DASHES AT LIFE 
 
 WITH A FREE PENCIL. 
 
 N. P. .WILLIS. 
 
 " Armado. How hast thou purchased this experience ? 
 Moth. By my penny of observation." 
 
 SHAKSPERK. 
 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 J. S. REDFIELD, CLINTON HALL, 
 
 CORNER OF NASSAU AND BEEKMAN STREETS. 
 
 STEREOTYPED BY REDFIELD AND SAVAGE, 13 CHAMBERS ST., N. T. 
 
 1845. 
 
V V x , V* . 
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1845, 
 
 BY N. P. WILLIS, 
 in the Clerk s Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern District of New York. 
 
P3? 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 IT has been with difficult submission to 
 marketableness that the author has broken up 
 his statues at the joints, and furnished each 
 fragment with head and legs to walk alone. 
 Continually accumulating material, with the 
 desire to produce a work of fiction, he was as 
 continually tempted by extravagant prices to 
 shape these separate forms of society and char 
 acter into tales for periodicals ; and between 
 two persuaders the law of copyright, on the 
 one hand, providing that American books at 
 fair prices should compete with books to be 
 had for nothing, and necessity on the other 
 hand, pleading much more potently than the 
 ambition for an adult stature in literary fame 
 he has gone on acquiring a habit of dashing 
 off for a magazine any chance view of life that 
 turned up to him, and selling in fragmentary 
 chapters what should have been kept together 
 and moulded into a proportionate work of im 
 agination. So has gradually accumulated the 
 large collection of tales which follow literally 
 dashes at life with a free pencil each one, 
 though a true copy of a part, conveying, of 
 course, no portion of the meaning and moral 
 of a whole. It is as a parcel of fragments as 
 a portfolio of sketches for a picture never paint 
 ed that he offers them to the public. Their 
 lack of what an English critic cleverly calls the 
 "ponderous goodness of a didactic purpose," 
 
 must be balanced, if at all, by their truth to life, 
 for they have been drawn mostly from impres 
 sions freshly made, and with no record of what 
 they were a part of. In proportion to his pow 
 er of imagination, the reader will supply the 
 back-ground and adjuncts some, no doubt (if 
 the author may judge by himself), preferring 
 the sketch to the finished picture. 
 
 A word explanatory of the character of Part 
 I. Most of the stories in it are illustrative of 
 the distinctions of English society. As a re 
 publican visiting a monarchical country for the 
 first time, and traversing the barriers of differ 
 ent ranks with a stranger s privilege, the au 
 thor s curiosity was most on the alert to know 
 how nature s nobility held its own against no 
 bility by inheritance, and how heart and judg 
 ment were modified in their action by the thin 
 air at the summit of refinement. Circumstances 
 in the career of men of genius now living, and 
 feelings in titled and exclusive circles which 
 the author had opportunities to study, furnished 
 hints for the storied illustrations of the dis 
 tinctions that interested him, and he has thought 
 it worth while to present these together, as 
 bearing upon those relations of aristocratic 
 life which first interest republican curiosity 
 abroad. 
 
 With these explanations, the author commits 
 his book to the reader s kind allowance. 
 
 082 % 
 
HIGH LIFE IN EUROPE, 
 
 LEAVES FROM THE HEART-BOOK OF ERNEST CLAY, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IN a small room, second floor, front, No. 
 
 South Audley street, Grosvenor square, on one of 
 the latter days of May, five or six years ago, there 
 stood an inkstand, of which you may buy the like for 
 three halfpence in most small shops in Soho. It was 
 stuck in the centre of the table, like the largest of 
 the Azores, on a schoolboy s amateur map a large 
 blot surrounded by innumerable smaller blotlings. 
 On the top of a small leather portmanteau near by, 
 stood two pair of varnished-leather boots of a sump 
 tuous expensiveness, slender, elegant, and without 
 spot, except the leaf of a crushed orange blossom 
 clinging to one of the heels. Between the inkstand 
 and the boots sat the young and then fashionable au 
 thor of , and the boots and the ink 
 stand were tolerable exponents of his two opposite 
 but closely woven existences. 
 
 It was two o clock, P. M., and the author was stir 
 ring his tea. He had been stirring it with the same 
 velocity three quarters of an hour for when that cup 
 should be drank, inevitably the next thing was to 
 write the first sentence of an article for the New 
 Month. Mag., and he was prolonging his breakfast, 
 as a criminal his last prayer. 
 
 The "fatigued" sugar and milk were still flying 
 round the edge of the cup in a whity blue concave, 
 when the " maid of all work" of his landlord the 
 baker, knocked at the door with a note. 
 
 13 G M street. 
 
 "DEAR SIR: 
 
 " Has there been any mistake in the two-penny post 
 delivery, that I have not received your article for this 
 month ? If so, please send me the rough draught by 
 the bearer (who waits), and the compositors will try 
 to make it out. Yours, truly, 
 
 " P. S. If the tale is not finished, please send me 
 the title and motto, that we may print the contents 
 during the delay." 
 
 The tea, which, for some minutes, had turned off a 
 decreasing ripple from the edge of the arrested spoon, 
 came to a standstill at the same moment, with the 
 author s wits. He had seized his pen and com 
 menced : 
 
 " DEAR SIR : 
 
 " The tale of this month will be called " 
 
 As it was not yet conceived, he found a difficulty 
 in baptizing it. Ills eyebrows descended like the 
 bars of a knight s visor ; his mouth, which had ex 
 pressed only lassitude and melancholy, shut close, 
 and curved downward, and he sat for some minutes 
 dipping his pen in the ink, and, at each dip, adding a 
 new shoal to the banks of the inky Azores. 
 
 A long sigh of relief, and an expansion of every 
 
 line of his face into a look of brightening thought gave 
 token presently that the incubation had been success 
 ful. The gilded note-paper was pushed aside, a broad 
 and fair sheet of " foreign post" was hastily drawn 
 j from his blotting-book, and forgetful alike of the un 
 achieved cup of tea, and the waiting "devil" of Marl- 
 borough street, the felicitous author dashed the first 
 magic word on mid-page, and without title or motto, 
 traced rapidly line after line, his face clearing of las 
 situde, and his eyes of their troubled languor, as the 
 erasures became fewer, and his punctuations farther 
 between. 
 
 " Any answer to the note, sir?" said the maid-ser 
 vant, who had entered unnoticed, and stood close at 
 his elbow, wondering at the flying velocity of his pen. 
 He was at the bottom of the fourth page, and in 
 the middle of a sentence. Handing the wet and blot 
 ted sheet to the servant, with an order for the messen 
 ger to call the following morning for the remainder, 
 he threw down his pen and .abandoned himself to the 
 most delicious of an author s pleasures revery in the 
 mood of composition. He forgot work. Work is to 
 put such reveries into words. His imagination flew 
 on like a horse without his rider gloriously and ex- 
 ultingly, but to no goal. The very waste made his 
 indolence sweeter the very nearness of his task 
 brightened his imaginative idleness. The ink dried 
 upon his pen. Some capricious association soon 
 drew back his thoughts to himself. His eye dulled. 
 His lips resumed their mingled expression of pride 
 and voluptuousness. He started to find himself idle, 
 remembered that had sent oft" the sheet with a bro 
 ken sentence, without retaining even the concluding 
 word, and with a sigh more of relief than vexation, 
 lie drew on his boots. Presto ! the world of which 
 his penny-half-penny inkstand was the immortal cen 
 tre the world of heaven-born imagination melted 
 from about him ! He stood in patent leather hu 
 man, handsome, and liable to debt! 
 
 And thus fugitive and easy of decoy, thus compul 
 sory, irresolute, and brief, is the unchastised toil of 
 genius the earning of the "fancy-bread" of poets! 
 It would be hard if a man who has " made himself 
 a name" (beside being paternally christened), should 
 want one in a story so, if you please, I will name 
 my hero in the next sentence. Ernest Clay was 
 dressed to walk to Marlborough street to apply for his 
 " guinea-a-page" in advance, and find out the con 
 cluding word of his MS., when there was heard a foot 
 man s rap at the street door. The baker on the 
 (ground floor ran to pick up his penny loaves jarred 
 i from the shelves by the tremendous rat-a-tat-tat, and 
 jjthe rn;u d ran herself out of her shoes to inform Mr. 
 
 ||CIay that Lady Mildred wished to speak with 
 
 him. Neither maid nor baker were displeased at being 
 put to inconvenience, nor was the baker s hysterical 
 
ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 mother disposed to murmur at the outrageous clat 
 ter which shattered her nerves for a week. There 
 is a spell to a Londoner in a coronetted carnage which 
 changes the noise and impudence of the unwhipped 
 varlets who ride behind it, into music and condescen 
 sion. 
 
 "You were going out," said Lady Mildred ; " can 
 I take you anywhere?" 
 
 "You can take me," said Clay, spreading out his 
 hands in an attitude of surrender, " when and where 
 you please ; but I was going to my publisher s." 
 
 The chariot-steps rattled down, and his foot was on 
 the crimson carpet, when a plain family carriage sud 
 denly turned out of Grosvenor square, and pulled up 
 as near his own door as the obstruction permitted. 
 
 Ernest changed color slightly, and Lady Mildred, 
 after a glance through the window behind her, stamp 
 ed her little foot and said " Come !" 
 
 "One moment!" was his insufficient apology as he 
 sprang to the window of the other carnage, and with 
 a manner almost infantile in its cordial simplicity, ex 
 pressed his delight at meeting the two ladies who sat 
 within. 
 
 "Have you set up a chariot, Ernest?" said the 
 younger, laying her hand upon the dark mass of curls 
 on his temple, and pushing his head gently back that 
 she might see what equipage stopped the way. 
 
 He hesitated a moment, but there was no escape 
 from the truth. 
 
 " It is Lady Mildred, who has just 
 
 " Is she alone ?" 
 
 The question was asked by the elder lady with a 
 look that expressed a painfully sad wish to hear him 
 answer, "No." 
 
 While he hesitated, the more forgiving voice next 
 him hurriedly broke the silence. 
 
 " We are forgetting our errand, Ernest. Can you 
 come to Ashurst to-morrow?" 
 
 "With all my heart." 
 
 "Do not fail! My uncle wishes to see you. 
 Stay I have brought you a note from him. Good- 
 by ! Are you going to the rout at Mrs. Rothschild s 
 to-night?" 
 
 " I was not but if you are going, I will." 
 
 "Till this evening, then?" 
 
 The heavy vehicle rolled away, and Ernest crushed 
 the note in his hand unread, and with a slower step 
 than suited the impatience of Lady Mildred, returned 
 to the chariot. The coachman, with that mysterious 
 instinct that coachmen have, let fall his silk upon the 
 backs of his spirited horses, and drove in time with 
 his master s quickened pulses ; and at the corner of 
 Chesterfield street, as the family carriage rolled slowly 
 on its way to Howell and James s (on an errand con 
 nected with bridal pearls), the lofty-stepping bays of 
 Lady Mildred dashed by as if all the anger and scorn 
 of a whole descent of coronets were breathing from 
 their arched nostrils. 
 
 What a boon from nature to aristocracy was the 
 pride of the horse ! 
 *#.***** 
 
 Lady Mildred was a widow of two years weeds, 
 thirty-two, and of a certain kind of talent, which will be 
 explained in the course of this story. She had no per 
 sonal charms, except such as are indispensably neces 
 sary to lady-likeness indispensably necessary, for 
 that very reason, to any control over the fancy of a 
 man of imagination. Her upper lip was short enough 
 to express scorn, and her feet and hands were ex 
 quisitely small. Some men of fancy would exact 
 these attractions and great many more. But without 
 these, no woman ever secured even the most transient 
 homage of a poet. She had one of those faces you 
 never find yourself at leisure to criticise, or rather she 
 had one of those siren voices, that, if you heard her 
 speak before you had found leisure to look at her 
 
 features, you had lost your opportunity for ever. Her 
 voice expressed the presence of beauty, as much as a 
 carol in a tree expresses the presence of a bird, and 
 though you saw not the beauty, as you may not see 
 the bird, it was impossible to doubt it was there. Yet 
 with all this enchantment in her voice it was the most 
 changeable music on earth for hear it when you 
 would, if she were in earnest, you might be sure it 
 was the softened echo of the voice to which she was 
 replying. She never spoke first. She never led the 
 conversation. She had not (or never used) the talent 
 which many very common-place women have, of 
 giving a direction to the feelings and controlling even 
 the course of thought of superior men who may ad 
 mire them. In everything she played a second. She 
 was silent through all your greetings, through all your 
 compliments; smiled and listened, if it was for hours, 
 till your lighter spirits were exhausted and you came 
 down to the true under tone of your heart ; and by the 
 first-struck chord of feeling and earnest (and her skill 
 in detecting it was an infallible instinct), she modulated 
 her voice and took up the strain, and from the echo 
 of your own soul and the flow of the most throbbing 
 vein in your own heart, she drew your enchantment 
 and intoxication. Her manners were a necessary part 
 of such a character. Her limbs seemed always en 
 chanted into stillness. When you gazed at her more 
 earnestly, her eyes gradually drooped, and, again her 
 enlarged orbs brightened and grew eager as your gaze 
 retreated. With her slight forefinger laid upon her 
 cheek, and her gloved hand supporting her arm, she 
 sat stirless and rapt, and by an indescribable magnetism 
 you felt that there was not a nerve in your eye, nor a 
 flutter toward change in the expression of your face, 
 that was not linked to hers, nerve for nerve, pulsation 
 for pulsation. Whether this charm would work on 
 common men it is difficult to say for Lady Mildred s 
 passions were invariably men of genius. 
 
 You may not have seen such a woman as Lady 
 Mildred but you have seen girls like Eve Gore. 
 There are many lilies, though each one, new-found, 
 seems to the finder the miracle of nature. She was a 
 pure, serene-hearted, and very beautiful girl of seven 
 teen. Her life had been hitherto the growth of love 
 and care, as the lily she resembled is the growth of 
 sunshine and dew ; and, flower-like, all she had ever 
 known or felt had turned to spotless loveliness. She 
 had met the gifted author of her favorite romance at 
 a country-house where they were guests together, and 
 I could not. short of a chapter of metaphysics, tell you 
 how natural it was for these two apparently uncon 
 genial persons to mingle, like drops of dew. I will 
 merely say now, that strongly marked as seems the 
 character of every man of genius, his very capability 
 of tracking the mazes of human nature, makes him 
 the very chameleon and Proteus of his species, and 
 that after he has assimilated himself by turns to every 
 variety of mankind, his masks never fall off without 
 disclosing the very soul and type of the most infantine 
 simplicity. Other men s disguises, too, become a 
 second nature. Those of genius are worn to their 
 last day, as loosely as the mantles of the gods. 
 
 The kind of man called " a penetrating observer," 
 if he had been in the habit of meeting Mr. Clay in 
 London circles, and had afterward seen him rambling 
 
 through the woods of Park with Eve Gore, 
 
 natural, playful sometimes, and sometimes sad, his 
 manner the reflex of hers, even his voice almost as 
 feminine as hers, in his fine sympathy with her charac 
 ter and attractions one of these shrewd people I say 
 would have shaken his head and whispered, "poor 
 girl, how little she understands him!" But of all the 
 wise and worldly, gentle and simple, who had ever 
 crossed the path of Ernest Clay, the same child-like 
 girl was the only creature to whom he appeared utterly 
 himself for whom he wore no disguise to whose 
 
ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 
 
 plummet of simple truth he opened the seldom-sound 
 ed depths of his prodigal and passionate heart. Lady 
 Mildred knew his weaknesses and his genius. Eve 
 Gore knew his better and brighter nature. And both 
 loved him. 
 
 And now, dear reader, having drawn you the portraits 
 of my two heroines, I shall go ou with a disembarras 
 sed narrative to the end. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LADY Mildred s bays panced proudly up Bond 
 street, and kept on their way to the publisher s, at 
 whose door they fretted and champed the bit they 
 and their high-born mistress in attendance upon the 
 poor author who in this moment of despondency com 
 plained of the misappreciation of the world. Of the 
 scores of people who knew him and his companion 
 as London celebrities, and who followed the showy 
 equipage with their eyes, how many, think you, look 
 ed on Mr. Ernest Clay as a misappreciated man ? 
 How many, had they known that the whole errand 
 of this expensive turn out was to call on the publisher 
 for the price of a single magazine paper, would have 
 reckoned those sixteen guineas and the chariot of a 
 noble lady to come for the payment five hundred 
 pounds for your romance, and a welcome to all the 
 best houses and costliest entertainments of England 
 a hundred pounds for your poem and the attention 
 of a thousand eager admirers these are some of the 
 " lengthening shadows" to the author s profits which 
 the author does not reckon, but which the world does. 
 To the rest of mankind these are " chattels" priced 
 and paid for. Twenty thousand a year would hardly 
 buy for Mr. Clay, simple and uncelebrated, what Mr. 
 Clay, author, etc., has freely with five hundred. To 
 whose credit shall the remaining nineteen thousand 
 five hundred be set down ? Common people who pay 
 for these things are not believers in fairy gifts. They 
 see the author in a station of society unattainable ex 
 cept by the wealthiest and best born, with all that 
 profuse wealth could purchase as completely at his 
 service as if the bills of cost were to be brought in to 
 him at Christmas ; and besides all this (once more 
 " into the bargain") caressed and flattered as no 
 " golden dulness" ever was or could be. To rate the 
 revenue of such a pampered idol of fortune, what man 
 in his senses would inquire merely into the profits of 
 his book ! 
 
 And in this lies the whole secret of the envy and 
 malice which is the peculiar inheritance of genius. 
 Generous-minded men, all women, the great and rich 
 who arc too high themselves to feel envy, and the poor 
 and humble who are too low to feel aught but wonder 
 and grateful admiration these are the fosterers and 
 flatterers, the paymasters of the real wealth and the 
 receivers of the choicest fruits of genius. The aspi 
 ring mediocrity, the slighted and eclipsed pretenders 
 to genius^ are a large class, to whose eyes all bright 
 ness is black, and the great mass of men toil their lives 
 and utmost energies away for the hundredth part of 
 what the child of genius wins by his unseen pen by 
 the toil which neither hardens his hands nor trenches 
 on his hours of pleasure. They see a man no come- 
 lier nor better born than they idle apparently, as the 
 most spoilt minion of wealth, vying with the best born 
 in the favor of beautiful and proud women, using all 
 the goodsof fortune with a ptofuse carelessness, which 
 the possession of the lamp of Aladdin could not more 
 than inspire, and by bitter criticism, by ingenious 
 slander, by continual depreciation, ridicule, and ex 
 aggeration of every pretty foible, they attempt to level 
 the inequalities of fortune, and repair the flagrant in 
 justice of the blind goddess to themselves. Upon the 
 
 class generally, they are avenged. Their malice 
 poisons the joy and cripples the fine-winged fancy of 
 nineteen in the score. But the twentieth is born 
 proud and elastic, and the shaft his scorn does not 
 fling back, his light-heartedness eludes, and his is the 
 destiny which, more than that of kings or saints, proves 
 the wide inequality in human lot. 
 
 I trust, dear reader, that you have been more amused 
 than Lady Mildred at this half hour s delay at the 
 publisher s. While I have been condensing into a 
 theory by scattered observations of London authors, 
 her ladyship has been musing upon the apparition of 
 the family carriage of the Gores at Mr. Clay s lodgings. 
 Lady Mildred s position in society, though she had 
 the entree to all the best houses in London, precluded 
 an intimate acquaintance with any unmarried girl 
 but she had seen Eve Gore and knew and dreaded her 
 loveliness. A match of mere interest would have 
 given her no uneasiness, but she could see far enough 
 into the nature of this beautiful and fresh-hearted girl 
 to know that hers would be no divided empire. All 
 women are conscious that a single-minded, concentra 
 ted, pure affection, melting the whole character into 
 the heart, is omnipotent in perpetuating fidelity. 
 
 " Ernest," said Lady Mildred, as the chariot sped 
 from the publisher s door, and took its way to the 
 Park, " you are grown ceremonious. Am I so new a 
 friend that you can not open a note in my presence ?" 
 
 Clay placed the crushed letter in her hand. 
 
 "1 will have no secrets from you, dear Lady Mildred. 
 There is probably much in that note that will surprise 
 you. Break the seal, however, and give me your ad 
 vice. I will not promise to follow it." 
 
 The blood flushed to the temples of Lady Mildred 
 as she read- but her lips, though pale and trembling, 
 were compressed by a strong effort of self control. 
 She turned back and read the note again in a murmur 
 ing undertone: 
 
 " DEAR MR. CLAY : From causes which you will 
 probably understand, I have been induced to recon 
 sider your proposal of marriage to my niece. Impru 
 dent as I must still consider your union, I find myself 
 in such a situation that, should you persevere, I must 
 decide in its favor, as the least of two evils. You will 
 forgive my anxious care, however, if I exact of you, 
 before taking any decided step, a full and fair state 
 ment of your pecuniary embarrassments (which I 
 understand are considerable) and your present income 
 and prospects. 1 think it proper to inform you that 
 Miss Gore s expectations, beyond an annuity of =300 
 a year, are very distant, and that all your calculations 
 should be confined to that amount. With this under 
 standing, I should be pleased to see you at Ashurst 
 to-morrow morning. Yours, truly, 
 
 " THOMAS GORE." 
 
 " Hear me before you condemn, dear Lady Mildred," 
 passionately exclaimed Ernest, as she clasped her 
 hands over the letter and her tears fell fast upon them: 
 " I was wrong to leave the discovery of this to chance 
 I should have dealt more frankly with you indeed, 
 if I had had the opportunity 
 
 Lady Mildred looked up, as if to reproach him for 
 ! the evasion half uttered. 
 
 " I have seen you daily, it is true, but every hour is 
 ! not an hour for confession like this, and besides, my 
 i new love was a surprise, and what I have to confess is 
 a change in my feelings still more recent a constant- 
 i ly brightening vision of a life (pardon me, Lady Mil 
 dred !) deeper a thousand fold, and a thousand times 
 sweeter and more engrossing than ours." 
 
 " You are frank," said his pale listener, who had re- 
 
 j covered her self-possession, and seemed bent now, 39 
 
 i usual, only on listening and entering into his feelings. 
 
 " I would he so, indeed," he resumed ; " but I have 
 
10 
 
 ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 not yet come to my confession. Life is too short, 
 Lady Mildred, and youth too vanishing, to waste feel 
 ing on delusion." 
 
 " Such as your love, do you mean, Ernest ?" 
 
 " Pardon me ! Were you my wife " 
 
 Lady Mildred made a slight motion of impatience 
 with her hand, and unconsciously raised the expressive 
 arching of her lip. 
 
 " I must name this forbidden subject to be under 
 stood. See what a false position is mine ! You are 
 too proud to marry, but have not escaped loving me, 
 and you wish me to be contented with a perfume on 
 the breeze, to feel a property in a bird in the sky. It 
 was very sweet to begin to love you, to win and join 
 step by step, to have food for hope in what was refused 
 me. But I am checked, and you are still free. Island 
 at an impassable barrier, and you demand that I should 
 feel united to you." 
 
 " You are ungrateful, Ernest !" 
 
 " If I were your slave, I am, for you load me with 
 favors but as your lover, no ! It does not fill my 
 heart to open your house to me, to devote to me your 
 dining hours, your horses and servants, to let the 
 world know that you love me, to make me your 
 romance yet have all the common interests of life 
 apart, have a station in society apart, and ambition not 
 mine, a name not mine, and hearth not mine. You 
 share my wild passions, and my fashionable negations, 
 not my homely feelings and everyday sorrows. I have 
 a whole existence into which you never enter. I am 
 something besides a fashionable author but not to 
 you. I have a common human heart a pillow upon 
 which lies down no fancy a morning which is not 
 spent in sleep or listlessness, but in the earning of my 
 bread I have dulness and taciturnity and caprice 
 and in all these you have no share. I am a butterfly 
 and an earth-worm, by turns, and you know me only 
 on the wing. You do not answer me !" 
 
 Lady Mildred, as I have said before, was an admirer 
 of genius, and though Ernest was excusing an infideli 
 ty to herself, the novelty of his distinctions opened to 
 her a new chapter in the book of love, and she was 
 interested far beyond resentment. He was talking 
 from his heart, .too, and every one who has listened to a 
 murmur of affection, knows what sweetness the breath 
 ings of those deeper veins of feeling infuse into the 
 voice. To a palled Sybarite like Lady Mildred, there 
 was a wild-flower freshness in all this that was irresisti 
 bly captivating. A smile stole through her lips instead 
 of the reproach and anger that he expected. 
 
 " I do not answer you, my dear Ernest, for the same 
 reason I would not tear a leaf out of one of your books 
 unread. I quite enter into your feelings. I wish I 
 could hear you talk of them hours longer. Their 
 simplicity and truth enchant me but I confess I can 
 not see what you propose to yourself. Do you think 
 to reconcileand blend all these contradictory moods 
 by an imprudent marriage ? Or do you mean to vow 
 your butterfly to celibacy, and marry your worm-fly 
 alone, and grovel in sympathy rather than take love 
 with you when you soar, and keep your grovelling to 
 yourself." 
 
 " I think Eve Gore would love me, soaring or creep 
 ing, Lady Mildred! She would be happier sitting by 
 my table while I wrote, than driving in this gay crowd 
 with her chariot. She would lose the light of her life 
 in absence from me, like a cloud receding from the 
 moon, whatever stars sparkled around her. She 
 xvould be with me at all hours of the day and the night, 
 sharing every thought that could spring to my lips, 
 and reflecting my own soul for ever. You will forgive 
 me for finding out this want, this void, while you loved 
 me. But I have felt it sickeningly in your bright 
 rooms, with music and perfume, and the touch of your 
 hand all conspiring to enchant me. In the very hours 
 when most men on earth would have envied me, I 
 
 have felt the humbler chambers of my heart ache with 
 loneliness. I have longed for some still and dark re 
 treat, where the beating of my pulse would be protes 
 tation enough, and where she who loved me was blest 
 to overflowing with my presence only. Affection is a 
 glow-worm light, dear Lady Mildred ! It pales amid 
 splendor." 
 
 "But you should have a glow-worm s habits to 
 relish it, my dear poet. You can not live on a blade 
 of grass, nor shine brightest out of doors in the rain. 
 Let us look at it without these Claude Lorraine 
 glasses, and see the truth. Mr. Thomas Gore offers 
 you d300 a year with his neice. Your own income, 
 the moment you marry, is converted from pocket- 
 money into subsistence from the purchase of gloves 
 and Hungary water into butcher s meat and groceries. 
 You retire to a small house in one of the cheaper streets. 
 You have been accustomed to drive out continually, 
 and for several years you have not only been free from 
 the trouble and expense of your own dinner, but you 
 have pampered your taste with the varied chefs d ceuvre 
 of all the best cooks of London. You dine at home 
 now, feeding several mouths beside your own, on what 
 is called a family dinner say, as a good specimen, a 
 beefsteak and potatoes, with a Yorkshire pudding. 
 Instead of retiring after your coffee to a brilliantly 
 lighted drawning-room, where collision with some 
 portion of the most gifted society of London dis 
 ciplines your intellect and polishes your wit and fancy, 
 you sit down by your wife s work-table, and grow 
 sleepy over your plans of economy, sigh for the gay 
 scenes you once moved in, and go to bed to be rid of 
 your regrets." 
 
 " But why should I be exiled from society, my dear 
 Lady Mildred ? What circle in London would not 
 take a new grace from the presence of such a woman 
 as Eve Gore ?" 
 
 "Oh, marvellous simplicity ! If men kept the gates 
 of society, a la bonne heure ! for then a party would 
 i consist of one man (the host), and a hundred pretty 
 women. But the "free list" of society, you know, 
 as well as I, my love-blind friend, is exclusively mas 
 culine. Woman keeps the door, and easy as turns the 
 hinge to the other sex, it swings reluctant to her own. 
 You may name a hundred men in your circle whose 
 return for the hospitality of fashionable houses it 
 would be impossible to guess at, but you can not 
 point me out one married woman, whose price of 
 admission is not as well known and as rigidly exacted, 
 as the cost of an opera-box. Those who do not give 
 sumptuous parties in their turn (and even |hese must 
 be well bred and born people), are in the first place 
 very ornamental; but, besides being pretty, they must 
 either sing or flirt. There are but two classes of 
 women in fashionable society the leaders or party- 
 givers, and the decoys to young men. There is the 
 
 pretty Mrs. , for example, whose habitation 
 
 nobody knows but as a card with an address; and why 
 is she everywhere ? Simply, because she draws four 
 or five fashionable young men, who would find no in 
 ducement to come if she were not there. Then there 
 
 is Mrs. , who sings enchantingly, and Mrs. 
 
 , who is pretty, and a linguist, and entertains 
 stupid foreigners, and Mrs. , who is clever at 
 charades, and plays quadrilles, and what would Mrs. 
 Clay do? Is she musical ?" 
 
 " She is beautiful !" 
 
 " Well she must flirt. With three or four fash 
 ionable lovers " 
 
 "Lady Mildred!" 
 
 "Pardon me, I was thinking aloud. Well I will 
 suppose you an exception to this Mede-and-Persian 
 law of the beau monde, and allow for a moment that. 
 Mrs. Clay, with an income of five or six hundred a 
 year, with no eyes for anybody but her husband, 
 poor, pretty, and innocent (what a marvel it would be 
 
ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 11 
 
 in May Fair, by-the-way !), becomes as indispensable 
 to a partie fine as was Mr. Clay while in unmarried 
 celebrity. Mind, I am not talking of routs and balls, 
 where anybody can go, because there must be a crowd, 
 but of petits soupcrs, select dinners, and entertain 
 ments where every guest is invited as an ingredient to 
 a well-studied cup of pleasure. I will suppose for an 
 instant, that a connubial and happy pair could be de 
 sirable in such circles. What part of your income 
 of five or six hundred a year, do you suppose, would 
 dress and jewel your wife, keep carriage and servants, 
 and pay for your concert-tickets and opera-boxes all 
 absolutely indispensable to people who go out ? Why, 
 my dear Ernest, your whole income would not suffice 
 for the half. You must live shy, go about in hack 
 ney-coaches, dress economically (which is execrable 
 in a woman), and endure the neglects and mortifica 
 tions which our pampered servants inevitably inflict 
 on shabby people. Your life would be one succes 
 sion of bitter mortifications, difficulties, and heart 
 burnings. Believe me, there is no creature on earth 
 so exquisitely wretched as a man with a fashionable 
 wife and small means." 
 
 Lady Mildred had been too much accustomed to 
 the management of men, not to leave Ernest, after this 
 homily, to his own thoughts. A woman of less 
 knowledge and tact would have followed up this argu 
 ment with an appeal to his feelings. But beside that, 
 she wished the seed she had thus thrown into his 
 mind to germinate with thought. She knew that it 
 was a wise principle in the art of love to be cold by 
 daylight. Ernest sat silent, with his eyes cast musing 
 ly down to the corner of the chariot, where the smal 
 lest foot and prettiest chaussure conceivable was play 
 ing with the tassel of the window-pull ; and reserving 
 her more effective game of feeling for the evening, 
 
 when they were to meet at Mrs. R s, she set him 
 
 down at his clubhouse with a calm and cold adieu, 
 and drove home to bathe, dine alone, sleep, and re 
 fresh body and spirit for the struggle against love and 
 Eve Gore. 
 
 CHAPTER 111. 
 
 GENIUS is lord of the world. Men labor at the 
 foundation of society, while the lowly lark, unseen 
 and little prized, sits, hard by, in his nest on the earth, 
 gathering strength to bear his song up to the sun. 
 Slowly rise basement and monumental aisle, column 
 and architrave, dome and lofty tower; and when the 
 cloud-piercing spire is burnished with gold, and the 
 fabric stands perfect and wondrous, up springs the for 
 gotten lark, with airy wheel to the pinnacle, and 
 standing poised and unwondering on his giddy perch, 
 he pours out his celestial music till his bright footing 
 trembles with harmony. And when the song is done, 
 and mounting thence, he soars away to fill his ex 
 hausted heart at the fountains of the sun, the dwel 
 lers in the towers below look up to the gilded spire 
 and shout not to the burnished shaft, but to the 
 lark lost from it in the sky. 
 
 " Mr. Clay !" repeated the last footman on Mrs. K s 
 flower-laden staircase. 
 
 I have let you down as gently as possible, dear 
 reader; but here we are in one of the most fashion 
 able houses in May Fair. 
 
 Pardon me a moment ! Did I say I had let you 
 down 1 What pyramid of the Nile is piled up like 
 the gradations between complete insignificance and 
 the effect of that footman s announcement? On the 
 heels of Ernest, and named with the next breath of 
 the menial s lips, came the bearer of a title laden 
 with the emblazoned honors of descent. Had he en- 
 
 | tered a hall of statuary, he could not have been less 
 regarded. All eyes were on the pale forehead and 
 calm lips that had entered before him ; and the blood 
 of the warrior who made the name, and of the states 
 men and nobles who had borne it, and the accumu 
 lated honor and renown of centuries of unsullied dis 
 tinctions all these concentrated glories in the midst 
 of the most polished and discriminating circle on 
 earth, paled before the lamp of yesterday, burning in 
 the eye of genius. Where is distinction felt ? In 
 secret, amid splendor ? No ! In the street and the 
 vulgar gaze ? No ! In the bosom of love ? She 
 only remembers it. W^here, then, is the intoxicating 
 cup of homage the delirious draught for which 
 brain, soul, and nerve, are tasked, tortured, and 
 spent where is it lifted to the lips? The answer 
 brings me back. Eyes shining from amid jewels, 
 voices softened with gentle breeding, smiles awaken 
 ing beneath costly lamps an atmosphere of perfume, 
 splendor, and courtesy these form the poet s Hebe, 
 and the hero s Ganymede. These pour for ambition 
 the draught that slakes his fever these hold the cup 
 to lips, drinking eagerly, that would turn away in sol 
 itude, from the ambrosia of the gods ! 
 
 Clay s walk through the sumptuous rooms of Mrs. 
 
 R was like a Roman triumph. He was borne on 
 
 from lip to lip those before him anticipating his 
 greeting, and those he left, still sending their bright 
 and kind words after him. He breathed incense. 
 
 Suddenly, behind him, he heard the voice of Eve 
 Gore. She was making the tour of the rooms on the 
 arm of a friend, and following Ernest, had insensibly 
 tried to get nearer to him, and had become flushed 
 and troubled in the effort. They had never before 
 met in a large party, and her pride, in the universal 
 attention he attracted, still more flushed her eyelids 
 and injured her beauty. She gave him her hand as 
 he turned ; but the greeting that sprang to her lips 
 was checked by a sudden consciousness that many 
 eyes were on her, and she hesitated, murmured some 
 broken words, and was silent. The immediate atten 
 tion that Clay had given to her, interrupted at the 
 same moment the undertoned murmur around him, 
 and there was a minute s silence, in which the inevit 
 able thought flashed across his mind that he had over 
 rated her loveliness. Still the trembling and clinging 
 clasp of her hand, and the appealing earnestness of 
 her look, told him what was in her heart and when 
 was ever genius ungrateful for love ! He made a 
 strong effort to reason down his disappointment, and 
 had the embarrassed girl resumed instantly her natu 
 ral ease and playfulness, his sensitive imagination 
 would have been conquered, and its recoil forgotten. 
 But love, that lends us words, smiles, tears, all we 
 want, in solitude, robs us in the gay crowd of every 
 thing but what we can not use tears ! As the man 
 she worshipped led her on through those bright 
 rooms, Eve Gore, though she knew not why, felt the 
 large drops ache behind her eyes. She would have 
 sobbed if she had tried to speak. Clay had given her 
 his arm, and resumed his barter of compliment with 
 the crowd, and with it a manner she had never before 
 seen. He had been a boy, fresh, frank, ardent, and 
 unsuspicious, at Annesley Park. She saw him now 
 in the cold and polished armor of a man who has 
 been wounded as well as flattered by the world, and 
 who presents his shield even to a smile. Impossible 
 as it was that he should play the lover now, she felt 
 wronged and hurt by his addressing the same tone of 
 elegant trifling and raillery which was the key of the 
 conversation around them. She knew, too, that she 
 herself was appearing to disadvantage ; and before a 
 brief hour had elapsed, she had become a prey to an 
 other feeling the bitter avarice which is the curse 
 of all affection for the gifted or the beautiful an ava- 
 arice that makes every smile given back for admiration, 
 
12 
 
 ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 a germ torn from us every word, even of thanks for 
 courtesy, a life-drop of our hearts drank away. 
 
 " The moon looks 
 On many brooks, 
 The brook can see no moon but this," 
 
 contains the mordent secret of most hearts vowed to 
 the love of remarkable genius or beauty. 
 
 The supper-rooms had been some time open; from 
 these and the dancing hall, the half-weary guests 
 were coming back to the deep fauteuils, the fresher 
 air, and the graver society of the library, which had 
 served as an apartment of reception. With a clouded 
 brow, thoughtful and silent, Eve Gore sat with her 
 mother in a recess near the entrance, and Clay, who 
 had kept near them, though their conversation had 
 long since languished, stood in the centre of a small 
 group of fashionable men, much more brilliant and 
 far louder in his gayety than he would have been 
 with a heart at ease. It was one of those nights of 
 declining May, when the new foliage of the season 
 seems to have exhausted the air, and though it was 
 near morning, there came through the open windows 
 neither coolness nor vitality. Fans, faded wreaths, 
 and flushed faces, were universal. 
 
 A footman stood suddenly in the vacant door. 
 
 " Lady Mildred !" 
 
 The announcements had been over for hours, and ev 
 ery eye was turned on the apparition of so late a comer. 
 
 Quietly, but with a step as elastic as the nod of a 
 water-lily, Lady Mildred glided into the room, and 
 the high tones and unharmonized voices of the differ 
 ent groups suddenly ceased, and were succeeded by 
 a low and sustained murmur of admiration. A white 
 dress of faultless freshness of fold, a snowy turban, 
 from which hung on either temple a cluster of crim 
 son camelias still wet with the night dew ; long raven 
 curls of undisturbed grace falling on shoulders of that 
 undescribable and dewy coolness which follows a 
 morning bath, giving the skin the texture and the 
 opaque whiteness of the lily ; lips and skin redolent 
 of the repose and purity, and the downcast but wake 
 ful eye so expressive of recent solitude, and so pecu 
 liar to one who has not spoken since she slept. 
 These were attractions which, in contrast with the 
 paled glories around, elevated Lady Mildred at once 
 into the predominant star of the night. 
 
 "What news from the bottom of the sea, most 
 adorable Venus ?" said a celebrated artist, standing 
 out from the group and drawing a line through the 
 air with his finger as if he were sketching the flowing 
 outline of her form. 
 
 Lady Mildred laid her small hand on Clay s, and 
 with a smile, but no greeting else, passed on. The 
 bantering question of the great painter told her that 
 her spell worked to a miracle, and she was too shrewd 
 an enchantress to dissolve it by the utterance of a 
 word. She glided on like a spirit of coolness, calm, 
 silent, and graceful, and, standing a moment on the 
 threshold of the apartment beyond, disappeared, 
 with every eye fixed on her vanishing form in won 
 dering admiration. Purity was the effect she had pro 
 duced purity in contrast with the flowers in the 
 room purity (Ernest Clay felt and wondered at it), 
 even in contrast with Eve Gore ! There was silence 
 in the library for an instant, and then, one by one, the 
 gay group around our hero followed in search of the 
 new star of the hour, and he was left standing alone. 
 He turned to speak to his silent friends, but the man 
 ner of Mrs. Gore was restrained, and Eve sat pale and 
 tearful within the curtain of the recess, and looked as 
 if her heart was breaking. 
 
 " I should like I should like to go home, mother !" 
 she said presently, with a difficult articulation. " I 
 think I am not well. Mr. Clay Ernest will see, 
 perhaps, if our carriage is here." 
 
 "You will find us in the shawl-room," said Mrs. 
 Gore, following him to the staircase, and looking after 
 him with troubled eyes. 
 
 The carriage was at the end of the line, and could 
 not come up for an hour. Day was dawning, and 
 Ernest had need of solitude and thought. He crossed 
 to the park, and strode off through the wet grass, 
 bathing his forehead with handfuls of dew. Alas ! 
 the fevered eyes and pallid lips he had last seen were 
 less in harmony with the calm stillness of the dawn 
 than the vision his conscience whispered him was 
 charmed for his destruction. As the cool air brought 
 back his reason, he remembered Eve s embarrassed 
 address and his wearisome and vain efforts to amuse 
 her. He remembered her mother s reproving eye, 
 her own colder utterance of his name, and then in 
 powerful relief came up the pictures he had brooded 
 on since his conversation in the chariot with Lady 
 Mildred, visions of self-denial and loss of caste op 
 posed to the enchantments of passion without re 
 straint or calculation, and his head and heart became 
 wild with conflicting emotions. One thing was cer 
 tain. He must decide now. He must speak to Eve 
 Gore before parting, and in the tone of his voice, if it 
 were but a word, there must be that which her love 
 would interpret as a bright promise or a farewell. He 
 turned back. At the gate of the park stood one of 
 the guilty wanderers of the streets, who seized him 
 by the sleeve and implored charity. 
 
 " Who are you ?" exclaimed Clay, scarce knowing 
 what he uttered. 
 
 "As good as she is," screamed the woman, pointing 
 to Lady Mildred s carriage, "only not so rich! Oh, 
 we could change places, if all s true." 
 
 Ernest stood still as if his better angel had spoken 
 through those painted lips. He gasped with the 
 weight that rose slowly from his heart ; and purcha 
 sing his release from the unfortunate wretch who 
 had arrested his steps, he crossed slowly to the 
 door crowded with the menials of the gay throng 
 within. 
 
 " Lady Mildred s carriage stops the way !" shouted 
 a footman, as he entered. He crossed the hall, and 
 at the door of the shawl-room he was met by Lady 
 Mildred herself, descending from the hall, surrounded 
 with a troop of admirers. Clay drew back to let her 
 pass ; but while he looked into her face, it became 
 radiant with the happiness of meeting him, and the 
 temptation to join her seemed irresistible. She en 
 tered the room, followed by her gay suite, and last of 
 all by Ernest, who saw with the first glance at the 
 Gores that he was believed to have been with her du 
 ring the half-hour that had elapsed. He approached 
 Eve; but the sense of an injustice he could not im 
 mediately remove, checked the warm impulse with 
 which he was coming to pour out his heart, and 
 against every wish and feeling of his soul, he was 
 constrained and cold. 
 
 " No, indeed !" exclaimed Lady Mildred, her voice 
 suddenly becoming audible, " I shall set down Mr. 
 Clay, whose door I pass. Lord George, ask Mr. 
 Clay if he is ready." 
 
 Eve Gore suddenly laid her hand on his arm, as if 
 a spirit had whispered that her last chance for happi 
 ness was poised on that moment s lapse. 
 
 " Ernest," she said, in a voice so unnaturally low 
 that it made his veins creep with the fear that her 
 reason was unseated, " I am lost if you go with her. 
 Stay, dear Ernest ! She can not love you as I do ! 
 I implore you remember that my life my life " 
 
 " Beg pardon," said Lord George, laying his hand 
 familiarly on Clay s shoulder, and drawing him away, 
 " Lady Mildred waits for you !" 
 
 " I will return in an instant, dearest Eve," he said, 
 springing again to her side, " I will apologize and be 
 with you. One instant only one " 
 
ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 "Thank God!" said the poor girl, sinking into a 
 chair and bursting into tears. 
 
 Lady Mildred sat in her chariot, but her head 
 drooped on her breast, and her arm hung lifeless at 
 her side. 
 
 "She is surely ill," said Lord George; "jump in, 
 Clay, my fine fellow. Get her home. Shut, the door, 
 Thomas! Go on, coachman!" And away sped the 
 fleet horses of Lady Mildred, but not homeward. 
 Clay lifted her head and spoke to her, but receiving 
 no answer, he busied himself chafing her hands, 
 and the carriage-blinds being drawn, he thought mo 
 mently he should be rid of his charge by their arrival 
 in Grosvenor square. But the minutes elapsed, and 
 still the carriage sped on ; and surprised at last into 
 suspicion, he raised his hand to the checkstring, but 
 the small fingers he had been chafing so earnestly ar 
 rested his arm. 
 
 " No, no !" said Lady Mildred, rising from his 
 shoulder, and throwing her arms passionately around 
 his neck, " you must go blindfold, and go with me ! 
 Ernest ! Ernest !" she continued, as he struggled an 
 instant to reach the string; but he felt her tears on 
 his breast, and his better angel ceased to contend with 
 him. He sank back in the chariot with those fragile 
 arms wound around him, and, with fever in his brain, 
 and leaden sadness at his heart, suffered that swift 
 chariot to speed on its guilty way. 
 
 In a small maison de plaisance, which he well knew, 
 in one of the most romantic dells of Devon, built 
 with exquisite taste by Lady Mildred, and filled with 
 all that art and wealth could minister to luxury, Er 
 nest Clay passed the remainder of the summer, for 
 getful of everything beyond his prison of pleasure, 
 except a voice full of bitter remorse, which some 
 times, in the midst of his abandonment, whispered the 
 name of Eve Gore. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE rain poured in torrents from the broad leads and 
 
 Gothic battlements of Castle, and the dull and 
 
 plashing echoes, sent up with steady reverberation 
 from the stone pavement of the terrace and courts, 
 lulled to a late sleep one of most gay and fashionable 
 parties assembled out of London. It was verging 
 toward noon, and, startled from a dream of music, by 
 the entrance of a servant, Ernest Clay drew back the 
 heavy bed-curtains and looked irresolutely around his 
 luxurious chamber. The coals in the bright fire 
 widened their smoking cracks and parted with an in 
 dolent effort, the well-trained menial glided stealthily 
 about, arranging the preparations for the author s 
 toilet,, the gray daylight came in grayer and softer 
 through the draped folds which fell over the windows, 
 and if there was temptation to get up, it extended no 
 farther than to the deeply cushioned and spacious 
 chair, over which was flung a dressing-gown of the 
 loose and flowing fashion, and gorgeous stuff of the 
 Orient. 
 
 " Thomas, what stars are visible to the naked eye 
 this morning?" said the couchant poet with a heavy 
 yawn. 
 
 "Sir!" 
 
 " I asked if Lady Grace was at breakfast?" 
 
 " Her ladyship took breakfast in her own room, I 
 believe, sir!" 
 
 " Qualis rex, tails grex. Bring mine !" 
 
 " Beg pardon, sir ?" 
 
 "I said I would have an egg and a spatchcock, 
 Thomas ! And, Thomas, see if the duke has done 
 with the Morning Post." 
 
 " I could have been unusually agreeable to Lady 
 Grace," soliloquized the author, as he completed his 
 
 toilet; "I feel both gregarious and brilliant this 
 morning and should have breakfasted below. Strange 
 that one feels so dexterous-minded sometimes after a 
 hard drink! Bacchus waking like Aurora! Thomas, 
 you forgot the claret ! I could coin this efflux of 
 soul, now, into burning words, and I will. What 
 is the cook s name, Thomas ? Gone ? So has the 
 builder of this glorious spatchcock narrowly escaped 
 immortality ! Fairest Lady Grace, the sonnet shall 
 be yours at the rebound ! A sonnet ? N n no ! 
 But I could write such a love-letter this morning ! 
 Morning Post. Died at Brighton Mr. William 
 Brown. 1 Brown Brown what was that pretty girl s 
 name that married a Brown a rich William Brown. 
 Beverley was her name Julia Beverley a flower for 
 the garden of Epicurus a mate for Leontium! I 
 loved her till I was stopped by Mr. Brown loved her? 
 by Jove, I loved her as well as I loved anybody that 
 year. Suppose she were now the widow Brown ? If 
 I thought so, faith ! I would write her such a te- 
 miniscent epistle Why not as it is on the supposi 
 tion ? Egad, if it is not her William Brown, it is no 
 fault of mine. Here goes at a venture ! 
 
 " To her who was JULIA BEVERLEY 
 
 " Your dark eye rests on this once familiar hand 
 writing. If your pulse could articulate at this moment, 
 it would murmur he loved me well ! He who writes to 
 you now, after years of silence, parted from you with 
 your tears upon his lips parted from you as the last 
 shadow parts from the sun, with a darkness that must 
 deepen till morn again. I begin boldly, but the usage 
 of the world is based upon forgetfulness in absence, 
 and I have not forgotten. Yet this is not to be a love- 
 letter. 
 
 " I am turning back a leaf in my heart. Turn to 
 it in yours ! On a night in June, within the shadow 
 of the cypress by the fountain of Ceres, in the ducal 
 gardens of Florence, at thefesla of the duke s birth- 
 night, I first whispered to you of love. Is it so writ in 
 your tablet ? Or were those broken words, and those 
 dark tresses drooped on my breast, mockeries of a 
 night flung from remembrance with the flowers you 
 wore? Flowers, said I? Oh, Heaven ! how beautiful 
 you were with those lotus-stems braided in your hair, 
 and the white chalices gleaming through your ringlets 
 as if pouring their perfume over your shoulders ! 
 How rosy-pale, like light through alabaster, showed 
 the cheek that shrank from me beneath the betraying 
 brightness of the moon! How musical above the 
 murmur of the fountain rose the trembling wonder 
 at my avowal, and the few faint syllables of forgiveness 
 and love. I strained you wildly to my heart ! Oh, 
 can that be forgotten ! 
 
 "With the news that your husband was dead, rush 
 ed back these memories in a whirlwind. For one 
 brief, one delirious moment, 1 fancied you might yet 
 be mine. I write because the delirium is over. Had 
 it not been, I should be now weeping at your feet 
 my life upon your lips ! 
 
 "I will try to explain to you, calmly, a feeling that 
 I have. We met in the aisle of Santa Croce 
 strangers. There was a winged lightness in your 
 step, and a lithe wave in the outline of your form, as 
 you moved through the sombre light, which thrilled 
 me like the awakening to life of some piece of aerial 
 sculpture. I watched you to your carriage, and re 
 turned to trace that shadowy aisle for hours, breathing 
 the same air, and trying to conjure up to my imagina 
 tion the radiant vision lost to me, I feared, for ever. 
 That night your necklace parted and fell at my feet, 
 in the crowd at the Pitti, and as I returned the warm 
 jewel to your hand, I recognised the haunting features 
 which 1 seemed to live but to see again. By the first 
 syllable of acknowledgment I knew yovfor in your 
 voice there was that profound sweetness tfcat comes 
 
14 
 
 ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 only from a heart thought-saddened, and therefore 
 careless of the cold fashion of the world. In the em 
 bayed window looking out on the moonlit terrace of 
 the garden, I joined you with the confidence of a 
 familiar friend, and in the low undertone of earnest 
 and sincerity we talked of the thousand themes with 
 which the walls of that palace of pilgrimage breathe 
 and kindle. Chance-guided and ignorant even of 
 each other s names, we met on the galleries of art, in 
 the gardens of noble palaces, in the thronged re 
 sorts open to all in that land of the sun, and my heart 
 expanded to you like a flower, and love entered it with 
 the fulness of light. Again, I say, we dwelt but upon 
 themes of intellect, and I had not breathed to you of 
 the passion that grew hour by hour. 
 
 "We met for the last time on the night of the duke s 
 festa in that same glorious palace where we had first 
 blended thought and imagination, or the wondrous 
 miracles of art. You were sad and lower-voiced than 
 even your wont, and when I drew you from the crowd, 
 and wandering with you through the flowering alleys 
 of the garden, stood at last by that murmuring fountain, 
 and ceased suddenly to speak there was the threshold 
 of love. Did you forbid me to enter? You fell on 
 my bosom and wept ! 
 
 " Had I brought you to this by love-making? Did 
 I flatterer plead rny way into your heart ? Were you 
 wooed or importuned ? It is true your presence drew 
 my better angel closer to my side, but I was myself 
 such as your brother might be to you such as you 
 would have found me through life ; and for this for 
 being what I was with no art or effort to win affec 
 tion, you drew the veil from between us you tempted 
 from my bosom the bird that cornes never back you 
 suffered me to love you, helplessly and wildly, when 
 you knew that love such as mine impoverishes life 
 for ever. The only illimitable trust, the only bound 
 less belief on earth, is first love ! What had I done to 
 be robbed of this irrecoverable gem to be sent wander 
 ing through the world, a hopeless infidel in woman ? 
 
 " I have become a celebrity since we parted, and 
 perhaps you have looked into my books, thinking I 
 might have woven into some one of my many-colored 
 woofs the bright thread you broke so suddenly. You 
 found no trace of it, and you thought, perhaps, thai 
 all memory of those simpler hours was drowned in the 
 intoxicating cup of fame. I have accounted in this 
 way for your never writing to cheer or congratulate 
 me. But if this conjecture be true, how little you 
 know the heart you threw away how little you know 
 of the thrice-locked, light-shining, care-hidden casket 
 in which is treasured up the refused gold of a first 
 love. What else is there on earth worth hiding and 
 brooding over? Should I wing such treasures with 
 words and lose them ? 
 
 " And now you ask, why, after years of healing 
 silence, I open this wound afresh, and write to you. 
 Is it to prove to you that I love you ? to prepare the 
 way to see you again, to woo and win you ? No 
 though I was worthy of you once ! No though I 
 feel living in my soul a passion that with long silence 
 and imprisonment has become well-nigh uncontrolla 
 ble. I am not worthy of you now! My nature is 
 soiled and world-polluted. I am prosperous and 
 famous, and could give you the station you never 
 won, though you trod on my heart to reach it but 
 the lamp is out on my altar of truth I love by my 
 lips I mock at faith I marvel at belief in vows or 
 fidelity I would not trust you, no, if you were mine, 
 I would not trust you though I held every vein of 
 your bosom like a hound s leash. Till you can re 
 buke whim, till you can chain imagination, till you 
 can fetter blood, 1 will not believe in woman. Yet this 
 is your work ! 
 
 " Would you know why I write to you ? Why has 
 God given us the instinct of outcry in agony, but to 
 
 inflict on those who wound us a portion of our pain ? 
 I would tell you that the fire you kindled so wantonly 
 burns on that after years of distracting ambition, 
 fame, and pleasure, I still taste the bitterness you 
 threw into my cup that in secret when musing on 
 my triumphs, in the crowd when sick with adulation, 
 in this lordly castle when lapt in luxury and regard 
 in all hours and phazes of a life brilliant and exciting 
 above that of most men, I mourn over that betrayed 
 affection, I see that averted face, I worship in bitter 
 despair that surpassing loveliness which should have 
 been mine in its glory and flower. 
 
 " I have made my moan. I have given voice to 
 my agony. Farewell !" 
 
 When Mr. Clay had concluded this "airing of his 
 vocabulary," he enclosed it in a hasty note to his 
 friend, the secretary of legation at the court of 
 Tuscany, requesting him to call on " two abominable 
 old maids, by the name of Buggins or Bridgins," who 
 represented the scan. mag. of Florence, and could 
 doubtless, tell him how to forward his letter to " the 
 Browns ;" and the castle-bell sounding as he achieved 
 the superscription, he descended to lunch, very much 
 lightened of his ennui, but with no more memory of 
 the " faithless Julia," than of the claret which had 
 supplied some of the " intensity" of his style. The 
 letter began as a mystification, or, if it had an object 
 beyond the amusement of an idle hour, intended as a 
 whimsical revenge for Miss Beverley s preference of 
 a rich husband to her then undistinguished admirer 
 had, in the heat of composition, and quite uncon 
 sciously to Clay, enlisted real feelings, totally discon 
 nected with the fair Julia, but not the less easily fused 
 into shape and probability by the facile alcbymy of 
 genius. The reader will see at once that the feelings 
 expressed in it could never be the work of imagination. 
 Truth and bitter suffering show through every line, 
 and all its falsehood or fancy lay in its capricious ad 
 dress to a woman who had really noi the slightest 
 share in contributing to its material. The irreparable 
 mischief it occasioned, will be seen in the sequel. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 WHILE the ambassador s bag is steadily posting over 
 the hills of Burgundy with Mr. Clay s letter to Julia 
 Beverley, the reader must be content to gain a little 
 upon her majesty s courier and look in upon a family 
 party assembled in the terraced front of a villa in the 
 neighborhood of Fiesole. The evening was Italian 
 and autumnal, of a ripe, golden glory, and the air was 
 tempered to the blood, as daylight is to the eye so 
 fitly as to be a forgotten blessing. 
 
 A well-made, well-dressed, robust gentleman, who 
 might be forty-five, or a well-preserved sixty, sat at a 
 stone table on the westward edge of the terrace. The 
 London Times lay on his lap, and a bottle of sherry 
 and a single glass stood at his right hand, and he was 
 dozing quietly after his dinner. Near a fountain be 
 low, two fair English children played with clusters of 
 ripe grapes. An Italian nurse, forgetting her charge, 
 stood with folded arms leaning against a rough garden 
 statue, and looked vacantly at the sunset sky, while 
 up and down a level and flowering alley in the slope 
 of the garden, paced slowly and gracefully Mrs. 
 William Brown, the mother of these children, the 
 wife of the gentleman sleeping over his newspaper, 
 and the heroine of this story. 
 
 Julia Beverley had been married five years, and for 
 three years at least she had relinquished the habit of 
 dressing her fine person to advantage. Yet in that 
 untransparent sleeve was hidden an arm of statuary 
 roundness and polish, and in those carelessly fitted 
 
ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 Ifi 
 
 shoes were disguised feet of a plump diminutiveness 
 and arched instep worthy to be the theme of a new 
 Cenerentola. The voluptuous chisel of the Greek 
 never moulded shoulders and bust of more exquisite 
 beauty, yet if she had not become unconscious of the 
 possession of these charms altogether, she had so far 
 lost the vanity of her girlhood that the prudery of a 
 quakeress would not have altered a fold of her cash 
 mere. Her bonnet, as she walked, had fallen back, 
 and, holding it by one string over her shoulder, she 
 put away behind her "pearl-round ear" the dark and 
 heavy ringlet it had tangled in its fall, and, with its 
 fellow shading her cheek and shoulder in broken 
 masses of auburn, she presented a picture of luxurious 
 and yet neglected beauty such as the undress pencil 
 of Grenze would have revelled in portraying. The 
 care of such silken fringes as veiled her indolent eyes 
 is not left to mortals, and the covert loves who curve 
 these soft cradles and sleep in them, had kept Julia 
 Beverley s with the fidelity of fairy culture. 
 
 The Beverleys had married their daughter to Mr. 
 Brown with the usual parental care as to his fortune, 
 and the usual parental forgetfulness of everything else. 
 There was a better chance for happiness, it is true, 
 than in most matches of convenience, for the bride 
 groom, though past his meridian, was a sensible and 
 very presentable sort of man, and the bride was natural 
 ly indolent, and therefore likely to travel the road 
 shaped out for her by the very marked hedges of ex 
 pectation and duty. What she had felt for Mr. Clay 
 during their casual and brief intimacy, will be seen by- 
 and-by, but it had made no barrier to her union with 
 Mr. Brown. With a luxurious house, fine horses, 
 and her own way, the stream of life, for the first year 
 of marriage, ran smoothly off. The second year was 
 chequered with misgivings that she had thrown her 
 self away, and nights of bitter weeping over a destiny 
 in which no one of her bright dreams of love seemed 
 possible to be realized, nnd still habit riveted its thou 
 sand chains, her children grew attractive and attach 
 ing, and by the time at which our story commences, 
 the warm images of a life of passionate devotion had 
 ceased to haunt her dreams, sleeping or waking, and 
 she bade fair to live and die one of the happy many 
 about whom " there is no story to tell." 
 
 Mr. Brown at this period occupied a villa in the 
 neighborhood of Florence, and on the arrival of Mr. 
 Clay s letter at English Embassy, it was at once for 
 warded to Fiesole, where it intruded like the serpent 
 of old on the domestic paradise to which the reader 
 has been introduced. 
 
 Weak and ill-regulated as was the mind of Mrs. 
 Brown, her first feeling after reading the ardent epistle 
 of Mr. Clay, was unmingled resentment at its freedom. 
 Her husband s back was turned to her as he sat on the 
 terrace, and, ascending the garden steps, she threw the 
 letter on the table. 
 
 " Here is a letter of condolence on your death," 
 she said, the blood mantling in her cheek, and her 
 lips arched into an expression of wounded pride and 
 indignation. 
 
 Alas for the slight pivot on which turns the balance 
 of destiny her husband slept ! 
 
 " William!" she said again, but the tone was fainter 
 and the hand she raised to touch him, stayed suspend 
 ed above the fated letter. 
 
 Waiting one instant more for an answer, and bending 
 over her husband to be sure that his sleep was real, 
 she hastily placed the letter in her bosom, and, with 
 pale brow and limbs trembling beneath her, fled to 
 her chamber. Memory had required but an instant 
 to call up the past, and in that instant, too, the honeyed 
 flatteries she had glanced over in such haste, had 
 burnt into her imagination, effacing all else, even the 
 object for which he had written, and the reproaches 
 he had lavished OH her unfaithfulness. With locked 
 
 doors, and curtains dropped between her and the 
 glowing twilight, she reperused the worshipping 
 picture of herself, drawn so covertly under the sem 
 blance of complaint, and the feeling of conscious 
 beauty so long forgotten, stole back into her veins 
 like the reincarnation of a departed spirit. With a 
 flashing glance at the tall mirror before her, she stood 
 up, arching her white neck and threading her fingers 
 through the loosened masses of her hair. She felt 
 that she was beautiful still superbly beautiful. She 
 advanced to the mirror. 
 
 Her bright lips, her pliant motion, the smooth trans 
 parence of her skin, the fulness of vein and limb, all 
 mingled in one assurance of youth, in a wild desire 
 for admiration, in a strange, restless, feverish im 
 patience to be away where she could be seen and 
 loved away to fulfil that destiny of the heart which 
 seemed now the one object of life, though for years 
 so unaccountably forgotten ! 
 
 "I was born to be loved!" she wildly exclaimed, 
 pacing her chamber, and wondering at her own beauty 
 as the mirror gave back her kindling features and 
 animated grace of movement ; "How could I have 
 forgotten that I was beautiful ?" But at that instant 
 her husband s voice, cold, harsh, and unimaginative, 
 forced its way to her ear, and, convulsed with a 
 tumultuous misery, she could neither struggle with 
 nor define, she throw herself on her bed and abandoned 
 herself to an uncontrolled agony of tears. 
 
 Let those smile at this paroxysm of feeling whose 
 " dream has come to pass!" Let those wonder who 
 have never been startled from their common-place 
 existence with the heart s bitter question Is this all! 
 
 Reader ! are you loved ? loved as you dreamed in 
 youth you might and must be loved by the matchless 
 creature you painted in your imagination, lofty-hearted, 
 confiding, and radiantly fair? Have you spent your 
 treasure ? Have you lavished the boundless wealth 
 of your affection ? Have you beggared heart and 
 soul by the wild abandonment to love, of which you 
 once felt capable ? 
 
 Lady ! of you I ask : Is the golden flow of your 
 youth coined as it melts away ? Are your truth and 
 fervor, your delicacy and devotedness, your unutter 
 able depths of tenderness and tears are they named 
 on another s lips? are they made the incense to 
 Heaven of another s nightly prayer? Your beauty 
 is in its pride and flower. Who lays back with idola 
 trous caress the soft parting of your hair? Who 
 smiles when your cheek mantles, and shudders when 
 it is pale? Who sits with your slender fingers clasped 
 in his, dumb because there are bounds to lan 
 guage, and trembling because death will divide you ? 
 Oh, the ray of light wasted on the ocean, and the ray 
 caught and made priceless in a king s diamond the 
 wild-flower perishing in the woods, and its sister culled 
 for culture in the garden of a poet are not wider 
 apart in their destiny than the loved and the neglected ! 
 " Blessed are the beloved," should read a new 
 beatitude " for theirs is the foretaste of Paradise!" 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE autumn following found Mr. Clay a pilgrim 
 for health to the shores of the Mediterranean. Ex 
 hausted, body and soul, with the life of alternate 
 gayety and passion into which his celebrity had drawn 
 him, he had accepted, with a sense of exquisite relief, 
 the offer of a cruise among the Greek Isles in a friend s 
 yacht, and in the pure stillness of those bright sea s, 
 I with a single companion and his books, he idled away 
 the summer in a luxury of repose and enjoyment such 
 as only the pleasure-weary can understand. Recruited 
 in health, and with a mind beginning to yearn once 
 
10 
 
 ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 more for the long foregone stimulus of society, he 
 landed at Naples in the beginning of October. 
 
 " We are not very gay just now," said the English 
 minister with whom he hastened to renew an ac 
 quaintance commenced in his former travels, "but the 
 prettiest woman in the world is at home to-night, 
 and if you are as susceptible as most of the cavaliers 
 of the Chiaja, you will find Naples attractive enough 
 after you have seen her." 
 
 "English?" 
 
 " Yes but you can not have known her, for I think 
 she was never heard of till she came to Naples." 
 
 " Her name?" 
 
 "Why, you should hear that after seeing her. 
 Call her Queen Giovanna and she will come nearer 
 your prepossession. By-the-by, what have you to do 
 this morning ?" 
 
 " I am at your excellency s disposal," 
 
 " Come with me to the atelier of a very clever artist 
 then, and I will show you her picture. It should be 
 the man s chcf-d eeuvre, for he has lost his wits in 
 painting it." 
 
 "Literally, do you mean ?" 
 
 " It would seem so for though the picture was 
 finished some months since, he has never taken it off 
 his easel, and is generally found looking at it. Besides, 
 he has neither cleaned pallet nor brush since the last 
 day she sat to him." 
 
 " If he were young and handsome " 
 
 " So he is and so are scores of the lady s devoted 
 admirers ; but she is either prudent or cold to a degree 
 that effectually repels hope, and the painter pines with 
 the rest." 
 
 A few minutes walk brought them to a large room 
 near the Corso, tenanted by the Venetian artist, 
 Ippolito Incontri. The minister presented his friend, 
 and Clay forgot their errand in admiration of the 
 magnificent brigand face and figure of the painter, 
 who, after a cold salutation, retreated into the darkest 
 corner of the point of view, and stood gazing past them 
 at his easel, silent and unconscious of observation. 
 
 "I have seen your wonder," said Clay, turning to 
 the picture with a smile, and at the first glance only 
 remarking its resemblance to a face that should be 
 familiar to him. " I am surprised that I can not 
 name her at once, for I am sure I know her well. 
 But, stay! the light grows on my eye no! with 
 that expression, certainly not I am sure, now, that I 
 have not seen her. Wonderful beauty ! Yet there 
 was a superficial likeness ! Have you ever remarked, 
 Signor Incontri, that, through very intellectual faces, 
 such as this, you can sometimes see what the counte 
 nance would have been in other circumstances with 
 out the advantages of education, I mean ?" 
 
 No answer. The painter was absorbed in his pic 
 ture, and Clay turned to the ambassador. 
 
 " I have seen somewhere a face, and a very lovely 
 one, too, that was strangely like these features; yet, 
 not only without the soul that is here, but incapable, 
 I should think, of acquiring it by any discipline, ei 
 ther of thought or feeling." 
 
 " Perhaps it was the original of this, and the painter 
 has given the soul !" 
 
 " He could as soon warm a statue into life as do it. 
 Invent that look! Oh, he would be a god, not a 
 painter! Raphael copied, and this man copies; but 
 nature did the original of this, as he did of Raphael s 
 immortal beauties; and the departure of the most 
 vanishing shadow from the truth would be a blot irre 
 mediable." 
 
 Clay lost himself in the picture and was silent. 
 Veil after veil fell away from the expression as he 
 gazed, and the woman seemed melting out from the 
 canvass into life. The pose and drapery were nothing. 
 It was the portrait of a female standing still perhaps 
 looking idly out on the sea lost in revery perhaps 
 
 perhaps just feeling the breath of a coming thought, 
 the stirring of some lost memory that would presently 
 awake. The lips were slightly unclosed. The heavy 
 eyelashes were wakeful yet couchant in their expres 
 sion. The large dark orbs lustrous and suffused, 
 looked of the depth and intense stillness of the mid 
 night sky close to the silver rim of a moon high in 
 heaven. The coloring was warm and Italian, but 
 every vein of the transparent temple was steeped in 
 calmness; and even through the bright pomegranate 
 richness of a mouth full of the capability of passion, 
 there seemed to breathe the slumberous fragrance of 
 a flower motionless under its night-burthen of dew. 
 It portrayed no rank in life. The drapery might have 
 been a queen s or a contadina s. It was a woman sto 
 len to the canvass from her inmost cell of privacy, 
 with her soul unstartled by a human look, and mere 
 life and freedom from pain or care expressed in her 
 form and countenance yet, with all this, a radiance 
 of beauty, and a sustained loftiness of feeling, as ap 
 parent as the altitude of the stars. It was a match 
 less woman incomparably painted ; and though not a 
 man to fall in love with a semblance, Clay felt and 
 struggled in vain against the feeling, that the creature 
 drawn in that portrait controlled the next and perhaps 
 the most eventful revolution of his many-sphered ex 
 istence. 
 
 The next five hours have (for this tale) no history. 
 
 "I have perplexed myself in vain since I left you," 
 Clay said to the ambassador, as they rolled on their 
 way to the palace of the fair Englishwoman; "but 
 when I yield to the secret conviction that I have seen 
 the adorable original of the picture, I am lost in a 
 greater mystery how I ever could have forgotten her. 
 The coining five minutes will undo the Sphinx s riddle 
 for me." 
 
 " My life on it you have never seen her," said his 
 friend, as the carriage turned through a reverberating 
 archway, and rapidly making the circuit of a large 
 court, stopped at the door of a palace blazing with 
 light. 
 
 An opening was made through the crowd, as the 
 ambassador s name was announced, and Clay followed 
 him through the brilliant rooms with an agitation to 
 which he had long been a stranger. Taste, as well 
 as sumptuous expensiveness, was stamped on every 
 thing around, and there was that indefinable expres- 
 sioH in the assembly, which no one could detect or 
 appreciate better than Clay, and which is composed, 
 among other things, of a perfect conviction on the 
 part of the guests, that their time, presence, and ap 
 probation, are well bestowed where they are. 
 
 At the curtained door of a small boudoir, draped 
 like a tent, a Neapolitan noble of high rank turned 
 smiling to the ambassador and placed his finger on 
 his -lip. The silken pavilion was crowded, and only 
 uniforms and heads, fixed in attention, could be seen 
 by those without ; but from the arching folds of the 
 curtain came a female voice of the deepest and sweet 
 est melodiousness, reading in low and finely-measured 
 cadence from an English poem. 
 
 " Do you know the voice ?" asked the ambassador, 
 as Clay stood like a man fixed to marble, eagerly 
 listening. 
 
 " Perfectly ! I implore you tell me who reads !" 
 
 "No ! though your twofold recognisance is singu 
 lar. You shall see her before you hear her name. 
 What is she reading ?" 
 
 " My own poetry, by Heaven ! and yet I can not 
 "name her! This passes belief. I have heard that 
 voice sob sob convulsively, and with accents of love 
 I have heard it whisper and entreat you look incred 
 ulous, but it is true. If she do not know me nay, 
 
 if she has not " he would have said " loved me" 
 
 but the look of scrutiny and surprise on the counte 
 nance of the ambassador checked the imprudent 
 
ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 17 
 
 avowal, and he became aware that he was on danger 
 ous ground. He relapsed into silence, and crowding 
 close to the tent, heard the numbers he had long ago 
 linked and forgotten, breathing in music from those 
 mysterious lips, and, possessed as he was by suspense 
 and curiosity, he could have wished that sweet mo 
 ment to have lasted for ever. I call upon the poet, if 
 there be one who reads this idle tale, to tell me if 
 there is a flattery more exquisite on earth, if there is 
 a deeper-sinking plummet of pride ever dropped into 
 the profound bosom of the bard, than the listening to 
 thoughts born in pain and silence, articulate in the 
 honeyed accents of woman! Answer me, poet! 
 Answer me, women beloved of poets, who have 
 breathed their worshipping incense, and know by 
 what its bright censor was kindled ! 
 
 The voice ceased, and there was one moment of 
 stillness, and then the rooms echoed with acclamation. 
 "Crown her!" cried a tall old man, who stood near 
 the entrance covered with military orders. "Crown 
 
 | are true only of the common-place and unimaginative. 
 j The rich gifts of affection, which surfeit the cold 
 bosom of the dull, fall upon the fiery heart of genius 
 like spice-wood and incense, and long after the giver s 
 prodigality has ceased, the mouldering embers lie 
 warm beneath the ashes of silence, and a breath will 
 uncover and rekindle them. The love of common 
 men is a world without moon or stars. When the 
 meridian is passed, the shadows lengthen, and the 
 light departs, and the night that follows is dark indeed. 
 But as the twilight closes on the bright and warm pns- 
 sion of the poet, memory lights her pale lamp, like 
 the moon, and brightens as the darkness deepens ; and 
 the warm sacrifices made in love s noon and eve, go 
 up to their places like stars, and with the light treasur 
 ed from that fervid day, shine in the still heaven of 
 the past, steadfast though silent. If there is a feature 
 of the human soul in which more than in all others, 
 the fiend is manifest, it is the masculine ingratitude 
 for love. What wrongs, what agonies, what unutter 
 
 her!" repeated every tongue; and from a vase thatjj 
 hung suspended in the centre of the pavilion, the 
 fresh flowers were snatched by eager hands and 
 wreathed into a chaplet. But those without became 
 clamorous to see the imposition of the crown; and, 
 clearing a way through the entrance, the old man took 
 the chaplet from the busy hands that had entwined it, 
 and crying out with Italian enthusiasm, " A triumph ! a 
 triumph !" led forth the majestic Corinna to the crowd. 
 The ambassador looked at Clay. He had shrunk 
 behind the statue of a winged cupid, and though his 
 eyes were fixed with a gaze of stone on the magnifi 
 cent creature who was the centre of all regards, he 
 seemed by his open lips and heaving chest, to be gasp 
 ing with some powerful emotion. 
 
 "Give me the chaplet !" suddenly exclaimed the 
 magnificent idol of the crowd. And with no apparent 
 emotion, except a glowing spot in her temples, and a 
 quicker throb in the snowy curve of her neck and 
 bosom, she waved back the throng upon her right, 
 and advanced with majestic steps to the statue of Love. 
 "Welcome, Ernest!" she said in a low voice, 
 taking him by the hand, and losing, for a scarce per 
 ceptible moment, the smile from her lips. " Here, 
 my friends!" she exclaimed, turning again, and lead 
 ing him from his concealment, "honor to whom hon 
 or is due ! A crown for the poet of my country, Er 
 nest Clay !" 
 
 " Clay, the poet !" " The English poet!" "The 
 author of the poem!" were explanations that ran 
 quickly through the room, and as the crowd pressed 
 closer around, murmuring the enthusiasm native to 
 that southern clime, Julia Beverley sprang upon an ot 
 toman, and standing in her magnificent beauty con 
 spicuous above all, she placed the crown upon^Clay s 
 head, and bending gracefully and smilingly over him, 
 impressed a kiss on his forehead, and said, " This for 
 the poet . " 
 
 And of the many lovers of this superb woman who 
 saw that kiss, not one showed a frown or turned away, 
 so natural to the warm impulse of the hour did it I 
 seem so pure an expression of admiration of genius 
 so mere a tribute of welcome from Italy to the bard, 
 by an inspiration born of its sunny air. Surrounded I 
 with eager claimants for his acquaintance, intoxicated 1 
 with flattery, giddy with indefinable emotions of love | 
 and pleasure, Ernest Clay lost sight for a moment of 
 the face that had beamed on him, and in that moment 
 she had made an apology of fatigue and retired, leav 
 ing her guests to their pleasures. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 " Un amour rechauffe ne vaut jamais n en," is one 
 of those common-places in the book of love, which 
 2 
 
 able sorrows are the reward of lavished affection, of 
 generous self-abandonment, of unhesitating and idola 
 trous trust ! Yet who are the ungrateful? Men lack 
 ing the imagination which can reclose the faded form 
 in its youthful beauty ! Men dead to the past with 
 no perception but sight and touch to whom woman 
 is a flower and no more fair to look on and sweet to 
 pluck in her pride and perfume but scarce possessed 
 ere trampled on and forgotten ! Genius alone treasures 
 the perishing flower and remembers its dew and fra 
 grance, and so, immemorially and well, poets have been 
 beloved of women. 
 
 I am recording the passions of genius. Let me 
 sny to you, lady ! (reading this tale understand ingly, 
 for you have been beloved by a poet), trust neither 
 absence, nor silence, nor untoward circumstances ! 
 He has loved you once. Let not your eye rest on 
 him when you meet and if you speak, speak coldly ! 
 For, with a passion strengthened and embellished 
 tenfold by a memory all imagination, he will love you 
 again ! The hours you passed with him the caresses 
 you gave him, the tears you shed, and the beauty 
 with which you bewildered him. have been hallowed 
 in poetry, and glorified in revery and dream, and he 
 will come back to you as he would spring into para 
 dise were it so lost and recovered! 
 
 But to my story ! 
 
 Clay s memory had now become the home of an all- 
 | absorbing passion. By a succession of mischances, 
 or by management so adroit as never to alarm his pride, 
 a week passed over, and he had found no opportunity 
 of speaking alone to the object of his adoration. She 
 
 favored him in public, talked to him at the opera, 
 leaned on his arm in the crowd, caressed his genius 
 with exquisite flattery, and seemed at moments to 
 escape narrowly from a phrase too tender or a subject 
 that would lead to the past yet without a violation 
 of the most palpable tact, love was still an impossible 
 topic. That he could have held her hand in his, un- 
 forbidden that he could have pressed her to his 
 bosom while she wept that she could have loved 
 him ever, though but for an hour seemed to him 
 sometimes an incredible dream, sometimes a most 
 passionate happiness only to (relieve. He left her at 
 night to pace the sands of the bay till morning, re 
 membering for ever remembering the scene by the 
 fountain at Florence ; and he passed his day between 
 her palace and the picture of poor Incontri, who loved 
 her more hopelessly than himself, but found a sym 
 pathy in the growing melancholy of the poet. 
 
 " She has no heart," said the painter; but Clay had 
 felt it beat against his own, and he fed his love in 
 silence on that remembrance. 
 
 They sat upon the rocks by the gate of the Villa 
 Real. The sun was just setting and as the waves 
 formed near the shore aud rode in upon the glassy 
 
18 
 
 ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 swell of the bay, there seemed to writhe on each wavy 
 back a golden serpent, who broke on the sands at their 
 feet in sparkles of fire. At a little distance lay the 
 swallow-like yacht, in which Clay had threaded the 
 Archipelago, and as the wish to feel the little craft 
 bounding once more beneath him, was checked by the 
 anchor-like heaviness of his heart, an equestrian party 
 stopped suddenly on the chiaja. 
 
 " There is Mr. Clay !" said the thrilling voice of 
 Julia Beverley, " perhaps he will take us over in the 
 yacht. Sorrento looks so blue and tempting in the 
 distance." 
 
 Without waiting for a repetition of the wish he 
 had overheard, Clay sprang upon a rock, and made 
 signal for the boat, and before the crimson of the de 
 parting day had faded from the sky, the fair Julia and 
 her party of cavaliers, were standing on the deck of the 
 swift vessel, bound on a moonlight voyage to Sorrento, 
 and watching on their lee the reddening ribs and lurid 
 eruption of the volcano. The night was Neapolitan, 
 and the air was the food of love. 
 
 It was a voyage of silence, for the sweetness of life 
 in such an atmosphere and in the midstof that match 
 less bay, lay like a voluptuous burthen in the heart, 
 and the ripple under the clearing prow was language 
 enough for all. Incontri leaned against the mast, 
 watching the moonlit features of the signora with his 
 melancholy but idolizing gaze, and Clay lay on the 
 deck at her feet, trying with pressed-downlids to recall 
 the tearful eyes of the Julia Beverley he had loved at 
 the fountain. 
 
 It was midnight when the breath of the orange 
 groves of Sorrento, stealing seaward, slackened the 
 way of the little craft, and running in close under the 
 rocky foundations of the house of Tasso, Clay dropped 
 his anchor, and landed his silent party at their haven. 
 Incontri was sent forward to the inn to prepare their 
 apartments, and leaning on Clay s arm and her hus 
 band s, the superb Englishwoman ascended to the 
 overhanging balcony of the dwelling of the Italian 
 bard, and in a few words of eloquent sympathy in the 
 homage paid by the world to these shrines of genius, 
 added to the overflowing heart of her gifted lover one 
 more intoxicating drop of flattery and fascination. 
 They strolled onward to the inn, and he bade her good 
 night at the gate, for he could no longer endure the 
 fetter of another s presence, and the emotion stifled in 
 his heart and lips. 
 
 1 have forgotten the name of that pleasant inn at 
 Sorrento, built against the side of its mountain shore, 
 with terraced orange-groves piled above its roof, and 
 the golden fruit nodding in at its windows. From the 
 principal floor, you will remember, projects a broad 
 verandah, jutting upon one of these fruit-darkened 
 alleys. If you have ever slept there after a scramble 
 over Scaricatoja, you have risen, even from your 
 fatigued slumber, to go out and pace awhile that over 
 hanging garden, oppressed with the heavy perfume of 
 the orange flowers. Strange that I should forget the 
 name of that inn ! I thought, when the busy part of 
 my life should be well over, I should go back and die 
 there. 
 
 The sea had long closed over the orbed forehead of 
 the moon, and still Clay restlessly hovered around the 
 garden of the inn. Mounting at last to the alley on 
 a level with the principal chambers of the house, he 
 saw outlined in shadow upon the curtain of a long 
 window, a female figure holding a book, with her 
 cheek resting on her hand. He threw himself on the 
 grass and gazed steadily. The hand moved from the 
 cheek, and raised a pencil from the table, and wrote 
 upon the margin of the volume, and then the pencil 
 was laid down, and the slender fingers raised the 
 masses of fallen hair from the shoulder, and threaded 
 the wavy ringlets indolently as she read : From the 
 slightest motion of that statuary hand, from the most 
 
 fragmented outline of that bird-like neck, Clay would 
 have known Julia Beverley ; and as he watched her 
 graceful shadow, the repressed and pent-up feelings 
 of that evening of restraint, fed as they had been by 
 every voluptuous influence known beneath the moon, 
 rose to a height that absorbed brain and soul in one 
 wild tumult of emotion. He sprang to his feet to rush 
 into her presence, but at that instant a footstep started 
 from the darkness of a tree, at the extremity of the 
 alley. He paused and the shadow arose, and laying 
 aside the book, leaned back, and lifted the tapering 
 arms, and wound up the long masses of fallen hair, 
 and then kneeling, remained a few minutes motion 
 less, with the face buried in the hands. 
 
 Clay trembled and felt rebuked. 
 
 Once more the flowing drapery swept across the 
 curtain, the light was extinguished, and the window 
 thrown open to the night air; and then all was still. 
 
 Clay walked to and fro in an agitation bordering on 
 delirium. " I must speak to her!" he said, murmur 
 ing audibly, and advancing toward the window. But 
 hurried footsteps started again from the shndow of the 
 pine, and he stopped to listen. All was silent, and 
 he stood a moment pressing his hands on his brow, 
 and trying to struggle with the wild impulse in his 
 brain. His closed eves brought back instantly the 
 unfading picture of Julia Beverley, weeping on his 
 breast at the fountain, and with one rapid movement 
 he divided the curtains and stood breathless in her 
 chamber. 
 
 The heavy breathing of the unconscious husband 
 | fell like music on his ear. 
 
 " Julia !" he exclaimed in a hoarse whisper, "I am 
 here Ernest Clay!" 
 
 "You are frantic, Ernest!" said a voice so calm 
 that it fell on his ear like an assurance of despair. 
 " I have no feeling for you that answers to this free 
 dom. Leave my chamber !" 
 
 44 No !" said Clay, dropping the curtain behind him, 
 and advancing into the room, " wake your husband if 
 I you will this is the only spot on earth where I can 
 breathe, and if you are relentless, here will I die 
 Was it false when you said you loved me ? Speak, 
 Julia !" 
 
 "Ernest !" she said, in a less assured tone, "I have 
 done wrong not to check this wild passion earlier, and 
 I have that to say to you which, perhaps, had better 
 be said now. I will come to you in the garden." 
 
 " My vessel waits, and in an hour " 
 
 "Nay, nay, you mistake me. But go! I will 
 follow instantly !" 
 
 Vesuvius was burning with an almost smokeless 
 flame when Clay stood again in the night-air, and every 
 object was illuminated with the clearness of a confla 
 gration. At the first glance around, he fancied he 
 | saw figures gliding behind the lurid body of a pine 
 opposite the window, but in the next moment the cur 
 tain again parted, and Julia Beverley, wrapped in a 
 cloak, stood beside him on the verandah. 
 
 " Stand back !" she said, as he endeavored to put 
 his arm around her, " I have more than one defender 
 within call, and I must speak to you where- I am. 
 Will you listen to me, Ernest ?" 
 
 Clay s breast heaved ; but he folded his arms and 
 leaned against the slender column of the verandah in 
 silence. 
 
 " Were it any other person who had so far forgot 
 ten himself," she continued, "it would be sufficient 
 to say, I can never love you, and leave my privacy 
 to be defended by my natural protector. But I wish 
 to show to you, Ernest, not only that you can have 
 no hope in loving me, but that you have made me the 
 mischievous woman I have become. From an hum 
 ble wife to a dangerous coquette, the change may 
 well seem startling but it is of your working." 
 
 " Mine, madam !" said Clay, whose pride was 
 
ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 aroused with the calm self-possession and repulse of 
 her tone and manner. 
 
 "I have never answered the letter you wrote me." 
 
 " Pardon and spare me !" said Clay, who remem 
 bered at the instant only the whim under which it 
 was written. 
 
 " It awoke me to a new existence," she continued, 
 without heeding his confusion, " for it first made me 
 aware that I could ever be the theme of eloquent ad 
 miration. I had never been praised but in idle com 
 pliment, and by those whose intellect I despised; and 
 though as a girl I had a vague feeling that I was 
 slighted and unappreciated, I yielded gradually to the 
 conviction that the world was right, and that women 
 sung by poets and described in the glowing language 
 of romance, were of another mould, I scarce rea 
 soned upon it. I remember, on first arriving in Italy, 
 drawing a comparison favorable to myself between j 
 my own beauty and the Fornarina s, and the portraits j 
 of Laura and Leonora D Este ; but as I was loved by j 
 neither painters nor poets, 1 accused myself of pre- i 
 sumption, and with a sigh, returned to my humility. I 
 My life seemed more vacant than it should be, and I 
 sometimes wept from an unhappiness I could not de 
 fine ; and I once or twice met persons who seemed 
 to have begun to love me, and appreciate my beauty 
 as I wished, and in this lies the history of my heart 
 up to the time of your writing to me. That letter, 
 Ernest " 
 
 " You believed that I loved you then !" passion- | 
 ately interrupted her listener, " you know now that I i 
 loved you ! Tell me so, I implore you !" 
 
 " My dear poet," said the self-possessed beauty, j 
 with a smile expressive of as much mischief as frank 
 ness, " let us be honest. You never loved me ! I 
 never believed it but for one silly hour ! Stay ! j 
 stay ! you shall not answer me ! I have not left my j 
 bed at this unseasonable hour to listen to protesta- ! 
 tions. At least, let me first conclude the hislory of , 
 my metempsychosis! I can tell it to nobody else, j| 
 and like the Ancient Mariner s, it is a tale that must j 
 be told. Revenons ! Your very brilliant letter awoke [ 
 me from the most profound lethargy by which beauty 
 such as mine was ever overtaken. A moment s in- \ 
 ventory of rny attractions satisfied me that your ex- | 
 quisite description (written, I have since suspected, | 
 to amuse an idle hour, but done, nevertheless, with j 
 the fine memory and graphic power of genius) was j 
 neither fanciful nor over-colored, and for the first time j 
 in my life I felt beautiful. You are an anatomist of j 
 the heart, and I may say to you that I looked at my j 
 own dark eyes and fine features and person with the I 
 admiration and wonder of a blind beauty restored to | 
 sight and beholding herself in a mirror. You will j 
 think, perhaps, that love for the writer of this magic 
 letter should have been the inevitable sequel. * But I 
 arn here to avert the consequences of my coquetry, 
 and I will be frank with you. I forgot you in a day ! 
 In the almost insane desire to be seen and appreciated, 
 painted, sung, and loved, which took possession of me | 
 when the tumult of my first feeling had passed away, j 
 your self-controlled and manageable passion seemed i 
 to me frivolous and shallow." 
 
 " Have you been better loved?" coldly asked Clay. 
 
 41 I will answer that question before we part. I did 
 not suffer myself to think of a love that could be 
 returned for I had husband and children and 
 though I felt that a mutual passion such as I could ! 
 imagine, would have absorbed, under happier circum 
 stances, every energy of my soul, I had no disposition 
 to make a wreck of another s happiness and honor, 
 whatever the temptation. Still I must be loved I 
 must come out from my obscurity and shine I must 
 be the idol of some gifted circle I must control the 
 painter s pencil and the poet s pen and the statesman s 
 scheme I must sun my beauty in men s eyes, and 
 
 be caressed and conspicuous I must use my gift and 
 fulfil my destiny ! 1 told my husband this. He se 
 cured my devotion to his peace and honor for ever, by 
 giving me unlimited control over his fortune and him 
 self. We came to Naples, and my star, hitherto 
 clouded in its own humility, sprang at once to the as 
 cendant. The " attraction of unconscious beauty" is 
 a poet s fiction, believe me! Set it down in your 
 books, Ernest we are our own nomenclators the 
 belle as well as the hero ! I claimed to be beautiful, 
 and queened it to the top of my bent and all Naples 
 is at my feet! Oh, Ernest! it is a delicious power 
 to hold human happiness in your control to be the 
 loadstar of eminent men and bright intellects! Per 
 haps a woman who is absorbed in one passion, finds 
 in her lover s character and fame room enough for her 
 pride and her thirst for influence; but to me, giving 
 nothing in return but the light of my eyes, there 
 seems scarce in the world celebrity, rank, genius 
 enough, to limit my ambition. I would be Helen! 
 I would be Mary of Scots ! I would have my beauty 
 as undisputed and renowned as the Apollo s! Am I 
 insane or heartless?" 
 
 Clay smiled at the abrupt naivete of the question, 
 but his eyes were full of visible admiration of the 
 glowing pictures before him. 
 
 "You are beautiful!" was his answer. 
 
 "Am I not ! Shall I be celebrated hereafter, Er 
 nest? I should be willing to grow old, if my beauty 
 were * in amber if by some burning line in your 
 book, some wondrous touch of the pencil, some bold 
 novelty in sculpture, my beauty would live on men s 
 lips for ever! Incontri s picture is beautiful and like, 
 but it is not, if you understand, a conception it is not 
 a memoir of the woman as the Cenei s is it does not 
 embody a complete fame in itself, like the Bella of 
 Titian, or the Wife of Giorgione. If you loved 
 me, Ernest" 
 
 "If you loved me, Julia!" echoed Clay, with a 
 tone rather of mockery than sincerity. 
 
 "Ah, but you threw me away; and even with my 
 own consent, I could never be recovered ! Believe 
 me, Ernest, there never was a coquette, who, in some 
 one of her earlier preferences, had not made a des 
 perate and single venture of her whole heart s devo 
 tion. That wrecked, she was lost to love. I em 
 barked with you, soul and heart, and you left to the 
 mercy of the chance wind a freight that no tide could 
 bring to port again !" 
 
 "You forget the obstacles." 
 
 " A poet! and talk of obstacles in love ! Did you 
 even ask me to run away with you, Ernest! I would 
 have gone! Ay coldly as I talk to you now, 1 
 would have followed you to a hovel for it was first 
 love to me. Had it been first love to both of us, I 
 should now be your wife sharer of your fame ! And 
 oh, how jealous !" 
 
 " With your beauty, jealous?" 
 
 " Not of flesh-and-blood women, Ernest ! With a 
 wife s opportunities, I could outcharm, with half my 
 beauty, the whole troop of Circe. I was thinking of 
 the favors of your pen ! Who would I let you de 
 scribe ! What eyes, what hair, what form but mine 
 what character, what name, would I even suffer you 
 to make immortal ! Paul Veronese had a wife with 
 my avarice. In his hundred pictures there is the 
 same blue-eyed, golden-haired woman, as much link 
 ed to his fame as Laura to Petrarch s. If he had 
 drawn her but once, she would have been known as 
 the woman Paul Veronese painted ! She is known 
 now as the woman he loved. Delicious immortality !" 
 
 " Yet she could not have exacted it. That would 
 have required an intellect which looked abroad and 
 poets love no women who are not like birds, content 
 with the summer around them, and with every thought 
 in their nest. Paul Veronese s Bionda, with her soft 
 
20 
 
 ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 mild eyes and fair hair, is the very type of such a 
 woman, and she would uot have foregone a caress for 
 twenty immortalities." 
 
 "May I ask what was my attraction, then?" said 
 the proud beauty, with a tone of pique. 
 
 " Julia Beverley, unconscious and unintellectual !" 
 answered Clay, drawing on his gloves with the air of 
 a man who has got through with an interview. " You 
 have explained your metempsychosis, but I was in 
 love with the form you have cast off. The night 
 grows chill. Sweet dreams to you !" 
 
 " Slay, Mr. Clay ! You asked me if I had been 
 better loved, and I promised you an answer. What 
 think you of a lover who has forgotten the occupation 
 that gave him bread, abandoned his ambition, and at 
 all hours of the night is an unrewarded and hopeless 
 watcher beneath my window ?" 
 
 " To-night excepted," said Clay, looking around. 
 " Incontri !" called Mrs. Brown, without raising 
 her voice. 
 
 Clay started and frowned, as the painter sprang 
 from the shadow of the pine-tree which had before 
 attracted his attention. Falling on his knee, the un 
 happy lover kissed the jewelled fingers extended to 
 him, and giving Clay his hand in rising, the poet 
 sprang back, for he had elapsed the handle of a stiletto ! 
 " Fear not she does not love you !" said Incontri, 
 remarking his surprise, and concealing the weapon in 
 his sleeve. 
 
 " I was destined to be cured of my love, either 
 way," said Clay, bowing himself oft" the verandah with 
 half a shudder and half a smile. 
 
 The curtain closed at the same moment over the 
 retreating form of Julia Beverley, and so turned 
 another leaf of Clay s voluminous book of love. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CLAY threw the volume aside, in which he had been 
 reading, and taking up " the red book," looked for 
 the county address of Sir Harry Freer, the exponent 
 (only) of Lady Fanny Freer, who, though the "nicest 
 possible creature," is not the heroine of this story. 
 Sir Harry s ancestral domain turned out to be a por 
 tion of the earth s surface in that county of England 
 where the old gentry look down upon very famous 
 lords as too new, and proportionately upon all other 
 families that have not degenerated since William the 
 conqueror. 
 
 Sir Harry had married an earl s daughter ; but as 
 the earldom was not only the fruit of two generations 
 of public and political eminence, Sir Harry was not 
 considered in Cheshire as having made more than a 
 tolerable match ; and if she passed for a " Cheshire 
 cheese in London, he passed for but the rind in the 
 county. In the county therefore there was a lord 
 paramount of Freer Hall, and in town, a lady par 
 amount of Brook-street ; and it was under the town 
 dynasty that Miss Blanch Beaufin was invited up from 
 Cheshire to pass a first winter in London Miss 
 Beaufin being the daughter of a descendant of a Nor 
 man retainer of the first Sir Harry, and the relative 
 position of the families having been rigidly kept up to 
 the existing epoch. 
 
 The address found in the red book was described 
 upon the following letter: 
 
 " DEAR LADY FANNY : If you have anything be 
 side the ghost-room vacant at Freer Hall, I will run 
 down to you. Should you, by chance, be alone, ask 
 up the curate for a week to keep Sir Harry off my 
 hands ; and, as you don t flirt, provide me with some- 
 5ouy more pretty than yourself for our mutual 
 
 security. As my autograph sells for eighteen pence, 
 you will excuse the brevity of Yours truly, 
 
 " ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 " N. B. Tell me in your answer if Blanch Beaufin 
 is within a morning s ride." 
 
 Lady Fanny was a warm-hearted, extravagant, 
 beautiful creature of impulse, a passionate friend of 
 Clay s (for such women there are), without a spice of 
 flirtation. She was a perennial belle in London; and 
 he had begun his acquaintance with her by throwing 
 himself at her head in the approved fashion in love 
 to the degree of rose-asking and sonnet-writing. As 
 she did not laugh when he sighed, however, but only 
 told him very seriously that she was not a bit in love 
 with him, and thought he was throwing away his 
 time, he easily forgave her insensibility, and they be 
 came very warm allies. Spoiled favorite as he was 
 of London society, Clay had qualities for a very sin 
 cere friendship; and Lady Fanny, full of irregular 
 talent, had also a strong vein of common sense, and 
 perfectly understood him. This explanation to the 
 reader. It would have saved some trouble and "pain, 
 if it had been made by some good angel to Sir Harry 
 Freer. 
 
 As the London coach rattled under the bridged 
 gate of the gloomy old town of Chester, Lady Fanny s 
 I dashing ponies were almost on their haunches with 
 j her impetuous pull-up at the hotel; and returning 
 I with a nod the coachman s respectful bow, she put 
 j her long whip in at the coach window to shake hands 
 i with Clay, and in a few minutes they were again off 
 J the pavements, and taking the road at her ladyship s 
 | usual speed. 
 
 " Steady, Flash ! steady !" (she ran on, talking to 
 Clay, and her ponies in the same breath), " doleful 
 ride down, isn t it? (keep up, Tom, you villain!) 
 very good of you to come, I m sure, dear Ernest, and 
 you ll stay; how long will you stay ? (down, Flash!) 
 Oh, Miss Beaufin ! I ve something to say to you 
 [ about Blanch Beaufin ! I didn t answer your Nota 
 Bene (go along, Tom ! that pony wants blooding) 
 because to tell the truth, it s a delicate subject at 
 Freer Hall, and 1 would rather talk than write about 
 it. You see (will you be done, Flash !) the 
 Beaufins. though very nice people, and Blanch quite 
 a love (go along, lazy Tom !) the Beaufins, I say, 
 are rated rather crockery in Cheshire. And I am 
 ashamed to own, really quite ashamed, I have not 
 been near them in a month. Shameful, isn t it ? 
 There s good action, Ernest ! Look at that nigh 
 pony ; not a blemish in him; and such a goer in sin 
 gle harness! Well, I ll go around by the Beaufins 
 now." 
 
 " Pray consider, Lady Fanny !" interrupted Clay 
 deprecatingly, "eighteen hours in a coach." 
 
 " Not to go in ! oh, not to go in ! Blanch is very ill, 
 and sees nobody ; and (come, Tom! come !) I only 
 heard of it this morning (there s for your laziness, 
 you stupid horse !, We ll, just call and ask how she is, 
 
 though Sir Harry " 
 
 " Is she very ill, then ?" asked Clay, with a concern 
 which made Lady Fanny turn her eyes from her 
 ponies ears to look at him. 
 
 " They say, very ! Of course, Sir Harry can t for 
 bid a visit to the sick." 
 
 " Surely he does not forbid you to call on Blanch 
 Beaufin!" 
 
 " Not forbid precisely; that wouldn t do (gently, 
 sweet Flash ! now, Tom ! now, lazy ! trot fair through 
 ihe hollow!) but I invited her to pass the winter 
 with me without consulting him, and he liked it well 
 enough, till he got back among his stupid neighbors 
 (well done, Flash ! plague take that bothering 
 whipple-tree!) and they and their awkward daughters, 
 whom I might have invited (whoa ! Flash !) if 1 
 
ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 21 
 
 hail wanted a menagerie, set him to looking into her 
 pedigree. There s the house; the old house with 
 the vines over it yonder! So then, Sir Harry such 
 a sweet girl, too set his face against the acquaintance. 
 Here we are ! (Whoa, bays ! whoa !) Hold the 
 reins a moment while I run in!" 
 
 More to quell a vague and apprehensive feeling of 
 remorse than to wile away idle time, Clay passed the 
 reins back to the stripling in gray livery behind, and 
 walked round Lady Fanny s ponies, expressing his 
 admiration of them and the turnout altogether. 
 
 " Yes, sir," said the lad, who seemed to have caught 
 some of the cleverness of his mistress, for he scarce j 
 looked fourteen, " they re a touch above anything in j 
 Cheshire ! Look at the forehand of that nigh uu, 1 
 sir! arm and withers like a greyhound, and yet what j 
 a quarter for trotting, sir ! Quite the tight thing all j 
 over ! Carries his flag that way quite natural ; never - 
 was nicked, sir ! Did you take notice, begging your | 
 pardon, sir, how milady put through that hollow ? j 
 Wasn t it fine, sir ? Tother s a goodish nag, too, 
 but, nothing to Flash ; can t spread, somehow ; that s 
 Sir Harry s picking up, and never was a match; no [ 
 blood in Tom, sir! Look at his fetlock : underbred, 
 but a jimpy nag for a roadster, if a man wanted work ; 
 out on him. See how he blows, sir, and Flash as j 
 still as a stopped wheel !" 
 
 Lady Fanny s reappearance at the door of the : 
 house interrupted her page s eulogy on the bays; and j 
 with a very altered expression of countenance she re 
 sumed the reins, and drove slowly homeward. 
 
 " She is very ill, very ill ! but she wishes to see 
 you, and you must go there ; but not to-morrow. 
 She is passing a crisis now, and her physician says, 
 will be easier if not better, after to-morrow. Poor 
 girl! dear Blanch! Ah, Clay ! but no no matter; 
 I shall talk about it with more composure by-and-by 
 poor Blanch !" 
 
 Lady Fanny s tears rained upon her two hands as 
 she let out her impatient horses to be sooner at home, j 
 and, in half an hour, Clay was alone in his luxurious ! 
 quarters, under Sir Harry s roof, with two hours to | 
 dinner, and more than thoughts enough, and very sad j 
 ones, to make him glad of time and solitude. 
 
 Freer Hall was full of company Sir Harry s com 
 pany and Clay, with the quiet assurance of a London 
 star, used to the dominant, took his station by Lady 
 Fanny on entering the drawing-room, and when din- ; 
 ner was announced, gave her his arm, without troubling 
 himself to remember that there was a baronet who had 
 claim to the honor, and of whom he must simply make 
 a mortal enemy. At table, the conversation ran main- j 
 ly in Sir Harry s vein, hunting, and Clay did not even | 
 take the listener s part ; but, in a low tone, talked of 
 London to Lady Fanny her ladyship (unaccountably i 
 to her husband and his friends, who were^used to [ 
 furnish her more merriment than revery) pensive J 
 and out of spirits. With the announcement of coffee j 
 in the drawing-room, Clay disappeared with her, and j 
 their evening was tete-a-tcte, for Sir Harry and his 
 friends were three-bottle men, and commonly bade 
 good-night to ladies when the ladies left the table, 
 If there had been a second thought in the convivial i| 
 squirearchy, they would have troubled their heads, 
 less about a man who did not exhibit the first symptom j 
 of love for the wife civility to the husband. But I 
 this is a hand-to-mouth world in the way of knowl- 
 edge, and nothing is stored but experiences, lifetime 
 by lifetime. 
 
 Another day passed and another, and mystery seem 
 ed the ruling spirit of the hour, for there were enigmas 
 for all. Regularly, morning and afternoon, the high 
 stepping ponies were ordered round, and Lady Fanny 
 (with Mr. Clay for company to the gate) visited the , 
 Beaufins, now against positive orders from the irate ; 
 Sir Harry, and daily, Clay s reserve with his beautiful 
 
 hostess increased, and his distress of mind with it, for 
 both he and she were alarmed with the one piece of 
 unexplained intelligence between them MissBeaufin 
 would see Mr. Clay when she should be dying! 
 Not before for worlds not before and of the phy 
 sician constantly in attendance (Lady Fanny often 
 present), Clay knew that the poor girl besought with 
 an eagerness, to the last degree touching and ear 
 nest, to know when hope could be given over. She 
 was indulged, unquestioned, as a dying daughter; 
 and, whatever might be her secret, Lady Fanny 
 promised that at the turning hour, come what would 
 of distressing and painful, she would herself come 
 with Mr. Clay to her death-bed. 
 
 Sir Harry and his friends were in the billiard-room, 
 and Lady Fanny and Clay breakfasting together, when 
 a note was brought in by one of the footmen, who 
 waited for an answer. 
 
 " Say that I will come," said Lady Fanny, " and 
 stay, George ! See that my ponies are harnessed im 
 mediately ; put the head of the phaeton up, and let it 
 stand in the coach-house. And, Timson !" she added 
 to the butler who stood at the side-table, " if Sir Harry 
 inquires for me, say that I am gone to visit a sick 
 friend." 
 
 Lady Fanny walked to the window. It rained in 
 torrents. There was no need of explanation to Clay; 
 he understood the note and its meaning. 
 
 11 The offices connect with the stables by a covered 
 way," she said, " and we will get in there. Shall you 
 be ready in a few minutes ?" 
 
 " Quite, dear Lady Fanny ! I am ready now." 
 " The rain is rather fortunate than otherwise," she 
 added, in going out, " for Sir Harry will not see us 
 go; and he might throw an obstacle in the way, and 
 make it difficult to manage. Wrap well up, Ernest !" 
 The butler looked inquisitively at Clay and his mis 
 tress, but both were preoccupied, and in ten minutes 
 the rapid phaeton was on its way, the ponies pressing 
 on the bit as if the eagerness of the two hearts beating 
 behind them was communicated through the reins, 
 and Lady Fanny, contrary to her wont, driving in un- 
 encouraging silence. The three or four miles between 
 Freer Hall and their destination were soon traversed, 
 and under the small porte-cochere of the ancient man 
 sion the ponies stood panting and sheltered. 
 
 " Kind Lady Fanny! God bless you !" said a tall, 
 dark man, of a very striking exterior, coming out to 
 the phaeton. " And you, sir, are welcome !" 
 
 They followed him into the little parlor, where Clay 
 was presented by Lady Fanny to the mother of Miss 
 Beaufin, a singularly yet sadly sweet woman in voice, 
 person, and address; to the old, white-haired vicar, 
 and to the physician, who returned his bow with a 
 cold and very formal salute. 
 
 "There is no time to be lost." said he, " and at the 
 request of MissBeaufin, Lady Fanny and this gentle 
 man will please go to her chamber without us. 1 can 
 trust your ladyship to see that her remainder of life 
 is not shortened nor harassed by needless agitation." 
 Clay s heart beat violently. At the extremity of 
 the. long and dimly-lighted passage thrown open by 
 the father to Lady Fanny, he saw a while curtained 
 bed the death-bed, he knew, of the gay and fair 
 flower of a London season, the wonder and idol of 
 difficult fashion, and unadmiring rank. Blanch Beaufin 
 had appeared like a marvel in the brilliant circles of 
 Lady Fanny s acquaintance, a distinguished, uncon 
 scious, dazzling girl, of whom her fair introductress 
 (either in mischief or good nature) would say nothing 
 but that she was her neighbor in Cheshire, though 
 all that nature could lavish on one human creature 
 seemed hers, with all that high birth could stamp on 
 mien, countenance, and manners. Clay paid her his 
 tribute with the rest the hundred who flattered and 
 followed her; but she was a proud girl, and though 
 
22 
 
 ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 he seized every opportunity of being near her, nothing 
 in her manner betrayed to him that he was not counted 
 among the hundred. A London season fleets fast, 
 and, taken by surprise with Lady Fanny s early de 
 parture for the country, her farewells were written 
 on the corners of cards, and with a secret deep buried 
 in the heart, she was brought back to the retirement 
 of home. 
 
 Brief history of the breaking of a heart ! 
 
 Lady Fanny started slightly on entering the cham 
 ber. The sick girl sat propped in an arm chair, 
 dressed in snowy white ; even her slight foot appear 
 ing beneath the edge of her dress in a slipper of white 
 satin. Her brown hair fell in profuse ringlets over 
 her shoulders ; but it was gathered behind into a 
 knot, and from it depended a white veil, the diamonds 
 which fastened it, pressing to the glossy curve of her 
 head, a slender stem of orange-flowers. Her features 
 were of that slight -mould which shows sickness by 
 little except higher transparency of the blue veins, 
 and brighter redness in the lips, and as she smiled 
 with suffused cheek, and held out her gloved hand to 
 Clay, with a vain effort to articulate, he passed his 
 hands across his eyes and looked inquiringly at his 
 friend. He had expected, though he had never 
 realized, that she would be altered. She looked 
 almost as he had left her. He remembered her only 
 as he had oftenest seen her dressed for ball or party, 
 and but for the solemnity of the preparation he had 
 gone through, he might have thought his feelings 
 had been played upon only; that Blanch Beaufin 
 was well still beautiful and well ; that he should 
 again see her in the brilliant circles of London; still 
 love her as he secretly did, and receive what he now 
 felt would be under any circumstances a gift of 
 Heaven, the assurance of a return. This and a world 
 of confused emotion, tumultuously and in an instant, 
 rushed through his heart ; for there are moments in 
 which we live lives of feeling and thought; moments, 
 glances, whichsupply years of secret or bitter memory. 
 
 This is but a sketch but an outline of a tale over 
 true. Were there space, were there time to follow 
 out the traverse thread of its mere mournful incidents, 
 we might write the reverse side of a leaf of life ever 
 read partially and wrong the life of the gay and un- 
 lamenting. Sickness and death had here broken 
 down a wall of adamant between two creatures, every 
 way formed for each other. In health and ordinary 
 regularity of circumstances, they would have loved as 
 truly and deeply as those in humbler or in more for 
 tunate relative positions ; but they probably would 
 never have been united. It is the system, the neces 
 sary system of the class to which Clay belonged, to 
 turn adroitly and gayly off every shaft to the heart ; 
 to take advantage of no opening to affection; to 
 smother all preference that would lead to an inter 
 change of hallowed vows ; to profess insensibility 
 equally polished and hardened on the subject of pure 
 love ; to forswear marriage, and make of it a mock 
 and an impossibility. And whose handiwork is this 
 unnatural order of society? Was it established by 
 the fortunate and joyous by the wealthy and un 
 trammelled, at liberty to range the world if they liked, 
 and marry where they chose, but preferring gayety to 
 happiness, and lawless liberty to virtuous love ? No, 
 indeed ! not by these ! Show me one such man, and 
 I will show you a rare perversion of common feeling 
 a man who under any circumstances would have 
 been cold and eccentric. It is not to those able to 
 marry where they will, that the class of London gay 
 men owe their system of mocking opinions. But it 
 is to the companions of fortunate men gifted like 
 them, in all but fortune, and holding their caste by 
 the tenure of forsworn ties abiding in the paradise 
 of aristocracy, with pure love for the forbidden fruit ! 
 Are such men insensible to love ? Has this forbidden 
 
 joy this one thing hallowed in a bad world ; has it no 
 temptation for the gay man ? Is his better nature 
 quite dead within him ? Is he never ill and sad where 
 gayety can not reach him ? Does he envy the rich 
 young lord (his friend), everything but his blushing 
 and pure bride ? Is he poet or wit, or the mirror of 
 taste and elegance, yet incapable of discerning the 
 qualities of a true love ; the celestial refinement of a 
 maiden passion, lawful and fearless, devoted because 
 spotless, and enduring because made up half of prayer 
 and gratitude to her Maker ? Does he not know dis 
 tinctions of feeling, as he knows character in a play ? 
 Does he not discriminate between purity and guilt in 
 love, as he does in his nice judgment of honor and 
 taste ? Is he gayly dead to the deepest and most 
 elevated cravings of nature love, passionate, single- 
 hearted, and holy ? Trust me, there is a bitterness 
 whose depths we can only fathom by refinement ! 
 To move among creatures embellished and elevated 
 to the last point of human attainment, lovely and un 
 sullied, and know yourself (as to all but gazing on and 
 appreciating them) a pariah and an outcast ! to breathe 
 their air, and be the companion and apparent equal of 
 those for whose bliss they are created, and to whom 
 they are offered for choice, with the profusion of 
 flowers in a garden (the chooser and possessor of 
 the brightest your inferior in all else) to live thus ; 
 to suffer thus, and still smile and call it choice and 
 your own way to happiness this is mockery indeed ! 
 He who now stood in the death-room of Blanch 
 Beaufin, had felt it in its bitterest intensity ! 
 
 " Mr. Clay ! Ernest !" said the now pale creature, 
 breaking the silence with a strong effort, for he had 
 dropped on his knee at her side in ungovernable emo 
 tion, and, as yet, had but articulated her name "Er 
 nest! I have but little time for anything least of all 
 for disguise or ceremony. I am assured that I am dy 
 ing. I am convinced," she added firmly, taking up 
 the watch that lay beside her, " that I have been told 
 the truth, and that when this hourhand comes round 
 again, I shall be dead. I will conceal nothing. They 
 have given me cordials that will support me one hour, 
 and for that hour and for eternity I wish if I may 
 be so blest if God will permit to be your wife !" 
 
 Lady Fanny Freer rose and came to her with rapid 
 steps, and Clay sprang to his feet, and in a passion of 
 tears exclaimed, "Oh God! can this be true !" 
 
 " Answer me quickly !" she continued, in a voice 
 raised, but breaking through sobs, " an hour is short 
 oh how short, when it is the last ! I can not stay with 
 you long, were you a thousand limes mine. Tell 
 me, Ernest ! shall it be ? shall I be wedded ere I 
 die? wedded now?" 
 
 A passionate gesture to Lady Fanny was all the 
 answer Clay could make, and in another moment the 
 aged vicar was in the chamber, with her parents and 
 the physician, to all of whom a few words explained 
 a mystery which her bridal attire had already half un 
 ravelled. 
 
 Blanch spoke quickly " Shall he proceed, Er 
 nest?" 
 
 Her prayer-book was open on her knee, and Clay 
 gave it to the vicar, who, with a quick sense of sym 
 pathy, and with but a glance at the weeping and si 
 lent parents, read without delay the hallowed ceremo 
 nial. 
 
 Clay s countenance elevated and cleared as he pro 
 ceeded, and Blanch, with her large suffused eyes fixed 
 on his, listened with a smile, serene, but expressive of 
 unspeakable rapture. Her beauty had never been so 
 radiant, so angelic. In heaven, on her bridal night, 
 beatified spirit as she was, she could not have been 
 more beautiful ! 
 
 One instant of embarrassment occurred, unobserved 
 by the dying bride, but, with the thoughtfulness of 
 womanly generosity, Lady Fanny had foreseen it, and, 
 
ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 23 
 
 drawing off her own wedding-ring, she passed it into 
 Ernest s hand ere the interruption became apparent. 
 Alas ! the emaciated haud ungloved to recei 
 
 That wasted finger pointed indeed to heaven! Till 
 then, Clay had felt almost in a dream. But here was 
 suffering sickness death ! This told what the hec 
 tic brightness and the faultless features would fain 
 deny what the fragrant and still unwithering flowers 
 upon her temples would seem to mock! But the 
 hectic was already fading, and the flowers outlived the 
 light in the dark eyes they shaded ! 
 
 "The vicar joined their hands with the solemn ad 
 juration, "Those whom God hath joined together let 
 no man put asunder ;" and Clay rose from his knees, 
 and pressing his first kiss upon her lips, strained her 
 passionately to his heart. 
 
 " Mine in heaven!" she cried, giving way at last to 
 her tears, as she closed her slight arms over his neck ; 
 "mine in heaven! Is it not so, mother! father! is 
 he not mine now ? There is no giving in marriage in 
 heaven, but the ties, hallowed here, are not forgotten 
 there! Tell me they are not! Speak to me, my 
 husband! Press me to your heart, Ernest ! Your 
 wife oh, I thank God !" 
 
 The physician sprang forward and laid his hand 
 upon her pulse. She fell back upon her pillows, and 
 with a smile upon her lips, and the tears still wet upon 
 her long and drooping lashes, lay dead. 
 
 Lady Fanny took the mother by the arm, and with 
 a gesture to the father and the physician to follow, 
 they retired and left the bridegroom alone. 
 ******* 
 
 Life is full of sudden transitions ; and the next 
 event in that of Ernest Clay, was a duel with Sir Har 
 ry Freer if the Morning Post was to be believed 
 ".occasioned by the indiscretion of Lady Fanny, who, 
 in a giddy moment, it appears, had given to her ad 
 mirer, Sir Harry s opponent, her wedding-ring!" 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 LATE one night in June two gentlemen arrived at 
 the Villa Hotel of the Baths of Lucca. They stop 
 ped the low britzka in which they travelled, and, leav 
 ing a servant to make arrangements for their lodging, 
 linked arms and strolled up the road toward the banks 
 of the Lima. The moon was chequered at the mo 
 ment with the poised leaf of a treetop, and as it pas 
 sed from her face, she arose and stood alone in the j 
 steel-blue of the unclouded heavens a luminous and 
 tremulous plate of gold. And you know how beau 
 tiful must have been the night, a June night in Italy, 
 with a moon at the full ! 
 
 A lady, with a servant following her at a little dis 
 tance, passed the travellers on the bridge of trie Lima. 
 She dropped her veil and went by in silence. But | 
 the Freyherr felt the arm of his friend tremble within 
 his own. 
 
 "Do you know her, then?" asked Von Leisten. 
 
 "By the thrill in my veins we have met before," 
 said Clay; "but whether this involuntary sensation 
 was pleasurable or painful, I have not yet decided. 
 There are none I care to meet none who can be 
 here." He added the last few words after a moment s 
 pause, and sadly. 
 
 They walked on in silence to the base of the moun 
 tain, busy each with such coloring as the moonlight 
 threw on their thoughts, but neither of them was 
 happy. 
 
 Clay was humane, and a lover of nature a poet, 
 that is to say and, in a world so beautiful, could nev 
 er be a prey to disgust ; but he was satiated with the 
 common emotions of life. His heart, forever over- j 
 flowing, had filled many a cup with love, but with 
 
 strange tenacity he turned back for ever to the first. 
 He was weary of the beginnings of love weary of 
 its probations and changes. He had passed the pe 
 riod of life when inconstancy was tempting. He 
 longed now for an affection that would continue into 
 another world holy and pure enough to pass a gate 
 guarded by angels. And his first love recklessly as 
 he had thrown it away was now the thirst of his ex 
 istence. 
 
 It was two o clock at night. The moon lay broad 
 upon the southern balconies of the hoiel, and every 
 casement was open to its luminous and fragrant still 
 ness. Clay and the Freyherr Von Leisten, each in 
 his apartment, were awake, unwilling to lose the lux 
 ury of the night. And there was one other under 
 that roof waking, with her eyes fixed on the moon. 
 
 As Clay leaned his head on his hand, and looked 
 outward to the sky, his heart began to be troubled. 
 There was a point in the path of the moon s rays 
 where his spirit turned back. There was an influence 
 abroad in the dissolving moonlight around him which 
 resistlessly awakened the past the sealed but unfor- 
 gotten past. He could not single out the emotion. He 
 knew not whether it was fear or hope pain or pleasure. 
 He called, through the open window, to Von Leisten. 
 
 The Freyherr, like himself, and like all who have, 
 outlived the" effervescence of life, was enamored of the 
 night. A moment of unfathomable moonlight was 
 dearer to him than hours disenchanted with the sun. 
 He, too, had been looking outward and upward but 
 with no trouble at his heart. 
 
 " The night is inconceivably sweet," he said, as he 
 entered, " and your voice called in my thought and 
 sense from the intoxication of a revel. What would 
 you, my friend ?" 
 
 " I am restless, Von Leisten! There is some one 
 near us whose glances cross mine on the moonlight, 
 and agitate and perplex me. Yet there was but one 
 on earth deep enough in the life-blood of my being 
 to move me thus even were she here ! And she is 
 not here !" 
 
 His voice trembled and softened, and the last word 
 was scarce audible on his closing lips, for the Frey 
 herr had passed his hands over him while he spoke, 
 and he had fallen into the trance of the spirit-world. 
 
 Clay and Von Leisten had retired from the active 
 passions of life together, and had met and mingled at 
 that moment of void and thirst when each supplied 
 the want of the other. The Freyherr was a German 
 noble, of a character passionately poetic, and of sin 
 gular acquirement in the mystic fields of knowledge. 
 Too wealthy to need labor, and too proud to submit 
 his thoughts or his attainments to the criticism or 
 judgment of the world, he lavished on his own life, and 
 on those linked to him in friendship, the strange powers 
 he had acquired, and the prodigal overthrow of his 
 daily thought and feeling. Clay was his superior, 
 perhaps, in genius, and necessity had driven him to 
 develop the type of his inner soul, and leave its im 
 press on the time. But he was inferior to Von Leis 
 ten in the power of will, and he lay in his control like 
 a child in its mother s. Four years they had passed 
 together, much of it in the secluded castle of Von 
 Leisten, busied with the occult studies to which the 
 Freyherr was secretly devoted; but travelling down 
 to Italy to meet the luxurious summer, and dividing 
 their lives between the enjoyment of nature and the 
 ideal world they had unlocked. Von Leisten had 
 lost, by death, the human altar on which his heart 
 could alone burn the incense of love; and Clay had 
 flung aside in an hour of intoxicating passion the one 
 pure affection in which his happiness was sealed 
 and both were desolate. But in the world of the 
 past, Von Leisten, though more irrevocably lonely, 
 was more tranquilly blest. 
 
 The Freyherr released the entranced spirit of his 
 
24 
 
 ERNEST CLAY. 
 
 friend, and bade him follow back the rays of the moon 
 to the source of his agitation. 
 
 A smile crept slowly over the speaker s lips. 
 
 In an apartment flooded with the silver lustre of the 
 night, reclined, in an invalid s chair, propped with pil- 
 Jows, a woman of singular, though most fragile beauty. 
 Books and music lay strewn around, and a lamp, sub 
 dued to the tone of the moonlight by an orb of ala 
 baster, burned beside her. She lay bathing her blue 
 eyes in the round chalice of the moon. A profusion 
 of brown ringlets fell over the white dress that envel 
 oped her, and her oval cheek lay supported on the 
 palm of her hand, and her bright red lips were parted. 
 The pure, yet passionate spell of that soft night pos 
 sessed her. 
 
 Over her leaned the disembodied spirit of him who 
 had once loved her praying to God that his soul 
 might be so purified as to mingle unstartingly, unre- 
 pulsively, in hallowed harmony with hers. And pres 
 ently he felt the coming of angels toward him, breath 
 ing into the deepest abysses of his existence a tearful 
 and purifying sadness. And with a trembling aspira 
 tion of grateful humility to his Maker, he stooped to 
 her forehead, and with his impalpable lips impressed 
 upon its snowy tablet a kiss. 
 
 It seemed to Eve Gore a thought of the past that 
 brought the blood suddenly to her cheek. She started 
 fromherrecliningposition, and, removing theobscuring 
 shade from her lamp, arose and crossed her hands 
 upon her wrists, and paced thoughtfully to and fro. 
 Her lips murmured inarticulately. But the thought, 
 painfully though it came, changed unaccountably to 
 melancholy sweetness ; and, subduing her lamp again, 
 she resumed her steadfast gaze upon the moon. 
 
 Ernest knelt beside her, and with his invisible brow 
 bowed upon her hand, poured forth, in the voiceless 
 language of the soul, his memories of the past, his 
 hope, his repentance, his pure and passionate adora 
 tion at the present hour. 
 
 And thinking she had been in a sweet dream, yet 
 wondering at its truthfulness and power, Eve wept, 
 silently and long. As the morning touched the east, 
 slumber weighed upon her moistened eyelids, and 
 kneeling by her bedside she murmured her gratitude 
 to God for a heart relieved of a burden long borne, 
 and so went peacefully to her sleep. * * * 
 
 It was in the following year, and in the beginning 
 of May. The gay world of England was concentra 
 ted in London, and at the entertainments of noble 
 houses there were many beautiful women and many 
 marked men. The Freyherr Von Leisten, after 
 years of absence, had appeared again, his mysterious 
 and undeniable superiority of mien and influence 
 again yielded to, as before, and again bringing to his 
 feet the homage and deference of the crowd he moved 
 among. To h is inscrutable power the game of so 
 ciety was easy, and he walked where he would through 
 its barriers of form. 
 
 He stood one night looking on at a dance. ""A" lady 
 of a noble air was near him, and both were watching 
 the movements of the loveliest woman present, a crea 
 ture in radiant health, apparently about twenty-three, 
 and of matchless fascination of person and manner. 
 Von Leisten turned to the lady near him to inquire 
 her name, but his attention was arrested by the re 
 
 semblance between her and the object of his admiring 
 curiosity, and he was silent. 
 
 The lady had bowed before he withdrew his gaze, 
 however. 
 
 "I think we have met before! 1 she said; but at 
 
 the next instant a slight flush of displeasure came to her 
 
 cheek, and she seemed regretting that she had spoken. 
 
 "Pardon me!" said Von Leisten, "but if the 
 
 question be not rude do you remember where ?" 
 
 She hesitated a moment. 
 
 " I have recalled it since I have spoken," she con 
 tinued ; " but as the remembrance of the person who 
 accompanied you always gives me pain, I would wil 
 lingly have unsaid it. One evening of last year, cros 
 sing the bridge of the Lima, you were walking with 
 Mr. Clay. Pardon me but, though I left Lucca 
 with my daughter on the following morning, and saw 
 you no more, the association, or your appearance, 
 I had imprinted the circumstance on my mind." 
 
 "And is that Eve Gore?" said Von Leisten, mu 
 singly, gazing oti the beautiful creature now gliding 
 with light step to her mother s side. 
 
 But the Freyherr s heart was gone to his friend. 
 
 As the burst of the waltz broke in upon the closing 
 of the quadrille, he offered his hand to the fair girl, 
 and as they moved round to the entrancing music, he 
 murmured in her ear, " He who came to you in the 
 moonlight of Italy will be with you again, if you are 
 alone, at the rising of to-night s late moon. Believe 
 the voice that then speaks to you !" * * * 
 
 It was with implacable determination that Mrs. 
 Gore refused, to the entreaties of Von Leisten, a re 
 newal of Clay s acquaintance with her daughter. 
 Resentment for the apparent recklessness with which 
 he had once sacrificed her maiden love for an unlaw 
 ful passion scornful unbelief of any change in his 
 character distrust of the future tendency of the 
 powers TSf hi^ genius all mingled together in a hos 
 tility pro^f against persuasion. She had expressed 
 this with all the positiveness of language, when her 
 daughter suddenly entered the room. It was the 
 morning after the ball, and she had risen late. But 
 though subdued and pensive in her air, Von Leisten 
 saw at a glance that she was happy. 
 
 " Can you bring him to me ?" said Eve, letting her 
 hand remain in Von Leisten s, and bending her deep 
 blue eyes inquiringly on his. 
 
 And with no argument but tears and caresses, and 
 an unexplained assurance of her conviction of the re 
 pentant purity and love of him to whom her heart 
 was once given, the confiding and strong-hearted 
 girl bent, at last, the stern will that forbade her happi 
 ness. Her mother unclasped the slight arms from her 
 neck, and gave her hand in silent consent to Von Leisten. 
 
 The Freyherr stood a moment with his eyes fixed 
 on the ground. The color fled from his cheeks, and 
 his brow moistened. 
 
 "I have called him," he said " he will be here !" 
 
 An hour elapsed, and Clay entered the house. He 
 had risen from a bed of sickness, and came, pale and 
 in terror for the spirit-summons was powerful. But 
 Von Leisten welcomed him at the door with a smile, 
 and withdrew the mother from the room, and left Er 
 nest alone with his future bride the first union, save 
 in spirit, after years of separation. 
 
THE MARQUIS IN PETTICOATS. 
 
 25 
 
 THE MARQUIS IN PETTICOATS 
 
 (THE OUTLINE FROM A FRENCH MEMOIR.) 
 
 I INTRODUCE you at once to the Marquis de la Che 
 tardie a diplomatist who figured largely in the gay 
 age of Louis XV. and the story is but one of the 
 illuminated pages of the dark book of diplomacy. 
 
 Charles de la Chetardie appeared for the first time 
 to the eyes of the king at a masquerade ball, given at 
 
 head of the beautiful stranger, appointed her, by one 
 of those sudden whims of preference against which 
 her ministers had so much trouble to guard, lectrice 
 intime et particuliere in short, confidential personal 
 attendant. The blushes of the confused marquis, who 
 
 g...^.. ~v was unprepared for so affectionate a reception, served 
 Versailles, under the auspices of la belle Pompadour, rather to heighten the disguise, and old Bestucheff 
 
 He was dressed as a young lady of high rank, making 
 her debut ; and, so perfect was his acting, and the de 
 ception altogether, that Louis became enamored 
 of the disguised marquis, and violently excited the 
 jealousy of " Madame," by his amorous attentions. 
 An eclaircissement, of course, took place, and the re 
 sult was a great partiality for the marquis s society, 
 and his subsequent employment, in and out of petti- 
 
 bowed himself out with a compliment to the beauty 
 of Mademoiselle de Beaumont, veiled in a diplomatic 
 congratulation to her imperial mistress. 
 
 Elizabeth was forty and a little passee, but she still 
 had pretensions, and was particularly fond of beauty 
 in her attendants, female as well as male. Her favor 
 ite, of her personal suite, at the time of the arrival of 
 the marquis, was an exquisite little creature who had 
 
 coats, in many a scheme of state diplomacy and royal | been sent to her, as a compliment to this particular 
 
 taste, by the Dutchess of Mecklenberg-Strelitz a kind 
 of German "Fenella," or " Mignon," by the name of 
 Nadege Stein. Not much below the middle size, 
 Nadege was a model of symmetrical proportion, and 
 
 amusement. 
 
 La Chetardie was at this time just eighteen. He 
 was very slight, and had remarkably small hands and 
 feet, and the radiant fairness of his skin and the luxu 
 riant softness of his profuse chestnut curls, might 
 justly have been the envy of the most delicate woman. 
 He was, at first, subjected to some ridicule for his 
 effeminacy, but the merry courtiers were soon made 
 aware, that, under this velvet fragility lay concealed 
 the strength and ferocity of the tiger. The grasp of 
 his small hand was like an iron vice, and his singular 
 activity, and the cool courage which afterward gave [ 
 him a brilliant career on the battle-field, established I 
 
 f very extraordinary beauty. She had been carefully 
 educated for her present situation, and was highly 
 accomplished ; a fine reader, and a singularly sweet 
 musician and dancer. The tzarine s passion for this 
 lovely attendant was excessive, and the arrival of a new 
 favorite of the same sex was looked upon with some 
 pleasure by the eclipsed remainder of the palace 
 idlers. 
 
 Elizabeth summoned Nadege, and committed Mad- 
 
 him, in a very short time, as the most formidable |j emoiselle de Beaumont temporarily to her charge; 
 
 swordsman of the court. His ferocity, however, lay 
 deeply concealed in his character, and, unprovoked, 
 he was the gayest and most brilliant of merry com 
 panions. 
 
 This was the age of occult and treacherous diplo 
 macy, and the court of Russia, where Louis would 
 fain have exercised an influence (private as well as po 
 litical in its results), was guarded by an implacable 
 Argus, in the person of the prime minister, Bestucheff. 
 Aided by Sir Hambuiy Williams, the English ambas 
 sador, one of the craftiest men of that crafty period, he 
 had succeeded for some years in defeating every at 
 tempt at access to the imperial ear by the secret emis 
 saries of France. The sudden appearance of La 
 Chetardie, his cool self-command, and his successful 
 personation of a female, suggested a new hope to the 
 king, however; and, called to Versailles by royal man 
 date, the young marquis was taken into cabinet confi 
 dence, and a secret mission to St. Petersburg!), in 
 petticoats, proposed to him and accepted. 
 
 With his instructions and secret despatches stitched 
 into his corsets, and under the ostensible protection of 
 a scientific man, who was to present him to the tzarine 
 as a Mademoiselle de Beaumont, desirous of entering 
 the service of Elizabeth, the marquis reached St. Pe 
 tersburg without accident or adventure. The young 
 lady s guardian requested an audience through Bestu 
 cheff, and having delivered the open letters recom 
 mending her for her accomplishments to the imperial 
 protection, he begged leave to continue on his scien 
 tific tour to the central regions of Russia. 
 
 Conge was immediately granted, and on the disap 
 pearance of the savant, and before the departure of 
 Bestucheff, the tzarine threw off all ceremony, and 
 pinching the cheeks and imprinting a kiss on the fore- 
 
 but the same mysterious magnetism which had reached 
 the heart of the tzarine, seemed to kindle, quite as 
 promptly, the affections of her attendant. Nadege 
 was no sooner alone with her new friend, than she 
 jumped to her neck, smothered her with kisses, called 
 her by every endearing epithet, and overwhelmed her 
 with questions, mingled with the most childlike ex 
 clamations of wonder at her own inexplicable love for 
 a stranger. In an hour, she had shown to the new 
 demoiselle all the contents of the little boudoir in which 
 she lived ; talked to her of her loves and hates at the 
 Russian court ; of her home in Mecklenberg, and her 
 present situation in short, poured out her heart with 
 the naif abandon of a child. The young marquis had 
 never seen so lovely a creature; and, responsibly as he 
 felt his difficult and delicate situation, he returned the 
 affection so innocently lavished upon him, and by the 
 end of this first fatal hour, was irrecoverably in love. 
 And, gay as his life had been at the French court, it 
 was the first, and subsequently proved to be the deep 
 est, passion of his life. 
 
 On the tzarine s return to her private apartment, she 
 summoned her new favorite, and superintended, with 
 condescending solicitude, the arrangements for hei 
 palace lodging. Nadege inhabited a small tower ad 
 joining the bedroom of her mistress, and above this 
 was an unoccupied room, which, at the present sug 
 gestion of the fairy little attendant, was allotted to the 
 new-comer. The staircase opened by one door into 
 the private gardens, and by the opposite, into the cor 
 ridor leading immediately to the imperial chamber. 
 The marquis s delicacy would fain have made some 
 objection to this very intimate location ; but he could 
 hazard nothing against the interests of his sovereign, 
 I and be trusted to a speedy termination of his disguise 
 
THE MARQUIS IN PETTICOATS. 
 
 with the attainment of his object. Meantime, the 
 close neighborhood of the fair Nadege was not the j 
 most intolerable of necessities. 
 
 The marquis s task was a very difficult one. He I 
 was instructed, before abandoning his disguise and de 
 livering his secret despatches, to awaken the interest 
 of the tzarine on the two subjects to which the docu 
 ments had reference : viz., a former partiality of her j 
 majesty for Louis, and a formerly discussed project of 
 seating the Prince de Conti on the throne of Poland. 
 Bestucheff had so long succeeded in cutting off all 
 approach of these topics to the ear of the tzarine, that j 
 her majesty had probably forgotten them altogether. 
 
 W^eks passed, and the opportunities to broach these 
 delicate subjects had been inauspiciously rare. Mad 
 emoiselle de Beaumont, it is true, had completely 
 eclipsed the favorite Nadege; and Elizabeth, in her 
 hours of relaxation from state affairs, exacted the con 
 stant attendance of the new favorite in her private 
 apartments. But the almost constant presence of 
 some other of the maids of honor, opposed continual 
 obstacles and interruptions, and the tzarine herself 
 was not always disposed to talk of matters more seri 
 ous than the current trifles of the hour. She was 
 extremely indolent in her personal habits; and often 
 reclining at length upon cushions on the floor of her 
 boudoir, she laid her imperial head in the lap of the 
 embarrassed demoiselle, and was soothed to sleep by 
 reading and the bathing of her temples. And during 
 this period, she exacted frequently of the marquis, with 
 a kind of instinctive mistrust, promises of continuance 
 for life in her personal service. 
 
 But there were sweeter hours for the enamored La 
 Chetardie than those passed in the presence of his 
 partial and imperial mistress. Encircled by sentinels, 
 and guarded from all intrusion of other eyes, in the 
 inviolable sanctuary of royalty, the beautiful Nadege, 
 impassioned she knew not why, in her love for her 
 new companion, was ever within call, and happy in 
 devoting to him all her faculties of caressing endear 
 ment. He had not yet dared to risk the interests of 
 his sovereign by a disclosure of his sex, even in the 
 confidence of love. He could not trust Nadege to 
 play so difficult a part as that of possessor of so em 
 barrassing a secret in the presence of the shrewd and 
 observing tzarine. A betrayal, too, would at once put 
 an end to his happiness. With the slight arm of the 
 fair and relying creature about his waist, and her head 
 pressed close against his breast, they passed the balmy- 
 nights of the Russian summer in pacing the flowery 
 alleys of the imperial garden, discoursing, with but 
 one reserve, on every subject that floated to their lips. 
 It required, however, all the self-control of La Che 
 tardie, and all the favoring darkness of the night, to con 
 ceal his smiles at the naive confessions of the uncon 
 scious girl, and her wonderings at the peculiarity of her 
 feelings. She had thought, hitherto, that there were 
 affections in her nature which could only be called forth 
 by a lover. Yet now, the thought of caressing another 
 than her friend of repeating to any human ear, least 
 of all to a man, those new-born vows of love filled 
 her with alarm and horror. She felt that she had 
 given her heart irrevocably away and to a woman ! 
 Ah, with what delirious, though silent passion, La 
 Chetardie drew her to his bosom, and, with the pres 
 sure of his lips upon hers, interrupted those sweet 
 confessions ! 
 
 Yet the time at last drew near for the waking from 
 this celestial dream. The disguised diplomatist had 
 found his opportunity, and had successfully awakened 
 in Elizabeth s mind both curiosity and interest as to 
 the subjects of the despatches still sewed safely in his 
 corsets. There remained nothing for him now but to 
 seize a favorable opportunity, and, with the delivery 
 of his missives, to declare his sex to the tzarine. There 
 was risk to life and liberty in this, but the marquis 
 
 knew not fear, and he thought but of its consequences 
 to his love. 
 
 In La Chetardie s last interview with the savant who 
 conducted him to Russia, his male attire had been 
 successfully transferred from one portmanteau to the 
 other, and it was now in his possession, ready for the 
 moment of need. With his plans brought to within a 
 single night of the denouement, he parted from the 
 tzarine, having asked the imperial permission for an 
 hour s private interview on the morrow, and, with gen 
 tle force excluding Nadege from his apartment, he 
 dressed himself in his proper costume, and cut open 
 the warm envelope of his despatches. This done, he 
 threw his cloak over him, and, with a dark lantern in 
 his hand, sought Nadege in the garden. He had de 
 termined to disclose himself to her, renew his vows of 
 love in his proper guise, and arrange, while he had 
 access and opportunity, some means for uniting their 
 destinies hereafter. 
 
 As he opened the door of the turret, Nadege flew 
 up the stair to meet him, and observing the cloak in 
 the faint glimmer of the stars, she playfully endeavored 
 to envelope herself in it. But, seizing her hands, 
 La Chetardie turned and glided backward, drawing 
 her after him toward a small pavilion in the remoter 
 part of the garden. Here they had never been inter 
 rupted, the empress alone having the power to intrude 
 upon them, and La Chetardie felt safe in devoting this 
 place and time to the double disclosure of his secret 
 and his suppressed passion. 
 
 Persuading her with difficulty to desist from putting 
 her arms about him and sit down without a caress, he 
 retreated a few steps, and in the darkness of the pa 
 vilion, shook down his imprisoned locks to their mas- 
 I culine abandon, threw off his cloak, and drew up the 
 j blind of his lantern. The scream of surprise, which 
 | instantly parted from the lips of Nadege, made him 
 regret his imprudence in not having prepared her for 
 I the transformation, but her second thought was mirth, 
 [ for she could believe it of course to be nothing but a 
 playful masquerade; and with delighted laughter she 
 I sprang to his neck, and overwhelmed him with her 
 kisses another voice, however, joining very unexpect 
 edly in the laughter ! 
 
 The empress stood before them ! 
 For an instant, with all his self-possession, La Che 
 tardie was confounded and dismayed. Siberia, the 
 knout, the scaffold, flitted before his eyes, and Nadege 
 was the sufferer ! But a glance at the face of the 
 tzarine reassured him. She, too, took it for a girlish, 
 masquerade ! 
 
 But the empress, unfortunately, was not disposed to 
 have a partner in her enjoyment of the society of this 
 I new apparition of "hose and doublet." She ordered 
 Nadege to her turret, with one of those petulant com 
 mands which her attendants understood to admit of no 
 delay, and while the eclipsed favorite disappeared with 
 the tears of unwilling submission in her soft eyes, La 
 Chetardie looked after her with the anguish of eternal 
 separation at his heart, for a presentiment crowded 
 irresistibly upon him that he should never see her 
 more ! 
 
 The empress was in slippers and role de nuit, and, 
 as if fate had determined that this well-kept secret 
 should not survive the hour, her majesty laid her arm 
 within that of her supposed masquerader, and led the 
 way to the palace. She was wakeful, and wished to 
 be read to sleep. And, with many a compliment to 
 the beauty of her favorite in male attire, and many a 
 playful caress, she arrived at the door of her chamber. 
 But the marquis could go no farther. He had hith 
 erto been spared the embarrassment of passing this 
 sacred threshold, for the passce empress had secrets 
 of toilet for the embellishment of her person, which 
 she trusted only to the eyes of an antiquated attend 
 ant. La Chetardie had never passed beyond the bow- 
 
THE MARQUIS IN PETTICOATS. 
 
 27 
 
 doir which was between the antechamber and the bed 
 room, and the time had come for the disclosure of his 
 secret. He fell on his knees and announced himself 
 a man! 
 
 Fortunately they were alone. Incredulous at first, 
 the empress listened to his asseverations, however, 
 with more amusement than displeasure, and the im 
 mediate delivery of the despatches, with the commen 
 dations of the disguised ambassador by his royal mas 
 ter to the forgiveness and kindness of the empress, 
 amply secured his pardon. But it was on condition 
 that he should resume his disguise and remain in her 
 service. 
 
 Alone in his tower (for Nadege had disappeared, and 
 he knew enough of the cruelty of Elizabeth to dread 
 the consequences to the poor girl of venturing on di 
 rect inquiries as to her fate), La Chetardie after a few 
 weeks fell ill ; and fortunate, even at this price, to 
 escape from the silken fetters of the enamored tzarine, 
 he departed under the care of the imperial physician, 
 for the more genial climate of France not without 
 reiterated promises of return, however, and offers, in 
 that event, of unlimited wealth and advancement. 
 
 But, as the marquis made his way slowly toward 
 Vienna, a gleam of light dawned on his sadness. 
 The Princess Sophia Charlotte was newly affianced to 
 George the Third of England, and this daughter of 
 the house of Mecklenberg had been the playmate of 
 Nadege Stein, from infancy till the time when Nadege 
 was sent to the tzarine by the Dutchess of Mecklen 
 berg. Making a confidant of the kind physician who 
 accompanied him, La Chetardie was confirmed, by the 
 good man s better experience and knowledge, in the 
 belief that Nadege had shared the same fate of every 
 female of the court who had ever awakened the jeal 
 ousy of the empress. She was doubtless exiled to 
 Siberia; but, as she had committed no voluntary fault, 
 it was probably without other punishment ; and, with 
 a playmate on the throne of England, she might be 
 demanded and recovered ere long, in all her freshness 
 and beauty. Yet the recent fate of the fair Eudoxie 
 Lapoukin, who, for an offence but little more distaste 
 ful to the tzarine, had been pierced through the tongue 
 with hot iron, whipped with the knout, and exiled for 
 life to Siberia, hung like a cloud of evil augury over 
 his mind. 
 
 The marquis suddenly determined that he would see 
 the affianced princess, and plead with her for her friend, 
 before the splendors of a throne should make her in 
 accessible. The excitement of this hope had given 
 him new life, and he easily persuaded his attendant, as 
 they entered the gates of Vienna, that he required his 
 attendance no farther. Alone with his own servants, 
 he resumed his female attire, and directed his course 
 to Mecklenberg-Strelitz. 
 
 The princess had maintained an intimate .corre- 
 spoudence with her playmate up to the time of her 
 betrothal, and the name of Mademoiselle de Beau 
 mont was passport enough. La Chetardie had sent 
 forward his servant, on arriving at the town, in the 
 neighborhood of the ducal residence, and the reply 
 
 to his missive was brought back by one of the officers 
 in attendance, with orders to conduct the demoiselle 
 to apartments in the castle. He was received with all 
 honor at the palace-gate by a chamberlain in waiting, 
 who led the way to a suite of rooms adjoining those 
 of the princess, where, after being left alone for a few 
 minutes, he was familiarly visited by the betrothed 
 girl, and overwhelmed, as formerly by her friend, with 
 most embarrassing caresses. In the next moment, 
 however, the door was hastily flung open, and Nadege, 
 like a stream of light, fled through the room, hung 
 upon the neck of the speechless and overjoyed mar 
 quis, and ended with convulsions of mingled tears and 
 laughter. The moment that he could disengage him- 
 | self from her arms, La Chetardie requested to be left 
 I for a moment alone. He felt the danger and impro- 
 I priety of longer maintaining his disguise. He closed 
 his door on the unwilling demoiselles, hastily changed 
 his dress, and, with his sword at his side, entered the 
 I adjoining reception-room of the princess, where Made- 
 j moiselle de Beaumont was impatiently awaited. 
 
 The scene which followed, the mingled confusion 
 and joy of Nadege, the subsequent hilarity and mas 
 querading at the castle, and the particulars of the 
 marriage of the Marquis de la Chetardie to his fair 
 I fellow maid-of-honor, must be left to the reader s im- 
 ; agination. We have room only to explain the reap- 
 ! pearance of Nadege at Mecklenberg. 
 
 Nadege retired to her turret at the imperative com- 
 j mand of the empress, sad and troubled ; but waited 
 I vvakefully and anxiously for the re-entrance of her dis- 
 ! guised companion. In the course of an hour, how- 
 j ever, the sound of a sentinel s musket, set down at her 
 I door, informed her that she was a prisoner. She knew 
 I Elizabeth, and the Dutchess of Mecklenberg, with an 
 j equal knowledge of the tzarine s character, had provi- 
 i ded her with a resource against the imperial cruelty, 
 I should she have occasion to use it. She crept to the 
 [ battlements of the tower, and fastened a handkerchief 
 ij to the side looking over the public square. 
 
 The following morning, at daylight, Nadege was 
 n summoned to prepare for a journey, and, in an hour, 
 j she was led between soldiers to a carriage at tbe pal- 
 | ace-gate, and departed by the northern egress of the 
 j city, with a guard of three mounted cossacks. In two 
 I hours from that time, the carnage was overtaken, the 
 ! guard overpowered, and the horses heads turned in 
 j the direction of Moscow. After many difficulties and 
 i dangers, during which she found herself under the 
 I charge of a Mecklenbergian officer in the service of 
 | the tzarine, she reached Vienna in safety, and was im- 
 j mediately concealed by her friends in the neighbor- 
 | hood of the palace at Mecklenberg, to remain hidden 
 j till inquiry should be over. The arrival of Mademoi- 
 | selle de Beaumont, for the loss of whose life or liberty 
 j she had incessantly wept with dread and apprehension, 
 : was joyfully communicated to her by her friends ; and 
 j| so the reader knows some of the passages in the early 
 |j life of the far-famed beauty in the French court in 
 j the time of Louis XV. the Marchioness de la Che- 
 i! tardie. 
 
28 
 
 BEAUTY AND THE BEAST." 
 
 "BEAUTY AND THE BEAST;" 
 
 OR, HANDSOME MRS. TITTON AND HER PLAIN HUSBAND. 
 
 1 That man i the world who shall report he ha 
 A better wife, let him in naught be trusted 
 For speaking false in that." Henry VIII. 
 
 I HAVE always been very fond of the society of 
 portrait-painters. Whether it is, that the pursuit of 
 a beautiful and liberal art softens their natural quali 
 ties, or that, from the habit of conversing while en 
 grossed with the pencil, they like best that touch-and- 
 go talk which takes care of itself; or, more probably 
 still, whether the freedom with which they are ad 
 mitted behind the curtains of vanity and affection gives 
 a certain freshness and truth to their views of things 
 around them certain it is, that, in all countries, their 
 rooms are the most agreeable of haunts, and they 
 themselves most enjoyable of cronies. 
 
 I had chanced in Italy to make the acquaintance of 
 
 S , an English artist of considerable cleverness 
 
 in his profession, but more remarkable for his frank 
 good breeding and his abundant good nature. Four 
 years after, I had the pleasure of renewing my inter 
 course with him in London, where he was flourishing, 
 quite up to his deserving, as a portrait-painter. His 
 rooms were hard by one of the principal thorough 
 fares, and, from making an occasional visit, I grew to 
 frequenting them daily, often joining him at his early 
 breakfast, and often taking him out with me to drive 
 whenever we changed to tire of our twilight stroll. 
 While rambling in Hyde Park, one evening, I men 
 tioned for the twentieth time, a singularly ill-assorted 
 couple I had once or twice met at his room a woman 
 of superb beauty attended by a very inferior-looking 
 and ill-dressed man. S had, previously, with 
 a smile at my speculations, dismissed the subject 
 rather crisply ; but, on this occasion, 1 went into some 
 surmises as to the probable results of such " pairing 
 without matching," and he either felt called upon to 
 defend the lady, or made my misapprehension of her 
 character an excuse for telling me what he knew about 
 her. He began the story in the Park, and ended it 
 over a bottle of wine in the Hayinarket of course 
 with many interruptions and digressions. Let me see 
 if I can tie his broken threads together. 
 
 "That lady is Mrs. Fortescue Titton, and the 
 gentleman you so much disparage is, if you please, 
 the incumbrance to ten thousand a year the money 
 as much at her service as the husband by whom she 
 gets it. Whether he could have won her had he been 
 " Bereft and gelded of his patrimony," 
 
 I will not assert, especially to one who looks on them 
 as Beauty and the Beast; but that she loves him, 
 or at least prefers to him no handsomer man, I may 
 say I have been brought to believe, in the way of my 
 profession." 
 
 "You have painted her, then?" I asked rather 
 eagerly, thinking I might get a sketch of her face to 
 take with me to another country. 
 
 " No, but I have painted him and for her and it 
 is not a case of Titania and Bottom, either. She is 
 quite aware he is a monster, and wanted his picture 
 for a reason you would never divine. But I must be 
 gin at the beginning. 
 
 " After you left me in Italy, I was employed by the 
 
 earl of , to copy one or two of his favorite 
 
 pictures in the Vatican, and that brought me rather 
 
 well acquainted with his son. Lord George was a gay 
 youth, and a very look-and-die style of fellow, and, 
 I as much from admiration of his beauty as anything 
 else, I asked him to sit to me, on our return to Lon- 
 j don. I painted him very fantastically in an Albanian 
 I cap and oriental morning-gown and slippers, smoking 
 a narghile the room in which he sat, by the way, 
 being a correct portrait of his own den, a perfect 
 museum of costly luxury. It was a pretty gorgeous 
 t\irn-out in the way of color, and was saverely criticised, 
 but still a good deal noticed for I sent it to the ex 
 hibition. 
 
 " I was one day going into Somerset-house, when 
 Lord George hailed me from his cab. He wished to 
 suggest some alteration in his picture, or to tell me 
 of some criticism upon it, I forget exactly what; but 
 we went up together. Directly before the portrait, 
 gazing at it with marked abstraction, stood a beautiful 
 woman, quite alone ; and as she occupied the only 
 point where the light was favorable, we waited a mo 
 ment till she should pass on Lord George, of course, 
 rather disposed to shrink from being recognised as the 
 original. The woman s interest in the picture seemed 
 rather to increase, however, and what with variations 
 of the posture of her head, and pulling at her glove 
 fingers, and other female indications of restlessness 
 and enthusiasm, I thought I was doing her no injus 
 tice by turning to my companion with a congratulatory 
 smile. 
 
 " It seems a case, by Jove ! said Lord George, try 
 ing to look as if it was a matter of very simple occur 
 rence ; and she s as fine a creature as I ve seen this 
 season! Eh, old boy? we must run her down, and 
 see where she burrows and there s nobody with her, 
 by good luck! 
 
 "A party entered just then, and passed between her 
 and the picture. She looked annoyed, 1 thought, but 
 started forward and borrowed a catalogue of a little 
 girl, and we could see that she turned to the last page, 
 on which the portrait was numbered, with, of course, 
 the name and address of the painter. She made a 
 memorandum on one of her cards, and left the house. 
 Lord George followed, and I too, as far as the door, 
 where I saw her get into a very stylishly appointed 
 carriage and drive away, followed closely by the cab 
 of my friend, whom I had declined to accompany. 
 
 "You wouldn t have given very heavy odds against 
 his chance, would you?" said S , after a mo 
 ment pause. 
 
 " No, indeed !" I answered quite sincerely. 
 
 " Well, I was at work, the next morning, glazing a 
 picture I had just finished, when the servant brought 
 up the card of Mrs. Fortescue Titton. I chanced to 
 be alone, so the lady was shown at once into my paint 
 ing room, and lo ! the incognita of Somerset-House. 
 The plot thickens, thought I ! She sat down in my 
 subject chair, and, faith! her beauty quite dazzled 
 me ! Her first smile but you have seen her, so I ll 
 not bore you with a description. 
 
 " Mrs. Titton blushed on opening her errand to me, 
 first inquiring if 1 was the painter of No 403 in the 
 exhibition, and saying some very civil things about the 
 
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST." 
 
 29 
 
 picture. I mentioned that it was a portrait of Lord 
 
 George (for his name was not in the catalogue), 
 
 and I thought she blushed still more confusedly 
 but that, I think now. was fancy, or at any rate had 
 nothing to do with feeling for his lordship. It was 
 natural enough for me to be mistaken, for she was very 
 particular in her inquiries as to the costume, furniture, 
 and little belongings of the picture, and asked me 
 among other things, whether it was a flattered like 
 ness ;_this last question very pointedly, too ! 
 
 " She arose to go. Was I at leisure, and could J 
 sketch a head for her, and when ? 
 
 " I appointed the next day, expecting of course that 
 the subject was the lady herself, and scarcely slept 
 with thinking of it, and siarved myself at breakfast to 
 have a clear eye, and a hand wide awake. And at 
 ten she came, with her Mr. Fortescue Titton! I was 
 sorry to see that she had a husband, for 1 had indulged 
 myself wjth a vague presentiment that she was a 
 widow ; but I begged him to take a chair, and prepar 
 ed the platform for my beautiful subject. 
 
 " Will you take your seat ? I asked, with all my 
 suavity, when my palette was ready. 
 
 " My dear, said she, turning to her husband, and 
 
 pointing to the chair, Mr. S is ready for you. 
 
 " I begged pardon for a moment, crossed over to 
 Verey s and bolted a beef-steak ! A cup of coffee, and 
 a glass of Cura^oa, and a little walk round Hanover- 
 square, and I recovered from the shock a little. It 
 went very hard, I give you my word. 
 
 " I returned, and took a look, for the first time, at 
 Mr. Titton. You have seen him, and have some idea 
 of what his portrait might be, considered as a pleasure 
 to the artist what it might promise, 1 should rather 
 say, for, after all, I ultimately enjoyed working at it, 
 quite aside from the presence of Mrs. Titton. It was 
 the ugliest face in the world, but full of good-nature ; 
 and, as I looked closer into it, I saw, among its coarse 
 features, lines of almost feminine delicacy, and capa 
 bilities of enthusiasm of which the man himself was 
 probably unconscious. Then a certain helpless style 
 of dress was a wet blanket to him. Rich from his 
 cradle, I suppose his qualities had never been needed 
 on the surface. His wife knew them. 
 
 " From time to time, as I worked, Mrs. Titton came 
 and looked over my shoulder. With a natural desire 
 to please her, I, here and there, softened a harsh line, 
 and was going on to flatter the likeness not as suc 
 cessful as I could wish, however, for it is much easier 
 to get a faithful likeness than to flatter without destroy 
 ing it. 
 
 " Mr. S , said she, laying her hand on my 
 
 arm as I thinned away the lumpy rim of his nostril, 
 I want, first, a literal copy of my husband s features. 
 Suppose, with this idea, you take a fresh canvass ? 
 
 " Thoroughly mystified by the whole busmess, I 
 did as she requested : and, in two sittings, made a j 
 likeness of Titton which would have given you a face- j 
 ache. He shrugged his shoulders at it, and seemed ; 
 very glad when the bore of sitting was over; but they | 
 seemed to understand each other very well, or, if not, | 
 he reserved hisquestions till there could be no restraint 
 upon the answer. He seemed a capital fellow, and I 
 liked him exceedingly. 
 
 "I asked if I should frame the picture and send it j 
 home ? No ! I was to do neither. If I would be kind | 
 enough not to show it, nor to mention it to any one, j 
 and come the next day and dine with them enfamillc., \ 
 Mrs. Titton would feel very much obliged to me. 
 And this dinner was followed up by breakfasts and 
 lunches and suppers, and, for a fortnight, I really lived 
 with the Tittons and pleas;inter people to live with, 
 by Jove, you haven t seen in your travels, though you 
 are a picked man of countries ! 
 
 " I should mention, by the way, that I was always 
 placed opposite Titton at table, and that he was a good 
 
 deal with me, one way and another, taking me out, as 
 you do, for a stroll, calling and sitting with me when 
 I was at work, etc. And as to Mrs. Titton if I did 
 not mistrust your arriere pensec, I would enlarge a 
 little on my intimacy with Mrs. Titton! But, believe 
 me when I tell you, that, without a ray of flirtation, 
 we became as cozily intimate as brother and sister." 
 " And what of Lord George, all this time ?" I asked. 
 " Oh, Lord George ! Well, Lord George of course 
 had no difficulty in making Mrs. Titton s acquaintance, 
 though they were not quite in the same circle, and he 
 had been presented to her, and had seen her at a party 
 or two, where he managed to be invited on purpose 
 but of this, for a while, I heard nothing. She had not 
 yet seen him at her own house, and I had not chanced 
 to encounter him. But let me go on with my story. 
 " Mrs. Titton sent for me to come to her, one 
 morning rather early. I found her in her boudoir, in 
 a neglige morning-dress, and looking adorably beauti 
 ful, and as pure as beautiful, you smiling villain ! She 
 seemed to have something on her mind about which she 
 was a little embarrassed, but I knew her too well to lay 
 any unction to my soul. We chatted about the weather 
 a few moments, and she came to the point. You will 
 see that she was a woman of some talent, mon ami ! 
 
 " Have you looked at my husband s portrait since 
 you finished it ? she asked. 
 
 " No, indeed! I replied rather hastily but im 
 mediately apologized. 
 
 " Oh, if I had not been certain you would not, 
 she said with a smile, 1 should have requested it, for 
 I wished you to forget it, as far as possible. And now 
 I let me tell you what I want of you! You have got, 
 i on canvass, a likeness of Fortescue as the world sees 
 j him. Since taking it, however, you have seen him 
 I more intimately, and and like his face better, do 
 | you not ? 
 
 " Certainly ! certainly ! I exclaimed, in all sincerity. 
 " Thank you ! If I mistake not, then, you do not, 
 ! when thinking of him, call up to your mind the 
 i features in your portrait, but a face formed rather of 
 i his good qualities, as you have learned to trace them 
 j in his expression. 
 
 " True, I said, very true ! 
 
 " Now, then, she continued, leaning over to me 
 very earnestly, I want you to paint a new picture, 
 and without departing from the real likeness, which 
 you will have to guide you, breathe into it the expres 
 sion you have in your ideal likeness. Add, to what 
 the world sees, what I see, what you see, what all who 
 | love him see, in his plain features. Idealize it, 
 spiritualize it and without lessening the resemblance. 
 Can this be done ? 
 
 " 1 thought it could. I promised to do my utmost. 
 " 1 shall call and see you as you progress in it, 
 she said, and now, if you have nothing better to do, 
 i stay to lunch, and come out with me in the carriage. 
 I want a little of your foreign taste in the selection of 
 some pretty nothings for a gentleman s toilet. 
 
 " We passed the morning in making what I should 
 consider very extravagent purchases for anybody but 
 a prince royal, winding up with some delicious cabinet 
 pictures and some gems of statuary all suited only, 
 1 should say, to the apartments of a fastidious luxuriast. 
 I was not yet at the bottom of her secret. 
 
 "T went to work upon the new picture with the 
 zeal always given to an artist by an appreciative and 
 1 confiding employer. She called every day and made 
 important suggestions, and at last I finished it to her 
 satisfaction and mine; and, without speaking of it as 
 a work of art, I may give you my opinion that Titton 
 , will scarcely be more embellished in the other world 
 
 t i ia t is, if it be true, as the divines tell us, that our 
 
 mortal likeness will be so far preserved, though im 
 proved upon, that we shall be recognisable by our 
 friends. Still I was to paint a third picture a cabinet 
 
30 
 
 BEAUTY AND THE BEAST." 
 
 full length and for this the other two were but studies, 
 and so intended by Mrs. Fortescue Titton. It was 
 to be an improvement upon Lord George s portrait 
 (which of course had given her the idea), and was to 
 represent her husband in a very costly, and an exceed 
 ingly recherche morning costume dressing-gown, 
 slippers, waistcoat, and neckcloth, worn with perfect 
 elegance, and representing a Titton with a faultless 
 attitude (in a fauteuil, reading), a faultless exterior, 
 and around him the most sumptuous appliances of 
 dressing-room luxury. This picture cost me a great 
 deal of vexation and labor, for it was emphatically a 
 fancy picture poor Titton never having appeared in 
 that character, even by particular desire. I finished 
 it however, and again, to her satisfaction. I afterward 
 added some finishing touches to the other two, and 
 sent them home, appropriately framed according to 
 very minute instructions." 
 
 " How long ago was this ?" I asked. 
 
 " Three years," replied S , musing over his wine. 
 
 " Well the sequel ?" said I, a little impatient. 
 
 " I was thinking how I should let it break upon you, 
 as it took effect upon her acquaintances for, under 
 stand, Mrs. Titton is too much of a diplomatist to do 
 anything obviously dramatic in this age of ridicule. 
 She knows very well that any sudden flare-up of her 
 husband s consequence any new light on his charac 
 ter obviously calling for attention would awaken 
 speculation and set to work the watchful anatomizers 
 of the body fashionable. Let me see! I will tell you 
 what I should have known about it, had I been only 
 an ordinary acquaintance not in the secret, and not 
 the painter of the pictures. 
 
 " Some six months after the finishing of the last 
 portrait, I was at a large ball at their house. Mrs. 
 Titton s beauty, I should have told you, and the style 
 in which they lived, and very possibly a little of Lord 
 George s good will, had elevated them from the wealthy 
 and respectable level of society to the fashionable and 
 exclusive. All the best people went there. As I was 
 going in, I overtook, at the head of the stairs, a very 
 clever little widow, an acquaintance of mine, and she 
 honored me by taking my arm and keeping it for a 
 promenade through the rooms. We made our bow 
 to Mrs. Titton and strolled across the reception room, 
 where the most conspicuous object, dead facing us, 
 with a flood of light upon it, was my first veracious 
 portrait of Titton ! As I was not known as the artist, 
 I indulged myself in some commonplace exclamations 
 of horror. 
 
 " Do not look at that, said the widow, you will 
 distress poor Mrs. Titton. What a quiz that clever 
 husband of hers must be to insist on exposing such a 
 caricature! 
 
 " How insist upon it ? I asked. 
 
 " Why, have you never seen the one in her boudoir? 
 Come with me! 
 
 " We made our way through the apartments to the 
 little retreat lined with silk, which the morning lounge 
 of the fair mistress of the house. There was but one 
 picture, with a curtain drawn carefully across it my 
 second portrait! We sat down on the luxurious 
 cushions, and the widow went off into a discussion of 
 it and the original, pronouncing it a perfect likeness, 
 not at all flattered, and very soon begging me to re 
 draw the curtain, lest we should be surprised by Mr. 
 Titton himself. 
 
 " And suppose we were? said I. 
 
 " Why, he is such an oddity ! replied the widow 
 lowering her tone. They say that in this very house 
 he has a suite of apartments entirely to himself, furnish 
 ed with a taste and luxury really wonderful ! There 
 are two Mr. Tittons, my dear friend ! one a perfect 
 Sybarite, very elegant in his dress when he chooses 
 to be, excessively accomplished and fastidious, and 
 brilliant and fascinating to a degree ! (and in this 
 
 character they say he won that superb creature for a 
 wife), and the other Mr. Titton is just the slovenly 
 monster that everybody sees ! Isn t it odd ! 
 
 " Queer enough ! said I, affecting great astonish 
 ment ; pray, have you ever been into these mysterious 
 apartments ? 
 
 " No ! they say only his wife and himself and one 
 confidential servant ever pass the threshold. Mrs. 
 I Titton don t like to talk about it though one would 
 think she could scarcely object to her husband s being 
 thought better of. It s pride on his part sheer pride 
 and I can understand the feeling very well ! He s 
 a very superior man, and he has made up his mind 
 that the world thinks him very awkward and 
 ugly, and he takes a pleasure in showing the world 
 that he don t care a rush for its opinion, and has re 
 sources quite sufficient within himself. That s the 
 reason that atrocious portrait is hung up in the best 
 room, and this good-looking one covered up with a 
 curtain ! I suppose lids wouldn t be here if he could 
 have his own way, and if his wife wasn t so much in 
 love with him ! 
 
 " This, I assure you," said S , " is the im 
 pression throughout their circle of acquaintances. 
 The Tittons themselves maintain a complete silence 
 on the subject. Mr. Fortescue Titton is considered 
 a very accomplished man, with a very proud and very 
 secret contempt for the opinions of the world dressing 
 badly on purpose, silent and simple by design, and only 
 caring to show himself in his real character to his 
 beautiful wife, who is thought to be completely in love 
 with him, and quite excusable for it ! What do you 
 think of the woman s diplomatic talents?" 
 
 " I think I should like to know her," said I; " but 
 what says Lord George to all this ?" 
 
 " I had a call from Lord George not long ago," 
 
 replied S , " and for the first time since our 
 
 chat at Somerset-House, the conversation turned upon 
 the Tittons. 
 
 "Devilish sly of you ! said his lordship, turning 
 to me half angry, why did you pretend not to know 
 the woman at Somerset-House ? You might have 
 saved me lots of trouble and money, for I was a month 
 or two finding out what sort of people they were 
 feeing the servants and getting them called on and 
 invited here and there all with the idea that it was 
 a rich donkey with a fine toy that didn t belong to him !" 
 
 " Well! exclaimed I 
 
 " Well! not at all well ! I made a great ninny 
 of myself, with that satirical slyboots, old Titton, 
 laughing at me all the time, when you, that had 
 painted him in his proper character and knew what a 
 deep devil he was, might have saved me with but half 
 a hint ! 
 
 " You have been in the lady s boudoir then ! 
 
 "Yes, and in the gentleman s sanctum sanctorum! 
 
 Mrs. Titton sent for me about some trumpery thing 
 
 or other, and when I called, the servant showed me in 
 
 there by mistake. There was a great row in the house 
 
 about it, but I was there long enough to see what a 
 
 monstrous nice time the fellow has of it, all to him- 
 
 ij self, and to see your picture of him in his private 
 
 I character. The picture you made of me was only a 
 
 jl copy of that, you sly traitor! And I suppose Mrs. 
 
 j Titton didn t like your stealing from hers, did she 
 
 | for, I take it that was what ailed her at the exhibition, 
 
 : when you allowed me to be so humbugged ! 
 
 " I had a good laugh, but it was as much at (he 
 ! quiet success of Mrs. Titton s tactics as at Lord 
 j George s discomfiture. Of course, I could not un- 
 
 !| deceive him. And now," continued S , very 
 
 good-naturedly, "just ring for a pen and ink, and I ll 
 write a note to Mrs. Titton, asking leave to bring you 
 there this evening, for it s her night at home, and 
 sta s worth seeing, if my pictures, which you will see 
 there, are not." 
 
BROWN S DAY WITH THE MIMPSONS. 
 
 31 
 
 BROWN S DAY WITH THE MIMPSONS. 
 
 WE got down from an omnibus in Charing-Cross. 
 
 " Sovereign or ha penny ?" said the cad, rubbing 
 the coin between his thumb and finger. 
 
 " Sovereign, of course !" said B confidently, 
 
 pocketing the change which the man had ready for 
 the emergency in a bit of brown paper. 
 
 It was a muggy, misty, London twilight. I was other sort of people. 
 
 of engagements required some little variation. There s 
 a toujours perdrix, even among lords and ladies, par 
 ticularly when you belong as much to their sphere, 
 and are as likely to become a part of it, as the fly re 
 volving in aristocratic dust on the wheel of my lord s 
 carriage. I thought, perhaps, I had better see some 
 
 coming up to town from Blackheath, and in the 
 crowded vehicle had chanced to encounter my com 
 patriot B (call it Brown), who had been lion 
 izing the Thames tunnel. In the course of conver 
 sation, it came out that we were both on the town for 
 our dinner, and as we were both guests at the Trav 
 eller s Club, we had pulled the omnibus-string at the 
 nearest point, and, after the brief dialogue recorded 
 above, strolled together down Pall Mall. 
 
 As we sat waiting for our fish, one of us made a re- 
 
 I had, under a presse papier on the table, about a 
 hundred letters of introduction the condemned re 
 mainder, after the selection, by advice, of four or five 
 only. I determined to cut this heap like a pack of 
 cards, and follow up the trump. 
 
 -"John Mimpson, Esq., House of Mimpson and 
 Phipps, Mark s Lane, London. 
 
 " The gods had devoted me to the acquaintance of 
 Mr. (and probably Mrs.) John Mimpson. After turn- 
 ng over a deal of rubbish in my mind, I remembered 
 
 mark as to" the" difference o f/cel between gold and that the letter had been given me five years before by 
 copper coin, and Brown, fishing in his pocket for||an American merchant probably the correspondent 
 money to try the experiment, discovered that the 
 
 doubt" of the cad was well founded, for he had uncon 
 sciously passed a halfpenny for a sovereign. 
 
 " People are very apt to take your coin at your own 
 valuation!" said Brown, with a smile of some mean 
 ing, "and when they are in the dark as to your original 
 coinage (as the English are with regard to Americans 
 abroad), it is as easy to pass for gold as for copper. 
 Indeed, you may pass for both in a day, as I have 
 lately had experience. Remind me presently to tell 
 you how. Here comes the fried sole, and it s trouble 
 some talking when there are bones to fight shy of 
 the flow of sole 1 to the contrary notwithstanding." 
 
 I will take advantage of the hiatus to give the reader 
 a slight idea of my friend, as a preparation for his 
 story. 
 
 Brown was the 
 
 mirror of courtesy." He was 
 
 also the mirror of vulgarity. And he was the 
 of everything els 
 
 of Englishmen, from peers to green-gro 
 he had a visit to England in prospect, he 
 
 garty. n e was e mrror 
 He had that facility of adapta 
 to the society he was in, which made him seem 
 born for that society, and that only ; and, without cal 
 culation or forethought by an unconscious instinct, 
 indeed he cleverly reflected the man and manners 
 before him. The result was a popularity of a most 
 varied quality. Brown was a man of moderate for 
 tune and no profession. He had travelled for some 
 years on the continent, and had encountered all classes 
 
 rocers, and as 
 seldom part 
 
 ed from the most chance acquaintance without a vol 
 unteer of letters of introduction, exchange of addres 
 ses, and similar tokens of having "pricked through 
 his caslle wall." When he did arrive in London, at 
 last, it was with a budget like the postman s on Val 
 entine s day, and he had only to deliver one letter in 
 a score to be put on velvet in any street or square 
 within the bills of mortality. Sagacious enough to 
 know that the gradations of English society have the 
 facility of a cat s back (smooth enough from the head 
 downward), he began with a most noble duke, and at 
 the date of his introduction to the reader, was on the 
 dinner-list of most of the patricians of May Fair. 
 
 Presuming that you see your man, dear reader, let 
 us come at once to the removal of the cloth. 
 
 "As I was calling myself to account, the other day, 
 over my breakfast," said Brown, filling his glass and 
 
 of the firm in Mark s Lane. It was a sealed letter, 
 and said in brackets on the back, Introducing Mr. 
 BrownS I had a mind to give it up and cut again, 
 for I could not guess on what footing I was intro 
 duced, nor did I know what had become of the wri 
 ter nor had I a very clear idea how long a letter of 
 recommendation will hold its virtue. It struck me 
 again that these difficulties rather gave it a zest, and 
 I would abide by the oracle. I dressed, and, as the 
 day was fine, started to stroll leisurely through the 
 Strand and Fleet street, and look into the shop-win 
 dows on my way assuring myself, at least, thus 
 much of diversion in my adventure. 
 
 " Somewhere about two o clock, I left daylight be 
 hind, and plunged into Mark s Lane. Up one side 
 and down the other Mimpson and Co. at last, on a 
 small brass plate, set in a green baize door. With my 
 unbuttoned coat nearly wiped oft my shoulder by the 
 strength of the pulley, I shoved through, and emerged 
 in a large room, with twenty or thirty clerks perched 
 on high stools, like monkeys in a menagerie. 
 
 " First door right ! said the nearest man, without 
 raising his eyes from the desk, in reply to my inquiry 
 for Mr. Mimpson. 
 
 " I entered a closet, lighted by a slanting skylight, 
 in which sat my man. 
 " Mr. John Mimpson ? 
 " Mr. John Mimpson ! 
 
 " After this brief dialogue of accost, I produced my 
 letter, and had a second s leisure to examine my new 
 friend while he ran his eye over the contents. He 
 was a rosy, well-conditioned, tight-skinned little man, 
 with black hair, and looked like a pear on a chair. 
 (Hang the bothering rhymes!) His legs were com 
 pletely hid under the desk, so that the ascending eye 
 bean with his equaiory line, and whether he had no 
 shoulders or no neck, I could not well decide but it 
 was a tolerably smooth plane from his seat to the top 
 curl of his sinciput. He was scrupulously well dress 
 ed, and had that highly washed look which marks the 
 ! city man in London bent on not betraying his dig- 
 gins by his complexion. 
 
 "I answered Mr. Mimpson s inquiries about our 
 ; mutual friend with rather a hazardous particularity, 
 ! and assured him he was quite well (I have since dis- 
 1 covered that he has been dead three years), and con- 
 
 pushing the bottle , " it occurred to me that my round ji versatiou warmed between us for ten minutes, till we 
 
BROWN S DAY WITH THE MIMPSONS. 
 
 were ready to part sworn friends. I rose to go, anc 
 the merchant seemed very much perplexed. 
 
 " To-morrow, said he, rubbing the two great busi 
 ness bumps over his eyebrows no yes that is to 
 say, Mrs. Mimpson well, it shall be to-morrow 
 Can you come out to Rose Lodge, and spend the da} 
 to -morrow? 
 
 " With great pleasure, said I, for I was determinec 
 to follow my trump letter to extremities. 
 
 " Mrs. Mimpson, he next went on to say, as he 
 wrote down the geography of Rose Lodge Mrs 
 Mimpson expects some friends to-morrow indeed 
 some of her very choice friends. If you come early, 
 you will see more of her than if you just save your 
 dinner. Bring your carpetbag, of course, and stay 
 over night. Lunch at two dine at seven. I can t 
 be there to receive you myself, but I will prepare M 
 Mimpson to save you all trouble of introduction. 
 Hampstead road. Good morning, my dear sir. 
 
 " So, I am in for a suburban bucolic, thought I, as I 
 regained daylight in the neighborhood of the Mansion 
 House. 
 
 "It turned out a beautiful day, sunny and warm; 
 and had I been sure of my navigation, and sure of my 
 disposition to stay all night, I should have gone out 
 Oy the Hampstead coach, and made the best of my 
 way, carpetbag in hand. I went into Newman s for a 
 postchaise, however, and on showing him the written 
 address, was agreeably surprised to find he knew 
 Rose Lodge. His boys had all been there. 
 
 "Away I went through the Regent s park, behind 
 the blood-posters, blue jacket and white hat, and, 
 somewhere about one o clock, mounted Hampstead 
 Hill, and in ten minutes thence was at my destination. 
 The postboy was about driving in at the open gate, 
 but I dismounted and sent him back to the inn to 
 leave his horses, and then depositing my bag at the 
 porter s lodge, walked up the avenue. It was a much 
 finer place, altogether, than I expected to see. 
 
 "Mrs. Mimpson was in the garden. The dashing 
 footman who gave me the information, led me through 
 a superb drawing-room and out at a glass door upon 
 the lawn, and left me to make my own way to the la 
 dy s presence. 
 
 "It was a delicious spot, and I should have been 
 very glad to ramble about by myself till dinner, but, 
 at a turn in the grand-walk, I came suddenly upon 
 two ladies. 
 
 " I made my bow, and begged leave to introduce 
 myself as Mr. Brown. 
 
 "With a very slight inclination of the head, and no 
 smile whatever, one of the ladies asked me if I had 
 walked from town, and begged her companion (with 
 out introducing me to her) to show me in to lunch. 
 The spokester was a stout and tall woman, who had 
 rather an aristocratic nose, and was not handsome, 
 but, to give her her due, she had made a narrow 
 escape of it. She was dressed very showily, and evi 
 dently had great pretensions; but, that she was not 
 at all glad to see Mr. Brown, was as apparent as was 
 at all necessary. As the other, and younger lady, 
 who was to accompany me, however, was very pretty, 
 though dressed very plainly, and had, withal, a look 
 in her eye which assured me she was amused with my 
 unwelcome apparition, I determined, as I should not 
 otherwise have done, to stay it out, and accepted 
 her convoy with submissive civility very much in 
 clined, however, to be impudent to somebody, some 
 how. 
 
 "The lunch was on a tray in a side-room, and I 
 rang the bell and ordered a bottle of champagne. The 
 servant looked surprised, but brought it, and mean 
 time I was getting through the weather and the other 
 commonplaces, and the lady saying little, was watch 
 ing me very calmly. I liked her looks, however, and 
 was sure she was not a Mimpson. 
 
 " Hand this to Miss Armstrong ! said I to the foot 
 man, pouring out a glass of champagne. 
 " Miss Bellamy, you mean, sir. 
 " I rose and bowed, and, with as grave a courtesy 
 as I could command, expressed my pleasure at my 
 first introduction to Miss Bellamy through Thomas, 
 the footman! Miss Bellamy burst into a laugh, and 
 was pleased to compliment my American manners, 
 and in ten minutes we were a very merry pair of 
 friends, and she accepted my arm for a stroll through 
 the grounds, carefully avoiding the frigid neighbor 
 hood of Mrs. Mimpson. 
 
 "Of course I set about picking Miss Bellamy s 
 brains for what information I wanted. She turned 
 out quite the nicest creature I had seen in England 
 | fresh, joyous, natural, and clever ; and as I was deliv- 
 j ered over to her bodily, by her keeper and feeder, she 
 made no scruple of promenading me through the 
 grounds till the dressing-bell four of the most agree 
 able hours I have to record in my travels. 
 
 "By Miss Bellamy s account, my advent that day 
 was looked upon by Mrs. Mimpson as an enraging 
 calamity. Mrs. Mimpson was, herself, fourth cousin 
 to a Scotch lord, and the plague of her life was the 
 drawback to the gentility of her parties in Mimpson s 
 mercantile acquaintance. She had married the little 
 man for his money, and had thought, by living 
 out of town, to choose her own society, with her hus 
 band for her only incumbrance; but Mimpson vowed 
 that he should be ruined in Mark s Lane, if he did 
 not house and dine his mercantile fraternity and their 
 envoys at Rose Lodge, and they had at last compro 
 mised the matter. No Yankee clerk, or German 
 agent, or person of any description, defiled by trade, 
 was to be invited to the Lodge without a three days 
 premonition to Mrs. Mimpson, and no additions were 
 to be made, whatever, by Mr. M., to Mrs. M s din 
 ners, soirees, matinees, archery parties, suppers, de 
 jeuners, tableaux, or private theatricals. This holy 
 treaty, Mrs. Mimpson presumed, was written with a 
 gad of steel on a leaf of brass inviolable as her cous 
 in s coat-of-arms. 
 
 "But there was still Ossa on Pelion. The din 
 ner of that day had a diplomatic aim. Miss Mimp 
 son (whom I had not yet seen) was ready to come 
 out, and her mother had embarked her whole soul in 
 the enterprise of bringing about that debut at Al- 
 
 mack s. Her best card was a certain Lady S , 
 
 who chanced to be passing a few days in the neigh 
 borhood, and this dinner was in her honor the com 
 pany chosen to impress her with the exclusiveness of 
 the Mimpsons, and the prayer for her ladyship s in 
 fluence (to procure vouchers from one of the patron 
 esses) was to be made, when she was dieted to their 
 request. And all had hitherto worked to a charm. 
 Lady S had accepted Ude had sent his best 
 cook from Crockford s the Belgian charge, and a 
 Swedish attache were coming the day was beautiful, 
 and the Lodge was sitting for its picture ; and on the 
 very morning, when every chair at the table was ticketed 
 and devoted, what should Mr. Mimpson do, but send 
 back a special messenger from the city, to say that he 
 had forgotten to mention to Mrs. M. at breakfast, that he 
 had invited Mr. Brown ! Of course he had forgot 
 ten it, though it would have been as much as his 
 eyes were worth to mention it in person to Mrs. 
 Mimpson. 
 
 "To this information, which 1 give you in a lump, 
 but which came to light in the course of rather a de 
 sultory conversation, Miss Bellamy thought I had 
 some title, from the rudeness of my reception. It 
 was given in the shape of a very clever banter, it is 
 true, but she was evidently interested to set me right 
 with regard to Mr. Mimpson s good intentions in my 
 behalf, and, as far as that and her own civilities would 
 do it. to apologise for the inhospitality of Rose Lodge. 
 
BROWN S DAY WITH THE MIMPSONS. 
 
 33 
 
 Very kind of the girl for I was passing, recollect, 
 at a most ha penny valuation. 
 
 "I had made some casual remark touching the ab 
 surdity of Almack s aspirations in general, and Mrs. 
 Mimpson s in particular, and my fair friend, who of 
 course fancied an Almack s ticket as much out of Mr. 
 Brown s reach as the horn of the new moon, took up 
 the defence of Mrs. Mimpson on that point, and un 
 dertook to dazzle my untutored imagination by a pic 
 ture of this seventh heaven as she had heard it de 
 scribed for to herself, she freely confessed, it was not 
 even within the limits of dream-land. I knew this 
 was true of herself, and thousands of highly-educated 
 and charming girls in England; but still, looking at 
 her while she spoke, and seeing what an ornament she 
 would be to any ballroom in the world, I realized, 
 with more repugnance than I had ever felt before, the 
 arbitrary barriers of fashion and aristocracy. As ac 
 cident had placed me in a position to look on the re 
 verse of the shield, I determined, if possible, to 1 let 
 Miss Bellamy judge of its color with the same ad 
 vantage. It is not often that a plebeian like myself 
 has the authority to 
 
 * Bid the pebbles on the hungry beach 
 Fillip the stars. 
 
 We were near the open window of the library, 
 and I stepped in and wrote a note to Lady 
 (one of the lady patronesses, and the kindest friend I 
 have in England), asking for three vouchers for the 
 next ball. I had had occasion once or twice before to 
 apply for similar favors, for the countrywomen of my 
 own, passing through London on their travels, and J 
 knew that her ladyship thought no more of granting 
 them than of returning bows in Hyde Park. 1 did 
 not name the ladies for whom the three tickets were 
 intended, wishing to reserve the privilege of handing 
 one to Miss Mimpson, should she turn out civil and 
 presentable. The third, of course, was to Miss Bel 
 lamy s chaperon, whoever that might be, and the 
 party miht be extended to a quartette by the Mon 
 sieur De Trop of the hour cela selon. Quite a dra 
 matic plot wasn t it ? 
 
 " I knew that Lady was not very well, and 
 
 would be found at home by the messenger (my post 
 boy), and there was time enough between soup and 
 coffee to go to London and back, even without the 
 spur in his pocket. 
 
 "The bell rang, and Miss Bellamy took herself off 
 to dress. I went to my carpetbag in the bachelor 
 quarters of the house, and through a discreet entretien 
 with the maid who brought me hot water, became 
 somewhat informed as to my fair friend s position in 
 the family. She was the daughter of a gentleman who 
 had seen better days. They lived in a retired cottage 
 in the neighborhood; and, as Miss Bellamy* and a 
 younger sister were both very highly accomplished, 
 they were usually asked to the Lodge, whenever there 
 was company to be entertained with their music. 
 
 " I was early in the drawing-room, and found there 
 Mrs. Mimpson and a tall dragoon of a young lady I 
 presumed to be her daughter. She did not introduce 
 me. I had hardly achieved my salutary salaam when 
 Miss Bellamy came in opportunely, and took me off 
 their hands, and as they addressed no conversation to 
 us, we turned over music, and chatted in the corner 
 while the people came in. It was twilight in the re 
 ception-room, and I hoped, by getting on the same 
 
 side of the table with Lady S (whom I had 
 
 the honor of knowing), to escape recognizance till 
 we joined the ladies in the drawing-room after dinner. 
 As the guests arrived, they were formally introduced 
 to Miss Mimpson by the mother, and everybody but 
 
 myself was formally presented to Lady S , the 
 
 exception not noticeable, of course, among thirty 
 
 people. Mr. Mimpson came late from the city, poa- 
 
 3 
 
 jj sibly anxious to avoid a skirmish on the subject of his 
 friend Brown, and he entered the room barely in time 
 to hand Lady S in to dinner. 
 
 " My tactics were ably seconded by my unconscious 
 ally. I placed myself in such a position at table, 
 that, by a little management, I kept Miss Bellamy s 
 
 head between me and Lady S , and my name 
 
 was not so remarkable as to draw attention to me 
 | when called on to take wine with the peccant spouse 
 
 i J of the Scotch lord s cousin. Meantime I was very 
 | charmingly entertained Miss Bellamy not having, at 
 
 j all, the fear of Mrs. Mimpson before her eyes, and 
 apparently finding the Yankee supercargo, or cotton 
 clerk, or whatever he might be, quite worth trying her 
 hand upoo. The provender was good, and the wine 
 was enough to verily the apocrypha at least for the 
 
 il night a man remembering neither sorrow nor debt 
 
 i| with such glorious claret. 
 
 " As I was vis-a-vis to Miss Mimpson, and only two 
 plates removed from her mother, I was within reach 
 
 j of some syllable or some civility, and one would have 
 
 jj thought that good-breeding might exact some slight 
 notice for the devil himself, under one s own roof by 
 invitation; but the large eyes of Miss Aurelia and her 
 mamma passed over me as if I had on the invisible 
 ring of Gyges. I wonder, by-the-way, whether the 
 ambitious youths who go to London and Paris with 
 samples, and come back and sport the complete var- 
 
 I nish of a man acquired in foreign society I wonder 
 \ whether they take these rubs to be part of their pol- 
 I ishing! 
 
 "The ladies rose and left us, and as I had no more 
 I occasion to dodge heads, or trouble myself with hu- 
 
 jj mility, I took Lady S s place at old Mimpson s 
 
 right hand, and was immediately recognised with great 
 !l empressement by the Belgian cltargc, who had met me 
 j very often, in very agreeable society. Mimpson 
 stared, and evidently took it for a bit of flummery or 
 i; a mistake ; but he presently stared again, for the but 
 ler came in with a coronetted note on his silver tray, 
 and the seal side up, and presented it to me with a 
 most deferential bend of his white coat. I felt the 
 vouchers within, and pocketed it without opening, and 
 we soon after rose and went to the drawing-room for 
 our coffee. 
 
 " Lady S sat with her back to the door, be 
 sieged by Mrs. Mimpson ; and at the piano, beside 
 !! Miss Bellamy, who was preparing to play, stood one 
 j of the loveliest young creatures possibly to fancy. A 
 pale and high-bred looking lady in widow s weeds sat 
 
 I 1 near them, and I had no difficulty in making out who 
 
 I were the after-dinner additions to the party. I joined 
 | them, and was immediately introduced by Miss Bel- 
 
 j lamy to her mother and sister, with whom (after a 
 brilliant duet by the sisters) I strolled out upon the 
 
 I 1 lawn for an hour for it was a clear night, and the 
 i moon and soft air almost took me back to Italy. And 
 ,i (perhaps by a hint from Miss Bellamy) I was allowed 
 I) to get on very expeditiously in my acquaintance with 
 i her mother and sister. 
 
 "My new friends returned to the drawing-room, 
 i and as the adjoining library was lighted, I went in and 
 | filled up the blank vouchers with the names of Mrs. 
 j Bellamy and her daughters. I listened a moment to 
 : | the conversation in the next room. The subject was 
 i Almack s, and was discussed with great animation. 
 
 | Lady S , who seemed to me trying to escape 
 
 I the trap they had baited for her, was quietly setting 
 j forth the difficulties of procuring vouchers, and rec 
 ommending to Mrs. Mimpson not to subject herself 
 1 to the mortification of a refusal. Old Mimpson 
 I backed up this advice with a stout approval, and this 
 , brought Mrs. Mimpson out horse and foot, and she 
 I) declared that she would submit to anything, do any 
 thing, give anything, rather than fail in this darling 
 object of her ambition. She would feel under eternal, 
 
34 
 
 MR. AND MRS. FOLLETT. 
 
 inexpressible obligations to any friend who would pro 
 cure, for herself and daughter, admission for but one 
 night to Almack s. 
 
 "And then came in the sweet voice of Miss Bel 
 lamy, who knew it was both wrong and silly, but she 
 would give ten years of her life to go to one of Al 
 mack s balls, and in a long conversation she had had 
 with Mr. Brown on the subject that morning 
 
 " AhJ interrupted Lady S , if it had been 
 
 the Mr. Brown, you would have had very little trouble 
 about it. 
 
 " And who is the Mr. Brown? asked Mrs. Mimpson. 
 
 " The pet and protege of the only lady patroness 
 
 I do not visit, said Lady S , and unluckily, 
 
 too, the only one who thinks the vouchers great rub 
 bish, and gives them away without thought or scruple. 
 
 " At that moment I entered the room. 
 
 " Good heavens! screamed Lady S , is 
 
 that his ghost? Why, Mr. Brown ! she gasped, giv 
 ing me her hand very cautiously, do you appear 
 when you are talked of like like like 
 
 " Like the devil? No! But I am here in the 
 body, and very much at your ladyship s service, said 
 I, for of course you are going to the duke s to-night, 
 and so am I. Will you take me with you, or shall 
 my po-chay follow where I belong in your train ?" 
 
 " I ll take you, of course, said her ladyship, rising, 
 but first about these vouchers. You have just come, 
 and didn t hear our discussion. Mrs. Mimpson is ex 
 tremely anxious that her daughter should come out 
 at Almack s, and as I happened to say, the moment 
 before you entered, that you were the very person to 
 
 procure the tickets from Lady . How very 
 
 odd that you should come in just then ! But tell 
 us can you? 
 
 " A dead silence followed the question. Mrs. 
 Mimpson sat with her eyes on the floor, the picture 
 of dismay and mortification. Miss Mimpson blushed 
 and twisted her handkerchief, and Miss Bellamy 
 looked at her hostess, half amused and half dis 
 tressed. 
 
 "I handed the three vouchers to Miss Bellamy, 
 and begged her acceptance of them, and then turning 
 to Lady S , without waiting for a reply, regret 
 ted that, not having had the pleasure of being pre 
 sented to Mrs. Mimpson, I had not felt authorized to 
 include her in my effort to oblige Miss Bellamy. 
 "And what with old Mimpson s astonishment, and 
 
 Lady S s immediate tact in covering, by the 
 
 I bustle of departure, what she did not quite under- 
 j stand, though she knew it was some awkward contre 
 temps or other, I found time to receive Miss Bella 
 my s thanks, and get permission from the mother to 
 | call and arrange this unexpected party, and in ten 
 ! minutes I was on my way to London with Lady 
 I S , amusing her almost into fits with my expla 
 nations of the Mimpson mystery. 
 
 "Lady S was to be still at Hampstead for a 
 
 few days, and, at my request, she called with me on 
 the Bellamys, and invited the girls up to town. Rose 
 Bellamy, the younger, is at this moment one of the 
 new stars of the season accordingly, and Miss Bel 
 lamy and I carry on the war, weekly, at Almack s, 
 and nightly at some waxlight paradise or other, and 
 
 Lady S has fallen in love with them both, and 
 
 treats them like daughters. 
 
 "So you see, though I passed for a ha penny with 
 the Mimpsons, I turned out a sovereign to the Bel 
 lamys. 
 
 " Pass the bottle !" 
 
 MR, AND MRS, FOLLETT; 
 
 OR, THE DANGERS OF MEDDLING WITH MARRIED PEOPLE. 
 
 THERK are two commodities, much used by gentle 
 men, neither of which will bear tinkering or tampering 
 with matrimony and patent leather. Their necessi 
 ties are fair weather and untroubled wear and tear. 
 Ponder on the following melancholy example ! 
 
 My friend Follett married a lady contrary to my 
 advice. I gave the advice contrary to my wont and 
 against my will. He would have it. The lady was a 
 tolerably pretty woman, on whose original destiny it 
 was never written that she should be a belle. How 
 she became one is not much matter; but nature being 
 thoroughly taken by surprise with her success, had 
 neglected to provide the counterpoise. I say it is no 
 great matter how she became a belle nor is it for if 
 such things were to be accounted for to the satisfaction 
 of the sex, the world have little time for other specu 
 lations ; but I will devote a single paragraph to the 
 elucidation of this one of many mysteries, for a reason 
 I have. Fcenam kabet in cornu. 
 
 Poets are the least fastidious, and the least discrim 
 inating of men, in their admiration of women (vide 
 Byron), partly because their imagination, like sun 
 shine, glorifies all that turns to it, and partly because 
 the voluptuous heart, without which they were not. 
 poets, is both indolent and imperial, from both causes 
 waiting always to be sought. In some circles, bards 
 are rather comets than stars, and the one whose orbit 
 for a few days intersected that of Miss Adele Burnham, 
 was the exclusive marvel of the hour. Like other po 
 
 ets, the one of which I speak was concentrative in his 
 attentions, and he chose (why, the gods knew better 
 than the belles of the season) to have neither eyes nor 
 ears, flowers, flatteries, nor verses, for any other than 
 Miss Burnham. He went on his way, but the incense, 
 in which he had enveloped the blest Adele, lingered 
 like a magic atmosphere about her, and Tom Follett 
 and all his tribe breathed it in blind adoration. I trust 
 the fair reader has here nodded her head, in evidence 
 that this history of the belleship of Miss Burnham is 
 no less brief than natural and satisfactory. 
 
 When Follett came to me with the astounding in 
 formation that he intended to propose to Miss Burn- 
 ham (he had already proposed and been accepted, the 
 traitor) ! my fancy at once took the prophetic stride so 
 natural on the first breaking of such news, and in the 
 five minutes which I took for reflection, I had travelled 
 far into that land of few delusions holy matrimony. 
 Before me, in all the changeful variety of a magic 
 mirror, came and went the many phases of which that 
 multiform creature, woman, is susceptible. I saw her 
 in diamonds and satin, and in kitchen-apron and curl 
 papers; in delight, and in the dumps; in supplication, 
 and in resistance ; shod like a fairy in French shoes, 
 and slip-shod (as perhaps fairies are, too, in their bed 
 rooms and dairies). I saw her approaching the cli 
 macteric of age, and receding from it a mother, a 
 nurse, an invalid mum over her breakfast, chatty over 
 her tea doing the honors at Tom s table, and mend- 
 
MR. AND MRS. FOLLETT. 
 
 ing with sober diligence Tom s straps and suspenders. | 
 The kaleidoscope of fancy exhausted its combinations. 
 
 " Tom !" said I (looking up affectionately, for he j 
 was one of my weaknesses, was Tom, and I indulged 
 myself in loving him without a reason), "Miss Burn- 
 ham is in the best light where she is. If she cease 
 to be a belle, as of course she will, should she mar 
 ry " 
 
 " Of course !" interrupted Tom very gravely. 
 
 "Well, in that case, she lays oJf the goddess, trust 
 me ! You will like her to dress plainly " 
 
 "Quite plain !" 
 
 "And stripped of her plumage, your bird of paradise 
 would be nothing but a very indifferent hen with the 
 disadvantage of remembering that she had been a bird 
 of paradise." 
 
 "But it was not her dress that attracted the brilliant 
 author of " 
 
 Possibly not. But as the false gods of mythology 
 are only known by their insignia, Jupiter by his thun 
 derbolt, and Mercury by his talaria and caduceus, so 
 a woman, worshipped by accident, will find a change 
 of exterior nothing less than a laying aside of her di 
 vinity. That s a didactic sentence, but you will know 
 what I mean, when I tell you that I myself can not see 
 a pair of coral ear-rings without a sickness of the 
 heart, though the woman who once wore them, and 
 who slighted me twenty years ago, sits before me in 
 church, without diverting a thought from the sermon. 
 Don t marry her, Tom !" 
 
 Six weeks after this conversation, I was at the wed 
 ding, and the reader will please pass to the rear the 
 six succeeding months short lime as it seems to 
 record a change in the bland sky of matrimony. It was 
 an ellipse in our friendship as well ; for advice (con 
 trary to our wishes and intentions) is apt to be resent 
 ed, and I fancied, from the northerly bows I received 
 from Mrs. Follett, that my friend had made a merit to 
 her of having married contrary to my counsel. At the 
 end of this period Tom called on me. 
 
 Follett, I should have said, was a man of that unde 
 cided exterior which is perfectly at the mercy of a cra 
 vat or waistcoat. He looked "snob" or "nob," ac 
 cording to the care with which he had made his toilet. 
 While a bachelor, of course, he could never afford in 
 public a negligence or a mistake, and was invariably 
 an elegant man, harmonious and " pin-point" from 
 straps to whiskers. But alas! the security of wedded 
 life ! When Tom entered my room, I perused him 
 as a walking homily. His coat, still made on the old 
 measure, was buttoned only at the top, the waist being 
 rather snug, and his waistcoat pockets loaded with the 
 copper which in his gayer days he always left on the 
 counter. His satin cravat was frayed and brownish, 
 with the tie slipped almost under his ear. The heel 
 of his right boot (he trod straight on the othfer foot) 
 almost looked him in the face. His pantaloons (the 
 one article of dress in which there are no gradations 
 nothing, if not perfect) were bulged and strained. He 
 wore a frightfully new hat, no gloves, and carried a 
 baggy brown umbrella, which was,, in itself, a most ex 
 pressive portrait of "gone to seed. 1 Tom entered 
 with his usual uppish carriage, and, through the how- 
 d ye-dos, and the getting into his chair, carried off the 
 old manner to a charm. In talking of the weather, a 
 moment after, his eye fell on his stumpy umbrella, 
 which, with an unconscious memory of an old affecta 
 tion with his cane, he was balancing on the toe of his 
 boot, and the married look slid over him like a mist. 
 Down went his head between his shoulders, and down 
 went the corners of his mouth down the inflation of 
 his chest like a collapsed balloon; and down, in its 
 youth and expression it seemed to me, every muscle 
 of his face. He had assumed in a minute the style 
 and countenance of a man ten years older. 
 
 I smiled. How could I but smile ! 
 
 " Then you have heard of it !" exclaimed Tom, 
 suddenly starting to his feet, and flushing purple to the 
 roots of his hair. 
 
 "Heard of what?" 
 
 My look of surprise evidently took him aback ; and, 
 seating himself again with confused apologies, Tom 
 proceeded to " make a clean breast," on a subject 
 which I had not anticipated. 
 
 It seemed that, far from moulting her feathers after 
 marriage, according to my prediction, Mrs. Follett 
 clearly thought that she had not yet "strutted her 
 hour," and, though everything Tom could wish behind 
 the curtain, in society she had flaunted and flirted, not 
 merely with no diminution of zest from the wedding- 
 day, but, her husband was of opinion, with a ratio 
 alarmingly increasing. Her present alliance was with 
 a certain Count Hautenbas, the lion of the moment, 
 and though doubtless one in which vanity alone was 
 active, Tom s sense of connubial propriety was at its 
 last gasp. He could stand it no longer. He wished 
 my advice in the choice between two courses. Should 
 he call out the Frenchman, or should he take advan 
 tage of the law s construction of "moral insanity," and 
 shut her up in a mad-house. 
 
 My advice had been of so little avail in the first in 
 stance, that I shrank from troubling Tom with any 
 more of it, and certainly should have evaded it alto 
 gether, but for an experiment I wished to make, as 
 much for my own satisfaction as for the benefit of that 
 large class, the unhappy married. 
 
 "Your wife is out every night, I suppose, Tom ?" 
 
 "Every night when she has no party at home." 
 
 "Do you go with her always ?" 
 
 " I go for her usually but the truth is, that since 
 I married, parties bore me, and after seeing my wife off, 
 I commonly smoke and snooze, or read, or run into 
 Bob Thomas s and talk horse, till I have just time to 
 be in at the death." 
 
 "And when you get there, you don t dance ?" 
 
 "Not I, faith ! I haven t danced since I was mar 
 ried !" 
 
 "But you used to be the best waltzer of the day." 
 
 "Well, the music sometimes gets into my heels 
 now, but, when I remember I am married, the fit cools 
 off. The deuce take it ! a married man shouldn t be 
 seen whirling round the room with a girl in his arms !" 
 
 "I presume that were you still single, you would 
 fancy your chance to be as good for ladies favors as 
 any French count s that ever came over ?" 
 
 " Ehem ! why yes !" 
 
 Tom pulled up his collar. 
 
 "And if you had access to her society all day and 
 all night, and the Frenchman only an hour or two in 
 the evening, any given lady being the object, you would 
 bet freely on your own head . " 
 
 "I see your drift," said Tom, with a melancholy 
 smile, "but it won t do !" 
 
 " No, indeed it is what would have done. You had 
 at the start a much better chance with your wife than 
 Count Hautenbas ; but husbands and lovers are the 
 hare, and the tortoise of the fable. We must resort 
 now to other means. Will you follow my advice, as 
 well as take it, should I be willing again to burn my 
 fingers in your affairs ?" 
 
 The eagerness of Tom s protestations quite made 
 the amende to my mortified self-complacency, and I 
 entered zealousy into my little plot for his happiness. 
 At this moment I heartily wish I had sent him and his 
 affairs to the devil, and (lest I should forget it at the 
 close of this tale) I here caution all men, single and 
 double, against "meddling or making," marring or 
 mending, in matrimonial matters. The alliteration 
 may, perhaps, impress this salutary counsel on the 
 mind of the reader. 
 
 I passed the remainder of the day in repairing the 
 damage of Tom s person. I had his whiskers curled 
 
36 
 
 MR. AND MRS. FOLLETT. 
 
 and trimmed even (his left whisker was an inch nearer 
 his nose than the right), and his teeth looked to by the 
 dentist. I stood by, to be sure that there was no care 
 lessness in his selection of patent leathers, and on his 
 assuring me that he was otherwise well provided, I 
 suffered him to go home to dress, engaging him to 
 dine with me at seven. 
 
 He was punctual to the hour. By Jove, I could 
 scarce believe it was the same man. The conscious 
 ness of being well dressed seemed to have brightened 
 his eyes and lips, as it certainly changed altogether his 
 address and movements. He had a narrow escape of 
 being handsome. After all, it is only a " man of mark," 
 or an Apollo, who can well afford to neglect the outer 
 man ; and a judicious negligence, or a judicious plain 
 ness, is probably worth the attention of both the man 
 of mark and the Apollo. Tom was quite another or 
 der of creature a butterfly that was just no w a worm 
 and would have been treated with more consideration 
 in consequence, even by those least tolerant of "the 
 pomps and vanities." We dined temperately, and I 
 superseded the bottle by a cup of strong green tea, at 
 an early moment after the removal of the cloth, deter 
 mined to have Tom s wits in as full dress as his per 
 son. Without being at all a brilliant man, he was 
 the next best thing a steady absorbent; and as most 
 women are more fond of giving than receiving in all 
 things, but particularly in conversation, I was not un 
 easy as to his power of making himself agreeable. Nor 
 was he, faith ! 
 
 The ball of the night was at the house of an old 
 friend of my own, and Mr. and Mrs. Follett were but 
 newly introduced to the circle. I had the company 
 very clearly in my eye, therefore, while casting about 
 for dramatis persorxe, and fixing upon Mrs. Beverly 
 Fairlie, for the prominent character, I assured suc 
 cess, though being very much in love with that co 
 quettish widow myself, I had occasion for some self- 
 denial in the matter. Of Mrs. Fairlie s weak points 
 (on which it seemed necessary that I should enlighten 
 Tom), I had information not to be acquired short of 
 summering and wintering her, and with my eye solely 
 directed to its effect upon Mrs. Follett, I put the clues 
 into my friend s hands in a long after-dinner conversa 
 tion. As he seemed impatient to open the campaign 
 after getting these definite and valuable instructions, I 
 augured well for his success, and we entered the ball 
 room in high spirits. 
 
 It was quite enough to say to the mischievous widow 
 that another woman was to be piqued by any attentions j 
 she might choose to pay Mr. Follett. Having said 
 thus much, and presented Tom, I sought out Mrs. 
 Follett myself, with the double purpose of breaking 
 up the monopoly of Mons. Hautenbas, and of direct 
 ing her attention, should it be necessary, to the suavi 
 ties between Tom and the widow. 
 
 It was a superb ball, and the music, as Tom said, 
 went to the heels. The thing he did well was waltz 
 ing, and after taking a turn or two with Mrs. Fairlie, 
 the rustic dame ran up to Mrs. Follett with the most 
 innocent air imaginable, and begged the loan of her 
 husband for the rest of the evening ! I did not half 
 like the look of earnest with which she entered into 
 
 the affair, indeed, and there was little need of my 
 taking much trouble to enlighten Mrs. Follett ; for a 
 woman so surprised with a six months husband I never 
 saw. They were so capitally matched, Tom and the 
 widow, in size, motion, style of waltzing, and all, that 
 not we only, but the whole parly, were occupied with 
 observing and admiring them. Mrs. Follett and I (for 
 a secret sympathy, somehow, drew us together, as the 
 thing went on) kept up a broken conversation, in which 
 the count was even less interested than we ; and after 
 a few ineffectual attempts to draw her into the tea 
 room, the Frenchman left us in pique, and we gave 
 ourselves up to the observation of the couple who (we 
 presumed) severally belonged to us. They carried on 
 the war famously, to be sure ! Mrs. Fairlie was a 
 woman who could do as she liked, because she would ; 
 and she cared not a sfrraw for the very pronounce dem 
 onstration of engrossing one man for all the quadrilles, 
 waltzes, and galopades, beside being with him to sup 
 per. Once or twice I tried to find an excuse for leav 
 ing Mrs. Follett, to put in an oar for myself; but the 
 little woman clung to me as if she had not the courage 
 to undertake another person s amusement, and, new 
 and sudden as the feeling must have been, she was 
 pale and wretched, with a jealousy more bitter proba 
 bly than mine. Tom never gave me a look after the 
 first waltz ; and as to the widow, she played her part 
 with rather more zeal than we set down for her. 
 I passed altogether an uncomfortable night, for a 
 gay one, and it was a great relief to me when 
 Mrs. Follett asked me to send Tom for the car 
 riage. 
 
 "Be so kind as to send a servant for it," said Fol 
 lett, very coolly, " and say to Mrs. Follett, that I will 
 join her at home. I am going to sup, or rather break 
 fast, with Mrs. Beverly Fairlie !" 
 
 Here was a mess ! 
 
 " Shall I send the count for your shawl ?" I asked, 
 after giving this message, and wishing to know whether 
 she was this side of pride in her unhappiness. 
 
 The little woman burst into tears. 
 
 " I will sit in the cloak-room till my husband is 
 ready," she said ; " go to him, if you please, and im 
 plore him to come and speak to me." 
 
 As I said before, I wished the whole plot to the 
 devil. We had achieved our object, it is true and 
 so did the man who knocked the breath out of his 
 friend s body, in killing a fly on his back. Tom is 
 now (this was years ago) a married flirt of some celeb 
 rity, for after coming out of the widow s hands with a 
 three months education, he had quite forgot to be 
 troubled about Mrs. Follett ; and instead of neglect 
 ing his dress, which was his only sin when I took him 
 in hand, he now neglects his wife, who sees him, as 
 women are apt to see their husbands, through other 
 women s eyes. I presume they are doomed to quite 
 as much unhappiness as would have fallen to their lot, 
 had I let them alone had Mrs. Follett ran away with 
 the Frenchman, and had Tom died a divorced sloven. 
 But when I think that, beside achieving little for them, 
 I was the direct means of spoiling Mrs. Beverly Fair- 
 lie for myself, I think I may write myself down as a 
 warning to meddlers in matrimony. 
 
THE COUNTESS NYSCHRIEM. 
 
 37 
 
 THE COUNTESS NYSCHRIEM, 
 
 AND THE HANDSOME ARTIST. 
 
 THAT favored portion of the light of one summer s 
 morning that was destined to be the transparent bath 
 of the master-pieces on the walls of the Pitti, was 
 pouring in a languishing flood through the massive 
 windows of the palace. The ghosts of the painters i 
 (who, ministering to the eye only, walk the world from 
 cock-crowing to sunset) were haunting invisibly the 
 sumptuous rooms made famous by their pictures ; 
 and the pictures themselves, conscious of the presence 
 of the fountain of soul from which gushed the soul 
 that is in them, glowed with intoxicated mellowness 
 and splendor, and amazed the living students of the 
 gallery with effects of light and color till that moment 
 undiscovered. 
 
 [And now, dear reader, having paid you the com- j 
 plirnent of commencing my story in your vein (poetical), . 
 let me come down to a little every-day brick-and-mor- \ 
 tar, and build up a fair and square common-sense j 
 foundation.] 
 
 Graeme McDonald was a young highlander from 
 Rob Roy s country, come to Florence to study the 
 old masters. He was an athletic, wholesome, hand 
 some fellow, who had probably made a narrow escape j 
 of being simply a fine animal ; and, as it was, you ; 
 never would have picked him from a crowd as any- 
 thing but a hussar out of uniform, or a brigand per 
 verted to honest life. His peculiarity was (and this I ; 
 foresee is to be an ugly sentence), that he had pecu- | 
 liarities which did not seem peculiar. He was full of 
 genius for his art, but the canvass which served him 
 him as a vent, gave him no more anxiety than his ! 
 pocket-handkerchief. He painted in the palace, or J 
 wiped his forehead on a warm day with equally small 
 care, to all appearance, and he had brought his mother ! 
 and two sisters to Italy, and supported them by a most ; 
 heroic economy and industry all the while looking as 
 if the " silver moon" and all the small change of the j 
 stars would scarce serve him for a day s pocket-money, j 
 Indeed, the more 1 knew of McDonald, the more I ! 
 became convinced that there was another man built 
 over him. The painter was inside. And if he had 
 free thoroughfare and use of the outer man s windows 
 and ivory door, he was at any rate barred from hang- , 
 ing out the smallest sign or indication of being at any 
 time " within." Think as hard as he would devise, 
 combine, study, or glow with enthusiasm the pro- 
 prietor of the front door exhibited the same careless 
 and smiling bravery of mien, behaving invariably as if 
 he had the whole tenement to himself, and was neither 
 proud of, nor interested in the doings of his more 
 
 r ritual inmate leading you to suppose, almost, 
 it the latter, though billeted upon him, had not 
 been properly introduced. The thatch of this com 
 mon tenement was of jetty black hair, curling in most 
 opulent prodigality, and, altogether, it was a house 
 that Hadad, the fallen spirit, might have chosen, when 
 becoming incarnate to tempt the sister of Absalom. 
 
 Perhaps you have been in Florence, dear reader, 
 and know by what royal liberality artists are permitted 
 to bring their easels into the splendid apartments of 
 the palace, and copy from the priceless pictxires on 
 the walls. At the time I have my eye upon (some 
 few years ago), McDonald was making a beginning 
 of a copy of Titian s Bella, and near him stood the 
 
 easel of a female artist who was copying from the 
 glorious picture of " Judith and Holofernes," in the 
 same apartment. Mademoiselle Folie (so she was 
 called by the elderly lady who always accompanied 
 her) was a small and very gracefully-formed creature, 
 i with the plainest face in which attraction could possi 
 bly reside. She was a passionate student of her art, 
 pouring upon it apparently the entire fulness of her 
 I life, and as unconsciously forgetful of her personal 
 | impressions on those around her, as if she wore the 
 I invisible ring of Gyges. The deference with which 
 | she was treated by her staid companion drew some 
 j notice upon her, however, and her progress, in the 
 copy she was making, occasionally gathered the artists 
 about her easel ; and, altogether, her position among 
 the silent and patient company at work in the different 
 halls of the palace, was one of affectionate and tacit 
 respect. McDonald was her nearest neighbor, and 
 they frequently looked over each other s pictures, but, 
 as they were both foreigners in Florence (she of Polish 
 birth, as he understood), their conversation was in 
 French or Italian, neither of which languages were 
 fluently familiar to Graeme, and it was limited gene- 
 ! rally to expressions of courtesy or brief criticism of 
 | each other s labors. 
 
 As I said before, it was a " proof-impression" of a 
 celestial summer s morning, and the thermometer 
 stood at heavenly idleness. McDonald sat with his 
 maul-stick across his knees, drinking from Titian s 
 picture. An artist, who had lounged in from the 
 
 I next room, had hung himself by the crook of his arm 
 
 \ over a high peg, in his comrade s easel, and every now 
 ! and then he volunteered an observation to which he 
 | expected no particular answer. 
 
 " When I remember how little beauty 1 have seen 
 ! in the world," said Ingarde (this artist), " I am inclined 
 to believe with Saturninus, that there is no resurrec 
 tion of bodies, and that only the spirits of the good 
 return into the body of the Godhead for what is 
 ugliness to do in heaven !" 
 
 McDonald only said, " hm hm !" 
 " Or rather," said Ingarde again, " I should like to 
 fashion a creed for myself, and believe that nothing 
 
 II was immortal but what was heavenly, and that the 
 j I good among men and the beautiful among women 
 || would be the only reproductions hereafter. How will 
 
 i this little plain woman look in the streets of the New 
 II Jerusalem, for example ? Yet she expects, as we all 
 || do, to be recognisable by her friends in Heaven, and, 
 ! of ceurse, to have the same irredeemably plain face ! 
 I (Does she understand English, by the way for ^ she 
 might not be altogether pleased with my theory !") 
 
 "I have spoken to her very often," said McDonald, 
 "and I think English is Hebrew to her but my theo 
 ry of beauty crosses at least one corner of your argu 
 ment, my friend ! I believe that the original type ot 
 every human face is beautiful, and that every human 
 being could be made beautiful, without, in any essential 
 particular, destroying the visible identity. The like 
 ness preserved in the faces of a family through several 
 i generations is modified by the bad mental qualities, 
 i and the bad health of those who hand is down. Re- 
 j move these modifications, and, without destroying the 
 I family likeness, you would take away all that mars the 
 
THE COUNTESS NYSCHRIEM- 
 
 beauty of its particular type. An individual coun 
 tenance is an integral work of God s making, and God 
 saw that it was good when he made it. Ugliness, 
 as you phrase it, is the damage that type of countenance 
 has received from the sin and suffering of life. But 
 the type can be restored, and will be, doubtless, in 
 Heaven !" 
 
 " And you think that little woman s face could be 
 made beautiful ?" 
 
 " I know it." 
 
 "Try it, then! Here is your copy of Titian s 
 Bella, all finished but the face. Make an apotheosis 
 portrait of your neighbor, and while it harmonizes 
 with the body of Titian s beauty, still leave it recogni 
 sable as her portrait, and I ll give in to your theory 
 believing in all other miracles, if you like, at the same 
 time !" 
 
 Ingarde laughed, as he went back to his own picture, 
 and McDonald, after sitting a few minutes lost in 
 revery, turned his easel so as to get a painter s view 
 of his female neighbor. He thought she colored 
 slightly as he fixed his eyes upon her ; but, if so, she 
 apparently became very soon unconscious of his gaze, 
 and he was soon absorbed himself in the task to which 
 his friend had so mockingly challenged him. 
 
 II. 
 
 [Excuse me, dear reader, while with two epistles I 
 build a bridge over which you can cross a chasm of a 
 month in my story.] 
 
 " To GRAEME MO-DONALD. 
 
 "Sir: I am intrusted with a delicate commission, 
 which I know not how to broach to you, except by 
 simple proposal. Will you forgive my abrupt brevity, 
 if I inform you, without further preface, that the 
 Countess Nyschriem, a Polish lady of high birth and 
 ample fortune, does you the honor to propose for your 
 hand. If you are disengaged, and your affections are 
 not irrevocably given to another, I can conceive no 
 sufficient obstacle to your acceptance of this brilliant 
 connexion. The countess is twenty-two, and not 
 beautiful, it must in fairness be said ; but she has j 
 high qualities of head and heart, and is worthy of any 
 man s respect and affection. She has seen you, of 
 course, and conceived a passion for you, of which this 
 is the result. I am directed to add, that should you ! 
 consent, the following conditions are imposed that j 
 you marry her within four days, making no inquiry 
 except as to her age, rank, and property, and that, ; 
 without previous interview, she come veiled to the 
 altar. 
 
 "An answer is requested in the course of to-morrow, 
 addressed to The Count Hanswald, minister of his 
 majesty the king of Prussia. 
 
 "I have the honor, &c., &c. "HANSWALD." 
 
 McDonald s answer was as follows : 
 
 "To HIS EXCELLENCY, HANSWALD, &c., &c. 
 
 "You will pardon me that I have taken two days to 
 consider the extraordinary proposition made me in 
 your letter. The subject, since it is to be entertained 
 a moment, requires, perhaps, still further reflection 
 but my reply shall be definite, and as prompt as I can 
 bring myself to be, in a matter so important. 
 
 " My first impulse was to return your letter, declining 
 the honor you would do me, and thanking the lady 
 for the compliment of her choice. My first reflection 
 was the relief and happiness which an independence 
 would bring to a mother and two sisters dependant, 
 now, on the precarious profits of my pencil. And I 
 first consented to ponder the matter with this view, 
 and I now consent to marry (frankly) for this advan 
 tage. But still I have a condition to propose. 
 
 " In the studies I have had the opportunity to make 
 
 of the happiness of imaginative men in matrimony, I 
 have observed that their two worlds of fact and fancy 
 were seldom under the control of one mistress. It 
 must be a very extraordinary woman of course, who, 
 with the sweet domestic qualities needful for common 
 life, possesses at the same time the elevation and 
 spirituality requisite for the ideal of the poet and 
 painter. And I am not certain, in any case, whethei 
 the romance of some secret passion, fed and pursued 
 in the imagination only, be not the inseparable neces 
 sity of a poetical nature. For the imagination is in 
 capable of being chained, and it is at once disenchant 
 ed and set roaming by the very possession and cer 
 taiiity, which are the charms of matrimony. Whethei 
 exclusive devotion of all the faculties of mind and bodjf 
 be the fidelity exacted in marriage, is a question every 
 woman should consider before making a husband of 
 an imaginative man. As I have not seen the countess, 
 I can generalize on the subject without offence, and 
 she is the best judge whether she can chain my fancy 
 as well as my affections, or yield to an imaginative 
 mistress the devotion of so predominant a quality of 
 my nature. I can only promise her the constancy of 
 a husband. 
 
 " Still if this were taken for only vague specula 
 tion she might be deceived. I must declare, frankly, 
 that I am, at present, completely possessed with an 
 imaginative passion. The object of it is probably as 
 poor as I, and I could never marry her were I to con 
 tinue free. Probably, too, the high-born countess- 
 would be but little jealous of her rival, for she has no 
 pretensions to beauty, and is an humble artist. But, 
 in painting this lady s portrait (a chance experiment, 
 to try whether so plain a face could be made lovely) 
 I have penetrated to so beautiful an inner counten 
 ance (so to speak) I have found charms of impres 
 sion so subtly masked to the common eye I have 
 traced such exquisite lineament of soul and feeling, 
 visible, for the present, I believe, to my eye only 
 that, while I live, I shall do irresistible homage to her 
 as the embodiment of my fancy s want, the very spirit 
 and essence suitable to rule over my unseen world of 
 imagination. Marry whom I will, and be true to her 
 as I shall, this lady will (perhaps unknown to herself) 
 be my mistress in dream-land and revery. 
 
 " This inevitable license allowed my ideal world 
 and its devotions, that is to say, left entirely to myself 
 I am ready to accept the honor of the countess s 
 hand. If, at the altar, she should hear me murmur 
 another name with her own (for the bride of my fancy 
 must be present when I wed, and I shall link the vows 
 to both in one ceremony)- let her not fear for my 
 constancy to herself, but let her remember that it is 
 not to offend her hereafter, if the name of the other 
 come to my lip in dreams. 
 
 " Your excellency may command my time and 
 presence. With high consideration, &c. 
 
 GRAEME MCDONALD." 
 
 Rather agitated than surprised seemed Mademoiselle 
 Folie, when, the next day, as she arranged her brushes 
 upon the shelf of her easel, her handsome neighbor 
 commenced, in the most fluent Italian he could com 
 mand, to invite her to his wedding. Very much 
 surprised was McDonald when she interrupted him 
 in English, and begged him to use his native tongue, 
 as madatne, her attendant, would not then understand 
 him. He went on delightedly in his own honest 
 language, and explained to her his imaginative ad 
 miration, though he felt compunctious, somewhat, 
 that so unreal a sentiment should bring the blood into 
 her cheek. She thanked him drew the cloth from 
 the upper part of her own picture, and showed him an 
 admirable portrait of his handsome features, substituted 
 for the masculine head of Judith in the original from 
 which she copied and promised to be at his wedding, 
 
MY ONE ADVENTURE AS A BRIGAND. 
 
 and to listen sharply for her murmured name in his 
 vow at the altar. He chanced to wear at the moment 
 a ring of red cornelian, and he agreed with her" that 
 she should stand where he could see her, and, at the 
 moment of his putting the marriage ring upon the 
 bride s fingers, that she should put on this, and for 
 ever after wear it, as a token of having received his 
 spiritual vows of devotion. 
 
 The day came, and the splendid equipage of the 
 countess dashed into the square of Santa Maria, with 
 a veiled bride and a cold bridegroom, and deposited 
 them at the steps of the church. And they were fol 
 lowed by other coroneted equipages, and gayly dress 
 ed from each the mother and sisters of the bride 
 groom gayly dressed, among them, but looking pale 
 with incertitude and dread. 
 
 The veiled bride was small, but she moved grace 
 fully up the aisle, and met her future husband at the 
 altar with a low courtesy, and madia sign to the priest 
 to proceed with the ceremony. McDonald was color 
 
 less, but firm, and indeed showed little interest, except 
 by an anxious look now and then among the crowd of 
 spectators at the sides of the altar. He pronounced 
 with a steady voice, but when the ring was to be put 
 on, he looked around for an instant, and then sudden 
 ly, and to the great scandal of the church, clasped his 
 bride with a passionate ejaculation to his bosom. 
 The cornelian ring was on her finger and the Countess 
 Nyschriem and Mademoiselle Folie his bride and 
 his fancy queen were one. 
 
 This curious event happened in Florence some 
 eight years since as all people then there will re 
 member and it was prophesied of the countess that 
 she would have but a short lease of her handsome and 
 gay husband. But time does not say so. A more 
 constant husband than McDonald to his plain and 
 titled wife, and one more continuously in love, does 
 not travel and buy pictures, and patronize artists 
 though few except yourself and I, dear reader, know 
 the philosophy of it! 
 
 MY ONE ADVENTURE AS A BRIGAND, 
 
 I WAS standing in a hostelry, at Geneva, making a 
 bargain with an Italian for a place in a return carriage 
 to Florence, when an Englishman, who had been in 
 the same steamer with me on Lake Leman, the day 
 before, came in and stood listening to the conversa 
 tion. We had been the only two passengers on board, 
 but had passed six hours in each other s company 
 without speaking. The road to an Englishman s 
 friendship is to have shown yourself perfectly indiffer 
 ent to his acquaintance, and, as I liked him from the 
 first, we were now ready to be conscious of each oth 
 er s existence. 
 
 " I beg pardon," said he, advancing in a pause of 
 the vetturino s oration, "will you allow me to engage 
 a place with you? 1 am going to Florence, and, if 
 agreeable to you, we will take the carriage to our 
 selves." 
 
 I agreed very willingly, and in two hours we were 
 free of the gates of Geneva, and keeping along the 
 edge of the lake in the cool twilight of one of the love 
 liest of heaven s summer evenings. The carriage was 
 spaciously contrived for four; and, with the curtains 
 up all around, our feet on the forward seat, my com 
 panion smoking, and conversation bubbling up to 
 please itself, we rolled over the smooth road, gliding 
 into the first chapter of our acquaintance as tuanquilly 
 as Geoffrey Crayon and his reader into the first chap 
 ter of anything he has written. 
 
 My companion (Mr. St. John Elmslie, as put down 
 in his passport) seemed to have something to think of 
 beside propitiating my good will, but he was consid 
 erate and winning, from evident high breeding, and 
 quite open, himself, to my most scrutinizing study. 
 He was about thirty, and, without any definite beauty, 
 was a fine specimen of a man. Probably most per 
 sons would have called him handsome. I liked him 
 better, probably, from the subdued melancholy with 
 which he brooded on his secret thought, whatever it 
 might be sad men, in this world of boisterous gayety 
 or selfish ill-humor, interesting me always. 
 
 From that something, on which his memory fed in 
 quiet but constant revery, nothing aroused my com 
 panion except the passing of a travelling carriage, go 
 ing in the other direction, on our own arrival at an inn. 
 I began to suspect, indeed, after a little while, that 
 Elmslie had some understanding with our vetturino, 
 
 for, on the approach of any vehicle of pleasure, our 
 horses became restiff, and, with a sudden pull-up, 
 stood directly across the way. Out jumped my friend 
 to assist in controlling the restift animals, and, in the 
 five minutes during which the strangers were obliged 
 to wait, we generally saw their heads once or twice 
 thrust inquiringly from the carriage window. This 
 done, our own vehicle was again wheeled about, and 
 the travellers allowed to proceed. 
 
 We had arrived at Bologna with but one interruption 
 to the quiet friendliness of our intercourse. Apropos 
 of some vein of speculation, I had asked my companion 
 if he were married. He was silent for a moment, and 
 then, in a jocose tone of voice, which was new to me, 
 replied, " 1 believe I have a wife somewhere in Scot 
 land." But though Elmslie had determined to show 
 me that he was neither annoyed nor offended at my 
 inquisitiveness, his manner changed. He grew cere 
 monious. For the remainder of that day, I felt un 
 comfortable, I scarce knew why; and I silently deter 
 mined that if my friend continued so exceedingly well- 
 bred in his manner for another day, I should find an 
 excuse for leaving him at Bologna. 
 
 But we had left Bologna, and, at sunset of a warm 
 day, were slowly toiling up the Apennines. The inn to 
 which we were bound was in sight, a mile or two above 
 us, and, as the vetturiuo stopped to breathe his horses, 
 Elmslie jumped from the carriage and started to walk 
 on. I took advantage of his absence to stretch myself 
 over the vacated cushions, and, on our arrival at the 
 inn, was soundly asleep. 
 
 My friend s voice, in an unusual tone, awoke me, 
 and, by his face, as he looked in at the carriage win 
 dow, 1 saw that he was under some extraordinary ex 
 citement. This I observed by the light of the stable- 
 lantern for the hostelry, Italian fashion, occupied 
 
 the lower story of the inn, and our carriage was driven 
 
 under the archway, where the faint light from without 
 
 I made but little impression on the darkness. I followed 
 
 Elmslie s beckoning finger, and climbing after him up 
 
 the stairway of stone, stood in a large refectory occu- 
 
 | pying the whole of the second story of the building. 
 
 At the first glance I saw that there was an English 
 I party in the house. An Italian inn of the lower order 
 i has no provision for private parties, and few, except 
 I] English travellers, object to joining the common even- 
 
40 
 
 MY ONE ADVENTURE AS A BRIGAND. 
 
 ing meal. The hall was dark with the twilight, but a 
 large curtain was suspended across the farther ex 
 tremity, and, by the glimmer of lights, and an occa 
 sional sound of a knife, a party was within supping in 
 silence. 
 
 " If you speak, speak in Italian," whispered Elms- 
 lie, taking me by the arm, and leading me on tiptoe to 
 one of the corners of the curtain. 
 
 I looked in and saw two persons seated at a table 
 a bold and soldierly-looking man of fifty, and a young 
 lady, evidently his daughter. The beauty of the last- 
 mentioned person was so extraordinary that I nearly 
 committed the indiscretion of an exclamation in Eng 
 lish. She was slight, but of full and well-rounded 
 proportions, and she sat and moved with an emi 
 nent grace and ladylikeness altogether captivating. 
 Though her face expressed a settled sadness, it was 
 of unworn and faultless youth and loveliness, and 
 while her heavily-fringed eyes would have done, in 
 their expression, for a Niobe, Hebe s lips were not 
 more ripe, nor Juno s arched more proudly. She was 
 a blonde, with eyes and eyelashes darker than her 
 hair a kind of beauty almost peculiar to England. 
 
 The passing in of a tall footman, in a plain livery of 
 gray, interrupted my gaze, and Elmslie drew me away 
 by the arm, and led me into the road in front of the 
 locanda. The night had now fallen, and we strolled 
 up and down in the glimmer of the starlight. My 
 companion was evidently much disturbed, and we 
 made several turns after I had seen very plainly that 
 he was making up his mind to communicate to me the 
 secret. 
 
 "1 have a request to make of you," he said, at last; 
 " a service to exact, rather, to which there were no 
 hope that you would listen for a moment if I did not 
 first tell you a very singular story. Have a little pa 
 tience with me,, and I will make it as brief as I can 
 the briefer, that I have no little pain in recalling it with 
 the distinctness of description." 
 
 I expressed my interest in all that concerned my 
 new friend, and begged him to go on. 
 
 "Hardly six years ago," said Elmslie, pressing my 
 arm gently in acknowledgment of my sympathy, " I 
 left college and joined my regiment, for the first time, 
 in Scotland. By the way, I should re-introduce my 
 self to you as Viscount S , of the title of which, 
 
 then, I was in prospect. My story hinges somewhat 
 upon the fact that, as an honorable captain, a noble 
 man in expectancy, I was an object of some extrane 
 ous interest to the ladies who did the flirting for the 
 garrison. God forgive me for speaking lightly on the 
 subject ! 
 
 " A few evenings after my arrival, we had been dining 
 rather freely at mess, and the major announced to us 
 that we were invited to take tea with a linen-draper, 
 whose house was a popular resort of the officers of 
 the regiment. The man had three or four daughters, 
 who, as the phrase goes, gave you a great deal for 
 your money, and, for romping and frolicking, they 
 had good looks and spirit enough. The youngest was 
 really very pretty, but the eldest, to whom I was ex 
 clusively presented by the major, as a sort of quiz on 
 a new-comer, was a sharp and sneering old maid, red 
 headed, freckled, and somewhat lame. Not to be out 
 done in frolic by my persecutor, I commenced making 
 love to Miss Jacky in mock heroics, and we were soon 
 marching up and down the room, to the infinite enter 
 tainment of my brother officers, lavishing on each other 
 every possible term of endearment. 
 
 "In the midst of this, the major came up to me with 
 rather a serious face. 
 
 " Whatever you do, said he, for God s sake don t 
 call the old girl your wife. The joke might be seri 
 ous. 
 
 " It was quite enough that I was desired not to do 
 anything in the reign of misrule then prevailing. I 
 
 immediately assumed a connubial air, to the best of 
 my dramatic ability, begged Miss Jacky to join me in 
 the frolic, and made the rounds of the room, introdu 
 cing the old girl as Mrs. Elmslie, and receiving from 
 her quite as many tendernesses as were bearable by 
 myself or the company present. I observed that the 
 lynx-eyed linen-draper watched this piece of fun very 
 closely, and my friend, the major, seemed distressed 
 and grave about it. But we carried it out till the 
 party broke up, and the next day the regiment was 
 ordered over to Ireland, and I thought no more, for 
 awhile, either of Miss Jacky or my own absurdity. 
 
 "Two years afterward, I was, at a drawing-room at 
 St. James s, presented, for the first time, by the name 
 which I bear. It was not a very agreeable event to me, 
 as our family fortunes were inadequate to the proper 
 support of the title, and on the generosity of a maternal 
 uncle, who had been at mortal variance with my father, 
 depended our hopes*>f restoration to prosperity. From 
 the mood of bitter melancholy in which I had gone 
 through the ceremony of an introduction, I was aroused 
 by the murmur in the crowd at the approach of a young 
 girl just presented to the king. She was following a 
 lady whom I slightly knew, and had evidently been 
 presented by her; and, before I had begun to recover 
 from my astonishment at her beauty, I was requested 
 by this lady to give her jjrotege an arm and follow to a 
 less crowded apartment of the palace. 
 
 "Ah, my friend! the exquisite beauty of Lady 
 Meiicent but you have seen her. She is here, and 
 I must fold her in my arms to-night, or perish in the 
 attempt. 
 
 Pardon me!" he added, as I was about to inter 
 rupt him with an explanation. " She has been she 
 s my wife ! She loved me and married me, making 
 ife a heaven of constant ecstacy for I worshipped 
 her with every fibre of my existence." 
 
 He paused and gave me his story brokenly, and I 
 waited for him to go on without questioning. 
 
 "We had lived together in absolute and unclouded 
 bappiness for eight months, in lover-like seclusion at 
 ber father s house, and I was looking forward to the 
 airth of my child with anxiety and transport, when the 
 death of my uncle left me heir to his immense fortune, 
 and I parted from my greater treasure to go and pay 
 the fitting respect at his burial. 
 
 " I returned, after a week s absence, with an impa 
 tience and ardor almost intolerable, and found the door 
 closed against me. 
 
 " There were two letters for me at the porter s lodge 
 
 one from Lord A , my wife s father, informing 
 
 me that the Lady Meiicent had miscarried and was 
 dangerously ill, and enjoining upon me as a man of 
 honor and delicacy, never to attempt to see her again ; 
 ind another from Scotland, claiming a fitting support 
 or rny lawful wife, the daughter of the linen-draper. 
 The proofs of the marriage, duly sworn to and certi 
 fied by the witnesses of my fatal frolic, were enclosed, 
 and on my recovery, six weeks after, from the delirium 
 nto which these multiplied horrors precipitated me, I 
 bund that, by the Scotch law, the first marriage was 
 valid, and my ruin was irrevocable." 
 
 "And how long since was this ?" I inquired, break- 
 ng in upon his narration for the first time. 
 
 "A year and a month and till to-night I have not 
 seen her. But I must break through this dreadful 
 eparation now and I must speak to her, and press 
 icr to my breast and you will aid me 1" 
 
 "To the last drop of my blood, assuredly. But 
 how ?" 
 
 " Come to the inn ! You have not supped, and we 
 
 11 devise as you eat. And you must lend me your 
 nvention, for my heart and brain seem to me going 
 rild." 
 
 Two hours after, with a pair of loaded pistols in my 
 reast, we went to the chamber of the host, and bound 
 
WIGWAM VERSUS ALMACK S. 
 
 41 
 
 him and his wife to the posts of their beds. There 
 was but one man about the house, the hostler, and we 
 had made him intoxicated with our travelling flask of 
 brandy. Lord A and his daughter were still sit 
 ting up, and she, at her chamber window, was watch 
 ing the just risen moon, over which the clouds were 
 drifting very rapidly. Our business was, now, only 
 with them, as, in their footman, my companion had 
 found an attached creature, who remembered him, and 
 willingly agreed to offer no interruption. 
 
 After taking a pull at the brandy-flask myself (for, 
 in spite of my blackened face and the slouched hat of 
 the hostler, I required some fortification of the mus 
 cles of my face before doing violence to an English 
 nobleman), I opened the door of the chamber which 
 must be passed to gain access to that of Lady Meli- 
 
 cent. It was Lord A s sleeping-room, and, though 
 
 the light was extinguished, I could see that he was 
 still up, and sitting at the window. Turning my lan 
 tern inward, I entered the room and set it down, and, 
 
 to my relief, Lord A soliloquized in English, that 
 
 it was the host with a hint that it was time to go to 
 bed. My friend was at the door, according to my ar- ! 
 rangement, ready to assist me should I find any diffi 
 culty; but, from the dread of premature discovery of ! 
 the person, he was to let me manage it alone if pos- 
 sible. 
 
 Lord A sat unsuspectingly in his chair, with 
 
 his head turned half way over his shoulders to see why 
 the officious host did not depart. I sprung suddenly 
 upon him, drew him backward and threw him on his \ 
 face, and, with my haud over his mouth, threatened , 
 
 him with death, in my choicest Italian, if he did not 
 remain passive till his portmanteau had been looked 
 into. I thought he might submit, with the idea that 
 it was only a robbery, and so it proved. He allowed 
 me, after a short struggle, to tie his hands behind him, 
 and march him down to his carriage, before the muz 
 zle of my pistol. The hostelry was still as death, and, 
 shutting his carriage door upon his lordship, I mount 
 ed guard. 
 
 The night seemed to me very long, but morning 
 dawned, and, with the earliest gray, the postillions 
 came knocking at the outer door of the locanda. My 
 friend went out to them, while I marched back Lord 
 
 A to his chamber, and, by immense bribing, the 
 
 horses were all put to our carriage a half hour after, 
 and the outraged nobleman was left without the means 
 of pursuit till their return. We reached Florence iu 
 safety, and pushed on immediately to Leghorn, where 
 we took the steamer for Marseilles and eluded arrest, 
 very much to my most agreeable surprise. 
 
 By a Providence that does not always indulge mor 
 tals with removing those they wish in another world, 
 
 Lord S has lately been freed from his harrowing 
 
 chain by the death of his so-called lady; and, having 
 re-married Lady Melicent, their happiness is renewed 
 and perfect. In his letter to me, announcing it, he 
 gives me liberty to tell the story, as the secret was di 
 vulged to Lord A on the day of his second nup 
 tials. He said nothing, however, of his lordship s 
 forgiveness for my rude handling of his person, and, 
 in ceasing to be considered a brigand, possibly I am 
 ; responsible as a gentleman. 
 
 WIGWAM versus ALMACK S, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 IN one of the years not long since passed to your 
 account and mine by the recording angel, gentle read 
 er, I was taking my fill of a delicious American June, 
 as Ducrow takes his bottle of wine, on the back of a 
 beloved horse. In the expressive language of the 
 raftsmen on the streams of the West, I was " follow 
 ing" the Chemung a river whose wild and peculiar 
 loveliness is destined to be told in undying song, when 
 ever America can find leisure to look up her poets. 
 Such bathing of the feet of precipices, such kissing 
 of flowery slopes, such winding in and out of the bo 
 soms of round meadows, such frowning amid Broken 
 rocks, and smiling through smooth valleys, you would 
 never believe could go in this out-of-doors world, 
 unvisited and uncelebrated. 
 
 Not far from the ruins of a fortification, said to have 
 been built by the Spaniards before the settlement of 
 New-England by the English, the road along the Che 
 mung dwindles into a mere ledge at the foot of a 
 precipice, the river wearing into the rock at this spot j 
 by a black and deep eddy. At the height of your lip ! 
 above the carriage track, there gushes from the rock 
 a stream of the size and steady clearness of a glass 
 rod, and all around it in the small rocky lap which it ; 
 has worn away, there grows a bed of fragrant mint, 
 kept by the shade and moisture of a perpetual green, 
 bright as emerald. Here stops every traveller who is 
 not upon an errand of life or death, and while his 
 horse stands up to his fetlocks in the river, he parts 
 the dewy stems of the mint, and drinks, for once in \ 
 his life, like a fay or a poet. It is one of those ex 
 quisite spots which paint their own picture insensibly 
 
 in the memory, even while you look on them, natural 
 " Daguerrotypes," as it were ; and you are surprised, 
 years afterward, to find yourself remembering every 
 leaf and stone, and the song of every bird that sung 
 in the pine-trees overhead while you were watching 
 the curve of the spring-leap. As I said before, it will 
 be sung and celebrated, when America sits down weary 
 with her first century of toil, and calls for her min 
 strels, now toiling with her in the fields. 
 
 Within a mile of this spot, to which I had been 
 looking forward with delight for some hours, I over 
 took a horseman. Before coming up with him I had 
 at once decided he was an Indian. His relaxed limbs 
 swaying to every motion of his horse with the grace 
 and ease of a wreath of smoke, his neck and shoulders 
 so cleanly shaped, and a certain watchful look about 
 his ears which I cannot define, but which you see in 
 a spirited horse were infallible marks of the race 
 whom we have driven from the fair land of our inde 
 pendence. He was mounted upon a small black horse 
 of the breed commonly called Indian ponies, now 
 not very common so near the Atlantic and rode with 
 a slack rein and air, I thought, rather more dispirited 
 than indolent. 
 
 The kind of morning I have described, is, as every 
 one must remember, of a sweetness so communicative 
 that one would think two birds could scarce meet on 
 the wing without exchanging a carol; and I involun 
 tarily raised my bridle after a minute s study of the 
 traveller before me, and in a brief gallop was at his 
 side. With the sound of my horse s feet, however, 
 he changed in all his characteristics to another man 
 sat erect in his saddle, and assumed the earnest air of 
 an American who never rides but upon some errand ; 
 
42 
 
 WIGWAM VERSUS ALMACK S. 
 
 and, on his giving me back my " good morning" in 
 the unexceptionable accent of the country, 1 presum 
 ed I had mistaken my man. He was dark, but not 
 darker than a Spaniard, of features singularly hand 
 some and regular, dressed with no peculiarity except 
 an otter-skin cap of a silky and golden-colored fur, too j 
 expensive and rare for any but a fanciful, as well as a |j 
 luxurious purchaser. A slight wave in the black hair 
 which escaped from it, and fell back from his temples, 
 confirmed me in the conviction that his blood was of 
 European origin. 
 
 We rode on together with some indifferent conver 
 sation, till we arrived at the spring-leap T have de 
 scribed, and here my companion, throwing his right 
 leg over the neck of his poney, jumped to the ground 
 very actively, and applying his lips to the spring, drank 
 a free draught. His horse seemed to know the spot, 
 and, with the reins on his neck, trotted on to a shal 
 lower ledge in the river and stood with the water to 
 his knees, and his quick eye turned on his master with 
 an expressive look of satisfaction. 
 
 "You have been here before," I said, tying my 
 less disciplined horse to the branch of an overhanging 
 shrub. 
 
 " Yes often !" was his reply, with a tone so quick 
 and rude, however, that, but for the softening quality j 
 of the day, I should have abandoned there all thought j 
 of further acquaintance. 
 
 I took a small valise from the pommel of my sad 
 dle, and while my fellow-traveller sat on the rock-side 
 looking moodily into the river, I drew forth a flask of I 
 wins and a leathern cup, a cold pigeon wrapped in a 
 cool cabbage leaf, the bigger end of a large loaf, and i 
 as much salt as could be tied up in the cup of a large | 
 water-lily a set-out of provender which owed its 
 daintiness to the fair hands of my hostess of the night 
 before. 
 
 The stranger s first resemblance to an Indian had : 
 probably given a color to my thoughts, for, as I hand 
 ed him a cup of wine, I said, "I wish the Shawanee 
 chief to whose tribe this valley belongs, were here to 
 get a cup of my wine." 
 
 The young man sprang to his feet with a sudden 
 flash through his eyes, and while he looked at me, he 
 seemed to stand taller than, from my previous impres 
 sion of his height, I should have thought possible. 
 Surprised as I was at the effect of my remark, I did 
 not withdraw the cup, and with a moment s searching 
 look into my face, he changed his attitude, begged 
 pardon rather confusedly, and, draining the cup, said 
 with a faint smile, " The Shawanee chief thanks 
 you !" 
 
 " Do you know the price of land in the valley?" I 
 asked, handing him a slice of bread with the half 
 pigeon upon it, and beginning to think it was best to 
 stick to commonplace subjects with a stranger. 
 
 " Yes !" he said, his brow clouding over again. " It 
 was bought from the Shawanee chief you speak of for 
 a string of beads the acre. The tribe had their burial- 
 place on the Susquehannah, some twenty miles from 
 this, and they cared little about a strip of a valley 
 which, now, I would rather have for my inheritance 
 than the fortune of any white man in the land." 
 
 " Throw in the landlord s daughter at the village 
 below," said I, " and I would take it before any half- 
 dozen of the German principalities. Have you heard 
 the news of her inheritance ?" 
 
 Another moody look and a very crisp " Yes," put 
 a stop to all desire on my part to make further advan 
 ces in my companion s acquaintance. Gathering my 
 pigeon bones together, therefore, and putting them on 
 the top of a stone where they would be seen by the j 
 first "lucky dog" that passed, flinging my emptied 
 water-lily on the river, and strappingiip cup and flask 
 once more in my valise, I mounted, and with a crusty 
 good morning, set off at a hand-gallop down the river. 
 
 My last unsuccessful topic was, at the time I write 
 of, the subject of conversation all through the neigh 
 borhood of the village toward which I was travelling. 
 The most old-fashioned and comfortable inn on the 
 Susquehannah, or Chemung, was kept at the junction 
 of these two noble rivers, by a certain Robert Plymton, 
 who had "one fair daughter and no more." He was 
 a plain farmer of Connecticut, who had married the 
 grand-daughter of an English emigrant, and got, with 
 his wife, a chest of old papers, which he thought had 
 better be used to mend a broken pane or wrap up gro 
 ceries, but which his wife, on her death-bed, told him 
 " might turn out worth something." With this slen 
 der thread of expectation, he had kept the little chest 
 under his bed, thinking of it perhaps once a year, and 
 satisfying his daughter s inquisitive queries with a 
 shake of his head, and something about " her poor 
 mother s tantrums," concluding usually with some 
 reminder to keep the parlor in order, or mind her 
 housekeeping. Ruth Plymton had had some sixteen 
 " winters schooling," and was known to be much 
 " smarter" (Anglice, cleverer), than was quite neces 
 sary for the fulfilment of her manifold duties. Since 
 twelve years of age (the period of her mother s death) 
 she had officiated with more and more success as bar 
 maid and host s daughter to the most frequented inn 
 of the village, till now, at eighteen, she was the only 
 ostensible keeper of the inn, the old man usually be 
 ing absent in the fields with his men, or embarking his 
 grain in an " ark," to take advantage of the first 
 freshet. She was civil to all comers, but her manner 
 was such as to make it perfectly plain even to the 
 rudest raftsman and hunter, that the highest respect 
 they knew how to render to a woman was her due. 
 She was rather unpopular with the girls of the village 
 from what they called her pride and "keeping to her 
 self," but the truth was, that the cheap editions of 
 romances which Ruth took instead of money for the 
 lodging of the itinerant book-pedlars, were more 
 agreeable companions to her than the girls of the vil 
 lage ; and the long summer forenoons, and half the 
 long winter nights, were little enough for the busy 
 young hostess, who, seated on her bed, devoured tales 
 of high-life which harmonized with some secret long 
 ing in her breast she knew not and scarce thought 
 of asking herself why. 
 
 I had been twice at Athens (by this classical name 
 is known the village I speak of), and each time had 
 prolonged my stay at Plymton s inn for a day longer 
 than my horse or my repose strictly exacted. The 
 scenery at the junction is magnificent, but it was 
 scarce that. And I cannot say that it, was altogther 
 admiration of the host s daughter; for though I break 
 fasted late for the sake of having a clean parlor while 
 I ate my broiled chicken, and, having been once to 
 Italy, Miss Plymton liked to pour out my tea and hear 
 me talk of St. Peter s and the Carnival, yet there was 
 that marked rctenu and decision in her manner that 
 made me feel quite too much like a culprit at school, 
 and large and black as her eyes were, and light and 
 airy as were all her motions, 1 mixed up with my pro 
 pensity for her society, a sort of dislike. In short, I 
 never felt a tenderness for a woman who could "queen 
 it" so easily, and I went heart-whole on my journey, 
 though always with a high respect for Ruth Plymton, 
 and a pleasant remembrance of her conversation. 
 
 The story which 1 had heard farther up the river 
 was, briefly, that there had arrived at Athens an Eng 
 lishman, who had found in Miss Ruth Plymton, the 
 last surviving descendant of the family of her mother; 
 that she was the heiress to a large fortune, if the 
 proof of her descent were complete, and that the con 
 tents of the little chest had been the subject of a 
 week s hard study by the stranger, who had departed 
 after a vain attempt to persuade old Plymton to ac 
 company him to England with his daughter. This 
 
WIGWAM VERSUS ALMACK S. 
 
 43 
 
 was the rumor, the allusion to which had been re 
 ceived with such repulsive coldness by my dark com 
 panion at the spring-leap. 
 
 America is so much of an asylum for despairing 
 younger sons and the proud and starving branches of 
 great families, that a discovery of heirs to property 
 among people of very inferior condition, is by no 
 means uncommon. It is a species of romance in real 
 life, however, which we never believe upon hearsay, 
 and I rode on to the village, expecting my usual re 
 ception by the fair damsel of the inn. The old sign 
 still hung askew as I approached, and the pillars of 
 the old wooden "stoop" or portico, were as much off 
 their perpendicular as before, and true to my augury, 
 out stepped my fair acquaintance at the sound of my 
 horse s feet, and called to Reuben the ostler, and gave 
 me an unchanged welcome. The old man was down 
 at the river side, and the key of the grated bar hung 
 at the hostess s girdle, and with these signs of times 
 as they were, my belief in the marvellous tale vanish 
 ed into thin air. 
 
 " So you are not gone to England to take posses 
 sion ?" I said. 
 
 Her serious " No !" unsoftened by any other re 
 mark, put a stop to the subject again, and taking my 
 self to task for having been all day stumbling on 
 mal-apropos subjects, I asked to be shown to my room, 
 and spent the hour or two before dinner in watching 
 the chickens from the window, and wondering a great 
 deal as to the " whereabouts" of my friend in the 
 otter-skin cap. 
 
 The evening of that day was unusually warm, and 
 I strolled down to the bank of the Susquehannah, to 
 bathe. The moon was nearly full and half way to the 
 zenith, and between the lingering sunset and the clear 
 splendor of the moonlight, the dusk of the " folding 
 hour" was forgotten, and the night went on almost as 
 radiant as day. I swam across the river, delighting 
 myself with the gold rims of the ripples before my 
 breast, and was within a yard or two of the shore on 
 my return, when I heard a woman s voice approaching 
 in earnest conversation. I shot forward and drew my 
 self in beneath a large clump of alders, and with only 
 my head out of water, lay in perfect concealment. 
 
 " You are not just, Shahatan !" were the first words 
 I distinguished, in a voice I immediately recognised 
 as that of my fair hostess. "You are not just. As 
 far as I know myself I love you better than any one I 
 ever saw but" 
 
 As she hesitated, the deep low voice of my com 
 panion at the spring-leap, uttered in a suppressed and 
 impatient guttural, "But what?" He stood still with 
 his back to the moon, and while the light fell full on 
 her face, she withdrew her arm from his and went on. 
 " I was going to say that I do not yet know myself 
 or the world sufficiently to decide that I shall always 
 love you. I would not be too hasty in so important a 
 thins*, Shahatan ! We have talked of it before, and 
 therefore I may say to you, now, that the prejudices 
 of my father and all my friends are against it." 
 
 " My blood" interrupted the young man, with a 
 movement of impatience. 
 
 She laid her hand on his arm. " Stay ! the objec 
 tion is not mine. Your Spanish mother, besides 
 shows more in your look and features than the blood 
 of your father. But it would still be said I married 
 an Indian, and though I care little for what the village 
 would say, yet I must be certain that I shall love you 
 with all my heart and till death, before I set my face 
 with yours against the prejudices of every white man 
 and woman in my native land ! You have urged me 
 for my secret, and there it is. I feel relieved to have 
 unburthened my heart of it." 
 
 41 That secret is but a summer old !" said he, half 
 turning on his heel, and looking from her upon the 
 moon s path across the river. 
 
 " Shame !" she replied ; " you know that long be 
 fore this news came, I talked with you constantly of 
 other lands, and of my irresistible desire to see the 
 people of great cities, and satisfy myself whether I 
 was like them. That curiosity, Shahatan, is, I fear, 
 even stronger than my love, or at least, it is more im 
 patient ; and now that I have the opportunity fallen to 
 me like a star out of the sky, shall I not go ? I must. 
 Indeed I must." 
 
 The lover felt that all had been said, or was too 
 proud to answer, for they fell into the path again, side 
 by side, in silence, and at a slow step were soon out of 
 my sight and hearing. I emerged from my compul 
 sory hiding-place wiser than I went in, dressed and 
 I strolled back to the village, and finding the old land- 
 j lord smoking his pipe alone under the portico, I light- 
 I ed a cigar, and sat down to pick his brains of the little 
 information I wanted to fill out the story. 
 
 I took my leave of Athens on the following morn 
 ing, paying my bill duly to Miss Plymton, from whom 
 i I requested a receipt in writing, for I foresaw without 
 | any very sagacious augury beside what the old man 
 told me, that it might be an amusing document by- 
 and-by. You shall judge by the sequel of the story, 
 i dear reader, whether you would like it in your book 
 of autographs. 
 
 Not long after the adventure described in the pre 
 ceding chapter, I embarked for a ramble in Europe. 
 Among the newspapers which were lying about in the 
 cabin of the packet, was one which contained this 
 paragraph, extracted from a New-Orleans Gazette. 
 The American reader will at once remember it : 
 
 "Extraordinary attachment to savage life. The of 
 ficers at Fort (one of the most distant outposts 
 
 of human habitation in the west), extended their hos 
 pitality lately to one of the young proteges of govern 
 ment, a young Shawanee chief, who has been educated 
 at public expense for the purpose of aiding in the 
 civilization of his tribe. This youth, the son of a 
 Shawanee chief by a Spanish mother, was put to a 
 preparatory school in a small village on the Susque 
 hannah, and subsequently was graduated at 
 
 College with the first honors of his class. He had 
 become a most accomplished gentleman, was appa 
 rently fond of society, and, except in a scarce distin 
 guishable tinge of copper color in his skin, retained 
 no trace of his savage origin. Singular to relate, 
 however, he disappeared suddenly from the fort, leav 
 ing behind him the clothes in which he had arrived, 
 and several articles of a gentleman s toilet ; and as the 
 sentry on duty was passed at dawn of the same day by 
 a mounted Indian in the usual savage dress, who gave 
 the pass-word in issuing from the gate, it is presumed 
 it was no other than the young Shahatan, and that he 
 has joined his tribe, who were removed some years 
 since beyond the Mississippi." 
 
 The reader will agree with me that I possessed the 
 ! key to the mystery. 
 
 As no one thinks of the thread that disappears in an 
 ] intricate embroidery till it comes out again on the 
 surface, I was too busy in weaving my own less inter- 
 ! esting woof of adventure for the two years following, 
 to give Shahatan and his love even a passing thought. 
 On a summer s night in 18 , however, I found my 
 self on a banquette at an Almack s ball, seated beside 
 a friend who, since we had met last at Almack s, had 
 given up the white rose of girlhood for the diamonds 
 of the dame, timidity and blushes for self-possession 
 and serene sweetness, dancing for conversation, and 
 the promise of beautiful and admired seventeen for the 
 perfection of more lovely and adorable twenty-two. 
 She was there as chaperon to a younger sister, and it 
 was delightful in that whirl of giddy motion, and more 
 giddy thought, to sit beside a tranquil and unfevered 
 
44 
 
 WIGWAM VERSUS ALMACK S. 
 
 mind and talk with her of what was passing, without 
 either bewilderment or effort. 
 
 " What is it," she said, " that constitutes aristocratic 
 beauty ? for it is often remarked that it is seen no 
 where in such perfection as at Almack s; yet, I have 
 for a half-hour looked in vain among these handsome 
 faces for a regular profile, or even a perfect figure. It 
 is not symmetry, surely, that gives a look of high 
 breeding nor regularity of feature." 
 
 44 If you will take a leaf out of a traveller s book," 
 I replied, "we may at least have the advantage of 
 a comparison. I remember recording, when travel 
 ling in the East, that for months I had not seen an 
 irregular nose or forehead in a female face ; and, al 
 most universally, the mouth and chin of the Orientals 
 are, as well as the upper features, of the most classic 
 correctness. Yet where, in civilized countries, do 
 women look lower-born or more degraded?" 
 
 "Then it is not in the features," said my friend. 
 
 44 No, nor in the figure, strictly," I went on to say, 
 44 for the French and Italian women (vide the same 
 book ofmems), are generally remarkable for shape and 
 fine contour of limb, and the French are, we all know 
 (begging your pardon), much better dancers, and more 
 graceful in their movements, than all other nations. 
 Yet what is more rare than a thorough-bred looking 
 Frenchwoman ?" 
 
 41 We are coming to a conclusion very fast," she 
 said, smiling. " Perhaps we shall find the great secret 
 in delicacy of skin, after all." 
 
 44 Not unless you will agree that Broadway in New- 
 York is the l pralo fiarito, of aristocratic beauty for 
 nowhere on the face of the earth do you see such 
 complexions. Yet, my fair countrywomen stoop too 
 much, and are rather too dressy in their tastes to con 
 vey very generally the impression of high birth." 
 
 44 Stay!" interrupted my companion, laying her 
 hand on my arm with a look of more meaning than I 
 quite understood ; "before you commit yourself far 
 ther on that point, look at this tall girl coming up the 
 floor, and tell me what you think of her, apropos to 
 the subject." 
 
 44 Why, that she is the very forth-shadowing of 
 noble parentage," I replied, " in step, air, form every 
 thing. But surely the face is familiar to me." 
 
 " It is the Miss Trevanion whom you said you had 
 never met. Yet she is an American, and with such a 
 fortune as hers, I wonder you should not have heard 
 of her at least." 
 
 44 Miss Trevanion ! I never knew anybody of the 
 name, I am perfectly sure yet that face I have seen 
 before, and I would stake my life I have known the 
 lady, and not casually either." 
 
 My eyes were riveted to the beautiful woman who 
 now sailed past with a grace and stateliness that were 
 the subject of universal admiration, and I eagerly at 
 tempted to catch her eye ; but on the other side of 
 her walked one of the most agreeable flatterers of the 
 hour, and the crowd prevented my approaching her, 
 even if I had solved the mystery so far as to know in 
 what terms to address her. Yet it was marvellous 
 that I could ever have seen such beauty and forgotten 
 the when and where, or that such fine and "unusually 
 lustrous eyes could ever have shone on me without 
 inscribing well in my memory their 4l whereabout" 
 and history. 
 
 44 Well!" said my friend, "are you making out 
 your theory, or are you 4 struck home with the first 
 impression, like many another dancer here to-night?" 
 
 " Pardon me ! I shall find out presently, who" Miss 
 Trevanion is but, meantime, revenous. I will tell 
 you where I think lies the secret of the aristocratic 
 beauty of England. It is in the lofty maintien of the 
 h#ad and bust the proud carriage; if you remark, in 
 all these women the head set back, the chest eleva 
 ted and expanded, and the whole port and expression, 
 
 that of pride and conscious superiority. This, mind 
 you, though the result of qualities in the character, is 
 not the fcork of a day, nor perhaps of a single gener 
 ation. The effect of expanding the breast and pre 
 serving the back straight, and the posture generally 
 erect, is the high health and consequent beauty of 
 those portions of the frame ; and the physical advan 
 tage, handed down with the pride which produced it, 
 from mother to child, the race gradually has become 
 perfect in those points, and the look of pride and high- 
 bearing is now easy, natural, and unconscious. Glance 
 your eye around and you will see that there is not a 
 defective bust, and hardly a head ill set on, in the 
 room. In an assembly in any other part of the world, 
 to find a perfect bust with a gracefully carried head, is 
 as difficult as here to find the exception." 
 
 41 What a proud race you make us out, to be sure," 
 said my companion, rather dissentingly. 
 
 44 And so you are, eminently and emphatically 
 proud," I replied. "What English family does not 
 revolt from any proposition of marriage from a for 
 eigner ? For an English girl to marry a Frenchman 
 or an Italian, a German or a Russian, Greek, Turk, or 
 Spaniard, is to forfeit a certain degree of respectabili 
 ty, let the match be as brilliant as it may. The first 
 feeling on hearing of it is against the girl s sense of 
 delicacy. It extends to everything else. Your sol 
 diers, your sailors, your tradesmen, your gentlemen, 
 your common people, and your nobles, are all (who 
 ever doubted it, you are mentally asking) out of all 
 comparison better than the same ranks and professions 
 in any other country. John Bull is literally surprised 
 if any one doubts this nay, he does not believe that 
 any one does doubt it. Yet you call the Americans 
 ridiculously vain because they believe their institutions 
 better than yours, that their ships fight as well, their 
 women are as fair, and their men as gentlemanly aa 
 any in the world. The 4 vanity of the French, who 
 believe in themselves, just as the English do, only in a 
 less blind entireness of self-glorification, is a common 
 theme of ridicule in English newspapers ; and the 
 French and the Americans, for a twentieth part of 
 English intolerance and self-exaggeration, are written 
 down daily by the English, as the two vainest nations 
 on earth." 
 
 41 Stop!" said my fair listener, who was beginning 
 to smile at my digression from female beauty to na 
 tional pride, "let me make a distinction there. As the 
 English and French are quite indifferent to the opin 
 ion of other nations on these points, and not at all 
 shaken in their self-admiration by foreign incredulity, 
 theirs may fairly be dignified by the name of pride. 
 But what shall I say of the Americans, who are in a 
 perpetual fever at the ridicule of English newspapers, 
 and who receive, I understand, with a general convul 
 sion throughout the states, the least slur in a review, 
 or the smallest expression of disparagement in a tory 
 newspaper. This is not pride, but vanity." 
 
 44 1 atn hit, I grant you. A home thrust that I wish 
 I could foil. But here comes Miss Trevanion, again, 
 and I must make her out, or smother of curiosity. I 
 leave you a victor." 
 
 The drawing of the cord which encloses the dan 
 cers, narrowed the path of the promenaders so effect 
 ually, that I could easily take my stand in such a 
 position that Miss Trevanion could not pass without 
 seeing me. With my back to one of the slight pil 
 lars of the orchestra, I stood facing her as she came 
 down the room ; and within a foot or two of my po- 
 ition, yet with several persons between us, her eye 
 I for the first time rested on me. There was a sudden 
 flush, a look of embarrassed but momentary curiosity, 
 and the beautiful features cleared up, and I saw, with 
 vexatious mortification, that she had the advantage 
 of me, and was even pleased to remember where we 
 had met. She held out her hand the next moment, 
 
WIGWAM VERSUS ALMACK S. 
 
 but evidently understood my reserve, for, with a mis 
 chievous compression ol the lips, she leaned over, and 
 said in a voice intended only Cor my ear, "Reuben! 
 take the gentleman s horse !" 
 
 My sensations were very much those of the Irish 
 man who fell into a pit in a dark night, and catching 
 a straggling root in his descent, hung suspended by 
 incredible exertion and strength of arm till morning, 
 when daylight disclosed the bottom, at just one inch 
 below the points of his toes. So easy seemed the 
 solution after it was discovered. 
 
 Mis 
 
 Trevanion (ci-devant Plymton) took my arm. 
 Her companion was engaged to dance. Our meeting 
 at Almack s was certainlv one of the last events either 
 could have expected when we parted but Almack s 
 is not the place to express strong emotions. We 
 walked leisurely down the sides of the quadrilles to 
 the tea-room, and between her bows and greetings to 
 her acquaintances, she put me au coaranl of her 
 movements for the last two years Miss Trevanion 
 being the name she had inherited with the fortune 
 from her mother s family, and her mother s high but 
 distant connexions having recognised and taken her 
 by the hand in England. She had come abroad with 
 the representative of her country, who had been at 
 the trouble to see her installed in her rights, and had 
 but lately left her on his return to America. A house 
 in May Fair, and a chaperon in the shape of a card- 
 playing and aristocratic aunt, were the other principal 
 points in her parenthetical narration. Her communi 
 cativeness, of course, was very gracious, and indeed 
 her whole manner was softened and mellowed down, 
 from the sharpness and hauteur of Miss Plymton. 
 Prosperity had improved even her voice. 
 
 As she bent over her tea, in the ante-room, I could 
 not but remark how beautiful she was by the change 
 usually wrought by the soft moisture of the English 
 air, on persons from dry climates Americans particu 
 larly. That filling out and rounding of the features, 
 and renewing and freshening of the skin, becoming 
 and improving to all, had to her been like Juno s 
 bath. Then who does not know the miracles of 
 dress? A circlet of diamonds whose "water" was 
 light itself, followed the fine bend on either side back 
 ward from her brows, supporting, at the parting of her 
 hair, one large emerald. And on what neck (ay 
 even of age) is not a diamond necklace beautiful ? 
 Miss Trevanion was superb. 
 
 The house in Grosvenor Place, at which I knocked 
 the next morning, 1 well remembered as one of the 
 
 most elegant and sumptuous in London. Lady L 
 
 had ruined herself in completing and furnishing it, 
 and her parties "in my time" were called, by the most 
 apathetic blase, truly delightful. . 
 
 " I bought this house of Lady L ," said Miss 
 
 Trevanion, as we sat down to breakfast, " with all its 
 furniture, pictures, books, incumbrances, and trifles, 
 even to the horses in the stables, and the coachman 
 in his wig ; for I had too many things to learn, to 
 study furniture and appointments, and in this very 
 short life, time is sadly wasted in beginnings. People 
 are for ever gelling ready to live. What think you ? 
 Is it not true in everything?" 
 
 " Not in love, certainly." 
 
 "Ah! very true!" And she became suddenly 
 thoughtful, and for some minutes sipped her coffee in 
 silence. I did not interrupt it, for I was thinking of 
 Shahatan, and our thoughts very possibly were on the 
 same long journey. 
 
 " You are quite right," said I, looking round at the 
 exquisitely-furnished room in which we were break- 
 lasting, "you have bought these things at their intrin 
 sic value, and you have all Lady L s taste, trouble, 
 
 and vexatiou for twenty years, thrown into the bar 
 
 gain. It is a matter of a lifetime to complete a house 
 like this, and just as it is all done, Lady L re 
 tires, an old woman, and you come all the way from a 
 country-inn on the Susquehannah to enjoy it. What 
 a whimsical world we live in !" 
 
 "Yes!" she said, in a sort of soliloquizing tone, 
 " I do enjoy it. It is a delightful sensation to take a 
 long stride at once in the art of life to have lived for 
 years believing that the wants you felt could only be 
 supplied in fairy-land, and suddenly to change your 
 sphere, and discover that not only these wants, but a 
 thousand others, more unreasonable, and more im 
 aginary, had been the subject of human ingenuity 
 and talent, till those who live in luxury have no wants 
 that science and chymistry and mechanics have left 
 no nerve in the human system, no recess in human 
 sense, unquestioned of its desire, and that every de 
 sire is supplied ! What mistaken ideas most people 
 have of luxury! They fancy the senses of the rich 
 are over-pampered, that their zest of pleasure is al 
 ways dull with too much gratification, that their 
 health is ruined with excess, and their tempers spoiled 
 with ease and subserviency. It is a picture drawn by 
 the poets in times when money could buy nothing but 
 excess, and when those who were prodigal could only 
 be gaudy and intemperate. It was necessary to prac 
 tise upon the reverse, too ; and hence all the world is 
 convinced of the superior happiness of the plough 
 man, the absolute necessity of early rising and coarse 
 food to health, and the pride that must come with the 
 flaunting of silk and satin." 
 
 I could not but smile at this cool upset of all the 
 received philosophy of the poets. 
 
 "You laugh," she continued, "but is it not true 
 that in England, at this moment, luxury is the sci 
 ence of keeping up the zest of the senses rather than 
 of pampering them that the children of the wealthy 
 are the healthiest and fairest, and the sons of the aris 
 tocracy are the most athletic and rational, as well as 
 the most carefully nurtured and expensive of all clas 
 ses that the most costly dinners are the most digesti 
 ble, the most expensive wines the least injurious, the 
 most sumptuous houses the best ventilated and whole 
 some, and the most aristocratic habits of life the most 
 conducive to the preservation of the constitution and 
 consequent long life. There will be excesses, of 
 course, in all spheres, but is not this true ?" 
 
 " I am wondering how so gay a life as yours could 
 furnish such very grave reflections." 
 
 " Pshaw ! I am the very person to make them. My 
 aunt (who, by-the-way, never rises till four in the af 
 ternoon) has always lived in this sublimated sphere, 
 and takes all these luxuries to be matters of course, 
 as much as I take them to be miracles. She thinks 
 a good cook as natural a circumstance as a fine tree, 
 and would be as much surprised and shocked at the 
 absence of wax candles, as she would at the going out 
 of the stars. She talks as if good dentists, good mil 
 liners, opera-singers, perfumers, etc., were the com 
 mon supply of nature, like dew and sunshine to the 
 flowers. My surprise and delight amuse her, as the 
 child s wonder at the moon amuses the nurse." 
 
 "Yet you call this dull unconsciousness the per 
 fection of civilized life." 
 
 "I think my aunt altogether is not a bad specimen 
 of it, certainly. You have seen her, I think." 
 "Frequently." 
 
 "Well, you will allow that she is still a very haud- 
 I some woman. She is past fifty, and has every fac- 
 I ulty in perfect preservation; an erect figure, undimin- 
 j ished delicacy and quickness in all her senses and 
 tastes, and is still an ornament to society, and an at- 
 i tractive person in appearance and conversation. Con- 
 | trast her (and she is but one of a class) with the 
 j women past fifty in the middle and lower walks of life 
 I in America. At that age, with us, they are old 
 
46 
 
 WIGWAM VERSUS ALMACK S. 
 
 Avomen in the commonest acceptation of the term. 
 Their teeth are gone or defective from neglect, their 
 faces are wrinkled, their backs bent, ther feet enlarged, 
 their voices cracked, their senses impaired, their rel 
 ish in the joys of the young entirely gone by. What 
 makes the difference ? Costly care. The physician 
 has watched over her health at a guinea a visit. The 
 dentist has examined her teeth at twenty guineas a 
 year. Expensive annual visits to the seaside have re 
 newed her skin. The friction of the weary hands of 
 her maid has kept down the swelling of her feet and 
 preserved their delicacy of shape. Close and open 
 carriages at will, have given her daily exercise, either 
 protected from the damp, or refreshed with the fine 
 sir of the country. A good cook has kept her diges 
 tion untaxed, and good wines have invigorated with 
 out poisoning her constitution." 
 
 " This is taking very unusual care of oneself, how 
 ever." 
 
 " Not at all. My aunt gives it no more thought 
 than the drawing on of her glove. It is another ad 
 vantage of wealth, too, that your physician and den 
 tist are distinguished persons who meet you in society, 
 and call on you unprofessionally, see when they are 
 needed, and detect the approach of disease before 
 you are aware of it yourself. My aunt, though nat 
 urally delicate, has never been ill. She was watched 
 in childhood with great cost and pains, and, with the 
 habit of common caution herself, she is taken such 
 care of by her physician and servants, that nothing 
 but some extraordinary fatality could bring disease 
 near her." 
 
 " Blessed are the rich, by your showing." 
 
 " Why, the beatitudes were not written in our times. 
 If long life, prolonged youth and beauty, and almost 
 perennial health, are blessings, certainly, now-a-days, 
 blessed are the rich." 
 
 "But is there no drawback to all this? Where 
 people have surrounded themselves with such costly 
 and indispensable luxuries, are they not made selfish 
 by the necessity of preserving them? Would any 
 exigence of hospitality, for instance, induce your aunt 
 to give up her bed, and the comforts of her own room, 
 to a stranger?" 
 
 " Oh dear, no !" 
 
 "Would she eat her dinner cold for the sake of 
 listening to an appeal to her charity ?" 
 
 "How can you fancy such a thing?" 
 
 "Would she take a wet and dirty, but perishing 
 beggar-woman into her chariot on her way to a din 
 ner-party, to save her from dying by the roadside?" 
 
 "Um why, I fear she would be very nearsighted 
 till she got fairly by." 
 
 " Yet these are charities that require no great ef 
 fort in those whose chambers are less costly, whose 
 stomachs are less carefully watched, and whose car 
 riages and dresses are of a plainer fashion." 
 
 "Very true!" 
 
 " So far, then, blessed are the poor! But is not 
 the heart slower in all its sympathies among the rich? 
 Are not friends chosen and discarded, because their 
 friendship is convenient or the contrary ? Are not 
 many worthy people ineligible acquaintances, many 
 near relations unwelcome visitors, because they are 
 out of keeping with these costly circumstances, or 
 involve some sacrifice of personal luxury ? Are not 
 people, who would not preserve their circle choice 
 and aristocratic, obliged to inflict cruel insults on 
 sensitive minds, to slight, to repulse, to neglect, to 
 equivocate and play the unfeeling and ungrateful, at 
 the same time that to their superiors they must often 
 sacrifice dignity, and contrive, and flatter, and de 
 ceive all to preserve the magic charm of the life you 
 have painted so attractive and enviable?" 
 
 " Heigho ! it s a bad world, I believe !" said Miss 
 Trevanion, betraying by that ready sigh, that even 
 
 while drawing the attractions of high life, she had not 
 been blind to this more unfavorable side of the pic 
 ture. 
 
 " And, rather more important query still, for an 
 heiress," I said, "does not an intimate acquaintance 
 with these luxurious necessities, and the habit of 
 thinking them indispensable, make all lovers in this 
 class mercenary, and their admiration, where there is 
 wealth, subject, at least, to scrutiny and suspicion?" 
 
 A quick flush almost crimsoned Miss Trevanion s 
 face, and she fixed her eyes upon me so inquisitively 
 as to leave me in no doubt that I had inadvertently 
 touched upon a delicate subject. Embarrassed by a 
 searching look, and not seeing how I could explain 
 that 1 meant no allusion, I said hastily, " I was think 
 ing of swimming across the Susquehannah by moon 
 light." 
 
 "Puck is at the door, if you please, miss!" said 
 the butler, entering at the moment. 
 
 " Perhaps while I am putting on my riding-hat," 
 said Miss Trevanion, with a laugh, "I may discover 
 the connexion between your last two observations. It 
 certainly is not very clear at present." 
 
 I took up my hat. 
 
 "Stay you must ride with me. You shall have 
 the groom s horse, and we will go without him. I 
 hate to be chased through the park by a flying ser 
 vant one English fashion, at least, that I think un 
 comfortable. They manage it better where 1 learned 
 to ride," she added with a laugh. 
 
 "Yes, indeed! I do not know which they would 
 first starve to death in the backwoods the master for 
 his insolence in requiring the servant to follow him, 
 or the servant for being such a slave as to obey." 
 
 I never remember to have seen a more beautiful 
 animal than the highbred blood-mare on which my 
 ci-devant hostess of the Plymton inn rode through 
 the park gates, and took the serpentine path at a free 
 gallop. I was as well mounted myself as I had ever 
 been in my life, and delighted, for once, not to fret a 
 hundred yards behind ; the ambitious animal seemed 
 to have wings to his feet. 
 
 " Who ever rode such a horse as this," said my 
 companion, " without confessing the happiness of 
 riches! It is the one luxury of this new life that I 
 should find it misery to forego. Look at the eager 
 ness of his ears ! See his fine limbs as he strikes for 
 ward ! What nostrils ! What glossy shoulders ! 
 What bounding lightness of action ! Beautiful Puck ! 
 I could never live without you! What a shame to 
 nature that there are no such horses in the wilder 
 ness!" 
 
 " I remember seeing an Indian pony," said I, watch 
 ing her face for the effect of my observation, "which 
 had as many fine qualities, though of a different 
 kind at least when his master was on him." 
 
 She looked at me inquiringly. 
 
 "By-the-way. too, it was at your house on the Sus 
 quehannah," I added, "you must remember the 
 horse a black, double-jointed " 
 
 "Yes, yes! I know. I remember. Shall we 
 quicken our pace? I henr some one overtaking us, 
 and to be passed with such horses as ours were a 
 shame indeed." 
 
 We loosed our bridles and flew away like the wind; 
 but a bright tear was presently tossed from her 
 dark eyelash, and fell glittering on the dappled shoul 
 der of her horse. " Her heart is Shahatan s," thought 
 I, " whatever chance there may be that the gay hon- 
 orabJe who is at our heels may dazzle her into throw 
 ing away her hand." 
 
 Mounted on a magnificent hunter, whose powerful 
 and straightforward "leaps soon told against the lavish 
 and high action of our more showy horses, the Hon. 
 
 Charles (the gentleman who had engrossed the 
 
 attention of Miss Trevanion the night before at 
 
WIGWAM VERSUS ALMACK S. 
 
 47 
 
 Almack s) was soon beside my companion, and leaning 
 from his saddle, was taking pains to address conversa 
 tion to her in a tone not meant for my ear. As the 
 lady picked out her path with a marked preference 
 for his side of the road, I of course rode with a free 
 rein on the other, rather discontented, however, I 
 must own, to be playing Monsieur de Trop. The 
 Hon. Charles, I very well knew, was enjoying a tem 
 porary relief from the most pressing of his acquaint 
 ances by the prospect of his marrying; an heiress, and 
 in a two years gay life in London 1 had traversed his 
 threads too often to believe that he had a heart to be 
 redeemed from dissipation, or a soul to appreciate the 
 virtues of a high-minded woman. I found myself, 
 besides, without wishing if, attorney for Shahatan in 
 the case. 
 
 Observing that I " sulked," Miss Trevanion, in the 
 next round, turned her horse s .head toward the Ser 
 pentine Bridge, and we entered into Kensington Gar 
 dens. The band was playing on the other side of the 
 ha-ha, and fashionable London was divided between 
 the equestrians on the road, and the promenaders on 
 the greensward. We drew up in the thickest of the 
 crowd, and presuming that, by Miss Trevanion s tac 
 tics, I was to find some other acquaintance to chat 
 with while our horses drew breath, I spurred to a lit 
 tle distance, and sat mum in my saddle with forty or 
 fifty horsemen between me and herself. Her other 
 companion had put his horse as close by the side of 
 Puck as possible; but there were other dancers at 
 Almack s who had an eye upon the heiress, and their 
 tete-d-tetc was interrupted presently by the how-d ye- 
 do s and attentions of half a dozen of the gayest men 
 about town. After looking black at them for a mo 
 ment, Charles drew bridle, and backing out of 
 
 the press rather unceremoniously, rode to the side of 
 a lady who sat in her saddle with a mounted servant 
 behind her, separated from me by only the trunk of a 
 superb lime-tree. I was fated to see all the workings 
 of Miss Trevanion s destiny. 
 
 "You see what I endure for you!" he said, as a 
 flush came and went in his pale face. 
 
 "You are false!" was the answer. "I saw you 
 ride in your eyes fastened to hers your lips open 
 with watching for her words your horse in a foam 
 with your agitated and nervous riding. Never call 
 her a giraffe, or laugh at her again, Charles! She is 
 handsome enough to be loved for herself, and you 
 love her !" 
 
 " No, by Heaven !" 
 
 The lady made a gesture of impatience and whipped 
 her stirrup through the folds of her riding-dress till it | 
 was heard even above the tinkling triangle of the band. ; 
 
 "No !" he continued, "and you are less clever than [ 
 you think, if you interpret my excitement into love. 
 I am excited most eager in my chase after this wo 
 man. You, shall know why. But for herself good 
 heavens ! why, you have never heard her speak ! 
 She is never done wondering at silver forks, never 
 done with ecstatics about finger-glasses and pastilles. 
 She is a boor and you are silly enough to put her 
 beside yourself!" 
 
 The lady s frown softened, and she gave him her 
 whip to hold while she reimprisoned a stray ringlet. 
 
 "Keep an eye on her, while J am talking to you," j 
 he continued, " for I must stick to her like her shad 
 ow. She is full of mistrust, and if I lose her by the 
 want of attention for a single hour, that hour will cost 
 me yourself, dearest, first and most important of all, 
 and it will cost me England or my liberty for failing 
 this, I have not a chance." 
 
 " Go ! go !" said the lady, in a new and now anx 
 ious tone, touching his horse at the same time with 
 the whip he had just restored to her, "she is off! 
 Adieu !" 
 
 And with half a dozen attendants, Miss Trevanion 
 
 took the road at a gallop, while her contented rival 
 followed at a pensive amble, apparently quite content 
 to waste the time as she best might till dinner. The 
 handsome fortune-hunter watched his opportunity 
 and regained his place at Miss Trevanion s side, and 
 with an acquaintance, who was one of her self-select 
 ed troop, I kept in the rear, chatting of the opera, 
 and enjoying the movement of a horse of as free and 
 admirable action as I had ever felt communicated, 
 like inspiration, through my blood. 
 
 I was resumed as sole cavalier and attendant at 
 Hyde Park gate. 
 
 "Do you know the Baroness ?" I asked, as 
 
 we walked our horses slowly down Grosvenor Place. 
 
 "Not personally," she replied, " but I have heard 
 my aunt speak of her, and I know she is a woman of 
 most seductive manners, though said to be one of 
 
 very bad morals. But from what Mr. Charles 
 
 tells me, I fancy high play is her only vice. And 
 meantime she is received everywhere." 
 
 "I fancy," said I, "that the Hon. Charles is 
 
 good authority for the number of her vices, and beg 
 ging you, as a parting request, to make this remark 
 the key to your next month s observation, I have the 
 honor to return this fine horse to you, and make my 
 I adieux." 
 
 "But you will come to dinner! And, by-the-by, 
 I you have not explained to me what you meant by 
 j swimming across the Susquehannah, in the middle 
 
 iof your breakfast, this morning." 
 While Miss Trevanion gathered up her dress to 
 mount the steps, I told her the story which I have 
 j already told the reader, of my involuntary discovery, 
 | while lying in that moonlit river, of Shahatan s unfor- 
 j tunate passion. Violently agitated by the few words 
 i in which I conveyed it, she insisted on my entering 
 ! the house, and waiting while she recovered herself 
 sufficiently to talk to me on the subject. But I had 
 no fancy for match-making or breaking. I reiterated 
 my caution touching the intimacy of her fashionable 
 admirer with the baroness, and said a word of praise 
 of the noble savage who loved her. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 IN the autumn of the year after the events outlined 
 in the previous chapter, I received a visit at my resi 
 dence on the Susquehannah, from a friend I had never 
 before seen a mile from St. James s street a May-fair 
 man of fashion who took me in his way back from 
 Santa Fe. He stayed a few days to brush the cob 
 webs from a fishing-rod and gun which he found in 
 inglorious retirement in the lumber-room of my cot 
 tage, and, over our dinners, embellished with his trout 
 and woodcock, the relations of his adventures (com 
 pared, as everything was, with London experience ex 
 clusively) were as delightful to me as the tales of 
 Scheherezade to the calif. 
 
 "I have saved to the last," he said, pushing me the 
 ! bottle, the evening before his departure, "a bit of ro 
 mance which I stumbled over in the prairie, and I 
 | dare swear it will surprise you as much as it did me, 
 ! for I think you will remember having seen the heroine 
 at A.lmack s." 
 
 "At Almack s ?" 
 
 "You may well stare. I have been afraid to tell 
 you the story, lest you should think I drew too long 
 a bow. I certainly should never be believed in Lon 
 don." 
 
 Well the story?" 
 
 " I told you of my leaving St. Louis with a trading 
 party for Santa Fe. Our leader was a rough chap, 
 big-boned, and ill put together, but honestly fond of 
 fight, and never content with a stranger till he had 
 
48 
 
 WIGWAM VERSUS ALMACK S. 
 
 settled the question of which was the better man. He 
 refused at first to take me into his party, assuring me 
 that his exclusive services and those of his company 
 had been engaged at a high price, by another gentle 
 man. By dint of drinking juleps with him, how 
 ever, and giving him a thorough mill (for though 
 strong as a rhinoceros, he knew nothing of the sci 
 ence ), he at last elected me to the honor of his friend 
 ship, and took me into the party as one of his own 
 men. 
 
 " I bought a strong horse, and on a bright May 
 morning the party set forward, bag and baggage, the 
 leader having stolen a march upon us, however, anc 
 gone ahead with the person who hired his guidance 
 It was fine fun at first, as I have told you, to galloj 
 away over the prairie without fence or ditch, but 1 
 soon tired of the slow pace and the monotony of the 
 scenery, and began to wonder why the deuce our 
 leader kept himself so carefully out of sight for i 
 three days travel I had seen him but once^ and the 
 at our bivouac fire on the second evening. The men 
 knew or would tell nothing, except that he had one 
 man and a packhorse with him, and that the gentle 
 man and he encamped farther on. I was under prom 
 ise to perform only the part of one of the hired carriers 
 of the party, or I should soon have made a push to 
 penetrate the gentleman s mystery. 
 
 " I think it was on the tenth day of our travels that 
 the men began to talk of falling in with a tribe of In 
 dians, whose hunting-grounds we were close upon, 
 and at whose village, upon the bank of a river, they 
 usually got fish and bufialo-huinp, and other luxuries 
 not picked up on the wing. We encamped about 
 sunset that night as usual, and after picketing my 
 horse, I strolled off to a round mound not far from the 
 fire, and sat down upon the top to see the moon rise. 
 The east was brightening, and the evening was de 
 licious. 
 
 "Up came the moon, looking like one of the duke 
 of Devonshire s gold plates (excuse the poetry of the 
 comparison), and still the rosy color hung on in the 
 west, and turning my eyes from one to the other, I at 
 last perceived, over the southwestern horizon, a mist 
 slowly coming up, which indicated the course of a 
 river. It was just in our track, and the whim struck 
 me to saddle my horse and ride on in search of the 
 Indian village, which, by their description, must be on 
 its banks. 
 
 " The men were singing songs over their supper, 
 and with a flask of brandy in my pocket, I got off un 
 observed, and was soon in a flourishing gallop over the 
 wild prairie, without guide or compass. It was a silly 
 freak, and might have ended in an unpleasant adven 
 ture. Pass the bottle and have no apprehensions, 
 however. 
 
 " For an hour or so, I was very much elated with 
 my independence, and my horse too seemed delighted 
 to get out of the slow pace of the caravan. It was as 
 light as day with the wonderful clearness of the atmo 
 sphere, and the full moon and the coolness of the 
 evening air made exercise very exhilarating. I rode 
 on, looking up occasionally to the mist, which retreat 
 ed long after I thought I should have reached the 
 river, till I began to feel uneasy at last, and wondered 
 whether I had not embarked in a very mad adventure. 
 As I had lost sight of our own fires, and might miss 
 my way in trying to retrace my steps, I determined to 
 push on. 
 
 " My horse was in a walk, and I was beginning to 
 feel very grave, when suddenly the beast pricked up 
 his ears and gave a loud neigh. I rose in my stirrups, 
 and looked round in vain for the secret of his improved 
 spirits, till with a second glance forward, I discovered 
 what seemed the faint light reflected upon the smoke 
 of a concealed fire. The horse took his own counsel, 
 and set up a sharp gallop for the spot, and a few min- 
 
 utes brought me in sight of a fire half concealed by a 
 clump of shrubs, and a white object near it, which to 
 my surprise developed to a tent. Two horses picketed 
 near, and a man sitting by the fire with his hands 
 crossed before his shins, and his chin on his knees, 
 completed the very agreeable picture. 
 
 " Who goes there ? shouted this chap, springing 
 to his rifle as he heard my horse s feet sliding through 
 the grass. 
 
 " I gave the name of the leader, comprehending at 
 once that this was the advanced guard of our party ; 
 but though the fellow lowered his rifle, he gave me a 
 very scant welcome, and motioned me away from the 
 tent-side of the fire. There was no turning a man out 
 of doors in the midst of a prairie ; so, without cere 
 mony, I tethered my horse to his stake, and getting 
 out my dried beef and brandy, made a second supper 
 with quite as good an appetite as had done honor to 
 the first. 
 
 " My brandy-flask opened the lips of my sulky friend 
 after a while, though he kept his carcass very obsti 
 nately between me and the tent, and I learned that the 
 leader (his name was Rolfe, by-the-by), had gone on 
 to the Indian village, and that the gentleman had 
 dropped the curtain of his tent at my approach, and 
 was probably asleep. My word of honor to Rolfe that 
 I would cut no capers (his own phrase in adminis 
 tering the obligation), kept down my excited curiosity, 
 and prevented me, of course, from even pumping the 
 man beside me, though I might have done so with a 
 little more of the contents of my flask. 
 
 " The moon was pretty well overhead when Rolfe 
 returned, and found me fast asleep by the fire. I awoke 
 with the trampling and neighing of horses, and, spring 
 ing to my feet, I saw an Indian dismounting, and Rolfe 
 and the fire-tender conversing together while picketing 
 their horses. The Indian had a tall feather in his cap, 
 and trinkets on his breast, which glittered in the moon 
 light ; but he was dressed otherwise like a white man, 
 with a hunting-frock and very loose large trowsers. 
 By the way, he had moccasins, too, and a wampum 
 belt ; but he was a clean-limbed, lithe, agile-looking 
 devil, with an eye like a coal of fire. 
 
 " You ve broke your contract, mister! said Rolfe, 
 coming up to me; but stand by and say nothing. 
 
 " He then went to the tent, gave an ehem"! by 
 way of a knock, and entered 
 
 " It s a fine night ! said the Indian, coming up to 
 the fire and touching a brand with the toe of his moc 
 casin. 
 
 " I was so surprised at the honest English in which 
 he delivered himself, that I stared at him without an 
 swer. 
 
 " Do you speak English ? he said. 
 " Tolerably well, said I, but I beg your pardon 
 for being so surprised at your own accent that I forgot 
 to reply to you. And now I look at you more closely, 
 I see that you are rather Spanish than Indian. 
 
 " My mother s blood, he answered rather coldly, 
 but my father was an Indian, and I am a chief. 
 
 " Well, Rolfe, he continued, turning the next in 
 stant to the trader, who came toward us, who is this 
 that would see Shahatan ? 
 
 " The trader pointed to the lent. The curtain was 
 put aside, and a smart-looking youth, in a blue cap 
 and cloak, stepped out and took his way off into the 
 prairie, motioning to the chief to follow. 
 
 Go along ! he won t eat ye ! said Rolfe, as the 
 Indian hesitated, from pride or distrust, and laid his 
 hand on his tomahawk. 
 
 I wish I could tell you what was said at that in 
 terview, for my curiosity was never so strongly excited. 
 Rolfe seemed bent on preventing both interference and 
 observation, however, and in his loud and coarse voice 
 commenced singing and making preparations for his 
 supper; and, persuading rne into the drinking part of 
 
WIGWAM VERSUS ALMACK S. 
 
 49 
 
 it, I listened to his stories and toasted my shins till I 
 was too sleepy to feel either romance or curiosity; 
 and leaving the moon to waste its silver on the wilder 
 ness, and the mysterious colloquists to ramble and 
 finish their conference as they liked, I rolled over on 
 my buffalo-skin and dropped off to sleep. 
 
 " The next morning I rubbed my eyes to discover 
 whether all 1 have been telling you was not a dream, 
 for tent and demoiselle had evaporated, and I lay with 
 my feet to the smouldering fire, and all the trading 
 party preparing for breakfast around me. Alarmed at 
 my absence, they had made a start before sunrise to 
 overtake Rolfe, and had come up while I slept. The 
 
 the trader found himself apparently among old ac 
 quaintances. The chief sent a lad with my horse 
 down into the plain to be picketed where the grass was 
 better, and took me into a small hut, where I treated 
 myself to a little more of a toilet than I had been ac 
 customed to of late, in compliment to the unusual 
 prospect of supping with a lady. The hut was lined 
 with bark, and seemed used by the chief for the same 
 purpose, as there were sundry articles of dress and 
 other civilized refinements hanging to the bracing- 
 poles, and covering a rude table in the corner. 
 
 " Fancy my surprise, on coming out, to meet the 
 chief strolling up and down his prairie shelf with, not 
 
 leader after a while gave me a slip of paper from the one lady, but half a dozen a respectable looking gen 
 chief, saying that he should be happy to give me a ! tleman in black (I speak of his coat), and a bevy of 
 specimen of Indian hospitality at the Shawanee vil- | nice-looking girls, with our Almack s acquaintance in 
 lage, on my return from Santa Fe a neat hint that I j| the centre the whole party, except the chief, dressed 
 was not to intrude upon him at present." 
 
 " Which you took ?" 
 
 " Rolfe seemed to have had a hint which was prob 
 ably in some more decided shape, since he took it for 
 us all. The men grumbled at passing the village with 
 out stopping for fish, but the leader was inexorable, 
 and we left it to the riht and made tracks, as the 
 
 hunters say, for our destination. Two days from there 
 we saw a buffalo - " 
 
 " Which you demolished. You told me that story 
 last night. Come," get back to the Shawanees ! You 
 called on the village at your return ?" 
 
 " Yes, and an odd place it was. We came upon it 
 from the west, Rolfe having made a bend to the west 
 
 n a way that would pass muster in any village in Eng 
 land. Shahatan wore the Indian s blanket, modified 
 with a large mantle of fine blue cloth, and crossed over 
 his handsome bare chest something after the style of 
 a Hieland tartan. I really never saw a better made or 
 more magnificent looking fellow, though I am not sure 
 that his easy and picturesque dress would not have im 
 
 proved a plainer man. 
 
 " I remembered directly that Rolfe had said some 
 thing to me about missionaries living among the Shaw 
 anees, and I was not surprised to hear that the gende- 
 man in a black coat was a reverend, and the ladies the 
 sisterhood of the mission. Miss Trevanion seemed 
 rather in haste to inform me of the presence of the 
 
 irom me west, none Having maae a oenu 10 itie wesi- . inm^i m 
 
 ward, on his return back. We had been travelling all cloth, and in the next breath claimed my congratula- 
 
 day over a long plain, wooded in clumps, looking very 
 much like an immense park, and I began to think that 
 the trader intended to cheat me out of mv visit for 
 
 tions on her marriage ! She had been a chieftainess 
 for two months. 
 
 We strolled up and down the grassy terrace, divi- 
 
 he said we should sup with the Shawanees that night, | ding our attention between the effects of the sunset on 
 an3 I did not in the least recognise the outline of the [ the prairie below and the preparations for OIH supper, 
 country. We struck the bed of a small and very beau 
 
 tiful river, presently, however, and after following it 
 through a wood for a mile, came to a sharp brow 
 where the river suddenly descended to a plain at least 
 two hundred feet lower than the table-land on which 
 we had been travelling. The country below looked 
 as if it might have been the bed of an immense lake, 
 and we stood on the shore of it. 
 
 I sat on my horse geologizing in fancy about thi 
 
 which was going on by the light of pine-knots stuck 
 in the clefts of the rock in the rear. A dozen Indian 
 girls were crossing and recrossing before the fires, 
 and with the bright glare upon the precipice, and the 
 moving figures, wigwams, &c., it was like a picture of 
 Salvator Rosa s. The fair chieftainess, as she glided 
 across occasionally to look after the people, with a step 
 as light as her stately figure would allow, was not the 
 least beautiful feature of the scene. We lost a fine 
 
 singular formation of land, till, hearing a shout, I !| creature when we let her slip through our fingers, my 
 
 found the party had gone on, and Rolfe was hallooing 
 to me to follow. As I was trying to get a glimpse of 
 him through the trees, up rode my old acquaintance 
 Shahatan, with his rifle across his thigh, and gave me 
 a very cordial welcome. He then rode on to show me 
 the way. We left the river, which was foaming among 
 some fine rapids, and by a zig-zag side-path through 
 the woods, descended about half way to the plain, 
 where we rounded a huge rock, and stood suddenly in 
 the village of the Shawanees. You can not fancy any 
 thing so picturesque. On the left, for a quarter of a 
 mile, extended a natural steppe, or terrace, a hundred 
 yards wide, and rounding in a crescent to the south. 
 The river came in toward it on the right in a superb 
 cascade, visible from the whole of the platform, and 
 against the rocky wall at the back, and around on the 
 edge overlooking the plain, were built the wigwams 
 and log-huts of the tribe, in front of which lounged 
 men, women, and children, enjoying the cool of the 
 summer evening. Not far from the base of the hill 
 the river reappeared from the woods, and I distin 
 guished some fields planted with corn along its banks, 
 and horses and cattle grazing. What, with the pleas 
 ant sound of the falls, and the beauty of the scene al 
 together, it was to me more like the primitive Arcadia 
 we dream about, than anything I ever saw. 
 
 " Well, Rolfe and his party reached the village pres- ! 
 ently, for the chief had brought me by a shorter cut, 
 and in a moment the whole tribe was about us, 
 
 HU, 
 
 and i 
 
 dear fellow ! 
 
 " Thereby hangs a tale, 
 
 have little doubt, and I 
 
 can give you some data for a good guess at it but as 
 the nigger song has it 
 
 " Tell us what dey had for supper 
 Black-eyed pease, or bread and butter ?" 
 
 "We had everything the wilderness could produce 
 appetites included. Lying in the track of the tra 
 ding-parties, Shahatan, of course, made what additions 
 he liked to the Indian mode of living, and except that 
 our table was a huge buffalo-skin stretched upon stakes, 
 the supper might have been a traveller s meal among 
 Turks or Arabs, for all that was peculiar about it. I 
 should except, perhaps, that no Turk or Arab ever saw 
 so pretty a creature as the chiefs sister, who was my 
 neighbor at the feast." 
 
 So another romance !" 
 
 " No, indeed ! For though her eyes were eloquent 
 enough to persuade one to forswear the world and turn 
 Shawanee, she had no tongue for a stranger. What 
 little English she had learned of the missionaries she 
 was too sly to use, and our flirtation was a very unsat 
 isfactory pantomime. I parted from her at night in 
 the big wigwam, without having been out of ear-shot 
 of the chief for a single moment; and as Rolfe was in 
 exorable about getting off with the daybreak the next 
 morning, it was the last I saw of the little fawn. But 
 to tell you the truth, I had forty minds between that 
 
MISS JONES S SON. 
 
 and St. Louis to turn about and have another look 
 at her. 
 
 " The big wigwam, I should tell you, was as large 
 as a common breakfast-room in London. It was built 
 of bark very ingeniously sewed together, and lined 
 throughout with the most costly furs, even the floor 
 covered with highly-dressed bear-skins. After finish 
 ing our supper in the open air, the large curtain at the 
 door, which was made of the most superb gold-colored 
 otters, was thrown up to let in the blaze of the pine 
 torches stuck in the rock opposite, and, as the evening 
 was getting cool, we followed the chieftainess to her 
 savage drawing-room, and took coffee and chatted till 
 a late hour, lounging on the rude, fur-covered couch 
 es. I had not much chance to talk with our old 
 friend, but I gathered from what little she said that 
 she had been disgusted with the heartlessness of Lon 
 don, and preferred the wilderness with one of nature s 
 nobility to all the splendors of matrimony in high-life. 
 
 She said, however, that she should try to induce Sha- 
 hatan to travel abroad for a year or two, and after that, 
 she thought their time would be agreeably spent in 
 such a mixture of savage and civilized life as her for 
 tune and his control over the tribe would enable them 
 to manage." 
 
 When my friend had concluded his story, I threw 
 what little light I possessed upon the undeveloped 
 springs of Miss Trevanion s extraordinary movements, 
 and we ended our philosophizings on the subject by 
 promising ourselves a trip to the Shawanees some day 
 together. Now that we are together in London, how 
 ever, and have had the benefit of Mrs. Melicent s ad 
 ditional chapter, with the still later news that Shahatan 
 and his wife were travelling by the last accounts in the 
 east, we have limited our programme to meeting them 
 in England, and have no little curiosity to see whether 
 the young savage will decide like his wife in the ques 
 tion of "Wigwam versus Almack s." 
 
 MISS JONES S SON, 
 
 ONE night, toward the close of the London season 
 the last week in August, or thereabouts the Dept- 
 ford omnibus set down a gentleman at one of the small 
 brick-block cottages on the Kent road. He was a 
 very quietly disposed person, with a face rather in 
 scrutable to a common eye, and might, or might not, 
 pass for what he was a man of mark. His age was 
 perhaps thirty, and his manners and movements had 
 that cool security which can come only from con 
 versance with a class of society that is beyond being 
 laughed at. He was handsome but when the style 
 of a man is well pronounced, that is an unobserved 
 trifle. 
 
 Perhaps the reader will step in to No. 10, Verandah 
 Row, without further ceremony. 
 
 The room scarce more than a squirrel-box from 
 back to front was divided by folding doors, and the 
 furniture was fanciful and neatly kept. The canary- 
 bird, in a very small cage, in the corner, seemed rather 
 an intruder on such small quarters. You could scarce 
 give a guess what style of lady was the tenant of such 
 miniature gentility. 
 
 The omnibus passenger sat down in one of the little 
 cane-bottomed and straight backed chairs, and present 
 ly the door opened and a stout elderly woman, whose 
 skirts really filled up the remaining void of the little 
 parlor, entered with a cordial exclamation, and an 
 affectionate embrace was exchanged between them. 
 
 " Well, my dear mother !" said the visiter, " I am 
 off to-morrow to Warwickshire to pass the shooting 
 season, and I came to wind up your household clock 
 work, to go for a month (ticking, 1 am sorry to say!) 
 What do you want ? How is the tea-caddy ?" 
 
 " Out of green, James, but the black will do till you 
 come back. La! don t talk of such matters when you 
 are just going to leave me. I ll step up stairs and 
 make you out a list of my wants presently. Tell me 
 where are you going in Warwickshire ? I went to 
 school in Warwickshire. Dear me ! the lovers I had 
 there ! Well, well ! Where did you say you were 
 going?" 
 
 " To the marquis of Headfort Headfort court, I 
 think his place is called a post and a half from Strat 
 ford. Were you ever there, mother ?" 
 
 " I there, indeed ! no, my son ! But I had a lover 
 near Stratford young Sir Humphrey Fencher, he 
 was then old Sir Humphrey now ! I m sure he re 
 
 members me, long as it is since I saw him and, James, 
 I ll give you a letter to him. Yes I should like to 
 know how he looks, and what he will say to my grown 
 up boy. I ll go and write it now, and I ll look over 
 the groceries at the same time. If you move your 
 chair, James, don t crush the canary-bird !" 
 
 The mention of the letter of introduction lingered 
 in the ear of the gentleman left in the parlor, and 
 smiling to himself with a look of covert humor, he 
 drew from his pocket a letter of which it reminded 
 him the letter of introduction, on the strength of 
 which he was going to Warwickshire. As this and 
 the one which was being written up stairs, were the 
 two pieces of ordnance destined to propel the incidents 
 of our story, the reader will excuse us for presenting 
 them as a " make ready." 
 
 " Crochford s, Monday. 
 
 " DEAR FRED : Nothing going on in town, except 
 a little affair of my own, which I can t leave to go 
 down to you. Dull even at Crocky s nobody plays 
 this hot weather. And now, as to your commissions. 
 You will receive Dupree, the cook, by to-night s mail. 
 Grisi won t come to you without her man twasn t 
 thus when we were boys." so I send you a figurante, 
 and you must do tableaux. I was luckier in finding 
 
 you a wit. S will be withyou to-morrow, though, 
 
 by the way, it is only on condition of meeting Lady 
 Midge Bellasys, for whom, if she is not with you, you 
 must exert your inveiglements. This, by way only 
 of shuttlecock and battledore, however, for they play 
 at wit together nothing more, on her part at least. 
 Look out for this devilish fellow, my lord Fred ! 
 and live thin till you see the last of him for he ll 
 laugh you into your second apoplexy with the danger 
 ous ease of a hair-trigger. I coRld amuse you with 
 a turn or two in my late adventures, but black and 
 white are bad confidants, though very well as a busi 
 ness firm. And, mentioning them, I have drawn on 
 you for a temporary c500, which please lump with 
 my other loan, and oblige " Yours, faithfully, 
 
 " VAURIEN." 
 
 And here follows the letter of Mrs. S to her 
 ancient lover, the baronet of Warwickshire : 
 
 " No. 10, Verandah Row, Kent Road. 
 "DEAR SIR HUMPHREY : Perhaps you will scarce 
 remember Jane Jones, to whom you presented the 
 
MISS JONES S SON. 
 
 brush of your first fox. This was thirty years ago. 
 I was then at school in the little village near Tally-ho 
 hall. Dear me ! how well I remember it ! On hear 
 ing of your marriage, I accepted an offer from my late 
 
 husband, Mr. S , and our union was blessed 
 
 with one boy, who, I must say, is an angel of good 
 ness. Out of his small income, my dear James fur 
 nished and rented this very genteel house, and he 
 tells me I shall have it for life, and provides me one 
 servant, and everything I could possibly want. Thrice 
 a week he comes out to spend the day and dine with 
 me, and, in short, he is the pattern of good sons. As 
 this dear boy is going down to Warwickshire, I can not 
 resist the desire I have that you should know him, 
 and that he should bring me back an account of my 
 lover in days gone by. Any attention to him, dear 
 Sir Humphrey, will very much oblige one whom you 
 once was happy to oblige, and still 
 
 " Your sincere friend, JANE S , 
 
 "Formerly JONES." 
 
 It was a morning astray from paradise when S 
 awoke at Stratford. Ringing for his breakfast, he re 
 quested that the famous hostess of the red horse 
 would grace him so far as to join him over a muffin 
 and a cup of coffee, and between the pauses of his 
 toilet, he indited a note, enclosing his mother s letter 
 of introduction to Sir Humphrey. 
 
 Enter dame hostess, prim and respectful, and as 
 
 breakfast proceeded, S easily informed himself 
 
 of the geography of Tally-ho hall, and the existing 
 branch and foliage of the family tree. Sir Humphrey s 
 domestic circle consisted of a daughter and a neice 
 (his only son having gone with his regiment to the 
 Canada wars), and the hall lay half way to Headfort 
 court the Fenchers his lordship s nearest neighbors, 
 Mrs. Boniface was inclined to think. 
 
 S divided his morning very delightfully be 
 tween the banks of the Avon, and the be-scribbled 
 localities of Shakspere s birth and residence, and by 
 two o clock the messenger had returned with this note 
 from Sir Humphrey : 
 
 "DEAR SIR: I remember Miss Jones very well, 
 God bless me, I thought she had been dead many 
 years. I am sure I shall be very happy to see her 
 son. Will you come out and dine with us ? dinner 
 at seven. Your ob t servant, "HUMPHREY FENCHER. 
 
 "James S , Esq." 
 
 As the crack wit and diner-out of his time, S 
 
 was as well known to the brilliant society of London 
 as the face of the "gold stick in waiting" at St. 
 James s, and, with his very common name, he was a 
 little likely to be recognised out of his peculiar sphere 
 as the noble lord, when walking in Cheapside, to be 
 recognised as the " stick," so often mentioned in the 
 Court Journal. He had delayed his visit to Headfort 
 court for a day, and undertaken to deliver his mother s 
 letter, and look up her lang-syne lover, very much as 
 he would stop in the Strand to purchase her a parcel 
 of snuff purely from the filial habit of always doing 
 her bidding, even in whims. He had very little curiosi 
 ty to see a Warwickshire Nimrod, and, till his post- 
 chaise stopped at the lodge-gate of Tally-ho hall, it 
 had never entered his head to speculate upon the 
 ground of his introduction to Sir Humphrey, nor to 
 anticipate the nature of his reception. His nmne had 
 been so long to him an " open sesame," that he had 
 no doubt of its potency, and least of all when he pro 
 nounced it at an inferior gate in the barriers of society. 
 
 The dressing-bell had rang, and S was shown 
 
 into the vacant drawing-room, where he buried him 
 self in the deepest chair he could find, and sat looking 
 at the wall with the composure of a barber s customer 
 waiting to be shaved. There presently entered two 
 young ladies, very showily dressed, who called him 
 Mr. "Jones," in replying to his salutation, and im 
 
 mediately fell to promenading between the two old 
 mirrors at the extremities of the room, discoursing 
 upon topics evidently chosen to exclude the new 
 comer from the conversation. With rather a feeling 
 that it was their loss, not his, S --- recomposed 
 himself in the leathern chair and resumed the perusal 
 of the oaken ceiling. The neglect sat upon him a 
 little uncomfortable withal. 
 
 " How d ye do, young man ! What ! you are Miss 
 Jones s son, eh ?" was the salutation of a burly old 
 gentleman, who now entered and shook hands with 
 the great incognito. " Here, Bel ! Fan ! Mr. Jones, 
 My daughter and my niece, Mr. Jones !" 
 
 S - was too indignant for a moment to explain 
 that Miss Jones had changed her name before his 
 birth, and on second thought, finding that this real 
 character was not suspected, and that he represented 
 to Sir Humphrey simply the obscure son of an obscure 
 girl, pretty, thirty years ago, he fell quietly into the 
 role expected of him, and walked patiently in to dinner 
 with Miss Fencher, who accepted his arm for that 
 purpose, but forgot to take it ! 
 
 It was hard to be witty as a Mr. Jones, but the habit 
 was strong and the opportunities were good, and 
 S -- , warming with his first glass of sherry, struck 
 out some sparks that would have passed for gems of 
 the first water, with choicer listeners ; but wit is slowly 
 recognised when not expected, and though now and 
 then the young ladies stared, and now and then the 
 old baronet chuckled and said " egad ! very well ! 
 there was evidently no material rise in the value of 
 Mr. Jones, and he at last confined his social talents 
 exclusively to his wine-glass and nut-picker, feeling. 
 spite of himself, as stupid as he seemed. 
 
 Relieved of the burden of replying to their guess, 
 the young ladies now took up a subject which evident 
 ly lay nearest their hearts a series of dejeuners, the 
 first of which was to come off the following morning 
 at Headfort court. As if by way of caveat, in case 
 Mr. Jones should fancy that he could be invited to 
 accompany Sir Humphrey, Miss Fencher took the 
 trouble to explain that these were, by no means, com 
 mon country entertainments, but exclusive and select 
 arties, under the patronage of the beautiful and witty 
 ady Imogen Bellasys, now a guest at Headfort. 
 Her ladyship had not only stipulated for societe choisie, 
 but had invited down a celebrated London wit, a great 
 friend of her own, to do the mottoes and keep up the 
 spirit of the masques and tableaux. Indeed, Miss 
 Fencher considered herself as more particularly the 
 guest and ally of Lady Imogen, never having been 
 permitted during her mother s life to visit Headfort 
 (though she did not see what the marquis s private 
 character had to do with his visiting list), and she ex 
 pected to be called upon to serve as a sort of maid of 
 honor, or in some way to assist Lady Imogen, who 
 had invited her very affectionately, after church, on 
 Sunday. She thought, perhaps, she had better wake 
 up Sir Humphrey while she thought of it (and while 
 papa was good natured,as he always was after dinner), 
 and exact of him a promise that the great London 
 i Mr., what d ye call itn, should be invited to pass a 
 week at Tally-ho hall for, of course, as mutual 
 allies of Lady Imogen, Miss Feucher and he would 
 become rather well acquainted. 
 
 To this enliahtenment, of which we have given only 
 
 a brief resumer, Mr. Jones listened attentively, as he 
 
 I was expected to do, and was very graciously answered, 
 
 ! when by way of feeling one of the remote pulses of 
 
 his celebrity, he ventured to ask for some further par- 
 
 i ticulars about the London wit aforementioned. He 
 
 j learned, somewhat to his disgust, that his name was 
 
 either Brown or Simpson, some very common name, 
 
 however, but that he had a wonderful talent for writing 
 
 ! impromptuepigrams on people and singing them after- 
 
 I ward to impromptu music on the piano, and that he 
 
 pa 
 L 
 
52 
 
 MISS JONES S SON. 
 
 was supposed to be a natural son of Talleyrand or 
 Lord Byron, Miss Fencher had forgotten which. He 
 had written something, but Miss Fencher had for 
 gotten what. He was very handsome no, very plain 
 indeed, Miss Fencher had forgotten which but it 
 was one or the other. 
 
 At this crisis of the conversation Sir Humphrey 
 roused from his post-prandial snooze, and begged Mr. 
 Jones to pa,ss the port and open the door for the 
 ladies. By the time the gloves were rescued from 
 under the table, the worthy baronet had drained a 
 bumper, and, with his descending glass, dropped his 
 eyes to the level of his daughter s face, where they 
 rested with paternal admiration. Miss Fencher was 
 far from ill-looking, and she well knew that her father 
 waxed affectionate over his wine. 
 
 "Papa!" said she, coming behind him, and looking 
 down his throat, as he strained his head backward, 
 leaving his reluctant double chin resting on his cravat. 
 " I have a favor to ask, my dear papa !" 
 
 " He shall go, my dear! he shall go ! I have been 
 thinking of it I ll arrange it, Bel, I ll arrange it ! Go 
 your ways, chick, and send me my slippers !" gurgled 
 the baronet, with his usual rapid brevity, when slight 
 ly elevated. 
 
 Miss Fencher turned quite pale. 
 
 "Pa pa!" she exclaimed, with horror in her voice, 
 coming round front, " pa pa ! good gracious ! Do 
 you know it is the most exclusive however, papa ! 
 let us talk that over in the other room. What I wish 
 to ask is quite another matter. You know that 
 Mr. Mr." 
 
 " The gentleman you mean is probably James 
 S ," interrupted Mr. Jones. 
 
 " Thank you, sir, so it is !" continued Miss Fencher, 
 putting her hand upon the Baronet s mouth, who was 
 
 about to speak " It is Mr. James S ; and 
 
 what I wish, papa, is, to have Mr. James S in 
 vited to pass a week with us. You know, papa, we 
 
 shall be very intimate James S and I both ; 
 
 of us assisting Lady Imogen, you know, papa ! and 
 and stay till I get some note-paper will you, 
 dear papa ?" 
 
 " You will have your way, chick, you will have 
 your way," sighed Sir Humphrey, getting his specta 
 cles out of a very tight pocket on his hip. "But, 
 bless me, I can t write in the evening. Mr. Jones 
 perhaps Mr. Jones will write the note for me just 
 
 present my compliments to Mr. S , and request 
 
 the honor, and all that can you do it, Mr. Jones?" 
 
 S rapidly indited a polite note to himself, | 
 which he handed to Miss Fencher for her approba- ! 
 tion, and meantime entered the butler with the coffee, j 
 
 " Stuggins !" cried Sir Humphrey " I wish Mr. 
 Jones " 
 
 " Good Heavens! papa !" exclaimed Miss Fencher, 
 ending the remainder of her objurgation in a whisper 
 in her father s ear. But the baronet was not in a 
 mood to be controlled. 
 
 " My love! Bel, I say ! he shall go. You d-d.-d- 
 diddedent see Miss Jones sletter. He sap-p-p-pattern 
 of filial duty ! he gives his mother a house, and all 
 she wants! he s a good son, I tell you! St-Stuggins, 
 come here ! Pass the port, Jones, my good fellow!" 
 
 Stuggins stepped forward a pace, and presented his 
 white waistcoat, and Miss Fencher flounced out of the 
 room in a passion. 
 
 " Stuggins!" said the old man, a little more tran 
 quilly, since he had no fear now of being interrupted, 
 " I wish my friend, Mr. Jones, here, to see this cock- 
 a-hoop business to-morrow. It ll be a fine sight, they 
 tell me. I want him to see it, Stuggins ! You under 
 stand me. His mother, Miss Jones, was a pretty girl, 
 Stuggins ! And she ll be very glad to hear that her 
 boy has seen such a fine show eh, Jones ? eh, Stug 
 gins ? Well, you know what I want. The Headfort 
 
 tenants will have a place provided for them, of course 
 some shrubbery, eh ? some gallery some place 
 behind the musicians, where they are out of the way, 
 but can see isn t it so ? eh ? eh ?" 
 
 "Yes, Sir Humphrey no doubt, Sir Humphrey !" 
 acceded Stuggins, with his ears still open to know how 
 the details were to be managed. 
 
 " Well very well and you ll take Jones with you 
 in the dickey eh ? Thomas will go on the box eh? 
 Will that do ? and Mr. Jones will stay with us 
 to-nighl, and perhaps you ll show him his room, now, 
 and talk it over, eh, Stuggins ? good night, Mr. 
 Jones ! good night, Jones, my good fellow !" 
 
 And Sir Humphrey, having done this act of grate 
 ful reminiscence for his old sweetheart, managed to 
 find his way into the next room unaided. 
 
 S had begun, by this time, to see " straw for 
 his bricks," in the course matters were taking ; and 
 instead of throwing a decanter after Sir Humphrey, 
 and knocking down the butler for calling him Mr. 
 Jones, he accepted Stuggins s convoy to the house 
 keeper s room, and with his droll stories and funny 
 ways, kept the maids and footmen in convulsions of 
 laughter till break of day. Such a merry time had 
 not come off in servants hall for many a day, and of 
 many a precious morsel of the high life below stairs 
 of Tally-ho hall did he pick the brains of the delight 
 ed Abigails. 
 
 The ladies, busied with their toilets, had their 
 breakfasts in their own rooms, and Mr. Jones did not 
 make his appearance till after the baronet had achieved 
 his red herring and seltzer. The carriage came round 
 at twelve, and the ladies stepped in, dressed for triumph, 
 tumbled after by burly Sir Humphrey, who required 
 one side of the vehicle to himself Mr. Jones outside, 
 on the dickey with Stuggins, as previously arranged. 
 
 Half way up the long avenue of Headfort court, 
 Stuggins relinquished the dickey to its rightful oc 
 cupant, Thomas, and, with Mr. Jones, turned off by 
 a side path that led to the dairy and offices the latter 
 barely saving his legs, however, for the manoeuvre 
 was performed servant fashion, while the carriage kept 
 its way. 
 
 Lord Headfort was a widower, and his niece, Lady 
 Imogen Bellasys, the wittiest and loveliest girl in 
 England, stood upon the lawn for the mistress of the 
 festivities. She had occasion for a petticoat aid-de- 
 camj), and she knew that Lord Headfort wished to 
 propitiate his Warwickshire neighbors; and as Miss 
 Fencher was a fine grenadier looking girl, she pro 
 moted her to that office immediately on her arrival, 
 decking her for the nonce with a broad blue riband of 
 authority. Miss Fencher made the best use of her 
 powers of self congratulation, and thanked God private 
 ly besides, that Sir Humphrey had provided an eclipse 
 for Mr. Jones ; for with the drawback of presenting 
 such a superfluous acquaintance of their own to the 
 fastidious eyes of Lady Imogen, she felt assured that 
 her new honors would never have arrived to her. 
 She had had a hint, moreover, from her dressing- 
 maid, of Mr. Jones comicalities below stairs ; and 
 the fact that he was a person who could be funny in 
 a kitchen, was quite enough to confirm the aristocratic 
 instinct by which she had at once pronounced upon 
 his condition. If her papa/;(/ been gay in his youth, 
 there was no reason why every Miss Jones should 
 send her child to him to be made a gentleman of! 
 "Filial pattern," indeed ! 
 
 The gayeties began. The French figurante, de 
 spatched by Lord Vaurien from the opera, made up 
 her tableaux from the beauties, and those who had 
 ugly faces, but good figures, tried their attitudes on 
 the archery-lawn, and those whose complexions would 
 stand the aggravation, tripped to the dancing tents, 
 and the falcon was flown, and the greyhounds were 
 coursed, and a few couple of Warwickshire lads tried 
 
MISS JONES S SON. 
 
 their backs at a wrestling fall, and the time wore on. 
 But to Lady Imogen s shrewd apprehension, it wore 
 on very heavily. There was no wit afloat. Nobody 
 seemed gayer than he meant to be. The bubble w;is 
 wanting to their champagne of enjoyment. Miss 
 Fencher s blue riband went to and fro like a pendulum, 
 perpetually crossing the lawn between Lady Imogen 
 and the footman in waiting, to inquire if a post-chaise 
 had arrived from London. 
 
 " I will never forgive that James S , never !" 
 
 pettishly vowed her ladyship, as Miss Fencher came 
 back for the fiftieth time with no news of his arrival. 
 
 "Better feed your menagerie at once !" whispered 
 Lord Headfort to his niece, as he caught a glance at 
 her vexed face in passing. 
 
 The decision with which the order was given to 
 serve breakfast, seemed to hurry the very heat of the 
 kitchen fires, for in an incredibly short time, the hot 
 soups and delicate entremets of Monsieur Dupres 
 were on the tables, and breakfast was announced. The 
 band played a march, the games were abandoned, Miss 
 Fencher followed close upon the heels of her chef, to 
 secure a seat in her neighborhood, and in ten minutes 
 a hundred questions of precedence were settled, and 
 Sir Humphrey, somewhat to his surprise, and as much 
 to his delight, was called to the left hand of the mar 
 quis. Tally-ho hall was in the ascendant. 
 
 During the first assault upon the soups, the band 
 played a delicious set of waltzes, terminating with the 
 clatter of changing plates. But at the same moment, 
 above all the ring of impinging china, arose a shout 
 of laughter from a party somewhere without the 
 pavilion, and so sustained and hearty was the peal, 
 that the servants stood petrified with their dishes, 
 and the guests sat in wondering silence. The steward 
 was instantly despatched to enforce order, and Lord 
 Headfort explained, that the tenants were feasted on 
 beef and ale, in the thicket beyond, though he could 
 scarce imagine what should amuse them so uncom 
 monly. 
 
 14 They have promised to maintain order, my lord!" 
 said the steward, returning, and stooping to his master s 
 ear, " but there is a droll gentleman among them, my 
 lord !" 
 
 "Then I dare swear it s better fun than this!" 
 mumbled his lordship for the steward s hearing, as 
 he looked round upon the unamused faces in his 
 neighborhood. 
 
 " Headfort," cried Lady Imogen, presently, from 
 the other end of the table, "did you send to Stratford 
 
 for S , or did you not? Let us know whether 
 
 there is a chance of his coming !" 
 
 44 Upon my honor, Lady Imogen, my own chariot 
 has been at the Stratford inn, waiting for him since 
 morning," was the marquis s answer. " Vaurien wrote 
 that he had booked him by the mail of the night be 
 fore ! I d give a thousand pounds if he were nere !" 
 
 Bursts of laughter, breaking through all efforts to 
 suppress them, again rose from the offending quarter. 
 
 "It s a Mr. Jones, my lord," said the steward, 
 speaking between the marquis and Sir Humphrey;!! 
 he s a friend of Sir Humphrey s butler and if you 
 will excuse me, my lord Stuggins says he is the son 
 of a Miss Jones, formerly an acquaintance of Sir 
 Humphrey s !" 
 
 Red as a turkey-cock grew the old baronet in a 
 moment. " I beg ten thousand pardons for having 
 intruded him here, my lord !" said Sir Humphrey ; 
 44 it s a poor lad that brought me a letter from his 
 mother, and I told Stuggins " 
 
 But here Stuggins approached with a couple of 
 notes for his master, and, begging permission of the 
 marquis, Sir Humphrey put on his spectacles to read. 
 The guests at the table, meantime, were passing the 
 wine very slowly, and conversation more slowly still, 
 and, with the tranquillity that reigned in the pavilion, 
 the continued though half-smothered merriment of 
 the other party was provokingly audible. 
 
 "Can t we borrow a little fun from those merry 
 people ?" cried Lady Imogen, throwing up her eyes 
 despairingly as the marquis exchanged looks with her. 
 
 " If we could persuade Sir Humphrey to introduce 
 his friend, Jones, to us " 
 
 "7 introduce him!" exclaimed the fuming baronet, 
 tearing off his spectacles in a rage, 4t read that before 
 you condescend to talk of noticing suchTa varlet ! 
 Faith ! I think he s the clown from a theatre, or the 
 waiter from a pot-house !" 
 
 The marquis read : 
 
 44 DEAR NUNCLE : It s hard on to six o clock, and 
 I m engaged at seven to a junketing at the 4 Hen and 
 chickens, with Stuggins and the maids. If you in 
 tend to make me acquainted with your great lord, now 
 is the time. If you don t, I shall walk in presently, 
 and introduce myself; for I know how to make my 
 own way, nuncle ask Miss Bel s maid, and the other 
 girls you introduced me to at Tally-ho hall! Be in, 
 a hurry, I m just outside. Yours, " JO.VES. 
 
 " Sir Humphrey Fencher." 
 
 The excitement of Sir Humphrey, and the amused 
 face of the marquis as he read, had drawn Lady Imogen 
 from her seat, and as he read aloud, at her request, die 
 urgent epistle of Mr. Jones, she clapped her hands 
 with delight, and insisted on having him in. Sir 
 Humphrey declared he should take it as an affront if 
 the thing was insisted on, and Miss Fencher, who had 
 followed to her father s chair, and heard the reading 
 of the note, looked the picture of surprised indignation. 
 "Insolent! vulgar! abominable!" was all the com 
 pliment she ventured upon, however. 
 
 " Will you let me look at Mr. Jones s note ?" said 
 Lady Imogen. 
 
 " Good Heavens!" she exclaimed, after glancing at 
 it an instant, " I was sure it must be he !" 
 
 And out ran the beautiful queen of the festivities, 
 and the next moment, to Sir Humphrey s amazement, 
 and Miss Fencher s utter dismay, she returned, drag 
 ging in, with her own scarf around his body, and her 
 own wreath of roses around his head, the friend of 
 Stuggins the abominable Jones ! Up jumped the 
 marquis, and called him by name (not Jones), and 
 seized him by both hands, and up jumped with de 
 lighted acclamation half a dozen other of the more 
 distinguished guests at table, and the merriment was 
 now on the other side of the thicket. 
 
 It was five or ten minutes before they were again 
 
 seated at table, S on Lady Imogen s right hand, 
 
 but there were two vacant chairs, for Sir Humphrey 
 and his daughter had taken advantage of the confusion 
 to disappear, and the field was open, therefore, for a 
 full account of Mr. Jones s adventures above and below 
 stairs at Tally-ho hall. A better subject never fell 
 into the hand of that inimitable humorist, and glorious 
 ly he made use of it. 
 
 As he concluded, amid convulsions of laughter, the 
 
 butler brought in a note addressed to James S , 
 
 Esq., which had been given him by Stuggins early 
 in the day his own autograph invitation to the hospi 
 talities of Tally-ho hall ! 
 
54 
 
 LADY RACHEL. 
 
 LADY RACHEL 
 
 Beauty, alone, is lost, too warily kept. 
 
 I ONCE had a long conversation with a fellow-trav 
 eller in the coupe of a French diligence. It was a 
 bright moonlight night, early in June not at all the 
 scene or season for talking long on very dry topics 
 and with a mutual abandon which must be explained 
 by some theory of the silent sympathies, we fell to 
 chatting rather confidentially on the subject of love. 
 He gave me some hints as to a passage in his life 
 which seemed to me, when he told it, a definite and 
 interesting story ; but in recalling it to mind after 
 ward, I was surprised to find how little he really said, 
 and how much, from seeing the man and hearing his 
 voice, I was enabled without effort to supply. To 
 save roundabout, I ll tell the story in the first person, 
 as it was told to me, begging the reader to take my 
 place in the coupe and listen to a very gentlemanly 
 man, of very loveable voice and manners; supplying, 
 also, as I did, by the imagination, much more than is 
 told in the narration. 
 
 " I am inclined to think that we are sometimes best 
 loved by those whom we least suspect of being inter 
 ested in us ; and while a sudden laying open of hearts 
 would give the lie to many a love professed, it would, 
 here and there, disclose a passion which, in the or 
 dinary course of things, would never have been be 
 trayed. I was once a" litlle surprised with a circum 
 stance of the kind I allude to. 
 
 " I had become completely domesticated in a fam 
 ily living in the neighborhood of London I can 
 scarce tell you how, even if it were worth while. A 
 chance introduction, as a stranger in the country, 
 first made me acquainted with them, and we had gone 
 on, from one degree of friendship to another, till I 
 was as much at home at Lilybank as any one of the 
 children. It was one of those little English paradises, 
 rural and luxurious, where love, confidence, simplicity, 
 and refineiiient, seem natural to the atmosphere, and I 
 thought, when I was there, that I was probably as 
 near to perfect happiness as I was likely to be in the 
 course of my life. But I had my annoyance even 
 there. 
 
 "Mr. Fleming (the name is fictitious, of course) 
 was a man of sufficient fortune, living, without a pro 
 fession, on his means. He was avowedly of the mid 
 dle class, but his wife, a very beautiful specimen of 
 the young English mother, was very highly connect 
 ed, and might have moved in what society she pleased. , 
 She chose to find her happiness at home, and leave 
 society to come to her by its own natural impulse and 
 affinity a sensible choice, which shows you at once 
 the simple and rational character of the woman. 
 Fleming and his wife were very fond of each other, 
 but, at the same time, very fond of the companion 
 ship of those who were under their roof; and between 
 them and their three or four lovely children, I could 
 have been almost contented to have been a prisoner 
 at Lilybank, and to have seen nobody but its charm 
 ing inmates for years together. 
 
 "I had become acquainted with the Flemings, how 
 ever, during the absence of one of the members of 
 the family. Without being at all aware of any new 
 arrival in the course of the morning, I went late to j 
 dinner after a long and solitary ride on horseback, and 
 was presented to Lady Rachel , a tall and re 
 served-looking person, sitting on Fleming s right 
 hand. Seeing no reason to abate any of my outward \\ 
 
 show of happiness, or to put any restraint on the nat 
 ural impulse of my attentions, I took my accustomed 
 seat by the sweet mistress of the house, wrapped up 
 my entire heart, as usual, in every word and look 
 that I sent toward her, and played the schoolboy that 
 I felt myself, uncloudedly frank and happy. Fleming 
 laughed and mingled in our chat occasionally, as he 
 was wont to do, but a glance now and then at his 
 stately right-hand neighbor, made me aware that I 
 was looked upon with some coolness, if not with a 
 marked disapproval. I tried the usual peace-offer 
 ings of deference and marked courtesy, and lessened 
 somewhat the outward show of my happiness, but 
 Lady Rachel was apparently not propitiated. You 
 know what it is to have one link cold in the chain of 
 sympathy around a table. 
 
 " The next morning I announced my intention of 
 returning to town. I had hitherto come and gone at 
 my pleasure. This time the Flemings showed a de 
 termined opposition to my departure. They seemed 
 aware that my enjoyment under their roof had been, 
 for the first time, clouded over, and they were not 
 willing I should leave till the accustomed sunshine 
 was restored. I felt that I owed them too much to 
 resist any persuasion of theirs against my own feelings 
 merely, and I remained. 
 
 "But I determined to overcome Lady Rachel s 
 aversion a little from pique, I may as well confess, 
 but mostly for the gratification I knew it would give 
 to my sweet friends and entertainers. The saddle is 
 my favorite thinking-place. I mounted a beautiful 
 hunter which Fleming always put at my disposal 
 while I stayed with them, and went off for a long gal 
 op. I dismounted at an inn, some miles off, called 
 or black wax, and writing myself a letter, despatched 
 t to Lilybank. To play my part well, you will easily 
 conceive, it was necessary that my kind friends should 
 not be in the secret. 
 
 " The short road to the heart of a proud woman, I 
 well knew, was pity. I came to dinner that day a 
 changed man. It was known through the family, of 
 course, that a letter sealed with black had arrived for 
 me, during my ride, and it gave me the apology I 
 needed for a sudden alteration of manner. Delicacy 
 would prevent any one, except Mrs. Fleming, from 
 alluding to it, and she would reserve the inquiry till 
 we were alone. I had the evening before me, of 
 course. 
 
 " Lady Rachel, I had remarked, showed her supe 
 riority by habitually pitching her voice a note or two 
 below that of the persons around her as if the re 
 pose of her calm mind was beyond the plummet of 
 their superficial gayety. I had also observed, how 
 ever, that if she succeeded in rebuking now and then 
 the high spirits of her friends, and lowered the gen 
 eral diapason till it harmonized with her own voice, 
 she was more gratified than by any direct compliment 
 or attention. I ate my soup in silence, and while the 
 children, and a chance guest or two, were carrying on 
 some agreeable banter in a merry key, I waited for 
 the first opening of Lady Rachel s lips, and, when 
 she spoke, took her tone like an echo. Without look 
 ing at her, I commenced a subdued and pensive de 
 scription of my morning s ride, like a man uncon 
 sciously awakened from his revery by a sympathetic 
 voice, and betraying, by the tone in which he spoke, 
 
LADY RACHEL. 
 
 the chord to which he responded. A newer guest 
 had taken my place, next to Mrs. Fleming, and I wis 
 opposite Lady Rachel. I could feel her eyes sud 
 denly fixed on me as 1 spoke. For the first time, she 
 addressed a remark to me, in a pause of my descrip 
 tion. I raised my eyes to her with as much earnest 
 ness and deference as I could summon into them, 
 and, when I had listened to her and answered her ob 
 servation, kept them fastened on her lips, as if I hoped 
 she would speak to me again yet without a smile, 
 and with an expression that I meant should be that 
 of sadness, forgetful of usages, and intent only on an 
 eager longing for sympathy. Lady Rachel showed 
 her woman s heart, by an almost immediate change 
 of countenance and manner. She leaned slightly 
 over the table toward me, with her brows lifted from 
 her large dark eyes, and the conversation between us 
 became continuous and exclusive. After a little while, 
 my kind host, finding that he was cut off from his 
 other guests by the fear of interrupting us, proposed 
 to give me the head of the table, and I took his place 
 at the left hand of Lady Rachel. Her dinner was 
 forgotten. She introduced topics of conversation 
 such as she thought harmonized with my feelings, 
 and while I listened, with my eyes alternately cast 
 down or raised timidly to hers, she opened her heart 
 to me on the subject of death, the loss of friends, the 
 vanity of the world, and the charm, to herself, of sad 
 ness and melancholy. She seemed unconscious of the 
 presence of others as she talked. The tears suffused 
 her fine eyes, and her lips quivered, and I found, to 
 my surprise, that she was a woman, under that mask 
 of haughtiness, of the keenest sensibility and feeling. 
 When Mrs. Fleming left the table, Lady Rachel 
 pressed my hand, and, instead of following into the 
 drawing-room, went out by the low window upon the 
 lawn. I had laid up some little food for reflection as 
 you may conceive, and I sat the next hour looking 
 into my wineglass, wondering at the success of my 
 manoeuvre, but a little out of humor with my own hy 
 pocrisy, notwithstanding. 
 
 "Mrs. Fleming s tender kindness to me when I 
 joined her at the tea-table, made me again regret 
 the sacred feelings upon which I had drawn for 
 my experiment. But there was no retreat. I ex 
 cused myself hastily, anrl went out in search of Lady 
 Rachel, meeting her ladyship, as I expected, slowly 
 pacing the dark avenues of the garden. The dimness 
 of the starlight relieved me from the effort of keeping 
 sadness in my countenance, and I easily played out 
 my part till midnight, listening to an outpouring of 
 mingled kindness and melancholy, for the waste of 
 which I felt some need to be forgiven. 
 
 "Another day of this, however, was all that I could 
 bring my mind to support. Fleming and his wife had 
 entirely lost sight in sympathy with my presumed 
 affliction of the object of detaining me at Ltlybank, 
 and I took my leave, hating myself for the tender 
 pressure of the hand, and the sad and sympathizing 
 farewells which I was obliged to receive from them. 
 I did not dare to tell them of my unworthy ruse. 
 Lady Rachel parted from me as kindly as the rest, 
 and I had gained my point with the loss of my self- 
 esteem. With a prayer that, notwithstanding this de 
 ceit and misuse, I might find pity when I should in 
 deed stand in need of it, I drove from the door. 
 
 "A month passed away, and I wrote, once more, to 
 my friends at Lilybank, that I would pass a week 
 with them. An occurrence, in the course of that 
 month, however, had thrown another mask over my 
 face, and I went there again with a part to play and, 
 as if by a retributive Providence, it was now my need 
 of sympathy that I was most forced to conceal. An 
 affair which I saw no possibility of compromising, had 
 compelled me to call out a man who was well known 
 as a practical duelist. The particulars would not in 
 
 terest you. In accepting the challenge, my antago 
 nist asked a week s delay, to complete some import 
 ant business from which he could not withdraw his at 
 tention. And that week 1 passed with the Flemings. 
 " The gayety of Lilybank was resumed with the 
 smile I brought back, and chat and occupation took 
 their natural course. Lady Rachel, though kind and 
 courteous, seemed to have relapsed into her reserve, 
 and, finding society an effort, I rode out daily alone, 
 seeing my friends only at dinner and in the evening. 
 They took it to be an indulgence of some remainder 
 of my former grief, and left me consequently to the 
 I disposition of my own time. 
 
 " The last evening before the duel arrived, and I 
 i bade my friends good-night as usual, though with 
 I some suppressed emotion. My second, who was to 
 ! come from town and take me up at Lilybank on his 
 i way to the ground, had written to me that, from what 
 ! he could gather, my best way was to be prepared for 
 j the worst, and, looking upon it as very probably the 
 last night of my life, I determined to pass it waking, 
 i and writing to my friends at a distance. I sat down 
 1 1 to it, accordingly, without undressing. 
 
 " It was toward three in the morning that I sealed 
 ! up my last letter. My bedroom was on the ground- 
 | floor, with a long window opening into the garden; 
 j and, as I lifted my head up from leaning over the seal, 
 i I saw a white object standing just before the casement, 
 I but at some little distance, and half buried in the dark- 
 ! ness. My mind was in a fit mood for a superstitious 
 i feeling, and my blood crept cold for a moment; I 
 j passed my hand across my eyes looked again. The 
 figure moved slowly away. 
 
 " To direct my thoughts, I took up a book and 
 
 read. But, on looking up, the figure was there again, 
 
 and, with an irresistible impulse, I rushed out to the 
 
 | garden. The figure came toward me, but, with its 
 
 i first movement, I recognised the stately step of Lady 
 
 j Rachel. 
 
 " Confused at having intruded on her privacy, for I 
 i presumed that she was abroad for solitude, and with 
 i no thought of being disturbed, I turned to retire. 
 j She called to me, however, and, sinking upon a gar- 
 j den-seat, covered her face with her hands. I stood 
 ( before her, for a moment, in embarrassed silence. 
 
 " You keep late hours, she said, at last, with a 
 tremulous voice, but rising at the same time and, with 
 her arm put through mine, leading me to the thickly- 
 shaded walk. 
 
 " To-night I do, I replied; letters I could not 
 
 I well defer 
 
 " Listen to me! interrupted Lady Rachel. I 
 
 know your business for the morning 
 
 " I involuntarily released my arm and started back. 
 The chance of an interruption that would seem dis 
 honorable flashed across my mind. 
 
 " Stay ! she continued ; I am the only one in the 
 family who knows of it, and my errand with you is 
 not to hinder this dreadful meeting. The circum 
 stances are such, that, with society as it is, you could 
 not avoid it with honor. 
 
 " J pressed her arm with a feeling of gratified jus 
 tification which quite overcame, for the moment, my 
 curiosity as to the source of her knowledge of the 
 affair. 
 
 " You must forgive me, she said, that I come to 
 you like a bird of ill omen. I can not spare the pre 
 cious moments to tell you how I came by my infor 
 mation as to your design. I have walked the night 
 away, before your window, not daring to interrupt you 
 in what was probably the performance of sacred du 
 ties. But I know your antagonist I know his de 
 moniac nature, and pardon me! I dread the worst. 1 
 " I still walked by her side in silence. She re 
 sumed, though strongly agitated. 
 
 " I have said that I justify you ia an intention 
 
THE PHANTOM-HEAD UPON THE TABLE. 
 
 which will probably cost you your life. Yet, but for 
 a feeling which I am about to disclose to you, I should 
 lose no time and spare no pains in preventing this 
 meeting. Under such circumstances, your honor 
 would be less dear to me than now, and I should be 
 acting as one of my sex who had but a share of in 
 terest in resisting and striving to correct this murder 
 ous exaction of public opinion. I would condemn 
 duelling in argument avoid the duellist in society 
 make any sacrifice with others to suppress it in the 
 abstract but, till the feeling changes in reference to 
 it, I could not bring myself to sacrifice, in the honor 
 of the man I loved, my world of happiness for my 
 share only. 
 
 "And mean you to say I began, but, as the 
 
 light broke upon my mind, amazement stopped my 
 utterance. 
 
 " Yes that I love you ! that I love you ! mur 
 mured Lady Rachel, throwing herself into my arms, 
 and fastening her lips to mine in a long and passion 
 ate kiss that I love you, and, in this last hour of 
 your life, must breathe to you what I never before 
 breathed to mortal ! 
 
 " She sank to the ground, and, with handfuls of 
 dew, swept up from the grass of the lawn, I bathed 
 her temples, as she leaned senseless against my knee. 
 The moon had risen above the trees, and poured its 
 full radiance on her pale face and closed eyes. Her 
 hair loosened and fell in heavy masses over her shoul 
 ders and bosom, and, for the first time, I realized 
 Lady Rachel s extraordinary beauty. Her features 
 were without a fault, her skin was of marble fairness 
 and paleness, and her abandonment to passionate feel 
 ing had removed, for the instant, a hateful cloud of 
 
 pride and superciliousness that, at all other times, had 
 obscured her loveliness. With a newborn emotion 
 in my heart, I seized the first instant of returning 
 consciousness, and pressed her, with a convulsive ea 
 gerness, to my bosom. 
 
 " The sound of wheels aroused me from this de 
 lirious dream, and, looking up, I saw the gray of 
 the dawn struggling with the moonlight. I tore my 
 self from her arms, and the moment after was whirl 
 ing away to the appointed place of meeting. 
 
 "I was in my room, at Lilybank, dressing, at eleven 
 of that same day. My honor was safe, and the affair 
 was over, and now my whole soul was bent on this 
 new and unexpected vision of love. True I was 
 but twenty-five, and Lady Rachel probably twenty 
 years older but she loved me she was highborn and 
 beautiful and love is not so often brought to the lip 
 in this world, that we can cavil at the cup which holds 
 it. With these thoughts and feelings wrangling tu- 
 multuously in my heated blood, I took the following 
 note from a servant at my door. 
 
 " Lady Rachel buries in entire oblivion the 
 
 last night past. Feelings over which she has full con 
 trol in ordinary circumstances, have found utterance 
 under the conviction that they were words to the dy 
 ing. They would never have been betrayed without 
 impending death, and they will never, till death be 
 near to one of us, find voice, or give token of exist 
 ence again. Delicacy and honor will prompt you to 
 visit Lilybank no more. 
 
 " Lady Rachel kept her room till I left, and I have 
 never visited Lilybank, nor seen her since." 
 
 THE PHANTOM-HEAD UPON THE TABLE, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SHOWING THE HUMILIATIONS OF THE BARRIERS OF 
 HIGH-LIFE. 
 
 THERE is no aristocracy in the time o night. It 
 was punctually ten o clock, in Berkeley square. It 
 rained on the nobleman s roof. It rained on the beg 
 gar s head. The lamps, for all that was visible except 
 themselves, might as well have been half way to the 
 moon, but even that was not particular to Berkeley 
 square. 
 
 A hack cabriolet groped in from Bruton street. 
 
 " Shall I ring any bell for you, sir ?" said the cab 
 man, pulling aside the wet leather curtain. 
 
 " No ! I ll get out anywhere ! Pull up to the side 
 walk !" 
 
 But the passenger s mind changed while paying his 
 shilling. 
 
 "On second thoughts, my good fellow, you may 
 knock at the large door on the right." 
 
 The driver scrambled up the high steps and gave a 
 single knock such a knock as the drivers of only the 
 poor and unfashionable are expected to give, in well- 
 regulated England. 
 
 The door was opened only to a crack, and a glitter 
 ing livery peered through. But the passenger was 
 close behind, and setting his foot against the door, he 
 drove back the suspicious menial and walked in. 
 Three men, powdered and emblazoned in blue and 
 gold, started to their feet, and came toward the appa 
 rent intruder. He took the wet cap from his head, 
 deliberately flung his well-worn cloak into the arms 
 
 of the nearest man, and beckoning to another, pointed 
 to his overshoes. With a suppressed titter, two of 
 the footmen disappeared through a side-door, and the 
 third, mumbling something about sending up one of 
 the stable-boys, turned to follow them. 
 
 The new-comer s hand passed suddenly into the 
 footman s white cravat, and, by a powerful and sud 
 den throw, the man was brought to his knee. 
 
 " Oblige me by unbuckling that shoe " said the 
 stranger in a tone of imperturbable coolness, setting 
 his foot upon the upright knee of the astonished me 
 nial. 
 
 The shoe was taken off. and the other set in its 
 place upon the plush-covered leg, and unbuckled, as 
 obediently. 
 
 " Keep them until I call you to put them on again !" 
 said the wearer, taking his gloves from his pockets, as 
 the man arose, and slowly walking up and down the 
 hall while he drew them leisurely on. 
 
 From the wet and muddy overshoes had been de 
 livered two slight and well-appointed feet, however, 
 shining in pliable and unexceptionable jet. With a 
 second look, and the foul-weather toggery laid aside, 
 the humbled footman saw that he had been in error, 
 and that, hack-cab and dirty overshoes to the contrary 
 notwithstanding, the economising guest of "my lord" 
 would appear, on the other side of the drawing-room 
 door, only at home on " velvet of three pile" an ele 
 gant of undepreciable water! 
 
 " Shall I announce you, sir ?" respectfully inquired 
 the servant. 
 
 " If Lord Aymarhas come up from the dinner ta 
 bleyes! If the ladies ar aloo no !" 
 
THE PHANTOM-HEAD UPON THE TABLE. 
 
 57 
 
 Coffee has just gone in to the ladies, sir !" 
 
 " Then I ll find my own way !" 
 
 Lady Ayraar was jamming the projecting diamond 
 of a bracelet through and through the thick white 
 leaf of an Egyptian kala, lost apparently in an eclipse 
 of revery possibly in a swoon of slumberous diges 
 tion. By the drawing-room light, in her negligent 
 posture, she looked of a ripeness of beauty not yet 
 sapped by one autumnal minute plump, drowsy, and 
 voluptuous. She looked up as the door opened. 
 
 " Spiridion !" 
 
 " Sappho !" 
 
 "Don t be silly! how are you, Count Pallardos? 
 And how like a ghost you come in, unannounced! 
 Suppose I had been tying my shoe, or anything ?" 
 
 " Is your ladyship quite well ?" 
 
 " I will take coffee and wake up to tell you ! Was 
 I asleep when you opened the door? They were all 
 so dull at dinner. Ah me ! stupid or agreeable, we 
 grow old all the same! How am I looking, Spiri 
 dion?" 
 
 " Ravishingly ! Where is Lady Angelica?" 
 
 * Give me another lump of sugar ! La ! don t you 
 take coffee ?" 
 
 " There are but two cups, and this was meant for 
 a lip of more celestial earth has she been gone 
 long ?" 
 
 The door opened, and the rustling dress of Lady 
 Angelica Aymar made music in the room. Oh, how 
 gloriously beautiful she was, and how changed was 
 Count Spiridion Pallardos by her coming in ! A 
 minute before so inconsequent, so careless and com 
 plimentary now so timid, so deferential, so almost 
 awkward in every motion! 
 
 The name of " Greek count" has been for a long 
 time, in Europe, the synonym for " adventurer" a 
 worse pendant to a man s name, in high life at least, 
 than " pirate" or " robber." Not that a man is pecu 
 liar who is trying to make the most out of society and 
 would prefer an heiress to a governess, but that it is a 
 disgrace to be so labelled ! An adventurer is the same 
 as any other gentleman who is not rich, only without 
 a mask. 
 
 Count Pallardos was lately arrived from Constanti 
 nople, and was recognised and received by Lord Aymar 
 as the son of a reduced Greek noble who had been 
 the dragoman to the English embassy when his lord 
 ship was ambassador to the Porte. With a prompt 
 ness a little singular in one whose patronage was so 
 difficult to secure, Lord Aymar had immediately pro 
 cured, for the son of his old dependant, a small em 
 ployment as translator in the Foreign office, and with 
 its most limited stipend for his means, the young 
 count had commenced his experience of English life. 
 His acquaintance with the ladies of Lord Aymar s 
 family was two stages in advance of this, however. 
 Lady Aymar remembered him well as the beatitiful 
 child of the lovely Countess Pallardos, the playfellow 
 of her daughter Angelica on the shore of the Bos- 
 phorus; and on his first arrival in England, hearing 
 that the family of his patron was on the coast for sea 
 bathing, Spiridion had prepared to report himself first 
 to the female portion of it. Away from society in a 
 retired cottage ornee upon the seashore, they had re 
 ceived him with no hinderance to their appreciation or 
 hospitality ; and he had thus been subjected, by acci 
 dent, to a month s unshared intoxication with the 
 beauty of the Lady Angelica. The arrival of the 
 young Greek had been made known to Lord Aymar 
 by his lady s letters, and the situation had been pro 
 cured for him ; but Pallardos had seen his lordship 
 but once, and this was his first visit to the town estab 
 lishment of the family. 
 
 The butler came in with a petit verre of Curagoa 
 for Miladi, and was not surprised, as the footmen 
 would have been, to see Lady Angelica on her knee, 
 
 and Count Pallardos imprisoning a japonica in the 
 knot a la Grecque of that head of Heaven s most 
 heavenly moulding. Brother and sister, Cupid and 
 Psyche, could not have been grouped with a more 
 playful familiarity. 
 
 " Spiridion I" said Lady Aymar " I shall call you 
 Spiridion till the men come up how are you lodged, 
 my dear ! Have you a bath in your dressing-room ?" 
 
 " Pitcher and bowl of the purest crockery, my dear 
 lady ! May I venture to draw this braid a little closer, 
 Angelica to correct the line of this raven mass on 
 your cheek ? It robs us now of a rose-leaf s breadth 
 at least flat burglary, my sweet friend !" 
 
 But the Lady Angelica sprang to her feet, for a 
 voice was heard of some one ascending from the 
 dining-room. She flung herself into a dormeuse, 
 Spiridion twirled his two fingers at the fire, as if bodi 
 ly warmth was the uppermost necessity of the moment, 
 and enter Lord Aymar, followed by a great statesman, 
 1 a famous poet, one sprig of unsurpassed nobility, and 
 one wealthy dandy commoner. 
 
 Lord Aymar nodded to his protege, but the gentle 
 men grouped themselves, for a moment, around a silver 
 easel, upon which stood a Correggio, a late purchase 
 of which his lordship had been discoursing, and iu 
 that minute or two the name and quality of the stran 
 ger were communicated to the party probably, for 
 they took their coffee without further consciousness 
 of his presence. 
 
 The statesman paired off to a corner with his host 
 to talk politics, the poet took the punctured flower 
 from the lap of Lady Aymar, and commenced mend 
 ing, with patent wax wafers, from the ormolu desk 
 near by, the holes in the white leaves ; and the two in- 
 effables lingered a moment longer over their Curacoa. 
 
 Pallardos drew a chair within conversation-reacnof 
 Lady Angelica, and commenced an unskilful discus 
 sion of the opera of the night before. He felt angry, 
 insulted, unseated from his self-possession, yet he 
 could not have told why. The two young men lounged 
 leisurely across the room, and the careless Lord Fred 
 erick drew his chair partly between Pallardos and 
 Lady Angelica, while Mr. Townley Manners reclined 
 upon an ottoman behind her and brought his lips 
 within whisper-shot of her ear, and, with ease and un 
 forced nonsense, not audible nor intended to be audible 
 to the " Greek adventurer," they inevitably engrossed 
 the noble beauty. 
 
 The blood of Count Spiridion ran round his heart 
 like a snake coiled to strike. He turned to a portfolio 
 of drawings for a cover to self-control and self-com 
 muning, for he felt that he had need of summoning 
 his keenest and coldest judgment, his boldest and 
 wariest courage of conduct and endurance, to submit 
 to, and outnerve and overmaster, his humiliating po 
 sition. He was under a roof of which he well knew 
 that the pride and joy of it, the fair Lady Angelica, 
 the daughter of the proud earl, had given him her 
 heart. He well knew that he had needed reserve and 
 management to avoid becoming too much the favorite 
 of the lady mistress of that mansion ; yet, in it, he had 
 been twice insulted grossly, cuttingly, but in both 
 cases unresentably once by unpunishable menials, 
 of whom he could not even complain without expo 
 sing and degrading himself, and once by the supercil 
 ious competitors for the heart he knew was his own 
 and they too, unpunishable! 
 
 At this moment, at a sign from Lady Aymar, her 
 lord swung open the door of a conservatory to give 
 the room "air, and the long mirror, set in the panel, 
 showed to Spiridion his own pale and lowering fea 
 tures. He thanked Heaven for the chance ! To see 
 himself once more was what he bitterly needed ! to 
 see whether his head had shrunk between his shoul 
 ders whether his back was crouched whether his 
 eyes and lips had lost their fearlessness and pride ! He 
 
58 
 
 THE PHANTOM-HEAD UPON THE TABLE. 
 
 had feared so felt so ! He almost wondered that he 
 did not look like a dependant and a slave ! But oh, 
 no ! The large mirror showed the grouped figures 
 of the drawing-room, his own the noblest among them 
 by nature s undeniable confession ! His clear, statua 
 ry outline of features the finely-cut arches of his 
 lips the bold, calm darkness of his passionate eyes 
 his graceful and high-born mien, all apparent enough 
 to his own eye when seen in the contrast of that mir 
 rored picture he was not changed ! not a slave not 
 metamorphosed by that hour s humiliation ! He 
 clenched his right hand, once, till the nails were dri 
 ven through his glove into the clammy palm, and then 
 rose with a soft smile on his features, like the remain 
 der of a look of pleasure. 
 
 " I have found," said he, in a composed and musical 
 tone, "I have found what we were looking for, Lady 
 Angelica !" 
 
 He raised the large portfolio from the print-stand, 
 and setting it open on his knee, directly between Lord 
 Frederick and Lady Angelica, cut off that nobleman s 
 communication with her ladyship very effectually, 
 while he pointed out a view of the Acropolis at Athens. 
 Her ladyship was still expressing her admiration of the 
 drawing, when Spiridion turned to the astonished gen 
 tleman at her ear. 
 
 "Perhaps, sir," said he, " in a lady s service, I may 
 venture to dispossess you of that ottoman! Will you 
 be kind enough to rise?" 
 
 With a stare of astonishment, the elegant Mr. 
 Townley Manners reluctantly complied ; and Spiri 
 dion, drawing the ottoman in front of Lady Angelica, 
 set the broad portfolio upon it, and seating himself at 
 her feet upon the outer edge, commenced a detailed 
 account of the antiquities of the grand capitol. The 
 lady listened with an amused look of mischief in her 
 eye, Lord Frederick walked once around her chair 
 humming an air very rudely, Mr. Manners attempted 
 in vain to call Lady Angelica to look at something 
 wonderful in the conservatory, and Spiridion s triumph 
 was complete. He laid aside the portfolio after a mo 
 ment or two, drew the ottoman back to its advantageous 
 position, and, self-assured and at his ease, engrossed 
 fully and agreeably the attention of his heart s mistress. 
 
 Half an hour elapsed. Lord Aymar took a kind 
 of dismission attitude before the fire, and the guests 
 one and all took their leave. They were all cloaking 
 together in the entry, when his lordship leaned over 
 the bannister. 
 
 "Have you your chariot, Lord Frederick?" he 
 asked. 
 
 " Yes it s at the door now !" 
 
 " Lady Aymar suggests that perhaps you ll set down 
 Count Pallardos, on your way !" 
 
 " Why ah, certainly, certainly !" replied Lord 
 Frederick, with some hesitation. 
 
 "My thanks to Lady Aymar," said Spiridion very 
 quietly, " but say to her ladyship that I am provided 
 with overshoes and umbrella ! Shall I offer your lord 
 ship half of the latter ?" added he in another key, 
 leaning with cool mock-earnestness toward Lord 
 Frederick, who only stared a reply as he passed out to 
 his chariot. 
 
 And marvelling who would undergo such humilia 
 tions and such antagonism as had been his lot that 
 evening, for anything else than the love of a Lady 
 Angelica, Count Spiridion stepped forth into the rain 
 to grope his way to his obscure lodgings in Parlia 
 ment street. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 SHOWING A GENTLEMAN S NEED OF A HORSE. 
 
 IT was the hour when the sun in heaven is sup 
 posed to be least promiscuous the hour when the 
 
 five hundred fashionables of London West-End re 
 ceive his visit in the open air, to the entire exclusion 
 (it is presumed) of the remaining population of the 
 globe. The cabs and jarveys, the vehicles of the de 
 spised public, rolled past the forbidden gate of Hyde 
 park, and the echo stationed in the arched portal an 
 nounced the coroneted carriage* as they nicely nibbled 
 the pleased gravel in passing under. A plebeian or 
 two stood outside to get a look at the superior beings 
 whose daily list of company to dine is the news most 
 carefully furnished to the" instructed public. The 
 birds (having " fine feathers ) flew over the iron rail 
 ing unchallenged by the gate-keeper. Four o clock 
 went up to Heaven s gate with the souls of those who 
 had died since three, and with the hour s report of the 
 world s sins and good deeds ; and at the same moment 
 a chariot rolled into the park, holding between its 
 claret panels the embellished flesh and olood of Lady 
 Ayrnar and her incomparable daughter. 
 
 A group of gay men on horseback stood at the bend 
 of "Rotten Row," watching the comers-in; and within 
 the inner railing of the park, among the promenaders 
 on foot, was distinguishable the slight figure of Count 
 Pallardos, pacing to and fro with step somewhat irreg 
 ular. As Lady Aymar s chariot went by, he bowed 
 with a frank and ready smile, but the smile was quickly 
 banished by a flushed cheek and lowering brow, for, 
 from the group of mounted dandies, dashed out Lord 
 Frederick Beauchief, upon a horse of unparalleled 
 beauty, and with a short gallop took and kept his place 
 close at the chariot window. 
 
 Pallardos watched them till the turn of the ring took 
 them from his sight. The fitness of the group the 
 evident suitableness of Lord Frederick s position at 
 that chariot window, filled him with a jealousy he could 
 no longer stifle. The contest was all unequal, it was 
 too palpable to deny. He, himself, whatever his per 
 son or qualities, was, when on foot, in the place allot 
 ted to him by his fortunes not only unnoticed by the 
 contagious admiration of the crowd, but unable even 
 to obey his mistress, though beckoned by her smile to 
 follow her ! That superb animal, the very type of 
 pride and beauty, arching his glossy neck and tossing 
 his spirited head before the eyes of Lady Angelica, 
 was one of those unanalyzed, undisputed vouchers for 
 the owner s superiority, which make wealth the devil s 
 gift irresistible but by the penetrating and cold judg 
 ment of superior beings. How should a woman, born 
 with the susceptible weaknesses of her sex, most im 
 pressible by that which is most showy and beautiful 
 how should she be expected to reason coldly and with 
 philosophic discrimination on this subject ? how sep 
 arate from Lord Frederick, the mere man, his subser 
 vient accompaniments of wealth, attendance, homage 
 from others, and infatuated presumption in himself? 
 Nay what presumption in Spiridion Pallardos (so 
 he felt, with his teeth set together in despair, as he 
 walked rapidly along) to suppose that he could con 
 tend successfully against this and a thousand such ad 
 vantages and opportunities, with only his unpriced, 
 unproved love to offer her, with a hand of poverty ! 
 His heart ran drowningly over with the bitterness of 
 conviction ! 
 
 After a few steps, Pallardos turned back with an in 
 stinctive though inexplicable desire to hasten the pang 
 of once more meeting them as they came round the 
 ring of the park. Coming toward him, was one of the 
 honorable officials of Downing street, with whom he 
 had been thrown in contact, a conceited and well 
 born diner-out, mounted on a handsome cob, but 
 with his servant behind him on a blood hunter. 
 Mr. Dallinger was walking his horse slowly along the 
 fence, and, as he came opposite Pallardos, he drew 
 rein. 
 
 " Count !" said he, in that patronising tone which is 
 tossed over the head of the patronised like a swan a 
 
 
THE PHANTOM-HEAD UPON THE TABLE. 
 
 59 
 
 neck over the worm about to be gobbled, "a a a 
 
 do you know Spanish ?" 
 
 " Yes. Why ?" 
 
 "A a I ve a job for you ! You know Moreno, 
 
 the Spanish secretary well, his wife sheivill persist 
 
 in disguising her billet-doux in that stilted language, 
 
 and you know what I want suppose you come and 
 
 breakfast with me to-morrow morning ?" 
 
 Pallardos was mentally crowding his contemptuous 
 refusal into the smallest phrase that could convey re 
 pulse to insolence, when the high-stepping and foam- 
 spattered forelegs of Lady Aymar s bays appeared un 
 der the drooping branch of the tree beyond him. The 
 next instant, Lord Frederick s easily-carried head 
 danced into sight a smile of perfect self-satisfaction 
 on his face, and his magnificent horse, excited by the 
 constant check, prancing at his proudest. At the mo 
 ment they passed, Dallinger s groom, attempting to 
 restrain the impatience of the spirited hunter he was 
 upon, drew the curb a little too violently, and the man 
 was thrown. The sight of the empty saddle sent a 
 thought through the brain of Pallardos like a shaft. 
 
 " May I take a little of the nonsense out of that 
 horse for you ?" said he quickly, springing over the 
 railing, and seizing the rein, to which the man still 
 held, while the frighted horse backed and reared 
 toward his master. 
 
 " A a yes, if you like !" 
 
 Pallardos sprang into the saddle, loosened the rein 
 and leaned forward, and with three or four powerful 
 bounds, the horse was at the other window of the 
 chariot. Away, with the bursted trammels of heart 
 and brain, went all thoughts of the horse s owner, and 
 all design, if any had flashed on his mind, of time or 
 place for restoring him. Bred in a half-civilized coun 
 try, where the bold hand was often paramount to law, 
 the Greek had no habit of mind likely to recognise in 
 a moment of passion even stronger barriers of propri 
 ety than he was now violating ; and, to control his 
 countenance and his tongue, and summon his resour 
 ces for an apparently careless and smiling contest of 
 attraction with his untroubled rival, was work enough 
 for the whole mind and memory, as well as for all the 
 nerve and spirit of the excited Greek. He laid his 
 hand on the chariot window, and thinking no more of 
 the horse he was subduing than the air he breathed, 
 broke up his powerful gallop to a pace that suited him, 
 and played the lover to the best of his coolness and 
 ability. 
 
 " We saw you walking just now, and were lament 
 ing that you were not on horseback," said Lady Ay- 
 mar, "for it is a sweet evening, and we thought of 
 driving out for a stroll in old Sir John Chasteney s 
 grounds at Bayswater. Will you come, Spiridion ? 
 Tell White to drive there!" 
 
 Lord Frederick kept his place, and with its double 
 escort, the equipage of the Aymars sped on its vtoy to 
 Bayswater. Spiridion was the handsomer man, and 
 the more graceful rider, and, without forcing the dim- 
 cult part of keeping up a conversation with those 
 within the chariot, he soon found his uneasiness dis- 
 , placed by a glow of hope and happiness; for Lady 
 Angelica, leaning far back in her seat, and completely 
 hidden from Lord Frederick, kept her eyes watchfully 
 and steadily upon the opposite side where rode her less 
 confident lover. The evening was of summer s softest 
 and richest glory, breezy, and fragrant; and as the sun 
 grew golden, the party alighted at the gates of Chas- 
 teney park in tune for love, it must needs be, if ever 
 conspiring smiles in nature could compel accord in 
 human affections. 
 
 Ah, happy Sp,iridion Pallardos ! The Lady Ange 
 lica called him to disengage her dress from the step 
 of the carriage, and her arm was in his when he arose, 
 placed there as confidingly as a bride s, and with a 
 gentle pressure that was half love and half mischief 
 
 for she quite comprehended that Lord Frederick s 
 ride to Bayswater was not for the pleasure of a twilight 
 stroll through Chasteney park with her mother ! That 
 mother, fortunately, was no duenna. She had pre 
 tensions of her own to admiration, and she was only 
 particular as to the quantity. Her daughter s division 
 with her of the homage of their male acquaintances, 
 was an evil she indolently submitted to, but she was 
 pleased in proportion as it was not obtruded upon her 
 notice. As Pallardos and the Lady Angelica turned 
 into one of the winding alleys of the grounds, Lady 
 Aymar bent her large eyes very fixedly upon another, 
 and where such beautiful eyes went before, her small 
 feet were very sure to follow. The twilight threw its 
 first blur over the embowering foliage as the parties 
 lost sight of each other, and, of the pair who are the 
 hero and heroine of this story, it can only be disclosed 
 that they found a heaven (embalmed, for their partic 
 ular use, in the golden dusk of that evening s twi 
 light), and returned to the park gate in the latest min 
 ute before dark, sworn lovers, let come what would ! 
 But meantime, the happy man s horse had disap 
 peared, as well he might have been expected to do, his 
 bridle having been thrown over a bush by the en 
 grossed Pallardos, when called upon to assist Lady 
 Angelica from her carriage, and milord s groom and 
 miladi s footman having no sovereign reasons for se 
 curing him. Lord Frederick laughed till the count 
 accepted the offer of Lady Aymar to take him home, 
 bodkin-wise, between herself and her daughter; and for 
 the happiness of being close pressed to the loving side 
 of the Lady Angelica for one hour more, Pallardos 
 would willingly have lost a thousand horses his own 
 or the honorable Mr. Dallinger s. And, by the way, 
 of Mr. Dallinger and his wrath, and his horseless 
 groom, Spiridion began now to have a thought or two 
 of an uncomfortable pertinacity of intrusion. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 SHOWING WHAT MAKES A HORSE-STEALER A GEiNTLE- 
 MAIf. 
 
 IT was the first day of September, and most of the 
 gold threads were drawn from the tangled and vari 
 colored woof of London society. " The season" was 
 over. Two gentlemen stood in the window of Crock- 
 ford s, one a Jew barrister (kersey enough for more 
 russet company by birth and character, but admitted 
 to the society of "costly stuff" for the equivalent he 
 gave as a purveyor of scandal), and the other a com 
 moner, whose wealth and fashion gave him the privi 
 lege of out-staying the season in town, without pub 
 lishing in the Morning Post a better reason than incli 
 nation for so unnatural a procedure. 
 
 Count Spiridion Pallardos was seen to stroll slowly 
 up St. James street, on the opposite side. 
 
 "Look there, Abrams!" said Mr. Townley Man 
 ners, " there s the Greek who was taken up at one 
 time by the Aymars. I thought he was transported." 
 
 "No! he still goes to the Aymars, though he is 
 in Coventry everywhere else. Dallinger had him 
 arrested for horse-stealing, wasn t it ? The officer 
 nabbed him as he was handing Lady Angelica out of 
 her carriage in Berkeley square. 1 remember hearing 
 of it two months ago. What a chop-fallen blackguard 
 it looks !" 
 
 " Blackguard i Come, come, man ! give the devil 
 his due !" deprecated the more liberal commoner ; 
 " may be it s from not having seen a gentleman for the 
 last week, but, hang me if I don t think that same 
 horse-stcaler turning the corner is as crack-looking a 
 man as I ever saw from this window. What s o clock ?" 
 
 " Half-past four," replied the scandal-monger, swal- 
 
60 
 
 THE PHANTOM-HEAD UPON THE TABLE. 
 
 lowing, with a bland smile, what there was to swallmv 
 in Manners s two-edged remark, and turning suddenly 
 on his heel. 
 
 Pallardos slowly took his way along Picadilly, and 
 was presently in Berkeley square, at the door of the 
 Aymars. The porter admitted him without question, 
 and he mounted, unannounced, to the drawing-room. 
 The ladies sat by the window, looking out upon the 
 garden. 
 
 "Is it you, Spiridion?" said Lady Aymar, "I had 
 hoped you would not come to-day!" 
 
 " Oh, mamma!" appealed Lady Angelica. 
 
 "Welcome all other days of the year, my dear 
 Pallardos warmly welcome, of course" continued 
 Lady Aymar, " but to-day oh God ! you have no 
 idea what the first of September is to us to my 
 husband !" 
 
 Lady Aymar covered her face with her hands, and 
 the tears streamed through her fingers. 
 
 " Pardon me," said Pallardos " pardon me, my 
 dear lady, but I am here by the earl s invitation, to 
 dine at six." 
 
 Lady Aymar sprang from her seat in astonishment. 
 
 " By the earl s invitation, did you say ? Angelica, 
 what can that mean ? Was it bv note, Count Pal 
 lardos?" 
 
 " By note," he replied. 
 
 " I am amazed !" she said, " truly amazed! Does 
 he mean to have a confidant for his family secret ? Is 
 his insanity on one point affecting his reason on all ? 
 What shall we do, Angelica ?" 
 
 "We may surely confide in Spiridion, whatever the 
 meaning of it, or the result" gently murmured Lady 
 Angelica. 
 
 " We may we may !" said Lady Aymar. "Prepare 
 him for it as you will. I pray Heaven to help me 
 through with this day without upsetting my own 
 reason. I shall meet you at dinner, Spiridion." 
 
 With her hands twisted together in a convulsive 
 knot, Lady Aymar slowly and musingly passed into 
 the conservatory on her way to her own room, leaving 
 to themselves two lovers who had much to talk of 
 beside dwelling upon a mystery which, even to Lady 
 Angelica, who knew most of it, was wholly inexpli 
 cable. Yet it was partially explained by the trembling 
 girl explained as a case of monomania, and with the 
 brevity of a disagreeable subject, but listened to by 
 her lover with a different feeling a conviction as of a 
 verified dream, and a vague, inexplicable terror which 
 he could neither reason down nor account for.. But 
 the lovers must be left to themselves, by the reader as 
 well as by Lady Aymar; and meantime, till the dinner 
 hour, when our story begins again, we may glance at 
 a note which was received, and replied to, by Lord 
 Aymar in the library below. 
 
 " MY DEAR LORD : In the belief that a frank com 
 munication would be best under the circumstances, I 
 wish to make an inquiry, prefacing it with the assu 
 rance that my only hope of happiness has been for 
 some time staked upon the successful issue of my 
 suit for your daughter s hand. It is commonly under 
 stood, I believe, that the bulk of your lordship s for 
 tune is separate from the entail, and may be disposed 
 of at your pleasure. May I inquire its amount, or 
 rather, may I ask what fortune goes with the hand of 
 Lady Angelica. The Beauchief estates are unfortu 
 nately much embarrassed, and my own debts (I may 
 frankly confess) are very considerable. You will at 
 once see, my lord, that, in justice to your daughter, as 
 well as to myself, I could not do otherwise than make 
 this frank inquiry before pushing my suit to extremity. 
 Begging your indulgence and an immediate answer, I 
 remain, my dear lord, Yours very faithfully, 
 
 " FREDERICK BEAUCHIEF. 
 "The EARL OF AYMAR." 
 
 (REPLY.) 
 
 " DEAR LORD FREDERICK : I trust you will not 
 accuse me of a want of candor in declining a direct 
 answer to your question. Though I freely own to a 
 friendly wish for your success in your efforts to engage 
 the affections of Lady Angelica, with a view to mar 
 riage, it can only be in the irrevocable process of a 
 marriage settlement that her situation, as to the prob 
 able disposal of my fortune, can be disclosed. I may 
 admit to you, however, that, upon the events of this 
 day on which you have written (it so chances), may 
 depend the question whether I should encourage you 
 to pursue further your addresses to Lady Angelica. 
 " Yours very faithfully, " AYMAR. 
 
 " Lord FREDERICK BEAUCHIEF." 
 
 It seemed like the first day after a death, in the 
 house of Lord Aymar. An unaccountable hush pre 
 vailed through the servants offices ; the gray-headed 
 old butler crept noiselessly about, making his prepa 
 rations for dinner, and the doors, that were opened 
 and shut, betrayed the careful touch of apprehension. 
 With penetrating and glassy clearness, the kitchen 
 clock, seldom heard above stairs, resounded through 
 the house, striking six. 
 
 In the same neglected attire which she had worn in 
 the morning, Lady Aymar re-entered the drawing- 
 room. The lids were drawn up around her large eyes 
 with a look of unresisting distress, and she walked 
 with relaxed steps, and had, altogether, an air absent 
 and full of dread. The interrupted lovers ceased 
 talking as she approached, but she did not remark the 
 silence, and walked, errandless, from corner to corner. 
 
 The butler announced dinner. 
 
 " May I give your ladyship an arm ?" asked Pal 
 lardos. 
 
 " Oh God ! is it dinner-time already !" she exclaimed 
 with a voice of terror. " Williams ! is Lord Aymar 
 below?" 
 
 "In the dining-room, miladi." 
 
 She took Spiridion s arm, and they descended the 
 stairs. As they approached the dining-room, her arm 
 trembled so violently in his that he turned to her with 
 the fear that she was about to fall. He did not speak. 
 A vague dread, which was more than he had caught 
 from her looks a something unaccountably heavy at 
 his own heart made his voice cling to his throat. 
 He bowed to Lord Aymar. 
 
 His noble host stood leaning upon the mantel-piece, 
 pale, but seeming less stern and cold than suffering 
 and nerved to bear pain. 
 
 " I am glad to see you, my dear count !" he said, 
 giving him his hand with an affectionateness that he 
 had never before manifested. " Are you quite well ?" 
 he added, scrutinizing his features closely with the 
 question " for, like myself, you seem to have grown 
 pale upon this September dulness." 
 
 I am commonly less well in this month than in 
 any other," said Pallardos, " and now I think of it 
 I had forgotten that I arose this morning with a 
 depression of spirits as singular as it was unendurable. 
 I forgot it, when I received your lordship s note, in 
 the happiness the day was to bring me." 
 
 The lovers exchanged looks, unremarked, appa 
 rently, by either Lord or Lady Aymar, and the con 
 versation relapsed into the commonplaces of dinner- 
 table civility. Spiridion observed that the footmen 
 were excluded, the old butler alone serving them at 
 table ; and that the shutters, of which he got a chance 
 glimpse between the curtains, were carefully closed. 
 Once or twice Pallardos roused himself with the 
 thought that he was ill playing the part of an agree 
 able guest, and proposed some question that might 
 lead to discussion ; but the spirits of Lady Angelica 
 seemed frighted to silence, and Lord and Lady Aymar 
 
THE PHANTOM-HEAD UPON THE TABLE. 
 
 were wholly absorbed, or were at "least unconscious of 
 their singular incommunicativeness. 
 
 Dinner dragged on slowly Lady Aymar retarding 
 every remove with terrified and flurried eagerness. 
 Pallardos remarked that she did not eat, but she asked 
 to be helped agaiu from every dish before its removal. 
 Her fork rattled on the plate with the trembling of her 
 hand, and, once or twice, an outbreak of hysterical 
 tears was evidently prevented by a stern word and look 
 from Lord Aymar. 
 
 The butler leaned over to his mistress s ear. 
 
 " No no no ! Not yet not yet !" she exclaimed, 
 in a hurried voice, " oue minute more !" But the 
 clock at that instant struck seven, counted by that 
 table company in breathless silence. Pallardos felt 
 his heart sink, he knew not why. 
 
 Lord Aymar spoke quickly and hoarsely. 
 
 " Turn the key, Williams." 
 
 Lady Aymar screamed and covered her face with 
 her hands. 
 
 " Remove the cloth !" he again ordered precipi 
 tately. 
 
 The butler s hand trembled. He fumbled with the 
 corner of the cloth a moment, and seemed to want 
 strength or courage to fulfil his office. With a sudden 
 effort Lord Aymar seized and threw the cloth to the 
 other end of the apartment. 
 
 " There !" cried he, starting to his feet, and point 
 ing to the bare table, "there! there!" he repeated, 
 seizing the hand of Lady Angelica, as she arose terrifi 
 ed upon her feet. " See you nothing ? Do you see 
 nothing? 1 
 
 With a look, at her father, of blank inquiry a look 
 of pity at her mother, sunk helpless upon the arm of 
 her chair a look at Pallardos, who with open mouth, 
 and eyes starting from their sockets, stood gazing upon 
 the table, heedless of all present she answered 
 " Nothing my dear father ! nothing !" 
 
 He flung her arm suddenly from his hand. 
 
 " I knew it," said he, with angry emphasis. " Take 
 her, shameless woman ! Take your child, and be 
 gone !" 
 
 But Pallardos laid his hand upon the earl s arm. 
 
 " My lord ! my lord !" he said, in a tone of fearful 
 suppression of outcry, " can we not remove this 
 hideous object ! How it glares at you ! at me ! 
 Why does it look at me ! What is it, Lord Aymar? 
 What brings that ghastly head here 1 Oh God ! 
 oh God ! I have seen it so often !" 
 
 " You 1 you have seen it ?" suddenly asked Lady 
 Aymar in a whisper. " Is there anything to see ? Do 
 you see the same dreadful si^ht, Spiridion ?" Her 
 voice rose with the last question to a scream. 
 
 Pallardos did not answer. He had forgotten the 
 presence of them all. He struggled a moment, gasp 
 ing and choking for self-control, and then, with a^ud- 
 deu movement, clutched at the bare table. His empty 
 hand slowly opened, and his strength sufficed to pass 
 his finger across the palm. He staggered backward 
 with an idiotic laugh, and was received in his fall by 
 the trembling arms of Lady Angelica. A motion . 
 from Lord Aymar conveyed to his faithful servant | 
 that the phantom was vanishing ! The door was flung 
 open and the household summoned. 
 
 " Count Pallardos has fainted from the heat of the 
 room," s;iid Lord Aymar. " Place him upon my ! 
 bed! And Lady Aymar! will you step into the 
 library I would speak with you a moment !" 
 
 There was humility and beseechingness in the last 
 few words of Lord Aymar, which fell strangely on the 
 ear of the affrighted and guilty woman. Her mind 
 had been too fearfully tasked to comprehend the 
 meaning of that changed tone, but, with a vague 
 feeling of relief, she staggered through the hall, and 
 the door of the library closed behind her. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A letter from Lord Aymar to Lady Angelica will 
 put the story forward a little : 
 
 " MY DKAR ANGELICA : I am happy to know thr.t 
 there are circumstances which will turn aside much 
 of the poignancy of the communication I am about to 
 make to you. If I am not mistaken at least, in be 
 lieving a mutual attachment to exist between your 
 self and Count Pallardos, you will at once compre 
 hend the ground of my mental relief, and perhaps, in 
 a measure, anticipate what I am about to say. 
 
 " I have never spoken to you of the fearful in 
 heritance in the blood of the Aymars. This would 
 appear a singular omission between two members of 
 one family, but I had strong reasons for my silence, 
 one of which was your possible sympathy with your 
 mother s obstinate incredulity. Now since yester 
 day s appalling proof you can no longer doubt the 
 inheritance of me phantom head the fearful record of 
 some nameless deed of guilt, which is doomed to 
 haunt out festal table as often as the murderous day 
 shall come around to a descendant of our blood. 
 Fortunately mercifully, I shall perhaps say, we are 
 not visited by this dread avenger till the maturity of 
 manhood gives us the courage to combat with its 
 horror. The Septembers, since my twentieth year, 
 have brought it with fatal certainty to me. God alone 
 knows how long I shall be able to withstand the taint 
 it gives to my thoughts when waking, and to the dreams 
 upon my haunted pillow. 
 
 " You will readily see, in what I have said, another 
 reason for my silence toward you on this subject. In 
 the strong sympathy and sensitive imagination of a 
 woman, might easily be bred, by too vivid picturing, 
 a fancy which would be as palpable almost as the 
 reality ; and I Wished you to arrive at woman s years 
 with a belief that it was but a monomaniac affection of 
 my own brain a disease to pity but not to share ! 
 You are now twenty. The females of my family have 
 invariably seen the phantom at seventeen ! Do you 
 anticipate the painful inference 1 draw from the fact 
 that this spectre is invisible to you ! 
 
 " No, Angelica! you are not my daughter! The 
 Aymar blood does not run in your veins, and I know 
 not how much it will soften the knowledge of your 
 mother s frailty to know, that you are spared the dread 
 inheritance that would have been yours with a legiti 
 macy of honor. I had grounds for this belief at your 
 birth, but I thought it due to the hallowed character 
 of woman and wife to summon courage to wait for 
 confirmation. Had I acted out the impulse, then 
 almost uncontrollable within me, I.should have profit 
 ed by the lawless land in which I resided to add more 
 weight to the errand of this phantom avenger. But 
 time and reason have done their work upon me. Your 
 mother is safe from open retribution. May God 
 pardon her ! 
 
 "You will have said, here, that since Count Pallar 
 dos has- been revealed by the same pursuing Provi 
 dence to be my son, I may well refrain from appear 
 ing as my wile s accuser. I have no wish to profit by 
 the difference the world makes between infidelity in 
 man, and infidelity in woman; nor to look, for an 
 apology, into the law of nature upon which so general 
 and undisputed a distinction must needs be founded. 
 I confess the justice of Heaven s vengeance upon the 
 
 crime visited upon me, I fearfully believe, in the 
 
 unconscious retaliation which gave you birth. Yet 
 I can not, for this, treat you as the daughter of my 
 blood. 
 
 " And this brings me to the object of my letter. 
 With the care of years, I have separated, from the 
 
GETTING TO WINDWARD. 
 
 entail of Aymar, the bulk of my fortune. God has 
 denied me a legitimate male heir, and I have Ion"" ago 
 determined, to leave, to its natural conflict with cir 
 cumstances, the character of a child I knew to be 
 mine, and to adopt its destiny, if it proved worthy, 
 should my fears as to your own parentage be confirm 
 ed by the undeniable testimony of our spectral curse. 
 Count Pallardos is that child. Fate drew him here, 
 without my interference, as the crisis of your destiny 
 turned against you. The innocent was not to be 
 punished for the guilty, and the inheritance he takes 
 from you goes back to you with his love in wedlock ! 
 So, at least, appearances have led me to believe, and 
 so would seem to be made apparent the kind provisions 
 of Heaven against our resentful injustices. I must 
 confess that I shall weep tears of joy if it be so, for, j 
 dear Angelica, you have wound yourself around my 
 heart, nearer to its core than the coil of this serpent 
 of revenge. 1 shall find it to be so, I am sadly sure, 
 if I prove incorrect in my suppositions as to your at 
 tachment. 
 
 "I have now to submit to you, I%ust only as a 
 matter of form, two offers for your hand one from 
 Mr. Townley Manners, and the other (conditional, 
 however, with your fortune) from Lord Frederick 
 Beauchief. An annuity of five hundred a year would 
 be all you would receive for a fortune, and your 
 choice, of course, is free. As the countess Pallardos, 
 
 | you would share a very large fortune (my gifts to my 
 son, by a transfer to be executed this day), and to that 
 destiny, if need be, I tearfully urge you. 
 
 " Affectionately yours, my dear Angelica, 
 
 " AYMAR." 
 
 With one more letter, perhaps, the story will be 
 sufficiently told. 
 
 "DEAR COUNT: You will wonder at receiving a 
 friendly note from me after my refusal, two months 
 since, to meet you over pistols and coffee ; but rep 
 aration rnay not be too late, and this is to say, that 
 you have your choice between two modes of settle 
 ment, viz : to accept for your stable the hunter you 
 stole from me (vide police report) and allow me to take 
 a glass of wine with you at my own table and bury the 
 hatchet, or, to shoot at me if you like, according to 
 your original design. Manners and Beauchief hope 
 you will select the latter, as they owe you a grudge 
 for the possession of your incomparable bride and her 
 fortune ; but I trust you will prefer the horse, which 
 (if I am rightly informed) bore you to the declaration 
 of love at Chasteney. Reply to Crockford s. 
 " Yours ever (if you like), 
 
 " POMFEET DALLJNGER. 
 "Count PALLARDOS." 
 
 Is the story told ? I think so ! 
 
 GETTING TO WINDWARD, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 LONDON is an abominable place to dine. I mean, 
 of course, unless you are free of a club, invited out, or 
 pay a ridiculous price for a French dinner. The un 
 known stranger, adrift on the streets, with a traveller s 
 notions of the worth of things to eat, is much worse 
 off, as to his venture for a meal, than he would be in 
 the worst town of the worst province of France much 
 worse off than he would be in New York or New Or 
 leans. There is a " Very s," it is true, and there are 
 one or two restaurants, so called, in the Haymarket; 
 but it is true, notwithstanding, that short of a two- 
 guinea dinner at the Clarendon", or some hotel of this 
 class, the next, best thing is a simple pointed steak with 
 potatoes, at a chop-house. The admirable club-sys 
 tem (admirable for club-members) has absorbed all the 
 intermediate degrees of eating-houses, and the travel 
 ler s chance and solitary meal must be either absurdly 
 expensive, or dismally furnished and attended. 
 
 The only real liberty one ever enjoys in a metropo 
 lis is the interval (longer or shorter, as one is more or 
 less a philosopher) between his arrival and the deliv 
 ery of his letters of introduction. While perfectly 
 unknown, dreading no rencontre of acquaintances, sub 
 ject to no care of dress, equipage, or demeanor, the 
 stranger feels, what he never feels afterward, a com 
 plete abandon to what, immediately surrounds him, a 
 complete willingness to be amused in any shape which 
 chance pleases to offer, and, his desponding loneliness 
 serving him like the dark depths of a well, he sees lights 
 invisible from the higher level of amusement. 
 
 lired of my solitary meals in the parlor of a hotel 
 during my first week in London, I made the round of 
 such dming-places as I could inquire out at the West 
 .knd of course, from the reserved habits of the coun 
 try toward strangers, making no acquaintances, and 
 
 scarce once exchanging a glance with the scores who 
 sat at the tables around me. Observation was my only 
 amusement, and J felt afterward indebted to those si 
 lent studies of character for more acquaintance with 
 the under-crust of John Bull, than can be gathered 
 from books or closer intercourse. It is foreign to my 
 present purpose, however, to tell why his pride should 
 seem want of curiosity, and why his caution and deli 
 cacy should show like insensibility and coldness. I 
 am straying from my story. 
 
 The covered promenade of the Burlington Arcade 
 is, on rainy days, a great allure for a small chop-house 
 hard by, called " The Blue Posts." This is a snug 
 little tavern, with the rear of its two stories cut into a 
 I single dining-room, where chops, steaks, ale, and punch, 
 may be had in unusual perfection. It is frequented 
 ordinarily by a class of men peculiar, I should think, 
 to England taciturn, methodical in their habits, and 
 highly respectable in their appearance men who seem 
 to have no amusements and no circle of friends, but 
 who come in at six and sit over their punch and the 
 newspapers till bed time, without speaking a syllable, 
 except to the waiter, and apparently turning a cold 
 shoulder of discouragement to any one in the room 
 who may be disposed to offer a passing remark. They 
 hang their hats daily on the same peg, daily sit at the 
 same table (where the chair is turned down for them 
 by Villiam, the short waiter), daily drink a small pitcher 
 of punch after their half-pint of sherry, and daily read, 
 from beginning to end, the Herald, Post, and Times, 
 with the variation of the Athenamm and Spectator, on 
 Saturdays and Sundays. I at first hazarded various 
 conjectures as to their condition in life. They were 
 evidently unmarried, and men of easy though limited 
 means men of no great care, and no high hopes, and 
 in a fixed station ; yet of that degree of intelligence 
 and firm self-respect which, in other countries (the 
 
GETTING TO WINDWARD. 
 
 United States, certainly, at least), would have made 
 them sought for in some more social and higher sphere 
 than that with which they seemed content. I after 
 ward obtained something of a clue to the mystery of 
 the "Blue Posts" society, by discovering two of the 
 most respectable looking of its customers in the exer 
 cise of their daily vocations. One, a man of fine phre 
 nological development, rather bald, and altogether very 
 intellectual in his "os sublime, " I met at the rooms of 
 a fashionable friend, taking his measure for pantaloons. 
 He was the foreman of a celebrated Bond-street tailor. 
 The other was the head-shopman of a famous haber 
 dasher in Regent street ; and either might have passed 
 for Godwin the novelist, or Babbidge the calculator 
 with those who had seen those great intellects only in 
 their imaginations. It is only in England, that men 
 who, like these, have read or educated themselves far 
 above their situations in life, would quietly submit to 
 the arbitrary disqualifications of their pursuits, and 
 agree unresistingly to the sentence of exile from the 
 society suited to their mental grade. But here again 
 I am getting away from my story. 
 
 It was the close of a London rainy day. Weary of 
 pacing my solitary room, I sallied out as usual, to the 
 Burlington Arcade ([ say as usual, for in a metropolis 
 where it rains nine days out of ten, rainy-weather re 
 sorts become habitual). The little shops on either 
 side were brightly lit, the rain pattered on the glass 
 roof overhead, and to one who had not a single ac 
 quaintance in so vast a city, even the passing of the 
 crowd and the glittering of lights seemed a kind of 
 society. I began to speculate on the characters of 
 those who passed and repassed me in the turns of the 
 short gallery; and the dinner-hours coining round, and 
 the men gradually thinning off from the crowd, I ad 
 journed to the Blue Posts with very much the feeling 
 of a reader interrupted in the progress of a novel. One 
 of the faces that had most interested me was that of a 
 foreigner, who, with a very dejected air, leaned on the 
 arm of an older man, and seemed promenading to kill 
 time, without any hope of killing his ennui. On seat 
 ing myself at one of the small tables, I was agreeably 
 surprised to find the two foreigners my close neigh 
 bors, and in the national silence of the company pres 
 ent, broken only by the clatter of knives and forks, it 
 was impossible to avoid overhearing every word spoken 
 by either. After a look at me, as if to satisfy them 
 selves that I, too, was a John Bull, they went on with 
 their conversation in French, which, so long as it was 
 confined to topics of drink and platter, weather and 
 news, I did not care to interrupt. But with their 
 progress through a second pint of sherry, personal top 
 ics came up, and as they seemed to be conversing with 
 an impression that their language was not understood, 
 I felt obliged to remind them that I was overhearing 
 unwillingly what they probably meant for a private 
 conversation. With a frankness which I scarcely ex 
 pected, they at once requested me to transfer my glass 
 to their table, and culling for a pitcher of punch, they 
 extended their confidence by explaining to me the 
 grounds of the remarks I had heard, and continuing to 
 converse freely on the subject. Through this means, 
 and a subsequent most agreeable acquaintance, I pos 
 sessed myself of the circumstances of the following 
 story, and having thus shown the reader (rather di- 
 gressively, I must own) how I came by it, I proceed 
 in the third person, trusting that my narration will not 
 now seem like the "coinage of the brain." 
 
 The two gentlemen dining at the Blue Posts on the 
 rainy day just mentioned, were Frenchmen, and polit 
 ical exiles. With the fortunes of the younger, this 
 story has chiefly to do. He was a man past the senti 
 mental age, perhaps nearer thirty-seven than thirty- 
 five, less handsome than distinguished in his appear 
 ance, yet with one of those variable faces which 
 are handsome for single instants once in a half 
 
 hour, more or less. His companion called him Be- 
 laccueil. 
 
 " I could come down to my circumstances," he said 
 to Monsieur St. Leger, his friend, "if I knew how. It 
 is not courage that is wanting. I would do anything 
 for a livelihood. But what is the first step ? What 
 is the next step from this ? This last dinner this last 
 night s lodging I am at the end of my means ; and 
 unless [ accept of charity from you, which I will not, 
 to-morrow must begin my descent. Where to put my 
 foot ?" 
 
 He stopped and looked down into his glass, with the 
 air of a man who only expects an answer to refute its 
 reasoning. 
 
 " My dear Belaccueil," said the other, after a mo 
 ment s hesitation, "you were famous in your better 
 days for almost universal accomplishment. Mimic, 
 dancer, musician, cook what was there in our merry 
 carnival-time, to which you did not descend with suc 
 cess, for mere amusement ? Why not now for that 
 independence of livelihood to which you adhere so 
 pertinaciously^" 
 
 "You will be amused to find," he answered, "how 
 well I have sounded the depths of every one of these 
 resources. The French theatre of London has re 
 fused me, point-blank, all engagement, spite of the 
 most humiliating exhibitions of my powers of mimicry 
 before the stage-manager and a fifth-rate actress. I 
 am not musician enough for a professor, though very 
 well for an amateur, and have advertised in vain for 
 employment as a teacher of music, and what was 
 your other vocation ! cook ! Oh no ! I have just 
 science enough to mend a bad dinner and spoil a good 
 one, though I declare to you, I would willingly don 
 the white cap and apron and dive for life to the base 
 ment. No, my friend, I have even offered myself as 
 assistant dancing-master, and failed ! Is not that 
 enough ? If it is not, let me tell you, that I would 
 sweep the crossings, if my appearance would not ex 
 cite curiosity, or turn dustman, if I were strong enough 
 for the labor. Come down ! Show me how to come 
 down, and see whether I am not prepared to do it. 
 But you do not know the difficulty of earning a penny 
 in London. Do you suppose, with all the influence 
 and accomplishments I possess, I could get the place 
 of this scrubby waiter who brings us our cigars ? No, 
 indeed ! His situation is a perfect castle impregna 
 ble to those below him. There are hundreds of poor 
 wretches within a mile of us who would think them 
 selves in paradise to get his situation. How easy it is 
 for the rich to say, go and work ! and how difficult 
 to know how and where !" 
 
 Belaccueil looked at his friend as if he felt that he 
 had justified his own despair, and expected no com 
 fort. 
 
 "Why not try matrimony?" said St. Leger. "I 
 can provide you the means for a six months siege, 
 and you have better qualification for success than nine 
 tenths of the adventurers who have succeeded." 
 
 Why I could do even that for with all hope of 
 prosperity, I have of course given up all idea of a ro 
 mantic -love. But I could not practise deceit, and 
 without pretending to some little fortune of my own, 
 the chances are small. Besides, you remember my 
 ill luck at Naples." 
 
 "Ah, that was a love affair, and you were too hon- 
 
 63 " Not for the girl, God bless her ! She would have 
 married me, penniless as I was, but through the inter 
 ference of that officious and purse-proud Englishman, 
 her friends put me liors dc combat." 
 
 "What was his name ? Was he a relative ?" 
 "A mere chance acquaintance of their own, but he 
 1 entered at once upon the office of family adviser. He 
 was rich, and he had it in his power to call me an ad 
 venturer. 1 did not discover his interference till some 
 
G4 
 
 GETTING TO WINDWARD. 
 
 time after, or he would perhaps have paid dearly for 
 his nomenclature." 
 
 " Who did you say it was ?" 
 
 " Hitchings ! Mr. Plantagenet Hitchings, of Hitch 
 ing Park, Devonshire and the one point, to which I 
 cling, of a gentleman s privileges, is that of calling him 
 to account, should I ever meet him." 
 
 St. Leger smiled and sat thoughtfully silent for a 
 while. Belaccueil pulled apart the stems of a bunch 
 of grapes on his plate, and was silent with a very dif 
 ferent expression. 
 
 " You are willing," said the former, at last, " to teach 
 music and dancing, for a proper compensation." 
 
 " Parbleu ! Yes !" 
 
 "And if you could unite this mode of support with 
 a very pretty revenge upon Mr. Plantagenet Hitch 
 ings (with whom, by the way, I am very well acquaint 
 ed), you would not object to the two-fold thread in 
 your destiny ?" 
 
 "They would be threads of gold, man ami!" said 
 the surprised Belaccueil. 
 
 St. Leger called for pen, ink, and paper, and wrote 
 H letter at the Blue Posts, which the reader will follow 
 to its destination, as the next step in this story. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A GREEN angel (I mean an angel ignorant of the 
 world) would probably suppose that the feeding of 
 these animal bodies of ours, if not done in secret, must 
 at least be the one act of human life separated entirely 
 from the more heavenly emotions. Yet the dinner is 
 a meal dear to lovers ; and novelists and tale-tellers 
 choose the moments stolen from fork and plate for the 
 birth and interchange of the most delicious and tender 
 sentiments of our existence. Miss Hitchings, while 
 unconsciously shocking Monsieur Sansou by tilting 
 her soup-plate for the last spoonful of vermicelli, was 
 controlling the beating of a heart full of feminine and 
 delicate tenderness; and as the tutor was careful never 
 to direct his regards to the other end of the table (for 
 reasons of his own), Miss Henrietta laid the unction 
 to her soul that such indifference to the prettiest girl 
 who had ever honored them as a guest, proved the 
 strength of her own magnet, and put her more at ease 
 on the subject of Monsieur Sansou s admiration. He, 
 indeed, was committing the common fault of men 
 whose manners are naturally agreeable playing that 
 passive and grateful game of courtesy and attention so 
 easy to the object of regard, and so delightful to wo 
 man, who is never so blest as in bestowing. Besides, 
 he had an object in suppressing his voice to the lowest 
 audible pitch, and the rich and deep tone, sunk only to 
 escape the ear of another, sounded, to the watchful 
 and desiring sense of her to whom it was addressed, 
 like the very key-note and harmony of affection. 
 
 At a table so surrounded with secrets, conversation 
 flagged, of course. Mr. Hitchings thought it very 
 up-hill work to entertain Miss Hervey, whose heart 
 and senses were completely absorbed in the riddle of 
 Belaccueil s disguise and presence; Mr. Hervey, the 
 uncle, found old Mrs. Plantagenet rather absent, for 
 the smitten dame had eyes for every movement of 
 Monsieur Sansou ; and the tutor himself, with his re 
 sentment toward his host, and his suspicions of the 
 ove of his daughter, his reviving passion for Miss 
 Hervey, and his designs on Mrs. Plantagenet, had 
 enough to render him as silent as the latter could wish, 
 and as apparently insensible to the attraction of the 
 fair stranger. 
 
 How little we know what is in the bosoms of those 
 around us ! How natural it is, however, to feel and 
 act as if we knew to account for all that appears on 
 the surface by the limited acquaintance we have with 
 
 circumstances and feelings to resent an indifference 
 of which we know not the cause to approve or con 
 demn, without allowance for chagrin, or despair, or 
 love, or hope, or distress any of the deep undercur 
 rents for ever at work in the depths of human bosoms. 
 The young man at your side at a dinner-party may 
 have a duel on his hands for the morning, or a disgrace 
 imminent in credit or honor, or a refused heart or an 
 accepted one, newly crushed or newly made happy ; 
 or (more common still, and less allowed for) he may 
 feel the first impression of disease, or the consequen 
 ces of an indigestion ; and, for his agreeableness or 
 disagreeableness, you try to account by something in 
 yourself, some feeling toward yourself as if you and 
 you only could affect his spirits or give a color to his 
 mood of manners. The old man s thought of death, 
 the mother s overwhelming interest in her child, the 
 woman s up-spring of emotion or love, are visiters to 
 the soul that come unbidden and out of time, and you 
 can neither feast nor mourn, secure against their in 
 terruption. It would explain many a coldness, could 
 we look into the heart concealed from us. We should 
 often pity when we hate, love when we think we can 
 not even forgive, admire where we curl the lip with 
 scorn and indignation. To judge without reserve of 
 any human action is a culpable temerity, of all our 
 sins the most unfeeling and frequent. 
 
 I will deal frankly with you, dear reader. I have 
 arrived at a stage of my story which, of all the stages 
 of story-writing, I detest the most cordially. Poets 
 have written about the difficulty of beginning a story 
 (vide Byron) Ca ne me coute pas ; others of the end 
 ing. That I do with facility, joy, and rejoicing. But 
 the love pathos of a story the place where the reader 
 ! is expected to sigh, weep, or otherwise express his 
 | emotion that is the point, I confess, the most diffi- 
 I cult to write, and the most unsatisfactory when written. 
 I " Pourquoy, Sir Knight ?" Not because it is difficult 
 I to write love-scenes according to the received mode 
 not that it is difficult to please those (a large majority) 
 who never truly loved, and whose ideas, therefore, of 
 love and its making, are transcendentalized out of all 
 truth and nature not that it would be more labor to 
 do this than to copy a circular, or write a love-letter 
 for a modest swain (this last my besetting occupation) 
 but because, just over the inkstand there peers a 
 face, sometimes of a man of forty, past the nonsense 
 of life, but oftener of some friend, a woman who has 
 loved, and this last more particularly Tcnoivs that 
 true love is never readable or sensible that if its lan 
 guage be truly written, it is never in polished phrase 
 i or musical cadence that it is silly, but for its con- 
 l cealed meaning, embarrassed and blind, but for the 
 j interpreting and wakeful heart of one listener that 
 love, in short, is the god of unintelligibility, mystery, 
 and adorable nonsense, and, of course, that which 1 
 have written (if readable and sensible) is out of taste 
 j and out of sympathy, and none but fancy-lovers and 
 enamored brains (not hearts) will approve or believe it. 
 D Israeli the younger is one of the few men of ge- 
 njus who, having seen truth without a veil, dare to re- 
 veal the vision ; and he has written Henrietta Temple 
 the silliest yet truest love-book of modern time. 
 The critics (not an amative race) have given him a 
 ! benefit of the "besom" of ridicule, but D Israeli, far 
 j from being the effeminate intellect they would make 
 | him, is one of the most original and intrepid men of 
 | genius living, and whether the theme be "wine, wo- 
 man, or war," he writes with fearless truth, piquancy, 
 and grace. Books on love, however, should be read 
 by lovers only, and pity it is, that there is not an ink 
 in chemistry, invisible save to the eye kindled with am 
 atory fire. But "to our muttons." 
 
 It was not leap-year, but Monsieur Belaccueil, on 
 the day of the dinner-party at Hitchings park, was 
 made aware (I will not say by proposals, for ladies make 
 
GETTING TO WINDWARD. 
 
 65 
 
 known their inclinations in ways much less formidable) i; 
 he was made aware, I say, that the hearts of three 
 of the parly wore within the flight of his arrow. Prob 
 ably his humble situation reversed the usual relative 
 position of the sexes in the minds of the dame and 
 damsels and certainly there is no power woman exer 
 cises so willingly as a usurpation of the masculine 
 privilege. I have stated my objection to detail the 
 dialogue between Miss Hitchings and her tutor at the 
 diuner-table. To be recorded faithfully, the clatter 
 of silver forks on China, the gurgle of wine, the inter- 
 nipiions of the footmen with champagne and vegeta 
 bles, should all be literally interspersed for to all the 
 broken sentences (so pathetic when properly punctu 
 ated vide Neal s novels) these were the sequels and 
 the accompaniments: "No, thank you !" and "If you 
 please," and " May I fill your glass ?" have filled out, 
 to the perfect satisfaction of the lady, many an unfin 
 ished sentence upon which depended the whole des 
 tiny of her affections; and, as I said before, the truth 
 is not faithfully rendered when these interstices are 
 unsupplied. 
 
 It was dark when the ladies left the dinner-table, 
 followed by Monsieur Sansou, and, at the distance of 
 a few feet from the windows opening on the lawn, the 
 air was black and impenetrable. There were no stars 
 visible and no moon, but the clouds which were gath 
 ering after a drought, seemed to hush the air with 
 their long expected approach, and it was one of those 
 soft, still, yet murky and fragrant nights when the 
 earth seems to breathe only without light, sound, or 
 motion. What lover does not remember such a night ? 
 
 Oppressed with the glaring lights and the company 
 of people she cared nothing about, Miss Hervey 
 stepped out upon the lawn, and with her face lifted as 
 if to draw deeper inhalations of the dew and freshness, 
 she strolled leisurely over the smooth carpet of grass. 
 At a slight turn to avoid a clump of shrubbery, she 
 encountered Belaccueil, who was apologizing and 
 about to pass her, when she called him by his name, 
 and passing her arm through his, led him on to the 
 extremity of the lawn. A wire fence arrested their 
 progress, and leaning against it, Miss Hervey inquired 
 into the cause of the disguise she had penetrated, and 
 softened and emboldened by the fragrant darkness, 
 said all that a woman might say of tenderness and en 
 couragement. Belaccueil s heart beat with pride and 
 gratified amour propre, but he confined himself to the 
 expression of this feeling, and leaving the subject open, 
 took advantage of Mis. Plantagenet s call to Miss 
 Hervey from the window, to leave her and resume his 
 ramble through the grounds. 
 
 The supper tray had been brought in, and the party 
 were just taking their candles to separate, when the 
 tutor entered at the glass door and arrested the steps 
 of Mrs. Plantagenet. She set down her candl* and 
 courtesied a good-night to the ladies (Mr.Hitchings had 
 gone to bed, for wine made him sleepy, and Mr. Her 
 vey always retired early where he was bored), and 
 closing the windows, mixed a glass of negus for Mon 
 sieur Sansou ; and, herself pulling a sandwich to 
 pieces, deliberately, and it must be confessed, some 
 what patronisingly, invited the Frenchman to become 
 her lord. And after a conversation, which (la verite 
 avant tout) turned mainly on will and investments, the 
 window dame sailed blissfully to bed, and Belaccueil 
 wrote the following letter to his friend and adviser : 
 
 " MY DEAR ST. LKUKR : Enclosed you have the 
 only surviving lock of my grizzled wig sign and sym 
 bol that my disguises are over and my object attained. 
 The wig burns at this instant in the grate, item my 
 hand-ruffles, item sundry embroidered cravats a la 
 vielle cour, item (this last not without some trouble at 
 my heart) a solitary love-token from Coustantia Her 
 vey. One faded rose given me at Paestum, the day 
 before I was driven disgraced from her presence by 
 5 
 
 the interference of this insolent fool one faded rose 
 has crisped and faded into smoke with the rest. And 
 so fled from the world the last hope of a warm and 
 passionate heart, which never gave up its destiny till 
 now never felt that it was made in vain, guarded, re 
 fined, cherished in vain, till that long-loved flower lay 
 in ashes. I am accustomed to strip emotion of its 
 drapery determined to feel nothing but what is real 
 yet this moment, turn it and strip it, and deny its illu 
 sions as I will, is anguish. Self-inflicted, you smile 
 and say ! 
 
 "You will marvel what stars will not come into 
 conjunction, when I tell you that Miss Hervey is at 
 this moment under the same roof with me and my 
 affianced bride, and you will marvel what good turn I 
 have done the devil, that he should, in one day, offer 
 me my enemy s daughter, my enemy s fortune (with 
 the drawback of an incumbrance), and the woman who 
 I thought had spurned me. After all, it is a devil s 
 gift for in choosing that to which I am most impelled, 
 I crush hope, and inflict pain, and darken my own 
 heart for ever. I could not have done this once. 
 Manhood and poverty have embittered me. 
 
 " Miss Hitchings has chosen to fall in love with her 
 tutor. She is seventeen, a sweet blonde, with large, 
 suffused eyes, tender, innocent, and (without talent) 
 singularly earnest and confiding. I could be very 
 happy with such a woman, and it would have been a 
 very tolerable revenge (failing the other) to have stolen 
 her from her father. But he would have disinherited 
 and forgotten us, and I have had enough of poverty, 
 and can not afford to be forgotten by my enemy. 
 
 "You never saw Miss Hervey. It is not much to 
 tell you she is the most beautiful woman I have met. 
 If she were not beautiful, her manners would win all 
 hearts. If her manners were less fascinating, her sin 
 gular talents would make her remarkable. She is not 
 appreciated, because her beauty blinds people to her 
 talents, and her manners make them forget her beauty. 
 She is something in the style of the Giorgione we 
 adored at Venice a transparently dark beauty, with 
 unfathomable eyes and lashes that sweep her cheek ; 
 her person tall and full, and her neck set on like Ze- 
 nobia s. Yet she is not a proud woman I think she 
 is not. She is too natural and true to do anything 
 which looks like pride, save walk like an empress. 
 She says everything rightly penetrates instantly to 
 the core of meaning sings, dances, talks, with the 
 ease, confidence, grace, faithlessness, with which a 
 swallow flies. Perfection in all things is her nature. 
 I am jotting down her qualities now as they are al 
 lowed by the world. I will not write of them like a 
 lover. Oh, my friend, with what plummet can you 
 fathom the depth of my resentments, when, for them, 
 I forego possession of this woman ! She offered me, 
 two hours since, the unqualified control of her desti 
 ny ! She asked me with tremulous voice to forgive 
 her for the wrong done me in Italy. She dropped 
 that faultless and superb head on my bosom, and told 
 me that she loved me and I never answered ! The 
 serpent in my heart tied up my tongue, and with cold 
 thanks "and fiend-like resistance to the bliss of even 
 once pressing her to my bosom, I left her. I do not 
 know myself when I remember that 1 have done this. 
 I am possessed driven out by some hard and bitter 
 spirit who neither acts nor speaks like me. Yet could 
 I not undo what I have done. 
 
 "To-morrow morning will disappear Monsieur San 
 sou from Hitchings park, and, on the brief condition 
 of a brief ceremony, the law, the omnipotent law, will 
 deliver into my hands the lands, tenements, goods, 
 chattels, and liberty of my enemy for even so deeply 
 has he sunk into the open pocket of Mrs. Plantage 
 net ! She holds mortgages on all he has, for money 
 advanced, and all that is hers will be mine, without 
 reserve. The roof I have been living in degradation 
 
66 
 
 THE WIFE BEQUEATHED AND RESUMED. 
 
 under, will be to-morrow my own. The man who 
 called me an adventurer, who stood between me and 
 my love, who thrust me from my heaven without cause 
 or provocation the meddling fool who boasts that he 
 saved a countrywoman from a French swindler (he 
 has recurred to it often in my presence), will be to 
 morrow my dependant, beggar for shelter, suppli 
 ant for his liberty and subsistence ! Do you ask if 
 that outweighs the love of the woman I have lost ? 
 Alas ! yes. 
 
 " You are older, and have less taste for sentiment 
 even than I. I will not bore you with my crowd of 
 new feelings in this situation. My future wife is amia 
 ble and good. She is also vain, unattractive, and old. 
 I shall be kind to her and endeavor that she shall not 
 be disenchanted, and if I can make her happy, it may 
 mollify my penance for the devil with which I am pos 
 sessed. Miss Hitchings will lose nothing by having 
 loved me, for she shall be the heiress of my wealth, 
 
 and her father but I will not soil my heart by 
 
 thinking of an alleviation to his downfall. 
 
 "Farewell, mon ami. Congratulate and pily me. 
 "AooLPHE BELACCUEIL." 
 
 In one of the most fashionable squares of London 
 lives, "in the season," Monsieur Belaccueil, one of 
 the most hospitable foreigners in that great metropo 
 lis. He is a pensive and rather melancholy-looking 
 man by day; but society, which he seems to seek like 
 an opiate to restless feeling, changes him to a gay 
 man, the most mirth-loving of Amphytrions. His 
 establishment is presided over by his wife, who, as his 
 | society is mostly French, preserves a respectable si- 
 ! lence, but seems contented with her lot and proud of 
 her husband ; while in Miss Plantagenet (ci-devant 
 Hitchings) his guests find his table s chief attraction 
 one of the prettiest heiresses and most loveable girls in 
 j London. How deeply MonsieurBelaccueil still rejoices 
 I at his success in "getting to windward," is matter of 
 | problem. Certainly there is one chariot which passes 
 i him in his solitary ride in the park, to which he bows 
 j with a pang of unabating and miserable anguish. And 
 if the occupant of that plain chariot share at all in his 
 suffering, she has not the consolation to which he flies 
 in society for a more secluded and lonely woman 
 lives not in the great solitude of London, than Con- 
 stantia Hervey. 
 
 THE WIFE BEQUEATHED AND RESUMED, 
 
 THE following story was told to the writer by a lady 
 in France told during supper at a ball, and of course 
 only partially. The interstices have been supplied in 
 writing it, and the main thread of the narrative may 
 be relied on as fact. The names are fictitious : 
 
 A beautiful girl of seventeen, in the convent-parlor 
 of Saint Agatha. She is dressed as a novice, and the 
 light breaks off from the curve of the raven hair put 
 away under the close-fitting cap breaks off almost in 
 sparkles. For so it may as an artist knows. Her 
 eyes are like hounds in the leash fiery and eager. 
 And if, in those ever-parted and forward-pressing lips 
 there is a possibility of languid repose, the proof of it 
 lies in the future. They are sleepless and dreamless, 
 as yet, with a thirst unnamed and irrepressible, for the 
 passions of life. Her name is Zelie. 
 
 But we can not make the past into the present. 
 Change the tense for Zelie is dead now, or we could 
 not record her strange story. 
 
 There was a ring at the convent door, and presently 
 entered Colonel Count Montalembert, true to his ap 
 pointment. He had written to the lady-abbess to 
 request an interview with the daughter of his com 
 rade, dead on the frozen track of the retreat from 
 Moscow. Flaliault was to him, as his right hand to 
 his left, and as he covered up the stiffened body with 
 snow, he had sworn to devote his life to that child 
 whose name was last on the lips closed for ever. The 
 Count Montalembert was past fifty, and a constant 
 sufferer from, his wounds; and his physicians had 
 warned him that death was not far off. His bearing 
 was still noble and soldierly, however, and his frank 
 and clear eye had lost little of its lustre. 
 
 " I wrote to you the particulars of your father s 
 death, my child," said the colonel, after the abbess 
 had left them alone, at his request. "I could not 
 dwell on it again without more emotion than is well j 
 for me. I must be brief even with what I have to say 
 to his daughter for that, too, will move me overmuch. 
 You are very lovely, Zelie." 
 
 " You are very kind !" answered the novice, blush 
 ing, and dropping her long lashes upon her cheek. 
 
 "Very lovely, I say, and must love and be beloved. 
 j It is a woman s destiny, and your destiny more than 
 most women s." 
 
 The count gazed into the deep eyes of his eager 
 listener, and seemed embarrassed to know how to pro 
 ceed. 
 
 " Hear me through," he said, " before you form an 
 [ opinion of my motives. And first answer me a bold 
 question. Have you any attachment have you ever 
 seen a man you could love and marry ?" 
 
 " No !" murmured the blushing novice, after a mo 
 ment s hesitation. 
 
 " But you are likely to love, soon and rashly, once 
 
 I free in the world and that is one evil against which 
 
 I I will make myself your shield. And there is another 
 
 which I am only sorry that I need your permission 
 
 and aid in averting." 
 
 Zelie looked up inquiringly. 
 
 " Poverty the grave of love the palsy of the 
 heart the oblivion of beauty and grace ! To avert 
 this from you, I have a sacrifice to demand at your 
 hands." 
 
 Again the count stopped in embarrassment almost 
 painful, and Mademoiselle Montalembtrt with diffi 
 culty suppressed her impatience. 
 
 "My physicians tell me," he resumed, in a tone 
 lower and calmer, "that my lease of life is wearing 
 rapidly to a close. A year hence lies its utmost and 
 inevitable limit. Could you live in the world, without 
 love, for one year, Zelie?" 
 
 "Monsieur !" was her surprised exclamation. 
 
 "Then listen to my proposal. I have a fortune 
 while I live, large enough for your most ambitious 
 desires. But it is left to me with conditions which 
 forbid my conveying it through any link save mar 
 riage, and to my widow only for life. To give it 
 you, I regret deeply for your sake to say, I must wed 
 | you. You start do not answer me now. I leave you 
 to revolve this in your mind till to-morrow. Remem 
 ber that I shall not trouble you long, and that the 
 name of Montalembert is as noble as your own, and 
 that you require a year, perhaps more than a year, to 
 j recover from your first dizzy gaze upon the world. 1 
 
THE WIFE BEQUEATHED AND RESUMED. 
 
 17 
 
 shall put no restraint upon you. I have no wish but 
 to fulfil my duty to my dead comrade in arms, and to 
 die, knowing that you will well bestow your heart 
 when I am gone. Adieu !" 
 
 The count disappeared, and, with her clasped hands 
 pressed to her forehead, the novice paced the convent- 
 parlor until the refectory bell rang for dinner. * * * 
 It was an evening of June, in the gardens of Ver 
 sailles. It was an evening of June, also, in the pest- 
 house of St. Lazarus, and in the cell of the condemned 
 felon in St. Pelagie. Time, even in his holyday dress, 
 visits indiscriminately the levelling caitiff ! Have the 
 unhappy any business with June ? 
 
 But the gardens of Versailles were beginning to 
 illuminate, and the sky faded, with a glory more fes 
 tal than sunlight, with the radiance of a myriad of 
 glittering lamps, embellishing even the trees and flow 
 ers beyond the meaning of nature. The work of the 
 architect and the statuary at once stood idealized, and 
 draped in an atmosphere of fairy-land, and the most 
 beautiful woman of the imperial court became more 
 beautiful as she stepped into the glare of the alley of 
 fountains. And who should that be the fairest flower 
 of French nobility but the young Countess Monta- 
 lembert, just blooming through the close of her first 
 year of wedlock ! 
 
 The Count Montalembert stepped with her from the 
 shade of the orange-grove, and, without her arm, fell 
 behind scarce perceptibly, that he might keep his eye 
 filled with the grace of her motion, without seeming 
 to worship her before the world. With every salient 
 flow of that cloud-like drapery onward with every 
 twinkling step of those feet of airy lightness the dark 
 eyelashes benenth the soldier s brow lifted and drooped 
 again, as if his pulse of life and vision were alone 
 governed by her swan-like motion. The count had 
 forgotten that he was to die. The year allotted to 
 him by his physicians had passed, and, far from falling 
 gradually to his doom, his figure had straightened, and 
 his step grown firm, and his cheek and lip and eye had 
 brightened with returning health. He hnd drank life 
 ,from love. The superb Zelie had proved grateful and 
 devoted, and at the chateau of Montalembert, in 
 southern France, she had seemeS content to live with 
 him, and him only, the most assiduous of nurses in 
 all her glorious beauty. But though this was Para 
 dise to the count, his reason, not his heart, told him 
 it was imprisonment to her, and he had now been a 
 month at the sumptuous court of Napoleon, an at 
 tendant upon a wife who was the star of the time the 
 beloved of all the ceurt s gay beholders. 
 
 As the Montalemberts strolled toward the chateau, 
 which was now emitting floods of light from its many 
 windows, a young soldier, with a slight mustache just 
 shading his Grecian lip, joined them from a side-path, 
 and claimed the hand of the countess for a (v-.dtz. 
 The mercurial music at the same instant fled through 
 the air, and under an exclamation at its thrilling 
 sweetness, the countess concealed from her husband 
 an emotion which the trembling of her slight hand 
 betrayed instantly to her partner. With a bow of af 
 fected gayety to the count, she quickened her pace, 
 and in another moment stood blushing in the daz/Iing 
 ring of waltzers, the focus herself of all eyes open to 
 novelty and beauty. 
 
 De Mornay, the countess s partner, was but an en 
 sign in the imperial guard. He had but his sword. 
 Not likely to be called handsome, or to be looked 
 upon as attractive or dangerous by any but the most 
 penetrating of his own sex, he had that philtre, that 
 inexplicable something, which at once commended 
 him to woman. His air was all earnest. The sup 
 pressed devotion of life and honor breathed in his 
 voice. He seemed ever hiding his heart with pain 
 shamed with betrayed adoration calm by the force of 
 a respect that rebuked passion. He professed no gal 
 
 lantries. He professed nothing. His eyes alone, large, 
 steadfast, imploring, conveyed language of love. An 
 hour of that absorbing regard an apparently calm, 
 1 unimpassioncd hour of the intercourse common to 
 those newly met sufficed to awaken in the bosom of 
 the countess an interest alarming to himself, and dan 
 gerous to her content as the wife of another. Strange 
 she thought it, that, as the low and deferential tones 
 of De Mornay fell on her ear, they seemed to expel 
 from her heart all she had hitherto treasured ambi 
 tion for the splendors of the court, passion for admi 
 ration, and even her gratitude for her husband. A 
 hut in the forest, with De Mornay only, was the Para 
 dise now most present to the dreams and fancy of the 
 proud wife of Montalembert. 
 
 As his wife left him, the count thrust his hand into 
 his breast with a gesture of controlled emotion, and 
 turned aside, as if to seek once more the retired covert 
 he had left. But his steps were faltering. At the 
 entrance of the alley he turned again, and walking 
 rapidly to the chateau, entered the saloon trembling 
 to the measured motion of the dancers. 
 
 Waiting for an opportunity to float into the giddy 
 ring, De Mornay stood with his arm around the waist 
 of the countess. Montalembert s face flushed, but he 
 stepped to a column which supported the orchestra, 
 and looked on unobserved. Her transparent cheek 
 was so near to the lips of her partner, thai his breath 
 must warm it. Her hand was pressed ay, by the 
 bend of her gloved wrist, pressed hard upon the 
 shoulder of De Mornay. Her bosom throbbed per- 
 : ceptibly in its jewelled vest. She leaned toward him 
 ! with a slight sway of her symmetrical waist, and 
 1 away, like two smoke wreaths uniting, away in volup- 
 tuous harmony of movement, gazing into each other s 
 | eyes, murmuring inaudibly to the crowd lips, cheeks, 
 and eyes, in passionate neighborhood away floated 
 the wife and friend of Montalembert in the authorized 
 commerce of the gay world. Their feet chased each 
 other, advancing, retreating, amid the velvet folds of 
 her dress. Her waist was drawn close to his side in 
 the more exciting passages of the music. Her luxu 
 riant tresses floated from her temples to his. She 
 curved her swan-like neck backward, and, with a look 
 of pleasure, which was not a smile, gave herself up to 
 the thrilling wedlock of music and motion, her eyes 
 half-drooped and bathed in the eager gaze of De 
 Mornay s. Montalembert s face was pallid and his 
 eye on fire. The cold sweat stood on his forehead. 
 He felt wronged, though the world saw all. With his 
 concealed hand he clenched his breast till he drew 
 blood. There was a pause in the music, and with a 
 sudden agony at the thought of receiving his wife 
 again from the hands of De Mornay, Montalembert 
 fled on to the open air. 
 An hour elapsed. 
 
 "I ask a Heaven for myself, it is true, but not much 
 for you to give !" said a voice approaching through 
 the shadowy alley of the garden. 
 
 The count lay on the ground with his forehead 
 pressed to the marble pedestal of a statue, and he 
 lieard, with the voice, the rustling of a female dress, 
 and the rattling of a sabre-chain and spurs. 
 
 " But one ringlet, sacred to me" continued the 
 voice, in a tone almost feminine with its pleading ear 
 nestness; "not given to me. no, no! that were a 
 child s desire ! nut mine, though still playing on this 
 ivory shoulder, and still lying neatly beneath that vein 
 ed temple mine with your knowledge only, and 
 caressed and cared for, morn and night, with the 
 thought that it is mine ! Oh, Zelie ! there is no 
 wrong to Montalembert in this ! Keep it from his 
 touch! Let him not breathe upon it! Let not the 
 wind blow that one ringlet toward him ! And when it 
 kisses your cheek, and plays with the envied breeze 
 upon your bosom think think of the soul of De 
 
68 
 
 THE WIFE BEQUEATHED AND RESUMED. 
 
 Mornay, bound in it ! Oh, God ! why am I made 
 capable of love like this !" 
 
 There was no reply, and long ere Montalembert 
 had recovered from his amazement at these daring 
 words, the sound of their footsteps had died away. 
 
 Pass two years. It is enough to wait on Time in 
 the Present. In the Past and Future, the graybeard, 
 like other ministers out of place, must do without 
 usher and secretary. 
 
 It was a summer s noon on the Quai D Orsay, of 
 Paris. The liveried lacqueys of the princely hotels 
 were lounging by the heavy gateM ays of stone, or 
 leaning over the massy parapet of the river. And, 
 true to his wont, the old soldier came with the noon, 
 creeping from the " Invalides," to take his seat under 
 the carved lion of the Montalemberts. He had served 
 under the late count, and the memory of his house 
 was dear to the old veteran. The sabre-cut which had 
 disfigured his face, was received, he said, while fight 
 ing between Montalembert and Flahault, and to see 
 the daughter of the one, and the gay heir of the 
 other s wife and fortune, he made a dai ly pilgrimage 
 to the Quai, and sat in the sun till the countess drove 
 out in her chariot. 
 
 By the will of the first husband of Zelie de Fla 
 hault, the young De Mornay, to become her husband 
 and share her fortune, was compelled to take the 
 name and title of Count Montalembert, subject to the 
 imperial accord. Napoleon had given the rank un 
 willingly, and as a mark of respect to the last will of 
 a brave man who had embellished the title for the 
 eagle-eye of the Corsican read the soul of De Mor 
 nay like an illuminated book, and knew the use he 
 would make of fortune and power. 
 
 In the quadrangle of the hotel Montalembert, there 
 were two carriage-landings, or two persons, and the 
 apartments were separated into two entirely distinct 
 establishments. In one suite the young count chose 
 to live at his pleasure, en garcon, and in the other the 
 mixed hospitalities of the house were given, and the 
 countess was there, and there only, at home. At this 
 moment the court was ringing with the merry laugh- i 
 ter of the count s convives, for he had a bachelor party i 
 to breakfast, and the wine seemed, even at that early 
 hour of the day, to have taken the ascendant. The 
 carriages of the bacchanalians lined one side of the | 
 court, and the modest chariot of the countess stood 
 alone at the door on the other; for it was near the 
 hour for promenade in the Champs Elysees. 
 
 It was an hour after noon when the countess de 
 scended. She came slowly, drawing on her glove, 
 and the old soldier at the gate rose quickly to his feet, 
 and leaned forward to gaze on her. She had changed 
 since the death of her father s friend the brave Mon 
 talembert, to whom she owed her fortune. But she 
 was still eminently beautiful. Thought, perhaps sad 
 ness, had dimmed to a sweet melancholy the bright 
 sparkle of her glance, and her mouth, no longer 
 fiercely spirited, was firm but gentle. Her curtains 
 of sable lashes moved languidly over her drooping 
 eye. She looked like one who was subdued in her 
 hopes, not in her courage, and like one who had shut 
 the door of her heart upon its unextinguishable fires 
 to let them burn on, but in secret. She was dressed 
 more proudly than gayly, and she wore upon her 
 breast one memorial of her first husband his own 
 black cross that he had worn in bartle, and in the few 
 happy days of his wedlock, and which he had sent her 
 from his death-bed. 
 
 At the moment the countess stepped from her 
 threshold, the door on the opposite side of the quad 
 rangle was thrown open, and, with a boisterous laugh, 
 the count sprang into his phaeton, calling to one of 
 his party to follow him. His companion shrank back 
 on seeing the countess, and in that moment s delay 
 the door of the carriage was closed and the coachman 
 
 ordered to drive on. The count s whip had waved 
 over his spirited horses, however, and as they stood 
 rearing and threatening to escape from their excited 
 master, his friend sprang to his side, the reins were 
 suddenly loosed, and with a plunge which threatened 
 to tear the harness from their backs, they leaped for 
 ward. In the next moment, the horses of both vehicles 
 were drawn upon their haunches, half locked together 
 in the narrow gateway, and with a blow from the crutch 
 of the old veteran who rushed from the porter s lodge, 
 the phaeton was driven back against the wall, the pole 
 broken, and the count and his friend precipitated upon 
 the pavement. The liberated horses flew wildly 
 through the gate, and then followed a stillness like 
 that of midnight in the court for on the pavement, 
 betrayed by her profusion of fair locks, loosened by 
 the fall, lay a woman in man s attire, the dissolute 
 companion of the count, in his daylight revel. Un 
 injured himself, the count stood a moment, abashed 
 and motionless, but the old soldier, with folded arms 
 and the remnant of his broken crutch in his hand, 
 looked sternly on the scene, and as the servants start 
 ed from their stupor to raise the insensible woman, 
 the countess, reading her husband s impulse in his 
 looks, sprang from the open door of the chariot, and 
 interposed between him and his intended victim. 
 With the high-born grace of noble, the soldierly in 
 valid accepted her protection, and followed her to her 
 chariot ; and, ordered to drive to the Hospital of the 
 Invalides, the coachman once more turned slowly to 
 the gateway. 
 
 The night following, at the opera. Paris was on 
 the qui vive of expectation, for a new prima donna 
 was to make her debut before the emperor. 
 
 Paris was also on the qui vive for the upshot of a 
 certain matter of scandal. The eclaircissement at the 
 hotel Montalembert had been followed, it is said, by 
 open war between the count and countess ; and, de 
 termined to carry out his defiance, the dissolute hus 
 band had declared to his associates that he would 
 produce at the opera, in a box opposite to his wife, 
 the same person whose appearance she had resented, 
 and in the same attire. It was presumed, by the 
 graver courtiers wher had heard this, that the actors in 
 this brutal scene, if it should be carried out, would be 
 immediately arrested by the imperial guard. 
 
 The overture commenced to a crowded house, and 
 before it was half played, the presence of the count 
 and his companion, in a conspicuous box on the left 
 of the circle, drew the attention of every eye. The 
 Montalemberts were the one subject of conversation. 
 The sudden disappearance of the old count, his death 
 in a distant province, his will relative to his widow and 
 De Mornay all the particulars of that curious inher 
 itance of wife and fortune, by written testament were 
 passed from lip to lip. 
 
 There was a pause at the close of the overture. 
 The house was silent, occupied partly in looking at 
 the audacious count and his companion, partly in 
 watching for the entrance of the injured countess. 
 
 A sudden light illuminated the empty box, shed 
 from the lobby lamps upon the curtains at the open 
 ing of the door, and the Countess Montalembert en 
 tered, with every eye in that vast assembly bent 
 anxiously upon her. But how radiantly beautiful, 
 and how strangely dressed ! Her toilet was that of 
 a bride. Orange-flowers were woven into her long 
 raven tresses, and her robe of spotless white was fold 
 ed across her bust with the simplicity of girlhood. A 
 white rose-bud breathed on her bosom, and bracelets 
 of pearls encircled her wrists of alabaster. And her 
 smile, as she took her seat and looked around upon 
 her friends oh ! that was bridal too ! unlike any 
 look known lately upon her face joyous, radiant, 
 blissful, as the first hour of acknowledged love. Nev 
 er had Zelie- de Flahault looked so triumphantly 
 
A REVELATION OF A PREVIOUS LIFE. 
 
 G9 
 
 beautiful. The opera-glasses from every corner of the 
 house remained fixed upon her. A murmur arose 
 gradually, a murmur of admiration succeeding the 
 silent wonder of her first entrance; and but for the 
 sudden burst of music from the orchestra, heralding 
 the approach of the emperor, it would have risen into 
 a shout of spontaneotis homage. 
 
 The emperor came in. 
 
 But who is there ! at the right hand of Napoleon 
 smiled upon by the emperor, as the emperor seldom 
 smiled, decorated with the noblest orders of France 
 a star on his breast? MO.NTALEMBERT! 
 
 " Montalembert! ^lontalembert !" resounded from 
 a thousand voices. 
 
 Was he risen from the dead ? Was this an appa 
 rition the indignant apparition of the first husband j 
 risen to rebuke the unmanly brutality of the second ? 
 Would the countess start at the sight of him ? 
 
 Look ! she turns to the illuminated box of the em 
 peror ! She smiles with a radiant blush of joy and | 
 happiness she smiles she lifts that ungloved and ; 
 
 unjewelled hand, decorated only with a plain gold 
 ring, and waves it to the waved" hand of Montalem 
 bert ! the brave, true, romantic Montalembert. For, 
 with the quickness of French divination, the whole 
 story is understood by the audience. And there is 
 not a brain so dull as not to know, that the audacious 
 invalid veteran was the disguised count, watching over 
 the happiness of her whose destiny of love he had too 
 rashly undertaken to make cloudless make cloudless 
 at the expense of a crushed heart, and a usurped hearth, 
 and asecretdeath and burial, if so much were necessary. 
 But he is a happy bridegroom now. And Adolphe 
 de Mornay is once more an untitled ensign plucked 
 for ever from the chaste heart and bosom of the de 
 voted wife of Montalembert. 
 
 And Montalembert 
 
 f whose 
 
 springs 
 
 of life 
 
 were fed only by love died when that fountain of love 
 was broken ; for his wife died in childbed one year 
 after his return to her, and he followed her in one day. 
 Never man was more loved than he. Surely never 
 man more deserved it. 
 
 A REVELATION OF A PREVIOUS LIFE, 
 
 1 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting, 
 
 The soul that rises in us, our life s star, 
 Has had elsewhere its setting-, 
 
 And conieth from afar." WORDSWORTH. 
 
 THE death of a lady, in a foreign land, leaves me at 
 liberty to narrate the circumstances which follow. 
 
 A few words of previous explanation, however. 
 
 I am inclined to believe, from conversations on the 
 subject with many sensible persons, that there are few 
 men who have not had, at different intervals in their 
 lives, sudden emotions, currents of thought, affections 
 of mind and body, which, not only were wholly dis 
 connected with the course of life thus interrupted, but 
 seemed to belong to a wholly different being. 
 
 Perhaps I shall somewhere touch the reader s expe 
 rience by describing rather minutely, and in the first 
 person, some sensations of this kind not unusual to 
 myself. 
 
 Walking in a crowded street, for example, in perfect 
 health, with every faculty gayly alive, I suddenly lose 
 the sense of neighborhood. I see I hear but I 
 feel as if I had become invisible where I stand, and 
 was, at the same time, present and visible elsewhere. 
 I know everything that passes around me, but I seem 
 disconnected and (magnetically speaking) itnlinked 
 from the human beings near. If spoken to at such a 
 moment, I answer with difficulty. The person who 
 speaks seems addressing me from a world to which I 
 no longer belong. At the same time, I have an irre- ! 
 sistible inner consciousness of being present in another j 
 scene of every-day life where there are streets, and 
 houses, and people where I am looked on without 
 surprise as a familiar object where I have cares, 
 fears, objects to attain a different scene altogether, 
 and a different life, from the scene and life of which I 
 was a moment before conscious. I have a dull ache 
 at the back of my eyes for the minute or two that this 
 trance lasts, and then, slowly and reluctantly, my 
 absent soul seems creeping back, the magnetic links 
 of conscious neighborhood, one by one, re-attach, and 
 I resume my ordinary life, but with an irrepressible 
 feeling of sadness. 
 
 It is in vain that I try to fix these shadows as they 
 recede. I have struggled a thousand times in vain to 
 particularize and note down what I saw in the strange 
 
 j city to which I was translated. The memory glides 
 from my grasp with preternatural evasiveness. 
 
 In a book called " The Man of Two Lives," similar 
 
 i sensations to these are made the basis of the story. 
 
 I Indeed, till I saw that book, the fear of having my 
 sanity suspected sealed my lips on the subject. 
 
 I have still a reserve in my confession. I have 
 been conscious, since boyhood, of a mental peculiarity 
 which I fear to name while I doubt that it i* possessed 
 by others than myself which I should not allude to 
 now, but that it forms a strange link of identity 
 
 | between me and another being to be mentioned in this 
 story. 
 
 I may say, also, without attaching any importance 
 to it, except as it bears upon this same identity, that, 
 of those things which I have no occasion to be taught, 
 or which I did, as the common phrase is, by intuition, 
 drawing was the easiest and most passionately followed 
 of my boyish pursuits. 
 
 With these preliminaries, and probably some simi 
 lar experience of his own, the reader may happily form 
 a woof on which to embroider the following circum 
 stances. 
 
 Travelling through Styria, some years since, I 
 
 j chanced to have, for a fellow-occupant of the coupe 
 of a diligence, a very courteous and well-bred person, a 
 gentleman of Gratz. As we rolled slowly along on the 
 banks of the Muer, approaching his native town, he 
 very kindly invited me to remain with him a day or 
 two, offering me, as an inducement, a presentation at 
 the soiree of a certain lady of consequence, whoVas 
 to receive, on-the night of our arrival, and at whose 
 house I should see some fair specimens of the beauty 
 of Styria. 
 Accepted. 
 
 It was a lovely summer s night, when we strolled 
 through the principal street toward our gay destina 
 tion, and as I drew upon my friend s arm to stop him 
 while the military band of the fortress finished a deli- 
 
 1 cious waltz (they were playing in the public square), 
 
 I he pointed out to me the spacious balconies of the 
 
A REVELATION OF A PREVIOUS LIFE, 
 
 countess s palace, whither we were going, crowded 
 with the well-dressed company, listening silently to 
 the same enchanting music. We entered, and after 
 an interchange of compliments with the hostess, I 
 availed myself of my friend s second introduction to 
 take a stand in one of the balconies beside the person I 
 was presented to, and under cover of her favor, to hear 
 out the unfinished music of the band. 
 
 As the evening darkened, the lights gleamed out 
 from the illuminated rooms more brightly, and most 
 of the guests deserted the balconies and joined the 
 gayer circles within. The music ceased at the beat 
 of the drum. My companion in the balcony was a 
 very quiet young lady, and, like myself, she seemed 
 subdued by the sweet harmonies we had listened to, 
 and willing to remain without the shadow of the cur 
 tain. We were not alone there, however. A tall 
 lady, of very stately presence, and with the remains of 
 remarkable beauty, stood on the opposite side of the 
 balcony, and she, too, seemed to shrink from the glare 
 within, and cling to the dewy darkness oTthe summer 
 night. 
 
 After the cessation of the music, there was no 
 longer an excuse for intermittent conversation, and, 
 starting a subject which afforded rather freer scope, I 
 did my best to credit my friend s flattering introduc 
 tion. I had discoursed away for half an hour very 
 unreservedly, before I discovered that, with her hand 
 upon her side, in an attitude of repressed emotion, the 
 tall lady was earnestly listening to me. A third person 
 embarrasses even the most indifferent dialogue. The 
 conversation languished, and my companion rose and 
 took my arm for a promenade through the rooms. 
 
 Later in the evening, my friend came in search of 
 me to the supper-room. 
 
 " Mon ami . " he said, " a great honor has fallen out 
 of the sky for you. I am sent to bring you to the 
 beau reste of the handsomest woman of Styria 
 
 Margaret, Baroness R , whose chateau I pointed 
 
 out to you in the gold light of yesterday s sunset. 
 She wishes to know you u hy I can not wholly divine 
 for it is the first sign of ordinary feeling that she has 
 given in twenty years. But she seems agitated, and 
 sits alone itt the countess s boudoir. Allons-yV 
 
 As we made our way through the crowd, he hastily 
 sketched me an outline of the lady s history : "At 
 seventeen taken from a convent for a" forced marriage 
 with the baron whose name she bears ; at eighteen a 
 widow, and, for the first time, in love the subject of 
 her passion a young artist of Vienna on his way to 
 Italy. The ariist died at her chateau they were to 
 have been married she has ever since worn weeds 
 for him. And the remainder you must imagine for 
 here we are !" 
 
 The baroness leaned with her elbow upon a small 
 table of or molu, and her position was so taken that I 
 seated myself necessarily in a strong light, while her 
 features were in shadow. Still, the light was suffi 
 cient to show me the expression of her countenance. 
 She was a woman apparently about forty-five, of noble 
 physiognomy, and a peculiar fulness of the eyelid 
 something like to which I thought. I remembered to 
 have seen in a portrait of a young girl, many years 
 before. The resemblance troubled me somewhat. 
 
 " You will pardon me this freedom," said the bar 
 oness with forced composure, " when I tell you 
 that a friend whom 1 have mourned twenty-five 
 years seems present to me when you speak." 
 
 I was silent, for I knew not what to say. The bar 
 oness shaded her eyes with her hand, and sat silent 
 for a few moments, gazing at me. 
 
 " You are not like him in a single feature," she 
 resumed, " yet the expression of your face, strangely, 
 very strangely, is the same. He was darker 
 slighter" 
 
 Of my age ?" 1 inquired, to break my own silence. 
 
 For there was something in her voice which gave me 
 the sensation of a voice heard in a dream. 
 
 " Oh God ! that voice ! that voice !" she exclaimed 
 wildly, burying her face in her hands, and giving way 
 to a passionate burst of tears. 
 
 " Rodolph," she resumed, recovering herself with 
 a strong effort, " Rodolph died with the promise on 
 his lips that death should not divide us. And I have 
 seen him ! Not in dreams not in revery not at 
 times when my fancy could delude me. I have seen 
 him suddenly before me in the street in Vienna 
 here at home at noonday for minutes together, 
 gazing on me. It is more in latter years that I have 
 been visited by him ; and a hope" has latterly sprung 
 into being in my heart I know not how that in 
 person, palpable and breathing, I should again hold 
 converse with him fold him living to my bosom. 
 Pardon me ! You will think me mad !" 
 
 I might well pardon her ; for, as she talked, a vague 
 sense of familiarity with her voice, a memory, pow 
 erful, though indistinct, of having before dwelt on 
 those majestic features, an impulse of tearful passion- 
 ateness to rush to her embrace, well nigh overpowered 
 me. She turned to me again. 
 
 " You are an artist ?" she said, inquiringly. 
 
 " No ; though intended for one, I believe, by na 
 ture." 
 
 "And you were born in the year ." 
 
 " I was !" 
 
 With a scream she added the day of my birth, and 
 waiting an instant for my assent, dropped to the floor 
 and clung convulsively and weeping to my knees. 
 
 " Rodolph ! Rodolph !" she murmured faintly, as 
 her long gray tresses fell over her shoulders, and her 
 head dropped insensible upon her breast. 
 
 Her cry had been heard, and several persons entered 
 the room. I rushed out of doors. I had need to be 
 in darkness and alone. 
 
 It was an hour after midnight when I re-entered my 
 hotel. A chasseur stood sentry at the door of my 
 apartment with a letter in his hand. He called me by 
 name, gave me his missive, and disappeared. It was 
 from the baroness, and ran thus: 
 
 " You did not retire from me to sleep. This letter 
 will find you waking. And I must write, for my heart 
 and brain are overflowing. 
 
 " Shall I write to you as a stranger ? you whom I 
 have strained so often to my bosom you whom I have 
 loved and still love with the utmost idolatry of mortal 
 passion you who have once given me the soul that, 
 like a gem long lost, is found again, but in a newer 
 casket ! Mine still for did we not swear to love 
 for ever ! 
 
 " But I am taking counsel of my own heart only. 
 You may still be unconvinced. You may think that 
 a few singular coincidences have driven me mad. 
 You may think that, though born in the same hour 
 that my Rodolph died, possessing the same voice, the 
 same countenance, the same gifts though by irresist 
 ible consciousness I know you to be him my lost 
 lover returned in another body to life you may still 
 think the evidence incomplete you may, perhaps, 
 even now, be smiling in pity at my delusion. Indulge 
 me one moment. 
 
 " The Rodolph Isenberg whom I lost, possessed a 
 faculty of mind, which, if you are he, answers with the 
 voice of an angel to my appeal. In that soul resided, 
 and wherever it be, must now reside, the singular 
 power" * * * * 
 
 * a ***** 
 
 (The reader must be content with my omission of 
 this fragment of the letter. It contained a secret 
 never before clothed in language a secret that will die 
 with me, unless betrayed by what indeed it may lead 
 to madness ! As I saw it in writing defined accu 
 rately and inevitably in the words of another 1 felt as 
 
A REVELATION OF A PREVIOUS LIFE. 
 
 if the innermost chamber of my soul was suddenly 
 laid open to the day I abandoned doubt I answered 
 to the name by which she called me I believed in the 
 previous existence of which my whole life, no less than 
 these extraordinary circumstances, had furnished me 
 with repeated evidence. But, to resume the letter.) 
 
 "And now that we know each other again now 
 that I can call you by name, as in the past, and be 
 sure that your inmost consciousness must reply 
 a new terror seizes me! Your soul comes back, 
 youthfully and newly clad, while mine, though of 
 unfading freshness and youthfulness within, shows to 
 your eye the same outer garment, grown dull with 
 mourning and faded with the wear of time. Am I 
 grown distasteful ? Is it with the sight only of this 
 new body that you look upon rne ? Rodolph ! spirit 
 that was my devoted and passionate admirer! soul 
 that was sworn to me for ever ! am I the same Mar 
 garet, refound and recognised, grown repulsive? Oh 
 God ! What a bitter answer would this be to my 
 prayers for your return to me ! 
 
 " I will trust in Him whose benign goodness smiles 
 upon fidelity in love. I will prepare a fitter meeting 
 for two who parted as lovers. You shall not see me 
 again in the house of a stranger and in a mourning 
 attire. When this letter is written, I will depart at 
 once for the scene of our love. I hear my horses 
 already in the court-yard, and while you read this I 
 am speeding swiftly home. The bridal dress you were 
 secretly shown the day before death came between us, 
 is still freshly kept. The room where we sat the 
 bowers by the stream the walks where we projected 
 our sweet promise of a future they shall all be made 
 ready. They shall be as they were! And I oh 
 Rodolph, I shall be the same! My heart is not 
 grown old, Rodolph ! Believe me, I am unchanged 
 
 in soul ! And I will strive to be I will strive to 
 look God help me to look and be as of 
 yore! 
 
 " Farewell now ! T leave horses and servants to 
 wait on you till I send to bring you to me. Alas, for 
 any delay ! but we will pass this life and all other 
 time together. We have seen that a vow of eternal 
 union may be kept that death can not divide those 
 who will to love for ever ! Farewell now ! 
 
 " MARGARET." 
 
 Circumstances compelled me to read this letter 
 with but one feeling, exquisite pain ! Love lasts till 
 death, but it is mortal ! The affections, however 
 intense and faithful (I now know), are part of the 
 perishable coil, forgotten in the grave. With the 
 memory of this love of another life, haunting me 
 through my youth, and keeping its vow of visitation, 
 I had given the whole heart of my second youth to 
 another! Affianced to her, waited for by her, bound 
 to her by vows which death had not divided, I had but 
 one course to pursue. I left Gratz in an hour, never 
 to return. 
 
 A few days since I was walking alone in the 
 crowded thoroughfare of the city where I live. Sud 
 denly my sense of presence there fell off me. I 
 walked on, but my inward sight absorbed all my con 
 sciousness. A room which was familiar to me shut 
 me in, and a bed hung in mourning became apparent. 
 In another instant a figure laid out in a winding-sheet, 
 and partially covered with a velvet pall, grew distinct 
 through the dimness, and in the low-laid head I rec 
 ognised, what a presentiment had already betrayed to 
 
 me, the features of Margaret, Baroness R . It 
 
 will be still months before I can see the announce 
 ment of her death. But she is dead. 
 
AMERICAN LIFE. 
 
 COUNT POTT S STRATEGY. 
 
 1 L Espnt est un faux monnayeur, qui change continuellement les gros sous en louis d or, et qui souvent fait de ses louis d or des 
 
 THERK were five hundred guardian angels (and of 
 course as many evil spirits), in and about the merry 
 premises of Congress Hall. Each gay guest had his 
 pair; but though each pair had their special ministry 
 (and there was here and there a guest who would not 
 have objected to transform his, for the time being, into 
 a pair of trotting ponies), the attention of the cherubic ; 
 troop, it may fairly be presumed, was directed mainly j 
 to the momentous flirtations of Miss C. Sophy On 
 thank, the dread disposer of the destinies of eighty 
 thousand innocent little dollars. 
 
 Miss Chittaline Sophy (though this is blabbing, 
 for that mysterious " C." was generally condemned 
 to travel in domino) Miss Chittaline Sophy, besides 
 her good and evil spirit already referred to, was under 
 the additional watch and ward of a pair of bombazine 
 aunts, Miss Charity Onthank and Miss Sophy the 
 same, of whom she was the united namesake. 
 " Chittaline" being the embellished diminutive of 
 "Charity." These Hesperian dragons of old maids 
 were cut after the common pattern of such utensils, 
 and of course would not dignify a description; though 
 this disparaging remark (we must stop long enough to 
 say) is not at all to the prejudice of that occasional 
 love-of-an-old-maid that one docs sometimes see 
 that four-leaved clover of virginity that star apart in 
 the spilled milk of the Via Lactea : 
 
 " For now and then you find one who could rally 
 
 At forty, and go back to twenty-three 
 A handsome, plump, affectionate Aunt Sally, 
 With no rage for cuts, flannel, and Bohea." 
 
 But the two elderly Misses Onthank were not of this 
 category. 
 
 By the absence of that Junonic assurance, common 
 to those ladies who are born and bred heiresses, Miss 
 C. Sophy s autograph had not long been an object of 
 interest at the bank. She had all the air of having 
 been "brought up at the trough," as the French 
 phrase it, 
 
 " Round as a cipher, simple as good day," 
 
 and her belle-ship was still a surprise to her. Like 
 the red-haired and freckled who find, when they get 
 to Italy, that their flaming peculiarities are considered 
 as captivating signs of a skiu too delicate for exposure, 
 she received with a slight incredulity the homage to 
 her unseen charms homage not the less welcome for 
 exacting from the giver an exercise of faith and im 
 agination. The same faith and imagination, she was 
 free to suppose, might find a Venus within her girdle, 
 as the sculptor sees one in the goodly block of marble, 
 lacking only the removal of its clumsy covering by 
 chisel and sandpaper. With no visible waist, she was 
 as tall as a pump, and riotously rosy like a flowering 
 rhododendron. Hair brown and plenty of it. Teeth 
 
 white and all at home. And her voice, with but one 
 semitone higher, would have been an approved con 
 tralto. 
 
 Having thus compressed into a couple of paragraphs 
 what would have served a novelist for his first ten 
 chapters, permit us, without the bother of intermediate 
 mortar or moralizing (though this is rather a mixed 
 figure), to lay on the next brick in the shape of a hint 
 at the character of Miss Onthank s two prominent 
 admirers. 
 
 Mr. Greville Seville was a New York beau. He 
 had all the refinement that could possibly be imported. 
 He had seen those who had seen all that is visible in 
 the fashionable man of London and Paris, and he was 
 well versed in the conduits through which theit 
 several peculiarities found their way across the Atlantic. 
 Faultlessly booted, pantalooned, waistcoated, and shirt- 
 ed, he could afford to trust his coat and scarf to Provi 
 dence, and his hat to Warnock or Leary. He wore 
 a slightly restrained whisker, and a faint smut of an 
 imperial, and his gloves fitted him inexorably. His 
 figure was a matter of course. He was brought up in 
 New York, and was one of the four hundred thousand 
 results (more or less) of its drastic waters washy and 
 short. And he had as good a heart as is compatible 
 with the above personal advantages. 
 
 It would very much have surprised the " company" 
 at Congress Hall, to have seen Mr. Chesterfield Potts 
 put down as No. 2, in the emulous contest for the two 
 hands of Miss Onthank. The count (he was com 
 monly called " Count Potts," a compliment to good 
 manners not unusual in America), was, by his own 
 label, a man of " thirty and upward" by the parish 
 register possibly sixty-two. He was an upright, well- 
 preserved, stylish looking man, with an expensive wig, 
 fine teeth (commonly supposed not to be indigenous), 
 and a lavish outlay of cotton batting, covering the re 
 treat of such of his muscular forces as were inclined 
 to retire from the field. What his native qualities 
 might be was a branch of knowledge long since lost to 
 the world. His politeness had superseded the neces 
 sity of any particular inquiry into the matter; indeed, 
 we are inclined to believe his politeness had superseded 
 his character altogether. He was as incapable of the 
 impolite virtues (of which there are several) as of the 
 impolite vices. Like cricketing, punning, political 
 speech making, and other mechanical arts, compli 
 menting may be brought to a high degree of dexteri 
 ty, and Count Potts, after a practice of many years, 
 could, over most kinds of female platitude, spread a 
 flattering unction humbugative to the most suspicious 
 incredulity. As he told no stories, made no puns, 
 volunteered but little conversation, and had the air of 
 a modest man wishing to avoid notice, the blockheads 
 and the very young girls stoutly denied his fascination. 
 
COUNT POTT S STRATEGY. 
 
 73 
 
 But in the memory of the riper belles, as they went 
 to sleep night after night, lay snugly lodged and care- j 
 fully treasured, some timely compliment, some sooth- ! 
 ing word, and, though credited to " old Potts," the j 
 smile wi|h which it was gracefully re-acknowledged ! 
 the next morning at breakfast, would have been warm 
 enough for young Ascanius. "Nice old Potts!" was ! 
 the faint murmur of many a bright lip turning down- | 
 ward to the pillow in the "last position." 
 
 And now. dear reader, you have an idea of the forces 
 in the field, and you probably know how "the war is j 
 carried on" at Saratoga. Two aunts and a guardian j 
 angel versus an evil spirit and two lovers Miss On- j 
 thank s hand, the (well-covered) bone of contention, j 
 Whether the citadel would speedily yield, and which ! 
 of these two rival knights would bear away the palm \ 
 of victory, were questions upon which the majority 
 of lookers-on were doomed to make erroneous predic 
 tions. The reader of course is in the sagacious j 
 minority. 
 
 Mr. Potts income was a net answer to his morning 
 prayer. It provided his "daily bread" but no proven 
 der for a horse. He probably coveted Miss Onthank 
 
 as much for her accompanying oats as for her personal j day, Miss Onthank," or, "As you were al 
 avoirdupois, since the only complaint with which he when T interrupted you." If he touched 
 ever troubled his acquaintances, was one touching his was "so small he didn t see it." If she 
 
 inability to keep an equipage. Man is instinctively a 
 centaur, he used to say, and when you cut him off 
 from his horse and reduce him to his simple trunk | 
 (and a trunk was all the count s worldly furniture), he 
 is but a mutilated remainder, robbed of his natural j 
 locomotive. 
 
 It was not authenticated in Wall street that Mr. | 
 Greville Seville was reasonably entitled to horse-flesh ! 
 and caparison ; but he had a trotting wagon and two : 
 delicious cropped sorrels ; and those who drove in his 
 company were obliged to " down with the dust" (a , 
 bon mot of Count Potts ). Science explains many of | 
 the enigmas of common life, however, and the secret ; 
 of Mr. Seville s equipment and other means of going j 
 on swimmingly, lay in his unusually large organ of j 
 hope. He was simply anticipating the arrival of 1840, ; 
 a year in which he had reason to believe there would 
 be paid in to the credit of the present Miss Onthank 
 a sufficient sum to cover his loosest expenditure. 
 The intermediate transfer to himself of her rights to 
 the same, was a mere filling up of an outline, his mind \ 
 being entirely made up as to the conditional incum- j 
 brance of the lady s person. He was now paying her 
 some attentions in advance, and he felt justified in 
 charging his expenses on the estate. She herself ; 
 would wish it, doubtless, if she could look into the ; 
 future with his eyes. 
 
 By all the common data of matrimonial skirmish- j 
 ing, a lover with horses easily outstrips a lover with 
 none. Miss C. Sophy, besides, was particularly fond of 
 driving, and Seville was an accomplished whip. There 
 was no lack of the " golden opportunity" of Ictc-d-te/e, 
 for, with a deaf aunt and somebody else on the back 
 
 for there was no making love, parbleu ! Miss Chitta- 
 line Onthank was of a stratum of human nature sus 
 ceptible of no sentiment less substantial than a kiss, 
 and when the news, and the weather, and the virtues 
 of the sorrel ponies, were exhausted, the talk came to 
 a stand-still. The heiress began to remember with 
 alarm that her education had been neglected, and that 
 it was a relief to get back to old Potts and the portico. 
 
 Fresh from his nap and warm bath, the perfumed 
 count stepped out from the group he had purposely 
 collected, gave her his hand with a deferential inquiry, 
 spread the loungers to the right and left like an " usher 
 of the black rod," and with some well-studied im 
 promptu compliment, waited on her to her chamber 
 door. He received her again after her toilet, and for 
 the remainder of the day devoted his utmost powers 
 to her aggrandizement. If talking alone with her, it 
 was to provoke her to some passage of school-girl 
 autobiography, and listen like a charmed stone to the 
 harp of Orpheus. If others were near, it was to catch 
 her stupidities half uttered and twist them into sense 
 before they came to the ground. His own clever 
 nesses were prefaced with " As you remarked yester- 
 Ou were about to say 
 her foot, it 
 uttered an 
 
 | irredeemable and immitigable absurdity, he covered 
 its retreat with some sudden exclamation. He called 
 her pensive, when she was sleepy and vacant. He 
 called her romantic, when he couldn t understand her. 
 In short, her vanity was embodied turned into a 
 magician and slave and in the shape of Count Ches 
 terfield, Potts ministered to her indefatigably. 
 
 But the summer solstice began to wane. A week 
 more was all that was allotted to Saratoga by that 
 great American commander, General Consent. 
 
 Count Potts came to breakfast in a shawl cravat! 
 
 "Off, Potts?" 
 
 " Are you flitting, my dear count ?" 
 
 "What going away, dear Mr. Potts?" 
 
 " Gracious me ! don t go, Mr. Potts !" 
 
 The last exclamation was sent across the table in a 
 tone of alarm by Miss C. Sophy, and responded to 
 only by a bow of obsequious melancholy. 
 
 Breakfast was over, and Potts arose. His baggage 
 was at the door. He sought no interview with Miss 
 Onthank. He did not even honor the two bombazini- 
 ties with a farewell. He stepped up to the group of 
 belles, airing their demi-toilettes on the portico, said 
 " Ladies ! au revoir!" took the heiress s hand and put 
 it gallantly toward his lips, and walked oft with his 
 umbrella, requesting the driver to pick him up at the 
 spring. 
 
 " He has been refused !" said one. 
 
 " He has given Seville a clear field in despair !" said 
 another. And this was the general opinion. 
 
 The day crept on. But there was an emptiness 
 without Potts. Seville had the field to himself, and 
 as there was no fear of a new squatter, he thought he 
 might dispense with tillage. They had a very dull 
 n the 
 
 seat, he had Miss Onthank to himself on the driving 
 
 box, and could talk to his horses in the embarrassing ! drive and a very dull dinner, and 
 
 pauses. It looked a clear case to most observers ; 
 
 and as to Seville, he had studied out a livery for his 
 
 future footman and tiger, and would not have taken an 
 
 insurance at a quarter per cent. 
 
 But Potts ah ! Potts had traced back the wires of 
 woman s weaknesses. The heiress had no conversa 
 tion (why should she have it and money too?), and 
 the part of her daily drive which she remembered with 
 most pleasure, was the flourish of starting and return 
 ing managed by Potts with a pomp and circumstance 
 that would have done honor to the goings and comings 
 
 enmg, as 
 
 j there was no ball, Seville went off to play billiards. 
 1 Miss Onthank was surrounded, as usual, by the belles 
 and beaux, but she was down flat unmagnetized, un- 
 galvanized. The magician was gone. Her stupid 
 things "stayed put." She was like a glass bead lost 
 from a kaleidoscope. 
 
 That weary week was spent in lamentations over 
 Potts. Everybody praised him. Everybody com 
 plimented Miss Onthank on her exclusive power of 
 monopoly over such porcelain ware. The two aunts 
 were his main glorifiers ; for, as Potts knew, they 
 
 of Queen Victoria. Once away from the portico, it j 
 was a monotonous drag through the dust for two or , 
 three hours, and as most ladies know, it takes a great j 
 deal of chit-chat to butter so large a slice of time ; 
 
 were of that leathery toughness that only shines on 
 you with rough usage. 
 
 We have said little, as yet, of MissOnthank s capa 
 bilities in the love line. We doubt, indeed, whethei 
 
74 
 
 THE FEMALE WARD. 
 
 she rightly understood the difference between loving! I 
 and being born again. As to giving awny her heart, j] 
 she believed she could do what her mother did before | 
 her, but she would rather it would be one of her back 
 teeth, if that would do as well. She liked Mr. Potts 
 because he never made any difficulty about such 
 things. 
 
 Seville considered himself accepted, though he had 
 made no direct proposition. He had asked whether i 
 she preferred to live in country or town she said j 
 " town." He had asked if she would leave the choice 
 and management of horses and equipages to him 
 she said " be sure !" He had asked if she had any 
 objection to his giving bachelor dinners occasionally | 
 she said " la ! no !" As he understood it, the whole j 
 thing was most comfortably arranged, and he lent | 
 money to several of his friends on the strength of it 
 giving his note, this is to say. 
 
 On a certain morning, some ten days after the de 
 parture of the count from Saratoga, Miss Onthank 
 and her two aunts sat up in state in their parlor at the 
 City hotel. They always went to the City hotel j 
 because Willard remembered their names, and asked 
 after their uncle the major. Mr. Seville s ponies and jl 
 wagon were at the door, and Mr. Seville s father, | 
 mother, seven sisters, and two small brothers, were in 
 the progress of a betrothal visit calling on the future 
 Mrs. Greville Seville. 
 
 All of a sudden the door was thrown open, and enter 
 Count Potts ! 
 
 Up jumped the enchanted Chittaline Sophy. 
 
 " How do you do, Mr. Potts?" 
 
 "Good morning, Mr. Potts!" said the aunts in a 
 breath. 
 
 "D ye-do, Potts !"said Seville, giving him his fore 
 finger, with the air of a man rising from winning at 
 cards. 
 
 Potts made his compliments all round. He was 
 about sailing for Carolina, he said, and had come to 
 ask permission of Miss Onthank to leave her sweet 
 society for a few_years of exile. But as this was the 
 last of his days of pleasure, at least till he saw Miss 
 Onthank again, he wished to be graced with the honor 
 of her arm for a promenade in Broadway. The ladies 
 and Mr. Seville doubtless would excuse her if she put 
 on her bonnet without further ceremony. 
 
 Now Potts s politenesses had such an air of irresisti 
 ble authority that people fell into heir track like cars 
 after a locomotive. While Miss Onthank was bonnet 
 ing and shawling, the count entertained the entire 
 party most gayly, though the Sevilles thought it rather 
 
 unceremonious in the affianced miss to leave them in 
 the midst of a first visit, and Mr. Greville Seville had 
 arranged to send his mother home on foot, and drive 
 Miss Onthank out to Harlem. 
 
 " I ll keep my horses here till you come back !" he 
 shouted after them, as she tripped gayly down stairs 
 on the count s arm. 
 
 And so he did. Though it was two hours before 
 she appeared again, the impatient youth kept the old 
 aunts company, and would have stayed till night, sorrels 
 and all for in that drive he meant to "name the day," 
 and put his creditors at ease. 
 
 "I wouldn t even go up stairs, my dear!" said the 
 count, handing her to the wagon, and sending up the 
 groom for his master, " it s but an hour to dine, and 
 you ll like the air after your fatigue. Ah. Seville, 
 I ve brought her back ! Take good care of her for 
 my sake, my good fellow!" 
 
 " What the devil has his sake to do with it, I won 
 der ?" said Seville, letting his horses off like two rockets 
 in harness. 
 
 And away they went toward Harlem ; and in about 
 an hour, very much to the surprise of the old aunts, 
 who were looking out of the parlor window, the young 
 lady dismounted from an omnibus ! Count Potts had 
 come to dine with them, and he tripped down to meet 
 her with uncommon agility. 
 
 " Why, do you know, aunties," she exclaimed, as 
 she came up stairs, out of breath, "do you know that 
 Mr. Seville, when I told him I was married already to 
 Mr. Potts, stopped his wagon, and p-p-put me into an 
 omnibus !" 
 
 " Married to Mr. Potts !" screamed Aunt Charity. 
 
 " Married to Mr. Potts !" screamed Aunt Sophy. 
 
 " Why yes, aunties ; he said he must go south, 
 if I didn t !" drawled out the bride, with only a very 
 little blush indeed. " Tell aunties all about it, Mr. 
 Potts!" 
 
 And Mr. Potts, with the same smile of infallible 
 propriety, which seemed a warrant for everything he 
 said or did, gave a very sketchy account of his morning s 
 work, which, like all he undertook, had been exceed 
 ingly well done properly witnessed, certified, &c., 
 &c., &c. All of which shows the very sound policy 
 of first making yourself indispensable to people you 
 wish to manage. Or, put it receipt-wise : 
 
 To marry a flat : First, raise her up till she is 
 giddy. Second, go away, and let her down. Third, 
 come back, and offer to support her, if she will give 
 you her hand. 
 
 " Simple comme lonjour " as Balsac says. 
 
 THE FEMALE WARD, 
 
 MOST men have two or more souls, and Jem Thal- 
 imer was a doublet, with sets of manners correspond 
 ing. Indeed one identity could never have served the 
 pair of him ! When sad that is to say, when in dis 
 grace or out of money he had the air of a good man 
 with a broken heart. When gay flush in pocket 
 and happy in his little ambitions you would have 
 thought him a dangerous companion for his grand 
 mother. The last impression did him more injustice 
 than the first, for he was really very amiably disposed 
 when depressed, and not always wicked when gay 
 but he made friends in both characters. People sel 
 
 dom forgive us for compelling them to correct their 
 first impressions of us, and as this was uniformly the 
 case with Jem, whether he had begun as saint or sin 
 ner, he was commonly reckoned a deep-water fish ; 
 and, where there were young ladies in the case, early 
 warned off the premises. The remarkable exception 
 to this rule, in the incident I am about to relate, arose, 
 as may naturally be supposed, from his appearing, du- 
 ring a certain period, in one character only. 
 
 To begin my story fairly, I must go back for a mo 
 ment to our junior Jem in college, showing, by a lit 
 tle passage in our adventures, how Thalimer and I 
 
THE FEMALE WARD. 
 
 7;; 
 
 became acquainted with the confiding gentleman to 
 be referred to. 
 
 A college suspension, very agreeably timed, in June, 
 left my friend Jem and myself masters of our travels 
 for an uncertain period ; and as our purse was always 
 in common, like our shirts, love-letters, and disgraces, 
 our several borrowings were thrust into a wallet which 
 was sometimes in his pocket, sometimes in mine, as 
 each took the turn to be paymaster. With the (in 
 tercepted) letters in our pockets, informing the gov 
 ernors of our degraded position, we travelled very 
 prosperously on bound to Niagara, but very ready to fall 
 into any obliquity by the way. We arrived at Albany, 
 Thalimer chancing to be purser, and as this function 
 tacitly conferred; on the holder, all other responsibil 
 ities, I made myself comfortable at the hotel for the 
 second day and the third up to the seventh rather 
 wondering at Jem s depressed spirits and the sudden 
 falling off of his enthusiasm for Niagara, but con 
 tent to stay if he liked, and amusing myself^jn the 
 side-hill city passably well. It was during my ram 
 bles without him in this week that he made the ac 
 quaintance of a bilious-looking person lodging at the 
 same hotel a Louisianian on a tour of health. This 
 gentleman, whom he introduced to me by the name 
 of Dauchy, seemed to have formed a sudden attach 
 ment to my friend, and as Jem had a " secret sorrow" | 
 unusual to him, and the other an unusual secretion 
 of bile, there was of course between them that "se- j 
 cret sympathy" which is the basis of many tender 
 friendships. I rather liked Mr. Dauchy. He seemed 
 one of those chivalric, polysyllabic southerners, inca 
 pable of a short word or a mean action, and, interested 
 that Jem should retain his friendship, I w\\s not sorry 
 to find our departure follow close on the recovery of 
 his spirits. 
 
 We went on toward Niagara, and in the irresistible 
 confidence of canal travelling I made out the secret 
 of my fulus achatcs. He had attempted to alleviate 
 the hardship of a deck-passage for a bright-eyed girl 
 on board the steamer, and, on going below to his 
 berth, left her his greatcoat for a pillow. The stuffed 
 wallet, which somewhat distended the breast-pocket, 
 was probably in the way of her downy cheek, and 
 Jem supposed that she simply forgot to return the 
 " removed deposite" but he did not miss his money 
 till twelve hours after, and then, between lack of 
 means to pursue her, and shame at the sentiment he 
 had wasted, he kept the disaster to himself, and passed 
 a melancholy week in devising means for replenishing. 
 Through this penscroso vein, however, lay his way 
 out of the difficulty, for he thus touched the soul 
 and funds of Mr. Dauchy. The correspondence 
 (commenced by the repayment of the loan) was kept 
 up stragglingly for several years, bolstered somewhat j 
 by barrels of marmalade, boxes of sugar, hommony, 
 &c., till finally it ended in the unlooked-for consign 
 ment which forms the subject of my story. 
 
 Jem and myself had been a year out of college, and 
 were passing through that "tight place" in life, com 
 monly understood in New England as " the going in 
 at the little end of the horn." Expected by our pa 
 rents to take to money-making like ducks to swim 
 ming, deprived at once of college allowance, called 
 on to be men because our education was paid for, and 
 frowned upon at every manifestation of a lingering 
 taste for pleasure it was not surprising that we some 
 times gave tokens of feeling "crowded," and obtained 
 somewhat the reputation of " bad subjects" (using 
 this expressive phrase quite literally). Jem s share 
 of this odor of wickedness was much the greater, his 
 unlucky deviltry of countenance doing him its usual 
 disservice ; but like the gentleman to whom he was 
 attributed as a favorite protege, he was " not so black 
 as he was painted." 
 
 We had been so fortunate as to find one believer in 
 
 the fbture culmination of our clouded stars Galla 
 gher, "mine host * and for value to be received when 
 our brains should fructify, his white soup and " fed- 
 stiing Madeira," his game, turtle, and all the forth 
 comings of the best restaurant of our epoch, were 
 served lovingly and charged, moderately. Peace be 
 with the ashes of William Gallagher ! " The brains" 
 have fructified, and "the value" has been received 
 but his name and memory are not " filed away" with 
 the receipt ; and though years have gone over his 
 grave, his modest welcome, and generous dispensation 
 of entertainment and service, are, by one at least of 
 those who enjoyed them*, gratefully and freshly re 
 membered ! 
 
 We were to dine as usual at Gallagher s at six one 
 May day which I well remember. I was just addres 
 sing myself to my day s work, when Jem broke into 
 my room with a letter in his hand#and an expression 
 on his face of mingled embarrassment and fear. 
 
 " What the deuce to do with her!" said he, hand, 
 ing me the letter. 
 
 " A new scrape, Jem?" I asked, as I looked for an 
 instant at the Dauchy coat-of-arms on a seal as big as 
 a dollar. 
 
 " Scrape ? yes, it is a scrape ! for I shall never 
 get out of it reputably. What a dunce old Dauchy 
 must be to send me a girl to educate ! / a young 
 lady s guardian! Why, I shall be the laugh of the 
 town ! What say ? Isn t it a good one ?" 
 
 I had been carefully perusing the letter while Thal 
 imer walked soliloquizing about the room. It was 
 from his old friend of marmalades and sugars, and in 
 the most confiding and grave terms, as if Jem and he 
 had been a couple of contemporaneous old bachelors, 
 it consigned to his guardianship and friendly counsel, 
 Miss Adelmine Lasacque, the only daughter of a 
 neighboring planter ! Mr. Lasacque having no friends 
 at the north, had applied to Mr. Dauchy for his gui 
 dance in the selection of a proper person to superin 
 tend her education, and as Thalimer was the only cor 
 respondent with whom Mr. Dauchy had relations of 
 
 i friendship, and was, moreover, " fitted admirably for 
 
 | the trust by his impressive and dignified address," (?) 
 
 ! he had "taken the liberty," &c., &c. 
 
 " Have you seen her?" I asked, after a long laugh, 
 in which Jem joined but partially. 
 
 " No, indeed ! She arrived last night in the New 
 
 j Orleans packet, and the captain brought me this let- 
 
 ! ter at daylight, with the young lady s compliments. 
 
 The old seadog looked a little astounded when 1 an 
 nounced myself. Well he might, faith ! I don t look 
 
 like a young lady s guardian, do I?" 
 
 "Well you are to go on board and fetch her is 
 that it ?" 
 
 " Fetch her! Where shall I fetch her ? Who is 
 
 ! to take a young lady of my fetching? I can t find a 
 
 j female academy that I can approve " 
 
 I burst into a roar of laughter, for Jem was in ear- 
 
 j nest with his scruples, and looked the picture of un- 
 
 1 happiness. 
 
 " I say I can t find one in a minute don t Jaugli, 
 you blackguard ! and where to lodge her meantime ? 
 What should I say to the hotel-keepers ? They all 
 know me 1 It looks devilish odd, let me tell you, to 
 bring a young girl, without matron or other acquamt- 
 ances than myself, and lodge her at a pubhc house. 
 "Your mother must take your charge off your 
 
 ia " Of course that was the first thing I thought of. 
 You know my mother ! She don t half believe the 
 story, in the first place. If there is such a man as 
 , Mr Dauchy, she says, and if this is a Miss L,a- 
 sacque, all the way from Louisiana, there is but one 
 thin* to do send her back in the packet she came 
 in ! She ll have nothing to do with it* There s 
 more in it than I am willing to explain. I never 
 
THE FEMALE WARD. 
 
 mentioned this Mr. Dauchy before. Mischief will corne 
 of it! Abduction s a dreadful thing! If I will make 
 myself notorious, I need not think to involve my 
 mother and sisters ! That s the way she talks about it." 
 
 "But couldn t we mollify your mother? for, after 
 all, her countenance in the matter will be expected." 
 
 "Not a chance of it !" 
 
 " The money part of it is all right ?" 
 
 " Turn the letter over. Credit for a large amount 
 on the Robinsons, payable to my order only !" 
 
 "Faith! it s a very hard case if a nice girl with 
 plenty of money can t be permitted to land in Boston! 
 You didn t ask the captain if she was pretty?" 
 
 "No, indeed! But pretty or plain, I must get her 
 ashore and be civil to her. I must ask her to dine ! 
 I must do something besides hand her over to a 
 boarding-school ! Will you come down to the ship 
 with me?" 
 
 My curiosity was quite aroused, and I dressed im 
 mediately. On our way down we stopped at Gallagher s, j 
 to request a little embellishment to our ordinary dinner. ! 
 It was quite clear, for a variety of reasons, that she must 
 dine with her guardian there, or nowhere. Gallagher 
 looked surprised, to say the least, at our proposition j 
 to bring a young lady to dine with us, but he made no ! 
 comment beyond a respectful remark that " No. 2 
 was very private !" 
 
 We had gone but a few steps from Devonshire 
 street when Jem stopped in the middle of the side 
 walk. 
 
 " We have not decided yet what we are to do with 
 Miss Lasacque all day, nor where we shall send her 
 baggage, nor where she is to lodge to-night. For 
 Heaven s sake, suggest something!" added Jem, quite 
 out of temper. 
 
 "Why, as you say, it would be heavy work to walk 
 her about the streets from now till dinner-time eight 
 hours or more ! Gallagher s is only an eating-house, 
 unluckily, and you are so well known at all the ho 
 tels, that, to take her to one of them without a chap 
 eron, would, to say the least, give occasion for remark. 
 But here, around the corner, is one of the best board 
 ing-houses in town, kept by the two old Misses Smith. 
 You might offer to put her under their protection. 
 Let s try." 
 
 The Misses Smith were a couple of reduced gen 
 tlewomen, who charged a very good price for board 
 and lodging, and piqued themselves on entertaining 
 only very good company. Begging Jem to assume 
 the confident tone which the virtuous character of his 
 errand required, I rang at the door, and in answer to 
 our inquiry for the ladies of the house, we were shown 
 into the basement parlor, where the eldest Miss Smith 
 sat with her spectacles on, adding new vinegar to some 
 pots of pickles. Our business was very briefly stated. 
 Miss Smith had plenty of spare room. Would we 
 wait a moment till she tied on the covers to her pickle- 
 jars ? 
 
 The cordiality of the venerable demoiselle evidently 
 put Thalimer in spirits. He gave me a glance which 
 said very plainly, " You see we needn t have troubled 
 our heads about this ." but the sequel was to come. 
 
 Miss Smith led the way to the second story, where 
 were two very comfortable unoccupied bedrooms. 
 
 "A single lady?" she asked. 
 
 " Yes," said Jem, " a Miss Lasacque of Louisiana." 
 
 "Young, did you say ?" 
 
 " Seventeen, or thereabout, I fancy." (This was a 
 guess, but Jem chose to appear to know all about 
 her.) 
 
 "And ehem ! and quite alone?" 
 
 " Quite alone she is come here to go to school." 
 
 " Oh, to go to school ! Pray will she pass her 
 vacationswith your mother?" 
 
 "No! said Jem, coughing, and looking rather em 
 barrassed. 
 
 Indeed ! She is with Mrs. Thalimer at present, 
 I presume." 
 
 No she is still on shipboard ! Why, my dear 
 madam, she only arrived from New Orleans this 
 morning." 
 
 And your mother has not had time to see her? 
 I understand. Mrs. Thalimer will accompany her 
 here, of course." 
 
 Jem began to see the end of the old maid s cate 
 chism, and thought it best to volunteer the remainder 
 of the information. 
 
 "My mother is not acquainted with this young la 
 dy s friends," he said,; " and, in fact, she comes intro 
 duced only to myself." 
 
 She has a guardian, surely ?" said Miss Smith, 
 drawing back into her Elizabethan ruff with more 
 dignity than she had hitherto worn. 
 
 " I am her guardian!" replied Jem, looking as red 
 and guilty as if he had really abducted the young la 
 dy, and was ashamed of his errand. 
 
 The spinster bit her lips and looked out of the 
 window. 
 
 " Will you walk down stairs for a moment, gentle 
 men," she resumed, "and let me speak to my sister. 
 I should have told you that the rooms might possibly be 
 engaged. I am not quite sure indeed ehem pray 
 walk down and be seated a moment!" 
 
 Very much to the vexation of my discomfited 
 friend, I burst into a laugh as we closed the door of 
 the basement parlor behind us. 
 
 " You don t realize my confoundedly awkward po 
 sition," said he. " I am responsible for every step I 
 take, to the girl s father in the first place, and then to 
 my friend Dauchy, one of the most chivalric old 
 cocks in the world, who, at the same time, could nev 
 er understand why there was any difficulty in the 
 matter ! And it does seem strange, that in a city with 
 eighty thousand inhabitants, it should be nxtto impos 
 sible to find lodging for a virtuous lady, a stranger!" 
 
 I was contriving how to tell Thalimer that " there 
 was no objection to the camel but for the dead cat 
 hung upon its neck," when a maidservant opened the 
 door with a message " Miss Smith s compliments, 
 and she was very sorry she had no room to spare !" 
 
 " Pleasant !" said Jem, " very pleasant ! I suppose 
 every other keeper of a respectable house will be 
 equally sorry. Meantime, it s getting on toward noon, 
 and that poor girl is moping on shipboard, wondering 
 whether she is ever to be taken ashore ! Do you 
 think she might sleep at Gallagher s ?" 
 
 " Certainly not! He has, probably, no accommo 
 dations for a lady, and, to lodge in a restaurant, after 
 dining with you there, would be an indiscreet first 
 step, in a strange city, to say the least. But let us 
 make our visit to your fair ward, my dear Jem! Per 
 haps she has a face innocent enough to tell its own 
 story like the lady who walked through Erin with 
 the snow-white wand. " 
 
 The vessel had lain in the stream all night, and was 
 just hauling up to the wharf with the moving tide. 
 A crowd of spectators stood at the end of her moor 
 ing cable, and, as she warped in, universal attention 
 seemed to be given to a single object. Upon a heap 
 of cotton-bales, the highest point of the confused 
 lumber of the deck, sat a lady under a sky-blue par 
 asol. Her gown was of pink silk ; and by the volume 
 of this showy material which was presented to the 
 eye, the wearer, when standing, promised to turn out 
 of rather conspicuous stature. White gloves, a pair 
 of superb amethyst bracelets, a string of gold beads 
 on her neck, and shoulders quite naked enough for a 
 ball, were all the disclosures made for a while by the 
 envious parasol, if we except a little object in blue, 
 which seemed the extremity of something she was 
 sitting on, held in her left hand and which turned 
 out to be her right foot in a blue satin slipper ! 
 
THE FEMALE WARD. 
 
 77 
 
 I turned to Thalimer. He was literally pale with 
 consternation. 
 
 " Hadn t you better send for a carriage to take your 
 ward away ?" I suggested. 
 
 " You don t believe that to be Miss Lasacque, sure 
 ly !" exclaimed Jem, turning upon me with an implo 
 ring look. 
 
 "Such is my foreboding," I replied; "but wait a 
 moment. Her face may be pretty, and you, of course, 
 in your guardian capacity, may suggest a simplifica 
 tion of her toilet. Consider! the poor girl was 
 never before off the plantation at least, so says old 
 Daucliy s letter." 
 
 The sailors now began to pull upon the sternline, 
 and, as the ship came round, the face of the unconscious 
 object of curiosity stole inio view. Most of the spec 
 tators, after a single glance, turned their attention 
 elsewhere with a smile, and Jem, putting his hands 
 into his two coat-pocUets behind him, walked off tow 
 ard the end of the pier, whistling to himself very en 
 ergetically. She was an exaggeration of the peculiar 
 physiognomy of the south lean rather than slight, 
 sallow rather than pale. Yet I thought her eyes fine. 
 
 Thalimer joined me as the ship touched the dock, 
 and we stepped on board together. The cabinboy 
 confirmed our expectations as to the lady s identity, 
 and putting on the very insinuating manner which 
 was part of his objectionable exterior, Jem advanced 
 and begged to know if he had the honor of addressing 
 Miss Lasacque. 
 
 Without loosing her hold upon her right foot, the 
 lady nodded. 
 
 "Then, madam!" said Jem, "permit me to intro 
 duce to you your guardian, Mr. Thalimer !" 
 
 "What, that old gentleman coming this way?" 
 asked Miss Lasacque, fixing her eyes on a custom 
 house officer who was walking the deck. 
 
 Jem handed the lady his card. 
 
 " That is my name," said he, " and I should be 
 happy to know how I can begin the duties of my of 
 fice !" 
 
 "Dear me!" said the astonished damsel, dropping 
 her foot to take his hand, " isn t there an older Mr. 
 James Thalimer? Mr. Dauchy said it was a gentle 
 man near his own age!" 
 
 "I grow older, as you know me longer!" Jem re 
 plied apologetically ; but his ward was too well satis 
 fied with his appearance, to need even this remarka 
 ble fact to console her. She came down with a slide 
 from her cotton-bag elevation, called to the cook to 
 bring the bandbox with the bonnet in it, and mean 
 time gave us a brief history of the inconveniences she 
 had suffered in consequence of the loss of her slave, 
 Dinah, who had died of sea-sickness three days out. 
 This, to me, was bad news, for I had trusted to a " la 
 dy s maid" for the preservation of appearance*, and 
 the scandal threatening Jem s guardianship looked, 
 in consequence, very imminent. 
 
 " I am dying to get my feet on land again !" said 
 Miss Lasacque, putting her arm in her guardian s, 
 and turning toward the gangway her bonnet not 
 tied, nor her neck covered, and thin blue satin slip 
 pers, though her feet were small, showing forth in 
 contrast with her pink silk gown, with frightful con- 
 spicuousness ! Jem resisted the shoreward pull, and 
 stood motionless and aghast. 
 
 " Your baggage," he stammered at last. 
 
 " Here, cook !" cried the lady, " tell the captain, 
 when he comes aboard, to send my trunks to Mr. 
 Thalimer s ! They are down in the hold, and he told 
 me he couldn t get at em till to-morrow," she added, 
 by way of explanation to Thalimcr. 
 
 I felt constrained to come to the rescue. 
 
 " Pardon me, madam !" said I, " there is a little 
 peculiarity in our climate, of which you probably are 
 not advised. An east wind commonly sets in about 
 
 noon, which makes a shawl very necessary. In con- 
 ; sequence, too, of the bronchitis which this sudden 
 change is apt to give people of tender constitutions, 
 ; i the ladies of Boston are obliged to sacrifice what is 
 i | becoming, and wear their dresses very high in the 
 ; throat." 
 
 " La !" said the astonished damsel, putting her 
 hand upon her bare neck, " is it sore throat that you 
 mean ? I m very subject to it, indeed ! Cook ! bring 
 me that fur-tippet out of the cabin ! I m so sorry my 
 dresses are all made so low, and I haven t a shawl un 
 packed either! dear! dear!" 
 
 Jem and I exchanged a look of hopeless resigna 
 tion, as the cook appeared with the chinchilli tippet. 
 A bold man might have hesitated to share the con- 
 spicuousness of such a figure in a noon promenade, 
 but we each gave her an arm when she had tied the 
 soiled riband around her throat, and silently set for 
 ward. 
 
 It was a bright and very warm day, and there seem 
 ed a conspiracy among our acquaintances, to cross 
 our path. Once in the street, it was not remarkable 
 that they looked at us, for the towering height at 
 | which the lady carried her very showy bonnet, the 
 ! I flashy material of her dress, the jewels and the chin- 
 chilli tippet, formed an ensemble which caught the eye 
 like a rainbow; and truly people did gaze, and the 
 || boys, spite of the unconscious look which we attempt- 
 |j ed, did give rather disagreeable evidence of being 
 amused. 1 had various misgivings, myself, as to the 
 necessity for my own share in the performance, and, 
 at every corner, felt soiely tempted to bid guardian 
 and ward good morning ; but friendship and pity pre 
 vailed. By streets and lanes not calculated to give 
 Miss Lasacque a very favorable first impression of 
 Boston, we reached Washington street, and made an 
 intrepid dash across it, to the Marlborough hotel. 
 
 Of this public house, Thalimer had asked my opin 
 ion during our walk, by way of introducing an apolo 
 gy to Miss Lasacque for not taking her to his own 
 home. She had made it quite clear that she expected 
 this, and Jem had nothing for it but to draw such a 
 picture of the decrepitude of Mr. Thalimer, senior, 
 and the bedridden condition of his mother (as stout 
 a couple as ever plodded to church !) as would satisfy 
 the lady for his short- comings in hospitality. This 
 had passed off very smoothly, and Miss Lasacque en 
 tered the Marlboro , quite prepared to lodge there, 
 but very little aware (poor girl !) of the objections to 
 receiving her as a lodger. 
 
 Mr. , the proprietor, had stood in the arch- 
 
 :j way as we entered. Seeing no baggage in the lady s 
 | train, however, he had not followed us in, supposing, 
 | probably, that we were callers on some of his guests. 
 j Jem left us in the drawing-room, and went upon his 
 errand to the proprietor, but after half an hour s ab- 
 I sence, came back, looking very angry, and informed 
 1 1 us that no rooms were to be had ! Instead of taking 
 H the rooms without explanation, he had been unwise 
 
 :! enough to " make a clean breast" to Mr. , and 
 
 i! the story of the lady s being his "ward," and come 
 :i from Louisiana to go to school, rather staggered that 
 i ; discreet person s credulity. 
 
 Jem beckoned me out, and we held a little council 
 of war in the entry. Alas! I had nothing to suggest. 
 | I knew the puritan metropolis very well I knew its 
 ! phobia was " the appearance of evil." In Jem s care- 
 II for-nothing face lay the leprosy which closed all doors 
 : against us^ Kven if we had succeeded, by a coup-de- 
 ; main, in lodging Miss Lasacque at the Marlboro , her 
 I guardian s daily visits would have procured for her, in 
 i hr first week, some intimation that she could no 
 I j longer be accommodated. 
 
 " We had best go and dine upon it," said I ; " worst 
 , come to the worst^ we can find some sort of dormitory 
 |j for her at Gallagher s, and to-morrow she must be put 
 
78 
 
 THE FEMALE WARD. 
 
 to school, out of the reach of your pleasant, but 
 wrong society. " 
 
 "I hope to Heaven she ll stay put, " said Jem, 
 with a long sigh. 
 
 We got Miss Lasacque again under way, and avoid 
 ing the now crowded pave of Washington street, made 
 a short cut by Theatre Alley to Devonshire street and 
 Gallagher s. Safely landed in "No. 2," we drew a 
 long breath of relief. Jem rang the bell. 
 "Dinner, waiter, as soon as possible." 
 "The same that was ordered at six, sir?" 
 "Yes, only more champagne, and bring it imme 
 diately. Excuse me, Miss Lasacque," added Jem, 
 with a grave bow, " but the non-appearance of that 
 east wind my friend spoke of, has given me an unnat 
 ural thirst. Will you join me in some champagne 
 after your hot walk ?" 
 
 " No, thank you," said the lady, untying her tip 
 pet, " but, if you please, I will go to my room before 
 dinner!" 
 
 Here was trouble, again ! It had never occurred to 
 either of us, that ladies must go to their rooms before 
 bedtime. 
 
 " Stop !" cried Jem, as she laid her hand on the 
 bell to ring for the chamber-maid, "excuse me I 
 must first speak to the landlord the room the room 
 is not ready, probably !" 
 
 He seized his hat, and made his exit, probably wish 
 ing all confiding friends, with their neighbor s daugh 
 ters, in a better world ! He had to do with a man of 
 sense, however. Gallagher had but one bedroom in 
 the house, which was not a servant s room, and that 
 was his own. In ten minutes it was ready, and at the 
 lady s service. A black scullion was promoted for the 
 nonce, to the post of chamber-maid, and, fortunately, 
 the plantation-bred girl had not been long enough I 
 from home to be particular. She came to dinner as I 
 radiant as a summer-squash. 
 
 With the door shut, and the soup before us, Tha- I 
 limer s spirits and mino flung off their burthens to- j 
 gether. Jem was the pleasantest table-companion in 
 the world, and he chatted and made the amiable to his 
 ward, as if he owed her some amends for the awkward 
 position of which she was so blessedly unconscious. I 
 Your "dangerous man" (such as he was voted), in 
 spires, of course, no distrust in those to whom he 
 chooses to be agreeable. Miss Lasacque grew, every 
 minute, more delighted with him. She, too, improved 
 on acquaintance. Come to look at her closely, Nature 
 meant her for a fine showy creature, and she was 
 " out of condition," as the jockeys say that was all! 
 Her features were good, though gambosed by a 
 southern climate, and the fever-and-ague had flatten 
 ed what should be round and ripe lips, and reduced 
 to the mere frame, what should be the bust and neck 
 of a Die Vernon. I am not sure I saw all this at the 
 time. Her subsequent chrysalis and emergence into 
 a beautiful woman, naturally color my description 
 now. But I did see, then, that her eyes were large 
 and lustrous, and that naturally she had high spirit, 
 good abilities, and was a thorough woman in senti 
 ment, though deplorably neglected for, at the age 
 of twenty, she could hardly read and write ! It was 
 not surprising that she was pleased with us ! She was 
 the only lady present, and we were the first coxcombs 
 she had ever seen, and the day was summery, and the 
 dinner in Gallagher s best style. We treated her like 
 a princess ; and the more agreeable man of the two 
 being her guardian, and responsible for the propriety 
 of the whole affair, there was no chance for a failure. 
 We lingered over our coffee ; and we lingered over 
 our chassecafc; and we lingered over our tea; and, 
 when the old South struck twelve, we were still at the 
 table in " No. 2," quite too much delighted with each 
 other to have thought of separating. It was the ven 
 erated guardian who made the first move, and, after 
 
 jj ringing up the waiter to discover that the scullion had, 
 six hours before, made her nightly disappearance, the 
 lady was respectfully dismissed with only a candle for 
 her chamber-maid, and Mr. Gallagher s room for her 
 destination wherever that might be ! 
 
 We dined together every successive day for a week, 
 and during this time the plot rapidly thickened. Tha- 
 limer, of course, vexed soul and body, to obtain for 
 Miss Lasacque a less objectionable lodging urged 
 scarcely more by his sense of propriety than by a 
 feeling for her good-natured host, who, meantime, 
 slept on a sofa. But the unlucky first step of dining 
 and lodging a young lady at a restaurant, inevitable 
 as it was, gave a fatal assurance to the predisposed 
 scandal of the affair, and every day s events heighten 
 ed its glaring complexion. Miss Lasacque had ideas 
 of her own, and very independent ones, as to the 
 amusement of her leisure hours. She had never been 
 before where there were shops, and she spent her first 
 two or three mornings in perambulating Washington 
 street, dressed in a style perfectly amazing to behold 
 ers, and purchasing every description of gay trumpe 
 ry the parcels, of course, sent to Gallagher s, and 
 the bills to James Thalimer, Esq. ! To keep her out 
 of the street, Jem took her, on the third day, to the 
 riding-school, leaving her (safely enough, he thought), 
 in charge of the authoritative Mr. Roulstone, while 
 he besieged some school-mistress or other to under 
 take her ciphering and geography. She was all but 
 born on horseback, however, and soon tired of riding 
 round the ring. The street-door was set open for a 
 moment, leaving exposed a tempting tangent to the 
 circle, and out flew Miss Lasacque, saving her " Leg 
 horn flat" by a bend to the saddle-bow, that would 
 have done credit to a dragoon, and no more was seen, 
 (or hours, of the " bonnie black mare" and her rider. 
 
 The deepening of Miss Lasacque s passion for Jem, 
 would not interest the reader. She loved like other 
 
 omen, timidly and pensively. Young as the passion 
 was, however, it came too late to affect her manners 
 before public opinion had pronounced on them. There 
 was neither boarding-house nor private female acad 
 emy" within ten miles, into which "Mr. Thalimer s 
 young lady" would have been permitted to set her 
 foot small as was the foot, and innocent as was the 
 pulse to which it stepped. 
 
 Uncomfortable as was this state of suspense, and 
 anxious as we were to fall into the track marked 
 virtuous," if virtue would only permit; public opin- 
 on seemed to think we were enjoying ourselves quite 
 oo prosperously. On the morning of the seventh day 
 of our guardianship, I had two calls after breakfast, 
 ne from poor Gallagher, who reported that he had 
 jeen threatened with a prosecution of his establish 
 ment as a nuisance, and another from poorer Jem, 
 ivhose father had threatened to take the lady out of 
 :iis hands, and lodge her in the insane asylum ! 
 
 " Not that I don t wish she was there," added Jem, 
 for it is a very fine place, with a nice garden, and 
 tixurious enough for those who can pay for them, and 
 aith, I believe it s the only lodging-house I ve not ap- 
 )lied to !" 
 
 I must shorten my story. Jem anticipated his 
 ather, by riding over, and showing his papers con- 
 itituting him the guardian of Miss Lasacque, in which 
 rapacity, lie was, of course, authorized to put his 
 vard under the charge of keepers. Everybody who 
 tnows Massachusetts, knows that its insane asylums 
 re sometimes brought to bear on irregular morals, as 
 
 ell as on diseased intellects, and as the presiding of 
 ficer of the institution was quite well assured that 
 
 iss Lasacque was well qualified to become a patient, 
 
 "em had no course left but to profit by the error. 
 
 The poor girl was invited, that afternoon, to take a 
 
 Irive in the country, and we came back and dined 
 
 ithout her. in abominable spirits, I must say 
 
TWO BUCKETS IN A WELL. 
 
 7 J 
 
 Provided with the best instruction, the best of care 
 taken of her health, and the most exemplary of ma 
 trons interesting herself in lier patient s improvements, 
 Miss Lasacque rapidly improved more rapidly, no 
 doubt, than she ever could have done by control less 
 rigid and inevitable. Her father, by the advice of the 
 matron, was not informed of her location for a year, 
 
 I and at the end of that time he came on, accompanied 
 by his friend, Mi. Dauchy. He found his daughter 
 sufficiently improved in health, manners, and beauty, 
 I to be quite satisfied with Jem s discharge of his trust, 
 j and we all dined very pleasantly in " No. 2 ;" Miss 
 I Lasacque declining, with a blush, my invitation to her 
 ! to make one of the party. 
 
 TWO BUCKETS IN A WELL, 
 
 " FIVE hundred dollars a year!" echoed Fanny | 
 Bellairs, as the first silver gray of the twilight spread ! 
 over her picture. 
 
 "And my art," modestly added the painter, prying \ 
 into his bright copy of the lips pronouncing upon j 
 his destiny. 
 
 " And how much may that be at the present rate | 
 of patronage one picture a year painted for love!" 
 
 " Fanny, how can you be so calculating !" 
 
 "By the bumps over my eyebrows, I suppose. 
 Why, my dear coz, we have another state of existence 
 to look forward to old man-age and old woman-age ! 
 What am I to do with five hundred dollars a year, 
 when my old frame wants gilding (to use one of 
 your own similes) I shan t always be pretty Fanny 
 Bellairs!" 
 
 " But, good Heavens ! we shall grow old together!" ! 
 exclaimed the painter, sitting down at her feet, " and ! 
 what will you care for other admiration, if your husband j 
 see you still beautiful, with the eyes of memory and 
 habit." 
 
 "Even if I were sure he would so look upon me !" 
 answered Miss Bellairs more seriously, " I can not 
 but dread an old age without great means of embellish 
 ment. Old people, except in poetry and in very 
 primitive society, are dishonored by wants and cares. 
 And, indeed, before we are old when neither young 
 nor old we want horses and ottomans, kalydor and 
 conservatories, books, pictures, and silk curtains all 
 quite out of the range of your little allowance, don t j 
 you see !" 
 
 "You do not love me, Fanny !" 
 
 " I do and will marry you, Philip as I, long ago, 
 with my whole heart promised. But I wish to be 
 happy with you as happy, quite as happy, as is at all 
 possible, with our best efforts and coolest, discreetest 
 management. I laugh the matter over sometimes, 
 but I may tell yon, since you are determined to be in 
 earnest, that 1 have treated it, in my solitary thought, 
 as the one important event of tny life (so indeed it 
 is !) and, as such, worthy of all fore-thought, patience, 
 self-denial, and calculation. To inevitable ills I can 
 make up my mind like other people. If your art were 
 your only hope of subsistence why [ don t know i 
 (should 1 look well as a page?) I don t know that I > 
 couldn t run your errands and grind your paints in ; 
 hose and doublet. But there is another door open j 
 for you a counting-house door, to be sure leading 
 to opulence and all the appliances of dignity and happi 
 ness, and through this door, my dear Philip, the art 
 you would live by comes to pay tribute and beg for 
 patronage. Now, out of your hundred and twenty 
 reasons, give me the two stoutest and best, why you 
 should refuse your brother s golden offer of partner 
 ship my share, in your alternative of poverty, left for 
 the moment out of the question." 
 
 Rnther overborne bv the confident decision of his 
 
 beautiful cousin, and having probably made up his 
 mind that he must ultimately yield to her, Philip re 
 plied in a lower and more dejected tone : 
 
 " If you were not to be a sharer in my renown, 
 should I be so fortunate as to acquire it, I should feel 
 as if it were selfish to dwell so much on my passion 
 for distinction and my devotion to my pencil as the 
 means of winning it. My heart is full of you but it 
 is full of ambition too, paradox though it be. I can 
 not live ignoble. I should not have felt worthy to 
 press my love upon you worthy to possess you 
 except with the prospect of celebrity in my art. You 
 make the world dark to me, Fanny ! You closedown 
 the sky, when you shut out this hope ! Yet it shall 
 be so." 
 
 Philip paused a moment and the silence was unin 
 terrupted. 
 
 " There was another feeling I had, upon which I 
 have not insisted," he continued. "By my brother s 
 project, I am to reside almost wholly abroad. Even 
 the little stipend I have to offer you now, is absorbed 
 of course by the investment of my property in his 
 trading capital, and marriage, till I have partly enrich 
 ed myself, would be even more hopeless than at present. 
 Say the interval were five years and five years of 
 separation !" 
 
 " With happiness in prospect, it would soon pass, 
 my dear Philip !" 
 
 "But is there nothing wasted in this time ? My 
 life is yours the gift of love. Are not these coin 
 ing five years the very flower of it ? a mutual loss, 
 too. for are they not, even more emphatically, the very 
 flower of yours 1 Eighteen and twenty-five are ages at 
 which to marry, not ages to defer. During this time the 
 entire flow of my existence is at its crowning fulness 
 passion, thought, joy, tenderness, susceptibility to 
 beauty and sweetness all I have that can be diminish 
 ed or tarnished or made dull by advancing age and 
 contact with the world, is thrown away for its spring 
 and summer. Will the autumn of life repay us for 
 this? Will it even if we are rich and blest with 
 health, and as capable of an unblemished union as 
 now ? Think of this a moment, dear Fanny !" 
 
 " I do it is full of force and meaning, and could 
 we marry now, with a tolerable prospect of competen 
 cy, it would be irresistible. But poverty in wedlock, 
 Philip" 
 
 " What do you call poverty ! If we can suffice for 
 each other, and have the necessaiies of life, we are not 
 poor ! My art will bring us consideration enough 
 which is the main end of wealth, after all and of 
 society, speaking for myself only, I want nothing. 
 Luxuries for yourself, Fanny, means for your dear 
 comfort and pleasure, you should not want if the 
 world held them, and surely the unbounded devotion 
 of one man to the support of the one woman he loves, 
 ought to suffice for the task ! I am strong I am 
 
so 
 
 TWO BUCKETS IN A WELL. 
 
 capable of labor I have limbs to toil, if my genius 
 and my present means fail me, and, oh, Heaven, you 
 could not want !" 
 
 " No, no, no ! I thought not of want !" murmured 
 Miss Bellairs, "I thought only 
 
 But she was not permitted to finish the sentence. 
 
 " Then my bright picture for the future may be 
 realized !" exclaimed Philip, knitting his hands to 
 gether in a transport of hope. " I rnay build up a 
 reputation, with you for the constant partner of its 
 triumphs and excitements! I may go through the 
 world and have some care in life besides subsistence, 
 how I shall sleep, and eat, and accumulate gold ; some 
 companion, who, from the threshold of manhood, 
 shared every thought and knew every feeling some 
 pure and present angel who walked with me and puri 
 fied my motives and ennobled my ambitions, and re 
 ceived from my lips and eyes, and from the beating 
 of my heart, against her own, all the love I had to give 
 in a lifetime. Tell me, Fanny! tell me, my sweet 
 cousin ! is not this a picture of bliss, which, combined 
 with success in my noble art, might make a Paradise 
 on earth for you and me ?" 
 
 The hand of Fanny Bellairs rested on the upturned 
 forehead of her lover as he sat at her feet in the 
 deepening twilight, and she answered him with such 
 sweet words as are linked together by spells known 
 only to woman but his palette and pencils were, 
 nevertheless, burned in solemn holocaust that very 
 night, and the lady carried her point, as ladies must. 
 And to the importation of silks from Lyons was de 
 voted, thenceforth, the genius of a Raphael perhaps I 
 Who knows ? 
 
 The reader will naturally have gathered from this 
 dialogue that Miss Fanny Bellairs had black eyes, 
 and was rather below the middle stature. She was a 
 belle, and it is only belle-metal of this particular 
 description which is not fusible by " burning words." 
 She had mind enough to appreciate fully the romance 
 and enthusiasm of her cousin, Philip Ballister, and 
 knew precisely the phenomena which a tall blonde 
 (this complexion of woman being soluble in love and 
 tears), would have exhibited under a similar experi 
 ment. While the fire of her love glowed, therefore, 
 she opposed little resistance and seemed softened and 
 yielding, but her purpose remained unaltered, and she 
 rang out " no !" the next morning, with a tone as little 
 changed as a convent-bell from matins to vespers, 
 though it has passed meantime through the furnace 
 of an Italian noon. 
 
 Fanny was not a designing girl, either. She might 
 have found a wealthier customer for her heart than 
 her cousin Philip. And she loved this cousin as truly ] 
 and well as her nature would admit, or as need be, 
 indeed. But two things had conspired to give her 
 the unmalleable quality just described a natural dis 
 position to confide, first and foremost, on all occasions, 
 in her own sagacity, and a vivid impression made upon 
 her mind by a childhood of poverty. At the age of 
 twelve she had been transferred from the distressed 
 fireside of her mother, Mrs. Bellairs, to the luxurious 
 roof of her aunt, Mrs. Ballister, and her mother dying 
 soon after, the orphan girl was adopted and treated as 
 a child ; but the memory of the troubled health at 
 which she had first learned to observe and reason, 
 colored all the purposes and affections, thoughts, 
 impulses and wishes of the ripening girl, and to think 
 of happiness in any proximity to privation seemed to 
 her impossible, even though it were in the bosom of 
 Jove. Seeing no reason to give her cousin credit for 
 any knowledge of the world beyond his own experience, 
 she decided to think for him as well as love him, and 
 not being so much pressed as the enthusiastic painter 
 by the " besoin d aimer et de se faire aimer" she very 
 composedly prefixed, to the possession of her hand, 
 
 the trifling achievement of getting rich quite sure 
 that if he knew as much as she, he would willingly run 
 that race without the incumbrance of matrimony. 
 
 The death of Mr. Ballister, senior, had left the 
 widow and her two boys more slenderly provided for 
 than was anticipated Phil s portion, after leaving 
 college, producing the moderate income before men 
 tioned. The elder brother had embarked in his father s 
 business, and it was thought best on all hands for the 
 younger Ballister to follow his example. But Philip, 
 whose college leisure had been devoted to poetry and 
 painting, and whose genius for the latter, certainly, 
 was very decided, brought down his habits by a res 
 olute economy to the limits of his income, and took 
 up the pencil for a profession. With passionate en 
 thusiasm, great purity of character, distaste for all 
 society not in harmony with his favorite pursuit, and 
 an industry very much concentrated and rendered 
 effective by abstemious habits, Philip Ballister was 
 very likely to develop what genius might lie between 
 his head and hand, and his progress in the first year 
 had been allowed by eminent artists to give very 
 unusual promise. The Ballisters were still together 
 under the maternal roof, and the painter s studies 
 were the portraits of the family, and Fanny s picture 
 of course much the most difficult to finish. It would 
 be very hard if a painter s portrait of his liege mistress, 
 the lady of his heart, were not a good picture, and 
 Fanny Bellairs on canvass was divine accordingly. If 
 the copy had more softness of expression than the 
 original (as it was thought to have), it only proves that 
 wise men have for some time suspected, that love is 
 more dumb than blind, and the faults of our faultless 
 idols are noted, however unconsciously. Neither 
 thumb-screws nor hot coals nothing probably but re 
 pentance after matrimony would have drawn from 
 Philip Ballister, in words, the same confession of his 
 mistress s foible that had oozed out through his 
 treacherous pencil ! 
 
 Cupid is often drawn as a stranger pleading to be 
 "taken in, "but it is a miracle that he is not invariably 
 drawn as a portrait-painter. A bird tied to the muzzle 
 of a gun an enemy who has written a book an Indian 
 prince under the protection of Giovanni Bulletto (Tus 
 can for John Bull), is not more close upon demoli 
 tion, one would think, than the heart of a lady deliver 
 ed over to a painter s eyes, posed, draped and lighted 
 with the one object of studying her beauty. If there 
 be any magnetism in isolated attention, any in stead 
 fast gazing, any in passes of the hand hither and thither 
 if there be any magic in ce doux demi-jour so loved 
 in France, in stuff for flattery ready pointed and feather 
 ed, in freedom of admiration, "and all in the way of 
 business" then is a loveable sitter to a love-like 
 painter in " parlous" vicinity (as the new school would 
 phrase it), to sweet-heart-land ! Pleasure in a voca 
 tion has no offset in political economy as honor has 
 (" the more honor the less profit,") or portrait-painters 
 would be poorer than poets. 
 
 And malgre his consciousness of the quality which 
 required softening in his cousin s beauty, and malgre 
 his rare advantages for obtaining over her a lover s 
 proper ascendency, Mr. Philip Ballister bowed to the 
 stronger will of Miss Fanny Bellairs, and sailed for 
 France on his apprenticeship to Mammon. 
 
 The reader will please to advance five years. Be 
 fore proceeding thence with our story, however, let 
 us take a Parthian glance at the overstepped interval. 
 
 Philip Ballister had left New York with the triple 
 vow that he would enslave every faculty of his mind 
 and body to business, that he would not return till he 
 had made a fortune, and that such interstices as might 
 occur in the building up of this chateau for felicity 
 should be filled with sweet reveries about Fanny Bel 
 lairs. The forsworn painter had genius, as we have 
 
TWO BUCKETS IN A WELL. 
 
 ft] 
 
 before hinted, and genius is (as much as it is any one 
 thing), the power of concentration. He entered upon 
 his duties accordingly with a force, and patience of 
 application, which soon made him master of what are 
 called business habits, and, once in possession of the 
 details, his natural cleverness gave him a speedy insight 
 to all the scope and tactics of his particular field of 
 rade. Under his guidance, the affairs of the house 
 .vere soon in a much more prosperous train, and after 
 a year s residence at Lyons, Philip saw his way very 
 clear to manage them with a long arm and take up his 
 quarters in Paris. 
 
 " Les fats sont les seuls kommes qui aient soin d eux 
 tnemes" says a French novelist, but there is a period, 
 early or late, in the lives of the cleverest men, when 
 ihey become suddenly curious as to their capacity for 
 the graces. Paris, to a stranger who does not visit in 
 the Faubourg St. Germain, is a republic of personal 
 exterior, where the degree of privilege depends with 
 Utopian impartiality on the style of the outer man ; 
 and Paris, therefore, if he is not already a Bachelor 
 of Arts (qu? beau s Arts), usually serves the traveller 
 as an Alma Mater of the pomps and vanities. 
 
 Phil. Ballister, up to the time of his matriculation 
 in Ckaussee D Antin, was a romantic-looking sloven. 
 From this to a very dashing coxcomb is but half a step, 
 and to be rid of the coxcombry and retain a look of 
 fashion, is still within the easy limits of imitation. 
 But to obtain superiority of presence with no apparent 
 aid from dress and no describable manner, and to dis 
 play at the same time every natural advantage in ef 
 fective relief, and, withal, to adapt this subtle philtre, 
 not only to the approbation of the critical and censori 
 ous, but to the taste of fair women gifted with judg 
 ment as God pleases this is a finish not born with 
 any man (though unsuccessful if it do not seem to be), 
 and never reached in the apprenticeship of life, and 
 never reached at all by men not much above their 
 fellows. He who has it, has " bought his doublet in 
 Italy, his round hose in France, his bonnet in Germa 
 ny, and his behavior everywhere," for he must know, 
 as a chart of quicksands, the pronounced models of 
 other nations ; but to be a " picked man of countries," 
 and to have been a coxcomb and a man of fashion, are, 
 as a painter would say, but the setting of the palette 
 toward the making of the chef-d <euvre. 
 
 Business prospered and the facilities of leisure in 
 creased, while Ballister passed through these transi 
 tions of taste, and he found intervals to travel, and 
 time to read, and opportunity to indulge ; as far as he 
 could with the eye only, his passion for knowledge in 
 the arts. To all that appertained to the refinement 
 of himself, he applied the fine feelers of a delicate and 
 passionate construction, physical and mental, and, as 
 (he reader will already have included, wasted on culture 
 comparatively unprofitable, faculties that would* have 
 eeen better employed but for the meddling of Miss 
 fanny Bellairs. 
 
 Ballister s return from France was heralded by the 
 arrival of statuary and pictures, books, furniture, and 
 numberless articles of tasteful and costly luxury. The 
 reception of these by the family at home threw rather 
 < new light on the probable changes in the long-absent 
 brother, for, from the signal success of the business 
 he had managed, they had very naturally supposed 
 that it was the result only of unremitted and plodding 
 care. Vague rumors of changes in his personal ap 
 pearance had reached them, such as might be expected 
 from conformity to foreign fashions, but those who 
 had seen Philip Ballister in France, and called subse 
 quently on the family in New York, were not people 
 qualified to judge of the man, either from their own 
 powers of observation or from any confidence he was 
 likely to put forward while in their society. His 
 letters had been delightful, but they were confined to 
 
 third-person topics, descriptions of things likely to in 
 terest them, &c., and Fanny had few addressed per 
 sonally to herself, having thought it worth while, for 
 the experiment s sake or for some other reason, to see 
 whether love would subsist without its usual pabulum 
 of tender correspondence, and a veto on love-letters 
 having served her for a parting injunction at Phil s 
 embarkation for Havre. However varied by their 
 different fancies, the transformation looked for by the 
 whole family was substantially the same the romantic 
 artist sobered down to a practical, plain man of busi 
 ness. And Fanny herself had an occasional misgiving 
 as to her relish for his counting-house virtues and 
 manners; though, on the detection of the feeling, she 
 immediately closed her eyes upon it, and drummed 
 up her delinquent constancy for " parade and inspec 
 tion." 
 
 All bustles are very much alike (we use the word 
 as defined in Johnson), and the reader will appreciate 
 our delicacy, besides, in not intruding on the first re 
 union of relatives and lovers long separated. 
 
 The morning after Philip Ballister s arrival, the 
 family sat long at breakfast. The mother s gaze 
 fastened untiringly on the features of her son still her 
 boy prying into them with a vain effort to reconcile 
 the face of the man with the cherished picture of the 
 child with sunny locks, and noting little else than the 
 work of inward change upon the countenance and ex 
 pression. The brother, with the predominant feeling 
 of respect for the intelligence and industry of one who 
 had made the fortunes of the house, read only subdued 
 sagacity in the perfect simplicity of his whole exterior. 
 And Fanny Fanny was puzzled. The bourgeoisie 
 and leger-bred hardness of manner which she had 
 looked for were not there, nor any variety of the 
 "foreign slip-slop" common to travelled youth, nor 
 any superciliousness, nor (faith !) any wear and tear 
 of youth or good looks nothing that she expected 
 nothing ! Not even a French guard-chain ! 
 
 What there was in her cousin s manners and ex- 
 
 ! terior, however, was much more difficult to define by 
 I Miss Bellairs than what there was not. She began the 
 renewal of their intercourse with very high spirits, 
 herself the simple nature and unpretendingness of 
 his address awakening only an unembarrassed pleasure 
 at seeing him again but she soon began to suspect 
 there was an exquisite refinement in this very sim 
 plicity, and to wonder at "the trick of it;" and after 
 the first day passed in his society, her heart beat when 
 he spoke to her, as it did not use to beat when she 
 was sitting to him for her picture, and listening to his 
 passionate love-making. And with all her faculties she 
 studied him. What was the charm of his presence! He 
 was himself, and himself only. He seemed perfect, but 
 he seemed to have arrived at perfection like a statue, 
 not like a picture by what had been taken away, not 
 by what had been laid on. He was as natural as a bird, 
 and as graceful and unembarrassed. He neither forced 
 conversation, nor pressed the little attentions of the draw 
 ing-room, and his attitudes were full of repose ; yet she 
 was completely absorbed in what he said, and she had 
 been impressed imperceptibly with his high-bred polite 
 ness, and the singular elegance of his person. Fanny 
 felt there was a change in her relative position to her 
 cousin. In what it consisted, or which had the ad 
 vantage, she was perplexed to discover but she bit 
 her lips as she caught herself thinking that if she were 
 not engaged to marry Philip Ballister, she should 
 suspect that she had just fallen irrecoverably in love 
 with him. 
 
 It would have been a novelty in the history of Miss 
 Bellairs that any event to which she had once con 
 sented, should admit of reconsideration ; and the 
 Ballister family, used to her strong will, were confirm 
 ed fatalists as to the coming about of her ends and 
 aims. Her marriage with Philip, therefore, was 
 
S2 
 
 TWO BUCKETS IN A WELL. 
 
 discussed, cceur ouvert, from his first arrival, and, in 
 deed, in her usual fashion of saving others the trouble 
 of making up their minds. " herself had named the 
 day." This, it is true, was before his landing, and 
 was then, an effort of considerable magnanimity, as 
 the expectant Penelope was not yet advised of her 
 lover s state of preservation or damages by cares and 
 keeping. If Philip had not found his wedding-day 
 fixed on his arrival, however, he probably would have 
 had a voice in the naming of it, for with Fanny s new 
 inspirations as to his character, there hnd grown up a 
 new flower in her garden of beauties timidity ! 
 What bird of the air had sown the seed in such a soil 
 was a problem to herself but true it was! the con 
 fident belle had grown a blushing trembler! She 
 would as soon have thought of bespeaking her wings 
 for the sky, as to have ventured on naming the day in 
 a short week after. 
 
 The day was named, however, and the preparations 
 went on nem. con. the person most interested (after 
 herself) accepting every congratulation and allusion, 
 touching the event, with the most impenetrable suavity. 
 The marbles and pictures, upholstery and services, 
 were delivered over to the order of Miss Bellairs, and 
 Philip, disposed, apparently, to be very much a recluse 
 in his rooms, or at other times, engrossed by troops 
 of welcoming friends, saw much less of his bride elect 
 than suited her wishes, and saw her seldom alone. By 
 particular request, also, he took no part in the plenish 
 ing and embellishing of the new abode not permitted j 
 even to inquire where it was situated, and under this ; 
 cover, besides the pleasure of having her own way, ! 
 Fanny concealed a little secret, which, when disclosed, 
 she now felt, would figure forth to Philip s comprehen- j 
 sion, her whole scheme of future happiness. She hnd 
 taken the elder brother into her counsels a fortnight 
 after Philip s return, and, with his aid and consent, 
 had abandoned the original idea of a house in town, 
 purchased a beautifully-secluded estate and cottage 
 ornee, on the East river, and transferred thither all the [ 
 objects of art, furniture, &c. One room only of the ! 
 maternal mansion was permitted to contribute its 
 quota to the completion of the bridal dwelling the 
 wing, never since inhabited, in which Philip had made 
 his essay as a painter and without variation of a cob 
 web, and with whimsical care and effort on the part 
 of Miss Fanny, this apartment was reproduced at 
 Revedere her own picture on the easel, as it stood 
 on the night of his abandonment of his art, and palette, 
 pencils and colors in tempting readiness on the table, j 
 Even the fire-grate of the old studio had been re-set 
 in the new, and the cottage throughout had been re 
 fitted with a view to occupation in the winter. And 
 to sundry hints on the part of the elder brother, that 
 some thought should be given to a city residence 
 for the Christinas holydays, at least Fanny replied, 
 through a blush, that she should never wish to see the 
 town with Philip at Revedere! 
 
 Five years had ripened and mellowed the beauty 
 of Fanny Bellairs, and the sairafr summer-time of youth 
 had turned into fruit the feeling left by Philip in bud 
 and flower. She was ready now for love. She had 
 felt the variable temper of society, and there was a 
 presentiment in the heart of receding flatteries, and 
 the winter of life. It was with mournful self-reproach 
 that she thought of the years wasted in separation, of 
 her own choosing, from the man she loved, and with 
 the power to recall time, she would have thanked 
 God with tears of joy for the privilege of retracing 
 the chain of life to that link of parting. Not worth a 
 day of those lost years, she bitterly confessed to her 
 self, was the wealth they had purchased. 
 
 It lacked as little as one week of <; the happy day," 
 when the workmen were withdrawn from Revedere, 
 and the preparations for a family breakfast, to be suc 
 ceeded by the agreeable surprise to Philip of inform 
 
 ing him he was at home, were finally completed. One 
 or two very intimate friends were added to the party, 
 and the invitations (from the elder Ballister) proposed 
 simply a dejeuner sur I herbe in the grounds of an un 
 occupied villa, the property of an acquaintance. 
 
 With the subsiding of the excitement of return, the 
 early associations which had temporarily confused and 
 colored the feelings of Philip Ballister, settled gradu 
 ally away, leaving uppermost once more the fastidious 
 refinement of the Parisian. Through this medium, 
 thin and cold, the bubbles from the breathing of the 
 heart of youth, rose rarely and reluctantly. The Bal- 
 listers held a good station in society, without caring 
 for much beyond the easy conveniences of life, and 
 Fanny, though capable of any degree of elegance, had 
 not seen the expediency of raising the tone of her 
 manners above that of her immediate friends. With 
 out being positively distasteful to Philip, the family 
 circle, Fanny included, left him much to desire in the 
 way of society, and unwilling to abate the warmth of 
 his attentions while with them, he had latterly pleaded 
 occupation more frequently, and passed his time in 
 the more congenial company of his library of art. 
 This was the less noticed that it gave Miss Bellairs 
 the opportunity to make frequent visits to the work 
 men at Revedere, and in the polished devotion of her 
 betrothed, when with her, Fanny saw nothing reflected 
 but her own daily increasing tenderness and admira 
 tion. 
 
 The morning of the fete came in like the air in an 
 overture a harmony of all the instruments of sum 
 mer. The party were at the gate of Revedere by ten, 
 and the drive through the avenue to the lawn drew a 
 burst of delighted admiration from all. The place was 
 exquisite, and seen in its glory, and Fanny s heart was 
 brimming with gratified pride and exultation. She 
 assumed at once the dispensation of the honors, and 
 beautiful she looked with her snowy dress and raven 
 ringlets flitting across the lawn, and queening it like 
 Perdita among the flowers. Having narrowly escaped 
 bursting into tears of joy when Philip pronounced the 
 place prettier than anything he had seen in his travels, 
 she was, for the rest of the day, calmly happy, and 
 with the grateful shade, the delicious breakfast in the 
 grove, the rambling and boating on the river, the hours 
 passed oft like dreams, and no one even hinted a re 
 gret that the house itself was under lock and bar. And 
 so the sun set, and the twilight came on, and the 
 guests were permitted to order round their carriages 
 and depart, the Ballisters accompanying them to the 
 gate. And, on the return of the family through the 
 avenue, excuses were made for idling hither and thith 
 er, till lights began to show through the trees, and by 
 the time of their arrival at the lawn, the low windows 
 of the cottage poured forth streams of light, and the 
 open doors, and servants busy within, completed a 
 scene more like magic than reality. Philip was led in 
 by the excited girl who was the fairy of the spell, and 
 his astonishment at the discovery of his statuary and 
 pictures, books and furniture, arranged in complete 
 order within, was fed upon with the passionate delight 
 of love in authority. 
 
 When an hour had been spent in examining and 
 admiring the different apartments, an inner room was 
 thrown open, in which supper was prepared, and this 
 fourth act in the day s drama was lingered over in un 
 tiring happiness by the family. 
 
 Mrs. Ballister, the mother, rose and retired, and 
 Philip pleaded indisposition, and begged to be shown 
 to the room allotted to him. This was ringing-up the 
 curtain for the last act sooner than had been planned by 
 Fanny, but she announced herself as his chamberlain, 
 and witli her hands affectionately crossed on his arm, 
 led him to a suite of rooms in a wing still unvisited, 
 and with a good-night kiss left him at the open door 
 of the revived studio, furnished for the night with a 
 
TWO BUCKETS IN A WELL. 
 
 bachelor s bed. Turning upon the threshold, he 
 closed the door with a parting wish of sweet dreams, 
 and Fanny, after listening a moment with a vain hope 
 of overhearing some expression of pleasure, and lin 
 gering again on her way back, to be overtaken by her 
 surprised lover, sought her own bed without rejoining 
 the circle, and passed a sleepless and happy night of 
 tears and joy. 
 
 Breakfast was served the next morning on a terrace 
 overlooking the river, and it was voted by acclamation, 
 that Fanny never before looked so lovely. As none 
 but the family were to be present, she had stolen a 
 inarch on her marriage wardrobe, and added to her 
 demi-toilet a morning cap of exquisite becoming-ness. 
 Altogether, she looked deliciously wife-like, and did 
 the honors of the breakfast-table with a grace and 
 sweetness that warmed out love and compliments even 
 from the sober soil of household intimacy. Philip 
 had not yet made his appearance, and they lingered 
 long at table, till at last a suggestion that he might be 
 ill started Fanny to her feet, and she ran to his door 
 before a servant could be summoned. 
 
 The rooms were open, and the bed had not been 
 occupied. The candle was burned to the socket, and 
 on the easel, resting against the picture, was a letter 
 addressed " Miss Fanny Bellairs." 
 
 THE LETTER. 
 
 " I have followed up to this hour, my fair cousin, in 
 the path you have marked out for me. It has brought 
 me back, in this chamber, to the point from which I 
 started under your guidance, and if it had brought me 
 back unchanged if it restored me my energy, my 
 hope, and my prospect of fame, I should pray Heaven 
 that it would also give me back my love, and be con 
 tent more than content, if it gave me back also my 
 poverty. The sight of my easel, and of the surround 
 ings of my boyish dreams of glory, have made my 
 heart bitter. They have given form and voice to a 
 vague unhappiness, which has haunted me through all 
 these absent years years of degrading pursuits and 
 wasted powers and it now impels me from you, kind 
 and lovely as you are, with an aversion I can not con- ! 
 trol. I can not forgive you. You have thwarted my i 
 destiny. You have extinguished with sordid cares a \ 
 lamp within me that might, by this time, have shone 
 through the world. And what am I, since your wishes 
 are accomplished ? Enriched in pocket, and bankrupt 
 in happiness and self-respect. 
 
 "With a heart sick, and a brain aching for distinc 
 tion, I have come to an unhonored stand-still at thirty ! j 
 I am a successful tradesman, and in this character I ! 
 shall probably die. Could I begin to be a painter now, ! 
 say you ? Alas ! my knowledge of the art is too great 
 for patience with the slow hand ! I could not draw a 
 line without despair. The pliant fingers and the plas 
 tic mind must keep pace to make progress in art. My | 
 taste is fixed, and my imagination uncreative, because 
 chained down by certainties; and the shortsighted ar 
 dor and daring experiment which are indispensable to 
 sustain and advance the follower in Raphael s foot 
 steps, are too far behind for my resuming. The tide 
 ebbed from me at the accursed burning of my pencils 
 by your pitiless hand, and from that hour I have felt 
 hope receding. Could I be happy with you, stranded 
 here in ignoble idleness, and owing to you the loss of 
 my whole venture of opportunity ? No, Fanny ! 
 surely no ! 
 
 " I would not be unnecessarily harsh. I am sensi 
 ble of your affection and constancy. I have deferred 
 this explanation unwisely, till the time and place make 
 it seem more cruel. You are at this very moment, I 
 
 well know, awake in your chamber, devoting to me the 
 vigils of a heart overflowing with tenderness. And 1 
 : would if it were possible if it were not utterly be 
 yond my powers of self-sacrifice and concealment I 
 would affect a devotion I can not feel, and carry out 
 this error through a life of artifice and monotony. But 
 here, again, the work is your own, and my feelings re 
 vert bitterly to your interference. If there were no 
 other obstacle to my marrying you if you were not 
 associated repulsively with the dark cloud on my life, 
 you are not the woman I could now enthrone in my 
 j bosom. We have diverged since the separation which 
 I pleaded against, and which you commanded. I need 
 for my idolatry, now, a creature to whom the sordid 
 cares you have sacrificed me to, are utterly unknown 
 a woman born and educated in circumstances where 
 want is never feared, and where calculation never en 
 ters. I must lavish my wealth, if I fulfil my desire, 
 on one who accepts it like the air she breathes, and 
 who knows the value of nothing but love a bird with 
 a human soul and form, believing herself free of all 
 the world is rich in, and careful only for pleasure and 
 the happiness of those who belong to her. Such 
 women, beautiful and highly educated, are found only 
 in ranks of society between which and my own I have 
 been increasing in distance nay, building an impassa 
 ble barrier, in obedience to your control. Where I 
 stop, interdicted by the stain of trade, the successful 
 artist is free to enter. You have stamped me plebeian 
 you would not share my slow progress toward a 
 higher sphere, and you have disqualified me for attain 
 ing it alone. In your mercenary and immoveable will, 
 and in that only, lies the secret of our twofold unhap 
 piness. 
 
 " I leave you, to return to Europe. My brother and 
 i my friends will tell you I am mad and inexcusable, and 
 j look upon you as a victim. They will say that, to 
 have been a painter, were nothing to the career that 1 
 might mark out for my ambition, if ambition 1 must 
 ! have, in politics. Politics in a country where distinc- 
 | tion is a pillory ! But I could not live here. It is my 
 misfortune that my tastes are so modified by that long 
 and compulsory exile, that life, here, would be a per 
 petual penance. This unmixed air of merchandise 
 suffocates me. Our own home is tinctured black with 
 j it. You yourself, in this rural paradise you have con 
 jured up, move in it like a cloud. The counting- 
 house rings in your voice, calculation draws together 
 your brows, you look on everything as a means, and 
 know its cost; and the calm and means-forgetting//-M- 
 ition, which forms the charm and dignity of superior 
 life, is utterly unknown to you. What would be my 
 happiness with such a wife ? What would be yours 
 with such a husband ? Yet I consider the incompat 
 ibility between us as no advantage on my part on the 
 contrary, a punishment, and of your inflicting. What 
 shall I be anywhere but a Tantalus a fastidious en- 
 nuye, with a thirst for the inaccessible burning in my 
 bosom continually ! 
 
 " I pray you let us avoid another meeting before my 
 departure. Though I can not forgive you as a lover, 
 I can think of you with pleasure as a cousin, and I 
 give you, as your due ("damages," the law would 
 phrase it), the "portion of myself which you thought 
 most important when I offered you my all. You 
 would not take me without the fortune, but perhaps 
 you will be content with the fortune without me. I 
 shall immediately take steps to convey to you this 
 property of Revedere, with an income sufficient to 
 maintain it, and I trust soon to hear that you have 
 found a husband better worthy of you than your 
 cousin "PHILIP BALLISTER." 
 
LIGHT VERVAIN. 
 
 LIGHT VERVAIN, 
 
 " And thou light vervain, too thou next come after, 
 Provoking souls to mirth and easy laughter." Old Somebody. 
 
 ROME, May 30, 1832. 
 
 DINED with F , the artist, at a trattoria. F is 
 a man of genius, very adventurous and imaginative in 
 his art, but never caring to show the least touch of 
 these qualities in his conversation. His pictures have 
 given him great vogue and consideration at Rome, so 
 that his daily experience furnishes staple enough for 
 his evening s chit-chat, and he seems, of course, to be 
 always talking of himself. He is very generally set 
 down as an egotist. His impulse to talk, however, 
 springs from no wish for self-glorification, but rather 
 from an indolent aptness to lay hands on the readiest 
 and most familiar topic, and that is a kind of egotism 
 to which I have very little objection particularly 
 with the mind fatigued, as it commonly is in Rome, 
 by a long day s study of works of art. 
 
 I had passed the morning at the Barberini palace 
 with a party of picture-hunters, and 1 made some 
 remark as to the variety of impressions made upon 
 the minds of different people by the same picture. 
 Apropos of this remark, F told me a little anecdote, 
 which I must try to put down by way of a new shoal 
 in the chart of human nature. 
 
 " It is very much the same with everything else," 
 said F ; "no two people see with the same eyes, 
 physically or morally ; and faith, we might save our 
 selves a great deal of care and bother if we did but 
 keep it in mind." 
 
 " As how ?" I asked, for I saw that this vague 
 remark was premonitory of an illustration. 
 
 " I think I introduced young Skyring to you at a 
 party somewhere?" 
 
 "A youth with a gay waistcoat and nothing to say ? 
 Yes." 
 
 " Well your observation just now reminded me of 
 the different estimate put by that gentleman and 
 myself upon something, and if I could give you any 
 idea of my month s work in his behalf you would 
 agree with me that I might have spared myself some 
 trouble keeping in mind, as I said before, the differ 
 ence in optics. 
 
 "I was copying a bit of foreshortening from a pic 
 ture in the Vatican, one day, when this youth passed 
 without observing me. I did not immediately recol 
 lect him. He was dressed like a figure in a tailor s 
 widow, and with Mrs. Stark in his hand was hunting 
 up the pictures marked with four notes of admiration, 
 and I, with a smile at the waxy dandyism of the man. 
 turned to my work and forgot him. Presently his 
 face recurred to me, or rather his sister s face, which 
 some family likeness had insensibly recalled, and 
 gejting another look, I recognised in him an old, 
 though not very intimate playmate of my boyish days. 
 It immediately occurred to me that I could serve him 
 a very good turn by giving him the entree to society 
 here, and quite as immediately, it occurred to me to 
 doubt whether it was worth my while." 
 
 " And what changed your mind," I asked, " for of 
 course you came to the conclusion that it was not ?" 
 
 "Oh, for his sake alone I should have left him as 
 he was, a hermit in his varnished boots for he had 
 not an acquaintance in the city but Kate Skyring 
 had given me roses when roses were to me, each a 
 world; and for her sake, though I was a rejected 
 lover, I thought better of my demurrer. Then I had 
 
 a little pique to gratify for the Skyrings had rather 
 given me the dc haul en bas in declining the honor of 
 my alliance (lucky for me, since it brought me here 
 and made me what I am), and I was not indisposed to 
 show that the power to serve, to say the least, was now 
 on my side." 
 
 "Two sufficient, as well as dramatic reasons for 
 being civil to a man." 
 
 " Only arrived at, however, by a night s deliberation, 
 for it cost me some trouble of thought and memory to 
 get back into my chrysalis and imagine myself at all 
 subject to people so much below my present vogue 
 whatever that is worth ! Of course I don t think of 
 Kate in this comparison, for a woman one has once 
 loved is below nothing. We ll drink her health, God 
 bless her!" 
 
 (A bottle of Lagrima.) 
 
 " I left my card on Mr. Skyring the next morning, 
 with a note enclosing three or four invitations which I 
 had been at some trouble to procure, and a hope from 
 myself of the honor of his company to a quiet dinner. 
 He took it as a statue would take a shower-bath, wrote 
 me a note in the third person in reply to mine in the 
 first, and came in ball-dress and sulphur gloves at pre 
 cisely the canonical fifteen minutes past the hour. 
 Good old Thorwalsden dined with me, and an English 
 viscount for whom I was painting a picture, and 
 between my talking Italian to the venerable sculptor, 
 and Skyring s belording and belordshipping the good- 
 natured nobleman, the dinner went trippingly off the 
 Little Pedlington of our mutual nativity furnishing 
 less than its share to the conversation. 
 
 " We drove, all together, to the Palazzo Rossi, for 
 its was the night of the Marchesa s soiree. As spon 
 sor, I looked with some satisfaction at Skyring in the 
 ante-room, his toggery being quite unexceptionable, 
 and his maintien very uppish and assured. I presented 
 him to our fair hostess, who surveyed him as he 
 approached with a satisfactory look of approval, and 
 no one else chancing to be near, I left him to improve 
 what was rather a rare opportunity a tete-a-tete with 
 the prettiest woman in Rome. Five minutes after I 
 returned to reconnoitre, and there he stood, stroking 
 down his velvet waistcoat and looking from the carpet 
 to the ceiling, while the marchioness was quite red 
 with embarrassment and vexation. He had not opened 
 his lips ! She had tried him in French and Italian 
 (the dunce had told me that he spoke French too), 
 and finally she had ventured upon English, which she 
 knew very little of, and still he neither spoke nor ran 
 away ! 
 
 " Perhaps Monsieur would like to dance, said the 
 marchioness, gliding away from him with a look of 
 inexpressible relief, and trusting to me to find him a 
 partner. 
 
 "I had no difficulty in finding him a partner, for 
 (that far) his waistcoat put him on velvet but I 
 could not trust him alone again ; so, having presented 
 him to a very pretty woman and got them vis-a-vis in 
 the quadrille, I stood by to supply the shortcomings. 
 And little of a sinecure it was ! The man had nothing 
 to say ; nor, confound him, had he any embarrassment 
 on the subject. He looked at his varnished pumps, 
 and coaxed his coat to his waist, and set back his neck 
 like a goose bolting a grasshopper, and took as much 
 
LIGHT VERVAIN. 
 
 interest in the conversation as a footman behind your 
 chair deaf and dumb apparently, but perfectly at his 
 ease. He evidently had no idea that there was any 
 distinction between men except in dress, and was per 
 suaded that he was entirely successful as far as he had 
 gone : and as to my efforts in his behalf, he clearly 
 took them as gratuitous on my part probably thinking, 
 from the difference in our exteriors, that I paid myself 
 in the glory of introducing him. 
 
 " Well I had begun so liberally that T could scarce 
 refuse to find my friend another partner, and after that 
 another and another I, to avoid the odium of inflict 
 ing a bore on my fair acquaintances, feeling compelled 
 to continue my service as chorus in the pantomime 
 and, you will scarce believe me when I tell you that I 
 submitted to this bore nightly for a month ! I could 
 not get rid of him. He would not be let go. With 
 out offending him mortally, and so undoing all my 
 sentimental outlay for Kate Skyring and her short 
 sighted papa, I had nothing for it but to go on till he 
 should go off ridden to death with him in every con 
 ceivable variety of bore." 
 
 " And is he gone ?" 
 
 " Gone. And now, what thanks do you suppose I 
 got for all this ?" 
 
 " A present of a pencil-case ?" 
 
 " No, indeed ! but a lesson in human nature that 
 will stick by me much longer. He called at my studio 
 yesterday morning to say good-by. Through all my 
 sense of his boredom and relief at the prospect of 
 being rid of him, I felt embarrassed when he came in, 
 thinking how difficult it would be for him to express 
 properly his sense of the obligation he was under to 
 me. After half an hour s monologue (by myself) on 
 pictures, &c., he .started up and said he must go. 
 And by-the-by, said he, coloring a little, there is 
 one thing I want to say to you, Mr. F ! Hang it, 
 it has stuck in my throat ever since I met you ! 
 You ve been very polite and I m obliged to you, of 
 course but I don t like your devilish patronizing 
 manner ! Good-by, Mr. F ! " 
 
 ****** 
 
 The foregoing is a leaf from a private diary which I 
 kept at Rome. In making a daily entry of such 
 passing stuff as interests us, we sometimes, amid much 
 that should be ticketed for oblivion, record that which 
 has a bearing, important or amusing, on the future; 
 and a late renewal of my acquaintance with Mr. F , 
 followed by a knowledge of some fortunate changes 
 in his worldly condition, has given that interest to this 
 otherwise unimportant scrap of diary which will be 
 made apparent presently to the reader. A vague 
 recollection that I had something in an old book 
 which referred to him, induced me to look it up, and 
 I was surprised to find that I had noted down, in this 
 trifling anecdote, what turned out to be the mainspring 
 of his destiny. 
 
 F returned to his native country after five years 
 study of the great masters of Italy. "His first pictures 
 painted at Rome procured for him, as is stated in the 
 diary I have quoted, a high reputation. He carried 
 with him a style of his own which was merely stimu 
 lated and heightened by his first year s walk through 
 the galleries of Florence, and the originality and bold 
 ness of his manner of coloring seemed to promise a 
 sustained novelty in the art. Gradually, however, the 
 awe of the great masters seemed to overshadow his 
 confidence in himself, and as he travelled and deep 
 ened his knowledge of painting, he threw aside feature 
 after feature of his own peculiar style, till at last he 
 fell into the track of the great army of imitators, who 
 follow the immortals of the Vatican as doomed ships 
 follow the Flying Dutchman. 
 
 Arrived at home, and depending solely on his art 
 for a subsistence, F commenced the profession to 
 which be had served so long an apprenticeship. But 
 
 his pictures sadly disappointed his friends. After the 
 first specimens of his acquired style in the annual ex 
 hibitions, the calls at his rooms became fewer and 
 farther between, and his best works were returned 
 from the galleries unsold. Too proud to humor the 
 popular taste by returning to what he considered an 
 inferior stage of his art, he stood still with his reputa 
 tion ebbing from him, and as his means, of course, 
 depended on the tide of public favor, he was soon in 
 volved in troubles before which his once-brilliant hopes 
 rapidly faded. 
 
 At this juncture he received the following letter: 
 
 " You will be surprised on glancing at the signature 
 to this letter. You will be still more surprised when 
 you are reminded that it is a reply to an unanswered 
 one of your own written years ago. That letter lies 
 by me, expressed with all the diffidence of boyish 
 feeling. And it seems as if its diffidence would en 
 courage me in what I wish to say. Yet I write far 
 ! more tremblingly than you could have done. 
 
 " Let me try to prepare the way by some explana- 
 | tion of the past. 
 
 "You were my first lover. I was not forbidden, at 
 ji fourteen, to express the pleasure I felt at your admi- 
 J! ration, and you can not have forgotten the ardor and 
 j simplicity with which I returned it. I remember 
 1 1 giving you roses better than I remember anything so 
 long ago. Now writing to you with the same feel- 
 j| ing warm at my heart it seems to me as if it needed 
 ; but a rose, could I give it you in the same garden, to 
 !1 make us lovers again. Yet I know you must be 
 changed. I scarce know whether I should go on with 
 ; this letter. 
 
 "But I owe you reparation. I owe you an answer 
 to this which lies before me : and if I err in answer 
 ing it as my heart burns to do, you will at least be 
 made happier by knowing that when treated with 
 j neglect and repulsion, you were still beloved. 
 
 " I think it was not long before the receipt of this 
 j letter that my father first spoke to me of our attach 
 ment. Till then I had only thought of loving you. 
 That you were graceful and manly, that your voice 
 was sweet, and that your smile made me happy, was 
 all I could have told of you withoutj-eflection. I had 
 never reasoned upon your qualities of mind, though I 
 had taken an unconscious pride in your superiority to 
 your companions, and least of all had I asked myself 
 whether those abilities for making your way in the 
 world which my father denied you, were among your 
 boyish energies. With a silent conviction that you 
 had no equal among your companions, in anything, I 
 listened to my father s disparagement of you, bewil 
 dered and overawed, the very novelty and unexpected 
 ness of the light in which he spoke of you, sealing 
 my lips completely. Perhaps resistance to his will 
 would have been of no avail, but had I been better 
 prepared to reason upon what he urged, I might have 
 expressed to you the unwillingness of my acquies 
 cence. I was prevented from seeing you till your 
 letter came, and then all intercourse with you was 
 formally forbidden. My father said he would himself 
 reply to your proposal. But it was addressed to me, 
 and I have only recovered possession of it by his death. 
 " Though it may seem like reproaching you for 
 yielding me without an effort, I must say, to complete 
 the history of my own feelings, that I nursed a vague 
 hope of hearing from you until your departure for 
 Italy, and that this hope was extinguished not without 
 bitter tears. The partial resentment that mingled with 
 this unhappiness aided me doubtless in making up my 
 mind to forget you, and for a while, for years I may 
 say, I was possessed by other excitements and feel 
 ings. It is strange, however, that, though scarce 
 remembering you when waking, I still saw you per 
 petually in my dreams. 
 
86 
 
 NORA MEHIDY. 
 
 "And, so far, this is a cold and easy recital. How 
 shall I describe to you the next change, the re-awaken 
 ing of this smothered and slumbering affection ! How 
 shall I evade your contempt when I tell you that it 
 awoke with your renown ! But my first feeling was 
 not one of love. When your name began to come to 
 us in the letters of travellers and in the rumor of lit 
 erary circles, I felt as if something that belonged to 
 me was praised and honored ; a pride, an exulting and 
 gratified pride, that feeling seemed to be, as if the 
 heart of my childhood had been staked on your aspi 
 rations, and was borne up with you, a part and a par 
 taker of your fame. With all my soul I drank in the 
 news of your successes in the art ; I wrote to those 
 who came home from Italy; I questioned those likely 
 to have heard of you, as critics and connoisseurs ; I 
 devoted all my reading to the literature of the arts, 
 and the history of painters, for my life was poured 
 into yours irresistibly, by a power I could not, and 
 cannot now, control. My own imagination turned 
 painter, indeed, for I lived on revery, calling up, with 
 endless variations, pictures of yourself amid ihe works 
 of your pencil, visited and honored as I knew you 
 were, yet unchanged in the graceful and boyish beauty 
 I remembered. I was proud of having loved you, of 
 having been the object of the earliest and purest pref 
 erence of a creature of genius ; and through this 
 pride, supplanting and overflowing it, crept and 
 strengthened a warmer feeling, the love I have the 
 hardihood to avow. Oh ! what will you think of this 
 boldness ! Yet to conceal my love were now a se 
 verer task than to wait the hazard of your contempt. 
 
 "One explanation a palliative, perhaps you will 
 allow it to be, if you are generous remains to be 
 given. The immediate impulse of this letter was in 
 formation from my brother, long withheld, of your 
 kindness to him in Rome. From some perverseness 
 
 which I hardly understand, he has never before hinted 
 in my presence that he had seen you in Italy, and it 
 was only by needing it as an illustration of some feel 
 ing which seemed to have piqued him, and which he 
 was expressing to a friend, that he gave the particulars 
 of your month of devotion to him. Knowing the dif 
 ference between your characters, and the entire want 
 of sympathy between your pursuits and my brother s, 
 to what motive could I attribute your unusual and 
 self-sacrificing kindness ? 
 
 " Did I err was I presumptuous, in believing that 
 it was from a forgiving and tender memory of myself? 
 
 " You are prepared now, if you can be, for what I 
 would say. We are left alone, my brother and I, or 
 phan heirs to the large fortune of my father. I have 
 no one to control my wishes, no one s permission to 
 ask for any disposition of my hand and fortune. Will 
 you have them ? In this question is answered the 
 sweet, and long-treasured, though long-neglected let 
 ter lying beside me. " KATHERINE SKYRING." 
 
 Mrs. F , as will be seen from the style of her let 
 ter, is a woman of decision and cleverness, and of such 
 a helpmeet, in the way of his profession as well as in 
 the tenderer relations of life, F was sorely in need. 
 By her common-sense counsels and persuasion, he 
 has gone back with his knowledge of the art to the 
 first lights of his own powerful genius, and with 
 means to command leisure and experiment, he is, 
 without submitting the process to the world, perfect 
 ing a manner which will more than redeem his early 
 promise. 
 
 As his career, though not very uncommon or dra 
 matic, hinged for its more fortunate events on an act 
 of high-spirited politeness, I have thought, that in 
 this age of departed chivalry, the story was worth 
 preserving for its lesson. 
 
 NORA MEHIDY; 
 
 OR, THE STRANGE ROAD TO THE HEART OF MR. HYPOLET LEATHERS. 
 
 Now, Heaven rest the Phoenicians for their pleasant 
 invention of the art of travel. 
 
 This is to be a story of love and pride, and the he 
 ro s name is Hypolet Leathers. 
 
 You have smiled prematurely, my friend and reader, 
 if you "think you see" Mr. Leathers foreshadowed, 
 as it were, in his name. 
 
 (Three mortal times have I mended this son of a 
 goose of a pen, and it will not as you see by the 
 three unavailing attempts recorded above it will not 
 commence, for me, this tale, with a practicable begin 
 ning.) 
 
 The sun was rising (I think this promises well) 
 leisurely rising was the sun on the opposite side of the 
 Susquehannah. The tall corn endeavored to lift its 
 silk tassel out of the sloppy fog that had taken upon 
 itself to rise from the water and prognosticate a hot fair 
 day, and the driver of the Binghamton stage drew over 
 his legs a two-bushel bag as he cleared the street of 
 the village, and thought that, for a summer s morn 
 ing, it was " very cold" wholly unaware, however, 
 that, in murmuring thus, he was expressing himself 
 as Hamlet did while waiting for his father s ghost upon 
 the platform. 
 
 Inside the coach were three passengers. A gentle 
 man sat by the window on the middle seat, with his 
 cloak over his lap, watching the going to heaven of 
 the fog that had fulfilled its destiny. His mind was 
 melancholy partly for the contrast he could not but 
 draw between this exemplary vapor and himself, who 
 was "but a vapor,"* and partly that his pancreas be 
 gan to apprehend some interruption of the thorough 
 fare above or, in other words, that he was hungry 
 for his breakfast, having gone supperless to bed. He 
 mused as he rode. He was a young man, about 
 : twenty-five, and had inherited from his father, John 
 I Leathers, a gentleman s fortune, with the two draw 
 backs of a name troublesome to Phcebus ("Phoebus! 
 what a name!"), and premature gray hair. He was, 
 in all other respects, a finished and well-conditioned 
 hero tall, comely, courtly, and accomplished and 
 had seen the sight-worthy portions of the world, and 
 knew their differences. Travel, indeed, had become 
 a kind of diseased necessity with him for he fled 
 from the knowledge of his name, and from the obser 
 vation of his gray hair, like a man fleer.ig from two 
 fell phantoms/ He was now returning from Niagara, 
 
 * " Man s but a vapor, 
 
 Full of woes, 
 Cuts a caper, 
 And down he goes." .Fam?7/<w Ballads. 
 
NORA MEHIDY. 
 
 87 
 
 and left the Mohawk route to see where the Susque- 
 hannah makes its Great Bend in taking final leave of 
 Mr. Cooper, who lives above; and at the village of 
 the Great Bend he was to eat that day s breakfast. 
 
 On the back seat, upon the leather cushion, behind I 
 Mr. Leathers, sat two other chilly persons, a middle- < 
 aged man and a girl of sixteen the latter with her 
 shawl drawn close ^to her arms, and her dark eyes bent 
 upon her knees, as if to warm them (as unquestion- 
 ably they did). Her black curls swung out from her 
 bonnet, like ripe grapes from the top of an arbor 
 heavy, slumberous, bulky, prodigal black curls oh, j 
 how beautiful! And I do not know that it would be j 
 a " trick worth an egg" to make any mysiery of these 
 two persons. The gentleman was John Mehidy, the | 
 widowed tailor of Binghamton, and the lady was Nora j 
 Mehidy, his daughter ; and they were on their way to I 
 New York to change the scene, Mrs. Mehidy having j 
 left the painful legacy of love her presence behind 
 her. For, ill as he could afford the journey, Mr. Me- j 
 hidy thought the fire of Nora s dark eyes might be i 
 put out with water, and he must go where every ! 
 patch and shred would not set her a weeping. She | 
 " took it hard," as they describe grief for the dead in ; 
 the country. 
 
 The Great Bend is a scene you may look at with 
 pleasure, even while waiting for procrastinated prog, j 
 and Hypolet Leathers had been standing for ten min- | 
 utes on the high bank around which the Susquehan- 
 nah sweeps, like a train of silver tissue after a queen i 
 turning a corner, when past him suddenly tripped No 
 ra Mehidy bonnetless, and stood gazing on the river j 
 from the outer edge of the precipice. Leathers s vis 
 ual consciousness dropped into thai mass of cluster 
 ing hair like a ring into the sea, and disappeared. 
 His soul dived after it, and left him with no sense or | 
 remembrance of how his outer orbs were amusing i 
 themselves. Of what unpatented texture of velvet, 
 and of what sifting of diamond dust were those lights I 
 and shadows manufactured ! What immeasurable 
 thickness in those black flakes compared, with all 
 locks that he had ever seen, as an edge of cocoa- 
 meat, fragrantly and newly broken, to a torn leaf, limp ! 
 with wilting. Nora stood motionless, absorbed in the 
 incomparable splendor of that silver hook bent into j 
 the forest Leathers as motionless, absorbed in her i 
 wilderness of jetty locks till the barkeeper rang the 
 bell for them to come to breakfast. Ah, Hypolet! 
 Hypolet! what dark thought came to share, with that 
 innocent beefsteak, your morning s digestion ! 
 
 That tailors have, and why they have, the hand- i 
 somest daughters, in all countries, have been points 
 of observation and speculation for physiology, written 
 and unwritten. Most men know the fact. Some 
 writers have ventured to guess at the occult secret. 
 But I think "it needs no ghost, come from the^rave," 
 to unravel the matter. Their vocaiion is the embel 
 lishmentpartly indeed the creation of material 
 beauty. If philosophy sit on their shears (as it should 
 ever), there are questions to decide which discipline 
 the sense of beauty the degree in which fashion 
 should be sacrificed to becomingness, and the resist 
 ance to the invasion of the poetical by whim and 
 usage, for example and as a man thinketh to a cer 
 tain degree so is his daughter. Beauty is the busi 
 ness-thought of every day, and the desire to know 
 how best to remedy its defects is the ache and agony 
 of the tailor s soul, if he be ambitious. Why should 
 not this have its exponent on the features of the race, 
 as other strong emotions have plastic and malleable 
 as the human body is, by habit and practice. Shak- 
 spere, by-the-way, says 
 
 Tis use that breeds a habit in a man, 
 
 and I own to the dulness of never till now apprehend 
 ing that this remarkable passage typifies the steeping 
 
 of superfine broadcloth (made into superfine habits) 
 into the woof and warp of the tailor s idiosyncracy. 
 Q. E. D. 
 
 Nora Mehidy had ways with her that, if the world 
 had not been thrown into a muss by Eve and Adam, 
 would doubtless have been kept for queens. Leath 
 ers was particularly struck with her never lifting up 
 her eyelids till she was ready. If she chanced to be 
 looking thoughtfully down when he spoke to her, 
 which was her habit of sadness just now, she heard 
 what he had to say and commenced replying and 
 then, slowly, up went the lids, combing the loving air 
 with their long lashes, and no more hurried than the 
 twilight taking its fringes off the stars. It was ado 
 rable altogether adorable ! And her hands and lips, 
 and feet and shoulders, had the same contemptuous 
 and delicious deliberateness. 
 
 On the second evening, at half-past five just half 
 an hour too late for the "Highlander" steamer the 
 " Binghamton stage" slid down the mountain into 
 Newburgh. The next boat was to touch at the pier 
 at midnight, and Leathers had six capacious hours to 
 work on the mind of John Mehidy. What was the 
 process of that fiendish temptation, what the lure and 
 the resistance, is a secret locked up with Moloch 
 but it was successful ! The glorious chevelure of the 
 victim (sweet descriptive word chevelure. ) the 
 matchless locks that the matchlocks of armies should 
 have defended went down in the same boat with No 
 ra Mehidy, but tied up in Mr. Leathers linen pocket- 
 handkerchief! And, in one week from that day, the 
 head of Hypolet Leathers was shaven nude, and the 
 black curls of Nora Mehidy were placed upon its 
 irritated organs in an incomparable WIG ! ! 
 
 A year had elapsed. It was a warm day, in No. 77 
 of the Astor, and Hypolet Leathers, Esq., arrived a 
 week before by the Great Western, sat aiding the 
 evaporation from his brain by lotions of iced lavender. 
 His wig stood before him, on the blockhead that was 
 now his inseparable companion, the back toward him; 
 and, as the wind chased of the volatile lavender from 
 the pores of his skull, he toyed thoughtfully with the 
 lustrous curls of Nora Mehidy. His heart was on 
 that wooden block ! He dressed his own wig habit 
 ually, and by dint of perfuming, combing, and cares 
 sing those finger-like ringlets he had tangled up his 
 heart in their meshes. A phantom, with the superb 
 face of the owner, stayed with the separated locks, and 
 it grew hourly more palpable and controlling. The 
 sample had made him sick at heart for the remainder. 
 He wanted the rest of Nora Mehidy. He had come 
 over for her. He had found John Mehidy, following 
 his trade obscurely in a narrow lane, and he had asked 
 for Nora s hand. But though this was not the whole 
 of his daughter, and he had already sold part of her 
 to Leathers, he shook his head over his shiny shears. 
 Even if Nora could be propitiated after the sacrifice 
 , she had made (which he did not believe she could be), 
 I he would as lief put her in the world of spirits as in a 
 world above him. She was his life, and he would not 
 give "his life willingly to a stranger who would take it 
 from him, or make it too fine for his using. Oh, no 
 Nora must marry a tailor, if she marry at all and 
 this was the adamantine resolution, stern and without 
 appeal, of John Mehidy. 
 
 Some six weeks after this, a new tailoring estab 
 lishment of great outlay and magnificence was opened 
 in Broadway. The show-window was like a new rev 
 elation of stuff for trowsers, and resplendent, but not 
 gaudy, were the neckcloths and waistcoatings for 
 absolute taste reigned over all. There was not an ar 
 ticle on show possible to William street not a waist 
 coat that, seen in Maiden lane, would not have been 
 as unsphered as the Lost Pleiad in Botany Bay. It 
 was quite clear that there was some one of the firm 
 
THE PHARISEE AND THE BARBER. 
 
 of " Mehidy & Co." (the new sign) who exercised 
 his taste " from within, out," as the Germans say of 
 the process of true poetry. He began inside a gen 
 tleman, that is to say, to guess at what was wanted for 
 a gentleman s outside. He was a tailor-gentleman, 
 and was therefore, and by that .quality only, fitted to 
 be a gentleman s tailor. 
 
 The dandies flocked to Mehidy & Co. They 
 could not be measured immediately oh no ! The 
 gentleman to be built was requested to walk about the 
 shop for a half hour, till the foreman got him well in 
 his eye, and then to call again in a week. Meantime 
 he would mark his customer in the street, to see how 
 he performed. Mehidy & Co. never ventured to take 
 measure for terra incognita. The man s gait, shrug, 
 speed, style, and quality, were all to be allowed for, 
 and these were not seen in a minute. And a very 
 sharp and stylish looking fellow seemed that foreman 
 to be. There was evidently spoiled some very capa 
 ble stuff for a lord when he was made a tailor. 
 
 " His leaf, 
 
 By some o er hasty angel, was misplaced 
 In Fate s eternal volume." 
 
 And, faith ! it was a study to see him take a custom 
 er s measure! The quiet contempt with which he 
 overruled the man s indigenous idea of a coat ! the 
 rather satirical comments on his peculiarities of wear 
 ing his kerseymere ! the cool survey of the adult to 
 be embellished, as if he were inspecting him for ad 
 mission to the grenadiers ! On the whole, it was a 
 nervous business to be measured for a coat by that 
 fellow with the devilish fine head of black hair! 
 
 And, with the hair upon his head, from which Nora 
 had once no secrets with the curls upon his cheek 
 and temples which had once slumbered peacefully 
 over hers, Hypolet Leathers, the foreman of " Mehi 
 dy & Co.," made persevering love to the tailor s mag 
 nificent daughter. For she u>as magnificent! She 
 had just taken that long stride from girl to woman, 
 and her person had filled out to the imperial and vo 
 luptuous model indicated by her deliberate eyes. 
 
 With a dusky glow in her cheek, that looked like a 
 peach feinted by a rosy twilight, her mouth, up to the 
 crimson edge of its bow of Cupid, was moulded with 
 the slumberous fairness of newly wrought sculpture, 
 and gloriously beautiful in expression. She was a 
 creature for whom a butterfly might do worm over 
 again to whose condition in life, if need be, a prince 
 might proudly come down. Ah, queenly Nora Me 
 hidy ! 
 
 But the wooing alas! the wooing throve slowly ! 
 That lovely head was covered again with prodigal 
 locks, in short and massive clusters, but Leathers was 
 pertinacious as to his property in the wig, and its be- 
 comingness and indispensableness and to be made 
 love to by a man in her own hair! to be obliged to 
 keep her own dark curls at a respectful distance! to 
 forbid all intercourse between them and their chil 
 dren-ringlets, as it were it roughened the course of 
 Leathers s true love that Nora must needs be obliged 
 to reason on such singular dilemmas. For, though a 
 tailor s daughter, she had been furnished by nature 
 with an imagination ! 
 
 But virtue, if nothing more and no sooner, is its 
 own reward, and in time " to save its bacon." John 
 Mehidy s fortune was pretty well assured in the course 
 of two years, and made, in his own line, by his pro 
 posed son-in-law, and he could no longer refuse to 
 throw into the scale the paternal authority. Nora s 
 hair was, by this time, too, restored to its pristine 
 length and luxuriousness, and, on condition that Hyp 
 olet would not exact a new wig from his new posses 
 sions, Nora, one summer s night, made over to him 
 the remainder. The long-exiled locks revisited their 
 natal soil, during the caresses which sealed the com 
 pact, and a very good tailor was spoiled the week 
 after, for the married Leathers became once more a 
 gentleman at large, having bought, in two instalments, 
 at an expense of a hundred dollars, a heart, and two 
 years of service, one of the finest properties of which 
 Heaven and a gold ring ever gave mortal the copy 
 hold ! 
 
 THE PHARISEE AND THE BARBER, 
 
 ISHEAFE LANE, in Boston, is an almost unmention 
 able and plebeian thoroughfare, between two very 
 mentionable and patrician streets. It is mainly used 
 by bakers, butchers, urchins going to school, and j 
 clerks carrying home parcels in short, by those who I 
 care less for the beauty of the road than for economy | 
 of time and shoe-leather. If you please, it is a shabby 
 hole. Children are born there, however, and people j 
 die and marry there, and are happy and sad there, and i 
 the great events of life, more important than our 
 liking or disliking of Sheafe lane, take place in it i 
 continually. It used not to be a very savory place. 
 Yet it has an indirect share of such glory as attaches 
 to the birth-places of men above the common. The 
 (present) great light of the Unitarian church was born 
 at one end of Sheafe lane, and one of the most accom 
 plished merchant -gentlemen in the gay world of New 
 York was born at the other. And in the old Hay- 
 market (a kind of cul-de-sac, buried in the side of 
 Sheaf lane), stood the dusty lists of chivalric old 
 Roulstone, a gallant horseman, who in other days 
 would have been a knight of noble devoir, though in 
 the degeneracy of a Yankee lustrum, he devoted his 
 
 soldierly abilities to the teaching of young ladies how 
 to ride. 
 
 Are you in Sheafe lane ? (as the magnetisers in 
 quire). Please to step back twenty-odd years, and 
 take the hand of a lad with a rosy face (ourself for 
 we lived in Sheafe lane twenty-odd years ago), and 
 come to a small house, dingy yellow, with a white 
 i gate. The yard is below the level of the street. 
 I Mind the step. 
 
 The family are at breakfast in the small parlor 
 fronting on the street. But come up this dark stair 
 case, to the bedroom over the parlor a very neat 
 room, plainly furnished ; and the windows are cur 
 tained, and there is one large easy chair, and a stand 
 with a bible open upon it. In the bed lies an old man 
 of seventy, deaf, nearly blind, and bed-ridden. 
 
 We have now shown you what comes out of the 
 shadows to us, when we remember the circumstances 
 we are about to body forth in a sketch, for it can 
 scarcely be called a story. 
 
 It wanted an hour to noon. The Boylston clock 
 struck eleven, and close on the heel of the last stroke 
 followed the tap of the barber s knuckle on the door 
 
THE PHARISEE AND THE BARBER. 
 
 89 
 
 of the yellow house in Sheafe lane. Before answering 
 to the rap, the maid-of-all-work filled a tin can from 
 the simmering kettle, and surveying herself in a three- 
 cornered bit of looking-glass, fastened on a pane of the 
 kitchen window ; then, with a very soft and sweet 
 " good morning," to Rosier, the barber, she led the 
 way to the old man s room. 
 
 "He looks worse to-day," said the barber, as the 
 skinny hand of the old man crept up tremblingly to 
 his face, conscious of the daily office about to be per 
 formed for him. 
 
 " They think so below slairs," said Harriet, " and 
 one of the church is coming to pray with him to-night. 
 Shall I raise him up now?" 
 
 The barber nodded, and the girl seated herself near 
 the pillow, and lifting the old man, drew him upon her 
 breast, and as the operation went rather lingeringly on, 
 the two chatted together very earnestly. 
 
 Rosier was a youth of about twenty-one, talkative 
 aiul caressing, as all barbers are; and what with his 
 curly hair and ready smile, and the smell of soap that 
 seemed to be one of his natural properties, he was a 
 man to be thought of over a kitchen fire. Besides, he 
 was thriving in his trade, and not a bad match. All of 
 which was duly considered by the family with which 
 Harriet lived, for they loved the poor girl. 
 
 Poor girl, I say. But she was not poor, at least if 
 it be true that as a woman thinketh so is she. Most 
 people would have described her as a romantic girl. 
 
 together, and the girl seemed very tranquilly happy in 
 her prospect of marriage. 
 
 At four o clock on the afternoon of the day before 
 mentioned, Mr. Flint was to make a spiritual visit to 
 the old man. Let us first introduce him to the reader. 
 Mr. Asa Flint was a bachelor of about forty-five, 
 and an "active member" of a church famed for its 
 zeal. He was a tall man, with a little bend in his 
 back, and commonly walked with his eyes upon the 
 ground, like one intent on meditation. His complex- 
 ! ion was sallow, and his eyes dark and deeply set ; but 
 ) by dint of good teeth, and a little " wintry redness in 
 ! his cheek," he was good-looking enough for all his 
 ! ends. He dressed in black, as all religious men must 
 (in Boston), and wore shoes with black stockings the 
 year round. In his worldly condition, Mr. Flint had 
 always been prospered. He spent five hundred dollars 
 a year in his personal expenses, and made five thou 
 sand in his business, and subscribed, say two hundred 
 dollars a year to such societies as printed the name of 
 the donors. Mr. Flint had no worldly acquaintances. 
 He lived in a pious boarding-house, and sold all his 
 goods to the members of the country churches in 
 communion with his own. He " loved the brethren," 
 for he wished to converse with no one who did not see 
 heaven and the church at his back himself in the 
 foreground, and the other two accessories in the per 
 spective. Piety apart, he had found out at twenty-five, 
 that, as a sinner he would pass through the world 
 
 And so she was, but without deserving a breath of the || simply Asa Flint as a saint, he would be Asa Flint 
 "idicule commonly attached to the word. She was j| plus eternity and the respect of a large congregation, 
 uneducated, too, if any child of New England can be M He was a shrewd man, and chose the better part. 
 
 called uneducated. Beyond school-books and the 
 Bible, she had read nothing but the Scottish Chiefs, 
 and this novel was to her what the works of God are 
 to others. It could never become familiar. It must 
 be the gate of dream-land; what the moon is to a 
 poet, what a grove is to a man of revery, what sun 
 shine is to all the world. And she mentioned it as 
 seldom as people praise sunshine, and lived in it as 
 unconsciously. 
 
 Harriet had never before been out to service. She 
 was a farmer s daughter, new from the country. If 
 she was not ignorant of the degradation of her condi 
 tion in life, she forgot it habitually. A cheerful and 
 thoughtful smile was perpetually on her lips, and the 
 hardships of her daily routine were encountered as 
 things of course, as clouds in the sky, as pebbles in 
 the inevitable path. Her attention seemed to belong 
 to her body, but her consciousness only to her 
 imagination. In her voice and eyes there was no 
 touch or taint of her laborious servitude, and if 
 she had suddenly been " made a lady," there would 
 have been nothing but her hard hands to redeem from 
 her low condition. Then, hard-working creature as 
 she was, she was touchingly beautiful. A coatue eye 
 would have passed her without notice, perhaps, but a 
 
 Also, he remembered, sin is more expensive than 
 | sanctity. 
 
 At four o clock Mr. Flint knocked at the door. At 
 
 ! the same hour there was a maternal prayer-meeting at 
 
 the vestry, and of course it was to be numbered 
 
 among his petty trials that he must find the mistress 
 
 ; of the house absent from home. He walked up 
 
 i stairs, and after a look into the room of the sick man, 
 
 despatched the lad who had opened the door for him, 
 
 to request the " help" of the family to be present at 
 
 | the devotions. 
 
 Harriet had a rather pleasing recollection of Mr. 
 j Flint. He had offered her his arm, a week before, in 
 j coming out from a conference meeting, and had " pre 
 sumed that she was a young lady on a visit" to the 
 mistress ! She arranged her kerchief and took the 
 kettle off the fire. 
 
 Mr. Flint was standing by the bedside with folded 
 
 hands. The old man lay looking at him with a kind 
 
 of uneasy terror in his face, which changed, as Harriet 
 
 ! entered, to a smile of relief. She retired modestly to 
 
 li the foot of the bed, and, hidden by the curtain, open 
 
 ! only at the side, she waited the commencement of the 
 
 I! prayer. 
 
 "Kneel there, little boy !" said Mr. Flint, pointing 
 
 and 
 
 painter would not. She was of a fragile shape, and had to a chair on the other side of the light-stand, " 
 a slight stoop, but her head was small and exquisitely |j you, my dear, kneel here by me ! Let us pray !" 
 
 moulded, and her slender neck, round, graceful, and j 
 polished, was set upon her shoulders with the fluent 
 grace of a bird s. Her hair was profuse, and of a 
 tinge almost yellow in the sun, but her eyes were of a 
 blue, deep almost to blackness, and her heavy eye 
 lashes darkened them still more deeply. She had the 
 least possible color in her cheeks. Her features were 
 soft and unmarked, and expressed delicacy and repose, 
 though her nostrils were capable of dilating with an 
 energy of expression that seemed wholly foreign to 
 her character. 
 
 Rosier had first seen Harriet when called in to the 
 old man, six months before, and they were now sup 
 posed by the family to be engaged lovers, waiting only 
 for a little more sunshine on the barber s fortune. 
 Meantime, they saw each other at least half an hour 
 every morning, and commonly passed their evenings 
 
 Harriet had dropped upon her knees near the cor 
 ner of the bed, and Mr. Flint dropped upon his, on 
 the other side of the post, so that after raising his 
 hands in the first adjuration, they descended gradually, 
 and quite naturally, upon the folded hands of the 
 neighbor and there they remained. She dared not 
 withdraw them, but as his body rocked to and fro in 
 his devout exercise, she drew back her head to avoid 
 coming into farther contact, and escaped with only his 
 breath upon her temples. 
 
 It was a very eloquent prayer. Mr. Flint s voice, 
 in a worldly man, would have been called insinuating, 
 but its kind of covert sweetness, low and soft, seemed, 
 in a prayer, only the subdued monotony of reverence 
 and devotion. But it won upon the ear all the same. 
 He began, with a repetition of all the most sublime 
 ascriptions of the psalmist, filling the room, it appeared 
 
THE PHARISEE AND THE BARBER. 
 
 to Harriet, with a superhuman presence. She trem 
 bled to be so near him with his words of awe. Grad 
 ually he took up the more affecting and lender pas 
 sages of scripture, and drew the tears into her eyes 
 with the pathos of his tone and the touching images 
 he wove together. His hand grew moist upon hers, 
 and he leaned closer to her. He began, after a short 
 pause, to pray for her especially that her remarkable 
 beauty might not be a snare to her that her dove- 
 like eyes might beam only on the saddened faces of 
 the saints that she might be enabled to shun the 
 company of the worldly, and consort only with God s 
 people and that the tones of prayer now in her ears 
 might sink deep into her heart as the voice of one 
 who would never cease to feel an interest in her tem 
 poral and eternal welfare. His hand tightened its 
 grasp upon hers, and his face turned more toward 
 her; and as Harriet, blushing, spite of the awe 
 weighing on her heart, stole a look at the devout 
 man, she met the full gaze of his coal-black eyes 
 fixed unwinkingly upon her. She was entranced. 
 She dared not stir, and she dared not take her 
 eyes from his. And when he came to his amen, she 
 sank back upon the ground, and covered her face with 
 her hands. And presently she remembered, with 
 some wonder, that the old man, for whom Mr. Flint 
 had come to pray, had not been even mentioned in 
 the prayer. 
 
 The lad left the room after the amen, and Mr. FliiH 
 raised Harriet from the floor and seated her upon a 
 chair out of the old man s sight, and pulled a hymn- 
 book from his pocket, and sat down beside her. She 
 was a very enthusiastic singer, to say the least, and he 
 commonly led the singing at the conferences, and so, 
 holding her hand that she might beat the time with 
 him, he passed an hour in what he would call very 
 sweet communion. And by this time the mistress of- 
 the family came home, and Mr. Flint took his leave. 
 
 From that evening, Mr. Flint fairly undertook the 
 " eternal welfare" of the beautiful girl. From her 
 kind mistress he easily procured for her the indul 
 gence due to an awakened sinner, and she had permis 
 sion to frequent the nightly conference, Mr. Flint 
 always charging himself with the duty of seeing her 
 safely home. He called sometimes in the afternoon, 
 and had a private interview to ascertain the " state of 
 her mind," and under a strong " conviction" of some 
 thing or other, the excited girl lived now in a constant 
 revery, and required as much looking after as a child. 
 She was spoiled as a servant, but Mr. Flint had only 
 done his duty by her. 
 
 This seemed all wrong to Rosier, the barber, how 
 ever. The bright, sweet face of the girl he thought 
 to marry, had grown sad, and her work went all amiss 
 he could see that. She had no smile, and almost 
 no word, for him. He liked little her going out at 
 dusk when he could not accompany her, and coming 
 home late with the same man always, though a very 
 good man, no doubt. Then, once lately, when he 
 had spoken of the future, she had murmured some 
 thing which Mr. Flint had said about " marrying with 
 unbelievers," and it stuck in Rosier s mind and trou 
 bled him. Harriet grew thin and haggard besides, 
 though she paid more attention to her dress, and 
 dressed more ambitiously than she used to do. 
 
 We are reaching back over a score or more of 
 
 years for the scenes we are describing, and memory 
 
 j drops here and there a circumstance by the way. The 
 
 reader can perhaps restore the lost fragments, if we 
 
 j give what we remember of the outline. 
 
 The old man died, and Rosier performed the last 
 of his offices to fit him for the grave, and that, if we 
 j remember rightly, was the last of his visits, but one, 
 to the white house in Sheafe lane. The bed was 
 scarce vacated by the dead, ere it was required again 
 for another object of pity. Harriet was put into it 
 with a brain fever. She was ill for many weeks, and 
 called constantly on Mr. Flint s name in her delirium; 
 and when the fever left her, she seemed to have but 
 one desire on earth that he should come and see 
 her. Message after message was secretly carried to 
 him by the lad, whom she had attached to her with 
 her uniform kindness and sweet temper, but he never 
 came. She relapsed after a while into a state of stu 
 por, like idiocy, and when day after day passed with 
 out amendment, it was thought necessary to sendflfr 
 her father to take her home. 
 
 A venerable looking old farmer, with white hairs, 
 drove his rough wagon into Sheafe lane one evening, 
 we well remember. Slowly, with the aid of his long 
 staff, he crept up the narrow staircase to his daugh 
 ter s room, and stood a long time, looking at her in 
 silence. She did not speak to him. 
 
 He slept upon a bed made up at the side of hers, 
 upon the floor, and the next morning he went out 
 early for his horse, and she was taken up and dressed 
 for the journey. She spoke to no one, and when the 
 old man had breakfasted, she quietly submitted to be 
 carried toward the door. The sight of the street first 
 seemed to awaken some recollection, and suddenly in 
 a whisper she called to Mr. Flint. 
 
 " Who is Mr. Flint ?" asked the old man. 
 
 Rosier was at the gate, standing there with his hat 
 off to bid her farewell. She stopped upon the side 
 walk, and looked around hurriedly. 
 
 "He is not here I ll wait for him." cried Harriet, 
 in a troubled voice, and she let go her father s arm 
 and stepped back. 
 
 They took hold of her and drew her toward the 
 wagon, but she struggled to get free, and moaned like 
 a child in grief. Rosier took her by the hand and 
 tried to speak to her, but he choked, and the tears 
 came to his eyes. Apparently she did not know him. 
 
 A few passers-by gathered around now, and it was 
 necessary to lift her into the wagon by force, for the 
 distressed father was confused and embarrassed with 
 her struggles, and the novel scene around him. At 
 the suggestion of the mistress of the family, Rosier 
 lifted her in his arms and seated hsr in the chair in 
 tended for her, but her screams began to draw a crowd 
 around, and her struggles to free herself were so vio 
 lent, that it was evident the old man could never take 
 her home alone. Rosier kindly offered to accompany 
 him, and as he held her in her seat and tried to sooth her, 
 the unhappy father got in beside her and drove away. 
 
 She reached home, Rosier informed us, in a state 
 of dreadful exhaustion, still calling on the name that 
 haunted her; and we heard soon after, that she re 
 lapsed into a brain fever, and death soon came to her 
 with a timely deliverance from her trouble. 
 
MRS. PASSABLE TROTT. 
 
 ai 
 
 MRS, PASSABLE TROTT, 
 
 n aime pas qtte les autr 
 
 THE temerity with which I hovered on the brink || mourning should be over the very day the very 
 of matrimony when a very young man could only be |i hour her first love should be ready for her, good as 
 appreciated by a fatuitous credulity. The number! new! 
 
 of very fat mothers of very plain families who can jl I have said nothing of any evidences of continued 
 point me out to their respectable offspring as their ! attachment on the part of Mrs. Trott. She was a 
 once imminent papa, is ludicrously improbable. The j discreet person, and not likely to compromise Mr. P. 
 truth was that I had a powerful imagination in my Trott till she knew the strength of his constitution, 
 early youth, and no "realizing sense." A ""- 1 """ - 
 
 But there was one evidence of lingering preference 
 which I built upon like a rock. I had not visited her 
 during these fifteen years. Trott liked me not you 
 can guess why ! But I had a nephew, five years old 
 when Miss Balch was my " privately engaged," and 
 as like me, that boy, as could be copied by nature. 
 
 A coral neck 
 
 lace, warm from the wearer a shoe with a little round 
 stam in the sole anything flannel a biften rosebud 
 with the mark of a tooth upon it a rose, a glove, a 
 thimble either of these was agony, ecstasy ! To any 
 thing with curls and skirts, and especially if encircled 
 
 by a sky-blue sash, my heart was as prodigal as a II He was our unsuspecting messenger of love, going to 
 Croton hydrant. Ah me ! jl play in old Batch s garden when I was forbidden the 
 
 But, of all my short eternal attachments, Fidelia 1 1 house, unconscious of the billet-doux in the pocket 
 Balch (since Mrs. P. Trott) was the kindest and fair- of his pinafore ; and to this boy, after our separation, 
 
 seemed Fidelia to cling. He grew up to a youth of 
 mind and manners, and^ still she" cherished him. He 
 all but lived at old Trott s, petted and made much of 
 her constant companion reading, walking, riding 
 indeed, when home from college, her sole society. 
 Are you surprised that, in all this, there was a tender- 
 
 est. Faithless of course she was, since my name 
 does not begin with a T. but if she did not continue 
 to love me P. Trott or no P. Trott she was shock 
 ingly forsworn, as can be proved by several stars, 
 usually considered very attentive listeners. I rather 
 pitied poor Trott for ] knew 
 
 " Her heart it was another s," 
 
 and he was rich and forty-odd. But they seemed to 
 live very harmoniously, and if I availed myself of 
 such little consolations as fell in my way, it was the 
 result of philosophy. I never forgot the faithless 
 Fidelia. 
 
 This is to be a disembowelled narrative, dear reader 
 skipping from the maidenhood of my heroine to 
 her widowhood, fifteen years yet I would have you 
 supply here and there a betweenity. My own suffer 
 ings at seeing my adored Fidelia go daily into another 
 man s house and shut the door after her, you can 
 easily conceive. Though not in the habit of rebelling 
 against human institutions, it did seem to me that the 
 marriage ceremony had no business to give old Trott 
 quite so much for his money. But the aggravating 
 part of it was to come ! Mrs. P. Trott grew prettier 
 every day, and of course three hundred and sixty- 
 five noticeable degrees prettier every year! She 
 seemed incapable of, or not liable to, wear and tear ; 
 and probably old Trott was a man, in-doors, of tery 
 even behavior. And, it should be said too, in expla 
 nation, that, as Miss Balch, Fidelia was a shade too 
 fat for her model. She embellished as her dimples 
 
 ness of reminiscence that touched and assured me ? 
 Ah 
 
 " On revient toujours 
 A ses premiers amours !" 
 
 I thought it delicate, and best, to let silence do it3 
 work during that year of mourning. I did not whis 
 per even to my nephew Bob the secret of my happi 
 ness. I left one card of condolence after old Trott s 
 funeral, and lived private, counting the hours. The 
 slowest kind of eternity it appeared ! 
 
 The morning never seemed to me to break with so 
 much difficulty and reluctance as on the anniversary 
 of the demise of Mr. Passable Trott June 2, 1840. 
 Time is a comparative thing, I well know, but the 
 minutes seemed to stick, on that interminable morn 
 ing. I began to dress for breakfast at four but de 
 tails are tiresome. Let me assure you that twelve 
 o clock, A. M., did arrive ! The clocks struck it, and 
 the shadows verified it. 
 
 I could not have borne an accidental " not at home," 
 and I resolved not to run the risk of it. Lovers, be 
 sides, are not tied to knockers and ceremony. I bribed 
 the gardener. Fidelia s boudoir, I knew, opened upon 
 the lawn, and it seemed more like love to walk in. 
 
 grew shallower. Trifle by trifle, like the progress of jj She knew I knew Fate and circumstance knew and 
 a statue, the superfluity fell away from nature s ori- I had ordained that that morning was to be ibovedilp, 
 inal Miss Balch (as designed in Heaven), and when 1 joined on, and dovetailed to our last separatio 
 
 time between was to be a blank. Of ex 
 pected me. 
 
 The garden door was ajnr as paid for 
 
 The 
 Of course she ex- 
 
 I entered, 
 
 wrsed the vegetable beds, tripped through the flow- 
 -walk, and-oh bliss . -the window was open! I 
 
 old Passable died (and no one knew what that P. 
 stood for, till it was betrayed by the indiscreet plate 
 on his coffin) Mrs. Trott, thirty-three years old, was 
 at her maximum of beauty. Plump, taper, transpa- j; tn 
 rently fair, with an arm like a high-conditioned Venus, j er--a.n., ....- --- - 
 
 and a neck set on like the swell of a French horn, !| could just see the Egyptian urn on its pedestal of 
 he was consumedly srood-looking. When I saw in || sphinxes, into which I knew (per Bob) she threw all 
 the paper, " Died, Mr. P. Trott," I went out and i! her fading roses. I glided near. I looked in at the 
 walked passed the house, with overpowering emotions. \ window. 
 
 Thanks to a "rent many refusals, / had been faithful ! Ah, that picture ! She sat with her back to nie- 
 / could bring hw the same heart, unused and undam- ! her arm-that arm of rosy alabaster-thrown careless- 
 aged, which I had offered her before! / could || ly over her chair her egg-shell chin resting o 
 generously overlook Mr. Trott s temporary occupa- other thumb and forefinger-hereyehds sweeping her 
 tion (since he had lft us his money !)-and when her cheek-and a white-yes ! a white bow in her hair . 
 
THE SPIRIT-LOVE OP " IONE 
 
 And her dress was of snowy lawn white, bridal 
 white ! Adieu, old Passable Trott ! 
 
 I wiped ray eyes and looked again. Old Trott s 
 portrail hung on the wall, but that was nothing. Her 
 guitar Iny on the table, and did I see aright ? a 
 miniature just beside it ! Perhaps of old Trott ta 
 ken out for the last time. Well well ! He was a 
 very respectable man, and had been very kind to her, 
 most likely. 
 
 " Ehem !" said I, stepping over the sill, " Fidelia!" 
 
 She started and turned, and certainly looked sur 
 prised. 
 
 " Mr. G !" said she. 
 
 " It is long since we parted !" I said, helping my 
 self to a chair. 
 
 " Quite long !" said Fidelia. 
 
 " So long that you have forgotten the name of 
 G ?" I asked tremulously. 
 
 " Oh no !" she replied, covering up the miniature 
 on the table by a careless movement of her scarf. 
 
 " And may I hope that that name has not grown 
 distasteful to you ?" I summoned courage to say. 
 
 "N , no! I do not know that it has, Mr. G !" 
 
 The blood returned to my fainting heart ! I felt as 
 in days of yore. 
 
 "Fidelia !" said I, " let me not waste the precious 
 moments. You loved me at twenty may I hope that 
 I may stand to you in a nearer relation ! May I ven 
 ture to think that our family is not unworthy of a 
 
 union with the Balches ? that, as Mrs. G , you 
 
 could be happy ?" 
 
 Fidelia looked hesitated took up the miniature, 
 and clasped it to her breast. 
 
 " Do 1 understand you rightly, Mr. G !" she 
 
 tremulously exclaimed. "But I think I do! I re 
 member well what you were at twenty ! This picture 
 is like what you were then with differences, it is true, 
 but still like! Dear picture!" she exclaimed again, 
 kissing it with rapture. 
 
 (How could she have got my miniature? but no 
 matter taken by stealth, I presume. Sweet and ea 
 ger anticipation!) 
 
 "And Robert has returned from college, then ?" 
 she said, inquiringly. 
 
 "Not that I know of," said I. 
 
 " Indeed ! then he has written to you !" 
 
 " Not recently !" 
 
 " Ah, poor boy ! he anticipated ! Well, Mr. G ! 
 
 1 will not affect to be coy where my heart has been so 
 long interested." 
 
 (I stood ready to clasp her to my bosom.) 
 
 " Tell Robert my mourning is over tell him his 
 name" (the name of G , of course) " is the mu 
 sic of my life, and that I will marry whenever he 
 pleases !" 
 
 A horrid suspicion crossed my mind. 
 
 "Pardon me!" said I ; "whenever he pleases, did 
 you say ? Why, particularly, when he pleases?" 
 
 " La ! his not being of age is no impediment, I 
 hope!" said Mrs. Trott, with some surprise. "Look 
 
 at his miniature, Mr. G ! It has a boyish look, 
 
 it s true but so had you at twenty !" 
 
 Hope sank within me ! I would have given worlds 
 to be away. The truth was apparent to me perfect 
 ly apparent. She loved that boy Bob that child 
 that mere child and meant to marry him ! Yet how 
 could it be possible ! I might be yes I must be, 
 mistaken. Fidelia Balch who was a woman when 
 he was an urchin in petticoats ! she to think of mar 
 rying that boy ! I wronged her oh I wronged her ! 
 But. worst come to the worst, there was no harm in 
 having it perfectly understood. 
 
 "Pardon me!" said I, putting on a look as if I 
 expected a shout of laughter for the mere supposi 
 tion, " I should gather (categorically, mind you ! 
 only categorically) I should gather from what you 
 said just now (had I been a third person listening, 
 that is to say with no knowledge of the parties) I 
 should really have gathered that Bob little Bob was 
 the happy man, and not I ! Now don t laugh at me!" 
 
 " You the happy man ! Oh Mr. G ! you are 
 
 joking! Oh no! pardon me if I have unintentionally 
 
 misled you but if I marry again, Mr. G , it will 
 
 be a young man! ! ! In short, not to mince the mat 
 ter, Mr. G ! your nephew is to become my hus 
 band (nothing unforeseen turning up), in the course 
 of the next week ! We shall have the pleasure of 
 seeing you at the wedding, of course Oh no ! You! 
 I should fancy that no woman would make two une 
 qual marriages, Mr. G ! Good morning, Mr. 
 
 I was left alone, and to return as I pleased, by the 
 vegetable garden or the front door. I chose the lat 
 ter, being somewhat piqued as well as inexpressibly 
 grieved and disappointed. But philosophy came to 
 my aid, and I soon fell into a mood of speculation. 
 
 " Fidelia is constant!" said I to myself " constant, 
 after all ! She made up her mouth for me at twenty. 
 But I did not stay twenty! Oh no! I, unadvisedly, 
 and without preparatively cultivating her taste for 
 thirty-five, became thirty-five. And now what was she 
 to do ? Her taste was not at all embarked in Passa 
 ble Trott, and it stayed just as it was waiting to be 
 called up and used. She locks it up decently till old 
 Trott dies, and then reproduces what? Why, just 
 what she locked up a taste for a young man at 
 twenty and just such a young man as she loved when 
 she was twenty ! Bob of course ! Bob is like me 
 Bob is twenty ! Be Bob her husband ! 
 
 But I cannot say I quite like such constancy ! 
 
 THE SPIRIT-LOVE OF "IONE 
 
 (SINCE DISCOVERED TO BE MISS JONES.) 
 
 NOT long ago, but before poetry and pin-money 
 were discovered to be cause and effect, Miss Phebe 
 Jane Jones was one of the most charming contributors 
 to a certain periodical now gone over " Lethe s wharf." 
 
 Her signature was "lone S !" a neat anagram, 
 
 out of which few would have picked the monosyllable 
 engraved upon her father s brass knocker. She wrote 
 mostly in verse ; but her prose, of which you will 
 presently see a specimen or two, was her better vein 
 
 as being more easily embroidered, and not cramped 
 with the inexorable fetters of rhyme. Miss Jones 
 abandoned authorship before the New Mirror was es 
 tablished, or she would, doubtless, have been one of 
 its paid contributors as much ("we" flatter ourselves) 
 as could well be said of her abilities. 
 
 The beauty of hectics and hollow chests has been 
 written out of fashion ; so I may venture upon the 
 simple imagery of truth and nature. Miss Jones was- 
 
THE SPIRIT-LOVE OF " IONE S- 
 
 as handsome as a prize heifer. She was a compact, I 
 plump, wholesome, clean-limbed, beautifully-marked 
 animal, with eyes like inkstands running over; and a 
 mouth that looked, when she smiled, as if it had never j 
 been opened before, the teeth seemed so fresh and un- 
 handled. Her voice had a tone clear as the ring of a j 
 silver dollar ; and her lungs must have been as sound j 
 as a pippin, for when she laughed (which she never 
 did unless she was surprised into it, for she loved mel 
 ancholy), it was like the gurgling of a brook over the 
 pebbles. The bran-new people made by Deucalion 
 and Pyrrha, when it cleared up after the flood, were j 
 probably in Miss Jones s style. 
 
 But do you suppose tint "lone S " cared any 
 
 thing for her looks ! What value the poor perishing 
 tenement in which nature had chosen to lodge her 
 intellectual and spiritual part ! What care for her 
 covering of clay ! What waste thought on the chain 
 that kept her from the Pleiades, of which, perhaps, 
 she was the lost sister (who knows) ? And, more than 
 all oh gracious ! to be loved for this trumpery-dra 
 pery of her immortal essence ! 
 
 Yes infra dig. as it may seem to record such an 
 unworthy trifle the celestial Phebe had the superflu 
 ity of an every-day lover. Gideon Flimmins was wil 
 ling to take her on her outer inventory alone. He 
 loved her cheeks he did not hesitate to admit ! He 
 loved her lips he could not help specifying ! He had 
 been known to name her shoulders ! And, in taking 
 out a thorn for her with a pair of tweezers one day, he 
 had literally exclaimed with rapture that she had a 
 
 heavenly little pink thumb! But of " lone S " 
 
 he had never spoken a word. No, though she read 
 him faithfully every eft usion that appeared asked his j 
 opinion of every separate stanza talked of "lone 
 
 S " as the person on earth she most wished to see 
 
 (for she kept her literary incog.) Gideon had never 
 alluded to her a second time, and perseveringly, hate 
 fully, atrociously, and with mundane motive only, he 
 made industrious love to the outside and visible Phe 
 be ! Well! well! 
 
 Contiguity is something, in love ; and the Flim- 
 minses were neighbors of the Joneses. Gideon had 
 another advantage for Ophelia Flimmins, his eldest 
 sister, was Miss Jones s eternally attached friend. To 
 explain this, I must trouble the reader to take notice 
 that there were two streaks in the Flimmins family. 
 Fat Mrs. Flimmins, the mother (who had been dead a 
 year), was a thorough " man of business," and it was | 
 to her downright and upright management of her hus 
 band s wholesale and retail hat-lining establishment, ! 
 that the family owed its prosperity ; for Herodotus 
 Flimmins, whose name was on the sign, was a flimsy- ! 
 ish kind of sighing-dying man, and nobody could ever 
 find out what on earth he wanted. Gideon and the . 
 two fleshy Miss Flimminses took after their mother; ; 
 but Ophelia, whose semi-translucent frame was the ! 
 envy of her faithful Phebe, was, with very trifling ex 
 ceptions, the perfect model of her sire. She devotedly i 
 loved the moon. She had her preferences among the 
 stars of heaven. She abominated the garish sun. And 
 she and Phebe met by night on the sidewalk around ; 
 their mutual nearest corner deeply veiled to conceal 
 their emotion from the intruding gaze of such stars as 
 they were not acquainted with and there they com 
 muned ! 
 
 I never knew, nor have I any, the remotest suspicion 
 of the reasoning by which these commingled spirits 
 arrived at the conclusion that there was a want in their 
 delicious union. They might have known, indeed, ; 
 that the chain of bliss, ever so far extended, breaks off j 
 at last with an imperfect link that though mustard > 
 and ham may turn two slices of innocent bread into a 
 sandwich, there will still be an unbuttered outside. 
 But they were young they were sanguine. Phebe, 
 at least, believed that in the regions of space there ex 
 
 isted "wandering but not lost" the aching worser 
 half of which she was the "better" some lofty intel 
 lect, capable of sounding the unfathomable abysses of 
 hers some male essence, all soul and romance, with 
 whom she coald soar finally, arm-in-arm, to their na 
 tive star, with no changes of any consequence between 
 their earthly and their astral communion. It occurred 
 to her at last that a letter addressed to him, through 
 her favorite periodical, might possibly reach his eye. 
 The following (which the reader may very likely re 
 member to have seen) appeared in the paper of the 
 following Saturday : 
 
 " To my spirit-husband, greeting : 
 
 " Where art thou, bridegroom of my soul ? Thy 
 
 lone S calls to thee from the aching void of her 
 
 lonely spirit ! What name bearest thou ? What path 
 walkest thou ? How can I, glow-worm like, lift my 
 wings and show thee my lamp of guiding love ? Thus 
 wing I these words to thy dwelling-place (for thou art, 
 
 perhaps, a subscriber to the M r). Go truants ! 
 
 Rest not till ye meet his eye. 
 
 "But I must speak to thee after the manner of this 
 world. 
 
 " I am a poetess of eighteen summers. Eighteen 
 weary years have I worn this prison-house of flesh, in 
 which, when torn from thee, I was condemned to wan 
 der. But my soul is untamed by its cage of dark 
 ness ! I remember, and remember only, the lost hus 
 band of my spirit-world. I perform, coldly and scorn 
 fully, the unheavenly necessities of this temporary 
 existence ; and from the windows of my prison (black 
 like the glimpses of the midnight heaven they let in) 
 I look out for the coming of my spirit-lord. Lonely ! 
 lonely ! 
 
 " Thou wouldst know, perhaps, what semblance 1 
 bear since my mortal separation from thee. Alas ! the 
 rose, not the lily, reigns upon my cheek ! I would 
 not disappoint thee, though of that there is little fear, 
 for thou lovest for the spirit only. But believe not, 
 because health holds me rudely down, and I seem not 
 fragile and ready to depart believe not, oh bridegroom 
 of my soul ! that I bear willingly my fleshly fetter, or 
 endure with patience the degrading homage to its 
 beauty. For there are soulless worms who think me 
 fair. Ay in the strength and freshness of my corpo 
 real covering, there are those who icjoice ! Oh ! 
 mockery ! mockery ! 
 
 " List to me, Ithuriel (for I must have a name to 
 call thee by, and, till thou breathest thy own seraphic 
 name into my ear, be thou Ithuriel) ! List ! I would 
 meet thee in the darkness only ! Thou shall not see 
 me with thy mortal eyes ! Penetrate the past, and 
 remember the smoke-curl of wavy lightness in which 
 I floated to thy embrace ! Remember the sunset- 
 cloud to which we retired; the starry lamps that hung 
 over our slumbers! And on the softest whisper of 
 our voices let thy thoughts pass to mine! Speak not 
 aloud! Murmur! murmur! murmur! 
 
 "Dost thou know, Ilhuriel, I would fain prove to 
 thee my freedom from the trammels of this world ? In 
 what chance shape thy accident of clay may be cast, I 
 know not. Ay, and I care not ! I would thou wert a 
 hunchback, Ithuriel ! I would thou wert disguised 
 as a monster, my spirit-husband ! So would I prove 
 to thee my elevation above mortality ! So would I 
 show thee, that in the range of eternity for which we 
 are wedded, a moment s covering darkens thee not 
 that, like a star sailing through a cloud, thy brightness 
 is remembered while it is eclipsed that thy lone 
 would recognise thy voice, be aware of thy presence, 
 adore thee, as she was celestially wont ay, though 
 thou wert imprisoned in the likeness of a reptile ! 
 lone care for mortal beauty ! Ha ! ha ! ha ! Ha. 
 ha! ha! 
 
 " Come to me, Ithuriel ! My heart writhes in its 
 
THE SPIRIT-LOVE OF " IONE S- 
 
 cell for converse with thee ! I am sick-thoughted ! 
 My spirit wrings its thin fingers to play with thy ethe 
 real hair ! My earthly cheek, though it obstinately 
 refuses to pale, tingles with fever for thy coming. 
 Glide to me in the shadow of eve softly ! softly ! 
 
 "Address P. at the M r office. 
 
 "Thine, "loNES ." 
 
 ****** 
 
 There came a letter to "P." 
 
 ****** 
 
 It was an inky night. The moon was in her private 
 chamber. The stars had drawn over their heads the 
 coverlet of clouds and pretended to sleep. The street 
 lamps heartlessly burned on. 
 
 Twelve struck with "damnable iteration." 
 
 On tiptoe and with beating heart Phebe Jane left 
 her father s area. Ophelia Flimmins followed her at 
 a little distance, for lone was going to meet her spirit- 
 bridegroom, and receive a renewal of his ante-vital 
 vows; and she wished her friend, the echo of her soul, 
 to overhear and witness them. For oh if words were 
 anything if the soul could be melted and poured, 
 lava-like, upon " satin post" if there was truth in feel 
 ings magnetic and prophetic then was he who had 
 
 responded to, and corresponded with, lone S (she 
 
 writing to "I," and he to "P"), the ideal for whom 
 she had so long sighed the lost half of the whole so 
 mournfully incomplete her soul s missing and once 
 spiritually Siamesed twin ! His sweet letters had 
 echoed every sentiment of her heart. He had agreed 
 with her that outside was nothing that earthly beauty 
 was poor, perishing, pitiful that nothing that could 
 be seen, touched, or described, had anything to do 
 with the spiritually-passionate intercourse to which 
 their respective essences achingly yearned that, un 
 seen, unheard, save in whispers fainl as a rose s sigh 
 when languishing at noon, they might meet in com 
 munion blissful, superhuman, and satisfactory. 
 
 Yet where fittingly to meet oh agony ! agony ! 
 
 The street-lamps two squares off had been taken up 
 to lay down gas. Ophelia Flirnmins had inwardly 
 marked it. Between No. 12G and No. 132, more par 
 ticularly, the echoing sidewalk was bathed in unfath 
 omable night for there were vacant lots occupied as 
 a repository for used-up omnibuses. At the most 
 lonely point there stood a tree, and, fortunately, this 
 night, in the gutter beneath the tree, stood a newly- 
 disabled bus of the Knickerbocker line and (sweet 
 omen !) it was blue ! In this covert could the witness 
 ing Ophelia lie perdu, observing unseen through the 
 open door; and beneath this tree was to take place the 
 meeting of souls the re-interchange of sky-born vows 
 the immaterial union of Ithuriel and lone ! Bliss ! 
 bliss ! exquisite to anguish. 
 
 But oh incontinent vessel Ophelia had blabbed ! 
 The two fat Miss Flimminses were in the secret 
 nay, more they were in the omnibus ! Ay deeply 
 in, and portentously silent, they sat, warm and won 
 dering, on either side of the lamp probably extin 
 guished for ever! They knew not well what was to 
 be. But whatever sort of thing was a "marriage of 
 soul," and whether " Ithuriel" was body or nobody 
 mortal man or angel in a blue scarf the Miss Flim 
 minses wished to see him. Half an hour before the 
 trysting-time they had fanned their way thither, for a 
 thunder-storm was in the air and the night was intol 
 erably close; and, climbing into the omnibus, they re 
 ciprocally loosened each other s upper hook, and with 
 their moistened collars laid starchless in their laps, 
 awaited the opening of the mystery. 
 
 Enter Ophelia, as expected. She laid her thin hand 
 upon the leather string, and, drawing the door after 
 
 j her, leaned out of its open window in breathless sus- 
 [ pense and agitation. 
 
 lone s step was now audible, returning from 132. 
 I Slowly she came, but invisibly, for it had grown sud 
 denly pitch-dark ; and only the far-off lamps, up and 
 I down the street, served to guide her footsteps. 
 
 But hark ! the sound of a heel ! He came ! They 
 j met ! He passed his arm around her and drew her 
 beneath the tree and with whispers, soft and low, 
 leaned breathing to her ear. He was tall. He was in 
 a cloak. And, oh ecstasy, lie was thin ! But thinkest 
 thou to know, oh reader of dust, what passed on those 
 ethereal whispers? Futile futile curiosity ! Even to 
 I Ophelia s straining ear, those whispers were inaudible. 
 
 But hark ! a rumble ! Something wrong in the 
 bowels of the sky ! And pash ! pash ! on the re 
 sounding roof of the omnibus fell drops of rain fit 
 fully ! fitfully! 
 
 " My dear !" whispered Ophelia (for lone had bor 
 rowed her chip hat, the better to elude recognition), 
 "ask Ithuriel to step in." 
 
 Ithuriel started to find a witness near, but a whisper 
 from lone reassured him, and gathering his cloak 
 around his face, he followed his spirit-bride into the 
 bus. 
 
 The fat Miss Flimminses contracted their orbed 
 
 shapes, and made themselves small against the padded 
 
 extremity of the vehicle ; Ophelia retreated to the mid- 
 
 j die, and, next the door, on either side, sat the starry 
 
 bride and bridegroom all breathlessly silent. Yet 
 
 there was a murmur for five hearts beat within that 
 
 bus s duodecimal womb; and the rain pelted on the 
 
 j roof, pailsful-like and unpityingly. 
 
 But slap! dash! whew! heavens! In rushed a 
 I youth, dripping, dripping ! 
 
 " Get out !" cried lone, over whose knees he drew 
 himself like an eel pulled through a basket of con 
 torted other eels. 
 
 " Come, come, young man !" said a deep bass voice, 
 of which everybody had some faint remembrance. 
 
 " Oh !" cried one fat Miss Flimmins. 
 
 " Ah !" screamed the other. 
 
 " What ? dad !" exclaimed Gideon Flimmins, who 
 had dashed into the sheltering bus to save his new 
 hat "dad here with a girl !" 
 
 But the fat Flimminses were both in convulsions. 
 Scream ! scream ! scream ! 
 
 A moment of confusion ! The next moment a sud 
 den light ! A watchman with his lantern stood at the 
 door. 
 
 "Papa !" ejaculated three of the ladies. 
 
 "Old Flimmins! my heart will burst !" murmured 
 lone. 
 
 The two fat girls hurried on their collars; and Gid 
 eon, all amazement at finding himself in such a family 
 party at midnight in a lonely bus, stepped out and en 
 tered into converse with the guardian of the night. 
 
 The rain stopped suddenly, and the omnibus gave 
 up its homogeneous contents. Old Flimmins, who 
 was in a violent perspiration, gave Gideon his cloak to 
 carry, and his two arms to his two pinguid adult 
 pledges. Gideon took Ophelia and Phebe, and they 
 mizzled. Mockery ! mockery ! 
 
 lone is not yet gone to the spirit-sphere kept here 
 partly by the strength of the fleshy fetter over which 
 she mourned, and partly by the dove-tailed duties con 
 sequent upon annual Flimminses. Gideon loves her 
 after the manner of this world but she sighs "when 
 she hears sweet music," that her better part is still 
 unappreciated unfathomed "cabined, cribbed, con 
 fined !" 
 
MABEL WYNNE. 
 
 MABEL WYNNE, 
 
 MABEL WYNNE was the topmost sparkle on the 
 crest of the first wave of luxury that swept over New 
 York. Up to her time, the aristocratic houses were 
 furnished with high bullets, high-backed and hair- 
 bottomed mahogany chairs, one or two family portraits, 
 and a silver tray on the side board, containing cordials 
 and brandy for morning-callers. In the centre of the 
 room hung a chandelier of colored lamps, and the I 
 lighting of this and the 
 
 hiring of three negroes (to i 
 h say, a clarinet, a baseviol, 
 
 "fatigue," as the French say, a clarinet, a baseviol, j 
 and a violin) were the only preparations necessary for j 
 the most distinguished ball. About the time that j 
 Mabel left school, however, some adventurous pointer 
 of the Dutch haul ton ventured upon lamp-stands for 
 the corners of the rooms, stuffed red benches along , 
 the walls, and chaHied floors; and upon this a French 
 family of great beauty, residing in the lower part of 
 Broadway, ventured upon a fancy ball with wax-candles 
 instead of lamps, French dishes and sweetmeats in 
 stead of pickled oysters and pink champagne ; and, 
 the door thus opened, luxury came in like a flood. 
 Houses were built on a new plan of sumptuous ar 
 rangement, the ceiling stained in fresco, and the 
 columns of the doors within painted in imitation of 
 bronze and marble; and at last the climax was topped 
 by Mr. Wynne, who sent the dimensions of every 
 room in his new house to an upholsterer in Paris, 
 
 would show better the humbler her surroundings. 
 As Perdita upon the greensward, and open to a shep- 
 j herd s wooing, I should inevitably sling my heart upou 
 a crook " 
 
 "And forswear that formidable, impregnable vow of 
 celibacy ?" interrupted Miss Wynne. 
 
 " I am only supposing a case, and you are not likely 
 to be a shepherdess on the green." But Mr. Blythe s 
 smile ended in a look of clouded revery, and, after 
 a few minutes conversation, ill sustained by the gen 
 tlemen, who seemed each in the other s way, they 
 rose and took their leave Mr. Bellallure lingering 
 last, for he was a lover avowed. 
 
 As the door closed upon her admirer, Miss Wynne 
 drew a letter from her portfolio, and turning it over 
 and over with a smile of abstracted curiosity, opened 
 and read it for the second time. She had received it 
 that morning from an unknown source, and as it was 
 rather a striking communication, perhaps the reader 
 had better know something of it before we go on. 
 
 It commenced without preface, thus: 
 
 " On a summer morning, twelve years ago, a 
 chimney-sweep, after doing his work and singing his 
 song, commenced his descent. It was the chimney 
 of a large house, and becoming embarrassed among 
 the flues, he lost his way and found himself on the 
 
 with carle blanche as to costliness and style, and the , hearth of a sleeping-chamber occupied by a child. 
 fournisscur to come out himself and see to the arrange- jj The sun was just breaking through the curtains of 
 ment and decoration. r 16 roorn a vacate d bed showed that some one had 
 
 Jt was Manhattan tea-time, old style, and while risen lately, probably the nurse, and the sweep, with 
 Mr. Wynne, who had the luxury of a little plain h an irresistible impulse, approached the unconscious 
 furniture in the basement, was comfortably taking his j little sleeper. She lay with her head upon a round 
 
 toast and hyson below stairs, Miss Wynne was just 
 announced as "at home," by the black footman, and 
 two of her admirers made their highly-scented entree. 
 They were led through a suite of superb rooms, light 
 ed with lamps hid in ahbaster vases, and ushered in 
 at a mirror-door beyond, where, in a tent of fluted silk, 
 with ottomans and draperies of the same stuff, ex 
 quisitely arranged, the imperious Mabel held her 
 court of teens. 
 
 Mabel Wynne was one of those accidents of sover 
 eign beauty which nature seems to take delight in mis 
 placing in the world like the superb lobelia flashing 
 among the sedges, or the golden oriole pluming his 
 dazzling wings in the depth of a wilderness. She 
 was no less than royal in all her belongings. Her 
 features expressed consciousness of sway a sway 
 whose dictates had been from infancy anticipated. 
 
 arm buried in flaxen curls, and* the smile of a dream 
 on her rosy and parted lips. It was a picture of 
 singular loveliness, and something in the heart of that 
 boy-sweep, as he stood and looked upon the child, 
 knelt to it with an agony of worship. The tears gush 
 ed to his eyes. He stripped the sooty blanket from 
 his breast, and looked at the skin white upon his side. 
 j The contrast between his condition and that of the 
 fair child sleeping before him brought the blood to his 
 blackened brow with the hot rush of lava. He knelt 
 j beside the bed on which she slept, took her hand in 
 j his sooty grasp, and with a kiss upon the white and 
 ! dewy fingers poured his whole soul with passionate 
 earnestness into a resolve. 
 
 " Hereafter you may learn, if you wish, the first 
 struggles of that boy in the attempt to diminish the 
 distance between yourself and him for you will have 
 
 Never a surprise had startled those languishing eyelids j understood that you were the beautiful child he saw 
 from their deliberateness never a suffusion other than | j asleep. *I repeat that it is twelve years since he stood 
 the humid cloud of a tender and pensive hour had 1 1 in your chamber. He has seen you almost daily since 
 dimmed those adorable dark eyes. Or, so at least it i then watched your going out and coming in fed his 
 
 I eyes and heart on your expanding beauty, and inlorm- 
 ed himself of every change and development in your 
 With this intimate knowledge 
 
 seemed ! 
 
 She was a fine creature, nevertheless Mabel 
 Wynne ! But she looked to others like a specimen 
 of such fragile and costly workmanship that nothing 
 beneath a palace would be a becoming home for her. 
 
 " For the present," said Mr. Bellallure, one of the 
 gentlemen who entered, " the bird has a fitting cage." 
 
 Miss Wynne only smiled in reply, and the other 
 gentleman took upon himself to be the interpreter of 
 her unexpressed thought. 
 
 " The cage is the accessory not the bird," said 
 Mr. Blythe, " and, for iny part, 1 think Miss Wynne 
 
 I mind and character. 
 of you, and with the expansion of his own intellect, 
 his passion has deepened and strengthened. It pos 
 sesses him now as life does his heait, and will endure 
 as long. But his views with regard to you have 
 changed, nevertheless. 
 
 " You will pardon the presumption of my first 
 feeling that to attain my wishes I had only to be 
 come your equal. It was a natural error for my 
 agony at realizing the difference of our conditions iu 
 
MABEL WYNNE. 
 
 life was enough to absorb me at the time but it is 
 surprising to me how long that delusion lasted. I am 
 rich now. I have lately added to my fortune the last 
 acquisition I thought desirable. B ut with the thought 
 of the next thing to be done, came like a thunderbolt 
 upon me the feai* that after all my efforts you might 
 be destined for another! The thought is simple 
 enough. You would think that it would have haunted 
 me from the beginning. But I have either uncon 
 sciously shut my eyes to it, or I have been so absorbed 
 in educating and enriching myself that that goal only 
 was visible to me. It was perhaps fortunate for my 
 perseverance that I was so blinded. Of my midnight 
 studies, of my labors, of all my plans, self-denials, and 
 anxieties, you have seemed the reward ! I have never 
 gained a thought, never learned a refinement, never 
 turned over gold and silver, that it was not a step 
 nearer to Mabel Wynne. And now, that in worldly 
 advantages, after twelve years of effort and trial, I 
 stand by your side at last, a thousand men who never 
 thought of you till yesterday are equal competitors 
 with me for your hand ! 
 
 "But, as I said, my views with regard to you have 
 changed. I have, with bitter effort, conquered the 
 selfishness of this one lifetime ambition. I am devo 
 ted to you, as I have been from the moment I first 
 saw you life and fortune. These are still yours 
 but without the price at which you might spurn them. 
 My person is plain and unattractive. You have seen 
 me, and shown me no preference. There are others 
 whom you receive with favor. And with your glorious 
 beauty, and sweet, admirably sweet qualities of char 
 acter, it would be an outrage to nature that you should 
 not choose freely, and be mated with something of 
 your kind. Of those who now surround you I see no 
 one worthy of you but he may come ! Jealousy 
 shall not blind me to his merits. The first mark of 
 your favor (and I shall be aware of it) will turn upon 
 him my closest, yet most candid scrutiny. He must 
 love you well for I shall measure his love by my 
 own. He must have manly beauty, and delicacy, and 
 honor he must be worthy of you, in short but he 
 need not be rich. He who steps between me and you 
 takes the fortune I hadamassed for you. 1 tell you 
 this that you may have no limit in your choice for the 
 worthiest of a woman s lovers is often barred from her 
 by poverty. 
 
 "Of course I have made no vow against seeking 
 your favor. On the contrary, I shall lose no oppor 
 tunity of making myself agreeable to you. It is against 
 my nature to abandon hope, though I am painfully 
 conscious of my inferiority to other men in the quali 
 ties which please a woman. All I have done is to 
 deprive my pursuit of its selfishness to make it sub 
 servient to your happiness purely as it still would be 
 were I the object of your preference. You will hear 
 from me at any crisis of your feelings. Pardon my 
 being a spy upon you. I know you well enough to 
 be sure that this letter will be a secret since 1 wish 
 it. Adieu." 
 
 Mabel laid her cheek in the hollow of her hand and 
 mused long on this singular communication. It stirred 
 her romance, but it wakened still more her curiosity. 
 Who was he? She had "seen him and shown him 
 no preference !" Which could it be of the hundred 
 of herchance-made acquaintances ? She conjectured 
 at some disadvantage, for " she had come out" within 
 the past year only, and her mother having long been 
 dead, the visiters to the house were all but recently 
 made known to her. She could set aside two thirds 
 of them, as sons of families well known, but there 
 were at least a score of others, any one of whom might, 
 twelve years before, have been as obscure as her 
 anonymous lover. Whoever he might be, Mabel 
 thought he could hardly come into her presence again 
 
 without betraying himself, and, with a pleased smile 
 at the thought of the discovery, she again locked up 
 the letter. 
 
 Those were days (to be regretted or not, as you 
 please, dear reader !) when the notable society of 
 New York revolved in one self-complacent and clear 
 ly-defined circle. Call it a wheel, and say that the 
 centre was a belle and the radii were beaux (the 
 periphery of course composed of those who could 
 "down with the dust"). And on the fifteenth of July, 
 regularly and imperatively, this fashionable wheel 
 rolled off to Saratoga. 
 
 " Mabel ! my daughter !" said old Wynne, as he 
 
 bade her good night the evening before starting for 
 
 the springs, " it is useless to be blind to the fact that 
 
 among your many admirers you have several very 
 
 pressing lovers suiters for your hand I may safely 
 
 say. Now, I do not wish to put any unnecessary re- 
 
 i straint upon your choice, but as you are going to a 
 
 | gay place, where you are likely to decide the matter 
 
 j in your own mind, I wish to express an opinion. You 
 
 j may give it what weight you think a father s judg- 
 
 j ment should have in such matters. I do not like Mr. 
 
 ! Bellallure for, beside my prejudice against the man, 
 
 we know nothing of his previous life, and he may be 
 
 a swindler or anything else. I do like Mr. Blythe 
 
 j for I have known him many years, he comes of a 
 
 ! most respectable family, and he is wealthy and worthy. 
 
 j These two seem to me the most in earnest, and you 
 
 apparently give them the most of your time. Ifthede- 
 
 I cision is to be between them, you have my choice. 
 
 Good night, my love !" 
 
 Some people think it is owing to the Saratoga 
 water. I differ from them. The water is an "altera 
 tive," it is true but I think people do not so much 
 alter as develop at Saratoga. The fact is clear enough 
 that at the springs we change our opinionsof almost 
 everybody but (though it seems a bold supposition 
 at first glance) I am inclined to believe it is because 
 we see so much more of them ! Knowing people in 
 the city and knowing them at the springs is very much 
 in the same line of proof as tasting wine and drinking 
 a bottle. Why, what is a week s history of a city ac 
 quaintance? A morning call thrice a week, a diurnal 
 bow in Broadway, and perhaps a quadrille or two in 
 the party season. What chance in that to ruffle a 
 temper or try a weakness? At the springs, now, dear 
 lady, you wear a man all day like a shoe. Down at 
 the platform with him to drink the waters before break 
 fast strolls on the portico with him till ten drives with 
 him to Barheight s till dinner lounges in the draw 
 ing-room with him till tea dancing and promenading 
 with him till midnight very little short altogether of 
 absolute matrimony ; and, like matrimony, it is a very 
 severe trial. Your " best fellow" is sure, to be found 
 out, and so is your plausible fellow, your egotist, and 
 I your "spoon." 
 
 Mr. Beverly Bellallure had cultivated the male 
 I attractions with marked success. At times he proba- 
 [ bly thought himself a plain man, and an artist who 
 should only paint what could be measured with a rule, 
 I would have made a plain portrait of Mr. Bellallure. 
 But the atmosphere of the man ! There is a phys 
 iognomy in movement there is aspect in the har 
 monious link between mood and posture there is ex 
 pression in the face of which the features are as much 
 a portrait as a bagpipe is a copy of a Scotch song. 
 Beauty, my dear artist, can not always be translated 
 by canvass and oils. You must paint " the magnetic 
 fluid" to get a portrait of some men. Sir Thomas 
 Lawrence seldom painted anything else as you may 
 see by his picture of Lady Blessington, which is like 
 her without having copied a single feature of her face. 
 Yet an artist would be very much surprised if you 
 should offer to sit to him for your magnetic atmo 
 sphere though it expresses (does it not?) exactly 
 
MABEL WYNNE. 
 
 what you want when you order a picture ! You wish 
 to be painted as your appear to those who love you 
 a picture altogether unrecognisable by those who love 
 you not. 
 
 Mr. Bellallure, then, was magnetically handsome 
 positively plain. He dressed with an art beyond 
 detection. He spent his money as if he could dip it 
 at will out of Pactolus. He was intimate with nobody, 
 and so nobody knew his history ; but he wrote him 
 self on the register of Congress hall as "from New 
 York," and he threw all his forces into one unmista 
 kable demonstration the pursuit of Miss Mabel 
 Wynne. 
 
 But Mr. Bellallure had a formidable rival. Mr. 
 Blythe was as much in earnest as he, though he play 
 ed his game with a touch-and-go freedom, as if he 
 was prepared to lose it. And Mr. Blythe had very 
 much surprised those people at Saratoga who did not 
 know that between a very plain man and a very elegant 
 man there is often but the adding of the rose-leaf to 
 the brimming jar. fie was perhaps a little gayer 
 than in New York, certainly a little more dressed, 
 certainly a little more prominent in general conversa 
 tion but without any difference that you could swear 
 to, Mr. Blythe, the plain and reliable business man, 
 whom everybody esteemed without particularly ad 
 miring, had become Mr. Blythe the model of ele 
 gance and ease, the gentleman and conversationist 
 par excellence. And nobody could tell how the statue 
 could have Iain so long unsuspected in the marble. 
 
 The race for Miss Wynne s hand and fortune was 
 a general sweepstakes, and there were a hundred men 
 at the springs ready to take advantage of any falling 
 back on the part of the two on the lead ; but with 
 Blythe and Bellallure Miss Wynne herself seemed 
 fully occupied. The latter had a " friend at court" 
 the belief, kept secret in the fair Mabel s heart, that 
 he was the romantic lover of whose life and fortune 
 she had been the inspiration. She was an eminently 
 romantic girl with all her strong sense ; and the devo 
 tion which had proved itself so deep and controlling 
 was in reality the dominant spell upon her heart. 
 She felt that she must love that man, whatever his 
 outside might be, and she construed the impenetrable 
 silence with which Bellallure received her occasional 
 hints as to his identity, into a magnanimous deter 
 mination to win her without any advantage from the 
 romance of his position. 
 
 Yet she sometimes wished it had been Mr. Blythe! 
 The opinion of her father had great weight with her; 
 but, more than that, she felt instinctively that he was 
 the safer man to be intrusted with a woman s happi 
 ness. If there had been a doubt if her father had 
 not assured her that " Mr. Blythe came of a most 
 respectable family" if the secret had wavered be 
 tween them she would have given up to BeMallure 
 without a sigh. Blythe was everything she admired 
 and wished for in a husband but the man who had 
 made himself for her, by a devotion unparalleled even 
 in her reading of fiction, held captive her dazzled im 
 agination, if not her grateful heart. She made con 
 stant efforts to think only of Bellallure, but the efforts 
 were .preceded ominously with a sigh. 
 
 And now Bellallure sstar seemed in theascendant 
 for urgent business called Mr. Wynne to the city, and 
 on the succeeding day Mr. Blythe followed him, 
 though with an assurance of speedy return. Mabel 
 was left under the care of an indulgent chaperon, who 
 took a pleasure in promoting the happiness of the 
 supposed lovers ; and driving, lounging, waltzing, and 
 promenading, Bellallure pushed his suit with ardor 
 unremitted. He was a skilful master of the art of 
 wooing, and it would have been a difficult woman in 
 deed who would not have been pleased with his soci 
 etybut the secret in Mabel s breast was the spell by 
 which he held her. 
 
 7 
 
 A week elapsed, and Bellallure pleaded the receipt 
 of unexpected news, and left suddenly for New York 
 to Mabel s surprise exacting no promise at parting, 
 though she felt that she should have given it with re 
 luctance. The mail of the second day following 
 brought her a brief letter from her father, requesting 
 her immediate return; and more important still, a note 
 from her incognito lover. It ran thus: 
 
 " You will recognise my handwriting again. I have 
 little to say for I abandon the intention I had formed 
 to comment on your apparent preference. Your hap 
 piness is iu your own hands. Circumstances which 
 will be explained to you, and which will excuse this 
 abrupt forwardness, compel me to urge you to an im 
 mediate choice. On your arrival at home, you will 
 meet me in your father s house, where I shall call to 
 await you. I confess tremblingly, that I still cherish 
 a hope. If I am not deceived if you can consent to 
 love me if my long devotion is to be rewarded take 
 my hand when you meet me. That moment will de 
 cide the value of my life. But be prepared also to 
 name another if you love him for there is a neces 
 sity, which I can not explain to you till you have 
 chosen your husband, that this choice should be made 
 on your arrival. Trust and forgive one who has so 
 long loved you!" 
 
 Mabel pondered long on this strange letter. Her 
 spirit at moments revolted against its apparent dicta 
 tion, but there was the assurance, which she could 
 not resist trusting, that it could be explained and for 
 given. At all events, she was at liberty to fulfil its 
 requisitions or not and she would decide when the 
 time came. Happy was Mabel unconsciously hap 
 py in the generosity and delicacy of her unnamed 
 lover! Her father, by one of the sudden reverses of 
 mercantile fortune, had been stripped of his wealth 
 in a day! Stunned and heart-broken, he knew not 
 how to break it to his daughter, but he had written 
 for her to return. His sumptuous house had been 
 sold over his head, yet the purchaser, whom lie did 
 not know, had liberally offered the use of it till his 
 affairs were settled. And, meantime, his ruin was 
 made public. The news of it, indeed, had reached 
 Saratoga before the departure of Mabel but there 
 | were none willing to wound her by speaking of it. 
 
 The day was one of the sweetest of summer, and 
 | as the boat ploughed her way down the Hudson, Ma- 
 j bel sat on the deck lost in thought. Her father s 
 opinion of Bellallure, and his probable displeasure at 
 . her choice, weighed uncomfortably on her mind, 
 i She turned her thoughts upon Mr. Blythe, and felt sur- 
 j prised at the pleasure with which she remembered his 
 j kind manners and his trust-inspiring look. She be- 
 j gan to reason with herself more calmly than she had 
 i power to do with her lovers around her. She con- 
 fessed to herself that Bellallure might have the ro 
 mantic perseverance shown in the career of the chim 
 ney-sweep, and still be deficient in qualities necessary 
 to domestic happiness. There seemed to her some 
 thing false about Bellallure. She could not say in 
 what but he had so impressed her. A long day s 
 silent "reflection deepened this impression, and Mabel 
 j arrived at the city with changed feelings. She pre 
 pared herself to meet him at her father s house, and 
 j show him by her manner that she could accept nei 
 ther his hand nor his fortune. 
 
 Mr. Wynne was at the door to receive his daughter, 
 and Mabel felt relieved, for she thought that his pres- 
 sence would bar all explanation between herself and 
 Bellallure. The old man embraced her with an effu 
 sion of tears which she did not quite understand, but 
 he led her to the drawing-room and closed the door. 
 Mr. Blythe stood before her ! 
 
 Forgetting the letter dissociated wholly as it was, 
 in her mind, with Mr. Blythe Mabel ran to him 
 with frank cordiality and gave him her hand ! Blythe 
 
98 
 
 THE GHOST-BALL AT CONGRESS HALL. 
 
 stood a moment his hand trembling in hers and as 
 a suspicion of the truth flashed suddenly on Mabel s 
 mind, the generous Jover drew her to his bosom and 
 folded her passionately in his embrace. Mabel s 
 struggles were slight, and her happiness unexpectedly 
 complete. 
 
 The marriage was like other marriages. 
 
 Mr. Wynne had drawn a little on his imagination 
 in recommending Mr. Blythe to his daughter as "a 
 young man of most respectable family." 
 
 | Mr. Blythe was the purchaser of Mr. Wynne s su 
 perb house, and the old man ended his days under its 
 roof happy to the last in the society of the Blythes, 
 
 j large and little. 
 
 Mr. Bellallure turned out to be a clever adventurer, 
 and had Mabel married him, she would have been 
 Mrs. Bellallure No. 2 possibly No. 4. He thought 
 himself too nice a young man for monopoly. 
 
 I think my story is told if your imagination has 
 
 I rilled up the interstices, that is to say. 
 
 THE GHOST-BALL AT CONGRESS HALL, 
 
 IT was the last week of September, and the keeper 
 of " Congress hall" stood on his deserted colonnade. 
 Ths dusty street of Saratoga was asleep in the still 
 ness of village afternoon. The whittlings of the stage- 
 runners at the corners, and around the leaning posts, 
 were fading into dingy undistinguishableness. Stiff 
 and dry hung the slop-cloths at the door of the livery 
 stable, and drearily clean was doorway and stall. 
 " The season" was over. 
 
 " Well, Mr. B !" said the Boniface of the 
 
 great caravansary, to a gentlemanly-looking invalid, 
 crossing over from the village tavern on his way to 
 Congress spring, " this looks like the end of it ! A 
 
 slimmish season, though, Mr. B ! Gad, things 
 
 isn t as they used to be in your time ! Three months 
 we used to have of it, in them days, and the same 
 people coming and going all summer, and folks own 
 horses, and all the ladies drinking champagne ! And 
 every hop was as good as a ball, and a ball when do 
 you ever see such balls now-a-days ? Why, here s 
 
 all my best wines in the cellar; and as to beauty 
 
 pooh! they re done coming here, any how, are the 
 belles, such as belles was!" 
 
 " You may say that, mine host, you may say that!" 
 replied the damaged Corydon, leaning heavily on his 
 cane, " what they re all gone, now, eh nobody at 
 the United States ? " 
 
 "Not a soul and here s weather like August! 
 
 capital weather for young ladies to walk out evenings, 
 and, for a drive to Barheight s nothing like it ! It s 
 a sin, /say, to pass such weather in the city ! Why 
 shouldn t they come to the springs in the Indian 
 summer, Mr. B ?" 
 
 Coming events seemed to have cast their shadows 
 before. As Boniface turned his eyes instinctively 
 toward the sand hill, whose cloud of dust was the 
 precursor of new pilgrims to the waters, and the sign 
 for the black boy to ring the bell of arrival, behold, on 
 its summit, gleaming through the nebulous pyramid, 
 like a lobster through the steam of the fisherman s 
 pot, one of the red coaches of " the People s Line." 
 
 And another! 
 
 And another! 
 
 And another! 
 
 Down the sandy descent came the first, while the 
 driver s horn, intermittent with the crack of his whip, 
 set to bobbing every pine cone of the adjacent wil 
 derness. 
 
 " Prrr ru te too toot pash ! crack ! snap ! 
 prrrr r rut rut nut ! ! G lang ! Hip !" 
 
 Boniface laid his hand on the pull of the porter s 
 bell, but the thought flashed through his mind that 
 he might have been dreaming was he awake ? 
 
 And, marvel upon wonder ! a horn of arrival from 
 
 the other end of the village ! And as he turned his 
 
 eyes in that direction, he saw the dingier turnouts 
 
 from Lake Sacrament extras, wagons every variety 
 
 of rattletrap conveyance pouring in like an Irish 
 
 I funeral on the return, and making (oh, climax more 
 
 ; satisfactory !) straight, all, for Congress Hall ! 
 
 Events now grew precipitate 
 
 Ladies were helped out with green veils parasols 
 
 and baskets -were handed after them baggage was 
 
 chalked and distributed (and parasols, baskets, and 
 
 ! baggage, be it noted, were all of the complexion that 
 
 I innkeepers love, the indefinable look which betrays 
 
 the owner s addictedness to extras) and now there 
 
 I was ringing of bells ; and there were orders for the 
 
 I woodcocks to be dressed with pork chemises, and for 
 
 | the champagne to be iced, the sherry not and 
 
 ;j through the arid corridors of Congress hall floated 
 
 | a delicious toilet air of cold cream and lavender and 
 
 i ladies maids came down to press out white dresses, 
 
 I while the cook heated the curling irons and up and 
 
 I down the stairs flitted, with the blest confusion of 
 
 : | other days, boots and iced sangarees, hot water, towels, 
 
 | i and mint-julepsall delightful, but all incomprehen- 
 
 I sible ! Was the summer encored, or had the Jews 
 | gone back to Jerusalem? To the keeper of Con- 
 
 I gress hall the restoration of the millenium would have 
 
 | been a rush-light to this second advent of fun-and- 
 
 \ fashion-dom ! 
 
 Thus far we have looked through the eves of the 
 
 : person (pocket-ually speaking) most interested in the 
 singular event we wished to describe. Let us now 
 
 i (tea being over, and your astonishment having had 
 
 | time to breathe) take the devil s place at the elbow of 
 the invalided dandy beforementioned, and follow him 
 over to Congress Hall. It was a mild night and, as I 
 said before (or meant to, if I did not), August, having 
 been prematurely cut off by his raining successor, 
 seemed up again, like Hamlet s governor, and bent on 
 
 i walking out his time. 
 
 Rice (you remember Rice famous for his lemon 
 ades with a corrective) Rice, having nearly ignited 
 
 I 1 his forefinger with charging wines at dinner, was out 
 || to cool on the colonnade, and B , not strong 
 
 enough to stand about, drew a chair near the drawing- 
 room window, and begged the rosy barkeeper to throw 
 what light he could upon this multitudinous appari 
 tion. Rice could only feed the fire of his wonder 
 with the fuel of additional circumstances. Coaches 
 had been arriving from every direction till the house 
 was full. The departed black band had been stopped 
 at Albany, and sent back. There seemed no married 
 people in the party at least, judging by dress and 
 flirtation. Here and there a belle, a little on the 
 wane, but all most juvenescent in gayety, and (Rice 
 
THE GHOST-BALL AT CONGRESS HALL. 
 
 99 
 
 thought) handsomer girls than had been at Congress 
 hall since the days of the Albany regency (the regency 
 of beauty), ten years ago ! Indeed, it struck Rice 
 that he had seen the faces of these lovely girls before, 
 though they whom he thought they resembled had 
 long since gone off the stage grandmothers, some of 
 them, now! 
 
 Rice had been told, also, that there was an extraor 
 dinary and overwhelming arrival of children and 
 nurses at the Pavilion Hotel, but he thought the 
 eport smelt rather like a jealous figment of the 
 Pavilioners. Odd, if true that s all ! 
 
 Mr. B had taken his seat on the colonnade, as 
 
 Shakspere expresses it, "about cock-shut time" 
 twilight and in the darkness made visible of the 
 rooms within, he could only distinguish the outline of 
 some very exquisite, and exquisitely plump figures 
 gliding to and fro, winged, each one, with a pair of 
 rather stoutish, but most attentive admirers. As the 
 curfew hour stole away, however, the ladies stole away 
 with it, to dress; and at ten o clock the sudden out 
 break of the full band in a mazurka, drew Mr. 
 
 B s attention to the dining-room frontage of the 
 
 colonnade, and, moving his chair to one of the win 
 dows, the cockles of his heart warmed to see the 
 orchestra in its glory of old thirteen black Orpheuses 
 perched on a throne of dining-tables, and the black 
 veins on their shining temples strained to the crack j 
 of mortality with their zealous execution. The 
 waiters, meantime, were lighting the tinBriareus (that 
 spermaciti monster so destructive to broadcloth), and 
 the side-sconces and stand-lamps, and presently a I 
 blaze of light flooded the dusty evergreens of the j 
 facade, and nothing was wanting but some fashionable 
 Curtius to plunge first into the void some adventu 
 rous Benton, " to set the ball in motion." 
 
 Wrapped carefully from the night-air in his cloak 
 
 and belcher, B sat, looking earnestly into the 
 
 room, and to his excited senses there seemed, about 
 all this supplement to the summer s gayety, a weird 
 mysteriousness, an atmosphere of magic, which was 
 observable, he thought, evefi in* the burning of the I 
 candles! And as to Johnson, the sable leader of the j 
 band " God s-my-life," as Bottom says, how like a! 
 tormented fiend writhed the cremona betwixt his chin 
 and white waistcoat ! Such music, from instruments 
 so vexed, had never split the ears of the Saratoga 
 groundlings since the rule of Saint Dominick (in 
 whose hands even wine sparkled to song) no, not 
 since the golden age of the Springs, when that lord of 
 harmony and the nabobs of lower Broadway made, of 
 Congress hall, a paradise for the unmarried ? Was 
 Johnson bewitched ? Was Congress hall repossessed 
 
 by the spirits of the past ? If ever Mr. B -, sitting 
 
 in other years on that resounding colonnade, had felt \ 
 the magnetic atmosphere of people he knew to Be up 
 stairs, he felt it now ! If ever he had been contented, 
 knowing that certain bright creatures would presently 
 glide into the visual radius of black Johnson, he felt 
 contented, inexplicably, from the same cause nmo 
 expecting, as if such music could only be their herald, 
 the entrance of the same bright creatures, no older, 
 and as bright after years of matrimony. And now and 
 
 then B pressed his hand to his head for he was 
 
 not quite sure that he might not be a little wandering 
 in his mind. 
 
 But suddenly the band struck up a march! The 
 
 first bar was played through, and B looked at 
 
 the door, sighing that this sweet hallucination this 
 waking dream of other days was now to be scattered 
 by reality He could have filliped that mercenary 
 Ethiopian i n the nose for playing such music to such 
 falling off from the past as he now looked to see 
 enter. 
 
 A lady crossed the threshold on a gentleman s arm. 
 
 " Ha ! ha!" said B , trying with a wild effort to 
 
 laugh, and pinching his arm into a blood-blister, 
 
 " come this is too good ! Helen K ! oh, no ! 
 
 Not quite crazy yet, I hope not so far gone yet ! 
 
 Yet it is! I swear it is! And not changed either ! 
 
 j Beautiful as ever, by all that is wonderful ! Psha ! 
 
 I ll not be mad ! Rice ! are you there? Why, who 
 
 are these coming after her? Julia L ! Anna 
 
 K , and my friend Fanny ! The D s ! The 
 
 M s! Nay, I m dreaming, silly fool that I am! 
 
 I ll call for a light! Waiter!! Where the devil s 
 the bell ?" 
 
 And as poor B insisted on finding himself in 
 
 I bed, reached out his hand to find the bell-pull, one of 
 | the waiters of Congress hall came to his summons. 
 j The gentleman wanted nothing, and the waiter 
 j thought he had cried out in his nap ; and rather 
 i embarrassed to explain his wants, but still unconvinced 
 
 I of his freedom from dream-land, B drew his hat 
 
 over his eyes, and his cloak around him, and screwed 
 < up his courage to look again into the enchanted ball 
 room. 
 
 The quadrilles were formed, and the lady at the 
 | head of the first set was spreading her skirts for the 
 i ai ant- deux. She was a tall woman, superbly hand 
 some, and moved with the grace of a frigate at sea 
 with a nine-knot breeze. Eyes capable of taking in 
 lodgers (hearts, that is to say) of any and every calibre 
 and quality, a bust fora Cornelia, a shape all love and 
 lightness, and a smile like a temptation of Eblis 
 there she was and there were fifty like her not like 
 her, exactly, either, but of her constellation belles, 
 every one of them, who will be remembered by old 
 men, and used for the disparagement of degenerated 
 
 younglings splendid women of Mr. B s time, 
 
 and of the palmy time of Congress hall 
 
 " The past the past the past !" 
 
 Out on your staring and unsheltered lantern of 
 brick your " United States hotel," stiff, modern, and 
 promiscuous! Whoever passed a comfortable hour 
 in its glaring cross-lights, or breathed a gentle senti 
 ment in its unsubdued air and townish open-to-dusti- 
 ness ! What is it to the leafy dimness, the cool shad 
 ows, the perpetual and pensive dcmi-jour what to the 
 ten thousand associations of Congress hall ! Who 
 has not lost a heart (or two) on the boards of that 
 primitive wilderness of a colonnade ! Whose first 
 adorations, whose sighs, hopes, strategies, and flirta 
 tions, are not ground into that warped and slipper- 
 polished floor, like heartache and avarice into the 
 bricks of Wall street! Lord bless you, madam! 
 don t desert old Congress hall ! We have done going 
 to the Springs (we) and wouldn t go there again 
 for anything, but a good price for a pang (that is, 
 except to see such a sight as we are describing) but 
 we can not bear, in our midsummer flit through the 
 Astor, to see charming girls bound for Saratoga, and 
 hear no talk of Congress hall ! What ! no lounge 
 on those proposal sofas no pluck at the bright green 
 leaves of those luxuriant creepers while listening to 
 " the veice of the charmer" no dawdle on the steps 
 to the spring (mamma gone on before) no hunting 
 for that glow-worm in the shrubbery by the music- 
 room no swing no billiards no morning gossips 
 with the few privileged beaux admitted to the up 
 stairs entry, ladies wing ? 
 
 " I d sooner be set quick i the earth. 
 And bowled to death with turnips," 
 
 than assist or mingle in such ungrateful forgetfulness 
 of pleasure-land ! But what do we with a digression 
 in a ghost-story ? 
 
 The ball went on. Champagne of the "exploded" 
 color (pink) was freely circulated between the dances 
 (rosy wine suited to the bright days when all things 
 were tinted rose) and wit. exploded, too, in these 
 
100 
 
 THE GHOST-BALL AT CONGRESS HALL. 
 
 leaden times, went round with the wine; and as a 
 
 flass of the bright vintage was handed up to old 
 ohnson, B stretched his neck over the window- 
 sill in an agony of expectation, confident that the 
 black ghost, if ghost he were, would fail to recognise 
 the leaders of fashion, as he was wont of old, and to 
 bow respectfully to them before drinking in their pres 
 ence. Oh, murder ! not he ! Down went his black 
 poll to the music-stand, and up, and down again, and 
 
 height s, and back in time for ball and supper; and 
 the day after there was a most hilarious and memora 
 ble fishing-party to Saratoga lake, and all back again 
 in high force for the ball and supper ; and so like a 
 long gala-day, like a short summer carnival, all frolic, 
 sped the week away. Boniface, by the third day, had 
 rallied his recollections, and with many a scrape and 
 compliment, he renewed his acquaintance with the 
 belles and beaux of a brighter period of beauty and 
 
 at every dip, the white roller of that unctuous eye was gallantry. And if there was any mystery remaining 
 
 brought to bear upon some well-remembered star of 
 
 the ascendant ! He saw them as B did ! He 
 
 was not playing to an unrecognised company of late 
 comers to Saratoga anybodies from any place! He, 
 
 in the old functionary s mind as to the identity and 
 miracle of their presence and reunion, it was on the 
 one point of the ladies unfaded loveliness for, saving 
 a half inch aggregation in the waist, which was rather 
 
 the unimaginative African, believed evidently that j an improvement than otherwise, and a little more ful- 
 
 they were there in flesh Helen, the glorious, and all 
 her fair troop of contemporaries ! and that with them 
 had come back their old lovers, the gay and gallant 
 Lotharios of the time of Johnson s first blushing 
 honors of renown ! The big drops of agonized horror 
 and incredulity rolled off the forehead of Mr. B ! 
 
 But suddenly the waiters radiated to the side-doors, 
 and with the celestial felicity of star-rising and mor 
 ning-breaking, a waltz was found playing in the ears 
 of the revellers ! Perfect, yet when it did begin ! 
 "Waltzed every brain and vein, waltzed every swim 
 ming eye within the reach of its magic vibrations ! 
 Gently away floated couple after couple, and as they 
 
 circled round to his point of observation, B could 
 
 have called every waltzer by name but his heart was 
 in his throat, but his eyeballs were hot with the stony 
 immovableness of his long gazing. 
 
 Another change in the music ! Spirits of bedevil- 
 ment ! could not that waltz have been spared ! Boni 
 face stood waltzing his head from shoulder to shoulder 
 Rice twirled the head-chambermaid in the entry 
 the black and white boys spun round on the colonnade 
 the wall-flowers in the ball-room crowded their 
 chairs to the wall the candles flared embracingly 
 
 ghosts or no ghosts, dream or hallucination, B 
 
 could endure no more ! He flung off his cloak and 
 hat, and jumped in at the window. The divine Emily 
 C had that moment risen from tying her shoe. 
 
 With a nod to her partner, and a smile to herself, 
 
 B encircled her round waist, and away he flew 
 
 like Ariel, light on the toe, but his face pallid and 
 wild, and his emaciated legs playing like sticks in his 
 unfilled trousers. Twice he made the circuit of the 
 room, exciting apparently less surprise than pleasure 
 by his sudden appearance ; then, with a wavering halt, 
 and his hand laid tremulously to his forehead, he flew 
 at the hall-door at a 
 
 ness in the bust, which was a most embellishing dif 
 ference, the ten years that had gone over them had 
 made no mark on the lady portion of his guests ; and 
 as to the gentlemen but that is neither here nor there. 
 They were "men of mark," young or old, and their 
 wear and tear is, as Flute says, " a thing of naught." 
 It was revealed by the keeper of the Pavilion, after 
 the departure of the late-come revellers of Congress 
 hall, that there had been constant and secret visita 
 tions by the belles of the latter sojourn, to the numer 
 ous infantine lodgers of the former. Such a troop 
 of babies and boys, and all so lovely, had seldom 
 gladdened even the eyes of angels, out of the cheru 
 bic choir (let alone the Saratoga Pavilion), and though, 
 in their white dresses and rose-buds, the belles afore 
 spoken of looked like beautiful elder sisters to those 
 motherless younglings, yet when they came in, moth 
 ers confessed, on the morning of departure, openly 
 to superintend the preparations for travel, they had so 
 put off the untroubled maiden look from their coun 
 tenances, and so put on the indescribable growing- 
 old-iness of married life in their dress, that, to the 
 eye of an observer, they might well have passed for 
 the mothers of the girls they had themselves seemed 
 to be, the day before, only. 
 
 Who devised, planned, and brought about, this prac 
 tical comment on thj2 wgedlessness of the American 
 haste to be old, we are not at liberty to mention. The 
 reader will have surmised, however, that it was some 
 I one who had observed the more enduring quality of 
 i beauty in other lands, and on returning to his own, 
 j looked in vain for those who, by every law of nature, 
 should be still embellishing the society of which he 
 I had left them the budding flower and ornament. To 
 get them together again, only with their contempora 
 ries, in one of their familiar haunts of pleasure to 
 
 tangent, and rushing through suggest the exclusion of everything but youthful 
 
 servants and spectators, dashed across the portico, and 
 disappeared in the darkness ! A fortnight s brain-fever 
 deprived him of the opportunity of repeating this re 
 markable flourish, and his subsequent sanity was es 
 tablished through some critical hazard. 
 
 There was some inquiry at supper about " old 
 
 B ," but the lady who waltzed with him knew 
 
 as little of his coming and going as the managers; 
 and, by one belle, who had been at some trouble in 
 other days to quench his ardor, it was solemnly be 
 lieved to be his persevering apparition. 
 
 The next day there was a drive and dinner at Bar- 
 
 I in dress, amusement, and occupation to bring to 
 meet them their old admirers, married like themselves, 
 but entering the field once more for their smiles against 
 their rejuvenescent husbands to array them as belles 
 again, and see whether it was any falling off in beauty 
 or the power of pleasing which had driven them from 
 j their prominent places in social life this was the ob- 
 I vious best way of doing his immediate circles of 
 j friends the service his feelings exacted of him; the 
 j only way, indeed, of convincing these bright creatures 
 that they had far anticipated the fading hour of bloom 
 j and youthfulness. Pensez-y ! 
 
BORN TO LOVE PIGS AND CHICKENS. 
 
 101 
 
 BORN TO LOVE PIGS AND CHICKENS, 
 
 THE guests at the Astor House were looking mourn 
 fully out of the drawing-room windows, on a certain 
 rainy day of an October passed over to history. No 
 shopping no visiting! The, morning must be passed 
 in-doors. And it was some consolation to those who 
 were in town for a few days to see the world, that their 
 time was not quite lost, for the assemblage in the large 
 drawing-room was numerous and gay. A very dressy 
 affair is the drawing-room of the Astor, and as full of 
 eyes as a peacock s tail (which, by the way, is also a 
 very dressy affair). Strangers who wish to see and be 
 seen (and especially "be seen") on rainy days, as well 
 as on sunny days, in their visits to New York, should, 
 as the phrase goes, " patronize" the Astor. As if 
 there was any patronage in getting the worth of your 
 money ! 
 
 Well the people in the drawing-room looked a 
 little out of the windows, and a great deal at each 
 other. Unfortunately, it is only among angels and 
 underbred persons that introductions can be dispensed ! 
 with, and as the guests of that day at the Astor House 
 were mostly strangers to each other, conversation was ] 
 very fitful and guarded, and any movement whatever 
 extremely conspicuous. There were four very silent ; 
 ladies on the sofa, two very silent ladies in each of the j j 
 windows, silent ladies on the ottomans, silent ladies in | 
 the chairs at the corners, and one silent lady, very 
 highly dressed, sitting on the music-stool, with her 
 back to the piano. There was here and there a gen 
 tleman in the room, weather-bound and silent; but 
 we have only to do with one of these, and with the 
 last-mentioned much-embellished young lady. 
 
 " Well, I can t sit on this soft chair all day, cousin 
 Meg !" said the gentleman. 
 
 " Sh ! call me Margaret, if you must speak so 
 loud," said the lady. "And what would you do out 
 of doors this rainy day ? I m sure it s very pleasant 
 here." 
 
 " Not for me. I d rather be thrashing in the barn. 
 But there must be some rainy-weather work in the 
 city as well as the country. There s some fun, / know, 
 that s kept for a wet day, as we keep corn-shelling and 
 grinding the tools." 
 " Dear me!" 
 .Well what now?" 
 
 " Oh, nothing ! but I do wish you wouldn febring 
 the stable with you to the Astor House." 
 
 The gentleman slightly elevated his eyebrows, and 
 took a leaf of music from the piano, and commenced | 
 diligently reading the mystic dots and lines. We have 
 ten minutes to spare before the entrance of another ! 
 person upon the scene, and we will make use of the ] 
 silence to conjure up for you, in our magic mirror, j 
 the semblance of the two whose familiar dialogue we \ 
 have just jotted down. 
 
 Miss Margaret Pifflit was a young lady who had a 
 large share of what the French call la beaute du dia- 
 ble youth and freshness. (Though, why the devil 
 should have the credit of what never belonged to him, 
 it takes a Frenchman, perhaps, to explain.) To look 
 at, she was certainly a human being in very high per 
 fection. Her cheeks were like two sound apples; her { 
 waist was as round as a stove-pipe ; her shoulders had i 
 two dimples just at the back, that looked as if they I 
 defied punching to make them any deeper; her eyes j 
 looked as if they were just made, they were so bright 1 
 
 and new ; her voice sounded like " C sharp" in a new 
 piano ; and her teeth were like a fresh break in a 
 cocoa-nut. She was inexorably, unabatedly, despe 
 rately healthy. This fact, and the difficulty of uniting 
 all the fashions of all the magazines in one dress, 
 were her two principal afflictions in this world of care. 
 She had an ideal model, to which she aspired with 
 constant longings a model resembling in figure the 
 high-born creatures whose never-varied face is seen 
 in all the plates of fashion, yet, if possible, paler and 
 more disdainful. If Miss Pifflit could have bent her 
 short wrist with the curve invariably given to the well- 
 gloved extremities of that mysterious and nameless 
 beauty ; if she could but have sat with her back to 
 her friends, and thrown her head languishingly over 
 her shoulder without dislocating her neck ; if she 
 could but have protruded from the flounce of her 
 dress a foot more like a mincing little muscle-shell, 
 and less like a jolly fat clam ; in brief, if she could 
 have drawn out her figure like the enviable joints of a 
 spy-glass, whittled off more taperly her four extremi 
 ties, sold all her uproarious and indomitable roses for 
 a pot of carmine, and compelled the publishers of the 
 magazines to refrain from the distracting multiplicity 
 of their monthly fashions with these little changes 
 in her allotment, Miss Pifflit would havf realized all 
 her maiden aspirations up to the present hour. 
 
 A glimpse will give you an idea of the gentleman 
 in question. He was not much more than he looked 
 to be a compact, athletic young man of twenty one, 
 with clear, honest blue eyes, brown face, where it was 
 not shaded by the rim of his hat, curling brown hair, 
 and an expression of fearless qualities, dashed just 
 now by a tinge of rustic bashfulness. His dress was 
 a little more expensive and gayer than was necessary, 
 and he wore his clothes in a way which betrayed Chat 
 he would be more at home in shirt-sleeves. His hands 
 were rough, and his attitude that of a man who was 
 accustomed to fling himself down on the nearest 
 bench, or swing his legs from the top rail of a fence, 
 or the box of a wagon. We speak with caution of 
 his rusticity, however, for he had a printed card, " Mr. 
 Ephraim Bracely," and he was a subscriber to the 
 " Spirit of the Times." We shall find time to say a 
 thing or two about him as we get on. 
 
 "Eph." Bracely and "Meg" Pifflit were "enga 
 ged." With the young lady it was, as the French 
 say, faule de micux, for her beau-ideal (or, in plain 
 English, her ideal beau) was a tall, pale young gentle 
 man, with white gloves, in a rapid consumption. She 
 and Eph. were second cousins, however, and as she 
 was art orphan, and had lived since childhood with his 
 father, and, moreover, had inherited the Pifflit farm, 
 which adjoined that of the Bracelys, and, moreover, 
 had been told to " kiss her little husband, and love 
 him always" by the dying breath of her mother, and 
 (moreover third) had been " let be" his sweetheart by 
 the unanimous consent of the neighborhood, why, it 
 I seemed one of those matches made in Heaven, and 
 ! not intended to be travestied on earth. It was under 
 stood that they were to be married as soon as the 
 young man s savings should enable him to pull down 
 the old Pifflit house and build a cottage, and, with a 
 fair season, that might be done in another year. 
 Meantime, Eph. was a loyal keeper of his troth, 
 though never having the trouble to win the young 
 
102 
 
 BORN TO LOVE PIGS AND CHICKENS, 
 
 lady, he was not fully aware of the necessity of court 
 ship, whether or no ; and was, besides, somewhat un 
 susceptible of the charms of moonlight, after a hard 
 day s work at haying or harvesting. The neighbors 
 thought it proof enough of his love that he never 
 " went sparking" elsewhere, and as he would rather 
 talk of his gun or his fishing-rod, his horse or his 
 crop, pigs, politics, or anything else, than of love or 
 matrimony, his companions took his engagement with 
 his cousin to be a subject upon which he felt too 
 deeply to banter, and they neither invaded his domain 
 by attentions to his sweetheart, nor suggested thought 
 by allusions to her. It was in the progress of this 
 even tenor of engagement, that some law business 
 had called old Farmer Bracely to New York, and the 
 young couple had managed to accompany him. And 
 of course nothing would do for Miss Piflh t but " the 
 Astor." 
 
 And now, perhaps, the reader is ready to be told 
 whose carriage is at the Vesey street door, and 
 who sends up a dripping servant to inquire for Miss 
 Pifflit. 
 
 It is allotted to the destiny of every country-girl to 
 have one fashionable female friend in the city some 
 body to correspond with, somebody to quote, some 
 body to write her the particulars of the last elopement, 
 somebody to send her patterns of collars, and the rise 
 and fall of tournures, and such other things as are not 
 entered into by the monthly magazines. How these 
 apparently unlikely acquaintances are formed, is as 
 much a mystery as the eternal youth of post-boys, 
 and the eternal duration of donkeys. Far be it from 
 me to pry irreverently into those pokerish corners of j 
 the machinery of the world. I go no farther than 
 the fact, that Miss Julia Hampson was an acquaintance 
 of Miss Pifflit s. 
 
 Everybody knows " Hampson and Co." 
 Miss Hampson was a good deal what the Fates had 
 tried to make her. If she had not been admirably 
 well dressed, it would have been by violent opposition 
 to the united zeal and talent of dressmakers and mil 
 liners. These important vicegerents of the Hand that 
 reserves to itself the dressing of the butterfly and 
 lily, make distinctions in the" exercise of their voca 
 tion. Wo be to an unloveable woman, if she be not 
 endowed with taste supreme. She may buy all the 
 stuffs of France, and all the colors of the rainbow, 
 but she will never get from those keen judges of fit 
 ness the loving hint, the admiring and selective per 
 suasion, with which they delight to influence the 
 embellishment of sweetness and loveliness. They 
 who talk of " anything s looking well on a pretty 
 woman," have not reflected on the lesser providence 
 of dressmakers and milliners. Woman is never mer 
 cenary but in monstrous exceptions, and no trades 
 woman of the fashion will sell taste or counsel; and, 
 in the superior style of all charming women, you see, 
 not the influence of manners upon dress, but the af 
 fectionate tribute of these dispensers of elegance to 
 the qualities they admire. Let him who doubts, go 
 shopping with his dressy old aunt to-day, and to-mor 
 row with his dear little cousin. 
 
 Miss Hampson, to whom the supplies of elegance 
 came as naturally as bread and butter, and occasioned 
 as little speculation as to the whence or how, was as 
 unconsciously elegant, of course, as a well-dressed 
 lily. She was abstractly a very beautiful girl, though 
 in a very delicate and unconspicuous style ; and by 
 dint of absolute fitness in dressing, the merit of her 
 beauty, by common observers at least, would be half 
 given to her fashionable air and unexceptionable toilet. 
 The damsel and her choice array, indeed, seemed 
 the harmonious work of the same maker. How much 
 was nature s gift, and how much was bought in Broad 
 way, was probably never duly understood by even her 
 most discriminate admirer. 
 
 But we have kept Miss Hampson too long upon the 
 stairs. 
 
 The two young ladies met with a kiss, in which (to 
 the surprise of those who had previously observed 
 Miss Mifflit) there was no smack of the latest fashion. 
 
 "My dear Julia!" 
 
 " My dear Margerine!" (This was a romantic va 
 riation of Meg s, which she had forced upon her 
 intimate friends at the point of the bayonet.) 
 
 Eph. twitched, remindingly, the jupon of his cousin, 
 and she introduced him with the formula which she 
 had found in one of Miss Austin s novels. 
 
 " Oh, but there was a mock respectfulness in that 
 deep courtesy," thought Eph. (and so there was for 
 Miss Hampson took an irresistible cue from the in 
 flated ceremoniousness of the introduction). 
 
 Eph. made a bow as cold and stiff as a frozen horse- 
 blanket. And if he could have commanded the 
 blood in his face, it would have been as dignified and 
 resentful as the eloquence of Red Jacket but that 
 rustic blush, up to his hair, was like a mask dropped 
 over his features. 
 
 "A bashful country-boy," thought Miss Hampson, 
 as she looked compassionately upon his redhot fore 
 head, and forthwith dismissed him entirely from her 
 thoughts. 
 
 With a consciousness that he had better leave the 
 room, and walk off his mortification under an um 
 brella, Eph. took his seat, and silently listened to the 
 conversation of the young ladies. Miss Hampson had 
 come to pass the morning with her friend, and she 
 took off her bonnet, and showered down upon her 
 dazzling neck a profusion of the most adorable brown 
 ringlets. Spite of his angry humiliation, the young 
 farmer felt a thrill run through his veins as the heavy 
 curls fell indolently about her shoulders. He had 
 never before looked upon a woman with emotion. He 
 hated her oh, yes ! for she had given him a look 
 that could never be forgiven but for somebody, she 
 must be the angel of the world. Eph. would have 
 given all his sheep and horses, cows, crops, and hay 
 stacks, to have seen the man she would fancy to be 
 her equal. He could not give even a guess at the 
 height of that conscious superiority from which she 
 individually looked down upon him; but it would 
 have satisfied a thirst which almost made him scream, 
 to measure himself by a man with whom she could 
 be familiar. Where was his inferiority? What was 
 it? Why had he been blind toil till now? Was 
 there no surgeon s knife, no caustic, that could carve 
 out, or cut away, burn or scarify, the vulgarities she 
 looked upon so contemptuously ? But the devil take 
 her superciliousness, nevertheless! 
 
 It was a bitter morning to Eph. Bracely, but still it 
 went like a dream. The hptel parlor was no longer 
 a stupid place. His cousin Meg had gained a con 
 sequence in his eyes, for she was the object of caress 
 from this superior creature she was the link which 
 kept her within his observation. He was too full of 
 other feelings just now to do more than acknowledge the 
 superiority of this girl to his cousin. He felt it in 
 his after thoughts, and his destiny then, for the first 
 time, seemed crossed and inadequate to his wishes. 
 ******* 
 
 (We hereby draw upon your imagination for six 
 months, courteous reader. Please allow the teller to 
 show you into the middle of the following July.) 
 
 Bracely farm, ten o clock of a glorious summer 
 morning Miss Pifflit extended upon a sofa in despair. 
 But let us go back a little. 
 
 A week before, a letter had been received from 
 Miss Hampson, who, to the delight and surprise of 
 her friend Margerine, had taken the whim to pass a 
 month with her. She was at Rockaway, and was 
 sick and tired of waltzing and the sea. Had Farmer 
 Bracely a spare corner for a poor girl ? 
 
BORN TO LOVE PIGS AND CHICKENS. 
 
 103 
 
 But Miss Pifflit s "sober second thought" was utter 
 consternation. How to lodge fitly the elegant Julia 
 Hampson? No French bed in the house, no bou 
 doir, no ottomans, no pastilles, no baths, no Psyche to 
 dress by. What vulgar wretches they would seem to 
 her. What insupportable horror she would feel at 
 the dreadful inelegance of the farm. Meg was pale 
 with terror and dismay as she went into the details of 
 anticipation. 
 
 Something must be done, however. A sleepless 
 night of reflection and contrivance sufficed to give 
 some shape to the capabilities of the case, and by 
 daylight the next morning the whole house was in 
 commotion. Meg had fortunately a large bump of 
 constructiveness, very much enlarged by her habitual 
 dilemmas-toilet. A boudoir must be constructed. 
 Fanner Bracely slept in the dried apple-room, on 
 the lower floor, and he was no sooner out of his 
 bed than his bag and baggage were tumbled up stairs, 
 his gun and Sunday whip were taken down from their 
 nails, and the floor scoured, and the ceiling white 
 washed. Eph. was by this time returned from the 
 village with all the chintz that could be bought, and a 
 paper of tacks, and some new straw carpeting; and by 
 ten o clock that night the four walls of the apartment 
 were covered with the gayly-flowered material, the 
 carpet was nailed down, and old Farmer Bracely 
 thought it a mighty nice, cool-looking place. Eph. 
 was a bit of a carpenter, and he soon knocked togeth 
 er some boxes, which, when covered with chintz, and 
 stuffed with wool, looked very like ottomans; and, 
 with a handsome cloth on the round-table, geraniums 
 in the windows, and a chintz curtain to subdue the 
 light, it was not far from a very charming boudoir, 
 and Meg began to breathe more freely. 
 
 But Eph. had heard this news with the blood hot in 
 his temples. Was that proud woman coming to look 
 again upon him with contempt, and here, too, where 
 the rusticity, which he presumed to be the object of 
 her scorn, would be a thousand times more flagrant 
 and visible? And yet, with the entreaty on his lip 
 that his cousin would refuse to receive her, his heart 
 had checked the utterance for an irresistible desire 
 sprung suddenly within him to see her, even at the 
 bitter cost of tenfold his former mortification. 
 
 Yet, as the preparations for receiving Miss Hamp 
 son went on, other thoughts took possession of his 
 mind. Eph. was not a man, indeed, to come off sec 
 ond best in the long pull of wrestling with a weak 
 ness. His pride began to show its colors. He re 
 membered his independence as a farmer, dependant 
 on no man, and a little comparison between his pur 
 suits, and life, such as he knew it to be, in a city, soon 
 put him, in his own consciousness at least, on a par 
 with Miss Hampson s connexions. This point once 
 attained, Eph. cleared his brow, and went whistling 
 about the farm as usual receiving without reply, 
 however, a suggestion of his cousin Meg s, that he 
 had better burn his old straw hat, for, in a fit of ab 
 sence, he might possibly put it on while Miss Hamp 
 son was there. 
 
 Well, it was ten o clock on the morning after 
 Miss Hampson s arrival at Bracely farm, and, as we 
 said before, Miss Pifllit was in despair. Presuming 
 that her friend would be fatigued with her journey, 
 she had determined not to wake her, but to order 
 breakfast in the boudoir at eleven. Farmer Bracely 
 and Eph. must have their breakfast at seven, however, 
 and what was the dismay of Meg, who was pouring 
 out their coffee as usual, to see the elegant Julia rush 
 into the first kitchen, courtesy very sweetly to the old 
 man, pull up a chair to the table, apologise for being 
 late, and end this extraordinary scene by producing 
 two newly-hatched chickens from her bosom! She 
 had been up since sunrise, and out at the barn, down 
 by the river, and up in the haymow, and was perfectly 
 
 enchanted with everything, especially the dear little 
 pigs and chickens ! 
 
 "A very sweet young lady!" thought old Farmer 
 Bracely. 
 
 "Very well but hang your condescension!" thought 
 Eph.. distrustfully. 
 
 "Mercy on me ! to like pigs and chickens!" men 
 tally ejaculated the disturbed and bewildred Miss Pif- 
 flit. 
 
 But with her two chicks pressed to her breast 
 with one hand, Miss Hampson managed her coffee 
 and bread and butter with the other, and chattered 
 away like a child let out of school. The air was so 
 delicious, and the hay smelt so sweet, and the trees in 
 the meadow were so beautiful, and there were no stiff 
 sidewalks, and no brick houses, and no iron railings, 
 and so many dear speckled hens, and funny little 
 chickens, and kind-looking old cows, and colts, and 
 calves, and ducks, and turkeys it was delicious it 
 was enchanting it was worth a thousand Saratogas 
 and Rockaways. How anybody could prefer the city 
 to the country, was to Miss Hampson matter of in 
 credulous wonder. 
 
 "Will you come into the boudoir?" asked Miss 
 Piffiit, with a languishing air, as her friend Julia rose 
 from breakfast. 
 
 "Boudoir!" exclaimed the city damsel, to the in 
 finite delight of old Bracely, "no, dear! I d rather go 
 out to the barn! Are you going anywhere with the 
 | oxen to-day, sir?" she added, going up to the gray- 
 headed farmer caressingly, " I should so like to ride 
 in that great cart!" 
 
 Eph. was a little suspicious of all this unexpected 
 agreeableness, but he was naturally too courteous not 
 to give way to a lady s whims. He put on his old 
 straw hat, and tied his handkerchief over his shoulder 
 (not to imitate the broad riband of a royal order, but 
 | to wipe the sweat off handily while mowing), and of 
 fering Miss Hampson a rake which stood outside the 
 door, he begged her to be ready when he came by 
 with the team. He and his father were bound to the 
 far meadow, where they were cutting hay, and would 
 like her assistance in raking. 
 
 It was a "specimen" morning, as the magazines 
 say, for the air was temperate, and the whole country 
 was laden with the smell of the new hay, which some 
 how or other, as everybody knows, never hinders or 
 overpowers the perfume of the flowers. Oh, that 
 winding green lane between the bushes was like an 
 avenue to paradise. The old cart jolted along 
 through the ruts, and Miss Hampson, standing up 
 and holding on to old Farmer Bracely, watched the 
 great oxen crowding their sides together, and looked 
 | oft over the fields, and exclaimed, as she saw glimpses 
 of the river between the trees, and seemed veritably 
 and unaffectedly enchanted. The old farmer, at least, 
 had no doubt of her sincerity, and he watched her, 
 and listened to her, with a broad honest smile of ad 
 miration on his weather-browned countenance. 
 
 The oxen were turned up to the fence, while the 
 dew dried off the hay, and Eph. and his father turned 
 to mewing, leaving "Miss Hampson to ramble about 
 over the meadow, and gather flowers by the river-side. 
 In the course of an hour, they began to rake up, and 
 she came to offer her promised assistance, and stoutly 
 | followed Eph. up and down several of the long swaths, 
 till! her face glowed under her sunbonnet as it never 
 had glowed with waltzing. Heated and tired at last, 
 she made herself a seat with the new hay under a 
 large elm, and, with her back to the tree, watched the 
 labors of her companions. 
 
 Eph. was a well-built and manly figure, and all he 
 did in the way of his vocation, he did with a fine dis 
 play of muscular power, and (a sculptor would have 
 thought) no little grace. Julia watched him as he 
 stepped along after his rake on the elastic sward, anl 
 
104 
 
 THE WIDOW BY BREVET. 
 
 she thought, for the first time, what a very handsome 
 man was young Bracely, and how much more finely 
 a man looked when raking hay, than a dandy when 
 waltzing. And for an hour she sat watching his mo 
 tion, admiring the strength with which he pitched up 
 the hay, and the grace and ease of all his movements 
 and- postures; and, after a while, she began to feel 
 drowsy with fatigue, and pulling up the hay into a fra 
 grant pillow, she lay down and fell fast asleep. 
 
 It was now the middle of the forenoon, and the old 
 farmer, who, of late years, had fallen into the habit 
 of taking a short nap before dinner, came to the big j 
 elm to pick up his waistcoat and go home. As he ap- j 
 proached the tree, he stopped, and beckoned to his son. 
 
 Eph. came up and stood at a little distance, looking 
 at the lovely picture before him. With one delicate 
 hand under her cheek, and a smile of angelic content 
 and enjoyment on her finely cut lips, Julia Hampson 
 slept soundly in the shade. One small foot escaped 
 from her dress, and one shoulder of faultless polish 
 and whiteness showed between her kerchief and her 
 sleeve. Her slight waist bent to the swell of the hay, 
 throwing her delicate and well-moulded bust into 
 high relief; and all over her neck, and in large clus 
 ters on the tumbled hay, lay those glossy brown ring 
 lets, admirably beautiful and luxuriant. 
 
 And as Eph. looked on that dangerous picture of 
 loveliness, the passion, already lying perdu in his 
 bosom, sprung to the throne of heart and reason. 
 
 (We have not room to do more than hint at the 
 consequences of this visit of Miss Hampson to the 
 country. It would require the third volume of a 
 novel to describe all the emotions of that month at 
 Bracely farm, and bring the reader, point by point, 
 gingerly and softly, to the close. We must touch 
 here and there a point only, giving the reader s im 
 agination some gleaning to do after we have been over 
 the ground.) 
 
 Eph. Bracely s awakened pride served him the good 
 turn of making him appear simply in his natural char 
 acter during the whole of Miss Hampson s visit. By 
 the old man s advice, however, he devoted himself to 
 the amusement of the ladies after the haying was 
 over; and what with fishing, and riding, and scenery- 
 hunting in the neighborhood, the young people were 
 together from morning till night. Miss Piffiit came 
 down unwillingly to plain Meg, in her attendance on 
 her friend in her rustic occupations, and Miss Hamp 
 son saw as little as possible of the inside of the bou 
 doir. The barn, and the troops of chickens, and all 
 the out-door belongings of the farm, interested her 
 daily, and with no diminution of her zeal. She 
 seemed, indeed, to have found her natural sphere in 
 the simple and affectionate life which her friend Mar- 
 gerine held in such superfine contempt; and Eph., 
 who was the natural mate to such a spirit, and him 
 self, in his own home, most unconsciously worthy of 
 love and admiration, gave himself up irresistibly to 
 his new passion. 
 
 And this new passion became apparent, at last, to 
 the incredulous eyes of his cousin. And that it was 
 timidly, but fondly returned by her elegant and high 
 bred friend, was also very apparent to Miss Pifflit. 
 And after a few jealous struggles, and a night or two 
 of weeping, she gave up to it tranquilly for, a city 
 life and a city husband, truth to say, had long been 
 her secret longing and secret hope, and she never had 
 fairly looked in the face a burial in the country with 
 the "pigs and chickens." 
 
 She is not married yet, Meg Pifflit but the rich 
 merchant, Mr. Hampson, wrecked completely with 
 the disastrous times, has found a kindly and pleasant 
 asylum for his old age with his daughter. Mrs. Brace 
 ly. And a better or lovelier farmer s wife than Julia, 
 or a happier farmer than Eph., can scarce be founJ 
 in the valley of the Susquehannah. 
 
 THE WIDOW BY BREVET, 
 
 LET me introduce the courteous reader to two la 
 dies. 
 
 Miss Picklin, a tall young lady of twenty-one, near 
 enough to good-looking to permit of a delusion on the 
 subject (of which, however, she had an entire monop 
 oly), with cheeks always red in a small spot, lips not 
 so red as the cheeks, and rather thin, sharpish nose, 
 and waist very slender; and last (not least important), 
 a very long neck, scalded on either side into a resem 
 blance to a scroll of shrivelled parchment, which might 
 or might not be considered as a mis-fortune serving 
 her as a title-deed to twenty thousand dollars. The 
 scald was inflicted, and the fortune left in consequence, > 
 by a maiden aunt who, in the babyhood of Miss Pick- [ 
 lin, attempted to cure the child s sore throat by an ap- j 
 plication of cabbage-leaves steeped in hot vinegar. 
 
 Miss Euphemia Picklin, commonly called Phemie 
 a good-humored girl, rather inclined to be fat, but j 
 gifted with several points of beauty of which she was | 
 not at all aware, very much a pet among her female 
 friends, and admitting, with perfect sincerity and sub 
 mission, her sister s exclusive right to the admiration 
 of the gentlemen of their acquaintance. 
 
 Captain Isaiah Picklin, the father of these ladies, 
 was a merchant of Salem, an importer of figs and opi 
 um, and once master of the brig "Simple Susan," 
 which still plied between his warehouse and Constan 
 tinople- nails and codfish the cargo outward. I have 
 
 not Miss Picklin s permission to mention the precise 
 date of the events I am about to record, and leaving 
 that point alone to the imagination of the reader, I 
 shall set down the other particulars and impediments 
 in her "course of true love" with historital fidelity. 
 
 Ever since she had been of sufficient age to turn her 
 attention exclusively to matrimony, Miss Picklin had 
 nourished a presentiment that her destiny was exotic; 
 that the soil of Salem was too poor, and the indigenous 
 lovers too mean; and that, potted in her twenty thou 
 sand dollars, she was a choice production, set aside for 
 flowering in a foreign clime, and destined to be trans 
 planted by a foreign lover. With this secret in her 
 bosom, she had refused one or two gentlemen of mid 
 dle age, recommended by her father, beside sundry 
 score of young gentlemen of slender revenues in her 
 own set of acquaintances, till, if there had been any 
 thing beside poetry in Shakspere s assertion that it is 
 
 " Broom groves 
 Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves," 
 
 the neighboring "brush" barrens" of Saugus would 
 have sold in lots at a premium. It was possibly from 
 the want of nightingales, to whose complaining notes 
 the gentleman of Verona "turned his distresses," that 
 the discarded of Salem preferred the consolations of 
 Phemie Picklin. 
 
 News to the Picklins ! Hassan Keni, the son of old 
 
THE WIDOW BY BREVET. 
 
 105 
 
 Abdoul Keui, was coming out in the " Simple Susan !" 
 A Turk a live Turk a young Turk, and the son of 
 her father s rich correspondeut in Turkey ! " Ah me !" 
 thought Miss Picklin. 
 
 The captain himself was rather taken aback. He 
 had known old Abdoul for many years, had traded and ! 
 smoked with him in the cafes of Galata, had gone out ! 
 with him on Sundays to lounge on the tombstones at j 
 Scutari, and had never thought twice about his yellow j 
 gown and red trowsers ; but what the deuce would be 
 
 Miss Picklin s disappointment had to be slept upon, 
 for she had made great outlay of imagination upon the 
 pomp and circumstance of wedding a white Othello in 
 the eyes of wondering Salem; but Phemie s surprise 
 took but five minutes to grow into a positive pleasure; 
 and never suspecting, at any time, that she was visible 
 to the naked eye dining the eclipsing presence of her 
 sister, she sat with a very admiring smile upon her 
 lips, and her soft eyes fixed earnestly on the stranger, 
 till she had made out a full inventory of his features, 
 
 thought of them in Salem ? True, it was his son ; proportions, manners, and other stuff available in 
 but a Turk s clothes descend from father to son i dream-land. What might be Hassan s impression of 
 through three generations; he knew that, from re- j the young ladies, could not be gathered from his man- 
 membering this very boy all but smothered in a sort of i | ner ; for, in the first place, there was the reserve which 
 
 saffron blanket, with sleeves like pillowcases his first 
 assumption of the toga virilis (not that old Picklin 
 knew Latin, but such was "his sentiment better ex 
 pressed"). Then he had never been asked to the j 
 house of the Stamboul merchant, not introduced to 
 his wives nor his daughters (indeed, he had forgotten 
 that old Keui was near cutting his throat for asking | 
 after them) but of course it was very different in Sa- : 
 lem. Young Keui must be the Picklin guest, fed and ; 
 lodged, and the girls would want to give him a tea- j 
 party. Would he sit on a chair, or want cushions on ; 
 the floor ? Would he come to dinner with his breast 
 bare, and leave his boots outside ? Would he eat rice \ 
 pudding with his fingers ? Would he think it inde 
 cent if the girls didn t wear linen cloths, Turkey fash- | 
 ion, over their mouths and noses ? Would he bring 
 his pipes ? Would he fall on his face and say his ; 
 prayers four times a day, wherever he should be (with 
 a clean place handy) ? What would the neighbors j 
 say ? The captain worked himself into a violent per 
 spiration with merely thinking of all this. 
 
 The Salemites have a famous museum, and know 
 "what manner of thing is your crocodile;" but a live 
 Turk consigned to Captain Picklin ! It set the town 
 in a fever ! 
 
 It would leave an indelicate opening for a conjec 
 ture as to Miss Picklin s present age, were I to state 
 whether or not the arrival of the "Simple Susan" was 
 reported by telegraph. She ran in with a fair wind 
 one Sunday morning, and was immediately boarded by 
 the harbor-master and Captain Picklin; and there, true 
 to the prophetic boding of old Isaiah, the young Turk 
 sat cross-legged on the quarter-deck, in a white tur 
 ban and scarlet et ceteras, smoking his father s identical 
 pipe no other, the captain would have taken his oath ! 
 Up rose Hassan, when informed who was his visiter, 
 and taking old Picklin s hand, put it to his forehead. 
 The weather-stained sea-captain had bleached in the 
 counting-house, and he had not, at first sight remem 
 bered the old friend of his father. HR passed the pipe 
 into Isaiah s hand and begged him to keep it as a me 
 mento of Abdoul, for his father had died at the, last 
 Ramazan. Hassan had come out to see the world, 
 and secure a continuance of codfish and good-will from 
 the house of Picklin, and the merchant got astride the 
 tiller of his old craft, and smoked this news through 
 his amber-mouthed legacy, while the youth went be 
 low to get ready to go ashore. 
 
 The reader of course would prefer to share the first 
 impressions of the ladies as to the young Mussulman s 
 personal appearance, and I pass at once, therefore, to 
 their disappointment, surprise, mortification, and vex 
 ation; when, as the bells were ringing for church, the 
 front door opened, their father entered, and in followed 
 a young gentleman in frockcoatand trowsers ! Yes, i 
 and in his hand a hat a black hat and on his feet no ; 
 yellow boots, but calfskin, mundane and common calf 
 skin, and with no shaved head, and no twisted shawl 
 around his waist ; nothing to be seen but a very hand 
 some young man indeed, with teeth like a fresh slice 
 of cocoa-nut meat, and a very deliberate pronunciation 
 to his bad English. 
 
 belonged to him as a Turk, and, in the second place, 
 there was a violation of all oriental notions of modesty 
 in their exposing their chins to the masculine obser 
 vation; and though he could endure the exposure, it 
 was of course with that diffidence of gaze which ac 
 companies the consciousness of improper objects 
 adding to his demeanor another shade of timidity. 
 
 Miss Picklin s shoulders were not invaded quite to 
 the limits of terra cognita by the cabbage-leaves which 
 had exercised such an influence on her destiny; and 
 as the scalds somewhat resembled two maps of South 
 America (with Patagonia under each ear), she usu 
 ally, in full dress, gave a clear view of the surrounding 
 ocean wisely thinking it better to have the geogra 
 phy of her disfigurement well understood, than, by 
 covering a small extremity (as it were the isthmus of 
 Darien), to leave an undiscovered North America to 
 the imagination. She appeared accordingly at dinner 
 in a costume not likely to diminish the modest embar 
 rassment of Mr. Keui (as she chose to call him) ex 
 tremely decollete, in a pink silk dress with short sleeves, 
 and in a turban with a gold fringe the latter, of 
 course, out of compliment to his country. "Money 
 is power," even in family circles, and it was only Miss 
 Picklin who exercised the privilege of full dress at 
 a mid-day dinner. Phemie came to table dressed as 
 at breakfast, and if she felt at all envious of her sister s 
 pink gown and elbows to match, it did not appear in 
 her pleasant face or sisterly attention. The captain 
 would allow anything, and do almost anything, for his 
 rich daughter; but as to dining with his coat on, in hot 
 weather, company or no company, he would rather 
 
 " be set quick i the earth, 
 And bowled to death with turnips" 
 
 though that is not the way he expressed it. The parti 
 carre, therefore (for there was no Mrs. Picklin), was, 
 in the matter of costume, rather incongruous, but, as 
 the Turk took it for granted that it was all according 
 to the custom of the country, the carving was achieved 
 by the shirt-sleeved captain, and the pudding " helped" 
 by his bare-armed daughter, with no particular com 
 motion in the elements. Earthquakes do not invaria 
 bly follow violations of etiquette particularly where 
 nobody is offended. 
 
 After the first day, things took their natural course 
 as near as they were able. Hassan was not very 
 quick at conversation, always taking at least five min 
 utes to put together for delivery a sentence of Eng 
 lish, but his laugh did not hang fire, nor did his nods 
 and smiles ; and where ladies are voluble (as ladies 
 sometimes are), this paucity of ammunition on the 
 gentleman s part is no prelude to discomfiture. Then 
 Phemie had a very fair smattering of Italian, and that 
 being the business language of the Levant, Hassan 
 took refuge in it whenever brought to a stand-still in 
 English a refuge, by the way, of which he seemed 
 inclined to avaif himself oftener than was consistent 
 with Miss Picklin s exclusive property in his atten 
 tion. Rebellious though Hassan might secretly have 
 been to this authority over himself, Phemie was no ac- 
 complice, natural modesty combining with the long 
 
106 
 
 THE WIDOW BY BREVET. 
 
 habit of subserviency to make her even anticipate the 
 exactions of the heiress; and so Miss Picklin had 
 "Mr. Keui" principally to herself, promenading him 
 through the streets of Salem, and bestowing her 
 sweetness upon him from his morning entrance to his 
 evening exit; Phemie relieving guard very cheerfully, 
 while her sister dressed for dinner. It was possibly 
 from being permitted to converse in Italian during this 
 half hour, that Hassan made it the only part of the 
 day in which he talked of himself and his house on 
 the Bosphorus, but that will not account also for Phe- 
 mie s sighing while she listened never having sighed 
 before in her life, not even while the same voice was 
 talking English to her sister. 
 
 Without going into a description of the Picklin tea- 
 party, at which Hassan was induced to figure in his 
 oriental costume, while Miss Picklin sat by him on a 
 cushion, turbaned and (probably) cross-legged, a la 
 Sultana, and without recording other signs satisfac 
 tory to the Salemites, that the young Turk had fallen 
 to the scalded heiress 
 
 " As does the ospray to the fish, that takes it, 
 By sovereignty of nature" - 
 
 I must come plump to the fact that, on the Monday 
 following (one week after his arrival), Hassan left Sa 
 lem, ^accompanied by Miss Picklin. As he had 
 asked for no private interview in the best parlor, and 
 had made his final business arrangements with the 
 captain, so that he could take passage from New York 
 without returning, some people were inclined to fancy 
 that Miss Picklin s demonstrations with regard to him 
 had been a little premature. And "some people" 
 chose to smile. But it was reserved for Miss Picklin 
 to look round in church, in about one year from this 
 event, and have her triumph over "some people;" 
 for she was about to sail for Constantinople "sent 
 for," as the captain rudely expressed it. But I must 
 explain. 
 
 The "Simple Susan" came in, heavily freighted 
 with a consignment from the house of Keui to Picklin 
 & Co., and a letter from the American consul at Con 
 stantinople wrapped in the invoice. With the careful 
 and ornate wording of an official epistle, it stated that 
 Effendi Hassan Keui had called on the consul, and 
 partly from the mistrust of his ability to express him 
 self in English on so delicate a subject, but more par 
 ticularly for the sake of approaching the object of his 
 affections with proper deference and ceremony, he had 
 requested that officer to prepare a document convey 
 ing a proposal of marriage to the daughter of Captain 
 Picklin. The incomplete slate of his mercantile ar 
 rangements, while at Salem the previous year, would 
 account for his silence on the subject at that time, but 
 he trusted that his preference had been sufficiently 
 manifest to the lady of his heart ; and as his prosper 
 ity in business depended on his remaining at Constan 
 tinople, enriching himself only for her sake, he was 
 sure that the singular request appended to his offer 
 would be taken as a mark of his prudence rather than 
 as a presumption. The cabin of the " Simple Susan," 
 as Captain Picklin knew, was engaged on her next pas 
 sage to Constantinople by a party of missionaries, male 
 and female, and the request was to the intent that, in 
 case of an acceptance of his offer, the fair daughter of 
 the owner would come out, under their sufficient pro 
 tection, to be wedded, if she should so please, on the 
 day of her arrival in the "Golden Horn. 1 
 
 As Miss Picklin had preserved a mysterious silence 
 on the subject of " Mr. Keui s" attentions since his 
 departure, and as a lady with twenty thousand dollars 
 in her own right is, of course, quite independent of 
 parental control, the captain, after running his eye 
 hastily through the document, called to the boy who 
 was weighing out a quintal of codfish, and bid him 
 wrap the letter in a brown paper and run with it to 
 
 Miss Picklin taking it for granted that she knew 
 more about the matter than he did, and would explain 
 it all, when he came home to dinner. 
 
 In thinking the matter over, on his way home, it 
 occurred to old Picklin that it was worded as if he had 
 but one daughter. At any rate, he was quite sure 
 that neither of his daughters was particularly specified, 
 either by name or age. No doubt it was all right, 
 however. The girls understood it. 
 
 "So, it s you, miss!" he said, as Miss Picklin look 
 ed round from the turban she was trying on before 
 the glass. 
 
 " Certainly, pa ! who else should it be?" 
 
 And there ended the captain s doubts, for he never 
 again got sight of the letter, and the turmoil of prep 
 aration for Miss Picklin s voyage, made the house 
 anything but a place for getting answers to impertinent 
 questions. Phemie, whom the news had made silent 
 and thoughtful, let drop a hint or two that she would 
 like to see the letter ; but a mysterious air, and " La 
 child, you wouldn t understand it," was check enough 
 for her timid curiosity, and she plied her needle upon 
 her sister s wedding dress with patient submission. 
 
 The preparations for the voyage went on swimming 
 ly. The missionaries were written to, and willingly 
 consented to chaperon Miss Picklin over the seas, 
 provided her union with a pagan was to be sanctified 
 with a Christian ceremonial. Miss Picklin replied 
 with virtuous promptitude that the cake for the wed 
 ding was already soldered up in a tin case, and that 
 she was to be married immediately on her arrival, 
 under an awning on the brig s deck, and she hoped 
 that four of the missionaries wives would oblige her 
 by standing up as her bridesmaids. Many square 
 feet of codfish were unladen from the " Simple Susan" 
 to make room for boxes and bags, and one large case 
 was finally shipped, the contents of which had been 
 shopped for by ladies with families no book of orien 
 tal travels making any allusion to the sale of such 
 articles in Constantinople, though, in the natural 
 course of things, they must be wanted as much in 
 Turkey as in Salem. 
 
 The brig was finally cleared and lay off in the stream, 
 and on the evening before the embarkation the mis 
 sionaries arrived and were invited to a tea-party at the 
 Picklins. Miss Picklin had got up a little surprise 
 for her friends with which to close the party a 
 " walking tableau" as she termed it, in which she 
 should suddenly make her apparition at one door, 
 pass through the room, and go out at the other, 
 dressed as a sultana, with a muslin kirtle and satin 
 trowsers. She disappeared accordingly half an hour 
 before the breaking up ; and, conversation rather 
 languishing in her absence, the eldest of the mission 
 aries rose to conclude the evening with a prayer, in 
 the midst of which Miss Picklin passed through the 
 room unperceived the faces of the company being 
 turned to the wall. 
 
 The next morning at daylight the " Simple Susan" 
 put to sea with a fair wind, and at the usual hour for 
 opening the store of Picklin and Co., she had drop 
 ped below the horizon. Phemie sat upon the end of 
 the wharf and watched her till she was out of sight, 
 and the captain walked up and down between two 
 puncheons of rum which stood at the distance of a 
 quarter-deck s length from each other, and both father 
 and daughter were silent. The captain had a confused 
 thought or two besides the grief of parting, and Phemie 
 had feelings quite as confused, which were not all 
 made up of sorrow for the loss of her sister. Perhaps 
 the reader will be at the trouble of spelling out their 
 riddles while I try to let him down softly to the catas 
 trophe of my story. 
 
 Without confessing to any ailment whatever, the 
 plump Phemie paled and thinned from the day of her 
 sister s departure. Her spirits, too, seemed to keep 
 
THE WIDOW BY BREVET. 
 
 107 
 
 her flesh and color company, and at the end of a 
 month the captain was told by one of the good dames 
 of Salem that he had better ask a physician what 
 ailed her. The doctor could make nothing out of it 
 except that she might be fretting for the loss of her 
 sister, and he recommended a change of scene and 
 climate. That day Captain Brown, an old mate of 
 Isaiah s, dropped in to eat a family dinner and say 
 good-by, as he was about sailing in the new schooner 
 Nancy for the Black sea his wife for his only passen 
 ger. Of course he would be obliged to drop anchor . 
 at Constantinople to wait for a fair wind up the I 
 Bosphorus, and part of his errand was to offer to take l| 
 letters and nicknackeries to Mrs. Keui. Old Picklin 
 put the two things together, and over their glass of 
 wine he proposed to Brown to take Phemie with Mrs. 
 Brown to Constantinople, leave them both there on a 
 visit to Mrs. Keui, till the return of the Nancy from 
 the Black sea, and then re-embark them for Salem. 
 Phemie came into the room just as they were touch 
 ing glasses on the agreement, and when the trip was 
 proposed to her she first colored violently, then grew 
 pale and burst into tears ; but consented to go. And, 
 with such preparations as she could make that even 
 ing, she was quite ready at the appointed hour, and 
 was off with the land-breeze the next morning, taking i 
 leave of nobody but her father. And this time the 
 old man wiped his eyes very often before the depart- j 
 ing vessel was "hull down," and was heartily sorry he jj 
 had let Phemie go without a great many presents and 
 a great many more kisses. ******* 
 A fine, breezy morning at Constantinople ! 
 Rapidly down the Bosphorus shot the caique of 
 Hassan Keui, bearing its master from his country- 
 house at Dolma-batchi to his warehouses at Galata. 
 Just before the sharp prow rounded away toward the 
 Golden Horn, the merchant motioned to the caikjis 
 to rest upon their oars, and, standing erect in the 
 slender craft, he strained his gaze long and with anxi 
 ous earnestness toward the sea of Marmora. Not a 
 sail was to be seen coming from the west, except a 
 man-of-war with a crescent flag at the peak, lying off 
 toward Scutari from Seraglio point, and with a sigh 
 that carried the cloud off his brow, Hassan gayly 
 squatted once more to his cushions, and the caique 
 sped merrily on. In and out, among the vessels at 
 anchor, the airy bark threaded her way with the dex 
 terous swiftness of a bird, when suddenly a cable rose 
 beneath her and lifted her half out of the water. A 
 vessel newly-arrived was hauling in to a close anchor 
 age, and they had crossed her hawser as it rose to the 
 surface. Pitched headlong into the lap of the nearest 
 caikji, the Turk s snowy turban fell into the water and 
 was carried by the eddy under the stern of the vessel 
 rounding to, and as the caique was driven backward 
 to regain it, the bareheaded owner sank back aghast 
 SIMPLE SUSAN OF SALEM staring him in the fflce in 
 golden capitals. 
 
 " Oh! Mr. Keui ! how do you do !" cried a well- 
 remembered voice, as he raised himself to fend off 
 by the rudder of the brig. And there she stood 
 within two feet of his lips Miss Picklin in her brida 
 veil, waiting below in expectant modesty, and though 
 surprised by his peep into the cabin windows, excusing 
 it as a natural impatience in a bridegroom coming to 
 his bride. 
 
 The captain of the Susan, meantime, had looked 
 over the tafferel and recognised his old passenger, and 
 Hassan, who would have given a cargo of opium for 
 an hour to compose himself, mounted the ladder 
 which was thrown out to him, and stepped from the 
 gangway into Miss Picklin s arms ! She had rushed 
 up to receive him, dressed in her muslin kirtle and 
 satin trousers, though, with her dramatic sense of 
 propriety, she had intended to remain below till sum 
 moned to the bridal. The captain, of course, kept 
 
 back from delicacy, but the missionaries stood in a 
 cluster gazing on the happy meeting, and the sailors 
 looked over their shoulders as they heaved at the 
 windlass. As Miss Picklin afterward remarked, "it 
 would have been a tableau viiant if the deck had not 
 been so very dirty !" 
 
 Hassan wiped his eyes, for he had replaced his wet 
 turban on his head, but what with his escape from 
 drowning, and what with his surprise and embarrass 
 ment (for he had a difficult part to play, as the.reader 
 will presently understand), he had lost all memory 
 of his little stock of English. Miss Picklin drew him 
 gently by the hand to the quarter-deck, where, under 
 an awning fringed with curtains partly drawn, stood a 
 table with a loaf of wedding-cake upon it, and a bottle 
 of wine and a bible. She nodded to the Rev. Mr. 
 Griffin, who took hold of a chair and turned it round, 
 and placing it against his legs with the back toward 
 him, looked steadfastly at the happy couple. 
 
 " Good morning good night your s\slcra*petla ! 
 per amor 1 di Dio . " cried the bewildered Hassan, 
 giving utterance to all the English he could re 
 member, and seizing the bride by the arm. 
 
 " These ladies are my bridesmaids," said Miss 
 Picklin, pointing to the missionaries wives who stood 
 by in their bonnets and shawls. " I dare say he ex 
 pected my sister would come as my bridesmaid !" 
 she added, turning to Mr. Griffin to explain the out 
 break as she understood it. 
 
 Hassan beat his hand upon his forehead, walked 
 twice up and down the quarterdeck, looked around 
 over the Golden Horn as if in search of an interpreter 
 to his feelings, and finally walked up to Miss Picklin 
 with a look of calm resignation, and addressed to her 
 and to the Rev. Mr. Griffin a speech of three minutes, 
 in Italian. At the close of it he made a very cere 
 monious salaam, and offered his hand to the bride ; 
 and, as no one present understood a syllable of what 
 he had intended to convey in his address, it was re 
 ceived as probably a welcome to Turkey, or perhaps 
 a formal repetition of his offer of heart and hand. At 
 any rate, Miss Picklin took it to be high time to blush 
 and take off her glove, and the Rev. Mr. Griffin then 
 bent across the back of the chair, joined their hands 
 and went through the ceremony, ring and all. The 
 ladies came up, one after another, and kissed the 
 bride, and the gentlemen shook hands with Hassan, 
 who received their good wishes with a curious look 
 of unhappy resignation, and after cutting the cake and 
 permitting the bride to retire for a moineiit to calm 
 her feelings and put on her bonnet, the bridegroom 
 made rather a peremptory movement of departure, 
 and the happy couple went off in the caique toward 
 Dolma-batchi amid much waving of handkerchiefs 
 from the missionaries, and hurrahs from the Salem 
 hands of the Simple Susan. 
 
 And now, before giving the reader a translation of 
 the speech of Hassan before the wedding, we must 
 go back to some little events which had taken place 
 one month previously at Constantinople. 
 
 The Nancy arrived off Seraglio Point after a very 
 ., remarkable passage, having still on her quarter the 
 1 1 northwest breeze which had stuck to her like a blood 
 hound ever since leaving the harbor of Salem. She 
 had brought it with her to Constantinople indeed, lor 
 twenty or thirty vessels which had been long waiting 
 i a favorable wind to encounter the adverse current of 
 I the Bosphorus, were loosing sail and getting under 
 i way and the pilot, knowing that the destination of the 
 i Nancy was also to the Black sea, strongly dissuaded 
 ; Captain Brown from dropping anchor in the horn, 
 with a chance of losing the good luck, and lying, per 
 haps a month, wind-bound in harbor. Understanding 
 that the captain s only object in stopping was to leave 
 the two ladies with Keui the opium-merchant, th 
 pilot, who knew hiAesidence at Dolma-batchi, made 
 
108 
 
 THOSE UNGRATEFUL BLIDGIMSES. 
 
 signal for a caique, and kept up the Bosphorus. 
 Arriving opposite the little village of which Has 
 san s house was one of the chief ornaments, the la 
 dies were lowered into the caique and sent ashore 
 expecting of course to be received with open arms 
 by Mrs. Keui and then, spreading all her canvass, 
 the swift little schooner sped on her way to Trebi- 
 sond. 
 
 Hassan sat in the little pavilion of his house which 
 looked out on the Bosphorus, eating his pillau, for it 
 was the noon of a holytlay, and he had not been that 
 morning to Galata. Hecognising at once the sweet 
 face of Phemie as the caique came near the shore, 
 he flew to meet her, supposing that the " Simple 
 Susan" had arrived, and that the lady of his love 
 had chosen to come and seek him. The reader 
 will understand of course that there was no " Mrs. 
 Keui." 
 
 And now to shorten my story. 
 
 Mrs. Brown and Phemie were in Hassan s own house, 
 with no other acquaintance or protector on that side 
 of the world, and there was no possibility of escaping 
 a true explanation. The mistake was explained, and 
 explained to Brown s satisfaction. Phemie was the 
 "daughter" of Captain Picklin, to whom the offer was 
 transmitted, and as, by blessed luck, the Nancy had 
 outsailed the Simple Susan, Providence seemed to 
 have chosen to set right for once, the traverse of true 
 love. The English embassy was at Burgurlu, only 
 six miles above, on the Bosphorus, and Hassan and 
 his mother and sisters, and Mrs. Brown and Phemie 
 were soon on their way thither in swift caiques, and 
 the happy couple were wedded by the English chaplain. 
 The arrival of the Simple Susan was of course looked 
 for, by both Hassan and his bride, with no little dis 
 may. She had met with contrary winds on the 
 Atlantic, and had been caught in the Archipelago by 
 a Levanter, and from the damage of the last she had 
 been obliged to come to anchor off the little island of 
 Paros and repair. This had been a job of six weeks, 
 
 and meantime the Nancy had given them the go-by, 
 and reached Constantinople. 
 
 Hassan was daily on the look-out for the brig in his 
 trips to town, and on the morning of her arrival, his 
 mind being put at ease for the day by his glance 
 toward the seaof Marmora, the stumbling so suddenly 
 and so unprepared on the object of his dread, com 
 pletely bewildered and unnerved him. Through all 
 his confusion, however, and all the awkwardness of 
 his situation, there ran a feeling of self-condemnation, 
 as well as pity for Miss Picklin ; and this had driven 
 him to the catastrophe described above. He felt that 
 he owed her some reparation, and as the religion 
 which he was educated did not forbid a plurality of 
 wives, and there was no knowing but possibly she 
 might be inclined to " do in Turkey as Turkeys do," 
 he felt it incumbent on himself to state the fact of 
 his previous marriage, and then offer her the privilege 
 of becoming Mrs. Keui No. 2, if she chose to accept. 
 As he had no English at his command, he stated his 
 dilemma and made his offer in the best language he 
 had Italian and with the results the reader has been 
 made acquainted. 
 
 Of the return passage of Miss Picklin, formerly 
 Mrs. Keui, under the charge of Captain and Mrs. 
 Brown, in the schooner Nancy, I have never learned 
 the particulars. She arrived at Salem in very good 
 health, however, and has since been distinguished 
 principally by her sympathy for widows based on 
 what, I can not very positively say. She resides at 
 present in Salem with her father, Captain Picklin, 
 who is still the consignee of the house of Keui, having 
 made one voyage out to see the children of his 
 daughter Phemie and strengthen the mercantile con 
 nexion. His old age is creeping on him, undistinguish 
 ed by anything except the little monomania of read 
 ing the letters from his son-in-law at least a hundred 
 times, and then wafering them up over the fireplace 
 of his counting-room in doubt, apparently, whether 
 he rightly understands the contents. 
 
 THOSE UNGRATEFUL BLIDGIMSES, 
 
 "For, look you, he hath as many friends as enemies; which friends, sir (as it were), durst not (look you, sir) show 
 themselves (as we term it) his friends, while he s in directitude." Coriolanus. 
 
 " Hermione. Our praises are our wages." Winter s Tale. 
 
 F , the portrait-painter, was a considerable ally j 
 
 of mine at one time. His success in his art brought 
 him into contact with many people, and he made | 
 friends as a fastidious lady buys shoes trying on a I 
 great many that were destined to be thrown aside. It I 
 was the prompting, no doubt, of a generous quality 
 that of believing all people perfect till he discovered 
 their faults but as he cut loose without ceremony 
 from those whose faults were not to his mind, and as 
 ill-fitting people are not as patient of rejection as ill- 
 fitting shoes, the quality did not pass for its full value, 
 and his abusers were " thick as leaves in Vallambro- 
 sa." The friends who " wore his bleeding roses," 
 however (and of these he had his share), fought his 
 battles quite at their own charge. What with plenty I 
 of pride, and as plentiful a lack of approbativeness, 
 F took abuse as a duck s back takes rain buoy 
 ant in the shower as in the sunshine. 
 
 " Well, F !" I said, as I occupied his big chair 
 
 oue morning while he was at wo^k, " there was great 
 skirmishing about you last night at the tea-party !" 
 
 " No ! really ? Who was the enemy ?" 
 
 "Two ladies, who said they travelled with you 
 through Italy, and knew all about you the Blid- 
 gimses." 
 
 "Oh, the dear old Blidgimses Crinny and Nin 
 ny the ungrateful monsters ! Did I ever tell you 
 of my nursing those two old girls through the chol 
 era?" 
 
 "No. But before you go off with a long story, 
 tell me how you can stand such abominable back 
 biting? It isn t once in a way, merely! you are 
 their whole stock in trade, and they vilify you in ev 
 ery house they set foot in. The mildest part of it is 
 criminal slander, my good fellow ! Why not do the 
 world a service, and show that slander is actionable, 
 though it is committed in good society ?" 
 
 " Pshaw ! What does it amount to ? 
 The eagle suffers little birds to sing, 
 And is not careful what they mean thereby, 
 and in this particular instance, the jury would prob 
 ably give the damages the other way for if thev 
 
THOSE UNGRATEFUL BLIDGIMSES. 
 
 109 
 
 hammer at me till doomsday, I have had my fun out 
 of them my quid pro quo!" 
 
 " Well, preface your story by telling me where 
 you met them. I never knew by what perverse thread 
 you were drawn together." 
 
 "A thread that might have drawn me into much 
 more desperate extremity a letter from the most lov 
 able of women, charging me to become the trusty 
 squire of these errant damsels wherever I should en 
 counter them. 1 was then studying in Italy. They 
 came to Florence, where I chanced to be, and were 
 handed over to me without dog, cat, or waiting-maid, 
 
 to Jacomo, the waiter, that Signorina Kafrina s high 
 summons concerned only an overcharge of a penny 
 in the eggs !" 
 
 " And what said Jacomo ?" 
 
 " Jacomo was incapable of an incivility, and begged 
 pardon before stating that the usual practice of the 
 house was to charge half a dollar a day for board and 
 lodging, including a private parlor and bedroom, three 
 meals and a bottle of wine. The ladies, however, 
 had applied through an English gentleman (who 
 chanced to call on them, and who spoke Italian), to 
 have reductions made on their dispensing with two 
 
 j-m*tiu, ijrivc icuuuuima iiiaua un tucir ui8|.>c:ijoiijg 
 
 by a man who seemed ominously glad to be rid of ij dishes of meat out of three, drinking no wine, and 
 them. As it was the ruralizing season, and all the Ij wanting no nuts and raisins. Their main extrava 
 
 world was flocking to the baths of Lucca, close by, 
 they went there till I could get ready to undertake 
 them which I did, with the devotion of a courier in 
 a new place, one fig-desiring evening of June." 
 
 " Was there a delivery of the great seal ?" I asked, 
 
 rather amused at F s circumstantial mention of 
 
 his introitus to office. 
 
 " Something very like it, indeed. I had not fairly- 
 got the blood out of my face, after making my sa 
 laam, when Miss Crinny Blidgims fished up from 
 some deep place she had about her, a memorandum- 
 book, with a well-thumbed brown paper cover, and 
 gliding across the room, placed it in my hands as peo 
 ple on the stage present pocket-books with a sort 
 of dust-flapping parabola. Now if I have any partic 
 ular antipathy, it is to the smell of old flannel, and as 
 this equivocal-looking object descended before my 
 nose faith! But I took it. It was the account- 
 book of the eatables and drinkables furnished to the 
 ladies in their travels, the prices of eggs, bread, figs, 
 
 gance was in eggs, which they ate several times a 
 day between meals, and wished to have cooked and 
 served up at the price per dozen in the market. On 
 this they had held conclave below stairs, and the re 
 sult had not been communicated, because there was 
 no common language ; but Jacomo wished, through 
 j me, respectfully to represent, that the reductions from 
 i the half dollar a day should be made as requested, 
 I but that the eggs could not be bought, cooked, and 
 ! served up (with salt and bread, and a clean napkin), 
 for just their price in the market. And on this point 
 the ladies were obstinate. And to settle this difficulty 
 i between the high contracting parties, cost an argu- 
 ! ment of a couple of hours, my first performance as 
 translator in the service of the Blidgimses. Thence 
 forward, I was as necessary to Crinny and Ninny 
 (these were their familiar diminutives foi Corinna and 
 Katrina) as necessary to Crinny as the gift of speech, 
 j and to Ninny as the wig and abbo put together. Obe- 
 | dient to the mandate of the fair hand which had con- 
 
 et cetera, and I was to begin iny duties by having up j signed me to them, I gave myself up to their service, 
 
 the head waiter of the lodging-house, and holding in- even keeping in my pocket their frowsy grocery- 
 
 quisition on his charges. The Blidgimses spoke no 
 
 Italian, and no servant in the house spoke English, 
 
 and they were bursting for a translator to tell him that 
 
 the eggs were over-charged, and that he must deduct 
 
 threepence a day for wine, for they never touched it!" 
 
 " What do the ladies wish ? inquired the dumb 
 founded waiter, in civil Tuscan. 
 
 " What does he say? what does he say? cried 
 Miss Corinna, in resounding nasal. 
 
 Tell the impudent fellow what eggs are in Dutch- 
 ess county ! peppered out Miss Katrina, very sharply. 
 
 " Of course I translated with a discretion. There 
 was rather an incongruity between the looks of the 
 damsels and what they were to be represented as say 
 ing Katrina Blidgims living altogether in a blue op 
 era-hat with a white feather." 
 
 I interrupted F to say that the blue hat was 
 
 immortal, for it was worn at the tea-party of the night 
 before. 
 
 " I had enough of the blue hat and its bandbo* be 
 fore we parted. It was the one lifetime extravagance 
 of the old maid, perpetrated in Paris, and as it cov 
 ered the back seam of a wig (a subsequent discovery 
 
 ;pmg 
 
 book though not without some private outlay in 
 I burnt vinegar. What penance a man will undergo 
 for a pretty woman who cares nothing about him !" 
 
 " But what could have started such a helpless pair 
 I of old quizzes upon their travels ?" 
 
 " I wondered myself till I knew them better. 
 Crinny Blidgims had a tongue of the liveliness of an 
 eel s tail. It would have wagged after she was skinned 
 and roasted. She had, beside, a kind of pinchbeck 
 smartness, and these two gifts, and perhaps the name 
 of Corinna, had inspired her with the idea that she 
 was an improvisalrice. So, how could she die without 
 going to Italy ?" 
 
 " And Ninny went for company?" 
 
 " Oh, Miss Ninny Blidgims had a passion too ! 
 She had come out to see Paris. She had heard that, 
 in Paris, people could renew their youth, and she 
 thought she had done it, with her abbo. She thought, 
 too, that she must have manners to correspond. So, 
 while travelling in her old bonnet, she blurted out her 
 bad grammer as she had done for fifty years, but in 
 her blue hat she simpered and frisked to the best of 
 her recollection. Silly as that old girl was, however, 
 
 of mine), she was never without it, except when bon- | she had the most pellucid set of ideas on the prices 
 
 gr 
 ideas 
 
 neted to go out. She came to breakfast in it, mended 
 her stockings in it, went to parties in it. I fancy it 
 took some trouble to adjust it to the wig, and she de- 
 
 of things to eat. There was no humbugging her on 
 that subject, even in a foreign language. She filled 
 her pockets with apples, usually, in our walks ; and 
 
 voted to it the usual dressing-hours of morning and i the translating between her and a street-huckster, she 
 
 dinner; for in private she wore a handkerchief ove 
 it, pinned under her chin, which had only to be whip 
 
 in her abbo and the apple-woman in Italian rags, w 
 vexatious to endure, but very funny to rememjer. 1 
 
 , , - , 
 
 ped off when company was announced, and this, per- j have thought of painting it, but, to under 
 haps, is one of the secrets of its immaculate, yet picture, the spectator must make the acquaintance of 
 
 Miss Fanny Blidgims rather a pill fora connoisseur! 
 But by this time you are ready to approfond, as the 
 French aptly say, the depths of my subsequent dis- 
 
 She called it her abbo ." 
 
 threadbare preservation. 
 
 "Her what?" 
 
 " You have heard of the famous Herbault, the 
 man-milliner, of Paris? The bonnet was his pro 
 duction, and called after him with great propriety. 
 In Italy, where people dress according to their con- 
 
 dition in life, this perpetual abbo was something a la\ 
 princesse, and hence my embarrassment in explaining II 
 
 " I had been abouka month at Lucca, when it was 
 suddenly proposed b* Crinny that we should take a 
 
110 
 
 THOSE UNGRATEFUL BLIDGIMSES. 
 
 vetturino together, and go to Venice. Ninny and she 
 had come down to dinner with a sudden disgust for 
 the baths owing, perhaps, to the distinction they had 
 received as the only strangers in the place who were 
 not invited to the ball of a certain prince, our next-door 
 neighbor. The Blidgimses and their economies, in 
 fact, had become the joke of the season, and, as the 
 interpreter in the egg-trades, I was mixed up in the 
 omelette, and as glad to escape from my notoriety as 
 they. So I set about looking up the conveyance with 
 some alacrity. 
 
 "By the mass, it was evidently a great saving of 
 distance to cross the mountains to Modena. and of 
 course a great saving of expense, as vetturinos are 
 paid by the mile ; but the guide-books stated that the 
 read was rough, and the inns abominable, and recom 
 mended to all who cared for comfort to make a circum 
 bendibus by the way of Florence and Bologna. 
 Ninny declared she could live on bread and apples, 
 however, and Crinny delighted in mountain air in 
 short, economy carried it, and after three days chaf 
 fering with the owner of a rattletrap vettura, we set off 
 up the banks of the Lima without the blessing of 
 Jacorno, the head waiter. 
 
 " We soon left the bright little river, and struck 
 into the mountains, and as the carriage crept on very 
 slowly, I relieved the horses of my weight and walked 
 on. The ladies did the same thing whenever they 
 came in sight of an orchard, and for the first day 
 Ninny munched the unripe apples and seemed getting 
 along very comfortably. The first night s lodging 
 was execrable, but as the driver assured us it was the 
 best on the route, we saved our tempers for the worst, 
 and the next day began to penetrate a country that 
 looked deserted of man, and curst with uninhabitable 
 sterility. Its effect upon my spirits, as I walked on 
 alone, was as depressing as the news of some trying 
 misfortune, and I was giving it credit for one redeem 
 ing quality that of an opiate to a tongue like Crinny 
 Blidgims s when both the ladies began to show symp 
 toms of illness. It was not long after noon, and we 
 were in the midst of a waste upland, the road bending 
 over the horizon before and behind us, and neither 
 shed nor shelter, bush, wall, or tree, within reach of 
 the eye. The only habitation we had seen since morn 
 ing was a wretched hovel where the horses were fed 
 at noon, and the albergo, where we should pass the 
 night, was distant several hours a long up-hill 
 stretch, on which the pace of the horses could not 
 possibly be mended. The ladies were bent double in 
 the carriage, and said they could not possibly go on. 
 Going back was out of the question. The readiest 
 service I could proffer was to leave them and hurry 
 on to the inn, to prepare for their reception. 
 
 " Fortunately our team was unicorn-rigged one 
 horse in advance of a pair. I took off the leader, and 
 galloped away. 
 
 " Well, the cholera was still lingering in Italy, and 
 stomachs must be cholera-proof to stand a perpetual 
 diet of green apples, even with no epidemic in the air. 
 So I had a very clear idea of the remedies that would 
 be required on their arrival. 
 
 " At a hand-gallop I reached the albergo in a couple 
 of hours. It was a large stone barrack, intended, no 
 doubt, as was the road we had travelled, for military 
 uses. A thick stone wall surrounded it, and it stood 
 in the midst, in a pool of mud. From the last emi 
 nence before arriving, not another object could be 
 descried within a horizon of twenty miles diameter, 
 and a whitish soil of baked clay, browned here and 
 there by a bit of scanty herbage, was foreground and 
 middle and background to the pleasant picture. The 
 site of the barrack had probably been determined by 
 the only spring within many miles, and by the dryness 
 without and the mud within the walls, it was contrived 
 foi a monopoly by the besieged. * 
 
 "I cantered in at the unhinged gate, and roared 
 out casa ! cameriere ! botega ! till I was fright 
 ened at my own voice. 
 
 " No answer. I threw my bridle over a projection 
 of the stone steps, and mounted, from an empty 
 stable which occupied the ground floor (Italian 
 fashion), to the second story, which seemed equally 
 uninhabited. Here were tables, however, and wooden 
 settees, and dirty platters the first signs of life. On 
 the hearth was an iron pot and a pair of tongs, and 
 with these two musical instruments I played a tune 
 which I was sure would find ears, if ears there were 
 on the premises. And presently a heavy foot was 
 heard on the stair above, and with a sonorous yawn 
 descended mine host dirty and stolid a goodly pat 
 tern of the fat weed on Lethe s wharf, as you would 
 meet in a century. He had been taking his siesta, 
 and his wife had had a colpo di sole, and was confined 
 helplessly to her bed. The man John was out tend 
 ing sheep, and he, the host, was vicariously, cook, 
 waiter, and chambermaid. What might be the pleas 
 ure of il signore ? 
 
 " My pleasure was, first, to see the fire kindled and 
 the pot put over, and then to fall into a brown 
 study. 
 
 " Two fine ladies with the cholera two days jour 
 ney from a physician a fat old Italian landlord for 
 nurse and sole counsellor nobody who could under 
 stand a word they uttered, except myself, and not a 
 drug nor a ministering petticoat within available 
 limits ! Then the doors of the chambers were with 
 out latches or hinges, and the little bed in each great 
 room was the one article of furniture, and the house 
 was so still in the midst of that great waste, that all 
 sounds and movements whatever, must be of common 
 cognisance ! Should I be discharging my duty to 
 ladies under my care to leave them to this dirty old 
 man ? Should I offer my own attendance as constant 
 nurse, and would the service be accepted ? How, in 
 the name of Robinson Crusoe, were these delicate 
 damsels to be done for ? 
 
 " As a matter of economy in dominos, as well as 10 
 have something Italian to bring home, I had bought at 
 Naples the costume of a sister of charity, and in it I 
 had done all my masquerading for three carnivals. It 
 was among my baggage, and it occurred to me 
 whether I had not better take the landlord into my 
 confidence, and bribe him to wait upon the ladies, dis- - 
 guised in coif and petticoat. No for he had a mus 
 tache, and spoke nothing but Italian. Should 1 do it 
 myself? 
 
 "I paced up and down the stone floor in an agony 
 of dilemma. 
 
 " In the course of half an hour I had made up my 
 mind. I called to Boniface, who was watching the 
 boiling pot, and made a clean breast to him of my 
 impending distresses, aiding his comprehension by 
 such eye-water as landlords require. He readily un 
 dertook the necessary lies, brought out his store of 
 brandy, added a second bed to one of the apartments, 
 and promised faithfully to bear my sex in mind, and 
 treat me with the reverence due my cross and rosary. 
 I then tore out a leaf of the grocery book, and wrote 
 with my pencil a note to this effect, to be delivered to 
 the ladies on their arrival : 
 
 " DEAR Miss BLIDGIMS : Feeling quite indispo 
 sed myself, and being firmly persuaded that we are 
 three cases of cholera, I have taken advantage of a 
 return calesino to hurry on to Modena for medical 
 advice. The vehicle I take, brought hither a sister of 
 charity, who assures me she will wait on you, even in 
 the most malignant stage of your disease. She is 
 collecting funds for an hospital, and will receive com 
 pensation for her services in the form of a donation to 
 this object. I shnll send you a physician by express 
 
THOSE UNGRATEFUL BLIDGIMSES. 
 
 Ill 
 
 from Modena, where it is still possible we may meet. 
 With prayers, &c., &c. 
 
 " \Tours very devotedly, " F. 
 
 " P. S. Sister Benedetra understands French when 
 spoken, though she speaks only Italian. 
 
 " The delivery of this was subject, of course, to 
 the condition of the ladies when they should arrive, 
 though I had a presentiment they were in for a serious 
 business. 
 
 "And, true to my boding, they did arrive, exceed 
 ingly ill. An hour earlier than I had looked for him, 
 the vetturino came up with foaming horses at a tug 
 ging trot, frightened half out of his senses. The 
 ladies were dying, he swore by all the saints, before he 
 dismounted. He tore open the carriage door, shouted 
 for il signore and the landlord, and had carried both 
 the groaning girls up stairs in his arms, before fat 
 Boniface, who had been killing a sheep in the stable, 
 could wash his hands and come out to him. To his 
 violent indignation, the landlord s first care was to 
 unstrap the baggage and take off my portmanteau, 
 condescending to give him neither why nor wherefore, 
 and as it mounted the stairs on the broad shoulders of 
 my faithful ally, it was followed by a string of oaths 
 such as can rattle off from nothing but the voluble 
 tongue of an Italian. 
 
 " I immediately despatched the note by the host, 
 requesting him to come back and do my dress, and 
 in half an hour sister Beuedetta s troublesome toilet 
 was achieved, and my old Abigail walked around me, 
 rubbing his hands, and swore I was a meraviqlia di 
 belleza. The lower part of my face was covered by 
 the linen coif, and the forehead was almost completely 
 concealed ia the plain put-away of a false front ; 
 and, unless the Blidgimses had reconnoitred my nose 
 and eyes very carefully, I was sure of my disguise. 
 The improvements in my figure were, unluckily, 
 fixtures in the dress, for it was very hot ; but by the 
 landlord s account they were very becoming. Do you 
 believe the old dog tried to kiss me ? 
 
 " The groans of Ninny, meantime, resounded 
 through the house, for, as I expected, she had the 
 worst of it. Her exclamations of pain were broken 
 up, I could also hear, by sentences in a sort of spiteful 
 monotone, answered in regular humphs ! by Crin- j 
 ny Crinny never talking except to astonish, and being 
 as habitually crisp to her half-witted sister as she was j 
 fluent to those who were capable of surprise. Fear- j 
 ing that some disapprobation of myself might find its ! 
 way to Ninny s lips, and for several other reasons 
 
 which occurred to me, I thought it best to give the back the lost chevelure ! 
 
 ladies another half hour to themselves, and by way of 
 testing my incognito, bustled about in the presence of 
 the vetturiuo, warming oil and mixing brandies-and- 
 water, and getting used to the suffocation of my petti 
 coats for you have no idea how intolerably hot they 
 are, with trowsers under. 
 
 " Quite assured, at last, I knocked at the door. 
 
 " That s his nun! said Ninny, after listening an 
 
 as they relaxed their postures a little, I got one foot at 
 a time hung over to me from the side of the bed into 
 the pail of hot water, and set them to rubbing them 
 selves with the warm oil, while I vigorously bathed 
 their extremities. Crinny, as I very well knew, had 
 but fivc-and-twenty words of French, just sufficient to 
 hint at her wants, and Ninny spoke only such English 
 as Heaven pleased, so I played the ministering angel 
 in safe silence listening to my praises, however, for I 
 handled Ninny s irregular doigls du pied with a ten 
 derness that pleased her. 
 
 "Well you know what the cholera is. I knew 
 that at the Hotel Dieu at Paris, women who had not 
 been intemperate were oftenest cured by whiskey 
 punches, and as brandy toddies were the nearest ap 
 proach of which the resources of the place admitted, 
 I plied my patients with brandy toddy. In the weak 
 state of their stomachs, it produced, of course, a de 
 lirious intoxication, and as I began very early in the 
 morning, there were no lucid intervals in which my 
 incognito might be endangered. My ministrations 
 were, consequently, very much facilitated, and after 
 the second day (when I really thought the poor girls 
 would die), we fell into a very regular course of hos 
 pital life, and for one, I found it very entertaining. 
 Quite impressed with the idea that sister Bellidettor 
 (as Ninny called me) understood not a word of Eng 
 lish, they discoursed to please themselves, and I was 
 obliged to get a book, to excuse, even to their tipsy 
 comprehension, my outbreaks of laughter. Crinny 
 spouted poetry and sobbed about Washington Irving, 
 who, she thought, should have been her lover, and 
 Ninny sat up in bed, and, with a small glass she had 
 in the back of a hair-brush, tried on her abbo at every 
 possible angle, always ending by making signs to sister 
 
 ig by m 
 mb her 
 
 Beilidettor to come and comb her hair! There was a 
 long, slender, mustache remaining on the back of the 
 bald crown, and after putting this into my hand, with 
 the hair-brush, she sat with a smile of delight till she 
 found my brushing did not come round to the front! 
 
 " Why don t you brush this lock? she cried, 
 this and this and this! making passes from her 
 shining skull down to her waist, as if, in every one, she 
 had a handful of hair ! And so, for an hour together, 
 I threaded these imaginary locks, beginning where 
 they were rooted long time ago, and passing the 
 brush off to the length of my arm the cranium, 
 when I had done, looking like a balloon of shot silk, 
 its smooth surface was so purpled with the friction of 
 the bristles. Poor Ninny ! She has great temptation 
 to tipple, I think that is, if Macassar won t bring 
 
 About the fifth day, the ladies began to show 
 sians of convalescence, and it became necessary to 
 reduce their potations. Of course they grew less 
 entertaining, and 1 was obliged to be much more on 
 my guard. Crinny fell from her inspiration, and 
 jj Ninny from her complacency, and they came down to 
 jl their previous condition of damaged spinsters, prim 
 land peevish. Needs must that I should play out 
 ;|the play. however, and I abated none of my petits 
 Come in! that is to say, cntrct! feebly mm- . w jns for their comfort, laying out very large anticipa 
 
 mured Crinny. 
 
 " They were both in bed, rolled up like pocket- 
 handkerchiefs ; but Ninny had found strength to band 
 box her wig and abbo, and array herself in a nightcap 
 with an exceedingly broad frill. But I must not 
 trench upon the secrets of the prison-house. You 
 are a bachelor, and the Blidgimses are still in a world 
 of hope. 
 
 tions of their grateful acknowledgments for my dra 
 matic chivalry, devotion, and delicacy !" 
 
 Well they are ungrateful !" said I, interrupting 
 
 ; | F for the first time in his story. 
 
 " Now, are not they ? They should at least, since 
 ! they deny me my honors, pay me for my services as 
 1 inaid-of-all-work, nurse, hair- 
 
 -dresser, and apothecary ! 
 
 Well, "if I hear of their abusing me again, I ll send in 
 
 1 walked in and leaned over each of them, and jj ni y bills. Wouldn t you? But, to wind up this long 
 whispered a benedicite, felt their pulses, and madeligtoiy. 
 signs that I understood their complaints and they need ! ( thought that perhaps there might be some little 
 
 not trouble themselves to explain ; and forthwith I c 
 menced operations by giving them their grog (which ; 
 they swallowed without making faces, by-the-by), and, i 
 
 circumstances connected with my attentions which 
 would look best at a distance, and that it would be 
 more delicate to go on and take leave at Modena as 
 
112 
 
 THOSE UNGRATEFUL BLIDGIMSES. 
 
 sister Benedetta, and rejoin them the next morning in 
 hose and doublet as before reserving to some future 
 period the clearing up of my apparently recreant de 
 sertion. On the seventh morning, therefore, I in 
 structed old Giuseppe, the landlord, to send in his bill 
 to the ladies while I was dressing, and give notice to 
 the vetturino that he was to take the holy sister to 
 Modena in the place of il signore, who had gone on 
 before. 
 
 " Crinny and Ninny were their own reciprocal 
 dressing-maids, but Crinny s fingers had weakened by 
 sickness much more than her sister s waist had dimin 
 ished, and, in the midst of shaving, in my own room, 
 I was called to finish doing Ninny, who backed up 
 to me with her mouth full of pins, and the breath, for 
 the time being, quite expelled from her body. As I 
 was straining, very red in the face, at the critical hook, 
 Giuseppe knocked at the door, with the bill, and the 
 lack of an interpreter to dispute the charges, brought 
 up the memory of the supposed absquatulator with 
 no very grateful odor. Before I could finish Miss 
 Ninny and get out of the room, I heard myself 
 charged with more abominations, mental and personal, 
 than the monster that would have made the fortune of 
 Trinculo. Crinny counted down half the money, and 
 attempted, by very expressive signs, to impress upon 
 Giuseppe that it was enough ; but the oily palm of 
 the old publican was patiently held out for more, and 
 she at last paid the full demand, fairly crying with vex 
 ation. 
 
 " Quite sick of the new and divers functions to 
 which I had been serving an apprenticeship in my 
 black petticoat, I took my place in the vettura, and 
 dropped veil, to be sulky in one lump as far as Mode- j 
 na. I would willingly have stopped my ears, but after 
 wearing out their indignation at the unabated charges 
 of old Giuseppe, the ladies took up the subject of the 
 expected donation to the charity-fund of sister Bene 
 detta, and their expedients to get rid of it occupied 
 (very amusingly to me) the greater part of a day s 
 travel. They made up their minds at last, that half a 
 dollar would be as much as I could expect for my 
 week s attendance, and Crinny requested that she 
 should not be interrupted while she thought out the 
 French for saying as much when we should come to 
 the parting. 
 
 " I was sitting quietly in the corner of the vetlura, 
 the next day, felicitating myself on the success of my 
 masquerade, when we suddenly came to a halt at the 
 
 gate of Modena, and the doganiere put his mustache 
 in at the window, with passaporti, signore ! 
 
 "Murder! thought I here s a difficulty I never 
 provided for! 
 
 " The ladies handed out their papers, and I thrust 
 my -hand through the slit in the side of my dress and 
 pulled mine from my pocket. As of course you 
 know, it is the business of this gatekeeper to compare 
 every traveller with the description given of him in 
 his passport. He read those of the Blidgimses and 
 looked at them all right. I sat still while he opened 
 mine, thinking it possible he might not care to read 
 the description of a sister of charity. But to my dis 
 may he did and opened his eyes, and looked again 
 into the carriage. 
 
 " Aspetta, carol 1 said I, for I saw it was of no use. 
 I gathered up my bombazine and stepped out into the 
 road. There were a dozen soldiers and two or three 
 loungers sitting on a long bench in the shade of the gate 
 way. The officer read through the description once 
 more, and then turned to me with the look of a func 
 tionary who has detected a culprit. I began to pull up 
 my petticoat. The soldiers took their pipes out of their 
 mouths and uttered the Italian keck of surprise. 
 When I had got as far as the knee, however, I came 
 to the rolled-up trowsers, and the officer joined in the 
 sudden uproar of laughter. I pulled my black petti 
 coat over my head, and stood in my waistcoat and 
 shirt-sleeves, and bowed to the merry official. The 
 Blidgimses, to my surprise, uttered no exclamation, 
 but I had forgotten my coif. When that was unpin 
 ned, and my whiskers came to light, their screams 
 became alarming. The vetturino ran for water, the 
 soldiers started to their feet, and in the midst of the 
 excitement, I ordered down my baggage and resumed 
 my coat and cap, and repacked under lock and key 
 the sister Benedetta. And not quite ready to en 
 counter the Blidgimses, I walked on to the hotel and 
 left the vetturino to bring on the ladies at his leisure. 
 
 Of course I had no control over accidents, and 
 this exposure was unlucky ; but if I had had time to 
 let myself down softly on the subject, don t you see it 
 would have been quite a different sort of an affair ? I 
 parted company from the old girls at Modena, how 
 ever, and they were obliged to hire a man-servant who 
 spoke English and Italian, and probably the expense 
 of that was added to my iniquities. Anyhow, abusing 
 me this way is very ungrateful of these Blidgimses. 
 Now, isn t it ?" 
 
DASHES AT LIFE 
 
 WITH A FEEE PENCIL. 
 
 PART II 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 THE following passages are extracts from the 
 prefaces to the English editions of the two works 
 included in this book" Inklings of Adventure" 
 and " Loiterings of Travel :" 
 
 It will be seen, by many marks in the narratives 
 which follow, that they are not the work of ima 
 gination. The dramas of real life are seldom well 
 wound up, and the imperfectness of plot which 
 might be objected to them as tales, will prove to 
 the observant reader that they are drawn more 
 from memory than fancy. It is because they are 
 thus imperfect in dramatic accomplishment, that I 
 have called them by the name under which they 
 have been introduced. They are rather intima 
 tions of what seemed to lead to a romantic termi 
 nation than complete romances in short, they are 
 Inklings of Adventure. The adventures were jotted 
 down the events recorded the poems indited, 
 and the letters despatched, while the thought was 
 freshly born, or the incident freshly heard or re 
 membered at the first place which afforded the 
 leisure in short, during Loiterings of Travel. 
 
 For the living portraitures of the book J have a 
 word to say. That sketches of the whim of the 
 hour, its manners, fashions, and those ephemeral 
 trifles, which, slight as they are, constitute in a 
 great measure its " form and pressure" that these, 
 and familiar traits of persons distinguished in our 
 time, are popular and amusing, I have the most 
 weighty reasons certainly to know. They sell 
 ""Are they innocent ?" is the next question. And 
 to this I know no more discreet answer than that 
 mine have offended nobody but the critics. It has 
 been said that sketches of contemporary society 
 require little talent, and belong to an inferior or 
 der of literature. Perhaps. Yet they must be wel 
 done to attract notice at all ; and if true and graphic 
 
 they are not only excellent material for future 
 biographers, but to all who live out of the magic 
 circles of fashion and genius, they are more than 
 amusing they are instructive. To such persons, 
 living authors, orators, and statesmen, are as much 
 characters of history, and society in cities is as 
 much a subject of philosophic curiosity, as if a 
 century had intervened. The critic who finds 
 these matters " stale and unprofitable," lives in the 
 circles described, and the pictures drawn at his 
 elbow lack to his eye the effect of distance ; but 
 the same critic would delight in a familiar sketch 
 of a supper with " my lord of Leicester" in Eliz 
 abeth s time, of an evening with Raleigh and 
 Spenser, or perhaps he would be amused with a 
 description by an eye-witness of Mary Queen of 
 Scots, riding home to Holyrood with her train of 
 admiring nobles. I have not named in the same 
 sentence the ever-deplored blank in our knowledge 
 of Shakspere s person and manners. What 
 would not a trait by the most unskilful hand be 
 worth now if it were nothing but how he gave 
 the good-morrow to Ben Jonson in Eastcheap ? 
 
 How far sketches of the living are a breach of 
 courtesy committed by the author toward the per 
 sons described, depends, of course, on the temper 
 in which they are done. To select a subject for 
 complimentary description is to pay the most un 
 doubted tribute to celebrity, and, as far as I have 
 observed, most distinguished persons sympathize 
 with the public interest in them and their belong 
 ings, and are willing to have their portraits drawn, 
 either with pen or pencil, by as many as offer 
 them the compliment. It would be ungracious to 
 the admiring world if they were not. 
 
 The outer man is a debtor for the homage paid 
 to the soul which inhabits him, and he is bound, 
 like a porter at the gate, to satisfy all reasonable 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 curiosity as to the habits of the nobler and invis 
 ible tenant. He owes his peculiarities to the 
 world. 
 
 For myself, I am free to confess that no age 
 interests me like the present ; that no pictures of 
 society since the world began, are half so enter 
 taining to me as those of English society in our 
 day ; and that, whatever comparison the living 
 great men of England may sustain with those of 
 other days, there is no doubt in my mind that Eng 
 lish social life, at the present moment, is at a high 
 er pitch of refinement and cultivation than it was 
 ever here or elsewhere since the world began 
 consequently it, and all who form and figure in it, 
 are dignified and legitimate subjects of curiosity 
 and speculation. The Count Mirabel and Lady 
 Bellair of D Israeli s last romance, are, to my 
 mind, the cleverest portraits, as well as the most 
 entertaining characters, of modern novel-writing ; 
 and D Israeli, by the way, is the only English au 
 thor who seems to have the power of enlarging 
 his horizon, and getting a perspective view of the 
 times he lives in. His novels are far more popu 
 lar in America than in England, because the At 
 
 lantic is to us a century. We picture to ourselves 
 England and Victoria as we picture to ourselves 
 England and Elizabeth. We relish an anecdote 
 of Sheridan Knowles as we should one of Ford 
 or Marlowe. This immense ocean between us is 
 like the distance of time ; and while all that is 
 minute and bewildering is lost to us, the greater 
 lights of the age and the prominent features of so* 
 ciety stand out apart, and we judge of them like 
 posterity. Much as I have myself lived in Eng 
 land, I have never been able to remove this long 
 perspective from between my eye and the great men 
 of whom I read and thought on the other side of 
 the Atlantic. When I find myself in the same 
 room with the hero of Waterloo, my blood creeps 
 as if I had seen Cromwell or Marlborough ; and 
 I sit down afterward to describe how he looked, 
 with the eagerness with which I should commu 
 nicate to my friends some disinterred description 
 of these renowned heroes by a contemporary 
 writer. If Cornelius Agrippa were redivivus, in 
 short, and would show rne his magic mirror, I 
 should as soon call up Moore as Dryden Words 
 worth or Wilson as soon as Pope or Crichton. 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 PEDLAR KARL, 
 
 " Which manner of digression, however some dislike as frivo 
 lous and impertinent, yet I am of Beroaldus his opinion, such di 
 gressions do mightily delight and refresh a weary reader ; they are 
 like sawce to a bad stomach, and I therefore do most willingly use 
 them." BURTON. 
 
 " Bienheureuses les imparfaites ; a elles appartient le royaume 
 de 1 amour." L Evangilc des Femmes. 
 
 I AM not sure whether Lebanon Springs, the scene 
 of a romantic story I am about to tell, belong to New 
 York or Massachusetts. It is not very important, to 
 be sure, in a country where people take Vermont and 
 Patagonia to be neighboring states, but I have a natu 
 ral looseness in geography which I take pains to mor 
 tify by exposure. Very odd that I should not remem 
 ber more of the spot where I took my first lessons in 
 philandering ! where I first saw you, brightest and 
 most beautiful A. D. (not Anno Domini), in your white 
 morning-frocks and black French aprons ! 
 
 Lebanon Springs are the rage about once in three 
 years. I must let you into the secret of these things, 
 gentle reader, for perhaps I am the only individual 
 existing who has penetrated the mysteries of the four 
 dynasties of American fashion. In the fourteen mil 
 lions of inhabitants in the United States, there are j 
 precisely four authenticated and undisputed aristo- 
 cratic families. There is one in Boston, one in New I 
 York, one in Philadelphia, and one in Baltimore. By ! 
 a blessed Providence they are not all in one state, or 
 we should have a civil war and a monarchy in*no time. 
 With two hundred miles interval between them, they 
 agree passably, and generally meet at one or another 
 of the three watering-places of Saratoga, Ballston, or \ 
 Lebanon. Their meeting is as mysterious as the pro 
 cess of crystallization, for it is not by agreement. You 
 must explain it by some theory of homoeopathy or 
 magnetism. As it is not known till the moment they , 
 arrive, there is of course great excitement among the : 
 hotel-keepers in these different parts of the country, 
 and a village that has ten thousand transient inhabit 
 ants one summer, has, for the next, scarcely as many I 
 score. The vast and solitary temples of Paestum are 
 gay in comparison with these halls of disappointment. ! 
 
 As I make a point of dawdling away July and Au- 
 gust in this locomotive metropolis of pleasure, and 
 rather prefer Lebanon, it is always agreeable to me to 
 hear that the nucleus is formed in that valley of hem 
 locks. Not for its scenery, for really, my dear east- 
 
 ern-hemispherian ! you that are accustomed to what 
 is called nature in England (to wit, a soft park, with a 
 gray ruin in the midst), have little idea how wearily 
 upon heart and mind presses a waste wilderness of 
 mere forest and water, without stone or story. Trees 
 in England have characters and tongues ; if you see a 
 fine one, you know whose father planted it, and for 
 whose pleasure it was designed, and about what sum 
 the man must possess to afford to let it stand. They 
 are statistics, as it were so many trees, ergo so many 
 owners so rich. In America, on the contrary, trees 
 grow and waters run, as the stars shine, quite unmean 
 ingly ; there may be ten thousand princely elms, and 
 not a man within a hundred miles worth five pounds 
 five. You ask, in England, who has the privilege of 
 this water ? or you say of an oak, that it stood in such 
 a man s time : but with us, water is an element un 
 claimed and unrcnted, and a tree dabbles in the clouds 
 as they go over, and is like a great idiot, without soul 
 or responsibility. 
 
 If Lebanon had a history, however, it would have 
 been a spot for a pilgrimage, for its natural beauty. 
 It is shaped like a lotus, with one leaf laid back by 
 the wind. It is a great green cup, with a scoop for a 
 drinking-place. As you walk in the long porticoes of 
 the hotel, the dark forest mounts up before you like a 
 leafy wall, and the clouds seem just to clear the pine- 
 tops, and the eagles sail across from horizon to hori 
 zon, without lifting their wings, as if you saw them 
 from the bottom of a well. People born there think 
 the world about two miles square, and hilly. 
 
 The principal charm of Lebanon to me is the vil 
 lage of " shakers," lying in a valley about three miles 
 off. As Glaucus wondered at the inert tortoise of 
 Pompeii, and loved it for its antipodal contrast to him 
 self," so do I affection (a French verb that I beg leave 
 to introduce to the English language) the shaking 
 quakers. That two thousand men could be found in 
 the New World, who would embrace a religion en 
 joining a frozen and unsympathetic intercourse with 
 the diviner sex, and that an equal number of females 
 could be induced to live in the same community, with 
 out locks or walls, in the cold and rigid observance 
 of a creed of celibacy, is to me an inexplicable and 
 grave wonder. My delight is to get into my stanhope 
 after breakfast, and drive over and spend the forenoot 
 in contemplating them at their work in the fields 
 They have a peculiar and most expressive phvsiogno 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE, 
 
 my ; the women are pale, or of a wintry redness in 
 the cheek, and are all attenuated and spare. Gravity, 
 deep and habitual, broods in every line of their thin 
 faces. They go out to their labor in company with 
 those serious men, and are never seen to smile ; their 
 eyes are all hard and stony, their gait is precise and 
 stiff, their voices are of a croaking hoarseness, and na 
 ture seems dead in them. I would bake you such men 
 and women in a brick-kiln. 
 
 Do they think the world is coming to an end ? Are 
 there to be no more children ? Is Cupid to be thrown 
 out of business, like a coach proprietor on a railroad ? 
 What can the shakers mean, I should be pleased to 
 know ? 
 
 The oddity is that most of them are young. Men 
 of from twenty to thirty, and women from sixteen to 
 twenty-five, and often, spite of their unbecoming dress, 
 good-looking and shapely, meet you at every step. In 
 dustrious, frugal, and self-denying, they certainly are, 
 and there is every appearance that their tenets of 
 difficult abstinence are kept to the letter. There is 
 little temptation beyond principle to remain, and they 
 are free to go and come as they list, yet there they 
 live on in peace and unrepining industry, and a more 
 thriving community does not exist in the republic. 
 Many a time have I driven over on a Sunday, and 
 watched those solemn virgins dropping in one after 
 another to the church ; and when the fine-limbed and 
 russet-faced brotherhood were swimming round the 
 floor in their fanatical dance, I have watched their 
 countenances for some look of preference, some be 
 trayal of an ill suppressed impulse, till my eyes ached 
 again. I have selected the youngest and fairest, and 
 have not lost sight of her for two hours, and she 
 might have been made of cheese-parings for any trace 
 of emotion. There is food for speculation in it. Can 
 we do without matrimony ? Can we "strike," and be 
 independent of these dear delightful tyrants, for whom 
 we " live and move and have our being ?" Will it 
 ever be no blot on our escutcheon to have attained 
 thirty-five as an unfructifying unit ? Is that fearful 
 campaign, with all its embarrassments and awkward 
 nesses, and inquisitions into your money and morals, 
 its bullyings and backings-out is it inevitable ? 
 
 Lebanon has one other charm. Within a morning 
 drive of the springs lies the fairest village it has ever 
 been my lot to see. It is English in its character, 
 except that there is really nothing in this country 
 so perfect of its kind. There are many towns in the 
 United States more picturesquely situated, but this, 
 before I had been abroad, always seemed to me the 
 very ideal of English rural scenery, and the kind of 
 place to set apart for either love or death for one s 
 honeymoon or burial the two periods of life which 
 I have always hoped would find me in the loveliest 
 spot of nature. Stock bridge lies in a broad sunny 
 valley, with mountains at exactly the right distance, 
 and a river in its bosom that is as delicate in its wind 
 ings, and as suited to the charms it wanders among, 
 as a vein in the transparent neck of beauty. I am 
 not going into a regular description, but I have car 
 ried myself back to Lebanon ; and the remembrance 
 of the leafy mornings of summer in which I have 
 driven to that fair earthly paradise, and loitered under 
 its elms, imagining myself amid the scenes of song 
 and story in distant England, has a charm for me now. 
 I have seen the mother-land ; I have rambled through 
 park, woodland, and village, wherever the name was 
 old and the scene lovely, and it pleases me to go back 
 to my dreaming days and compare the reality with the 
 anticipation. Most small towns in America have traces 
 of newness about them. The stumps of a clearing, or 
 freshly-boarded barns something that is the antipodes 
 of romance meets your eye from every aspect. Stock- 
 bridge, on the contrary, is an old town, and the houses 
 
 are of a rural structure; the fields look soft and genial, 
 the grass is swardlike, the bridges picturesque, the 
 hedges old, and the elms, nowhere so many and so 
 luxuriant, are full-grown and majestic. The village 
 is embowered in foliage. 
 
 Greatest attraction of all, the authoress of " Redwood" 
 and " Hope Leslie," a novelist of whom America has 
 the good sense to be proud, is the Miss Mitford of Stock- 
 bridge. A man, though a distinguished one, may have 
 little influence on the town he lives in, but a remarka 
 ble woman is the invariable cynosure of s community, 
 and irradiates it all. I think I could divine the presence 
 of one almost by the growing of the trees and flowers. 
 " Our Village" does not look like other villages. 
 
 II. 
 
 You will have forgotten that I had a story to tell. 
 
 dear reader. I was at Lebanon in the summer of 
 
 (perhaps you don t care about knowing exactly when 
 it was, and in that case I would rather keep shy of 
 dates. I please myself with the idea that time gets on 
 faster than I). The Springs were thronged. The 
 president s lady was there (this was under our admin 
 istration, the Adams ), and all the four cliques spoken 
 of above were amicably united each other s beaux 
 dancing with each other s belles, and so on. If I were 
 writing merely for American eyes, I should digress 
 once more to describe the distinctive characters of the 
 south, north, and central representations of beauty; 
 but it would scarcely interest the general reader. I 
 may say, in passing, that the Boston belles were a 
 VAnglaise, rosy and riantes ; the New-Yorkers, like 
 Parisians, cool, dangerous, and dressy ; and the Balti- 
 moreans (and so south), like lonians or Romans, in 
 dolent, passionate, lovely, and languishing. Men, 
 women, and pine-apples, I am inclined to think, flour 
 ish with a more kindly growth in the fervid latitudes. 
 
 The campaign went on, and a pleasant campaign it 
 was for the parties concerned had the management 
 of their own affairs ; that is, they who had hearts to 
 sell made the bargain for themselves (this was the 
 greater number), and they who disposed of this com 
 modity gratis, though necessarily young and ignorant 
 of the world, made the transfer in the same manner, in 
 person. This is your true republic. The trading in 
 ffections by reference the applying to an old and 
 selfish heart for the purchase of a young and ingenu 
 ous one the swearing to your rents, and not to your 
 faithful passion to your settlements, and not your 
 constancy the cold distance between yourself and 
 the young creature who is to lie in your bosom, till 
 the purchase-money is secured and the hasty mar 
 riage and sudden abandonment of a nature thus 
 chilled and put on its guard, to a freedom with one 
 almost a stranger, that can not but seem licentious, 
 and can not but break down that sense of propriety in 
 which modesty is most strongly intrenched this 
 seems to me the one evil of your old worm-eaten mon 
 archies this side the water, which touches the essen 
 tial happiness of the well-bred individual. Taxation 
 and oppression are but things he reads of in the morn- 
 ng paper. 
 
 This freedom of intercourse between unmarried 
 people has a single disadvantage one gets so desper 
 ately soon to the end of the chapter ! There shall be 
 wo hundred young ladies at the Springs in a given 
 season, and, by the difference in taste so wisely ar 
 ranged by Providence, there will scarcely be, of course, 
 more than four in that number whom any one gentle 
 man at all difficult will find within the range of his 
 beau ideal. With these four he may converse freely 
 twelve hours in the day more, if he particularly de 
 sires it. They may ride together, drive together, ram- 
 ale together, sing together, be together from morning 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 till night, and at the end of a month passed in this way, 
 if he escape a committal, as is possible, he will know 
 all that are agreeable, in one large circle, at least, as well 
 as he knows his sisters a state of things that is very 
 likely to end in his going abroad soon, from a mere 
 dearth of amusement. I have imagined, however, 
 the case of an unmarrying idle man, a character too 
 rare as yet in America to affect the general question. 
 People marry as they die in that country when their 
 time come. We must all marry is as much an axiom 
 as we must all rffl, and eke as melancholy. 
 
 Shall we go on with the story ? I had escaped for 
 two blessed weeks, and was congratulating the sus 
 ceptible gentleman under my waistcoat-pocket that we 
 should never be in love with less than the whole sex 
 
 again, when a German Baron Von arrived at 
 
 the Springs with a lame daughter. She was eighteen, 
 transparently fair, and, at first sight, so shrinkingly 
 dependant, so delicate, so childlike, that attention to 
 her assumed the form almost of pity, and sprang as 
 naturally and unsuspectingly from the heart. The 
 only womanly trait about her was her voice, which 
 was so deeply soft and full, so earnest and yet so gen 
 tle, so touched with subdued pathos and yet so melan 
 choly calm, that if she spoke after a long silence, I 
 turned to her involuntarily with the feeling that she 
 was not the same as if some impassioned and elo 
 quent woman had taken unaware the place of the 
 simple and petted child. 
 
 I am inclined to think there is a particular tender 
 ness in the human breast for lame women. Any 
 other deformity in the gentler sex is monstrous ; but 
 lameness (the devil s defect) is "the devil." I picture 
 to myself, to my own eye, now pacing those rickety 
 colonnades at Lebanon with the gentle Meeta hanging 
 he;ivily, and with the dependance inseparable from 
 her infirmity, on my arm, while the moon (which was 
 the moon of the Rhine to her, full of thrilling and un 
 earthly influences) rode solemnly up above the moun 
 tain-tops. And that strange voice filling like a flute 
 with sweetness as the night advanced, and that irregu 
 lar pressure of the small wrist in her forgotten lame 
 ness, and my own (I thought) almost paternal feeling 
 as she leaned more and more heavily, and turned her 
 delicate and fair face confidingly up to mine, and that 
 dangerous mixture altogether of childlikeness and 
 womanly passion, of dependance and superiority, of 
 reserve on the one subject of love, and absolute confi 
 dence on every other if I had not a story to tell, I 
 could prate of those June nights and their witcheries 
 till you would think 
 
 " Tutti gli alberi del mondo 
 Fossero penne," 
 
 and myself " bitten by the dipsas." 
 
 We were walking one night late in the gallery run 
 ning around the second story of the hotel. There was 
 a ball on the floor below, and the music, deadened 
 somewhat by the crowded room, came up softened and 
 mellowed to the dark and solitary colonnade, and added 
 to other influences in putting a certain lodger in my 
 bosom beyond my temporary control. I told Meeta 
 that I loved her. 
 
 The building stands against the side of a steep moun 
 tain high up above the valley, and the pines and hem 
 locks at that time hung in their primeval blackness 
 almost over the roof. As the most difficult and em 
 barrassed sentence of which I had ever been delivered 
 died on my lips, and Meeta, lightening her weight on 
 my arm, walked in apparently offended silence by my 
 side, a deep-toned guitar was suddenly struck in the 
 woods, and a clear, manly voice broke forth in a song. 
 It produced an instant and startling effect on my com 
 panion. With the first word she quickly withdrew 
 her arm ; and, after a moment s pause, listening with 
 
 her hands raised in an attitude of the most intense ea 
 gerness, she sprang to the extremity of the balustrade, 
 and gazed breathlessly into the dark depths of the for 
 est. The voice ceased, and she started back, and laid 
 her hand hastily upon my arm. 
 
 " I must go," she said, in a voice of hurried feeling ; 
 " if you are generous, stay here and await me !" and in 
 another moment she sprang along the bridge connect 
 ing the gallery with the rising ground in the rear, and 
 was lost in the shadows of the hemlocks. 
 
 " I have made a declaration," thought I, "just five 
 minutes too soon." 
 
 I paced up and down the now too lonely colonnade, 
 and picked up the fragments of my dream with what 
 philosophy I might. By the time Meeta returned 
 perhaps a half hour, perhaps an age, as you measure 
 by her feelings or mine I had hatched up a very pret 
 ty and heroical magnanimity. She would have spoken, 
 but was breathless. 
 
 " Explain nothing," I said, taking her arm within 
 mine, " and let us mutually forget. If I can serve you 
 better than by silence, command me entirely. I live 
 but for your happiness even," I added after a pause, 
 " though it spring from another." 
 
 We were at her chamber-door. She pressed my 
 hand with a strength of which I did not think those 
 small, slight fingers capable, and vanished, leaving me, 
 I am free to confess, less resigned than you would sup 
 pose from my last speech. I had done the dramatic 
 thing, thanks to much reading of you, dear Barry 
 Cornwall ! but it was not in a play. I remained killed 
 after the audience was gone. 
 
 III. 
 
 The next day a new character appeared on the 
 stage. 
 
 "Such a handsome pedlar !" said magnificent Hel 
 en to me, as I gave my horse to the groom after 
 a ride in search of hellebore, and joined the prome 
 nade at the well : " and what do you think ? he sells 
 only by rnffle ! It s so nice! All sorts of Berlin iron 
 ornaments, and everything German and sweet ; and 
 the pedlar s smile s worth more than the prizes ; and 
 such a mustache ! See ! there he is ! and now, if 
 
 j he has sold all his tickets will you come, Master 
 Gravity ?" 
 
 " I hear a voice you can not hear," thought I, as I 
 
 gave the beauty my arm, and joined a crowd of people 
 gathered about a pedlar s box in the centre of the 
 parterre. 
 
 The itinerant vender spread his wares in the midst 
 of the gay assemblage, and the raffle went on. He 
 was excessively handsome. A head of the sweet gen 
 tleness of Raphael s, with locks flowing to his shoul 
 ders in the fashion of German students, a soft brown 
 mustache curving on a short Phidian upper lip, a 
 
 i large blue eye expressive of enthusiasm rather than 
 
 passion, and features altogether purely intellectual- 
 formed a portrait of which even jealousy might con 
 sole itself. Through all the disadvantages of a dress 
 suited to his apparent vocation, an eye the least on 
 the alert for a disguise would have penetrated his in 
 a moment. The gay and thoughtless crowd about 
 him, not accustomed to impostors who were more than 
 they pretended to be, trusted him for a pedlar, but 
 treated him with a respect far above his station insen 
 sibly. 
 
 Whatever his object was, so it were honorable, I 
 inly determined to give him all the assistance in my 
 power. A single glance at the face of Meeta, who 
 joined the circle as the prizes were drawn a face so 
 changed since yesterday, so flushed with hope and 
 pleasure, and yet so saddened by doubt and fear, the 
 small lips compressed, the soft black eye kindled aqd 
 
8 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE, 
 
 restless, and the red leaf on her cheek deepened to a 
 feverish beauty left me no shadow of hesitation. I 
 exchanged a look with her that I intended should say 
 as much. 
 
 IV. 
 
 I know nothing that gives one such an elevated idea 
 of human nature (in one s own person) as helping 
 another man to a woman one loves. Oh last days of 
 minority or thereabout ! oh primal manhood ! oh 
 golden time, when we have let go all but the enthu 
 siasm of the boy, and seized hold of all but the sel 
 fishness of the man ! oh blessed interregnum of the 
 evil and stronger genius ! why can we not bottle up 
 thy hours like the wine of a better vintage, and enjoy 
 them in the parched world-weariness of age ? In the 
 tardy honeymoon of a bachelor (as mine will be, if it 
 come ever, alas !) with what joy of paradise should we 
 bring up from the cellars of the past a hamper of that 
 sunny Hippocrene ! 
 
 Pedlar Karl and "the gentleman in No. 10" would 
 have been suspected in any other country of conspira 
 cy. (How odd, that the highest crime of a monarchy 
 the attempt to supplant the existing ruler becomes 
 in a republic a creditable profession ! You are a trai 
 tor here, a politician there !) We sat together from 
 midnight onward, discoursing in low voices over sherry 
 and sandwiches ; and in that crowded Babylon, his 
 entrances and exits required a very conspirator-like 
 management. Known as my friend, his trade and his 
 disguise were up. As a pedlar, wandering about 
 where he listed when not employed over his wares, his 
 interviews with Mecta were easily contrived, and his 
 lover s watch, gazing on her through the long hours 
 of the ball from the crowd of villagers at the windows, 
 hovering about her walks, and feeding his heart on 
 the many, many chance looks of fondness given him 
 every hour in that out-of-doors society, kept him com 
 paratively happy. 
 
 " The baron looked hard at you to-day," said I, as 
 he closed the door in my little room, and sat down on 
 the bed. 
 
 " Yes ; he takes an interest in me as a countryman, 
 but he does not know me. He is a dull observer, and 
 hr.s seen me but once in Germany." 
 
 " How, then, have you known Meeta so long ?" 
 
 " I accompanied her brother home from the uni 
 versity, when the baron was away, and for a long month 
 we were seldom parted. Riding, boating on the Rhine, 
 watching the sunset from the bartizan of the old castle- 
 towers, reading in the old library, rambling in the park 
 and forest it was a heaven, my friend, than which I 
 can conceive none brighter." 
 
 "And her brother?" 
 
 " Alas ! changed ! We were both boys then, and a 
 brother is slow to believe his sister s beauty dangerous. 
 He was the first to shut the doors against me, when 
 he heard that the poor student had dared to love his 
 highborn Meeta." 
 
 Karl covered his eyes with his hand, and brooded 
 for a while in silence on the remembrances he had 
 awakened. 
 
 " Do you think the baron came to America pur 
 posely to avoid you ?" 
 
 " Partly, I have no doubt, for I entered the castle 
 one night in my despair, when I had been forbidden 
 entrance, and he found me at her feet in the old cor 
 ridor. It was the only time he ever saw me, if, in 
 deed, he saw me at all in the darkness : and he imme 
 diately hastened his preparations for a long-contem 
 plated journey., 1 knew not whither." 
 
 " Did you follow him soon ?" 
 
 " No, for my heart was crushed at first, and I de 
 spaired. The possibility of following them in my 
 
 wretched poverty did not even occur to me for 
 months." 
 
 " How did you track them hither, of all places in 
 the world ?" 
 
 " I sought them first in Italy. It is easy on the 
 continent to find out where persons are not, and after 
 two years wanderings, I heard of them in Paris. 
 They had just sailed for America. I followed ; but 
 in a country where there are no passports, and no 
 espionage, it is difficult to trace the yaveller. It was 
 probable only that they would be at a^lace of general 
 resort, and I came here with no assurance but hope. 
 Thanks to God, the first sight that greeted my eyes 
 was my dear Meeta, whose irregular step, as she 
 walked back and forth with you in the gallery, enabled 
 me to recognise her in the darkness." 
 
 Who shall say the days of romance are over ? The 
 plot is not brought to the catastrophe, but we hope it 
 is near. 
 
 V. 
 
 My aunt, Isabella Slingsby (now in heaven, with 
 the "eleven thousand virgins," God rest her soul!), 
 was at this time, as at all others, under my respecta 
 ble charge. She would have said I was under hers 
 but it amounts to the same thing we lived together 
 in peace and harmony. She said what she pleased, 
 for I loved her and I did what I pleased, for she 
 loved me. When Karl told me that Meeta s principal 
 obkjction to an elopement was the want of a matron, 
 I snut the teeth of my resolution, as they say in Per 
 sia, and inwardly vowed my unconscious aunt to this 
 exigency. You should have seen Miss Isabella Slings 
 by to know what a desperate man may be brought to 
 resolve on. 
 
 On a certain day, Count Von Raffle-off (as my witty 
 friend and ally, Tom Fane, was pleased to call the 
 handsome pedlar) departed with his pack and the 
 hearts of all the dressing-maids and some of their mis 
 tresses, on his way to New York. I drove down the 
 road to take my leave of him out of sight, and give 
 him my last instructions. 
 
 How to attack my aunt was a subject about which 
 I had many unsatisfactory thoughts. If there was one 
 thing she disapproved of more than another, it was an 
 elopement ; and with what face to propose to her to 
 run away with a baron s only daughter, and leave her 
 in the hands of a pedlar, taking upon herself, as she 
 must, the whole sin and odium, was an enigma,! ate, 
 drank, and slept upon, in vain. One thing at last be 
 came very clear she would do it for nobody but me. 
 Sequitur, I must play the lover myself. 
 
 I commenced with a fit of illness. What was the 
 matter ? For two days I was invisible. Dear Isabella ! 
 it was the first time I had ever drawn seriously on thy 
 fallow sympathies, and, how freely they flowed at my 
 affected sorrows, I shame to remember ! Did ever 
 woman so weep ? Did ever woman so take antipathy 
 to man as she to that innocent old baron for his sup 
 posed refusal of his daughter to Philip Slingsby ? This 
 revival of the remembrance shall not be in vain. The 
 mignonette and roses planted above thy grave, dearest 
 aunt, shall be weeded anew ! 
 
 . Oh that long week of management and hypocrisy ! 
 The day came at last. 
 
 "Aunt Bel!" 
 
 "What, Philip, dear?" 
 
 " I think I feel better to-day." - v* ; 
 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "Yes. What say you to a drive? There is the 
 stanhope." 
 
 " My dear Phil, don t mention that horrid stanhope. 
 I am sure, if you valued my life " 
 
 " Precisely, aunt (I had taken care to give her a 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 good fright the day before) but Tom Fane has offered 
 me his ponies and Jersey wagon, and that, you know, 
 is the most quiet thing in the world, and holds four. 
 So, perhaps ehein ! you ll ask Meeta?" 
 
 " Um ! Why, you see, Philip " 
 
 I saw at once, that, if it got to an argument, I was 
 
 steep mountain for ? Well ! the flowers are charming 
 in these high regions ! 
 
 " Don t you see my reason for coming, then, aunt 
 Bella?" 
 
 " Was it for that, dear Philip ?" said she, putting 
 the wild flowers affectionately into her bosom, where 
 
 perdu. Miss Slingsby, though a sincere Christian, j they bloomed like broidery on saffron tapestry ; "how 
 never could keep her temper when she tried to reason. |; considerate of you !" And she drew her shawl around 
 
 I knelt down on her footstool, smoothed away the false 
 
 hair on her for^ead ; a 
 nating endearrrwp: of i 
 
 and kissed her. It was a fasci- 
 
 nine, that I only resorted to on 
 
 great emergencies. The hermit tooth in my aunt s 
 mouth became gradually visible, heralding what in 
 youth had been a smile ; and, as I assisted her in roll 
 ing up her embroidery, she looked on me with an un 
 suspecting affection that touched my heart. I made 
 a silent vow that if she survived the scrape into which 
 she was being inveigled, I would be to her and her 
 dog Whimsiculo (the latter my foe and my aversion) 
 the soul of exemplary kindness for the remainder of 
 their natural lives. 
 
 this vow was kept. My aunt blessed me shortly before 
 she was called to " walk in white" (she had hitherto 
 walked in yellow), and as it would have been unnatu 
 ral in Whimsiculo to survive her, I considered his 
 " natural life" as ended with hers, and had him peace 
 fully strangled on the same day. He lies at her feet, 
 as usual, a delicate attention of which (I trust in Swe- 
 denborg) her spirit is aware. 
 
 her, and was at peace with all the world. So easily 
 j are the old made happy by the young ! Reader, I 
 ; scent a moral in the air ! 
 
 We were at the top of the hill. If I was sane, my 
 j aunt was probably thinking, I should turn here, and 
 ! go back. To descend the other side, and reascend 
 and descend again to the Springs, was hardly a sort of 
 thing one would do for pleasure. 
 
 " Here s a good place to turn, Philip," said she, as 
 we entered a smooth broad hollow on the top of the 
 mountain. 
 
 I dashed through it as if the ponies were shod with 
 
 I lay the unction to my soul that jj talaria. My aunt said nothing, and luckily the road 
 was very narrow for a mile, and she had a horror of a 
 short turn. A new thought struck me. 
 
 " Did you ever know, aunt, that there was a way 
 back around the foot of the mountain ?" 
 " Dear, no ; how delightful ! Is it far ?" 
 "A couple of hours or so ; but I can do it in less. 
 We ll try ;" and I gave the sure-footed Canadians the 
 hip, and scampered down the hills rts if the rock of 
 
 With the exception of " Tom Thumb" and " Rat 
 tler," who were of the same double-jointed family, of 
 
 y.ot 
 p^r 
 
 l Sisyphus had been rolling after us. 
 
 j We were soon over the mountain-range, and the 
 
 interminable wind and bottom, there was never p^r- l| road grew better and more level. Oh, how fast pat- 
 haps such a pair of goers as Tom Fane s ponies. My !j tered those little hoofs, and how full of spirit, and 
 
 aunt had a lurking hope, I believe, that the baron 
 
 excitement looked those small ears, catching the 
 
 would refuse Meeta permission to join us, but either jj lightest chirrup I could whisper, like the very spell of 
 he did not think me a dangerous person (I have said jj swiftness ! Pines, hemlocks and cedars, farmhouses 
 before he was a dull man), or he had no objection to || and milestones, flew back like shadows. My nunt sat 
 me as a son-in-law, which my aunt and myself (against j speechless in the middle of the back seat, holding on 
 the world) would have thought the natural construe- | with both hands, in apprehensive resignation! She 
 
 expected soon to come in sight of the Springs, and 
 had doubtless taken a mental resolution that if, please 
 God, she once more found herself at home, she would 
 never " tempt Providence" (it was a favorite expression 
 of hers) by trusting herself again behind such a pair 
 of fly-away demons. As I read this thought in her 
 countenance by a stolen glar.ce over my shoulder, we 
 rattled into a village distant from Lebanon twenty 
 miles. 
 
 " There, aunt," said I, as I pulled up at the door of 
 the inn, " we have very nearly described a circle. 
 j Now, don t speak ! if you do, you ll start the horses. 
 Thei 
 
 man s voice. Very 
 
 i their mouths now, and be at home in the crack of a 
 whip. Five miles more, only. Come !" 
 
 Off we sped again like the wind, aunt Bel just vcn- 
 i turing to wonderwhetherthe horses wouldn t rather go 
 ] slower. Meeta had hardly spoken ; she had thoughts 
 of her own to be busy with, and I pretended to be fully 
 occupied with my driving. The nonsense I talked to 
 
 tion upon his indifference. He came to the end of the 
 colonnade to see us start, and as I eased the ribands 
 and let the ponies off like a shot from a crossbow, I 
 stole a look at Meeta. The color had fled from cheek 
 and lip, and the tears streamed over them like rain. 
 Aunt Bel was on the back seat, grace a Dicu ! 
 
 We met Tom at the foot of the hill, and I pulled 
 up. He was the best fellow, that Tom Fane ! 
 
 " Ease both the bearing reins," said I, " I am going 
 up the mountain." 
 
 " jghe devil you are !" said Tom, doing my bidding, 
 however ; " you ll find the road to the shakers much 
 pleasanter. What an odd whim ! It s a perpendicu 
 lar three miles, Miss Slingsby. I would as lief be 
 hoisted up a well and let down again. Don t go that 
 way, Phil, unless you are going to run away with 
 
 Miss Von " 
 
 " Many a shaft at random sent," 
 
 thought I, and waving the tandem lash over the ears 
 of the ponies, I brought up the silk on the cheek of 
 their malaprop master, and spanked away up the hill, 
 leaving him in a range likely to get a fresh supply of 
 fuel by dinner-time. Tom was of a plethoric habit, 
 and if I had not thought he could afford to burst a 
 blood-vessel better than two lovers to break their hearts, 
 I should not have ventured on the bold measure of 
 borrowing his horses for an hour, and keeping them a 
 week. We have shaken hands upon it since, but it is 
 my private opinion that he has never forgiven ine in 
 his heart. 
 
 As we wound slowly up the mountain, I gave Meeta 
 the reins, and jumped out to gather some wild flowers 
 for my aunt. Dear old soul ! the attention reconciled 
 her to what she considered a very unwarrantable ca 
 price of mine. What I could wish to toil up that 
 
 re s nothing they are so much afraid of as a wo- 
 s voice. Very odd, isn t it ? We ll just sponge 
 
 those horses, to do away the embarrassment of her si- 
 lence, would convict me of insanity before any jury in 
 the world. * 
 
 The sun began to throw long shadows, and the short- 
 legged ponies figured like (lying giraffes along the re 
 tiring hedges. Luckily, my aunt had very little idea 
 of conjecturing a course by the points of the compass. 
 We sped on gloriously. 
 
 " Philip, dear ! hav n t you lost your way ? It seems 
 to me we ve come more than five miles since you 
 stopped" (ten at least), " and I .don t see the moun 
 tains about Lebanon at all !" 
 
 " Don t be alarmed, aunty, dear ! We re very high, 
 just here, and shall drop down on Lebanon, as it were. 
 Are you afraid, Meeta ?" 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE, 
 
 " Nein /" she answered. She was thinking in Ger 
 man, poor girl, and heart and memory were wrapped 
 up in the thought. 
 
 I drove on almost cruelly. Tom s incomparable 
 horses justified all his eulogiums ; they were indefati 
 gable. The sun blazed a moment through the firs, 
 and disappeared ; the gorgeous changes of eve came 
 over the clouds ; the twilight stole through the damp 
 air with its melancholy gray ; and the whippoorwills, 
 birds of evening, came abroad, like gentlemen in debt, 
 to flit about in the darkness. Everything was sad 
 dening. My own volubility ceased ; the whiz of the 
 lash, as I waved it over the heads of my foaming po 
 nies, and an occasional " Steady !"as one or the other 
 broke into a gallop, were the only interruptions to the 
 silence. Meeta buried her face in the folds of her 
 shawl, and sat closer to my side, and my aunt, soothed 
 and flattered by turns, believed and doubted, and was 
 finally persuaded, by my ingenious and well-inserted 
 fibs, that it was only somewhat farther than I antici 
 pated, and we should arrive " presently." 
 
 Somewhere about eight o clock the lights of a town 
 appeared in the distance, and, straining every nerve, 
 the gallant beasts whirled us in through the streets, 
 and I pulled up suddenly at the door of an hotel. 
 
 " Why, Philip !" said my aunt in a tone of unut 
 terable astonishment, looking about hey as if she had 
 awoke from a dream, " this is Hudson !" 
 
 It was too clear to be disputed. We were upon the 
 North river, forty miles from Lebanon, and the steam 
 er would touch at the pier in half an hour. My aunt 
 was to be one of the passengers to New York, but she 
 was, yet to be persuaded of it; the only thing now was 
 to get her into the house, and enact the scene as soon 
 as possible. 
 
 I helped her out as tenderly as I knew how, and, as 
 we went up stairs, I requested Meeta to sit down in a 
 corner of the room, and cover her face with her hand 
 kerchief. When the servant was locked out, I took 
 my aunt into the recess of the window, and informed 
 her, to her very great surprise, that she had run away 
 with the baron s daughter. 
 " Philip Slingsby !" 
 
 My aunt was overcome. I had nothing for it but to 
 be overcome too. She sunk into one chair, and I into I 
 the other, and burying my face in my hands, I looked ! 
 through my fingers to watch the effect. Five mortal I 
 minutes lasted my aunt s wrath ; gradually, however, 
 she began to steal a look at me, and the expression of ; 
 resentment about her thin lips softened into something I 
 like pity. 
 
 " Philip !" said she, taking my hand, 
 " My dear aunt !" 
 "What is to be done?" 
 
 I pointed to Meeta, who sat with her head on her 
 bosom, pressed my hand to my heart, as if to suppress 
 a pang, and proceeded to explain. It seemed impos 
 sible for my aunt to forgive the deception of the thing. 
 Unsophisticated Isabella ! If thou hadst known that I 
 thou wert, even yet, one fold removed from the truth, | 
 if thou couldst have divined that it was not for the 
 darling of thy heart that thou wert yielding a point j 
 only less dear to thee than thy maiden reputation 
 if it could have entered thy region of possibilities that 
 thine own house in town had been three days aired 
 for the reception of a bride, run away with by thy os 
 tensible connivance, and all for a German pedlar, in 
 whose fortunes and loves thou hadst no shadow of 
 interest I think the brain in thee would have turned, 
 and the dry heart in thy bosom have broken with sur 
 prise and grief! 
 
 I wrote a note to Tom, left his horses at the inn, 
 and at nine o clock we were steaming down the Hud 
 son, my aunt in bed, and Meeta pacing the deck with 
 me, and pouring forth her fears and her gratitude in 
 
 a voice of music that made me almost repent my self- 
 sacrificing enterprise. I have told the story gayly, 
 gentle teader ! but there was a nerve ajar in my heart 
 while its little events went on. 
 
 How we sped thereafter, dear reader ! how the 
 consul of his majesty of Prussia was persuaded by my 
 aunt s respectability to legalize the wedding by his 
 presence how my aunt fainted dead away when the 
 parson arrived, and she discovered who was not to be 
 the bridegroom and who was how ^^sersuaded her 
 he had gone too far to recede, and worked on her ten 
 derness once more how the weeping Karl, and his 
 lame and lovely bride, lived with us till the old baron 
 thought it fit to give Meeta his blessing and some 
 money how Tom Fane wished no good to the ped 
 lar s eyes and lastly, how Miss Isabella Slingsby lived 
 and died wondering what earthly motive I could have 
 for my absurd share in these events, are matters of 
 which I spare you the particulars. 
 
 NIAGARA-LAKE ONTARIO-THE ST. LAW 
 RENCE, 
 
 NO. I. NIAGARA. 
 
 ^ was in my senior vacation, and I was bound to 
 Niagara for the first time. My companion was a spe 
 cimen of the human race found rarely in Vermont, and 
 never elsewhere. He was nearly seven feet high, 
 walked as if every joint in his body was in a hopeless 
 state of dislocation, and was hideously, ludicrously, 
 and painfully ugly. This whimsical exterior contained 
 the conscious spirit of Apollo, and the poetical suscep 
 tibility of Keats. He had left his plough in the Green 
 mountains at the age of twenty-five, and entered as a 
 poor student at the university, where, with the usual 
 policy of the college government, he was allotted to 
 me as a compulsory chum, on the principle of break 
 ing in a colt with a cart-horse. 1 began with laughing 
 at him, and ended with loving him. He rejoiced in 
 the common appellation of Job Smith a synonymous 
 soubriquet, as 1 have elsewhere remarked, which was 
 substituted by his classmates for his baptismal name 
 of Forbearance. ^ 
 
 Getting Job away with infinite difficulty from a 
 young Indian girl who was selling moccasins in the 
 streets of Buffalo (a straight, slender creature of eigh 
 teen, stepping about like a young leopard, cold, stern, 
 and beautiful), we crossed the outlet of Lake Erie at 
 the ferry, and took horses on the northern bank of 
 Niagara river to ride to the falls. It was a noble 
 stream, as broad as the Hellespont and as blue as the 
 sky, and I could not look at it, hurrying on headlong- 
 to its fearful leap, without a feeling almost of dread. 
 
 There was only one thing to which Job was more 
 susceptible than to the beauties of nature, and that 
 was the beauty of woman. His romance had been 
 stirred by the lynx-eyed Sioux, who took her money 
 for the moccasins with such haughty and thankless 
 superbia, and full five miles of the river, with all the 
 gorgeous flowers and rich shrubs upon its rim, might 
 as well have been Lethe for his admiration. He rode 
 along, like the man of rags you see paraded on an ass 
 in the carnival, his legs and arms dangling about in 
 ludicrous obedience to the sidelong hitch of his pacer. 
 
 The roar of the falls was soon audible, and Job s 
 enthusiasm and my own, if the increased pace of our 
 Narragansetponies meant anything, were fully aroused. 
 The river broke into rapids, foaming furiously on its 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 11 
 
 course, and the subterranean thunder increased like a 
 succession of earthquakes, each louder than the last. 
 I had never heard a sound so broad and universal. It 
 was impossible not to suspend the breath, and feel ab 
 sorbed, to the exclusion of all other thoughts, in the 
 great phenomenon with which the world seemed trem 
 bling to its centre. A tall, misty cloud, changing its 
 shape continually, as it felt the shocks of the air, rose 
 up before us, and with our eyes fixed upon it, and our 
 
 horses at a hard gallop, we found ourselves unexpect 
 edly in front of aiP 
 
 white 
 
 hotel ! which sud 
 
 denly interposed nMcwcen the cloud and our vision. 
 Job slapped his legs against the sides of his panting 
 beast, and urged him on, but a long fence on either 
 side the immense building cut him oft from all ap 
 proach ; and having assured ourselves that there was 
 no access to Niagara except through the back-door of 
 the gentleman s house, who stood with hat oft" to re 
 ceive us, we wished no good to his majesty s province 
 of Upper Canada, and dismounted. 
 
 " Will you visit the falls before dinner, gentlemen ?" 
 asked mine host. 
 
 " No, sir !" thundered Job, in a voice that, for a mo 
 ment, stopped the roar of the cataract. 
 
 He was like an improvisatore who had been checked 
 by some rude birbone in the very crisis of his elo 
 quence. He would not have gone to the falls that 
 night to have saved the world. We dined. 
 
 As it was the first meal we had ever eaten under a 
 monarchy, I proposed the health of the king ; but Job 
 refused it. There was an impertinent profanity, he 
 said, in fencing up the entrance to Niagara that was . 
 greater encroachment on natural liberty than the stamp j 
 act. He would drink to no king or parliament under | 
 which such a thing could be conceived possible. I left j 
 the table and walked to the window. 
 
 " Job, come here ! Miss , by all that is love 
 ly !" 
 
 He flounced up, like a snake touched with a torpe 
 do, and sprang to the window. Job had never seen 
 the lady whose name produced such a sensation, but 
 he had heard more of her than of Niagara. So had 
 every soul of the fifteen millions of inhabitants between 
 us and the gulf of Mexico. She was one of those mir 
 acles of nature that occur, perhaps, once in the rise 
 and fall of an empire a woman of the perfect beauty 
 of an angel, with the most winning human sweetness 
 of character and manner. She was kind, playful, un 
 affected, and radiantly, gloriously beautiful. I am sor 
 ry I may not mention her name, for in more chival 
 rous times she would have been a character of history. 
 Everybody who has been in America, however, will 
 Know who I am describing, and I am sorry for those 
 who have not. The country of Washington will be 
 in its decadence before it sees such another. 
 
 She had been to the fall and was returning with her 
 mother and a troop of lovers, who, I will venturiS to 
 presume, brought away a very imperfect impression of 
 the scene. I would describe her as she came laugh 
 ing up that green bank, unconscious of everything but 
 the pleasure of life in a summer sunset ; but I leave it 
 for a more skilful hand. The authoress of " Hope 
 Leslie" will, perhaps, mould her image into one of 
 her inimitable heroines. 
 
 I presented my friend, and we passed the evening 
 in her dangerous company. After making an engage 
 ment to accompany her in the morning behind ih< 
 sheet of the fall, we said "Good-night" at twelve one 
 of us at least as many " fathom deep in love" as a thou 
 sand Rosalinds. My poor chum ! The roar of the 
 cataract that shook the very roof over thy head was 
 less loud to thee that night than the beating of thine 
 own heart, I warrant me ! 
 
 I rose at sunrise to go alone to the fall, but Job was 
 before me, and the angular outline of his gaunt figure, 
 stretching up from Table Rock in strong relief against 
 
 the white body of the spray, was the first object that 
 caught my eye as I descended. 
 
 As I came nearer the fall, a feeling of disappoint 
 ment came over me. I had imagined Niagara a vast 
 body of water descending as if from the clouds. The 
 approach to most falls is from below, and we get an 
 idea of them as of rivers pitching down to the plain 
 from the brow of a hill or mountain. Niagara river, 
 on the contrary, comes out from Lake Erie through a 
 flat plain. The top of the cascade is ten feet perhaps 
 below the level of the country around consequently 
 invisible from any considerable distance. You walk 
 to the bank of a broad and rapid river, and look over 
 the edge of a rock, where the outlet flood of an inland 
 sea seems to have broken through the crust of the 
 earth, and, by its mere weight, plunged with an awful 
 leap into an immeasurabh and resounding abyss. It 
 seems to strike and thunder upon the very centre of 
 I the world, and the ground beneath your feet quivers 
 with the shock till you feel unsafe upon it. 
 
 Other disappointment than this I can not conceive 
 at Niagara. It is a spectacle so awful, so beyond the 
 scope and power of every other phenomenon in the 
 world, that I think people who are disappointed there 
 mistake the incapacity of their own conception for the 
 want of grandeur in the scene. 
 
 The "hell of waters" below need but a little red 
 ochre to out-Phlegethon Phlegethon. I can imagine 
 the surprise of the gentle element, after sleeping away 
 a se nnight of moonlight in the peaceful bosom of 
 Lake Erie, at finding itself of a sudden in such a coil! 
 A Mediterranean sea-gull, which had tossed out the 
 whole of a January in the infernal " yeast" of the 
 Archipelago (was I not all but wrecked every day be 
 tween Troy and Malta in a score of successive hurri 
 canes ?) I say, the most weather-beaten of sea-birds 
 would look twice before he ventured upon the roaring 
 caldron below Niagara. It is astonishing to see how 
 far the descending mass is driven under the surface of 
 the stream. As far down toward Lake Ontario as the 
 eye can reach, the immense volumes of water rise 
 like huge monsters to the light, boiling and flashing 
 out in rings of foam, with an appearance of rage and 
 anger that I have seen in no other cataract in the 
 world. 
 
 " A nice fall, as an Englishman would say, my dear 
 Job." 
 
 "Awful!" 
 
 Halleck, the American poet (a better one never 
 "strung pearls"), has writlen some admirable verses 
 on Niagara, describing its effect on the different indi 
 viduals of a mixed party, among whom was a tailor. 
 The sea of incident that has broken over me in years 
 of travel, has washed out of my memory all but the 
 two lines descriptive of its impression upon Snip : 
 
 " The tailor made one single note 
 Gods ! what a place to sponge a coat ! " 
 
 " Shall we go to breakfast, Job ?" 
 
 " How slowly and solemnly they drop into the 
 
 It was not an original remark of Mr. Smith s. Noth 
 ing is so surprising to the observer as the extraordi 
 nary deliberateness with which the waters of Niagara 
 take their tremendous plunge. All hurry and foam 
 and fret, till they reach the smooth limit of the curve 
 and then the laws of gravitation seem suspended, 
 and, like Cesar, they pause, and determine, since it is 
 inevitable, to take the death-leap with becoming dig- 
 
 01 "Shall we go to breakfast, Job ?" I was obliged to 
 raise my voice, to be hearJ, to a pitch rather exhaust 
 ing to an empty stomach. 
 
 His eyes remained fixed upon the shifting rainbows 
 bending and vanishing in the spray. There was no 
 moving him, and I gave in for another five minutes. 
 
13 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 " Do you think it probable, Job, that the waters of 
 Niagara strike on the axis of the world ?" 
 
 No answer. 
 
 " Job !" 
 
 What ?" 
 
 Do you think his majesty s half of the cataract is 
 finer than ours ?" 
 
 Much." 
 
 For water, merely, perhaps. But look at the de 
 licious verdure on the American shore, the glorious 
 trees, the massed foliage, the luxuriant growth even to 
 the very rim of the ravine ! By Jove ! it seems to me 
 things grow better in a republic. Did you ever see a 
 more barren and scraggy shore than the one you stand 
 upon ?" 
 
 " How exquisitely," said Job, soliloquizing, " that 
 small green island divides the fnll ! What a rock it 
 must be founded on, not to have been washed away 
 in the ages that these waters have split against it !" 
 
 " I ll lay you a bet it is washed away before the 
 year two thousand payable in any currency with 
 which we may then be conversant." 
 
 " Don t trifle !" 
 
 " With time, or geology, do you mean ? Isn t it 
 perfectly clear from the looks of that ravine, that Ni 
 agara has backed up all the way from Lake Ontario ? 
 These rocks are not adamant, and the very precipice 
 you stand on has cracked, and looks ready for the 
 plunge.* It must gradually wear back to Lake Erie, 
 and then there will be a sweep, I should like to live 
 long enough to see. The instantaneous junction of 
 two seas, with a difference of two hundred feet in their 
 levels, will be a spectacle eh, Job?" 
 
 " Tremendous !" 
 
 " Do you intend to wait and see it, or will you come 
 to breakfast ?" 
 
 He was immoveable. I left him on the rock, went 
 up to the hotel and ordered mutton-chops and coffee, 
 and when they were on the table, gave two of the 
 waiters a dollar each to bring him up nolens-volens. 
 He arrived in a great rage, but with a good appetite, 
 and we finished our breakfast just in time to meet 
 
 Miss , as she stepped like Aurora from her 
 
 chamber. 
 
 It is necessary to a reputation for prowess in the 
 United States to have been behind the sheet of the 
 fall (supposing you to have been to Niagara). This 
 achievement is equivalent to a hundred shower-baths, 
 one severe cold, and being drowned twite but most 
 people do it. 
 
 We descended to the bottom of the precipice, at the 
 side of the fall, where we found a small house, fur 
 nished with coarse linen dresses for the purpose, and 
 having arranged ourselves in habiliments not particu 
 larly improving to our natural beauty, we reappeared 
 only three out of a party often having had the courage 
 to trust their attractions to such a trial. Miss 
 
 looked like a fairy in disguise, and Job like the most 
 ghostly and diabolical monster that ever stalked un- 
 sepultured abroad. He would frighten a child in his 
 best black suit but with a pair of wet linen trowsers 
 scarcely reaching to his knees, a jacket with sleeves 
 shrunk to the elbows, and a white cap, he was some 
 thing supernaturally awful. The guide hesitated 
 about going under the fall with him. 
 
 It looked rather appalling. Our way lay through a 
 dense descending sheet of water, along a slender 
 pathway of rocks, broken into small fragments, with 
 an overhanging wall on one side, and the boiling 
 caldron of the cataract on the othfr. A false step, 
 and you were a subject for the " shocking accident" 
 maker. 
 
 * It has since fallen into the abyss fortunately in the night, 
 as visiters were always upon it during the day. The noise was 
 heard at an incredible distance. 
 
 The guide went frst, taking Miss 
 
 right 
 
 hand. She gave me her left, and Job brought up the 
 rear, as they say in Connecticut, " on his own hook." 
 We picked our way boldly up to the water. The wall 
 leaned over so much, and the fragmented declivity 
 was so narrow and steep, that if it had not been done 
 before, I should have turned back at once. Two 
 steps more, and the small hand in mine began to strug 
 gle violently, and, in the same instant, the torrent beat 
 into my eyes, mouth, and nostrils, .and I felt as if I 
 was drowning. I staggered a blu^ktcp onward, but 
 still the water poured into my nWmls, and the con 
 viction rushed for a moment on my mind that we were 
 lost. I struggled for breath, stumbled forward, and 
 with a gasp that I thought was my last, sunk upon 
 the rocks within the descending waters. Job tumbled 
 over me the next instant, and as soon as I could clear 
 my eyes sufficiently to look about me, I saw the 
 
 guide sustaining Miss , who had been as nearly 
 
 drowned as most of the subjects of the Humane So 
 ciety, but was apparently in a state of resuscitation. 
 None but the half-drowned know the pleasure of 
 breathing. 
 
 Here we were within a chamber that Undine might 
 have coveted, a wall of rock at our back, and a trans 
 parent curtain of shifting water between us and the 
 world, having entitled ourselves a pcu prcs to the same 
 reputation with Hylas and Leauder, for seduction by 
 the Naiads. 
 
 Whatever sister of Arethusa inhabits there, we 
 could but congratulate her on the beauty of her abode. 
 A lofty and well-lighted hall, shaped like a long pavil 
 ion, extended as far as we could see through the spray, 
 and with the two objections, that you could not have 
 heard a pistol at your ear for the noise, and that the 
 floor was somewhat precipitous, one could scarce im 
 agine a more agreeable retreat for a gentleman who 
 was disgusted with the world, and subject to dryness 
 of the skin. In one respect it resembled the enchanted 
 dwelling of the Witch of Atlas, where, Shelley tells 
 us 
 
 " The invisible rain did ever sing 
 A silver music on the mossy lawn." 
 
 It is lucky for Witches and Naiads that they are not 
 subject to rheumatism. 
 
 The air was scarcely breathable (if air it may be 
 called, which streams down the face with the density 
 of a shower from a watering-pot), and our footing upon 
 the slippery rocks was so insecure, that the^exertion 
 of continually wiping our eyes was attended with im 
 minent danger. Our sight was valuable, for surely, 
 never was such a brilliant curtain hung up to the sight 
 of mortals, as spread apparently from the zenith to our 
 feet, changing in thickness and lustre, but with a con 
 stant and resplendent curve. It was what a child might 
 imagine the arch of the sky to be where it bends over 
 the edge of the horizon. 
 
 The sublime is certainly very much diluted when 
 one contemplates it with his back to a dripping and 
 slimy rock, and his person saturated with a continual 
 supply of water. From a dry window, I think the in 
 fernal writhe and agony of the abyss into which we 
 were continually liable to slip, would have been as fine 
 a thing as I have seen in my travels ; but I am free to 
 admit, that, at the moment, I would have exchanged 
 my experience and all the honor attached to it, for a 
 dry escape. The idea of drowning back through that 
 thick column of water, was at least a damper to en 
 thusiasm. We seemed cut off from the living. There 
 was a death between us and the vital air and sunshine. 
 
 I was screwing up my courage for the return, when 
 the guide seized me by the shoulder. I looked around, 
 
 and what was my horror to see Miss standing 
 
 far in behind the sheet upon the last visible point of 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 rock, with the water pouring over her in torrents, and | pulling across, and you may get two or three of these 
 a gulf of loam between us, which I could in no way lifts, which shove you st.aight into the air about ten 
 understand how she had passed over. 
 
 She seemed frightened and pale, and the guide ex 
 plained to me by signs (for I could not distinguish a 
 syllable through the roar of the cataract), that she had 
 
 walked over a narrow ledge, which had broken with 
 
 stiaig 
 
 feet, and then drop you into the cup of an eddy, as if 
 some long-armed Titan had his hand under the water, 
 and were tossing you up and down for his amuse 
 ment. It imports lovers to take heed how their mis 
 
 tresses are seated, as all ladies, on these occasions, 
 
 her weight. A long fresh mark upon the rock at the \ throw themselves into the arms of the nearest " hose 
 
 foot of the precii^^s wall, made" it sufficiently evi 
 dent : her positi^^Hs most alarming. 
 
 I made a sign^^Hier to look well to her feet; for 
 the little island on which she stood was green with 
 slime and scarce larger than a hat, and an abyss of full 
 six feet wide, foaming and unfathomable, raged be 
 tween it and the nearest foothold. What was to be 
 done? Had we a plank, even, there was no possible 
 hold for the further extremity, and the shape of the 
 rock was so conical, that its slippery surface evidently 
 would not hold a rope for a moment. To jump to her, 
 even if it were possible, would endanger her life, and 
 while I was sinking and encouraging the beautiful j 
 creature, as she stood trembling and pale on her dan- I 
 gerous foothold, I felt my very heart sink within me. j 
 
 The despairing guide said something which I could i 
 not hear, and disappeared through the watery wall, 
 and I fixed my eyes upon the lovely form, standing, 
 like a spirit in the misty shroud of the spray, as if the 
 intensity of my gaze could sustain her upon her dan 
 gerous foothold. I would have given ten years of my 
 life at that moment to have clasped her hand in mine. 
 
 I had scarce thought of Job until I felt him trying 
 
 and doublet. 
 
 Job and I went over to dine on the American side 
 and refresh our patriotism. \Ve dined under a hickory- 
 tree on Goat island, just over the glassy curve of the 
 cataract; and as we grew joyous with our champagne, 
 we strolled up to the point where the waters divide 
 for the American and British Falls; and Job ha 
 rangued the "mistaken gentleman on his right," in 
 eloquence that would have turned a division in the 
 house of commons. The deluded multitude, how 
 ever, rolled away in crowds for the monarchy, and at 
 the close of his speech the British Fall was still, by a 
 melancholy majority, the largest. We walked back 
 to our bottle like foiled patriots, and soon after, hope 
 less of our principles, went over to the other side too! 
 
 I advise all people going to Niagara to suspend ma 
 king a note in their journal till the last day of their 
 visit. You might as well teach a child the magni 
 tude of the heavens by pointing to the sky with your 
 finger, as comprehend Niagara in a day. It has to 
 create its own mighty place in your mind. You have 
 no comparison through which it can enter. It is too 
 vast. The imagination shrinks from it. It rolls in . 
 
 to pass behind me. His hand was trembling as he j gradually, thunder upon thunder, and plunge upon 
 laid it on my shoulder to steady his steps ; but there I plunge ; and the mind labors with it to an exhaustion 
 was something in his ill-hewn features that shot an \- such" as is created only by the extremes! intellectual 
 indefinable ray of hope through my mind. His sandy |; effort. I have seen men sit and gaze upon it in a cool 
 
 hair was plastered over his forehead, and his scant , day of autumn, with the perspiration standing 
 like a skin ; but though I recall their foreheads in large beads, from the unconsci 
 
 dress clung to him 
 
 his image now with a smile, I looked upon him with a 
 feeling far enough from amusement then. God bless 
 thee, my dear Job! wherever in this unfit world thy 
 fine spirit may be fulfilling its destiny ! 
 
 He crept down carefully to the edge of the foaming 
 abyss, till he stood with the breaking bubbles at his 
 knees. I was at a loss to know what he intended. 
 She surely would not dare to attempt a jump to his 
 arms from that slippery rock, and to reach her in any 
 way seemed impossible. v 
 
 The next instant he threw himself forward, and 
 while I covered my eyes in horror, with the flashing 
 conviction that he had gone mad and flung himself 
 into the hopeless whirlpool to reach her^ she had 
 crossed the awful gulf, and lay trembling and ex 
 hausted at my feet I He had thrown himself over the 
 chasm, caught the rock barely with the extremities of 
 his fingers, and with certain death if he missed his 
 hold or slipped from his uncertain tenure, had sus 
 tained her with supernatural strength as she walked 
 over his body ! 
 
 The guide providentially returned with a rope in 
 the same instant, and fastening it around one of his 
 feet, we dragged him back through the whirlpool, and 
 after a moment or two to recover from the suffocating 
 immersion, he fell on his knees, and we joined him, 
 I doubt not devoutly, in his inaudible thanks to God. 
 
 II. LAKE ONTARIO. 
 
 THE next bravest achievement to venturing behind 
 the sheet of Niagara, is to cross the river in a small 
 boat, at some distance below the Phlegethon of the 
 abyss. I should imagine it was something like riding 
 in a howdah on a swimming elephant. The im 
 mense masses of water driven under by the Fall, rise 
 splashing and fuming far down the river; and they 
 are as unlike a common wave, to ride, as a horse and 
 a camel. You are, perhaps, ten or fifteen minutes 
 
 on 
 
 rge beads, from the unconscious 
 but toilsome agony of its conception. After haunting 
 its precipices, and looking on its solemn waters for 
 seven days, sleeping with its wind-played monotony 
 in your ears, dreaming, and returning to it till it has 
 grown the one object, as it will, of your perpetual 
 thought, you feel, all at once, like one who has com 
 passed the span of some almighty problem. It has 
 stretched itself within you. Your capacity has at 
 tained the gigantic standard, and you feel an elevation 
 and breadth of nature that could measure girth and 
 stature with a seraph. We had fairly " done" Niaga 
 ra. We had seen it by sunrise, sunset, moonlight; 
 from top and bottom ; fasting and full ; alone and to 
 gether. We had learned by heart every green path 
 on the island of perpetual dew, which is set like an 
 imperial emerald on its front (a poetical idea of my 
 own, much admired by Job) we had been grave, gay, 
 tender, and sublime, in its mighty neighborhood, we 
 had become so accustomed to the base of its broad 
 thunder, that it seemed to us like a natural property 
 in the air, and we were unconscious of it for hours; 
 our voices had become so tuned to its key, and our 
 thoughts so tinged by its grand and perpetual anthem, 
 that I almost doubted if the air beyond the reach of 
 its vibrations would not agonize us with its unnatural 
 silence, and the common features of the world seem 
 of an unutterable and frivolous littleness. 
 
 We were eating our last breakfast there, in tender 
 melancholy: mine for the Falls, and Job s for the 
 Falls and Miss , to whom I had a half sus 
 picion that he had made a declaration. 
 
 "Job ." said I. 
 
 He looked up from his egg. 
 
 44 My dear Job !" 
 
 44 Don t allude to it, my dear chum," said he, drop 
 ping his spoon, and rushing to the window to hide his 
 agitation. It was quite clear. 
 
 I could scarce restrain a smile. Psyche in the em 
 brace of a respectable giraffe would be the first thought 
 
14 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 in anybody s mind who should see them together. 
 And yet why should he not woo her and win her 
 too ? He had saved her life in the extremes! peril, at 
 the most extreme hazard of his own ; he had a heart 
 as high and worthy, and as capable of an undying 
 worship of her as she would find in a wilderness of 
 lovers; he felt like a graceful man, and acted like a 
 brave one, and was sans peur et sans reproche, and 
 why should he not love like other men ? My dear 
 Job ! I fear thou wilt go down to thy grave, and but 
 one woman in this wide world will have loved thee 
 thy mother ! Thou art the soul of a preux chevalier 
 in the body of some worthy grave-digger, who is strut 
 ting about the world, perhaps, in thy more proper car 
 cass. These angels are so o er hasty in packing ! 
 
 We got upon our horses, and had a pleasant amble 
 before us of fifteen miles, on the British side of the 
 river. We cantered off stoutly for a mile to settle our 
 regrets, and then I pulled up, and requested Job to 
 ride near me, as I had something to say to him. 
 
 " You are entering," said I, " my dear Job, upon 
 your first journey in a foreign land. You will see 
 other manners than your own, which are not therefore 
 laughable, and hear a different pronunciation from 
 your own, which is not therefore vulgar. You are to 
 mix with British subjects, whom you have attacked 
 vigorously in your school declamations as the enemy. 
 but who are not therefore to be bullied in their own 
 country, and who have certain tastes of their own, 
 upon which you had better reserve your judgment. 
 We have no doubt that we are the greatest country 
 that ever was, is, or ever shall be ; but, as this is an 
 unpalatable piece of information to other nations, we 
 will not stuff it into their teeth, unless by particular 
 request. John Bull likes his coat too small. Let him 
 wear it. John Bull prefers his beefsteak to a frican- 
 deau. Let him eat it. John Bull will leave no stone 
 unturned to serve you in his own country, if you will 
 let him. Let him. John Bull will suffer you to find 
 fault for ever with king, lords, and commons, if you 
 do not compare them invidiously with other govern 
 ments. Let the comparison alone. In short, my 
 dear chum, as we insist that foreigners should adopt 
 our manners while they are travelling in the United 
 States, we had better adopt theirs when we return the 
 visit. They are doubtless quite wOng throughout, 
 but it is not worth while to bristle one s back against 
 the opinions of some score mi lions." 
 
 The foam disappeared frr,n the stream, as we fol 
 lowed it on, and the roar jf the falls 
 
 * * * " Now loud, now calm again, 
 Like a ring of bells, whose sound the wind still alters, 
 
 was soon faint in our ears, and like the regret of part 
 ing, lessened with the increasing distance till it was 
 lost. Job began to look around him, and see some 
 thing else besides a lovely face in the turnings of the 
 road, and the historian of this memorable journey, 
 who never had but one sorrow that " would not budge 
 with a fillip," rose in his stirrups as he descried the 
 broad blue bosom of Lake Ontario, and gave vent to 
 his feelings in (he begs the reader to believe) the most 
 suitable quotation. 
 
 Seeing any celebrated water for the first time was 
 always, to me, an event. River, waterfall, or lake, if 
 I have heard of it and thought of it for years, has a 
 sensible presence, that I feel like the approach of a 
 human being in whom I am interested. My heart flut 
 ters to it. It is thereafter an acquaintance, and I de 
 fend its beauty or its grandeur as I would the fair fame 
 and worth of a woman that had shown me a prefer 
 ence. My dear reader, do you love water? Not to 
 drink, for I own it is detestable in small quantities 
 but water, running or falling, sleeping or gliding, tin 
 ged by the sunset glow, or silvered by the gentle al- 
 chymist of the midnight heaven ? Do you love a 
 
 lake? Do you love a river? Do you "affect" any 
 one laughing and sparkling brook that has flashed on 
 your eye like a fay overtaken by the cock-crowing, 
 and tripping away slily to dream-land? As you see 
 four sisters, and but one to love ; so, in the family of 
 the elements, I have a tenderness for water. 
 
 Lake Ontario spread away to the horizon, glittering 
 in the summer sun, boundless to the eye as the Atlan 
 tic ; and directly beneath us Uic small town of 
 Fort Niagara, with the steame^Hphe pier, in which 
 we promised ourselves a passaj^^own the St. Law 
 rence. We rode on to the hotel, which we found to 
 our surprise crowded with English officers, and having 
 disposed of our Narragansets, we inquired the hour 
 of departure, and what we could eat meantime, in as 
 nearly the same breath as possible. 
 
 " Cold leg of mutton and the steamboat s engaged, 
 sir !" 
 
 The mercury in Job s Britishometer fell plump to 
 zero. The idea of a monopoly of the whole steamer 
 by a colonel and his staff, and- no boat again for a 
 week ! 
 
 There was a government to live under ! 
 
 We sat down to our mutton, and presently enter 
 the waiter. 
 
 "Colonel s compliments; hearing that two 
 
 gentlemen have arrived who expected to go by the 
 steamer, he is happy to offer them a passage if they 
 can put up with rather crowded accommodations." 
 
 "Well, Job! what do you think now of England, 
 politically, morally, and religiously ? Has not the 
 gentlemanlike courtesy of one individual materially 
 changed your opinions upon every subject connected 
 with the United Kingdom of Great Britain ?" 
 
 " It has." 
 
 " Then, my dear Job, I recommend you never again 
 to read a book of travels without writing down on the 
 margin of every bilious chapter, probably lost his 
 passage in the steamer, or had no mustard to his 
 mutton, or could find no ginger-nuts for the interest 
 ing little traveller, or some similar annotation. De 
 pend upon it, that dear delightful Mrs. Trollope would 
 never have written so agreeable a book, if she had 
 thriven with her bazar in Cincinnati." 
 
 We paid our respects to the colonel, and at six 
 o clock in the evening got on board. Part of an Irish 
 regiment was bivouacked on the deck, and happier 
 fellows I never saw. They had completed their nine 
 years service on the three Canadian stations, and 
 were returning to the ould country, wives, children, 
 and all. A line was drawn across the deck, reserving 
 the after quarter for the officers ; the sick were dis 
 posed of among the women in the bows of the boat, 
 and the band stood ready to play the farewell air to the 
 cold shores of Upper Canada. 
 
 The line was cast off, when a boy of thirteen rushed 
 down to the pier, and springing on board with a 
 desperate leap, flew from one end of the deck to the 
 other, and flung himself at last upon the neck of 8 
 pretty girl sitting on the knee of one of the privates. 
 
 " Mary, dear Mary !" was all he could utter. His 
 sobs choked him. 
 
 " Avast with the line, there !" shouted the captain 
 who had no wish to carry off this unexpected passen 
 ger. The boat was again swung to the wharf, and the 
 boy very roughly ordered ashore. His only answer 
 was to cling closer to the girl, and redouble his tears, 
 and by this time the colonel had stepped aft, and the 
 case seemed sure of a fair trial. The pretty Canadian, 
 dropped her head on her bosom, and seemed divided 
 between contending emotions, and the soldier stood ui) 
 and raised his cap to his commanding officer, but hell 
 firmly by her hand. The boy threw himself on his 
 knees to the colonel, but tried in vain to speak. 
 
 " Who s this, O Shane ?" asked the officer. 
 
 " Sure, my swateheart, your honor." 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 " And how dare you bring her on board, sir ?" 
 " Och, she ll go to ould Ireland wid us, your hon 
 or." 
 
 " No, no, no !" cried the convulsed boy, clasping 
 the colonel s knees, and sobbing as if his heart would 
 break; "she is my sister ! She isn t his wife! Fa- 
 ther ll die if she does ! She can t go with him ! She 
 sho ii t go with him !" 
 
 Job began to snivel, and I felt warm about the eyes 
 myself. ^^ 
 
 " Have vni^K a wife, O Shane ?" asked the 
 colonel. 
 
 " Plase your honor, never a bit," said Paddy. He 
 was a tight, good-looking fellow, by the way, as you 
 would wish to see. 
 
 " Well we ll settle this thing at once. Get up, my 
 little fellow! Come here, my good girl! Do you 
 love O Shane well enough to be his wife ?" 
 
 " Indeed I do, sir !" said Mary, wiping her eyes with 
 the back of her hand, and stealing a look at the " six 
 feet one" that stood as straight as a pike beside her. 
 " O Shane ! I allow this girl to go with us only on 
 condition that you marry her at the first place where 
 we can find a priest. We will make her up a bit of a 
 dowry, and I will look after her comfort as long as she 
 follows the regiment. What do you say, sir? Will j 
 you marry her?" 
 
 O Shane began to waver in his military position, ! 
 from a full front face getting to very nearly a right- j 
 about. It was plain he was taken by surprise* The 
 eyes of the company were on him, however, and pub- i 
 lie opinion, which, in most human breasts, is consider 
 ably stronger than conscience, had its effect. 
 
 " I ll do it, your honor !" said he, bolting it out as 
 a man volunteers upon a "forlorn hope." 
 
 Tears might as well have been bespoken for the 
 whole company. The boy was torn from his sister s 
 neck, and set ashore in the arms of two sailors, and 
 poor Mary, very much in doubt whether she was hap 
 py or miserable, sank upon a heap of knapsacks, and 
 buried her eyes in a cotton handkerchief with a map 
 of London upon it, probably a gage d amour from the 
 desaving O Shane. I did the same myself with 
 silk one, and Job item. Item the colonel and several 
 officers. 
 
 The boat was shoved off, and the wheels spattered 
 away, but as far as we could hear his voice, the cry 
 came following on, " Mary, Mary !" 
 
 It rung in my ears all night : " Mary, Mary !" 
 I was up in the morning at sunrise, and was glad 
 to escape from the confined cabin and get upon deck 
 The steamer was booming on through a sea as calm 
 as a mirror, and no land visible. The fresh dewiness 
 of the morning air ashore played in my nostrils, and 
 the smell of grass was perceptible in the mind, but in 
 all else it was like a calm in mid ocean. The soldiers 
 were asleep along the decks, with their wives and 
 children, and the pretty runaway lay with her head on 
 O Shane s bosom, her red eyes and soiled finery 
 showing too plainly how she had passed the night. 
 Poor Mary ! she has enough of following a soldier, 
 by this, I fear. 
 
 I stepped forward, and was not a little surprised to 
 see standing against the railing on the larboard bow, 
 the motionless figure of an Indian girl of sixteen. 
 Her dark eye was fixed on the line of the horizon we 
 were leaving behind, her arms were folded on her 
 bosom, and she seemed not even to breathe. A com 
 mon shawl was wrapped carelessly around her, and 
 
 another glance betrayed to me that she was in a situ 
 ation soon to become a mother. Her feet were pro 
 tected by a pair of once gaudy but now shabby and 
 torn moccasins, singularly small ; her hands were of a 
 delicate thinness unusual to her race, and her hollow 
 cheeks, and forehead marked with an expression of 
 
 pain, told all I could have prophesied of the history of 
 a white man s tender mercies. I approached very 
 near, quite unperceived. A small burning spot was 
 just perceptible in the centre of her dark cheek, and 
 as I looked at her steadfastly, I could see a working of 
 the muscles of her dusky brow, which betrayed, in one 
 of a race so trained to stony calmness, an unusual fever 
 of feeling. I looked around for the place in which 
 she must have slept. A mantle of wampum-work, 
 folded across a heap of confused baggage, partly oc 
 cupied as a pillow by a brutal-looking and sleeping 
 soldier, told at once the main part of her story. I felt 
 or her, from my soul ! 
 
 " You can hear the great waterfall no more," I said, 
 touching her arm. 
 
 " I hear it when I think of it," she replied, turning 
 her eyes upon me as slowly, and with as little surprise, 
 as if I had been talking to her an hour. 
 
 I pointed to the sleeping soldier. "Are you going 
 with him to his country ?" 
 Yes." 
 
 " Are you his wife ?" 
 " My father gave me to him." 
 " Has he sworn before the priest in the name of the 
 Great Spirit to be your husband !" 
 
 " No." She looked intently into my eyes as she 
 answered, as if she tried in vain to read my meaning. 
 " Is he kind to you ?" 
 She smiled bitterly. 
 " Why then did you follow him ?" 
 Her eyes dropped upon the burden she bore at her 
 heart. The answer could not have been clearer if 
 written with a sunbeam. I said a few words of kind 
 ness, and left her to turn over in my mind how I could 
 best interfeie for her happiness. 
 
 HI. THE ST. LAAVRENCE. 
 
 ON the third evening we had entered upon the St. 
 Lawrence, and were winding cautiously into the 
 channel of the Thousand Isles. I think there is not, 
 within the knowledge of the "all-beholding sun," a 
 spot so singularly and exquisitely beautiful. Between 
 the Mississippi and the Cimmerian Bosphorus, Iknoio 
 there is not, for I have pic-nicked from the Symplegades 
 westward. The Thousand Isles of the St. Lawrence 
 are as imprinted on my mind as the stars of heaven. 
 I could forget them as soon. 
 
 The river is here as wide as a lake, while the chan 
 nel just permits the passage of a steamer. The 
 islands, more than a thousand in number, are a sin 
 gular formation of flat, rectangular rock, split, as it 
 were, by regular mathematical fissures, and over 
 flowed nearly to the tops, which are loaded with a 
 most luxuriant vegetation. They vary in size, but 
 the generality of them would about accommodate a 
 tea-party of six. The water is deep enough to float a 
 large steamer directly at the edge, and an active deer 
 ould leap across from one to the other in any direc 
 tion. What is very singular, these little rocky plat- 
 brms are covered with a rich loam, and carpeted with 
 noss and flowers, while immense trees take root in the 
 clefts, and interlace their branches with those of the 
 leighboring islets, shadowing the water with the un 
 sunned dimness of the wilderness. It is a very odd 
 hing to glide through in a steamer. The luxuriant 
 eaves sweep the deck, and the black funnel parts the 
 drooping sprays as it keeps its way, and you may 
 iluck the blossoms of the acacia, or the rich chestnut 
 lowers, sitting on the taffrail, and, really, a magic pas 
 sage in a witch s steamer, beneath the tree-tops of an 
 untrodden forest, could not be more novel and start 
 ing. Then the solitude and silence of the dim and 
 itill waters are continually broken by the plunge and 
 cap of the wild deer springing or swimming from one 
 
16 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 island to another, and the swift and shadowy canoe of 
 the Indian glides out from some unseen channel, and 
 with a single stroke of his broad paddle he vanishes, 
 and is lost again, even to the ear. If the beauty-sick 
 and nature-searching spirit of Keats is abroad in the 
 world, " my basnet to a prentice-cap" he passes his 
 summers amid the thousand isles of the St. Law 
 rence ! I would we were there with our tea-things, 
 sweet Rosa Matilda ! 
 
 We had dined on the quarter-deck, and were sitting 
 over the colonel s wine, pulling the elm-leaves from 
 the branches as they swept saucily over the table, and 
 listening to the band, who were playing waltzes that 
 probably ended in the confirmed insanity of every 
 wild heron and red deer that happened that afternoon 
 to come within ear-shot of the good steamer Queens- 
 ton. The paddles began to slacken in their spattering, 
 and the boat came to, at the sharp side of one of the 
 largest of the shadowy islands. We were to stop an 
 hour or two, and take in wood. 
 
 Everybody was soon ashore for a ramble, leaving 
 only the colonel, who was a cripple from a score of 
 Waterloo tokens, and your servant, reader, who had 
 something on his mind. 
 
 " Colonel ! will you oblige me by sending for Ma- 
 honey ? Steward ! call me that Indian girl sitting 
 with her head on her knees in the boat s bow." 
 
 They stood before us. 
 
 " How is this ?" exclaimed the colonel ; " another ! 
 good God ! these Irishmen ! Well, sir! what do you 
 intend to do with this girl, now that you have ruined 
 her?" 
 
 Mahoney looked at her out of a corner of his eye 
 with a libertine contempt that made my blood boil. 
 The girl watched for his answer with an intense but 
 calm gaze into his face, that if he had had a soul, 
 would have killed him. Her lips were set firmly but 
 not fiercely together, and as the private stood looking 
 from one side to the other, unable or unwilling to an 
 swer, she suppressed a rising emotion in her throat, 
 and turned her look on the commanding officer with a 
 proud coldness that would have become Medea. 
 
 " Mahoney !" said the colonel, sternly, " will you 
 marry this poor girl ?" 
 
 " Never, I hope, your honor !" 
 
 The wasted and noble creature raised her burdened 
 form to its fullest height, and, with an inaudible mur 
 mur bursting from her lips, walked back to the bow 
 of the vessel. The colonel pursued his conversation 
 with Mahoney, and the obstinate brute was still re 
 fusing the only reparation he could make the poor 
 Indian, when she suddenly reappeared. The shawl 
 was no longer around her shoulders. A coarse blan 
 ket was bound below her breast with a belt of wam 
 pum, leaving her fine bust entirely bare, her small feet 
 trod the deck with the elasticity of a leopard about to 
 leap on his prey, and her dark, heavily- fringed eyes, 
 glowed like coals of fire. She seized the colonel s 
 hand, and imprinted a kiss upon it, another upon mine, 
 and without a look at the father of her child, dived 
 with a single leap over the gangway. She rose di 
 rectly in the clear water, swam with powerful strokes 
 to one of the most distant islands, and turning once 
 more to wave her hand as she stood on the shore, 
 strode on, and was lost in the tangles of the forest. 
 
 THE CHEROKEE S THREAT, 
 
 " Notre bonheur, tnon cher, se tiendra toujours entre la plante de 
 nos pieds et notre occiput ; et qu il coute un million par an on cent 
 louis, la perception intrinsique est la mgme au-dedans de nous." 
 
 Le Pere Goriot, 
 
 THERE were a hundred students in the new class 
 matriculated at Yale College in Connecticut, ia the 
 
 year 18 . They were young men of different ages 
 and of all conditions in life, but less various in their 
 mien and breeding than in the characteristics of the 
 widely-separate states from which they came. It is 
 not thought extraordinary in Europe that the French 
 and English, the German, and the Italian, should pos 
 sess distinct national traits : yet one American is sup 
 posed to be like every other, though the two between 
 whom the comparison is drawn were born and bred as 
 far apart, and in as different latitu^fcas the Highland 
 cateran and the brigand of Calabi^BL 
 
 I looked around me with som^mterest, when, on 
 the first morning of the term, the president, professors, 
 and students of the University assembled in the college 
 chapel at the sound of the prayer-bell, and, with my 
 brother freshmen, I stood in the side aisle, closing 
 up with our motley, and, as yet, unclassical heads and 
 habiliments, the long files of the more initiated classes. 
 The berry-brown tan of the sun of Georgia, unblanched 
 by study, was still dark and deep on the cheek of one ; 
 the look of command, breathing through the indolent 
 attitude, betrayed, in another, the young Carolinian 
 and slave-master ; a coat of green, garnished with fur 
 and bright buttons, and shaped less by the tailor than 
 by the Herculean and expansive frame over which it 
 was strained, had a taste of Kentucky in its complex 
 ion ; the white skin and red or sandy hair, cold ex 
 pression, stiff black coat, and serious attention to the 
 service, told of the puritan son of New Hampshire or 
 Vermont ; and, perked up in his well-fitted coat, the 
 exquisite of the class, stood the slight and metropolitan 
 New-Yorker, with a firm belief in his tailor and him 
 self written on his effeminate lip, and an occasional 
 look at his neighbors coats and shoulders, that might 
 have been construed into wonder upon what western 
 river or mountain dwelt the builders of such coats and 
 men ! 
 
 Rather annoyed at last by the glances of one or two 
 seniors, who were amusing themselves with my simple 
 gaze of curiosity, I turned my attention to my more 
 immediate neighborhood. A youth with close, curl 
 ing, brown hair, rather under-size, but with a certain 
 decision and nerve in his lip which struck me imme 
 diately, and which seemed to express somehow a con 
 fidence in himself which his limbs scarce bore out, 
 stood with his back to the pulpit, and, with his foot on 
 the seat and his elbow on his knee, seemed to have 
 fallen at once into the habit of the place, and to be 
 beyond surprise or interest. As it was the custom of 
 the college to take places at prayers and recitation 
 alphabetically, and he was likely to be my neighbor 
 in chapel and hall for the next four years, I speculated 
 rather more than I should else have done on his face 
 and manner; and as the president came to his Amen, 
 I came to the conclusion, that whatever might be Mr. 
 "S. s" capacity for friendship, his ill-will would be 
 very demonstrative and uncomfortable. 
 
 The term went on, the politics of the little republic 
 fermented, and as first appearances wore away, or 
 peculiarities wore off by collision or developed by in 
 timacy, the different members of the class rose or fell 
 in the general estimation, and the graduation of talent 
 and spirit became more just and definite. The 
 " Southerners and Northerners," as they are called, 
 soon discovered, like the classes that had gone before 
 them, that they had no qualities in common, and, of 
 the secret societies which exist among the students in 
 that university, joined each that of his own compatri 
 ots. The Carolinian or Georgian, who had passed his 
 life on a plantation, secluded from the society of his 
 equals, soon found out the value of his chivalrous de 
 portment and graceful indolence in the gay society for 
 which the town is remarkable ; while the Vermontese, 
 or White-Mountaineer, " made unfashionably," and ill 
 at ease on a carpet, took another line of ambition, and 
 sat down with the advantage of constitutional patience 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 17 
 
 aud perseverance to the study which he would find in 
 the end a " better contiuuer," even in the race for a 
 lady s favor. 
 
 It was the only republic I have ever known that 
 class of freshmen. It was a fair arena; and neither: 
 in politics, nor society, nor literature, nor love, nor re 
 ligion, have I, in much searching through the world, 
 found the same fair play or good feeling. Talk of out- 
 own republic ! ^society is the very core and gali of 
 the worst growtj^feuistocracy. Talk of the republic 
 of letters ! the^ro graves by the pyramid of Cains 
 Cestius laugh it to scorn. Of love! of religion. 
 What is bought and sold like that which has the name 
 of the first? What is made a snare and a tool by the 
 designing like the last? But here with a govern 
 ment over us ever kindly and paternal, no favor shown, 
 and no privilege denied; every equality in the com 
 petitors at all possible age, previous education, and, 
 above all, worldly position it was an arena in which 
 a generous spirit would wrestle with an abandon of 
 heart and limb he might never know in the world 
 again. Every individual rising or falling by the esti 
 mation he exacts of his fellows, there is no such 
 school of honor; each, of the many pahns of scholar 
 ship, from the severest to the lightest, aiming at that 
 which best suits his genius, and as welcome as another 
 to the goal, there is no apology for the laggard. Of 
 the feelings that stir the heart in our youth of the 
 few, the very few, which have no recoil, and leave no 
 repentance this leaping from the starting-post of 
 mind this first spread of the encouraged wing in the 
 free heaven of thought and knowledge is recorded in 
 my own slender experience as the most joyous and 
 the most unmingled. He who has soiled his bright h 
 honor with the tools of political ambition he who has j 
 leant his soul upon the charity of a sect in religion 
 he who has loved, hoped, and trusted, in the greater \\ 
 arena of life and manhood must look back on days j j 
 like these as the broken-winged eagle to the sky as 
 the Indian s subdued horse to the prairie. 
 
 II. 
 
 NEW HAVEN is not alone the seat of a university. 
 It is a kind of metropolis of education. The excessive 
 beauty of the town, with its embowered streets and 
 sunny gardens, the refinement of its society, its cen 
 tral position and accessibility, and the facilities for at 
 tending the lectures of the college professors, render 
 it a most desirable place of instruction in every de 
 partment. Among others, the female schools of the 
 place have a great reputation, and this which in Eu 
 rope, or with a European state of society, would 
 probably be an evil, is, from the simple and frank 
 character of manners in America, a mutual aujd de 
 cided advantage. The daughters of the first families 
 of the country are sent here, committed for two, three, 
 and four years, to the exclusive care of the head of 
 the establishment, and (as one of the privileges and 
 advantages of the school) associating freely with the 
 general society of the town, the male part, of course, 
 composed principally of students. A more easy and 
 liberal intercourse exists in no society in the world, 
 and in no society that I have ever seen is the tone of 
 morals and manners so high and unexceptionable. 
 Attachments are often formed, and little harm is 
 thought of it; and unless it is a very strong case of 
 disparity or objection, no obstacle is thrown in the 
 way of the common intercourse between lovers ; and 
 the lady returns to her family, and the gentleman 
 senior disappears with his degree, and they meet and 
 marry if they like. If they do not, the lady stands 
 as well in the matrimonial market as ever, and the 
 gentleman (unlike his" horse) is not damaged by hav 
 ing been on his knees. 
 
 Like " Le Noir Fain6ant," at the tournament, my 
 
 friend St. John seemed more a looker-on than an actor 
 in tlu: various pursuits of the university. A sudden 
 interference in a quarrel, in which a brother freshman 
 was contending against odds, enlightened the class as 
 to his spirit and personal strength; he acquitted him 
 self at recitations with the air of self-contempt for 
 such easy excellence ; he dressed plainly, but with 
 instinctive taste ; and at the end of the first term, 
 having shrunk from all intimacy, and lived alone with 
 his books and a kind of trapper s dog he had brought 
 with him from the west, he had acquired an ascen 
 dency in the opinion of the class for which no one 
 could well account, but to which every one unhes 
 itatingly assented. 
 
 We returned after our first short vacation, and of 
 my hundred class-mates there was but one whom I 
 much cared to meet again. St. John had passed the 
 vacation in his rooms, and my evident pleasure at 
 meeting him, for the first time, seemed to open his 
 heart to me. He invited me to breakfast with him. 
 By favor seldom granted to a freshman, he had a lodg 
 ing in the town the rest of the class being compelled 
 to live with a chum in the college buildings. 1 found 
 his rooms (I was the first of the class who had en 
 tered them) more luxuriously furnished than I had 
 expected from the simplicity of his appearance, but 
 his books, not many, but select, and (what is in America 
 an expensive luxury) in the best English editions and 
 superbly bound, excited most my envy and surprise. 
 How he should have acquired tastes of such ultra- 
 civilization in the forests of the west was a mystery 
 that remained to be solved. 
 
 III. 
 
 AT the extremity of a green lane in the outer skirt 
 of the fashionable suburb of New Haven stood a ram 
 bling old Dutch house, built probably when the cattle 
 of Mynheer grazed over the present site of the town. 
 It was a wilderness of irregular rooms, of no describa- 
 ble shape in its exterior, and from its southern balcony, 
 to use an expressive Gallicism, "gave upon the bay." 
 Long Island sound, the great highway from the north 
 ern Atlantic to New York, weltered in alternate lead 
 and silver (oftener like the brighter metal, for the cli 
 mate is divine), between the curving lip of the bay and 
 the interminable and sandy shore of the island some 
 six leagues distant ; the procession of ships and steam 
 ers stole past with an imperceptible progress ; the 
 ceaseless bells of the college chapel came deadened 
 through the trees from behind, and (the day being one 
 of golden autumn, and myself and St. John waiting 
 while black Agatha answered the door-bell) the sun- 
 steeped precipice of East Rock, with its tiara of blood- 
 red maples flushing like a Turk s banner in the light, 
 drew from us both a truant wish for a ramble and a 
 holyday. I shall have more to say anon of the foliage 
 of an American October: but just now, while I remem 
 ber it, I wish to record a belief of my own, that if, as 
 philosophy supposes, we have lived other lives if 
 
 " our star 
 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 And cometh from afar" 
 
 it is surely in the days tempered like the one I am re 
 membering and describing profoundly serene, sunny 
 as the top of Olympus, heavenly pure, holy, and more 
 invigorating and intoxicating than luxurious or balmy ; 
 the sort of air that the visiting angels might have 
 brought with them to the tent of Abraham it is on 
 such days, I would record, that my own memory steps 
 back over the dim threshold of life (so it seems to me), 
 and on such days only. It is worth the translation of 
 our youth and our household gods to a sunnier land, 
 if it were alone for those immortal revelations. 
 
 In a few minutes from this time were assembled in 
 
18 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 Mrs. Ilfrington s drawing-room the six or seven young 
 ladies of my more particular acquaintance among her 
 pupils, of whom one was a newcomer, and the object 
 of my mingled curiosity and admiration. It was the 
 one day of the week when morning visiters were ad 
 mitted, and I was there, in compliance with an unex 
 pected request from my friend, to present him to the 
 agreeable circle o-f Mrs. Ilfrington. As an habitue in 
 her family, this excellent lady had taken occasion to 
 introduce to me, a week or two before, the newcomer | 
 of whom I have spoken above a departure from the j 
 ordinary rule of the establishment, which I felt to be j 
 a compliment, and which gave me, I presumed, a tacit j 
 claim to mix myself up in that young lady s destiny j 
 as deeply as I should find agreeable. The newcomer ! 
 was the daughter of an Indian chief, and her name 
 was Nunu. 
 
 The wrongs of civilization to the noble aborigines ! 
 of America are a subject of much poetical feeling in j 
 the United States, and will ultimately become the po- ! 
 etry of the nation. At present the sentiment takes 
 occasionally a tangible shape, and the transmission of j 
 the daughter of a Cherokee chief to New Haven, to j 
 be educated at the expense of the government, and of j 
 several young men of the same high birth to different ; 
 colleges, will be recorded among the evidences in his 
 tory that we did not plough the bones of their fathers j 
 into our fields without some feelings of compunction. 
 Nunu had come to the seaboard under the charge of a [ 
 female missionary, whose pupil she had been in one j 
 of the native schools of the west, and was destined, I 
 though a chief s daughter, to return as a teacher to j 
 her tribe when she should have mastered some of j 
 the higher accomplishments of her sex. She was an j 
 apt scholar, but her settled melancholy, when away I 
 from her books, had determined Mrs. Ilfrington to try | 
 the effect of a little society upon her, and hence my j 
 privilege to ask for her appearance in the drawing- i 
 room. 
 
 As we strolled down in the alternate shade and sun- j 
 shine of the road, I had been a little piqued at the want i 
 of interest, and the manner of course, with which St. I 
 John had received my animated descriptions of the 
 personal beauty of the Cherokee. 
 
 " I have hunted with the tribe," was his only an- i 
 swer, " and know their features." 
 
 . But she is not like them," I replied, with a tone J 
 of some impatience ; " she is the beau ideal of a red ! 
 skin, but it is with the softened features of an Arab or 
 an Egyptian. She is more willowy than erect, and 
 has no higher cheek-bones than the plaster Venus in 
 your chambers. If it were not for the lambent fire in 
 her eye, you might take her, in the sculptured pose 
 of her attitudes, for an immortal bronze of Cleopatra. 
 I tell you she is divine." 
 
 St. John called to his dog, and we turned along 
 the green bank above the beach, with Mrs. Ilfrington s 
 house in view, and so opens a new chapter in my story. 
 
 IV. 
 
 In the united pictures of Paul Veronese and Ra 
 phael, steeped as their colors seem to have been in the 
 divinest age of Venetian and Roman female beauty, I 
 have scarcely found so many lovely women, of so dif 
 ferent models and so perfect, as were assembled during 
 my sophomore year under the roof of Mrs. Ilfrington. , 
 They went about in their evening walks, graceful and j 
 angelic, but, like the virgin pearls of the sea, they 
 poured the light of their loveliness on the vegeta 
 ting oysters about them, and no diver of fashion had 
 yet taught them their value. Ignorant myself in those 
 days of the scale of beauty, their features are enam 
 elled in my memory, and I have tried insensibly by 
 that standard (and found wanting) of every court in 
 Europe the dames most worshipped and highest born. 
 
 Queen of the Sicilies, loveliest in your own realm of 
 sunshine and passion ! Pale and transparent princess 
 pearl of the court of Florence than whom the cre 
 ations on the immortal walls of the Pitti less discipline 
 our eye for the shapes of heaven ! Gipsy of the Pac- 
 tolus ! Jewess of the Thracian Gallipolis ! Bright 
 and gifted cynosure of the aristocracy of England ! 
 ye are five women I have seen in as many years wan 
 dering over the world, lived to gaze upon, and live to 
 remember and admire a constella^n, I almost be 
 lieve, that has absorbed all the inBfcest light of the 
 beauty of a hemisphere yet, with your pictures col 
 ored to life in my memory, and the pride of rank and 
 state thrown over most of you like an elevating charm, 
 I go back to the school of Mrs. Ilfrington, and (smile 
 if you will !) they were as lovely, and stately, and as 
 worthy of the worship of the world. 
 
 I introduced St. John to the young ladies as they 
 came in. Having never seen him, except in the pres 
 ence of men, I was a little curious to know whether 
 his singular aplomb would serve him as well with the 
 other sex, of which I was aware he had had a very 
 slender experience. My attention was distracted at 
 the moment of mentioning his name to a lovely little 
 Georgian (with eyes full of the liquid sunshine of the 
 south), by a sudden bark of joy from the dog, who had 
 been left in the hall ; and as the door opened, and the 
 slight and graceful Indian girl entered the room, the 
 usually unsocial animal sprang bounding in, lavishing 
 caresses on her, and seemingly wild with the delight 
 of a recognition. 
 
 In the confusion of taking the dog from the room, I 
 had again lost the moment of remarking St. John s 
 manner, and on the entrance of Mrs. Ilfrington, Nunu 
 was sitting calmly by the piano, and my friend was 
 talking in a quiet undertone with the passionate Geor 
 gian. 
 
 " I must apologize for my dog," said St. John, bow 
 ing gracefully to the mistress of the house; " he was 
 bred by Indians, and the sight of a Cherokee remind 
 ed him of happier days as it did his master." 
 
 Nunu turned her eyes quickly upon him, but im 
 mediately resumed her apparent deep study of the ab 
 struse figures in the Kidderminster carpet. 
 
 " You are well arrived, young gentlemen," said Mrs. 
 Ilfrington ; " we press you into our service for a bo 
 tanical ramble. Mr. Slingsby is at leisure, and will be 
 delighted, I am sure. Shall I say as much for you, 
 Mr. St. John ?" 
 
 St. John bowed, and the ladies left the room for 
 their bonnets Mrs. Ilfrington last. The door was 
 scarcely closed when Nunu reappeared, and checking 
 herself with a sudden feeling at the first step over the 
 threshold, stood gazing at St. John, evidently under 
 very powerful emotion. 
 
 " Nunu !" he said, smiling slowly and unwillinsly, 
 and holding out his hand with the air of one who for 
 gives an offence. 
 
 She sprang upon his bosom with the bound of a 
 leveret, and between her fast kisses broke the endear 
 ing epithets of her native tongue, in words that I onlv 
 understood by their passionate and thrilling accent. 
 The language of the heart is universal. 
 
 The fair scholars came in one after another, and we 
 were soon on our way through the green fields to the 
 flowery mountain-side of East Rock ; Mrs. Ilfrington s 
 arm and conversation having fallen to my share, and 
 St. John rambling at large with the rest of the party, 
 but more particularly beset by Miss Temple, whose 
 Christian name was Isabella, and whose Christian char 
 ity had no bowels for broken hearts. 
 
 The most sociable individuals of the party fora while 
 were Nunu and Lash ; the dog s recollections of the 
 past seeming, like those of wiser animals, more agreea 
 ble than the" present. The Cherokee astonished Mrs. 
 Ilfrington by an abandonment to joy and frolic which 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 19 
 
 she had never displayed before sometimes fairly out 
 running the dog at full speed, and sometimes sitting 
 down breathless upon a green bank, while the rude 
 creature overpowered her with his caresses. The 
 scene gave origin to a grave discussion between that 
 well-instructed lady and myself, upon the singular 
 force of childish association the extraordinary intima 
 cy between the Indian and the trapper s dog being 
 explained satisfactorily (to her, at least) on that at 
 tractive principle. Had she but seen Nunu spring 
 into the bosom of my friend half an hour before, she 
 might have added a material corollary to her proposi 
 tion. If the dog and the chief s daughter were not 
 old friends, the chief s daughter and St. John certain 
 ly were. 
 
 As well as I could judge by the motions of two 
 people walking before me, St. John was advancing fast 
 in the favor and acquaintance of the graceful Georgian. 
 Her southern indolence was probably an apology in 
 Mrs. Ilfrington s eyes for leaning heavily on her com 
 panion s arm ; but, in a momentary halt, the capricious 
 beauty disembarrassed herself of the bright scarf that 
 had floated over her shoulders, and bound it playfully 
 around his waist. This was rather strong on a first 
 acquaintance, and Mrs. Ilfrington was of that opin 
 ion. 
 
 " Miss Temple !" said she, advancing to whisper a 
 reproof in the beauty s ear. 
 
 Before she had taken a second step, Nunu bounded 
 over the low hedge, followed by the dog, with whom 
 she had been chasing a butterfly, and springing upon 
 St. John with eyes that flashed fire, she tore the scarf 
 into shreds, and stood trembling and pale, with her feet 
 on the silken fragments. 
 
 44 Madam!" said St. John, advancing to Mrs. Ilfring 
 ton, after casting on the Cherokee a look of surprise 
 and displeasure, " I should have told you before that 
 your pupil and myself are not new acquaintances. Her 
 father is my friend. I have hunted with the tribe, and 
 have hitherto looked upon Nunu as a child. You will 
 believe me, I trust, when I say her conduct surprises 
 me, and I beg to assure you that any influence I may 
 have over her will be in accordance with your own 
 wishes exclusively." 
 
 His tone was cold, and Nunu listened with fixed lips 
 and frowning eyes. 
 
 "Have you seen her before since her arrival ?" asked 
 Mrs. Ilfrington. 
 
 44 My dog brought me yesterday the first intelligence 
 that she was here: he returned from his morning ram 
 ble with a string of wampum about his neck, which 
 had the mark of the tribe. He was her gift," he added, 
 patting the head of the dog, and looking with a soft 
 ened expression at Nunu, who dropped her head upon 
 her bosom, and walked on in tears. 
 
 V. 
 
 The chain of the Green mountains, after a gallop of 
 some five hundred miles, from Canada to Connecticut, 
 suddenly pulls up on the shore of Long-island sound, 
 and stands rearing with a bristling mane of pine-trees, 
 three hundred feet in air, as if checked in mid career 
 by the sea. Standing on the brink of this bold preci 
 pice, you have the bald face of the rock in a sheer per 
 pendicular below you ; and, spreading away from the 
 broken masses at its feet, lies an emerald meadow, in 
 laid with a crystal and rambling river, across which, 
 at a distance of a mile or two, rise the spires of the 
 university, from what else were a thick-serried wilder 
 ness of elms. Back from the edge of the precipice 
 extends a wild forest of hemlock and fir, ploughed on 
 its northern side by a mountain-torrent, whose bed of 
 marl, dry and overhung with trees in the summer, serve 
 as a path and a guide from the plain to the summit. It 
 were a toilsome ascent but for that smooth and hard 
 
 pavement, and the impervious and green thatch of 
 pine tassels overhung. 
 
 Antiquity in America extends no farther back than 
 the days of Cromwell, and East Rock is traditionary 
 ground with us for there harbored the regicides 
 Whalley and Goffe, and many a breath-hushing tale 
 is told of them over the smouldering log-fires of Con 
 necticut. Not to rob the historian, I pass on to say 
 that this cavernous path to the mountain-top was the 
 resort in the holyday summer afternoons of most of the 
 poetical and otherwise well-disposed gentlemen sopho 
 mores, and, on the day of which I speak, of Mrs. Il 
 frington and herseven-and-twenty lovely scholars. The 
 kind mistress ascended with the assistance of my arm, 
 and St. John drew stoutly between Miss Temple and 
 a fat young lady with an incipient asthma. Nunu had 
 not been seen since the first cluster of hanging flow- 
 
 ; ers had hidden her from our sight, as she bounded 
 
 j upward. 
 
 The hour or two of slanting sunshine, poured in 
 upon the summit of the precipice from the west, had 
 been sufficient to induce a fine and silken moss to 
 show its fibres and small blossoms above the carpet of 
 pine-tassels ; and emerging from the brown shadow of 
 the wood, you stood on a verdant platform, the foliage 
 of sighing trees overhead, a fairies velvet beneath you, 
 and a view below that you may as well (if you would 
 not die in your ignorance) make a voyage over the 
 water to see. 
 
 We found Nunu lying thoughtfully near the brink 
 of the precipice, and gazing off over the waters of the 
 sound, as if she watched the coming or going of a 
 friend under the white sails that spotted its bosom. 
 We recovered our bteath in silence, I alone, perhaps, 
 of that considerable company gazing with admiration 
 at the lithe and unconscious figure of grace lying in 
 the attitude of the Grecian Hermaphrodite on the brow 
 of the rock before us. Her eyes were moist and mo 
 tionless with abstraction, her lips just perceptibly 
 curved in an expression of mingled pride and sorrow, 
 her small hand buried and clinched in the moss, and 
 her left foot and ankle, models of spirited symmetry, es 
 caped carelessly from her dress, the high instep strained 
 back as if recovering from a leap, with the tense con 
 trol of emotion. 
 
 The game of the coquettish Georgian was well 
 played. With a true woman s pique, she had re- 
 
 j doubled her attentions to my friend from the moment 
 
 j that she found it gave pain to another of her sex ; and 
 St. John, like most men, seemed not unwilling to see 
 a new altar kindled to his vanity, though a heart he 
 had already won was stifling with the incense. Miss 
 Temple was very lovely. Her skin, of that teint of 
 opaque and patrican white which is found oftenest in 
 Asian latitudes, was just perceptibly warmed toward 
 the centre of the cheek with a glow like sunshine 
 through the thick white petal of a "magnolia; her eyes 
 were hazel, with those inky lashes which enhance the 
 expression a thousand-fold, either of passion or mel 
 ancholy ; her teeth were like strips from the lily s 
 heart ; and she was clever, captivating, graceful, and a 
 thorough coquette. St. John was mysterious, roman 
 tic-looking, superior, and, just now, the only victim in 
 the way. He admired, as all men do, those qualities 
 which, to her own sex, rendered the fair Isabella un- 
 amiable ; and yielded himself, as all men will, a, satis 
 fied prey to enchantments of which he knew the 
 springs were the pique and vanity of the enchantress. 
 How singular it is that the highest and best qualities 
 of the female heart are those with whicn men are the 
 least captivated ! 
 
 A rib of the mountain formed a natural seat a little 
 back from the pitch of the precipice, and here sat Miss 
 Temple, triumphant in drawing all eyes upon herself 
 and her tamed lion ; her lap full of flowers, which h, 
 had fou,nd time to gather on the way, and fy 
 
20 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 hands employed in arranging a bouquet, of which the 
 destiny was yet a secret. Next to their own loves, 
 ladies like nothing on earth like mending or marring 
 the loves of others ; and while the violets and already- 
 drooping wild flowers were coquettishly chosen or re 
 jected by those slender fingers, the sun might have 
 swung back to the east like a pendulum, and those 
 seven-and-twenty misses would have watched their 
 lovely schoolfellow the same. Nunu turned her head 
 slowly around at last, and silently looked on. St. 
 John lay at the feet of the Georgian, glancing from 
 the flowers to her face, and from her face to the flow 
 ers, with an admiration not at all equivocal. Mrs. 
 Ilfrington sat apart, absorbed in finishing a sketch of 
 New-Haven ; and I, interested painfully in watching 
 the emotions of the Cherokee, sat with my back to 
 the trunk of a hemlock the only spectator who 
 comprehended the whole extent of the drama. 
 
 A wild rose was set in the heart of the bouquet at 
 last, a spear of riband-grass added to give it grace 
 and point, and nothing was wanting but a string. Ret 
 icules were searched, pockets turned inside out, and 
 never a bit of riband to be found. The beauty was 
 in despair. 
 
 " Stay," said St. John, springing to his feet. 
 " Lash ! Lash!" 
 
 The dog came coursing in from the wood, and 
 crouched to his master s hand. 
 
 "Will a string of wampum do ?" he asked, feeling 
 under the long hair on the dog s neck, and untying a 
 fine and variegated thread of many-colored beads, 
 worked exquisitely. 
 
 The dog growled, and Nunu sprang into the mid 
 dle of the circle with the fling of an adder, and seiz 
 ing the wampum as he handed it to her rival, called the 
 dog, and fastened it once more around his neck. 
 
 The ladies rose in alarm ; the belle turned pale, and 
 clung to St. John s arm ; the dog, with his hair brist 
 ling upon his back, stood close to her feet in an atti 
 tude of defiance ; and the superb Indian, the peculiar 
 genius of her beauty developed by her indignation, 
 her nostrils expanded, and her eyes almost showering 
 fire in their flashes, stood before them like a young 
 Pythoness, ready to strike them dead with a regard. 
 
 St. John recovered from his astonishment after a 
 moment, and leaving the arm of Miss Temple, ad 
 vanced a step, and called to his dog. 
 
 The Cherokee patted the animal on his back, and 
 spoke to him in her own language ; and, as St. John 
 still advanced, Nunu drew herself to her fullest height, 
 placed herself before the dog, who slunk growling 
 from his master, and said to him, as she folded her 
 arms, " The wampum is mine." 
 
 St. John colored to the temples with shame. 
 
 " Lash !" he cried, stamping with his feet, and en 
 deavoring to fright him from his protectress. 
 
 The dog howled and crept away, half crouching 
 with fear, toward the precipice ; and St. John shoot 
 ing suddenly past Nunu, seized him on the brink, and 
 held him down by the throat. 
 
 The next instant, a scream of horror from Mrs. Il 
 frington, followed by a terrific echo from every female 
 present, started the rude Kentuckian to his feet. 
 
 Clear over the abyss, hanging with one hand by an 
 ashen sapling, the point of her tiny foot just poising 
 on a projecting ledge of rock, swung the desperate 
 Cherokee, sustaining herself with perfect ease, but 
 with all the determination of her iron race collected 
 in calm concentration on her lips. 
 
 " Restore the wampum to his neck," she cried, with 
 a voice that thrilled the very marrow with its subdued 
 fierceness, " or my blood rest on your soul !" 
 
 St. John flung it toward the dog, and clasped his 
 hands in silent horror. 
 
 The Cherokee bore down the sapling till its slender 
 stem cracked with the tension, and rising lightly with 
 
 the rebound, alit like a feather upon the rock. The 
 subdued student sprang to her side ; but with scorn 
 on her lip, and the flush of exertion already vanished 
 from her cheek, she called to the dog, and with rapid 
 strides took her way alone down the mountain. 
 
 VI. 
 
 Five years had elapsed. I had put to sea from the 
 sheltered river of boyhood had encountered the 
 storms of a first entrance into life had trimmed my 
 boat, shortened sail, and, with a sharp eye to wind 
 ward, was lying fairly on my course. Among others 
 from whom I had parted company was Paul St. John, 
 who had shaken hands with me at the university gate, 
 leaving me, after four years intimacy, as much in 
 doubt as to his real character and history as the first 
 day we met. I had never heard him speak of either 
 father or mother, nor had he, to my knowledge, re 
 ceived a letter from the day of his matriculation. He 
 passed his vacations at the university ; he had studied 
 well, yet refused one of the highest college honors 
 offered him with his degree ; he had shown many 
 good qualities, yet some unaccountable faults ; and, 
 all in all, was an enigma to myself and the class. I 
 knew him, clever, accomplished, and conscious of 
 superiority ; and my knowledge went no farther. The 
 coach was at the gate, and I was there to see him off; 
 and, after four years constant association, I had not 
 an idea where he was going, or to what he was des 
 tined. The driver blew his horn. 
 " God bless you, Slingsby !" 
 "God bless you, St. John " 
 And so we parted. 
 
 It was five years from this time, I say, and, in the 
 | bitter struggles of first manhood, I had almost forgot- 
 [ ten there was such a being in the world. Late in the 
 j month of October, in 1829, I was on my way west- 
 ! ward, giving myself a vacation from the law. I em 
 barked, on a clear and delicious day, in the small 
 j steamer which plies up and down the Cayuga lake, 
 j looking forward to a calm feast of scenery, and caring 
 ! little who were to be my fellow-passengers. As we 
 ! got out of the little harbor of Cayuga, I walked astern 
 | for the first time, and saw the not very unusual sight 
 of a group of Indians standing motionless by the 
 wheel. They were chiefs, returning from a diplomatic 
 ; visit to Washington. 
 
 I sat down by the companion-ladder, and opened 
 ; soul and eye to the glorious scenery we were gliding 
 : through. The first severe frost had come, and the 
 I miraculous change had passed upon the leaves which 
 i is known only in America. The blood-red sugar ma- 
 ! pie, with a leaf brighter and more delicate than a Cir 
 cassian lip, stood here and there in the forest like the 
 Sultan s standard in a host the solitary and far-seen 
 aristocrat of the wilderness ; the birch, with its spirit- 
 like and amber leaves, ghosts of the departed summer, 
 turned out along the edges of the woods like a lining 
 of the palest gold ; the broad sycamore and the fan- 
 like catalpa flaunted their saffron foliage in the sun, 
 spotted with gold like the wings of a lady-bird; the 
 kingly oak, with its summit shaken bare, still hid its 
 majestic trunk in a drapery of sumptuous dyes, like a 
 stricken monarch, gathering his robes of slate about 
 him to die royally in his purple ; the tall poplar, with 
 its minaret of silver leaves, stood blanched like a cow 
 ard in the dying forest, burthening every breeze with 
 its complainings ; the hickory paled through its en 
 during green ; the bright berries of the mountain-ash 
 flushed with a more sanguine glory in the unobstructed 
 sun ; the gaudy tulip-tree, the Sybarite of vegetation, 
 stripped of its golden cups, still drank the intoxicating 
 light of noonday in leaves than which the lip of an 
 Indian shell was never more delicately teinted ; the 
 still deeper-dyed vines of the lavish wilderness, perish- 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 ing with the noble things whose summer they had 
 shared, outshone them in their decline, as woman in 
 her death is heavenlier than the being on whom in life 
 she leaned ; and alone and unsympathizing in this 
 universal decay, outlaws from Nature, stood the fir 
 and the hemlock, their frowning and sombre heads 
 darker and less lovely than ever, in contrast with the 
 death-struck glory of their companions. 
 
 The dull colors of English autumnal foliage give 
 you no conception of this marvellous phenomenon. 
 The change here is gradual ; in America it is the 
 work of a night of a single frost ! 
 
 Oh, to have seen the sun set on hills bright in the 
 still green and lingering summer, and to wake in the 
 morning to a spectacle like this! 
 
 It is as if a myriad of rainbows were laced through ! 
 the tree-tops as if the sunsets of a summer gold, 
 pdrple, and crimson had been fused in the alembic 
 of the west, and poured back in a new deluge of light |: 
 and color over the wilderness. It is as if every leaf ;j 
 in those countless trees had been painted to outflush ! 
 the tulip as if. by some electric miracle, the dyes of || 
 the earth s heart had struck upward, and her crystals 
 and ores, her sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies, had let 
 forth their imprisoned colors to mount through the!j 
 roots of the forest, and, like the angels that in olden jj 
 time entered the body of the dying, reanimate the per- jj 
 ishing leaves, and revel an hour in their bravery. 
 
 I was sitting by the companion-ladder, thinking to 
 what on earth these masses of foliage could be resem 
 bled, when a dog sprang upon my knees, and, the 
 moment after, a hand was laid on my shoulder. 
 
 "St. John? Impossible!" 
 
 "Bodily!" answered my quondam classmate. 
 
 I looked at him with astonishment. The soigne 
 man of fashion I had once known was enveloped in a 
 kind of hunter s frock, loose and large, and girded to 
 his waist by a belt; his hat was exchanged for a cap 
 of rich otter skin ; his pantaloons spread with a slov 
 enly carelessness over his feet ; and, altogether, there 
 was that in his air which told me at a glance that he 
 had renounced the world. Lash had recovered his 
 leanness, and, after wagging out his joy, he crouched 
 between my feet, and lay looking into my face, as if 
 he was brooding over the more idle days in which we 
 had been acquainted. 
 
 "And where are you bound?" I asked, having an 
 swered the same question for myself. 
 
 " Westward with the chiefs !" 
 
 "For how long?" 
 
 " The remainder of my life." 
 
 I could not forbear an exclamation of surprise. 
 
 "You would wonder less," said he, with an impa 
 tient gesture, " if you knew more of me. And, by- 
 the-way," he added with a smile, " I think } never 
 told you the first half of the story my life up to the 
 time I met you." 
 
 " It was not for want of a catechist," I answered, 
 settling myself in an attitude of attention. 
 
 " No ; and I was often tempted to gratify your cu 
 riosity : but from the little intercourse^! had had with 
 the world, I had adopted some precocious principles; 
 and one was, that a man s influence over others was 
 vulgarized and diminished by a knowledge of his 
 history." 
 
 I smiled, and as the boat sped on her Avay over the 
 calm waters of the Cayuga, St. John went on lei 
 surely with a story which is scarce remarkable enough 
 for a repetition. He believed himself the natural son 
 of a western hunter, but only knew that he had passed 
 his early youth on the borders of civilization, between 
 vyhites and Indians, and that he had been more par 
 ticularly indebted for protection to the father of Nunu. 
 Mingled ambition and curiosity had led him eastward 
 while still a lad, and a year or two of a most vagabond 
 life in the different cities had taught him the caution 
 
 and bitterness for which he was so remarkable. A 
 fortunate experiment in lotteries supplied him with 
 the means of education, and, with singular application 
 in a youth of such wandering habits, he had applied 
 himself to study under a private master, fitted him 
 self for the university in half the usual time, and cul 
 tivated, in addition, the literary taste which I have re 
 marked upon. 
 
 " This," he said, smiling at my look of astonish 
 ment, " brings me up to the time when we met. I 
 came to college at the age of eighteen, with a few 
 hundred dollars in my pocket, some pregnant experi 
 ence of the rough side of the world, great confidence 
 in myself, and distrust of others, and, 1 believe, a kind 
 of instinct of good manneis, which made me ambi 
 tious of shilling in society. Yon were a witness to 
 my debut. Miss Temple was the first highly-edu 
 cated woman I had ever known, and you saw her 
 effect on me." 
 
 "And since we parted ?" 
 
 11 Oh, since we parted my life has been vulgar 
 enough. I have ransacked civilized life to the bot 
 tom, and found it a heap of unredeemed falsehoods. 
 I do not say it from common disappointment, for I 
 may say I succeeded in everything I undertook " 
 
 "Except Miss Temple," 1 said, interrupting, at the 
 hazard of wounding him. 
 
 "No; she was a coquette, and I pursued her till I 
 had my turn. You see me in my new character now. 
 But a month ago I was the Apollo of Saratoga, play 
 ing my own game with Miss Temple. I left her for 
 a woman worth ten thousand of her and here she 
 is." 
 
 As Nunu came up the companion-way from the 
 cabin, I thought I had never seen breathing creature 
 so exquisitely lovely. With the exception of a pair 
 of brilliant moccasins on her feet, she was dressed in 
 the usual manner, but with the most absolute sim 
 plicity. She had changed in those five years from 
 the child to the woman, and, with a rouiul and well- 
 developed fiuure, additional height, and manners at 
 once gracious and dignified, she walked and looked 
 the chieftain s daughter. St. John took her hand, 
 and gazed on her with moisture in his eyes. 
 
 " That I could ever have put a creature like this," 
 he said, " into comparison with the dolls of civiliza 
 tion!" 
 
 We parted at Buffalo ; St. John with his wife and 
 the chiefs to pursue their way westward by Lake 
 Erie, and I to go moralizing on my way to Niagara. 
 
 F, SMITH, 
 
 Nature had made him for some other planet, 
 
 And pressed his xonl into a human shape 
 
 By accident or malice." COLEHIDOB. 
 
 " I ! liave you chronicled, and chronicled, and cut-and-chron- 
 iclnd, and sung in all-to-be-praised sonnets, and graved in new 
 brave ballads, tliat all tongues shall troule you." PUILASTEE. 
 
 IF you can imagine a buried Titan lying along the 
 length of a continent with one arm stretched out into 
 the midst of the sea, the place to which I would trans 
 port you, reader mine ! would lie as it were in the 
 palm of the giant s hand. The small promontory to 
 which I refer, which becomes an island in certain 
 states of the tide, is at the end of one of the long capes 
 of Massachusetts, and is still called by its Indian name, 
 Nuhant. Not to make you uncomfortable, I beg to 
 introduce you at once to a pretentious hotel, "squat- 
 like a toad" upon the unsheltered and highest point 
 of this citadel in mid sea, and a very great resort for 
 the metropolitan New-Englanders. Nahant is per- 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 haps, liberally measured, a square half-mile ; and it is 
 distant from what may fairly be called mainland, per 
 haps a league. 
 
 Road to Nahant there is none. The oi pottm go 
 there by steam ; but when the tide is down, you may 
 drive there with a thousand chariots over the bottom 
 of the sea. As I suppose there is not such another 
 place in the known world, my tale will wait while I 
 describe it more fully. If the Bible had been a fic 
 tion (not to speak profanely), I should have thought 
 the idea of the destruction of Pharaoh and his host 
 had its origin in some such wonder of nature. 
 
 Nahant is so far out into the ocean, that what is 
 called the "ground swell," the majestic heave of its 
 great bosom going on for ever like respiration (though 
 its face may be like a mirror beneath the sun, and a 
 wind may not have crisped its surface for days and 
 weeks), is as broad and powerful within a rood of the 
 shore as it is a thousand miles at sea. 
 
 The promontory itself is never wholly left by the 
 ebb ; but, from its western extremity, there runs a 
 narrow ridge, scarce broad enough for a horse-path, 
 impassible for tho rocks and sea-weed of which it is 
 matted, and extending at just high-water mark fro.m 
 Nahant to the mainland. Seaward from this ridge, 
 which is the only connexion of the promontory with 
 the continent, descends an expanse of sand, left bare 
 six hours out of the twelve by the retreating sea, as 
 smooth and hard as marble, and as broad and appa 
 rently as level as the plain of the Hermus. For three 
 miles it stretches away without shell or stone, a sur 
 face of white, fine-grained sand, beaten so hard by the 
 eternal hammer of the surf, that the hoof of a horse 
 scarce marks it, and the heaviest wheel leaves it as 
 printless as a floor of granite. This will be easily un 
 derstood when you remember the tremendous rise and 
 fall of the ocean swell, from the very bosom of which, 
 in all its breadth and strength, roll in the waves of the 
 flowing tide, breaking down on the beach, every one, 
 with the thunder of a host precipitated from the bat 
 tlements of a castle. Nothing could be more solemn 
 and anthem-like than the succession of these plunging 
 surges. And when the " tenth wave gathers, far out 
 at sea, and rolls onward to the shore, first with a 
 glassy and heaving swell as if some mighty monster 
 were lurching inland beneath the water, and then, 
 bursting up into foam, with a front like an endless and 
 sparry crystal wall, advances and overwhelms every 
 thing in its progress, till it breaks with a centupled 
 thunder on the beach it has seemed to me, standing 
 there, as if thus might have beaten the first surge on 
 the shore after the fiat which " divided sea and land." 
 I am no Cameronian, but the sea (myself on shore) 
 always drives me to Scripture for an illustration of my 
 feelings. 
 
 The promontory of Nahant must be based on the 
 earth s axle, else I can not imagine how ii should have 
 lasted so long. In the mildest weather, the ground- 
 swell of the sea gives it a fillip at every heave that 
 would lay the " castled crag of Drachenfels" as low as 
 Memphis. The wine trembles in your beaker of 
 claret as you sit after dinner at the hotel ; and if you 
 look out at the eastern balcony (for it is a wooden 
 pagoda, with balconies, verandahs, and colonnades ad 
 libitum), you will see the grass breathless in the sun 
 shine upon the lawn, and the ocean as polished and 
 calm as Miladi s brow beyond, and yet the spray and 
 foam dashing fifty feet into the air between, and en 
 veloping the "Devil s Pulpit" (a tall rock split off from 
 the promontory s front) in a perpetual kaleidoscope of 
 mist and rainbows. Take the trouble to transport 
 yourself there ! I will do the remaining honors on the 
 spot. A cavern as cool (not as silent) as those of 
 Trophonius lies just under the brow of yonder preci 
 pice, and the waiter shall come after us with our wine. 
 You have dined with the Borromeo in the grotto of 
 
 Isola Bella, I doubt not, and know the perfection of 
 art I will show you that of nature. (I should like to 
 transport you for a similar contrast from Terni to 
 Niagara, or from San Giovanni Laterano to an aisle in 
 a forest of Michigan ; but the Daedalian mystery, alas ! 
 is unsolved. We "fly not yet.") 
 
 Here we are, then, in the "Swallow s Cave." The 
 floor descends by a g entle declivity to the sea, and 
 from the long dark cleft stretching outward you look 
 forth upon the broad Atlantic the shore of Ireland 
 the first terra firma in the path of your eye. Here is 
 a dark pool left by the retreating tide for a refrigerator, 
 and with the champagne in the midst, we will recline 
 about it like the soft Asiatics of whom we learned 
 pleasure in the east, and drink to the small-featured 
 and purple-lipped " Mignons" of Syria those fine- 
 limbed and fiery slaves, adorable as Peris, and by turns 
 languishing and stormy, whom you buy for a pinch 
 of piastres (say 51. 5s.) in sunny Damascus. Your 
 drowsy Circassian, faint and dreamy, or your crockery 
 Georgian fit dolls for the sensual Turk is, to him 
 who would buy soul, dear at a para the hecatomb. 
 
 We recline, as it were, in an ebon pyramid, with a 
 hundred feet of floor and sixty of wall, and the fourth 
 side open to the sky. The light comes in mellow and 
 dim, and the sharp edges of the rocky portal seem let 
 into the pearly arch of heaven. The tide is at half- 
 ebb, and the advancing and retreating waves, which at 
 first just lifted the fringe of crimson dulse at the lip 
 of the cavern, now dash their spray-pearls on the rock 
 below, the "tenth" surge alone rallying as if in scorn 
 of its retreating fellows, and, like the chieftain of Cul- 
 loden Moor, rushing back singly to the contest. And 
 now that the waters reach the entrance no more, come 
 forward and look on the sea ! The swell lifts ! would 
 you not think the bases of the earth rising beneath it? 
 It falls ! would you not think the foundation of the 
 deep had given way ? A plain, broad enough for the 
 navies of the world to ride at large, heaves up evenly 
 and steadily as if it would lie against the sky, rests a 
 moment spell-bound in its place, and falls again as 
 far the respiration of a sleeping child not more reg 
 ular and full of slumber. It is only on the shore that 
 it chafes. Blessed emblem ! it is at peace with itself! 
 The rocks war with a nature so unlike their own, and 
 the hoarse din of their border onsets resounds through 
 the caverns they have rent open ; but beyond, in the 
 calm bosom of the ocean, what heavenly dignity ! what 
 godlike unconsciousness of alarm ! I did not think we 
 should stumble on such a moral in the cave ! 
 
 By the deeper base of its hoarse organ, the sea is 
 now playing upon its lowest stops, and the tide is down. 
 Hear! how it rushes in beneath the rocks, broken and 
 stilled in its tortuous way, till it ends with a washing 
 and dull hiss among the sea-weed, and, like a myriad 
 of small tinkling bells, the dripping from the crags is 
 audible. There is fine music in the sea ! 
 
 And now the beach is bare. The cave begins to 
 cool and darken, and the first gold teint of sunset is 
 stealing into the sky, and the sea looks of a changing 
 opal, green, purple, and white, as if its floor were 
 paved with pearl, and the changing light struck up 
 through the waters. And there heaves a ship into the 
 horizon, like a white-winged bird lying with dark breast 
 on the waves, abandoned of the sea-breeze within sight 
 of port, and repelled even by the spicy breath that 
 comes with a welcome off the shore. She comes from 
 "merry England." She is freighted with more than 
 merchandise. The home-sick exile will gaze on her 
 snowy sail as she sets in with the morning breeze, and 
 bless it ; for the wind that first filled it on its way 
 swept through the green valley of his home ! What 
 links of human affection brings she over the sea? 
 How much comes in her that is not in her "bill of 
 lading," yet worth, to the heart that is waiting for it, a 
 thousand times the purchase of her whole venture ! 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 Mais montons nous! I hear the small hoofs of 
 Thalaba; my stanhope waits; we will leave this half 
 bottle of champagne, that " remainder biscuit," and the 
 echoes of our philosophy, to the Naiads who have lent 
 us their drawing-room. Undine, or Egeria! Lurly, 
 or Arethusa! whatever thou art called, nympth of this 
 shadowy cave! adieu! 
 
 Slowly, Thalaba! Tread gingerly down this rocky 
 descent ! So ! Here we are on the floor of the vasty 
 deep! What a glorious race-course ! The polished 
 and printless sand spreads away before you as far as 
 the eye can see, the surf comes in below, breast-high 
 ere it breaks, and the white fringe of the sliding wave 
 shoots up the beach, but leaves room for the marching 
 of a Persian phalanx on the sands it has deserted. 
 Oh, how noiselessly runs the wheel, and how dreamily 
 we glide along, feeling our motion but in the resist 
 ance of the wind, and by the trout-like pull of the 
 ribands by the excited animal before us. Mark the 
 color of the sand! Whit 
 
 Hence I speak not of the friends I made, rambling by 
 lake or river. The lake and the river are there, but 
 the friends are changed to themselves and me. I 
 speak not of the lovely and loving ones that stood by 
 me, looking on glen or waterfall. The glen and the 
 waterfall are romantic still, but the form and the heart 
 that breathed through it are no longer lovely or loving. 
 I should renew my joys by the old mountain and 
 j river, for, all they ever were I should find them still, 
 I and never seem to myself grown old, or cankered of 
 the world, or changed in form or spirit, while they 
 reminded me but of my youth, with their familiar 
 sunshine and beauty. But the friends that I knew 
 as I knew them are dead. They look no longer 
 the same ; they have another heart in them ; the 
 kindness of the eye, the smilingness of the lip, are 
 no more there. Philosophy tells me the material 
 and living body changes and renews, particle by par 
 ticle, with time ; and experience cold-blooded and 
 
 it high-water mark, and j stony monitor tells me, in his frozen monotone, that 
 thence deepening to a silvery gray as the water has heart and spirit change with it and renew ! But the 
 evaporated less a slab of Egyptian granite in the I name remains, mockery that it is! and the memory 
 
 obelisk of St. Peter s not more polished and unimpres- 
 sible. Shell or rock, weed or quicksand, there is 
 none ; and mar or deface its bright surface as you 
 will, it is ever beaten down anew, and washed even of 
 
 sometimes; and so these apparitions of the past that 
 we almost fear to question when they encounter us, 
 lest the change they have undergone should freeze our 
 blood stare coldly on us, yet call us by name, and 
 
 ! wish the grave of the past, with all that it contained 
 nty | of kind or lovely, had been sealed for ever. The 
 
 the dust of the foot of man, by the returning sea. I; answer, though coldly to their own, and have that 
 You may write upon its fine-grained face with a crow- | terrible similitude to what they were, mingled with 
 quill you may course over its dazzling expanse with j their unsympathizing and hollow mummery, that 
 a troop of chariots. 
 
 Most wondrous and beautiful of all, within twenty.. 
 
 yards of the surf, or for an hour after the tide has left \. heart we have lain near before our birth (so read I the 
 the sand, it holds the water without losing its firm- j book of human life) is the only one that can not for- 
 ness, and is like a gray mirror, bright as the bosom of ;! get that it has loved us. Saith well and aflectiou- 
 the sea. (By your leave, Thalaba!) And now lean !| ately an American poet, in some birth-day verses to 
 over the dasher, and see those small fetlocks striking ! his mother 
 up from beneath the flying mane, the thorough-bred j 
 action, the small and expressive head, as perfect in j 
 
 the reflection as in the reality; like Wordsworth s 
 swan, he 
 
 " Trots double, horse and shadow." 
 
 You would swear you were skimming the surface of j 
 the sea; and the delusion is more complete as the! 
 white foam of the "tenth wave 1 skims in beneath! 
 wheel and hoof, and you urge on with the treacherous 
 element gliding away visibly beneath you. 
 
 We seem not to have driven fast, yet three miles, 
 fairly measured, are left behind, and Thalaba s blood 
 is up. Fine creature! I would not give him 
 
 ( Mother ! dear mother ! the feelings nurst 
 As I hung at thy bosom, duns; round thee first 
 Twas the earliest link in love s warm chain, 
 Tis the only one that will long remain ; 
 And as, yearly year, and day by day, 
 Some friend, still trusted, drops away, 
 Mother ! dear mother ! oh, dost thou see 
 HoiL the shortened chain brings me nearer thee . " 
 
 I have observed that of all the friends one has in the 
 course of his life, the truest and most attached is ex 
 actly the one who, from his dissimilarity to yourself, 
 the world finds it very odd you should fancy. We 
 
 hear sometimes of lovers who "are made for each 
 For the best horse the Sun has in his stable." | other/ , , )Ut rardy of the game naturj| j match ^ f) . iend _ 
 
 We have won champagne ere now, Thalaba, and I, I ship. It is no great marvel. In a world like this, 
 trotting on this silvery beach ; and if ever old age I where we pluck so desperately at the fruit of pleasure, 
 comes on me, and I intend it never shall on aught we prefer for company those who are not formed with 
 save my mortal coil (my spirit vowed to perpetual precisely the same palate as ourselves. You will sel- 
 youth), I think these vital breezes, and a trot on these l! dom go wrong, dear reader, if you refer any human 
 exhilarating sands, would sooner renew my prime question about which you are in doubt to that icy 
 than a rock in St. Hilary s cradle, or a dip in the well oracle selfishness. 
 
 of Kanathos. May we try the experiment together, 
 gentle reader! 
 
 I am not settled in my own mind whether this de 
 
 My shadow for many years was a gentle monster, 
 whom "I have before mentioned, baptized by the name 
 of Forbearance Smith. He was a Vermontese, a de 
 
 ription of one of my favorite haunts in America scendant of one of the puritan pilgrims, and the first 
 was written most to introduce the story that is to fol- j[ of his family who had left the Green mountains since 
 low, or the story to introduce the description. Possi- the flight of the regicides to America. We assimilate 
 bly the latter, for having consumed by callow youth I j to what we live among, and Forbearance was very 
 
 general 
 
 in wandering " to and fro in the earth," like Sathanas 
 of old, and looking on my country now with an eye 
 from which all the minor and temporary features have 
 gradually faded, I find my pride in it (after its glory- 
 as a republic) settling principally on the superior 
 handiwork of nature in its land and water. When 
 I talk of it now, it is looking through another s eyes 
 his who listens. I do not describe it after my own 
 memory of what it was once to me, but according to 
 my idea of what it will seem now to a stranger. 
 
 green, and very like a mountain. He had a 
 i resemblance to one of Thorwaldsen s unfinished apos- 
 ties larger than life, and just hewn into outline. My 
 
 acquaintance w 
 
 th him commenced during my first 
 
 year at the university. He stalked into my room one 
 morning with a hair-trunk on his back, and handed me 
 the follow ing note from the tutor : 
 
 41 SIR : The faculty have decided to impose upon 
 you the fine of ten dollars and damages, for painting 
 
24 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 the president s horse on sabbath night while grazing 
 on the college green. They, moreover, have removed 
 Freshman Wilding from your rooms, and appoint as 
 your future chum the studious and exemplary bearer, 
 Forbearance Smith, to whom you are desired to show 
 a becoming respect. 
 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 "ERASMUS S^UFFI^EGREEK. 
 " To Freshman Slingsby." 
 
 Bather relieved by my lenient sentence (for, till the 
 next shedding of his well-saturated coat, the sky-blue 
 body and red mane and tail of the president s once 
 gray mare would interfere with that esteemed animal s 
 usefulness), I received Air. Smith with more polite 
 ness than he expected. He deposited his hair-trunk in 
 the vacant bedroom, remarked with a good-humored 
 smile that it was a cold morning, and seating himself 
 in my easiest chair, opened his Euclid, and went to 
 work upon a problem, as perfectly at home as if he 
 had furnished the room himself, and lived in it from 
 his matriculation. I had expected some preparatory 
 apology at least, and was a little annoyed ; but being 
 upon my good behavior, I bit my lips, and resumed 
 the "Art of Love," upon which I was just then prac 
 tising my nascent Latinity, instead of calculating loga 
 rithms for recitation. In about an hour, my new chum 
 suddenly vociferated "Eureka!" shut up his book, 
 and having stretched himself (a very unnecessary op 
 eration), coolly walked to my dressing-table, selected 
 my best hair-brush, redolent of Macassar, and used it 
 with the greatest apparent satisfaction. 
 
 " Have you done with that hair-brush ?" I asked, as 
 he laid it in its place again. 
 
 " Oh yes !" 
 
 " Then, perhaps, you will do me the favor to throw 
 it out of the window." 
 
 He did it without the slightest hesitation. He then 
 resumed his seat by the fire, and I went on with my 
 book in silence. Twenty minutes had elapsed, per 
 haps, when he rose very deliberately, and without a 
 word of preparation, gave me a cuff that sent me fly 
 ing into the wood-basket in the corner behind me. As 
 soon as I could pick myself out, I flew upon him. but 
 I might as well have grappled with a boa-constrictor. 
 He held me off at arm s length till I was quite ex 
 hausted with rage, and, at last, when I could struggle 
 no more, I found breath to ask him what the devil he 
 meant. 
 
 " To resent what seemed to me, on reflection, to be 
 an insult," he answered, in the calmest tone, " and 
 now to ask your pardon for a fault of ignorance. The 
 first was due to myself, the second to you." 
 
 Thenceforth, to the surprise of everybody, and Bob 
 Wilding and the tutor, we were inseparable. I took 
 Bruin (by a double elision Forbearance became " bear," 
 and by paraphrase Bruin, and he answered to the 
 name) I took him, I say, to the omnium shop, and 
 presented him with a dressing-case, and other appli 
 ances for his outer man ; and as my inner man was 
 relatively as much in need of his assistance, we mu 
 tually improved. I instructed him in poetry and po 
 liteness, and he returned the lesson in problems and 
 politics. My star was never in more fortunate con 
 junction. 
 
 Four years had woven their threads of memory about 
 us, and there was never woof more free from blemish. 
 Our friendship was proverbial. All that much care 
 and Macassar could do for Bruin had been done, but 
 there was no abating his seven feet of stature, nor re 
 ducing the size of his feet proper, nor making the mus 
 cles of his face answer to their natural wires. At his 
 most placid smile, a strange waiter would run for n 
 hot towel and the doctor (colic was not more like it 
 self than that like colic); and for his motions oh 
 Lord I a skeleton, with each individual bone append 
 
 ed to its neighbor with a string, wculd execute a pas 
 scul with the same expression. His mind, however, 
 had none of the awkwardness of his body. A simpli 
 city and truth, amounting to the greatest naivete, and 
 a fatuitous unconsciousness of the effect on beholders 
 of his outer man, were its only approaches to fault or 
 foible. With the finest sense of the beautiful, the 
 most unerring judgment in literary taste, the purest 
 romance, a fervid enthusiasm, constancy, courage, and 
 good temper, he walked about the world in a mask 
 an admirable creature, in the guise and seeming of a 
 ludicrous monster. 
 
 Bruin was sensitive on but one point. He never 
 j could forgive his father and mother for the wrong they 
 j had entailed on him at his baptism. "Forbearance 
 j Smith !" he would say to himself sometimes in uncon 
 scious soliloquy, "they should have given me the vir- 
 | tue as well as the name !" And then he would sit 
 with a pen, and scrawl " F. Smith" on a sheet of paper 
 by the hour together. To insist upon knowing his 
 Christian name was the one impertinence he never 
 fonrave. 
 
 III. 
 
 My party at Nahant consisted of Thalaba, Forbear 
 ance, and myself. The place was crowded, but I 
 passed my time very much between my horse and my 
 i friend, and was as certain to be found on the beach 
 i when the tide was down, as the sea to have left the 
 
 sands. Job (a synonyme for Forbearance which be 
 came at this time his common soubriquet) was, of 
 course, in love. Not the least to the prejudice, how 
 ever, of his last faithful passion for he was as fond 
 of the memory of an old love, as he was tender in the 
 presence of the new. I intended to have had him dis 
 sected after his death, to see whether his organization 
 was not peculiar. I strongly incline to the opinion 
 that we should have found a mirror in the place of his 
 heart. Strange ! how the same man who is so fickle 
 in love, will be so constant in friendship ! But is it 
 fickleness ? Is it not rather a supcrjlu, of tenderness in 
 the nature, which overflows to all who approach the 
 fountain ? I have ever observed that the most suscep 
 tible men are the most remarkable for the finer quali 
 ties of character. They are more generous, more 
 delicate, and of a more chivalrous complexion alto 
 gether, than ether men. It was surprising how reason 
 ably Bruin would argue upon this point" " Because 
 I was happy at Niagara," he was saying one day as 
 we sat upon the rocks, " shall I take no pleasure in 
 the falls of Montmorenci ? Because the sunset was 
 glorious yesterday, shall I find no beauty in that of 
 to-day ? Is my fancy to be used but once, and the 
 key turned upon it for ever? Is the heart like a bon 
 bon, to be eaten up by the first favorite, and thought 
 of no more ? Are our eyes blind, save to one shape 
 of beauty ? Are our ears insensible to the music save 
 of one voice ?" 
 
 " But do you not weaken the heart, and become in 
 capable of a lasting attachment, by this habit of incon 
 stancy 1" 
 
 " How long, my dear Phil, will you persist in talk 
 ing as if the heart was material, and held so much love 
 as a cup so much water, and had legs to be weary, or 
 organs to grow dull ? How is my sensibility lessened 
 Tiow my capacity enfeebled? What would I have 
 done for my first love, that I would not do for my last ? 
 I would have sacrificed my life to secure the happi 
 ness of one you wot of in days gone by: I would jump 
 into the sea, if it would make Blanche Carroll happier 
 to-morrow." 
 
 " Sautez-dvnc !" said a thrilling voice behind ; and 
 as if the utterance of her name had conjured her out 
 of the ground, the object of all Job s admiration, and 
 a little of my own, stood before us. She had a work- 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 basket in her hand, a gipsy-hat tossed carelessly on 
 her bead, and had preceded a whole troop of belles 
 and matrons, who were coming out to while away the 
 morning, and breathe the invigorating sea-air on the 
 rocks. 
 
 Blanche Carroll was what the women would call 
 " a little love," but that phrase of endearment would 
 not at all express the feeling with which she inspired 
 the men. She was small, and her face and figure 
 might have been framed in fairy-land for bewitching 
 beauty ; but with the manner of a spoiled child, and, 
 apparently, the most thoughtless playfulness of mind, 
 she was as veritable a little devil as ever took the shape 
 of woman. Scarce seventeen at this time, she had 
 a knowledge of character that was like an instinct, and I 
 was an accomplished actress in any part it was neces 
 sary for her purpose to play. No grave Machiavel i 
 ever managed his cards with more finesse than that | 
 little intriguante the limited world of which she was ! 
 the star. She was a natural master-spirit and plotter; 
 and the talent that would have employed itself in the ! 
 deeper game of politics, had she been born a woman 
 of rank in EJurope, displayed itself, in the simple so- j 
 ciety of a republic, in subduing to her power every- : 
 thing in the shape of a single man that ventured to her 
 net. I have nothing to tell of her at all commensu 
 rate with the character I have drawn, for the disposal 
 of her own heart (if she has one) must of course be 
 the most important event of her life ; but I merely 
 pencil the outline of the portrait in passing, as a i 
 specimen of the material that exists even in the | 
 simplest society for the dramatis persons of a i 
 court. 
 
 " Good-night ! Tis little now to thee 
 
 That in my ear thy words were spoken, 
 And thou wilt think of them and me 
 
 As long as of the bracelet broken. 
 For thus is riven many a chain 
 
 That thou hast fastened but to break, 
 And thus tliou lt sink to sleep again, 
 
 As careless that another wake : 
 The only thought thy heart can rend 
 Is what the fellou ll charge to mend!" 
 
 Job s conclusion was more pathetic, but probably 
 less true. He appeared after the applause had ceased, 
 and resumed his place at the lady s feet, with a look 
 in his countenance of having deserved an abatement 
 of persecution. The beauty spread out the fragments 
 of the broken bracelet on the rock beside her. 
 
 " Mr. Smith !" said she, in her most conciliating 
 tone. 
 
 Job leaned toward her with a look of devoted in 
 quiry. 
 
 " Has the tide turned ?" 
 
 " Certainly. Two hours since." 
 
 " The beach is passable, then ?" 
 
 " Hardly, I fear." 
 
 " No matter. How many hours drive is it to Sa 
 lem ?" 
 
 " Mr. Slingsby drives it in two." 
 
 " Then you ll get Mr. Slingsby to lend you his 
 stanhope, drive to Salem, have this bracelet mended, 
 and bring it back in time for the ball. / have spoken, 
 as the grand Turk says. Allez /" 
 
 " But my dear Miss Carroll " 
 
 She laid her hand on his mouth as he began to re 
 monstrate, and while I made signs to him to refuse, 
 
 We followed the light-footed beauty to the shelter she said something to him which I lost in a sudden 
 of one of the caves ope ning on the sea, and seated our- ! dash of tlle waters - He looked at me for in ^ 
 selves about her upon the rocks. Some one proposed 
 that Job or myself should read. 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Smith," interrupted the belle, "where is 
 n.y bracelet ? and where are my verses ?" 
 
 At the ball the night before she had dropped 
 
 aracelet in the waltz, and Job had been permitted to 
 take care of the fragments, on condition of restoring 
 them, with a sonnet, the next morning. She had just i 
 thought of it. 
 
 " Read them out ! read them out !" she cried, as 
 Job, blushing a deep blue, extracted a tri-colored pink 
 document from his pocket, and tried to give it to her i 
 unobserved, with the packet of jewelry. Job looked 
 at her imploringly, and she took the verses from his 
 hand, and ran her eye through them. 
 
 " Pretty well !" she said ; " but the last line might 
 be improved. Give me a pencil, some one !" And 
 bending over it, till her luxuriant hair concealed her 
 fairy fingers in their employment, she wrote a moment 
 upon her knee, and tossing the paper to me, bijde me 
 read it out with the emendation. Bruin had, mean 
 time, modestly disappeared, and I read with the more 
 freedom 
 
 Twas broken in the gliding dance, 
 
 When thou wcrt in I he dream of power ; 
 When shape and motion, tone and glance, 
 
 Were glorious all the woman s hour ! 
 The light lay soft upon thy brow, 
 
 The music molted in thine ear, 
 And one perhaps forgotten now, 
 
 With - wildered thoughts stood listening near. 
 Marvelling not that links of gold 
 A pulse like thine had not controlled. 
 
 Tis midnight now. The dance is done, 
 
 And thou. in thy soft dreams, asleep, 
 And I, awake, am gazing on 
 
 The fragments given me to keep : 
 I think of every glowing vein 
 
 That ran beneath these links of trnld, 
 And wonder if n. thrill of pain 
 
 Made those bright channels ever cold ! 
 With gifts like thine, I can not think 
 Grief ever chilled this broken link. 
 
 for my consent. 
 
 " Oh ! you can have Mr. Slingsby s horse," said the 
 beauty, as I hesitated whether my refusal would not 
 check her tyranny, " and I ll drive him out this even 
 ing for his reward, N*est-ce pasl you cross man !" 
 
 So, with a sun hot enough to fry the brains in his 
 skull, and a quivering reflection on -the sands that 
 would burn his face to a blister, exit Job, with the 
 broken bracelet in his bosom. 
 
 "Stop, Mr. Slingsby," said the imperious little belle, 
 as I was making up a mouth, after his departure, to 
 express my disapprobation of her measures, "no lec 
 ture, if you please. Give me that book of plays, and 
 I ll read you a precedent. Because you are virtuous, 
 shall we have no more cakes and ale ? Ecoulez ! And, 
 with an emphasis and expression that would have been 
 perfect on the stage, she read the following passage 
 from " The Careless Husband :" 
 
 " Lady Bef.li/ The men of sense, my dear, make 
 the best fools in the world ; their sincerity and good 
 breeding throw them so entirely into one s power, and 
 give one such an agreeable thirst of using them ill, to 
 show that power tis impossible not to quench it. 
 
 " Lady Easy. But, my Lord Morelove 
 
 " Lad y B. Pooh ! my Lord Morelove s a mere In 
 dian damask one can t wear him out: o my con- 
 sciende, I must give him to my woman at last. I begin 
 to be known by him ; had I not best leave him oft", my 
 dear? 
 
 " Lady E. Why did you ever encourage him ? 
 
 "Lady B. Why, what would you have one do? 
 For my part, I could no more choose a man by my 
 eye than a shoe one must draw them on a little, to 
 see if they are riaht to one s foot. 
 
 " Lady E. But I d no more fool on with a man I 
 could not like, than wear a shoe that pinched me. 
 
 " Lady B. Ay ; but then a poor wretch tells one 
 he ll widen em, or do anything, and is so civil and 
 silly, that one does not know how to turn such a trifle 
 as a pair of shoes, or a heart, upon a fellow s hands 
 again. 
 
 " Lady E And there s my Lord Foppington. 
 
26 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 "Lady B. My dear! fine fruit will have flies about 
 it ; but, poor things! they do it no harm; for, if you 
 observe, people are generally most apt to choose that 
 the flies have been busy with. Ha ! ha ! 
 
 " Lady E. Thou art a strange, giddy creature ! 
 
 " Lady B. That may be from too much circula 
 tion of thought, my dear!" 
 
 " Pray, Miss Carroll," said I, as she threw aside the 
 book with a theatrical air, " have you any precedent 
 for broiling a man s brains, as well as breaking his 
 heart ? For, by this time, my friend Forbearance has 
 a coup de soleil, and is hissing over the beach like a 
 steam-engine." 
 
 " How tiresome you are ! Do you really think it 
 will kill him ?" 
 
 " It might injure him seriously let alone the dan 
 ger of driving a spirited horse over the beach, with the 
 tide quarter-down." 
 
 " What shall I do to be taken out of the corner, 
 Mr. Slingsby ?" 
 
 "Order your horses an hour sooner, and drive to 
 Lynn, to meet him halfway on his return. I will re 
 sume my stanhope, and give him the happiness of 
 driving back with you." 
 
 " And shall I be gentle Blanche Carroll, and no 
 ogre, if I do ?" 
 
 "Yes; Mr. Smith surviving." 
 
 " Take the trouble to give my orders, then ; and 
 come back immediately, and read to me till it is time 
 to go. Meantime, I shall look at myself in this black 
 mirror." And the spoilt, but most lovely girl bent 
 over a dark pool in the corner of the cave, forming a 
 picture on its shadowy background that drew a mur 
 mur of admiration even from the neglected group who 
 had been the silent and disapproving witnesses of her 
 caprice." 
 
 IV. 
 
 A thunder-cloud strode into the sky with the rapid 
 ity which marks that common phenomenon of a 
 breathless summer afternoon in America, darkened the 
 air for a few minutes, so that the birds betook them 
 selves to their nests, and then poured out its refresh 
 ing waters with the most terrific flashes of lightning, 
 and crashes of thunder, which for a moment seemed to 
 still even the eternal base of the sea. With the same 
 fearful rapidity, the black roof of the sky tore apart, and 
 fell back, in rolling and changing masses, upon the 
 horizon ; the sun darted with intense brilliancy 
 through the clarified and transparent air; the light- 
 stirring breeze came freighted with delicious coolness; 
 and the heavy sea-birds, who had lain brooding on the 
 waves while the tumult of the elements went on, rose 
 on their cimeter-like wings, and fled away, with in 
 comprehensible instinct, from the beautiful and freshen 
 ed land. The whole face of earth and sky had been 
 changed in an hour. 
 
 Oh, of what fulness of delight are even the senses 
 capable ! What a nerve there is sometimes in every 
 pore ! What love for all living and all inanimate 
 things may be born of a summer shower ! How stirs 
 the fancy, and brightens hope, and warms the heart, 
 and sings the spirit within us, at the mere animal joy 
 with which the lark flees into heaven! And yet, of 
 this exquisite capacity for pleasure we take so little 
 care ! We refine our taste, we elaborate and finish 
 our mental perception, we study the beautiful, that 
 we may know it when it appears yet the senses by 
 which these faculties are approached, the stops by 
 which this fine instrument is played, are trifled with 
 and neglected. We forget that a single excess blurs 
 and confuses the music written on our minds ; we 
 forget that an untimely vigil weakens and bewilders 
 the delicate minister to our inner temple ; we know 
 
 not, or act as if we knew not, that the fine and easily- 
 jarred harmony of health is the only interpreter of 
 Nature to our souls ; in short, we drink too much 
 claret, and eat too much pate foie gras. Do you un 
 derstand me, gourmand et gourmet ? 
 
 Blanche Carroll was a beautiful whip, and the two 
 bay ponies in her phaeton were quite aware of it. La 
 Bruyere says, with his usual wisdom, " Une belle 
 femme qui a les qualites d un honnete homme est ce 
 qu il y a au monde d un commerce plus delicieux ;" 
 and, to a certain degree, masculine accomplishments 
 too, are very winning in a woman if pretty ; if plain, 
 she is expected not only to be quite feminine, but 
 quite perfect. Foibles are as hateful in a woman who 
 does not possess beauty, as they are engaging in a wo 
 man who does. Clouds are only lovely when the 
 heavens are bright. 
 
 She looked loveliest while driving, did Blanche 
 Carroll, for she was born to rule, and the expression 
 native to her lip was energy and nerve ; and as she 
 sat with her little foot pressed against the dasher, and 
 reined in those spirited horses, the finely-pencilled 
 mouth, usually playful or pettish, wasr pressed to 
 gether in a curve as warlike as Minerva s, and twice 
 as captivating. She drove, too, as capriciously as 
 she acted. At one moment her fleet ponies fled over 
 the sand at the top of their speed, and at the next they 
 were brought down to a walk, with a suddenness 
 which threatened to bring them upon their haunches. 
 Now far up on the dry sand, cutting a zigzag to 
 lengthen the way, and again below at the tide edge, 
 with the waves breaking over her seaward wheel ; all 
 her powers at one instant engrossed in pushing them 
 to their fastest trot, and in another the reins lying 
 loose on their backs, while she discussed some sudden 
 flight of philosophy. " Be his fairy, his page, his 
 everything that love and poetry have invented," said 
 Roger Ascham to Lady Jane Grey, just before her 
 marriage; but Blanche Carroll was almost the only 
 woman I ever saw capable of the beau ideal of fascina 
 ting characters. 
 
 Between Miss Carroll and myself there was a safe 
 and cordial friendship. Besides loving another better, 
 she was neither earnest, nor true, nor affectionate 
 enough to come at all within the range of my possible 
 attachments, and though I admired her, she felt that 
 the necessary sympathy was wanting for love ; and, 
 the idea of fooling me with the rest once abandoned, 
 we were the greatest of allies. She told me all her 
 triumphs, and I listened and laughed without thinking 
 it worth while to burden her with my confidence in 
 return ; and you may as well make a memorandum, 
 gentle reader, that that is a very good basis fora friend 
 ship. Nothing bores women or worldly persons so 
 uch as to return their secrets with your own. 
 
 As we drew near the extremity of the beach, a boy 
 rode up on horseback, and presented Miss Carroll with 
 a note. I observed that it was written on a very dirty 
 slip of paper, and was waiting to be enlightened as to 
 
 contents, when she slipped it into her belt, took the 
 whip from the box, and flogging her ponies through 
 the heavy sand of the outer beach, went off, at a pace 
 which seemed to engross all her attention, on her road 
 to Lynn. We reached the hotel and she had not 
 spoken a syllable, and as I made a point of never in 
 quiring into anything that seemed odd in her conduct, 
 I merely stole a glance at her face, which wore the 
 expression of mischievous satisfaction which I liked 
 he least of its common expressions, and descended 
 rom the phaeton with the simple remark, that Job 
 could not have arrived, as I saw nothing of my stan- 
 lope in the yard. 
 
 Mr. Slingsby." It was the usual preface to asking 
 some particular favor. 
 " Miss Carroll." 
 " Will you be so kind as to walk to the library and 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 select me a book to your own taste, and ask no ques 
 tions as to what I do with myself meantime ?" 
 
 "But, my dear Miss Carroll your father " 
 
 " Will feel quite satisfied when he hears that Cato 
 was with me. Leave the ponies to the groom, Cato, 
 and follow me." I looked after her as she walked 
 down the village street with the old black behind her, 
 not at all certain of the propriety of my acquiescence, 
 but feeling that there was no help for it. 
 
 I lounged away a half hour at the library, and found 
 Miss Carroll waiting for me on my return. There 
 were no signs of Bruin ; and as she seemed impatient 
 to be off, I jumped into the phaeton, and away we flew 
 to the beach as fast as her ponies could be driven 
 under the whip. As we descended upon the sands 
 she spoke for the first time. 
 
 "It is so civil of you to ask no questions, Mr. Slings- 
 by ; but you are not offended with me ?" 
 
 " If you have got into no scrape while under my 
 charge, I shall certainly be too happy to shake hands 
 upon it to-morrow." 
 
 " Are you quite sure ?" she asked archly. 
 " Quite sure." 
 
 " So am not I," she said with a merry laugh; and 
 in her excessive amusement she drove down to the sea, 
 till the surf broke over the nearest pony s back, and 
 filled the bottom of the phaeton with water. Our wet 
 feet were now a fair apology for haste, and taking the 
 reins from her, I drove rapidly home, while she wrap 
 ped herself in her shawl, and sat apparently absorbed 
 in the coming of the twilight over the sea. 
 
 I slept late after the bail, though I had gone to bed 
 exceedingly anxious about Bruin, who had not yet 
 made his appearance. The tide would prevent his 
 crossing the beach after ten in the morning however, 
 and I made myself tolerably easy till the sands were 
 passable with the evening ebb. The high-water mark 
 was scarcely deserted by the waves, when the same 
 boy who had delivered the note to Miss Carroll the 
 day before, rode up from the beach on a panting horse, 
 and delivered me the following note : 
 
 " DKAR PHILIP : You will be surprised to hear 
 that I am in the Lynn jail on a charge of theft and 
 utterance of counterfeit money. I do not wait to tell 
 you the particulars. Please come and identify, 
 " Yours truly, 
 
 " F. SMITH." 
 
 I got upon the boy s horse, and hurried over the 
 beach with whip and spur. I stopped at the justice s 
 office, and that worthy seemed uncommonly pleased 
 to see me. 
 
 " We have got him, sir," said he. 
 
 " Got whom ?" I asked rather shortly. 
 
 " Why, the fellow that stole your stanhope and Miss 
 Carroll s bracelet, and passed a twenty dollar counter 
 feit bill ha n t you hearrc on t ?" 
 
 The justice s incredulity, when I told him it was 
 probably the most intimate friend I had in the world, 
 would have amused me at any other time. 
 
 " Will you allow me to see the prisoner?" I asked. 
 
 " Be sure I will. I let Miss Carroll have a peep at 
 him yesterday, and what do you think ? Oh, Lord ! 
 he wanted to make her believe she knew him ! Good ! 
 wasn t it? Ha! ha! And such an ill-looking fel 
 low! Why, I d know him for a thief anywhere! 
 Your intimate friend, Mr. Slingsby ! Oh, Lord ! 
 when you come to see him ! Ha ! ha !" 
 
 We were at the prison-door. The grating bolts 
 turned slowly, the door swung rustily on its hinges as 
 if it was not often used, and in the next minute I was 
 enfolded in Job s arms, who sobbed and laughed, and 
 Has quite hysterical with his delight. I scarce won 
 
 dered at the justice s prepossessions when I looked at 
 
 the figure he made. His hat knocked in, his coat 
 
 muddy, his hair full of the dust of straw the natural 
 
 ideousness of poor Job had every possible aggrava- 
 
 We were in the stanhope, and fairly on the beach, 
 before he had sufficiently recovered to tell me the 
 story. He had arrived quite overheated at Lynn, but, 
 in a hurry to execute Miss Carroll s commission, he 
 merely took a glass of soda-water, had Thalaba s 
 mouth washed, and drove on. A mile on his way, he 
 was overtaken by a couple of ostlers on horseback 
 who very roughly ordered him back to the inn. He 
 refused, and a fight ensued, which ended in his beino- 
 tied into the stanhope, and driven back as a prisoner. 
 The large note, which he had given for his soda-water, 
 it appeared, was a counterfeit, and placards, offering a 
 reward for the detection of a villain, described in the 
 usual manner as an ill-looking fellow, had been stick 
 ing up for some days in the village. He was taken 
 before the justice, who declared at first sight that he 
 answered the description in the advertisement. His 
 stubborn refusal to give the whole of his name (he 
 would rather have died, I suppose), his possession of 
 my stanhope, which was immediately recognised, and 
 lastly, the bracelet found in his pocket, of which he 
 refused indignantly to give any account, were circum 
 stances enough to leave no doubt on the mind of the 
 worthy justice. He made out his mittimus forthwith, 
 granting Job s request that he might be allowed to 
 write a note to Miss Carroll (who, he knew, would 
 drive over the beach toward evening), as a very great 
 favor. She arrived as he expected. 
 
 " And what in Heaven s name did she say ? said I, 
 interested beyond my patience at this part of the story. 
 
 "Expressed the greatest astonishment when the 
 justice showed her the bracelet, and declared she 
 .never saw me before in her life!" 
 
 That Job forgave Blanche Carroll in two days, and 
 gave her a pair of gloves with some verses on the 
 third, will surprise only those who have not seen that 
 lady. It would seem incredible, but here are the 
 verses, as large as life : 
 
 " Slave of the snow-white hand ! I fold 
 
 My spirit in thy fabric fair ; 
 And when that dainty hand is cold, 
 
 And rudely comes the wintry air, 
 Press in thy light and straining form 
 Those slender fingers soft and warm ; 
 
 And, as the fine-traced veins within 
 Quicken their bright and rosy flow. 
 
 And gratefully the dewy skin 
 Clings to the form that warms it so 
 
 Tell her my heart is hiding there, 
 Trembling to be so closely prest, 
 
 Yet feels how brief its moments are, 
 And saddens even to be blest 
 Fated to serve her for a day, 
 And then, like thee, be flung away." 
 
 EDITH LINSEY. 
 
 PART 1. 
 
 FROST AND FLIRTATION. 
 
 Oh yes for you re in love with me . 
 
 (I m very glad of it, I m sure ;) 
 But then you are not rich, you see. 
 
 And I you know I m very poor ! 
 
 Tis true that I can drive a tandem 
 
 Tis true that I can turn a sonnet 
 Tis true I leave the law at random, 
 
 When I should study plague upon it ! 
 But this is not excuse me ! m y ! 
 
 ( A thing they give for house and land ;) 
 And we must eat in matrimony 
 And love is neither bread nor honey 
 
 And so you underatand !" 
 
28 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 " Thou art spotless as the snow, lady mine, lady mine ! 
 Thou art spotless as the snow, lady mine ! 
 But the noon will have its ray, 
 
 And hearts why should not they? 
 Why not thine V 
 
 IT began to snow. The air softened ; the pattering 
 of the horse s hoofs was muffled with the impeded vi 
 bration ; the sleigh glided on with a duller sound ; 
 the large loose flakes fell soft and fast, and the low 
 and just audible murmur, like the tread of a fairy 
 host, melted on the ear with a drowsy influence, as if 
 it were a descent of palpable sleep upon the earth. 
 You may talk of falling water of the running of a 
 brook of the humming song of an old crone on a 
 sick vigil or of the lem susurro of the bees of Hybla 
 but there is nothing like the falling of the snow for 
 soft and soothing music. You hear it or not, as you 
 will, but it melts into your soul unaware. If you have 
 ever a heartache, or feel the need of " poppy or man- 
 dragora," or, like myself, grow sometimes a-weary of 
 the stale repetitions of this unvaried world, seek me 
 out in Massachusetts, when the wind softens and veers 
 south, after a frost say in January. There shall 
 have been a long-lying snow on the ground, well- 
 trodden. The road shall be as smooth as the paths 
 to our first sins of a seeming perpetual declivity, as 
 it were and never a jolt or jar between us and the 
 edge of the horizon ; but all onward and down appa 
 rently, with an insensible ease. You sit beside me in 
 my spring-sleigh, hung with the lightness of a cob 
 web cradle for a fairy s child in the trees. Our horse 
 is, in the harness, of a swift and even pace, and around 
 his neck is a string of fine small bells, that ring to his 
 measured step in a kind of muffled music, softer and 
 softer as the snow-flakes thicken in the air. Your 
 seat is of the shape of the fauteuil in your library, 
 cushioned and deep, and with a backward and gentle 
 slope, and you are enveloped to the eyelids in warm 
 furs. You settle down, with every muscle in repose, 
 the visor of your ermine cap just shedding the snow 
 from your forehead, and with a word, the groom stands 
 back, and the horse speeds on, steady, but beautifully 
 fast. The bells, which you hear loudly at first, begin 
 to deaden, and the low hum of the alighting flakes 
 steals gradually on your ear; and soon the hoof- 
 strokes are as silent as if the steed were shod with 
 wool, and away you flee through the white air, like 
 birds asleep upon the wing diving through the feathery 
 fleeces of the moon. Your eyelids fall forgetfulness 
 steals upon the senses a delicious torpor takes pos 
 session of the uneasy blood and brain and thought 
 yield to an intoxicating and trance-like slumber. It 
 were perhaps too much to ask that any human bosom 
 may go scathless to the grave ; but in my own un 
 worthy petitions I usually supplicate that my heart 
 may be broken about Christmas. I know an anodyne 
 o that season. 
 
 Fred Fleming and I occupied one of the seven long 
 seats in a stage-sleigh, flying at this time twelve miles 
 in the hour (yet not fast enough for our impatience), 
 westward from the university gates. The sleighing 
 had been perfect for a week, and the cold keen air had 
 softened for the first time that morning, and assumed 
 the warm and woolly complexion that foretokened 
 snow. Though not very cheerful in its aspect, this is 
 an atmosphere particularly pleasant to breathe, and 
 Fred, who was making his first move after a six weeks 
 fever, sat with the furs away from his mouth, nostrils 
 expanded, lips parted, and the countenance altogether 
 of a man in a high state of physical enjoyment I 
 had nursed him through his illness, by-the-way, in 
 my own rooms, and hence our position as fellow- 
 travellers. A pressing invitation from his father to 
 come home with him to Skaneateles, for the holydays, 
 had diverted me from my usual winter journey to the 
 North ; and for the first time in my life, I was going 
 
 upon a long visit to a strange roof. My imagination 
 had never more business upon its hands. 
 
 Fred had described to me, over and over again, 
 every person I was to meet, brothers, sisters, aunts, 
 cousins, and friends a household of thirty people, 
 guests included ; but there was one person among 
 them of whom his descriptions, amplified as they 
 were, were very unsatisfactory. 
 
 Is she so very plain ?" I asked for the twentieth 
 time. 
 
 " Abominably !" 
 
 " And immense black eyes?" 
 
 " Saucers !" 
 
 "And large mouth?" 
 
 "Huge!" 
 
 "And very dark?" 
 
 " Like a squaw !" 
 
 "And skinny hands, did you say ?" 
 
 " Lean, long, and pokerish !" 
 
 " And so very clever ?" 
 
 " Knows everything, Phil !" 
 
 "But a sweet voice ?" 
 
 " Um ! everybody says so." 
 
 " And high temper ?" 
 
 " She s the devil, Phil ! don t ask any more ques 
 tions about her." 
 
 " You don t like her, then ?" 
 
 " She never condescends to speak to me ; how 
 should I ?" 
 
 And thereupon I put my head out of the sleigh, and 
 employed myself with catching the snow-flakes on my 
 nose, and thinking whether Edith Linsey would like 
 me or no ; for through all Fred s derogatory descrip 
 tions, it was clearly evident that she was the ruling 
 spirit of the hospitable household of the Flemings. 
 
 As we got farther on, the new snow became deeper, 
 and we found that the last storm had been heavier 
 here than in the country from which we had come. 
 The occasional farm-houses were almost wholly 
 buried, the black chimney alone appearing above the 
 ridgy drifts, while the tops of the doors and windows 
 lay below the level of the trodden road, from which a 
 descending passage was cut to the threshold, like the 
 entrance to a cave in the earth. The fences were 
 quite invisible. The fruit-trees looked diminished to 
 shrubberies of snow-flowers, their trunks buried under 
 the visible surface, and their branches loaded with the 
 still falling flakes, till they bent beneath the burden. 
 Nothing was abroad, for nothing could stir out of the 
 road without danger of being lost, and we dreaded to 
 meet even a single sleigh, lest in turning out, the 
 horses should "slump" beyond their depth, in the 
 untrodden drifts. The poor animals began to labor 
 severely, and sunk at every step over their knees in 
 the clogging and wool-like substance ; and the long 
 and cumbrous sleigh rose and fell in the deep pits like 
 a boat in a heavy sea. It seemed impossible to get on. 
 Twice we brought up with a terrible plunge and stood 
 suddenly still, for the runners had struck in too deep 
 for the strength of the horses; and with the snow- 
 shovels, which formed a part of the furniture of the 
 vehicle, we dug them from their concrete beds. Our 
 progress at last was reduced to scarce a mile in the 
 hour, and we began to have apprehensions that out- 
 team would give out between the post-houses. For 
 tunately it was still warm, for the numbness of cold 
 would have paralyzed our already flagging exertions. 
 
 We had reached the summit of a long hill with the 
 greatest difficulty. The poor beasts stood panting 
 and reeking with sweat; the runners of the sleigh 
 were clogged with hard cakes of snow, and the air 
 was close and dispiriting. We came to a stand-still, 
 with the vehicle lying over almost on its side, and I 
 stepped out to speak to the driver and look forward. 
 It was a discouraging prospect ; a long deep valley 
 lay before us, closed at the distance of a couple of 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 miles by another steep hill, through a cleft in the top 
 of which lay our way. We could not even distinguish 
 the line of the road between. Our disheartened ani 
 mals stood at this moment buried to their breasts, and 
 to get forward without rearing at every step seemed 
 impossible. The driver sat on his box looking un 
 easily down into the valley. It was one undulating 
 ocean of snow, not a sign of a human habitation to be 
 seen, and even the trees indistinguishable from the 
 general mass by their whitened and overladen branch 
 es. The storm had ceased, but the usual sharp cold | 
 that succeeds a warm fall of snow had not yet light- \ 
 ened the clamminess of the new-fallen flakes, and | 
 they clung around the foot like clay, rendering every 
 step a toil. 
 
 " Your leaders are quite blown," I said to the dri 
 ver, as he slid off his uncomfortable seat. 
 
 " Pretty nearly, sir !" 
 
 "And your wheelers are not much better." 
 
 " Sca cely." 
 
 "And what do you think of the weather?" 
 
 " It ll be darnation cold in an hour." As he spoke 
 he looked up to the sky, which was already peeling 
 off its clouds in long stripes, like the skin of an 
 orange, and looked as hard and cold as marble be 
 tween the widening rifts. A sudden gust of a more 
 chilling temperature followed immediately upon his 
 prediction, and the long cloth curtains of the sleigh 
 flew clear of their slight pillars, and shook oft their 
 fringes of icicles. 
 
 " Could you shovel a little, mister ?" said the dri- ; 
 ver, handing me one of the broad wooden utensils ; 
 from his foot-board, and commencing himself, after 
 having thrown off his box-coat, by heaving up a solid j 
 cake of the moist snow at the side of the road. 
 
 "It s just to make a place to rub down them ere- j 
 turs," said he, as I looked at him, quite puzzled to 
 know what he was going to do. 
 
 Fred was too weak to assist us, and having righted j 
 the vehicle a little, and tied down the flapping cur- i 
 tains, he wrapped himself in his cloak, and I set heart- i 
 ily to work with my shovel. In a few minutes, taking 
 advantage of the hollow of a drift, we had cleared a 
 small area of frozen ground, and releasing the tired 
 animals from their harness, we rubbed them well down 
 with the straw from the bottom of the sleigh. The 
 persevering driver then cleared the runners of their 
 iced and clinging masses, and a half hour having 
 elapsed, he produced two bottles of rum from his box, 
 and, giving each of the horses a dose, put them again 
 to their traces. - 
 
 We heaved out of the pit into which the sleigh had 
 settled, and for the first mile it was down-hill, and we 
 got on with comparative ease. The sky was by this 
 time almost bare, a dark, slaty mass of cloud alone 
 settling on the horizon in the quarter of the wind, 
 while the sun, as powerless as moonlight, poured with 
 dazzling splendor on the snow, and the gusts came 
 keen and bitter across the sparkling waste, rimming 
 the nostrils as if with bands of steel, and penetrating to 
 the innermost nerve with their pungent iciness. No 
 protection seemed of any avail. The whole surface 
 of the body ached as if it were laid against a slab of 
 ice. The throat closed instinctively, and contracted 
 its unpleasant respiration the body and limbs drew 
 irresistibly together, to economize, like a hedge-hog, 
 the exposed surface the hands and feet felt transmu 
 ted to lead and across the forehead, below the pres 
 sure of the cap, there was a binding and oppressive 
 ache, as if a bar of frosty iron had been let into the 
 scull. The mind, meantime, seemed freezing up un 
 willingness to stir, and inability to think of anything 
 but the cold, becoming every instant more decided. 
 
 From the bend of the valley our difficulties became 
 more serious. The drifts often lay across the road 
 like a wall, some feet above the heads of the horses, 
 
 and we had dug through one or two, and had been 
 once upset, and often near it, before we came to the 
 steepest part of the ascent. The horses had by this 
 time begun to feel the excitement of the rum, and 
 bounded on through the snow with continual leaps, 
 jerking the sleigh after them with a violence that 
 threatened momently to break the traces. The steam 
 from their bodies froze instantly, and covered them 
 with a coat like hoar-frost, and spite of their heat, and 
 the unnatural and violent exertions they were making, 
 it was evident by the pricking of their ears, and the 
 I sudden crouch of the body when a stronger blast 
 swept over, that the cold struck through even their 
 I hot and intoxicated blt>od. 
 
 We toiled up, leap after leap, and it seemed mirac 
 ulous to me that the now infuriated animals did not 
 burst a blood-vessel or crack a sinew with every one 
 of those terrible springs. The sleigh plunged on af 
 ter them, stopping dead and short at every other mo 
 ment, and reeling over the heavy drifts, like a boat in a 
 surging sea. A finer crystallization had meantime 
 taken place upon the surface of the moist snow, and 
 the powdered particles flew almost insensibly on the 
 blasts of wind, filling the eyes and hair, and cutting 
 the skin with a sensation like the touch of needle 
 points. The driver and his matldened but almost ex 
 hausted team were blinded by the glittering and whirl 
 ing eddies, the cold grew intenser every moment, the 
 forward motion gradually less and less, and when, with 
 the very last effort apparently, we reached a spot on 
 the summit of the hill, which, from its exposed situa 
 tion, had been kept bare by the wind, the patient and 
 persevering whip brought his horses to a stand, and 
 despaired, for the first time, of his prospects of getting 
 on. I crept out of the sleigh, the iron-bound runners 
 of which now grated on the bare ground, but found it 
 impossible to stand upright. 
 
 " If you can use your hands," said the driver, turn 
 ing his back to the wind which stung the face like the 
 lash of a whip, " I ll trouble you to untackle them 
 horses." 
 
 I set about it, while he buried his hands and face 
 I in the snow to relieve them for a moment from the 
 agony of cold. The poor animals staggered stiffly as 
 1 pushed them aside, and every vein stood out from 
 their bodies like ropes under the skin. 
 
 " What are you going to do ?" I asked, as he joined 
 me again, and taking off the harness of one of the 
 leaders, flung it into the snow. 
 
 " Hide for life !" was his ominous answer. 
 
 " Good God ! and what is to become of my sick 
 ;l friend ?" 
 
 " The Almighty knows if he can t ride to the 
 ; tavern !" 
 
 I sprang instantly to poor Fred, who was lying in 
 j the bottom of the sleigh almost frozen to death, in- 
 I formed him of the driver s decision, and asked him if 
 i he thought he could ride one of the horses. He was 
 j beginning to grow drowsy, the first symptom of death 
 by cold, and could with difficulty be roused. With 
 the driver s assistance, however. I lifted him out of the 
 sleigh, shook him soundly, and making stirrups of the 
 traces, set him upon one of the horses, and started 
 him off before us. The poor beasts seemed to have a 
 presentiment of the necessity of exertion, and though 
 stiff and sluggish, entered willingly upon the deep 
 drift which blocked up the way, and toiled exhaustedly 
 i on. The cold in our exposed position was agonizing. 
 Every small fibre in the skin of my own face felt split- 
 ! ting and cracked, and my eyelids seemed made of ice. 
 ; Our limbs soon lost all sensation. I could only press 
 1 with my knees to the horse s side, and the whole col 
 lected energy of my frame seemed expended in the 
 exertion. Fred held on wonderfully. The driver had 
 still the use of his arm, arid rode behind, flogging the 
 poor animals on, whose every step seemed to be the 
 
30 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 last summons of energy. The sun set, and it was 
 rather a relief, for the glitter upon the snow was ex 
 ceedingly painful to the sight, and there was no warmth 
 in its beams. I could see my poor friend drooping 
 gradually to the neck of his horse, but until he should 
 drop off it was impossible to assist him, and his faith 
 ful animal still waded on. I felt my own strength fast 
 ebbing away. If I had been alone, I should certainly 
 have lain down, with the almost irresistible inclination 
 to sleep ; but the thought of my friend, and the shout 
 ing of the energetic driver, nerved me from time to 
 time and with hands hanging helplessly down, and 
 elbows fastened convulsively to my side, we plunged 
 and struggled painfully forward. I but remember 
 being taken afterward to a fire, and shrinking from it 
 with a shriek the suffering of reviving consciousness 
 was so intolerable. We had reached the tavern liter 
 ally frozen upon our horses. 
 
 II. 
 
 I was balancing my spoon on the edge of a cup at 
 the breakfast-table, the morning after our arrival, when 
 Fred stopped in the middle of an eulogium on my 
 virtues as a nurse, and a lady entering at the same 
 moment, he said simply in parenthesis, " My cousin 
 Edith, Mr. Slingsby," and went on with his story. I 
 rose and bowed, and as Fred had the parole, I had 
 time to collect my courage, and take a look at the 
 enemy s camp for, of that considerable household, I 
 felt my star to be in conjunction or opposition with 
 hers only, who was at that moment my vis-a-vis across 
 a dish of stewed oysters. 
 
 In about five minutes of rapid mental portrait-paint 
 ing, I had taken a likeness of Edith Linsey, which I 
 see at this moment (I have carried it about the world 
 for ten years) as distinctly as the incipient lines of age 
 in this thin-wearing hand. My feelings changed in 
 that time from dread or admiration, or something be 
 tween these, to pity ; she was so unscrupulously and 
 hopelessly plain so wretchedly ill and suffering in 
 her aspect so spiritless and unhappy in every motion 
 and look. " I ll win her heart," thought I, " by being 
 kind to her. Poor thing ! it will be something new to 
 her, I daresay!" Oh, Philip Slingsby ! what a doomed 
 donkey thou wert for that silly soliloquy ! 
 
 And yet even as she sat there, leaning over her un- 
 tasted breakfast, listless, ill, and melancholy with her 
 large mouth, her protruding eyes, her dead and sallow 
 complexion, and not one redeeming feature there 
 was something in her face which produced a phantom 
 of beauty in my mind a glimpse, a shadowing of a 
 countenance that Beatrice Cenci might have worn at 
 her last innocent orison a loveliness moulded and 
 exalted by superhuman and overpowering mind in 
 stinct through all its sweetness with energy and fire. 
 So strong was this phantom portrait, that in all my 
 thoughts of her as an angel in heaven (for I supposed 
 her dying for many a month, and a future existence 
 was her own most frequent theme), she always rose to 
 my fancy with a face half Niobe, half Psyche, radiantly 
 lovely. And this, too, with a face of her own, a bond 
 fide physiognomy, that must have made a mirror an 
 unpleasant article of furniture in her chamber. 
 
 I have no suspicion in my own mind whether Time 
 was drunk or sober during the succeeding week of 
 those Christmas holydays. The second Saturday had 
 come round, and I just remember that Fred was" very 
 much out of humor with me for having appeared to 
 his friends to be everything he had said I was not, and 
 nothing he had said I was. He had described me as 
 the most uproarious, noisy, good-humored, and agree 
 able dog in the world. And I was not that at all 
 particularly the last. The old judge told him he had 
 not improved in his penetration at the university. 
 
 A week ! and what a life had been clasped within 
 
 its brief calendar, for me ! Edith Linsey was two 
 years older than I, and I was considered a boy. She 
 was thought to be dying slowly, but irretrievably, of 
 consumption ; and it was little matter whom she loved, 
 or how. They would only have been pleased, if, by 
 a new affection, she could beguile the preying melan 
 choly of illness ; for by that gentle name they called, 
 in their kindness, a caprice and a bitterness of charac 
 ter that, had she been less a sufferer, would not have 
 been endured for a day. But she was not capricious, 
 or bitter to me ! Oh no ! And from the very extreme 
 of her impatience with others from her rudeness, her 
 violence, her sarcasm she came to me with a heart 
 softer than a child s, and wept upon my hands, and 
 weighed every word that might give me offence, and 
 watched to anticipate my lightest wish, and was hum 
 ble, and generous, and passionately loving and depen 
 dant. Her heart sprang to me with a rebound. She 
 gave herself up to me with an utter and desperate 
 abandonment, that owed something to her peculiar 
 character, but more to her own solemn conviction that 
 she was dying that her best hope of life was not worth 
 a week s purchase. 
 
 We had begun with books, and upon them her past 
 enthusiasm had hitherto been released. She loved her 
 favorite authors with a passion. They had relieved 
 j her heart ; and there was nothing of poetry or philoso- 
 | phy that was deep or beautiful, in which she had not 
 steeped her very soul. How well I remember her re 
 peating to me from Shelley those glorious lines to the 
 soaring swan : 
 
 " Thou hast a home, 
 
 Beautiful bird ! Thou voyagest to thy home 
 Where thy swoet mate will twine her downy neck 
 With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes 
 Bright with the lustre of their own fond joy ! 
 And what am J, that I should linger here, 
 With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, 
 Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned 
 To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers 
 To the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven 
 That echoes not my thoughts !" 
 
 There was a long room in the southern wing of the 
 house, fitted up as a library. It was a heavily-curtain 
 ed, dim old place, with deep-embayed windows, and so 
 many nooks, and so much furniture, that there was 
 that hushed air, that absence of echo within it, which 
 is the great charm of a haunt for study or thought. 
 It was Edith s kingdom. She might lock the door, 
 if she pleased, or shut or open the windows ; in short, 
 when she was there, no one thought of disturbing her, 
 and she was like a " spirit in its cell," invisible and 
 inviolate. And here I drank into my very life and 
 soul the outpourings of a bosom that had been locked 
 till (as we both thought) the last hour of its life a 
 flow of mingled intellect and passion that overran my 
 heart like lava, sweeping everything into its resistless 
 fire, and (may God forgive her !) leaving it scorched 
 and desolate when its mocking brightness had gone 
 out. 
 
 I remember that " Elia" Charles Lamb s Elia 
 was the favorite of favorites among her books ; and 
 partly that the late death of this most-to-be-loved au 
 thor reminded me to look it up, and partly to have 
 time to draw back my indifference over a subject that 
 it something stirs me to recall, you shall read an imi 
 tation (or continuation, if you will) that I did for Edith s 
 eye, of his " Essay on Books and Reading." I sat 
 with her dry and rleshless hand in mine while I read 
 it to her, and the fingers of Psyche were never fairer 
 to Canova than they to me. 
 
 " It is a litlle singular," I began (looking into her 
 eyes as long as I could remember what I had written), 
 " that, among all the elegancies of sentiment for which 
 the age is remarkable, no one should ever have thought 
 of writing a book upon Reading. The refinements 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 3] 
 
 of the true epicure in books are surely as various as 
 those of the gastronome and the opium-eater ; and I 
 can conceive of no reason why a topic of such natural 
 occurrence should have been so long neglected, unless 
 it is that the taste itself, being rather a growth of indo 
 lence, has never numbered among its votaries one of 
 the busy craft of writers. 
 
 " The great proportion of men read, as they eat, for 
 hunger. I do not consider them readers. The true 
 secret of the thing is no more adapted to their compre 
 hension, than the sublimations of Louis Eustacbe Ude 
 for the taste of a day-laborer. The refined reading- 
 taste, like the palate of gourmanderie, must have got 
 beyond appetite gross appetite. It shall be that of a 
 man who, having led through childhood and youth 
 on simple knowledge, values now only, as it were, the 
 apotheosis of learning the spiritual narc. There are, 
 it is true, instances of a keen natural relish : a boy, as 
 you will sometimes find one, of a premature thought- 
 fulness, will carry a favorite author in his bosom, and 
 feast greedily on it in his stolen hours. Elia tells the 
 exquisite story: 
 
 I saw a boy, with eager eye, 
 Open a book upon a stall, 
 And read as he d devour it all ; 
 Which, when the stall-man did espy, 
 Soon to the boy 1 heard him call, 
 " You sir, you never buy a book, 
 Therefore in one you shall not look !" 
 The boy passed slowly on, and with a sigh, 
 He wished he had never been taught to read 
 Then of the old churl s books he should have had no need. 
 
 " The pleasure as well as the profit of reading de 
 pends as much upon time and manner, as upon the 
 book. The mind is an opal changing its color with 
 every shifting shade. Ease of position is especially 
 necessary. A muscle strained, a "nerve unpoised, an 
 admitted sunbeam caught upon a mirror, are slight 
 circumstances; btit a feather may tickle the dreamer 
 from paradise to earth. Many a froward axiom, 
 says a refined writer, many an inhumane thought 
 hath arisen from sitting uncomfortably, or from a want 
 of symmetry in your chamber. Who has not felt, at 
 times, an unaccountable disrelish for a favorite author? 
 Who has not, by a sudden noise in the street, been 
 startled from a reading dream, and found, afterward, 
 that the broken spell was not to be rewound ? An 
 ill-tied cravat may unlink the rich harmonies of Tay 
 lor. You would not think Barry Cornwall the de 
 licious heart he is, reading him in a tottering chair. 
 
 " There is much in the mood with which you come 
 to a book. If you have been vexed out of doors, the 
 good humor of an author seems unnatural. I think 
 I should scarce relish the gentle spiriting of Ariel 
 with a pulse of ninety in the minute. Or if I had 
 been touched by the unkindness of a friend,* Jack 
 FalstalF would not move me to laughter as easily as 
 he is wont. There are tones of the mind, however, 
 to which a book will vibrate with a harmony than 
 which there is nothing more exquisite in nature. To 
 go abroad at sunrise in June, and admit all the holy 
 influences of the hour stillness, and purity, and 
 balm to a mind subdued and dignified, as the mind 
 will be by the sacred tranquillity of sleep, and then to 
 come in with bathed and refreshed senses, and a tem 
 per of as clear joyfulness as the soaring lark s and 
 sit down to Milton or Spenser, or, almost loftier still, 
 the divine Prometheus of Shelley, has seemed to j 
 me a harmony of delight almost too heavenly to be 
 human. The great secret of such pleasure is sym 
 pathy. You must climb to the eagle poet s eyry. 
 You must have senses, like his, for the music that is 
 only audible to the fine ear of thought, and the beauty 
 that is visible only to the spirit-eye of a clear, and for 
 the time, unpolluted fancy. The stamp and pressure 
 of the magician s own time and season must be upon 
 you. You would not read Ossian, for example, in a 
 
 j bath, or sitting under a tree in a sultry noon; but 
 I after rushing "into the eye of the wind with a fleet 
 horse, with all his gallant pride and glorious strength 
 and fire obedient to your rein, and so mingling, as it 
 will, with his rider s consciousness, that you feel as 
 if you were gifted in your own body with the swift 
 ness and energy of an angel ; after this, to sit down 
 to Ossian, is to read him with a magnificence of de 
 lusion, to my mind scarce less than reality. I never 
 envied Napoleon till I heard it was his habit, after a 
 battle, to read Ossian. 
 
 "You can not often read to music. But I love, 
 when the voluntary is pealing in church every breath 
 in the congregation suppressed, and the deep-volumed 
 notes pouring through the arches of the roof with the 
 sublime and almost articulate praise of the organ to 
 I read, from the pew Bible, tire book of Ecclesiastes. 
 I The solemn stateliness of its periods is fitted to music 
 I j like a hymn. It is to me a spring of the most thril 
 ling devotion though I shame to confess that the 
 richness of its eastern imagery, and, above all, the in 
 imitable beauty of its philosophy, stand out somewhat 
 definitely in the reminiscences of the hour. 
 
 "A taste for reading comes comparatively late. 
 Robinson Crusoe will turn a boy s head at ten. 
 The Arabian Nights are taken to bed with us at 
 twelve. At fourteen, a forward boy will read the 
 Lady of the Lake, Tom Jones, and Peregrine 
 Pickle; and at seventeen (not before) he is ready for 
 Shakspere, and, if he is of a thoughtful turn, Milton. 
 Most men do not read these last with a true relish till 
 ! after this period. The hidden beauties of standard 
 I authors break upon the mind by surprise. It is like 
 discovering a secret spring in an old jewel. You take 
 up the book in an idle moment, as you have done a 
 j thousand times before, perhaps wondering, as you 
 I turn over the leaves, what the world finds in it to ad- 
 j mire, when suddenly, as you read, your fingers press 
 | close upon the covers, your frame thrills, and the 
 i passage you have chanced upon chains you like a 
 j spell it is so vividly true and beautiful. Milton s 
 Comus flashed upon me in this way. I never could 
 read the Rape of the Lock till a friend quoted some 
 passages from it during a walk. I know no more ex 
 quisite sensation than this warming of the heart to an 
 old author; and it seems to me that the most delicious 
 portion of intellectual existence is the brief period in 
 which, one by one, the great minds of old are admit 
 ted with all their time-mellowed worth to the affec 
 tions. With what delight I read, for the first time, 
 the kind-hearted plays of Beaumont and Fletcher! 
 How I doated on Burton ! What treasures to me 
 were the Fairy Queen and the Lyrics of Milton! 
 
 " I used to think, when studying the Greek and 
 Latin poets in my boyhood, that to be made a school- 
 author was a fair offset against immortality. I would 
 as lief, it seemed to rne, have my verses handed down 
 1 by the town-crier. But latterly," after an interval of a 
 i few years, I have taken up my classics (the identical 
 school_ copies with the hard places all thummed and 
 pencilled) and have read them with no little pleasure. 
 : It is not to be believed with what a satisfaction the 
 riper eye glides smoothly over the once difficult line, 
 i finding the golden cadence of poetry beneath what 
 ! once seemed only a tangled chaos of inversion. The 
 ! associations of hard study, instead of reviving the old 
 i distaste, added wonderfully to the interest of a re- 
 I perusal. I could see now what brightened the sunken 
 eye of the pale and sickly master, as he took up the 
 i hesitating passage, and read on, forgetful of the delin- 
 i quent, to the end. I could enjoy now, what was a 
 dead letter to me then, the heightened fulness of He- 
 i rodotus, and the strong-woven style of Thucydides, 
 ! and the magnificent invention of Eschylus. I took 
 j an aversion to Homer from hearing a classmate in the 
 j next room scan it perpetually through his nose. 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 There is no music for me in the Iliad. But, spite of 
 the recollections scored alike upon my palm and the 
 margin, I own to an Augustan relish for the smooth 
 melody of Virgil, and freely forgive the sometime 
 troublesome ferule enjoying by its aid the raciness 
 of Horace and Juvenal, and the lofty philosophy of 
 Lucretius. It will be a dear friend to whom 1 put 
 down in my will that shelf of defaced classics. 
 
 " There are some books that bear reading pleasantly 
 once a year. Tristram Shandy is an annual with 
 me. I read him regularly about Christmas. Jeremy 
 Taylor (not to mingle things holy and profane) is a 
 good table-book, to be used when you would collect 
 your thoughts and be serious a while. A man of 
 taste need never want for Sunday reading while he 
 can find the sermons of Taylor, and South, and Ful 
 ler writers of good theological repute though, be 
 tween ourselves, I think one likelier to be delighted 
 with the poetry and quaint fancifulness of their style, 
 than edified by the piety it covers. I like to have a 
 quarto edition of Sir Thomas Brown on a near shelf, 
 or Milton s prose works, or Bacon. These are health 
 ful moods of the mind when lighter nutriment is dis 
 tasteful. 
 
 "I am growing fastidious in poetry, and confine 
 myself more and more to the old writers. Castaly of 
 late runs shallow. Shelley s (peace to his passionate 
 heart!) was a deep draught, and Wordsworth and 
 Wilson sit near the well, and Keats and Barry Corn 
 wall have been to the fountain s lip, feeding their 
 imaginations (the latter his liearl as well), but they 
 have brought back little for the world. The small 
 silver stream will, I fear, soon cease to flow down to 
 us, and as it dries back to its source, we shall close 
 nearer and nearer upon the pure English undefiled. 
 The dabblers in muddy waters (tributaries to Lethe) 
 will have Parnassus to themselves. 
 
 "The finest pleasures of reading come unbidden. 
 You can not, with your choicest appliances for the 
 body, always command the many-toned mind. In the 
 twilight alcove of a library, with a time-mellowed 
 chair yielding luxuriously to your pressure, a June 
 wind laden with idleness and balm floating in at the 
 window, and in your hand some Russia-bound ram 
 bling old author, as Izaak Walton, good-humored and 
 quaint, one would think the spirit could scarce fail to 
 be conjured. Yet often, after spending a morning 
 hour restlessly thus, I have risen with my mind un 
 hinged, and strolled off with a book in my pocket to 
 the woods; and, as I live, the mood has descended 
 upon me under some chance tree, with a crooked root 
 under my head, and I have lain there, reading and 
 sleeping by turns, till the letters were blurred in the 
 dimness of twilight. It is the evil of refinement that 
 it breeds caprice. You will sometimes stand unfa- 
 tigued for hours on the steps of a library; or in a 
 shop, the eye will be arrested, and all the jostling of 
 customers and the looks of the jealous shopman will 
 not divert you till you have read out the chapter. 
 
 I do not often indulge in the supernatural, for I 
 am an unwilling believer in ghosts, and the topic ex 
 cites me. But, for its connexion with the subject 
 upon which I am writing, I must conclude these 
 rambling observations with a late mysterious visitation 
 of my own. 
 
 " 1 had, during the last year, given up the early 
 summer tea-parties common in the town in which the 
 university stands ; and having, of course, three or 
 four more hours than usual on my hands, I took to an 
 afternoon habit of imaginative reading. Shakspere 
 came first, naturally ; and I feasted for the hundredth 
 time upon what I think his (and the world s) most 
 delicate creation the Tempest. The twilight of 
 the first day overtook me at the third act, where the 
 banquet is brought in with solemn music by the fairy 
 troop of Prospero, and set before the shipwrecked 
 
 king and his followers. I closed the book, and lean 
 ing back in my chair, abandoned myself to the crowd 
 of images which throng always upon the traces of 
 Shakspere. The fancy music was still in my mind, 
 when an apparently real strain of the most solemn 
 melody came to my ear, dying, it seemed to me as it 
 reached it, the tones were so expiringly faint and low. 
 I was not startled, but lay quietly, holding my breath, 
 and more fearing when the strain would be broken, 
 than curious whence it came. The twilight deepened, 
 till it was dark, and it still played on, changing the 
 tune at intervals, but always of the same melancholy- 
 sweetness ; till, by-and-by, I lost all curiosity, and, 
 giving in to the charm, the scenes I had been reading 
 began to form again in my mind, and Ariel, with his 
 delicate ministers, and Prospero, and Miranda, and 
 Caliban, came moving before me to the measure, as 
 bright and vivid as the reality. I was disturbed in the 
 midst of it by Alfonse, who came in at the usual 
 hour with my tea ; and, on starting to my feet, I lis 
 tened in vain for the continuance of the music. I sat 
 thinking of it a while, but dismissed it at last, and went 
 out to enjoy, in a solitary walk, the loveliness of the 
 summer night. The next day I resumed my book, 
 with a smile at my previous credulity, and had read 
 through the last scenes of the Tempest, when the 
 light failed me. I again closed the book, and pres 
 ently again, as if the sympathy was instantaneous, the 
 strain broke in, playing the same low and solemn mel 
 odies, and falling with the same dying cadence upon 
 the ear. I listened to it, as before, with breathless at 
 tention ; abandoned myself once more to its irresistible 
 spell ; and, half-waking, half-sleeping, fell again into 
 a vivid dream, brilliant as fairy-land, and creating itself 
 to the measures of the still audible music. 1 could 
 not now shake off my belief in its reality ; but I was so 
 wrapt with its strange sweetness, and the beauty of my 
 dream, that I cared not whether it came from earth or 
 air. My indifference, singularly enough, continued 
 for several days ; and, regularly at twilight, I threw 
 aside my book, and listened with dreamy wakefulness 
 for the music. It never failed me, and its results were 
 as constant as its coming. AVhatever 1 had read 
 sometimes a canto of Spenser, sometimes an act of a 
 play, or a chapter of romance the scene rose before 
 me with the stately reality of a pageant. At hist I 
 began to think of it more seriously ; and it was a relief 
 to me one evening when Alfonse came in earlier than 
 usual with a message. 1 told him to stand perfectly 
 still; and after a minute s pause, during which 1 heard 
 distinctly an entire passage of a funeral hymn, I asked 
 him if he heard any music ? He said he did not. My 
 blood chilled at his positive reply, and I bade him 
 listen once more. Still he heard nothing. 1 could 
 endure it no longer. It was to me as distinct and 
 audible as my own voice; and I rushed from my room 
 as he left me, shuddering to be left alone. 
 
 "The next day I thought of nothing but death. 
 Warnings by knells in the air, by apparitions, by mys 
 terious voices, were things I had believed in specula- 
 tively for years, and now their truth came upon me 
 like conviction. I felt a dull, leaden presentiment 
 about my heart, growing heavier and heavier with 
 every passing hour. Evening came at last, and with 
 it, like a summons from the grave, a dead march 
 swelled clearly on the air. I felt faint and sick at 
 heart. This could not be fancy ; and why was it, as 
 I thought I had proved, audible to my ear alone ? I 
 threw open the window, and the first rush of the cool 
 north wind refreshed me ; but, as if to mock my at 
 tempts at relief, the dirge-like sounds rose, at the in 
 stant, with treble distinctness. I seized my hat and 
 rushed into the street, but, to my dismay, every step 
 seemed to bring me nearer to the knell. Still I hur 
 ried on, the dismal sounds growing distractingly loud 
 er, till, on turning a corner that leads to the lovely 
 
INKLINGS OP ADVENTURE. 
 
 33 
 
 burying-ground of New Haven, Icame suddenly upon 
 a bell-foundry ! In the rear had lately been hung, 
 for trial, the chiming bells just completed for the new 
 Trinity church, and the master of the establishment 
 informed me that one of his journeymen was a fine 
 player, and every day after his work, he was in the 
 habit of amusing himself with the Dead March in 
 Saul, the Marsellois Hymn, and olher melancholy 
 and easy tunes, muffling the hammers that he might 
 not disturb the neighbors." 
 
 I have had my reward for these speculations, dear 
 reader a smile that is lying at this instant, perdu, in 
 the innermost recess of memory and I care not much 
 (without offence) whether you like it or no. She \ 
 thanked me she thought it well done she laid her 
 head on my bosom while I read it in the old library of 
 the Flemings, and every word has been "paid for in 
 fairy gold."" 
 
 I have taken up a thread that lengthens as I unra 
 vel it, and I can not well see how I shall come to the 
 end, without trespassing on your patience. We will 
 cul it here, if you like, and resume it after a pause ; j 
 but before I close, I must give you a little instance of 
 how love makes the dullest earth poetical. Edith 
 had given me a portefeuille crammed with all kinds of 
 embossed and curious note-paper, all quite too pret 
 ty for use, and what I would show you are my verses 
 on the occasion. For a hand unpractised, then, in , 
 aught save the " Gradus ad Parnassum," I must own 
 I have fished them out of that same old portefeuille 
 (faded now from its glory, and worn with travel but 
 O how cherished !) with a pleasant feeling of paternity : 
 
 ; Thanks for thy gift ! But heardst thou ever 
 
 A story of a wandering fay. 
 Who, tired of playing syJph for ever, 
 
 Came romping to the"earth one day ; 
 And, flirting like a little love 
 
 With everything that flew and flirted, 
 Made captive of a sober dove, 
 
 Whose pinions (so the tale asserted), 
 Though neither very fresh nor fair, 
 Were well enough ir common wear. 
 
 " The dove, though plain, was gentle bred, 
 
 And coood agreeably, though low ; 
 But still the fairy shook her head, 
 
 And, patting with her foot, said No ." 
 Twas true that he was rather fat : 
 
 But that was living in an abbey ; 
 And solemn but it was not that. 
 What then? lf r hy, sir, your wj ng.? are shabby. ; 
 
 44 The dove was dumb : he drooped, and sidled 
 
 In shame along the abbey-wall ; 
 And then the haughty fay unbridled, 
 
 And blew her snail-shell trumpet-call ; 
 And summoning her waiting-sprite, 
 
 Who bore her wardrobe on his hack, 
 She took the wings she wore at night, 
 
 (Silvery stars on plumes of black,) 
 
 And, smiling, begged that he would take 
 And wear them for his lady s sake. 
 
 " He took them ; but he could not fly ! 
 
 A fay-wing was too fine for him ; 
 And when she pouted, by-and-by, 
 
 And left him for some other whim, 
 He laid them softly in his nest, 
 
 And did his flying with his own, 
 And they were soft upon his breast, 
 
 When many a night he slept alone ; 
 And many a thought those wings would stir, 
 And many a dream of love and her." 
 
 PART II. 
 
 LOVE AND SPECULATION. 
 
 EDITH LINSEY was religious. There are m^ny 
 iniensijiets (a new word, that I can t get on without: 
 I submit it for admission into the language) ; there 
 3 
 
 are many intensifies, I say, to the passion of love : 
 such as pride, jealousy, poetry (money, sometimes, 
 Din mio . ) and idleness:* but, if the experience of 
 one who first studied the Art of Love in an "evan 
 gelical country is worth a para, there is nothing 
 within the bend of the rainbow that deepens the ten 
 der passion like religion. I speak it not irreverently. 
 The human being that loves us throws the value of 
 its existence into the crucible, and it can do no more. 
 Love s best alchymy can only turn into affection what 
 j is in the heart. The vain, the proud, the poetical, 
 i the selfish, the weak, can and do fling their vanity, 
 | pride, poetry, selfishness, and weakness, into a first 
 ; passion ; but these are earthly elements, and there is 
 j an antagonism in their natures that is for ever stri- 
 | ving to resolve them back to their original earth. But 
 religion is of the soul as well as the heart the mind 
 as well as the affections and when it mingles in love, 
 I it is the infusion of an immortal essence into an un 
 worthy and else perishable mixture. 
 
 Edith s religion was equally without cant, and 
 without hesitation or disguise. She had arrived 
 ; at it by elevation of mind, aided by the habit of never 
 i counting on her tenure of life beyond the setting of 
 i the next sun, and with her it was rather an intellec- 
 ! tual exaltation than an humility of heart. She thought 
 j of God because the subject was illimitable, and her 
 ; powerful imagination found in it the scope for which 
 she pined. She talked of goodness, and purity, and 
 I disinterestedness, because she found them easy virtues 
 ] with a frame worn down with disease, and she was* 
 i removed by the sheltered position of an invalid from 
 I the collision which tries so shrewdly in common life 
 the ring of our metal. She prayed, because the ful 
 ness of her heart was loosed by her eloquence when 
 on her knees, and she found that an indistinct and 
 mystic unburthening of her bosom, even to the Deity, 
 was a hush and a relief. The heart does not always 
 require rhyme and reason of language and tears. 
 
 There are many persons of religious feeling who, 
 from a fear of ridicule or misconception, conduct them 
 selves as if to express a devout sentiment was a want 
 of taste or good-breeding. Edith was not of these. 
 Religion was to her a powerful enthusiasm, applied 
 without exception to every pursuit and affection. She 
 used it as a painter ventures on a daring color, or a 
 musician a new string in his instrument. She felt 
 that she aggrandized botany, or history, or friendship, 
 ; or love, or what you will, by making it a stepping- 
 i stone to heaven, and she made as little mystery of it as 
 she did of breathing and sleep, and talked of subjects 
 which the serious usually enter upon with a sup 
 pressed breath, as she would comment upon a poem or 
 define a new philosophy. It was surprising what an 
 impressiveness this threw over her in everything ; 
 how elevated she seemed above the best of those 
 about her; and with what a worshipping and half- 
 reverent admiration she inspired all whom she did not 
 utterly neglect or despise. For myself, my soul was 
 drink up in hers as the lark is taken into the sky, and 
 I forgot there was a world beneath me in my intoxica 
 tion. I thought her an angel unrecognised on earth. 
 I believed her as pure from worldliness, and as spot 
 less from sin, as a cherub with his breast upon his 
 lute ; and I knelt by her when she prayed, and held 
 her upon my bosom in her fits of faintness and ex 
 haustion, and sat at her feet with my face in her hands 
 listening to her wild speculations (often till the morn 
 ing brightened behind the curtains) with an utter and 
 irresistible abandonment of my existence to hers, 
 which seems to me now like a recollection of another 
 
 jjfe it were, with this conscious body and mind, a 
 
 self-relinquishment so impossible ! 
 
 Our life was a singular one. Living in the midst 
 * " La paresse dans les femmes est le presage de 1 amour." 
 LA BRUYEHE. 
 
34 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE, 
 
 of a numerous household, with kind and cultivated 
 people about us, \ve were as separated from them as if 
 the ring of Gyges encircled us from their sight. Fred 
 wished me joy of my giraffe, as he offensively called 
 his cousin, arid his sisters, who were quite too pretty to 
 have been left out of my story so long, were more indul 
 gent, I thought, to tlie indigenous beaux of Skaneat- 
 eles than those aboriginal specimens had a right to 
 expect ; but I had no eyes, ears, sense, or civility for 
 anything but Edith. The library became a forbidden 
 spot to all feet but ours ; we met at noon after our late 
 vigils and breakfasted together; a light sleigh was set 
 apart for our tete-a-tete drives over the frozen lake, 
 and the world seemed to me to revolve on its axle 
 with a special reference to Philip Sliugsby s happiness. 
 I wonder whether an angel out of heaven would have 
 made me believe that I should ever write the story of 
 those passionate hours with a smile and a sneer ! I 
 tell thee, Edith ! (for thou wilt read every line that I 
 have written, and feel it, as far as thou canst, feel any 
 thing), that I have read " Faust" since, and thought 
 thee Mephistopheles ! I have looked on thee since, 
 with thy cheek rosy dark, thy lip filled with the blood 
 of health, and curled with thy contempt of the world 
 and thy yet wild ambition to be its master-spirit and 
 idol, and struck my breast with instinctive self-ques 
 tioning if thou hadst given back my soul that was 
 thine own ! I fear thee, Edith. Thou hast grown 
 beautiful that wert so hideous the wonder-wrought 
 miracle of health and intellect, filling thy veins, and 
 breathing almost a newer shape over form and feature ; 
 lut it is not thy beauty ; no, nor thy enthronement 
 in the admiration of thy woman s world. These are 
 little to me; for I saw thy loveliness from the first, 
 and I worshipped thee more in the duration of a 
 thought than a hecatomb of these worldlings in their 
 lifetime. I fear thy mysterious and unaccountable 
 power over the human soul! I can scorn thee here, 
 in another land, with an ocean weltering between us, 
 and anatomize the character that I alone have read 
 truly and too well, for the instruction of the world (its 
 amusement, too, proud woman thou wilt writhe at 
 that) but I confess to a natural and irresistible obedi 
 ence to the mastery of thy spirit over mine. I would 
 not willingly again touch the radius of thy sphere. 1 
 would come out of Paradise to walk alone with the 
 devil as soon. 
 
 How little even the most instructed women knew 
 the secret of this power ! They make the mistake of 
 cultivating only their own minds. They think that, 
 by se//-elevation, they will climb up to the intellects 
 of men, and win them by seeming their equals. Shal 
 low philosophers! You never remember that to sub 
 due a human being to your will, it is more necessary 
 to know his mind than you own that, in conquering 
 a heart vanity is the first out-post that while your are 
 employing your wits in thinking how most effectually 
 to duzzle him, you should be sounding his character 
 for its undeveloped powers to assist him to dazzle you 
 that love is a reflected light, and to be pleased with 
 others we must be first pleased with ourselves ! 
 
 Edith (it has occurred to me in my speculations 
 since) seemed to me always an echo of myself. She 
 expressed my thought as it sprang into my brain. 1 
 thought that in her I had met my double and coun- 
 terpirt, with the reservation that I was a little the 
 stronger spirit, and that in >/ mind lay the material 
 of the eloquence that flowed from her lips as the al 
 mond that you endeavor to split equally leaves the 
 kernel in the deeper cavity of its shell. Whatever 
 the topic, she seemed using my thoughts, anticipating 
 my reflections, and, with an unobtrusive but thrilling 
 flattery, referring me to myself for the truth of what 
 I must know was but a suggestion of my own ! O! 
 Lucrezia Borgia ! if Machiavelli had but practised that 
 subtle cunning upou thee, thou wouldst have had lit 
 
 tle space in thy delirious heart for the passion that, in 
 the history of crime, has made thee the marvel and 
 the monster. 
 
 The charm of Edith to most people was that she 
 was no sublimation. Her mind seemed of any or ne 
 stature. She was as natural, and earnest, and as sat 
 isfied to converse, on the meanest subject as on the 
 highest. She overpowered nobody. She (apparently) 
 eclipsed nobody. Her passionate and powerful elo 
 quence was only lavished on the passionate and pow 
 erful. She never misapplied herself: and what a 
 secret of influence and superiority is contained in that 
 single phrase ! We so hate him who out-measures 
 us, as we stand side by side before the world ! 
 
 I have in my portfolio several numbers of a manu 
 script " Gazette," with which the Flemings amused 
 1 1 themselves during the deep snows of the winter in 
 | ; which I visited them. It was contributed to by every- 
 j; body in the house, and read aloud at the breakfast- 
 | table on the day of its weekly appearance, and, quite 
 i apropos to these remarks upon the universality of 
 | Edith s mind, there is in one of them an essay of hers, 
 j on what she calls minute philosophies. It is curious, 
 as showing how, with all her loftiness of speculation, 
 1 1 she descended sometimes to the examination of the 
 j smallest machinery of enjoyment. 
 
 " The principal sources of everyday happiness," (I 
 am copying out a part of the essay, dear reader), "are 
 too obvious to need a place in a chapter of breakfast- 
 table philosophy. Occupation and a clear conscience, 
 the very truant in the fields will tell you, are craving 
 necessities. But when these are secured, there are 
 lighter matters, which, to the sensitive and educated 
 at least, are to happiness what foliage is to the tree. 
 They are refinements which add to the beauty of life 
 without diminishing its strength; and, as they spring 
 only from a better use of our common gifts, they are 
 I neither costly nor rare. I have learned secrets under 
 the roof of a poor man, which would add to the Jux- 
 ; ury of the rich. The blessings of a cheerful fancy 
 and a quick eye come from nature, and the trailing of 
 a vine may develop them as well as the curtaining of 
 a king s chamber. 
 
 " Riding and driving are such stimulating pleasures, 
 that to talk of any management, in their indulgence 
 | seems superfluous. Yet we are, in motion or at rest, 
 equally liable to the caprices of feeling, and, perhaps, 
 the gayer the mood the deeper the shade cast on it by 
 untoward circumstances. The time of riding should 
 never be regular. It then becomes a habit, and hab 
 its, though sometimes comfortable, never amount to 
 positive pleasure. I would ride when nature prompt 
 ed when the shower was past, or the air balmy, or 
 the sky beautiful whenever and wherever the sig 
 nificant finger of Desire pointed. Oh! to leap into 
 the saddle when the west wind blows freshly, and gal 
 lop off into its very eye, with an undrawn rein, care 
 less how fir or whither; or, to spring up from a book 
 when the sun breaks through afier a storm, and drive 
 away under the white clouds, through light and shad 
 ow, while the trees are wet and the earth damp and 
 spicy; or, in the clear sunny afternoons of autumn, 
 | with a pleasant companion on the seat beside you, and 
 j the glorious splendor o-f the decaying foliage flushing 
 in the sunshine, to loiter up the valley dreaming over 
 the thousand airy castles that are stirred by such 
 shifting beauty these are pleasures indeed, and such 
 as he who rides regularly after his dinner knows as 
 little of as the dray-horse of the exultation of the 
 courser. 
 
 There is a great deal in the choice of a compan 
 ion. If he is an indifferent acquaintance, or an indis 
 criminate talker, or has a coarse eye for beauty, or is 
 insensible to the delicacies of sensation or thought 
 if he is sensual, or stupid, or practical constitutionally 
 he will never do. He must be a man who can de- 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 35 
 
 tect a rare color in a leaf, or appreciate a peculiar 
 passage in scenery, or admire a grand outline in a 
 cloud ; he must have accurate and fine senses, and a 
 heart, noble at least by nature, and subject still to tier 
 direct influences ; he must be a lover of the beautiful 
 in whatever shape it comes; and, above all, he must 
 have read and thought like a scholar, if not like a 
 poet. He will then ride by your side without crossing 
 your humor : if talkative, he will talk well, and if 
 silent, you are content, for you know that the same 
 grandeur or beauty which has wrought the silence, in 
 your own thoughts has given a color to his. 
 
 " There is much in the manner of driving. I like 
 a capricious rein now fast through a hollow, and I 
 now loiteringly on the edge of a road or by the bank | 
 of a river. There is a singular delight in quickening j 
 your speed in the animation of a climax, and in j 
 coming down gently to a walk with a digression of 
 feeling, or a sudden sadness. 
 
 "An important item in household matters is the 
 management of light. A small room well-lighted is 
 much more imposing than a large one lighted ill. 
 Cross lights are painful to the eye, and they destroy | 
 besides the cool and picturesque shadows of the fur- j 
 niture and figures 1 would have a room always par- i 
 tially darkened : there is a repose in the twilight dim- 
 Desa of a drawing-room which affects one with the 
 proper gentleness of the place : the out-of-door hu 
 mor of men is too rude, and the secluded light sub 
 dues them fitly as they enter. 1 like curtains heavy, 
 and of the richest material: there is a magnificence 
 in large crimson folds which nothing else equals, and ! 
 the color gives everything a beautiful teint as the light 
 streams through them. Plants tastefully arranged are j 
 pretty ; flowers are always beautiful. I would have my 
 own roonf like a painter s one curtain partly drawn ; 
 a double shadow has a nervous look. The effect of a 
 proper disposal of light upon the feelings is by most 
 people surprisingly neglected. I have no doubt that 
 as an habitual thing it materially affects the character; 
 the disposition for study and thought is certainly de 
 pendant on it in no slight degree. What is more 
 contemplative than the twilight of a deep alcove in a ! 
 library ? What more awakens thought than the dim 
 interior of an old church with its massive and shadowy ; 
 pillars ? 
 
 " There mav be the most exquisite luxury in furni- i 
 ture. A crowded room has a look of comfort, and j 
 suspended lamps throw a mellow depth into the fea- ! 
 tures. Descending light is always the most becoming ; : 
 it deepens the eye, and distributes the shadows in the I; 
 face judiciously. Chairs should be of different and 
 curious fashions, made to humor every possible wea- J! 
 riness. A spice-lamp should burn in the corner, and 
 the pictures should be colored of a pleasant tone, and , 
 the subjects should be subdued and dreamy. It should ij 
 be a place you would live in for a century without an || 
 juicomfortable thought. I hate a neat room. A dozen j 
 of the finest old authors should lie about, and a new j. 
 novel, and the last new prints. I rather like the French I 
 fashion of a bonbonniere, though that perhaps is an ex 
 travagance. 
 
 " There is a management of one s own familiar in 
 tercourse which is more neglected, and at the same 
 time more important to happiness, than every other ; 
 it is particularly a pity that this is not oftener under 
 stood by newly -married people ; as far as my own 
 observation goes, I have rarely failed to detect, far too 
 early, signs of ill-disguised and disappointed weariness. 
 It was not the reaction of excitement not the return 
 to the quiet ways of home but a new manner a for 
 getful indifference, believing itself concealed, and yet 
 betraying itself continually by unconscious and irre 
 pressible symptoms. I believe it resulted oftenest 
 from the same causes: partly that they saw each 
 other too much, and partly that when the form of eti 
 
 quette was removed, they forgot to retain its invalua 
 ble essence an assiduous and minute disinterested 
 ness. It seems nonsense to lovers, but absence is the 
 secret of respect, and therefore of affection. Love is 
 divine, but its flame is too del : cate for a perpetual 
 household lamp ; it should be burned only for incense, 
 and even then trimmed skilfully. It is wonderful how 
 a slight neglect, or a glimpse of a weakness, or a chance 
 defect of knowledge, dims its new glory. Lovers, mar 
 ried or single, should have separate pursuits they 
 should meet to respect each other for new and distinct 
 acquisitions. It is the weakness of human affections 
 that they are founded on pride, and waste with over 
 much familiarity. And oh, the delight to meet after 
 hours of absence to sit down by the evening lamp, 
 and with a mind Unexhausted by the intercourse of 
 the day, to yield to the fascinating freedom of conver 
 sation, and clothe the rising thoughts of affection in 
 fresh and unhackneyed language ! How richly the 
 treasures of the mind are colored not doled out, 
 counter by counter, as the visible machinery of thought 
 coins them, but heaped upon the mutual altar in lavish 
 and unhesitating profusion ! And how a bold fancy as 
 sumes beauty and power not traced up through all its 
 petty springs till its dignity is lost by association, but 
 flashing full-grown and suddenly on the sense ! The 
 gifts of no one mind are equal to the constant draught 
 of a lifetime ; and even if they were, there is no one 
 taste which could always relish them. It is an humilia 
 ting thought that immortal mind must be husbanded 
 like material treasure ! 
 
 " There is a remark of Godwin, which, in rather 
 too strong language, contains a valuable truth: A 
 judicious and limited voluptuousness, he says, is ne 
 cessary to the cultivation of the mind, to the polishing 
 of the manners, to the refinement of the sentiment, 
 and to the development of the understanding ; and a 
 woman deficient in this respect may be of use in the 
 government of our families, but can not add to the 
 enjoyment, nor fix the partiality of a man of taste ! 
 Since the days when St. Leon was written, the word 
 by which the author expressed his meaning is grown 
 perhaps into disrepute, but the remark is still one of 
 keen and observant discrimination. It refers (at least 
 so I take it) to that susceptibility to delicate attentions, 
 that fine sense of the nameless and exquisite ten 
 derness of manner and thought, which constitute in 
 the minds of its possessors the deepest undercurrent 
 of life the felt and treasured, but unseen and inex 
 pressible richness of affection. It is rarely found in 
 the characters of men, but it outweighs, when it is, all 
 grosser qualities for its possession implies a generous 
 nature, purity, fine affections, and a heart open to all 
 the sunshine and meaning of the universe. It belongs 
 more to the nature of woman ; but indispensable as it 
 is to her character, it is oftener tlnn anything else, 
 wanting. And without it, what is she ? What is love 
 to a being of such dull sense that she hears only its 
 common and audible language, and sees nothing but 
 what it brings to her feet to be eaten, and worn, and 
 looked" upon ? What is woman, if the impassioned 
 language of the eye, or the deepened fulness of the 
 tone, or the tenderness of a slight attention, are things 
 unnoticed and of no value ? one who answers you 
 when you speak, smiles when you tell her she is grave, 
 assents barely to the expression of your enthusiasm, 
 but has no dream beyond no suspicion that she has 
 not felt and reciprocated your feelings as fully as you 
 could expect or desire ? It is a matter too little looked 
 to. Sensitive and ardent men too often marry with 
 a blindfold admiration of mere goodness or loveliness. 
 The abandon of matrimony soon dissipates the gay 
 dream, and they find themselves suddenly unsphered, 
 linked indissolubly with affections strangely different 
 from their own, and lavishing their only treasure on 
 those who can neither appreciate nor return it. The 
 
36 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 after-life of such men is a stifling solitude of feeling. 
 Their avenues of enjoyment are their manifonn sym 
 pathies, and when these are shut up or neglected, the 
 heart is dark, and they have nothing to do thencefor 
 ward but to forget. 
 
 " There are many, who, possessed of the capacity 
 for the more elevated affections, waste and lose it by 
 a careless and often unconscious neglect. It is not a 
 plant to grow untended. The breath of indifference, 
 or a rude touch, may destroy for ever its delicate tex 
 ture. To drop the figure, there is a daily attention to 
 the slight courtesies of life, and an artifice in detecting 
 the passing shadows of feeling, which alone can pre 
 serve, through life, the first freshness of passion. The 
 easy surprises of pleasure, and earnest cheerfulness of 
 assent to slight wishes, the habitual respect to opin 
 ions, the polite abstinence from personal topics in the 
 company of others, the assiduous and unwavering at 
 tention to her comfort, at home and abroad, and, above 
 all, the absolute preservation in private of those pro 
 prieties of conversation and manner which are sacred 
 before the world are some of the thousand secrets of 
 that rare happiness which age and habit alike fail to 
 impair or diminish." 
 
 II. 
 
 Vacation was over, but Fred and myself were still 
 lingering at Fleming Farm. The roads were impas 
 sable with a premature THAW. Perhaps there is noth 
 ing so peculiar in American meteorology as the phe 
 nomenon which I alone probably, of all the imprisoned 
 inhabitants of Skaneateles, attributed to a kind and 
 44 special Providence." Summer had come back, like 
 Napoleon from Elba, and astonished usurping winter 
 in the plenitude of apparent possession and security. 
 No cloud foreboded the change, as no alarm preceded 
 the apparition of " the child of destiny." We awoke 
 on a February morning, with the snow lying chin- 
 deep on the earth, and it was June ! The air was soft 
 and warm the sky was clear, and of the milky ceru 
 lean of chrysoprase the south wind (the same, save 
 his unperfumed wings, who had crept off like a sa 
 tiated lover in October) stole back suddenly from the 
 tropics, and found his flowery mistress asleep and in 
 sensible to his kisses beneath her snowy mantle. The 
 sunset warmed back from its wintry purple to the 
 golden teints of heat, the stars burned with a less 
 vitreous sparkle, the meteors slid once more lambent- 
 ly down the sky, and the house-dove sat on the eaves, 
 washing her breast in the snow-water, and thinking 
 (like a" neglected wife at a capricious return of her 
 truant s tenderness) that the sunshine would last for 
 ever ! 
 
 Th air was now full of music. The water trickled 
 away under the snow, and, as you looked around and 
 saw no change or motion in the white carpet of the 
 earth, it seemed as if a myriad of small bells were ring 
 ing under ground fairies, perhaps, startled in mid- 
 revel with the false alarm of summer, and hurrying 
 about with their silver anklets, to wake up the slum 
 bering flowers. The mountain-torrents were loosed, 
 and rushed down upon the valleys like the Children 
 of the Mist; and the hoarse war-cry, swelling and fal 
 ling upon the wind, maintained its perpetual undertone 
 like an accompaniment of bassoons ; and occasionally, 
 in a sudden lull of the breeze, you would hear the 
 click of the undermined snow-drifts dropping upon the 
 earth, as if the chorister of spring were beating time 
 to the reviving anthem of nature. 
 
 The snow sunk perhaps a foot in a day, but it was 
 only perceptible to the eye where you could measure 
 its wet mark against a tree from which it had fallen 
 away, or by the rock, from which the dissolving bank 
 shrunk and separated, as if rocks and snow were as 
 heartless as ourselves and threw off their friends, too, 
 
 in their extremity ! The low-lying lake, meantime, 
 surrounded by melting mountains, received the aban 
 doned waters upon its frozen bosom, and, spreading 
 them into a placid and shallow lagoon, separate by a 
 crystal plane from its own lower depths, gave them the 
 repose denied in the more elevated sphere in which 
 lay their birthright. And thus (oh, how full is na 
 ture of these gentle moralities !) and thus sometimes 
 do the lowly, whose bosom, like the frozen lake, is at 
 first cold and unsympathetic to the rich and noble, 
 still receive them in adversity, and, when neighbor 
 hood and dependance have convinced them that they 
 are made of the same common element, as the lake 
 melts its dividing and icy plane, and mingles the strange 
 waters with its own, do they dissolve the unnatural bar 
 rier of prejudice, and take the humbled wanderer to 
 their bosom ! 
 
 The face of the snow lost its dazzling whiteness as 
 the thaw went on as disease steals away the beauty 
 of those we love but it was only in the distance, 
 where the sun threw a shadow into the irregular pits 
 of the dissolving surface. Near to the eye (as the 
 dying one pressed to the bosom), it was still of its 
 original beauty, unchanged and spotless. And now 
 you are tired of my loitering speculations, gentle read 
 er, and we will return (please Heaven, only on paper!) 
 to Edith Linsey. 
 
 The roads were at last reduced to what is expres 
 sively called, in New England, slosh (in New York, 
 posh, but equally descriptive), and Fred received a 
 hint from the judge that the mail had arrived in the 
 usual time, and his beaux jours were at an end. 
 
 A slighter thing than my departure would have been 
 
 sufficient to stagger the tottering spirits of Edith. We 
 
 were sitting at table when the letters came in, and the 
 
 dates were announced that proved the opening of the 
 
 roads ; and I scarce dared to turn my eyes upon the 
 
 pale face that I could just see had dropped upon her 
 
 I bosom. The next instant there was a general confu- 
 
 ! sion, and she was carried lifeless to her chamber. 
 
 A note, scarce legible, was put into my hand in the 
 I course of the evening, requesting me to sit up for her 
 | in the library. She would come to me, she said, if 
 she had strength. 
 
 It was a night of extraordinary beauty. The full 
 moon was high in the heavens at midnight, and there 
 had been a slight shower soon after sunset, which, 
 with the clearing-up wind, had frozen thinly into a 
 most fragile rime, and glazed everything open to the 
 sky with transparent crystal. The distant forest looked 
 serried with metallic trees, dazzlingly and unspeakably 
 gorgeous ; and, as the night-wind stirred through them 
 and shook their crystal points in the moonlight the 
 aggregated stars of heaven springing from their Ma 
 ker s hand to the spheres of their destiny, or the 
 inarch of the host of the archangel Michael with their 
 irradiate spear-points glittering in the air, or the dia 
 mond beds of central earth thrust up to the sun in 
 some throe of the universe would, each or all, have 
 been well bodied forth by such similitude. 
 
 It was an hour after midnight when Edith was sup 
 ported in by her maid, and, choosing her own position, 
 sunk into the broad window-seat, and lay with her head 
 on my bosom, and her face turned outward to the glit 
 tering night. Her eyes had become, I thought, un 
 naturally bright, and she spoke with an exhausted 
 faintness that gradually strengthened to a tone of the 
 most thrilling and melodious sweetness. I shall never 
 get that music out of my brain ! 
 
 " Philip !" she said. 
 
 " I listen, dear Edith !" 
 
 " I am dying." 
 
 And she looked it, and I believed her; and my heart 
 sunk to its deepest abyss of wretchedness with the 
 conviction. 
 
 She went on to talk of death. It was the subject 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 37 
 
 that pressed most upon her mind, and she could 
 scarce fail to be eloquent on any subject. She was 
 very eloquent on this. I was so impressed with the 
 manner in which she seemed almost to rhapsodize 
 between the periods of her faintness, as she lay in 
 my arms that night, that every word she uttered is 
 still fresh in my memory. She seemed to forget my 
 presence, and to commune with her own thoughts 
 
 aloud. 
 
 I recollect," she said, 
 
 when I was strong and 
 
 well (years ago, dear Philip!), I left my books on a 
 morning in May, and looking up to find the course of 
 the wind, started off alone for a walk into its very eye. 
 A moist steady breeze came from the southwest, dri 
 ving before it fragments of the dispersed clouds. The 
 air was elastic and clear a freshness that entered free 
 ly at every pore was corrring up, mingled with the pro 
 fuse perfume of grass and flowers the colors of the 
 new, tender foliage were particularly soothing to an 
 eye pained with close attention and the just percep 
 tible murmur of the drops shaken from the trees, and 
 the peculiarly soft rustle of the wet leaves, made as 
 much music as an ear accustomed to the silence of 
 solitude could well relish. Altogether, it was one of 
 those rarely-tempered days when every sense is satis 
 fied, and the mind is content to lie still with its com 
 mon thoughts, and simply enjoy. 
 
 " I had proceeded perhaps a mile my forehead 
 held up to the wind, my hair blowing back, and the 
 blood glowing in my cheeks with the most vivid flush 
 of exercise and health when I saw coming toward 
 me a man apparently in middle life, but wasted by ill- | on it in wonder. 
 ness to the extremest emaciation. His lip was color- realize it. 
 less, his skin dry and white, and his sunken eyes had 
 that expression of inquiring earnestness which comes 
 
 now, will settle and grow dull ? That the refined lip, 
 which now shrinks so sensitively from defilement, will 
 not feel the earth lying upon it, and the tooth of the 
 feeding worm ? That the free breath will be choked, 
 and the forehead be pressed heavily on by the decay 
 ing coffin, and the light and air of heaven be shut quite 
 out ; and this very body, warm, and breathing, and 
 active as it is now, will not feel uneasiness or pain ? 
 I could not help looking at my frame as these thoughts 
 crowded on me; and I confess I almost doubted my 
 
 own convictions there was so much strength and 
 quickness in it my hand opened so freely, and my 
 
 always with impatient sickness. He raised his head, 
 and looked steadily at me as I came on. My lips were 
 open, and my whole air must have been that of a per 
 son in the most exulting enjoyment of health. I was 
 just against him, gliding past with an elastic step, 
 when, with his eye still fixed on me, he half turned, 
 and in a voice of inexpressible meaning, exclaimed, 
 
 nostrils expanded with such a satisfied thirst to the 
 moist air. Ah ! it is hard to believe at first that we 
 must die ! harder still to believe and realize the repul 
 sive circumstances that follow that terrible change ! 
 It is a bitter thought at the lightest. There is little 
 comfort in knowing that the soul will not be there 
 that the sense and the mind that feel and measure suf 
 fering, will be gone. The separation is too great a 
 mystery to satisfy fear. It is the body that we know. 
 It is this material frame in which the affections have 
 grown up. The spirit is a mere thought a presence 
 that we are told of, but do not see. Philosophize as 
 we will, the idea of existence is connected indissolubly 
 with the visible body, and its pleasant and familiar 
 senses. We talk of, and believe, the soul s ascent to 
 its Maker ; but it is not ourselves it is not our own 
 conscious breathing identity that we send up in ima 
 gination through the invisible air. It is some phantom 
 that is to issue forth mysteriously, and leave us gazing 
 We do not understand, we can not 
 
 At the time I speak of, my health had been always 
 unbroken. Since then, I have known disease in many 
 
 Merciful Heaven ! lioic well she 
 
 eaning, 
 is ." I 
 
 passed on, 
 
 with his voice still ringing in my ear. It haunted me 
 like a tone in the air. It was repeated in the echo of 
 my tread in the panting of my heart. I felt it in the 
 beating of the strong pulse in my temples. As if it 
 was strange that I should be so well ! I had never 
 before realized that it could be otherwise. It Deemed , 
 impossible to me that my strong limbs shoi W /ail me, 
 or the pure blood I felt bounding so bravely through j 
 my veins could be reached and-tswn ed b y disease. 
 I ate. 
 
 forms, and have had, of course, more time and occa- 
 ! sion for the contemplation of death. I have never, 
 j till hue, known resignation. With my utmost energy 
 I I was merely able, in other days, to look upon it with 
 i quiet despair; as a terrible, unavoidable evil. I re- 
 ! member once, after severe suffering for weeks, I over 
 heard the physician telling my mother that I must 
 die, and from th;>< moment the thought never left me. 
 A thin line of light came in between the shutters of 
 the south window ; and, with this one thought fasten- 
 ed on my mind, like the vulture of Prometheus, I lay 
 and watched it, day after day, as it passed with its 
 imperceptible progress over the folds of my curtains. 
 The last faint gleam of sunset never faded from its 
 damask edge, without an inexpressible sinking of my 
 heart, and a belief that I should see its pleasant light 
 no more. I turned from the window when even ima 
 gination could find the daylight no longer there, and 
 
 How should it come ? If . - 
 
 me ? If I slept, would it not r^iresh me ? If I came felt my pulse and lifted my head to try my remaining 
 
 out in the cool free air wld not m y lungs Weave, j| strength. And then every object, yes, even the mean- 
 
 and my muscles BpriP* >d my face feel its grateful 
 
 freshness ? I held o* 1 m y arm > <or tne first time in in y ! 
 
 life, with a doub *>( its strength. I closed my hand | 
 
 unconscious^ * w tn a f ear >t would not obey. I drew j 
 
 a deep hr*"* 1 1 to ^ ee ^ l was difficult to breathe ; and | 
 
 even "f bounding step, that was as elastic then as a 
 
 fane s, seemed to my excited imagination already to 
 
 have become decrepit and feeble. 
 
 I walked on, and thought of death. I had never 
 
 est, grew unutterably dear to me ; my pillow, and the 
 cup with which my lips were moistened, and the cool 
 ing amber which I had held in my hand, and pressed 
 to my burning lips when the fever was on me every 
 thing that was connected with life, and that would re 
 main among the living when I was gone. 
 
 " It is strange, but with all this clinging to the world 
 my affection for the living decreased sensibly. I grew 
 selfish in my weakness. I could not bear that they 
 
 before done so definiteJy ; It was like a terrible shape j should go from my chamber into the fresh air, and 
 that had always pursued me dimly, but which I had j have no fear of sickness and no pain. It seemed un- 
 never before turned and looked steadily on. Strange! jj feeling that they did not stay and breathe the close 
 that we can live so constantly with that threatening jj atmosphere of my room at least till I was dead. 
 hand hung over us,and not think of it always! Strange! ji How could they walk round so carelessly, and look 
 that we can use a limb, or enter with interest into any |j on a fellow-creature dying helplessly and unwillingly, 
 pursuit of time, when we know that our continued u and never shed a tear! And then the passing cour- 
 life is almost a daily miracle ! \\ tesies exchanged with the family at the door, and the 
 
 "How difficult it is to realize death ! How difficult i| quickened step on the sidewalk, and the wandering looks 
 it is to believe that the hand with whose every vein j about my room, even while I was answering with my 
 you are familiar, will ever lose its motion and its i difficult breath their cold inquiries! There was an in- 
 warmth? That the quick eye, which is so restless || human carelessness in all this that stung me-to the settl. 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 "I craved sympathy as I did life ; and yet I doubted 
 it all. There was not a word spoken by the friends 
 who were admitted to see me, that I did not ponder 
 over when they were gone, and always with an im 
 patient dissatisfaction. The tone, and the manner, 
 and the expression of faee, all seemed forced : and 
 often, in my earlier sickness, when I had pondered for 
 hours on the expressed sympathy of some one I had 
 loved, the sense of utter helplessness which crowded 
 on me with my conviction of their insincerity, quite 
 overcame me. I have lain night after night, and 
 looked at my indifferent watchers : and oh how I 
 hated them for their careless ease, and their snatched 
 moments of repose ! I could scarce keep from dashing 
 aside the cup they came to give me so sluggishly. 
 
 " It is singular that, with all our experience sf sick 
 ness, we do not attend more to these slight circum 
 stances. It can scarce be conceived how an ill-man- 
 aged light, or a suppressed whispering, or a careless 
 change of attitude, in the presence of one whose senses 
 are so sharpened, and whose mind is so sensitive as a 
 sick person s, irritate and annoy. And, perhaps, more 
 
 reader, with what must be more interesting to me than 
 to you, it is because every syllable was burnt like 
 enamel into my soul, in my boundless reverence and 
 love. 
 
 It was two o clock, and she still lay breathing pain 
 fully in my arms. 1 had thrown up the window, and 
 the soft south wind, stirring gently among the tinkling 
 icicles of the trees, came in, warm and genial, and she 
 leaned over to inhale it, as if it came from the source 
 of life. The stars burned gloriously in the heavens ; 
 and, in a respite of her p-.iin, she lay back her head, 
 and gazed up at thein with an inarticulate motion of 
 her lips, and eyes so unnaturally kindled, that I thought 
 reason had abandoned her. 
 
 "How beautiful are the stars to night, Ediih!" I 
 said, with half a fear that she would answer me in 
 madness. 
 
 " Yes," she said, putting nfy hand (that pressed her 
 closer, involuntary, to my bosom) first to her lips 
 "Yes; and, beautiful as they are, they are all accu 
 rately numbered and governed, and just as they burn- 
 now have the burned since the creation, never faint 
 
 than these to bear, is the affectedly subdued tone of ! in their watches, and never absent from their place, 
 condolence. I remember nothing which I endured so ! How glorious they are! How thrilling it is to see them 
 
 impatiently. 
 
 " Annoyances like these, however, scarcely diverted ! 
 fox. a moment the one great thought of death. It be- 
 came at last familiar, but, if possible, more dreadfully 
 horrible from that very fact. It was giving it a new 
 character. I realized it more, The minute circum 
 stances became nearer and more real F tried the posi 
 tion in which I should lie in my coffin I lay with 
 
 stand with such a constant silence in the sky, vm- 
 steadied and unsupported, obeying the great law of 
 their Maker! What pwre and silvery light h is! How 
 steadily it pours from those small fountains, giving 
 every spot of earth its due portion ! The hovel and 
 the palace are shone upon equally, and the shepherd 
 gets as broad a beam as the king, and these few rays 
 that are now streaming into my feverish eyes were 
 
 my arms to my side, and my feet together, and with j meant and lavished only for me! I have oftf 
 the cold sweat standing in large drops on my lip, com- !! thought has it never occurred to you, dear Philip ? 
 posed my features into a forced expression, of tran- ! how ungrateful we are to call ourselves poor, when 
 quillity. there is so much that no poverty can take away f 
 
 I awoke on the second morning after the hope of |l Clusters of silver rays from every star in these heavens 
 my recovery had bco n abandoned. There was a nar- are mine. Every breeze that breaks on my forehead 
 row sunbeam lying in ;. clear crimson line across the |] was sent for my refreshment. Every tinkle and ray 
 
 curtain, and I lay and watched the specks of lint sail- j 
 ing through it, like silver-winged insects, and the thin 
 dust, quivering and disappearing on its definite limit, I 
 in a dream of wonder. I had thought not to see I 
 
 another sun, and my mind was still fresh with the ex 
 pectation of an immediate change ; I could not believe 
 
 from those stirring and glistening icicles, and the 
 vigorating freshness of this unseasonable and delicious 
 wind, and moonlight, and sunshine, and the glory of 
 the planets, are all gifts that poverty could not take 
 
 away ! It is not often that I forget these treasures ; for 
 
 I have loved nature, and the skies of night and day, in 
 
 that I was alive. The dizzy throb in my temples was | all their changes, from my childhood, and they have 
 done ; my limbs felt cool and refreshed; my mind had j| been unspeakably dear to" me ; for in them I see the 
 that feeling of transparency which is common after !j evidence of an Almighty Maker, and in the excessive 
 
 healthful and sweet sleep; and an indefinite sensation 
 of pleasure trembled in every nerve. I thought that 
 this might be death, and that, with this exquisite feel 
 ing of repose, I was to linger thus consciously with 
 the body till the last day ; and I dwelt on it pleasantly 
 with my delicious freedom from pain. I felt no regret 
 
 for life none for a friend even : I was willing quite _ 
 
 willing to lie thus for ages. Presently the physician I j it is the last time I am surt f j t the verv last ! Yet 
 
 "ty of the stars and the unfading and equal splen 
 dor of their steadfast fires, 1 see glimpses of an im 
 mortal hie, anc j fj nc j ail answer to the eternal question 
 ing within mo,; 
 
 " j. hree . Fb* village clock reaches us to night. 
 Nay, the wind can nos, i, arm me now . Turn me more 
 to the window, for I wouvi j ook nearer upon the stars: 
 
 entered ; he came and laid his fingers on my pulse, 
 and his face brightened. You will get well, he said, 
 and I heard it almost without emotion. Gradually, 
 however, the love of life returned; and as I realized it 
 fully, and all the thousand chords which bound me to 
 it vibrated once more, the tears came thickly to my eyes, 
 and a crowd of delightful thoughts pressed cheerfully 
 and glowingly on me. No language can do justice 
 to the pleasure of convalescence from extreme sick 
 ness. The first step upon the living grass the first 
 breath of free air the first unsuppressed salutation of 
 
 to-morrow night those stars wh\ a || ^ e t| iere ,, ot 
 
 missing from the sky, nor shining u^,, ,- av f| le ] ess De . 
 cause I am dead ! It is strange thv<\ t jjj s thought 
 should be so bitter strange that the CI>IN WUJ J O! s hjp 
 should be so close between our earthly affect, - >ns ., m j 
 those spiritual worlds and stranger yet, that, .v,>tj s _ 
 fied as we must be that we shall know them neartt 
 and better when released from our flesh, we still cling: 
 so fondly to our earthly and imperfect vision. I I erl, 
 Philip, that I shall traverse herealter every star hi tfiose 
 bright heavens. If the course of that career of kn 
 
 a friend my fainting heart, dear Philip, rallies and | edge, which I believe in my soul it will be the reward 
 
 quickens even now with the recollection." 
 
 I have thrown into a continuous strain what was 
 murmured to me between pauses of faintness, and with 
 difficulty of breath that seemed overpowered only by 
 the mastery of the eloquent spirit apparently trembling 
 on its departure. 1 believed Edith Linsey would die 
 that uight; I believed myself listening to words spoken 
 almost from heaven ; and if I have wearied you, dear 
 
 of the blessed to run, be determined in any degrt 
 the strong desires that yearn so sickeningly within us, 
 I see the thousand gates of my future heaven shii.ii.jj 
 at this instant above me. There they are! the clus 
 tering Pleiades, with their sweet influences ; and 
 the morning star, melting into the east with its trans 
 cendent lambency and whiteness; and the broad gal 
 axy, with its myriads of bright spheres, dissolving into 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 each other s light, and belling the heavens like a gir 
 dle. J shall see them all ! 1 shall know them and 
 the r inli ibitants as the -angels of (iod know them ; 
 the mystery of their order, and the secret of their 
 wonderful harmony, and the duration of their appoint 
 ed courses all will be made clear!" 
 
 1 have trespassed again, most indulgent reader, on 
 the limits of these Procrustean papers. J must defer 
 the " change" that " came o er the spirit of my dream" 
 till another mood an I time. Meanwhile, you may- 
 consider Edith, if you like, the true heart she thought 
 herself (and I thought her) durin;: her nine deaths in 
 the library; and you will have leisuie to imagine the 
 three years over which we shall skip with this finale, 
 during which I made a journey to the north, and d.-mced 
 out a winter in your own territories at Quebec a cir 
 cumstance I allu.Ie to, no less to record the hospitali 
 ties of the garrison of that time (this was in 27 were 
 you there?) than to pluck forth from Time s hinder- 
 most wallet a modest copy of verses 1 addressed thence 
 to Edith. She sent them back to me considerably 
 mended; but I give you the original draught, scorn 
 ing her finger in my poesies. 
 
 TO EDITH, FROM THE NORTH. 
 
 As, gazing on the Pleiades, 
 
 We count each fair and starry one, 
 Yet wander from the light of these 
 
 To muse upon the Pleiad gone ; 
 As, bending o er fresh-gathered flowers, 
 
 The rose s most enchanting hue 
 Reminds us hut of other hours, 
 
 Whose roses were all lovely, too; 
 So. dearest, when I rove among 
 
 The bright ones of this northern sky, 
 And mark the smilt- , and list the song, 
 
 And watch the dmcers gliding by 
 The fairer still they seem to be, 
 The more it stirs a thought of thee. 
 
 The sad, sweet bells of twilight chime, 
 
 Of many hearts may touch hut one, 
 And so this seeming careless rhyme 
 
 Will whisper to thy heart alone. 
 I give it to the winds. The bird, 
 
 Let loose, to his far nest will flee : 
 And love, though hreathed but on a word, 
 
 Wi.l find thee over land and sea. 
 Though clouds across he sky have driven, 
 
 We trust the star at last will shine ; 
 And like the very light of heaven, 
 
 I trust thy love trust thou in mine ! 
 
 PART III. 
 
 A DIGRESSION. 
 
 " By. Will you not sleep, sir? 
 
 Knight. Fling the window np ! 
 
 Ml look upon the stars. Where twinkle now 
 The I leiades? 
 
 Boy. Here, master! 
 
 KtifU. Throw me now 
 
 MY cloak upon my slmu ders. and good niglit ! 
 I have no mind to sleep ! * * * 
 * * * * She bade me look 
 Upon his hand of stars when other eyes 
 Beamed on me brightly, and remember her 
 By the Lost Pleiad. 
 
 Ratj. Are you well, sir ? 
 
 Knight. Boy! 
 
 Love you the stars ? 
 
 Boy. When they first spring- at eve 
 
 Better than near to morning. 
 
 Knight. Fickle child ! 
 
 Are they more fair in twilight ? 
 
 Hoy. Master, no ! 
 
 Brighter as nisrht wears onliut I foiget 
 Their beauty, looking on >h<-m InngT 
 
 * SIR FABIAN," an unpub ishtd Poem. 
 
 IT was a September night at the university. On the 
 morrow I was to appear upon the stage as the winner 
 of the first honors of my year. I was the envy the 
 admiration iu some degree the wonder, of the col- 
 
 I legiate town in which the university stands ; for I had 
 j commenced my career as the idlest and most riotous 
 of freshmen. What it was that had suddenly made 
 me enamored of my chambers and my books that 
 had saddened my manners and softened my voice that 
 had given me a disgust to champagne and my old al 
 lies, in favor of cold water and the Platonists that, in 
 i short, had metamorphosed, as Bob Wilding would 
 ; have said, a gentleman-like rake and vau-rien into so 
 | dull a thing as an exemplary academician was past 
 i the divining of most of my acquaintances. Oh, once- 
 , loved Edith! hast thou any inkling in thy downward 
 metempsychosis of the philosophy of this marvel ? 
 
 If you" were to set a poet to make a town, with 
 carte blanche as to trees, gardens, and green blinds, 
 he would probably turn out very much such a place 
 as New Haven. (Supposing your education in ge 
 ography to have been neglected, dear reader, this is 
 the second capital of Connecticut, a half-rural, half- 
 metropolitan town, lying between a precipice that 
 makes the fag-end of the (ireen mountains and a 
 handsome bay in Long-Island sound.) The first 
 thought of the inventor of New Haven was to lay out 
 the streets in parallelograms, and the second was to 
 plant them from suburb to water-side with the mag 
 nificent elms of the country. The result is, that at 
 the end of fifty years, the town is buried in leaves. If 
 it were not for the spires of the churches, a bird flying 
 over on his autumn voyage to the Floridas would 
 never mention having seen it in his travels. It is a 
 glorious tree, the elm and those of the place I speak 
 of are famous, even in our land of trees, for their sur 
 prising size and beauty. With the curve of their 
 stems in the sky, the long weepers of their outer and 
 lower branches drop into the street, fanning your face 
 as you pass under with their geranium-like leaves ; 
 and close overhead, interwoven like the trellice of a 
 vine, they break up the light of the sky into golden 
 flecks, and make you, of the common highway, a 
 bower of the most approved secludedness and beauty. 
 The houses are something between an Italian palace 
 and an English cottage built of wood, but, in the 
 dim light of those overshadowing trees, as fair to the 
 eye as marble with their triennial coats of paint ; and 
 each stands in the midst of its own encircling grass- 
 plot, half buried in vines and flowers, and facing out 
 ward from a cluster of gardens divided by slender 
 palings, and filling up with fruit-trees and summer- 
 houses the square on whose limit it stands. Then, 
 like the vari-colored parallelograms upon a chess 
 board, green openings are left throughout the town, 
 fringed with triple and interweaving elm-rows, the long 
 and weeding branches sweeping downward to the 
 grass, and with their enclosing shadows keeping moist 
 and cool the road they overhang; and fair forms (it is 
 the garden of American beauty New- Haven) flit 
 Hheurin the green light in primitive security and free 
 dom, and you would think the place, if you alit upon 
 it in a summer s evening what it seems to me now 
 in memory, and what 1 have made it in this Rosa- 
 MatilJa description a scene from Boccacio, or a 
 vision from long lost Arcady. 
 
 New Haven may have eight thousand inhabitants. 
 Its steamers run to New York in six hours (or did in 
 my time I have ceased to be astonished on that sub 
 ject, and should not wonder if they did it now in one 
 a trifle of seventy miles up the sound), and the 
 ladies go up in the morning for a yard of bobbin and 
 return at night, and the gentlemen the same for a 
 stroll in Broadway ; and it is to this circumstance that, 
 while it preserves its rural exterior, it is a very metro- 
 , politan place in the character of its society. The 
 I Armaryllis of the petty cottage you admire wears the 
 fashion twenty days from Paris, and her shepherd has 
 a coat from Nugee, the divine peculiarity of which is 
 1 not yet suspected east of Bond street ; and, in the 
 
40 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 newspaper hanging half out of the window, there is 
 news, red-hot with the velocity of its arrival, from 
 Russia and the Rocky Mountains, from the sources of 
 the Mississippi and the brain of Monsieur Herbault. 
 Distance is an imaginary quantity, and Time, that 
 used to give everything the go-by, has come to a 
 stand-still in his astonishment. There will be a prop 
 osition in congress ere long to do without him alto 
 gether every new thing " saves time" so marvel 
 lously. 
 
 Bright as seems to me thrs seat of my Alma 
 Mater, however, and gayly as I describe it, it is to 
 me, if I may so express it, a picture of memory 
 glazed and put away ; if I see it ever again, it will 
 be but to walk through its embowered streets by 
 a midnight rnoon. It is vain and heart-breaking to go 
 back, after absence, to any spot of earth of which tin 
 
 men of from eighteen to twenty -four every one of 
 whom was passing the last evening of the four most 
 impressible and attaching years of his life, with the 
 family in which he had been most intimate, in a town 
 where refinement and education had done their ut 
 most upon the society, and which was renowned 
 throughout America for the extraordinary beauty of 
 its women. They had come from every state in the 
 Union, and the Georgian a-nd the Vermontese, the 
 Kentuckian and the Virginian, were to start alike on 
 the morrow-night with a lengthening chain for home, 
 each bearing away the hearts he had attached to him 
 (one or more!) and leaving his own, till, like the mag- 
 : netized needle, it should drop away with the weak 
 ened attraction ; and there was probably but one that 
 night in the departing froop who was not whispering 
 in some throbbing ear the passionate but vain and 
 
 interest was the human love whose home and cradle it \\ mocking avowal of fidelity in love ! And yet I had 
 had been. But there is a period in our lives when I j had my attachments too; nnd there was scarce a 
 the heart fuses and compounds with the things about jl house in tlwit leafy and muramring paradise of friend- 
 it, and the close enamel with which it overruns and j ship and trees, that would not have hailed me with 
 binds in the affections, and which hardens in the] acclamation had I entered the door; and I make this 
 lapse of years till the immortal germ within is noti| record of kindness and hospitality (unforgolten after 
 more durable and unwasting, warms never again, nor j] long years of vicissitude and travel), with the hope 
 softens; and there is nothing on earth so mournful j that there m;iy yet live some memory as constant as 
 
 and unavailing as to return to the scenes which are 
 unchanged, and look to return to ourselves and others 
 as we were when we thus knew them. 
 
 Yet we think (I judge you by my own soul, gentle 
 reader) that it is others not we who are changed ! 
 We meet the friend that we loved in our youth, and it 
 is ever he who is cold and altered ! We take the 
 hand that we bent over with our passionate kisses in 
 boyhood, and our raining tears when we last parted, 
 and it is ever hers that returns not the pressure, and 
 her eyes, and not ours oh, not ours! that look back 
 the moistened and once familiar regard with a dry lid 
 
 mine, and that some eye will read it with a warmth in 
 its lid, and some lip some one at least murmur, "/ 
 remember him!" There are trees in that town whose 
 drooping leaves I could press to my lips with an affec 
 tion as passionate as if they were human, though the- 
 lips and voices that have endeared them to me are as 
 changed as the foliage upon the branch, and would 
 recognise my love as coldly. 
 
 There was one, I say, who walked the thronged 
 pavement alone that night, or but with such company 
 as Uhland s ;* yet the heart of that solitary senior was 
 far from lonel\ r . The ualm of years of ambition was 
 
 and a gaze of stone ! Oh God! it is ever he the j! in his grasp the reward of daily self-denial ;md mid- 
 friend you have worshipped for whom you would (; night watching the prize of a straining mind and 
 have died who gives you the tips of his ringers, and j a yearning desire ; and there was not one of the many 
 greets you with a phrase of fashion, when you would j who spoke of him that night in those crowded rooms, 
 rush into his bosom and break your heart with weep- j either to rejoice in his success or to wonder at its at- 
 ing out the imprisoned tenderness of years ! I could j tainment, who had the shadow of an idea what spirit 
 carve out the heart from my bosom, and fling it with j sat uppermost in his bosom. Oh! how common is 
 a malison into the sea, when I think how utterly and i this ignorance of human motives ! How distant, and 
 worse than useless it is in this world of mocking j slight, and unsuspected, are the springs often of the 
 names ! Yet " love" and " friendship" are words 
 
 that read well. You could scarce spare them in 
 poetry. 
 
 II. 
 
 It was, as I hare said, a moonlight night of unpar 
 alleled splendor. The morrow was the college anni 
 versarythe day of the depvu-ture of the senior class 
 
 nd the town, which is, as 
 
 it were, a part of the uni 
 
 versity, was in the usual tumult of the gayest and 
 saddest evening of the year. The night was warm, 
 and the houses, of which the drawing-rooms are ali 
 on a level with the gardens in the rear, and through 
 which a long hall stretches like a ball-room, were 
 thrown open, doors and windows, and the thousand 
 students of the university, and the crowds of their 
 friends, and the hosts of strangers drawn to the place 
 at this season by the annual festivities, and the fami 
 lies, every one with a troop of daughters (as the leaves 
 on our trees, compared with those of old countries 
 three to one so are our sons and daughters) were all 
 sitting without lamps in the moon-lit rooms, or strol 
 ling together, lovers and friends, in the fragrant gar 
 dens, or looking out upon the street, returning the 
 greetings of the passers-by, or, with heads uncovered, 
 pacing backward and forward beneath the elms before 
 the door the whole scene one that the angels in 
 heaven might make a holyday to see. 
 
 There were a hundred of my fellow-seniors young 
 
 most desperate achievement! How little the world 
 knows for what the poet writes, the scholar toils, the 
 politician sells his soul, and the soldier perils his life ! 
 And how insignificant and unequal to the result would 
 seem these invisible wires, could they be traced back 
 from the hearts whose innermost resource and faculty 
 they have waked and exhausted ! It is a startling 
 thing to question even your own soul for its motive. 
 Ay, even in trifles. Ten to one you are surprised at 
 the answer. I have asked myself, while writing this 
 sentence, whose eye it is most meant to please; and, 
 as I live, the face that is conjured up at my bidding is 
 of one of whom I have not had a definite thought for 
 years. I would lay my life she thinks at this instant 
 I have forgotten her very name. Yet I know she 
 will read this page with an interest no other could 
 awaken, striving to trace in it the changes that have 
 come over me since we parted. I know (and I knew 
 then, though we never exchanged a word save in 
 friendship), that she devoted her innermost soul when 
 we strayed together by that wild river in the West, 
 (dost thou remember it, dear friend ? for now I speak 
 to thee !) to the study of a mind and character of which 
 
 Almost the sweetest thing I remember is the German, 
 poet s thought when crossing the lerry to his wile and 
 child ; 
 
 " Take, O boatman ! thrice thy fee, 
 Take, I give it willingly : 
 For, invisMy to tkee, 
 Spirits twain have crossed with me." 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 4i 
 
 she thought better than the world or their possessor ; 
 and I know oh, how well I know! that with hus 
 band and children around her, whom she loves and 
 to whom she is devoted, the memory of me is laid 
 away in her heart like a fond but incomplete dream 
 of what once seemed possible the feeling with which 
 the mother looks on her witless boy, and loves him 
 more for what he might have been, than his brothers 
 for what they are! 
 
 I scarce know what thread I dropped to take up this 
 improvista digression (for, like "Opportunity and the 
 Hours," I " never look back :"*) but let us return to 
 the shadow of the thousand elms of New Haven. 
 
 The Gascon thought his own thunder and lightning 
 superior to that of other countries, but I must run the ! 
 hazard of your incredulity as well, in preferring an 
 American moon. In Greece and Asia Minor, perhaps 
 (ragione she was first worshipped there), Cytheris 
 shines as brightly ; but the Ephesian of Connecticut 
 sees the flaws upon the pearly buckler of ihe goddess, ! 
 as does the habitant of no other clime. His eye lies j 
 close to the moon. There is no film, and no visible 
 beam in the clarified atmosphere. Her light is less ! 
 an emanation than a presence the difference between 
 the water in a thunder-shower and the depths of i 
 the sea. The moon struggles to you in England ; 
 she is all about you, like an element of the air, in 
 America. 
 
 The night was breathless, and the fragmented light 
 lay on the pavement in motionless stars, as clear and j 
 definite in their edges as if the " patines of bright gold ; 
 had dropped through the trees, and lay glittering be- i 
 neath my feet. There was a kind of darkness visible 
 in the streets, overshadowed as they were by the massy I 
 and leaf-burthened elms, and as 1 looked through the | 
 houses, standing in obscurity myself, the gardens ! 
 seemed full of daylight the unobstructed moon I 
 poured with such a flood of radiance on the flowery- 
 alleys within, and their gay troops of promenaders. 
 And as I distinguished one and another familiar friend, 
 with a form as familiar clinging to his side, and, with 
 drooping head and faltering step, listening or replying : 
 (I well knew), to the avowals of love and truth, ] mur 
 mured in thought to my own far away, but never-for 
 gotten Edith, a vow as deep ay, deeper than theirs, 
 as my spirit and hers had been sounded by the pro- , 
 founder plummet of sorrow and separation. How the 
 very moonlight how the stars of heaven how the 
 balm in the air, and the languor of summer night in 
 my indolent frame, seemed, in those hours of loneli 
 ness, ministers at the passionate altar-fires of my love! ; 
 Forsworn and treacherous Edith ! do I live to write ; 
 this for thine eye? 
 
 I linger upon these trifles of the past these hours I 
 for which I would have borrowed wings when, they 
 were here and, as then they seemed but the flowering 
 promise of happiness, they seem now like the fruit, 
 enjoyed and departed. Past and future bliss there 
 would seem to be in the world knows any one of 
 such a commodity in the present ? I have not seen 
 it in my travels. 
 
 III. 
 
 I was strolling on through one of the most fashion 
 able and romantic streets (when did these two words 
 ever before find themselves in a sentence together ?) 
 when a drawing-room with which I was very familiar, 
 lit, unlike most others on that bright night, by a sus 
 pended lamp, and crowded with company, attracted 
 my attention for a moment. Between the house and 
 the street there was a slight shrubbery shut in by a 
 white paling, just sufficient to give an air of seclusion 
 to the low windows without concealing them from the 
 passer-by, and, with the freedom of an old visiter, I 
 Walter Savage Landor. 
 
 unconsciously stopped, and looked unobserved into 
 the /ooms. It was the residence of a magnificent 
 girl, who was generally known as the Connecticut 
 beauty a singular instance in America of what is 
 called in England a fine woman. (With us that word 
 applies wholly to moral qualities.) She was as large 
 as Juno, and a great deal handsomer, if the painters 
 have done that much-snubbed goddess justice. She 
 was a "book of beauty" printed with virgin type; 
 and that, by the way, suggests to me what I have all 
 my life been trying to express that some women 
 seem wrought of new material altogether, apropos to 
 others who seem mortal n chavffes as if every limb 
 and feature had been used, and got out of shape in 
 some other person s service. The lady I speak of 
 looked new and her name was Isidora. 
 
 She was standing just under the lamp, with a single 
 rose in her hair, listening to a handsome coxcomb of 
 a classmate of mine with evident pleasure. She was 
 a great fool, (did I mention that before?) bnt weak, 
 and vacant, and innocent of an idea as she was, 
 Faustina was not more naturally majestic, nor Psyche 
 (soil elle en grande) more divinely and meaningly 
 graceful. Loveliness and fascination came to her as 
 dew and sunshine to the flowers, and she obeyed her 
 instinct, as they theirs, and was helplessly, and with 
 out design, the loveliest thing in nature. I do not 
 see, for my part, why all women should not be so. 
 They are as useful as flowers ; they perpetuate our 
 species. 
 
 I was looking at her with irresistible admiration, 
 when a figure stepped out from the shadow of a tree, 
 and my chum, monster, and ally, Job Smith (of whom 
 I have before spoken in these historical papers), laid 
 his hand on my shoulder. 
 
 " Do you know, my dear Job," I said, in a solemn 
 tone of admonition, "that blind John was imprisoned 
 for looking into people s windows?" 
 
 But Job was not in the vein for pleasantry. The 
 light fell on his face as I spoke to him, and a more 
 haggard, almost blasted expression of countenance, I 
 never saw even in a madhouse. I well knew he had 
 loved the splendid girl that stood unconsciously in our 
 sight, since his first year in college ; but that it would 
 ever so master him, or that he could link his mon 
 strous deformity, even in thought, with that radiant 
 vision of beauty, was a thing that I thought as prob 
 able as that hirsute Pan would tempt from her sphere 
 the moon that kissed Endymion. 
 
 " I have been standing here looking at Isidora, ever 
 since you left me," said he. (We had parted three 
 hours before, at twilight.) 
 
 " And why not go in, in the name of common 
 sense ?" 
 
 "Oh! God, Phil! with this demon in my heart ? 
 Can you see my face in this light ?" 
 
 It was too true, he would have frightened the 
 household gods from their pedestals. 
 
 "But what would you do, my dear Job? Why 
 come here to madden yourself with a sight you must 
 have known you would see. 
 
 "Phil?" 
 
 "What, my dear boy?" 
 
 "Will you do me a kindness?" 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 " Isidora would do anything you wished her to do. 
 
 "Um! with a reservation, my dear chum !" 
 
 " But she would give you the rose that is in her 
 hair." 
 
 " Without a doubt." 
 
 "And for me if you told her it was for me. 
 Would she not ?" 
 
 " Perhaps. But will that content you ?" 
 
 " It will soften my despair. I will never look on 
 her face more ; but I should like my last sight of her 
 to be associated with kindness ?" 
 
42 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 Poor Job! how true it is that "affection is a fire 
 which kindleth as well in the bramble as in the oak, 
 and catcheth hold where it first lighteth, not where it 
 may best burn." I do believe in my heart that the 
 soul in thee was designed for a presentable body thy 
 instincts were so invariably mistaken. When didst 
 thou ever think a thought, or stir hand or foot, that it 
 did not seem prompted, monster though thou wert, by 
 conscious good-looking-ness! What a lying simili 
 tude it was thai was written on every blank page in j 
 thy Lexicon: "Larks that mount in the air, build 
 their nests below in the earth ; and women that cast ! 
 their eyes upon kings, may place their hearts upon 
 vassals." Apelles must have been better looking than ; 
 Alexander, when Campaspe said that ! 
 
 As a general thing you may ask a friend freely to 
 break any three of the commandments in your set vice, \ 
 but you should hesitate to require of friendship a vio 
 lation of etiquette. 1 was in a round jacket and boots, ] 
 and it was a dress evening throughout New Haven. I 
 looked at my dust-covered feet, when Job asked me 
 to enter a soiree upon his errand, and passed my 
 thumb and finger around the edge of vny white jacket; 
 but I loved Job as the Arabian loves his camel, and for 
 the same reason, with a difference the imperishable 
 well-spring he carried in his heart through the desert 
 of the world, and which I well knew he would give up 
 his life to offer at need, as patiently as the animal 
 whose construction (inner and outer) he so remarkably 
 resembled. When I hesitated, and looked down at , 
 my boots, therefore, it was less to seek for an excuse i 
 to evade the sacrificing office required of me, than to 
 beat about in my unprepared mind for a preface to my \ 
 request. If she had been a woman of sense, I should 
 have had no difficulty ; but it requires caution and 
 skill to go out of the beaten track with a fool. 
 
 "Would not the rose do as well," said I, in despe 
 rate embarrassment, " if she does not know that it is 
 for you, my dear Job ?" It would have been very 
 easy to have asked for it for myself. 
 
 Job laid his hand upon his side, as if I could not 
 comprehend the pang my proposition gave him. 
 
 "Away prop, and down, scaffold," thought I, as I 
 gave my jacket a hitch, and entered the door. 
 
 "Mr. Slingsby," announced the servant. 
 
 " Mr. Slingsby ?" inquired the mistress of the house, 
 seeing only a white jacket in the clair obscur of the 
 hall. 
 
 "Mr. Slingsby!!!" cried out twenty voices in 
 amazement, as 1 stepped over the threshold into the 
 light. 
 
 It has happened since the days of Thebet Ben Kho- 
 rat, that scholars have gone mad, and my sanity was 
 evidently the uppermost concern in the minds of all 
 present. (I should observe, that in those days, I rel 
 ished rather of dandyism.) As 1 read the suspicion 
 in their minds, however, a thought struck me. I went 
 straight up to Miss Higgins, and, solto voce, asked her 
 to take a turn with me in the garden. 
 
 " Isidora," 1 said, " I have Jong known your supe 
 riority of mindT(when you want anything of a wo 
 man, praise her for that in which she is most deficient, 
 says La Bruyere); "and I have great occasion to rely 
 on it in the request I am about to make of you." 
 
 She opened her eyes, and sailed along the gravel- 
 walk with heightened majesty. I had not had occa 
 sion to pay her a compliment before since my fresh 
 man year. 
 
 " What is it, Mr. Slingsby ?" 
 
 "You know Smith my chum." 
 
 "Certainly." 
 
 " I have just come from him." 
 
 "Well!" 
 
 " He is gone mad !" 
 "Mad! Mr. Slingsby?" 
 "Stark and furious!" 
 
 " Gracious goodness !" 
 
 "And all for you !" 
 
 " For me ! !" 
 
 "For you !" I thought her great blue eyes would 
 have become what they call in America "sot," at this 
 astounding communication. 
 
 "Now, Miss Higgins," I continued, "pray listen; 
 my poor friend has such extraordinary muscular 
 strength, that seven men can not hold him." 
 
 " Gracious!" 
 
 "And he has broken away, and is here at your 
 door." 
 
 "Good gracious!" 
 
 " Don t be afraid ! He is as gentle as a kitten when 
 I am present. And now hear my request. He leaves 
 town to-morrow, as you welj know, not to return. I 
 shall take him home to Vermont with keepers. He 
 is bent upon one thing, and in that you must humor 
 him." 
 
 Miss Hiagins began to be alarmed. 
 
 " He has looked through the window and seen you 
 with a rose in your hair, and, despairing even in his 
 madness of your love, he says, that if you would give 
 him that rose, with a kind word, and a farewell, he 
 should be happy. You will do it, will yon not ?" 
 
 " Dear me ! I should be so afraid to speak to him!" 
 
 "But will you ? and I ll tell you what to say." 
 
 Miss Higgins gave a reluctant consent, and 1 passed 
 ten minutes in drilling her upon two sentences, which, 
 with her fine manner and sweet voice, really sounded 
 like the most interesting thing in the world. 1 left her 
 in the summer-house at the end of the garden, and 
 returned to Job. 
 
 "You have come without it!" said the despairing 
 lover, falling back against the tree. 
 
 " Miss Higgins compliments, and begs you will go 
 round by the gate, and meet her in ihe summer-house. 
 She prefers to manage her own affairs." 
 
 "Good God! are you mocking me?" 
 
 " I will accompany you, my dear boy." 
 
 There was a mixture of pathos and ludicrousness 
 in that scene which starts a tear and a laugh together, 
 whenever I recall it to my mind. The finest heart in 
 the world, the most generous, the most diffident of 
 itself, yet the most self sacrificing and delicate, was 
 at the altar of its devotion, offering its all in passionate 
 abandonment for a flower and a kind word: and she, 
 a goose in the guise of an angel, repeated a phrase of 
 kindness of which she could not comprehend the 
 meaning or the worth, but which was to be garnered 
 up by that half-broken heart, as a treasure that repaid 
 him for years of unrequited affection! She recited it 
 really very well. I stood at the latticed door, and in 
 terrupted" them the instant there was a pause in the 
 dialogue; and getting Job away as fast as possible, I 
 left Miss Hiirsiins with a promise of secrecy, and re 
 sumed my midnight stroll. 
 
 Apropos among Job s letters is a copy of verses, 
 which, spite of some little inconsistencies, I think 
 were written on this very occasion : 
 
 Nay smile not on me I have borne 
 
 Indifference nnd repulse from thee ; 
 With my heart sickening I have worn 
 
 A brow, as thine own cold one, free ; 
 My lip has been as guy as thine, 
 
 Ever thine own light mirth repeating, 
 Though, in this burning brain of mine, 
 
 A throb the while, like death, was beating 
 My spirit did not shrink or swerve 
 Thy look 1 thank thee . froze the nerve ! 
 
 But now again, as when 1 met 
 
 And loved thee in my happier days, 
 A sin le upon thy bright lip plays, 
 
 Aud kindness iu thine eye is set 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 43 
 
 And tliis I can not hoar ! 
 It melt* the manhood from my pride, 
 It br ngs 1110 closer to tliy side 
 
 Bewilders -chains me there 
 There where my dearest hope was crushed and died 
 
 Oh, if thou couldsl hut know the deep 
 
 Of Jove that hope has nursed for years, 
 How in th" heart s still chambers sleep 
 
 Its hoarded thoughts, its trembling fears- 
 Treasure that love has brooded o er* 
 Till life, than this, lias nothing more 
 
 And Mtdcbt thou but tis vain ! 
 I will not, can not lell thee, how 
 That hoard consumes its coffer now 
 
 I may not write of piin 
 That sickens in the heart, and maddens in the brain ! 
 
 Then smile not on me . pass me by 
 
 Coldly, and with a careless mien 
 Twill pierce my heart, and (ill mine eye, 
 But 1 shall be as I have been 
 
 Quiet in my despair ! 
 Tis better than the throbbing fever, 
 That else were in my brain for ever, 
 
 And easier to bear ! 
 I ll not upbraid the coldest look 
 The bitterest word tliou hast, in my sad pride I ll brook ! 
 
 If Job had rejoiced in a more euphonious nnme, I 
 shoul.I have bought a criticism in some review, and 
 started him (airly as a poet. But " Job Smith!" 
 " Poems by Job Smith . " It would never do ! If he 
 wrote like :i seraph, and printed the book at his own 
 expense, illustrated and illuminated, and half-a-crown 
 to each person that would take one away, the critics 
 would damn him all the same! Really, one s father 
 and mother have a great deal to answer for ! 
 
 But Job is a poet who should have lived in the 
 middle ages, no less for the convenience of the noni de 
 guerre, fashionable in those days, than because his 
 poetry, being chie-fly the mixed product of feeling and 
 courtesy, is particularly susceptible to ridicule. The 
 philosophical and iron wire poetry of our day stands 
 an attack like a fortification, and comes down upon 
 tlie besieger with reason and logic as good as his own. 
 But the more delicate offspring of tenderness and chiv 
 alry, intending no violence, and venturing out to sea 
 upon a rose-leaf, is destroyed and sunk beyond diving- 
 bells by half a breath of scorn. I would subscribe 
 liberally myself to a private press and a court of honor 
 in poetry critics, if admitted, to be dumb upon a 
 penalty. Will no Howard or Wilberforce act upon 
 this hint ? Poets now-a-days are more slaves and 
 felons than your African, or your culprit at the old 
 Bailey ! 
 
 I would go a great way. privately, to find a genuine 
 spark of chivalry, and Job lit his every-day lamp with 
 it. See what a redolence of old time there is in these 
 verses, which I copied long ago from a lady s album. 
 Yet, you may ridicule them if you like ! 
 
 .There is a story I have met, 
 
 Of a high angel, pure and true, 
 With eyes that tears had never wet, 
 
 And lips that pity never knew; 
 But ever on his throne he sate, 
 
 Will his white pinions proudly furled, 
 And, looking from his high estate, 
 
 Beheld the errors of a world : 
 Yet, never, as they rose to heaven, 
 Plead even for one to be forgiven. 
 
 God looked at last upon his pride, 
 And bade him fold his shining wing, 
 
 An;l o er .1 land where tempters bide, 
 He made the heartless angel king. 
 
 Tis lovely reading in the tale, 
 _ The glorious spells they tried on him, 
 Ere grew his heavenly birth-star pale, 
 Ere grew his frontlet jewel dim- 
 
 Cups of such rare and ravishing wines 
 
 As even a god might drink and bless, 
 Gems from tmsearched and central mines, 
 
 Whose light than heaven s was scarcely less 
 Gold of a sheen like crystal spars, 
 
 And silver whiter than the moon s, 
 And music like the songs of stars, 
 
 And perfume like a thousand Junes, 
 And breezes, soft as heaven s own air 
 
 Like fingers playing in his hair ! 
 He shut his eyes he closed his ears 
 
 H" bade them, in God s name, begone ! 
 And, through the yet eternal years, 
 
 Had stood, the tried and sinlrss one: 
 But there was yet one untried spell 
 A woman tempted and he fell ! 
 
 And I if semblance I may find 
 
 Between such glorious sphere and mine 
 Am not to the high honor blind, 
 
 Ot filling this fair page of thine 
 Writing my unheard n .me among 
 Sages and sires and men of song ; 
 
 Hut honor, though the best eVr given, 
 And glory, though it were a king s, 
 
 And power, though loving it like heaven, 
 Were, to my seeming, lesser things, 
 
 And less temptation, far, to me / 
 
 Than half a hope of serving thee I 
 
 am mounted upon my hobby now, dear reader ; 
 for Job Smith, though as hideous an idol as ever was 
 worshipped on the Indus, was still my idol. Here is 
 a little touch of his quality : 
 
 I look upon the fadin? flowers 
 
 Thou giv st me, 1 idy, in thy mirth, 
 And mourn, that, with" the perishing hours 
 
 Such fair things perish from the earth 
 For thus, I know, the moment s feeling 
 
 Its own light web of life unweaves, 
 The deepest trace from memory stealing, 
 
 Like perfume from these dying leaves 
 The thought that gave it, anil the flower, 
 Alike the creatures of an hour. 
 
 And thus it better were, perhaps, 
 
 For feel : ng is the nurse of pain, 
 And joys that linger in their laj se, 
 
 Must die at last, and so are vain ! 
 Could I revive these faded flowers, 
 
 Could I call back departed bliss, 
 I would not, though this world of ours 
 
 Were ten times brighter than it is ! 
 They must and let them pass away ! 
 We are forgotten even as they ! 
 
 I think I must give Edith another reprieve. I have 
 no idea why I have digressed this time from the story 
 
 I which (you may see by the motto at the beginning of 
 the paper) I have not yet told. I can conceive easily 
 
 I how people, who have nothing to do, betake them- 
 
 || selves to autobiography it is so pleasant rambling 
 
 I about over the past, and regathering only the flowers. 
 
 j Why should pain and mortification he unsepultured ? 
 
 ,| The world is no wiser for these written experiences. 
 
 | " The best book." said Southey, "does but little good 
 to the world, and much harm to the author." I shall 
 deliberate whether to enlighten the world as to Edith s 
 metempsychosis, or no. 
 
 PART IV. 
 
 SCENKRY AND A SCENE. 
 
 " Truth is no doctoresse ; she takes no degrees at Paris or Oxford 
 among great clerks, disputants, subtle Aristotles, men nodnxi inge- 
 nii, nb e to take J.ully by the chin ; but oftenlimes. to such a one 
 as myself, an idiota or common person, no preat things, rnelancho i- 
 zing in woods where water* are, quiet places by livers, rmintains 
 
 how best to delectate and refresh his myn 
 ture, her pleasaunt scenes, woods, waterf 
 goddess herself. Truth has appeared wiih 
 sparkhn? countenance, so as ye may not be able lightly to resist 
 
 continually with na 
 lls : on a sudden the 
 hining light and a 
 
44 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 " Ever thus 
 
 Drop from us treasures one by one : 
 
 They who have been from youth with us, 
 Whose every look, whose every tone, 
 
 Is linked to us like leaves to flowers 
 
 They who have shared our pleasant hours 
 Whose voices, so familiar grown. 
 They almost seem to us our own 
 
 The echoes of each breath of ours 
 They who have ever been our pride, 
 
 Yet in their hours of triumph dearest 
 They whom we must have known and tried, 
 
 And loved the most when tried the nearest 
 They pass from us, like stars that wane, 
 
 The brightest still before, 
 Or gold links broken from a chain 
 
 That can be joined no more !" 
 
 JOB SMITH and myself were on the return from Ni 
 agara. It was in the slumberous and leafy midst of 
 Tune. Lake Erie had lain with a silver glaze upon 
 its bosom for days; the ragged trees upon its green 
 shore dropping their branches into the stirless water, 
 as if it were some rigid imitation the lake glass, and 
 the leaves emerald ; "the sky was of an April blue, as 
 if a night-rain had washed out its iniikiness, till you 
 could see through its clarified depths to the gates of 
 heaven ; and yet breathless and sunny as was the 
 face of the earth, there was a nerve and a vitality in 
 the air that exacted of every pulse its full compass 
 searched every pore for its capacity of the joy of ex 
 istence. 
 
 No one can conceive, who has not had his imagina 
 tion stretched at the foot of Niagara, or in the Titanic 
 solitudes of rhe west, the vastness of the unbroken 
 phases of nature ; where every tree looks a king, and 
 every flower a marvel of glorious form and color 
 where the rocks are rent every one as by the " tenth" 
 thunderbolt and lake, mountain, or river, ravine or 
 waterfall, cave or eagle s nest, whatever it maybe that 
 feeds the eye or the fancy, is as the elements have 
 shaped and left it where the sculpture, and the paint 
 ing, and the poetry, and the wonderful alchymy of 
 nature, go on under the naked eye of the Almighty, 
 and by his own visible and uninterrupted hand, and 
 where the music of nature, from the anthem of the 
 torrent and storm, broken only by the scream of the 
 vulture, to the trill of the rivulet with its accompani 
 ment of singing birds and winds, is for ever ringing its 
 changes, as if for the stars to hear in such scenes, I 
 say, and in such scenes only, is the imagination over 
 tasked or stretched to the capacity of a seraph s ; and 
 while common minds sink beneath them to the mere 
 inanition of their animal senses, the loftier spirit takes 
 their color and stature, and outgrows the common and 
 pitiful standards of the world. Cooper and Leather- 
 stocking thus became what they are the one a high- 
 priest of imagination and poetry, and the other a sim 
 ple-hearted but mere creature of instinct; and Cooper 
 is no more a living man, liable to the common laws of 
 human nature, than Leatherstocking a true and life 
 like transcript of the more common effect of those 
 overpowering solitudes on the character. 
 
 We got on board the canal-boat at noon, and Job 
 and myself, seated on the well-cushioned seats, with 
 the blinds half-turned to give us the prospect and ex 
 clude the sun, sat disputing in our usual amicable way. 
 He was the only man I ever knew with whom I could 
 argue without losing my temper ; and the reason was, 
 that I always had the last word, and thought myself 
 victorious. 
 
 " We are about to return into the bosom of society, 
 my dear Job," said I, " looking with unctuous good 
 nature on the well-shaped boot I had put on for the 
 first time in a month thai morning. (It is an unsen 
 timental fact that hob-nailed shoes are indispensable on 
 the most poetical spots of earth.) 
 
 " Yes," said Job ; " but how superior is the society 
 we leave behind ! Niagara and Erie ! What in your 
 crowded city is comparable to these ?" 
 
 " Nothing, for size ! but for society you will think 
 
 me a pagan, dear chum but, on my honor, straight 
 from Niagara as I come, I feel a most dissatisfied yearn 
 ing for the society of Miss Popkins " 
 " Oh, Phil !" 
 " On my honor !" 
 
 " You, who were in such raptures at the falls !" 
 "And real ones but I wanted a woman at my el 
 bow to listen to them. Do you know, Job, I have 
 made up my mind on a great principle since we have 
 been on our travels ? Have you observed that 1 was 
 pensive ?" 
 
 " Not particularly but what is your principle ?" 
 " That a man is a much more interesting object than 
 a mountain." 
 
 "A man ! did you say ?" 
 " Yes but I meant a woman !" 
 " I don t think so." 
 
 " I do ! and I judge by myself. When did I ever 
 see wonder of nature tree, sunset, waterfall, rapid, 
 lake, or river that I would not rather have been talk 
 ing to a woman the while ? Do you remember the 
 three days we were tramping through the forest with 
 out seeing the sun, as if we had been in the endless 
 aisle of a cathedral ? Do you remember the long morn 
 ing when we lay on the moss at the foot of Niagara, 
 and it was a divine luxury only 10 breathe ? Do you 
 jj remember the lunar rainbows at midnight on Goat 
 || island ? Do you remember the ten thousand glorious 
 moments we have enjoyed between weather and scene 
 ry since the bursting of these summer leaves ? Do 
 you ?" 
 
 " Certarnlv, my dear boy !" 
 
 " Well, then, much as i iove nature and you, there 
 has not been an hour since we packed our knapsacks, 
 that, if I coul 1 have distilled a charming girl out of a 
 mixture of you and any mountain, river, or rock, that 
 I have seen, I would not have flung you, without re 
 morse, into any witch s caldron that was large enough, 
 and would boil at my bidding." 
 " Monster !" 
 
 "And I believe I should have the same feelings in 
 Italy or Greece, or wherever people go into raptures 
 with things you can neither eat nor make love to." 
 
 " Would not even the Venus fill your fancy for a 
 day?" 
 
 "An hour, perhaps, it might ; for I should be study 
 ing, in its cold Parian proportions, the warm structure 
 of some living Musidora but I should soon tire of it, 
 and long for my lunch or my love ; and I give you my 
 honor I would not lose the three meals of a single day 
 to see Santa Croce and St. Peter s." 
 "Both?" 
 "Both." 
 
 Job disdained to argue against such a want of sen 
 timental principle, and pulling up the blind, he fixed 
 bis eyes on the slowly-gliding panorama of rock and 
 brest, and I mounted for a promenade upon the deck. 
 Mephistopheles could hardly have found a more 
 striking amusement for Faust than the passage of three 
 lundred miles in the canal from Lake Erie to the 
 Hudson. As I walked up and down the deck of the 
 lacket-boat. I thought to myself, that if it were not 
 or thoughts of things that come more home to one s 
 business and bosom" (particularly " bosom"), I could 
 >e content to retake my berth at Schenectady, and re- 
 :urn to Buffalo for amusement. The Erie canal-boat 
 s a long and very pretty drawing-room afloat. It has 
 i library, sofas, a tolerable cook, curtains or Venetian 
 )linds, a civil captain, and no smell of steam or per 
 ceptible motion. It is drawn generally by three horses 
 it a fair trot, and gets you through about a hundred 
 niles a day, as softly as if you were witched over the 
 ground by Puck and Mustard-seed. The company 
 say fifty people) is such as pleases Heaven ; though I 
 nust say (with my eye all along the shore, collecting 
 he various dear friends I have made and left on that 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 45 
 
 long canal) there are few highways on which you will 
 meet so many lovely and loving fellow-passengers. 
 On this occasion my star was bankrupt Job Smith 
 being my only civilized companion and I was left to 
 the unsatisfactory society of my own thoughts and the 
 scenery. 
 
 Discontented as I may seem to have been, I remem 
 ber, through eight or ten years of stirring and thickly- 
 sown manhood, every moment of that lonely evening. 
 I remember the progression of the sunset, from the 
 lengthening shadows and the first gold upon the clouds, 
 to the deepening twilight and the new-sprung star 
 hung over the wilderness. And 1 remember what I 
 am going to describe a twilight anthem in the forest 
 as you remember an air of Rossini s, or a transition 
 in the half-fiendish, half-heavenly creations of Meyer 
 beer. I thought time dragged heavily then, but I 
 wish I had as light a heart and could feel as vividly 
 now ! 
 
 The Erie canal is cut a hundred or two miles 
 through the heart of the primeval wilderness of 
 America, and the boat was gliding on silently and 
 swiftly, and never sailed a lost cloud through the 
 abv*-, of space on a course more apparently new and 
 untrodden. The luxuriant soil had sent up a rank j 
 gtass that covered the horse-path like velvet; the 
 Erie water was clear as a brook in the winding canal ; 
 the old shafts of the gigantic forest spurred into the j 
 sky by thousands, and the yet unscared eagle swung j 
 off from the dead branch of the pine, and skimmed the 
 tree-tops for another perch, as if he had grown to 
 believe that gliding spectre a harmless phenomenon 
 of nature. The horses drew steadily and unheard at 
 the end of the long line ; the steersman stood mo- j 
 tionless at the tiller, and I lay on a heap of baggage j 
 in the prow, attentive to the slightest breathing of na- j 
 ttire, but thinking, with an ache at my heart, of Edith < 
 Linsey, to whose feet (did I mention it ?) I was has- j 
 tening with a lover s proper impatience. I might as ! 
 well have taken another turn in my " fool s paradise." j 
 
 The gold of the sunset had glided up the dark pine i 
 tops and disappeared, like a ring taken slowly from an j 
 Ethiop s finger; the whip-poor-will had chanted the 
 first st;ive of his lament; the bat was abroad, and the : 
 screech-owl, like all bad singers, commenced without ! 
 waiting to be importuned, though we were listening ! 
 for the nightingale. The air, as I said before, had 
 been all day breathless; but as the first chill of eve 
 ning displaced the warm atmosphere of the departed 
 sun, a slight breeze crisped the mirrored bosom of the 
 canal, and then commenced the night anthem of the 
 forest, audible, I would fain believe, in its soothing 
 changes, by the dead tribes whose bones whiten amid 
 the perishing leaves. First, whisperingly yet articu- j 
 lately, the suspended and wavering foliage of the birch j 
 was touched by the many-fingered wind, and, like a 
 faint prelude, the silver-lined leaves rustled in the low 
 branches; and, with a moment s pause, when you 
 could hear the moving of the vulture s claws upon 
 the bark, as he turned to get his breast to the wind, 
 the increasing breeze swept into the pine-tops, and 
 drew forth from their fringe-like and myriad tassels a 
 low monotone like the refrain of a far-off dirge; and 
 still as it murmured (seeming to you sometimes like 
 the confused and heart-broken responses of the peni 
 tents on a cathedral floor), the blast strengthened and 
 filled, and the rigid leaves of the oak, and the swaying 
 fans and chalices of the magnolia, and the rich cups 
 of the tulip-trees, stirred and answered with their dif 
 ferent voices like many-toned harps ; and when the 
 wind was fully abroad, and every moving thing on the 
 breast of the earth was roused from its daylight repose, 
 the irregular and capricious blast, like a player on an 
 organ of a thousand stops, lulled and strengthened by 
 turns, and from the hiss in the rank grass, low as the 
 whisper of fairies, to the thunder of the impinging 
 
 and groaning branches of the larch and the fir, the 
 anthem went ceaselessly through its changes, and the 
 harmony (though the owl broke in with his scream, 
 and though the over-blown monarch of the wood 
 came crashing to the earth), was still perfect and with 
 out ajar. It is strange that there is no sound of na 
 ture out of tune. The roar of the waterfall comes 
 into this anthem of the forest like an accompaniment 
 of bassoons, and the occasional bark of the wolf, or 
 the scream of a night-bird, or even the deep-throated 
 croak of the frog, is no more discordant than the out 
 burst of an octave flute above the even melody of an 
 orchestra ; and it is surprising how the large rain 
 drops, pattering on the leaves, and the small voice of 
 the nightingale (singing, like nothing but himself, 
 sweetest in the darkness) seems an intensitive and a 
 low burthen to the general anthem of the earth as 
 it were, a single voice among instruments. 
 
 I had what Wordsworth calls a " couchant ear" in 
 my youth, and my story will wait, dear reader, while 
 I tell you of another harmony that I learned to love 
 in the wilderness. 
 
 There will come sometimes in the spring say in 
 May, or whenever the snow-drops and sulphur butter 
 flies are tempted out by the first timorous sunshine 
 there will come, I say, in that yearning and youth- 
 renewing season, a warm shower at noon. Our tent 
 shall be pitched on the skirts of a forest of young 
 pines, and the evergreen foliage, jf foliage it may be 
 called, shall be a daily refreshment to our eye while 
 watching, with the west wind upon our cheeks, the 
 unclothed branches of the elm. The rain descends 
 softly and warm ; but with the sunset the clouds break 
 away, and it grows suddenly cold enough to freeze. 
 The next morning you shall come out with me to a 
 hill-side looking upon (he south, and .lie down wit!, 
 your ear to the earth. The pine tassels hold in every 
 four of their fine fingers a drop of rain frozen like a 
 pearl in a long ear-ting, sustained in their loose grasp 
 by the rigidity of the cold. The sun grows warm at 
 ten, and the slight green fingers begin to relax and 
 yield, and by eleven they are all drooping their icy 
 pearls upon the dead leaves with a murmur through 
 the forest like the swarming of the bees of Hybla. 
 There is not much variety in its music, but it is a 
 pleasant monotone for thought, and if you have a 
 restless fever in your boSom (as I had, when I learned 
 to love it, for the travel which has corrupted the heart 
 and the ear that it soothed and satisfied then) you may 
 lie down with a crooked root under your head in the 
 skirts of the forest, and thank Heaven for an anodyne 
 to care. And it is better than the voice of your friend, 
 or the song of your lady-love, for it exacts no grati 
 tude, and will not desert you ere the echo dies upon 
 the wind. 
 
 Oh, how many of these harmonies there are ! how 
 many that we hear, and how many that are " too 
 constant to be heard!" I could go back to my youth, 
 now, with this thread of recollection, and unsepulture 
 a hoard of simple and long-buried joys that would 
 bring the blush upon my cheek to think how my senses 
 ate dulled since such things could give me pleasure! 
 Is there no " well of Kanathos" for renewing the 
 youth of the soul ? no St. Hilary s cradle ? no elixir 
 to cast the slough of heart-sickening and heart-tar 
 nishing custom? Find me an alchymy for that, with 
 your alembic and crucible, and you may resolve t 
 dross again your philosopher s stone ! 
 
 II. 
 
 Everybody who makes the passage of the Erie 
 canal, stops at the half-way town of Utica, to visit a 
 wonder of nature fourteen miles to the west of it, called 
 Trenton Falls. It would be becoming in me, before 
 mentioning the falls, however, to sing the praises of 
 
46 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 Utica and its twenty thousand inhabitants having 
 received much hospitality from the worthy burghers, 
 and philandered up and down their well-flagged trot- 
 toir very much to my private satisfaction. I should 
 scorn any man s judgment who should attempt to con 
 vince me that the Erie water, which comes down the 
 canal a hundred and fifty miles, and passes through 
 the market-place of that pleasant town, has not com 
 municated to the hearts of its citizens the expansion 
 and depth of the parent lake from which it is drawn. 
 1 have a theory on that subject with which I intend to 
 surprise the world whenever politics and Mr. Bulwer 
 draw less engrossingly on its attention. Will any one 
 tell me that the dark eyes I knew there, and whose 
 like for softness and meaning I have inquired for in 
 vain through Italy, and the voice that accompanied 
 their gaze (that Pasta, in her divinest out-gush of 
 melody and soul, alone recalls to me) that these, and 
 the noble heart, and high mind, and even the genius, 
 that were other gifts of the same marvel among wo 
 men that these were born of common parentage, and 
 nursed by the air of a demi-metropolis ? We were 
 but the kindest of friends, that bright creature and my 
 self, and I may say, without charging myself with the 
 blindness of love, that I believe in my heart she was 
 the foster-child of the water spirits on whose wander 
 ing streamlet she lived that the thousand odors that 
 swept down from the wilderness upon Lake Erie, and 
 the unseen but wild and innumerable influences of 
 nature, or whatever you call that which makes the 
 Indian a believer iti the Great Spirit that these 
 came down with those clear waters, ministering to the 
 mind and watching over the budding beauty of this 
 noble and most high-hearted woman! If you do not 
 believe it, 1 should like you to tell me how else such 
 a creature was "raised." as they phrase it in Virginia. 
 I shall hold to my theory till you furnish me with a 
 more reasonable. 
 
 We heard at the hotel that there were several large 
 parties at Trenton Falls, and with an abridgment of 
 
 hood of scenery, he was off till Heaven knew when, 
 and as I had that delicacy for his feelings never to 
 dine without him, you may imagine the necessity of 
 my hungry manreuvre. 
 
 We dined upon the trout of the glorious stream we 
 had come to see ; and as our host s eldest daughter 
 waited upon us (recorded in Job s journal, in my pos 
 session at this moment, as " the most comely and gra 
 cious virgin" he had seen in his travels), we felt bound 
 to adapt our conversation to the purity of her mind, 
 and discussed only the philosophical point, whether 
 the beauty of the stream could be tasted in the flavor 
 of the fish Job for it, I against it. The argument 
 was only interrupted by the entrance of an apple- 
 pudding, so hot that our tongues were fully occupied 
 in removing it from place to place as the mouth felt 
 its heat inconvenient, and then, being in a country 
 of liberty and equality, and the damsel in waiting, as 
 Job smilingly remarked, as much a lady as the Presi 
 dent s wife, he requested permission to propose her 
 health in a cool tumbler of cider, and we adjourned to 
 the moonlight. 
 
 III. 
 
 Ten or fifteen years ago, the existence of Trenton 
 Falls was not known. It was discovered, like Paestum, 
 by a wandering artist, when there was a town of len 
 thousand inhabitants, a canal, a theatre, a liberty- 
 pole, and forty churches, within fourteen miles of it. 
 It may be mentioned to the credit of the Americans, 
 that in the "hardness" of character of which travel- 
 j lers complain, there is the soft trait of a passion for 
 ! scenery ; and before the fact of its discovery had got 
 [well into the "Cahawba Democrat" and "Go-the- 
 i whole-hog-Courier," there was a splendid wooden 
 hotel on the edge of the precipice, with a French 
 cook, soda-water, and olives, and a law was passed by 
 the Kentucky Travellers Club, requiring a hanging- 
 bird s nest from the trees "frowning down the awful 
 
 our toilets in our pockets, Job and I galloped out of ! abysm," (so expressed in the regulation), as a qual- 
 Utica about four o clock of as bright a summer s after- ; ification for membership. Thenceforward to the pres- 
 noon as was ever promised in the almanac. We drew j ent time it has been a place of fashionable resort 
 rein a mile or two out of town, and dawdled along the |! during the summer solstice, and the pine woods, in 
 wild road more leisurely, Job s Green mountain pro- j which the hotel stands, being impervious to the sun, 
 portions fitting to the saddle something in the manner j! it is prescribed by oculists for gentlemen and ladies 
 and relative fitness of a skeleton on a poodle. By the j with weak eyes. If the luxury of corn-cutters had 
 same token he rode safely, the looseness of his bones 
 accommodating itself with singular facility to the 
 irregularities in the pace of the surprised animal be 
 neath him. 
 
 I dislike to pass over the minutest detail of a period 
 of my life that will be rather interesting in my biogra 
 phy (it is my intention to be famous enough to merit 
 that distinction, and I would recommend to my friends 
 to be noting my " little peculiarities"), and with this 
 posthumous benevolence in my heart, I simply record, 
 that our conversation on the road turned upon Edith 
 Linsey at this time the lady of my constant love for 
 whose sake and at whose bidding I was just conclu 
 ding (with success I presumed) a probation of three 
 years of absence, silence, hard study, and rigid morals, 
 and upon whose parting promise (God forgive her!) I 
 had built my uttermost gleaning and sand of earthly 
 hope and desire. I tell you in the tail of this mock 
 ing paragraph, dear reader, that the bend of the rain 
 bow spans not the earth more perfectly than did the 
 love of that woman my hopes of future bliss; and the 
 ephemeral arc does not sooner melt into the clouds 
 but 1 am anticipating my story. 
 
 Job s extraordinary appearance, as he extricated 
 himself from his horse, usually attracted the entire at 
 tention of the by-standers at a strange inn, and under 
 cover of this, T usually contrived to get into the house 
 and commit him by ordering the dinner as soon as it i 
 could be got ready. Else, if it was in the neighbor- I 
 
 penetrated to the United States, it might be prescribed 
 for tender feet as well the soft floor of pine-tassels 
 spread under the grassless woods, being considered 
 an improvement upon Turkey carpet? and green 
 sward. 
 
 Trenton Falls is rather a misnomer. I scarcely 
 know what you would call it. but the wonder of na 
 ture which bears the name is a tremendous torrent, 
 whose bed, for several miles, is sunk fathoms deep 
 into the earth a roaring and dashing stream, so far 
 I below the surface of the forest in which it is lost, that 
 I you would think, as you come suddenly upon the 
 edge of its long precipice, that it was a river in some 
 inner world (coiled within ours, as we in the outer 
 circle of the firmament), and laid open by some 
 Titanic throe that had cracked clear asunder the crust 
 of this "shallow earth." The idea is rather assisted 
 if you happen to see below you, on its abysmal shore, 
 a party of adventurous travellers; for, at that vast 
 depth, and in contrast with the gigantic trees and 
 rocks, the same number of well-shaped pismires, 
 dressed in the last fashions, and philandering upon 
 your parlor floor, would be about of their apparent size 
 and distinctness. 
 
 They showed me at Eleusis the well by which 
 Proserpine ascends to the regions of day on her an 
 nual visit to the plains of Thessaly but with the 
 genius loci at my elbow in the shape of a Greek girl 
 as lovely as Phryne, my memory reverted to the bared 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 axle of the earth in the bed of this American river, 
 and 1 was persuaded (looking the while at the fero- 
 tii^re of gold sequins on the Phidian forehead of my 
 Katinka) that supposing Hade.s in the centre of the 
 earth, you are nearer to it by some fathoms at Tren 
 ton. 1 confess 1 have had, since my first descent into 
 those depths, an uncomfortable doubt of the solidity 
 of the globe how the dense it can hold together with 
 such a crack in its bottom ! 
 
 Jt was a night to play Endymion, or do any Tom 
 foolery that could be l.iid to the charge of the moon, 
 for a more omnipresent and radiant atmosphere of 
 moonlight never sprinkled the wilderness with silver. 
 Ic w;is a night in which to wish it might never be 
 day again a night to be enamored of the stars, and 
 bid God bless them like human creatures on their 
 bright journey a night to love in, to dissolve in to 
 do everything but what night is made for sleep ! 
 Oh heaven ! when I think how precious is life in such 
 moments ; how the aroma the celestial bloom and 
 flower of the soul the yearning and fast-perishing 
 enthusiasm of youth waste ihernselvetin ihe solitude 
 of uch nights on the senseless and unanswering air ; 
 vviien 1 wander alone, unloving and unloved, beneath 
 influences that could inspire me with the elevation of 
 a seraph, were 1 at the ear of a human creature that 
 could summon forth and measure my limitless capaci 
 ty of devotion when 1 think this, and feel this, and 
 so waste my existence in vain yearnings I could ex 
 tinguish the divine spark within me like a lamp on an 
 unvisited shrine, and thank Heaven for an assimila 
 tion to the animals I walk among ! And that is the 
 substance of a speech 1 made to Job as a sequitur of a 
 well-meant remark of his own. that " it was a pity 
 Edith Linsey was not there." He took the clause 
 about the animals" to himself, and I made an apology 
 for the same a year after. We sometimes give our 
 friends, quite innocently, such terrible knocks in our 
 rhapsodies ! 
 
 Most people talk of the sublimity of Trenton, but I 
 have haunted it by the week together for its mere 
 loveliness. The river, in the heart of that fearful 
 chasm, is the most varied and beautiful assemblage of 
 the thousand forms and shapes of running water that 
 I know in the world. The soil and the deep-striking 
 roots of the forest terminate far above von, looking like 
 a black rim on the enclosing precipices ; the bed of 
 the river and its sky-sustaining walls are of solid rock, 
 and, with the tremendous descent of the stream 
 forming for miles one continuous succession of falls 
 and rapids the channel is worn into curves and cavi 
 ties which throw the clear waters into forms of in 
 conceivable brilliancy and variety. It is a sort of 
 half twilight below, with heie and there a long beam 
 of sunshine reaching down to kiss the lip of an eddy 
 or form a rainbow over a fall, and the reverbemting 
 and changing echoes: 
 
 " Like a ring of bells whose sound the wind still alters," 
 
 maintain a constant and most soothing music, varying 
 at every step with the varying phase of the current. 
 Cascades of from twenty to thirty feet, over which 
 the river flies with a single and hurrying leap (not a 
 drop missing from the glassy and bending sheet,) oc 
 cur frequenily as you ascend; and it is from these 
 that the place takes its name. Hut the falls, though 
 beautiful, are only peculiar from the dazzling and un 
 equalled rapidity with which the waters come to the 
 leap. If it were not for the leaf which drops waver 
 ing down into the abysm from trees apparently painted 
 on the sky, and which is caught away by the flashing 
 current as if the lightning had suddenly crossed it, 
 you would think the vault of the steadfast heavens a 
 flyins element as soon. The spot in that long gulf of 
 beauty that 1 best remember is a smooth descent ofsome 
 hundred yards, where the river iu full and undivided 
 
 I volume skims over a plane as polished as a table of 
 
 I scagliola, looking, in its invisible speed, like one mir- 
 
 j ror of gleaming but motionless crystal. Just above, 
 
 I there is a sudden turn in the glen which sends the 
 
 w.iter like a catapult against the opposite angle of the 
 
 rock, and, in the action of years, it lias worn out a 
 
 cavern of unknown depth, into which the whole 
 
 j mass of the river plunges with the abandonment of a 
 
 flying fiend into hell, and, reappearing like the anel 
 
 that has pursued him, glides swiftly but with divine 
 
 serenity on its way. (I am indebted for that last 
 
 figure to Job, who travelled with a Milton in his 
 
 pocket, and had a natural redolence of "Paradise 
 
 Lost" in his conversation.) 
 
 Much as 1 detest water in small quantities (to drink), 
 I have a hydromania in the way of lakes, rivers, and 
 waterfalls. It is, by much, the belle in the family of 
 the elements. Earth is never tolerable unless dis 
 guised in green. Air is so thin as only to be visible 
 when she borrows drapery of water ; and Fire is so 
 staringly bright as to be unpleasant to the eyesight ; 
 but water! soil, pure, graceful water! there is no 
 shape into which you can throw her that she does not 
 seem lovelier than before. She can borrow nothing 
 of her sisters. Earth lias no jewels in her lap so brif- 
 liant as her own spray pearls and emeralds; Fire has 
 no rubies like what she steals from the sunset ; Air 
 has no robes like the grace of her fine-woven and ever- 
 changing drapery of silver. A health (in wine !) to 
 WATER ! 
 
 Who is there that did not love some stream in his 
 youth ] Who is there in whose vision of the past 
 there does not sparkle up, from every picture of child 
 hood, a spring or a rivulent woven through the darken 
 ed and torn woof of first affections like a thread of 
 unchanged silver 1 How do you interpret the in 
 stinctive yearning with which you search for the 
 river-side or the fountain in every scene of nature-*", 
 the clinging unaware to the river s course when a 
 truant iu the fields in June the dull void you find iu 
 every landscape of which it is not the ornament and 
 the centre ] For myself, I hold with the Greek : 
 " Water is the first principle of all things : we were 
 made from it and we shall be resolved into it."* 
 
 The awkward thing in all story-telling is transition. 
 Invention you do not need if you have experience ; 
 for fact is stranger than fiction. A beginning in these 
 days of startling abruptness is as simple as open your 
 mouth ; and when you have once begun you can end 
 whenever you like, arid leave the sequel to the reader s 
 imagination: but the hinges of a story the turning 
 gracefully back from a digression (it is easy to turn 
 into one) is the pas qui coule. My education on that 
 point was neglected. 
 
 It was, as I said before, a moonlight night, and 
 Job and myself having, like Sir Fabian, no mind 
 to sleep," followed the fashion and the rest of the com 
 pany at,, the inn, and strolled down to see the falls l/y 
 moonlight. I had been there before, and I took Job 
 straight to the spot in the bed of the river which I 
 have described above as my favorite, and, after watch 
 ing it for a few minutes, we turned back to a dark 
 cleft in the rock which afforded a rude seat, and sat 
 musing in silence. 
 
 Several parties had strolled past without seeing us 
 in our recess, when two female figures, with their 
 arms around each other s waists, sauntered slowly 
 around the julting rock below, and approached us, 
 eagerly engaged in conversation. They came on to 
 the very edge of the shadow which enveloped us, 
 and turned to look back at the scene. As the head 
 nearest me was raised to the light, I started half to 
 * The Ionic philosophy, supported by Thales. 
 
48 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 my feet: it was Ediih ! la the same instant her 
 voice of music broke on my ear, and an irresistible 
 impulse to listen unobserved drew me down again 
 upon my seat, and Job, with a similar instinct, laid his 
 hand on my arm. 
 
 "It was his favorite spot!" said Edith. (We had 
 been at Trenton together years before.) "I stood here 
 with him, and I wish he stood here now, that I might 
 tell him what my hand hesitates to write." 
 
 " Poor Philip !" said her companion, whom by the 
 voice I recognised as the youngest of the Flemings, 
 "I can not conceive how you can resolve so coldly to 
 bieak his heart." 
 
 1 felt a dagger entering my bosom, but still I listen 
 ed. Edith went on. 
 
 " Why, I will tell you, my dear little innocent. I 
 loved Pljilip Slingsby when I thought I was going to 
 die. It was then a fitting attachment, for I never 
 thought to need, of the goods of this world, more 
 than a sick chamber and a nurse ; and Phil wns kind- 
 hearted and devoted to me, and I lived at home. 
 But, with returned health, a thousand ambitious de 
 sires have sprung up in my heart, and I find myself 
 admired by whom I will, and every day growing 
 more selfish and less poetical. Philip is poor, and 
 love in a cottage, though very well for vou if you 
 like it, would never do for me. I should like him 
 very well for a friend, for he is gentlemanlike and 
 devoted, but, with my ideas, I should only make him 
 miserable, and so I think I had better put him out of 
 misery at once don t you think ? 
 
 A half-smothered groan of anguish escaped my lips ; 
 but it was lost in the roar of the waters, and Edith s 
 voice, as she walked on, lessened and became inaudi 
 ble to my ear. As her figure was lost in the shadow 
 of the rocks beyond, I threw myself on the bosom of 
 my friend, and wept in the unutterable agony of a 
 ^crushed heart. I know not how that night was spent, 
 but I awoke at noon of the next day, in my bed, with 
 Job s hand clasped tenderly in my own. 
 
 V. 
 
 I kept my tryst. I was to meet Edith Linsey at 
 Saratoga in July the last month of the probation by 
 which I had won a right to her love. I had not spo 
 ken to her, or written, or seen her (save, unknown to 
 Ler, in the moment I have described), in the three 
 long years to which my constancy was devoted. I 
 had gained the usual meed of industry in my profes 
 sion, and was admitted to its practice. I was on the 
 threshold of manhood; and she had promised, before 
 heaven, here to give me heart and hand. 
 
 I had parted from her at twelve on that night three 
 years, and, as the clock struck, I stood again by her 
 side in the crowded ballroom of Saratoga. 
 
 " Good God ! Mr. Slingsby !" she exclaimed, as I 
 put out my hand. 
 
 " Am I so changed that you do not know me, Miss 
 Linsey ?" I asked, as she still looked with a wonder 
 ing gaze into my face pressing my hand, however, 
 with real warmth, and evidently under the control, 
 for the moment, of the feelings with which we had 
 parted. 
 
 " Changed, indeed ! Why, you have studied your 
 self to a skeleton ! My dear Philip, you are ill !" 
 
 I was but it was only for a moment. I asked her 
 hand for a waltz, and never before or since came wit 
 and laughter so freely to my lip. I was collected, but, 
 at the same time, I was the gayest of the gay ; and 
 when everybody had congratulated me, in her hear 
 ing, on the school to which I had put my wits in my 
 long apprenticeship to the law, I retired to the gallery 
 looking down upon the garden, and cooled my brow 
 and rallied my sinking heart. 
 
 The candles were burning low, and the ball was 
 
 nearly over, when I entered the room again, and re 
 quested Kdith to take a turn with me on the colon 
 nade. She at once assented, and I could feel by her 
 arm in mine, and see by the fixed expression on her 
 lip, that she did so with the intention of revealing to 
 me what she little thought I could so well anticipate. 
 
 " My probation is over," I said, breaking the si 
 lence which she seemed willing to prolong, and which 
 had lasted till we had twice measured the long colon 
 nade. 
 
 " It was three years ago to-night, I think, since we 
 parted." She spoke in an absent and careless tone, as 
 if trying to work out another more prominent thought 
 in her mind. 
 
 " Do you find me changed ?" I asked. 
 
 " Yes oh, yes ! very !" 
 
 " But I am more changed than I seem, dear Edith !" 
 
 She turned to me as if to ask me to explain my 
 self. 
 
 " Will you listen to me while I tell you how ?" 
 
 " What can you mean ? Certainly." 
 
 " Then listen, for I fear I can scarce bring myself 
 to repeat what I am going to say. When I first learned 
 to love you, and when I promised to love you for 
 life, you were thought to be dying, and I was a boy. 
 I did not count on the future, for I despaired of your 
 living to share it with me, and, if I had done so, I 
 was still a child, and knew nothing of the world. I 
 have since grown more ambitious, and, I may as well 
 say at once, more selfish and less poetical. You will 
 easily divine my drift. You are poor, and I find my 
 self, as you have seen to-night, in a position which 
 will enable me to marry more to my advantage ; and, 
 with these views, I am sure ] should only make you 
 miserable by fulfilling my contract with you, and you 
 will agree with me that 1 consult our mutual happi- 
 i ness by this course don t you think ?" 
 
 At this instant I gave a signal to Job, who approached 
 and made some sensible remarks about the weather; 
 I and, after another turn or two, I released Miss Linsey s 
 arm, and cautioning her against the night air, left her 
 to finish her promenade and swallow her own project 
 ed speech and mine, and went to bed. 
 
 And so ended my first love ! 
 
 . 
 
 SCENES OF FEAR, 
 
 No. I. 
 
 THE DISTURBED VIGIL. 
 
 " Antonio. Get me 
 lets out devils !" 
 
 out a man that 
 OLD PLA.Y. 
 
 SUCH a uight ! It was like a festival of Dian. A 
 burst of a summer shower at sunset, with a clap or 
 two of thunder, had purified the air to an intoxicating 
 rareness, and the free breathing of the flowers, and 
 the delicious perfume from the earth and grass, and 
 the fresh foliage of the new spring, showed the delight 
 and sympathy of inanimate Nature in the night s beau- 
 
 ! ty. There was no atmosphere nothing between the 
 eye and the pearly moon and she rode through the 
 heavens without a veil, like a queen as she is, giving a 
 
 i glimpse of her nearer beauty for a festal favor to the 
 
 I worshipping stars. 
 
 I was a student at the famed university of Connecti 
 cut, and the bewilderments of philosophy and poetry 
 
 j were strong upon me, in a place where exquisite natu 
 ral beauty, and the absence of all other temptation, 
 secure to the classic neophite an almost supernatural 
 wakefulness of fancy. I contracted a taste for the 
 horrible in those days, which still clings to me. I 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 49 
 
 have travelled the world over, with no object but gen- || for a moment, and she immediately leaped again upon 
 eral observation, and have dawdled my hour at courts j| the corpse, and had covered her feet and face with 
 and operas with little interest, while the sacking and ; blood before I could recover my hold upon her. The 
 
 body was no longer in a situation to be spared, and I 
 
 drowning of a woman in the Bosphorus, the impale 
 ment of a robber on the Nile, and the insane hospitals 
 from Liverpool to Cathay, are described in my capri 
 cious journal with the vividness of the most stirring 
 adventure. 
 
 There is a kind of crystallization in the circum 
 stances of one s life. A peculiar turn of mind draws 
 to itself events fitted to its particular nucleus, and it is 
 frequently a subject of wonder why one man meets 
 with more remarkable things than another, when it is 
 owing merely to a difference of natural character. 
 
 It was, as I was saying, a night of wonderful beauty. 
 I was watching a corpse. In that part of the United 
 States, the dead are never left alone till the earth is 
 thrown upon them ; and, as a friend of the family, I 
 had been called upon for this melancholy service on 
 the night preceding the interment. It was a death 
 which had left a family of broken hearts ; for, beneath 
 the sheet which sank so appallingly to the outline of 
 a human form, lay a wreck of beauty and sweetness 
 whose loss seemed to the survivors to have darkened 
 the face of the earth. The ethereal and touching 
 loveliness of that dying girl, whom I had known only 
 a hopeless victim of consumption, springs up in my 
 memory even yet, and mingles with every conception 
 of female beauty. 
 
 Two ladies, friends of the deceased, were to share 
 my vigils. I knew them but slightly, and, having read 
 them to sleep an hour after midnight, I performed 
 my half-hourly duty of entering the room where the 
 corpse lay, to look after the lights, and then strolled 
 into the garden to enjoy the quiet of the summer night. 
 The flowers were glittering in their pearl-drops, and 
 the air was breathless. 
 
 The sight of the long, sheeted corpse, the sudden 
 flare of lights as the long snuffs were removed from 
 the candles, the stillness of the close-shuttered room, 
 and my own predisposition to invest death with a su 
 pernatural interest, had raised my heart to my throat. 
 I walked backward and forward in the garden-path ; 
 and the black shadows beneath the lilacs, and even 
 the glittering of the glow-worms within them, seemed 
 weird and fearful. 
 
 The clock struck, and I re-entered. My compan 
 ions still slept, and I passed on to the inner chamber. 
 I trimmed the lights, and stood and looked at the 1 1 and, with the facility which belongs to his country! 
 
 seized her with a desperate grasp to draw her off ; but 
 1 to my horror, the half-covered and bloody corpse rose 
 upright in her fangs, and, while I paused in fear, sat 
 with drooping arms, and head fallen with ghastly help 
 lessness over the shoulder. Years have not removed 
 that fearful spectacle from my eyes. 
 
 The corpse sank back, and I succeeded in throttling 
 the monster, and threw her at last lifeless from the 
 window. I then composed the disturbed limbs, laid 
 the hair away once more smoothly on the forehead, 
 and, crossing the hands over the bosom, covered the 
 violated remains, and left them again to their repose. 
 My companions, strangely enough, slept on, and I paced 
 the garden-walk alone, till the day, to my inexpressible 
 relief, dawned over the mountains. 
 
 No. II. 
 
 THK MAD SENIOR. 
 
 I WAS called upon in my senior year to watch with 
 an insane student. He was a man who had attracted 
 a great deal of attention in college. He appeared in 
 an extraordinary costume at the beginning of our 
 freshman term, and wrote himself down as Washing 
 ton Greyling, of , an unheard-of settlement 
 
 somewhere beyond the Mississippi. His coat and oth 
 er gear might have been the work of a Chickasaw 
 tailor, aided by the superintending taste of some white 
 huntsman, who remembered faintly the outline of ha 
 biliments he had not seen for half a century. It was 
 a body of green cloth, eked out with wampum and 
 otter-skin, and would have been ridiculous if it had 
 not encased one of the finest models of a manly frame 
 that ever trod the earth. \Vith close-curling black 
 hair, a fine weather-browned complexion, Spanish fea 
 tures (from his mother a frequent physiognomy in 
 the countries bordering on Spanish America), and 
 the port and lithe motion of a lion, he was a figure to 
 look upon in any disguise with warm admiration. 
 He was soon put into the hands of a tailor-proper, 
 
 white heap lying so fearfully still within the shadow 
 of the curtains ; and my blood seemed to freeze. At 
 
 nen, became in a month the best-dressed man in col 
 lege. His manners were of a gentleman-like mildness, 
 
 the moment when I was turning away with a strong j energetic, but courteous and chivalresque, and, unlike 
 effort at a more composed feeling, a noise like a flutter ! most savages and all coins, he polished without " losing 
 
 his mark." At the end of his first term, he would 
 have been called a high-bred gentleman at any court 
 in Europe. 
 
 The opening of his mind was almost as rapid and 
 extraordinary. He seized everything with an ardor 
 and freshness that habit and difficulty never deadened. 
 He was like a man who had tumbled into a new star, 
 and was collecting knowledge for a world to which he 
 was to return. The first in all games, the wildest in 
 all adventure, the most distinguished even in the ele 
 gant society for which the town is remarkable, and 
 unfailingly brilliant in his recitations and college per 
 formances, he was looked upon as a sort of admirable 
 
 of wings, followed by a rush and a sudden silence, 
 struck on my startled ear. The street was as quiet as 
 death, and the noise, which was far too audible to be a 
 deception of the fancy, had come from the side toward 
 an uninhabited wing of the house. My heart stood 
 still. Another instant, and the fire-screen was dashed 
 down, and a white cat rushed past me, and with the 
 speed of light sprang like an hyena upon the corpse. 
 The flight of a vampyre into the chamber would not 
 have more curdled my veins. A convulsive shudder 
 ran cold over me, but recovering my self-command, I 
 rushed to the animal (of whose horrible appetite for 
 the flesh of the dead \ had read incredulously), and at 
 tempted to tear her from the body. With her claws 
 fixed in the breast, and a yowl like the wail of an infer 
 nal spirit, she crouched fearlessly upon it, and the I his sensations at coming fresh from a wild western 
 stains already upon the sheet convinced me that it j 1 prairie, and, at the first measure of his capacities with 
 would be impossible to remove her without shockingly I men of better advantages, finding himself so uniformly 
 
 i. f . .1 -r _ _ i i. _ i .1 _ .1 . . . . i i _ _^- i__ j_i:_ i_*r..i T~ _ 
 
 J phenomenon, and neither envied nor opposed in any 
 thing. I have often thought, in looking on him, that 
 
 disfiguring the corpse. I seized her by the throat, in 
 the hope of choking her ; but with the first pressure 
 of my fingers, she flew into my face, and the infuriated 
 animal seemed persuaded that it was a contest for life. 
 Half blinded by the fury of her attack, I loosed her 
 
 superior, must have been stirringly delightful. It is a 
 wonder he never became arrogant ; but it was the last 
 foible of which he could have been accused. 
 
 We were reading hard for the honors in the senior 
 year, when Greyling suddenly lost his reason. He 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 had not been otherwise ill, and had, apparently in the 
 nrdst of high health, gone mad at a moment s warn 
 ing. The physicians scarce knew how to treat him. 
 The confinement to which he was at first subjected, 
 however, was thought inexpedient, and he seemed to 
 justify their lenity by the gentlest behavior when at 
 liberty. He seemed oppressed by a heart-breaking 
 melancholy. We took our turns in guarding and 
 watching with him, and it was upon my first night of 
 duty that the incident happened which I have thus 
 endeavored to inttoduce. 
 
 It was scarce like a vigil with a sick man, for our 
 patient went regularly to bed, and usually slept well. 
 I took my " Lucretius" and the " Book of the Mar 
 tyrs," which was just then my favorite reading, and 
 with hot punch, a cold chicken, books, and a fire, I 
 looked forward to it as merely a studious night ; and, 
 as the wintry wind of January rattled in at the old 
 college windows, I thrust my feet into slippers, drew 
 my dressing-gown about me, and congratulated my 
 self on the excessive comfortableness of my position. 
 The Sybarite s bed of roses would have been no temp 
 tation. 
 
 It had snowed all day, but the sun had set with a 
 red rift in the clouds, and the face of the sky was 
 swept in an hour to the clearness of I want a com 
 parison your own blue eye, dear Mary ! The all- 
 glorious arch of heaven was a mass of sparkling stars. 
 
 Greyling slept, and I, wearied of the cold philosophy 
 of the Latin poet, took to my "Book of Martyrs." I 
 read on, and read on. The college clock struck, it 
 seemed to me, the quarters rather than the hours. 
 Time flew : it was three. 
 
 " Horrible ! most horrible !" I started from my chair 
 with the exclamation, and felt as if my scalp were 
 self-lifted from my head. It was a description in the 
 harrowing faithfulness of the language of olden time, 
 painting almost the articulate groans of an impaled 
 Christian. I clasped the old iron-bound book, and 
 rushed to the window as if my heart was stifling for 
 fresh air. 
 
 Again at the fire. The large walnut fagots had 
 burnt to a bed of bright coals, and I sat gazing into it, 
 totally unable to shake off the fearful incubus from I 
 my breast. The martyr was there on the very hearth ! 
 with the stakes scornfully crossed in his body ; and 
 as the large coals cracked asunder and revealed the 
 prightness within, I seemed to follow the nerve-rending 
 instrument from hip to shoulder, and suffer with him 
 pang for pang, as if the burning redness were the pools 
 of his fevered blood. 
 
 "Aha!" 
 
 It struck on my ear like the cry of an exulting fiend. 
 
 "Aha!" 
 
 I shrunk into the chair as the awful cry was re 
 peated, and looked slowly and with difficult courage 
 over my shoulder. A single fierce eye was fixed upon 
 me from the mass of bed-clothes, and, for a moment, 
 the relief from the fear of some supernatural presence 
 was like water to a parched tongue. I sank back re 
 lieved into the chair. 
 
 There was a rustling immediately in the bed, and, 
 starting again, I found the wild eyes of my patient 
 fixed still steadfastly upon me. He was creeping 
 stealthily out of bed. His bare foot touched the floor, 
 and his toes worked upon it as if he was feeling its 
 strength, and in a moment he stood upright on his 
 feet, and, with his head forward and his pale face livid 
 with rage, stepped toward me. I looked to the door. 
 He observed the glance, and in the next instant he 
 sprang clear over the bed, turned the key, and dashed 
 it furiously through the window. 
 
 "Now!" said he. 
 
 " Greyling !" I said. 1 had heard that a calm and 
 fixed gaze would control a madman, and with the most 
 difficult exertion of nerve, I met his lowering eye, and 
 
 we stood looking at each other for a full minute, like 
 men of marble. 
 
 " Why have you left your bed ?" I mildly asked. 
 
 " To kill you!" was the appalling answer; and in 
 another moment the light-stand was swept from be 
 tween us, and he struck me down with a blow that 
 would have felled a giant. Naked as he was, I had 
 no hold upon him, even if in muscular strength I had 
 been his match ; and with a minute s struggle I yielded, 
 for resistance was vain. His knee was now upon my 
 breast and his left hand in my hair, and he seemed 
 by the tremulousness of his clutch to be hesitating 
 whether he should dash my brains out on the hearth. 
 I could scarce breathe with his weight upon my chest, 
 but I tried, with the broken words I could command, 
 to move his pity. He laughed, as only maniacs can, 
 and placed his hand on my throat. Oh God! shall I 
 ever forget the fiendish deliberation with which he 
 closed those feverish fingers? 
 
 " Greyling ! for God s sake ! Greyling !" 
 
 "Die! curse you!" 
 
 In the agonies of suffocation I struck out my arm, 
 and almost buried it in the fire upon the hearth. 
 With an expiring thought, I grasped a handful of the 
 red-hot coals, and had just strength sufficient to press 
 them hard against his side. 
 
 "Thank God!" I exclaimed with my first breath, 
 as my eyes recovered from their sickness, and I looked 
 upon the familiar objects of my chamber once more. 
 
 The madman sat crouched like a whipped dog in 
 the farthest corner of the room, gibbering and moan 
 ing, with his hands upon his burnt side. ~I felt that I 
 had escaped death by a miracle. 
 
 The door was locked, and, in dread of another at 
 tack, I threw up the broken window, and to my 
 unutterable joy the figure of a man was visible upon 
 the snow near the out-buildings of the college. It 
 was a charity-student, risen before day to labor in the 
 wood-yard. I shouted to him, and Greyling leaped 
 to his feet.. 
 
 "There is time yet!" said the madman; but as he 
 came toward me again with the same panther-like 
 caution as before, I seized a heavy stone pitcher 
 standing in the window-seat, and hurling it at him 
 with a fortunate force and aim, he fell stunned and 
 bleeding on the floor. The door was burst opon at 
 the next moment, and, calling for assistance, we tied 
 the wild Missourian into his bed, bound up his head 
 and side, and committed him to fresh watchers. . . . 
 
 We have killed bears together at a Missouri salt 
 lick since then; but I never see Wash. Greyling with 
 a smile off his face, without a disposition to look 
 around for the door. 
 
 No. III. 
 
 THE LUNATIC S SKATE. 
 
 I HAVE only, in my life, known one lunatic prop 
 erly so called. In the days when I carried a satchel 
 on the banks of the Shawsheen (a river whose half- 
 lovely, half-wild scenery is tied like a silver thread 
 about my heart), Larry Wynn and myself were the 
 farthest boarders from school, in a solitary farm-house 
 on the edge of a lake of some miles square, called by 
 the undignified title of Pomp s pond. An old negro, 
 who was believed by the boys to have come over with 
 Christopher Columbus, was the only other human 
 being within anything like a neighborhood of the 
 lake (it took its name from him), and the only ap 
 proaches to its waters, girded in as it was by an almost 
 impenetrable forest, were the path through old Pomp s 
 clearing, and that by our own door. Out of school, 
 Larry and I were inseparable. He was a pale, sad- 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 51 
 
 faced boy, and, in the first days of our intimacy, he 
 had confided a secret to me which, from its uncom 
 mon nature, and the excessive caution with which he 
 kept it from every one else, bound me to him with 
 more than the common ties of schoolfellow attach 
 ment. We built wigwams together in the woods, had 
 our tomahawks made of the same fashion, united our 
 property in fox-traps, and played Indians with perfect 
 contentment in each other s approbation. 
 
 I had found out, soon after my arrival at school, 
 that Larry never slept on a moonlight night. With 
 the first slender horn that dropped its silver and grace 
 ful shape behind the hills, his uneasiness commenced, 
 and by the time its full and perfect orb poured a flood 
 of radiance over vale and mountain, he was like one 
 haunted by a pursuing demon. At early twilight lie 
 closed the shutters, stuffing every crevice that could 
 admit a ray; and then, lighting as many candles as 
 he could beg or steal from our thrifty landlord, he sat 
 down with his book in moody silence, or paced the 
 room with an uneven step, and a solemn melancholy 
 in his fine countenance, of which, with all my famil 
 iarity with him, I was almost afraid. Violent exer 
 cise seemed the only relief, and when the candles 
 burnt low after midnight, and the stillness around the 
 lone farm-house became too absolute to endure, he 
 would throw up the window, and, leaping desperately 
 out into the moonlight, rush up the hill into the 
 depths of the wild forest, and walk on with supernatural 
 excitement till the day dawned. Faint and pale he 
 would then creep into his bed, and, begging me to 
 make his very common and always credited excuse of 
 illness, sleep soundly till I returned from school. I 
 soon became used to his way, ceased to follow him, 
 as I had once or twice endeavored to do, into the 
 forest, and never attempted to break in on the fixed 
 and wrapt silence which seemed to transform his lips 
 to marble. And for all this Larry loved me. 
 
 Our preparatory studies were completed, and, to 
 our mutual despair, we were destined to different 
 universities. Larry s father was a disciple of the great 
 Channing, and mine a Trinitarian of uncommon zeal; 
 and the two institutions of Yale and Harvard were in 
 the hands of most eminent men of either persuasion, 
 and few are the minds that could resist a four years 
 ordeal in either. A student was as certain to come 
 forth a Unitarian from one as a Calvinist from the 
 other; and in the New England states these two sects 
 are bitterly hostile. So, to the glittering atmosphere 
 of Channing and Everett went poor Larry, lonely 
 and dispirited; and I was committed to the sincere 
 zealots of Connecticut, some two hundred miles off, 
 to learn Latin and Greek, if it pleased Heaven, but 
 the mysteries of " election and free grace," whether 
 or no. 
 
 Time crept, ambled, and galloped, by turns, as we 
 were in love or out, moping in term-time, or revelling 
 in vacation, and gradually, I know not why, our cor 
 respondence had dropped, and the four years had 
 come to their successive deaths, and we had never 
 met. I grieved over it ; for in those days I believed 
 with a school-boy s fatuity, 
 
 " That two, or one, are almost what they seem ;" 
 and I loved Larry Wynn, as I hope I may never love 
 man or woman again with a pain at my heart. I 
 wrote one or two reproachful letters in my senior 
 years, but his answers were overstrained, and too full 
 of protestations by half; and seeing that absence had 
 done its usual work on him, I gave it up, and wrote 
 an epitaph on a departed friendship. I do not know, 
 by the way, why I am detaining you with all this, for 
 it has nothing to do with my story ; but let it pass as 
 an evidence that it is a true one. The climax of things 
 in real life has not the regular procession of incidents 
 in a tragedy. 
 
 Some two or three years after we had taken "the 
 irrevocable yoke" of life upon us (not matrimony, 
 but money-making), a winter occurred of uncom 
 monly fine sleighing sledging, you call it in Eng 
 land. At such times the American world is all 
 abroad, either for business or pleasure. The roads 
 are passable at any rate of velocity of which a horse 
 is capable ; smooth as montagnes Jtusses, and hard 
 as is good for hoofs; and a hundred miles is dimin 
 ished to ten in facility of locomotion. The hunter 
 brings down his venison to the cities, the western 
 trader takes his family a hundred leagues to buy 
 calicoes and tracts, and parties of all kinds scour the 
 country, drinking mulled wine and "flip," and shaking 
 the very nests out of the fir-trees with the ringing of 
 their horses bells. You would think death and sor 
 row were buried in the snow with the leaves of the 
 last autumn. 
 
 I do not know why I undertook, at this time, a 
 journey to the west; certainly not for scenery, for it 
 was a world of waste, desolate, and dazzling white 
 ness, fora thousand unbroken miles. The trees were 
 weighed down with snow, and the houses were 
 thatched and half-buried in it. and the mountains and 
 valleys were like the vast waves of an illimitable sea, 
 congealed with its yesty foam in the wildest hour of a 
 tempest. The eye lost its powers in gazing on it. 
 The " spirit-bird" that spread his refreshing green 
 wings before the pained eyes of Thalaba would have 
 been an inestimable fellow-traveller. The worth of 
 the eyesight lay in the purchase of a pair of green 
 goggles. 
 
 In the course of a week or two, after skimming over 
 the buried scenery of half a dozen states, each as 
 large as Great Britain (more or less), I found myself 
 in a small town on the border of one of our western 
 lakes. It was some twenty years since the bears had 
 found it thinly settled enough for their purposes, and 
 now it contained perhaps twenty thousand souls. 
 The oldest inhabitant, born in the town, was a youth 
 in his minority. With the usual precocity of new 
 settlements, it had already most of the peculiarities of 
 an old metropolis. The burnt stumps still stood about 
 among the houses, but there was a fashionable circle, 
 at the head of which were the lawyer s wife and the 
 member of Congress s daughter; and people ate their 
 peas with silver forks, and drank their tea with scan 
 dal, and forgave men s many sins and refused to for 
 give woman s one, very much as in towns whose his 
 tory is written in black letter. I dare say there were 
 not more than one or two offences against the moral 
 and Levitical law, fashionable on this side the water, 
 which had not been committed, with the authentic 
 
 aggravations, in the town of ; I would mention 
 
 the name if this were not a true story. 
 
 Larry Wynn (now Lawrence Wynn, Esq.) lived 
 here. He had, as they say in the United States, " hung 
 out a shingle" (Londonice, put up a sign) as attorney- 
 at-law, and to all the twenty thousand innocent in 
 habitants of the place, he was the oracle and the squire. 
 He was besides colonel of militia, churchwarden, 
 and canal commissioner; appointments which speak 
 volumes for the prospects of " rising young men" in 
 our flourishing republic. 
 
 Larry was glad to see me very. I was more glad 
 to see him. I have a soft heart, and forgive a wrong 
 generally, if it touches neither my vanity nor my 
 purse. I forgot his neglect, and called him " Larry." 
 By the same token he did not call me " Phil." (There 
 are very few that love me, patient reader ; but those 
 who do, thus abbreviate my pleasant name of Philip. 
 I was called after the Indian sachem of that name, 
 whose blood runs in this tawny hand.) Larry looked 
 upon me as a man. I looked on him, with all his 
 dignities and changes, through the sweet vista of 
 memory as a boy. His mouth had acquired the 
 
52 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 pinched corners of caution and mistrust common to 
 those who know their fellow-men ; but I never saw it 
 unless when speculating as I am now. He was to me 
 the pale-faced and melancholy friend of my boyhood; 
 and I could have slept, as I used to do, with my arm 
 around his neck, and feared to stir lest I should wake 
 him. Had my last earthy hope lain in the palm of 
 my hand, I could have given it to him, had he needed 
 it, but to make him sleep ; and yet he thought of me 
 but as a stranger under his roof, and added, in his 
 warmest moments, a "Mr." to my name! There is 
 but one circumstance in my life that has wounded me 
 more. Memory avaunt ! 
 
 Why should there be no unchangeableness in the 
 world? why no friendship? or why ami, and you, 
 gentle reader (for by your continuing to pore over 
 these idle musings, you have a heart too), gifted with 
 this useless and restless organ beating in our bosoms, 
 if its thirst for love is never to be slaked, and its ach 
 ing self-fulness never to find flow or utterance ? I 
 would positively sell my whole stock of affections for 
 three farthings. Will you say " two?" 
 
 "You are come in good time," said Larry one morn 
 ing, with a half-smile, " and shall be groomsman to 
 me. I am going to be married." 
 
 " Married ?" 
 
 " Married." 
 
 I repeated the word after him, for I was surprised. 
 He had never opened his lips about his unhappy luna 
 cy since my arrival, and I had felt hurt at this ap 
 parent unwillingness to renew our ancient confidence, 
 but had felt a repugnance to any forcing of the topic 
 upon him, and could only hope that he had outgrown 
 or overcome it. I argued, immediately on this infor 
 mation of his intended marriage, that it must be so. 
 No man in his senses, I thought, would link an im 
 pending madness to the fate of a confiding and lovely 
 woman. 
 
 He took me into his sleigh, and we drove to her 
 father s house. She was a flower in the wilderness, I 
 Of a delicate form, as all my countrywomen are, and 
 lovely, as quite all certainly are not, large-eyed, soft 
 in her manners, and yet less timid than confiding and 
 sister-like, with a shade of melancholy in her smile, 
 caught, perhaps, with the " trick of sadness" from him 
 self, and a patrician slightness of reserve, or pride, 
 which Nature sometimes, in very mockery of high 
 birth, teaches her most secluded child the bride elect 
 was, as I said before, a flower in the wilderness. She 
 was one of those women we sigh to look upon as they 
 pass by, as if there went a fragment of the wreck of 
 some blessed dream. 
 
 The day arrived for the wedding, and the sleigh- 
 bells jingled merrily into the village. The morning 
 was as soft and genial as June, and the light snow on 
 the surface of the lake melted, and lay on the breast 
 of the solid ice beneath, giving it the effect of one white 
 silver mirror, stretching to the edge of the horizon. 
 It was exquisitely beautiful, and I was standing at the 
 window in the afternoon, looking off upon the shining 
 expanse, when Larry approached, and laid his hand 
 familiarly on my shoulder. 
 
 "What glorious skating we shall have," said I, "if 
 thi* smooth water freezes to-night !" 
 
 I lurned the next moment to look at him; for we 
 
 had not skated together since I went out, at his earnest 
 
 ^treaty, at midnight, to skim the little lake where we 
 
 " oassed our boyhood, and drive away the fever from 
 ; n, under the light of a full moon. 
 
 "embered it, and so did I ; and I put my arm 
 for the color fled from his face, and I 
 "ild have sunk to the floor. 
 
 full to-night," said he, recovering in- 
 ""-possession. 
 
 haud firmly, and, in as kind a 
 spoke of our early friend 
 
 ship, and apologizing thus for the freedom, asked if he 
 had quite overcome his melancholy disease. His face 
 worked with emotion, and he tried to withdraw his 
 hand from my clasp, and evidently wished to avoid an 
 answer. 
 
 " Tell me, dear Larry," said I. 
 
 " Oh God ! No . " said he, breaking violently from 
 me, and throwing himself with his face downward upon 
 the sofa. The tears streamed through his fingers upon 
 the silken cushion. 
 
 "Not cured ? And does she know it ?" 
 
 " No ! no ! thank God ! not yet !" 
 
 I remained silent a few minutes, listening to his 
 suppressed moans (for he seemed heart-broken with 
 the confession), and pitying while I inwardly con 
 demned him. And then the picture of that lovely and 
 fond woman rose up before me, and the impossibility 
 of concealing his fearful malady from his wife, and 
 the fixed insanity in which it must end, and the whole 
 wreck of her hopes and his own prospects and happi 
 ness and my heart grew sick. 
 
 I sat down by him, and, as it was too late to remon 
 strate on the injustice he was committing toward her, 
 I asked how he came to appoint the night of a full 
 moon for his wedding. He gave up his reserve, calm 
 ed himself, and talked of it at last as if he were relieved 
 by the communication. Never shall I forget the 
 doomed pallor, the straining eye, and feverish hand, 
 of my poor friend during that half hour. 
 
 Since he had left college he had striven with the 
 whole energy of his soul against it. He had plunged 
 into business he had kept his bed resolutely night 
 after night, till his brain seemed on the verge of phrensy 
 with the effort he had taken opium to secure to him 
 self an artificial sleep ; but he had never dared to con 
 fide it to any one, and he had no friend to sustain him 
 in his fearful and lonely hours ; and it grew upon him 
 rather than diminished. He described to me with the 
 most touching pathos how he had concealed it for 
 j years how he had stolen out like a thief to give vent 
 to his insane restlessness in the silent streets of the city 
 at midnight, and in the more silent solitudes of the 
 forest how he had prayed, and wrestled, and wept 
 over it and finally, how he had come to believe that 
 there was no hope for him except in the assistance and 
 constant presence of some one who would devote life 
 to him in love and pity. Poor Larry ! I put up a silent 
 prayer in my heart that the desperate experiment might 
 not end in agony and death. 
 
 The sun set, and, according to my prediction, the 
 wind changed suddenly to the north, and the whole 
 surface of the lake in a couple of hours became of the 
 lustre of polished steel. It was intensely cold. 
 
 The fires blazed in every room of the bride s pater 
 nal mansion, and I was there early to fulfil my office 
 of master of ceremonies at the bridal. My heart was 
 weighed down with a sad boding, but I shook off at 
 least the appearance of it, and superintended the con 
 coction of a huge bowl of punch with a merriment 
 which communicated itself in the shape of most joyous 
 hilarity to a troop of juvenile relations. The house 
 resounded with their shouts of laughter. 
 
 In the midst of our noise in the small inner room 
 entered Larry. I started back, for he looked more like 
 a demon possessed than a Christian man. He had walk 
 ed to the house alone in the moonlight, not daring to 
 trust himself in company. I turned out the turbulent 
 troop about me, and tried to dispel his gloom, for a face 
 like his at that moment would have put to flight the 
 rudest bridal party ever assembled on holy ground. 
 He seized on the bowl of strong spirits which I had 
 mixed for a set of hardy farmers, and before I could 
 tear it from his lips had drank a quantity which, in an 
 ordinary mood, would have intoxicated him helplessly 
 in an hour. He then sat down with his face buried in 
 his hands, and in a few minutes rose, his eyes spark- 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 ling with excitement, and the whole character of his 
 face utterly changed. I thought he had gone wild. 
 
 " Now, Phil," said he ; " now for my bride !" And 
 with an unbecoming levity he threw open the door, 
 and went half dancing into the room where the friends 
 were already assembled to witness the ceremony. 
 
 I followed with fear and anxiety. He took his place 
 by the side of the fair creature on whom he had placed 
 his hopes of life, and, though sobered somewhat by 
 the impressiveness of the scene, the wild sparkle still 
 danced in his eyes, and I could see that every nerve 
 in his frame was excited to the last pitch of tension. 
 If he had fallen a gibbering maniac on the floor, I ! 
 should not have been astonished. 
 
 The ceremony proceeded, and the first tone of his 
 voice in the response startled even the bride. If it had | 
 rung from the depths of a cavern, it could not have 
 been more sepulchral. I looked at him with a shud 
 der. His lips were curled with an exulting expres 
 sion, mixed with an indefinable fear ; and all the blood 
 in his face seemed settled about his eyes, which were j 
 so bloodshot and fiery, that I have ever since wondered 
 he was not, at the first glance, suspected of insanity. | 
 But oh ! the heavenly sweetness with which that love- j 
 liest of creatures promised to love and cherish him, in ! 
 sickness and in "health ! I never go to a bridal but it j 
 half breaks my heart ; and as the soft voice of that 
 beautiful girl fell with its eloquent meaning on my 
 ear, and I looked at her, with lips calm and eyes moist- j 
 ened, vowing a love which I knew to be stronger than i 
 death, to one who, I feared, was to bring only pain and 
 sorrow into her bosom, my eyes warmed with irrepres 
 sible tears, and I wept. 
 
 The stir in the room as the clergyman closed his 
 prayer, seemed to awake him from a trance. He j 
 looked around with a troubled face for a moment ; and ; 
 then, fixing his eyes on his bride, he suddenly clasped 
 his arms about her, and straining her violently to his 
 bosom, broke into an hysterical passion of tears and 
 laughter. Then suddenly resuming his self-command, 
 he apologized for the over-excitement of his feelings, 
 and behaved with forced and gentle propriety till the 
 guests departed. 
 
 There was an apprehensive gloom over the spirits 
 of the small bridal party left in the lighted rooms ; and j 
 as they gathered round the fire, 1 approached, and en- ! 
 deavored to take a gay farewell. Larry was sitting . 
 with his arm about his wife, and he wrung my hand in 
 silence as I said, " Good-night," and dropped his head 
 upon her shoulder. I made some futile attempt to 
 rally him, but it jarred on the general feeling, and I I 
 left the house. 
 
 It was a glorious night. The clear piercing air had 
 a vitreous brilliancy, which I have never seen in any 
 other climate, the rays of the moonlight almost visi 
 bly splintering with the keenness of the frost. The 
 moon herself was in the zenith, and there seemed 
 nothing between her and the earth but palpable and 
 glittering cold. 
 
 I hurried home : it was but eleven o clock ; and, 
 heaping up the wood in the large fireplace, I took a j 
 volume of" Ivanhoe," which had just then appeared, 
 and endeavored to rid myself of my unpleasant j 
 thoughts. I read on till midnight ; and then, in a I 
 pause of the story, I rose to look out upon the night, j 
 hoping, for poor Larry s sake, that the moon was j 
 buried in clouds. The house was near the edge of j 
 the lake ; and as I looked down upon the glassy waste, ! 
 spreading away from the land, I saw the dark figure 
 of a man kneeling directly in the path of the moon s 
 rays. In another moment he rose to his feet, and 
 the tall, slight form of my poor friend was distinctly 
 visible, as, with long and powerful strokes, he sped 
 away upon his skates along the shore. 
 
 To take my own Hollanders, put a collar of fur 
 around my mouth, and hurry after him, was the work 
 
 of but a minute. My straps were soon fastened ; and, 
 following in the marks of the sharp irons at the top of 
 my speed, I gained sight of him in about half an hour, 
 and with great effort neared him sufficiently to shout 
 his name with a hope of being heard. 
 
 " Larry ! Larry !" 
 
 The lofty mountain-shore gave back the cry in re 
 peated echoes but he redoubled his strokes, and 
 sped on faster than before. At my utmost speed I 
 followed on ; and when, at last, I could almost lay 
 my hand on his shoulder, I summoned my strength 
 to my breathless lungs, and shouted again " Larry ! 
 Larry !" 
 
 He half looked back, and the full moon at that in 
 stant streamed full into his eyes. I have thought 
 since that he could not have seen me for its dazzling 
 brightness ; but I saw every line of his features with 
 the distinctness of daylight, and I shall never forget 
 them. A line of white foam ran through his half- 
 parted lips ; his hair streamed wildly over his forehead, 
 on which the perspiration glittered in large drops; and 
 every lineament of his expressive face was stamped with 
 unutterable and awful horror. He looked back no 
 more ; but, increasing his speed with an energy of 
 which I did not think his slender frame capable, he 
 began gradually to outstrip me. Trees, rocks, and 
 hills, fled back like magic. My limbs began to grow 
 numb ; my fingers had lost all feeling, but a strong 
 northeast wind was behind us, and the ice smoother 
 than a mirror ; and I struck out my feet mechanically, 
 and still sped on. 
 
 For two hours we had kept along the shore. The 
 branches of the trees were reflected in the polished 
 ice, and the hills seemed hanging in the air, and float 
 ing past us with the velocity of storm-clouds. Far 
 down the lake, however, there glimmered the just 
 visible light of a fire, and I was thanking God that 
 we were probably approaching some human succor, 
 when, to my horror, the retreating figure before me 
 suddenly darted oft* to the left, and made swifter than 
 before toward the centre of the icy waste. Oh, God ! 
 what feelings were mine at that moment ! Follow him 
 far I dared not ; for, the sight of land once lost, as it 
 would be almost instantly with our tremendous speed, 
 we perished, without a possibility of relief. 
 
 He was far beyond my voice, and to overtake him 
 was the only hope. I summoned my last nerve for 
 the effort, and keeping him in my eye, struck across 
 at a sharper angle, with the advantage of the wind full 
 in my back. I had taken note of the mountains, and 
 knew that we were already forty miles from home, a 
 distance it would be impossible to retrace against the 
 wind ; and the thought of freezing to death, even if 
 I could overtake him, forced itself appallingly upon 
 me. 
 
 Away I flew, despair giving new force to my limbs, 
 and soon gained on the poor lunatic, whose efforts 
 seemed flagging and faint. I neared him. Another 
 struggle ! I could have dropped down where I was, 
 and slept, if there were death in the first minute, so 
 stiff and drowsy was every muscle in my frame. 
 
 " Larry !" I shouted. " Larry !" 
 
 He started at the sound, and I could hear a smoth 
 ered and breathless shriek, as, with supernatural 
 strength, he straightened up his bending figure, and, 
 leaning forward again, sped away from me like a 
 phantom on the blast. 
 
 I could follow no longer. I stood stiff on my skates, 
 still going on rapidly before the wind, and tried to 
 look after him, but the frost had stiffened my eyes, 
 and there was a mist before them, and they felt like 
 glass. Nothing was visible around me but moonlight 
 and ice, and dimly and slowly I began to retrace the 
 slight path of semicircles toward the shore. It was 
 painful work. The wind seemed to divide the very 
 fibres of the skin upon my face. Violent exercise no 
 
54 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 longer warmed ray body, and I felt the cold shoot 
 sharply into my loins, and bind across my breast like 
 a chain of ice; and, with the utmost strength of mind 
 at my command, I could just resist the terrible incli 
 nation to lie down and sleep. I forgot poor Larry. 
 Life dear life ! was now my only thought! So self 
 ish are we in our extremity ! 
 
 With difficulty I at last reached the shore, and then, 
 unbuttoning my coat, and spreading it wide for a sail, 
 I set my feet together, and went slowly down before j 
 the wind, till the fire which I had before noticed be 
 gan to blaze cheerily in the distance. It seemed an 
 eternity in my slow progress. Tree after tree threw 
 the shadow of its naked branches across the way ; hill 
 after hill glided slowly backward ; but my knees 
 seemed frozen together, and my joints fixed in ice ; 
 and if my life had depended on striking out my feet, 
 I should have died powerless. My jaws were locked, ! 
 my shoulders drawn half down to my knees, and in a < 
 few minutes more, I am well convinced, the blood 
 would have thickened in my veins, and stood still, for [ 
 ever. 
 
 I could see the tongues of the flames I counted 
 the burning fagots a form passed between me and I 
 the fire I struck, and fell prostrate on the snow ; and j 
 I remember no more. 
 
 The sun was darting a slant beam through the trees 
 when I awoke. The genial warmth of a large bed of j 
 embers played on my cheek, a thick blanket enveloped 
 me, and beneath my head was a soft cushion of with 
 ered leaves. On the opposite side of the fire lay four 
 Indians wrapped in their blankets, and, with her head 
 on her knees, and her hands clasped over her ankles, 
 sat an Indian woman, who had apparently fallen asleep 
 upon her watch. The stir I made aroused her, and, 
 as she piled on fresh fagots, and kindled them to a 
 bright blaze with a handful of leaves, drowsiness came 
 over me again, and I wrapped the blanket about me 
 more closely, and shut my eyes to sleep. 
 
 I awoke refreshed. It must have been ten o clock 
 by the sun. The Indians were about, occupied in va 
 rious avocations, and the woman was broiling a slice 
 of deer s flesh on the coals. She offered it to me as I 
 rose ; and having eaten part of it with a piece of a cake 
 made of meal, 1 requested her to call in the men, and, 
 with offers of reward, easily induced them to go with 
 me in search of my lost friend. 
 
 We found him, as I had anticipated, frozen to death, 
 far out on the lake. The Indians tracked him by the 
 marks of his skate-irons, and from their appearance 
 he had sunk quietly down, probably drowsy and ex 
 hausted, and had died of course without pain. His 
 last act seemed to have been under the influence of 
 his strange madness, for he lay on his face, turned 
 from the quarter of the setting moon. 
 
 We carried him home to his bride. Even the In 
 dians were affected by her uncontrollable agony. I | 
 can not describe that scene, familiar as I am with pic- j 
 tures of horror. 
 
 I made inquiries with respect to the position of his i 
 bridal chamber. There were no shutters, and the 1 
 moon streamed broadly into it : and after kissing his j 
 shrinking bride with the violence of a madman, he 
 sprang out of the room with a terrific scream, and she 
 saw him no more till he lay dead on his bridal bed. 
 
 INCIDENTS ON THE HUDSON. 
 
 M. CHABERT, the fire-eater, would have found New 
 York uncomfortable. I would mention the height of 
 
 I had fixed upon the first of August for my annual 
 trip to Saratoga and with a straw hat, a portmanteau, 
 and a black boy, was huddled into the " rather-faster- 
 than-lightning" steamer, " North America," with about 
 seven hundred other people, like myself, just in time. 
 Some hundred and fifty gentlemen and ladies, thirty 
 seconds too late, stood " larding" the pine chips upon 
 the pier, gazing after the vanishing boat through show 
 ers of perspiration. Away we " streaked" at the rate 
 of twelve miles in the hour against the current, and 
 by the time I had penetrated to the baggage-closet, 
 and seated William Wilberforce upon my portmanteau, 
 with orders not to stir for eleven hours and seven min 
 utes, we were far up the Hudson, opening into its hills 
 and rocks, like a witches party steaming through the 
 Hartz in a caldron. 
 
 A North-river steamboat, as a Vermont boy would 
 phrase it, is another guess sort d 1 thing from a Brit 
 isher. A coal-barge and an eight-oars on the Thames 
 are scarce more dissimilar. Built for smooth water 
 only, our river boats are long, shallow, and graceful, 
 of the exquisite proportions of a pleasure-yacht, and 
 painted as brilliantly and fantastically as an Indian 
 shell. With her bow just leaning up from the surface 
 of the stream, her cut-water throwing off a curved and 
 transparent sheet from either side, her white awnings, 
 her magical speed, and the gay spectacle of a thousand 
 well-dressed people on her open decks, I know noth 
 ing prettier than the vision that shoots by your door 
 as you sit smoking in your leaf-darkened portico on 
 the bold shore of the Hudson. 
 
 The American edition of Mrs. Trollope (several 
 copies of which are to be found in every boat, serving 
 the same purpose to the feelings of the passengers as 
 the escape-valve to the engine) lay on a sofa beside 
 me, and taking it up, as to say, " I will be let alone," 
 I commenced dividing my attention in my usual quiet 
 way between the varied panorama of rock and valley 
 flying backward in our progress, and the as varied 
 multitude about me. 
 
 For the mass of the women, as far as satin slippers, 
 hats, dresses, and gloves, could go, a Frenchman might 
 have fancied himself in the midst of a transplantation 
 from the Boulevards. In London, French fashions are 
 in a manner Anglified : but an American woman looks 
 on the productions of Herbault, Boivin, and Maneuri, 
 as a translator of the Talmud on the inspired text. The 
 slight figure and small feet of the race rather favor the 
 resemblance; and a French milliner, who would prob 
 ably come to America expecting to see bears and buf 
 faloes prowling about the landing-place, would rub her 
 eyes in New York, and imagine she was still in France, 
 and had crossed, perhaps, only the broad part of the 
 Seine. 
 
 The men were a more original study. Near me sat 
 aKentuckian on three chairs. He had been to the me 
 tropolis, evidently for the first time, and had " looked 
 round sharp." In a fist of no very delicate propor 
 tions, was crushed a pair of French kid-gloves, which, 
 if they fulfilled to him a glove s destiny, would flatter 
 " the rich man" that "the camel" might yet give him 
 the required precedent. His hair had still the traces 
 of having been astonished with curling-tongs, and 
 across his Atlantean breast was looped, in a compli 
 cated zig-zag, a chain that must have cost him a wil 
 derness of rackoon-skins. His coat was evidently the 
 production of a Mississippi tailor, though of the finest 
 English material ; his shirt-bosom was ruffled like a 
 swan with her feathers full spread, and a black silk 
 cravat, tied in a kind of a curse-me-if-I-care-sort-of-a- 
 knot, flung out its ends like the arms of an Italian 
 improvisatore. With all this he was a man to look 
 upon with respect. His under jaw was set up to its 
 fellow with an habitual determination that would 
 
 the thermometer, but for an aversion I have to figures, j throw a hickory-tree into a shiver ; but frank good- 
 Broadway, at noon, had been known to fry soles. ! nature, and the most absolute freedom from susni- 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 cion, lay at large on his Ajacean features, mixed with 
 an earnestness that commended itself at once Jo your 
 liking. 
 
 In a retired corner, near the wheel, stood a group 
 of Indians, as motionless by the hour together as 
 figures carved in rosso antico. They had been on 
 their melancholy annual visit to the now-cultivated 
 shores of Connecticut, the burial-place, but unforgot- 
 ten and once wild home of their fathers. With the 
 money given them by the romantic persons whose 
 sympathies are yearly moved by these stern and poet 
 ical pilgrims, they had taken a passage in the "fire- 
 canoe," which would set them two hundred miles on 
 their weary journey back to the prairies. Their 
 Apollo-like forms loosely dressed in blankets, their 
 gnudy wampum-belts and feathers, the muscular arm 
 and close clutch upon the rifle, the total absence of 
 surprise at the unaccustomed wonders about them, 
 and the lowering and settled scorn and dislike ex 
 pressed in their copper faces, would have powerfully 
 impressed a European. The only person on whom 
 they deigned to cast a glance was the Kentuckian, 
 and at him they occasionally stole a look, as if, through 
 all his metropolian finery, they recognised metal with 
 whose ring they were familiar. 
 
 There were three foreigners on board, two of them 
 companions, and one apparently alone. With their 
 coats too small for them, their thick-soled boots and 
 sturdy figures, collarless cravats, and assumed uncon 
 sciousness of the presence of another living soul, they 
 were recognisable at once as Englishmen. To most 
 of the people on board they probably appeared equally 
 well-dressed, and of equal pretensions to the character 
 of gentlemen; but any one who had made observations 
 between Temple Bar and the steps of Crockford s, 
 would easily resolve them into two Birmingham bag 
 men "sinking the shop," and a quiet gentleman on a 
 tour of information. 
 
 The only other persons I particularly noted were a 
 southerner, probably the son of a planter from Ala 
 bama, and a beautiful girl, dressed in singularly bad 
 taste, who seemed his sister. I knew the "specimen" 
 well. The indolent attitude, the thin but powerfully- 
 jointed frame, the prompt politeness, the air of superi 
 ority acquired from constant command over slaves, the 
 mouth habitually flexible and looking eloquent even 
 in silence, and the eye in which slept a volcano of vio 
 lent passions, were the marks that showed him of a 
 race that I had studied much, and preferred to all the 
 many and distinct classes of my countrymen. His 
 sister was of the slightest and most fragile figure, 
 graceful as a fawn, but with no trace of the dancing 
 master s precepts in her motions, vivid in her attention 
 to everything about her, and amused with all she saw; 
 a copy of Lalla Kookh sticking from the pocket of 
 her French apron, a number of gold chains hung out- 
 side her travelling habit, and looped to her belt, and a 
 glorious profusion of dark curls broken loose from her 
 combs and floating unheeded over her shoulders. 
 
 Toward noon we rounded West Point, and shot 
 suddenly into the overshadowed gorge of the moun 
 tains, as if we were dashing into the vein of a silver 
 mine, laid open and molten into a flowing river by a 
 flash of lightning. (The figure should be Mont 
 gomery s; but I can in no other way give an idea of 
 the sudden darkening of the Hudson, and the under 
 ground effect of the sharp over-hanging mountains as 
 you sweep first into the highlands.) 
 
 The solitary Englishman, who had been watching 
 the southern beauty with the greatest apparent in 
 terest, had lounged over to her side of the boat, and, 
 with the instinctive knowledge that women have of 
 character, she had shrunk from the more obtrusive 
 attempts of the Brummagems to engage her in con 
 versation, and had addressed some remark to him, 
 which seemed to have advanced them at once to ac 
 
 quaintances of a year. They were admiring the stu 
 pendous scenery together a moment before the boat 
 stopped for a passenger, off a smaU town above the 
 point. As the wheels were checked, there was a sud 
 den splash in the water, and a cry of "a lady over- 
 ! board !" I looked for the fair creature who had been 
 [ standing before me, and she was gone. The boat was 
 1 sweeping on, and as I darted to the railing I saw the 
 ; gurgling eddy where something had just gone down; 
 ; and in the next minute the Kentuckian and the 
 i youngest of the Indians rushed together to the stern, 
 j and clearing the taffrail with tremendous leaps, dived 
 side by side into the very centre of the foaming circle. 
 ii The Englishman had coolly seized a rope, and, by the 
 time they reappeared, stood on the railing with a coil 
 | in his hand, and flung it with accurate calculation 
 directly over them. With immovably grave faces, and 
 eyes blinded with water, the two divers rose, holding 
 high between them a large pine fagot ! Shouts of 
 ; laughter pealed from the boat, and the Kentuckian, 
 ij discovering his error, gave the log an indignant fling 
 i behind, and, taking hold of the rope, lay quietly to be 
 I drawn in; while the Indian, disdaining assistance, 
 darted through the wake of the boat with arrowy 
 swiftness, and sprang up the side with the agility of a 
 tiger-cat. The lady reappeared from the cabin as 
 they jumped dripping upon the deck ; the Kentuckian 
 shook himself, and sat down in the sun to dry; and 
 j the graceful and stern Indian, too proud even to put 
 I the wet hair away from his forehead, resumed his 
 . place, and folded his arms, as indifferent and calm, 
 1 save the suppressed heaving of his chest, as if he had 
 ! | never stirred from his stone-like posture. 
 
 An hour or two more brought us to the foot of the 
 !J Catskills, and here the boat lay alongside the pier to 
 j discharge those of her passengers who were bound to 
 the house on the mountain. A hundred or more 
 moved to the gangway at the summons to get ready, 
 and among them the southerners and the Kentuckian. 
 I had begun to feel an interest in our fair fellow-pas 
 senger, and I suddenly determined to join their party 
 a resolution which the Englishman seemed to come 
 to at the same moment, and probably for the same 
 i reason. 
 
 We slept at the pretty village on the bank of the 
 I river, and the next day made the twelve hours ascent 
 through glen and forest, our way skirted with the 
 i most gorgeous and odorent flowers, and turned aside 
 ! and towered over the trees whose hoary and moss- 
 I covered trunks would have stretched the conceptions 
 j of the "Savage Rosa." Everything that was not 
 lovely was gigantesque and awful. The rocks were 
 split with the visible impress of the Almighty power 
 that had torn them apart, and the daring and dizzy 
 crags spurred into the sky, as if the arms of a buried 
 nd phrensied Titan were thrusting them from the 
 mountain s bosom. It gave one a kind of maddening 
 desire to shout and leap the energy with which it 
 filled the mind so out-measured the power of the frame. 
 Near the end of our journey, we stopped together 
 on a jutting rock, to look back on the obstacles we 
 had overcome. The view extended over forty or fifty 
 miles of vale and mountain, and, with a half-shut eye, 
 it looked, in its green and lavish foliage, like a near 
 and unequal bed of verdure, while the distant Hudson 
 crept through it like a half-hid satin riband, lost as if 
 in clumps of rnoss among the broken banks of the 
 highlands. I was trying to fix the eye of my com 
 panion upon West Point, when a steamer, with its 
 black funnel and retreating line of smoke, issued as if 
 from the bosom of the hills into an open break of the 
 river. It was as small apparently as the white hand 
 that pointed to it so rapturously. 
 
 "Oh!" said the half-breathless girl, "is it not like 
 some fairy bark on an eastern stream, with a spice- 
 lamp alight in its prow?" 
 
56 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 "More like an old shoe afloat, with a cigar stuck in 
 it," interrupted Kentucky. 
 
 As the sun began to kindle into a blaze of fire, the 
 tumultuous masses , so peculiar to an American sky, 
 turning every tree and rock to a lambent and rosy 
 gold, we stood on the broad platform on which the 
 house is built, braced even beyond weariness by the 
 invigorating and rarified air of the mountain. A hot 
 supper and an early pillow, with the feather beds and 
 blankets of winter, were unromantic circumstances, 
 but I am not aware that any one of the party made 
 any audible objection to them; I sat next the Ken- 
 tuckian at table, and can answer for two. 
 
 A mile or two back from the mountain-house, on 
 nearly the same level, the gigantic forest suddenly 
 sinks two or three hundred feet into the earth, forming 
 a tremendous chasm, over which a bold stag might 
 almost leap, and above which the rocks hang on 
 cither side with the most threatening and frowning 
 grandeur. A mountain-stream creeps through the 
 forest to the precipice, and leaps as suddenly over, as 
 if, Arethusa-like, it fled into the earth from the pur 
 suing steps of a satyr. Thirty paces from its brink, 
 you would never suspect, but for the hollow rever 
 beration of the plunging stream, that anything but a 
 dim and mazy wood was within a day s journey. It 
 is visited as a great curiosity in scenery, under the 
 name of Cauterskill Falls. 
 
 We were all on the spot by ten the next morning, 
 after a fatiguing tramp through the forest; for the 
 Kentuckian had rejected the offer of a guide, under 
 taking to bring us to it in a straight line by only the 
 signs of the water- course. The caprices of the little 
 stream had misled him, however, and we arrived half- 
 dead with the fatigue of our cross-marches. 
 
 I sat down on the bald edge of the precipice, and 
 suffered my more impatient companions to attempt 
 the difficult and dizzy descent before me. The Ken 
 tuckian leaped from rock to rock, followed daringly 
 by the southerner; and the Englishman, thoroughly 
 enamored of the exquisite child of nature, who knew 
 no reserve beyond her mnidenly modesty, devoted 
 himself to her assistance, and compelled her with 
 anxious entreaties to descend more cautiously. I lay 
 at my length as they proceeded, and with my head 
 over the projecting edge of the most prominent crag, 
 watched them in a giddy dream, half-stupified by the 
 grandeur of the scene, half-interested in their motions. 
 
 They reached the bottom of the glen at last, and 
 shouted to the two who had gone before, but they had 
 followed the dark passage of the stream to find its 
 vent, and were beyond sight or hearing. 
 
 After sitting a minute or two, the restless but over- 
 fatigued girl rose to go nearer the fall, and I was re 
 marking to myself the sudden heaviness of her steps, 
 when she staggered, and turning toward her compan 
 ion, fell senseless into his arms. The closeness of the 
 air below, combined with over-exertion, had been too 
 much for her. 
 
 The small hut of an old man who served as a guide 
 stood a little back from the glen, and 1 had rushed 
 into it, and was on the first step of the descent with a 
 flask of spirits, when a cry from the opposite crag, in 
 the husky and choking scream of infuriated passion, 
 suddenly arrested me. On the edge of the yawning 
 chasm, gazing down into it with a livid and death-like 
 paleness, stood the southerner. I mechanically fol 
 lowed his eye. His sister lay on her back upon a flat 
 rock immediately below him, and over her knelt the 
 Englishman, loosening the dress that pressed close 
 upon her throat, and with his face so near to hers as to 
 conceal it entirely from the view. I felt the brother s 
 misapprehension at a glance, but my tongue clung to 
 the roof of my mouth ; for in the madness of his fury 
 he stood stretching clear over the brink, and every 
 instant I looked to see him plunge headlong. Be 
 
 fore I could recover my breath, he started back, gazed 
 wildly round, and seizing upon a huge fragment of 
 rock, heaved it up with supernatural strength, and 
 hurled it into the abyss. Giddy and sick with horror, 
 I turned away and covered up my eyes. I felt assured 
 he had dashed them to atoms. 
 
 The lion roar of the Kentuckian was the first sound 
 that followed the thundering crash of the fragments. 
 
 " Hallo, youngster ! what in tarnation are you arter ? 
 You ve killed the gal, by gosh!" 
 
 The next moment I heard the loosened stones as he 
 went plunging down into the glen, and hurrying after 
 him with my restorative, I found the poor English 
 man lying senseless on the rocks, and the fainting girl, 
 escaped miraculously from harm, struggling slowly to 
 her senses. 
 
 On examination, the new sufferer appeared only 
 stunned by a small fragment which had struck him 
 on the temple, and the Kentuckian, taking him up in 
 his arms like a child, strode through the spray of the 
 fall, and held his head under the descending torrent 
 till he kicked lustily for his freedom. With a draught 
 from the flask, the pale Alabamian was soon perfectly 
 restored, and we stood on the rock together looking 
 at each other like people who had survived an earth 
 quake. 
 
 We climbed the ascent and found the brother lying 
 with his face to the earth, beside himself with hia 
 conflicting feelings. The rough tongue of the Ken 
 tuckian to whom 1 had explained the apparent cause 
 of the rash act, soon cleared up the tempest, and he 
 joined us presently, and walked back by his sister s 
 side in silence. 
 
 We made ourselves into a party to pass the remain 
 der of the summer on the lakes, unwillingly letting off 
 the Kentuckian, who was in a hurry to get back to 
 propose himself for the legislature. 
 
 Three or four years have elapsed, and I find myself 
 a traveller in England. Thickly sown as are the 
 wonders and pleasures of London, an occasional din 
 ner with a lovely countrywoman in Square, and 
 
 a gossip with her husband over a glass of wine, in 
 which Cauterskill Falls are not forgotten, are mem 
 orandums in my diary never written but in "red 
 letters." 
 
 THE GIPSY OF SAEDIS, 
 
 . . . . " And thou art far, 
 Asia ! who, when my being overflowed, 
 Wert like a golden chalice to bright wine, 
 Which else had sunk into the thirsty dust." 
 SHELLEY S PKOME 
 
 OUR tents were pitched in the vestibule of the house 
 of Croesus, on the natural terrace which was once the 
 imperial site of Sardis. A humpbacked Dutch artist, 
 who had been in the service of Lady Hester Stanhope 
 as a draughtsman, and who had lingered about be 
 tween Jerusalem and the Nile till he was as much at 
 home in the east as a Hajji or a crocodile ; an Eng 
 lishman qualifying himself for "The Travellers ;" 
 a Smyrniote merchant in figs and opium ; Job Smith 
 (my inseparable shadow) and myself, composed a 
 party at this time (August, 1834), rambling about 
 Asia Minor in turbans and Turkish saddles, and pitch 
 ing our tents, and cooking our pilau, wherever it 
 pleased Heaven and the inexorable suridji who was 
 our guide and caterer. 
 
 I thought at the time that I would compound to 
 abandon all the romance of that renowned spot, for a 
 clean shirt and something softer than a marble frustrum 
 for a pillow ; but in the distance of memory, and my- 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 self at this present in a deep morocco chair in the 
 library at " The Travellers ;" the same scene in the 
 ruins of Sardis does not seem destitute of interest. 
 
 It was about four in the lazy summer afternoon. 
 We had arrived at Sardis at mid-day, and after a 
 quarrel whether we should eat immediately or wait till 
 the fashionable hour of three, the wooden dish con 
 taining two chickens buried in a tumulus of rice, 
 shaped (in compliment to the spirit of the spot) like 
 the Mound of Alyattis in the plain below, was placed | 
 in the centre of a marble pedestal ; and with Job and i 
 the Dutchman seated on the prostrate column dislodged 
 for our benefit, and the remainder of the party squatted 
 in the high grass, which grew in the royal palace as if 
 it had no memory of the foot-prints of the kings of ; 
 Lydia, we spooned away at the saturated rice, and I 
 pulled the smothered chickens to pieces with an inde- [ 
 pendence of knives and forks that was worthy of the 
 4i certain poor man in Attica." Old Solon himself, 
 who stood, we will suppose, while reproving the osten- j 
 tatious monarch, at the base of that very column now j 
 ridden astride by an inhabitant of a country of which j 
 he never dreamed (at least it strikes me there is no 
 mention of the Yankees in his philosophy) the old I 
 graybeard of the Academy himself, I say, would have \ 
 been edified at the primitive simplicity of our repast. ! 
 The salt (he would have asked if it was Attic) was ; 
 contained in a ragged play-bill, which the Dutchman j 
 had purloined as a specimen of Modern Greek, from 
 the side of a house in Corfu ; the mustard was in a I 
 cracked powder-horn, which had been slung at the 
 breast of old Whalley the regicide, in the American J 
 revolution, and which Job had brought from the Green 
 mountains, and held, till its present base uses, in re 
 ligious veneration ; the ham (I should have mentioned 
 that respectable entremet before) was half enveloped 
 in a copy of the " Morning Post ;" and the bread, 
 which had been seven days out from Smyrna, and had 
 been kept warm in the suridji s saddle bags twelve 
 hours in the twenty-four, lay in disjecta membra around 
 the marble table, with marks of vain but persevering 
 attacks in its nibbled edges. The luxury of our lar 
 der was comprised in a flask which had once held Har 
 vey s sauce, and though the last drop had served as a 
 condiment to a roasted kid some three months before, 
 in the Acropolis at Athens, we still clung to it with 
 affectionate remembrance, and it was offered and re- 
 fused daily around the table for the melancholy pleasure 
 of hearing the mention of its name It was unlucky 
 that the only thing which the place afforded of the 
 best quality, and in sufficient quanities* was precisely ; 
 the one thing in the world for which no individual of ! 
 the party had any particular relish water ! It was I 
 brought in a gourd from the bed of the " golden-sand- ! 
 ed Pactolus," rippling away to the plain within pistol- ; 
 shot of the dining-room ; but, to the shame of our sim- ! 
 plicity I must record, that a high-shouldered Jug of ! 
 the rough wine of Samos, trodden out by the feet of j 
 the lovely slaves of the jEgcan, and bought for a far- j 
 thing the bottle, went oftener to the unclassical lips of 
 the company. Methinks, now (the wind east in Lon 
 don, and the day wet and abominable), I could barter 
 the dinner that I shall presently discuss, with its suite i 
 of sherries and anchovy, to kneel down by that golden i 
 river in the sunshine, and drink a draught of pure 
 lymph under the sky of effeminate Asia. Yet, when 
 I was there so rarely do we recognise happiness till 
 she is gone I wished myself (where I had never been) 
 in " merry England." " Merry," quotha ? Scratch 
 it out, and write comfortable. I have seen none 
 44 merry" in England, save those who have most cause 
 to be sad the abandoned of themselves and the 
 world ! 
 
 Out of the reach of ladies and the laws of society, 
 the most refined persons return very much to the na 
 tural instincts from which they have departed in the i 
 
 progress of civilization. Job rolled off the marble 
 column when there was nothing more to eat, and went 
 to sleep with the marks of the Samian wine turning 
 up the corners of his mouth like the salacious grin of 
 a satyr. The Dutchman got his hump into a hollow, 
 and buried his head in the long grass with the same obe 
 dience to the prompting of nature, and idem the suridji 
 and the fig-merchant, leaving me seated alone among 
 the promiscuous ruins of Sardis and the dinner. The 
 dish of philosophy I had with myself on that occasion 
 will appear as a rechauffe in my novel (I intend to 
 write one) ; but meantime I may as well give you the 
 practical inference ; that, as sleeping after dinner is 
 evidently Nature s law, Washington Irving is highly 
 excusable for the practice, and he would be a friend of 
 reason who should introduce couches and coffee at that 
 somnolent period, the digestive nap taking the place 
 of the indigestible politics usually forced upon the com 
 pany on the disappearance of the ladies. Why should 
 the world be wedded for ever to these bigoted incon 
 veniences ! 
 
 The grand track from the south and west of Asia 
 Minor passes along the plain between the lofty Acropo 
 lis of Sardis and the tombs of her kings ; and with 
 the snore of travellers from five different nations in 
 my ear, I sat and counted the camels in one of the 
 immense caravans never out of sight in the valley of 
 the Hermus. The long procession of those brown 
 monsters wound slowly past on their way to Smyrna, 
 their enormous burthens covered with colored trap 
 pings and swaying backward and forward with their dis 
 jointed gait, and their turbaned masters dozing on the 
 backs of the small asses of the east, leading each a 
 score by the tether at his back ; the tinkling of their 
 hundred bells swarmed up through the hot air of the 
 afternoon with the drowsiest of monotones ; the native 
 oleanders, slender-leaved and tall, and just now in all 
 their glory, with a color in their bright flowers stolen 
 from the bleeding lips of Houris, brightened the plains 
 of Lydia like the flush of sunset lying low on the earth ; 
 the black goats of uncounted herds browsed along the 
 ancient Sarabat, with their bearded faces turned every 
 one to the faintly coining wind : the eagles (that abound 
 now in the mountains from which Sardis and a hundred 
 silent cities once scared their bold progenitors) sailed 
 slowly and fearlessly around the airy citadel that flung 
 open its gates to the Lacedaemonian ; and, gradually, 
 as you may have lost yourself in this tangled paragraph, 
 dear reader, my senses became confused among the 
 objects it enumerates, and I fell asleep with the speech 
 of Solon in my ears, and my back to the crumbling 
 portico of Croesus. 
 
 The Dutchman was drawing my picture when I 
 awoke, the sun was setting, and Job and the suridji 
 were making tea. I am not a very picturesque object, 
 generally speaking, but done as a wild Arab lying at 
 the base of a column in a white turban, with a stork s 
 nest over my head, I am not so ill-looking as you would 
 suppose. As the Dutchman drew for gelt, and hoped 
 to sell his picture to some traveller at Smyrna who 
 would take that opportunity to affirm in his book that 
 he had been at Sardis (as vide his own sketch), I do 
 not despair of seeing myself yet in lithograph. And, 
 talking of pictures, I would give something now if I 
 had engaged that hump-backed draughtsman to make 
 me a sketch of Job, squat on his hams before a fire in 
 the wall, and making tea in a tin pot with a " malig 
 nant and turbaned Turk," feeding the blaze with the 
 dry thorn of Syria.* It would have been consolation 
 to his respectable mother, whom he left in the Green 
 mountains (wondering what he could have to do with 
 following such a scapegrace as myself through the 
 
 * It has the peculiarity of a hooked thorn alternating with the 
 straight, and it is difficult to touch it without lacerating the 
 hands. It is the common thorn of the east, and it is supposed 
 that our Savior s crown at his crucifixion was made of it. 
 
58 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 world), to have seen him in the turban of a Hajji tak 
 ing his tea quietly in ancient Lydia. The green tur 
 ban, the sign of the Hajji, belonged more properly to 
 myself; for though it was Job who went bodily to 
 Jerusalem (leaving me ill of a fig-fever at Smyrna), the 
 sanctity of the pilgrimage by the Mohammedan law 
 falls on him who provides the pilgrim with scallop-shell 
 and sandals, aptly figured forth in this case, we will sup 
 pose, by the sixty American dollars paid by myself for 
 his voyage to Jaffa and back. The suridji was a 
 Hajji, too, and it was amusing to see Job, who respect 
 ed every man s religious opinions, and had a little 
 vanity besides in sharing with the Turk* the dignity of 
 a pilgrimage to the sacred city, washing his knees and 
 elbows at the hour of prayer, and considerately, but 
 very much to his own inconvenience, transferring the 
 ham of the unclean beast from the Mussulman s sad 
 dle-bags to his own. It was a delicate sacrifice to a 
 pagan s prejudices worthy of Socrates or a Christian. 
 
 II. 
 
 In all simple states of society, sunset is the hour of 
 better angels. The traveller in the desert remembers 
 his home the sea-tost boy his mother and her last 
 words the Turk talks, for a wonder, and the chatter 
 ing Greek is silent, for the same the Italian forgets 
 his mustache, and hums la patria and the English 
 man delivers himself of the society of his companions, 
 and " takes a walk." It is something in the influences 
 of the hour, and I shall take trouble, some day, to 
 maintain that morn, noon, and midnight, have their 
 ministry as well, and exercise each an unobserved but 
 salutary and peculiar office on the feelings. 
 
 We all separated " after tea ;" the Suridji was off to 
 find a tethering place for his horses; the Englishman 
 strolled away by himself to a group of the " tents of 
 Kedar" far down in the valley with their herds and 
 herdsmen ; theSmyrniote merchant sat by the camel- 
 track at the foot of the hill waiting for the passing of a 
 caravan; the Green-Mountaineer was wandering around 
 the ruins of the apostolic church; the Dutchman was 
 sketching the two Ionic shafts of the fair temple of 
 Cybele ; and I, with a passion for running water which 
 I have elsewhere alluded to, idled by the green bank 
 of the Pactolus, dreaming sometimes of Gyges and 
 Alexander, and sometimes of you, dear Mary! 
 
 I passed Job on my way, for the four walls over 
 which the " Angel of the Church of Sardis" kept his 
 brooding watch in the days of the Apocalypse stand 
 not far from the swelling bank of the Pactolus, and 
 nearly in a line between it and the palace of Croesus. I 
 must say that my heart almost stood still with awe as I 
 stepped over the threshold. In the next moment, the 
 strong and never-wasting under-current of early reli 
 gious feeling rushed back on me, and I involuntarily 
 uncovered my head, and felt myself stricken with the 
 spell of holy ground. My friend, who was never with 
 out the Bible that was his mother s parting gift, sat on 
 the end of the broken wall of the vestibule with the 
 sacred volume open at the Revelation in his hand. 
 
 " I think, Philip," said he, as I stood looking at him 
 in silence, " I think my mother will have been told by 
 an .angel that I am here." 
 
 He spoke with a solemnity that, spite of every other 
 feeling, seemed to me as weighty and true as prophecy. 
 
 " Listen, Philip," said he, "it will be something to 
 tell your mother as well as mine, that we have read the 
 Apocalypse together in the Church of Sardis." 
 
 I listened with what I never thought to have heard 
 
 The Mussulmans make pilgrimages to Jerusalem, and pray 
 at all the places consecrated to our Savior and the Virgin, ex 
 cept only the tomb of Christ, which they do not acknowledge. 
 They believe that Christ did not die, but ascended alive into 
 heaven , leaving the likeness of his face to Judas, who was 
 crucified for him. 
 
 in Asia my mother s voice loud at my heart, as I had 
 heard it in prayer in my childhood : 
 
 " Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have 
 not defiled their garments ; and they shall walk with 
 me in white: for they are worthy." 
 
 I strolled on. A little farther up the Pactolus stood 
 the Temple of Cybele. The church to which " He" 
 spoke " who hath the seven spirits of God and the seven 
 stars," was a small and humble ruin of brick and mor 
 tar ; but, of the temple of the Heathen Mother of the 
 world, remained two fair columns of marble with their 
 curiously carved capitals, and the earth around was 
 strewn with the gigantic frusta of an edifice, stately 
 even in the fragments of its prostration. I saw for a 
 moment the religion of Jupiter and of Christ with the 
 eyes of Crcesus and the philosopher from Athens; and 
 then I turned to the living nations that I had left to 
 wander among these dead empires, and looking still 
 on the eloquent monuments of what these religions 
 were, thought of them as they are, in wide-spread 
 Christendom. 
 
 We visit Rome and Athens, and walk over the ruined 
 temples of their gods of wood and stone, and take pride 
 to ourselves that our imaginations awake the spirit 
 of the spot." But the primitive church of Christ, over 
 which an angel of God kept watch whose undefiled 
 members, if there is truth in Holy Writ, are now 
 " walking with him in white" before the face of the 
 Almighty a spot on which the Savior and his apos 
 tles prayed, and for whose weal, with the other church 
 es of Asia, the sublime revelation was made to John 
 this, the while, is an unvisited shrine, and the " classic" 
 of pagan idolatry is dearer to the memories of men 
 than the holy antiquities of a religion they profess ! 
 
 III. 
 
 The Ionic capitals of the two fair columns of the 
 fallen temple were still tinged with rosy light on the 
 side toward the sunset, when the full moon, rising 
 in the east, burnished the other like a shaft of sil 
 ver. The two lights mingled in the sky in a twilight 
 of opal. 
 
 " Job," said I, stooping to reach a handful of sand 
 as we strolled up the western bank of the river, " can 
 you resolve me why the poets have chosen to call this 
 pretty stream the golden-sanded Pactolus? Did you 
 ever see sand of a duller gray ?" 
 
 "As easy as give you a reason," answered Job, 
 " why we found the turbidus Hermus, yesterday, the 
 clearest stream we have forded why 1 am no more 
 beautiful than before, though I have bathed like Ve 
 nus in the Scamander why the pumice of Naxos no 
 longer reduces the female bust to its virgin propor 
 tions and why Smyrna and Malta are not the best 
 places for figs and oranges !" 
 
 "And why the old king of Lydia, who possessed 
 the invisible ring, and kept a devil in his dog s collar, 
 lies quietly under the earth in the plain below us, and 
 his ring and his devil were not bequeathed to his suc 
 cessors. What a pleasant auxiliary to sin must have 
 been that invisible ring ! Spirit of Gyges, thrust thy 
 finger out of the earth, and commit it once more to a 
 mortal ! Sit down, my dear monster, and let us spec 
 ulate in this bright moonshine on the enormities we 
 would commit !" 
 
 As Job was proceeding, in a cautious periphrasis, 
 to rebuke my irreverent familiarity with the prince of 
 darkness and his works, the twilight had deepened, 
 and my eye was caught by a steady light twinkling far 
 above us in the ascending bed of the river. The green 
 valley wound down from the rear of the Acropolis, and 
 the single frowning tower stood in broken and strong 
 relief against the sky ; and from the mass of shadow be 
 low peered out, like a star from a cloud-rack, the steady 
 blaze of a lamp. 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 "Aliens! Job !" said I, making sure of an adven 
 ture, " let us see for whose pleasure a lamp is lit in 
 the solitude of this ruined city." 
 
 " I could not answer to your honored mother," said 
 my scrupulous friend, " if I did not remind you that 
 this is a spot much frequented by robbers, and that 
 probably no honest man harbors at that inconvenient 
 altitude." 
 
 I made a leap over a half-buried frieze that had 
 served me as a pillow, and commenced the ascent. 
 
 " I could as ill answer to your anxious parent," said 
 Job, following with uncommon alacrity, " if I did not 
 partake your dangers when they are inevitable." 
 
 We scrambled up with some difficulty in the dark 
 ness, now rolling into an unseen hollow, now stumbling 
 over a block of marble held fast one moment by the 
 lacerating hooked thorn of Syria, and the next brought 
 to a stand-still by impenetrable thickets of brushwood. 
 \Vith a half hour s toil, however, we stood on a clear 
 platform of grass, panting and hot ; and as I was sug 
 gesting to Job that we had possibly got too high, he 
 laid his hand on my arm, and, with a sign of silence, 
 drew me down on the grass beside him. 
 
 In a small fairy amphitheatre, half encircled by a 
 bend of the Pactolus, and lying a few feet below the 
 email platform from which we looked, lay six low tents, j 
 disposed in a crescent opposite to that of the stream, 
 and enclosing a circular area of bright and dewy grass, t 
 of scarce ten feet in diameter. The tents were round, ! 
 and laced neatly with wicker-work, with their curtain- j 
 doors opening inward upon the circle. In the largest j 
 one, which faced nearly down the valley, hung a small j 
 iron lamp of an antique shape, with a wick alight in j 
 one of its two projecting extremities, and beneath it 
 swung a basket-cradle suspended between two stakes, I 
 and kept in motion by a woman apparently of about 
 forty, whose beauty, but for another more attractive 
 object, would have rewarded us alone for our toil. The | 
 other tents were closed and seemed unoccupied, but the 
 curtain of the one into which our eyes were now strain 
 ing with intense eagerness, was looped entirely back to 
 give admission to the cool night air; and, in and out, 
 between the light of the lamp and the full moon, stole 
 on naked feet a girl of fifteen, whose exquisite symme 
 try and unconscious but divine grace of movement 
 filled my sense of beauty as it had never been filled by 
 the divinest chisel of the Tribune. She was of the 
 height and mould of the younger water-nymph in 
 Gibson s Hylas,* with limbs and lips that, had I cre 
 ated and warmed her to life like Pygmalion, I should 
 have just hesitated whether or not they wanted anoth- j 
 er half-shade of fulness. The large shawl of the east, 
 which was attached to her girdle, and in more guard- j 
 ed hours concealed all but her eyes, hung in loose 
 folds from her waist to her heels, leaving her bust and 
 smoothly-rounded shoulders entirely bare ; arftl, in 
 strong relief even upon her clear brown skin, the flakes 
 of her glossy and raven hair floated over her back, and 
 swept around her with a grace of a cloud in her indo 
 lent motions. A short petticoat of striped Brusa silk 
 stretched to her knees, and below appeared the full j 
 trowser of the east, (^ the same material, narrowed at 
 the ankle, and bound with what looked in the moon 
 light an anklet of silver. 4t profusion of rings on her 
 fingers, and a gold sequin on her forehead, suspended 
 from a colored fillet, completed her dress, and left 
 nothing to be added by the prude or the painter. She 
 was at that ravishing and divinest moment of female 
 life, when almost the next hour would complete her 
 womanhood like the lotus ere it lays back to the 
 prying moonlight the snowy leaf nearest its heart. 
 
 A group that will be immortal in the love and wonder of 
 the world, when the divine hand of the English Praxiteles has 
 long passed from the earth. Two more exquisite shapes of 
 women than those lily-crowned nymphs never lay in the womb 
 of marble or human mother. Rome is brighter for them. 
 
 She was employed in filling a large jar which stood 
 j at the back of the tent, with water from the Pactolus, 
 and as she turned with her empty pitcher, and came 
 j under the full blaze of the lamp in her way outward, 
 treading lightly lest she should disturb the slumber of 
 the child in the cradle, and pressing her two round 
 hands closely to the sides of the vessel, the gradual 
 compression of my arm by the bony hand which still 
 held it for sympathy, satisfied me that my own leaping 
 pulse of admiration found an answering beat in the 
 bosom of my friend. A silent nod from the woman, 
 whose Greek profile was turned to us under the lamp 
 light, informed the lovely water-bearer that her labors 
 I were at an end ; and with a gesture expressive of heat, 
 she drew out the shawl from her girdle, untied the 
 I short petticoat, and threw them aside, and then trip 
 ping out into the moonlight with only the full silken 
 trowsers from her waist to her ankles, she sat down on 
 | the brink of the small stream, and with her feet in the 
 i water, dropped her head on her knees, and sat as mo 
 tionless as marble. 
 
 " Gibson should see her now," I whispered to Job, 
 "with the glance of the moonlight on that dimpled 
 and polished back, and her almost glittering hair veil 
 ing about her in such masses, like folds of gossamer !" 
 "And those slender fingers clasped over her knees, 
 and the air of melancholy repose which is breathed into 
 her attitude, and which seems inseparable from those 
 indolent Asiatics. She is probably a gipsy." 
 
 The noise of the water dashing over a small cascade 
 a little farther up the stream had covered our approach 
 and rendered our whispers inaudible. Job s conjecture 
 I was probably right, and we had stumbled on a small 
 encampment of- gipsies the men possibly asleep in 
 those closed tents, or possibly absent at Smyrna. Af- 
 | ter a little consultation, I agreed with Job that it would 
 be impolitic to alarm the camp at night, and resolving 
 on a visit in the morning, we quietly and unobserved 
 withdrew from our position, and descended to our own 
 tents in the ruins of the palace. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The suridji had given us our spiced coffee in the 
 small china cups and filagree holders, and we sat dis 
 cussing, to the great annoyance of the storks over our 
 heads, whether we should loiter another day at Sardis, 
 or eat melons at noon at Casabar on our way to Con 
 stantinople. To the very great surprise of the Dutch 
 man, who wished to stay to finish his drawings, Job and 
 myself voted for remaining a view of the subject which 
 was in direct contradiction to our vote of the preceding 
 evening. The Englishman, who was always in a hur 
 ry, flew into a passion, and went off with the phleg 
 matic suridji to look after his horse ; and having dis 
 posed of our Smyrniote, by seeing a caravan (which 
 was not to be seen) coming southward from Mount 
 Tmolus, I and my monster started for the encamp 
 ment of the gipsies. 
 
 As we rounded the battered wall of the Christian 
 church, a woman stepped out from the shadow ; through 
 a tattered dress, and under a turban of soiled cotton set 
 far over her forehead, and throwing a deep shadow into 
 her eyes, I recognised at once the gipsy woman whom 
 we had seen sitting by the cradle. 
 
 " Buon giorno, signori," she said, making a kind of 
 salaam, and relieving me at once by the Italian saluta 
 tion of my fears of being unintelligible. 
 
 Job gave her the good-morning, but she looked at 
 him with a very unsatisfactory glance, and coming 
 I close to my ear, she wished me to speak to her out of 
 the hearing of " il mio domeslico . " 
 
 "Amico piu (oslo /" I added immediately with a con 
 sideration for Job s feelings, which, I must do myself 
 the justice to say, I always manifested, except in very 
 elegant society. I gave myself the greater credit in 
 
60 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 this case, as, in my impatience to know the nature of 
 the gipsy s communication, I might be excused for 
 caring little at the moment whether my friend was 
 taken for a gentleman or a gentleman s gentleman. 
 
 The gipsy looked vexed at her mistake, and with a 
 half-apologetic inclination to Job, she drew me into 
 the shade of the ruin, and perused my face with great 
 earnestness. " The same to yourself," thought I, as 
 I gave back her glance, and searched for her meaning 
 in two as liquid and loving eyes as ever looked out of 
 the gates of the Prophet s paradise for the coming of 
 a young believer. It was a face that had been divine, 
 and in the hands of a lady of fashion would have still 
 made a bello rifacimento. 
 
 " Inglese ?" she said at last. 
 
 " No, madre Americano." 
 
 She looked disappointed. 
 
 " And where are you going, filio mio ?" 
 
 " To Stamboul." 
 
 " Benissimo !" she answered, and her face bright 
 ened. " Do you want a servant ?" 
 
 " Unless it is yourself, no !" 
 
 " It is my son." 
 
 It was on my lips to ask if he was like her daughter, 
 but an air of uneasiness and mystery in her manner put 
 me on the reserve, and I kept my knowledge to myself. 
 She persevered in her suit, and at last the truth came 
 out, thai her boy was bound on an errand to Constan 
 tinople, and she wished safe conduct for him. The 
 rest of the troop, she said, were at Smyrna, and she 
 was left in care of the tents with the boy and an infant 
 child. As she did not mention the girl, who, from the 
 resemblance, was evidently her daughter I thought it 
 unwise to allude to our discovery : and- promising that, 
 if the boy was mounted, every possible care should be 
 taken of him, I told her the hour on the following 
 morning when we should be in the saddle, and rid my 
 self of her with the intention of stealing a march on 
 the camp. 
 
 I took rather a circuitous route, but the gipsy was 
 there before me, and apparently alone. She had sent 
 the boy to the plains for a horse, and though I pre- 
 Bumed that the loveliest creature in Asia was concealed 
 in one or the other of those small tents, the curtains 
 were closely tied, and I could find no apology for in 
 truding either my eyes or my inquiries. The hand 
 some Zingara, too, began to look rather becomingly 
 fiere ; and as I had left Job behind, and was always 
 naturally afraid of a woman, I reluctantly felt myself 
 under the necessity of comprehending her last injunc 
 tion, and with a promise that the boy should join us 
 before we reached the foot of Mount Sypilus, she fair 
 ly bowed me off the premises. I could have forsworn 
 my complexion and studied palmistry for a gipsy, had 
 the devil then tempted me ! 
 
 We struck our tents at sunrise, and were soon dash 
 ing on through the oleanders upon the broad plain of 
 the Hermus, the dew lying upon their bright vermeil 
 flowers like the pellucid gum on the petals of the ice- 
 plant, and nature, and my five companions, in their 
 gayest humor. I was not. My thoughts were of 
 moonlight and the Pactolus, and two round feet 
 ankle-deep in running water. Job rode up to my 
 
 " My dear Phil ! take notice that you are nearing 
 Mount Sypilus, in which the magnetic ore was first 
 discovered." 
 
 " It acts negatively on me, my dear chum ! for I 
 drag a lengthening chain from the other direction." 
 
 Silence once more, and the bright red flowers still 
 fled backward in our career. Job rode up again. 
 
 " You must excuse my interrupting your revery, but 
 I thought you would like to know that the town where 
 
 we sleep to-night is the residence of the beys of Og- 
 lou, mentioned in the Bride of Abydos. " 
 
 No answer, and the bright red blossoms still flew 
 scattered in our path as our steeds flew through the 
 coppice, and the shovel-like blades of the Turkish stir 
 rups cut into them right and left in the irregular gallop. 
 Job rode again to my side. 
 
 " My dear Philip, did you know that this town of 
 Magnesia was once the capital of the Turkish empire 
 the city of Timour the Tartar ?" 
 
 " Well !" 
 
 "And did you know that when Themistocles was 
 in exile, and Artaxerxes presented him with the tribute 
 of three cities to provide the necessaries of life, Mag 
 nesia* found him in bread?" 
 
 "And Lampascus in wine. Don t bore me, Job!" 
 
 We sped on. As we neared Casabar toward noon, 
 and (spite of romance) I was beginning to think with 
 complacency upon the melons, for which the town is 
 famous, a rattling of hoofs behind put our horses upon 
 their mettle, and in another moment a boy dashed into 
 the midst of our troop, and reining up with a fine dis 
 play of horsemanship, put the promised token into 
 my hand. He was mounted on a small Arabian mare, 
 remarkable for nothing but a thin and fiery nostril, 
 and a most lavish action, and his jacket and turban 
 were fitted to a shape and head that could not well 
 be disguised. The beauty of the gipsy camp was 
 beside me ! 
 
 It was as well for my self-command, that I had 
 sworn Job to secrecy in case of the boy s joining us, 
 and that I had given the elder gipsy, as a token, a very 
 voluminous and closely-written letter of my mother s. 
 In the twenty minutes which the reading of so appa 
 rently "lengthy" a document would occupy, I had 
 leisure to resume my self-control, and resolve on my 
 own course of conduct toward the fair masquerader. 
 My travelling companions were not a litlle astonished 
 to see me receive a letter by courier in the heart of 
 Asia, but that was for their own digestion. All the 
 information I condescended to give, was that the boy 
 was sent to my charge on his road to Constantinople ; 
 and as Job displayed no astonishment, and entered 
 simply into my arrangements, and I was the only per 
 son in the company who could communicate with the 
 suridji (I had picked up a little modern Greek in the 
 Morea), they were compelled (the Dutchman, John 
 Bull, and the fig-merchant) to content themselves 
 with such theories on the subject as Heaven might 
 supply them withal. 
 
 How Job and I speculated apart on what could be 
 the errand of this fair ..creature to Constantinople 
 how beautifully she rode and sustained her character 
 as a boy how I requested her, though she spoke 
 Italian like her mother, never to open her lips in any 
 Christian language to my companions how she slept 
 at my feet at the khans, and rode at my side on the 
 journey, and, at the end of seven days, -arriving at 
 Scutari, and beholding across the Bosphorus the golden 
 spires of Stamboul, how she looked at me with tears 
 in her unfathomable eyes, and sDurred her fleet Arab 
 to his speed to conceal her emotion, and how 1 felt 
 that I could bury myself with -her in the vizier s 
 tomb we were passing at tlH moment, and be fed on 
 rice with a goule s bodkin, if so alone we might not 
 be parted all these are matters which would make 
 sundry respectable chapters in a novel, but of which 
 you are spared the particulars in a true story. There 
 was a convenience both to the dramatist and the au 
 dience in the " cetera inlus agentur" of the Romans. 
 
 We emerged from the pinnacled cypresses of the 
 cemetery overlooking Constantinople, and dismount- 
 
 * Not pronounced as in the apothecary s shop. It is a fine 
 large town at the foot of Mount Sypilus. 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 61 
 
 ing from my horse, I climbed upon the gilded turban 
 crowning the mausoleum of a royal Ichoglan (a sul 
 tan s page, honored more in his burial than in his life), 
 and feasted my eyes on the desecrated but princely 
 fair birth-right of the Palaeologi. The Nekropolis 
 the city of the dead on the outermost tomb of whose 
 gloomy precincts I had profanely mounted, stands 
 high and black over the Bosphorus on one side, while 
 on the other, upon similar eminences, stand the gleam 
 ing minarets and latticed gardens of the matchless city 
 of the living as if, while Europe flung up her laugh 
 ing and breathing child to the sun, expiring Asia, the 
 bereaved emperess of the world, lifted her head to the 
 same heavens in majestic and speechless sorrow. 
 
 But oh! how fairer than Venice in her waters 
 than Florence and Rome in their hills and habitations, 
 than all the cities of the world in that which is most 
 their pride and glory is this fairest metropolis of the 
 Mahomets! With its two hundred mosques, each 
 with a golden sheaf of minarets laying their pointed 
 fingers against the stars, andencircled with the fretted 
 galleries of the callers to prayer, like the hand of a 
 cardinal with its costly ring with its seraglio gardens 
 washed on one side by the sea, and on the other by the 
 gentle stream that glides out of the "Valley of Sweet 
 Waters;" men-of-war on one side, flaunting their red 
 pennants over the nightingale s nest which sings for 
 the delight of a princgss, and the swift caique on the 
 other gliding in protected waters, where the same im 
 prisoned fair one might fling into it a flower (so slen 
 der is the dividing cape that shuts in the bay) with 
 its Bosphorus, its radiant and unmatched Bosphorus 
 the most richly-gemmed river within the span of the 
 sun, extending with its fringe of palaces and castles 
 from sea to sea, and reflecting in its glassy eddies a 
 pomp and sumptuousness of costume and architecture 
 ^ which exceeds even your boyish dreams of Bagdad 
 _and the califs Constantinople, I say, with its tur- 
 baned and bright-garmented population its swarm- 
 ing sea and rivers its columns, and aqueducts, and 
 strange ships of the east is impenetrable seraglio, 
 and its close-shuttered harems its bezestein and its 
 Hippodrome Constantinople lay before me! If the 
 star I had worshipped had descended to my hand out 
 of the sky if my unapproachable and yearning dream 
 of woman s beauty had been bodied forth warm and 
 real if the mining star in the heel of Serpentarius, 
 and the lost sister of the Pleiades had waltzed back 
 together to their places if poets were once more 
 prophets, not felons, and books were read for the good 
 that is in them, not for the evil if love and truth had 
 been seen again, or any impossible or improbable thing 
 had come to pass I should not have felt more thril- 
 lingly than now the emotions of surprise and wonder! 
 
 While I stood upon the marble turban of theJcho- 
 ^l;ui, my companions had descended the streets of 
 .. SciM-i, and I was left alone with the gipsy. She sat 
 on her Arab with her head bowed to his neck, and 
 when I withdrew my eye from the scene I have faintly 
 described, the tear-drops were glistening in the flow 
 ing mane, and, her bj^ast was heaving under her em 
 broidered jacket \vitUjincontrollable grief. J jumped 
 to the ground, and taking rujrhead between my hands, 
 pressed her wet cheek to my lips. 
 
 "We part here, signer," said she, winding around 
 her head the masses of hair that had escaped from 
 her turban, and raising herself in the saddle as if to 
 go on. 
 
 " I hope not, Maimuna!" 
 
 She bent her moist eyes on me with a look or ear 
 nest inquiry. 
 
 " You are forbidden to intrust me with your errand 
 to Constantinople, and you have kept your word to 
 your mother. But whatever that errand may be, I 
 hope it does not involve your personal liberty?" 
 
 She lookedffembarrassed, but did not answer. 
 
 "You are very young to be trusted so far from your 
 mother, Maimuna !" 
 "Signer, si!" 
 
 "But I think she can scarce have loved you so well 
 as I do to have suffered you to come here alone !" 
 " She intrusted me to you, signer." 
 I was well reminded of tny promise. I had given 
 my word to the gipsy that I would leave her child at 
 the Persian fountain of Tophana. Maimuna was 
 evidently under a control stronger than the love I half- 
 hoped and half-feared I had awakened. 
 
 " Andiamo!" she said, dropping her head upon her 
 I bosom with the tears pouring once more over it like 
 rain; and driving her stirrups with abandoned energy 
 into the sides of her Arabian, she dashed headlong 
 down the uneven streets of Scutari, and in a few min 
 utes we stood on the limit of Asia. 
 
 We left our horses in the "silver city,"* crossing to 
 the "golden" in a caique, and with Maimuna in my 
 j bosom, and every contending emotion at work in my 
 heart, the scene about me still made an indelible im 
 pression on my memory. The star-shaped bay, a 
 mile perhaps in diameter, was one swarm of boats of 
 every most slender and graceful form, the caikjis, in 
 i their silken shirts, and vari-colored turbans, driving 
 j them through the water with a speed and skill which 
 j put to shame the gondolier of Venice, and almost the 
 j Indian in his canoe; the gilded lattices and belvideres 
 of the seraglio, and the cypresses and flowering trees 
 that mingle their gay and sad foliage above them, 
 were already so near that I could count the roses upon 
 the bars, and see the moving of the trees in the evening 
 wind; the muezzins were calling to sunset-prayer, 
 their voices coming clear and prolonged over the 
 water; the men-of-war in the mouth of the Bosphorus 
 were lowering their blood-red flags; the shore we 
 | were approaching was thronged with veiled women, 
 || and bearded old men, and boys with the yellow slipper 
 |j and red scull-cap of the east; and watching our ap- 
 | proach, stood apart, a group of Jews and Armenians, 
 ; marked by their costume for an inferior race, but look 
 ing to my cosmopolite eye as noble in their black 
 robes and towering caps as the haughty Mussulman 
 that stood aloof from their company. 
 
 We set foot in Constantinople. It was the suburb 
 of Tophana, and the suridji pointed out to Maimuna, 
 as we landed, a fountain of inlaid marble and brass, 
 around whose projecting frieze were traced inscrip 
 tions in the Persian. She sprang to my hand. 
 
 "Remember, Maimuna!" I said, "that I offer you 
 a mother and a home in another and a happier land. 
 I will not interfere with your duty, but when your 
 errand is done, you may find me if you will. Fare 
 well." 
 
 With a passionate kiss in the palm of my hand, and 
 one beaming look of love and sorrow in her large and 
 lustrous eyes, the gipsy turned to the fountain, and 
 striking suddenly to the left around the mosque of 
 Sultan Selim, she plunged into the narrow street run 
 ning along the water-side to Galata. 
 
 VII. 
 
 We had wandered out from our semi-European, 
 semi-Turkish lodgings on the third morning after our 
 arrival at Constantinople, and picking our way list 
 lessly over the bad pavement of the suburb of Pera, 
 stood at last in the small burying-ground at the sum 
 mit of the hill, disputing amicably upon what quarter 
 of the fair city beneath us we should bestow our share 
 in the bliss of that June morning. 
 
 "It is a heavenly day," said Job, sitting down un 
 thinkingly upon a large sculptured turban that formed 
 
 * Galata, the suburb on the European side, was the Chrysop- 
 olis, and Scutari, on the Asian, the Argentopolis of the an 
 cients. 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 fhe head-stone to the grave of some once-wealthy 
 pagan, and looking off wistfully toward the green sum 
 mit of Bulgurlu. 
 
 The difference between Job and myself was a mania, 
 on his part for green fields, and on mine for human 
 faces. I knew very well that his remark was a leader 
 to some proposition for a stroll over the wilder hills of 
 the Bosphorus, and I was determined that he should 
 enjoy, instead, the pleasure of sympathy in my never- 
 tiring amusement of wandering in the crowded bazars 
 on the other side of the water. The only way to ac 
 complish it, was to appear to yield the point, and then 
 rally upon his generosity. I had that delicacy for his 
 feelings (I had brought him all the way from the Green 
 mountains at my own expense) never to carry my 
 measures too ostentatiously. 
 
 Job was looking south, and my face was as resolute 
 ly turned north. We must take a caique in any case 
 at Galata (lying just below us) but if we turned the 
 prow south in the first instance, farewell at every 
 stroke to the city ! Whereas a northern course took 
 us straight up the Golden Horn, and I could appear to 
 change my mind at any moment, and land immediate 
 ly in a street leading to the bazars. Luckily, while 
 I was devising an errand to go up the channel instead 
 of down, a small red flag appeared gliding through the 
 forest of masts around the curve of the water-side at 
 Tophana, and, in a moment more, a high-pooped 
 vessel, with the carved railings and outlandish rigging 
 of the ships from the far east, shot out into the 
 middle of the bay with the strong current of the 
 Bosphorus, and squaring her lateen sail, she rounded 
 a vessel lying at anchor with the flag of Palestine, and 
 steered with a fair wind up the channel of the Golden 
 Horn. A second look at her deck disclosed to me a 
 crowd of people, mostly women, standing amid-ships, 
 and the supposition with which I was about inducing 
 Job to take a caique and pull up the harbor after her 
 seemed to me now almost a certainty. 
 
 " It is a slave-ship from Trebizond, ten to one, my 
 dear Job !" 
 
 He slid off the marble turban which he had pro 
 faned so unscrupulously, and the next minute we 
 passed the gate that divides the European from the 
 commercial suburb, and were plunging down the steep 
 and narrow straits of Galata with a haste that, to the 
 slippered and shuffling Turks we met or left behind, 
 seemed propably little short of madness. Of a hun 
 dred slender and tossing caiques lying in the disturbed 
 waters of the bay, we selected the slenderest and best 
 manned ; and getting Job in with the usual imminent 
 danger of driving his long legs through the bottom of 
 the egg-shell craft, we took in one of the obsequious 
 Jews who swarm about the pier as interpreters, coiled 
 our legs under us in the hollow womb of the caique, 
 and shot away like a nautilus after the slaver. 
 
 The deep-lying river that coils around the throbbing 
 heart of Constantinople is a place of as delicate navi 
 gation as a Venetian lagoon on a festa, or a soiree of 
 middling authors. The Turk, like your plain-spoken 
 friend, rows backward, and with ten thousand egg 
 shells swarming about him in every direction, and hi* 
 own prow rounded off in a pretty iron point, an extra 
 piastre for speed draws down curses on the caikji and 
 the Christian dogs who pay him for the holes he lets 
 into his neighbors boats, which is only equalled in bit 
 terness and profusion by the execrations which follow 
 what is called "speaking your mind." The Jew 
 laughed, as Jews do since Shylock, at the misfortunes 
 of his oppressors ; and, in the exercise of his vocation, 
 translated us the oaths as they came in right and left 
 most of them very gratuitous attacks on those (as 
 Job gravely remarked), of whom they could know very 
 little our respected mothers. 
 
 The slackening vessel lost her way as she got oppo 
 site the bazar of dried fruits, and, as her yards came 
 
 down by the run, she put up her helm, and ran her 
 towering prow between a piratical-looking Egyptian 
 craft, and a black and bluff English collier, inscribed 
 appropriately on the stern as the " snow-drop" from 
 Newcastle. Down plumped her anchor, and in the 
 next moment the Jew hailed her by our orders, and 
 my conjecture was proved to be right. She was from 
 I Trebizond, with slaves and spices. 
 
 " What would they do if we were to climb up her 
 side ?" I asked the Israelite. 
 
 He stretched up his crouching neck till his twisted 
 beard hung clear off like a waterfall from his chin, and 
 looked through the carved railing very intently. 
 
 " The slaves are Georgians," he answered, after 
 awhile, "and if there were no Turkish purchasers on 
 board, they might simply order you down again." 
 
 " And if there were " 
 
 " The women would be considered damaged by a 
 Christian eye, and the slave merchant might shoot you 
 or pitch you overboard." 
 
 "Is that all?" said Job, evolving his length very 
 deliberately from his coil, and offering me a hand the 
 next moment from the deck of the slaver. Whether 
 the precedence he took in all dangers arose from affec 
 tion for me, or from a praiseworthy indifference to the 
 fate of such a trumpery collection as his own body 
 and limbs, I have never decided to my own satisfac 
 tion. 
 
 In the confusion of port-officers and boats alongside, 
 all hailing and crying out together, we stood on the 
 outer side of the deck unobserved, and I was soon in 
 tently occupied in watching the surprise and wonder 
 of the pretty toys who found themselves for the first 
 time in the heart of a great city. The owner of their 
 charms, whichever of a dozen villanous Turks I saw 
 about them it might be, had no time to pay them very 
 particular attention, and dropping their dirty veils 
 about their shoulders, they stood open-mouthed and 
 staring ten or twelve rosy damsels in their teens, with 
 eyes as deep as a well, and almost as large and liquid. 
 Their features were all good, their skins without a 
 flaw, hair abundant, and figures of a healthy plump 
 ness looking, with the exception of their eyes, which 
 were very oriental and magnificent, like the great, fat, 
 pie-eating, yawning, boarding-school misses one sees 
 over a hedge at Hampstead. It was delicious to see 
 their excessive astonishment at the splendors of the 
 Golden Horn they from the desert mountains of 
 Georgia or Circassia, and the scene about them 
 (mosques, minarets, people, and men-of-war, all to 
 gether), probably the most brilliant and striking in the 
 world. I was busy following their eyes and trying to 
 divine their impressions, when Job seized me by "the 
 arm. An old Turk had just entered the vessel from 
 the land-side, and was assisting a closely-veiled female 
 to mount after him. Haifa glance satisfied me that it 
 was the Gipsy of Sardis the lovely companion of our 
 journey to Constantinople. 
 
 " Maimuna !" I exclaimed, darting forward on the 
 instant. 
 
 A heavy hand struck me backAs I touched her, and 
 as I returned the blow, the swarthy crew of Arabs 
 closed about us, and we were hurried with a most un 
 ceremonious haste to the side of the vessel. J scarce 
 know, between my indignation and the stunning effect 
 of the blow I had received, how I got into the caique, 
 but we were pulling fast up the Golden Horn by the 
 time I could speak, and in half an hour were set ashore 
 on the green bank of the Barbyses, bound on a solita 
 ry ramble up the valley of Sweet Waters. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The art of printing was introduced into the Mo 
 hammedan empire in the reigns of Achmet III. and 
 Louis XV. I seldom state a statistical fact, but this 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 is one I happen to know, and I mention it because the 
 most fanciful and romantic abode with which I am ac 
 quainted in the world was originally built to contain 
 the first printing-press brought from the court of Ver 
 sailles by Mehemet Effendi, ambassador from the 
 "Brother of the Sun." It is now a maison de plais- 
 ancc for the sultan s favorite women, and in all the 
 dreams of perfect felicity which visit those who have 
 once seen it, it rises as the Paradise of retreats from 
 the world. 
 
 The serai of Khyat-Khana is a building of gold and 
 marble, dropped down unfenced upon the green 
 sward in the middle of a long emerald valley, more 
 like some fairy vision, conjured and forgotten to be 
 dissolved, than a house to live in, real wealher-proof, 
 and to be seen for the value of one and sixpence. The 
 Barbyses falls over the lip of a sea-shell (a marble 
 cascade sculptured in that pretty device), sending up 
 its spray and its perpetual music close under the gilded 
 lattice of the sultana, and following it back with the 
 eye, like a silver thread in a broidery of green velvet, 
 it comes stealing down through miles of the tenderest 
 verdure, without tree or shrub upon its borders, but 
 shut in with the seclusion of an enchanted stream and 
 valley by mountains which rise in abrupt precipices 
 from the edges of its carpet of grass, and fling their 
 irregular shadows across it at every hour save high 
 noon sacred in the east to the sleep of beauty and 
 idleness. 
 
 In the loving month of May it is death to set foot in 
 the Khyat-Khana. The ascending caique is stopped 
 in the Golden Horn, and on the point of every hill is 
 stationed a mounted eunuch with drawn sabre. The 
 Arab steeds of the sultan are picketed on the low-ly 
 ing grass of the valley, and his hundred Circassians 
 come from their perfumed chambers in the seraglio, 
 and sun their untold loveliness on the velvet banks of 
 the Barbyses. From the Golden Horn to Belgrade, 
 twelve miles of greensward (sheltered like a vein of 
 ore in the bosom of the earth, and winding away after 
 the course of that pebbly river, unseen, save by the 
 eye of the sun and stars), are sacred in this passion- 
 born month from the foot of man, and, riding in their 
 scarlet ai ubas with the many-colored ribands floating 
 back from the horns of their bullocks, and their own 
 snowy veils dropped from their guarded shoulders and 
 deep-dyed lips, wander, from sunrise to sunset, these 
 caged birds of a sultan s delight, longing as wildly 
 (who shall doubt?) to pass that guarded barrier into 
 the forbidden world, as we, who sigh for them without, 
 to fly from falsehood and wrong, and forget that same 
 world in their bosoms! 
 
 How few are content! How restless are even the 
 most spoiled children of fortune ! How inevitably 
 the heart sighs for that which it has not, even jhough 
 its only want is a cloud on its perpetual sunshine ! 
 We were not of those Job and I for we were of 
 that school of philosophers* who. "had little and 
 wanted nothing ;" but we agreed, as we sat upon the 
 marble bridge sprung like a wind-lifted cobweb over 
 the Barbyses, that \jac envy of a human heart would 
 poison even the content of a beggar ! He is a fool 
 who is sheltered from hunger and cold and still com 
 plains of fortune ; but he is only not a slave or a seraph, 
 who feeling on the innermost fibre of his sensibility the 
 icy breath of malice, utters his eternal malison on the 
 fiend who can neither be grappled with nor avoided. 
 I could make a paradise with loveliness and sunshine, 
 if envy could be forbidden at the gate ! 
 
 We had walked around the Serai and tried all its 
 entrances in vain, when Job spied, under the shelter 
 of the southern hill, a blood-red fla^ flying at the top 
 of a small tent of the Prophet s green doubtless con 
 cealing the kervas, who kept his lonely guard over the 
 
 * With a difference. " Nih.il cat, nihil deest," was their 
 motto. 
 
 precincts. I sent my friend with a " pinch of piastres" 
 to tempt the trowsered infidel to our will, and he soon 
 came shuffling in his tmmilitary slippers, with keys, 
 which, the month before, were guarded like the lamp 
 of Aladdin. We entered. We rambled over the 
 chambers of the chosen houries of the east ; we looked 
 through their lattices, and laid the palms of our hands 
 on the silken cushions dimmed in oval spots by the 
 moisture of their cheeks as they slept ; we could see by 
 the tarnished gold, breast-high at the windows, where 
 | they had pressed to the slender lattices to look forth 
 I upon the valley ; and Job, more watchfully alive to 
 the thrilling traces of beauty, showed me in the dia 
 mond-shaped bars the marks of their moist fingers and 
 the stain as of lips between, betraying where they had 
 clung and laid their faces against the trellis in the 
 indolent attitude of gazers from a wearisome prison. 
 Mirrors and ottomans were the only furniture ; and 
 never, for me, would the wand of Cornelius Agrippa 
 have been more welcome, than to wave back into 
 those senseless mirrors the images of beauty they had 
 lost. 
 
 I sat down on a raised corner of the divan, probably 
 the privileged seat of the favorite of the hour. Job 
 stood with his lips apart, brooding in speechless poeti- 
 calness on his own thoughts. 
 
 "Do you think, after all," said I, reverting to the 
 matter-of-fact vein of my own mind, which was para 
 mount usually to the romantic " do you think really, 
 Job, that the Zuleikas and Fatimas who have by turns 
 pressed this silken cushion with their crossed feet 
 were not probably inferior in attraction to the most 
 third-rate belle of New England ? How long would 
 you love a woman that could neither read, nor write, 
 nor think five minutes on any given theme ? The ut 
 most exertion of intellect in the loveliest of these deep- 
 eyed Circassians is probably the language of flowers ; 
 and, good Heavens ! think how one of your della 
 Cruscan sentiments would be lost upon her ! And yet, 
 here you are, ready to go mad with romantic fan 
 cies about women that were never taught even their 
 letters." 
 
 Job began to hum a stave of his favorite song, which 
 was always a sign that he was vexed and disenchanted 
 of himself. 
 
 " How little women think," said I, proceeding with 
 my unsentimental vein, while Job looked out of the 
 window, and the kervas smoked his pipe on the sul 
 tana s ottoman " how little women think that the 
 birch and the dark closet, and the thumbed and dog 
 eared spelling-book (or whatever else more refined tor 
 ments their tender years in the shape of education), 
 was, after all, the groundwork and secret of their fas 
 cination over men ! What a process it is to arrive at 
 love! D-o-g, dog c-a-t, cat." If you had not 
 learned this, bright Lady Melicent, I fear Captain 
 Augustus Fitz-Somcrset would never have sat. as I 
 saw him last night, cutting your initials with a dia 
 mond ring on the purple-claret glass which had just 
 poured a bumper to your beauty !" 
 
 " You are not far wrong," said Job, after a long 
 pause, during which I had delivered myself, unheard, 
 of the above practical apostrophe" you are not far 
 wrong, quoad the women of New England. They 
 would be considerable bores if they had not learned, 
 in their days of bread-and-butter, to read, write, and 
 reason. But, for the women of the softer south and 
 east, I am by no means clear that education would 
 not be inconsistent with the genius of the clime. Take 
 yourself back to Italy, for example, where, for two 
 mortal years, you philandered up and down between 
 Venice and Amalfi, never out of the sunshine or away 
 from the feet of women, and, in all that precious epi 
 sode of your youth, never guilty, I will venture to pre 
 sume, of either suggesting or expressing anew thought. 
 And the reason is, not that the imagination is dull, but 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 that nobody thinks, except upon exigency, in these 
 latitudes. It would be violent and inapt to the spirit 
 of the hour. Indolence, voluptuous indolence of body 
 and mind (the latter at the same time lying broad 
 awake in its chamber, and alive to every pleasurable 
 image that passes uncalled before its windows) is the 
 genius, the only genius, of the night and day. What 
 would be so discordant as an argument by moonlight 
 in the Coliseum ? What so ill-bred and atrocious as 
 the destruction by logic of the most loose-spun theory 
 by the murmuring fountains of the Pamfili ? To live 
 is enough in these lands of the sun. But merely to 
 live, in ours, is to be bound, Prometheus-like, to a 
 rock, with a vulture at our vitals. Even in the most 
 passionate intercourse of love in your northern clime, 
 you read to your mistress, or she sings to you, or you 
 think it necessary to drive or ride ; but I know nothing 
 that would more have astonished your Venetian bionda 
 than, when the lamp was lit in the gondola that you 
 might see her beauty on the lagune in the starless 
 night, to have pulled a book from your pocket, and 
 read even a tale of love from Boccaccio. And that is 
 why I could be more content to be a pipe-bearer in 
 Asia than a schoolmaster in Vermont, or, sooner than 
 a judge s ermine in England, to wear a scrivener s 
 rags, and sit in the shade of a portico, writing love-let 
 ters for the peasant-girls of Rome. Talk of republics 
 your only land of equality is that in which to breathe 
 is the supreme happiness. The monarch throws open 
 his window for the air that comes to him past the brow 
 of a lazzaroni, and the wine on the patrician s lip in 
 toxicates less than the water from the fountain that is 
 free to all, though it gush from the marble bosom of a 
 nymph. If I were to make a world, I would have the 
 climate of Greece, and no knowledge that did not 
 come by intuition. Men and women should grow 
 wise enough, as the flowers grow fair enough, with 
 sunshine and air, and they should follow their instincts 
 like the birds, and go from sweet to sweet with as lit 
 tle reason or trouble. Exertion should be a misde 
 meanor, and desire of action, if it were not too mon 
 strous to require legislation, should be treason to the 
 tate." 
 " Long live King Job!" 
 
 PART II. 
 
 I HAD many unhappy thougnts about Maimuna : the 
 g^ince I had snatched on board the Trebizond slaver 
 lc t in my memory a pair of dark eyes full of uneasi 
 ness and doubt, and I knew her elastic motions so well, 
 th*t there was something in her single step as she 
 ca/ie over the gangway which assured me that she 
 waa dispirited and uncertain of her errand. Who was 
 the old Turk who dragged her up the vessel s side 
 with so little ceremony ? What could the child of 
 a gipsy be doing on the deck of a slaver from Trebi 
 zond ? 
 
 With no very definite ideas as to the disposal of 
 this lovely child should I succeed in my wishes, I had 
 insensibly made up my mind that she could never be 
 happy without me, and that my one object in Constan 
 tinople was to get her into my possession. I had a 
 delicacy in communicating the full extent of my design 
 to Job, for, aside from the grave view he would take 
 of the morality of the step, and her probable fate as a 
 woman, he would have painful and just doubts of my 
 ability to bear this additional demand upon my means. 
 Though entirely dependant himself, Job had that nat 
 ural contempt for the precions metals, that he could 
 not too freely assist any one to their possession who 
 happened to set a value on the amount in his pocket ; 
 and this, I may say, was the one point which, between 
 my affectionate monster and myself, was not discussed 
 
 as harmoniously as the loves of Corydon and Alexis. 
 The account of his expenditure, which I regularly ex 
 acted of him before he tied on his bandanna at night, 
 was always more or less unsatisfactory ; and though 
 he would not have hesitated to bestow a whole scudo 
 unthinkingly on the first dirty dervish he should meet, 
 he was still sufficiently impressed with the necessity 
 of economy to remember it in an argument of any 
 length or importance : and for this and some other 
 reasons I reserved my confidence upon the intended 
 addition to my suite. 
 
 Not far from the Burnt Column, in the very heart 
 of Stamboul, lived an old merchant in attar and jessa 
 mine, called Mustapha. Every one who has been at 
 Constantinople will remember him and his Nubian 
 slave in a small shop on the right, as you ascend to 
 the Hippodrome. He calls himself essence-seller to 
 the sultan, but his principal source of profit is the 
 stranger who is brought to his divans by the interpre 
 ters in his pay ; and to his credit be it said, that, for the 
 courtesy of his dealings, and for the excellence of his 
 extracts, the stranger could not well fall into better 
 hands. 
 
 It had been my fortune, on my first visit to Musta 
 pha. to conciliate his good will. I had laid in my 
 small stock of spice-woods and essences on that occa 
 sion, and the call which I made religiously every time 
 I crossed the Golden Horn was purely a matter of 
 friendship. In addition to one or two trifling pres 
 ents, which (with a knowledge of human nature) I 
 had returned in the shape of two mortal sins a keg 
 of brandy and a flask of gin, bought out of the Eng 
 lish collier lying in the bay in addition to his kind 
 presents, I say, my large-trowsered friend had made 
 me many pressing offers of service. There was little 
 probability, it was true, that I should ever find occa 
 sion to profit by them ; but I nevertheless believed 
 that his hand was laid upon his heart in earnest sin 
 cerity, and in the course of my reflections upon the 
 fate of Maimuna, it had occurred to me more than 
 once that he might be of use in clearing up the mys 
 tery of her motions. 
 
 "Job!" said I, as we were dawdling along the street 
 of confectioners with our Jew behind us one lovely 
 morning, " I am going to call at Mustapha s." 
 
 We had started to go to the haunt of the opium- 
 eaters, and he was rather siirprised at my proposition, 
 but, with his usual amiableness (very inconvenient 
 and vexatious in this particular instance), he stepped 
 over the gutter without saying a word, and made for 
 the first turning to the right. It was the first time 
 since we had left New England that I wished myself 
 rid of his company. 
 
 "But, Job," said I, calling him back to the shady 
 side of the street, and giving him a great lump of 
 candy from the nearest stall (its oriental name, by the 
 way, is "peace-to-your-throat,") "I thought you were 
 bent on eating opium to-day?" 
 
 My poor friend looked at me for a minute, as if to 
 comprehend the drift of my remark, and as he arrived 
 by regular deduction at the result, I read very clearly 
 in his hideous physiognomy the painful embarrassment 
 it occasioned him. It was only the day before, that, 
 in descending the Bosphorus, we had seen a party of 
 the summary administrators of justice quietly sus 
 pending a Turkish woman and her Greek paramour 
 from the shutters of a chamber-window intercourse 
 with a Christian in that country of liberal legislation 
 being punishable without trial or benefit of dervish. 
 From certain observations on my disposition in the 
 course of my adventures, Job had made up his mind, 
 I well knew, that my danger was more from Delilah 
 than the Philistines ; and while these victims of love 
 were kicking their silken trowsers in the air, I saw, by 
 the look of tender anxiety he cast upon me, from the 
 bottom of the caique, that trie moral in his mind would 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 65 
 
 result in an increased vigilance over my motions. 
 While he stood with his teeth stuck full of " peace- j 
 to-your-throat," therefore, forgetting even the instinct 
 of mastication in his surprise and sorrow, I well un 
 derstood what picture was in his mind, and what con 
 struction he put upon my sudden desire to solitude. ! 
 
 "My dear Philip!" he began, speaking with dif 
 ficulty from the stickiness of the candy in his teeth, i 
 "your respected mother- " 
 
 At this instant a kervas, preceding a Turk of rank, 
 jostled suddenly against him, and as the mounted 
 Mussulman, with his train of runners and pipe-bearers, 
 came sweeping by, I took the opportunity of Job s 
 surprise to slip past with the rest, and, turning down , 
 an ally, quietly mounted one of the saddle-horses 
 standing for hire at the first mosque, and pursued my 
 way alone to the shop of the attar-merchant. To |; 
 dismount and hurry Mustapha into his inner and pri- , 
 vate apartment, with an order to the Nubian to deny i 
 me to everybody who should inquire, was the work of 
 a minute, but it was scarcely done before I heard Job : 
 breathless at the door. 
 
 "Ha visto il signore?" he exclaimed, getting to the 
 back of the shop with a single stride. 
 
 " Effcndi, no!" said the imperturbable Turk, and he 
 laid his hand on his heart, as he advanced, and offered 
 him with grave courtesy the pipe from his lips. 
 
 The Jew had come puffing into the shop with his 
 slippers in his hand, and dropping upon his hams near j 
 the door, he took off his small g^ray turban, and was 
 wiping the perspiration from his high and narrow fore- j 
 head, when Job darted again into the street with a i 
 sign to him to follow. The look of despair and ex 
 haustion with which he shook out his baggy trowsers : 
 and made after the striding Yankee, was too much | 
 even for the gravity of Mustapha. He laid aside his 
 pipe, and, as the Nubian struck in with the peculiar 
 cackle of his race, I joined myself in their merriment ] 
 with a heartiness to which many a better joke might j 
 have failed to move me. 
 
 While Mustapha was concluding his laugh between i 
 the puffs of his amber pipe, 1 had thrown myself along p 
 the divan, and was studying with some curiosity the ; 
 inner apartment in which 1 had been concealed. A | 
 curtain of thick but tarnished gold cloth (as sacred j 
 from intrusion in the east as the bolted and barred j 
 doors of Europe) separated from the outer shop a 
 small octagonal room, that, in size and furniture, re- j 
 sembled the Turkish boudoirs, which, in the luxurious ; 
 palaces of Europe, sometimes adjoin a lady s chamber, j 
 The slippered foot was almost buried in the rich car- j 
 pets laid, but not fitted to the floor. The divans were j 
 covered with the flowered and lustrous silk of Brusa, \ 
 and piled with vari-colored cushions. A perpetual j 
 spice-lamp sent up its thin wreaths of smoketo the 
 black and carved ceiling, diffusing through the room a [ 
 perfume which, while it stole to the innermost fibres 
 of the brain with a sense of pleasure, weighed on the j 
 eyelids and relaxed the limbs ; and as the eye became j 
 more accustomed to the dim light which struggled in 
 from a window in the arched ceiling, and dissolved in 
 the luxurious and spicy atmosphere, heaps of the rich 
 shawls of the east became distinguishable with their 
 sumptuous dyes, and, in a corner, stood a cluster of j 
 crystal narghiles, faintly reflecting the light in their; 
 dim globes of rose-water, while costly pipes, silver- 
 mounted pistols, and a rich Damascus sabre in a 
 sheath of red velvet, added gorgeousness to the apart 
 ment. 
 
 Mustapha was a bit of a philosopher in his way, and 
 he. had made his own observations on the Europeans 
 who came to his shop. The secluded and oriental 
 luxurionsness of the room I have described was one of 
 his lures to that passion for the picturesque which he 
 saw in every traveller; and another was his gigantic 
 Nubian, who, with bracelets and anklets of gold, a 
 5 
 
 white turban, and naked legs and arms, stood always 
 at the door of his shop, inviting the passers-by not to 
 buy essences and pastilles but to come in and take 
 sherbet with his master. You will have been an hour 
 upon his comfortable divans, have smoked a pipe or 
 two, and eaten a snowy sherbet or a dish of rice-paste 
 and sugar, before Mustapha nods to his slave, and pro 
 duces his gold-rimmed jars of essences, from which, 
 with his fat fore-finger, he anoints the palm of your 
 hand, or, with a compliment to the beauty of your 
 hair, throws a drop into the curl on your temples. 
 Meanwhile, as you smoke, the slave lays in the bowl 
 
 ; of your pipe a small pastille wrapped in gold leaf, 
 from which presently arrives to your nostrils a per 
 fume that might delight a sultan ; and then, from the 
 two black hands which are held to you full of cubical- 
 edged vials with gilded stoppers, you are requested 
 with the same bland courtesy to select such as in 
 size or shape suit your taste and convenience the 
 smallest of them, when filled with attar, worth near a 
 gold piastre. 
 
 This is not very ruinous, and your next temptation 
 comes in the shape of a curiously-wrought censer, 
 upon the filagree grating of which is laid strips of 
 odorent wood which, with the heat of the coals be 
 neath, give out a perfume like gums from Araby. 
 
 i This, Mustapha swears to you by his beard, has a 
 spell in its spicy breath provocative as a philtre, and 
 is to be burnt in your lady s chamber. It is worth its 
 
 I weight in gold, and for a handful of black chips you 
 
 I are persuaded to pay a price which would freight a 
 caique with cinnamon. Then come bracelets, and 
 amulets, and purses, all fragrant and precious, and, 
 while you hesitate, the Nubian brings you coffee that 
 would open the heart of Shylock, and you drink and 
 purchase. And when you have spent all your money, 
 you go away delighted with Mustapha, and quite per 
 suaded that you are vastly obliged to him. And, all 
 things considered, so you are! 
 
 When Mustapha had finished his prayers (did I say 
 
 , that it was noon?) he called in the Nubian to roll up 
 the sacred carpet, and then closing the curtain be- 
 
 i tween us and the shop, listened patiently to my story 
 of the gipsy, which I told him faithfully from the 
 beginning. When I arrived at the incident on board 
 the slaver, a sudden light seemed to strike upon his 
 mind. 
 
 "PeUhe, filio mio ! pekhe!" he exclaimed, running 
 his fore-finger down the middle of his beard, and 
 pouring out a volume of smoke from his mouth and 
 nostrils which obscured him for a moment from my 
 sight. 
 
 (I dislike the introduction of foreign words into a 
 story, but the Turkish dissyllable in the foregoing 
 
 , sentence is as constantly on an eastern lip as the amber 
 
 ; of the pipe.) 
 
 He clapped his hands as I finished my narration, 
 and the Nubian appeared. Some conversation passed 
 between them in Turkish, and the slave tightened his 
 girdle, made a salaam, and taking his slippers at the 
 outer door, left the shop. 
 
 " We shall find her at the slave-market," said Mus- 
 
 i started. The thought had once or twice passed 
 through my mind, but I had as often rejected it as 
 impossible. A freeborn Zingara, and on a confiden 
 tial errand from her own mother! I did not see how 
 her freedom, if there were danger, should have been 
 so carelessly put in peril. 
 
 "And if she is there!" said I; remembering, first, 
 that it was against the Mohammedan law for a Christian 
 to purchase a slave, and next, that the price, if it did 
 not ruin me at once, would certainly leave me in a sit 
 uation rather to lessen than increase my expenses. 
 
 " I will buy her for you," said Mustapha. 
 
 The Nubian returned at this moment, and laid at 
 
66 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 meninn) Irad ensconced himself behind a towering 
 heap of folios, and his vexed and impatient pipe-bearer 
 had taken his more humble position on the narrow 
 base of one of the chequered columns which are pe 
 culiar to the bazar devoted to the bibliopolists. As 
 my friend came floundering along " all abroad" with 
 his legs and arms, as usual, 1 contrived, by an adroit 
 insertion of one of my feet between his, to spread him 
 over the musty tomes of the Armenian in away calcu 
 lated to derange materially the well-ordered sequence 
 of the volumes. 
 
 into a silk shirt, big trowsers, jacket, and slippers, and || " Allah ! Mashallah !" exclaimed Mustapha, whose 
 stood up to look at myself in tho minor. I was as ; spreading lap was filled with black-letter copies of the 
 
 my feet a bundle of wearing apparel. He then took 
 from a shelf a shaving apparatus, with which he pro 
 ceeded to lather my forehead and temples, and alter a 
 short argument with Mustapha, in which I pleaded in 
 vain for two very seducing clusters of curls, those 
 caressed minions dropped into the black hand of the 
 slave, and nothing was left for the petits soins of my 
 thumb and fore-finger in their leisure hours save a \ 
 well-coaxed and rather respectable mustache. A I 
 scull-cap and turban completed the transformation of j 
 my head, and then, with some awkwardness, I got j 
 
 like one of the common Turks of the street as possi- j 
 ble, save that the European cravat and stockings had 
 preserved an unoriental whiteness in my neck and 
 ankles. This was soon remedied with a little brown 
 juice, and after a few cautions from Mustapha as to my 
 behavior, I settled my turban and followed him into 
 the street. 
 
 It is a singular sensation to be walking about in a 
 strange costume, and find that nobody looks surprised. 
 I could not avoid a slight feeling of mortification at 
 the rude manner with which every dirty mussuhnan 
 took the wall of me. After long travel in foreign 
 lands, the habit of everywhere exciting notice as a 
 stranger, and the species of consequence attached to 
 the person and movements of a traveller, become 
 rather pleasures than otherwise, and it is not without 
 pain that one finds oneself once more like common 
 people. I have not yet returned to my own land 
 (Slingsby is an American, gentle reader), and can not 
 judge, therefore, how far this feeling is modified by 
 the pleasures of a recovered home; but I was vexed 
 not to be stared at when playing the Turk at Con 
 stantinople, and, amusing as it was to be taken for an 
 Englishman on first arriving in England (different as 
 it is from every land I have seen, and still more differ 
 ent from my own), I must confess to have experienced 
 again a feeling of lessened consequence, when, on my 
 first entrance into an hotel in London, I was taken for 
 an Oxonian, " come up for a lark" in term-time. Per 
 haps I have stumbled in this remark upon one of those 
 unconfessed reasons why a returned traveller is pro 
 verbially discontented with his home. 
 
 Whether Mustapha wished to exhibit his new pipe- 
 bearer to his acquaintances, or whether there was fun 
 enough in his obese composition to enjoy my difficul 
 ties in adapting myself to my new circumstances, I 
 can not. precisely say ; but I soon found that we were 
 not going straight to the slave-market. I had several 
 times forgotten my disguise so far as to keep the nar 
 row walk till I stood face to face with the bearded 
 Mussulmans, who were only so much astonished at my 
 audacity that they forgot to kick me over the gutter; 
 and passing, in the bazar of saddle-cloths, an Eng 
 lish officer of my acquaintance, who belonged to the 
 corvette lying in the Bosphorus, I could not resist the 
 temptation of whispering in his ear the name of his 
 sweetheart (which he had confided to me over a bot 
 tle at Smyrna), though I rather expected to be seized 
 by the turban the next moment, with the pleasant con 
 sequences of a mob and an exposure. My friend was 
 so thoroughly amnzed, however, that I was deep in 
 the crowd before he had drawn breath, and I look 
 daily now for his arrival in England (I have not seen 
 him since), with a curiosity to know how he supposes 
 a "blackguard Turk" knew anything of the lock of 
 hair he carried in his waistcoat pocket. 
 
 The essence-seller had stopped in the book-bazar, 
 and was condescendingly smoking a pipe, with his 
 legs crossed on the counter of a venerable Armenian, 
 who sat buried to the chin in his own wares, when 
 who should co me. pottering along (as Mrs. Butler would 
 say) but Job with his Jew behind him. Mustapha 
 
 Khoran, while the bowl of his pipe was buried in the 
 fallen pyramid. 
 
 " Bestia Inglese !" muttered the Armenian, as Job 
 put one hand in the inkstand in endeavoring to rise, 
 and with the next effort laid his blackened fingers on 
 a heap of choice volumes bound in snowy vellum. 
 
 The officious Jew took up the topmost copy, marked 
 like a cinq-foil with his spreading thumb and fingers, 
 and quietly asked the Armenian what il signore would 
 be expected to pay. As I knew he had no money in 
 his pocket, I calculated safely on his new embarrass 
 ment to divert his anger from the original cause of his 
 overthrow. 
 
 u Tre colonati," said the bookseller. 
 
 Job opened the book, and his well-known guttural 
 of surprise and delisht assured me that I might come 
 out from behind the column and look over his shoul 
 der. It was an illuminated copy of Hafiz, with a 
 Latin translation a treasure which his heart had 
 been set upon from our first arrival in the east, 
 and for which I well knew he would sell his coat 
 off his back without hesitation. The desire to give 
 it him passed through my mind, but 1 could see no 
 means, under my present circumstances, either of 
 buying the book or relieving him from his embar 
 rassment ; and as he buried his nose deeper between 
 the leaves, and sat down on the low counter, forget 
 ful alike of his dilemma and his lost friend, I nod 
 ded to Mustapha to get off as quietly as possible, 
 and, fortunately slipping past both him and the 
 Jew unrecognised, left him to finish the loves of 
 Gulistan and settle his account with the incensed 
 Armenian. 
 
 II. 
 
 As we entered the gates of the slave-market, Mus 
 tapha renewed his cautions to me with regard to my 
 conduct, reminded me that, as a Christian, [ should see 
 the white female slaves at the peril of my life, and imme 
 diately assumed, himself, a sauntering w\poco-curante 
 manner, equally favorable to concealment and to his 
 interests as a purchaser. I followed close at his heels 
 with his pipe, and, as he stopped to chat with his ac 
 quaintances, I now and then gave a shove with the bowl 
 between his jacket and girdle, rendered impatient to the 
 last degree by the sight of the close lattices on every 
 side of us, and the sounds of the chattering voices 
 within. 
 
 I should have been interested, had I been a mere 
 spectator, in the scene about me, but Musiapha s unne 
 cessary and provoking delay, while (as I thought pos 
 sible, ifshe really were in the market), Mairnuna might 
 be bartered for at that moment within, wound my rage 
 to a pitch at last scarcely endurable. 
 
 We had come up from a cellar to which one of Mus- 
 tapha s acquaintances had taken him to see a young 
 white lad he was about to purchase, and I was hoping 
 that my suspense was nearly over, when a man came for 
 ward into the middle of the court, ringing a hand-bell, 
 and followed by a black girl, covered with a scant blank 
 et. Like most of her lace (she was an Abyssinian), her 
 
 (probably unwilling to be seen smoking with an Ar- ii head was that of a brute, but never were body and limbs 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 67 
 
 more exquisitely moulded. She gazed about without |i 
 either surprise or shame, stepping after the crier with | 
 an elastic, leopard-like tread, her feet turned in like j 
 those of the North American Indian, her neck bent 
 gracefully forward, and her shoulders and hips working 
 with that easy play so lost in the constrained dress and 
 motion of civilized women. The Mercury of Giovanni j 
 di Bologna springs not lighter from the jet of the foun- j 
 tain than did this ebon Venus from the ground on which j 
 she stood. 
 
 I ventured to whisper to Mustapha, that, under cover j 
 of the sale of the Abyssinian, we might see the white | 
 slaves more unobserved. 
 
 A bid was made for her. 
 
 " Fifteen piastres !" said the attar-seller, wholly ab- ! 
 sorbed in the sale, and not hearing a syllable I said to 
 him, " She would be worth twice as much to gild my 
 pastilles !" And handing me his pipe, he waddled into 
 the centreof the court, lifted the blanket from theslave s i 
 shoulders, turned her round and round, like a Venus 
 on a pivot, looked at her teeth and hands, and after a 
 conversation aside with the crier, he resumed his pipe, 
 and the black disappeared from the ground. 
 
 " I have bought her !" he said, with a salacious grin, j 
 as I handed him his tobacco-bag, and muttered a round j 
 Italian execration in his ear. 
 
 The idea that Maimuna might have become the 
 property of that gross and sensual monster just as easily 
 as the pretty negress he had brought, sent my blood | 
 boiling for an instant to my cheek. Yet I had seen this 
 poor savage of seventeen sold without a thought, save 
 mental congratulation that she would be better fed and 
 clad. What a difference one s private feelings make 
 in one s sympathies ! 
 
 I was speculating, in a kind of tranquil despair, on 
 the luxurious evils of slavery, when Mustapha called to 
 him an Egyptian, in a hooded blue cloak, whom I re 
 membered to have seen on board the Trebisondian. 
 He was a small-featured, black-lipped, willowy Asiatic, 
 with heavv-lidded eyes, and hands as dry and rusty as 
 the claws of a harpy. After a little conversation, he 
 rose from the platform on which he had crossed his 
 legs, and taking my pro-tempore master by the sleeve, 
 traversed the quadrangle to a closed door in the best- 
 looking of the miserable houses that surrounded the 
 court. 1 followed close upon his heels with a beating 
 heart. It seemed to me as if every eye in the crowded 
 market-place must penetrate my disguise. He knock 
 ed, and answering to some one who spoke from within, 
 the door was opened, and the next moment I found my 
 self in the presence of a dozen veiled women, seated in 
 various attitudes on the floor. At the command of our 
 conductor, carpets were brought for Mustapha and him 
 self; and, as they dropped upon their hams, every veil 
 was removed, and a battery of staring and unwinking 
 eyes was levelled full upon us. 
 
 4i Is she here?" said Mustapha to me in Italian, as 
 I stooped over to hand him his eternal pipe. 
 " Dio mio ! no !" 
 
 I felt insulted, that with half a glance at the Circas 
 sian and Georgian dolls sitting before us, he could ask 
 me the question. Yet they were handsome! Red 
 cheeks, white teeth, black eyes, and youth could scarce 
 compose a plain woman ; and thus much of beauty 
 seemed equally bestowed on all. 
 
 " Has he no more ?" I asked, stooping to Mus- 
 tapha s ear. 
 
 I looked around while he was getting the informa 
 tion I wanted in his own deliberate way ; and, scarce 
 knowing what I did, applied my eye to a crack in the 
 wall, through which had been coming, for some time a 
 strong aroma of coffee. I saw at first only a small dim 
 room, in the midst of which stood a Turkish manghal, 
 or btazier of coals, sustaining the coffee-pot from which 
 came the agreeable prefume I had inhaled. As my 
 eye became accustomed to the light, I could distinguish 
 
 a heap of what I took to be shawls lying in the centre 
 of the floor; and presuming it was the dormitory of one 
 of the slave-owners, I was about turning my head away, 
 when the coffee on the manghal suddenly boiled over, 
 and at the same instant started, from the heap at which 
 I had been gazing, the living form of Maimuna! 
 
 " Mustapha !" 1 cried, starting back, and clasping 
 my hands before him. 
 
 Before I could utter another word, a grasp upon my 
 ankle, that drew blood with every nail, restored me to 
 my self-possession. The Circassians began to giggle, 
 and the wary old Turk, taking no apparent notice of 
 my agitation, ordered me, in a stern tone, to fill his 
 pipe, and went on conversing with the. Egyptian. 
 
 I leaned with an effort at carelessness against the 
 wall, and looked once more through the crevice. She 
 stood by the manghal, filling a cup with a small fila 
 gree-holder from the coffee-pot, and by the light of the 
 fire I could see every feature of her face as distinctly 
 as daylight. She was alone, and had been sitting 
 with her head on her knees, and the shawl, which had 
 now fallen to her shoulders, drawn over her till it con 
 cealed her feet. A narrow carpet was beneath her, 
 and as she moved from the fire, a slight noise drew my 
 attention downward, and I saw that she was chained by 
 I the ankle to the floor. I stooped to the ear of Mus- 
 j tapha, told him in a whisper of my discovery, and im 
 plored him, for the love of Heaven, to get admission 
 into her apartment. 
 
 " Pclchc ! pekhe ! filio mio /" was the unsatisfactory 
 
 I answer to my impatience, while the Egyptian rose and 
 
 i proceeded to turn around, in the light of the window, 
 
 the fattest of the fair Circassians, from whom he had 
 
 ! removed every article of dress save her slippers and 
 
 trousers. 
 
 I returned to the crevice. Maimuna had drunk her 
 ; coffee, and stood, with her arms folded, thoughtfully 
 gazing on the, fire. The expression in her beautiful 
 and youthful face was one I could scarcely read to my 
 1 satisfaction. The slight lips were firmly but calmly 
 ; compressed, the forehead untroubled, the eye alone 
 1 strained, and unnaturally fixed and lowering. I 
 j looked at her with the heart beating like a hammer in 
 | my bosom, and the impatience in my trembling limbs 
 which it required every consideration of prudence to 
 ! suppress. She moved slowly away at last, and sink 
 ing again to her carpet, drew out the chain from be 
 neath her, and drawing the shawl once more over her 
 head, lay down, and sunk apparently to sleep. 
 
 Mustapha left the Circassian, whose beauties he had 
 risen to examine more nearly, and came to my side. 
 
 " Are you sure that it is she?" he asked, in an al 
 most inaudible whisper. 
 " Si ." 
 
 He took the pipe from my hand, and requested me, 
 | in the same suppressed voice, to return to his shop. 
 
 " And Maimuna" 
 
 His only answer was to point to the door, and think 
 ing it best to obey his orders implicity, I made the 
 best of my way out of the slave-market, and was soon 
 drinking a sherbet in his inner apartment, and listen 
 ing to the shuttle of every passing slipper for the com 
 ing of the light step of the gipsy. 
 
 III. 
 
 The rules of good-breeding discountenance in socie 
 ty what is usually called " a scene." I detest it as 
 well on paper. There is no sufficient reason, appa 
 rent to me, why my sensibilities should be draw.i upon 
 at siht, as I read, any more than when I plep^e myself 
 by following my own devices in compary. Violent 
 sensations are, abstractly as well as conventionally, 
 ill-bred. They derange the serenitv, fluster the man 
 ner, and irritate the complexion, it is for this reason 
 that I forbear to describe the meeting between Maimu- 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 na and myself after she had been bought for forty 
 pounds by the wily and worthy seller of essences and 
 pastilles how she fell on my neck when she discovered 
 that I, and not Mustapha, was her purchaser and mas 
 ter how she explained, between her hysterical sobs, 
 that the Turk who had sold her to the slave-dealer was 
 a renegade gipsy, and her mother s brother (to whom 
 she had been on an errand of affection) and how she 
 sobbed herself to sleep with her face in the palms of 
 my hands, and her masses of raven hair covering my 
 knees and feet like the spreading fountains of San Pie- 
 tro and how I pressed my lips to the starry parting 
 of those raven tresses on the top of her fairest head, 
 and blessed the relying child as she slept are circum 
 stances, you will allow, my dear madam T that could 
 not be told passably well without moving your amiable 
 tenderness to tears. You will consider this paragraph, 
 therefore, less as an ingenious manner of disposing of 
 the awkward angles of my story, than as a polite and 
 praise-worthy consideration of your feelings and com 
 plexion. Flushed eyelids are so very unbecoming ! 
 
 My confidential interviews with Job began to take 
 rather an unpleasant coloring. The forty pounds I 
 had paid for Maimuna s liberty, with the premium to 
 Mustapha, the suit of European clothes necessary to 
 disguise my new companion, and the addition of a 
 third person in our European lodgings at Pera, rather 
 drove my finances to the wall. Job cared very little 
 for the loss of his allowance of pocket-money, and 
 made no resistance to eating kibaubs at a meat-shop, 
 instead of his usual silver fork and French dinner at 
 Madame Josepino s. He submitted with the same 
 resignation to a one-oared caique on the Bosphorus, 
 and several minor reductions in his expenses, thinking 
 nothing a hardship, in short, which I shared cheerfully 
 with him. He would have donned the sugar-loaf hat 
 of a dervish, and begged his way home by Jerusalem 
 or Mecca, so only I was content. But the morality of 
 the thing ! 
 
 "What will you do with this beautiful girl when 
 you get to Rome ? how will you dispose of her in 
 Paris ? how will your friends receive a female, already 
 arrived at the age of womanhood, who shall have 
 travelled with you two or three years on the continent ? 
 how will you provide for her? how educate her? how 
 rid yourself of her, with any Christian feeling of com 
 passion, when she has become irrevocably attached to 
 you?" 
 
 We were pulling up to the Symplegades while my 
 plain-spoken Mentor thrust me these home questions, 
 and Maimuna sat coiled between my feet in the bottom 
 of the caique, gazing into my face with eyes that 
 seemed as if they would search my very soul for the 
 cause of my emotion. We seldom spoke English in 
 her presence, for the pain it gave her when she felt 
 excluded from the conversation amounted in her all- 
 expressive features to a look of anguish that made it 
 seem to me a cruelty. She dared not ask me, in 
 words, why I was vexed ; but she gathered from Job s 
 tone that there was reproof in what he said, and 
 flashing a glance of inquiring anger at his serious 
 face, she gently stole her hand under the cloak to 
 mine, and laid the back of it softly in my palm. There 
 was a delicacy and a confidingness in the motion that 
 started a tear into my eye ; and as I smiled through it, 
 and drew her to me and impressed a kiss on her fore 
 head, I inwardly resolved, that, as long as that lovely 
 creature should choose to eat of my bread, it should 
 be free to her in all honor and kindness, and, if need 
 were, I would supply to her, with the devotion of my 
 life, the wrong and misconstruction of the world. 
 As I turned over that leaf in my heart, there crept 
 through it a breath of peace, and I felt that my good 
 
 angel had taken me into favor. Job began to fumble 
 for the lunch, and the dancing caique shot forth mer 
 rily into the Black sea. 
 
 "My dearest chum!" said I, as we sat round our 
 brown paper of kibaubs on the highest point of the 
 Symplegades, "you see yourself here at the outer 
 most limit of your travels." 
 
 His mouth was full, but as soon as he could con 
 veniently swallow, he responded with the appropriate 
 sigh. 
 
 " Six thousand miles, more or less, lie between you 
 
 and your spectacled and respectable mother; but 
 
 nineteen thousand, the small remainder of the earth s 
 
 I circumference, extending due east from this paper of 
 
 | cold meat, remain to you untravelled !" 
 
 Job fixed his eye on a white sea-bird apparently 
 asleep on the wing, but diving away eastward into the 
 sky, as if it were the heart within us sped onward with 
 our boundless wishes. 
 
 "Do you not envy him?" he asked enthusiastically. 
 
 "Yes; for nature pays his travelling expenses, and 
 
 I would our common mother were as considerate to 
 
 me ! How soon, think you, he will see Trebisond, 
 
 ! posting at that courier speed ?" 
 
 " And Shiraz, and Isaphan, and the valley of Cash- 
 
 ! mere! To think how that stupid bird will flyover 
 
 I them, and, spite of all that Hafiz, and Saadi, and Tom 
 
 I Moore, have written on the lands that his shadow may 
 
 glide throught, will return, as wise as he went, to 
 
 Marmora ! To compound natures with him were a 
 
 nice arrangement, now!" 
 
 "You would be better looking, my dear Job!" 
 " How very unpleasant you are, Mr. Slin^sby ! But 
 really, Philip, to cast the slough of this expensive and 
 j il-locomotive humanity, and find yourself afloat with 
 I all the necessary apparatus of life stowed snugly into 
 breast and tail, your legs tucked quietly away under 
 you, and, instead of coat and unmentionables to be put 
 off and on and renewed at such inconvenient expense, a 
 : self-renewing tegument of cleanly feathers, brushed 
 j and washed in the common course of nature by wind 
 | and rain no valet to be paid and drilled no dressing- 
 case to be supplied and left behind no tooth-brushes 
 to be mislaid no tight boots no corns no passports 
 nor host-horses! Do you know, Phil, on reflection, I 
 find this mortal coil a very inferior and inconvenient 
 apparatus!" 
 
 "If you mean your own, I quite agree with you." 
 "I am surprised, Mr. Slingsby, that you, who value 
 yourself on knowing what is due from one highly- 
 civilized individual to another, should indulge in these 
 very disagreeable reflections!" 
 
 Maimuna did not quite comprehend the argument, 
 
 | but she saw that the tables were turned, and, without 
 
 j ill-will to Job, she paid me the compliment of always 
 
 I taking my side. I felt her slender arm around my 
 
 j neck, and as she got upon her knees behind me and 
 
 put forward her little head to get a peep at my lips, her 
 
 clear bird-like laugh of enjoyment and triumph added 
 
 visibly to my friend s mortification. A compunctious 
 
 visiting stole over me, and I began to feel that I should 
 
 j scarce have revenged myself for what was, after all, 
 
 but a kind severity. 
 
 "Do you know, Job," said I (anxious to restore his 
 
 self-complacency without a direct apology for my ruda- 
 
 ness), "do you know there is a very deep human truth 
 
 I hidden in the familiar story of * Beauty and the Beast ? 
 
 ! I really am of opinion, that, between the extremes of 
 
 | hideousness and the highest perfection of loveliness, 
 
 there is no face which, after a month s intercourse, 
 
 does not depend exclusively on its expression (or, in 
 
 other words, on the amiable qualities of the individual) 
 
 for the admiration it excites. The plainest features 
 
 become handsome unaware when associated only with 
 
 kind feelings, and the loveliest face disagreeable when 
 
 linked with ill-humor or caprice. People should re- 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 member this when selecting a face which they are to | Perhaps nothing would he so contradictory as the true 
 see every morning across the breakfast-table for the re- [j analysis of the character of what is called an indolent 
 
 mainder of their natural lives. 
 
 Job was appeased by the indirect compliment con 
 tained in this speech: and, gathering tip our kibauhs. 
 we descended to the caique, and pulling aroun.l tin- 
 easternmost point of the Symplegades, bade adieu to 
 the orient, and took the first step westward with the 
 smile of conciliation on our lips. 
 
 We were soon in the strong current of the Bospho- 
 rus, and shot swiftly down between Europe and Asia, 
 by the light of a sunset that seemed to brighten the 
 west for our return. It was a golden path homeward. 
 The east looked cold behind ; and the welcome of 
 our far-away kinsmen seemed sent to us on those pur 
 pling clouds, winning us back. Beneath that kindling 
 horizon below that departed sun lay the fresh and 
 free land of our inheritance. The light of the world 
 seemed gone over to it. These, from which the day 
 had declined, were countries of memory ours, of 
 hope. The sun, that was setting on these, was dawn 
 ing gloriously on ours. 
 
 On ordinary occasions. Job would have given me a 
 stave of "Hail Columbia!" after such a burst of pa 
 triotism. The cloud was on liis soul, however. 
 
 With all the tastes I have just professed, my 
 j strongest feeling on leaving the Symplegades, for ex- 
 amplf, was, and is still, an unwillingness to retrace my 
 steps. Onward! onward! is the perpetual cry of 
 my heart. I could pass my life in going from land to 
 land, so only that every successive one was new. Italy 
 will be old to us ; France, Germany, can scarce lure 
 the imagination to adventure, with the knowledge we 
 have: and England, though we have not seen it, is so 
 familiar to us from its universality that it will not seem, 
 even on a first visit, a strange country. We have sa 
 tiety before us, and the thought saddens me. I hate 
 to go back. I could start now, with Maimuna for a 
 guide, and turn gipsy in the wilds of Asia." 
 
 "Will you go with him, Maimuna?" 
 
 " Signor, no /" 
 
 I am the worst of story-tellers, gentle reader; for I 
 never get to the end. The truth is, that in these ram 
 bling papers, I go over the incidents I describe, not as 
 they should be written in a romance, but as they oc 
 curred in my travels : I write what I remember. There 
 are, of course, long intervals in adventure, filled 
 
 We have turned to go back," he said, in a kind of sometimes by feasting or philosophy, sometimes 
 
 1 up 
 with 
 
 musing bitterness, "and see what we are leaving be 
 hind ! In this fairy-shaped boat you are gliding like a 
 
 . . 
 
 dleness or love; and, to please myself, I must un 
 weave the thread as it was woven. Jt is strange how, 
 
 y-sna] 
 
 dream down the Bosphorus. The 
 Therapia yonder is fringed for miles with the pleasure- i important things are the best remembered. You may 
 
 liore of i 1 tne memory of a traveller, the most wayside and un 
 
 loving inhabitants of this delicious land, who think a have stood 
 
 Parthenon, and, looking back upon 
 
 life too short, of which the highest pleasure is to ram- tl through the distance of years, a chance word of the 
 ble on the edge of these calm waters with their kins 
 men and children. Is there a picture in the wotld 
 more beautiful than that palace-lined shore? Is there 
 
 companion who happened to be with you, or the atti 
 tude of a Greek seen in the plain below, may come up 
 more vividly to the recollection than the immortal 
 
 city so magnificent under the sun as that in which it sculptures on the frieze. There is a natural antipathy 
 
 in the human mind to fulfil expectations. We wander 
 from the thing we are told to admire, to dwell on 
 something we have discovered ourselves. The child 
 
 terminates? Are there softer skies, greener hills, 
 simpler or better people, to live among, than these? 
 Oh, Philip! ours, with all its freedom, "is a worki 
 
 day land. There is no idleness there ! The sweat is in church occupies itself with the fly on its prayer- 
 ever on the brow, the serpent of care never loosened book < and " the chlld 1S father of the man " If 1 in " 
 about the heart 1 I confess mvself a worshipper of dulge in llie same perversity in story-telling, dear 
 leisure: I would let no moment of my golden youth i reader if, in the most important crisis of my tale, I 
 go by unrecorded with a pleasure. Toil is ungo dlike, digress to some trifling vein of speculation if, at the 
 
 close even, the climax seem incomplete, and the moral 
 
 and unworthy of the immortal spirit, that should walk 
 unchained through the world. I love these idleorien 
 
 vain 1 plead, upon all these counts, an adherence to 
 
 tals. Their sliding and haste-forbidding slippers, their iriith and nature. Life real life is made up oj half- 
 flowing and ungirded habiliments, are signs most ex 
 pressive of their joy in life. Look around, and see : 
 
 how on every hill-top stands a maison de plaisance ; : ridiculous and the trifling, and at the end, oftenest left 
 
 imperfect. Who ever saw, oft the stage, a five-act 
 tragedy, with its proprieties and its climax? 
 
 finished romance. The most interesting procession of 
 events is delayed, and travestied, and mixed with the 
 
 how every hill-tide is shelved into those green plat 
 forms,* so expressive of their habits of enjoyment! 
 Rich or poor, their pleasures are the same. The 
 open air, freedom to roam, a caique at the water-side, 
 and a sairgah on the hill these are their moans of 
 happiness, and they are within the reach of all ; they 
 are nearer U lopia than we, my dear Philip ! We shall 
 be more like Turks than Christians in paradise!" 
 
 " Inglorious Job!" 
 
 "Why? Because I love idleness? Are there 
 braver people in the world than the Turks? Are 
 
 PART III. 
 
 TEN o clock A. M., and the weather like the prophet s 
 paradise, 
 
 " Warmth without heat, and coolness without cold." 
 Madame Josepino stood at the door of her Turco-Ital- 
 
 there people more capable of the romance of heroism? 
 
 Energy, though it sound a paradox, is the child of . ian boarding-house in the nasty and fashionable main 
 idleness. All extremes are natural and easy; and the ! street of Pera, dividing her attention between a hand- 
 most indolent in peace is likely to be the most fiery in | some Armenian, with a red button in the top of his 
 war. Here we are, opposite the summer serai of Sul- black lamb s-wool cap,f and her three boarders, Job 
 tan Mahmoud; and who more luxurious and idle? 
 Yet the massacre of the Janissaries was one of the 
 boldest measures in history. There is the most per 
 fect orientalism in the description of the Persian beauty 
 byllafiz:- 
 Her heart is full of passion, and her eyes are full of sleep. 
 
 * All around Constantinople are seen what are called sair- 
 Kahs small greensward platforms levelled in the side of a 
 hill, and usually commanding some lovely view, intended as 
 spots ou which those who are abroad for pleasure may spread 
 
 Maimuna, and myself, at that critical moment about 
 mounting our horses for a gallop to Belgrade. 
 
 their carpets. I know nothing so expressive as this of the 
 simple and natural lives led by these gentle orientals. 
 
 t The Armenians at Constantinople are despised by the 
 Turks, and tacily submit, like the Jews, to occupy a degraded 
 position as a people. A few, however, are employed as in 
 terpreters by the embassies, and these are allowed to wear 
 the mark of a red worsted button in the high black cap of the 
 race a distinction which just serves to make them the great 
 est possible coxcombs. 
 
70 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 We kissed our hands to the fat and fair Italian, and 
 with a promise to be at home for supper, kicked our 
 shovel-shaped stirrups into the sides of our horses, and 
 pranced away up the street, getting many a glance of 
 curiosity, and one or two that might be more freely 
 translated, from the dark eyes that are seen day and 
 night at the windows of the leaden-colored houses of ! 
 the Armenians. 
 
 We should have been an odd-looking cavalcade for | 
 the Boulevard or Bond street, but, blessed privilege of j 
 the east ! we were sufficiently comine il fauL for Pera. 
 To avoid the embarrassment of Maimuna s sex, I had 
 dressed her, from an English "slop-shop" at. Galata, 
 in the checked shirt, jacket, and trowsers of a sailor- 
 boy, but as she was obstinately determined that her | 
 long black hair should not be shorn, a turban was her 
 only resource for concealment, and the dark and { 
 glossy mass was hidden in the folds of an Albanian 
 shawl, forming altogether as inharmonious a costume 
 as could well be imagined. With the white duck 
 trowsers tight over her hips, and the jacket, which was j 
 a little too large for her, loose over her shoulders and 
 breast, the checked collar tied with a black silk cravat | 
 close round her throat, and the silken and gold fringe j 
 of the shawl flowing coquetishly over her left cheek j 
 and ear, she was certainly an odd figure on horseback, , 
 and, but for her admirable riding and excessive grace of ! 
 attitude, she might have been as much a subject for a j 
 caricature as her companion. Job rode soberly along 
 at her side, in the green turban of a Hajji (which he 
 had persisted in wearing ever since his pilgrimage to ; 
 Jerusalem), and, as he usually put it on askew, the ; 
 gaillard and rakish character of his head-dress, and j 
 the grave respectability of his black coat and salt-arid- 
 pepper trowsers, produced a contrast which elicited 
 a smile even from the admiring damsels at the win- j 
 dows. 
 
 Maimuna went caracoling along till the road entered 
 the black shadow of the cemetery of Pera, and then, 
 pulling up her well-managed horse, she rode close to 
 my side, with the air of subdued respect which was 
 more fitting to the spirit of the scene. It was a lovely 
 morning, as I said, and the Turks, who are early risers, 
 were sitting on the graves of their kindred with then- 
 veiled wives and children, the marble turbans in that 
 thickly-sown nekropolis\ess numerous than those of the 
 living, who had come, not to mourn the dead who lay 
 beneath, but to pass a day of idleness and pleasure on 
 the spot endeared by their memories. 
 
 " I declare to you," said Job, following Maimtrna s 
 example in waiting till I came up, " that I think the 
 Turks the most misrepresented and abused people on 
 earth. Look at this scene ! Here are whole families 
 seated upon graves over which the grass grows green 
 and fresh, the children playing at their feet, and their 
 own faces the pictures of calm cheerfulness and enjoy 
 ment. They are the by-word for brutes, and there is 
 not a gentler or more poetical race of beings between 
 the Indus and the Arkansas !" 
 
 It was really a scene of great beauty. The Turkish 
 tombs are as splendid as white marble can make them, 
 with letters and devices in red and gold, and often the 
 most delicious sculptures, and, with the crowded close 
 ness of the monuments, the vast extent of the burial- 
 ground over hill and dale, and the cypresses (nowhere 
 so magnificent) veiling all in a deep religious shadow, 
 dim, and yet broken by spots of the clearest sunshine, 
 a more impressive and peculiar scene could scarce be 
 imagined. It might exist in other countries, but it 
 would be a desert. To the Mussulman death is not 
 repulsive, and he makes it a resort when he would be 
 happiest. At all hours of the day you find the 
 tombs of Constantinople surrounded by the living. 
 They spread their carpets, and arrange their simple 
 repast around the stone which records the name and 
 virtues of their own dead, and talk of them as they do 
 
 of the living and absent parted from them to meet 
 again, if not in life, in paradise. 
 
 " For my own part," continued Job, " I see nothing 
 in scripture which contradicts the supposition that we 
 shall haunt, in the intermediate state between death 
 and heaven, the familiar places to which we have been 
 accustomed. In that case, how delightful are the hab 
 its of these people, and how cheeringly vanish the hor 
 rors of the grave ! Death, with us, is appalling ! The 
 smile has scarce faded from our lips, the light scarce 
 dead in our eye, when we are thrust into a noisome 
 vault, and thought of but with a shudder and a fear. 
 We are connected thenceforth, in the memories of our 
 friends, with the pestilent air in which we lie, with the 
 vermin that infest the gloom, with dullness, with dark 
 ness, with disease; and, memento as it is of their own 
 coming destiny, what wonder if they chase us, and the 
 forecast shadows of the grave, with the same hurried 
 disgust from their remembrance. Suppose, for an iii- 
 stant (what is by no means improbable), that the 
 j spirits of the dead are about us, conscious and watch 
 ful ! Suppose that they have still a feeling of sympa- 
 ! thy in the decaying form they have so long inhabited, 
 | in its organs, its senses, its once- ad mired and long- 
 ! cherished grace and proportion; th;U they feel the 
 ! contumely and disgust with which the features we pro- 
 j fessed to love are cast like garbage inlo the e;;rth, and 
 the indecent haste with which we turn away from the 
 solitary spot, and think of it but as the abode of iester- 
 ! ing and revolting corruption ! 
 
 At this moment we turned to the left, descending to 
 the Bosphorus, and Maimuna, who had ridden a little 
 ! in advance during Job s unintelligible monologue, came 
 > galloping back to tell us that there was a corpse in the 
 road. We quickened our p;tee, and the next moment 
 our horses started aside from the bier, left in a bend of 
 the highway with a single individual, the grave-digger, 
 sitting cross-legged beside it. Without looking up at 
 our approach, the man mumbled something between 
 his teeth, and held up his hand as if t8 arrest us in our 
 path. 
 
 "What does he say ?" I asked of Maimuna. 
 " He repeats a verse of the Koran," she replied, 
 "which promises a reward in paradise to him who 
 bears the dead forty steps on its way to the grave." 
 
 Job sprang instantly from his horse, threw the bridle 
 over the nearest tombstone, and made a sign to the 
 grave-digger that he would officiate as bearer. The 
 man nodded assent, but looked down the road without 
 arising from his seat. 
 
 "You are but three," said Maimuna, "and he waits 
 for a fourth." 
 
 I had dismounted by this time, not to be behind my 
 friend in the humanities of life, and the grave digger, 
 seeing that we were Europeans, smiled with a kind 
 of pleased surprise, and uttering the all expressive 
 " Pekkhe /" resumed his look-out for the fourth 
 bearer. 
 
 The corpse was that of a poor old man. The cof 
 fin was without a coyer, and he lay in it, in his turban 
 and slippers, his hands crossed over his breast, and 
 the folds of his girdle stuck full of flowers. He might 
 have been asleep, for any Ipok of death about him. 
 His lips were slightly unclosed, and his long beard was 
 combed smoothly over his breast. The odor of the 
 pipe and the pastille struggled with the perfume of the 
 flowers, and there was in his whole aspect a life-like 
 ness and peace, that the shroud and the close coffin, 
 and the additional horrors of approaching death, per 
 haps, combine, in other countries, utterly to do away. 
 " Hitherto," said Job, as he gazed attentively on the 
 calm old man, " I have envied the Scaligers their up 
 lifted and airy tombs in the midst of the cheerful street 
 of Verona, and, next to theirs, the sunny sarcophagus 
 of Petrarch, looking away over the peaceful Campagna 
 of Lombardy ; but here is a Turkish beggar who will 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 71 
 
 be buried still more enviably. Is it not a paradise of 
 tombs a kind of Utopia of the dead ?" 
 
 A youns; man wiili a load of vegetables for the 
 market of Pera, came toiling up the hill behind his 
 mule. Sure of his assistance, the grave-digger arose, 
 and as we took our places at the poles, the marketer 
 quietly turned his beast out of the road, and assisted 
 us in lifting the dead on our shoulders. The grave 
 was not far off, and having deposited the corpse on its 
 border, we returned to our horses, and, soon getting 
 clear of the cemetery, galloped away with light hearts 
 toward the valley of Sweet Waters. 
 
 We were taking breath on the silken banks of the 
 Barbyses M; 
 
 Constantinople. It is a common-place two-story affair, 
 but the best house of the dozen that form the village, 
 and overlooks a dell below that reminds one of the 
 " Emerald valleys of Cashmeer." We wandered 
 through its deserted rooms, discussed the clever wo 
 man who has described her travels so graphically, and 
 then followed Maimuna to the narrow street, in search 
 of/dbaubs. The butcher s shop in Turkey is as open 
 as the trottoir to the street, and with only an entire 
 sheep hanging between us and a dozen hungry beg- 
 , gars, attracted by the presence of strangers, we crossed 
 j our legs on the straw carpet, and setting the wooden 
 j tripod in the centre, waited patiently the movements of 
 I our feeder, who combined in his single person the 
 I three vocations of butcher, cook, and waiter. One 
 must have travelled east of Cape Coionna to relish 
 
 Barbyses Maimuna prancing along the pebbly bed, Jj dinner so slightly disguised, but, once rid of European 
 up to her barb s girths in sparkling water, and Job and ! > prejudices, there is nothing more simple than the fact 
 myself laughing at her frolics from either side, when ;i that it is rather an attractive mode of feeding a travel- 
 an old woman, bent double with age, came hobbling jj ler s appetite sitbaudi i/r. 
 
 toward us from a hovel in the hill-side. Our friend was a wholesome-looking Turk, with a 
 
 "Maimuna," said Job, fishing out some trumpery jj snow-white turban, a black, well-conditioned beard, a 
 paras from the corner of his waistcoat pocket, " give j! mouth incapable of a smile, yet honest, and a most 
 ihis to that good woman, and tell her that he who gives jj trenchant and janissaresquc style of handling his 
 it is happy, and would share his joy with her." {cleaver. Having laid open his bed of coals with a 
 
 The gipsy spurred up the bank, dismounted at a i kind of conjurer s flourish of the poker, he slapped the 
 short distance from the decrepit creature, and after a pendent mutton on the thigh in a fashion of encourage- 
 little conversation returned, leading her horse. jj ment, and waiting an instant for our admiration to sub- 
 " She is not a beggar, and wishes to know why you ; j side, he whipping his knife from its sheath, and had out 
 give her money ?" jj a dpzen strips from the chine (as Job expressed it in 
 " Tell her, to buy bread for her children." said my j; Vermontese) " in no time." With the same alacrity 
 patriarchal friend. j I these were cut into bits " of the size of a piece of 
 Maimuna went back, conversed with her again, and j chalk" (another favorite expression of Job s), run 
 returned with the money. j, upon a skewer, and laid on the coals, and in three 
 " She says she has no need of it. Tliereis noliuinan I j minutes, more or less, they appeared smoking on the 
 creature between her ami Allah . " I j trencher, half lost in a fine green salad, well peppered, 
 The old woman hobbled on, Job pocketed his re- j and of a most seducing and provocative savor. If you 
 jected paras, and Maimun-i rode between us in silence. || have performed your four ablutions A. M., like adevout 
 
 Mussulman, it is not conceived in Turkey that you 
 have occasion for the medium of a fork, and I frankly 
 own, that I might have been seen at Belgrade, cross- 
 legged in a kibaub-shup, between my friend and the 
 gipsy, and making a most diligent use of my thumb 
 and fore-finger. I have dined since at the Rocher de 
 Cancale and the Traveller s with less satisfaction. 
 
 Having paid something like sixpence sterling for 
 our three dinners (rather an overcharge, Maimuna 
 thought), we unpicketed our horses from the long 
 grass, and bade adieu to Belgrade, on our way to the 
 aqueducts. We were to follow down a verdant val- 
 
 It was a gem of natural poetry that was worthy of 
 the lips of an angel. 
 
 III. 
 
 We kept up the valley of Sweet Waters, tracing 
 the Barbyses through its bosom, to the hills ; and then 
 mounting a steep asc.ent, struck across to the east, over 
 a country, which, though so near the capital of the 
 Turkish empire, is as wild as the plains of the Hermus. 
 Shrubs, forest-trees, and wild grass, cover the appa 
 rently illimitable waste, and save a half-visible horse 
 path which guides the traveller across, there is scarce 
 an evidence that you are uot the first adventurer in the 
 wilderness. 
 
 What a natural delight is freedom ! What a bound 
 gives the heart at the sight of the unfenced eajth, the 
 unsep.irated hill-sides, the unhedged and unharvested 
 valleys! How thrilling it is unlike any other joy 
 to spur a fiery horse to the hill-top, and gaze away 
 over dell and precipice to the horizon, and never a 
 wall between, nor a human limit to say " Thus far 
 shalt thou go, and no farther!" Oh, I think we have 
 an instinct, dulled by civilization, which is like the 
 caged eaglet s, or the antelope s that is reared in the 
 Arab s tent ; an instinct of nature that scorns boundary 
 and chain ; that yearns to the free desert ; that would 
 have the earth, like the sea or the sky, unappropriated 
 and open ; that rejoices in immeasurable liberty of foot 
 and dwelling-place, and springs passionately back to 
 its freedom even after years of subduing method and 
 spirit-breaking confinement ! I have felt it on the sea, 
 in the forests of America, on the desolated plains of 
 Asia and Roumelia ; I should feel it till my heart 
 burst, had I the wings of a bird! 
 
 The house once occupied by Lady Mary Wortley 
 Montagu stands on the descent of a hill in the little vil 
 lage of Belgrade, some twelve or fourteen miles from 
 
 ley, and, exhilarated by a flask of Greek wine (which 
 j I "forgot to mention), and the ever-thrilling circum- 
 5 1 stances of unlimited greensward and horses that wait 
 not for the spur, we followed the daring little Asiatic 
 up hill and down, over bush and precipice, till Job 
 cried us mercy. We pulled up on the edge of a sheet 
 1 of calm water, and the vast marble wall, built by the 
 j sultans in the days of their magnificence and crossing 
 j the valley from side to side, burst upon us like a scene 
 of enchantment in the wilderness. 
 
 Those same sultans must have lived a great deal at 
 Belgrade. Save these vast aqueducts, which are splen 
 did monuments of architecture, there is little in the 
 first aspect to remind you that you are not in the wilds 
 of Missouri; but a further search discloses, in the re 
 cesses of the hidden windings of the valley, circular 
 staircases of marble leading to secluded baths, now 
 filled with leaves and neglected, but evidently on a 
 scale of the most imperial sumptuousness. From the 
 perishable construction of Turkish dwelling-houses, all 
 traces even of the most costly serai may easily have 
 disappeared in a few years, when once abandoned to 
 ruin; and I pleased myself with imagining, as we 
 slackened bridle, and rode slowly beneath the gigantic 
 trees of the forest, the gilded pavilions, and gay scenes 
 of oriental pleasure that must have existed here in 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 the days of the warlike yet effeminate Selims. It is a 
 place for the enchantments of the "Arabian Nights" 
 to have been realized. 
 
 I have followed the common error in giving these 
 structures in the forest of Belgrade the name of aque 
 ducts. They are rather walls built across the deep 
 valleys, of diiferent altitudes, to create reservoirs for 
 the supply of aqueducts, but are built with all the 
 magnificence and ornament of a facade to a temple. 
 
 We rode on from one to the other, arriving at last at 
 the lowest, which divides the valley at its wildest part, 
 forming a giddy wall across an apparently bottomless 
 ravine, as dark and impracticable as the glen of the 
 Cauterskill in America. Our road lay on the other 
 side, but though with a steady eye one might venture 
 to cross the parapet on foot, there were no means of 
 getting our horses over, short of a return of half a mile 
 to the path we had neglected higher up the valley. 
 W^ might swim it. above the embankment, but the 
 opposite shore was a precipice. 
 " What shall we do ?" I asked. 
 Job made no answer, but pulled round his beast, 
 and started off in a sober canter to return. 
 
 I stood a moment, gazing on the placid sheet of 
 water above, and the abyss of rock and darkness be 
 low, and then calling to Maimuna, who had ridden 
 farther down the bank, I turned my horse s head after 
 him. 
 
 " Signore !" cried the gipsy from below. 
 "What is it, Carissima ?" 
 " Maimuna never goes back !" 
 "Silly child!" I answered, "you are not going to 
 cross the ravine?" 
 
 " Yes !" was the reply, and the voice became more 
 indistinguishable as she galloped away. " I will be 
 over before you !" 
 
 I was vexed, but I knew the self-will and temerity 
 of the wild Asiatic, and, very certain that if there 
 were danger it would be run before I could reach 
 her, I drove the stirrups into my horse s sides, and 
 overtook Job at the descent into the valley. We as 
 cended again, and rode down the opposite shore to the 
 embankment, at a sharp gallop. Maimuna was not 
 there. 
 
 " She will have perished in the abyss," said Job. 
 I sprang from my horse to cross the parapet on foot 
 in search of her, when I heard her horse s footsteps, 
 and the next moment she dashed up the steep, having 
 failed in her attempt, and stood once more where we 
 had parted. The sun was setting, and we had ten 
 miles to ride, and impatient of her obstinacy, I sharply 
 ordered her to go up the ravine at speed, and cross as 
 we had done. 
 
 I think I never shall forget, angry as I was at the 
 moment, the appearance of that lovely creature, as 
 she resolutely refused to obey me. Her horse, the 
 same fiery Arabian she had ridden from Sardis (an 
 animal that, except when she was on his back, would 
 scarce have sold for a gold sequin), stood with head 
 erect and panting nostrils, glancing down with his 
 wild eyes upon the abyss into which he had been 
 urged the whole group, horse and rider, completely 
 relieved against the sky from the isolated mound they 
 occupied, and, at this instant, the gold flood of the set 
 ting sun pouring full on them through a break in the 
 masses of the forest. Her own fierce attitude, and 
 beautiful and frowning face, the thin lip curled reso 
 lutely, and the brown and polished cheek deepened 
 with a rosy glow, her full and breathing bosom swell 
 ing beneath its jacket, and her hair, which had escaped 
 from the turban, flowing over her neck and shoulders, 
 and mingling with the loosened fringes of red and gold 
 in rich disorder it was a picture which the pencil of 
 Martin (and it would have suited his genius) could 
 scarce have exaggerated. The stately half Arabic, 
 balf Grecian architecture of the aqueducts, and the 
 
 cold and frowning tints of the abyss and the forese 
 around, would have left him nothing to add to it as a 
 composition. 
 
 I was crossing the giddy edge of the parapet, look 
 ing well to my feet, with the intention of reasoning 
 with the obstinate being, who, vexed at my reproaches 
 and her own failure, was now in as pretty a rage as 
 myself, when I heard the trampling of horses in the 
 forest. I stopped mid-way to listen, and presently 
 there sprang a horseman up the bank in an oriental 
 costume, with pistols and ataghan flashing in the 
 sun, and a cast of features that at once betrayed his 
 origin. 
 
 "A Zingara!" I shouted back to Job. 
 
 The gipsy, who was about nineteen, and as well- 
 made and gallant a figure for a man as Maimuna for a 
 woman, seemed as much astonished as ourselves, and 
 sat in his saddle gazing on the extraordinary figure I 
 have described, evidently recognising one of his own 
 race, but probably puz-zled with the mixture of cos 
 tumes, and struck at the same time with Maimuna s 
 excessive beauty. Lovely as she always was, I had 
 never seen her to such advantage as now. She might 
 have come from fairy-land, for the radiant vision she 
 seemed in the gold of that burning sunset. 
 
 I gazed on them both a moment, and was about 
 finishing my traverse of the parapet, when a troop of 
 mounted gips-ies and baggage-horses came up the bank 
 at a quick pace, and in another minute Maimuna was 
 surrounded. I sprang to her bridle, and apprehensive 
 of, I scarce knew what danger, gave her one of the 
 two pistols I carried always in my bosom. 
 
 The gipsy chief (for such he evidently was) meas 
 ured me from head to foot with a look of dislike, and 
 speaking for the first time, addressed Maimuna in his 
 own language, with a remark which sent the blood to 
 her temples with a suddenness I had never before 
 seen. 
 
 " What does he say ?" I asked. 
 
 "It is no matter, signore, but it is false!" Her 
 black eyes were like co;ils of fire, as she spoke. 
 
 " Leave your horse," I said to her, in a low tone, 
 " and cross the parapet. I will prevent his following 
 you, and will join you on your own before you can 
 reach Constantinople. Turn the horses heads home 
 ward!" I continued in English to Job, who was crying 
 out to me from the other side to come baek. 
 
 Maimuna laid her hand on the pommel to dismount, 
 but the gipsy, anticipating her motion, touched his 
 horse with the stirrup, and sprang with a single leap 
 between her and the parapet. The troop had gath 
 ered into a circle behind us, and seeing our retreat 
 thus cut off, I presented my pistol to the young chief, 
 and demanded, in Italian, that he should clear the 
 way. 
 
 A blow from behind, the instant that I wns pulling 
 the trigger, sent the discharged pistol into the ravine, 
 and, in the same instant, Maimuna dashed her horse 
 against the unguarded gipsy, nearly overturning him 
 into the abyss, and spurred desperately upon the para 
 pet. One cry from the whole gipsy troop, and then 
 all was as silent as the grave, except the click of her 
 horse s hoofs on the marble verge, as, trembling pal 
 pably in every limb, the terrified animal crossed the 
 giddy chasm at a half trot, and, in the next minute, 
 bounded up the opposite bank, and disappeared with 
 a snort of fear and delight amid the branches of the 
 forest. 
 
 What with horror and wonder, and the shock of the 
 blow which had nearly broken my arm, I stood mo 
 tionless where Maimuna had left me, till the gipsy, re 
 covering from his amazement, dismounted and put his 
 pistol to rny breast. 
 
 "Call her back!" he said to me, in very good Ital 
 ian, and with a tone in which rage and determination 
 were strangely mingled, " or you die where you stand 1" 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 78 
 
 Without regarding his threat, I looked at him, with 
 a new thought stealing into my mind. He probably 
 read the pacific change in my feelings, for he dropped 
 his arm, and the frown on his own features moderated 
 to a steadfast and inquisitive regard. 
 
 "Zingara!" I said, "Maimuna is my slave." 
 
 A clutch of his pistol-stock, and a fiery and impa 
 tient look from his fine eyes, interrupted me for an in 
 stant. I proceeded to tell him briefly how I had ob 
 tained possession of her, while the troop gradually 
 closed around, attracted by his excessive look of in 
 terest in the tale, though they probably did not under 
 stand the language in which I spoke, and all fixing 
 their wild eyes earnestly on my face. 
 
 " And now, Zingara," I said, "I will bring her back 
 on one condition that, when the offer is fairly made 
 her, if she chooses still to go with me, she shall be j 
 free to do so. I have protected her, and sworn still I 
 to protect her as long as she should choose to cat of | 
 my bread. Though my slave, she is pure and guilt- j 
 less as when she left the tent of her mother, and is 
 worthy of the bosom of an emperor." 
 
 The Zingara took my hand, and put it to his lips. 
 
 " You agree to our compact, then ?" I asked. 
 
 He put his hand on his forehead, and then laid it, 
 with a slight inclination, on his breast. 
 
 " She can not have gone far," I said, and stepping 
 on the mound above the parapet, I shouted her name 
 till the woods rang again with the echo. 
 
 A moment, and Job and Maimuna came riding to jj 
 the verge of the opposite hill, and with a few words 
 of explanation, fastened their horses to a tree, and 
 crossed to us by the parapet. 
 
 The chief returned his pistols to his girdle, and 
 stood aside while I spoke to Maimuna. It was a diffi 
 cult task, but I felt that it was a moment decisive of i 
 her destiny, and the responsibility weighed heavily on 
 my breast. Though excessively attached to her 
 though she had been endeared to me by sacrifices, and ! 
 by the ties of protection though, in short, I loved ; 
 her, not with a passion, but with an affection as a : 
 father more than as a lover I still felt it to be my duty j 
 to leave no means untried to induce her to abandon j 
 me, to return to her own people and remain in her own | 
 land of the sun. What her fate would be in the state I 
 of society to which I must else introduce her, had 
 been eloquently depicted by Job, and will readily be 
 imagined by the reader. 
 
 After the first burst of incredulity and astonishment 
 at my proposal, she folded her arms on her bosom, 
 and, with the tears streaming like rain over her jacket, 
 listened in silence and with averted eyes. I conclu 
 ded with representing to her, in rather strong colors, 
 the feelings with which she might be received by my 
 friends, and the difficulty she would find in accojjimo- 
 dating herself to the customs of people, to whom not 
 only she must be inferior in the accomplishments of 
 a woman, but who might find, even in the color of that 
 loveliest cheek, a reason to despise her. 
 
 Her lip curled for an instant, but the grief in her 
 heart was stronger than the scorn for an imaginary 
 wrong, and she bowed her head again, and her tears 
 flowed on. 
 
 I was silent at last, and she looked up into my face. 
 
 " I am a burthen to you," she said. 
 
 " No, dearest Maimuna ! no ! but if I were to see 
 you wretched hereafter, you would become so. Tell 
 me! the chief will make you his wife; will you re 
 join your people ?" 
 
 She flung herself upon the ground, and wept as if 
 her heart would break. I thought it best to let her 
 feelings have away, and walking apart with the ymiiiu 
 gipsy, I gave him more of the particulars of her his 
 tory, and exacted a promise that, if she should finally 
 be left with the troop, he would return with her to the 
 tribe of her mother, at Sardis. 
 
 Maimuna stood gazing fixedly inlo the ravine when 
 we turned back, and there was an erectness in her at 
 titude, and ajierte in the air of her head, that, I must 
 acknowledge, promised more for my fears than my 
 wishes. Her pride was roused, it was easy with half 
 a glance to see. 
 
 With the suddenness of oriental passion, the young 
 chief had become already enamored of her, and, with 
 a feeling of jealousy which, even though I wished him 
 success, I could not control, I saw him kneel at her 
 feet and plead with her in an inaudible tone. She had 
 been less than woman if she had been insensible to 
 that passionate cadence, and the imploring earnest 
 ness of the noble countenance on which she looked. 
 It was evident that she was interested, though she 
 began with scarce deigning to lift her eyes from the 
 ground. 
 
 1 felt a sinking of the heart which I can not describe 
 when he rose to his feet and left her standing alone. 
 The troop had withdrawn at his command, and Job, 
 to whom the scene was too painful, had recrossed the 
 parapet, and stood by his horse s head waiting the re 
 sult. The twilight had deepened, the forest looked 
 black around us, and a single star sprang into the sky, 
 while the west was still glowing in a fast purpling gold 
 and crimson. 
 
 " Signore !" said Maimuna, walking calmly to my 
 hand, which I stretched instinctively to receive her, 
 " I am breaking my heart ; 1 know not what to do." 
 
 At this instant a faint meteor shot over the sky, and 
 drew its reflection across the calm mirror whose verge 
 we were approaching. 
 
 "Stay !" she cried ; " the next shall decide the fate 
 of Maimuna ! If it cross to the east, the will of Al 
 lah be done ! I will leave you !" 
 
 I called to the gipsy, and we stood on the verge of 
 the parapet in breathless expectation. The darkness 
 deepened around us, the abyss grew black and indis 
 tinguishable, and the night-birds flitted past like audi 
 ble shadows. I drew Maimuna to my bosom, and 
 with my hands buried in her long hair, pressed her to 
 my heart, that beat as painfully and as, heavily as her 
 own. 
 
 A sudden shriek ! She started from my bosom, and 
 as she fell upon the earth, my eye caught, on the face 
 of the mirror from which I had forgetfully withdrawn 
 my gaze, the vanishing pencil of a meteor, drawn like 
 a beam of the sunset, from west to east! 
 
 I lifted the insensible child, impressed one long kiss 
 on her lips, and flinging her into the arms of the gipsy, 
 crossed the parapet, and rode, with a speed that tried 
 in vain to outrun my anguish, to Constantinople. 
 
 TOM FANE AND I, 
 
 " Common as light is love, 
 
 TOM FANE S four Canadian ponies were whizzing 
 his light phaeton through the sand at a rate that would 
 have^put spirits into anything but a lover absent from 
 his mistress. The " heaven-kissing" pines towered on 
 every side like the thousand and one columns of the 
 Paheologi at Constantinople ; their flat and spreading 
 tops shutting out the light of heaven almost as effec 
 tually as the world of mussulmans, mosques, kiosks, 
 bazars, and Giaours, sustained on those innumerable 
 capitals, darkens the subterranean wonder of Stam- 
 boul. An American pine forest is as like a temple, 
 and a sublime one, as any dream that ever entered 
 into the architectural brain of the slumbering Martin. 
 The Yankee methodists in their camp-meetings, have 
 
74 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 but followed an irresistible instinct to worship God in 
 the religious dimness of these interminable aisles of the 
 wilderness. 
 
 Tom Fane and I had stoned the storks together in 
 the palace of Croesus at Sardis. We had read Anas- 
 tasius on a mufti s tomb in the Nekropolis of Scutari. 
 We had burned with fig-fevers in the same caravanse 
 rai at Smyrna. We had cooled our hot foreheads 
 and cursed the Greeks in emulous Romaic in the dim 
 tomb of Agamemnon at Argos. We had been grave 
 at Paris, and merry at Rome ; and we had pic-nic d 
 with the beauties of the Fanar in the Valley of Sweet 
 Waters in pleasant Roumelia ; and when, after parting 
 in France, he had returned to England and his regi 
 ment, and I to New England and law, whom should 
 I meet in a summer s trip to the St. Lawrence but 
 
 Captain Tom Fane of the th, quartered at the 
 
 cliff perched and doughty garrison of Quebec, and 
 ready for any " lark" that would vary the monotony 
 of duly ! 
 
 Having eaten seven mess-dinners, driven to the 
 falls of Montmorenci, and paid my respects to Lord 
 Dalhousie, the hospitable and able governor of the 
 Canadas, Quebec had no longer a temptation : and 
 obeying a magnet, of which more anon, I announced 
 to Fane that my traps were packed, and my heart sent 
 on, a Uavimt courier, to Saratoga. 
 
 " Is she pretty ?" said Tom. 
 
 " As the starry-eyed Circassian we gazed at through 
 the grill in the slave-market at Constantinople !"- 
 (Heaven and my mistress forgive me for the compari 
 son ! but it conveyed more to Tom Fane than a folio 
 of more respectful similitudes.) 
 
 " Have you any objection to be dnuvn to your lady 
 love by four cattle that would buy the soul of Osbal- 
 dislon ?" 
 
 " Objection ! quotha ?" 
 
 The next morning, four double-jointed and well- 
 groomed ponies were munching their corn in the bow 
 of a steamer, upon the St. Lawrence, wondering pos 
 sibly what, in the name of Bucephalus, had set the 
 hills and churches flying at such a rate down the river. 
 The hills and churches carne to a stand-still with the 
 steamer opposite Montreal, and the ponies were landed 
 and put to their mettle for some twenty miles, where 
 they were destined to be astonished by a similar flying 
 phenomenon in the mountains girding the lengthening 
 waters of Lake Champlain. Landed at Ticonderoga, 
 a few miles trot brought them to Lake George and a 
 third steamer, and, with a winding passage among 
 green islands and overhanging precipices loaded like 
 a harvest-wagon with vegetation, we made our last 
 landing on the edge of the pine forest, where our story 
 opens. 
 
 " Well, I must object, says Tom, setting his whip 
 in the socket, and edging round upon his driving-box, 
 "I must object to this republican gravity of yours. I 
 should take it for melancholy, did I not know it was 
 the complexion of your never-smiling countrymen." 
 
 " Spare me, Tom ! I see a hand you can not see. 
 Talk to your ponies, and let me be miserable, if you 
 love me." 
 
 " For what, in the name of common sense ? Are 
 you not within five hours of your mistress? Is not 
 this cursed sand your natal soil ? Do not 
 
 The pine-boughs sing 
 Old songs with new gladness ? 
 
 and in the years that we have dangled about, here- 
 and-there-ians together, were you ever before grave, 
 sad, or sulky ? and will you without a precedent, and 
 you a lawyer, inflict your stupidity upon me for the 
 first time in this waste, and being-less solitude ? Half 
 an hour more of the dread silence of this forest, and 
 it will not need the horn of Astolpho to set me irre 
 mediably mad 1" 
 
 " If employment will save your wits, you may in 
 vent a scheme for marrying the son of a poor gentle 
 man to the ward of a rich trader in rice and molas 
 ses." 
 
 " The programme of our approaching campaign, I 
 presume ?" 
 
 " Simply." 
 
 " Is the lady willing ?" 
 
 " I would fain believe so." 
 
 " Is Mr. Popkins unwilling ?" 
 
 "As the most romantic lover could desire." 
 
 "And the state of the campaign ?" 
 
 " Why, thus : Mr. George Washington Jefferson 
 Frump, whom you have irreverently called Mr. Pop- 
 kins, is sole guardian to the daughter of a dead West 
 Indian planter, of whom lie was once the agent. ] fell 
 in love with Kate Lorimer from description, when she 
 was at school with my sister, saw her by favor of a 
 garden-wall, and after the us>n! vows 
 
 " Too romantic for a Yankee, by half!" 
 
 " Proposed bv letter to Mr. Frump." 
 
 "Oh, bathos!" 
 
 " He refused me." 
 
 " Because " 
 
 "Imprimis, I was not myself in the sugar line, and 
 in secundis, my father wore gloves and did nothing 
 for a living two blots in the eyes of Mr. Frump, 
 which all the waters of Niagara would never wash from 
 my escutcheon." 
 
 "And what the devil hindered you from running off 
 with her ?" 
 
 " Fifty shares in the Manhattan Insurance Compa 
 ny, a gold mine in Florida, Heaven knows how many 
 hogsheads of treacle, and a million of acres on the 
 banks of the Missouri." 
 
 " Pluto s flame-colored daughter defend us! what 
 a living El Dorado !" 
 
 " All of which she forfeits if she marries without old 
 Frump s consent." 
 
 " I see I see ! And this lo and her Argus are now 
 drinking the waters at Saratoga ?" 
 
 "Even so." 
 
 " I ll bet you my four-in-hand to a sonnet, that I get 
 her for you before the season is over." 
 
 " Money and all ?" 
 
 " Mines, molasses, and Missouri acres !" 
 
 "And if you do, Tom, I ll aive you a team of Vir 
 ginian bloods that would astonish Ascot, and throw you 
 into the bargain a forgiveness for riding over me with 
 j your camel on the banks of the Hermus." 
 
 " Santa Maria ! do you remember that spongy foot 
 stepping over your frontispiece ? I had already cast 
 my eyes up to Mont Sypilus to choose a clean niche 
 for you out of the rock-hewn tombs of the kings of 
 Lydia. I thought you would sleep with Alyattis, 
 Phil !" 
 
 We dashed on through dark foiest and open clear 
 ing, through glens of tangled cedar and wild vine, over 
 log bridges, corduroy marshes, and sand hills, till, tow 
 ard evening, a scattering shanty or two, and an occa 
 sional sound of a woodman s axe, betokened our vi 
 cinity to Saratoga. A turn around a clump of tall pines 
 brought us immediately into the broad street of the 
 village, and the flaunting shops, the overgrown, un 
 sightly hotels, riddled with windows like honeycombs, 
 the fashionable idlers out for their evening lounge to 
 the waters, the indolent smokers on the colonnades, 
 and the dusty and loaded coaches driving from door 
 to door in search of lodgings, formed the usual evening 
 picture of the Bath of America. 
 
 As it was necessary to Tom s plan that my arrival 
 afeSaratoga should not be known, he pulled up at a 
 small tavern at the entrance of the street, find drop 
 ping me and my baggage, drove on to Congress Hall, 
 with my best prayers, and a letter of introduction to 
 my sister, whom 1 had left on her way to the Springs 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 75 
 
 with a party at my departure for Montreal. Unwil 
 ling to remain in such a tantalizing vicinity, I hired a 
 chaise the next morning, and despatching a note to 
 Tom, drove to seek a retreat at Barhydl s a spot that 
 can not well be described in the tail of a paragraph. 
 Herr Barhydt is an old Dutch settler, who, till the Ij 
 
 the forest, three thousand and more miles from thy 
 smoky whereabout, meihinks it would warm up the 
 flush of pleasure around thine eyelids, though the 
 " golden-tressed Adelaide" were waiting her good- 
 nisht kisses at thy knee ! 
 ould stand it no longer. On the second evening 
 
 _______ ________ 
 
 ineral springs of Saratoga were discovered some five || of my seclusion, I made bold to borrow olid Barhydt s 
 
 miles fiom hisdoor, was buried in the depth of a forest 
 solitude, unknown to all but the prow I m" Indian. The 
 sky is supported above him (or looks to be) by a wil 
 derness of straight, columnar pine shafts, gigantic in 
 girth, and with no foliage except at the top, where 
 they branch out like round tables spread for a banquet 
 
 superannuated roadster, and getting up the steam with 
 infinite difficulty in his rickety engine, higgled away, 
 with a pace to which I could not venture to affix a 
 name, to the gay scenes of Saratoga. 
 
 It was ten o clock when I dismounted at the stable 
 in Congress Hall, and, giving der Teitfel, as ihe old 
 
 in the clouds. A small ear shaped lake. sunk as deep i; man ambitiously styled his steed, to the hands of the 
 
 into the earth as the firs shoot above it, black as Ere 
 bus in the dim shadow of it.s hilly shore and the ob 
 structed light of the trees that nearly meet over if, and 
 clear and unbroken as a mirror, save the pearl spot 
 
 ostler, stole round through the garden to the eastern 
 colonnade. 
 
 I feel called upon to describe "Congress Hall." 
 Some fourteen or fifteen millions of white gentlemen 
 
 of the thousand lotuses holding up their cups to the and ladies consider that wooden and windowed Baby- 
 blue eye of heaven that peers through the leafy vault, i| Ion as the proper palace ol Delight a sojourn to be 
 sleeps beneath his window ; and around him, in the 1 : sighed for, and sacrificed for, and economized loi- 
 forest, lies, still unbroken, the elastic and brown carpet i| the birthplace of Love, the haunt of Hymen, ihe arena 
 of the faded pine tassels, deposited in yearly layers of fashion a place without which a new lease ol I lie 
 since the continent rose from the flood, and footed a ii were valueless for which, if the conjuring cap o King 
 foot beneath the surf. cc to a rich mould that would ; Erricus itself could not furnish a season ticker, it 
 fatten the Svmp!e"laJes to a (lower-garden. With his i might lie on a lady s toilet as unnoticed as a bride s 
 black tarn well .stocked with trout, his bit of a farm nisiht-cap a twelvemonth after marriage. J say to my- 
 
 betwee 
 
 as the old Dutch inhabitants dropped faster away, saw 
 never a white human face from one maple-blossoming 
 to another. 
 
 A roving mineralogist tasted the waters of Saratoga, 
 and, like the work of a lath-and-plaster Aladdin, up j 
 
 a campaign of pleasure you are losing in America 
 ! what belles than the bluebell slighter and fairer what 
 hearts than the dewdrops fresher and clearer are liv 
 ing their pretty hour, like gems undived for in the 
 ocean what loads of foliage, what Titans of trees, 
 what glorious wildernesses of rocks and waters, are 
 
 ana, line me wun* >i <> miu-iuu , . .. 
 
 sprmi" a thrivin<r villas around the fountain s lip, and !] lavishing their splendors on the clouds that sail mer 
 hotels? tin tumblers, and apothecaries, multiplied in the ! them, and all within the magic circle ol winch Con- 
 usual proportion to each other, but out of all prece- ij gress Hall is the centre, and which a circl n dove 
 
 proporton to eac oter, ut out o a prece 
 de:it, with everything else for rapidity. Libraries, 
 uewspipers, churches", livery stables, and lawyers, fol 
 lowed in their train ; and it was soon established, from 
 the plains of Abr mam to the savannahs of Alabama, 
 th.it no person of fashionable taste or broken constitu 
 tion could exist through the months of July and Au 
 gust without a visit to the chalybeate springs and pop 
 ulous village of Saratoga. It contained seven thoti- 
 
 would measure to get an appetite for his breakfast if 
 you but knew this, my lord, as I know it, you would 
 not be gazing so vacantly on the steps of Crockford s, 
 nor consider the graybeard such a laggard in his 
 hours !" 
 
 Congress Hall is a wooden building, of which the 
 size and capacity could never be definitely ascertained. 
 It is built on a slight elevation, just above the strongly- 
 ime it bears, with little at- 
 
 Mod inhabitants In-fore Herr Barhvdt, living in his !| impregnated spring tvhose na 
 
 wooded seclusion only five miles off. became aware of ! ! tempt at architecture, save a spacious and vme-covera 
 
 its existence. A pair of lovers, philandering about the || colonnade, serving as a promenade on either side 
 
 in uon him one June l two wings, the extremities of which are losr in the d 
 
 forest on horseback, popped in upon him one June two wings, me exiremu.es o, . - - 
 
 mornin-, an I thenceforth there was no rest for theljtance. A relic or two ol the still-astonished forest 
 soul of "the Dutchman. Everybody rode down to eat : towers above the chimneys, in the shape of a melan- 
 his trout and make love in the dark sha les of hi. mir- j , choly group of firs ; and, five minutes walk from the 
 roreJ 1 1*00:1; an I at last, in self-defence, he added a j door, the dim old wilderness stands looking down on 
 room or" two to his shanty, enclosed his cabbage-gar- !l the village in its primeval grandeur, like the sp.r.i 
 
 - 
 
 e j the wronged Indians, whose tracks are scarce van, 
 
 s from the sand. In the Strength ol the summer sol- 
 
 den, anJ put a price upon his trout-dinners. Th 
 traveller now-a-days who has not dined at Barhydt 
 
 iruiu 111*111:, niiiu 11 iimnwiww ,*s,j ... - . . ,,.;iioii f 
 
 complexion of anything about me, I waited Tom s op- ij Mr. Westcott, the obliging proprieloi , 
 eration, with a lover s usual patience. Barhydt s visit- l! preference of rooms, on my next annu.il visit, 
 ree o clock, and the j! just and honorable mention. 
 
 for this 
 
 before two 
 
 ani mused upon in those dim and whispering aisles of [j 
 
 a waltz m 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 the candles quiver, and the pines tremble audibly in 
 their tassels. The ballroom was on the ground floor, 
 and the colonnade upon the garden side was crowded 
 with spectators, a row of grinning black fellows edging 
 the cluster of heads at every window, and keeping 
 time with their hands and feet in the irresistible sym 
 pathy of their music-loving natures. Drawing my hat 
 over my eyes, I stood at the least-thronged window, 
 and concealing my face in the curtain, waited impa- j 
 tiently for the, appearance of the dancers. 
 
 The bevy in the drawing-room was sufficiently i 
 strong at last, and the lady patronesses, handed in by 
 a state governor or two, and here and there a member 
 of congress, achieved the entree with their usual intre 
 pidity. Followed beaux and followed belles. Such 
 belles ! Slight, delicate, fragile-looking creatures, ele 
 gant as Retzsch s angels, warm-eyed as Mohammedan 
 houries, yet timid as the antelope whose hazel orbs 
 they eclipse, limbed like nothing earthly except an 
 American woman I would rather not go on ! When 
 I speak of the beauty of my countrywomen, my heart 
 swells. I do believe the New World has a newer 
 mould for its mothers and daughters. I think I am 
 not prejudiced. I have been years away. I have 
 sighed in France ; I have loved in Italy ; I have bar 
 gained for Circassians in an eastern bezestein, and I 
 have lounged at Howell and James s on a sunny day 
 in the season ; and my eye is trained, and my percep 
 tions quickened : but I do think (honor bright ! and 
 Heath s " Book of Beauty" forgiving me) that there 
 is no such beautiful work of God under the arch of 
 the sky as an American girl in her bellehood. 
 
 Enter Tom Fane in a Stultz coat and Sparding 
 tights, looking as a man who had been the mirror of 
 Bond street might be supposed to look, a thousand 
 leagues from his club-house. She leaned on his arm. 
 I had never seen her half so lovely. Fresh and calm 
 from the seclusion of her chamber, her transparent 
 cheek was just tinged with the first mounting blood, 
 from the excitement of lights and music. Her lips 
 were slightly parted, her fine-lined eyebrows were 
 arched with a girlish surprise, and her ungloved arm 
 lay carelessly and confidingly within his, as white, I 
 round, and slender, as if Canova had wrought it in 
 Parian for his Psyche. If you have never seen a i 
 beauty of northern blood nurtured in a southern clime, 
 the cold fairness of her race wanned up as if it had ! 
 been steeped in some golden sunset, and her deep blue ! 
 eye darkened and filled with a fire as unnaturally re 
 splendent as the fusion of crysoprase into a diamond, 
 and if you have never known the corresponding con- i 
 trast in the character, the intelligence and constancy 
 of the north kindling with the enthusiasm and impulse, 
 the passionateness and the abandon of a more burning 
 latitude you have seen nothing, let me insinuate, 
 though you " have been i the Indies twice," that 
 could give you an idea of Kate Lorimer. 
 
 She waltzed, and then Tom danced with my sister, 
 and then, resigning her to another partner, he offered 
 his arm again to Miss Lorimer, and left the ballroom 
 with several other couples for a turn in the fresh air 
 of the colonnade. I was not jealous, but I felt un 
 pleasantly at his returning to her so immediately. He 
 was the handsomest man, out of all comparison, in the 
 room, and he had dimmed my star too often in our 
 rambles in Europe and Asia, not to suggest a thought, j 
 at least, that the same pleasant eclipse might occur in ! 
 our American astronomy. 1 stepped off the colonnade, 
 and took a turn in the garden. 
 
 Those "children of eternity," as Walter Savage 
 Landor poetically calls " the breezes," performed their 
 soothing ministry upon my temples, and I replaced 
 Tom in my confidence with an heroic effort, and turned 
 back. A swing hung between two gigantic pines, just 
 under the balustrade, and flinging myself into the cush 
 ioned seat, I abandoned myself to the musings natural i 
 
 to a person " in my situation." The sentimentalizing 
 promenaders lounged backward and forward above me, 
 and not hearing Tom s drawl among them, I presumed 
 he had returned to the ballroom. A lady and gentle 
 man, walking in silence, stopped presently, and leaned 
 upon the railing opposite the swing. They stood a 
 moment, looking into the dim shadow of the pine- 
 grove, and then a voice, that I knew better than my 
 own, remarked in a low and silvery tone upon the 
 beauty of the night. 
 
 She was not answered, and after a moment s pause, 
 as if resuming a conversation that had been interrupted, 
 she turned very earnestly to her companion, and asked, 
 "Are you sure, quite sure, that you could venture to 
 marry without a fortune ?" 
 
 " Quite, dear Miss Lorimer !" 
 
 I started from the swing, but before the words of 
 execration that rushed choking from my heart could 
 struggle to my lips, they had mingled with the crowd 
 and vanished. 
 
 I strode down the garden-walk in a phrensy of pas 
 sion. Should I call him immediately to account ? 
 Should I rush into the ballroom and accuse him of 
 his treachery to her face ? Should 1 drown myself in 
 old Barhydt s tarn, or join an Indian tribe, and make 
 war upon the whites ? Or should I could I be mag 
 nanimous and write him a note immediately, offering 
 to be his groomsman at the wedding ? 
 
 I stepped into the punch-room, asked for pen, ink, 
 and paper, and indited the following note : 
 
 " DEAR TOM : If your approaching nuptials are to 
 be sufficiently public to admit of a groomsman, you 
 will make me the happiest of friends by selecting me 
 for that office. 
 
 Yours ever truly, 
 
 PHII 
 
 Having despatched it to his room, T flew to the stable, 
 roused der Teufcl, who had gathered up his legs in the 
 straw for the night, flogged him furiously out of the 
 village, and giving him the rein as he entered the for 
 est, enjoyed the scenery in the humor of mad old Hie- 
 ronymo in the Spanish tragedy " the moon dark, the 
 stars extinct, the winds blowing, the owls shrieking, 
 the toads croaking, the minutes jarring, and the clock 
 striking twelve ! 
 
 Early the next day Tom s " tiger" dismounted at 
 Barhydt s door, with an answer to my note, as fol 
 lows : 
 
 " DEAR PHIL : The devil must have informed you 
 of a secret I supposed safe from all the world. Be as 
 sured I should have chosen no one but yourself to 
 support me on the occasion ; and however you have 
 discovered my design upon your treasure, a thousand 
 thanks for your generous consent. I expected no less 
 from your noble nature. 
 
 " Yours devotedly, 
 
 " TOM. 
 
 " P. S. I shall endeavor to be at Barhydt s, with 
 materials for the fifth act of our comedy, to-morrow 
 morning." 
 
 " Comedy ! call you this, Mr. Fane ?" I felt my 
 heart turn black as I threw down the letter. After a 
 thousand plans of revenge formed and abandoned 
 borrowing old Barhydt s rifles, loading them deliber 
 ately, and discharging them again into the air J flung 
 myself exhausted on the bed, and reasoned myself back 
 to my magnanimity. I would be his groomsman ! 
 
 It was a morning like the burst of a millennium on 
 the world. I felt as if I should never forgive the birds 
 for their mocking enjoyment of it. The wild heron 
 swung up from the reeds, the lotuses shook out their 
 dew into the lake as the breeze stirred ihejn, and the 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 77 
 
 senseless old Dutchman sat fishing in his canoe, sing 
 ing one of his unintelligible psalms to a quick measure 
 that half maddened me. I threw myself upon the 
 yielding floor of pine-tassels on the edge of the lake, 
 and with the wretched school philosophy, "&z grams 
 est, breris est," endeavored to put down the tempest 
 of my feelings. 
 
 A carriage rattled over the little bridge, mounted the 
 ascent rapidly, and brought up at Barhydt s door. 
 
 " Phil !" shouted Tom, " Phil !" 
 
 1 gulped down a choking sensation in my throat, and 
 rushed up the bank to him. A stranger was dismount 
 ing from his horse. 
 
 " Quick !" said Tom, shaking my hand hurriedly 
 " there is no time to lose. Out with your inkhorn, 
 Mr. Poppletree, and have yojur papers signed while I 
 tie up my ponies." 
 
 " What is this, sir ?" said I, starting back as the 
 stranger deliberately presented me with a paper, in 
 which my own name was written in conspicuous let 
 ters. 
 
 The magistrate gazed at me with a look of aston 
 ishment. "A contract of marriage, I think, between 
 Mr. Philip Slingsby and Miss Katherine Lorimer, spin 
 ster. Are you the gentleman named in that instrument, 
 sir?" 
 
 At this moment my sister, leading the blushing girl 
 by the hand, came and threw her arms about my neck, 
 and drawing her within my reach, ran off and left us 
 together. 
 
 There are some pure moments in this life that de 
 scription would only profane. 
 
 We were married by the village magistrate in that 
 magnificent sanctuary of the forest, old Barhydt and 
 his lotuses the only indifferent witnesses of vows as 
 passionate as ever trembled upon human lips. 
 
 I had scarce pressed her to my heart and dashed the 
 tears from my eyes, when Fane, who had looked more 
 at my sister than at the bride during the ceremony, left 
 her suddenly, and thrusting a roll of parchment into 
 my pocket, ran off to bring up his ponies. I was on 
 the way to Saratoga, a married man, and my bride on 
 the seat beside me, before I had recovered from my 
 astonishment. 
 
 " Pray," said Tom, " if it be not an impertinent 
 question, and you can find breath in your ecstasies, 
 how did you find out that your sister had done me 
 the honor to accept the offer of my hand ?" 
 
 The resounding woods rung with his unmerciful 
 laughter at the explanation. 
 
 "And pray," said I, in my turn, "if it is not an im 
 pertinent question, and you can find a spare breath in j 
 your ecstasies, by what magic did you persuade old 
 Frump to trust his ward and her title-deeds in your 
 treacherous keeping ?" 
 
 " It is a long story, my dear Phil, and I will give*you 
 the particulars when you pay rne the * Virginia bloods ! 
 you wot of. Suffice it for the present, that Mr. Frump 
 believes Mr. Tom Fane (alias Jacob Phipps, Esq., 
 sleeping partner of a banking-house at Liverpool) to 
 be the accepted suitor of his fair ward. In his extreme 
 delight at seeing her in so fair a way to marry into a \ , 
 bank, he generously made her a present of her own 
 fortune, signed over his right to control it by a docu- \ t 
 merit in your possession, and will undergo as agreeable jj 
 a surprise in about five minutes as the greatest lover 
 of excitement could desire." 
 
 The ponies dashed on. The sandy ascent by the 
 Pavilion Spring was surmounted, and in another min 
 ute we were at the door of Congress Hall. The last 
 stragglers from the breakfast-table were lounging down 
 the colonnade, and old Frump sat reading the newspa 
 per under the portico. 
 
 "Aha! Mr. Phipps," said he, as Tom drove up 
 " back so soon, eh ? Why, I thought you and Kitty 
 would be billing it till dinner-time !" 
 
 " Sir !" said Tom, very gravely, " you have the hon 
 or of addressing Captain Thomas Fane, of his majesty s 
 th Fusileers ; and whenever you have a moment s 
 leisure, I shall be happy to submit to your perusal a 
 certificate of the marriage of Miss Katherine Lorimer 
 to the gentleman I have the pleasure to present to you. 
 Mr. Frump, Mr. Slingsby !" 
 
 At the mention of my name, the blood in Mr. 
 Frump s ruddy complexion turned suddenly to the 
 color of the Tiber. Poetry alone can express the 
 feeling pictured in his countenance : 
 
 " If every atom of a dead man s flesh 
 Should creep, each one with a particular life, 
 Yet all as cold as ever twas just so : 
 Or had it drizzled needle-points of frost, 
 Upon a feverish head made suddenly bald. 
 
 George Washington Jefferson Frump, Esq., left 
 Congress Hall the same evening, and has since ungra 
 ciously refused an invitation to Captain Fane s wedding 
 possibly from his having neglected to invite him on 
 a similar occasion at Saratoga. This last, however, I 
 am free to say, is a gratuitous supposition of my own. 
 
 LARKS IN VACATION, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 DRIVING STANHOPE PRO TEM. 
 
 IN the edge of a June evening in the summer vaca 
 tion of 1827, I was set down by the coach at the gate 
 of my friend Horace Van Pelt s paternal mansion a 
 large, old-fashioned, comfortable Dutch house, cling 
 ing to the side of one of the most romantic dells on 
 the North river. In the absence of his whole family 
 on the summer excursion to the falls and lakes (taken 
 by almost every " well-to-do" citizen of the United 
 States), Horace was emperor of the long-descended, 
 and as progressively enriched domain of one of the 
 earliest Dutch settlers a brief authority which he ex 
 ercised more particularly over an extensive stud, and 
 bins number one and two. 
 
 The west was piled with gold castles, breaking up 
 the horizon with their burnished pinnacles and turrets, 
 the fragrant dampness of the thunder-shower that had 
 followed the heat of noon was in the air, and in a low 
 room, whose floor opened out so exactly upon the 
 shaven sward, that a blind man would not have known 
 when he passed from the heavily-piled carpet to the 
 grass, I found Horace sitting over his olives and claret, 
 having waited dinner for me till five (long beyond the 
 latest American hour), and, in despair of my arrival, 
 having dined without me. The old black cook was 
 too happy to vary her vocation by getting a second 
 dinner ; and when I had appeased my appetite, and 
 overtake my friend in his claret, we sat with the 
 moonlight breaking across a vine at our feet, and cof 
 fee worthy of a filagree cup in the Bezestein, and de 
 bated, amid a true cmbarras dcs rickcsses, our plans 
 for the next week s amusement. 
 
 The seven days wore on, merrily at first, but each 
 succeeding one growing less merry than the last. By 
 the fifth eve of my sojourn, we had exhausted variety. 
 All sorts of headaches and megrims in the morning, 
 all sorts of birds, beasts, and fishes, for dinner, all sorts 
 of accidents in all sorts of vehicles, left us on the sev 
 enth day out of sorts altogether. We were two dis 
 contented Rasselasesin the Happy Valley. Rejoicing 
 as we were in vacation, it would have been a relic! to 
 have had a recitation to read up, or a prayer-bell to 
 mark the time. Two idle sophomores in a rambling, 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 lonely old mansion, were, we discovered, a very insuf 
 ficient dramatis persona for the scene. 
 
 It was Saturday night. A violent clap of thunder 
 had interrupted some daring theory of Van Pelt s on 
 the rising of champagne-bubbles, and there we sat, 
 mum and melancholy, two sated Sybarites, silent an 
 hour by the clock. The mahogany was bare between 
 us. Any number of glasses and bottles stood in their 
 lees about the table ; the thrice-fished juice of an 
 olive-dish and a solitary cigar in a silver case had been 
 thrust aside in a warm argument, and, in his father s 
 sacred gout-chair, buried to the eyes in his loosened 
 cravat, one leg on the table, and one somewhere in 
 the neighborhood of my own, sat Van Pelt, the eidolon 
 of exhausted amusement. 
 
 " Phil !" said he, starting suddenly to an erect posi 
 tion, " a thought strikes me !" 
 
 I dropped the claret-cork, from which I was at the 
 moment trying to efface the " Margaux" brand, and 
 sat in silent expectation. I had thought his brains as 
 well evaporated as the last bottle of champagne. 
 
 He resred his elbows on the table, and set his chin 
 between his two palms. 
 
 "I ll resign the keys of this mournful old den to the 
 butler, and we ll go to Saratoga for a week. What 
 say ?" 
 
 " It would be a reprieve from death by inanition," 
 I answered, " but, as the rhetorical professor would 
 phrase it, amplify your meaning, young gentleman." 
 
 " Thus : To-morrow is Sunday. We will sleep till 
 Monday morning to purge our brains of these cloudy 
 vapors, and restore the freshness of our complexions. 
 If a fair day, you shall start alone in the stanhope, and 
 on Monday night sleep in classic quarters at Titus s 
 in Troy." 
 
 " And you !" I interrupted, rather astonished at his 
 arrangement for one. 
 
 Horace laid his hand on his pocket with a look of 
 embarrassed care. 
 
 " I will overtake you with the bay colls in the 
 drosky, but I must first go to Albany. The circula 
 ting medium 
 
 " I understand." 
 
 II. 
 
 We met on Monday morning in the breakfnst-room 
 in mutual spirits. The sun was two hours high, the 
 birds in the trees were wild with the beauty and elas 
 ticity of the day, the dew glistened on every bough, 
 and the whole scene, over river and hill, was a heaven 
 of natural delight. As we finished our breakfast, the 
 light spattering of a horse s feet up the avenue, and 
 the airy whirl of quick-following wheels, announced 
 the stanhope. It was in beautiful order, and what 
 would have been termed on any pave in the world a 
 tasteful turn-out. Light cream-colored body, black 
 wheels and shafts, drflb lining edged with green, dead- 
 black harness, light as that on the panthers of Bac 
 chus it was the last style of thing you would have 
 looked for at the " stoup" of a Dutch homestead. 
 And Tempest ! I think I see him now ! his small in 
 quisitive ears, arched neck, eager eye, and fine, thin 
 nostril his dainty feet flung out with the grace of a 
 flaunted riband his true and majestic action and his 
 spirited champ of the bit, nibbling at the tight rein with 
 the exciting pull of a hooked trout how evenly he 
 drew ! how insensibly the compact stanhope, just 
 touching his iron-gray tail, bowled along on the road 
 after him ! 
 
 Horace was behind with the drosky and black boy, 
 and with a parting nod at the gate, I turned north 
 ward, and Tempest took the road in beautiful style. I 
 do not remember to have been ever so elated- I was 
 always of the Cyrenaic philosophy that " happiness is 
 motion," and the bland vitality of the air had refined 
 
 my senses. The delightful /ee^ of the reins thrilled me 
 to the shoulder. Driving is like any other appetite, 
 dependant for the delicacy of its enjoyment on the 
 system, and a day s temperate abstinence, long sleep, 
 and the glorious perfection of the morning, had put 
 my nerves "in condition." I felt the air as I rushed 
 through. The power of the horse was added to my 
 consciousness of enjoyment, and if you can imagine a 
 centaur with a harness and stanhope added to his liv 
 ing body, I felt the triple enjoyment of animal exer 
 cise which would then be his. 
 
 It is delightful driving on the Hudson. The road is 
 very fair beneath your wheels, the river courses away 
 under the bold shore with the majesty inseparable 
 from its mighty flood, and the constant change of out 
 line in its banks gives you, as you proceed, a constant 
 variety of pictures, from the loveliest lo the most sub 
 lime. The eagle s nest above you at one moment, a 
 
 I sunny and fertile farm below you at the next rocks, 
 trees, and waterfalls, wedded and clustered as, it 
 seems to me, they are nowhere else done so pictu 
 resquely it is a noble river, the Hudson ! And every 
 few minutes, while you gaze down upon the broad 
 waters spreading from hill to hill like a round lake, a 
 gayly-painted steamer with her fringed and white awn 
 ings and streaming flag, shoots out as if from a sudden 
 cleft in the rock, and draws across it her track of 
 foam. 
 
 Well I bowled along. Ten o clock brought me 
 to a snug Dutch tavern, where I sponged Tempest s 
 mouth and nostrils, lunched and was stared at by the 
 natives, and continuing my journey, at one I loosed 
 rein and dashed into the pretty village of , Tem 
 pest in a foam, and himself and his extempore master 
 creating a great sensation in a crowd of people, who 
 
 j stood in the shade of the verandah of the hotel, as if 
 
 I that asylum for the weary traveller had been a shop for 
 
 j the sale of gentlemen in shirt-sleeves. 
 
 Tempest was taken round to the " barn," and I or 
 dered rather an elaborate dinner, designing still to go 
 on some ten miles in the cool of the evening, and hav 
 ing, of course, some mortal hours upon my hands. 
 The cook had probably never heard of more than 
 three dishes in her life, but those three were garnished 
 with all manner of herbs, and sent up in the best 
 china as a warranty for an unusual bill, and what with 
 coffee, a small glass of new rum as an apology for a 
 chasse cafe, and a nap in a straight-backed chair, I 
 killed the enemy to my satisfaction till the shadows of 
 the poplars lengthened across the barnyard. 
 
 I was awoke by Tempest, prancing round to the 
 door in undiminished spirits ; and as 1 had begun the 
 day en grand seigneur, I did not object to the bill, 
 which considerably exceeded the outside of my calcu 
 lation, but giving the landlord a twenty-dollar note, 
 received the change unquestioned, doubled the usual 
 fee to the ostler, and let Tempest off with a bend for 
 ward which served at the same time for a gracious bow 
 to the spectators. So remarkable a coxcomb had prob 
 ably not been seen in the village since the passing of 
 
 I Cornwallis s army. 
 
 The day was still hot, and as I got into the open 
 country, I drew rein and paced quietly up hill and 
 down, picking the road delicately, and in a humor of 
 thoughtful contentment, trying my skill in keeping the 
 edges of the green sod as it leaned in and out from the 
 walls and ditches. With the long whip I now and 
 then touched the wing of a sulphur butterfly hovering 
 over a pool, and now and then I stopped and gathered 
 a violet from the unsunned edge of the wood. 
 
 I had proceeded three or four miles in this way, 
 
 when I was overtaken by three stout fellows, gallop- 
 I ing at speed, who rode past and faced round with a 
 peremptory order to me to stop. A formidable pitch 
 fork in the hand of each horseman left me no alterna 
 tive. I made up my mind immediately to be robbed 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 79 
 
 quietly of my own personals, bul to show light, if ne 
 cessary, lor Tempest and the stanhope. * 
 
 " Well, gentlemen," said I, coaxing my impatient 
 horse, who had been rather excited by the clatter of 
 hoofs behind him, " what is the meaning of this ?" 
 
 Before 1 could get an answer, one of the fellows 
 had dismounted and given his bridle to another, and 
 coming round to the left side, he sprang suddenly into 
 the stanhope. I received him as he rose with a well- 
 placed thrust of my heel which sent him back into the 
 road, and with a chirrup to Tempest, I dashed through 
 the phalanx and took the road at a top speed. The 
 short lash once waved round the small ears before me, 
 there was no stopping in a hurry, and away sped the 
 gallant gray, and fast behind followed my friends in 
 their short sleeves, all in a lathering gallop. A couple 
 of miles was the work of no time, Tempest laying his 
 legs to it as if the stanhope had been a cobweb at his 
 heels ; but at the end of that distance there came a 
 sharp descent to a mill-stream, and I just remember 
 an unavoidable milestone and a jerk over a wall, and 
 the next minute, it seemed to me, I was in the room 
 
 for not so readily identifying the person of his friend 
 in the damaged gentleman in the straw. 
 
 " Ay, ay! I see you don t know him," said the land 
 lord, while Van Pelt suiveyed me rather coldly ; "on 
 with him, constables! he Mould have us believe you 
 knew him, sir! walk in, Mr. Van Pelt ! Ostler, look 
 to Mr. Van Pelt s horses ! Walk in, sir !" 
 
 " Stop !" I cried out in a voice of thunder, seeing 
 that Horace, really had not looked at me, " Van Pelt ! 
 stop, I say !" 
 
 The driver of the cart seemed more impressed by 
 the energy of my cries than my friends the constables, 
 and pulled up his horse. Some one in the crowd cried 
 out that I should have a hearing or he would " wallup 
 the comitatus," and the justice, called back by this ex 
 pression of an opinion from the sovereign people, re 
 quested his new guest to look at the prisoner. 
 
 I was preparing to have my hands untied, vet feel 
 ing so indignant at Van Pelt for not having recognised 
 me that I would not look at him, when, to my surprise, 
 the horse started off once more, and looking back, I 
 saw my friend patting the neck of his near horse, evi- 
 
 where I had dined, with my hands tied, and a hundred ; deutly not having thought it worth his while to take 
 
 people about me. My cool white waistcoat was mat 
 ted with mud, and my left temple was, by the glass 
 opposite me, both bloody and begrimed. 
 
 The opening of my eyes was a signal for a closer ! 
 gathering around me, and between exhaustion and the 
 close air I was half suffocated. I was soon made to 
 understand that I was a prisoner, and that the three i 
 v.-liite frocked highwaymen, as I took them to be, were j 
 among the spectators. O.i a polite application to the j 
 landlord, who, I found out, was a justice of the peace 
 as well, 1 was informed that he had made out my mit 
 timus as a counterfeiter, and that the spurious note I \ 
 had passed upon him for my dinner was safe in his 
 possession ! He pointed at the same time to a placard I 
 newly stuck against the wall, offering a reward for the I 
 apprehension of a notorious practiser of my supposed 
 craft, lo the description of whose person I answered, 
 to the satisfaction of all present. 
 
 Quite too indignant to remonstrate, I seated myself 
 in the chair consi lerately offered me by the waiter, 
 and listening to the whispers of the persons who were 
 still permitted to throng the room, I discovered, what 
 might have struck me before, that the initials on the [ 
 p:mel of the stanhope an 1 the handle of the whip had 
 been compared with the card pasted in the bottom of 
 
 any notice of the justice s observation. Choking with 
 rage, I flung myself down upon the straw, and jolted 
 on without further remonstrance to the county town. 
 
 I had been incarcerated an hour when Van Pelt s 
 voice, half angry with the turnkey and half ready to 
 burst into a laugh, resounded outside. He had not 
 heard a word spoken by the officious landlord, till after 
 the cart had been some time gone. Even then, be 
 lieving it to be a cock-and-bull story, he had quietly 
 dined, and it was only on going into tlie yard to see 
 after his horses that he recognised the debris of his 
 stanhope. 
 
 The landlord s apologies, when we returned to the 
 inn, were more amusing to Van Pelt than consolatory 
 to Philip Slingsby. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 SARATOGA SPRINGS. 
 
 IT was about seven o clock of a hot evening when 
 Van Pelt s exhausted horses toiled out from the Pine 
 
 my hat, and the want of correspondence was taken as II Forest, and stood, fetlock deep in sand, on the brow 
 decided corroboration. It was remarked also by a by- j| of the small hill overlooking the mushtonin village of 
 slander that I was quite too much of a dash for an | Saratoga. One or two straggling horsemen were re- 
 honest man, and \\v.\\ he had suspected me from first | turning late from their afternoon ride, and looked at 
 seeing me drive into the village ! I was sufficiently ! us, as they passed on their fresher hacks, with the cu- 
 
 Uumbled by this time to make an inward vow never 
 again to take airs upon myself if I escaped the county 
 ja.l. 
 
 The justice meanwhile had made out my orders, 
 
 and a horse and cart had been provided to take me to i the foot-path to the Spring ; and as Horac 
 
 the next town. I endeavored to get speech of 1 
 
 riosity which attaches to new-comers in a watering- 
 place ; here and there a genuine invalid, who had 
 come to the waters for life, not for pleasure, took ad 
 vantage of the coolness of the hour and crept down 
 
 flagging cattle into a trot to bring up gal- 
 
 worship as I was marched out of the inn parlor, but lantly at the door of "Congress Hall," the great bell 
 the crowd pressed close upon my heels, and the digni- of that fast caravanserai resounded through the dusty 
 tary-landlord seemed anxious to rid his house of me. ,|air, and by the shuffling of a thousand feet, audible as 
 
 we approached, we knew that the fashionable world 
 of Saratoga were rushing down, en masse, " to lea." 
 
 Having driven through a sand-cloud for the prece 
 ding three hours, and, to say nothing of myself, Van 
 Pelt being a man, who, in his character as the most 
 considerable beau of the University, calculated his first 
 impression, it was not thought advisable to encounter, 
 uncleansed, the tide of fashion at that moment stream- 
 
 I had no papers, and no proofs of my character, and 
 assertion went for nothing. Besides, T was muddy, 
 and my hat was broken in on one side, proofs of vil- 
 luny which appeal to the commonest understanding. 
 
 1 begged for a little straw in the bottom of the cart, 
 and had mads myself as comfortable as my two rustic 
 constables thought fitting for a culprit, when the vehi 
 cle was quickly ordered from the door to make away 
 for a carriage coming at a dashing pace up the road. 
 It was Van Pelt in his drosky. 
 
 Horace was well known on the road, and the stan 
 hope had already been recognised as his. By this 
 time it was deep in the twilight, and though he was in- | 
 stautly known by the landlord, he might" be excused | 
 
 ing through the 
 
 We drove round to the side- 
 
 door, and gained our pigeon-hole quarters under cover 
 of the back-staircase. 
 
 The bachelors wing of Congress Hall is a long, un- 
 slightly, wooden barrack, divided into chambers six feet 
 by four, and of au airiness of partition which enables 
 
80 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 the occupant to converse with his neighbor three rooms 
 oft , with the ease of clerks calling out entries to the 
 leger across the desks of a counting-house. The 
 clatter of knives and plates came up to our ears in a 
 confused murmur, and Van Pelt having refused to dine 
 at the only inn upon the route, for some reason best 
 known to himself, I commenced the progress of a long j 
 toilet with an appetite not rendered patient by the 
 sounds of cheer below. 
 
 I had washed the dust out of my eyes and mouth, 
 and, overcome with heat and hunger, I knotted a cool 
 cravat loosely round my neck, and sat down in the one 
 chair. 
 
 " Van Pelt !" I shouted. 
 
 "Well, Phil!" 
 
 " Are you dressed ?" 
 
 " Dressed ! I am as pinguid as a pate foie gras 
 greased to the eyelids in cold cream !" 
 
 I took up the sixpenny glass and looked at my own 
 newly- washed physiognomy. From the temples to the J 
 chin it was one unmitigated red burned to a blister 
 with the sun ! I had been obliged to deluge my head ; 
 like a mop to get out the dust, and not naturally re- I 
 markable for my good looks, I could, much worse than 
 Van Pelt, afford these startling additions to my disad 
 vantages. Hunger is a subtle excuse-finder, however, 
 and, remembering there were five hundred people in j 
 this formidable crowd, and all busy with satisfying their 
 appetites, I trusted to escape observation, and deter- ! 
 mined to " go down to tea." With the just-named ; 
 number of guests, it will easily be understood why it 
 is impossible to obtain a meal at Congress Hall, out of 
 the stated time and place. 
 
 In a white roundabout, a checked cravat, my hair 
 plastered over my eyes a la Mawworm, and a face like 
 the sign of the " Rising Sun," 1 stopped at Van Pelt s 
 door. 
 
 " The most hideous figure my eyes ever looked 
 upon !" was his first consolatory observation. 
 
 " Handsome or hideous," I answered, " I ll not | 
 starve! So here goes for some bread and butter!" 
 and leaving him to his "appliances," I descended to the 
 immense hall which serves the comers to Saratoga, for 
 dining, dancing, and breakfasting, and in wet weather, 
 between meals, for shuttlecock and promenading. 
 
 Two interminable tables extended down the hall, 
 filled by all the beauty and fashion of the United States, j 
 Luckily, I thought, forme, there are distinctions in this 
 republic of dissipation, and the upper end is reserved 
 for those who have servants to turn down the chairs 
 and stand over them. The end of the tables nearest 
 the door, consequently, is occupied by those whose j 
 opinion of my appearance is not without appeal, if they ; 
 trouble their heads about it at all, and I may glide in, ( 
 in my white roundabout (permitted in this sultry , 
 weather), and retrieve exhausted nature in obscurity. ! 
 
 An empty chair stood between an old gentleman j 
 and a very plain young lady, and seeing no remembered 
 faces opposite, I glided to the place, and was soon lost 
 to apprehension in the abysm of a cold pie. The table 
 was covered with meats, berries, bottles of chalybeate 
 water, tea appurtenances, jams, jellies, and radishes, 
 and, but for the absence of the roast, you might have 
 doubted whether the meal was breakfast or dinner, 
 lunch or supper. Happy country! in which any one 
 of the four meals may serve a hungry man for all. 
 
 The pigeon-pie stood, at last, well quarried before 
 me, the debris of the excavation heaped upon my plate ; 
 and, appetite appeased, and made bold by my half 
 hour s obscurity, I leaned forward and perused with 
 curious attention the long line of faces on the opposite 
 side of the table, to some of whom, doubtless,! was to 
 be indebted for the pleasures of the coining fort 
 night. 
 
 My eyes were fixed on the features of a talkative 
 woman just above, and I had quite forgotten the fact 
 
 of my dishabille of complexion and dress, when two 
 persons entered who made considerable stir among 
 the servants, and eventually were seated directly op 
 posite me. 
 
 " We loitered too long at Barhydt s," said one of the 
 most beautiful women I had ever seen, as she pulled 
 her chair nearer to the table and looked around her 
 with a glance of disapproval. 
 
 In following her eyes to see who was so happy as 
 to sympathize with such a divine creature even in the 
 loss of a place at table, I met the fixed and astonished 
 gaze of my most intimate friend at the University. 
 
 " Ellerton !" 
 
 "Slingsby !" 
 
 Overjoyed at meeting him, I stretched both hands 
 across the narrow table, and had shaken his arm nearly 
 off his shoulders, and asked him a dozen questions, be 
 fore I became conscious that a pair of large wondering 
 eyes were coldly taking an inventory of my person 
 and features. Van Pelt s unflattering exclamation 
 upon my appearance at his door, flashed across my 
 mind like a thunderstroke, and, coloring through my 
 burned skin to the temples, I bowed and stammered I 
 know not what, as Ellerton introduced me to his 
 sister ! 
 
 To enter fully into my distress, you should be ap 
 prized that a correspondence arising from my long and 
 constant intimacy with Tom Ellerton, had been carried 
 on for a year between me and his sister, and that, being 
 constantly in the habit of yielding to me in manners of 
 taste, he had, I well knew, so exaggerated to her my 
 personal qualities, dress, and manners, that she could 
 not in any case fail to be disappointed in seeing me. 
 Believing her to be at that moment two thousand miles 
 off in Alabama, and never having hoped for the pleas 
 ure of seeing her at all, I had foolishly suffered this 
 good-natured exaggeration to go on, pleased with seeing 
 the reflex of his praises in her letters, and, Heaven 
 knows, little anticipating the disastrous interview upon 
 which my accursed star would precipitate me ! As I 
 went over, mentally, the particulars of my unbecom- 
 ingness, and saw Miss Ellerton s eyes resting inquisi 
 tively and furtively on the mountain of pigeon bones 
 lifting their well-picked pyramid to my chin, 1 wished 
 myself an ink-fish at the bottom of the sea. 
 
 Three minutes after, I burst into Van Pelt s room, 
 tearing my hair and abusing Tom Ellerton s good na 
 ture, and my friend s headless drosky, in alternate 
 breaths. Without disturbing the subsiding blood in his 
 own face by entering into my violence, Horace coolly 
 asked me what the devil was the matter. 
 
 I told him. 
 
 " Lie down here !" said Van Pelt, who was a small 
 Napoleon in such trying extremities ; " lie down ojj 
 the bed, and anoint your phiz with this unguent. I see 
 good luck for you in this accident, and you have only 
 to follow my instructions. Phil Slingsby, sunburnt, 
 in a white roundabout, and Phil Slingsby, pale and well 
 dressed, are as different as this potted cream and a dan 
 cing cow. You shall see what a little drama I ll work 
 out for you !" 
 
 I lay down on my back, and Horace kindly anointed 
 me from the trachea to the forelock, and from ear to 
 ear. 
 
 " Egad," said he, warming with his study of his pro 
 posed ^plot as he slid his fore-fingers over the bridge of 
 my nose, "every circumstance tells for us. Tall man 
 as you are, you are as short-bodied as a monkey (no 
 offence, Phil !) and when you sit at table, you are rather 
 an under-sized gentleman. I have been astonished 
 every day these three years, at seeing you rise after 
 dinner in Commons Hall. A thousand to one, Fanny 
 Ellerton thinks you a stumpy man." 
 
 "And then, Phil," he continued, with a patronising 
 tone, "you have studied minute philosophy to little 
 purpose if you do not know that the first step in win- 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 81 
 
 ning a wom;m to whom you have been overpraised, is 
 to disenchant her at all hazards, on your first inter 
 view. You will never rise above the ideal she has 
 formed, and to sink below it gradually, or to remain 
 stationary, is not to thrive in your wooing." 
 
 Leaving me this precocious wisdom to digest, 
 Horace descended to the foot of the garden to take a 
 warm bath, and overcome with fatigue, and the recum- 
 
 opening at every three steps by a long window into 
 the carpeted floors. When the rooms within are lit 
 in a summer s night, that cool and airy colonnade is 
 thronged by truants from the dance, and collectively 
 by all who have anything to express that is meant for 
 one ear only. The mineral waters of Saratoga are no 
 less celebrated as a soporific for chaperons than as a 
 tonic for the dyspeptic, and while the female Argus 
 
 bent posture, I soon fell asleep and dreamed of the || dozes in the drawing-room, the fair lo and her Jupi- 
 
 great blue eyes of Fanny Ellerton. 
 
 
 The soaring of the octave flute in " Hail Columbia," 
 
 ter (represented in this case, we will say, by Miss El- 
 lerton and myself) range at liberty the fertile fields of 
 flirtation. 
 
 I had easily put Miss Ellerton in surprised good 
 humor with herself and me during the first quadrille, 
 and with a freedom based partly upon my certainty of 
 
 with which the band was patriotically opening the j | pleasing her, partly on the peculiar manners of the 
 
 ball, woke me from the midst of a long apologetic let 
 ter to my friend s sister, and I found Van Pelt s black \ 
 boy Juba waiting patiently at the bed-side with curl- j 
 ing-tongs and Cologne-water, ordered to superintend 
 my toilet by his master, who had gone early to the 
 drawing-room to pay his respects to Miss Ellerton. 
 With the cold cream disappeared entirely from my j 
 face the uncomfortable redness to which I had been a ! 
 martyr, and, thanks to my ebony coiffeur, my straight 
 
 place, I coolly requested that she would continue to 
 dance with me for the rest of the evening. 
 
 "One unhappy quadrille excepted," she replied, 
 with a look meant to be mournful. 
 
 " May I ask with whom?" 
 
 " Oh, he has not asked me yet ; but my brother has 
 bound me over to be civil to him a spectre, Mr. 
 Wrongham ! a positive spectre." 
 
 How denominated ?" I inquired, with a forced in- 
 
 and plastered locks soon grew as different to their difference, for I had a presentiment I should hear my 
 
 umquhile guise" as Hyperion s to a satyr s. Hav 
 ing appeared to the eyes of the lady, in whose favor I 
 hoped to prosper, in red and white (red phiz and white 
 
 jacket), I trusted that in white and black (black suit j don t seem surprised!" 
 
 own name. 
 
 "Slingsby Mr. Philip Slingsby Tom s fidus 
 Achates, and a proposed lover of my own. But you 
 
 and paleviznomy), I should look quite another person. 
 Juba was pleased to show his ivory in a complimen 
 tary smile at my transformation, and I descended to 
 the drawing-room, on the best terms with the coxcomb 
 in my bosom. 
 
 Horace met me at the door. 
 
 "Proteus redinvus /" was his exclamation. "Your 
 new name is Wrongham. You are a gentle senior, 
 instead of a bedeviled sophomore, and your cue is to 
 be poetical. She will never think again of the mon 
 ster in the white jacket, and I have prepared her for 
 the acquaintance of a new friend, whom I have just 
 described to you. 
 
 I took his arm, and with the courage of a man in a 
 
 Surprised! E-hem! I know the gentleman !" 
 
 "Then did you ever see such a monster! Tom 
 told me he was another Hyperion. He half admitted 
 it himself, indeed ; for to tell you a secret, I have cor 
 responded with him a year!" 
 
 "Giddy Miss Fanny Ellerton! and never saw 
 him !" 
 
 "Never till to-night ! He sat at supper in a white 
 jacket and red face, with a pile of bones upon his plate 
 like an Indian tumulus." 
 
 "And your brother introduced you ?" 
 
 " Ah, you were at table ! Well, did you ever see in 
 your travels, a man so unpleasantly hideous?" 
 
 Fanny!" said her brother, coining up at the mo 
 
 mask, went through another presentation to Miss El- ment, "Slingsby presents his apologies to you for not 
 
 lerton. Her brother had been let into the secret by | joining your cordon to-night but he s gone to bed 
 
 Van Pelt, and received me with great ceremony as his I with a head-ache." 
 
 college superior; and, as there was no other person at 
 
 the Springs who knew Mr. Slingsby, Mr. Wrongham 
 
 was likely to have an undisturbed reign of it. Miss j 
 
 Ellerton looked hard at me for a moment, but the j walks not forth to-night, I am yours for a cool hour 
 
 gravity with which I was presented and received, dis- H on the colonnade." 
 
 sipated a doubt if one had arisen in her mind, and i Vegetation is rapid in Alabama, and love is a weed 
 
 that thrives in the soil of the tropics. We discoursed 
 of the lost Pleiad and the Berlin bracelets, of the five 
 
 "Indigestion, I dare say," said the young lady. 
 " Never mind, Tom, I ll break my heart when I have 
 leisure. And now, Mr. Wrongham, since the spectre 
 
 she took my arm to go to the ball-room, with an 
 undisturbed belief in my assumed name and eharac- 
 ter. 
 
 hundred people about us, and the feasibility of boiling 
 commenced the acquaintance of the fair Alaba- i a pot on five hundred a year the unmatrimonial sum 
 
 mian with great advantages. Received as a perfect 
 stranger, I possessed, from long correspondence with 
 her, the most minute knowledge of the springs, of her 
 character, and of her favorite reading and pursuits, 
 
 total of my paternal allowance. She had as many ne 
 groes as I had dollars, I well knew, but it was my cue 
 to seem disinterested. 
 
 And where do you mean to live, when you marry, 
 
 and, with the little knowledge of the world which she j Mr. Wrongham?" asked Miss Ellerton, at the two 
 
 had gained on a plantation, she was not likely to pene 
 trate my game from my playing it too freely. Her 
 
 confidence was immediately won by the readiness . ! as if I had not heard her. 
 
 hundredth turn on the colonnade. 
 
 Would you like to live in Italy?" I asked again, 
 
 with which I entered into her enthusiasm and antici 
 pated her thoughts ; and before the first quadrille was 
 well over, she had evidently made up her mind that 
 
 Do you mean that as a scqurtur to my question, 
 Mr. Wrongham ?" said she, half stopping in her walk ; 
 \ though the sentence was commenced playfully, 
 
 she had never in her life met one who so well "under- || dropping her voice at the last word, with something, I 
 
 thought, very like emotion. 
 
 I drew her oft" the colonnade to the small garden 
 between the house and the spring, and in a giddy 
 
 stood her." Oh ! how much women include in that 
 apparently indefinite expression, " He understands 
 me/" 
 
 The colonnade of Congress Hall is a long prom 
 enade laced in with vines and columns, on the same 
 level with the vast ball-room and drawing-room, and 
 (the light of heaven not being taxed at Saratoga) 
 6 
 
 dream of fear and surprise at my own rashness and 
 success, I made, and won from her, a frank avowal of 
 preference. 
 
 Matches have been made more suddenly. 
 
82 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 III. 
 
 Miss Ellerton sat in the music-room the next morn 
 ing after breakfast, preventing pauses in a rather in 
 teresting conversation, by a running accompaniment 
 upon the guitar. A single gold thread formed a fillet 
 about her temples, and from beneath it, in clouds of 
 silken ringlets, floated the softest raven hair that ever 
 grew enamored of an ivory shoulder. Hers was a 
 skin that seemed woven of the lily-white, but opaque 
 fibre of the magnolia, yet of that side of its cup turned | 
 toward the fading sunset. There is no term in paint 
 ing, because there is no touch of pencil or color, that 
 could express the vanishing and impalpable breath 
 that assured the healthiness of so pale a cheek. She 
 was slight as all southern women are in America, and 
 of a flexible and luxurious gracefulness equalled by 
 nothing but the movings of a smoke-curl. Without 
 the elastic nerve remarkable in the motions of Taglioni, 
 she appeared, like her, to be born with a lighter spe 
 cific gravity than her fellow-creatures. If she had 
 floated away upon some chance breeze you would only 
 have been surprised upon reflection. 
 
 "I am afraid you are too fond of society," said Miss 
 Ellerton, as Juba came in hesitatingly and delivered 
 her a note in the hand writing of an old correspondent. 
 She turned pale on seeing the superscription, and 
 crushed the note up in her bond, unread. I was not 
 sorry to defer the denouement of my little drama, and 
 taking up the remark which she seemed disposed to 
 forget, I referred her to a scrap-book of Van Pelt s, j 
 which she had brought home with her, containing 
 some verses of my own, copied (by good luck) in that 
 sentimental sophomore s own hand. 
 
 "Are these yours, really and really?" she asked, 
 looking pryingly into my face, and showing me my 
 own verses, against which she had already run a pen 
 cil line of approbation. 
 
 "Peccavi!" I answered. "But will you make me 
 in love with my offspring by reading them in your own ! 
 voice." 
 
 They were some lines written in a balcony at day 
 break, while a ball was still going on within, and con 
 tained an allusion (which I had quite overlooked) to 
 some one of my ever-changing admirations. As well 
 as I remember they ran thus : 
 
 Morn in the east ! How coldly fair 
 
 It breaks upon my fevered eye ! 
 How chides the calm and dewy air ! 
 
 Ho w chides the pure and pearly sky ! 
 The stars melt in a brighter fire, 
 
 The dew in sunshine leaves ihe flowers j 
 They from their watch, in light retire, 
 
 While we in sadness pass from ours ! 
 
 I turn from the rebuking morn, 
 
 The cold gray sky and fading star, 
 And listen to the harp and horn, 
 
 And see the waltzers near and far ; 
 The lamps and flowers are bright as yet, 
 
 And lips beneath more bright than they 
 How can a scene so fair beget 
 
 The mournful thoughts we bear away. 
 
 Tis something that thou art not here, 
 
 Sweet lover of my lightest word ! 
 Tis something that my mother s tear 
 
 By these forgetful hours is stirred ? 
 But I have long a loiterer been 
 
 In haunts where Joy is said to be ; 
 And though, with Peace I enter in. 
 
 The nymph comes never forth with me! 
 
 " And who was this sweet lover, Mr. Wrongham ? 
 I should know, I think, before I go farther with so ex 
 peditious a gentleman." 
 
 "As Shelley says of his ideal mistress 
 
 I loved oh, no ! I mean not one of ye. 
 Or any earthly one though ye are fair ! 
 
 It was but an apostrophe to the presentiment of that 
 which I have found, dear Miss Ellerton ! But will you 
 read that ill-treated billet-doux, arid remember that 
 Juba stands with the patience of an ebon statue wait 
 ing for an answer ?" 
 
 I knew the contents of the letter, and I watched the 
 expression of her face, as she read it, with no little 
 interest. Her temples flushed, and her delicate lips 
 gradually curled into an expression of anger and scorn, 
 and having finished the perusal of it, she put it into 
 my hand, and asked me if so impertinent a production 
 deserved an answer. 
 
 I began to fear that the edaircisscment would not 
 leave me on the sunny side of the lady s favor, and felt 
 the need of the moment s reflection given me while 
 running my eye over the letter. 
 
 " Mr. Slingsby," said I, with the deliberation of an 
 attorney, " has been some time in correspondence with 
 you ?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " And, from his letters and your brother s commen 
 dations, you had formed a high opinion of his charac 
 ter, and had expressed as much in your letters ?" 
 
 " Yes perhaps I did." 
 
 "And from this paper intimacy he conceives him 
 self sufficiently acquainted with you to request leave 
 to pay his addresses ?" 
 
 A dignified bow put a stop to my catechism. 
 
 " Dear Miss Ellerton !" I said, " this is scarcely a 
 question upon which I ought to speak, but by putting 
 this letter into my hand, you seemed to ask my opin 
 ion." 
 
 " I did I do," said the lovely girl, taking my hand, 
 and looking appealingly into my face ; " answer it for 
 me ! J have done wrong in encouraging that foolish 
 correspondence, and I owe perhaps to this forward 
 man a kinder reply than my first feeling would have 
 dictated. Decide for me write for me relieve me 
 from the first burden that has lain on my heart 
 since " 
 
 She burst into tears, and my dread of an explanation 
 increased. 
 
 " Will you follow my advice implicitly ?" I asked. 
 
 " Yes oh, yes !" 
 
 " You promise ?" 
 
 " Indeed, indeed !" 
 
 " Well, then, listen to me ! However painful the 
 task, I must tell you that the encouragement you have 
 given Mr. Slingsby, the admiration you have expressed 
 in your letters of his talents and acquirements, and the 
 confidences you have reposed in him respecting your 
 self, warrant him in claiming as a right, a fair trial of 
 his attractions. You have known and approved Mr. 
 Slingsby s mind for years you know me but for a few 
 hours. You saw him under the most unfavorable 
 auspices (for I know him intimately), and I feel bound 
 n justice to assure you that you will like him much 
 better upon acquaintance." 
 
 Miss Ellerton had gradually drawn herself up du 
 ring this splendid speech, and sat at last as erect and 
 as cold as Agrippina upon her marble chair. 
 
 "Will you allow me to send Mr. Slingsby to you," 
 I continued, rising " and suffer him to plead his own 
 cause ?" 
 
 If you will call my brother, Mr. Wrongham, I 
 shall feel obliged to you," said Miss Ellerton. 
 
 I left the room, and hurrying to my chamber, dipped 
 my head into a basin of water, and plastered my long 
 locks over my eyes, slipped on a white roundabout, 
 and tied around my neck the identical checked cravat 
 n which I had made such an unfavorable impression 
 on the first day of my arrival. Tom Ellerton was soon 
 found, and easily agreed to go before and announce me 
 by my proper name to his sister ; and treading close 
 ly on his heels, I followed to the door of the music- 
 room. 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 83 
 
 " Ah, Ellen !" said he, without giving her time for i| to the door, where thnt small epitome of the inherit- 
 a scene, " I was looking for you. Slingsby is better, ance of the prince of darkness, an American stage- 
 and will pay his respects to you presently. And, I jj coach, awaited me as its ninth inside passenger. As 
 say you will treat him well, Ellen, and and, don t | the last person picked up, I knew very well the seat 
 
 to which I was destined, and drawing a final cool 
 breath in the breezy colonnade, I summoned resolu 
 tion and abandoned myself to the tender mercies of 
 
 flirt with Wrongham the way you did last night ! 
 Slingby s a devilish sight better fellow. Oh, here he 
 is !" 
 
 As I stepped over the threshold, Miss Ellerton gave 
 me just enough of a look to assure herself that it was 
 the identical monster she had seen at the tea-table, 
 and not deigning me another glance, immediately com 
 menced talking violently to her brother on the state of 
 the weather. Tom bore it for a moment or two with 
 remarkable gravity, but at my first attempt to join in 
 the conversation, my voice was lost in an explosion of 
 laughter which would have been the death of a gentle 
 man with a full habit. 
 
 Indignant and astonished, Miss Ellerton rose to her 
 full height, and slowly turned to me. 
 
 " Peccavi /" said I, crossing my hands on my bosom, 
 and looking up penitently to her face. 
 
 She ran to me, and seized my hand, but recovered 
 herself instantly, and the next moment was gone from 
 the room. 
 
 Whether from wounded pride at having been the 
 subject of a mystification, or whether from that female 
 caprice by which most men suffer at one period or 
 other of their bachelor lives, I know not but I never 
 could bring Miss Ellerton again to the same interest 
 ing crisis with which she ended her intimacy with Mr. 
 WVongham. She proffered to forgive me, and talked 
 laughingly enough of our old correspondence ; but 
 whenever I grew tender, she referred me to the " sweet 
 lover," mentioned in my verses in the balcony, and 
 looked around for Van Pelt. That accomplished 
 beau, 
 
 Miss Ellerton s graces without the aid of his quizzing- 
 glass, and I soon found it necessary to yield the pas 
 altogether. She has since become Mrs. Van Pelt, 
 and when I last heard from her was " as well as could 
 be expected." 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MRS. CAPTAIN THOMPSON. 
 
 THE last of August came sweltering in, hot, dusty, 
 and faint, and the most indefatigable belles of Sarato 
 ga began to show symptoms of weariness. The stars 
 disappeared gradually from the ballroom ; the bar- 
 
 the driver. 
 
 The " ray of contempt" that " will pierce through 
 the shell of the tortoise," is a shaft from the horn of 
 a new moon in comparison with the beating of an 
 i American sun through the top of a stage-coach. This 
 " accommodation," as it is sometimes bitterly called, 
 not being intended to carry outside passengers, has a 
 top as thin as your grandmother s umbrella, black, po 
 rous, and cracked ; and while intended for a protec 
 tion from the heat, it just suffices to collect the sun s 
 rays with an incredible power and sultriness, and ex 
 clude the air that makes it sufferable to the beasts of 
 the field. Of the nine places inside this " dilly," the 
 four seats in the corners are so far preferable that the 
 occupant has the outer side of his body exempt from 
 a perspirative application of human flesh (the ther 
 mometer at 100 degrees of Fahrenheit), while, of the 
 three middle places on the three seats, the man in the 
 centre of the coach, with no support for his back, yet 
 buried to the chin in men, women, and children, is at 
 the ninth and lowest degree of human suffering. I 
 left Saratoga in such a state of happiness as you 
 might suppose for a gentleman, who, besides fulfilling 
 this latter category, had been previously unhappy in 
 his love. 
 
 I was dressed in a white roundabout and trowsers 
 of the same, a straw hat, thread stockings, and pumps, 
 ind was so far a blessing to my neighbors that I looked 
 
 on observing my discomfiture, began to find out j cool. Directly behind me, occupying the middle of 
 
 the back seat, sat a young woman with a gratis passen 
 ger in her lap (who, of course, did not count among 
 the nine), in the shape of a fat and a very hot child 
 of three years of age, whom she called John, .Tacky, 
 Johnny, Jocket, Jacket, and the other endearing di 
 minutives of the namesakes of the great apostle. Like 
 the saint who had been selected for his patron, he was 
 a "voice crying in the wilderness." This little gen 
 tleman was exceedingly unpopular with his two neigh 
 bors at the windows, and his incursions upon their legs 
 and shoulders in his occasional forays for fresh air, 
 ended in his being forbidden to look out at either win 
 dow, and plied largely with gingerbread to content him 
 with the warm lap of his mother. Though I had no 
 eyes in the back of my straw hat, I conceived very 
 well the state in which a compost of soft gingerbread, 
 
 keeper grew thin under the thickening accounts for tears, and perspiration, would soon leave the two un- 
 lernonades; the fat fellow in the black band, who j I scrupulous hands behind me ; and as the jolts of the 
 "vexed" the bassoon, had blown himself from the j coach frequently threw me back upon the knees of 
 girth of Falstaff to an " eagle s talon in the waist ;" j his mother, I could not consistently complain of the 
 papas began to be waylaid in their morning walks by I familiar use made of my roundabout and shoulders in 
 young gentlemen with propositions ; and stage-coaches I j Master John s constant changes of position. I vowed 
 that came in with their basgageless tails in the air, and I my jacket to the first river, the moment I could make 
 the driver s weight pressing the foot-board upon the | sure that the soft gingerbread was exhausted bull 
 astonished backs of his wheelers, went out with the|j kept my temper. 
 
 How an American Jehu gets his team over ten 
 iles in the hour, through all the variety of sand, ruts, 
 
 trim of a Venetian gondola the driver s up-hoisted 
 figure answering to the curved proboscis of that stern- 
 laden craft. 
 
 The vocation of tin-tumblers and water-dippers was 
 gone. The fashionable world (hrazen in its general 
 habit) had drank its fill of the ferrugineous waters. 
 Mammas thanked Heaven for the conclusion of the 
 chaperon s summer solstice ; and those who came to 
 bet, and those who came to marry, " made up their 
 books," and walked off (if they had won) with their 
 winnings. 
 
 Having taken a less cordial farewell of Van Pelt 
 than I might have done had not Miss Ellerton been 
 hanging confidingly on his arm, I followed my baggage 
 
 clay-pits, and stump-thickets, is a problem that can 
 only be resolved by riding beside him on the box. In 
 the usual time we arrived at the pretty village of Troy, 
 some thirty miles from Saratoga; and here, having ex 
 changed my bedaubed jacket for a clean one, I freely 
 forgave little Pickle his freedoms, for I hoped never 
 to set eyes on him again during his natural life. I was 
 going eastward by another coach. 
 
 Having eaten a salad for my dinner, and drank a 
 bottle oficed claret, I stepped forth in my blanched 
 and lavendered" jacket to take my place in the other 
 coach, trusting Providence not to afflict ine twice in 
 
84 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 the same day with the evil I had just escaped, and feel 
 ing, on the whole, reconciled to my troubled dividend 
 of eternity. I got up the steps of the coach with as 
 much alacrity as the state of the thermometer would 
 permit, and was about drawing my legs after me upon 
 the forward seat, when a clammy hand caught me 
 unceremoniously by the shirt-collar, and the voice 1 
 was just beginning to forget cried out with a chuckle, 
 
 " Madam!"! said, picking off the gingerbread from 
 my shirt as the coach rolled down the street, "I had 
 hoped that your infernal child - " 
 
 I stopped in the middle of the sentence, for a pair 
 of large blue eyes were looking wonderingly into mine, 
 and for the first time I observed that the mother of 
 this familiar nuisance was one of the prettiest women I 
 had seen since 1 had become susceptible to the charms 
 of the sex. 
 
 "Are you going to Boston, sir ?" she inquired, with 
 a half-timid smile, as if, in that case, she appealed to 
 me for protection on the road. 
 
 " Yes, madam !" I answered, taking little Jocket s 
 pasty hand into mine, affectionately, as I returned her 
 hesitating look ; " may 1 hope for your society so 
 far ?" 
 
 My fresh white waistcoat was soon embossed with a 
 dingy yellow, where my enterprising fellow-passenger 
 had thrust his sticky fist into the pockets, and my sham 
 shirt-bosom was reduced incontinently to the complex 
 ion of a painter s rag after doing a sunset in gamboge. 
 I saw everything, however, through the blue eyes of 
 his mother, and was soon on such pleasant terms with 
 Master John, that, at one of the stopping-places, I in 
 veigled him out of the coach and dropped him acci 
 dentally into the horse-trough, contriving to scrub him 
 passably clean before he could recover breath enough 
 for an outcry. I had already thrown the residuum 
 of his gingerbread out of the window, so that his fa 
 miliarities for the rest of the day were, at least, less 
 adhesive. 
 
 We dropped one or two way-passengers at Lebanon, 
 and I was left in the coach with Mrs. Captain and 
 Master John Thompson, in both whose favors I made 
 a progress that (I may as well depone) considerably 
 restored my spirits laid flat by my unthrift wooing at 
 Saratoga. If a fly hath but alit on my nose when my 
 self-esteem hath been thus at a discount, I have 
 soothed myself with the fancy that it preferred me a 
 drowning vanity will so catch at a straw ! 
 
 As we bowled along through some of the loveliest 
 scenery of Massachusetts, my companion (now become 
 my charge), let me a little into her history, and at the 
 same time, by those shades of insinuation of which 
 women so instinctively know the uses, gave me per 
 fectly to comprehend that 1 might as well economize 
 my tenderness. The father of the riotous young gen 
 tleman who had made so free with my Valencia waist 
 coat and linen roundabouts, had the exclusive copy 
 hold of her affections. He had been three years at 
 sea (I think I said before), and she was hastening to 
 show him the pledge of their affections come ^into 
 the world since the good brig Dolly made her last 
 clearance from Boston bay. 
 
 I was equally attentive to Mrs. Thompson after this 
 illumination, though I was, perhaps, a shade less en 
 amored of the interesting freedoms of. Master John. 
 One s taste for children depends so much upon one s 
 love for their mothers ! 
 
 It was twelve o clock at night when the coach rat 
 tled in upon the pavements of Boston. Mrs. Thomp 
 son had expressed so much impatience during the last 
 few miles, and seemed to shrink so sensitively from 
 being left to herself in a strange city, that I offered my 
 services till she should find herself in better hands, 
 and, as a briefer way of disposing of her, had bribed 
 
 the coachman, who was in a hurry with the mail, to 
 turn a little out of his way, and leave her at her hus 
 band s hotel. 
 
 We drew up with a prodigious clatter, accordingly, 
 at the Marlborough hotel, where, no coach being ex 
 pected, the boots and bar-keeper were not immediately 
 forthcoming. After a rap "to wake the dead," I set 
 about assisting the impatient driver in getting off the 
 lady s trunks and boxes, and they stood in a large 
 pyramid on the sidewalk when the door was opened. 
 A man in his shirt, three parts asleep, held a flaring 
 candle over his head, and looked through the half- 
 opened door. 
 
 " Is Captain Thompson up ?" I asked rather brusque 
 ly, irritated at the sour visage of the bar-keeper. 
 
 "Captain Thompson, sir!" 
 
 "Captain Thompson, sir! !" I repeated my words 
 with a voice that sent him three paces back into the 
 hall. 
 
 "No, sir," he said at last, slipping one leg into his 
 trowsers, which had hitherto been under his arm. 
 
 " Then wake him immediately, and tell him Mrs. 
 Thompson is arrived." Here s a husband, thought I, 
 I as I heard something between a sob and a complaint 
 ; issue from the coach-window at the bar-keeper s intel 
 ligence. To go to bed when he expected his wife and 
 child, and after three years separation ! She might 
 as well have made a parenthesis in her constancy ! 
 
 "Have you called the captain?" I asked, as I set 
 Master John upon the steps, and observed the man 
 still standing with the candle in his hand, grinning 
 from ear to ear. 
 
 " No, sir," said the man. 
 
 " No !" I thundered, " and what in the devil s name 
 is the reason?" 
 
 "Boots!" he cried out in reply, "show this gentle- 
 j man forty-one. Them may wake Captain Thompson 
 as likes! /never hearn of no Mrs. Thompson!" 
 
 Rejecting an ungenerous suspicion that flashed 
 across my mind, and informing the bar-keeper en pas 
 sant, that he was a brute and a donkey, 1 sprang up 
 the staircase after a boy, and quite out of breath, ar 
 rived at a long gallery of bachelors rooms on the fifth 
 floor. The boy pointed to a door at the end of the 
 gallery, and retreated to the banisters as if to escape 
 the blowing up of a petard. 
 
 Rat-a-tat-tat! 
 
 "Come in!" thundered a voice like a hailing trum 
 pet. I took the lamp from the boy, and opened the 
 door. On a narrow bed well tucked up, lay a most 
 i formidable looking individual, with a face glowing 
 I with carbuncles, a pair of deep-set eyes inflamed and 
 fiery, and hair and eyebrows of glaring red, mixed 
 slightly with gray ; while outside the bed lay a hairy 
 arm, with a fist like the end of the club of Hercules. 
 His head tied loosely in a black silk handkerchief, and 
 on the light-stand stood a tumbler of brandy- and-water. 
 
 " W hat do you want ?" he thundered again, as I step 
 ped over a threshold and lifted my hat, struck speech 
 less for a moment with this unexpected apparition. 
 
 " Have I the pleasure," I asked, in a hesitating 
 voice, "to address Captain Thompson?" 
 j , "That s my name!" 
 
 " Ah ! then, captain, I have the pleasure to inform 
 j you that Mrs. Thompson and little John are arrived. 
 They are at the door at this moment." 
 
 A change in the expression of Captain Thompson s 
 ; face checked my information in the middle, and as I 
 ! took a step backward, he raised himself on his elbow, 
 ! and looked at me in a way that did not diminish my 
 I embarrassment. 
 
 "I ll tell you what, Mr. Milk-and-water," said he, 
 I with an emphasis on every word like the descent of a 
 i sledge-hammer; "if you re not out of this room in 
 I two seconds with your Mrs. Thompson and little 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 65 
 
 John/ I ll slam you through that window, or the devil 
 take me!" 
 
 I reflected as I took another step backward, that if 
 1 were thrown down to Mrs. Thompson from a fifth 
 story window I should not be in a state to render her 
 the assistance she tequired ; and remarking with an 
 ill-feigned gayety to Captain Thompson that so de 
 cided a measure would not be necessary, I backed 
 expeditiously over the threshold. As I was closing 
 his door, I heard the gulp of his brandy-and-water, 
 and the next instant the empty glass whizzed past my 
 retreating head, and was shattered to pieces on the 
 wall behind me. 
 
 I gave the " boots" a cuff for an untimely roar of 
 laughter as I reached the staircase, and descended, 
 very much discomfited and embarrassed, to Mrs. 
 Thompson. My delay had thrown that lady into a 
 very moving state of unhappiness. Her tears were 
 glistening in the light of the street lamp, and Master 
 John was pulling away unheeded at her stomacher, 
 and crying as if he would split his diaphragm. What 
 to do? 1 would have offered to take her to my pater 
 nal roof till the mystery could be cleared up but I 
 had been absent two years, and to arrive at midnight 
 with a woman and a young child, and such an im 
 probable story I did not think my reputation at 
 home would bear me out. The coachman, too, began 
 to swear and make demonstrations of leaving us in the 
 street, and it was necessary to decide. 
 
 "Shove the baggage inside the coach," I said at 
 last, "and drive on. Don t be unhappy Mrs. Thomp 
 son! Jocket, stop crying, you villain! I ll see that 
 you are comfortably disposed of for the night where 
 the coach stops, madam, and to-morrow I ll try a 
 litlle reason with Captain Thompson. How the devil 
 can she love such a volcanic specimen!" I muttered 
 to myself, dodging instinctively at the bare remem 
 brance of the glass of brandy-and-water. 
 
 The coachman made up for lost time, and we rattled 
 over the pavements at a rate that made Jocket s hully- 
 baloo quite inaudible. As we passed the door of rny 
 own home, 1 wondered what would be the impression 
 of my respectable parent, could he see me whisking 
 by, after midnight, with a rejected woman and her 
 progeny upon my hands ; but smothering the un 
 worthy doubt that re-arose in my mind, touching the 
 legitimacy of Master John, I inwardly vowed that I 
 would see Mrs. Thompson at all risks fairly out of 
 her imbroglio. 
 
 We pulled up with a noise like the discharge of a ! 
 load of paving-stones, and I was about saying some 
 thing both affectionate and consolatory to my weeping 
 charge, when a tall handsome fellow, with a face as 
 brown as a berry, sprang to the coach-door, and seized 
 her in his arms! A shower of kisses and tender ep 
 ithets left me not a moment in doubt. Thfere was 
 another Captain Thompson! 
 
 He had not been able to get rooms at the Marl- 
 borough, as he had anticipated when he wrote, and 
 presuming that the mail would come first to the post- 
 office, he had waited for her there. 
 
 As I was passing the Mailborough a week or two 
 afterward, I stopped to inquire about Captain Thomp 
 son. I found that he was an old West India captain, 
 who had lived there between his cruises for twenty 
 years more or less, and had generally been supposed a 
 bachelor. He had suddenly gone to sea, the land 
 lord told me, smiling at the same time, as if thereby 
 hung a tale if he chose to tell it. 
 
 " The fact is," said Boniface, when I pushed him a 
 little on the subject, "he was sheared off." 
 
 " What scared him ?" I asked very innocently. 
 
 "A wife and child from some foreign port!" he an 
 swered laughing as if he would burst his waistband, 
 and taking me into the back parlor to tell me the par 
 ticulars. 
 
 A LOG IN THE ARCHIPELAGO, 
 
 THE American frigate, in which I had cruised as 
 the ward-room guest for more than six months, had 
 sailed for winter quarters at Mahon, and my name was 
 up at the pier of Smyrna, as a passenger in the first 
 ship that should leave the port, whatever her destina 
 tion. 
 
 The flags of all nations flew at the crowded peaks of 
 the merchantmen lying off the Marina, and among them 
 lay two small twin brigs, loading with figs and opium 
 for my native town in America. They were owned by 
 an old schoolfellow of my own, one of the most distin 
 guished and hospitable of the Smyrniote merchants, 
 and, if nothing more adventurous turned up, he had 
 offered to land me from one of his craft at Malta ot 
 Gibraltar. 
 
 Time wore on, and I had loitered up and down the 
 I narrow street " in melancholy idleness" by day, and 
 I smoked the narghile with those " merchant princes" 
 I by night, till I knew every paving-stone between the 
 j beach and the bazar, and had learned the thrilling 
 ! events of the Greek persecution with the particularity 
 I of a historian. My heart, too, unsusceptible enough 
 when "packed for travel," began to uncoil with ab 
 sence of adventure, and expose its sluggish pulses to 
 the "Greek fire," still burning in those Asiatic eyes, 
 and I felt sensibly, that if, Telemachus-like, I did not 
 ! soon throw myself into the sea, I should yield, past 
 I praying for, to the cup of some Smyrniote Circe. 
 ! Darker eyes than are seen on that Marina swim not in 
 delight out of paradise ! 
 
 I was sitting on an opium-box in the counting-house 
 
 j of my friend L n(the princely and hospitable mer- 
 
 j chant spoken of above), when enter a Yankee "skip- 
 ; per," whom I would have clapped on the shoulder for 
 a townsman if I had seen him on the top of the minaret 
 of the mosque of Sultan Bajazet. His go-ashore black 
 i coat and trowsers, worn only one month in twelve, 
 ! were of costly cloth, but of the fashion prevailing in 
 I the days of his promotion to be second mate of a cod- 
 fisher ; his hat was of the richest beaver, but getting 
 ; brown with the same paucity of wear, and exposure to 
 ! the corroding air of the ocean ; and on his hands were 
 stretched (and they had well need to be elastic) a pair 
 | of Woodstock gloves that might have descended to 
 him from Paul Jones " the pilot." A bulge just over 
 ! his lowest rib gave token of the ship s chronometer, 
 j and, in obedience to the new fashion of a guard, a fine 
 j chain of the softest auburn hair (doubtless his wife s, 
 | and, I would have wagered my passage-money, as pret 
 ty a woman as he would see in his v yage) a chain, 1 
 say, braided of silken blond ringlets passed around his 
 neck, and drew its glossy line over his broad-breasted 
 white waistcoat the dewdrop on the lion s mane not 
 more entitled to be astonished. 
 
 A face of hard-weather, but with an expression of 
 care equal to the amount of his invoice, yet honest and 
 fearless as the truck of his mainmast; a round sailor s 
 back, that looked as if he would hoist up his deck if 
 you battered him beneath hatches against his will ; 
 and teeth as white as his new foresail, completed the 
 j picture of the master of the brig Metamora. Jolly old 
 
 H 1, 1 shall never feel the grip of an honester hand, 
 
 nor return one (as far as I can with the fisi you crip 
 pled at parting) with a more kindly pressure ! A fair 
 I wind on your quarter, my old boy, wherever you may 
 be trading ! 
 
 " What sort of accommodations have you, captain ?" 
 I asked, as my friend introduced me. 
 
 " Why, none to speak of, sir ! There s a starboard 
 birth that a n t got much in it a few boxes of figs, and 
 the new spritsail, and some of the mate s traps but I 
 could stow away a little perhaps, sir." 
 " You sail to-morrow morning ?" 
 " Off with the land-breeze, ir." 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 I took leave of the kindest of friends, laid in a few 
 hasty stores, and was on board at midnight. The next 
 morning I awoke with the water rippling beside me, 
 and creeping on deck, I saw a line of foam stretching 
 behind us far up the gulf, and the ruins of the primi 
 tive church of Smyrna, mingled with the turrets of a 
 Turkish castle, far away in the horizon. 
 
 The morning was cool and fresh, the sky of an ori 
 ental purity, and the small low brig sped on like a 
 nautilus. The captain stood by the binnacle, looking 
 off to the westward with a glass, a tarpaulin hat over 
 his black locks, a pair of sail-cloth pumps on his feet, 
 and trowsers and roundabout of an indefinable tarri- 
 ness and texture. He handed me the glass, and, obey 
 ing his direction, I saw, stealing from behind a point of 
 land, shaped like a cat s back, the well-known topsails 
 of the two frigates that had sailed before us. 
 
 We were off Vourla, and the commodore had gone 
 to pay his respects to Sir Pulteney Malcolm, then ly 
 ing with his fleet in this little bay, and waiting, we 
 supposed, for orders to force the Dardanelles. The 
 frigates soon appeared on the bosom of the gulf, and 
 Leading down, neared our larboard bow, and stood for 
 the Archipelago. The Metamora kept her way, but 
 the " United States," the fleetest of our ships, soon 
 left us behind with a strengthening breeze, and, fol 
 lowing her with the glass till I could no longer distin 
 guish the cap of the officer of the deck, I breathed a 
 blessing after her, and went below to breakfast. It is 
 strange how the lessening in the distance of a ship in 
 which one has cruised in these southern seas, pulls on 
 the heartstrings ! 
 
 I sat on deck most of the day, cracking pecan-nuts 
 with the captain, and gossiping about schooldays in j 
 our native town, occasionally looking off over the hills j 
 of Asia Minor, and trying to realize (the Ixion labor of j 
 the imagination in travel) the history of which thdte 
 barren lands have been the scene. I know not wheth 
 er it is easy for a native of old countries to people these 
 desolated lands from the past, but for me, accustomed 
 to look on the face of the surrounding earth as mere 
 vegetation, unstoried and unassociated, it is with a con 
 stant mental effort alone that I can be classic on clas 
 sic ground find Plato in the desert wastes of the 
 Academy, or Priam among the Turk-stridden and 
 prostrate columns of Troy. In my recollections of 
 Athens, the Parthenon and the Theseion and the sol 
 emn and sublime ruins by the Fount of Callirhoe stand 
 forth prominent enough ; but when I was on the spot 
 a biped to whom three meals a day, a washerwo 
 man, and a banker, were urgent necessities I shame 
 to confess that I sat dangling my legs over the classic 
 Pelasgicum, not " fishing for philosophers with gold 
 and figs," but musing on the mundane and proximate 
 matters of daily economy. I could see my six shirts 
 hanging to dry, close by the temple of the Winds, and 
 I knew my dinner was cooking three doors from the 
 crumbling capitals of the Agora. 
 
 As the sun set over Ephesus, we neared the mouth 
 of the gulf of Smyrna, and the captain stood looking 
 over the leeward-bow rather earnestly. 
 
 " We shall have a snorter out of the nor east," he 
 said, taking hold of the tiller, and sending the helms 
 man forward " I never was up this sea but once 
 afore, and it s a dirty passage through these islands in 
 any weather, let alone a Levanter." 
 
 He followed up his soliloquy by jamming his tiller 
 hard a-port, and in ten minutes the little brig was run 
 ning her nose, as it seemed to me, right upon an in 
 hospitable rock at the northern headland of the gulf. 
 At the distance of a biscuit-toss from the shore, how 
 ever, the rock was dropped to leeward, and a small 
 passage appeared, opening with a sharp curve into 
 the miniature but sheltered bay of Fourgas. We 
 dropped anchor off a small hamlet of forty or fifty 
 houses, and lay beyond the reach of Levanters in a 
 
 circular basin that seemed shut in by a rim of granite 
 from the sea. 
 
 The captain s judgment of the weather was correct, 
 and, after the sun set, the wind rose gradually to a vi 
 olence which sent the spray high over the barriers of 
 our protected position. Congratulating ourselves that 
 we were on the right side of the granite wall, we got 
 out our jolly-boat on the following morning, and ran 
 ashore upon the beach half a mile from town, propo 
 sing to climb first to the peak of the neighboring hill, 
 and then forage for a dinner in the village below. 
 
 We scrambled up the rocky mountain-side, with 
 some loss of our private stock of wind, and considera 
 ble increase from the nor easter, and getting under the 
 lee of a projecting shelf, sat looking over toward Les 
 bos, and ruminating in silence I, upon the old ques 
 tion, "an Sappho publica fuerit" and the captain prob 
 ably on his wife at Cape Cod, and his pecan-nuts, figs, 
 and opium, in the emerald-green brig below us. I 
 don t know why she should have been painted green, 
 by-the-by (and I never thought to suggest that to the 
 captain), being named after an Indian chief, who was 
 as red as her copper bottom. 
 
 The sea toward Mitylene looked as wild as an ea 
 gle s wing ruffling against the wind, and there was that 
 smoke in the sky as if the blast was igniting with its 
 speed the look of a gale in those seas when unac 
 companied with rain. The crazy-looking vessels of 
 the Levant were scudding with mere rags of sails for 
 the gulf; and while we sat on the rock, eight or ten 
 of those black and unsightly craft shot into the little 
 bay below us, and dropped anchor blessing, no doubt, 
 every saint in the Greek calendar. 
 
 Having looked toward Lesbos an hour, and come to 
 the conclusion, that, admitting the worst with regard 
 to the private character of Sappho, it would have been 
 very pleasant to have known her; and the captain 
 having washed his feet in a slender tricklet oozing 
 from a cleft in a rock, we descended the hill on the 
 other side, and stole a march on the rear to the town 
 of Fourgas. Four or five Greek women were picking 
 up olives in a grove lying halfway down the hill, and 
 on our coming in sight, they made for us with such 
 speed, that I feared the reverse of the Sabine rape 
 not yet having seen a man on this desolate shore ; they 
 ran well, but they resembled Atalanta in no other pos 
 sible particular. We should have taken them for the 
 Furies, but there were five. They wanted snuff and 
 money making signs easily for the first, but attempt 
 ing amicably to put their hands in our pockets when 
 we refused to comprehend the Greek for " Give us a 
 para." The captain pulled from his pocket an Amer 
 ican dollar-note (payable at Nantucket), and offered it 
 to the youngest of the women, who smelt at it and re 
 turned it to him, evidently unacquainted with the Cape 
 Cod currency. On farther search he found a few of 
 the tinsel paras of the country, which he substituted 
 for his " dollar-bill," a saving of ninety-nine cents to 
 him, if the bank has not broke when he arrives at Mas 
 sachusetts. 
 
 Fourgas is surrounded by a very old wall, very much 
 battered. We passed under a high arch containing 
 marks of having once been closed with a heavy gate; 
 and, disputing our passage with cows, and men that 
 seemed less cleanly and civilized, penetrated to the 
 heart of the town in search of the barber s shop, cafe, 
 and kibaub shop three conveniences usually tmited 
 in a single room and dispensed by a single Figaro in 
 Turkish and Greek towns of this" description. The 
 word cafe is universal, and we needed only to pio- 
 nounce it to be led by a low door into a square apart 
 ment of a ruinous old building, around which, upon a 
 kind of shelf, waist-high, sat as many of ihe inl abit- 
 ants of the town as could cross their legs conveniently. 
 As soon as we were discerned through the smoke by 
 the omnifarious proprietor of the establishment, two 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 87 
 
 of the worst-dressed customers were turned off the 
 shelf unceremoniously to make room for us, the fire 
 beneath the coffeepot was raked open, and the agree 
 able flavor of the spiced beverage of the east ascended 
 refreshingly to our nostrils. With his baggy trowsers 
 tucked up to his thigh, his silk shirt to his armpits, 
 an-l his smoke-dried but clean feet wandering at large 
 in a pair of red morocco slippers, our Turkish Gany 
 mede presented the small cups in their filagree hold 
 ers, and never was beverage more delicious or more 
 welcome. Thirsty \vith our ramble, and unaccus 
 tomed to such small quantities as seem to satisfy the 
 natives of the east, the captain and myself soon became 
 objects of no small amusement to the wondering beards 
 about us. A large tablespoon holds rather more than 
 a. Turkish coffee-cup, and one, or, at most, two of 
 these, satisfies the dryest clay in the Orient. To us, 
 a dozen of them was a bagatelle, and we soon ex 
 hausted the copper pot, and intimated to the aston 
 ished cafi Iji that we should want another. He looked 
 at us a mituite to see if we were in earnest, and then 
 laid his hand on his stomach, and rolling up his eyes, 
 made some remark to his other customers which pro 
 voked a general laugh. It was our last " lark" ashore 
 for some time, however, and spite of this apparent 
 prophecy of a colic, we smoked our narghiles and 
 kept him running with his fairy cups for some time j 
 longer. One never gets enough of that fragrant li 
 quor. 
 
 The sun broke through the clouds as we sat on the j 
 high bench, and, hastily paying our Turk, we hurried j 
 to the seaside. The wind seemed to have lulled, and j 
 was blowing lightly offshore ; and, impatient of loiter- 
 log on his voyage, the captain got up his anchor and j 
 ran across the bay, and in half an hour was driving : 
 through a sea that left not a dry plank on the deck of I 
 the .Metarnora. 
 
 The other vessels at Fourgas had not stirred, and 
 the sky in the northeast looked to my eye very threat 
 ening. It was the middle of the afternoon, and the 
 captain crowded sail and sped on like a sea-bird, 
 though I could see by his face when he looked in the 
 quarter of the wind, that he had acted more from im 
 pulse than judgment in leaving his shelter. The heavy 
 sea kicked us on our course, however, and the smart 
 little brig shot buoyantly over the crests of the waves 
 as she outran them, and it was difficult not to feel that 
 the bounding and obedient fabric beneath our feet was j 
 instinct with self-confidence, and rode the waters like 
 their master. 
 
 I well knew that the passage of the Archipelago was 
 a difficult one < in a storm even to an experienced pilot, 
 and with the advantage of daylight ; and I could not 
 but remember with some anxiety that we were enter 
 ing upon it at nightfall, and with a wind strengthening 
 every moment, while the captain confessedly hfld made 
 the passage but once before, and then in a calm sea of 
 August. The skipper, however, walked his deck con 
 fidently, though he began to manage his canvass with a 
 more wary care, and, before dark, we were scudding 
 under a single sail, and pitching onward with the heave 
 of the sea at a rate that, if we were to see Malta at all, 
 promised a speedy arrival. As the night closed in we 
 passed a large frigate lying-to, which we afterward 
 found out was the Superbe, a French eighty-gun ship 
 (wrecked a few hours after on the island of Andros). 
 The two American frigates had run up by Mitylene, 
 and were still behind us : and the fear of being run 
 down in the night, in our small craft, induced the 
 captain to scud on, though he would else have lain-to 
 with die Frenchman, and perhaps have shared his 
 fate. 
 
 I stayed on deck an hour or two after dark, and be 
 fore going below satisfied myself that we should owe 
 it to the merest chance if we escaped striking in the 
 night. The storm had become so furious that we ran 
 
 with bare poles before it ; and though it set us pretty 
 fairly on our way, the course lay through a narrow 
 and most intricate channel, among small and rocky 
 islands, and we had nothing for it but to trust to a 
 providential drift. 
 
 The captain prepared himself for a night on deck, 
 lashed everything that was loose, and filled the two 
 jugs suspended in the cabin, which, as the sea had 
 been too violent for any hope from the cook, were to 
 sustain us through the storm. We took a biscuit and 
 a glass of Hollands and water, holding on hard by the 
 berths lest we should be pitched through the skylight, 
 and as the captain tied up the dim lantern, I got a 
 look at his face, which would have told me, if I had 
 not known it before, that though resolute and un 
 moved, he knew himself to be entering on the most 
 imminent hazard of his life. 
 
 The waves now broke over the brig at every heave, 
 and occasionally the descent of the solid mass of water 
 i on the quarter-deck seemed to drive her under like a 
 I cork. My own situation was the worst on board, for 
 I was inactive. It required a seaman to keep the deck, 
 I and as there was no standing in the cabin without great 
 ! effort, I disembarrassed myself of all that would impede 
 j a swimmer, and got into my berth to await a wreck 
 | which I considered almost inevitable. Braced with 
 both hands and feet, I lay and watched the imbroglio 
 in the bottom of the cabin, my own dressing-case 
 1 among other things emptied of its contents and swim- 
 j ming with some of my own clothes and the captain s, 
 i and the water rushing down the companion-way with 
 ! every wave that broke over us. The last voice I heard 
 ! on deck was from the deep throat of the captain cal- 
 ! ling his men aft to assist in lashing the helm, and then, 
 in the pauses of the gale, came the awful crash upon 
 | deck, more like the descent of a falling house than a 
 I body of water, and a swash through the scuppers im 
 mediately after, seconded by the smaller sea below, in 
 which my coat and waistcoat were undergoing a re 
 hearsal of the tragedy outside. 
 
 At midnight the gale increased, and the seas that de 
 scended on the brig shook her to the very keel. We 
 could feel her struck under by the shock, and reel and 
 quiver as she recovered and rose again ; and, as if to 
 distract my attention, the little epitome of the tempest 
 going on in the bottom of the cabin grew more and 
 more serious. The unoccupied berths were packed 
 with boxes of figs and bags of nuts, which " brought 
 away" one after another, and rolled from side to side 
 with a violence which threatened to drive them through 
 the side of the vessel ; my portmanteau broke its lash 
 ings and shot heavily backward and forward with the 
 roTl of the sea ; and if I was not to be drowned like a 
 dog in a locked cabin, I feared, at least, I should have 
 my legs broken by the leap of a fig-box into my berth. 
 My situation was wholly uncomfortable, yet half ludi 
 crous. 
 
 An hour after midnight the captain came down, pale 
 and exhausted, and with no small difficulty managed 
 to get a tumbler of grog. 
 
 " How does she head ?" I asked. 
 "Side to wind, drifting five knots an hour." 
 "Where are you?" 
 
 "God only knows. I expect her to strike every 
 minute." 
 
 He quietly picked up the wick of the lamp as it 
 
 tossed to and fro, and watching the roll of the vessel, 
 
 gained the companion-way, and mounted to the deck. 
 
 I The door was locked, and I was once more a prisoner 
 
 and alone. 
 
 An hour elapsed the sea, it appeared to me, 
 strengthening in its heaves beneath us, and the wind 
 howling and hissing in the rigging like a hundred 
 devils. An awful surge then burst down upon the 
 deck, racking the brig in every seam : the hurried 
 tread of feet "overhead told ine that they were cutting 
 
88 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 the lashings of the helm ; the seas succeeded each 
 other quicker and quicker, and, conjecturing from the 
 shortness of the pitch, that we were nearing a reef, 1 
 was half out of my berth when the cabin door svas 
 wrenched open, and a deluging sea washed down the 
 companion-way. 
 
 "On deck for your life !" screamed the hoarse voice 
 of the captain. 
 
 I sprang up through streaming water, barefoot and 
 bareheaded, but the pitch of the brig was so violent 
 that I dared not leave the ropes of the companion lad 
 der, and, almost blinded with the spray and wind, I 
 stood waiting for the stroke. 
 
 " Hard down !" cried the captain in a voice I shall 
 never forget, and as the rudder creaked with the strain, 
 the brig fell slightly off, and rising with a tremendous 
 surge, I saw the sky dimly relieved against the edge 
 of a ragged precipice, and in the next moment, as if J 
 with the repulse of a catapult, we were flung back; 
 into the trough of the sea by the retreating wave, and j 
 surged heavily beyond the rock. The noise of the 
 breakers, and the rapid commands of the captain ! 
 now drowned the hiss of the wind, and in a few min- | 
 utes we were plunging once more through the un- j 
 certain darkness, the long and regular heavings of ! 
 the sea alone assuring us that we were driving from 
 the shore. 
 
 The wind was cold, and I was wet to the skin. 
 Every third sea broke over the brig and added to the ^ 
 deluge in the cabin, and from the straining of the!) 
 masts I feared they would come down with every sue- |. 
 ceeding shock. I crept once more below, and regained 
 my berth, where wet and aching in every joint, I [ 
 awaited fate or the daylight. 
 
 Morning broke, but no abatement of the storm. 
 The captain came below and informed me (what I had j 
 already presumed) that we had run upon the southern- i 
 most point of Negropont, and had been saved by a i 
 miracle from shipwreck. The back wave had taken j 
 us off, and with the next sea we had shot beyond it. |j 
 We were now running in the same narrow channel for 
 Cape Colonna, and were surrounded with dangers. \ 
 The skipper looked beaten out; his eyes were protru- ; 
 ding and strained, and his face seemed to me to have j 
 emaciated in the night. He swallowed his grog, and j 
 flung himself for half an hour into his berth, and then { 
 went on deck again to relieve his mate, where tired of 
 my wretched berth, I soon followed him. 
 
 The deck was a scene of desolation. The bulwarks 
 were carried clean away, the jolly-boat swept off, and 1 
 the long-boat the only moveable thing remaining. 
 The men were holding on to the shrouds, haggard and 
 sleepy, clinging mechanically to their support as the 
 sea broke down upon them, and, silent at the helm, > 
 stood the captain and the second mate keeping the 
 brig stern-on to the sea, and straining their eyes for 
 land through the thick spray before them. 
 
 The day crept on, and another night, and we passed i 
 it like the last. The storm never slacked, and all j 
 through the long hours the same succession went on, 
 the brig plunging and rising, struggling beneath the 
 overwhelming and overtaking waves, and recovering j 
 herself again, till it seemed to me as if I had never! 
 known any other motion. The captain came below j| 
 for his biscuit and grog and went up again without ! 
 speaking a word, the mates did the same with the same 
 silence, and at last the bracing and holding on to pre 
 
 with watching, the brig labored more and more heavily, 
 and the storm seemed eternal. 
 
 vent being flung from my berth became mechanical, 
 and I did it while I slept. Cold, wet, hungry, and jj 
 exhausted, what a blessing from Heaven were five | 
 minutes of forgetfulness! 
 
 How the third night wore on I scarce remember. 
 The storm continued with unabated fury, and when 
 the dawn of the third morning broke upon us the cap 
 tain conjectured that we had drifted four hundred 
 miles before the wind. The crew were exhausted 
 
 At noon of the third day the clouds broke up a little, 
 and the wind, though still violent, slacked somewhat 
 in its fury. The sun struggled down upon the lashed 
 and raging sea, and, taking our bearings, we found our 
 selves about two hundred miles from Malta. With 
 great exertions, the cook contrived to get up a fire in 
 the binnacle and boil a little rice, and never gourmet 
 sucked the brain of a woodcock with the relish which 
 welcomed that dark mess of pottage. 
 
 It was still impossible to carry more than a hand s 
 breadth of sail, but we were now in open waters and 
 flew merrily before the driving sea. The pitching and 
 racking motion, and the occasional shipping of a heavy 
 wave, still forbade all thoughts or hopes of comfort, 
 but the dread of shipwreck troubled us no more, and 
 I passed the day in contriving how to stand long 
 enough on my legs to get my wet traps from my 
 floating portmanteau, and go into quarantine like a 
 Christian. 
 
 The following day, at noon, Malta became visible 
 from the top of an occasional mountain wave; and still 
 driving under a reefed topsail before the hurricane, we 
 rapidly neared it, and I began to hope for the repose 
 of terra firma. The watch towers of the castellated 
 rock soon became distinct through the atmosphere of 
 spray, and at a distance of a mile, we took in sail and 
 waited for a pilot. 
 
 While tossing in the trough of the sea the following 
 half hour, the captain communicated to me some em 
 barrassment with respect to my landing which had not 
 occurred to me. It appeared that the agreement to 
 land me at Malta was not mentioned in his policy of 
 | insurance, and the underwriters of course were not re- 
 j sponsible for any accident that might happen to the 
 i brig after a variation from his original plan of passage. 
 This he would not have minded if he could have set 
 j me ashore in a half hour, as he had anticipated, but 
 | his small boat was lost in the storm, and it was now a 
 j question whether the pilot-boat would take ashore a 
 passenger liable to quarantine. To run his brig into 
 harbor would be a great expense and positive loss of 
 insurance, and to get out the long-boat with his broken 
 tackle and exhausted crew was not to be thought of. 
 I knew very well that no passenger from a plague port 
 (such as Smyrna and Constantinople) was permitted 
 to land on any terms at Gibraltar, and il the pilot here 
 should refuse to take me off, the alternative was clear, 
 I must make a voyage against my will to America! 
 
 I was not in a very pleasant state of mind during the 
 delay which followed; for, though I had been three 
 years absent from my country and loved it well, 1 had 
 laid my plans for still two years of travel on this side 
 the Atlantic, and certain moneys for my "charges" lay 
 waiting my arrival at Malta. Among lesser reasons, 
 I had not a rag of clothes dry or clean, and was 
 heartily out of love with salt water and the smell of 
 figs. 
 
 As if to aggravate my unhappiness, the sun broke 
 through a rifVin the clouds and lit up the white and 
 turreted battlements of Malra like an isle of the blessed 
 the only bright spot within the limits of the stormy 
 horizon. The mountain waves on which we were 
 tossing were tempestuous and black, the comfortless 
 and battered brig with her weary crew looked more 
 like a wreck than a seaworthy merchantman, and no 
 pilot appearing, the captain looked anxiously seaward, 
 as if he grudged every minute of the strong wind rush 
 ing by on his course. 
 
 A small speck at last appeared making toward us 
 from the shore, and, riding slowly over the tremendous 
 waves, a boat manned by four men came within hailing 
 distance. One moment as high as our topmast, and 
 another in the depths of the gulf a hundred feet below 
 us, it was like conversing from two buckets in a well. 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 "Do you want a pilot?" screamed the Maltese in 
 English, as the American flag blew out to the wind 
 
 "No!" roared the captain, like a thunder-peal, 
 through his tin-trumpet. 
 
 The Maltese, without deigning another look, put 
 up his helm with a gesture of disappointment, and 
 bore away. 
 
 "Boat ahoy!" bellowed the captain. 
 
 "Ahoy! ahoy!" answered the pilot. 
 
 " Will you take a passenger ashore ?" 
 
 "Where from?" 
 
 " Smyrna !" 
 
 There was a sound of doom in the angry prolonga 
 tion of that detested monosyllable that sunk to the 
 bottom of my heart like lead. 
 
 "Clear away the mainsail," cried the captain get 
 ting round once more to the wind. " I knew how it 
 would be, sir," he continued, to me, as I bit my lips in 
 the effort to be reconciled to an involuntary voyage of 
 four thousand miles; "it wasn t likely he d put him 
 self and his boat s crew into twenty days quarantine 
 to oblige you and me." 
 
 I could not but own that it was an unreasonable ex 
 pectation. 
 
 "Never mind, sir," said the skipper, consolingly, 
 " plenty of salt fish in the locker, and I ll set you on 
 Long Wharf in no time!" 
 
 " Brig ahoy!" came a voice faintly across the waves. 
 
 The captain looked over his shoulder without losing 
 a capful of wind from his sail, and sent back the hail 
 impatiently. 
 
 The pilot was running rapidly down upon us. and 
 had come back to offer to tow me ashore in the brig s 
 jolly-boat for a large sum of money. 
 
 " We ve lost our boat, and you re a bloody shark," 
 answered the skipper, enraged at the attempt at extor 
 tion. " He. id your course!" he muttered gruffly to 
 the man at the helm, who had let the brig fall off that 
 the pilot might come up. 
 
 Irritated by this new and gratuitous disappointment, 
 I stamped on the deck in an ungovernable fit of rage, 
 and wished the brig at the devil. 
 
 The skipper looked at me a moment, and instead of 
 the angry answer I expected, an expression" of kind 
 commiseration stole over his rough lace. The next 
 moment he seized the helm and put the brig away 
 from the wind, and then making a trumpet of his two 
 immense hands, he once more hailed the returning 
 pilot. 
 
 " I can t bear to see you take it so much to heart, 
 sir," said the kind sailor, "and I ll do for you what I 
 wouldn t do for another man on the face o the arth. 
 All hands there!" 
 
 The men came aft, and the captain in brief words 
 stated the case to them, and appealed to their^ense 
 of kindness for a fellow-countryman, to undertake a 
 task, which, in the sea then running, and with their 
 exhausted strength, was not a service he could well 
 demand in other terms. It was to get out the long 
 boat, and wait off while the pilot towed me ashore and 
 returned with her. 
 
 "Ay, ay! sir," was the immediate response from 
 every lip, and from the chief mate to the black cabin- 
 boy, every man sprang cheerily to the lashings. It 
 was no momentary task, for the boat was as firmly set 
 in her place as the mainmast, and stowed compactly 
 with barrels of pork, extra rigging, and spars in short, 
 all the furniture and provision of the voyage. In the 
 course of an hour, however, the tackle was rigged on 
 the fore and main yards, and with a desperate effort 
 its immense bulk was heaved over the side, and lay 
 tossing on the tempestuous waters. I shook hands 
 with the men, who refused every remuneration be 
 yond my thanks, and, following the captain over the 
 side, was soon toiling heavily on the surging waters, 
 
 thanking Heaven for the generous sympathies of home 
 and country implanted in the human bosom. Those 
 who know the reluctance with which a merchant cap 
 tain lays-to, even to pick up a man overboard in a fair 
 wind, and those who understand the meaning of a for 
 feited insurance, will appreciate this instance of dif 
 ficult generosity. I shook the hard fist of the kind- 
 hearted skipper on the quarantine stairs, and watched 
 his heavy boat as she crept out of the little harbor 
 with the tears in my eyes. I shall travel far before I 
 find again a man 1 honor more heartily. 
 
 THE REVENGE OF THE SIGNOR BASIL, 
 
 PART I. 
 
 " Un homme capable de faire des dominos av ec les os de son 
 pere." PEBE GOR;OT. 
 
 IT was in the golden month of August, not very 
 
 | long ago, that the steamer which plies between St. 
 
 : Mark s Stairs, at Venice, and the river into which 
 
 1 Phaeton turned a somerset with the horses of the sun, 
 
 1 started on its course over the lagoon with an unusual 
 
 God-send of passengers. The moon was rising from 
 
 the unchaste bed of the Adriatic (wedded every year 
 
 1 to Venice, yet every day and night sending the sun 
 
 j and moon from her lovely bosom to the sky), and while 
 
 the gold of the west was still glowing on the landward 
 
 ! side of the Campanile, a silver gleam was brightening 
 
 momently on the other, and the Arabic domes of St. 
 
 | Mark and the flying Mercury on the Dogana paled to 
 
 j the setting orb and kindled to the rising with the same 
 
 Talleyrand-esque facility. 
 
 For the first hour the Mangia-foco sputtered on her 
 way with a silent company ; the poetry of the scene, 
 or the regrets at leaving the delicious city lessening 
 in the distance, affecting all alike with a thoughtful 
 incommunicativeness. Gradually, however, the dol 
 phin hues over the Brenta faded away the marble 
 city sank into the sea, with its turrets and bright spires 
 the still lagoon became a sheet of polished glass 
 I, and the silent groups leaning over the rails found 
 tongues and feet, and began to stir and murmur. 
 
 With the usual unconscious crystallization of so- 
 
 ! ciety, the passengers of the Mangia-foco had yielded 
 
 ; one side of the deck to a party of some rank, who had 
 
 left their carriages at Ferrara in coming from Florence 
 
 to Venice, and were now upon their return to the city 
 
 of Tasso, stomaching, with what grace they might, the 
 
 contact of a vulgar conveyance, which saved them the 
 
 hundred miles of posting between Ferrara and the 
 
 Brenta. In the centre of the aristocratic circle stood 
 
 a lady enveloped in a cashmere, but with her bonnet 
 
 hung by the string over her arm one of those women 
 
 of Italy upon whom the divinest gifts of loveliness are 
 
 showered with a profusion which apparently impover- 
 
 , ishes the sex of the whole nation. A beautiful woman 
 
 I in that "land is rarely met; but when she does appear, 
 
 she is what Venus would have been after the contest 
 
 I for beauty on Ida, had the weapons of her antagonists, 
 
 ; as in the tournaments of chivalry, been added to the 
 
 i palm of victory. The marchesa del Marmore was ap- 
 
 : parently twenty-three, and she might have been an 
 
 incarnation of the morning-star for pride and bright- 
 
 j ness. 
 
 On the other side of the deck stood a group of 
 
 young men, who, by their careless and rather shabby 
 
 j dress, but pale and intellectual faces, were of that class 
 
 li met in every public conveyance of Italy. The port- 
 
 I folios under their arms, ready for a sketch, would have 
 
 removed a doubt of their profession, had one existed ; 
 
 and with that proud independence for which the class 
 
00 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 is remarkable, they had separated themselves equally 
 from the noble and ignoble disqualified by inward 
 superiority from association with the one, and by acci 
 dental poverty from the claims cultivation might give 
 them upon the other. Their glances at the divine 
 face turned toward them from the party I have alluded 
 to, were less constant than those of the vulgar, who 
 could not offend ; but they were evidently occupied 
 more with it than with the fishing-boats lying asleep 
 on the lagoon : and one of them, half-buried in the 
 coil of rope, and looking under the arm of another, 
 had already made a sketch of her that might some day 
 make the world wonder from what seventh heaven of 
 fancy such an angelic vision of a head had descended 
 upon the painters dream. 
 
 In the rear of this group, with the air of one who 
 would conceal himself from view, stood a young man 
 who belonged to the party, but who, with less of the 
 pallor of intellectual habits in his face, was much bet 
 ter dressed than his companions, and had, in spite of 
 the portfolio under his arm, and a hat of the Salvator 
 breadth of rim, the undisguisable air of a person ac 
 customed to the best society. While maintaining a 
 straggling conversation with his friends, with whom he 
 seemed a favorite, Signer Basil employed himself in 
 looking over the sketch of the lovely marchesa going 
 on at his elbow occasionally, as if to compare it with 
 the original, stealing a long look from between his 
 hand and his slouched hat at the radiant creature sit 
 ting so unconsciously for her picture, and in a low 
 voice correcting, as by the result of his gaze, the rapid 
 touches of the artist. 
 
 " Take a finer pencil for the nostril, caro mio !" said 
 he ; "it is as thin as the edge of a violet, and its trans 
 parent curve " 
 
 " Cospetto !" said the youth ; " but you see by this 
 faint light better than I : if she would but turn to the 
 moon " 
 
 The signor Basil suddenly flung his handkerchief 
 into the lagoon, bringing its shadow between the queen 
 of night and the marchesa del Marmore ; and, attract 
 ed from her revery by the passing object, the lady 
 moved her head quickly to the light, and in that mo 
 ment the spirited lip and nostril were transferred to the 
 painter s sketch. 
 
 " Thanks, mio bravo !" enthusiastically exclaimed 
 the looker-on ; " Giorgione would not have beaten 
 thee with the crayon !" and, with a rudeness which 
 surprised the artist, he seized the paper from beneath 
 his hand, walked away with it to the stern, and lean 
 ing far over the rails, perused it fixedly by the mellow 
 lustre of the moon. The youth presently followed 
 him, and after a few words exchanged in an under 
 tone, Signor Basil slipped a piece of gold into his 
 hand, and carefully placed the sketch in his own port 
 folio. 
 
 II. 
 
 It was toward midnight when the Mangia-foco en 
 tered the Adige, and keeping its steady way between 
 the low banks of the river, made for the grass-grown 
 and flowery canal which connects its waters with the 
 Po. Most of the passengers had yielded to the drowsy 
 influence of the night air, and, of the aristocratic party 
 on the larboard side, the young marchesa alone was 
 waking : her friends had made couches of their cloaks 
 and baggage, and were reclining at her feet, while the 
 artists, all except the signor Basil, were stretched fairly 
 on the deck, their portfolios beneath their heads, and 
 their large hats covering their faces from the powerful 
 rays of the moon. 
 
 " Miladi does justice to the beauty of the night, 
 said the waking artist, in a low and respectful tone, 
 as he rose from her feet with a cluster of tuberoses she 
 had. let fall from her hand. 
 
 " It is indeed lovely, Signor Pittore," responded the 
 marchesa, glancing at his portfolio, and receiving the 
 flowers with a gracious inclination ; " have you touched 
 Venice from the lagoon to-night ? 
 
 The signor Basil opened his portfolio, and replied 
 to the indirect request of the lady by showing her a 
 very indifferent sketch of Venice from the island of 
 St. Lazzaro. As if to escape from the necessity of 
 praising what had evidently disappointed her, she 
 turned the cartoon hastily, and exposed, on the sheet 
 beneath, the spirited and admirable outline of her own 
 matchless features. 
 
 A slight start alone betrayed the surprise of the 
 highborn lady, and raising (he cartoon to examine it 
 more closely, she said with a smile, " You may easier 
 tread on Titian s heels than Canaletti s. Bezzuoli has 
 painted me, and not so well. I will awake the mar 
 quis, and he shall purchase it of you." 
 
 " Not for the wealth of the Medici, madam !" said 
 the young man, clasping his portfolio hastily, pray 
 do not disturb monsignore ! The picture is dear to 
 me!" 
 
 The marchesa, looking into his face, and with a 
 glance around, which the accomplished courtier be 
 fore her read better than she dreamed, she drew her 
 shawl over her blanched shoulders, and settled her 
 self to listen to the conversation of her new acquaint 
 ance. 
 
 u You would be less gracious if you were observed, 
 proud beauty," thought Basil ; " but while you think 
 the poor painter may while away the tediousness of a 
 vigil, he may feed his eyes on your beauty as well." 
 
 The Mangia-foco turned info the canal, threaded 
 its lily-paved waters for a mile or two. and then, put 
 ting forth upon the broad bosom of the Po, went on 
 her course against the stream, and, with retarded pace, 
 penetrated toward the sun-beloved heart of Italy. And 
 while the later hours performed their procession with 
 the stars, the marchesa del Marmore leaned sleepless 
 and unfatigued against the railing, listening with min 
 gled curiosity and scorn to the passionate love-murmur 
 of the enamored painter. His hat was thrown aside, 
 his fair and curling locks were flowing in the night 
 air, his form was bent earnestly but respectfully toward 
 her, and on his lip, with all its submissive tenderness, 
 there sat a shadow of something she could not define, 
 but which rebuked, ever and anon, as with the fierce 
 regard of a noble, the condescension she felt toward 
 him as an artist. 
 
 III. 
 
 Upon the lofty dome of the altar in the cathedral of 
 Bologna stands poised an angel in marble, not spoken 
 of in the books of travellers, but perhaps the loveliest 
 incarnation of a blessed cherub that ever lay in the 
 veined bosom of Pentelicus. Lost and unobserved on 
 the vast floor of the nave, the group of artists, who had 
 made a day s journey from Ferrara, sat in the wicker 
 chairs hired for a baioch during the vesper, and drew 
 silently from this angel, while the devout people of 
 Bologna murmured their Ave Marias around. Signor 
 Basil alone was content to look over the work of his 
 companions, and the twilight had already begun to 
 brighten the undying lamps at the shrine, when he 
 started from the pillar against which he leaned, and 
 crossed hastily toward a group issuing from a private 
 chapel in the western aisle. A lady walked between 
 two gentlemen of noble mien, and behind her, attend- 
 
 ed by an equally distinguished company, followed that 
 lady s husband, the marchese del Marmore. They 
 were strangers passing through Bologna, and had been 
 attended to vespers by some noble friends. 
 
 The companions of the signor Basil looked on with 
 some surprise as their enamored friend stepped confi- 
 
 [ dently before the two nobles in attendance upon the 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 91 
 
 lady, nnd arrested her steps with a salutation which, 
 though respectful as became a gentleman, was marked 
 with the easy politeness of one accustomed to a favora 
 ble reception. 
 
 " May I congratulate miladi," he said, rising slowly 
 from his bow, and fixing his eyes with unembarrassed 
 admiration on her own liquid but now frowning orbs, 
 " upon her safe journey over the marches ! Bologna," 
 he continued, glancing at the nobles with a courteous 
 smile, " welcomes her fittingly." 
 
 The lady listened with a looU of surpiise, and the 
 Bolognese glanced from the dusty boots of the artist 
 to his portfolio. 
 
 Has the painter the honor to know la signora?" 
 asked the cavalier on her right. 
 
 " Signor, si !" said the painter, fiercely, as a curl 
 arched the lady s lip, and she prepared to answer. 
 
 The color mounted to the temples of the marchesa, 
 and her husband, who had loitered beneath the ma 
 donna of Domenichino, coming up at the instant, she 
 bowed coldly to the signor Basil, and continued down 
 the aisle. The artist followed to her carriage, and 
 lifted his hat respectfully as the lumbering equipage 
 took its way by the famous statue of Neptune, and 
 then with a confident smile, which seemed to his com 
 panions somewhat mistimed, he muttered between his 
 teeth, " Ciascuno son bel giorno !" and strolled loiter 
 ing on with them to the trattoria. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The court of the grand-duke of Florence is perhaps 
 the most cosmopolitan and the most easy of access in 
 all Europe. The Austrian-born monarch himself, 
 adopting in some degree the frank and joyous charac 
 ter of the people over whom he reigns, throws open 
 his parks and palaces, his gardens and galleries, to the 
 strangers passing through ; and in the season of gayety 
 almost any presentable person, resident at Florence, 
 may procure the entree to the court balls, and start 
 f.iir with noble dames and gentlemen for grace in 
 courtly favor. The fetes at the Palaz/.o Pitti, albeit 
 not always exempt from a leaven of vulgarity, are al 
 ways brilliant and amusing, and the exclusives of the 
 court, though they draw the line distinctly enough to 
 their own eye, mix with apparent abandonment in the 
 motley waltz and mazurka, and either from good-na 
 ture or a haughty conviction of their superiority, never 
 suffer the offensive cordon to be felt, scarce to be sus 
 pected, by the multitude who divert them. The 
 grand-duke, to common eyes, is a grave and rather 
 timid person, with more of the appearance of the 
 scholar than of the sovereign, courteous in public, and 
 benevolent and earnest in his personal attentions to 
 his guests at the palace. The royal quadrille may be 
 shared without permission of the grand chamberlain, 
 and the royal eye, after the first one or two dances of 
 ceremony, searches for partners by the lamp of beauty, 
 heedless of the diamonds on the brow, or the star of 
 nobility on the shoulder. The grand supper is scarce 
 more exclusive, and on the disappearance of the royal 
 cortege, the delighted crowd take their departure, 
 having seen no class more favored than themselves, 
 and enchanted with the gracious absence of pretension 
 in the nobilita of Tuscany. 
 
 Built against the side of a steep hill, the Palazzo 
 Pitti encloses its rooms of state within massive and 
 sombre walls in front, while in the rear the higher sto 
 ries of the palace open forth on a level with the deli 
 cious gardens of the Boboli, and contain suites of 
 smaller apartments, filled up with a cost and luxury 
 which would beggar the dream of a Sybarite. Here 
 lives the monarch, in a seclusion rendered deeper and 
 more sa:re;l by the propinquity of the admitted world 
 in the apartments below; and in this sanctuary of roy 
 alty is enclosed a tide of life as silent and unsuspected 
 
 by the common inhabitant of Florence as the flow of 
 the ocean-veiled Arethusa by the mariner of the Ionian 
 main. Here the invention of the fiery genius of Italy 
 is exhausted in poetical luxury; here the reserved and 
 silent sovereign throws off his maintcin of royal conde 
 scension, and enters with equal arms into the lists of 
 love and wit ; here burn (as if upon an altar fed with 
 spice-woods and precious gums) the fervent and uncal- 
 culating passions of this glowing clime, in senses re 
 fined by noble nurture, and hearts prompted by the 
 haughty pulses of noble blood ; and here to the 
 threshold of this sanctuary of royal pleasure press all 
 who know its secrets, and who imagine a claim to it 
 in their birth and attractions, while the lascia-passarc 
 is accorded with a difficulty which alone preserves its 
 splendor. 
 
 Some two or three days after the repulse of the 
 signor Basil in the cathedral of Bologna, the group of 
 Ij travelling artists were on their way from the grand gal- 
 I lery at Florence to their noonday meal. Loitering 
 with slow feet through the crowded and narrow Via 
 Calzaiole, they emerged into the sunny Piazza, and 
 looking up with understanding eyes at the slender shaft 
 of the Campanile (than which a fairer figure of reli 
 gious architecture points not to heaven), they took 
 their way toward the church of Santa Triniia, propo 
 sing to. eat their early dinner at a house named, from 
 its excellence in a certain temperate beverage, La 
 Birra. The traveller should be advised, also, that by 
 paying an extra paul in the bottle, he may have at this 
 renowned eating-house an old wine sunned on the 
 southern shoulder of Fiesole, that hath in its flavor a 
 certain redolence of Boccaccio scarce remarkable, 
 since it grew in the scene of the Decameron but of a 
 virtue which, to the Hundred Tales of Love (read 
 drinking), is what the Gradus ad. Parnassum should 
 be to the building of a dithyrambic. The oil of two 
 r.razie upon the palm of the fat waiter Giuseppe will 
 assist in calling the vintage to his memory. 
 
 A thundering rap upon the gate of the adjoining 
 
 i Palazzo arrested the attention of the artists as they 
 
 [| were about to enter the Birra, and in the occupant of 
 
 a dark-green cabriolet, drawn by a pampered horse of 
 
 the duke s breed, they recognised, elegantly dressed 
 
 and posed on his seat a la d Orsay, the signor Basil. 
 
 His coat was of an undecided cut and color, and his 
 
 gloves were of primrose purity. 
 
 The recognition was immediate, and the cordiality 
 
 of the greeting mutual. They had parted from their 
 
 companion at the gate of Florence, as travellers part, 
 
 without question, and they met without reserve to part 
 
 as questionless again. The artists were surprised at 
 
 j the signor Basil s transformation, but no follower of 
 
 , their refined art would have been so ill-bred as to ex- 
 
 < press it. He wished them the bon appetito, as a tall 
 
 ! chasseur came out to say that her ladyship was at 
 
 I home; and with a slacked rein the fiery horse sprang 
 
 | through the gateway, and the marble court of the 
 
 I palace rang with his prancing hoofs. 
 
 He who was idle and bought flowers at the Cafe of 
 I the Colonna at Florence will have remarked, as he sat 
 ! in his chair upon the street in the sultry evening the 
 I richly ornamented terrace and balustrade of the Pa 
 lazzo Corsi giving upon the Piazza Trinita. The 
 !| dark old Ghibelline palace of the Strozzi lets the eye 
 down upon it, as it might pass from a helmeted knight 
 I with closed vizor to his un bonneted and laughing 
 I page. The crimson curtains of the window opening 
 I upon the terrace, at the time of our story, reminded 
 every passing Florentine of the lady who dwelt within 
 a descendant of one of the haughtiest lines of Eng 
 lish chivalry resident in Italy since many years for 
 health, but bearing in her delicate frame and ex 
 quisitely transparent features, the loftiest type of pa 
 trician beauty that had ever filled the eye that looked 
 upon her. In the inner heaven of royal exclusiveness 
 
92 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 at the Pitti in its constellation of rank and wit the 
 lady Geraldine had long been the worshipped and as 
 cendant cynosure. Happy in a husband without rank 
 and but of moderate fortune, she maintained the spot 
 less character of an English wife in this sphere of 
 conventional corruption; and though the idol of the 
 duke and his nobles, it would have been like a whisper 
 against the purity of the brightest Pleiad, to have 
 linked her name with love. 
 
 With her feet upon a sofa covered with a gossamer 
 cashmere, her lovely head pillowed on a cushion of 
 silk, and a slight stand within arm s length holding a 
 vase of flowers and the volume from which she had 
 been reading, the lady Geraldine received the count 
 Basil Spiriford, some time attache to the Russian em 
 bassy at Paris (where he had first sunned his eyes in 
 her beauty), and at present the newly-appointed sec 
 retary to the minister of the same monarch near the 
 court of Tuscany. 
 
 Without a bow, but with the hasty step and gesture 
 of a long absent and favored friend, the count Basil 
 ran to the proffered hand, and pressed its alabaster 
 fingers to his lips. Had the more common acquaint 
 ances of the diplomate seen him at this moment, they 
 would have marvelled how the mask of manhood may 
 drop, and disclose the ingenuous features of the boy. 
 The secretary knew his species, and the lady Geral 
 dine was one of those women for whom the soul is 
 unwilling to possess a secret. 
 
 After the first inquiries were over, the lady ques 
 tioned her recovered favorite of his history since they 
 had parted. "I left you," she said, "swimming the 
 dangerous tide of life at Paris. How have you come 
 to shore?" 
 
 " Thanks, perhaps, to your friendship, which made 
 life worth the struggle ! For the two extremes, how 
 ever, you know what I was at Paris and yesterday I 
 was a wandering artist in velveteen and a sombrero!" 
 
 Lady Geraldine laughed. 
 
 "Ah! you look at my curls but Macassar is at a 
 discount ! It is the only grace I cherished in my in 
 cognito. A resumcr I got terribly out of love by the 
 end of the year after we parted, and as terribly in 
 debt. My promotion in diplomacy did not arrive, and 
 the extreme hour for my credit did. Pozzo di Borgo 
 kindly procured me conge for a couple of years, and I 
 dived presently under a broad-rimmed hat, got into a 
 vetturino with portfolio and pencils, joined a troop of 
 wandering artists, and with my patrimony at nurse, 
 have been two years looking at life without spectacles 
 at Venice." 
 
 "And painting?" 
 
 "Painting!" 
 
 " Might one see a specimen ?" asked the lady Geral 
 dine, with an incredulous smile. 
 
 " I regret that my immortal efforts in oils are in the 
 possession of a certain Venetian, who lets the fifth 
 floor of a tenement washed by the narrowest canal in 
 that fair city. But if your ladyship cares to see a 
 drawing or two " 
 
 He rang the bell, and his jocki Anglais presently 
 brought from the pocket of his cabriolet a wayworn 
 and thinly furnished portfolio. The lady Geraldine 
 turned over a half-dozen indifferent views of Venice, 
 but the last cartoon in the portfolio made her start. 
 
 " La Marchesa del Marmore!" she exclaimed, look 
 ing at Count Basil with an inquiring and half uneasy 
 eye. 
 
 "Is it well drawn?" he asked quietly. 
 
 "Well drawn? It is a sketch worthy of Raphael. 
 Do you really draw so well as this, or" she added, 
 after a slight hesitation "is it a miracle of love?" 
 
 " It is a divine head," soliloquized the Russian, half 
 closing his eyes, and looking at the drawing from a 
 distance, as if to fill up the imperfect outline from his 
 memory. 
 
 The lady Geraldine laid her hand on his arm. " My 
 dear Basil," she said seriously, "I should be wretched 
 if I thought your happiness was in the power of this 
 woman. Do you love her?" 
 
 " The portrait was not drawn by me," he answered, 
 "though I have a reason for wishing her to think so. 
 It was done by a fellow-traveller of mine, whom I wish 
 to make a sketch of yourself, and I have brought it 
 here to interest you in him as an artist. Mais revenons 
 a nos moutons- la marchesa was also a fellow-traveller 
 of mine, and without loving her too violently, 1 owe 
 her a certain debt of courtesy contracted on the way. 
 Will you assist me to pay it?" 
 
 Relieved of her fears, and not at all suspecting the 
 good faith of the diplomatist in his acknowledgments 
 of gratitude, the lady Geraldine inquired simply how 
 she could serve him. 
 
 "In the twenty-four hours since my arrival at Flor 
 ence," he said, "I have put myself, as you will see, 
 au courant of the minor politics of the Pitti. Thanks 
 to my Parisian renown, the duke has enrolled me al 
 ready under the back-stairs oligarchy, and to-morrow 
 night I shall sup with you in the saloon of Hercules 
 after the ball is over. La marchesa, as you well know, 
 has, with all her rank and beauty, never been able to 
 set foot within those guarded penetralia soil her ma 
 licious tongue, soit the interest against her of the men 
 she has played upon her hook too freely. The road 
 to her heart, if there be one, lies over that threshold, 
 and I would take the toll. Do you understand me, 
 most beautiful lady Geraldine?" 
 
 The count Basil imprinted another kiss upon the 
 fingers of the fair Englishwoman, as she promised to 
 put into his hand the following night the illuminated 
 ticket which was to repay, as she thought, too gener 
 ously, a debt of gratitude ; and plucking a flower from 
 her vase for his bosom, he took his leave to return at 
 twilight to dinner. Dismissing his cabriolet at the 
 gate, he turned on foot toward the church of San 
 Gaetano, and with an expression of unusual elation in 
 his step and countenance, entered the trattoria, where 
 dined at that moment his companions of the pencil. 
 
 The green lamps glittering by thousands amid the 
 foliage of the Boboli had attained their full brightness, 
 and the long-lived Italian day had died over the distant 
 mountains of Carrara, leaving its inheritance of light 
 apparently to the stars, who. on their fields of deepen 
 ing blue, sparkled, each one like the leader of an un 
 seen host in the depths of heaven, himself the fore 
 most and the most radiant. The night was balmy and 
 voluptuous. The music of the ducal band swelled 
 forth from the perfumed apartments on the air. A 
 single nightingale, far back in the wilderness of the 
 garden, poured from his melodious heart a chant of 
 the most passionate melancholy. The sentinel of the 
 body-guard stationed at the limit of the spray of the 
 fountain leaned on his halberd and felt his rude senses 
 melt in the united spells of luxury and nature. The 
 ministers of a monarch s pleasure had done their ut 
 most to prepare a scene of royal delight, and night and 
 summer had flung in their enchantments when in 
 genuity was exhausted. 
 
 The dark architectural mass of the Pitti, pouring a 
 blaze of light scarce endurable from its deeply-sunk 
 windows, looked like the side of an enchanted moun 
 tain laid open for the revels of sorcery. The aigrette 
 and plume passed by; the tiara and the jewel upon 
 the breast; the gayly-dressed courtiers and glittering 
 dames; and to that soldier at his dewy post, it seemed 
 like the realized raving of the improvisatore when he 
 is lost in some fable of Araby. Yet within walked 
 malice and hate, and the light and perfume that might 
 have fed an angel s heart with love, but deepened 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 03 
 
 in many a beating bosom the consuming fires of 
 envy. 
 
 With the gold key of office on his cape, the grand 
 chamberlain stood at the feet of the dowager grand 
 dutchess, and by a sign to the musicians, hidden in 
 a latticed gallery behind the Corinthian capital of the 
 hall, retarded or accelerated the soft measure of the 
 waltz. On a raised seat in the rear of the chairs of 
 state, sat the ladies of honor and the noble dames 
 nearest allied to royal blood ; one solitary and privi 
 leged intruder alone sharing the elevated place the 
 lady Geraldine. Dressed in white, her hair wound 
 about her head in the simplest form, yet developing 
 its divine shape with the clear outline of statuary, her 
 eyes lambent with purity and sweetness, heavily fring 
 ed with lashes a shade darker than the light auburn 
 braided on her temples, and the tint of the summer s 
 most glowing rose turned out from the threadlike part 
 ing of her lips ; she was a vision of loveliness to take 
 into the memory, as the poet enshrines in his soul 
 the impossible shape of his ideal, and consumes youth 
 and age searching in vain for its like. Fair Lady Ger 
 aldine ! thou wilt rend these passionate words from 
 one whose worship of thy intoxicating loveliness has 
 never before found utterance, but if this truly-told tale 
 should betray the hand that has dared to describe thy 
 beauty, in thy next orisons to St. Mary of pity, breathe 
 from those bright lips a prayer that he may forget 
 thee ! 
 
 By the side of the lady Geraldine, but behind the 
 chair of the grand dutchess, who listened to his con 
 versation with singular delight, stood a slight young 
 man of uncommon personal beauty, a stranger appa 
 rently to every other person present. His brilliant uni 
 form alone betrayed him to be in the Russian diploma 
 cy ; and the marked distinction shown him, both by the 
 reigning queen of the court, and the more powerful 
 and inaccessible queen of beauty, marked him as an 
 object of keen and universal curiosity. By the time 
 the fifth mazurka had concluded its pendulous refrain, 
 the grand chamberlain had tolerably well circulated 
 the name and rank of Count Basil Spirifort, the re 
 nowned wit and elegant of Paris, newly appointed to 
 the court of his royal highness of Tuscany. Fair 
 eyes wandered amid his sunny curls, and beating bo 
 soms hushed their pulses as he passed. 
 
 Count Basil knew the weight of a first impression. 
 Count Basil knew also the uses of contempt. Upon 
 the first principle he kept his place between the grand 
 dutchess and Lady Geraldine, exerting his deeply- 
 studied art of pleasing, to draw upon himself their ex 
 clusive attention. Upon the second principle, he was 
 perfectly unconscious of the presence of another hu 
 man being ; and neither the gliding step of the small- 
 eared princess S in the waltz, nor the solely 
 
 advance of the last female of the Medici in the mazur 
 ka, distracted his large blue eyes a moment from their 
 idleness. With one hand on the eagle-hilt of his 
 sword, and his side leaned against the high cushion of 
 red velvet honored by the pressure of the lady Geral 
 dine, he gazed up into that beaming face, when not 
 bending respectfully to the dutchess, and drank stead 
 fastly from her beauty, as the lotus-cup drinks light 
 from the sun. 
 
 The new secretary had calculated well. In the 
 deep recess of the window looking toward San Minia- 
 to, stood a lady nearly hidden from view by the muslin 
 curtains just stirring with the vibration of the music, 
 who gazed on the immediate circle of the grand dutch 
 ess with an interest that was not attempted to b*e dis 
 guised. On her first entrance into the hall, the mar- 
 chesa del Mannore had recognised in the new minion 
 of favor her impassioned lover of the lagoon, herslight- 
 ed acquaintance of the cathedral. When the first shock 
 of surprise was over, she looked on the form which 
 she had found beautiful even in the disguise of pover 
 
 ty, and, forgetting her insulting repulse when he would 
 have claimed in public the smile she had given him 
 when unobserved, she recalled with delight every syl 
 lable he had murmured in her ear, and every look she 
 had called forth in the light of a Venetian moon. The 
 man who had burned upon the altar of her vanity the 
 ! most intoxicating incense who had broken through 
 the iron rules of convention and ceremony, to throw 
 his homage at her feet who had portrayed so incom 
 parably (she believed) with his love-inspired pencil 
 | the features imprinted on his heart this chance-won 
 i worshipper, this daring but gifted plebeian, as she had 
 | thought him, had suddenly shot into her sphere and 
 become a legitimate object of love ; and, beautified by 
 the splendor of dress, and distinguished by the prefer 
 ence and favor of those incomparably above her, he 
 seemed tenfold, to her eyes, the perfection of adorable 
 beauty. As she remembered his eloquent devotion to 
 herself, and saw the interest taken in him by a woman 
 whom she hated and had calumniated a woman who 
 j she believed stood between her and all the light of ex 
 istence she anticipated the triumph of taking him 
 from her side, of exhibiting him to the world as a fal 
 con seduced from his first quarry ; and never doubting 
 that so brilliant a favorite would control the talisman 
 of the paradise she had so long wished to enter, she 
 j panted for the moment when she should catch his eye 
 i and draw him from his lure, and already heard the 
 1 chamberlain s voice in her ear commanding her pres- 
 i ence after the ball in the saloon of Hercules. 
 
 The marchesa had been well observed from the first 
 ! by the wily diplomate. A thorough adept in the art 
 (so necessary to his profession) of seeing without ap 
 pearing to see, he had scarce lost a shade of the vary- 
 ing expressions of her countenance ; and while she 
 | fancied him perfectly unconscious of her presence, he 
 ! read her tell-tale features as if they had given utter 
 ance to her thoughts. He saw, with secret triumph, 
 the effect of his brilliant position upon her proud and 
 vain heart ; watched her while she made use of her 
 throng of despised admirers to create a sensation near 
 i him and attract his notice; and when the ball wore on, 
 and he was still in unwearied and exclusive attendance 
 upon the lady Geraldine, he gazed after her with a 
 momentary curl of triumph on his lip, as she took up 
 her concealed position in the embayed window, and 
 abandoned herself to the bitter occupation of watching 
 the happiness of her rival. The lady Geraldine had 
 never been so animated since her first appearance at 
 1 the court of Tuscany. 
 
 It was past midnight when the grand-duke, flushed 
 | and tired with dancing, came to the side of the lady 
 | Geraldine. Count Basil gave place, and, remaining a 
 } moment in nominal obedience to the sovereign s polite 
 request which he was too politic to construe literally, 
 he looked down the dance with the air of one who has 
 turned his back on all that could interest him, and, 
 passing close to the concealed position of the marche 
 sa, stepped out upon the balcony. 
 
 The air was cool, and the fountain played refresh 
 ingly below. The count Basil was one of those minds 
 which never have so much leisure for digression as 
 when they are most occupied. A love, as deep and 
 profound as the abysses of his soul, was weaving thread 
 for thread with a revenge worthy of a Mohican ; yet, 
 1 after trying in vain to count eight in the Pleiades, he 
 raised himself upon the marble balustrade, and perfect- 
 | ly anticipating the interruption to his solitude which 
 i presently occurred, began to speculate aloud on the 
 | dead and living at that hour beneath the roof of the 
 j Pitti. 
 
 A painter s mistress," he said, " immortal in her 
 ! touch of her paramour s pencil, is worshipped for cen 
 turies on these walls by the pilgrims of art ; while the 
 warm perfection of all loveliness the purest and di- 
 vinest of highborn women will perish utterly with the 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 eyes that have seen her! The Bella of Titian, the 
 Fornarina of RafFaelle peasant-girls of Italy have, 
 at this moment, more value in this royal palace than 
 the breathing forms that inhabit it ! The lady Geral- 
 dine herself, to whom the sovereign offers at this mo 
 ment his most flattering homage, would be less a loss 
 to him than either ! Yet they despise the gods of the 
 pencil who may thus make them immortal ! The dull 
 blood in their noble veins, that never bred a thought 
 beyond the instincts of their kind, would look down, 
 forsooth, on the inventive and celestial ichor that in 
 flames the brain, and prompts the fiery hand of the 
 painter! How long will this very sovereign live in the 
 memories of men? The murderous Medici, the am 
 bitious cardinals, the abandoned women, of an age gone 
 by, hang in imperishable colors on his walls ; while of 
 him, the lord of this land of genius, there is not a bust 
 or a picture that would bring a sequin in the market 
 place ! They would buy genius in these days like 
 wine, and throw aside the flask in which it ripened. 
 Raffaelle and Buonarotti were companions for a pope 
 and his cardinals : Titian was an honored guest for the 
 doge. The stimulus to immortalize these noble friends 
 was in the love they bore them ; and the secret of their 
 power to do it lay half in the knowledge of their char 
 acters, gained by daily intimacy. Painters were princes 
 then, as they are beggars now; and the princely art is 
 beggared as well !" 
 
 The marchesa del Marmore stepped out upon 
 the balcony, leaning on the arm of the grand 
 chamberlain. The soliloquizing secretary had fore 
 told to himself both her coming and her compan 
 ion. 
 
 " Monsieur le comte," said the chamberlain, " la 
 marchesa del Marmore wishes for the pleasure of your 
 acquaintance." 
 
 Count Basil bowed low, and in that low and musical 
 tone of respectful devotion which, real or counterfeit, 
 made him irresistible to a woman who had a soul to be 
 thrilled, he repeated the usual nothings upon the beau 
 ty of the night ; and when th, chamberlain returned 
 to his duties, the marchesa walked forth with her 
 companion to the cool and fragrant alleys of the gar 
 den, and, under the silent and listening stars, implored j 
 forgiveness for her pride ; and, with I he sudden aban- 
 donment peculiar to the clime, poured into his ear j 
 the passionate and weeping avowal of her sorrow and ! 
 love. 
 
 " Those hours of penitence in the embayed win- ; 
 dow," thought Count Basil, " were healthy for your j 
 soul." And as she walked by his side, leaning heavi- j 
 ly on his arm, and half-dissolved in a confiding tender- j 
 ness, his thoughts reverted to another and a far sweet- i 
 er voice; and while the caressing words of the marchesa 
 fell on an unlistening ear, his footsteps insensibly turned 
 back to the lighted hall. 
 
 VI. 
 
 As the daylight stole softly over Vallombrosa, the 
 luxurious chariot of the marchesa del Marmore stopped 
 at the door of Count Basil. The lady Geraldine s suit 
 had been successful ; and the hitherto excluded Flor 
 entine had received, from the hand of the man she had 
 once so ignorantly scorned, a privilege for which she 
 would have bartered her salvation : she had supped at 
 his side in the saloon of Hercules. With many faults 
 of character, she was an Italian in feeling, and had a 
 capacity, like all her countrywomen, for a consuming 
 and headlong passion. She had better have been born 
 of marble. 
 
 " I have lifted you to heaven," said Count Basil, as 
 her chariot-wheels rolled from his door ; " but it is as 
 the eagle soars into the clouds with the serpent. We 
 will see how you will relish the fall !" 
 
 PART II. 
 
 THE grand-duke s carriages, with their six horses 
 and outriders, had turned down the Borg ognisanti, 
 and the "City of the Red Lily," waking from her 
 noonday slumber, was alive with the sound of wheels. 
 The sun was sinking over the Apennine which kneels 
 at the gate of Florence ; the streets were cool and 
 shadowy; the old women, with the bambino, between 
 their knees, braided straw at the doors ; the booted 
 guardsman paced his black charger slowly over the 
 jeweller s bridge ; the picture-dealer brought forward 
 his brightest " master" to the fading light ; and while 
 the famous churches of that fairest city of the earth 
 called to the Ave-Maria with impatient bell, the gal 
 lantry and beauty of Tuscany sped through the damp 
 ening air with their swift horses, meeting and passing 
 with gay greetings amid the green alleys of the Cas- 
 cine. 
 
 The twilight had become gray, when the carriages 
 and horsemen, scattered in hundreds through the in 
 terlaced roads of this loveliest of parks, turned by com 
 mon consent toward the spacious square in the centre, 
 and drawing up in thickly-serried ranks, the soiree on 
 wheels, the reunion en plein air, which is one of the 
 most delightful of the peculiar customs of Florence, 
 commenced its healthful gayeties. The showy car 
 riages of the grand-duke and the ex-king of Wurtern- 
 berg (whose rank would not permit them to share in 
 the familiarities of the hour) disappeared by the avenue 
 skirting the bank of the Arno, and with much delicate 
 and some desperate specimens of skill, the coachmen 
 of the more exclusive nobility threaded the embar 
 rassed press of vehicles, and laid their wheels together 
 on the southern edge of the piazza. The beaux in the 
 saddle, disembarrassed of ladies and axletrees, enjoyed 
 their usual butterfly privilege of roving, and with light 
 rein and ready spur pushed their impatient horses to 
 the coronetted panels of the loveliest or most power 
 ful ; the laugh of the giddy was heard here and there 
 over the pawing of restless hoofs; an occasional scream 
 half of apprehension, half of admiration rewarded 
 the daring caracole of some young and bold rider ; 
 and while the first star sprang to its place, and the dew 
 of heaven dropped into the false flowers in the hat of 
 the belle, and into the thirsting lips of the violet in the 
 field (simplicity, like virtue, is its own reward !), the 
 low murmur of calumny and compliment, of love and 
 lightheartedness, of politeness, politics, puns, and po 
 etry, arose over that assembly upon wheels : and if it 
 was not a scene and an hour of happiness, it was the 
 fault neither of the fragrant eve nor of the provisions 
 of nature and fortune. The material for happiness 
 was there. 
 
 A showy caleche with panels of dusky crimson, the 
 hammer-cloth of the same shade, edged with a broad 
 fringe of white, the wheels slightly picked out with the 
 same colors, and the coachman and footman in corre 
 sponding liveries, was drawn up near the southern edge 
 of the Piazzi. A narrow alley had been left for horse 
 men between this equipage and the adjoining ones, 
 closed up at the extremity, however, by a dark-green 
 and very plain chariot, placed with a bold violation of 
 etiquette directly across the line, and surrounded just 
 now by two or three persons of the highest rank lean 
 ing from their saddles in earnest conversation with the 
 occupant. Not far from the caleche, mounted upon 
 an English blood-horse of great beauty, a young man 
 had just drawn rein as if interrupted only for a mo 
 ment on some pressing errand, and with his hat slight 
 ly raised, was paying his compliments to the venerable 
 Prince Poniatowski, at that time the Amphytrion of 
 Florence. From moment to moment, as the pauses 
 occurred in the exchange of courteous phrases, the 
 rider, whose spurred heel was close at his saddle- 
 girths, stole an impatient glance up the avenue of 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 93 
 
 carriages to the dark-green chariot, arid, excited by 
 the lifted rein and (he proximity of the spur, the grace 
 ful horse fretted on his million feet, and the bending 
 figures from a hundred vehicles, and the focus of 
 bright eyes radiating from all sides to the spot, would 
 have betrayed, even to a stranger, that the horseman 
 was of no common mark. Around his uncovered tem 
 ples floated fair and well-cherished locks of the sunni 
 est auburn ; and if there was beauty in the finely-drawn 
 lines of his lips, there was an inexpressibly fierce spirit 
 as well. 
 
 II. 
 
 The count Basil had been a month at Florence. In 
 that time he had contrived to place himself between 
 the duke s ear and all the avenues of favor, and had 
 approached as near, perhaps nearer, to the hearts of 
 the women of his court. A singular and instinctive 
 knowledge of the weaknesses of human nature, per 
 fected and concealed by conversance with the consum 
 mate refinement of life at Paris, remarkable personal 
 beauty, and a quality of scornful bitterness for which 
 no one could divine a reason in a character and fate 
 else so happily mingled, but which at the same time 
 added to his fascination, had given Count Basil a com- j 
 mand over the varied stops of society, equalled by few i 
 plnyers on that difficult and capricious instrument. I: 
 His worldly ambition went swimmingly on, and the : 
 same wind filled the sails of his lighter ventures Mil 
 well. The love of the marchesa del Marmore, as he ji 
 had very well anticipated, grew with his influence and j 
 renown. A woman s pride, he perfectly knew, is diffi- j 
 cult to wake after she has once believed herself adored ; j 
 and, satisfied that the portrait taken on the lagoon, and 
 the introduction he had given her to the exclusive pen 
 etralia of the Pilti, would hold her till his revenge was 
 complete, he left her love for him to find its own food 
 in his successes, and never approached her but to lay 
 to her heart more mordently the serpents of jealousy 
 and despair. 
 
 For the lady Geraldine the count Basil had con 
 ceived a love, the deepest of which his nature was ca 
 pable. Long as he had known her, it was a passion 
 born in Italy, and while it partook of the qualities of 
 the clime, it had for its basis the habitual and well- 
 founded respect of a virtuous and sincere friendship. 
 At their first acquaintance at Paris, the lovely English 
 woman, newly arrived from the purer moral atmo 
 sphere of her own country, was moving in the disso 
 lute, but skilfully disguised society of the Faubourg 
 St. Germain, with the simple unconsciousness of the : 
 pure in heart, innocent herself, and naturally unsus- j 
 picious of others. The perfect frankness with which ! 
 she established an intimacy with the clever and accoin- ! 
 plished attache, had soon satisfied that clear-sighted j 
 person that there was no passion in her preference, I 
 and, giddy with the thousand pleasures of that me- { 
 tropolis of delight, he had readily sunk his first startled 
 admiration of her beauty in an affectionate and con- ; 
 fiding friendship. He had thus shown her the better 
 qualities of his character only, and, charmed with his 
 wit and penetration, and something; flattered, perhaps, 
 with the devotion of so acknowledged an autocrat of 
 fashion and talent, she had formed an attachment for 
 him that had all the earnestness of love without its 
 passion. They met at Florence, but the "knowledge 
 of good and evil" had by this time driven the lady 
 Geraldine from her Eden of unconsciousness. Still 
 as irreproachable in conduct, and perhaps as pure in 
 heart as before, an acquaintance with the forms of vice 
 had introduced into her manners those ostensible cau 
 tions which, while they protect, suggest also what is 
 to be feared. 
 
 A change had taken pi ice also in Count Basil. He 
 had left the vitreous and mercurial clime of France, 
 
 with its volatile and superficial occupations, for the 
 voluptuous arid indolent air of Italy, and the study of 
 its impassioned deifications of beauty. That which 
 had before been in him an instinct of gay pleasure a 
 pursuit which palled in the first moment of success, 
 and was second to his ambition or his vanity had be 
 come, in those two years of a painter s life, a thirst 
 both of the senses and the imagination, which had 
 usurped the very throne of his soul. Like the Hindoo 
 youth, who finds the gilded plaything of his childhood 
 elevated in his maturer years into a god, he bowed his 
 heart to what he held so lightly, and brought the 
 costly sacrifice of time and thought to its altars. He 
 had fed his eyes upon the divine glories of the pencil, 
 and upon the breathing wonders of love in marble, be 
 neath the sky and in the dissolving air in which they 
 rose to the hand of inspiration ; and with his eye dis 
 ciplined, and his blood fused with taste and enthusi 
 asm, that idolatry of beauty, which had before seemed 
 sensual or unreal, kindled its first fires in his mind, 
 and his senses were intoxicated with the incense. 
 There is a kind of compromise in the effects of the 
 atmosphere and arts of Italy. If the intellect takes 
 a warmer hue in its study of the fair models of an 
 tiquity, the senses in turn become more refined and 
 intellectual. In other latitudes and lands woman is 
 loved more coldly. After the brief reign of a passion 
 of instinct, she is happy if she can retain her empire 
 by habit, or the qualities of the heart. That divine 
 form, meant to assimilate her to the angels, has never 
 been recognised by the dull eye that should have 
 seen in it a type of her soul. To the love of the painter 
 or the statuary, or to his who has made himself con 
 versant with their models, is added the imperishable 
 enthusiasm of a captivating and exalted study. The 
 mistress of his heart is the mistress of his mind. She 
 is the breathing realization of that secret ideal which 
 exists in every mind, but which, in men ignorant of the 
 fine arts, takes another form, and becomes a woman s 
 rival and usurper. She is like nothing in ambition 
 she is like nothing in science or business nothing in 
 out-of-door pleasures. If politics, or the chase, or the 
 acquisition of wealth, is the form of this ruling passion, 
 she is unassociated with that which is nearest his heart, 
 and he returns to her with an exhausted interest and a 
 flagging fancy. It is her strongest tie upon his affec 
 tion, even, that she is his refuge when unfit for that 
 which occupies him most in his fatigue, his disap 
 pointment, his vacuity of head and heart. He thinks 
 of her only as she receives him in his most worthless 
 hours; and, as his refreshed intellects awake, she is 
 forgotten with the first thought of his favorite theme 
 for what has a woman s loveliness to do with that? 
 
 Count Basil had not concluded his first interview 
 with the lady Geraldine, without marvelling at the new 
 feelings with which he looked upon her. He had 
 never before realized her singular and adorable beauty. 
 The exquisitely turned head, the small and pearly 
 ears, the spiritual nostril, the softly moulded chin, the 
 clear loftiness of expression yet inexpressible delicacy 
 and brightness in the lips, and a throat and bust than 
 which those of Faustina in the delicious marble oi the 
 Gallery of Florence might be less envied by the queen 
 of love his gaze wandered over these, and followed 
 her in the harmony of her motions, and the native and 
 unapproachable grace of every attitude; and the pic 
 tures he had so passionately studied seemed to fade in 
 his mind, and the statues he had half worshipped 
 seemed to descend from their pedestals depreciated. 
 The lady Geraldino, for the first time, felt his eye. 
 For the first time in their acquaintance, she was of 
 fended with its regard. Her embarrassment was rend 
 by the quick diplomate, and at that moment sprang 
 into being a passion, which perhaps had died but for 
 the conscious acknowledgment of her rebuke. 
 
 Up to the evening in the Cascine, with which the 
 
96 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 second chapter of this simply true tale commences, 
 but one of the two leading threads in the count Basil s 
 woof had woven well. "The jealous are the damned," 
 and the daily and deadly agony of the marchesa del 
 Marmore was a dark ground from which his love to 
 the lady Geraldine rose to his own eye in heightened 
 relief. His dearest joy forwarded with equal step his 
 dearest revenge ; and while he could watch the work 
 ing of his slow torture in the fascinated heart of his 
 victim, he was content to suspend a blow to which 
 that of death would be a mercy. " The law," said 
 Count Basil, as he watched her quivering and im 
 ploring lip, "takes cognizance but of the murder of 
 the body. It has no retribution for the keener dagger 
 of the soul." 
 
 III. 
 
 The conversation between the Russian secretary 
 and the prince Poniatowski ended at last in a graceful 
 bow from the former to his horse s neck; and the 
 quicker rattling of the small hoofs on the ground, as 
 the fine creature felt the movement in the saddle and 
 prepared to bound away, drew all eyes once more 
 upon the handsomest and most idolized gallant of 
 Florence. The narrow lane of carriages, commencing 
 with the showy ca/eche of the marchesa del Marmore, 
 and closed up by the plain chariot of the lady Geral 
 dine, was still open, and with a glance at the latter 
 which sufficiently indicated his destination, Count 
 Basil raised his spurred heel, and with a smile of de 
 light and the quickness of a barb in the desert, gal 
 loped toward the opening. In the same instant the 
 marchesa del Marmore gave a convulsive spring for 
 ward, and, in obedience to an imperative order, her 
 coachman violently drew rein and shot the back and 
 forward wheels of the caleche directly across his path. 
 Met in full career by this sudden obstacle, the horse 
 of the Russian reared high in air; but ere the screams 
 of apprehension had arisen from the adjacent carriages, 
 the silken bridle was slacked, and with a low bow to 
 the foiled and beautiful marchesa as he shot past, he 
 brushed the hammer-cloths of the two scarce separa 
 ted carriages, and at the same instant stood at the 
 chariot window of the lady Getaldine, as calm and 
 respectful as if he had never known danger or emotion. 
 
 A hundred eyes had seen the expression of his face 
 as he leaped past the unhappy woman, and the drama 
 of which that look was the key was understood in Flor 
 ence. The lady Geraldine alone, seated far back in 
 her chariot, was unconscious of the risk run for the 
 smile with which she greeted its hero ; and uncon 
 scious, as well, of the poignant jealousy and open mor 
 tification she had innocently assisted to inflict, she 
 stretched her fair and transparent hand from the car 
 riage, and stroked the glossy neck of his horse, and 
 while the marchesa del Marmore drove past with a 
 look of inexpressible anguish and hate, and the dis 
 persing nobles and dames took their way to the city 
 gates, Count Basil leaned close to the ear of that love 
 liest of breathing creatures, and forgot, as she forgot 
 in listening to the besvildering music of his voice, that 
 the stars had risen, or that the night was closing 
 around them. 
 
 The Cascine had long been silent when the chariot 
 of the lady Geraldine took its way to the town, and, 
 with the reins loose upon his horse s neck, Count 
 Basil followed at a slower pace, lost in the revery of a 
 tumultuous passion. The sparkling and unobstructed 
 stars broke through the leafy roof of the avenue whose 
 silence was disturbed by those fine and light-stepping 
 hoofs, and the challenge of the duke s forester, going 
 his rounds ere the gates closed, had its own deep- 
 throated echo for its answer. The Arno rippled 
 among the rushes on its banks, the occasional roll of 
 wheels passing the paved arch of the Ponte Seraglio, 
 
 came faintly down the river upon the moist wind, the 
 pointed cypresses of the convent of Bello Sguardo 
 laid their slender fingers against the lowest stars in the 
 southern horizon, and with his feet pressed, carelessly, 
 far through his stirrups, and his head dropped on his 
 bosom, the softened diplomate turned instinctively to 
 the left in the last diverging point of the green al 
 leys, and his horse s ears were already pricked at 
 the tread, before the gate, of the watchful and idle 
 doganieri. 
 
 Close under the city wall on this side Florence, 
 the traveller will remember that the trees are more 
 thickly serried, and the stone seats, for the comfort 
 and pleasure of those who would step forth from the 
 hot streets for an hour of fresh air and rest, are mossy 
 with the depth of the perpetual shade. In the midst 
 of this dark avenue, the unguided animal beneath the 
 careless and forgetful rider suddenly stood still, and 
 the next moment starting aside, a female sprang high 
 against his neck, and Count Basil, ere awake from his 
 revery, felt the glance of a dagger-blade across his bo 
 som. 
 
 With the slender wrist that had given the blow- 
 firmly arrested in his left hand, the count Basil slowly 
 dismounted, and after a steadfast look, by the dim 
 light, into the face of the lovely assassin, he pressed 
 her fingers respectfully, and with well counterfeited 
 emotion, to his lips. . 
 
 " Twice since the Ave-Maria !" he said in atone of 
 reproachful tenderness, " and against a life that is your 
 own !" 
 
 He could see, even in that faint light, the stern com 
 pression of those haughty lips, and the flash of the 
 darkest eyes of the Val d Arno. But leading her gen 
 tly to a seat, he sat beside her, and with scarce ten 
 brief moments of low-toned and consummate elo 
 quence, he once more deluded her soul ! - 
 
 " We meet to-morrow," she said, as, after a burst 
 of irrepressible tears, she disengaged herself from his 
 neck, and looked toward the end of the avenue, where 
 Count Basil had already heard the pawing of her im 
 patient horses. 
 
 " To-morrow!" lie answered ; " but,?)n <7 carissima!" 
 he continued, opening his breast to stanch the blood of 
 his wound, "you owe me a concession after this rude 
 evidence of your love." 
 
 She looked into his face as if answer were superflu 
 ous. 
 
 " Drive to my palazzo at noon, and remain with me 
 till the Ave-Maria." 
 
 For but half a moment the impassioned Italian hesi 
 tated. Though the step he demanded of her was ap 
 parently without motive or reason though it was one 
 that sacrificed to a whim her station, her fortune, and 
 her friends she hesitated but to question her reason 
 if the wretched price of this sacrifice would be paid 
 if the love, to which she fled from this world and heav 
 en, was her own. In other countries, the crime of in 
 fidelity is punished : in Italy it is the appearance only 
 that is criminal. In proportion as the sin is overlook 
 ed, the violation of the outward proprieties of life is 
 severely visited ; and while a lover is stipulated for in 
 the marriage-contract, an open visit to that lover s 
 house is an offence which brands the perpetrator with 
 irremediable shame. The marchesa del Marmore 
 well knew that in going forth from the ancestral pal 
 ace of her husband on a visit to Count Basil, she took 
 \\ leave of it forever. The equipage that would bear 
 j her to him would never return for her ; the protection, 
 | the fortune, the noble relations, the troops of friends, 
 ; would all drop from her. In the pride of her youth 
 ! and beauty from the highest pinnacle of rank from 
 :| the shelter of fortune and esteem she would descend, 
 . i by a single step, to be a beggar for life and love from 
 1 1 the mercy of the heart she fled to ! 
 
 " I will come," she said, in a firm voice, looking 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 close into his face, as if she would read in his dim fea 
 tures the prophetic answer of his soul. 
 
 The count Basil strained her to his bosom, and start 
 ing back as if with the paiu of his wound, he pleaded 
 the necessity of a surgeon, and bade her a hasty good 
 night. And while she pained her own carriage in se 
 crecy, he rode round to" the other gate, which opens 
 upon the Borg ognisanti, and dismounting at the 
 Cafe Colonna, where the artists were at this hour usu 
 ally assembled, he sought out his fellow-traveller, 
 Giannino Speranza, who had sketched the inarchesa 
 upon the lagoon, and made an appointment with him 
 for the morrow. 
 
 While the count Basil s revenge sped thus merrily, 
 the just Fates were preparing for him a retribution in 
 his love. The mortification of the marchesa del Mar- 
 more, at the Cascine, had been made the subject of 
 conversation at the prima sera of the lady Geraldine ; 
 and other details of the same secret drama transpiring 
 at the same time, the whole secret of Count Basil s 
 feelings toward that unfortunate woman flashed clearly 
 and fully upon her. His motives for pretending to 
 have drawn the portrait of the lagoon for procuring 
 her an admission to the exclusive suppers of the Pitti 
 for a thousand things which had been unaccounta 
 ble, or referred to more amiable causes were at once 
 unveiled. Even yet, with no suspicion of the extent 
 of his revenge, the lady Geraldine felt an indignant pity 
 for the unconscious victim, and a surprised disappro 
 val of the character thus unmasked to her eye. Upon 
 further reflection, her brow flushed to remember that 
 she herself had been made the most effective tool of 
 his revenge ; and as she recalled circumstance after 
 circumstance in the last month s history, the attention 
 and preference he had shown her, and which had grat 
 ified her, perhaps, more than she admitted to herself, 
 seemed to her sensitive and resentful mind to have 
 been only the cold instruments of jealousy. Incapable 
 as she was of an unlawful passion, the unequalled fas 
 cinations of Count Basil had silently found their way 
 to her heart, and if her indignation was kindled by a 
 sense of justice and womanly pity, it was fed and 
 fanned unaware by mortified pride. She rang, and 
 sent an order to the gate that she was to be denied for 
 the future to Count Basil Spirifort. 
 
 The servant had appeared with his silver tray in his 
 hand, and before leaving h,er presence to communi 
 cate the order, he presented her with a letter. Well 
 foreseeing the eclaircissement which must follow the 
 public scene in the Cascine, the count Basil had left 
 the cafe for his own palazzo ; and, in a letter, of which 
 the following is the passage most important to our 
 story, he revealed to the lady he loved a secret, which 
 he hoped would anticipate the common rumor : 
 
 ***** "But these passionate words will have 
 offended your ear, dearest lady, and 1 must pass to a 
 theme on which I shall be less eloquent. You will 
 hear to-night, perhaps, that which, with all your im 
 agination, will scarce prepare you for what you will 
 hear to-morrow. The marchesa del Marmore is the 
 victim of a revenge which has only been second in my 
 heart to the love I have for the first time breathed to 
 you. I can never hope that you will either under 
 stand or forgive the bitterness in which it springs ; yet 
 it is a demon to which I am delivered, soul and body, 
 and no spirit but my own can know its power. When 
 I have called it by its name, and told you of its exas 
 peration, if you do not pardon, you will pity me. 
 
 " You know that I am a Russian, and you know the 
 station my talents have won me ; but you do not know 
 that I was horn a seif and a slave ! If you could rend 
 open my heart and see the pool of blackness and bit 
 terness that lies in its bottom fallen, drop by drop, 
 7 
 
 from this accursed remembrance there would be lit 
 tle need to explain to you how this woman has offend 
 ed me. Had I been honorably born, like yourself, I 
 feel that I could have been, like you, an angel of light : 
 as it is, the contumely of a look has stirred me to a 
 revenge which has in it, I do not need to be told, the 
 darkest elements of murder. 
 
 " My early history is of no importance, yet I may 
 tell you it was such as to expose to every wind this 
 lacerated nerve. In a foreign land, and holding an 
 official rank, it was seldom breathed upon. I wore, 
 mostly, a gay heart at Paris. In my late exile at Ven 
 ice I had time to brood upon my dark remembrance, 
 and it was revived and fed by the melancholy of my 
 solitude. The obscurity in which I lived, and the oc 
 casional comparison between myself and some passing 
 noble in the Piazza, served to remind me, could I have 
 forgotten it. I never dreamed of love in this humble 
 disguise, and so never felt the contempt that had most 
 power to wound me. On receiving the letters of my 
 new appointment, however, this cautious humility did 
 not wait to be put off with my sombrero. I started 
 for Florence, clad in the habiliments of poverty, but 
 with the gay mood of a courtier beneath. The first 
 burst of my newly-released feelings was admiration for 
 a woman of singular beauty, who stood near me on 
 one of the most love-awakening and delicious eves 
 that I ever remember. My heart was overflowing, and 
 she permitted me to breathe my passionate adoration 
 in her ear. The marchesa del Marmore, but for the 
 scorn of the succeeding day, would, I think, have been 
 the mistress of my soul. Strangely enough, I had 
 seen you without loving you. 
 
 " f have told you, as a bagatelle that might amuse 
 you, my rencontre with del Marmore and his dame in 
 the cathedral of Bologna. The look she gave me 
 there sealed her doom. It was witnessed by the com 
 panions of my poverty, and the concentrated resent 
 ment of years sprang up at the insult. Had it been a 
 man, I must have struck him dead where he stood : 
 she was a woman, and I swore the downfall of her 
 pride." * * 
 
 Thus briefly dismissing the chief topic of his letter, 
 Count Basil returned to the pleading of his love. It 
 was dwelt on more eloquently than his revenge ; but 
 as the lady Geraldine scarce read it to the end, it need 
 not retard the procession of events in our story. The 
 fair Englishwoman sat down beneath the Etruscan 
 lamp, whose soft light illumined a brow cleared, as if 
 by a sweep from the wing of her good angel, of the 
 troubled dream which had overhung it, and in brief 
 and decided, but kind and warning words, replied to" 
 the letter of Count Basil. 
 
 It was noon on the following day, and the Contadini 
 from the hills were settling to their siesta on the steps 
 of the churches, and against the columns of the Piaz 
 za del Gran Duca. The artists alone, in the cool gal 
 lery, and in the tempered halls of the Pitti, shook off 
 the drowsiness of the hour, and strained sight and 
 thought upon the immortal canvass from which they 
 drew ; while the sculptor, in his brightening studio, 
 weary of the mallet, yet excited by the bolder light, 
 leaned on the rough block behind him, and with list 
 less body but wakeful and fervent eye, studied the last 
 touches upon his marble. 
 
 Prancing hoofs, and the sharp quick roll peculiar to 
 the wheels of carriages of pleasure, awakened the aris 
 tocratic sleepers of the Via del Servi, and with a lash 
 and jerk of violence, the coachman of the marchesa 
 del Marmore, enraged at the loss of his noonday re 
 pose, brought up her showy caliche at the door of 
 Count Basil Spirifort. The fair occupant of that luxu- 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 rious vehicle was pale, but the brightness of joy and 
 hope binned almost fiercely in her eye. 
 
 The doors flew open as the marchesa descended, 
 and following a servant in the count s livery, of whom 
 she asked no question, she found herself in a small sa 
 loon, furnished with the peculiar luxury which marks 
 the apartment of a bachelor, and darkened like a paint 
 er s room. The light came in from a single tall win 
 dow, curtained below, and under it stood an easel, at 
 which, on her first entrance, a young man stood 
 sketching the outline of a female head. As she ad 
 vanced, looking eagerly around for another face, the 
 artist laid down his palette, and with a low reverence 
 presented her with a note from Count Basil. It in 
 formed her that political news of the highest impor 
 tance had called him suddenly to the cabinet of his 
 chef, but that he hoped to be with her soon ; and, 
 meantime, he begged of her, as a first favor in his 
 newly-prospered love, to bless him with the possession 
 of her portrait, done by the incomparable artist who 
 would receive her. 
 
 Disappointment and vexation overwhelmed the heart 
 of the marchesa, and she burst into tears. She read 
 the letter again, and grew calmer; for it was laden with 
 epithets of endearment, and seemed to her written in 
 the most sudden haste. Never doubting for an instant 
 the truth of his apology, she removed her hat, and 
 with a look at the deeply-shaded mirror, while she 
 shook out from their confinement the masses of her 
 luxuriant hair, she approached the painter s easel, and 
 with a forced cheerfulness inquired in what attitude 
 she should sit to him. 
 
 " If the signora will amuse herself," he replied, 
 with a bow, " it will be easy to compose the picture, 
 and seize the expression without annoying her with a 
 pose." 
 
 Relieved thus of any imperative occupation, the un 
 happy marchesa seated herself by a table of intaglios 
 and prints, and while she apparently occupied herself 
 in the examination of these specimens of art, she was 
 delivered, as her tormentor had well anticipated, to the 
 alternate tortures of impatience and remorse. And 
 while the hours wore on, and her face paled, and her 
 eyes grew bloodshot with doubt and fear, the skilful 
 painter, forgetting everything in the enthusiasm of his 
 art, and forgotten utterly by his unconscious subject, 
 transferred too faithfully to the canvass that picture of 
 agonized expectation. 
 
 The afternoon, meantime, had worn away, and the 
 gay world of Florence, from the side toward Fiesole, 
 rolled past the Via dei Servi on their circuitous way 
 to the Cascine, and saw, with dumb astonishment, the 
 carriage and liveries of the marchesa del Marmore at 
 the door of Count Basil Spirifort. On they swept by 
 the Via Mercata Nova to the Lung Arno, and there 
 their astonishment redoubled : for in the window of 
 the Casino dei Nobili, playing with a billiard-cue, and 
 laughing with a group of lounging exquisites, stood 
 Count Basil himself, the most unoccupied and listless 
 of sunset idlers. There was but one deduction to be 
 drawn from this sequence of events; and when they 
 remembered the demonstration of passionate jealousy 
 on the previous evening in the Cascine, Count Basil, 
 evidently innocent of participation in her passion, was 
 deemed a persecuted man, and the marchesa del Mar- 
 more was lost to herself and the world ! 
 
 Three days after this well-remembered circumstance 
 in the history of Florence, an order was received from 
 the grand-duke to admit into the exhibition of mod 
 ern artists a picture by a young Venetian painter, an 
 eleve of Count Basil Spirifort. It was called " The 
 Lady expecting an Inconstant," and had been pro 
 nounced by a virtuoso, who had seen it on private 
 view, to be a masterpiece of expression and color. It 
 was instantly and indignantly recognised as the por 
 trait of the unfortunate marchesa, whose late abau> 
 
 I donment of her husband was fresh on the lips of com 
 mon rumor ; but ere it could be officially removed, 
 the circumstance had been noised abroad, and the 
 picture had been seen by all the curious in Florence. 
 The order for its removal was given ; but the purpose 
 of Count Basil had been effected, and the name of the 
 unhappy marchesa had become a jest on the vulgar 
 tongue. 
 
 This tale had not been told, had there not been 
 more than a common justice in its sequel. The worst 
 passions of men, in common life, are sometimes in 
 scrutably prospered. The revenge of Count Basil, 
 however, was betrayed by the last which completed 
 it ; and while the victim of his fiendish resentment 
 finds a peaceful asylum in England under the roof of 
 the compassionate Lady Geraldine, the once gay and 
 admired Russian wanders from city to city, followed 
 by an evil reputation, and stamped unaccountably as a 
 jattatore.* 
 
 LOVE AND DIPLOMACY. 
 
 " Pray pardon me, 
 
 For I am like a boy that hath found money 
 Afraid I dream still." 
 
 FORD OR WEBSTEH. 
 
 IT was on a fine September evening, within my time 
 (and I am not, I trust, too old to be loved), that Count 
 
 Anatole L , of the impertinent and particularly 
 
 useless profession of attache, walked up and down be 
 fore the glass in his rooms at the "Archduke Charles," 
 the first hotel, as you know, if you have travelled, in 
 the green-belted and fair city of Vienna. The brass 
 ring was still swinging on the end of the bell-rope, and, 
 in a respectful attitude at the door, stood the just- 
 summoned Signor Attilio, valet and privy councillor 
 to one of the handsomest coxcombs errant through 
 the world. Signor Attilio was a Tyrolese, and, like 
 his master, was very handsome. 
 
 Count Anatole had been idling away three golden 
 summer months in the Tyrol, for the sole purpose, 
 as far as mortal eyes could see, of disguising his fine 
 Phidian features in a callow mustache and whiskers. 
 The crines ridentes (as Eneas Sylvius has it) being now 
 in a condition beyond improvement, Signor Attilio had 
 for some days been rather curious to know what course 
 of events would next occupy the diplomatic talents of 
 his master. 
 
 After a turn or two more, taken in silence, Count 
 Anatole stopped in the middle of the floor, and eying 
 the well-made Tyrolese from head to foot, begged to 
 know if he wore at the present moment his most be 
 coming breeches, jacket, and beaver. 
 
 Attilio was never astonished at anything his master 
 did or said. He simply answered, "Si, signore." 
 
 "Be so kind as to strip immediately, and dress your 
 self in that travelling suit lying on the sofa." 
 
 As the green, gold-corded jacket, knee-breeches, 
 buckles, and stockings, were laid aside, Count Anatole 
 threw off his dressing-gown, and commenced encasing 
 his handsome proportions in the cast-off habiliments. 
 He then put on the conical, slouch-rimmed hat, with 
 the tall eagle s-feather stuck jauntily on the side, and 
 the two rich tassels pendant over his left eye ; and, the 
 toilet of the valet being completed at the same moment, 
 they stood looking at one another with perfect gravity 
 rathertransformed, but each apparently quite at home 
 in his new character. 
 
 " You look very like a gentleman, Attilio," said the 
 count. 
 
 " Your excellency has caught to admiration, I aria 
 
 A man with aa evil eye. 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 del paese," complimented back again the sometime 
 Tyrolese. 
 
 44 Attilio !" 
 
 " Signore ?" 
 
 44 Do you remember the lady in the forest of 
 Friuli ?" 
 
 Attilio began to have a glimmering of things. Some 
 three months before, the count was dashing on at a 
 rapid post-pace through a deep wood in the moun- 
 tains which head in the Adriatic. A sudden pull-up 
 at a turning in the road nearly threw him from his j 
 britska ; and looking out at the "anima di porco . " of 
 the postilion, he found his way impeded by an overset 
 carriage, from which three or four servants were en 
 deavoring to extract the body of an old man, killed 
 by the accident. 
 
 There was more attractive metal for the traveller, 
 however, in the shape of a young and beautiful woman, 
 leaning, pale and faint, against a tree, and apparently 
 about to sink to the ground, unassisted. To bring a 
 hat full of water from the nearest brook, and receive 
 her falling head on his shoulder, was the work of a 
 thought. She had fainted quite away, and taking her, 
 like a child, into his arms, he placed her on a bank by 
 the road-side, bathed her forehead and lips, and chafed 
 her small white hands, till his heart, with all the dis 
 tress of the scene, was quite mad with her perfect 
 beauty. 
 
 Animation at last began to return, and as the flush 
 was stealing into her lips, another carriage drove up 
 with servants in the same livery, and Count Anatole, I 
 thoroughly bewildered in his new dream, mechanically ! 
 assisted them in getting their living mistress and dead 
 master into it, and until they were fairly out of sight, 
 it had never occurred to him that he might possibly 
 wish to know the name and condition of the fairest 
 piece of work he had ever seen from the hands of his 
 Maker. 
 
 An hour before, he had doubled his bono mano to 
 the postilion, and was driving on to Vienna as if to sit 
 at a new congress. Now, he stood leaning against the 
 tree, at the foot of which the grass and wild flowers 
 showed the print of a new-made pressure, and the 
 postilion cracked his whip, and Attilio reminded him 
 of the hour he was losing, in vain. 
 
 He remounted after a while ; but the order was to 
 go back to the last post-house. 
 
 Three or four months at a solitary albergo in the j 
 neighborhood of this adventure, passed by the count 
 in scouring the country on horseback in every direc 
 tion, and by his servant in very particular ennui, brings 
 up the story nearly to where the scene opens. 
 
 44 1 have seen her!" said the count. 
 
 Attilio only lifted up his eyebrows. 
 
 44 She is here, in Vienna!" 
 
 "Felice lei!" murmured Attilio. 
 
 44 She is the princess Leichstenfels, and, by the 
 death of that old man, a widow. 
 
 41 Vtra.me.nle! 
 inflexio 
 
 too well not to foresee a damper in the possibility of 
 matrimony. 
 
 44 Veramente . " gravely echoed the count. "And 
 now listen. The princess lives in close retirement. 
 An old friend or two, and a tried servant, are the only 
 persons who see her. You are to contrive to see this 
 servant to-morrow, corrupt him to leave her, and rec 
 ommend me in his place, and then you are to take 
 him as your courier to Paris : whence, if I calculate 
 well, you will return to me before long, with impor 
 tant despatches. Do you understand me?" 
 
 44 Signor, si!" 
 
 In the small boudoir of a masin de plaisance, be 
 longing to the noble family of Leichstenfels, sat the 
 widowed mistress of one of the oldest titles and finest II 
 
 dow opening down t the floor and leading out upon 
 a terrace of flowers, was subdued by a heavy crimson 
 curtain, looped partially away, a pastille lamp was 
 sending up from its porphyry pedestal a thin and just 
 perceptible curl of smoke, through which the lady 
 musingly passed backward and forward one of her 
 slender fingers, and, on a table near, lay a sheet of 
 black-edged paper, crossed by a small silver pen, and 
 scrawled over irregularly with devices and discon 
 nected words, the work evidently of a fit of the most 
 | absolute and listless idleness. 
 
 The door opened, and a servant in mourning livery 
 I stood before the lady. 
 
 44 1 have thought over your request, Wilhelm," she 
 ! said. " I had become accustomed to your services, 
 j and regret to lose you ; but I should regret more to 
 : stand in the way of your interest. You have my per 
 mission." 
 
 Wilhelm expressed his thanks with an effort that 
 showed he had not obeyed the call of mammon with 
 out regret, and requested leave to introduce the person 
 he had proposed as his successor. 
 
 44 Of what country is he?" 
 
 44 Tyrolese, your excellency." 
 
 "And why does he leave the gentleman with whom 
 he came to Vienna?" 
 
 "// est amoureux d une Vicnnaise, madatnc" an 
 swered the ex-valet, resorting to French to express 
 what he considered a delicate circumstance. 
 
 44 Pamre enfant!" said the princess, with a sigh 
 that partook as much of envy as of pity ; let him 
 come in !" 
 
 And the count Anatole, as the sweet accents reached 
 his ear, stepped over the threshold, and in the coarse 
 but gay dress of the Tyrol, stood in the presence of 
 her whose dewy temples he had bathed in the forest, 
 whose lips he had almost "pried into for breath," 
 whose snowy hands he had chafed and kissed when the 
 senses had deserted their celestial organs the angel 
 of his perpetual dream, the lady of his wild and un 
 controllable, but respectful and honorable love. 
 
 The princess looked carelessly up as he approached, 
 but her eyes seemed arrested in passing over his fea 
 tures. It was but momentary. She resumed her 
 occupation of winding her taper fingers in the smoke- 
 curls of the incense-lamp, and with half a sigh, as if 
 she had repelled a pleasing thought, she leaned back 
 in the silken fauteuil, and asked the new-comer his 
 name. 
 
 44 Anatole, your excellency." 
 
 The voice again seemed to stir something in her 
 memory. She passed her hand over her eyes, and 
 was for a moment lost in thought. 
 
 44 Anatole," she said (oh, how the sound of his own 
 name, murmured in that voice of music thrilled 
 through the fiery veins of the disguised lover!) 
 "Anatole, I receive you into my service. Wilhelm 
 will inform you of your duties, and 1 have a fancy 
 may wear it instead 
 
 amente?" responded the valet, with a rising for the dress of the Tyrol you 
 n; for he knew his master and French morals j of my livery, if you will." 
 
 And witli one stolen and warm gaze from under his 
 drooping eyelids, and heart and lips on fire, as he 
 thanked her for her condescension, the new retainer 
 took his leave. 
 
 Month after month passed on to Count Anatole in 
 a bewildering dream of ever deepening passion. It 
 was upon a soft and amorous morning of April, that a 
 clashing equipage stood at the door of the proud palace 
 
 of Leichstenfels. The arms of E blazed on the 
 
 panels, and the insoucianls chasseurs leaned against 
 the marble columns of the portico, waiting for their 
 master, and speculating on the gayety likely to ensue 
 from the suite he was prosecuting within. How could 
 
 a prince of E be supposed to sue in vain? 
 
 The disguised footman had ushered the gay and 
 estates of Austria. The light from a single long win- ii handsome nobleman to his mistress presence. After 
 
100 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 rearranging a family of very well-arranged flower 
 pots, shutting the window to open it again, changing 
 the folds of the curtains not at all for the better," and 
 lookinsr a stolen and fierce look at the unconscious 
 visitor, he could find no longer an apology for remain 
 ing in the room. He shut the door after him in a 
 tempest of jealousy. 
 
 " Did your excellency ring ?" said he, opening the 
 door again, after a few minutes of intolerable torture. 
 
 The prince was on his knees at her feet ! 
 
 "No, Anatole; but you may bring me a glass of 
 water." 
 
 As he entered with a silver tray trembling in his 
 hand, the prince was rising to go. His face expressed 
 delight, hope, triumph everything that could mad 
 den the soul of the irritated lover. After waiting on 
 his rival to his carriage, he returned to his mistress, 
 and receiving the glass upon the tray, was about 
 leaving the room in silence, when the princess called 
 to him. 
 
 la all this lapse of time it is not to be supposed that 
 Count Anatole played merely his footman s part. His 
 respectful and elegant demeanor, the propriety of his 
 language, and that deep devotedness of manner which 
 wins a woman more than all things else, soon gained 
 upon the confidence of the princess; and before a 
 week was passed she found that she was happier when 
 he stood behind her chair, and gave him, with some 
 self-denial, those frequent permissions of absence from 
 the palace which she supposed he asked to prosecute 
 the amour disclosed to her on his introduction to her 
 service. As time flew on, she attributed his earnest 
 ness and occasional warmth of manner to gratitude; 
 and, without reasoning much on her feelings, gave 
 herself up to the indulgence of a degree of interest in 
 him which would have alarmed a woman more skilled 
 in the knowledge of the heart. Married from a con 
 vent, however, to an old man who had secluded her 
 from the world, the voice of the passionate count in 
 the forest of Friuli was the first sound of love that had 
 ever entered her ears. She knew not why it was that 
 the tones of her new footman, and now and then a look 
 of his eyes, as he leaned over to assist her at table, 
 troubled her memory like a trace of a long-lost dream. 
 
 But, oh, what moments had been his in these fleet 
 ing months ! Admitted to her presence in her most 
 unguarded hours seeing her at morning, at noon, at 
 night, in all her unstudied and surpassing loveliness 
 for ever near her, and with the world shut out her 
 rich hair blowing with the lightest breeze across his 
 fingers in his assiduous service her dark full eyes, 
 unconscious of an observer, filling with unrepressed 
 tears, or glowing with pleasure over some tale of love 
 her exquisite form flung upon a couch, or bending 
 over flowers, or moving about the room in all its native 
 and untrammelled grace and her voice, tender, most 
 tender to him, though she knew it not, and her eyes, 
 herself unaware, ever following him in his loitering 
 attendance and he, the while, losing never a glance 
 nor a motion, but treasuring all up in his heart with 
 the avarice of a miser what, in common life, though 
 it were the life of fortune s most favored child, could 
 compare with it for bliss? 
 
 Pale and agitated, the count turned back at the call 
 of his mistress, and stood waiting her pleasure. 
 
 "Anatole!" 
 
 "Madame!" 
 
 The answer was so low and deep it startled even 
 himself. 
 
 She motioned him to come nearer. She had sunk 
 upon the sofa, and as he stood at her feet she leaned 
 forward, buried her hands and arms in the long curls 
 which, in her retirement, she allowed to float luxuri 
 antly over her shoulders, and sobbed aloud. Over 
 
 come and forgetful of all but the distress of the lovely 
 creature before him, the count dropped upon the cush 
 ion on which rested the small foot in its mourning 
 slipper, and taking her hand, pressed it suddenly and 
 fervently to his lips. 
 
 The reality broke upon her! She was beloved 
 but by whom ? A menial ! and the appalling answer 
 drove all the blood of her proud race in a torrent upon 
 her heart, sweeping away all affection as if her nature 
 had never known its name. She sprang to her feet, 
 and laid her hand upon the bell. 
 
 " Madame !" said Anatole, in a cold proud tone. 
 
 She stayed her arm to listen. 
 
 "I leave you for ever." 
 
 And again, with the quick revulsion of youth and 
 passion, her woman s heart rose within her, and she 
 buried her face in her hands, and dropped her head in 
 utter abandonment on her bosom. 
 
 It was the birthday of the emperor, and the courtly 
 nobles of Austria were rolling out from the capital to 
 offer their congratulations at the royal palace of 
 Schoenbrunn. In addition to the usual attractions 
 of the scene, the drawing-room was to be graced by 
 the first public appearance of a new ambassador, 
 whose reputed personal beauty, and the talents he had 
 displayed in a late secret negotiation, had set the whole 
 court, from the queen of Hungary to the youngest 
 dame d honneur, in a flame of curiosity. 
 
 To the prince E there was another reason for 
 writing the day in red letters. The princess Leich- 
 stenfels, by an express message from the emperess, 
 was to throw aside her widow s weeds, and appear 
 once more to the admiring world. She had yielded 
 to the summons, but it was to be her last day of splen 
 dor. Her heart and hand were plighted to her Ty- 
 rolese minion; and the brightest and loveliest ornament 
 of the court of Austria, when the ceremonies of the 
 day were over, was to lay aside the costly bauble 
 from her shoulder, and the glistening tiara from her 
 brow, and forget rank and fortune as the wife of his 
 bosom ! 
 
 The dazzling hours flew on. The plain and kind 
 old emperor welcomed and smiled upon all. The 
 wily Metternich, in the crime of his successful man 
 hood, cool, polite, handsome, and winning, gathered 
 golden opinions by every word and look ; the young 
 duke of Reichstadt, the mild and gentle son of the 
 struck eagle of St. Helena, surrounded and caressed 
 by a continual cordon of admiring women, seemed for 
 getful that opportunity and expectation awaited him, 
 like two angels with their wings outspread ; and haugh 
 ty nobles and their haughtier dames, statesmen, schol 
 ars, soldiers, and priests, crowded upon each other s 
 heels, and mixed together in that doubtful podrida, 
 which goes by the name of pleasure. I could moralize 
 here had T time ! 
 
 The princess of Leichstenfels had gone through the 
 ceremony of presentation, and had heard the murmur 
 of admiration, drawn by her beauty, from all lips. Diz 
 zy with the scene, and with a bosom full of painful and 
 conflicting emotions, she had accepted the proffered 
 
 arm of Prince E to breathe a fresher air upon 
 
 the terrace. They stood near a window, and he was 
 pointing out to his fair but inattentive companion the 
 various characters as they passed within. 
 
 " I must contrive," said the prince, " to show you 
 the new envoy. Oh ! you have not heard of him. 
 Beautiful as Narcissus, modest as Pastor Corydon, 
 clever as the prime minister himself, this paragon of 
 diplomatists has been here in disguise these three 
 months, negotiating about Melternich and the devil 
 knows what but rewarded at last with an ambassa 
 dor s star, and but here he is : Princess Leichsten 
 fels, permit me to present " 
 
 She heard no more. A glance from the diamond 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 101 
 
 star on his breast to the Hephaestion mouth and keen 
 dark eye of Count Anatole, revealed to her the mys 
 tery of months. And as she leaned against the win 
 dow for support, the hand that sustained her in the 
 forest of Friuli, and the same thrilling voice, in almost 
 the same never-forgotten cadence, offered his impas 
 sioned sympathy and aid and she recognised and re 
 membered all. 
 
 I must go back so far as to inform you, that Count 
 Anatole, on the morning of this memorable day, had 
 sacrificed a silky but prurient mustache, and a pair 
 of the very sauciest dark whiskers out of Coventry. 
 
 Whether the prince E recognised in the new 
 
 envoy the lady s gentleman who so inopportunely 
 broke in upon his tender avowal, I am not prepared to 
 say. I only know (for I was there) that the princess 
 Leichstenfels was wedded to the new ambassador in 
 
 the " leafy month of June ;" and the prince E- , 
 
 unfortunately prevented by illness from attending the 
 nuptials, lost a very handsome opportunity of singing 
 with effect 
 
 " If she be not fair for me" 
 
 supposing it translated into German. 
 
 Whether the enamored ambassadress prefers her 
 husband in his new character, I am equally uncertain ; 
 
 home on board, and as ready to enter into any scheme 
 of amusement, as the maddest-brained midshipman 
 could desire. 
 
 The companion-hatch was covered with its grating, 
 lest some dizzy waltzer should drop his partner into the 
 steerage, the band got out their music-stand, and the 
 bright buttons were soon whirling round from larboard 
 to starboard, with forms in their clasp, and dark eyes 
 glowing over their shoulders, that might have tempted 
 the devil out of Stromboli. 
 
 Being only a passenger myself, I was contented with 
 sitting on the slide of a carronade, and with the music 
 in my ear, and the twilight flush deepening in the fine- 
 traced angles of the rigging, abandoning myself to the 
 delicious listlessness with which the very air is pregnant 
 in these climates of paradise. 
 
 The light feet slid by, and the waltz, the gallopade, 
 and the mazurka, had followed each other till it was 
 broad moonlight on the decks. It was like a night 
 without an atmosphere, the radiant flood poured down 
 with such an invisible and moonlike clearness. 
 
 " Do you see the lady leaning on that old gentle 
 man s arm by the hammock-rail ?" said the first lieu 
 tenant, who sat upon the next gun like myself, a 
 spectator of the scene. 
 
 I had remarked her well. She had been in the ship 
 
 though from much knowledge of German courts and i five or ten minutes, and in that time, it seemed to me 
 a little of human nature, I think she will be happy if i I had drunk her beauty, even to intoxication. The 
 at some future day she would not willingly exchange | frigate was slowly swinging round to the land breeze, 
 her proud envoy for the devoted Tyrolese, and does j and the moon, from drawing the curved line of a gip- 
 not sigh that she can no more bring him to her feet sy-shaped capclla di paglia with bewitching conceal- 
 with a pull of a silken string. I ment across her features, gradually fell full upon the 
 
 dark limit of her orbed forehead. Heaven ! what a 
 vision of beauty! Solemn, and full of subdued paiu 
 as the countenance seemed, it was radiant with an al 
 most supernatual light of mind. Thought and feeling 
 seemed steeped into every line. Her mouth was large 
 the only departure from the severest model of the 
 G ree k an( ] stamped with calmness, as if it had been 
 a legible word upon her lips. But her eyes what can 
 
 THE MADHOUSE OF PALERMO, 
 
 HE who has not skimmed over the silvery waters of , - -, - , . . 
 
 the Lipari, with a summer breeze right from Italy in j| I say of their unnatural lightning of the depth, tn 
 his tonsails. the smoke of Stromboli alone staining the \ fulness, the wild and maniac-like passionateness of their 
 
 his topsails, the sm 
 
 unfathomable-looking blue of the sky, and, as the sun 
 
 dipped his flaming disk in the sea, put up his helm for 
 
 every look ? 
 
 My curiosity was strongly moved. I walked aft to 
 
 ppe s amng s n , 
 
 the bosom of La Concha d Oro, the Golden Shell, as |j the capstan, and throwing oft my habitual reserve with 
 they beautifully call the bay of Palermo : he who has I some effort, approached the old gentleman < 
 not thus entered, I say, to the fairest spot on the face | arm she leaned, and begged permission to lead 1 
 of this very fair earth," has a leaf worth the turning in : for a waltz. 
 his book of observation. " If you wish ,t, canssima mia /" sa,d he, turning to 
 
 In ten minutes after dropping the anchor, with sky i 
 
 her with all the tenderness in his tone of whic 
 
 , 
 
 and water still in a glow, the men were all out of the i honeyed language of Italy is capable. 
 rigging, the spars of the tall frigate were like lines pen- i But she clung to his arm with startled clos ness, and 
 cilled on the sky, the band played inspiringly on the : 
 poop, and every boat along the gay Marina was Right 
 ed with fair Palermitans on its way to the stranger 
 ship. 
 
 I was standing with the oflicer-of-the-deck by the ; 
 capstan, looking at the first star which had just sprung 
 into its place like a thing created with a glance of the i 
 
 without even looking at me, turned her lips up to his 
 ear, and murmured, "Mcdpiu!" 
 
 At my request the officer on duty paid them the com 
 pliment of sending them ashore in one of the frigate s 
 boats; and after assisting them down the ladder, I stood 
 upon the broad stair on the level of the water, and 
 watched the phosphoric wake of the swift cutter till 
 
 eye 
 
 "Shall we let the ladies aboard, sir ?" said a smiling 
 
 middy, coming aft from the gangway. 
 
 " Yes, sir. And tell the boatswain s mate to clear 
 away for a dance on the quarter-deck." 
 
 In most of the ports of the Mediterranean, a ship-of- ! gunroom preparatory to Crinkled 
 
 r, on a summer cruise, is as welcome as the breeze j forms lay about upon the chairs an 1 ta! les, sprn klecl 
 Bringing with her forty or fifty gay ! with swords, epaulettes, and cocked hats , very well 
 
 
 the bright sparkles were lost amid the vessels nearer 
 land. The coxswain reported the boat s return ; but 
 all that belonged to the ship had not come back in her. 
 My heart was left behind. 
 
 The next morning there was the usual bustle in the 
 ing ashore. Glittering uni- 
 
 wa 
 
 from the sea. 
 
 from tlie sea. r> ringing wuu w iuiij u un> ^..j K,.,,cJiprl and vprv 
 
 young officers overcharged with life and spirits, a band brushed boots were sent to b rebrushed and very 
 of music never so well occupied as when playing for a nice coats to be made, ,1 possible, to 
 dance, and a deck whiter and smoother than a ball- ,! ships barber was cursed for not having .the 
 
 * r the warlike vessel seems made for a scene Briareus, and no good was wishe 01 ine 
 
 re. Whatever her nation, she no sooner ! washerwoman of the last port where 
 anchor, than she is surrounded by boats from , j anchored. Cologne-water was m great n** 
 ; and when the word is passed for admission, : the purser had an uncommon number of pnv 
 
 ucrTat i i Amid til the bustle, the question of how to pass the 
 
102 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 day was busily agitated. Twenty plans were proposed ; 
 but the sequel a dinner at the Hotel Anglais, and a 
 " stroll for a lark" after it was the only point on which 
 the speakers were quite unanimous. 
 
 One proposition was to go to Bagaria, and see the 
 palace of Monsters. This is a villa about ten miles 
 from Palermo, which the owner, Count Pallagonia, an 
 eccentric Sicilian noble, has ornamented with some 
 hundreds of statues of the finest workmanship, repre 
 senting the form of woman in every possible combina 
 tion, with beasts, fishes, and birds. It looks like the 
 temptation of St. Anthony on a splendid scale, and is 
 certainly one of the most extraordinary spectacles in 
 the world. 
 
 Near it stands another villa, the property of Prince 
 Butera (the present minister of Naples at the court of 
 France), containing, in the depths of its pleasure- 
 grounds, a large monastery, with wax monks, of the 
 size and appearance of life, scattered about the pas 
 sages and cells, and engaged in every possible uncleri- 
 cal avocation. It is a whimsical satire on the order, 
 done to the life. 
 
 Another plan was to go to the Capuchin convent, 
 and see the dried friars six or eight hundred bearded 
 old men, baked, as they died, in their cowls and beards, 
 and standing against the walls in ghastly rows, in the 
 spacious vaults of the monastery. A more infernal 
 spectacle never was seen by mortal eyes. 
 
 A drive to Monreale, a nest of a village on the moun 
 tain above the town a visit to the gardens of a noble 
 man who salutes the stranger with a jet d eau at every 
 turning and a lounge in the public promenade of 
 Palermo itself shared the honors of the argument. 
 
 I had been in Sicily before, and was hesitating which 
 of these various lions was worthy of a second visit, 
 when the surgeon proposed to me to accompany him 
 on a visit to a Sicilian count living in the neighborhood, 
 who had converted his chateau into a lunatic asylum, 
 and devoted his time and a large fortune entirely to 
 this singular hobby. He was the first to try the sys 
 tem, now, thank God, generally approved, of winning 
 back reason to these most wretched of human suffer 
 ers by kindness and gentle treatment. 
 
 We jumped into one of the rattling calesini standing 
 in the handsome corso of Palermo, and fifteen minutes 
 beyond the gates brought us to the Casa del Pazzi. 
 My friend s uniform and profession were an immediate 
 passport, and we were introduced into a handsome 
 court, surrounded by a colonnade, and cooled by a 
 fountain, in which were walking several well-dressed 
 people, with books, drawing-boards, battledores, and 
 other means of amusement. They all bowed politely ! 
 as we passed, and at the door of the interior we were 
 met by the count. 
 
 " Good God ! ? I exclaimed " she was insane, 
 then !" 
 
 It was the old man who was on board the night be 
 fore ! 
 
 " E clla?" said I, seizing his arm, before he had 
 concluded his bow, quite sure that he must under 
 stand me with a word. 
 
 " Era pazza." 1 He looked at me as he answered, 
 with a scrutiny, as if he half suspected my friend had 
 brought him a subject. 
 
 The singular character of her beauty was quite ex- 
 pi, lined. Yet what a wreck! 
 
 I followed the old count around his establishment 
 in a kind of dream, but I could not avoid being inter 
 ested at every step. Here were no chains, no whips, 
 no harsh keepers, no cells of stone and straw. The 
 walls of the long corridors were painted in fresco, rep 
 resenting sunny landscapes, and gay dancing figures. 
 Fountains and shrubs met us at every turn. The 
 people were dressed in their ordinary clothes, and all 
 employed in some light work or amusement. It was 
 ijke what it might havfc been in the days of the count s 
 
 ancestors a gay chateau, filled with guests and de 
 pendants, with no more apparent constraint than the 
 ties of hospitality and service. 
 
 We went first to the kitchen. Here were tsn 
 people, all, but the cook, stark mad! It was one of 
 the peculiarities of the count s system, that his pa 
 tients led in his house the lives to which they had pre 
 viously been accustomed. A stout Sicilian peasant 
 girl was employed in filling a large brasier from the 
 basin of a fountain. While we were watching her 
 task, the fit began to come on her, and after a fierce 
 look or two around the room, she commenced dashing 
 the water about her with great violence. The cook 
 turned, not at all surprised, and patting her on the 
 back, with a loud laugh, cried, " Brava, Pepinu! 
 brava!" ringing at the same moment a secret bell. 
 
 A young girl of sixteen with a sweet, smiling coun 
 tenance, answered the summons, and immediately 
 comprehending the case, approached the enraged 
 creature, and putting her arms affectionately round her 
 neck, whispered something in her ear. The expres 
 sion of her face changed immediately to a look of de 
 light, and dropping the bucket, she followed the young 
 attendant out of the room with peals of laughter. 
 
 " Vcnitc!" said the count, "you shall see how we 
 manage our furies." 
 
 We followed across a garden filled with the sweet 
 est flowers to a small room opening on a lawn. From 
 the centre of the ceiling was suspended a hammock, 
 and Pepina was already in it, swung lightly from side 
 to side by a servant, while the attendant stood by, and, 
 as if in play, threw water upon her face at every ap 
 proach. It had all the air of a frolic. The violent 
 laughter of the poor maniac grew less and less as the 
 soothing motion and the coolness of the water took 
 effect, and in a few minutes her strained eyes gently 
 closed, the hammock was swung more and more 
 gently, and she fell asleep. 
 
 " This," said the count, with a gratified smile, " is 
 iny substitute for a forced shower-bath and chains; 
 and this," kissing his little attendant on the forehead, 
 " for the whip and the grim turnkey." I blessed him 
 in my heart. 
 
 " Come !" said he, as we left the sleeper to her re 
 pose, "I must show you my grounds." 
 
 We followed him to an extensive garden, opening 
 from the back of the chateau, laid out originally in the 
 formal style of an Italian villa. The long wa iks had 
 been broken up, however, by beautiful arbors with 
 grottoes in their depths, in which wooden figures, of 
 the color and size of life, stood or sat in every altitude 
 of gayety or grotesqueness. It was difficult, in the 
 deep shadow of the vines and oleanders, not to believe 
 them real. We walked on through many a winding 
 shrubbery, perfumed with all the scented flowers of 
 the luxuriant climate, continually surprised with little 
 deceptions of perspective, or figures half concealed in 
 the leaves, till we emerged at the entrance of a charm 
 ing summer theatre, with sodded seats, stage, orches 
 tra, and scenery, complete. ^ Orange- trees, roses, and 
 clematis, were laced together for a wall in the rear. 
 
 "Here," said the old man, bounding gayly upon the 
 stage, "here we act plays the summer long." 
 
 "What! not with your patients?" 
 
 " Si, si gnore ! Who else?" And he went on to 
 describe to us the interest they took in it, and the sin 
 gular power with which the odd idea seized upon their 
 whimsied intellects. We had been accompanied fiom 
 the first, by a grave, respectable looking man, whom I 
 had taken for an assistant. While we were listening 
 to the description of the first attempt they had made 
 at a play, he started out from the group, and pulling 
 himself in an attitude upon the stage, commenced 
 spouting a furious passage in Italian. 
 
 The count pointed to his forehead, and made a sign 
 to us to listen,. The tragedian stopped at the end of 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 103 
 
 his sentence, and after a moment s delay, apparently 
 in expectation of a reply, darted suddenly oft and dis 
 appeared behind the scenes. 
 
 "PovercUo!" said the count, "it is my best actor!" 
 
 Near the theatre stood a small chapel, with a circu 
 lar lawn before it, on which the grass had been lately 
 much trodden. It was surrounded partly by a green 
 bank, and here the count seated us, saying with a sig 
 nificant look at me, that he would tell us a story. 
 
 I should like to give it you in his own words still 
 more with his own manner; for never was a tale told 
 with more elegance of language, or a more natural 
 and pleasant simplicity. But a sheet of " wire-wove" 
 is not a Palermitan cavaliere, and the cold English 
 has not the warm eloquence of the Italiun. He laid 
 aside his hat, ordered fruit and wine, and proceeded. 
 
 " Almost a year ago I was called upon by a gen 
 tleman of a noble physiognomy and address, who in 
 quired very particularly into my system. I explained 
 it to him at his request, and he did me the honor, as 
 you gentlemen have done, to go over my little establish 
 ment. He seemed satisfied, and with some hesitation 
 informed me that lie had a daughter in a very des 
 perate state of mental alienation. Would I go and 
 see her? 
 
 "This is not, you know, gentlemen, a public insti 
 tution. I am crazy," he said it very gravely, "quite 
 crazy the first of my family of fools, on this particular 
 theme and this asylum is my toy. Of course it is 
 only as the whim seizes me that I admit a patient; for 
 there are some diseases of the brain seated in causes 
 with which I wish not to meddle. 
 
 " However, I went. With the freedom of a physi 
 cian I questioned the father, upon the road, of the 
 girl s history. He was a Greek, a prince of the Fanar, 
 who had left his degraded people in their dirty and 
 dangerous suburb at Constantinople, to forget oppres 
 sion and meanness in a voluntary exile. It was just 
 before the breaking out of the last Greek revolution, 
 and so many of his kinsmen and friends had been sac 
 rificed to the fury of the Turks, that he had renounced 
 all idea of ever returning to his country. 
 
 " And your daughter ? 
 
 " My dear Katinka, my only child, fell ill upon re 
 ceiving distressing news from the Fanar, and her 
 health and reason never rallied after. It is now several 
 years, and she has lain in bed till her limbs are with 
 ered, never having uttered a word, or made a sign 
 which would indicate even consciousness of the pres 
 ence of those about her. 
 
 " I could not get from him that there was any disap 
 pointment of the heart at the bottom of it. It seemed 
 to be one of those cases of sudden stupefaction, to 
 which nervously sensitive minds are liable after a vio 
 lent burst of grief; and I began, before I had seen her, 
 to indulge in bright hopes of starting once more the 
 sealed fountains of thought and feeling. 
 
 "We entered Palermo, and passing out at the other 
 gate, stopped at a vine-laced casino on the lip of the 
 bay, scarcely a mile from the city wall. It was a 
 pretty, fanciful place, and, on a bed in its inner cham 
 ber, lay the most poetical-looking creature I had ever 
 seen out of my dreams*. Her head was pillowed, in an 
 abundance of dark hair, which fell away from her fore 
 head in masses of glossy curls, relieving with a striking 
 effect, the wan and transparent paleness of a face which 
 the divinest chisel could scarce have copied in alabas 
 ter. Dio mio ! how transcendant was the beauty of 
 that poor girl !" 
 
 The count stopped and fed his memory a moment 
 with closed eyes upon the image. 
 
 "At the first glance I inwardly put up a prayer to 
 the Virgin, and determined, with her sweet help, to 
 restore reason to the fairest of its earthly temples. I 
 took up her shadow of a hand, and spread out the thin 
 fingers in my palm, and as she turned her large wan 
 
 dering eye toward me, I felt that the blessed Mary 
 had heard my prayer, You shall see her well again, 
 said I confidently. 
 
 "Quite overcome, the prince Ghika fell on the bej 
 and embraced his daughter s knees in an agony of 
 tears. 
 
 "You shall not have the seccatura, gentlemen, of 
 listening to the recital of all my tedious experiments 
 for the first month or two. I brought her to my house 
 upon a litter, placed her in a room filled with every 
 luxury of the east, and suffered no one to approach 
 her except two Greek attendants, to whose services 
 she was accustomed. I succeeded in partially re 
 storing animation to her benumbed limbs by friction, 
 and made her sensible of music, and of the perfumes 
 of the east, which I burned in a pastille-lamp in 
 her chamber. Here, however, my skill was baffled. 
 I could neither amuse nor vex. Her mind was beyond 
 me. After trying every possible experiment, as it 
 seemed to me, my invention was exhausted, and I 
 despaired. 
 
 " She occupied, however, much of my rnind. 
 Walking up and down yonder orange-alley one sweet 
 morning, about two months ago, I started oft suddenly 
 to my chamber with a new thought. You would 
 have thought me the maddest of my household, to 
 have seen me, gentlemen. I turned out by the shoul- 
 ders the regazza, who was making my bed, washed 
 and scented myself, as if for a ball, covered my white 
 hairs with a handsome brown wig, a relic of my cox 
 combical days, rouged faintly, and, with white gloves, 
 and a most youthful appearance altogether, sought 
 i the chamber of my patient. 
 
 "She was lying with her head in the hollow of her 
 th ; n arm, and, as I entered, her dark eyes rested full 
 upon me. I approached, kissed her hand with a re 
 spectful gallantry, and in the tenderest tones of which 
 my damaged voice was susceptible, breathed into her 
 ear a succession of delicately-turned compliments to 
 II her beauty. 
 
 "She lay as immovable as marble, but I had not 
 calculated upon the ruling passion of the sex in vain. 
 A thin flush on her cheek, and a flutter in her temple, 
 only perceptible to my practised eye, told me that the 
 words had found their way to her long-lost conscious 
 ness. 
 
 "I waited a few moments, and then took up a ring 
 let that fell negligently over her hand, and asked per 
 mission to sever it from the glossy mass in which the 
 arm under her head was literally buried. 
 
 " She clutched her fingers suddenly upon it, and 
 glancing at me with the fury of a roused tigress, ex 
 claimed in a husky whisper, Lasdale me, signore ." 
 
 " I obeyed her, and, as I left the room, 1 thanked 
 the Virgin in my heart. It was the first word she had 
 spoken for years. 
 
 " The next day, having patched myself up more 
 successfully in my leisure, in a disguise so absolute 
 that not one even of my pets knew me as I passed 
 through the corridor, I bowed myself up once more to 
 her bedside. 
 
 VShe lay with her hands clasped over her eyes, and 
 took no notice of my first salutation. I commenced 
 with a little raillery, and under cover of finding fault 
 with her attitude, contrived to pay an adroit compli 
 ment to the glorious orbs she was hiding from admira 
 tion. She Jay a moment or two without motion, but 
 the muscles of her slight mouth stirred just percepti 
 bly, and presently she drew her fingers quickly apart, 
 and looking at me with a most confiding expression 
 in her pale features, a full sweet smile broke like sud 
 den sunshine through her lips. I could have wept for 
 
 joy- 
 
 " I soon acquired all the influence over her I could 
 wish. She made an effort at my request to leave her 
 bed, and in a week or two walked with me in the gar- 
 
104 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 den. Her mind, however, seemed to have capacity |j 
 but for one thought, and she soon began to grow un- 
 Vppv. and would weep for hours. I endeavored to 
 dfcnv from her the cause, but she only buried her face 
 in "niy bosom, and wept more violently, till one day, 
 sobbiog out her broken words almost inarticulately, I 
 gathered her meaning. She was grieved that I did not 
 marry^her ! 
 
 " Poor girl !" soliloquized the count, after a brief 
 pause, " she was only true to her woman s nature. In 
 sanity had but removed the veil of custom and restraint. 
 She "would have broken her heart before she had be 
 trayed such a secret, with her reason. 
 
 " I was afraid at last she would go melancholy mad, 
 this one thought preyed so perpetually on her brain 
 and I resolved to delude her into the cheerfulness ne 
 cessary to her health by a mock ceremony. 
 
 " The delight with which she received my promise 
 almost alarmed me. I made several delays, with the 
 hope that in the convulsion of her feelings a ray of 
 reason would break through the darkness; but she 
 took every hour to heart, and I found it was inevi 
 table. 
 
 " You are sitting, gentlemen, in the very scene of our 
 mad bridal. My poor grass has not yet recovered, you 
 see, from the tread of the dancers. Imagine the spec 
 tacle. The chapel was splendidly decorated, and at 
 the bottom of the lawn stood three long tables, cov 
 ered with fruits and flowers, and sprinkled here and 
 there with bottles of colored water (to imitate wine), 
 sherbels, cakes, and other such innocent things as I 
 could allow my crazy ones. They were all invited." 
 
 " Good God !" said the surgeon, " your lunatics ?" 
 
 "All all! And never was such a sensation pro 
 duced in a household since the world was created. 
 Nothing else was talked of for a week. My worst pa 
 tients seemed to suspend for the time their fits of vio 
 lence. I sent to town for quantities of tricksy stuffs, 
 and allowed the women to deck themselves entirely 
 after their own taste. You can conceive nothing like 
 the business they made of it ! Such apparitions ! 
 Santa Maria . shall I ever forget that Babel ? 
 
 " The morning came. My bride s attendants had 
 dressed her from her Grecian wardrobe ; and with her 
 long braid parted over her forehead, and hanging back 
 from her shoulders to her very heels, her close-fitted 
 jacket, of gorgeous velvet and gold, her costly brace 
 lets, and the small spangled slippers upon her unstock- 
 inged feet, she was positively an angelic vision of beau 
 ty. Her countenance was thoughtful, but her step was 
 unusually elastic, and a small red spot, like a rose-leaf 
 tinder the skin, blushed through the alabaster paleness 
 of her cheek. 
 
 " My maniacs received her with shouts of admira 
 tion. The women were kept from her at first with 
 great difficulty, and it was only by drawing their at 
 tention to their own gaudier apparel, that their .anx 
 iety to touch her was distracted. The men looked at 
 her, as she passed along like a queen of love and 
 beamy, and their wild, gleaming eyes, and quickened j 
 breaths, showed the effect of such loveliness upon the 
 unconcealed feelings. I had multiplied my attend- j 
 ants, scarce knowing how the excitement of the scene 
 miffht affect them ; but the interest of the occasion, 
 and the imposing decencies of dress and show, seemed 
 to overcome them effectually. The most sane guests 
 at a bridal could scarce have behaved with more pro 
 priety. 
 
 " The ceremony was performed by an elderly friend 
 of mine, the physician to rny establishment. Old as I 
 am, gentlemen, I could have wished that ceremony to 
 litive been in earnest. As she lifted up her large liquid 
 eyes to heaven, and swore to be true to me till death, I 
 forgot my manhood, and wept. If I had been younger 
 ma che porcheria ! 
 
 " After the marriage the women were invited to sa 
 
 lute the bride, and then all eyes in my natural party 
 turned at once to the feast. I gave the word. Fruits, 
 cakes, and sherbets, disappeared with the rapidity of 
 magic, and then the music struck up from the shrub 
 bery, and they danced as you see by the grass. 
 
 " I committed the bride to her attendants at sunset, 
 but I could with difficulty tear myself away. On the 
 following day I called at her door, but she refused to 
 see me. The next day and the next I could gain no 
 admittance without exerting my authority. On the 
 fourth morning I was permitted to enter. She had re 
 sumed her usual dress, and was sad, calm, and gentle. 
 She said little, but seemed lost in thought to which 
 she was unwilling or unable to give utterance. 
 
 " She has never spoken of it since. Her mind, 1 
 think, has nearly recovered its tone, but her memory 
 seems confused. I scarce think she remembers her 
 illness, and its singular events, as more than a troubled 
 dream. On all the common affairs of life she seems 
 quite sane, and I drive out with her daily, and have 
 taken her once or twice to the opera. Last night we 
 were strolling on the Marina when your frigate came 
 into the bay, and she proposed to join the crowd and 
 go off to hear the music. We went on board, as you 
 know ; and now, if you choose to pay your respects 
 to the lady who refused to waltz with you, take an 
 other sip of your sherbet and wine, and come with 
 me." 
 
 To say more would be trespassing perhaps on the 
 patience of my readers, but certainly on my own feel 
 ings. I have described this singular case of madness 
 and its cure, because I think it contains in itself the 
 seeds of much philosophy on the subject. It is only 
 within a very few years that these poor sufferers have 
 been treated otherwise than as the possessors of in 
 carnate devils, whom it was necessary to scourge out 
 with unsparing cruelty. If this literal statement of a 
 cure in the private madhouse of the eccentric conte 
 , of Palermo, induce the friends of a single un 
 fortunate maniac to adopt a kind and rational system 
 for his restoration, the writer will have been repaid for 
 bringing circumstances before the public which have 
 since had much to do with his own feelings. 
 
 MINUTE PHILOSOPHIES, 
 
 " Nature there 
 
 Was with thee ; she who loved us hoth, she still 
 Was with thee ; and even so didst thou become 
 A silent poet ; from tlie solitude 
 Of the vast sea didst bring a watchful heart 
 
 Of the 
 
 Still couchant, an inevitabi 
 
 And an eye practised lik 
 
 ear, 
 blind man s touch." 
 
 WORDSWORTH. 
 
 A SUMMER or two since, I was wasting a college va 
 cation among the beautiful creeks and falls in the 
 neighborhood of New York. In the course of my 
 wanderings, up-stream and down-stream, sometimes 
 on foot, sometimes on horseback, and never without 
 a book for an excuse to loiter orf the mossy banks and 
 beside the edge of running water, I met frequently a 
 young man of a peculiarly still and collected eye, and 
 a forehead more like a broad slab of marble than a hu 
 man brow. His mouth was small and thinly cut ; his 
 chin had no superfluous flesh upon it; and his whole 
 appearance was that of a man whose intellectual na 
 ture prevailed over the animal. He was evidently a 
 scholar. We had met so frequently at last, that, on 
 passing each other one delicious morning, we bowed 
 and smiled simultaneously, and, without further intro 
 duction, entered into conversation. 
 
 It was a temperate day in August, with a clear but 
 not oppressive sun, and we wandered down a long 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 105 
 
 creek together, mineralizing here, botanizing there, 
 and examining the strata of the ravines, with that sort 
 of instinctive certainty of each other s attainments 
 which scholars always feel, and thrusting in many a 
 little wayside parenthesis, explanatory of each other s 
 history and circumstances. I found that he was one 
 of those pure and unambitious men, who, by close 
 application and moderate living while in college, be 
 come in love with their books ; and, caring little for 
 anything more than the subsistence, which philosophy 
 tells them is enough to have of this world, settle down 
 for life into a wicker-bottomed chair, more content 
 edly than if it were the cushion of a throne. 
 
 We were together three or four days, and when I 
 left him, he gave me his address, and promised to write 
 to me. I shall give below an extract from one of his 
 letters. I had asked him for a history of his daily 
 habits, and any incidents which he might choose to 
 throw in hinting to him that I was a dabbler in lit 
 erature, and would be obliged to him if he would do it 
 minutely, and in a form of which I might avail myself 
 in the way of publication. 
 
 After some particulars, unimportant to the reader, 
 he proceeds : 
 
 " I keep a room at a country tavern. It is a quiet, 
 out-of-the-way place, with a whole generation of elms 
 about it ; and the greenest grass up to the very door, 
 and the pleasantest view in the whole country round 
 from my chamber-window. Though it is a public 
 house, and the word HOTEL swings in golden capi 
 tals under a landscape of two hills and a river, painted 
 for a sign by some wandering Tinto, it is so orderly a 
 town, that not a lounger is ever seen about the door ; 
 and the noisiest traveller is changed to a quiet man, as 
 if it were by the very hush of the atmosphere. 
 
 " Here, in my pleasant room, upon the second floor, 
 with my round table covered with choice books, my 
 shutters closed just so much as to admit light enough 
 for a painter, and my walls hung with the pictures 
 which adorned my college chambers, and are there 
 fore linked with a thousand delightful associations I 
 can study my twelve hours a day, in a state of mind 
 sufficiently even and philosophical. I do not want for 
 excitement. The animal spirits, thanks to the Crea 
 tor, are enough at all times, with employment and 
 temperate living, to raise us above the common shad 
 ows of life ; and after a day of studious confinement, 
 when my mind is unbound, and I go out and give it 
 up to reckless association, and lay myself open unre 
 servedly to the influences of nature at such a time, 
 there comes mysteriously upon me a degree of pure 
 joy, umningled and unaccountable, which is worth 
 years of artificial excitement. The common air seems 
 to have grown rarer; my step is strangely elastic ; my 
 sense of motion full of unwonted dignity; my thoughts 
 elevated ; my perceptions of beauty acuter and more 
 
 pleasurable; and my better nature predominant and - , 
 
 sublime. There is nothing in the future which looks I water it and let in the sunshine to its bosom, detect 
 difficult, nothing in my ambition unattainable, nothing I the secret springs which move to such beautiful re 
 
 shall be happier in one hour spent within himself, 
 than in ten wasted on folly. 
 
 " Few know the treasures in their own bosoms 
 very few the elasticity and capacity of a well-regulated 
 mind for enjoyment. The whole world of philoso 
 phers, and historians, and poets, seem, to the seel qded 
 student, but to have labored for his pleasure ; and as 
 he comes to one new truth and beautiful though) after 
 another, there answers a chord of joy, richer than 
 music, in his heart which spoils him for the coarser 
 pleasures of the world. I have seen my college churn 
 a man, who, from a life of mingled business and 
 pleasure, became suddenly a student lean back in his 
 chair, at the triumph of an argument, or the discovery 
 of a philosophical truth, and give himself up for a few 
 moments to the enjoyment of sensations, which, he 
 assured me, surpassed exceedingly the most vivid 
 pleasures of his life. The mind is like the appetite 
 when healthy and well-toned, receiving pleasure from 
 the commonest food ; but becoming a disease, when 
 pampered and neglected. Give it time to turn in upon 
 itself, satisfy its restless thirst for knowledge, and it 
 will give birth to health, to animal spirits, to every 
 thing which invigorates the body, while it is advan 
 cing by every step the capacities of the soul. Oh ! if 
 the runners after pleasure would stoop down by the 
 wayside, they might drink waters better even than 
 those which they see only in their dreams. They will 
 not be told that they have in their possession the gold- 
 j en key which they covet ; they will not know that the 
 music they look to enchant them, is sleeping in their 
 own untouched instruments ; that the lamp which 
 I they vainly ask from the enchanter, is burning in 
 their own bosoms ! 
 
 " When I first came here, my host s eldest daughter 
 I was about twelve years of age. She was, without be 
 ing beautiful, an engaging child, rather disposed to be 
 ! contemplative, and, like all children, at that age, very 
 j inquisitive and curious. She was shy at first, but soon 
 I became acquainted with me ; and would come into 
 ! my room in her idle hours, and look at my pictures 
 and read. She never disturbed me, because her nat 
 ural politeness forbade it ; and I pursued my thoughts 
 or my studies just as if she were not there, till, by-and- 
 by, I grew fond of her quiet company, and was hap 
 pier when she was moving stealthily around, and look 
 ing into a book here and there in her quiet way. 
 
 "She had been my companion thus for some time, 
 when it occurred to me that I might be of use to her 
 in leading her to cultivate a love for study. I seized 
 the idea enthusiastically. Now, thought I, I will see 
 the process of a human mind. I have studied its phi 
 losophy from books, and now I will take a single 
 original, and compare them, step by step. I have 
 seen the bud, and the flower full blown, and I am told 
 that the change was gradual, and effected thus leaf 
 after leaf. Now I will watch the expansion, and while 
 
 in the past which can not be reconciled with good : I 
 am a purer and a better man; and though I am ele 
 vated in my own thoughts, it will not lead to vanity, 
 for my ideas of God, and of my fellow-men, have been 
 enlarged also. This excitement ceases soon ; but it 
 ceases like the bubbling of a fountain, which leaves 
 the waters purer for the influence which has passed 
 through them not like the mirth of the world, which 
 ebbs like an unnatural tide, and leaves loathsomeness 
 and disgust. 
 
 " Let no one say that such a mode of life is adapted 
 to peculiar constitutions, and can be relished by those 
 only. Give me the veriest worldling the most de 
 voted, and the happiest of fashionable ephemera, and 
 if ho has material for a thought, and can take pride 
 in the improvement of his nature, I will so order his 
 daily round, that, with temperance and exercise, he 
 
 sults. The idea delighted me. 
 
 "I was aware that there was great drudgery in the 
 first step s, and I determined to avoid it, and connect 
 i the idea of my own instruction with all that was de 
 lightful and interesting to her mind. For this pur 
 pose I persuaded her father to send her to a better 
 school than she had been accustomed to attend, and, 
 by a little conversation, stimulated her to enter upon 
 her studies with alacrity. 
 
 " She was now grown to a girl, and had begun to 
 assume the naive, womanly airs which girls do at her 
 age. Her figure had rounded into a flowing sym 
 metry, and her face, whether from associating princi 
 pally with an older person, or for what other reason I 
 know not, had assumed a thoughtful cast, and she 
 was really a girl of most interesting and striking per 
 sonal appearance. 
 
106 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 " I did not expect much from the first year of my 
 Experiment. I calculated justly on its being irksome 
 and common-place. Still I wasarnuspd and interested. 
 I c^ould hear her light step on the stair, always at the 
 saitie early hour of the evening, and it was a pleasure 
 to toe to say Come in, to her timid rap, and set her 
 a cmjir by my own, that I might look over her book, 
 or taik in a low tone to her. 1 then asked her about 
 her lessons, and found out what had most attracted her 
 notice, and I could always find some interesting fact 
 connected with it, or strike off into some pleasant as 
 sociation, till she acquired a habit of selection in her 
 reading, and looked at me earnestly to know whai I 
 would say upon it. You would have smiled to see 
 her leaning forward, with her soft blue eye fixed on 
 me, and her lips half parted with attention, waiting for 
 my ideas upon some bare fact in geography or his 
 tory; and it would have convinced you that the nat 
 ural, unstimulated mind, takes pleasure in the simplest 
 addition to its knowledge. 
 
 " All this time I kept out of her way everything 
 that would have a tendency to destroy a taste for mere 
 knowledge, and had the pleasure to see that she 
 passed with keen relish from her text books to my ob 
 servations, which were as dry as they, though recom 
 mended by kindness of tone and an interested manner. 
 She acquired gradually, by this process, a habit of 
 reasoning upon everything which admitted it, which 
 was afterward of great use in fixing and retaining the 
 leading features of her attainments. 
 
 " I proceeded in this way till she was fifteen. Her 
 mind had now become inured to regular habits of in 
 quiry, and she began to ask difficult questions and 
 wonder at common things. Her thoughts assumed a 
 graver complexion, and she asked for books upon sub 
 jects of which she felt the want of information. She 
 was ready to receive and appreciate truth and instruc- j 
 tion, and here was to begin my pleasure. 
 
 " She came up one evening with an air of embar- ] 
 rassment approaching to distress. She took her usual 
 seat, and told me that she had been thinking all day 
 that it was useless to study any more. There were so 
 many mysterious things so much, even that she could 
 see, which she could not account for, and, with all her 
 efforts, she got on so slowly, that she was discouraged. 
 It was better, she said, to be happy in ignorance, than 
 to be constantly tormented with the sight of knowledge 
 to which she could not attain, and which she only knew 
 enough to value. Poor child ! she did not know that 
 she was making the same complaint with Newton, and 
 Locke, and Bacon, and that the wisest of men were 
 only gatherers of pebbles on the shore of an illimita 
 ble sea ! I began to talk to her of the mind. I spoke 
 of its grandeur, and its capacities, and its destiny. I 
 told her instances of high attainment and wonderful 
 discovery sketched the sublime philosophies of the 
 soul the possibility that this life was but a link in a 
 chain of existences, and the glorious power, if it were 
 true, of entering upon another world, with a loftier ca 
 pacity than your fellow-beings for the comprehension 
 of its mysteries. I then touched upon the duty of self- 
 cultivation the pride of a high consciousness of im 
 proved time, and the delicious feelings of self-respect 
 and true appreciation. 
 
 "She listened to me in silence, and wept. It was 
 one of those periods which occur to all delicate minds, j 
 of distrust and fear; and when it passed by, and her ! 
 ambition stirred again, she gave vent to her feelings ^. 
 with a woman s beautiful privilege. I had no more j 
 trouble to urge her on. She began the next day with 
 the philosophy of the mind, and I was never happier i 
 than while following her from step to step in this de- | 
 lightful study. 
 
 " I have always thought that the most triumphant 
 intellectual feeling we ever experience, is felt upon the 
 first opening of philosophy. It is like the interpreta 
 
 tion of a dream of a lifetime. Every topic seems to 
 you like a phantom of your own mind, from which a 
 mist has suddenly melted. Every feature has a kind 
 of half-familiarity, and you remember musing upon it 
 for hours, till you gave it up with an impatient dissat 
 isfaction. Without a definite shape, this or that very 
 idea has floated in your mind continually. It was a phe 
 nomenon without a name a something which you 
 could not describe to your friend, and which, by-and- 
 by, you came to believe was peculiar to yourself, and 
 would never be brought out or unravelled. You read 
 on, and the blood rushes to your face in a tumultu 
 ous consciousness you have had feelings in pecu 
 liar situations which you could not define, and here 
 are tbeir very features and you know, now, that it was 
 jealousy, or ambition, or love. There have been mo 
 ments when your faculties seemed blinded or reversed. 
 You could not express yourself at all when you felt 
 you should be eloquent. You could not fix your 
 mind upon the subject, of which, before, you had been 
 passionately fond. You felt an aversion for your very 
 partialities, or a strange warming in your heart toward 
 people or pursuits that you had disliked; and when 
 the beauty of the natural world has burst upon you, 
 as it sometimes will, with an exceeding glory, you 
 have turned away from it with a deadly sickness of 
 heart, and a wish that you might die. 
 
 " These are mysteries which are not all soluble even 
 by philosophy. But you can see enough of the ma 
 chinery of thought to know its tendencies, and like 
 the listener to mysterious music, it is enough to have 
 seen the instrument, without knowing the cunning 
 craft of the player. 
 
 "I remembered my school-day feelings, and lived 
 them over again with my beautiful pupil. I entered 
 with as much enthusiasm as she, into the strength and 
 sublimity which I had wondered at before ; and I be 
 lieve that, even as she sat reading by herself, my blood 
 thrilled, and my pulses quickened, as vividly as her 
 own, when I saw, by the deepening color of her cheek, 
 or the marked passages of my book, that she had found 
 a noble thought or a daring hypothesis. 
 
 " She proceeded with her course of philosophy rap 
 idly and eagerly. Her mind was well prepared for its 
 relish. She said she felt as if a new sense had been 
 given her an inner eye which she could turn in upon 
 herself, and by which she could, as it were, stand aside 
 while the process of thought went on. She began to 
 respect and to rely upon her own mind, and the eleva 
 tion of countenance and manner, which so certainly 
 and so beautifully accompanies inward refinement, 
 stole over her daily. I began to feel respectful in her 
 presence, and when, witli the peculiar elegance of a 
 woman s mind, she discovered a delicate shade of 
 meaning which I had not seen, or traced an associa 
 tion which could spring only from an unsullied heart, 
 I experienced a sensation like the consciousness of an 
 unseen presence elevating, without alarming me. 
 
 "It was probably well that with all this change in 
 her mind and manner, her person still retained its 
 childish grace and flexibility. She had not grown 
 tall, and she wore her hair yet as she used to do fall 
 ing with a luxuriant fulness upon her shoulders. 
 Hence she was still a child, when, had she been taller 
 or more womanly, the demands upon her attention, 
 and the attractiveness of mature society, might have 
 divided that engrossing interest which is necessary to 
 successful study. 
 
 " I hav^ often wished I was a painter; but never so 
 much as when looking on this beautiful being as she 
 sat absorbed in her studies, or turned to gaze up a 
 moment to my face, with that delicious expression of 
 inquiry and affection. Every one knows the elevation 
 given to the countenance of a man by contemplative 
 habits. Perhaps the natural delicacy of feminine fea 
 tures has combined with its rarity, to make this ex- 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 107 
 
 pression less observable in woman; but, to one famil 
 iar with the study of the human face, there is, in the 
 look of a truly intellectual woman, a keen subtlety of 
 refinement, a separation from everything gross and 
 material, which comes up to our highest dream of the 
 angelic. For myself, I care not to analyze it. I leave 
 it to philosophy to find out its secret. It is enough 
 for me that I can see and feel it in every pulse of my 
 being. It is not a peculiar susceptibility. Everyman 
 who approaches such a woman feels it. He may not 
 define it; he may be totally unconscious what it is 
 that awes him ; but he feels as if a mysterious and in 
 visible veil were about her, and every dark thought is 
 quenched suddenly in his heart, as if he had come 
 into the atmosphere of a spirit. I would have every 
 woman know this. I would tell every mother who 
 prays nightly for the peculiar watchfulness of good 
 spirits over the purity of her child, that she may weave 
 round her a defence stronger than steel that she may 
 place in her heart a living amulet whose virtue is like 
 a circle of fire to pollution. I am not stringing pearls. 
 I have seen, and I know, that an empty mind is not a 
 strong citadel; and in the melancholy chronicle of 
 female ruin, the instances are rare of victims distin 
 guished for mental cultivation. I would my pen were 
 the point of a diamond, and I were writing on living 
 hearts! for when I think how the daughters of a house 
 are its grace and honor and when I think how the 
 father and mother that loved her, and the brother that 
 made her his pride, and the sister in whose bosom she 
 slept, are all crushed, utterly, by a daughter s degra 
 dation, I feel, that if every word were a burning coal, 
 my language could not be extravagant! 
 
 "My pupil, had, as yet, read no poetry. I was un 
 certain how to enter upon it. Her taste for the beau 
 tiful in prose had become so decided, that I feared for 
 the first impression of my poetical world. I wished it 
 to burst upon her brilliantly like the entrance to an 
 inner- and more magnificent temple of knowledge. I 
 hoped to dazzle her with a high and unimagined 
 beauty, which should exceed far the massive but. plain 
 splendors of philosophy. We had often conversed on 
 the probability of a previous existence, and, one eve 
 ning, I opened Wordsworth, and read his sublime 
 Ode upon Intimations of Immortality. She did not 
 interrupt me, but I looked up at the conclusion, and 
 she was in tears. I made no remark, but took Byron, 
 and read some of the finest passages in Childe Harold, 
 and Manfred, and Cain and, from that time, poetry- 
 has been her world ! 
 
 "It would not have been so earlier. It needs the j in of color, and the vanishing of the cold shadows of 
 simple and strong nutriment of truth to fit us to relish || gray the heavenly quiet that seems infused, like a 
 and feel poetry. The mind must have strength and j visible spirit, into the pearly depths of the east, as the 
 cultivated taste, and then it is like a language from i light violet tints become deeper in the upper sky, and 
 Heaven. We are astonished at its power and mag- j the morning mist rises up like a veil of silvery film, 
 
 found time to study nature. She knew little of the 
 character of the material creation, and I now com 
 menced walking constantly abroad with her at sunset, 
 and at all the delicious seasons of moonlight and star 
 light and dawn. It came in well with her poetry. I 
 can not describe the effect. She became, like all who 
 are, for the first time, made sensible of the glories 
 around them, a worshipper of the external world. 
 
 " There is a time when nature first loses its famil 
 iarity, and seems suddenly to have become beautiful. 
 This is true even of those who have been taught early 
 habits of observation. The mind of a child is too 
 feeble to comprehend, and does not soon learn, the 
 scale of sublimity and beauty. He would not be sur 
 prised if the sun were brighter, or if the siars were 
 sown thicker in the sky. He sees that the flower is 
 beautiful, and he feels admiration at the rainbow ; but 
 he would not wonder if the dyes of the flower were 
 deeper, or if the sky were laced to the four coi ners 
 with the colors of a prism. He grows up with tr"se 
 splendid phenomena at work about him, till they have 
 become common, and, in their most wonderful forms, 
 cease to attract his attention. Then his senses are 
 suddenly, as by an invisible influence, unsealed, and, 
 like the proselyte of the Egyptian pyramids, he finds 
 himself in a magnificent temple, and hears exquisite 
 music, and is dazzled by surpassing glory. He never 
 recovers his indifference. The perpetual changes of 
 nature keep alive his enthusiasm, and if his taste is not 
 dulled by subsequent debasement, the pleasure he re 
 ceives from it flows on like a stream wearing deeper 
 and calmer. 
 
 Caroline became now my constant companion. 
 The changes of the natural world have always been 
 my chief source of happiness, and I was curious to 
 know whether my different sensations, under different 
 circumstances, were peculiar to myself. I left her, 
 therefore, to lead the conversation, without any ex 
 pression of my feelings, and, to my surprise and de 
 light, she invariably struck their tone, and pursued the 
 same vein of reflection. It convinced me of what I 
 had long thought might be true that there was, in 
 the varieties of natural beauty, a hidden meaning, and 
 a delightful purpose of good ; and, if I am not de 
 ceived, it is a new and beautiful evidence of the pro 
 portion and extent of God s benevolent wisdom. 
 Thus, you may remember the peculiar effect ol the 
 early dawn the deep, unruffled serenity, and the per 
 fect collectedness of your senses. You may remem- 
 j ber the remarkable purity that pervades the stealing 
 
 nificence. We have been familiar with knowledge t 
 with a person of plain garment and a homely presence 
 -and lie comes to us in poetry, with the state of a 
 
 and softens away its intensity; and then you will re 
 member how the very beatings of your heart grew 
 
 (|iiiet, and you felt 
 
 sistible impulse to pray! 
 
 king, glorious in purple and gold. We have known There was no irregular delight, no indefinite sensa- 
 hiin as an unassuming friend who talked with us by J tion, no ecstacy. It was deep, unbroken repose, and 
 the wayside, and kept us company on our familiar l] your pulses were free from the fever of life, and your 
 paths and we see him coming with a stately step, and !; reason was lying awake in its chamber, 
 a glittering diadem on his brow; and we wonder that !j " There is a hush also at noon; but it is not like 
 we" did not see that his plain garment honored him the morning. You have been mingling in the business 
 
 not, and his bearing were fitter for a king! 
 
 "Poetry entered to the very soul of Caroline Grey. 
 It was touching an unreached string, and she felt as 
 
 of the world, and you turn aside, weary and distracted, 
 for rest. There is a far depth, in the intense blue of 
 the sky which takes in the spirit, and you are content 
 
 if the whole compass of her heart were given out. I II to lie "down and sleep in the cool shadow, and forget 
 used to read to her for hours, and it was beautiful to | even our existence. How different from the cool 
 
 see her eye kindle, and her cheek burn with excite 
 ment. The sublimed mysticism and spirituality of j 
 Wordsworth were her delight, and she feasted upon 
 the deep philosophy and half-hidden tenderness of 
 Coleridge. 
 
 " I had observed, with some satisfaction, that, in the 
 rapid development of her mental powers, she had not , 
 
 y 
 
 wakefulness of the morning, and yet how fitted for the 
 necessity of the hour! 
 
 "The day wears on and comes to the sunsetting. 
 The strong light passes oft" from the hills, and the 
 leaves are mingled in golden masses, and the tips of the 
 long grass, and the blades of maize, and the luxuriant 
 grain," are all sleeping in a rich glow, as if the daylight 
 
108 
 
 INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 had melted into gold and descended upon every living 
 thing like dew. The sun goes down, and there is a 
 tissue of indescribable glory floating upon the clouds, 
 and the almost imperceptible blending of the sunset 
 color with the blue sky, is far up toward the zenith. 
 Presently the pomp of the early sunset passes away ; 
 and the clouds are all clad in purple, with edges of 
 metallic lustre; and very far in the west, as if they 
 were sailing away into another world, are seen spots 
 of intense brightness, and the tall trees on the hilly 
 edge of the horizon seem piercing the sky, on fire with 
 its consuming heat. There is a tumultuous joy in 
 the contemplation of this hour which is peculiar to 
 itself. You feel as if you should have had wings; for 
 there is a strange stirring in your heart to follow on 
 and your imagination bursts away into that beautiful 
 world, and revels among the unsubstantial clouds till 
 they become cold. It is a triumphant and extravagant 
 hour. Its joyousness is an intoxication, and its pleas 
 ure dies with the day. 
 
 " The night, starry and beautiful, comes on. The 
 sky has a blue, intense almost to blackness, and the 
 stars are set in it like gems. They are of different 
 glory, and there are some that burn, and some that I 
 have a twinkling lustre, and some are just visible and 
 faint. You know their nature, and their motion ; and 
 there is something awful in so many worlds moving on 
 through the firmament so silently and in order. You I 
 feel an indescribable awe stealing upon you, and your 
 imagination trembles as it goes up among them. You 
 gaze on, and on, and the superstitions of olden time, 
 and the wild visions of astrology, steal over your mem 
 ory, till, by-and-by, you hear the music which they 
 give out as they go, and drink in the mysteries of 
 their hidden meaning, and believe that your destiny is 
 woven by their burning spheres. There comes on 
 you a delirious joy, and a kind of terrible fellowship 
 with their sublime nature, and you feel as if you could 
 go up to a starry place and course the heavens in com 
 pany. There is a spirituality in this hour, a separa 
 tion from material things, which is of a fine order of 
 happiness. The purity of the morning, and the noon 
 tide quietness, and the rapture of the glorious sunset, 
 are all human and comprehensible feelings ; but this 
 has the mystery and the lofty energy of a higher world, j 
 
 might object to her want of fashionable tournure, and 
 find fault with her unfashionable impulses. I do not. 
 She is a high-minded, noble, impassioned being, with 
 an enthusiasm that is not without reason, and a com 
 mon sense that is not a regard to self-interest. Her 
 motion was not learned at schools, but it is unembar 
 rassed and free ; and her tone has not been educated 
 to a refined whisper, but it expresses the meaning of 
 her heart, as if its very pulse had become articulate. 
 The many might not admire her I know she would 
 be idolized by the few. 
 
 " Our intercourse is as intimate still ; and it could 
 not change without being less so for we are constant 
 ly together. There is to be sure lately a slight 
 degree of embarrassment and somehow we read 
 more poetry than we used to do but it is nothing at 
 all nothing." 
 
 My friend was married to his pupil a few months 
 after writing the foregoing. He has written to me 
 since, and 1 will show you the letter if you will call, 
 any time. It will not do to print it, because there are 
 some domestic details not proper for the general eye ; 
 but, to me, who am a bachelor, bent upon matrimony, 
 it is interesting to the last degree. He lives the same 
 quiet, retired life, that he did before he was married. 
 His room is arranged with the same taste, and with 
 reference to the same habits as before. The light 
 comes in as timidly through the half-closed window, 
 and his pictures look as shadowy and dim, and the 
 rustle of the turned leaf adds as mysteriously to the 
 silence. He is the fondest of husbands, but his affec 
 tion does not encroach on the habits of his mind. Now 
 and then he looks up from his book, and, resting his 
 head upon his hand, lets his eye wander over the pale 
 cheek and drooping lid of the beautiful being who sits 
 reading beside him ; but he soon returns to his half- 
 forgotten page, and the smile of affection which had 
 stolen over his features fades gradually away into the 
 habitual soberness of thought. There sits his wife, 
 hour after hour, in the same chair which she occupied 
 when she first came, a curious loiterer to his room ; 
 and though she does not study so much, because other 
 cares have a claim upon her now, she still keeps pace 
 
 thhim in the pleasanter branches of knowledge, and 
 
 and you return to your human nature with a refreshed j| they talk as often and as earnestly as before on the 
 
 
 
 spirit and an elevated purpose : see now the wisdom 
 of God I the collected intellect for the morning pray 
 er and our daily duty the delicious repose for our 
 noontide weariness and the rapt fervor to purify us 
 by night from our worldliness, and keep wakeful the 
 eye of immortality ! They are all suited to our need ; 
 and it is pleasant to think, when we go out at this or 
 that season, that its peculiar beauty is fitted to our pe 
 culiar wants, and that it is not a chance harmony of our 
 hearts with nature. 
 
 "The world had become to Caroline a new place. 
 No change in the season was indifferent to her noth 
 ing was common or familiar. She found beauty in 
 things you would pass by, and a lesson for her mind or 
 her heart in the minutest workmanship of nature. Her 
 character assumed a cheerful dignity, and an elevation 
 
 above ordinary amusements or annoyances. She WE 
 equable and calm, because her feelings were never 
 
 thousand topics of a scholar s contemplation. Her 
 cares may and will multiply ; but she understands the 
 economy of time, and I have no doubt that, with every 
 attention to her daily duties, she will find ample time 
 for her mind, and be always as well fitted as now for 
 the companionship of an intellectual being. 
 
 I have, like all bachelors, speculated a great deal 
 upon matrimony. I have seen young and beautiful 
 women, the pride of gay circles, married as the world 
 said well ! Some have moved into costly houses, and 
 their friends have all come and looked at their fine 
 furniture and their splendid arrangements for happi 
 ness, and they have gone away and committed them to 
 their sunny hopes, cheerfully, and without fear. It is 
 natural to be sanguine for the young, and, at such 
 times, I am carried away by similar feelings. I love to 
 
 get unobserved into a corner, and watch the bride in 
 her white attire, and with her smiling face and her soft 
 
 reached by ordinary irritations ; and, if there were no !| eyes moving before me in their pride of life, weave a 
 other benefit in cultivation, this were almost argument ! waking dream of her future happiness, and persuade 
 
 enough to induce it. 
 
 " It is now five years since I commenced my tutor 
 ship. I have given you the history of two of them. In 
 the remaining three there has been much that has in 
 terested my mind probably little that would interest 
 yours. We have read together, and, as far as possible, 
 studied together. She has walked with me, and shared 
 all my leisure, and known every thought. She is now a 
 woman of eighteen. Her childish graces are matured, 
 and her blue eye would send a thrill through you. You 
 
 myself that it will be true. I think how they will sit 
 upon that luxurious sofa as the twilight falls, and build 
 gay hopes, and murmur in low tones the now unfor- 
 bidden tenderness, and how thrillingly the allowed kiss 
 and the beautiful endearments of wedded life, will 
 make even their parting joyous, and how gladly they 
 will come back from the crowd and the empty mirth 
 of the gay, to each other s quiet company. I picture 
 to myself that young creature, who blushes, even now, 
 at his hesitating caress, listening eagerly for his foot- 
 
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
 109 
 
 steps as the night steals on, and wishing that he would 
 come ; and when he enters at last, and, with an affec 
 tion as undying as his pulse, folds her to his bosom, I 
 can feel the very tide that goes flowing through his 
 heart, and gaze with him on her graceful form as 
 she moves about him for the kind offices of affec 
 tion, soothing all his unquiet cares, and making him 
 lorget even himself, in her young and unshadowed 
 beauty. 
 
 I go forward for years, and see her luxuriant hair 
 put soberly away from her brow, and her girlish graces 
 ripened into dignity, and her bright loveliness chast 
 ened with the gentle meekness of maternal affection. 
 Her husband looks on her with a proud eye, and 
 shows the same fervent love and delicate attention < 
 which first won her, and fair children are growing ! 
 -up about them, and they go on, full of honor and ; 
 untroubled years, and are remembered when they 
 die ! 
 
 I say I love to dream thus when I go to give the 
 young bride joy. It is the natural tendency of feel 
 ings touched by loveliness that fears nothing for itself, 
 and, if I ever yield to darker feelings, it is because the > 
 light of the picture is changed. I am not fond of f 
 dwelling on such changes, and I will not, minutely, j 
 now. 1 allude to it only because I trust that my sim- j 
 pie page will be read by some of the young and beau 
 tiful beings who move daily across my path, and I j 
 would whisper to them as they glide by, joyously and 
 confidingly, the secret of an unclouded future. 
 
 The picture I have drawn above is not peculiar. It j 
 is colored like the fancies of the bride ; and many oh j 
 many an hour will she sit, with her rich jewels lying 
 loose in her fingers, and dream such dreams as these. 
 She believes them, too and she goes on, for a while, 
 undeceived. The evening is not too long while they 
 talk of their plans for happiness, and the quiet meal is 
 still pleasant with the delightful novelty of mutual re 
 liance and attention. There comes soon, however, a 
 time when personal topics become bare and wearisome, j 
 
 and slight attentions will not alone keep up the social 
 excitement. There are long intervals of silence, and 
 detected symptoms of weariness, and the husband, first 
 in his impatient manhood, breaks in upon the hours 
 they were to spend together. I can not follow it cir 
 cumstantially. There come long hours of unhappy 
 listlessness, and terrible misgivings of each other s worth 
 and affection, till, by-and-by, they can conceal their 
 uneasiness no longer, and go out separately to seek 
 relief, and lean upon a hollow world for the support 
 which one who was their "lover and friend" could not 
 give them ! 
 
 Heed this, ye who are winning, by your innocent 
 beauty, the affections of highminded and thinking 
 beings ! Remember that he will give up the brother 
 of his heart with whom he has had, ever, a fellowship 
 of mind the society of his contemporary runners in 
 the race of fame, who have held with him a stern 
 companionship and frequently, in his passionate love, 
 he will break away from the arena of his burning am 
 bition, to come and listen to the "voice of the charm 
 er." It will bewilder him at first, but it will not long ; 
 and then, think you that an idle blandishment will 
 chain the mind that has been used, for years, to an 
 equal communion ? Think you he will give up, for a 
 weak dalliance, the animating themes of men, and the 
 search into the fine mysteries of knowledge ? Oh no, 
 lady ! believe me no ! Trust not your influence to 
 such light fetters ! Credit not the old-fashioned ab 
 surdity that woman s is a secondary lot ministering 
 to the necessities of her lord and master ! It is a 
 higher destiny I would award you. If your immor 
 tality is as complete, and your gift of mind as capable 
 as ours of increase and elevation, I would put no wis 
 dom of mine against God s evident allotment. I 
 would charge you to water the undying bud, and give 
 it healthy culture, and open its beauty to the sun 
 and then you may hope, that when your life is bound 
 up with another, you will go on equally, and in a 
 fellowship that shall pervade every earthly interest 
 
 END OF INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE. 
 
DASHES AT LIFE 
 
 WITH A FREE PENCIL. 
 
 P A E T III; 
 
 LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
 LADY RAVELGOLD, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " What wouid it pleasure me to have my throat cut 
 With diamonds ? or to be smothered quick 
 With cassia, or be shot to death with pearls 1" 
 
 DUTCHESS or MALFY. 
 
 " I ve been i the Indies twice, and seen strange things 
 But two honest women .One, I read of once !" 
 
 RULE A WIFE. 
 
 IT was what is called by people on the continent a 
 " London day." A thin, gray mist drizzled down 
 through the smoke which darkened the long cavern 
 of Fleet street ; the sidewalks were slippery and clam 
 my ; the drays slid from side to side on the greasy 
 pavement, creating a perpetual clamor among the 
 lighter carriages with which they came in contact ; 
 the porters wondered that "gemmen" would carry 
 their umbrellas up when there was no rain, and the 
 gentlemen wondered that, porters should be permitted 
 on the sidewalks ; there were passengers in box-coats, 
 though it was the first of May, and beggars with bare 
 breasts, though it was chilly as November ; the boys 
 were looking wistfully into the hosier s windows who 
 were generally at the pastry-cook s ; and there were 
 persons who wished to know the time, trying in vain 
 to see the dial of St. Paul s through the gamboge at 
 mosphere. 
 
 It was twelve o clock, find a plain chariot with a 
 simple crest on the panels, slowly picked its way 
 through the choked and disputed thoroughfare east 
 of Temple Bar. The smart glazed hat of the coach 
 man, the well-fitted drab greatcoat and gaiters of the 
 footman, and the sort of half-submissive, half-con 
 temptuous look on both their faces (implying that they 
 were bound to drive to the devil if it were miladi s or 
 ders, but that the rabble of Fleet street was a leetle too 
 vulgar for their contact), expressed very plainly that 
 the lady within was a denizen of a more privileged 
 quarter, but had chosen a rainy day for some compul 
 sory visit to " the city." 
 
 At the rate of perhaps a mile an hour, the well- 
 groomed night-horses (a pair of smart, hardy, twelve- 
 mile cabs, all bottom, but little style, kept for night- 
 work and forced journeys) had threaded the tortuous 
 entrails of London, and had arrived at the arch of a 
 dark court in Throgmorton street. The coachman 
 put his wheels snug against the edge of the sidewalk, 
 to avoid being crushed by the passing drays, and set 
 tled his many-caped benjamin about him ; while the 
 footman spread his umbrella, and making a balustrade 
 of his arm for his mistress s assistance, a closely-veiled 
 lady descended and disappeared up the wet and ill- 
 paved avenue. 
 
 The green-baize door of Firkins and Co. opened on 
 its silent hinges and admitted the mysterious visiter, 
 who, inquiring of the nearest clerk if the junior part 
 ner were in, was shown to a small inner room contain 
 ing a desk, two chairs, a coal fire, and a young gentle 
 man. The last article of furniture rose on the lady s 
 entrance, and as she threw off her veil he made a low 
 bow, with the air of a gentleman, who is neither sur 
 prised nor embarrassed, and pushing aside the door- 
 check, they were left alone. 
 
 There was that forced complaisance in the lady s 
 manner on her first entrance, which produced the 
 slightest possible elevation in a very scornful lip owned 
 by the junior partner, but the lady was only forty-five, 
 highborn, and very handsome, and as she looked at 
 the fine specimen of nature s nobility, who met her 
 with a look as proud and yet as gentle as her own, the 
 smoke of Fleet street passed away from her memory, 
 and she became natural and even gracious. The 
 effect upon the junior partner was simply that of re 
 moving from his breast the shade of her first impres 
 sion. 
 
 " I have brought you," said his visiter, drawing a 
 card from her reticule, " an invitation to the dutchess 
 of Hautaigle s ball. She sent me half a dozen to fill 
 up for what she calls ornamentals and I am sure I 
 shall scarce find another who comes so decidedly under 
 her grace s category." 
 
 The fair speaker had delivered this pretty speech 
 in the sweetest and best-bred tone of St. James s, 
 looking the while at the toe of the small brodequin 
 which she held up to the fire perhaps thinking only 
 of drying it. As she concluded her sentence, she 
 turned to her companion for an answer, and was sur 
 prised at the impassive politeness of his bow of ac 
 knowledgment. 
 
 I reg ret that I shall not be able to avail myself of 
 your ladyship s kindness," said the junior partner, in 
 the same well-enunciated tone of courtesy. 
 
 " Then," replied the lady with a smile, "Lord Au 
 gustus Fitz-Moi, who looks at himself all dinner-time 
 in a spoon, will be the Apollo of the hour. What a 
 pity such a handsome creature should be so vain ! 
 By-the-way, Mr. Firkins, you live without a looking- 
 glass, I see." 
 
 " Your ladyship reminds me that this is merely a 
 place of business. May I ask at once what errand 
 has procured me the honor of a visit on so unpleasant 
 a day ?" 
 
 A slight flush brightened the cheek and forehead 
 of the beautiful woman, as she compressed her lips, 
 and forced herself to say with affected ease, The 
 want of five hundred pounds." 
 
 The junior partner paused an instant, while the lady 
 tapped with her boot upon the fender in ill-dissembled 
 anxiety, and then, turning to his desk, he filled up the 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD. 
 
 Ill 
 
 check without remark, presented it, and took his hat 
 to wait on her to her carriage. A gleam of relief and 
 pleasure shot over her countenance as she closed her 
 small jewelled hand over it, followed immediately by a 
 look of embarrassed inquiry into the face of the un 
 questioning banker. 
 
 " I am in your debt already." 
 
 " Thirty thousand pounds, madam !" 
 
 " And for this you think the securities on the estate 
 of Rockland " 
 
 "Are worth nothing, madam ! But it rains. I re 
 gret that your ladyship s carriage can not come to the 
 door. In the old-fashioned days of sedan-chairs, now, 
 the dark courts of Lothbury must have been more at 
 tractive. By-the-way, talking of Lothbury, there is 
 Lady Roseberry s fete champetre next week. If you 
 should chance to have a spare card " 
 
 " Twenty, if you like I am too happy really, Mr. 
 Firkins " 
 
 " It s on the fifteenth ; I shall have the honor of 
 seeing your ladyship there ! Good-morning ! Home, 
 coachman !" 
 
 44 Does this man love me ?" was Lady Ravelgold s 
 first thought, as she sank back in her returning char 
 iot. " Yet no ! he was even rude in his haste to be 
 rid of me. And I would willingly have stayed too, for 
 there is something about him of a mark that I like. 
 Ay, and he must have seen it a lighter encourage 
 ment has been interpreted more readily. Five hun 
 dred pounds ! really five hundred pounds ! And thir 
 ty thousand at the back of it ! What does he mean ? 
 Heavens ! if he should be deeper than I thought ! If 
 he should wish to involve me first !" 
 
 And spite of the horror with which the thought was 
 met in the mind of Lavy Ravelgold, the blush over 
 her forehead died away into a half smile and a bright 
 er tint in her lips ; and as the carriage wound slow 
 on through the confused press of Fleet street andt 
 Strand, the image of the handsome and haughty young 
 banker shut her eyes from all sounds without, and she 
 was at her own door in Grosvenor square before she 
 had changed position or wandered half a moment from 
 the subject of those busy dreams. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE morning of the fifteenth of May seemed to 
 have been appointed by all the flowers as a jubilee of 
 perfume and bloom. The birds had been invited, and 
 sang in the summer with a welcome as full-throated 
 as a prima donna singin down the tenor in a duet ; 
 the most laggard buds turned out their hearts to the 
 sunshine, and promised leaves on the morrow ; and 
 that portion of London that had been invited to Lady 
 Roseberry s fete, thought it a very fine day" ! That 
 portion which was not, wondered how people would 
 go sweltering about in such a glare for a cold dinner ! 
 
 At about half past two, a very elegant dark-green 
 cab without a crest, and with a servant in whose slight 
 figure and plain blue livery there was not a fault, 
 whirled out at the gate of the Regent s Park, and took 
 its way up the well-watered road leading to Hamp- 
 stead. The gentlemen whom it passed or met turned 
 to admire the performance of the dark-gray horse, and 
 the ladies looked after the cab as if they could see the 
 handsome occupant once more through its leather 
 back. Whether by conspiracy among the coach- 
 makers, or by an aristocracy of taste, the degree of 
 elegance in a turn-out attained by the cab just de 
 scribed, is usually confined to the acquaintances of 
 
 Lady ; that list being understood to enumerate 
 
 all " the nice young men" of the West End, beside 
 the guardsmen. (The ton of the latter, in all matters 
 that affect the style of the regiment, is looked after by 
 
 r as 
 rer 
 
 I 
 
 the club and the colonel.) The junior Firkins seemed 
 an exception to this exclusive rule. No " nice man" 
 could come from Lothbury, and he did not visit Lady 
 
 ; but his horse was faultless, and when he turned 
 
 into the gate of Rose-Eden, the policeman at the 
 porter s lodge, though he did not know him, thought 
 it unnecessary to ask for his name. Away he spat 
 tered up the hilly avenue, and giving the reins to his 
 groom at the end of a green arbor leading to the re 
 ception-lawn, he walked in and made his bow to Lady 
 Roseberry, who remarked, " How very handsome ! 
 Who can he be ?" and the junior partner walked on 
 and disappeared down an avenue of laburnums. 
 
 Ah ! but Rose-Eden looked a paradise that day ! 
 Hundreds had passed across the close-shaven lawn, 
 with a bow to the lady-mistress of this fair abode. Yet 
 the grounds were still private enough for Milton s pair, 
 so lost were they in the green labyrinths of hill and 
 dale. Some had descended through heavily-shaded 
 paths to a fancy dairy, built over a fountain in the bot 
 tom of a cool dell ; and here, amid her milk-pans of 
 old and costly china, the prettiest majd in the country 
 round pattered about upon a floor of Dutch tiles, and 
 served her visitors with cream s and ices already, as it 
 were, adapted to fashionable comprehension. Some 
 had strayed to the ornamental cottages in the skirts 
 of the flower-garden poetical abodes, built from a 
 picturesque drawing, with imitation roughness ; thatch, 
 lattice-window, and low panng^Ul complete; and in 
 habited by superannuated dependants of Lord Rose- 
 berry, whose only duties were to look like patriarchs, 
 and give tea and new cream-cheese to visiters on fete- 
 days. Some had gone to see the silver and gold pheas 
 ants in their wire-houses, stately aristocrats of the game 
 tribe, who carry their finely-pencilled feathers like 
 
 Marmalet Madarus," strutting in hoop and farthin 
 gale. Some had gone to the kennels, to see setters 
 and pointers, hounds and terriers, lodged like gentle 
 men, each breed in its own apartment the puppies, 33 
 elsewhere, treated with most attention. Some were 
 in the flower-garden, some in the greenhouses, some 
 in the graperies, aviaries, and grottoes ; and at the side 
 of a bright sparkling fountain, in the recesses of a fir- 
 grove, with her foot upon its marble lip, and <fne hand 
 on the shoulder of a small Cupid who archly made a 
 drinking-cup of his wing, and caught the bright water 
 as it fell, stood Lady Imogen Ravelgold. the loveliest 
 girl of nineteen that prayed night and morning within 
 j the parish of Mny Fair, listening to very passionate 
 language from the young banker of Lothbury. fe 
 
 A bugle on the lawn rang a recall. From every 
 alley, and by every path, poured in the gay multitude, 
 and the smooth sward looked like a plateau of ani 
 mated flowers, waked by magic from a broidery on 
 green velvet. Ah ! the beautiful dcmi-toilcltcs ! so 
 difficult to attain, yet, when attained, the dress most 
 modest, most captivating, most worthy the divine grace 
 of woman. Those airy hats, sheltering from the sun, 
 yet not enviously concealing a feature or a ringlet that 
 a painter would draw for his exhibition-picture ! 
 Those summery and shapeless robes, covering the 
 pecson more to show its outline better, and provoke 
 more the worship, which, like all worship, is made 
 more adoring by mystery ! Those complexions which 
 but betray their transparency in the sun ; lips in which 
 the blood is translucent when between you and the 
 light ; cheeks finer-grained than alabaster, yet as cool 
 in* their virgin purity as a tint in the dark corner of a 
 Ruysdael : the human race was at less perfection in 
 Athens in the days of Lais in Egypt in the days of 
 Cleopatra than that day on the lawn of Rose-Eden. 
 
 Cart-loads of ribands, of every gay color, had been 
 laced through the trees in all directions; and amid 
 every variety of foliage, and every shade of green, the 
 tulip-tints shone vivid and brilliant, like an American 
 forest after the first frost. From the left edge of the 
 
112 
 
 LADY RAVELGOLD. 
 
 lawn, the ground suddenly sunk into a dell, shaped 
 like an amphitheatre, with a level platform at its bot 
 tom, and all around, above and below, thickened a 
 shady wood. The music of a delicious band stole up 
 from the recesses of a grove, draped as an orchestra 
 and green-room on the lower side, and while the 
 audience disposed themselves in the shade of the up 
 per grove, a company of players and dancing-girls 
 commenced their theatricals. Imogen Ravelgold, 
 who was separated, by a pine tree only, from the junior 
 partner, could scarce tell you, when it was finished, 
 what was the plot of the play. 
 
 The recall-bugle sounded again, and the band 
 wound away from the lawn, playing a gay march. 
 Followed Lady Roseberry and her suite of gentlemen, 
 followed dames and their daughters, followed all who 
 wished to see the flight of my lord s falcons. By a 
 narrow path and a wicket-gate, the long music-guided 
 train stole out upon an open hill-side, looking down 
 on a verdant and spreading meadow. The band play 
 ed at a short distance behind the gay groups of spec 
 tators, and it was a^pretty picture to look down upon 
 the splendidly-dressed falconer and his men, holding 
 their fierce birds upon their wrists, in their hoods and 
 jesses, a foreground of old chivalry and romance ; 
 while far beyond extended, like a sea over the horizon, 
 the smoke-clad pinnacles of busy and every-day Lon 
 don. There are suc^^jjjL^sts of the eyes of the 
 rich ! 
 
 The scarlet hood was taken from the trustiest 
 falcon, and a dove, confined, at first, with a string, 
 was thrown up, and brought back, to excite his altera 
 tion. As he fixed his eye upon him, the frightened 
 victim was let loose, and the falcon flung off; away 
 skimmed the dove in a low flight over the meadow, 
 and up to the very zenith, in circles of amazing swift 
 ness and power, sped the exulting falcon, apparently 
 forgetful of his prey, and bound for the eye of the sun 
 with his strong wings and his liberty. The falconer s 
 whistle and cry were heard ; the dove circled round 
 the edge of the meadow in his wavy flight ; and down, 
 with the speed of lightning, shot the falcon, striking 
 his prey dead to the earth before the eye could settle 
 on his foYm. As the proud bird stood upon his 
 victim, looking around with a lifted crest and fierce eye, 
 Lady Imogen Ravengold heard, in a voice of which 
 her heart knew the music, " They who soar highest 
 strike surest the dove lies in the falcon s bosom." 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE afternoon had, meantime, been wearing on, 
 and at six the "breakfast" was announced. The 
 tents beneath which the tables were spread were in 
 different parts of the grounds, and the guests had 
 made up their own parties. Each sped to his ren 
 dezvous, and as the last loiterers disappeared from 
 the lawn, a gentleman in a claret coat and a brown 
 study, found himself stopping to let a lady pass who 
 had obeying the summons as tardily as himselt In 
 a white chip hat, Hairbault s last, a few lilies of the 
 valley laid among her raven curls beneath, a simple 
 white robe, the chef-d auvre of Victotine in style and 
 tournure, Lady Ravelgold would have been the belle 
 of the fete, but for her daughter. 
 
 "Well emerged from Lothbury !" she said, court- 
 esying, with a slight flush over her features, but im 
 mediately taking his arm ; " I have lost my party, and 
 meeting you is opportune. Where shall we breakfast?" 
 
 There was a small tent standing invitingly open on 
 the opposite side of the lawn, and by the fainter rattle 
 of soup-spoons from that quarter, it promised to be 
 less crowded than the others. The junior partner 
 would willingly have declined the proffered honor, but 
 
 he saw at a glance that there was no escape, and sub 
 mitted with a grace. 
 
 " You know very few people here," said his fair 
 creditor, taking the bread from her napkin. 
 
 "Your ladyship and one other." 
 
 "Ah, we shall have dancing by-and-by, and I must 
 introduce you to my daughter. By the way, have 
 you no nam^from your mother s side ? Firkins 
 sounds so very odd. Give me some prettier word to 
 drink in this champagne." 
 
 " What do you think of Tremlet?" 
 
 " Too effeminate for your severe style of beauty 
 but it will do. Mr. Tremlet, your health ! Will you 
 give me a little of the pate before you? Pray, if it 
 is not indiscreet, how comes that classic profile, and 
 more surprising still, that distinguished look of yours, 
 to have found no gayer destiny than the signing of 
 Firkins and Co. to notes of hand ? Though I thought 
 you became your den in Lothbury, upon my honor you 
 look more at home here." 
 
 And Lady Ravengold fixed her superb eyes upon 
 the beautiful features of her companion, wondering 
 partly why he did not speak, and partly why she had 
 not observed before that he was incomparably the 
 handsomest creature she had ever seen. 
 
 " I can regret no vocation," he answered after a 
 moment, " which procures me an acquaintance with 
 your ladyship s family." 
 
 " There is an arriere pensee in that formal speech, 
 Mr. Tremlet. You are insincere. I am the only 
 one in my family whom you know, and what pleas 
 ure have you taken in my acquaintance ? And, now 
 I think of it, there is a mystery about you, which, but 
 for the noble truth written so legibly on your features, 
 I should be afraid to fathom. Why have you suffered 
 to over-draw my credit so enormously, and without 
 adow of a protest ?" 
 
 n Lady Ravelgold had disburdened her heart 
 of this direct question, she turned half round and 
 looked her companion in the face with an intense 
 interest, which produced upon her own features an 
 expression of earnestness very uncommon upon their 
 pale and impassive lines. She was one of those per 
 sons of little thought, who care nothing for causes or 
 consequences, so that the present difficulty is removed, 
 or the present hour provided with its wings ; but the 
 repeated relief she had received from the young banker, 
 when total ruin would have been the consequence of 
 his refusal, and his marked coldness in his manner to 
 her, had stimulated the utmost curiosity of which she 
 was capable. Her vanity, founded upon her high rank 
 and great renown as a beauty, would have agreed that 
 he might be willing to get her into his power at that 
 price, had he been less agreeable in his own person, 
 or more eager in his manner. But she had wanted 
 money sufficiently to know, that thirty thousand pounds 
 are not a bagatelle, and her brain was busy till she dis 
 covered the equivalent he sought for it. Meantime 
 her fear that he would turn out to be a lover, grew 
 rapidly into a fear that he would not. 
 
 Lady Ravelgold had been the wife of a dissolute 
 earl, who had died, leaving his estate inextricably in 
 volved. With no male heir to the title or property, 
 and no very near relation, the beautiful widow shut 
 her eyes to the difficulties by which she was sur 
 rounded, and at the first decent moment after the 
 death of her lord, she had re-entered the gay society 
 of which she had been the bright and particular star, 
 and never dreamed either of diminishing her establish 
 ment, or of calculating her possible income. The 
 first heavy draft she had made upon the house of 
 Firkins and Co., her husband s bankers, had been re 
 turned with a statement of the Raveleold debt and 
 credit on their books, by which it appeared that Lord 
 Ravelgold had overdrawn four or five thousand pounds 
 before his death, and that from some legal difficulties, 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD. 
 
 113 
 
 nothing could be realized from the securities given 
 on his estates. This bad news arrived on the morning 
 of a fete to be given by the Russian ambassador, at 
 which her only child. Lady Imogen, was to make her 
 debut in society. AVith the facility of disposition 
 which was peculiar to her, Lady Ravelgold thrust the 
 papers into her drawer, and determining to visit her 
 banker on the following morning, threw the matter 
 entirely from her mind and made preparations for the 
 ball. With the Russian government the house of 
 Firkins and Co. had long carried on very extensive 
 fiscal transactions, and in obedience to instructions 
 from the emperor, regular invitations for the embassy 
 fetes were sent to the bankers, accepted occasionally 
 by the junior partner only, who was generally sup 
 posed to be a natural son of old Firkins. Out of the 
 banking-house he was known as Mr. Tremlet, and it 
 was by this name, which was presumed to be his 
 mother s, that he was casually introduced to Lady 
 Imogen on the night of the fete, while she was separa 
 ted from her mother in the dancing-room. The con 
 sequence was a sudden, deep, ineffaceable passion in 
 the bosom of the young banker, checked and silenced, 
 but never lessened or chilled by tho recollection of 
 the obstacle of his birth. The impression of his sub 
 dued manner, his worshipping, yet most respectful 
 tones, and the bright soul that breathed through his 
 handsome features with his unusual excitement, was, 
 to say the least, favorable upon Lady Imogen, and they 
 parled on the night of the fete, mutually aware of each 
 other s preference. 
 
 On the following morning Lady Ravelgold made 
 her proposed visit to the city ; and inquiring for Mr. 
 Firkins, was shown in as usual to the junior partner, 
 to whom the colloquial business of the concern had j 
 long been intrusted. To her surprise she found no | 
 difficulty in obtaining the sum of money which had 
 been refused her on the preceding day a result which 
 she attributed to her powers of persuasion, or to some 
 new turn in the affairs of the estate ; and for two years 
 these visits had been repeated at intervals of three or j 
 four months, with the same success, though not with j 
 the same delusion as to the cause. She had discover- j 
 ed that the estate was worse than nothing, and the j 
 junior partner cared little to prolong his tt-tcs-a-teles \ 
 with her, and, up to the visit with which this tale \ 
 opened, she had looked to every succeeding one with | 
 increased fear and doubt. 
 
 During these two years, Tremlet had seen Lady 
 Imogen occasionally at balls and public places, and 
 every look they exchanged wove more strongly be 
 tween them the subtle threads of love. Once or twice 
 she had endeavored to interest her mother in conver- j 
 sation on the subject, with the intention of making 
 a confidence of her feelings ; but Lady Ravengold, 
 when not anxious, was giddy with her own success, 
 and the unfamiliar name never rested a moment on her j 
 ear. With this explanation to render ttie tale in- | 
 telligible, " let us," as the French say, " return to our 
 muttons." 
 
 Of the conversation between Tremlet and her moth 
 er, Lady Imogen was an unobserved and astonished 
 witness. The tent which they had entered was large, > 
 with a buffet in the centre, and a circular table waited 
 on by servants within the ring ; and, just concealed 
 by the drapery around the pole, sat Lady Imogen 
 with a party of her friends, discussing very seriously 
 the threatened fashion of tight sleeves. She had half 
 risen, when her mother entered, to offer her a seat by 
 her side, but the sight of Tremlet, who immediately 
 followed, had checked the words upon her lip, and to 
 her surprise they seated themselves on the side that 
 was wholly unoccupied, and conversed in a tone in 
 audible to all but themselves. Not aware that her 
 lover knew Lady Ravelgold, she supposed that they 
 might have beeu casually introduced, till the earnest 
 
 ness of her mother s manner, and a certain ease be 
 tween them in the little courtesies of the table, assured 
 her that this could not be their first interview. Trern- 
 let s face was turned from her, and she could not 
 judge whether he was equally interested ; but she 
 had been so accustomed to consider her mother as 
 irresistible when she chose to please, that she supposed 
 it of course ; and very soon the heightened color of 
 Lady Ravelgold, and the unwavering look of mingled 
 admiration and curiosity which she bent upon the 
 handsome face of her companion, left no doubt in her 
 mind that her reserved and exclusive lover was in the 
 dangerous toils of a rival whose power she knew. 
 From the mortal pangs of a first jealousy, Heaven send 
 thee deliverance, fair Lady Imogen ! 
 
 " We shall find our account in the advances on 
 your ladyship s credit ;" said Tremlet, in reply to the 
 direct question that was put to him. " Meantime 
 permit me to admire the courage with which you look 
 so disagreeable a subject in the face." 
 
 " For disagreeable subject, read Mr. Tremlet. 
 I show my temerity more in that. Apropos of faces, 
 yours would become the new fashion of cravat. The 
 men at Crockford s slip the ends through a ring of 
 their lady-love s, if they chance to have one thus !" 
 and untying the loose knot of his black satin cravat, 
 Lady Ravelgold slipped over the ends a diamond of 
 small value, conspicuously set in pearls. 
 
 " The men at Crockford s," said Tremlet, hesita- 
 I ting to commit the rudeness of removing the ring, 
 " are not of my school of manners. If I had been so 
 fortunate as to inspire a lady with a preference for me, 
 j I should not advertise it on my cravat." 
 
 " But suppose the lady were proud of her preference 
 as dames were of the devotion of their knights in the 
 days of chivalry would you not wear her favor as 
 conspicuously as they ?" 
 
 A flush of mingled embarrassment and surprise 
 shot over the forehead of Tremlet, and he was turning 
 the ring with his fingers, when Lady Imogen, at 
 tempting to pass out of the tent, was stopped by her 
 mother. 
 
 "Imogen, my daughter! this is Mr. Tremlet. La 
 dy Imogen Ravelgold, Mr. Tremlet!" 
 
 The cold and scarce perceptible bow which the 
 wounded girl gave to her lover, betrayed no previous 
 acquaintance to the careless Lndy Ravelgold. With 
 out giving a second thought to her daughter, she held 
 her glass for some champagne to a passing servant, 
 and as Lady Imogen and her friends crossed the lawn 
 to the dancing-tent, she resumed the conversation 
 which they had interruptsd; while Tremlet, with his 
 heart brooding on the altered look he had received, 
 listened and replied almost unconsciously ; yet from 
 ; this very circumstance, in a manner which was in 
 terpreted by his companion as the embarrassment of a 
 timid and long-repressed passion for herself. 
 
 While Lady Ravelgold and the junior partner were 
 i thus playing at cross purposes over their champagne 
 and bons-bons, Grisi and Lablanche were singing a 
 duet from I Puritani, to a full audience in the saloon ; 
 the drinking young men sat over their wine at the 
 nearly-deserted tables; Lady Imogen and her friends 
 waltzed to Collinefs band, and the artisans were busy 
 below the lawn, erecting the machinery for the fire 
 works. Meantime every alley and avenue, grot and 
 labyrinth, had been dimly illuminated with colored 
 lamps, showing like vari-colomi glow-worms amid 
 the foliage and shells; and if the bright scenery of 
 Rose-Eden had been lovely by day, it was fay-land 
 and witchery by night. Fatal impulse of our nature, 
 that these approaches to paradise in the "delight of 
 , the eye," stir only in our bosoms the passions upon 
 which law and holy writ have put ban and bridle ! 
 
 " Shall we stroll down this alley of crimson lamps?" 
 1 said Lady Ravelgold, crossing the lawn from the tent 
 
114 
 
 LADY RAVELGOLD. 
 
 where their coffee had been brought to them, and put 
 ting her slender arm far into that of her now pale and 
 silent companion. 
 
 A lady in a white dress stood at the entrance of that 
 crimson avenue, as Tremlet and his passionate ad 
 mirer disappeared beneath the closing lines of the 
 long perspective, and, remaining a moment gazing 
 through the unbroken twinkle of the confusing lamps, 
 she pressed her hand hard upon her forehead, drew 
 up her form as if struggling with some irrepressible 
 feeling, and in another moment was whirling in the 
 waltz with Lord Ernest Fitzantelope, whose mother 
 wrote a complimentary paragraph about their per 
 formance for the next Saturday s Court Journal. 
 
 The bugle sounded, and the band played a march 
 upon the lawn. From the breakfast tents, from the 
 coffee-rooms, from the dance, from the card-tables, 
 poured all who wished to witness the marvels that lie 
 in saltpetre. Gentlemen who stood in a tender attitude 
 in the darkness, held themselves ready to lean the 
 other way when the rockets blazed up, and mammas 
 who were encouraging flirtations with eligibles, whis 
 pered a caution on the same subject to their less ex 
 perienced daughters. 
 
 Up sped the missiles, round spun the wheels, fair 
 burned the pagodas, swift flew the fire-doves off and 
 back again on their wires, and softly floated down 
 through the dewy atmosphere of that May night the 
 lambent and many-colored stars, flung burning from 
 the exploded rockets. Device followed device, and 
 Lady Imogen almost forgot, in her child s delight at 
 the spectacle, that she had taken into her bosom a 
 green serpent, whose folds were closing like suffoca 
 tion about her heart. 
 
 The finale was to consist of a new light, invented 
 by the pyrotechnist, promised to Lady Roseberry to 
 be several degrees brighter than the sun compara 
 tively with the quantity of matter. Before this last 
 flourish came a pause ; and while all the world were 
 murmuring love and applause around her, Lady 
 Imogen, with her eyes fixed on an indefinite point in 
 the darkness, took advantage of the cessation of light 
 to feed her serpent with thoughts of passionate and 
 uncontrollable pain. A French attache, Phillipiste to 
 the very tips of his mustache, addressed to her ear, 
 meantime, the compliments he had found most effect 
 ive in the Chaussee d Antin. 
 
 The light burst suddenly from a hundred blazing 
 points, clear, dazzling, intense illuminating, as by 
 the instantaneous burst of day, the farthest corner of 
 Rose-Eden. And Monsieur Mangepoire, with a 
 French contempt for English fireworks, took advan 
 tage of the first ray to look into Lady Imogen s eyes. 
 
 1(1 Mais, Miladi!" was his immediate exclamation, 
 after following their direction with a glance, "ce n est 
 qu un tableau vivant, cela! Help, gentlemen! Elle 
 s evanouit. Some salts! Misericorde! Mon Dicul 
 Mon Dieu /" And Lady Imogen Ravelgold was car 
 ried fainting to Lady Roseberry s chamber. 
 
 In a small opening at the end of a long avenue of 
 lilacs, extended from the lawn in the direction of 
 Lady Imogen s fixed and unconscious gaze, was pre 
 sented, by the unexpected illumination, the tableau 
 vivant, seen by her ladyship and Monsieur Mange- 
 
 Eoire at the same instant a gentleman drawn up to 
 is fullest height, with his arms folded, and a lady 
 kneeling on the ground at his feet with her arms 
 stretched up to his bosom. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 A LITTLE after two o clock on the following 
 "Wednesday, Tremlet s cabriolet stopped near the 
 perron of Willis s rooms in King street, and while he 
 
 sent up his card to the lady patronesses for his ticket 
 to that night s Almack s, he busied himself in looking 
 into the crowd of carriages about him, and reading on 
 the faces of their fair occupants the hope and anxiety 
 to which they were a prey till John the footman 
 brought them tickets or despair. Drawn up on the 
 opposite side of the street, stood a family-carriage of 
 the old style, covered with half the arms of the herald s 
 office, and containing a fat dowager and three very over 
 dressed daughters. Watching them, to see the effect 
 of their application, stood upon the sidewalk three or 
 four young men from the neighboring club-house, and 
 at the moment Tremlet was observing these circum 
 stances, a foreign britscka, containing a beautiful wo 
 man of a reputation better understood than expressed 
 in the conclave above stairs, flew round the corner of 
 St. James s street, and very nearly drove into the open 
 mouth of the junior partner s cabriolet. 
 
 "I will bet you a Ukraine colt against this fine bay 
 of yours," said the Russian secretary of legation, ad 
 vancing from the group of dandies to Tremlet, "that 
 miladi, yonder, with all the best blood of England in 
 her own and her daughters red faces, gets no tickets 
 I his morning." 
 
 "I ll take a bet upon the lady who has nearly 
 extinguished me, if you like," answered Tremlet, 
 gazing with admiration at the calm, delicate, child 
 like looking creature, who sat before him in the 
 britscka. 
 
 "No!" said the secretary, "for Almack s is a re 
 public of beauty, and she ll be voted in without either 
 blood or virtue. Par e.remple, Lady Ravelgold s 
 voucher is good here, though she does study tableaux 
 in Lothbury eh, Tremlet?" 
 
 Totally unaware of the unlucky discovery by the 
 fireworks at Lady Roseberry s fete, Tremlet colored 
 and was inclined to take the insinuation as an affront; 
 but a laugh from the dandies drew off his companion s 
 attention, and he observed the dowager s footman 
 standing at her coach window with his empty hands 
 held up in most expressive negation, while the three 
 young ladies within sat aghast, in all the agonies of 
 disappointed hopes. The lumbering carriage got into 
 motion its ineffective blazonry paled by the mortified 
 blush of its occupants and, as the junior partner 
 drove away, philosophizing on the arbitrary opinions 
 and unprovoked insults of polite society, the britsgka 
 shot by, showing him, as he leaned forward, a lovely 
 woman who bent on him the most dangerous eyes in 
 London, and an Almack s ticket lying on the unoccu 
 pied cushion beside her. 
 
 The white relievo upon the pale blue wall of Al 
 mack s showed every crack in its stucco flowers, and 
 the faded chaperons who had defects of a similar de 
 scription to conceal, took warning of the walls, and 
 retreated to the friendlier dimness of the tea-room. 
 Collinet was beginning the second set of quadrilles, 
 and among the fairest of the surpassingly beautiful 
 women who were moving to his heavenly music, was 
 Lady Imogen Ravelgold, the lovelier to-night for the 
 first heavy sadness that had ever dimmed the roses 
 in her cheek. Her lady-mother divided her thoughts 
 between what this could mean, and whether Mr. 
 Tremlet would come to the ball; and when, presently 
 after, in the dos-a-dos, she forgot to look at her daugh 
 ter, on seeing that gentleman enter, she lost a very 
 good opportunity for a guess at the cause of Lady 
 Imogen s paleness. 
 
 To the pure and true eye that appreciates the 
 divinity of the form after which woman is made, it 
 would have been a glorious feast to have seen the per 
 fection of shape, color, motion, and countenance, shown 
 that night on the bright floor of Almack s. For the 
 young and beautiful girls whose envied destiny is to 
 commence their woman s history in this exclusive 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD. 
 
 115 
 
 hall, there exists aids to beauty known to no other 
 class or nation. Perpetual vigilance over every limb 
 from the cradle up; physical education of a perfec 
 tion, discipline, and judgment, pursued only at great 
 expense and under great responsibility; moral educa 
 tion of the highest kind, habitual consciousness of 
 rank, exclusive contact with elegance and luxury, and 
 a freedom of intellectual culture which breathes a soul 
 through the face before passion has touched it with a 
 line or a shade these are some of the circumstances 
 which make Almack s the cynosure of the world for 
 adorable and radiant beauty. 
 
 There were three ladies who had come to Almack s 
 with a definite object that night, each of whom was 
 destined to be surprised and foiled : Lady Ravelgold, 
 who feared she had been abrupt with the inexperienced 
 banker, but trusted to find him softened by a day or 
 two s reflection; Mrs. St. Leger, the lady of the 
 britsgka, who had ordered supper for two on her ar 
 rival at home from her morning s drive, and intended 
 to have the company of the handsome creature she 
 had nearly run over in King street ; and Lady Imogen 
 Ravelgold as will appear in the sequel. 
 
 Tremlet stood in the entrance from the tea-room a 
 moment, gathering courage to walk alone into such a 
 dazzling scene, and then, having caught a glimpse of 
 the glossy lines of Lady Imogen s head at the farthest 
 end of the room, he was advancing toward her, when he 
 was addressed by a lady who leaned against one of the 
 slender columns- of the orchestra. After a sweetly- 
 phrased apology for having nearly knocked out his 
 brains that morning with her horses fore feet, Mrs. St. 
 Leger took his arm, and walking deliberately two or 
 three times up and down the room, took possession, at 
 last, of a banquette on the highest range, so far from any 
 other person, that it would have been a marked rude 
 ness to have left her alone. Tremlet took his seat by 
 her with this instinctive feeling, trusting that some of 
 her acquaintances would soon^ approach, and give him 
 a fair excuse to leave her ; but he soon became 
 amused with her piquant style of conversation, and, 
 not aware of being observed, fell into the attitude of a 
 pleased and earnest listener. 
 
 Lady Ravelgold s feelings during this petit entre- 
 tien, were of a very positive description. She had 
 an instinctive knowledge, and consequently a jealous 
 dislike of Mrs. St. Leger s character; and, still under 
 the delusion that the young banker s liberality was 
 prompted by a secret passion for herself, she saw her 
 credit in the city and her hold upon the affections of 
 Tremlet (for whom she had really conceived a violent 
 affection), melting away in every smile of the dangerous 
 woman who engrossed him. As she looked around 
 for a friend, to whose ear she might communicate 
 Borne of the suffocating poison in her own heart, Lady 
 Imogen returned to her from a galopade ; and, like a 
 second dagger into the heart of the pure-minded girl, 
 went this second proof of her lover s corrupt principle 
 and conduct. Unwilling to believe even hef own eyes 
 on the night of Lady Roseberry s fete, she had sum 
 moned resolution on the road home to ask an explana 
 tion of her mother. Embarrassed by the abrupt ques 
 tion, Lady Ravelgold felt obliged to make a partial 
 confidence of the state of her pecuniary affairs; and 
 to clear herself, she represented Tremlet as having 
 taken advantage of her obligations to him, to push a 
 dishonorable suit. The scene disclosed by the sud 
 den blaze of the fireworks being thus simply explain 
 ed, Lady Imogen determined at once to give up 
 Tremlet s acquaintance altogether; a resolution which 
 his open flirtation with a woman of Mrs. St. Leger s 
 character served to confirm. She had, however, one 
 errand with him, prompted by her filial feelings and 
 favored by an accidental circumstance which will ap 
 
 pear 
 
 . 
 
 Do you believe in animal magnetism?" asked 
 
 Mrs. St. Leger, "for by the fixedness of Lady Ravel- 
 gold s eyes in this quarter, something is going to happen 
 to one of us." 
 
 The next moment the Russian secretary approach 
 ed and took his seat by Mrs. St. Leger, and with 
 diplomatic address contrived to convey to Tremlet s 
 ear that Lady Ravelgold wished to speak with him. 
 The banker rose, but the quick wit of his companion 
 comprehended the manoeuvre. 
 
 " Ah ! I see how it is," she said, " but stay you ll 
 sup with me to-night ? Promise me parole d hon- 
 neur /" 
 
 " Parole /" answered Tremlet, making his way 
 out between the seats, half pleased and half embar 
 rassed. 
 
 " As for you, Monsieur le Secretaire," said Mrs. 
 St. Leger, " you have forfeited my favor, and may 
 sup elsewhere. How dare you conspire against me ?" 
 
 While the Russian was making his peace, Trem 
 let crossed over to Lady Ravelgold ; but, astonished 
 at the change in Lady Imogen, he soon broke in 
 abruptly upon her mother s conversation, to ask her 
 to dance. She accepted his hand for a quadrille; 
 but as they walked down the room in search of a vis 
 a-vis, she complained of heat, and asked timidly if he 
 would take her to the tea-room. 
 
 " Mr. Tremlet," she said, fixing her eyes upon the 
 cup of tea which he had given her, and which she 
 found some difficulty in holding, " I have come here 
 to-night to communicate to you some important in 
 formation, to ask a favor, and to break off an acquaint 
 ance which has lasted too long." 
 
 Lady Imogen stopped, for the blood had fled from 
 her lips, and she was compelled to ask his arm for a 
 support. She drew herself up to her fullest height 
 the next moment, looked at Tremlet, who stood in 
 speechless astonishment, and with a strong effort, com 
 menced again in a low, firm tone 
 
 " I have been acquainted with you some time, sir, 
 and have never inquired, nor knew more than your 
 name, up to this day. I suffered myself to be pleased 
 too blindly " 
 
 " Dear Lady Imogen !" 
 
 "Stay a moment, sir! I will proceed directly to 
 my business. I received this morning a letter from 
 the senior partner of a mercantile house in the city, 
 with which you are connected. It is written on the 
 supposition that I have some interest in you, and in 
 forms me that you are not, as you yourself suppose, 
 the son of the gentleman who writes the letter." 
 
 " Madam!" 
 
 " That gentleman, sir, as you know, never was 
 married. He informs me that in the course of many 
 financial visits to St. Petersburg!!, he formed a friend 
 ship with Count Manteuffel, then minister of finance 
 to the emperor, whose tragical end, in consequence 
 of his extensive defalcations, is well known. In 
 brief, sir, you were his child, and were taken by this 
 English banker, and carefully educated as his own, in 
 happy ignorance, as he imagined, of your father s mis 
 fortunes and mournful death." 
 
 Tremlet leaned against the wall, unable to reply 
 to this astounding intelligence, and Lady Imogen 
 went on. 
 
 "Your title and estates have been restored to you 
 | at the request of your kind benefactor, and you are 
 now the heir to a princely fortune, and a count of 
 the Russian empire. Here is the letter, sir, which 
 is of no value to me now. Mr. Tremlet ! one word 
 more, sir." 
 
 Lady Imogen grasped for breath. 
 
 " In return, sir, for much interest given you here 
 tofore in return, sir, for this information " 
 
 " Speak, dear Lady Imogen !" 
 
 " Spare my mother !" 
 
 " Mrs. St. Leger s carriage stops the way !" shout- 
 
116 
 
 LADY RAVELGOLD. 
 
 ed a servant at that moment, at the top of the stairs ; 
 and as if there were a spell in the sound to nerve her 
 resolution anew, Lady Imogen Ravelgold shook the 
 tears from her eyes, bowed coldly to Tremlet, and 
 passed out into the dressing-room. 
 
 "If you please, sir," said a servant, approaching the 
 amazed banker, " Mrs. St. Leger waits for you in her 
 carriage." 
 
 " Will you come home and sup with us ?" said 
 Lady Ravelgold at the same instant, joining him in 
 the tea-room. 
 
 " I shall be only too happy, Lady Ravelgold." 
 
 The bold coachman of Mrs. St. Leger continued 
 to " stop the way," spite of policemen and infuriated 
 footmen, for some fifteen minutes. At the end of 
 that time Mr. Tremlet appeared, handing down 
 Lady Ravelgold and her daughter, who walked to 
 their chariot, which was a few steps behind; and 
 very much to Mrs. St. Leger s astonishment, the 
 handsome banker sprang past her horses heads a 
 minute after, jumped into his cabriolet, which stood 
 on the opposite side of the street, and drove after 
 the vanishing chariot as if his life depended on over 
 taking it. Still Mrs. St. Leger s carriage " stopped 
 the way." But, in a few minutes after, the same 
 footman who had summoned Tremlet in vain, re 
 turned with the Russian secretary, doomed in blessed 
 unconsciousness to play the pis utter at her tete-d-lete 
 supper in Spring Gardens. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 IF Lady Ravelgold showed beautiful by the un 
 compromising light and in the ornamented hall of 
 Almack s, she was radiant as she came through the 
 mirror door of her own loved-contrived and beauty- 
 breathing boudoir. Tremlet had been showed into 
 this recess of luxury and elegance on his arrival, and 
 Lady Ravelgold and her daughter, who preceded her 
 by a minute or two, had gone to their chambers, the 
 first to make some slight changes in her toilet, and 
 the latter (entirely ignorant of her lover s presence in 
 the house), to be alone with a heart never before in 
 such painful need of self-abandonment and solitude. 
 
 Tremlet looked about him in the enchanted room 
 in which he found himself alone, and, spite of the I 
 prepossessed agitation of his feelings, the voluptuous j 
 beauty of every object had the effect to divert and 
 tranquillize him. The light was profuse, but it came ) 
 softened through the thinnest alabaster ; and while I 
 every object in the room was distinctly and minutely j 
 visible, the effect of moonlight was not more soft and 
 dreamy. The general form of the boudoir was an 
 oval, but within the pilasters of folded silk with their 
 cornices of gold, lay crypts containing copies exquisite 
 ly done in marble of the most graceful statues of an 
 tiquity, one of which seemed, by the curtain drawn 
 quite aside and a small antique lamp burning near it, 
 to be the divinity of the place the Greek Antinous, 
 with his drooped head and full, smooth limbs, the 
 most passionate and life-like representation of voluptu 
 ous beauty that intoxicates the slumberous air of 
 Italy. Opposite this, another niche contained a few 
 books, whose retreating shelves swung on a secret 
 door, and as it stood half open, the nodding head of a | 
 snowy magnolia leaned through, as if pouring from 
 the lips of its broad chalice the mingled odors of the 
 unseen conservatory it betrayed. The first sketch in 
 crayons of a portrait of Lady Ravelgold by young 
 Lawrence, stood against the wall, with the frame half 
 buried in a satin ottoman ; and, as Tremlet stood be 
 fore it, admiring the clear, classic outline of the head 
 and bust, and wondering in what chamber of his brain 
 the gifted artist had found the beautiful drapery in 
 
 which he had drawn her, the dim light glanced faintly 
 on the left, and the broad mirror by which he had 
 entered swung again on its silver hinges, and admitted 
 the very presentment of what he gazed on. Lady 
 Ravelgold had removed the jewels from her hair, and 
 the robe of wrought lace, which she had worn that 
 night over a boddice of white satin laced loosely below 
 the bosom. In the place of this she had thrown upon 
 her shoulders a flowing wrapper of purple velvet, 
 made open after the Persian fashion, with a short and 
 large sleeve, and embroidered richly with gold upon, 
 the skirts. Her admirable figure, gracefully defined 
 by the satin petticoat and boddice, showed against the 
 gorgeous purple as it flowed back in her advancing 
 motion, with a relief which would have waked the very 
 soul of Titian ; her complexion was dazzling and 
 faultless in the flattering light of her own rooms ; and 
 there are those who will read this who know how the 
 circumstances which surround a woman luxury, 
 elegance, taste, or the opposite of these enhance or 
 dim, beyond help or calculation, even the highest order 
 of woman s beauty. 
 
 Lady Ravelgold held a bracelet in her hand as she 
 came in. 
 
 " In my own house," she said, holding the glitter 
 ing jewel to Tremlet, " 1 have a fancy for the style 
 antique. Tasseline, my maid, has gone to bed, and 
 you must do the devoir of a knight, or an abigail, and 
 loop up this Tyrian sleeve. Stay look first at the 
 model that small statue of Cytheris, yonder ! Not 
 the shoulder for you are to swear mine is prettier 
 but the clasp. Fasten it like that. So! Now take 
 me for a Grecian nymph the rest of the evening." 
 
 " Lady Ravelgold!" 
 
 " Hermione or Aglae, if you please ! But let us 
 ring for supper !" 
 
 As the bell sounded, a superb South American 
 trulian darted in from the conservatory, and, spread 
 ing his gorgeous black and gold wings a moment 
 over the alabaster shoulder of Lady Ravelgold, as if 
 he took a pleasure in prolonging the first touch as 
 he alighted, turned his large liquid eye fiercely on. 
 Tremlet. 
 
 " Thus it is," said Lady Ravelgold, " we forget our 
 old favorites in our new. See how jealous he is !" 
 
 " Supper is served, miladi !" said a servant entering. 
 
 " A hand to each, then, for the present," she said, 
 putting one into Tremlet s, and holding up the trulian 
 with the other. _ " He who behaves best shall drink 
 first with me." 
 
 " I beg your ladyship s pardon," said Tremlet, 
 drawing back, and looked at the servant, who im 
 mediately left the room. " Let us understand each 
 other! Does Lady Imogen sup with us to-night ?" 
 
 " Lady Imogen has retired," said her mother, in 
 some surprise. 
 
 " Then, madam, will you be seated one moment and 
 listen to me ?" 
 
 Lady Ravelgold sat down on the nearest ottoman, 
 with the air of a person too high bred to be taken by 
 surprise, but the color deepened to crimson in the 
 centre of her cheek, and the bird on her hand be 
 trayed by one of his gurgling notes that he was held 
 more tightly than pleased him. With a calm and de 
 cisive tone, Tremlet went through the explanation 
 given in the previous parts of this narration. He de 
 clared his love for Lady Imogen, his hopes (while he 
 had doubts of his birth) that Lady Ravelgold s increas 
 ing obligations and embarrassments and his own wealth 
 might, weigh against his disadvantages ; and now, his 
 honorable descent being established, and his rank en 
 titling him to propose for her hand, he called upon 
 Lady Ravelgold to redeem her obligations to him by 
 an immediate explanation to her daughter of his con 
 duct toward herself, and by lending her whole influ 
 ence to the success of his suit. 
 
LADY RAVELGOLD. 
 
 117 
 
 Five minutes are brief time to change a lover into a 
 son-in-law ; and Lady Ravelgold, as we have seen in 
 the course of this story, was no philosopher. She 
 buried her face in her hands, and sat silent for a while 
 after Tremlet had concluded : but the case was a very 
 clear one. Ruin and mortification were in one scale, 
 mortification and prosperity in the other. She rose, 
 pale but decided, and requesting Monsieur le conte 
 Manteuffel to await her a few minutes, ascended to 
 her daughter s chamber. 
 
 " If you please, sir," said a servant, entering in about 
 half an hour, " miladi and Lady Imogen beg that you 
 will join them in the supper-room." 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE spirit of beauty, if it haunt in such artificial at 
 mospheres as Belgrave square, might have been pleased 
 to sit invisibly on the vacant side of Lady Ravelgold s 
 table. Tremlet had been shown in by the servant to a 
 small apartment, built like a belvidere over the garden, 
 half boudoir in its character, yet intended as a supper- 
 room, and at the long window (opening forth upon 
 descending terraces laden with flowers, and just now 
 flooded with the light of a glorious moon) stood Lady 
 Imogen, with her glossy head laid against the case 
 ment, and the palm of her left hand pressed close upon 
 her heart. If those two lights the moon faintly shed 
 off from the divine curve of her temple, and the stained 
 rose-lamp pouring its mellow tint full on the heavenly 
 
 sured him that she had obtained a victory over herself. 
 Shrinking immediately, however, from anything like 
 sentiment (with the nervous dread of pathos so pecu 
 liar to the English), she threw off her trulian, that 
 made a circle and alighted on the emerald bracelet of 
 Lady Imogen, and rang the bell for coffee. 
 
 "I (latter myself, Mr. Tremlet," she said, "that I 
 have made a new application of the homoeopathic phi 
 losophy. Hahnemann, they say, cures fevers by ag 
 gravating the disease ; and when I can not sleep, I 
 drink coffee. J en suis passablement fitre ! You did 
 not know I was a philosopher ?" 
 
 " No, indeed !" 
 
 " Well, take some of this spiced mocha. I got it of 
 the Turkish ambassador, to whom I made beaux yeux 
 on purpose. Stop ! you shall have it in the little tin 
 sel cups he sent me. George, bring those filagree 
 things ! Now, Mr. Tremlet, imagine yourself in the 
 serail du Bosphore Imogen and I two lovely Circas- 
 | sians, par exemple! Is it not delicious ? Talking of 
 | the Bosphorus, nobody was classical enough to under- 
 : stand the device in my coiffure to-night." 
 
 "What was it?" asked Tremlet, absently, gazing 
 I while he spoke, with eyes of envy at the trulian, who 
 ! was whetting his bill backward and forward on the 
 ! clear bright lips of Lady Imogen. 
 
 " Do you think my profile Grecian ?" asked Lady 
 Ravelgold. 
 
 " Perfectly !" 
 
 "And my hair is coiffed a la Grec ?" 
 
 " Most becomingly." 
 
 " But still you won t see my golden grasshopper ! 
 
 shape and whiteness of her shoulder and neck if those || Do you happen to know, sir, that to wear the golden 
 two lights, I say, could have been skilfully managed, ! grasshopper was the birthright of an Athenian ? I saw 
 re you might have made it in a book. Well ! I had to explain it to everybody. 
 
 Mr. Lawrence ! what a picture you might hav 
 of Lady Imogen Ravelgold ! 
 
 " Imogen, my daughter ! Mr. Tremlet !" said her 
 mother as he entered. 
 
 Without changing her position, she gave him the 
 hand she had been pressing on her heart. 
 
 " Mr. Tremlet !" said Lady Ravelgold, evidently 
 entering into her daughter s embarrassment, " trouble 
 yourself to come to the table and give me a bit of this 
 pheasant. Imogen, George waits to give you some 
 champagne." 
 
 " Can you forgive me ?" said the beautiful girl, be 
 fore turning to betray her blushing cheek and suffused 
 eyes to her mother. 
 
 Tremlet stopped as if to pluck a leaf from the ver 
 bena at her feet, and passed his lips over the slight fin 
 gers he held. 
 
 " Pretty trulian !" murmured Lady Ravelgold to her 
 bird, as he stood on the edge of her champagne-glass, 
 and curving his superb neck nearly double, contrived 
 to drink from the sparkling brim " pretty trulian ! 
 
 By-the-way, what did that gambler, George Heriot 
 mean, by telling me that its legs should be black ? 
 All Greeks have black legs, said he, yawning in his 
 stupid way. What did he mean, Mr. Tremlet ?" 
 
 " Greeks and blacklegs are convertible terms. He 
 thought you were more au fait of the slang dictionary. 
 Will you permit me to coax my beautiful rival from 
 your hand, Lady Imogen ?" 
 
 She smiled, and put forward her wrist, with a bend 
 of its slender and alabaster lines which would have 
 i drawn a sigh from Praxiteles. The trulian glanced 
 his fiery eyes from his mistress s face to Tremlet s, 
 and as the strange hand was put out to take him from 
 his emerald perch, he flew with the quickness of light 
 ning into the face of her lover, and buried the sharp 
 beak in his lip. The blood followed copiously, and 
 Lady Imogen, startled from her timidity, sprang from 
 her chair and pressed her hands one after the other 
 upon the wound, in passionate and girlish abandon 
 ment. Lady Ravelgold hurried to her dressing-room 
 
 u will be,merry after this ! What ancient Sybarite, j for something to stanch the wound, and, left alone 
 ink you, Mr. Tremlet, inhabits the body of this ! with the divine creature who hung over him, Tremlet 
 
 you 
 
 think 
 
 bright bird ? Look up, mignon, and tell usif^ ou were 
 
 Hylas or Alcibiades ! Is the pheasant good, Mr. Trem 
 
 let ?" 
 
 " Too good to come from Hades, miladi. Is it true 
 that you have your table supplied from Crockford s ?" 
 
 " Tout bonnement! I make it a principle to avoid all 
 great anxieties, and I can trust nobody but Ude. He 
 sends my dinners quite hot, and if there is a particular 
 dish of game, he drives round at the hour and gives it ! 
 
 drew her to his bosom and pressed his cheek long nnd 
 ! closely to hers, while to his lips, as if to keep in life, 
 
 i clung her own crimsoned and trembling fingers. 
 " Imogen !" said Lady Ravelgold, entering, " take 
 him to the fountain in the garden and wash the wound ; 
 | then put on this bit of gold-beater s skin. I will come 
 to you when I have locked up the trulian. Is it pain- 
 ful, Mr. Tremlet ?" 
 
 Tremlet could not trust his voice to answer, but 
 
 , 
 
 the last turn in my own kitchen. I should die, to be jj with his arm still around Lady Imogen, he descended 
 responsible for my dinners. I don t know how people I by the terrace of flowers^ to the fountain 
 
 get on that have no grand artiste- Pray, Mr. Trem 
 let (I beg pardon Monsieur le conte, perhaps I should 
 say ?") 
 
 " No, no, I implore you ! Tremlet has been spoken 
 too musically to be so soon forgotten. Tremlet or 
 Charles, which you will !" 
 
 Lady Ravelgold put her hand in his, and looked 
 from his face to her daughter s with, a smile, which as- 
 
 They sat upon the edge of the marble basin, and 
 the moonlight striking through the jet of the fountain, 
 descended upon them like a rain of silver. Lndy Imo- 
 I gen had recovered from her fright, and buried her face 
 1 in her hands, remembering into what her feelings had 
 betrayed her ; and Tremlet, sometimes listening to the 
 clear bell-like music of the descending water, some 
 times uttering the broken sentences which are most 
 
118 
 
 PALETTO S BRIDE, 
 
 eloquent in love, sat out the hours till the stars began 
 to pale, undisturbed by Lady Ravelgold, who, on the 
 upper stair of the terrace, read by a small lamp, which, 
 in the calm of that heavenly summer night, burned 
 unflickeringly in the open air. 
 
 It was broad daylight when Tremlet, on foot, saun 
 tered slowly past Hyde Park corner on his way to the 
 Albany. The lamps were still struggling with the 
 brightening approach to sunrise, the cabmen and their 
 horses slept on the stand by the Green Park, and with 
 cheerful faces the laborers went to their work, and with 
 haggard faces the night-birds of dissipation crept wea 
 rily home. The well-ground dust lay in confused heel- 
 marks on the sidewalk, a little dampened by the night- 
 dew ; the atmosphere in the street was clear, as it never 
 is after the stir of day commences ; a dandy, stealing 
 out from Crockford s, crossed Piccadilly, lifting up his 
 head to draw in long breaths of the cool air, after the 
 closeness of over-lighted rooms and excitement ; and 
 Tremlet, marking none of these things, was making 
 his way through a line of carnages slowly drawing up 
 to take off their wearied masters from a prolonged fete 
 at Devonshire house, when a rude hand clapped him 
 on the shoulder. 
 
 " Monsieur Tremlet !" 
 
 " jl/i, Baron! bien bonjouT. 1 " 
 
 " Bien rencontre, Monsieur ! You have insulted a 
 lady to-night, who has confided her cause to my hands. 
 Madam St. Leger, sir, is without a natural protector, 
 and you have taken advantage of her position to insult 
 her grossly, Mr. Tremlet, grossly !" 
 
 Tremlet looked at the Russian during this extraor 
 dinary address, and saw that he was evidently highly 
 excited with wine. He drew him aside into Berkeley 
 street, and in the calmest manner attempted to explain 
 what was not very clear to himself. He had totally 
 forgotten Mrs. St. Leger. The diplomate, though 
 quite beyond himself with his excitement, had suffi 
 cient perception left to see the weak point of his state 
 ment ; and infuriated with the placid manner in which 
 he attempted to excuse himself, suddenly struck his 
 glove into his face, and turned upon his heel. They 
 had been observed by a policeman, and at the moment 
 that Tremlet, recovering from his astonishment, sprang 
 forward to resent the blow, the gray-coated guardian 
 of the place laid his hand upon his collar and detained 
 him till the baron had disappeared. 
 
 More than once on his way to the Albany, Tremlet 
 surprised himself forgetting both the baron and the in 
 sult, and feeding his heart in delicious abandonment 
 with the dreams of his new happiness. He reached 
 his rooms and threw himself on the bed, forcing from 
 his rnind, with a strong effort, the presence of Lady 
 Imogen, and trying to look calmly on the unpleasant 
 circumstance before him. A quarrel which, the day 
 before, he would have looked upon merely as an in 
 convenience, or which, under the insult of a blow, he 
 would have eagerly sought, became now an almost in 
 supportable evil. When he reflected on the subject 
 of the dispute a contention about a woman of doubt 
 ful reputation taking place in the same hour with a 
 first avowal from the delicate and pure Lady Imogen 
 when he remembered the change in his fortunes, 
 which he had as yet scarcely found time to realize 
 on the consequences to her who was so newly dear to 
 him, and on all he might lose, now that life had be 
 come invaluable his thoughts were almost too painful 
 to bear. How seldom do men play with an equal stake 
 in the game of taking; life, and how strange it is that 
 equality of weapons is the only comparison made ne 
 cessary by the laws of honor ! 
 
 Tremlet was not a man to be long undecided. He 
 rose, after an hour s reflection, and wrote as fol 
 lows : 
 
 " BARON : Before taking the usual notice of the oc 
 currence of this morning, I wish to rectify one or two 
 points in which our position is false. I find myself, 
 since last night, the accepted lover of Lady Imogen 
 Ravelgold, and the master of estates and title as a 
 count of the Russian empire. Under the etourdisse- 
 ment of such sudden changes in feelings and fortune, 
 perhaps my forgetfulness of the lady, in whose cause 
 you are so interested, admits of indulgence. At any 
 rate, I am so newly in love with life, that I am willing 
 to suppose for an hour that had you known these cir 
 cumstances, you would have taken a different view of 
 the offence in question. I shall remain at home till 
 two, and it is in your power till then to make me the 
 reparation necessary to my honor. Yours, etc., 
 
 " TREMLET." 
 
 There was a bridal on the following Monday at St. 
 George s church, and the Russian secretary stood be 
 hind the bridegroom. Lady Ravelgold had never been 
 seen so pale, but her face was clear of all painful feel 
 ing ; and it was observed by one who knew her well, 
 that her beauty had acquired, during the brief engage 
 ment of her daughter, a singular and undefinable ele 
 vation. As the carriages with their white favors turned 
 into Bond street, on their way back to Belgrave square, 
 the cortege was checked by the press of vehicles, and 
 the Russian, who accompanied Lady Ravelgold in her 
 chariot, found himself opposite the open britscka of a 
 lady who fixed her glass full upon him without recog 
 nising a feature of his face. 
 
 " I am afraid you have affronted Mrs. St. Leger, 
 baron !" said Lady Ravelgold. 
 
 " Or I should not have been here !" said the Rus 
 sian ; and as they drove up Piccadilly, he had just time 
 between Bond street and Milton Crescent to tell her 
 ladyship the foregone chapter of this story. 
 
 The trulian, on that day, was fed with wedding-cake, 
 and the wound on Mr. Tremlet s lip was not cured by 
 Jetting alone. 
 
 PALETTO S BRIDE, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " As a fish will sometimes gather force, and, with a longing, per 
 haps, for the brightness of upper air, leap from its prescribed ele 
 ment, and glitter a moment among the birds, so will there be found 
 men whose souls revolt against destiny, and make a fiery pluck at 
 things above them. But, like the fish, who drops, panting, with 
 dry scales, backward, the aspiring man oftenest regrets the native 
 element he has left ; and, with the failure of his unnatural effort, 
 drops back, content, to obscurity." JEREMY TAYLOR. 
 
 " MY daughter!" said the count Spinola. 
 
 The lady so addressed threw off a slight mantle and 
 turned her fair features inquiringly to her father. Heed 
 less of the attention he had arrested, the abstracted 
 count paced up and down the marble pavement of his 
 hall, and when, a moment after, Francesca came to 
 him for his good-night kiss, he imprinted it silently 
 on her forehead, and stepped out on the balcony to 
 pursue, under the aiding light of the stars, thoughts 
 that were more imperative than sleep. 
 
 There had been a fete of great splendor in the ducal 
 gardens of the Boboli, and Francesca Spinola had 
 | shown there, as usual, the most radiant and worship 
 ped daughter of the nobilita of Florence. The mel- 
 ancholy duke himself (this was in the days of his first 
 marriage) had seemed even gay in presenting her with 
 flowers" which he had gathered at her side, with the 
 dew on them (in an alley glittering with the diamonds on 
 noble bosoms, and dewdrops on roses that would slum 
 ber, though it was the birth-night of a princess), and 
 
PALETTO S BRIDE. 
 
 119 
 
 marked as was the royal attention to the envied beauty, 
 it was more easily forgiven her than her usual tri 
 umphs for it cost no one a lover. True to his con 
 jugal vows, the sad- featured monarch paid to beauty 
 only the homage exacted alike by every most admira 
 ble work of nature. 
 
 The grand-duke Leopold had not been the only ad 
 mirer whose attentions to Francesca Spinola had been 
 remarked. A stranger, dressed with a magnificence 
 that seemed more fitted for a masquerade than a court- 
 ball, and yet of a mien that promised danger to the 
 too inquisitive, had entered alone, and, marking out the 
 daughter of the haughty count from the first, had 
 procured an introduction, no one knew how, and 
 sought every opportunity which the intervals of the 
 dance afforded, to place himself at her side. Occu 
 pied with the courtly devoirs of his rank, the count 
 was, for a while, unaware of what struck almost every 
 one else, and it was only when the stranger s name 
 was inquired of him by the duke, that his dark and 
 jealous eye fell upon a face whose language of kindling 
 and undisguised admiration a child would have inter 
 preted aright. It was one of those faces that are of 
 no degree that may belong to a barbaric king, or to 
 a Greek slave that no refinement would improve, and 
 no servile habits degrade; faces which lake their 
 changes from an indomitable and powerful soul, and 
 are beyond the trifling impression of the common usages 
 of life. Spinola was offended with the daring and 
 passionate freedom of the stranger s gaze upon his 
 daughter; but he hesitated to interrupt their conver 
 sation too rudely. He stayed to exchange a compli 
 ment with some fair obstruction in his way across the 
 crowded saloon, and, in the next moment, Francesca 
 stood alone. 
 
 "Who left you this moment, my Francesca?" asked 
 the count, with affected unconcern. 
 
 "I think, a Venetian," she answered. 
 
 "And his name?" 
 
 " I know not, my father !" 
 
 The count s face flashed. 
 
 Who presented him to my darling?" he asked, 
 again forcing himself to composure. 
 
 Francesca colored ; and, with downcast eyes, an 
 swered : 
 
 "No one, my father! He seemed to know me, and 
 I thought I might have forgotten him." 
 
 Spinola turned on his heel, and, after a few vain in 
 quiries, and as vain a search for the stranger, ordered 
 his attendants, and drove silently home. 
 
 It was close upon the gray of the morning, and the 
 count still leaned over the stone-railing of his balcony. 
 Francesca had been gone an hour to her chamber. 
 A guitar-string sounded from the street below, and, a { 
 moment after, a manly and mellow voice broke into a | 
 Venetian barcarole, and sang with a skill and tender- | 
 ness which a vestal could scarce have listenedto un 
 moved. Spinola stepped back and laid his hand upon 
 his sword ; but, changing his thought, he took a lamp 
 from the wall within, and crept noiselessly to his 
 daughter s chamber. She lay within her silken cur 
 tains, with her hands crossed on her bosom, and from 
 her parted lips came the low breath of innocent and 
 untroubled sleep. Reassured, the count closed her 
 window and extinguished his lamp; and, when the 
 guitar was no longer heard echoing from the old 
 palace walls, and the rich voice of the serenader had 
 died away with his footsteps, the lord of the Palazzo 
 Spinola betook himself to sleep with a heart somewhat 
 relieved of its burden. 
 
 On the following day, the count pleaded the early- 
 coming heats of summer; and, with slight prepara 
 tion, left Florence for his summer-palace in the Ap 
 ennines. When Francesca joined him cheerfully, and , 
 even gayly, in his sudden plan, he threw aside the I 
 jealous fears that had haunted his breast, and forgot | 
 
 the stranger and his barcarole. The old trees of his 
 maison de plaisance were heavy with the leaves of the 
 Italian May; the statues stood cool in the shade; the 
 mountain rivulets forgot their birth in the rocky 
 brooks, and ran over channels of marble, and played 
 up through cactus-leaves and sea-shells, and nereids 
 horns, all carved by the contemporaries of Donatello. 
 " And here," thought the proud noble, "I am a Vecart 
 of the designs of adventurers, and the temptations and 
 dangers of gayety, and the child of my hopes will re 
 fresh her beauty and her innocence, under the watchful 
 eye, ever present, of my love. 
 
 Francesca Spinola was one of those Italian natures 
 of which it is difficult for the inhabitants of other 
 climes to conceive. She had no feelings. She had 
 passions. She could love but it sprang in an instant 
 to its fullest power and maidenly reserve and hesita 
 tion were incompatible with its existence. She had 
 listened, unmoved, to all the adulation of the duke s 
 court, and had been amused with the devotion of all 
 around her but never touched. The voice of the 
 stranger at the fete of the Boboli the daring words 
 he had addressed to her had arrested her attention ; 
 and it needed scarce the hour which flew like a mo 
 ment at his side to send a new sensation, like a tem 
 pest, through her heart. She reasoned upon nothing 
 asked nothing ; but, while she gave up her soul 
 wholly to a passion hitherto unfelt, the deep dissimula 
 tion which seems a natural part of the love of that 
 burning clime, prompted her, by an unquestioned im 
 pulse, to conceal it entirely from her father. She had 
 counterfeited sleep when nearly surprised in listening 
 to the barcarole, and she had little need to counterfeit 
 joy at her departure for the mountains. 
 
 The long valley of the Arno lay marked out upon 
 the landscape by a wreath of vapor, stealing up as if 
 enamored of the fading color of the clouds; and far 
 away, like a silver bar on the rim of the horizon, shone 
 the long line of the Mediterranean. The mountain 
 sides lay bathed in azure; and, echoing from the 
 nearest, came the vesper-bells of Vallombrosa. Peace 
 and purity were stamped upon the hour. 
 
 " My child," said the softened count, drawing Fran 
 cesca to his bosom, as they stood looking off upon 
 this scene from the flowery terrace beneath the por 
 tico; "does my child love me?" 
 
 Francesca placed her hands upon his shoulders and 
 kissed him for reply. 
 
 "I feel impelled," he continued, "to talk to you 
 while this beautiful hour is around us, of an affection 
 that resembles it." 
 
 " Resembles the sunset, my father ?" 
 
 " Yes ! Shall I tell you how ? By affecting with 
 its soft influence every object under the bend of the 
 sky ! My Francesca ! there are parents who love 
 their children, and love them well, and yet find feel 
 ings for other attachments, and devotion for every 
 other interest in life. Not so mine ! My love for 
 my child is a whole existence poured into hers. 
 Look at me, Francesca! I am not old. I am capa 
 ble, perhaps, of other love than a parent s. There are 
 among the young and beautiful who have looked on 
 me with favoring eyes. My blood runs warm yet, and 
 my step is as full of manhood perhaps my heart as 
 prompt to be gay as ever. I mean to say that I am 
 not too old for a lover. Does my daughter think so ?" 
 
 " I have been long vain of your beauty, dear fa 
 ther," said Francesca, threading her hand in his dark 
 curls. 
 
 "There are other things that might share your 
 empire in my heart politics, play, the arts a hun 
 dred passions which possess themselves of men whose 
 fortune or position gives them means and leisure. 
 Now listen, my daughter! You have supplanted all 
 these! You have filled my heart with yourself. 
 
120 
 
 PALETTO S BRIDE. 
 
 I am tempted to love my heart is my daughter s. 
 I am asked to play my thoughts are with my child. 
 I have neither time for politics, nor attention for the 
 arts my being breathes through my child. I am 
 incapable of all else. Do you hear me, Francesca?" 
 
 " I do, dear father !" 
 
 "Then, one moment more ! I can not conceal my 
 thoughts from you, and you will pardon love like mine 
 for ungrounded fears. I liked not the stranger at the 
 duke s palace." 
 
 Francesca stole a quick look at her father, and, 
 with the rapidity of light, her dark eye resumed its 
 tranquillity. 
 
 " I say I liked him not ! No one knew him ! He 
 is gone, no one knows whither! I trust he will never 
 be seen more in Florence. But I will not disguise 
 from you that I thought you pleased with him!" 
 
 "Father!" 
 
 " Forgive me if I wrong you but, without pursu 
 ing the subject, let your father implore you, on his 
 knees, for the confidence of your heart. Will you 
 tell me your thoughts, Francesca ? Will you love 
 me with but the thousandth part of my adoration, my 
 devotion, for my child?" 
 
 " Father ! I will !" 
 
 The count rose from the knee on which he had 
 fallen, gave his daughter a long embrace, and led her 
 in. And that night she fled over the Tuscan border, 
 into neighboring Romagna, and, with the stranger at 
 her side, sped away, under the cover of night, toward 
 the shores of the Brenta. 
 
 Like a city of secrets, sleeps silent Venice. Her 
 sea-washed foundations are buried under the smooth 
 glass of the tide. Her palace-entrances are dark cav- ! 
 erns, impenetrable to the eye. Her veiled dames are 
 unseen in their floating chambers, as they go from 
 street to street ; and mysteriously and silently glide to 
 and fro those swift gondolas, black as night, yet carry 
 ing sadness and mirth, innocence and guilt, alike 
 swiftly, mysteriously, and silently. Water, that be 
 trays no footstep, and covers all with the same mantle 
 of light, fills her streets. Silence, that is the seal of 
 secrecy, reigns day and night over her thousand 
 palaces. 
 
 For an hour the smooth mirror of the broad canal 
 that sweeps under the Rialto, had not been divided by 
 the steel prow of a gondola. Francesca Spinola stood 
 at the window of a chamber in a palace of gorgeous 
 magnificence, watching that still water for the coming 
 of her husband. The silver lines of the moon stole 
 back imperceptibly, as her full orb sailed up the 
 heavens, and the turrets of the old architecture of 
 Venice, drawn clearly on the unruffled bosom of the 
 canal, seemed retiring before a consuming sheet of 
 silver. The silence seemed painful. To the ear of 
 the beautiful Florentine, the want of the sound of a 
 footstep, of the echo of some distant wheel, the utter 
 death of all sound common to even the stillest hour of 
 a paved city, seemed oppressive and awful. Behind 
 her burned lamps of alabaster, and perfumes filled the 
 chamber, and on a cushion of costly velvet lay a mean 
 and unornamented guitar. Its presence in so costly a 
 palace was a secret yet withheld. She wished to 
 touch its strings, if only to disperse the horror of si 
 lence. But she raised her fingers, and again, without 
 touching it, leaned out and watched the dark arch of 
 the Rialto. 
 
 A gondola, with a single oar, sped swiftly from its 
 black shadow. It could not be Paletto. He had 
 gone with his two faithful servants to St. Mark s. 
 The oar ceased the bark headed in the water 
 splashed on the marble stair and the gondolier step 
 ped on shore. Ah, who but Paletto had such a form 
 as stood there in the moonlight ? 
 
 " Are we to be married again," said Francesca, as 
 her husband entered the chamber, " that you have 
 once more disguised yourself as a fisherman ?" 
 
 Paletto turned from the light, and took up the 
 mysterious guitar. "It is no night to be in-doors, my 
 Francesca! Come with me to the lagoon, and I will 
 tell you the story of this despised instrument. Will 
 you come ?" he pursued, as she stood looking at him 
 in wonder at his strange dress and disturbed look. 
 " Will you come, my wife?" 
 
 " But you have returned without your gondoliers!" 
 she said, advancing a step to take his hand. 
 
 "I have rowed a gondola ere now," he answered ; 
 and, without further explanation, he led her down the 
 lofty staircase, and seating her in the stern of the bark 
 which he had brought with him, stepped upon the 
 platform, and, with masterly skill and power, drove it 
 like a shadow under the Rialto. 
 
 He who has watched the horn of a quarter-moon 
 gliding past the towers, pinnacles and palaces of the 
 drifting clouds, and in his youthful and restless brain, 
 fancied such must be the smooth delight and chang 
 ing vision of a traveller in strange lands one who has 
 thus dreamed in his boyhood will scarce shoot though 
 Venice for the first time in a gondola, without a 
 sense of familiarity with the scene and motion. The 
 architecture of the clouds is again drifting past, and 
 himself seems borne onward by the silver shallop of 
 the moon. 
 
 Francesca sat on the low cushion of the gondola, 
 watching and wondering. How should her luxurious 
 Paletto have acquired the exquisite skill with which 
 he drove the noiseless boat like a lance-fly over the 
 water. Another gondola approached or was left be 
 hind, the corner of a palace was to be rounded, or the 
 black arch of a bridge to be shot under, and the 
 peculiar warning-cry of the gondoliers, giving notice 
 of their unheard approach, fell from his lips so me 
 chanically, that the hireling oarsmen of the city, mar 
 velling at his speed, but never doubting that it was a 
 comrade of the Piazza, added the "fratdlo mio" to 
 their passing salutation. She saw by every broad 
 beam of light, which, between the palaces, came down 
 across them, a brow clouded and a mind far from the 
 oar he turned so skilfully. She looked at the gondola 
 in which she sat. It was old and mean. In the prow 
 lay a fisher s net, and the shabby guitar, thrown upon 
 it, seemed now, at least, not out of place. She looked 
 up at Paletto once more, and, in his bare throat and 
 bosom, his loose cap and neglected hair, she could 
 with difficulty recognise the haughty stranger of the 
 Boboli. She spoke to him. It was necessary to 
 break the low-born spell that seemed closing around 
 her. Paletto started at her voice, and suspending his 
 oar, while the gondola still kept way as if with its own 
 irresistible volition, he passed his hand over his eyes, 
 and seemed waking from some painful dream. 
 
 The gondola was now far out in the lagoon. 
 Around them floated an almost impalpable vapor, 
 just making the moonlight visible, and the soft click 
 of the water beneath the rising and dropping prow was 
 the only sound between them and the cloudless heaven. 
 In that silence Paletto strung his guitar and sang to 
 his bride with a strange energy. She listened and 
 played with his tangled "locks, but there seemed a spell 
 upon her tongue when she would ask the meaning of 
 this mystery. 
 
 "Francesca!" he said at last, raising his head from 
 her lap. 
 
 "What says my fisherman?" she replied, holding 
 up his rough cap with a smile. 
 
 Paletto started, but recovering his composure, in 
 stantly took the cap from her jewelled fingers and 
 threw it carelessly upon his head. 
 
 " Francesca ! who is your husband ?" 
 
 " Paletto ?" 
 
PALETTO S BRIDE. 
 
 121 
 
 " And who is Paletto ?" i 
 
 " I would have asked sometimes, but your kisses 
 have interrupted me. Yet I know enough." 
 
 " What know you?" 
 
 " That he is a rich and noble seignior of Venice !" 
 
 " Do I look one to-night ?" 
 
 " Nay for a masquerade, I have never seen a 
 better ! Where learned you to look so like a fisher 
 man and row so like a gondolier ?" 
 
 Paletto frowned. 
 
 " Francesca !" said he folding his arms across his 
 bosom, " I am the son of a fisherman, and I was bred 
 to row the gondola beneath you !" 
 
 The sternness of his tone checked the smile upon 
 her beautiful lip, and when she spoke it was with a 
 look almost as stern as his own. 
 
 "You mock me too gravely, Paletto ! But come! 
 I will question you in your own humor. Who educa 
 ted the fisherman s son?" 
 
 " The fisherman." 
 
 " And his palace and his wealth whence came 
 they, Signor Pescatore ?" 
 
 The scornful smile of incredulity with which this 
 question was asked, speedily fled from her lip as Pal 
 etto answered it. 
 
 " Listen ! Three months since I had never known 
 other condition than a fisherman of the lagoon, nor 
 worn other dress than this in which you see me. The 
 first property I ever possessed beyond my day s earn 
 ings, was this gondola. It was my father s, Giannotto 
 the fisherman. When it became mine by his death, 
 I suddenly wearied of my tame life, sold boat and nets, 
 and with thoughts which you can not understand, 
 but which have brought you here, took my way to 
 the Piazza. A night of chance, begun with the whole 
 of my inheritance staked upon a throw, left me mas 
 ter of wealth I had never dreamed of. I became a 
 gay signore. It seemed to me that my soul had gone 
 out of me, and a new spirit, demoniac if you will, had 
 taken possession. I no longer recognised myself. I 
 passed for an equal with the best-born, my language 
 altered, my gait, my humor. One strong feeling alone 
 predominated an insane hatred to the rank in which 
 you were born, Francesca ! It was strange, too, that 
 I tried to ape its manners. I bought the palace you 
 have just left, and filled it with costly luxuries. And 
 then there grew upon me the desire to humiliate that 
 rank to pluck down to myself some one of its proud 
 and cherished daughters such as you !" 
 
 Francesca muttered something between her teeth, 
 and folded her small arms over her bosom. Paletto 
 went on. 
 
 "I crossed to Florence with this sole intention. I i 
 Unknown and uninvited, I entered the palace at the \- 
 fete of the Boboli, and looked around for a victim. !: 
 You were the proudest and most beautiful. I chose 1 1 
 you and you are here." 
 
 Paletto looked at her with a smile, and never sun- I 
 beam was more unmixed with shadow than the smile i 
 which answered it on the lips of Spinola s daughter. 
 
 M My Paletto !" she said, " you have the soul of a i 
 noble, and the look of one, and I am your bride. Let ! 
 us return to the palace !" 
 
 " I have no palace but this !" he said, striking his 
 hand like a bar of iron upon the side of the gondola. 
 " You have not heard out my tale." 
 
 Francesca sat with a face unmoved as marble. 
 
 "This night, at play, I lost all. My servants are 
 dismissed, my palace belongs to another, and with 
 this bark which I had repurchased, I am once more 
 Paletto the fisherman!" 
 
 A slight heave of the bosom of the fair Florentine 
 was her only response to this astounding announce 
 ment. Her eyes turned slowly from the face of the 
 fisherman, and fixing apparently on some point far out 
 in the Adriatic, she sat silent, motionless, and cold. 
 
 " I am a man, Francesca!" said Paletto after a pause 
 which, in the utter stillness of the lagoon around them, 
 seemed like a suspension of the breathing of nature, 
 and "I have not gone through this insane dream with 
 out some turning aside of the heart. Spite of my 
 self, I loved you, and I could not dishonor you. We 
 are married, Francesca !" 
 
 The small dark brows of the Florentine lowered 
 till the silken lashes they overhung seemed starting 
 from beneath her forehead. Her eyes flashed fire 
 below. 
 
 " Bene . " said Paletto, rising to his feet ; " one 
 word more while we have silence around us and are 
 alone. You are free to leave me, and I will so far re 
 pair the wrong I have done you, as to point out the 
 way. It will" be daylight in an hour. Fly to the 
 governor s palace, announce your birth, declare that 
 you were forced from your father by brigands, and 
 claim his protection. The world will believe you, and 
 the consequences to myself I will suffer in silence." 
 
 With a sudden, convulsive motion, Francesca thrust 
 out her arm, and pointed a single finger toward Venice. 
 Paletto bent to his oar, and quivering in every seam 
 beneath its blade, the gondola sped on his way. The 
 steel prow struck fire on the granite steps of the 
 Piazza, the superb daughter of Spinola stepped over 
 the trembling side, and with a half-wave of her hand, 
 strode past the Lion of St. Mark, and approached the 
 sentinel at the palace-gate. And as her figure was 
 lost among the arabesque columns shaded from the 
 moon, Paletto s lonely gondola shot once more silently 
 and slowly from the shore. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE smooth, flat pavement of the Borg ognisanti 
 had been covered since morning with earth, and the 
 windows and balconies on either side were flaunting 
 with draperies of the most gorgeous colors. The 
 riderless horse-races, which conclude the carnival in 
 Florence, were to be honored by the presence of the 
 court. At the far extremity of the street, close by the 
 gate of the Cascine, an open veranda, painted in fresco, 
 stood glittering with the preparations for the royal party, 
 and near it the costlier hangings of here and there a 
 window or balustrade, showed the embroidered crests 
 of the different nobles of Tuscany. It was the people s 
 place and hour, and beneath the damask and cloth of 
 gold, the rough stone windows were worn smooth by 
 the touch of peasant hands, and the smutched occu 
 pants, looking down from the balconies above, upon 
 the usupers of their week-day habitations, formed, to 
 the stranger s eye, not the least interesting feature of 
 the scene. 
 
 As evening approached, the balconies began to 
 show their burden of rank and beauty, and the street 
 below filled with the press of the gay contadini. 
 The ducal cortege, in open carriages, drove down 
 the length of the course to their veranda at the gate, 
 but no other vehicle was permitted to enter the ser 
 ried crowd; and, on foot like the peasant-girl, the 
 noble s daughter followed the servants of her house, 
 who slowly opened for her a passage to the balcony 
 she sought. The sun-light began to grow golden. 
 The convent-bell across the Arno rang the first peal 
 of vespers, and the horses were led in. 
 
 It was a puzzle to any but an Italian how that race 
 was to be run. The entire population of Florence 
 was crowded into a single narrow street men, women, 
 and children, struggling only for a foothold. The sig 
 nal was about to be given for the start, yet no attempt 
 was made to clear a passage. Twenty high-spirited 
 horses fretted behind the rope, each with a dozen 
 spurs hung to his surcingales, which, at the least mo- 
 
122 
 
 PALETTO S BRIDE. 
 
 tion, must drive him onward like the steed of Mazep- 
 pa. Gay ribands were braided in their manes, and the 
 bets ran high. All sounded and looked merry, yet it 
 would seem as if the loosing of the start-rope must be 
 like the letting in of destruction upon the crowd. 
 
 In a projecting gallery of a house on the side next 
 the Arno, was a p arty that attracted attention, some 
 what from their rank and splendid attire, but more 
 from the remarkable beauty of a female, who seemed 
 their star and idol. She was something above the 
 middle height of the women of Italy, and of the style 
 of face seen in the famous Judith of the Pitti dark, 
 and of melancholy so unfathomable as almost to af 
 fray the beholder. She looked a brooding prophet 
 ess ; yet through the sad expression of her features 
 there was a gleam of fierceness, thnt to the more criti 
 cal eye betrayed a more earthly gleam of human pas 
 sion and suffering. As if to belie the maturity of years 
 of which such an expression should be the work, an 
 ungloved hand and arm of almost childlike softness 
 and roundness lay on the drapery of the railed gallery ; 
 and stealing from that to her just-perfected form, the 
 gazer made a new judgment of her years, while he 
 wondered whal strange fires had forced outward the 
 riper lineaments of her character. 
 
 The count Fazelli, the husband of this fair dame, 
 stood within reach of her hand, for it was pressed on 
 his arm with no gentle touch, yet his face was turned 
 from her. He was a slight youth, little older, appa 
 rently, than herself, of an effeminate and yet wilful cast 
 of countenance, and would have been pronounced by 
 women (what a man would scarce allow him to be) 
 eminently handsome. Effeminate coxcomb as he was, 
 he had power over the stronger nature beside him, and 
 of such stuff, in courts and cities, are made sometimes 
 the heroes whose success makes worthier men almost 
 forswear the worship due to women. 
 
 There were two other persons in the balconies of 
 the Corso, who were actors in the drama of which this 
 was a scene. The first was the prima donna of the 
 Cocomero, to whose rather mature charms the capri 
 cious Fazelli had been for a month paying a too open 
 homage ; and the second was a captain in the duke s 
 guard, whose personal daring in the extermination of I 
 a troop of brigands, had won for him some celebrity 
 and his present commission. What thread of sympa- j 
 thy rested between so humble an individual and the 
 haughty countess Fazelli, will be shown in the sequel. 
 Enough for the present, that, as he stood leaning 
 against the pillar of an opposite gallery, looking care 
 lessly on the preparations for the course, that proud 
 dame saw and remembered him. 
 
 A blast from a bugle drew all eyes to the starting- 
 post, and in another minute the rope was dropped, and 
 the fiery horses loosed upon their career. Right into 
 the crowd, as if the bodies of the good citizens of 
 Florence were made of air, sprang the goaded troop, 
 and the impossible thing was done, for the suffocating 
 throngs divided like waves before the prow, and united 
 again as scathless and as soon. The spurs played 
 merrily upon the flanks of the affrighted animals, and 
 in an instant they had swept through the Borg ogni- 
 santi, and disappeared into the narrow lane leading to 
 the Trinita. It was more a scramble than a race, yet 
 there must be a winner, and all eyes were now occu 
 pied in gazing after the first glimpse of his ribands as 
 he was led back in triumph. 
 
 Uncompelled by danger, the suffocating crowd made 
 way with more difficulty for the one winning horse 
 than they had done for the score that had contended ; 
 with him. Yet, champing the bit, and tossing his | 
 ribands into the air, he came slowly back, and after 
 passing in front of the royal veranda, where a small ; 
 flag was thrown down to be set into the rosette of his j 
 bridle, he returned a few steps, and was checked by 
 the groom under the balcony of the prima donna. A ! 
 
 moment after, the winning flag was waving from the 
 rails above, and as the sign that she was the owner of 
 the victorious horse was seen by the people, a shout 
 arose which thrilled the veins of the fair singer more 
 than all the plaudits of the Cocomero. It is thought 
 to be pleasant to succeed in that for which we have 
 most struggled that for which our ambition and our 
 efforts are known to the world to be eminent, in 
 short, in our metier, our vocation. I am inclined to 
 think it natural to most men, however, and to all pos 
 sessors of genius, to undervalue that for which the 
 world is most willing to praise them, and to delight 
 more in excelling in that which seems foreign to their 
 usual pursuits, even if it be a trifle. It is delightful to 
 disappoint the world by success in anything. Detrac 
 tion, that follows genius to the grave, sometimes ad 
 mits its triumph, but never without the " back-water" 
 that it could do *no more. The fine actress had won a 
 shout from assembled Florence, yet off the scene. She 
 laid one hand upon her heart, and the other, in the 
 rash exultation of the moment, ventured to wave a 
 kiss of gratitude to the count Fazelli. 
 
 As that favored signer crossed to offer his congratu 
 lations, his place beside the countess was filled by a 
 young noble, who gave her the explanatory informa 
 tion that the horse was Fazelli s gift. Calmly, almost 
 without a sign of interest or emotion, she turned her 
 eyes upon the opposite balcony. A less searching and 
 nterested glance would have discovered, that if the 
 young count had hitherto shared the favor of the ad 
 mired singer with his rivals, he had no rival now. 
 There was in the demeanor of both an undisguised 
 tenderness that the young countess had little need to 
 watch long, and retiring from the balcony, she accept 
 ed the attendance of her communicative companion, 
 and was soon whirling in her chariot over the Ponte 
 3t. Angelo, on her way to the princely palace that 
 would soon cease to call her its mistress. 
 
 Like square ingots of silver, the moonlight came 
 through the battlements of the royal abode of the 
 Medici. It was an hour before day. The heavy heel 
 of the sentry was the only sound near the walls of the 
 Pitti, save, when he passed to turn, the ripple of the 
 Arno beneath the arches of the jeweller s bridge broke 
 "aintly on the ear. The captain of the guard had 
 strolled from the deep shadow of the palace into the 
 open moonlight, and leaned against a small stone shrine 
 of the Virgin set into the opposite wall, watching mu 
 singly the companionable and thought-stirring em- 
 leress of the night. 
 
 " Paletto !" suddenly uttered a voice near him. 
 
 The guardsman started, but instantly recovered his 
 position, and stood looking over his epaulet at the 
 ntruder, with folded arms. 
 
 " Paletto !" she said again, in a lower and more ap- 
 )ealing tone " will you listen to me ?" 
 
 " Say on, Countess Fazelli !" 
 
 " Countess Fazelli no longer, but Paletto s wife !" 
 
 " Ha ! ha !" laughed the guardsman bitterly, " that 
 tory is old, for so false a one." 
 
 " Scorn me not ! I am changed." The dark eyes 
 of Francesca Cappone lifted up, moist and full, into 
 he moonlight, and fixing them steadfastly on the sol 
 dier s, she seemed to demand that he should read her 
 soul in them. For an instant, as he did so, a troubled 
 emotion was visible in his own features, but a new 
 bought seemed to succeed the feeling, and turning 
 away with a cold gesture, he said, " I knew you false, 
 jut till now I thought you pure. Tempt me not to 
 lespise as well as hate you !" 
 
 I have deserved much atyourhand,"she answered, 
 with a deeper tone, " but not this. You are my hus- 
 >and, Paletto !" 
 
 " One of them !" he replied, with a sneer. 
 
 Francesca clasped her hands in agony. " I have 
 :ome to you," she said, trusting the generous nature 
 
VIOLANTA CESARINI. 
 
 123 
 
 which I have proved so well. I can not live unloved. 
 I deserted you, for I was ignorant of myself. I have 
 tried splendor and the love of my own rank, but one 
 is hollow and the last is selfish. Oh, Paletto ! what 
 love is generous like yours?" 
 
 The guardsman s bosom heaved, but he did not turn 
 to her. She laid her hand upon his arm : " I have 
 come to implore you to take me back, Paletto. False 
 as I was to you, you have been true to me. I would 
 be your wife again. I would share your poverty, if 
 you were once more a fisherman on the lagoon. Are 
 you inexorable, Paletto ?" 
 
 Her hand stole up to his shoulder : she crept closer 
 to him, and buried her head, unrepelled, in his bosom. 
 Paletto laid his hand upon the mass of raven hair 
 whose touch had once been to him so familiar, and 
 while the moon drew their shadows as one on the 
 shrine of the Virgin, the vows of early love were re 
 peated with a fervor unknown hitherto to the lips of 
 Cappone s daughter, and Paletto replied, not like a 
 courtly noble, but like that which was more eloquent 
 his own love-prompted and fiery spirit. 
 
 The next day there was a brief but fierce rencontre 
 between Count Fazelli and the guardsman Paletto, at 
 the door of the church of Santa Trinita. Francesca 
 had gone openly with her husband to vespers, attend 
 ed by a monk. When attacked by the young count 
 as the daring abducer of his wife, he had placed her 
 under that monk s protection till the quarrel should be 
 over, and, with the same holy man to plead his cause, 
 he boldly claimed his wife at the duke s hands, and 
 bore her triumphantly from Florence. 
 
 I heard this story in Venice. The gondolier Pa 
 letto, they say, still rows his boat on the lagoon : and 
 sometimes his wife is with him, and sometimes a daugh 
 ter, whose exquisite beauty, though she is still a child, 
 is the wonder of the Rialto as he passes under. I 
 never chanced to see him, but many a stranger has 
 hired the best oar of the Piazza, to pull out toward the 
 Adriatic in the hope of finding Paletto s boat and get 
 ting a glimpse of his proud and still most beautiful 
 wife a wife, it is said, than whom a happier or more 
 contented one with her lot lives not in the "city of 
 the sea." 
 
 VIOLANTA CESARINI, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " When every feather sticks in its own wing, 
 Lord Timon will be left a naked gull." 
 
 IT was an eve fit for an angel s birthnight (and we 
 know angels are born in this loving world), and while 
 the moon, as if shining only for artists eyes, drew the 
 outlines of palace and chapel, stern turret and sere 
 naded belvidere, with her silver pencil on the street, 
 two grave seniors, guardians in their own veins of the 
 blood of two lofty names known long to Roman story, 
 leaned together over a balcony of fretted stone, jutting 
 out upon the Corso, and affianced a fair and noble 
 maid of seventeen summers to a gentleman whose 
 character you shall learn, if we come safe to the se 
 quel. 
 
 " The cardinal has offered me a thousand scudi for 
 my Giorgione, said the old count Malaspina, at last, 
 changing his attitude and the subject at the same 
 time. 
 
 " Anima diporco /" exclaimed the other, " what stirs 
 the curtain ? The wind is changing, Malaspina. Let 
 us in ! So, he offers but a thousand ! I shall feel my 
 
 rheumatism to-morrow with this change. .B a thou 
 sand ! ha ! ha ! Let us in, let us in !" 
 
 " Let us out, say I !" murmured two lips that were 
 never made of cherries, though a bird would have 
 pecked at them; and stealing from behind the curtain, 
 whose agitation had persuaded her father that the wind 
 was rising, Violanta Cesarini, countess in her own right, 
 and beautiful by Heaven s rare grace, stepped forth 
 into the moonlight. 
 
 She drew a long breath as she looked down into the 
 Corso. The carriages were creeping up and down at 
 a foot-pace, and the luxurious dames, thrown back on 
 their soft cushions, nodded to the passers-by, as they 
 recognised friends and acquaintances where the moon- 
 II light broke through; crowds of slow promenaders loi 
 tered indolently on, now turning to look at the berry- 
 brown back of a contadini, with her stride like a tra 
 gedy-queen, and her eyes like wells of jet, and now 
 leaning against a palace wall, while a wandering harp- 
 girl sung better for a baiocco than noble ladies for the 
 praise of a cardinal; at one corner stood an artist with 
 his tablet, catching some chance effect perhaps in the 
 drapery of a marble saint, perhaps in the softer dra 
 pery of a sinner; the cafes, far up and dawn, looked 
 like festas out of doors, with their groups of gayly- 
 dressed idlers, eating sherbets and buying flowers ; a 
 gray friar passed now with his low-toned benedicite ; 
 and again a black cowl with a face that reddened the 
 very moonbeam that peeped under; hunchbacks con 
 tended testily for the wall, and tall fellows (by their 
 long hair and fine symmetry, professed models for 
 sculptors and painters) yielded to them with a gibe. 
 And this is Rome when the moon shines well, and on 
 this care-cheating scene looked down the countess 
 Violanta, with her heart as full of perplexity as her 
 silk boddice-lace would bear without breaking. 
 
 I dare say you did not observe, if you were in Rome 
 that night, and strolling, as you would have been in 
 the Corso (this was three years ago last May, and if 
 you were in the habit of reading the Diario di Roma, 
 the story will not be new to you) ; you did not observe, 
 I am sure, that a thread ran across from the balcony I 
 speak of, in the Palazzo Cesarim, to a high window 
 in an old palace opposite, inhabited, as are many 
 palaces in Rome, by a decayed family and several ar 
 tists. On the two sides of this thread, pressed, while 
 she mused, the slight fingers of Violanta Cesarini; 
 and, as if it descended from the stars at every pull 
 which the light May-breeze gave it in passing, she 
 turned her soft blue eyes upward, and her face grew 
 radiant with hope not such as is fed with star-gazing ! 
 Like a white dove shooting with slant wings down 
 ward a folded slip of paper flew across on this invisible 
 thread, and, by heaven s unflickering lamp, Violanta 
 read some characters traced with a rough crayon, but 
 in most sweet Italian. A look upward, and a nod, as 
 if she were answering the stars that peeped over her, 
 and the fair form had gone with its snowy robes from 
 the balcony, and across the high window from which 
 the messenger had come, dropped the thick and im 
 penetrable folds of the gray curtain of an artist. 
 
 It was a large upper room, such as is found in the 
 vast houses of the decayed nobility of Rome, and of 
 its two windows one was roughly boarded up to ex 
 clude the light, while a coarse gray cloth did nearly 
 the same service at the other, shutting out all but an 
 artist s modicum of day. The walls of rough plaster 
 were covered with grotesque drawings, done apparently 
 with bits of coal, varied here and there with scraps of 
 unframed canvass, nailed carelessly up, and covered 
 with the study of some head, by a famous master. A 
 
 | large table on one side of the room was burdened with 
 a confused heap of brushes, paint-bags, and discolored 
 cloths, surmounted with a clean palette ; and not far 
 
 ! off stood an easel, covered with thumb-marks of all 
 
124 
 
 VIOLANTA CESARINI. 
 
 dyes, and supporting a new canvass, on which was 
 outlined the figure of a nymph, with the head finished 
 in a style that would have stirred the warm blood of 
 Raphael himself with emulous admiration. A low 
 flock bed, and a chair without a bottom, but with a 
 large cloak hung over its back, a pair of foils and a 
 rapier, completed so much of the furniture of the 
 room as belonged to a gay student of Corregio s art, 
 who wrote himself Biondo Amieri. 
 
 By the light of the same antique lamp, hung on a 
 rusty nail against the wall, you might see a very good 
 effect on the face of an unfinished group in marble, 
 of which the model, in plaster, stood a little behind, 
 representing a youth with a dagger at his heart, ar 
 rested in the act of self-murder by a female whose 
 softened resemblance to him proclaimed her at the first 
 glance his sister. A mallet, chisels, and other im 
 plements used in sculpture, lay on the rough base of 
 the unfinished group, and half-disclosed, half-con 
 cealed, by a screen covered with prints by some curi 
 ous female hand, stood a bed with white curtains, and 
 an oratory of carved oak at its head, supporting a 
 clasped missal. A chair or two, whose seats of worked 
 satin had figured one day in more luxurious neighbor 
 hood, a table covered with a few books and several 
 drawings from the antique, and a carefully-locked 
 escritoire, served, with other appearances, to distin 
 guish this side of the room as belonging to a separate 
 occupant, of gentler taste or nurture. 
 
 While the adventurous Violanta is preparing her 
 self to take advantage of the information received by 
 her secret telegraph, I shall have time, dear reader, 
 to put you up to a little of the family history of the 
 Cesarini, necessary no less to a proper understanding 
 of the story, than to the heroine s character for dis 
 cretion. On the latter point, I would suggest to you, 
 you may as well suspend your opinion. 
 
 It is well known to all the gossips in Rome, that, 
 for four successive generations, the marquises of 
 Cesarini have obtained dispensations of the pope for 
 marrying beautiful peasant-girls from the neighbor 
 hood of their castle, in Romagna. The considerable 
 sums paid for these dispensations, reconciled the holy 
 see to such an unprecedented introduction of vulgar 
 blood into the veins of the nobility, and the remarkable 
 female beauty of the race (heightened by the addition 
 of nature s aristocracy to its own), contributed to main 
 tain good will at a court, devoted above all others to 
 the cultivation of the fine arts, of which woman is the 
 Eidolon and the soul. The last marquis, educated 
 like his fathers, in their wild domain among the moun 
 tains, selected, like them, the fairest wild-flower that 
 sprung at his feet, and after the birth of one son, ap 
 plied for the tardy dispensation. From some un 
 known cause (possibly a diminished bribe, as the mar 
 quis was less lavish in his disposition than his prede 
 cessors), the pope sanctioned the marriage, but re 
 fused to legitimatize the son, unless the next born 
 should be a daughter. The marchioness soon after 
 retired (from mortification it is supposed) to her home 
 in the mountains, and after two years of close seclu 
 sion, returned to Rome, bringing with her an infant 
 daughter, then three months of age, destined to be the 
 heroine of our story. No other child appearing, the 
 young Cesarini was legitimatized, and with his infant 
 sister passed most of his youth at Rome. Some three 
 or four years before the time when our tale com 
 mences, this youth, who had betrayed always, a coarse 
 and brutal temper, administered his stiletto to a gen 
 tleman on the Corso, and flying from Rome, became 
 a brigand in the Abruzzi. His violence and atrocity 
 in this congenial life, soon put him beyond hope of 
 pardon, and on his outlawry by the pope, Violanta be 
 came the heiress of the estates of Cesarini. 
 
 The marchioness had died when Violanta was be 
 tween seven and eight years of age, leaving her, by a 
 
 death-bed injunction, in the charge of her own con 
 stant attendant, a faithful servant from Romagno, sup 
 posed to be distant kinswoman to her mistress. With 
 this tried dependant, the young countess was permit 
 ted to go where she pleased, at all hours when not at 
 tended by her masters, and seeing her tractable and 
 lovely, the old marquis, whose pride in the beauty of 
 his family was the passion next to love of money in 
 his heart, gave himself little trouble, and thought him 
 self consoled for the loss of his son in the growing at 
 tractions and filial virtues of his daughter. 
 
 On a bright morning in early spring, six years before 
 the date of our tale, the young countess and her at 
 tendant were gathering wild flowers near the fountain 
 of Egeria (of all spots of earth, that on which the wild 
 flowers are most profuse and sweetest), when a de 
 formed youth, who seemed to be no stranger to Donna 
 Bettina, addressed Violanta in a tone of voice so mu 
 sical, and with a look so kindly and winning, that the 
 frank child took his hand, and led him off in search of 
 cardinals and blue-bells, with the familiarity of an es 
 tablished playfellow. After this day, the little countess 
 never came home pleased from a morning drive and 
 ramble in which she had not seen her friend Signor 
 Giulio; and the romantic baths of Caracalla, and the 
 many delicious haunts among the ruins about Rome, 
 had borne witness to the growth of a friendship, all 
 fondness and impulse on the part of Violanta, all ten 
 derness and delicacy on that of the deformed youth. 
 By what wonderful instinct they happened always to 
 meet, the delighted child never found time or thought 
 to inquire. 
 
 Two or three years passed on thus, and the old 
 marquis had grown to listen with amused familiarity 
 to his daughter s prattle about the deformed youth, 
 and no incident had varied the pleasant tenor of their 
 lives and rambles, except that, Giulio once falling ill, 
 Bettina had taken the young countess to his home, 
 where she discovered that, young as he was, he made 
 some progress in moulding in clay, and was destined for 
 a sculptor. This visit to the apartment of an obscure 
 youth, however, the marquis had seen fit to object to ; 
 and though, at his daughter s request, he sent the 
 young sculptor an order for his first statue, he per 
 emptorily forbade all further intercourse between him 
 and Violanta. In the paroxysm of her grief at the 
 j first disgrace she had ever fallen into with her master, 
 I Bettina disclosed to her young mistress, by way of 
 justification, a secret she had been bound by the 
 most solemn oaths to conceal, and of which she now 
 was the sole living depository that this deformed 
 youth was born in the castle of the Cesarini, in Ro 
 magna, of no less obscure parentage than the castle s 
 lord and lady, and being the first child after the dis 
 pensation of marriage, and a son, he was consequently 
 the rightful heir to the marquisate and estates of Cesa 
 rini ; and the elder son, by the terms of that dispen 
 sation, was illegitimate. 
 
 This was astounding intelligence to Violanti, who, 
 nevertheless, child as she was, felt its truth in the 
 yearnings of her heart to Giulio ; but it was with no 
 little pains and difficulty on Bettina s part, that she was 
 persuaded to preserve the secret from her father. The 
 Romagnese knew her master s weakness ; and as the 
 birth of the child had occurred during his long ab 
 sence from the castle, and the marchioness, proud of 
 her eldest-born, had determined from the first that he 
 alone should enjoy the name and honors of his father, 
 it was not very probable that upon the simple word of 
 a domestic, he would believe a deformed hunchback 
 to be his son and heir. 
 
 The intermediate history of Giulio, Bettina knew 
 little about, simply informing her mistress, that dis 
 gusted with his deformity, the unnatural mother had 
 sent him to nurse in a far-off village of Romagna, and 
 that the interest of a small sum which the marquis 
 
VIOLANTA CESARINI. 
 
 125 
 
 supposed had been expended on masses for the souls 
 of his ancestors, was still paid to his foster-parents for 
 his use. 
 
 From the time of this disclosure, Violanta s life had 
 beeu but too happy. Feeling justified in contriving 
 secret interviews with her brother; and possessing the 
 efficient connivance of Bettiaa, who grew, like her 
 self, almost to worship the pure-minded and the gentle 
 Giulio. her heart and her time were blissfully crowded 
 with interest. So far, the love that had welled from 
 her heart had been all joyous and untroubled. 
 
 It was during the absence of the marquis and his 
 daughter from Rome, and in an unhealthy season, 
 that Giulio, always delicnte in health and liable to ex 
 cessive fils of depression, had fallen ill in his solitary 
 room, and, but for the friendly care of a young artist 
 whom he had long known, must have died of want 
 and neglect. As he began to recover, he accepted the 
 offer of Amieri, his friend, to share with him a lodging 
 in the more elevated air of the Corso, and, the more 
 readily, that this room chanced to overlook the palace 
 of Cesarina. Here Violanta found him on her return, 
 and though displeased that he was no longer alone, 
 she still continued, when Amieri was absent, to see 
 him sometimes in his room, and their old haunts 
 without the walls were frequented as often as his 
 health and strength would permit. A chance meeting 
 of Violanta and Amieri in his own studio, however, 
 made it necessary that he should be admitted to their 
 secret, and the consequence of that interview, and 
 others which Violanta found it impossible to avoid, 
 was a passion in the heart of the enthusiastic painter, 
 which consumed, as it well might, every faculty of 
 his soul. 
 
 We are thus brought to an eveninsr of balmy May, 
 when Giulio fount! himself alone. Biondo had been 
 painting all day on the face of his nymph, endeavoring 
 in vain to give it any other features than those of the 
 lady of his intense worship, and having gone out to 
 ramble for fresh air and relaxation in the Corso. 
 Giulio thought he might venture to throw across his 
 ball of thread and send a missive to his sister, promisin <T 
 her an uninterrupted hour of his society. 
 
 With these preliminaries, our story will now run 
 smoothly on. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " COME in, carissima /" said the low, silver-toned 
 voice of the deformed sculptor, as a female figure, in 
 the hood and cloak of an old woman, crossed the 
 threshold of his chamber. 
 
 " Dear Giulio !" And she lermed slightly over the 
 diminutive form of her brother, and first kissing his 
 pale forehead, while she unfastened the clasp of 
 Bettina s cloak of black silk, threw her arms about 
 him as the disguise fell off, and multiplied, between 
 her caresses, the endearing terms in which the lan 
 guage of that soft clime is so prodigal. 
 
 They sat down at the foot of his group in marble, 
 and each told the little history of the hours they had 
 spent apart. They grew alike as they conversed ; 
 for theirs was that resemblance of the soul, to which 
 the features answer only when the soul is breathing 
 through. Unless seen together, and not only together, 
 but gazing on each other in complete abandonment 
 of heart, the friends that knew .hem best would have 
 aid they were unlike. Yet Amieri s nymph on the 
 canvass was like both, for Amieri drew from the picture 
 burnt on his own heart by love, and the soulof Violanta 
 lay breathing beneath every lineament. 
 
 "You have not touched the marble to-day!" said 
 the countess, taking the lamp from its nail, and shed 
 ding the light aslant on the back of the statue. 
 
 " No ! I have lifted the hammer twenty times to 
 break it in pieces." 
 
 " Ah ! dearest Ginlio ! talk not thus ! Think it is 
 rny image you would destroy !" 
 
 " If it were, and truly done, I would sooner strike 
 the blessed crucifix. But, Violanta ! there ia a link 
 wanting in this deformed frame of mine ! The sense 
 of beauty, or the power to body it forth, wants room in 
 me. I feel it I feel it !" 
 
 Violanta ran to him and pressed the long curls that 
 fell over his pallid temples to her bosom. There was 
 a tone of conviction in his voice that she knew not how 
 to answer. 
 
 He continued, as if he were musing aloud : 
 " I have tried to stifle this belief in my bosom, and 
 i have never spoken of it till now but it is true! 
 i Look at that statue ! Parts of it are like nature 
 i but it wants uniformity it wants grace it wants 
 I what / want proportion! I never shall give it that, 
 I because I want the sense, the consciousness, the emo- 
 tion, of complete godlike movement. It is only the 
 well formed who feel this. Sculptors may imitate 
 i gods ! for they are made in God s image. But oh, 
 ; Violanta ! / am not !" 
 "My poor brother !" 
 
 " Our blessed Savior was not more beautiful than 
 the Apollo," he passionately continued, " but could / 
 | feel like the Apollo! Can /stand before the clay and 
 straighten myself to his attitude, and fancy, by the 
 most delirious effort of imagination, that 1 realize in 
 this frame, and could ever have conceived and moulded 
 his indignant and lofty beauty ? No no no !" 
 
 "Dear dear Giulio." He dropped his head again, 
 and she felt his tears penetrate to her bosom. 
 
 " Leave this melancholy theme," she said, in an 
 imploring tone, " and let us talk of other things, I have 
 something to tell you, Giulio !" 
 
 " Raphael was beautiful," he said, raising himself 
 up, unconscious of the interruption, "and Giorgione, 
 and Titian, both nobly formed, and Michael Angelo 
 had the port of an archangel ! Yes, the soul inhabits 
 the whole body, and the sentiment of beauty moves 
 and quickens through it all. My tenement is cramp 
 ed ! Violanta !" 
 
 "Well, dear brother!" 
 
 "Tell me your feelings when you first breathe the 
 air in a bright morning in spring. Do yon feel grace 
 ful ? Is there a sensation of beauty? Do you lift 
 yourself and feel swan-like and lofty, and worthy of 
 : the divine image in which you breathe. Tell uie 
 truly, Violanta." 
 " Yes, brother!" 
 
 " I knew it ! I have a faint dream of such a feel- 
 ! ing a sensation that is confined to my brain somehow 
 which I struggle to express in motion but if I lift 
 j my finger, it is gone. I watch Amieri sometimes, 
 1 when lie draws. He pierces rny very soul by as- 
 ! suming, always, the attitude on his canvass. Violanta! 
 i how can / stand like a statue that would please the 
 | eye?" 
 
 "Giulio! Giulio!" 
 
 ; Well, I will not burden you with my sadness. 
 : Let us look at Blonde s nymph. Pray the Virgin he 
 1 come not in the while for painting, by lamp-light, 
 shows less fairly than marble." 
 
 He took the lamp, and while Violanta shook the 
 j tears from her eyes, he drew out the pegs of the easel, 
 and lowered the picture to the light. 
 
 44 Are you sure Amieri will not come in, Giulio?" 
 inquired his sister, looking back timidly at the door 
 i while she advanced. 
 
 " I think he will not. The Corso is gay to night, 
 i and his handsome face and frank carriage, win greet 
 ings, as the diamond draws light. Look at his pic 
 ture, Violanta! With what triumph he paints! How 
 different from my hesitating hand ! The thought that 
 
126 
 
 VIOLANTA CESARINI. 
 
 is bora in his fancy, collects instant fire in his veins 
 and comes prompt and proportionate to his hand. It 
 looks like a thing born, not wrought ! How beautiful 
 
 >u are, my Violanta ! He has done well brave 
 iondo !" 
 
 " It is like me, yet fairer." 
 
 I wish it were done ! There is a look on the lips 
 that is like a sensation 1 feel sometimes on my own I 
 almost feel as if I should straighten and grow fair as it 
 advances. Would it not be a blessed thing, Violanta ?" 
 
 " I love you as you are, dear Giulio !" 
 
 "But I thirst to be loved like other men ! I would 
 pass in the street and not read pity in all eyes. I 
 would go out like Biondo, and be greeted in the street j 
 with Mio bravo ! Mio bello ! I would be beloved | 
 by some one that is not my sister, Violanta! I would 
 have my share only my share of human joy and re 
 gard. I were better dead than be a hunchback. I 
 would die, but for you to-night yes, to night." 
 
 With a convulsive hand he pulled aside the curtain, 
 and sent a long, earnest look up to the stars. Violanta 
 had never before heard him give words to his melan 
 choly thoughts, and she felt appalled and silenced by 
 the inexpressible poignancy of his tones, and the fever 
 ish, tearless, broken-heartedness of his whole manner. 
 As she took his hand, there was a noise in the street 
 below, and presently after, a hurried step was heard 
 on the stair, and Amieri rushed in, seized the rapier 
 which hung over his bed and without observing Vio 
 lanta, was flying again from the apartment. 
 
 " Biondo !" cried a voice which would have stayed 
 him were next breath to have been drawn in heaven. 
 
 " Contessa Violanta !" 
 
 "What is it, Amieri? Where go you now?" 
 asked Giulio, gliding between him and the door. 
 Biondo s cheek and brow had flushed when first ar 
 rested by the voice of the countess, but now he stood 
 silent and with his eyes on the floor, pale as the statue 
 before him. 
 
 " A quarrel, Giulio !" he said at length. 
 
 " Biondo !" The countess sprang to his side with 
 the simple utterance of his name, and laid her small 
 hand on his arm. " You shall not go! You are dear 
 to us dear to Guilio, Signor Amieri! If you love us 
 if you care for Giulio nay, I will say it if you 
 care for me, dear Biondo, put not your life in peril." 
 
 " Lady !" said the painter, bowing his head to his 
 wrist, and kissing lightly the small white fingers that 
 pressed it, "if I were to lose my life this hour, I should 
 bless with my dying lips the occasion which had drawn 
 from you the blessed words I hear. But the more 
 life is valuable to me by your regard, the more need 
 you should not delay me. I am waited for. Fare 
 well!" 
 
 Disengaging himself from Violanta s grasp, quickly 
 but gently, Amieri darted through the door, and was 
 gone. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 BIOXDO had readily found a second in the first 
 artist he met on the Corso, and after a rapid walk 
 they turned on the lonely and lofty wall of the Pala 
 tine, to look back on the ruins of the Forum. At a 
 fountain side, not far beyond, he had agreed to find 
 his antagonist; but spite of the pressing business of 
 the hour, the wonderful and solemn beauty of the ruins 
 that lay steeped in moonlight at his feet, awoke, for 
 an instant, all of the painter in his soul. 
 
 " Is it not glorious, Lenzoni ?" he said, pointing with 
 his rapier to the softened and tall columns that carried 
 their capitals among the stars. 
 
 "We have not come out to sketch, Amieri!" was 
 the reply. 
 
 "True, caro! but my fingers work as if the pencil 
 was in them, and I forget revenge while 1 see what I 
 shall never sketch again!" 
 
 Lenzoni struck his hand heavily on Amieri s shoul 
 der, as if to wake him from a dream, and looked close 
 into his face. 
 
 "If you fight in this spirit, Biondo " 
 
 "I shall fight with heart and soul, Lenzoni ; fear 
 me not! But when I saw, just now, the bel ejfetto of 
 the sharp-drawn shadows under the arch of Constau- 
 tine, and felt instinctively for my pencil, something 
 told me, at my heart s ear you will never trace line 
 | again, Amieri!" 
 
 "Take heart, caro amico!" 
 
 My heart is ready, but my thoughts come fast! 
 
 What were my blood, I can not but reflect, added to 
 
 , the ashes of Rome? We fight in the grave of an 
 
 i empire! But you will not philosophize, dull Len- 
 
 l zoni! Come on to the fountain!" 
 
 The moon shone soft on the greensward rim of the 
 i neglected fountain that once sparkled through the 
 j " gold palace" of Nero. The white edges of half- 
 , buried marble peeped here and there from the grass, 
 i and beneath the shadow of an ivy-covered and totter 
 ing arch, sang a nightingale, the triumphant posses- 
 I sor of life amid the forgotten ashes of the Cassars. 
 Amieri listened to his song. 
 
 "You are prompt, signor!" said a gay-voiced gen 
 tleman, turning the corner of the ruined wall, as 
 Biondo, still listening to the nightingale, fed his heart 
 with the last sweet words of Violanta. 
 
 " Sempre pronto? is a good device," answered Len 
 zoni, springing to his feet. "Will you fight, side to 
 the moon, signers, or shall we pull straws for the 
 choice of light?" 
 
 Amien s antagonist was a strongly-made man of 
 thirty, costly in his dress, and of that class of features 
 eminently handsome, yet eminently displeasing. The 
 origin of the quarrel was an insulting observation, 
 coupled with the name of the young countess Cesa- 
 rini, which Biondo, who was standing in the shadow 
 of a wall, watching her window from the Corso, acci 
 dentally overheard. A blow on the mouth was the 
 first warning the stranger received of a listener s 
 neighborhood, and after a momentary struggle they 
 | exchanged cards, and separated to meet in an hour, 
 with swords, at the fountain, on the Palatine. 
 
 Amieri was accounted the best foil in the ateliers of 
 Rome, but his antagonist, the count Lamba Malas- 
 pina had just returned from a long residence in France, 
 and had the reputation of an accomplished swordsman. 
 Amieri was slighter in person, but well-made, and 
 agile as a leopard; but when Lenzoni looked into the 
 cool eye of Malaspina, the spirit and fire which he 
 would have relied upon to ensure his friend success in 
 an ordinary contest, made him tremble now. 
 
 Count Lamba bowed, and they crossed swords. 
 Amieri had read his antagonist s character, like his 
 friend, and, at the instant their blades parted, he broke 
 down his guard with the quickness of lightning, and 
 wounded him in the face. Malaspina smiled as he 
 crossed his rapier again, and in the next moment 
 Amieri s sword flew high above his head, and the 
 count s was at his breast. 
 
 "Ask for your life, mio lravo!" he said, as calmly 
 as if they had met by chance in the Corso. 
 
 " A morte ! villain and slanderer!" cried Amieri, and 
 striking the sword from his bosom, he aimed a blow 
 at Malaspina, which by a backward movement, was 
 received on the point of the blade. Transfixed through 
 the wrist, Amieri struggled in vain against the supe 
 rior strength and coolness of his antagonist, and falling 
 on his knee, waited in silence for his death-blow. 
 Malaspina drew his sword gently as possible from the 
 wound, and recommending a tourniquet to Lenzoni 
 till a surgeon could be procured, washed the blood 
 
VIOLANTA CESARINI. 
 
 127 
 
 from his face in the fountain, and descended inlo the 
 Forum, humming the air of a new song. 
 
 Faint with loss of blood, and with his left arm ) 
 around Lenzoni s neck, Biondo arrived at the sur 
 geon s door. 
 
 " Can you save his hand ?" was the first eager ques 
 tion. 
 
 Amieri held up his bleeding wrist with difficulty, 
 and the surgeon shook his head as he laid the help 
 less fingers in his palm. The tendon was entirely 
 parted. 
 
 44 1 may save the hand." he said, 41 but he will never 
 use it more /" 
 
 Amieri gave his friend a look full of anguish, and 
 fell back insensible. 
 
 "Poor Biondo!" said Lenzom, as he raised his 
 pallid head from the surgeon s pillow. " Death were 
 less misfortune than the loss of a hand like thine. 
 The foreboding was too true, alas! that thou never 
 wouldst use pencil more!" 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE frowning battlements of St. Angelo were 
 brightened with the glare of lamps across the Tiber, 
 and the d;irk breast of the river was laced with bars of 
 gold like the coat of a captain of dragoons. Here and 
 there lay a boat in mid-stream, and while the drift of 
 the current was counteracted by an occasional stroke 
 at the oar, the boatman listened to the heavenly strains 
 
 Donna Bettina laughed under her palmer s cowl, 
 and drawing Giulio s arm within her own, they min 
 gled in the masquerade. 
 
 The old count Cesarini arrived a few minutes after 
 in one of the equipages of the Malaspina, accompanied 
 by a red-cross knight in a magnificent armor, his 
 sword-hilt sparkling with diamonds, and the bars of 
 his visor half-drawn, yet showing a beard of jetty and 
 curling black, and a mouth of the most regular, yet 
 unpleasant beauty. The upper part of his face was 
 quite concealed, yet the sneer on his lips promised a 
 cold and unfeeling eye. 
 
 "As a hunchback, did you say. count?" 
 
 44 It was her whim," answered Cesarini. 4l She has 
 given alms to a poor sculptor with that deformity till 
 her brain is filled with it. Pray the saints to afreet 
 not your offspring, Lamba !" 
 
 Malaspina surveyed himself in the long mirror at 
 the entrance of the saloon, and smiled back incredu 
 lously with his white teeth. 
 
 41 1 gave Bettina strict orders not to leave her side," 
 said Cesarini. 4t You will find the old donna by her 
 palmer s dress. The saints speed your suite, Lamba! 
 I will await you in the card-room when the dance 
 wearies you !" 
 
 It was not for some time after the two old nobles 
 had affianced their children, that Cesarini had found 
 a fitting opportunity to break the subject to his daugh 
 ter. When he did so, somewhat to his embarrass 
 ment, Violanta listened to it without surprise; and 
 after hearing all he had to say upon the honorable de 
 scent, large fortune, and courtly accomplishments of 
 
 , , 
 
 of a waltz, dying and triumphing in alternate cadences . the young count Lamba, she only permitted her fa- 
 j breath of night and the pope s band. A j ther to entertain any future hope on the subject, upon 
 platform was built out over the river, forming a con- J the condition, that, till she was of age, her proposed 
 
 tinu;ition of the stnge; the pit was floored over, and 
 all draped like a Persian harem ; and thus began a 
 masquerade at the Teatro della Pergola at Rome, 
 which stands, if you will take the trouble to remem 
 ber, close by the bridge and castle of St. Angelo upon 
 the bauk of the "yellow Tiber." 
 
 ge, her proposed 
 
 husband should not even be presented to her. For 
 this victory over the most cherished ambition of the 
 old count, Violanta was indebted partly to the holy 
 see, and partly to some qualities in her own character, 
 of which her father knew the force. He was aware 
 l with what readiness the cardinal would seize upon the 
 
 The entrance of the crowd to the theatre was like a j slightest wish she might express to take the veil and 
 d to represent the things of which bring her possessions into the church, and he was 
 e are commanded not to make graven images, nor : sufficiently acquainted with the qualities of a Cesa- 
 to bow down and worship them. There was the like- : rini, not to drive one of their daughters to extremity, 
 ness of everything in heaven above and on the earth : With some embarrassment the old count made a 
 BDeath, and in the waters under the earth. There clean breast to Malaspina and his son, and was ex- 
 were angels, devils, serpents, birds, beasts, fishes, and ! hausting language in regrets, when he was relieved by 
 fair women of which none except the last occasioned I an assurance from Lamba that the difficulty increased 
 much transgression of the commandment. Oddly j his zest for the match, and that, with Cesarini s per- 
 fishes waltzed and so did the beasts and \\ mission, he would find opportunities to encounter her 
 lair women, the serpents and birds pairing off as they i in her walks as a stranger, and m;ike his way after the 
 ne within sound of the music, with a defiance of ; romantic taste which he supposed was alone at the boN 
 mtural antipathies which would have driven a natural- torn of her refusal For success in this, Count Lamba 
 ist out of his senses. re ]i e d on his personal beauty and on that address in 
 
 A chariot drove up with the crest of the Cesarini the arts of adventure which is acquired by a residence 
 on the pannel, and out of it stepped rather a si iff figure | in France. 
 
 dressed as a wandering palmer, with serge and scallop- j Since his duel, Amieri had been confined to his 
 
 ells, followed by a masked hunchback whose cos- ! bed with a violent fever, danoerously aggravated by 
 
 tume, even to the threadbare spot on the ridge of his j the peculiar nature of his calamity. The love of the 
 
 mity, was approved, by the loungers at the door, j pencil was the breath of his soul, and in all his 
 
 in a general "bravissimo." They entered the dress- 1 1 thaiights of Violanta, it was only as a rival of the 
 
 ing-room, and the cloak-keeper was not surprised ! lofty fame of painters who had made themselves the 
 
 when the lump was withdrawn in the shape of a pad |l companions of kings, that he could imagine himself a 
 
 f wool, arid by the aid of a hood and petticoat of j claimant for her love. It seemed to him that his 
 
 black silk, the deformed was transformed into a slender \ nerveless hand had shut out heaven s entire light. 
 
 domino, undistinguished but for the grace and elas- i Giulio had watched by his friend with the faithful 
 
 ticity of her movements. The attendant was sur- ! fondness of a woman, and had gathered from his mo- 
 
 pnsed, however, when having stepped aside to deposite !j ments of delirium, what Biondo had from dtlicacy to 
 
 the pad given in charge to her, she turned and saw the ;| Violanta never revealed to his second, Lenzoni the 
 
 ornino flitting from the room, but the hunchback ji cause of his quarrel with Malaspina. Touched with 
 
 with^his threadbare hump still leaning on the palmer s j this chivalric tenderness toward his sister, the kind 
 
 arm - . . I Giulio hung over him with renewed affection, and 
 
 "baniissima Vergine . " she exclaimed, pulling out when, in subsequent ravings, the maimed youth be- 
 
 her cross and holding it between herself and Giulio, !: trayed the real sting of his misfortune the death of 
 
 the fiend the unholy fiend!" |( his hopes of her love the unambitious brother re- 
 
128 
 
 VIOLANTA CESARINI. 
 
 solved in his heart that if he could aid him by service 
 or sacrifice, by influence with Violanta, or by making 
 the almost desperate attempt to establish his own 
 claims to the name and fortunes of Cesarini, he would 
 devote himself to his service heart and soul. 
 
 During the confinement of Amieri to his room, the 
 young countess had of course been unable to visit her 
 brother, and as he scarce left the patient s side for a 
 moment, their intercourse for two or three weeks had 
 been entirely interrupted. On the first day the con 
 valescent youth could walk out, she had stolen to the 
 studio, and heard from Giulio the whole history of 
 the duel and its consequences. When he had finished 
 his narrative, Violanta sat, for a few minutes, lost in 
 thought. 
 
 "Giulio!" she said at last, with a gayety of tone 
 which startled him. 
 
 " Violanta !" 
 
 Did you ever remark that our voices are very 
 much alike?" 
 
 "Biondo often says so." 
 
 "And you have a foot almost as small as mine." 
 
 "I have not the proportions of a man, Violanta!" 
 
 " Nay, brother, but I mean that that we might 
 pass for each other, if we were masked. Our height 
 is the same. Stand up, Giulio " 
 
 " You would not mock me!" said the melancholy 
 youth with a faint smile, as he rose and set his bent 
 back beside the straight and lithe form of his sister. 
 
 "Listen to me, amato-bene . " she replied, sitting 
 down and drawing him upon her knee, after satisfying 
 himself that there was no perceptible difference in 
 their height. " Put your arm about my neck, and 
 ove rne while 1 tell you of my little plot." 
 
 Giulio impressed a kiss upon the clear, alabaster 
 forehead of the beautiful girl, and looked into her face 
 inquiringly. 
 
 "There is to be a masquerade at La Pergola," she 
 snid "a superb masquerade given to some prince! 
 And I am to go, Giulio ndo /" 
 
 " Well," answered the listener, sadly. 
 
 "But do you not seem surprised that I am permitted 
 to go! Shall I tell you the reason why papa gave me 
 permission ?" 
 
 " If you will, Violanta !" 
 
 " A little bird told me that Malaspina means to be 
 there !" 
 
 " And you will go to meet him?" 
 
 " You shall go to meet him, and I " she hesi 
 tated and cast down the long dark fringes of her eyes; 
 "I will meet Biondo !" 
 
 Giulio clasped her passionately to his heart. 
 
 " I see ! I see !" he cried, springing upon his feet, 
 as he anticipated the remaining circumstances of the 
 plot. " We shall be two hunchbacks they will little 
 think that we are two Cesarini. Dear, noble Violanta! 
 you will speak kindly to Biondo. Send Bettina for 
 the clothes, carina mia! You will get twin masks in 
 the Corso. And, Violanta]" 
 
 " What, Giulio ?" 
 
 " Tell Bettina to breathe no word of our project to 
 Arnieri ! I will persuade him to go but to see you 
 dauce ! Poor Amieri 1 Dear, dear sister ! Farewell 
 snow ! He will be returning, and you must be gone. 
 The Holy Virgin guard you, my Violanta!" 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE reader will long since have been reminded, by 
 the trouble we have to whip in and flog up the lagging 
 and straggling members of our story, of a flock of 
 
 sheep driven unwillingly to market. Indeed, to stop j over the seat, and took a place beside him. if 
 at the confessional (as you will see many a shepherd I a female in a black domino, closely masked, and 
 of the Campagna, on his way to Rome), this tale of jj through the pasteboard mouth protruded the bit of 
 
 many tails should have been a novel. You have, in 
 brief, what should have been well elaborated, embar 
 rassed with difficulties, relieved by digressions, tipped 
 with a moral, and bound in two volumes, with a portrait 
 of the author. We are sacrificed to the spirit of the 
 age. The eighteenth century will be known in 
 hieroglyphics by a pair of shears. But, "to return to 
 our muttons." 
 
 The masquerade went merrily on, or, if there were 
 more than one heavy heart among those light heels, 
 it was not known, as the newspapers say, " to our re 
 porter." One, there certainly was heavy as Etna on 
 the breast of Enceladus. Biondo Amieri sat in a cor 
 ner of the gallery, with his swathed hand laid before 
 him, pale as a new sti.tue, and with a melancholy in 
 his soft dark eyes, which would have touched the exe 
 cutioners of St. Agatha. Beside him sat Lcnzoni, 
 who was content to forego the waltz for a while, and 
 keep company for pity with a friend who was too busy 
 with his own thoughts to give him word or look, but 
 still keeping sharp watch on the scene below, and 
 betraying by unconscious ejaculations how great a 
 penance he had put on himself for love and charity. 
 
 "All, la lella musica, Biondo!" he exclaimed 
 drumming on the banquette, while his friend held 
 up his wounded hand to escape the jar, "listen to that 
 waltz, that might set fire to the heels of St. Peter. 
 Corpo di JBacco ! look at the dragon! a dragon 
 making love to a nun, Amieri! Ah! San Pieiro ! 
 what a foot ! Wait till I come, sweet goblin ! That 
 a goblin s tail should follow such ankles, Biondo ! 
 Eh! belli ssimo ! the knight ! Look at the red cross 
 knight, Amieri! and what? il gobbo, by St. An 
 thony! and the red-cross takes him for a woman! 
 It is Giulio, for there never were two hunchbacks so 
 wondrous like ! Ecco, Biondo !" 
 
 But there was little need to cry "look" to Amieri, 
 now. A hunchback, closely masked, and leaning on 
 a palmer s arm, made his way slowly through the 
 crowd, and a red-cross knight, a figure gallant enough 
 to have made a monarch jealous, whispered with courte 
 ous and courtly deference in his ear. 
 
 " Cielo ! it is she!" said Biondo, with mournful 
 earnestness, not heeding his companion, and laying 
 his hand upon his wounded wrist, as if the sight he 
 looked on gave it a fresher pang. 
 
 "She ?" answered Lenzoni, with a laugh. " If it 
 is not he not gobbo Giulio I ll eat that cross-hilled 
 rapier ! What she should it be, caro Biondo !" 
 
 " I tell thee," said Amieri, "Giulio is asleep at the 
 foot of his marred statue ! I left him but now, he is 
 too ill with his late vigils to be here but his clothes, 
 I may tell thee, are borrowed by one who wears them 
 as you see. Look at the foot, Lenzoni!" 
 
 ** A woman, true enough, if the shoe were all ! 
 But I ll have a close look! Stay for me, dear Amieri! 
 I will return ere you have looked twice at them " 
 
 And happy, with all his kind sympathy, to find a 
 fair apology to be free, Lenzoni leaped over the 
 benches and mingled in the crowd below. 
 
 Left alone, Biondo devoured with his eyes, every 
 movement of the group in which he was so deeply 
 interested, and the wound in his hand seemed burn- 
 | ing with a throb of fire, while he tried in vain to de- 
 ! tect, in the manner of the hunchback, that coyness 
 ! which might show, even through a mask, dislike or 
 ! indifference. There was even, he thought (and he 
 i delivered his soul over to Apollyon in the usual phrase 
 I for thinking such ill of such an angel) ; there was 
 | even in her manner a levity and freedom of gesture 
 for which the mask she wore should be no apology. 
 He wns about to curse Malaspina for having spared 
 his life at the fountain, when someone jumped lighily 
 
VIOLANTA CESARINI. 
 
 129 
 
 ivory, commonly held in the teeth by maskers, to dis 
 guise the voice. 
 
 " Good evening to you. fair signer !" 
 
 "Good even to you, lady !" 
 
 " I am come to share your melancholy, signer !" 
 
 "I have none to give away unless you will take all; 
 and just now, my fair one. it is rather anger than sad 
 ness, if it please you. leave me p 
 
 " What if i am more pleased to stay " 
 
 "Briefly, I would be alone . I am not of the festa. 
 I but look on, here !" And Biondo turned his shoulder 
 to the mask, and fixed his eyes again on the hunch 
 back, who having taken the knight s arm, was talking 
 and promenading most gayly between him and the 
 palmer. 
 
 " You have a wounded hand, signer !" resumed his 
 importunate neighbor. 
 
 "A useless one, lady. Would it were well !" 
 
 "Signor Melancholy, repine not against providence. 
 I that am no witch, tell thee that thou wilt yet bless 
 Heaven that this hand is disabled." 
 
 Biondo turned and looked at the bold prophetess, 
 but her disguise was impenetrable. 
 
 " You are a masker, lady, and talk at random !" 
 
 " No ! I will tell you the thought uppermost in your 
 bosom !" 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " A longing for a pluck at the red-cross, yonder!" 
 
 " True, by St. Mary !" said Biondo, starting ener 
 getically : " but you read it in my eyes !" 
 
 "1 have told you your first thought, signor, and I will 
 give you a hint of the second Is there a likeness 
 between a nymph on canvass, and a gobbo in a mask !" j 
 
 " Giulio !" exclaimed Amieri, turning suddenly 
 round; but the straight back of the domino met his ! 
 eye, and totally bewildered, he resumed his seat, and | 
 slowly perused the stranger from head to foot. 
 
 " Talk to me as if my mask were the mirror of your 
 soul, Amieri," said the soft but disguised voice. 
 "You need sympathy in this mood, and I am your 
 good angel. Is your wrist painful to-night ?" 
 
 " I can not talk to you," he said, turning to resume 
 bis observation on the scene below. " If you know 
 the face beneath the gobbo s mask, you know the 
 heaven from which I am shut out. But I must gaze 
 on it still." 
 
 " Is it a woman ?" 
 
 t* No ! an angel." 
 
 " And encourages the devil in the shape of Ma- 
 laspina ? You miscall her, Amieri !" 
 
 The answer was interrupted by Lenzoni, who ran 
 into the gallery, but seeing his friend beset by a mask, 
 he gave him joy of his good luck, and refusing to in 
 terrupt the lete-d-lete, disappeared with a laugh. 
 
 " Brave, kind Lenzoni !" said the stranger. 
 
 "Are you his good angel, too?" asked Amieri, 
 surprised again at the knowledge so mysteriously dis- j 
 played. 
 
 " No ! Little as you know of me you would not be 
 willing to share me with another! Say, Amieri! love j 
 you the gobbo on the knight s arm ?" 
 
 " You have read me riddles less clear, my fair in 
 cognita ! I would die at morn but to say farewell to 
 her at midnight!" 
 
 " Do you despair of her love ?" 
 
 " Do i despair of excelling Raphael with these 
 unstrung fingers ? I never hoped but in my dreams, 
 lady!" 
 
 "Then hope, waking ! For as there is truth in 
 heaven, Violanta Cesarini loves you, Biondo !" 
 
 Laying his left hand sternly on the arm of the 
 stranger, Bio-ndo raised his helpless wrist and pointed 
 toward the hunchback, who, seated by the red-cross 
 knight, played with the diamond cross of his sword- 
 hilt, while "the palmer turned his back, as if to give 
 two lovers an opportunity. 
 
 With a heart overwhelmed with bitterness, he then 
 turned to the mocking incognito. Violanta sat be 
 side him ! 
 
 Holding her mask between her and the crowd be 
 low, the maiden blush mounted to her temples, and 
 the long sweeping lashes dropped over her eyes their 
 veiling and silken fringes. And while the red-cross 
 knight still made eloquent love to Giulio in the saloon 
 of the masquerade, Amieri and Violanta, in their un 
 observed retreat, exchanged vows, faint and choked 
 with emotion on his part, but all hope, encouragement, 
 and assurance, on hers 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " WILL you waltz ?" said a merry-voiced domino 
 to the red-cross knight, a few minutes after tapping 
 him smartly on the corslet with her black fan, and 
 pointing, for the first step, a foot that would have 
 tempted St. Anthony. 
 
 "By the mass!" answered Malaspina, "I should 
 pay an ill compliment to the sweetest voice that ever 
 enchanted human ear" (and he bowed low to Guilio), 
 " did 1 refuse invitation so sweetly toned. Yet my 
 Milan armor is not light !" 
 
 " I have been refusing his entreaties this hour," 
 said Giulio, as the knight whirled away with Violanta, 
 " for though I can chatter like a woman, I should 
 dance like myself. He is not unwilling to show his 
 grace to his lady-mistress ! Ha! ha! It is worth 
 while to sham the petticoat for once to see what fools 
 men are when they would please a woman ! But, 
 close mask ! Here comes the count Cesarini !" 
 
 "How fares my child?" said the old noble, leaning 
 over the masked Giulio, and touching with his lips the 
 glossy curl which concealed his temple. Are you 
 amused, idolo wiio?" 
 
 A sudden tremor shot through the frame of poor 
 Giulio at the first endearment ever addressed to his 
 ear by the voice of a parent. The tears coursed down 
 under his mask, and for all answer to the question, he 
 could only lay his small soft hand in his lather s and 
 return his pressure with irresistible strength and emo 
 tion. 
 
 "You are not well, rr.y child!" he said, surprised at 
 not receiving an answer, "this ugly hump oppresses 
 you! Come to the air! So lean on me, caro lesoro! 
 We will remove the hump presently. A Cesarini with 
 a hump indeed ! Straighten yourself, my life, my 
 child, and you will breathe more freely !" 
 
 Thus entered, at one wound, daggers and balm into 
 the heart of the deformed youth; and while Bettina, 
 trembling in every limb, grew giddy with fear as they 
 made their way through the crowd, Giulio, relieved 
 by his tears, nerved himself with a strong effort and 
 prepared to play out his difficult part with calmness. 
 
 They threaded slowly the crowded maze of M allzers, 
 and, emerging from the close saloons, stood at last in 
 the gallery overhanging the river. The moon was 
 rising, and touched with a pale light the dark face of 
 the Tiber; the music came faintly out to the night 
 air, and a fresh west wind, cool and balmy from the 
 verdant campagna, breathed softly through the lat 
 tices. 
 
 Refusing a chair, Giulio leaned over the balustrade, 
 and the count stood by his side and encircled his waist 
 with his arm. 
 
 "I can not bear this deformity, my Violanta!" he 
 said, " you look so unlike my child with it ; I need 
 this little hand to reassure me." 
 
 " Should you know that was my hand, father?" said 
 Giulio. 
 
 " Should I not ! I have told you a thousand times 
 that the nails of a Cesarini were marked let me see 
 
130 
 
 PASQUALI, THE TAILOR OF VENICE. 
 
 you again by the arch of this rosy line! See, my 
 little Gobbo ! They are like four pink fairy shells of 
 India laid over rolled leaves of roses. What was the 
 poet s name who said that of the old countess Giulia 
 Cesarini la belia Giulia? 
 
 " Should you have known my voice, father ?" asked 
 Giiilio, evading the question. 
 
 " Yes, my darling, why ask me ?" 
 
 "But, father! if I had been stolen by brigands 
 from the cradle or you had not seen me for many, 
 many years and I had met you to-night as a gobbo 
 and had spoken to you only in sport and had 
 called you father, dear father." should you have 
 known my voice ? would you have owned me for a 
 Cesarini?" 
 
 " Instantly, my child !" 
 
 "But suppose my back had been broken suppose 
 1 were a gobbo a deformed hunchback indeed, in 
 deed but had still nails with a rosy arch, and the 
 same voice with which I speak to you now and 
 pressed your hand thus and loved you would you 
 disown me, father? 
 
 Giulio had raised himself while he spoke, and taken 
 his hand from his father s with a feeling that life or 
 death would be in his answer to that question. Cesa 
 rini was disturbed, and did not reply for a moment. 
 
 " My child !" said he at last, " there is that in your 
 voice that would convince me you are mine, against 
 all the evidence in the universe. I can not imagine 
 the dreadful image you have conjured up, for the 
 Cesarini are beautiful and straight by long inheritance. 
 But if a monster spoke to me thus, I should love 
 him ! Come ro my bosom, my blessed child ! and 
 dispel those wild dreams ! Come, Violanta !" 
 
 Giulio attempted to raise his arms to his father s 
 neck, but the strength that had sustained him so well, 
 began to ebb from him. He uttered some indistinct 
 words, lifted his hand to his mask as if to remove it 
 for breath, and sunk slowly to the floor. 
 
 "It. is i/our son, my lord !" cried Bettina. "Lift 
 him, Count Cesarini ! Lift your child to the air be 
 fore he dies!" 
 
 She tore off his mask and disclosed to the thunder- 
 stricken count the face of the stranger ! As he stood 
 pale and agliast, too much confounded for utterance or 
 action, the black domino tripped into the gallery, follow 
 ed by the red-cross knight, panting under his armor. 
 
 " Giulio ! my own Giulio !" cried Violanta, throw 
 ing herself on her knees beside her pale and insensible 
 brother, and covering his forehead and lips with kisses. 
 "Is he hurt? Is he dead? Water! for the love 
 of Heaven! Will no one bring water?" And tear 
 ing away her own mask, she lifted him from the 
 ground, and, totally regardless of the astonished group 
 who looked on in petrified silence, fanned and caressed 
 him into life and consciousness. 
 
 " Come away, Violanta !" said her father at last, in 
 a hoarse voice. 
 
 "IS ever, my father ! he is our own blood! How 
 feel you now, Giulio ?" 
 
 " Better, sweet ! where is Biondo ?" 
 
 "Near by! But you shall go home with me. 
 Sigrior Malaspina, as you hope for my favor, lend my 
 brother an arm. Bettina, call up the chariot. Nay, 
 father ! he goes home with me, or I with him, we 
 never part more !" 
 
 The red-cross knight gave Giulio an arm, and lean 
 ing on him and Violanta, the poor youth made his 
 way to the carriage. Amieri sat at the door, and re 
 ceived only a look as she passed, and helping Giulio 
 tenderly in, she gave the order to drive swiftly home, 
 and in a few minutes they entered together the palace 
 of their common inheritance. 
 
 It would be superfluous to dwell on the incidents 
 of the sequel, which were detailed in the Diario di 
 
 Roma, and are known to all the world. The hunch 
 back Count Cesarini has succeeded his father in his 
 title and estates, and is beloved of all Rome. The 
 next heir to the title is a son (now two years of age) 
 of the countess Amieri, who is to take the name of 
 Cesarini on coming to his majority. They live to 
 gether in the old palazzo, and all strangers go to see 
 their gallery of pictures, of which none are bad, except 
 some well intended but not very felicitously executed 
 compositions by one Lenzoni. 
 
 Count Lamba Malaspina is at present in exile, having 
 been convicted of drawing a sword on a disabled gentle 
 man, on his way from a masquerade at La Pergola. 
 His seclusion is rendered the more tolerable by the 
 loss of his teeth, which were rudely thrust down his 
 throat by this same Lenzoui (fated to have a finger in 
 every pie) in defence of the attacked party on that oc 
 casion. You will hear Lenzoni s address (should you 
 wish to purchase a picture of his painting) at the Caffc 
 del Gioco, opposite the trattoria of La Bella Donna 
 in the Corso. 
 
 PASQUALI, THE TAILOR OF VENICE, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 GIANNINO PASQUALI was a smart tailor some five 
 years ago, occupying a cool shop on one of the smaller 
 canals of Venice. Four pairs of suspenders, a print 
 of the fashions, and a motley row of the gay-colored 
 trousers worn by the gondoliers, ornamented the win 
 dow looking on the dark alley in the rear, and, attach 
 ed to the post of the water-gate on the canal side, 
 floated a small black gondola, the possession of which 
 afforded the same proof of prosperity of the Venetian 
 tailor which is expressed by a horse and buggy at the 
 door of a snip in London. The place-seeking travel 
 ler, who. nez en I air, threaded the tangled labyrinth 
 of alleys and bridges between the Rialto and St. 
 Mark s, would scarce have observed the humble shop- 
 window of Pasquali, yet he had a consequence on the 
 Piazza, and the lagoon had seen his triumphs as an 
 amateur gondolier. Giannino was some thirty years 
 of age, and his wife Fiametta, whom he had married 
 for her zecchini, was on the shady side of fifty. 
 
 If the truth must be told, Pasquali had discovered 
 that, even with a bag of sequins for eye-water, Fi 
 ametta was not always the most lovely woman in 
 Venice. Just across the canal lived old Donna 
 Bentoccata, the nurse, whose daughter Tuiturilla 
 was like the blonde in Titian s picture of the Marys ; 
 and to the charms of Turturilla, even seen through 
 the leaden light of poverty, the unhappy Pasquali was 
 far from insensible. 
 
 The festa of San Antonio arrived after a damp week 
 of November, and though you would suppose the at 
 mosphere of Venice not liable to any very sensible in 
 crease of moisture, Fiametta, like people who live on 
 land, and who have the rheumatism as a punishment 
 for their ae and ugliness, was usually confined to her 
 brazero of hot coals till it was dry enough on the Lido 
 for the peacocks to walk abroad. On this festa, how 
 ever, San Antonio being, as every one knows, the 
 patron saint of Padua, the Padovese were to come 
 down the Brenta, as was their custom, and cross over 
 the sea to Venice to assist in the celebration ; and 
 Fiametta once more thought Pasquali loved her for 
 herself alone when he swore by his rosary that unless 
 she accompanied him to the festa in her wedding dress, 
 he would not turn an oar in the race, nor unfasten his 
 gondola from the door-post. Alas ! Fiametta was 
 
 
PASQUALI, THE TAILOR OF VENICE. 
 
 131 
 
 married in the summer solstice, and her dress was 
 permeable to the wind as a cobweb or gossamer. Is 
 it possible you could have remembered that, oh, wick 
 ed Pasquali ? 
 
 It was a day to puzzle a barometer ; now bright, 
 now rainy ; now gusty as a corridor in a novel, and 
 now calm as a lady after a fit of tears. Pasquali was 
 up early and waked Fiametta with a kiss, and, by way 
 of unusual tenderness, or by way of ensuring; the wed- j 
 ding dress, he chose to play dressing maid, and ar 
 ranged with his own hands her jupon and fezzoletta. 
 She emerged from her chamber looking like a slice : 
 of orange-peel in a flower-bed, but smiling arid nod 
 ding, and vowing the day warm as April, and the sky 
 without a cloud. The widening circles of an occa- ; 
 sional drop of rain in the canal were nothing but the 
 bubbles bursting after a passing oar, or perhaps the last i 
 flies ofsummer. Pasquali swore it was weather to win [ 
 down a peri. 
 
 As Fiametta stepped into the gondola, she glanced 
 her eyes over the way and saw Turturilla, with a face 
 as sorrowful as the first day in Lent, seated at her 
 window. Her lap was full of work, and it was quite 
 evident that she had not thought of being at the festa. j 
 Fiametta s heart was already warm, and it melted quite 
 at the view of the poor girl s loneliness. 
 
 " Pasquali mio !" she said, in a deprecating tone, 
 as if she were uncertain how the proposition would 
 be received, " I think we could make room for poor 
 Turturilla,!" 
 
 A gleam of pleasure, unobserved by the confiding 
 sposa, tinted faintly the smooth olive cheek of Pasquali. ! 
 
 "Eh! diavolo /" he replied, so loud that the sor- ] 
 rowful seamstress heard, and hung down her head 
 still lower; "must you take pity on every cheese 
 paring of a regezza who happens to have no lover! 
 Have reason ! have reason ! The gondola is narrower 
 than your brave heart my fine Fiametta !" And away 
 he pushed from the water-steps. 
 
 Turturilla rose from her work and stepped out upon 
 the rusly gratings of the balcony to see them depart. 
 Pasquali stopped to grease the notch of his oar, and 
 between that and some other embarrassments, the 
 gondola was suffered to float directly under her 
 window. The compliment to the generous nature 
 of Fiametta, was, meantime, working, and as she was 
 compelled to exchange a word or two with Turturilla 
 while her husband was getting his oar into the socket, 
 it resulted (as he thought it very probable it would), 
 in the good wile s renewing her proposiiion, and ma 
 king a point of sending the deserted girl for her holy- 
 day bonnet. Pasquali swore through all the saints 
 and angels by the time she had made herself ready, 
 though she was but five minutes gone from the window, 
 and telling Fiametta in her ear that she must consider 
 it as the purest obligation, he backed up to the steps of 
 old Donna Bentoccata, helped in her daughter with a 
 better grace than could have been expected, and with 
 one or two short and deep strokes, put forth into the 
 grand canal with the velocity of a lance-fly. 
 
 A gleam of sunshine lay along the bosom of the 
 broad silver sheet, and it was beautiful to see the 
 gondolas with their gay colored freights all hastening 
 in one direction, and with swift track to the festa. 
 Far up and down they rippled the smooth water, here 
 gliding out from below a palace-arch, there from a nar 
 row and unseen canal, the steel beaks curved and (lash 
 ing, the water glancing on the oar-blades, the curtains 
 moving, and the fair women of Venice leaning out and 
 touching hands as thev neared neighbor or acquaint 
 ance in the close-pressing gondolas. It was a beauti 
 ful sight, indeed, and three of the happiest hearts in 
 that swift gliding company were in Pasquali s gondola, 
 though the bliss of Fiametta, I am compelled to say, 
 was entirely owing to the bandage with which love is 
 so significantly painted. Ah ! poor Fiametta! 
 
 From the Lido, from Fusina, from under the Bridge 
 of Sighs, from all quarters of the lagoon, and from all 
 points of the floating city of Venice, streamed the fly- 
 ing gondolas to the Giudecca. The narrow walk 
 along the edge of the long and close-built island was 
 thronged \vith booths and promenaders. and the black 
 barks by hundreds bumped their steel noses against 
 the pier as the agitated water rose and fell beneath 
 them. The gondolas intended for the race pulled 
 slowly up and down, close to the shore, exhibiting 
 their fairy-like forms and their sinewy and gayly dress 
 ed gondoliers to the crowds on land and water ; the 
 bands of music, attached to different parties, played 
 here and there a strain ; the criers of holy pictures 
 and gingerbread made the air vocal with their lisping 
 and soft Venetian ; and all over the scene, as if it was 
 the light of the sky or some other light as blessed but 
 less common, shone glowing black eyes, black as 
 night, and sparkling as the stars on night s darkest 
 bosom. He who thinks lightly of Italian beauty 
 should have seen the women of Venice on St. An 
 tonio s day 32, or on any or at any hour when their 
 pulses are beating high andtheireyes alight for they 
 are neither one nor the other always. The women 
 of that fair clime, to borrow the simile of Moore, are 
 like lava-streams, only bright when the volcano kindles. 
 Their long lashes cover lustreless eyes, and their blood 
 shows dully through the cheek in common and listless 
 I hours. The calm, the passive tranquillity in which 
 the delicate graces of colder climes find their element 
 
 I are to them a torpor of the heart when the blood scarce 
 seems to flow. They are wakeful only to the ener 
 getic, the passionate, the joyous movements of the 
 soul. 
 
 Pasquali stood erect in the prow of his gondola, and 
 stole furtive glances at Turturilla while he pointed 
 away with his finger to call off the sharp eyes of Fi 
 ametta ; but Fiametta was happy and unsuspicious. 
 Only when now and then the wind came up chilly 
 from the Adriatic, the poor wife shivered and sat 
 closer to Turturilla, who in her plainer but thicker 
 dress, to say nothing of younger blood, sat more com 
 fortably on the black cushion and thought less about 
 the weather. An occasional drop of rain fell on the 
 nose of poor Fiametta, but if she did not believe it was 
 \ the spray from Pasquali s oar, she at least did her best 
 
 II to believe so; and the perfidious tailor swore by St. 
 I Anthony that the clouds were as dry as her eyelashes. 
 
 1 never was very certain that Turturilla was not in the 
 secret of this day s treacheries. 
 
 The broad centre of the Giudecca was cleared, and 
 the boats took their places for the race. Pasquali 
 ranged his gondola with those of the other spectators, 
 and telling Fiametta in her ear that he should sit on 
 the other side of Turturilla as a punishment for their 
 malapropos invitation, he placed himself on the small 
 remainder of the deep cushion on the farthest side 
 from his now penitent spouse, and while he complain 
 ed almost rudely of the narrowness of his seat, he 
 made free to hold on by Turturilla s waist which no 
 doubt made the poor girl s mind more easy on the 
 subject of her intrusion. 
 
 Who won and who lost the race, what was the 
 device of each flag, and what bets and bright eyes 
 changed owners by the result, no personage of this 
 ! tale knew or cared, save Fiametta. She looked on 
 eagerly. Pasquali and Turturilla, as the French say, 
 trouvaient autress chats a frailer. 
 
 After the decision of the grand race, St. Antonio 
 being the protector, more particularly of the humble 
 ("patron of pigs" in the saints calendar), the seignoria 
 and the grand people generally, pulled away for St. 
 Mark s, leaving the crowded Giudecca to the people. 
 Pasquali, as was said before, had some renown as a 
 gondolier. Something what would be called in other 
 countries a scrub race, followed the departure of the 
 
132 
 
 PASQUALI, THE TAILOR OF VENICE. 
 
 winning boar, and several gondolas, holding each one 
 person "only, took their places for the start. The 
 tailor laid his hand on his bosom, and, with the smile 
 that had first stirred the heart and the sequins of 
 Fiametta, begged her to gratify his love by acting as 
 his make-weight while he turned an oar for the pig of 
 St. Antonio. The prize roasted to an appetizing 
 crisp, stood high on a platter in front of one of the 
 booths on shore, and Fiametia smacked her lips, 
 overcame her tears with an effort, and told him, in 
 accents as little as possible like the creak of a dry oar 
 iu the socket, that he might set Turturilla on shore. 
 
 A word in her ear, as he handed her over the gun 
 wale, reconciled Bonna Bentoccata s fair daughter to 
 this conjugal partiality, and stripping his manly figure 
 of its upper disguises, Pasquali straightened out his 
 fine limbs, and drove his bark to the line in a style that 
 drew applause from even his competitors. As a mark 
 of their approbation, they offered him an outside place 
 where his fair dame would be less likely to be spatter 
 ed with the contending oars ; but he was too generous 
 to take advantage of this considerate offer, and crying 
 out as he took the middle, " ben pronto, si gnori!" gave 
 Fiametta a confident look and stood like a hound in 
 the leash. 
 
 Off they went at the lap of the drum, poor Fiametta 
 holding her breath and clinging to the sides of the 
 gondola, and Pasquali developing skill and muscle 
 not for Fiamelta s eyes only. It was a short, sharp 
 race, without jockeying or management, all fair play 
 and main strength, and the tailor shot past the end of 
 the Giudecca a boat s length ahead. Much more ap 
 plauded than a king at a coronation or a lord-mayor 
 taking water at London stairs, he slowly made his way 
 back to Turturilla, and it was only when that demure 
 damsel rather shrunk from sitting down in two inches 
 of water, that he discovered how the disturbed element 
 had quite filled up the hollow of the leather cushion 
 and made a peninsula of the uncomplaining Fiametta. 
 She was as well watered, as a favorite plant in a flower- 
 garden. 
 
 " Pasquali mio /" she said in an imploring tone, 
 holding up the skirt of her dress with the tips of her 
 thumb and finger, " could you just take me home 
 while I change my dress." 
 
 One moment, Fiametia cara ! they are bringing 
 the pig !" 
 
 The crisp and succulent trophy was solemnly placed 
 in the prow of the victor s gondola, and preparation 
 was made to convoy him home with a triumphant 
 procession. A half hour before it was in order to 
 move an hour in first making the circuit of the grand 
 canal, and an hour more in drinking a glass and ex 
 changing good wishes at the stairs of the Rialto, and 
 Donna Fiametta had sat too long by two hours and a 
 half with scarce a dry thread on her body. What 
 afterward befell will be seen in the more melancholy 
 sequel. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE hospital of St. Girolamo is attached to the 
 convent of that name, standing on one of the canals 
 which put forth on the seaward side of Venice. It is 
 a long building, with its low windows and latticed 
 doors opening almost on the level of the sea, and the 
 wards for the sick are large and well aired ; but, ex 
 cept when the breeze is stirring, impregnated with a 
 saline dampness from the canal, which, as Pasquali 
 remarked, was good for llie rheumatism. It was not 
 so good for the patient. 
 
 The loving wife Fiametta grew worse and worse 
 after the fatal festa, and the fit of rheumatism brought 
 OQ by the slight ness of her dress and the spattering he 
 
 had given her in the race, had increased by the end of 
 the week, to a rheumatic fever. Fiametta was old 
 and tough, however, and struggled manfully (woman 
 as she was) with the disease, but being one night a 
 little out of her head, her loving husband took occa 
 sion to shudder at the responsibility of taking care of 
 her, and jumping into his gondola, he pulled across to 
 St. Girolamo and bespoke a dry bed and a sister of 
 charity, and brought back the pious father Gasparo 
 and a comfortable litter. Fiametta was dozing when 
 they arrived, and the kind-hearted tailor willing to 
 spare her the pain of knowing that she was on her way 
 to the hospital for the poor, set out some meat and 
 wine for the monk, and sending over for Tunurilla 
 and the nurse to mix the salad, they sal and ate away 
 the hours till the poor dame s brain should be wander 
 ing again. 
 
 Toward night the monk and Dame Bentoccata were 
 comfortably dozing with each other s support (having 
 fallen asleep at table), and Pasquali with a kiss from 
 Turturilla, stole softly up stairs. Fiamettn was ma 
 turing unquietly, and working her fingers in the palms 
 of her hands, and on feeling her pulse lie found the 
 fever was at its height. She took him, besides, for the 
 prize pig of the festa, for he knew her wits were fairly 
 abroad. He crept down stairs, gave the monk a strong 
 cup of coffee to get him well awake, and, between the 
 four of them, they got poor Fiametta into the litter, 
 drew the curtains tenderly around and deposited her 
 safely in the bottom of the gondola. 
 
 Lightly and smoothly ihe winner of ihe pig pulled 
 away with his loving burden, and gliding around the 
 slimy corners of the palaces, and hushing his voice 
 as he cried out "right!" or "left!" to guard the 
 coming gondoliers of his vicinity, he arrived, like a 
 thought of love to a maid s mind in sleep, at the door 
 of St. Girolamo. The abbess looked out and said, 
 " Beriedicite /" and the monk stood fiirn on his brown 
 sandals to receive the precious burden from the arms 
 of Pasquali. Believing firmly that it was equivalent 
 to committing her to the hand of St. Peter, and of 
 course abandoning all hope of seeing her again in 
 this world, the soft-hearled tailor wiped his eye as 
 she was lifted in, and receiving a promise from Faiher 
 Gasparo that he would communicate faithfully the 
 state of her soul in the last agony, he pulled, with 
 lightened gondola and heart, back to his widower s 
 home and Turturilla. 
 
 For many good reasons, and apparent as good, it is 
 a rule in the hospital of St. Girolamo, that the sick 
 under its holy charge shall receive the visil of neither 
 friend nor relative. If they recover, they return to 
 their abodes to earn candles for the altar of the restor 
 ing saint. If they die, their clolhes are sent to their 
 surviving friends, and this affecting memorial, besides 
 communicating the melancholy news, affords all the 
 particulars and all the consolation they are supposed 
 to require upon the subject of their loss. 
 
 Waiting patiently for Father Gasparo and his bundle, 
 Pasquali and Turturilla gave themselves up to hopes, 
 which on the tailor s part (we fear it must be admitted), 
 augured a quicker recovery from grief than might be 
 credited to an elastic constitution. The fortune of 
 poor Fiametta was sufficient to warrant Pasquali in 
 neglecting his shop to celebrate every festa that the 
 church acknowledged, and for ten days subsequent to 
 the committal of his wife to the tender mercies of St. 
 Girolamo, five days out of seven was the proportion of 
 merry holydays with his new betrothed. 
 
 They were sitting one evening in the open piazza 
 of St. Mark, in front of the most thronged cafe, of 
 that matchless square. The moon was resting her 
 silver disk on the point of the Campanile, and the 
 shadows of thousands of gay Venetians fell on ihe 
 immense pavement below, clear and sharply drawn 
 as a black cartoon. The four extending sides of the 
 
THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. 
 
 133 
 
 square Iny ha!( m shades half in light, with their 
 inmimeiiilm: columns <m(i balconies and sculptured 
 wutK. .itnl, frowning down on all, in broken light and 
 sh.iduw, stow! iht; arabesque structure of St. Mark s 
 hsell rli//.yini> ihe eyes with its mosaics and confused 
 devic.es. and thrusting forth the heads of her four 
 golden-collared steeds into the moonbeams, till they 
 looked on that black relief, like the horses of Pluto 
 issuing from the gates of Hades. In the centre of 
 the square stood a tall woman, singing, in rich con 
 tralto, an old song of the better days of Venice ; and 
 against one of the pillars, Polichinello had backed 
 his wooden stage, and beat about his puppets with 
 an energy worthy of old Dandolo and his helmeted 
 galley-men. To those who wore not the spectacles 
 of grief or discontent, the square of St. Mark s that 
 night was like some cozening tableau. I never saw 
 anything so gay. 
 
 Everybody who has "swam in a gondola," knows 
 how the cafes of Venice thrust out their checkered 
 awnings over a portion of the square, and filled tli3 
 shaded space below with chairs and marble tables. 
 In a corner of the shadow thus afforded, with ice and 
 coffee on a small round slab between them, and the 
 flat pavement of the public promenade under their feet, 
 sat our two lovers. With neither hoof nor wheel to 
 drown or interrupt their voices (as in cities who 
 
 posed, bridegroom as he was, to make him wait her 
 leisure. Her clothes fitted her ill, and she carried in 
 her hand a pair ofshoes.it was easy to see were never 
 made for her. She rose at last, and as her face be 
 came visible, down dropped Turturilla and the pious 
 father, and motionless and aghast stood the simple 
 Pasquali. Fiametta stepped on shore ! 
 
 In broken words Pasquali explained. He had 
 landed at the stairs near the fish market, and with two 
 leaps reaching the top, sped off past the buttress in 
 the direction of the goldsmith, when his course was 
 arrested by encountering at full speed, the person of 
 an old woman. Hastily raising her up, he recognised 
 his wife, who, fully recovered, but without a gondola, 
 was threading the zig-zag alleys on foot, on her way 
 to her own domicil. After the first astonishment was 
 over, her dress explained the error of the j;ood father 
 I and the extent of his own misfortune. The clothes 
 had been hung between the bed of Fiametta and that 
 of a smaller woman who had been long languishing 
 of a consumption. She died, and Fiametta s clothes, 
 brought to the door by mistake, were recognised by 
 Father Gasparo and taken to Pasquali. 
 
 The holy monk, chop-fallen and sad, took his soli 
 tary way to the convent, but with the first step he felt 
 something slide into the heel of his sandal. He sat 
 down on the church stairs and absolved the devil from 
 
 streets are stones, not water), they murmured their |! theft it was the lost ring, which had fallen upon his 
 
 hopes and wishes in the softest language under the i foot and saved Pasquali the tailor from the pains of 
 
 sun, and with the sotto race acquired by all the inhabi- j bigamy. 
 
 tants of this noiseless city. Turturilla had taken ice to 
 
 cool her and coffee to take off the chill of her ice, and 
 
 a bicchicre del pofetto anwre to reconcile these two 
 
 antagonists in hei digestion, when the slippers of a 
 
 monk glided by, and in a moment the recognised 
 
 Father Gasparo made a third in the shadowy corner. 
 
 The expected bundle was under his arm, and he was 
 
 on his way to Pasquali s dwelling. Having assured 
 
 the disconsolate tailor that she hud unction and wafer 
 
 as became the wife of a citizen of Venice like himself, 
 
 l)e took heart and grew content that she was in heaven. 
 
 It was a better place, and Turturilla for so little as a 
 
 gold ring, would supply her place in his bosom. 
 
 The moon was but a brief week older when Pas 
 quali and Turturilla stood in the church of our lady 
 of grief, and Father Gasparo within the palings of the 
 altar. She was as fair a maid as ever bloomed in the 
 garden of beauty beloved of Titian, and the tailor was 
 nearer worth nine men to look at, than the fraction of 
 
 THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA, 
 
 " Affection is a fire which kinclleth as well in the bramble ax in 
 the oak, and catcheih hnld where it first light.eth, not whore it may 
 bst burn. Larks that mount in the air build their nests below in 
 the earth ; and women that cast iheir eyes upon kings, may placa 
 their hearts upon vassals." MAULOWE. 
 
 " L acrement cst arliitraire : }a beaute tst quclque chn<e de plus reel 
 et de plus independent du gout tt de I optnion." LA BRUYERE. 
 
 FAST and rebukingly rang the matins from the 
 towers of St. Etienne, and. though unused to wake, 
 much less to pray, at that sunrise hour, I felt a com 
 punctious visiting as my postillion cracked his whip 
 
 a man considered usually the exponent of his profes- i and flew past the sacred threshold, over which trip- 
 
 sion. Aw ly mumbled the good father upon the mat 
 rimonial service, thinking of the old wine and rich 
 pastries that were holding their sweetness under cork 
 
 ped, as if every stroke would be the last, the tardy yet 
 light-footed mass-goers of Vienna. It was my first 
 entrance into this Paris of Germany, and I stretched 
 
 upon the fretted gothic pile, so cumbered with orna- 
 ment, yet so light and airy so vast in the area it 
 covered, yet so crusted in every part with delicate de 
 
 and crust only till he had done his ceremony, and I my head from the window to look back with delight 
 quicker by some seconds than had ever been achieved 
 before by priest or bishop, he arrived at the putting on 
 of the ring. His hand was tremulous, and (oh un 
 lucky omen !) he dropped it within the gilden fence i vice and sculpture. On sped the merciless postillion, 
 of the chancel. The choristers were called, and j and the next moment we rattled into the court-yard of 
 Father Gasparo dropped on his knees to look for it the hotel. 
 
 but if the devil had not spirited it away, there was no jj I gave my keys to the most faithful and intelligent 
 other reason why that search was in vain. Short of 
 an errand to the goldsmith on the Rialto, it was at 
 last determined the wedding could not proceed. Fa 
 
 ther Gasparo went to hide his impatience within the 
 restiary, and Turturilla knelt down to pray against the 
 arts of Sathanas. Before they had settled severally 
 to their pious occupations, Pasquali was half way to 
 the Rialto. 
 
 H;il("an hour elapsed, and then instead of the light 
 grazing of i\ swift-sped gondola along the church 
 stairs, the splash of a sullen oar w-is heard, and Pas- 
 qu;di stepped on shore. They had hastened to the 
 door to receive him monk, choristers rmd bride 
 and to their surprise and bewilderment, he waited to 
 hand out a woman in a strange dress, who seemed dis- 
 
 of valets an English boy of sixteen, promoted from 
 white top-boots and a cabriolet in London, to a plain 
 coat and almost his master s friendship upon the con 
 tinent and leaving him to find rooms to my taste, 
 make them habitable and get breakfast, I retraced my 
 
 ! way to ramble a half hour through the aisles of St. 
 Etienne. 
 
 The lingering bell was still beating its quick and 
 
 I monotonous call, and just before me, followed closely 
 by a female domestic, a veiled and slightly-formed lady 
 
 I stepped over the threshold of the cathedral, and look 
 her way by the least-frequented aisle to the altar. I 
 
 j gave a passing glance of admiration at the small ankle 
 and dainty chaussure betrayed by her hurried step; 
 but remembering with a slight effort that I had sought 
 
134 
 
 THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. 
 
 the church with at least some feeble intentions of re 
 ligious worship, I crossed ihe broad nave to the oppo 
 site side, and was soon leaning against a pillar, and 
 listening to the heavenly-breathed music of the volun 
 tary, with a confused, but I trust, not altogether un 
 profitable feeling of devotion. 
 
 The peasants, with their baskets standing beside 
 them on the tesselated floor, counted their beads upon 
 their knees ; the murmur, low-toned and universal, 
 rose through the vibrations of the anthem with an ac 
 companiment upon which I have always thought the 
 great composers calculated, no less than upon the 
 echoing arches, and atmosphere thickened with in 
 cense ; and the deep-throated priest muttered his 
 Latin prayer, more edifying to me that it left my 
 thoughts to their own impulses of worship, unde- 
 meaned by the irresistible littleness of criticism, and 
 unchecked by the narrow bounds of another s com 
 prehension of the Divinity. Without being in any 
 leaning of opinion a son of the church of Rome, I 
 confess my soul gets nearer to heaven ; and my re 
 ligious tendencies, dulled and diverted from improve 
 ment by a life of travel and excitement, are more 
 gratefully ministered to, in the indistinct worship of 
 the catholics. It seems to me that no man can pray- 
 well through the hesitating lips of another. The 
 inflated style or rhetorical efforts of many, addres 
 sing Heaven with difficult grammar and embarrass 
 ed logic and the weary monotony of others, re 
 peating without interest and apparently without 
 thought, the most solemn appeals to the mercy of 
 the Almighty are imperfect vehicles, at least to 
 me, for a fresh and apprehensive spirit of worship. 
 The religious architecture of the catholics favors the 
 solitary prayer of the heart. The vast floor of the 
 cathedral, the far receding aisles with their solemn 
 light, to which penetrate only the indistinct murmur 
 of priest and penitent, and the affecting wail or tri 
 umphant hallelujah of the choir; the touching atti 
 tudes and utter abandonment of all around to their 
 unarticulated devotions; the freedom to enterand de 
 part, unquestioned and unnoticed, and the wonderful 
 impressiveness of the lofty architecture, clustered 
 with mementoes of death, and presenting through 
 every sense, some unobtrusive persuasion to the duties 
 of the spot all these, I can not but think, are aids, 
 not unimportant to devout feeling, nor to the most 
 careless keeper of his creed and conscience, entirely 
 without salutary use. 
 
 My eye had been resting unconsciously on the 
 drapery of a statue, upon which the light of a painted 
 oriel window threw the mingled dyes of a peacock. 
 It was the figure of an apostle ; and curious at last to 
 see whence the colors came which turned the saintly 
 garb into a mantle of shot silk, I strayed toward the 
 eastern window, and was studying the gorgeous dyes 
 and grotesque drawing of an art lost to the world, when 
 I discovered that I was in the neighborhood of the 
 pretty figure that had tripped into church so lightly 
 before me. She knelt near the altar, a little forward 
 from one of the heavy gothic pillars, with her maid 
 beside her, and, close behind knelt a gentleman, who 
 I observed at a second glance, was paying his devo 
 tions exclusively to the small foot that peeped from 
 the edge of a snowy peignoir, the dishabille of which 
 was covered and betrayed by a lace-veil and mantle. 
 As I stood thinking what a graceful study her figure 
 would make for a sculptor, and what an irreligious im 
 pertinence was visible in the air of the gentleman be 
 hind, he leaned forward as if to prostrate his face upon 
 the pavement, and pressed his lips upon the slender 
 sole of (I have no doubt) the prettiest shoe in Vienna. 
 The natural aversion which all men have for each 
 other as strangers, was quickened in my bosom by a 
 feeling much more vivid, and said to be quite as natu 
 ralresentment at any demonstration by another of 
 
 I preference for the woman one has admired. If I have 
 j not mistaken human nature, there is a sort of imagina 
 ry property which every man feels in a woman he has 
 looked upon with even the most transient regard, 
 which is violated malgre lui, by a similar feeling on 
 the part of any other individual. 
 
 Not sure that the gentleman, who had so suddenly 
 become my enemy, had any warrant in the lady s con 
 nivance for his attentions, I retreated to the shelter 
 of the pillar, and was presently satisfied that he was as 
 I much a stranger to her as myself, and was decidedly 
 i annoying her. A slight advance in her position to 
 j escape his contact gave me the opportunity I wished, 
 and stepping upon the small space between the skirt 
 of her dress and the outpost of his ebony cane, I began 
 to study the architecture of the roof with gre;it serious 
 ness. The gothic order, it is said, sprang from the 
 | first attempts at constructing roofs from the branches 
 ! of trees, and is more perfect as it imitates more closely 
 I the natural wilderness with its tall tree-shafts and in 
 terlacing limbs. With my eyes half shut I endeavor- 
 ! ed to transport myself to an American forest, and con- 
 vert the beams and angles of this vast gothic structure 
 into a primitive temple of pines, with the sunshine 
 coining brokingly through; but the delusion, other- 
 | wise easy enough, was destroyed by the cherubs roost- 
 j ing on the cornices, and the apostles and saints perch- 
 j ed as it were in the branches ; and, spite of myself, I 
 j thought it represented best Shylock s "wilderness of 
 j monkeys." 
 
 " S il vous plait, monsieur ." said the gentleman, 
 j pulling me by the pantaloons as I was losing myself 
 in these ill-timed speculations. 
 I looked down. 
 " Vous me genez, monsieur . " 
 
 " J en suis bien sure, monsieur!" and I resumed my 
 study of the roof, turning gradually round till my heels 
 were against his knees, and backing peu-d-peu. 
 
 It has often occurred to me as a defect in the system 
 of civil justice, that the time of the day at which a 
 crime is committed is never taken into account by judge 
 or jury. The humors of an empty stomach act so ener 
 getically on the judgment and temper of a man, and 
 the same act appears so differently to him, fasting and 
 full, that I presume an inquiry into the subject would 
 prove that few offences against law and human pity 
 were ever perpetrated by villains who had dined. In 
 the adventure before us, the best-disposed reader will 
 condemn my interference in a stranger s gallantries as 
 impertinent and quixotic. Later in the day, I should 
 as soon have thought of ordering water-cresses for the 
 gentleman s dindon aux trvffes. 
 
 I was calling myself to account something after the 
 
 above fashion, the gentleman in question standing near 
 
 5 me, drumming on his boot with his ebony cane, when 
 
 the ladv rose, threw her rosary over her neck, and 
 
 \ turning to me with a graceful smile, courtesied slight- 
 
 | ly and disappeared. 1 was struck so exceedingly with 
 
 the intense melancholy in the expression of the face 
 
 | an expression so totally at variance with the elasticity 
 
 I 1 of the step, and the promise of the slight and riante 
 
 | figure and air that I quite forgot I had drawn a 
 
 j quarrel on myself, and was loitering slowly toward the 
 
 I door of the church, when the gentleman 1 had offeud- 
 
 I ed touched me on the arm, and in the politest manner 
 
 possible requested my address. We exchanged cards, 
 
 and 1 hastened home to breakfast, musing on the 
 
 facility with which the current of our daily life may be 
 
 i thickened. I fancied I had a new love on my hands, 
 
 and I was tolerably sure of a quarrel yet I had oeen 
 
 in Vienna but fifty-four minutes by Breguet. 
 
 My breakfast was waiting, and Percie had found 
 time to turn a comb through his brown curls, and get 
 the dust off his gaiters. He was tall for his age, and 
 (unaware to himself, poor boy !) every word and action 
 reflected upon the handsome seamstress in Cranboutne 
 
THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. 
 
 135 
 
 Alley, whom lie called his mother for he showed 
 blood. His father was a gentleman, or there is no 
 truth in thorough-breeding. As I looked at him, a 
 difficulty vanished from my mind. 
 
 " Percie!" 
 
 "Sir!" 
 
 "Get into your best suit of plain clothes, and if a 
 foreigner calls on me this morning, come in and forget 
 that you are a valet. I have occasion to use you for 
 a gentleman." 
 
 " Yes, sir !" 
 
 " My pistols are clean, I presume ?" 
 
 " Yes, sir!" 
 
 I wrote a letter or two, read a volume of " Ni 
 jamais, ni toujours," and about noon a captain of 
 dragoons was announced, bringing me the expected 
 cartel. Percie came in, treading gingerly in a pa 
 
 " My friend is not satisfied. He presumes that 
 monsieur I" Anglais wishes to trifle with him." 
 
 " Then let your fiiend take care of himself/ said I, 
 roused by the unprovoked murderousness of the feel 
 ing. Load the pistols, Percie! In my country," I 
 continued, turning to the dragoon, " a man isdisgraced 
 who fires twice upon an antagonist who has spared 
 him ! Your friend is a ruffian, and the consequences 
 be on his own hand !" 
 
 We took our places and the first word was given, 
 when a man dashed between us on horseback at top- 
 speed. The violence with which he drew rein brought 
 his horse upon his haunches, and he was on his feet in 
 half a breath. 
 
 The idea that he was an officer of the police was 
 immediately dissipated by his step and air. Of the 
 finest athletic form I had ever seen, agile, graceful, 
 
 of tight t rench boots, but behaving exceedingly like I and dressed pointedly well, there was still an inde- 
 a genileman, and alter a little conversation, managed on j finable something about him, either above or below 
 his part str.ctly according to my instructions, he took ! a gentleman which, it was difficult to say. His 
 his cane and walked oft with his fiiend of the steel |i features were slight, fair, and, except a brow too 
 scabbard to become acquainted with the ground. j heavy for them and a lip of singular and (I thought) 
 
 The gray of a heavenly summer morning was habitual defiance, almost feminine. His hair g rew 
 brightening above the chimneys of the fair city of j long and had been soi^e, probably by mo. 
 Vienna as I stepped into a caliche, followed by Per- j 1 sing fingers than his own, and his rather silk 
 :ie. With a special passport (procured by the polite- 
 less of my antagonist) we made our sortie at that early 
 
 cie. 
 
 ness of my antagonist) we made our sortie at that early 
 hour from the gates, and crossing the glacis, took the 
 road to the banks of the Danube. It was but a mile 
 from the city, and the mist lay low on the face of the 
 troubled current of the river, while the towers and 
 pinnacles of the silent capital cut the sky in clear and 
 sharp lines as if tranquillity and purity, those im 
 maculate hand-maidens of nature, had tired of inno 
 cence and their mistress and slept in town ! 
 
 I had taken some coffee and broiled chicken before 
 starting, and (removed thus from the category of the 
 savage unbreakfasted) I was in one of those moods of 
 
 to be 
 
 pro 
 
 cares- 
 
 rather silken mus 
 tache was glossy with some odorent oil. As he 
 approached me and took my hand, with a clasp like a 
 smith s vice, I observed these circumstances, and could 
 have drawn his portrait without ever seeing him again 
 so marked a man was he, in every point and feature. 
 His business was soon explained. He was the 
 
 j husband of the lady my opponent had insulted, and 
 that pleasant gentleman could, of course, make no ob 
 jection to his taking my place. I officiated as temoin, 
 
 \ and, as they took their position, I anticipated for the 
 
 ; dragoon and myself the trouble of carrying them both 
 off the field. 1 had a practical assurance of my friend s 
 
 ! pistol, and the stranger was not the looking man to 
 
 I miss a hair s breadth of his aim. 
 
 The word was not fairly off my lips when both 
 pistols cracked like one discharge, and high into the 
 air sprang my revengeful opponent, and dropped like 
 a clod upon the grass. The stranger opened his 
 
 universal benevolence, said (erroneously) 
 
 duced only by a clean breast and milk diet. I could 
 
 have wept, with Wordsworth, over a violet. 
 
 My opponent was there with his dragoon, and Per 
 cie, cool and gentlemanlike, like a man who "had ._ . ,. ^ ^ .^. 
 
 served," looked on at the loading of the pistols, and waistcoat", thrust his fore-finger Into TwoTindTn his 
 gave me mine with a very firm hand, but with a mois- j. ] e ft breast, and slightly closing his teeth, pushed a 
 ture and anxiety m his eye which I have remembered bullet through, which had been checked by the bone 
 since. We were to fire any time after the counting j and lodged in the flesh near the skin. The surgeon 
 of three, and having no malice against my friend, | who had accompanied my unfortunate antagonist Jeft 
 whose impertinence to a lady was (really!) no business | the body, which he had found beyond his art, and 
 
 m, ne ; i iriten ^ ed of course, to throw away my fire, readily gave his assistance to stanch the blood of my 
 
 preserver; and jumping with the latter into my ca/eche, 
 1 put Percie upon the stranger s horse, and we drove 
 
 The first word was given and I looked at my an 
 tagonist, who, I saw at a glance, had no such gentle 
 intentions. He was taking deliberate aim, and in the 
 four seconds that elapsed between the remaining two 
 words, I changed my mind (one thinks so fast when 
 his leisure is limited !) at least twenty times whether I 
 should fire at him or no. * 
 
 back to Vienna. 
 
 The market people were crowding in at the gate, 
 the merry peasant girls glanced at us with their blue, 
 German eyes, the shopmen laid out their gay wares 
 to the street, and the tide of life ran on as busily and 
 
 " Iroisr pronounced the dragoon, from a throat !. ; ,s gayly, though a drop had been extracted, within 
 like a trombone, and with the last thought, up flew \, scarce ten minutes, from its quickest vein. I felt a 
 my hnnd, and as my pistol discharged in the air, my j| revulsion at my heart, and grew faint and sick. Is a 
 friend s shot struck upon a large turquoise which I human life is HIV life worth anything, even 
 wore on my third finger, and drew a slight pencil-line 
 across my left organ of causality. It was well aimed 
 for my temple, but the ring had saved me. 
 
 Friend of those days, regretted and unforgotten ! 
 days of the deepest sadness and heart-heaviness, yet 
 somehow dearer in remembrance than all the joys I 
 can recall there was a talisman in thy parting gift thou 
 didst not think would be, one day, my angel ! 
 
 " You will be able to wear your hair over the scar, 
 sir!" said Percie, coming up and putting his finger on 
 the wound. 
 
 " Monsieur !" said the dragoon, advancing to Per 
 cie after a short conference with his principal, and 
 looking twice as fierce as before. 
 
 " Monsieur !" said Percie, wheeling short upon him. 
 
 y life worth anything, even a thought, 
 to my fellow-creatures ? was the bitter question forced 
 upon my soul. How icily and keenly the unconscious 
 indifference of the world penetrates to the nerve and 
 marrow of him who suddenly realizes it. 
 
 We dashed through the kohl-market, and driving 
 into the porle-cochere of a dark-looking house in one 
 of the cross streets of that quarter, were ushered into 
 apartments of extraordinary magnificence. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 " WHAT do you want, Percie ?" 
 He was walking into the room with all the deli- 
 berate politeness of a " gold-stick-in-waiting." 
 
136 
 
 THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. 
 
 " 1 ben pardon, sit, but I was asked to walk up, and 
 I was not sure whether I was still a gentleman." 
 
 ji instantly struck me that it might seem rather 
 infra di to the chevalier (my new friend had thus 
 announced himself) to have had a valet for a second, and 
 as he immediately after entered the room, having step 
 ped below to give orders about his horse, I presented 
 Percie as a gentleman and my friend, and resumed my 
 observation of the singular apartment in which I found 
 myself. 
 
 The effect on coming first in at the door, was that 
 of a small and lofty chapel, where the light struggled 
 in from an unseen aperture above the altar. There 
 were two windows at the farther extremity, but cur 
 tained so heavily, and set so deeply into the wall, that 
 I did not at first observe the six richly-carpeted steps 
 which led up to them, nor the luxuriously cushioned 
 seats on either side of the casement, within the niche, 
 for those who would mount thither for fresh air. The 
 walls were tapestried, but very ragged and dusty, and 
 the floor, though there were several thicknesses of the 
 heavy-piled, small, Turkev carpets laid loosely over it, 
 was irregular and sunken. The corners were heaped 
 with various articles I could not at first distinguish. 
 My host fortunately gave me an opportunity to gratify 
 my curiosity by frequent absences under the house 
 keeper s apology (odd 1 thought for a chevalier) of 
 expediting breakfast; and with the aid of Percie, I 
 tumbled his chattels about with all necessary freedom. 
 
 " That," said the chevalier, entering, as I turned out 
 the face of a fresh colored picture to the light, " is a 
 capo tVopera of a French artist, who painted it, as you 
 may say, by the gleam of the dagger." 
 
 " A cool light, as a painter would say !" 
 
 " He was a cool fellow, sir, and would have handled 
 a broadsword better than a pencil. * 
 
 Percie stepped up while I was examining the ex 
 quisite finish of the picture, and asked very respect 
 fully if the chevalier would give him the particulars 
 of the story. It was a full-length portrait of a young 
 and excessively beautiful girl, of apparently scarce 
 fifteen, entirely nude, and lying upon a black velvet 
 couch, with one foot laid on a broken diadem, and her 
 right hand pressing a wild rose to her heart. 
 
 " It was the fancy, sir," continued the chevalier, 
 " of a bold outlaw, who loved the only daughter of a 
 noble of Hungary." 
 
 " Is this the lady, sir?" asked Percie, in his politest 
 valet French. 
 
 The chevalier hesitated a moment and looked over 
 his shoulder as if he might be overheard. 
 
 " This is she copied to the minutest shadow of a 
 hair ! He was a bold outlaw, gentlemen, and had 
 plucked the lady from her father s castle with his 
 own hand." 
 
 " Against her will ?" interrupted Percie, rather 
 energetically. 
 
 " No !" scowled the chevalier, as if his lowering 
 brows had articulated the word, " by her own will and 
 connivance: for she loved him." 
 
 Percie drew a long breath, and looked more close 
 ly at the taper limbs and the exquisitely-chiselled 
 features of the face, which was turned over the 
 shoulder with a look of timid shame inimitably true 
 to nature. 
 
 " She loved him," continued our fierce narrator, 
 who, I almost began to suspect was the outlaw him 
 self, by the energy with which he enforced the tale, 
 and after a moonlight ramble or two with him in the 
 forest of her father s domain, she fled and became his 
 wife. You are admiring the hair, sir! It is as 
 luxuriant and glossy now !" 
 
 " If you please, sir, it is the villain himself!" said 
 Percie in an undertone. 
 
 " Bref," continued the chevalier, either not under 
 standing English or not heeding the interruption, " an 
 
 adventurous painter, one day hunting the picturesque 
 in the neighborhood of the outlaw s retreat, surprised 
 this fair creature bathing in one of the loneliest moun 
 tain-streams in Hungary. His art appeared to be his 
 first passion, for he hid himself in the trees and drew 
 her as she stood dallying on the margin of the small 
 pool in which the brook loitered; and so busy was he 
 with his own work, or so soft was the mountain moss 
 under its master s tread, that the outlaw looked, un- 
 perceived the while, over his shoulder, and fell in love 
 anew with the admirable counterfeit. She looked 
 like a naiad, sir, new-born of a dew-drop and a violet." 
 
 I nodded an assent to Percie. 
 
 "The sketch, excellent as it seemed, was still un 
 finished when the painter, enamored as he might 
 well be, of these sweet limbs, glossy with the shining 
 water, flung down his book and sprang toward her. 
 The outlaw " 
 
 "Struck him to the heart? Oh Heaven!" said 
 Percie, covering his eyes as if he could see the 
 murder. 
 
 " No ! he was a student of the human soul, and de 
 ferred his vengeance." 
 
 Percie looked up and listened, like a man whose 
 wits were perfectly abroad. 
 
 " He was not unwilling since her person had been 
 seen irretrievably, to know how his shrinking Iminild 
 (this was her name of melody) would have escaped, 
 had she been found alone." 
 
 " The painter" prompted Percie, impatient for 
 the sequel. 
 
 " The painter flew over rock and brake, and sprang 
 into the pool in which she was half immersed ; and 
 my brave girl " 
 
 He hesitated, for he had betrayed himself. 
 
 "Ay she is mine, gentlemen; and I am Yvain, 
 the outlaw my brave wife, I say with a single bound, 
 leaped to the rock where her dress was concealed, 
 seized a short spear which she used as a staff in lier 
 climbing rambles, and struck it through his shoulder 
 as he pursued !" 
 
 " Bravely done !" I thought aloud. 
 
 " Was it not ? I came up the next moment, but the 
 spear stuck in his shoulder, and I could not fall upon 
 a wounded man. We carried him to our ruined 
 castle in the mountains, and while my Iminild cured 
 her own wound, I sent for his paints, and let him 
 finish his bold beginning with a difference of my own. 
 You see the picture." 
 
 " Was the painter s love cured with his wound !" 
 I asked with a smile. 
 
 "No, by St. Stephen! He grew ten times more 
 enamored as he drew. He was as fierce as a welk 
 hawk, and as willing to quarrel for his prey. I could 
 have driven my dagger to his heart a hundred limes 
 for the mutter of his lips and the flash of his dark eyes 
 as he fed his gaze upon her ; but he finished the pic 
 ture, and I gave him a fair field. He chose the broad 
 sword, and hacked away at me like a man." 
 
 "And the result" 1 asked. 
 
 " I am here !" replied the outlaw significantly. 
 
 Percie leaped upon the carpeted steps, and pushed 
 back the window for fresh air; and, for myself, 1 scarce 
 knew how to act under the roof of a man, who, though 
 he confessed himself an outlaw and almost an assassin, 
 was bound to me by the ties of our own critical ad 
 venture, and had confided his condition to me with so 
 ready a reliance on my honor. In the rnidst of my 
 dilemma, while I was pretending to occupy myself 
 with examining a silver mounted and peaked saddle, 
 which I found behind the picture i the corner, a deep 
 and unpleasant voice announced breakfast. 
 
 "Wolfen is rather a grim chamberlain," said the 
 chevalier, bowing with the grace and smile of the 
 softest courtier, " but he will usher you to breakfast 
 and I am sure you stand in need of it. For myself, 
 
THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. 
 
 137 
 
 I could eat worse meat than my grandfather with this 
 appetite." 
 
 Percie gave me a look of inquiry and uneasiness 
 when lie found we were to follow the rough domestic 
 through the dark corridors of the old house, and 
 through his underbred politeness of insisting on fol 
 lowing his host, I could see that he was unwilling to 
 trust the outlaw with the rear; but a massive and 
 broad door, flung open at the end of the passage, let 
 in upon us presently the cool and fresh air from a 
 northern exposure, and, stepping forward quickly to ; 
 the threshold, we beheld a picture which changed the | 
 current and color of our thoughts. 
 
 In the bottom of an excavated area, which, as 
 well as I could judge, must be forty feet below the 
 level of the court, lay a small and antique garden, j 
 brilliant with the most costly flowers, and cooled by ! 
 a fountain gushing from under the foot of a nymph in 
 marble. The spreading tops of six alleys of lindens 
 reaching to the level of the street, formed a living 
 roof to the grot-like depths of the garden, and con- [ 
 cealed it from all view but that of persons descend 
 ing like ourselves from the house; while, instead of | 
 walls to shut in this paradise in the heart of a city, I 
 sharply inclined slopes of green-sward leaned in ! 
 under the branches of the lindens, and completed the j 
 fairy-like enclosure of shade and verdure. As we | 
 descended the rose-laden steps and terraces, I ob- j 
 served, that, of the immense profusion of flowers in ! 
 the area below, nearly all were costly exotics, whose j 
 pots were set in the earth, and probably brought , 
 away from the sunshine only when in high bloom; 
 and as we rounded the spreading basin of the foun 
 tain which broke the perspective of the alley, a table, 
 which had been concealed by the marble nymph, 
 and a skilfully-disposed array of rhododendrons lay 
 just beneath our feet, while a lady, whose features i 
 1 could not fail to remember, smiled up from her 
 couch of crimson cushions and gave us a graceful 
 welcome. 
 
 The same taste for depth which had been shown 
 in the room sunk below the windows, and the garden 
 below the street, was continued in the kind of mar 
 ble divan in which we were to breakfast. Four steps j 
 descending from the pavement of the alley introduc 
 ed us into a circular excavation, whose marble seats, 
 covered with cushions of crimson silk, surrounded a 
 table laden with the substantial viands which are 
 common to a morning meal in Vienna, and smoking 
 with coffee, whose aroma (Percie agreed with me) 
 exceeded even the tube roses in grateful sweetness. 
 Between the cushions at our backs and the pave 
 ments just above the level of our heads, were piled cir 
 cles of thickly-flowering geraniums, which enclosed 
 us in rings of perfume, and, pouring from the cup of 
 a sculptured flower, held in the hand of the nymph, 
 a smooth stream like a silver rod supplied a ctiannel 
 grooved around the centre of the marble table, through 
 which the bright water, with the impulse of itsdescent, 
 made a swift revolution and disappeared. 
 
 It was a scene to give memory the lie if it could 
 have recalled the bloodshed of the morning. The 
 green light decked down through the lofty roof upon 
 the glittering and singing water ; a nightingale in a 
 recess of the garden, gurgled through his wires as if 
 intoxicated with the congenial twilight of his prison ; 
 the heavy-cupped flowers of the tropics nodded with 
 the rain of the fountain spray; the distant roll of 
 wheels in the neighboring streets came with an 
 assurance of reality to this dream-land, yet softened 
 by the unreverberating roof and an air crowded with 
 flowers and trembling with the pulsations of falling 
 water; the lowering forehead of the outlaw cleared 
 up like a sky of June after a thunder-shower, ami his 
 voice grew gentle and caressing ; and the delicate 
 mistress of all (by birth, Countess Iminild), a crea- 
 
 ture as slight as Psyche, and as white as the lotus, 
 whose flexile stem served her for" a bracelet, wel 
 comed us with her soft voice and humid eyes, and 
 saddened by the event of the morning, looked on her 
 husband with a tenderness that would have assoiled 
 her of her sins against delicacy, I thought even in the 
 mind of an angel. 
 
 " We live, like truth, here, in the bottom of a well," 
 said the countess to Percie. as she gave him his cof 
 fee ; " how do you like my whimsical abode, sir?" 
 
 " I should like any place where you were, Miladi !" 
 he answered, blushing and stealing his eyes across at 
 me, either in doubt how far he might presume upon 
 his new character, or suspecting that I should smile 
 at his gallantry. 
 
 The outlaw glanced his eyes over the curling head 
 of the boy, with one of those just perceptible smiles 
 which developed, occasionally, in great beauty, the 
 gentle spirit in his bosom : and I mini hi. pleased with 
 the compliment or the blush, threw off her pensive 
 mood, and assumed in an instant, the coquettish air 
 which had attracted my notice as she stepped before 
 me into the church of St. Ktienne. 
 
 "You had hard work," she said, "to keep up 
 with your long-legged dragoon yesterday, Monsieur 
 Percie !" 
 
 " [Miladi ?" he answered, with a look of inquiry. 
 
 "Oh, I was behind you, and my legs are not much 
 longer than yours. How he strided aw.iy with his 
 long spurs, to be sure ! Do you remember a smart 
 young gentleman with a blue cap that walked past 
 you on the glacis occasionally." 
 
 Ah, witli laced boots, like a Hungarian ?" 
 I see I am ever to be known by my foot," said 
 she, putting it out upon the cushion, and turning it 
 about with naive admiration ; " that poor captain of 
 the imperial guard paid dearly for kissing it, holy 
 virgin !" and she crossed herself and was silent for a 
 moment. 
 
 " If I might take the freedom, chevalier," I said, 
 " pray how came I indebted to your assistance in this 
 affair ?" 
 
 "Iminild has partly explained," he answered. 
 " She knew, of course, that a challenge would follow 
 your interference, and it was very easy to know that 
 an officer of some sort would take a message in the 
 course of the morning to Le Prince Charles, the only 
 hotel frequented by the English d un certain gens. 
 
 I bowed to the compliment. 
 
 " Arriving in Vienna late last night, I found Iminild 
 (who had followed this gentleman and the diagoou 
 unperceived) in possession of all the circumstances; 
 and, but for oversleeping myself this morning. 1 should 
 have saved your turquoise, nvm seigneur . " 
 
 " Have you lived here long, Miladi ?" asked Per 
 cie, looking up into her eyes with an unconscious 
 passionateness which made the countess Iminild color 
 slightly, and bite her lips to retain au expression of 
 pleasure. 
 
 " I have not lived long, anywhere, sir!" she nnswer- 
 ed half archly, "but I played in this garden when not 
 much older than you!" 
 
 Percie looked confused and pulled tip his crnvnt. 
 
 " This house said the chevalier, willing apparently 
 to spare the countess a painful narration, " is the 
 property of the old count lldefert, my wile s lather. 
 He has long ceased to visit Vienna, and has left it, he 
 supposes, to a stranger. When Iminild tires ol the 
 forest, she comes here, and I join her if I can find 
 time. Imusttothesaddle to-morrow, by St. Jacques!" 
 
 The word had scarce died on his lips when the door 
 
 by which we had entered the garden was flung open, 
 
 j and the measured tread of gens-d armes resounded in 
 
 I the corridor. The first man who stood out upon the 
 
 upper terrace was the dragoon who had been second 
 
 to my opponent. 
 
138 
 
 THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. 
 
 Traiter and villain !" muttered the outlaw between 
 his teeth, "I thought I remembered you ! It is that 
 false comrade Berthold, Iminild !" 
 
 Yvain had risen from the table as if but to stretch 
 his legs; and drawing a pistol from his bosom he 
 cocked it as he quietly stepped up into the garden. 
 I saw at a glance that there was no chance for his 
 escape, and laid my hand on his arm. 
 
 " Chevalier !" I said, " surrender and trust to op 
 portunity. It is madness to resist here." 
 
 Yvain !" said Iminild, in a low voice, flying to his 
 side as she comprehended his intention, " leave me 
 that vengeance, and try the parapet. I ll kill him be 
 fore he sleeps! Quick ! Ah, Heavens !" 
 
 The dragoon had turned at that instant to fly, and 
 with suddenness of thought the pistol flashed, and 
 the traitor dropped heavily on the terrace. Spring 
 ing like a cat up the slope of green sward, Yvain stood 
 an instant on the summit of the wall, hesitating where 
 to jump beyond, and in the next moment rolled heavily 
 back, stabbed through and through with a bayonet 
 from the opposite side. 
 
 The blood left the lips and cheek of Iminild; but 
 without a word or a sign of terror, she sprang to the 
 side of the fallen outlaw and lifted him up against 
 her knee. The gens-d armes rushed to the spot, but 
 the subaltern who commanded them yielded instantly 
 to my wish that they should retire to the skirts of the 
 garden; and, send ing Percie to the fountain for water, 
 we bathed the lips and forehead of the dying man and 
 set him against the sloping parapet. With one hand 
 grasping the dress of Iminild and the other clasped in 
 mine, he struggled to speak. 
 
 " The cross !" he gasped, "the cross !" 
 
 Iminild drew a silver crucifix from her bosom. 
 
 "Swear on this," he said, putting it to my lips and 
 speaking with terrible energy, swear that you will 
 protect her while you live !" 
 
 " I swear!" 
 
 He shut our hands together convulsively, gasped 
 slightly as if he would speak again, and, in another 
 instant sunk, relaxed and lifeless, on the shoulder of 
 Iminild. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE fate and history of Yvain, the outlaw, became, 
 on the following day, the talk of Vienna. He had 
 been long known as the daring horse-stealer of Hun 
 gary ; and, though it was not doubted that his sway- 
 was exercised over plunderers of every description, 
 even pirates upon the high seas, his own courage and 
 address were principally applied to robbery of the well- 
 guarded steeds of the emperor and his nobles. It was 
 said that there was not a horse in the dominions of 
 Austria whose qualities and breeding were not known 
 to him, nor one he cared to have which was not in his 
 concealed stables in the forest. The most incredible 
 stories were told of his horsemanship. He would so 
 disguise the animal on which he rode, either by forcing 
 him into new paces or by other arts only known to him 
 self, that he would make the tour of the Glacis on the 
 emperor s best horse, newly stolen, unsuspected even 
 by the royal grooms. The roadsters of his own troop 
 were the best steeds bred on the banks of the Danube; 
 but, though always in the highest condition, they 
 would never have been suspected to be worth a florin 
 till put upon their mettle. The extraordinary escapes 
 of his band from the vigilant and well-mounted gens- 
 d armes were thus accounted for ; and, in most of the 
 villages in Austria, the people, on some market-day 
 or other, had seen a body of apparently ill-mounted 
 peasants suddenly start off with the speed of lightning 
 at the appearance of gens-d armes, and, flying over 
 
 fence and wall, draw a straight course for the mount 
 ains, distancing their pursuers with the ease of swal 
 lows on the wing. 
 
 After the death of Yvain in the garden, I had been 
 forced with Percie into a carriage, standing in the 
 court, and accompanied by a guard, driven to my 
 hotel, where I was given to understand that I was to 
 remain under arrest till further orders. A sentinel at 
 the door forbade all ingress or egress except to the 
 people of the house: a circumstance which was only 
 distressing to me, as it precluded my inquiries after 
 the countress Iminild, of whom common rumor, the 
 servants informed me, made not the slightest mention. 
 Four days after this, on the relief of the guard at 
 noon, a subaltern, entered my room and informed me 
 that I was at liberty. I instantly made preparations to 
 go out, and was drawing on my boots, when Percie, 
 who had not yet recovered from the shock of his 
 arrest, entered in some alarm, and informed me that 
 one of the royal grooms was in the court with a letter, 
 which he would deliver only into my own hands. He 
 had orders beside, he said, not to leave his saddle. 
 Wondering what new leaf of my destiny was to turn 
 over, I went below and received a letter, with apparent- 
 
 j ly the imperial seal, from a well-dressed groom in the 
 
 : livery of the emperor s brother, the king of Hungary. 
 
 j He was mounted on a compact, yet fine-limbed horse, 
 
 I and both horse and rider were as still as if cut in 
 
 j marble. 
 
 I returned to my room and broke the seal. It was 
 a letter from Iminild, and the bold bearer was an out 
 law disguised ! She had heard that I was to be re 
 leased that morning, and desired me to ride out on the 
 road to Gratz. In a postscript she begged I would 
 request Monsieur Percie to accompany me. 
 
 I sent for horses, and, wishing to be left to my own 
 thoughts, ordered Percie to fall behind, and rode 
 slowly out of the southern gate. If the countess 
 Iminild were safe, I had enough of the adventure for 
 my taste. My oath bound me to protect this wild and 
 unsexed woman, but farther intercourse with a band 
 of outlaws, or farther peril of my head for no reason 
 that either a court of gallantry orof justice would rec 
 ognise, was beyond my usual programme of pleasant 
 events. The road was a gentle ascent, and with the 
 bridle on the neck of my hack I paced thoughtfully on, 
 till, at a slight turn, we stood at a fair height above 
 Vienna. 
 
 " It is a beautiful city, sir," said Percie, riding up. 
 " How the deuce could she have escaped ?" said I, 
 thinking aloud. 
 
 " Has she escaped, sir ? Ah, thank Heaven !" ex 
 claimed the passionate boy, the tears rushing to his 
 eyes. 
 
 " Why, Percie !" I said with a tone of surprise 
 which called a blush into his face, " have you really 
 found leisure to fall in love amid all this imbroglio?" 
 
 " I beg pardon, my dear master !" he replied in a 
 confused voice, "I scarce know what it is to fall in 
 love ; but I would die for Miladi Iminild." 
 
 "Not -at all an impossible sequel, my poor boy! 
 But wheel about and touch your hat, for here comes 
 some one of the royal family !" 
 
 A horseman was approaching at an easy canter, 
 
 I over the broad and unfenced plain of table-land which 
 
 j overlooks Vienna on the south, attended by sixmount- 
 
 | ed servants in the white kerseymere frocks, braided 
 
 with the two-headed black eagle, which distinguish the 
 
 j members of the imperial household. 
 
 The carriages on the road stopped while he passed, 
 
 j the foot-passengers touched their caps, and, as he came 
 near, I perceived that he. was slight and young, but 
 rode with a confidence and a grace not often attained. 
 His horse had the subdued, half-fiery action of an 
 
 1 Arab, and Percie nearly dropped from his saddle when 
 
 I the young horseman suddenly drove in his spurs, 
 
THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. 
 
 139 
 
 and with almost a single vault stood motionless be 
 fore us. 
 
 " Monsieur /" 
 
 " Madame la Contesse . " 
 
 I was uncertain how to receive her, and took refuge 
 in civility. Whether she would be overwhelmed with 
 the recollection of Yvain s death, or had put away the 
 thought altogether with her masculine firmness, was 
 a dilemma for which the eccentric contradictions of 
 her character left me no probable solution. Motion 
 ing with her hand after saluting me, two of the party 
 rode back and forward in different directions, as if 
 patrolling; and giving a look between a tear and a 
 smile at Percie, she placed her hand in mine, and 
 shook off her sadness with a strong effort. 
 
 " You did not expect so large a suite with your 
 protegee," she said, rather gayly, after a moment. 
 
 " Do I tinderstand that you come now to put your 
 self under my protection ?" I asked in reply. 
 
 It had been a long summer s day, and, contrary to 
 my usual practice, 1 had riot mounted, even for half a 
 post, to Percie s side in the rumble. Out of humor 
 with fate for having drawn me into very embarrassing 
 circumstances out of humor with myself for the 
 quixotic step which had first brought it on me and a 
 little ol out hutnor with Percie (perhaps from an un 
 acknowledged jealousy of Iminild s marked preference 
 for the varlet), I left him to toast alone in the sun, 
 while I tried to forget him and myself in " Le Marquis 
 de Pontangos." What a very clever book it is, by 
 the way ! 
 
 The pompous sergeant of the guard performed his 
 office upon my passport at the gate giving me at 
 least a kreutzer worth of his majesty s black sand in 
 exchange for my florin and my English curse (I said 
 before I was out of temper, and he was half an hour 
 writing his abominable name), and leaving my carriage 
 and Percie to find their way together to the hotel, I 
 
 " Soon, but not now, nor here. I have a hundred I dismounted at the foot of a steep street and made my 
 
 way to the battlements of the castle, in search of scene 
 ry and equanimity. 
 
 Ah ! what a glorious landscape ! The precipitous 
 rock on which the old fortress is built seems dropped 
 by the Titans in the midst of a plain, extending miles 
 
 men at the foot of Mount Semering, whose future 
 fate, in some important respects, none can decide but 
 myself. Yvain was always prepared for this, and 
 everything is en train. I come now but to appoint a 
 place of meeting. Quick ! my patrole comes in, and 
 some one approaches whom we must fly. Can you 
 await me at Gratz ? 
 
 " I can and will !" 
 
 She put her slight hand to my lips, waved a kiss 
 at Percie, and away with the speed of wind, flew her 
 swift Arab over the plain, followed by the six horse 
 men, every one of whom seemed part of the animal 
 that carried him he rode so admirably. 
 
 The slight figure of Iminild in the close fitting dress 
 of a Hungarian page, her jacket open and her beauti 
 ful limbs perfectly defined, silver fringes at her ankles 
 and waist, and a row of silver buttons gallonne down 
 to the instep, her bright, flashing eyes, her short curls 
 escaping from her cap and tangled over her left temple, 
 with the gold tassel, dirk and pistol at her belt and 
 spurs upon her heels it was an apparition I had 
 scarce time to realize, but it seemed painted on my 
 
 in every direction, with scarce another pebble. Close 
 at its base run the populous streets, coiling about it 
 like serpents around a pyramid, and away from the 
 walls of the city spread the broad fields, laden, as far 
 as the eye can see, with tribute for the emperor! The 
 tall castle, with its armed crest, looks down among the 
 reapers. 
 
 " You hive not lost your friend and lover, yet you 
 are melancholy !" said a voice behind me, that I was 
 scarce startled to hear. 
 
 "Is it you, Iminild ?" 
 
 " Scarce the same for Iminild was never before so 
 sad. It is something in the sunset. Come away while 
 the woman keeps down in me, and let us stroll through 
 the Plaza, where the band is playing. Do you love 
 military music ?" 
 
 1 looked at the costume and figure of the extra- 
 
 eyes. The cloud of dust which followed their rapid ordinary creature before I ventured with her on a 
 
 flight faded away as I watched it, but I saw her still. 
 
 "Shall I ride back and order post-horses, sir!" 
 asked Percie standing up in his stirrups. 
 
 " No ; but you may order dinner at six. And Per 
 cie !" he was riding away with a gloomy air; "you 
 may go to the police and get our passports for Venice." 
 
 " By the way of Gratz, sir!" 
 
 " Yes, simpleton !" 
 
 There is a difference between sixteen and twenty- 
 six, I thought to myself, as the handsome boy flogged 
 his horse into a gallop. The time is gone when I 
 coul.l love without reason. Yet 1 remember when a 
 feather, stuck jauntily into a bonnet, would have made 
 any woman a princess; and in those days, Heaven help 
 us ! I should have loved this woman more for her 
 galliardize than ten times a prettier one with all the 
 virtues of Dorcas. For which of my sins am I made 
 guardian to a robber s wife, I wonder ! 
 
 The heavy German postillions, with their cocked 
 hats and yellow coats, got us over the ground after a 
 manner, and toward the sunset of a summer s evening 
 the tall castle of Gratz, perched on a pinnacle of rock 
 in the centre of a vast plain, stood up boldly against 
 the reddening sky. The rich fields of Styria were 
 ripening to an early harvest, the people sat at their 
 doors with the look of household happiness for which 
 the inhabitants of these "despotic countries" are so 
 remarkable ; and now and then on the road the rattling 
 of steel scabbards drew my attention from a book or a 
 reveiy, and the mounted troops, so perpetually seen 
 on the broad roads of Austria, lingered slowly past 
 with their dust and baggage-trains. 
 
 public promenade. She was dressed like one of thf 
 travelling apprentices of Germany, with cap and bleuzcr. 
 and had assumed the air of the craft with a success 
 ! absolutely beyond detection. I gave her my arm and 
 I we sauntered through the crowd, listening lo the 
 thrilling music of one of the finest bands in Germany. 
 j The privileged character and free manners of tho 
 wandering craftsmen whose dress she had adopted, 
 I was well aware, reconciled, in the eyes of the in 
 habitants, the marked contrast between our conditions 
 in life. They would simply have said, if they had 
 made a remark at all, that the Englishman was Ion 
 enfant and the craftsman bon camarade. 
 
 " You had better look at me, messieurs !" said the 
 dusty apprentice, as two officers of the regiment passed 
 and gave me the usual strangers stare ; " f am better 
 worth your while by exactly five thousand florins." 
 
 " And pray how ?" I asked. 
 
 " That price is set on my head !" 
 
 "Heavens! and you walk here !" 
 
 " They kept you longer than usual with your pass 
 port, I presume ?" 
 
 " At the gate? yes." 
 
 " I came in with my pack at the, time. They have 
 orders to examine all travellers and passports with 
 unusual care, these sharp officials ! But I shall get 
 I out as easily as I got in !" 
 
 "My dear countess!" I said, in a tone of serious 
 do not trifle with the vigilance of the 
 
 My 
 
 remonstrance, 
 
 best police in Europe! I am your guardian, and you 
 owe my advice some respect. Come away from the 
 square and let us talk of it in eainest." 
 
 "Wise seignior! suffer me to remind you how 
 
140 
 
 THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. 
 
 defily I slipped through the fingers of these gentry 
 after our tragedy in Vienna, and pay w/ opinion some 
 respect! It was my vanity that brought me, with 
 my lackeys, to meet you a la prince royale so near 
 Vienna ; and hence this alarm in the police, for 1 was 
 seen and suspected. I have shown myself to you 
 in my favorite character, however, and have done 
 with such measures. You shall see me on the road 
 to-morrow, safe as the heart in your bosom. Where 
 is Monsieur Percie !" 
 
 " At the hotel. But stay ! can I trust you with 
 yourself?" 
 
 " Yes, and dull company, too ! A revoir /" 
 And whistling the popular air of the craft she had ! 
 assumed, the countess Iminild struck her long staff j 
 on the pavement, and with the gait of a tired and I 
 habitual pedestrian, disappeared by a narrow street | 
 Jeading under the precipitory battlements of the ! 
 castle. 
 
 Percie made his appearance with a cup of coffee ! 
 the following morning, and, with the intention of post- j 
 ing a couple of leagues to breakfast, I hurried through 
 my toilet and was in my carriage an hour after sun- i 
 rise. The postillion was in his saddle and only waited 
 for Percie, who, upon inquiry, was nowhere to be 
 found. I sat fifteen minutes, and just as I was be 
 ginning to be alarmed he ran into the large court of 
 the hotel, and, crying out to the postillions that all 
 was right, jumped into his place with an agility, 
 it struck me, very unlike his usual gantlemanlike 
 deliberation. Determining to take advantage of the 
 first up hill to catechize him upon his matutinal ram 
 bles, I read the signs along the street till we pulled 
 up at the gate. 
 
 Iminild s communication had prepared me for un 
 usual delay with my passport, and I was not surprised 
 when the officer, in returning it to me, requested me 
 as a matter of form, to declare, upon my honor, that 
 the servant behind my carriage was an Englishman, 
 and the person mentioned in my passport. 
 
 " Foi d honneur, monsieur," 1 said, placing my hand 
 politely on my heart, and off trotted the postillion, 
 while the 1 caplainof the guard, flattered with my civili 
 ty, touched his foraging-cap. and sent me a German 
 blessing through his mustache. 
 
 It was a divine morning, and the fresh and dewy 
 air took me back many a year, to the days when I 
 was more familiar with the hour. We had a long 
 trajet across the plain, and unlooping an antivibralion 
 tablet, for the invention of which my ingenuity took 
 great credit to itself (suspended on caoutchouc cords 
 from the roof of the carriage and deserving of a 
 patent I trust you will allow !) I let off my poetical 
 vein in the following beginning to what might have 
 turned out, but for the interruption, a very edifying 
 copy of verses : 
 
 " Ye are not what 3 r e were to me, 
 
 Oh waning night and morning star ! 
 
 Though silent still your watches flee- 
 Though hang yon lamp in heaven as far 
 
 Thoueh live the thoughts ye fed of yore 
 
 I m thine, oh starry dawn, no more if 
 
 Yet to that dew-pe irled hour alone 
 I was not folly s blindest child ; 
 
 It came when wearied mirth had flown, 
 And sleep was on the gay and wild ; 
 
 And wakeful with repentant pain, 
 1 lay amid its lap of flowers, 
 
 And with a truant s earnest brain 
 
 Turned hack the leaves of wnsted hours. 
 
 The angels that by day would floe, 
 
 Returned, oh morning star ! with thee ! 
 
 Yet now again * * * 
 
 A foot thrust into my carriage-window rudely broke 
 the thread of these delicate musings. The postillion 
 
 was on a walk, and before I could get my wits back 
 from their wool-gathering, the countess Iminild, in 
 Percie s clothes, sat laughing on the cushion beside 
 me. 
 
 "On what bird s back has your ladyship descended 
 from the clouds ?" I asked with unfeigned astonish 
 ment. 
 
 The same bird has brought us both down c est 
 a dire, if you are not still en / air," she added, looking 
 from my scrawled tablets to my perplexed face. 
 
 "Are you really and really the countess Iminild ?" 
 I asked with a smile, looking down at the trowsered 
 feet and loose-fitting boots of the pseudo-valet. 
 
 " Yes, indeed ! but I leave it to you to swear, 
 fid cVhonneurJ that a born countess is an English 
 valet !" And she laughed so long and merrily that 
 the postillion looked over his yellow epaulets in as 
 tonishment. 
 
 " Kind, generous Percie ! " she said, changing her 
 tone presently to one of great feeling, " I would scarce 
 believe him last night when he informed me, as as in 
 ducement to leave him behind, that he was only a ser 
 vant! You never told me this. But he is a gentle 
 man, in every feeling as well as in every feature, and, 
 by Heavens! he shall be a menial no longer!" 
 
 This speech, begun with much tenderness, rose, 
 toward the close, to the violence of passion ; and 
 folding her arms with an air of defiance, the lady- 
 outlaw threw herself back in the carriage. 
 
 " I have no objection," I said, after a short silence, 
 " that Percie should set up for a gentleman. Nature 
 has certainly done her part to make him one ; but till 
 you can give him means and education, the coat which 
 you wear, with such a grace, is his safest shell. Ants 
 live safely till they have gotten wings, says the old 
 proverb." 
 
 The blowing of the postillion s horn interrupted the 
 argument, and, a moment after, we were rolled up, 
 withGerman leisure, to the doorof the small inn where 
 I had designed to breakfast. Thinking it probable 
 that the people of the house, in so small a village, 
 would be too simple to make any dangerous comments 
 upon our appearance, I politely handed the countess 
 out of the carriage, and ordered plates for two. 
 
 " It is scarce worth while," she said, as she heard 
 the order, " fot I shall remain at the door on the look 
 out. The eil-waggen, for Trieste, which was to leave 
 Gratz an hour after us, will be soon here, and (if my 
 friends have served me well), Percie in it. St. Mary 
 speed him safely !" 
 
 She strode away to a small hillock to look out for the 
 lumbering diligence, with a gait that was no stranger 
 to, "doublet and hose." ft soon came on with its 
 usual tempest of whip-cracking and bugle-blasts, and 
 nearly overturning a fat burgher, who would have 
 proffered the assistance of his hand, out jumped a 
 petticoat, which I saw, at a glance, gave a very em 
 barrassed motion to gentleman Percie. 
 
 " This young lady," said the countess, dragging 
 the striding and unwilling damsel into the little parlor 
 where I was breakfasting " travels under the charge of 
 a deaf old brazier, who has been requested to protect her 
 modesty as far as Laybach. Make a courtesy, child!" 
 
 " I beg pardon, sir !" began Percie. 
 
 " Hush, hush! no English ! Walls have ears, and 
 your voice is rather gruffish, mademoiselle. Show 
 me your passport? Cunegunda Von Krakcnjiatc, 
 eighteen years of age, blue eyes, nose and chin mid 
 dling, etc ! Tliere is the conductor s horn ! Atlez 
 vile ! We meet at Laybach. Adieu, charmante 
 feninie ! Adieu!" 
 
 And with the sort of caricatured elegance which 
 women always assume in their imitations of our sex, 
 Countess Iminild, in frock-coat and trowsers, helped 
 into the diligence, in hood and petticoat, my " tiger" 
 from Cranbourne-alley ! 
 
THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. 
 
 HI 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 SPITE of remonstrance on my part, the imperative 
 countess, who had asserted her authority more than 
 once on our way to Laybach, insisted on the com 
 pany of Miss Cunegunda Von Krakenpate, in an 
 evening walk around the town. Fearing that Per- 
 cie s masculine stride would betray him, and object 
 ing to lend myself to a farce with my valet, I opposed 
 the freak as ibug as it was courteous but it was not j 
 the first time I had learned that a spoiled woman 
 would have her own way, and too vexed to laugh, I I 
 soberly promenaded the broad avenue of the capital j 
 of Styria, with a valet en demoiselle, and a dame en j 
 valet. 
 
 It was but a few hours hence to Planina, and Iminild, 
 who seemed to fear no risk out of a walled city, waited 
 on Percie to the carriage the following morning, and 
 in a few hours we drove up to the rural inn of this 
 small town of Littorale. 
 
 I had been too much out of humor to ask the 
 countess, a second time, what errand she could have | 
 in so rustic a neighborhood. She had made a mystery 
 of it, merely requiring of me that I should defer all 
 arrangements for the future, as far as she was concern 
 ed, till we had visited a spot in Littorale, upon which 
 her fate in many respects depended. After twenty 
 fruitless conjectures, I abandoned myself to the course j 
 of circumstances, reserving only the determination, if it 
 should prove a haunt of Yvain s troop, to separate at 
 once from her company and await her at Trieste? 
 
 Our dinner was preparing bt the inn, and tired of 
 the embarrassment Percie exhibited in my presence, 
 I walked out and seated myself under an immense 
 linden, that every traveller will remember, standing 
 in the centre of the motley and indescribable clusters 
 of buildings, which serve the innkeeper and black 
 smith of Planina for barns, forge, dwelling, and out 
 houses. The tree seems the father of the village. 
 It was a hot afternoon, and I was compelled to dis 
 pute the shade with a congregation of cows and double- 
 jointed posthorses ; but finding a seat high up on the 
 root, at last I busied myself with gazing down the 
 road, and conjecturing what a cloud of dust might con- j 
 tain, which, in an opposite direction from that which j 
 we had come, was slowly creeping onward to the inn. i 
 
 Four roughly-harnessed horses at length, appeared, 
 with their traces tied over their backs one of them 
 ridden by a man in a farmer s frock. They struck me , 
 at first as fine specimens of the German breed of 
 draught-horses, with their shaggy fetlocks and long ! 
 manes ; but while they drank at the trough which 
 stood in the shade of the linden, the low tone in which 
 the man checked their greedy thirst, and the instant 
 obedience of the well-trained animals, awakened at 
 once my suspicions that we were to becon^p better 
 acquainted. A more narrow examination convinced 
 me that, covered with dust and disguised with coarse | 
 harness as they were, they were four horses of such 
 bone and condition, as were never seen in a farmer s 
 stables. The rider dismounted at the inn door, and 
 very much to the embarrassment of my suppositions, 
 the landlord, a stupid and heavy Boniface, greeted him j 
 with the familiarity of an old acquaintance, and in an- I 
 swer, apparently to an inquiry, pointed to my carriage, I 
 and led him into the house. 
 
 " Monsieur Tyrell," said Iminild, coming out to 
 me a moment after, " a servant whom I had expected 
 has arrived with my horses, and with your consent, 
 they shall be put to your carriage immediately." 
 
 " To take us where 1" 
 
 " To our place of destination." 
 
 " Too indefinite, by half, countess ! Listen to me ! 
 
 I have very sufficient reason to fancy that, in leaving 
 
 the post-road to Trieste, I shall leave the society of 
 
 honest men. You and your minions of the moon 
 
 10 
 
 may be very pleasant, but you are not very safe com 
 panions ; and having really a wish to die quietly in 
 my bed " 
 
 The countess burst into a laugh. 
 " If you will have the character of the gentleman 
 you are about to visit from the landlord here " 
 "Who is one of your ruffians himself, I ll be sworn!" 
 " No, on my honor ! A more innocent old beer- 
 I guzzler lives not on the road. But I will tell you 
 thus much, and it ought to content you. Ten miles 
 to the west of this dwells a country gentleman, who, 
 the landlord will certify, is as honest a subject of his 
 gracious majesty as is to be found in Littorale. He 
 lives freely on his means, and entertains strangers 
 occasionally from all countries, for he has been a 
 traveller in his time. You are invited to pass a day 
 or two with this Mynheer Krakenpate (who, by the 
 way, has no objection to pass for father of the young 
 lady you have so kindly brought from Laybach), 
 and he has sent you his horses, like a generous host, 
 to bring you to his door. More seriously, this was 
 a retreat of Yvain s, where he would live quietly and 
 play ban citoyen, and you have nothing earthly to fear 
 in accompanying me thither. And now will you wait 
 and eat the greasy meal you have ordered, or will you 
 save your appetite for la fortune de pot at Mynheer 
 Krakenpate s, and get presently on the road !" 
 
 I yielded rather to the seducing smile and capti 
 vating beauty of my pleasing ward, than to any con 
 fidence in the honesty of Mynheer Krakenpate ; and 
 Percie being once more ceremoniously handed in, we 
 left the village at the sober trot becoming the fat steeds 
 of a landholder. A quarter of a mile of this was quite 
 sufficient for Iminild, and a word to the postillion 
 changed, like a metamorphosis, both horse and rider. 
 From a heavy unelastic figure, he rose into a gallant 
 and withy horseman, and, with one of his low-spoken 
 words, away flew the four compact animals, treading 
 lightly as cats, and. with the greatest apparent ease, 
 putting us over the ground at the rate of fourteen 
 miles in the hour. 
 
 The dust was distanced, a pleasant breeze was 
 created by the motion, and when at last we turned 
 from the main road, and sped off to the right at the 
 same exhilarating pace, I returned Iminild s arch 
 look of remonstrance with my best-hurnofed smile 
 and an affectionate jemefe d rous! Miss Krakenpate, 
 I observed, echoed the sentiment by a slight pressure 
 of the countess s arm, looking very innocently out of 
 the window all the while. 
 
 A couple of miles, soon done, brought us round the 
 
 face of a craggy precipice, forming the brow of a hill, 
 
 and with a continuation of the turn, we drew up at the 
 
 gate of a substantial-looking building, something be- 
 
 ; tween a villa and a farm-house, built against the rock, 
 
 as if for the purpose of shelter from the north winds. 
 
 | Two beautiful Angora hounds sprang out at the noise, 
 
 and recognised Iminild through all her disguise, and 
 
 presently, with a look offorced courtesy, as if not quite 
 
 sure whether he might throw off the mask, a stout 
 
 j man of about fifty, hardly a gentleman, yet above a 
 
 common peasant in his manners, stepped forward from 
 
 the garden to give Miss Krakenpate his assistance in 
 
 alighting. 
 
 "Dinner in half an hour!" was Iminild s brief 
 greeting, and, stepping between her bowing dependant 
 and Percie, she led the way into the house. 
 
 I was shown into a chamber, furnished scarce above 
 
 i the common style of a German inn, where I made a 
 
 hungry man s despatch in my toilet, and descended 
 
 at once to the parlor. The doors were all open upon 
 
 ! the ground floor, and, finding myself quite alone, I 
 
 I sauntered from room to room, wondering at the scanti- 
 
 j ness of the furniture and general air of discomfort, and 
 
 scarce able to believe that the same mistress presided 
 
 j over this and the singular paradise in which I had 
 
142 
 
 THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. 
 
 first found her at Vienna. After visiting every corner 
 of the ground floor with a freedom which I assumed in 
 my character as guardian, it occurred to me that I 
 had not yet found the dining-room, and I was making 
 a new search, when Iminild entered. 
 
 I have said she was a beautiful woman. She was 
 dressed now in the Albanian costume, with the addi 
 tional gorgeousness of gold embroidery, which might 
 distinguish the favorite child of a chief of Suli. it 
 was the male attire, with a snowy white juktanilla 
 reaching to the knee, a short jacket of crimson velvet, 
 and a close-buttoned vest of silver cloth, fitting ad 
 mirably to her girlish bust, and leaving her slender and 
 pearly neck to rise bare and swan-like into the masses 
 of her clustering hair. Her slight waist was defined 
 by the girdle of fine linen edged with fringe of gold, 
 which was tied coquettishly over her left side and fell 
 to her ankle, and below the embroidered leggin appear 
 ed the fairy foot, which had drawn upon me all this 
 long train of adventure, thrust into a Turkish slipper 
 with a sparkling emerald on its instep. A. feroniere 
 of the yellowest gold sequins bound her hair back 
 from her temples, and this was the only confinement 
 to the dark brown meshes which, in wavy lines and 
 in the richest profusion, fell almost to her feet. The 
 only blemish to this vision of loveliness was a flush 
 about her eyes. The place had recalled Yvain to her 
 memory. 
 
 " I am about to disclose to you secrets," said she, 
 laying her hand on my arm, " which have never been 
 re vealed but to the most trusty of Yvain s confederates. 
 To satisfy those whom you will meet you must swear 
 to me on the same cross which he pressed to your lips 
 when dying, that you will never violate, while I live, 
 the trust we repose in you." 
 
 " I will take no oath," I said ; " for you are leading 
 me blindfolded. If you are not satisfied with the 
 assurance that I can betray no confidence which honor 
 would preserve, hungry as I am, I will yet dine in 
 Planina." 
 
 " Then I will trust to the faith of an Englishman. 
 And now I have a favor, not to beg, but to insist upon 
 that from this moment you consider Percie as dis 
 missed from your service, and treat him, while here 
 at least, as my equal and friend." 
 
 " Willingly !" I said ; and as the word left my lips, 
 enter Percie in the counterpart dress of Iminild, with 
 a silver-sheathed ataghan at his side, and the bluish 
 muzzles of a pair of Egg s hair-triggers peeping from 
 below his girdle. To do the rascal justice, he was as 
 handsome in his new toggery as his mistress, and carried 
 it as gallantly. They would have made the prettiest 
 tableau as Juan and Haidee. 
 
 " Is there any chance that these persuaders may 
 be necessary," I asked, pointing to his pistols which 
 awoke in my mind a momentary suspicion. 
 
 No none that I can foresee but they are loaded. 
 A favorite, among men whose passions are profession 
 ally wild," she continued with a meaning glance at 
 Percie ; " should be ready to lay his hand on them, 
 even if stirred in his sleep !" 
 
 I had been so accustomed to surprises of late, that 
 I scarce started to observe, while Iminild was speak 
 ing, that an old-fashioned clock, which stood in a 
 niche in the wall, was slowly swinging out upon 
 hinges. A narrow aperture of sufficient breadth to 
 admit one person at a time, was disclosed when it 
 had made its entire revolution, and in it stood, with 
 a lighted torch, the stout landlord Von Krakenpate. 
 Iminild looked at me an instant as if to enjoy my 
 surprise. 
 
 " Will you lead me in to dinner, Mr. Tyrell?" she 
 said at last, with a laugh. 
 
 " If we are to follow Mynheer Von Krakenpate," I 
 replied, " give me hold of the skirt of your juktanilla, 
 rather, and let me follow ! Do we dine in the cellar ?" 
 
 I stepped before Percie, who was inclined to take 
 advantage of rriy hesitation to precede me, and fol 
 lowed the countess into the opening, which, from 
 the position of the house, I saw must lead directly 
 into the face of the rock. Two or three descending 
 steps convinced me that it was a natural opening en 
 larged by art ; and after one or two sharp turns, and 
 a descent of perhaps fifty feet, we came to a door 
 which, suddenly flung open by our torch-bearer, 
 deluged the dark passage with a blaze of light which 
 the eyesight almost refused to bear. Recovering 
 from my amazement, I stepped over the threshold 
 of the door, and stood upon a carpet in a gallery of 
 sparkling stalactites, the dazzling reflection of innu 
 merable lamps flooding the air around, and a long 
 snow-white vista of the same brilliancy and effect 
 stretching downward before me. Two ridges of 
 the calcareous strata running almost parallel over 
 our heads, formed the cornices of the descending 
 corridor, and from these, with a regularity that 
 seemed like design, the sparkling pillars, white as 
 alabaster, and shaped like inverted cones, dropped 
 nearly to the floor, their transparent points resting on 
 the peaks of the corresponding stalagmites, which, of 
 a darker hue and coarser grain, seemed designed as 
 bases to a new order of architectural columns. The 
 reflection from the pure crystalline rock gave to this 
 singular gallery a splendor which only the palace of 
 Aladdin could have equalled. The lamps were hung 
 between in irregular but effective ranges, and in our 
 descent, like Thalaba, who refreshed his dazzled eyes 
 in the desert of snow by looking on the green wings of 
 the spirit bird, I was compelled to bend my eyes per 
 petually for relief upon the soft, dark masses of hair 
 which floated upon the lovely shoulders of Iminild. 
 
 At the extremity of the gallery we turned short to 
 the right, and followed an irregular passage, some 
 times so low that we could scarce stand upright, but 
 all lighted with the same intense brilliancy, and formed 
 of the same glittering and snow-white substance. We 
 had been rambling on thus far perhaps ten minutes, 
 when suddenly the air, which I had felt uncomfort 
 ably chill, grew warm and soft, and the low reverbera 
 tion of running water fell delightfully on our ears. 
 Far ahead we could see two sparry columns standing 
 close together, and apparently closing up the way. 
 
 " Courage! my venerable guardian !" cried Iminild, 
 laughing over her shoulder ; " you will see your dinner 
 presently. Are you hungry, Percie ?" 
 
 " Not while you look back, Madame la Comtesse !" 
 answered the callow gentleman, with an instinctive 
 tact at his new vocation. 
 
 We stood at the two pillars which formed the ex 
 tremity of the passage, and looked down upon a scene 
 of which all description must be faint and imperfect. 
 A hundred feet below ran a broad subterraneous river, 
 whose waters sparkling in the blaze of a thousand 
 torches, sprang into light from the deepest darkness, 
 crossed with foaming rapidity the bosom of the vast 
 illuminated cavern, and disappeared again in the same 
 inscrutable gloom. Whence it came or whither it 
 fled was a mystery beyond the reach of the eye. The 
 deep recesses of the cavern seemed darker for the in 
 tense light gathered about the centre. 
 
 After the first few minutes of bewilderment, I en 
 deavored to realize in detail the wondrous scene be- 
 I fore me. The cavern was of an irregular shape, but 
 all studded above with the same sparry incrustation, 
 i thousands upon thousands of pendent stalactites glit- 
 ! tering on the roof, and showering back light upon the 
 | clusters of blazing torches fastened everywhere upon 
 the shelvy sides. Here and there vast columns, 
 alabaster white, with bases of gold color, fell from the 
 roof to the floor, like pillars left standing in the ruined 
 aisle of a cathedral, and from corner to corner ran 
 their curtains of the same brilliant calcareous sps- 
 
THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. 
 
 143 
 
 shaped like the sharp edge of a snow-drift, and almost 
 white. It was like laying bare the palace of some 
 king-wizard of the mine to gaze down upon it. 
 
 " What think you of Mynheer Krakenpate s taste 
 in a dining-room, Monsieur Tyrell ?" asked the count 
 ess, who stood between Percie and myself, with a 
 hand on the shoulder of each. 
 
 I had scarce found time, as yet, to scrutinize the 
 artificial portion of the marvellous scene, but, at the 
 question of Iminild, I bent my gaze on a broad plat 
 form, rising high above the river on its opposite bank, 
 the tear of which was closed in by perhaps forty ir 
 regular columns, leaving between them and the sharp 
 precipice on the river-side, an area, in height and ex 
 tent of about the capacity of a ball-room. A rude 
 bridge, of very light construction, rose in a single 
 
 "No, not Yvain, but Tranchcreur his equal in 
 command over this honest confederacy. By the way, 
 he is your countryman, Mr. Tyrell, though he rights 
 under a nom de guerre. You are very likely to see 
 him, too, for his bark is at Trieste, and he is the only 
 human being besides myself (and my company here) 
 who can come and go at wiH in this robber s paradise. 
 He is a lover of mine, parbleu ! and since Yvain s 
 death, Heaven knows what fancy he may bring hith 
 er in his hot brain ! I have armed Percie for the 
 hazard ?" 
 
 The thin nostrils of my friend from Cranbourue- 
 alley dilated with prophetic dislike of a rival thus 
 abruptly alluded to, and there was that in his face 
 which would have proved, against all the nurses 
 oaths in Christendom, that the spirit of a gentleman s 
 
 arch across the river, forming the only possible access | blood ran warm through his heart. Signor Tranch- 
 to the platform from the side where we stood, and, 
 following the path back with my eye, I observed a 
 narrow and spiral staircase, partly of wood and partly 
 cut in the rock, ascending from the bridge to the galle 
 ry we had followed hither. The platform was carpet 
 ed richly, and flooded with intense light, and in its 
 centre stood a gorgeous array of smoking dishes, 
 
 co;ur must be gentle in his suit, I said to myself, 
 or he will find what virtue lies in a hair-trigger ! 
 Percie had forgot to eat since the mention of the 
 pirate s name, and sat with folded arms and his right 
 hand on his pistol. 
 
 A black slave brought in an omelette souff.ee, as 
 light and delicate as the ckef-d ctuvre of an artiste in 
 
 served after the Turkish fashion, with a cloth upon ( the Palais Royal. Iminild spoke to him in Greek, as 
 the floor, and surrounded with cushions and ottomans j he knelt and placed it before her. 
 
 of every shape and color. A troop of black slaves, 
 whose silver anklets, glittered as they moved, were 
 busy bringing wines and completing the arrangements 
 for the meal. 
 
 " Allans, mignon /" cried Iminild, getting impatient 
 and seizing Percie s arm, " let us get over the river, i 
 and perhaps Mr. Tyrell will look down upon us with 
 his grands yeux while we dine. Oh, you will come 
 with us ! Suivcz done!" 
 
 An iron door, which I had not hitherto observed, 
 let us out from the gallery upon the staircase, and ; 
 Mynheer Von Krakenpate carefully turned the key ! 
 behind us. We crept slowly down the narrow stair 
 case and reached the edge of the river, where the 
 warm air from the open sunshine came pouring through 
 the cavern with the current, bringing with it a smell 
 of green fields and flowers, and removing entirely the 
 
 I have a presentiment," she said, looking at me 
 as the slave disappeared, " that Tranchcoeur will be 
 here presently. I have ordered another omelette on the 
 strength of the feeling, for he is fond of it, and may be 
 soothed by the attention." 
 
 " You fear him, then ?" 
 
 " Not if I were alone, for he is as gentle as a woman 
 when he has no rival near him but I doubt his relish 
 of Percie. Have you dined ?" 
 
 " Quite." 
 
 " Then come and look at my garden, and have a 
 peep at old Perdicaris. Stay here, Percie, and finish 
 your crapes, mon-mignon ! I have a word to say to 
 Mr. Tyrell." 
 
 We walked across the platform, and passing be 
 tween two of the sparry columns forming its bound 
 ary, entered upon a low passage which led to a large 
 
 chill of the cavernous and confined atmosphere I had j opening, resembling singularly a garden of low shrubs 
 
 found so uncomfortable above. We crossed the 
 bridge, and stepping upon the elastic carpets piled 
 thickly on the platform, arranged ourselves about the 
 smoking repast, Mynheer Von Krakenpate sitting down 
 after permission from Iminild, and Percie by order of 
 the same imperative dictatress, throwing his graceful 
 length at her feet. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 
 
 TAKE a lesson in flattery from Percie, Mr. Tyrell, 
 and be satisfied with your bliss in my society without 
 asking for explanations. I would fain have the use 
 of my tongue (to swallow) for ten minutes, and I see 
 you making up your mouth for a question. Try this 
 pilau! It is made by a Greek cook, who fries, boils, 
 and stews, in a kitchen with a river for a chimney." 
 
 " Precisely what I was going to ask you. 1 was 
 wondering how you cook without smoking your snow- 
 white roof." 
 
 " Yes, the river is a good slave, and steals wood as 
 well. We have only to cut it by moonlight and com 
 mit it to the current." 
 
 " The kitchen is down stream, then ?" 
 " Down stream ; and down stream lives jolly Per 
 dicaris the cook, who having lost his nose in a sea- 
 fight, is reconciled to forswear sunshine and mankind, 
 and cook rice for pirates." 
 
 " Is it true then that Yvain held command on the 
 wa?" 
 
 turned by some magic to sparkling marble. 
 
 Two or three hundred of these stalagmite cones, 
 formed by the dripping of calcareous water from the 
 roof (as those on the roof were formed by the same 
 fluid which hardened and pondered), stood about in 
 the spacious area, every shrub having an answering 
 cone on the roof, like the reflection of the same mar 
 ble garden in a mirror. One side of this singular 
 apartment was used as a treasury for the spoils of the 
 band, and on the points of the white cones hung 
 pitchers and altar lamps of silver, gold drinking-cups, 
 and chains, and plate and jewellery of every age and 
 description. Farther on were piled, in unthrifty con 
 fusion, heaps of velvets and silks, fine broadcloths, 
 French gloves, shoes, and slippers, brocades of Genoa, . 
 pieces of English linen, damask curtains still fasten 
 ed to their cornices, a harp and mandolin, cases of 
 danla^ed bons-bons, two or three richly-bound books, 
 and (Fast and most valuable in my eyes), a miniature 
 bureau, evidently the plunder of some antiquary s 
 treasure, containing in its little drawers antique gold 
 | coins of India, carefully dated and arranged, with a 
 I list of its contents half torn from the lid. 
 
 " You should hear Tranchcoeur s sermons on 
 these pretty texts," said the countess, trying to thrust 
 open a bale of Brusa silk with her Turkish slipper. 
 
 "He will beat off the top of a stalagmite with his 
 sabre-hilt, and sit down and talk over his spoils and the 
 adventures they recall, till morning dawns." 
 
 " And how is that discovered in this sunless cave.?" 
 
 " By the perfume. The river brings news of it, 
 and fills the cavern with the sun s first kisses. Those 
 
144 
 
 THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA. 
 
 violets kiss and tell, Mr. Tyrell ! Apropos des 
 bottes, let us look into the kitchen." 
 
 We turned to the right, keeping on the same level, 
 and a few steps brought us to the brow of a consider 
 able descent forming the lower edge of the carpeted 
 platform, but separated from it by a wall of close 
 stalactites. At the bottom of the descent ran the 
 river, but just along the brink, forming a considerable 
 crescent, extended a flat rock, occupied by all the 
 varied implements of a kitchen, and lighted by the 
 glare of two or three different fires blazing against 
 the perpendicular limit of the cave. The smoke of 
 these followed the inclination of the wall, and was 
 swept entirely down with the current of the river. 
 At the nearest fire stood Perdicaris, a fat, long-haired 
 and sinister-looking rascal, his noseless face glowing 
 with the heat, and at his side waited, with a silver 
 dish, the Nubian slave who had been sent for Tranch- 
 coeur s omelette. 
 
 * One of the most bloody fights of my friend the 
 rover," said Iminild, " was with an armed slaver, from 
 whom he took these six pages of mine. They have 
 reason enough to comprehended an order, but too 
 little to dream of liberty. They are as contented as 
 tortoises, ici-bas." 
 
 " Is there no egress hence but by the iron door ?" 
 
 " None that I know of, unless one could swim up 
 this swift river like a salmon. You may have sur 
 mised by this time, that we monopolize an unexplored 
 part of the great cave of Adelsberg. Common report 
 says it extends ten miles under ground, but common 
 report has never burrowed as far as this, and I doubt 
 whether there is any communication. Father Kraken- j 
 pate s clock conceals an entrance, discovered first by j 
 robbers, and handed down by tradition, Heaven knows j 
 how long. But hark! Tranchcceur, by Heaven! 
 my heart foreboded it !" 
 
 I sprang after the countess, who, with her last ex 
 clamation, darted between two of the glittering columns 
 separating us from the platform, and my first glance 
 convinced me that her fullest anticipations of the 
 pirate s jealousy were more than realized. Percie 
 stood with his back to a tall pillar on the farther side, 
 with his pistol levelled, calm and unmoveable as a 
 stalactite ; and, with his sabre drawn and his eyes 
 flashing fire, a tall powerfully-built man in a sailor s 
 press, was arrested by Iminild in the act of rushing on 
 him. "Stop! or you die, Tranchcoeur !" said the 
 countess, in a tone of trifling command. " He is my 
 guest !" 
 
 " He is my prisoner, madame !" was the answer, as 
 the pirate changed his position to one of perfect repose 
 and shot his sabre into his sheath, as if a brief delay 
 could make little difference. 
 
 " We shall see that," said the countess, once more, 
 with as soft a voice as was ever heard in a lady s 
 boudoir ; and stepping to the edge of the platform, 
 she touched with her slipper a suspended gong, which 
 sent through the cavern a shrill reverberation heard 
 clearly over the rushing music of the river. 
 
 In an instant the click of forty muskets from the 
 other side fell on our ears ; and, at a wave of her 
 hand, the butts rattled on the rocks, and all was still 
 again. 
 
 " I have not trusted myself within your reach, 
 Monsieur Tranchcoeur," said Iminild, flinging herself 
 carelessly on an ottoman, and motioning to Percie to 
 keep his stand, " without a score or two of my free- 
 riders from Mount Semering to regulate your con 
 science. 1 am mistress here, sir! You may sit 
 down!" 
 
 Tranchcceur had assumed an air of the most gen 
 tlemanly tranquillity, and motioning to one of the 
 slaves for his pipe, he politely begged pardon for 
 smoking in the countess s presence, and filled the 
 enamelled bowl with Shiraz tobacco. 
 
 " You heard of Yvain s death ?" she remarked after 
 a moment passing her hand over her eyes. 
 
 " Yes, at Venice." 
 
 " With his dying words, he gave me and mine in 
 charge to this Englishman. Mr. Tyrell, Monsieur 
 Tranchcoaur." 
 
 The pirate bowed. 
 
 " Have you been long from England ?" he asked 
 with an accent and voice that even in that brief 
 question, savored of the nonchalant English of the 
 west end. 
 
 " Two years !" I answered. 
 
 " I should have supposed much longer from your 
 chivalry in St.Etienne, Mr. Tyrell. My countrymen 
 generally are less hasty. Your valet there," he con 
 tinued, looking sneeringly at Percie, "seems as quick 
 on the trigger as his master." 
 
 Percie turned on his heel, and walked to the edge 
 of the platform as if uneasy at the remark, and Iminild 
 rose to her feet. 
 
 " Look you, Tranchcceur ! I ll have none of your 
 sneers. That youth is as well-born and better bred 
 than yourself, and with his consent, shall have the 
 authority of the holy church ere long to protect my 
 property and me. Will you aid me in this, Mr. 
 Tyrell ?" 
 
 " Willingly, countess !" 
 
 " Then, Tranchcceur, farewell ! I have withdrawn 
 from the common stock Yvain s gold and jewels, and 
 I trust to your sense of honor to render me at Venice 
 whatever else of his private property may be concealed 
 in the island." 
 
 " Iminild !" cried the pirate, springing to his feet, 
 " I did not think to show a weakness before this 
 stranger, but I implore you to delay !" 
 
 His bosom heaved with strong emotion as he spoke, 
 and the color fled from his bronzed features as if he 
 were struck with a mortal sickness. 
 
 " I can not lose you, Iminild ! I have loved you 
 too long. You must " 
 
 She motioned to Percie to pass on. 
 
 " By Heaven, you shall !" he cried, in a voice sud 
 denly become hoarse with passion ; and reckless of 
 consequences, he leaped across the heaps of cushion, 
 and, seizing Percie by the throat, flung him with 
 terrible and headlong violence into the river. 
 
 A scream from Iminild, and the report of a musket 
 from the other side, rang at the same instant through 
 the cavern, and as I rushed forward to seize the pistol 
 which he had struck from Percie s hand, his half- 
 drawn sabre slid back powerless into the sheath, and 
 Tranchcceur dropped heavily on his knee. 
 
 " I am peppered, Mr. Tyrell !" he said, waving me 
 off with difficult effort to smile, " look after the boy, 
 if you care for him ! A curse on her German wolves!" 
 
 Percie met me on the bridge, supporting Trninild, 
 who hung on his neck, smothering him with kisses. 
 
 " Where is that dog of a pirate ?" she cried, sud 
 denly snatching herataghan from the sheath and flying 
 across the platform. "Tranchcceur !" 
 
 Her hand was arrested by the deadly pallor and 
 helpless attitude of the wounded man, and the weapon 
 dropped as she stood over him. 
 
 "I think it is not mortal," he said, groaning as he 
 pressed his hand to his side, " but take your boy out 
 of my sight ! Iminild !" 
 
 " Well, Tranchcceur !" 
 
 " I have not done well but you know my nature 
 and iisy love ! Forgive me, and farewell ! Send 
 Bertram to stanch this blood I get faint! A little 
 wine, Iminild !" 
 
 He took the massive flagon from her hand, and 
 drank a long draught, and then drawing to him a cloak 
 which lay near, he covered his head and dropped ou 
 his side as if to sleep. 
 
 Iminild knelt beside him and tore open the shirt 
 
OONDER-HOOFDEN. 
 
 145 
 
 beneath his jacket, and while she busied herself in 
 stanching the blood, Perdicaris, apparently well pre 
 pared for such accidents, arrived with a surgeon s 
 probe, and, on examination of the wound, assured I 
 Iminild that she might safely leave him. Washing 
 her hands in the flagon of wine, she threw a cloak over j 
 the wet and shivering Percie, and, silent with horror : 
 at the scene behind us, we made our way over the I 
 bridge, and in a short time, to my infinite relief, stood j 
 in the broad moonlight on the portico of Mynheer 
 Krakenpate. 
 
 My carriage was soon loaded with the baggage and 
 treasure of the countess, and with the same swift 
 horses that had brought us from Planina, we regained 
 the post-road, and sped on toward Venice by the 
 Friuli. We arrived on the following night at the fair 
 city so beloved of romance, and with what haste I 
 might, I procured a priest and married the Countess 
 Iminild to gentleman Percie. 
 
 As she possessed now a natural guardian, and a 
 sufficient means of life, I felt released from my death j 
 vow to Yvain, and bidding farewell to the happy i 
 couple," I resumed my quiet habit of travel, and three 
 days after my arrival at Venice, was on the road to 
 Padua by the Brenta. 
 
 OONDERrHOOFDEN, OR THE UNDERCLIFF, 
 
 A TALE OF THE VOYAGE OF HEXDRICK 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " IT is but an arm of the sea, as I told thee, skip 
 per," said John Fleming, the mate of the " Halve- 
 Mane," standing ready to jam down the tiller and bring- 
 to, if his master should agree with him in opinion. 
 
 Hudson stood by his steersman, with folded arms, 
 now looking at the high-water mark on the rocks, 
 which betrayed a falling tide, now turning his ear 
 slightly forward to catch the cry of the man who stood 
 heaving the lead from the larboard bow. The wind 
 drew lightly across the starboard quarter, and, with a 
 counter-tide, the little vessel stole on scarce percepti 
 bly, though her mainsail was kept full the slowly 
 passing forest trees on the shore giving the lie to the 
 merry and gurgling ripple at the prowl 
 
 The noble river, or creek, which they had followed 
 in admiring astonishment for fifty miles, had hitherto | 
 opened fairly and broadly before them, though, once : 
 or twice, its widening and mountain-girt bosom had 
 deceived the bold navigator into the belief, that he , 
 was entering upon some inland lake. The wind still | 
 blew kindly and steadily from the southeast, and the 
 sunset of the second day a spectacle of tumultuous 
 and gorgeous glory which Hudson attributed justly 
 to the more violet atmospheric laws of an unsettled 
 continent had found them apparently closed in by 
 impenetrable mountains, and running immediately on 
 the head shore of an extended arm of the sea. 
 
 " She ll strike before she can follow her helm," 
 cried the young sailor in an impatient tone, yet still 
 with habitual obedience keeping her duly on her 
 course. 
 
 " Port a little !" answered the skipper, a moment 
 after, as if he had not heard the querulous comment 
 of his mate. 
 
 Fleming s attention was withdrawn an instant by 
 a low guttural sound of satisfaction, which reached 
 his ear as the head of the vessel went round, and, 
 casting his eye amidships, he observed the three 
 Indians who had come oil to the Half-Moon in a 
 
 c^noe, and had been received on board by the master, 
 standing together in the chains, and looking forward 
 to the rocks they were approaching with countenances 
 of the most eager interest. 
 
 " Master Hendrick !" he vociferated in the tone of 
 a man who can contain his anger no longer, "will you 
 look at these grinning red-devils, who are rejoicing to 
 see you run so blindly ashore?" 
 
 The adventurous little bark was by this time within 
 a biscuit toss of a rocky point that jutted forth into 
 the river with the grace of a lady s foot dallying with 
 the water in her bath ; and, beyond the sedgy bank 
 disappeared in an apparent inlet, barely deep enough, 
 it seemed to the irritated steersman, to shelter a 
 canoe. 
 
 As the Half-Moon obeyed her last order, and headed 
 a point more to the west, Hudson strode forward to 
 the bow, and sprang upon the windlass, stretching his 
 gaze eagerly into the bosom of the hills that were now 
 darkening with the heavy shadows of twilight, though 
 the sky was still gorgeously purple overhead. 
 
 The crew had by this time gathered with uncon 
 scious apprehension at the halyards, ready to let go 
 at the slightest gesture of the master, but, in the slow- 
 progress of the little bark, the minute or two which 
 she took to advance beyond the point on which his 
 eye was fixed, seemed an age of suspense. 
 
 The Half-Moon seemed now almost immoveable, 
 for the current, which convinced Hudson there was 
 a passage beyond, set her back from the point with 
 increasing force, and the wind lulled a little with the 
 sunset. Inch by inch, however, she crept on, till at 
 last the silent skipper sprang from the windlass upon 
 the bowsprit, and running out with the agility of a 
 boy, gave a single glance ahead, and the next mo- 
 merit had the tiller in his hand, and cried out with a 
 voice of thunder, " Stand by the halyards ! helm s- 
 a-lee !" 
 
 In a moment, as if his words had been lightning, 
 the blocks rattled, the heavy boom swung round like 
 a willow spray, and the white canvass, after fluttering 
 an instant in the wind, filled and drew steadily on the 
 other tack. 
 
 Looks of satisfaction were exchanged between the 
 crew, who expected the next instant an order to take 
 in the sail and drop anchor ; but the master was at the 
 ! helm, and to their utter consternation, he kept her 
 steadily to the wind, and drove straight on, while a 
 gorge, that, in the increasing darkness, seemed the 
 entrance to a cavern, opened its rocky sides as they 
 advanced. 
 
 The apprehensions of the crew were half lost in 
 their astonishment at the grandeur of the scene. The 
 cliffs seemed to close up behind them; a mountain, 
 that reached apparently to the now colorless clouds, 
 rose up gigantic, in the increasing twilight, over the 
 prow ; on the right, where the water seemed to bend, 
 a craggy precipice extended its threatening wall ; and 
 in the" midst of this round bay, which seemed to them, 
 to be an enclossd lake in the bottom of an abyss, the 
 wind suddenly took them aback, the Halve-Mane lost 
 her headway, and threatened to go on the rocks with 
 the current, and audible curses at his folly reached 
 the ears of the determined master. 
 
 More to divert their attention than with a prognos 
 tic of the direction of the wind, Hudson gave the 
 order to tack, and, more slowly this time, but still 
 with sufficient expedition, the movement was execu 
 ted, and the flapping sails swung round. The hal 
 yards were not belayed before the breeze, rush 
 ing down a steep valley on the left, struck full on 
 the larboard quarter, and, running sharp past the face 
 of the precipice over the starboard bow, Hudson 
 pointed out, exultingly, to his astonished men, the 
 j broad waters of the mighty river, extending far through 
 I the gorge beyond the dim purple of the lingering 
 
146 
 
 OONDER-HOOFDEN. 
 
 day, which had been long lost to the cavernous and 
 overshadowed pass they had penetrated, tinting its far 
 bosom like the last faint hue of the expiring dolphin. 
 The exulting glow of triumph suffused the face 
 of the skipper, and relinquishing the tiller once more 
 to the mortified Fleming, he walked forward to look 
 out for an anchorage. The Indians, who still stood 
 in the chains together, and who had continued to 
 express their satisfaction as the vessel made her way 
 through the pass, now pointed eagerly to a little 
 bay on the left, across which a canoe was shooting 
 like the reflection of a lance in the air, and, the wind 
 dying momently away, Hudson gave the order to 
 round to, and dropped his anchor for the night. 
 
 In obedience to the politic orders of Hudson the 
 men were endeavoring, by presents and signs, to 
 induce the Indians to leave the vessel, and the mas 
 ter himself stood on the poop with his mate, gazing 
 back on the wonderful scene they had passed through. 
 
 " This passage," said Hudson, musingly, " has been 
 rent open by an earthquake, and the rocks look still as 
 if they felt the agony of the throe." 
 
 11 It is a pity the earthquake did its job so raggedly, 
 then !" answered his sulky companion, who had not 
 yet forgiven the mountains for the shame their zig-zag 
 precipices had put upon his sagacity. 
 
 At that instant a sound, like that of a heavy body 
 sliding into the water, struck the ear of Fleming, 
 and looking quickly over the stern, he saw one of 
 the Indians swimming from the vessel with a pillow 
 in his hand, which he had evidently stolen from the 
 cabin window. To seize a musket, which lay ready 
 for attack on the quarter-deck, and fire upon the poor 
 savage, was the sudden thought and action of a man on 
 the watch, for a vent to incensed feelings. 
 
 The Indian gave a yell which mingled wildly with 
 the echoes of the report from the reverberating hills, ! 
 and springing waist-high out of the water, the gurgling j 
 eddy closed suddenly over his head. 
 
 The canoe in which the other savages were already 
 embarked shot away, like an arrow, to the shore, and j 
 Hudson, grieved and alarmed inexpressibly at the fool- ! 
 hardy rashness of his male, ordered all hands to arms, i 
 and established a double watch for the night. 
 
 Hour after hour, the master and the non-repent- 
 ant Fleming paced fore and aft, each in his own I 
 quarter of the vessel, watching the shore and the 
 dark face of the water with straining eyes: but no 
 sound came from the low cliff round which the fly- i 
 ing canoe had vanished, and the stars seemed to I 
 wink almost audibly in the dread stillness of nature, j 
 The men alarmed at the evident agitation of Hudson, j 
 who, in these pent-up waters, anticipated a most ef- j 
 fective and speedy revenge from the surrounding j 
 tribes, drowsed not upon their watch, and the gray i 
 light of the morning began to show faintly over the : 
 mountains before the anxious master withdrew his | 
 aching eyes from the still and star waters. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 LIKE a web woven of gold by the lightning, the 
 sun s rays ran in swift threads from summit to sum- j 
 mit of the dark green mountains, and the soft mist i 
 that slept on the breast of the river began to lift like ; 
 the slumberous lid from the eye of woman, when her j 
 dream is broken at dawn. Not so poetically were 
 these daily glories regarded, however, by the morning 
 watch of the Half- Moon, who, between the desire to 
 drop asleep with their heads on the capstan, and the 
 necessity of keeping sharper watch lest the Indians 
 should come off through the rising mist, bore the 
 double pains of Tantalus and Sysiphus ungratified 
 desire at their lips and threatening ruin over their heads. 
 
 After dividing the watch at the break of day, Hud 
 son, with the relieved part of his crew, had gone be 
 low, and might have been asleep an hour, when Flem 
 ing suddenly entered the cabin and laid his hand upon 
 his shoulder. The skipper sprang from his berth 
 with the habitual readiness of a seaman, and followed 
 his mate upon deck, where he found his men standing 
 to their arms, and watching an object that, to his first 
 glance, seemed like a canoe sailing down upon them 
 through the air. The rash homicide drew close to 
 Hendrick as he regarded it, and the chatter of his 
 teeth betrayed that, during the long and anxious 
 watches of the night, his conscience had not justified 
 him for the hasty death he had awarded to a fellow- 
 creature. 
 
 " She but looms through the mist !" said the skip 
 per, after regarding the advancing object for a moment. 
 " It is a single canoe, and can scarce harm us. Let 
 her come alongside !" 
 
 The natural explanation of the phenomenon at once 
 satisfied the crew, who had taken their superstitious 
 fears rather from Fleming s evident alarm than from 
 their own want of reflection ; hut the guilty man him 
 self still gazed on the advancing phantom, and when 
 a slight stir of the breeze raised the mist like the cor 
 ner of a curtain, and dropped the canoe plain upon 
 the surface of the river, he turned gloomily on his 
 heel, and muttered in an undertone to Hudson, " It 
 brings no good, Skipper Hendrick !" 
 
 Meanwhile the canoe advanced slowly. The single 
 paddle which propelled her paused before every turn, 
 and as the mist lifted quite up and showed a long 
 green line of shore between its shadowy fringe and 
 the water, an Indian, highly-painted, and more orna 
 mented than any they had hitherto seen, appeared 
 gazing earnestly at the vessel, and evidently approach- 
 ng with fear and caution. 
 
 The Half-Moon was heading up the river with 
 he rising tide, and Hudson walked forward to the 
 jows to look at the savage more closely. By the 
 eagle and bear, so richly embroidered in the gay- 
 colored quills of the porcupine on his belt of wam- 
 }um, he presumed him to be a chief; and glancing 
 is eye into the canoe, he saw the pillow which had 
 occasioned the death of the plunderer the night before, 
 and on it lay two ears of corn, and two broken arrows. 
 Pausing a moment as he drew near, the Indian pointed 
 o these signs of peace, and Hudson, in reply, spread 
 out his open hands and beckoned him to come on 
 joard. In an instant the slight canoe shot under the 
 starboard bow, and with a noble confidence which the 
 skipper remarked upon with admiration, the tall savage 
 sprang upon the deck and laid the hand of the com 
 mander to his breast. 
 
 The noon arrived, hot and sultry, and there was no 
 ikelihood of a wind till sunset. The chief had been 
 easted on board, and had shown, in his delight, the 
 most unequivocal evidence of good feeling; and even 
 Fleming, at last, who had drank more freely than usual 
 during the morning, abandoned his suspicion, and 
 oined in amusing the superb savage who was their 
 *uest. In the course of the forenoon, another canoe 
 ;ame off, paddled by a single young woman, whom 
 Fleming, recognised as having accompanied the plun 
 derers the night before, but in his half-intoxicated 
 tate, it seemed to recall none of his previous bodings, 
 and to his own surprise, and that of the crew, she 
 evidently regarded him with particular favor, and by 
 pertinacious and ingenious signs, endeavored to in 
 duce him to go ashore with her in the canoe. The 
 particular character of her face and form would have 
 given the mate a clue to her probable motives, had he 
 been less reckless from his excitement. She was 
 taller than is common for females of the savage tribes, 
 and her polished limbs, as gracefully moulded in their 
 
OONDER-HOOFDEN. 
 
 147 
 
 dark hues as those of the mercury of the fountain, 
 combined, with their slightness, a nerve and steadi 
 ness of action which betrayed strength and resolution 
 of heart and frame. Her face was highly beautiful, j 
 but the voluptuous fulness of the lips was contradicted 
 by a fierce fire in her night-dark eyes, and a quickness i 
 of the brow to descend, which told of angry passions j 
 habitually on the alert. It was remarked by Hans 
 Christaern, one of the crew, that when Fleming left I 
 her for an instant, she abstracted herself from the j 
 other joyous groups, and, with folded arms and looks j 
 of brooding thoughtfulness, stood looking over the i 
 stern ; but immediately on his reappearance, her j 
 snowy teeth became visible between her relaxing lips, 
 and she resumed her patient gaze upon his counten 
 ance, and her occasional efforts to draw him into the 
 canoe. 
 
 Quite regardless of the presence of the woman, the 
 chief sat apart with Hudson, communicating his ideas j 
 by intelligent signs, and after a while, the skipper j 
 called his mate, and informed him that, as far as he j 
 could understand, the chief wished to give them a 
 feast on shore. " Arm yourselves well," said he, j 
 " though I look for no treachery from this noble pagan ; j 
 and if chance should put us in danger, we shall be j 
 more than a match for the whole tribe. Come with j 
 me, Fleming," he continued, after a pause, "you are j 
 too rash with your firearms to be left in command. 
 Man the watch, four of you, and the rest get into the 
 long-boat. We ll while away these sluggish hours, \ 
 though danger is in it." 
 
 The men sprang gayly below for their arms, and 
 were soon equipped and ready, and the chief, with an | 
 expression of delight, put off in his canoe, followed 
 more slowly by the heavy long-boat, into which Hud- j 
 son, having given particular orders to the watch to let 
 no savages on board during his absence, was the last 
 to embark. The woman, whom the chief had called j 
 to him before his departure by the name of Kihyalee, I 
 sped off before in her swift canoe to another point of j 
 the shore, and when Fleming cried out from the bow j 
 of the boat, impatiently motioning her to follow, she 
 smiled in a manner that sent a momentary shudder 
 through the veins of the skipper who chanced to ob- j 
 serve the action, and by a circular movement of her J 
 arm conveyed to him that she should meet him from 
 the other side of the hill. As they followed the chief, j 
 they discovered the wigwams of an Indian village be 
 hind the rocky point for which she was making, and ; 
 understood that the chief had sent her thither on some 
 errand connected with his proposed hospitality. 
 
 A large square rock, which had the look of having 
 been hurled with some avalanche from the mountain, 
 lay in the curve of a small beach of sand, surrounded 
 by the shallow water, and, on the left of this, the chief 
 pointed out to the skipper a deeper channel, hollowed 
 by the entrance of a mountain-torrent intoihe river, 
 through which he might bring his boat to land. At 
 the edge of this torrent s bed, the scene of the first act 
 of hospitality to our race upon the Hudson, stands at 
 this day the gate to the most hospitable mansion on 
 the river, as if the spirit of the spot had consecrated it 
 to its first association with the white man. 
 
 The chief led the way when the crew had disem 
 barked, by a path skirting the deep-worn bed of the 
 torrent, and after an ascent of a few minutes, through 
 a grove of tall firs, a short turn to the left brought 
 them upon an open table of land, a hundred and fifty 
 feet above the river, shut in by a circle of forest-trees, 
 and frowned over on the east by a tall and bald cliff, 
 which shot up in a perpendicular line to the height 
 of three hundred feet. From a cleft in the face of 
 this precipice a natural spring oozed forth, drawing 
 a darker line down the sun-parched rock, and feeding 
 a small stream that found its way to the river on the 
 northern side of the platform just mentioned, creating 
 
 between itself and the deeper torrent to the south, a 
 sort of highland peninsula, now constituting the estate 
 of the hospitable gentleman above alluded to. 
 
 Hudson looked around him with delight and sur 
 prise when he stood on the highest part of the broad 
 natural table selected by the chief for his entertain 
 ment. The view north showed a cleft through the 
 hills, with the river coiled like a lake in its widening 
 bed, while a blue and wavy line of mountains form 
 ed the far horizon at its back; south, the bold eminen 
 ces, between which he had found his adventurous 
 way, closed in like the hollowed sides of a bright- 
 green vase, with glimpses of the river lying in its 
 bottom like crystal ; below him descended a sharp 
 and wooded bank, with the river at its foot, and 
 directly opposite rose a hill in a magnificent cone to 
 the very sky, sending its shadow down through the 
 mirrored water, as if it entered to some inner world. 
 The excessive lavishness of the foliage clothed these 
 bold natural features with a grace and richness al 
 together captivating to the senses, and Hudson long 
 stood, gazing around him, believing that the tales of 
 brighter and happier lands were truer than he had 
 deemed, and that it was his lucky destiny to have been 
 the discoverer of a future Utopia. 
 
 A little later, several groups of Indians were seen 
 advancing from the village, bearing the materials for 
 a feast, which they deposited under a large tree, indi 
 cated by the chief. It was soon arranged, and Hud 
 son with his men surrounded the dishes of shell and 
 wood, one of which, placed in the centre, contained a 
 roasted dog, half buried in Indian-corn. While the 
 chief and several of his warriors sat down in company 
 with the whites, the young men danced the calumet- 
 ; dance to the sound of a rude drum, formed by drawing 
 a skin tightly over a wooden bowl, and near them, in 
 groups, stood the women and children of the village, 
 glancing with looks of curiosity from the feats of the 
 young men to the unaccustomed faces of the strangers. 
 
 Among the women stood Kihyalee, who kept her 
 large bright eyes fixed almost fiercely upon Fleming, 
 yet when he looked toward her, she smiled and turned 
 ; as if she would beckon him away a bidding which he 
 tried in vain to obey, under the vigilant watch of his 
 : master. 
 
 The feast went on, and the Indians having produced 
 gourds, filled with a slight intoxicating liquor made 
 from the corn, Hudson offered to the chief, some 
 spirits from a bottle which he had intrusted to one 
 of the men to wash down the expected roughness of 
 the savage viands. The bottle passed in turn to the 
 j mate, who was observed to drink freely, and, a few 
 minutes after, Hudson rising to see more nearly a trial 
 of skill with the bow and arrow, Fleming found the 
 desired opportunity, and followed the tempting Kihyalee 
 into the forest. 
 
 The sun began to throw the shadows of the tall 
 pines in gigantic pinnacles along the ground, and the 
 youths of the friendly tribe, who had entertained the 
 |! great navigator, ceased from their dances and feats 
 of skill, and clustered around the feast-tree. Intend- 
 i, ing to get under weigh with the evening breeze and 
 i proceed still farther up the river, Hudson rose to col 
 lect his men, and bid the chief farewell. Taking the 
 hand of the majestic savage and putting it to his 
 i breast, to express in his own manner the kind feel- 
 ! ings he entertained for him, he turned toward the path 
 i ! by which he came, and was glancing round at his men, 
 !! when Hans Christaern inquired if he bad sent the 
 I : mate back to the vessel. 
 
 " Der teufel, no /" answered the skipper, missing 
 him for the first time ; " has he been long gone ?" 
 " A full hour !" said one of the men. 
 Hudson put his hand to his head, and remembered 
 the deep wrong Fleming had done to the tribe. Re- 
 
148 
 
 THE PICKER AND FILER. 
 
 tribution, he feared, had over-taken him but how was 
 it done so silently? How had the guilty man been 
 induced to leave his comrades, and accelerate his 
 doom by his own voluntnry act ? 
 
 The next instant resolved the question. A distant 
 and prolonged scream, as of a man in mortal agony, 
 drew all eyes to the summit of the beetling cliff, which 
 overhung them. On its extremes! verge, outlined 
 distinctly against the sky, stood the tall figure of Kih- 
 yalee, holding from her, yet poised over the precipice, 
 the writhing form of her victim, while in the other 
 hand, flashing in the rays of the sun, glittered the 
 bright hatchet she had plucked from his fiirdle. In 
 furiated at the sight, and suspecting collision on the 
 part of the chief, Hudson drew his cutlass and gave 
 the order to stand to arms, but as he turned, the gigan 
 tic savage had drawn an arrow to its head with incredi 
 ble force, and though it fell far short of its mark, there 
 was that in the action and in his look which, in the 
 passing of a thought, changed the mind of the skipper. 
 In another instant, the hesitating arm of the widowed 
 Kihyalee descended, and loosening her hold upon the 
 relaxed body of her victim, the doomed mate fell 
 heavily down the face of the precipice. 
 
 The chief turned to Hudson, who stood trembling 
 and aghast at the awful scene, and plucked the re 
 maining arrows from his quiver, he broke them and 
 threw himself on the ground. The tribe gathered 
 around their chief, Hudson moved his hand to them 
 in token of forgiveness, and in a melancholy silence 
 the crew took their way after him to the shore. 
 
 THE PICKER AND FILER, 
 
 THE nature of the strange incident I have to relate 
 forbids me to record either^place or time. 
 
 On one of the wildest nights in which I had ever 
 been abroad, I drove my panting horses through a 
 snowdrift breast high, to the door of a small tavern in 
 the western country. The host turned out unwilling 
 ly at the knock of my whip handle on the outer door, 
 and, wading before the tired animals to the barn, which 
 was nearly inaccessible from the banks of snow, he 
 assisted me in getting off their frozen harnesses, and 
 bestowing them safely for the night. 
 
 The " bar-room" fire burnt brightly, and never was 
 fire more welcome. Room was made for me by four 
 or five rough men who sat silent around it, and with a 
 keen comprehension of " pleasure after pain, 1 I took 
 off my furs and moccasins, and stretched my cold con 
 tracted limbs to the blaze. When, a few minutes 
 after, a plate of cold salt beef was brought me, with a 
 corn cake and a mug of " flip" hissing from the poker, 
 it certainly would have been hard to convince me that 
 I would have put on my coats and moccasins again to | 
 have ridden a mile to paradise. 
 
 The faces of my new companions, which I had not 
 found time to inspect very closely while my supper 
 lasted, were fully revealed by the light of a pitch-pine 
 knot, thrown on the hearth by the landlord, and their 
 grim reserve and ferocity put me in mind, for the first 
 time since I had entered the room, of my errand in 
 that quarter of the country. 
 
 The timber-tracts which lie convenient to the rivers 
 of the west, offer to the refugee and desperado of every | 
 description, a resource from want and (in their own | 
 opinion) from crime, which is seized upon by all at j 
 least who are willing to labor. The owners of the ex- j 
 tensive forests, destined to become so valuable, are 
 mostly men of large speculation, living in cities, who, 
 satisfied with the constant advance in the price of j 
 
 lumber, consider their pine-trees as liable to nothing 
 but the Jaws of nature, and leave them unfenced and 
 unprotected, to increase in size and value till the land 
 beneath them is wanted for culture. It is natural 
 enough that solitary settlers, living in the neighbor 
 hood of miles of apparently unclaimed land, should 
 think seldom of the owner, and in time grow to the 
 opinion of the Indian, that the Great Spirit gave the 
 land, the air, and the water, to all his children, and 
 they are free to all alike. Furnishing the requisite 
 teams and implements, therefore, the inhabitants of 
 these tracts collect a numberof the stragglers through 
 the country, and forming what is called a " bee," go 
 into the nearest woods, and for a month or more, work 
 laboriously at selecting, and felling the tallest and 
 straightest pines. In their rude shanty at night they 
 have bread, pork, and whiskey, which hard labor makes 
 sufficiently palatable, and the time is passed merrily 
 till the snow is right for sledding. The logs are then 
 drawn to the water sides, rafts are formed, and the 
 valuable lumber, for which they paid nothing but their 
 labor is run to the cities for their common advantage. 
 The only enemies of this class of men are the agents 
 who are sometimes sent out in the winter to detect 
 them in the act of felling or drawing off timber, and 
 in the dark countenances around the fire, I read this 
 as the interpretation of my own visit to the woods. 
 They soon brightened and grew talkative when they 
 discovered that I was in search of hands to fell and 
 burn, and make clearing for a farm; and after a talk 
 of an hour or two, I was told in answer to my inquiries, 
 that all the " men people" in the country were busy 
 
 " lumbering for themselves," unless it were 
 
 the " Picker and Filer." 
 
 As the words were pronounced, a shrill neigh 
 outside the door pronounced the arrival of a new-comer. 
 "Talk of the devil" said the man in a lower tone, 
 and without finishing the proverb he rose with a 
 respect which he had not accorded to me, to make 
 room for the Picker and Filer. 
 
 A man of rather low stature entered, and turned to 
 Jrive back his horse, who had followed him nearly in. 
 [ observed that the animal had neithersaddle nor bridle. 
 Shutting the door upon him without violence, he ex 
 changed nods with one or two of the men, and giving 
 the landlord a small keg which he had brought, he 
 pleaded haste for refusing the offered chair, and stood 
 silent by the fire. His features were blackened with 
 smoke, but I could see that they were small and regu 
 lar, and his voice, though it conveyed in its deliberate 
 accents an indefinable resolution, was almost feminine 
 ly soft and winning. 
 
 " That stranger yonder has got a job for you," said 
 the landlord, as he gave him back the keg and received 
 the money. 
 
 Turning quickly upon me, he detected me in a very 
 eager scrutiny of himself, and for a moment I was 
 thrown too much oft my guard to address him. 
 
 " Is it you, sir ?" he asked, after waiting a moment. 
 "Yes, I have some work to be done hereabouts, 
 but you seem in a hurry. Could you call here to 
 morrow." 
 
 "I may not be here again in a week." 
 "Do you live far from here ?" He smiled. 
 " I scarce know where I live, but I am burning a 
 piece of wood a mile or two up the run, and if you 
 would like a warmer bed than the landlord will give 
 you " 
 
 That personage decided the question for me by 
 telling me in so many words that I had better go. 
 His beds were all taken up, and my horses should be 
 taken care of till my return. 1 saw that my presence 
 had interrupted something, probably the formation of 
 a " bee," and more willingly than I would have be 
 lieved possible an hour before, I resumed my furs and 
 wrappers, and declared that 1 was ready. The Picker 
 
THE PICKER AND FILER. 
 
 149 
 
 and Filer had inspired me, and I knew not why, with 
 an involuntary respect and liking. 
 
 " It is a rough night, sir," said he, as he shouldered 
 a rifle he had left outside, and slung the keg by a 
 leather strap over the neck of his horse, " but I will 
 soon show you a better climate. Come, sir, jump on !" 
 
 " And you ?" 1 said inquisitively, as he held his 
 horse by the mane for me to mount. It was a Cana 
 dian pony, scarce larger than a Newfoundland dog. 
 
 " I am more used^to the road, sir, and will walk. 
 Come ?" 
 
 It was no time to stand upon etiquette, even if it 
 had been possible to resist the strange tone of authori 
 ty with which he spoke. So without more ado, I 
 sprang upon the animal s back, and holding on by the 
 long tuft upon his withers, suffered him passively to 
 plunge through the drift after his master. 
 
 Wondering at the readiness with which I had en 
 tered upon this equivocal adventure, but never for an 
 instant losing confidence in my guide, I shut my eyes 
 to the blinding cold, and accommodated my limbs as 
 well as 1 could to the bare back and scrambling paces 
 of the Canadian. The Picker and Filer strode on 
 before, the pony following like a spaniel at his heels, 
 and after a half hour s tramp, during which I had 
 merely observed that we were rounding the base of a 
 considerable hill, we turned short to the right, and 
 were met by a column of smoke, which, lifting, the 
 moment after, disclosed the two slopes of a consider 
 able valley enveloped in one sea of fire. A red, lurid 
 cloud, overhung it at the tops of the tallest trees, and 
 far and wide, above that, spread a covering of black 
 smoke, heaving upward in vast and billowy masses, and 
 rolling away on every side into the darkness. 
 
 We approached a pine of gigantic height, on fire 
 to the very peak, not a branch left on the trunk, and 
 its pitchy knots distributed like the eyes of the lamprey, 
 burning pure and steady amid the irregular flame. I 
 had once or twice, with an instinctive wish to draw 
 rein, pulled hard upon the tangled tuft in my hand, 
 but master and horse kept on. This burning tree, 
 however, was the first of a thousand, and as the pony 
 turned his eyes away from the intense heat to pass be- j 
 tween it and a bare rock, I glanced into the glowing 
 labyrinth beyond, and my faith gave way. I jumped 
 from his back and hailed the Ficker and Filer, with a 
 halloo scarcely audible amid the tumult of the crack 
 ling branches. My voice did not evidently reach his 
 ear, but the pony, relieved from my weight, galloped 
 to his side, and rubbed his muzzle against the unoc- j 
 cupied hand of his master. 
 
 He turned back immediately. "I beg pardon," he 
 said, "I have that to think of just now which makes 
 me forgetful. I am not surprised at your hesitation, 
 but mount again and trust the pony." 
 
 The animal turned rather unwillingly at his mas 
 ter s bidding, and a little ashamed of having shown 
 fear, while a horse would follow, I jumped again on 
 his back. 
 
 "If you find the heat inconvenient, cover your face." 
 And with this laconic advice, the Picker and Filer 
 turned on his heel, and once more strode away be 
 fore us. 
 
 Sheltering the sides of my face by holding up the 
 corners of my wrapper with both hands, I abandoned 
 myself to the horse. He overtook his master with a 
 shuffling canter, and putting his nose as close to the 
 ground as he could carry it without stumbling, fol 
 lowed closely at his heels. I observed, by the green 
 logs lying immediately along our path, that we were 
 following an avenue of prostrate timber which had been 
 felled before the wood was fired ; but descending 
 presently to the left, we struck at once into the deep 
 bed of a brook, and by the lifted head and slower gait 
 of the pony, as well as my own easier respiration, I 
 found that the hollow through which it ran, contained 
 
 a body of pure air unreached by the swaying curtains 
 of smoke or the excessive heat of the fiery currents 
 above. The pony now picked his way leisurely along 
 the brookside, and while my lungs expanded with the 
 relief of breathing a more temperate atmosphere, I 
 raised myself from my stooping posture in a profuse 
 perspiration, and one by one disembarrassed myself 
 from my protectives against the cold. 
 
 I had lost sight for several minutes of the Picker 
 and Filer, and presumed by the pony s desultory 
 movements that he was near the end of his journey, 
 when, rounding a shelvy point of rock, we stood sud 
 denly upon the brink of a slight waterfall, where the 
 brook leaped four or five feet into a shrunken dell, and 
 after describing a half circle on a rocky platform, re- 
 | sumed its onward course in the same direction as be 
 fore. This curve of the brook and the platform it 
 enclosed lay lower than the general level of the forest, 
 and the air around and within it, it seemed to me, was 
 as clear and genial as the summer noon. Over one 
 side, from the rocky wall, a rude and temporary roof 
 of pine slabs drooped upon a barricade of logs, lbrmin r 
 a low hut, and before the entrance of this, at the mo 
 ment of my appearance, stood a woman and a showily- 
 dressed young man, both evidently confused at the 
 sudden apparition of the Picker and Filer. My eyes 
 had scarce rested on the latter, when, from standing 
 at his fullest height with his rifle raised as if to beat 
 the other to the earth, he suddenly resumed hisstoop- 
 ing and quiet mien, set his rifle against the rock, and 
 came forward to give me his hand. 
 
 " My daughter!" he said, more in the way of ex 
 planation than introduction, and without taking fur 
 ther notice of the young man whose presence seemed 
 so unwelcome, he poured me a draught from the keg 
 he had brought, pointed to the water falling close at 
 my hand, and threw himself at his length upon the 
 ground. 
 
 The face and general appearance of the young man, 
 now seated directly opposite me, offered no temptation 
 for more than a single glance, and my whole attention 
 I was soon absorbed by the daughter of my singular 
 I host, who, crossing from the platform to the hut, 
 divided her attention between a haunch of venison 
 j roasting before a burning log of hickory, and the ar 
 rangement of a few most primitive implements for our 
 coming supper. She was slight, like her father, in 
 form, and as far as 1 had been able to distinguish his 
 i blackened features, resembled him in the general out- 
 j line. But in the place of his thin and determined 
 mouth, her lips were round and voluptuous, and 
 ! though her eye looked as if it might \vake, it ex- 
 I pressed, even in the presence of her moody father, a 
 drowsy and soft indolence, common enough to the 
 I Asiatics, but seldom seen in America. Her dress was 
 I coarse and careless, but she was beautiful with every 
 { possible disadvantage, and, whether married or not, 
 evidently soon to become a mother. 
 
 The venison was placed before us on the rock, and 
 the young man, uninvited, and with rather an air of 
 bravado, cut himself a steak from the haunch and 
 broiled it on the hickory coals, while the daughter kept 
 as ne*r him as her attention to her father s wants would 
 permit, but neither joined us in eating, nor encouraged 
 my attempts at conversation. The Picker and Filer 
 ate in silence, leaving me to be my own carver, nnd 
 finishing his repast by a deep draught from the keg 
 which had been the means of our acquaintance, he 
 sprang upon his feet and disappeared. 
 
 " The wind has changed," said the daughter, look 
 ing up at the smoke, "and he has gone to the western 
 edge to start a new fire. It s a full half mile, and he ll 
 be gone an hour." 
 
 This was said with a look at me which was any 
 thing but equivocal. I was de trop. 1 took up the 
 rifle of the Picker aud Filer, forgetting that there was 
 
150 
 
 THE PICKER AND FILER. 
 
 probably nothing to shoot in a burning wood, and re 
 marking that I would have a look for a deer, jumped 
 up the water-fall side, and was immediately hidden by 
 the rocks. 
 
 I had no conception of the scene that lay around 
 me. The natural cave or hollow of rock in which the 
 hut lay embosomed, was the centre of an area of per 
 haps an acre, which had been felled in the heart of the 
 wood before it was set an fire. The forest encircled 
 it with blazing columns, whose capitals were ap- 
 
 Sarently lost in the sky, and curtains of smoke and 
 ame, which flew as if lashed into ribands by a whirl 
 wind. The grandeur, the violence, the intense bright 
 ness of the spectacle, outran all imagination. The 
 pines, on fire to the peak, and straight as arrows, 
 seemed to resemble, at one moment the conflagration 
 of an eastern city, with innumerable minarets aban 
 doned to the devouring element. At the next moment, 
 the wind, changing its direction, swept out every 
 vestige of smoke, and extinguished every tongue of 
 flame, and the tall trees, in clear and flameless igni 
 tion, standing parallel in thousands, resembled some 
 blinding temple of the genii, whose columns of 
 miraculous rubies, sparkling audibly, outshone the I 
 day. By single glances, my eye penetrated into aisles j 
 of blazing pillars, extending far into the forest, and the j 
 next instant, like a tremendous surge alive with ser- j 
 pents of fire, the smoke and flame swept through it, I 
 and it seemed to me as if some glorious structure had ! 
 been consumed in the passing of a thought. For a 
 minute, again, all would be still except the crackling 
 of the fibres of the wood, and with the first stir of the I 
 wind, like a shower of flashing gems, the bright coals ! 
 rained down through the forest, and for a moment the 
 earth glowed under the trees as if its whole crust were 
 alive with one bright ignition. 
 
 With the pungency of the smoke and heat, and the 
 variety and bewilderment of the spectacle, I found my I 
 eyes and brain growing giddy. The brook ran cool 
 below, and the heat had dried the leaves in the small 
 clearing, and with the abandonment of a man overcome 
 with the sultriness of summer, I lay down on the 
 rivulet s bank, and dipped my head and bathed my 
 eyes in the running water. Close to its surface there 
 was not a particle of smoke in the air, and, exceeding 
 ly refreshed with its temperate coolness, 1 lay for some 
 time in luxurious ease, trying in vain to fancy the 
 winter that howled without. Frost and cold were 
 never more difficult to realize in midsummer, though 
 within a hundred rods, probably, a sleeping man would 
 freeze to death in an hour. 
 
 14 1 have a better bed for you in the shanty," said the 
 Picker and Filer, who had approached unheard in the 
 noise of the fires, and suddenly stood over me. 
 
 He took up his rifle, which I had laid against a 
 prostrate log, and looked anxiously toward the descent 
 to the hut. 
 
 "I am liltle inclined for sleep," I answered, " and 
 perhaps you will give me an hour of conversation here. 
 The scene is new to me" 
 
 " I have another guest to dispose of," he answered, 
 " and we shall be more out of the smoke near the 
 shanty." 
 
 I was not surprised, as I jumped upon the platform, : 
 to find him angrily separating his daughter and the j 
 stranger. The girl entered the hut, and with a de 
 cisive gesture, he pointed the young man to a "shake- I 
 down" of straw in the remotest corner of the rocky j 
 enclosure. 
 
 "With your leave, old gentleman," said the in- 
 truder, after glancing at his intended place of repose, 
 " I ll find a crib for myself." And springing up the 
 craggy rock opposite the door of the shanty he gather 
 ed a slight heap of brush, and threw it into a hollow 
 left in the earth by a tree, which, though full grown 
 and green, had been borne to the earth and partly 
 
 uprooted by the falling across it of an overblown and 
 gigantic pine. The earili and stones had followed the 
 uptorn mass, forming a solid upright wall, from which, 
 like struggling fingers, stretching back in agony to 
 the ground from which they had parted, a few rent 
 and naked roots pointed into the cavity. The sequel 
 will show why I am so particular in this description. 
 
 " When peace was declared between England and 
 this country," said the Picker and Filer (after an 
 hour s conversation, which had led insensibly to his 
 own history), I was in command of a privateer. Not 
 choosing to become a pirate, by continuing the cruise, 
 I was set ashore in the West Indies by a crew in open 
 mutiny. My property was all on board, and I was 
 left a beggar. I had one child, a daughter, whose 
 mother died in giving her birth. 
 
 " Having left a sufficient sum for her education in 
 the hands of a brother of my own, under whose roof 
 she had passed the first years of her life, I determined 
 to retrieve my fortunes before she or my friends should 
 be made acquainted with my disaster. 
 
 " Ten years passed over, and I was still a wanderer 
 md a beggar. 
 
 " I determined to see my child, and came back, 
 ike one from the dead, to my brother s door. He had 
 brgotten me, and abused his trust. My daughter, 
 then seventeen, and such as you see her here, was the 
 drudge in the family of a stranger ignorant and friend 
 less. My heart turned against mankind with this last 
 drop in a bitter cup, and, unfitted for quiet life, I look 
 ed around for some channel of desperate adventure. 
 But my daughter was the perpetual obstacle. What 
 to do with her ? She had neither the manners nor 
 the education of a lady, and to leave her a servant was 
 impossible. I started with her for the west, with the 
 vague design of joining some tribe of Indians, and 
 chance and want have thrown me into the only mode 
 of life on earth that could now be palatable to me." 
 
 " Is it not lonely," I asked, " after your stirring ad 
 ventures ?" 
 
 " Lonely ! If you knew the delight with which I 
 live in the wilderness, with a circle of fire to shut out 
 the world ! The labor is hard it is true, but I need it, 
 to sleep and forget. There is no way else in which I 
 could seclude my daughter. Till lately, she has been 
 coiiteMak, too. We live a month together in one 
 place-ijHfccentre like this of a burning wood. I can 
 bear rfHfep, but I love a high temperature the 
 cliiji^^l^le tropics and I have it here. For weeks 
 I forget that it is winter, tending my fires and living 
 on the game I have stored up. There is a hollow or 
 a brook a bed or a cave, in every wood, where the 
 cool air, as here, sinks to the bottom, and there I can 
 put up my shanty, secure from all intrusion but such 
 as I bring upon myself." 
 
 The look he gave to the uprooted ash and the 
 sleeper beneath it, made an apology for this last clause 
 unnecessary. He thought not of me. 
 
 " Some months since," continued the Picker and 
 Filer, in a voice husky with suppressed feeling, " I 
 met the villain who sleeps yonder, accidentally, as I 
 met you. He is the owner of this land. After 
 engaging to clear and burn it, I invited him, as I 
 did yourself, from a momentary fever for company 
 which sometimes comes over the solitary, to go with 
 me to the fallow I was clearing. He loitered in the 
 neighborhood awhile, under pretext of hunting, and 
 twice on my return from the village, I found that my 
 daughter had seen him. Time has betrayed the 
 wrong he inflicted on me. 
 
 The voice of the agitated father sank almost to a 
 whisper as he pronounced the last few words, and, 
 rising from the rock on which we were sitting, he 
 paced for a few minutes up and down the platform in 
 silence. 
 
 The reader must fill up from his own imagination 
 
KATE CREDIFORD. 
 
 151 
 
 the drama of which this is but the outline, for the 
 Picker and Piler was not a man to be questioned, and 
 I can tell but what I saw and heard. In the narration 
 of his story he seemed but recapitulating the promi 
 nent events for his own self-converse, rather than at 
 tempting to tell a tale to me, and it was hurried over 
 as brokenly and briefly as I have put it down. .Isat in 
 a listening attitude after he concluded, but he seemed 
 to have unburthened his bosom sufficiently, and his 
 lips were closed with stern compression. 
 
 " You forget," he said, after pacing awhile, "that I 
 offered j-ou a place to sleep. The night wears late. 
 Stretch yourself on that straw, with your cloak over 
 you. Good night!" 
 
 I lay down and looked up at the smoke rolling 
 heavily into the sky till I slept. 
 
 I awoke, feeling chilled, for the rock sheltered me 
 from the rays of the fire. I stepped out from the ; 
 hollow. The fires were pale with the gray of the j 
 morning, and the sky was visible through the smoke. 
 I looked around for a place to warm myself. The : 
 hickory log had smouldered out, but a fire h;id been j 
 kindled under the overblown pine, and its pitchy heart 
 was now flowing with the steady brilliancy of a torch. > 
 I took up one of its broken branches, cracked it on my j 
 knee, and stirring up the coals below, soon sent up a j 
 merry blaze, which enveloped the whole trunk. 
 
 Turning my back to the increasing heat. I started, 
 for, creeping toward me, with a look of eagerness for 
 which I was at a loss to account, came the Picker and 
 Piler. 
 
 " Twice doomed !" he muttered between his teeth, ;j 
 " but not by me !" 
 
 He threw down a handful of pitch pine knots, laid jj 
 his axe against a burning tree, and with a branch of ; 
 hemlock, swept off the flame from the spot where the j 
 fire was eating through, as if to see how nearly it was 
 divided. 
 
 I began to think him insane, for I could get no j 
 answer to my questions, and when lie spoke, it was ; 
 half audible, and with his eyes turned from me fixedly. 
 I looked in the same direction, but could see nothing 
 remarkable. The seducer slept soundly beneath his 
 matted wall, and the rude door of the shanty was be 
 hind us. Leaving him to see phantoms in the air, as 
 I thought, I turned my eyes to the drips of the water 
 fall, and was absorbed in memories of my own, when ! 
 I saw the girl steal from the shanty, and with one 
 bound overleap the rocky barrier of the platform. 1 
 laid my hand on the shoulder of my host, and pointed 
 after her, as with stealthy pace looking back occa- ij 
 sionally to the hut, where she evidently thought her 
 father slept, she crept round toward her lover. 
 
 "He dies!" cried the infuriated man; but as he j 
 jumped from me to seize his axe, the girl crouched 
 out of sight, and my own first thought was to awake ; 
 the sleeper. I made two bounds and looked back, for 
 I heard no footstep. 
 
 "Stand clear!" shouted a voice of almost super 
 natural shrillness ! and as I caught sight of the Picker 
 and Piler standing enveloped in smoke upon the burn 
 ing tree, with his axe high in the air, the truth flash 
 ed on me. 
 
 Down came the axe into the very heart of the pitchy 
 flame, and trembling with the tremendous smoke, the 
 trunk slowly bent upward from the fire. 
 
 The Picker and Piler sprang clear, the overborne 
 ash creaked and heaved, and with a sick giddiness in | 
 my eyes, I look at the unwarned sleeper. 
 
 One half of the dissevered pine fell to the earth, 
 and the shock startled him from his sleep. A whole 
 age seemed to me elapsing while the other rose with I 
 the slow lift of the ash. As it slid heavily away, the 
 vigorous tree righted, like a giant springing to his 
 feet. I saw the root pin the hand of the seducer to . 
 the earth a struggle a contortion and the leafless i 
 
 and waving top of the recovered and upright tree 
 rocked with its effort, and a long, sharp cry had gone 
 out echoing through the woods, and was still. I felt 
 my brain reel. 
 
 Blanched to a livid paleness, the girl moved about 
 in the sickly daylight, when I recovered ; but the 
 Picker and Piler, with a clearer brow than I had yet 
 seen him wear, was kindling fires beneath the remnants 
 of the pine. 
 
 KATE CREDIFORD, 
 
 I FOUND myself looking with some interest at the 
 back of a lady s head. The theatre was crowded, and 
 I had come in late, and the object of my curiosity, 
 whoever she might be, was listening very attentively to 
 the play. She did not move. I had time to build a 
 life-time romance about her before I had seen a feature 
 of her face. But her ears were small and of an ex 
 quisite oval, and she had that rarest beauty of woman 
 the hair arched and joined to the white neck with 
 the same finish as on the temples. Nature often 
 slights this part of her masterpiece. 
 
 The curtain dropped, and I stretched eagerly for 
 ward to catch a glimse of the profile. But no ! she 
 sat next one of the slender pilasters, and with her head 
 leaned against it, remained immovable. 
 
 I left the box, and with some difficulty made my 
 way into nhc crowded pit. Elbowing, apologizing, 
 persevering, I at last gained a point where I knew I 
 could see my incognita at the most advantage. I 
 turned pshaw ! how was it possible I had not recog 
 nised her? i 
 
 Kate Crediford ! 
 
 There was no getting out again, for a while at least, 
 without giving oiience to the crowd I had jostled so 
 unceremoniously. I sat down vexed and commen 
 ced a desperate study of the figure of Shakspere on 
 the drop-curtain. 
 
 Of course I had been a lover of Miss Crediford s, 
 or I could not have turned with indifference from the 
 handsomest woman in the theatre. She was very 
 beautiful there was no disputing. But we love wo 
 men a little for what we do know of them, and a great 
 deal more for what we do not. I had love-read Kate 
 Crediford to the last leaf. We parted as easily as a 
 reader and a book. Flirtation is a circulating library, 
 in which we seldom ask twice for the same volume, 
 and I gave up Kate to the next reader, feeling no 
 property even in the marks 1 had made in her perusal. 
 A little quarrel sufficed as an excuse for the closing of 
 the book, and both of us studiously avoided a recon 
 ciliation. 
 
 As I sat in the pit, I remembered suddenly a mole 
 on her left cheek, and I turned toward her with the 
 simple curiosity to knew whether it was visible at that 
 distance. Kate looked sad. She still leaned immove- 
 able against the slight column, and her dark eyes, it 
 struck me, were moist. Her mouth, with this pecu 
 liar expression upon her countenance, was certainly 
 inexpressibly sweet the turned-down corners ending 
 in dimples, which in that particular place, I have al 
 ways observed, are like wells of unfathomable melan 
 choly. Poor Kate ! what was the matter with her? 
 
 As I turned back to my dull study of the curtain, a 
 little pettish with myself for the interest with which I 
 had looked at an old flame, I detected half a sigh 
 under my white waistcoat ; but instantly persuading 
 myself that it was a disposition to cough, coughed, and 
 began to hum "suoni la tromba." The curtain rose 
 and the play went on. 
 
152 
 
 KATE CREDIFORD. 
 
 It was odd that I never had seen Kate in that humor 
 before. I did not think she could be sad. Kate 
 Crediford sad ! Why, she was the most volatile, light- 
 hearted, care-for-nothing coquette that ever held up 
 her fingers to be kissed. I wonder, has any one really 
 annoyed you, my poor Kate ! thought I. Could I, 
 by chance, be of any service to you for. after all, I 
 owe you something! I looked at her again. 
 
 Strange that I had ever looked at that face without 
 emotion ! The vigils of an ever-wakeful, ever-passion- J 
 ate, yet ever-tearful and melancholy spirit, seemed set, j 
 and kept under those heavy and motionless eyelids. | 
 And she, as I saw her now, was the very model and j 
 semblance of the character that I had all my life been 
 vainly seeking ! This was the creature I had sighed 
 for when turning away from the too mirthful tender 
 ness of Kate Crediford ! There was something new, 
 or something for the moment miswritten, in that 
 familiar countenance. 
 
 I made my way out of the pit with some difficulty, 
 and returned to sit near her. After a few minutes, a 
 gentleman in the next box rose and left the seat vacant 
 on the other side of the pilaster against which she 
 leaned. I went around while the orchestra \Vere play 
 ing a loud march, and, without being observed by the 
 thoughtful beauty, seated myself in the vacant place. 
 
 Why did my eyes flush and moisten, as I looked i 
 upon the small white hand lying on the cushioned 
 barrier between us ! I knew every vein of it, like the 
 strings of my own heart. I had held it spread out in | 
 my own, and followed its delicate blue traceries with > 
 a rose-stem, for hours .and hours, while imploring, and 
 reproaching, and reasoning over love s lights and j 
 shadows. I knew the feel of every one of those ex- [ 
 quisite fingers those rolled up rose-leaves, with nails j 
 like pieces cut from the lip of a shell ! Oh, the 
 promises I had kissed into oaths on that little chef- 
 d oeuvre of nature s tinted alabaster! the psalms and 
 sermons I had sat out holding it, in her father s pew ! 
 the moons I had tired out of the sky, making of it a 
 bridge for our hearts passing backward and forward ! 
 And how could that little wretch of a hand, that knew 
 me better than its own other hand (for we had been 
 more together), lie there, so unconscious of my pres 
 ence ? How could she Kate Crediford sit next to 
 me as she was doing, with only a stuffed partition be 
 tween us, and her head leaning on one side of a pilaster, 
 and mine on the other, and never start, nor recognise, 
 nor be at all aware of my neighborhood ? She was 
 not playing a part, it was easy to see. Oh, I knew 
 those little relaxed fingers too well ! Sadness, indolent 
 and luxurious sadness, was expressed in her counten 
 ance, and her abstraction was unfeigned and contem 
 plative. Could she have so utterly forgotten me 
 magnetically, that is to say? Could the atmosphere 
 about her, that would once have trembled betrayingly 
 at my approach, like the fanning of an angel s invisi 
 ble wing, have lost the sense of my presence ? 
 
 I tried to magnetize her hand. I fixed my eyes on 
 that little open palm, and with all the intensity I could 
 summon, kissed it mentally in its rosy centre. I re 
 proached the ungrateful little thing for its dulness and 
 forgetfulness, and brought to bear upon it a focus of 
 old memories of pressures and caresses, to which a 
 stone would scarce have the heart to be insensible. 
 
 But I belie myself in writing this with a smile. I 
 watched those unmoving fingers with a heart. I could 
 not see the face, nor read the thought, of the woman 
 who had once loved me, and who sat near me, now, so 
 unconsciously but if a memory had stirred, if a pulse 
 had quickened its beat, those finely-strung fingers I 
 well know would have trembled responsively. Had 
 she forgotten me altogether ? Is that possible ? Can 
 a woman close the leaves of her heart over a once-loved 
 and deeply-written name, like the waves over a vessel s 
 track like the air over the division of a bird s flight ? 
 
 I had intended to speak presently to Miss Crediford, 
 but every moment the restraint became greater. I felt 
 no more privileged to speak to her than the stranger 
 who had left the seat I occupied. I drew back, for 
 fear of encroaching on her room, or disturbing the 
 folds of her shawl. I dared not speak to her. And, 
 while I was arguing the matter to myself, the party 
 who were with her, apparently tired of the play, arose 
 and left the theatre, Kate following last, but unspoken 
 to, and unconscious altogether of having been near 
 any one whom she knew. 
 
 I went home and wrote to her all night, for there was 
 no sleeping till I had given vent to this new fever at my 
 heart. And in the morning, I took the leading thoughts 
 from my heap in incoherent scribblings, and embodied 
 them more coolly in a letter : 
 
 " You will think, when you look at the signature, 
 that this is to be the old story. And you will be as 
 much mistaken as you are in believing that I was ever 
 your lover, till a few hours ago. I have declared love 
 to you, it is true. I have been happy with you, and 
 wretched without you ; I have thought of you, dream 
 ed of you, haunted you, sworn to you, and devoted to 
 you all and more than you exacted, of time and out 
 ward service and adoration ; but I love you now for 
 the first time in my life. Shall I be so happy as to 
 make you comprehend this startling contradiction ? 
 
 "There are many chambers in the heart, Kate; and 
 the spirits of some of us dwell, most fondly and secret 
 ly, in the chamber of tears avowedly, however, in the 
 outer and ever-open chamber of mirth. Over the 
 sacred threshold, guarded by sadness, much that we 
 select and smile upon, and follow with adulation in 
 the common walks of life, never passes. We admire 
 the gay. They make our melancholy sweeter by con 
 trast, when we retire within ourselves. We pursue 
 them. We take them to our hearts to the outer 
 vestibules of our hearts and if they are gay only, they 
 are content with the unconsecrated tribute which we 
 pay them there. But the chamber within is, mean 
 time, lonely. It aches with its desolation. The echo 
 of the mirthful admiration without jars upon its 
 mournful silence. It longs for love, but love toned 
 with its own sadness love that can penetrate deeper 
 than smiles ever came love that, having once entered, 
 can be locked in with its key of melancholy, and 
 brooded over with the long dream of a life-time. But 
 that deep-hidden and unseen chamber of the heart 
 may be long untenanted. And, meantime, the spirit 
 becomes weary of mirth, and impatiently quenches the 
 fire even upon its outer altar, and in the complete 
 loneliness of a heart that has no inmate or idol, gay 
 or tearful, lives mechanically on. 
 
 " Do you guess at rny meaning, Kate ? Do you 
 remember the merriment of our first meeting ? Do 
 you remember in what a frolic of thoughtlessness you 
 first permitted me to raise to my lips those restless 
 fingers ? Do you remember the mock condescension, 
 the merry haughtinass, the rallying and feigned in 
 credulity, with which you first received my successive 
 steps of vowing and love-making the arch look when 
 it was begun, the laugh when it was over, the untiring 
 follies we kept up, after vows plighted, and the future 
 planned and sworn to ? That you were in earnest, as 
 much as you were capable of being, I fully believe. 
 You would not else have been so prodigal of the sweet 
 bestowings of a maiden s tenderness. But how often 
 have I left you with the feeling, that in the hours I 
 had passed with you, my spirit had been alone ! How 
 often have I wondered if there were depths in my heart, 
 which love can never reach ! How often mourned 
 that in the procession of love there was no place allot 
 ted for its sweetest and dearest followers tears and 
 silence ! Oh, Kate ! sweet as was that sun-gleam of 
 early passion, I did not love you ! I tired of your 
 
FLIRTATION AND FOX-CHASING. 
 
 153 
 
 I left you, 
 
 mention to you, that, in consequence of eating an im 
 prudent quantity of unripe fruit, she felt ill before go 
 ing to the theatre, and was obliged to leave early. 
 To day she seems seriously indisposed. I trust she 
 will be well enough to see you in a day or two and 
 remain, " Yours, truly, 
 
 " SAMUEL SMITHERS." 
 
 smiles, waiting in vain for your sadness 
 and thought of you no more ? 
 
 "But now (and you will be surprised to know that 
 I have been so near to you unperceived) I have drank 
 an intoxication from one glance into your eyes, which 
 throws open to you every door of my heart, subdues 
 to your control every nerve and feeling of my exis 
 tence. Last night, I sat an hour, tracing again the 
 transparent and well-remembered veins upon your 
 hand, and oh! how the language written in those 
 branching and mystic lines had changed in meaning 
 and power. You were sad. I saw you from a dis 
 tance, and, with amazement at an expression upon 
 your face which I had never before seen. I came and 
 sat near you. It was the look I had longed for when 
 I knew you, and when tired of your mirth. It was 
 the lookl had searched the world for, combined with 
 such beauty as yours. It was a look of tender and 
 passionate melancholy, which revealed to me an un 
 suspected chamber in your heart a chamber of ttfars. 
 Ah, why were you never sad before ? Why have we 
 lost why have I lost the eternity s worth of sweet j 
 
 hours when you love me with that concealed treasure : n ___ rf 
 
 in your bosom ? Alas ! that angels must walk tb : j win(]ow and t h e back wall I saw the yards of a vessel 
 world, unrecognised, till too late ! Alas, that I have I, suddent |y cross t h e light, and heard the next moment 
 held in my arms and pressed to my lips, and loosed ^ ra u\ e of a chain let go, and all the bustle of a 
 again with trifling and weariness, the creature whom 
 
 But I never called on Mrs. Samuel Smithers. 
 
 FLIRTATION AND FOX-CHASING, 
 
 " The only heart that I have known of late, has been an easy, 
 excitable sort of gentleman, quickly roused and quickly calmed 
 sensitive enough to confer a great deal of pleasure, and not sensi 
 tive enough to give a moment s pain. The heart of other days was 
 a very different person indeed." BULWEB. 
 
 I WAS moping one day in solitary confinement in 
 quarantine at Malta, when, in a turn between my stone 
 
 it was my life s errand, the thirst and passionate long 
 ing of my nature, to find and worship ! 
 
 " Oh, Heaven ! with what new value do I now 
 number over your adorable graces of person ! How 
 spiritualized is every familiar feature, once so deplor- 
 
 erchantman coming to anchor. 1 had the privilege 
 of promenading between two ring-bolts on the whart 
 below the lazaretto, and with the attraction of a new 
 comer to the sleepy company of vessels under the 
 yellow flag, I lost no time in descending the stone 
 stairs, and was immediately joined by my vigilant sen- 
 
 bly misappreciated ! How compulsive of respectful tine] the <r uan n an0t whose business it was to prevent 
 
 _ 
 
 adoration is that flexible waist, that step of aerial light 
 ness, that swan-like motion, which I once dared to 
 praise triflingly and half-mockingly, like the tints of a 
 flower or the chance beauty of a bird ! And those 
 bright lips ! How did I ever look on them, and not 
 know that within their rosy portal slept voiceless, for 
 
 my contact with the other visitors to the wharf. The 
 tricolor flew at the peak of the stranger, and we easily 
 made out that she was a merchantman from Marseilles, 
 subject therefore to a week s quarantine on ac 
 count of the cholera. I had myself come from a 
 plague port, Smyrna, and was subjected to twenty 
 
 Frenchman, though but beginning his imprisonment 
 1 was in a position comparatively enviable. 
 
 I had watched for an hour the getting of the vessel 
 
 into mooring trim, and was beginning to conclude 
 
 that she had come without passengers, when a gentle- 
 
 ! man made his appearance on deck, and the jolly-boat 
 
 | was immediately lowered and manned. A traveller s 
 
 i baggage wasWianded over the side, the gentleman took 
 
 for long I pray you !" 
 
 I despatched this letter, and it would be difficult to 
 embody in language the agony I suffered in waiting 
 for a reply. I walked my room, that endless morning, 
 with a death-pang in every step so fearful was I so 
 prophetically fearful that I had forfeited for ever the 
 heart I had once flung from me. 
 
 It was noon when a letter arrived. It was in a hand 
 writing new to me. But it was on tl subject which 
 possessed my existence, and it was of final import. 
 It follows : 
 
 " DEAR SIR : My wife wishes me to write to you, 
 and inform you of her marriage, which took place a 
 week or two since, and of which she presumes you 
 are not aware. She remarked to me, that you thought 
 her looking unhappy last evening, when you chanced 
 to see her at the play. As she seemed to regret not 
 being able to answer your note herself, I may perhaps 
 convey the proper apology by taking upon myself to 
 
 _ while, the controlling spell of my destiny the tear- | j , quaran t j ne , s j x o f which had passed ; so that the 
 ful spirit followed and called in my dreams, with per 
 petual longing ? Strange value given to features and 
 outward loveliness by qualities within ! Strange 
 witchery of sadness in a woman! Oh, there is, in 
 mirth and folly, dear Kate, no air for love s breathing, 
 still less of food for constancy, or of holiness to con 
 secrate and heighten beauty of person. 
 
 "What can I say else, except implore to be per 
 mitted to approach you to offer my life to you to ji j e ~.jy e ~ ! o f t i ie captain, and, in obedience to directions 
 begin, thus late, after being known so long, the wor- | from tl)e q uarant j ne officer on the quarterdeck, the 
 ship which till death is your due ? Pardon me if 1 I bo . u was p u n ed directly to the wharf on which I stood. 
 have written abruptly and wildly. I shall await your j Tlje g U(tr( n ano g ave me a caution to retire a little, as 
 answer in an agony of expectation. I do not willingly ^ e stranger was coming to take possession of the next 
 breathe till I see you till I weep at your feet over my apartment to my own, and must land at the stairs near 
 blindness and forgetfulness. Adieu! but let it not be ^. bu() Before j i mc j taken two steps backward, I 
 
 be^an to recognise features familar to me, and with a 
 i turn of the head as he sprang on the wharf the identity 
 1 was established completely. Tom Berryman, by all 
 I that was wonderful! I had not seen him since we 
 ] were suspended from college together ten years before. 
 1 Forgetting lazaretto and guardiano, and all the salt 
 wate* between New Haven and Malta, J rushed up to 
 Tom with the cordiality of other days (a little sharpen 
 ed by abstinence from society), and we st.ll had hold 
 of hands with a firm grip, when the quarantine master 
 aravely accosted us, and informed my friend that he 
 had incurred an additional week by touching me in 
 short, that he must partake of the rema.nder of my 
 quarantine. 
 
 Aghast and chap-fallen as Berryman was at the con 
 sequences of our rencontre (for he had fully calculated 
 on getting into Malta in time for the carnival), he was 
 somewhat reconciled to his lot by being permitted to 
 share my room and table instead of living his week in 
 solitude ; and, by enriching our supplies a little from 
 
154 
 
 FLIRTATION AND FOX-CHASING. 
 
 town, sleeping much, and chatting through the day in 
 the rich sunshine of that climate of Paradise, we con 
 trived to shove off the fortnight without any very in 
 tolerable tedium. 
 
 My friend and I had begun our travels differently 
 he taken England first, which I proposed visiting last. 
 It is of course the bonne bouche of travel to everybody, 
 and I was very curious to know Tom s experiences ; 
 and, as I was soon bound thitherward, anxious to pick 
 out of his descriptions some chart of the rocks and 
 shoals in the " British channel" of society. 
 
 I should say, before quoting my friend, that he was 
 a Kentuckian. with the manner (to ladies) of mingled 
 devotion and nonchalance so popular with the sex, 
 and a chivalric quality of man altogether. His father s 
 political influence had obtained for him personal letters 
 of introduction from the president, and, with this ad 
 vantage, and his natural air of fashion, he had found 
 no obstacle to choosing his society in England ; 
 choosing the first, of course, like a true republican ! 
 
 We were sitting on the water-steps with our feet 
 immersed up to the ankles (in January too), and in 
 reply to some question of mine as to the approacha- 
 Wlity of noble ladies by such plebeian lovers as him 
 self, Tom told me the story which follows. I take the 
 names at random, of course, but, in all else, I shall try 
 to " tell the tale as twas told to me." 
 
 Why, circumstances, as you know, sometimes put 
 people in the attitude of lovers whether they will or no ; 
 and it is but civil in such a case, to do what fate ex 
 pects of you. I knew too much of the difference be 
 tween crockery and porcelain to enter English society 
 with the remotest idea of making love within the red 
 book of the peerage, and though I ve a story to tell, I 
 swear I never put a foot forward till I thought it was 
 knightly devoir; inevitable, though ever so ridiculous. 
 Still, I must say, with a beautiful and unreserved 
 woman beside one, very much like other beautiful and 
 unreserved woman, a republican might be pardoned for 
 forgetting the invisible wall. " Right honorable" love 
 liness has as much attraction about it, let me tell you, 
 and is quite as difficult to resist, as loveliness that is 
 honored, right or wrong, and a man must be brought 
 up to it, as Englishmen are, to see the heraldric dragons 
 and griffins in the air when a charming girl is talking 
 to him. 
 
 " AVhy should a man, whose blood is warm within, 
 Sit like (her) grandsire cut in alabaster ?" 
 
 Eh ? But to begin with the " Tityre tu patula?." 
 
 I had been passing a fortnight at the hunting lodge 
 
 of that wild devil, Lord , in the Scotch Highlands, 
 
 and what with being freely wet outside every day, and 
 freely wet inside every night, I had given my principle 
 of life rather a disgust to its lodgings, and there were 
 some symptoms of preparation for leave-taking. Un 
 willing to be ill in a bachelor s den, with no solace j 
 tenderer than a dandy lord s tiger, I made a twilight 
 flit to the nearest post-town, and tightening my life- 
 screws a little with the aid of the village apothecary, 
 started southward the next morning with four posters. 
 
 I expected to be obliged to pull up atEdinboro , but 
 the doctor s opiates, and abstinence, and quiet did i 
 more for me than I had hoped, and I went on very I 
 comfortably to Carlisle. I arrived at this place after 
 nightfall, and found the taverns overflowing with the j 
 crowds of a fair, and no bed to be had unless T could 
 make one in a quartette of snoring graziers. At the i 
 same time there was a great political meeting at I 
 Edinboro , and every leg of a poster had gone north 
 those I had brought with me having been trans- i 
 hitched to a return chaise, and gone off while I was i 
 looking for accommodations. 
 
 Regularly stranded, I sat down by the tap-room 
 fire, and was mourning my disaster, when the horn ; 
 of the night-coach reached my ear, and in the minute i 
 
 of its rattling up to the door, I hastily resolved that it 
 was the least of two evils, and booked myself accord 
 ingly. There was but one vacant place, an outsider ! 
 With hardly time enough to resolve, and none to re 
 pent,! was presently rolling over the dark road, chilled 
 to the bone in the first five minutes, and wet through 
 with a " Scotch mist" in the next half hour. Some 
 where about daybreak we rolled into the little town 
 
 of , five miles from the seat of the earl of Trese- 
 
 then, to whose hospitalities I stood invited, and I went 
 to bed in a most comfortable inn and slept till noon. 
 
 Before going to bed I had written a note to be des 
 patched to Tresethen castle, and the earl s carriage 
 was waiting for me when I awoke. I found myself 
 better than I had expected, and dressing at once for 
 dinner, managed to reach the castle just in time to 
 hand in Lady Tresethen. Of that dinner I but re 
 member that I was the only guest, and that the earl 
 regretted his daughter s absence from table, Lady 
 Caroline having been thrown that morning from her 
 horse. I fainted somewhere about the second remove, 
 and recovered my wits some days after, on the safe side 
 of the crisis of a fever. 
 
 I shall never forget that first half hour of conscious 
 curiosity. An exquisite sense of bodily repose mingled 
 with a vague notion of recent relief from pain, made 
 me afraid to speak lest I should awoke from a dream, 
 yet, if not a dream, what a delicious reality ! A lady 
 of most noble presence, in a half-mourning dress, sat 
 by the sideof a cheerful fire, turning her large dark eyes 
 on me, in the pauses of a conversation with a gray- 
 headed servant. My bed was of the most sumptuous 
 luxury; the chamber was hung with pictures and 
 draped with spotless white; the table covered with 
 the costliest elegancies of the toilet : and in the gentle 
 and deferential manner of the old liveried menial, and 
 the subdued tones of inquiry by the lady, there was a 
 refinement and tenderness which, with the keen sus 
 ceptibility of my senses, "lapt me in Elysium." I was 
 long in remembering where 1 was. The lady glided 
 from the room, the old servant resumed his seat by 
 my bedside, other servants in the same livery came 
 softly in on errands of service, and, at the striking of 
 the half hour by a clock on the mantelpiece, the lady 
 returned, and I was raised to receive something from 
 her hand. As she came nearer, I remembered the 
 Countess Tresethen. 
 
 Three days after this I was permitted to take the 
 irof a conservatory which opened from the countess s 
 boudoir. My old attendant assisted me to dress, and, 
 with another servant, took me down in a fauteuil. I 
 was in slippers and robe-de-chambre, and presumed 
 :hat I should see no one except the kind and noble 
 Lndy Tresethen, but I had scarce taken one turn up 
 the long alley of flowering plants, when the countess 
 came toward me from the glass door beyond, and on 
 her arm a girl leaned for support, whose beauty 
 
 (Here Tom dabbled his feet for some minutes in 
 he water in silence.) 
 
 God bless me ! I can never give you an idea of it ! 
 [t was a new revelation of woman to me; the opening 
 of an eighth seal. In the minute occupied by her 
 approach, my imagination (accelerated, as that faculty 
 always is, by the clairvoyance of sickness), had gone 
 hrough a whofc drama of love fear, adoration, des- 
 leration, and rejection and so complete was it, that 
 n after moments when these phases of passion came 
 ound in the proper lapse of days and weeks, it seemed 
 o me that I had been through with them before ; that 
 t was all familiar; that I had met and loved in some 
 >ther world, this same glorious creature, with the 
 lame looks, words, and heart-ache ; in the same con 
 servatory of bright flowers, and faith, myself in the 
 ;ame pattern of a brocade dressing-gown ! 
 
 Heavens! what a beautiful girl was that LadyCaro- 
 ine ! Her eyes were of a light gray, the rim of the 
 
FLIRTATION AND FOX-CHASING. 
 
 155 
 
 lids perfectly inky with the darkness of the long sweep 
 ing lashes, and in her brown hair there was a gold 
 lustre that seemed somehow to illuminate the curves 
 of her small head like a halo. Her mouth had too 
 much character for a perfectly agreeable first impres 
 sion. It was nobility and sweetness educated over 
 native high spirit andscornfulness the nature shining 
 through the transparent blood, like a flaw through 
 enamel. She would have been, in other circu instan 
 ces, a maid of Saragossa or a Gertrude Von Wart ; 
 a heroine ; perhaps a devil. But her fascination was 
 resistless ! 
 
 " My daughter," said Lady Tresethen (and in that 
 beginning was all the introduction she thought neces 
 sary), " is, like yourself, an invalid just escaped from 
 the doctor ; you must congratulate each other. Are 
 you strong enough to lend her an arm, Mr. Berry- 
 man ?" 
 
 The countess left us, and with the composure of a | 
 sister who had seen me every day of my life, Lady I 
 Caroline took my arm and strolled slowly to and fro, 
 questioning me of my shooting at the lodge, arid talk- j 
 ing to me of her late accident, her eyes sometimes ! 
 fixed upon her little embroidered slippers, as they I 
 peeped from her snowy morning dress, and sometimes ! 
 indolently raised and brought to bear on my flushed 
 cheek and trembling lips; her singular serenity opera 
 ting on rne as anything but a sedative ! I was taken | 
 up stairs again, after an hour s conversation, in a fair j 
 way for a relapse, and the doctor put me under em 
 bargo again for another week, which, spite of all the 
 renewed care and tenderness of Lady Tresethen, 
 seemed to me an eternity ! I ll not bother you with 
 what I felt and thought all that time ! 
 
 It was a brilliant autumnal day when I got leave to 
 make my second exodus, and with the doctor s per- I 
 mission I prepared for a short walk in the park. I 
 declined the convoy of the old servant, for I had heard , 
 Lady Caroline s horse gallop away down the avenue, 
 and I wished to watch her return unobserved. I had 
 just lost sight of the castle in the first bend of the path, 
 when I saw her quietly walking her horse under the 
 trees at a short distance, and the moment after she 
 observed and came toward me at an easy canter. I 
 had schooled myself to a little more self-possession, i 
 but I was not prepared for such an apparition of splen 
 did beauty as that woman on horseback. She rode an 
 Arabian bay of the finest blood ; a lofty, fiery, match 
 less creature, with an expression of eye and nostril 
 which I could not but think a proper Cendant to her 
 own, limbed as I had seldom seen a horse, and his 
 arched neck, and forehead, altogether, proud as a steed 
 for Lucifer. She sat on him as if it were a throne 
 she was born to, and the flow of her riding-dress 
 seemed as much a part of him as his mane. He ap- : 
 peared ready to bound into the air, like Pegasus, but j 
 one hand calmly stroked his mane, and her faee was 
 as tranquil as marble. 
 
 " Well met !" she said ; "I was just wishing for a 
 cavalier. What sort of a horse would you like, Mr. 
 Berryman 1 Ellis!" {speaking to her groom), "is old 
 Curtal taken up from grass ?" 
 
 41 Yes, miladi!" 
 
 " Curtal is our invalid horse, and as you are not : 
 very strong, perhaps his easy pace will be best for you. 
 Bring him out directly, Ellis. We ll just walk along 
 the road a little way ; for I must show you my Ara- ; 
 bian ; and we ll not go back to ask mamma s permis 
 sion, for we shouldn t get it ! You won t mind riding 
 a little way, will you ?" 
 
 Of course I would have bcstrided a hippos-ill at 
 her bidding, and wheu the groom came out, leading 
 a thorough-bred hunter, with apparently a very elastic 
 and gentle action, I forgot the doctor and mounted 
 with great alacrity. We walked our horses slowly 
 down the avenue and out at the castle gate, followed 
 
 by the groom, and after trying a little quicker pace on 
 the public road, I pronounced old Curtal worthy of 
 her ladyship s eulogium, and her own Saladin worthy, 
 it" horse could be worthy, of his burthen. 
 
 We had ridden perhaps a mile, and Lady Caroline 
 was giving me a slight history of the wonderful feats 
 of the old veteran under me, wheu the sound of a horn 
 made both horses prick up their ears, and on rising 
 a little acclivity, we cnught sight of a pack of hounds 
 coming across the fields directly toward us, followed 
 by some twenty red-coated horsemen. Old Curtal 
 trembled and showed a disposition to fret, and I ob 
 served that Lady Caroline dexterously lengthened 
 her own stirrup and loosened the belt of her riding- 
 dress, and the next minute the hounds were over the 
 hedge, and the horsemen, leap after leap, after them, 
 and with every successive jump, my own steed reared 
 and plunged unmanageably. 
 
 "Indeed, I can not stand this !" cried Lady Caro 
 line, gathering up her reins, "Ellis! see Mr. Berry 
 man home !" and away went the flying Arabian over 
 the hedge with a vault that left me breathless with 
 astonishment. One minute I made the vain effort to 
 control my own horse and turn his head in the other 
 direction, but my strength was gone. I had never 
 leaped a fence in my life on horseback, though a 
 tolerable rider on the road ; but before I could think 
 how it was to be done, or gather myself together for 
 the leap, Curtal was over the hedge with me, and 
 flying across a ploughed field like the wind Saladin 
 not far before him. With a glance ahead I saw the 
 red coats rising into the air and disappearing over 
 another green hedge, and though the field was crossed 
 in twenty leaps, I had time to feel my blood run cold 
 with the prospect of describing another parabola in 
 the air, and to speculate on the best attitude for a 
 projectile on horseback. Over went Saladin like a 
 greyhound, but his mistress s riding-cap caught the 
 wind at the highest point of the curve, and flew back ^ 
 
 into my face as Curtal rose on his haunches, and over 
 I went again, blinded and giddy, and, with the cap 
 held flat against my bosom by the pressure of the air, 
 flew once more at a tremendous pace onward. My 
 feet were now plugged to the instep in the stinups, 
 and my back, too weak to support me erect, let me 
 down to my horse s mane, and one by one, along the 
 skirt of a rising woodland, I could see the red coats 
 dropping slowly behind. Right before me like a 
 meteor, however, streamed back the loosened tresses 
 f Lady Caroline, and Curtal kept close on the track 
 of Saladiu, neither losing nor gaining an inch apparent 
 ly, and nearer and nearer sounded the baying of the 
 hounds, and clearer became my view of the steady and 
 slight waist riding so fearlessly onward. Of my horse 
 I had neither guidance nor control. He needed none. 
 The hounds had crossed a morass, and we were round 
 ing a half-circle on an acclivity to come up with them, 
 and Curtal went at it too confidently to be in error. 
 Evenly as a hand-gallop on a green sward his tremen 
 dous pace told off, and if his was the ease of muscular 
 power, the graceful speed of the beautiful creature 
 moving before me seemed the aerial buoyancy of a 
 bird. Obstructions seemed nothing. That flowing 
 dress and streaming hairsailed over rocks and ditches, 
 and over them, like their inseparable shadow, glided 
 I, and, except one horseman who still kept his ^dis 
 tance ahead, we seemed alone in the field. The 
 clatter of hoofs, and the exclamations ot excitement 
 had ceased behind me, and though I was capable of 
 no exertion beyond that of keeping my seat, I no 
 longer feared the leap nor the pace, and began to an 
 ticipate a safe termination to my perilous adventure. 
 \ slight exclamation from Lady Caroline reached my 
 ear and I looked forward. A small river was before 
 us, and, from the opposite bank, of steep clay, the 
 rider who had preceded us was falling back, his horse s 
 
156 
 
 THE POET AND THE MANDARIN. 
 
 forefeet high in the air, and his arms already in the 
 water. I tried to pull my reins. I shouted to my 
 horse in desperation. And with the exertion, my 
 heart seemed to give way within me. Giddy and faint 
 I abandoned myself to my fate. I just saw the flying 
 heels of Saladin planted on the opposite bank and the 
 streaming hair still flying onward, when, with a bound 
 that, it seemed to me, must rend every fibre of the 
 creature beneath me, I saw the water gleam under 
 my feet, and still I kept on. We flew over a fence 
 into a stubble field, the hounds just before us, and over 
 a gate into the public highway, which we followed for 
 a dozen bounds, and then, with a pace slightly mode 
 rated, we successively cleared a low wall and brought 
 up, on our horses haunches, in the midst of an uproar 
 of dogs, cows, and scattering poultry the fox having 
 been run down at last in the enclosure of a barn. I 
 had just strength to extricate my feet from the stirrups, 
 take Lady Caroline s cap, which had kept its place 
 between my elbows and knees, and present it to her 
 as she sat in her saddle, and my legs gave way under 
 me. I was taken into the farmhouse, and, at the close 
 of a temporary ellipse, I was sent back to Tresethen 
 Castle in a post-chaise, and once more handed over to 
 the doctor ! 
 
 Well, my third siege of illness was more tolerable, 
 for I received daily, now, some message of inquiry or 
 some token of interest from Lady Caroline, though I 
 learned from the countess that she was in sad disgrace 
 for her inveiglement of my trusting innocence. I also 
 received the cards of the members of the hunt, with 
 many inquiries complimentary to what they were 
 pleased to consider American horsemanship, and I 
 found that my seizure of the flying cap of Lady Caro 
 line and presentation of it to her ladyship at "the 
 death," was thought to be worthy, in chivalry of 
 Bayard, and in dexterity of Ducrow. Indeed, when 
 let out again to the convalescent walk in the conser 
 vatory, I found that 1 was counted a hero even by the 
 stately earl. There slipped a compliment, too, here 
 and there, through the matronly disapprobation of 
 Lady Tresethen and all this was too pleasant to put 
 aside with a disclaimer so I bid truth and modesty 
 hold their peace, and took the honor the gods chose 
 to provide ! 
 
 But now came dangers more perilous than my ride 
 on Curtal. Lady Caroline was called upon to be kind 
 to me ! Daily as the old servant left me in the alley 
 of japonicas, she appeared from the glass door of her 
 mother s boudoir and devoted herself to my comfort 
 walking with me, while I could walk, in those fragrant 
 and balmy avenues of flowers, and then bringing me 
 into her mother s luxurious apartment, where books, 
 and music, and conversation as frank and untrammelled 
 as man in love could ask, wiled away the day. Wiled 
 it away ? winged it shod it with velvet and silence, 
 for I never knew how it passed ! Lady Caroline had 
 a mind of the superiority stamped so consciously on 
 her lip. She anticipated no consequences from her 
 kindness, therefore she was playful and unembarrassed. 
 She sang to me, and I read to her. Her rides were 
 given up, and Saladin daily went past the window to 
 his exercise, and with my most zealous scrutiny I 
 could detect in her face neither impatience of con 
 finement nor regret at the loss of weather fitter for 
 pleasures out of doors. Spite of every caution with 
 which hope could be chained down, I was flattered. 
 
 You smile (Tom said, though he was looking 
 straight into the water, and had not seen my face for 
 half an hour) but, without the remotest hope of 
 taking Lady Caroline to Kentucky, or of becoming 
 English on the splendid dowry of the heiress of Trese 
 then, I still felt it impossible to escape from my lover s 
 attitude impossible to avoid hoarding up symptoms, 
 encouragements, flatteries, and all the moonshine of am 
 atory anxiety. I was iu love and who reasons in love ? 
 
 One morning, after I had become an honorary 
 patient an invalid only by sufferance and was slow 
 ly admitting the unwelcome conviction that it was 
 time for me to be shaping my adieux the conversa 
 tion took rather a philosophical turn. The starting 
 point was a quotation in a magazine from Richter : 
 " Is not a man s universe within his head, whether a 
 king s diadem or a torn scullcap be without ?" and I 
 had insisted rather strenuously on the levelling privilege 
 we enjoyed in the existence of a second world around 
 us the world of revery and dream wherein the tyran 
 ny, and check, and the arbitrary distinctions of the 
 world of fact, were never felt and where he, though 
 he might be a peasant, who had the consciousness in 
 his soul that he was a worthy object of love to a prin 
 cess, could fancy himself beloved and revel in imagin 
 ary possession. 
 
 " Why," said I, turning with a sudden flush of self- 
 confidence to Lady Caroline, " Why should not the 
 passions of such a world, the loving and returning of 
 love infancy, have the privilege of language ? Why 
 should not matches be made, love confessed, vows ex 
 changed, and fidelity sworn, valid within the realm of 
 drearn-land only ? Why should I not say to yo%, for 
 example, I adore you, dear lady, and in my world of 
 thought you shall, if you so condescend, be my bride 
 and mistress ; and why, if you responded to this and 
 listened to my vows of fancy, should your bridegroom 
 of the world of fact feel his rights invaded ? 
 
 " In fancy let it be then-!" said Lady Caroline, with 
 a blush and a covert smile, and she rang the bell for 
 luncheon. 
 
 Well, I still lingered a couple of days, and on the 
 last day of my stay at Tresethen, I became sufficiently 
 emboldened to take Lady Caroline s hand behind the 
 fountain of the conservatory, and to press it to my lips 
 with a daring wish that its warm pulses belonged to 
 the world of fancy. 
 
 She withdrew it very kindly, and (I thought) sadly, 
 and begged me to go to the boudoir and bring her a 
 volume of Byron that lay on her work-table. 
 
 I brought it, and she turned over the leaves a mo 
 ment, and, with her pencil, marked two lines and gave 
 me the book, bidding me an abrupt good morning. 
 I stood a few minutes with my heart beating and my 
 brain faint, but finally summoned courage to read : 
 
 " I can not lose a world for thee 
 But would not lose thee for the world I" 
 
 I left Tresethen the next morning, and 
 
 "Hold on, Tom !" cried I " there comes the boat 
 with our dinner from Valletta, and we ll have your 
 sorrows over our Burgundy." 
 
 " Sorrows !" exclaimed Tom, " I was going to tell 
 you of the fun I had at her wedding !" 
 
 " Lord preserve us !" 
 
 "Bigamy wasn t it? after our little nuptials in 
 dream-land ! She told her husband all about it at the 
 wedding breakfast, and his lordship (she marrie d the 
 
 Marquis of ) begged to know the extent of my 
 
 prerogatives. I was sorry to confess that they did not 
 interfere very particularly with his . " 
 
 THE POET AND THE MANDARIN, 
 
 THE moon shone like glorified and floating dew on 
 the bosom of the tranquil Pei-ho, and the heart of the 
 young poet Le-pih was like a cup running over with 
 wine. It was no abatement of his exulting fulness 
 that he was as yet the sole possessor of the secret of 
 his own genius. Conscious of exquisite susceptibility 
 to beauty, fragrance and music (the three - graces of 
 
THE POET AND THE MANDARIN. 
 
 157 
 
 the Chinese), he was more intent upon enjoying his 
 gifts than upon the awakening of envy for their posses 
 sion the latter being (lie second leaf in the book of 
 genius, and only turned over by the finger of satiety. 
 Thoughtless of the acquisition of fame as the youth 
 ful poet may be, however, he is always ready to an 
 ticipate its fruits, and Le-pih committed but the poet s 
 error, when, having the gem in his bosom which 
 could buy the favor of the world, he took the favor 
 for granted without producing the gem. 
 
 Kwonfootse had returned a conqueror, from the wars 
 with the Hwong-kin, and this night, on which the 
 moon shone so gloriously, was the hour of his triumph, 
 for the Emperor Tang had condescended to honor 
 with his presence, a gala given by the victorious gene 
 ral at his gardens on the Pei-ho. Softened by his 
 exulting feelings (for though a brave soldier, he was 
 as haughty as Liuykong the thunder-god, or Hwuyloo 
 the monarch of fire), the warlike mandarin threw open 
 his gardens on this joyful night, not only to those who 
 wore in their caps the gold ball significant of patrician 
 birth, but to all whose dress and mien warranted their 
 appearance in the presence of the emperor. 
 
 Like the realms of the blest shone the gardens of 
 Kwonfootse. Occupying the whole valley of the 
 Pei-ho, at a spot where it curved like the twisted 
 cavity of a shell, the sky seemed to shut in the grounds 
 like the cover of a vase, and the stars seemed bui the 
 garden-lights overhead. From one edge of the vase 
 to the other from hill-top to hill-topextended a 
 broad avenue, a pagoda at either extremity glittering 
 with gold and scarlet, the sides flaming with colored 
 lamps and flaunting with gay streamers of barbarian 
 stuffs, and the moonlit river cutting it in the centre, the 
 whole vista, at the first glance, resembling a girdle of 
 precious stones with a fastening of opal. Off from 
 this central division radiated in all directions alleys of 
 camphor and cinnamon trees, lighted with amorous 
 dimness, and leading away to bowers upon (he hill 
 side, and from every quarter resounded music, and in 
 every nook was seen feasting and merriment. 
 
 In disguise, the emperor and imperial family mingled 
 in the crowd, and no one save the host and his daugh 
 ters knew what part of the gardens was honored with 
 their presence. There was, however, a retreat in the 
 grounds, sacred to the privileged few, and here, when 
 fatigued or desirous of refreshment, the royal person 
 ages laid aside disguise and were surrounded with 
 the deferential honors of the court. It was so con 
 trived that the access was unobserved by the people, 
 and there was, therefore, no feeling of exclusion to 
 qualify the hilarity of the entertainment, Kwonfootse, 
 with all his pride, looking carefully to his popularity. 
 At the foot of each descent, upon the matted banks 
 of the river, floated gilded boats with lamps burning in 
 their prows, and gayly-dressed boatmen offering con 
 veyance across to all who required it; but thew were 
 also, unobserved by the crowd, boats unlighted and 
 undecorated holding off from the shore, which, at a 
 sign given by the initiated, silently approached a mar 
 ble stair without the line of the blazing avenue, and tak 
 ing their freight on board, sxviftly pulled up the moonlit 
 river, to a landing concealed by the shoulder of the hill. 
 No path led from the gardens hither, and from no point 
 of view could be overlooked the more brilliant scene 
 of imperial revel. 
 
 It was verging toward midnight when the unknown 
 poet, with brain floating in a celestial giddiness of delight, 
 stood on the brink of the gleaming river. The boats 
 plied to and fro with their freights of fair damsels and 
 gayly-dressed youths, the many-colored lamps throw 
 ing a rainbow profusion of tints on the water, and 
 many a voice addressed him with merry invitation, for 
 Le-pih s beauty, so famous now in history, was of no 
 forbiddujg stateliness, and his motions, like his coun- 
 were as frankly joyous as the gambols of a 
 
 young leopard. Nol inclined to boisterous gayety at 
 
 the moment, Le-pih stepped between the lamp-boaring 
 
 trees of the avenue, and folding his arms in his silken 
 
 vest, stood gazing in revery on the dancing waters. 
 
 After a few moments, one of the dark boats on which 
 
 he had unconsciously fixed his gaze drew silently 
 
 toward him, and as the cushioned stern was brought 
 
 j round to the bank, the boatman made a reverence to 
 
 | his knees and sat waiting the poet s pleasure. 
 
 Like all men born to good fortune, Le-pih was 
 
 prompt to follow the first beckoningsof adventure, and 
 
 asking no questions, he quietly embarked, and with a 
 
 quick dip of the oars the boat shot from the shore and 
 
 II took the descending current. Almost in the next in- 
 
 || slant she neared again to the curving and willow-fringed 
 
 i margin of the stream, and lights glimmered through 
 
 the branches, and sweet, low music became audible, 
 
 and by rapid degrees, a scene burst on his eye, which 
 
 j i the first glimpse into the gate of paradise (a subsequent 
 
 I agreeable surprise, let us presume) could scarcely have 
 | exceeded. 
 
 Without an exchange of a syllable between the 
 ! boatman and his freight, the stern was set against a 
 carpeted stair at the edge of the river, and Le-pih dis- 
 ; embarked with a bound, and stood upon a spacious 
 j area Iving in a lap of the hill, the entire surface carpeted 
 j smoothly with Persian stuffs, and dotted here and there 
 j with striped tents piched with jx)les of silver. Gar- 
 j lands of flowers hung in festoons against the brilliant- 
 ; colored cloths, and in the centre of each lent stood a 
 | low tablet surrounded with couches and laden with 
 
 II meats and wine. The guests, for whom this portion 
 of the entertainment w;is provided, were apparently 
 assembled at a spot farther on, from which proceeded 
 the delicious music heard by the poet in approaching; 
 and, first entering one of the abandoned tents for a 
 goblet of wine, Le-pih followed to the scene of attrac 
 tion. 
 
 Under a canopy of gold cloth held by six bearers, 
 stood the imperial chair upon a raised platform not 
 occupied, however, the august Tang reclining more at 
 his ease, a little out of the circle, upon cushions 
 canopied by the moonlight. Around upon the steps 
 j of the platform and near by, were grouped the noble 
 j ladies of the court and the roy;il princesses (Tang 
 living much in the female apartments and his daugh 
 ters numbering several score), and all, at the moment 
 j of Le-pih s joining the assemblage, turning to observe 
 a damsel with a lute, to whose performance the low 
 sweet music of the band had been a prelude. The 
 first touch of the strings betrayed a trembling hand, 
 and the poet s sympathies were stirred, though from 
 her bent posture and her distant position he had not 
 yet seen the features of the player. As the tremulous 
 notes grew firmer, and the lute began to give out a 
 flowing harmony, Le-pih approached, and at the same 
 time, the listening groups of ladies began to whisper 
 and move away, and of those who remained, none 
 seemed to listen with pleasure except Kwonfootse and 
 the emperor. The latter, indeed, rivalled the intruding 
 bard in his interest, rolling over upon the cushions 
 and resting on the other imperial elbow in close at 
 tention. 
 
 Gaining confidence evidently from the neglect of 
 her auditory, or, as is natuial to women, less afraid of 
 the judgment of the other sex, who were her only 
 listeners, the fair Taya (the youngest daughter of 
 Kwonfootse), now joined her voice to her instrument, 
 and sang with a sweetness that dropped like a plum 
 met to the soul of Le-pih. He fell to his knee upon 
 a heap of cushions and leaned eagerly forward. As 
 she became afterward one of his most passionate 
 themes, we are enabled to reconjure the features that 
 were presented to his admiring wonder. The envy 
 of the princesses was sufficient proof that Taya was of 
 rare beauty ; she had that wonderful perfection of 
 
158 
 
 THE POET AND THE MANDARIN. 
 
 feature to which envy pays its bitterest tribute, which 
 is apologized for if not found in the poet s ideal, which 
 we thirst after in pictures and marble, of which loveli 
 ness and expression are but lesser degrees fainter 
 shadowings. She was adorably beautiful. The outer 
 corners of her long almond-shaped eyes, the dipping 
 crescent of her forehead, the pencil of her eyebrow 
 and the indented corners of her mouth all these 
 turned downward ; and this peculiarity which, in faces 
 of a less elevated character, indicates a temper morose 
 and repulsive, in Taya s expressed the very soul of 
 gentle and lofty melancholy. There was something 
 infantine about her mouth, the teeth were so small 
 and regular, and their dazzling whiteness, shining be 
 tween lips of the brilliant color of a cherry freshly 
 torn apart, was in startling contrast with the dark 
 lustre of her eyes. Le-pih s poetry makes constant 
 allusion to those small and snowy teeth, and the turn 
 ed-down corners of the lips and eyes of his incompar 
 able mistress. 
 
 Taya s song was a fragment of that celebrated 
 Chinese romance from which Moore has borrowed so 
 largely in his loves of the angels, and it chanced to 
 be particularly appropriate to her deserted position 
 (she was alone now with her three listeners), dwelling as 
 it did upon the loneliness of a disguised Peri, wander 
 ing in exile upon earth. The lute fell from her hands 
 when she ceased, and while the emperor applauded, 
 and Kwonfootse looked on her with paternal pride, 
 Le-pih modestly advanced to the fallen instrument, 
 and with a low obeisance to the emperor and a hesita 
 ting apology to Taya, struck a prelude in the same 
 air, and broke forth into an impulsive expression of 
 his feelings in verse. It would be quite impossible to 
 give a translation of this famous effusion with its 
 oriental load of imagery, but in modifying it to the 
 spirit ofour language (giving little more than its thread 
 of thought), the reader may see glimpses of (he ma 
 terial from which the great Irish lyrist spun his woof 
 of sweet fable. Fixing his keen eyes upon the bright 
 lips just closed, Le-pih sang : 
 
 " When first from heaven s immortal throngs 
 
 The earth-doomed angels downward came, 
 And mourning their enraptured songs, 
 
 Walked sadly in our mortal frame ; 
 To those, whose lyres of loftier string 
 
 Had taught the myriad lips of heaven, 
 The song that they for ever sing, 
 
 A wondrous lyre, tis said, was given. 
 And go, the seraph warder said, 
 
 As from the diamond gates they flew, 
 And wake the songs ye here have led 
 In earthly numbers, pure and new ! 
 And yours shall be the hallowed power 
 
 To win the lost to heaven again, 
 And when earth s clouds shall darkest lower 
 
 Your lyre shall breathe its holiest strain ! 
 Yet, chastened by this inward fire, 
 
 Your lot shall be to walk alone, 
 Save when, perchance, with echoing lyre, 
 
 You touch a spirit like your own ; 
 And whatsoe er the guise your wear, 
 
 To him, tis given to know you there. " 
 
 The song over, Le-pih sat with his hands folded 
 across the instrument and his eyes cast down, and 
 Taya gazed on him with wondering looks, yet slowly, 
 and as if unconsciously, she took from her breast a 
 rose, and with a half-stolen glance at her father, threw 
 it upon the lute. But frowningly Kwonfootse rose 
 from his seat and approached the poet. 
 
 " Who are you?" he demanded angrily, as the bard 
 placed the rose reverently in his bosom. 
 
 Le-pih!" 
 
 With another obeisance to the emperor, and a deeper 
 one to the fair Taya, he turned, after this concise an 
 swer, upon his heel, lifting his cap to his head, which, 
 to the rage of Kwonfootse, bore not even the gold ball 
 of aristocracy. 
 
 " Bind him for the bastinado !" cried the infuriated 
 mandarin to the bearers of the canopy. 
 
 The six soldiers dropped their poles to the ground, 
 but the emperor s voice arrested them. 
 
 " He shall have no violence but from you, fair 
 Taya," said the softened monarch ; " call to him by 
 the name he has just pronounced, for I would hear 
 that lute again !" 
 
 "Le-pih! Le-pih!" cried instantly the musical 
 voice of the fair girl. 
 
 Th poet turned and listened, incredulous of his 
 own ears. 
 
 " Le-pih! Le-pih!" she repeated, in a soft tone. 
 
 Half-hesitating, half-bounding, as if still scarce be 
 lieving he had heard aright, Le-pih flew to her feet, 
 and dropped to one knee upon the cushion before her, 
 his breast heaving and his eyes flashing with eager 
 | wonder. Taya s courage was at an end, and she sat 
 | with her eyes upon the ground. 
 
 " Give him the Jute, Kwonfootse !" said the em 
 peror, swinging himself on the raised chair with an 
 i abandonment of the imperial avoirdupois, which set 
 | ringing violently the hundred bells suspended in the 
 ! golden fringes. 
 
 " Let not the crow venture again into the nest of 
 the eagle," muttered the mandarin between his teeth 
 as he handed the instrument to the poet. 
 
 The sound of the bells brought in the women and 
 courtiers from every quarter of the privileged area, 
 and, preluding upon the strings to gather his scattered 
 senses, while they were seating themselves around 
 him, Le-pih at last fixed his gaze upon the lips of 
 Taya, and commenced his song to an irregular harmo 
 ny well adapted to extempore verse. We have tried 
 | in vain to put this celebrated song of compliment into 
 English stanzas. It commenced with a description 
 of Taya s beauty, and an enumeration of things she 
 resembled, dwelling most upon the blue lily, which 
 seems to have been Le-pih s favorite flower. The 
 burthen of the conclusion, however, is the new value 
 everything assumed in her presence. "Of the light 
 in this garden," he says, "there is one beam worth all 
 the glory of the moon, for it sleeps on the eye of Taya. 
 Of the air about me there is one breath which my soul 
 drinks like wine it is from the lips of Taya. Taya 
 looks on a flower, and that flower seems to me, with 
 its pure eye, to gaze after her for ever. Taya s jacket 
 of blue silk is my passion. If angels visit me in my 
 dreams, let them be dressed like Taya. I love the 
 broken spangle in her slipper better than the first star 
 of evening. Bring me, till I die, inner leaves from 
 the water-lily, since white and fragrant like them are 
 the teeth of Taya. Call me, should I sleep, when 
 rises the crescent moon, for the blue sky in its bend 
 curves like the drooped eye of Taya," &c., &c. 
 
 " By the immortal Fo !" cried the emperor, raising 
 himself bolt upright in his chair, as the poet ceased, 
 "you shall be the bard of Tang ! Those are my sen 
 timents better expressed ! The lute, in your hands, 
 is my heart turned inside out ! Lend me your gold 
 chain, Kwonfootse, and, Taya! come hither and put 
 it on his neck !" 
 
 Taya glided to the emperor, but Le-pih rose to his 
 feet, with a slight flush on his forehead, and stood 
 erect and motionless. 
 
 " Let it please your imperial majesty," he said, 
 after a moment s pause, " to bestow upon me some 
 gift less binding than a chain." 
 
 "CarbuncleofBudha! What would theyoutJi have!" 
 exclaimed Tang in astonishment. " Is not the gold 
 chain of a mandarin good enough for his acceptance ?" 
 
 "My poor song," replied Le-pih, modestly casting 
 down his eyes, " is sufficiently repaid by your majesty s 
 praises. The chain of the mandarin would gall the 
 neck of the poet. Yet if I might have a" reward 
 more valuable " 
 
THE POET AND THE MANDARIN. 
 
 159 
 
 " In Fo s name what is it ?" said the embarrassed | 
 emperor. 
 
 Kwonfootse laid his hand on his cimeter, and his 
 daughter blushed and trembled. 
 
 "The broken spangle on the slipper of Taya !" said 
 Le-pih, turning half indifferently away. 
 
 Loud laughed the ladies of the court, and Kwon 
 footse walked from the bard with a look of contempt, 
 but the emperor read more truly the proud and deli 
 cate spirit tiiat dictated the reply ; and in that moment 
 probably commenced the friendship with which, to the 
 end of his peaceful reign, Tang distinguished the most 
 gifted poet of his time. 
 
 The lovely daughter of the mandarin was not behind 
 the emperor in her interpretation of the character of 
 Le-pih, and as she stepped forward to put the detach 
 ed spangle into his hand, she bent on him a look full 
 of earnest curiosity and admiration. 
 
 "What others give me," he murmured in a low 
 voice, pressing the worthless trifle to his lips, " makes 
 me their slave; but what Taya gives me is a link that 
 draws her to my bosom." 
 
 Kwonfootse probably thought that Le-pih s audi 
 ence had lasted long enough, for at this moment the 
 sky seemed bursting into flame with a sudden tumult 
 of fireworks, and in the confusion that immediately 
 succeeded, the poet made his way unquestioned to 
 the bank of the river, and was reconveyed to the spot 
 of his first embarkation, in the same silent mariner with 
 which he had approached the privileged area. 
 
 During the following month, Le-pih seemed much 
 in request at the imperial palace, but, to the surprise 
 of his friends, the keeping of " worshipful society" 
 was not followed by any change in his merry manners, 
 nor apparently by any improvement in his worldly 
 condition. His mother still sold mats in the public 
 market, and Le-pili still rode, every few days, to the 
 marsh, for his panniers of rushes, and to all comers, 
 among his old acquaintances, his lute and song were 
 as ready and gratuitous as ever. 
 
 All this time, however, the fairTaya was consuming 
 with a passionate melancholy which made startling 
 ravages in her health, and the proud mandarin, whose 
 affection for his children was equal to his pride, in vain 
 shut his eyes to the cause, and eat up his heart with 
 mortification. When thefull moon came round again, j 
 reminding him of the scenes the last moon had shone ;; 
 upon, Kwonfootse seemed suddenly lightened of his 
 care, and his superb gardens on the Pei-ho were sud 
 denly alive with preparations for another festival. Kept 
 in close confinement, poor Taya fed on her sorrow, 
 indifferent to the rumors of marriage which could 
 concern only her sisters; and the other demoiselles 
 Kwonfootse tried in vain, with fluttering hearts, to pry 
 into their father s secret. A marriage it certainly was 
 to be, for the lanterns were painted of the color of 
 peach-blossoms but whose marriage ? , 
 
 It was an intoxicating summer s morning, and the 
 sun was busy calling the dew back to heaven, and the 
 birds wild with entreating it to stay (so Le-pih de 
 scribes it), when down the narrow street in which the 
 poet s mother piled her vocation, there came a gay J 
 procession of mounted servants with a led horse richly 
 caparisoned, in the centre. The one who rode before 
 held on his pommel a velvet cushion, and upon it lay ! 
 the cap of a noble, with its gold ball shining in the sun. 
 Out flew the neighbors as the clattering hoofs came . 
 on, and roused by the cries and the barking of dogs, 
 forth came the mother of Le-pih, followed by the 
 poet himself, but leading his horse by the bridle, for i 
 he had just thrown on his panniers, and was bound 
 out of the city to cut his bundle of rushes. The poet 
 gazed on the pageant with the amused curiosity of j 
 others, wondering what it could mean, abroad at so j 
 early an hour; but, holding back his sorry beast to 
 let the prancing horsemen have all the room they re- 
 
 quired, he was startled by a reverential salute from 
 the bearer of the velvet cushion, who, drawing up his 
 followers in front of the poet s house, dismounted and 
 requested to speak with him in private. 
 
 Tying his horse to the door-post, Le-pih led the 
 way into the small room, where sat his mother braid 
 ing her mats to a cheerful song of her son s making, 
 and here the messenger informed the bard, with much 
 circumstance and ceremony, that in consequence of 
 the pressing suit of Kwonfootse, the emperor had been 
 pleased to grant to the gifted Le-pih, the rank ex 
 pressed by the cap borne upon the velvet cushion, and 
 that as a noble of the celestial empire, he was now a 
 match for the incomparable Taya. Futhermore the 
 condescending Kwonfootse had secretly arranged the 
 ceremonial for the bridal, and Le-pih was commanded 
 to mount the led horse and come up with his cap and 
 gold ball to be made forthwith supremely happy. 
 
 An indefinable expression stole over the features of 
 the poet as he took up the cap, and placing it on his 
 head, stood gayly before his mother. The old dame 
 looked at him a moment, and the tears started to her 
 eves. Instantly Le-pih plucked it off and flung it on 
 the waste heap at her side, throwing himself on his 
 knees before her in the same breath, and begging her 
 forgiveness for his silly jest. 
 
 "Take back your bauble to Kwonfootse!" he said, 
 rising proudly to his feet, "and tell him that the em 
 peror, to whom I know how to excuse myself, can 
 easily make a poet into a noble, but he can not make 
 a noble into a poet. The male bird does not borrow 
 its brighter plumage from its mate, and she who mar 
 ries Le-pih will braid rushes for his mother!" 
 
 Astonished, indeed, were the neighbors, who had 
 learned the errand of the messenger from his attendants 
 without, to see the crest fallen man come fortli again 
 with his cap and cushion. Astonished much more 
 were they, ere the gay cavalcade were well out of sight, 
 to see Le-pih appear with his merry countenance and 
 plebeian cap, and. mounting his old horse, trot briskly 
 away, sickle in hand, to the marshes. The day passed 
 in wondering and gossip, interrupted by the entrance 
 of one person to the house while the old dame was 
 gone with her mats to the market, but she returned 
 duly before sunset, and went in as usual to prepare 
 supper for her son. 
 
 The last beams of day were on the tops of the 
 pagodas when Le-pih returned, walking beside his 
 heavy-laden beast, arid singing a merry song. He 
 threw off his rushes at the door and entered, but his 
 song was abruptly checked, for a female sat on a low 
 seat Ity his mother, stooping over a half-braided mat, 
 and the next moment, the blushing Taya lifted up her 
 brimming eyes and gazed at him with silent but plead 
 ing love. 
 
 Now, at last, the proud merriment and self respect 
 ing confidence of Le-pih were overcome. His eyes 
 grew flushed and his lips trembled without utterance. 
 With both his hands pressed on his beating heart, he 
 stood ga/.ing on the lovely Taya. 
 
 "Ah!" cried the old dame, who sat with folded 
 hands and smiling face, looking on at a scene she did 
 not -quite understand, though it gave her pleasure, 
 " Ah ! this is a wife for my boy, sent from heaven ! 
 No haughty mandarin s daughtershe! no proud minx, 
 to fall in love with the son and despise the mother! 
 Let them keep their smari^caps and gift-horses for 
 those who can be bought at such prices ! My son is 
 a noble by the gift of his Maker better than an em 
 peror s gold ball ! Come to your supper, Le-pih ! 
 Come, my sweet daughter !" 
 
 Taya placed her finger on her lip, and Le-pih 
 agreed that the moment was not yet come to enlighten 
 ; his mother as to the quality of her guest. She was 
 , not long in ignorance, however, for before they could 
 ; seat themselves at table, there was a loud knocking at 
 
160 
 
 MEENA DIMITY. 
 
 the door, and before the old dame could bless herself, 
 an officer entered and arrested the daughter of K \von- 
 footse by name, and Lc-pih and his mother at ihe 
 same time, and there was no dismissing the messenger 
 now. Off they inarched, amid the silent consterna- 
 tion and pity of the neighbors not toward the palace 
 of justice, however, but to the palace of the emperor, 
 where his majesty, to save all chances of mistake, 
 chose to see the poet wedded, and sit, himself, at the 
 bridal feast. Tang had a romantic heart, fat and 
 voluptuous as he was, and the end of his favor to Le- 
 pih and Taya was the end of his life. 
 
 MEENA DIMITY ; 
 
 OR, WHY MR. BROWN CRASH TOOK THE TOUR, 
 
 FASHION is arbitrary, we all know. \Vhat it was 
 that originally gave Sassafras street the right to de 
 spise Pepperidge street, the oldest inhabitant of the 
 village of Slimford could not positively say. The 
 courthouse and jail were in Sassafras street ; but the 
 orthodox church and female seminary were in Pep 
 peridge street. Two directors of the Slimford bank 
 lived in Sassafras street two in Pepperidge street. 
 The Dyaper family lived in Sassafras street the 
 Dimity family in Pepperidge street ; and the fathers 
 of the Dyaper girls and the Dimity girls were worth 
 about the same money, and had both made it in the 
 lumber line. There was no difference to speak of in 
 their respective mode of Jiving none in the educa 
 tion of the girls none in the family gravestones or 
 church-pews. Yet, deny it who liked, ihe Dyapers 
 were the aristocracy of Slimford. 
 
 It may be a prejudice, but I am inclined to think 
 there is always something in a nose. (I am about to 
 mention a trifle, but trifles are the beginning of most 
 things, and I would account for the pride paramount 
 of the Dyapers, if it is any way possible.) The most 
 stylish of the Miss Dyapers Harriet Dyaper had a 
 nose like his grace the Duke of Wellington. Nei 
 ther her father nor mother had such a feature; but 
 there was a foreign umbrella in the family with ex 
 actly the same shaped nose on the ivory handle. Old 
 Dyaper had once kept a tavern, and he had taken this 
 umbrella from a stranger for a night s lodging. But 
 that is neither here nor there. To the nose of Har 
 riet Dyaper, resistlessly and instinctively, the Dimity 
 girls had knocked under at school. There was au 
 thority in it ; for the American eagle had such a nose, 
 and ihe Duke of Wellington had such a nose; and 
 when, to these two warlike instances, was added the 
 nose of Harriet Dyaper, the tripod stood firm. Am 
 I visionary in believing that the authority introduced 
 into that village by a foreigner s umbrella (so unac 
 countable is fate) gave the dynasty to the Dyapers? 
 
 I have mentioned but two families one in each of 
 the two principal streets of Slimford. Having a little 
 story to tell, I can not afford to distract my narrative 
 with unnecessary "asides;" and I must not only 
 omit all description of the other Sassafrasers and 
 Pepperidgers, but I must leave to your imagination 
 several Miss Dyapers and several Miss Dimitys Har 
 riet Dyaper and Meena Dimity being the two exclu 
 sive objects of my hero s Sunday and evening atten 
 tions. 
 
 For eleven months in the year, the loves of the 
 ladies of Slimford were presided over by indigenous 
 Cupids. Brown Crash and the other boys of the vil 
 lage had the Dyapers and the Dimitys for that respect 
 ive period to themselves. The remaining month, 
 when their sun of favor was eclipsed, was during the 
 
 falling of the leaf, when the "drummers" came up to 
 dun. The townish clerks of the dry goods merchants 
 were too much for the provincials. Brown Cru.Mi 
 knocked under and sulked, owing, as he said, to the 
 melancholy depression accompanying the tall of* the 
 deciduous vegetation. But I have not yet introduced 
 you to my hero. 
 
 Brown Crash was the Slimford stage-agent. He 
 was the son of a retired watch-maker, and had been 
 laughed at in his boyhood for what they called his 
 "airs." He loved, even as a lad, to be at the tavern 
 when the stage came in, and help out the ladies. 
 With instinctive leisureliness he pulled off his cap 
 as soon after the "whoa-hup" as was necessary (and 
 no sooner), and asked the ladies if they would "alight 
 and take dinner," with a seductive smile which began, 
 as the landlord said, " to pay." Hence his promotion. 
 At sixteen he was nominated stage-agent, and thence 
 forward was the most conspicuous man in the village; 
 for " man" he was, if speech and gait go for any 
 thing. 
 
 But we must minister a moment to the reader s 
 inner sense ; for we do not write altogether for Slim- 
 ford comprehension. Brown Crash had something 
 in his composition "above the vulgar." If men s 
 qualities were mixed like salads, and I were giving a 
 recipe for Brown Crashes," in Mrs. Glass s style, 1 
 hould say his two principal ingredients were a dic 
 tionary and a dunghill cock for his language was as 
 ornate as his style of ambulation was deliberate 
 and imposing. What Brown Crash would have been, 
 born Right Honorable, I leave (with the smaller Dy- 
 pers and Dimitys) to the reader s fancy. My object 
 is to show what he was, minus patrician nurture and 
 valuation. Words, with Brown Crash, were suscep 
 tible of being dirtied by use. He liked a clean tow 
 el he preferred an unused phrase. But here stopped 
 his peculiarities. Below the epidermis he was like 
 other men, subject to like tastes and passions. And 
 if he expressed his loves and hates with grandiloquent 
 imagery, they were the honest loves and hates of a 
 week-day world no finer nor flimsier for their be 
 decked plumage. 
 
 To use his own phrase, Brown frequented but two 
 ladies in Slimford Miss Harriet Dyaper and Miss 
 Meena Dimity. The first we have described in 
 describing her nose, for her remainder was compara 
 tively inconsiderable. The latter was "a Jove," and 
 of course had nothing peculiar about her. She was 
 a lamp nothing till lighted. She was a mantle 
 nothing, except as worn by the owner. She was a 
 mirror blank and unconscious till something came 
 to be reflected. She was anything, loved unloved, 
 nothing! And this (it is our opinion after half a 
 life) is the most delicious and adorable variety of 
 woman that has been spared to us from the museum 
 of specimen angels. (A remark of Brown Crash s, 
 by the way, of which he may as well have the credit.) 
 
 Now Mr. Crash had an ambitious weakness for the 
 best society, and he liked to appear intimate with the 
 Dyapers. But in Meena Dimity there was a secret 
 charm which made him wish she was an ever-to-be- 
 handed-out lady-stage-passenger. He could have 
 given her a hand, and brought in her umbrella and 
 bandbox, all day Jong. In his hours of pride he 
 thought of the Dyapers in his hours of affection of 
 Meena Dimity. But the Dyapers looked down upon 
 the Dimitys; and to play his card delicately between 
 Harriet and Meena, took all the diplomacy of Brown 
 Crash. The unconscious Meena would walk up 
 Sassafras street when she had his arm, and the scorn 
 ful Harriet would be there with her nose over the 
 front gate to sneer at them. He managed as well as 
 he could. He went on light evenings to the Dya 
 pers on dark evenings to the Dimitys. He took 
 town-walks with the Dyapers country-walks with 
 
MEENA DIMITY. 
 
 161 
 
 the Dimitys. But his acquaintance with the Djapers 
 hung by the eyelids. Harriet liked him : for he WRS 
 the only beau in Slimford whose manners were not 
 belittled beside her nose. But her acquaintance with 
 him was a condescension, and he well knew that he 
 could not "hold her by the nose" if she were offend 
 ed. Oh no ! Though their respective progenitors 
 were of no very unequal rank though a horologist 
 and a " boss lumberman" might abstractly be equals 
 the Dyapers had the power! Yes they could lift 
 him to themselves, or dash him down to the Dimitys; 
 and all Slimford would agree in the latter case that 
 he was a "slab" and a "small potato !" 
 
 But a change came o er the spirit of Brown Crash s 
 dream ! The drummers were lording it in Slimford, 
 and Brown, reduced to Meena Dimity (for he was too 
 proud to play second fiddle to a town dandy), was 
 walking with her on a dark night past the Dyapers. 
 The Dyapers were hanging over the gate unluckily, 
 and their Pearl-street admirers sitting on the top rail 
 of the fence. 
 
 " Who is it ?" said a strange voice. 
 
 The reply, sent upward from a scornfully pro 
 jecting under lip, rebounded in echoes from the tense 
 nose of Miss Dyaper. 
 
 "A Mr. Crash, and a girl from the back street !" 
 
 It was enough. A hot spot on his cheek, a warm | 
 rim round his eyes, a pimply pricking in his skin, I 
 and it was all over ! His vow was made. He coldly j 
 bid Meena good night at her father s door, and went | 
 home and counted his money. And from that hour, 
 without regard to sex, he secretly accepted shillings 
 from gratified travellers, and "stood treat" no more. 
 
 Saratoga was crowded with the dispersed nuclei of 
 the metropolises. Fashion, wealth, and beauty, were 
 there. Brown Crash was there, on his return from a 
 tour to Niagara and the lakes. 
 
 44 Brown Crash, Esq.," was one of the notabilities 
 of Congress Hall. Here and there a dandy " could 
 not quite make him out;" but there was evidently 
 something uncommon about him. The ladies thought II 
 him "of the old school of politeness," and the pol- j * 
 iticians thought he had the air of one used to influ 
 ence in his county. His language was certainly very 
 choice and peculiar, and his gait was conscious dig 
 nity itself. He must have been carefully educated ; 
 yet his manners were popular, and he was particularly 
 courteous on a first introduction. The elegance and 
 ease with which he helped the ladies out of their 
 carriages were particularly remarked, and a shrewd 
 observer said of him, that " that point of high breed 
 ing was only acquired by daily habit. He must have 
 been brought up where" there were carriages and la 
 dies." A member of congress, who expected to run 
 for governor, inquired his county, and took wine 
 with him. His name was mentioned by the letter- 
 writers from the springs. Brown Crash was in his 
 perihelion ! 
 
 The season leaned to its close, and the following ! 
 paragraph appeared in the New York American : 
 
 " Fashionable Intelligence. The company at the 
 Springs is breaking up. We understand that the 
 Vice-President and Brown Crash, Esq., have already 
 left for their respective residences. The latter gen 
 tleman, it is understood, has formed a matrimonial 
 engagement with a family of wealth and distinction 
 from the south. We trust that these interesting 
 bonds, binding together the leading families of the 
 far-divided extremities of our country, may tend to 
 
 Meena Dimity. " If that was the effect of fashion 
 and distinction on the heart, Mr. Crash was welcome 
 to his honors! Let him marry Miss Dyaper, and 
 they wished him much joy of her nose; but they 
 would never believe that he had not ruthlessly broken 
 the heart of Meena Dimity, and he ought to be 
 ashamed of himself, if there was any shame in such 
 a dandy." 
 
 But the milliners, though powerful people in their 
 way, could little affect the momentum of Brown 
 Crash s glories. The paragraph from the "Ameri 
 can" had been copied into the " Slimford Advertiser," 
 and the eyes of Sassafras street and Pepperidge street 
 were alike opened. They had undervalued their in 
 digenous "prophet." They had misinterpreted and 
 misread the stamp of his superiority. He had been 
 obliged to go from them to be recognised. But he 
 was returned. He was there to have reparation 
 made justice done. And now, what office would he 
 like, from Assessor to Pathmaster, and would he be 
 good enough to name it before the next town-meet 
 ing. Brown Crash was king of Slimford! 
 
 And Harriet Dyaper! The scorn from her lip had 
 gone, like the blue from a radish! Notes for " B. 
 Crash, Esq., "showered from Sassafras street bouquets 
 from old Dyaper s front yard glided to him, per black 
 boy no end to the endearing attentions, undisguised 
 and unequivocal. Brown Crash and Harriet Dyaper 
 were engaged, if having the front parlor entirely given 
 up to them of an evening meant anything if his 
 being expected every night to tea meant anything 
 if his devoted (though she thought rather cold) at 
 tentions meant anything. . ; 
 They did n t mean anything ! They all did n t 
 mean anything ! What does the orthodox minister 
 do, the third Sunday after Brown Crash s return, but 
 read the banns of matrimony between that faithless 
 man and Meena Dimity ! 
 
 But this was not to be endured. Harriet Dyaper 
 had a cousin who was a " strapper." He was boss of 
 a sawmill in the next county, aud he must be sent for. 
 
 He was sent for. 
 
 strengthen the tenacity of the great American Union !" 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 It was not surprising that the class in Slimford who 
 
 knew everything the milliners, to-wit moralized 
 
 somewhat bitterly on Mr. Crash s devotion to the 
 
 Dyapers after his return, and his consequent slight to 
 
 The fisht was over. Boss Dyaper had undertaken 
 to flog Brown Crash, but it was a drawn battle for 
 the combatants had been pulled apart by their coat- 
 tails. They stepped into the barroom and stood re 
 covering their breath. The people of Slimford 
 crowded in, and wanted to have the matter talked 
 over. Boss Dyaper bolted out his grievance. 
 
 "Gentlemen!" said Brown Crash, with one of his 
 irresistible come-to-dinner smiles, " I am culpable, 
 perhaps, in the minutiae of this business justifiable, 
 I trust you will say, in the general scope and tendency. 
 You, all of you, probably, had mothers, and some of 
 you have wives and sisters; and your silver cord 
 naturally sympathizes with a worsted woman. But, 
 gentlemen, you are republicans! You, all of you, 
 are the rulers of a country very large indeed ; and 
 you are not limited in your views to one woman, nor 
 to a thousand women to one mile, nor to a thousand 
 miles." You generalize! you go for magnificent prin 
 ciples, gentlemen ! You scorn high-and-mightiuess, 
 and supercilious aristocracy !" 
 
 "Hurra for Mr. Crash!" cried a stagedriver from 
 the outside. 
 
 44 Well, gentleman ! In what I have done, I have 
 deserved well of a republican country! True it has 
 been my misfortune to roll my Juggernaut of prin 
 ciple over the sensibilities of that gentleman s re- 
 
 spectable female relative. But, gentlemen, she of 
 fended, remedilessly and grossly, one of the sovereign 
 people ! She scorned one of earth s fairest daughters, 
 who lives in a back street ! Gentlemen, you know 
 that pride tripped up Lucifer ! Shall a tiptop angel fall 
 for it, and a young woman who is nothing particular 
 
162 
 
 THE POWER OF AN "INJURED LOOK/ 
 
 be left scornfully standing? Shall Miss Dyaper have 
 more privileges than Lucifer ? I appreciate your in 
 dignant negative ! 
 
 "But, gentlemen, I am free to confess, I had also 
 my republican private end. You know my early his 
 tory. You have witnessed my struggles to be respect 
 ed by my honorable contemporaries. If it be my 
 weakness to be sensitive to the finger of scorn, be it 
 so. You will know how to pardon me. But I will 
 be brief. At a particular crisis of my acquaintance 
 with Miss Dyaper, I found it expedient to transfer my 
 untrammelled tendernesses to Pcpperidge street. My 
 heart had long been in Pepperidge street. But, 
 gentlemen, to have done it without removing from 
 before my eyes the contumelious finger of the scorn 
 of Sassafras street, was beyond my capabilities of en 
 durance. Injustice to my present future, gentle 
 men, I felt that I must remove sour grapes from my 
 escutcheon that I must soar to a point, whence, 
 swooping proudly to Meena Dimity, I should pass 
 the Dyapers in descending ! 
 
 (Cheers and murmurs.) 
 
 "Gentlemen and friends! This world is all a fleet 
 ing show. The bell has rung, and 1 keep you from 
 your suppers. Briefly. I found the means to travel 
 and test the ring of my metal among unprejudiced 
 strangers. I wished to achieve distinction and return 
 to my birthplace ; but for what ? Do me justice, 
 gentlemen. Not to lord it in Sassafras street. Not 
 to carry off a Dyaper with triumphant elation! 
 Not to pounce on your aristocratic No. 1, and 
 link my destiny with the disdainful Dyapers! No! 
 But to choose where I liked, and have the credit 
 of liking it ! To have Slimford believe that if I 
 pre. erred their No. 2, it was because I liked it bet 
 ter than No. 1. Gentlemen, I am a republican! 1 
 may find my congenial spirit among the wealthy I 
 may find it among the humble. But I want the lib 
 erty to choose. And I have achieved it, I trust you 
 will permit me to say. Having been honored by the 
 dignitaries of a metropolis having consorted with a 
 candidate for gubernatorial distinction having been 
 recorded in a public journal as a companion of the 
 Vice-President of this free and happy country you 
 will believe me when I declare that I prefer Pepper 
 idge street to Sassafras you will credit my sincerity, 
 when, having been approved by the Dyapers betters, 
 I give them the go-by for the Dimitys ! Gentlemen, 
 I have done." 
 
 The reader will not be surprised to learn that Mr. 
 Brown Crash is now a prominent member of the 
 legislature, and an excessive aristocrat Pepperidge 
 street and very democratic speeches to the contrary 
 notwithstanding. 
 
 THE POWER OF AN "INJURED LOOK, 1 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 I HAD a sort of candle-light acquaintance with Mr. 
 Philip McRueit when we were in college. I mean to 
 say that I had a daylight repugnance to him, and never 
 walked with him, or talked with him, or rode with 
 him, or sat with him; and, indeed, seldom saw him 
 expect as one of a club oyster-party of six. He was 
 a short, sharp, satirical man (nicknamed " my cruet" 
 by his cronies rather descriptively !) but as plausible 
 and as vindictive as Mephistopheles before and after 
 the ruin of a soul. In some other state of existence 
 
 I had probably known and suffered by Phil. McRueit 
 for I knew him like the sleeve of an old coat, the 
 first day I laid eyes on him ; though other people 
 seemed to have no such instinct. Oh, we were not 
 new acquaintances from whatever star he had been 
 transported, for his sins, to this planet of dirt. I think 
 he was of the same opinion, himself. He chose be 
 tween open warfare and conciliation in the first five 
 minutes after seeing me as a stranger chose the 
 latter. 
 
 Six or seven years after leaving college, I was fol 
 lowing my candle up to bed rather musingly, one night 
 at the Astor, and on turning a corner, I was obliged to 
 walk round a short gentleman who stood at the head 
 of the stairs in an attitude of fixed contemplation. As 
 1 weathered the top of his hat rather closely, I caught 
 the direction of his eye, and saw that he was regard 
 ing, very fixedly, a pair of rather dusty kid slippers, 
 which had been set outside the door, probably for 
 cleaning, by the occupant of the chamber opposite. 
 As the gentleman did not move, I turned on the half 
 landing of the next flight of stairs, and looked back, 
 breaking in, by my sudden pause, upon his fit of ab 
 straction. It was McRueit. and on recognising me, 
 he immediately beckoned me to his side. 
 
 "Does it strike you," said he, " that there is any 
 thing peculiar in that pair of shoes ?" 
 
 " No except that they certify to two very small 
 feet on the other side of the door." 
 
 "Not merely small, my dear fellow! Do you 
 see where the pressure has been in those slender shoes, 
 how straight the inside line, how arched the instep, 
 how confidingly flat the pressure downward of the 
 little great toe ! It s a woman of sweet and relying 
 character who wore that shoe to-day, and I must know 
 her. More, sir, I must marry her ! Ah, you laugh 
 but I will ! There s a magnetism in that pair of 
 shoes addressed to me only. Beg your pardon good 
 night I ll go down stairs and find out her number 
 74! I ll be well acquainted with 74 by this time 
 to-morrow !" 
 
 For the unconscious young lady asleep in that room, 
 I lay awake half the night, troubled with foreboding 
 pity. I knew the man so well, I was so certain that 
 he would leave nothing possible undone to carry out 
 this whimsical purpose! 1 knew that from that mo 
 ment was levelled, point-blank, at the lady, whoever 
 she might be (if single) a battery of devilish and per 
 tinacious ingenuity, which would carry most any 
 small fort of a heart, most any way barricaded and 
 defended. He was well off; he was well-looking 
 enough; he was deep and crafty. But if he did win 
 her, she was gone! gone, I knew, from happiness, 
 like a stone from a sling. Hs was a tyrant subtle 
 in his cruelties to all people dependant on him and 
 her life would be one of refined torture, neglect, be 
 trayal, and tears. 
 
 A fit of intermittent disgust for strangers, to which 
 all persons living in hotels are more or less liable, 
 confined my travels, for some days after this rencontre, 
 to the silence-and-slop thorough-fare of the back 
 stairs, " Coming to rny feed" of society one rainy 
 morning, I went into the drawing-room after breakfast, 
 and was not surprised to see McRueit in a posture of 
 absorbed attention beside a lady. His stick stood on 
 the floor, and with his left cheek rested on the gold 
 head, he was gazing into her face, and evidently keep 
 ing her perfectly at her ease as to the wants and gaps 
 of conversation, as he knew how to do for he was the 
 readiest man with his brick and mortar whom I ever 
 had encountered. 
 
 " Who is that lady?" Tasked of an omni-acquainted 
 old bachelor friend of mine. 
 
 " Miss Jonthee Twitt and what can be the secret 
 of that rather exclusive gentleman s attention to her, 
 1 can not fancy." 
 
THE POWER OF AN "INJURED LOOK. 
 
 163 
 
 I pulled a newspaper from my pocket, and seating M carried on the war strenuously. Perfectly certain as I 
 
 myself in one of the deep windows, commenced rather 
 a compassionate study of MissTwitt intending fully, 
 if I should find her interesting, to save her from the 
 clutches of my detestable classmate. 
 
 She was a slight, hollow-chested, consumptive- 
 looking girl, with a cast of features that any casual 
 observer would be certain to describe as "interesting." 
 With the first two minutes gaze upon her, my sym 
 pathies were active enough for a crusade against a 
 whole army of connubial tyrants. I suddenly paused, 
 however. Something McRueit said made a change 
 
 was that " the whirligig of time" would " bring about 
 the revenges" of Mrs. McRueit, I began to feel a 
 meantime pity for her, and had myself presented duly 
 by McRueil the next morning after breakfast. 
 
 It was a tepid, flaccid, revery-colored August morn 
 ing, and the sole thought of the universe seemed to 
 be to sit down. The devotees to gayety and mineral 
 water dawdled out to the porticoes, and some sat on 
 chairs under the trees, and the dandies lay on the 
 grass, and the old ladies on the steps and the settees, 
 and here and there, a man on the balustrade, and, in 
 
 in the lady s countenance. She sat just as still ; she !j the large swing, vis-d-vis, sat McRueit and the widow 
 
 did not move her head from its negligent posture; her I Wanmaker, chattering in an undertone quite inaudi- 
 
 eyebrows did not contract; her lips did not stir; but 
 
 the dull, sickly-colored lids descended calmly and 
 
 fixedly till they hid from sight the upper edges of the 
 
 pupils! and by this slight but infallible sign I knew 
 
 but the story will tell what I knew. Napoleon was 
 
 nearly, but not quite right, when he said that there 
 
 was no reliance to be placed on peculiarities of feature 
 
 or expression. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Ix August of that same year, I followed the world 
 to Saratoga. In my first reconnoitre of the drawing- 
 room of Congress Hall, I caught the eye of Mr. Mc 
 Rueit, and received from him a cordial salutation. 
 As I put my head right, upon its pivot, after an easy ! 
 nod to my familiar aversion, my eyes fell upon Miss j 
 Jonfhee Twitt that was for I had seen, in the 
 newspapers of two months before, that the resolve 
 (born of the dusty slipper outside her door), had been 
 brought about, and she was now on the irrevocable 
 side of a honeymoon sixty days old. 
 
 Her ei/elid was down upon the pupil motionless, 
 concentrated, and vigilant as a couched panther and 
 from beneath the hem of her dress curved out the 
 high arched instep of a foot pointed with desperate I 
 tension to the carpet ; the little great toe (whose rely- j 
 ing pressure on the soiled slipper Mr. McRueit had 
 been captivated by), now rigid with as strong a pur 
 pose as spiritual homeopathy could concentrate in so j 
 small a tenement. 
 
 ble. Mrs. McRueit sat on a bench, with her back 
 against one of the high-shouldered pine trees in the 
 court-yard, and I had called McRueit. out of his swing 
 to present me. But he returned immediately to the 
 widow. 
 
 I thought it would be alleviative and good-natured 
 to give Mrs. McRueit an insight to the harmlessness 
 of Mrs. Wanmaker, and I had done so very nearly to 
 my satisfaction, when I discovered that the slighted 
 wife did not care sixpence about the fact, and that, 
 unlike Hamlet, she only knew seems. The more I 
 developed the innocent object of the widow s outlay 
 of smiles and confidentialities, the more Mrs. McRueit 
 placed herself in a posture to be remarked by the 
 loungers in the court-yard and the dawdlers on the 
 portico, and the more she deepened a certain look 
 j you must imagine it for the present, dear reader. It 
 j would take a razor s edge of analysis, and a Flemish 
 | paint-pot and patience, to carve that injured look into 
 language, or paint it truthfully to the eye ! Juries 
 would hang husbands, and recording angels "ruthless 
 ly overcharge," upon the unsupported evidence of 
 such a look. She looked as if her heart must have 
 suffocated with forbearance long before she began to 
 look so. She looked as if she had forgiven and wept, 
 and was ready to forgive and weep again. She looked 
 as if she would give her life if she could conceal "her 
 feelings," and as if she was nerving soul, and heart, 
 and eyelids, and lachrymatory glands all to agony 
 to prevent bursting into tears with her unutterable 
 anguish ! It was the most unresisting, unresentful, 
 patient, sweet miserableness! A lamb s willingness 
 to "furnish forth another meal" of chops and sweet- 
 
 I thought I would make Mr. and |j bread, was testy to such meek endurance ! She was 
 
 Mrs. McRueit the subject of quiet study while I re 
 mained at Saratoga. 
 
 But I have not mentioned the immediate cause of 
 Mrs. McRueit s resentment. Her bridegroom was 
 walking up and down the room with a certain Mrs. 
 Wanmaker, a widow, who was a better woman than 
 she looked to be, as I chanced to know, but as nobody 
 could know without the intimate acquaintance with 
 Mrs. Wanmaker upon which I base this temark. 
 With beauty of the most voluptuous cast, and a 
 passion for admiration which induced her to throw 
 out every possible lure to men any way worth her 
 time as victims, Mrs. Wanmaker s blood was as 
 " cold as the flow of Iser," and her propriety, in fact, 
 wholly impregnable. I had been myself "tried on" 
 by the widow Wanmaker, and twenty caravan-marches 
 might have been made across the Desert of Sahara, 
 while the conviction I have just stated was " getting 
 through my hair." It was not wonderful, therefore, 
 that both the bride and her (usually) most penetratious 
 bridegroom, had sailed over the widow s shallows, un 
 conscious of soundings. She was a "deep" woman, 
 too but in the love line. 
 
 I thought McRueit singularly off his guard, if it 
 were only for " appearances." He monopolized the 
 widow effectually, and she thought it worth her while 
 to let the world think him (a bridegroom and a rising 
 young politician), mad for her, and, truth to s;y, they 
 
 evidently a martyr, a victim, a crushed flower, a " poor 
 thing !" But she did, now and then unseen by any 
 body but me give a glance from that truncated orb 
 of a pupil of hers, over the top of her handkerchief, 
 that, if incarnated, would have made a hole in the hide 
 of a rhinoceros ! It was triumph, venom, implacabili 
 ty such as I had never before seen expressed in hu 
 man glances. 
 
 There are many persons with but one idea, and that 
 a good one. Mrs. McRueit, I presume, was inca 
 pable of appreciating my interest in her. At any rate 
 she played the same game with me as with other 
 people, and managed her affairs altogether with per 
 fect. unity. It was in vain that I endeavored to hear 
 from her tongue what I read in the lowering pupil of 
 her eye. She spoke of McRueit with evident re 
 luctance, but always with discretion never blaming 
 him, nor leaving any opening that should betray re 
 sentment, or turn the current of sympathy from her 
 self. The result was immediate. The women in the 
 house began to look black upon McRueit. The men 
 "sent him to Coventry" more unwillingly, for he was 
 amusing and popular but "to Coventry" he went! 
 And at last the widow Wanmaker became aware that 
 she was wasting her time on a man whose attentions 
 were not wanted elsewhere and she (the unkindest 
 cut of all) found reasons for looking another way when 
 he approached her. He had became aware, during 
 
164 
 
 THE POWER OF AN "INJURED LOOK." 
 
 this process, what was " in the wind," but he knew 
 too much to stay in the public eye when it was in 
 flamed. With his brows lowering, and his face 
 gloomy with feelings I could easily interpret, he took 
 the early coach on the third morning after my intro 
 duction to Mrs. McRueit, and departed, probably for 
 a discipline trip, to some place where sympathy with 
 his wife would be less dangerous. 
 
 CHAPTER IH. 
 
 I THINK, that within the next two or three years, I 
 heard McRueit s name mentioned several times, or 
 saw it in the papers, connected with strong political 
 movements. I had no very definite idea of where he 
 was residing, however. Business called me to a 
 western county, and on the road I fell into the com 
 pany of a great political schemer and partisan one 
 of those joints (of the feline political body), the next 
 remove from the " cat s paw." Finding that I cared 
 not a straw for politics, and that we were going to the 
 same town, he undertook the blandishment of an over 
 flow of confidence upon me, probably with the remote 
 possibility that he might have occasion to use me. I 
 gave in to it so far as courteously to receive all his 
 secrets, and we arrived at our destination excellent 
 friends. 
 
 The town was in a ferment with the coming election 
 of a member for the legislature, and the hotel being 
 very crowded, Mr. Develin (rny fellow-traveller) and 
 myself were put into a double-bedded room. Busy 
 with my own affairs, I saw but little of him, and he 
 seemed quite too much occupied for conversation, till 
 the third night after our arrival. Lying in bed wiih 
 the moonlight streaming into the room, he began to 
 give me some account of the campaign, preparing for, 
 around us, and presently mentioned the name of 
 McRueit (the name, by the way, that I had seen 
 upon the placards, without caring particularly to in 
 quire whether or not it was " mine ancient" aversion). 
 
 " They are not aware," snid Mr. Develin, after 
 talking on the subject awhile, " that this petty election, 
 is, in fact, the grain of sand that is to turn the presi 
 dential scale. If McRueit should be elected (as I 
 am sorry to say there seems every chance he will be), 
 Van Buren s doom is sealed. I have come a little 
 too late here. I should have had time to know some 
 thing more of this man McRueit " 
 
 " Perhaps I can give you some idea of him," inter 
 rupted I, " for he has chanced to be more in my way 
 than I would have bargained for. But what do you 
 wish to know particularly?" (I spoke, as the reader 
 will see, in the unsuspecting innocence of my heart.) 
 
 "Oh anything anything ! Tell me all you know 
 of him !" 
 
 Mr. Develin s vividness rather surprised me, for he 
 raised himself on his elbow in bed but I went on and 
 narrated very much what I have put down for the 
 reader in the two preceding chapters. 
 
 "How do you spell Mrs. Wanmaker s name?" 
 asked my imbedded vis-d-vis, as I stopped and turned 
 over to go to sleep. 
 
 I spelt it for him. 
 
 He jumped out of bed, dressed himself and left the 
 room. Will the reader permit me to follow him, like 
 Asmodeus, giving with Asmodean brevity the knowl 
 edge I afterward gained of his use of my involuntary 
 revelation ? 
 
 Mr. Develin roused the active member of the Van 
 Buren committee from his slumber, and in an hour 
 had the printers of their party paper at work upon a 
 placard. A large meeting was to be held the next 
 
 day in the town-hall, during which both candidate*, it 
 was supposed, would address the people. Ladies 
 were to occupy the galleries. The hour came round. 
 Mrs. McRueit s carriage drove into the village a few 
 minutes before eleven, and as she stopped at a shop 
 for a moment, a letter was handed her by a boy. She 
 sat still and read it. She was alone. Her face turned 
 livid with paleness after its first flush, and forgetting 
 her errand at the shop, she drove on to the town-hall. 
 She took her seat in a prominent part of the gallery. 
 The preliminaries were gone through with, and her 
 husband rose to speak. He was a plausible orator, 
 an eloquent man. But there was a sentiment circula 
 ting in the audience something whispered from man 
 to man that strangely took off the attention of the 
 audience. He could not, as he had never before found 
 difficulty in doing, keep their eyes upon his lips. 
 Every one was gazing on his wife ! And there she 
 sat with her INJURED LOOK ! pale, sad, apparently 
 striving to listen and conceal her mental suffering. It 
 was as convincing to the audience of the truth of the 
 j insinuation that was passing from mouth to mouth 
 as convincing as would have been a revelation from 
 Heaven. McRueit followed the many upturned eyes 
 at last, and saw that they were bent on his wife, and 
 that once more after years of conciliation, she wore 
 THAT INJURED LOOK ! His heart failed him. He 
 evidently comprehended that the spirit that had driven 
 him from Saratoga, years before popular sympathy 
 with women had overtaken him and was plotting 
 against him once more. His speech began to lose 
 its concentration. He talked wide. The increasing 
 noise overpowered him, and he descended at last from 
 the platform in the midst of a universal hiss. The 
 other candidate rose and spoke; and at the close of 
 his speech the meeting broke up, and as they dis 
 persed, their eyes were met at every corner with a 
 large placard, in which injured wife." kl unfaithful 
 husband," "widow W n k r," were the words in 
 prominent capitals. The election came on the next 
 day, and Mr. McRueit being signally defeated, Mr. 
 Van Buren s election to the Presidency (if Mr. Develin 
 knew anything) was made certain brought about by 
 a woman s INJURED LOOK. 
 
 My business in the county was the purchase of land, 
 and for a year or two afterward, I was a great deal 
 there. Feeling that I had unintentionally furnished 
 a weapon to his enemies, I did penance by cultivating 
 McRueit. I went often to his house: He was at 
 first a good deal broken up by the sudden check to 
 his ambition, but he rallied with a change in his 
 character for which I was not prepared. He gave up 
 all antagonism toward his wife. He assumed a new 
 manner to her. She had been skilfully managed be 
 fore but he took her now confidingly behind his 
 shield. He felt overmastered by the key she had to 
 popular sympathy, and he determined wisely to make 
 it turn in his favor. By assiduity, by tenderness, 
 childlikeness, he succeeded in completely convincing 
 her that he had but one out-of-doors wish that of 
 embellishing her existence by his success. The effort 
 on her was marvellous. She recovered her health, 
 gradually changed to a joyous and earnest promoter 
 of her husband s interests, and they were soon a mark 
 ed model in the county for conjugal devotion. The 
 popular impression soon gained ground that Mr. Mc 
 Rueit had been shamefully wronged by the previous 
 prejudice against his character as a husband. The 
 tide that had already turned, soon swelled to a flood, 
 and Mr. McRueit now but Mr. McRueit is too power 
 ful a person in the present government to follow any 
 farther. Suffice it to say that he might return to Mrs. 
 Wanmaker and his old courses if he liked for his 
 wife s INJURED LOOK is entirely fattened out of possi 
 bility by her happiness. She weighs two hundred, and 
 could no more look injured than Sir John Falstaff. 
 
BEWARE OF DOGS AND WALTZING. 
 
 165 
 
 BEWARE OF DOGS AND WALTZING, 
 
 THE birds that flew over County Surrey on the 
 twelfth of June, 1835, looked down upon a scene of 
 which many a "lord of creation," travelling only by 
 the roads, might well have envied them the seeing. 
 For, ever so merry let it be within the lordly parks of 
 England, the trees that look over the ring fence upon 
 the world without, keep their countenance aristocrats 
 that they are! Round and round Beckton Park you 
 might have travelled that sunny day, and often within 
 arrow-shot of its hidden and fairy lawn, and never 
 suspected, but by the magnetic tremor in your veins, 
 that beautiful women were dancing near by, and " mar 
 vellous proper men," more or less enamored, looking 
 on every pink and blue girdle a noose for a heart, 
 of course, and every gay waistcoat a victim venturing 
 near the trap (though this last is mentioned entirely 
 on my own responsibility). 
 
 But what have we to do with the unhappy exiles 
 without this pretty paradise ! You are an invited 
 guest, dear reader. Pray walk in ! 
 
 Did you ask about the Becktons? The Becktons 
 are people blessed with money and a very charming 
 acquaintance. That is enough to know about them. 
 Yet stay ! Sir Thomas was knighted for his behavior 
 at some great crisis in India (for he made his fortune 
 in India) and Lady Beckton is no great beauty, but 
 she has the mania of getting handsome people together, 
 and making them happier than belongs properly to 
 handsome people s destiny. And this, I think, must 
 suffice for a first introduction. 
 
 The lawn, as you see, has the long portico of the 
 house on one side of it, a bend of the river on two 
 other sides, and a thick shrubbery on the fourth. 
 The dancing-floor is in the centre, inlaid at the level 
 of the smooth sward, and it is just now vibrating to 
 the measured step of the mazurka beautifully danced, 
 we must say ! 
 
 And now let me point out to you the persons most 
 concerned in this gossip of mine. 
 
 First, the ladies. 
 
 Miss Blakeney (and she was never called anything 
 but Miss Blakeney never Kate, or Kitty, or Kathleen, j 
 I mean, though her name was Catherine) Miss ! 
 Blakeney is that very stylish, very striking, very \ 
 magnificent girl, I think I may say, with the white 
 chip hat and black feather. Nobody but Miss Blake 
 ney could venture to wear just the dress she is sport- j 
 ing, but she must dash, though she is in half-mourn 
 ing, and, faith! there is nothing out of keeping, artisti 
 cally speaking, after all. A white dress embroidered 
 with black flowers, dazzling white shoulders turned 
 over with black lace, white neck and forehead (brilliant 
 ly white), waved over and kissed by luxuriant black j 
 ringlets (brilliantly black). And very white temples i 
 with very black eyes, and very white eyelids with long i 
 black lashes, and, since those dazzling white teeth 
 were without a contrast, there hung upon her neck a [ 
 black cross of ebony and now we have pul her in 
 black and white, where she will " stay put." Scripta 
 verba inanent, saith the cautionary proverb. 
 
 Here and there, you observe, there is a small Per- ! 
 sian carpet spread on I he sward for those who like to \ 
 lounge and look at the dancers, and though a score of ! 
 people, at least, are availing themselves of this oriental 
 luxury, no one looks so modestly pretty, half-couched 
 on the richly-colored woof, as that simply dressed ; 
 blonde, with a straw hat in her lap, and her light 
 auburn curls taking their saucy will of her blue-veined 
 neck and shoulders. That lady s plain name is Mabel 
 Brown, and, like yourself, many persons have wished 
 to change it for her. She is half-married, indeed, to 
 several persons here present, for there is one consenting 
 party. Mais rautre ne veut pas, as a French novelist 
 
 laments, it stating a similar dilemma. Meantime, Miss 
 Brown is the adopted sister of the black and white Miss 
 Blakeney. 
 
 One more exercise of my function of cicerone ! 
 
 Lying upon the bank of the river, with his shoulder 
 
 against that fine oak, and apparently deeply absorbed 
 
 in the fate of the acorn-cups which he throws into the 
 
 current, you may survey the elegant person of Mr. 
 
 Lindsay Maud a gentleman whom I wish you to take 
 
 for rather more than his outer seeming, since he will 
 
 show you at the first turn of his head, that he cares 
 
 nothing for your opinion, though entitled, as the 
 
 diplomatists phrase it, to your "high consideration." 
 
 ! | Mr. Maud is twenty-five, more or less six feet, or 
 
 ! thereabouts. He has the sanguineous tint, rather 
 
 odd for so phlegmatic a person as he seems. His 
 
 ! nose is un petit pcu retrousse, his lips full, and his 
 
 ; smile easy and ready. His eyes are like the surface 
 
 : I of a very deep well. Curling brown hair, broad and 
 
 calm forehead, merry chin with a dimple in it, and 
 
 mouth expressive of great good humor, and quite 
 
 enough of fastidiousness. If this is not your beau 
 
 ideal, I am very sorry but experience went to show 
 
 that Lindsay Maud was a very agreeable man, and 
 
 pleased generally where he undertook it. 
 
 And now, if you please, having done the honors, I 
 will take up the story en simple conteur. 
 
 The sky was beginning to blush about the sun s 
 going to bed, and the dancers and archers were pair 
 ing off, couple by couple, to stroll and cool in the dim 
 shrubberies of Beckton Park. It was an hour to 
 breakfast, so called, for breakfast was to be served in 
 the darker edge of the twilight. With the afore-" 
 named oak-tree between him and the gay company, 
 Mr. Lindsay Maud beguiled his hunger (for hungry 
 he was), by reading a volume of that very clever novel, 
 " Le Pere Goriot," and, chapter by chapter, he 
 " cocked up his ear," as the story-books say, hoping 
 to hear the cheerful bell of the tower announce the 
 serving of the soup and champagne. 
 
 "Well, Sir Knight Faineant !" said Lady Beckton, 
 stepping in suddenly between his feet and the river 
 brink, " since when have you turned woman-hater, 
 and enrolled among the unavailables ? Here have you 
 lain all day in the shade, with scores of nice girls 
 dancing on the other side of your hermit tree, nnd not 
 a sign of life not a look even to see whether my 
 party, got up with so much pains, flourished or lan 
 guished! I ll cross you out of my little book, recreant!" 
 Maud was by this time on his feet, and he penitent 
 ly and respectfully kissed the fingers threateningly 
 held up to him for the unpardonable sin in a single 
 man is to appear unamused, let alone failing to amuse 
 others at a party sworn to be agreeable. 
 
 " 1 have but half an apology," he said, " that of 
 knowing that your parties go swimmingly off, whether 
 I pull an oar or no ; but I deserve not the less to be 
 crossed out of your book. Something ails me. lam 
 growing old, or my curiosity has burnt out, or I am 
 touched with some fatal lethargy. Upon my word 1 
 would as lief listen to a Latin sermon as chat for the 
 next half hour with the prettiest girl at Beckton ! 
 There s no inducement, my dear Lady Beckton ! 
 I m not a marrying man, you know, and flirtation 
 flirtation is such tiresome repetition endless reading 
 of prefaces, and never coming to the agreeable first 
 chapter. But I ll obey orders. Which is the destitute 
 woman ? You shall see how I will redeem my dam 
 aged reputation !" 
 
 But Lady Beckton, who seldom refused an offer 
 from a beau to make himself useful at her parties, 
 seemed hardly to listen to Maud s justification. She 
 placed her arm in his, and led him across the bfidge 
 which spanned the river a little above, and they were 
 presently out of hearing in one of the cool and shaded 
 avenues of the park. 
 
166 
 
 BEWARE OF DOGS AND WALTZING. 
 
 "A penny for your thought!" said Maud, after 
 walking at her side a few minutes in silence. 
 
 " It is a thought, certainly, in which pennies are 
 concerned," replied Lady Beckton, " and that is why 
 I find any trouble in giving expression to it. It is 
 difficult enough to talk with gentlemen about love, but 
 that is easy to talking about money." 
 
 "Yet they make a pretty tandem, money on the 
 lead !" 
 
 "Oh! are you there ?" exclaimed Lady Beckton, 
 with a laugh ; " I was beginning too far back, al 
 together ! My dear Lindsay, see how much better I 
 thought of you than you deserved ! I was turning 
 over in my mind with great trepidation and embarrass 
 ment how I should venture to talk to you about a money - 
 and-Iove match!" 
 
 " Indeed ! for what happy man ?" 
 
 " Toi metne, mon ami!" 
 
 " Heavens! you quite take away my breath! Spare 
 yourself the overture, my dear Lady Beckton ! I 
 agree ! I am quite ready sold from this hour if you 
 can produce a purchaser, and possession giveti im 
 mediately !" 
 
 "Now you go too fast; for I have not time to banter, 
 and I wish to see my way in earnest before 1 leave you. 
 Listen to me. I xvas talking you over with Beckton 
 this morning. I ll not trouble you with the discus 
 sion it would make you vain, perhaps. But we ar 
 rived at this : Miss Blakeney would be a very good 
 match for you, and if you are inclined to make a dem 
 onstration that way, why, we will do what we can to 
 make it plain sailing. Stay with us a week, for in 
 stance, and we will keep the Blakeneys. It s a sweet 
 month for pairing, and you are an expeditious love- 
 maker, I know. Is it agreed ?" 
 
 " You are quite serious!" 
 
 " Quite!" 
 
 " I ll go back with you to the bridge, kindest of 
 friends, and return and ramble here till the bell rings, 
 by myself. I ll find you at table, by-and-by, and ex 
 press my gratitude at least. Will that be time enough 
 for an answer ?" 
 
 "Yes but no ceremony with me! Stay and 
 ponder where you are ! Au rewir . I must see after 
 my breakfast !" 
 
 And away tripped the kind-hearted Lady Beckton. 
 
 Maud resumed his walk. He was rather taken 
 aback. He knew Miss Blakeney but as a waltzing 
 partner, yet that should be but little matter ; for he 
 had long ago made up his mind that, if he did not 
 marry rich, he could not marry at all. 
 
 Maud was poor that is to say, he had all that an 
 angel would suppose necessary in this hungry and cold 
 world assurance of food and clothing in other words, 
 three hundred a year. He had had his unripe time 
 like other youths, in which he was ready to marry for 
 love and no money ; but his timid advances at that 
 soft period had not been responsibly met by his first 
 course of sweethearts, and he had congratulated him 
 self and put a price on his heart accordingly. Mean 
 time, he thought, the world is a very entertaining 
 place, and the belonging to nobody in particular, has 
 its little advantages. 
 
 And very gayly sped on the second epoch of Mr. 
 Lindsay Maud s history. He lived in a country where, 
 to shine in a profession, requires the " audace, patience 
 et volontc dc quoi renverser le mondc," and having turn 
 ed his ambition well about, like a strange coin that 
 might perhaps have passed current in other times, he 
 laid it away with romance and chivalry, and other 
 things suited only to the cabinets of the curious. He 
 was well born. He was well bred. He was a fair 
 candidate for the honors of a "gay man about town" 
 that untaxed exempt that gues t by privilege that 
 irresponsible denizen of high life, possessed of every 
 luxury on earth except matrimony and the pleasures 
 
 ] of payment. And, for a year or two, this was very 
 
 delightful. He had a half dozen of those charming 
 
 female friendships which, like other ephemera in this 
 
 changing world, must die or turn into something else 
 
 at the close of a season, and, if this makes the feelings 
 
 very hard, it makes the manners very soft ; and Maud 
 
 was content with the compensation. If he felt, now 
 
 j and then, that he was idling life away, he looked about 
 
 j him and found countenance at least ; for all his friends 
 
 j were as idle, and there was an analogy to his condi- 
 
 jj tion in nature (if need were to find one), for the but- 
 
 ! terfly had his destiny like the bee. and was neither 
 
 pitied nor reproached that he was not a honey-rnaker. 
 
 But Maud was now in a third lustrum of his exist- 
 
 I ence, and it was tinted somewhat differently from the 
 
 rose-colored epochs precedent. The twilight of 
 
 satisfied curiosity had fallen imperceptibly around 
 
 . him. The inner veils of society had one by one lifted, 
 
 and there could be nothing new for his eye in the 
 
 i world to which he belonged. 
 
 A gay party, which was once to him as full of un- 
 
 attru ned objects as the festal mysteries of Eleusinia to 
 
 i a rustic worshipper of Ceres, was now as readable at 
 
 a glance as the stripes of a backgammon-board. He 
 
 j knew every man s pretensions and chances, every wo- 
 
 man s expectations and defences. Not a damsel whose 
 
 J defects he had not discovered, whose mind he had not 
 
 sounded, whosedowry he did not know. Not a beauty, 
 
 i married or single, whose nightly game in society he 
 
 i could not perfectly foretell; not an affection unoccupied 
 
 ] of which he could not put you down the cost of en- 
 
 ji gaging it in your favor, the chances of constancy, the 
 
 M dangers of following or abandoning. He had no stake 
 
 j I in society, meantime, yet society itself was all his 
 
 j world. He had no ambitions to further by its aid. 
 
 And until now, he had looked on matrimony as a 
 
 closed door for he had neither property, nor profes- 
 
 \ sion likely to secure it, and circumstances like these, 
 
 in the rank in which he moved, are comprehended 
 
 I among the " any impediments." To have his own 
 
 way, Maud would have accepted no invitations except 
 
 to dine with the beaux esprits, and he would have con- 
 
 ! centrated the remainder of his leisure and attentions 
 
 j upon one agreeable woman (at a time) two selfish- 
 
 nesses very attractive to a blase, but not permitted to 
 
 [ any member of society short of a duke or a Croesus. 
 
 And now, with a new leaf turning over in his dull 
 | book of life a morning of a new day breaking on 
 I his increasing night Lindsay Maud tightly screwed 
 ; his arms across his breast, and paced the darkening 
 avenue of Beckton Park. The difference between 
 i figuring as a fortune-hunter, and having a fortune 
 i hunted for him by others, he perfectly understood. 
 I In old and aristocratic societies, where wealth is at 
 j the same time so much more coveted and so much 
 more difficult to win, the eyes of " envy, malice, and 
 all uncharitableness," are alike an omnipresent argus, 
 j in their watch over the avenues to its acquisition. No 
 i step, the slightest, the least suspicious, is ever taken 
 I toward the hand of an heiress, or the attainment of 
 I an inheritance, without awakening and counter-work 
 ing of these busy monsters; and, fora society-man, 
 better to be a gambler or seducer, better to have all 
 the fashionable vices ticketed on his name, than to 
 stand qfficlied as a fortune-hunter. If to have a for 
 tune cleverly put within reach by a powerful friend, 
 however, be a proportionate beatitude, blessed was 
 Maud. So thought he, at least, as the merry bell of 
 Beckton tower sent its summons through the woods, 
 | and his revery gave place to thoughts of something 
 more substantial. 
 
 And thus far, oh adorable reader ! (for I see what 
 
 unfathomable eyes are looking over my shoulder) thus 
 
 far, like an artist making a sketch, of which one part 
 
 j is to be finished, I have dwelt a little on the touches 
 
 I of my pencil. But, by those same unfathomable eyes 
 
BEWARE OF DOGS AND WALTZING. 
 
 167 
 
 I know (for in those depths dwell imagination), that 
 if the remainder be done ever so lightly in outline, 
 even then there will be more than was needed for the 
 comprehension of the story. Thy ready and bound 
 less fancy, sweet lady, would supply it all. Given, 
 the characters and scene, what fair creature who has 
 loved, could fail to picture forth the sequel and its 
 more minute surroundings, with rapidity and truth 
 daguerreotypical? 
 
 Sketcliily, then, touch we the unfinished denouement 
 of our story. 
 
 The long saloon was already in glittering progress 
 wken Maud entered. The servants in their blue and 
 white liveries were gliding rapidly about with the ter 
 restrial nutriment for eyes celestial to-wit, wines and 
 oysters. 
 
 Half blinded with the glare of the numberless 
 lights, he stood a moment at the door. 
 
 " Lady Beckton s compliments, and she has re 
 served a seat for you!" said a footman approaching 
 him. 
 
 He glanced at the head of the table. The vacant 
 chair was near Lady Beckton and opposite Miss Blake- 
 ney. " Is a vis-a-vis better for love-making than a 
 seat at the lady s ear ?" thought Maud. But Lady 
 
 better grace, however, coming from simple Miss 
 Blakeney. From the future Mrs. Lindsay Maud, he 
 could have wished those pretty inveiglements very 
 much reduced and modified. 
 
 At his side, the while, sweet Mabel Brown carried 
 
 on with him a conversation, which to the high tone 
 
 i of merriment opposite, was like the intermitted mur- 
 
 I mur of a brook heard in the pauses of merry instru- 
 
 j ments. At the same time that nothing brilliant or 
 
 gay seemed to escape her notice, she toned her own 
 
 j voice and flow of thought so winningly below the ex- 
 
 I citernent around her, that Maud, who was sensible of 
 
 every indication of superiority, could not but pay her 
 
 i a silent tribute of admiration. " If this were but the 
 
 I heiress !" he ejaculated inwardly. But Mabel Brown 
 
 I was a dependant. 
 
 Coffee was served. 
 
 The door at the end of the long saloon was sud 
 denly thrown open, and as every eye turned to gaze 
 into the blazing ballroom, a march with the full power 
 of the band burst upon the ear. 
 
 The diplomatist who had been sitting at the side 
 of Miss Blakeney was a German, and a waltzer comme 
 il y en a peu. At the bidding of Lady Beckton, he 
 put his arm around the waist of the heiress, and bore 
 
 Beckton s tactics were to spare his ear and dazzle his her away to the delicious music of Strauss, and, by 
 eye, without reference especially to the corresponding jj general consent, the entire floor was loft to this pair 
 impressions on the eyes and ear of the lady. And jj for a dozen circles. Miss Blakeney was passionately 
 she had the secondary object of avoiding any betrayal |, fond of waltzing, and built for it, like a Baltimore 
 
 of her designs till they were too far matured to be de 
 feated by publicity. 
 
 " Can you tell me, Mr. Maud," said the sweet 
 voice of Mabel Brown as he drew his chair to the 
 table, "what is the secret of Lady Beckton s putting 
 you next me so pertinaciously ?" 
 
 "A greater regard for my happiness than yours, 
 
 B-obably," said Maud; "but why pertinaciously? 
 as there been a skirmish for this particular chair?" 
 " No skirmish, but three attempts at seizure by 
 three of my admirers." 
 
 If they admire you more than I, they are fitter 
 
 clipper for running close to the wind. If she had a 
 fault that her friends were afraid to jog her memory 
 about, it was the wearing her dresses a flounce too 
 short. Her feet and ankles were Fenella s own, while 
 [ her figure and breezy motion would have stolen En- 
 dymion from Diana. She waltzed too well for a 
 lady all but well enough for a premiere danseuse de 
 Vopera. Lady Beckton was a shrewd woman, but 
 she made a mistake in crying " encore /" when this 
 single couple stopped from their admired pas de deux. 
 She thought Maud was just the man to be captivated 
 by that display. But the future Mrs. Lindsay Maud 
 
 companions for a telc-a-tete than a crowded party,"] must not have ankles for general admiration. Oh, no ! 
 said Maud. " I am as near a lover as I can be, and j Maud wished to efface the feeling this exhibition 
 
 had caused by sharing in the excitement. 
 
 " Miss Brown," hue said, as two or three couples 
 went off, "permit me the happiness of one turn! 1 
 and, scarce waiting for an answer, he raised his arm 
 to encircle her waist. 
 
 Mabel took his hands, and playfully laid them 
 across each other on his own breast in an attitude of 
 resignation. 
 
 "I never waltz," she said. "But don t think me 
 a prude! I don t consider it wrong in those who 
 think it right." 
 
 "But with this music tugging at your heels!" said 
 Maud, who did not care to express how much he ad 
 mired the delicacy of her distinction. 
 
 "Ah, with a husband or a brother, I should think 
 one could scarce resist bounding away; but I can 
 not " 
 
 " Can not what ? can not take me for either?" in 
 terrupted Maud, with an air of affected malice that 
 covered a very strong desire to ask the question in 
 earnest. 
 
 _, _. She turned her eyes suddenly upon him with a rapid 
 
 dmit. With no intention of becoming respon- |! look of inquiry, and, slightly coloring, fixed her at- 
 for her manners, he would even have admired, ; tention silently on the waltzers. 
 
 Lady Beckton came, making her way through the 
 crowd. She touched Maud on the arm. 
 
 "Hold hook and line! is it not?" she said, in a 
 whisper. 
 
 After an instant s hesitation, Maud answered, 
 
 Yes !" but pages, often, would not suffice to ex- 
 j press all that passes through the mind in "an instant s 
 hesitation." All Lindsay Maud s prospects and cir 
 cumstances were reviewed in that moment ; all his 
 
 be agreeable !" 
 
 To this Maud expected the gay retort due to a bag 
 atelle of gallantry ; but the pretty Mabel was silent. 
 The soup disappeared and the entremets were served. 
 Maud was hungry, and lie had sent a cutlet and a 
 glass of Johnnnisberg to the clamorous quarter be 
 fore he ventured to look toward his hostess. 
 
 He felt her eye upon him. A covert smile stole 
 through her lips as they exchanged glances. 
 
 "Yes ?" she asked, with a meaning look. 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 And in that dialogue of two monosyllables Lady 
 Beckton presumed that the hand and five thousand a 
 year of Miss Catherine Blakeney, were virtually made 
 over to Mr. Lindsay Maud. And her diplomacy 
 made play to that end without farther deliberation. 
 
 Very unconscious indeed that she was under the 
 eye of the man who had entered into a conspiracy to 
 become her husband, Miss Blakeney sat between a 
 guardsman and a diplomatist, carrying on the war in 
 her usual trenchant and triumphant fashion. She 
 looked exceedingly handsome that Maud could not 
 but admit, 
 sible 
 
 as he often had done, her skilful coquetries and adroit 
 displays of the beauty with which nature had en 
 dowed her. She succeeded, Maud thought, in giving 
 both of her admirers the apparent preference (appa 
 rent to themselves, that is to say), and considering her 
 vis-a-vis worth a chance shaft at least, she honored 
 that very attentive gentleman with such occasional 
 notice, as, under other circumstances, would have 
 been far from disagreeable. It might have worn a 
 
168 
 
 THE INLET OF PEACH-BLOSSOMS. 
 
 many steps by which he had arrived at the conclusion 
 that marriage with him must be a matter of convenance 
 merely ; all his put-down impulses and built-up reso 
 lutions ; all his regrets, consolations, and offsets; all 
 his better and worser feelings ; all his former loves 
 (and in that connexion, strangely enough, Mabel 
 Brown) ; all his schemes, in short, for smothering his 
 pain in the sacrifice of his heart, and making the 
 most of the gain to his pocket, passed before him iu 
 that half minute s review. But he said " Yes!" 
 
 The Blakeney carriage was dismissed that night, 
 with orders to bring certain dressing-maids and cer 
 tain sequents of that useful race, on the following 
 morning to Beckton Park, and the three persons who 
 composed the Blakeney party, an old aunt, Miss 
 Blakeney, and Mabel Brown, went quietly to bed un 
 der the hospitable roof of Lady Beckton. 
 
 How describe (and what need of it, indeed !) a week 
 at an English country-house, with all its age of 
 chances for loving and hating, its eternity of oppor 
 tunities for all that hearts can have to regulate in this 
 shorthand life of ours? Let us come at once to the 
 closing day of this visit. 
 
 Maud lay late abed on the day that the Blakeneys 
 were to leave Beckton Park. Fixed from morning 
 till night in the firm resolution at which he had ar 
 rived with so much trouble and self-control, he was 
 dreaming from night till morning of a felicity in 
 which Miss Blakeney had little share. He wished 
 the marriage could be all achieved in the signing of a 
 bond. He found that he had miscalculated his phi 
 losophy in supposing that he could venture to loose 
 thought and revery upon the long-forbidden subject 
 of marriage. In all the scenes eternally being con 
 jured up to his fancy scenes of domestic life the 
 bringing of Miss Blakeney into the picture was an 
 after effort. Mabel Brown stole into it, spite of him 
 self the sweetest and dearest feature of that enchant 
 ing picture, in its first warm coloring by the heart. 
 But, day by day, he took the place assigned him by 
 Lady Beckton at the side of Miss Blakeney, riding, 
 driving, dining, strolling, with reference to being near 
 her only, and still scarce an hour could pass in which, 
 spite of all effort to the contrary, he did not betray 
 his passionate interest in Mabel Brown. 
 
 He arose and breakfasted. Lady Beckton and the 
 young ladies were bonneted and ready for a stroll in 
 the park woods, and her ladyship came and whispered 
 in Maud s ear, as he leaned over his coffee, that he 
 must join them presently, and that she had prepared 
 Miss Blakeney for an interview with him, which she 
 would arrange as they rambled. 
 
 " Take no refusal !" were her parting words as she 
 stepped out upon the verandah. 
 
 Maud strolled leisurely toward the rendezvous in 
 dicated by Lady Beckton. He required all the time 
 he could get to confirm his resolutions and recover 
 his usual mainticn of repose. With his mind made 
 up at last, and a face in which few would have read 
 the heart in fetters beneath, he. jumped a wicker- 
 fence, and, by a cross path, brought the ladies in 
 view. They were walking separately, but as his foot 
 steps were heard, Lady Beckton slipped her arm into 
 Miss Brown s, and commenced apparently a very ear 
 nest undertone of conversation. Miss Blakeney 
 turned. Her face glowed with exercise, and Maud 
 confessed to himself that he rarely had seen so beau 
 tiful a woman. 
 
 "You are come in time, Mr. Maud," she said, "for 
 something is going on between my companions from 
 which I am excluded." 
 
 " En revanche, suppose we have our little exclusive 
 secret!" said Maud, offering his arm. 
 
 Miss Blakeney colored slightly, and consented to 
 obey the slight resistance of his arm by which they 
 fell behind. A silence of a few moments followed, 
 
 for if the proposed secret were a proposal of mar 
 riage, it had been too bluntly approached. Maud felt 
 that he must once more return to indifferent topics, 
 and lead on the delicate subject at his lips with more 
 tact and preparation. 
 
 They rose a slight elevation in the walk which over 
 looked the wilder confines of the park. A slight 
 smoke rose from a clump of trees, indicating an in 
 trusion of gipsies within, and the next instant, a deep- 
 mouthed bark rang out before them, and the two la 
 dies came rushing back in violent terror, assailed at 
 every step of their flight by a powerful and infuriated 
 mastiff. Maud ran forward immediately, and suc 
 ceeded in driving the dog back to the tents; but on his 
 return he found only the terrified Mabel, who, lean 
 ing against a tree, and partly recovered from her 
 breathless flight, was quietly awaiting him. 
 
 " Here is a change of partners as my heart would 
 have it!" thought Maud, as he drew her slight arm 
 within his own. "The transfer looks to me like the 
 interposition of my good angel, and I accept the 
 warning!" 
 
 And in words that needed no management to bring 
 them skilfully on with the eloquence of a heart re 
 leased from fetters all but intolerable, and from a 
 threatened slavery for life Lindsay Maud poured 
 out the fervent passion of his heart to Mabel Brown. 
 The crust of a selfish and artificial life broke up in 
 the tumult of that declaration, and he found himself 
 once more natural and true to the instincts and better 
 impulses of his character. He was met with the 
 trembling response that such pure love looks for 
 when it finds utterance, and without a thought of 
 worldly calculation, or a shadow of a scheme for their 
 means and manner of life, they exchanged promises 
 to which the subsequent ceremony of marriage was 
 but the formal seal. 
 
 And at the announcement of this termination to 
 her matrimonial schemes, Lady Beckton seemed 
 much more troubled than Miss Blakeney. 
 
 But Lady Beckton s disappointment was somewhat 
 modified when she discovered that Miss Blakeney had 
 long before secretly endowed her adopted sister Ma 
 bel with the half of her fortune. 
 
 THE INLET OF PEACH-BLOSSOMS, 
 
 THE Emperor. Yuentsoong, of the dynasty Chow, 
 was the most magnificent of the long-descended suc 
 cession of Chinese sovereigns. On his first accession 
 to the throne, his character was so little understood, 
 that a conspiracy was set on foot among the yellow- 
 caps, or eunuchs, to put out his eyes, and place upon 
 the throne the rebel Szema, in whose warlike hands, 
 they asserted, the empire would more properly main 
 tain its ancient glory. The gravity and reserve which 
 these myrmidons of the palace had construed into 
 stupidity and fear, soon assumed another complexion, 
 however. The eunuchs silently disappeared ; the 
 mandarins and princes whom they had seduced from 
 their allegiance, were made loyal subjects by a gen 
 erous pardon ; and in a few days after the period fixed 
 upon for the consummation of the plot, Yuentsoong 
 set forth in complete armor at the head of his troops 
 to give battle to the rebel in the mountains. 
 
 In Chinese annals this first enterprise of the youth 
 ful Yuentsoong is recorded with great pomp and par 
 ticularity. Szema was a Tartar prince of uncommon 
 ability, young like the emperor, and, during the few 
 last imbecile years of the old sovereign, he had gath 
 ered strength in his rebellion, till now he was at the 
 head of ninety thousand men, all soldiers of repute 
 
THE INLET OF PEACH-BLOSSOMS. 
 
 169 
 
 and tried valor. The historian has unfortunately 
 dimmed (he emperor s fame to European eyes, by at 
 tributing his wonderful achievements in this expe 
 dition to his superiority in arts of magic. As this ac 
 count of his exploits is only prefatory to our tale, we 
 will simply give the reader an idea of the style of the 
 historian, by translating literally a passage or two of 
 his description of the battle: 
 
 "Szema now took refuge within a cleft of the 
 mountain, and Yuentsoong, upon his swift steed, out 
 stripping the body-guard in his ardor, dashed amid 
 the paralyzed troops with poised spear, his eyes fixed 
 only on the rebel. There was a silence of an instant, 
 broken only by the rattling hoofs of the intruder, and 
 then, with dishevelled hair and waving sword, Szema 
 uttered a fearful imprecation. In a moment the wind 
 rushed, the air blackened, and with the suddenness of 
 a fallen rock, a large cloud enveloped the rebel, and 
 innumerable men and horses issued out of it. Wings 
 flapped against the eyes of the emperor s horse, hel 
 lish noises screamed in his ears, and, completely be 
 yond control, the animal turned and fled back through 
 the narrow pnss, bearing his imperial master safe into 
 the heart of his army. 
 
 "Yuentsoong, that night, commanded some of his 
 most expert soldiers lo scale the beetling heights of 
 the ravine, bearing upon their backs the blood of 
 swine, sheep, and dogs, with other impure things, and 
 these they were ordered to shower upon the combat 
 ants at the sound of the imperial clarion. On the fol 
 lowing morning, Szema came forth again to offer bat- j 
 tie, with flags displayed, drums beating, and shouts j 
 of triumph and defiance. As on the day previous, the j 
 bold emperor divided, in his impatience, rank after j 
 rank of his own soldiery, and, followed closely by his 
 body-guard, drove the rebel army once more into their 
 fastness. Szema sat upon his warhorse as before, in- I 
 trenched amid his officers and ranks of the tallest Tar- 
 tar spearmen, and as the emperor contended hand to | 
 hand with one of the opposing rebels, the magic im- j 
 precation was again uttered, the air again filled with ; 
 cloudy horsemen and chariots, and the mountain sha- j 
 ken with discordant thunder. Backing his willing j 
 steed, the emperor blew a long sharp note upon his j 
 silver clarion, and in an instant the sun broke through j 
 .he darkness, and the air seemed filled with paper men, 
 lorses of straw, and phantoms dissolving info smoke. I 
 Yuentsoong and Szema now stood face to face, with j 
 only mortal aid and weapons." 
 
 The historian goes on to record that the two armies 
 suspended hostilities at the command of their leaders, 
 and that the emperor and his rebel subject having en 
 gaged in single combat, Yuentsoong was victorious, j 
 and returned to his capital with the formidable enemy, j 
 whose life he had spared, riding beside him like a ! 
 brother. The conqueror s career, for several years i 
 after this, seems to have been a series of exploits of ! 
 personal valor, and the Tartar prince shared in all his 
 dangers and pleasures, his inseparable friend. It was 
 during this period of romantic friendship that the 
 events occurred which have made Yuentsoong one of 
 the idols of Chinese poetry. 
 
 By the side of a lake in a distant province of the 
 empire, stood one of the imperial palaces of pleasure, I 
 seldom visited, and almost in ruins. Hither, in one 
 of his moody periods of repose from war, came the 
 conqueror Yuentsoong, for the first time in years sep 
 arated from his faithful Szema. In disguise, and 
 with only one or two attendants, he established him 
 self in the long silent halls of his ancestor Tsinche- 
 mong, and with his boat upon the lake, and his spear 
 in the forest, seemed to find all the amusement of 
 which his melancholy was susceptible. On a certain 
 day in the latter part of April, the emperor had set 
 his sail to a fragrant south wind, and reclining on the 
 cushions of his bajrk, watched the shore as it softly 
 
 and silently glided past, and, the lake being entirely 
 encircled by the imperial forest, he felt immersed in 
 what he believed to be the solitude of a deserted par 
 adise. After skirting the fringed sheet of water in 
 this manner for several hours, he suddenly observed 
 that he had shot through a streak of peach-blossoms 
 floating from the shore, and at the same moment he 
 became conscious that his boat was slightly headed 
 off by a current setting outward. Putting up his 
 helm, he returned to the spot, and beneath the droop 
 ing branches of some luxuriant willows, thus early in 
 leaf, he discovered the mouth of an inlet, which, but 
 for the floating blossoms it brought to the lake, would 
 have escaped the notice of the closest observer. The 
 emperor now lowered his sail, unshipped the slender 
 mast, and betook him to the oars, and as the current 
 was gentle, and the inlet wider within the mouth, he 
 sped rapidly on, through what appeared to be but a 
 lovely and luxuriant vale of the forest. Still, those 
 blushing betrayers of some flowering spot beyond, 
 extended like a rosy clue before him, and with im 
 pulse of muscles swelled and indurated in warlike ex 
 ercise, the swift keel divided the besprent mirror wind 
 ing temptingly onward, and, for a long hour, the royal 
 oarsman untiringly threaded this sweet vein of the 
 wilderness. 
 
 Resting a moment on his oars while the slender 
 bark still kept her way, he turned his head toward 
 what seemed to be an opening in the forest on the 
 left, and in the same instant (he boat ran, head on, to 
 the shore, the inlet at this point almost doubling on 
 its course. Beyond, by the humming of bees, and 
 the singing of birds, there should be a spot more open 
 than the tangled wilderness he had passed, and disen 
 gaging his prow from the alders, he shoved the boat 
 again into the stream, and pulled round a high rock, 
 by which the inlet seemed to have been compelled to 
 curve its channel. The edge of a bright green mead 
 ow now stole into the perspective, and, still widening 
 with his approach, disclosed a slightly rising terrace 
 clustered with shrubs, and studded here and there 
 with vases ; and farther on, upon the same side of the 
 stream, a skirting edge of peach-trees, loaded with the 
 gay blossoms which had guided him hither. 
 
 Astonished at these signs of habitation in what was 
 well understood to be a privileged wilderness, Yuent 
 soong kept his boat in mid-stream, and with his eyes 
 vigilantly on the alert, slowly made headway against 
 the current. A few strokes with his oars, however, 
 traced another curve of the inlet, and brought into 
 view a grove of ancient trees scattered over a gently 
 ascending lawn, beyond which, hidden by the river 
 till now by the projecting shoulder of a mound, lay a 
 small pavilion with srilded pillars, glittering like fairy 
 work in the sun. The emperor fastened his boat to a 
 tree leaning over the water, and with his short spear 
 in his hand, bounded upon the shore, and took his 
 way toward the shining structure, his heart beating 
 with a feeling of wonder and interest altogether new. 
 On a nearer approach, the bases of the pillars seemed 
 decayed by time, and the gilding weather-stained and 
 tarnished, but the trellised porticoes on the southern 
 aspect were laden with flowering shrubs, in vases of 
 porcelain, and caged birds sang between the pointed 
 arches, and there were manifest signs of luxurious 
 taste, elegance, and care. 
 
 A moment, with an indefinable timidity, the em 
 peror paused before stepping from the green sward 
 upon the marble floor of the pavilion, and in that 
 moment a curtain was withdrawn from the door, and 
 a female, with step suddenly arrested by the sight of 
 the stranger, stood motionless before him. Ravished 
 with her extraordinary beauty, and awe-struck with 
 the suddenness of the apparition and the novelty of 
 the adventure, the emperor s tongue cleaved to his 
 mouth, and ere he could summon resolution, even 
 
170 
 
 THE INLET OF PEACH-BLOSSOMS. 
 
 for a gesture of courtesy, the fair creature had fled 
 within, and the curtain closed the entrance as before. 
 
 Washing to recover his composure, so strangely 
 troubled, and taking it for granted that some other in 
 mate of the house would soon appear, Yuentsoong 
 turned his steps aside to the grove, and with his head 
 bowed, and his spear in the hollow of his arm, tried 
 to recall more vividly the features of the vision he 
 had seen. He had walked but a few paces, when 
 there came toward him from the upper skirt of the 
 grove, a man of unusual stature and erectness, with 
 white hair, unbraided on his shoulders, and every sign 
 of age except infirmity of slep and mien. The em 
 peror s habitual dignity had now rallied, and on his 
 first salutation, the countenance of the old man soft 
 ened, and he quickened his pace to meet and give him 
 welcome. 
 
 " You are noble?" he said, with confident inquiry. 
 
 Yuentsoong colored slightly. 
 
 " I am," he replied, " Lew-melin, a prince of the 
 empire." 
 
 "And by what accident here ?" 
 
 Yuentsoong explained the clue of the peach-blos 
 soms, and represented himself as exiled for a time to 
 the deserted palace upon the lakes. 
 
 " I have a daughter," said the old man, abruptly, 
 "who has never looked on human face, save mine." 
 
 "Pardon me!" replied his visiter; " I have thought 
 lessly intruded on her sight, and a face more heavenly 
 fair " 
 
 The emperor hesitated, but the old man smiled en 
 couragingly. 
 
 "Jt is time," he said, "that I should provide a 
 younger defender for my bright Teh-leen, and Heaven 
 has sent you in the season of peach-blossoms, with 
 provident kindness.* You have frankly revealed to 
 me your name and rank. Before I offer you the hos 
 pitality of my roof, I must tell you mine. I am 
 Choo-tseen, the outlaw, once of your own rank, and 
 the general of the Celestial army." 
 
 The emperor started, remembering that this cele 
 brated rebel was the terror of his father s throne. 
 
 " You have heard my history," the old man con 
 tinued. " I had been, before my rebellion, in charge 
 of the imperial palace on the lake. Anticipating an 
 evil day, I secretly prepared this retreat for my fami 
 ly ; and when my soldiers deserted me at the battle of 
 Ke-chow, and a price was set upon my head, hither I 
 fled with my women and children ; and the last alive 
 is my beautiful Teh-leen. With this brief outline of 
 my life, you are at liberty to leave me as you came, 
 or to enter my house, on the condition that you be 
 come the protector of my child." 
 
 The emperor eagerly turned toward the pavilion, 
 and, with a step as lighl as his own, the erect and 
 stately outlaw hastened to lift the curtain before him. 
 Leaving his guest for a moment in the outer apart 
 ment, he entered to an inner chamber in search of his 
 daughter, whom he brought, panting with fear, and 
 blushing with surprise and delight, to her future lover 
 and protector. A portion of an historical tale so deli 
 cate as the description of the heroine is not work for 
 imitators, however, and we must copy strictly the por 
 trait of the matchless Teh-leen, as drawn by Le-pih, 
 the Anacreon of Chinese poetry, and the contempo 
 rary and favorite of Yuentsoong. 
 
 " Teh-leen was born while the morning star shone 
 upon the bosom of her mother. Her eye was like 
 the unblemished blue lily, and its light like the white 
 gem unfractured. The plum-blossom is most fra 
 grant when the cold has penetrated its stem, and the 
 mother of Teh leen had known sorrow. The head 
 of her child drooped in thought, like a violet over 
 laden with dew. Bewildering was Teh-leen. Her 
 
 * The season of peach-blossoms was the only season of 
 marriage in ancient China. 
 
 mouth s corners were dimpled, yet pensive. The 
 arch of her brows was like the vein in the tulip s 
 heart, and the lashes shaded the blushes on her cheek. 
 With the delicacy of a pale rose, her complexion put 
 to shame the floating light of day. Her waist, like a 
 thread in fineness, seemed ready to break; yet was it 
 straight and erect, and feared not the fanning breeze ; 
 and her shadowy grace was as difficult to delineate, as 
 the form of the white bird rising from the ground by 
 moonlight. The natural gloss of her hair resembled 
 the uncertain sheen of calm water, yet without the 
 false aid of unguents. The native intelligence of her 
 mind seemed to have gained strength by retirement, 
 and he who beheld her, thought not of her as human. 
 Of rare beauty, of rarer intellect was Teh-leen, and 
 her heart responded to the poet s lute." 
 
 We have not space, nor could we, without copying 
 directly from the admired Le-pih, venture to describe 
 the bringing of Teh-leen to court, and her surprise at 
 finding herself the favorite of the emperor. It is a 
 romantic circumstance, besides, which has had its 
 parallels in other countries. But the sad sequel to 
 the loves of poor Teh-leen is but recorded in the cold 
 page of history; and if the poet, who wound up the 
 climax of her peffections, with her susceptibility to 
 his lute, embalmed her sorrows in verse, he was prob 
 ably too politic to bring it ever to light. Pass we to 
 these neglected and unadorned passages of her history. 
 
 Yuentsoong s nature was passionately devoted and 
 confiding; and, like two brothers with one favorite 
 sister, lived together Teh-leen, Szema, and the emper 
 or. The Tartar prince, if his heart knew a mistress 
 before the arrival of Teh-leen at the palace,. owned 
 afterward no other than her ; and fearless of check 
 or suspicion from the noble confidence and generous 
 friendship of Yuentsoong, he seemed to live but for 
 her service, and to have neither energies nor ambition 
 except for the winning of her smiles. Szema was of 
 great personal beauty, frank when it did not serve him 
 to be wily, bold in his pleasures, and of manners al 
 most femininely soft and voluptuous. He was re 
 nowned as a soldier, and, for Teh-leen, he became a 
 poet and master of the lute ; and, like all men formed 
 for ensnaring the heart of women, he seemed to forget 
 himself in the absorbing devotion of his idolatry. His 
 friend, the emperor, was of another mould. Yuent 
 soong s heart had three chambers love, friendship, 
 and glory. Teh-leen was but a third in his existence, 
 yet he loved her the sequel will show how well! In 
 person he was less beautiful than majestic, of large 
 stature, and with a brow and lip naturally stern and 
 lofty. He seldom smiled, even upon Teh-leen, whom 
 he would watch for hours in pensive and absorbed de 
 light ; but his smile, when it did awake, broke over 
 his sad countenance like morning. All men loved and 
 honored Yuentsoong, and all men, except only the 
 emperor, looked on Szema with antipathy. To such 
 natures as the former, women give all honor and ap 
 probation ; but for such as the latter, they reserve 
 their weakness ! 
 
 Wrapt up in his friend and mistress, and reserved, 
 in his intercourse with his counsellors, Yuenrsoong 
 knew not that, throughout the imperial city, Szema 
 was called " the kieu," or robber-bird, and his fair 
 Teh-leen openly charged with dishonor. Going out 
 alone to hunt as was his custom, and having left his 
 signet with Szema, to pass and repass through the 
 private apartments at his pleasure, his horse fell with 
 him unaccountably in the open field. Somewhat 
 superstitious, and remembering that good spirits some 
 times "knit the grass," when other obstacles fail to 
 bar our way into danger, the emperor drew rein and 
 returned to his palace. It was an hour after noon, 
 and having dismissed his attendants at the city gate, 
 he entered by a postern to the imperial garden, and 
 bethought himself of the concealed couch in a cool 
 
THE INLET OF PEACH-BLOSSOMS. 
 
 171 
 
 grot by a fountain (a favorite retreat, sacred to him 
 self and Teh-leen), where he fancied it would be re 
 freshing (o sleep away the sultriness of the remaining 
 hours till evening. Sitting down by the side of the 
 murmuring fount, he bathed his feet, and left his slip 
 pers on the lip of the basin to be unencumbered in 
 his repose within, and so with unechoing step entered 
 the resounding grotto. Alas! there slumbered the 
 faithless friend with the guilty Teh-leen upon his 
 bosom ! 
 
 Grief struck through the noble heart of the em 
 peror like a sword in cold blood. With a word he 
 could consign to torture and death the robber of his 
 
 passing among his soldiers on the evening previous to 
 an engagement, promising to interfere with what was 
 usually his last duty before retiring to his couch. 
 Teh-leen on this occasion seemed moved by some 
 irrepressible emotion, and as he rose to depart, she fell 
 forward upon her face, and bathed his feet with her 
 tears. Attributing it to one of those excesses of feel 
 ing to which all, but especially hearts ill at ease, are 
 liable, the noble monarch gently raised her, and, with 
 repeated efforts at reassurance, committed her to the 
 hands of her women. His own heart beat far from 
 
 tranquilly, for, in the excess of his pity for her grief 
 he had unguardedly called her by one of the sweet 
 
 honor, but there was agony in his bosom deeper than j! names of their early days of love strange word now 
 revenge. He turned silently away, recalled his horse upon his lip and it brought back, spite of memory 
 
 and huntsmen, and, outstripping all, plunged 
 through the forest till night gathered around him. 
 
 Yuentsoong had been absent many days from his 
 capitol, and his subjects were murmuring their fears 
 for his safety, when a messenger arrived to the coun 
 sellors informing them of the appointment of the 
 captive Tartar prince to the government of the pro 
 vince of Szechuen, the second honor of the Celestial 
 empire. A private order accompanied the announce 
 ment, commanding the immediate departure of Szema 
 
 and truth, happiness that would not be forgotten ! 
 
 It was past midnight, and the moon was riding high 
 in heaven, when the emperor, returning between the 
 lengthening watch-fires, sought the small lamp which, 
 suspended like a star above his own tent, guided him 
 back from the irregular mazes of the camp. Paled 
 by the intense radiance of the moonlight, the small 
 globe of alabaster at length became apparent to his 
 weary eye, and with one glance at the peaceful beauty 
 of the heavens, he parted the curtained door beneath 
 
 for the scene of his new authority. Inexplicable as ! it, and stood within. The Chinese historian asserts 
 was this riddle to the multitude, there were those who that a bird, from whose wing Teh-leen had once 
 read it truly by their knowledge of the magnanimous i! plucked an arrow, restoring it to liberty and life, and 
 soul of the emperor ; and among these was the crafty j in grateful attachment to her destiny, removed the 
 object of his generosity. Losing no time, he set for- lamp from the imperial tent, and suspended it over 
 
 hers. The emperor stood beside her couch. Startled 
 at his inadvertent error, he turned to retire ; but the 
 lifted curtain let in a flood of moonlight upon the 
 sleeping features of Teh-leen, and like dew-drops, the 
 undried tears glistened in her silken lashes. A lamp 
 burned faintly in the inner apartment of the tent, and 
 her attendants slept soundly. His soft heart gave 
 way. Taking up the lamp, he held it over his beau 
 tiful mistress, and once more gazed passionately and 
 
 ward with great pomp for Szechuen, and in their joy 
 to see him no more in the palace, the slighted princes 
 of the empire forgave his unmerited advancement. 
 Yuentsoong returned to his capitol ; but to the terror 
 of his counsellors and people, his hair was blanched 
 white as the head of an old man ! He was pale as 
 well, but he was cheerful and kind beyond his wont, 
 and to Teh-leen untiring in pensive and humble at 
 tentions. He pleaded only impaired health and rest 
 less slumbers as an apology for nights of solitude. 
 Once, Teh-leen penetrated to his lonely chamber, but 
 
 unrestrainedly on her unparalleled beauty. The 
 past the early past was alone before him. He for- 
 
 by the dim night lamp she saw that the scroll over her j gave her there, as she slept, unconscious of the 
 window* was changed, and instead of the stimulus to throbbing of his injured, but noble heart, so close 
 
 changed, and instead of the stimulus to 
 glory which formerly hung in golden letters before 
 his eyes, there was a sentence written tremblingly in 
 black : 
 " The close wing of love covers the death-throb of honor." 
 
 Six months from this period the capitol was thrown 
 into a tumult with the intelligence that the province 
 of Szeclfuen was in rebellion, and Szema at the head 
 of a numerous army on his way to seize the throne 
 of Yuentsoong. This last sting betrayed the serpent 
 even to the forgiving emperor, and tearing the reptile 
 at last from his heart, he entered with the spirit of 
 other times into the warlike preparations. The im 
 perial army was in a few days on its march, ,pnd at 
 Keo-yang the opposing forces met and prepared for 
 encounter. 
 
 With a dread of the popular feeling toward Teh- 
 leen, Yuentsoong had commanded for her a close 
 litter, and she was borne after the imperial standard in 
 the centre of the army. On the eve before the battle, 
 ere the watch-fires were lit, the emperor came to 
 her tent, set apart from his own, and with the delicate 
 care and kind gentleness from which he never varied, 
 inquired how her wants were supplied, and bade her, 
 thus early, farewell for the night ; his own custom of 
 
 *The most common decorations of rooms, halls, and tem 
 ples, in China, are ornamental scrolls or labels of colored paper, 
 or wood, painted and f*iJded, and hunsr over doors or windows, 
 and inscribed with a line or couplet conveying some allusion 
 to the circumstances of the inhabitant, or some pious or phi 
 losophical axiom. For instance, a poetical one recorded by 
 Dr 
 
 op 
 . Mo 
 
 rrson : 
 
 From the pine forest the azute dragon ascends 
 
 the milky way," 
 
 typical of the prosperous man arising to wealth and honors. 
 
 jured, 
 
 beside her he forgave her in the long silent abysses 
 of his soul ! Unwilling to wake her from her tran 
 quil slumber, but promising to himself, from that hour, 
 such sweets of confiding love as had well nigh been 
 lost to him for ever, he imprinted one kiss upon the 
 parted lips of Teh-leen, and sought his couch for 
 slumber. 
 
 Ere daybreak the emperor was aroused by one of 
 his attendants with news too important for delay. 
 Szema, the rebel, had been arrested in the imperial 
 camp, disguised, and on his way back to his own 
 forces, and like wildfire, the information had spread 
 among the soldiery, who, in a state of mutinous 
 excitement, were with difficulty restrained from rush 
 ing upon the tent of Teh-leen. At the door of bis 
 tent, Yuentsoong found messengers from the alarmed 
 princes and officers of the different commands, implo 
 ring immediate aid arid the imperial presence to allay 
 the excitement, and while the emperor prepared to 
 mount his horse, the guard arrived with the Tartar 
 prince, ignominiously tied, and bearing marks of 
 rough usage from his indignant captors. 
 
 "Loose him!" cried the emperor, in a voice of 
 thunder. 
 
 The cords were severed, and with a glance whose 
 ferocity expressed no thanks, Szema reared himself 
 up to his fullest height, and looked scornfully around 
 him. Daylight had now broke, and as the group 
 stood upon an eminence in sight of the whole army, 
 shouts began to ascend, and the armed multitude, 
 breaking through all restraint, rolled in toward the 
 centre. Attracted by the commotion, Yuentsoong 
 turned to give some orders to those near him, when 
 
172 
 
 THE BELLE OF THE BELFRY. 
 
 Szema suddenly sprang upon an officer of the guard 
 wrenched his drawn sword from his grasp, and in an 
 instant was lost to sight in the tent of Teh-leen. A 
 sharp scream, a second of thought, and forth again 
 rushed the desperate murderer, with his sword flinging 
 drops of drops of blood, and ere a foot stirred in the 
 paralyzed group, the avenging cimeter of Yuentsoong 
 had cleft him to the chin. 
 
 A hush, as if the whole army was struck dumb by 
 a bolt from heaven, followed this rapid tragedy. 
 Dropping the polluted sword from his hand, the 
 emperor, with uncertain step, and the pallor of death 
 upon his countenance, entered the fatal tent. 
 
 He came no more forth that day. The army was 
 marshalled by the princes, and the rebels were routed 
 with great slaughter; but Yuentsoong never more 
 wielded sword. " He pined to death," says the histo 
 rian, " with the wane of the same moon that shone 
 upon the forgiveness of Teh-leen." 
 
 THE BELLE OF THE BELFRY; 
 
 OR, THE DARING LOVER. 
 
 A GRFSETTE is something else beside a "mean girl" 
 or a "gray gown," the French dictionary to the contra 
 ry notwithstanding. Bless me ! you should see the 
 griset es of Rochepot ! And if you wished to take a 
 lesson in political compacts, you should understand 
 the grisette confederacy of Rochepot ! They were 
 working-girls, it is true dressmakers, milliners, shoe- 
 binders, tailoresses, flowermakers, embroideresses 
 and they never expected to be anything more aristo 
 cratic. And in that content lay their power. 
 
 The grisettes of Rochepot were a good fourth of 
 the female population. They had their jealousies, 
 and little scandals, and heart-burnings, and plottings, 
 and counterplottings (for they were women) among 
 themselves. But they made common cause against 
 the enemy. They would bear no disparagement. 
 They knew exactly what was due to them, and what 
 was due to their superiors, and they paid and gave 
 credit in the coin of good manners, as can not be done 
 in countries of "liberty and equality." Still there 
 were little shades of difference in the attention shown 
 them by their employers, and they worked twice as 
 much in a day when sewing for Madame Durozel, 
 who took her dinner with them, sans facon in the 
 work-room, as for old Madame Chiquette, who dined 
 all alone in her grand saloon, and left them to eat by 
 themselves among their shreds and scissors. But 
 these were not slights which they seriously resented. 
 Wo only to the incautious dame who dared to scan 
 dalize one of their number, or dispute her dues, or 
 encroach upon her privileges ! They would make 
 Rochepot as uncomfortable for her, parbleu ! as a 
 kettle to a slow-boiled lobster. 
 
 But the prettiest grisette of Rochepot was not often 
 permitted to join her companions in their self-chap 
 eroned excursions on the holydays. Old Dame 
 Pomponney was the sexton s widow, and she had the 
 care of the great clock of St. Roch, and of one only 
 daughter; and excellent care she took of both her 
 charges. They lived all three in the belfry dame, 
 clock, and daughter and it was a bright day for 
 Thenais when she got out of hearing of that " tick, 
 tick, tick," and of the thumping of her mother s 
 cane on the long staircase, which always kept time 
 with it. 
 
 Not that old Dame Pomponney had any objection 
 to have her daughter convenably married. She had 
 been deceived in her youth (or so it was whispered) 
 
 by a lover above her condition, and she vowed, by th* 
 cross on her cane, that her daughter should have no 
 sweetheart above a journeyman mechanic. Now tht 
 romance of the grisettes (parlons has!) was to have 
 one charming little flirtation with a gentleman before 
 they married the leather-apron just to show that, 
 had they by chance been born ladies, they could have 
 played their part to the taste of their lords. But it 
 was at this game that Dame Pomponney had burnt her 
 fingers, and she had this one subject for the exercise 
 of her powers of mortal aversion. 
 
 When I have added that, four miles from Roche- 
 pot, stood the chateau de Brevanne, and that the old 
 Count de Brevanne was a proud aristocrat of the an- 
 cien regime, with one son, the younjg Count Felix, 
 whom he had educated at Paris, I think I have pre 
 pared you tolerably for the little romance I have to 
 tell you. 
 
 It was a fine Sunday morning that a mounted hus 
 sar appeared in the street of Rochepot. The grisettes 
 were all abroad in their holyday parure, and the gay 
 soldier soon made an acquaintance with one of them 
 at the door of the inn, and informed her that he had 
 been sent on to prepare the old barracks for his troop. 
 The hussars were to be quartered a month at Roche- 
 pot. Ah ! what a joyous bit of news ! And six offi 
 cers beside the colonel! And the trumpeters were 
 miracles at playing quadrilles and waltzes ! And not 
 a plain man in the regiment except always the 
 speaker. And none, except the old colonel, had ever 
 been in love in his life. But as this last fact required 
 to be sworn to, of course he was ready to kiss the 
 book or, in the absence of the book, the next most 
 sacred object of his adoration. 
 
 " Finissez done, Monsieur . " exclaimed his pretty 
 listener, and away she ran to spread the welcome in 
 telligence with its delightful particulars. 
 
 The next day the troop rode into Rochepot, and 
 formed in the great square in front of St. Roch; and 
 by the time the trumpeters had played themselves red 
 in the face, the hussars were all appropriated, to a 
 man for the grisettes knew enough of a marching 
 regiment to lose no time. They all found leisure to 
 pity poor Thenais, however, for there she stood in 
 one of the high windows of the belfry, looking down 
 on the gay crowd below, and they knew very well 
 that old Dame Pomponney had declared all soldiers 
 to be gay deceivers, and forbidden her daughter to 
 stir into the street while they were quartered at 
 Rochepot. 
 
 Of course the grisettes managed to agree as to each 
 other s selection of a sweetheart from the troop, and 
 of course each hussar thankfully accepted the pair of 
 eyes that fell to him. For, aside from the limited 
 duration of their stay, soldiers are philosophers, and 
 know that "life is short," and it is better to " take the 
 goods the gods provide." But " after everybody was 
 helped," as they say at a feast, there appeared another 
 short jacket and foraging cap, very much to the re 
 lief of red-headed Susette, the shoebinder, who had 
 been left out in the previous allotment. And Susette 
 made the amiable accordingly, but to no purpose, for 
 the lad seemed an idiot with but one idea looking 
 for ever at St. Roch s clock to know the time of day ! 
 The grisettes laughed and asked their sweethearts his 
 name, but they significantly pointed to their foreheads 
 and whispered something about poor Robertin s being 
 a privileged follower of the regiment and a protege of 
 the colonel. 
 
 Well, the grisettes flirted, and the old clock of St. 
 Roch ticked on, and Susette and Thenais, the plain 
 est and the prettiest girl in the village, seemed the 
 only two who were left out in the extra dispensation 
 of lovers. And poor Robertin still persisted in oc 
 cupying most of his leisure with watching the time 
 of day. 
 
THE BELLE OF THE BELFRY. 
 
 173 
 
 It was on the Sunday morning after the arrival of 
 the troop that old Dame Pomponney went up, as 
 usual, to do her Sunday s duty in winding up the 
 clock. She had previously locked the belfry door to 
 be sure that no one entered below while she was 
 above ; but the Virgin help us ! on the top stair, 
 gazing into the machinery of the clock with absorbed 
 attention, sat one of those devils of hussars! "Thief," 
 " vagabond," and " house-breaker," were the most 
 moderate epithets with which Dame Pomponney ac 
 companied the enraged beating of her stick on the 
 resounding platform. She was almost beside herself i 
 with rage. And Thenais had been up to dust the I 
 wheels of the clock ! And how did she know that | 
 that scelerat of a trooper was not there all the time! 
 
 But the intruder, whose face had been concealed 
 till now, turned suddenly round and began to gibber | 
 and arin like a possessed monkey. He pointed at the j 
 clock, imitated the "tick, tick, tick," laughed till the 
 big bell gave out an echo like a groan, and then sud 
 denly jumped over the old dame s stick and ran down 
 stairs. 
 
 "Eh, Sainte Vierge!" exclaimed the old dame, " it s 
 a poor idiot after all ! And he has stolen up to see 
 what made the clock tick ! Ha ! ha ! ha ! Well ! 
 well! lean not come up these weary stairs twice aj 
 day, and I must wind up the clock before I go down 
 to let him out. Tick, tick, tick! poor lad ! poor |j 
 lad! They must have dressed him up to make fun; 
 of him those vicious troopers ! Well ! well !" 
 
 And with pity in her heart, Dame Pomponney hob- i 
 bled down, stair after stair, to her chamber in the 
 square turret of the belfry, and there she found the 
 poor idiot on his knees before Thenais, and Thenais |j 
 was just preparing to put a skein of thread over his j| 
 thumbs, for she thought she might make him useful 
 and amuse him with the winding of it till her mother 
 came down. But as the thread got vexatiously en 
 tangled, and the poor lad sat as patiently as a wooden 
 reel, and it was time to go below to mass, the dame 
 thought she might as well leave him there till she 
 came back, and down she stumped, locking the door 
 very safely behind her. 
 
 Poor Thenais was very lonely in the belfry, and 
 Dame Pomponney, who had a tender heart where her 
 duty was not involved, rather rejoiced when she re 
 turned, to find an unusual glow of delight on her 
 daughter s cheek ; and if Thenais could find so much 
 pleasure in the society of a poor idiot lad, it was a 
 sign, too, that her heart was not gone altogether after 
 those abominable troopers. It was time to send the 
 innocent youth about his business, however, so she 
 gave him a holyday cake and led him down stairs and 
 dismissed him with a pat on his back and a strict in 
 junction never to venture again up to the " tick, tick, 
 tick." But as she had had a lesson as to the acces 
 sibility of her bird s nest, she determined thenceforth 
 to lock the door invariably and carry the key in her 
 pocket. 
 
 While poor Robertin was occupied with his re 
 searches into the " tick, tick, tick," never absent a 
 day from the neighborhood of the tower, the more 
 fortunate hussars were planning to give the grisettes 
 a fete champctre. One of the saints days was coming 
 round, and, the weather permitting, all the vehicles 
 of the village were to be levied, and, with the troop- 
 horses in harness, they were to drive to a small wood 
 ed valley in the neighborhood of the chateau de 
 Brevanne, where seclusion and a mossy carpet of 
 grass were combined in a little paradise for such en 
 joyment. 
 
 The morning of this merry day dawned, at last, 
 and the grisettes and their admirers were stirring be 
 times, for they were to breakfast sur I herbe, and they 
 were not the people to turn breakfast into dinner. The 
 sky was clear, and the dew was not verv heavy on the 
 12 
 
 grass, and merrily the vehicles rattled about the town, 
 picking up their fair freights from its obscurest cor 
 ners. But poor Thenais looked out, a sad prisoner, 
 from her high window in the belfry. 
 
 It was a half hour after sunrise and Dame Pompon 
 ney was creeping up stairs after her matins, thanking 
 Heaven that she had been firm in her refusals at 
 least twenty of the grisettes having gathered about 
 her, and pleaded for a day s freedom" for her imprison 
 ed daughter. She rested on the last landing but one 
 to take a little breath but hark ! a man s voice talk 
 ing in the belfry ! She listened again, and quietly 
 slipped her feet out of her high-heeled shoes. The 
 voice was again audible yet how could it be ! She 
 knew that no one could have passed up the stair, for 
 the key had been kept in her pocket more carefully 
 than usual, and, save by the wings of one of her own 
 pigeons, the belfry window was inaccessible, she was 
 sure. Still the voice went on in a kind of pleading 
 murmur, and the dame stole softly up in her stock 
 ings, and noiselessly opened the door. There stood 
 Thenais at the window, but she was alone in the room. 
 At the same instant the voice was heard again, and 
 sure now that one of those desperate hussars had 
 climbed the tower, and unable to control her rage at 
 the audacity of the attempt, Dame Pomponney clutch 
 ed her cane and rushed forward to aim a blow at the 
 military cap now visible at the sill of the window. 
 But at the same instant the head of the intruder was 
 thrown back, and the gibbering and idiotic smile of 
 poor Robertin checked her blow in its descent, and 
 turned all her anger into pity. Poor, silly lad ! he 
 had contrived to draw up the garden ladder and place 
 it upon the roof of the stone porch below, to climb 
 and offer a flower to Thenais ! Not unwilling to have 
 her daughter s mind occupied witli some other thought 
 than the forbidden excursion, the dame offered her 
 hand to Robertin and drew him gently in at the win 
 dow. And as it was now market-time she bid The 
 nais be kind to the poor boy, and locking the door 
 behind her, trudged contentedly off with her slick and 
 basket. 
 
 I am sorry to be obliged to record an act of filial 
 disobedience in the heroine of rny story. An hour 
 after, Thenais was welcomed with acclamations as she 
 suddenly appeared with Robertin in the midst of the 
 merry party of grisettes. With Robertin not as he 
 had hitherto been seen, his cap on the back of his 
 head and his under lip hanging loose like an idiot s 
 but with Robertin, gallant, spirited, and gay, the hand 
 somest of hussars, and the most joyous of companions. 
 And ThtMiais, spite of her hasty toilet and the cloud 
 of conscious disobedience which now and then shaded 
 her sweet smile, was, by many degrees, the belle of 
 the hour; and the palrn of beauty, for once in the 
 world at least, was yielded without envy. The gri 
 settes dearly love a bit of romance, too, and the cir 
 cumventing of old Dame Pomponney by his ruse of 
 idiocy, and the safe extrication of the prettiest girl 
 of the village from that gloomy old tower, was quite 
 enough to make Robertin a hero, and his sweetheart 
 Thenais more interesting than a persecuted princess. 
 
 And, seated on the ground while their glittering 
 cavaliers served them with breakfast, the light-hearted 
 grisettes of Rochepot were happy enough to be en 
 vied by their betters. But suddenly the sky darkened, 
 and a slight gust murmuring among the trees, an 
 nounced the coming up of a summer storm. Sauvc 
 qui pent ! The soldiers were used to emergencies, 
 and they had packed up and reloaded their cars and 
 were under way for shelter almost as soon as the 
 grisettes, and away they all fled toward the nearest 
 grange one of the dependancies of the chateau de 
 Brevanne. 
 
 But Robertin, now, had suddenly become the di 
 rector and ruling spirit of the festivities. The soldiers 
 
174 
 
 PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. 
 
 treated him with instinctive deference, the old farmer 
 of the grange hurried out with his keys and unlocked 
 the great storehouse, and disposed of the horses un 
 der shelter ; and by the time the big drops began to 
 fall, l he party were dancing gayly and securely on the 
 dry and smooth thrashing-floor, and the merry har 
 mony of the martial trumpets and horns rang out far 
 and wide through the gathering tempest. 
 
 The rain began to come down very heavily, and the 
 clatter of a horse s feet in a rapid gallop was heard in 
 one of the pauses in the waltz. Some one seeking 
 shelter, no doubt. On went the bewitching music 
 again, and at this moment two or three couples ceased 
 waltzing, and the floor was left to Robertin and The- 
 nais, whose graceful motions drew all eyes upon them 
 in admiration. Smiling in each other s faces, and 
 wholly unconscious of any other presence than their 
 own, they whirled blissfully around but there was 
 now another spectator. The horseman who had been 
 heard to approach, had silently joined the party, and 
 making a courteous gesture to signify that the dan 
 cing was not to be interrupted, he smiled back the 
 courtesies of the pretty grisettes for, aristocratic as 
 he was, he was a polite man to the sex, was the Count 
 de Brevanne. 
 
 "Felix !" he suddenly cried out, in a tone of sur 
 prise and anger. 
 
 The music stopped at that imperative call, and 
 Robertin turned his eyes, astonished, in the direction 
 from which it came. 
 
 The name was repeated from lip to lip among the 
 grisettes, " Felix !" " Count Felix de Brevanne !" 
 
 But without deigning another word, the old man 
 pointed with his riding-whip to the farm-house. The 
 disguised count respectfully bowed his head, but held 
 Thenais by the hand and drew her gently with him. 
 
 "Leave her! disobedient boy!" exclaimed the 
 father. 
 
 But as Count Felix tightened his hold upon the 
 small hand he held, and Thenais tried to shrink back 
 from the advancing old man, old Dame Pomponney, 
 streaming with rain, broke in unexpectedly upon the 
 scene. 
 
 " Disgrace not your blood," said the Count de Bre 
 vanne at that moment. 
 
 The offending couple stood alone in the centre of 
 the floor, and the dame comprehended that her daugh 
 ter was disparaged. 
 
 "And who is disgraced by dancing with my daugh 
 ter?" she screamed with furious gesticulation. 
 
 The old noble made no answer, but the grisettes, 
 in an under tone, murmured the name of Count 
 Felix ! 
 
 " Is it he the changeling ! the son of a poor gar 
 dener, that is disgraced by the touch of my daughter?" 
 
 A dead silence followed this astounding exclama 
 tion. The old dame had forgotten herself in her rage, 
 and she looked about with a terrified bewilderment 
 but the mischief was done. The old man stood aghast. 
 Count Felix clung still closer to Thenais, but his 
 face expressed the most eager inquisitiveness. The 
 grisettes gathered around Dame Pomponney, and the 
 old count, left standing and alone, suddenly drew his 
 cloak about him and stepped forth into the rain ; and 
 in another moment his horse s feet were heard clat 
 tering away in the direction of the chateau de Bre 
 vanne. 
 
 We have but to tell the sequel. 
 
 The incautious revelation of the old dame turned 
 out to be true. The dying infant daughter of the 
 Marchioness de Brevanne had been changed for the 
 healthy son of the count s gardener, to secure an heir 
 to the name and estates of the nearly extinct family 
 of Brevanne. Dame Pomponney had assisted in 
 this secret, and but for her heart full of rage at the 
 moment, to which the old count s taunt was but the 
 
 last drop, the secret would probably have never been 
 revealed. Count Felix, who had played truant from 
 his college at Paris, to come and hunt up some of his 
 childish playfellows, in disguise, had remembered and 
 disclosed himself to the little Theuais, who was not 
 sorry to recognise him, while he played the idiot in 
 the belfry. But of course there was now no obstacle 
 to their union, and united they were. The old count 
 pardoned him, and gave the new couple a portion of 
 his estate, and they named their first child Robertin, 
 as was natural enough. 
 
 PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL, 
 
 KEPT ON A LATE VISIT TO ENGLAND. 
 
 Ship Gladiator, off the Isle of Wight, 
 Evening of June 9th, 1839. 
 
 THE bullet which preserves the perpendicular of 
 my cabin-lamp is at last still, T congratulate myself; 
 and with it my optic nerve resumes its proper and 
 steady function. The vagrant tumblers, the peripatet 
 ic teeth-brushes, the dancing stools, the sidling wash 
 basins and et-ceteras, have returned to- a quiet life. 
 The creaking bulk-heads cry no more. I sit on a 
 trunk which will not run away with me, and pen and 
 paper look up into my face with their natural sobriety 
 and attention. I have no apology for not writing to 
 you, except want of event since we parted. There is 
 not a milestone in the three thousand four hundred 
 miles I have travelled. " Travelled !" said I. I am 
 as unconscious of having moved from the wave on 
 which you left me at Staten Island as the prisoner in 
 the hulk. I have pitched forward and backward, and 
 rolled from my left cheek to my right ; but as to any 
 fueling of having gone onward I am as unconscious 
 of it as a lobster backing after the ebb. The sea is a 
 dreary vacuity, in which he, perhaps, who was ever 
 well upon it, can find material for thought. But for 
 one, 1 will sell, at sixpence a month, all copyhold 
 upon so much of my life as is destined "to the deep, 
 the blue, the black" (and whatever else he calls it) of 
 my friend the song-writer. 
 
 Yet there are some moments recorded, first with a 
 sigh, which we find afterward copied into memory 
 with a smile. Here and there a thought has come 
 to me from the wave, snatched listlessly from the 
 elements here and there a word has been said which 
 on shore should have been wit or good feeling here 
 and there a good morning, responded to with an effort, 
 has, from its courtesy or heartiness, left an impression 
 which will make to-morrow s parting phrases more 
 earnest than 1 had anticipated. With this green isle 
 to windward, and the smell of earth and flowers com 
 ing to my nostrils once more, I begin to feel an in 
 terest in several who have sailed with me. Humanity, 
 killed in me invariably by salt water, revives, I think, 
 with this breath of hawthorn. 
 
 The pilot tells us that the Montreal, which sailed 
 ten days before us, has not yet passed up the channel, 
 and that we have brought with us the first west wind 
 they have had in many weeks. The sailors do not 
 know what to say to this, for we had four parsons on 
 board, and, by all sea-canons, they are invariable 
 Jonahs. One of these gentlemen, by the way, is an 
 j abolitionist, on a begging crusade fora school devoted 
 I to the amalgam of color, and very much to the amuse 
 ment of the passengers he met the steward s usual 
 demand for a fee with an application for a contribu 
 tion to the funds of his society ! Hia expectations 
 
PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. 
 
 175 
 
 from British sympathy are large, for he ia accom 
 panied by a lay brother " used to keeping accounts," 
 whose sole errand is to record the golden results of 
 his friend s eloquence. But " eight bells" warn me 
 to bed ; so when I have recorded the good qualities 
 of the Gladiator, which are many, and those of her 
 captain, which are more, I will put out my sea-lamp 
 for the last time, and get into my premonitory "six 
 feet by two." 
 ******* 
 
 The George Inn, Portsmouth. This is a morning 
 in which (under my circumstances) it would be diffi 
 cult not to be pleased with the entire world. A fair 
 day in June, newly from sea, and with a journey of 
 seventy miles before me on a swift coach, through 
 rural England, is what I call a programme of a pleas 
 ant day. Determined not to put myself in the way 
 of a disappointment, I accepted, without the slightest 
 hesitation, on landing at the wharf, the services of an 
 elderly gentleman in shabby black, who proposed to 
 stand between me and all my annoyances of the 
 morning. He was to get my baggage through the 
 customs, submit for me to all the inevitable imposi 
 tions of tide-waiters, secure my place in the coach, 
 bespeak me a fried sole and green peas, and sum up 
 his services, all in one short phrase of I. s. d. So 
 putting my temper into my pocket, and making up 
 my mind to let roguery take the wall of me for one 
 day unchallenged, I mounted to the grassy ramparts 
 of the town to walk off the small remainder of sea-air 
 from my stomach, and admire everything that came 
 in my way. I would recommend to all newly-landed 
 passengers from the packets to step up and accept of 
 the sympathy of the oaks of the " king s bastion" in 
 their disgust for the sea. Those sensible trees, 
 leaning toward the earth, and throwing out their 
 boughs as usual to the landward, present to the sea 
 ward exposure a turned-up and gnarled look of nausea 
 and disgust, which is as expressive to the commonest 
 observer as a sick man s first look at his bolus. I 
 have great affinity with trees, and I believe implicitly 
 that what is disagreeable to the tree can not be pleas 
 ant to the man. The salt air is not so corrosive here 
 as in the Mediterranean, where the leaves of the olive 
 are eaten off entirely on the side toward the sea ; but 
 it is quite enough to make a sensible tree turn up ils 
 nose, and in that attitude stands most expressively 
 every oak on the " king s bastion." 
 ******* 
 
 The first few miles out of Portsmouth form one 
 long alley of ornamented cottages wood-bine creep 
 ing and roses flowering over them all. If there were 
 but two between Portsmouth and London two even 
 of the meanest we saw a traveller from any other 
 land would think it worth his while to describe them 
 minutely. As there are two thousand (more or less), 
 they must pass with a bare mention. Yet I b ecame 
 conscious of a new feeling in seeing these rural para 
 dises; and I record it as the first point in which 1 find 
 myself worse for having become a " dweller in the 
 shade." I was envious. Formerly, in passing a 
 tasteful retreat, or a fine manor, I could say, " What 
 a bright lawn ! What a trim and fragrant hedge ! 
 What luxuriant creepers ! I congratulate their 
 fortunate owner !" Now it is, " How I wish I had 
 that hedge at Glenmary! How I envy these people 
 their shrubs, trellices, and flowers!" I wonder not 
 a little how the English emigrant can make a home 
 among our unsightly stumps that can ever breed a 
 forgetfulness of all these refined ruralities. 
 
 After the first few miles, I discovered that the two 
 windows of the coach were very limited frames for 
 the rapid succession of pictures presented to my eye, 
 and changing places with William, who was on the 
 top of the coach, I found myself between two tory 
 politicians, setting forth to each other most eloquently 
 
 the mal-administrations of the whigs, and the queen s 
 mismanagement. As I was two months behind the 
 English news, I listened with some interest. They 
 made out to their own satisfaction that the queen was 
 a silly girl ; that she had been caught in a decided 
 fib about Sir Robert Peel s exactions with respect to 
 the household ; and one of the Jeremiahs, who seem 
 ed to be a sturdy grazier, said that " in igh life the 
 queen-dowager s ealth was now received uniwersally 
 with three times three, while Victoria s was drank in 
 solemn silence." Her majesty received no better 
 j treatment at the hands of a whig on the other end of 
 the seat ; and as we whirled under the long park fence 
 ! of Claremont, the country palace of Leopold and the 
 I Princess Charlotte, he took the pension of the Belgian 
 I king for the burden of his lamentation, and, between 
 j whig and tory, England certainly seemed to be in 
 
 I a bad way. This Claremont, it will be remembered 
 by the readers of D lsraeli s novels, is the original of 
 the picture of the luxurious maison de plaisance, drawn 
 in the young duke. 
 
 We got glimpses of the old palace at Esher, of 
 Hampton court, of Pitt s country seat at Putney, and 
 of Jane Porter s cottage at Esher, and in the seventh 
 hour from leaving Portsmouth (seventy-four miles) 
 we found the vehicles thickening, the omnibuses 
 passing, the blue-coated policemen occurring at short 
 
 I 1 intervals, and the roads delightfully watered symp- 
 j toms of suburban London. We skirted the privileged 
 
 1 paling of Hyde Park ; and I could see, over the rails, 
 | the flying and gay-colored equipages, the dandy horse- 
 j men, the pedestrian ladies followed by footmen with 
 , I their gold sticks, the fashionable throng, in short, 
 ! which, separated by an iron barrier from all contact 
 ij with unsightlinesa and vulgarity, struts its hour in this 
 jj green cage of aristocracy. 
 
 Around the triumphal arch opposite the duke of 
 Wellington s was assembled a large crowd of carriages 
 and horsemen. The queen was coming from Buck- 
 I ingham palace through the Green park, and they 
 were waiting for a glimpse of her majesty on horse- 
 j back. The regulator whirled mercilessly on; but 
 I far down, through the long avenues of trees, I could 
 I see a movement of scarlet liveries, and a party coming 
 | rapidly toward us on horseback. We missed the 
 | queen by a couple of minutes. 
 
 It was just the hour when all London is abroad, 
 and Piccadilly was one long cavalcade of splendid 
 equipages on their way to the park. I remembered 
 many a face, and many a crest; but either the faces 
 had beautified in my memory, or three years had 
 done time s pitiless work on them all. Near Devon 
 shire house J saw, fretting behind the slow-moving 
 j press of vehicles, a pair of magnificent and fiery blood 
 horses, drawing a coach, which, though quite new, 
 was of a color and picked out with a peculiar stripe 
 that was familiar to my eye. The next glance con 
 vinced me that the livery was that of Lady B. ; but, 
 for the light chariot in which she used to drive, here 
 was a stately coach for the one tall footman, two 
 for the plain but elegant harness, a sumptuous and 
 superb caparison the whole turn-out on a scale of 
 splendor unequalled by anything around us. Another 
 moment decided the doubt for as we came against 
 the carriage, following, ourselves, an embarrassed 
 press of vehicles, her ladyship appeared, leaning back 
 in the corner with her wrists crossed, the same in the 
 grace of her attitude and the elegance of her toilet, 
 but stouter, more energetic, and graver in the expres 
 sion of her face, than I ever remembered to have seen 
 her. From the top of the stage-coach 1 looked, 
 unseen, directly down upon her, and probably got, by 
 chance, a daylight and more correct view of her 
 countenance than I should obtain in a year of opera 
 and drawing-room observation. 
 
 Tired and dusty, we were turned from hotel to ho- 
 
176 
 
 PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. 
 
 tel, all full and overflowing ; and finding at last a cor 
 ner at Raggett s, in Dover street, we dressed, dined, 
 and posted to Woolwich. Unexpected and mournful 
 news closed our first day in England with tears. 
 
 ****** 
 
 I drove up to London the second day after our ar 
 rival, and having a little " Grub-street" business, made 
 my way to the purlieus of publishers in Paternoster 
 row. If you could imagine a paper mine, with a very 
 deep-cut shaft laid open to the surface of the earth, 
 you might get some idea of Ivy lane. One walks 
 along through its dim subterranean light, with no idea 
 of breathing the proper atmosphere of day and open 
 air. A strong smell of new books in the nostrils, and 
 one long stripe of blue sky much farther off" than usu 
 al, are the predominant impressions. 
 
 From the dens of the publishers, I wormed my way 
 through the crowds of Cheapside and the Strand, tow 
 ard that part of London which, as Horace Smith says, 
 is "open at the top." Something in the way of a 
 ship s fender, to save the hips and elbows, would sell 
 well I should think to pedestrians in London. What 
 crowds, to be sure ! On a Sunday in New York, 
 when all the churches are pouring forth their congre 
 gations at the same moment, you have seen a faint 
 image of the Strand. The style of the hack cabriolets 
 is very much changed since I was in London. The 
 passenger sits about as high up from the ground as he 
 would in a common chair the body of the vehicle 
 suspended from the axle instead of being placed upon 
 it, and the wheels very high. The driver s seat would 
 suit a sailor, for it answers to the ship s tiller, well astern. 
 He whips over the passenger s head. I saw one or 
 two private vehicles built on this principle, certainly 
 one of safety, though they have something the beauty 
 of a prize hog. 
 
 The new National Gallery in Trafalgar square, not 
 finished when I left England, opened upon me as I 
 entered Charing Cross, with what I could not but feel 
 was a very fine effect, though critically, its " pepper- 
 boxity" is not very creditable to the architect. Fine 
 old Northumberland house, with its stern lion atop on 
 one side, the beautiful Club house on the other, St. 
 Martin s noble church and the Gallery with such a 
 fine opening in the very cor cordium of London, could 
 not fail of producing a noble metropolitan view. 
 
 The street in front of the gallery was crowded with 
 carriages, showing a throng of visiters within ; and 
 mounting the imposing steps (the loftiness of the ves 
 tibule dropping plump as I paid my shilling entrance), 
 I found myself in a hall whose extending lines of pil 
 lars ran through the entire length of the building, 
 offering to the eye a truly noble perspective. Off 
 from this hall, to the right and left, lay the galleries 
 of antique and modern paintings, and the latter were 
 crowded with the fair and fashionable mistresses of the 
 equipages without. You will not care to be bothered 
 with criticisms on pictures, and mine was a cursory 
 glance but a delicious, full-length portrait of a noble 
 lady by Grant, whose talent is now making some noise 
 in London, a glorious painting of Van Amburgh 
 among his lions by Edwin Landseer, and a portrait of 
 Miss Pardoe in a Turkish costume, with her pretty 
 feet coiled under her on a Persian carpet, by Pickers- 
 gill, are among those I remember. I found a great 
 many acquaintances in the gallery ; and I was sitting up 
 on a bench with a lady, who pointed out to me a portrait 
 of Lord Lyndhurst in his chancellor s wig and robes 
 a very fine picture of a man of sixty or thereabouts. 
 Directly between me and it, as I looked, sidled a per 
 son with his back to me, cutting off my view very pro- 
 vokingly. " When this dandy gets out of the way with 
 his eyeglass," said I, "I shall be able to see the pic 
 ture." My friend smiled. " Who do you take the 
 dandy to be ?" It was a well-formed man, dressed in 
 the top of the fashion, with a very straight back, curl 
 
 ing brown hair, and the look of perhaps thirty years 
 of age. As he passed on and I caught his profile, I 
 saw it was Lord Lyndhurst himself. 
 
 ****** 
 
 I had not seen Taglioni since the first representa 
 tion of the Sylphide, eight or nine years ago at Paris. 
 ! Last night I was at the opera, and saw her in La 
 Gitana ; and except that her limbs are the least in the 
 world rounder and fuller, she is, in person, absolutely 
 unchanged. I can appreciate now, better than I could 
 | then (when opera dancing was new to me), what it is 
 I that gives this divine woman the right to her proud 
 title of La Deesse de la Dansc. It is easy for the 
 Ellslers, and Augusta, and others, who are said to be 
 only second to her, to copy her flying steps, and even 
 \ to produce, by elasticity of limb, the beautiful effect 
 ; of touching the earth, like a thing afloat, without be 
 ing indebted to it for the rebound. But Taglioni alone 
 finishes the step, or the pirouette, or the arrowy bound 
 over the scene, as calmly, as accurately, as faultlessly, 
 1 as she begins it. She floats out of a pirouette as if, 
 , instead of being made giddy, she had been lulled by 
 | it into a smiling and child-like dream, and instead of 
 trying herself and a plomb (as is seen in all other dan 
 cers, by their effort to recover composure), it had been 
 the moment when she had rallied and been refreshed. 
 The smile, so expressive of enjoyment in her own 
 grace, which steals over Taglioni s lips when she closes 
 a difficult step, seems communicated, in an indefina 
 ble languor, to her limbs. You can not fancy her fa 
 tigued when, with her peculiar softness of motion, she 
 courtesies to the applause of the enchanted audience, 
 and walks lightly away. You are never apprehensive 
 that she has undertaken too much. You never de 
 tect, as you do in all other dancers, defects slurred 
 over adroitly, and movements that, from their antici 
 pating the music of the ballet, are known by the criti 
 cal eye to cover some flaw in the step, from giddiness 
 or loss of balance. But oh what a new relation bears 
 the music to the dance, when this spirit of grace re 
 places her companions in the ballet ! Whether the 
 motion seems born of the music, or the music floats 
 out of her dreamy motion, the enchanted gazer might 
 be almost embarrassed to know. 
 
 In the new ballet of La Gitana, the music is based 
 upon the Mazurka. The story is the old one of the 
 child of a grandee of Spain, stolen by gipsies, and re 
 covered by chance in Russia. The gradual stealing 
 |i over her of a recollection of music she had heard in 
 | her childhood was the finest piece of pantomimic act 
 ing I ever saw. But there is one dance, the Cachucha, 
 \ introduced at the close of the ballet, in which Taglioni 
 i has enchanted the world anew. It could only be done 
 ! by herself; for there is a succession of flying move- 
 i ments expressive of alarm, in the midst of which she 
 | alights and stands poised upon the points of her feet, 
 i with a look over her shoulder of fierte and animation 
 possible to no other face, I think, in the world. It 
 was like a deer standing with expanded nostril and 
 i neck uplifted to its loftiest height, at the first scent of 
 his pursuers in the breeze. It was the very soul of 
 swiftness embodied in a look ! How can I describe it 
 j to you ? 
 
 ****** 
 
 My last eight hours have been spent between Bed- 
 | lam and the opera one of those antipodal contrasts 
 I of which London life affords so many. Thanks to 
 | God, and to the Howards who have arisen in our time, 
 i a madhouse is no longer the heart-rending scene that 
 i it used to be; and Bedlam, though a place of melan- 
 ! choly imprisonment, is as cheering a spectacle to the 
 humane as imprisonment can be made by care and 
 kindness. Of the three hundred persons who are in 
 mates of its wards, the greater part seemed quiet and 
 content, some playing at ball in the spacious court 
 yards, some lying on the grass, and some working vol- 
 
PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. 
 
 177 
 
 untarily at a kind of wheel arranged for raising water 
 to their rooms. 
 
 On the end of a bench in one of the courts, quite 
 apart from the other patients, sat the youth who came 
 up two hundred miles from the country to marry the 
 queen ! You will remember the story of his forcing 
 himself into Buckingham palace. He was a stout, 
 sandy-haired, sad-looking young man, of perhaps 
 twenty-four; and with his arms crossed, and his eyes 
 on the ground, he sat like a statue, never moving even 
 an eyelash while we were there. There was a very 
 gentlemanlike man working at the waterwheel, or 
 rather walking round, with his hand on the bar, in a 
 gait that would have suited the most finished exquis 
 ite of a drawing-room Mr. Davis, who shot (I think) 
 at Lord Londonderry. Then in an upper room we 
 saw the Captain Brown who shook his fist in the 
 queen s face when she went to the city really a most 
 officer-like and handsome fellow ; and in the next 
 room, poor old Hatfield, who shot at George the Third, 
 and has been in Bedlam for forty years quite sane! 
 He was a gallant dragoon, and his face is seamed with 
 scars got in battle before his crime. He employs him 
 self with writing poetry on the death of his birds and 
 cats whom he has outlived in prison all the society i 
 he has had in this long and weary imprisonment. He I 1 
 received us very courteously, and called our attention j 
 to his favorite canary showed us his poetry, and all I 
 with a sad, mild, subdued resignation, that quite ! 
 moved me. 
 
 In the female wards I saw nothing very striking, ex 
 cept one very noble-looking woman who was standing j 
 at her grated window, entirely absorbed in reading the 
 Bible. Her face expressed the most heart-rending j 
 melancholy I had ever witnessed. She has been for 
 years under the terrible belief that she has committed 
 the unpardonable sin," and though quiet all the day, 
 her agony at night becomes horrible. What a corn- j 
 ment on a much-practised mode of preaching the mild ! 
 and forgiving religion of our Savior ! 
 
 As I was leaving one of the wards, a young woman 
 of nineteen or twenty came up to me with a very po- 
 lite courtesy, and said, "Will you be so kind as to i; 
 have me released from this dreadful place ?" "I am |i 
 afraid I can not," said I. "Then," she replied, lay- | 
 ing her hand on my arm, with a most appealing ear- j 
 nestness, "perhaps you will on Monday you know jl 
 I ve nothing to pack !" The matron here interposed, j: 
 and led her away, but she kept her eyes on us till the 
 door closed. She was confined there for the murder 
 of her child. 
 
 We visited the kitchens, wash-houses, bakery, &c., 
 &c. all clean, orderly, and admirable, and left our 
 names on the visiters book, quite of the opinion of a 
 Frenchman who was there just before us, and who had 
 written under his own name this expressive praise : 
 " J ai visile certains palais mains beaux et moms bicn 
 entretcnus que cette maison de iafolie." 
 
 Two hours after, I was listening to the overture of 
 La Cenerentola, and watching the entrance to the op 
 era of the gay, the celebrated, and the noble. In the 
 house I had left, night had brought with it (as it does 
 always to the insane) a maddening and terrific exalta 
 tion of brain and spirit but how different from that 
 exaltation of brain and spirit sought at the same hour, 
 by creatures of the same human family, at the opera ! 
 It was difficult not to wonder at the distribution of 
 allotments to mankind. In a box on the left of me sat 
 the queen, keeping time with a fan to the delicious 
 singing of Pauline Garcia, her favorite minister stand 
 ing behind her chair, and her maids of honor around 
 herself the smiling, youthful, and admired sovereign 
 of the most powerful nation on earth ! I thought of 
 the poor girl in her miserable cell at Bedlam imploring 
 release. 
 
 The queen s face has thinned and grown more oval 
 
 since I saw her at a drawing-room, four years ago, as 
 Princess Victoria. She has been compelled to think 
 since then, and such exigencies, in all stations of life, 
 work out the expression of the face. She has now 
 what I should pronounce a decidedly intellectual 
 countenance, a little petulant withal when she turns 
 to speak, but, on the whole, quite beautiful enough 
 for a virgin queen. No particular attention seemed 
 paid to her by the audience. She was dressed less 
 gayly than many others around her. Her box was at 
 the left side of the house, undistinguished by any mark 
 of royalty, and a stranger would never have suspected 
 her presence. 
 
 Pauline Garcia sang better than I thought it possi 
 ble for any one to sing after Malibran was dead. She 
 has her sister s look about the forehead and eyes, and 
 all her sister s soul and passionateness in her style of 
 singing. Her face is otherwise very plain, but, plain 
 as it is, and young as she is, the opera-going public 
 prefer her already to the beautiful and more powerful 
 Grisi. The latter long triumphant prima donna is 
 said to be very unhappy at her eclipse by this new fa 
 vorite ; and it is curious enough to hear the hundred 
 and one faults found in the declining songstress by 
 those who once would not admit that she could be 
 transcended on earth. A very celebrated person, whom 
 I remembered, when in London before, giving Grisi 
 the most unqualified eulogy, assured the gay admirers 
 in her box last night that she had always said that 
 Grisi had nothing but lungs and fine eyes. She was 
 a great healthy Italian girl, and could sing in tune; 
 but soul or sentiment she never had ! Poor Grisi ! 
 Hers is the lot of all who are so unhappy as to have 
 been much admired. " Le monde ne ha it rien autant 
 que ses idoles quand Us sont d terrc," said the wise La 
 Bruyere. 
 
 ****** 
 
 Some of the most delightful events in one s travels 
 are those which afford the least materiel for descrip 
 tion, and such is our scjour of a few days at the vicar 
 age of B . It was a venerable old house with 
 
 pointed gables, elaborate and pointed windows, with 
 panes of glass of the size of the palm of the hand, 
 low doors, narrow staircases, all sorts of unsuspected 
 rooms, and creepers outside, trellised and trained to 
 every corner and angle. Then there was the modern 
 wing, with library and dining-room, large windows, 
 marble fireplaces, and French paper; and in going 
 from your bedroom to breakfnst, you might fancy 
 yourself stepping from Queen Elizabeth s time to 
 Queen Victoria s. A high hedge of holly divided the 
 smoothly-shaven lawn from the churchyard, and in 
 the midst of the moss-grown headstones stood a gray 
 old church with four venerable towers, one of the most 
 picturesque and beautiful specimens of the old Eng 
 lish architecture that I have ever seen. The whole 
 group, church, vicarage, and a small hamlet of vine- 
 covered and embowered stone cottages, lay in the lap 
 of a gently rising sweep of hills, and all around were 
 spread landscapes of the finished and serene character 
 peculiar to England rich fields framed in flowering 
 hedges, clumps of forest trees, glimpses of distant 
 parks , country seats, and village Spires, and on the 
 horizon a line of mist-clad hills, scarce ever more dis 
 tinct than the banks of low-lying clouds retiring after 
 a thunderstorm in America. 
 
 Early on Sunday morning we were awakened by 
 the melody of the bells in the old towers ; and with 
 brief pauses between the tunes, they were phiyed upon 
 most musically, till the hour for the morning services. 
 We have little idea in America of the perfection to 
 which the chiming of bells is carried in England. In 
 the towers of this small rural church are hung eight 
 bells of different tone, and the tunes played on them 
 by the more accomplished ringers of the. neighboring 
 hamlet are varied endlessly. 1 lay and listened to the 
 
178 
 
 PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. 
 
 simple airs as they died away over the valley, with a I 1 
 pleasure I can scarcely express. The morning was!: 
 serene and bright, the perfume of the clematis and! 
 jasmine flowers at the window penetrated to the cur-;! 
 tains of my bed, and Sunday seemed to have dawned jj 
 with the audible worship and palpable incense of na- || 
 ture. We were told at breakfast that the chimes had , 
 been unusually merry, and were a compliment to our- || 
 selves, the villagers always expressing thus their con- !j 
 gratulations on the arrival of guests at the vicarage. 
 The compliment was repeated between services, and a i 
 very long peal rang in the twilight our near relation- j 
 ship to the vicar s family authorizing a very special | 
 rejoicing. 
 
 The interior of the church was very ancient look- 
 ing and rough, the pews of unpainted oak, and the jj 
 massive stone walls simply whitewashed. The con- j 
 gregation was small, perhaps fifty persons, and thelj 
 men were (with two exceptions) dressed in russet 1 1 
 carters frocks, and most of them in leather legging, j I 
 The children sat on low benches placed in the centre ji 
 of the one aisle, and the boys, like their fathers, were 
 in smock frocks of homespun, their heavy shoes shod j 
 with iron like horses hoofs, and their little legs button- I 
 ed up in the impenetrable gaiters of coarse leather, jj 
 They looked, men and boys, as if they were intended 
 to wear but one suit in this world. 
 
 I was struck with the solemnity of the service, and j| 
 the decorous attention of men, women, and children, 
 to the responses. It was a beautiful specimen of \\ 
 simple and pastoral worship. Each family had the: 
 name of their farm or place of residence printed on 
 the back of the pew, with the number of seats to jj 
 which they were entitled, probably in proportion to 
 their tithes. The "living" is worth, if I remember 
 right, not much over a hundred pounds an insuffi- j 
 cient sum to support so luxurious a vicarage as is,! 
 appended to it; but, happily for the people, the vicar 
 chances to be a man of fortune, and he unites in his !; 
 excellent character the exemplary pastor with the ! ! 
 
 physician and lord of the manor. I left B with j : 
 
 the conviction that if peace, contentment, and happi- 
 ness, inhabit one spot more than all others in a world !; 
 whose allotments are so difficult to estimate, it is the 
 vicarage in the bosom of that rural upland. 
 
 We left B at twelve in the Brighton "Age" 
 
 the "swell coach" of England. We were to dine 
 
 thirty miles nearer London, at Park, and we did 
 
 the distance in exactly three hours, including a stop 
 of fifteen minutes to dine. We are abused by all 
 travellers for our alacrity in dining on the road ; but 
 what stage-coach in the United States ever limited 
 its dining time to fifteen minutes, and what American 
 dinner of roast, pastry, and cheese, was ever despatch 
 ed so briefly ? Yet the travellers to Brighton are of 
 the better class ; and whose who were my fellow- 
 passengers the day I refer to were particularly well 
 dressed and gentlemanly yet all of them achieved a 
 substantial dinner of beef, pudding, and cheese, paid 
 their bills, and drained their glass of porter, within \\ 
 the quarter of an hour. John Bull s blindness to the 
 beam in his own eye is perhaps owing to the f;ict that 
 this hasty meal is sometimes called a " lunch !" 
 
 The two places beside our own in the inside were 
 occupied by a lady and her maid and two children 
 an interpretation of the number two to which I would 
 not have agreed if I could have helped it. We can not 
 always tell at first sight what will be most amusing, 
 however ; and the child of two years, who sprawled 
 over my rheumatic knees with her mother s permis 
 sion, thereby occasioning on my part a most fixed 
 look out of the window, furnished me after a while 
 with a curious bit of observation. At one of the 
 commons we passed, the children running out from a i 
 gipsy encampment flung bunches of heath flowers 
 
 into the coach, which the little girl appropriated, and 
 commenced presenting rather graciously to her mother, 
 the maid, and Mrs. W., all of whom received them 
 with smiles and thanks. Having rather a sulky face 
 of my own when not particularly called on to be 
 pleased, the child omitted me for a long time in her 
 distributions. At last, after collecting and re-distribu 
 ting the flowers for about an hour, she grew suddenly 
 grave, laid the heath all out upon her lap, selected the 
 largest and brightest flowers, and made them into a 
 nosegay. My attention was attracted by the serious 
 ness of the child s occupation ; and I was watching 
 her without thinking my notice observed, when she 
 raised her eyes to me very timidly, turned her new 
 bouquet over and over, and at last, with a blush, 
 deeper than I ever saw before upon a child, placed 
 the flowers in my hand and hid her face in her mother s 
 bosom. My sulkiness gave way, of course, and the 
 little coquette s pleasure in her victory was excessive. 
 For the remainder of the journey, those who had 
 given her their smiles too readily were entirely neg 
 lected, and all her attentions were showered upon the 
 only one she had found it difficult to please. I thought 
 it as pretty a specimen of the ruling passion strong in 
 baby-hood as I ever saw. It was a piece of finished 
 coquetry in a child not old enough to speak plain. 
 
 The coachman of " the age" was a young man of 
 perhaps thirty, who is understood to have run through 
 a considerable fortune, and drives for a living but he 
 was not at all the sort of looking person you would 
 fancy for a "swell whip." He drove beautifully, and 
 helped the passengers out and in, lifted their baggage, 
 &c., very handily, but evidently shunned notice, and 
 had no desire to chat with the " outsides." The ex 
 cessive difficulty in England of finding any clean way 
 of making a living after the initiatory age is passed 
 a difficulty which reduced gentlemen feel most keen 
 ly probably forced this person as it has others to 
 take up a vocation for which the world fortunately 
 finds an excuse in eccentricity. He touches his hat 
 for the half crown or shilling, although probably if it 
 were offered to him when the whip was out of his 
 hand he would knock the giver down for his imperti 
 nence. I may as well record here, by the way, for 
 the benefit of those who may wish to know a compari 
 son between the expense of travelling here and at 
 home, that for two inside places for thirty miles the 
 coach fare was two pounds, and the coachman s fee 
 five shillings, or half-a-crown each inside. To get 
 
 from the post town to Park (two miles) cost me 
 
 five-and-sixpence for a " fly," so that for thirty-two 
 miles travel I paid 21. 10s. 6d., a little more than 
 twelve dollars. 
 
 And speaking of vocations, it would be a useful 
 lesson to some of our ambitious youths to try a be 
 ginning at getting a living in England. I was never 
 at all aware of the difficulty of finding even bread and 
 salt for a young man, till I had occasion lately to en 
 deavor to better the condition of a servant of my own 
 a lad who has been with me four or five years, and 
 whose singular intelligence, good principles, and high 
 self-improvement, fitted him, I thought, for any con 
 fidential trust or place whatever. His own ideas, too 
 (I thought, not unreasonably), had become somewhat 
 sublimated in America, and he was unwilling to con 
 tinue longer as a servant. He went home to his 
 mother, a working-woman of London, and I did my 
 utmost, the month I was in town, inquiring among all 
 classes of my friends, advertising, &c., to find him any 
 possible livelihood above menial service. I was met 
 everywhere with the same answer : " There are 
 hundreds of gentlemen s sons wearing out their youth 
 in looking for the same thing." I was told daily that 
 it was quite in vain that apprenticeships were as 
 much sought as clerkships, and that every avenue to 
 the making of a sixpence was overcrammed and inac- 
 
PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. 
 
 179 
 
 cessible. My boy and his mother at last came to 
 their senses ; and, consenting to apply once more for 
 a servant s place, he was fortunate enough to engage 
 as valet to a bachelor, and is now gone with his new 
 master on a tour to France. As Harding the painter 
 said to me, when he returned after his foreign trip, 
 "England is a great place to take the nonsense out of 
 people." 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 When London shall have become the Rome or 
 Athens of a fallen empire (qu. will it ever?) the ter 
 mini of the railways will be among its finest ruins. 
 That of the Birmingham and Liverpool track is al 
 most as magnificent as that flower of sumptuousness, 
 the royal palace of Caserta, near Naples. It is really 
 an impressive scene simply to embark for " Brum 
 magem ;" and there is that utility in all this showy 
 expenditure for arch, gateway, and pillar, that no one 
 is admitted but the passenger, and you are refreshing 
 ly permitted to manage your baggage, &c., without 
 the assistance of a hundred blackguards at a shilling 
 each. Then there are " ladies waiting-rooms," and 
 " gentlemen s waiting-rooms," and attached to them 
 every possible convenience, studiously clean and order 
 ly. I wish the president and directors of the Utica 
 and other American railroads would step over and 
 take a sumptuary hint. 
 
 The cars are divided into stalls, i. e. each passenger 
 is cushioned off by a stuffed partition from his neigh 
 bor s shoulder, and sleeps without offence or encroach 
 ment. When they are crowded, that is an admirable 
 arrangement ; but I have found it very comfortable in 
 long journeys in America to take advantage of an 
 empty car, and stretch myself to sleep along the 
 
 The Adelphi is the Astor house of Liverpool, a 
 very large and showy hotel near the terminus of the 
 railway. We were shown into rather a magnificent 
 parlor on our arrival ; and very hungry with rail-road- 
 ing since six in the morning, we ordered dinner at 
 their earliest convenience. It came after a full hour, 
 and we sat down to four superb silver covers, anticipa 
 ting a meal corresponding to the stout person and 
 pompous manners of the fattest waiter I have seen in my 
 travels. The grand cover was removed with a flourish 
 and disclosed divers small bits of second-hand beef 
 steak, toasted brown and warped at the corners by a 
 second fire, and on the removal of the other three 
 silver pagodas, our eyes were gratified by a dish of 
 peas that had been once used for green soup, three 
 similarly toasted and warped mutton chops, and three 
 potatoes. Quite incredulous of the cook s intentions, 
 I ventured to suggest to the waiter that he had proba 
 bly mistaken the tray and brought us the dinner of 
 some sportsman s respectable brace of pointers; but 
 on being assured that there were no dogs in the cellar, 
 I sent word to the master of the house that we had 
 rather a preference for a dinner ne\v and hot, and 
 would wait till he could provide it. Half an hour 
 more brought up the landlord s apologies and a fresh 
 and hot beef-steak, followed by a tough-crusted apple- 
 pie, custard, and cheese and with a bottle of Moselle, 
 which was good, we finished our dinner at one of the 
 most expensive and showy hotels in England. The 
 manners and fare at the American hotels being always 
 described as exponents of civilization by English 
 travellers, I shall be excused for giving a counter- 
 picture of one of the most boasted of their own. 
 
 Regretting exceedingly that the recent mourning 
 
 vacant seat. Here, full or empty, you can occupy of my two companions must prevent their presence 
 but your upright place. In every car are suspended at the gay festivities of Eglinton, 1 put them on board 
 lamps to give light during the long passages through j the steamer, bound on a visit to relatives in Dublin, 
 
 the subterranean tunnels. 
 
 We rolled from under the Brobdignag roof of the 
 terminus, as the church of Mary-le-bone (Cockney 
 for Marie-la-bonne, but so carved on the frieze) struck 
 six. Our speed was increased presently to thirty 
 
 and returned to the Adelphi to wait en garcon for the 
 Glasgow steamer of Monday. My chamber is a large 
 and well-furnished room, with windows looking out 
 on the area shut in by the wings of the house ; and I 
 must make you still more contented at the Astor, by 
 
 miles in the hour; and with the exception of the I describing what is going on below at this moment, 
 slower rate in passing the tunnels, and the slackening ! It is half-past eight, and a Sunday morning. All the 
 
 j bells of the house, it seems to me, are ringing, most, 
 patiently, and in the area before the 
 are six or eight idle waiters, and four 
 
 stoppages having exceeded an hour altogether. j or five female scullions, playing, quarrelling, scolding, 
 
 I thought, toward the end, that all this might be j and screaming; the language of both men and women 
 very pleasant with a consignment of buttons, or an more profane and indecent than anything 1 have ever 
 errand to Gretna Green. But for the pleasure of the (before chanced to hear, and every word audible in 
 thing, I would as lief sit in an arm-chair and see bales every room in this quarter of the hotel. This has 
 of striped green silk Unfolded for eight hours, astravel been going on since six this morning; and I seriously 
 the same length of time by the railroad. (I have de- declare I do not think I ever heard as much indecent 
 scribed in this simile exactly the appearance of the i conversation in my life as for three mortal hours must 
 fields as you see them in flying past.) The old wo- j have " murdered sleep" for every lady and gentleman 
 
 slower rate in passing tiie tunnels, and tne slackening ! it is nan-past eigiu, ; 
 
 and getting under way at the different stations, this bells of the house, it 
 
 rate was kept up throughout. We arrived at Liver- i of them very impati< 
 
 pool (205 miles or upward) at three o clock, our i kitchen windows are : 
 
 men and cabbages gain by it, perhaps, for yoiucan not 
 tell whether they are not girls and roses. The washer 
 woman at her tub follows the lady on the lawn so i 
 quickly that you confound the two irresistibly the 
 thatched cottages look like browsing donkeys, and the 
 browsing donkeys like thatched cottages you ask the 
 name of a town, and by the time you get up your 
 finger, your point at a spot three miles off in short, 
 the salmon well packed in straw on the top of the j 
 coach, and called fresh-fish after a journey of 200 i 
 miles, sees quite as much of the country as his most 
 intellectual fellow-passenger. I foresee in all this a 
 new distinction in phraseology. " Have you travel- j 
 led in England?" will soon be a question having no 
 reference to railroads. The winding turnpike and ! 
 cross-roads, the coaches and post-carriages, will be 
 resumed by all those who consider the sense of sight 
 as useful in travel, and the bagmen and letter-bags 
 will have almost undisputed possession of the rail- 
 cars. 
 
 lodged on the rear bide of the " crack hotel" of Liver 
 pool. 
 
 Sick of the scene described above, I went out just 
 now to take a turn or two in my slippers in the long 
 entry. Up and down, giving me a most appealing 
 stare whenever we met, dawdled also the fat waiter 
 who* served up the cold victuals of yesterday. He 
 evidently had some errand with me, but what I did 
 not immediately fathom. At last he approached 
 
 " You a got your things, sir ?" 
 
 " What things?" 
 
 "The stick and umbrella, I carried to your bed 
 room, sir." 
 
 " Yes, thank you," and I resumed my walk. 
 
 The waiter resumed his, and presently approached 
 again. 
 
 u You a don t intend to use the parlor again, sir ?" 
 
 "No: I have explained to the master of the house 
 that I shall breakfast in the coffee-room." And again 
 I walked on. 
 
180 
 
 PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. 
 
 My friend began again at the next turn. 
 
 "You a pay for those ladies dinner yourself, 
 sir?" 
 
 " Yes." I walked on once more. 
 
 Once more approaches rny fat incubus, and with a 
 twirl of the towel in his hand looks as if he would fain 
 be delivered of something. 
 
 Why the d 1 am I badgered in this way ?" I 
 stormed out at last, losing patience at his stammering 
 hesitation, and making a move to get round the fat 
 obstruction and pursue rny walk. 
 
 " Will you a remember the waiter, if you please, 
 sir?" 
 
 " Oh ! I was not aware that I was to pay the waiter 
 at every meal. I generally do it when I leave the 
 house. Perhaps you ll be kind enough to let me 
 finish my walk, and trust me till to-morrow morning?" 
 
 P. S. Evening in the coffee-room They say the 
 best beginning in love is a decided aversion, and badly 
 as I began at Liverpool, I shall always have a tender 
 recollection of it for the admirable and unequalled 
 luxury of its baths. A long and beautiful Grecian 
 building crests the head of George s pier, built by the 
 corporation of Liverpool, and devoted exclusively to 
 salt-water baths. I walked down in the twilight to 
 enjoy this refreshing luxury, and it being Sunday 
 evening, 1 was shown into the ladies end of the 
 building. The room where I waited till the bath 
 was prepared was a lofty and finely proportioned 
 apartment, elegantly furnished, and lined with superb 
 ly bound books and pictures, the tables covered with 
 engravings, and the whole thing looked like a central 
 apartment in a nobleman s residence. A boy showed 
 me presently into a small drawing-room, to which was 
 attached a bath closet, the two rooms lined, boudoir 
 fashion, with chintz, a clock over the bath, a nice 
 carpet and stove, in short, every luxury possible to 
 such an establishment. I asked the boy if the gentle 
 men s baths were as elegant as these. " Oh yes," he 
 said: "there are two splendid pictures of Niagara 
 Falls and Catskill." " Who painted them ?" "Mr. 
 Wall." " And whose are they ?" " They belong to 
 our father, sir !" I made up my mind that " our 
 father" was a man of taste and a credit to Liverpool. 
 ******* 
 
 I have just returned from the dinner given to Mac- 
 ready at the Freemason s tavern. The hall, so cele 
 brated for public " feeds," is a beautiful room of a 
 very showy style of architecture, with three galleries, 
 and a raised floor at the end usually occupied by the 
 cross table. It accommodated on this occasion four 
 hundred persons. 
 
 From the peculiar object of the meeting to do 
 honor to an actor for his intellectual qualities, and for 
 his efforts to spiritualise and elevate the stage, there 
 probably never was collected together in one room so 
 much talent and accomplishment. Artists, authors, 
 critics, publishers, and amateurs of the stage a large 
 body in London made up the company. My atten 
 tion was called by one of my neighbors to the singu 
 larly superior character of the heads about us, and I 
 had already observed the striking difference, both in 
 head and physiognomy, between this and a common 
 assemblage of men. Most of the persons connected 
 with the press, it was said, were present; and perhaps 
 it would have been a worthy service to the world had 
 some shorn Samson, among the authors, pulled the 
 temple upon the heads of the Philistines. 
 
 The cry of " make way !" introduced the duke of 
 Sussex, the chairman of the meeting a stout, mild- 
 looking, dignified old man, wearing a close black scull- 
 cap and the star and riband. He was followed by 
 Lord Conyngham, who, as grand chamberlain, had 
 done much to promote the interests of the drama; by 
 Lord Nugent (whom I had last seen sailing a scampama 
 in the bay of Corfu), by Sir Lytton Bulwer, Mr. I 
 
 Shell, Sir Martin Shee, Young, the actor, Mr. Milnes, 
 the poet, and other distinguished men. I should 
 have said, by the way Mr. Macready followed next 
 his royal highness. 
 
 The cheering and huzzas, as this procession walked 
 
 up the room, were completely deafening. Macready 
 
 looked deadly pale and rather overcome; and amid 
 
 : the waving of handkerchiefs and the stunning uproar 
 
 I of four hundred "gentlemen and scholars," the duke 
 
 placed the tragedian at his right hand, and took his 
 
 seat before the turbot. 
 
 The dinner was an uncommonly bad one ; but of 
 this I had been forewarned, and so had taken a provi 
 sory chop at the club. I had leisure, therefore, to 
 look about me, and truly there was work enough for 
 
 the eyes. M s head interested me more than 
 
 any one s else, for it was the personification of his 
 lofty, liberal, and poetic genius. His hair, which 
 was long and profuse, curled in tendrils over the 
 loftiest forehead ; but about the lower part of the face 
 ! lay all the characteristics which go to make up a 
 voluptuous yet generous, an enthusiastic and fiery, 
 yet self-possessed and well directed character. He was 
 excessively handsome ; yet it was the beauty of 
 Masaniello, or Salvator Rosa, with more of intellect 
 than both together. All in all, I never saw a finer 
 face for an artist; and judging from his looks and 
 from his works (he is perhaps twenty-four), I would 
 stake my sagacity on a bold prophecy of his greatness. 
 On the same side were the L s, very quiet-look 
 ing men, and S the portrait-painter, a merry- 
 
 ! looking grenadier, and L B the poet, with a 
 
 | face like a poet. Near me was L , the painter, 
 
 ! poet, novelist, song and music writer, dramatist, and 
 good fellow seven characters of which his friends 
 j scarce know in which he is most excellent and he 
 : has a round Irish face, with a bright twinkle in his 
 | eye, and a plump little body which carries off all his 
 I gifts as if they were no load at all. And on my left 
 
 [ was S , the glorious painter of Venice, of the 
 
 j battle of Trafalgar, the unequalled painter of the sea 
 i in all its belongings; and you would take him for a 
 | gallant lieutenant of the navy, with the fire of a score 
 I of battles asleep in his eye, and the roughening of a 
 | hundred tempests in his cheek. A franker and more 
 j manly face would not cross your eye in a year s travel. 
 
 Mr. J was just beyond, a tall, sagacious-look- 
 
 ! ing, good humored person of forty-five. He was a 
 man of very kind manners, and was treated with great 
 [ marks of liking and respect by all about him. Buc 
 directly opposite to me sat so exact a picture of Paul 
 j Pry as he is represented on the stage, particularly of 
 my friend Finn in that character, that it was difficult 
 | not to smile in looking at him. To my surprise, I 
 heard some one behind me point him out, soon after, 
 as the well-known original in that character the 
 gentleman, whose peculiarities of person, as well as 
 manners, were copied in the farce of Mr. Poole. 
 " That s my name what s yours ?" said he the mo 
 ment after he had seated himself, thrusting his card 
 close to the nose of the gentleman next him. I took 
 it of course for a piece of fun between two very old 
 friends, but to my astonishment the gentlemen next 
 him was as much astonished as I. 
 
 The few servants scattered up and down were deaf 
 to everything but calls for champagne (furnished only 
 at an extra charge when called for a very mean 
 system for a public dinner, by the way), and the 
 wines on the table seemed selected to drive one to 
 champagne or the doctor. Each person had four 
 plates, and when used, they were to be put under the 
 bench, or on the top of your head, or to be sat upon, 
 j or what you would, except to be taken away, and the 
 | soup and fish, and the roast and boiled and all, having 
 been put on together, was all removed at one fell 
 swoop the entire operation of dinner having lasted 
 
PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. 
 
 181 
 
 just twenty-five minutes. Keep this fact till we are re 
 corded by some new English traveller as the most ex 
 peditious eaters in Christendom. 
 
 Here end my croakings, however, for the speeches 
 commenced directly, and admirable they were. To 
 the undoing of much prejudice got by hearsay, I 
 listened to Bulwer. He is, beyond all comparison, 
 the most graceful and effective speaker I ever heard 
 in England. All the world tells you that he makes 
 signal failures in oratory yet he rose, when his health 
 was drank, and, in self-possessed, graceful, unhesita 
 ting language, playful, yet dignified, warm, yet not 
 extravagant, he replied to the compliments of his 
 royal highness, and brought forward his plan (as you 
 have seen it reported in the papers) for the erection 
 of a new theatre for the legitimate drama and Mac- 
 ready. I remember once hearing that Bulwer had a 
 belief in his future eminence as an orator and I would 
 warrant his warmest anticipations in that career of 
 ambition. He is a better speaker than Sheil, who follow 
 ed him, and Sheil is renowned as an orator. Really 
 there is nothing like one s own eyes and ears in this 
 world of envy and misrepresentation. 
 
 D sat near Sheil, at the cross table, very silent, 
 
 as is his custom and that of most keen observers. 
 The courtly Sir M S was near B , look 
 ing like some fine old picture of a wit of Charles the 
 
 second s time, and he and Y the actor made two 
 
 very opposite and gentlemanlike speeches. 1 believe 
 I have told you nearly all that struck me, except what 
 was reported in the gazettes, and that you have no 
 need to read over again. I got away at eleven, and 
 reached the opera in time to hear the last act of the 
 Puritani, and see the Elsslers dance in the ballet, and 
 with a look-in at a ball, I concluded one of those ex 
 hausting, exciting, overdone London days, which are 
 pleasanter to remember than to enjoy, and pleasanter 
 to read about than either. 
 ******* 
 
 One of the most elegant and agreeable persons I 
 ever saw was Miss P , and I think her conversa 
 tion more delightful to remember than any person s 
 I ever knew. A distinguished artist told me that he 
 remembered her when she was his beau-ideal of female 
 beauty ; but in those days she was more "fancy-rapt," 
 and gave in less to the current and spirit of society. 
 Age has made her, if it may be so expressed, less 
 selfish in her use of thought, and she pours it forth, 
 like Pactolus that gold which is sand from others, i 
 
 once on a visit to a noble house, when to her dismay 
 a large and fashionable company arrived, who brought 
 with them a mania for private theatricals. Her ward 
 robe was very slender, barely sufficient for the ordinary 
 j events of a week-day, and her purse contained one 
 I solitary shilling. To leave the house was out of the 
 | question, to feign illness as much so, and to decline 
 | taking a part was impossible, for her talent and spright- 
 j liness were the hope of the theatre. A part was cast 
 for her, and, in despair, she excused herself from the 
 gay party bound to the country town to make purcha 
 ses of silk and satin, and shut herself up, a prey to 
 mortified low spirits. The character required a smart 
 village dress, and it certainly did not seem that it could 
 come out of a shilling. She sat at her window, biting 
 her lips, and turning over in her mind whether she 
 could borrow of some one, when her attention was at 
 tracted to a carpenter, who was employed in the con 
 struction of a stage in the large hall, and who, in the 
 court below, was turning off from his plane broad and 
 long shavings of a peculiarly striped wood. It struck 
 her that it was like riband. The next moment she 
 was below, and begged of the man to give her half-a- 
 dozen lengths as smooth -as he could shave them. He 
 performed his task well, and depositing them in her 
 apartment, she set off alone on horseback to the vil 
 lage, and with her single shilling succeeded in pur 
 chasing a chip hat of the coarsest fabric. She carried 
 it home, exultingly, trimmed it with her pine shavings, 
 and on the evening of the performance appeared with 
 a white dress, and hat and belt-ribands which were 
 the envy of the audience. The success of her inven 
 tion gave her spirits and assurance, and she played to 
 admiration. The sequel will justify my first remark. 
 She made a conquest on that night of one of her titled 
 auditors, whom she afterward married. You will al 
 low that Lady may afford to be tolerant of car 
 penters." 
 
 An eminent clergyman one evening became the sub 
 ject of conversation, and a wonder was expressed that 
 ! he had never married. "That wonder," said Miss 
 P , "was once expressed to the reverend gentle 
 man himself in my hearing, and he told a story in an 
 swer which I will tell you and perhaps, slight as it 
 may seem, it is the history of other hearts as"sensitive 
 and delicate as his own. Soon after his ordination, 
 he preached once every Sabbath, for a clergyman in 
 i a small village not twenty miles from London. Among 
 his auditors, from Sunday to Sunday, he observed a 
 
 She is still what I should call a handsome woman, or, j young lady, who always occupied a certain seat, and 
 if that be not allowed, she is the wreck of more than || whose close attention began insensibly to grow to him 
 
 an object of thought and pleasure. She left the 
 church as soon as service was over, and it so chanced 
 that he went on for a year without knowing her name ; 
 but his sermon was never written without many a 
 | thought how she would approve it, nor preached with 
 ] satisfaction unless he read approbation in her face. 
 I Gradually he came to think of her at other times than 
 I when writing sermons, and to wish to see her on other 
 days than Sundays ; but the weeks slipped on, and 
 though he fancied she grew paler and thinner, he 
 never brought himself to the resolution either to ask 
 her name or to seek to speak with her. By these 
 silent steps, however, love had worked into his heart, 
 and he had made up his mind to seek her acquaint 
 ance and marry her, if possible, when one day he was 
 sent for to minister at a funer.il. The face of the 
 corpse was the same that had looked up to him Sun 
 day after Sunday, till he had learned to make it a part 
 of his religion and his life. He was unable to perform 
 the service, and another clergyman present officiated ; 
 and after she was buried, her father took him aside and 
 begged his pardon for giving him pain but he could 
 I not resist the impulse to tell him that his daughter 
 
 a common allotment of beauty, and looks it. Her 
 person is remarkably erect, her eyes and eyelids (in 
 this latter resembling Scott) very heavily moulded, 
 and her smile is beautiful. It strikes me that it always 
 is so where it ever was. The smile seems to be the 
 work of the soul. 
 
 I have passed months under the same roof with Miss 
 
 P 1 and nothing gave me more pleasure than to 
 
 find the company in that hospitable house dwindled 
 to a " fit audience though few," and gathered around 
 the figure in deep mourning which occupied the 
 warmest corner of the sofa. In any vein, and a-propos 
 to the gravest and the gayest subject, her well-stored 
 mind and memory flowed forth in the same rich cur 
 rent of mingled story and reflection, and I never saw 
 an impatient listener beside her. I recollect, one even 
 ing a lady s sinking "Auld Robin Gray," and some 
 one remarking (rather unsentimentaliy), at the close, 
 
 " By-the-by, what is Lady (the authoress of the 
 
 ballad) doing with so many carpenters. Berkeley 
 square is quite deafened with their hammering !" 
 
 "A-propos of carpenters and Lady ," said Miss 
 
 P 1 " this same charming ballad-writer owes some 
 
 thing to the craft. She was~better-born than provided jj had mentioned his name with her last breath, and he 
 with the gifts of fortune, and in her younger days was || was afraid that a concealed affection for him had hur- 
 
182 
 
 PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. 
 
 ried her to the grave. Since that, said the clergyman 
 ia question, my heart has been dead within me, and I 
 look forward only. I shall speak to her in heaven." 
 
 ****** 
 
 London is wonderfully embellished within the last 
 three years not so much by new buildings, public or 
 private, but by the almost insane rivalry that exists 
 among the tradesmen to outshow each other in the ex 
 pensive magnificence of their shops. When I was in 
 England before, there were two or three of these pal 
 aces of columns and plate-glass a couple of shawl- 
 shops, and a glass warehouse or two, but now the 
 west end and the city have each their scores of estab 
 lishments of which you would think the plate-glass 
 alone would ruin anybody but Aladdin. After an ab 
 sence of a month from town lately, I gave myself the 
 always delightful treat of an after-dinner ramble among 
 the illuminated palaces of Regent street and its neigh 
 borhood, and to my surprise, found four new wonders 
 of this description a shawl-house in the upper Re 
 gent Circus, a silk-mercer s in Oxford street, a whip- 
 maker s in Regent street, and a fancy stationer s in the 
 Quadrant either of which establishments fifty years 
 ago would have been the talk of all Europe. The 
 first-mentioned warehouse lines one of the quarters of 
 the Regent Circus, and turns the corner of Oxford 
 street with what seems but one window a series of 
 glass plates, only divided by brass rods, reaching from 
 the ground to the roof window-panes twelve feet high, 
 and four or five feet broad! The opportunity which 
 this immense transparency of front gives for the dis 
 play of goods is proportionately improved ; and in the 
 mixture of colors and fabrics to attract attention there 
 is evidently no small degree of art so harmonious are 
 the colors and yet so gorgeous the show. I see that 
 several more renovations are taking place in different 
 parts of both " city" and "town;" and London prom 
 ises, somewhere in the next decimals, to complete its 
 emergence from the chrysalis with a glory to which 
 eastern tales will be very gingerbread matters indeed. 
 
 If I may judge by my own experience and by what 
 I can see in the streets, all this night-splendor out of 
 doors empties the play-houses for I would rather 
 walk Regent street of an evening than see ninety-nine 
 plays in a hundred ; and so think, apparently, multi 
 tudes of people, who stroll up and down the clean and 
 broad London sidewalks, gazing in at the gorgeous 
 succession of shop-windows, and by the day-bright 
 glare of the illumination exchanging nods and smiles 
 the street, indeed, becoming gradually a fashionable 
 evening promenade, as cheap as it is amusing and de 
 lightful. There are large classes of society, who find 
 the evenings long in their dingy and inconvenient 
 homes, and who must go somewhere; and while the 
 streets were dark, and poorly paved and lighted, the 
 play-house was the only resort where they could be 
 guile their cares with splendor and amusement, and 
 in those days theatricals flourished, as in these days 
 of improved thoroughfares and gay shops they evi 
 dently languish. I will lend a hint to the next essay 
 ist on the " Decline of the Drama." 
 
 The increased attractiveness of London, from thus 
 disclosing the secrets of its wondrous wealth, compen 
 sates in a degree for what increases as rapidly on me 
 the distastefulness of the country, from the forbid 
 ding and repulsive exclusiveness of high garden-walls, 
 impermeable shrubberies, and every sort of contrivance 
 for confining the traveller to the road, and nothing but 
 the road. What should we say in America to travel 
 ling miles between two brick walls, with no prospect 
 but the branches of overhanging trees from the invis 
 ible park lands on either side, and the alley of cloudy 
 sky overhead ? How tantalizing to pass daily by a 
 noble estate with a fine specimen of architecture in its 
 centre, and see no more of it than a rustic lodge and 
 some miles of the tops of trees over a paling ! All 
 
 this to me is oppressive I feel abridged of breathing- 
 room and eyesight deprived of my liberty robbed 
 of my horizon Much as I admire high preservation 
 and cultivation, I would compromise for a " snake- 
 fence" all over England. 
 
 On a visit to a friend a week or two since in the 
 neighborhood of London, I chanced, during a long 
 walk, to get a glimpse over the wall of a nicely-grav 
 elled and secluded path, which commanded what the 
 proprietor s fence enviously shut from the road a 
 noble view of London and the Thames. Accustomed 
 to see people traversing my own lawn and fields in 
 America without question, as suits their purpose, and 
 tired of the bricks, hedges and placards of blacking 
 and pills, I jumped the fence, and with feelings of 
 great relief and expansion aired my eyes and my im 
 agination in the beautiful grounds of my friend s op 
 ulent neighbor. The Thames with its innumerable 
 steamers, men-of-war, yachts, wherries, and ships a 
 vein of commercial and maritime life lying between the 
 soft green meadows of Kent and Essex formed a de 
 licious picture of contrast and meaning beauty, which 
 I gazed upon with great delight for some ten minutes. 
 
 In about that time I was perceived by Mr. B s 
 
 gardener, who, with a very pokerish-looking slick in 
 his hand, came running toward me, evidently, by his 
 pace, prepared for a vigorous pursuit of the audacious 
 intruder. He came up to where I stood, quite out of 
 breath, and demanded, with a tight grasp of his stick, 
 what business I had there. I was not very well pre 
 pared with an answer, and short of beating the man 
 for his impudence (which in several ways might have 
 been a losing job), I did not see my way very clearly 
 
 out of Mr. B s grounds. My first intention, to 
 
 call on the proprietor and apologise for my intrusion 
 while I complained of the man s insolence, was defeat 
 ed by the information, evidently correct, that Mr. 
 B was not resident at the place, and so I was walk 
 ed out of the lodge-gate with a vagabond s warning 
 never to let him "catch me there again !" So much 
 for my liberal translation of a park-fence! 
 
 This spirit of exclusion makes itself even more dis 
 agreeably felt where a gentleman s paling chances to 
 include any natural curiosity. One of the wildest, as 
 well as most exquisitely beautiful spots on earth, is 
 the Dargle, in the county Wicklow, in Ireland. It is 
 interesting, besides, as belonging to the estate of the 
 orator and patriot Grattan. To get to it, we were let 
 through a gate by an old man, who received a 
 douceur ; we crossed a newly-reaped field, and came 
 to another gate; another person opened this, and we 
 paid another shilling. We walked on toward the 
 glen, and in the middle of the path, without any ob 
 ject apparently but the toll, there was another locked 
 gate, and another porter to pay ; and when we made 
 our exit from the opposite extremity of the grounds, 
 after seeing the Dargle, there was a fourth gate and a 
 fourth porter. The first field and fee belonged, if I 
 remember rightly, to a Captain Somebody, but the 
 other three gates belong to the present Mr. Grattan, 
 who is very welcome to my three shillings, either as 
 a tribute to his father s memory, or to the beauty of 
 Tinnehinch and the Dargle. But on whichever 
 ground he pockets it, the mode of assessment is, to say 
 the least, ungracious. Without subjecting myself 
 to the charge of a mercenary feeling, I think I may 
 say that the enthusiasm for natural scenery is very 
 much clipped and belittled by seeing it at a shilling 
 the perch paying the money and taking the look. I 
 should think no sum lost which was expended in 
 bringing me to so romantic a glen as the Dargle; but 
 it should be levied somewhere else than within sound 
 of its wild waterfall somewhere else than midway 
 between the waterfall and the fine mansion of Tin 
 nehinch. 
 
PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. 
 
 183 
 
 The fish most "out of water" in the world is cer 
 tainly a Frenchman in England without acquaint 
 ances. The illness of a friend has lately occasioned 
 me one or two hasty visits to Brighton; and being 
 abandoned on the first evening to the solitary mercies 
 of the coffee-room of the hotel, I amused myself not I 
 a little with watching the ennui of one of these unfor 
 tunate foreigners, who was evidently there simply to 
 qualify himself to say that he had been at Brighton j 
 in the season. I arrived late, and was dining by my- | 
 self at one of the small tables, when, without looking ; 
 up, I became aware that some one at the other end of 
 the room was watching me very steadily. The place i 
 was as silent as coffee-rooms usually are after the 
 dinner-hour, the rustling of newspapers the only sound 
 that disturbed the digestion of the eight or ten per- | 
 sons present, when the unmistakeable call of" Vaitare !" j 
 informed me that if I looked up I should encounter ; 
 the eyes of a Frenchman. The waiter entered at the ! 
 call, and after a considerable parley with my opposite 
 neighbor, came over to me and said in rather an 
 apologetic tone, " Beg pardon, sir, but the shevaleer ; 
 wishes to know if your name is Coopair." Not very 
 much inclined, fatigued as I was, for a conversation 
 in French, which I saw would be the result of a polite 
 answer to his question, I merely shook my head, and 
 took up the newspaper. The Frenchman drew a long j 
 sigh, poured out his last glass of claret, and crossing 
 his thumbs on the edge of the table, fell into a pro- I 
 found study of the grain of the mahogany. 
 
 What with dawdling over coffee and tea and reading 
 half-a-dozen newspapers, I whiled away the time till 
 ten o clock, pitying occasionally the unhappy chevalier, 
 who exhibited every symptom of a person bored to 
 the last extremity. One person after another called 
 for a bed-room candle, and exit finally the French- j 
 man himself, making me, however, a most courteous 
 bow as he passed out. There were two gentlemen ; 
 left in the room, one a tall and thin old man of seventy, ! 
 the other a short portly gentleman of fifty or there 
 abouts, both quite bald. They rose together and 
 came to the fire near which I was sitting. 
 
 "That last man who went out calls himself a cheva 
 lier," said the thin gentleman. 
 
 "Yes," said his stout friend "he took me for a 
 Mr. Cooper he had travelled with." 
 
 " The deuce he did," said the other " why he 
 took me for a Mr. Cooper, too, and we are not very 
 much alike." 
 
 " I beg pardon, gentlemen," said I "he took me j 
 for this Mr. Cooper too." 
 
 The Frenchman s ruse was discovered. It was in 
 stead of a snuff-box a way he hnd of making ac 
 quaintance. We had a good laugh at our triple re 
 semblance (three men more unlike it would be diffi 
 cult to find), and bidding the two Messrs. Cooper 
 good night, I followed the ingenious chevalier up 
 stairs. 
 
 The next morning I came down rather late to break 
 fast, and found my friend chipping his egg-shells to 
 pieces at the table next to the one I had occupied the 
 night before. He rose immediately with a look of j 
 radiant relief in his countenance, made a most elabo- ! 
 rate apology for having taken me for Mr. Cooper | 
 (whom I was so like, cependant, that we should be 
 mistaken for each other by our nearest friends), and 
 in a few minutes, Mr. Cooper himself, if he had en 
 tered by chance, would have returned the compliment, 
 and taken me for the chevalier s most intimate friend 
 and fellow-traveller. 
 
 1 remained three or four days at Brighton, and 
 never discovered in that time that the chevalier s ruse 
 succeeded with any other person. I was his only 
 successful resemblance to " Monsieur Coopair." He 
 always waited breakfast for me in the coffee-room, 
 and when I called for my bill on the last morning, he 1 
 
 dropped his knife and asked if I was going to London 
 and at what hour and if I would be so obliging as 
 to take a place for him in the same coach. 
 
 It was a remarkably fine day ; and with my friend 
 
 by my side outside of " the Age," we sped on toward 
 
 ! London, the sun getting dimmer and dimmer, and the 
 
 j fog thicker and more chilly at every mile farther from 
 
 ! the sea. It was a trying atmosphere for the best of 
 
 spirits let alone the ever-depressed bosom of a stran- 
 
 i ger in England. The coach stopped at the Elephant 
 
 j and Castle, and I ordered down my baggage, and in- 
 
 1 formed my friend, for the first time, that I was bound 
 
 j to a country-house six miles from town. I scarce 
 
 know how I had escaped telling him of it before, but 
 
 | his " impossible mon ami. . " was said in a tone and 
 
 ! accompanied with a look of the most complete sur- 
 
 ! prise and despair. I was evidently his only hope in 
 
 London. 
 
 I went up to town a day or two after ; and in ma 
 king my way to Paternoster Row, I saw my friend on 
 the opposite side of the strand, with his hands thrust 
 up to the wrists in the pockets of his "Taglioni," and 
 his hat jammed down over his eyes, looking into the 
 shop windows without much distinction between the 
 trunkmaker s and the printsellers evidently miser 
 able beyond being amused at anything. I was too 
 much in a hurry to cross over and resume my office 
 of escape-valve to his ennui, and I soon outwalked his 
 slow pace, and lost sight of him. Whatever title he 
 j had to the " chevalier" (and he was decidedly too 
 j deficient in address to belong to the order "c/ in- 
 i dustrie"), he had no letter of recommendation in his 
 | personal appearance, and as little the air of even a 
 Frenchman of " quality" as any man I ever saw in 
 the station of a gentleman. He is, in short, the per 
 son who would first occur to me if I were to see a 
 paragraph in the Jim es headed "suicide by a for 
 eigner." 
 
 Revenons un pen. Brighton at this season (Novem- 
 j ber) enjoys a climate, which, as a change from the 
 heavy air in the neighborhood of London, is extremely 
 exhilarating and agreeable. Though the first day of 
 my arrival was rainy, a walk up the west cliff gave me a 
 feeling of elasticity and lightness of spirits, of which I 
 ; was beginning to forget the very existence, in the 
 ! eternal fogs of the six months I had passed inland. 
 : I do not wonder at the passion of the English for 
 Brighton. It is, in addition to the excellence of the 
 air, both a magnificent city aud the most advantageous 
 ground for the discomfiture of the common enemy, 
 " winter and rough weather." The miles of broad 
 i gravel-walk just out of reach of the surf of the sea, so 
 hard and so smoothly rolled that they are dry in five 
 minutes after the rain has ceased to fall, are alone no 
 small item in the comfort of a town of professed idlers 
 and invalids. 1 was never tired of sauntering along 
 i this smooth promenade so close to the sea. The 
 beautiful children, who throng the walks in almost all 
 weathers (and what children on earth are half as 
 beautiful as English children?) were to me a constant 
 1 source of pleasure and amusement. Tire of this, and 
 . by crossing the street you meet a transfer of the gay 
 throngs of Regent street and Hyde Park, with splen 
 did shops and all the features of a metropolis, while 
 midway between the sea aud this crowded sidewalk 
 pours a tide of handsome equipages, parties on horse- 
 i back, and vehicles of every description, all subservient 
 j to exercise and pleasure. 
 
 My first visit to Brighton was made in a very cold 
 day in summer, aud I saw it through most unfavorable 
 spectacles. But 1 should think that along the cliffs, 
 ! where there are no trees or vendure to be seen, there 
 i is very little apparent difference between summer and 
 i winter ; and coming here with the additional clothing 
 \ of a severer season, the temperature of the elastic and 
 i saline air is not even chilly. The most delicate chil- 
 
184 
 
 PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. 
 
 dren play upon the beach in days when there is no 
 sunshine; and invalids, wheeled out in these conve 
 nient bath chairs, sit for hours by the seaside, watch 
 ing the coming and retreating of the waves, apparently 
 without any sensation of cold and this in December. 
 In America (in the same latitudes with Leghorn and 
 Venice), an invalid sitting out of doors at this season 
 would freeze to death in half an hour. Yet it was as 
 cold in August, in England, as it has been in Novem 
 ber, and it is this temperate evenness of the weather 
 throughout (he year which makes English climate, 
 on the whole, perhaps the healthiest in the world. 
 
 In the few days I was at Brighton, I became very 
 fond of the perpetual ioud beat of the sea upon the 
 shore. Whether, like the " music of the spheres," 
 it becomes at last " too constant to be heard," I did 
 not ask but I never lost the consciousness of it ex 
 cept when engaged in conversation, and 1 found it 
 company to my thoughts when I dined or walked 
 alone, and a most agreeable lullaby at night. This 
 majestic monotone is audible all over Brighton, in 
 doors and out, and nothing overpowers it but the 
 wind in a storm ; it is even then only by fits, and the 
 alternation of the hissing and moaning of the blast 
 with the broken and heavy plash of the waters, is so 
 like the sound of a tempest at sea (the whistling in the 
 rigging, and the burst of the waves), that those who 
 have been at Brighton in rough weather have realized 
 all of a storm at sea but the motion and the sea-sick 
 ness rather a large but not an undesirable diminution 
 of experience. 
 
 Calling on a friend at Brighton, I was introduced 
 casually to a Mr. Smith. The name, of course, did 
 not awaken any immediate curiosity, but a second 
 look at the gentleman did for I thought 1 had never 
 seen a more intellectual or finer head. A fifteen 
 minutes conversation, which touched upon nothing 
 that could give me a clue to his profession, still satis 
 fied me that so distinguished an address, and so keen 
 an eye, could belong to no nameless person, and I was 
 scarcely surprised when I read upon his card at part 
 ing HORACE SMITH. I need not say it was a very i 
 great pleasure to meet him. I was delighted, too, j 
 that the author of books we love as much as " Zillah," i 
 and " Brambletye-House," looks unlike other men. 
 It gratifies somehow a personal feeling as if those 
 who had won so much admiration from us should, for 
 our pride s sake, wear the undeniable stamp of supe 
 riority as if we had acquired a property in him by 
 loving him. How natural it is, when we have talked 
 and thought a great deal about an author, to call him 
 "ours." "What Smith? Why our Smith Horace 
 Smith" is as common a dialogue between persons 
 who never saw him as it is among his personal friends. 
 
 These two remarkable brothers, James and Horace 
 Smith, are both gifted with exteriors such as are not I 
 often possessed with genius yet only James is so 
 fortunate as to have stumbled upon a good painter. 
 Lonsdale s portrait of James Smith, engraved by 
 Cousens, is both the author and the man as fine a I 
 picture of him, with his mind seen through his features, j 
 as was ever done. But there is an engraved picture ] 
 extant of the author of Zillah, that, though it is no 
 likeness of the author, is a detestable caricature of the 
 man. Really this is a point about which distinguish 
 ed men, in justice to themselves, should take some 
 little care. Sir Thomas Lawrence s portraits, and 
 Sir Joshua Reynolds s, are a sort of biography of the 
 eminent men they painted. The most enduring 
 history, it has been said, is written in coins. Certain 
 ly the most effective biography is expressed in por 
 traits. Long after the book and your impressions of 
 the character of which it treats have become dim in j 
 your memory your impression of the features and 
 mien of a hero or a poet, as received from a picture, 
 remains indelible. How often does the face belie the 
 
 biography making us think better or worse of the 
 man, after forming an opinion from a portrait in words, 
 that was either partial or malicious ! I am persuaded 
 the world would think better of Shelley, if there were 
 a correct and adequate portrait of his face, as it has 
 been described to me by one or two who knew him. 
 How much of the Byronic idolatry is born and fed 
 from the idealized pictures of him treasured in every 
 portfolio ! Sir Thomas Lawrence, Chalon, and Par- 
 ris, have composed between them a biography of Lady 
 Blessington, that have made her quite independent 
 of the " memoirs" of the next century. And who, I 
 may safely ask, even in America, has seen the nice, 
 cheerful, sensible, and motherly face which prefaces 
 the new edition of " The Manners of the American 
 Domestics" (I beg pardon for giving the title from my 
 Kentucky copy), without liking Mrs. Trollope a great 
 deal better, and at once dismissing all idea of " the 
 bazar" as a libel on that most lady-like countenance ? 
 * * * * * * # 
 
 I think Lady S had more talent and distinction 
 
 crowded into her pretty rooms, last night, than I ever 
 before saw in such small compass. It is a bijou of a 
 house, full of gems of statuary and painting, but all 
 its capacity for company lies in a small drawing-room, 
 a smaller reception-room, and a very small, but very 
 exquisite boudoir yet to tell you who were there 
 would read like Colburn s list of authors, added to a 
 paragraph of noble diners-out from the Morning Post. 
 
 The largest lion of the evening certainly was the 
 new Persian ambassador, a man six feet in his slippers ; 
 a height which, with his peaked calpack, of a foot and 
 a half, superadded, keeps him very much among the 
 chandeliers. The principal article of his dress does 
 not diminish the effect of his eminence a long white 
 shawl worn like a cloak, and completely enveloping 
 him from beard to toe. From the twisted shawl 
 around his waist glitters a dagger s hilt, lumped with 
 diamonds and diamonds, in most dazzling profu 
 sion, almost cover his breast. 1 never saw so many 
 together except in a cabinet of regalia. Close behind 
 this steeple of shawl and gem, keeps, like a short 
 shadow when the sun is high, his excellency s secre 
 tary, a dwarfishly small man, dressed also in cashmere 
 nd calpack, and of a most ill-favored and bow-stringish 
 countenance and mien. The master and man seem 
 chosen for contrast, the countenance of the ambassa 
 dor expressing nothing but serene good nature. The 
 ambassador talks, too, and the secretary is dumb. 
 
 T H stood bolt upright against a mirror- 
 door, looking like two T H s trying to see 
 
 hich was taller. The one with his face to me looked 
 like the incarnation of the John Bull newspaper, for 
 which expression he was indebted to a very hearty 
 face, and a very round subject for a buttoned-up coat; 
 
 while the H with his back to me looked like an 
 
 author, for which he was indebted to an exclusive view 
 
 of his cranium. I dare say Mr. H would agree 
 
 with me that he was seen, on the whole, at a most en 
 viable advantage. It is so seldom we look, beyond the 
 man, at the author. 
 
 I have rarely seen a greater contrast in person and 
 
 expression than between H ;md B , who stood 
 
 near him. Both were talking to ladies one bald, 
 burly, upright, and with a face of immovable gravity, 
 the other slight, with a profusion of curling hair, rest 
 less in his movements, and of a countenance which 
 
 lights up with a sudden inward illumination. H s 
 
 partner in the conversation looked into his face with a 
 ready-prepared smile for what he was going to say, 
 
 B s listened with an interest complete, but without 
 
 effort. H was suffering from what I think is the 
 
 common curse of a reputation for wit the expectation 
 of the listener had outrun the performance. 
 
 H B , whose diplomatic promotion goes on 
 
 much faster than can be pleasing to "Lady Cheveley," 
 
PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. 
 
 185 
 
 has just received his appointment to Paris the object 
 of his first wishes. He stood near his brother, talking 
 to a very beautiful and celebrated woman, and I 
 thought, spite of her ladyship s unflattering descrip 
 tion, I had seldom seen a more intellectual face, or a 
 more gentlemanly and elegant exterior. 
 
 Late in the evening came in his royal highness the 
 
 duke of C -, and I wondered, as I had done many 
 
 times before, when in company with one of these royal 
 brothers, at the uncomfortable etiquette so laboriously 
 observed toward them. Wherever he moved in the 
 crowded rooms, everybody rose and stood silent, and 
 by giving way much more than for any one else, left 
 a perpetual circular space around him, in which, of 
 course, his conversation had the effect of a lecture to 
 a listening audience. A more embarrassed manner 
 and a more hesitating mode of speech than the duke s, 
 I can not conceive. He is evidently gene, to the last 
 degree with this burdensome deference; and one 
 would think that in the society of highly-cultivated 
 and aristocratic persons, such as were present, he 
 would be delighted to put his highness into his pocket 
 when the footman leaves him at the door, and hear no 
 more of it till he goes again to his carriage. There 
 was great curiosity to know whether the duke would 
 think it etiquetical to speak to the Persian, as in con 
 sequence of the difference between the shah and the 
 British envoy the tall minister is not received at the 
 
 court of St. James. Lady S introduced them, 
 
 however, and then the duke again must have felt his 
 rank nothing less than a nuisance. It is awkward 
 enough, at any time, to converse with a foreigner who 
 has not forty English words in his vocabulary, but 
 what with the duke s hesitating and difficult utterance, 
 the silence and attention of the listening guests, and 
 the Persian s deference and complete inability to com 
 prehend a syllable, the scene was quite painful. 
 
 There was some of the most exquisite amateur sing 
 ing I ever heard after the company thinned off a little, 
 and the fashionable song of the day was sung by a 
 most beautiful woman in a way to move half the com 
 pany to tears. It is called "Ruth," and is a kind of 
 recitative of the passage in Scripture, " Wliere thou 
 goest I will go," &c. 
 
 ****** 
 
 I have driven in the park several days, admiring the 
 queen on horseback, and observing the changes in the 
 fashions of driving, equipages, &c., &c. Her majesty 
 seems to me to ride very securely and fearlessly, 
 though it is no wonder that in a country where every 
 body rides, there should be bolder and better horse 
 women. Miss Quentin, one of the maids of honor, 
 said to be the best female equestrian in England, 
 "takes the courage out" of the queen s horse every 
 morning before the ride so she is secured against one 
 class of accidents. 1 met the royal party yesterday in 
 full gallop near the centre of Rotten Row, and fhe two 
 grooms who ride ahead had brief time to do their work 
 of making the crowd of carriages give way. On came 
 the queen upon a dun-colored, highly-groomed horse, 
 with her prime minister on one side of her and Lord 
 Byron upon the other, her cortege of maids of honor 
 and ladies and lords in waiting checking their more 
 spirited horses, and preserving always a slight distance 
 between themselves and her majesty. Victoria s round 
 and plump figure looks extremely well in her dark- 
 green riding-dress, but I thought the man s hat un 
 becoming. Her profile is not sufficiently good for 
 that trying style, and the cloth riding-cap is so much 
 prettier, that I wonder she does not remember that 
 " nice customs courtesy to great queens," and wear 
 what suits her. She rode with her mouth open, and 
 looked exhilarated with the exercise. Lord Melbourne, 
 it struck me, was the only person in her party whose 
 face had not the constrained look of consciousness of 
 observation. 
 
 1 1 I observe that the "crack men" ride without mar- 
 ji tingals, and that the best turnouts are driven without 
 | a check-rein. The outstretched neck which is the 
 consequence, has a sort of Arab or blood look, proba 
 bly the object of the change; but the drooping head 
 when the horse is walking or standing seems to me 
 ugly and out of taste. All the new carriages are built 
 near the ground. The low park-phaeton, light, as a 
 child s plaything, and drawn by a pair of ponies, is the 
 fashionable equipage. I saw the prettiest thing con- 
 j ceivable of this kind yesterday in the park a lady 
 I driving a pair of small cream-colored horses of great 
 1 beauty, with her two children in the phceton, and two 
 grooms behind mounted on cream-colored saddle- 
 j horses, all four of the animals of the finest shape and 
 action. The new street cabs (precisely the old-fash 
 ioned sedan-chair suspended between four wheels, a 
 foot from the ground) are imitated by private carriages, 
 and driven with two horses ugly enough. The cab- 
 phaeton, is in great fashion, with either one or two 
 horses. The race of ponies is greatly improved since 
 I was in England. They are as well-shaped as the 
 large horse, with very fine coats and great spirit. The 
 children of the nobility go scampering through the 
 j park upon them, looking like horsemen and horse- 
 | women seen through a reversed opera-glass. They 
 j are scarce larger than a Newfoundland dog, but they 
 i patter along with great speed. There is one fine lad 
 ! of about eight years, whose parents seem to have very 
 I little care for his neck, and who, upon a fleet, milk- 
 i white, long-tailed pony, is seen daily riding at a rate 
 I of twelve miles an hour through the most crowded 
 I streets, with a servant on a tall horse plying whip and 
 I spur to keep up with him. The whole system has the 
 droll effect of a mixture of Lilliput and Brobdignag. 
 * * * * * * 
 
 We met the king of Oude a few deys since at a party, 
 and were honored by an invitation to dine with his 
 majesty at his house in the Regent s park. Yester 
 day was the appointed day ; and with the pleasant an 
 ticipation of an oriental feast, we drove up at seven, 
 and were received by his turbaned ayahs, who took 
 shawl and hat with a reverential salaam, and introduced 
 us to the large drawing-room overlooking the park. 
 j The king was not yet down; but in the corner sat 
 I three parsees or fire-worshippers, guests like ourselves, 
 who in their long white linen robes, bronze faces, and 
 ! high caps, looked like anything but " diners-out" in 
 j London. To our surprise they addressed us in ex- 
 I cellent English, and we were told afterward that they 
 ; were all learned men facts not put down to the credit 
 of the Ghebirs in Lalla Rookh. 
 
 We were called out upon the balcony to look at a 
 i balloon that was hovering over the park, and on step- 
 I ping back into the drawing-room, we found the com 
 pany all assembled, and our royal host alo/ie wanting. 
 There were sixteen English ladies present, and five 
 i white gentlemen beside myself. The Orient, how- 
 ever, was well represented. In a corner, leaning si- 
 I lently against a table, stood Prince Hussein Mirza, the 
 ! king s cousin, and a more romantic and captivating 
 specimen of Hindoo beauty could scarcely be im- 
 j agined. He was slender, tall, and of the clearest olive 
 complexion, his night-black hair falling over his 
 i shoulders in profusion, and his large antelope eyes 
 | fixed with calm and lustrous suiprise upon the half- 
 | denuded forms sitting in a circle before him. We 
 j heard afterward that he has conceived a most uncon 
 trollable and unhappy passion for a high-born and 
 | beautiful P^nglish girl whom he met in society, and 
 i that it is with difficulty he is persuaded to come out 
 j of his room. His dress was of shawls most gracefully 
 j draped about him, and a cap of gold cloth was thrown 
 I carelessly on the side of his head. Altogether he was 
 i like a picture of the imagination. 
 
 A middle-aged stout man, ashy black, with Grecian 
 
186 
 
 PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL. 
 
 features, and a most determined and dignified expres- i 
 
 sion of mouth, sat between Lady and Miss Por- j 
 
 ter, and this was the waked or ambassador of the j 
 prince of Sutara, by name Afzul AH. He is in Eng- I 
 land on business for his master, and if he does not sue- i 
 ceed it will be no fault of his under lip. His secretary, ; 
 Keeram Ali, stood behind him the wakeel dressed in [ 
 shawls of bright scarlet, with a white cashmere turban, j 
 and the scribe in darker stuffs of the same fashion. \ 
 Then there was the king s physician, a short, wiry, ! 
 merry-looking, quick-eyed Hindoo, with a sort of quiz- j 
 zical angle in the pose of his turban : the high-priest, 
 also a most merry-looking Oriental, and Ali Acbar, a 
 Persian attache. I think these were all the Asiatics. 
 
 The king entered in a few minutes, and made the 
 circuit of the room, shaking hands most cordially with : 
 all his guests. He is a very royal-looking person in- j 
 deed. Perhaps you might call him too corpulent, if 
 his fine height (a little over six feet), and very fine j 
 proportions, did not give his large size a character of j 
 majesty. His chest is full and round, and his walk ) 
 erect and full of dignity. He has the Italian olive I 
 complexion, with straight hair, and my own remark at ! 
 first seeing him was that of many others, "How like | 
 a bronze cast of Napoleon !" The subsequent study 
 of his features remove this impression, however, for j 
 he is a most " merry monarch," and is seldom seen j 
 without a smile. His dress was a mixture of oriental 
 and English fashions a pair of baggy blue pantaloons, 
 bound around the waist with a rich shawl, a splendid i 
 scarlet waistcoat buttoned close over his spacious j 
 chest, and a robe of very fine snuff-colored cloth some- ! 
 thing like a loose dressing-gown without a collar. A I 
 cap of silver cloth, and a brilliant blue satin cravat [ 
 completed his costume, unless in his covering should 
 be reckoned an enormous turquoise ring, which al 
 most entirely concealed one of his fingers. 
 
 Ekbal-ood-Dowlah, Nawnub of Oude (his name and ! 
 title), is at present appealing to the English against ; 
 his uncle, who usurps his throne by the aid and counte- j 
 nance of the East India company. The Mohamme- j 
 dan law, as I understand, empowers a king to choose 
 his successor from his children without reference 
 to primogeniture, and the usurper, though an elder | 
 brother, having been imbecile from his youth, Ekbal s \ 
 father was selected by the then king of Oude to sue- j 
 ceed him. The question having been referred to 
 Lord Wellesley, however, then governor of India, he 
 decided that the English law of primogeniture should 
 prevail, or in other words (as the king s friends say) 
 preferred to have for the king of a subject province an 
 imbecile who would give him no trouble. So slipped 
 from the Nawaub s hands a pretty kingdom of six 
 millions of faithful Mohammedans ! I believe this is 
 the "short" of the story. I wonder (we are reproach 
 ed so very .often by the English for our treatment of 
 the Indians) whether a counter-chapter of " expedient 
 wrong" might not be made out from the history of the 
 Indians under British government in the east ? 
 
 Dinner was announced with a Hindostanee salaam, 
 
 and the king gave his arm to Lady . The rest 
 
 of us "stood not upon the order of our going," and .1 
 I found myself seated at table between my wife and a I 
 Polish countess, some half dozen removes from the 
 Nawaub s right hand. His highness commenced help- I 
 ing those about him most plentifully from a large 
 pillau, talking all the while most merrily in broken 
 English, or resorting to Hindostanee and his inter 
 preter whenever his tongue got into trouble. With 
 the exception of one or two English joints, all the 
 dishes were prepared with rice or saffron, and (wine 
 being forbidden by the Mahommedan law) iced water 
 was served round from Indian coolers freely. For I 
 one, I would have compounded for a bottle of wine 
 by taking the sin of the entire party on my soul, for, 
 what with the exhaustion of a long London day, and 
 
 the cloying quality of the Nawaub s rich dishes, I 
 began to be sorry I had not brought a flask in my 
 pocket. His majesty s spirits seemed to require no 
 aid from wine^ He talked constantly, and shrewdly, 
 and well. He impresses every one with a high 
 estimate of his talents, though a more complete and 
 undisguised child of nature I never saw. Good sense, 
 with good humor, frankness, and simplicity, seem to 
 be his leading qualities. 
 
 We were obliged to take our leave early after din 
 ner, having other engagements for the evening, but 
 while coffee was serving, the Hindostanee cook, a 
 funny little old man, came in to receive the compli 
 ments of the company upon his dinner, and to play 
 and dance for his majesty s amusement. He had at 
 his back a long Indian drum, which he called his 
 "turn turn," and playing himself an accompaniment 
 upon this, he sang two or three comic songs in his 
 own language to a sort of wild yet merry air, very 
 much to the delight of all the orientals. Singer, 
 dancer, musician, and cook, the king certainly has a 
 jewel of a servant in him. 
 
 One moment bowing ourselves out from the pres 
 ence of a Hindoo king, and the next beset by an Irish 
 man with " Heaven bless your honor for the sixpence 
 you mean to give me !" what contrasts strike the travel 
 ler in this great heart of the world ! Paddy lighted 
 us to our carriage with his lantern, implored the coach 
 man to " dhrive carefully," and then stood with his 
 head bent to catch the sound upon the pavement of 
 another sixpence for his tenderness. Wherever there 
 is a party in the fashionable quarters of London, these 
 Tantaluses flit about with their lanterns for ever at 
 the door of pleasure, yet shivering and starving for 
 ever in their rags. What a life ! 
 
 *#*#** 
 
 One of the most rational and agreeable of the fashion 
 able resorts in London is Kensington Gardens, on the 
 days when the royal band plays from five to seven 
 near the bridge of the Serpentine. Some twenty of 
 the best instrumental musicians of London station 
 themselves under the trees in this superb park (for 
 though called " gardens," it is but a park with old 
 trees and greensward), and up and down the fine silky 
 carpet stroll hundreds of the fashionables of " May 
 fair and Belgrave square," listening a little perhaps, 
 and chattering a great deal certainly. It is a good 
 opportunity to see what celebrated beauties look like 
 by daylight; and, truth to say, one comes to the con 
 clusion there, that candle-light is your true kalydor. 
 It is very ingeniously contrived by the grand chamber 
 lain that this public music should be played in a far 
 away corner of the park, inaccessible except by those 
 who have carriages. The plebeians, for whose use 
 and pleasure it seems at first sight graciously con 
 trived, are pretty well sifted by the two miles walk, 
 and a very aristocratic and well-dressed assembly in 
 deed is that of Kensington gardens. 
 
 Near the usual stand of the musicians runs a bridle 
 path for horsemen, separated from the greensward by 
 a sunk fence, and as I was standing by the edge of the 
 ditch yesterday, the queen rode by, pulling up to listen 
 to the music, and smile right and left to the crowd of 
 cavaliers drawn up in the road. I pulled off my hat 
 and stood uncovered instinctively, but looking around 
 to see how the promenaders received her, I found to 
 my surprise that with the exception of a bald-headed 
 nobleman whem I chanced to know, the Yankee stood 
 alone in his homage to her. 
 
 I thought before I left America that I should find 
 the stamp of the new reign on manners, usages, con 
 versation, and all the outer form and pressure of socie 
 ty. One can not fancy England under Elizabeth to 
 have struck a stranger as did England under James. 
 We think of Shakspere, Leicester, and Raleigh, and 
 conclude that under a female sovereign chivalry at 
 
MY ADVENTURES AT THE TOURNAMENT. 
 
 187 
 
 least shines brighter, and poetry should. A good 
 deal to my disappointment, I have looked in vain for 
 even a symptom of the queen s influence on anything. 
 She is as completely isolated in England, as entirely 
 above and out of the reach of the sympathies and 
 common thoughts of society, as the gilt grasshopper 
 on the steeple. At the opera and play, half the 
 audience do not even know she is there ; in the park, 
 she rides among the throng with scarcely a head 
 turned to look after her; she is unthought of, and 
 almost unmentioned at balls, routes, and soirees ; in 
 short, the throne seems to stand on glass with no one 
 conductor to connect it with the electric chain of hu 
 man hearts and sympathies. 
 
 MY ADVENTURES AT THE TOURNAMENT, 
 
 THAT Irish Channel has, as the English sny, ;i | 
 nasty way with it." I embarked at noon on the 26th, j 
 in a magnificent steamer, the Royal Sovereign, which j 
 had been engaged by Lord Eglinton (as per advertise- 
 ment) to set down at Ardrossan all passengers bound 
 to the tournament. This was a seventeen hours job, 
 including a very cold, blowy, and rough night ; and 
 of the two hundred passengers on board, one half 
 were so blest as to have berths or settees the others 
 were unblest, indeed. 
 
 I found on board several Americans ; and by the 
 time I had looked at the shape of the Liverpool har 
 bor, and seen one or two vessels run in before a slap 
 ping breeze, the premonitory symptom (which had 
 already sent many to their berths) sent me to mine. 
 The boat was pitching backward and forward with a 
 sort of handsaw action that was not endurable. By 
 foregoing my dinner and preserving a horizontal posi 
 tion, I escaped all sickness, and landed at Ardrossan I 
 at six the next morning, with a thirty-six hours fast \ 
 upon me, which I trusted my incipient gout would re 
 member as a per contra to the feast in the promised 
 " banquet." 
 
 Ardrossan, built chiefly, I believe, by Lord Eglin- 
 ton s family, and about eight miles from the castle, is 
 a small but very clean and thrifty-looking hamlet on 
 that part of the western coast of Scotland which lies 
 opposite the Isle of Arran. Ailsa Rock, famous in 
 song, slumbers like a cloud in the southwestern hori 
 zon. The long breakers of the channel lay their lines 
 of foam almost upon the street, and the harbor is 
 formed by a pier jutting out from a little promontory 
 on the northern extremity of the town. The one 
 thoroughfare of Ardrossan is kept clean by the Broom 
 of every wind that sweeps the Irish sea. A cleaner or 
 bleaker spot I never saw. 
 
 A Gael, who did not comprehend a syllable of such 
 English as a Yankee delivers, shouldered my port 
 manteau without direction or request, and travelled 
 away to the inn, where he deposited it and held out 
 his hand in silence. There was certainly quite enough 
 said between us ; and remembering the boisterous ac 
 companiment with which the claims of porters are 
 usually pushed upon one s notice, I could well wish 
 that Gaelic tide-waiters were more common. 
 
 " Any room, landlord ?" was the first question 
 " Not a clipboard, sir," was the answer. u Can you 
 give me some breakfast ?" asked fifty others in a breath. 
 " Breakfast will be put upon all the tables presently, 
 gentlemen," said the dismayed Boniface, glancing at 
 the crowds who were pouring in, and, Scotchmanlike, 
 making no promises to individuals. " Landlord !" 
 vociferated a gentleman from the other side of the 
 
 hall "what the devil does this mean? Here s the 
 room I engaged a fortnight ago occupied by a dozen 
 people shaving and dressing !" " I canna help it, sir ! 
 Ye re welcome to turn em a out if ye can . " said 
 j the poor man, lifting up his hands in despair, and re 
 treating to the kitchen. The hint was a good one, 
 I and taking up my own portmanteau, I opened a door 
 | in one of the passages. It led into a small apartment, 
 i which in more roomy times might have been a pantry, 
 but was now occupied by three beds and a great varie- 
 | ty of baggage. There was a twopenny glass on the 
 mantel-piece, and a drop or two of water in a pitcher, 
 and where there were sheets I could make shift for a 
 towel. I found presently, by the way, that I had had 
 a narrow escape of surprising some one in bed, for 
 the sheet which did duty as a napkin was still warm 
 with the pressure of the newly-fled occupant. 
 
 Three or four smart-looking damsels in caps looked 
 in while I was engaged in my toilet, and this, with one 
 or two slight observations made in the apartment, con 
 vinced me that I had intruded on the dormitory of the 
 ladies maids belonging to the various parties in the 
 house. A hurried "God bless us!" as they retreated, 
 however, was all either of reproach or remonstrance 
 that I was troubled with; and I emerged with a 
 | smooth chin in time for breakfast, very much to the 
 ] envy and surprise of my less-enterprising compan 
 ions. 
 
 There was a great scramble for the tea and toast; 
 but, uniting forces with a distinguished literary man 
 whose acquaintance I had been fortunate enough to 
 make on board the steamer, we managed to get places 
 at one of the tables, and achieved our breakfasts in 
 tolerable comfort. We were still eight miles from 
 Eglinton, however, and a lodging was the next matter 
 of moment. My friend thought he was provided for 
 nearer the castle, and I went into the street, which I 
 found crowded with distressed-looking people, flying 
 from door to door, with ladies on their arms and wheel 
 barrows of baggage at their heels, the townspeople 
 standing at the doors and corners staring at the novel 
 spectacle in open-mouthed wonder. Quite in a di 
 lemma whether or not to go on to Irvine (which, being 
 within two miles of the castle, was probably much 
 more over-run than Ardrossan), I was standing at the 
 corner of the street, when a Liverpool gentleman, 
 whose kindness I must record as well as my pleasure 
 in his society for the two or three days we were to 
 gether, came up and offered me a part of a lodging he 
 had that moment taken. The bed was what we call 
 in America a bunk, or a kind of berth sunk into the 
 wall, and there were two in the same garret, but the 
 sheets were clean ; and there was a large bible on the 
 table the latter a warrant for civility, neatness, and 
 honesty, which, after many years of travel, I have 
 never found deceptive. I closed immediately with 
 my friend ; and whether it was from a smack of au 
 thorship or no, I must say I took to my garret very 
 kindly- 
 It "was but nine o clock, and the day was on my 
 hands. Just beneath the window ran a railroad, built 
 to bring coal to the seaside, and extending to within 
 a mite of the castle; and with some thirty or forty 
 others, I embarked in a horse-car for Eglinton to see 
 the preparations for the following day s tournament. 
 We were landed near the park gate, after an hour s 
 drive through a flat country blackened with coal-pits; 
 and it was with no little relief to the eye that I en 
 tered upon a smooth and gravelled avenue, leading by 
 a mile of shaded windings to the castle. The day was 
 heavenly; the sun-flecks lay bright as "patines of 
 gold" on the close-shaven grass beneath the trees ; 
 and I thought that nature had consented for once to 
 remove her eternal mist-veil from Scotland, and let 
 pleasure and sunshine have a holyday together. The 
 sky looked hard and deep; and I had no more appre- 
 
188 
 
 MY ADVENTURES AT THE TOURNAMENT. 
 
 hension of rain for the morrow than I should have had 
 under a July sun in Asia. 
 
 Crossing a bright little river (the Lugton, I think 
 it is called), whose sloping banks, as far as I could see 
 up and down, were shaven to the rich smoothness of 
 " velvet of three-pile," I came in sight of the castle 
 towers. Another bridge over a winding of the same 
 river lay to the left, a Gothic structure of the most 
 rich and airy mould, and from either end of this ex 
 tended the enclosed passage for the procession to the 
 lists. The castle stood high upon a mound beyond. Its 
 round towers were half concealed by some of the finest 
 trees I ever saw ; and though less antique and of a less 
 rowning and rude aspect than I had expected, it was 
 a very perfect specimen of modern castellated archi 
 tecture. On ascending to the lawn in front of the 
 castle. I found that it was built less upon a mound 
 than upon the brow of a broad plateau of table-land, 
 turned sharply by the Lugton, close under the castle 
 walls a natural sight of singular beauty. Two Sara 
 cenic-looking tents of the gayest colors were pitched 
 upon the bright-green lawn at a short distance, and 
 off to the left, by several glimpses through the trees, 
 I traced along the banks of the river the winding en 
 closures for the procession. 
 
 The large hall was crowded with servants ; but pre- 
 Buming that a knight who was to do his devoir so con 
 spicuously ou the morrow would not be stirring at so 
 early an hour, 1 took merely a glance of the armor 
 upon the walls in passing, and deferring the honor of 
 paying my respects, crossed the lawn and passed over 
 
 I blue sky of the size of my garret skylight, and a daz- 
 j zling sunshine on the floor. " Skirling" above all the 
 other instruments of the band, the Highland bagpipe 
 made the air reel with "A the blue bonnets are over 
 the border," and, hoisting the window above my head, 
 I strained over the house-leads to get a look at the 
 performer. A band of a dozen men in kilt and bonnet 
 were marching up and down, led by a piper, something 
 in the face like the heathen representations of Boreas; 
 and on a long line of roughly-constructed rail-cars 
 were piled, two or three deep, a crowd resembling, at 
 first sight, a crushed bed of tulips. Bonnets of every 
 cut and color, from the courtier s green velvet to the 
 shepherd s homely gray, struggled at the top ; and 
 over the sides hung red legs and yellow legs, cross- 
 barred stockings and buff boots, bare feet and pilgrim s 
 sandals. The masqueraders scolded and laughed, the 
 boys halloed, the quiet people of Ardrossan stared in 
 grave astonishment, and, with the assistance of some 
 brawny shoulders, applied to the sides of the over 
 laden vehicles, the one unhappy horse got his whim 
 sical load under way for the tournament. 
 
 Train followed train, packed with the same motley 
 array ; and at ten o clock, after a clean and comforta 
 ble Scotch breakfast in our host s little parlor, we sal 
 lied forth to try our luck in the scramble for places. 
 j After a considerable fight we were seated, each with a 
 j man in his lap, when we were ordered down by the 
 , conductor, who informed us that the chief of the 
 Campbells had taken the car for his party, and that, 
 with his band in the succeeding one, he was to go in 
 
 the Lugton by a rustic foot-bridge in search of the state (upon a railroad!) to Eglinton. Up swore half- 
 
 lists. A cross-path (leading by a small temple en 
 closed with wire netting, once an aviary, perhaps, but 
 now hung around in glorious profusion with game, 
 venison, a boar s head, and other comestibles), brought 
 me in two or three minutes to a hill-side overlooking 
 the chivalric arena. It was a beautiful sight of itself 
 without plume or armor. In the centre of a verdant 
 plain, shut in by hills of an easy slope, wooded richly, 
 appeared an oblong enclosure glittering at either end 
 with a cluster of tents, striped with the gayest colors 
 of the rainbow. Between them, on the farther side, 
 stood three galleries, of which the centre was covered 
 with a Gothic roof highly ornamented, the four front 
 pillars draped with blue damask, and supporting a can 
 opy over the throne intended for the queen of beauty. 
 A strongly-built barrier extended through the lists; 
 and heaps of lances, gay flags, and the heraldic orna 
 ments, still to be added to the tents, lay around on 
 the bright grass in a picture of no little richness. I 
 was glad afterward that I had seen thus much with 
 the advantage of an unclouded sun. 
 
 In reluming, I passed in the rear of the castle, and 
 looked into the temporary pavilions erected for the 
 banquet and ball. They were covered exteriorly with 
 rough board and sails, and communicated by an en 
 closed gallery with one of the larger apartments of the 
 castle. The workmen were still nailing up the drapery, 
 and arranging lamps and flowers; but with all this dis 
 advantage, the effect of the two immense halls, lined as 
 they were with crimson and white in broad alternate 
 stripes, resembling in shape and fashion two gigantic 
 tents, was exceedingly imposing. Had the magnificent 
 design of Lord Eglinton been successfully carried out, 
 it would have been a scene, with the splendor of the 
 costumes, the lights, music, and revelry, unsurpassed, 
 probably, by anything short of enchantment. 
 
 PRINCIPAL DAY. 
 
 I WAS awakened at an early hour the morning after 
 my arrival at Ardrossan by a band of music in the 
 street. My first feeling was delight at seeing a bit of i 
 
 a-dozen Glasgow people, usurpers like ourselves, that 
 they would give way for no Campbell in the world ; 
 and finding a stout hand laid on my leg to prevent my 
 yielding to the order to quit, 1 gave in to what might 
 j be called as pretty a bit of rebellious republicanism as 
 I you would find on the Mississippi. The conductor 
 stormed, but the Scotch bodies sat firm ; and as Scot 
 met Scot in the fight, I was content to sit in silence 
 and take advantage of the victory. I learned after 
 ward that the Campbell chieftain was a Glasgow man 
 ufacturer; and though he undoubtedly had a right to 
 gather his clan, and take piper and eagle s plume, there 
 might, possibly, be some jealous disapprobation at the 
 bottom of his townsmen s rudeness. 
 
 Campbell and his party presently appeared, and a 
 dozen or twenty very fine looking men they were. One 
 of the ladies, as well as I could see through the black 
 lace veil thrown over her cap and plumes, was a re 
 markably handsome woman ; and I was very glad when 
 the matter was compromised, and the Campbells were 
 distributed among our company. We jogged on at a 
 slow pace toward the tournament, passing thousands 
 of pedestrians, the men all shod, and the women all 
 barefoot, with their shoes in their hands, and nearly 
 every one, in accordance with Lord Eglinton s printed 
 request, showing some touch of fancy in his dress. A 
 plaid over the shoulder, or a Glengary bonnet, or, per 
 haps, a goose-feather stuck jauntily in the cap, was 
 enough to show the feeling of the wearer, and quite 
 enough to give the crowd, all in all, a most festal and 
 joyous aspect. 
 
 The secluded bit ol road between the rail-track and 
 the castle lodge, probably never before disturbed by 
 more than two vehicles at a time, was thronged with a 
 press of wheels, as closely jammed as Fleet street at 
 noon. Countrymen s carts piled with women and 
 children like loads of market-baskets in Kent; post- 
 chaises with exhausted horses and occupants straining 
 their eyes forward for a sight of the castle ; carriages 
 of the neighboring gentry with " bodkins" and over- 
 packed dickeys, all in costume ; stout farmers on 
 
 horseback, with plaid and bonnet; gingerbread and 
 ale-carts, pony-carts, and coal-carts; wheelbarrows 
 with baggage, and porters with carpet-bags and hat- 
 
MY ADVENTURES AT THE TOURNAMENT. 
 
 189 
 
 boxes, were mixed up in merry confusion with the 
 most motley throng of pedestrians it has ever been my 
 fortune to join. The vari-colored tide poured in at 
 the open gate of the castle; and if I had seen no other 
 procession, the long-extended mass of caps, bonnets, 
 and plumes, winding through that shaded and beautiful 
 avenue, would have repaid me for no small proportion 
 of my subsequent discomfort. I remarked, by the 
 way, that I did not see a hat in the entire mile between 
 the porter s lodge and the castle. 
 
 The stables, which lay on the left of the approach 
 (a large square structure with turret and clock, very | 
 like four methodist churches, dos-d-dos), presented j 
 another busy and picturesque scene horses half- j 
 caparisoned, men-at-arms in buff and steel, and the j 
 gay liveries of the nineteenth century paled by the re- I 
 vived glories of the servitude of more knightly times, j 
 And this part of the scene, too, had its crowd of laugh 
 ing and wondering spectators. 
 
 On reaching the Gothic bridge over the Lugton, ! 
 we came upon a cordon of police who encircled the ! 
 castle, turning the crowd off by the bridge in the di- ( 
 rection of the lists. Sorry to leave my merry and 
 motley fellow-pedestrians, 1 presented my card of in 
 vitation and passed on alone to the castle. The sun 
 was at this time shining with occasional cloudings- 
 over; and the sward and road, after the two or three 
 fine days we had had, were in the best condition for 
 every purpose of the tournament. 
 
 Two or three noble trees with their foliage nearly i 
 to the ground stood between me and the front of the | 
 castle, as I ascended the slope above the river ; and : 
 the lifting of a stage curtain could scarce be more i 
 sudden, or the scene of a drama more effectively com- J 
 posed, than the picture disclosed by the last step upon i 
 the terrace. Any just description of it, indeed, must 
 read like a passage from the " prompter s book." I I 
 stood for a moment, exactly where you would have ! 
 placed an audience. On my left rose a noble castle 
 with four round towers, the entrance thronged with I 
 men-at-arms, and busy comers and goers in every ! 
 variety of costume. On the greensward in front of the j 
 castle lounged three or four gentlemen archers in ! 
 suits of green silk and velvet. A cluster of grooms 
 under an immense tree on the right were fitting two 
 or three superb horses with theirarmor and caparisons, 
 while one beautiful blood palfrey, whose fine limbs 
 and delicately veined head and neck were alone visible \ 
 under his embroidered saddle and gorgeous trappings 
 of silk, was held by two " tigers" at a short distance, j 
 Still farther on the right, stood a cluster of gayly dec- ; 
 orated tents; and in and out of the looped-up curtain 
 of the farthest passed constantly the slight forms of j 
 lady archers in caps with snowy plumes, kirtles of 
 green velvet, and petticoats of white satin, quivers at 
 their backs and bows in their hands one tall and 
 stately girl (an Ayrshire lady of very uncommon j 
 beauty, whose name I took some pains to inquire), | 
 conspicuous by her grace and dignity above all. 
 
 SFhe back-ground was equally well composed the ! 
 
 farther side of the lawn making a sharp descent to the ! 
 small river which bends around the castle, the opposite ! 
 shore thronged with thousands of spectators watching ] 
 the scene 1 have described ; and in the distance be- ! 
 hind them, the winding avenue, railed in for the pro- 
 CWrion, hidden and disclosed by turns among the 
 noble trees of the park, and alive throughout its whole 
 extent with the multitudes crowding to the lists. 
 There was a chivalric splendor in the whole scene, 
 which I thought at the time would repay one for a i 
 long pilgrimage to see it even should the clouds, ; 
 which by this time were coming up very threatening 
 ly from the horizon, put a stop to the tournament al 
 together. 
 
 On entering the castle hall, a lofty room hung ! 
 round with arms, trophies of the chase, ancient i 
 13 
 
 shields, and armor of every description, T found my 
 self in a crowd of a very merry and rather a motley 
 character knights half armed, esquires in buff, pal- 
 | mers, halberdiers, archers, and sen-ants in modern 
 j livery, here and there a lady, and here and there a 
 spectator like myself, and in a corner by one of the 
 Gothic windows what think you? a minstrel? a 
 gray-haired harper? a jester ? Guess again a re 
 porter for the Times! With a "walking dictionary" 
 at his elbow, in the person of the fat butler of the 
 castle, he was inquiring out the various characters in 
 the crowd, and the rapidity of his stenographic jot 
 tings-down (with their lucid apparition in print two 
 days after in London) would, in the times represented 
 by the costumes about him, have burnt him at the 
 stake for a wizard with the consent of every knight in 
 Christendom. 
 
 I was received by the knight-marshal of the lists, 
 j who did the honors of hospitality for Lord Eglinton 
 during his preparation for the " passage of arms ;" 
 and finding an old friend under the gray beard and 
 I scallop shell of a venerable palmer, whose sandal and 
 I bare toes I chanced to stumble over, we passed in 
 I together to the large dining-room of the castle. 
 j " Lunch" was on the long table, and some two hun- 
 I dred of the earl s out-lodging guests were busy at 
 ! knife and fork, while here and there were visible some 
 of those anachronisms which, to me, made the zest 
 | of the tournament pilgrims eating Perigord pies, 
 ! esquires dressing after the manner of the thirteenth 
 century diving most scientifically into the richer veins 
 of pates defoie-gras, dames in rufl and farthingale dis 
 cussing blue blanc-mange, and a knight with an over 
 night headache calling out for a cup of tea ! 
 
 On returning to the hall of the castle, which was 
 | the principal place of assemblage, I saw with no little 
 j regret that ladies were coining from their carriages 
 i under umbrellas. The fair archers tripped in doors 
 from their crowded tent, the knight of the dragon, 
 who had been out to look after his charger, was being 
 wiped dry by a friendly pocket handerckief, and all 
 I countenances had fallen with the barometer. It was 
 i time for the procession to start, however, and the 
 j knights appeared, one by one, armed cap-a-pie, all 
 i save the helmet, till at last the hall was crowded with 
 steel-clad and chivalric forms; and they waited only 
 for the advent of the queen of beauty. After admiring 
 not a little the manly bearing and powerful " thewes 
 and sinews" displayed by the array of modern English 
 i nobility in the trying costumes and harness of olden 
 j time, 1 stepped out upon the lawn with some curiosity 
 j to see how so much heavy metal was to be got into a 
 demipique saddle. After one or two ineffectual at 
 tempts, foiled partly by the restlessness of his horse, 
 the first knight called ingloriously for a chair. Another 
 scrambled over with great difficulty ; and I fancy, 
 though Lord Waterford and Lord Eglinton, and one 
 other whom I noticed, mounted very gallantly and 
 gracefully, the getting to saddle was possibly the most 
 difficult feat of the day. The ancient achievement 
 of leaping on the steed s back from the ground in 
 complete armor would certainly have broken the 
 spine of any horse present, and was probably never 
 done but in story. Once in the saddle, however, 
 English horsemanship told well ; and one of the finest 
 sights of the day I thought was the breaking away of 
 a powerful horse from the grooms, before his rider had 
 gathered up his reins, and a career at furious speed 
 through the open park, during which the steel-encum 
 bered horseman rode as safely as a fox-hunter, and 
 subdued the affrighted animal, and brought him back 
 in a style worthy of a wreath from the queen of 
 beauty. 
 
 Driven in by the rain, I was standing at the upper 
 side of the hall, when a movement in the crowd and 
 an unusual " making-way" announced the coming of 
 
190 
 
 MY ADVENTURES AT THE TOURNAMENT. 
 
 the "cynosure of all eyes." She enteted from the 
 interior of the castle with her train held up by two 
 beautiful pages of ten or twelve years of age, and at 
 tended by two fair and very young maids of honor. 
 Her jacket of ermine, her drapery of violet and blue 
 velvet, the collars of superb jewels which embraced 
 her throat and bosom, and her sparkling crown, were 
 on her (what they seldom are, but should be only) 
 mere accessaries to her own predominating and radiant 
 beauty. Lady Seymour s features are as nearly fault 
 less as is consistent with expression ; her figure and 
 face are rounded to the complete fulness of the mould 
 for a Juno ; her walk is queenly, and peculiarly un 
 studied and graceful, yet (I could not but think then 
 and since) she was not well chosen for the queen of a 
 tournament. The character of her beauty, uncom 
 mon and perfect as it is, is that of delicacy and loveli 
 ness the lily rather than the rose the modest pearl, 
 not the imperial diamond. The eyes to flash over a 
 crowd at a tournament, to be admired from a distance, 
 to beam down upon a knight kneeling for a public 
 award of honor, should be full of command, dark, 
 lustrous, and fiery. Hers are of the sweetest and 
 most tranquil blue that ever reflected the serene 
 heaven of a happy hearth eyes to love, not wonder 
 at, to adore and rely upon, not admire and tremble for. 
 At the distance at which most of the spectators of the 
 tournament saw Lady Seymour, Fanny Kemble s 
 stormy orbs would have shown much finer, and the 
 forced and imperative action of a stage-taught head 
 and figure would have been more applauded than the 
 quiet, nameless, and indescribable grace lost to all but 
 those immediately round her. I had seen the Queen 
 of Beauty in a small society, dressed in simple white, 
 without an ornament, when she was far more becom 
 ingly dressed and more beautiful than here, and I have 
 never seen, since, the engravings and prints of Lady 
 Seymour which fill every window in the London 
 shops, without feeling that it was a profanation of a 
 style of loveliness that would be 
 
 " prodigal enough 
 
 If it unveiled its beauty to the moon." 
 
 The day wore on, and the knight-marshal of the 
 lists (Sir Charles Lamb, the stepfather of Lord 
 Eglinton, by far the most knightly looking person at 
 the tournament), appeared in his rich surcoat and 
 embossed armor, and with a despairing look at the in 
 creasing torrents of rain, gave the order to get to 
 horse. At the first blast of the trumpet, the thick- 
 leaved trees around the castle gave out each a dozen 
 or two of gay colored horsemen who had stood almost 
 unseen under the low-hanging branches mounted 
 musicians in silk and gay trappings, mounted inen-at- 
 arms in demi-suits of armor, deputy marshals and 
 halberdiers; and around the western tower, where 
 their caparisons had been arranged and their horse- 
 armor carefully looked to, rode the glittering and 
 noble company of knights, Lord Eglinton in his armor 
 of inlaid gold, and Lord Alford, with his athletic 
 frame and very handsome features, conspicuous above 
 all. The rain, meantime, spared neither the rich 
 tabard of the pursuivant, nor the embroidered saddle 
 cloths of the queen s impatient palfrey ; and after a 
 half-dozen of dripping detachments had formed and 
 led on, as the head of the procession, the lady-archers 
 (who were to go on foot) were called by the marshal 
 with a smile and a glance upward which might have 
 been construed into a tacit advice to stay in doors. 
 Gracefully and majestically, however, with quiver at 
 her back, and bow in hand, the tall and fair archer of 
 whose uncommon beauty I have already spoken, 
 stepped from the castle door ; and, regardless of the 
 rain which fell in drops as large as pearls on her un 
 protected forehead and snowy shoulders, she took her 
 place in the procession with her silken-booted troop 
 
 picking their way very gingerly over the pools behind 
 her. Slight as the circumstance may seem, there 
 was in the manner of the lady, and her calm disregard 
 of self in the cause she had undertaken, which would 
 leave me in no doubt where to look for a heroine 
 were the days of Wallace (whose compatriot she is) 
 to come over again. The knight-marshal put spurs 
 to his horse, and re-ordered the little troop to the 
 castle ; and regretting that I had not the honor of the 
 lady s acquaintance for my authority, I performed my 
 only chivalric achievement for the day, the sending a 
 halberdier whom I had chanced to remember as the 
 servant of an old friend, on a crusade into the castle 
 for a lady s maid and a pair of dry stockings ! Whether 
 they were found, and the fair archer wore them, or 
 where she and her silk-shod company have the tourna 
 ment consumption, rheumatism, or cough, at this 
 hour, I am sorry I can not say. 
 
 The judge of peace, Lord Saltoun, with his wand, 
 and retainers on foot bearing heavy battle-axes, was 
 one of the best figures in the procession ; though, as 
 he was slightly gray, and his ruby velvet cap and sat 
 urated ruff were poor substitutes for a warm cravat 
 and hat-brim, I could not but associate his fine horse 
 manship with a sore throat, and his retainers and their 
 battle-axes with relays of nurses and hot flannels. The 
 flower of the tournament, in the representing and 
 keeping up of the assumed character, however, was its 
 king, Lord Londonderry. He, too, is a man, I should 
 think, on the shady side of fifty, but of just the high 
 preservation and embonpoint necessary for a royal pres 
 ence. His robe of red velvet and ermine swept the 
 ground as he sat in his saddle; and he managed to 
 keep its immense folds free of his horse s legs, and 
 yet to preserve its flow in his prancing motion, with a 
 grace and ease, I must say, which seemed truly im 
 perial. His palfrey was like a fiery Arabian, all ac 
 tion, nerve, and fire ; and every step was a rearing 
 prance, which, but for the tranquil self-possession and 
 easy control of the king, would have given the specta 
 tors some fears for his royal safety. Lord London 
 derry s whole performance of his part was without a 
 fault, and chiefly admirable, I thought, from his sus 
 taining it with that unconsciousness and entire freedom 
 from mauvaise honte which the English seldom can 
 command in new or conspicuous situations. 
 
 The queen of beauty was called, and her horse led 
 to the door; but the water ran from the blue saddle 
 cloth and housings like rain from a roof, and the storm 
 seemed to have increased with the sound of her name. 
 She came to the door, and gave a deprecating look 
 upward which would have mollified anything but a 
 Scotch sky, and, by the command of the knight mar 
 shal, retired again to wait for a less chivalric but drier 
 conveyance. Her example was followed by the other 
 ladies, and their horses were led riderless in the pro 
 cession. 
 
 The knights were but half called when I accepted 
 a friend s kind offer of a seat in his carriage to the lists. 
 The entire park, as we drove along, was one vast ex 
 panse of umbrellas ; and it lookedYrom the carriage- 
 window, like an army of animated and gigantic mush 
 rooms, shouldering each other in a march. I had no 
 idea till then of the immense crowd the occasion had 
 drawn together. The circuitous route railed in for 
 the procession was lined with spectators six or seven 
 deep, on either side, throughout its whole extent of a 
 mile ; the most distant recesses of the park were 
 crowded with men, horses, and vehicles, all pressing 
 onward ; and as we approached the lists we found the 
 multitude full a quarter of a mile deep, standing on all 
 the eminences which looked down upon the enclosure, 
 as closely serried almost as the pit of the opera, and 
 all eyes bent in one direction, anxiously watching the 
 guarded entrance. I heard the number of persons 
 present variously estimated during the day, the esti- 
 
MY ADVENTURES AT THE TOURNAMENT. 
 
 191 
 
 mates ranging from fifty to seventy-five thousand, but 
 I should think the latter was nearer the mark. 
 
 We presented our tickets at the private door, in the 
 rear of the principal gallery, and found ourselves intro 
 duced to a very dry place among the supports and 
 rafters of the privileged structure. The look-out was 
 excellent in front, and here I proposed to remain, de 
 clining the wet honor of a place above stairs. The 
 gentleman-usher, however, was very urgent for our 
 promotion ; but as we found him afterward chatting 
 very familiarly with a party who occupied the seats 
 we had selected, we were compelled to relinquish the 
 flattering unction that he was actuated by an intuitive 
 sense of our deservings. On ascending to the covered 
 gallery, I saw, to my surprise, that some of the best 
 seats in front were left vacant, and here and there, 
 along the different tiers of benches, ladies were crowd 
 ing excessively close together, while before or behind 
 <hem there seemed plenty of unoccupied room. A 
 second look showed me small streams of water coming 
 through the roof, and I found that a dry seat was 
 totally unattainable. The gallery held about a thou 
 sand persons (the number Lord Eglinton had invited 
 to the banquet and ball), and the greater part of these 
 were ladies, most of them in fancy dresses, and the re 
 mainder in very slight demi-toilette everybody having 
 dressed apparently with a full reliance on the morn- 
 ing s promise of fair weather. Less fortunate than 
 the multitude outside, the earl s guests seemed not to 
 have numbered umbrellas among the necessities of a 
 tournament; and the demand for this despised inven 
 tion was sufficient (if merit were ever rewarded) to i 
 elevate it for ever after to a rank among chivalric ap 
 pointments. Substitutes and imitations of it were 
 made of swords and cashmeres ; and the lenders of 
 veritable umbrellas received smiles which should in 
 duce them, one would think, to carry half-a-dozen to 
 all future tournaments in Scotland. It was pitiable 
 to see the wreck going on among the perishable ele 
 gancies of Victorine and Herbault chip hats of the 
 most faultless toumure collapsing with the wet ; { 
 starched ruffs quite flat ; dresses passing helplessly I 
 from " Lesbia s" style to " Nora Creina s ;" shawls, ! 
 tied by anxious mammas over chapeau and coiffure, 
 crushing pitilessly the delicate fabric of months of in- j 
 vention ; and, more lamentable still, the fair brows and I 
 shoulders of many a lovely woman proving with rain- j 
 bow clearness that the colors of the silk or velvet com 
 posing her head-dress were by no means " fast." The 
 Irvine archers, by the way, who, as the queen s body- j 
 guard, were compelled to expose themselves to the I 
 rain on the grand staircase, resembled a troop of New- j 
 Zealanders with their faces tattooed of a delicate 
 green ; though, as their Lincoln bonnets were all 
 made of the same faithless velvet, they were fortunately 
 streaked so nearly alike as to preserve theiimniform. 
 
 After a brief consultation between the rheumatisms , 
 in my different limbs, it was decided (since it was vain i 
 to hope for shelter for the entire person) that my cloth- 
 cap would be the best recipient for the inevitable wet; ! 
 and selecting the best of the vacated places, I seated I 
 myself so as to receive one of ihe small streams as I 
 nearly as possible on my organ of firmness. Here I ; 
 was undisturbed, except that once I was asked (my j 
 seat supposed to be a dry one) to give place to a lady ! 
 newly arrived, who, receiving my appropriated rivulet 
 in her neck, immediately restored it to me with many ! 
 acknowledgments, and passed on. In point of posi 
 tion, my seat, which was very near the pavilion of the 
 queen of beauty, was one of the best at the tourna 
 ment; and diverting my aqueduct, by a little manage 
 ment, over my left shoulder, I contrived to be more 
 comfortable, probably, than most of my shivering and 
 melancholy neighbors. 
 
 A great agitation in the crowd, and a dampish sound 
 of coming trumpets, announced the approach of the 
 
 procession. As it came in sight, and wound along the 
 curved passage to the lists, its long and serpentine line 
 of helmets and glittering armor, gonfalons, spear- 
 points, and plumes, just surging above the moving sea 
 of umbrellas, had the effect of some gorgeous and 
 bright-scaled dragon swimming in troubled waters. 
 The leaders of the long cavalcade pranced into the 
 arena at last, and a tremendous shout from the multi 
 tude announced their admiration of the spectacle. On 
 they came toward the canopy of the queen of beauty, 
 rnen-at-arms, trumpeters, heralds, and halberdiers, and 
 soon after them the king of the tournament, with his 
 long scarlet robe flying to the tempest, and his rearing 
 palfrey straining every nerve to show his pride and 
 beauty. The first shout from the principal gallery 
 was given in approbation of this display of horseman 
 ship, as Lord Londonderry rode past ; and consider 
 ing the damp state of the enthusiasm which prompted 
 it, it should have been considered rather flattering. 
 Lord Eglinton came on presently, distinguished above 
 all others no less by the magnificence of his appoint 
 ments than by the ease and dignity with which he 
 rode, and his knightly bearing and stature. His 
 golden armor sat on him as if he had been used to 
 wear it ; and he managed his beautiful charger, and 
 bowed in reply to the reiterated shouts of the multitude 
 and his friends, with a grace and chivalric courtesy 
 which drew murmurs of applause from the spectators 
 long after the cheering had subsided. 
 
 The jester rode into the lists upon a gray steed, 
 shaking his bells over his head, and dressed in an odd 
 costume of blue and yellow, with a broad-flapped hat, 
 asses ears, Arc. His character was not at first under 
 stood by the crowd, but he soon began to excite mer 
 riment by his jokes, and no little admiration by his 
 capital riding. He was a professional person, I think 
 it was said, from Astley s, but as he spoke with a most 
 excellent Scotch " burr," lie easily passed for an in 
 digenous "fool." He rode from side to side of the 
 lists during the whole of the tournament, borrowing 
 umbrellas, quizzing the knights, &c. 
 
 One of the most striking features of the procession 
 was the turn-out of the knight of the Gael, Lord 
 Glenlyon, with seventy of his" clansmen at his back 
 in plaid and philibeg, and a finer exhibition of calves 
 (without a joke) could scarce be desired. They fol 
 lowed their chieftain on foot, and when the procession 
 separated, took up their places in line along the 
 palisade, serving as a guard to the lists. 
 
 After the procession had twice made the circuit of 
 the enclosure, doing obeisance to the queen of beauty, 
 the jester had possession of the field while the knights 
 retired to don their helmets (hitherto carried by their 
 esquires), and to await the challenge to combat. All 
 eyes were now bent upon the gorgeous clusters of 
 tents at either extremity of the oblong area ; and in a 
 very few minutes the herald s trumpet sounded, and 
 the knight of the swan rode forth, having sent his de 
 fiance to the knight of the golden lion. At another 
 blast of the trumpet they set their lances in rest, se 
 lected opposite sides of the long fence or barrier run 
 ning lengthwise through the lists, and rode furiously 
 past each other, the fence of course preventing any 
 contact except that of their lances. This part oY the 
 tournament (the essential part, one would think) was, 
 from the necessity of the case, the least satisfactory of 
 all. The knights, though they rode admirably, were 
 so oppressed by the weight of their armor, and so em 
 barrassed in their motions by the ill-adjusted joints, 
 that they were like men of wood, unable apparently 
 even to raise the lance from the thigh on which it 
 rested. I presume no one of them either saw where 
 he should strike his opponent, or had any power of 
 directing the weapon. As they rode close to the 
 fence, however, and a ten-foot pole sawed nearly off 
 in two or three places was laid crosswise on the legs 
 
193 
 
 MY ADVENTURES AT THE TOURNAMENT. 
 
 of each, it would be odd if they did not come in con 
 tact; and (he least shock of course splintered the lance 
 in other words, finished what was begun by the car 
 penter s saw. The great difficulty was to ride at all 
 under such a tremendous weight, and manage a horse 
 of spirit, totally unused both to the weight and the 
 clatter of his own and his rider s armor. I am sure 
 that Lord Eglinton s horse, for one, would have 
 bothered Ivanhoe himself to "bring to the scratch;" 
 and Lord Waterford s was the only one that, for all 
 the fright he showed, might have been selected (as 
 they all should have been) for the virtue of having 
 peddled tin-ware. These two knights, by the way, ran 
 the best career, Lord Eglinton, malgrc his bolter, 
 coming off the victor. 
 
 The rain, meantime, had increased to a deluge, the 
 queen of beauty sat shivering under an umbrella, the 
 jester s long ears were water-logged, and lay flat on 
 his shoulders, and everybody in my neighborhood had 
 expressed a wish for a dry seat and a glass of sherry. 
 The word " banquet" occurred frequently right and 
 left; hopes for " mulled wine or something hot be 
 fore dinner" stole from the lips of a mamma on the 
 seat behind ; and there seemed to be but one chance 
 for the salvation of health predominant in the minds 
 of all, and that was drinking rather more freely than 
 usual at the approaching banquet. Judge what must 
 have been the astonishment, vexation, dread, and de 
 spair, of the one thousand wet, shivering, and hungry 
 candidates for the feast, when Lord Eglinton rode up 
 to the gallery unhelmeted, and delivered himself as 
 follows : 
 
 " Ladies and gentlemen, I had hoped to have given 
 you all a good dinner; but to my extreme mortifica 
 tion and regret, I am just informed that the rain has 
 penetrated the banqueting pavilions, and that, in con 
 sequence, I shall only be able to entertain so many of 
 my friends as can meet around rny ordinary table." 
 
 About as uncomfortable a piece of intelligence, to 
 some nine hundred and sixty of his audience, as they 
 could have received, short of a sentence for their im 
 mediate execution. 
 
 To comprehend fully the disastrous extent of the 
 disappointment in the principal gallery, it must be 
 taken into consideration that the dornicils, fixed or 
 temporary, of the rejected sufferers, were from five to 
 twenty miles distant a long ride at best, if begun on 
 the point of famishing, and in very thin and well- 
 saturated fancy dresses. Grievance the first, however, 
 was nothing to grievance the second; viz., that from 
 the tremendous run upon post-horses and horses of all 
 descriptions, during the three or four previous days, 
 the getting to the tournament was the utmost that 
 many parties could achieve. The nearest baiting- 
 place was several miles off; and in compassion to the 
 poor beasts, and with the weather promising fair on 
 their arrival, most persons had consented to take 
 their chance for the quarter of a mile from the lists to 
 the castle, and had dismissed their carriages with 
 orders to return at the close of the banquet and ball 
 daylight the next morning ! The castle, everybody 
 knew, was crammed, from " donjon-keep to turret- 
 top," with the relatives and intimate friends of the 
 noble earl, and his private table could accommodate 
 no more than these. To get home was the inevitable 
 alternative. 
 
 The rain poured in a deluge. The entire park was 
 trodden into a slough, or standing in pools of water 
 carts, carriages, and horsemen, with fifty thousand 
 flying pedestrians, crowding every road and avenue. 
 How to get home with a carriage ! How the deuce 
 to get home without one ! 
 
 A gentleman, who had been sent out on the errand 
 of Noah s dove by a lady whose carriage and horses 
 were ordered at four the following morning, carne 
 back with the mud up to his knees, and reported that 
 
 there was not a wheel-barrow to be had for love or 
 money. After threading the crowd in every direction, 
 he had offered a large sum, in vain, for a one-horse 
 cart ! 
 
 Night was coming on, meantime, very fast ; but 
 absorbed by the distresses of the shivering groups 
 around me, I had scarce remembered that my own in 
 vitation was but to the banquet and ball and my 
 dinner, consequently, nine miles off, at Ardrossan. 
 Thanking Heaven, that, at least, I had no ladies to 
 share my evening s pilgrimage, I followed the queen 
 of beauty down the muddy and slippery staircase, and, 
 when her majesty had stepped into her carriage, I 
 stepped over ankles in mud and water, and began my 
 wade toward the castle. 
 
 Six hours of rain, and the trampling of such an im 
 mense multitude of men and horses, had converted 
 the soft and moist sod and soil of the park into a deep 
 and most adhesive quagmire. Glancing through the 
 labyrinth of vehicles on every side, and seeing men 
 and horses with their feet completely sunk below the 
 surface, I saw that there was no possibility of shying 
 
 I the matter, and that wade was the word. I thought, 
 
 i at first, that I had a claim for a little sympathy on the 
 score of being rather slenderly shod (the impalpable 
 sole of a pattern leather-boot being all that separated 
 
 | me from the subsoil of the estate of Eglinton); but 
 overtaking, presently, a party of four ladies who had 
 lost several shoes in the mire, and were positively 
 wading on in silk stockings, I took patience to myself 
 from my advantage in the comparison, and thanked 
 fate for the thinnest sole with leather to keep it on. 
 The ladies I speak of were under the charge of a most 
 despairing-looking gentleman, but had neither cloak 
 nor umbrella, and had evidently made no calculations 
 for a walk. We differed in our choice of the two 
 sides of a slough, presently, and they were lost in the 
 crowd ; but I could not help smiling, with all my pity 
 of their woes, to think what a turning up of prunella 
 shoes there will be, should Lord Eglintou ever plough 
 the chivalric field of the Tournament. 
 
 As I reached the castle, I got upon the Macadamised 
 road, which had the advantage of a bottom somewhere, 
 though it was covered with a liquid mud, of which 
 every passing foot gave you a spatter to the hips. My 
 exterior was by this time equally divided between 
 
 I water and dirt, and I trudged on in comfortable fellow 
 ship with farmers, coal-miners, and Scotch lasses 
 envying very much the last, for they carried their 
 shoes in their hands, and held their petticoats, to say 
 the least, clear of the mud. Many a good joke they 
 seemed to have among them, but as they spoke in 
 Gaelic, it was lost on my Sassenach ears. 
 
 I had looked forward with a faint hope to a ginger 
 bread and ale-cart, which I remembered having seen 
 in the morning established near the terminus of the 
 railroad, trusting to refresh my strength and patience 
 with a glass of anything that goes under the generic 
 appellation of "summat;" but though the cart was 
 there, the gingerbread shelf was occupied by a row of 
 Scotch lasses, crouching together under cover from 
 the rain, and the pedlar assured me that "there wasna 
 a drap o speerit to be got within ten mileo the castle." 
 One glance at the railroad, where a car with a single 
 horse was beset by some thousands of shoving and 
 fighting applicants, convinced me that I had a walk 
 of eight miles to finish my " purgation by" tourna 
 ment ; and as it was getting too dark to trust to any 
 picking of the way, I took the middle of the rail-track, 
 and set forward. 
 
 " Oh. but a weary wight was he 
 When he reached the foot of the dogwood tree." 
 
 Eight miles in a heavy rain, with boots of the con 
 sistence of brown paper, and a road of alternate deep 
 mud and broken stone, should entitle one to the green 
 
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 193 
 
 turban. I will make the pilgrimage of a Hadji from 
 the " farthest inn" with half the endurance. 
 
 I found my Liverpool friends over a mutton-chop 
 in the snug parlor of our host, and with a strong brew 
 of hot toddy, and many a laugh at the day s adventures 
 by land and water, we got comfortably to bed " some 
 where in the small hours." And so ended the great 
 day of the tournament. 
 
 After witnessing the disasters of the first day, the 
 demolition of costumes, and the perils by water, of 
 masqueraders and spectators, it was natural to fancy 
 that the tournament was over. So did not seem to 
 think several thousands of newly-arrived persons, 
 pouring from steamer after steamer upon the pier of 
 Ardrossan, and in every variety of costume, from the 
 shepherd s maud to the courtier s satin, crowding to 
 the rail-cars for Eglinton. It appeared from the 
 chance remarks of one or two who came to our lodg 
 ings to deposite their carpet-bags, that it had rained 
 very little in the places from which the steamers had j 
 come, and that they had calculated on the second as ; 
 the great day of the joust. No dissuasion had the | 
 least effect upon them, and away they went, bedecked j 
 and merry, the sufferers of the day before looking out j 
 upon them, from comfortable hotel and lodging, with i 
 prophetic pity. 
 
 At noon the sky brightened ; and as the cars were j 
 running by this time with diminished loads, I parted ( 
 from my agreeable friends, and bade adieu to my i 
 garret at Ardrossan. I was bound to Ireland, and my | 
 road lay by Eglinton to Irvine and Ayr. Fellow- | 
 passengers with me were twenty or thirty men in j 
 Glengary bonnets, plaids, &c. ; and I came in for my 
 share of the jeers and jokes showered upon them by 
 the passengers in the return-cars, as men bound on a 
 fruitless errand. As we neared the castle, the crowds 
 of people with disconsolate faces waiting for convey 
 ances, or standing by the reopened gingerbread carts ! 
 in listless idleness, convinced my companions, at last i 
 that there was nothing to be seen, for that day at least, ! 
 at Eglinton. I left them sitting in the cars, undecided 
 whether to go on or return without losing their places ; 
 and seeing a coach marked " Irvine" standing in the 
 road, 1 jumped in without question or ceremony. It 
 belonged to a private party of gentlemen, who were to 
 visit the castle and tilting-ground on their way to 
 Irvine ; and as they very kindly insisted on my re 
 maining after I had apologised for the intrusion, I 
 found myself "booked" fora glimpse of the second 
 day s attractions. 
 
 The avenue to the castle was as crowded as on the 
 day before ; but it was curious to remark how the 
 general aspect of the multitude was changed by the 
 substitution of disappointment for expectation. The 
 lagging gait and surly silence, instead of the elastic 
 step and merry joke, seemed to have darkened the 
 scene more than the withdrawal of the sun, and I was 
 glad to wrap myself in my cloak, and remember that 
 I was on the wing. The banner flying at the castle 
 tower was the only sign of motion I could see in its 
 immediate vicinity ; the sail-cloth coverings of the 
 pavilion were dark with wet; the fine sward was every 
 where disfigured with traces of mud, and the whole 
 scene was dismal and uncomfortable. We kept on to 
 the lists, and found them, as one of my companions 
 expressed it, more like a cattle-pen after a fair than a 
 scene of pleasure trodden, wet, miry, and deserted. 
 The crowd, content to view them from a distance, 
 were assembled around the large booths on the ascent 
 of the rising ground toward the castle, where a band 
 was playing some merry reels, and the gingerbread 
 and ale venders plied a busy vocation. A look was 
 enough; and we shaped our course for Irvine, sympa 
 thizing deeply with the disappointment of the high- 
 spirited and generous lord of the Tourney. I heard 
 at Irvine, and farther on, that the tilting would be re 
 
 newed, and the banquet and ball given on the succeed 
 ing days ; but after the wreck of dresses and peril of 
 health I had witnessed, I was persuaded that the best 
 that could be done would be but a slender patching 
 up of the original glories, as well as a halting rally of 
 the original spirits of the tournament. So I kept on 
 my way. 
 
 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THKRK is an inborn and inbred distrust of "foreign 
 ers" in England continental foreigners, I should say 
 which keeps the current of French and Italian so 
 ciety as distinct amid the sea of London, as the blue 
 Rhone in Lake Leman. The word " foreigner," ia 
 England, conveys exclusively the idea of a dark-com 
 plexioned and whiskered individual, in a frogged coat 
 and distressed circumstances ; and to introduce a 
 smooth-cheeked, plaiuly-dressed, quiet-looking person 
 by that name, would strike any circle of ladies and 
 gentlemen as a palpable misnomer. The violent and 
 unhappy contrast between the Parisian s mode of life 
 in London and in Paris, makes it very certain that few 
 of those bien nes et comv;nable>ncnt riches will live in 
 London for pleasure; and then the flood of political 
 emigres, for the last half century, has monopolised 
 hair-dressing, &c., &c., to such a degree, that the 
 word Frenchman is synonymous in English ears with 
 barber and dancing-master. If a dark gentleman, 
 wearing either whisker or mustache, chance to of 
 fend John Bull in the street, the first opprobrious lan 
 guage he hears the strongest that occurs to the fel 
 low s mind is, " Get out, you Frenchman !" 
 
 All this, malgrc the rage for foreign lions in London 
 society. A well-introduced foreigner gets easily into 
 this, and while he keeps his cabriolet and confines 
 himself to freqiiemingsoirf es and accepting invitations 
 to dine, he will never suspect that he is not on an 
 equal footing with any " milor" in London. If he 
 wishes to be disenchanted, he has only to change his 
 lodgings from Long s to Great Russell street, or (bit 
 terer and readier trial) to propose marriage to the 
 honorable Augusta or Lady Fanny. 
 
 Everybody who knows the society of Paris, knows 
 something of a handsome and very elegant young 
 baron of the Faubourg St. Germain, who, with small 
 fortune, very great taste, and greater credit, contrived 
 to go on very swimmingly as an adorable roue and 
 vaurien till he was hard upon twenty-five. At the 
 first crisis in his affairs, the ladies, who hold all the 
 politics in their laps, got him appointed consul to 
 Algiers, or minister to Venezuela, and with this pretty 
 pretext for selling his horses and dressing-gowns, these 
 cherished articles brought twice their original value, 
 saved his loyautt, and set him up in fans and monkeys 
 at his place of exile. A year of this was enough for 
 the darling of Paris, and not more than a day before 
 his desolate loves would have ceased to mourn for 
 him, he galloped into his hotel with a new fashion of 
 whiskers, a black female slave, and the most delicious 
 | histories of his adventures during the ages he had 
 been exiled. Down to the earth and their previous 
 obscurity dropped the rivals who were just beginning 
 to usurp his glories. A new stud, an indescribable 
 I vehicle, a suite of rooms a. rAfricaine, and a mystery, 
 preserved at some expense, about his negress, kept all 
 | Paris, including his new creditors, in admiring aston- 
 
194 
 
 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 ishment for a year. Among the crowd of his worship 
 pers, not the last or least fervent, were the fair-haired 
 and glowing beauties who assemble at the levees of 
 their ambassador in the Rue St. Honore, and upon 
 whom le beau Adolplie had looked as pretty savages, 
 whose frightful toilets and horrid French accent 
 might be tolerated one evening in the week vu le 
 souper ! 
 
 Eclipses will arrive as calculated by insignificant 
 astronomers, however, and debts will become due as 
 presumed by vulgar tradesmen. Le beau Adolphe 
 began to see another crisis, and betook himself to his 
 old advisers, who were dcsoles to the last degree; but 
 there was a new government, and the blood of the 
 Faubourg was at a discount. No embassies were to 
 be had for nothing. With a deep sigh, and a gentle 
 tone, to spare his feelings as much as possible, his 
 friend ventures to suggest to him that it will be neces 
 sary to sacrifice himself. 
 
 "Ahi ! mais comment /" 
 
 " Marry one of these betes Anglaises, who drink 
 you up with their great blue eyes, and are made of 
 gold !" 
 
 Adolphe buried his face in his gold-fringed oriental 
 pocket-handkerchief; but when the first agony was 
 passed, his resolution was taken, and he determined to 
 go to England. The first beautiful creature he should 
 see, whose funds were enormous and well-invested, 
 should bear away from all the love, rank, and poverty 
 of France, the perfumed hand he looked upon. 
 
 A flourishing letter, written in a small, cramped 
 hand, but with a seal on whose breadth of wax and 
 blazon all the united heraldry of France was inter 
 woven, arrived, through the ambassador s despatch 
 
 box, to the address of Miladi , Belgrave square, 
 
 announcing, in full, that le beau Adolphe was coming 
 to London to marry the richest heiress in good socie 
 ty ; and as Paris could not spare him more than a 
 week, he wished those who had daughters to marry, 
 answering the description, to be bien prevenus of his 
 visit and errand. With the letter carne a compend of 
 his genealogy, from the man who spoke French in the 
 confusion of Babel to le dit Baron Adolphe. 
 
 To London came the valet of le beau baron, two 
 days before his master, bringing his slippers and dres 
 sing-gown to be aired after their sea-voyage across the 
 channel. To London followed the irresistible youth, 
 cursing, in the politest French, the necessity which 
 subtracted a week from a life measured with such 
 "diamond sparks" as his own in Paris. He sat him 
 self down in his hotel, sent his man Porphyre with his 
 card to every noble and rich house, whose barbarian 
 tenants he had ever seen in the Champs Elysees, and 
 waited the result. Invitations from fair ladies, who 
 remembered him as the man the French belles were 
 mad about, and from literary ladies, who wanted his 
 whiskers and black eyes lo give their soirees the neces 
 sary foreign complexion, flowed in on all sides, and 
 Monsieur Adolphe selected his most mignon cane and 
 his happiest design in a stocking, and "rendered him 
 self" through the rain like a martyr. 
 
 No offers of marriage the first evening! 
 
 None the second ! ! 
 
 None the third ! ! ! 
 
 Le beau Adolphe began to think either that English 
 papas did not propose their daughters to people as in 
 France ; or, perhaps, that the lady whom he had com 
 missioned to circulate his wishes had not sufficiently 
 advertised him. . She had, however. 
 
 He took advice, and found it would be necessary to 
 take the first step himself. This was disagreeable, 
 and he said to himself, " Lc jeu ne vaut pas le chan- 
 delle ;" but his youth was passing, and his English 
 fortune was at interest. 
 
 He went to Almack s and proposed to the first 
 authenticated fortune that accepted his hand for a 
 
 waltz. The young lady first laughed, and then told 
 her mother, who told her son, who thought it an in 
 sult, and called out le beau Adolphe, very much to the 
 astonishment of himself and Porphyre. The thing 
 was explained, and the baron looked about the next 
 day for one pas si bete. Found a young lady with 
 half a million sterling, proposed in a morning call, 
 and was obliged to ring for assistance, his intended 
 having gone into convulsions with laughing at him. 
 The story by this time had got pretty well distributed 
 through the different strata of London society ; and 
 when le beau, Adolphe convinced that he would not 
 succeed with the noble heiresses of Belgrave square, 
 j condescended, in his extremity, to send his heart by 
 his valet to a rich little vulgarian, who " never had a 
 | grandfather," and lived in Harley street, he narrowly 
 I escaped being prosecuted for a nuisance, and, Parig 
 [ being now in the possession of the enemy, he buried 
 j his sorrows in Belgium. After a short exile his friends 
 j procured him a vice-consulate in some port in the 
 j north sea, and there probably at this moment he sor 
 rowfully vegetates. 
 
 This is not a story founded upon fact, but literally 
 true. Many of the circumstances came under my own 
 observation ; and the whole thus affords a laughable 
 example of the esteem in which what an English fox- 
 hunter would call a " trashy Frenchman" is held in 
 England, ( as well as of the travestie produced by trans 
 planting the usages of one country to another. 
 
 Ridiculous as any intimate mixture of English and 
 French ideas and persons seems to be in London, the 
 foreign society of itself in that capital is exceedingly 
 spiritual and agreeable. The various European em 
 bassies and their attaches, with their distinguished 
 travellers, from their several countries, accidentally 
 belonging to each ; the French and Italians, married 
 to English noblemen and gentry, and living in Lon 
 don, and the English themselves, who have become 
 cosmopolite by residence in other countries, form a 
 very large society in which mix, on perfectly equal 
 terms, the first singers of the opera, and foreign musi 
 cians and artists generally. This last circumstance 
 gives a peculiar charm to these reunions, though it 
 imparts a pride and haughty bearing to the prima 
 donna and her fraternity, which is, at least, sometimes 
 very inconvenient to themselves. The remark recalls 
 to my mind a scene I once witnessed in London, 
 which will illustrate the feeling better than an essay 
 upon it. 
 
 I was at one of those private concerts given at an 
 enormous expense during the opera season, at which 
 " assisted" Julia Grisi, Rubini, Lablache, Tamburiui, 
 and Ivanhoff. Grisi came in the carriage of a foreign 
 lady of rank, who had dined loith Aer, and she walked 
 into the room looking like an empress. She was 
 dressed in the plainest white, with her glossy hair put 
 smooth from her brow, and a single white japonica 
 dropped over one of her temples. The lady who 
 brought her chaperoned her during the evening, as if 
 she had been her daughter, and under the excitement 
 of her own table and the kindness of her friends, she 
 sung with a rapture and a freshet of glory (if one may 
 borrow a word from the Mississippi) which set all 
 hearts on fire. She surpassed her most applauded 
 hour on the stage for it was worth her while. The 
 audience was composed, almost exclusively, of those 
 who are not only cultivated judges, but who some- 
 j times repay delight with a present of diamonds. 
 
 Lablache shook the house to its foundations in his 
 turn ; Rubini ran through his miraculous compass 
 with the ease, truth, and melody, for which his singing 
 s unsurpassed ; Tamburini poured his rich and even 
 fulness on the ear, and Russian Ivanhoff, the one 
 southern singing-bird who has come out of the north, 
 wire-drew his fine and spiritual notes, till they who bad 
 been flushed, and tearful, and silent, when the others 
 
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 195 
 
 had sang, drowned his voice in the poorer applause 
 of exclamation and surprise. 
 
 The concert was over by twelve, the gold and silver 
 paper bills of the performance were turned into f;ms, and 
 everyone was waiting till supper should be announced 
 the prima donna still sitting by her friend, but sur 
 rounded by foreign attaches, and in the highest elation 
 at her own success. The doors of an inner suite of 
 rooms were thrown open at last, and Grisi s cordon of 
 admirers prepared to follow her in and wait on her at 
 supper. At this moment, one of the powdered menials 
 of the house stepped up and informed her very respect 
 fully that supper was prepared in a separate room for 
 the singers ! 
 
 Medea, in her most tragic hour, never stood so 
 absolutely the picture of hate as did Grisi for a single 
 instant, in the centre of that aristocratic crowd. Her 
 chest swelled and rose, her lips closed over her snowy 
 teeth, and compressed till the blood left them, and, for 
 myself, I looked unconsciously to see where she would 
 strike. I knew, then, that there was more than fancy 
 there was nature and capability of the real in the 
 imaginary passions she plays so powerfully. A laugh 
 of extreme amusement at the scene from the high 
 born woman who had accompanied her, suddenly 
 turned her humor, and she stopped in the midst of a 
 muttering of Italian, in which I could distinguish 
 only the terminations, and, with a sort of theatrical 
 
 ?uickness of transition, joined heartily in her mirth, 
 t was immediately proposed by this lady, however, 
 that herself and their particular circle should join the 
 insulted prima donna at the lower table, and they suc 
 ceeded by this manoeuvre in retaining Rubini and the 
 others, who were leaving the house in a most un 
 equivocal Italian fury. 
 
 I had been fortunate enough to be included in the 
 invitation, and, with one or two foreign diplomatic 
 men, I followed Grisi and her amused friend to a 
 small room on a lower floor, that seemed to be the 
 housekeeper s parlor. Here supper was set for six 
 (including the man who had played the piano), and 
 on the side-table stood every variety of wine and fruit, 
 and there was nothing in the supper, at least, to make 
 us regret the table we had left. With a most im 
 perative gesture and rather an amusing attempt at 
 English, Grisi ordered the servants out of the room, 
 and locked the door, and from that moment the con 
 versation commenced and continued in their own 
 musical, passionate, and energetic Italian. My long 
 residence in that country h;id made me at home in it ; 
 every one present spoke it fluently ; and I had an 
 opportunity I might never have again, of seeing with 
 what abandonment these children of the sun throw 
 aside rank and distinction (yet without forgetting it), 
 and join with those who are their superiors in every 
 circumstance of life, in the gayeties of a chance hour. 
 
 Out of their own country these singers would prob 
 ably acknowledge no higher lank than that of the kind 
 and gifted lady who was their guest ; yet, with the 
 briefest apology at finding the room too cold after the 
 heat of the concert, they put on their cloaks and hats 
 as a safeguard to their lungs (more valuable to them 
 than to others) ; and as most of the cloaks were the 
 worse for travel, and the hats opera-hats with two 
 corners, the grotesque contrast with the diamonds of 
 one lady, and the radiant beauty of the other, may 
 easily be imagined. 
 
 Singing should be hungry work, by the knife and 
 fork they played ; and between the excavations of 
 truffle pies, and the bumpers of champagne and bur 
 gundy, the words were few. Lablache appeared to be 
 an established droll, and every syllable he found time 
 to utter was received with the most unbounded laughter. 
 Rubini could not recover from the slight he conceived 
 put upon him and his profession by the separate table; 
 and he continually reminded Grisi, who by this time 
 
 had quite recovered her good humor, that, the night 
 before, supping at Devonshire house, the duke of 
 Wellington had held her gloves on one side, while his 
 grace, their host attended to her on the other. 
 
 " E vero /" said IvanholF, with a look of modest ad 
 miration at the prima donna. 
 
 "jB vero, e bravo!" cried Tamburini, with his sepul 
 chral-talking tone, much deeper than his singing. 
 
 " Si, si, si, bravo /" echoed all the company; and 
 the haughty and happy actress nodded all round with 
 a radiant smile, and repeated, in her silver tones, 
 " Grazie ! cari amid ! grazie . " 
 
 As the servants had been turned out, the removal 
 
 ; of the first course was managed in pic-nic fashion ; 
 
 and when the fruit and fresh bottles of wine were set 
 
 upon the table by the attaches, and younger gentle- 
 
 | men, the health of the princess who honored them by 
 
 her presence was proposed in that language, which, it 
 
 \ seems to me, is more capable than all others of ex- 
 
 | pressing affectionate and respectful devotion. All un- 
 
 I covered and stood up, and Grisi, with tears in her eyes, 
 
 | kissed the hand of her benefactress and friend, and 
 
 drank her health in silence. 
 
 It is a polite and common accomplishment in Italy 
 to improvise in verse, and the lady I speak of is well 
 ; known among her immediate friends for a singular 
 1 facility in this beautiful art. She reflected a moment 
 ! or two with the moisture in her eyes, and then com- 
 ; menced, low and soft, a poem, of which it would be 
 | difficult, nay impossible, to convey, in English, an 
 j idea of its music and beauty. It took us back to Italy, 
 I to its heavenly climate, its glorious arts, its beauty and 
 its ruins, and concluded with a line of which I remein- 
 I her the sentiment to have been, " out of Italy every 
 land is exile /" 
 
 The glasses were raised as she ceased, and every 
 
 I one repeated after her, " Fuori d 1 Italia tutto e esilio . " 
 
 Ma /" cried out the fat Lablache, holding up his 
 
 ! glass of champagne, and looking through it with one 
 
 eye, siarno ben esiliati qua . " and, with a word of 
 
 i drollery, the party recovered its gayer tone, and the 
 
 humor and wit flowed on brilliantly as before. 
 
 The house had long been still, and the last carriage 
 I belonging to the company above stairs had rolled from 
 the door, when Grisi suddenly remembered a bird that 
 | she had lately bought, of which she proceeded to give 
 j us a description, that probably penetrated to every 
 j corner of the silent mansion. It was a mocking-bird, 
 I that had been kept two years in the opera-house, and 
 between rehearsal and performance had learned parts 
 , of everything it had overheard. It was the property 
 j of the woman who took care of the wardrobes. Grisi 
 I had accidentally seen it, and immediately purchased 
 ; it for two guineas. How much of embellishment there 
 j was in her imitations of her treasure 1 do not know; 
 j but certainly the whole power of her wondrous voice, 
 I passion, and knowledge of music, seemed drunk up at 
 once in the wild, various, difficult, and rapid mixture 
 I of the capricious melody she undertook. First came, 
 without the passage which it usually terminates, the 
 \ long, throat-down, gurgling, water-toned trill, in which 
 ! Rubini (but for the bird and its mistress, it seemed to 
 I me) would have been inimitable : then, right upon it, 
 , as if it were the beginning of a bar, and in the most 
 unbreathing continuity, followed a brilliant passage 
 from the Barber of Seville, run into the passionate 
 prayer of Anna Bolena in her madness, and followed 
 by the air of " Suoni la tromba intrepida," the tremen 
 dous duet in the Puritani, between Tamburini and 
 Lablache. Up to the sky, and down to the earth 
 again away with a note of the wildest gladness, and 
 back upon a note of the most touching melancholy 
 if the bird but half equals the imitation of his mistress, 
 he were worth the jewel in a sultan s turban. 
 
 "Giulia!" "Giulietta!" " GiulieUina !" cried out 
 | one and another, as she ceased, expressing in their 
 
196 
 
 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 Italian diminutives, the love and delight she had in 
 spired by her incomparable execution. 
 
 The stillness of the house in the occasional pauses 
 of conversation reminded the gay party, at last, that it 
 was wearing late. The door was unlocked, and the 
 half-dozen sleepy footmen hanging about the hall were 
 despatched for the cloaks and carriages ; the drowsy 
 porter was roused from his deep leathern dormeuse, 
 and opened the door and broad upon the street lay 
 the cold gray light of a summer s morning. I declined 
 an offer to be set down by a friend s cab, and strolled 
 off to Hyde Park to surprise myself with a sunrise; 
 balancing the silent rebuke in the fresh and healthy 
 countenances of early laborers going to their toil, 
 against the effervescence of a champagne hour, which, 
 since such come so rarely, may come, for me, with 
 what untimeliness they please. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE STREETS OF LONDON. 
 
 IT has been said, that "few men know how to take 
 a walk." In London it requires some experience to 
 know where to take a walk. The taste of the peram 
 bulator, the hour of the day, and the season of the 
 year, would each affect materially the decision of the 
 question. 
 
 If you are up early I mean early for London say 
 ten o clock we would start from your hotel in Bond 
 street, and hastening through Regent street and the 
 Quadrant (deserts at that hour), strike into the zigzag 
 of thronged alleys, cutting traversely from Coventry 
 street to Covent Garden. The horses on the cab 
 stand in the Haymarket " are at this hour asleep." 
 The late supper-eaters at Dubourg s and the Cafe dt 
 VEurope were the last infliction upon their galled 
 withers, and while dissipation slumbers they may find 
 an hour to hang their heads upon the bit, and forget 
 gall and spavin in the sunshiny drowse of morning. 
 The cabman, too, nods on his perch outside, careless 
 of the custom of "them as pays only their fare," and 
 quite sure not to get "a gemman to drive" at that un 
 seasonable hour. The " waterman" (called a " water 
 man," as he will tell you, " because he gives hay to 
 the orses") leans against the gas-lamp at the corner, 
 looking with a vacant indifference of habit at the 
 splendid coach with its four blood bays just starting from 
 the Brighton coach-office in the Crescent. The side 
 walk of Coventry street, usually radiant with the 
 flaunting dresses of the fail and vicious, is now sober 
 with the dull habiliments of the eaily-stirring and the 
 poor. The town (for this is town, not city) beats its 
 more honest pulse. Industry alone is abroad. 
 
 Rupert street on the left is the haunt of shabby- 
 genteel poverty. To its low-doored chop-houses steal 
 the more needy loungers of Regent street, and in con 
 fined and greasy, but separate and exclusive boxes, 
 they eat their mutton-chop and potato, unseen of their 
 gayer acquaintances. Here comes the half-pay of 
 ficer, whose half-pay is halved or quartered with wife 
 and children, to drink his solitary half-pint of sherry, 
 and over a niggardly portion of soup and vegetables, 
 recall, as well as he may in imagination, the gay din 
 ners at mess, and the companions now grown cold in 
 death or worldliness ! Here comes the sharper out 
 of luck, the debtor newly out of prison. And here 
 comes many a "gay fellow about town," who will dine 
 to-morrow, or may have dined yesterday, at a table of 
 unsparing luxury, but who now turns up Rupert street 
 at seven, cursing the mischance that draws upon his 
 own slender pocket for the dinner of to-day. Here 
 are found the watchful host and the suspicious waiter 
 the closely-measured wine, and the more closely- 
 
 measured attention the silent and shrinking compa 
 ny, the close-drawn curtain, the suppressed call for 
 the bill, the lingering at the table of those who value 
 the retreat and the shelter to recover from the embar 
 rassing recognition and the objectless saunter through 
 the streets. The ruin, the distress, the despair, that 
 wait so closely upon the heels of fashion, pass here 
 with their victims. It is the last step within the 
 bounds of respectability. They still live " at the West 
 end," while they dine in Rupert street. They may 
 still linger in the park, or stroll in Bond street, till 
 their better-fledged friends flit to dinner at the clubs, 
 and within a stone s throw of the luxurious tables and 
 the gay mirth they so bitterly remember, sit down to 
 an ill-dressed meal, and satisfy the calls of hunger in 
 silence. Ah, the outskirts of the bright places in life 
 are darker for the light that shines so near them ! 
 How much sweeter is the coarsest meal shared with 
 the savage in the wilderness, than the comparative 
 comfort of cooked meats and wine in a neighborhood 
 like this! 
 
 Come through this narrow lane into Leicester 
 square. You cross here the first limit of the fashion 
 able quarter. The Sabloniere hotel is in this square; 
 but you may not give it as your address unless you 
 are a foreigner. This is the home of that most mis 
 erable fish out of water a Frenchman in London. 
 A bad French hotel, and two or three execrable 
 French restaurants, make this spot of the metropolis 
 the most habitable to the exiled habitue of the Palais 
 Royal. Here he gets a mocking imitation of what, iu 
 any possible degree, is better than the sacre biftek, or 
 the half-raw mutton-chop and barbarous boiled potato ! 
 Here he comes forth, if the sunshine perchance for 
 one hour at noon, and paces up and down on the side 
 walk, trying to get. the better of his bile and his bad 
 breakfast. Here waits for him at three, the shabby, 
 but most expensive remise cab, hired by the day for 
 as much as would support him a month in Paris. 
 Leicester square is the place for conjurors, bird- 
 fanciers, showmen, and generally for every foreign 
 novelty in the line of nostrums and marvels. If there 
 is a dwarf in London, or a child with two heads, or a 
 learned pig, you will see une or all in that building, so 
 radiant with placards, and so thronged with beggars. 
 
 Come on through Cranbourne alley. Old clothes, 
 second-hand stays, idem shawls, capes, collars, and 
 ladies articles of ornamental wear generally : cheap 
 straw-bonnets, old books, gingerbread, und stationery . 
 Look at this once-expensive and finely-worked muslin 
 cape ! What fair shoulders did it adorn when these 
 dingy flowers were new when this fine lace-edging 
 bounded some heaving bosom, perhaps, like frost-work 
 on the edge of a snow-drift. It has been the property 
 of some minion of elegance and wealth, vicious or vir 
 tuous, and by what hard necessity came it here ? Ten 
 to one, could it speak, its history would keep us stand 
 ing at this shop window, indifferent alike to the curi 
 ous glances of these passing damsels and the gentle 
 eloquence of the Jew on the other side, who pays us 
 the unflattering compliment of suggesting an improve 
 ment in our toilet by the purchase of the half-worn 
 habiliments he exposes- 
 
 I like Cranbourne alley, because it reminds me of 
 Venice. The half-daylight between the high and 
 overhanging roofs, the just audible hum of voices and 
 occupation from the different shops, the shuffling of 
 hasty feet over the smooth flags, and particularly the 
 absence of horses and wheels, make it (in all but the 
 damp air and the softer speech) a fair resemblance to 
 those close passages in the rear of the canals between 
 St. Mark s and the Rialto. Then I like studying a 
 pawnbroker s window, and I like ferreting in the old 
 book-stalls that abound here. It is a good lesson in 
 humility for an author to see what he can be bought 
 for in Cranbourne alley. Some " gentle reader," who 
 
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 J97 
 
 has paid a guinea and a half for you, has resold you 
 for two-aud-sixpence. For three shillings you may 
 have the three volumes, " as good as new," and the 
 shopman, by his civility, pleased to be rid of it on the 
 terms. If you would console yourself, however, buy 
 Milton for one-and-sixpence, and credit your vanity 
 with the eighteen-pence of the remainder. 
 
 The labyrinth of alleys between this and Covent 
 Garden, are redolent of poverty and pot-houses. In j 
 crossing St. Martin s lane, life appears to have be- ! 
 come suddenly a struggle and a calamity. Turbulent ! 
 and dirty women are everywhere visible through the ; 
 open windows; the half-naked children at the doors | 
 look already care-worn and incapable of a smile ; and 
 the men throng the gin-shops, bloated, surly, and re 
 pulsive. Hurry through this leprous spot in the vast 
 body of London, and let us emerge in the Strand. 
 
 You would think London Strand the main artery 
 of the world. I suppose there is no thoroughfare on 
 the face of the earth where the stream of human life . 
 runs with a tide so overwhelming. In any other 
 street in the world you catch the eye of the passer-by, j 
 In the Strand, no man sees another except as a solid 
 body, whose contact is to be avoided. You are safe 
 nowhere on the pavement without all the vigilance of j 
 your senses. Omnibuses and cabs, drays, carriages, 
 wheelbarrows, and porters, beset the street. News- 
 pnper-hawkers, pickpockets, shop-boys, coal-heavers, 
 and a perpetual and selfish crowd dispute the sidewalk, jj 
 If you venture to look at a print in a shop-window, | 
 you arrest the tide of passengers, who immediately I 
 walk over you ; and, if you stop to speak with a friend, | 
 who by chance has run his nose against yours rather j 
 than another man s, you impede the way, and are < 
 made to understand it by the force of jostling. If you j 
 would get into an omnibus you are quarrelled for by 
 half-a-dozen who catch your eye at once, and after \ 
 using all your physical strength and most of your dis- ! 
 crimination, you are most probably embarked in the 
 wrong one, and are going at ten miles the hour to j 
 Bbtckwell, when you are bound to Islington. A j 
 Londoner passes his life in learning the most adroit j 
 mode of threading a crowd, and escaping compulsory , 
 journeys in cabs and omnibuses; and dine with any ; 
 man in that metropolis from twenty-five to sixty years i 
 of age, and he will entertain you. from the soup to the 
 Curac/oa, with his hair-breadth escapes and difficulties 
 with cads and coach-drivers. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A LONDONER, if met abroad, answers very vaguely 
 any questions you may be rash enough to put to him 
 about " the city." Talk to him of "town," and he 
 would rather miss seeing St. Peter s, than appear ig 
 norant of any person, thing, custom, or fashion, con 
 cerning whom or which you might have a curiosity. 
 It is understood all over the world that the " city" of 
 London is that crowded, smoky, jostling, omnibus and 
 cab-haunted portion of the metropolis of England 
 which lies east of Temple Bar. A kind of debatable 
 country, consisting of the Strand, Covent Garden, and j 
 Tottenham Court road, then intervenes, and west of j 
 these lies what is called " the town." A transit from j 
 one to the other by an inhabitant of either is a matter j 
 of some forethought and provision. If milord, in 
 Carlton Terrace, for example, finds it necessary to 
 visit his banker in Lombard street, he orders not the 
 blood bay and the cane tilbury which he is wont to 
 drive in the morning but the crop roadster in the 
 cab, with the night harness, and Poppet his tiger in 
 plain hat and gaiters. If the banker iu Lombard 
 
 street, on the contrary, emerges from the twilight of 
 his counting-house to make a morning call on the 
 wife of some foreign correspondent, lodging at the 
 Clarendon, he steps into a Piccadilly omnibus, not in 
 the salt-and-pepper creations of his Cheapside tailor, 
 but (for he has an account with Stultz also for the 
 west-end business) in a claret-colored frock of the last 
 fashion at Crockford s, a fresh hat from New Bond 
 street, and (if he is young) a pair of cherished boots 
 from the Rue St. Honore. He sits very clear of his 
 neighbors on the way, and, getting out at the crossing 
 at Farrance s, the pastry cook, steps in and indulges 
 in a soup, and then walks slowly past the clubs to his 
 rendezvous, at a pace that would ruin his credit irre 
 vocably if practised a mile to the eastward. The dif 
 ference between the two migrations is, simply, that 
 though the nobleman affects the plainness of the city, 
 he would not for the world be taken for a citizen ; 
 while the junior partner of the house of Firkins and 
 Co. would feel unpleasantly surprised if he were not 
 supposed to be a member of the clubs, lounging to a 
 late breakfast. 
 
 There is a " town" manner, too, and a " city" man 
 ner, practised with great nicety by all who frequent 
 both extremities of London. Nothing could be in 
 more violent contrast, for example, than the manner 
 of your banker when you dine with him at his coun 
 try-house, and the same person when you meet him 
 on the narrow sidewalk in Throgmorton street. If you 
 had seen him first in his suburban retreat, you would 
 wonder how the deuce such a cordial, joyous, spare- 
 nothing sort of good fellow could ever reduce himself 
 to the cautious proportions of Change alley. If you 
 met him first in Change alley, on the contrary, you 
 would wonder, with quite as much embarrassment, 
 how such a cold, two-fingered, pucker-browed slave 
 of mammon could ever, by any license of interpreta 
 tion, be called a gentleman. And when you have 
 seen him in both places, and know him well, if he is 
 a favorable specimen of his class, you will be aston 
 ished still more to see how completely he will sustain 
 both characters giving you the cold shoulder, in a 
 way that half insults you, at twelve in the morning, 
 and putting his home, horses, cellar, and servants, 
 completely at your disposal at four in the afternoon. 
 Two souls inhabit the banker s body, and each is ap 
 parently sole tenant in turn. As the Hampstead early 
 coach turns the corner by St. Giles s, on its way to 
 the bank, the spirit of gain enters into the bosom of 
 the junior Firkins, ejecting, till the coach passes the 
 same spot at three in the afternoon, the more gentle 
 manly inhabitants. Between those hours, look to 
 Firkins for no larger sentiment than may be written 
 upon the blank lines of a note of hand, and expect no 
 courtesy that would occupy the head or hands of the 
 junior partner longer than one second by St. Paul s. 
 With the broad beam of sunshine that inundates the 
 returning omnibus emerging from Holborn into Tot 
 tenham Court road, the angel of port wine and green 
 fields passes his finger across Firkins s brow, and 
 presto! the man is changed. The sight of a long 
 and narrow strip of paper, sticking from his neighbor s 
 pocket, depreciates that person in his estimation, he 
 criticises the livery and riding of the groom trotting 
 past, says some very true things of the architecture of 
 the new cottage on the roadside, and is landed at the 
 end of his own shrubbery, as pleasant and joyous- 
 looking a fellow as you would meet on that side of 
 London. You have ridden out to dine with him, and 
 as he meets you on the lawn, there is still an hour to 
 dinner, and a blood horse spatters round from the sta 
 bles, which you are welcome to drive to the devil if 
 you like, accompanied either by Mrs. Firkins or him 
 self; or, if you like it better, there are Mrs. Firkins s 
 two ponies, and the chaise holds two and the tiger. 
 Ten to one Mrs. Firkins is a pretty woman, and has 
 
198 
 
 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 her whims, and when you are fairly on the road, she 
 proposes to leave the soup and champagne at home 
 to equalize their extremes of temperature, drive to 
 Whitehall Stairs, take boat and dine, extempore, at 
 Richmond. Arid Firkins, to whom it will be at least 
 twenty pounds out of pocket, claps his hands and 
 says " By Jove, it s a bright thought ! touch up the 
 near pony, Mrs. Firkins." And away you go, Firkins 
 amusing himself the whole way from Hampstead to 
 Richmond, imagining the consternation of his cook 
 and butler when nobody comes to dine. 
 
 There is an aristocracy in the city, of course, and 
 Firkins will do business with twenty persons in a day 
 whom he could never introduce to Mrs. Firkins. The 
 situation of that lady with respect to her society is 
 (she will tell you in confidence) rather embarrassing. 
 There are many very worthy persons, she will say, 
 who represent large sums of money or great interests 
 in trade, whom it is necessary to ask to the Lodge, 
 but who are far from being ornamental to her new 
 blue satin boudoir. She has often proposed to Fir 
 kins to have them labelled in tens and thousands ac 
 cording to their fortunes ; that if, by any unpleasant 
 accident, Lord Augustus should meet them there, he 
 might respect them like = in algebra, for what they 
 stand for. But as it is, she is really never safe in cal 
 culating on a societe choisie to dine or sup. When 
 Hook or Smith is just beginning to melt out, or Lady 
 Priscilla is in the middle of a charade, in walks Mr. 
 Snooks, of the foreign house of Snooks, Son, and 
 Co. " unexpectedly arrived from Lisbon, and run 
 down without ceremony to call on his respectable cor 
 respondent." 
 
 " Isn t it tiresome ?" 
 
 " Very, my dear madam ! But then you have the 
 happiness of knowing that you promote very essen 
 tially your husband s interests, and when he has made 
 a plum 
 
 " Yes, very true; and then, to be sure, Firkins has 
 had to build papa a villa, and buy my brother Wilfred 
 a commission, and settle an annuity on my aunt, and 
 fit out my youngest brother Bob to India ; and when I 
 think of what he does for my family, why I don t mind 
 making now and then a sacrifice ; but, after all, it s a 
 great evil not to be able to cultivate one s own class 
 of society." 
 
 And so murmurs Mrs. Firkins, who is the prettiest \ 
 and sweetest creature in the world, and really loves 
 the husband she married for his fortune ; but as the I 
 prosperity of Hainan was nothing while Mordecaj sat i 
 at the gate, it is nothing to Mrs. Firkins that her fa 
 ther lives in luxury, that her brothers are portioned 
 off, and that she herself can have blue boudoirs and 
 pony-chaises ad libitum, while Snooks, Son, and Co., 
 may at any moment break in upon the charade of 
 Lady Priscilla ! 
 
 There is a class of business people in London, 
 mostly bachelors, who have wisely declared themselves 
 independent of the West End, and live in a style of 
 their own in the dark courts and alleys about the Ex- I 
 change, but with a luxury not exceeded even in the 
 silken recesses of May Fair. You will sometimes j 
 meet at the opera a young man of decided style, un 
 exceptionable in his toilet, and quiet and gentleman- j 
 like in his address, who contents himself with the side | 
 alley of the pit, and looks at the bright circles of beau- i 
 ty and fashion about him with an indifference it is dif 
 ficult to explain. Make his acquaintance by chance, j 
 and he takes you home to supper in a plain chariot on j 
 the best springs Long Acre can turn out ; and while i 
 you are speculating where, in the name of the prince 
 of darkness, these narrow streets will bring you to, 
 you are introduced through a small door into saloons, ! 
 perfect in taste and luxury, where, ten to one, you sup 
 with the prima donna, or la premiere danseuse, but 
 certainly with the most polished persons of your own 
 
 sex, not one of whom, though you may have passed a 
 life io London, you ever met in society before. There 
 are, I doubt not, in that vast metropolis, hundreds of 
 small circles of society, composed thus of persons 
 refined by travel and luxury, whose very existence is 
 unsuspected by the fine gentleman at the West End, 
 but who, in the science of living agreeably, are almost 
 as well entitled to rank among the cognoscenti as Lord 
 Sefton or the " member for Finsbury." 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 You return from your ramble in " the city" by two 
 o clock. A bright day " toward," and the season in 
 its palmy time. The old veterans are just creeping 
 out upon the portico of the United Service club, hav 
 ing crammed "The Times" over their late breakfast, 
 and thus prepared their politics against surprise for 
 the day ; the broad steps of the Athenreum are as yet 
 unthronged by the shuffling feet of the literati, whose 
 morning is longer and more secluded than that of idler 
 men, but who will be seen in swarms, at four, entering 
 that superb edifice in company with the employes and 
 politicians who affect their society. Not a cab stands 
 yet at the "Travellers," whose members, noble or 
 fashionable, are probably at this hour in their dres 
 sing-gowns of brocade or shawl of the orient, smoking 
 a hookah over Balzac s last romance, or pursuing at 
 this (to them) desert time of day some adventure which 
 waited upon their love and leisure. It is early yet for 
 the park; but the equipages you will see by-and-by 
 "in the ring" are standing now at Howell and James s, 
 and while the high-bred horses are fretting at the 
 door, and the liveried footmen lean on their gold- 
 headed sticks on the pavement, the fair creature whose 
 slightest nod these trained minions and their fine- 
 limbed animals live to obey, sits upon a three-legged 
 stool within, and in the voice which is a spell upon all 
 hearts, and with eyes to which rank and genius turn 
 like Persians to the sun, discusses with a pert clerk 
 the quality of stockings ! 
 
 Look at these equipages and their appointments ! 
 Mark the exquisite balance of that claret-bodied chariot 
 upon its springs the fine sway of its sumptuous ham 
 mer-cloth in which the un-smiling coachman sits 
 buried to the middle the exact fit of the saddles, set 
 ting into the curve of the horses backs so as not break, 
 to the most careless eye, the fine lines which exhibit 
 action and grace ! See how they stand together, 
 alert, fiery, yet obedient to the weight of a silken 
 thread ; and as the coachman sees you studying his 
 turn-out, observe the imperceptible feel of the reins 
 and the just-visible motion of his lips, conveying to 
 the quick ears of his horses the premonitory, and, to 
 us, inaudible sound, to which, without drawing a 
 hair s breadth upon the traces, they paw their fine 
 hoofs, and expand their nostrils impatiently ! Come 
 nearer, and find a speck or a raised hair, if you can, 
 on these glossy coats ! Observe the nice fitness of 
 the dead-black harness, the modest crest upon the 
 panel, the delicate picking out of white in the wheels, 
 and, if you will venture upon a freedom in manners, 
 look in through the window of rose-teinled glass, and 
 see the splendid cushions and the costly and perfect 
 adaptation of the interior. The twinmated footmen 
 fly to the carriage-door, and the pomatumed clerk who 
 has enjoyed a tele-d-tete for which a prince-royal might 
 sigh, and an ambassador negotiate in vain, hands in 
 his parcel. The small foot presses on the carpeted 
 step, the airy vehicle yields lightly and recovers from 
 the slight weight of the descending form, the coach 
 man inclines his ear for the half-suppressed order 
 
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 199 
 
 from the footman, and off whirls the admirable struc 
 ture, compact, true, steady, but magically free and 
 fast as if horses, footmen, and chariot were but the 
 parts of some complicated centaur some swift-moving 
 monster upon legs and wheels ! 
 
 Walk on a little farther to the Quadrant. Here 
 commences the most thronged promenade in London. 
 These crescent colonnades are the haunt of foreigners 
 on the lookout for amusement, and of strangers in the 
 metropolis generally. You will seldom find a town- 
 bred man there, for he prefers haunting his clubs; or, 
 if he is not a member of them, he avoids lounging 
 much in the Quadrant, lest he should appear to have 
 no other resort. You will observe a town dandy 
 getting fidgety after his second turn in the Quadrant, 
 while you will meet the same Frenchman there from 
 noon till dusk, bounding his walk by those columns as 
 if they were the bars of a cage. The western side 
 toward Piccadilly is the thoroughfare of the honest 
 passer-by ; but under the long portico opposite, you 
 will meet vice in every degree, and perhaps more 
 beauty than on any other pave, in the world. It is 
 given up to the vicious and their followers by general 
 consent. To frequent it, or to be seen loitering there 
 at all, is to make but one impression on the mind of 
 those who may observe you. 
 
 The two sides of Regent street continue to partake 
 of this distinction to the end. Go up on the left, and | 
 you meet the sober citizen perambulating with his 
 wife, the lady followed by her footman, the grave and 
 the respectable of all classes. Go up on the other, 
 and in color and mien it is the difference between a 
 grass-walk and a bed of tulips. What proof is here 
 that beauty is dangerous to its possessor ! It is said 
 commonly of Regent street, that it shows more beauty 
 in an hour than could be found in all the capitals of 
 the continent. It is the beauty, however, of brilliant 
 health of complexion and freshness, more than of 
 sentiment or classic correctness. The English features, 
 at least in the middle and lower ranks, are seldom 
 good, though the round cheek, the sparkling lip, the 
 soft blue eyes and hair of dark auburn, common as 
 health and youth, produce the effect of high and al 
 most universal beauty on the eye of the stranger. The 
 larest thing in these classes is a finely-turned limb, 
 and to the clumsiness of their feet and ankles must be 
 attributed the want of grace usually remarked in their 
 movements. 
 
 Regent street has appeared to me the greatest and 
 most oppressive solitude it) the world. In a crowd of 
 business men, otHn the thronged and mixed gardens j 
 of the continent, the pre-occupation of others is less 
 attractive, or at least, more within our reach, if we 
 would share in it. Here, it is wealth beyond com- j 
 petition, exclusiveness and indifference perfectly un- 
 approachable. In the cold and stern mien ^of the 
 practised Londoner, it is difficult for a stranger not to 
 read distrust, and very difficult for a depressed mind 
 not to feel a marked repulsion. There is no solitude, 
 alter all, like the solitude of cities. 
 
 " O dear, dear London" (says the companion of 
 Asmodeus on his return from France), "dear even in 
 October ! Regent street, 1 salute you ! Bond street, 
 my good fellow, how are you ? And you, oh, beloved 
 Oxford street, whom the opium-eater called stony 
 hearted, and whom I, enting no opium, and speaking 
 as I find, shall ever consider the most kindly and ma 
 ternal of all streets the street of the middle classes 
 busy without uproar, wealthy without ostentation. 
 Ah, the pretty ankles that trip along thy pavement ! 
 Ah! the odd country-cousin bonnets that peer into 
 thy windows, which are lined with cheap yellow shawls, 
 price one pound four shillings, marked in the corner ! 
 Ah ! the brisk young lawyers flocking from their quar 
 ters at the back of Holborn ! Ah ! the quiet old ladies, 
 living in Duchess street, and visiting thee with their 
 
 eldest daughters in the hope of a bargain ! Ah, the 
 bumpkins from Norfolk just disgorged by the Bull and 
 Mouth the soldiers the milliners the Frenchmen 
 the swindlers the porters with four-post beds on 
 their backs, who add the excitement of danger to that of 
 amusement ! The various shifting, motley group that 
 belong to Oxford street, and Oxford street alone ! What 
 thoroughfares equal thee in the variety of human 
 specimens ! in the choice of objects for remark, satire, 
 admiration! Besides, the other streets seem chalked 
 out for a sect narrow-minded and devoted to a coterie. 
 Thou alone art catholic all-receiving. Regent street 
 belongs to foreigners, cigars, and ladies in red silk, 
 whose characters are above scandal. Bond street be 
 longs to dandies and picture-dealers. St. James s 
 street to club loungers and young men in the guards, 
 with mustaches properly blackened by the cire of 
 Mr. Delcroix; but thou, Oxford street, what class can 
 especially claim thee as its own ? Thou mockest at 
 oligarchies ; thou knowest nothing of select orders ! 
 Thou art liberal as air a chartered libertine; accept 
 ing the homage of all, and retaining the stamp of 
 none. And to call thee stony-hearted! certainly 
 thou art so lo beggars to people who have not the 
 WHEREWITHAL. But thou wouldst not be so respect- 
 able if thou wert not capable of a certain reserve to 
 paupers. Thou art civil enough, in all conscience, 
 to those who have a shilling in their pocket those 
 who have not, why do they live at all ?" 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 IT is near four o clock, and in Bond street you 
 might almost walk on the heads of livery-servants 
 at every stride stepping over the heads of two ladies 
 and a dandy exclusive. Thoroughfare it is none, for 
 the carriages are creeping on, inch by inch, the blood- 
 horses " marking time," the coarhman watchful for 
 his panels and whippletrees, and the lady within her 
 silken chariot, lounging back, with her eyes upon the 
 passing line, neither impatient nor surprised at the 
 delay, for she came there on purpose. Between the 
 swaying bodies of the carriages, hesitating past, she 
 receives the smiles and recognitions of all her male 
 acquaintances ; while occasionally a female ally (for 
 allies against the rest of the sex are as necessary in 
 society to women, as in war to monarchs) occasion 
 ally, I say, a female ally announced by the crest upon 
 the blinker of an advancing horse, arrives opposite her 
 window, and, with only the necessary delay in passing, 
 they exchange, perhaps, inquiries for health, but, cer 
 tainly, programmes, comprehensive though brief, for 
 the prosecution of each other s loves or hates. Occa 
 sionally a hack cab, seduced into attempting Bond 
 street by some momentary opening, finds itself closed 
 in, forty deep, by chariots, butckas, landaus, and fam 
 ily coaches ; and amid the imperturbable and unan- 
 swermg whips of the hammercloth, with a passenger 
 
 I who is losing the coach by the delay, he must wait, 
 will-he-nill-he, till some "pottering" dowager has 
 purchased the old lord his winter flannels, or till the 
 countess of Loiter has said all she has to say to the 
 guardsman whom she has met accidentally at Pluck- 
 rose, the perfumer s. The three tall fellows, with 
 gold sticks, would see the entire plebeian population 
 of London thrice-sodden in vitriol, before they would 
 advance miladi s carriage a step, or appear to possess 
 eyes or ears for the infuriated cabman. 
 
 Bond street, at this hour, is a study for such ob- 
 
 I servers, as, having gone through an apprenticeship of 
 criticism upon all the other races and grades of men 
 and gentlemen in the world, are now prepared to study 
 
200 
 
 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 their species in its highest fashionable phase that of 
 "nice persons" at the" West End. The Oxford-street 
 "swell," and the Regent-street dandy, if seen here, 
 are out of place. The expressive word "quiet" (with 
 its present London signification), defines the dress, 
 manner, bow, and even physiognomy, of every true 
 denizen of St. James s and Bond street. The great 
 principle among men of the clubs, in all these partic 
 ulars, is to subdue to deprive their coats, hats, and 
 manners, of everything sufficiently marked to be cari 
 catured by the satirical or imitated by the vulgar. 
 The triumph of style seems to be that the lines which 
 define it shall be imperceptible to the common eye 
 that it shall require the difficult education which cre 
 ates it to know its form and limit. Hence an almost 
 universal error with regard to English gentlemen 
 that they are repulsive and cold. With a thousand 
 times the heart and real politeness of the Frenchman, 
 they meet you with the simple and unaffected address 
 which would probably be that of shades in Elysium, 
 between whom (we may suppose) there is no longer 
 etiquette or concealment. The only exceptions to 
 
 this rule in London, are, first and alone, Count , 
 
 whose extraordinary and original style, marked as it 
 is, is inimitable by any man of less brilliant talents 
 and less beauty of person, and the king s guardsmen, 
 who are dandies by prescriptive right, or, as it were, 
 professionally. All other men who are members of 
 Brooks s and the Traveller s, and frequent Bond street 
 in the flush of the afternoon, are what would be called 
 in America, plain, unornamental, and, perhaps, ill- 
 dressed individuals, who would strike you more by the 
 absence than the possession of all the peculiarities 
 which we generally suppose marks a " picked man of 
 countries." In America, particularly, we are liable to 
 error on this point, as, of the great number of our 
 travellers for improvement, scarce one in a thousand 
 remains longer in London than to visit the tower and 
 the Thames tunnel. The nine hundred and ninety- 
 nine reside principally, and acquire all they get of for 
 eign manner and style, at Paris the very most artifi 
 cial, corrupt, and affected school for gentlemen in the 
 polite world. 
 
 Prejudice against any one country is an illiberal 
 feeling, which common reflection should, and which 
 enlightened travel usually does, entirely remove. 
 There is a vulgar prejudice against the English in 
 almost all countries, but more particularly in ours, 
 which blinds its entertainers to much that is admira 
 ble, and deprives them of the good drawn from the 
 best models. The troop of scurrilous critics, the class 
 of English bagmen, and errant vulgarians of all kinds, 
 and the industriously-blown coals of old hostilities, 
 are barriers which an educated mind may well over 
 look, and barriers beyond which lie, no doubt, the best 
 examples of true civilization and refinement the world 
 ever saw. But we are getting into an essay when we 
 should be turning down Bruton street, on our way to 
 the park, with all the fashion of Bond street and May 
 Fair. 
 
 May Fair ! what a name for the core of dissipated 
 and exclusive London! A name that brings with it 
 only the scent of crushed flowers in a green field, of a 
 pole wreathed with rose, booths crowded with dancing 
 peasant-girls, and nature in its holyday! This to 
 express the costly, the courtlike, the so-called " heart 
 less" precinct of fashion and art, in their most authen 
 tic and envied perfection. Mais, les extremes se tou- 
 client, and, perhaps, there is more nature in May Fair 
 than in Rose Cottage or Honeysuckle Lodge. 
 
 We stroll on through Berkeley square, by Chester 
 field and Curzon streets to the park gate. What an 
 aristocraiic quiet reigns here ! How plain are the ex 
 teriors of these houses : how unexpressive these doors, 
 without a name, of the luxury and high-born pride 
 within ! At the open window of the hall sit the butler 
 
 and footman, reading the morning paper, while they 
 wait to dispense the "not at home" to callers not dis 
 appointed. The rooks are noisy in the old trees of 
 Chesterfield house. The painted window-screens of 
 the probably still-slumbering Count , in his bach 
 elor s den, are closely drawn, and, as we pass Seymour 
 place, a crowd of gay cabs and diplomatic chariots, 
 drawn up before the dark-green door at the farther ex 
 tremity, announce to you the residence of one whose 
 morning and evening levees are alike thronged by dis 
 tinction and talent the beautiful Lady . 
 
 This short turn brings us to the park, which is rap 
 idly filling with vehicles of every fashion and color, 
 and with pedestrians and horsemen innumerable. No 
 hackney-coach, street-cab, cart, or pauper, is allowed 
 to pass the porters at the several gates : the road is 
 macadamized and watered, and the grass within the 
 ring is fresh and verdant. The sun here triumphs 
 partially over the skirt of London smoke, which sways 
 backward and forward over the chimneys of Park lane, 
 and, as far as it is possible so near the dingy halo of 
 the metropolis, the gay occupants of these varied con 
 veyances "take the air." 
 
 Let us stand by the railing a moment, and see what 
 comes by. This is the field of display for the coach 
 man, who sits upon his sumptuous hammercloth, 
 and takes more pride in his horses than their owner, 
 and considers them, if not like his own honor and 
 blood, very like his own property. Watch the delicate 
 handling of his ribands, the affected nonchalance of 
 his air, and see how perfectly, how admirably, how 
 beautifully, move his blood horses, and how steadily 
 and well follows the compact carriage ! Within (it is 
 a dark-green calcche, and the liveries are drab, with 
 red edgings) sits the oriental form and bright spiritual 
 face of a banker s wife, the daughter of a noble race, 
 who might have been, but was not, sacrificed in " mar 
 rying into the finance," and who soars up into the sky 
 of happiness, like the unconscious bird that has es 
 caped the silent arrow of the savage, as if her destiny 
 could not but have been thus fulfilled. Who follows? 
 D Israeli, alone in his cab; thoughtful, melancholy, 
 disappointed in his political schemes, and undervaluing 
 his literary success, and expressing, in his scholar-like 
 and beautiful profile, as he passes us, both the thirst 
 at his heart and the satiety at his lips. The livery of 
 his " tiger" is neglected, and he drives like a man who 
 has to choose between running and being run against, 
 1 1 and takes that which leaves him the most leisure for re 
 flection. Poor D Israeli ! With a kind and generous 
 heart, talents of the most brilliant <C?der, an ambition 
 which consumes his soul, and a father who expects 
 everything from his son ; lost for the want of a tact 
 common to understandings fathoms deep below his 
 own, and likely to drive in Hyde Park forty years 
 hence, if he die not of the corrosion of disappointment, 
 no more distinguished than now, and a thousand times 
 more melancholy. 
 
 An open barouche follows, drawn by a pair of dark 
 bays, the coachman and footman in suits of plain gray, 
 and no crest on the panels. A lady, of remarkable 
 small person, sits, with the fairest foot ever seen, just 
 peeping from under a cashmere, on the forward cush 
 ion, and from under her peculiarly plain and small 
 bonnet burn, in liquid fire, the most lambent and 
 spiritual eyes that night and sleep ever hid from the 
 world. She is a niece of Napoleon, married to an 
 English nobleman ; and beside her sits her father, 
 who refused the throne of Tuscany, a noble-looking 
 man, with an expression of calm and tranquil resigna 
 tion in his face, unusually plain in his exterior, and 
 less alive than most of the gay promenaders to the 
 bright scene passing about him. He will play in the 
 charade at his daughter s soiree in the evening, how 
 ever, and forget his exile and his misfortunes ; for he 
 is a fond father and a true philosopher. 
 
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 201 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 IF you dine with all the world at seven, you have 
 still an hour or more for Hyde Park, and " Rotten 
 Row;" this half mile between Oxford street and Pic 
 cadilly, to which the fashion of London confines itself, 
 as if the remainder of the bright green park were for 
 bidden ground, is now fuller than ever. There is the 
 advantage in this condensed, drive, that you are sure to 
 see your friends here, earlier or later, in every day 
 (for wherever you are to go with horses, the conclu 
 sion of the order to the coachman is, " home by the 
 park") and then if there is anything new in the way 
 of an arrival, a pretty foreigner, or a fresh face from 
 the country, some dandy s tiger leaves his master at 
 the gate, and brings him at his club, over his coffee, 
 all possible particulars of her name, residence, con 
 dition, and whatever other circumstances fall in his 
 
 way. By dropping in at Lady s soiree in the 
 
 evening, if you were interested in the face, you may 
 inform yourself of more than you would have drawn 
 in a year s acquaintance from the subject of your cu 
 riosity. Malapropos to my remark, here comes a 
 turn-out, concerning which and its occupant I have 
 made many inquiries in vain the pale-colored chariot, 
 with a pair of grays, dashing toward us from the Sey 
 mour gate. As it comes by you will see, sitting quite 
 in the corner, and in a very languid and elegant atti 
 tude, a slight woman of perhaps twenty-four, dressed 
 in the simplest white cottage-bonnet that could be | 
 made, and, with her head down, looking up through 
 heavy black eyelashes, as if she but waited till she had ! 
 passed a particular object, to resume some engrossing j 
 revery. Her features are Italian, and her attitude, j 
 always the same indolent one, has also a redolence of ] 
 that land of repose; but there has been an English | 
 taste, and no ordinary one, in the arrangement of that I 
 equipage and its dependants ; and by the expression, 
 never mistaken in London, of the well-appointed me 
 nials, you may be certain that both master and mis 
 tress (if master there be), exact no common deference. 
 She is always alone, and not often seen in the park ; 
 and whenever I have inquired of those likely to know, 
 I found that she had been observed, but could get no 
 satisfactory information. She disappears by the side 
 toward the Regent s park, and when once out of the 
 gate, her horses are let off at a speed that distances j 
 all pursuit that would not attract observation. There i 
 is a look of" Who the deuce can it be ?" in the faces j 
 of all the mounted dandies, wherever she passes, for | 
 it is a face which once seen is not easily thought of 
 with indifference, or forgotten. Immense as London 
 is, a woman of anything like extraordinary beauty 
 would find it difficult to live there incognito a week ; 
 and how this fair incomprehensible has contrived to 
 elude the curiosity of Hyde-park admiration, for nearly 
 two years, is rather a marvel. There she goes, how 
 ever, and without danger of being arrested for a flying 
 highwayman you could scarcely follow. 
 
 It is getting late, and, as we turn down toward the 
 clubs, we shall meet the last and most fashionable 
 comers to the park. Here is a horseman, surrounded 
 with half a dozen of the first young noblemen of Eng 
 land. He rides a light bay horse with dark legs, 
 whose delicate veins are like the tracery of silken 
 threads beneath the gloss of his limbs, and whose 
 small, animated head seems to express the very es 
 sence of speed and fire. He is the most beautiful 
 park horse in England ; and behind follows a high 
 bred milk-white pony, ridden by a small, faultlessly- 
 dressed groom, who sits the spirited and fretting crea 
 ture as if he anticipated every movement before the 
 fine hoof rose from the ground. He rides admirably, 
 
 but his master is more of a study. A luxuriance of 
 black curls"escapes from the broad rim of a peculiar 
 hat, and forms a relief to the small and sculpture-like 
 profile of a face as perfect, by every rule of beauty, as 
 the Greek Antinous. It would be too feminine but 
 for the muscular neck and broad chest from which 
 the head rises, and the indications of great personal 
 strength in the Herculean shoulders. His loose coat 
 would disguise the proportions of a less admirable 
 figure ; but, au resle, his dress is without fold or 
 wrinkle, and no figurante of the ballet ever showed 
 finer or more skilfully developed limbs. He is one 
 of the most daring in (his country of bold riders ; but 
 modifies the still English school of equestrianism, 
 with the ease and grace of that of his own country. 
 His manner, though he is rather Angtomane, is in 
 striking contrast to the grave and quiet air of his com 
 panions ; and between his recognitions, right and left, 
 to the passing promenaders, he laughs and amuses 
 himself with the joyous and thoughtless gayety of a 
 child. Acknowledged by all his acquaintances to pos 
 sess splendid talents, this " observed of all observers" 
 is a singular instance of a modern Sybarite content 
 to sacrifice time, opportunity, and the highest advan 
 tages of mind and body, to the pleasure of the moment. 
 He seems exempt from all the usual penalties of such 
 a career. Nothing seems to do its usual work on him 
 care, nor exhaustion, nor recklessness, nor the dis 
 approbation of the heavy-handed opinion of the world. 
 Always gay, always brilliant, ready to embark at any 
 moment, or at any hazard, in anything that will amuse 
 an hour, one wonders how and where such an un 
 wonted meteor will disappear. 
 
 But here comes a carriage without hammercloth or 
 liveries; one of those shabby-genteel conveyances, 
 hired by the week, containing three or four persons in 
 the highest spirits, all talking and gesticulating at once. 
 As the carriage passes the " beau-knot" (as , and 
 his inseparable troop are sometimes called), one or 
 two of the dandies spur up, and resting their hands on 
 the windows, offer the compliments of the day to the 
 only lady within, with the most earnest looks of ad 
 miration. The gentlemen in her company become 
 silent, and answer to the slight bows of the cavaliers 
 with foreign monosyllables, and presently the coach 
 man whips up once more, the horsemen drop off, and 
 the excessive gayety of the party resumes its tone. 
 You must have been struck, as the carriage passed, 
 with the brilliant whiteness and regularity of the lady s 
 teeth, and still more with the remarkable play of her 
 lips, which move as if the blood in them were im 
 prisoned lightning. (The figure is strong, but nothing 
 else conveys to my own mind what I am trying to de 
 scribe.) Energy, grace, fire, rapidity, and a capabili 
 ty of utter abandoment to passion and expression, live 
 visibly on those lips. Her eyes are magnificent. Her 
 nose is regular, with nostrils rimmed round with an 
 expansive nerve, that gives them constantly the kind 
 of animation visible in the he;id of a fiery Arab. Her 
 complexion is one of those which, dark and wanting 
 in brilliance by day, light up at night with an alabaster 
 fairness ; and when the glossy black hair, which is 
 now put away so plainly under her simple bonnet, 
 falls over her shoulders in heavy masses, the contrast 
 is radiant. The gentlemen in that carriage are Rubin i, 
 Lablache, and a gentleman who passes for the lady s 
 uncle ; and the hidy is Julia Grini. 
 
 The smoke over the heart of the city begins to 
 thicken into darkness, the gas-lamps are shooting up, 
 bright and star-like, along the Kensington road, and 
 the last promenaders disappear. And now the world 
 of London, the rich and gay portion of it at least, 
 i enjoy that which compensates them for the absence 
 of the bright nights and skies of Italy a climate 
 within doors, of comfort and luxury, unknown under 
 brighter heavens. 
 
202 
 
 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ISLE OF WIGHT RTDE. 
 
 " INSTEAD of parboiling you with a soiree or a din 
 ner," said a sensible and kind friend, who called on us 
 at Ryde, " I shall make a pic-nic to Netley." And on 
 a bright, breezy morning of June, a merry party of 
 some twenty of the inhabitants of the green Isle of 
 Wight shot away from the long pier, in one of the 
 swift boats of those waters, with a fair wind for South 
 ampton. 
 
 Ryde is the most American-looking town I have 
 seen abroad; a cluster of white houses and summery 
 villas on the side of a hill, leaning up from the 
 sea. Geneva, on the Seneca lake, resembles it. It 
 is a place of baths, boarding-houses, and people of 
 damaged constitutions, with very select society, and 
 quiet and rather primitive habils. The climate is de- 
 liciously soft, and the sun seems always to shine 
 there. 
 
 As we got out into the open channel, I was assisting 
 the skipper to tighten his bowline, when a beautiful 
 ship, in the distance, putting about on a fresh track, 
 caught the sun full on her snowy sails, and seemed to 
 start like an apparition from the sea. 
 
 " She s a liner, sir !" said the bronzed boatman, sus 
 pending his haul to give her a look of involuntary ad 
 miration. 
 
 "An American packet, you mean?" 
 
 "They re the prettiest ships afloat, sir," he contin 
 ued, " and the smartest handled. They re out to New 
 York, and back again, before you can look round, 
 a most. Ah, I see her flag now stars and stripes. 
 Can you see it, sir?" 
 
 "Are the captains Englishmen, principally?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "No, sir! all calculators ; sharp as a needle!" 
 
 "Thank you," said I; " I am a calculator too!" 
 
 The conversation ceased, and I thought from the 
 boatman s look, that he had more respect than love 
 for us. The cloud of snowy sail traversed the breadth 
 of the channel with the speed of a bird, wheeled again 
 upon her opposite tack, and soon disappeared from 
 view, taking with her the dove of my imagination to 
 return with an olive-branch from home. It must be 
 a cold American heart whose strings are not swept by 
 that bright flag in a foreign land, like a harp with the 
 impassioned prelude of the master. 
 
 Cowes was soon upon our lee, with her fairy fleet 
 of yachts lying at anchor Lord Yarborough s frigate- 
 looking craft asleep amid its dependant brood, with all 
 its fine tracery of rigging drawn on a cloudless sky, the 
 picture of what it is, and what all vessels seem to me 
 a thing for pleasure only. Darting about like a swal 
 low on the wing, a small, gayly-painted sloop-yacht, 
 as graceful and slender as the first bow of the new 
 moon, played off the roadstead for the sole pleasure 
 of motion, careless whither ; and meantime the low- 
 fringed shores of the Southampton side grew more 
 and more distinct, and before we had well settled upon 
 our cushions, the old tower of the abbey lay sharp 
 over the bow. 
 
 We enjoyed the first ramble through the ruins the 
 better, that to see them was a secondary object. The 
 first was to select a grassy spot for our table. Thread 
 ing the old unroofed vaults with this errand, the pause 
 of involuntary homage exacted by a sudden burst upon 
 an arch or a fretted window, was natural and true ; and 
 for those who are disturbed by the formal and trite 
 enthusiasm of companions who admire by a prompter, 
 this stalking-horse of another pursuit was not an in 
 different advantage. 
 
 The great roof over the principal nave of the abbey 
 has fallen in, and lies in rugged and picturesque masses 
 
 within the Gothic shell windows, arches, secret stair- 
 cases, and gray walls, all breaking up the blue sky 
 around, but leaving above, for a smooth and eternal 
 roof, an oblong and ivy-fringed segment of the blue 
 plane of heaven. It seems to rest on those crumbling 
 corners as you stand within. 
 
 We selected a rising bank under the shoulder of a 
 rock, grown over with moss and ivy, and following the 
 suggestion of a pretty lover of the picturesque, the 
 shawls and cloaks, with their bright colors, were 
 thrown over the nearest fragments of the roof, and every 
 body unbonneted and assisted in the arrangements. An 
 old woman who sold apples outside the walls was em 
 ployed to build a fire for our teakettle in a niche 
 where, doubtless, in its holier days, had stood the 
 effigy of a saint ; and at the pedestals of a cluster of 
 slender columns our attendants displayed upon a table 
 a show of pasties and bright wines, that, if there be 
 monkish spirits who walk at Netley, we have added a 
 poignant regret to their purgatories, that their airy 
 stomachs can be no more vino ciboque gravali. 
 
 We were doing justice to a pretty shoulder of lamb, 
 with mint sauce, when a slender youth who had been 
 wandering around with a portfolio, took up an artist s 
 position in the farther corner of the ruins, and began 
 to sketch the scene. I mentally felicitated him on the 
 accident that had brought him to Netley at that par 
 ticular moment, for a prettier picture than that before 
 him an artist could scarce have thrown together. The 
 inequalities of the floor of the abbey provided a mossy 
 table for every two or three of the gayly-dressed ladies, 
 and there they reclined in small and graceful groups, 
 their white dresses relieved on the luxuriant grass, 
 and between them, half buried in moss, the sparkling 
 glasses full of bright wines, and an air of ease and 
 grace over all, which could belong only to the two 
 extremes of Arcadian simplicity, or its high-bred im 
 itation. We amused ourselves with the idea of ap 
 pearing, some six months after, in the middle ground 
 of a landscape, in a picturesque annual ; and I am 
 afraid that I detected, on the first suggestion of the 
 idea, a little unconscious attitudinizing in some of the 
 younger members of the party. It was proposed that 
 the artist should be invited to take wine with us ; but 
 as a rosy-cheeked page donned his gold hat to carry 
 our compliments, the busy draughtsman was joined 
 by one or two ladies not quite so attractive-looking as 
 himself, but evidently of his own party, and our mes 
 senger was recalled. Sequitur they who would find 
 adventure should travel alone. 
 
 The monastic ruins of England derive a very pecu 
 liar and touching beauty from the bright veil of ivy 
 which almost buries them from the sun. This con 
 stant and affectionate mourner draws from the moist 
 ure of the climate a vividness and luxuriance which is 
 found in no other land. Hence the remarkable love 
 liness of Netley a quality which impresses the visit- 
 ers to this spot, far more than the melancholy usually 
 inspired by decay. 
 
 Our gayety shocked some of the sentimental people 
 rambling about the ruins, for it is difficult for those 
 who have not dined to sympathize with the mirth of 
 those who have. How often we mistake for sadness 
 the depression of an empty stomach ! How differently 
 authors and travellers would write, if they commenced 
 the day, instead of ending it, with meats and wine! I 
 was led to these reflections by coming suddenly upon 
 i young lady and her companion (possibly her lover), 
 n climbing a ruined staircase sheathed within the 
 wall of the abbey. They were standing at one of the 
 windows, quite unconscious of my neighborhood, and 
 looking down upon the gay party of ladies below, who 
 were still amid the debris of the feast arranging their 
 bonnets for a walk. 
 
 1 What a want of soul," said the lady, "to be eat 
 ing and drinking in such a place !" 
 
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 203 
 
 "Some people have no souls," responded the gentle 
 man. 
 
 After this verdict, I thought the best thing I could 
 do was to take care of my body, and I very carefully 
 backed down the old staircase, which is probably more 
 hazardous now than in the days when it was used to 
 admit damsels and haunches of venison to the reverend 
 fathers. 
 
 I reached the bottom in safety, and informed my 
 friends that they had no souls, but they manifested 
 the usual unconcern on the subject, and strolled away 
 through the echoing arches, in search of new points 
 of view and fresh wild-flowers. " Commend me at 
 least," I thought, as 1 followed on, "to those whose 
 pulses can be quickened even by a cold pie and a glass 
 of champagne. Sadness and envy are sown thickly 
 enough by any wayside." 
 
 We were embarked once more by the middle of the 
 afternoon, and with a head wind, but smooth water and 
 cool temperature, beat back to Ryde. If the young 
 lady and her lover have forgiven or forgotten us, and 
 the ghosts of Netley, frocked or petticoated, have 
 taken no umbrage, 1 have not done amiss in marking 
 the day with a stone of the purest white. How much 
 more sensible is a party like this, in the open air, and 
 at healthy hours, than the untimely and ceremonious 
 civilities usually paid to strangers. If the world would 
 mend by moralising, however, we should have had a 
 Utopia long ago. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 COMPARISON OF THE CLIMATK OF EUROPE AND 
 AMERICA. 
 
 ONE of Hazlitt s nail-driving remarks is to the effect 
 that he should like very well to pass the whole of his life 
 in travelling, if he could anywhere borrow another life 
 to spend afterward at home. How far action is neces 
 sary to happiness, and how far repose how far the 
 appetite for novelty and adventure will drive, and how 
 far the attractions of home and domestic comfort will 
 recall us in short, what are the precise exactions of 
 the antagonist principles in our bosoms of curiosity 
 and sloth, energy and sufferance, hope and memory 
 are questions which each one must settle for himself, 
 and which none can settle but he who has passed his 
 life in the eternal and fruitless search alter the happi 
 est place, climate, and station. 
 
 Contentment depends upon many things within our 
 own control, but, with a certain education, it depends 
 partly upon things beyond it. To persons delicately 
 constituted or delicately brought up, and to all idle 
 persons, the principal ingredient in the cup of ^enjoy- 
 ment is climate ; and Providence, that consults the 
 greatest happiness of the greatest number," has made 
 the poor and the roughly-nurtured independent of the 
 changes of the wind. Those who have the misfortune 
 to be delicate as well as poor those, particularly, for 
 whom there is no hope but in a change of clime, but 
 whom pitiless poverty compels to languish in vain 
 after the reviving south, are happily few ; but they 
 have thus much more than their share of human ca 
 lamity. 
 
 In throwing together my recollections of the cli 
 mates with which 1 have become acquainted in other 
 lands, I am aware that there is a greater difference of 
 opinion on this subject than on most others. A man 
 who has agreeable society about him in Montreal, but 
 who was without friends in Florence, would be very 
 likely to brin^ the climate in for its share of the dif 
 ference, and prefer Canada to Italy; and health and 
 circumstances of all kinds affect, in no slight degree, 
 ovr susceptibility to skies and atmosphere. But it is 
 
 sometimes interesting to know the impressions of oth 
 ers, even though they agree not with our own ; and I 
 will only say of mine on this subject, that they are so 
 far likely to be fair, as I have been blessed with the 
 same perfect health in all countries, and have been 
 happy alike in every latitude and season. 
 
 It is almost a matter of course to decry the climate 
 of England. The English writers themselves talk of 
 i the suicidal months ; and it is the only country where 
 I part of the livery of a mounted groom is his master s 
 1 great-coat strapped about his waist. It is certainly a 
 \ damp climate, and the sun shines less in England than 
 i in most other countries. But to persons of full habit 
 this moisture in the air is extremely agreeable ; and 
 ] the high condition of all animals in England, from 
 ! man downward, proves its healthfulness. A stranger 
 who has been accustomed to a brighter sky, will, at 
 j first, find a gloom in the gray light so characteristic of 
 an English atmosphere; but this soon wears off, and 
 ; he finds a compensation, as far as the eye is con- 
 ! cerned, in the exquisite softness of the verdure, and 
 I the deep and enduring brightness of the foliage. The 
 i effect of this moisture on the skin is singularly grate- 
 1 ful. The pores become accustomed to a healthy ac 
 tion, which is unknown in other countries ; and the 
 bloom by which an English complexion is known all 
 over the world is the index of an activity in this im 
 portant part of the system, which, when first experi 
 enced, is almost like a new sensation. The transition 
 to a dry climate, such as ours, deteriorates the condi 
 tion and quality of the skin, and produces a feeling, 
 if I may so express it, like that of being glazed. It is 
 a common remark in England, that an officer s wife 
 and daughters follow his regiment to Canada at the 
 expense of their complexions ; and it is a well-known 
 fact that the bloom of female beauty is, in our coun 
 try, painfully evanescent. 
 
 The climate of America is, in many points, very 
 different from that of France and Great Britain. In 
 the middle and northern states, it is a dry, invigora 
 ting, bracing climate, in which a strong man may do 
 more work than in almost any other, and which makes 
 continual exercise, or occupation of some sort, abso 
 lutely necessary. With the exception of the "Indian 
 summer," and here and there a day scattered through 
 i the spring and the hot months, there is no weather 
 : tempered so finely that one would think of passing 
 the day in merely enjoying it, and life is passed, by 
 1 those who have the misfortune to be idle, in continual 
 and active dread of the elements. The cold is so 
 acrid, and the heat so sultry, and the changes from 
 one to the other are so sudden and violent, that no 
 enjoyment can be depended upon out-of-doors, and 
 no system of clothing or protection is good for a day 
 together. He who has full occupation for head and 
 hand (as by far the greatest majority of our country 
 men have) jnay live as long in America as in any por 
 tion of the globe vide the bills of mortality. He 
 whose spirits lean upon the temperature of the wind, 
 or whose nerves require a genial and constant atmo 
 sphere, may find more favorable climes ; and the hab 
 its and delicate constitutions of scholars and people 
 of sedentary pursuits generally, in the United States, 
 prove the truth of the observation. 
 
 The habit of regular exercise in the open air, which 
 is found to be so salutary in England, is scarcely pos 
 sible in America. It is said, and said truly, of the 
 first, that there is no day in the year when a lady may 
 not ride comfortably on horseback ; but with us, the 
 extremes of heat and cold, and the tempestuous char 
 acter of our snows and rains, totally forbid, to a deli 
 cate person, anything like regularity in exercise. The 
 consequence is, that the habit rarely exists, and the 
 high and glowing health so common in England, and 
 consequent, no doubt, upon the equable character of 
 the climate in some measure, is with us sufficiently 
 
204 
 
 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 rare to excite remark. " Very English-looking," is a 
 common phrase, and means very healthy-looking. 
 Still our people last and though I should define the 
 English climate as the one in which the human frame 
 is in the highest condition, t should say of America, 
 that it is the one in which you could get the most 
 work out of it. 
 
 Atmosphere, in England and America, is the first 
 of the necessaries of life. In Italy, it is the first of its 
 luxuries. We breathe in America, and walk abroad, 
 without thinking of these common acts but as a means 
 of arriving at happiness. In Italy, to breathe and to 
 walk abroad are themselves happiness. Day after day 
 week after week month after month you wake 
 with the breath of flowers coming in at your open 
 window, and a sky of serene and unfathomable blue, 
 and mornings and evenings of tranquil, assured, heav 
 enly purity and beauty. The few weeks of the rainy 
 season are forgotten in these long halcyon months of 
 sunshine. No one can have lived in Italy a year, who 
 remembers anything but the sapphire sky and the 
 kindling and ever-seen stars. You grow insensibly to 
 associate the sunshine and moonlight only with the 
 fountain you have lived near, or the columns of the 
 temple you have seen from your window, for on no 
 objects in other lands have you seen their light so 
 constant. 
 
 I scarce know how to convey, in language, the effect 
 of the climate of Italy on mind and body. Sitting 
 here, indeed, in the latitude of thirty-nine, in the 
 middle of April, by a warm fire, and with a cold wind 
 whistling at the window, it is difficult to recall it, even 
 to the fancy. I do not know whether life is pro 
 longed, but it is infinitely enriched and brightened, by 
 the delicious atmosphere of Italy. You rise in the 
 morning, thanking Heaven for life and liberty to go 
 abroad. There is a sort of opi;ite in the air, which 
 makes idleness, that would be the vulture of Prome 
 theus in America, the dove of promise in Italy. It is 
 delicious to do nothing delicious to stand an hour 
 looking at a Savoyard and his monkey delicious to 
 sit away the long, silent noon, in the shade of a col 
 umn, or on the grass of a fountain delicious to be 
 with a friend without the interchange of an idea to 
 dabble in a book, or look into the cup of a flower. 
 You do not read, for you wish to enjoy the weather. 
 You do not visit, for you hate to enter a door while 
 the weather is so fine. You lie down unwillingly for 
 your siesta in the hot noon, for you fear you may 
 oversleep the first coolness of the long shadows of 
 sunset. The fancy, meantime, is free, and seems lib 
 erated by the same languor that enervates the severer 
 faculties ; and nothing seems fed by the air but 
 thoughts, which minister to enjoyment. 
 
 The climate of Greece is very much that of Italy. 
 The Mediterranean is all beloved of the sun. Life 
 has a value there, of which the rheumatic, shivering, 
 snow-breasting, blue-devilled idler of northern regions 
 has no shadow, even in a dream. No wonder Dante 
 mourned and languished for it. No wonder at the 
 sentiment I once heard from distinguished lips Fuori 
 d? Italia tutto e. esiiio. 
 
 This appears like describing a Utopia ; but it is 
 tvhat Italy seemed to me. I have expressed myself 
 much more to my mind, however, in rhyme, for a 
 prose essay is, at best, but a cold medium. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 STRATFORD-ON-AVON. 
 
 " OWE-P UN -FIVE outside, sir, two p un in." 
 It was a bright, calm afternoon in September, prom 
 ising nothing but a morrow of sunshine and autumn, 
 
 ! when I stepped in at the White Horse Cellar," in 
 | Piccadilly, to take my place in the Tantivy coach for 
 Stratford-on-Avon. Preferring the outside of the 
 coach, at least by as much as the difference in the 
 prices, and accustomed from long habit to pay dearest 
 for that which most pleased me, I wrote myself down 
 for the outside, and deposited my two pounds in the 
 horny palm of the old ex-coachman, retired from the 
 box, and playing clerk in this dingy den of parcels and 
 | portmanteaus. Supposing my business concluded, I 
 stood a minute speculating on the weather-beaten, 
 cramp-handed old Jehu before me, and trying to rec 
 oncile his ideas of "retirement from office" with those 
 of his almost next door neighbor, the hero of Strath- 
 fieldsaye. 
 
 I had mounted the first stair toward daylight, when 
 a touch on the shoulder with the end of a long whip 
 a technical "reminder," which probably came easier 
 to the old driver than the phrasing of a sentence to a 
 " gemman" recalled me to the cellar. 
 
 " Fifteen shillin , sir," said he laconically, pointing 
 with the same expressive exponent of his profession 
 to the change for my outside place, which 1 had left 
 lying on the counter. 
 
 " You are at least as honest as the duke," I solilo 
 quised, as I pocketed the six bright and substantial 
 half-crowns. 
 
 I was at the " White Horse Cellar" again the fol 
 lowing morning at six, promising myself with great 
 sincerity never to rely again on the constancy of an 
 English sky. It rained in torrents. The four inside 
 places were all taken, and with twelve fellow-outsides, 
 J mounted to the wet seat, and begging a little straw 
 by way of cushion from the ostler, spread my um 
 brella, abandoned my knees with a single effort of 
 mind to the drippings of the driver s weather-proof 
 upper Benjcim^i, and away we sped. I was "due" at 
 the house of a hospitable catholic baronet, a hundred 
 and two miles from London, at the dinner-hour of that 
 day, and to wait till it had done raining in England is 
 to expect the millennium. 
 
 London in the morning I mean the poor man s 
 morning, daylight is to me matter for the most 
 speculative and intense melancholy. Hyde park in 
 the sunshine of a bright afternoon, glittering with 
 equipages and gay with the Aladdin splendors of rank 
 and wealth, is a scene which sends the mercurial quali 
 ties of the blood trippingly through the veins. But 
 Hyde park at daylight seen from Piccadilly through 
 fog and rain, is perhaps, of all contrasts, to one who 
 has frequented it in its bright hours, the most dispirit 
 ing and dreary. To remember that behind the barri 
 caded and wet windows of Apsley house sleeps the 
 hero of Waterloo that under these crowded and fog- 
 wrapped houses lie, in their dim chambers breathing 
 of perfume and luxury, the high-born and nobly- 
 moulded creatures who preserve for the aristocracy 
 of England the palm of the world s beauty to remem 
 ber this, and a thousand other associations linked with 
 the spot, is not at all to diminish, but rather to deepen, 
 the melancholy of the picture. Why is it that the 
 deserted stage of a theatre, the echo of an empty ball 
 room, the loneliness of a frequented promenade in 
 untimely hours any scene, in short, of gayety gone 
 by but remembered oppresses and dissatisfies the 
 heart ! One would think memory should re-brighten 
 and re-populate such places. 
 
 The wheels hissed through the shallow pools in the 
 Macadam road, the regular pattering of the small 
 hoofs in the wet carriage-tracks maintained its quick 
 and monotonous beat on the ear ; the silent driver kept 
 his eye on the traces, and "reminded" now and then 
 with but the weight of his slight lash a lagging wheeler 
 or leader, and the complicated but compact machine 
 of which the square foot that I occupied had been so 
 nicely calculated, sped on its ten miles in the hour 
 
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 205 
 
 with the steadfastness of a star in its orbit, aud as in 
 dependent of clouds and rain. 
 
 "_Es< ce (/ne monsieur parle Francois 1" asked at the 
 end of the first st:ige my right-hand neighbor, a little 
 gentleman, of whom I had hitherto only remarked that 
 he was holding on to the iron railing of the seat with 
 great tenacity. 
 
 Having admitted in an evil moment that I had been 
 in France, I was first distinctly made to understand j 
 that my neighbor was on his way to Birmingham 
 purely far pleasure, and without the most distant ob 
 ject of business a point on which he insisted so long, 
 and recurred to so often, that he succeeded at last in 
 persuading me that he was doubtless a candidate for 
 the French clerkship of some exporter of buttons. 
 After listening to an amusing dissertation on the rash 
 ness of committing one s life to an English stage 
 coach, with scarce room enough for the perch of a 
 parrot, and a velocity so diablemcnt dangcrcux, I tired 
 of my Frenchman ; and, since I could not have my 
 own thoughts in peace, opened a conversation with a 
 straw-bonnet and shawl on my left the property, I 
 soon discovered, of a very smart lady s maid, very in 
 
 dignant at having been made to change places with " The carriage has been waiting some time for you, 
 Master George, who, with his mother and her mistress, i sir," s 
 
 should be the landlady. Having expected to see a 
 rosy little Mrs. Boniface, with a brown pinafore and 
 worsted mittens, I made up my mind at once that the 
 inn had changed mistresses. On the right of the old- 
 fashioned entrance blaeed cheerily the kitchen fire, 
 and with my enthusiasm rather dashed by my disap 
 pointment, I stepped in to make friends with the cook, 
 and get a little warmth and information. 
 
 " So your old mistress is dead, Mrs. Cook," said I, 
 rubbing my hands with great satisfaction between the 
 fire and a well-roasted chicken. 
 
 " Lank, sir, no, she isn t !" answered the rosy lass, 
 pointing with a dredging-box to the same respectable 
 lady in black who was just entering to look after me. 
 
 "I beg pardon, sir," she said, dropping a cour 
 tesy ; " but are you the gentleman expected by Sir 
 Charles ?" 
 
 "Yes, madam. And can you tell me anything of 
 your predecessor who had the inn in the days of 
 Washington Irving?" 
 
 She dropped another courtesy, and drew up her 
 thin person to its full height, while a smile of gratified 
 vanity stole out at the corners of her mouth. 
 
 ere dry and comfortable inside. She "would not 
 have minded the outside place, 1 she said, " for there 
 were sometimes very agreeable gentlemen on the out 
 side, very ! but she had been promised to go inside, 
 and had dressed accordingly ; and it was very pro 
 voking to spoil a nice new shawl and best bonnet, just 
 because a great school-boy, that had nothing on that 
 would damage chose not to ride in the rain." 
 
 " Very provoking, indeed !" I responded, letting in 
 the rain upon myself unconsciously, in extending my i 
 umbrella forward so as to protect her on the side of 
 the wind. 
 
 " We should have gone down in the carriage, sir," j 
 she continued, edging a little closer to get the full ad 
 vantage of my umbrella ; " but John the coachman 
 has got the hinfluenzy, and my missis wo n t be driven 
 
 he said, with a softer tone than that in which 
 .he had hitherto addressed me; " and you will hardly 
 
 j be at C in time for dinner. You will be coming 
 
 over to-morrow or the day after, perhaps, sir; and 
 then, if you would honor my little room by taking a 
 cup of tea with me, I should be pleased to tell you all 
 about it, sir." 
 
 I remembered a promise I had nearly forgotten, 
 that I would reserve my visit to Stratford till I could 
 
 be accompanied by Miss J. P , whom I was to 
 
 have the honor of meeting at my place of destina 
 
 and promising an early acceptance of the kind land 
 lady s invitation, I hurried on to my appointment over 
 the fertile hills of Warwickshire. 
 
 I was established in one of those old Elizabethan 
 country-houses, which, with their vast parks, their 
 self-sufficing resources of subsistence and company, 
 
 by no other coachma n ; she s" as obstinate as a mule, j and the absolute deference shown on all sides to the 
 sir. And that isn t all I could tell, sir; but I scorns | lord of the manor, give one the impression rather of a 
 to hurt the character of one of my own sex." And j little kingdom with a castle in its heart, than of an 
 the pretty abigail pursed up her red lips, and looked j abode for a gentleman subject. The house itself 
 determined not to destroy her mistress s character (called, like most houses of this size and consequence 
 
 in Warwickshire, a " Court,") was a Gothic, half- 
 castellated square, with four round towers, and in 
 numerable embrasures and windows; two wings in 
 front, probably more modern than the body of the 
 house, and again two long wings extending to the rear, 
 at right angles, and enclosing a flowery and formal 
 parterre. There had been a trench about it, now 
 
 unless particularly requested. 
 
 I detest what may be called a proper road-book 
 even would it be less absurd than it is to write one on 
 a country so well conned as England. 
 
 I shall say nothing, therefore, of Marlow, which 
 looked the picture of rural loveliness though seen 
 through fog, nor of Oxford, of which all I remembe 
 
 is that I dined there with my teeth chattering, and 
 lin. All England is lovely 
 
 filled up, and at a short distance from the house stood 
 a polyangular and massive structure, well calculated 
 for defence, and intended as a strong-hold for the re- 
 
 my knees saturated with rain. 
 
 to the wild eye of an American unused to high cukiva- j 
 
 tion ; and though my enthusiasm was somewtiat damp, |j treat of the family and tenants in more troubled times. 
 
 I arrived at the Abridge over the Avon, blessing England ;j One of these rear wings enclosed a catholic chapel, 
 
 sufficiently for its beauty, and much more for the speed 1 1 for the worship of the baronet and those of his tenants 
 
 of its coaches. 
 
 The Avon, above and below the bridge, ran brightly 
 along between low banks, half sward, half meadow ; 
 
 who professed the same faith ; while on the northern 
 I side, between the house and the garden, stood a large 
 protestant stone church, with a turret and spire, both 
 
 and on the other side lay the native town of the im- | chapel and church, with the 
 
 clergyman and priest, 
 favored by the 
 
 mortal wool-comber a gay cheerful-looking village, i[ dependant on the estate, and equally favor 
 narrowing in the centre to a closely-built street, across ; liberal and high-minded baronet. The tenantry torm- 
 
 ed two considerable congregations, and lived and wor- 
 shipped side by side, with the most perfect harmony 
 
 an instance of real Christianity, in my opinion, which 
 
 the angels of heaven might come down to see. A 
 lovely rural graveyard for the lord and tenants, and a 
 secluded lake below the garden, in which hundreds of 
 wild ducks swam and screamed unmolested, completed 
 
 the outward features of C court. 
 
 There are noble houses in England, with a door 
 communicating from the dining-room to the stables, 
 that the master and his friends may see their favorites, 
 
 which swung, broad and fair, the sign of the " Red : 
 horse." More ambitious hotels lay beyond, and . 
 broader streets ; but while Washington Irving is re 
 membered (and that will be while the language lasts), j 
 the quiet inn in which the great Geoffrey thought 
 and wrote of Shakspere will be the altar of the pil- 
 grim s devotions. 
 
 My baggage was set down, the coachman and guard 
 
 tipped their hats for a shilling, and, chilled to the bone, 
 
 I raised my hat instinctively to the courtesy of a slender 
 
 gentlewoman in black, who, by the keys at her girdle, 
 
 14 
 
206 
 
 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 after dinner, without exposure to the weather. In the 
 place of this rather bizarre luxury, the oak-panelled 
 
 and spacious dining-hall of C is on a level with 
 
 the organ loft of the chapel, and when the cloth is re 
 moved, the large door between is thrown open, and 
 the noble instrument pours the rich and thrilling 
 music of vespers through the rooms. When the 
 service is concluded, and the lights on the altar ex 
 tinguished, the blind organist (an accomplished musi 
 cian, and a tenant on the estate), continues his volun 
 taries in the dark until the hall-door informs him of 
 the retreat of the company to the drawing-room. 
 There is not only refinement and luxury in this 
 beautiful arrangement, but food for the soul and 
 heart. 
 
 I chose my room from among the endless vacant 
 but equally luxurious chambers of the rambling old 
 house ; my preference solely directed by the portrait 
 of a nun, one of the family in ages gone by a picture 
 full of melancholy beauty, which hung opposite the 
 window. The face was distinguished by all that in 
 England marks the gentlewoman of ancient and pure 
 descent ; and while it was a woman with the more 
 tender qualities of her sex breathing through her fea 
 tures, it was still a lofty and sainted sister, true to her 
 cross, and sincere in her vows and seclusion. It was 
 the work of a master, probably Vandyke, and a picture 
 in which the most solitary man would find company 
 and communion. On the other walls, and in most of 
 the other rooms and corridors, were distributed por 
 traits of the gentlemen and soldiers of the family, most 
 of them bearing some resemblance to the nun, but 
 differing, as brothers in those wild times may be sup 
 posed to have differed, from the gentle creatures of the 
 blood, nursed in the privacy of peace. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 VISIT TO STRATFORD-ON-AVON SHAKSPERE. 
 
 ONE of the first visits in the neighborhood was nat 
 urally to Stratford-on-Avon. It lay some ten miles 
 south of us, and I drove down, with the distinguished 
 literary friend I have before mentioned, in the car 
 riage of our kind host, securing, by the presence of 
 his servants and equipage, a degree of respect and at 
 tention which would not have been accorded to us in 
 our simple character of travellers. The prim mistress 
 of the "Red Horse," in her close black bonnet and 
 widow s weeds, received us at the door with a deeper 
 courtesy than usual, and a smile of less wintry formal 
 ity; and proposing to dine at the inn, and "suck the 
 brain" of the hostess more at our leisure, we started 
 immediately for the house of the wool-comber the 
 birthplace of Shakspere. 
 
 Stratford should have been forbidden ground to 
 builders, masons, shopkeepers, and generally to all 
 people of thrift and whitewash. It is now rather a 
 smart town, with gay calicoes, shawls of the last pat 
 tern, hardware, and millinery, exhibited in all their 
 splendor down the widened and newer streets ; and 
 though here and there remains a glorious old gloomy 
 and inconvenient abode, which looks as if Shakspere 
 might have taken shelter under its eaves, the gayer 
 features of the town have the best of it, and flaunt their 
 gaudy and unrespected newness in the very windows 
 of that immortal birthplace. I stepped into a shop to 
 inquire the way to it. 
 
 "Shiksper s ouse, sir? Yes, sir!" said a dapper 
 clerk, with his hair astonished into the most impossi 
 ble directions by force of brushing; "keep to the 
 right, sir ! Shiksper lived in the wife ouse, sir the 
 ouse, you see beyond, with the windy swung up, sir." 
 
 A low, old-fashioned house, with a window sus- 
 
 pended on a hinge, newly whitewashed and scrubbed, 
 stood a little up the street. A sign over the door in 
 formed us in an inflated paragraph, that the immortal 
 Will Shakspere was born under this roof, and that an 
 old woman within would show it to us for a considera 
 tion. It had been used until very lately, I had been 
 told, for a butcher s shop. 
 
 A "garrulous old lady" met us at the bottom of the 
 narrow stair leading to the second floor, and began 
 not to say anything of Shakspere but to show us the 
 names of Byron, Moore, Rogers, &c., written among 
 thousands of others on the wall! She had worn out 
 Shakspere ! She had told that story till she was tired 
 of it! or (what, perhaps, is more probable) most 
 people who go there fall to reading the names of the 
 visiters so industriously, that she has grown to think 
 some of Shakspere s pilgrims greater than Shakspere. 
 "Was this old oaken chest here in the days of 
 Shakspere, madam?" I asked. 
 
 "Yes, sir, and here s the name of Byron here with 
 a capital B. Here s a curiosity, sir." 
 "And this small wooden box?" 
 "Made of Shakspere s mulberry, sir. I had sich a 
 time about that box, sir. Two young gemrnen were 
 here the other day just run up, while the coach was 
 changing horses, to see the house. As soon as they 
 were gone I misses the box. Oft scuds my son to the 
 Red Horse, and there they sat on the top looking as 
 innocent as may be. Stop the coach, says my son. 
 What do you want ? says the driver. My mother s 
 mulberry-box ! Shakspere s mulberry-box ! One of 
 them ere young men s got it in his pocket. And 
 true enough, sir, one on em had the imperence to 
 take it out of his pocket, and flings it into my son s 
 face ; and you know the coach never stops a minnit for 
 nothing, sir, or he d a smarted for it." 
 
 Spirit of Shakspere ! dost thou not sometimes walk 
 
 alone in this humble chamber ! Must one s inmost 
 
 soul be fretted and frighted always from its devotion 
 
 by an abominable old woman ? Why should not such 
 
 lucrative occupations be given in charity to the deaf 
 
 I and dumb ? The pointing of a finger were enough in 
 
 i such spots of earth ! 
 
 I sat down in despair to look over the book of visit- 
 i era, trusting that she would tire of my inattention. 
 As it was of no use to point out names to those who 
 ! would not look, however, she commenced a long story 
 i of an American who had lately taken the whim to 
 | sleep in Shakspere s birth-chamber. She had shaken 
 i him down a bed on the floor, and he had passed the 
 i night there. It seemed to bother her to comprehend 
 j why two thirds of her visitors should be Americans 
 j a circumstance that was abundantly proved by the 
 books. 
 
 It was only when we were fairly in the street that I 
 began to realize that I had seen one of the most glori 
 ous altars of memory that deathless Will Shakspere, 
 the mortal, who was, perhaps (not to speak profanely), 
 next to his Maker, in the divine faculty of creation, 
 first saw the light through the low lattice on which 
 we turned back to look. 
 
 The single window of the room in which Scott died 
 at Abbotsford, and this in the birth-chamber of Shak 
 spere, have seemed to me almost marked with the 
 touch of the fire of those great souls for I think we 
 have an instinct which tells us on the spot where 
 mighty spirits have come or gone, that they came and 
 went with the light of heaven. 
 
 We walked down the street to see the house where 
 Shakspere lived on his return to Stratford. It stands 
 at the corner of a lane, not far from the church where 
 he was buried, and is a newish un-Shaksperian looking 
 place no doubt, if it be indeed the same house, most 
 | profanely and considerably altered. The present pro 
 prietor or occupant of the house or site took upon 
 himself some time since the odium of cutting down 
 
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 207 
 
 the famous mulberry-tree planted by the poet s hand 
 in the garden. 
 
 I forgot to mention in the beginning of these notes 
 that two or three miles before coming to Stratford we 
 passed through Shottery, where Anne Hathaway lived. 
 A nephew of the excellent baronet whose guests we 
 were occupies the house. I looked up and down the 
 green lanes about it, and glanced my eye round upon 
 the hills over which the sun has continued to set and 
 the moon to ride in her love-inspiring beauty ever 
 since. There were doubtless outlines in the landscape 
 which had been followed by the eye of Shakspere 
 when coming, a trembling lover, to Shottrey doubt 
 less, teints in the sky, crops on the fields, smoke- 
 wreaths from the old homesteads on the high hill 
 sides, which are little altered now. How daringly the 
 imagination plucks back the past in such places ! 
 How boldly we ask of fancy and probability the thou 
 sand questions we would put, if we might, to the magic 
 mirror of Agrippa ? Did that great mortal love timid 
 ly, like ourselves? Was the passionate outpouring 
 of his heart simple, and suited to the humble condition 
 of Anne Hathaway, or was it the first fiery coinage of 
 Romeo and Othello? Did she know the immortal 
 honor and light poured upon woman by the love of 
 genius ? Did she know how this common and often- 
 est terrestrial passion becomes fused in the poet s bo 
 som with celestial fire, and, in its wondrous elevation 
 and purity, ascends lambently and musically to the 
 very stars ? Did she coy it with him? Was she a 
 woman to him, as commoner mortals find woman ca 
 pricious, tender, cruel, intoxicating, cold everything 
 by changes impossible to calculate or foresee ? Did 
 he walk home to Stratford, sometimes, despairing, in 
 perfect sick-heartedness, of her affection, and was he 
 recalled by a message or a lover s instinct to find her 
 weeping and passionately repentant? 
 
 How natural it is by such questions and specula 
 tions to betray our innate desire to bring the lofty 
 spirits of our common mould to our own inward level 
 to seek analogies between our affections, passions, appe 
 tites, and theirs to wish they might have been no more 
 exalted, no more fervent, no more worthy of the adora 
 ble love of woman than ourselves ! The same temper 
 that prompts the depreciation, the envy, the hatred, 
 exercised toward the poet in his lifetime, mingles, not 
 inconsiderably, in the researches so industriously prose 
 cuted after his death into his youth and history. To 
 be admired in this world, and much more to be beloved 
 for higher qualities than his fellow-men, insures to 
 genius not only to be persecuted in life, but to be 
 ferreted out with all his frailties and imperfections 
 from the grave. 
 
 The church in which Shakspere is buried stands 
 near the banks of the Avon, and is a most picturesque 
 and proper place of repose for his ashes. AJJ avenue 
 of small trees and vines, ingeniously overlaced, ex 
 tends from the street to the principal door, and the 
 interior is broken up into that confused and accidental 
 medley of tombs, pews, cross-lights, and pillars, for 
 which the old churches of England are remarkable. 
 The tomb and effigy of the great poet lie in an inner 
 
 chapel, and are as described in every traveller s book. 
 I will not take up room with the repetition. 
 
 It gives one an odd feeling to see the tomb of his 
 wife and daughter beside him. One does not realize 
 before, that Shakspere had wife, children, kinsmen, 
 like other men that there were those who had a right 
 to lie in the same tomb; to whom he owed the chari- 
 ies of life; whom he may have benefited or offended; 
 who may have influenced materially his destiny, or 
 he theirs ; who were the inheritors of his household 
 goods, his wardrobe, his books people who looked 
 on him on Shakspere as a landholder, a renter of a 
 pew, a townsman ; a relative, in short, who had claims 
 upon them, not for the eternal homage due to celestial 
 
 I inspiration, but for the charity of shelter and bread 
 had he been poor, for kindness and ministry had he 
 been sick, for burial and the tears of natural affection 
 when he died. It is painful and embarrassing to the 
 mind to go to Stratford to reconcile the immortality 
 and the incomprehensible power of genius like Shak- 
 spere s, with the space, tenement, and circumstance 
 of a man ! The poet should be like the sea-bird, seen 
 only on the wing his birth, his slumber, and his 
 death, mysteries alike. 
 
 I had stipulated with the hostess that my baggage 
 should be put into the chamber occupied by Wash 
 ington Irving. I was shown into it to dress for dinner 
 a small neat room, a perfect specimen, in short, of 
 an English bedroom, with snow-white curtains, a look 
 ing-glass the size of the face, a well-polished grate 
 and poker, a well-fitted carpet, and as muc$ light as 
 heaven permits to the climate. 
 
 Our dinner for two was served in a neat parlor on 
 the same floor an English inn dinner simple, neat, 
 and comfortable, in the sense of that word unknown in 
 other countries. There was just fire enough, in the 
 ! grate, just enough for two in the different dishes, a 
 servant who was just enough in the room, and just 
 civil enough in short, it was, like everything else in 
 that country of adaptation and fitness, just what was 
 i ordered and wanted, and no more. 
 
 The evening turned out stormy, and the rain pat 
 tered merrily against the windows. The shutters were 
 closed, the fire blazed up with new brightness, the 
 well-fitted wax lights were set on the table ; and when 
 the dishes were removed, we replaced the wine with a 
 i tea-tray, and sent for the hostess to give us her com 
 pany and a little gossip over our cups. 
 
 Nothing could be more nicely understood and de- 
 I fined than the manner of English hostesses generally 
 j in such situations, and of Mrs. Gardiner particularly 
 ! in this. Respectful without servility, perfectly sure 
 j of the propriety of her own manner and mode of ex- 
 i pression, yet preserving in every look and word the 
 | proper distinction between herself and her guests, she 
 ; insured from them that kindness and ease of commu 
 nication which would make a long evening of social 
 conversation pass, not only without embarrassment on, 
 either side, but with mutual pleasure and gratification. 
 "I have brought up, mem," she said, producing a 
 well-polished poker from under her black apron, be 
 fore she took the chair set for her at the table "I 
 have brought up a relic for you to see, that no money 
 would buy from me." 
 
 She turned it over in my hand, and I read on one 
 of the flat sides at the bottom "GEOFFREY CRAYON S 
 SCEPTRE." 
 
 " Do you remember Mr. Irving," asked my friend, 
 "or have you supposed, since reading his sketch of 
 Stratford-on-Avon, that the gentleman in number 
 three might be the person ?" 
 
 The hostess drew up her thin figure, and the ex 
 pression of a person about to compliment herself stole 
 into the corners of her mouth. 
 
 " Why, you see, mem, I am very much in the habit 
 of observing my guests, and I think I may say I knows 
 
 a superior gentleman when I sees him. If you re 
 member, mem" (and she took down from the mantle- 
 piece a much-worn copy of the Sketch-Book), "Geof 
 frey Crayon tells the circumstance of my stepping in 
 when it was getting late, and asking if he had rung. 
 I knows it by that, and then the gentleman I mean 
 was an American, and I think, mem, besides" (and she 
 hesitated a little, as if she was about to advance an 
 original and rather venturesome opinion) " I think 
 I can see that gentleman s likeness all through this 
 book." 
 
 A truer remark or a more just criticism was per 
 haps never made on the Sketch-Book. We smiled, 
 and Mrs. Gardiner proceeded : 
 
208 
 
 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 " I was in and out of the coffee-room the night he 
 arrived, mem, and I sees directly by his modest ways 
 and timid look that he was a gentleman, and not fit 
 company for the other travellers. They were all young 
 men, sir, and business travellers, and you know, mem, 
 ignorance takes the advantage of modest merit, and af 
 ter their dinner they were very noisy and rude. So, I 
 says to Sarah, the chambermaid, says I, That nice 
 gentleman can t get near the fire, and you go and light 
 a fire in number three, and he shall sit alone, and it 
 shan t cost him nothing, for I like the look on him. 
 Well, mem, he seemed pleased to be alone, and after 
 his tea, he puts his legs up over the grate, and there 
 he sits with the poker in his hand till ten o clock. 
 The other travellers went to bed, and at last the house 
 was as still as midnight, all but a poke in the grate 
 now and then in number three, and every time I heard 
 it, I jumped up and lit a bed-candle, for I was getting 
 very sleepy, and I hoped he was getting up to ring for | 
 a light. Well, mem, I nodded and nodded, and still 
 no ring at the bell. At last I says to Sarah, says I, 
 Go into number three, and upset something, for I am 
 sure that gentleman has fallen asleep. La, ma am, 
 says Sarah, I don t dare. Well, then, says I, I ll 
 go. So I opens the door, and I says, If you please, 
 sir, did you ring ? little thinking that question would 
 ever be written down in such a beautiful book, mem. 
 He sat with his feet on the fender poking the fire, and 
 a smile on his face, as if some pleasant thought was 
 in his mind. No, ma am, says he, I did not. I 
 shuts the door, and sits down again, for I hadn t the 
 heart to tell him that it was late, for he was a gentle 
 man not to speak rudely to, mem. Well, it was past 
 twelve o clock, when the bell did ring. There, says 
 I to Sarah, thank Heaven he has done thinking, and 
 \ve can go to bed. So he walked up stairs with his 
 light, and the next morning he was up early and off 
 to the Shakspere house, and he brings me home a box i 
 of the mulberry-tree, and asks me if I thought it was 1 
 genuine, and said it was for his mother in America, \ 
 And I loved him still more for that, and I m sure I j 
 prayed she might live to see him return." 
 
 "I believe she did, Mrs. Gardiner; but how soon j 
 after did you set aside the poker ?" 
 
 " Why, sir, you see there s a Mr. Vincent that 
 comes here sometimes, and he says to me one day : 
 So, Mrs. Gardiner, you re finely immortalized. Read 
 that. So the minnit I read it, I remembered who it f 
 was, and all about it, and I runs and gets the number 
 three poker, and locks it up safe and sound, and by- 
 and-by I sends it to Brummagem, and has his name 
 engraved on it, and here you see it, sir and I wouldn t 
 take no money for it." 
 
 I had never the honor to meet or know Mr. Irving, 
 and I evidently lost ground with the hostess of the 
 "Red Horse" for that misfortune. I delighted her, 
 however, with the account which I had seen in a late 
 newspaper, of his having shot a buffalo in the prairies 
 of the west; and she soon courtesied herself out, and 
 left me to the delightful society of the distinguished 
 lady who had accompanied me. Among all my many 
 loiterings in many lands, I remember none more in 
 tellectually pure and gratifying, than this at Stratford- 
 on-Avon. My sleep, in the little bed consecrated by 
 the slumbers of the immortal Geoffrey, was sweet and 
 light ; and I write myself his debtor for a large share 
 of the pleasure which genius like his lavishes on the 
 world. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CHARLECOTE. 
 
 ONCE more posting through Shottery and Stratford- 
 on-Avon, on the road to Kenilworth and Warwick, I 
 
 felt a pleasure in becoming an habitue in Shakspere s 
 town in being recognised by the Stratford post-boys, 
 known at the Stratford inn, and remembered at the 
 toll-gates. It is pleasant to be welcomed by name 
 anywhere ; but at Stratford-on-Avon, it is a recogni 
 tion by those whose fathers or predecessors were the 
 companions of Shakspere s frolics. Every fellow in 
 a slouched hat every idler on a tavern bench every 
 saunterer with a dog at his heels on the highway 
 should be a deer-stealer from Charlecote. You would 
 almost ask him, " Was Will Shakspere with you last 
 night ?" 
 
 The Lucys still live at Charlecote, immortalized 
 by a varlet poacher who was tried before old Sir 
 Thomas for stealing a buck. They have drawn an 
 apology from Walter Savage Landor for making too 
 free with the family history, under cover of an im 
 aginary account of the trial. I thought, as we drove 
 along in sight of the fine old hall, with its broad park 
 and majestic trees very much as it stood in the 
 days of Sir Thomas, I believe that most probably 
 the descendants of the old justice look even now upon 
 Shakspere more as an offender against the game-laws 
 than as a writer of immortal plays. I venture to say, 
 it would be bad tact in a visiter to Charlecote to felici 
 tate the family on the honor of possessing a park in 
 which Shakspere had stolen deer to show more in 
 terest in seeing the hall in which he was tried than in 
 the family portraits. 
 
 On the road which I was travelling (from Stratford 
 to Charlecote) Shakspere had been dragged as a cul 
 prit. What were his feelings before Sir Thomas ! 
 He felt, doubtless, as every possessor of the divine fire 
 of genius must feel, when brought rudely in contact 
 with his fellow-men, that he was too much their supe 
 rior to be angry. The humor in which he has drawn 
 Justice Shallow proves abundantly that he was more 
 amused then displeased with his own trial. But was 
 there no vexation at the moment? A reflection, it 
 might be, from the estimate of his position in the 
 minds of those who were about him who looked on 
 him simply as a stealer of so much venison. Did he 
 care for Anne Hathaway s opinion then ? 
 
 How little did Sir Thomas Lucy understand the 
 relation between judge and culprit on that trial ! How 
 little did he dream he was sitting for his picture to the 
 pestilent varlet at the bar ; that the deer-stealer could 
 j better afford to forgive him than he the deer-stealer ! 
 i Genius forgives, or rather forgets, all wrongs done in 
 i ignorance of its immortal presence. Had Ben Jonson 
 made a wilful jest on a line in his new play, it would 
 have rankled longer than fine and imprisonment for 
 deer-stealing. Those who crowd back and trample 
 upon men of genius in the common walk of life ; who 
 cheat them, misrepresent them, take advantage of their 
 inattention or their generosity in worldly matters, are 
 sometimes surprised how their injuries, if not them 
 selves, are forgotten. Old Adam Woodcock might 
 as well have held malice against Roland Grame for 
 the stab in the stuffed doublet of the Abbot of Mis 
 rule. 
 
 Yet, as I might have remarked in the paragraph 
 gone before, it is probably not easy to put conscious 
 and secret superiority entirely between the mind and 
 the opinions of those around who think differently. 
 It is one reason why men of genius love more than 
 the common share of solitude to recover self-respect. 
 In the midst of the amusing travesty he was drawing 
 in his own mind of the grave scene about him, Shak 
 spere possibly felt at moments as like a detected culprit 
 as he seemed to the gamekeeper and the justice. It 
 is a small penalty to pay for the after worship of the 
 world ! The ragged and proverbially ill-dressed 
 peasants who are selected from the whole campagna, 
 as models to the sculptors of Rome, care little what 
 is thought of their good looks in the Corso. The 
 
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 209 
 
 disguised proportions beneath their rags will be ad 
 mired in deathless marble, when the noble who scarce 
 deigns their possessor a look will lie in forgotten dust 
 under his stone scutcheon. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 WARWICK CASTLE. 
 
 WERE it not for the " out-heroded" descriptions in 
 the guide-books, one might say a great deal of War 
 wick cnstle. It is the quality of overdone or ill-ex 
 pressed enthusiasm to silence that which is more 
 rational and real. Warwick is, perhaps, the best kept 
 of all the famous old castles of England. It is a superb 
 and admirably-appointed modern dwelling, in the shell, 
 and with all the means and appliances preserved, of 
 an ancient stronghold. It isa curious union, too. My 
 lady s maid and my lord s valet coquet upon the bar 
 tizan, where old Guy of Warwick stalked in his coat- 
 of-mail. The London cockney, from his two days 
 watering at Leamington, stops his pony-chaise, hired 
 ai half-a-crown the hour, and walks Mrs. Popkins 
 over the old draw-bridge as peacefully as if it were the 
 threshold of his shop in the Strand. Scot and French 
 man saunter through fosse and tower, and no ghost of 
 the middle ages stalks forth, with closed visor, to 
 challenge these once natural foes. The powdered 
 butler yawns through an embrasure, expecting "mila- 
 di," the countess of this fair domain, who in one day s 
 posting from London seeks relief in Warwick Castle 
 from the routs and soirees of town. What would old 
 Guy say, or the " noble imp" whose effigy is among 
 the escutcheoned tombs of his fathers, if they could 
 rise through their marble slabs, and be whirled over the 
 drawbridge in a post-chaise ? How indignantly they 
 would listen to the reckoning within their own port 
 cullis, of the rates for chaise and postillion. How 
 astonished they would be at the butler s bow, and the 
 proffered officiousness of the valet. " Shall I draw 
 off your lordship s boots ? Which of these new vests 
 from Staub will your lordship put on for dinner ?" 
 
 Among the pictures at Warwick, I was interested 
 by a portrait of Queen Elizabeth (the best of that sov 
 ereign I ever saw) ; one of Machiavelli. one of Essex, 
 and one of Sir Philip Sidney. The delightful and 
 gifted woman whom 1 had accompanied to the castle 
 observed of the latter, that the hand alone expressed 
 all his character. I had often made the remark in 
 real life, but 1 had never seen an instance on painting 
 where the likeness was so true. No one could doubt, 
 who knew Sir Philip Sidney s character, that it was a 
 literal portrait of his hand. In our day, if you have 
 an artist for a friend, he makes use of you while you 
 call, to "sit for the hand" of the portrait on Vis easel. 
 Having a preference for the society of artists myself, 
 and frequenting their studios habitually, I know of 
 some hundred and fifty unsuspecting gentlemen on 
 canvass, who have procured for posterity and their 
 children portraits of their own heads and dress-coats 
 to be sure, but of the hands of other persons ! 
 
 The head of Machiavelli is, as is seen in the marble 
 in the gallery of Florence : small, slender, and visibly 
 " made to creep into crevices." The face is impassive 
 and calm, and the lips, though slight and almost femi 
 nine, have an indefinable firmness and character. Es 
 sex is the bold, plain, and blunt soldier history makes 
 him, and Elizabeth not unqueenly, nor (to my think 
 ing) of an uninteresting countenance; but, with all 
 jhe artist s flattery, ugly enough to be the abode of 
 the murderous envy that brought Mary to the block. 
 
 We paid our five shillings for having been walked 
 through the marble hall of Castle Warwick, and the 
 dressing-room of its modern lady, and, gratified much 
 
 more by our visit than I have expressed in this brief 
 description, posted on to Kenilworth. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 KENILWORTH. 
 
 ON the road from Warwick to Kenilworth, I thought 
 more of poor Pierce Gaveston than of Elizabeth and 
 her proud earls. Edward s gay favorite was tried at 
 Warwick, and beheaded on Blacklow hill, which we 
 passed soon after leaving the town. He was executed 
 in June; and I looked about on the lovely hills and 
 valleys that surround the place of his last moments, 
 and figured to myself very vividly his despair at this 
 hurried leave-taking of this bright world in its bright 
 est spot and hour. Poor Gaveston! It was not iu 
 his vocation to die ! He was neither soldier nor prel 
 ate, hermit nor monk. His political sins, for which 
 he suffered, were no offence against good-fellowship, 
 and were ten times more venial than those of the 
 " black dog of Arden," who betrayed and helped to 
 murder him. He was the reckless minion of a king, 
 but he must have been a merry and pleasant fellow ; 
 and now that the world (on our side the water at least), 
 is grown so grave, one could go back with Old Mor 
 tality, and freshen the epitaph of a heart that took life 
 more gayly. 
 
 As we approached the castle of the proud Leices 
 ter, I found it easier to people the road with the flying 
 Amy Robsart and her faithful attendant, with Mike Lam- 
 bourne, Flibbertigibbet, Richard Varney, and the troop 
 of mummurs and players, than with the more real 
 characters of history. To assist the romance, a little 
 Italian boy, with his organ and monkey, was fording 
 the brook on his way to the castle, as if its old towers 
 still held listeners for the wandering minstrel. I 
 tossed him a shilling from the carriage window, and 
 while the horses slowly forded the brook, asked him 
 in his own delicious tongue, where he was from. 
 
 " Son di Fircnze, signore /" 
 
 "And where are you going ?" 
 
 "Li! alcastello." 
 
 Come from Florence and bound to Kenilworth ! 
 Who would not grind an organ and sleep under a hedge, 
 to answer the hail of the passing traveller in terms 
 like these ? I have seen many a beggar in Italy, 
 whose inheritance of sunshine and leisure in that de 
 licious clime I could have found it in my heart to 
 envy, even with all its concomitants of uncertainty 
 and want; but here was a bright-faced and inky-eyed 
 child of the sun, with his wardrobe and means upon 
 his back, travelling from one land to another, and loiter 
 ing wherever there was a resort for pleasure, without 
 a friend or a care ; and, upon my life, I could have 
 donned his velveteen jacket, and with his cheerful 
 heart to button it over, have shouldered his organ, 
 put my trust iu iforestieri, and kept on for Kenilworth. 
 There really is, I thought, as I left him behind, no 
 prgfit or reward consequent upon a life of confinement 
 and toil ; no moss ever gathered by the unturned 
 stone, that repays, by a thousandth part, the loss of 
 even this poor boy s share of the pleasures of change. 
 What would not the tardy winner of fortune give to 
 exchange his worn-out frame, his unloveable and 
 furrowed features, his dulled senses, and his vain 
 regrets, for the elastic frame, the unbroken spirits, 
 and the redeemable, yet not oppressive poverty of this 
 Florentine rcguzzo . The irrecoverable gem of youth 
 is too often dissolved, like the pearl of Cleopatra, in a 
 cup which thins the blood and leaves disgust upon 
 the lip. 
 
 The magnificent ruins of Kenilworth broke in upon 
 my moralities, and a crowd of halt and crippled ciceroni 
 
210 
 
 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 beset the carriage-door as we alighted at the outer 1 
 tower. The neighborhood of the Spa of Leamington, i 
 makes Kenilworth a place of easy resort ; and the 
 beggars of Warwickshire have discovered that your | 
 traveller is more liberal of his coin than your sitter-at- i 
 home. Some dozens of pony-chaises and small, crop j 
 saddle-horses, clustered around the gate, assured us | 
 that we should not muse alone amid the ruins of j 
 Elizabeth s princely gift to her favorite. We passed | 
 into the tilt-yard, leaving on our left the tower in 
 which Edward was confined, now the only habitable 
 part of Kenilworth. It gives a comfortable shelter to 
 an old seneschal, who stands where the giant probably 
 stood, with Flibbertigibbet under his doublet for a \ 
 prompter ; but it is not the tail of a rhyme that serves 
 now for a passport. 
 
 Kenilworth. as it now stands, would probably dis 
 enchant almost any one of the gorgeous dreams con 
 jured up by reading Scott s romance. Yet it is one 
 of tho most superb ruins in the world. It would scarce 
 be complete to a novel-reader, naturally, without a 
 warder at the gate, and the flashing of a spear-point 
 and helmet through the embrasures of the tower. A 
 horseman in armor should puce over the draw-bridge, 
 and a squire be seen polishing his cuiras through 
 the opening gate; while on the airy bartizan should 
 be observed a lady in hoop and farthingale, philander 
 ing with my lord of Leicester in silk doublet and 
 rapier. In the place of this, the visiter enters Kenil 
 worth as I have already described, and stepping out 
 into the tilt-yard, he sees, on an elevation before him, 
 a fretted and ivy-covered ruin, relieved like a cloud- 
 castle on the sky ; the bright blue plane of the western 
 heavens shining through window and broken wall, 
 flecked with waving and luxuriant leaves, and the 
 crusted and ornamental pinnacles of tottering masonry 
 
 inhabit it. If I read Kenilworth now, I see Mike 
 Lambourne stealing out, not from the ruined postern 
 which I clambered through, over heaps of rubbish, 
 but from a little gate that turned noiselessly on its 
 hinges, in the unreal castle built ten years ago in my 
 brain. 
 
 I had wandered away from my companion, Miss 
 Jane Porter, to climb up a secret staircase in the wall, 
 rather too difficult of ascent for a female foot, and 
 from my elevated position I caught an accidental view 
 of that distinguished lady through the arch of a Gothic 
 window, with a background of broken architecture and 
 foliage presenting, by chance, perhaps the most fit 
 ting and admirable picture of the authoress of the 
 Scottish Chiefs, that a painter in his brightest hour 
 could have fancied. Miss Porter, with her tall and 
 striking figure, her noble face (said by Sir Martin Shee 
 to have approached nearer in its youth to his beau 
 ideal of the female features than any other, and still 
 possessing the remains of uncommon beauty), is at all 
 times a person whom it would be difficult to see with 
 out a feeling of involuntary admiration. But standing, 
 as I saw her at that moment, motionless and erect, in 
 the morning dress, with dark feathers, which she has 
 worn since the death of her beloved and gifted sister, 
 her wrists folded across, her large and still beautiful 
 eyes fixed on a distant object in the view, and her 
 nobly-cast lineaments reposing in their usual calm and 
 benevolent tranquillity, while, around and above her, 
 lay the material and breathed the spirit over which she 
 had held the first great mastery it was a tableau 
 vivanl which I was sorry to be alone to see. 
 
 Was she thinking of the great mind that had evoked 
 the spirits of the ruins she stood among a mind in 
 which (by Sir Walter s own co s < jssion) she had first 
 bared the vein of romance which breathed so freely 
 
 and sculpture just leaning to their fall, though the 1 for the world s delight? Were the visions which 
 
 foundations upon which they were laid, one would 
 still think, might sustain the firmament. The swelling 
 root of a creeper has lifted that arch from its base, 
 and the protruding branch of a chance-sprung tree 
 (sown perhaps by a field-sparrow) has unseated the 
 key-stone of the next ; and so perish castles and repu 
 tations, the masonry of the human hand, and the 
 fabrics of human forethought ; not by the strength 
 which they feared, but by the weakness they despised ! 
 Little thought old John of Gaunt, when these rudely- 
 hewn blocks were heaved into their seat by his hercu 
 lean workmen, that, after resisting fire and foe, they 
 would be sapped and overthrown at last by a vine-ten 
 dril and a sparrow ! 
 
 Clinging against the outer wall, on that side of the 
 castle overlooking the meadow, which was overflowed 
 for the aquatic spots of Kenilworth, stands an antique 
 and highly ornamental firephice, which belonged, 
 doubtless, to the principal hall. The windows on 
 either side looking forth upon the fields below, must 
 have been those from which Elizabeth and her train 
 observed the feats of Arion and his dolphin; and at all 
 times, the large and spacious chimney-place, from the ; 
 
 sweep with such supernatural distinctness and rapidity 
 through the imagination of genius visions of which 
 the millionth portion is probably scarce communicated 
 to the world in a literary lifetime were Elizabeth s 
 courtiers, Elizabeth s passions, secret hours, inter 
 views with Leicester were the imprisoned king s 
 nights of loneliness and dread, his hopes, his indignant, 
 but unheeded thoughts were all the possible circum 
 stances, real or imaginary, of which that proud castle 
 might have been the scene, thronging in those few 
 moments of re very through her fancy ? Or was her 
 heart busy with its kindly affections, and had the 
 beauty and interest of the scene but awakened a thought 
 i of one who was most wont to number with her the 
 sands of those brighter hours ? 
 
 Who shall say ? The very question would perhaps 
 startle the thoughts beyond recall so elusive are even 
 the most angelic of the mind s unseen visitants? 
 
 I have recorded here the speculations of a moment 
 while I leaned over the wall of Kenilworth, but as 1 
 
 descended by the giddy 
 
 peal of rude 
 
 laughter broke from the party in the fosse below, and 
 I could not but speculate on the difference between 
 
 castle s first occupation to its last, must have been the ij the various classes whom curiosity draws to the spot, 
 centre of the evening revelry, and conversation of its The distinguished mind that conceives a romance 
 guests. It was a hook whereon to hang a revery, and " which enchants the world, comes in the same guise 
 between the roars of vulgar laughter which assailed j and is treated but with the same respect as theirs, 
 my ears from a party lolling on the grass below, I con- The old porter makes no distinction in his charge of 
 tri ved to figure to myself, with some distinctness, the ;| ha!f-a-crown, and the grocer s wife who sucks an 
 personages who had stood about it. A visit to Kenil- ! orange on the grass, looks at the dark crape hat and 
 
 worth, without the deceptions of fancy, would be as 
 disconnected from our previous enthusiasm on the 
 
 plain exterior her only standards and thinks herself 
 as well dressed, and therefore equal or superior to the 
 
 subject as from any other scene with which it had no tall lady, whom she presumes is out like herself 01 
 relation. The general effect at first, in any such spot, day s pleasuring. One comes and goes like the other, 
 
 is only to dispossess us, by a powerful violence, of the j 
 cherished picture we had drawn of it in imagination ; 
 
 and is forgotten alike by the beggars at the gate and 
 the seneschal within, and thus invisibly and unsuspect 
 
 it is only after the real recollection has taken root ; ed, before our very eyes, does genius gather its gold- 
 and ripened after months, it may be that we can I Jen fruit, and while ive walk in a plain and common- 
 fully bring the visionary characters we have drawn to | place world, with commonplace and sordid thoughts 
 
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 211 
 
 and feelings, the gifted walk side by side with us in a 
 world of their own a world of which we see distant 
 glimpses in their after-creations, and marvel in what i 
 unsunned mine its gems of thought were gathered ! 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 A VISIT TO DUBLIN ABOUT THE TIME OF THE QUEEN S 
 MARRIAGE. 
 
 THE usual directions for costume, in the corner of 
 the court card of invitation, included, on the occasion 
 of the queen s marriage, a wedding favor, to be worn 
 by ladies on the shoulder, and by gentlemen on the 
 left breast. This trifling addition to the dress of the 
 individual was a matter of considerable importance to 
 the milliners, hatters, etc., who, in a sale of ten or 
 twelve hundred white cockades (price from two dollars 
 to five) made a very pretty profit. The power of giv 
 ing a large ball to the more expensive classes, and or 
 dering a particular addition to the costume in other 
 words, of laying a tax on the rich for the benefit of 
 the poor, is exercised more frequently in Ireland than 
 in other countries, and serves the double purpose of 
 popularity to the lord lieutenant, and benefit to any 
 particular branch of industry that may be suffering 
 from the decline of a fashion. 
 
 The large quadrangular court-yard of the castle 
 rattled with the tramp of horses feet and the clatter of 
 sabres and spurs, and in the uncertain glare of torches 
 and lamps, the gay colors and glittering arms of the 
 mounted guard of lancers had a most warlike appear 
 ance. The procession which the guard was stationed 
 to regulate and protect, rather detracted from the ro 
 mantic effect the greater proportion of equipages 
 being the covered hack cars of the city vehicles of 
 the most unmitigated and ludicrous vulgarity. A 
 coffin for two, set on its end, with the driver riding on 
 the turned-down lid, would be a very near resemblance ; 
 and the rags of the driver, and the translucent leanness 
 of his beast, make it altogether the most deplorable 
 of conveyances. Here and there a carriage with 
 liveries, and here and there a sedan-ch.iir with four 
 stout Milesian calves in blue stockings trotting under 
 the poles, rather served as a foil than a mitigation of 
 the effect, and the hour we passed in the line, edging 
 slowly toward the castle, was far from unfruitful in 
 amusement. I learned afterward that even those who 
 have equipages in Dublin go to court in hack cars as 
 a matter of economy one of the many indications of 
 that feeling of lost pride which has existed in Ireland 
 since the removal of the parliament. 
 
 A hall and staircase lined with files of soldiers is not 
 quite as festive an entrance to a ball as the n^ore com 
 mon one of alleys of flowering shrubs ; but with a 
 waltz by a military band resounding from the lofty 
 ceiling, I am not sure that it does not temper the blood 
 as aptly for the spirit of the hour. It was a rainy 
 night, and the streets were dark, and the effect upon 
 myself of coming suddenly into so enchanted a scene 
 -arms glittering on either side, and a procession of 
 uniforms and plumed dames winding up the spacious 
 gtairs W as thrilling, even with the chivalric scenes of 
 Eglinton fresh in niy remembrance. 
 
 At the head of the ascent we entered a long hall, 
 lined with the private servants of Lord Ebrington, and 
 the ceremony of presentation having been achieved the 
 week before, we left the throne-room on the right, and 
 passed directly to St. Patrick s Hall, the grand scene 
 of the evening s festivities. This, I have said before, 
 is the finest ball-room I remember in Europe. Twelve 
 hundred people, seated, dancing, or promenading, 
 were within its lofty walls on the night whose festivi 
 ties I am describing; and at either end a gallery, sup 
 
 ported by columns of marble, contained a band of 
 music, relieving each other with alternate waltzes and 
 quadrilles. On the long sides of the hall were raised 
 tiers of divans, filled with chaperons, veteran officers, 
 and other lookers-on, and at the upper end was raised 
 a platform with a throne in the centre, and seats on 
 either side for the family of the lord lieutenant and the 
 more distinguished persons of the nobility. Lord 
 Kbrington was rather in his character of a noble host 
 than that of viceroy, and I did not observe him once 
 seated under his canopy of state ; but with his aids 
 and some one of the noble ladies of his family on his 
 arm, he promenaded the hall conversing with his ac 
 quaintances, and seemingly enjoying in a high degree 
 the brilliant gayety of the scene. His dress, by the 
 way, was the simple diplomatic dress of most conti 
 nental courts, a blue uniform embroidered with gold, 
 the various orders on his breast forming its principal 
 distinction. I seldom have seen a man of a more 
 calm and noble dignity of presence than the lord lieu 
 tenant, and never a face that expressed more strongly 
 the benevolence and high purity of character for which 
 he is distinguished. In person, except that he is 
 taller, he bears a remarkably close resemblance to the 
 Uuke of Wellington. 
 
 We can scarcely conceive, in this country of black 
 coats, the brilliant effect of a large assembly in which 
 there is no person out of uniform or court-dress 
 every lady s head nodding with plumes, and every 
 gentleman in military scarlet and gold or lace and 
 embroidery. I may add, too, that in this country of 
 care-worn and pale faces, we can as little conceive the 
 effect of an assembly rosy with universal health, 
 habitually unacquainted with care, and abandoned with 
 the apparent child-like simplicity of high breeding, to 
 the inspiring gayety of the hour. The greater con 
 trast, however, is between a nation where health is the 
 first care, and one in which health is never thought 
 of till lost; and light and shade are not more con 
 trasted than the mere general effect of countenance 
 in one and in the other. A stranger travelling in our 
 country, once remarked to me that a party he had at 
 tended seemed like an entertainment given in the con 
 valescent ward of a hospital the ladies were so pale 
 and fragile, and the men so unjoyous and sallow. And 
 my own invariable impression, in the assemblies I 
 have first seen after leaving my own country was a 
 | corresponding one that the men and women had the 
 rosy health and untroubled gayety of children round a 
 May-pole. That this is not the effect of climate, I do 
 j most religiously believe. It is over-much care and over 
 much carelessness the corroding care of an avid temer 
 ity in business, and the carelessness of all the functions 
 of life till their complaints become too imperative to 
 be disregarded. But this is a theme out of place. 
 
 The ball was managed by the grand chamberlain 
 (Sir William Leeson), and the aids-de-camp of the 
 lord lieutenant, and except that now and then you 
 were reminded by the movement around you that you 
 stood with your back to the representative of royalty, 
 there was little to draw your attention from the attrac 
 tions of the dance. Walt/,, quadrille, and gallop, fol 
 lowed each other in giddy succession, and "what do 
 you think of Irish beauty?" had been asked me as 
 often as "how do you like America ?" was ever mum 
 bled through the trumpet of Miss Martineau, when I 
 mounted with a friend to one of the upper divans, and 
 tried, what is always a difficult task, and nowhere so 
 difficult as in Ireland, to call in the intoxicated fancy, 
 and anatomize the chartn of the hour. 
 
 Moore s remark has been often quoted " there is 
 ! nothing like an Irish woman to take a man off his 
 i feet;" but whether this figure of speech was suggested 
 I by the little bard s common soubriquet of "Jump-up- 
 I and-kiss-me* Tom Moore," or simply conveyed his 
 The name of a small flower, common in Ireland. 
 
212 
 
 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 idea of the bewildering character of Irish beauty, it 
 contains, to any one who has ever travelled (or waltzed) 
 in that country, a very just, as well as realizing: descrip 
 tion. Physically, Irish women are probably the finest 
 race in the world I mean, taller, better limbed and 
 chested, larger eyed, and with more luxuriant hair, 
 and freer action, than any other nation I have ob 
 served. The Phoenicijan and Spanish blood which 
 has run hundreds of years in their veins, slill kindles 
 its dark fire in their eyes, and with the vivacity of the 
 northern mind and the bright color of the northern 
 skin, these southern qualities mingle in most admira 
 ble and superb harmony. The idea we form of Ital 
 ian and Grecian beauty is never realized in Greece and 
 Italy, but we find it in Ireland, heightened and ex 
 ceeded. Cheeks and lips of the delicacy and bright 
 teint of carnation, with snowy teeth, and hair and eye 
 brows of jet, are what we shouM look for on the palette 
 of Appelles, could we recall the painter, and reanimate 
 his far-famed models; and these varied charms, united, 
 fall very commonly to the share of the fair Milesian 
 of the upper classes. In other lands of dark eyes, the 
 rareness of a fine-grained skin, so necessary to a bru 
 nette, makes beauty as rare but whether it is the 
 damp softness of the climate or the infusion of Saxon 
 blood, a coarse skin is almost never seen in Ireland. 
 I speak now only of the better-born ranks of society, 
 for in all my travels in Ireland, I did not chance to 
 see even one peasant-girl of any pretensions to good 
 looks. From north to south, they looked, to me, 
 coarse, ill-formed, and repulsive. 
 
 I noticed in St. Patrick s Hall what 1 had remarked 
 ever since I had been in the country, that with all 
 their beauty, the Irish women are very deficient in 
 what in England is called style. The men, on the 
 contrary, were particularly comme ilfaul, and as they 
 are a magnificent race (corresponding to such mothers 
 and sisters), I frequently observed I had never seen 
 so many handsome and elegant men in a day. When 
 ever I saw a gentleman and lady together, riding, 
 driving, or walking, my first impression was, almost 
 universally, that the man was in attendance upon a 
 woman of an inferior class to his own. This differ 
 ence may be partly accounted for by the reduced cir 
 cumstances of the gentry of Ireland, which keeps the 
 daughters at home| that the sons may travel and im 
 prove ; but it works differently in America, where, 
 spite of travel and every other advantage to the con 
 trary, the daughters of a family are much oftener 
 lady-like than the sons are gentleman-like. After 
 wondering for some time, however, why the quick 
 witted women of Ireland should be less apt than those 
 of other countries in catching the air of high breeding 
 usually deemed so desirable, I began to like them bet 
 ter for the deficiency, and to find a reason for it in the 
 very qualities which make them so attractive. Noth 
 ing could be more captivating and delightful than the 
 manners of Irish women, and nothing, at the same 
 time, could be more at war with the first principles of 
 English high breeding coldness and relenu. The 
 frank, almost hilarious "how are you?" of an Irish 
 girl, her whole-handed and cordial grasp, as often in 
 the day as you meet her, the perfectly un-missy-ish, 
 confiding, direct character of her conversation, are all 
 traits which would stamp her as somewhat rudely bred 
 in England, and as desperately vulgar in New York 
 or Philadelphia. 
 
 Modest to a proverb, the Irish woman is as unsus 
 pecting of an impropriety as if it were an impossible 
 thing, and she is as fearless and joyous as a midship 
 man, and sometimes as noisy. In a ball-room she 
 looks ill-dressed, not because her dress was ill-put-on, 
 but because she dances, not glides, sits down without 
 care, pulls her flowers to pieces, and if her head-dress 
 incommodes her, gives it a pull or a push acts which 
 would be perfect insanity at Almack s. If she is of 
 
 fended, she asks for an explanation. If she does not 
 understand you, she confesses her ignorance. If she 
 wishes to see you the next day, she tells you how and 
 when. She is the child of nature, and children are 
 not "stylish." The niminy-piminy, eye-avoiding, 
 finger-tipped, drawling, don t-touch-rne manner of 
 some of the fashionable ladies of our country, would 
 amuse a cold and reserved English woman sufficiently, 
 but they would drive an Irish girl into hysterics. 1 
 have met one of our fair country-people abroad, whose 
 "Grecian stoop," and exquisitely subdued manner, 
 was invariably taken for a fit of indigestion. 
 
 The ball-supper was royally sumptuous, and served 
 in a long hall thrown open at midnight ; and in the 
 gray of the morning, I left the floor covered with 
 waltzers, and confessed to an Irish friend, that I never 
 in my life, not even at Almack s, had seen the half as 
 much true beauty as had brightened St. Patrick s Hall 
 at the celebration of the queen s marriage. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 CLOSING SCENES OF THE SESSION AT WASHINGTON. 
 
 THE paradox of" the more one does, the more one 
 ] can do," is resolved in life at Washington with more 
 success than I have seen it elsewhere. The inexora 
 ble bell at the hotel or boarding-house pronounces the 
 irrevocable and swift transit of breakfast to all sleepers 
 after eight. The elastic depths of the pillow have 
 scarcely yielded their last feather to the pressure of 
 ! the sleeper s head, before the drowse is rudely shaken 
 from his eyelids, and with an alacrity which surprises 
 himself, he finds his toilet achieved, his breakfast over, 
 and himself abroad to lounge in the sunshine till the 
 flag waves on the capitol. He would retire to his 
 chamber to read during these two or three vacant 
 hours, but the one chair in his pigeon-hole creaks, or 
 has no back or bottom, or his anthracite fire is out, or 
 j is too hot for the size of the room : or, in short, Wash 
 ington, from whatever cause, is a place where none 
 read except those who stand up to a padlocked news 
 paper. The stars and stripes, moving over the two 
 wings of the capitol at eleven, announce that the two 
 chambers of legislation are in session, and the hard- 
 i working idler makes his way to the senate or the 
 house. He lingers in the lobby awhile, amused with 
 the button-hole seizers plying the unwilling ears of 
 members with their claims, or enters the library, 
 where ladies turn over prints, and enfilade, witli their 
 battery of truant eyes, the comers-in at the green 
 door. He then gropes up the dark staircase to the 
 senate gallery, and stifles in the pressure of a hot 
 gallery, forgetting, like listeners at a crowded opera, 
 j that bodily discomfort will unlink the finest harmonies 
 j of song or oratory. Thence hedescends to the rotunda 
 to draw breath and listen to the more practical, but 
 i quite as earnest eloquence of candidates for patents ; 
 and passes, after while, to the crowded gallery of the 
 house, where, by some acoustic phenomena in the 
 construction of the building, the voices of the speakers 
 comes to his ear as articulate as water from a narrow- 
 necked bottle. "Small blame to them !" he thinks, 
 however: for behind the brexia columns are grouped 
 all the fair forms of Washington ; and in making his 
 ! bow to two hundred despotic lawgivers in feathers and 
 | velvet, he is readily consoled that the duller legislators 
 ! who yield to their sway are inaudible and forgotten. 
 I To this upper house drop in, occasionally, the younger 
 I or gayer members of the lower, bringing, if not politi 
 cal scandal, at least some slight resumcr of what INJr. 
 Somebody is beating his desk about below ; and thus, 
 I crammed with the day s trifles or the day s business, 
 I and fatigued from heel to eyelid, our idler goes home 
 
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 213 
 
 at five to dress for dinner and the night s campaign, 
 having been up and on his legs for ten mortal hours. 
 
 Cold water and a little silence in his own room have 
 rather refreshed him, and he dines at six with a party 
 of from fifteen to twenty-five persons. He discusses 
 the vital interests of fourteen millions of people over 
 a glass of wine with the man whose vote, possibly, 
 will decide their destiny, and thence hurries to a ball 
 room crammed like a perigord-pie, where he pants, 
 elbows, eats supper, and waltzes till three in the 
 morning. How human constitutions stand this, and 
 stand ifdaily and nightly, from the beginning to the 
 end of a session, may well puzzle the philosophy of 
 those who rise and breakfast in comfortable leisure. 
 
 I joined the crowd on the twenty-second of Februa 
 ry, to pay my respects to the president, and see the 
 cheese. Whatever veneration existed in the minds of 
 the people toward the former, their curiosity in ref- { 
 erence to the latter predominated, unquestionably, ij 
 The circular jmve, extending from the gate to the i 
 White House, was thronged with citizens of all classes, 
 those coming away having each a small brown paper | 
 parcel and a very strong smell; those advancing mani- \ 
 festing, by shakings of the head and frequent exclama- j 
 tions, that there may be too much of a good thing, j 
 and particularly of a cheese. The beautiful portico j 
 was thronged with boys and coach-drivers, and the 
 odor strengthened with every step. We forced our | 
 way over the threshold, and encountered an atmo 
 sphere, to which the mephitic gas floating over Aver- 
 nus must be faint and innocuous. On the side of the 
 hall hung a rough likeness of the general, emblazoned 
 with eagle and stars, forming a background to the 
 huge tub in which the cheese had been packed ; and 
 in the centre of the vestibule stood the "fragrant gift," 
 surrounded with a dense crowd, who, without crackers, 
 or even " malt to their cheese," had, in two hours, 
 eaten and purveyed away fourteen hundred pounds ! 
 The small segment reserved for the president s use 
 counted for nothing in the abstractions. 
 
 Glad to compromise for a breath of cheeselcss air, 
 we desisted from the struggle to obtain a sight of the 
 table, and mingled with the crowd in the east room. 
 Here were diplomates in their gold coats and officers 
 in uniform, ladies of secretaries and other ladies, 
 soldiers on volunteer duty, and Indians in war-dress 
 and paint. Bonnets, feathers, uniforms, and all it 
 was rather a gay assemblage. I remembered the de 
 scriptions in travellers books, and looked out for 
 millers and blacksmiths in their working gear, and for 
 rudeness and vulgarity in all. The oiler of a mam 
 moth cheese to the public was likely to attract to the 
 presidental mansion more of the lower class than would 
 throng to a common levee. Great-coats there were, 
 and not a few of them, for the day was raw, and unless 
 they were hung on the palings outside, theyjpnust re 
 main on the owners shoulders ; but, with a single ex 
 ception (a fellow with his coat torn down his back, 
 possibly in getting at the cheese), I saw no man in a 
 dress that was not respectable and clean of its kind, 
 and abundantly fit for a tradesman out of his shop. 
 Those who were much pressed by the crowd put their 
 hats on ; but there was a general air of decorum 
 which would surprise any one who had pinned his 
 faith on travellers. An intelligent Englishman, very 
 much inclined to take a disgust to mobocracy, ex 
 pressed to me great surprise at the decency and proper 
 behavior of the people. The same experiment in 
 England, he thought, would result in as pretty a riot 
 as a paragraph-monger would desire to see. 
 
 The president was down stairs in the oval reception 
 room, and, though his health would not permit him 
 to stand, he sat in his chair for two or three hours, and 
 received his friends with his usual bland and dignified 
 courtesy. By his side stood the lady of the mansion, 
 dressed in full court costume, and doing the honors 
 
 of her place with a grace and amenity which every one 
 felt, and which threw a bloom over the hour. Gene 
 ral Jackson retired, after a while, to his chamber, and 
 the president-elect remained to support his relative, 
 and present to her the still thronging multitude, and 
 by four o clock the guests were gone, and the " ban 
 quet hall" was deserted. Not to leave a wrong im 
 pression of the cheese, I dined afterward at a table to 
 which the president had sent a piece of it, and found 
 it of excellent quality. It is like many other things, 
 more agreeable in small quantities. 
 
 Some eccentric mechanic has presented the presi 
 dent with a sulkey, made entirely (except the wheels) 
 of rough-cut hickory, with the bark on. It looks 
 rude enough, but has very much the everlasting look 
 of old Hickory himself; and if he could be seen dri 
 ving a high-stepping, bony old iron-gray steed in it, 
 any passer by would see that there was as much fitness 
 in the whole thing as in the chariot of Bacchus and 
 his reeling leopards. Some curiously-twisted and 
 gnarled branches have been very ingeniously turned 
 into handles and whip-box, and the vehicle is compact 
 and strong. The president has left it to Mr. Van 
 Buren. 
 
 In very strong contrast to the sulkey, stood close by, 
 the elegant phaeton, made of the wood of the old 
 frigate Constitution. It has a seat for two, with a 
 driver s box, covered with a superb hammercloth, and 
 set up rather high in front; the wheels and body are 
 low. and there are bars for baggage behind ; altogeth 
 er, for lightness and elegance, it would be a creditable 
 turn out for Long Acre. The material is excessively 
 beautiful a fine-grained oak, polished to a very high 
 degree, with its colors delicately brought out by a coat 
 of varnish. The wheels are very slender and light, but 
 strong, and, with all its finish, it looks a vehicle capa 
 ble of a great deal of service. A portrait of the Con 
 stitution, under full sail, is painted on the panels. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE INAUGURATION. 
 
 WHILE the votes for president were being counted 
 in the senate, Mr. Clay remarked to Mr. Van Buren, 
 with courteous significance : 
 
 " It is a cloudy day, sir!" 
 
 " The sun will shine on the fourth of March!" was 
 the confident reply. 
 
 True to his augury, the sun shone out of heaven 
 without a cloud on the inaugural morning. The air 
 was cold, but clear and life-giving ; and the broad 
 avenues of Washington for once seemed not too large 
 for the thronging population. The crowds who had 
 been pouring in from every direction for several days 
 before, ransacking the town for but a shelter from the 
 night, were apparent on the spacious sidewalks ; and 
 the old campaigners of the winter seemed but a thin 
 sprinkling among the thousands of new and strange 
 facts. The sun shone alike on the friends and oppo 
 nents of the new administration, and, as far as one 
 might observe in a walk to the capitol, all were made 
 cheerful alike by its brightness. It was another 
 augury, perhaps, and may foretell a more extended 
 fusion under the light of the luminary new risen. In 
 a whole day passed in a crowd composed of all classes 
 and parlies, 1 heard no remark that the president would 
 have been unwilling to hear. 
 
 I was at the capitol a half hour before the proces 
 sion arrived, and had leisure to study a scene for 
 which I was not at all prepared. The noble staircase 
 of the east front of the building leaps over three 
 arches, under one of which carriages pass to the base 
 ment door ; and, as you approach from the gate, the 
 
214 
 
 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 eye cuts the ascent at right angles, and the sky, broken 
 by a small spire at a short distance, is visible beneath. 
 Broad stairs occur at equal distances, with corre 
 sponding projections ; and from the upper platform rise 
 the outer columns of the portico, with ranges of col 
 umns three deep extending back to the pilasters. I 
 had often admired this front with its many graceful 
 columns, and its superb flight of stairs, as one of the 
 finest things I had seen in the world. Like the effect 
 of the assembled population of Rome waiting to re 
 ceive the blessing before the front of St. Peter s, how 
 ever, the assembled crowd on the steps and at the 
 base of the capitol heightened inconceivably the gran 
 deur of the design. They were piled up like the 
 people on the temples of Babylon in one of Martin s 
 sublime pictures every projection covered, and an 
 inexpressible soul and character given by their pres 
 ence to the architecture. Boys climbed about the 
 bases of the columns, single figures stood on the posts 
 of the surrounding railings in the boldest relief against 
 the sky; and the wholesaling was exactly what Paul 
 Veronese would have delighted to draw. I stood near 
 an accomplished artist who is commissioned to fill one 
 of the panels of the rotunda, and I can not but hope 
 he may have chosen this magnificent scene for his 
 subject. 
 
 The republican procession, consisting of the presi 
 dents and their families, escorted by a small volunteer 
 corps, arrived soon after twelve. The General and 
 Mr. Van Buren were in the constitution phaeton, 
 drawn by four grays, and as it entered the gate, they 
 both rode uncovered. Descending from the carriage 
 at the foot of the steps, a passage was made for them 
 through the dense crowd, and the tall white head of 
 the old chieftain, still uncovered, went steadily up 
 through the agitated mass, marked by its peculiarity 
 from all around it. 
 
 I was in the crowd thronging the opposite side of 
 the court, and lost sight of the principal actors in this 
 imposing drama, till they returned from the senate 
 chamber. A temporary platform had been laid, and 
 railed in on the broad stair which supports the por 
 tico, and, for all preparation to one of the most impor 
 tant and most meaning and solemn ceremonies on 
 earth for the inauguration of a chief magistrate over a 
 republic of fifteen millions of freemen the whole ad 
 dition to the open air, and the presence of the people, 
 was a volume of holy writ. In comparing the impres 
 sive simplicity of this consummation of the wishes of 
 a mighty people, with the tricked-out ceremonial, and I 
 hollow show, which embarrass a corresponding event 
 in other lands, it was impossible not to feel that the 
 moral sublime was here that a transaction so impor 
 tant, and of such extended and weighty import, could 
 borrow nothing from drapery or decoration, and that 
 the simple presence of the sacred volume, consecrating 
 the act, spoke more thrillingly to the heart than the 
 trumpets of a thousand heralds. 
 
 The crowd of diplomatists and senators in the rear 
 of the columns made way, and the ex-president and 
 Mr. Van Buren advanced with uncovered heads. A 
 murmur of feeling rose up from the moving mass be 
 low, and the infirm old man, emerged from a sick- 
 chamber, which his physician had thought it impossi 
 ble he should leave, bowed to the people, and, still 
 uncovered in the cold air, took his seat beneath the 
 portico. Mr. Van Buren then advanced, and with a I 
 voice remarkably distinct, and with great dignity, read i 
 his address to the people. The air was elastic, and 
 the day still ; and it is supposed that near twenty thou 
 sand persons heard him from his elevated position dis 
 tinctly. I stood myself on the outer limit of the 
 crowd, and though I lost occasionally a sentence from 
 the interruption near by, his words came clearly ar 
 ticulated to my ear. 
 
 When the address was closed, the chief justice ad 
 
 vanced and administered the oath. As the book 
 touched the lips of the new president, there arose a 
 general shout, and expression of feeling common 
 enough in other countries, but drawn with difficulty 
 from an American assemblage. The sons, and the 
 immediate friends of Mr. Van Buren, then closed 
 about him ; the ex-president, the chief justice, and 
 others, gave him the hand of congratulation, and the 
 ceremony was over. They descended the steps, the 
 people gave one more shout as they mounted the con 
 stitution carriage together, and the procession returned 
 through the avenue, followed by the whole population 
 of Washington. 
 
 Mr. Van Buren held a levee immediately afterward, 
 but I endeavored in vain to get my foot over the 
 threshold. The crowd was tremendous. At four, 
 the diplomatic body had an audience ; and in replying 
 to the address of Don Angel Calderon, the president 
 astonished the gold coats, by addressing them as the 
 democratic corps. The representatives of the crowned 
 heads of Europe stood rather uneasily under the 
 epithet, till it was suggested that he possibly meant to 
 say diplomatic. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 WASHINGTON IN THE SESSION. 
 
 THERE is a sagacity acquired by travel on the sub 
 ject of forage and quatters, which is useful in all other 
 cities in the world where one may happen to be a 
 stranger, but which is as inapplicable to the emergen 
 cies of an arrival in Washington as waltzing in a ship 
 wreck. It is a capital whose peculiarities are as much 
 sui generis as those of Venice ; but as those who have 
 become wise by a season s experience neither remain 
 on the spot to give warning, nor have recorded thei 
 experiences in a book, the stranger is worse ofif in a 
 coach in Washington than in a gondola in the "city 
 of silver streets." 
 
 It is well known, I believe, that when the future 
 city of Washington was about being laid out, there 
 were two large lot-buyers or land-owners, living two 
 miles apart, each of whom was interested in having 
 the public buildings upon the centre of his own do 
 main. Like children quarrelling for a sugar horse, 
 the subject of dispute was pulled in two, and one got 
 the head, the other the tail. The capitol stands on a 
 rising ground in solitary grandeur, and the president s 
 house and department buildings two miles oft" on an 
 other. The city straddles and stretches between, 
 doing its best to look continuous and compact; but 
 the stranger soon sees that it is, after all, but a " city 
 of magnificent distances," built to please nobody on 
 earth but a hackney-coachman. 
 
 The new-comer, when asked what hotel he will 
 drive to, thinks himself very safe if he chooses that 
 nearest the capitol supposing, of course, that, as 
 Washington is purely a legislative metropolis, the 
 most central part will naturally be near the scene of 
 action. He is accordingly set down at Gadsby s, and, 
 at a price that would startle an English nobleman, he 
 engages a pigeon-hole in the seventh heaven of that 
 boundless caravansary. Even at Gadsby s, however, 
 he finds himself over half a mile from the capitol, and 
 wonders, for two or three days, why the deuce the 
 hotel was not built on some of the waste lots at the 
 foot of Capitol hill, an improvement which might 
 have saved him, in rainy weather, at least five dollars 
 a day in hack-hire. Meantime the secretaries and 
 foreign ministers leave their cards, and the party and 
 dinner-giving people shower upon him the "small 
 rain" of pink billets. He sets apart the third or fourth 
 day to return their calls, and inquires the addresses 
 
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 215 
 
 of his friends (which they never write on their cards, ; 
 because, if they did, it would be no guide), and is told j 
 it is impossible to direct him, but the hackney-coachmen I 
 all know! lie calls the least ferocious-looking of the j 
 most bullying and ragged set of tatterdemalions he has 
 ever seen, and delivers himself and his visiting-list into 
 his hands. The first thing is a straight drive two 
 milt s away from the capitol. He passes the presi 
 dent s house, and getting off the smooth road, begins 
 to drive and drag through cross lanes and open lots, 
 laid out according to no plan that his loose ideas of 
 geometry can comprehend, and finds his friends liv- 
 ing in houses that want nothing of being in the coun- j 
 try, but trees, garden, and fences. It looks as if it had ! 
 rained naked brick houses upon a waste plain, and j 
 each occupant had made a street with reference to his j 
 own front door. The much-shaken and more-aston- j 
 ished victim consumes his morning and his temper, ! 
 and has made, by dinner-time, but six out of forty j 
 calls, all imperatively due, and all scattered far and j 
 wide with the same loose and irreconcilable geogra- j 
 
 py- 
 
 A fortnight s experience satisfies the stranger that 
 this same journey is worse at night than at morning; 
 and that, as he leaves his dinner which he pays for at 
 home, runs the risk of his neck, passes an hour or 
 two on the road, and ruins himself in hack-hire, it 
 must be a very yes, a very pleasant dinner-party to 
 compensate him. Consequently, he either sends a 
 "p. p. c." to all his acquaintances, and lives incog., 
 or, which is a more sensible thing, moves up to the 
 other settlement, and abandons the capitol. 
 
 Those who live on the other side of the president s 
 house are the secretaries, diplomatists, and a few 
 wealthy citizens. There is no hotel in this quarter, 
 but there are one or two boarding-houses, and (what 
 we have been lucky enough to secure ourselves) fur- j 
 nished lodgings, in which you have everything but 
 board. Your dinner is sent you from a French cook s 
 near by, and your servant gets your breakfast a plan 
 which gives you the advantage of dining at your own 
 hour, choosing your own society, and of having covers 
 for a friend or two whenever it suits your humor, and 
 at half an hour s warning. There are very few of 
 these lodgings (which combine many other advantages 
 over a boarding-house), but more of them would be a 
 good speculation to house-owners, and I wish it were 
 suggested, not only here, but in every city in our 
 country. 
 
 Aside from society, the only amusement in Wash 
 ington is frequenting the capitol. If one has a great j 
 deal of patience and nothing better to do, this is very 
 well ; and it is very well at any rate till one becomes I 
 acquainted with the heads of the celebrated men in I 
 both the chambers, with the noble architecture of the i 
 building, and the routine of business. This done, it ! 
 is time wearily spent for a spectator. The finef orators i 
 seldom speak, or seldom speak warmly, the floor is 
 oftenest occupied by prosing and very sensible gentle 
 men, whose excellent ideas enter the mind more 
 agreeably by the eye than the ear, or, in other words, 
 are better delivered by the newspapers, and there is a I 
 great deal of formula and etiquetical sparring which i 
 is not even entertaining to the members, and which 
 consumes time " consumedly." Now and then the | 
 senate adjourns when some one of the great orators 
 has taken the floor, and you are sure of a great effort 
 the next morning. If you are there in time, and can 
 sit, like Atlas with a world on your back, you may en 
 joy a front seat and hear oratory, unsurpassed, in my 
 opinion, in the world. 
 
 The society in Washington, take it all in^ll, is by 
 many degrees the best in^the United States. One is 
 prepared, though I can not conceive why, for the con 
 trary. We read in books of travels, and we are told 
 by everybody, that the society here is promiscuous, 
 
 rough, inelegant, and even barbarous. This is an 
 untrue representation, or it has very much changed. 
 
 There is no city, probably no village in America, 
 where the female society is not refined, cultivated, and 
 elegant. With or without regular advantages, woman 
 attains the refinements and the tact necessary to polite 
 intercourse. No traveller ever ventured to complain 
 of this part of American society. The great deficiency 
 is that of agreeable, highly-cultivated men, whose pur 
 suits have been elevated, and whose minds are pliable 
 to the grace and changing spirit of conversation. 
 Every man of talents possesses these qualities naturally, 
 and hence the great advantage which Washington en 
 joys over every other city in our country. None but 
 a shallow observer, or a malicious book-maker, would 
 ever sneer at the exteriors or talk of the ill-breeding 
 of such men as form, in great numbers, the agreeable 
 society of this place for a man of great talents never 
 could be vulgar; and there is a superiority about most 
 of these which raises them above the petty standard 
 which regulates the outside of a coxcomb. Even 
 compared with the dress and address of men of similar 
 positions and pursuits in Europe, however (members 
 of the house of commons, for example, or of the cham 
 ber of deputies in France), it is positively the fact that 
 the senators and representatives of the United States 
 have a decided advantage. It is all very well for Mr. 
 Hamilton, and other scribblers whose books must be 
 spiced to go down, to ridicule a Washington soiree for 
 English readers; but if the observation of one who 
 has seen assemblies of legislators and diplomatists in 
 all the countries of Europe may be fairly placed 
 against his and Mrs. Trollope s, 1 may assert, upon 
 my own authority, that they will not find, out of May 
 Fair in England, so well-dressed and dignified a body 
 of men. I have seen as yet no specimen of the rough 
 animal described by them and others as the "western 
 member;" and if IJavid Crockett (whom I was never 
 so fortunate as to see) was of that description, the race 
 must have died with him. It is a thing 1 have learned 
 since I have been in Washington, to feel a wish that 
 foreigners should see congress in session. We are 
 so humbugged, one way and another, by travellers 
 lies. 
 
 I have heard the observation once or twice from 
 strangers since I have been here, and it struck myself 
 on my first arrival, that I had never seen within the 
 same limit before, so many of what may be called 
 "men of mark." You will scarce meet a gentleman 
 on the sidewalk in Washington who would not attract, 
 your notice, seen elsewhere, as an individual possess 
 ing in his eye or general features a certain superiority. 
 Never having seen most of the celebrated speakers of 
 the senate, 1 busied myself for the first day or two in 
 examining the faces that passed me in the street, in 
 the hope of knowing them by the outward stamp 
 which, we are apt to suppose, belongs to greatness. 
 I gave it up at last, simply from the great number I 
 met who might be (for all that features had to do with 
 it) the. remarkable men I sought. 
 
 There is a very simple reason why a congress of the 
 United States should be, as they certainly are, a much 
 more marked body of men than the English house of 
 commons or lords, or the chamber of peers or deputies 
 in France. I refer to the mere means by which, in 
 either case, they come by their honors. In England 
 and France the lords and peers are legislators by hered 
 itary right, and the members of the commons and 
 deputies from the possession of extensive property or 
 family influence, or some other cause, arguing, in 
 most cases, no great personal talent in the individual. 
 They are legislators, but they are devoted VTV often 
 much more heartily to other pursuits running or 
 farming, racing, driving, and similar out-of-door pas 
 sions common to English gentlemen and lords, or the 
 corresponding penchants of French peers and deputies. 
 
216 
 
 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 It is only the few great leaders and orators who devote 
 themselves to politics exclusively. With us every 
 one knows it is quite the contrary. An American 
 politician delivers himself, body and soul, to his pur 
 suit. He never sleeps, eats, walks, or dreams, but in 
 subservience to his aim. He can not afford to have 
 another passion of any kind till he has reached the 
 point of his ambition and then it has become a 
 mordent necessity from habit. The consequence is, 
 that no man can be found in an elevated sphere in our 
 country, who has not had occasion for more than ordi 
 nary talent to arrive there. He inherited nothing of 
 his distinction, and has made himself. Such ordeals 
 leave their marks, and they who have thought, and 
 watched, and struggled, and contended with the pas 
 sions of men as an American politician inevitably 
 must, can not well escape the traces of such work. 
 It usually elevates the character of the face it always 
 strongly marks it. 
 
 A-propos of " men of mark ;" the dress circle of the 
 theatre, at Power s benefit, not long since, was graced 
 by three Indians in full costume the chief of the 
 Foxes, the chief of the loways, and a celebrated war 
 rior of the latter tribe, called the Sioux-killer. The 
 Fox is an old man of apparently fifty, with a heavy, 
 aquiline nose, a treacherous eye, sharp as an eagle s, 
 and a person rather small in proportion to his head 
 and features. He was dressed in a bright scarlet 
 blanket, and a crown of feathers, with an eagle s plume, 
 standing erect on the top of his head, all dyed in the 
 same deep hue. His face was painted to match, ex 
 cept his lips, which looked of a most ghastly sallow, 
 in contrast with his fiery nose, forehead, and cheeks. 
 His tomahawk lay in the hollow of his arm, decked 
 with feathers of the same brilliant color with the rest 
 of his drapery. Next him sat the Sioux-killer, in a 
 dingy blanket, with a crown made of a great quantity 
 of the feathers of a pea-hen, which fell over his face, 
 and concealed his features almost entirely. He is 
 very small, but is famous for his personal feats, having, 
 among other things, walked one hundred and thirty 
 miles in thirty successive hours, and killed three Sioux 
 (hence his name) in one battle with that nation. He 
 is but twenty-three, but very compact and wiry-looking, 
 and his eye glowed through his veil of hen-feathers 
 like a coal of fire. 
 
 Next to the Sioux-killer sat " White Cloud," the 
 chief of the loways. His face was the least warlike 
 of the three, and expressed a good nature and freedom 
 from guile, remarkable in an Indian. He is about 
 twenty-four, has very large features, and a fine, erect 
 person, with broad shoulders and chest. He was 
 painted less than the Fox chief, but of nearly the same 
 color, and carried, in the hollow of his arm, a small, 
 glittering tomahawk, ornamented with blue feathers. 
 His head was encircled by a kind of turban of silver- 
 fringed cloth, with some metallic pendents for earrings, 
 and his blanket, not particularly clean or handsome, 
 was partly open on the breast, and disclosed a calico 
 shirt, which was probably sold to him by a trader in 
 the west. They were all very attentive to the play, 
 but the Fox chief and White Cloud departed from the 
 traditionary dignity of Indians, and laughed a great 
 deal at some of Power s fun. The Sioux-killer sat 
 between them, as motionless and grim as a marble 
 knight on a tomb-stone. 
 
 The next day I had the pleasure of dining with 
 Mr. Power, who lived at the same hotel with the In 
 dian delegation ; and while at dinner he received a 
 message from the loways, expressing a wish to call on 
 him. We were sitting over our wine when White 
 Cloud and the Sioux-killer came in with their inter 
 preter. There were several gentlemen present, one 
 of them in the naval undress uniform, whose face the 
 Sioux-killer scrutinized very sharply. They smiled 
 in bowing to Power, but made very grave inclinations 
 
 to the rest of us. The chief took his seat, assuming 
 a very erect and dignified attitude, which he preserved 
 immoveable during the interview ; but the Sioux-killer 
 drew up his legs, resting them on the round of the 
 chair, and, with his head and body bent forward, 
 seemed to forget himself, and give his undivided atten 
 tion to the study of Power and his naval friend. 
 
 Tumblers of champagne were given them, which 
 they drank with great relish, though the Sioux-killer 
 provoked a little ridicule from White Cloud, by cough 
 ing as he swallowed it. The interpreter was a half- 
 breed between an Indian and a negro, and a most in 
 telligent fellow. He had been reared in the loway 
 tribe, but had been among the whites a great deal for 
 the last few years, and had picked up English very 
 fairly. He told us that White Cloud was the son of 
 old White Cloud, who died three years since, and 
 that the young chief had acquired entire command 
 over the tribe by his mildness and dignity. He had 
 paid the debts of the loways to the traders, very much 
 against the will of the tribe; but he commenced by 
 declaring firmly that he would be just, and had carried 
 his point. He had come to Washington to receive a 
 great deal of money from the sale of the lands of the 
 tribe, and the distribution of it lay entirely in his own 
 power. Only one old warrior had ventured to rise in 
 council and object to his measures; but when White 
 Cloud spoke, he had dropped his head on his bosorn 
 and submitted. This information and that which 
 followed was given in English, of which neither of the 
 loways understood a word. 
 
 Mr. Power expressed a surprise that the Sioux- 
 killer should have known him in his citizen s dress. 
 The interpreter translated it, and the Indian said in 
 answer: 
 
 " The dress is very different, but when I see a man s 
 eye I know him again." 
 
 He then told Power that he wished, in the theatre, 
 to raise his war-cry and help him fight the three bad- 
 looking men who were his enemies (referring to the 
 three bailiffs in the scene in Paddy Carey). Power 
 asked what part of the play he liked best. He said 
 that part where he seized the girl in his arms and ran 
 off the stage with her (at the close of an Irish jig in 
 the same play). 
 
 The interpreter informed us that this was the first 
 time the Sioux-killer had come among the whites. 
 He had disliked them always till now, but he said he 
 had seen enough to keep him telling tales all the rest 
 of his life. Power offered them cigars, which they 
 refused. We expressed our surprise ; and the Sioux- 
 killer said that the Indians who smoked gave out 
 soonest in the chase; and White Cloud added, very 
 gravely, that the young women of his tribe did not 
 like the breaths of the smokers. In answer to an in 
 quiry I made about the comparative size of Indians 
 and white men, the chief said that the old men of the 
 whites were larger than old Indians, but the young 
 whites were not so tall and straight as the youths of 
 his tribe. We were struck with the smallness of the 
 chief s hands and feet; but he seemed very much 
 mortified when the interpreter translated our remark to 
 him. He turned the little sallow fingers over and over, 
 and said that old White Cloud, his father, who had 
 been a great warrior, had small hands like his. The 
 young chief, we were told by the interpreter, has never 
 yet been in an engagement, and is always spared from 
 | the heavier fatigues undergone by the rest of the 
 I tribe. 
 
 They showed great good nature in allowing us to 
 
 I look afc their ornaments, tomahawks, &c. White 
 
 Cloud wore a collar of bear s claws, which marked 
 
 him for a chief; and the Sioux-killer carried a great 
 
 | cluster of brass bells on the end of his tomahawk, of 
 
 ; which he explained the use very energetically. It 
 
 ! was to shake when he stood over his fallen enemy in 
 
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 217 
 
 the fight, to let the tribe know he had killed him. | 
 After another tumbler of champagne each, they rose 
 to take their leave, and White Cloud gave us his hand j 
 gently, with a friendly nod. We were all amused, | 
 however, with the Sioux-killer s more characteristic | 
 adieu. Ue looked us in the eye like a hawk, and gave , 
 us each a grip of his iron fist, that made the blood | 
 tingle under our nails. He would be an awkward 
 customer in a fight, or his fixed lips and keen eye very ! 
 much belie him. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 WASHINGTON AFTKR THE SESSION. 
 
 THE leaf that is lodged in some sunny dell, after 
 drifting on the whirlwind the Indian s canoe, after it 
 has shot the rapids the drop of water that has strug 
 gled out from the Phlegethon of Niagara, and sleeps 
 on the tranquil bosom of Ontario are faint images 
 of contrast and repose, compared with a Washington!- j 
 an after the session. I have read somewhere, in an I 
 oriental tale, that a lover, having agreed to share his j 
 life with his dying mistress, took her place in the i 
 grave six months in the year. In Bagdad it might 
 have been a sacrifice. In Washington I could con 
 ceive such an arrangement to make very little dif 
 ference. 
 
 Nothing is done leisurely in our country ; and, by 
 the haste with which everybody rushes to the rail 
 road the morning after the rising of congress, you I 
 would fancy that the cars, like Cinderella s coach, j 
 would be changed into pumpkins at the stroke of 
 twelve. The town was evacuated in a day. On the j 
 fifth of March a placard was sent back by the inn 
 keepers at Baltimore, declaring that there was not so ! 
 much as a garret to be had in that city, and imploring 
 gentlemen and ladies to remain quietly at Washington j 
 for twenty-four hours. The railroad engine, twice a j 
 day, tugged and putted away through the hills, draw- j 
 ing after it, on its sinuous course, a train of brick-color 
 ed cars, that resembled the fabulous red dragon trailing \ 
 its slimy length through the valley of Crete. The j 
 gentlemen who sit by the fire in the bar-room at ! 
 Gadsby s, like Theodore Hook s secretary, who could i 
 hear his master write " Yours faithfully" in the next j 
 room, learned to distinguish " Received payment" j 
 from " Sundries," by listening to the ceaseless scratch 
 of the bookkeeper. The ticket-office at the depot I 
 was a scene of struggle and confusion between those 
 who wanted places ; while, looking their last on these j 
 vanishing paymasters, stood hundreds of tatterdema- j 
 lions, white, yellow, and black, with their hands in i 
 their pockets, and (if sincere regret at their departure \ 
 could have wrung it forth) a tear in their eye. The 
 bell rang, and the six hundred departures flocked to ! 
 their places young ladies, with long faces, leaving 
 the delights of Washington for the dull repose of the 
 country their lovers, with longer faces, trying, in vain, 
 to solve the X quantity expressed by the aforesaid 
 " Sundries" in their bill and members of congress 
 with long faces, too for not one in twenty has "made | 
 the impression" he expected ; and he is moralizing 
 on the decline of the taste for eloquence, and on the 
 want of " golden opportunity" for the display of indig 
 nant virtue! 
 
 Nothing but an army, or such a concourse of people 
 as collects to witness an inauguration, could ever make 
 Washington look populous. But when congress, and 
 its train of ten thousand casual visiters are gone, and 
 only the official and indigenous inhabitants remain, 
 Balbec, or Palmyra, with a dozen Arabs scattered 
 among its ruins, has less a look of desolation. The | 
 few stragglers in the streets add to its loneliness pro- , 
 
 ducing exactly the effect sometimes given to a wood 
 land solitude by the presence of a single bird. The 
 vast streets seem grown vaster and more dispropor 
 tionate the houses seem straggling to greater distan 
 ces the walk from the president s house to the capitol 
 seems twice as long and new faces are seen here and 
 there, at the doors and windows for cooks and inn 
 keepers that had never time to lounge, lounge no\v, 
 and their families take quiet possession of the unrented 
 front parlor. He who would be reminded of his de 
 parted friends should walk down on the avenue. The 
 carpet, associated with so many pleasant recollections 
 which has been pressed by the dainty feet of wits 
 and beauties to tread on which was a privilege and 
 a delight is displayed on a heap of old furniture, and 
 while its sacred defects are rudely scanned by the curi 
 ous, is knocked down, with all its memories, under the 
 hammer of the auctioneer. Tables, chairs, ottomans 
 all linked with the same glowing recollections go 
 for most unworthy prices; and while, humiliated with 
 the sight, you wonder at the artificial value given to 
 things by their possessors, you begin to wonder wheth 
 er your friends themselves, subjected to the same 
 searching valuation, would not be depreciated too! 
 Ten to one, if their characters were displayed like 
 their carpets, there would come to light defects as un 
 suspected ! 
 
 The person to whom this desolation is the " un- 
 kindest cut" is the hackney-coachman. "His voca 
 tion" is emphatically gone ! Gone is the dollar made 
 every successive half hour! Gone is the pleasant sum 
 in compound addition, done "in the head," while wait 
 ing at the doors of the public offices! Gone are the 
 short, but profitable, trips to the theatre ! Gone the 
 four or five families, all taken the same evening to par 
 ties, and each paying the item of" carriage from nine 
 till twelve !" Gone the absorbed politician, who would 
 rather give the five-dollar bill than wait for his change ! 
 the lady who sends the driver to be paid at "the bar;" 
 the uplifted fingers, hither and thither, which embar 
 rass his choice of a fare gone, all! The chop-fallen 
 coachy drives to the stand in the morning and drives 
 home at noon; he creeps up to Fuller s at a snail- 
 pace, and, in very mockery of hope, asks the home 
 ward-bound clerk from the department if he wants a 
 coach! Night comes on, and his horses begin to be 
 lieve in the millenium and the cobwebs are wove 
 over his whip-socket. 
 
 These changes, however, affect not unpleasantly the 
 diplomatic and official colony extending westward from 
 the president s. The inhabitants of this thin-sprinkled 
 settlement are away from the great thoroughfare, and 
 do not miss its crowds. The cessation of parties is to 
 them a relief from night-journeys, colds, card-leavings, 
 and much wear and tear of carriage-horses. They 
 live now in dressing-gowns and slippers, read the re 
 views and the French papers, get their dinners com 
 fortably from the restaurateurs, and thank Heaven that 
 the capitol is locked up. The attaches grow fat, and 
 the despatches grow thin. 
 
 There are several reasons why Washington, till the 
 rnontli of May, spite of all the drawbacks in the pic 
 ture delineated above, is a more agreeable residence 
 than the northern cities. In the first place, its climate 
 is at least a month earlier than that of New York, and, 
 in the spring, is delightful. The trees are at this mo 
 ment (the last week in March) bursting into buds; 
 open carriages are everywhere in use; walking in the 
 sun is oppressive ; and for the last fortnight, this has 
 been a fair chronicle of the weather. Boston and 
 New York have been corroded with east winds, mean 
 time, and even so near as Baltimore, they are still 
 wrapped in cloaks arid shawls. To those who, in 
 reckoning the comforts of life, agree with me in making 
 climate stand for nine tenths, this is powerful attrac 
 tion. 
 
218 
 
 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 Then the country about Washington, the drives 
 and rides, are among the most lovely in the world, 
 the banks of Rock creek are a little wilderness of 
 beauty. More bright waters, more secluded bridle 
 paths, more sunny and sheltered hill-sides, or finer 
 mingling of rock, hill, and valley, I never rode among. 
 Within a half hour s gallop, you have a sylvan retreat 
 of every variety of beauty, and in almost, any direction ; 
 and from this you come home (and this is not the 
 case with most sylvan rides) to an excellent French 
 dinner and agreeable society, if you like it. You have 
 all the seclusion of a rural town, and none of its petty 
 politics and scandal all the means and appliances of 
 a large metropolis, and none of its exactions and lim 
 itations. That which makes the charm of a city, and 
 that for which we seek the country, are equally here, 
 and the penalties of both are removed. 
 
 Until the reflux of population from the Rocky 
 mountains, I suppose Washington will never be a me 
 tropolis of residence. But if it were an object with 
 the inhabitants to make it more so, the advantages I 
 have just enumerated, and a little outlay of capital and 
 enterprise, would certainly, in some degree, effect it. 
 People especially who come from Europe, or have 
 been accustomed to foreign modes of living, would be 
 glad to live near a society composed of such attractive 
 materials as the official and diplomatic persons at the 
 seat of government. That which keeps them away is, 
 principally, want of accommodation, and, in a less de 
 gree, it is want of comfortable accommodation in the 
 other cities which drives them back to Europe. In 
 Washington you must either live at an hotel or a 
 boarding-house. In either case, the mode of life is 
 only endurable for the shortest possible period, and 
 the moment congress rises, every sufferer in these de 
 testable places is off for relief. The hotels are crowd 
 ed to suffocation ; there is an utter want of privacy in 
 the arrangement of the suites of apartments ; the ser 
 vice is ill-ordered, and the prices out of all sense or 
 reason. You pay for that which you have not, and 
 you can not get by paying for it that which you want. 
 
 The boarding-house system is worse yet. To pos 
 sess but one room in privacy, and thai opening on a 
 common passage; to be obliged to come to meals at 
 certain hours, with chance table companions, and no 
 place for a friend, and to live entirely in your bedroom 
 or in a public parlor, may truly be called as abominable 
 a routine as a gentleman could well suffer. Yet the 
 great majority of those who come to Washington are 
 in one or the other of these two categories. 
 
 The use of lodgings for strangers or transient resi 
 dents in the city does not, after all the descriptions in 
 books, seem at all understood in our country. This 
 is what Washington wants, but it is what every city in 
 the country wants generally. Let us describe it as if 
 it was never before heard of, and perhaps some en 
 lightened speculator may advance us half a century in 
 some of the cities, by creating this luxury. 
 
 Lodgings of the ordinary kind in Europe generally 
 consist of the apartments on one floor. The house, 
 we will suppose, consists of three stories above the 
 basement, and each floor contains a parlor, bedroom, 
 and dressing-room, with a small antechamber. (This 
 arrangement of rooms varies, of course, and a larger 
 family occupies two floors.) These three suites of 
 apartments are neatly furnished ; bed-clothes, table- 
 linen, and plate, if required, are found by the proprie 
 tor, and in the basement story usually lives a man and 
 his wife, who attend to the service of the lodgers; 
 i. e., bring water, answer the door-bell, take in letters, 
 keep the rooms in order, make the fires, and, if it is 
 wished, do any little cookery in case of sickness. 
 These people are paid by the proprietor, but receive a 
 fee for extra service, and a small gratuity, at departure, 
 from the lodger. It should be added to this, that it is 
 not infra, dig: to live in the second or third story. 
 
 In connexion with lodgings, there must be of course 
 a cook or restaurateur within a quarter of a mile. 
 The stranger agrees with him for his dinner, to consist 
 of so many dishes, and to be sent to him at a certain 
 hour. He gives notice in the morning if he dines out, 
 buys his own wine of the wine-merchant, and thus 
 saves two heavy items of overcharge in the hotel or 
 boarding-house. His own servant makes his tea or 
 coffee (and for this purpose has access to the fire in 
 the basement), and does all personal service, such as 
 brushing clothes, waiting at table, going on errands, 
 &c., &c. The stranger comes in, in short, at a mo- 
 
 I ment s warning, brings nothing but his servant and 
 baggage, and finds himself in five minutes at home, 
 his apartments private, and every comfort and con 
 venience as completely about him as if he had lived 
 there for years. 
 
 At from ten to fourteen dollars a week, such apart 
 ments would pay the proprietor handsomely, and af 
 ford a reasonable luxury to the lodger. A cook would 
 make a good thing of sending in a plain dinner for a 
 dollar a head (or more if the dinner were more expen 
 sive), and at this rate, a family of two or more persons 
 might have a hundred times the comfort now enjoyed 
 at hotels, at certainly half the cost. 
 
 We have been seduced into a very unsentimental 
 chapter of " ways and means," but we trust the sug 
 gestions, though containing nothing new, may not be 
 altogether without use. The want of some such thing 
 
 I as we have recommended is daily and hourly felt and 
 
 j complained of. 
 
 THE FOUR RIVERS, 
 
 THE HUDSON THE MOHAWK THE CHENANGO THE 
 
 SUSQUEHANNAH. 
 
 SOME observer of nature offered a considerable re 
 ward for two blades of striped grass exactly similar. 
 i The infinite diversify, of which this is one instance, 
 | exists in a thousand other features of nature, but in 
 1 none more strikingly than in the scenery of rivers. 
 1 What two in the woild are alike ! How often does 
 I the attempt fail to compare the Hudson with the Rhine 
 the two, perhaps, among celebrated rivers, which 
 j are the nearest to a resemblance ? Yet looking at the 
 I first determination of a river s course, and the natural 
 j operation of its search for the sea, one would suppose 
 j that, in a thousand features, their valleys would scarce 
 I be distinguishable. 
 
 I think, of all excitements in the world, that of the 
 first discovery and explanation of a noble river, must 
 j be the most eager and enjoyable. P ancy " the bold 
 i Englishman, as the Dutch called Hendrich Hudson, 
 \ steering his little yacht, the Halve-Mane, for the first 
 time through the Highlands ! Imagine his anxiety 
 for the channel forgotten as he gazed up at the tower- 
 j ing rocks, and round upon the green shores, and on- 
 | ward, past point and opening bend, miles away into the 
 i heart of the country ; yet with no lessening of the 
 glorious stream beneath him, and no decrease of 
 promise in the bold and luxuriant shores ! Picture 
 him lying at anchor below Newburgh, with the dark 
 j pass of the " Wey-Gat" frowning behind him, the 
 I lofty and blue Catskills beyond, and the hill-sides 
 around covered with the red lords of the soil, exhibit 
 ing only less wonder than friendliness. And how 
 beautifully was the assurance of welcome expressed, 
 when the "very kind old man" brought a bunch of 
 arrows, and broke them before the stranger, to induce 
 him to partake fearlessly of his hospitality! 
 
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 219 
 
 The qualities of the Hudson are those most likely 
 to impress a stranger. It chances felicitously that the 
 traveller s first entrance beyond the sea-board is usually 
 made by the steamer to Albany. The grand and im 
 posing outlines of rock and horizon answer to his an 
 ticipations of the magnificence of a new world ; and if 
 he finds smaller rivers and softer scenery beyond, it I 
 strikes him but as a slighter lineament of a more en- I 
 larged design. To the great majority of tastes, this, I 
 too, is the scenery to live among. The stronger lines 
 of natural beauty affect most tastes ; and there are 
 few who would select country residence by beauty at 
 all, who would not sacrifice something to their prefer 
 ence for the neighborhood of sublime scenery. The 
 quiet, the merely rural a thread of a rivulet instead 
 of a broad river a small and secluded valley, rather 
 than a wide extent of view, bounded by bold moun 
 tains, is the choice of but few. The Hudson, there 
 fore, stands usually foremost in men s aspirations for 
 escape from the turmoil of cities; but to my taste, 
 though there are none more desirable to see, there 
 are sweeter rivers to live upon. 
 
 I made one of a party, very lately, bound upon a 
 rambling excursion up and down some of the river- 
 courses of New York. We had anticipated empty 
 boats, and an absence of all the gay company usually 
 found radiating from the city in June, and had made 
 up our minds for once to be contented with the study 
 of inanimate nature. Never were wiseheads more 
 
 when a Yankee settler hews me down twenty wood- 
 nymphs of a morning ! There lie their bodies, limb 
 less trunks, on the banks of the Mohawk, yet no Dutch 
 man stands sprouting into leaves near by, nor woollen 
 jacket turning into bark, as in the retributive olden 
 time! We are abandoned of these gods of Arcady! 
 They like not the smoke of steam funnels ! 
 
 Talking of smoke reminds me of ashes. Is there 
 no way of frequenting railroads without the loss of 
 one s eyes. Must one pay for velocity as dearly as 
 Cacus for his oxen ? Really this new invention is a 
 blessing to the oculists ! Ten thousand small crystals 
 of carbon cutting right and left among the fine vessels 
 and delicate membranes of the eye, and all this amid 
 glorious scenery, where to go bandaged (as needs 
 must), is to slight the master-work of nature ! Either 
 run your railroads away from the river courses, gentle 
 men contractors, or find some other place than your 
 passengers eyes to bestow your waste ashes ! I have 
 heard of " lies in smiles," but there s a lye in tears, 
 that touches the sensibilities more nearly ! 
 
 There is a drowsy beauty in these German flats that 
 seems strangely profaned by a smoky monster whisk 
 ing along twenty miles in the hour. The gentle canal- 
 boat was more homogeneous to the scene. The hills 
 lay off from the river in easy and sleepy curves, and 
 the amber Mohawk creeps down over its shallow gravel 
 with a deliberateness altogether and abominably out 
 of tune with the iron rails. Perhaps it is the rails out 
 
 mistaken. Our kind friend, Captain Dean, of the II of tune with the river but any way there is a discord. 
 Stevens, stood by his plank when we arrived, doing his j I am content to see the Mohawk, canal, and railroad 
 best to save the lives of the female portion of the j inclusive, but once a year. 
 
 1 ___ l_- _ ___ 1. ____ J . _ J .1 -wr 1 , , J , 
 
 crowd rushing on board ; and never, in the most palmy 
 days of the prosperity of our country, have we seen a 
 greater number of people on board a boat, nor a strong 
 er expression of that busy and thriving haste, which 
 is thought to be an exponent of national industry. 
 How those varlets of newsboys contrive to escape in 
 time, or escape at all, from being crushed or carried 
 off; how everybody s baggage gets on board, and 
 everybody s wife and child ; how the hawsers are 
 slipped, and the boat got under way, in such a crowd 
 and such a crush, are matters understood, I suppose, 
 by Providence and the captain of the Stevens but 
 they are beyond the comprehension of the passenger. 
 
 Having got out of hearing of " Here s the Star !" 
 "Buy the old major s paper, sir ?" " Here s the Ex 
 press!" "Buy the New-En/?" " Would you like a 
 New-Era, sir ?" " Take a Sun, miss ?" and a hun 
 dred such deafening ciies, to which New York has of 
 late years become subject, we drew breath and com 
 parative silence off the green shore of Hoboken, thank 
 ing Heaven for even the repose of a steamboat, after 
 the babel of a metropolis. Stillness, like all other 
 things, is relative. 
 
 The passage of the Hudson is doomed to be |je-wi it- 
 ten, and we will not again swell its great multitude of 
 describers. Bound onward, we but gave a glance, in 
 passing, to romantic Undercliff and Cro -Nest, hallow 
 ed by the sweetest poetry our country has yet com 
 mitted to immortality ; gave our malison to the black 
 smoke of iron-works defacing the green mantle of 
 nature, and our benison to every dweller on the shore 
 who has painted his fence white, and smoothed his 
 
 We reached the head waters of the Chenango river, 
 by what Miss Martineau celebrates as an " exclusive 
 extra," in an afternoon s ride from Utica. The latter 
 thrifty and hospitable town was as redolent of red 
 bricks and sunshine as usual ; and the streets, to my 
 regret, had grown no narrower. They who laid out 
 the future legislative capital of New York, must have 
 been lovers of winter s wind and summer s sun. They 
 forgot the troubles of the near-sighted (it requires 
 spectacles to read the signs or see the shops from one 
 side to the other); they forgot the perils of old women 
 and children in the wide crossings; they forgot the 
 pleasures of shelter and shade, of neighborly vis-a-vis, 
 of comfortable-lookingness. I maintain that Utica is 
 not a comfortable-looking town. It affects me like the 
 clown in the pantomime, when he sits down without 
 bending his legs by mere straddling. I would not 
 say anything so ungracious if it were not to suggest a 
 remedy a shady mall up and down the middle ! What 
 a beautiful town it would be like an old-fashioned 
 shirt bosom, with a frill of elms! Your children 
 would walk safely within the rails, and your country- 
 neighbors would expose their " sa ace," and cool their 
 tired oxen in the shade. We felt ourselves compen 
 sated for paying nearly double price for our " extra," 
 by the remarkable alacrity with which the coach came 
 to the door after the bargain was concluded, and the 
 politeness with which the "gentleman who made out 
 the way-bill," acceded to our stipulation. He bowed 
 us off, expressed his happiness to serve us, and away 
 we went. 
 
 The Chenango, one of the largest tributaries to the 
 
 lawn to the river; and sooner than we used to do by 1 1 Susquehannah, began to show itself, like a small brook, 
 some five or six hours (ere railroads had supplanted jj some fifteen or twenty miles from Utica. Its course 
 the ploughing and crawling coaches to Schenectady), II lay directly south and the new canal kept along its 
 we fed our eyes on the slumbering and broad valley i bank, as deserted, but a thousand times less beautiful 
 
 of the Mohawk. 
 
 How startled must be the Naiad of this lovely river 
 to find her willowy form embraced between railroad 
 and canal ! one intruder on either side of the bed so 
 sacredly overshaded ! Pity but there were a new 
 knight of La Mancha to avenge the hamadryads and ; 
 
 in its loneliness than the river, whose rambling curves 
 it seemed made to straighten. We were not in the 
 best humor, for our double-priced " extra" turned out 
 to be the regular stage ; and while we were delivering 
 and waiting for mails, and taking in passengers, the 
 troop of idlers at tavern-doors amused themselves with 
 
 water-nymphs of their wrongs from wood-cutters and i| reading the imaginative production called our "extra 
 contractors ! Where sleep Pan and vengeful Oread, \\ way-bill," as it was transferred, with a sagacious wink, 
 
220 
 
 SKETCHES OF TRAVEL. 
 
 from one driver s hat to the other. I thought of 
 Paddy s sedan-chair, with the bottom out. " If it 
 were not for the name of the thing," said he, as he 
 trotted along with a box over his head. 
 
 I say we were not in the best of humors with our 
 prompt and polite friend at Utica, but even through 
 these bilious spectacles, the Chenango was beautiful. 
 Its valley is wide and wild, and the reaches of the 
 capricious stream through the farms and woods along 
 which it loiters, were among the prettiest effects of 
 water scenery I have ever met. There is a strange 
 loneliness about it ; and the small towns which were I 
 sprinkled along the hundred miles of its course, seem 
 rather the poineers into a western wilderness, than j 
 settlements so near the great thoroughfare to the lakes. ! 
 It is a delicious valley to travel through, barring 
 "corduroy." Tre-men-dous ! exclaims the traveller, 
 as the coach drops into a pit between two logs, and 
 surges up again Heaven only knows how. And, as 
 my fellow-passenger remarked, it is a wonder the road 
 does not echo " tree-mcnd-us /" 
 
 Five miles before reaching the Susquehannah, the 
 road began to mend, the hills and valleys assumed the 
 smile of cultivation, and the scenery before us took a 
 bolder and broader outline. The Chenango came 
 down full and sunny to her junction, like the bride, 
 who is most lovely when just losing her virgin name, 
 and pouring the wealth of her whole existence into 
 the bosom of another; and, untroubled with his new 
 burden, the lordly Susquehannah kept on his majestic 
 way, a type of such vainly-dreaded, but easily-borne 
 responsibilities. 
 
 At Binghamton, we turned our course down the 
 Susquehannah. This delicious word, in the Indian j 
 tongue, describes its peculiar and constant windings, || 
 and I venture to say that on no river in the world are i! 
 the grand and beautiful in scenery so gloriously mixed. 
 The road to Owego follows the course of the valley 
 rather than of the river, but the silver curves are con- j; 
 stantly in view; and, from every slight elevation, the ! 
 majestic windings are seen like the wanderings of a 
 vein, gleaming through green fringes of trees, andj; 
 circling the bright islands which occasionally divide 
 their waters. It is a swift river, and singularly living 
 and joyous in its expression. 
 
 At Owego there is a remarkable combination of bold 
 scenery and habitable plain. One of those small, 
 bright rivers, which are called "creeks" in this coun- I 
 try, comes in with its valley at right angles, to the vale 
 and stream of the Susquehannah, forming a star with i 
 
 three rays, or a plain with three radiating valleys, or a 
 city (in the future, perhaps), with three magnificent 
 exits and entrances. The angle is a round mountain, 
 some four or five hundred feet in height, which kneels 
 fairly down at the meeting of the two streams, while 
 another round mountain, of an easy acclivity, lifts 
 gracefully from the opposite bank, as if rising from 
 the same act of homage to Nature. Below the town 
 and above it, the mountains, for the first time, give in 
 to the exact shape of the river s short and capricious 
 course ; and the plain on which the town stands, is 
 enclosed between two amphitheatres of lofty hills, 
 shaped with the regularity and even edge of a coliseum, 
 and resembling the two halves of a leaf-lined vase, 
 struck apart by a twisted wand of silver. 
 
 Owego creek should have a prettier name for its 
 small vale is the soul and essence of loveliness. A 
 meadow of a mile in breadth, fertile, soft, and sprink 
 led with stately trees, furnishes a bed for its swift 
 windings ; and from the edge of this new tempe, on 
 the southern side, rise three steppes, or natural ter 
 races, over the highest of which the forest rears its 
 head, and looks in upon the meeting of the rivers, 
 while down the sides, terrace by terrace, leap the small 
 streamlets from the mountain-springs, forming each 
 again its own smaller dimple in this loveliest face of 
 Nature. 
 
 There are more romantic, wilder places than this 
 in the world, but none on earth more habitably beauti 
 ful. In these broad valleys, where the grain-fields, 
 and the meadows, and the sunny farms, are walled in 
 by glorious mountain sides, not obtrusively near, yet 
 by their noble and wondrous outlines, giving a per 
 petual refreshment, and an hourly-changing feast to 
 the eye in these valleys, a man s household gods 
 yearn for an altar. Here are mountains that, to look 
 on but once, "become a feeling" a river at whose 
 grandeur to marvel and a hundred streamlets to lace 
 about the heart. Here are fertile fields, nodding with 
 grain ; " a thousand cattle" grazing on the hills here 
 is assembled together, in one wondrous centre, a spe 
 cimen of every most loved lineament of Nature. Here 
 
 | would I have a home ! Give me a cottage by one of 
 these shining streamlets upon one of these terraces, 
 that seem steps to Olympus, and let me ramble over 
 these mountain sides, while my flowers are growing, 
 and my head silvering in tranquil happiness. He 
 
 ! whose Penates would not root ineradicably here, has 
 no heart for a home, nor senses for the glory of Na- 
 
 ; ture ! 
 
 END OF LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL. 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 113 
 
 cut from one end that is sewed on to the other ! But, 
 out on monotony, and hey for Saratoga ! If there be 
 an approach to a gayety-paradise on earth if there be 
 a place where the mortifications of neighborhood are 
 forgotten, and " people s natural advantages" are prom 
 inent and undisputed if there be, this side Heaven, 
 a place where it is worth while to dress, worth while 
 to be pretty, worth while to walk, talk, and particu 
 larly and generally outdo 
 
 " The snowy swans that strut on Isca s sands," 
 
 it is sandy Saratoga Marvin s United States Hotel ! 
 Take your papa there, " for his health," my dear 
 belle! "And tell him, too," that it was the well- 
 expressed opinion of the philosopher Bacon, that 
 "money, like manure, is offensive if not spread-" 
 Tell your mamma to tell him how pale he is when he 
 wakes in the morning! Tell the doctor to prescribe 
 Congress water without the taste of the cork! Tell 
 him, if he does not, and you are not let go with a 
 chaperon, you will do something you shudder to 
 think of bolt, slope, elope, with the first base 
 
 " Arimaspian who, by stealth, 
 Will from his wakeful custom purloin 
 The guarded gold" 
 
 to which you are the heiress ! For it is credibly and 
 currently reported " in high circles," that the coming 
 season at Saratoga is to be of a crowded uncomforta- 
 bleness of splendor that was reserved for the making 
 fashionable, by Mr. Van Buren, of the " United 
 States" and its dependant colonies. 
 
 Among the alleviations to passing a summer in 
 town (misericordia pro nobis . ) is the completion of 
 Mr. Stevens s Gothic cottage at the lip of the Elysian 
 Hoboken, where are to be had many good things, of 
 course, but where (I venture to suggest) it would be a 
 bliss ineffable to be able to get a good breakfast! What 
 a pleasure to cross the ferry, and, after a morning 
 ramble in that delicious park, to sit down in the fresh 
 air volant through the galleries of that sweet cottage, 
 and eat (if nothing more) a nice roll with a good cup 
 of French coffee ! A restaurateur there would make 
 a fortune, I do think. Bring it about, Mr. "Person 
 Concerned," and you shall lack neither our company 
 nor a zealous trumpeter. 
 
 THE CLOISTER. 
 
 Committee (solus). Oh, most beset of brigadiers! 
 Most civil of military men ! (for half a firm, the most 
 yielding partner of my acquaintance!) whett, oh re 
 sponsible general, will you get through with your^?r- 
 ticular callers and come to confab ? True, 1 have 
 dined, and can wait! True, there are joint letters to 
 answer! True, I can listen, and look out into the 
 back yard ! Hark ! Syphax, my black boy, loquitur. 
 
 Syphax (to the general). Shall I cut out them 
 favorable notices from the exchanges, sir? 
 
 Brigadier. Those favorable notices, Syphax! 
 
 Heavens ! what an unfeeling man ! For the love 
 of pity, corrupt not the innocent grammar of the lad, 
 my dear brigadier! Out of seven black boys sent me 
 for trial by the keeper of an intelligence-office, six, to 
 my disgust, spoke with the painful accuracy of Doc 
 tor Pangloss. The last, my inestimable Syphax, 
 whom that finished brigadier would fain bring to his 
 own level of heartless good grammar was ignorant 
 (virtuous youth!) even of the sexes of pronouns! He 
 came to me innocent; and, I need not say to any 
 writer to any slave of the rule-tied pen to any man 
 
 cabined, cribbed, confined, as are public scribblers 
 to case and number, gender and conjugation, participle 
 present, and participle past I need not say, to such 
 a victim, what an oasis in the desert of perfection was 
 the green spot of a black boy s cacology ! Oh, to 
 the attenuated ear of the grammar-ridden! to the 
 tense mood of unerring mood and tense what a lux 
 ury is an erring pronoun what a blessed relief from 
 monotony is a too-yielding verb, seduced, from its sin 
 gular antecedent, by a contiguity of plural! Out on 
 perfectionists! Out on you, you flaw-less brigadier! 
 Correct your own people, however! Inveigle not my 
 Syphax into rhetoric ! Ravish not from my use the 
 one variation, long-sought and chance-found, from the 
 maddening monotone of good grammar! 
 
 And this brings to my mind "(if I get time to jot it 
 down before the brigadier comes to cloister) a long- 
 settled conviction of my own, that the corrections in 
 American manners brought about by the criticisms of 
 Trollope and others, have been among the worst in 
 fluences ever exercised upon the country. Gracious 
 heaven ! are we to have our national features rasped 
 off by every manner-tinker who chooses to take up a 
 file ! See how it affects the English to laugh at their 
 bloat of belly and conceit, their cockney ignorance 
 and their besotted servility to rank. Do they brag 
 less, and drink less beer ? Do they modify their Bow- 
 bell dialect one hair, or whip off their hats with less 
 magical celerity when spoken to by a lord? Not a 
 bit! They will be English till they are smothered 
 with Russians English ghosts (those who die before 
 England is conquered by Russia), with English man 
 ners, at doomsday. They are not so soft as to be 
 moulded into American pottery, or German pottery, 
 or French pottery, because an American, or a Ger 
 man, or a Frenchman, does not find them like his own 
 country s more common utensils ! Where do national 
 features exist? Not among well-bred people! Not 
 where peas are eaten with a fork and soup-plates left 
 untilted by the hungry ! All well-bred people are 
 monotonously alike whatever their nation and what 
 ever the government they have lived under. Differ 
 ences of manners are found below this level, and the 
 mistake the lamentable mistake lies in submitting 
 to correct this low level by the standard of coxcombs! 
 What a picture would be without shade what music 
 would be without discords what life would be with 
 out something to smile at what anything would be 
 without contrast that are we becoming by our sensi 
 tiveness to criticism. Long live our (B u\l-judice) 
 " abominations." Long live some who spit and whit 
 tle, some who eat eggs out of wine-glasses and sit on 
 four chairs, some who wear long naps to their hats, 
 some who eat peas with a knife, some who pour out 
 their tea into saucers, and some who are civil to un 
 protected ladies in stage-coaches! Preserve some 
 thing that is not English, oil, my countrymen ! 
 
 [Enter the brigadier.] 
 
 Brigadier. Forgive me, my dear boy what is that 
 I see written on your paper about Russia ? 
 
 The Russie men are round of bodies, fully-faced, 
 The greatest part with bellies that overhang the waist, 
 Flat-headed for the most, with faces nothing faire, 
 But brown by reason of the stoves and closeness of the aire." 
 
 So says old Tuberville, the traveller and now to busi 
 ness. Jot ! 
 
 Committee. What ? 
 
 Brigadier. Jot that we are glad to offer to the 
 patrons of the "Mirror Library" a book they will 
 thank us for, at every line " THE PLEA OF THE MID 
 SUMMER FAIRIES," and other admirable poems, preg 
 nant with originality and richness, by Thomas Hood. 
 His poetry is the very attar, the aroma, the subtlest 
 extract of sweet imagination. " EUGENE ARAM" is 
 one of those included in this volume. 
 
 Committee. What else are you glad of? 
 
114 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 Brigadier. Glad to be sorry that Parke Godwin s 
 fine analytical mind and bold foundry of cast-iron 
 English are not freighted with a more popular sub 
 ject than Fourierism worthy though the theme be 
 of the regard of angels whose approbation don t pay. 
 Politics should be at a lift to deserve the best ener 
 gies of such a writer but they are not, and so he 
 turns to philosophy. 
 
 Committee. But he should play Quintus Curtius, 
 and write up politics to his level, man ! The need is 
 more immediate than the need of Fourierism. 
 
 Brigadier. My dear boy, give away nothing but 
 what is saleable. Gifts, that would not otherwise have 
 been money in your purse, are not appreciated par 
 ticularly advice. We love Godwin let us love his 
 waste of ammunition, if it please him to waste it. 
 
 Committee. 
 
 " Then let him weep, of no man mercified," 
 
 if his brains be not coinable to gold, /would make 
 a merchant of genius! The world has need of brains 
 like Godwin s, and need makes the supply into com 
 modity, and commodity is priceable. That s the logic 
 by which even my poor modicum is made to thrive. 
 Apropos what do you think of these lines on "bells," 
 by Duganne? A poet. I should say: 
 
 " Ye melancholy bells, 
 Ye know not why ye re ringing- 
 See not the tear-drops springing 
 From sorrows that ye bring to mind, 
 Ye melancholy bells. 
 
 " And thus ye will ring on 
 To-day, in tones of sadness ; 
 To-morrow, peals of gladness ; 
 Ye ll sound them both, yet never feel 
 A thrill of either one. 
 
 " Ye ever-changing bells ! 
 Oh many ye resemble, 
 Who ever throb and tremble, 
 Yet never know what moves them so 
 Ye ever-changing bells." 
 
 Brigadier. Kernel-ish and quaint. But, my dear 
 boy, 
 
 " twilight, soft arbiter 
 Twixt day and night," 
 
 is beginning to blur the distinctness of the cheeks on 
 that apron drying upon the line in the back yard. 
 Shall we go to tea? 
 
 The opening of the exhibition at the National Acad 
 emy is like taking a mask from one of the city s most 
 agreeable features. And it is only those who live in 
 the city habitually, and ivho live as fast as the city does, 
 who are qualified to enjoy it with the best apprecia 
 tion. Did you ever notice, dear reader, how behind 
 the tide you feel, on arriving in town, even after an j 
 absence of a week how whirling and giddy your sen- 
 sntions are how many exciting things there seem for I 
 you to do how " knowing" and ahead-of-you" seem j 
 all the takers-coolly whom you meet- how incapable 
 you are of any of the tranquil pleasures of the me 
 tropolis, and with what impatient disgust you pnss any 
 exhibition which would subtract you, mind and body, 
 from the crowd. It is not for strangers, then, that the j 
 exhibition is the highest pleasure. It is for those who ! 
 have laid behind them the bulk of the city excite 
 ments in a used-up heap to whom balls are nuisances, 
 theatres sntiety, concerts a bore, Broadway stale, 
 giants, dwarfs, and six-legged cows, "familiar as your [ 
 hand." It is only such who have the cool eye to look 
 critically and enjoyingly at pictures. It is for such 
 that Durand has laid into his landscape the touch that ; 
 was preceded by despair for such that Ingham elab 
 orates, and Page strains invention, and Sully woos the 
 
 ! coy shade of expression. And, truth to say, it is not 
 | one of the least of the gratuitous riches of existence, 
 that while we are sifting away the other minutes of 
 the year in commonplace business or pleasure, forget 
 ful of art and artists, these gifted minds are at work, 
 producing beautiful pictures to pamper our eyes with 
 in spring ! If you never chanced to think of that 
 before, dear reader, you are richer than you thought! 
 Please enclose us the surplus in bankable funds ! 
 Ehem! 
 
 There are more portraits in the exhibition than will 
 please the dilettanti but hang the displeased ! We 
 would submit to a thousand indifferent portraits, for the 
 accident of possessing a likeness of one friend unex 
 pectedly lost. For Heaven s sake, let everybody be 
 painted, that, if perchance there is a loved face 
 marked, unsuspected by us, for heaven, we may have 
 its semblance safe before it is beyond recall! How 
 bitter the regret, the self-reproach, when the beautiful 
 joy of a household has been suddenly struck into the 
 I grave, that we might have had a bright image of her 
 j on canvass that we might have removed, by holding 
 | converse wiih her perpetuated smile, the dreadful 
 image of decay that in sad moments crowds too closely 
 upon us! For the sake of love and friendship, let 
 that branch of the art, now in danger of being dispar 
 aged by short-sighted criticism let it be ennobled, for 
 the sacred offices it performs ! Is an art degrading to 
 its follower which does so much which prolongs the 
 presence of the dead, which embellishes family ties, 
 which brightens the memory of the absent, which 
 quickens friendship, and shows the loved, as they were 
 before ravage by sadness or sickness ? There should 
 rather be a priesthood of the affections, and portrait- 
 painters its brotherhood holy for their ministering 
 pencils. 
 
 We have a customer in Andover, to whose attention 
 particularly we commend the truly delicious poetry of 
 " The Sacred Rosary," as some atonement for having 
 inveigled him into the purchase of the " Songs of the 
 Bard of Poor Jack." That mis-spent shilling troubled 
 our friend, and he wrote us a letter and paid eighteen 
 pence postage to complain of it! but non omnia pos- 
 sum-us omnes (we can t play possum with all our sub 
 scribers), and we humbly beg our kind friend (who 
 j lives where we learned our Latin) to refresh his piety 
 ! with the "Rosary," and forgive the Dibdin. The 
 j apology over, however, we must make bold to say that 
 j of all the publications of the " Mirror Library," this 
 collection of Dibdin s songs has sold the best. It has 
 been indeed what our Andover friend scornfully calls 
 " a catch-penny affair," and we wish there were (what 
 there never will be) another catch-penny like it. No 
 by Castaly ! such a book will never again be written ! 
 If ever there was honest, hearty, natural, manly feel 
 ing spliced to rhyme, it is in these magnificent songs. 
 England s naval glory her esprit-dc-man-o -war hei 
 empire of the sea lies spell-bound in that glorious 
 song-book ! She owes more to Dibdin than to Chat- 
 j ham or Burke as much as to Howard or Wilber- 
 force! Ah, dear Anonym of Andover, you have 
 never hung your taste out to salt over the gunwale ! 
 Fou don t know poor Jack. Find out when your 
 lease of life is likely to run out go first to sea read 
 Dibdin understanding!}-, c poimori!" 
 
 The proprietor of the " Connecticut pie depot" 
 \ (corner of Beekman and Nassau), writes us that he 
 will be happy to have us " call and taste his pies when 
 we are sharp-set," and that he hails from Boston and 
 takes a pride in us. So we do in him. though, for a 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 115 
 
 puff, our pen against his rolling-pin for a thousand 
 pound ! He evidently thinks us " the cheese," for he 
 says he wishes to be noticed in our " dairy of town 
 trifles." Well, sir, we don t " fill our belly with the 
 east wind," nor eat pies, since we left Boston, but we 
 rejoice in your pie-ous enterprise, and agree, with you, 
 to consider ourselves mutually \\iejlour of the city we 
 come from. Apropos we can do our friend a service 
 which we hope he will reciprocate by opening a sub 
 scription-book in his pie-magazine, and procuring us 
 five hundred subscribers (payments invariably in ad 
 vance). A young lady has written to us, imploring 
 the Mirror s aid in reforming the prog at fashionable 
 boarding-schools. There are symptoms of a " strike" 
 for something better to eat in these coops of chicken- 
 angels, and the establishment of a " Connecticut pie 
 depot" seems (seems, madam, nay, it is !) beautifully 
 providential ! We can not trace our anonymous note 
 to any particular school, but we hereby recommend 
 to the young ladies in every "establishment," "nun 
 nery," and "seminary," to "hang their aprons on the 
 outer wall," and hoist in our friend s pastry, on trial. 
 The French pockets will be filled the first day gratis, 
 we undertake to promise. The second day and after, 
 of course, the bill will be presented to tante or the 
 music-master. 
 
 There are poems which the world "does not wil 
 lingly let die," but which this same go-to-bed world, 
 tired of watching, covers quietly up with the ashes of 
 neglect, and leaves to grow as black as the poker and 
 tongs of criticism that stand unused beside them. 
 Stop the first twenty men (gentlemen, even) whom you 
 see in the street, and probably not one can tell you 
 even the argument of Goldsmith s great poem ! And 
 the " pourquoy Sir Knight" is simply that " The 
 English Poets," in six formidable volumes, are too 
 much for cursory readers to encounter! The poems 
 and passages they would "thumb," if they could light 
 readily on them, are buried up in loads of uninterest 
 ing miscellany. They want the often-quoted, unde 
 niable, pure fire, raked out of this heap of embers. 
 Our last number of the Mirror Library begins a sup 
 ply of this want, under the title of " LIVE COALS, 
 raked from the Embers of English Poetry." 
 
 The following advertisement is cut from " The 
 Sun :" 
 
 " NOTICE To the gentleman that pushed the man 
 over the curbstone in Broadway, at the corner of Lis- 
 penard street, with his dinner-kettle in his hand, from 
 this time forth never to lay his hand on David Brown 
 again." 
 
 Now, what other country than America would do 
 for David Brown ? God bless the land where a man 
 can pour his sorrows into the sympathizing bosom of 
 a newspaper! Query does not this seventy -five cent 
 vent supersede altogether the use of that dangerous 
 domestic utensil, a friend ! Add to this the invention 
 of an wnexpressive substitute for gunpowder, and the 
 world will be comparatively a safe place. 
 
 Point of fact we delight in all manner of old things 
 made young again, particularly in all kinds of vene 
 rable and solemn humbug " showing green." If ever 
 there was a monster, grown out of sight of its natural 
 and original intention a bloated, diseased, wen-cov 
 ered, abate-worthy nuisance of a monster, it is the 
 newspaper. The first newspaper ever published in 
 France was issued by a physician to amuse his pa 
 tients. "To this complexion" would we reduce it 
 once more. Fill them with trifles, or with important 
 news (the same thing as to amusement), and throw a 
 
 wet blanket, and keep it wet, over congressional twad 
 dle, polemical fubbery, tiresome essays, political cob- 
 webberies yes, especially politics ! People some 
 times cease to talk when there are no listeners, and it 
 might be hoped, with God s blessing and help ("Ave 
 Maria ! ora pro nobis !") that congress members would 
 cease to put us to shame as well as to bore us to ex 
 tinction, if there were no newspapers to fan their 
 indignant eloquence. It is a query worth sticking a 
 pin in how many nuisances would die (beside con 
 gress) if newspapers were restored to their original 
 use and purpose? Any symptom of this regenera 
 tion inexpressibly refreshes us. Hence our delight at 
 the advertisement of David Brown. Who would not 
 rather know that a man had run against David Brown 
 at the corner of Lispenard street, with a dinner-kettle 
 in his hand (and had better not do it again), than to 
 read the next any ten speeches to be delivered on the 
 rowdy floor of congress ! We have said enough to 
 give you a thinking-bulb, dear reader, and now to our 
 next but 
 
 Apropos we wish our friend Russell Jarvis, or any 
 analytically-minded and strong writer half as good, 
 would prepare us a speculative essay on the query 
 which is the natural inference of the late Washing- 
 | ton doings, viz. : how curious must be the process 
 of mind by which a gentleman (there are one or 
 two in congress) could be brought to consent to 
 stay there hail from there frank from there have 
 his letters addressed there in any way or shape take 
 upon himself a member s share of this lustrum s ob 
 loquy and abomination ? Not but what we think it 
 I wholesome we do ! You can not cure festers with- 
 j out bringing them to a head. The wonder is, how 
 gentlemen are willing to be parts of a congress that is 
 only the nation s pustule the offensive head and vent 
 of all the purulent secretions of the body politic ! 
 Thank God, they are coming to a head to this head, 
 if need be (it is rather conspicuous, it is true like 
 a pimple on a lady s nose, which might be better situ 
 ated) to have the worst issue of our national shame 
 on the floor of Congress ; but better so than pent 
 U p better so than an inward mortification precursory 
 of dissolution ! For our own part (though we are no 
 politician, except when stung upon our fifteen mil 
 lionth of national feeling), we think we could do very 
 well without a congress. We believe the supreme 
 court capable of doing all the legislative grinding ne 
 cessary for the country, or, if that would not do, we 
 think a congress convened only for the first three 
 months of every administration, in which speaking 
 was prohibited, would answer all wise ends. We are 
 over-governed. The reign of grave outrages and 
 solemn atrocities is at its height, and Heaven overturn 
 it, and send us, next after, a dynasty of laws " left to 
 settle," and trifles paramount. Amen. 
 
 We are not of the envious and discontented nature 
 
 of a muttou candle, blackest at the wick that is to 
 
 say we do not think every spot brighter than the one 
 
 we live in. We seek means to glorify New York 
 
 since we live here. Pat to our bosom and business, 
 
 therefore, comes a letter " from a gentleman to his 
 
 sister," apotheosistic (we will have our long word if we 
 
 like) of this same pleasant municipality. Our friend 
 
 i and anonymous correspondent does not go quite 
 
 | enough into detail, and we cut off his long peroration, 
 
 in which he compares himself very felicitously to "a 
 
 bottle of soda-water, struggling for vent." "Now 
 
 ! then," he continues, " to uncork (off hat) and let my 
 
 1 1 exuberant contents be made manifest : 
 
 " Once more in New York dear, delightful New 
 ! York ! the spot of all spots and the place of all places ! 
 1 the whereabout which the poet dreamed of when he 
 
116 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 Bpoke of the first flower of the earth and first gem of 
 the sea ; and once more here, too, not to look upon 
 it for a moment, and then depart, but to stay, lo live, 
 to be, to exist, and to enjoy. You do not know the 
 love I bear New York ; it is, beyond all others, the 
 place where existence is ; where time passes, not like 
 a summer s dream, but as time should pass, in a suc 
 cession (constant) of employments and enjoyments. 
 
 " I love the city, as I love everything loveable, with 
 a full and abiding joyousness. There is nothing pas 
 sing, or in still life, but goes to make up the sum. The 
 very odor of the atmosphere, which might shock your 
 delicate, country-bred olfactories, is more to me than 
 all the fragrance of all the green fields that were ever 
 babbled of. 
 
 "The country is all very well, in its way. 1 love 
 that also at a distance, or in moderate quantities. 
 Homeopathetically, as it were as, for instance, the 
 Battery. I love to walk there, to inhale the sea- 
 breeze, and enjoy the sweet smell of the growing 
 grass and the budding trees; and to look over to Long 
 Island or New Jersey, and see the country blooming 
 (afar oft ) under the loving smiles of spring. Yes, the 
 country is, no doubt, very desirable for a few days in 
 the summer for a change, or to come back from with 
 a new relish for the real life that awaits one on his 
 return. 
 
 " I love to stand on the docks, of a still evening, and 
 hear the tide rush past. The very rime of the sea 
 drifts in music to my ear. The rushing of the free 
 and ever-changing waters, the glad dancing of its 
 waves, the glowing reflex of the stars in their bosom, 
 the rifting foam, and the swift gushing sound, like a 
 continuous echo, stir up the dormant poetry of one s 
 soul, and send him, with a glowing heart, back to his 
 lonely home, happier for the sweet communion. 
 
 "All the time, too, is thought-filled; there is no 
 standing still here. Business is part of life, perhaps 
 life itself, and it is constantly going on around and 
 with us. If I choose a walk, Broadway is full of 
 life never-ending, never-tiring. So all over the city. 
 One can not stroll anywhere but he meets with some 
 thing new, something strange, something interesting; 
 some chapter opens, which has till then been to him 
 as a dead letter. 
 
 " Somebody, who wanted to express in strong lan 
 guage that nature might be improved by art, has said 
 that < God made the country, man made the town. 
 How true it is! And, beyond that, here are congre 
 gated hundreds of thousands of featherless bipeds 
 (men and women), of whom, perhaps, you know not 
 a dozen, but every one of whom, in your walks, is to 
 you a study. 
 
 "Then, again, the very situation the form, struc 
 ture, and appliances of New York, are delightful 
 and fascinating beyond compare. Such a beautiful 
 promontory, swelling up from two magnificent rivers, 
 rising from either, gently, to the palace-lined thor 
 oughfare on its crown; and crossbarred with a thou 
 sand avenues to both rivers inlets for pure air, ever 
 fresh rising from the sea, blowing over and into every 
 habitation, and freighted with health, like the gales 
 of Araby the blest. 
 
 "Nature has been wonderfully prodigal of her be- 
 stowments on this spot, and the hand of man has not 
 been niggardly in completing what the fair dame com 
 menced, by putting a worthy superstructure on her 
 noble foundation. I have often thought of the remark 
 made by some one, that the man who first stood on 
 Manhattan island, and looked around him with an eye 
 and a mind that could comprehend and appreciate its 
 wonderful beauties and advantages, must have held 
 his very breath in wonder and admiration. 
 
 " And then more of its present beauties to the 
 dwellers therein. Should one, in hot and dusty 
 weather, choose to change the scene, how joyous a 
 
 j trip to Sandy Hook ! Often have I stood on the 
 I heights, and looked off on old Ocean, holding in my 
 
 gaze one of the most glowing scenes that this world 
 j shows. The wide and boundless view the noble 
 I Hudson and the city above, the green beauties of 
 j Long island before, and the heaven ocean below, spread 
 [ out in its grand sublimity; the sails of all nations 
 
 flashing on its breast and blending in its glory, 
 
 ; like a mirror where the Almighty s form 
 
 Glasses itself. 
 
 "Oh who, with such a prospect before him, feels 
 not his soul elevated and his thoughts sublimated ! 
 Thoughts, indeed, too wild for utterance, are born, 
 not for others, but to sink deep in the heart and leave 
 him a wiser if not a better man. 
 
 " This, you will say is the country ah, but it is the 
 country of New York, close by, and part of city life 
 itself. Then there is another country (yours is only 
 one) over the other shoulder, where the moderate 
 sum of sixpence will waft us to the delightful walks, 
 the green lawns, the shady groves, and cool zephyrs 
 of dear, charming Hoboken. Doubly dear to a New- 
 Worker. Fresh smelling and fragrant in the spring, 
 cool and breezy in the hot days of summer ; and. with 
 the rustling leaf of autumn, dear in its remembered 
 beauties, its fading foliage, and the ever-sounding sur 
 ges that beat with melancholy moan at the foot of its 
 beetling crags and sloping lawns. Ah, lovely Hobo- 
 ken, 
 
 None know thee but to love thee, 
 Nor name thee but to praise ! 
 
 "Mr. Stevens, we owe you much; and we can af 
 ford to owe ; but we pay you a large annual interest 
 in gratitude and praise. Tis all we have, we can no 
 more. " 
 
 We also cut off the irrelevant tail of our friend s 
 letter (tipped with a " G."), and beg another from him 
 with a finer nib to his pen going more into the individ 
 ualities. If you would like a subject suggested (exem 
 pli gratia) give us the hopes, trials, temptations, and 
 aspirations of a Broadway shop-tender. They seem 
 fine youths, those silk-and-suavity venders. Who 
 knows what is their pny and prospects ? How can 
 they afford such good manners and fine waistcoats ? 
 I What is the degree of friendly acquaintance bred be- 
 j tween them and the ladies in the course of a bargain ? 
 j Have they legs (below the counter) ? Do they rnar- 
 
 1 ry? Have they combinations, and esprit de corps? 
 
 Which are the honorablest goods to sell? As to the 
 " beating down" of grass-cloth and stockings is it 
 interesting, or more so than the cheapening of calico? 
 When do they eat ? Do handsomer ones get higher 
 wages? May their "cousins" come to see them? 
 How do they look with hats on ? What is the dura 
 tion of their chrysalis the time of metamorphosis 
 from boy to " boss" and what are their several sta 
 ges of mental discipline ? The most saleable book in 
 the world would be the autobiography of a Broadway 
 clerk (dry goods, retail). Let this " verbum" be 
 " sat" to a sapienti. 
 
 We have undertaken to make ourselves acquainted 
 with the island on which we live. We mean to give 
 our readers, bit by bit, the results of our observations 
 upon the customs, manners, geography, and morals 
 of the island of New York, as noted down in our ram 
 bles. We do not take our walks in chapters, howev 
 er, and we shall, therefore, be equally miscellaneous 
 and disorderly in our arrangement of topics. It is a 
 curious island, and some of the inhabitants are curi 
 ous islanders. Those who only walk up the city s 
 backbone (Broadway) know very little of its bowels 
 and extremities. Little by little, we hope to make 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 117 
 
 out its truthful anatomy veins, pulses, functions, and 
 arteries. 
 
 We should like to know, among other things, why 
 the broadest, most accessible, most convenient street 
 in New York, the noble avenue of W^:ST BROADWAY, 
 is entirely given up to negroes? The rage is to move 
 up town but there are people who are not rajahs, 
 who are willing to pay high rents people who don t 
 care where the fashionable people go to (while they 
 live), and who simply desire to reside in broad streets 
 for air and light, and above all, to be near, if possible, 
 to their business. Now the narrowest part of this be- 
 streeted island is of course the most wholesome, as the 
 air from the two rivers comes over fewer chimneys 
 and gutters. The broader the street the better, both 
 for health and show. The access to a street should 
 be good, and West Broadway, in its whole length, is 
 parallel to Broadway, and approachable by Chambers 
 street, Murray, Warren, and all the best short ave 
 nues of the city. It has, besides, near by, the beau 
 tiful " lungs" of St. John s park, the hospital grounds, 
 and College Green, and is crossed at its upper end by 
 the broad ventilator of Canal street. Where, on the 
 island, is there a street more calculated to be whole 
 some dirty as it now is from the character of its oc 
 cupants ? It would require, it is true, an entire renova 
 tion, before any one person, desirous of good neigh 
 borhood, could live there but that renovation (we 
 prophesy it) will be done. Some speculator will buy 
 lots in it, and call a meeting of proprietors to suggest 
 a general turn-out and improvement, or some one of 
 the Wall street Astor-hood will buy the street, from 
 lamp-post to lamp-post, and fill it with fashionable 
 dwelling-houses. The up-town tide will partly ebb, 
 the natural advantages of the Battery and Lower 
 Broadway will regain their ascendency, and the san 
 dalled foot of the island will again wear jewels on its 
 instep. 
 
 Pearl street (if Manhattan lie on his back) would be 
 the main artery of his left leg, and Franklin square, 
 which occupies a natural knoll, would be his knee- 
 pan. This gives you some idea of its geography, 
 though, probably, dear reader, if you are not in the 
 dry-goods line, you have never visited it. It is a cu 
 rious place historically, and was once the aristocratic 
 centre of the city. There are still two famous houses 
 in it one the old Walton mansion, and the other a 
 building that was once the headquarters of Washing 
 ton. In the yard of the latter house is a pear-tree of 
 Washington s planting. And, by the way, our com 
 panion (in a first visit which we made to Franklin 
 square a day or two since) told us a story that may be 
 new or old, touching an attempt made to poison 
 Washington. A dish of some vegetables from a for 
 cing-bed was put upon the table for dinner, and the 
 general, remarking that growths so much earlier than 
 was natural were not wholesome, threw them out of 
 the window. Some pigs in the yard were poisoned 
 by eating them. Colonel Stone can tell us if the 
 story be true always presuming it is not in some 
 veritable history of New York.* The Walton house 
 is still a noble-looking mansion, with its English mould 
 ings in good preservation, and is now occupied as a 
 lodging-house. The headquarters of Washington are 
 tenanted by a pianoforte builder, and all around looks 
 trafficky and dull. 
 
 One of the favorite spring amusements of the peo 
 ple of New York (of course of the silly people, of 
 whom there are at least several) is to attend the auc 
 tion sales at private houses. We heard of one silly 
 
 " A recollection 1ms come back to us very reluctantly (on 
 its way to bed with Lethe), that of having seen this anecdote 
 in Dunlap s History. 
 
 but honest woman (they are often honest) who, on be 
 ing rallied a day or two since at having so passed the 
 last fortnight, said, " La! it s so amusing to see how 
 people live !" And, truly enough, you may find out 
 by this process how every class "furnishes," which is 
 a considerable feature in living, and it is wonderful 
 with how little ceremony and reluctance the house 
 hold gods are stripped to the skin and exposed to the 
 gaze of a public invited in by the red flag of an auc 
 tion ! It is possibly a very natural feature of a new 
 country to have no respect for furniture ; but to our 
 notion it comes close after "honor thy father and 
 mother" to honor the chairs and tables at which they 
 have eaten and prayed, counselled and blessed. And 
 even this were easier got over the selling of the mere 
 mahogony and damask if the articles were removed 
 to a shop and disassociated from the places where 
 they had become hallowed. But to throw open 
 sacred boudoirs, more sacred bedrooms, breakfast- 
 rooms, bath-rooms, in which (as has been the case 
 once or twice lately) lovely and cherished women 
 have lived, and loved, and been petted, and secluded, 
 and caressed to let in vulgar and prying curiosity to 
 sit on the damask seats and lounge on the silken so 
 fas, and breathe the air impregnated with perfume 
 that could betray the holiest secrets if it had a tongue 
 and then to stand by while an auctioneer chaffers, 
 and describes, and tempts the vulgar appetite to buy! 
 Why, it seems to us scarce less flagrant and atrocious 
 than the ride of Lady Godiva desecrating to those 
 who sell out, and a profanity and license in those who 
 go to see ! 
 
 It is a famous time, now, to buy cheap second-hand 
 furniture, by the way for the fashion of French fur 
 niture has come in lately, with a rush, and the nabobs 
 are selling out from sideboard to broom, and furnish 
 ing anew a. la Francaise, from skylight to basement. 
 By a year from this time there will be more houses in 
 New York above a certain cost and up to a marquis s 
 taste and wants, than either in Paris or London. 
 (And this estimate is not extravagant, for only " the 
 few" abroad spend money as"///e many" do here.) 
 There is a dry-goods retailer in Broadway, who has a 
 house furnished as sumptuously, and in as good taste, 
 as the most extravagant nobleman s house in London. 
 The thing is done very simply. The dimensions of 
 the house, and an accurate description of the way it is 
 lighted and arranged, are sent out to the first uphol 
 sterers of Paris men who are artists in their way, 
 and who have furnished for royalty and rank all over 
 Europe. Carte blancfte as to expense, and out comes 
 your " interior," complete, lustrous, and as good as 
 his majesty s wanting only (really only) the society 
 suitable to enjoy it which is like (something like) a 
 very fine play without a symptom of an audience. 
 
 So marked is this change of taste, and the new 
 school of furnishing, that the oldest and most wealthy 
 of the cabinet warehouse-men in this city has com 
 pletely abandoned the making of English furniture. 
 He has sold out an immense stock of high-priced arti 
 cles at auction, and sent to France for models and 
 workmen to start new with the popular taste. It is a 
 great chance, by the way, to establish the European 
 fashion of hotels garnis for strangers giving them the 
 temporary hire of houses ready furnished, by the 
 week or month their meals sent to them from a res 
 taurateur. Such investments bring large profits ; and 
 the convenience of the custom, to families coming 
 from the south or west, and wishing for greater priva 
 cy and more room than they can get at a hotel, is very 
 great. So may good come out of an extravagant foily. 
 
 THE ANTIQUE CABINET. Whether it is a perverse 
 pleasure in seeing costly things out of place, or an 
 aversion we have to new things (except new thoughts, 
 
118 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 new toothpicks, and new ladies gear), or the natural | 
 love for miscellany common to all mankind whether i 
 it is for one of these reasons, or for a little of each 
 we are in the habit of bestowing the loose ends of our 
 idleness upon the warehouses of second-hand furniture. 
 Nothing grows upon a man like a habit of choice 
 between such entertainment and any society merely 
 tolerable the preference given, of course, to the 
 shabby but more suggestive damask and mahogany. 
 Ah, the variety of things people sell to get money ! 
 What curious places shops are, where they will buy 
 anything that is "sacrificed!" How entertaining to 
 mousle about among old portraits, broken ornaments, 
 miniatures soiled by wearing in the bosom, unstrung 
 harps, battered statuary, and furniture that has kept 
 proud company! How curious-minded must become 
 at last these dealers in nothing with a gloss on ! How 
 exactly they must know the duration and value of 
 fashionable newness ! How well they must under 
 stand the pitiless transit from ornament to lumber 
 how well the sudden chill of the money-test to arti 
 cles valued, till then, only by affection ! But we can 
 not afford a digression here. 
 
 Resting our umbrella on the steps to a high bed 
 the other day, and our chin on our umbrella (a 
 posture taken for the leisurely perusal of a crowded 
 corner of an old furniture shop), we began to pick out 
 from the mass, an outline of an old cabinet secretary. 
 Now we have been that degree of vagabond, that we 
 have to confess having fairly topped our meridian with 
 out the knowledge of more luxury in writing-tools than 
 any table, any pen, and any conceivable vagary of ink- 
 holder. It is true, that while travelling we got ac 
 customed to fastening the other end of our thought- 
 string to an old black trunk a companion to our 
 hithering and thithering for seven long years and, by 
 dint of habit in many a far country, we could ill write, 
 at last, where that old portmanteau was not ready to 
 receive our eyes as they came off the paper. But, in 
 reforming our baggage for matrimony, the old trunk 
 was degraded to a packing-box, and at present it 
 peacefully reposes, smelling of quinces, and holding 
 the modest Sunday-clothes of our farmer s dame at 
 Glenmary. Save and since this, our travelled and 
 " picked pen of countries" has been without appanage 
 or equipage, wearing all its honors upon its bare 
 plume of service, and, like a brave and uncomplaining 
 soldier, scorning to claim the dignities which should 
 have been plucked down by its deservings. Well 
 well ! " the whirligig of time !" " Pen !" we mentally 
 ejaculated, as we made out the odd corners and 
 queer angles of the antique cabinet " thy proper 
 honors are in flower! Thou shall do thy work in 
 luxury after this ! What pigeon-holes can do to 
 make thee comfortable what drawers, what slits, 
 what niches and nooks is as good as done! Rise 
 to-morrow rich and glorious!" 
 
 We had the advantage to be favorably known to the 
 furniture-dealer. He was a man who rejoiced in our 
 promotions. -We bought the old secretary without 
 chaffer, " at the lowest figure," and requested that it 
 might be dug out from its unsold neighbors, and sent 
 home, not too vigorously dusted. Here it is. We 
 are writing upon its broad let-down leaf, and our pen 
 struts like a knight wearing for the first hour his well- 
 earned spurs. It is an old chamberer the secretary 
 brown-black mahogany, inlaid with sandal-wood 
 and has held money, and seen frowns and smiles. In 
 its experience (for which we would give a trifle) we 
 ourself are but a circumstance. The hand that first 
 wrote at it is cold ; and, for the hands that are to 
 write at it hereafter, nature may not yet have sorted 
 out the nails. Our own hand will give over its cun 
 ning and turn to ashes, meantime. One man s life 
 and using are but of the duration of a coat of varnish, 
 to this old cabinet s apprehension. Ah " we !" 
 
 "By the pricking of our thumbs," the brigadier is 
 mounting the stairs. Since the possession of our 
 first operative luxury, we have taken a disgust to the 
 cloister conceiting that the smell of soap, from the 
 lavendering in the back yard, gave a stain to such 
 flowers of imagination as were born there. The brig 
 adier says we grow superfine. Soil! It is time 
 after "taking it as it comes" for so many years. Be 
 sides, we must have something to set off against his 
 epaulettes ! Glory in your staff, dear brigadier, but 
 leave us our cabinet! 
 
 Brigadier (entering out of breath). Paff ! paff! 
 How the breath of life flutters with this vicinity to 
 heaven ! Paff! paff! prophetic nature ! How are 
 you, my dear upster? 
 
 Committee. You see the ink wet in my pen I was 
 just about to dash into a critique. That straw-colored 
 volume of poems, by Mrs. Lewis, shows feathers 
 from Pegasus; though, as usual with lady-poems, 
 without any parings from the hoof any trace of that 
 part of the old steed that touches earth. It takes 
 wrongs and sufferings like those of Mrs Norton, 
 L. E. L., and Mrs. Hemans to compound a poetess 
 of any reality and strength. Soil, that, if torn up with 
 a ploughshare, may yield the heavy grain of anguish, 
 will yield nothing but daisies and white clover, lying 
 undisturbed in the sunshine. Yet this same white 
 clover is very sweet grazing, and Mrs. Lewis s is a very 
 sweet book. May she never write a better one by 
 having suffered enough to " qualify /" 
 
 Brigadier. Amen ! I say, rny boy, what a clever 
 thing Inman is making of his magazine ! The May 
 number is beautiful. AVhat a good pick he has 
 among the magazine-writers ! 
 
 Committee. Excellent but he uses himself up 
 with making his correspondents work, and sets too 
 little value on his own writings. He wants a sub. for 
 drudgery. He could, with his strong fabric of good 
 sense (which is genius), and his excellent critical pow 
 ers, make all the rest of the " COLUMBIAN" subser 
 vient to his own articles. 
 
 Brigadier. Tell him so. 
 
 Committee. Will he stand it as your firm ally ? 
 
 Brigadier. Bless your soul, he has told you many 
 a plainer thing in print. 
 
 Committee. Has he ? Here goes, then : 
 
 " For Jove s right hand, with thunder cast from sky, 
 Takes open vengeance oft for secret ill." 
 
 But now we think of it, you are bound to be particu 
 larly good-natured, my dear brigadier. With what 
 enthusiasm they received your song the other night 
 at the Tabernacle "The Pastor s Daughter!" 
 That, and " Boatman haste," and " Cheerly o er the 
 mountains," are three songs, that, skilfully built, as 
 they are, upon three of our most exquisite national 
 melodies, and intrinsically beautiful in words and mu 
 sic, will be classics. A twill has published them charm 
 ingly, too. What lots of money you ought to make 
 out of these universalities ! 
 
 Brigadier. My dear boy, stop praising me at a ju 
 dicious place for praise, like " heat, hath three de 
 grees : first, it indurateth or maketh strong; next, 
 it maketh fragile; and lastly, it doth encinerate or 
 calcinate, or crumble to pieces." 
 
 Committee. Subtle tactician ! How you have cor 
 rupted my rural simplicity! Mff mff mff! I 
 think I sniff mint ! The wind sets this way from 
 Windust s. How it exhausts the juices to talk pleas 
 antly with a friend ; and, by-the-way, soft crabs are in 
 the market. What say to a dish of water-cresses, 
 and such other things as may suggest themselves 
 we two over the way ! We are in too good humor 
 to dine in public to-day. We should seem to lack 
 modesty, with this look of exultation on our faces. 
 
 Brigadier. To dinner, with all my heart for the 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 119 
 
 Mirror lias an appetite the philosopher s tranquil : 
 appetite idem contemptui et admirationi habitus. 
 
 Committee. I go to shave off this working face, 
 my dear general ! Please amuse yourself with my 
 warm pen. Our correspondents, " l r ." and " E. K." 
 two " treasures trove," if such periodical ever had 
 should be gracefully and gratefully thanked. Do it 
 while I am gone, with your usual suaviter. 
 
 [Brigadier writes.] 
 
 I GAVE in to a friend s proposition to " poke about," 
 lately, one afternoon, and, by dint of turning every 
 corner that we had never turned before, we zig-zagged [ 
 ourselves into a somewhat better acquaintance with j 
 the Valley of Poverty lying between Broadway and 
 the Bowery. On our descent we stopped at the Tombs, 
 making, however (as many do), rather an unsatisfacto 
 ry visit. We lacked an Old Mortality to decipher the i 
 names and quality of the tenants. It is a gloomy ac 
 cess to Justice, up the dark flight of steps frowned over 
 by these Egyptian pillars : and the resolute-looking 
 constables, and the anxious-looking witnesses and 
 prisoners friends who lean and group at the bases of 
 the columns, or pace up and down the stony pave 
 ment, show, with gloomy certainty, that this is not the 
 dwelling of " Hope, with eyes so fair." "We turned | 
 out of the dark portico into the police court a dingy j 
 apartment with the dust on the floor not like other | 
 unswept apartments, but ground into circles of fine j 
 powder by hurried and twisting footprints. No culprit 
 was before the court, and the judge s terrors were laid | 
 on the desk with his spectacles. We looked about in I 
 vain for anything note-worthy. Even the dignity of 
 " the presence" was unrecognised by us, for (not be- j 
 ing in the habit of uncovering where there is neither j 
 carpet, lady, nor sign of holy cross) we were obliged j 
 to be notified by the " hats off , gentlemen," of the one 
 other person in the room apparently a constable on 
 duty. 
 
 A side door led us downward to the watch-house, 
 which occupies the basement of the Egyptian struc 
 ture. It is on a level with the street, and hither are 
 brought newly-caught culprits, disturbers of the peace, 
 and, indeed (so easy is disgrace), anybody accused by 
 anybody ! It is not an uncoinmon shape of malice 
 (so the officer told us in answer to my query) for the 
 aggressor in a quarrel to give the sufferer in charge 
 to the watchman and have him locked up ! The 
 prisoner is discharged, of course, the next morning, 
 the complainant not appearing, to prosecute ; but 
 passing a night in a cell, even on false accusation, is 
 an infliction which might fall with some weight on an 
 honest man, and the power to inflict it should not be 
 quite so accessible " thinks I to myself." (I made 
 a mental promise to get better information on the sub 
 ject of arrests, and generally on the subject of the draw 
 ing of the first line between " ourselves" and the 
 guilty. With Miss Lucy Long s privilege, I shall 
 duly produce what I can gather.) 
 
 On application at the door of the prisons, we were 
 informed nonchalantly (and figuratively, I presume) 
 that it was " all open," and so indeed it seemed, for 
 there was no unlocking, though probably the hinges 
 would have somehow proved reluctant had a prisoner 
 tried the swing of them. We walked in to the prison- 
 yard unattended, and came first to the kitchens. A 
 very handsome woman, indeed, was singing and washing 
 at a tub, and up and down, on either side of the large 
 boilers, promenaded a half-dozen men in couples 
 sailors and loafers, " in for a month," as we were after 
 ward informed. They looked as happy as such men 
 do elsewhere, I thought, and wearing no prison-dress, 
 they seemed very little like prisoners. It is consider 
 ed quite a privilege, by the way, to be employed in 
 the kitchen. 
 
 The inner prison-door looked more like one s idea 
 of a " Tolbooth," and by it we gained the interior of 
 the Tombs. Gadsby s Hotel at Washington is a very 
 correct model of it, on a somewhat large scale. The 
 cells all open upon a quadrangle, and around each of 
 the four stories runs a light gallery. In the place of 
 Gadsby s fountain is a stove and the turnkey s desk, 
 and, just as we entered, one of the prisoners was cook 
 ing his mess at the fire with quite an air of comfort 
 and satisfaction. It chanced to be the time of day 
 when the cell-doors are thrown open, and the tenants 
 were mostly outside, hanging over the railings, smo 
 king, chatting with each other and the keepers, and 
 apparently not at all disturbed at being looked at. 
 Saunders, the absconding clerk, whose forgery made 
 so much noise not long ago, was pointed out to us, 
 and a more innocent-looking fair-haired mother s boy 
 you could scarce pick out of a freshman class. He 
 has grown fat in the Tombs. His accomplice, Raget, 
 the Frenchman, is not much older, but he looked 
 rather more capable of a clever bad trick, and French 
 man-like, he preserved, even in prison, the dandy air, 
 and wore his velvet dressing-cap with as jaunty an air 
 of assurance as if just risen to an honest man s break 
 fast. He is handsome, and his wife still voluntarily 
 shares his cell. A very worthy-looking old gentle 
 man leaned at his cell-door, a celebrated passer of 
 counterfeit money ; and a most sanctimonious and 
 theological-student-looking young man was pacing 
 one of the galleries, and he had been rather a success 
 ful swindler. Truly " looks is nuffin," as Sam. Weller 
 was shrewd enough to discover. 
 
 We looked into one or two of the cells. To a man 
 who has ever suited his wants to the size of a ship s 
 state-room, they are very comfortable lodgings, and 
 probably a sailor would think quarters in the Tombs 
 altogether luxurious. Punishment of this kind must 
 be very unequal, until it is meted out by what a man 
 has been used to. (Till then, at least, it is better not 
 to steal !) Two or three of the cells were carpeted 
 and decked with pictures, and the walls of one I look 
 ed into were covered with drawings. Friends are 
 permitted, of course, to bring to prisoners any luxuries 
 except liberty ; and on the small shelf of another cell 
 we saw a pyramid of gingerbread the occupant, prob 
 ably, still a youth. 
 
 We passed over to the female prison. The cell- 
 doors were all open as in the other wards. But here 
 were strong symptoms that, however "it is not good 
 for man to be alone," it is much more unpalatable to 
 woman. A poor girl who had just been brought in, 
 and was about to be locked up, was pleading piteously 
 with the keeper not to be shut up alone. Seven others 
 who had just been sentenced and were " waiting for 
 their carriage" to go to Sing-Sing, sat around the 
 stove in the passage, and a villanous-looking set they 
 were. It is a pity women ever sin. They look so 
 much worse than we (probably from falling so much 
 farther) and degradation in dress is so markedly un- 
 [ becoming ! Most of the female cells were double- 
 bedded, I observed; and in one, which was very nice 
 ly furnished, stood a tall and well-dressed, but il 
 favored woman, who gave back our look of curiosity 
 with a ferocious scowl. It struck me as curious, that, 
 out of nineteen or twenty women whom we saw in the 
 Tombs, two thirds had scratched faces! 
 
 One of the police-officers joined us in the latter part 
 of our rounds, but too late for the thorough inquiries 
 I wished to make ; and promising myself another visit 
 to the Tombs, accompanied by some one in authority, 
 I made my envied and unobstructed exit. 
 
 It was a sunny spring afternoon, the kind of weather 
 in which, before all other blessings, to thank God for 
 
120 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 liberty. With a simultaneous expression of this 
 feeling as we cleared the prison steps, my friend and 
 I crossed the rail-track which forms the limit of the 
 New York Alsatia, and were presently in the heart 
 of the Five Points very much in the same " circle" 
 of society as we had just left, the difference probably 
 consisting in scarce more than cleanly restraint with 
 out want, and dirty liberty with it. Luckily for the 
 wretched, the open air is very nearly as pleasant for 
 half the year as the inside of a millionaire s palace, and 
 the sunshine is kept bright and the sky clear, and the 
 wind kept in motion alike for the pauper setting on 
 his wooden door-step and the rich man on the silk 
 ottoman in his window. Possibly, too, there is not 
 much difference in the linings of their content, and if 
 so, the nominal value of the distinctions between rich 
 and poor should be somewhat modified. At the Five 
 Points, to all appearance, nobody goes in doors except 
 to eat and sleep. The streets swarrn with men, wo 
 men, and children, sitting down. The negro-girls with 
 their bandanna turbans, the vicious with their gay- 
 colored allures, the sailors tired of pleasures ashore, 
 the various " minions of the moon" drowsing the day 
 away they are all out in the sun, idling, jesting, 
 quarrelling, everything but weeping, or sighing, or 
 complaining. The street is dirty, but no offence to 
 their nostrils ! The police officers are at the watch- 
 house door, always on the alert, but (probably from 
 possessing little imagination) the culprits of to-morrow 
 have no apprehension till apprehended. A viler place 
 than the Five Points by daylight you could not find, 
 yet to the superficial eye, it is the merriest quarter of 
 New York. I am inclined to think Care is a gentle 
 man, and frequents good society chiefly. There is 
 no print of his crow s-foot about the eyes of these out 
 casts. Who knows how much happiness there is in 
 nothing to dread the downfall well over? 
 
 We strolled slowly around the triangular area which 
 is the lungs of the Five Points, and, spoken to by 
 some one in every group we passed, escaped without 
 anything like a rudeness offered to us. The lower 
 story of every second house is a bar-room, and every 
 bench in them had a sleeper upon it. There are 
 some houses in this quarter that have been pretentious 
 in their day, large brick buildings with expensive cor 
 nice and mouldings one particularly at the corner of 
 the famous " Murdering Alley," which would bring 
 a six-hundred-dollar rent, " borne like Loretto s 
 chapel through the air" to a more reputable neighbor 
 hood. 
 
 We wound our way into the German quarter, which 
 occupies the acclivity between the Five Points and 
 the Bowery; but as I wish to connect, with a descrip 
 tion of this, some notices of the habits and resorts of 
 foreigners generally in New York, I shall drop the 
 reader at the corner. 
 
 It is right and wholesome that anew country should 
 be the paradise of the working-classes, and that ours is 
 so may be seen very readily. A wealthy merchant, 
 whose family is about leaving the city, sold out his 
 household furniture last week, and among other very 
 expensive articles, a magnificent piano. It was bid 
 off at a very fair price, and the purchaser turned out 
 to be the carman usually employed at the merchant s 
 warehouse! He bought it for his daughters. The 
 profits of this industrious man s horse and cart were 
 stated by this gentleman to approach three thousand 
 dollars a year ! 
 
 A drygoods palace, is now going up in Broadway, 
 which will probably exceed in splendor even the cele 
 
 brated shops which are the prominent features of 
 London and Paris. " Stuart" is the projecter, and 
 when it is completed, he will leave the low-browed 
 and dingy long-room in which he has amassed a 
 fortune, and start fresh in this magnificent " bezes- 
 tein." Extending back to a great depth, the new 
 structure is to open by a right angle on another 
 street, giving the facility of two entrances. "Shop 
 ping" is to be invested with architectural glories 
 as if its Circean cup was not already sufficiently 
 seductive ! 
 
 Even this chrysalis-burst of Stuart s, however, is a 
 less forcible exponent of the warrant for the importa 
 tion of luxuries, than the brilliant CURIOSITY SHOP of 
 TIFFANY and YOUNG. No need to go to Paris now 
 for any indulgence of taste, any vagary of fancy. It 
 is as well worth an artist s while as a purchaser s, 
 however, to make the round of this museum of luxu 
 ries. The models of most of these fancy articles have 
 been the perfected work approached with slow degrees, 
 even by genius. Those faultless vases, in which not 
 a hair line is astray from just proportion, are not the 
 chance work of a potter ! Those intricate bronzes 
 were high achievements/of art ! Those mignon gems 
 of statuary are copies of the most inspired dreams and 
 revelations of human beauty ! The arts are all there 
 their best triumphs mocked in luxurious trifles. 
 Poetry is there, in the quaint and lovely conception 
 of keepsakes and ornaments. Even refinements upou 
 rural simplicity are there, in the simple and elegant 
 basket furniture of Germany. The mechanic arts are 
 still more tributary in the exquisite enamel of port 
 folios, the contrivance of marvellous trinkets, the fine 
 carving and high finish of the smithcry of precious 
 metals. And then, nowhere such trim shape and 
 dainty color in gloves nowhere such choice dandy 
 appointments in the way of chains and canes nowhere 
 such rnollifiers of the hearts of sweethearts in the way 
 of presents of innumerable qualities, kinds, values, and 
 devices. I think that shop at the corner of Broadway 
 and Warren is the most curious and visit-worthy spot 
 in New York money in your pocket or no money. 
 And (left out of ourenumeration)- these enterprising 
 luxurifers have lately opened a second story, where 
 they show such chairs and work-tables as are last in 
 vented things in their way gorgeous and unsurpassa 
 ble. If the gods have any design of making me rich, 
 I wish it might be done before TIFFANY and YOUNG 
 get too old to be my caterers. 
 
 The theatrical astronomers have been much inter 
 ested in the birth of a new star lovely Mrs. Hunt of 
 the Park who has suddenly found her sphere and 
 commenced shining brilliantly in a range of characters 
 seemingly written for the express purpose of develop 
 ing her talent. Her arch, half-saucy, and yet natural 
 and earnest personation of Fortunio has "taken the 
 town." She had made the success also of a very in 
 different piece a poor transfer of the celebrated 
 Gamin de Paris in which she played the character 
 of a young rascal with a very good heart. The in 
 creasing applause with which Mrs. Hunt is nightly 
 greeted, after having had her light so long " hidden 
 under the bushel" of a stock actress, must be a high 
 gratification to " Strong-back," her husband, indeed, 
 his undisguised enjoyment of her clever acting (as he 
 plays with her in Fortunio), is as "good as a play" 
 and much more edifying. Success to her, pray I! 
 
 THE CABINET. With difficult and analytical de 
 liberation, we have, at last, duly distributed, to the 
 slits, pigeon-holes, drawers, and cavities of our an- 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 121 
 
 tique cabinet, their several and appropriate offices and 
 functions. It was a discipline of our talent at strategy, 
 was this job of office-giving for, to confess a weak 
 ness, we have become superstitious touching this ven 
 erable piece of furniture. It seems to us haunted ! 
 We have harbored it, now, some three weeks, and 
 have attempted with it, in that time, certain liberties 
 of arrangement which have been mysteriously cross- 
 purposed. Nothing about it would stay arranged. 
 We put our approved contributions into one pigeon 
 hole, and our doubtfuls into another, our to-be-noticed 
 into the upright slits, and our damned into the hori 
 zontal. We had a topic-drawer, and a drawer for 
 memoranda an oblivion-hole and a cave of ridicule. 
 We committed the proper documents to each, and 
 thanking Heaven for a tried secretary, commenced our 
 tranquil reign. A week had not glided by, before all 
 was in confusion. Every hole seemed to have kicked 
 out its tenant. The " approved" had scrambled in 
 with the "doubtfuls," and the "damned" into the 
 " noticed-hole," and " things to be written about," 
 " things to be laughed at," and " things to be forgot 
 ten," had changed places with marvellous and deci 
 sive celerity! We tried to restore order, but the con 
 fusion increased. Nothing would stay put. It was 
 manifestly a Tyler cabinet the doomed victim of dis 
 arrangement. 
 
 How order has been restored by what spirit-fin 
 gers our labels have been changed what intimations 
 as to the occupancy of each particular pigeon-hole 
 we have been compelled to regard is more than a 
 cabinet secret. We have had (to make a confession) 
 enough of telling ghost-stories. We have been called 
 on by all manner of men and women for our facts as 
 to the only glimpse into the spirit-world which we 
 ever described. It has cost us any quantity of brass 
 (in the wear of our knocker) to satisfy curiosity on 
 that subject. Enough that our pigeon-holes are la 
 belled with supernatural certainty. Our contributors, 
 now, will go to their appointed niche by a selective 
 destiny of which the responsibility is not ours. The j 
 rejecteds will be kind enough to note this, and curse 
 the cabinet not us! If their manuscripts lodge in 
 the upright slits of the " damned," it is because the 
 " accepted" would not hold, keep, or harbor them. 
 We wash our hands. 
 
 Our first three pulls from the topic-drawers are let 
 ters of complaint against postmasters for the postage 
 on the Mirror. According to the interpretation of the 
 law by some village postmasters, the government may 
 charge more for carrying the light weight of the Mir 
 ror than we for editing, printing, embellishing, and 
 wrapping it! The dtince in the Charlestown post- 
 office has compelled our subscribers to have their pa 
 pers sent to Boston, the nearest office presided over 
 by a gentleman. Another pig s head has control of 
 the Dedham office, and by-the-way, we clipped from 
 a Dedham paper, the following results of his readings 
 of the postage law : 
 
 Tweedledum. The postage at the Dedham office 
 for the New World newspaper of 32 pages, is " one 
 and 4-8ths of a cent." 
 
 Tweedledee. The postage for the New Mirror 
 newspaper of 16 pages, smaller in size, with a plate, is 
 "3 and 12-16ths, or twenty-four thirty-twoths of a 
 cent ." 
 
 Tweedledum second. The postage of a New Mir 
 ror extra, of 32 pages of smaller size, is five cents ! 
 
 There are one or two offices in the interior of this 
 state where the postage on a single copy of the Mir 
 ror has been charged fifteen cents of course leaving 
 it unredeemed in the office for the postmaster s use 
 as he expected ! 
 
 Now, pray (we ask of our friend the town-pump), 
 what is the use of the much-vaunted blessing of 
 "cheap literature," if the Government, or its petty 
 
 officials, are to stand between the publishers and the 
 people, making it dear by charging as much as its 
 whole value for carrying it ! Ought the government 
 to favor the circulation of intelligence or not ? Is it 
 proper to put the most oppressive, or the least oppres 
 sive construction, on all cases which affect the spread 
 of art and literature ? It is a fact, that revenue suffi 
 cient has been received at the port of New York in 
 the last two months to pay the whole expenses of the 
 government of the United States for one year. (So 
 we were authentically informed yesterday.) But, if 
 government must have more revenue, should not liter 
 ature (we scarce have patience to ask it) be the last 
 thing taxed ? Should not luxuries, vanities, goods 
 and chattels, be levied upon, to the crack of endurance, 
 j for the support of authority, before one ray of light is 
 stopped on its way to the public mind stopped to be 
 converted into a perquisite for the pocket of a petty 
 despot ? Of the postmasters in the larger cities there 
 is no complaint. They are generally enlightened 
 men. Mr. Graham here Mr. Green in Boston 
 throw no obstacles in the way of literature. On the 
 contrary, they do all in their power to promote and to 
 facilitate it. It is the petty, ignorant, peppercorn post 
 master of a small milage, who, clothed with a little 
 brief authority, and knowing that his oppressions 
 leaves the disputed article in his hands, reads the law 
 perversely, and at last shuts his whole neighborhood 
 against everything but newspapers ! 
 
 It is rather a reproach to a country whose boast and 
 whose reliance for the perpetuity of its free institu 
 tions is the superior intelligence of its population, that 
 monarchical countries (England and France) should 
 be before us in the reduction of taxes on the convey 
 ance of intelligence. It has struck us as extraordi- 
 | nary, too, that in the revising of postage laws, the in 
 crease of facilities for carrying the mails should not 
 have suggested a reduction of postage! But at any 
 rate leaving the laws as oppressive as they are we 
 call upon on enlightened statesman like Mr. Wick- 
 | liffe to insist upon the most lenient and most favorable 
 interpretation of them instead of having his admin 
 istration of the department distinguished, as it fias 
 been and is, for more postoffice oppressions than were 
 ever known before. The postage on the Mirror, for 
 one instance never before charged higher than the 
 newspapers which it scarce equals in weight now 
 varies (in some of the country postoffices) from Jive 
 to fifteen cents a gross " sliding-scale" of oppression 
 which must put a stop to our enterprise, if persevered 
 in, or cause us to give up cover and embellishment, 
 and circulate only the newspaper sheet, suited to the 
 petty letter of the law ! The great majority of post 
 masters, however, we are happy to add, charge mere 
 newspaper postage for the Mirror, "as the law" (prop 
 erly understood) " directs." 
 
 Our favorite adversary of the American finds pala 
 table fault with us for not appending Leigh Hunt s 
 name to such good things as we have copied from him. 
 Why should we ? We do not claim, them as origi 
 nal, nor are they leaded, as original contributions are 
 wont to be. The original object of giving the author s 
 name is lost (we conceive) at the distance of this 
 country from England. Leigh Hunt collects and 
 publishes in volumes all he writes, and his good things 
 are well labelled and guarded in his own country. 
 Neither his fame, his profit, nor his consequence (the 
 three ends he aims at), could be affected by adding his 
 name to what we occasionally take from him. Be- 
 aides tit-for-tat-\cz\\y considered the English steal 
 our articles by the dozen, and not only leave out our 
 name but appropriate them, by other initials, as their 
 own. They have at this moment a cheap edition of 
 ! our poems in the press without our leave or license, 
 | and we have helped swell most of the collections of 
 English poetry, with no clue K-ft for posterity to dis- 
 
122 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 cover that the author had also the honor of the 
 l( American s" frequent notice. Besides again, there 
 is a precedent in nature. The rice-birds of the south 
 are the bobolinks of the north losing their name and 
 copyright altogether by emigration. But now, having 
 defended our castle, we would fain express our pleas 
 ure at the tone and quality of the "American s" 
 fault-findings, invariably done in good taste, and con 
 fined always within legitimate critical bounds. This, 
 which in a Utopia, would be like praising water for 
 running down hill, is great praise in an unmitigated 
 republic. Fault found with our writings, without a 
 smutch on out-self, is " a thing to thank God on" as 
 things go. In the same breath let us laud the Boston 
 Atlas, who says of us, with something between a 
 pickle and a sweetmeat, that " he has one fault he 
 caters for his readers as for himself, and novelty or 
 eccentricity of expression sometimes usurps the place 
 which should only be accorded to thoughts of real 
 value." We kiss the rod. 
 
 (Enter the Brigadier.) 
 
 Brigadier. My dear boy, what could have pos 
 sessed you to get up so early ? Ten o clock, and the 
 last page all written, and not a subject touched, I ll 
 wager a julep, out of forty that were indispensable ! 
 Have you said no word of the " Mirror Library ?" 
 
 Cabinet. Supererogatory, brigadier! Why add 
 perfume to the violet ! Our selections for the Library 
 are appreciated they sell ! They advertise them 
 selves. They breathe sweetness. 
 
 Brigadier. Like the lady s breath, which made all 
 men exclaim, "Hereof be scent-bags made!" Eh, 
 my boy ? 
 
 Cabinet. The " Rubric of Love" that bundle of all 
 the delicious things ever written on the exciting sub 
 ject of love what but its very name and purpose is 
 wanting to make that universal] Everybody, whose 
 lease of love is not quite run out, must have a copy 
 of it ! 
 
 Brigadier. They must! they must ! It is a book, 
 charming arid cheap at any price. But 
 
 Cabinet. I ll stave oflf your "but" with a passage 
 from Milton s Comus, for I ll talk of work no more. 
 Did you know that the julep was to Milton what gin 
 was to Byron ? Listen ! 
 
 " And first behold this cordial julep here, 
 With spirits of balm and fragrant syrups mixed . 
 Not that Nepenthe which the wife of Thone 
 In Egypt gave to Jove-born Helena, 
 Is of such power to stir up joy as this, 
 To life so friendly, or so cool to thirst !" 
 
 Let us to this " Nepenthe" for we thirst with 
 Milton. 
 
 It would probably flabbergast most barn-door fowl 
 to be asked the meaning of eccalobeon, though, call it 
 the hatching of eggs, and they would laugh at being 
 acquainted with anything else. This big word has 
 mystified the posts and corners for a fortnight, and 
 yesterday my curiosity came to a head. I looked at 
 the bottom of the placard to see where the Eccalobeon 
 was to be exhibited, and soon found myself at a small 
 boy, keeping door opposite Washington Hall. (The 
 lad was so small and pale, by the way, that I thought 
 it warrantable to inquire whether he was produced by 
 eccalobeon. It appeared that he was not. He had a 
 regular mother, who " knew he was out.") 
 
 The chirruping of chickens saluted our ears as we 
 opened the door, and we observed that a corner of the 
 room was picketed off, where a dozen or two of these 
 pseudo-orphans (who had lost their mother by not 
 having been suffered to have one), were pecking at 
 gravel and evidently doing well. V"ery good manners, 
 for chickens, though, as the man in the menagerie 
 
 says, " where they got them mity knows." It began 
 to look very much as if mothers were a superfluity. 
 
 The centre of the room was occupied by the artifi 
 cial mother a square brick structure, containing 
 ovens in which lay the eggs in different stages of prog 
 ress. Pieces of carpet were suspended before the 
 openings, and, on raising them and putting in the 
 hand, the temperature within seemed to be at about 
 blood-heat. The keeper took out an egg that was 
 about to enter upon its new destiny of skewer and 
 gravy. The chicken had been twenty days on the 
 road from spoon-victual land, and its little beak was 
 just hardened sufficiently to prick a hole into the 
 world in which it was to be eaten. It lay in a heap, 
 rather confusedly packed, its thigh bone close at its 
 beak (apparently ready to be used as a fulcrum in pry 
 ing the crack open), and its downy feathers, wet and 
 forlorn, just lifted by respiration. This premature 
 removal of the shell, however, the man said, would be 
 fatal. The destiny of that little well-contrived heart, 
 as far as this world was concerned, was to furnish 
 material for this sigh and paragraph ! 
 
 In dishes upon the table were eggs, without shells, 
 in all the different stages of formation. In some the 
 veins were just reddening, and the vessels filling around 
 the heart, and in one, just opened, the newly-formed 
 heart, a red globule of the size of a pin s head, was 
 playing backward and forward, like a shuttle in a 
 miniature loom. With a glass, every phase of the 
 process of chicken-making could be distinctly seen. 
 The yolk, I was surprised to learn, does not contribute 
 to the material of the body the most valuable portion 
 of its existence, as an egg, being, therefore, of no value 
 to it in its after-life of chicken ! The provision is 
 certainly a wise one by which winged creatures, that 
 could not well fly if gravid like other animals, are 
 provided with a removable womb in the shape of an 
 egg, so that their parturition can be carried on outside 
 the body, and their buoyancy of locomotion is not in 
 terfered with. The comparison between the incuba 
 tion of fowls and human gestation immediately suggests 
 itself, and the superior convenience of the former to 
 the shape-destroying, beauty-marring, and painful ma 
 ternity of our race, seems a blessing to be envied, at 
 least by the beautiful. How long might women con 
 tinue ornamental, and to what age would their person 
 al loveliness beundiminished, if the care and suffering 
 of maternity could be delegated to a brick oven ! 
 
 I am inclined to think it is not peculiar to myself 
 to have a sabbath taste for the water-side. There is 
 an affinity, felt I think by man and boy, between the 
 stillness of the day and the audible hush of boundaries 
 to water. Premising that it was at first with the turn- 
 ed-up nose of conscious travestie, I have to confess 
 the finding of a sabbath ramble, to my mind, along 
 the river-side in New York the first mile toward 
 Albany on the bank of the Hudson. Indeed, if quiet 
 be the object, the nearer the water the less jostled the 
 walk on Sunday. You would think, to cross the city 
 anywhere from river to river, that there was a general 
 hydrophobia the entire population crowding to the 
 high ridge of Broadway, and hardly a soul to be seen 
 on either the East river or the Hudson. But, with a 
 little thoughtful frequenting, those deserted river-sides 
 become contemplative and pleasant rambling-places, 
 and, if some whim of fashion do not make the bank 
 of the Hudson like the Marina of Smyrna, a fashion 
 able resort, I have my Sunday afternoons provided for, 
 during the pigritude of city durance. 
 
 Yesterday (Sunday) it blew one of those unfolding 
 west winds, chartered expressly to pull the kinks out 
 of the belated leaves a breeze it was delightful to set 
 the face to strong, genial, and inspiriting, and smell- 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 123 
 
 ing (in New York) of the snubbed twigs of Hoboken. 
 The Battery looked very delightful, with the grass 
 laying its cheek to the ground, and the trees all astir 
 and trinkling, but on Sunday this lovely resort is full 
 of smokers of bad cigars unpleasant gentlemen to 
 take the wind of. I turned the corner with a look 
 through the fence, and was in comparative solitude 
 the next moment. 
 
 The monarch of our deep water-streams, the gigantic 
 44 Massachusetts," lay at her wharf, washed by the 
 waving hands of the waters taking leave of the Hudson. 
 The river ends under the prow or, as we might say 
 with a poetic license, joins on, at this point, to Ston- 
 ington so easy is the transit from wharf to wharf in 
 that magnificent conveyance. From this point up, 
 extends a line of ships, rubbing against the pier the 
 fearless noses that have nudged the poles and the 
 tropics, and been breathed on by spice-islands and ice 
 bergs an array of nobly-built merchantmen, that, 
 with the association of their triumphant and richly- 
 freighted comings and goings, grows upon my eye 
 with a certain majesty. It is a broad street here, of 
 made land, and the sidewalks in front of the new stores 
 are lumbered with pitch and molasses, flour and red 
 ochre, bales, bags, and barrels, in unsightly confusion 
 but the wharf-side, with its long line of carved figure 
 heads, and bowsprits projecting over the street, is an 
 unobstructed" walk on Sundays at least and more 
 suggestive than many a gallery of marble statues. 
 The vessels that trade to the North sea harbor here, 
 unloading their hemp and iron; andthesuperb French 
 packet-ships, with their gilded prows ; and, leaning 
 over the gangways and tafferails, the Swedish and 
 Norwegian sailors jabber away their Sunday s idle 
 time ; and the negro-cooks lie and look into the pud 
 dles, and altogether it is a strangely-mixed picture 
 Power reposing and Fret and Business gone from the 
 six-days whip and chain. I sat down on a short 
 hawser-post, and conjured the spirits of ships around 
 me. They were as communicative as would naturally 
 be expected in a tete-a-tete when quite at leisure. 
 Things they had seen and got wind of in the Indian 
 seas, strange fishes that had tried the metal of their 
 copper bottoms, porpoises they had run over asleep, 
 wrecks and skeletons they had thrown a shadow across 
 when under prosperous headway these and particu 
 lars of the fortunes they had brought home, and the 
 passengers coming to look through one more country 
 to find happiness, and the terrors and dangers, heart 
 aches and dreams, that had come and gone with each 
 bill of lading the talkative old bowsprits told me all. 
 I sat and watched the sun setting between two out 
 landish-looking vessels, and, at twilight, turned to go 
 home, leaving the spars and lines drawn in clear trace 
 ry on a sky as rosy and fading as a poet s prospects 
 at seventeen. 
 
 POSTOFFICE ABUSES. " It will none otherwise be," 
 says Sir Thomas More, "but that some stumblinge 
 blockes will always bee, by malicious folk, laid in good 
 people s way." Upon this text we propose to preach 
 a little sermon. 
 
 We have given in to the rage of the day, which is 
 the cheapening; of brain-work, not very willingly at 
 first, but heartily when our mind was made up to it. 
 The author is depreciated, and that is, perhaps, not 
 wellbut the public is benefited, and that is, very 
 certainly, good. Millions are touched by the length 
 ened wand of literature, who were beyond its reach 
 till it was eked out by cheapness. 
 
 The old Mirror, at five dollars per annum, occasion 
 ally embellished by a plate, was considered, by the 
 successive postmasters-general for twenty years, as a 
 ftopular good, which it was well worth their while to 
 favor and foster. It throve accordingly. Had Mr. 
 
 Wickliffe been postmaster-general when it was started, 
 it would not have lived a year ! With or without its 
 plate, with or without its cover, it went rigorously to 
 all parts of the country, at newspaper postage. No 
 village postmaster would have ventured to charge 
 more upon it; and if one had been pragmatical enough 
 to twist the law into a new reading for that purpose, 
 the very first complaint would have set it right, or re- 
 moved him. The editors had no trouble on the sub 
 ject, and they went on, pioneering the way into the 
 ; fields of art and elegant literature, and setting an ex- 
 1 ample which has been followed by the large troop of 
 ! tasteful periodicals now in existence, to the no small 
 1 diffusion of taste and intelligence. 
 
 Literature began to cheapen. It was proposed to 
 bring refinement, delicate sentiment, the ennobling 
 love of poetry, and an acquaintance with heroic mod 
 els through song and story, within reach of the hum- 
 I bier classes. New periodicals were started on this 
 basis. The old Mirror was superseded by cheaper 
 1 works works which, for tJiree dollars, gave as much 
 or more matter, but without embellishment, and of 
 very inferior typography and paper. That rage had 
 its day. The circulation of light literature was very 
 i much enlarged, and the people, of all classes, became 
 | interested in the current writing of the eventful pres 
 ent hour. This sudden spread of taste (we may say 
 in passing) was an ingredient thrown into the national 
 character which no doubt powerfully furthered what 
 it seems Mr. Wickliffe s sole mission to retard the 
 refinement and growing intelligence of the American 
 people. 
 
 But there was one more effort to be made. Com 
 plaints began to be heard that these cheap publica 
 tions were inelegant; that, sent forth damp, unpressed 
 and unembellished, they became smutched and grew 
 unsightly and hurtful to the eyes; and that more 
 careful workmanship and better type and paper were 
 desirable. The founder of the old Mirror took the 
 subject into examination and study. He made the 
 closest calculations of the cost of fair print and em 
 bellishment, and after much thought and inquiry, aid 
 ed by twenty years of experience and success, he ma 
 tured the plan of the present " NEW MIRROR." It 
 was the plan of a periodical to be suited to the now 
 refined taste of the "greatest number," as well as 
 adapted to the means of the greatest number, and the 
 uniting of these two desirable extremes brought its 
 price within a hair s breadth of its cost, and left the 
 feasibility of the project dependant wholly on the 
 chance of sailing at once, and smoothly, into an enor 
 mous circulation. The item of postage was not over 
 looked but as the New Mirror, cover and plate in 
 cluded, would scarce weigh half as much as the Al 
 bion, Spirit of the Times, and other weekly papers 
 which went for newspaper-postage, and it was no 
 heavier than the old Mirror, which went for the same 
 postage, the subject was not thought worth a doubt. 
 "\Vell the New Mirror made its appearance. A 
 type worthy of the choicest library, a cover conve 
 nient and elegant, a beautiful steel plate, and sixteen 
 pages of matter edited with careful experience and 
 labor, were offered to the public for this same man 
 ageable price of " three dollars a year!" The poor 
 est citizen need not now be without his fair share of 
 knowledge of the arts and literature. Nothing seemed 
 to stand in the way. The manifest high order of 
 style and spirit in the design of the work, combined 
 with its accessibility by cheapness, sent it abroad like 
 day-rising. Its circulation became, as it well needed 
 to be, enormous. And now, you ask, what is the 
 matter? And we will tell you, and we wish Mr. 
 Wickliffe to listen. 
 
 A gentleman called at our office a week or two 
 since, and bought a copy or two of the " Mirror Li- 
 brarv," expressing his regret that it was not conve- 
 
124 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 nient for him to take the Mirror. He lived in Ver- 
 non, Oneida county, New York, and the postage 
 charged him by Mr. J. W. Jenkins, the postmaster 
 of that place, was FOURTEEN CENTS on each copy 
 bringing the cost of the Mirror up to ten doltars twen 
 ty-eight cents a year ! We immediately addressed a 
 letter to Mr. J. W. Jenkins, inquiring respectfully 
 into the reason of this exorbitant charge, and that 
 letter Mr. J. W. Jenkins has never answered. The 
 gentleman assured us that several persons of his ac 
 quaintance in Vernon had been deterred from subscri 
 bing to the Mirror by Mr. J. W. Jenkins s overcharge 
 of postage. Again: we have discovered, in many in 
 stances, that our subscribers, after paying their sub 
 scriptions, have let their papers lie in the postoffice i 
 rather than submit to the extortionate charge of post 
 age, and the postmasters have never notified us of the 
 fact. Again : the Mirrors miscarry, to a degree that 
 shows more than neglect on the part of the postmas 
 ters or their subordinates. The complaints and stop 
 pages for this last reason are out of all precedent and 
 proportion. Again : the postage charged on the New 
 Mirror varies, as we have said before, from one cent 
 to fifteen, in some of the country postoffices, more or 
 less, according to the whim or tyranny of the dull of 
 ficial. The postmaster of Great Harrington is one 
 of those pigheaded dunces, charging postage on the 
 Mirror sent to the "Berkshire Courier" in direct vi 
 olation of the law which exempts papers from postage 
 on exchanges. 
 
 What is the remedy for these abuses ? We have 
 complained to Mr. WicklifTe of the irregularity and 
 extortion in regard to the postage on the Mirror, and 
 have received in turn a letter of sesquipedalian flum 
 mery, the compounding of which required the edu 
 cation of a Virginia politician; and, our letter once 
 answered, the abuse was probably never thought of 
 in the department. Yet it was a matter serious 
 enough to be worth Mr. Wickliffe s attention. These 
 petty tyrants with their "little brief authority," stand 
 between the public and the supply for public refinement 
 and intelligence. They change the cost of the cheap 
 est and most elegant publication of the day from 
 $3.52 (postage and all) to $10.28! They strangle 
 literary enterprise in the cradle. And for whose ad 
 vantage ? Not the government s for subscribers will 
 rather leave their Mirrors in the office than pay the ex 
 tortionate charge. For the benefit of the postmasters 
 themselves who, by this indirect fraud, obtain a nice 
 handful of periodicals weekly, to dispose of as one of 
 the perquisites of their office! This is surely a mat 
 ter worth Mr. Wickliffe s while to look after. 
 
 To the majority of postmasters we owe thanks rather 
 than reproaches. They have rightly judged that the 
 spirit of the law did not intend a difference of two 
 cents between a paper stitched and a paper not stitched 
 (a difference made by some of the Dogberry post 
 masters). They feel justly that if there is a question 
 as to the intention of a postage-law, the cause of in 
 telligence and literature is to have the benefit of the 
 most favorable interpretation. No law can exactly 
 describe every periodical likely to be started. No 
 senate, in making a law, intends to charge more for 
 carrying three printed pieces that weigh one ounce, 
 than one printed piece that weighs tivoor three ounces 
 yet so, again, do these petty Dogberrys interpret 
 the law. 
 
 There is another point about which we would in 
 quire of the committee now engaged on the revised 
 postage-laws. Why should literary papers of the same 
 weight be more taxed than newspapers ? Is the circu 
 lation of moral and refining influences twice as tax 
 able as the circulation of scandal and politics, rapes 
 and murders, amusements and advertisements ? Sure 
 ly the intelligence that enlightens the community is 
 as much contained in the weeklies and monthlies as in 
 
 the daily papers. Yet in the bill now before the 
 house, the former are taxed at twice the price of the 
 latter! This, we suppose, is some of Mr. Wickliffe s 
 handiwork. 
 
 We give up the postmaster-general leave him to 
 be bewildered with the technicalities of his office 
 careful of the husks while the grain sifts away from 
 him. We make an appeal to the fountain of his of 
 ficial power public opinion ! Let this matter be un 
 derstood, and let every petty postmaster who plays 
 the tyrant, or misuses his authority, be memorialized 
 out of office. The government ought not to be one 
 penny richer for carrying the mails. No revenue 
 should be derivable to the treasury from the carrying 
 of intelligence. The cheapest postage-rate possible 
 should be set by law, and the law should be bent to 
 suit circumstances in all cases where the cost of car 
 rying is not thereby made greater. Public opinion 
 should so instruct the public servant. The postmas 
 ter-general, and the lesser postmasters who obey his 
 dictum, should be made to feel that the least pretence 
 for extortion or oppression on their part, or any want 
 of accommodation and liberal conduct, would be 
 promptly punished. We write freely on this subject, 
 for our enterprise is at stake, and we speak somewhat, 
 too, for other interests than our own. To offer a pe 
 riodical for three dollars a year, that is made to cost 
 ten by the oppression of postmasters, is to advertise a 
 misnomer. Let the Wickliffe dynasty prevail, and 
 we shall be obliged to leave off cover, plate, and 
 stitching, and change the Mirror to a simple printed 
 sheet, without protection from wear and tear, and 
 without embellishment or capability of binding and 
 preservation. 
 
 We have always felt great sympathy for the blind. 
 We have felt also great curiosity to know exactly how 
 much of human knowledge is forbidden to go in at 
 the ear and how much that is turned aside, as inad 
 missible at that one portal, can be smuggled in after 
 ward under the cloak of explanation and description. 
 The accounts of Laura Bridgman interested us pro- 
 portionably more from her greater deprivations. It 
 is putting this curiosity in a much more spicy vein of 
 gratification, however, to know that a poet is impris 
 oned in one of these windowless temples, and to dis 
 cover how he lives without light and color as well 
 as how much he is the purer and better from escaping 
 all that offends the eye, which, by-the-way, is not a 
 little. The poems of Miss FRANCES JANE CROSBY, 
 a pupil of the New York Institution for the Blind, 
 lie before us, and we have read them with great mod 
 ification of our pity for the blind. Eyes could scarce 
 do more. 
 
 No one in reading the miscellaneous poems by 
 Miss Crosby would suspect that she was blind. She 
 seems to forget it herself. She talks of "crimson 
 teints" and "purple west" and "stars of mildest hue," 
 with quite the familiarity of those who see. But it 
 is evident that her ear has more than a common share 
 of nicety and susceptibility to measure, for in no early 
 poems that we remember is there such smooth ele 
 gance of rhythm. 
 
 The volume is composed principally of poems of 
 the affections, and well-expressed, musical, and cred 
 itable to the authoress, are all the pieces. The price 
 of such a volume should be nominal merely, and the 
 kindly-disposed should give for it what their benevo 
 lence prompts. We would suggest to the publishers 
 to send it round by agents with this view. 
 
 There are things in the world better than poetry, 
 and things written without genius that more stir the 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 125 
 
 soul of a man than would some things ticketed for 
 immortality. Now we do not make sure that we are 
 not "weak" on the subject of young children. We 
 always thought them quite eligible to any possible 
 choir of cherubim. But we will venture to unmask 
 our foible, if foible it be, by declaring that we have 
 read the following downright, homely, truthful, and 
 funny verses (sent to us by some charming mother) 
 read them with delight. It is good honest poetry, 
 with a foothold to it, and we should like to see the 
 baby, since reading it : 
 
 "MY BABY. 
 
 " She is not a beauty, my sweet little pet, 
 Her mouth s not a rosebud, her eyes not like jet, 
 Her nose far from Grecian, her skin not like snow, 
 She is not a beauty, dear me ! no, no, no ! 
 But then she is winsome, this bird of my bower, 
 And she grows on my heart every minute and hour. 
 
 " She is not a beauty, my sweet little pet, 
 On dimples more witching my eyes have been set ; 
 Her mouth, I must tell you, is large like mama s, 
 While her chin, to-be-sure, is just like her papa s ! 
 But when she smites trustingly, what can compare 
 With this gem of my casket, bright, sparkling, and fair? 
 
 " She is not a beauty, my sweet little pet, 
 Far handsomer babies each day can be met ; 
 Her brows are not arching indeed, they re too straight, 
 Yet time will work wonders, with patience I ll wait. 
 But if she s not handsome, it matters not no ! 
 This bud of my bosom is pure as the snow. 
 
 " She is not a beauty, my sweet little pet, 
 That her forehead is too low I can not forget ; 
 No, no, she s not beautiful I must confess, 
 (Between you and I, would her mouth had been less) 
 But she loves me so dearly, oh, how could I part 
 With this light of my pilgrimage, joy of my heart, c. n." 
 
 We are fortunate in a troop of admirable contribu 
 tors who write for love, not money love being the 
 only commodity in which we can freely acknowledge 
 ourselves rich. We receive, however, all manner of 
 tempting propositions from those who wish to write 
 for the other thing money and it pains us griev 
 ously to say " No," though, truth to say, love gets 
 for us as good things as money would buy our read 
 ers will cheerfully agree. But, yesterday, on open 
 ing at the office a most dainty epistle, and reading it 
 fairly through, we confess our pocket stirred within 
 
 More at first than afterward for, upon reflec- | Bro 
 
 tion, we became doubtful whether the writer were not 
 old and "blue" it was so exceedingly well done! 
 We have half a suspicion, now, that it is some sharp 
 old maid in spectacles some regular contributor to 
 Godey and Graham, who has tried to inveigle us 
 through our weak point possibly some varlet of a 
 man-scribbler. But no ! it is undeniably .feminine. 
 Let us show you the letter the latter part of it, at 
 least, as it opens rather too honeyedly for print: 
 
 "You know that the shops in Broadway are very 
 tempting this spring. Suck beautiful things ! Well, 
 you know (no, you don t know that, but you can guess) 
 what a delightful thing it would be to appear in one 
 of those charming, head-adorning, complexion-soften 
 ing, hard-feature-subduing Neapolitans; with a little 
 gossamer veil dropping daintily on the shoulder of one 
 of those exquisite balzarine,<;, to be seen any day at 
 Stewart s and elsewhere. Well, you know (this you 
 must know) that shopkeepers have the impertinence 
 to demand a trifling exchange for these things, even 
 of a lady ; and also that some people have a remark 
 ably small purse, and a remarkably small portion of 
 the yellow root in that. And now, to bring the mat 
 ter home, / am one of that class. I have the most 
 
 counterfeiting that is, filling the void with tissue-pa 
 per in lieu of bank-notes, preparatory to a shopping 
 expedition ! 
 
 " Well, now to the point. As Bel and I snuggled 
 down on the sofa this morning, to read the New Mir 
 ror (by-the-way, cousin Bel is never obliged to put 
 tissue-paper in her purse), it struck us that you would 
 be a friend in need, and give good counsel in this 
 emergency. Bel , however, insisted on my not tel 
 ling what I wanted the money for; she even thought 
 that I had better intimate orphanage, extreme suffer 
 ing from the burdens of some speculating bubble, ill 
 ness, etc., etc. ; but did not I know you better! Have 
 I read the New Mirror so much (to say nothing of the 
 graceful things coined under a bridge, and a thou 
 sand other pages flung from the inner heart), and not 
 learned who has an eye for everything pretty? Not 
 so stupid, Cousin Bel no, no ! 
 
 "However, this is not quite the point, after all; but 
 here it is. I have a pen not a gold one (I don t 
 think I could write with that), but a nice little feath 
 er-tipped pen, that rests in the curve of my fore-finger 
 as contentedly as on its former pillow of down. 
 (Shocking! how that line did run down hill ! and this 
 almost as crooked! dear me!) Then I have little 
 messengers racing like mad through the galleries of 
 my head, spinning long yarns, and weaving fabrics 
 rich and soft as the balzarine which I so much covet, 
 until 1 shut my eyes and stop my ears and whisk away 
 with the wonderful lamp safely hidden in my own 
 brown braids. Then I have Dr. Johnson s diction 
 ary capital London edition, etc., etc.; and, after I 
 use up all the words in that, I will supply myself with 
 Webster s wondrous quarto, appendix and all. Thus 
 prepared, think you not I should be able to put some 
 thing in the shops of the literary caterers something 
 that, for once in my life, would give me a real errand 
 into Broadway ? Maybe you of the New Mirror pay 
 for acceptable articles maybe not. Comprenez-vous ! 
 
 "O I do hope that beautiful balzarine like Bel s 
 will not be gone before another Saturday ! You will 
 not forget to answer me in the next Mirror ; but pray, 
 my dear editor, let it be done very cautiously, for 
 Bel would pout all day if she should know what I 
 have written. Till Saturday, your anxiously-waiting 
 friend, "FAN^Y." 
 
 Well we give in ! On condition that you are un 
 der twenty-five, and that you will wear a rose (recog- 
 nisably) in your boddice the first day you appear in 
 with the hat and "balzarine," we will pay 
 the bills. Write us thereafter a sketch of " Bel " and 
 yourself as cleverly done as this letter, and you may 
 "snuggle down" on the sofa and consider us paid and 
 the public charmed with you. 
 
 In the days when we were " possessed" with horses, 
 and horse-racing, we were sadly well-acquainted with 
 a jockey who lost his wits in the excitement of losing 
 a race. He hung about race-courses for some years 
 after becoming an idiot, and by dint of always denying 
 a horse s good qualities in the stable, and of never 
 speaking well of one except at the winning moment, 
 he contrived to preserve, through all his idiocy, some 
 influence in the judgment of horseflesh. We have 
 been reminded of our old friend Spavin (call him 
 Spavin " nil mortuis") by certain of our critical 
 brother editors, and their very kindly-intended (pos 
 sibly) critiques on the Mirror; Come a week (as such 
 
 weeks will come) when our health is queasy, and when 
 our spirits are gathering violets in dells where a pa 
 ving-stone would be stoned to death as a monster (and 
 there are dells incapable of a paving-stone) come 
 
 beautiful little purse in the world, but it is only kept i such a week, we say, and let the Mirror go forth, 
 for show; I even find myself under the necessity of without such quantity of our own work as strains our 
 
126 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 extremest fibre to the crack, and down comes this 
 vigilant critic upon us with a cry of " no go," " falling 
 off," " idle," and " better formerly" disparagements 
 that would take the conceit out of a church steeple ! 
 And why does he do this ? Why should we not be 
 better at some times than at others, without being 
 criticised like a steam-engine a thing incapable of 
 mood, humor, and caprice? Simply because this 
 sort of critique is easy to tvrite, and so favors, in the 
 writer, the very idleness he criticises in us. But, good 
 heavens ! are we not entitled to our worser, as well as 
 our better moments ! Shall we always be at tiptop 
 speed, and never have freedom from disparagement 
 except when winning a race ? 
 
 We boldly lay claim to more industry than rightly 
 falls to us as our share of the curse ! Supposing, for 
 the moment, that our writings are better for the Mir 
 ror than what takes their place occasionally (a flatter 
 ing inference from our critic s critique), we do more in 
 quantity, in the course of the year, than one editor in 
 a hundred. There is more copied from the Mirror 
 (we have often had occasion to observe) than from any 
 two periodicals in the country. The truth is, we are 
 too famous for comfort ! 
 
 " Oh mediocrity, 
 
 Thou priceless jewel only mean men have 
 But never value like the precious gem 
 Found in the muck-hill by the ignorant cock." 
 
 You see what troubles us, dear reader ! 
 
 The flowering into glory of such a century-plant 
 of excellence as our worthy friend and fellow-publish 
 er, JAMKS HARPER, has in it, with all our willing ac 
 clamation, some occasional provocation to a smile. 
 The sudden call for " his picture" the eager litho 
 graph of his fun-bestridden nose and money-making 
 spectacles the stir he has made among the abuses, 
 with his Cliff-street way of doing business, and the 
 salutary feel we get of the wand of power in his 
 clutch, while we still see him in his accustomed 
 haunts, busy and unpedestaled as before there is 
 something in the contrast which makes us say, with 
 Prince Hal, " Ned, come out of that fat room and 
 give us thy hand to laugh a little," though, with all 
 our heart, we rejoice in his authority. The Courier, 
 speaking of the likeness just published of Mr. Har 
 per, says : " The new mayor s pleasant, shrewd, and 
 half-quizzical countenance is cleverly hit off, and he 
 is peering through the official eye-glasses in a manner 
 that portends trouble to all municipal delinquents. 
 Let them look to their ways, and Jet all subordinate 
 official functionaries look to the streets ; for this por 
 trait would convince us, even if we were not acquaint 
 ed with the original, that the chief magistrate has an 
 eye upon them." 
 
 This bit of speculation as a preface to our lauda- 
 mus of Mayor Harpers administration, as felt particu 
 larly in two or three abated nuisances. The hack- 
 men are no longer permitted to devour passengers on 
 their arrival in steamboats, nor to make a clievaux-dc- 
 frise of their whips at the landing-piers, but must sit 
 quietly on their coach-boxes till called for. The 
 omnibus-racing is to be put a stop to, we understand, 
 and that should really be celebrated in an appropriate 
 " northern refrain. 1 " There are two refrains more 
 that we would suggest to our city Harper that hose- 
 boys should be made to refrain from flooding the 
 sidewalks under the thin shoes of ladies, and that gen 
 tlemen who must smoke in the street should refrain 
 from the windward side of ladies, particularly those 
 who prefer air that has not been used. 
 
 And apropos (it will be seen that we were born to 
 make a world) we wish to suggest to enterprise an 
 other abatement of the nuisances of Broadway. It 
 
 is desirable to reduce the number of omnibuses in 
 this great thoroughfare, for many very cogent rea 
 sons but as long as they pay that is to say, as long 
 as the public require them they must even go on 
 deafening promenaders, and endangering private car 
 riages and the lives of people crossing the street. But 
 who that is down town in a summer s day, and wishes 
 to go anywhere to the western side of the city, would 
 not prefer to take a ferry-boat (if there were one) 
 from the foot of Maiden lane round the Battery to 
 Chelsea ? How preferable the fresh air, and beautiful 
 scenery of the rivers and bay, to a crowded omnibus 
 in hot weather ! How much more desirable would be 
 a residence in Chelsea, if there were such a conveni 
 ence ! The boats might touch at the foot of Cort- 
 land street and the Battery, and, indeed, extend their 
 course up the East river to the foot of Pike street 
 plying, say, every ten minutes, from Pike street to 
 Chelsea, and back rounding the Battery, and touch 
 ing wherever it was convenient. \V^ho would not pre 
 fer this to omnibussing ? Let this line communicate 
 with Stevens s upper ferry to Hoboken, and the line 
 would be continuous from that beautiful spot, all 
 round the city. Quite aside from its utility, this 
 would be one of the prettiest pleasure trips that could 
 be invented. Pensez-y, Messrs. Stevens. 
 
 If any charitable person has an old man or woman 
 whom he would like to set up in an easy and profita 
 ble business, we have a plan to suggest. Give them 
 half a dozen light chairs, and send them to the Bat 
 tery or the Park. In all public promenades in France 
 there are chairs to be hired for two cents an hour, and 
 besides being a good trade for the lame and old. this 
 convenience is wanted. 
 
 By the way, where are the good things, clever 
 couplets, and flings of wit, that used to fly about at 
 the municipal elections ? Squibs grow dull. Where 
 is that witty conservative whig who, when " Forest 
 and Liberty" was placarded by the democrats, put up 
 a rival bill of "Povey and the Constitution ?" Wit 
 and poetry (we might have remembered) seem to 
 have gone into advertisements. When people have 
 done with "Who is Seatsfield ?" we shall start a new 
 query " Who is the bard of Stoppani ?" Moore s 
 oriental flow of melting stanza and balmy imagery is 
 quite paled in its glory by Stoppani s advertisement: 
 
 Will you come to the BATHS IN BROADWAY, 
 
 Where the genius of luxury presides, 
 And the glorious Croton, by night and by day, 
 Through the conduits silently glides ? 
 
 " The ceiling al fresco, the beautiful bar, 
 
 Rich drapery, and sumptuous screens, 
 The marble as white as a Persian Cyrnar, 
 The painting of Italy s scenes," etc. 
 
 Mellifluously musical! Who is the distinguished au 
 thor ? 
 
 The advertisement of a hatter plausibly sets forth 
 that the Miller prophecy being exploded, and the 
 world really not coming to an end (at least within a 
 hat s-wear of time), the prospects of the globe s con 
 tinuance justifies the venture of a new hat ! We 
 think we see a hat bought on that hypothesis ! 
 
 We are happy to see that our imported word, rococo, 
 is coming into general use. A critic in the Herald, 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 127 
 
 noticing the opera, says : " This concert-piece has 
 been rococo for some time, and, like an old maid, is 
 getting, every year, two years older." This is a clever 
 critic, by the way, though in the sentence we have 
 quoted he reminds us of a bit of dialogue in an old 
 play : 
 
 " Manes. Didst thou not find that I did quip thee ? 
 
 Psy. No, verily. What is a quip ? 
 
 Manes. A short saying of a sharp wit, with a bit 
 ter sense in a sweet word." 
 
 The True Sun quotes, with a clincher, from the 
 Buffalo Commercial, " The common use of the word | 
 lady, instead of the definite honored term wife, is 
 an atrocious vulgarism that should be universally 
 scouted." We think the ladies should be informed 
 of the etymological meaning of the two words, and 
 take their choice after. Wife is derived from the An- j 
 glo-Saxon word signifying to weave, and means the j 
 person who weaves for the family. Lady originally j 
 meant a woman raised to the rank of her husband j 
 from the Saxon word signifying elevated. The pro- j 
 priety of calling a man s better half his lady, depends, 
 of course, on the fact whether she was made more I 
 respectable by the match; and the propriety of calling | 
 her his wife, hangs upon her expertness and industry 
 at the loom. Which will the fair sex prefer ? 
 
 NEW LITERARY EPOCH. We have been, for the 
 last year, not only working among, but ivatching, " the 
 signs of the times" in the way of literature. We have 
 been trying, not only to make out a living, but to 
 make out head and tail to our epoch to see what ; 
 way the transition was tending, and when there was 
 likely to be any reliable shape and form to American j 
 literature ; or (to change the figure) whether the lit 
 erary boatmen, who stand with their barques hauled 
 ashore, uncertain of the current, and employing them 
 selves meantime in other vocations, could be called 
 upon to launch and dip their oars, sure at last of tide 
 and channel. 
 
 International copyright has died a natural death. 
 There was not a statesman in the country who had the 
 courage to take the chance of making or marring his 
 political fortunes by espousing the question. At the 
 same time palpably just, honorable, and expedient, 
 as would be the giving of copyright to English au 
 thors there was some excuse for shying the subject, 
 in the violent abuse that was indiscreetly showered 
 upon us by Dickens and the Reviews, at the very 
 moment when general public attention had been 
 called to the subject, and when there was every 
 prospect of its turning the crisis favorably. It would 
 have taken the statesmanship and eloquenc* of Clay 
 or Webster to have made the discussion at all endura 
 ble to congress, and we are quite sure that it will be 
 ten years before the public irritation against English 
 travellers and critics will have sufficiently abated to 
 tolerate any measure in their favor. Dickens, and his 
 friend, the critic of the Foreign Quarterly, therefore, 
 have sanded their own bread and butter in throwing 
 dirt at us. 
 
 But the great end of international copyright is coin 
 ing about without the aid of legislation. The abuse 
 has been that American authors were thrown out of j 
 the market by English works that were to be had for 
 nothing (justice to the English author, of course, a 
 secondary consideration). But this abuse is losing 
 strength by surfeit. The publishers and periodical 
 agents are aghast, at this very moment, of the falling 
 off of interest in ihe most attractive publications. The 
 zest for novelty has been so pampered, that only the 
 first number or two. of anything new, sells well. And 
 
 not from any falling off in their character. The Eng 
 lish pictorial papers (for one example) have rather im 
 proved in merit, but a publisher informed us a day or 
 two since that they do not now sell ten where they 
 sold a hundred a month or two ago. Such enter 
 prises used to begin small, and grow into favor gradu 
 ally. Noic, the cornucopia of their prosperity is re 
 versed the small end turned from the publisher. 
 Copyrighted American books, and American periodi 
 cals, though dearer than reprints, sell much better, 
 and in our opinion the American public, in three 
 months more, will give a preference so decided to 
 home literature, and home periodicals, that, as far as 
 protection to our native authors is concerned, the in 
 ternational copyright will be useless. The truth is, 
 that literature, to be permanently popular, must be 
 produced under the meridian of the country it is to 
 supply. Who will pretend that any periodical in this 
 country is edited with half the ability of the London 
 magazines and reviews ? The leading intellects of 
 the age men who in this country would be eminent 
 lawyers and politicians, devote themselves to maga 
 zine-writing abroad, and, besides, they are a trained 
 class of professed authors, such as we have no idea of 
 in America. Our contributors are men who dash off 
 an article as by-play, and make no investment of 
 thought or money in it and of course it can not com 
 pare to the carefully-written and well-considered arti 
 cles of English weeklies and monthlies. But look at 
 the difference of circulation. See how periodicals 
 languish that are made up of the cream of these Lon 
 don magazines, and see how Graham and Godey, In- 
 man of the Columbian, and ourselves, quadruple them 
 in vogue and prosperity ! It was to be expected it 
 is the most natural thing in the world that America 
 should grow American, at last ! What more natural 
 than that we should tire of having our thinking done 
 in London, our imaginations fed only with food that 
 is Londonish, and our matters of feeling illustrated 
 and described only by London associations, tropes, 
 and similitudes ? This weariness of going to so dis 
 tant a well for better water, we do say, is to be relied 
 upon as a sign of the literary times. The country is 
 tired of being bc-Brilished. It wants its own indige 
 nous literature, and we think we should be safe to 
 morrow in issuing a replevin upon law, politics, and 
 commerce, for the men of genius draughted for their 
 employ, during the want of a literary market, (live 
 up the blood horses harnessed into your dull drays, 
 oh, Wall street and Pearl ! Untie your fetters of red 
 tape, and let loose your enslaved poets and novelties, 
 oh, Nassau and Pine ! Discharge Halleck, oh, Astor; 
 and give up Wetmore, oh, crates of crockery ! Lead 
 off with a new novel, Mr. Cooper, and let the public 
 give us a five years benefit of their present disgust 
 with imported literature, to recover from the numb 
 ness of inaction and discouragement. Give us five 
 years of the home tide of sympathy that is now setting 
 westward, and we will have an American literature 
 that will for ever prevent the public taste and patron 
 age from ebbing back again to England. 
 
 THINGS AS THEY COME. We know of a matter we 
 mean to write about, somewhere between this and the 
 bottom of the next column somewhere within this 
 half-cent s-worth, that is to say (this page costs you 
 not quite half a cent, dear reader !) but we must first 
 haul out two or three things that lie a-top of it in our 
 fact-drawer ; facts being, as everybody knows, obstinate 
 as nails in a keg, when you want a particular one from 
 underneath. 
 
 We have whims (this lies a-top), about the face of 
 newspaper type. There are some most worthy and 
 able periodicals that we could not read our own obitua- 
 
128 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 ry in, without an effort the type is so unexplainably 
 anti-pathetic. Every editor who turns over exchange 
 papers will know precisely what we mean. There is 
 no necessity for naming those which we should never 
 open if we had them in our pocket "forty days in the 
 wilderness," but we can. without offence, name an op 
 posite example the PICAYUNE which, from the 
 mere witchery of type, a man would like to take out 
 of the postoffice on his way to execution. The BOS 
 TON TRANSCRIPT is another (fact No. 2) which we 
 fatuitously read, and slwuld read, even if it were edited 
 by that broken mustard-spoon, the Portland Thersites. 
 The type is captivating a kind of insinuating, piquant, 
 well-bred brevier, that catches the eye like a coquette 
 in a ball-room. And this, be it noted, spite of the 
 " burnt child s" prejudice, for the fair editress does 
 not always put on her gloves, before taking a tweak at 
 our immortality! And, apropos there is an editor 
 " down south" who sympathises with this typical 
 weakness of ours declaring in a late paper that the 
 reputation of our letters to the Intelligencer " was 
 entirely owing to the large type in which they were 
 sd." And this we not only believe, but if we 
 
 fork over the swindle" to our 
 
 printe 
 
 ever get rich, we will 
 
 deluded employers. 
 
 The reader will see that we are trying to apologise 
 for our dissipation in reading newspapers being such 
 very loose mental company, and we, as news-writer, 
 having, no more business with the luxury of news 
 written, than a shoemaker with wearing the patent 
 leathers he makes for his gentlemen customers. But 
 we have read an article in the seductive type of the 
 Transcript which led us to philosophise a little touch 
 ing a point of contrast between Boston and New 
 York ; and as we grew up in Boston, but were dug 
 up, and trimmed, and watered into flowering, in New 
 York, we claim to know both places well enough to 
 run a parallel with fairish fidelity. 
 
 The article we speak of was a letter, containing, 
 among other things, a touch-up of the Astor house ; 
 but the Astor is so much the best hotel in the world, 
 that fault-finding, merited as it may be, will send no 
 body from its door in search of a better. Without 
 alluding farther to the letter, let us jot down the specu 
 lation it suggested. 
 
 New York is far more vicious than Boston, without 
 a doubt. But it is not much more vicious than it was, 
 when it was of Boston s size. We have often wished 
 to preach a sermon to the Bostonians from 1 Corin 
 thians iv. 7: "For who maketh thee to differ from 
 another ? And what hast thou, that thou didst not 
 receive?" Up to the present time, the Puritan obedi 
 ence to authority, and the " power paramount" of 
 good principles, have never been sapped or shaken in 
 Boston. It is but one community, with one class of 
 leading prejudices, and worked by one familiar set of 
 moral, social, and political wires. The inhabitants 
 are nearly all Americans, all church-goers of some j 
 sect or other, implicitly subject to general and time- j 
 honored principles, and as controllable by mayor and ; 
 aldermen as an omnibus by passengers and driver, j 
 Indeed, the municipal history of Boston for the last 
 twenty years, is a Utopian beau-ideal of efficiency and I 
 order, which will never bercpeated. The authoritative 
 break-up of the first formidable symptom of mob- 
 ocracy two years ago, for example when bold mayor 
 Elliott quietly took the fire-engines from their turbu 
 lent companies, and put them into the hands of a paid 
 fire-police could never have been done in any other 
 city of this country ; and ten years hence (Boston 
 continuing to increase and vitiate), a similar pluck at 
 the beard of mob license would be a dangerous experi 
 ment. 
 
 But look at New York in comparison. There are 
 at least a hundred thousand Irish in this city, twenty 
 thousand French, sixty thousand Germans, and a 
 
 miscellany of other nations, that probably leaves scarce 
 one fourth of the population (say a hundred thousand), 
 for indigenous and home-spirited Neiv-Yorkers. One 
 quarter too, of the general population, is in a condition 
 that is scarce known in Boston that of desperate ex 
 tremity of livelihood, and readiness to do anything for 
 the moment s relief, vicious, turbulent, or conspirative. 
 The municipal government of New York is, unfor 
 tunately, in some measure, a political tool, and com 
 pelled to shape its administration somewhat with a 
 view to politics. Harsh measures, used in Boston 
 upon the first germ or symptom of license, are reserved 
 in New York for such signal instances as are melo 
 dramatically flagrant such as can not be perverted, 
 by the party out of power, into a counter-current of 
 sympathy and resentment. What there is now remain 
 ing of the Knickerbocker influence in New York, is the 
 degree in which New York can compare with Boston 
 and this small remainder of the old Dutch character 
 is, as to power and check, about equal to what will be 
 left of Puritan character in Boston, when Boston, by 
 aid of railroads and inducements for foreign residence, 
 shall have four hundred thousand inhabitants. Look 
 at the difference in the observance of Sunday in the 
 two places ! At least twenty thousand people cross 
 to Hoboken alone, to pass the sabbath in the fields 
 foreigners, mostly, who have been in the habit of 
 making it a holyday at home. The Bostonians would 
 suppress the ferry, without the slightest hesitation! 
 There are four or five Sunday newspapers in New 
 York, and Boston will not support one. There are 
 German balls in various places in this city, on Sunday 
 evening ; and oyster-shops, and bar-rooms, and the 
 drinking-places, in all directions in the suburbs, have 
 overflowing custom on that day. The government 
 of the city is, of course, in some degree, a reflex of 
 this large proportion of the sovereign voters, and when 
 public opinion countenances a degree of license, it is 
 next to impossible to bring in a city government that 
 can control it. We have not room to follow out this 
 comparison in detail but we wished to outline it, as 
 a reply to the condemnations of New York (for the 
 sale of vicious publications, etc., etc.), made from 
 time to time, by our more virtuous brethren in the 
 north. We shall take another opportunity to enlarge 
 upon it. 
 
 We have received several truly delightful and grati 
 fying letters from eminent clergymen of different per 
 suasions, thanking us for the Sacred Numbers of the 
 Mirror Library, and sending us the choice poems 
 which they had severally laid aside, to add to another 
 collection. We had no idea there was so much beauti 
 ful religious poetry in existence ! This rich vein of 
 literature has been unworked and overlooked, and we 
 assure the religious world, confidently, that we are 
 doing a most important work in the collection of these 
 gems of piety and poetry in a cheap and accessible 
 form. " SONGS FOR THE SABBATH," falls behind 
 none of them in interest, and will be a classic in re 
 ligious books, as long as religious literature exists. 
 
 We do not know whether we were particularly in a 
 mood to be pleased on the night of Simpson s benefit 
 at the Park, but several things pleased us more than 
 they seemed to please other people the dancing, for 
 example, both of KORPONAY, and of DESJARDINS. 
 (Of the acting we do not speak, and by-the-way, we 
 may as well say, here, that the stage is so much bet 
 ter kept in hand by the theatrical critic of the Albion 
 than we could possibly do it, that we generally shie 
 that part of criticism, from a sort of consciousness 
 that it will be done for the public by abler hands. AVe 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 129 
 
 love good criticism, nnd we love "honor to whom i accompaniments as well. See how eloquence was 
 
 honor is due.") We did not see Korponay at his 
 debut at Palmo s but a friend pronounced his dan 
 cing a failure. As an attempt at anything in Vestris s 
 line, it certainly was a failure. But that is not the 
 dish to which the well-made Pole invites us. He is, 
 
 made ;\ pleasure in the gardens of the academy of 
 Athens ! Instead of treating our orators as we do the 
 fountain in the Park (eiving them a broad margin of 
 bare ground), we should surround their oratory with 
 tributary ornament. The audiences now, at lectures, 
 
 amon- dancers, what olives are at a feast" bad j are that passionless and abstract portion of the coin- 
 pickle s" to the vulgar, but artful appetisers to the j munity that can stand anything in the shape of an m- 
 refined. Korponay seemed to us like a symmetrical 
 and dashing nobleman, doing gracefully a difficult and 
 grotesque dance for the amusement and admiration of 
 a court leaning as far away as possible from the airs 
 of a professed dancer, and intent only on showing the eloquence, from being a jewel dulled with the dirt o 
 superb proportion of his figure and the subtle com- j! mine, will be a gem in the fit setting of a sparkling 
 
 tellectual bore the Grahamites of amusement. But 
 give us orators on popular subjects, at Palmo s, with 
 dress-circle, bright lights, opera-music, scenery, and 
 interludes for conversation and change of place, and 
 
 maud over his limbs. 
 role of performance. 
 
 His face expressed exactly this 
 
 fi 
 
 tiara. This would be, beside, a kind of premium 
 
 It was full of mock solemnity 1 1 upon eloquence, that would foster it into a national 
 
 .<! hi<>h-bred assurance. He seemed to us exactly ! excellence. There are men at the bar, in the press, 
 the sort of noble masquer \hrt, at a Venetian festival and in business, who have the " volcano ol burning 
 of old time, would have "topped the jaunty part," and !j words" within them, and would make eloquence a 
 
 | study, were it a source of renown and profit-. What 
 say to a new niche for oratory, oh, amiable public ! 
 | Let us get a new screw upon public feeling, to use 
 i with effect when we have patriotism to arouse, or 
 
 carried away the flower, the ladies favor. 
 
 But the untrumpeted deservings of Monsieur Kor 
 ponay are less surprising than the want of apprecia 
 tion of Mademoiselle Desjardins. We never saw her 
 before, though she has been dancing in town for some 
 time, and, considering how easily most any hook and 
 line of public amusement catches us, it is very plain 
 that the bait has not been skilfully angled. In the oly of th 
 first place, as to qualifications, we never have seen, in | 
 all our travels from Niagara to the Black sea (the two | 
 poles 
 at 
 
 SllUUlU UUTC oiwtfu m wvui* v .^v.^^.. .. j 
 
 Me.cury 1 There is not a woman s heart better should be, with captivating flowers. 
 mounted, we venture to sav, between Ontario and the I And while we have this thread in our loom, e i 
 Suxine. And she uses "these communicators with I express the delight with which we listened, not long 
 earth deftly and Ariel-wise ! We only saw her in the ! j since, to oratory in a silk gown-an oration on cov- 
 fhich isa kind of attitudinizing dance, and J TKMPT, that was linked naturally enough to a text and 
 
 ,11 our travels from Niagara to the Black sea (the two | orchestra, a glowing oraiwn, a, i , il, 
 
 x>lesof our "inky orbit"), so well-bridaed an instep, ! and we shall have public amusement in which I. 
 u,d so Dianesque a pair of serviceable ankles. She ;! serious classes will join with the gay, and in wh, 
 mould have stood to John of Bologna for his poised ; instruction shall be dressed, as it always may be, an 
 
 buses to overthrow passions to awake for good pur 
 poses. Let us have a power at the public ear that will 
 be a check-balance to newspapers, that have a monop 
 oly of the public eye. Let music, oratory, and paint 
 ing, combine in a tripod to support each other ;\fine 
 orchestra, a glowing oration, and beautiful scenery 
 
 which the 
 which 
 d 
 
 Polacca, 
 possibly, 
 ficult pas 
 
 ch is a kind or attitudinizing aance, ana TKMFT, iiwi j~~ . . 
 
 possibly, better suited to her abilities than a more dif- j j a pulpit, but which would have been a noble ^p.ece of 
 But she walked and acted it with spirit! intellectual oratory in a public hallo^the 
 
 and grace enough to be charming, and though she is j 
 not to be named with Ellsler, she is enough of a dan- j 
 sense, in Ellsler s absence, to give one s eyes their 
 night s rations very satisfactorily. Underrated she is ! \ 
 
 We see, by one of the careful and elaborate reports 
 of the Republic, that the Mercantile Library Associ 
 ation have had a report from a despair-committee, on 
 the subject of the decline of lectures. Eloquence 
 don t pay for the candle, it seems. This excellent 
 association, however, shrinks the wrong way from the 
 plaoue they have had with it. The taste for eloquence 
 is n"o more dead or torpid in New York than the love 
 of war or the relish for lions. \V hile people have 
 brains and hearts they will love a true orator. But \ 
 they are tired (and reasonably enough) of th* bald and . 
 untarnished style i" which oratory is served up to I 
 them. To go moping into the dark and silent Taber- j 
 
 n;ic | e ! tne gas economized till the rise of the orator, j 
 
 and a deathly and gloomy silence maintained for an 
 
 hour (more or less) before the commencement of the jl 
 
 l PCtl) ,-e_to have the orator s first opening addressed M sing the entire summer i 
 
 to chilled, oppressed, and unelevated minds, and all !| a few alleviations which have as yet 
 
 orator was Rev. HKNRY GILKS, and the sermon was 
 delivered in a place that is used to eloquence the 
 pulpit of Mr. Dewey. There were passages in this 
 discourse that were worked up, both in (ervor ol lan 
 guage and concentrated fire of delivery, to a pitch 
 that we should call truly Demosihenian. Mr. Giles 
 is a natural orator a man of expanded generalizing 
 powers. It is a treat to hear him, such as would not 
 be second in interest to any dramatic entertainment, 
 and properly combined xvith other things as agreeable 
 to the taste, there would be an attraction in such ora 
 tory that would draw better than a play. We really 
 wish that some " manager" would undertake the get 
 ting up of the scenery and musical accessories to ora 
 tory, and let secular eloquence take leave of the pul 
 pit where it does not properly belong, and come into 
 a field more natural to its aims and uses. 
 
 We had a June May, and a May June, and the brick 
 world of Manhattan has not, as yet, become too hot to 
 hold us. This is to be our first experiment at p 
 
 n the city, and we had laid up 
 
 ftTs making of eloquence what the ascetic makes of 
 religion a dry crust instead of a relishing loaf. No, 
 no! 
 
 attired; and eloquence has its natural 
 9 
 
130 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 privnfe yachts! We know no plensanter trip, after 
 (lie dusU of the evening, than to stroll down to the 
 ferry, haul a bench to the bow of the ferry-boat, 
 and "open up" the evening breeze for two miles and 
 back, for a shilling! Afier eight o clock, there are, 
 on an average, ten people in the boat, and you have 
 the cool shoulder under the railing as nearly as possi 
 ble to yourself. The long line of lamps on either 
 shore makes a gold flounce to the " starry skirt of 
 heaven" the air is as pure as the rich man has it in 
 his grounds, and all the money in the world could not 
 mend the outside of your head, as far as the horizon. 
 (And the horizon, at such place and hour, becomes a 
 substitute for the small hoop you have stepped out of.) 
 No man is richer than we, or could be better off till 
 we reach the Jersey shore and we are as rich going 
 back. Try this, of a hot evening, all who prefer 
 coolness and have a mind that is good company. 
 
 Then, there is our substitute for an airing. There 
 is a succession of coaches, lined with red velvet, that, 
 in the slope of the afternoon, ply, nearly empty, the 
 whole length of Broadway two or three miles, at an 
 easy pace, for sixpence. We have had vehicles, or 
 friends who had vehicles, in most times and places 
 that we remember, and we crave our ride after dinner. 
 We need to get away from walls and ceiling stuck 
 over with cares and brain-work, and to be amused 
 without effort particularly without the effort of walk 
 ing or talking. So 
 
 " Taking our hat in our hand, that remarkably requisite 
 practice," 
 
 we step out from our side street to the brink of Broad 
 way, and presto, like magic, up drives an empty coach 
 with two horses, red velvet lining, and windows open; 
 and by an adroit slackening of the tendons of his left 
 leg, the driver opens the door to us. With the lei 
 surely pace suited to the hour and its bcsoin, our car 
 riage rolls up Broadway, giving us a sliding panorama 
 of such charms as are peculiar to the afternoon of the 
 great thoroughfare (quite the best part of the day, for 
 a spectator merely). Every bonnet we see wipes off a 
 care from our mental slate, and every nudge to our 
 curiosity shoves up our spirits a peg. Easily and 
 uncrowded, we are set down for our sixpence at 
 " Fourteenth street," and turning our face once more 
 toward Texas, we take the next velvet-lined vehicle 
 bound down. The main difference betwixt us and 
 the rich man, for that hour, is, that he rides in a 
 green lane, and we in Broadway he sees green leaves 
 and we pretty women he pays much and we pay 
 little. The question of envy, therefore, depends upon 
 which of these categories you honestly prefer. While 
 Providence furnishes the spare shilling, we, at any 
 rate, will not complain. Such of our friends as are 
 prepared to condole with us for our summer among 
 the bricks, will please credit us with the two foregoing 
 alleviations. 
 
 The postoffice irregularities of which we have so 
 often complained, have drawn from one of our good- 
 natured subscribers, a lament in poetry. We wish all 
 our friends would take it as kindly, but give voice to 
 it as expressively : 
 
 " No Mirror to-day 
 
 No price, no pay ; 
 No chance to spend a sixpence all day long ; 
 
 No work at all to do, 
 
 No help for feeling blue ; 
 No plate, no tale, no trifle, and no song ! 
 
 No why and no because ; 
 
 No faith in the whole race of editors 
 
 No remedy, tis true ; 
 No seeing exactly what it s best to do ; 
 
 No chance of being heard, 
 
 No profit in a word ; 
 
 No grumbling at the keepers of the keys ; 
 No hope of men who do just what they please ; 
 
 No chance to raise a breeze ; 
 
 No hope, no sign, 
 
 No promise that I can divine ; 
 No faith to-day in high humanity ; 
 
 No doubt that life is vanity ; 
 No dawn, no rising of a better day ; 
 
 No faint foreshadowing of a golden way : 
 No knowing when Wicldifie will be turned away ; 
 
 No last resort but a vile parody. 
 No Mirror " 
 
 We very seldom buy a volume of new poetry, but 
 jj the portrait on the first leaf of Mrs. Butler s book, a 
 jj portrait by the admirable and spiritualizing pencil of 
 I Sully, and engraved by the as admirable and spirituali 
 zing burin of Cheney, was worth quite the price of the 
 volume. We have since read the poetry. The pic 
 ture bears a slight resemblance to the poetess, Mrs. 
 Norton, and the poetry is very like Mrs. Norton s in 
 its intention. But both in features and verse, Mrs. 
 Butler is very far that glorious woman s inferior. We 
 have been vexed to see how narrow an escape Mis. 
 Butler has had, of being a fine poetess, however how 
 easily with a little consistent labor, and some little 
 unity of sentiment and purpose, she might have filled 
 out ihe penumbra which provokingly shows what she 
 might have been but for the eclipse of caprice or 
 carelessness. We have struck a word in this last 
 sentence which seems to us to be the master-chord 
 of all her poetry caprice! She begins nobly and 
 goes evenly and beautifully half through her strain, 
 and then falters and winds weakly or inconsequently 
 off. We could quote passages from this book as fine 
 as anything of Mrs. Norton s, but there is no one fin 
 ished poem in it worth reprinting. Jn all this, we 
 are looking at it with the world s eye. To a poet, 
 who judges of a fragment, as the connoisseur knows 
 the statue of Hercules, by the foot, this volume is full 
 of genius. There is a massy fulness in the use of 
 epithets and figures that shows a Sapphic prodigality 
 of fervor and impulse, and there is, moreover, a mas- 
 j culine strength of passionateness in the moulding and 
 flinging off of emotion, that, well carried out, would 
 have swept the public heart like a whirlwind. We had 
 marked many passages of Mrs. Butler s book for ex 
 tract, but on looking at them again, we find the best 
 and most creditable blemished with flaws, and, with 
 strong admiration for what the authoress might have 
 been, we lay the book aside. 
 
 Our readers will remember a very clever letter, 
 wiitten to us by an anonymous lady who wished to 
 conjure a new bonnet and dress out of her inkstand. 
 The inveiglement upon ourselves (to induce us to be 
 her banker), was so adroit and fanciful that we sus 
 pected the writer of being no novice at rhetorical trap 
 one, indeed, of the numerous sisterhood who, denied 
 the concentrated developments of maternity, scatter 
 their burthensorne ammunition of contrivance and re 
 source upon periodical literature. We " gave i n ," 
 
 however walking willingly into the lady s noose on 
 
 a condition, that she should wear a rose recognisably 
 in Broadway the day she first sported the balzarine 
 and Neapolitan, and afterward send us a sketch of 
 herself and her cousin. The " sketch" we have re 
 ceived, and when we have seen the rose we shall not 
 hesitate to acknowledge the debt. Jn the following 
 parts of the letter which accompanied the sketch, the 
 reader will see that the authoress feels (or feigns mar 
 vellously well) some resentment at our suspicions as 
 to her age and quality : 
 
 " Have you never heard, my de (pardon ! I fear it 
 
 is a habit of mine to write too honeyedly ) but have 
 
 you not heard that suspicion is a heavy armor, which, 
 with its own weight impedes more than it protects. 
 Suspicion is most assuredly a beggarly virtue. It 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 131 
 
 may, now and then, prevent you from being; taken in, 
 but it nips you in the costs most unmercifully. Oh! 
 sharpsighU dnessis the most extravagantly dear whistle 
 that poor humans ever purchased! That you should 
 suspect me too, when 1 was opening my heart away 
 down to the core. How could you ? inveigle ! no 
 inveigling about it! I want a bonnet and dress, and 
 said so, frankly and honestly. And I never wrote a 
 line for Graham in my life, no ! nor for Godey either. 
 As for le couleur tics bas, your keen-eyed hawk pounced 
 on less than a phantom there. From the day that I j 
 stood two mortal hours with my linger poked into my I 
 eye, and a fool s-cap on my head, because I persisted i 
 in spelling b-a-g, baker, to the notable morning of | 
 christening my cousin by her profession, I have been 
 voted innocent of all leaning toward the uncelestial. 
 Indeed it is mote than suspected by my friend (cousin 
 Bel excepted) that I affect dame Nature s carpet, 
 rather than her canopy. Maybe I am some varlet 
 of a man scribbler Oh! you are such a Yankee at 
 guessing ! Old ! ah, that is the unkindest cut of all ! 
 You an editor, and the son of an editor, and not know 
 that old maids are a class extinct at the present day, 
 save in the sew ing societies, etc., of some western village, 
 suliject only to the exploring expeditions of the in 
 defatigable Mary Clavers ! " Have you never heard 
 of five-and-twenty s being a turning point, and ken ye 
 not its meaning ? Why, faire maydens then reverse 
 the hour-glass" of old gray-beard ; and, one by one, 
 drop back the golden sands that lie lias scattered, till, 
 in five years, they are twenty again. Of course, then, 
 I must be under twenty-five ; but, as a punishment 1 
 for your lack of gallantry, you shall not know whether I 
 the sands are dropping in or out of my glass. One 
 thing, however, is indisputable: lam not sharp, my 
 face has not a single sharp feature, nor my temper (it 
 is I, who know, that say it), a sharp corner, nor my 
 voice a sharp tone. So much in self-justification, and 
 now to the little package which you hold in the other 
 hand. 
 
 " I send my sketch in advance, because I nm afraid 
 cousin Bel and I might not interest you and the pub- j 
 lie so much as we do ourselves; and then how are we 
 to consider you paid. In truth, I can not write j 
 clever things. Bel might, but she never tries. Some- : 
 times she plans for me; but, somehow, I never can 1 1 
 find the right words for her thoughts. They come into 
 my head like fixed-up visitors, and play tea-party | ! 
 with their baby neighbors, until I am almost as much || 
 puzzled by their strange performances as the old 
 woman of the nursery rhyme, who was obliged to call 
 on her little dog at home to establish her identity. 
 No, no ! I can not write clever things, and particularly 
 on the subject to which I am restricted ; but if it is 
 the true sketch that you would have for the sake of 
 the information, why here it is. You will perceive 
 that I have been very particular to tell you ell. 
 
 " Pray, do you allow us carte blanche as far as the hat 
 and dress are concerned ? You had better nor, for 
 Bel never limits herself. How soon may we have j 
 them ? The summer is advancing rapidly, and my 
 old muslin and straw are unco shabby. Yours with j 
 all due gratitude, " FANNY FORESTER." 
 
 Whoever our fair correspondent may be, old or j 
 young, naive or crafty, we can tell her that talent like 
 hers need never want a market. We commend her, [ 
 thus in print, to those princes of literary paymasters, | 
 Graham and Godey, with our assurance that no more j 
 entertaining pen strides a vowel in this country. The 
 sketch of " The Cousins," which we shall give here- j 
 after, has a twi.rt-tear-and-smile-fulness which shows 
 the writer s heart to be as young as a school-girl s , 
 satchel, whatever kind of wig she wears, and whatever 
 the number of her spectacles. And she will be as 
 young forty years hence -for genius will be a child, 
 eternity through, in Heaven. If, by chance, the lady 
 
 is a sub- twenty -fwity, she is a star rising, and we should 
 like to visit her before she culminates. 
 
 TIIK REST OF WHAT WE HAVE TO SAY. There is a 
 circulation that beats newspapers beatsthem particu 
 larly in this the Tuesday s paper overtakes the Mon 
 day s, but the lie of Monday is never overtaken by the 
 truthof Tuesday. Some time since a sketch appeared 
 in the Mirror, written by a correspondent, which was 
 sei/.ed upon immediately by some of the busy-bodies of 
 society, as an intentional attack upon one of the first 
 families in this city. A week or two after its publica 
 tion, a friend informed us of the rumor, and we read the 
 sketch over again to see what was objectionable in it. 
 With the exception of a correction made by the proof 
 reader, and one accidental circumstance, invented by 
 the writer to round a sentence, there was nothing in 
 it that could possibly apply to the family in question, 
 and we were amazed at the interpretation put upon it. 
 Subsequent knowledge of the writer and her object 
 has completely removed from our mind, and that of 
 the family alluded to, all shadow of suspicion that any 
 particular person or persons were in her mind while 
 writing it. The story has again come round to us, 
 however, and in so bold a shape that we think it worth 
 while to nail it again with a denial. There never has 
 been, in the Mirror, and there never icill be, any offen 
 sive allusion to individuals in private life. Descriptive 
 writers constantly describe classes, and, if they describe 
 them well, they will apply as the essays in the Specta 
 tor do. to hundreds of persons. The amiable Mis3 
 Sedgwick, utterly incapable of an intentional wound 
 to the feelings of any one, has lived in constant hot 
 water, from the offence taken at the supposed person 
 alities of her descriptions. It is very easy for a mali 
 cious person to take any sketch of character, and find 
 for it a most plausible original. But there should be a 
 watch kept for those who first name these discoveries 
 the first finders of the key to a mischievous allusion. 
 The first time you hear a malicious story, MARK THE 
 TELLER OF IT for ten to one, in that person, male or 
 female, lies the whole malice of the invention and ap 
 plication. Such people do not work in the dark, 
 however. Mischief-making is a most unprofitable 
 trade, and we trust that, in the future school of Ameri 
 can morals, the certain infamy of being the first teller 
 of a malicious tale, will be a predominant feature. It 
 can easily be made so, by " keeping the subject be 
 fore the people." 
 
 One of the most curious features of New Y r ork is 
 the gradual formation of a PATERNOSTER Row or 
 the making of Aim street to correspond with that 
 famous book-mine and fame-quarry of London. Our 
 enterprising and thrifty friends and neighbors, BUR- 
 GFSS. STRINGER, & Co., are the "LONGMANS" ol this 
 publishing Row, and truly, the activity of their sales, 
 and the crowds leaning continually over their counter, 
 give a new aspect to the hitherto contemplative current 
 of merchandise in literature. Their central and spa 
 cious shop on the corner of Broadway, is a thronged 
 book-market, as vigorously tended and customered as 
 the sales of pork and grain. They have lately added 
 to their establishment two stores intervening between 
 them and us, and, with the office of our friends of the 
 " NEW WORLD" farther down the street, and several 
 intermediate publishing and forwarding offices, we of 
 the Mirror are in the midst of a formidable literary 
 mart, that seems destined to concentrate the book- 
 trade, and make, of Ann street, as we said just now, a 
 Paternoster Row. The Turks (who, by the way, 
 have many other sensible notion, besides washing 
 themselves instead of their shirts), devote each differ- 
 
133 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 ent lane of their grand bazar to a single commodity 
 
 no shoemakers to he found out of Shoemaker-lane, 
 
 anJ no books out of Book-alley. The convenience 
 of ihis arrangement, to the public, is very great, and 
 it would be, in this city, a prodigious saving of labor, 
 in cartage and tiaffic, to the booksellers themselves. 
 We have a faint hope of seducing over, to our Row, 
 the agreeable clique of our friend Porter of the 
 Spirit," and we hope Inman of the Columbian will 
 follow after (to save rent), and in this way, we shall 
 h;ive a morning lounge in Ann street for the beaux 
 esprits, that will enable us to combine into a literary 
 social order and have some fun and more weight. 
 Nothing like combination, oh, fellow-pensrnen ! Why 
 shou d we not have a head, and wag ir, like the cham 
 ber of commerce and the powerful presbytery ? For 
 a cl.iss that keeps the key of the city s to-morrow, the 
 press in New York is as strangely unorganized and 
 segregate a body as anarchy of public opinion could 
 possibly desire. But we are trenching here on some 
 thing we have in petto, to write upon more gravely 
 hereafter. 
 
 We seldom read a novel. We can not afford the 
 sympathy, even when we have the time. But, some 
 what liquefied on a warm afternoon of last week, our 
 resolution would not hold, and we took up " THK 
 Jiosw OF THISTLE ISLAND," a Swedish novel by Etn- 
 ilie Carlen, just published by Winchester. The story 
 took hold of us immediately, and we read the book 
 through before going to bed, charmed with its earnest 
 and sjraphic truth of narration and char ter, and par 
 ticularly with the entire fusion of the style, betraying 
 no thumb-spot from the dictionary-cover, and no 
 smack of haste or clumsiness in the transfer. It reads 
 like a book original in English, and that, to our pro 
 fessional superfinery of noun and pronoun, is no small 
 difference from ordinary translations. 
 
 THE REMAINDER. One of the greatest pleasures 
 of living in our free country, is the unceasing satis 
 faction one feels at not having died last week fortu 
 nately surviving to put down one more lie that, if you 
 hud been dead, would be as durable as your tomb 
 stone. Another peculiarity of our country good or 
 bad as you chance to feel about it is the necessity to 
 talk a great deal about yourself, if you would keep 
 up a lively popularity. With these two patriotic 
 promptings, let us say a word of a trip we made lately 
 to Albany. 
 
 h is not perhaps generally known that Albany was 
 our birthplace. We were born once before, it is true, 
 
 in Portland, somewhere about half a life ago a 
 
 man-child." But in Albany, in 1827, we first open 
 ed our eyes, as an adult lion. Up to that period we 
 had been under tutors, and had known only boy 
 friends. By a fortunate chance we suddenly acquired 
 the friendship of a man of great talent and accom 
 plishment, and on a visit to this, our first man-friend 
 at Albany, we stood, for the first time, clear of the 
 imprisoning chalk-lines of boyhood. Those who have 
 " hived the honey" of their summers of the heart 
 know well how intoxicatingly sweet was the first gar 
 den of life in which they walked as men. Still a child 
 at home, and still a college-boy at New Haven, we 
 were, at Albany, a man who had written a book, and as 
 the companion and guest of our fashionable and popu 
 lar friend,* we saw beauty enough, and received kiud- 
 
 * I trust it will not be considered mistimed or unnatural if 
 I follow the impulse of my heart, and put, into a note to so 
 worldly a theme, the substance of a tearful and absorbing 
 revery, which, for the last half hour, has suspended my pen 
 over the paper. The name of the gentleman I have just al- 
 
 ness enough, to have whipped a less leathery brain into 
 syllabub. The loveliness of the belles of Albany at 
 that time, and the brilliancy of its society, are perpet 
 uated in a remembrance that will become a tradition ; 
 and we have never since seen, in any country or so 
 ciety of the world, an equal proportion of elegant men 
 and beautiful and accomplished women. It was so 
 acknowledged over the whole country. The regency 
 of fashion, male and female, was confessedly at Alba 
 ny. New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore, 
 were provinces to this castle of belle-dom ! We have 
 an object in showing what Albany was, at the time 
 we were in the habit of visiting it, and how inevitably, 
 from a combination of circumstances, it becaiue and 
 has remained, to us, a paradise of enchanting associa 
 tions. There is no spot in this country which we re 
 member with equal pleasure. It was the first leaf 
 turned over in our book of manhood. 
 
 We went to Albany with these memories upon us, 
 a week or more ago, to lecture. We spent the morn 
 ing in finding old friends and reviving old associations, 
 and in the evening we had an audience much larger 
 than we looked for, and as brilliant as hope born of 
 such memories could have prefigured it; and we re 
 turned to the city the morning after, gratified and de 
 lighted. But (and here comes the matter in hand) 
 there seems to have been a gentleman in Albany who 
 was unwilling we should be delighted. We have not 
 seen the article he wrote, but, as condensed in another 
 paper, it goes to show that the reasons why we were 
 unsuccessful at Albany were, first, that we have been 
 in the habit of abusing its Dutch aristocracy, and 
 second, that two years ago we "insulted a liidy there 
 and refused a challenge from her friend !" Now here 
 are four items of absolute news to us: 1, that we did 
 ! not succeed 2, that we ever insulted a lady any- 
 ! where 3, that we ever declined any fight that was 
 ever proposed to us 4, that we ever abused the 
 Dutch at Albany. 
 
 j On the fourth count of the indictment, alone, a 
 I friend has thrown a little light. We did once, inad- 
 i vertently, use an adjective, in a way which has been 
 i remembered fifteen years! We said of the swine in 
 j the streets of Albany (in some trifling article for a 
 newspaper), that they were a nuisance " more Dutch 
 than decent." The alliteration seduced us somewhat, 
 but there was provocation as well for, the night 
 
 luded to, JOHN BLEECKER VAN SCHAICK, will call up, at once, 
 to the memory of the Albanians, as well as to the prominent 
 men of all parts of the country, a loss, by early death, of 
 one of our most accomplished gentlemen, and most admira 
 bly-gifted minds. The proportion the balance of character 
 and intellect, in Mr. Van Schaick the fine sense of honor, 
 and the keen discrimination of wit, the manliness and the del 
 icacy, the common sense and the strong poetical perception 
 made him, to me, one of the most admirable of studies, as 
 well as the most winning and endearing of friends. I loved 
 and honored him, till his death, as few men have ever won 
 from me love and honor. It was a matter of continual urging 
 on my part, to induce him to devote his leisure, given him by 
 ample means, to literature. Some of his poetry appeared in 
 the magazines, and is now collected in a volume of the Amer 
 ican poets. But he had higher studies and more vigorous 
 aims than light literature, and he had just broken ground as a 
 I j brilliant orator and statesman, when disease unnerved and 
 prostrated him. Mr. Van Schaick had, however, another 
 Ij quality which would have made him the idol of society in 
 j! England (though, comparatively, little appr-.oiated here) 
 I unequalled wit and brilliancy of converse .IP-. I say ur.e- 
 \) mailed for I have lived long in the soo .y of the men of 
 I svft most celebrated in London, and I hv t .ver thought that 
 jl ibis countryman of my own was their V ^P livocal superior. 
 His "Syonderful quickness and fineness o^ r.-rception, and the 
 ready facility of his polished language, combined with his 
 universal reading and information, made his society in the 
 highest degree delightful and fascinating ; and though, as my 
 first friend of manhood, I gave him warm nnd impulsive ad- 
 miration, my subsequent knowledge of mankind has con 
 stantly enhanced this admiring appreciation In all qualities 
 of the heart he was uprightly noble; and, altogether, we 
 think that in him died the best-balanced and most highly- 
 giflod chnractpr we have ever intimately known. 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 133 
 
 before writing it, strolling home from a party in Al 
 bany, we had been brought from the seventh heaven 
 to the sidewalk, tripped up by a pig ! Now, to us, 
 the pig was Dutch. We had lived only in New Eng 
 land, where this animal, from some prejudice against 
 his habits, has not the freedom of the city. Visiting 
 two Dutch cities, New York and Albany, we found 
 the pig master of the pave, and the offending adjec- 
 .ive, lubricated by our disaster, slipped into its place 
 with inevitable facility. We have heard from time to 
 time, of this perversion of the word Dutch, as a thing 
 remembered against us. We had hoped that the 
 great fire in Wall street, the death of Harrison, the 
 Miller-prophecy, and the other events of the last fif- ; 
 teen years, would have wiped that small adjective out. 
 We do not know why it should outlive the poets who 
 have written and been forgotten in that time the > 
 steamboats that have been built and used up the i 
 politicians who have flourished and fallen the com 
 ets that have glittered and gone the newspapers that 
 have started and stopped. The secret of that little 
 adjective s imperishableness is worth analyzing 
 especially by poets and the patentees of "asbestos 
 safes." We wish we could stumble upon as long- 
 lived a conjunction I 
 
 Seriously, we are annoyed and hurt at the discov 
 ery of a hostility that could make itself heard, in a 
 place we owe so much to for past happiness. We 
 beg the Albanians to forgive us for the unintentional 
 offence, and to take us and our Mirror into that favor 
 of which we have always been ambitious. 
 
 The spot where all the winds of heaven turn the 
 corner the coolest and most enjoyable spot in the 
 hottest and least enjoyable summer s day is the out 
 side bastion of Castle Garden. We made our way 
 there a few days ago, when the streets were fairly in 
 a swoon with the breathless heat, and it was as cool 
 and bree/.v, outside the round castle, as a hill-top on 
 a May mo rning. For children for happy idlers with 
 a book for strangers who wish to study the delicious 
 panorama of the bay there is no place comparable 
 to the embrasures, parapets, and terraces of Castle 
 Garden. 
 
 TWO OR THREE LITTLE MATTERS. There is HO 
 
 struggling against it we have a need to pass the sum- 
 merln some place that God made. We have argued 
 the instinct down every morning since May-day 
 while shaving. It is as cool in the city as in the 
 c 
 
 II! 
 
 country, we believe. We see as many trees, from 
 our window (living opposite St. Paul s churchyard), 
 and as much grass, as we could take in ai a glance. 
 The air we breathe, outside the embrasures of Castle 
 Garden, every afternoon, and on board the Hoboken 
 and Jersey boats, every warm evening, are entire rec 
 ompenses to the lungs for the day s dust and stony 
 heat. And then God intends that somebody shall live 
 in the city in summer-time, and why not we? By 
 the time this argument is over, our chin and our re 
 bellious spirit are both smoothed down. Breakfast is 
 ready as cool fruit, as delicious butter under the ice, 
 and as charming a vis-a-vis over the white cloth and 
 coffee-tray as we should have in the country. We 
 go to work after breakfast with passable content. The 
 city cries, and the city wheels, the clang of the char 
 coal cart and the importunities of printer s imp all 
 blend in the passages of our outer ear as unconsciously 
 and fitly as brook-noises and breeze-doings. We are 
 well enough till two. An hour to dinner passed in 
 varnished boots and out-doors-inesses somewhat a 
 weary hour, we must say, with a subdued longing for 
 some earth to walk upon. Dinner pretty well 
 
 Discontent and sorrow dwell in a man s throat, and go 
 abroad while it is watered and swept. The hourafier 
 dinner has its little resignations also coffee, music, 
 and the " angel-visit" from the nursery. Five o clock 
 | comes round, and with it nature s demand for a pair 
 of horses. (Alas ! why are we not centaurs, to have 
 a pair of horses when we marry ?) We get into an 
 omnibus, and as we get toward the porcelain end of 
 the cicy, our porcelain friends pass us in their car 
 riages, bound out where the earth breathes and the 
 grass grows. An irresistible discontent overwhelms 
 us! The paved hand of the city spreads out beneath 
 us, holding down I he grass and shutting off the salu 
 tary earth-pores, and we pine for balm and moisture! 
 The over-worked mind offers no asylum of thought. 
 It is the out-door time of day. Nature calls us to 
 her bared bosom, and there is a floor of impenetrable 
 stone between us and he.r! At the end of the omni 
 bus-line we turn and go back, and resume our paved 
 and walled-up existence, and all the logic of philoso 
 phy, aided by icecreams and bands of music, would 
 fail to convince us, that night, that we are not vic 
 tims and wretches. For Heaven s sake, some kind old 
 man give us an acre off the pavement, and money 
 enough to go and lie on the outside of it of summer 
 afternoons ! 
 
 Let us out of this great stone oven ! The city is 
 intolerable ! Oh, from these heated bricks and stones, 
 what moistureless. what wilted, what fainting air comes 
 to the nostrils ! The two river-breezes doing their best 
 to meet across the island, swoon in Broadway. The 
 pores gasp, the muscles droop, the mind is blank and 
 nerveless. Let us out somewhere ! 
 
 We had such a fever upon us as is expressed above, 
 when a friend offered to drive us to ROCKAWAY. With 
 a mental repetition of the affecting prayer of the poor 
 woman in the ballad, 
 
 (" Take a white napkin, and wrap my head softly, 
 And then throw me overboard, me and my baby !") 
 
 we crept into his wagon, and bowled away silently on 
 the road to Jamaica. It was a hot evening, but the 
 smell of the earth, and the woods, and the dairy-farms, 
 roused our drooping petals a little. Jamaica lies 
 somewhat in the island s Jap, however, and it was not 
 till we began to sniff the salt of the open Atlantic, that 
 we were once more " capable creatures." But what 
 a revivification as we approached Rockaway ! The 
 sea-breeze nudged up our drooping eyebrows, gave a 
 pull to the loose halliards of our let-go smiles, crisped 
 our pores, and restored everything to its use and its ac 
 tivity the irrevocable starch in our shirt-collars alone 
 incapable of rally. Rockaway (we write only for 
 those who know nothing of it) is part of the snowy 
 edge of the Atlantic St. George s hotel, at Ports 
 mouth, England, being all but next door to the Rock- 
 away pavilion. Of course there, is nothing to take the 
 saline coolness out of the breeze (unless by chance 
 it has come across St. Helena or the Azores), and the 
 difference between the "entire quadruped" in tbe 
 way of a sea-breeze, and the mixtures they get in 
 some other sea-side places, is worth taking pains for. 
 But let us tell, in plain language, ivhat sort of place 
 Rockau ayisfor the benefit of those who are choos 
 ing a month s resort for health or pleasure. 
 
 The pavilion of Rockaway is an immense hotel, 
 whose majestic portico forms the centre of a curving 
 beach of two or three miles in the bend, on the south 
 ern shore of Long Island. From this portico, and 
 from the windows of the hotel, the delightful sight 
 and sound of the beating surf are visible and audible 
 eternal company to eye and ear. The beach ex 
 tends for miles either way a broad floor as smooth as 
 marble, and so hard that a carriage wheel scarce 
 
134 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 leaves a print, and this, as a drive, we presume to be 
 the most delightful and enjoyable in the world. The 
 noiseless tread of the horse, and the unheard progress 
 of the wheels, the snowy surf along the edge of which 
 you keep your way, and the high exhilaration given 
 to the spirits by the sea-breeze, and the enlivening 
 beat of the waves upon the sand at your feet, form, 
 altogether, an enchantment to which, in the way of 
 out-door pleasure, we scarce know a parallel. And, 
 as a walk, the pure hard floor of that interminable 
 beach is, of course, equally delightful. 
 
 The arrangements for bathing are very well man 
 aged. There are some twenty bathing-houses on the 
 beach, near the house, and, between the hours of ten 
 and twelve in the forenoon, the ocean-side is guarded 
 and kept exclusive to the ladies and their attendants. 
 An omnibus constantly plies between the bathing- 
 bouses and the hotel, and to- ladies and children, to 
 old men and young, the hour spent in the invigorating 
 surf is the pleasure of the day. All, alike, come back 
 elated and animated, and the society of the place 
 shows very markedly the fillip given by the sea-bath 
 ing to health and spirits. Children, more especial^, 
 who have drooped in the city, pluck up appetite and 
 vigor immediately at Rockaway. 
 
 As the favorite and regular resort of many of the 
 best families of the city, the society of the pavilion has 
 always been acknowledged to be of a more refined 
 quality and on a more agreeable footing than that of 
 any other watering-place. It is equally removed from 
 useless ceremony and undesirable freedom. Those 
 who wish to combine gayety with the pursuit of 
 health and the enjoyment of luxury, have facilities for 
 all these at Rockaway, in a degree as desirable as it is 
 unusual. The table is not surpassed by that of any 
 hotel even in the city, and this, in a watering-place, is 
 a peculiarity ! Mr. Cranston, the keeper of the house, 
 thoroughly understands his business. 
 
 As to facilities for getting to Rockaway, the railroad 
 from Brooklyn ferry takes you to Jamaica in half an 
 hour; from Jamaica, on the arrival of the cars, starts 
 regularly a mammoth omnibus with six horses, and 
 other roomy conveyances are supplied if necessary, 
 which bring you to Rockaway in an hour. All de 
 lays included, it is about two hours from the city. 
 
 Certain coolness and certainly-improved health thrown 
 into the scale, the desirableness of Rockaway, as a 
 summer resort, far outweighs that of every other wa 
 tering-place in the country. 
 
 A late number of the Southern Literary Messenger 
 contains two poems of uncommon merit for the drift 
 of a periodical. One is by Mr. Gilmore Simms 
 (whose much-worked mine has now and then a very 
 golden streak of poetry), and the other is by H. B. 
 Hirst a poem of fifty-seven stanzas on the subject of 
 ENDYMION. This latter is after Keats. It is very 
 highly studied, very carefully finished, and very airily 
 and spiritually conceived. Its faults are its conceits, 
 which are not always defensible for instance, the one 
 in italics, in the following beautiful description of Di 
 ana as she descended to Endymion: 
 
 " A crescent on her brow a brow whose brightness 
 Darkened the crescent ; and a neck and breast 
 
 On which young love might rest 
 
 Breathless with passion ; and an arm whose whiteness 
 Shadowed the lily s snow ; a lip the bee 
 
 Might dream in, and a knee 
 Round as a period ; while her white feet glancing 
 Between her sandals, shed a twilight light 
 
 Athwart the purple night. 
 
 Cycling her waist a zone, whose gems were dancing 
 With rainbow rays, pressed with a perfect grace 
 Her bosom s ivory space." 
 
 Now we know as well as anybody what the " round of 
 a period" is, and we have seen, here and there, a god 
 
 dess s knee, and we declare there is no manner or 
 shape of likeness that justifies the comparison ! With 
 the exception of two or three of these lapses away 
 from nature, however, it is a beautiful poem this 
 "Endymion" and will read well in a volume. By 
 the way, let us wonder whether the sweet poetess by 
 the same name is a sister of Mr. Hirst. 
 
 We consider Niblo s garden one of the chief 
 
 "broideries" upon our woof of probation in this dirty 
 
 planet, and if there are to be offsets for good things 
 
 enjoyed this side of Cocytus, we expect to pay for 
 
 Mitchell. Oh, thou pleasant Mitchell ! And he to 
 
 j grow fat under the exercise of such a wand of indus- 
 
 | trious enchantment ! What is the man made of, be- 
 
 : sides brains! 
 
 We sat through the " RKVOLT OF THE HAREM," a 
 j night or two ago, and saw all its funny sights, seriatim. 
 The ballet, as intended to be seen, was excellent for 
 the time and material, indeed, quite wonderful. But 
 1 we had our little pleasures (not down in the bill), and 
 |: one of them was to see pretty Miss Taylor, the clever 
 i: opera-singer, figuring as an Odalisque danseuse ! If 
 that pretty actress be not abducted, and sold to the 
 sultan within a year, we shall think less of the enter 
 prise of Salem privateers! She only wants to forget 
 that she is Miss Taylor, indeed, to dance uncommonly 
 ji well the consciousness of her silk stockings being at 
 present something of a damper to the necessary aban- 
 j don. But, modesty and all, she is very charming in 
 j this ballet, and one wonders what Mitchell will make 
 ! of her next ! Korponay, too the elegant Korponay 
 figuring as an Abyssinian eunuch ! That, truth to 
 | say, had for us a dash of displeasure! He entered 
 i into it with all his might, it is true, and played the 
 I nigger with Jim Crow facility ; but the part, for him, 
 | was out of character, and we shall not be content till 
 he \sdis-mggered by appearing once more in the role 
 I! of a gentleman. The bath-scene was well arranged, 
 though the prettiest girls were not in the water (pray 
 why. Master Mitchell ?) And the military evolutions 
 of the revolted ladies were very well done, and will be 
 better done with a little more practice, and the mend- 
 i ing of that corporal s stocking with a hole in it. The 
 town seemed pleased, we thought. 
 
 We have not yet mentioned the premiere danseuse, 
 Mademoiselle Desjardiris, who did very well in the 
 way of her vocation, but from whose feet have de 
 parted, with the boots she wore, the exquisite symme- 
 i try we admired at Simpson s benefit. Ah, ladies, you 
 j should wear boots! Here were two feet in tightly- 
 sandalled shoes, looking like two tied-up parcels from 
 Beck s, which, a night or two before, in brodeqvins 
 bien fails, looked models of Arabian instep! Can 
 boots do that? We hereby excommunicate, from the 
 church of true love, all husbands, fathers, and guard 
 ians, who shall rebel against the preference, by wife, 
 ward, or daughter, of Nunn s boots at $3 50, over 
 Middleton s slippers at ten shillings. The embellish 
 ment is worth the difference! 
 
 We have received a very testy letter from some old 
 gentleman, requesting us to reform the gait of the 
 New York ladies. He manages to convey what pecu 
 liarity it is that offends his eye, but he is mistaken as 
 to the stoop. The lady within stands straight enough! 
 If he knows this, and means covertly to attack the ar 
 tificial portion of the outline, we can tell him that he 
 rashly invades, not merely a caprice of fashion (which 
 in itself were formidable enough), but the most jealous 
 symbol and citadel of female domination ! There are 
 thousands of ladies who would resign carriages and 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 135 
 
 die by fire and! 1 city of worship between men and women in those 
 ount on horse- j days! and as innocent as joyous ! Compare it with 
 
 satin without a sigh, but who would 
 fagot rather than yield the right to mount on horse 
 back in the masculine riding habit! "Wearing the 
 breeches" is a worn-out figure of speech, but does 
 anybody in his senses believe that the usurpation has And now, my dear Willis, a cautious word or two 
 not taken refuge in a new shape ? Need we open our i about the women. There are " belles" at Saratoga, 
 
 the arms -length superfmery, and dangerous pent-up- 
 itude of now! 
 
 respondent s eyes any further ? What bird is the 
 most pronounced and unequivocal type of martial and 
 
 masculine bravery ? What bird is the farthest re 
 move, in shape, air, and habits, from his female part 
 ner ? What bird lives up systematically to woman s 
 ideal of a hero a life of fighting and making love? 
 Draw the outline from the comb of a fighting-cock to 
 
 well-born, well-moulded, and well-dressed five or six 
 of the first degree of perilous loveliness, none of ihe 
 
 second degree (I don t know why) and fifty or sixty 
 with beauty enough to make, each one, a dull man 
 happy. The rest are probably immortal creatures, 
 and have angels to look after them but, as they make 
 no sacrifices in proportion to their mortal plainness, 
 the feather-tip of his bustle, and you have the eidolon they are ciphers, fit least till doomsday. I will not 
 
 of male carriage and the dressmaker s ne plus ultra! impa : r my advantages by telling, to an enterprising 
 
 We warn off our correspondent! ji admirer like yourself, even the names of the adorables, 
 
 for as I slide into the back-swath of the great mower, 
 I am jealous of opportunity but there is one woman 
 here who was the electric light of the court of France 
 i when I was abroad, a creature of that airy stateliness 
 that betrays the veiled symmetry 
 
 LETTER FROM CINNA BKVKRLEY, ESQ., TO N. 
 WILLIS. 
 
 SARATOGA, U. S. Hotel, August 1. 
 
 Of the fair form that terminates so well 
 
 an se g as ea un now as , 
 
 . my dear poet, and I am trying on the old trick maternal nioU rnfulness of eye has more than mad, 
 
 f gayety at Saratoga. Which of us should write , for (he fainter roses an d mO re languishing lilies ol 
 
 ie other a letter ? You, if you say so though as J > ^ ch<jeU (God be pl - aise d f or compensations ! 
 
 You are feed.ng the news-hopper of your literary ^ ^ jg ag beailtiflll now as then , for a kind of tender 
 mill, my dear poet, and I am trying on the old trick ! _ ^ , v , Qto ,. n , 1 mnnrn f n | npsa O f eve has more than made 
 of 
 the 
 
 get older, I am beginning to think well of the town, 
 even in August. You have your little solaces, my fast 
 liver ! 
 
 Well what shall I tell you ? This great khan in 
 in the desert of dulness is full, to the most desirable 
 
 lilies of 
 
 (God be praised lor compensations !) 
 ^u. i witho ut specifying more to you, I must hold back 
 a bit of speculation that I have in reserve, while 1 
 make you marvel at a triumph of toilet achieved by 
 the kind of short gown, or kirtle,* never before seen 
 but at a wash-tub, but proinpted now to be the lode- 
 
 uncomfortabieness. Shall I begin with the tnen ! star O f the drawing-room ! There are articles of dress, 
 God made them first, and as it is a test of the ultimate ;l u ^ now , which are inlensijiers making vulgarity 
 degree of refinement to reapproach nature, why, let j more vu |g ;) r, aristocracy more aristocratic and the 
 men have the precedence ! Less American than phi- ; ^^ who comes Uj rt | e d to breakfast at Saratoga, is of 
 losophical, you will say! but men first, let it be . l jf ature B daintiest fabric, only less proud than win- 
 must have my way in my post-meridian, nine but fancy a buttoned-up frock-coat over a 
 There used to be dandies! That was in the time ,| gn petticoat, and you can picture to yourself the 
 when there was an aristocracy in the country. V" th i| saucv piquancy of the costume. Titania in the 
 the levelling (from the middle to the top) that has b een I laundrv ; 
 
 going on for the last ten or twelve years, the incentive 
 somehow, seems gone, or, account for it how you 
 will there are no dandies! I am inclined to think 
 
 I was going to philosophize upon the changes in 
 lady-tactics within the last few years, but I will just 
 hint at a single point that has impressed me. The 
 
 that two causes may have contributed ^to it the mdis-i . n) . tive con fi d i n 1 gness o f American girlhood (the 
 cretion of tailors in using gentlemen s ideas pro || j ove |j e8t 8OC j a | phase that ever ascended from the 
 
 shepherd s fold to ihe drawing-room) has been aban 
 doned for the European mamma-dom and watchful 
 restraint, but without some of the compensatory Eu 
 ropean concomitants. I will not "lift the veil" by 
 telling what those concomitants are. It would be a 
 
 - - . delicate and debateable subject. But the effect of 
 
 woman s being beautiful enough to adore, and yet not i ^ ^ a(] tation ig) in my opinion, far more dan- 
 
 wise enough to know that degree of dilierence . AH, ug than what it seeks to SIlp plant or remedy, and 
 
 cuously. and the attention paid to dress by all classes 
 everybody who can buy a coat at all, being within one 
 decree of comme it faut ! The other side of that degree 
 is not far enough off from the mob, and so dandyism 
 is discouraged. Needlessly, it is true, for the differ 
 ence is marked enough; but the possibility of a 
 
 ~ 
 
 my dear Willis, that an angel may " walk unrecog 
 nised !" It has killed the class ! 
 
 Tliere is one dandy only, at Saratoga, and he is but 
 the dovetail upon the age gone by a better-dressed 
 
 man ten yea 
 
 rs ago than this morning at breakfast. 
 
 among other evils is that of making culpable what was 
 once thought innocent. I shudder at the manuiac- 
 ture of new sins in a world where enough, for all 
 needful ruin, grows wild by the road-side. I do not 
 believe we shall grow purer by Europeamzmg. 
 
 1 lie wjitcr 
 
 One dandy among three thousand "fashionables!" It, wii-it else would you like to know; i ne waier 
 is early in the season, it is true, and (as a youth said j ^^ gg metamc as ofoij, though the beauties around 
 
 purer by Europeanizing. 
 ou like to know ? Th 
 
 to me yesterday, with a clever classification) "all Car- j ^ ^ of - the j ounl;i in are an increased congregation. 
 venter s coats are gone this year to Newport." But, j _,. -, k p ,) ie j r grea t caravansary admirably 
 still, there are those here done into stereotype, and 
 reckless of the peculiarities in themselves which are 
 susceptible of piquant departures from the fashion 
 who would have been, twenty years ago, each 
 one a phenix unresembled ! How delightful the 
 springs were, in those days of marked men! How 
 adored they were by the women ! How generously 
 
 The Marvms keep ter grea c 
 
 well, as usual, though, surviving amid such a cataract 
 of travel, they should rather call their hotel "Goat 
 Island" than "United States." Un.on hall is 
 making a fortune out of the invahd saints, and Con 
 gress hall looks romantic and flirt-w.se as ever ; ; 
 by-the-way, they are about to enlarge it, with a portico 
 overlooking the spring. Delicious dinners can be had 
 and an omnibus runs there regularly, and 
 
 at the lake 
 
 HI IIIO la* w au* * - - I/-* 
 
 in all matters, Saratoga enlarges. It serves a needful 
 
 (by such petting as is now unknown) their anxieties 
 of toilet were repaid and glorified ! How the arrival 
 of each " particular star" was hailed by the rushing 
 
 out of the white dresses upon the portico of Congress M nave smi;f . ulstuvc , rvi ._ r .... 
 
 hall the acclamations, the felicitations, the inquiries was dug up" by the spirited belles of Carolina, anc 
 tender and uproarious ! There was a joyous recipro- at the south a Jib-along-josey: 
 
 T have since discovered that this promo 
 
 ted article of dress 
 
136 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 purpose in this gregarious country; and on the whole, 
 no place of escape is pleasanter to man or woman. 
 How is the joyous brigadier? Make my homage 
 
 acceptable to his quill and his epaulets, and ask him, j 
 in his next hour of inspired song, to glorify proud j 
 beauty in humble kirtle. 
 
 Come to Saratoga, my dear Willis, and let me tell 
 your how sincerely I am yours, 
 
 CINNA BEVERLEY. 
 
 The time will come, perhaps, when we shall be a 
 connoisseur in snuff-boxes, insects, or autographs 
 but, meantime, we are curious in the cultivation of 
 the rarer kinds of friendship. The ingenious idea oc 
 curred to us, some ten years ago, of turning the waste 
 overflow of our heart into some such special and 
 available irrigation, and the result we shall leave to be 
 published posthumously, under the title of AMICUL- 
 TURK, or a TREATISE ON LOVE-WASTE. Our proper 
 channels of affection being first supplied to the point ! 
 
 the world goes, and stuff for moralizing eh, old 
 Willis ? 
 
 The charm of society at Saratoga lies in getting 
 the thing without paying for it. To see a pretty 
 woman in town, one has to resolve at breakfast, shape 
 his arrangements, stick three hours to his resolve, trav 
 el a mile, ring a bell, run the chance of intruding or 
 "not at home," talk to some bore in the way of aunt 
 or brother, and two to one, after all, you light upon 
 an undress humor in the lady visited. In the great 
 drawing-room of the United States, on the contrary, 
 the whole visitable world is reduced to the compass of 
 a gamut, and you have it all within the spread of your 
 hand, and all in tune ! You dress, breakfast, and sit 
 on a sofa, and in ten minutes your entire female ac 
 quaintance passes within three feet of your nose, and 
 every one as ready to be talked to as if you had ridden 
 three miles, and wasted patience and a forenoon to 
 have that pleasure. You leave her when you like, 
 without the trouble of an adieu, see and talk to twenty 
 more with the same charming economy of time and 
 
 of overflow, we have felt free to venture upon very ; labor, and having got through your duty-talks by 
 
 bold experiments with the remainder, and some of our 
 specimens, of course, are simply curiosities ; but we 
 have them (friends) of every quality, form, and condi 
 tion, male and female, preserved with studious care 
 and industry guardedly confining ourselves to only 
 one of a kind. Some of the humbler specimens are I 
 of great beauty, but will show better preserved and I 
 pressed in a posthumous andbarium. We can only i 
 venture, in our lifetime, to give specimens of the j 
 more ornamental varieties ; and our object now is to 
 introduce a leaf of the species "callow dandy" in 
 
 eleven, you select your favorite and devote yourself to 
 her for the remaining twelve or fourteen hours "a 
 month s love in a day!" This, if you please, is letting 
 
 " the serious part of life go by 
 Like the neglected sand," 
 
 and very glad to be rid of it ! Now, don t you think, 
 my paternal Willis, that society in town has too many 
 hinderances, obstructions, cross-purposes, exactions, 
 mystifications, and botherations considering tkat a 
 plague slices off just as much life as a pleasure! I 
 
 oilier words, to give you a letter from a very elegant 
 
 lad with a nascent mustache, a prized friend of ours, 
 
 now, for the first time, at Saratoga. He writes about 
 
 trifles, but in hot weather we (for one) like trifles best; 
 
 and as he writes, after all, with a dash of philosophy, j 
 
 we have not thought it worth while to omit or alter, loots, my dear dandy ? Do you observe what aT>reak- 
 
 Here is hisjetter, written in the vanishing legibility of! down they give to the instep, and how shamble-footed, 
 
 and down at the heel the men seem who wear them ? 
 
 After all, there is a " blood look" to a man s leg as 
 
 wish the Marvins would take a lease of New York, 
 roof it in, knock away walls, and make a "Springs" 
 of it ! It is so very cumbrous, letting people have 
 whole houses to themselves ! 
 
 Have you anatomized this new fashion of Baiter- 
 
 a once good school-hand : 
 
 U. S. HOTEL, Aug. . 
 
 DFAR WILLIS: Your kind note to St. John, of the 
 Knickerbocker, got me the state-room with the pic 
 ture of " Glenmary" on the panel, and I slept under 
 the protection of your household gods famously, of 
 course. The only fault I found with that magnificent 
 boat, was the right of any "smutched villain" to walk 
 through her. It is a frightful arrangement that can 
 sell, to a beauty and a blackguard, for the same money, 
 the right to promenade on the same carpet, and go to 
 sleep with the same surroundings on the opposite 
 sides of a pine partition ! Give me a world where 
 antipodes stay put! But what a right-royal, "slap- 
 up" supper they give in the Knickerbocker! They ll 
 make the means better than the end travelling better 
 than arriving if they improve any more ! I had a 
 great mind to go back the next day, and come up 
 again. 
 
 Saratoga s great fun. I had no idea there were so 
 many kinds of people beasts and beauties. Five 
 hundred men and women in one house is a lumping 
 of things that shoves aside a great many secrets 
 there s no room for. Old women popping out of their 
 rooms, with their wigs off, to call a waiter lazy men 
 coming to breakfast unshaved cross people that can 
 not, be smiling all day long lovers besieging, when 
 the lady would prefer cracker and cheese jealous 
 people looking daggers while they pretend to blow 
 their noses bustles flattened by dinner-chairs into 
 upright pianos ladies spreading their nostrils at un 
 expected introductions old maids in calm disgust, 
 and just-outs in " sweet confusion" a Turk in the 
 portico selling attars, and a Jew in the drawing-room, 
 shining in patent leather all pretty good sights, as 
 
 well as a horse s, and no dandy can look "clean 
 limbed" with unstrapped trousers and his apparent foot 
 cut in two by shoes of two colors. The eye wants a 
 clean line from the point of the toe to the swearing- 
 place of the patriarchs, and an unblemished instep 
 rising to the pantaloon. The world s tailors have 
 been ever since breeches-time learning the proper ad 
 justment of straps, and now it is perfected, the capri 
 cious world condemns it to disuse! Write an article 
 about it, my dear Willis! And then these gathered 
 French trousers making a man into a " big-hipped 
 humble-bee" as if we needed to be any more like 
 women ! I see, too, that here and there a youth has 
 a coat padded over the hips! Though, apropos of 
 coats, there is a well-dressed man here with a new cut 
 of Carpenter s. He s a Prometheus, that Carpenter 
 heating his goose by undoubted "fire from heaven!" 
 The skirts of the last inspiration cross slightly behind, 
 aiding the Belvidere "pyramid inverted" (from the 
 shoulders down) and of course promoting the fine arts 
 of tailoring. Allowing freely the tip-toppiness of 
 Jennings in trousers, waistcoats, and overcoats, there 
 is nobody like this Philadelphia man for coats ! You 
 might as well restore the marble chips to the nose of 
 a statue as suggest an improvement to him. And what 
 a blessing this is, my dear Willis! Do you remem 
 ber the French dandy s sublime sentiment: " Si I on 
 rencontrait un habit parfait dans toute sa vie, on pour- 
 rait presque se passer tV amour . " 
 
 Ah! such an interminable letter as I am writing! 
 Your friend " Jo. Sykes," the puller of the big wires, 
 is here, handsome and thoughtful, with a daughter 
 who is to be the belle of I860 the loveliest child I 
 have seen in my travels. The beautiful women I will 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 137 
 
 tell you about over our olives and tinta. No events 
 that I can trust to the indiscretion of pen and ink. 
 Ever yours, AUGUSTUS ILIHO. 
 
 Of course there was a postscript, but that we must 
 reserve for posterity. Our friend Gus lliho is not a 
 man to write altogether upon third person topics. But 
 we have another friend at Saratoga a female speci 
 men and we hope to hear from her, twixt this and 
 the season over. Our readers will please expect it. 
 
 THE CABINET. 
 
 (" The Committee" trimming pencil in the Eastern-most 
 bdthin g-house on Rockaway beach. Enter the briga- i 
 dier with nostrils inflated.) 
 
 Brig. Fmff ! fmff ! God bless the Atlantic ocean ! j 
 Fmff! "Salt sea" indeed! I never smelt a breeze 
 fresher. Fmff! fmff! fmff! You got the start of j 
 me, my dear boy ! (pulls his last high heel out of the \ 
 deep sand and sits down on the threshold.) What say 
 to a strip and dip before we come to business? 
 
 Com. Fie ! general, fie ! Look through your 
 fingers at the other end of the beach ! It is the hour i 
 of oceanic beatitude the ladies bathing ! The mur- j 
 muring waters will be purer for the interview. Bathe j 
 we in the first wave after ! 
 
 Brig. How can you 
 
 Play in wench-like words with that 
 Which is so serious ?" 
 
 Did you bring a towel, mi-boy? 
 
 Com. Tut ! would you offend the south wind, that 
 proffers the same office so wooingly ? Walk on the 
 bench, man. and let the sun peruse you, whileyoudry! 
 
 Brig. So should I be more red, with a vengeance ! 
 But 1 don t like this dry-salting, mi-boy ! It s too 
 sticky ! Ye gods ! look at the foam upon that wave ! 
 What is that like, my poet ? 
 
 Com. Like the unrolling of a bale of lace on a 
 broad counter! The "tenth wave" is the head clerk, 
 and the clams and soft crabs are the ladies shopping! ; 
 How I love the affinities of Art and Nature! 
 
 Brig. Poll ! Where s Nature s twine and brown ! 
 paper? Don t be transcendental ! 
 
 Com. How ignorant you are, not to know eel-grass i 
 and devil s apron Nature s twine and brown paper ! 
 My dear general, were you ever introduced to the 
 Atlantic? Is this your first visit? Stand up in the 
 doorway ! 
 
 (Brigadier rises and the surf bows to the ground.) 
 
 General Morris ! the Atlantic ocean. Atlantic 
 ocean! General Morris. I am happy to bring two 
 such distinguished " swells" together. Thoagh (apro 
 pos, Mr. "Heaving Main !") the general is a gay man! 
 Look out for your " pale Cynthia !" The moon is 
 not famed for her constancy ! 
 
 Brig. What are you mumbling there, mi-boy! 
 I wish, under the tender influence of these suggesting 
 waters, to express a wish that you would write some 
 poetry, or give us a new tale, or dash us off a play, or 
 
 Com. Or, in some other way make rubbish for 
 posterity ! No, sir ! There are no pack-horses in 
 Posthumousland, and, as much as will ride in a ghost s 
 knapsack, with his bread and cheese, is as much, in 
 quantity, as any man should write who has pity for his 
 pedestrian soul on its way to dooms-day ! Why, ! 
 general, the TALES which I am about to publish (in 
 cluding "Inklings," "Loiterings" etc., etc.), will 
 make, of themselves, a most adult-looking octavo. 
 My POEMS and PLAYS have tonnage enough to carry, 
 at least, all the bulk necessary to a fame ; my MISCEL 
 LANIES, yet to be collected will make a most sizeable 
 
 volume of slip-slop ; PENCILLINGS is no pamphlet: and 
 LETTERS FROM UNDER A BRIDGE, and other episiolary 
 
 production do you see how beautifully the sand 
 
 immortalizes the industrious waves that write succes 
 sively their sparkling lines on the beach ! 
 
 Brig. Don t malign your "eternal fame, mi-boy !" 
 Com More eternal, I believe, than the love of the 
 impertinent Lothario in the sonnet : 
 
 (" But say, my all ! my mistress ! and my friend ! 
 What day next week th eternity shall end?") 
 
 but how much more eternal it would be, if they would 
 make the genesis of a man s works like (hat of the 
 patriarchs dateable from the first satisfactory off-shoot 
 of his manhood ! Do you remember the expressive 
 genealogy of Shem ? 
 
 12. And Arphaxad lived five and thirty years and begat 
 Salah : 
 
 13. And Arphaxad lived after he begat Salah four hundred 
 and three years and begat sons and daughters. 
 
 14. And Eber lived four and thirty years and begat Peleg : 
 
 15. And Eber lived after he begat Peleg four hundred and 
 thirty years, and begat sons and daughters. 
 
 And so on, up to Abraham, whose father was seven 
 ty years old when he was born. But don t you sup 
 pose these boys did anything before they were thirty- 
 odd ? Their history begins with their first creditable 
 production ! Eber was nothing till he begat Peleg, 
 though, very likely, the critics of that time "preferred 
 very much his earlier productions." 
 
 Brig. And you think you could begin, now, with 
 your first Peleg and Salah ? 
 
 Com. You have said it. But, as I hinted before, 
 my posthumous knapsack is already full of rubbish, 
 and a thought strikes me ! 
 
 Brig. " Call it out !" 
 
 Com. I ll change my style and start a new reputa 
 tion, incog! 
 
 Brig. Famous ! 
 
 Com. And sell some man the glory of it for an 
 annuity ! 
 
 Brig.-Good ! 
 
 Com. ( Thoughtfully) The old countess of Des 
 mond shed her teeth three limes. 
 
 Brig. A precedent in nature. 
 
 Com. (Firmly) Soit! Done! So be it! Hang 
 me if I don t ! You ll hear of a new author before 
 long one that beats me hollow ! Look me up a 
 purchaser, my dear brigadier ! Literary fame furnish 
 ed at say, three thousand dollars per annum ! 
 
 Brig. Mi-boy, the ladies have left the beach I 
 wonder if the sea would condescend to us, now ! 
 
 Com. Peltry after roses and ivory ! I don t know! 
 
 Brig. Talking of Esau he should have lived in 
 cravat-time. Well-drest, your hirsute customers looks 
 not amiss ! (No pun, you villain !) Stand back, my 
 unclad-boy ! Here comes a wagon load of women ! 
 
 Com. Chambermaids and nurses; who, by the 
 way they flock to the beach in the male hours, must 
 either have eyes with a nictitating membrane, or a 
 modesty that is confined to what they hear. I wish to 
 heaven that all females were patricians undesecrated 
 by low taste and servitude ! It s like classifying owls 
 with angels because they are both feathered, to call 
 these rude creatures women . What s that scar on 
 your breast, brigadier? 
 
 Brio-. Slide down your "nictitating membrane," 
 
 mi-boy, and don t be too observing ! Here goes ! 
 Hup! (The brigadier rushes into the surf, takes a 
 stitch through three frills of the island s shirt, and rises 
 like a curly-headed sun from the ocean.) 
 
 Com. (so/us). There he swims ! God bless him 
 for a buoyant brigadier ! How the waves tumble over 
 his plump shoulders, delighted to feel the place where 
 ride his epaulets and his popularity! Look out for 
 sharks, my dear general ! They snuff a poet afar off! 
 
138 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 Natural victims we are to them on land or water! 
 Hear him laugh as he shakes the brine out of his 
 whiskers ! Was ever such a laugh ! His heart gives 
 that " ha ! ha !" a fillip as it sets out ! I must swim 
 off to him ! Clear the beach, soft crab and sand-bird! 
 Morris and Willis must swim together! 
 
 ****** 
 
 Brig. (Sitting down to dry.) This salting freshens 
 a man, and this wetting makes him dry. Oh for a 
 drink and the asp of Cleopatra a cobbler and a riper! ! 
 Shake yourself, mi-boy ! 
 
 Com. Suppose we roll in the sand and take a 
 wrestle, like the athleta? of old eh ? How do you 
 propose to get the sand and gravel out from your 
 doigts da pied, general ? 
 
 Brig. " Gravelled, 1 we are, mi-boy, but not " for 
 lack of matter !" Let s dress first, and then go down 
 and rinse our feet with the aid of the moon s lover 
 lacking a servant to bring a pail ! Are you dry ? 
 
 Com. Inner and outer man very ! What s this | 
 dropped out of your pocket! 
 
 Brig. A song* that I wrote for Brown to set to 
 
 musicT Shall I read it to you ? 
 
 (Brigadier reads with his hand on his breast.) 
 
 TIS NOW THE PROMISED HOUR. 
 
 " The fountains serenade the flowers, 
 
 Upon their silver lute 
 And, nestled in their leafy bowers 
 
 The forest-birds are mute : 
 The bright and glittering hosts above, 
 
 Unbar their golden gates, 
 While nature holds her court of love, 
 
 And for her client waits. 
 Then, Jady, wake in beauty rise ! 
 
 Tis now the promised hour. 
 When torches kindle in the skies 
 
 To light thee to thy bower. 
 
 " The day we dedicate to care 
 
 To love the witching night ; 
 For all that s beautiful and fair 
 
 In hours like these unite. 
 E en thus the sweets to flowerets given 
 
 The moonlight on the tree 
 And all the bliss of earth and heaven 
 
 Are mingled, love, in thee. 
 Then, lady, wake in beauty rise ! 
 
 Tis now the promised hour, 
 When torches kindle in the skies 
 
 To light thee to thy bovver." 
 
 Com. True and smooth as a locomotive on a "T" 
 rail ! Is it sold and set? 
 
 Brig. Beautifully set to music by Brown, and sold 
 to Atwill, who will publish it immediately. 
 
 Com. It s a delicious song, my happy troubadour, 
 and destined to tumble over bright lips enough to make 
 a sunset. That we should so envy the things we 
 make ! My kingdom for a comb ! I shall never get 
 the salt out of my hair I m 
 
 " briny as the beaten mariner, 
 Oft soused in swelling Tethys saltish tears." 
 
 Tf you want a curl to keep, now s your time ! 
 
 Brig. Willis? . 
 
 Com. My lord ? 
 
 Brig. I hear you were voted in to the " Light 
 Guard" last week. 
 
 Cow. Yes, sir, an honorary private! I feel the 
 compliment, for they are a set of tip-top capables, joy 
 ous and gentlemanly but, my dear martinet, what the 
 devil do they want of a man s dura mater? 
 
 Brig. A man s what ? 
 
 Com. The weary membrane of an author s brain. 
 
 Brig. They want it, you say ? 
 
 Com. With the official announcement came an 
 order to equip myself according to directions, and 
 
 * This song, set to music, has been purchased and copy 
 righted by Mr. Atwill. 
 
 " deposite my fatigue-jacket" in the armory of the 
 corps ! What fatigue-jacket have I, but the jacket of 
 my brain ? 
 
 Brig. True ! Pick up your boots and come 
 along ? 
 (Exit the brigadier barefoot, and the cabinet adjourns.} 
 
 Half an hour later room No. 300, Rockaway Pavil 
 ion. Two sherry cobblers on the table, uith two 
 straws, erect in the ice.) 
 
 Brig. How like this great structure on the sand 
 must be, to a palace amid the ruins of Persepolis ! 
 
 Com. The palace of Chilminar with forty columns 
 and stairs for ten horses to go up abreast ! very like 
 indeed especially the sand ! Somewhat like, in 
 another respect, by the way that the palaces of 
 Persepolis were the tombs of her kings, and Rock- 
 away is the place of summer repose for the indignant 
 aristocracy of Manhattan.- 
 
 Brig. True, as to the aristocracy, but why " indig 
 nant ?" 
 
 Com. That there can be fashion without them at 
 Saratoga (which there could not be once), and that 
 " aristocratic" and " fashionable are two separate 
 estates, not at all necessary to be combined in one 
 individual. Rockaway is full, now, of the purest 
 porcelain porcelain fathers, porcelain mothers, porce 
 lain daughters ! 
 
 Brig. Then why is not the society perfectat Rock- 
 away ? 
 
 Com. Because the beaux go after the crockery at 
 Saratoga. The rush, the rowdydow, the flirtations, 
 and game suppers, are all at Saratoga! Aristocracy 
 likes to have the power of complaining of these things 
 as nuisances inseparable from its own attraction. Aris 
 tocracy builds high walls, but it likes to have them 
 pertinaciously overleaped. The being let alone within 
 their high walls, as they are now at their exclusive 
 watering-places, was not set down in the plans of aris 
 tocratic campaigns ! 
 
 Brig. But they are charming people here, mi-boy? 
 
 Com. The best-bred and most agreeable people in 
 the world, but the others give a beau more for his 
 money. In all countries, but ours, people make ac 
 quaintances for life. But the hinderances and obstacles 
 which are not minded at the beginning of a lifetime 
 acquaintance, are intolerable in an acquaintance for a 
 week (the length of most summer acquaintances with 
 us), and the floating beaux from the south, the west, 
 the Canadas, and the West Indies, go where they can 
 begin at the second chapter omitting the tedious 
 preface and genealogical introduction. 
 
 Brig. Rockaway is stupid, then. 
 
 Com. Quiet, not stupid. The lack of beaux and 
 giddy times is only felt by the marriageable girls, and 
 there are a great many people in the world besides 
 marriageable girls. And upon this same " many 
 people," will depend the prosperity of the Pavilion. 
 When it is known that it is a delightful place for 
 everything but flirting, it will be a centre for sober 
 people to radiate to, and a paradise for penserosos like 
 you and me, general eh? 1 suppose Cranston would 
 as lief (liefer, indeed) that his rooms should be filled 
 with tame people as wild. 
 
 Brig. How s your cobbler ? 
 
 Com Fit to immortalize the straw that passes it ! 
 
 Brig. What birds are those, my Willis ? 
 
 Com. Shore birds that build in the sedge and feed 
 on molluscous animals death on the soft crabs ! 
 And, general, do you know that the male of this bird 
 (called the phalarope), is a most virtuous example to 
 our sex ? What do you think he does ? 
 
 Brig. Feeds the little-uns ? 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 139 
 
 Com. Hatches them, half and half, with the she- 
 bird, and helps bring them up ! 
 
 Brig. Is the gender shown in the plumage ? 
 
 Com. No. 
 
 Brig. So I thought. Your handsome peacock, 
 now, leaves it all to the hen. The domestic virtues 
 are their own reward remarkably so ! Is that the 
 dinner-bell ? 
 
 Com. Yes, it is that music ! 
 
 " Give me excess of it that, surfeiting, 
 The appetite may sicken, and so die." 
 
 I ll meet you below, my dear general ! Adieu! 
 
 (Cabinet adjourns for the day.) 
 
 THE CABINET. 
 
 ( Rockawoy beach, Sunday evening. The brigadier and 
 committee seated on their boot-legs, after walking two 
 miles, barefoot, on the hard sand.) 
 
 Brig. Boots are durance vile, mi-boy ! How much 
 we lose in not keeping our feet open to female assidu 
 ities ! Fancy one of those apostolic washings a 
 sweet woman kneeling before you, and, with her hair 
 breathing perfumes over your ankles, performing it as 
 an office of tenderness and hospitality ! Can patent 
 leather be weighed against desuetude so melancholy ! 
 
 Com. I am satisfied that the tender pink in your 
 toe-nails was intended by nature to be admired, my 
 dear brigadier ! And there is nature s remonstrance 
 eloquent in a corn against the airless confinement of 
 boot and stocking ! Why is a poet like a sandal ? 
 
 Brig. Philosophize, my dear boy, don t quibble ! 
 
 Com. Because he s a soul kept under with a thong ! 
 
 Brig. Willis, 1 love the sea ! 
 
 Com. So sung Barry Cornwall, " the open sea." 
 As if Pharaoh had not yet passed over! To me the 
 sea seems, on the contrary, for ever slamming down 
 trap-doors of surf, and carefully covering the " treas 
 ures of the deep" with cold water. I never saw any 
 thing less "open!" 
 
 Brig. There goes the sun down ! as red as what 
 shall 1 compare it to ? 
 
 Com. A wafer, sealing up this 17th of August for 
 the doomsday postoffice. Happy they who have not 
 forgotten the P. S. of repentance ! 
 
 Brig. Ah, mi-boy! that pious infancy of yours! 
 It oozes through the after-crust of your manhood in 
 drops of poetry ! Pity you are less of a saint than 
 you were at seventeen ! 
 
 Com. Less of a saint / am not, though more of a 
 sinner I am ! All I had seen at seventeen was beauty 
 and goodness, and with an innate sense of beauty and 
 goodness, I worshipped the Maker, my youth jhrough, 
 with a poet s adoration ! The heart melts and drops 
 upon its knees within a man, at any sudden revelation 
 of unusual loveliness; and I have worshipped God, 
 and loved one of his angelic creatures, with the white 
 quivering lip of the same rush of blood inward. If to 
 look often and adoringly " through nature up to na 
 ture s God" be devotion, I am still devout. No sun 
 set, no morning s beauty, no rich and sudden sight of 
 loveliness in scenery, goes by without the renewal of 
 that worship in my heart that was once religion. I 
 praise God daily. Worldling as I am, and hardly as I 
 dare claim any virtue as a Christian, there is that 
 within me which sin and folly never reached or tainted. 
 The unprompted and irresistible thoughts, upsprings 
 in my mind in any scene of beauty, would seem 
 prayers, and pure ones, to many an humble Christian. 
 Pardon me for reading to you this inner leaf, my dear 
 brigadier ! 
 
 Brig. Thank you, on the contrary, for its philos 
 ophy, my dear boy ! Saints and worldlings have more 
 
 ! feelings in common than the pulpit admits. That I 
 
 j believe. 
 
 Com. The chasm between them in this world 
 
 should be narrowed, for they have many sympathies. 
 The bigot makes the separation unnaturally wide. 
 
 j Who is the one man mentioned in Scripture as 
 
 I "loved" by the Savior? The "young ruler" who 
 could not give up his " great possessions" "to inherit 
 
 1 eternal life !" Is not this tender interest in one " out 
 of the fold," a lesson a most unheeded lesson, to the 
 strict sect ? I talk feelingly of this, for I have an ad 
 miration of goodness and purity that has never sepa 
 rated itself from my love of beauty. I love a simple 
 and unobtrusive piety, and am drawn irresistibly 
 toward the possessor. Yet this better part of my 
 nature is excluded with the rest, when 1 am denied 
 Christian sympathy. Come out of dream-land, 
 brigadier, and observe the tender violet in that upper 
 
 [ cloud ! 
 
 Brig. I was thinking whether the wave that falls 
 upon the beach is to be congratulated or pitied com 
 paring its arrival, that is to say, with its "swell" time 
 upon the sea. 
 
 Com. Congratulated, I should say. The hoary 
 
 ! locks with which it approaches the beach, though 
 they are breakers ahead when seen from the sea, are 
 beautiful when seen from the shore as the head, 
 whitened with the dreaded troubles of life, grows 
 more beautiful in the eyes of angels, as it is more 
 whitened and troubled, approaching heaven! JJut 
 what hypocrites these shore-birds are, witli their 
 
 I whitest plumes turned earthward! See that dark- 
 
 ! backed snipe on the beach, with his white breast and 
 belly! 
 
 Brig. Rather what knowledge of mankind they 
 have preferring to keep their darker side for the 
 
 : more forgiving eye of Heaven ! 
 
 Com. True the better reading! Do you like 
 snipe ? 
 
 Brig. With a pork shirt they are fairish that is, 
 if you can t get woodcock. But, mi-boy, it isn t you 
 that need ever eat snipe ! 
 Com. As how ? 
 
 Brig. (Pulling out the Sunday Mercury and read 
 ing) "Willis, it is said, has profited So, QUO by the 
 sale of the last edition of Pencillings by the Way. " 
 Com. The mischief he has! for "has" read would 
 be pleased to. Perhaps the editor of the Mercury 
 will be kind enough to fork over the difference be 
 tween fact and fiction ! By-the-way, I have read the 
 book, myself, for the first time in eight years, and I 
 have been both amazed and amused with the difference 
 between what I saw then, and what I know now ! And 
 I am going to give the public the same amazement 
 and amusement, by writing for the Mirror a review of 
 "Pencillings" with my new eyes showing the inter 
 esting difference between first impressions and after 
 familiarity. 
 
 Brig. They ll want to read " Pencillings" over 
 again, mi-boy! 
 
 Com. For a hasty pudding it has held out surpri 
 singly already. The fifth edition, embellished with 
 
 1 engravings, is still selling well in England, and in the 
 most stagnant literary month of the year we have sold 
 two editions, as you know. I am inclined to fear that 
 1 shall be less known by my careful writings than by 
 this unrevised book written between fatigue and 
 sleep, by roadsides and in most unstudylike places, 
 and r epublished, in the Mirror edition, exactly as first 
 written ! There is a daguerreotypity in literal first 
 impressions, my dear general, and a man would write 
 an interesting letter, the first moment after seeing the 
 
 ! Colosseum for the first time, though a description from 
 
 memory, a month after, would be very stupid. Did 
 you ever feel posthumous, brigadier ? 
 Brig. No. 1 never was dead. 
 
140 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 Com. Nor I, except "in trespasses and sins" but 
 a letter I received to-dny has given me a most pos 
 thumous sensation. Tt was sent me to publish, by a 
 lady who has lived several years abroad, and has lately 
 revisiied Saratoga. It will "rub my brass" as the | 
 maids say, to publish the passage about myself (quoted 
 from the letter of a German baron), but it may make 
 somebodies buy " Pencillings" to know that it has: 
 passed abroad into a vade-mecum for travellers. So, 
 down modesty and swell pocket! Who knows but ; 
 that the " Sunday Mercury," that " lighted on the 
 heaven kissing hill" of $5,000, may be a better 
 prophet than historian ! Set your heels comfortably 
 into the sand, general, and listen to this letter. There 
 are some sweet lines at the close, written by the same 
 lady after visiting the home of the young poetess Da 
 vidson, whose precocious genius and premature death 
 have been so feelingly written upon : 
 
 " When you and I, my dear sir, met so pleasantly : 
 some weeks since at Saratoga, I forgot to give you an \ 
 extract from a letter which I had received from Ger 
 many. No one can be insensible to deserved praise 
 from a far land, and I know you will read with gratifi 
 cation these few lines from a distinguished friend of ! 
 mine : I remember with pleasure our visit to your 
 splendid frigate, the United States, in the bay of Na 
 ples. We met Mr. N. P. Willis on board, and after 
 his cruise I met him again at Lady Parley s. He will 
 not remember me, but if you ever see him, tell him 
 that a person who lias visited almost all the spots 
 described in his " Pencillings by the Way," feels the 
 greatest pleasure in reading his book at least twice a 
 year. It accompanies him regularly from Dresden to 
 his estates in the spring, and back to the city in the 
 autumn. 
 
 " Not having seen Saratoga for many years, I was 
 curious to perceive what changes time had made. Of 
 course, its outward condition is greatly improved, and 
 the remarkable change of all is the transition of the 
 fashion and gayety from Congress hall to the United 
 States hotel. It would be unwise to compare this 
 latter establishment with any other that we have seen I 
 in Europe, inasmuch as the whole order of arrange- j 
 merit is entirely different ; but this must be conceded, { 
 that/or a fortnight, no place in the world offers more i 
 amusement. One may remain months at Carlsbad, j 
 Baden-Baden, &c., without fatigue, in consequence 
 of the entirely independent manner of living; but 
 Saratoga must be taken, to be enjoyed, in homeopathic 
 doses of the beforementioned fourteen days. It is 
 really extraordinary how well-ordered and conducted 
 is the United States hotel, when we remember the i 
 crowds that dwell within its four walls and its colo- j 
 nies; and assuredly the brothers* who bring about 
 this state of things, deserve great commendation, j 
 Having been repeatedly told, since my return from a 
 long absence, that Saratoga had deteriorated, I con 
 fess to having seen nothing of the sort. I had the 
 good fortune to meet some of the most remarkable 
 men of my country, and many of the fairest of its 
 daughters, and to enjoy their society. I hold that 
 Saratoga must be visited upon broad American prin 
 ciples no cliques (like will come to like) but a gra 
 cious word for all. At Carlsbad, and all other conti 
 nental watering-places, the government provides a 
 master of ceremonies, who introduces, regulates the 
 balls, &c. The voice of the people gives this posi 
 tion, at the United States hotel, to a citizen of Balti 
 more, and allow me to say, that those who look upon 
 him as a mere manager of balls, totally mistake his 
 character; for a kinder and better heart never beat 
 within a human breast than he possesses. Indeed, Bal 
 timore seems to have been singularly well represented 
 this year the incomparable beauty of its women 
 
 Messrs. Marvin excellent hosts and most worthy men. 
 
 | eclipsing all, and the wit alone of one finished gentle 
 man of that town being sufficient to leaven a mass 
 
 I meeting. 
 
 "1 think the visits of clergymen to watering-places 
 a signal benefit, when they resemble the Rev. Dr. 
 Bethune, engaging in pleasing conversation with 
 young and old, whom he enlivened by his eloquence. 
 
 j He never lost sight of the great aim of his existence 
 their improvement. Ever surrounded by eager listen 
 ers, he left them better, wiser. On the whole, I think 
 we must consider Saratoga as a great public good a 
 neutral ground, where the south discovers that the 
 norih is not a Mont Blanc, and the north perceives 
 that the south is not a Vesuvius ! 
 
 " My last visit at Saratoga was to the late home of the 
 gifted Davidsons. Their brother kindly accompanied 
 me, and presented me to his bereaved father. It 
 seemed, as I lingered amidst their remains, a very home 
 of shadows* a wondrous contrast to the surrounding 
 scenes. I considered myself quite fortunate in hiving 
 paid this visit, as Dr. Davidson leaves San-toga 
 shortly, and the establishment will thereby be enl wly 
 dismembered. 
 
 * " A home of shadows ! mid the din 
 
 Of fashion s gay and glittering scene 
 So calm, so purely calm within 
 Breathing of holiness serene. 
 
 " A home of shadows ! where the twain, 
 Who dwelt within its hallowed core, 
 Are sought with wondering eyes in vain, 
 Alas ! to bless its walls no more ! 
 
 " The pair have winged their glorious flight, 
 
 And, borne by angels through the air, 
 To realms of everlasting light, 
 Are linked with cherubs bright and fair. 
 
 " Some student, yet, in time untold, 
 
 Star-seeking in the dark blue sky, 
 Will, midst its silver lamps, behold 
 These joyous Pleiads wandering by. 
 
 " Back, back to earth its pleasures, cares- 
 Must thou, my soul, my thoughts be given, 
 But, bless the spot, that, midst its snares, 
 Called for a lingering look to heaven." 
 
 Brig. Charming verses, and she must be a fresh 
 hearted and impressible woman who wrote them. Do 
 you remember the first thought of " Pencillings, 
 mi-boy the oysters at Sandy Welsh s, over which 1 
 offered to send you abroad ? 
 
 Com. Theodore Fay, you, and I, supping together! 
 
 Brig. You have a way of knowing opportunity 
 when^ou see it! I little dreamed of so long a leass 
 of you! Dear Theodore! howl should like to eal 
 that supper over again ! 
 
 Com. I am very glad it agreed with you (presuming 
 it is me and Theodore you want over again not the 
 oysters !) They say Fay has grown fat, handsome 
 and diplomatic. When shall we have that sweet fel 
 low back among us? 
 
 Brig. When they want the place for a green sec 
 retary, who knows nothing of the court or court Ian 
 guage. As soon as a man has been long enough 
 attached to a legation to be presentable and useful, 
 they recall him ! What is that other letter I brought 
 you ? 
 
 Com. From a lady at Fishkill, who is dazzled with 
 the upshoot of "Fanny Forester." She thinks Fan 
 ny s offhand piquancy is easy to do, and the lettei 
 shows how much she is mistaken. I would fain say 
 an encouraging word, however, for she seems to have 
 the best of motives for wishing to be literary. Now, 
 is it kinder to discourage such beginners at once, or to 
 encourage them good-naturedly into a delusion ? 
 
 Brig. Always discourage, mi-boy, for if they have 
 genius, they will prosper 
 
 " like a thunder-cloud, against the wind," 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 141 
 
 and if they have none, they are better stopped where II thought. Here, it is thought s hnrness language ! 
 they are. How many heart-aching authoresses do we j What makes these people throw their potato-parings 
 
 they __ ., 
 
 know at this moment, who can write just well enough j 
 to be wof ully distressed with the reluctance of the i 
 market! The only style saleable is the spicy but dif- j 
 
 into the gutter, my dear general ? 
 
 Brig. Ann street, mi-boy, rails for the attention 
 of Mayor Harper. The Mirror has a dainty nostril 
 
 ficult vein of brig ht Fanny Forester, and yet, to all or two, and there are flower-pots in the windows op- 
 neophyte, that very woof seems the easiest woven! f posite, and Burgess & Stringer keep the choicest of 
 A woman who is more intelligent than the people I literary conservatories, yet we reside upon a rivulet 
 around her, is very apt to believe that she might be , of swill! The simple enforcement of the law would 
 famous, and make money with her pen ; and unless \ sweeten things, but there is no police except for crim 
 inals in this land of liberty. Look at that brace of 
 turtle-doves coming up-street! What loving friend- 
 ; ships women have, at an age when boys are perfect 
 she endeavors in this way to compensate herself for Ishmaelites. 
 
 the lack of belleship. Better raise flowers and sell Com. Pardon me, my dear general, if I correct 
 bouquets, dear Rosalie Beverlv ! your cacology. The sportsmen call two turtles a 
 
 Com. The gray lace of twilight s star-broidered | dule of turtles, not a brace. Though, by-the-way, 1 
 veil has fallen over" the sea, brigadier. Let us paddle have not long been in possession of my learning upon 
 back through the surf-edge to the bathing-houses, boot, ! that point. Let me read you a chapter on the nomen- 
 and reappear to a world (1 don t think) disconsolate ; clature of such matters from this book in my hand. 
 
 " Fair politure walk all her body over, 
 And symmetry rejoice in every part," 
 
 without us. 
 
 THE CABINET. 
 
 (Shop-door, Ann street. The Brigadier and Commit 
 tee standing, sphinx-wise, outside.) 
 
 Brig. The " devil" was here just now for " copy," 
 my dear boy ! 
 
 Com. The devil here and no Fanny Forester! 
 We have given our readers a taste of this charming 
 incognito, brigadier, and now they ll not feast with 
 out her! I wonder whether she s pretty? 
 
 Brig. So would she be over-endowed. No, mi- 
 boy ! " I warrant that, with all her cleverness, she has 
 envied, many a time, the doll of the village ! 
 
 Com. A woman is, sometimes, wholly unadmired, 
 who would become enchanting by a change of her 
 
 Will you listen? The book is "Goodman s Social 
 History of Great Britain" a gem of delightful read 
 ing: 
 
 "The stags which ran wild in the king s forests 
 were named as early (if not earlier) as Edward III. 
 (1307), from their antlers; thus the first year the male 
 is called a calf, second year a brocket, third year a 
 spayer, fourth year a stag, fifth year a great stag, sixth 
 year a hart of the first head. 
 
 "In the notes of Sir Walter Scott s Lady of the 
 Lake, is a curious account of the brytling, breaking 
 up, or quartering of the stag. The forester had his 
 portion, the hounds theirs, and there is a little gristle, 
 
 called the raven s bone, which was cut from the bris 
 ket, and frequently an old raven was seen perched 
 upon a neighboring tree waiting for it. 
 
 "The fallow-deer, which are kept in the English 
 parks, have also names, but not exactly the same as 
 
 ,.,. _. _ 6 , - , . - , for stags. The males and the females the first year 
 
 surroundings. That playful wit of Fanny Forester s, i are called fawns, second year the females are callec 
 what-like shell soever it inhabits, would make her the || does, which name she always retains; but the male 
 idol of a circle of appreciators for its work is in her > is called a prickett; third year he is called a shard; 
 face, somewhere! Do you remember George Sand s fourth year, a sword; fifth year, a sword-ell, or sor- 
 description of one of her heroines? "Elle 6tait jolie j rell; sixth year, a buck of first head ; seventh year, 
 par juxta-position. Heureuse, elle eut ete ravissante. l| a buck; eighth year, a full buck; he is then fit for 
 Le bonheur est la poesie des femmes, comme la toi- ; killing, and not before: and in the summer is very fat, 
 lette en est le Card. Si la joi d un bal eut reflete ses j which he loses in winter. Buck-venison is not fit to 
 teints rosees sur ce visage pale, si les douceurs d une : ! eat in winter, and ought not to be killed, 
 vie eleante eussent rempli, eussent vermillione ses j "When beasts went together in companies, there 
 iouesdeia Increment creusees, si 1 amour eut ranime was said to be a pride of lions, a lepe ol leopards, a 
 ses yeux tristes, elie aurait pu lutter avec les plus ; herd of harts, of bucks, and all sorts of deer; a bevy 
 belles jeunes filles. II lui manquait e V* cr * e we : : of roes, a sloth of bears, a singular of boars, a sowndes 
 seconde fois la fcmmc :les chiffons et les billet-doux . " of swine, a dryfte of tame swine, a route of wolves, a 
 Bri<r.(whohad gone in to escape the French quo- \\ harass of horses, a rag of colts, a stud of mares, a 
 -ionand returned as the last word lingered on the pace of asses, a barren of mules, a team of oxen, a 
 nmittee s lias). Write a billetdoux" to the next drove of kine, a flock of sheep, a tribe ol goats, a 
 risen star, mi-boy, and ask her (him, it, or her) I sculk of foxes, a cete of badgers, a nchess of mar- 
 shine first, like Fanny Forester, in the columns of tins, a fessynes of ferrets, a huske or a down of hares, 
 
 unnsen 
 
 to shine first, like b anny 
 the Mirror. I love the baptism of genius, and (mod 
 estly speaking) I have been the St. John in the wil 
 derness of new writers. 
 
 Com. Apostolic brigadier! You do know a star, 
 even " at the breast" though, from sucking poets de 
 liver me mostly, oh, kind Heaven ! They exact a 
 faith in their call and mission that precludes every 
 thing but the blindest and most acquiescent admira 
 tion. I remember my own difficult submissions to 
 the corrections of the kind, but truthful and consist 
 ent critic of my youth, Buckingham of the Boston 
 Courier. He was always right, but it is hard, when 
 
 a nest of rabbits, a clowder of cats, a kendel of young 
 cats, a shrewdness of apes, and a labor of moles. 
 
 "When animals are retired to rest, a hart was said 
 to be harbored; a buck lodged; a roebuck bedded ; a 
 fox kennelled; a badger earthed; a hare formed; and 
 a rabbit seated. 
 
 " Dogs which run in packs are enumerated by 
 couples. If a pack of fox-hounds consists of thirty- 
 six, which is an average number, it would be said to 
 contain eighteen couples. 
 
 "Dogs used for the gun, or for coursing, two of 
 them are called a brace, three a leash; but two span- 
 
 your feathers are once smoothed down, to pluck oat iels, or harriers, are called a couple. They also say 
 and re-stick them in vour poetical peacockery ! Ah, a mute of hounds, for a number; a kennel of raches, 
 juvenilities! We build bridges over chasms of mean- ! a cowardice of curs, and a litter of whelps, 
 ing, but they drop away behind us, as we pass over! " The seasons for alle sortes of veiiery were regu- 
 In Heaven, where there will be no grammar and die- , lated in the olden time as follows: The time ot 
 tionarv we shall have a new standard of excellence grace begins at midsummer, and lasteth to holy-rood ; 
 
142 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 the fox mny be hunted from the nativity to the an 
 nunciation of our lady; the roebuck from Easter to 
 Michaelmas; the roe from Michaelmas to Candlemas; 
 the hare from Michaelmas to midsummer; the wolf, 
 as the fox and the boar, from the nativity to the pu 
 rification of our lady. 
 
 " So for birds there is a vocabulary ; and first, for 
 aquatic birds: a herd of swans, of cranes, and of 
 curlews, a dropping of sheldrakes, a spring of teals, 
 a serges of herons and bitterns, a covert of cootes, gag 
 gles of geese, sutes of mallards, baddylynges of ducks. 
 Now for meadow and upland birds : a congregation 
 of plovers, a walk of snipes, a fall of woodcocks, a 
 muster of peacocks, a nye of pheasants, a dule of 
 turtles, a brood of hens, a building of rooks, a numer 
 ation of starlings, a flight of swallows, a watch of 
 nightingales, a charm of goldfinches, flights of doves 
 and wood-pigeons, coveys of partridges, bevies of 
 quails, and exaltations of larks. 
 
 "When a sportsman inquires of a friend what he 
 has killed, the vocabulary is still varied ; he does not 
 use the word pair but a brace of partridges, or 
 pheasants, a couple of woodcocks; if he has three 
 of any sort, he says a leash. 
 
 " If a London poulterer was to be asked for a pair 
 of chickens, or a pair of ducks, by a female, he 
 would suppose he was talking to some fine finicking I 
 lady s maid, who had so puckered up her mouth into 
 small plaits before she started, that she could not open 
 it wide enough to say couple. 
 
 "As the objects sportsmen pursue are so various, 
 and as the English language is so copious, various 
 terms have been brought into use: so that the ever 
 lasting term pair, this pairing of anything (except in 
 the breeding-season) sounds so rude, uninstructive, 
 and unmusical, upon the ears of a sportsman, that he 
 would as soon be doomed to sit for life by the side of 
 a seat-ridden cribbage-player as to hear it. 
 
 " It is the want of this knowledge which makes the 
 writings of Howitt and Willis, when they write upon 
 this ever-interesting national subject, appear so tame; 
 the sportsman peruses their pages with no more zest 
 than he listens to the babble of a half-bred hound, or 
 
 a ranging spaniel that barks at every bird he sees 
 
 leaving his game. " 
 
 Mr. Goodman adds, in a note, the explanation of 
 my blunders in dog-nomenclature: 
 
 "Mr. Willis, in vol. iii., p. 203, Pencillings by the 
 Way, gives the following information, speaking of 
 the duke s greyhounds (at Gordon Castle): "Dinna 
 tak pains to caress them, sir," said the huntsman, 
 " they ll only be hanged for it." I asked for an expla 
 nation. He then told me that a hound was hung the 
 moment he betrayed attachment to any one, or in any 
 way showed superior sagacity. In coursing the hare, 
 if the dog abandoned the scent, to cut across or inter 
 cept the animal, he was considered as spoiling the 
 sport. If greyhounds leave the track of the hare, 
 either by their own sagacity, or to follow the master 
 in intercepting it, they spoil thfe pack, and are hung 
 without mercy. Perhaps Mr. Willis will excuse me 
 if I show how unsporlsman-like this is. In the first 
 place, there are no packs of greyhounds; in the next 
 place, those who attend on them are not called hunts 
 men ; in the next place, they never run by scent : if 
 they did, they ought to be destroyed. As to the ca 
 ressing, no dog ought ever to be caressed without he 
 had first performed some extraordinary feat, and then 
 it should be done instantly. The everlasting petting 
 or patting a dog, spoils it in its nature, its disposition, 
 its temper, and its habits. It becomes worthless, ex 
 cept as a lapdog, and that is the most contemptible 
 and worthless thing in all God s creation. 
 
 " Many years close observation has convinced me, 
 that where the dog is once admitted into the house, ij 
 and petted, the dogs rule the children, and the chil- 
 
 dren rule the rest; bringing in its train all the usual 
 concomitants of turbulence, filth, and frowsiness; and 
 turning the room into a dog-kennel. 
 
 " ( If men transact like brutes, tis equal then 
 For brutes to claim the privilege of men. " 
 
 The correction is very right thanks to Mr. Good 
 man. My attention was called to the blunder, by the 
 duke of Gordon himself, soon after the publication 
 of the book in England; and I should have corrected 
 ; it in this new edition, but for determining not to read 
 the proofs, that the letters might be published literally 
 from the first copy. But what beautifully descriptive 
 words are those in the nomenclature of birds, my 
 dear general: "A watch of nightingales! a charm of 
 goldfinches! a numeration of starlings, and exalta 
 tions of larks!" How pretty it would be, instead of 
 "Here come two pretty women!" to say, "Here 
 comes a charm of women!" Instead of, "There 
 stand Morris and Willis!" to have the shoemaker op 
 posite say, " Look at that pride of lions," or that 
 "exaltation of editors!" 
 
 Brig. A "muster of peacocks" hits my fancy de 
 scriptive, say, of two loungers in uniform! Aha! 
 mi-boy! fine! 
 
 Com. Most brigadierish of brigadiers! You 
 would rather be the sodger men have "made you than 
 the poet God made you ! So would not I ! 
 
 Brig. you rejoice in a destiny fulfilled, then? 
 Com. Quite the contrary. I mean to say that God 
 made me a natural idler and trifler, and want made me 
 a poet and a worky; and unlike you, I would rather 
 be what God made me. By-the-way, do you know 
 the trouble there was in the first composing of a 
 horse? This same amusing book quotes from Fitz- 
 herberfs old book on agriculture: "A horse has fif 
 ty-four properties, viz. : two of a man, two of a bad 
 ger, four of a lion, nine of an ox, nine of a hare, nine 
 of a fox, nine of an ass, and ten of a woman. This 
 description has been somewhat altered, but perhaps 
 not improved upon, viz.: three qualities of a woman, 
 a broad breast, round hips, and a long mane; three 
 of a lion, countenance, courage, anil fire ; three of a 
 bullock, the eye, the nostrils, and joints; three of a 
 sheep, the nose, gentleness, and patience ; three of a 
 mule, strength, constancy, and good feet; three of a 
 deer, head, legs, and short hair; three of a wolf, 
 throat, neck, and hearing ; three of a fox, ear, tail, 
 and throat; three of a serpent, memory, sight, and 
 cunning; and three of a hare or cat, cunning, walk 
 ing, and suppleness." 
 
 THE CABINET. 
 
 (Committee s private study. Brigadier lounging in a 
 fauteuil.) 
 
 Com. My dear general, what do you think, ab 
 stractly, of industry ? Does no shuddering con 
 sciousness of awful platitude creep over you, in this 
 dreadfully exemplary career that we are pursuing ? I 
 feel as if the very nose on my face were endeavoring 
 to " dress," as you military men say striving to come 
 down to the dull, cheek-bone level of tedious uni 
 formity ! I declare I should be pleased to "hear 
 
 tell" of something out of the " way of business" 
 
 sentiment of some sort ! 
 
 Brig. Listen to a song that I have just \vritten. 
 There is a background of truth to it the true sadness 
 of a lovely living woman that would supply your 
 need of a sensation, if your imagination could picture 
 her. 
 
 Com. It shall ! .Read away, my friend ! 
 (Brigadier reads.) 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 143 
 
 Com. Thai is a peculiarly musical and engaging j general, lhat I, for one, shall " cast my slough," and 
 measure, and you have hung it upon hinges of honey, try my youth on again ! 
 It simcks of the days when poets wrote a song a 
 year, finishing, to the last vanishing point of perfec 
 tion. What do the women say to you for translating 
 their prose into angel-talk ? 
 
 Brio.: They love poetry, mi-boy ! The more po 
 etical you can make their life, the more they love life ; 
 and you ! They would rather suffer than live monot- | 
 onously. So, beware ihe "even tenor !" 
 
 Com. Even of prosperity, eh ? I ll beware when jj 
 1 see it coming ! 
 
 Brig: Ah, mi-boy, you have no idea of the intense 
 
 abstraction of mind necessary to bring a poetical ima 
 gination down to habits of business. 
 
 Com. Do you really wish to know what is to be 
 the new race in society this winter? 
 Brig. What ? 
 
 Com. Married belles ! The teens dynasty is pas 
 sing away ! The talk, this summer, at all the water 
 ing-places, has been of beautiful women, who (if. per- I 
 chance, they have loved out their love) have not shone i 
 out their shine ! Heavens ! how many there are 
 completely shelved in American society, who have 
 never had more than two winters of vogue in the 
 
 world, and who are compelled to believe that, out of 
 
 thirty years of loveliness, only two are to be rescued 
 
 from the nursery only two to intervene between the 
 
 nursery filial and the nursery maternal! What a 
 
 utensil woman is, in this way ! For what did Heaven 
 
 give them their other powers ? Heaven did iiot put 
 
 the smile of woman under her arm! No! it was 
 
 placed where it could not be covered without suffoca 
 tion, and, doubtless, with a purpose. : that the lips 
 
 and their outgoing should be kept open to society! 
 
 Till those lips fade till the mind that speaks through 
 
 them loses its playfulness and attraction, woman can 
 
 not be monopolized without a manifest waste of the 
 
 gifts of nature making that bloom for two years only, 
 
 that was constructed to bloom for forty ! Besides 
 
 these very charms are withdrawn from the world be 
 fore ripening flowers permitted only to bud ! There 
 
 never was a belle who was not more 
 
 marriage than before. An un 
 
 agreeable than a ripe one. The elegant repose 
 
 " For when the life is quickened, out of doubt, 
 The wits that were defunct and dead before, 
 Break up their drowsy grave, and newly move 
 With casted slough and fresh legerity," 
 
 and who knows ? I may be agreeable in the re 
 formed baby-house of society ! 
 Brig. " Hope on hope ever !" 
 
 THE CABINET. 
 
 (Committee and Brigadier in confidential session.) 
 
 Com. My dear general, it won t do ! Read these 
 two letters ! 
 
 . I won t waste my eyes with them ! It must 
 do ! who says it won t do? 
 
 Com. One Noggs. 
 
 .Bri,g-. Who s Noggs ? 
 
 Com. By Jove, he writes a capital letter! Hear 
 this, my incensed brigadier ! (reads.) 
 
 " DEAR WILLIS : You frightened me to-day, terri 
 bly, in the hint you threw out in the course of con 
 versation with the brigadier, to wit : Shall we 
 make it into a monthly ? 
 
 " Make the WEEKLY NKW MIRROR into a monthly ! 
 God forbid ! / forbid, anyhow. Who are you? I 
 am a live Yankee, at your service, who lives in the 
 land of soles and codfish, whig pow-wows and demo 
 cratic clam-bakes one who has not been so deco 
 rously brought up, perhaps as some of your readers, 
 but a man for a that a constant reader of the Mir 
 ror, at any rate proof of my manhood, eh ? 
 
 Well, sir, I, Newman Noggs, Esq., of Lynn, coun 
 
 ty of Essex, etc., etc., do hereby seriously and ar 
 dently protest against any such nonsense as is implied 
 in the above question. Excuse me, sir, but 1 couldn t 
 help it. I feel so worked up at the bare idea of the 
 
 agreeable after visits of the Mirror coming only monthly, that I can 
 
 ripe mind is far less . hardly stick to decency. Why, sir, 1 shouldn t be in 
 
 agreeao.e man n,ic u.. c . /he elegant repose of trim for my sabbath-day meeting albeit a pious man 
 lovely married women is Jar more enchanting than the I am I were it not for the preparatory study in tli 
 hovdenish romping or inexperienced sentiment of j Mirror, Saturday nights. Not lhat you are so dread- 
 girls Speak up, brigadier ! What say ? i fully religious, but there is always sure to be some- 
 fe B^._It is highly natural, mi-boy, that this change thing in you that makes me feel better, and when I 
 
 i nat- feel bolter I want to go to church, of course, to let 
 lorna- myself and the world know that I m getting kind o 
 good. As for the literary merils of ihe Mirror, it 
 don t become ihe like o me to be offering an opinion. 
 All I ve got to say is, that I individually like it first- 
 rate. There s a sort of racy, spicy, off-hand, unstudied 
 of an operative i n"a nat\on*-?acTor^ ! wittiness about it that takes my eye amazingly. 
 
 should be coming about, now ! But it was botl 
 ural and necessary that, hitherto in the unorn 
 mental foundation of American society, woman should 
 be reduced to her simple primitive mission shining, 
 like the glow-worm, only long enough to attract the 
 male. When married, she passed into the condition 
 
 a working educatress, a working patriot-maker 
 
 Her i for God s sake, or more particularly for my sake, dear 
 
 whole time was then needed for offices that are now | Willis, don t ye change it. Suppose it does cost 
 performed (all but the first) by schools, moral teach- jj some folks a little more for postage than it wou 
 ers surrounding example, and national routine. Lu- something else what o that? Who s air? ia 01 a 
 bricate the child now with money, and it will slide on cent or two ? I m a poor man long s.de o some folk, 
 
 money 
 
 to manhood over an inevitable railroad of education 
 and good influences. Ot course, the mother is now 
 at liberty to shine as long as nature feeds the lamp; 
 and. indeed, it is in this way, only, thai she can fulfil 
 her destiny dispensing elsewhere the sweet influ 
 ences no longer needed exclusively by her chil 
 dren. 
 
 Com. Statesmanlike and pellucid ! Well, sir, this 
 great national metamorphosis is now coming about ! 
 
 t has been secretly resolved, among the young mar- ;j general, the brigadu 
 ried men of New York, that there shall exist, this 
 inter, a post-connubial bclte-ocracy : and that mar 
 
 and yet I rather pay letter-postage than have it stop. 
 So,- Willis dear, just tell your postage friends to econ 
 omize in some other department, or, it they can t do 
 that, tell em I ll make it up to em. 
 
 "No, no, friend of my early youth, don t think of 
 any such thing, that is, if ye love me for 1 could 
 better spare something better, than the piquant dish 
 of conversation which weekly (oh, let it be ever week- 
 \\\ occurs between mi-boy and our dearly-beloved 
 
 J i .1 - . !...:_.. j:,. > 
 
 Mrs. Noggs, loo a strong woman, by the way 
 ,. nevertheless, weekly on this point, very. She says 
 
 ried belles shall, accordingly, have "the pas, in waltz, she ll never forgive you if you change the (air form 
 quadrille, promenade, and conversation. How deli- i of the Mirror. Think o that Though not a vam 
 cious ! isn t it ? It enlarges the field so ! I believe, ! woman, she has a passion for looking into the Mirror 
 
144 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 that is very affecting. On the other hand, she says 
 if you ll give up the horrid notion of changing the 
 form of the Mirror, she ll fry you a nipper as 
 brown as a nut, with her own fair hands, when next 
 you come Bostonward, and will visit our humble 
 cottage near the sea. I have ye now ! For my well- 
 tried friends, Gentleman Charles (him of the Astor 
 house, I mean) and his handsome partner, tell me 
 you are a gallant youth and well affected toward the 
 ladies. 
 
 " We shall look anxiously in the next Mirror to find 
 our anxious hopes confirmed, and, if not disappointed, 
 shall henceforth, as in duty bound, ever pray for your 
 everlasting welfare, world without end. 
 
 " Yours till then, "NoGGS." 
 
 Com. I have had twenty letters the last week 
 (none as good as that, but) all to the same purpose! 
 I am inclined to think, general, that Heaven s first pe 
 riodical (Sunday) was arranged in accordance with 
 some revolution of our mental nature, and that once 
 in seven days, as it is good to rest, so it is good to 
 read, or grieve, or go love-making. Friends dine to 
 gether once a week, making friendship a weekly peri 
 odical. Lovers of nature in cities ride to the coun 
 try once a week. We eat a boiled dinner once a 
 week. Everybody in New England needs beans once 
 a week. The weather comes round once a week 
 fair Sundays and wet Sundays coming in successive 
 dozens. There is nothing agreeable in nature that is 
 monthly, except the moon, and the very sight of that 
 periodical puts people to sleep! 
 
 Brig. There is the monthly rose, mi-boy ! 
 
 Com. The poorest rose that blows! 
 
 Brig. But here is a point I should like to make 
 clear to the public. With an enormous subscription 
 every day increasing, we are every day making less 
 money. 
 
 Com. How, oh, business man ? 
 
 Brier. Thus: For Mirrors that we sell through 
 agents in cities, we get but four cents each. For 
 Mirrors that we send to subscribers by mail, we get the 
 full price sixpence each. The irregular and exor 
 bitant postage has nearly killed our mail subscription, 
 on which we chiefly depended, while in cities, where 
 our patrons get them from the agents without postage, 
 we have a sale growing daily more enormous. The 
 dense of it is, that the Minor at sixpence is as cheap 
 as it cnn possibly be sold with anything like profit, and 
 selling it to agents literally at cost, the increase of the 
 agency circulation does us no manner of good ! 
 
 Com. Why sell to agents at cost? 
 
 Brig. It was a necessary evil in the beginning 
 lacking capital to hire the doing of what agents do. 
 
 Com. And we must go on as we begun ? 
 
 Brig. Short of a six months paralysis, which we 
 could not afford, there is no help for it ! But the 
 postage is the great block in our way ! Most people 
 would subscribe and have it sent to their houses by 
 mail, if the postage were not more than the subscrip 
 tion. 
 
 Com. How would that be helped in the monthly 
 form. 
 
 Brier. Ah ! now you come to the matter. The 
 monthly Mirror goes for seven cents postage, and most 
 of our mail subscribers who remain, have the Mirror 
 sent in the monthly form, by mail and I wish all who 
 value the Mirror, or care for us, would do the same. To 
 take it weekly from an agent, does not bring back to 
 you a single leaf of Glenmary, my dear boy ! 
 
 Com. Ah, my dear friend Glenmary! Some 
 villain some wanton and unfeeling villain has de 
 stroyed a vine I planted, which had completely em 
 bowered that sweet cottage. In an Ithaca paper, sent 
 to me yesterday, I find a letter here it is from some 
 Owego gentleman to the editor. Let me read you 
 part of it : 
 
 " The cottage you know, like a bird s nest, is al 
 most hid in the foliage. On one side is the road pas- 
 | sing over the bridge, and all around a sweet lawn, 
 sloping away to Owego creek. The bridge was 
 once white, and neat in its outward appearance. But 
 how Willis, even in the summer months, made his 
 bridge-gipsying delicious, is now a mystery. The 
 groundwork is flood-wood, and reptiles crawl where 
 swallows peeped out from their nests against the 
 sleepers, while every five minutes a baptism of dust 
 comes down from above, as a benediction from the 
 passing traveller. But the pruning hand of a man of 
 taste has been wanting to all this rural spot for two 
 years past, which may account for the blemishes we 
 find in the picture so beautifully drawn in A 1 Abri. 
 Some Caligula among shrubbery has cut the root of a 
 luxuriant vine, which spread itself over the cottage 
 front, making a delightful arbor of the piazza ; and 
 its leaves and tendrils, already changed in hue, are 
 folding themselves to die. As through it the night- 
 breeze rustled, it seemed to breathe of the desolation 
 that had stolen upon this garden, sacred to the mem 
 ory of a lovely exotic which made it a paradise, and 
 the fadeless light of genius." 
 
 That is written by some kind man, who understood 
 how a heartstring might be cut through with a vine 
 one had planted and cherished. Whoever may be 
 the perpetrator of that needless outrage, I commend 
 him to the notice of my friendly neighbors, adding a 
 petition from me, which may thus reach them, that 
 only Time s hand may be suffered to ravage my lost 
 paradise. 
 
 Brig The subject troubles me, mi-boy ! Let us 
 change it. I ve a funny communication here, from a 
 Rip Van Winkle, who dates fifty years hence, and 
 
 Com. Keep it till next week, general, and let us 
 get into the fresh air. I m manuscript sick. Allans I 
 Stay while I mend my outer man a little, read this 
 funny letter, sent me by the lady to whom it was 
 written. She thinks her friend, young " Cinna Bev- 
 erley," is a genius. 
 
 (Brigadier reads, with an occasional laugh.) 
 
 "TO MISS PHffiBE LORN. 
 
 "DEAR BEL-PHOEBE: I have been twiddling my 
 sunbeam (you say my letters are perfect sunshine ) 
 for some time, more or less, in a quandary as to what 
 is now resolved upon as Dear Bel-Phcebe the be 
 ginning of this (meant-to-be) faultless epistle. I 
 chanced to wake critical this morning, and, dear 
 Phoebe, as the beginning of this letter of mine, looked 
 both vulgar and meaningless. I inked it out as you 
 see. A reference to my etymological dictionary, 
 however, restored my liking for that dear 1 word. It 
 is derived from the Anglo-Saxon verb Dcr-ian, which 
 means to do mischief. Hence dearth, which, by doing 
 mischief, makes what remains more precious, and 
 hence dear, meaning something made precious by hav 
 ing escaped hurting. Dear Phoebe, therefore (mean 
 ing unhurt Phcebe), struck me as pretty well you be 
 ing one of those delicious, late-loving women, destined 
 to be hurt first at thirty. Still, the sacred word 
 Phoebe was too abruptly come upon. It sounded 
 familiar, and familiarity should be reserved for the 
 postscript. I should have liked to write dear Lady 
 Phoebe, or dear Countess Phoebe but we are not 
 permitted to read our title clear, in this hideously- 
 simple country. Might I invent an appellative? We 
 say char-woman and horse-man why not put a de 
 scriptive word before a lady s name, by way of re 
 spectful distance. Phcebe Lorn is a belle why not 
 eay 5e/-Phcebe ? Good! It sounds authentic. This 
 letter, then, is to Phosbe, unhurt and beautiful (alias), 
 Dear Bel-Phcebe ! 
 
 " You are an ephemeron of a month the month 
 at Saratoga, in which you get wings to come forth 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 145 
 
 from your eleven months chrysalis in the country 
 and you are now once more gathered to your fathers, 
 and mourning over the departed summer ! Your 
 Arabian mare feels your thrilling weight again, and 
 you astonish your pet cow with sponge-cake over the 
 lawn fence, and give caraways to your top-knot hens, 
 and say Sir to your greyhound, and make-believe 
 care for your dahlias and tube-roses but the pleas- 
 antest part of the day, after all, is its heavenly twilight 
 of closed eyelids, when you can live over again that 
 month at Saratoga myself, perhaps, then, cursorily 
 remembered ! For you rejoice in the perils of love, 
 unhurt and and adorable Phoebe ! 
 
 "But you know enough aboutyourself and you wish 
 to hear about the town ! Well ! the flies are numb 
 with the first frost, the window-blinds are open nearly 
 to Union square, somebody has been seen with a 
 velvet waistcoat, starch is looking up, and the town 
 is full of palmetto-hatted andready-made-clothing-ized 
 southerners. By these data judge of the epoch. I, 
 myself, am among my dusted household gods, and, 
 at this moment (writing in my bed-room) see my boots 
 phalanxed in their winter parade. 1 must say it is, so 
 far, pleasant ! Perhaps but you want news, not the 
 philosophy of boots in repose. 
 
 " You heard of the marriage of one of our wild In 
 dians to an English girl, not long ago in London. 
 She has been at the Waverley some days, and has 
 excited no little curiosity. She is moderately hand 
 some, but in such an unusual style of beauty that she 
 out-magnetizes many a more strictly beautiful woman. 
 My vaurien friend, F., the artist (who chanced to dine 
 opposite the chief and chief-ess at the taUc-iV kote a 
 day or two since), declares the face to be wholly 
 unique, and a sufficient explanation of the extraordi 
 nary whim of her marriage. I have never, myself, 
 wondered at it. The crust, impenetrable upward, of 
 English middle life, is enough to drive genius of any 
 kind more mad than this ! What hell like inevitable 
 mediocrity in anything ! This fine woman, now going 
 to live a dog s life with nn Indian in the wilderness, 
 would have spent her days in a brick row, and grown 
 idiotic with looking out upon the same sidewalk till 
 death. Which would you rather ? 
 
 "Do you remember (for beautiful women don t al 
 ways remember beautiful women) the adorable Mrs. 
 C., at Saratoga that charming specimen of a healthy 
 and practicable angel ? She has been here a week on 
 her return from Niagara, and Flagg, the beauty-painter, 
 lias stolen a copy of her on canvass. Ah, Bel-Phoebe! 
 You have a loss in not realizing what it is to a man 
 when an exquisite face holds still to be critically ad 
 mired !. You can see the grain of the velvet in her 
 brown eye, now, and trace by what muscle her heart 
 pulls, to keep down that half-sad cornerof her delicious 
 mouth ! He is an appreciator, that Flagg, and paints 
 a woman as she looks to appreciators differently from 
 the butchers -meat estimation of common gazers on 
 beauty. Mrs. C., has gone to Baltimore, where 
 beauty is an indigenous drug belles of that city 
 rich in women being never valued till transplanted. 
 But heavens ! how tired you will be of reading this 
 long female paragraph ! Hasten to speak of some 
 thing with a man in it ! 
 
 "One of the most fascinating men in England is 
 ekeing out an exile from May fair, by singing -and 
 lecturing on songs to the delighted Croton drinkers. 
 He is a man of that quiet elegance of address that 
 seems nothing in a woman s way till she has broken 
 her neck over it, and he sings as such a man shouldn t 
 
 to be a safe man, that is to say ! Fancy Moore s 
 
 songs any more bewitched than Moore intended ! 
 Mr. McMichael s voice glides under your heart like 
 a gondola under a balcony Moore s melody represent 
 ing the embellished and enriched moonlit water. It 
 is the enchanted perfection of lover-like, and gentle- 
 10 
 
 man-like song-singing. 
 
 songs in England, and Mr. McMichael sings them in 
 
 heard Moore sing his own 
 " ael sings them 
 (Ask your papa 
 
 the same style only in apotheosis ! 
 to translate that big word.) 
 
 "Do you care about theatres? We have a new 
 tragedian, about whose resemblance to Macready the 
 critics are quarrelling, and a new tragedian-ess who 
 has put the boxes into fits by coming on the stage 
 
 without a bustle! (Fancy Desdemona without a 
 
 bustle !) Of course you are surprised, for this is one 
 of these coming events that could not possibly cast 
 their shadows before, but fashion is imperative, and 
 
 Where ruled the (bustle) Nature broods alone ." 
 
 I understand the omnibuses are to be re-licensed to 
 carry fourteen inside, and the shops in Broadway are 
 petitioning (so Alderman Cozzens told me to-day) to 
 put out bow-windows, in expectation of the vacated 
 space. 
 
 " Seriously, there has been a growing mistrust 
 (Pearl-streetingly speaking) of the article woman, as 
 shown to customers ! Thank fashion, there is more 
 chance now of a poor youth s knowing the ( ground 
 covered by the imposing obligations of matrimony .") 
 
 " As to the fault found with Anderson his resem 
 blance to Macready I see it in no objectionable 
 particular, unless it be theincorrigible one, of a mutual 
 brevity of nose. He was educated to his profession 
 by Macready, and of course has his master s severe 
 taste, and smacks somewhat of his school, which is a 
 good one. I like him much better than I do Mac- 
 ready, however, for, though he has most of his ex 
 cellences, he has none of his defects, and, in voice 
 and pliancy of action, he is much that artificial man s 
 superior. Criticism aside, Anderson plays agreeably 
 and makes you like him, whereas Macready, playing 
 ever so well, does it disagreeably, and makes you dis 
 like him ! But I am no judge for I would rather sit 
 on a sofa by most any woman than sit in a box during 
 most any play. Pity me ! 
 
 " Hast thou great appetite, and must I vouchsafe 
 thee still another slice of news ? The new hotel up 
 town is waxing habitable, and the proprietor is in a 
 quandary what to call it. The natural inquiry as to 
 what would be descriptive, has suggested a look at the 
 probabilities of custom, and it is supposed that it will 
 be filled partly with that class of fashionables who feel 
 a desire to do something in life besides laboriously 
 keep house, partly by diplomatists and dandies wish 
 ing to be convaynient to balls and chez-eltcs, and 
 partly by such Europeanized persons as have a distaste 
 for American gregariousness, and desire a voice as to 
 the time and place of refreshing and creature. The 
 arrangements are to surpass any previous cis-Atlantic 
 experience, and the whole project is considered as the 
 first public flower of the transplanted whereabout of 
 aristocracy. It has been proposed to call it MAY FAIR 
 HOTEL May Fair being the name of the fashion 
 able nucleus of London. HAUTEVILLE HOTEL has 
 been suggested, descriptive of its position up-town. 
 HOTEL RECHERCHE, HOTEL CHOISI, are names pro- 
 nosed also, but more liable to criticism. I, myself, 
 proposed AL ABi-as signifying a house aside from 
 the rush of travel and business. Praise that, if you 
 please ! Billings, the lessee, is a handsome man, ot a 
 very up-town address, with the finest teeth possible for 
 the welcome to new-comers this last no indifferent 
 item ! He is young but young people are the 
 fashion. Young England and Young France 
 wield the power. I have not mentioned the system 
 of the hotel, by the way, which is that of Meunce s 
 at Paris a table-d hote and a restaurant, and dinner in 
 public, or private, or not at all, at your option. Charm 
 ingwont it be ? 
 
 " Crawford, the sculptor, has come home from Italy, 
 
146 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 and, as he is the American, par excellence, in whom 
 resides the sense of beauty, I trust he may see you. 
 
 What else had I to say? Something but I 
 write it on a slip, for it will be personal, and you like 
 to show all your letters to the governor. 
 
 " Adieu, dear Bel-Phoebe, and pray tear up the slip 
 enclosed as soon as you have recovered from fainting. 
 Yours at discretion. " CINNA BEVERLEY, JR." 
 
 FANNY FORESTER." We have been accused, face 
 to face, several times, and by letter once or twice, of 
 being, ourself, that bewitching masquerader. We have 
 conjured some variety out of our workyday quill, it is 
 true, and have an unfulfilled and recorded vow of a 
 new alias but in " Fanny Forester" there resides a 
 dimpled youthfulness and elasticity that is not found 
 so many miles on the road as our present sojourn ! 
 Oh no, sweet Fanny ! they slander you and do too 
 much credit to our industry and versatility ! Those 
 who wish to know more of Fanny Forester, may hear 
 of her, now, among the high-priced contributors of 
 Graham and Godey. 
 
 DR. LARDNER S LECTURE. We did not chance to 
 hear Dr. Lardner s excellent and amusing lecture on 
 the " London literati," etc., but the report of it in the 
 " Republic" has scraped the moss from one corner of 
 our memory, and we may, perhaps, aid in the true 
 portraiture of one or two distinguished men by show 
 ing a shade or two in which our observation of them 
 differed from that of the doctor. We may remark 
 here, that Dr. Lardner has been conversant with all 
 the wits and scholars of England for the last two or 
 three lustrums, and we would suggest to him that, 
 with the freedom given him by withdrawal from their 
 sphere, he might give us a book of anecdotical biogra 
 phy that would have a prosperous sale and be both 
 instructive and amusing. \Ve shall not poach upon 
 the doctor s manor, by the way, if we give our im 
 pression of one of these literati himself as he ap 
 peared to us, once in very distinguished company, in 
 England. We were in a ball in the height of the 
 season, at Brighton. Somewhere about the later 
 hours, we chanced to be in attendance upon a noble 
 lady, in company with two celebrated men. Mr. 
 Ricardo and Horace Smith (the author of Bramblelye 
 House, and Rejected Addresses), Lady Stepney, 
 authoress of the " New Road to Ruin," approached 
 our charming centre of attraction with a proposition 
 to present to her the celebrated Dr. Lardner. " Yes, 
 my dear ! I should like to know him of all things ." 
 was the reply, and the doctor was conjured forthwith 
 into the magic circle. He bowed " with spectacles 
 on nose," but no other extraneous mark of philosopher 
 or scholar. We shall not offend the doctor by stating 
 that, on this evening, he was a very different looking 
 person from his present practical exterior. With 
 showy waistcoat, black tights, fancy stockings and 
 small patent-leather shoes, he appeared to us an ele 
 gant of very bright water, smacking not at all, in man- j 
 ner no more than in dress, of the smutch and toil of 
 the laboratory. We looked at and listened to him, ! 
 we remember, with great interest and curiosity. He 
 left us to dance a quadrille, and finding ourself acci 
 dentally in the same set, we looked at his ornamental 
 and lover-like acquittalof himself with a kindofwonder 
 at what Minerva would say ! This was just before the 
 doctor left England. We may add our expression of 
 pleasure that the Protean facility of our accomplished 
 and learned friend has served him in this country- 
 making of him the best lecturer on all subjects, and 
 the carver out of prosperity under a wholly new 
 meridian. * 
 
 But, to revert to the report of the lecture : 
 " The doctor gave some very amusing descriptions 
 of the personal peculiarities of Bulwer and D Israeli. 
 the author of Coningsby, observing that those who 
 have read the works of the former, would naturally 
 conclude him to be very fascinating in private society. 
 Such, however, was not the case. He had not a 
 particle of conversational facility, and could not utter 
 twelve sentences free from hesitation and embarrass 
 ment. In fact, Bulwer was only Bulwer when his 
 pen was in his hand and his meerschaum in his mouth. 
 He is intimate with Count D Orsay, one of the hand 
 somest men of the day, and in his excessive admira 
 tion of that gentleman has adopted his style of dress, 
 which is adapted admirably to the figure of the second 
 Beau Brummell, but sits strangely on the feeble, rick 
 ety and skeleton form, of the man of genius." 
 
 Now it struck us, on the contrary, that there was no 
 more playful, animated, facile creature in London 
 society than Bulwer. He seemed to have a horror 
 of stilted topics, it is true, and never mingled in gene 
 ral conversation unless merrily. But at Lady Bles- 
 sington s, where there was but one woman present 
 (herself), and where, consequently, there could be no 
 tetes-u-tetcs, Bulwer s entrance was the certain precur 
 sor of fun. He ivas a brilliant rattle, and as to any 
 " hesitation and embarrassment," we never saw a 
 symptom of it. At evening parties in other houses, 
 Bulwer s powers of conversation could scarce be fairly 
 judged, for his system of attention is very concentra- 
 tive, and he was generally deep in conversation with 
 some one beautiful woman whom he could engross. 
 We differ from the doctor, too, as to his style of dandy 
 ism. Spready upper works, trousers closely fitting to 
 the leg, a broad-brimmed hat, and cornucopial whisk 
 ers, distinguished D Orsay, while Bulwer wore al 
 ways the loose French pantaloon, a measurable hat- 
 brim, and whiskers carefully limited to the cheek. We 
 pronounce the doctor s astrology (as to these stars) 
 based upon an error in "observation." 
 The reporter adds : 
 
 " D Israeli he described as an affected coxcomb, 
 with a restless desire to appear witty ; yet he never 
 remembered him to have said a good thing in his life 
 except one, and that was generally repeated with the 
 preface, D Israeli has said a good thing at last. " 
 
 That D Israeli is not a bon-mot" man, is doubtless 
 true. It never struck us that he manifested a " desire 
 to appear witty." He is very silent in the general 
 melee of conversation, but we have never yet seen him 
 leave a room before he had made an impression by 
 some burst in the way of monologue eitheran eloquent 
 description or a dashing new absurdity, an anecdote 
 or a criticism. He sits indolently with his head on 
 his breast, taking sight through his eyebrows till he 
 finds his cue to break in, and as far as our observation 
 goes, nobody was ever willing to interrupt him. The 
 doctor calls him an "affected coxcomb," but it is only 
 of his dress that this is any way true. No schoolboy 
 is more frank in his manners. This is true, even since 
 D Israeli s " gobble up" of the million with a widow. 
 When we were first in London, he was the immortal 
 tenant of one room and a recess, and with manners 
 indolently pensive. Three years after, returning to 
 England, we found him master of a lordly establish 
 ment on Hyde Park, and. except that he looked of a 
 less lively melancholy, his manners were as untroubled 
 with affection as before. We do not in the least 
 doubt the sincerity of the doctor s report, but it shows 
 how even acute observers (we two are that, doctor !) 
 will see the same thing with different eyes. This 
 article is too long. 
 
 New York has an unsupplied want no less a thing 
 than a FASHIONABLE PROMENADE. Broadway, that 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 147 
 
 used to be the parade of all that wns feminine, fashion 
 able and fair, has been, for some time, only a walk of 
 plain-dress-necessity to the noli-me-tangcries, and it 
 will soon be left entirely to the deaf and the humble 
 so intolerable is the Bedlam racket of its abominable 
 omnibuses ! (To get an audible answer to the " How 
 do you do ?" one has need to take one s friend into a 
 store.) 
 
 Our ladies have done like the English, in giving up 
 shopping and walking the street in full dress, and now, 
 where is to be the English or French substitute 
 our Hyde park or our Bois de Boulogne ? Ladies, 
 in London, are supposed to be so incapable of walk 
 ing at ail in the street, that, if they do so, it is rather 
 \vell-bred not to recognise them in passing. But 
 after shopping in disguise in Regent street (their 
 Broadway) they go home and "dress for the carriage," 
 and drive out to meet all the world in the " Rotten 
 row" of the park. Up and down this half mile they 
 follow in slow procession, meeting as slow a procession 
 going the other way, and bowing at every carriage 
 length, and, no public hack being admitted into the 
 park, those who have no carriages have no promenade ! 
 
 Don t let us improve with our eyes shut ! We have 
 taken off our foot of fashion from one round of the 
 ladder. How long is it to be suspended in the air 
 for, a driving park is the next inevitable step upward ? 
 
 ODD ENOUGH. The best view of Trinity steeple and 
 almost the only view of Trinity cliurch, is across some 
 old one-story wooden groceries in Greenwich street, 
 the spectator standing upon the opposite sidewalk ! 
 " We never know to whom we look best," said we to 
 the steeple, when we discovered it ! To Broadway- 
 gazers, Trinity steeple is a Gothic column. The body 
 of the church is wholly lost as to effect, and it was a 
 great mistake not to set it sidewise upon the street. 
 But, let us suggest something to the enormously 
 wealthy vestry of that church. There is not a valua 
 ble building, nor scarce a lot unoccupied by a nuisance, 
 between this splendid fabric and Greenwich street. 
 How easy to buy this advantageous slope, and make 
 of it an ascending foreground, unequalled except by 
 the ascent to the capitol at Washington! Besides 
 the addition to the beauty of the city, it would give 
 another "lungs" to the neighborhood of Wall street, 
 and grace, fitly and with additional beauty, the resting- 
 place of the gallant and lamented Lawrence. 
 
 CHANGE IN NEW YORK HABITS. The great pecu 
 liarity of America our gregariousness. as shown in 
 our populous hotels has taken a large strid on its 
 way to the exclusivism of Europe. The office of the 
 lessee of the new hotel up-town lias been overrun with 
 applicants, and most of them, we understand, with a 
 view of availing themselves of its privileges as a hotel 
 garni or furnished house where the meals are dis 
 cretionary, as to place, time, and price. Let us look 
 a little into this. 
 
 A gentleman arrives at a London hotel. He alights 
 at the door of what resembles a private house. He is 
 shown to a small parlor and bed-room, and left alone 
 with his baggage and the peculiarly neat and unsoci 
 able chairs and table. He orders his dinner and tea, 
 and it is served to him alone. He is as much alone 
 the remainder of the day and evening, and from that 
 time to doomsday, if he stay so long ; and there is no 
 place about the" house where he can vary this loneli 
 ness, except the coffee-room, where the parlor class 
 of lodgers have no errand and rarely go. His engage 
 ment with the landlord is to pny so much, by the day, 
 for his rooms, and for whatever else he chooses to order. 
 
 What with the absence of books, and all the comforts 
 and trifles that give a look of home, and, on the other 
 hand, the lack of the American compensations, such 
 : as reading-room, ladies drawing-room, sitting-rooms, 
 and thronged halls and entries, the solitude and gloom 
 of a hotel in the heart of London could scarce be 
 exceeded. 
 
 But, admirably suited as is the American system of 
 hotel to the relief and pleasure of the stranger and 
 ; traveller, there is a class of hotel-lodgers who would 
 | be more comfortable in New York were there a hotel 
 after the European fashion and it is with a view td 
 ; this class, mainly, that the new hotel up-town has 
 ! been designed. We refer to the class who wish a 
 luxurious home, but can not afford time, trouble, or 
 money, to be housekeepers. There are many families 
 of this description families who pass the summer in 
 the country, but in the winter reside in town, and, 
 dreading the trouble and expense of a town house, 
 would still prefer a private table and drawing-room. 
 j For such, a hotel garni, with elegant suites of apart- 
 ! ments and a restaurant on the floor before, is the well- 
 ! adapted provision, and this class is sufficiently large 
 to more than warrant the enterprise of the hotel up 
 town. 
 
 The great mass, however, even of families (and 
 I certainly of bachelors), prefer the gregarious hotel, 
 \ where two or three hundred people form almost one 
 [ family, where eating and dancing and social pleasures 
 are all enjoyed in common, and where business and 
 amusement are closely, and without foresight or 
 trouble, closely intermingled. This style of living 
 best suits the great mass of a business community, and 
 it will not be till we have a ruling proportion of aris 
 tocratic idlers, that the gregarious hotel will go out of 
 fashion. That may be fifty years hence, or our "gre 
 gariousness" may become a national peculiarity, and 
 the Astor " stay put" for a century. 
 
 We speak the Tuscan, and lively Mr. Palmo is 
 betrayed by his soft c to be a Piedmontese or a Vene 
 tian else we should venture to give him the ideas 
 here-below embodied, in his own lingua de belleza. 
 We beg his worthy and eloquent legal counsellor, 
 however (whom we have the pleasure to know), to 
 translate to him, through some medium more pellucid 
 than the last, the nicer shades of our meaning. We 
 put up our prayer for its happy voyage to the mana 
 ger s harbor of comprehension. 
 
 An OPERA, like a woman, is never to be taken liter 
 ally. It is not, exclusively or mainly, a place wherein 
 to hear good music. If the music be the best that 
 can be procured (though it were only the best in 
 Ethiopia), the uncrowned but very executive King 
 Public is content. " Our" ear is merciful ! But the 
 opera is a place for the advancing of two ends more 
 human tenderness and human vanity. Ten go thither 
 to flirt, and forty to be seen, where one goes to pamper 
 his auricular nerve upon a cadenza. We don t see 
 that this requires enlarging upon. 
 
 We wish to enlighten those who have hitherto been 
 proudly content with their own country (haven t trav 
 elled, and that s the reason), as to the true uses of the 
 opera abroad the way it is truly used, that is to say, 
 where sing Rubini and his starry troupe. P irst, as to 
 construction. The London opera-house (like the 
 Parisian) is composed of a hundred or more private 
 boxes, and a pit. The private boxes are used by their 
 lady-proprietors to receive company during the evening, 
 and the pit is used to reconnoitre the boxes, to lounge, 
 to chat, and to be visible in white gloves and opera- 
 glass (this last a most necessary demonstration by 
 those who would not otherwise be considered " men 
 about town"). We have not yet mentioned the Us- 
 
148 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 tening to the opera. This very subordinate part of the 
 evening s entertainment commences at the signal 
 sh!" "sh!" from the connoisseurs, indicating that 
 some favorite aria is commencing which is worth lis 
 tening to, or a duett or quartette, or fine point of 
 action, coming off, and, till this is past, the audience, 
 above and below, is breathlessly still and attentive. At 
 all other times during the performance of the opera, 
 it is rather green than otherwise to pay attention to 
 the stage, and anybody who should request that his 
 neighbors would not converse during the recitative 
 secco, would be smiled at as " capital fun !" The 
 opera, in short, is considered as a help, an accompani 
 ment (or, if you like, a stop-gap) to conversation, and 
 the consequence is that nowhere are people so much at 
 their ease, and nowhere are so many bright and merry 
 things said as at the opera! We ll mend our pen, 
 dear reader, while you compare this with the quaker- 
 meeting attention so tediously given at Palme s. 
 
 But this is to be mended (the practice, we mean 
 the pen does pretty well), and the first thing we wish 
 to suggest to Mr. Pal mo is an improvement in the 
 "fP s alley" P ar t f if- To go round behind the 
 boxes, as the house is constructed now, is formidably 
 conspicuous, unless one has a direct errand to the lady 
 next the stage; yet this, with the exception of having 
 a seat in the pit, and sitting in it, is the only way to 
 get a look at the house and " see who is there." Let 
 Mr. Pal mo drop a staircase, passing under the stage- 
 box to the front of the pit, and there would be an ex 
 cusable lounge of observation all round the house a 
 prodigious difference in the attraction for the dan 
 dies, let us assure you, signor ! You need the dan 
 dies! You wish to make it among the necessities of 
 a "man about town," that he should have a season- 
 ticket to the opera. But it is no pleasure to sit 
 cramped and silent in one seat, and no pleasure to 
 come in and stand behind the audience for the whole 
 evening, or for an hour. It would be a pleasure to 
 see the audience from the front, and that can not be 
 done now, without a pretty " cool" walk to the or 
 chestra and back. Now could it? 
 
 We have two or three other propositions to make 
 for the improvement of the social opportunities of 
 the opera, but this will do for to-day. Addio, signore ! 
 
 We cordially approve of the reason for, and the 
 feeling which prompted the following paragraph. 
 We have the pleasure of knowing the three gentle 
 men mentioned in it. particularly the urbane captain, 
 and we wish the Howards a happy retirement, and 
 Captain Roe ^.-bounding prosperity but this done, 
 we wish to note a nationality as it passes ; and first, 
 to quote a paragraph: 
 
 "It has been announced in various quarters that 
 the Messrs. Howard, who have established the hotel 
 so extensively and favorably known as Howard s Ho 
 tel, have disposed of that establishment to Captain 
 Roe, of the "Empire" steamboat. * * * 
 
 As for the Howards, we are glad that they have done 
 so well. We presume that, being relieved now from 
 the labor of keeping such a large establishment, they 
 will retire to some of those beautiful retreats with 
 which their native state, Vermont, abounds." 
 
 It will be seen at once that a traveller who should 
 measure this trio by the European scale of condition 
 in life (rank these gentlemen, that is to say, with 
 "mine host" in any other part of the world) would 
 make a blunder. The difference between an Ameri 
 can hotel-proprietor, and a London Boniface, is not 
 merely that our hotels are six times as large. It is 
 not merely that he is six times as great a " proprie 
 tor." The vocation is almost wholly different and 
 the difference is a result of the totally different hab 
 
 its of the two countries. In London, you may, by 
 chance, see the " land-Zae/?/," daily, but you may be 
 months in the house without seeing the " land-Zorc?." 
 (Two terrible misnomers, by-the-way, for the hostess, 
 though she has no land, is not a lady but as a land- 
 lady, and mine host is far enough from a lord with 
 land, though he is no lord except as a land-lord !) 
 The English host, therefore, is never an acquaintance 
 of his guest, and the guest knows his hostess only in 
 the quality of an upper servant. The reader will 
 have recognised the difference we wish to point to. 
 The American hotel-keeper has charge, not of twenty 
 or thirty people living wholly in their own private 
 rooms, but of two or three hundred, whose habits are 
 all gregarious, and to almost every one of them he (the 
 landlord) is a personal and familiar friend. The ex 
 tent of this friendly intercourse with persons mostly 
 of the better class, gives to the hotel-proprietor a 
 mass of influence, direct and indirect, which makes 
 him a very important person in the community. He 
 is continually appealed to for knowledge on popular 
 subjects, such as is got only by great facilities of hear 
 say. He is often made a reference in disputes, from 
 his necessary habit of impartiality. He is intrusted 
 with deposites of great value by his guests, and is the 
 confidant-general of the secrets and difficulties of 
 strangers, and of travelling lovers and mourners. 
 Ladies and families are committed to his charge. 
 Public entertainments are given by his advice and di 
 rection ; and, in short, he has so much harm, and so 
 much good influence, in his power, that he is, neces 
 sarily, a person of high moral character, superior 
 judgment, discretion, and information wit/tout all 
 ivhich public opinion would not tolerate him in his 
 place and, ivilh which, while in the full exercise of 
 his vocation, he naturally holds a high station of re 
 publican social rank. It is in tacit obedience to this 
 scale of valuation, that the change of masters in a 
 public hotel is made the subject of newspaper an 
 nouncement and comment a notice of the fact which 
 would seem to a London editor wholly beyond its con 
 sequence and value. 
 
 We are aware that it is rather Utopian to give nom 
 inal rank to people according to their actual worth 
 and influence; but let us have our little bit of fancy 
 now and then ! We should be afraid to call public 
 attention to the rank of editors measuring it by their 
 power! 
 
 OLE BULL AND HIS MISSING " SPOT." As we pre 
 dicted, this great luminary took the light of the 
 world to himself on Saturday night, and became vis 
 ible above the horizon of the footlights precisely at 
 eight, 
 
 " Bright as a god, but punctual as a slave !" 
 
 Mrs. Child (the moon who reflects the masculine 
 gold of his music in the feminine silver of language) 
 sat in the stage-box, somewhat obscured in the pe 
 numbra of a shocking cap. (We rely upon Miss 
 Dorsey to invent a "silver cloud," or, at any rate, 
 some headdress more becoming for the waxing glory 
 of this charming reflector.) The Memnonian music 
 awoke, of course, with the appearance of Ole-Apollo, 
 and the crammed world of fashion sat breathless. 
 By the time the first piece was played, however, it 
 was felt that there was something wrong. The audi 
 ence was irresponsive. The ivory inside edge of the 
 moon s disk (disclosed by the tranquil smile at first), 
 became less and less visible, and disappeared. The 
 applause was mechanical. Madame Burkhardt arose 
 like a morning vapor, and clouded the horizon with 
 an abominable song. Ole Bull broke out again, and 
 though the shadows had shortened somewhat before 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 149 
 
 he finished his second piece, there was still a lack 
 still but a dull acknowledgment of his glory. 
 
 We presently discovered the cause. A heavy fore- 
 lock of hair, which used to drop over the forehead j 
 of the inspired Norwegian, descending "with the j 
 linked sweetness long drawn out" of a cadenza, and j 
 then tossed back like an absorbed comet with the re- j 
 vulsive sweep of a return to the flon-Jlon of the air 
 this expressive forelock, with the steeped sweetness 
 of the Niagara it had overheard, and the dreams of j 
 
 melody it had stirred to, was gone to " and scis- j 
 
 sois." The " sun was (the day before) shorn of his j 
 beams" by Cristadoro! Mingled with the hair of, 
 the uninspired, that magic lock had been swept into 
 Broadway from the floor of the undiscriminating bar 
 ber, and, fallen from the heaven of harmony, is now ! 
 sticking to the wheels of omnibuses in a purgatory 
 of Sysiphus. Those in other cities who remember 
 the toss back of that wild lock of hair in the convul 
 sive transitions of Ole Bull s music, will understand 
 that there must have been, emphatically, a spot mis 
 sing on his luminous face. 
 
 Spite of politics and attractions elsewhere, the 
 house was crammed; and in spite of the missing 
 lock, Ole Bull recovered his power over the audi 
 ence. The last piece he played was electric, and the 
 curtain fell amid unlimited plaudits. 
 
 THE PAY FOR PKRIODICAL-WRITING. What a 
 butcher would think of veal, as a marketable article, 
 if everybody had an ambition to raise calves to give 
 away, is very near the conclusion that a merely busi 
 ness-man would arrive at, on inquiring into the sale- 
 ableness of fugitive literature. It is as pleasant for 
 people not hackneyed in authorship to see their 
 thoughts transferred to print, as it is for beauties to 
 see their faces transferred to canvass; and, if custom 
 ary, most contributors to periodicals would pay the 
 publisher as willingly as women pay the portrait- 
 painter. Another thing. Females are naturally fa 
 cile writers, and the attention paid to the mental cul 
 ture of women in our day, has set their thoughts 
 a-flow upon paper, as the letting in of sunshine upon 
 the dark floor of the forest draws to the surface new 
 springs of water. These facts to begin with, the 
 reader will easily understand the pourquoi of the^un- 
 promising literary market we have to " open up" to 
 him. 
 
 There are several of the magazines that pay for 
 articles, but no one of them, we believe, pays for all 
 its contents. Graham and Godey (two men of noble 
 liberality to authors) pay prices to some of their con 
 tributors that would far outbid the highest rates of 
 magazine-payment in England. Their prose-writers 
 receive from two to twelve dollars a page, ?>nd their 
 poets from five to fifty dollars an article. The Co 
 lumbian and the Ladies Magazine also pay well. 
 The North American Review used to think it liberal 
 enough to pay Edward Everett a dollar a page. All 
 the paying magazines and reviews, however, reject 
 fifty articles to one that they accept, and they pay 
 nobody whose " name" would not enrich their table 
 of contents. In point of fact, but for Ike necessity of 
 a brag, and the misfortune that a writer, once made 
 famous, esteems pay a desirable manner of compli 
 ment (whether he wants the money or not), the liter 
 ary periodicals in this country might do well, relying 
 only on the editor s pen and the epidemic "cacoethes." 
 The Mirror did so and was as cleverly contributed 
 to, we think, as any periodical in the country. The 
 rejected articles (offered to us, of course, as a gratu 
 ity) would have filled, at least, a barrel a month! 
 
 Newspapers pay for reporting and editing, but sel 
 dom or never for "articles." The faror, on the con 
 
 trary, of giving room and circulation to another man s 
 ideas, is growing into a saleable commodity the ed 
 itor (on the ground that he risks the popularity of 
 his paper by relinquishing the chance of a better ar 
 ticle) charging rent for his columns instead of hiring 
 a tenant. To every scheme of public interest to 
 every society to everything which newspapers can 
 hinder or further there is attached some person who 
 is both desirous and able to present the subject 
 forcibly on paper; and, quite as readily and zealously, 
 if there be an objectionable side to it, springs up a 
 pen-and-ink caviller in opposition. Between them, 
 and with the desire to figure in print which besets 
 very many able men, newspaper-editors need pay for 
 little aid except eyewater and scissors, and they get 
 credit for a world of zeal in good causes by articles 
 they neither write nor pay for. We have got to the 
 footboard of our Procrustes bed. 
 
 AUTHORS PAY IN AMERICA. We have hot coals 
 smouldering in the ashes of " things put oft ," which 
 we poke reluctantly to the surface just now reluc 
 tantly only because we wish to light beacons for an 
 author s crusade, and we have no leisure to be more 
 than its Peter the Hermit. We solemnly summon 
 Edgar A. Poe to do the devoir of Cceur de Lion 
 no man s weapon half so trenchant! And now lot 
 us turn the subject round, small end foremost. 
 
 These are days when gentlemen paint their own 
 boots, and we have latterly been our own publisher. 
 We have thereby mastered one or two statistics which, 
 we know not well why, never looked us in the face 
 before, and which we proceed to hold up by the nape 
 of the neck for the encouragement of the less stuffy 
 or less inquiring. Authors who can not find publish 
 ers, and authors who, having found them, have been 
 as much respected by them as pig-iron by the razor- 
 maker, are invited to "lend us their ears" on interest. 
 What proportion should an author have of the net 
 profits of a book 1 This seems a shallow question 
 enough^ but there is a deep hole in it. Remember, 
 in the first place, that the author wrote the book 
 that God gave him the monopoly of the vein Irom 
 which it is worked that he has been at the expense 
 and toil of an education, and to other expenses and 
 toils (as in travel) that his mind s lease is far shorter 
 than his lease of life and that thoughtsmiths should 
 be better paid than blacksmiths or goldsmiths (that is 
 to say, if the credit the work does to the country goes 
 for anything in the valuation). The question of the 
 division of profit is between author and publisher, and 
 the publisher gives his uneducated mental attention 
 to the sale, a brief use of his credit for the printing 
 and binding, and runs a most partial risk as to the re 
 sultfor he need not purchase the book except in 
 obedience to his own judgment and his readers , and 
 the cost is paid, of course, before there are any " net 
 receipts." (There is great capital made of this 
 "risk," but ninety-nine books in a hundred more than 
 clear expenses!) Now, taking a stereotyped dollar- 
 book for example, the plates, worth four or five hun 
 dred dollars, are paid for, with a moderate , sale, m^he 
 first month Suppose it to be three months. Ine 
 use of tl"e Publisher s credit for $500 for ninety days 
 has beea his only outlay of consequence; but the 
 author has had his outlay of brain-work, time, genius, 
 and years of education The printing and getting 
 up, after the plates are paid for, cost about on, 
 fifth of the retail ^rice-twenty cents on a dollar. To 
 charge ten cents more on each copy for the absolute 
 expense of selling and circulating, is more than lib 
 eral and now, how shall the remaining seventy cents 
 the net P rofit-ie divided between author and pub- 
 Usher 1 
 
150 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 We should like to have a watchmaker s answer to 
 that question. How much ought the jeweller to have 
 for buying it from the maker, warranting it "to go" 
 after examining it, for advertising it, and for selling it 
 across a counter? Suppose the watch to sell for a 
 hundred dollars, and seventy dollars to be the net 
 profit above cost of material. What would you say, 
 if the maker got but ten or twenty dollars, and the 
 retailer fifty or sixty ? Yet that is the proportion at 
 which author and bookseller are paid for literary pro 
 duction the seller of the book being paid from twice 
 to five times as much as the author of it! 
 
 Certainly, the readiest-minded man we ever knew, 
 as well as one of the most brilliant and highly culti 
 vated conversationists, is Major Dave/ac, the subject 
 of the anecdote below. Never was a man more out 
 of place as a stump-orator and agitator, well as he 
 acquits himself in these turbulent vocations. It is 
 no ne of our business to discuss that point, however. 
 We were only about to roll the anecdotical snow-ball 
 a little larger, by recording a bon mot of the major s, 
 at the birth of which we chanced to be present. 
 Davezac was charge at Naples in eighteen hundred 
 and some time ago, and French being the language 
 he was born in, his wit of course played freely in the 
 court vernacular. He was quite the idol of the diplo 
 matic corps, and an "indispensable" at all dances and 
 masquerades. We were dining one evening in his 
 company during the carnival. The major sat oppo 
 site to us, next to a very pretty German countess. 
 During the procession and the pelting of sugar-plums 
 which had occupied the early part of the day, the 
 countess had received a slight bruise upon her cheek. 
 Davezac wore court-plaster on his lip a hit also from 
 the sugared ammunition. They were both complain 
 ing. "_E/i, Monsieur Davezac" said the countess, 
 mournfully, " il faut reunir nos doulcurs . " " Oui, 
 madam, et nos blessures!" replied the major instantly, 
 placing his lip upon the cheek of the surprised suf 
 ferer. 
 
 COSMOPOLITE ATTRACTION IN BROADWAY. With 
 in a few doors, in the neighborhood of Prince street, 
 are collected accidentally, at present, four most vivid 
 representations of four very distant and different 
 countries Spain, India, Paris, and Constantinople 
 the " Alhamra," the "Panorama of Madras," the 
 " Panorama of Paris," and the new shop of " Turk 
 ish curiosities." He who wishes to realize what bal 
 loons are to do for us in 55, can astonish and con 
 fuse his geographical impressions to his entire satis 
 faction, by a visit to all these in one morning. 
 
 The Turkish shop has articles for sale that could 
 seldom before be obtained except by a voyage to the 
 Orient. We brought some curiosities from Constan 
 tinople, but we have a thousand times regretted, since, 
 that we had not quadrupled our purchases in the bazars 
 and bezestein so much were the articles admired, 
 and so impossible was it, even in the curiosity-shops 
 of Europe, to find specimens of them. No person 
 who is luxurious in personal habits would willingly 
 be, for example, without the Turkish shirts having 
 once seen them. They are the poetry of neglige 
 costume the idealized romance of the drapery of 
 dishabille. Those who have time to make a luxury 
 of dressing-room or boudoir the beautiful and idle 
 of either sex should take a look at the gossamer 
 shirts from Constantinople. But there are all man 
 ner of things in this shop beside. There are beauti 
 ful gold-embroidered slippers, small carpets and otto 
 man-cloths, attars in gold bottles, gold-embroidered 
 handkerchiefs and gilded pastilles everything, in 
 
 short, that one buys of old Mustapha, near the Hip 
 podrome in Stamboul, confectionary included. We 
 inquired after old Mustapha yesterday, and the Greek 
 who keeps the shop (who was himself a confectioner 
 in Constantinople) delighted us with talking. of him, 
 as if he had seen him yesterday ! Picturesque and 
 jolly old turbaned Mustapha! what fun it was to 
 have the curtain lifted by his grinning Abyssinian in 
 anklets and wristlets, and step into the back shop to 
 take coffee and try his essences! It quite came over 
 us like a dream yesterday the chat with this Broad 
 way Constantinopolitan. If you have any curiosity, 
 dear reader, call and taste the confectionary at this 
 shop, and look at the translucent shirts, and see the 
 Persian inkstands, and handle the graceful cimeters, 
 and look at the Brusa silks and seraglio slippers in 
 short, see Constantinople for that is a palpable slice 
 of it! 
 
 JUMPING THE PEW. We were once in the gallery 
 of a country church when an address was to be de 
 livered to a Sunday school. The body of the house 
 was reserved for the adult audience, and the boys were 
 confined to one of the side aisles. There was evident 
 ly an understanding, however, that if not otherwise 
 wanted, the well-cushioned seat facing the chancel 
 was to be given up to as many lads as could occupy it. 
 It would hold, perhaps, twenty, and a hundred of 
 them were packed in the aisle like figs, waiting till the 
 class leader at the head should " open up." Looking 
 on with some amusement, we found our eye arrested 
 by the bright face of a lad, half way down, who bore 
 the keeping back very impatiently. His struggles to 
 pass the other boys were vehement, but of no use. 
 He was slight, and his neighbors were bold and sturdy. 
 Presently he bit his lips, entered a pew, jumped the 
 partition into the central aisle, and walked round to 
 the front. There was a murmur of indignation among 
 the boys, and a general smile among the spectators, 
 but he secured his pick of seats. The clergyman, in 
 the course of his address, thought proper to get up 
 an impromptu colloquy, and, to the evident annoyance 
 of the other boys, selected the pew-jumper, who sat 
 just before him, for the honor. The lad arose, when 
 questioned, and surprised the whole audience with 
 the clearness of his replies. He sat down amid gene 
 ral applause, and (whatever reproof he got in private 
 for his daring) he was the envied hero of the day. We 
 have often since had the successful boldness of this 
 lad recalled to our memory by the class of things it 
 illustrates, and our mental reply, after reading a let 
 ter to which this was the preface, was "Better jump 
 the pew !" 
 
 Our correspondent can not get a hearing from the 
 public ! Few things are more difficult. " We have 
 not read his book, but it may be excellent snuff to 
 keep a fame going, and yet not the stuff to start one. 
 Genius is expected " never to go into the water till it 
 knows how to swim" never to expect to be read but 
 for having been read before ! With any degree of 
 ability, more or less, it is easy to be almost hopelessly 
 overlaid. We, ourself, are a very humble example. 
 We "jumped the pew" unconsciously, in England, 
 with our furiously abused " Peucillings," and imme 
 diately sold, for the highest price, an edition of " Ink 
 lings of Adventure" a series of tales that had fallen 
 still-born into the lap of Boston, and for the first print 
 ing of which we paid more than a thousand dollars on 
 our return to their birth-place. Instances of "jump 
 ing the pew" will occur to every observer of men 
 every reader of biography. It is the shabby door to 
 many a path of glory. Almost every profession begins 
 with a dilemma hope deferred, or a pew to jump I 
 The starving lawyer in the west, who flogged his 
 neighbor to have a case to plead, jumped the pew ! 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 151 
 
 The veteran Buckingham, one of the most judicious, 
 able and respected editors in the country, was starving 
 in Boston, when he "jumped the pew" with the abu 
 sive "Galaxy" making himself read from terror till 
 he was famous enough to be read for merit. The 
 game is dangerous, however, and the principle lies 
 in most questionable neighborhood. For one who 
 would succeed in it there are ninety-nine who would 
 fail, and failure is hopeless extinction ! The pew can 
 be jumped but once. The attention of the public can 
 be but once summoned by a rude pluck at its beard ; 
 and, to keep attention long enough to have the rude 
 ness forgotten, there must be merit that the public 
 would regret overlooking merit, indeed, of which the 
 neglect was injury enough to justify violent extrication. 
 
 THE MIRROR STEAM-PRESS. It would be curious 
 not to lose sight of the Latin word, dropped for transla 
 tion into the scholar s ear, till it re-appears in English 
 on his tongue, but a half-hour s watching of the steam- 
 press on which the Mirror is printed would be hardly 
 a less instructive spectacle of contrivance. To com 
 plete the assimilation of the second process to the 
 first, it would have been necessary, till lately, to em 
 ploy a boy to pull the word off the scholar s tongue ; 
 but, by the ingenuity of R. HOE & Co., the, great 
 organ of public opinion is endowed with a happy de 
 livery of its own laying off the sheet that was printed 
 and ready for utterance , that is to say, and drawing in 
 its iron tongue, unaided, to be laden with the mean 
 time coinage of another. 
 
 The improvements in printing-presses within the 
 last ten or fifteen years are probably far less remark 
 able than some other progresses of mechanic inven 
 tion, yet they are wonderful enough to use up quite 
 as much curiosity as it is comfortable to find epithets 
 for, in a day. The difference between the old Ramage 
 press, and the steam-miracle in our present office, is 
 peculiarly impressive to ourself. There is a small 
 bar of iron in this press which fulfils precisely the 
 same destiny to which we were at one time devoted. 
 We were considered in an exemplary line of life while 
 performing exactly its office that of inking the type 
 during a long year of disgust with Latin (when a 
 sensible papa took us at our word, and allowed us to 
 prefer a trade to a satchel !) 
 
 The ink was in those days kept in a wooden box, 
 and, with two stuffed leather balls, a boy or man, be 
 side the press, distributed it over the face of the type, 
 while the pressman was fixing the sheet for the impres 
 sion. We remember balling an edition of " Watts s 
 Psalms and Hymns," which it took weeks to print, 
 and, by the same token, there are lines in that good 
 book of which we caught glimpses on the " frisket," 
 that, to this day, go to the tune we played with the 
 ink-balls while conning them over ! Reviving ambi 
 tion sent us back to school, however, and invention 
 soon after superseded the ink-boy s elbows (encum 
 bered with a stomach), by a bit of machinery that 
 neither required to be fed, nor committed verses to 
 memory while inking the type ! This getting rid of 
 the boy was the peculiarity of the Smith press, and 
 then followed the Napier press, which dispensed with 
 the man, and needed only the tending of two girls or 
 boys; and now (thanks to Mr. Hoe), we have a steam- 
 press, which puts up three iron fingers for a sheet of 
 white paper, pulls it down into its bosom, gives it a 
 squeeze that makes an impression, and then lays it into 
 the palm of an iron hand which deposites it evenly on a 
 
 faap a t the rate of two thousand an hour ! We often 
 
 stop with curiosity to look at the little arrangement 
 which does the work our elbows have ached with, and 
 we think the Mirror press altogether is a sight worth 
 your coming to see, dear reader ! 
 
 THE FIRST DAY OF THE WORLD S NEW LEASE 
 was clasped upon the last yesterday of the completed 
 series, by as glorious a retiring moon, and as brilliant 
 a rising sun, as were ever coveted by the " old gray- 
 beard," at whose funeral they are to be the expiring 
 candles. A finer night than last night a finer day 
 than to-day never relieved watch upon the "tented 
 heavens." We stood looking up a steeple from our 
 bed-room window at midnight (having first finished 
 an article for to-day s paper, upon the venture of its 
 being wanted), and we stood shaving at the same 
 window when the gold smile of the unexpected sun 
 rise called upon the surprised weather-cock to look 
 about him as usual ! We, therefore, certify to the 
 world s coming honestly by its "situation." Go about 
 your business, oh, mankind ! 
 
 Coming down the front steps of the Astor, at half- 
 past six, we naturally enough took a look up Broad 
 way, to see if, perchance, some blessed change in the 
 pavement might not give the first sign of anew Jerusa 
 lem. But if the sapphire paviors had called upon 
 Mayor Harper, he had struck at something in the 
 contract. The old holes were there, with stones of 
 the accustomed complexion (chafed "trap," minera- 
 logically speaking) and the mud evidently unaware 
 of a miracle. But, hey! now! WHAT! a rainbow 
 across Broadway? ? Could we believe our eyes? 
 a many-colored arch completely spanning the street, 
 hung with flowers, and men walking over it! ! Was 
 an advent forthcoming, after all ? 
 
 While we write, that Advent is in progress ! It is 
 the ADVENT OF YOUTH JUVENOCRACY IN THI AS 
 CENDANT! A flowery arch spans the breadth of 
 Broadway, and under it winds, at this moment, the 
 procession in honor of first maturity manhood in 
 youth ! It scarce needed, it is true, that the world 
 should be born again before its new monarch should 
 make formal entry. It was, ten years ago, discovered 
 in France two years ago in England last year in 
 America that the gray head icas only the wisest while 
 there were no books but experience ! That which men 
 once waited to know till the hair was silvered, is now 
 taught the child at school conned in the ambitious 
 dream of the youth in his puberty. The world has 
 " hung fire" in other ages, from the damp of burnt- 
 out enthusiasm spread like a blanket over its brain- 
 powder. Improvement has gone upon crutches. 
 Action waited for enterprise to cough. Courage 
 stayed to fumble for spectacles. The forenoou 
 shadows of the sun of human intellect were of un 
 trustworthy measure, and the dial to begin to ivork by 
 was shadowed till post-meridian ! 
 
 Without touching upon the political articulation in 
 " the roar of the Young Lion," we MARK THE EPOCH 
 the epoch of " Young France," " Young England," 
 " Young America !" We could show, had we time, 
 how strikingly the peculiar habits of our land have 
 more prepared us than other countries, for the sover- 
 ei<rnty of YOUTH! We have no time now. We must 
 go" forth with the crowd and see the bright cheek and 
 curling beard of the Young Monarch in his hour of 
 triumph. The cannon are pealing ! The drums 
 shake upon the prophetic sunshine in th 
 
 " HaU to the" YOUTH " that in triumph advances ." 
 12 o clock. We have been to Broadway. The 
 procession is soon to form. The mounted marshals 
 3 f the day are galloping to and fro with their nbanded 
 insizniathe pictorial outside of the Museum is per 
 fectly embroidered with petticoats (a charming relief!) 
 th g windows on both sides of Broadway are cram 
 med with gnyly-dressed spectators-the 500 Boston 
 voung men (fine, wholesome-looking fellows, who 
 certainly do credit to their " parsley bed"), are assem 
 bled with their badges in front of the Astor the town 
 is full of what the ladies would call " handsome young 
 
152 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 strangers" the omnibuses carry flags the whole 
 street, from the triumphal arch to the pinnacles of 
 Trinity, looks impassable with the glittering crowd. 
 "We never saw comparable preparation for a festal 
 march. It will be a day to be remembered mocked 
 at, perhaps, as the first after a millenial crisis, but 
 glorified as the first in the great era of Youthfulhood ! 
 
 MASS MEETING OF NEWSBOYS. We may be per 
 mitted, perhaps, to please our friends with the an 
 nouncement that we at least stand well upon the side 
 walk ! The exhaustion of our large edition at four 
 o clock, yesterday afternoon, and a general return of 
 the newsboys from their routes with eager demands 
 for more, occasioned a multitudinous holding of 
 counsel among those piping potentates, and to the as 
 tonishment of our corner and the neighborhood, the 
 assembled varlets actually gave the Evening Mirror 
 three cheers ! We bow to the tattered vox populi, and 
 own the soft impeachment. Gentlemen newsboys ! 
 give us your hand (with a newspaper between !) and 
 permit us to offer you a business suggestion. Aston 
 ish one of your insinuating number with a white shirt, 
 and try the new trick of selling us with a smile to the 
 ladies ! Call him the ladies boy, and treat him deli 
 cately when he is dressed and can t afford the results 
 of your familiarity ! Your powerful body amounts at 
 present to some three or four hundred, and your 
 profits will soon tempt the competition of older gen 
 tlemen, unless you find more worlds to conquer. 
 Hurrah for the ladies, gentlemen (waving whatever 
 you have to represent a pocket-handkerchief) and 
 now, if you will graciously withdraw your attention, 
 we would speak to those over whom you have the ad 
 vantage of youth. 
 
 We have to thank the press all over the country for 
 the most flattering mention and the kindest encour 
 agement. Our own craft seem to love us. We thought 
 of quoting some of their felicilous notices, but our 
 grateful pride would thus fall into a shape used for 
 puffing, and we shrink from the medium. Thanks to 
 our friends simply but fervently. 
 
 GOLD INKSTAND TO THE AUTHORESS OF THE SCOT 
 TISH CHIEFS. The works of JANE PORTER have 
 probably brought more money into the hands of 
 booksellers than those of any writer except, per 
 haps, Scott, and at this moment steam-presses are 
 employed in printing large editions of her delight 
 ful novels. An enthusiastic man, a great admirer 
 of Miss Porter, has, for the second time, started a 
 subscription among the booksellers of this city to pre 
 sent her with a gold inkstand, and the Harpers, Ap- 
 plelons, Langleys, and others, have subscribed with 
 enthusiastic liberality. Perhaps a description of Jane 
 Porter with a little of her hitherto unwritten history may 
 not be unacceptable. 
 
 Miss PORTER was the daughter of a gallant English 
 officer, who died, leaving a widow, and three children, 
 then very young, but all destined to remarkable fame 
 Sir ROBERT KER PORTER, JANE PORTER, and ANNA 
 MARIA PORTER. Sir Robert, as is well known, was 
 the celebrated historical painter, traveller in Persia, 
 soldier, diplomatist, and author, lately deceased. He 
 went to Russia with one of his great pictures when 
 very young, married a wealthy Russian princess, and 
 passed his subsequent years between the camp and 
 diplomacy, honored and admired in every station and 
 relation of his life. The two girls were playmates 
 and neighbors of Walter Scott. Jane published her 
 " Scottish Chiefs" at the age of eighteen, and became 
 immediately the great literary wonder of her time. 
 
 Her widowed mother, however, withdrew her imme 
 diately from society to the seclusion of a country 
 town, and she was little seen in the gay world of Lon 
 don before several of her works had become classics. 
 Anna Maria, the second sister, commenced her admi 
 rable series of novels soon after the first celebrity of 
 Jane s works, and they wrote and passed the brightest 
 years of their life together in a cottage retreat. The 
 two sisters were singularly beautiful. Sir Thomas 
 Lawrence was an unsuccessful suitor to Anna Maria, 
 and Jane (said by Sir Martin Shee to have been the 
 handsomest woman he ever saw) was engaged to a 
 young soldier who was killed in the Peninsula. She 
 is a woman to have but one love in a lifetime. Her 
 betrothed was killed when she was twenty years of 
 age, and she has ever since worn mourning, and re 
 mained true to his memory. Jane is now the only 
 survivor of her family, her admirable mother and her 
 sister having died some twelve or fourteen years ago, 
 and Sir Robert having died lately, while revisiting 
 England after many years diplomatic residence in 
 Venezuela. 
 
 Miss Porter is now near sixty. She has suffered 
 within the last two or three years from ill-health, but 
 she is still erect, graceful, and majestic in person, and 
 still possessed of admirable beauty of countenance. 
 Her large dark eyes have a striking lambency of lus 
 tre, her smile inspires love in all who see her, and her 
 habit of mind, up to the time we last saw her (three 
 or four years ago), was that of rejlccting the mood of 
 others in conversation, thinking never of herself, and 
 endeavoring only to make others shine, and all this 
 with a tact, a playfulness and simplicity, an occasional 
 unconscious brilliancy and penetration, which have 
 made her, up to sixty years of age, a most inter 
 esting, engaging, and lovely woman. We have had 
 the good fortune to pass several months, at different 
 times, under different hospitable roofs, with Jane 
 Porter, and, considering the extent of her charm, 
 over old and young, titled and humble, masters and 
 servants, we sincerely think we never have seen a 
 woman so beloved and so fascinating. She is the 
 idol of many different circles of very high rank, and 
 passes her time in yielding, month after month, to 
 pressing invitations from the friends who love her. 
 The dowager queen Adelaide is one of her warmest 
 friends, the highest families of nobility contend for 
 her as a resident guest, distinguished and noble for 
 eigners pay court to her invariably on arriving in 
 England, she has been ennobled by a decree of the 
 king of Prussia, and with all this weight of honor on 
 her head, you might pass weeks with her (ignorant of 
 her history) without suspecting her to be more than 
 the loveliest of women past their prime, and born but 
 to grace a contented mediocrity of station. 
 
 This is an impartial and truthful sketch of the cele 
 brated person for whom the above-mentioned compli 
 ment is intended. We trust it may find her alive, and 
 with her accustomed bright smile upon her lips God 
 guard and preserve her ! 
 
 RocKiNG-CHAiRCTcelNKSTANDrm -<Y/. We gave, 
 "by authority," an account of a subscription paper, 
 the purpose of which was to present to Jane Porter 
 an inkstand of gold. Our publisher-mayor Mr. Har 
 per, headed the list with $40. We wrote a paragraph 
 on the subject, and the same evening were called to 
 see a rocking-chair into which the inkstand had been 
 suddenly converted by a rub against the Aladdin s lamp 
 of propriety. We went into Meeks s museum of 
 sumptuous furniture, and the chair was disrobed, for 
 us, of a beautiful chintz cover presented to Miss Por 
 ter by Messrs. Meeks, the makers. The chair is a 
 bijou. The model is appropriately Elizabethan (a 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 153 
 
 chair for the virgin queen of English romance, made 
 in the style of the virgin queen of English history) 
 the carving in rosewood relief, and the lining of crim 
 son velvet. The exact model of the chair was sent 
 to Queen Victoria not long since, as a specimen of 
 American furniture, by a club of English gentlemen. 
 The cadcau goes out consigned by the mayor of New j 
 York to the lord-mayor of London, for his worshipful 
 presentation, Mr. Griswold, the packet owner, giving 
 it an honorary passage. The following letter, written 
 on parchment and sealed with the city arms, accom 
 panies it : 
 
 " NEW YORK, October 28, 1844. 
 
 " DEAR MADAM : The undersigned, booksellers, 
 publishers, and authors, of the city of New York, 
 have long felt desirous of transmitting to you a me- 
 mori-il of the high and respectful admiration which 
 they entertain for one to whose pen we are indebted j 
 for some of the purest and most imaginative produc 
 tions in the wide range of English literature. As the 
 authoress of Thaddeus of Warsaw, the Scottish 
 Chiefs, &c., your name has spread over the length 
 and breadth of our land, and the volumes of your de 
 lightful works may be found gracing alike the abodes 
 of the wealthy, and the humble dwellings of the 
 poor. And deservedly so for if purity of sentiment, 
 felicity of expression, and the constant inculcation of 
 the noblest lessons of religion and morality, be any 
 passport to literary fame, then will the name of Miss 
 Porter rank high on the list of those whom the present 
 age delights to honor, and for whom coming ages 
 will entertain a deep feeling of reverential esteem. 
 
 "Regarding you, therefore, as that one among the 
 writers of our time who first opened up the path that 
 has been since further embellished by the kindred 
 genius of a Scott, we take the liberty, as well on our 
 own behalf as in the name of thousands of American 
 readers to whom your charming productions have 
 taught, in so graceful and captivating a manner, the 
 lessons of true virtue, of presenting you with the ac 
 companying testimonial of our sincere and grateful 
 esteem. 
 
 "We have the honor to remain, dear madam, 
 
 " Your obedient servants, 
 " JAMES HARPER, Mayor of New York, 
 W. H. APPLETON, DANIEL APPLETON, 
 CHAS. S. FRANCIS, S. B. COLLINS, 
 HARPER & BROTHERS." 
 
 We have still another light to throw upon this fa 
 mous chair. The WOOD, without which it might not 
 have been built, did not come from the West Indies 
 in planks of amyris balsamifcra (rosewood), but from 
 Canandaigua, in the shape of a gentleman whose 
 heart distils a better balsam of courtesy! We first 
 heard of Mr. Wood and the proposed presentation of 
 an inkstand, from Miss Porter herself. She inquired 
 whether we knew Mr. Wood, and gave us the history 
 of his project to compliment her, apropos of promis 
 ing us a sight of barrels of jirescnts which had show 
 ered upon her from all parts of the world. She ex 
 pressed a most simple-hearted delight in the extent 
 of her American reputation, and wished to see a copy 
 of one of the American editions. 
 
 On our return to this country we found a small 
 copy of the " Scottish Chiefs," almost illegible with 
 grease and thumbing, in the kitchen of a remote tav 
 ern in Pennsylvania. We sent it to her with a little 
 water added unintentionally to its romance having 
 fallen overboard with it in our pocket while ferrying a 
 skiff across the Susquehannah. By the way, let us 
 here record an act of liberality in an English pub 
 lisher, which is apropos of this present from the 
 American bibliopoles. We were one day requested 
 by Mr. George Virtue, the enterprising publisher of 
 the American Scenery, to be the bearer of a message 
 to Miss Porter. He wished to publish her Scottish 
 
 Chiefs in a beautifully-embellished edition. The copy 
 right, by English law limiting duration, had long since 
 expired but Mr. Virtue wished to give Miss Porter 
 ei/JOO one thousand dollars FOR HER FORMAL CON 
 SENT. The check was sent the next day, and the 
 edition, one of tho must superb specimens of embel 
 lished edition in the language, is since completed. 
 The old proverb says of a burn, 
 
 " Rub it to Wood, 
 It will come to good," 
 
 and we had a burn at our fingers end as to the real 
 mover s getting his share of the credit of this compli 
 ment to Miss Porter. There is little enough enthu 
 siasm for others glory in the world little enough to 
 prevent all fear of surfeit by mention. We have re 
 corded, therefore, against his express orders, the dis 
 interested zeal of WILLIAM WOOD in this matter. 
 
 THE OVERCOAT DILEMMA. We have received a 
 note from a dismayed tailor in a thriving inland town 
 of Massachusetts, begging us, " for charity s sake," 
 to inform him "what is the fashion for overcoats." 
 He protests that the models sent him from the city 
 are inelegant and unbecoming and he begs us to in 
 quire of some dandy, regnant or ci-detant, as to the 
 existence, among knowing men, of some outer habili 
 ment more becoming than the prevailing type. This 
 is our summing up of his wishes as expressed in a let 
 ter of three pages. 
 
 Before venturing to tamper with so ticklish a sub 
 ject, let us fortify the ground by an extract from a 
 very grave and well-considered lecture on the " Changes 
 of the Fashions," lately delivered before a lyceum in 
 Portsmouth : 
 
 Although the inventors of new fashions and the 
 leaders in them are highly culpable for the injury 
 they do society yet nine tenths of those whom we 
 see in fashionable attire are persons on whom no im 
 putation can be cast : neither is there one in a hun 
 dred of their dressmakers or tailors, hatters or cord- 
 wainers, who are deserving a breath of censure for do 
 ing their work in a fashionable style. So powerful 
 an impetus has been moving the fashionable world, 
 that no individual can with safety hold up a resisting 
 hand. Nothing but a combined strength can over 
 come it. 
 
 Common sense asks why is it that a coat of a few 
 years standing, with a broad back and long waist, 
 which the prudent man has kept for his holyday 
 wear, is not as really valuable as one in which the 
 seams are more nearly allied, or the buttons placed in 
 a different position ? 
 
 Public opinion replies the man is not in fashion. 
 The observers point him out among the multitude 
 "There is a sample of old times * " There goes a 
 miser who can t afford a new coat :" and a soft voice 
 whispers as he passes " I wonder who would have 
 that old-fashioned man !" How frequently is the 
 public sympathy excited for an adroit rogue in fash 
 ionable attire, who has received the just sentence of 
 the law while the poorly-clad culprit by his side, 
 not more guilty, passes almost unpitied to the gal 
 lows. 
 
 Thus to be out of fashion a man is generally re 
 garded as wanting in spirit or purse ; and it becomes 
 a matter of necessity for a modest man, who wishes 
 to elude the notice of the world, to follow along in 
 the wake of fashion. However much a person in 
 common life may be disgusted with its fluctuations, 
 he must bear the imputation of vanity, and in some 
 degree lose his influence in society, if he either has a 
 new dress made in an old style, or for convenience 
 appears in any new clothing which is made more 
 
154 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 with a view to general utility than in subservience to 
 fashion. 
 
 With this warrant for giving a grave opinion on the 
 subject, we proceed to huddle together our kersey 
 mere ideas as follows : 
 
 The sack-coat belongs to the climate of England, 
 and is wholly desoriente. in ibis country. It was in 
 vented as a kind of body-umbrella in which elegant 
 men could pass unwet from club to cab, in that cli 
 mate of eternal moisture, and was never meant to be 
 used but as a garment of transit. A dandy bien poinlu 
 in his kid and varnish extremities, may certainly walk 
 the street safely in a sack-coat, as his quality would be 
 known by his gloves and boots only, were he other 
 wise parenthesized in a barrel. But, unless redeema 
 ble by the point of his boot or a finger of his glove, no 
 man is " dressed" in a sack. By universally making 
 sack-coats of coarse cloth in England, they class them 
 very definitely with hackney-coaches and umbrellas 
 temporary conveniences of which the material is by 
 no means a point of honor. 
 
 In England, however, dandies dress to drive, and in 
 this country they dress to walk, and, of course, it is 
 more important here that the street coat should be be 
 coming to the shape than is thought necessary in Eng 
 land. The paletot (for a description of which see 
 " Scott s" authentic " Mirror of Fashion") is becom 
 ing to men of fine carriage, and the " Taglioni," when 
 cut into the back adroitly, is becoming to slender fig 
 ures. In the present anarchy of overcoat, however, 
 every man can choose for himself, and our pastoral 
 querist of the shears, we venture to assure him, is 
 perfectly safe in first suiting his customers, and then 
 swearing it to be the fashion. We would just hint, 
 in conclusion, that there is a mixture of cloak and 
 overcoat that we have seen on a " slap-up" man lately 
 from Paris, and this chanced to hit our weakness. 
 Any man who has genius in his shears will require no 
 broader hint of what the combination looks like ! 
 
 YOUNG MEN S PROCESSION. The procession of 
 yesterday, was less remarkable for its numbers (esti 
 mated at 3,000) than for the unusual interest taken in 
 it by the spectators the enthusiasm of the ladies and 
 more quiet lookers-on, and the boundless heartiness 
 of the cheers by the people in the streets. The quali 
 ty of the general feeling, to our thinking, was more 
 nearly up to the warmth of the Lafayette Ovation, 
 than any procession that has taken place since. We 
 remarked, also, that in the escorts and cavalcade, there 
 was a large mixture of fashionable young men, which 
 is a new feature in the public processions of this city. 
 There were also more clergymen, who had errands in 
 town and about the streets, than usual the white 
 cravat in rather uncommon proportion. Altogether, 
 we think the bed of this new party has a longer and 
 broader blanket covering higher toward the fastidious 
 public head, and falling more kindly upon the service 
 able public feet than any new-party blanket spread 
 within our recollection. Youth is beloved. Its hopes 
 are contagious. Its opinions are supposed free from 
 selfishness. Its ardor is credited with inspiration. 
 The party of youth, whenever it is combined for one 
 object, must triumph, it seems to us for it carries 
 with it an outside atmosphere of electric sympathies 
 exclusively its own, while, within, it has the energy 
 of enthusiastic first manhood, and confidence unsub 
 dued by experience. 
 
 OPENING OF THE RAILROAD TO WHITE PLAINS. 
 The first rush of blood through the heart of Pygma 
 lion s statue, and the first rush of a rail-car, on Satur 
 day, through the bosom of the Bronx valley, would 
 
 seem to us a well-matched fable and fact, were not the 
 fact, both as a surprise and a change, more electric 
 than the fable. To realize it, one must get at the way 
 it is looked at by the rustic dwellers in the plains be 
 yond. They were called upon to believe that a city 
 which has, all their lives, been four hours distant, 
 " good driving," would, after the forthcoming celebra 
 tion, be slid up to within one hour, "easy going." 
 Their potatoes are to glide to market, and coal and 
 groceries to glide back, with magical facility their 
 women-folks are to go to town, stop and get home be 
 tween dinner and supper the morning newspapers 
 are to arrive from New York a little after breakfast 
 the citizens are to come out by hundreds for an after 
 noon walk New York, in short, is four times as near 
 as it used to be, only the land is not knocked away be 
 tween ! A gentleman told us, just before the cars 
 started on their return, from White Plains, that the 
 country-people, around, were not only incredulous as 
 to the completion of the road, up to the time of the 
 arrival of the cars, but that they still (6 o clock 
 P. M.) looked upon the whole affair celebration, 
 train, music and guns as a humbug lhat could never 
 hold out got up for some Millerite or political hocus- 
 pocus, and to end only in the ruin of their credulous 
 neighbors ! 
 
 To start fair, however. We were invited to join 
 the worshipful society of aldermen, bank-directors, 
 stockholders, and judiciary, who, on Saturday after 
 noon, were to invade, for the first time, by public rail 
 road, the virgin seclusion of the White Plains. The 
 access, through the valley of the Bronx, promised some 
 thing attractive in the way of landscape, and there 
 was a pull out of town in the soft air of the morning. 
 We were at the cars punctually at one, found a friend 
 inside, and a band of music a-top, and rolled away 
 from the City Hall with a double momentum steam 
 to draw the cars, and the gentlemen in the cars who 
 are drawn on for the steam ! We went on our musi 
 cal way through Centre street, embellishing it (by the 
 beauty attracted to the chamber-windows) as the moon 
 brightens the clouds in passing through, and with a 
 momentary chill from the deserted propriety of streets 
 up-tovvn, were soon in the fields fields by the way, 
 which are secured to Nature and shorn of their chief 
 value (nearness to town) by the railroad which makes 
 fields beyond quite as come-at-able. 
 
 We gave Harlem an outbreak of music in passing 
 through, stopped a moment at Williams bridge, where 
 the road has hitherto terminated, and then proceeded 
 upon the new track through the Bronx valley.* The 
 scenery for the next twelve miles was as primitive and 
 fresh as if a three-days journey lay between it and a 
 great city the most unconscious looking old water- 
 mills on the stream, the woods and hill-sides with a 
 look most innocent of snob and suburb, and a univer 
 sal gape of amazement on the faces of cottagers and 
 their cows. The seclusion and thorough country of 
 the whole twelve miles were enchanting, and we prom 
 ised ourselves a ramble to twenty successive nooks 
 that we saw (and twenty successive times of course 
 had occasion to remember that we had become a 
 utensil of daily use, labelled "never to be taken out 
 of the kitchen !" We are sorry to say the grass will 
 probably do pretty well without us, now, till we disturb 
 it to ask leave to pass under.) 
 
 The hill-sides suddenly fell back and we glided into 
 an open plain, where two or three hundred rustic- 
 looking people were assembled six or seven of them 
 
 * The road, from a few miles above the Harlem river, fol 
 lows the valley of the Bronx, a small stream, taking its rise 
 near Rye, and sometimes dignified by the name of a river. 
 We believe that it was contemplated by the British govern 
 ment, at one time, to form a court of inquiry, to try the 
 British admiral for not ascending the Bronx river with his 
 fleet, and destroying the army of General Washington, then 
 lying near White Plains. 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 155 
 
 busy on a knoll near by, ramming a welcome up a gun. 
 
 The report rang as the engine slopped, and White 
 
 Plains was cosmopolized ! Out jumped Wall street 
 and City Hall. An old negro and his very old wife 
 commenced furiously opening oysters at a bench near 
 bv. The cars stood in the middle of a corn-field. 
 The country people gathered around and looked hard 
 at the boots of the company. Two or three barrels 
 of crackers were rolled over the corn-hills to a new 
 stable building in the field. Everybody from the city 
 seemed exclusively occupied with smelling the plough 
 ed ground. Horses were tied to the fences all about. 
 The landscape (breasted with fine, fertile hills, and 
 having the White Plains for its lap), was slumbering 
 in a soft haze, with just sunshine enough to content 
 a man who would be contented without it, and al 
 together the scene was simple and fresh near by, and 
 the distance more picturesque than the name of 
 " White Plains" had suggested. 
 
 On the floor of the new barn, half boarded and 
 nearly shingled, were spread four long tables, laden 
 with a very profuse and substantial repast, and, in 
 fifteen minutes after arrival, the president was in his 
 place, and the stockholders and their guests seated 
 and " in a fair way" to be enthusiastic. After a round 
 or two of champagne, the president s health was drank 
 and his report called for but we will give the statistics 
 in another paragraph. 
 
 Pretty sure of hearing the report and reading the 
 speeches " in the way of business," we accepted the 
 invitation of Mr. Lyon, and drove to his beautiful 
 residence, near by a Gothic cottage of most absolute 
 taste, a sketch of which we had seen in the new edi 
 tion of " Downing s Rural Architecture." It is 
 enough to make one doubt all the ills of life to see 
 such a place to pass it in. The table-land of the 
 White Plains lies behind the house, and a valley 
 folded slope over slope, and sunk, knoll below knoll 
 drops away from the lawn in front, showing miles of 
 wild-wood and fertile fields, with a shady glen leading 
 away to the left the whole combination, for an inland 
 view, unsurpassed in variety and beauty. The cottage 
 is in the Tudor style, faultless within and without. 
 We wish we had time and space to say more of it and 
 its surroundings. We should add that Mr. Lyon has 
 been the zealous apostle of the road, and that a pro 
 cession was formed after the collation to make him a 
 complimentary visit. They went to his house, pre 
 ceded by the band, but were unfortunately missed by- 
 Mr. Lyon, who was conducting his friends back by a 
 shorter path across the fields. 
 
 The White Plains moon rose to see us off, and, as 
 we got under way with music and cheers, she added 
 another full face to the gazing rustics, and, when last , 
 seen, was apparently climbing~up on a barrel to look I 
 over the spectators shoulders. As she was in town 
 when we arrived at half past nine, and as there were [ 
 no ladies invited by the directors, she must have got 
 a ride somehow behind, and whatever the conductor 
 may say (for we know her well !) the paying her pas 
 sage was probably " all moonshine." 
 
 LABOR AND BRAINS. We hear much about " pro 
 tection for labor," and very little about protection for 
 Irains (except in the way of a hat). The working 
 men, those who use their hands skilfully and industri 
 ously, have many advocates of their claims. The 
 politicians and the law-makers and the newspaper 
 press, take up their cause loudly and sincerely, but 
 those who " can not dig," who are " ashamed to beg" 
 and have nothing but their brains their intellect, to 
 depend upon are whistled down the wind, "the prey 
 to fortune." 
 
 One class of these luckless personages, is that of 
 
 editors and assistant editors, and their remuneration is 
 not only inadequate, generally speaking, to their sup 
 port, but far below their real merit. What would the 
 newspaper press of this city be but for these men ? 
 Nothing ! They are the indirect means of giving a 
 livelihood to thousands, and are never thanked for it. 
 For example. We know of a newspaper in this city 
 which owes its success to a small corps of editors, 
 whose whole pay is about two thousand dollars per 
 annum. If they should withdraw their aid, the paper 
 icould stop beyond a question. 
 
 Let us see what their brains do for others. The 
 paper-makers receive from the establishment. 818,000 
 a year. The compositors receive about 10, 000 more 
 the reporters and clerks about 83,000 more. The 
 type-makers and ink-manufacturers about $2,000 more. 
 And this expenditure goes on from year to year. It 
 would be utterly impossible for this $32,000 to be re 
 ceived and expended in this way, but for the talent and 
 tact of two or three persons connected with the paper. 
 A large number of persons is actually supported by 
 their brains, and yet there is not one among the num 
 ber thus supported, who does not think his own person 
 al labor and toil, far more important and praiseworthy 
 than that of the men who actually furnish them with 
 employment! This is the justice of the world ! This 
 is the result of the ridiculous notions prevailing, that 
 the lifting of the sledge-hammer is more deserving of 
 reward than the skill which guides its blows. Me 
 chanical labor of all kinds is better paid than literary 
 labor, and it is time that just impressions prevailed on 
 this subject. Let us honor the working men, but 
 when they are aided by talent and literary industry, 
 they should honor them in return. 
 
 The editorial corps are making the fortunesof many 
 newspaperand magazine establishments in this country, 
 and yet many men of talent are starving under the 
 effort. 
 
 PORTRAIT OF WORDSWORTH Bt HENRY LNMAN 
 Without wishing to compare our great painter to a 
 worm except as having used up one system (of artis 
 tic ideas) and being fairly on wing in a new one we 
 think the worm in chrysalis and its emergent new 
 creature very fair types of the Inman that was, in 
 America, and the Inman that is, in England. Before 
 this time we think he would have gone abroad prema 
 turely. Genius requires to complete its first identity 
 to ripen fully to acquire the perfection of com 
 mand over, and familiarity with, its in-born peculiari 
 tiesbefore trusting itself in a sphere which is both 
 removed from habit and aids to concentration, and 
 bewildering with the glitter and supremacy of other 
 models. No matter what the pursuit, there is a 
 natural mental chrysalis a time after completed man 
 hood, when a change of scene, change of habits, 
 change of influences, external and internal, renew the 
 life of both mind and body, open chambers in the soul 
 hitherto unseen, and incredibly beautify and enrich 
 the whole existence. How many painters have we 
 seen confirmed into tame copyists crushed by the 
 weight of the masters above them by going abroad 
 ha new-born style just struggling into shape and 
 seeming of its own! In a minor way, how many 
 characters are smothered by being forced into a too 
 trying element of society before completing their 
 natural idiosyncrasy! 
 
 Power went abroad at the right stage of his exis 
 tence as a sculptor Grenough, perhaps, too early. 
 Inman might, possibly, have gone earlier, with equal 
 advantage. He has been, for some time, gaining little 
 in his art. The easily-given and ill-weighed praise 
 of our country had long ago satiated him. He had 
 little stimulus beyond the profit of his pencil. But 
 the mind that lies fallow under such torpor, ripens and 
 
156 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 collects richness under the surface, and ploughed 
 again, before it is mastered by weeds and tangle, it 
 shows wondrous fertility and vigor. 
 
 We have put down, now, what passed through our 
 mind while looking yesterday at a head of Words 
 worth, which is just received from Inman. It is a 
 masterly piece of work, though but a sketch. The 
 truth to nature convinces you that it is an infallible 
 portrait, without your ever having seen the original. 
 It is Wordsworth. It is the shell of the meat in his 
 books. His feeblenesses and his philosophic sim 
 plicities are there. You see how he came to write 
 what we have read. He has done his own portrait 
 a faithful copy, in poetry, of the same as this on can- 
 ass. Majestic and weak, wise and silly, far-sighted 
 and credulous old man ! He looks like his poetry, 
 and to a man who could read characters as some do, 
 there would be nothing new in his books after seeing 
 Inman s picture, nor any surprise in Inman s picture, 
 after seeing his books. 
 
 What will Broadway be like, with omnibuses exclu 
 ded, and two lines of railcars plying its entire length ? 
 Where will the tracks be? both in the middle, 
 or one on each side? If the latter, how will car 
 riages stand by the sidewalk with safety? If the 
 former, will there be room left for two carriages to 
 pass each other on either side? Will not the fre 
 quent taking-up and setting-down of passengers, and 
 the consequent hinderance of cars behind, make the 
 passage up and down tediously slow? These are 
 questions that, with sundry others on the same sub 
 ject, will furnish table-talk to the city for the ensuing 
 week the announcement of the corporation s inten 
 tion to have a railroad there being yesterday made 
 public. Let us mumble about it a little. The slow 
 ness of the motion would justify a very narrow track. 
 By placing the seats lengthwise, and back to back, 
 the cars themselves might be made very narrow, and 
 with a roof overhead, and no sides (or sides remova 
 ble in fair weather), passengers might easily jump on 
 and off, and be sufficiently protected. They will 
 probably stop for passengers at the crossings only. 
 The fare will be taken by a boy inside, as soon as the 
 passenger is seated, to prevent delay. We shall have 
 the comfort (sitting back to back) of not becoming so 
 compulsively acquainted with anybody s face, breath, 
 knees, and umbrella. Our chances of being the sub 
 ject of a coroner s inquest will be diminished 100 per 
 cent. the present rate and manner of omnibus-driving 
 having (we presume) nearly doubled the cost of life-in : 
 surance to those who live in the upper part of the city. 
 There will probably be fast lines established in the 
 streets nearly parallel to Broadway, and the great tide 
 of human life, now concentrated in one thoroughfare, 
 will be divided into three. McNair & Scarpa, and 
 other sellers of " acoustic oil," will languish under 
 the suspended deafening of Broadway, and that charm 
 ing lounge will be once more susceptible of enjoy 
 ment by walk and talk. The danger of prying off a 
 wheel upon the railtrack, or coming in contact with 
 the cars, will deter the timid from taking their car 
 riages into Broadway, and we shall meet all the pretty 
 shopperesses on foot (the greatest Amelia-ration)! 
 The "Kipp& Brown" buses will be obliged to come 
 down Church street, and have their terminus at the 
 corner of Fulton street and Broadway or (query?) 
 will the lower part of Broadway, between the Park 
 and Bowling-green, be necessarily left open to the 
 converging lines from east and west? 
 
 "Taglioni is coming to this country." So say the 
 papers ; and if it prove true, we shall see the differ- 
 
 ence between the apparent efforts of a football and a 
 balloon between common and rarefied air (in manner 
 as well as in motion) between a smile which, beauti 
 fully dissected from the muscles that might else move 
 it, is left stereotyped upon the face, and a smile timid, 
 natural, and impulsive in short, the difference be 
 tween the "divine Fanny" and the womanly Taglioni. 
 (We prefer a woman to " a divinity" any day !) Like 
 all women permitted to be desirably famous, Taglioni 
 paid the inexorable penalty of being undesirably 
 mated. She has amassed a fortune or two from the 
 "gold dust" at the toe of her white slipper dissipa 
 ted, they say, without pity, by her husband, and she 
 has at last cut him (in toto), and goes entirely upon 
 her own legs. We hope they and the Cunard pad 
 dles will, indeed, bring her to this country. In see 
 ing any other stage-exhibition, one is conscious of 
 the seat he sits on and the trouble of holding his hat. 
 To see Taglioni is to be in a trance, during which 
 one might almost be content with the seat of St. 
 Lawrence on a gridiron. We shall remember (talk 
 ing of seats), "while memory holds her seat" (and 
 has any pleasure in sitting on it), the first performance 
 of La Sylphide at Paris by far the most entrancing 
 I and intoxicating spectacle we ever witnessed. We 
 venture to refer the reader to our description of it in 
 " Pencillings." We wonder whether Taglioni will 
 come ! Echo " come !" 
 
 MAJOR NOAH AND HIS APOLOGY FOR THE Cuuci- 
 FIXION. Our friend, the lecturer on the Restoration, 
 has written us a letter, phrased with great forbearance 
 and kindness, but finding grievous fault with our yes 
 terday s notice of his discourse at the Tabernacle. 
 His letter is too long to publish, as he requests, but 
 we will give its substance, and leave out only his ex 
 pressions of good will. He says he "understood 
 from a friend that we were fast asleep before the lec 
 ture commenced, and slept throughout the whole of 
 it." With his letter, the major sent us a copy of 
 the Mirror with the objectionable passages of our re 
 port underlined. Here they are: 
 
 " Major Noah arose and commenced with an apolo 
 gy for the Jews as to the crucifixion of our Savior." 
 
 "With the exception of his very adroit disparage 
 ment of the Savior," &c., &c. 
 
 Some extracts from the lecture, copied from his 
 MS. into the Express, were also sent us by the ma 
 jor, and we extract the page which, in the deliveiy, 
 impressed us as represented in our objectionable sen 
 tences. 
 
 "The Jews were amazed, perplexed, and bewil 
 dered at all they saw and heard. They knew Jesus 
 from his birth: he was their neighbor; they knew his 
 father Joseph, and Mary his mother, his brothers, 
 James and Judas; he was in constant intercourse 
 with his brethren in their domestic relations, and sur 
 rounded by their household gods; they remembered 
 him a boy, disputing, as was the custom, most learn 
 edly with the doctors in the temple ; as a man pursu 
 ing to the age of thirty, the modest and laborious 
 calling of his profession; and yet he proclaimed him 
 self the Son of God, and performed most wonderful 
 miracles, was surrounded by a number of disciples, 
 poor, but extraordinary gifted men, who sustained his 
 doctrines, and had an abiding faith in his mission ; 
 he gathered strength and followers as he pro 
 gressed ; he denounced the whole nation, and proph- 
 ecied its destruction, with their altars and temples; 
 he preached against whole cities, and proscribed 
 their leaders with a force which, even at this day, 
 would shake our social systems. The Jews became 
 alarmed at his increasing power and influence, and 
 the Sanhedrim resolved to become his accuser, and 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 157 
 
 bring him to trial under the law as laid down in the 
 13th of Deuteronomy. 
 
 " In reflecting deeply on all the circumstances of 
 this, the most remarkable trial and judgment in his 
 tory, I am convinced, from the whole tenor of the 
 proceedings, that the arrest, trial, and condemnation 
 of Jesus of Nazareth, was conceived and executed un- 
 ler a decided panic" 
 
 Now it seemed to us, and it seems to us (for we^are 
 wide awake now), that to represent the Son of God, 
 while on a mission from Jehovah for the salvation of 
 a world, made the victim of a " decided panic" the 
 "earth quaking, the rocks rent, the sun darkened, the 
 graves opened, and the veil of the temple rent in 
 twain," as the consequence of a "decided panic," un 
 der the influence of which the Jews had crucified one 
 whom they "knew as a boy," and as an industrious 
 laborer this does seem to us a "disparagement of the 
 Savior," and of the dignity of his mission, and it 
 docs seem to us as intended to "apologise for the 
 Jews." What other aim or relevancy has this very 
 new and original reason for the crucifixion, but to 
 apologise for the act? 
 
 As this is the "first time for centuries" that the 
 Jews have had n apologist, our readers will be inter 
 ested to know more particularly how the crucifixion 
 is defended. We therefore yield to our own wish, 
 and give the following more extended extract from 
 Major Noah s lecture, underlining those passages 
 which we oflendingly described as "adroit disparage 
 ment," and " apology for the Jews:" 
 
 The title of God was a title of power and domin 
 ion, and frequently was conferred by the Almighty 
 himself on earthly rulers. See, I have made thee a 
 God to Pharaoh, as God supreme said to Moses. 
 Son of God ivas a title frequently conferred on those of 
 distinguished piety and learning, and on those posses 
 sing the emanations of the divinity, and this title the 
 apostles themselves carry out in their writings. 
 
 " The Son, My Son, not the Father; the hu 
 manity, not the divinity, the image of the invisible 
 God, not ihe invisible God himself; and as Paul said, 
 there is one God and one mediator between God and 
 man. Could the Almighty delegate a mediatorial 
 character to any one on earth? Who can doubt it ? 
 God said to Moses, Behold, 1 send an angel before 
 thee to keep thee in the way ; provoke him not, for he 
 will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is 
 in him; my spirit is in him. It was not therefore al 
 together on the charge of Jesus having catted himself 
 Son of God, that the Sanhedrim accused and con 
 demned him ; political considerations mingled them 
 selves, and in a measure controlled the decision of the 
 council, and this is demonstrable from the declaration 
 of Caiaphas himself, as stated in the Gospel: Better 
 that one man should die than that the nation should 
 be destroyed. 
 
 " It was the sedition, and not altogether the blasphe 
 my, the terror and apprehension of political overthrow, 
 which led to conviction, and this political and national 
 characteristic ivas maintained throughout ; it was that 
 consideration which induced the Jews to urge upon Pi 
 late a confirmation of the sentence. It was the charge 
 of assuming the prerogatives of Cesar, not the name 
 of the Divinity, which overcame the well-founded ob 
 jections of the Roman governor, and crucifixion itself 
 was a Roman and not a Jewish punishment. The 
 opprobrious insults heaped upon the master came 
 from the Roman soldiers, and that mixed rabble, 
 which, even in our day, desecrate all that is held sa 
 cred. 
 
 " I place these most absorbing events before you 
 my countrymen, not to contrast things sacred wit! 
 
 timidity, their hesitation, without even a ray of hope; 
 a people so venerable for their antiquity, so beloved 
 and protected for their fidelity, on the very threshold 
 of political destruction. 
 
 " It. is not my duly to condemn the course of our an 
 cestors, nor yet to justify the measures they adopted 
 ity ; but if 
 
 in that dire extremity 
 
 if there are mitigating cir- 
 
 umstanccs, I am bound by the highest considerations 
 which a love of truth and justice dictates, to spread 
 them before you, at the same time to protest against 
 any entailing upon us, the responsibility of acts com 
 mitted eighteen hundred years ago by our fathers, and 
 thus transmit to untold generations the anger and ha 
 tred of a faith, erroneously taught to believe us the 
 aggressors. 
 
 " The Jews, my friends, were but the instruments 
 of a higher power, arid in rejecting Jesus of Nazareth, we 
 have a great and overwhelming evidence of the infinite 
 ivisdom of (he Almighty. Had they acknowledged him 
 as their Messiah at that fearful crisis, the whole na 
 tion would have gradually sunk under the Roman 
 yoke, and we should have had at this day paganism 
 and idolatry, with all their train of terrible evils, and 
 darkness and desolation would have spread over the 
 earth. But the death of Jesus was the birth of 
 Christianity ; the Gentile church sprang from the ru 
 ins which surrounded its primitive existence; its 
 march was onward, beset with darkness and difficul 
 ties, with oppression and persecution, until the Sun 
 of Reformation rose upon it, dissipating the clouds 
 of darkness which had obscured its beauties, and it 
 shone forth with a liberal and tolerant brightness, 
 such as the Great Master had originally designed it. 
 Had not that event occurred, how would you have been 
 saved from your sins? The Jews in this did nothing 
 but what God himself ordained, for you will find it 
 written in the Acts of the Apostles, And now, breth 
 ren, I know that through ignorance ye did it, as did 
 also your rulers ! " 
 
 We leave it to any Gentile (saved by the "decided 
 political panic" of the Jews under Caiaphas), whether 
 it was not reasonable enough at least for a man 
 i fast asleep" to fancy he could detect in the above 
 argument, an "apology for the Jews," and a "dispar 
 agement of the Savior." We were quite too fast 
 asleep to detect anything else! 
 
 No, dear major, we were not " asleep" when this 
 was delivered! Our head was down for you had 
 1 two unshaded lamps, looking like blazing earrings, on 
 either side of your benevolent head, and our eyes 
 as weak as 
 
 your heartstrings but we went to the 
 Tabernacle, not only with the interest of friendship 
 for yourself, but with high excitement in the unpar 
 alleled background of your theme ! We could not tell 
 you, without a seem ing rhapsody we could not trust 
 ourself to record, out of blank verse the scope your 
 subject seemed to possess, the tragic sublimity of 
 your position, the climax of events you wished to be 
 instrumental in bringing to a close, and the interest 
 that might be awakened in the Christian world by an 
 eloquent, life-devoted, fervent apostle of the restora 
 tion ! There is no theme for eloquence with a thou 
 sandth part of the pathos, depth, splendor, -and pres 
 ent convergent/ of this ! Heavens ! what a theme ! 
 The key of tlie whole Christian era ! The winding 
 up of a cycle of two thousand years numbered from 
 the crucifixion! The close of the one expiation 
 which is the theme of scripture-prophecy, and with 
 the closing of which comes in the millenial glory, 
 and the renewal of Paradise on earth! This theme, 
 on the lips of genius, one would think genius ac 
 cursed eighteen hundred years ago, and to be one of 
 the forgiven at the second coming of the Messiah 
 
 those~whYch are profane, but that you should under- might burn like the fire upon the lips of Paul, and 
 tand The exact position of the Jews at that time; || turn all eyes toward waiting Jerusalem. This was 
 
 their painful situation, their prostrate condition, their ll the view of the subject with which we went to the 
 
158 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 Tabernacle, dear major! almost envying you your 
 qualification by birth for the using of it. We mean 
 no disrespect in our notice. W^e were only a little 
 disappointed and annoyed that you did not kindle into 
 a crusader, or try on Peter the Hermit, till we gazec 
 at you, spite of your earrings ! 
 
 And now (" to step out of the carriage and see 
 ourselves go by") you are wrong if you are right 
 major, and right if you are wrong ! If your Jewisl 
 creed be right, you are wrong to deny its manifest de 
 duction. If your Jewish creed be wrong, you are 
 right in wishing to explain it away. But you can 
 not have your cake and eat it, too. You can not rec 
 oncile the church with the synagogue, nor can you 
 lecture palatably and frankly from the synagogue to 
 Christians. The time, at least, is not come. " At 
 the end of the world" (says a commentator on the Bi 
 ble), " Christ will unite the church with the syna 
 gogue, the Jew with the Christian, the Christian with 
 the Gentile ; then all things will be restored to a per 
 fect union, and there will be but one shepherd and 
 one flock." 
 
 PRICES OF WOMEN COLD AND WARM. A lovely 
 female slave, warm from the mountains of Circas; 
 and warranted not to be second-hand, may be bought 
 at Constantinople for three hundred dollars. A lovely 
 female statue, cold from the marble mountains of Car 
 rara (and spotless as the snow, without a doubt), was 
 lately sold by Mr. Power to the Hon. William Pres 
 ton, for three thousand dollars. Something would 
 seem to be wrong here the " clay-tariff " or the Ot 
 toman " protection" or something ! Various ques 
 tions arise. Is an original woman a favorite article ? 
 Is the imitation by Power of the fabrics of Nature & Co. 
 an improvement upon the model ? Is the presence of 
 the faculty of speech in the cheaper article any special 
 indication of a preference that can be relied upon in 
 the buyer ? Perhaps some extensive dealer in both 
 articles will oblige us with a solution of this mercan 
 tile problem. 
 
 We had a bonne louche of opera last night atNiblo s 
 which made us long for the whole feast a hint of a 
 ballet which provoked great desire for more and just 
 such a sprinkling of judicious white gloves as satisfied 
 the cognoscents that there was something in the bill 
 that had a pull upon the town s fashion. Then, as 
 if it were to be nothing but an appetizer, Madame 
 Pico appeared in a private box, and the audience saw, 
 that, whatever the warble might be, the throat it would 
 come from was of the most capable fulness of beauty. 
 We have had our suspicions, from the quietness with 
 which she "bides her time," that Madame Pico is a 
 star conscious of the swing for a large orbit, and very 
 sure of "putting a circle round the" town, whenever 
 she rises. It is a considerable spoke in the wheel of 
 this same orbit that she is a very superb woman. She 
 has the adorable low Greek forehead, like Mrs. Nor 
 ton s (the poetess), and a certain maintien of bust and 
 neck which shows the kind of passionate uppishness 
 the old gods used to be fond of. ( Vide the gods 
 old pictures.) We were not surprised last night to 
 overhear a foreigner telling one of his countrymen 
 that Madame Pico would make more impression in 
 New York than any prima donna since Malibran. 
 What say, Corbyni ! Light up your dress-circle with 
 a little more gas, and give us b allet and opera with 
 Borghese and Pico on alternate nights ! 
 
 In every civilized country but this, the government 
 backs up the opera, as an important public refinement. 
 The royal treasurer is always half a stage manager. 
 With us, the people are the sovereign, but Chancellor 
 Bibb, not having, as far as we know, offered terms to 
 
 | Madame Pico, we, as one of the royal pores, do our 
 part of the insensible perspiration, and express the 
 warm desire of the public, that Madame Pico should 
 appear. It is manifest dulness of enterprise, to have 
 no opera now. There are no parties, the autumn 
 weather is moderate, the strangers hang about town, 
 till after the Indian summer, and there is no room for 
 doubt that the thing would be supported. 
 
 There was a demonstration of enthusiasm, last night, 
 which appeared to be quite a I improvista, at the per 
 formance of the Polka, by " Master WOOD and la 
 Petite CARLINE." These two little miniatures of 
 j the size of children six years old danced, to our 
 thinking, quite wonderfully. We are likely to have 
 j no grown-up dancers, this year at least, who, reduced 
 t to the same size by an inverted opera-glass, would do 
 I the Polka any better. The necessary air of galliar- 
 \ disc, the precision, combined with abandon, the look 
 and gesture, were all capitally well done. They are 
 I charming little people, and a good deal of a " good 
 I card" for any theatre. Query, for Corbyn Would 
 not a ballet, by these Lilliputians, got up for children, 
 to commence at four o clock in the afternoon, and last 
 I about one hour, be a paying enterprise? 
 
 One hint more : Is there not the making of a fine 
 actress and singer in Miss Rosina Shaw ? She has 
 beauty, remarkable voice, grace and confidence four 
 " pretty wells." Keep an eye on her, Mr. Manager! 
 
 THE DAT AFTER THE BALLOT. The contention 
 for the favors of Mrs. Vox Populi is over. The diffi 
 cult darne has made her election. The future presi 
 dent is in the ballot-box, and that womb of authority 
 is now silently waited upon by the paternal majority. 
 God bless whatever is to be brought forth ! 
 
 Thank Heaven the town is stiller ! There is more 
 noise upon the blacksmith s anvil and the shoemaker s 
 lap-stone more clatter upon the tinman s vice and 
 the coppersmith s rivet but the town s heart beats 
 less audibly, to-day, and the town s pulse less feverish 
 ly and wildly. The political bully is looking around 
 unwillingly but peacefully for work. The club 
 wrangler s vocation is gone. The working-man will 
 give less of his evening to the bar-room and caucus. 
 Wives rejoice. Children are glad. 
 
 Considering only individuals, the immediate tumult 
 and recoil of politics seem only evil and violence. 
 The pore and the pediculus will complain of blood 
 letting and blister. We believe the country at large 
 is benefited by the bringing of these bad humors to 
 the surface, however. We are sure at least that we 
 see all there is, in our body popular, that is dangerous. 
 There is evil disposition, antagonism, discontent, cra 
 ving for excitement, love of combination, dormant 
 energy, and ambition qualities everywhere distribu 
 ted, and hungering, every one, for a field of action. 
 Where better would they break out, than in politics ? 
 How, easier, should we know our neighbor s length 
 of conscience-string and proneness to trick and unfair 
 ness, than by watching him when his passions are 
 roused and his cautiousness forgotten ? What man 
 in a political committee knows too little of his fellows 
 for future living with them ? 
 
 But, thank God, the tumult once over, the city re 
 turns to peace, industry, and prosperity. Injury and 
 calumny stand no more behind the editor s chair 
 literature and commerce, instead, look promptingly 
 over his shoulder. The merchant is relieved from 
 anxiety, and knows how to shape his venture. The 
 mechanic "hangs" politics for a plague and a bother. 
 The republic has set up its master, and is content to 
 be governed while it toils and prospers. 
 
 There is one feature of the late contest, however, 
 for which we can find no philosophical offset. We 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 159 
 
 refer to the unparallelled and insane extent to which 
 betting has been carried. Of any good this practice 
 does we do not see even a shadowing. Of its intoler 
 able evils we hear mournful accounts at every turn. 
 It seems to have infected, with a gambling mania, 
 those who never before hazarded money on a question 
 of chance or uncertainty. We have heard several 
 really most lamentable instances of fatuity and disaster 
 in this new demon-shape of party-spirit. Families 
 are ruined, creditors robbed, children deprived of edu 
 cation and bread by men who would as soon cut off 
 their hands as throw a stake at a gaming-table ! Is 
 there no power in the law to put a stop to this new 
 evil of politics ? We ask this question to provoke, if 
 possible, an answer. 
 
 And now as politics walkout from the public mind, 
 and there is room for something else to walk in let 
 us mention a great evil in this country of ours, and 
 tell some news that has an example by which to 
 mend it. 
 
 WE TOIL TOO MUCH! 
 
 LADIES DICTIONARY the word Alpaca. The Al 
 paca is a South American animal, much used as a 
 beast of burden by the Indians, with long hair, princi 
 pally black, but slightly grizzled. It is an excessive- 
 ly irritable animal, and indomitable till soothed. The 
 importance of this animal has already been considered 
 by the English, in their hat, woollen, and stuff trade, 
 and an essay on the subject has been published by 
 Dr. Hamilton of London. The wool is so remarkable, 
 being a jet black, glossy, silk-like hair, that it is fitted 
 for the production of texile fabrics differing from all 
 others, occupying a medium position between the 
 wool and the silk. It is now mingled with other ma 
 terials in such a singular manner, that while a par 
 ticular dye will affect those, it will leave the Alpaca 
 wool with its original black color, thus giving rise to 
 great diversity. 
 
 WHO WANTS A DRESS-OPERA ? There is a large 
 class in every metropolis who are fond of gayely, 
 dress, and " a place to go to," but who do not like 
 private parties for three or more reasons: 1st, the 
 lateness of the hours; 2d, the trouble of making the 
 agreeable ; 3d, the card-and-visit nuisance, the man 
 agement and ceremony, necessary to keep up fashion 
 able vogue. The part of the evening between eight 
 and eleven is, to this class, the time of the twenty-four 
 hours in which they wish to be abroad, to be admired, 
 to be amused. The less trouble with it the better; 
 and they would rather give a dollar and think no more 
 about it, than leave a card at an expense of memory, 
 time, equipage, and politic calculation. They want a 
 place where everybody dresses ; where it il light ; 
 where they will see beauty, and be seen themselves 
 by appreciative eyes ; where there is music to hear 
 and a show to look at if they like to be silent, or 
 friends in a box near by if they wish to converse a 
 place where they can hear the gossip, have singers 
 to criticise, and "see the world" in short, AN OPERA. 
 To the great majority of ball-goers particularly to 
 the men the time from eight to eleven hangs heavily. 
 They would gladly dress early and go first to the 
 opera, if it were habitually a dress-resort. 
 
 There are many well-off people to whom a dress- 
 opera is the only tolerable amusement lame people ; 
 ladies who only look well sitting, or look best in shawls 
 and opera-dress ; foreigners who do not speak the 
 language ; timid persons, who wish to see the gay 
 world without encountering it ; and the many fami 
 lies who have a competency to live and can afford 
 amusement, but want a handle to the door of society. 
 The first object of strangers in town (of whom there 
 
 are always several thousands), is to go where they can 
 see the well-dressed and fashionable people. Most 
 strangers, in a large city, would rather see the exclu- 
 sives in an opera-box, than the Croton reservoirs, or 
 the monsters in a menagerie. 
 
 People in ceremonious mourning find a great relief 
 in seeing the gay world from an opera-box. 
 
 Last (not least, unless you please!) some people 
 would frequent the opera, the season through, for the 
 music. It "soothes" our "savage breast" for one, 
 and we think the " hang" of opera-music in the town 
 hum and whistle is a desirable and refining variety. 
 
 Now, with all this desirableness and frequentability, 
 is it not wonderful that no larger capitalist than Signor 
 Palmo (pocket edition), should have ventured to em 
 bark in a scheme for an opera-house ! It is not a 
 schemeto prosper donely halves. Itmust be a splen 
 did affair, or a failure. There must be comfort in the 
 seats, breadth in the alleys, boundless prodigality in 
 the lights, luxury in the saloons and entrances, and 
 Alhambrian excellence in the refreshments. The 
 manager should be a mixture of Crcsar, Talleyrand, 
 and Bluebeard awful, politic, punctual in pay. and 
 relentless to the caprices of pri madonnas. Two slash 
 ing critics should be employed to annihilate each other 
 daily, in opposing preferences for the performers. 
 The exaction of full dress for all comers should be 
 rigidly enforced. The names of the belles at every 
 last night s opera should be disembowelled and para 
 graphed every morning. Prestige, celebrity, show, 
 humbug, and ceremony, should be added to the most 
 indefatigable real merit in the management, and then 
 the shareholders would make money. 
 
 Then, too, we should have a DRESS-RESORT what 
 no theatre now is or ever has been in New York, but 
 hat, of all refinements and resources, is the most 
 delightful and indispensable. We could write, a 
 column about the blessing of beauty seen in public, 
 the chastening and refining influences of music, the 
 restraining proprieties of dress and observance, etc., 
 etc., etc. but we confine ourself to tangibilities. One 
 more fact the existence of such an opera-house, so 
 conducted, would link New York in the operatic chain 
 of star-travel; and Grisi, Lablache, and the rest, would 
 as certainly come here from London and Paris, as go 
 to Vienna and St. Petersburg!!, Berlin and Naples. 
 Our readers in Wall street will please consider this 
 as a " money article: 
 
 PROMISCUOUS REPLIES TO LETTERS. 
 
 DEAR JACK: Since my compulsory budding, flower 
 ing, and bearing fruit, have been accelerated to one 
 season per diem, to feed a daily paper, you will easily 
 understand that I found it necessary at first to work 
 all my sap into something useful omitting as it were, 
 the gum deposite of superfluous correspondence. J 
 accordingly left you off. Your last letter was slipped 
 into the no- more-bother hole, without the usual en 
 dorsement of " answered," and I considered you like 
 ;i 
 
 trinket laid aside before a race-not to encumber 
 
 e. I miss the writing of trumpery, however. 1 miss 
 
 the sweeping out of the corners of my mind-full of 
 
 things fit only for the dust-pan, but still very possibly 
 
 hiding a silver-spoon. 
 
 Do you want any more explanation of why you get 
 etter from me for one cent, printed, instead ^of a 
 
 written one at eighteen and three quarters ? It is 
 wonderful how much cheaper printing is than writing ! 
 I left off my envy of your country life as usual with 
 my summer "trowsers, not caring to see the death of 
 anything even the resigned summer. As soon as I 
 have occasion to button my coat to keep out the air, 
 I am content with that part of the earth s breast that 
 is paved over. The town is honored now by the pres- 
 
160 
 
 EPHEMERA 
 
 ence of those who could go away if they wished, and, 
 as, human-like, the town values those who can do 
 without it, "New York is gay." Shopping is this 
 month s pastime, however. The ladies have no need 
 of parties while they can yield reluctant dollars to in 
 sidious temptation. It was in competition with the 
 " fall goods" that the opera failed a month ago open 
 ed on the supposition that people had nothing to amuse 
 them! A manager, and not know the sex ! Kech! 
 Pal mo ! 
 
 The town is to be illuminated on Monday next by 
 the apparition of a new base and a brace of prima- 
 donnas. Madame Pico has been biding her time like 
 game in the larder, and the town is quite ready to 
 sweeten her with the current condiment and devour 
 her. She is a beautiful woman, and though 1 never 
 could get my sentiment over the foot-lights, I love to 
 see the town fascinated. Pray Heaven she sings well 
 after all the heralding I have done for her ! If that 
 well-chiselled throat should have an awkward corner 
 in it, we should have to restore to Borghese her divi 
 ded throne and go back to our worship of her toilet 
 and other utmost-possibles, with an indifferent grace. 
 Happy queen of Sheba, who ordained that no woman 
 should reign after her ! 
 
 Well, sir, what do you want to know ? There are 
 few things above ground that I do not hear of, some 
 hundreds of newspapers doing their best to make news 
 and send it to me to cook to your liking ! He who 
 subscribes to the Mirror appoints me his fashioner of 
 things palatable to know, and though, like other cooks, 
 I pass under my nose a vast deal I should not choose 
 for my own relishing, I do my best to give it with due 
 spice and proportion. Indeed, what with serving so 
 many people with so many different kinds of knowl 
 edge, I feel like the omnificent man called for in Ben 
 Jonson s " Staple of news :" 
 
 " Where is my fashioner, my feather-man, 
 My linener, perfumer, barber, all !" 
 
 When Saturday comes round with the life, business, 
 fun, and literature of the whole week in one a mir- 
 ror d E Pluribus Unum it seems wonderful to me 
 how so much, and of such endless variety, could have 
 been gathered into one week s history ! That weekly 
 Mirror is worth binding and keeping, if it were only 
 as a choice record of the events of the buyer s times 
 set down, point by point, with the life he lived 
 amidst their occurrings. There is nothing good, 
 brilliant, or important, that is not recorded in it, and, 
 if a man wants to forget as he goes along, that pack- 
 horse will take the load off his memory, and for three 
 dollars a year bring it safe after him ! 
 
 And now, dear Jack, assuring you that this letter 
 is wholly confidential, and that you are not at liberty 
 to give it away as an autograph, I record myself, 
 
 As usual, Yours, . 
 
 To JOHN ESQ., 
 
 (a friend in the country). 
 
 ETIQUETTE OF WEDDING-CARDS. 
 
 MESSRS. EDITORS: My friend John Smith is to be 
 married to Lucy Jones. She issues a card of invita 
 tion like this : 
 
 No. 59 
 
 AT HOME, 
 
 -street, Tuesday Evening, 
 November 14th. 
 
 JOHW SMITH, 
 JLucy JONES. 
 
 Now he intends to use this for inviting to the cere 
 mony ; but I tell him it is wrong, and can only be used 
 
 to invite to the party after the ceremony. He con 
 tends that this is the usual form so the engraver 
 tells him, etc. 
 
 Please give us the law in these matters (we can ap 
 peal to. no higher authority in matters of etiquette 
 and fashion) ; let us have the two customary forms, 
 for wedding and party, for the enlightenment of in 
 experienced candidates who wish to follow the fash 
 ions, and much oblige, CUSTOM. 
 
 P. S. We wait for your infallible decision. 
 
 Wednesday morning. 
 
 DEAR CUSTOM : Your friend is wrong, from the 
 egg to the apple. Miss Lucy Jones has a mother, or 
 father, guardian, or friend, at whose house she is to be 
 married. The invitation should come from the per 
 son under whose protection she is given away (sent, 
 if you please, to Mr. Smitl^s friends, with Mr. Smith s 
 card, but understood by Miss Lucy Jones s friends, 
 without card or explanation). It is tampering with 
 serious things, very dangerously, to circulate the three 
 words, "AND MRS. JOHN SMITH," one minute before 
 the putting on of the irrevocable ring. The law 
 which permits ladies (though not gentlemen) to 
 change their minds up to the last minute before wed- 
 lock, exacts also that the privileged angels should not 
 be coerced by the fear of seeing the escaped name 
 afterward on a wedding card ! Besides, such a card, 
 so issued, would be received from Mrs. Smith before 
 there was any such person. 
 
 The first proper use of the wedded name is to send 
 it with parcels of wedding-cake, the morning after the 
 ceremony, to friends and persons desired as visiting 
 acquaintances. This is considered an excusable ad 
 vance on the part of persons entering newly upon life, 
 and the promptness uith which a return-card is left 
 upon the bride is an indication of the degree of pleas 
 ure with which the proposition of acquaintance is re 
 ceived. Another advantage of cake and card : the 
 etiquette of (exacting that a new nail should be thus 
 driven in all acquaintances that are to be kept up) en 
 ables bride and bridegroom to drop, without offence, 
 such acquaintances of each as are respectively unde 
 sirable persons inseparable from the set in which the 
 lady has lived, who are not agreeable to the bride 
 groom, and bachelor acquaintances of the bridegroom, 
 who may be thought too free for the fireside. Wed 
 ded life is thus begun with a "culled posy of friend 
 ship," the door of society open before, and mischief- 
 makers shut out behind. 
 
 Our compliments to Miss Jones, and we remain, 
 Very truly 
 
 Open to card and cake, 
 
 MIRROR TRIPLET. 
 
 UNMARRIED PEOPLE four times as liaUe to insani/i/ 
 as MARRIED PEOPLE. The " Concord Freeman," in 
 a statistical article made up from hospital reports, 
 shows, that if a man is, perhaps, oftener out of jwcket 
 when married, he is not so often out of his head. The 
 editor says : Few people are aware how much more 
 insanity prevails among bachelors and unmarried la 
 dies than among the married of both sexes. We 
 learn from the examination of very many reports, that 
 of every five of all lunatics sent to American hospitals, 
 three are unmarried, and only two are married, and 
 that almost all of them are over twenty-one years old. 
 On the other hand, it is pretty certain that in all the 
 community over twenty-one years of age, there are 
 more than three times as many in as out of wedlock. 
 If this be the case, then the unmarried are more than 
 four times as liable to become insane as married 
 people. 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 161 
 
 The Herald seems to think we have bought the 
 " Republic." We are sorry that a republic is a mar 
 ketable commodity, but at any rate we have bought 
 nothing of that name or description. Our ambition, 
 somehow, does not seem to stumble upon things re 
 publican. In this world we desire a farm, on which 
 we can be " monarch of all we survey," and in the 
 next, we pray for a citizenship in the kingdom of 
 heaven. 
 
 " Up-TowN" AND " DOWN-TOWN." We see that 
 these names of the different halves of the city are be 
 coming the common language of advertisements, etc. 
 A person advertises in one of the papers a " Down 
 town singing school," and another a "Down-town 
 dancing academy." We think our friend Billings 
 would better stick to " Up-town Hold" as the better 
 designation of the new brick khan. 
 
 THE NEW SEQUEL TO THEATRICAL INTELLIGENCE. 
 Since the bishops and deacons have taken to in 
 dicting each other for fallings-away of which the pub 
 lic like to read the Scan. Mag., we observe that the 
 particular column of newspapers which is devoted to 
 spicy news, theatricals, police incidents, etc., has 
 silently become the locality for brief paragraphs an 
 nouncing where distinguished preachers are to hold 
 
 : be seen there, in cab or mounted ; the women of " po 
 sition" must refresh there the memories of forgetful 
 i tributaries; the new candidate for fashion must there 
 display that taste in " belongings" which can only be 
 I guessed at in a ball-room; there are seen all whose 
 | means make them eligible to expensive circles of so- 
 I ciety, and who (by something that will and does tell, 
 in the equipage, or the mode of dressing for, and ap 
 pearing in, it) there make claim to fitness for, at least, 
 a ceremonious conversance with the haute voice. 
 
 Of course, there is a postern of society in all cities, 
 
 through which are admitted certain classes, who keep 
 
 no equipages those who are to amuse, instruct, or 
 
 1 embellish the gay world poets, parsons, and pretty 
 
 women ; but the promenade on wheels is, to all oth- 
 
 ! ers, the inexorable vestibule, and, as far at least as this 
 
 I gate, the ordinary seekers of the heaven beyond must 
 
 come with horses. Cowper only mentioned the barest 
 
 essentials when he said, 
 
 " Well-drest, well-bred, 
 Well-equtpaged, is ticket good enough 
 To pass us readily through every door." 
 
 In New York, however undesirable to the mass, this 
 formidable gulf is about to be sunk, between wealth 
 and competency. At present there is no distinction 
 among the upper ten thousand of the city. There is 
 no place where equipages are exclusively looked for. 
 There are five or ten thousand young men who dress 
 as well as the millionare s son; five or ten thousand 
 
 forth. In the salad column of one of the papers there la dies for whom milliners and mantua-makers do their 
 is one announcement of a play followed by six an- best ! te " or twenty thousand who can show as well 
 nouncements of sermons ! And in 
 there a 
 
 a specific " repo 
 
 another paper 
 
 mons, 
 
 ire very nearly two columns of sketches of ser- 
 from a specific " reporter! !" 
 
 We saw yesterday, for the first time in this coun 
 try, an equipage of full ceremonial splendor, faultless 
 in taste, and evidently not at all modified by any 
 dread of democratic prejudices. We admired the 
 " bravery" of the turn-out, and the courage of using 
 it. The ice broken, there will soon be conjured oth 
 ers from the vaults in Wall street but meantime, let 
 us look a little at the necessity for a promenade drive 
 in New York, and its probable locality. 
 
 In or near every capital of Europe there is a spot 
 which serves, for those who have carriages, the same 
 purpose which Broadway serves for promenaders on 
 foot. In London it is the Mayfair side of Hyde park ; 
 in Paris it is the Champs Elysees and Bois de Bou 
 logne; in Florence it is the Cascine ; in Rome the 
 Pincian hill ; in Naples the Strada Nuova. In all of 
 these capitals the titled and wealthy avoid driving in 
 the crowded streets except upon errands of necessity, 
 and in London it is the custom to keep a plainer ve 
 hicle with cob-horses expressly for use at night and 
 errands in the city. Ladies who have occasion to go 
 out in the morning, do so on foot and in the plainest 
 dress, followed invariably by a servant. They return 
 to lunch at one or two, and immediately after dress for 
 the show part of the day s out-door occupation. The 
 carriage comes round in full livery at the specified 
 hour, and, the shopping and business-errands having 
 been despatched in the forenoon, the equipage starts 
 upon the afternoon destination of ceremony or pleas 
 ure. 
 
 An hour before sunset or the dinner hour, the 
 principal drive is over, and the scattered equipages 
 meet, as upon a fashionable exchange, for a prome 
 nade of display. This conventional assembling is re 
 lied upon for recognition of acquaintance, for arrange 
 ments as to the evening, for keeping advised of the 
 fashions, for seeing strangers, and for contests of style 
 in equipage and personal atlire. The dandies must 
 1 1 
 
 on foot, and walk as well without heart-burnings, in 
 Broadway one as another. New York is (at this 
 critical moment, before the shoot of the centripetal 
 particles to a new nucleus) the largest republic of 
 "first quality" people that the world ever saw. 
 
 There is one spot which has been talked of as a 
 promenade drive, and we believe some endeavor has 
 been made to purchase it for the purpose the beau- 
 | tiful wood on the right of the Third avenue. That 
 charming spot would stand to New York very much 
 as the CASCINE to Florence. We doubt, however, 
 whether, yet awhile at least, the object would warrant 
 the purchase. 
 
 The first probable promenade drive, we should say, 
 would be the FIFTH AVENUE, from Washington 
 square to the Croton reservoir. The splendor of the 
 houses on this broad highway is far beyond that of 
 any other portion of the city; it is no thoroughfare 
 for omnibuses ; it leads from the wealthiest neighbor 
 hood to a prominent public work ; it is on the return 
 route from the loveliest drives on the island ; and, 
 should the summit of the rising ground on which the 
 reservoir stands be fixed upon, as proposed, for the 
 Washington monument, and planted and decorated, 
 that limit would be a convenient turning-place, and a 
 charming and airy spot for a sunset soiree en voiture. 
 
 A STORY FOR TOUR SON, SIR. The present king 
 of France, one very cold evening, was riding from 
 Boston to Salem on the outside of the stage. He 
 was entirely without money to pay for a lodging that 
 night, and he began to make friends with the driver to 
 get part of his bed. After a while the driver s com 
 passion was aroused. You are not a very clean 
 looking chap," said he to the poor Frenchman, "but 
 my bed is in the harness-room, where there s a stove, 
 and if you ll keep your trowsers on, and sleep outside, 
 I don t mind /" 
 
 THE REPUBLIC OF BROADWAY. Eyes were con 
 trived at some trouble ; the great sun shows only the 
 
162 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 outside of things; the present and visible (Carlyle- 
 ically speaking)" is the world God adapted our senses 
 to; and though some people like to live the life of a 
 sundial under ground, we prefer to throw to-day s 
 shadow from whatever we do writing about what we 
 see, and thinking most about what jostles our elbow. 
 This explained, 
 
 We have a loose slip-slop or two for the young men 
 about town not as to their invisible minds and morals, 
 but as to their visible walking and dressing. Having 
 "bought our doublet in Italy, our round hose in 
 France, our bonnet in Germany, and our behavior 
 everywhere," we may perhaps excusably scale a ped 
 estal to give our opinion; though the credit we take 
 to ourselves may be granted in the spirit of Falstaff s 
 to Doll Tearsheet, "We catch of you, Doll, we catch 
 of you !" 
 
 There is nothing so republican as a dressy popula 
 tion. We are no " leveller," but we like to see things 
 level themselves; and the declaration of independence 
 is impotent in comparison with the tailor s goose. A 
 young man about town slips his miniature into five 
 thousand eyes per diem. Fifty of the five thousand 
 who see him know whether his father is a mechanic 
 or a rich man; and it depends wholly upon his dress 
 and mien whether the remaining four thousand nine 
 hundred and fifty take him to be a rich man s son or 
 a mechanic s son. It is reasonable, of course, to let 
 the fifty who know think what pleases them, and to 
 dress for the very large majority who don t know. 
 This is apparently the tacit philosophy of the young 
 men of New York. There is no telling, by any dif 
 ference in dress, whether the youth going by has, 
 probably, a sister who is an heiress, or a sister who is 
 a sempstress. There is no telling the merchant from 
 his bookkeeper no guessing which is the diner on 
 eighteen pence, and which the gourmet of Delmon- 
 ico s no judging whether the man in the omnibus, 
 whom you vaguely remember to have seen some 
 where, was the tailor who tried on your coaf, or your 
 vis-d-vis last night at a ball. 
 
 As we said above, this is a true republic. A young 
 man whose appearance is four-story-housy, can very 
 well afford to let a few people know that he sleeps 
 over the shop. If he is more elegant than a rich 
 man s son, he gets as nearly the full value of the dif 
 ference as ordinary vanity would require. Every 
 young man finds means to dress to his liking, and of 
 course every young man starts fair, each morning, 
 with all of his age, for the day s competition in bright 
 eyes. 
 
 We shall be understood, now, in our republican ef 
 fort to add still another levelling to this of the tailor s 
 goose to bring the attractions of plain men up to 
 those of the "aristocracy of nature." The hints we 
 have to throw out will be slighted by the good-look 
 ing; taken advantage of by the plain thus levelling, 
 in another respect, upward. 
 
 The rarest thing seen in Broadway is a young man 
 who walks well. A stoop in the back is almost na 
 tional; and an upright, graceful, gentlemanlike gait 
 is as rare as it is singularly striking. If you can af 
 ford the time to walk slowly, high-heeled boots are a 
 great improvement. With time enough, you drop 
 the foot insensibly from a high heel, like an actor 
 walking down the slope of the stage. Beside, it 
 makes the instep look high, which implies that your 
 father did not carry a hod. 
 
 Avoid a broadcloth shirt, in the shape of a shape 
 less garment with sleeves (one of the new fashions). 
 It looks colic-y, with the wind bellying it out in all 
 directions as you walk along. 
 
 Leave long cloaks to the clergy. The broad velvet 
 collar, turning over, diminishes your apparent breadth 
 of shoulders, and it should be worn with careful dra 
 matic propriety, not to be very awkward and inelegant. 
 
 If you are about to have an overcoat made, get a 
 fat friend to go and be measured for it. At any rate, 
 let not your diaphragm be so imprisoned, that the 
 first heroic sentiment will tear off a button. One of 
 Jenning s cutters is the apostle of a reform in this 
 matter measuring you (if you request it) by a mag 
 nify ing-glass, from the waist upward. 
 
 These are not King Canute s days, when " none 
 under the rank of gentlemen dare presume to have a 
 greyhound to follow him." The outward symbols, 
 once peculiar to elegance, are pretty well levelled up 
 to, as we said before but, by careful observation, 
 you will now and then see a something that nice men 
 do, or do not do, which has not yet got through the 
 hair of the promiscuous. As an example, and in the 
 hope that it will not be generally understood, we will 
 mention, that very particular men, for the last year, 
 have walked the street invariably with a kind of 
 grieved look very expressive and distinguishing. 
 
 We will resume this republican theme. 
 
 THK DESIGNATION OF THE LADY PRESIDENTESS. 
 If it had not been for a certain ante-expiatory "white 
 horse," we should have prayed for the miraculous re 
 turn to this world of "John Tetzel, Vender of Indul 
 gences." The editor of the Morning News did jus 
 tice to his Irish blood a day or two ago, by giving 
 back, to the loser s wife, a saddle-horse he had won 
 in a bet; but how, in the name of all the gallant pro 
 prieties, can he justify himself to the ladies of the de 
 mocracy for making no distinction between their queen 
 and the (of course) less glorious queen of any coun 
 try on earth? The promiscuousness of two "Mrs. 
 P s!" 
 
 " WHITE-HOUSE- Among other consequences of 
 the election of Mr. Polk, it is said, will be to locate 
 in the White-house at Washington the handsomest 
 and perhaps the most accomplished lady that ever 
 presided in its stately halls. Mrs. P. has, for some 
 years, been remarkable not only for personal beauty, 
 but for that greater charm, graceful manners, and a 
 highly-cultivated mind." 
 
 If, in this democratic country, one may venture to 
 say a word for the other " Mrs. P.," we think that 
 Louis Philippe s having slept with a stagedriver in 
 this country (vide a late anecdote) might have pro 
 cured for his wife the easy privilege of at least one 
 distinguishing initial. It surely would not seriously 
 invade the simplicity of our court circular to add a 
 " J." to the single-letter title of the lady presidentess 
 of fifteen millions and Texas! Be generous, gentle 
 men people! Let us have some distinction in the 
 Queen " P. s" of the two countries. The editor of 
 the Morning News will be some day minister to 
 France. Fancy his being called on to present "Mrs. 
 American P." to " Mrs. French P." 
 
 OVERHAUL OF SAILING ORDERS. The sails draw 
 the freight sits trim in the hold the ship minds 
 her helm, and the wind strengthens on the quarter 
 with a freshness that strains rope and spar. It is per 
 haps the best moment that will occur, in the long 
 voyage before us, to overhaul our signals and sailing- 
 papers, and understand how we are to communicate 
 with the fleet, and go straightest and most prosperous 
 ly to our destined haven. 
 
 (Whoa, Pegasus! We have been as poetical as 
 will have been expected of us at one day s notice. 
 Drop to the ground and let us go off on a plain trot!) 
 
 We have always looked upon the gentlemen of the 
 daily press as among the enviably unlabelled poten 
 tates of this country of King Everybody-nobody 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 163 
 
 enviably as having enormous power and little responsi 
 bility as to the using of it. The power will doubtless 
 remain as large and the responsibility as small. "A 
 free press" is the lesser of two evils. In the perpet 
 uation of this state of things, however, lies our future 
 vocation, and while we have it yet in our power to 
 " make a clean breast," and avow what we have ob 
 jected to in the exercise, by others, of the spells by 
 which we are to conjure let us name at least the one 
 blot which most smirches the forward face of the pro 
 fession. 
 
 It were of little use for one. editor to declare that he 
 would make war freely upon opinions never upon 
 persons. And the disadvantage is not merely that of 
 throwing away the dagger in battle, because the sword 
 is more gentlemanly not merely a lessening of one s 
 formidabieness to an opponent. The evil is in the 
 greater curiosity to watch the slabber, felt by the look 
 ers-on. The temptation to be personally abusive lies 
 in the diseased appetite of the crowd that will follow 
 the abuser leaving the scrupulous man alone with 
 his decency. Living as editors do, by the favor of 
 the crowd, if many are willing to minister to this dis 
 eased appetite, decency in the few is a kind of slow, 
 business-suicide. 
 
 It would almost require a Utopian fancy to picture 
 the beauty of a press from which personalities and 
 illwilled abuse were wholly excluded. No personal 
 ities in literature, and none in politics the author, 
 editor, and statesman, alike intrenched in 
 
 " that credent bulk 
 
 That no particular scandal once can touch, 
 But it confounds the breather," 
 
 how completely the envy of malignant mediocrity 
 would be deprived of its now easy sting, and how 
 completely ruffianism and brutality would be confined 
 to the bully-club and dram-shop ! Scholars would 
 wait on public opinion, at the editor s table, busied 
 only with embellishing, and not engrossed with de 
 fending their fair fame ; and gentlemen of sensitive 
 honor, who are now appalled at the calumnious gaunt 
 let of politics, would come forward to serve their 
 country at the small posts occupied now only by men 
 senseless to defamation. 
 
 To the coming about of this paradise of letters, 
 editorial consent is alone wanting. No one man could 
 live long, the only calumniator of the press. No one 
 man would dare to hold the only pen deficient in 
 courtesy and gentlemanlike regard to private charac 
 ter. Complete silence from the rest of the press 
 toward the one offender, after a unanimous publica 
 tion of his disgrace refusal, without exception, to 
 exchange papers with him from that time forward 
 any combination, in short, which should make the os 
 tracism of such an individual, by his brethren of the 
 press, universally known would suffice to r*urge the 
 press of him. One year of such united self-censor 
 ship would so purify the public habit of news-read 
 ing, that an offence against propriety would at least 
 startle and alarm the public sense; and, arrived at that 
 point, a very moderate apostleship might complete the 
 reform. 
 
 We do not anticipate this. Oh, no ! We are 
 
 " in this earthly world, where to do harm 
 Is often laudable ; to good sometimes 
 Accounted dangerous folly ;" 
 
 but, at the risk of being the "grave of our deserv 
 ing," we shall do the leaning of one to the better side. 
 We shall have harder work for it. Nothing is easier 
 than to be popular by habitual illwill. Trashy minds 
 write most readable satire, and, with the mood on or 
 off the industry willing or reluctant fault-finding is 
 fecund production. But if good nature can be spiced 
 if courteous treatment of our brother editors, 
 
 brother authors, and all nameable men, can be made 
 palatable to the public if a paper wholly incapable 
 of rui unkindness, but capable of all things pleasurable 
 else, can be fairly tested we trust to do without the 
 price of giving pain, and we trust that the money so 
 turned out of our hand will not be like the lost oil of 
 the tomb of Belus irreplaceable. 
 
 THK COST OF FASHION. From a pamphlet sent us, 
 
 ; learn that five hundred millions of dollars are spent 
 annually in the United States for such articles of 
 dress as are subject to the fluctuations of fashion. 
 Of this sum, it is computed that sixteen millions are 
 spent for hats, probably about twenty millions for caps 
 and bonnets, and for other articles of dress not less 
 than four hundred millions ! 
 
 So that not far from a million and a half dollars are 
 spent daily for clothing; of which, if the calls of 
 fashion claim but ten per cent, (but probably she re 
 ceives double that sum), one hundred and fifty thou 
 sand dollars are sacrificed daily at the footstool of the 
 fickle goddess, by the enlightened citizens of the 
 United States ! 
 
 Is it not time that some standard of national dress 
 was established ? We certainly have had sufficient 
 experience to know what kinds of clothing are the 
 most convenient, and one good reason can not be pro 
 duced for the unmeaning changes which are every 
 day taking place. 
 
 It is not to be expected that in a free country, where 
 it is proverbial that " every man is at liberty to wear 
 shoes or go without," an association to fix upon 
 a general standard of dress would lead all to adopt it. 
 No there would be those still found who, lacking 
 other points to recommend them to public notice, 
 would act the cameleon still. But no small portion 
 of the community would recommend that course 
 which would most evidently be for the public good. 
 
 The number, if large and respectable, would exert 
 a sufficient influence by their example to prevent the 
 standard fashion from ever appearing out of date. 
 The ladies bonnets would then be new at the end of 
 three years, instead of being old-fashioned at the end 
 of one. The gentlemen s hats would be fashionable 
 until worn out; and the wedding coat, which is saved 
 for holyday occasions, might descend from father to 
 son, a fashionable garment. 
 
 A HUMBUG FAME. 
 
 THOMAS CARLYLE. We have nowhere seen a just- 
 er view of this much-talked-of writer than is given in 
 the October number of the Biblical Repository, a 
 journal conducted with great ability by an association 
 of divines. The writer (Prof. J. T. Smith, of New 
 ton Theological Institute, Mass.) allows Carlyle to be 
 a " most vigorous, unique, and original thinker and 
 writer," and that his "Past and Present" is "certainly 
 worth reading." He allows further, that that work 
 contains many noble and truthful sentiments, uttered 
 with commanding energy. This, however, is the ex 
 tent of his commendation. " We must, on the whole," 
 says the writer, " characterize it as a book, in style, 
 barbarous; in politics, incendiary ; in philosophy, du 
 bious ; and in theology, execrable." This opinion 
 the reviewer supports by an analysis of the work, and 
 by a specification of particulars. 
 
 The barbarity of the style no one doubts, and no 
 one, except a few very warm admirers, defends. This 
 very barbarity seems to us only another manifestation 
 of that arrogance which characterizes all Carlyle s 
 
164 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 attempts. A man who condemns everybody must 
 needs be an inventor. 
 
 The work is said to "breathe an overweening, mor 
 bid admiration of the past." Nothing of the present 
 satisfies Mr. Carlyle ; nothing of the past but elicits 
 his commendation, and among other things, Scandi 
 navian savagery, Mohammedanism, twelfth century 
 Catholicism, the fighting barons of feudal times, Popes 
 Gregory and Hildebrand, and other personages of like 
 stamp, each and all present to him some phase worthy 
 of special notice and admiration. The religion and 
 the systems of government of the present day, have 
 very hard fare at his hands, since the former is all 
 cant, hypocrisy, and quackery, and the latter nothing 
 better, to say the least. We are, in truth, recom 
 mended to go back to the twelfth century for models 
 of religion and government. The HERO must be found 
 by some means or he must find himself. A fighting 
 aristocracy like that of the twelfth century is no longer 
 possible ; but a working aristocracy must take its 
 place, and the system of villanage be restored. In 
 deed, American slavery seems essentially the system 
 recommended by this practical preacher. 
 
 The sum and substance of our own view of the 
 whole matter is, that while we sympathize to some ex 
 tent with Mr. Carlyle in his dissatisfaction with the 
 present state of things, the remedies he proposes in 
 his deep-mouthed and most oracular tone, are abso 
 lutely naught the mere dreams of a mind well-inten 
 tioned enough, but half-crazed with overweening self- 
 estimation. 
 
 He insists much on the necessity of a "French 
 revolution" in England. "There will be two, if 
 needed ; there will be twenty, if needed. . . The 
 laws of nature will have themselves fulfilled," and 
 much more to the same purpose. Yet this inevitable 
 fulfilment of the laws of nature which is to work all 
 good, seems, according to the seer s estimate, as yet 
 to have wrought nothing but ill. His final hope is a 
 hero-king: "Yes, friends: hero-kings and a whole 
 world not unheroic there lies the port and happy 
 haven," &c. In fine, if Carlyle s words mean any 
 thing (which, the more we read the more we doubt), 
 the whole people are to be roused to violent revolt, 
 and plunged into all sorts of horrors, as a preparation 
 for a better state of things! 
 
 Carlyle speaks of the last two centuries as godless 
 centuries and that in contrast with the long ages 
 that went before them. What is this but to shock 
 the common sense of history ? And his remedy is 
 HERO-HOOD. What is this but inane twaddle ? Mon 
 strous, unblushing egotism, is one of Carlyle s stri 
 king characteristics. Great and learned men, astrono 
 mers, philosophers, and others, are " poor scientific 
 babblers ;" he alone, it would seem, discerns the re 
 ality of things, and has the key to the mysteries of 
 nature. "Insight" has been granted to no other. 
 
 One of the wonders of the age to us is, that such a 
 monstrosity as Carlyle should have attained so high a 
 place in its estimation. His merits are so overloaded 
 by the most shocking and unbounded affectation and 
 egotism, that we rise from the perusal of much that 
 he has written with no other sensations than those of 
 weariness and disgust. 
 
 The poems of the Kentucky Sappho, AMELIA, have 
 been published in a very elegant gift-book volume, by 
 Tompldns, of Boston. We have expressed our almost 
 unqualified admiration of this lady s poems, as they 
 separately appeared. She has a mind fed equally 
 from a full heart and a prodigal imagination. 
 
 It was once remarked to us, by a critic as candid as 
 he is discerning, that there is a great development of 
 the poetic sentiment in this country ; that many of our 
 
 collections, which, in their brief existence, resemble 
 the flowers that seem to be born only to die, like those 
 delicate, odorous, and lovely objects in nature, have 
 often a character of sweetness, purity, and freshness, 
 grateful to refined taste and a feeling heart. The 
 pieces contained in this volume are worthy of such 
 praise. A loving heart, and a soul in harmony with 
 the beauty of the world and the divine spirit which 
 informs it, dictated these poems. 
 
 We might make many beautiful selections from this 
 handsome volume; but we must content ourselves, 
 for the present, with naming one, " The Little Step 
 son," which, in its earnest simplicity, and its ringing 
 music, reminds us of that favorite translation, "My 
 ear-rings! my ear-rings! they ve dropped into the 
 well !" Not merely that the measure is the same, but 
 that the whole tone seems the echo of far off and 
 primitive manners the voice of untutored affection. 
 
 MIFF BETWEEN JOHN BULL AND BROTHER JONA 
 THAN. The offensive club exclusion by which Eng 
 lish aristocrats have undertaken to make Ameri 
 cans pay their debts, does, unquestionably, put the 
 screw upon a national weakness. We are not sorry 
 for it but there could have been nothing in worse 
 taste or showing a more ignorant lack of discrimina 
 tion setting aside the fact of its being done by a class 
 of men, who are themselves, notoriously bad paymas 
 ters. We do not believe, however, all that is in the 
 papers on the subject. The " Reform-Club," in 
 which it originated, is a new combination of ill-ballast 
 ed politicians, and the movement will be disclaimed 
 in some authoritative shape, before a month is over. 
 Trifling as the matter abstractly is, it would act very 
 pungently on any questionof war-making which should 
 arise among us within a year. 
 
 Perhaps some of our readers would like to know 
 how far an exclusion from the clubs affects Americans 
 in England. The fact of not having the honorary 
 privilege of admission to the two principal clubs, was 
 (before this national exclusion) sufficient evidence 
 that a gentleman had not come well introduced. One 
 of the first and most natural questions addressed to a 
 stranger in London is, " What club are you in ?" 
 the intention being to ask you to a tete-d-tete club 
 dinner, if you turn out agreeable. This is almost the 
 only courtesy that a literary man in England has it in 
 his power to show you. He can give you a dinner 
 for a few shillings at his club (if you are a member of 
 it and not otherwise), which in point of style and com 
 fort is equal to a nobleman s entertainment. Or 
 (which is more common) he can say, "I dine at the 
 Athenaeum to-day at six. If you have no better en 
 gagement, we ll put our chairs together" each man 
 in this case paying his own bill. An invitation to 
 club privilege is only got up by high interest, however. 
 It requires some person of consequence to play the 
 applicant, and the number of strangers in each club, 
 at one time, is seldom more than twenty or thirty. 
 The following are the formulas of invitation to the 
 two principal clubs : 
 
 "PALL MALL, 28th January, 1835. 
 
 "DEAR SIR : I am directed by the committee of the TRAVEL 
 LERS to inform you that they have great pleasure in admit 
 ting you as a visiter to the club for the ensuing month, and 
 that they hope to be favored with your frequent attendance. 
 " I have the honor to be, sir, 
 
 " Your most obed t and humble serv t, 
 " J. W. SINGER. Secretary." 
 
 " ATHENJEUM, LONDON, 19th February, 1835. 
 
 " SIR: I am directed to inform you that the committee of 
 
 the ATHENJEUM have ordered your name to be placed on 
 
 the list of distinguished foreigners residing in London, who 
 
 are invited to the house of the club for three months, sub- 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 165 
 
 ject to the same regulations as the members are required to 
 observe. 
 
 " In case your stay should be prolonged beyond that period, 
 and it should be your wish to have this invitation renewed, it 
 will be necessary that an application be made to the commit 
 tee to that effect. 
 
 " I have the honor to be, sir, 
 
 " Your very obedient, humble servant, 
 " EDWARD MAGRATH, Sec y." 
 
 It is rather important to a man making his way in 
 London society, that he should be seen at the clubs. 
 The formidable " Who is he ?" is always satisfactorily 
 answered by, " Don t know, but I saw him at the club." 
 It influences all manner of introductions, breaking 
 down scores of invisible walls between the new-comer 
 and desirable things and people. A call at the clubs 
 is an invariable part of the routine of a fashionable 
 man s morning. He goes there to meet friends, to j 
 hear the news, to bet, to smoke, to make engagements 
 to prepare for the out-door part of the day, in short. : 
 All notes, requiring a very private delivery, are ad- I 
 dressed to a man at his club. Men who have no li- ! 
 braries of their own, do the most of their reading ! 
 there. It is the place to see great men, fashionable I 
 men, famous men ; and to see them without their 
 masks for the security, as to the proper introduction 
 of all present, throws an atmosphere of marked laisser- 
 allf.r around sensitive greatness. 
 
 We sat down, however, to comment upon the igno 
 rance as to our country, shown by the late narrow- 
 viewed movement of club-exclusion the evident igno 
 rance of any distinction between state responsibility 
 and national responsibility. To mention it is enough, 
 however; and we turn to that which will show the 
 out-lying proof of English ignorance of us. 
 
 One of the dullest, most arrogant, and unscrupulous 
 of travellers is commended in the last foreign quarter 
 ly, by one of the most unfair and ignorant of critics. 
 If all travellers and critics were like this well-matched 
 pair, the subject of British tourists and reviewers, and 
 their opinions and statements concerning us would not 
 be worth a thought. Of the capacity and information 
 of the reviewer, take one or two specimens. " The 
 unanimity of whigs, lories, and radicals, upon the one 
 topic of American society (i. e., in condemnation) is a 
 thing to wonder at and reflect upon." Two of the 
 most readable works of this class within the last ten 
 years are decidedly favorable those of Miss Martineau, 
 and the Hon. Charles Augustus Murray. A more 
 striking instance still of the reviewer s utter ignorance 
 or most shameful falsification is his representing the 
 internal traffic in slaves as j)ublicly repudiated, and 
 founding on that a charge of duplicity, since "men 
 are ready to swear there is no such thin"; from one end 
 of America to the other as a trade in slaves." A very 
 suitable person this to write comments on American 
 travels ! With such endorsements Mr. Featherston- 
 haugh s statements can not but pass current ! We 
 did not suppose there was, in the obscurest corner of 
 Europe, one dabbler in ink so profoundly and inex 
 cusably ignorant as not to know that slaves were 
 openly bought and sold in the slave states of this 
 country. That such Cimmerian darkness (to make 
 the most charitable supposition) should envelope the 
 brain of a British reviewer is a marvel indeed! 
 
 It was not, however, to expose such ignorance that 
 we took up the pen, nor to draw the very natural con 
 clusion of the amount of information, which Mr. F. s 
 book conveyed to his countrymen at large, since, not 
 withstanding the title "slave states," his reviewer con 
 cluded there was no acknowledged slavery for with 
 out purchase and sale the system is of course knocked 
 on the head. 
 
 But such are not all British tourists, nor such all 
 British reviewers; and it is worth while to inquire why 
 it is, that, placing out of the account writers of this 
 
 class, there is still so large a proportion of our well- 
 informed and sensible visitants, who get an unfavor 
 able impression of our institutions and of our state of 
 society. 
 
 We ought to give up the idea of a prevalent ill- 
 feeling toward us in the fatherland of our ancestors, 
 or a wish to put us down, because we are on the wrong 
 side of the water. Few Englishmen like us the less 
 because we are Americans, and not French or German 
 or Russians. Thousands of us when abroad have ex 
 perienced the contrary. 
 
 Nor ought we to suppose that envy, jealousy, or 
 ancient grudges, are at the bottom of the hard measure 
 meted out to us by tourists. True, we have met in 
 war as enemies, and in peace as commercial rivals, 
 and have in both held our own; but meanness and spite 
 form no part of the character of John Bull. He has 
 tremendous faults, but he keeps tolerably clear of 
 pettinesses. 
 
 One fault shows itself with the English abroad, 
 wherever they are. Though the greatest travellers, 
 they are the least cosmopolitan. The island mania 
 attends them everywhere, except at home. Like 
 some mistresses to some lovers, old England seems 
 the dearer the farther they get away from her. Gold 
 smith s Traveller s lengthening chain is no ficiion. 
 Across the ocean it is often insupportable. Some 
 times, also, this distance has, at the outset of the 
 voyage, " lent enchantment to the view," which, when 
 dispelled, leads to a bitter, though unreasonable dis 
 appointment. 
 
 The very resemblance which we bear to the Eng 
 lish and must bear, from our origin, our language, 
 our literature, and our continued intercourse ever 
 since the ocean rolled between us is unfavorable to a 
 just, and still more to a partial judgment of us, on 
 the part of those honestly disposed to do us justice. 
 To other people the British traveller can apply, in 
 some measure, the true standard i. e., to each its 
 own ; but for us, he can have only the home standard. 
 Weighed by this, we are, of course, found wanting. 
 He find us nine tenths English, and scolds that the 
 other tenth is not English too. 
 
 It is needless to discuss the point, whether that 
 tenth is better or worse the English blood renforces 
 
 (as some Frenchman has pronounced, justly we 
 
 hope) or not it is enough that it is not English for 
 the genuine John Bull to pronounce it ridiculous or 
 insufferable ; to laugh or rail at it according to bis 
 humor. The general resemblance he can not deny, 
 but he unreasonably demands an exact likeness. Jn 
 the points where this is not perceptible, he of course 
 considers us shockingly degenerate, altered altogether 
 for the worse. Now there are various points which 
 we should not expect him to appreciate justly, for we 
 know he is a creature full of prejudices and contra 
 dictions, and he must see with his own eyes or not see 
 at all. 
 
 Another real difficulty is, that no mere passing 
 traveller can realize the crowning glory of our country 
 and of our institutions the general diffusion of com 
 fort and intelligence. A traveller is looking out for 
 the salient points something striking or marvellous 
 something that will tell in his book and his memory. 
 A thousand comfortable or even elegant private dwel 
 lings that he might pass, would not make upon him 
 so vivid an impression as one splendid palace while 
 the former would indicate a thousand families living 
 in comfort and abundance, and the latter that there 
 was one family of over-grown wealth with a presump- 
 | tion against its possessing the average worth of the 
 former, or even enjoying their average happiness. 
 
 We contribute to the severity of the judgments 
 
 against us by our own fault. Our sensitiveness lays 
 
 us peculiarly open to attack, and none reply to such 
 
 attacks with more violence. The foreigner who 
 
166 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 knows this and who can not perhaps conscientiously 
 grant us all we ask, sharpens his weapons beforehand 
 for the encounter, and deals harder blows in anticipa 
 tion of those which he knows he is about to bring 
 down upon himself. 
 
 To this must be added our national vanity a 
 characteristic which the candid among us own. From 
 demanding too indiscriminate praise, we do not get 
 that which we really deserve, as the trader, who praises 
 his wares extravagantly, is sure to have them under 
 valued. If our claims were more moderate, they 
 would be oftener acknowledged. If we exacted less, 
 more would be voluntarily given. If we did not rise 
 up against deserved reproof, we should be oftener 
 spared that which we did not deserve. 
 
 When we claim the eloquence of a Chatham for 
 every stump orator, and then apply the same phrases 
 to our really great and eloquent men, the latter are 
 sufferers. If we claim for our every-day life or even 
 for our soirees recherchees the grace and polish of a 
 court, where they have nothing to do but to kill time 
 agreeably, the assertion is simply ridiculous. Some 
 traveller (Dickens we believe) says of the factory-girls 
 of Lowell, that they have the port and bearing (or 
 something to that effect) of well-bred ladies. Pretty 
 complimentary we should think ! But an annotator 
 somewhere (but where we know not), is not satisfied. 
 He adds, that if Mr. Dickens should meet these per 
 sons in private circles, he would find they had the 
 correspond ing elegance and manners. As if any good 
 factory-girl at Lowell would pass muster at Queen 
 Victoria s drawing-room ! 
 
 THE NEW PRIMA DONNA. The haste with which 
 it is the fashion to write about prima-donnas, giving 
 them a cornucopial criticism, on their debut, and drop 
 ping directly after into very brief notices, reminds us 
 of a lady s reproach to her lover, in the old play of the 
 Spanish friar : " You men are like watches, wound 
 up for striking twelve immediately ; but after you are 
 satisfied, the very next that follows is the solitary- 
 sound of single one." We should like very much to 
 defer expressing an opinion of Madame Pico, till she 
 had a little recovered from the embarrassment of a 
 first performance, and (more important still in critici 
 sing) till we had steeped our tympanum a little longer 
 in the honey the bees of Italy have shed upon her 
 lips ; but 
 
 The audience at Palmo s, last night, was, probably, 
 the best ever assembled since Malibran s time, as to 
 the capability of judging of a cantatrice by taste and 
 comparison. Madame Pico, even in Italy, would 
 scarce have dropped her golden cadences into more 
 judicious ears. Fortunately, too, the unripeness of 
 an entirely new opera was corrected by the predomi 
 nance of natural melody in the composer s style ma 
 king it all come to the ear with the impromptu wel 
 come sometimes refused to the best music. By the 
 way without knowing whether this opera will grow 
 upon us, and allowing, at once, that it has none of 
 Beethoven s under-song, nor any of the supernatural 
 combinations of Mozart we must express our almost 
 passionate delight in its main burthen and character. 
 We write, it is true, by a past-time-to-go-to-bed candle, 
 and with the graciles-que sensus still reeling under the 
 intoxication of the cup of bewitched sound ; but if 
 this gets to press (and we shall look it over before 
 breakfast, to-morrow morning), we congratulate the 
 every-day-ear of the city we live in, upon a opera that 
 is natural as a bird s song, and that can be enjoyed 
 with as simple a taste for music at the same "time, 
 no more to be disparaged, for its simplicity, than the 
 bird s throat for not having the harp-stop of a piano. 
 But let us go on, story -fashion. 
 
 The curtain drew up, and after the appearance of 
 the usual precedent foil of chorus-singers, Sanquirico, 
 the ben amatoofthe company, came on as a postillion. 
 After making a bow, with the good-will of a waterfall, 
 in acknowledgment of the applause with which he 
 was met, he went on playing his part, and (to dismiss 
 him with this brief notice) most admirably to the 
 last. The make-way motions of the guard and the 
 aspettando impatience of the music, now prepared us 
 for the prima-donna. She was to represent a young 
 girl, under the protection of the prince and princess, 
 whose escape from ruin by a villain is the story of the 
 opera. "Chiara!" trilled the "cue" and in glided 
 Chiara! 
 
 Madame Pico has a look in her face as if " Sorrow 
 had passed that way." She has had a narrow escape 
 of being superbly handsome, and, as it is, she could 
 personate, with small call upon the imagination, the 
 part of "Mrs. Helpless Ingulfus," on the stage or off 
 it. Tho not near so beautiful, she is a strong likeness 
 of Mrs. Norton the same low, concentrative forehead, 
 the same something-or-other in the sweep of the dark 
 hair, the same caressing inwardness in the white round 
 of the shoulder. There is rather too much of a caden 
 za in her bust, and her under lip does not always come 
 up with the alacrity we like in a woman, but we may 
 change our opinion. She was very much frightened, 
 and these matters are 
 
 " now high, now low again, 
 Like a ring of bells that the wind s wooing alters." 
 
 The welcome of applause ceased, and the expected 
 voice trembled on the silence. It was listened to with 
 pricked ears, nodded to by the cognoscenti at the first 
 pause approved, applauded. It was a rich, clouded 
 contralto, its depths hidden by a soprano part, like a 
 dark well impoverished by a slant beam of sunshine. 
 As she went on, gathering a little more control, her voice 
 sank to the inner sound-chamber where the heart sits 
 to listen, and the audience, instead of louder applaud 
 ing, began to murmur their admiration. Evident as 
 it was that the delicious home of her voice was never 
 reached, or borrowed from, by the notes of that soprano 
 part, there was a kind of full forth-shadowing of reser 
 ved power which made, even what she did sing, satisfy 
 the ear. And then, occasionally, where the lower 
 notes approached her treasury of un-used power, she 
 flung out a contralto cadence upon the air with an ef 
 fect the audience waited impatiently to hear repeated. 
 We feel bespoken to be enchanted with a fair develop 
 ment of that full throat s capabilities. Artistic com 
 parison apart, we have a passion for a contralto noth 
 ing that can pass the portal of an ear touching with 
 half the delicacy our levia ajfectuum vestigia. Those 
 who take our criticisms will, if they like, make allow 
 ance for this weakness. 
 
 Borghese was in one of the avant-scene boxes, lend 
 ing her captive town to her rival with the best grace 
 imaginable. She well may for a smiling rivalry be 
 tween her and Pico will give each new attraction, 
 particularly since their voices are of totally opposite 
 quality. The little soprano comme-il-faut has her 
 advantages, and Madame Pico has hers. Neither of 
 them is quite the " horn of Astolpho, at the sound 
 of which the hearer went mad," but while hearing 
 either, as Esdras says, "a man remembereth neither 
 sorrow nor debt." May they pull together " like 
 Juno s swans, coupled and inseparable !" 
 
 The FOOTRACE we have seen this afternoon " car 
 ried the town" more completely than any excitement 
 we have yet been abroad in politics not excepted. 
 We were late, but a thousand people were on the 
 road with us, and when we arrived, the first race was 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 167 
 
 just over, Jackson the winner. The weather was 
 Indian summer, in its most bracing smile good 
 omen, a punster would say, for the red-skinned com- I 
 petitor! The roads had been dried pretty well 
 hy the sharp wind of yesterday, the grass looked 
 glossy, and King Pluribus was in unusual good hu 
 mor as he generally is on the first bright day after 
 bad weather. 
 
 The stands looked like stacks of noses and hats, 
 and after a vain attempt to find room in the principal 
 ones, we descended to the course to take our chance 
 with the great company of the jostled. As it was an 
 object to get a near view of the runners at the end of j 
 the first quarter of a mile, we crossed the area of the | 
 field to the less thronged side of the course, and I 
 awaited their coming. Several loads of undisguised 
 sinners were near us, one of whom, a professed ma- I 
 tron, apparently, coolly sat with a pair of pistols, wait- | 
 ing some expected attack from a crowd of ruffians 
 who had surrounded them. She looked quite capa- j 
 ble of a tragedy; but the striking of the bell at the ! 
 stand drew off the rowdies to the ring-fence, and the | 
 pistols in the gloved hands gave place to a bouquet, j 
 We had been thinking that there should be a compel- j 
 itrix in the race to inherit the honors of Atalanta, 
 and a female, by a pull of the forefinger, might easily 
 have taken the day s notoriety from the competitors 
 in the race. 
 
 A stroke of the bell a shout from twenty thou 
 sand throats a sudden radiation, to one point, of all \ 
 the loose vagrants in the field and around came the i 
 horse-fence, that in single file kept pace with the run- I 
 ners, hemming them in from the crowd. The gro 
 tesque-looking pedestrians hugged the wooden railing 
 very closely as they came along, Barlow ahead, the 
 Indian close on his heels, and Gildersleeve, the victor J 
 of the last race, quietly consenting to be number 
 three. The foremost man was simply "diapered," as 
 the nurses say, exhibiting his white Saxon skin in 
 strong contrast to the smoked hams of the Indian be 
 hind him, and if the race had depended on muscle 
 merely, a good anatomist might have picked out the 
 winner, hy points fairly displayed, as easily as a horse s 
 capabilities are seen by the jockey. 
 
 They ran very differently. A plurnbline, dropped 
 from the forehead of each, would have fallen a foot in 
 advance of Barlow s body, and eighteen inches in ad 
 vance of the Indian s, while it would have lain close 
 to the breast of the erect little Gildersleeve. Barlow 
 never took his eyes from the ground, and kept his 
 lower jaw relaxed in a kind of shame-faced smile. 
 We observed that his make was in exceeding good 
 distribution, and though he was slightly knock-kneed, 
 he made play as straight ahead as a pendulum, losing 
 nothing by sideling. Gildersleeve s natural ballast, 
 on the contrary, rounded him to, slightly, at every 
 step, and his shoulders were partly employedin coun 
 teracting the swing. McCabe, who was compact all 
 over, trotted along like a stiff little pig, giving no 
 where, and the Indian, a long, stringy six-footer, 
 seemed to follow his head like a kite s bobs the near 
 est way for a wave. Gildersleeve, it struck us, was 
 lividly pale, the Indian ready to cry with anxiety, 
 McCabe spunky, and Barlow slyly confident of suc 
 cess. 
 
 We crossed over to the stands, where, we presume, 
 upon four acres of ground, there were twenty-five 
 thousand men. It was a peculiar-looking crowd 
 sprinklings excepted, very gamc-y. We presume no 
 pick of New York city could have brought out of it, 
 so completely, the stuff it holds for an army. The 
 betting was going on vigorously Barlow and Steep- 
 rock the favorites, but every man talking up his coun 
 tryman. The Irish swore up McCabe as he came 
 along, the English applauded Barlow, the New-York 
 ers encouraged Gildersleeve and the Indian. Mean- 
 
 ime, the horse-fence-men rode open the crowd with 
 triking and shouting; betting-books were whipped 
 ut at every completed mile; boys cried cigars; row- 
 ies broke down barriers and climbed into the stands ; 
 he men on the roofs pointed after the runners, and 
 allooed the gainings and losings; and every third 
 minute the naked white shoulders came round ahead, 
 nd it was manifest that Barlow gained constantly, 
 nd, unless the little Yankee or the Indian could over- 
 aul him by a miraculous push, he was sure to win. 
 
 They came along for the tenth mile, and the crowd 
 were almost still with anxiety. The overtaking rush, 
 iy which Gildersleeve won in the last race, was now 
 xpected of him by his backers. Barlow passed, a 
 mndred feet ahead ; Steeprock strained after, with a 
 ponge at his lips, and his knees tottering; Gilder- 
 leeve came third, a spectacle of pallor and exhaus- 
 ion ; Greenhalgh, another Englishman, was evidently 
 naking more speed and that was the last we saw of 
 hem in motion. 
 
 With the thousands rushing in from all sides we 
 vere swept toward the judges stand. The horsemen 
 ame on, in the midst of a sea of heads keeping pace 
 thh them, whips going, shouts pealing, boys and bul- 
 ies screaming, swearing, and crowding. " Barlow !" 
 Barlow!" "Barlow!" arose from hundreds of wild 
 oices, and the tumult of inquiry as to the others 
 grew deafening. We backed out a little to hear the 
 ictor called off by the judges. A moment s stillness 
 vas procured, and the competitors were named from 
 he standin the order in which they had come in: 
 Barlow, Steeprock, Greenhalgh, Gildersleeve. The 
 ime made by the winner was ten miles in fifty-four 
 minutes twenty-one seconds. 
 
 As we turned away, Gildersleeve was brought along 
 )y two men, with his eyes half closed and his tongue 
 oose in his lips; and he seemed just able to place his 
 eet, one after the other, mechanically, as he was 
 ifted over the ground. A sicker-looking man we 
 never saw. A minute after, Barlow appeared above 
 he crowd, on a man s shoulders, waving his hand and 
 smiling quite composedly, and the shouts, apparently 
 "rom every voice, hailed him victor. 
 
 P. S. We had nearly forgotten a good conundrum 
 he race gave birth to : 
 
 Question. Why did Barlow run so like a locomo 
 tive yesterday ? 
 
 Answer. Because he had behind him an Indian- 
 near. 
 
 NEW TRIAL OF CULPRIT POETS. Mrs. Oilman 
 has invented a new kind of book ("Oracles from the 
 Poets," of which we gave a notice a few days ago), 
 and the opening preface, very charmingly written, 
 tries the poets by new standards altogether. She had 
 occasion to ransack all the popular authors for an 
 swers to the fate-questions of her Fortune-Teller, and 
 of course she discovered where lay the most thought 
 and feeling of a peculiar character. She begins by 
 finding out that poets are benevolent. She had great 
 difficulty in finding sixty answers to the question, 
 " To what hare you a distaste or aversion ?" while 
 " What gratifies your taste or affections 7" was stuff as 
 common as ctover. She says that in Shakspere there 
 is a singular lack of mention of places of residence, and 
 there seems not to be even a fair proportion of pas 
 sages descriptive of musical sounds, hours, seasons, 
 and (except in the Winter s Tale) of flowers. In 
 Wordsworth, scarcely a flower or musical sound is de 
 scribed. They are alluded to, but not painted out. 
 The poetry of Crabbe, though abounding in numer 
 ous characters, could furnish almost nothing for her 
 
 purpose, on account of their being woven into the 
 general strain of his narrations. Shelley, Landon, 
 and Howitt, are eminently the poets of flowers, while 
 
168 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 Darwin, with a whole "Botanic Garden" before h 
 and Mason, in his "English Garden," gave none 
 fairly entitled to selection. Few passages of any sort, 
 except those hackneyed into adages, could be gained 
 from Milton, on account of the abstract, lofty, and 
 continuous flow of his diction. Coleridge has cor 
 responding peculiarities. Keats and Shelley are the 
 poets of the heavens. Byron, with faint exceptions, 
 does not describe a flower, or musical sound, or place 
 of residence. The AMERICAN POETS, in contradis 
 tinction to their elder and superior brethren of the 
 fatherland, display a more marked devotion to nature, 
 with which a continued glow of religious sentiment 
 aptly harmonizes. 
 
 Apropos as the living American poets are in pro 
 cess of broidery, would it not be well to know where 
 their worsteds are deficient, that they may shop up 
 their lacking threads in the Broadway of contempla 
 tion? Will not some of our several sleeping female 
 geniuses (intellectual dolce-far-nientes, of whom we 
 know at least a capable dozen) take up the American 
 poets and go through them with a discriminating bod 
 kin, showing what colors lack replenishing ? It would 
 serve the poetry of Bryant-dom the present passing 
 age in which this faultless poet is the flower in most 
 palpable relief. Come, ladies! tell us what Lowell 
 (whose fame is being worked just now) had better 
 thread his inspired needle with ! Tell us what Long 
 fellow is out of. Tell us whether Halleck has done 
 enough to cover the pattern, and whether some oth 
 ers hadn t better unravel and work it all o\jer again ! 
 At any rate, turn up their frames of immortality and 
 show us the wrong side! Let them mend, if they 
 like, 
 
 " Ere the worm pierce their tapestry, and the spider 
 Weave his thin curtain o er unfinished dreams." 
 
 THE UPPER TEN THOUSAND OF NEW YORK CITY. 
 The first three of the following paragraphs are from 
 the True Sun of November 22, and the last is from 
 the same paper of a day or two previous: 
 
 "Politically, we are all republicans socially, we 
 are divided into classes on the European plan. 
 There is a certain class, for instance, that lakes exer 
 cise only on one side of Broadway the west side. 
 The canaille, to-be-sure, may walk there too, be 
 cause, fortunately, our aristocracy, with all its pride 
 and vanity, has no power; but what perfumed and 
 ringleted exquisite would ever think of sporting his 
 white kids, mustaches, and goatee, on the east side 
 of our great thoroughfare? That would be literally 
 wasting his sweetness on the desert air. We under 
 stand, by-the-by, that Stewart is severely censured 
 for choosing the site of Washington Hall as the lo 
 cation of his new temple of taste" and fashion, merely 
 because it is situated on the east side of Broadway. 
 However, if the pavement in front is sprinkled thrice 
 a day with eau de Cologne, and Mr. Stewart doubles 
 the price of his goods, in order to give ton to the lo 
 cation, it may do away with the fashionable prejudice 
 against the promenade of the nobodies, and thereby 
 equalize the value of the property on the two sides 
 of the street. At present there is a very material 
 difference in the price of the brick and mortar which 
 borders the two pavements." 
 
 "THE OPERA. That this is a refined and elegant 
 amusement, no one can doubt; but to exaggerate its 
 consequence, to make it a grand controlling feature 
 in our society, is, in our judgment, giving it undue 
 importance. With regard to its being a very aristo 
 cratic affair in New York, we can only say, that a 
 complete refutation of such an idea may be easily had 
 at any time by a glance at the dress-circle habitues. 
 
 "TnE ARISTOCRACY. We must confess we do not 
 
 think that wealth is the only essential necessary to 
 place one in good society. We can imagine many 
 refined, intellectual, and charming people, who do 
 not drive equipages lined with silk, and who have nei 
 ther coachman nor footman bedizened with lace. 
 What would be thought of the elegance of a leader 
 of the ton, who could take a peculiarly-dressed par 
 tridge from a dinner-table, and place it in his hat, in 
 order to carry it home with him ? We do not imagine 
 that such an attempt (for it was unsuccessful) marks 
 any very superior degree of refinement!" 
 
 "There are some, again, who study a profound re 
 serve, or rather adopt an appearance of hauteur. 
 They are stiff, quiet, and unapproachable. These 
 are the dandies of the cities, who adopt the Horatian 
 sentiment of 
 
 " Odi profanum vulgus, &c. 
 
 You must not come between the wind and their no 
 bility. They wear the last productions of Watson, 
 or Jennings, or Carpenter, and display a clean pair of 
 kid gloves, with the last fashion of wrist-buttons. 
 You might, if uninitiated, suppose them some dis 
 tinguished foreigners on their travels. In nine cases 
 out of ten (hey belong to the parvenu order of the 
 aristocracy. Whiskey or codfish has taken a rise, 
 and their honored father has made a fortune. The 
 family-mansion in a back lane has been abandoned for 
 some fashionable quarter, and visits on one side 
 have been paid throughout the neighborhood. If 
 they choose, they could astonish, but they would not 
 condescend. The railroad-car does not shake down 
 their consequence. They regret this progress of one 
 art, which makes so many other arts useless. They 
 are delighted when they escape from the crowd and 
 seek the hotel, where the extravagant charges prevent 
 the danger of further collision." 
 
 We received yesterday an anonymous letter, re 
 proving us, in sober bad English, for ministering to 
 the vanity of the rich, by an article in the Mirror on 
 the selection of " a promenade drive." This, the re 
 proof also given us a day or two since by a political 
 paper for an article on the prima-donna, and the fore 
 going paragraphs from a neutral paper, aimed princi 
 pally at popularity with the working classes, are suf 
 ficient indications, we think, that some bitter weed, 
 passing for an aristocracy-nettle, is rolled up in the 
 present cud of the reposing people. 
 
 We commence taking exceptions to the tone of 
 these articles, by stating what seems to us a fact of 
 general notoriety that the ten thousand people up 
 permost in this city (aristocrats, if wealth and po 
 sition make them so) are the most moral and scru 
 pulous ten thousand in the four hundred thousand of 
 the population. There is probably about this num 
 ber ten thousand who are rich enough, if they 
 choose, to keep a carriage. Two thirds of them, we 
 presume, were poor men a few years ago, and the 
 children of three fourths of them will be obliged to 
 work for a living (a flying-fish aristocracy, who are 
 hardly long enough out of the water, one would 
 think, to give offence by their brief airs to those left in 
 the element below them). There is a smaller class 
 perhaps two thousand families who have been respect 
 able and well off for two or more generations. There is 
 a third class, still perhaps one or two hundred whose 
 display is offensive, from no one s knowing where 
 their money comes from, or from their being sup 
 posed to live dishonestly above their means, or from 
 being notoriously vicious. 
 
 Of these three classes an " aristocracy" of ten 
 thousand one half, at least, are religious, and the 
 remainder seek refined pleasures, and attend the 
 atres and operas; but, with the exception of the third 
 and smallest class last named, we venture to repeat, 
 that the upper ten thousand are by much the most 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 169 
 
 exacting of moral character iu their friends, the most 
 rigid in the support of moral opinions and charities, 
 and the most exemplary in their individual private 
 life. This is true of the upper ten thousand of no other 
 country in the world. It would sound Utopian in Eng 
 land to assert this to be true of the upper classes of 
 any city on the face of the earth. Look at the dif 
 ference of the standards in ordinary matters. To 
 make a good match, here, it is necessary that a young 
 man should be moral; and if he be of high character 
 in this respect (and the lady willing), public opinion 
 will not suffer his pretensions to be slighted by the 
 richest man! In every other country the lover s mo 
 rality is altogether a secondary consideration family 
 and fortune far before it. Morality is a young man s 
 best card in New York ; whether his object be influ 
 ence, matrimony, good business-connexion, appoint 
 ments from societies, or general position in the best 
 circles. This truth needed only to be put in print to 
 make people wonder it had not been said before ! 
 
 It is a wretched trick caught from English papers ; 
 and English plays, to talk of the rich as certainly 
 vicious, and of the poor as necessarily virtuous. We 
 live in a country where the sovereignty (that part of 
 sociely which vice commonly noses and follows close 
 alter) resides at the opposite end from the sovereignty 
 of England. The more virtuous class, here as there, is 
 comparatively powerless at the polls. The rowdy 
 drunkard and the gambler do as much toward presi- j 
 dent-making and the selection of lawgivers, as the I 
 thrifty merchant, and the rich father of a family of 
 virtuous daughters; and, as there are a hundred hus 
 bands, of either of the first-named classes, to one of 
 either of the others, virtue and order keep company 
 with sovereignty in this country as little as in Eu 
 rope! Power is at the surface of a country, and the 
 scum rises to it. We are quite aware, that the pen 
 and inkstand with which we write these sentiments 
 will not be, to all readers, " a pot of lambative elec 
 tuary with a stick of licorice." 
 
 RIVALRY AT THE OPERA. The musical tilt, to de 
 cide which was the more prime of the prima-donnas, 
 came off last night, to the very great entertainment 
 of the towu s ornamentals. It reminded us very 
 strongly of the contention between the lute and the 
 nightingale, in the old play of the " Lover s Melan 
 choly." Borghese drops dead in the last act, very 
 soon after a glorious and triumphant outbreak by 
 Pico; and we will quote a passage to show how this 
 resembles the poetic story premising, by-the-way, 
 that a musician, playing in the woods, is overheard by 
 a bird, who mocks him till the lute-player gets angry 
 at the excellence of the rivalry : 
 
 " To end the controversy, in a rapture, 
 Upon his instrument he plays so swiftly 
 So many voluntaries and so quick 
 That there was curiosity and cunning, 
 Concord in discord, lines of differing method, 
 Meeting in one full centre of delight. 
 
 the bird (ordained to be 
 
 Music s first martyr) strove to imitate 
 These several sounds ; which, when her warbling throat 
 Failed in, for grief down dropped she on his lute, 
 Aud broke her heart." 
 
 But, to tell the other story "after the manner of 
 men." 
 
 The opera was "Lucrezia Borgia." Signorina 
 Borghese represents (as well as we could understand 
 the story) a bad mother, who, in poisoning a large 
 party of youths, half rakes, half conspirators, for hav 
 ing insulted her sign over the door, poisons one too 
 many her son. Madame Pico represents the leader 
 of the set, and does the noise and the jollification. 
 She descends upon the stage the first thing after the 
 
 rising of the curtain, dressed in a very modest suit of 
 male attire, and figures about as a Roman Captain 
 Ryriders, bandying dialogue here and there, but with 
 no chance of display in the three or four first acts. 
 Borghese, we began to think, was to have the best of 
 it all the way through. She was exquisitely dressed, 
 sang with as little of the split-straw in her soprano as 
 we ever heard her sing with, and acted to her singing 
 (as she always does) with what the Greeks called ono- 
 matopcia movement linked with sound indivisibly. 
 The applause was pretty well, but not overpowering. 
 
 The fourth act represented the youths at the fatal 
 supper, Pico the principal customer. After a little 
 hobnobbing on the other side of the table, she glides 
 round, upon her plumptitudinous locomotives, and 
 dashes into a song, rich, rollicking, and risvegliato ! 
 Down went the bucket for the first time into her well 
 of contralto, and up came the liquid and golden mu 
 sic, of a round, true fulness, that made the ear s thirst 
 a luxury. It was a passage full of involutions, abrupt, 
 startling, and bacchanal; but her skill in flinging her 
 voice from point to point, with the capricious surpri 
 ses of the music, was wonderfully subtle. The au 
 dience was, for the first time in the evening, fairly 
 lifted clear of the ground. On the part of the stage- 
 company, no encore was looked for at this point of the 
 opera. The closing of Pico s song is the signal for a 
 death-bell and the disclosing of a hearse a-piece for 
 the jolly junketers. The audience were not ready, 
 however. The applause kept on till the hearses 
 jacked out, and the song was sung over again. Oh, 
 "ion* deliciously it was sung! No voice, however 
 arge its compass, was ever sweeter, rounder, mellow 
 er in its quality, than Madame Pico s. The audience 
 murmured, and leaned forward, and ejaculated, and 
 with one unhesitating accord, it seemed to us, gave 
 over the palm to the contralto. The chorus-singers 
 seemed surprised she herself forgot her male attire, 
 and courtesied (the first time we ever saw how it was 
 done, by-the-by), a tributary bouquet flew over the 
 footlights, and Lucrezia Borgia rose up once more, 
 like an apparition amid the hearses in waiting. 
 
 The last act, like the first three, was all Borghese s. 
 It is deep tragedy, and she played it well. The young 
 man, poisoned by mistake, held his stomach till he 
 was done for, and his letting go was the signal for 
 Borghese to give her " C sharp," and go after him. 
 The curtain dropped, and the applause rose imme 
 diately. Borghese came out and was cheered till she 
 courtesied out, but still the applause continued. No 
 reply. The canes began to rap, and the audience 
 seemed not beginning to go. " Pico !" shouted some 
 body. " Pico !" shouted everybody. Still no an 
 swer. The deafening uproar at last lifted the cur 
 tain, and there was Borghese! led forward by Peroz- 
 zi, and courtesying again ! And presently, all alone, 
 with her hair down her back, her mustache gone, and 
 a loose dressing-gown about her, the real queen by 
 acclamation took the honors there was no longer any 
 denying her. The will of the audience, and the will 
 of the Italian corps, were two entirely different matters. 
 
 We really do not see why these fine-throated peo 
 ple can not consent to do their best, and let the pub 
 lic like which they please. The two singers are both 
 admirable, each unrivalled in her way : and, because 
 we admire the new-comer, it is no reason why we 
 should not still appreciate our former favorite. But 
 see how unlike musical people in prose are to musical 
 people in poetry. We will quote the conclusion of 
 the pretty story we began our criticism with, for a 
 lesson of magnanimity, after the bird dropped, broken 
 hearted, upon the lute. 
 
 " It was the quaintest sadness 
 To see the conqueror, upon her hearse, 
 Weeping a funeral elegy of tears. 
 He looks upon the trophies of his art, 
 
170 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 Then sighed, then wiped his eyes, then sighed and cried, 
 
 Alas ! poor creature, I will soon revenge 
 
 This cruelty upon the author of it. 
 
 Henceforth this lute, guilty of innocent blood, 
 
 Shall never more betray a harmless peace 
 
 To an untimely end : and, in that sorrow, 
 
 As he was poshing it against a tree, 
 
 I suddenly stepped in." 
 
 Another night we trust to see Borghese submitting 
 resignedly, like the bird, to be beaten ; though if the 
 conquering Pico undertakes, in consequence, to "pash 
 herself against a tree," we trust the manager will 
 "suddenly step in." 
 
 THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY DINNER. We went to 
 the dinner of the Historical Society last evening, with 
 a mood in our mental pocket, which was as useless to 
 us as the wrong mask for a night of carnival. We 
 went to indulge in relaxation and gratify curiosity. 
 We decided in the midst of confusing avocations, that 
 it would be delightful to see Mr. Adams and Mr. Gal- 
 latin, pleasant to listen to the voices whose words we 
 should read in the next morning s papers, and curious 
 to see the first menu of the opening hotel up-town. 
 We presumed there would be some dull talking, 
 which the dinner and the friends around would keep 
 off with the by-play of conviviality, and that we 
 should, at any rate, hear wit, get our cares jostled 
 from astride us, and store up, for illustration to future 
 thought and reading, two pictures of men who are 
 soon to pass over to history. 
 
 But (the two great statesmen who were to be 
 present set aside for the moment) it is not easy to 
 come at all into the presence of a large number of 
 men of superior intellect, without feeling the dormant 
 thunder of the cloud about us. This is partly a moral 
 magnetism, we presume, but there is a physiognomy 
 in crowds; and, to the eye accustomed to see men 
 " as they come," the look of an assemblage of master- 
 intellects is the laying of a spirit-hand upon the be 
 holder. There were present the leading minds of 
 this great metropolis able divines, merchant princes, 
 formidable politicians, brilliant lawyers, scheming cap 
 italists, influential citizens, philanthropists, scholars, 
 poets, and journalists none of them common men, 
 and none without the sympathy-read print upon the 
 forehead distinction s philactery of pain.* Seated at 
 table, we looked about upon the men we knew, and 
 followed back into their bosoms the visible thread of 
 which we knew the knot at the heart-strings. We 
 have no time here (our hasty thoughts going from 
 us, sentence by sentence, into irrevocable print, as we 
 record them) no time to separate and describe the 
 crowding influences that changed our careless pre 
 paratory mood into an overshadowed aud attentive 
 silence. We passed an evening of resistless revery 
 much of it homage, much of it quickening to ambi 
 tion, and in part a coveting of fellowship and sympa 
 thy. But we can not go on with this misplaced rec 
 ord of emotions. 
 
 There are weighty and wide influences exercised 
 by an historical society, which, again, we can only 
 hint at, far too hastily. Historical record is the 
 paymaster of the immortality toiled for by greatness ; 
 and it is vital to the existence of great motives, that 
 this treasurer s trust should be faithfully discharged, 
 and his accounts chronicled in blazon. Affecting 
 mention was drawn from Mr. Adams of his coming 
 reward from history the reward of justificatory tri 
 umph for having passed through the fire of calumny. 
 It was over these heated plough-shares that he has 
 
 * We may say, in passing, that we have seen the first men 
 of their time in many countries, and many assemblages of 
 distinguished men, but it struck us that we had never seen 
 either a finer collection of intellectual heads, or finer individ 
 ual specimens, than this occasion had brought together. 
 
 walked to the luminous door by which he is about to 
 pass from the world ; and if he could be sure of no 
 brother-spirits left behind, to see the truth written in 
 characters legible to the world, he would have done 
 his great services to his country, by sufferings, indeed, 
 mournfully thankless. In a republic, especially in an 
 age of free-thinking and irreverence for usage, like 
 ours the influence of a society which brightens and 
 keeps manifest the coolly-proved wisdom of the past, 
 is more especially all-needful. History forgotten, the 
 present is a ship without chart or compass, trusting to 
 the stars alone in the clouded storm-nights of politics. 
 Ambition, with that watchful dragon asleep no rec 
 ord to be dreaded beyond the memory of the living 
 would be a fiend loosed upon the world. History is 
 our citadel of safety. 
 
 NEW KIND OF HOTEL UP-TOWN. We have thought 
 that it would, perhaps, interest our readers to go into 
 a detail of the differences between the popular hotel 
 (like the Astor, the American, Howard s, &c.) and 
 what is understood in Europe as the hotel-garni of 
 which the up-town hotel is the new example in this 
 country. 
 
 The hotel-garni is a furnished house, in which the 
 lodging is the only charge not variable at the option 
 of the guest. A certain price is charged for the 
 rooms occupied, and the other expenses are accord 
 ing to what is ordered. A popular bachelor, for ex 
 ample, makes a great economy of this. He pays for 
 his rooms and his breakfast; and, if invited out to 
 dine five times in the week, saves the corresponding 
 items in his bill five dinners and five bottles of wine. 
 This, in Europe, is considered a fair offset against 
 patent blacking, white gloves, and hack-hire ; and 
 puts society on a level with health, sunshine, reputa 
 tion, and other plain matters-of-course. A common 
 table and a restaurant are not necessary parts of a ho 
 tel-garni, but they serve to increase its eligibility. 
 There is a certain price for a dinner at the table d hote, 
 charged separately every day ; but in Europe few 
 dine at the common table except strangers in town. 
 A fashionable man avoids it as an implied confession, 
 1st, that he has not been invited out that day, and, 2d, 
 that he can content himself with everybody s dinner 
 and company. For families, particularly if there are 
 unmarried daughters, it is irreconcilable with position, 
 if not with propriety, to live at the public table. The 
 rooms in these hotels are arranged so as to unite a draw 
 ing-room with each bedroom, and every person, or fam 
 ily, respectably lodged, has a private parlor for meals and 
 reception of visits. There is no large common draw 
 ing-room, of course. The meals are furnished by ex 
 press order, given each day, to the restaurant below, 
 aud sent up with tablecloth, silver, glass, &c. all 
 at the appointed hour, and all removed together when 
 dinner is over giving the lodger no trouble, except 
 to wait on himself while dining, or provide a servant 
 to do so. As each dish is for one person only, how 
 ever (or one family), the expense of such a dinner is 
 much greater than where the dishes are cooked in 
 larger quantities for a hundred people. To dine in 
 private on as many dishes as you may taste for fifty 
 cents at a public table, would cost, probably, from two 
 to five dollars. 
 
 The ordinary hotel is, of course, described by 
 specifying the peculiarities of the other. It will 
 be seen at once that the hotel-garni must prevail 
 with the increase of exclusiveism in this country. It 
 is only in new countries that families can do without 
 household gods ; and it is only where the whole male 
 society of a country is only unharnessed for sleep 
 from the eternal drag of money-making, that the do 
 mestic virtues can be left safely without private altars 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 171 
 
 and locked doors, single roof-trees, and four-walled 
 
 ! to announce an ASTROLOGICAL CONJUNCTION, however, 
 
 simplicity. Twenty years hence, we venture to say, 
 
 the Astor s splendid drawing-room will be occupied 
 
 by some nabob of a lodger needed no longer as a , 
 
 common parlor and its long galleries will be but j f ba P e _ f v cold [ 
 
 suites of apartments, every third bedroom converted 
 
 into a cosy saloon, and the occupants seeing as little 
 
 of each other as neighbors in a "block." 
 
 There are some very republican advantages in our 
 present system of hotels, which the country is not 
 yet ready to forego. Tell a country lady in these 
 times that when she comes to New Fork she must 
 eat and pass the evening in a room by herself, and she 
 would rather stay at home. The going to the Astor, 
 and dining with two hundred well-dressed people, and 
 sitting in full dress in a splendid drawing-room with 
 
 plenty of company is the charm of going to the city ! 
 The theatres are nothing to that ! Broadway, the 
 shopping, and the sights, are all subordinate poor 
 accessories to the main object of the visit. A large 
 company as cheap as none at all a hundred dishes 
 as cheap as one a regal drawing-room at her service, 
 with superb couches, piano, and drapery, and costing 
 no more than if she stayed in her bedroom plenty of 
 eyes to dress for if not to become acquainted with, 
 and very likely a " hop" and a band of music bless 
 my soul, says the country lady, I hope they ll never 
 think of improving away all that! 
 
 And, there lies the pinch ! The senator now on his 
 way to congress, dines with his family at the public 
 table. The gentleman who does not choose to keep 
 house, invites his friends to dine with him at the pub 
 lic table. The man who prefers to dine in a private 
 parlor is satirically made welcome to his own society 
 if he prefers it ! The distinguished, the fashiona- 
 able, the dressy, and handsome,^ may all dine, without 
 peril of style, at the public (able. But since so may 
 the opposites of all these, and anybody else who is 
 tolerably dressed and well-behaved the public table 
 is the tangible republic the only thing palpable and 
 agreeable that we have to show, in common life, as 
 republican. And when the exclusivism of the hotel- 
 garni draws its dividing line through this promiscu 
 ous community of habits, the cords ivill be cut which 
 let some people UP, out of reach, and drop some 
 
 ^ iii- 
 
 people DOWN, out of all satisfactory supposible contact 
 \cith society. 
 
 GROWTH OF WESTERN LITERATURE. We are 
 happy to notice that seven out of the seventeen arti 
 cles with the names of the authors, in the last two 
 numbers of the Biblical Repository, are from persons 
 connected with literary institutions west of the mount 
 ains. Among the subjects of the western writers are, 
 The Writings of Martin Luther; Evidences from 
 Nature for the Immortality of the Soul ; and the 
 Natural History of Man in his Spiritual Relations. 
 Another article contains an able defence of presbyte- 
 rianism. So far as we can judge from a hasty view, 
 these subjects, some of which are the greatest that 
 can employ the pen anywhere, are treated with tact 
 and ability, and give us a favorable opinion of the con 
 dition of our western seminaries of learning. The 
 remaining contributions are from New England, with 
 the exception of one from Virginia. New York does 
 not appear in the list of contributors names. 
 
 THE OPERA. The " stars" of the opera are just 
 through their night s work and the stars of heaven are 
 half way through theirs. We have not the pleasure 
 of a personal acquaintance with a single individual in 
 either company knowing neither Venus nor Pico, 
 Lyra nor Borghese, " off the stage." We are about 
 
 and, as "many an inhumane thought hath arisen from 
 a man s sitting uncomfortably in his chamber," we 
 have sent for an emollient to our arm chair, in the 
 
 xpecting there 
 by to achieve our nearest perihelion to the calm clear 
 sightedness of Copernicus. 
 
 Up-town New York, a week ago, was in the situa 
 tion the starry firmament was in, about two hundred 
 years before the Christian era. Pythagoras recorded 
 his conviction at that time that there were two stars 
 wanting to complete the harmony of a certain portion 
 of the heavens, and, in the very spots named by the 
 great philosopher, Mars and Jupiter did soon after 
 make their first appearance. In like manner a Daily 
 Pythagoras, of this city (we think it was Mr. King of 
 the American), darkly hinted in a late evening paper, 
 that there were two stars necessary contralto and 
 soprano to complete harmony of the Palmospheric 
 constellation ; and, in that very troop, Pico and Bor 
 ghese did soon after take their places in similarly har- 
 morious conjunction. We trust history will do us 
 justice for linking together these two marked fore- 
 shadowings of stars " doing something for their fami- 
 ies." 
 [Your health, dear reader, in a glass of Cordon- 
 
 )leu m m mplck ! delicious !] 
 
 And now we have to beg the discreet portion of 
 the public to step with us behind the curtain not 
 hat (representing the rosy dawn) which drops before 
 Vlars and Jupiter, but that (representing Jupiter feei 
 ng the pulse of Minerva) which drops before Bor 
 ghese and Pico. There has been a terrible rowdydow 
 the operatic green-room. Borghese has been 
 hitherto queen of the zodiac, and her orbit was only 
 ntersected by nebula; of nameless supernumeraries. 
 The breaking of Pico upon the gaze of the impartial 
 slar-worshippers, however, and their undeniable prefer 
 ence, of the star at fifty dollars a night to the star at 
 double the money, sent Borghese sick to her bed ; 
 and she is said to have vowed (with the spunk of the 
 Lost Pleiad, who died for jealousy of her six brighter 
 
 sisters) that she would never rise again if papa 
 
 would excuse her. 
 
 [Our astronomy is used up, dear reader, but the 
 champagne still holds out. A glass to Borghese s 
 better resignation, and let us go on, in terrestrial 
 phraseology. M-m-mpIck !] 
 
 Borghese commenced making position, a year or 
 more ago, and has pursued it very skilfully, and, 
 therefore, very creditably to herself. For a winter, 
 or more, before showing herself as an admirable ac 
 tress, she revolved in the japonica circles up-town, 
 as a singer at parties, and made acquaintances and 
 friendships exclusively among the forced-plant cus 
 tomers of Hogg and Thorburn. Her manners were 
 of that well-studied, eager unconsciousness, which 
 is the modesty of nature in a hot-house school ; and 
 her tact, elegance, and musical science, were leaved 
 like a rose-bud tied up with a string showing what 
 the prima-donna might be, if the young lady were 
 loosed and expanded. As the parent-stem required 
 to be relieved of her, she prepared to throw herself 
 on the public; and when she did, she was, of course, 
 plucked from neglect, and cherished in the protect 
 ing bosom of the society that had secluded her. She 
 has been worn in triumph, as the first flower of the 
 opera, for a couple of seasons as you know, dear 
 public ! 
 
 But nature exacts an equilibrium; and where there 
 is more public harmony, there will be more private 
 discord. The children of the " boot on the map," 
 kick against authorities, and every tuneful rehearsal 
 had its offset in a quarrel. Signor Borghese (the 
 star-father), not being of the sect of the Apotactiw, 
 who renounce property, took advantage of a tight 
 
172 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 place in the treasury, and bought in, " for a song," 
 the theatrical weapons and wardrobe. Of course, 
 whatever solvent might separate the other parts of the 
 company, they crystallized, again, around their only 
 possible nucleus the prima-donna who had the tog 
 gery ! And, at this stage of the Borghese monocracy 
 came Pico ! 
 
 Months passed away. The story of Pico s errand 
 her husband a political prisoner at Venice, and her 
 voice the only probable conjurer of the gold key to 
 release or relieve him was told and apparently for 
 gotten. We heard it, and reserved our republican 
 sympathy till she should appear. The Mirror suggest 
 ed a concert knowing nothing of her powers but 
 her friends thought she had better bide her time with 
 the opera. She has done so. At half the pay of 
 Borghese, she phyed to-night for the second time, in 
 the opera of Lucrezia Borgia. 
 
 We have come home from hearing her "posses 
 sed" (as this undevoured cold duck is our witness) 
 our capacity for delight plummeted our cistern of 
 unshed tears strangely and pleasurably troubled our 
 pen as gushing with welcome to Pico as the miraculous 
 oil-spring of old Rome that welcomed home the con 
 quering Augustus. 
 
 [Her health in this last glass of champagne God 
 bless her !] 
 
 The house was crowded. Borghese sang beauti 
 fully, and played as no other female in America can 
 play. She was heartily applauded but as on the 
 last opera night the tumult of the house was reserved 
 for the drinking song of Pico. It is her first chance 
 to unchain soul and voice after nearly a whole opera 
 of subservient by-play. Oh how the first swooping 
 away into those clear silver caverns of her throat 
 dropping through unfathomable love-depths with her 
 fearless down-cadences, and turning with an easy up- 
 lift again toward the summit-perch of the careless 
 akissimo how like an eagle s swoop it careered ! 
 overtaking the dew falling, and the perfume rising 
 into the sky, and, with all its fierce swiftness, robbing 
 the cleft air of nothing but fragrance and softness. 
 
 [We are getting poetical but champagne after 
 Pico, is, as the Venetians say, tanto amorevolc ! We ll 
 go to bed and sum up in the morning.] 
 
 Thursday Morning. Our friend of the " Morning 
 News," expresses, in his paper of to-day, a regret that 
 "a feeling of rivalry is encouraged between Borghese 
 and Pico." We are surprised at this discouragement, 
 on his knowing part, of the great secret of good opera 
 and good everything else. When are they ever so 
 likely to sing so well, and to draw so well, as when 
 
 " their souls come upward to their lips 
 Like neighboring monarchs at their borders meeting?" 
 
 He adds, that " Pico fairly out-Pico d Pico," and we 
 should say the same of Borghese, if the name would 
 come as pat. 
 
 No ! no ! let them be rivals ! What could be pret 
 tier ? more gracefully done, and more touchingly 
 enlisting to the feelings than Borghese s picking up 
 the wreath again, last night, and giving it generously 
 to Pico? We broke a new malacca stick in applaud 
 ing that action alone. Viva Borghese ! Viva Pico! 
 You are two halves of a scissors, dear ladies, and 
 rivalry is your rivet. Divide the public since both 
 halves are your oivn, after they are divided ! 
 
 Pico AND BORGHESE. These two ladies are certain 
 ly most poculent commodities, and the town drinks 
 their delicious music with unquestionable intoxica 
 tion. The crammed opera-house was as breathless 
 with absorbed attention last night as if Pico s rosy- 
 lipped cup ministered to every heart s measure of ful 
 
 ness one palate common to all. For ourself, we con 
 fess immeasurable delight in Pico. Her voice has a 
 road to the heart upon which criticism takes no toll 
 the gate-opening facility of music going home. One 
 listens to it as Shelley seems to have listened to the 
 witch of Atlas 
 
 " Her voice was like the voice of his own soul 
 Heard in the calm of thought," 
 
 the very inmost tenant of your bosom, somehow, 
 seeming to have " expected it, all along." 
 
 Borghese is a treasure to a town an uncommon 
 creature such an actress and artist as we shall not 
 see again until we deserve a benefit from the gods 
 but Pico ! oh, Pico is of quite another invoice of goods 
 from paradise. Borghese is the most ingenious har 
 mony-pump that, for many a year, has offered patron 
 age a handle the other is a natural-well spring of 
 passionate and careless music, that would flow as 
 bountifully, for a bird to drink, as for an emperor to 
 stoop to. Pico s voice would cut up like a polypus 
 not a fragment without the making of a woman in 
 it. She neither sings, nor moves, nor smiles, as if 
 she remembered ever doing it before ; and if she has 
 not the great " art of concealing art" (of which we 
 have had our half a suspicion), she is one of those 
 helpless irresistibles that could as soon become invisi 
 ble as not bewitch. 
 
 Th.e drinking song (Pico s only good chance in the 
 whole opera), was stunningly applauded last night, 
 and, at the close, a wreath was thrown to her from a 
 very select company in a private box, and thrown with 
 a pretty good aim for she caught it upon her bosom. 
 Out of it (or the place where she caught it we 
 could not tell which) dropped a sealed note, which 
 we trust contained a check payable in favor of the im 
 prisoned husband at Venice. 
 
 If we had a moderate thought during the opera of 
 last night, it was that there could be no question of 
 a keen taste for music in New York for here was a 
 crowded audience, attentive, appreciative, measuring 
 its applause most judiciously, and leaving the house 
 delighted. We are sure a large opera-house would do 
 with more inducements to foreign subordinates, 
 more enterprise to procure visits from the Parisian 
 and London operatics, better regulations for private 
 boxes, etc., etc. We think, for one, that there is no 
 greater pleasure, away from a man s hearth, than a 
 good opera. 
 
 ENVY OF THE RICH, OR, THE FLYING-FISH ARIS 
 TOCRACY, AND THE No. 1 PASSENGER LEFT BEHIND. 
 In the hurry of composition, yesterday, we stum 
 bled upon a similitude (a "flying-fish aristocracy") 
 which, we think, expresses that transitory duration of 
 American "up-in-the-world," which should make the 
 greater number of rich people looked upon with in 
 dulgent affection by those left temporarily below. Of 
 such short-lease wings as most American " first fami 
 lies" fly with, there need be little envy, one would 
 think in the democratic element they drip with till 
 they drop again. There are families, however a 
 small number who hold their own for three or four 
 generations ; and, in the " measureless content" of 
 these with their position, the democrats find offence; 
 but one of the most curious social problems we know 
 of, is the manner in which the old families of New 
 York are let alone, and tacitly eclipsed by the more 
 newly prosperous; and we must offer to our readers 
 a descriptive similitude for this also. (Our object, it 
 will be seen, is to take away the offence of aristocracy, 
 if possible, and induce King Public to let us cater for 
 them, as for all other classes, with level editorial re 
 publicanism!) 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 173 
 
 A half hour before the starting of the Oxford night 
 mail, a fat gentleman was discovered fast asleep in the 
 coach, which was stil! under the shed- He occupied 
 the back seat, and his enormous bulk filled it so com 
 pletely thai there was no room for the usual fourth 
 inside passenger. But four seats were taken and paid 
 for, and the last man booked insisted on his right to a 
 place fat man, or no fat man! The stout gentleman 
 was waked, and requested to come out till the other 
 three were seated. 
 
 " He [however] knew his rights, and knowing dared main 
 tain ;" 
 
 and having mentioned his name, and inquired whether 
 it was not first on the book, settled his chin into his 
 cravat, and speedily snored again ! " Is this Oxford ? 
 bless me, how I have slept!" said the fat man, rub 
 bing his eyes, when the coach door was opened the 
 next morning in the same place where it stood when 
 he went to sleep . The driver had hitched his team to 
 another coach, and the three unprivileged customers 
 last booked were probably breakfasting in Oxford ! 
 
 It strikes us that the people who are last booked, in 
 this community, may very well monopolize the envy 
 (success in arriving at their destination of conspicu- 
 ousness being, of course, the chief matter of envy) 
 and the fat sleepers, upon the usurped seats, once left 
 out of the proscription, the charity for " flying-fish" 
 easily forgives the remainder. 
 
 If the above dues not please our friend "Cheap 
 Jemmy," we will never do a good-natured thing again 
 as long as we live. If he knew Latin, we should 
 send him in a bill for a diaphoretic. 
 
 AFTER THE OPERA. 
 
 (Supper in 184 s room at the Astorthe brigadier here 
 " on business" a poulct pique, and a bottle of cham 
 pagne in silver tissue paper, also here " on busi 
 ness" Eleven O clock, Esq., just parting from the 
 bell of St. Paul s, with a promise to be " round in the 
 morning." ) 
 
 Brig, (nodding, and taking up his glass). Mi-boy ! 
 184 (lauing his hand on the general s arm). Not in 
 such profane haste, my prompt sodger! That glass 
 of wine is the contemporary of bliss sent to us to be 
 drank lo the health of a bride, now three hours past 
 the irrevocable gate. 
 
 Brig. Married at eight 1 Do you say that ? God 
 bless her, in a bumper! (gazes abstractedly into the 
 bottom of the glass, and speaks musingly.) Ten min 
 utes past eleven ! Well, who s the lady, and who the 
 happy man ? 
 
 184. One of our parish, who, though he does not 
 personally know us, wishes us to be made aware of 
 his happiness. We have written ourselves into his 
 bosom. God bless him for the loving door in his 
 eye isn t so, my tree-sparer! So may all men take 
 us in ! Try a bit of chicken now, general, or that 
 tear in your eye will fall back on an empty stomach! 
 
 Brig. And what a difference it makes what it falls 
 back upon, mi-boy ! The salt in a tear is not natu 
 ral, depend on it, or the in ards would take to it more 
 kindly. What an etiquette of mercy it would be, 
 now, to make pathos and bad news matters of full- 
 dressnever to be alluded to in good society, till a 
 man has ceased, as Menenius says, " to pout upon the 
 morning !" What s your to-morrow s leader ? 
 
 184. Not coming to business at the second glass, I 
 hope ? Fie on you for a disrespect to the bride. 
 (The brigadier blushes, and covers his confusion by 
 reading the label on the bottle.) How enchantingly 
 old Belisario and his captive sung their vows of friend 
 ship to-night ! Ah, musir and lights ! things are TO 
 
 much finer for embellishing ! Our small friendship 
 now, general brought forward to the prompter s cup 
 board and foot-lights do you think it would be en 
 cored, like that ? 
 
 Brig. As you don t ask for information, mi-boy, 
 i let s proceed to business. Can you give me an idea 
 of your to-morrow s editorial ? 
 184. No ! 
 
 Brig. And the boy is to come for it at seven ! 
 184 (seizing a pen). What shall it be ? 
 Brig. Why, there s the mud in the streets and 
 the Bohemian Girl and the wretched weather and 
 the menagerie and Vandenhoff and Stuart s candy- 
 shop and Mrs. Coles 
 
 184. By the by ! a discovery ! r Tryon ought 
 to head his play-bills with the Marsellois war-cry 
 " to arms ! to arms !" I never saw a pair in my life 
 more exquisitely moulded and polished than Mrs. 
 Coles s, of the Bowery circus as shown after her 
 third undoing on horseback! It takes a symmetrical 
 woman, of course, to stand tiptoe upon a flying horse, 
 and strip, from a jacketed Cracovienne to a short 
 sleeved evening dress but ladies of this vocation, well 
 | made in all other respects, are usually thin from the 
 elbow to the shoulder. Shall I make a " leader" of 
 Mrs. Coles ? 
 
 Brig. Certainly not, mi-boy ! nor a follower either ! 
 Just indicate, as it were call attention mysteriously 
 hint somehow that there is a part of the equestrian 
 performance that reminds you of things you saw in 
 Italy statuary or something delicately, mi-boy 
 very delicately ! What else have you got down there 
 in your memorandum-book? 
 
 184. Half a dozen topics. Here s a note that 
 
 I smells of "above Bleecker," requesting us to implore 
 
 of Japonica-dom not to give parties on opera-nights! 
 
 Really, they should not ! The opera is a rare luxury, 
 
 without which a metropolis is like a saloon without a 
 
 I mirror, and there should be a little combination, 
 
 among refined people if not to give it extra support, 
 
 ! at least to throw no hinderance in its way. They do 
 
 ! this in London (where, by the way, there are but 
 
 ! two operas a week, and it would be quite enough here) 
 
 | Lady Blessington, for one, never " at home" on 
 
 opera-nights, and dinner-parties are given-at an earlier 
 
 hour to release people in time. The quality of the 
 
 opera depends, of course, on its enthusiastic support, 
 
 ; and those who can appreciate it can do no less, I 
 
 i think, than to go in full dress, and go habitually. It 
 
 I is far pleasanter than a party, is over at bearable bed- 
 
 time, and, just now, the company at Palmo s is too 
 
 good to be slighted. And, by the way, have you 
 
 thought how gloriously Pico has beggared the loud 
 
 trumpet we blew for her on her first appearance! 
 
 "Ants," says the old proverb, "live safely till they 
 
 have gotten wings, and juniper is not thrown away till 
 
 it hath gotten a high top." She is neither your ant 
 
 nor your juniper-blossom is she general ? 
 
 Brig, (who has been dozing). Not my aunt, mi- 
 boy, whoever you re talking of. I never had one- 
 hope I never shall ! 
 
 184. What s that note falling out of your pocket, 
 meantime ? 
 
 Sri*. Well thought of I brought it to you for a 
 paragraph. What do you think it is ? A complaint 
 from the ladies that the young men waylay them on 
 the staircases ! 
 
 184 Heavens and Sabines ! wait till I dip my pen 
 in the thunder-stand ! Who? How? When? How 
 many ? 
 
 Brig. At parties at parties my dear boy don t 
 
 , be violent ! This lady declares (brigadier opens the 
 
 note) that it is a " perfect nuisance, the mere descent 
 
 from the dressing-room to the ball-room" "a pretty 
 
 girl has to comedown a perfect ladder of boys every 
 
 stair an engagement to dance" " no chance for a 
 
174 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 pick" " her mind fatigued with the effort to remem 
 ber her partners" " no hope of dancing with a grown 
 up man from Christmas to April" " green talk alto 
 gether" " dreadful sense of unripeness" " no sub 
 ject but Pico and Polka" " begs we will write the 
 boys off the staircase," etc., etc. You see your sub 
 ject. 
 
 184. Shall I tell you why that was not written by a 
 woman ? Don t you see that if this system of long 
 lists of engagements were done away, a lady would 
 have no escape from a disagreeable partner no plea 
 of too many engagements no chance for a lie whiter 
 than many a truth ? Don t you see, that (now duel 
 ling is laughed at) a lady can leave out an early part 
 ner on the list, or slip a tardy one in, with perfect 
 ease and comfort distressing nobody s mamma with 
 fears of Hoboken! Leave the ladies alone for put 
 ting down troublesome usages ! Your letter was 
 written by some old coxcomb going out of fashion, 
 who can get nobody to dance with him, and lays it to 
 the boys on the staircase ! Tut! 
 
 Brig. Twelve o clock, and where s your leader ? 
 Oh, mi-boy, think of to-morrow s paper ! 
 
 184. Hang the leader ! Let s go without it once 
 in a way ! 
 
 Brig. Gracious ! no ! What will the public say ? 
 There goes one o clock ! Bed-time (for me not for 
 you) and nothing from you for the boy in the morn 
 ing ! Oh, mi-boy, sit up! Go and wash your face, 
 and feel fresh! Write a paragraph requesting the 
 Mirror brides to send their champagne, hereafter, ex 
 clusively to the talking partner! Where s my hat ? 
 Get inspired, mi-boy, get inspired ! Good night! 
 
 184. Stay stay stay! Listen to this! (184 reads 
 the foregoing dialogue to the brigadier, whose face 
 gradua .ly reassumes its usual serene placidity. He 
 lays down his hat and picks another wing of the 
 chicken.) 
 
 Brig. And you have been writing this down, all the 
 time, with your hand deep in that old cabinet ! Bless 
 me, what a boy you are for expedients! I thought 
 you was scratching autographs, or writing " Pico," 
 or sketching Glenmary, or something ! But you 
 haven t mentioned the weekly? 
 
 184. Poh ! it doesn t want mentioning. 
 
 Brig. Not more than the sun and moon, and other 
 periodicals but you trust the world s memory too 
 much, my worky ! They d forget the sun shone if it 
 wasn t down in the almanac ! Say something! 
 
 184. Well, let s see ! It s our diary of the world s 
 goings-on and what we think of it published every 
 seventh day. It is a week s corn, ground, sifted, and 
 bagged, for those who can t go to mill every day. It 
 is a newspaper without the advertisements and other 
 trumpery at half price, in consequence of lumber 
 left out and one postage instead of seven. It is edited 
 every day, and other weeklies are edited once a week. 
 It gives the news, the fashions, the fun, the accidents, 
 the operas, and our all-spice to make it keep, in a 
 handsome, preservable shape bindable for reference 
 and re-reading "the times" as it were, "boned and 
 potted." Shall I say any more ? 
 
 Brig. Three dollars a year 
 
 184. Mum, man ! Never mention money after 
 midnight ! What will the angels say ! Go to bed ! 
 go to bed ! (Exit brigadier, after a silent embrace.) 
 
 AFTER THE OPERA. 
 
 A FEW GRAVE REMARKS WHILE SUPPER IS COMING. 
 
 The Cinderella-tude of Madame Pico s own situa 
 tion, in the operatic corps, and her still disputed claim 
 to the "glass slipper" of preference, sent us to Pal- 
 mo s, to-night, with somewhat of an owl upon our 
 
 shoulder. We dreaded Prince Public s final choice 
 between her and the favorite daughter of Don Mag- 
 nifico for the real- life opera had come to its last act, 
 and, as she should or should not, make the most of 
 the opportunity (of which we had done our best to 
 be the " Pilgrim Alidoro"), she would, or would not, 
 wear to-morrow the crown of Palmo-dom. The cur 
 tain is down, and 
 
 ENTER SUPPER FOR NO. 184. 
 
 Before we grow too enthusiastic for the nice distinc 
 tions of criticism, let us say a word of the general 
 performance of the opera. Why the frisky Signer 
 Antognini, whose conceit, 
 
 " Ploughed by the sunbeams only, would suffice 
 For the world s granary/ 
 
 was cast in a part that the unemployed Perozzi would 
 have done so much better, and so much more agree 
 ably to the public, we have no Italian spectacles to 
 see. And apropos if it is the object of the com 
 pany to please and draw, why did not Borghese (ex 
 cept that silver is less tractile than gold) take the sec 
 ond role in this opera, as Pico did in Lucrezia Bor 
 gia ? The part sustained by Miss Moss has rather 
 more scope in it than that of Orsini, and how vastly 
 more attractive the opera, so cast, would be to the 
 public ! Signor Tomasi showed the vertebras in his 
 voice, to-night, more than he did in Belisario prob 
 ably from stooping with difficulty to the comic ; but 
 Sanquirico what shall we say of his admirable per 
 sonable of Don Magnifico ? We ll drink his health 
 by way of answer. (A lei, Sanquirico . ) And so 
 ends our fault-finding. 
 
 SECOND GLASS. 
 
 This glass of purple Tinta, steeped in the latitude 
 of Italy, tastes, of course, of the climate of Pico s 
 voice ; and we are glad to vary, with this redolent 
 bumper, the avenue to our heart so breaking up the 
 ear s monopoly of toll. Health to Cinderella tri 
 umphant! Her voice has a flavor (if this wine be 
 like it and it is the sun s fault if it is not like it for 
 the same cupful of his mellow light fed the grape 
 from which gushed the wine and the lip from which 
 poured the melody) worthy of the immortality of 
 Falernian. (For this discovery of homogeneousness 
 of pulp we beg a medal from the Institute.) 
 
 We were afraid, as we said before, that Pico, " like 
 a careless farrier, would lame her well-shod glory 
 with the last nail," but she sang throughout with un 
 blemished deliciousness, and the " piu mestar," at the 
 close, fairly took the town ! Nothing has been heard 
 like it, in this city, since Malibran, either in voice or 
 execution. We have made up our mind about Pico. 
 Her abandon is like the apparent carelessness of all 
 kinds of genius -fearless trust after finished study. 
 Of that desperate and intoxicating let-go, Borghese 
 has none. She is artistic and careful in the most pas 
 sionate extremity, dying, even, "with her wits all 
 about her." Pico fastens each link of the composer s 
 melody in her brain, with workmanlike fidelity; but 
 when she comes out from her music-smithy, she 
 brings with her no memory of the clink of hammer 
 and rivet. In that relying forgetfulness lies the mys 
 tery of her charm. It is recognised, by the instinct 
 men have that this is the quality of those who do 
 best statesmen or soldiers, poets or lovers the most 
 successful, in all enterprises, throwing themselves on 
 what they have once made up their minds to, as a 
 bird launches from the cliff. Nature prodigally sec 
 onds the unhesitating trust of Pico s execution. Her 
 voice follows her concerted thought with the certainty 
 of a shadow and the fulness of a floodtide. The 
 plentitude of every shade and semi-tone, insures, 
 in the first five minutes of hearing her, an ab 
 sence of all dread of flaw or falling off an assurance, 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 175 
 
 that whatever height or depth she stoops her neck to 
 swoop for, it will bring, for the listener, 
 
 " those music-wings 
 Lent to exalt us to the seventh sphere." 
 
 WE DRINK TO THE JACOB S LADDER OF MUSIC. 
 A new light breaks upon us as to the uses of the 
 opera. As~(to the wicked) common speech is a con 
 venience and swearing a luxury, so poetry is a conve 
 nience to passion, and music its luxury. An unhar- 
 moni/.ed shout a succession of cries may mean 
 anything ; but a chorus, or a concerted transition of j 
 cries, has a meaning to convey fioodtides out of the 
 soul. Poetry may fall cold upon the eye, but music 
 must melt in the ear. These premises allowed, the 
 opera becomes (does it not?) a healthful vent to the 
 passions of a metropolis a chance (for those who 
 long to swear and do violence), by a more innocent 
 
 to wreak 
 Their thoughts upon expression !" 
 
 How common the feeling " to want a spree ." and 
 who that for three hours has choked back tears in his 
 throat, and been enraptured with a contralto across 
 the footlights, is not ready to go to bed like a gentle 
 man ? An opera is a blessed succedaneum to the 
 many. To the few it is the loan of a dictionary from 
 Heaven ! Thoughts otherwise mute feelings whose 
 dumbness is the inner man buried alive, leap to free- 
 breathing utterance with music. It is for this reason 
 that an unknown language is the best vehicle for an 
 opera. We wish to hear the harmony, and let our 
 souls furnish the articulation. Don t you see, now, 
 my dear "Bohemian Girl . " the plain reason of the 
 platitude of English opera! 
 
 paragement to the outline of the republic. It is a 
 pyramid, in fair progression, but refinement sits with 
 in it like an hourglass. Half-way up the ascent of 
 political perfection, the social diagram within is at its 
 inevitable "tight place ;" and while we remember on 
 what a breadth of polite foundation public opinion 
 built up society at the Revolution, and while we be 
 lieve that, half a century hence, we shall have as re 
 fined standards as any country on earth, we believe 
 that, now, there is a squeeze upon good-breeding in 
 this country (less protection for private rights and 
 feelings than there was once, and will be again), and it 
 is as well that those who are to suffer by the tight 
 place should be prepared to stand it. 
 
 To protect that upon which the proprietor has a right 
 t a value, is the object of law and 
 
 to put 
 
 civilization. 
 
 Italian music has words 
 
 to it, and so has a dancing-girl a carotid artery but 
 you wish to feel your own heart beat delightfully, and 
 not to count the quickening pulses of Taglipni s 
 you wish to embark your own thoughts in music s en 
 chanted boat, and not see how it was first laden with 
 other people s. A man s soul can have nothing in it 
 unsaid, when he wants a libretlo to help him listen 
 understandingly to Pico ! 
 
 And now, having translated into grammatical Eng 
 lish, the inarticulate contents of a chicken s breast, 
 and a pint-bottle of Tinta (for the benefit of a public 
 to whom these eloquent midnight companions would 
 otherwise have spoken in vain), let us to bed apro- 
 pos-imously remarking, that, in the paragraph prece 
 dent to this, there is a hint as to the uses of an opera, 
 worthy the attention of the society of moral reform. 
 As the clergy are, probably, asleep at this hour (3 
 o clock), we say no more. 
 
 (Exit " 184," with a candle.) 
 
 THE MIRROR HELD UP TO THE TIMES. It is a 
 trick of ours to begin at the other end, when the sub 
 ject would otherwise open dry bespeaking attention, 
 as it were, by first naming the inducement. As we 
 have lately been pulled up for not giving credit, we 
 may as well mention, that we took this peculiarity of 
 style from Mother Goose s politic inducement to the 
 five reluctant patrons of the milkpail : 
 
 " Cushy cow bonny, give down your milk, 
 And I will give you a goim of silk." 
 
 Silk gown : we are about to show how we have 
 
 Five dollars, paid back, will satisfy a man who has 
 been robbed of five dollars; but the thief goes to 
 prison besides. A wound given to a man is soon 
 healed and forgotten, but the assailant is condemned 
 for a felon. A newspaper-attack upon a man, for pe 
 culiarities with which the public have no business, 
 may be a deeper offence to him than the loss of half 
 his fortune, yet the attempt at remedy by law is worse 
 than bearing it in silence. The damages given are 
 rifling and nominal, and the prosecution propagates 
 the evil. 
 
 The above is a skeleton statement, to which the 
 memory of every newspaper-reader will supply the 
 flesh-and-blood illustrations. A late decision in Mas 
 sachusetts, justifying an unnecessary libel on the 
 ground of its truth, threw off, to our thinking, the last 
 skin of the metamorphosis. There is left, now, no 
 protection, by law or public opinion, to anything but 
 the pocket and the person of the citizen. His private 
 feelings, his domestic peace, his hard-won respect 
 from other men, his consciousness of respectability 
 abroad commodities of more value to him than 
 money are outlawed, and, if wronged, left to his in 
 dividual avenging. 
 
 Few republicans need to be told that the law casts 
 o formidable shadow unless shone upon by public 
 pinion. The law of libel is powerless, because the 
 icense of the press is agreeable to the public. If it 
 ,ere not so, the libeller would not find himself, after 
 onviction, still on the sunny side of public favor 
 lor would judges charge juries with the little emphasis 
 hey do nor would juries give, as they do, damages 
 hat turn the plaintiff into ridicule! 
 
 There is another thing that republicans need not be 
 old : that where a just remedy is denied by the law, 
 he individual takes the penalty into his own hands 
 ;he same public that left him to administer it, kindly 
 warding off the law when he is tried for the retribu 
 tive assault and battery. A case of this sort lately 
 occurred in the tabernacle city. A family of the 
 most liberal habits and highest private worth just 
 risen to wealth by two generations of honest industry 
 chose to marry a daughter with entertainments pro 
 portionate to their fortune. A malicious editor, avow 
 edly " to make his paper sell," and for no other rea 
 son, came out with a foul-mouthed ridicule of the 
 festivities, that completely destroyed the happiness of 
 the brightest domestic event of their lives. One hun 
 dred thousand dollars would have been no inducement 
 to the family to suffer the pain and mortification that 
 were, and will be for years, the consequences of that 
 unprovoked outrage. But where lay the remedy ? 
 The law would perpetuate the ridicule, without giv- 
 in(T damages that would outweigh the additional sale 
 
 1U S *"* T . i . _ -i_:_ _. .~ .1,.,* *V in 
 
 arrived at the conclusion, that, in the state of the 
 country now "opening up," it will be necessary for 
 every eentleman to be a pugilist. 
 
 We beg to premise, that the state of things we are would have been, had there been puonc opinion i, 
 about to show forth is by no means a sign of repub give power to the law) ca led on the defendant 
 lican retrogression. We are about to record no dis- ! would have been) and whipped him severely; ai 
 
 of the paper. It chanced, in this case, that the in 
 jured man was of athletic habits and proportions, and 
 the editor was small and puny. The plaintiff (that 
 would have been, had there been public opinion to 
 
176 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 when tried for the assault and bnttery, was punished 
 with a fine next to nothing. The public opinion of 
 the city of " broad philacteries" virtually justified 
 both outrages. But where would have been the rem 
 edy, if the physical superiority had been on the oth 
 er side, or if the popular blight-monger had been an 
 unassailable cripple ? 
 
 Another case of legal justification of club-law lately 
 occurred in this city. It is so marked an instance, 
 also, of the social impunity of printed injuries (the in- 
 flictor, Mr. Gliddon, being still a popular lecturer, 
 and glorified daily by the model family-newspaper of 
 Boston), that we venture to quote three or four pas 
 sages from the libel. Mr. Cooley, the flogger, had 
 described, with humorous ridicule, some people he 
 saw in Egypt, and Mr. Gliddon takes it for granted 
 (though it is denied by Mr. Cooley) that the ridicule 
 was aimed at himself and his father. A pamphlet of 
 thirty or forty pages of abuse of Cooley is the retort 
 to this supposed allusion, and from a notice of the 
 pamphlet in a daily paper, we copy three or four of 
 its quoted sentences: 
 
 "If, since the publication of The American in 
 Egypt, it be a work of supererogation on his part 
 (Gliddon s) to place upon public record the petulant 
 vagaries of an upstart, to recall the petty shifts of an 
 itinerant miser, to unmask the insidious insipidities of 
 a would-be author, or to refute the falsehoods of a 
 literary abortion, it will be allowed that the deed is 
 none of his seeking, but has been fastened on him, as 
 the only course within the letter of American laws 
 whereby a poltroon can receive chastisement from 
 those who would have gladly vindicated their honor 
 by means to them far more satisfactory." 
 
 "Again Mr. Gliddon says: I grieved that, not hav 
 ing been gifted with prophetic vision, I neglected to 
 apply it [the corbash] in the Thebaid to Mr. Cooley 
 himself, for I may never have such an eligible chance 
 again. " 
 
 " Had he been in Cairo at the time [of my depar 
 ture from that city], he should have laid aside all of 
 ficial character, even at the risk of eventual censure, 
 and Mr. Cooley should not have perpetrated his pas 
 quinade in Arabia Petrea and Palestine, before he 
 [Gliddon] had hung a cowskin on those recreant 
 limbs! " 
 
 " If he [Gliddon] do not now apply a horsewhip to 
 Mr. Cooley s shoulders, it is solely because, in a com 
 munity among which both are residing, the satisfac 
 tion he should derive from a physical expression of 
 his obligations to Mr. Cooley, might prove more ex 
 pensive than the pleasure is worth." 
 
 " Our relative positions have been, and, so far as 
 may depend on him, will remain perfectly distinct ; 
 for possible affluence will never raise Mr. Cooley to 
 the social standing of a gentleman. " 
 
 " Mr. Cooley s fractiousness is confined to paper 
 pellets. Innate cowardice is a guaranty for his never 
 resorting to a different manifestation of his vicious, 
 though innocuous waspishness." 
 
 The first time Mr. Cooley saw Mr. Gliddon after 
 these expressions of restrained warlike impatience, he 
 gave him a beating. Mr. Gliddon prosecuted him for 
 assault and battery, recovered " five dollars damages," 
 and went on lecturing with high popular favor. What 
 was Mr. Cooley s remedy for being published as " no 
 gentlemen," a "miser," and a "coward," who had 
 three times escaped personal chastisement? Mr. 
 Cooley is not the "loafer" these epithets would seem 
 to make him. He is a man of fortune, and a most 
 excellent citizen, with highly-respectable connexions, 
 and a hearth blessed with the presence of beauty and 
 refinement. A duel would have brought upon him 
 a ridicule more formidable than personal danger the 
 law on the subject is a cipher and, to remove the 
 pointed finger from waiting on him at his very table, 
 
 he was obliged to chastise the man who stigmatized 
 him. 
 
 One more proof of the same new state of things, 
 though in a different line. A highly-educated young 
 lawyer in this city, in canvassing for the whigs, during 
 the late political contest, was severely whipped by 
 three members of the leading democratic club. He 
 lay a-bed a week, recovering from his bruises, and, at 
 the end of that time, walked into a meeting of the 
 club referred to and demanded a hearing. Order was 
 called, and he stated his case, and demanded of the 
 president of the club that a ring should be formed, 
 and his antagonists turned in to him one after the 
 other. It was enthusiastically agreed to, and the 
 three bullies being present, were handed over to him 
 and handsomely flogged, one after the other. Of 
 course this is not all we are to hear of such a man; 
 but who will deny, that when he comes to stand for 
 congress, he will not have counterbalanced, by this 
 act, the disadvantage of belonging to one of the most 
 aristocratic families of the city ? 
 
 We are expressing no discontent with our country. 
 We are playing the Mirror only showing the public 
 its face, that it may not forget " what manner of man" 
 it is. We have shown by facts, that there is no more 
 remedy among us, for the deepest injuries that can 
 be inflicted, than there is among wild beasts in the 
 forest. Duelling is as good as abolished, we rejoice 
 with all our hearts but it owes its abolition to the 
 country s having sunk below the chivalric level at 
 which that weed could alone find nourishment. We 
 leave to others to draw conclusions and suggest rem 
 edies. We are not reformers. We submit. But we 
 should think a man as improvident, not forthwith to be 
 rubbing up his sparring, as a gentleman would have 
 been in Charles the Second s time, to have walked 
 abroad without his sword. They have a saying in 
 the Mediterranean (from the custom of yoking a hog 
 with a donkey together for draught), "You must 
 plough with a hog if you stay in Minorca!" 
 
 Rev. Sidney Smith s description of himself from a 
 letter to a correspondent of the New York American. 
 "I am seventy-four years old; and being a canon of 
 St. Paul s, in London, and rector of a parish in the 
 country, my time is equally divided between town and 
 country. I am living amidst the best society in the 
 metropolis, am at ease in my circumstances, in tolera 
 ble health, a mild whig, a tolerating churchman, and 
 much given to talking, laughing, and noise. I dine 
 with the rich in London, and physic the poor in the 
 country passing from the sauces of Dives to the sores 
 of Lazarus. I am, upon the whole, a happy man, 
 have found the world an entertaining world, and am 
 heartily thankful to Providence for the part allotted to 
 me in it." 
 
 We can add a touch or two to the auto-sketch of 
 the witty prebend, who, we think, is one of the men 
 most thought about just now. He is a fat man, 
 weighing probably between two and three hundred 
 pounds, with a head and stomach very c/mrcA-man-like 
 (that is to say in the proportion of a large church 
 with a small belfry) a most benevolent yet humorous 
 face, and manners of most un-English boisterousness 
 and cordiality. At a party he is followed about, like 
 a shepherd by his sheep, and we remember, once, at 
 his own house, seeing Lord Byron s sister, the Hon. 
 Mrs. LEIGH, one of the laughing flock browsing upon 
 the wit that sprung up around him. One would 
 think, to see him and know his circumstances, that 
 the gods had done their best to make one of the Mr. 
 Smiths perfectly happy. 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 177 
 
 JOHN (JUINCT ADAMS. 
 
 (In reply to our respected private correspondent, and the 
 editor with his puddle against every man, and every man s 
 inkstand against him.) 
 
 When is a statesman beyond accusation 1 NOT while 
 he is still armed in the arena! NOT while he has 
 neither dismounted from the car of ambition, nor, j 
 even once, made sign to the world, that he would fain 
 stop and turn his face to his Maker ! 
 
 We are understood as referring to Mr. ADAMS. 
 We consider this present active member of congress 
 as, beyond competition, the most potent spirit in 
 America. " Venerable" he is and " his hand trem- 
 
 hles" but his venerableness is a cavern of power, and 
 
 his uplifted forefinger 
 
 trembles as the granite trembles 
 Lashed by the waves." 
 
 We know there is a level on the mountain of life, 
 where the air is pure and cold a height at which im 
 purity can scarce come, more, between the climber 
 and his God but, it is above where the lightning comes 
 from it is above the dark cloud where sleeps the 
 thunder, collected from below, and charged with in- 
 separable good and harm. This incorrupt level is, at 
 least, one step above the cloud in which Mr. Adams 
 has pertinaciously lingered ; and if his friends insist 
 that he has been long enough lost to common scrutiny 
 to have reached the upper side of the cloud of danger 
 ous power, we must be excused for pointing our con 
 ductor till he is done stirring in the thunder. 
 
 Persuade us that Mr. Adams is so " venerable" as 
 to have outlived all liability to the license described 
 by the poet : 
 
 " For now, at last, alone, he sees his might ! 
 
 Out of the compass of respective awe 
 He now begins to violate all right. 
 While no restraining fear at hand he saw." 
 
 Persuade us that a vindictive man maybe safely bowed > 
 before, for an angel, with his hand, for the first time, | 
 fetterlessly clutched on this world s thunderbolts ! | 
 Persuade us that Mr. Adams could not stoop his ; 
 statesmanship to resent, and that he is not one of those 
 dreaders of political extinction, who feel that "not to 
 be at all is worse than to be in the miserablest condi 
 tion of something." Persuade us, in short, that no 
 provocation in argument, no lull of responsibility, no 
 oracular unanswerableness, no appetite for the exercise 
 of power, no 
 
 " injury, 
 The jailer to his pity," 
 
 could tempt Mr. Adams, with his present undiminish- 
 ed mental vigor, to swerve a hair line from good by 
 weight thrown upon public measure, or by influence 
 wrongfully exercised over the fair fame of the dead 
 and the private feelings of the livingpersuade us 
 of all this, and we will allow that he is beyond 
 " venerably" beyond the remindings of human cen 
 sure ! 
 
 But now having arms-lengthed it, in reply to a 
 very formal letter we received last evening condemning 
 the admission into our columns of a communication 
 accusatory of Mr. Adams let us come closer to the 
 reader with a little of our accustomed familiarity. 
 
 We were called upon a day or two since, by one 
 of the first scholars and most intelligent of business 
 men among us this communication in his hand. 
 He left us to read it at our leisure. We, at first, 
 were unpleasantly affected by it, and slipped it upon 
 our refusal Iwiok sorry that so great a man as Mr. 
 Adams should have an unbeliever (and so weighty an 
 unbeliever), in greatness so ready for its closing seal. 
 We should have stopped at this regret, probably, and 
 only thought of the subject again when returning the 
 1-2 
 
 manuscript, but that we had been previously impress 
 ed with our friend s courage in historical justice on a 
 wholly different subject. This brought about the 
 sober second thought, and we turned it over somewhat 
 as follows : 
 
 Of the allowed UPPER TRIUMVIRATE of this country 
 CLAY, JACKSON, and ADAMS the peaceful good 
 name of the first is, just now, closed for history, by 
 his willing relinquishment of public action. The 
 world owes him the glorified repose for which he has 
 signified his desire. The second has also retired ; 
 and, though he sometimes has sent his invincible 
 banner to wave again in the political field, it would 
 be a harsh pen that would transmute, and make read 
 able by judicious eyes, the silly abuses syringed at 
 the venerable old chieftain by the Bedouin squirt of 
 the " Express." 
 
 The third Mr. Adams we could not but feel, at 
 once, wasoff the pedestal where the world had willing 
 ly placed him, and had come down, once more 
 
 " to dabble in the pettiness of fame." 
 
 (We shall be pardoned, by the way, for quoting what 
 is recalled by this chance-sprung quotation a com 
 parison which seems to us singularly to picture Mr. 
 Clay and Mr. Adams as to loftiness of public life and 
 motive.) Dante says : 
 
 The world hath left me, what it found me, pure, 
 
 And, if 1 have not gathered yet its praise, 
 I sought it not by any baser lure. 
 
 Man wrongs and time avenges ; and my name 
 May form a monument not all obscure, 
 
 Though such was not my ambition s end and aim- 
 To add to the vain-glorious list of those 
 
 Who dabble in the pettiness of fame, 
 And make men s fickle breath the wind that blows 
 
 Their sail." 
 
 We felt, at once, that this latter character this 
 
 aliquis in omnibus, nihil in singulis was, as displayed 
 
 in Mr. Adams s career, rather the mettle of invincible 
 
 ! obstinacy and unrest acting upon strong talent, than 
 
 the r\n of the clear metal of human greatness. There 
 
 was nothing in Mr. Adams s life of toil that had not 
 
 fed his innate passion for antagonism. He was a born 
 
 ascetic, in whose nostrils the fiery perils of other men 
 
 were but offensive smoke who had no temptation to 
 
 softer pleasure than a pasquinade against a political 
 
 r j va l who had made the most of the morality which 
 
 came natural to him, and which, in this land, covers 
 more sins than charity. He was not, like Clay and 
 Jackson, great in spite of the impassioned nature for 
 which we (so inconsistently), love the man and dis 
 claim his greatness. He has been the terror of his 
 time for wounds worse than murder yet gave no 
 stab that could be "stopped with parsley." 
 needed no shirt of penance to make him remem 
 that 
 
 " The virtues of great men, will only show 
 Like coy auriculas, in Alpine snow. 
 
 He has profited by men s not remembering that (in 
 the zoology of the pleasures), the sm of the sloth 
 , were a merit in the armadillo-one hatmg to move 
 and the other hating to be st.l , and bo th tested by 
 t w;. artivitv of motion. In short, Mr. Adarns 
 h he has unquestionably walked to the topmost 
 if of the temple of statesmanship, and is now the 
 third reatest man in the country that shakes under 
 "las exclusively pampered his own des.res, top 
 most and undermost, by the practice of the virtues 
 h . Inve shielded him. The toils that have advanced 
 Sm were begun in the pastime of an -istocratic 
 youth; and position, up to quite the end of that 
 - second heat" of his ambition-race, was an inheritance 
 nerseveringly thrust on him. Can such a man, while 
 ! our ditmy^ still hourly hanging on his l.ps, be 
 11 venerable" beyond the possibility of censure? 
 
178 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 With this unwilling mental review of the " boiled 
 peas" of Mr. Adams s pilgrimage to greatness un 
 willingly, as it was irresistibly and truthfully dispara 
 ging we reverted to our first picture of his present 
 position. We had been truly, and even tearfully, af 
 fected, on seeing the old man, at the late festival of 
 the Historical Society doubtless very near his grave, 
 but fighting his way determinately backward through 
 the gate of death and we expressed ourself in terms 
 of high respect and honor, when we wrote of it the 
 morning after. It is a recompensing ordinance of 
 Nature, that the glory and virtues of a great man ac 
 company his person and his sins lie where they first 
 fall in the furrow of history. It is hard to look upon 
 any man s face, and remember ill of him ; and there 
 is many a great man, who has a halo where he comes, 
 and none where he is heard of. 
 
 We remembered nothing disparaging to Mr. Adams 
 that evening. But in our office, with a shade drawn 
 over our eyes, to compel a disagreeable decision of 
 duty, we saw that the age and decrepitude, which 
 apparently exacted submission to his will, had left no 
 joint open in his harness, loosened no finger upon his 
 weapons of attack. He can defend himself he has 
 hundreds to defend him, should he be silent. His 
 much talked-of "diary" lacks no evidence that truth 
 can furnish ; and if the charges against him are " mere 
 cobwebs in a church bell," the best of prayers is, that 
 he may burst them with one stroke of living triumph, 
 and not leave even that slight violence to be done by 
 the knell of his departure. 
 
 The last thought that came to us, and the only one 
 we thought necessary fora preface to the communica 
 tion, was, that now would probably be the time chosen 
 by Mr. Adams himself for denying (and they MUST 
 BE DKNIED !) these indictments against his greatness. 
 The five years silence that will follow his death, had 
 better harden over no ulcer to be re-opened and 
 cleansed, to the world s offence, hereafter. We took 
 some credit to ourself, for simply saying this, without 
 recording what we have been compelled to record now 
 the reasons of our thinking gravely of the com 
 munication. We would have taken the other side 
 and entered into the defence quite as willingly but 
 the writer, as well as Mr. Adams, is a man not to be 
 denied a hearing. We may perhaps be permitted to 
 close this article written in a most unwonted vein, 
 for us with a little editorial comfort from Shak- 
 spere : 
 
 " What we oft do best, 
 By sick interpreters, or weak ones, is 
 Not ours, or not allowed ; what worst, as oft, 
 Hitting a grosser quality, is cried up 
 For our best act. But if we shall stand still 
 For fear our motion will be mocked or carped at, 
 We should take root here where we sit, or sit 
 For statues only. 
 
 " MONEY ARTICLE" ON THE OPERA. We were de 
 lighted to hear it whispered about at the opera, last 
 night, that there is a movement among the people of 
 taste and influence to " set up," by a liberal subscrip 
 tion, the present excellent, but impoverished and 
 struggling operatic company. The first thought that 
 occurs to any one hearing of this, would, probably, be 
 a surprise that, with such full houses as have graced 
 the opera, they have not been thriving to the fullest 
 extent of reasonable expectation. We understand, 
 however, that it is quite the contrary. When the 
 present company commenced their engagement, there 
 was an arrearage of gas expenses to be paid up, the 
 license was to be renewed, at $500; and the house, 
 even when full, gives but a slender dividend over the 
 expenses of the orchestra, scenery, lights, stage prop 
 erties, and dresses. At the onlv " division of the 
 
 spoils" that has yet been made, Madame Pico re 
 ceived but sixty dollars so insufficient a sum being 
 all that this admirable singer has received for several 
 months waiting, and one month s playing and singing ! 
 Her dresses alone cost her twice the sum! Borghese 
 received twice this amount, but the other performers, 
 of course, much less even than Pico. 
 
 In the history of the first introduction of Italian 
 music into England, in 1692, it is stated that the sing 
 ers (an " Italian lady," a basso, and a soprano} were 
 taken up by two spirited women of fashion, wives of 
 noblemen, who arranged benefit concerts at their own 
 houses, for the " charming foreigners," and inviting 
 their friends as if to a ball demanding Jive guineas 
 for each invitation! The rage for these expensive 
 concerts is recorded as a curious event of the time, 
 and it was a grievous mark of unfashionableness not 
 to be honored with a ticket. 
 
 The American public is a hard master to these 
 children of the sun. They take no comfort among 
 us, if they lay up no money. Our climate is both 
 dangerous and disagreeable ! Our usages, and preju 
 dices, and manner of life, all at variance with theirs! 
 Their hearts are bleak here, and their pockets at 
 least should have a warm lining ! And (by the way) 
 see what a difference there is, even between our coun 
 try and chilly England, in the way society treats 
 them! We chance to possess an autograph letter of 
 JULIA GRISI S, given us by the lady to whom it was 
 addressed a daughter of Lucien Bonaparte married 
 to an English nobleman. Look at the position this 
 little chance record reveals of a prima donna in Eng 
 land : 
 
 " AlMABLE ET TRES CHERE PRINCESSE ! 
 
 " Je suis vraiment desolee de ne pouvoir aller ce soir chez 
 Lady Morgan. Je dine chez le Prince Esterhazy ou je dois 
 passer la soiree. Demain au soir, j ai un concert pour M. La- 
 porte, le reste de la semaine je suis libre et tout </ vos ordres. 
 Si vous croyez de combiner quelque-choze avec Lady Morgan, 
 comptez sur moi ! Domain je passerai chez Lady Morgan 
 pour faire mes excuses en personne. 
 
 " Que dirai-je de ce magnifique voile ! Que la geuerosite e 
 1 amabilile sont innees dans la grandefamille. 
 
 " Croyez toujours, madame la princesse, a tout le devoue- 
 ment de votre servante, JULIA GRISI. 
 
 We chance to have another dramatic autograph, a 
 note of LEONTINE FAY S, given us by the same noble 
 lady (and we may say here, apropos, that we should 
 be very happy to show these, and others, to persons 
 curious in autographs) showing the same necessary 
 reliance ou special patronage : 
 
 " THEATRE FRANCAIS. 
 
 " M lle Leontine Fay a 1 honneur de presenter ses humble 
 respects a Lady D , et de solliciter sa puissante protection 
 
 rr la soiree qui aura lieu a son benefice Vendredi, 10 Juliet, 
 choix des pieces et les noms des artistes qui veulent bien 
 contribuer a son succes liu font esperer que miladi, qui aime 
 a encourager les arts, daignera 1 honorer de sa presence." 
 
 This is dated from the French theatre in London, 
 but we treasured up the autograph with no little ava 
 rice, for Leontine Fay was in the height of her glory, 
 in Paris, when we first went abroad, and, to us, she 
 seemed a new revelation of things adorable. She 
 was made for the stage by nature as scenery is 
 adapted by coarse lines for distant perspective. Her 
 eyes were dark, luminous, and of a size that gave 
 room for the whole audience to "repose on velvet" in 
 
 them. But we wander! We resume our subject, 
 
 after saying that we never envied prince or king, till 
 we heard, at that time, that Leontine Fay passion 
 ately loved the prince royal the young duke of Or 
 leans. He is dead, she is grown ugly, and we are left 
 to admire Pico. " Much after this fashion," etc., etc. 
 
 Grave people (though by no means all grave peo 
 ple) are inclined to bid the opera " stand aside" as a 
 ! thing unholy. We think this is a mistake. We be- 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 179 
 
 lieve music to be medicinal to body and soul. Wilh 
 entire reverence, we take leave to remind the religious 
 objector of the cure of Saul, and to quote the pas 
 sage : 
 
 " But the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil 
 spirit from the Lord troubled him. And Saul s servants said 
 unto him, Behold now, an evil spirit troubleth thee. Let our 
 Lord now command thy servants which are before thee, to 
 seek out a man who is a cunning player on a harp ; and it 
 shall come to pass, when the evil spirit from God is upon 
 thre, that he shall play with his hand, and thou shall be well. 
 
 " And it came to pass that when the evil spirit from God 
 was upon Saul, that David took a harp and played with his 
 hand : so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and the evil 
 spirit departed from him. 
 
 The medicinal value attached to music by the an 
 cients is also shown in the education of Moses at the 
 court of Pharaoh. Clemens Alexandrinus has re 
 corded that " Moses was instructed by the Egyptians 
 in arithmetic, geometry, rhythm, harmony, but, above 
 all, in medicine and music." Miriam sang and danced 
 in costume, and David " in his linen ephod," and the 
 only reproach made by Laban to Jacob, for carrying 
 off his two daughters, was, that he did not give him 
 the opportunity to send him away "with mirth and with 
 songs, with tabret and with harp." We refer to these 
 historic proofs, to remind the objecting portion of the 
 community that scenic musical representation was a 
 vent for domestic and religious feeling among the an 
 cients, and that, in an opera particularly one unac 
 companied by modern ballet there is no offence to 
 mor;il feeling, but, on the contrary, authorized good. 
 
 To revert to our purpose, in this article (chrono 
 logically, somewhat spready !) We do not know 
 what shape the aroused liberality of the wealthy clas 
 ses of New York will take, but we should think that 
 Madame Pico (as she has given us the most pleas 
 ure, at the greatest expense to herself, and is an un 
 protected and exemplary woman, alone among us) 
 should have a special benefit by subscription concert, 
 or some other means as exclusive to herself. We 
 suggest it but we presume we are not the first it has 
 occurred to. Will the wealthy gentlemen who are 
 nightly seen in the dress-circles, delighted with her 
 exquisite music, turn the subject over at their luxuri 
 ous firesides? 
 
 stract principles to which there is no opposition 
 nothing is dearer to the heart than opinions for which 
 we have been called on to contend and suffer. A 
 free press, therefore, keeping open gate for all sub 
 jects not prohibited by law and morals, is far safer 
 than a press over-guarded in its admissions to the 
 public eye. 
 
 Having thus repeated, as it were, a page of the 
 very spelling-book of freedom, let us bespeak, of our 
 subscribers, a let-off, as far as we personally are con 
 cerned, for any decent opinions expressed under the 
 head of " correspondence." We throw open that part 
 of our paper. It is interesting to know what people 
 think who do not agree with us. We court variety. 
 We would not (in anything but love) be called a big- 
 ot. New opinions, even the truest, are reluctantly 
 | received, and, we think, very often culpably distrusted. 
 As far, therefore, as the. yea or nay may go, on any 
 proper subject, we care not a fig which side writes 
 first to us. and we hereby disclaim responsibility for 
 all articles under "owr correspondence, 1 " except on the 
 score of morals and readableness. 
 
 To AND ABOUT OUR CORRESPONDENTS. We Wish 
 
 to "define our position" with regard to our corre 
 spondents and their opinions. 
 
 Were an editor to profess an agreement of opinion 
 with every writer for his paper, he would either claim 
 a superhuman power of decision on all possible sub 
 jects, at first sight, or he would exclude communica 
 tions on all subjects, except his own mental hobbies 
 and matters of personal study and acquaintance. To 
 avoid both horns of this fool s dilemma, he opens a 
 correspondence column, in which anything (short of an 
 invasion of a cardinal virtue, or violation of a palpable 
 truth) may very properly and irresponsibly appear. 
 The only questions the editor asks himself are, whether 
 it will interest his readers, and whether it is worth its 
 space in the paper. 
 
 But there are people for whom it is necessary that 
 we should go back to the very catechism of political 
 economy, and show upon what principle is founded 
 the expediency of a FREE PRESS a press untrammel 
 led by a king in a kingdom, and by the sovereign re 
 publicans in a republic. 
 
 Opinions have been well likened to steam power 
 less when diffused abroad, resistless when shut in and 
 denied expansion. The unconscious apostleship of 
 Mr. Adams procuring an explosion in favor of aboli 
 tion, by his obstinacy in provoking an undue suppres 
 
 THE OPERA. The PURITAM is one of those ope 
 ras with which musical criticism has little or nothing 
 to do. If only tolerably sung, the feeling of the audi 
 ence goes on before making no stay with fault-find 
 ing. The applause last night, after a most limping 
 and ill-paced duett between Tomasi and Valtellina, 
 | was tempestuous ; and Antognini, in one passage, ran 
 off his voice, and was gone for several notes in some 
 unknown region, and yet, on spreading out his hands 
 immediately after, there was great approbation by the 
 audience ! Great effort was made by the audience to 
 encore " Suoni la tromba" but the two bases thought 
 more basely of their bases than the audience, and did 
 not repeat it. Is there no way to implore Valtellina 
 to abate a little of his overreaching of voice, in that 
 superb invocation ? He overdoes it terribly. 
 
 We are not writing in very good humor, we are 
 afraid but the enthusiasm of a crammed house needs 
 no propping. We would not find fault if they needed 
 our praise. BORGHESE did well but will do better at 
 the next representation. She would sing with fuller 
 tone for a little egg beat up with brandy. We longed 
 to unreef her voice in some way croud a little more 
 abandon into it. She acted as she always does to a 
 charm. 
 
 Pico was in one of the proscenium boxes, looking 
 very charming, and evidently enjoying the whole op 
 era with uu-envious enthusiasm. She went with a 
 bouquet for Borghese so said a bird in our ear. 
 
 OLE BULL S NIAGARA. 
 
 (AN HOUR BEFORE THE PERFORMANCE.) 
 
 Saddle, as. of course, we are, under any very striking 
 event, we find ourselves bestridden, now and then, 
 with a much wider occupancy than the plumb-line 
 of a newspaper column. Ole Bull possesses us over 
 our tea-table; he will possess us over our supper- 
 table his performance of Niagara equi-dietant between 
 
 the two. We must think of him and his violin for 
 this coming hour. Let us take pen and ink into our 
 confidence. 
 
 The "origin of the harp" has been satisfactorily 
 recorded. We shall not pretend to put forward a 
 credible story of the origin of the violin ; but we wish 
 to name a circumstance in natural history. The 
 house-cricket that chirps upon our hearth, is well 
 
 sion of the subject is a striking illustration of this, known as belonging to the genus Pneumora. Its in- 
 Nothing makes less impression on the mind than ab- | sect si/.e consists almost entirely of a pellucid abdomen. 
 
180 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 crossed with a number of transverse ridges. This, 
 when inflated, resembles a bladder, and upon its tight 
 ened ridges the insect plays like a fiddler, by drawing 
 its thin legs over them. The cricket is, in fact, a 
 living violin; and as a fiddler is "scarce himself" 
 without his violin, we may call the cricket a stray 
 portion of a fiddler. 
 
 Ole Bull " is himself" with his violin before him 
 but without it, the commonest eye must remark that 
 he is of the invariable build of the restless searchers 
 after something lost the build of enthusiasts that is 
 to say, chest enormous, and stomach, if anything, 
 rather wanting ! The great musician of Scripture, it 
 will be remembered, expressed his mere mental afflic 
 tion by calling out "My bowels! my bowels!" and, 
 after various experiments on twisted silk, smeared 
 with the white of eggs, and on single threads of the 
 silk-worm, passed through heated oil, the animal fibre 
 of cat- gut has proved to be the only string that answers 
 to the want of the musician. Without trying to re 
 duce these natural phenomena to a theory (except by 
 suggesting that Ole Bull may very properly take the 
 cricket as an emblem of his instinctive pursuit), we 
 must yield to an ominous foreboding for this evening. 
 The objection to cat-gut as a musical string is its 
 sensibility to moisture ; and in a damp atmosphere it 
 is next to impossible to keep it in tune. The string 
 comes honestly enough by its sensitiveness (as any 
 one will allow who has seen a cat cross a street after 
 a shower) but, if the cat of Ole Bull s violin had the 
 least particle of imagination in her, can what is left of 
 her be expected to discourse lovingly of her natural 
 antipathy a water-hU 1 
 
 But before we draw on our gloves to go over to 
 Palmo s a serious word as to what is to be attempted 
 to-night. 
 
 Old Bull is a great creature. He is fitted, if ever 
 mortal man was, to represent the attendant spirit in 
 Milton, who 
 
 " Well knew to still the wild woods when they roared 
 And hush the moaning winds ;" 
 
 but it seems to us that, without a printed programme, 
 showing what he intends to express besides the mere 
 sound of waters, he is trusting far too rashly to the 
 comprehension of his audience and their power of 
 musical interpretation. He is to tell a story by music ! 
 Will it be understood? 
 
 We remember being very much astonished, a year 
 or two ago, at finding ourself able to read the thoughts 
 of a lady of this city, as she expressed them in an ad 
 mirable improvisation upon the piano. The delight 
 we experienced in this surprise induced us to look 
 into the extent to which musical meaning had been 
 perfected in Europe. We found it recorded that a 
 Mons. Sudre, a violinist of Paris, had once brought 
 the expression of his instrument to so nice a point 
 that he " could convey information to a stranger in 
 another room," and it is added that, upon the evidence 
 thus given of the capability of music, it was proposed 
 to the French government to educate military bands 
 in the expression of orders and heroic encouragements 
 in battle! Hayden is criticised by a writer on music 
 as having failed in attempting (in his great composi 
 tion " The Seasons") to express " the dawn of day," 
 "the husbandman s satisfaction," "the rustling of 
 leaves," " the running of a brook," "the coming on 
 of winter," "thick fogs," etc., etc. The same writer 
 laughs at a commentator on Mozart, who, by a " sec 
 ond violin quartette in D minor," imagines himself 
 informed how a loving female felt on being abandoned, 
 and thought the music fully expressed that it was 
 Dido ! Beethoven undertook to convey distinct pic 
 tures in his famous Pastoral Symphony, but it was 
 thought at the time that no one would have dis- 
 
 the country and his musical sensations while sitting 
 beside a river unless previously told what was com 
 ing ! 
 
 Still, Ole Bull is of a primary order of genius, and 
 he is not to wait upon precedent. He has come to 
 our country, an inspired wanderer from a far away 
 shore, and our greatest scenic feature has called on 
 him for an expression of its wonders in music. He 
 may be inspired, however, and we, who listen, still 
 ! be disappointed. He may not have felt Niagara as we 
 | did. He may have been subdued where a meaner 
 spirit would be aroused as 
 
 " Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." 
 (Seven o clock, and time to go.) 
 
 (AFTER THE PERFORMANCE.) 
 
 We believe that we have heard a transfusion into 
 music not of " Niagara," which the audience seemed 
 bona-fide to expect, but of the pulses of the human 
 heart AT Niagara. We had a prophetic boding of the 
 result of calling the piece vaguely " Niagara" the 
 listener furnished with no " argument," as a guide 
 through the wilderness of " treatment" to which the 
 subject was open. This mistake allowed, however, 
 it must be said that Ole Bull has, genius-like, refused 
 to mis-interpret the voice within him refused to play 
 the charlatan, and " bring the house down" as he 
 might well have done by any kind of " uttermost," from 
 the drums and trumpets of the orchestra. 
 
 The emotion at Niagara is all but mute. It is a 
 " small, still voice" that replies within us to the thun 
 der of waters. The musical mission of the Norwegian 
 was to represent the insensate element as it was to 
 him to a human soul, stirred in its seldom-reached 
 depths by the call of power. It was the answer to 
 Niagara that he endeavored to render in music not 
 the call ! We defer attempting to read further, or 
 rightly, this musical composition till we have heard 
 it again. It was received by a crowded audience, in 
 breathless silence, but with no applause. 
 
 Miss JULIA NORTHALL S first appearance as a public 
 singer was very triumphant. If her heart had not 
 kept beating just under her music-maker, she would 
 have made much better music, however. When we 
 tell the lovely debutante, that persons in besieged 
 fortresses can detect the direction of the enemy s ap 
 proach under ground, by placing sanded drums on 
 the surface, which betray the strokes of the mining 
 pickaxes by the vibrations of the particles, she will 
 understand how the beating of her heart may disturb 
 the timbre of her voice to say nothing of the disturb 
 ance in the air by the accelerated beating of the 
 anxious hearts of her admirers! She has great ad 
 vantages a rich voice deep down with an upper 
 chamber in it (what the musicians call a contralto 
 
 tinguished between his musical sensations on visiting I. man is stylish, now, 
 
 sfogato), and a kind of personal beauty susceptible of 
 great stage embellishments. " Modest assurance" 
 (with a preponderance of assurance if anything), is her 
 great lack. 
 
 Sanquirico sang admirably but his black coat 
 spoiled it for all but the cognoscenti. 
 
 We came out of the opera-house amid a shower of 
 expressions of disappointment, and we beg pardon of 
 " the town" for remembering what Antigenides of 
 Athens said to a musical pupil who was once too little 
 applauded. " The next time you play," said Anti 
 genides, "shall be to me and the Muses." 
 
 THE TWO NEW FASHIONS, WHITE CRAVATS AND 
 LADIES TARPAULINS. Here and there a country 
 reader will, perhaps, require to be informed that no 
 
 in the evening, without a 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 181 
 
 white cravat. To those who frequent the opera this 
 will be uo news, of course ; us no eye could have 
 failed to track the "milky way," around the semi 
 circle, from stage-box to stage-box. The fact thus 
 recorded, however, we proceed to the diagnosis of the 
 fashion (aud of another fashion, of which we shall 
 presently speak) premising only that we are driven 
 to the discussion of these comparatively serious 
 themes, by the frivolous character of other news, aud 
 the temporary public surfeit of politics, scandal, and 
 murder. 
 
 The white cravat was adopted two years since, in 
 London, as the mark of a party " Young England." 
 Our readers know, of course, that for ten years, they 
 have been worn only by servants in that country, and 
 that a black coat and white cravat were the unmis 
 takable uniform of a family butler. The Cravat hav 
 ing been first worn as the distinction of a certain re- i 
 forming club, in Cromwell s parliament, however, the ! 
 author of Vivian Grey adopted it as the insignium of j 
 the new political party, of which he is the acknowl- i 
 edged leader; and, as the king of the white cravats, he ! 
 has set a fashion for America. The compliment we 
 pay him is the greater, by the way, that we do not 
 often copy the tight-legged nation in our wearables. I 
 
 It was established in Brummell s time that a white | 
 cravat could not be successfully tied, except upon the 
 critical turn preceding the reaction of a glass of cham 
 pagne and a cup of green tea. A felicitous dash of 
 inspired dexterity is the only thing to be trusted, and 
 failure is melancholy! As to dressiness, a white cravat i 
 is an intensifier making style more stylish, and the 
 lack of it more observable ; but artistically it is only [ 
 becoming to light complexions by its superior white 
 ness, producing an effect of warmth on a fair skin, | 
 but impoverishing the brilliancy of a dark one. As a 
 sign of the times, the reappearance of the white cra 
 vat is the forerunner of a return to old-fashioned 
 showiness in evening dress, and, as the wheel comes ] 
 round again, we shall revive tights, buckles, and shoes 
 expelling the levelling costume of black cravat and 
 boots, and making it both expensive and troublesome 
 to look like a gentleman after candlelight. So tilts 
 the plank in republics aristocratic luxury going up 
 as aristocratic politics are going down ! 
 
 But what shall we say of trains and tarpaulins for 
 ladies wear! Jack s hat, copied exactly in white satin, 
 is the rage for a head-dress, now (worn upon the 
 side of the head with a ruinous feather) and a velvet 
 train is about becoming indispensable to a chaperon ! 
 It will be a bold poor man that will dare to marry a 
 lady ere long what with feathers and trains and 
 pages wages ! We rejoice that we had our fling in 
 the era of indifferent pocket. Keep the aristocracy 
 unemployed on politics for another administration or 
 two, and we shall drive matrimony to the extremities 
 of society none but the very rich, or verypoor, able 
 to afford the luxury ! 
 
 MKRRY CHRISTMAS. Our paper of this evening 
 (Christmas eve) is to be read by the light of the 
 " YULE LOG," or whatever else represents the bright j 
 centre around which, dear reader! your family does 
 its Christmas assembling. We shall perhaps amuse 
 you by suggesting a comparison between the elegant 
 lamp, which diffuses its light over your apartment, > 
 and the expedient resorted to by your English ances 
 tors to brighten the hall for their Christmas evening. 
 " I myself," says an old historian, " have seen table 
 cloths, napkins, and towels, which being taken foul \ 
 from the table, have been cast into the fire, and there 
 they burned before our faces upon the hearth." This, 
 of course, was by way of illustrating the greasy habits 
 of our ancestors at table, and gives an amusing piquan- 
 
 cy to the injunction of wisdom that we should cherish 
 the " lights of the past." 
 
 There are two points of freedom in which we envy 
 the condition of slaves at the south FREEDOM from 
 responsibility at all times, and FREEDOM /ro//i all man 
 ner of work from Christmas to New Year. " The 
 negroes" (says a writer on the festivals, games, and 
 amusements, in the southern states), " enjoy a week s 
 recreation every winter, including Christmas and New 
 Year s ; during which they prosecute their plays and 
 sports in a very ludicrous and extravagant manner, 
 dressing and masking in the most grotesque style, and 
 having, in fact, a complete carnival." We confess 
 this let-up from the pressure of toil is enviable. The 
 distinction between horse and man, in the latter s re 
 quiring mental as well as bodily rest, should be legis 
 lated upon all business barred with penalties, except 
 for the necessaries of life, during the Christinas holy- 
 days and during another week somewhere in June. 
 We are a monotonous people in this country. The 
 festivals of the Jews occupied a quarter of the year, 
 and eighty days were given to festivals among the 
 ancient Greeks! We do not fairly keep more than 
 one in New York New Year s day the only day, 
 except Sundays, when newspapers are not issued and 
 shops are all shut. 
 
 We are sorry we can not paragraph America into 
 more feeling for holydays, but we may perhaps prevent 
 a gradual desuetude of even keeping Christmas, by 
 heaping up our regrets when it comes round. We 
 shall join the procession of visitors to the toy-shops 
 aud confectioners to-night, and we think, by the way, 
 that these rounds to the gift-venders, might be made 
 exceedingly agreeable. "GuiON," "SANDS," "THOMP 
 SON," " TIFFANY & YOUNG," " STUART S CANDY 
 PALACE," " BONFANTI S," and "THE ALHAMRA," are 
 beautiful places for a range of soirees in hat and bon 
 net, and we went this round last Christmas eve with 
 great amusement. Happy children are beautiful 
 sights, and we can still see bons-bons with their eyes. 
 
 READER ! a merry Christmas ! and let us repeat 
 once more to you the old stanza (tho* old Trinity is 
 no longer what it was when this was written) : 
 
 " Hark the merry bells chiming from Trinity, 
 
 Charm the ear with their musical din. 
 Telling all, throughout the vicinity, 
 
 Holyday gambols are now to begin ! 
 Friends and relations, with fond salutations, 
 
 And warm gratulations, together appear, 
 While lovers and misses with holyday kisses 
 
 Greet merry Christmas and happy New Year." 
 
 THE OTHER SIDE OF BROADWAY. It is time that 
 the decline of the era of shopping a-foot was fairly an 
 nounced as at rtsfall an epoch gone over to history. 
 Washington Hall has been purchased as a property 
 no longer objectionable from its being the other side 
 of mud, and is to be speedily converted into the most 
 magnificent "ladies store" within the limits of silk 
 and calico. We are credibly assured that this last 
 assertion is fully borne out by the plans of Mr. Stuart, 
 the projector. No shop in London or Paris is to 
 surpass it. But the best part of it remains to be told : 
 
 The building is to have a court for carnages in the 
 
 centre, so that shoppers will thunder in at a porte 
 cochere, like visiters to the grand duke of Tuscany ! 
 There will of course be a spacious door on the street, 
 for those who can cross Broadway without a carriage 
 (poor zealous things!) but the building is con 
 trived for those to whom the crowded side of the street 
 is rather an objection, and who wish their hammer- 
 cloths to stand out of the spatter of omnibuses while 
 they shop ! ! There is a comment on " the times" 
 in this plan of Mr. Stuart s which we commend to the 
 notice of some other parish. 
 
182 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 Farther down-town, however (156) the shilling side 
 of Broadway has been embellished by a new store, in- , 
 tended for all comers and customers, and certainly an j 
 ornament to the town occupied by BEEBK & Cos- I 
 TAR, hatters. No more showy and sumptuous saloon | 
 could possibly be contrived than this " hatter s shop;" ! 
 and it is very well that they keep one article of ladies [ 
 wear (riding-hats) for it is altogether too pretty a j 
 place for a monastery. The specimen hats stand on j 
 rows of marble tables, and the room is lined with mir- I 
 rors and white panels the effect very much that of a 
 brilliant French cafe. As to the article of merchan- j 
 disc, Beebe & Costar have made tributary the " lines i 
 of beauty" to a degree which gives their hats a most 
 peculiar elegance of shape, and it is worth the while 
 of those who are nice in their tea-men, to " look in." 
 
 Apropos : The only god who employed a hatter j 
 was Mercury why is not that " English clever" 
 deity, with his winged hat, installed as a hatter s 
 crest ? The propriety of it must have occurred to the 
 hatters. Possibly we are so mercurial a nation, that 
 it was thought impolitic no man wanting any more 
 mercury in his hat at least when it is on. We see 
 that the annual hatters ball comes off on the 26th. 
 May we venture to suggest as topics of discussion in 
 the quadrilles 1st, Mercury s claims to the arms of 
 the assembly, and, 2d, what peltry was probably used 
 by the hatter of Olympus, and 3d, whether (as it was 
 a winged hat) it must not have been made of the only 
 quadruped that flies fur, the flying squirrel? "Curi 
 ous questions, coz !" 
 
 English (and Americans) are proud, but not vain ; 
 
 i the French are very vain, but have little pride. 
 
 "Again: we like the Englishman s fondness for 
 
 j white linen, and in this we can not imitate him too 
 closely. It is not only in the evening, as with the 
 Frenchman, that he puts on his fine linen, but at 
 rising he must have it. Though he may wear a 
 shaggy morning coat, his under garments must be 
 
 I spotless. You may know him when travelling on the 
 
 I continent, by the unrivalled whiteness of his linen. 
 
 j The same cleanliness makes the white cravat prefer- 
 
 ! able. It has its recommendation in being a clean 
 fashion for no gentleman can wear it more than 
 once ; whereas, the black satin cravat, which your 
 correspondent so much extols, is an exceedingly dirly 
 fashion for, after dancing, the perspiration settles in 
 
 | the satin ; and with the dust in the room, &c., it be 
 comes unfit to wear more than twice, whereas the 
 French wear their cravats until they are worn out." 
 
 FRANCE versus ENGLAND, or the BLACK CRAVAT 
 versus THE WHITK. We have received, in a very j 
 Loudon-club-y handwriting, a warlike reply to the 
 note we published lately from a French gentleman on 
 the subject of the white cravat. The two nations 
 seem to have separated into hostile array on the sub 
 ject. Our English correspondent certainly brings 
 cogent arguments in favor of the white, and indeed 
 of English costume generally. After asking very 
 naturally what our French correspondent s phrase, 
 "perfidious Albion, 1 had to do with it, and suggesting 
 that "black cravat" had better "reflect on the late 
 conduct of the French in the Pacific," he goes on 
 with the matter in question : 
 
 "The P^nglish fashion for gentlemen s dress is never 
 to sacrifice comfort to appearance, which the French 
 fashion invariably does; the clothes of the English 
 are loosely made, so that every limb of the body is 
 free. You see nothing in the dress that can be called 
 effeminate ; they appear to eschew everything that 
 approaches the Miss Nancy school ; no man with 
 them is considered well-dressed, however costly his 
 attire, if he be not manly in his appearance. Now, a 
 Frenchman s clothes are made to fit so tight, that it 
 is impossible for him to look at his ease. A French 
 man dressed looks as if he had just come out of a 
 band-box; he looks like a pretty doll which you see 
 in the shop windows in Paris. To hand a lady a 
 chair, he runs the danger of bursting his coat, or 
 cracking his waist-band ; he can not stoop to pick up 
 a lady s fan, without danger to his inexpressibles. 
 The Frenchman dressed is no longer the easy, pliant, 
 laughing man, that we know him to be when in dis 
 habille but he is stiff, unnatural, ind effeminate. 
 
 "The English fashion abhors display ; the French, 
 on the contrary, invites it. With the Frenchman 
 dress is a great affair, for he intends to make a sensa 
 tion. With the Englishman it is but secondary, for 
 he does not believe that mere dress can have any in 
 fluence. You may form an idea of the sentiments 
 
 i;i > 
 in 
 
 of both nations from this national character the i 
 
 The sun "kept Christmas" yesterday, by appearing 
 in his best." We never saw a more joyous, kindly, 
 i holyday quality of sunshine. All who had hearts to 
 I go abroad with, went abroad, and a-Broadway was a 
 long aisle of beauty in nature s roofless cathedral. 
 j God help all who were not happy yesterday ! We 
 I picked up a bit of real-life poetry (by-the-way) in a 
 very unexpected place yesterday a confectioner s 
 shop ! The circumstance is at such a distance from 
 poetry, that the flash comes before the report a 
 laugh before the eye is moistened. At Thompson s, 
 the best confectioner of the city, we saw a large pound- 
 j cake, with a figure of a nun standing on it, dressed in 
 j white, and we were told that a cake had just gone to 
 I the sisters of the Barclay-street convent, with this lit- 
 tie figure in mourning instead of white sent by a 
 young catholic lady who had just lost her mother. 
 As a conveyance of a thought, intended to be en 
 tirely between the mourner and the sympathising sis 
 ters, we think this was very beautiful. Perhaps we 
 spoil it by giving the coarse-minded a chance to ridi 
 cule it. 
 
 We wish to introduce to the reader the word tonal- 
 it]). Let us show its availableness at once by using 
 it to express the secret of Pico s overwhelming effect 
 upon the audience on Saturday evening. As musical 
 people know, melody is the natural "concord of sweet 
 sounds," and harmony may be tolerably defined as the 
 artificial creation of surprises to vary melody. Mali- 
 bran saw, for instance, that one of her rustic audiences 
 could feel melody, but was incapable of appreciating 
 harmony, when they tumultuously encored her in 
 " Home, Sweet Home," and let her " Di tanti pal- 
 pili" go by without applause! It takes more than 
 one hearing, for persons not learned in music, to ap 
 preciate the harmony of an opera, though if there be 
 in it an air of simple melody, a child will listen to 
 it, for the first time, with delight. But there are op 
 eras, much cried up, where the melody and harmony 
 are not in TONE ; and though people may be made to 
 like them against nature (as they like olives), the ma 
 jority of the audience will feel incredulous as to its 
 being " good music." (We were two or three years 
 opera-going before these unwritten distinctions got 
 through our dura mater, dear reader; and if you are 
 not in a hurry, perhaps you will pay us the compli 
 ment of reading them over again, while we mend our 
 pen for a new paragraph.) 
 
 Pico sang a part in the opera of Saturday night, 
 which, in our opinion, owed its electric power to three 
 tonalities: tone No. 1, between the harmony and mel 
 ody of the music tone No. 2, between the music 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 183 
 
 and her own impression on the public as a woman 
 and tone No. 3, between the opera and the mood of 
 the public for that evening. 
 
 Tone No. 1 is already explained. Tone No. 3 was, 
 perhaps, a combination of pleasurable accidents 
 both the donnas in one piece, the house crammed 
 with fashion, and graced with more beauty than usual, 
 and (last, not least) the change in the weather. A sud 
 den south wind in December, makes even fashion af 
 fectionate, and, with such influences in the air, mu- ; 
 sic that is "the food of love," may "play on" with 
 entire confidence as to its reception. Of tone No. 2 jj 
 (the p;irt in Donizetti s opera) we wish to speak more 
 at large, but we can not trust ourself afloat with it in ^ 
 a paragraph already under headway. 
 
 Donizetti is commonly rated as a trite and not very j 
 vigorous composer. Asa musical convoy, he never ; 
 drops the slowest sailor below the horizon. Bur, that 
 he lets his heart steer the music whenever he can per 
 suade science to give up the helm, everybody must ( 
 have felt who has embarked a thought in one of his ; 
 operas. The music written down for Orsini (Pico s 
 part) expresses the character that Slr-ikspere s words 
 give to Mercutio the prince of thoughtless good jj 
 fellows, careless, loveable, and amusing. Between 
 this and Pico s personal qualities (as made legible | ; 
 across the footlights), there is a tonality the town has j 
 felt a joyous recognition, by the audience, of a com- : 
 plete correspondence between the good-fellow music 
 she sings and the good fellow nature has made her. j 
 There is a class of such women some of them the 
 most captivating of their sex, and every one of them 
 the acknowledged "best creature in the world" of the |. 
 circle she lives in. Here and there a person will un- jj 
 derstand better what we mean if we mention that | 
 Pico sat in the proscenium-box on the night of Oie 
 Bull s concert, and, with a full house looking at her j 
 with eager curiosity, sat and munched her under-lip 
 most unbecomingly, in perfect unconsciousness of .| 
 any need of forbearing to do in public what she would , 
 have done if she were alone! We must say we like 
 women that forget themselves ! 
 
 We heard twenty judicious persons comment on 
 the opera of Saturday, and with but one expression 
 of never, in any country, having enjoyed opera more. 
 The universal tonality, to which we have tried to play 
 the interpreter, is partly a matter of coincidence, and 
 may not happen again; but we assure the two donnas 
 and our friend Signor Sacchi, that with the remem 
 brance of it, and with them both in the glorious opera \ 
 of Semiramide, next week, they will want a larger 
 house than Palmo s. 
 
 And, by-the-way, this amiable "Quintius Curtius" 
 of the opera, who has procured us the luxury of a 
 temple of music by jumping into the gulf with his 
 $47,000 excellent Signor Palmo claims of the pub 
 lic a slight return; no more than that they should ac 
 knowledge the fact of his disaster ! It has been doubt- j! 
 ed that he has lost money, and some of the world s 
 cruelty has been dealt out to him in the shape of a 
 sneer at his sincerity. We copy (literally) the ex 
 planation sent us on the subject, and bespeak for him 
 present public regard, and some future more tangible 
 demonstration : 
 
 "Being attracted by a statement made in the Mir 
 ror in reference to the Italian company at Palmo s 
 opera-house, showing the receipts and disbursements 
 for twelve nights, leaving but a small amount to be 
 divided by the company, after having as good and bet 
 ter houses than when under the auspices of Signor j 
 Palmo, whose honesty has been imputed to have made 
 money, and made the public and his creditors believe 
 the contrary, now the mystery is solved, and the pub 
 lic should be satisfied of Signor Palmo s integrity, 
 who is ready to show by bills paid, and his books, that 
 he lias lost $47,000 the last four years." 
 
 SUPPER AFTER THE OPERA. 
 
 Private room over the Mirror office, corner of Ann and 
 Nassau Supper on the round table, and brigadier 
 mixing summat and water Flagg, the artist, fa 
 tiguing Oie salad with a paper-folder Devil in wait 
 ing Quarter past ten, and enter " Yours Truly" 
 from the opera. 
 
 Brig. Here he comes, like a cloud dropping from 
 Olympus -charged with Pico-tricity ! Boy (to the 
 " devil"), stick a steel pen in my hat for a conductor! 
 Now let him rain ! 
 
 Flagg. Echo let him reign ! 
 
 Yours Truly (looking at the salad-dish). Less 
 gamboge for me, if you please, my dear artist! Be 
 merciful of mustard when you mix for public opin 
 ion ! But, nay! brigadier! 
 
 Brig. Thank you for not calling on me to bray, 
 mi-boy! What shall I neigh at? 
 
 Yours Truly. How indelicate of you to call on 
 an artist to exercise his profession on a party of pleas 
 ure! 
 
 Brig. How ? 
 
 Yours Truly Setting him to grind colors in a sal 
 ad-dish! What are you tasting with that wooden 
 ladle, my periodical sodger? 
 
 Brig. Two of " illicit" to one of Croton potheen 
 from a private still in the mountains of Killarny! 
 Knowles sent it to me ! You have no idea what a 
 flavor of Kate Kearney there is about it ! (finff! frnff!) 
 
 Flagg (absently). I smell the color of the heath- 
 flowers in it crocus-yellow on a brown turf! 
 
 Brig. Stick a pin there, mi-boy! a new avenue 
 to the brain for things beautiful! Down with priv 
 ileged roads in a republic! Why should the colors 
 mixed for a limitless sense of beauty go in only at the 
 eye? 
 
 Flagg. No reason why. I wish we could hear 
 colors ! 
 
 Brig. So you can, my inspired simplicity! and 
 taste them, too! You can hear things that are read, 
 and you can taste the brown in a turkey! (Turning 
 to Yours Truly) Was that well said, my dear boy ? 
 
 Yours Truly. Pardon me if I suggest still an im 
 provement in the aristocracy of the senses ! The 
 eye has a double door of fringed lids, and the mouth 
 an inner door of fastidious ivory; and, with the power 
 to admit or exclude at will, these are the exclusive or 
 gans! The republicans are the nose and ear open 
 to all comers, and forced to make the best of them ! 
 
 Flagg. A new light, by Jupiter ! Let us pamper 
 the aristocracy ! An oyster for my ivory gate, if you 
 please, general, and let us spite the ear s monopoly 
 of Pico by drinking her in silence ! ( ) 
 
 Brig.( ) 
 
 Yours Truly. ( ) 
 
 Brig. Touching Pico is she, or isn t she ? you 
 know what I want to know, my boy ! Disembowel 
 your mental oyster! What ails Borghese? What 
 is a " contralto?" Is it anything wrong or what ? 
 Yours Truly. A contralto, my particular general, 
 fe a voice that touches bottom rubs your heart with 
 its keel, as it were, while floating through you com 
 paring with a soprano, as the air on a mountain-top 
 compares with a breeze from lower down. 
 
 grig. Best possible description of yourself, mi- 
 boy ! Go on, my contralto ! 
 
 Flagg. Yes go on about Borghese what is the 
 philosophy of Borghese s salary being the double of 
 Pico s ? 
 
 Yours Truly. Ah! now you touch the weight 
 that keeps Borghese down ! The public, like your 
 self, ask why the prima-donna who gives them the 
 more pleasure is the poorer paid ! Borghese but 
 first let me tell you what I think of her, comparison 
 
184 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 apart. (Boy, light a cigar, and keep it going with the 
 bellows, a la pastille ! I like the smoke, but to talk 
 with a cigar in the mouth spoils the delicacy of dis 
 crimination.) 
 
 Brig. Spare us the scientific, mi-boy ! 
 Yours Truly. Why, what do you mean ? I am as 
 ignorant of music, my dear sodger, as an Indian is of 
 botany but he knows a weed from a flower, and / 
 talk of music as the audience judge of it by what I 
 hear, " mark, and inwardly digest." 
 
 Brig. But the big words, my dear contralto ! 
 Yours Truly. " Foreign slip-slops," I grant you 
 but nothing more ! I lived three years in Italy, and, 
 of course, heard Italian audiences express themselves, 
 and here and there a phrase sticks to me but if I 
 know "B sharp 1 from "B flat" (which is more than 
 some musical critics know), it is the extent of my 
 knowledge. No, general ! there is no sillier criticism 
 of music than technical criticism. You might as well 
 paint cannon-balls piebald and then judge of their 
 effect by remembering which color showed through 
 the touch-hole before priming ! Notes go to the ear ; 
 effects shower the nerves. A musician who is a critic, 
 judges of a prima-donna by the accuracy with which 
 she imitates what he (the musician) has played on 
 an instrument like a light-rope dancer criticising his 
 brother of the slack-rope, because he don t swing over 
 the pit! Analyze the applause at an opera ! There 
 are, perhaps, ten persons in a Palmo audience who are 
 scientific musicians. These ten admire most what 
 they can most exclusively admire rapid and difficult 
 passages (what the Italians call fiorituri, or " flourish 
 es") executed with the most skilful muscular effort. 
 of the vocal organs. These ten, however, pass over, 
 as very pleasant accidents of the opera, the part which 
 pleases the rest of the audience the messa di voce 
 the tender expression of slower notes which try the 
 sweetness of the voice the absoluteness of the " art j 
 concealing art," and which, more than all, betrays the 
 personal sensibility and quality oj the actress s mind. 
 My dear brigadier, true criticism travels a circle, and 
 ends where it began with nature- But as the art of 
 the prima-donna brings her to the same point, the un 
 scientific audience are most with the most skilful pri 
 ma-donna nearer to a just appreciation of her than 
 musicians are. 
 
 Brifr. Now I see the reason I am so enchanted 
 with Pico, mi-boy ! I was afraid I had no business to 
 like her as I didn t know Italian music ! What a 
 way you have of making me feel pleasant ! 
 
 Yours Truly. Pico has enchanted the town, briga- j 
 dier ! and I have endeavored to put the flesh and 
 blood of language to the ghost of each night s enchant 
 ment. That ghost of remembrance sticks by us 
 through the next day, and I thought it would be I 
 agreeable to the Mirror readers to have the impres 
 sion of the music recalled by our description of it. 
 Have I done it scientifically ? Taste forbid ! even if 
 I knew how ! I interpret for " the million" not for 
 " the ten." 
 
 Flagg. But about Borghese ! 
 Yours Truly. Well I have a great deal to say 
 about Borghese I have a great deal of the " flesh 
 and blood" I just spoke of, in reserve for Borghese ; 
 but I shall follow a strong public feeling, and not 
 clothe her enchantments with language, till she slacks 
 her hold upon the purse-strings, and shares equally, 
 at least, with the donna whom the public prefer. 
 There goes the brigadier fast asleep ! Good night, 
 gentlemen ! (Exit " Yours Truly.") 
 
 OLE BULL S CONCERT. We longed last night for 
 one of " Curtis s acoustic chairs," by which all the 
 sound that approaches a man is inveigled into his ear 
 
 and made the most of, for we heard Niagara atten 
 tively through, and at every change in the music 
 wished it louder. We thought even the "dying fall" 
 too expiring. It occurred to us, by the way, that if 
 the text of this discoursed music had been one of the 
 psalms instead of God s less interpretable voice in the 
 cataract, the room for enthusiasm, as well as the 
 preparation for it, on the part of the audience, would 
 have been vastly greater. In a mixed assembly (of 
 the quality of that at Palmo s last night) no chamber 
 of imagination is furnished or tenanted except that of 
 religion, and the very name of a bible psalm on the vi 
 olin would hnve clothed any music of Ole Bull s per 
 forming with the aggrandizing wardrobe of asso 
 ciation kept exclusively for " powerful sermons" and 
 "searching prayers." We rather wonder that this 
 ready access to the excitability of the mass has not 
 been taken advantage of by the violinists. 
 
 We confess to a little surprise in Ole Bull s organi 
 zation. With the 
 
 " Bust of a Hercules waist of a gnat" 
 
 a superb build for a gladiator or an athlete his violin 
 is a woman ! The music he draws from it is all deli 
 cacy, sentiment, pathos, and variable tenderness 
 never powerful, masculine, or imposing. " The 
 Mother s Prayer," and the " Solitude of a Prairie," 
 are more effective than " Niagara," for that reason. 
 The audience are prepared for a different sex in a 
 cataract. We know very well that the accordatura of 
 a violin is of all compass, and that Paganini " played 
 the devil" on it, as well as the angel, and we repeat 
 our surprise, that, even in a piece whose name sug 
 gests nothing but masculine power, the burthen should 
 be wholly feminine ! Fact, as this unquestionably is, 
 we leave it to our readers to reconcile with another fact 
 that the applause at one of Ole Bull s concerts bears 
 no proportion to the enthusiasm, as the ladies, without 
 exception, are enchanted with him, and the men (who 
 do the applauding) are, almost without exception, dis 
 satisfied with him. 
 
 " Gentle shepherd, tell us why !" 
 
 Even at the high price of tickets, nobody draws 
 like the Norwegian. A very sensible correspondent 
 of ours proposed to him (through the Mirror) to lower 
 his price, and allow those who could not afford the 
 dollar to have an opportunity of hearing him. He is 
 the soul of kindness and charity, and we should sup 
 pose this would strike him as a felicitous hint. 
 
 BATTLE OF THE CRAVATS. The front row of the 
 opera resembles a pianoforte with its white and black 
 keys the alternation of black and white cravats is so 
 evenly distributed. The Frenchmen are all in black 
 cravats of course, and the English and Americans in 
 white, and a man might stop his ears and turn his 
 back to the orchestra (when the two donnas are on 
 the stage together) and tell who is singing, Pico or 
 Borghese, by the agitation of the black cravats or the 
 white. It is a strong argument in favor of the white 
 cravats, apropos, that the Americans, whose sympa 
 thy is with the French in almost everything, should 
 have joined the English in this division of opinion. 
 We have received two or three most bellicose letters 
 on each side of this weighty argument, and would 
 publish them if we had a spare page. 
 
 THE OPERA. Madame Pico was evidently strug 
 gling, last evening, against the effects of her late ill 
 ness ; but she delighted the audience as usual, with 
 her impassioned and effective singing. The opera 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 185 
 
 is a very trying one, and, to us, not the most agreea 
 ble in its general character particularly in the lach 
 rymose tone, throughout, of the part allotted to Pico. 
 Sanquirico was a relief to this ennui, and he so 
 charmed one lady in the house, that she threw him a 
 bouquet ! He played capitally well barring one little 
 touch of false taste in using two English words by 
 way of being funny. It let him down like the falling 
 out of the bottom of a sedan. 
 
 Several of our French friends, by the way, have re 
 quested us to contradict the on dit we mentioned in 
 the Mirror, touching a " cabal to keep Pico subservi 
 ent to Borghese." A regularly-formed one there 
 doubtless is not but the French are zealous allies, 
 and every one of them does as much for Borghese as 
 he can, and, of course, as much as he could do in a 
 cabal. On the contrary, there seems to be no one in 
 dividual taking any pains about Pico the general en 
 thusiasm at the opera excepted. Let us state a fact : 
 We have received many visits and more than a dozen 
 letters, to request even our trifling critical preference 
 for Borghese ; and no sign has been given, either by 
 Pico or her friends, that our critical preference was 
 wished for, or otherwise than tacitly acknowledged. 
 This being true of a mere newspaper, what must be 
 probably the difference of appeal to more direct sour 
 ces of patronage? One or two persons have talked 
 feelingly of pity for Borghese s mortification ! We 
 are watching to see when her mortification will be so 
 insupportable that she will slacken her grasp upon 
 
 The question whether a country is ready for liveries 
 that is to say, whether it has arrived at that stage 
 where the want they imply is felt, and where the dis 
 tinctions they imply are acknowledged is the true 
 point at issue. It is a curious point, too, for, in every 
 other nation, liveries may be excused as traditional 
 as being only modifications of the dresses of feudal 
 retainers while Americans, without this apology, 
 must defend the abrupt adoption of liveries on the 
 mere grounds of propriety and convenience. 
 
 We certainly have not yet arrived at that point of 
 civilization where liveries are needed as in England 
 to protect a lady from insult in the street. A fe 
 male may still walk the crowded thoroughfares of 
 New York by daylight as she dare not do in Lon 
 don unattended, either by a gentleman or a servant 
 in livery. (We live in hope of overtaking the civiliza 
 tion of the mother-country !) Neither has a liveried 
 equipage, as yet, the tacit consequence, in America, 
 which secures to it in London the convenient conces 
 sions of the highway. We are republican enough, 
 thus far, to allow no privileges to be taken for grant 
 ed ; and he who wishes to ride in a vehicle wholly in 
 visible to omnibus-drivers, and at the same time to 
 have his lineage looked into and perpetuated without 
 the expense of heraldic parchment, has only to ap 
 pear in Broadway with liveried equipage! 
 
 We differ from some of our luxurious friends, bv 
 thinking, that, as long as the spending of over five 
 I thousand dollars a year makes a gentleman odious in 
 
 Pico s just share of the profits ! We are not only the ji the community, liveries are a little premature. It 
 
 true exponent of public opinion in reference to the 
 merits of these ladies, but, if we are not personally 
 impartial, it is because (though we have no acquaint 
 ance with either of the two ladies) we chance to know 
 most of Borghese s friends. Pico is evidently a kind- 
 hearted person, indolently careless of her pecuniary 
 interests, and it is impossible to see the shadows of 
 mental suffering in her face and not wish to aid her 
 but we should not sacrifice critical taste to do even 
 that, and we have not written a syllable that her effect \ 
 on the public has not more that justified. At the | 
 same time we have never said a syllable to disparage | 
 Borghese, and have only forborne to say as much of] 
 her merits as we should otherwise have done, because 
 she was overpaid and strongly hedged in with sup 
 porters. 
 
 SERVANTS IN LIVERY, EQUIPAGES, ETC. There is 
 a stage of civilization at which a country will not and 
 a subsequent stage at which a country will tolerate 
 liveried servants. In a savage nation, an able-bodied 
 man who should put on a badge of hopeless and sub 
 missive servitude for the mere certainty of food and 
 clothing, would be considered a disgrace to his tribe. 
 The further step of making that badge ornamental to 
 the servile wearer, would probably be resented as an 
 affront to the pre-eminence of display which is the 
 rightful prerogative of chiefs and warriors. 
 
 In a crowded and highly-civilized country, it is 
 found convenient for patricians to secure the tacit 
 giving-way of plebeian encounter in thronged places 
 convenient for them to distinguish their own servants 
 from other people s in a crowd at night and, more 
 particularly, in large and corrupt cities, it is conveni 
 ent to have such attendants for ladies as may secure 
 them from insult in public the livery upon the fol 
 lower showing that the person he follows is not only re 
 spectable, but of too much consequence to be annoyed 
 with impunity. The ostentation of servants in livery 
 is scarce worth a comment, as, unless newly assumed, 
 it is seldom thought of by the owner of the equipage, 
 nor is it offensive to the passer-by, except in a coun 
 try where it is not yet common. 
 
 I is a pity to be both virtuous and unpopular. The 
 I moving about in a cloud of reminded lordship is a 
 luxury very consistent with high morality, but it 
 comes coldly between republicans and the sun 
 whatever fire of heaven the offending cloud may em 
 bosom. We wonder, indeed, at the remaining in this 
 country, of any persons ambitious of distinctions in 
 the use of which we are thus manifestly "behind the 
 age." It is so easy to leave the lagging American 
 anno domini of aristocracy, and sail for the next cen 
 tury by the Havre packet ! 
 
 That Heaven does not disdain such Jove of each 
 other as is quickened by personal admiration, is 
 proved by the injunctions to the children of Israel to 
 appear in cheerful and becoming dresses on festal days 
 those days occupying rather more than a quarter of 
 a year. The Jews also ornamented their houses on 
 holydays, not as we do with evergreens (a custom we 
 have taken from the Druid " mistletoe, cut with the 
 golden knife"), but with such ornaments as would 
 best embellish them for the reception of friends. The 
 French nation is to be admired for supremacy, in this 
 
 age, in the exhibition of the kindly feelings and the 
 brightening of the links of relationship and friendship. 
 It has been stated (among statistics) that for bons-bons 
 alone, in Paris, on new year s day, were expended 
 one hundred thousand dollars ! We copy the French 
 with great facility in this country, and (until the pro 
 posed " annexation of Paris") we rejoice in the pros 
 perity of STUART S CANDY QUARRY in New York, and 
 the myriad cobwebs of affection that stick, each by 
 one thread, to the corner of Chambers and Greenwich 
 streets! If not quite a " pilgrimage to Jerusalem," 
 it is a pilgrimage to our best signs and emblems of 
 Jerusalem usages, to go the rounds of the gift-shops 
 during the holydays; and no kindly Christian parent, 
 who wishes to throw out an anchor for his children 
 against the storm of political ruffianism, should neg 
 lect to bind friendship and family by a new tie in the 
 holydays ! We see a use in the skill at temptation 
 shown by such admirable taste-mongers as TIF- 
 
186 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 FANY & YOUNG, WOODWORTH, GUION, and others, 
 which is beyond the gratification of vanity, and far 
 from provocatives to " waste of money." But this is 
 no head under which to write a sermon. 
 
 We have (ourselves) a preference among the half 
 dozen curiosity-shops of the city a preference which 
 may, perhaps, be called professional springing from 
 love for the memory of a departed poet. The son of 
 Woodworth, the warm-hearted author of the "Old 
 Oaken Bucket" and other immortal embodiments of 
 the affections, in verse, is the present proprietor of the 
 establishment known as Bonfanti s (by our just men 
 tioned theory of the holy ministration of gifts, employed 
 on somewhat the same errand in life as the bard who 
 went before). It may not be improper to mention 
 hare, that the last few painful years of the poet s life 
 were soothed with a degree of filial devotion and ten 
 derness which makes the Woodworths cherished 
 among their friends, and this is a country, thank God, 
 where such virtues bring prosperity in business ! 
 
 BREAKFAST ON NEW YEAR S DAY. 
 
 A.stor house, No. 184 nine o clock in the morning 
 breakfast for two on the table enter the brigadier. 
 
 Brig. (Embracing "MS"). Mi-boy! GOD BLESS 
 
 " We." (With his hand to his forehead.) With 
 what a sculptured and block-y solidity you hew out 
 your benedictions, my dear general! You fairly 
 knock a man over with blessing him ! Sit down and 
 wipe your eyes with that table-napkin ! 
 
 Brio-. Well how are you? 
 
 " We." Hungry ! I ll take a wing of the chicken 
 before you killed probably last year. How many 
 " friends, countrymen, and lovers," are you going to 
 call on to day ? 
 
 Brig. I wish I knew how many I shall not call on! 
 What is a (pass the butter if you please) what is 
 a pat of butter, like me, spread over all the daily bread 
 of my acquaintance ? 
 
 We." 
 
 " Tis Greece but living Greece no more !" 
 
 I ll tell you what 1 have done, general. Here is a list 
 of all my circle of pasteboard. It begins with those 
 I love, and ends with those with whom I arn cere 
 monious. Those whom I neither love nor am cere 
 monious with, form a large betweenity of indifference; 
 and though you may come to love those with whom 
 you are ceremonious, you never can love those you 
 are wholly indifferent to. I have crossed out this be 
 tweenity. Life is too short to play even a game of 
 acquaintance in which there is no possible stake. 
 
 Brig. How short life is, to be sure ! 
 
 " We." Shorter this side the water than the other! 
 In Europe a man is not bowed out till he is ready to 
 go ! Here, he is expected to have repented and made 
 his will at thirty-seven! I shall pass my "second 
 childhood" in France, where it will pass for a con 
 tinuation of the first! 
 
 Brig. My dear boy, don t get angry! Eat your 
 breakfast and talk about New Year s. What did the 
 Greeks used to do for cookies? 
 
 We." Well thought of they made presents of 
 dates covered with gold leaf! Who ever gilds a date 
 in this country ? No ! no ! general ! You will see 
 dozens of married women to-day who have quietly 
 settled down into upper servants with high-necked 
 dresses lovely women still who would be belles for 
 ten years to come, in France ! Be a missionary, 
 brigadier! Preach against the unbelievers in mulie 
 
 brity ! It s New Year and time to begin something ! 
 Implore your friends to let themselves be beautiful 
 once more ! (Breast-bone of that chicken, if you 
 please !) I should be content never to see another 
 woman under thirty their loveable common-sense 
 comes so long after their other maturities ! 
 
 Brig. What common-place things you do say, to 
 be sure ! Well, mi-boy, we are going to begin another 
 year ! 
 
 " We." Yes prosperously, thank God ! And, 
 
 j oh, after the first in-haul of rent from these well- 
 
 i tenanted columns, what a change we shall make in 
 
 I our paper ! Let us but be able to afford the outlay 
 
 of laborious aid, which other editors pay for, and see 
 
 how the Mirror will shine all over . I have a system 
 
 in my brain for a daily paper the fruit of practical 
 
 study for the last three months which I shall begin 
 
 upon before this month has made all its icicles; and 
 
 , you shall say that I never before found my true voca- 
 
 i lion ! The most industriously edited paper in the 
 
 country is but the iron in the razor; and though it is 
 
 not easy to work that into shape, anybody can hire it 
 
 done, or do it with industry. The steel edge, we shall 
 
 find time to put on, when ice are not, as noiv, employed 
 
 in tinkering the iron ! 
 
 Brig. Black-and-white-smiths you and I! 
 
 " We." No matter for the name, my dear general! 
 one has to be everything honesty will permit, to 
 get over the gulf we have put behind us. Civilized 
 life is full of the most unbridged abysses. Transitions 
 from an old business to a new, or from pleasure to 
 business, or from amusing mankind to taking care of 
 yourself, would be supposed, by a " green" angel, to 
 be good intentions, easy enough carried out, in a 
 world of reciprocal charities. But let them send 
 down the most popular angel of the house of Gabriel 
 & Co., to borrow money for the most brilliant project, 
 without bankable security ! And the best of it is, that 
 though your friends pronounce the crossing of a busi 
 ness-gulf, on your proposed bridge of brains, impossi 
 ble and chimerical, they look upon it as a matter of 
 course when it is done! You and I are poets if the 
 money and fuss we have made will pass for evidence 
 yet nobody thinks it surprising that we have taken 
 off our wings, and rolled up our shirt-sleeves to carry 
 the hod ! Not to die without having experienced all 
 kinds of sensations, I wish to be rich though it will 
 come to me like butter when the bread is gone to 
 spread it on. Heigho ! 
 
 Brig. How you keep drawing similitudes from 
 what you see before your eyes ! Let me eat my 
 breakfast without turning it into poetry! It will sour 
 on my stomach, my dear boy ! 
 
 " We." So you are ordered out to smash the Hel- 
 derbergers, general ! 
 
 Brig. Ordered to hold myself in readiness that s 
 all at present. I wish they d observe the seasons, and 
 rebel in pleasant weather! Think of the summit of 
 a saddle with the thermometer at zero ! Besides, if 
 there is any fighting to do one likes an enemy. This 
 campaign to help the constable, necessary as it is, goes 
 against my stomach. 
 
 " We." Fortify it, poor thing ! What say to a 
 drop of curacoa before you begin your New Year s 
 round ? (Pouring for the general and himself.) Burke 
 states, in his " Vindication of Natural Society," that 
 your predecessor, Julius Cesar, was the means of 
 killing two millions one hundred thousand men! How 
 populous is Helderberg women and all? 
 | Brig. Twelve o clock, my dear "boy, and time to 
 be shaking hands and wishing. Take the first wish 
 off the top of my heart a happy New Year to you, 
 and 
 
 " We." Gently with that heavy benediction ! 
 
 Brig. GOD BLESS YOU, mi- boy ! 
 
 (Exit the brigadier, affected.) 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 187 
 
 THEMES FOR THE TABLE. Among the "upper 
 ten thousand," there are, of course, many persons, not 
 only of really refined taste, but of practical common 
 sense, and to them we wish to proffer a hint or two, 
 touching the usages just now in plastic and manage 
 able transition among the better classes. The follow 
 ing note, received a day or two since, suggests one of 
 the improvements that we had marked down for com 
 ment : 
 
 MR. EDITOR: I observe that a bachelor, wri 
 
 invited 
 
 mocraey might wish fashion kept inconvenient, for this 
 very purpose; but our belief is, that there is no place 
 like a republic for a positive and even violent aristoc 
 racy, and, if inevitable, it is as well to compound it 
 of good elements in the beginning. Simply, then, no 
 intellectual man, past absolute juvenility, would con 
 sent to enfeeble his mind by fashionable habits injuri 
 ous to health. Late hours and late suppers (in a 
 country where we can not well sleep till noon as they 
 do in Europe) are mental suicide. Hours and usages, 
 
 therefore, which are not accommodated to the conve 
 nience of the best minds of the country, will drive 
 those minds from the class to which they form the 
 objection, and the result is easily pictured. We 
 shall resume the topic. 
 
 ting in the American, recommends to 
 and inviters, to send invitations and answers, stamp 
 ed, through the penny-post. This is a capital idea, 
 and I shall adopt it for one. I perceivethat abachelor i 
 in another paper says, it will suit him and his fellow- 
 bachelors, for reasons set forth, and that he will adopt ;, 
 the plan. Now, Mr. Editor, I am a housekeeper, ! | 
 and married, and my wife requires the use of all my j 
 
 servants, and can not spare them to be absent three or J | LIVERIES AND OPERA-GLASSES. i here is really no 
 four days, going round the city, delivering notes, on way of foreseeing what the Americans will stand and 
 the eve of a party. These notes could, by the plan i! what they will not. An aristocratic family or two, 
 ested, be delivered in three hours, and insure a unwilling to compete with the working-classes in person- 
 
 sugg . 
 
 prompt answer. I can then know exactly who is 
 
 coming and who is not a very convenient point of 
 
 knowledg 
 
 al attire, choose to transfer the splendors of their condi 
 tion to the backs of their servants. They dress plainly 
 themselves and set up a liveried equipage as they 
 
 - These reasons induce me to become an advocate \\ have an absolute and (one would think) an unoffend- 
 of the suggestion. There are other sound arguments ! ing right to do. This, however, the American pub- 
 that mioht be urged in its favor, but pray present them J j lie will not bear and the persons so doing are insulted 
 in your own fashion to your readers. ; by half the presses in the country. 
 
 " Yours, &c." 
 
 There is another very burthensome matter, the 
 
 annoyance of which might be transferred to the penny- j; classes are all in private boxes, with blinds and curtains 
 ostcare/ bavin* / When men are busy and ladies ji to shutout observation if they please, the use of opera- 
 
 But what they will bear is much more remarkable. 
 In the immense theatres of Europe, where the upper 
 j; classes are all in private boxes, with blinds and curta 
 
 ji to shutout observation if they please, the use of ope 
 
 ill (the business and the illness equally unlikely to be \\ glasses has gradually become sanctioned. It is fou 
 heard of by way of apology) it would often be a most convenient for those classes to diminish the dista 
 essential relief to commit to envelopes a dozen cards, i across the house, since they have the choice of sec 
 
 It is found 
 nee 
 clu- 
 
 and with an initial letter or two in the corner,* ex- sion behind curtains which those in the pit have not. 
 pressive of good-will but inability to call in person, Abstractly, of course, the giving to a vulgarian the 
 make and return visits without moving from counting power to draw a lady s face close to him lor a 
 house or easy-chair. This, in a country where few hour s examination, would be permitting a gross li- 
 keep carriages, and where every man worth knowing j cense. This being the custom in Europe, however, 
 
 has some business or profession, should be an easy pit is adopted with no kind of comparisons of rca 
 matter to brin- about ; and, if established into a usage why, in New York. We budd an opera-house, si- 
 larger than a drawing-room, and light it so well, and 
 
 matter to bring about ; and, if established into a usage 
 that gave no offence, would serve two purposes re- ; 
 
 reasons 
 scarce 
 
 lieving the ill or busy, and compelling those, who so arrange the seats, that people are as visible to each 
 really wish to keep up an acquaintance, at least to other as they would be m a drawing-room ; and m 
 send cards once in a wLe, as reminders. this cosy place, allow peon e -to coolly -^ -r 
 
 We wish that common sense could be made fashion 
 able among us vigorously applied, we mean, to the 
 fashions of the best style of people. Why should not 
 
 , opera-glasses and turn them full into the faces of those 
 they wish to scrutinize. So near as the glass is, too, 
 it is utterly impossible not to be conscious of being 
 
 . 
 
 the insufferable nuisance of late parties be put down looked at and the embarrassment ,t occas.ons , to very 
 
 in this country by a plot between a hundred of our young ladies ,s easy enough shown. We have used 
 
 . *J . J . . i , .1 _ 1 _ :, nnvaalT fHafMHlflA 111 Knmf* Wfi (lO 33 
 
 sensible and distinguished families? In England they 
 are at the dinner-table between six and ten ; but why 
 should ive, who seldom dine later than three or four, 
 yawn through a long unoccupied evening before going 
 out, merely because they go to parties at eleven in 
 London ? Why should it not be American, to revise, 
 correct, and adapt to differences of national character, 
 the usages we copy from other countries ? The sub 
 ject of late parties is constantly talked over, however, 
 and as all are agreed as to the absurdity of the fashion, 
 a hint at it, here, is enough. 
 
 There are other usages which require remodelling 
 by this standard, but while we defer the mention of 
 them at present, we wish to allude to another argu 
 ment (in favor of common sense applied to fashion) 
 remoter and perhaps weightier than mere convenience. 
 It is simply, that, if an aristocracy is to be formed in 
 this country, the access to its resorts must be kept 
 convenient for men of sense, or society will be left ex 
 clusively to fools. Believers in the eternity of de- 
 
 T. R. M., for instance (meaning this to remind you of 
 me), written in the corner of a card, might imply that the 
 friendly wish had occurred, though the call was overruled by 
 hinderances 
 
 this impertinence ourself (because in Rome we do as 
 Romans do), but we never yet have levelled a glass 
 I upon a face without seeing that the scrutiny was at 
 I once detected. Since we have preached on the sub 
 ject, however, we shall " go and sin no more." 
 
 " We ask for information :" is the difference of 
 reception, for these two European customs, explain 
 able on the ground that opera-glasses are a mxury 
 within the reach of most persons, and liveries are not J 
 Dp republicans only object to exclusive impertinences? 
 
 OPERA LAST NIGHT We presume we are safe in 
 saying that no four inhabitants in New York gave as 
 much pleasure last night as Pico, BORGHESE, fK- 
 ROZZI, and VALTELLINA. We certainly would not 
 have missed our share for any emotion set down 
 
 i among the pleasures of Wall street well as we know 
 the let-up of an opportune discount ! 1 hat emperor 
 of Rome who poisoned Britannicus because he was 
 
 i a better tenor than himself, and slept in his imperial 
 bed with a plate of lead on his stomach to improve 
 his voice, knew where music went to, and ot what 
 
188 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 recesses, within his empire, he was not monarch with 
 out it. (We suggest a meeting of gentlemen up-town 
 to erect a monument to Nero, now for the first time 
 appreciated !) 
 
 Let us tell the story of Semiramide and we must 
 take the liberty, for clearness sake, to use the names 
 of the performers without the Siamese-ry of the names 
 of the characters. 
 
 Borghese is queen of Babylon. She and Valtel- 
 lina, who is an old lover of hers, have killed her former 
 husband, a descendant of Belus by whom she had a 
 child. This child is Pico, rightful heir to the throne. 
 At the time the curtain rises, Borghese and Valtel- 
 lina suppose that Pico also is killed, and the throne 
 vacant for a new husband to Borghese. Valtellina 
 wishes to be that husband ; but Borghese, partly from 
 dislike of him, and partly from having had enough of 
 matrimony, takes advantage of a thunder-storm to put 
 off her expected decision. Meantime Pico arrives 
 (acquainted only with Mr. Meyer, apparently, who is 
 a high-priest of Belus), and Queen Borghese, not 
 knowing that it is her own child, falls in love with 
 him ! There is a Miss Phillips who is a descendant 
 of this same Belus, and who is to have the throne if 
 Borghese does not marry Valtellina. Pico loves Miss 
 Phillips for some reason only hinted at, and has come 
 to Babylon to see her. Mr. Meyer, who is the only 
 one aware that Pico is the prince supposed to be lost, 
 takes him down into the tomb of the dead king, tells 
 him who he is, gives him his father s " things" in a 
 box, and leaves him there to have a conversation with 
 his mother who happens to drop in. It is all cleared 
 up between them, and they sing a duet together, and 
 go out for a little fresh air. Valtellina, mousing about 
 after the queen, comes afterward to the tomb and 
 meets the high-priest there ; and one after another 
 drops in, till the tomb is full, and the ghost of the old 
 king takes the opportunity to get up and mention 
 what he died of. Great confusion of course ; and, 
 soon after, Pico, feeling called upon to kill the mur 
 derer of the sleepless old gentleman, stabs at some 
 body in the dark and kills his mother ! Valtellina is 
 led off by the police, Pico faints in the arms of Mr. 
 Meyer, the satraps and Babylonians rush in, and the 
 curtain falls leaving Pico to marry Miss Phillips and 
 succeed to the throne. All this of course took place 
 in a city built two generations after Ham (brother of 
 Shein and Japhet) but what with the look of the 
 " tombs," and the way people were stabbed and pois 
 oned, it was impossible not to wonder what Justice 
 Matsell would have done in the premises. 
 
 AVe shall hear Semiramide again to-night, and speak 
 more advisedly of the music on Monday. At present, 
 we can not convince ourself that Grisi and Persian! 
 sang any better when we heard them in London. We 
 can never hope for and we need not wish a better 
 opera. BORGHESE is a most accomplished creature, 
 with (among other things) an intoxicating way of 
 crushing her eyes up to express passion (in a way that 
 none but people of genius do) and she does nothing 
 indifferently. Pico, with her wonderful at-home-ative- 
 ness anywhere between the lowest note and the high 
 est, faultless in her science, and personally of the kind 
 of women most loveable, is enough, of herself, to keep 
 a town together. PEROZZI, with his sweet, pure 
 voice, and gentlemanly taste (lie was king of Egypt 
 last night, by the way, and a candidate for Borghese s 
 hand), is worthy to be a third star in any such Orion s 
 belt, and the fourth may well be VALTELLINA, whose 
 thorough base, we have no doubt, first suggested the 
 idea of the forty-horse excavator lately patented by 
 congress. 
 
 But what shall we say of the scenery ? We were 
 taken completely by surprise, with the taste as well as 
 splendor of it, and we think Stanfield himself, the 
 great artist who produces occasionally such marvels 
 
 in the spectacles of Drury Lane, would have taken a 
 pride in claiming it. Certainly no comparable scene 
 ry has been exhibited, to our knowledge, in this 
 country. The costumes were also admirable. 
 
 Abstaining as we do, for to-day, from musical 
 criticism, we can not help alluding to the electric ef 
 fect, upon the audience, of the duet between Pico 
 and Borghese the well-known " Giorno d orrore." 
 The house was uncomfortably crammed, but a pin 
 might have been heard to drop, at any moment dur 
 ing the singing of it. It was a case of complete musi 
 cal intoxication. The applause was boundless, but 
 unluckily the encore (which we trust will not be foiled 
 again to-night) was defeated by an evident fear on the 
 part of the audience of intemipting a part of the duet 
 not yet completed. If you love your public, dear 
 Semiramide, nod, to-nig/it, to the orchestra, after the 
 bouquets have descended ! 
 
 BEHIND THE CURTAIN. 
 
 Editor s room, toward midnight Enter the brigadier, 
 as the printers go down stairs The day over, and 
 the shop shut up under A pen (too tired to be 
 wiped) drying in peace on the editor s table News 
 boys done (thank God .) Brigadier collapsed into 
 a chair. 
 
 Brig. Oh, mi-boy ! To think of the trouble of 
 "getting along," and the very small place in which 
 we sleep, when we get there ! I wonder whether a 
 man would be much behind the time at his own fu 
 neral if he stopped working! I m tired, Willis! I ll 
 send my ticket for the afterpiece, and " go home," as 
 the Moravians say. 
 
 " We." You forget ! Editors are on the " free 
 list" in the theatre of life, and " not entitled to a 
 check." 
 
 Brig. Talk plain to me, my dear boy, and save 
 your heliotropes for the paper! The work I have 
 done this week ! Is it you that say somewhere, 
 "there s no poetry in a steamboat?" Think of the 
 blessed cry of " stop her !" 
 
 " We." And so you are fairly fagged, my " mar 
 tial Pyrrhus !" 
 
 Brig. Fagged and dispirited ! Moving the print 
 ing office getting all the advertisements set up in, 
 new type little indispensable nothings plaguing my 
 life out new arrangements in every corner, and the 
 daily paper going on besides 
 
 " We." I don t wonder you re dead! 
 
 Brig. That is the least of my trouble, I was going 
 to say (though, to be sure, what we have done this 
 last week, changing office, and renewing type, with 
 out stopping the daily, is very much like shoeing 
 your horse without slacking his trot) but the "ben 
 efit," my dear boy, the benefit. 
 
 " We." So long since you have had any money to 
 end is that what you mean ? You are afraid you 
 have lost the art of making yourself out poorer 
 than the man who comes to borrow. Why, my poor 
 general ! 
 
 Brig. Doesn t it strike you as a dreadful mortifi 
 cation, my dear Willis ? 
 
 We" The whole business ? 
 
 Brig. The whole business. 
 
 " We." Inasmuch as for genius to be rich, after 
 being poor, would make a god of the man so en 
 riched (by the intensity of his enjoyment, and his nat- 
 iral inoculation against catching the canker from his 
 noney) it is wisely ordained by Providence that we 
 shall not receive it in sums larger than $3, city bill, 
 ithout mental agony. We should else be in heaven 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 189 
 
 before our time, my dear general purgatory omit 
 ted ! 
 
 Brig. But isn t your pride wounded for me, my 
 dear hoy ? 
 
 44 We." As Cassio says (who, by the way, loved 
 general Othello very much as I do you), 
 
 I do attend here on the general, 
 And think it no addition, nor my wish, 
 To have him see me womaned." 
 
 I have no tear to shed on the subject. I have 
 thought it all over, and would have stood in your 
 place and received the painful thousands myself, if I 
 had thought it more than you could bear but let me 
 tell you how I look at it. 
 
 Brig. Do, mi-boy, and don t joke more than you 
 can help ! 
 
 there, and we are likely at any moment to be " broke" 
 by the critics "making a run upon the bank." 
 Brig. Now that s what I call clear ! 
 " We." Don t interrupt me ! The risks of suc 
 cess in literature, the outlay for education, the delay 
 in turning it to profit, the endurance of the gauntlets 
 of criticism, and the rarity of the gift of genius from 
 God, should be added to the usually fragile shop in 
 which its wares are embarked for vending. The poet, 
 by constitution least able to endure rude usage, is the 
 common target of coarseness and malice. Here and 
 there, to be sure, a man is born, like me with brains 
 enough, but more liver than brains and such men 
 sell thoughts as they would potatoes, and don t break 
 their hearts if customers find specks in them; but the 
 literary profession, generally, is of another make, and 
 political economy" should compensate proportion- 
 
 ~TFe" Editors are the pump-handles of charity, II ally. They do it for clergymen ! What clergyman 
 ilwavs helping people to water, and never thought to feels it an indignity to be sent abroad by subscription, 
 be thirsty themselves ! if his health fails ? He considers that he is inade- 
 
 Brir You funny Willis! so we are! quately paid unless his parish take the risks ol Ins 
 
 .. We "You, particularly, have not only been > health ! And you /besides the reason you have, 
 bolted to the public cistern for every benefit of the! wholly apart from our joint business, for needing this 
 last twenty years the fag and worky of every possible i benefit here you are, after passing your lile in ser- 
 c haritable committee, but your paper has been called ,; ving people, with a pair of eyes you can scarce sign 
 upon (and that people think nothing of) to blow wind !! your name by, and a prospect of a most purblind view 
 heme of benevolence, every j! of the City Hall when they make you mayor. 
 
 into the sail of every sc 
 
 device for the good of individuals or the public. Peo- ] 
 pie see your face on every printed note that comes to 
 them. You are the other-folks-beggar of the town. 
 
 When you die 
 
 Un ff . No painful allusions now, mi-boy ! 
 4 We." I was only going to say, my dear general, 
 that they will wish they had unmuzzled the ox that 
 trod out the corn ! 
 
 Brig, (siuallowing something apparently}. But T have 
 had so many misgivings about this benefit concert, my 
 dear Willis ! 
 
 "We." The pump-handle changing places with 
 the pail ! Well it will be a shower-bath at first, but 
 you ll be full when it s over! 
 Briff. There you go again ! 
 
 4 We." I was letting that simile trickle off my 
 lips while I fished up, from my practical under-cur 
 rent, another good reason for your benefit. Suffer 
 me to be tedious a moment! 
 
 Brig. Be so, mi-boy be so ! I love you best 
 when you re tedious! 
 
 44 We." Well, then ! Political economy differs 
 
 from the common estimates of things, by taking into 
 consideration not only their apparent value at the 
 time of sale, but what it has cost, directly or indi 
 rectly, to attain that value. Do you understand me ? 
 Brig. No. 
 
 44 We." For example, then ! a leg of mountain 
 
 mutton may weigh no more than a leg of lowland 
 mutton but as the fibre of the meat is finv from be 
 ing fed on highland grass, it is reasonable to estimate 
 it^by something besides its weight i. e., the shep 
 herd s risk of losing it by wild beasts, and the trouble 
 of driving it up and down the mountain. 
 J3r?>. True. 
 
 44 We." Thus, a lawyer charges you fifty dollars 
 for an opinion which it takes him but ten minutes to 
 dictate to his clerk. A savage would laugh at the 
 price, and offer to talk twice the time for half the 
 monev but a civilized man pays it, allowing for the 
 education, study, and talent, which it cost to give the 
 opinion value. 
 
 Brig. True again. Now for our " mutton." 
 44 We." You and I, my dear general, are brain- 
 mongers which is an exceedingly ticklis^ trade. We 
 art with our goods in supposition, like the capital 
 
 Brig. Mi-boy ! oh ! 
 
 "We." There s but one pair of well-endorsed eyes 
 
 >etween us, and suppose somebody leaves me money 
 
 enough to unharness me from this omnibus, and turn 
 
 e out to grass at Glenmaiy ! What will become of 
 
 m? 
 
 Brig. Heaven indissolubly Siamese us, my dear 
 boy ! 
 
 .4 We." And T have not even named, yet, the os 
 tensible ground for this concert the songs you have 
 loaded the women s lips with, and never received 
 even a kiss for your trouble ! 
 
 Brig. What a fellow you are for reasons, Willis! 
 
 44 We." My dear friend, I am going to state all 
 this to the committee for your benefit! By the way 
 did you ever hear of Ismenias, the D Orsay of an 
 cient Corinth ? 
 
 Brig. Never. 
 
 "We" Ismenias commissioned a friend to buy a 
 jewel for him. The friend succeeded in purchasing 
 it at a sum below its value. " Fool!" said Ismenias, 
 "you have disgraced the gem!" Did you suppose, 
 general, that I was going to give the public, the pleas 
 ure of paying you this tribute without taxing their 
 admiration as well as their pockets ! No ! (Hear 
 him !) No ! I trust every woman who has su 
 
 heard sung, a song of yours, w 
 
 be there to wave a 
 
 handkerchief for you ! I hope every man who loves 
 literature, and has a corner in his heart for the poet 
 who has pleased him, will be there to applaud you ! 
 I hope David Hale will give us gas enough to see 
 you on the platform. I hope God bless me, twelve 
 o clock ! 
 
 .OPERATIC PARTY. As our readers are aware, a 
 private sparkle from the stars of an operatic constella 
 tion, is one of the luxuries rated as princely in Europe 
 
 a proper fitness in the other circumstances of the 
 
 entertainment requiring a spaciousness of saloons and 
 a magnificence of menu which only the very wealthi 
 est have to offer. The private dwelling-houses of 
 this city, till within a few years, have been much too 
 small for the introduction of this advanced phase of 
 pleasure. Last night, however, a sumptuous resi 
 dence, that might compare to advantage with any m- 
 in Europe, was thrown open, and its "uilder- 
 
 
190 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 bination. As being the head of a new chapter of na 
 tional refinement, it would, perhaps, be posthumously 
 worth while to depict the scene not only as to its 
 sumptuary splendors and costumes, but with a de 
 scription of the " beauty that bewitched the light" 
 but however posterity might thank us for such an inky 
 Arethusa, we have too much to do with what is above 
 ground, just now, to bury charms for the future. 
 
 Madame Pico remarked, before the commencement 
 of the performance, that it was almost as trying for 
 singers used to a theatre to adapt the voice, impromp 
 tu, to a saloon, as for an amateur to calculate, at once, 
 the volume of voice necessary to fill a theatre. The 
 first two or three pieces were, notwithstanding this 
 judicious apprehension, a little too loud. Signer 
 Valtellina must have the credit of having been the 
 first to reduce the " fill of the empyrean" to the ca 
 pacity of a saloon, and, after the measure was taken, 
 the music was exquisitely enjoyable. After tea 
 (served in an adjoining apartment at the close of the 
 first part) the artists assumed, to a charm, the neces 
 sary abandon, and the singing between tea and sup 
 per was, to our ear, faultless. The pianist only, M. 
 Etienne seemed lacking in the magnetism to quicken 
 the movement with the acceleration of Pico s climax, 
 and we wished a younger or more sympathetic hand 
 in the accompaniment; but this charming cantatrice 
 has too infallible an ear to outrun the instrument, and 
 the effect was sufficiently enchanting. She and Sig- 
 norina BORGHKSK were rapturously encored, and a 
 laughing terzetto between BORGHKSK, SANQUIRICO, and 
 PEROZZI, was called for, a second time, with bound 
 less delight and enthusiam. 
 
 We had never before seen Madame Pico off the 
 stage. Care has left no foot-print on the threshold 
 of the gate of music, and her mouth is infantine in 
 texture and expression ; but her eyes have that in 
 definable look which betrays 
 
 " The thieves of joyance that have passed that way." 
 
 Her person shows to more advantage in a drawing- 
 room than on the stage, and her manners, like those of 
 all gifted Italians, are of a natural sculpture beyond 
 the need of artificial chiseling. BORGHKSE, too, has 
 charming manners, and we were pleased with the cor 
 dial accueil given to the prima-donnas by the ladies 
 of the party. Altogether, the absolute good taste of 
 the entertainment, and the unusually choice mixture 
 of elements, social, sumptuous, and professional, made 
 the evening one of high enchantment. 
 
 OPERA SINGERS At the benefit of Mademoiselle 
 Borghese, lately, the centre of the ceiling suddenly 
 gave birth (at the close of the first act) to a shower of 
 billets-doux, which, being immediately followed by the 
 descent of the drop-scene, representing Jupiter feeling 
 the pulse of Juno, was understood by the audience 
 " as well as could be expected." The delivery was 
 rather a relief to the feeling of the house, for the 
 crowd and pressure had been very uncomfortable, 
 and some critical event was needed to relieve the en 
 durance. 
 
 We have been pleased at the example, set by the 
 good authority of the parly of Monday evening, of 
 giving a cordial, social welcome to distinguished musi 
 cal strangers. America profits by having two nations 
 inarching immediately before her in civilization 
 each unwilling to imitate the other, but both open to 
 study, by us, with no impediment as to our selection 
 of points for imitation or rejection. The French and 
 English are wholly at variance on the point we have 
 just alluded to the social position given to celebrated 
 musicians. In the high circles of France, when a 
 
 ! party is given at which the operatic singers perform a 
 concert, the reception for the musicians consults only 
 their personal comfort. Chairs are placed for them, 
 which they rarely leave to mix with the party, and 
 their supper is always separate from that, of the guests. 
 There is no intention shown, of treating them like 
 equals. In England, on the contrary, the operatic 
 company are the pels of society. Pasta, Catalani, 
 Persiani, Grisi, and the male singers, Lablache, 
 Rubini, Ivanhoff, and others, were free of all exclu- 
 j sion on the score of rank, and " dined and teted" 
 familiarly like noble strangers from other countries. 
 We have seen the duke of Wellington holding the 
 gloves of GRISI, while she pulled to pieces a bunch of 
 grapes at the supper table of Devonshire house ; and 
 we have a collection of autographs of public singers 
 (two of which we published the other day), addressed 
 to persons of high rank, and expressed in terms of 
 the most confessed feeling of ease as to relative posi 
 tion. 
 
 We repeat that we rejoice in the power to select 
 footsteps to follow in civilization (from those of two 
 nations gone on before), and we take pride, that, in 
 this latest instance, we have copied the more liberal 
 and kindly-hearted usage. These children of a pas 
 sionate clime are not justly measured by our severe 
 standards; and we should receive them like airs from 
 a southern sky, without cooling them first by a chymi- 
 cal analysis. They are, commonly, ornaments to 
 society -joyous, genial, free from the "finikin" super- 
 fineries of some of those inclined to abase them and 
 the difference of the pleasure they give, when their hearts 
 are in it, is offset enough for any sacrifice made in ex 
 cusing the "low breeding" of their genius ! 
 
 BORGHKSK, whose benefit came off so triumphantly 
 last night, is a woman of very superior mind, of man 
 ners faultlessly distinguished, and (essential praise to 
 a woman) a model of toilet-ability. She is, besides, a 
 remarkable actress, and a very accomplished musician. 
 This is a pretty good description of an agreeable ac 
 quaintance ; and, if we were to sketch Madame Pico, 
 it would be in terms still more warmly eulogistic. 
 We leave to the ladies who throw bouquets to San- 
 quirico, to laud the men of the opera, and wind up 
 this essay of political economy, by drawing an instruc 
 tive example, of the effect of what we preach, from 
 the manufacture of a prima-donna into a queen and 
 goddess, in the days of venerable antiquity. 
 
 "Among the female performers of antiquity, LAMIA 
 is certainly the most celebrated ; how much her fame 
 may have been aided by her beauty we can not deter 
 mine. She was everywhere received with honor, and 
 according to Plutarch, equally admired for her wit, 
 beauty, and musical performance. She was a native 
 of Athens, but travelled into Egypt to hear the cele 
 brated flute-players of that country. During her resi 
 dence at the court of Alexandria, Ptolemy Soter was 
 defeated in a naval engagement by Demetrius, and all 
 his wives and domestics fell into the hands of the 
 conqueror. Lamia was among the number; but 
 Demetrius was so attracted by her beauty and skill, 
 that he raised her to the highest rank, and from her 
 solicitations, conferred such benefits on the Athenians, 
 that they gave him divine honors and dedicated a tem 
 ple to Venus Lamia. " 
 
 MADAME Pico s BENEFIT. We should be happy 
 if Europe would inform us why this remarkable can 
 tatrice comes to us " new as a tooth-pick," as to fame, 
 and whethe^ (the same lack of previous trumpeting 
 having given us a surprise in Malibran), we are to 
 have the credit also of the eccalobeion of Pico ! Even 
 without the " deep-sea plummet" of her contralto 
 (which certainly does touch bottom for which most 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 191 
 
 voices lack fathoms of line) she has a compass as a 
 mezzo soprano, which would alone serve for remarka 
 ble success in her profession. She is a most correct 
 musician loo (the only false note we have heard 
 from her, having been occasioned by her striking her 
 chest too violently while singing defiance to Vallelliua) 
 and, withal, a most gifted and charming woman, 
 every way formed to be an idol for the public. We 
 have written a great deal about Madame Pico, and, 
 her benefit being the last occasion we shall find, to do 
 more than chronicle her movements, we shall send 
 this quill to our friend Kendall of the Picayune (as 
 the Highlanders send the lighted brand), enveloped 
 in a stanza addressed by an Italian poet to Lady 
 Coventry : 
 
 " Si tutti gli alberi del mondo 
 
 Fossero penne, 
 
 II cielo fosse carta, 
 
 II mare inchiostro 
 Non basterenno a destrivere 
 La miuiina parte della" 
 
 We leave the rest to the Picayune s prophetic divina 
 tion. 
 
 Adieu, Pico, 1 in-cantatrice ! A clear throat and a 
 plethoric pocket to you ! 
 
 MADAME ARNOULT S CONCERT. It looked very 
 queer (and a little wicked withal) to see opera-glasses 
 and ladies with their heads uncovered, in the pews of 
 the Tabernacle ; and we are not sure that our " way 
 we should go" did not twitch us for a " departure," 
 when we found ourselves applauding with kid gloves 
 in the neighborhood of the altar ! We were applaud 
 ing Pico ; and the next thought that came to us was, 
 a regret that such voices should not be consecrated to 
 church choirs ; for (granting the opera to be a profane 
 amusement, as is thought by the worshippers at the 
 Tabernacle), " it is a pity," as a celebrated divine once 
 said, "that the devil should have all the good music." 
 And, apropos was not this capital remark (attributed, 
 we believe, to Wesley) suggested by one, recorded 
 of the pope Gregory of the fifth century ? Britain 
 at that time was, to Rome, what Africa is now to us 
 
 a savage country they brought slaves from; and 
 
 the introduction of Christianity into that heathen land 
 is said to have been prompted by the pope s admira 
 tion of the beauty of two or three young John Bulls 
 who were for sale in the market-place of Rome. On 
 inquiring of the merchant if they were Christians, 
 and being informed they were pagans, he exclaimed, 
 " Alas, what a pity that (he author of darkness should 
 be in possession of men of such fair countenances . " He 
 commissioned Pelagius forthwith to send missionaries 
 to the handsome British pagans, and hence the church 
 of England probably the only church, the members 
 of which owe their salvation to their personal beauty ! 
 (Pardon this historical digression, dear readers!) 
 
 Madame ARNOULT took New York by surprise 
 she is so much better a singer than was supposed. 
 With less effort, and in a smaller room than the nave 
 of the Tabernacle, she would, however, appear to much 
 more advantage. Her voice, to our ear, lacked fledg 
 ing, or lining, or something to make it warmer or 
 more downy but it is a clear and most cultivable 
 soprano, and she manages it with wonderful skill for a 
 beginner at public singing. We predict great popu 
 larity for her. Madame Pico sang, with her, the 
 duet from Semiramide, and it was enough to steep 
 even the pulpit cushion in a this world s trance of 
 music. 
 
 ARMLETS. We have observed that there is a late 
 fashionable promotion of the jewels of the arm to the 
 more lovely round above the elbow, where, it must 
 
 be confessed, a bracelet sits much more enviably im 
 bedded. We rather think this renewal of the fashion 
 of armlets is a clean jump from the rape of Helen to 
 1845, for the latest mention we can find of it is in the 
 account of the Trojan nymphs, who laid aside their 
 armlets to dance in the choirs on Mount Ida. It 
 takes an arm, plump and not too plump, to wear this 
 clasp with a grace, but where the arm is really beauti 
 ful, no ornament could be more filly and captivatingly 
 located. We were very much struck with the effect 
 upon the dazzling arm on which we lately noticed it. 
 
 VIEWS OF MORRIS S CONCERT. There are few 
 buttons on the motley coat of human dependance, to 
 which the button-hole is not serviceably correspondent 
 the button (conferring the favor) commonly draw 
 ing the same garment closer by aid of the button-hole 
 (receiving the favor). There is one very striking in 
 stance however, of constant services unreciprocated, in 
 what editors do for singers and actors. Our attention 
 has been called to this by a series of paragraphs 
 (part silly, part malicious) expressing surprise that 
 Ole Bull and others, who had never been in any way 
 benefited by Gen. Morris, should have been asked to 
 contribute their services gratuitously to his benefit 
 concert. 
 
 It is needful, of course, in a newspaper, to make 
 some mention and some critical estimate of all public 
 performers. It may be done favorably or unfavor 
 ably ; and there is a way of being abundantly paid lor 
 either. " BLACK MAIL" is willingly paid where com 
 mendation is sold in shambles, but the editor is letter 
 paid, still, if, with skilful roasting and dissection of 
 the faults of public performers, he cruelly enriches 
 his paper (like a pate, defoie gras with the liver of the 
 goose roasted alive), and so sends it, palatably spiced, 
 to the umnquiring appetite of the public. He who 
 has a hair of his head left undamned, to creep with 
 shame at the " black mail" sale of his approbation 
 and he who has common human kindness to prevent 
 his murdering the hopes of strangers to make his 
 paper readable both these are of classes that go un 
 paid, and commonly unthanked, for services most 
 essential to others, and forbearance most costly to 
 themselves. 
 
 The editor s business is to make his paper readable. 
 The most difficult task he has to do is to be readably 
 good-natured. The easiest writing in the world is 
 criticism amusingly severe. If any one doubts, for 
 ! example, that with the same pains we have taken, 
 
 I glowingly to interpret between Ole Bull and the pub- 
 
 I 1 lie, we could have ridiculed him into a comparative 
 1 failure sending a laugh before him through the 
 
 country that would have armed every listener with an 
 impenetrable incredulity if any one doubts our power 
 i to have done this, as easily as we have ushered him 
 into hearts we made ready for a believing reception 
 1 of his music, he does not know either the press or the 
 !j public neither the arbitrary license of the press, nor 
 ! the public s weak memory for everything but ridicule. 
 l| \Vkeie Ole Bull now stands, the press is compara 
 tively powerless. He is stamped with success. But, 
 i| when he stood on the threshold of this country s favor 
 \ a musician, whose peculiaiities at first seemed tricks, 
 1 and whom few heard for the first time with a confident 
 I appreciation if, then, ridicule had met him, boldly 
 1 and unsparingly, even though this one paper had alone 
 opened the cry, he would have had us to thank, we 
 believe, for the tide turned back on which lie now rides 
 triumphantly onward. Certain as it is that we could 
 not, all alone, have made his present good fortune, it 
 i is quite as certain that we could, all alone, \\avemarred 
 \ it and that, too, to the profitable spicing of our some- 
 ! what praise-ridden columns. We need not. stop to 
 
192 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 tell the reader that we are describing the fiend Siam- 
 esed to Liberty an Irresponsible Press which can not 
 be chained without chaining Liberty too but we wish 
 to show that there is some merit in not harnessing 
 this fiend to our own slow vehicle of fortune. There 
 never was an opportunity so ready as Ole Bull s ad 
 vent for amusing ridicule but we were the first, or 
 among the first, to call for faith in him, and aid in his 
 appreciation. We did it from love of the man and 
 belief in his genius, and would as soon have been 
 marked on the brow with a hot iron as bargain for a 
 syllable of it. But the unforeseen opportunity pre 
 senting itself? when, apparently, he might return our 
 paper s service by a favor to our associate he was 
 invited without scruple to do so. Suppose he had 
 played ten minutes on the violin for the benefit of the 
 proprietor of a paper devoted, for a year, invariably to 
 his interests ? Would it have been the " act of chari 
 ty" for which a paragraphist says that " Ole Bull was 
 unreasonably called upon ?" The high-spirited Nor 
 wegian placed his regret, that he could not be here to 
 comply, upon no such footing. 
 
 While we are calling things by their real names, 
 we may as well change the label of another matter 
 the motive of the benefit to Gen. Morris. As the 
 public know, our estimable associate, by twenty years 
 of literary labor, amassed a moderate fortune, which, 
 in the disasters of an era of bankruptcy, he suddenly 
 lost. A part of his property was invested in the 
 beautiful country-seat of Undercliff on the Hudson 
 the residence of his family for several years. His 
 friends with a provident hope, looking beyond the 
 clouds that enveloped him fastened, to the transfer 
 of this lovely spot, a condition by which he might, 
 if able, repurchase it at a certain time, and at. its then 
 reduced valuation. He has since been suffered to 
 tenant it for a trifling rent. He has improved it, em 
 bellished it, increased its value. "His children have 
 grown up in it. But, meantime, the limit came around 
 (now only a short time off) when the purchase 
 must be made or the home lost. His old friends came 
 to inquire into the probable result of their forethought 
 for him. We need not give the particulars of our 
 business General Morris was partly prepared to re 
 deem the property. The lack was a sum that might 
 be covered by a benefit concert so suggested by one 
 of the parties. It was urged upon him "and declined. 
 He was told that Beranger had three subscriptions 
 (one of twenty thousand dollars) that Campbell 
 had several that Scott s children were relieved of 
 his debts by a posthumous subscription of two hun 
 dred thousand dollars and that private subscrip 
 tions for literary men were of common occurrence in 
 England. 
 
 The public know the sequel. He refused, till the 
 concert was agreed upon by his friends without him. 
 The Italians, whom our paper had more especially 
 served, sprang, generously and with acclamation, to 
 reciprocate our constant advocacy of their company s 
 attraction. The musicians resident here were all 
 friends of General Morris, for he alone, more than all 
 other men in New York taken together, had served the 
 dramatic and musical profession. They, too, joyous 
 ly sprang to the chance of benefiting him. Never 
 was service more eagerly rendered than that by the 
 performers last night at the Tabernacle never came 
 good purpose before the public, so lamely and dis 
 paragingly construed. 
 
 In making up our mind to allow the public to be 
 intimate with us, we expect now and then to expose 
 the lining of our gaberdine. We conform to the exi 
 gences of the latitude we live in but upon dishabille ex 
 planations, we hope for dishabille constructions. What 
 we have written here, between five o clock, A. M-, and 
 breakfast (wholly without the knowledge of General 
 Morris), goes to press with the ink undried, and we 
 
 have no security against errors but that of writing as 
 we would talk to our confessor. If the time should 
 ever arise when really good intentions may be trusted 
 to stand, in public opinion : 
 
 With that credent bulk 
 That no unworthy scandal once can touch 
 But it confounds the breather," 
 
 we may cease to explain " why our stocking is un- 
 gartered." Meantime, we expect to die. 
 
 THE OPERA BEREAVEMENT. What is to become 
 of this widower of a town when it has lost its fairly-es 
 poused Pico, we must leave to the survivor s obituary 
 to record. We may as well have our ears boxed and 
 stowed away ! Their vocation is as good as gone ! 
 No more Pico ? Faith, it will go hard for the first 
 week or two ! But by the way as those " lost from 
 us" are invariably supposed to be crowned in the next 
 place they go to, and as, of course, Pico will be 
 crowned in the presence of St. Charles and the brunet 
 angels of New Orleans, we must take upon ourselves, 
 as her New York " gold stick in waiting," to summon 
 one at least, of her liege subjects to his duty. (We 
 happen, fortunately, to possess an autograph of 
 George the Fourth, signed to the necessary formula.) 
 " To G W- K , Marquis of Picayune : 
 
 RIGHT TRUSTY AND RIGHT WELL-BELOVED 
 COUSIN. We greet you well. Whereas, the 1st day 
 of March next (or thereabouts) is appointed for our 
 coronation. These are to will and command you (all 
 excuses set apart) to make your personal attendance 
 on us at the time above-mentioned, furnished and ap 
 pointed as to your rank and quality appertaineth 
 
 There to do and perform all such services as shall be 
 required and belong to you. Whereof you are not to 
 fail. And so we bid you heartily farewell. 
 
 "Given at.our court at Palmo s, the 21st day of 
 January, 1845, in the first year of our reign. 
 
 "Pico PRIMA (donna). " 
 
 STAR RETURNING TO ITS MERIDIAN. Pico has 
 changed her mind! Jubilate! She has declined to 
 go to New Orleans with the Borgheses, and will re 
 main here to be the nucleus for a new operatic crys- 
 talization. We beg New York and Boston to shake 
 hands in felicitation ! And now that it is settled (as 
 we understand it was, yesterday, by a decisive letter 
 to Signor Borghese), Jet us splinter a ray or two of 
 light upon the diamond that has so wisely refused re 
 setting. New Orleans is a French city, with a French 
 opera ; and Mademoiselle Borghese is a French wo 
 man, with lost laurels to win back from the Italian 
 Pico. This new arena, little likely to have been an 
 impartial one, is a great way off, the journey danger 
 ous and tedious, and, to go there, Madame Pico must 
 abruptly leave a wave of fortune, which she is now 
 riding " at the flood." and give up three admiring cities 
 for one that might be dubious ! A new opera-house 
 is about to be built here, of which she will be the first 
 predominant star; her concerts, in the meantime, in 
 the different cities, will profitably employ her ; and, 
 as to the company, there is a substitute lying perdu 
 for Borghese, and a tenor might soon be found to re 
 place Perozzi. Out of these facts, the public can 
 pick the good reasons Madame Pico has for abandon 
 ing her journey to New Orleans. Let us do our best 
 to show her that she has not made a mistake in pre 
 ferring us 
 
 TAKING THE WHITE VEIL. The Undine of the 
 Bowling-green (Miss Undine W g, if named after 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 193 
 
 the gentleman to whose liberality she owes her exist 
 ence) was shown last evening, with her radiant beau 
 ty enveloped in slittering white, to the assembled 
 friends of the author of her being. To alight from 
 the poetry of the matter: Mr. W g invited, yester 
 day, a party of his friends to see an illumination of the 
 superb fountain with which he has embellished that 
 part of the city. The rocky structure through which 
 it leaps, is completely encrusted with ice, and it look 
 ed like like more things than we have room to men 
 tion. The colored light covered the fountain first 
 with a suffused blush of the tenderest pink, and this 
 deepened to crimson, and the glow upon ice and water 
 was really superb beyond any effect of the kind we 
 have ever witnessed. It made even a Dry Dock om- 
 nibus (which chanced to be passing at the moment), 
 look rosily picturesque and fairy-like. The black sky 
 overhead ; the delicate tracery of the naked branches 
 of the trees; the enclosure of architecture with lights ] 
 in the windows (which seemed completely to shut it ! 
 in like the court of an illuminated palace), were all 
 striking additions to the effect. We would inquire, ! 
 by the way, whether this couleur de rose could not be 
 adapted to the brightening of the ice with which the 
 fountains of the mind are sometimes crusted over. 
 Phlogistic chymists will please explain. 
 
 IMPROVEMENTS ON THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE. 
 The making an improvement in one s mother s prop 
 erty is, of course, a praiseworthy filial service, and we 
 find that we have succeeded in enriching our "mother 
 language" by successfully breaking, to new and valu 
 able service, a pair of almost useless and refractory 
 terminations. " -Dom" and " -tricity" may now be 
 hitched by a single hyphen to any popular word, name, 
 or phrase, and, without the cumbrous harness of a 
 periphrasis, may turn it out in the full equipage of a 
 collect : ve noun! Our first experiment in this econo 
 my of parts of speech was the describing a charming 
 class of society by the single word JAPONICA-DOM. 
 This musical substantive could hardly be displaced by 
 a shorter sentence than " the class up town who usu 
 ally wear in their hair the expensive erotic commonly 
 called a japonica." The second experiment was the 
 word PICO-TRICITY a condensation of " the power, 
 brilliancy, and electric effect of the singing of Mad 
 ame Rosina Pico." We see by the papers that these 
 expediting inventions (for which we liberally refrained 
 from taking out a patent) are freely used already by 
 our brother administrators of the mother language, 
 and we have only respectfully to suggest a proper 
 economy and fitness in their application. 
 
 EARLY-HOURS-DOM. We scarcely need explain, we 
 presume, that we have undertaken the wholesome 
 mission of giving interest, as far as in us lies, to the 
 more re fined occupancy of that portion of the day com 
 prised between twilight and go-to-bcd time becoming, 
 so to speak, the apostle of fashionable early-hours- 
 dom. Of course we are entirely too practical to dream 
 of " reforming out," by mere force of argument, the 
 four-hours unprofitable yawn and the night s restitu 
 tion-less robbery of sleep. Every one knows that the 
 reasons for the late hours of European fashion are 
 wholly wanting in this country but every one consents 
 to follow the fashion ivithout the reasons. The only 
 way to diminish the attraction of late amusements 
 is to anticipate them by more attractive early amuse 
 ments. It will be remembered that we commenced 
 our vigorous support of the opera with this view of 
 the use of it. It was a well-put though unsuspected 
 blow to the habit of late hours, for many gave up par 
 
 ties they would otherwise have gone to, from having 
 been sufficiently amused at the opera; and others 
 found out, practically, that to dress and go to the op 
 era from seven till ten, gave all the relaxation they re 
 quired, and their natural night s sleep into the bar 
 gain ! It is with this ultimate view of making a fash 
 ionable Kate 
 
 " Conformable as other household Kates" 
 
 giving us a substitute that shall make late hours more 
 easily dispensed with that we look upon the plan of 
 this new opera-house as a national benefit. If built 
 luxuriously, lavishly lighted, made to serve all the pur 
 poses of a sumptuous festal saloon, and give exquisite 
 music besides, it will be a preferable resort to a ball 
 room ; and we believe that it is only from the lack of 
 a preferable resort in evening dress, that late parties 
 are any way endurable. Early parties on the off 
 ninhts of the opera, would soon follow, we think the 
 habit of early hours of gayety, once relished and so 
 would creep out this servile and senseless imitation of 
 foreign fashion. 
 
 UNTILLED FIELD OF LITERATURE IN NKW YORK. 
 The one country we have lived in, without loving 
 a native, is the country that, on the whole, gave us 
 the most to admire FRANCE. We embroidered a 
 year and a half of our memory with the grace and wit 
 of the world s capital of taste, and we have left a heart 
 (travellers pattern) in every other country between 
 Twenty-second street and the Black sea; but, that 
 we do not even suspect the color of a French heart 
 ache we solemnly vow and marvel. We admire the 
 French quite enough, however (perhaps there lies the 
 philosophy of it!) to leave no fuel for sentiment to 
 mourn over as wastage, and now (apropos des bottes) 
 why have we no vehicle for French wit in New 
 York no battery for the friction and sparkle of French 
 electricity? How can the French live without a 
 " Charivari ?" Twenty thousand French inhabitants 
 and no savor in the town, as if the gods had "dined 
 below stairs!" Ten thousand French women (prob 
 ably), and either no celebrity, of wit or beauty, among 
 them, or no needful newspaper-cloud in which the 
 thunder and lightning of such pervading electricities 
 could be collected ! 
 
 We wonder whether the " Courrier des Etats Unis" 
 (the Anchises French paper which we read, as the 
 pious ./Eneas carried his father on his back, to have 
 something to cherish, out of the city left behind 
 something French, that is to say) we wonder wheth 
 er, on their alternate days, the editors of that sober 
 tri-weekly paper could not give us something spiced 
 a, la Par isicnne and whether such a vehicle, for the 
 French wit that must be here, benumbed or hidden, 
 would not be a profitable speculation ! The " Cour 
 rier" is the best of useful and grave papers, and en 
 tirely fulfils its destiny, but it is small pleasure to the 
 ten thousand people in New York, who relish French 
 literature, to re-peruse the matter of the daily papers, 
 rechauffe in a foreign language. If the lack of Paris 
 ian material, here, were an apparent objection, what a 
 delightful luxury it would be to have a paper made up, 
 at Jirst, entirely, with the condensed essence of the 
 gay papers of Paris ? A feature of New York chari- 
 vari-ty might be gradually worked in but, meantime, 
 a well-selected bouquet of the prodigal wit and fun of 
 the capital (made comprehensible by a correspond 
 ence kept up with Paris, which should explain allu 
 sions, etc.) would be, we should really suppose, most 
 attractive to the better classes of our society, and, to 
 the French of New Orleans and other more remote 
 cities, an indispensable luxury. 
 
 There is a natural homeopathy for everything French 
 in this city much stronger than for the same thing* 
 
194 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 a VAnglaise. We would wish, too, that the barrier 
 of a different language were gradually broken down, 
 BO that some of the delightful peculiarities of Paris 
 might ooze into our city manners through a conduit 
 of periodical literature. Heigho ! to think of the 
 brilliant intellectual lamps blazing like noonday in 
 France, while, with the material for the same bright 
 ness about us, we sit by the glimmer of fire-light! 
 Oh, Jules Janin ! " American in Paris !" come over 
 with your prodigal brain and be a Parisian in Ameri 
 ca! Ordain yourself as a missionary of wit, and Ja- 
 nin-ify a continent by a year s exile beyond the Bou 
 levards! You ll laugh at us when you return, but 
 streams chafe the channels they refresh, and we will 
 take you with your murmur! 
 
 " L onda, dal mar divisa, 
 Bagna la valle e 1 monte, 
 Va passegiara 
 In fiume, 
 Va prigionera 
 In fonte, 
 
 Mormora sempre e gem 
 Fin che non torna al mar." 
 
 It would hardly be inferred but wo really sat 
 down to write the following paragraph, and not the 
 foregoing one : 
 
 THE PRIMA-DONNAS AT FAULT. The "Courrier 
 des Etats Unis" has now and then an ebullition of na 
 tional spirituality, in the shape of a half column of 
 theatrical gossip, and we have had on our table, for 
 several days, a cut-out paragraph, very well hit off, 
 touching one or two of the town s pleasure-makers. 
 The editor is, of course, behind the curtain, as the 
 natural centre of the foreign circle of New York, and 
 he writes with knowledge. He gives as a fact that 
 Borghese cleared $550 by her benefit, but he dispara 
 ges the performance of that evening, and hauls the 
 ladies seriously over the coals for having exhausted 
 themselves at a private party the night before ! He 
 detects an anachronism in Serniramide, and calls Pico 
 to account for appearing before the queen (as Arsace) 
 with his mother s crown on, when the good lady had 
 as yet only promised it to him ! The first thing in the 
 succeeding duet, says the " Courrier," should have 
 been a remark from Semiramide (who has promised 
 him the crown as a lover, not knowing it is her son) 
 to this effect : " Vous etes un peu presse, mon bel 
 amoureux!" ou bien, " De quel droit portez-vous 
 cette couronne, que je n ai fait que vous offrir ?" The 
 crown given him by the high-priest, out of the pater 
 nal box, was, of course, only symbolic, as the queen 
 was still on the throne. 
 
 KORPONAY S FALL, FROM A FAUX PAS. Another 
 matter touched in the same paragraph is the non- 
 rising of the new ballet-star promised for that evening. 
 The leader of the constellation chanced to be taken 
 ill (below the horizon) at Philadelphia, but the Cour 
 rier states that the illness was owing to a fall, from 
 faux pas, and that the faux pas was an engagement 
 by ihe tumbler (Korponay) to go to Philadelphia 
 once a week for twenty-four dollars, when his expen 
 ses, wife and all, were twenty-six/ The Courrier does 
 not state, what we think highly probable, that Korpo- 
 nay s blood has come through too many generatio 
 of gentlemen to be good at a dancing-master s bar 
 gains. 
 
 THE NEW DANSEUSE. A third topic of this same 
 pregnant paragraph is the contention between two 
 dancing-masters, Charruaud and Mons. Korponay, for 
 the honor of having given the finishing grace to the 
 "light fantastic toe" of Miss BROOKS, the new won 
 der. Monsieur Charruaud (Frenchman-like) declares 
 that she is not only his pupil, but by no means the best 
 of his pupils . Monsieur Korponay simply advertises 
 her as his; and the star, and the star s mamma, con 
 fess to her Korponay-tivity. But 
 
 (" How Alexander s dust may stop a bung !") 
 
 What blood does the public think is running in the 
 veins of this same " fantastic toe?" James Brooks 
 the " Florio," who, ten years ago, was the poetical 
 passion of this country was the father of this dancing 
 girl ! What would that sensitive poet have written 
 (prophetically) on the first appearance of his daughter 
 in a pas seul ! 
 
 LONGFELLOW S WAIF. A friend, who is a very fine 
 critic, gave us, not long since, a review of this delight 
 ful new book. Perfectly sure that anything from that 
 source was a treasure for our paper, we looked up 
 from a half-reid proof to run our eye hastily over it, 
 and gave it to the printer not, however, without 
 mentally differing from the writer as to the drift of 
 the last sentence, as follows: 
 
 " We conclude our notes on the Waif with the 
 observation that, although full of beauties, it is in 
 fected with a moral taint or is this a mere freak of 
 our own fancy ? We shall be pleased if it be so but 
 there does appear, in this exquisite little volume, a 
 very careful avoidance of all American poets who may 
 be supposed especially to interfere with the claims of 
 Mr. Longfellow. These men Mr Longfellow can 
 continuously imitate (is that the word?) and yet never 
 even incidentally commend." 
 
 Notwithstanding the haste with which it passed 
 through our attention (for we did not see it in proof), the 
 question of admission was submitted to a principle in 
 our mind; and, in admitting it, we did by Longfellow as 
 we would have him do by us. It was a literary charge, 
 by a pen that never records an opinion without some 
 supposed good reason, and only injurious to Long 
 fellow (to our belief) while circulating, un-replied-to, 
 \nconversation-dom. In the second while we reasoned 
 upon it, we went to Cambridge and saw the poet s 
 face, frank and scholar-like, glowing among the busts 
 and pictures in his beautiful library, and (with, per 
 haps a little mischief in remembering how we have 
 always been the football and/iethe nosegay of our con- 
 1 temporaries) we returned to our printing-office arguing 
 ! thus : Our critical friend believes this, though we do 
 not; Longfellow is asleep on velvet; it will do him 
 good to rouse him ; his friends will come out and 
 fight his battle ; the charge (which to us would be a 
 comparative pat on the back) will be openly disproved, 
 and the acquittal of course leaves his fame brighter 
 than before the injurious whisper in conversation- 
 dom killed into the bargain! 
 
 That day s Mirror commenced its 
 
 " Circle in the water 
 Which only seeketh to expand itself 
 Till, by much spreading, it expand to naught." 
 
 We expected the return mails from Boston to bring 
 us a calmly indignant "Daily Advertiser," a coquet- 
 tishly reproachful " Transcript," a paternally severe 
 " Courier," and an Olympically-denunciatory "Atlas." 
 j A week has elapsed, and we are still expecting. Thun- 
 j der is sometimes "out to pasture." But, meantime, 
 I a friend who thinks it the driver s lookout if stones 
 are thrown at a hackney-coach, but interferes when it 
 is a private carriage (has loved us these ten years, 
 that is to say, and never objected to our being a tar 
 get, but thinks a fling at Longfellow is a very different 
 matter) this friend writes us a letter. He thinks as 
 we do, exactly, and we shall, perhaps, disarm the 
 above-named body-guard of the accused poet by quo 
 ting the summing-up of his defence: 
 
 "It has been asked, perhaps, why Lowell was neg 
 lected in this collection? Might it not as well be 
 asked why Bryant, Dana, and Halleck, were neglect 
 ed ? The answer is obvious to any one who candidly 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 195 
 
 considers the character of the collection. It professed 
 to be, according to the proem, from the humbler poets ; 
 and it was intended to embrace pieces that were anon 
 ymous, or which were not easily accessible to the gen 
 eral reader the ivaifs and estrays of literature. To 
 put anything of Lowell s, for example, into a collec 
 tion of waifs, would be a peculiar liberty with pieces 
 which are all collected and christened." 
 
 It can easily be seen how Longfellow, and his 
 friends for him, should have a very different estimate 
 from ourself as to the value of an eruption, in print, of 
 the secret humors of appreciation. The transient 
 disfiguring of the skin seems to us better than disease 
 concealed to aggravation. But, apart from the intrin- j 
 sic policy of bringing all accusations to the light, 
 where they can be encountered, we think that the pe 
 culiar temper of the country requires it. Our na 
 tional character is utterly destitute of veneration, j 
 There is a hostility to all privileges, except property ; 
 in money to all hedges about honors to all reserves : 
 of character and reputation to all accumulations of 
 value not bankable. There is but one field considered 
 fairly open money-making. Fame-making, charac- j 
 ter-making, position-making, power-making, are priv 
 ileged arenas in which the " republican many" have 
 no share. 
 
 The distrust with which all distinction, except j 
 wealth, is regarded, makes a whispered doubt more j 
 dangerous to reputation than a confessed defect. The j 
 dislike to inheritors of anything birthrights of any 
 thing family names or individual genius metamor 
 phoses the first suspicion greedily into a belief. A 
 clearing-up of a disparaging doubt about a man is a 
 public disappointment. " That fellow is all right 
 again, hang him!" is the mental ejaculation of ninety- 
 nine in a hundred of the readers of a good defence or 
 a justification. 
 
 P. S. We are not recording this view of tilings by 
 way of assuming to be, ourself, above this every-day 
 level of the public mind too superfine to be a part \ 
 of such a public. Not a bit of it. We can not afford 
 superfinery of any kind. We are trying to make a i 
 living by being foremost in riding on a coming turn of 
 the tide in these matters. The country is at the low 
 est ebb of democracy consistent with its intelligence. 
 The taste for refinements, for distinctions, for aristo 
 cratic entrenchments, is moving with the additional 
 momentum of a recoil. We minister to this, in the 
 way of business, as the milliner makes a crown-shaped 
 head-dress for Mrs. President Tyler. It has its pen 
 alty, but that was reckoned at starting. We knew, 
 of course, that we could not sell fashionable opinions 
 at our counter without being assailed as assuming to 
 be the representative of fashion* just as if we could 
 not even name a tribute of libertinism to virtue with 
 out being sillily called a libertine by the Courier, 
 Commercial, and Express. However, the re is some 
 hope, by dint of lifetime fault-culture, that, in the sod 
 over a man s grave, there will be no slander-seed left 
 to flower posthumously undetected. 
 
 but wishing us to impress upon our religious readers, 
 i by arguments more at length, the sacredness of good 
 j music, even by an operatic singer. We remember a 
 passage in Burnet s Records, which shows that even 
 [ these operatic singers, if enlisted to sing in the choirs 
 of churches, would become the special subjects of 
 prayer. " Also ye shall pray for them that find any 
 light in this church, or give any behests, book, bell, 
 chalice or vestment, surplices, water-cloth or towel, 
 lands, rents, lamp or light, or other aid or service, 
 whereby God s worship is better served, sustained and 
 maintained in reading and SINGING." It has long been 
 our opinion that to heighten the character of church 
 music would be aiding and giving interest and con- 
 I sequence to religious service, and the inviting of pro 
 fessed singers to the choirs, for the sabbaths they pass 
 in the city, would make them particularly (according 
 to Burnet) special subjects of prayer. 
 
 The four-feet precipice between the carriage wheel 
 and the side walk, and the back slope to the range of 
 racing omnibuses and drunken sleigh-riders, prevent 
 ladies from embarking in carriages at present, and this 
 is one thing that reconciles us to the opera people s 
 having chosen to 
 
 " fold up their tents like the Arab 
 And silently steal away." 
 
 Madame Pico has found a rich oasis in Boston appre 
 ciation, and we trust the snow will have melted away 
 before the Tabernacle so that it will not bean inacces 
 sible desert when she returns. Her concert there will 
 be like a dawn after a month s night of music. 
 
 POPULARITY OF MADAME Pico. During the past 
 week we received a letter from a serious writer (a lady), 
 confessing to her own great delight in Madame Pico, 
 
 Others have recorded this national habit of attacking the 
 individual instead of the opinion. Dr. Reese, in his " Ad 
 dress in behalf of the Bible in Schools," thus speaks of the 
 manner of opposition to his philanthropic labors : 
 
 " I have learned that to tremble in the presence of popular 
 clamor, or desert the post of duty when it becomes one of 
 danger, is worthy neither of honor nor manhood ; else I would 
 have gladly retired from the conflict to which I found my first 
 ojfficial act exposed me, and the hostile weapons of which, were 
 aimed, not at the law under which I was acting, but hurled only 
 againtt my humble self." 
 
 TWO OR THREE NEW FASHIONS IN FRANCE. In a 
 
 French pamphlet handed in to our office a few days 
 ago, purporting to be Monsieur Grousset s justification 
 for having been shot down in Broadway by Monsieur 
 Erneric, Mr. Grousset describes a previous affair with 
 the same gentleman, lately, in France. On that oc 
 casion, he states, Mr. Emeric went to the field attended 
 by nine persons, one of whom was a lady ! 
 
 We find, also, by a private letter from a friend in 
 ! Paris, that the now common FEMALE practice of SMO 
 KING CIGARS is considered (by connoisseurs in know- 
 ing-dotn) as a most engaging addition to the attractions 
 of some particular styles of beauty ! "The play of the 
 mouth upon the cigar, the reddening of the lips by the 
 
 I irritation of the tobacco, and the insouciant air, al- 
 ! together, which it gives to the smoker, adds to the 
 peculiar quality of a dashing and coquettish woman, as 
 
 much as it would detract from that of a retiring and 
 timid one." The eyes (he adds) gleam with a peculiar 
 softness, through the smoke. Our correspondent had 
 (just returned from a call on a charming American 
 lady, whom he found with a cigar in her rosy mouth ! 
 WELLINGTON BOOTS have been sported during the 
 late bad weather for walking, by some of the fashion 
 able ladies of Pai is. They are made of patent leather, 
 reaching to the knee, with a small tassel in front (at 
 least so exhibited in shop-windows) and the leg of the 
 boot rounded and shaped in firm leather, like the 
 fashion of boots twenty years ago. The high heel 
 (keeping the sole of the foot from the wet pavement), 
 is "raved about," in Paris the ladies wondering how 
 such a sensible thing as a heel should have been so 
 long disused by the sex most in need of its protection. 
 The relief of the ankles from contact with the cold or 
 wet edge of the dress in wet weather is dwelt upon in 
 the description, as is also the increased beauty of the 
 foot from the heightening of the arch of the instep by 
 
 II the high heel- 
 
196 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 FASHIONS FOR COUNTRY BELLES. The following 
 appeal to our gallantry pulls very hard : 
 
 MR. EDITOR: One of the greatest treats you 
 could give your country lady readers, would be to 
 furnish them from time to time, with brief hints as to 
 the actual style of fashions in the metropolis. We 
 have, all along, depended for information on this im 
 portant subject, upon the monthly magazines, all of 
 which profess to give the fashions as worn, but we find 
 out to our dismay, that they pick up their fashions 
 from the Paris and London prints at random some 
 of them adopted by our city ladies, some not ! It thus 
 happens that we country people, who like to be in the 
 fashion, are often subjected to great expense and mor 
 tification relying too implicitly upon the magazine 
 reports. We cause a bonnet or a dress to be made 
 strictly in accordance with the style prescribed in the 
 fashion plate of the magazine, and when we hie away 
 to the city with our new finery, we discover that our 
 costume is so outre that every one laughs at us! Now, 
 should there not be some remedy for this evil ? 
 
 " We ladies hope you will do something for us in 
 the way of remedying this. You can make up a para 
 graph, every now and then, on the subject without 
 more trouble than it costs you in writing a critique on 
 a much less important matter. Let us know all about 
 the real changes in the outer woman in Broadway 
 and in drawing-rooms. Tell us all about the New 
 York shawls, and New York handkerchiefs, and New 
 York gloves, etc. And, when the fine weather again 
 appears, tell us about the riding -dresses and riding- 
 caps your friends in the city wear, and do not fail to 
 give us an exact account of the kind of sun-defenders 
 in vogue, whether they be parasols, shades, hoods, or 
 anything else. 
 
 " I subscribe myself, your well-wisher, 
 
 " KATE SALISBURY. 
 " Belle Grange, Jan. 29." 
 
 We have omitted the bulk of Miss Kate s letter, 
 giving rather too long an account of two or three ex 
 pensive disasters from being misguided by magazine 
 as to the fashions but it is easily to be seen that it is 
 a matter that concerns outlay which " comes home to 
 business and bosom." We shall take it into con 
 sideration. Our present impression is, that we shall 
 set apart half a column, weekly, bi-weekly, or tri 
 weekly, devoted to " the fashions by an eye-witness." 
 This, however, immediately suggests a dilemma : 
 There are two schools of taste among the ladies ! 
 Some women dress for men s eyes, and this style is 
 both striking and economical. Other women (most 
 women indeed), dress for ladies approval only, and 
 this style is studiously expensive, sacrifices becoming- 
 ness to novelty, and is altogether beyond male appre 
 ciation. Which style should we shape our report for ? 
 
 CANADIAN Gossip. The chief of the Scotch clan, 
 McNab, has lately emigrated to Canada with a hun 
 dred clansman. On arriving at Toronto, he called on 
 his newly illustrious namesake, Sir Allan, and left his 
 card as " The McNab." Sir Allan returned his visit, 
 leaving as his card, " The other McNab." The un 
 usual relish of this accidental bit of fun, has elevated 
 the definite article into a kind of provincial title, and, 
 in common conversation, the leading individual of a 
 family name is regularly ^e-ified. Among the officers 
 at Montreal there was lately a son of the late cele 
 brated " Jack Mytton," the most game-y sportsman 
 in England. Meeting Sir Allan McNab at a mess- 
 dinner, young Mytton sent wine to him with the mes 
 sage : " The Mytton" would be happy to take wine 
 with " The Other McNab." We should not wonder 
 f this funny use of the definite article became the 
 
 | germ of the first American title. The Tyler ! The 
 
 \ Mrs. Tyler ! 
 
 This same young Mytton, by the way, inherited his 
 father s adventurous temper, and though the first 
 favorite of Montreal society, he alone, of all tlie offi 
 cers, could find no lady willing to sleigh-ride with him. 
 They openly declared their fear of his pranks of driving. 
 One fine day, however, when all the town was on run 
 ners, Mytton was seen with a dashing turn-out, and a 
 lady deeply veiled, sitting beside him, to whose com 
 fort he was continually ministering, and to whom he 
 was talking with the most merry glee. It was, to all 
 appearance, a charming and charmed auditor, at least. 
 The next day, there was great inquiry as to who was 
 driving with Mr. Mytton. The mystery was not 
 solved for a week. It came out at last, that in a 
 certain milliner s shop in Montreal had stood a wooden 
 "lay figure" for the exhibition of caps and articles 
 of dress. The despairing youth had bought this, had 
 it expensively and fashionably dressed, and still keeps 
 it at his lodgings (under the name of " Ma m selle 
 Pis-Aller") for his companion in sleigh-ridina! 
 
 WHO ARE THE UPPER TEN THOUSAND ? 
 
 (In reply to a question of Fanny Forester s.) 
 
 * * * Your postscript, asking "Enlightenment as 
 to the upper ten thousand" can not be answered with 
 a candle-end of attention. From the " sixes and 
 sevens" of our brain, we must draw a whole "dip," 
 new and expensive, to throw light on that matter- 
 expensive, inasmuch as the same length of editorial 
 candle would light us through a paragraph. If ador- 
 | able "Cousin Bel" chance to be leaning over your 
 i chair, therefore, beg her to lift the cuHain of her 
 auburn tress-aract from your shoulder, and allow the 
 American public to look over while you read. 
 
 The upper ten thousand, all told, would probably 
 number one hundred thousand, or more : Not in Eng 
 land, where the upperdorn is a matter of ascertained 
 certainty, but in a republic, where every man has his 
 own idea of what kind are uppermost, and where, of 
 course, there are as many " ten thousands" as there 
 are different claims to position. Probably few things 
 would be funnier than for an angel suddenly to re 
 quest the upper ten thousand of New York to walk up 
 the let-down steps of a cloud, and record their names 
 and residences, for the convenience of the up-town 
 ministering spirits ! A hundred thousand, we are sure, 
 would be the least number of autographs left in the 
 heavenly directory ! 
 
 But, till we arrive at the "red-book" degree of defi 
 nite aristocracy, a newspaper addressed to the " upper 
 ten thousand" embraces a sufficient bailiwick for the 
 most ambitious circulation. There are all manner of 
 standards for "the best people." The ten thousand 
 who live in the biggest houses would define New York 
 upperdom with satisfactory clearness, to some. The 
 ten thousand " safest" men would satisfy others. The 
 educated ten thousand the religious ten thousand 
 the ten thousand who had grandfathers the ten 
 thousand who go to Saratoga and Newport the 
 liberal ten thousand the ten thousand who ride in 
 carriages the ten thousand who spend over a certain 
 sum the ten thousand " above Bleecker" the ten 
 thousand "ever heard of" are aristocracies as others 
 estimate them. And till the really upper ten thousand 
 are indubitably defined, there are ninety thousand, 
 more or less, who are in the enjoyment of a most desi 
 rable illusion. 
 
 No! no! republican benevolence the "greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number" would stop the 
 march of civilization as to aristocracy, where it is. 
 Its progress is through a reversed cornucopia, and the 
 
EPHEMERA 
 
 197 
 
 extreme end is too small for the comfort of the " na 
 tion." Meantime, however, the standard of good 
 manners is rather loosely kept, and though the ten 
 41 ten-thousands" are all seen to be tolerable, there is 
 a small class who go wholly unappreciated those 
 who are unconscious of their own degree from nature, 
 and are only recognisable by the highest standards. 
 We speak of those who have " no manner" simply 
 because they would be less refined if they had. There 
 are enchanting women in New York we ourself 
 know a half-dozen who are wholly unaware them 
 selves, wholly unsuspected by others, of carrying a 
 mark from nature that in Europe would supersede all 
 questions of origin and circumstances. English aris 
 tocratic society is sprinkled throughout with these 
 sealed packets of nobility from God one of whom I 
 remember inquiring out with great interest, a single 
 lady of thirty-six apparently, but looking like a dis 
 tilled drop of the " blood of all the Howards." simple 
 as a tulip on (he stem, and said, though obscurely con 
 nected, to have refused a score of the best matches 
 of England. These "no manners" that are better 
 than "good manners" walk a republic quite undetected 
 as aristocracy; but, as the persons so born are always 
 beloved (losing only the admiration that is due to 
 them) their benighted state scarce calls for a mis 
 sionary ! 
 
 We should not be surprised if there were a pair 
 from this Nature s Upper-dom 
 
 " Two trusty turtles, truefastest of all true," 
 in your own village, dear Fanny Forester ! 
 
 THE WEST IN A PETTICOAT. 
 
 (By way of declining a communication in hope of a 
 better one.) 
 
 We have been for years looking at the western 
 horizon of American literature, for a star to rise that 
 should smack of the big rivers, steamboats, alligators, 
 and western manners. We have the DOW.X KAST 
 embodied in Jack Downing and his imitators. There 
 was wanting a literary embodiment of the OUT WEST 
 not, a mind shining at it, by ridiculing it from a 
 distance, but a mind shining from it, by showing its 
 peculiar qualities unconsciously. The rough-hewn 
 physiognomy of the west, though showing as yet but 
 in rude and unattractive outline, is the profile of a fine 
 giant, and will chisel down to noble features hereafter; 
 but, meantime, there will be a literary foreshadowing 
 of its maturity abrupt, confiding, dashing writers, 
 regardless of all trammels and fearless of ridicule 
 and we think we have heard from one of them. 
 
 The letter from which we shall quote presently, is 
 entirely in earnest, and signed with the Jady s real 
 name. We at first threw the accompanying com 
 munication aside, as very original and amusing, but 
 unfit for print except with comments which we had 
 no time to make. Taking it up again this morning, 
 we think we see a way to compass the lady-writer s 
 object, and we commence by giving her a fictitious 
 name to make famous (instead of her own), and by in 
 teresting our readers in her with showing her charac 
 ter of mind as her letter shows her to us. She is 
 quick, energetic, confident of herself, full of humor, 
 and a good observer, and the " half-horse half-alliga 
 tor impulses with which she writes so unconscious 
 ly, may be trimmed into an admirable and entirely 
 original style by care and labor. 
 
 Miss " Kate Juniper,"* (so we name her), thus 
 
 The word " Juniper is derived from the Latin words 
 "junior and pai-ere" descriptive of a fruit which makes its 
 appearance prematurely. We trust Miss Kate Juniper will sec 
 the propriety of using this name till she is ripe enough to re 
 sume her own. 
 
 dashes, western-fashion, in what she has to say 
 to us : 
 
 " 1 hate formal introductions. I would speak to you 
 now, and I will see you, when I may, in the Palace 
 of Truth. I am in Godey s Lady s Book with decent 
 compensation, but I want to be published faster than 
 they can do it. I want to write for the Mirror icithout 
 pay, for the sake of getting my name up. I shall 
 ultimately put money in rny purse by this course. 
 I have now three manuscript volumes, which good 
 judges tell me are equal to Miss Bremer s. I send you 
 a specimen. I have a series of these sketches, enti 
 tled The Spirits of the Room. I can sell them to 
 Godey, but he will be for ever bringing them out. I 
 ! propose to give them to you, if you like them, in the 
 ! true spirit of bargain and sale, though not in the let- 
 i ter. 1 will give you as many as will serve my purpose 
 ; of getting my name known; and then, if success 
 comes, you will hold me by the chain of gratitude, as 
 you now do by that of reverence and affection. 
 
 " Will ypu write me immediately and tell me your 
 i thoughts of this thing ? Truly your friend." 
 
 We can only give a taste of her literary quality by 
 an extract from her communication, the remainder 
 wanting finish, and this portion sufficing to introduce 
 I her to our readers. We give it precisely as written 
 I and punctuated. She is describing an interview with 
 I a travelling lecturer on magnetism, and gives her own 
 experience in neurological sight-seeing : 
 
 "Mark the sequel. I had, on going into the room, 
 lost my handkerchief. A gentleman famed for his 
 wisdom, his powder of seeing as far into the future 
 without the gift of second sight, as others can with it, 
 lent me his, protem. 1 heard the wonderful statements 
 of the New School in Psychology relative to sym 
 pathy established by means of magnetized or neurolo- 
 | gized handkerchiefs, letters, etc. I determined to 
 keep the handkerchief and see if there were enough 
 of the soul aura of my wise-acre friend imprisoned in 
 it, to affect me. I did so ; I returned to my home in 
 the hotel to riiy lonely room ; evening shut in ; the 
 waiter did not bring me a light; my anthracite burned 
 blue and dimly enough ; 1 bound the magic handker 
 chief about my brow and invoked the sight of my 
 friend to aid my own. What I saw shall be told in 
 the next chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 "I gazed into the dimness and vacancy that sur 
 rounded me J conjured the guardian spirit of the 
 room to come before me, and communicate some of 
 the secrets of his wards. How many hearts, thought 
 I, have beat with joy and sorrow, with hope, and with 
 anguish unutterable in this room. But no guardian 
 spirit appeared, and 1 began to think that the tee-total 
 pledge of this hotel had really banished all sorts of 
 spirits, neurology to the contrary notwithstanding. I 
 i closed my eyes, laid my hand on the bewiirhing 
 | point in my forehead, and lo ! my eyes were opened, 
 not literally but neurologically. At first a figure was 
 revealed dimly and indistinctly gradually its out lines 
 grew more defined, and a graceful young man stood 
 before me. He was enveloped in the (olds of an am 
 ple cloak, a jewelled hand held it in front, and he 
 stood as if waiting to be known and noted. While 
 gazing on him I found myself endowed with new and 
 marvellous powers every line of his face had its 
 language, and told me a broad history. His attitude, 
 his hand, the manner in which the folds of his cloak 
 fell about him, constituted a library that I was skilled 
 to read, if I would. Here was the signatura rerun. 
 I looked and looked it was like looking into a libra 
 ry and determining what you shall read, and what you 
 i shall leave unread. Some one has said that ihe 
 j half is greater than the whole. This may be a physi 
 cal, yet not a metaphysical paradox. Here I saw tha 
 
198 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 last occupant of my room standing before me. I 
 said I will first look at one week of his life. In a 
 moment I beheld him pacing fitfully the room 
 his thoughts came before me they were such as 
 these," &c., &c. 
 
 Miss Juniper goes on with an account of half a 
 dozen different characters, who (by a very natural 
 vein of revery) she imagines may have occupied the 
 room before her. The specimen we have given sim 
 ply shows the free dash of her pen, and we think we 
 see in it the capability of better things. 
 
 FEMALE STOCK BROKERS, ETC. A letter from 
 Paris to the London Times describes the stock ex 
 change of Paris (the Bourse) as thronged by female 
 speculators not less than a hundred in attendance on 
 any one day. To do this, too, they are obliged to 
 stand in the open square in front of the building, as 
 they have been excluded from the interior by a spe 
 cial regulation ! Every five minutes during the sale 
 of stocks, two or three bareheaded agents rush down 
 the steps of the Bourse to announce to the fair spec 
 ulators the state of the market; and they buy and sell 
 accordingly. 
 
 Fancy a few of the customs of the " most polite na 
 tion" introduced into New York ! What would "Mrs. 
 Grundy" say of a hundred ladies standing about on 
 the sidewalk in Wall street, speculating in stocks, and 
 excluded by a vote of the stock-brokers from the floor 
 of the Exchange! When will the New York ladies 
 begin to smoke in their carriages, as they do in Par- 
 
 This book begins with an emblematic device re 
 sembling, at first view, the knightly decoration called 
 by our English neighbors a star. On further exami 
 nation, a garter seems to be included in the figure; 
 but upon still closer view, we discover, within the 
 rays which form the outer border, first an eternal 
 serpent then the deeper mystery of two triangles 
 one of light, the other of darkness and shadow. We 
 should not have been thus particular in describing a 
 new decoration, but we conceive that the figure is 
 very significant of the tone and design of the book. 
 It belongs to what is called the transcendental school 
 a school which we believe to have mixed up much 
 of what is noble and true with much of what is merely 
 | imaginary and fantastic. Truth, freedom, love, light 
 these are high and holy objects; and though they 
 may be sought, sometimes, by modes which we may 
 think susceptible of improvement, we honor those 
 who propose to themselves such objects, according to 
 their aims and not according to their ability of ac 
 complishment. The character and rights of woman 
 form naturally the principal subject of Miss Fuller s 
 book ; and we hope it may have an influence in con 
 vincing, if not "man," at least some men, that woman 
 was born for better things than to " cook him some 
 thing good." 
 
 THE ENGLISH PREMIER. We see a text for the 
 least-taste-in-life of a sermon, in the following touch- 
 up of Sir Robert Peel by the London Examiner: 
 
 " WANTED, A PREMIER S ASSISTANT. Our friend 
 Punch, who has written some excellent lessons for 
 
 is? When will they wear Wellington boots with ministers, suited to the meanest capacity, in words 
 
 high heels? When will they frequent the billiard- 
 rooms and public eating-houses ? When will those who 
 are not rich enough to keep house, use "home" only 
 as birds do their nests, to sleep in breakfasting, di 
 ning, and amusing themselves, at all other hours, out 
 of doors, or in cafes and restaurants? .W^hen will the 
 more fashionable ladies receive morning calls in the 
 prettiest room in the house their bed-room them 
 selves in bed, with coquettish caps and the most soig 
 nee demi-toilet any way contrivable? Funny place, 
 France ! Yet in no country that we were ever in, 
 seemed woman so insincerely worshipped so mocked 
 with the shadow of power over men. We should 
 think it as great a curiosity to see a well-bred French 
 man love-sick (when he supposed himself alone) as to 
 see an angel tipsy, or a marble bust in tears. This 
 condition of the " love of the country," and the dissi 
 pation of female habits, are mutual consequences so 
 to speak. Men are constituted by nature to love 
 women, and in proportion as women become man-ified 
 they feel toward them as men do to each other self 
 ish and unimpressible. We remember once asking a 
 French nobleman who was very fond of London, what 
 was the most marked point of difference which he (as 
 a professed love-maker) found between French and 
 English women. The reply was an unfeeling one, 
 but it will be a guide to an estimate of the effect of 
 the different national manners on female character. 
 "The expense of a love affair," said he, " falls on the 
 man in France, and on the woman in England. Eng 
 lish women make you uncomfortable by the quantity 
 of presents they give you, and French women quite 
 as uncomfortable by the quantity they exact from 
 you." We only quote this remark as made by a very 
 great beau and a very keen observer the fact that a 
 high-bred man weighed women at all in such abomina 
 ble scales being a good argument (at least) against in 
 viting the ladies to Wall street and the billiard-rooms! 
 And now let us say a word of what made the letter 
 in the Times more suggestive than it otherwise would 
 have been Miss Fuller s book on " WOMAN IN THE 
 
 J^FNETEENTH CENTURY," 
 
 from one syllable to three, by easy upward ascent, 
 should take Sir Robert Peel s education in hand, and 
 teach him how to write a decent note. 
 
 " Notwithstanding the proverb to the contrary, a man 
 may do a handsome thing in a very awkward way. 
 
 "It was quite becoming and right to give a pension 
 of c20 a year to Miss Brown, but what a note about 
 it is this, with its parenthetical dislocations, and its 
 atrocious style as stiff as buckram : 
 
 " Whitehall, Dec. 24. 
 
 " MADAM : There is a fund applicable, as vacancies 
 may occur, to the grant of annual pensions of very 
 limited amount, which usage has placed at the dispo 
 sal of the lady of the first minister. On this fund 
 there is a surplus of c20 per annum. 
 
 " Lady Peel has heard of your honorable and suc 
 cessful exertions to mitigate, by literary acquirements, 
 the effects of the misfortune by which you have been 
 visited; and should the grant of this pension for your 
 life be acceptable to you, Lady Peel will have great 
 satisfaction in such an appropriation of it. 
 
 " I am, &c. ROBERT PEEL. 
 
 "If Punch had been over Sir Robert Peel when he 
 wrote this, he would have hit him several sharp raps 
 on the knuckles with his baton, we are quite certain. 
 The model of the note may be in Dilworth, very 
 probably, or even in the Complete Letter-Writer, by 
 the retired butler; but, nevertheless, it is not a true 
 standard of taste. 
 
 " Not to mention the clumsy parenthetical clauses 
 so much better omitted, or the long-tailed words so 
 out of place in a note about a matter of c20 a year. 
 Sir Robert Peel has to learn that none but he-millin 
 ers and haberdashers talk of their " ladies." Sir Rob 
 ert Peel, as a gentleman and a prime minister, needs 
 not be ashamed of writing of his wife. He may rest 
 quite assured that the world will know that his wife is 
 a lady without his studiously telling it so. 
 
 " Foreigners will ask what is the distinction be 
 tween a gentleman s lady and his wife ; whether they are 
 convertible terms; whether there are minister s wives 
 who are not ladies ; or whether there are ladies who 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 199 
 
 are not wives; and why the equivocal word is prefer 
 red to the distinct one; and why the wife is treated if 
 it were the less honorable. 
 
 " Formerly men used to have wives, not ladies; but 
 in the announcement of birlhs it has seemed finer to 
 Mr. Spruggins and Mr. Wiggins to say that his lady 
 has been delivered than his wife, the latter sounding 
 homely and low. 
 
 "But Sir Robert Peel should not be led away by 
 these examples. He is of importance enough in the : 
 world to afford to mention his wife in plain, honest, I 
 homely old English. 
 
 "Any one who is disposed to give lessons in letter- 
 writing can not do better than collect Sir Robert 
 Peel s notes as warning examples. From the Velve 
 teens to Miss Brown s c20 a year, they have all the 
 same atrocious offences of style and taste. It is an 
 other variety of the Yellow Plush school. 
 
 " It distresses us to see it. We should like to see 
 MissBrown s <20 a year rendered into plain, gentle 
 manly English. 
 
 " As prizes are the fashion, perhaps some one will 
 give a prize for the best translation of Sir Robert 
 Peel s notes into the language of ease, simplicity, and 
 with them, good taste." 
 
 Sir Robert s crockery note proves, not that his pre 
 miership still shows the lint of the spinning-jenny, but [ 
 that he employed one of his clerks (suitably impressed j 
 with his duty to Lady Peel) to write the letter. We 
 wish to call attention, however, to the superior sim- \ 
 plicity of the taste contended for by the critic, and to 
 the evidence it gives that extremes meet in the usages ! 
 of good breeding as in other things the highest re 
 finement fairly lapping over upon what nature started 
 with. The application of this is almost universal, but 
 perhaps we had better particularize at once, and con 
 fess to as much annoyance as we have a right to ex 
 press (in " a free country") at the affected use of the 
 word lady in the United States, and the superfine 
 shrinking from the honest words wife and woman. M 
 Those who say "this is my lady, sir!" instead of{ 
 "this is my wife, sir!" or those who say "she is a P 
 very pretty lady" instead of "she is a very pretty |; 
 woman," should at least know what the words mean, 
 and what they convey to others. 
 
 In common usage, to speak of one s wife as one s 
 lady, smacks of low-breeding, because it expresses a 
 kind of announcement of her rank, as if her rank 
 would not otherwise be understood. It is sometimes 
 used from a dread of plain-spoken-ness, by men who 
 doubt their own manners but, as it always betrays 
 the doubt, it is in bad taste. The etymology of the 
 plainer words is a better argument in their favor, how 
 ever. In the Saxon language from which they are 
 derived, wceepman signifies that one of the conjugal 
 pair who employed the weapons necessary for the de 
 fence of the family, and icif-man signified, the one 
 who was employed at the woof, clothing the family by 
 her industry. (The terms of endearment, of course, 
 were " my fighter," and " my weaver !") instead of 
 this honestly derived word (wife), meaning the one 
 who has the care of the family, the word lady is used, 
 which (also by derivation from the Saxon) signifies 
 one. who is raised to the rank of her conjugal mate ! 
 But, in this country, where the males invariably bur 
 row in trade, while the females as invariably soar out 
 of their reach in the sunshine of cultivation, few wo 
 men are raised to the rank of their husbands. It is an 
 injustice to almost any American woman to say as 
 much by calling her a lady. 
 
 It is one part, though ever so small a part, of patri 
 otism, to toil for improving the manners of the coun 
 try. If we can avoid the long round of affectations, 
 and make a short cut to good taste by at once sub 
 mitting every question of manners to the three ulti 
 mate standards of high-breeding simplicity, disinter 
 
 estedness, and modesty, it might save us the century 
 or two of bad taste through which older countries 
 have found their way to refinement. Amen ! 
 
 LETTER TO FANNY FORESTER. 
 
 DKAR FANNY : Would your dark eyes vouchsafe 
 to wonder how I come to write to you ? Thus it 
 ! befell :_ 
 
 You live in the country and know what log-haul- 
 I ing is like over the stumps in the woods. You have, 
 many a time, mentally consigned, to condign axe and 
 fire, the senseless trunk that, all its life, had found 
 motion enough to make way for every silly breeze 
 that flirted over it, but lay in unyielding immoveable- 
 ness when poor oxen and horses were tortured to make 
 it stir! If you knew what a condition Broadway is in 
 what horses have to suffer to draw omnibuses and 
 how many pitiless human trunks are willing doggedly 
 to sit still to be drawn home to the fire by brute agony 
 you would see how, while walking in Broadway, I was 
 reminded of log-hauling then of the country and 
 then, of course, of Fanny Forester. 
 
 Before setting the news to trickle from my full 
 pen let me quote from a book (one that is my present 
 passion), a fine thought or two on the cruelty to ani 
 mals that has, this day, in Broadway, made me no 
 better than Uncle Toby in Flanders ! 
 
 " Shame upon creation s lord, the fierce unsanguined dpspot : 
 What ! art thou not content thy sin hath dragged down 
 
 suffering and death 
 Upon the poor dumb servants of thy comfort, and yet must 
 
 thou rack them with thy spite ? 
 For very shame be merciful, be kind unto the creatures thou 
 
 hast ruined ; 
 
 Earth and her million tribes are cursed for thy sake ; 
 Liveth there but one among the million that shall not bear 
 
 witness against thee, 
 A pensioner of land or air or sea, that hath not whereof it 
 
 will accuse thee ? 
 From the elephant toiling at a launch, to the shrew-mouse 
 
 in the harvest-field, 
 From the whale which the harpooner hath stricken, to the 
 
 minnow caught upon a pin, 
 From the albatross wearied in its flight, to the wren in her 
 
 covered nest, 
 From the death-moth and the lace-winged dragon-fly, to the 
 
 lady-bird and the gnat, 
 The verdict of all things is unanimous, finding their master 
 
 cruel : 
 
 The dog, thy humble friend, thy trusting, honest friend, 
 The horse, thy uncomplaining slave, drudging from mom 
 
 to even, 
 The lamb, and the timorous hare, and the laboring ox at 
 
 plough, 
 
 And all things that minister alike to thy life and thy com 
 fort and thy pride. 
 
 Testify with one sad voice that man is a cruel master. 
 The galled ox can not complain, nor supplicate a moment s 
 
 respite ; 
 The spent horse hideth his distress, till he panted out his 
 
 spirit at the goal ; 
 Behold, he is faint with hunger ; the big tear standeth in 
 
 His sk u/isVore with stripes, and he tottereth beneath his 
 
 burden : 
 His limbs are stiff with age, his sinews have lost their 
 
 And^n is stamped upon his face, while he wrestleth 
 
 unequally with toil ; 
 Yet once more mutely and meekly endureth he the crush- 
 
 ing blow ; 
 That struggle hath cracked his heart-strings the generous 
 
 brute is dead !" 
 
 I doubt whether fifty years of jumping toothache 
 would not be a lesser evil, hereafter, than the retribu 
 tion charged this day against each passenger from 
 Wall street to Bleecker. And, as if to aggravate the 
 needlessness of the sin, the sidewalk was like the side 
 walks in June dry, sunny, and besprinkled with ador 
 able shoppers. With the sides of the street thus 
 
200 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 clenn and bright, the middle with a succession of pits, 
 each one of which required the utmost strength of a 
 pair of horses to toil out of the wheels continually 
 cutting in to the axletrees, each sinking of the wheels 
 bringing down the whip on the guilty horses, and, 
 with all the lashing, cursing, toiling and breaking of 
 harness, people (with legs to carry them) remaining 
 heartlessly inside the omnibuses. Oh, for one hour s 
 change of places horses inside arid passengers in 
 harness ! 
 
 But why break your country heart for sins in 
 Broadway ? Think rather of the virtues and the 
 fashions. Large parasols (feminized, from male um 
 brellas, only by petticoats of fringe and the change- 
 ableness of the silk) are now carried between heaven 
 and bright eyes, to the successful banishment of the 
 former. Ladies sit in the shops smoking camphor 
 cigars while their daughters buy ribands. French 
 lap-dogs, with maids to lead them, are losing singu 
 larity, as pairs of spectacles. People in the second 
 story are at the level of very fine weather. Literature 
 is at a dead stand-still. The " father of evil has not 
 yet told us what the next excitement is to grow out 
 of; and meantime (to-night) we are to have an Eng 
 lish song from Madam Pico at the Tabernacle. 
 
 So you have been ill and are mortal after all ! 
 Well ! I presume whatever stays to keep the violets 
 company "Fanny Forester" goes to He;iven; so you 
 must have your reminders, like the rest of us, that 
 the parting guest is to be looked after. What a to- 
 morrow-dom life is! Eve s fault or Adam s to-day 
 was left in Eden ! we live only for what is to come. I 
 am, for one, quite sick of hoping ; and if I could put 
 a sack of money at my back to keep my heels from 
 tripping, I would f;ice about and see nothing but the 
 to-day of the children behind me. (Bless me, how 
 grave ] am getting to be !) 
 
 Write to me, dear Fanny! As I go to market on 
 this river of ink, write me such a letter as will ride 
 without damage in the two-penny basket that brings 
 this to you. 
 
 And now adieu or rather au soin de Dieu for I 
 trust that the first lark that goes up with the spring 
 news will bid the angels not to expect you, yet awhile. 
 Take care of your health. Yours always. 
 
 MADAMK Pico s CONCERT. We should guess that 
 between two and three thousand persons were listeners 
 in the vast hall of the Tabernacle at the concert. The 
 five hundred regular opera-goers, who were apparent 
 ly all there, were scattered among a mass of graver 
 countenances, and Madame Pico saw combined her 
 two bailiwicks of fashion and seriousness. She seems 
 to be equally popular with both, and her "good-fel 
 low" physiognomy never showed its honest beauty to 
 more advantage. She wore a Greek cap of gold braid 
 on the right-side organ of conscientiousness, and prob 
 ably magnetized very powerfully the large gold tassel 
 that fell from it over her cheek. The English song 
 was the qui-vive-\ly of the evening, however, and 
 English, from a tongue cradled in a gondola, is cer 
 tainly very peculiar! But, preserv us, Rossini-Bel 
 lini ! After hearing exclusively Italian music from a 
 songstress, the descent to Balfe is rather intolerable. 
 A lark starting for its accustomed zenith with "chicken 
 fixings" would represent our soul as it undertook to 
 soar last night with Balfeathered Pico! What should 
 make that same song popular is beyond our divining. 
 Most of its movement works directly in the joint be 
 tween the comfortable parts of the voice, and nobody 
 ever tilled through its see-saw transitions, in our hear 
 ing, without apparent distress. 
 
 Madame Arnoult made a very strong impression on 
 the audience last night. She sang with more dew in 
 
 her throat than when we heard her before, and we 
 fancy that the hard enamel of her tones, at thai time, 
 was from the bracing up against timidity, and not from 
 the quality of the organ. She has only to draw a 
 check for what popularity she wants, we presume. 
 
 TOWN-HUNGER FOR POETS. The appetite for live 
 bards (like other scarce meats, commonly liked best 
 when pretty well gone) is probably peculiar to old 
 countries. We have stumbled lately on the follow 
 ing letter touching Petrarch, written in 1368, by the 
 Seigneury of Florence, to Pope Urban V. : 
 
 " The celebrity and talent of our fellow-citizen. M. 
 Francesco Petrarca, inspire us with a great desire to 
 attract him back to reside in Florence, for the honor 
 of the city and for his own tranquillity; for he has 
 greatly harassed himself by bodily fatigues and scien 
 tific pursuits in various countries. But as he has 
 here no patrimony nor means of support, and little 
 fancy for a secular life, be pleased to grant him the 
 favor of the first canonry vacant in Florence ; and this 
 notwithstanding any previous promise, so that no one 
 may be appointed canon in preference to him. And 
 you will ascertain from Pitti in what manner this ap 
 pointment may be obtained for him in the most ample 
 manner." 
 
 How long it will be before Newburyport will send 
 to the governor of Arkansas for ALBERT PIKE before 
 New Haven will send to Mayor Harper for Mr. HAL- 
 LECK before Portland will send to President Quincy 
 for LONGFELLOW before other great cities will send 
 for the now peripatetic ashes of their future honorary 
 urns, and confer on them " appointments in the most 
 ample manner" we are not prophet enough to know 
 nor do we know what the locofocos would sny to 
 such appointments. We suggest, however, that the 
 poets should combine to vote for Mayor Harper on 
 condition that he inquire what poets New York needs 
 to have back " for the honor of the city and their own 
 tranquillity." 
 
 JAPONICA-DOM IN ITALY We have often thought 
 that it would amuse, and possibly instruct, New- 
 Yorkers, to know exactly what class of Europeans 
 have, as nearly as possible, their own pretensions to 
 aristocracy, and where such persons "stand," in the 
 way of go-to-lhe-devil-dom, from the titled classes. 
 There is scarce a man of fortune or fashion in New 
 York who is not what they call in Europe a roturier 
 a man, that is to say, whose posilion is made al 
 together by his money. The treatment which a 
 roturier gets, therefore, from ihose above him, presents 
 a fair opportunity for contrasting his value (measured 
 by this scale) with that of a rich, but grandfotherless 
 New-Yorker. Besides other profit in the comparison, 
 it is as well, perhaps, to form a guess as to what sort 
 of a sore the upper ten thousand will make, when they 
 come to a head in Manhattan. 
 
 A letter to the Foreign Quarterly Review from a cor 
 respondent in Italy, gives an account of the celebra 
 tion of a scientific anniversary which draws together 
 the accessible celebrities of Europe, and which was 
 held this year in Milan. Incidentally the writer 
 speaks of Milanese society thus : 
 
 "Yes! the congress, whatever its other claims to 
 consideration may have been, was deficient in quar- 
 terings, and was therefore, no company for Milanese 
 noblesse. Nowhere, in Europe, is the effete barbar 
 ism of castes more in vigor than at Milan. The 
 result of course, and of necessity, is, that the exclu 
 sive there are the least advanced in social and moral 
 ivilization of all the great cities of Italy. Will it be 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 201 
 
 believed that these noble blockheads have a Casino 
 for themselves .ml their females, to whose festivities 
 the more distinguished of their non-noble fellow-citi 
 zens are invited after what manner does the civilized 
 nineteenth century Englishman think? Thus: A 
 gallery has been constructed, looking from above into 
 the ball-room. Inhere such more distinguished roturiers 
 (men of low descent), with their families, as the privi 
 leged caste may condescend to invite not to share but to 
 witness their festivities, being duly fenced in with an 
 iron grating, may gaze through the bars at the paradise 
 that they can never enter. It is at least something ! 
 They may there see tuhal it is to be noble / The 
 happy ones, thus permitted to feast their eyes, may, 
 at least, boast to their less fortunate fellow-citizens, 
 of the condescension with which they have been 
 honored, and thus propagated, in some degree the 
 blessings of exclusiveness among the ranks of the 
 swinish multitude! In their happy gallery, at the 
 top of the noble ball-room, they may at least inhale the 
 refuse breath streaming up from noble lungs delicious 
 gales from Ara by tJie blest. Surely this is something. 
 The wealthy citizens of Milan feel that it is ; and they 
 value the so-condescendingly-granted privilege ac 
 cordingly. 
 
 "Yes! the roturier citizens of Milan incredible 
 as it may seem to those whose more civilized social 
 system has given them the feelings of men in the place 
 of those of slaves do gratefully and gladly accept 
 tliese invitations. Yes for one of the curses most 
 surely attendant on the undue separation of a privi 
 leged caste, is the degradation of both parties the real 
 abasement of the pariah, as well as the fancied exalta 
 tion of the noble." 
 
 Our readers imaginations will easily transfer this 
 state of things to New York (fancying one class of 
 rich men inviting another class of men, quite as rich, 
 but with not the same sort of grandfathers, to look at 
 a ball through an iron gr<iting!) but, leaving our friends 
 to pick out the " customers" for the two sides of the 
 grate, we turn to another difference still, between the 
 nether -graters and the mechanics. There is even a 
 more impassable barrier between these, and it is almost 
 as impassable in England and France as in the more 
 monarchical portions of Europe. A letter from abroad 
 in the Ledger of yesterday, states this phase of social 
 distinction very clearly : 
 
 " The present state of society in France presents, 
 therefore, a new and almost incurable evil the entire 
 separation of tiie capitalists, the merchants and manu 
 facturers, from the laboring portion of the community ; 
 and what is worse, a hostile attitude of these social 
 elements to each other. In Germany, and partly even 
 in England, the interests of the manufacturers and 
 capitalists are parallel with those of the laborers, and 
 kept so by the pressure of a wealthy overbearing aris 
 tocracy in Great Britain ; while on the continent the 
 industrious pursuits are not yet sufficiently developed 
 to effect the separation. Whenever the laborers (the 
 pariahs) of England make common cause with their 
 employers, or rather, whenever their demands coincide 
 with those of their masters, the aristocracy is gene 
 rally obliged to yield : but whenever, as in the case 
 of the chartists, the laborers or inferior orders of the 
 industrious section of society demand anything for 
 itself which does not agree with the views of their em 
 ployers, they are perfectly powerless a mere play-ball, 
 tossed to and fro between the landlords and the cotton- 
 lords. 
 
 "In France, as I have observed, the separation of 
 the higher bourgeoisie from those who help them by 
 their labor to amass wealth, is complete; but so power 
 less is the latter section that it is not only not repre 
 sented in the chambers, but not even thought or spo 
 ken of, except when it is thought necessary to teach 
 it a lesson by putting it down and teaching it obedi- , 
 
 ence. The misery of the laboring classes has not yet 
 found an orator. " 
 
 We have given, here-above, an attractive nucleus 
 for table-talk and speculation, and we leave it to our 
 friends. 
 
 POETS AND POETRY OF AMERICA. An hour s 
 lecture on this subject by Mr. Poe is but a " foot of 
 Hercules," and though one can see what would be 
 the proportions of the whole, if treated with the same 
 scope and artistic minuteness, it is a pity to see only 
 the fragment. What we heard last night convinced 
 us, however, that one of the most readable and sale 
 able of books would be a dozen of such lectures by 
 Mr. Poe, and we give him a publisher s counsel to 
 print them. 
 
 After some general remarks on poetry and the uses 
 of impartial criticism, Mr. Poe gently waked up the 
 American poetesses. He began with Mrs. Sigourney, 
 whom he considered the best known, and who, he 
 seemed to think, owed her famousness to the same 
 cause as "old boss Richards" the being kept before 
 the people. He spoke well of her poetry abstractly, 
 but intimated that it was strongly be-Hemans d, and 
 that without the Hemanshood and the newspaper 
 iteration, Mrs. Sigouruey would not be the first 
 American poetess. He next came to Mrs. Welby as 
 No. 2, and gave her wholesome muse some very stiff 
 laudation. Mrs. Osgood came next, and for her he 
 prophesied a rosy future of increasing power and re 
 nown. He spoke well of Mrs. Seba Smith, and he 
 spent some time in showing that the two Miss David 
 sons, with all their merit, were afloat " on bladders in 
 a sea of glory." The pricking of these bladders, by- 
 the-way, and the letting out of Miss Sedgwick s 
 breath, and Professor Morse s, and Mr. Southey s, 
 was most artistically well done. 
 
 Of the inspired males Mr. Poe only took up the 
 copperplate five Bryant, Halleck, Longfellow, 
 Sprague, and Dana. These, as having their por 
 traits engraved in the frontispiece of Griswold s 
 "Poets and Poetry of America," were taken to rep 
 resent the country s poetry, and dropped into the 
 melting-pot accordingly. Mr. Bryant came first as 
 the allowed best poet; but Mr. Poe, after giving him 
 high praise, expressed a contempt for " public opin 
 ion," and for the opinion of all majorities, in matters 
 of taste, and intimated that Mr. Bryant s universality 
 of approval lay in his keeping within very narrow lim 
 its, where it was easy to have no faults. Halleck, Mr. 
 Poe praised exceedingly, repeating with great beauty 
 of elocution his Marco Bozzaris. Longfellow, Mr. 
 Poe said, had more genius than any other of the five, 
 but his fatal alacrity at imitation made him borrow, 
 when he had better at home. Sprague, but for 
 one drop of genuine poetry in a fugitive piece, was 
 described by Poe as Pope-and-water. Dana found 
 very little favor. Mr. Poe thought his metre harsh 
 and awkward, his narrative ill-managed, and his con 
 ceptions eggs from other people s nests. With the 
 copperplate five, the criticisms abruptly broke off, Mr. 
 Poe concluding his lecture with the recitation of three 
 pieces of poetry which he thought had been mista 
 kenly put away, by the housekeeper of the temple of 
 fame, among the "empty bottles. Two of them were 
 by authors we did not know, and the third was by an 
 author whom we have been exhorted to know under 
 the Greek name of Seauton ("gnothi seauton") 
 ourself ! (Perhaps we may be excused for mentioning 
 that the overlooked bottle of us contained "unseen 
 spirits," and that the brigadier, who gave us twenty 
 dollars for it, thought it by no means "small beer!") 
 
 Mr. Poe had an audience of critics and poets 
 between two and three hundred of victims and victim- 
 j zers and he was heard with breathless attention. He 
 
202 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 becomes a desk, his beautiful head showing like a 
 statuary embodiment of discrimination; his accent 
 drops like a knife through water, and his style is so 
 much purer and clearer than the pulpit commonly 
 gets or requires, that the effect of what he says, beside 
 other things, pampers the ear. Poe s late poem of 
 " The Raven," embroidered him at once on the quilt 
 of the poets ; but as the first bold traverse thread run 
 across the parallelisms of American criticism, he 
 wants but a business bodkin to work this subordinate 
 talent to great show and profit. We admire him none 
 the less for dissenting from some of his opinions. 
 
 ASYLUM FOR INDIGENT WOMEN. A benevolent 
 friend surprised us, on Saturday, into one of the most 
 agreeable visits we ever made a visit to an institution 
 of whose existence we were not even aware. We 
 presume that others have shared our ignorance, and 
 that the name we have written above will convey to 
 most readers an idea either vague or entirely novel. 
 Poetry alone would express truly the impression left 
 on our mind by this visit, but we will confine ourself 
 to a brief description in prose. 
 
 Our friend informed us, on the way, that an entrance 
 fee of fifty dollars was required, and that the claims of 
 the proposed inmate (as to respectability and such cir 
 cumstances as would affect the social comfort of the 
 establishment) were decided upon by the board of 
 management. Once there, she has a home for life, 
 with perfect command of egress, absence for visits, 
 and calls from friends, books, medical attendance, oc 
 cupation, &c. Each inmate commonly adds some 
 furniture to the simple provision of the room. 
 
 We entered a large building, with two spacious 
 wings, standing on Twentieth street, near the East 
 river. Opposite the entrance, the door opened into a 
 cheerful chapel, and we turned to the left into a 
 drawing-room, which had all the appearance of an 
 apartment in the most comfortable private residence. 
 We descended thence through warm corridors, to the 
 refectory in the basement, and here the ladies (be 
 tween fifty and sixty of them) chanced to be taking 
 their tea. We really never saw a pleasanter picture 
 of comfort. The several tables were scattered irreg 
 ularly around the room, and each little party had sep 
 arate teapot and table furniture, the arrangements 
 reminding one of a cafe, in a world grown old. The 
 gay chatting, the passing of cups and plates, the nod 
 ding of clean caps, and the really unusual liveliness 
 of the different parties, took us entirely by surprise 
 took away, in fact, all idea of an asylum for sickness 
 or poverty. What with the fragrant atmosphere of 
 souchong, and the happy faces, it would have been a 
 needlessly fastidious person who would not have sat 
 down willingly as a guest at the meal. 
 
 We looked into the kitchen and household arrange 
 ments for a few minutes, finding everything the model 
 of wholesome neatness, and then, as the ladies had 
 returned to their rooms, we made a few visits to 
 them, chez elles, introduced by the attendant. Here 
 again, the variety of furniture, the comfortable rock 
 ing-chairs, the curtains, and pictures, and ornamental 
 trifles, removed all idea of hospital or asylum-life, and 
 gave us the feeling of visiters in private families. 
 The ladies were visiting from room to room, and those 
 we conversed with assured us that they had every 
 thing for their comfort, and were as happy as they well 
 could be though they laughed very heartily when we 
 expressed some envy of the barrier between them and 
 the vexed world we must return to, and at our wish 
 that we could "qualify" and stay with them. We 
 have rarely had merrier conversation in a call, and we 
 think that this asylum for age holds at least one or 
 two very agreeable women. 
 
 But what charity can the angel of mercy so smile 
 upon, as this waiting upon life to its gloomy retiring- 
 door, lighting the dark steps downward, and sending 
 home the weary guest with a farewell, softened and 
 cheerful ! God bless the founder of this beautiful 
 charity ! Who can hear of it and not wish to aid it ? 
 Who has read thus far, our truthful picture, and does 
 not mentally resolve to be one (though by ever so 
 small a gift) among its blest benefactors. 
 
 We begged a copy of the last report, and we find 
 that the society, which supports the asylum, has some 
 eighty pensioners out of the house, and that there is 
 some fear entertained, from the low state of the funds, 
 as to the ability to continue these latter charities. 
 We can not conceive the treasury of such an institu 
 tion in want. We are not authorized to make any 
 appeal to the public, but those who are inclined to 
 give can easily find out the way. 
 
 SACRED CONCERT. We have once or twice, when 
 writing of musical performers, given partial expres 
 sion to a feeling that has since been very strongly 
 confirmed the expediency of addressing music, in 
 this country, to the more serious instead of the gayer 
 classes, for its best support and cultivation. The 
 high moral tone, this side the water, of all those strata 
 of society to which refined amusement looks for sup 
 port, gives music rather an American rebuke than an 
 American welcome coming as a pleasure in which 
 dissipated fashionables are alone interested. Italian 
 opera, properly labelled and separated from its need 
 less association with ballet, would rise to the unof 
 fending moral level of piano-music, sight-seeing, con 
 cert-going, or what the serious commonly call inno 
 cent amusements. 
 
 Till lately it has been generally understood that the 
 only hope for patronage of fine music, in New York, 
 was the exclusive class which answers to the court 
 circles of Europe ; and, so addressed, the opera has 
 very naturally languished. 
 
 The truth is, that the great mass of the wealthy 
 and respectable population of New York is at a level 
 of strict morality, or of religious feelings rising still 
 higher, and any amusement that goes by a doubtful 
 name among moralists, is at once excluded. But 
 music need never suffer by this exclusion, and as the 
 favor of these stricter classes, once secured, would be 
 of inexhaustible profit to musicians, it would be worth 
 while for some master-spirit among them to undertake 
 the proper adaptation of music to moral favor. 
 
 Why should the best singers be considered almost, 
 profane was the question that naturally enough oc 
 curred to us the other night on hearing the Taberna 
 cle fill, to its vast capacity, with the voice of Madame 
 Pico giving entrancing utterance to Scripture! Here 
 were a thousand lovers of music sitting breathless to 
 gether, with their most hallowed feelings embarked 
 upon a voice usually devoted to profane uses. Many 
 whose tears flow only at hallowed prompting, listened 
 with moist eyes to the new-clad notes of familiar sa 
 cred music perhaps half-sighing with self-reproach 
 that the enchantment of an opera-singer should have 
 reached such sacred fountains of emotion. Why 
 should not the best musical talent, as well as the 
 more indifferent, be made tributary to religion? Why 
 should not sacred operas be written for our country 
 exclusively ? Why should not the highly dramatic 
 scenes and events of Scripture be represented on the 
 stage, and seen with reverence by the classes who 
 have already seen them in their imaginations, during 
 perusal of the inspired volume. And why should not 
 the events of human life, as portrayed in unobjection 
 able operas, be alternated with these, and addressed to 
 the moral approbation of our refined serious classes? 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 203 
 
 We believe that this (and not this alone of things com 
 monly delivered over to the evil spirit among us) 
 would be willingly taken charge of by the angel of 
 good influences. 
 
 We can not give a critical notice of the performances 
 at the sacred concert, as we were unable to remain 
 after the conclusion of the first part, but we heard a 
 single remark which seems to us worth quoting. At 
 the conclusion of Madame Pico s first air, a gentle 
 man, standing near us, observed that it was very odd 
 a foreigner should sing with perfect articulation, while 
 he could scarce understand a word from those who 
 sang in their native tongue ! The instrumental mu 
 sic was admirable, and the scenic effect of the female 
 choir (all dressed in white, and getting up with a 
 spontaneous resurrection for the chorus) was at least 
 impressive. 
 
 P. S. Just as we are going to press we have re 
 ceived a critique of the concert, speaking very glow 
 ingly of Madame Pico, and the 
 
 " moist melodious hymn 
 From her white throat dim," 
 
 "as Aristophanes hath it," of the "deep clear tones 
 of BROUGH, so long lost to us," and " Miss Norihall 
 and Mr. Meyer," as having "given full satisfaction." 
 
 THE FAMINE AT WASHINGTON. The city is alive 
 with laughable stories of the distress for bed and prov 
 ender during the late descent upon the scene of the 
 inauguration. 
 
 " As the scorched locusts from the fields retire 
 While fast behind them runs the blaze of fire," 
 
 the belles and beaux, politicians and travellers, are 
 crowding back to the regions of steady population, 
 aghast at the risks of famine run in the capital of a 
 land of proverbial abundance. The stories are mostly 
 such as would easily be imagined taking place in any 
 country, under the circumstances, but we heard of one 
 worth recording a Yankee variation of an expedient 
 tried some years ago by an Englishman at Saratoga. 
 John Bull, in that instance (it may be remembered), 
 after calling in vain to the flying attendants at the 
 crowded table, splashed a handful of silver into his 
 plate and handed it to a waiter with a request for " a 
 clean plate and some soup." A Massachusetts judge, 
 probably remembering this, drew a gold piece from 
 his pocket last week while sitting hungry at the strip 
 ped table at Washington, and tapping his tumbler 
 with it till he attracted attention, laid it beside his 
 plate and pointed to it while he mentioned what he 
 wanted. He was miraculously supplied of course, 
 but, when he had nothing more to ask, he Qplitely 
 thanked the waiter and returned the gold piece to 
 his own pocket ! 
 
 THE GERMAN CONCERT. The great wilderness 
 of Pews-y-ism the boundless Tabernacle was filled 
 to its remotest " seat for one" on Saturday evening, 
 and a more successful concert could scarcely have 
 been given. The nation cradled away from salt air, 
 showed their naturally fresh enthusiasm for the per 
 formances, and it seemed to have an effect upon 
 Madame Pico, for her friends thought she never had 
 sung so enchantingly, as in the second of the pieces 
 set down for her " la casta Diva" She was ap 
 plauded to the utmost tension of Mr. Male s roof and 
 rafters. The German chorus by a score of amateurs 
 was admirably given, and Schaftenburg s piano-music 
 was done to the utmost probable of excellence. 
 
 " MINE HOST." Some time ago, in some specula 
 tions on American peculiarities, we commented on the 
 hotel-life so much more popular in this country than 
 elsewhere, and the necessity, bred by the manners 
 and habits of our people, that hotel-keepers should be 
 well-bred men, of high character and agreeable man 
 ners. The trusts reposed in them by their guests, 
 and the courtesy they are called on to exercise, make 
 it almost inevitable that such men should alone be 
 encouraged to assume the direction of hotels. This 
 tendency of fitness has lately put the Howard house 
 into the hands of one of our most courteous, capable, 
 and agreeable friends, Capt. Roe, and the public will 
 find that central hotel all that they can require. 
 
 THE GEODE. We remember being pitched for a 
 week into Query-dom, while attending college lec 
 tures, by Prof. Silliman s astounding story of the 
 mine in (we think) Meriden, Connecticut a single 
 cave in which had been found a specimen of almost 
 every known precious stone. It was a kind of omnibus 
 geode, and with a boy s imagination, we speculated 
 endlessly on how so many rare gems could have 
 chanced to have come together in this world of loose 
 distribution. We have come, now, however, to the 
 astounding knowledge of a geode of poetesses the 
 centre of which is Fanny Forester and though there 
 are astonishing resemblances between the material 
 and spirilual world, we were not prepared for this ! 
 Fanny herself, as a prose writer and poetess, has now 
 an assured fame. But, on St. Valentine s day, we 
 received an original Valentine from one of her in 
 timate friends, which was as beautiful poetry as fame 
 wants in her trumpet, and two or three weeks ago we 
 published a most delicious poem from another friend 
 of Fanny Forester s, and here comes a fourth gem 
 which seems to hint (and this is too sad a possibility 
 to trifle upon) that gifted Fanny Forester is beckoned 
 to, from a better world. God send her health with 
 this coming spring thousands will pray fervently. 
 Here follows a prayer for it, expressed in touching 
 erse by one who seems a familiar friend : 
 
 " TO FANNY FORESTER. 
 
 3RENCE NOBLK. 
 
 Saw you ever a purer light 
 
 More still and fair than the harvest moon 
 When day has died in a shadowless night ? 
 
 And the air is still as a summer s noon? 
 No? Ah, sweet one, your eyelids shrine 
 A light far purer, and more divine. 
 
 1 Heard you ever the silvery gush 
 
 Of a brook, far down in its rocky dell ; 
 
 And stilled your breath with a tremulous hush, 
 As its mystic murmurs rose and fell ? 
 
 Tis thus I list to the liquid flow 
 
 Of your silvery accents, soft and low. 
 
 Yet, sweet Fanny, the light that gleams 
 
 Neath the sweeping fringe of your radiant eyes, 
 Too purely chaste, and too heavenly seems 
 
 To dwell in the glare of our earthly skies ; 
 And, too soft and low your tones have birth. 
 To linger long mid the din of earth 
 
 1 The sweet brow shrined in your clustering hair 
 
 Has gathered a shadow wan, and deep, 
 And the veins a darker violet wear, 
 
 Which over your hollow temples creep ; 
 And your fairy foot falls faint and slow, 
 As the feathery flakes of the drifting snow. 
 
 Tis said the eods send swift decay 
 
 To the bright ones they love, of mortal birth ; 
 And your angel Dora passed away 
 
 In her youth s sweet spring-time, from the earth, 
 Yet stay, sweet Fanny ." your pinions fold, 
 Till the hearts that love you now, are cold." 
 
204 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 YANKEE-PARISIAN ARISTOCRACY. Our agreeable 
 neighbor of the " Etats-Unis" gives a letter from 
 Paris which states that " another rich American is 
 about taking the place of the retiring Col. THORN. 
 Mr. MACNAMARA has opened a superb house in the 
 rue de la Madeleine, and is sending out invitations 
 par milliers. In the commencement of a fashionable 
 career as an entertainer, a thousand invitations will 
 hardly bring persons enough to form a quadrille. 
 Mr. TUDOR, another American, is just now in that stage 
 where he has commenced weeding his saloons !" 
 
 The same agreeable letter states that two sisters of 
 the Hon. Mrs. Norton, Lady Seymour (the Queen 
 of Beauty at Eglinton), and Lady Dufferin (the Mrs. 
 Blackwood whose songs are well known in this coun 
 try), have been playing at the English embassy in 
 private theatricals. The characters were nearly all 
 personated by lords and ladies, yet one Baltimore 
 belle sustained the part of " Mary Copp" in the play 
 of Charles the Second Miss MACTAVISH. The 
 two sisters of Mrs. Norton and the " Undying One" 
 herself, were by much the three most beautiful wo 
 men we saw abroad magnificent graces between 
 whom it was hard to choose the most beautiful. 
 
 NEWELL S PATENT LOCK. Mr. Newell s wonder 
 ful lock (one of which costs as much as a pianoforte) 
 is not wholly original. On the world s first washing- 
 day, Monday No. 1, a human mind was created on 
 precisely the same principle. Without going into 
 the details either of this lock or a human mind (in 
 either of which we should lose ourself of course) we 
 will simply give the principle of Nature s patent and 
 Mr. Newell s, viz : that the lock is constructed not 
 only to be un-openable to all keys but the right one, 
 but to become just what that right one makes it. Newell s 
 lock is a chaos of slides, wards, and joints, till the key 
 turns in it ; and it then suddenly springs into order, 
 simplicity, and beauty of construction. Another 
 resemblance to Nature s plastic lock, is this feature 
 of Newell s, that by the slightest change in the key 
 (provided for by bits inserted at will) the whole interior 
 responds differently ; so that a bank director, like a 
 mind director, may change his key every day in the 
 year, and (preserving only the harmony between lock 
 and key) will find the lock every day responsive to the 
 change. Fair dealing required, we think, that the 
 proper credit should have been given to the original 
 inventor, and that the patent should bo called " New 
 ell s, after Nature." 
 
 Having shown the way the invention struck us, 
 however," we copy by request what was said of it by 
 the Journal of Commerce: 
 
 " Mr. Newell denominates this new masterpiece of 
 ingenuity, theParautoptic Toiken Permutation Lock. 
 Parautoptic, being a Greek word, signifying preven 
 tive of an internal inspection, and toiken meaning 
 walled, hence the name. This lock has been named 
 after its peculiar properties. Phosphoric or other 
 lisjht may be introduced into it in vain in order to 
 view its interior construction. The tumblers being 
 separated from the essential actional parts of the lock, 
 which constitute its safety, by a perpendicular wall of 
 solid steel forming two distinct and separate chambers 
 in the same, thus counteracting all burglarious designs. 
 The front chamber will, on close inspection, either by 
 phosphoric light or reflection, exhibit nothing but solid 
 walls of steel or iron. This lock is susceptible of an 
 infinity of changes from thousands to millions, ena 
 bling the possessor to change or vary it at pleasure, 
 simply by transposing or altering the bits in the key, 
 before using it to lock the door, in a manner 
 which is truly surprising. It therefore follows that 
 a person may make himself a different lock every 
 
 j moment of his life, if such be his disposition, thereby 
 frustrating the skill of the maker, and placing him on 
 a footing with the merest novice. We are, therefore, 
 fully persuaded of its being the ultimatum of lock- 
 making, and sincerely congratulate the inventor of 
 this admirable contrivance, in thus being able to 
 counteract so effectually the various plans and schemes 
 of burglars and pick-locks, and we feel warranted in 
 stating that after due inspection, all those connected 
 with banking institutions, and the public generally, 
 will adopt it at once as preferable to all others, for the 
 safe-keeping and protection of their property." 
 
 THE NEW YORK "RocHER DE CANCALE." To 
 dine tete-a-tete with a friend, in Paris, or to give a din 
 ner party, you must go to the above-named renowned 
 restaurant, where have dined, probably, all the gentle 
 men now existing. Private room, faultless dinner, 
 : apt and prompt service, and reasonable charges, con- 
 j stitute the charm, and all this we are to have (or so 
 h says that communicative "little bird in the air") at 
 i the corner of Reade st., in the new Maison Lafarge. 
 | That " unrecognised angel," Signer Bardotte, is to 
 ! be the chef des details, and, in partnership with him, 
 a gentleman well fatigued with travel and experience 
 is to act as partner. Of course we would much rather 
 ! record the establishment, at the same corner, of an 
 asylum for unavoidable accomplishments, but since 
 ! luxury will cut its swarth, we like to see the rake with 
 1 a clean handle. 
 
 THE MISSES RICE AND THE BEARS. The Port- 
 || land Advertiser states that in a secluded part of Ox 
 ford county, called "The Andover Surplus," there 
 reside two female farmers, who occupy a few acres, 
 and "do their own chores," hiring male help only for 
 haying and harvesting. Out in the woods lately with 
 the ox-team, cutting and drawing winter s wood, one 
 of the Misses Rice was attracted by the barking of the 
 dog at a hollow tree. One of the young ladies was 
 absent for the moment, and the other chopped a hole 
 in the tree and came to a lear-skin . Nothing 
 daunted at the sight, she gave a poke, and out scram 
 bled bruin, whom she knocked down and despatched. 
 A second bear immediately made his appearance, and 
 she despatched him ! A third bear then crept from 
 the tree, and the same axe finished him ! This, 
 Miss Rice considered a good morning s work, for 
 there is a two-dollar bounty on bears, and the skins 
 and grease are worth five dollars, at least. We should 
 like to see Miss Rice, of the " Andover Surplus !" 
 
 INCONSTANCY MADE ROMANTIC. " The Countess 
 Faustina" (the new book now in everybody s hands) 
 is the first novel we remember to have read, the whole 
 burthen of which is a glorification of inconstancy in 
 love ! The heroine is charmingly drawn the model 
 of divine women but after quite innocently using up 
 all that was most loveable in two men and deserting 
 them, she gets tired of a third, and goes into a con 
 vent to finish the story ! The lovers are all described 
 as worthy of a deathless passion, and the love on both 
 sides, while it lasts, is of the loftiest lift and devotion, 
 but the countess has the little peculiarity of liking no 
 love except love in progress, and she deserts, of course, 
 at the first premonishing of the halt of tranquillity. 
 The following passage, descriptive of her enlightening 
 her last love as to the coming break-off, will show how 
 neatly she wrapped up the bitter pill : 
 
 "Be silent, she exclaimed, when I was about to 
 answer her, * be silent ! Does not the water-lily 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 205 
 
 know its time, rises to blossom from the water, and|| 
 then returns back into its depths, satisfied, tranquil, 
 with a treasure of sweet recollections? Flowers! 
 know when their time is passed, and man tries, all he 
 can, not to be aware of it. This year with you, 
 Mario, was the height of my blossoming ! 
 
 " You love me no longer, I exclaimed bitterly. 
 
 " Fool ! she replied, with that ecstatic smile which 
 I never saw on any brow but hers, have you not j 
 touched the tabernacle of my heart? Is not my son j 
 yours? No, Mario! I love you; J have loved 
 nothing so much ; I shall never love anything after \ 
 you but, above you, God ! My soul has squandered i 
 itself in such transports of love and inspiration with 
 yours, that all it can ever meet in this region will be ; 
 but a repetition, and perhaps an insipid one. We 
 have so broken up my heart in searching for its treas 
 ure, that the gold mines are probably exhausted, 
 before the sad certainty comes upon us. 
 
 Faustina! I know not in what tone I said this, 
 but she sank trembling into my arms, and said very, 
 very softly, 
 
 " Oil, if you are angry, I shall not have the cour 
 age to open my heart to you ! 
 
 " I knew I ought not to alarm her, and I embraced j 
 her tenderly, and inquired what she thought of doing. 
 
 "She replied, I will close the mine! If there is 
 any valuable metal within, it may rest quietly in the 
 depths. And above I will plant flowers. 
 
 "But what can what would you do? I inquired 
 with terrible anxiety. 
 
 " Belong entirely to God, and enter a convent." 
 she replied," &c., &c. 
 
 Six months of convent-life sufficed to finish the 
 Countess Faustina, who "discovered too late" (says 
 the narrator) " that, during our life, we can but look, 
 like Moses, toward the promised Canaan" (of a man 
 worth being constant to) "but never reach it!" It 
 strikes us this is a naughtyish book at least, if, as we 
 read in Spenser : 
 
 " there is no greater shame 
 Than lightness or inconstancy in love." 
 
 The book is a mark of the times, however. It 
 makes no mention of Fourierism, but we doubt 
 whether its sentiments would have been ventured 
 upon in print, if Fourier principles had not insensibly 
 opened the gates. It is no sign that principles are not 
 spreading, because everybody writes against them, 
 and because few will acknowledge them. We see by 
 various symptoms in literature, that the mere peep 
 into free-and-easy-dorn given by the discussion of 
 Fourier tenets, has left a leaning that way. There is 
 no particular Fourierism, that we know of, in the two 
 following pieces of poetry, but they fell from that 
 same leaning, we rather fancy. We copy the first 
 from our sober and exemplary neighbor, " r JPhe Al 
 bion" : 
 
 " No ! the heaven-enfranchised poet 
 
 Must have no exclusive home, 
 But (young ladies, you should know it) 
 
 Wives in scores his hair to comb. 
 When the dears were first invented, 
 
 One a-piece Fate only gave us, 
 Wiser far two kings demented 
 
 Solomon and Hal Octavus. 
 
 " Doctors Commons judge severely, 
 
 My belief to reason stands ; 
 Any dolt can prove it clearly, 
 
 With ten fingers on his hands. 
 Smiles and glances, sighs and kisses 
 
 From one wife are sweet what then ? 
 That amount of wedlock s blisse 
 
 Take, and multiply by ten. 
 
 " Laughing Jane and sparkling Jessy 
 Shall the morning s meal prepare, 
 Brilliant Blanche and bright-eyed Bessy 
 Mid-day s lunch shall spread and share ; 
 
 Ann and Fan shall grace my dinner, 
 
 Rose and Laura pour my tea ; 
 Sue brew grog, while Kate, sweet sinner, 
 
 Lights the bedroom wax for me. 
 
 "Monk ! within thy lonely cell, 
 
 What wouldst give to greet a bride ? 
 Monckton bids thee forth to dwell 
 
 With a dozen by thy side. 
 Poet ! in your crown one wife 
 
 Shines a jewel, past a doubt, 
 But in ten times married life, 
 
 Mind your jewels don t full out! 
 
 The next instance comes from the very heart of 
 holier-than-thou-dom the exemplary state of Maine. 
 The St. Louis Reveille declares it to be a "well-au 
 thenticated fact which occurred at Holton, in Maine. 1 
 
 In old New England, long ago, 
 When all creation travelled slow, 
 And naught but trackless deserts lay, 
 Before the early settlers way, 
 A youth and damsel, bold and fair, 
 Had cause to take a journey where 
 
 Through night and day, and day and night, 
 
 No house would greet their wearied sight ; 
 
 And, thinking Hymen s altar should 
 
 Precede their journey through the wood, 
 
 They straightway to a justice went, 
 
 By love and circumstances sent ! 
 
 The justice good old honest pate 
 
 Said it was quite unfortunate, 
 
 But at that time he could not bind 
 
 These two young folks of willing mind, 
 
 For his commission sad to say 
 
 Had just expired but yesterday ! 
 
 Yet, after all, he u-ould not say 
 
 That single they should go away : 
 
 And so he bade them join their hands 
 
 In holy wedlock s happy bands, 
 
 And just a little he would marry 
 
 Enough, perhaps, to safely carry 
 
 As they were in connubial mooa 
 
 Enough to do them through the wood ." " 
 
 MISSIONARY EYELIDS. At No. 75, Fulton street, 
 a large emporium has lately been opened for the sale 
 of the plant propagated from the cut-off eyelids of the 
 first Christian missionary to China in other words, 
 for the sale of tea! One of the partners of this es 
 tablishment (the Pekin tea company) has written a 
 charming little pamphlet, called a " Guide to Tea- 
 Drinkers," in which he gives the following true origin 
 of the wakeful properties of tea: 
 
 " Darma, the son of an Indian king, is said to have 
 landed in China in the year 510 of the Christian era. 
 He employed all his care and time to spread through 
 the country a knowledge of God and religion, and, to 
 stimulate others by his example, imposed on himself 
 privations of every kind, living in the open air, in fast 
 ing and prayer. On one occasion, being worn out 
 with fatigue, he fell asleep against his will, and that he 
 might thereafter observe his oath, which he had thus 
 violated, he cut off" his eyelids, and threw them on the 
 ground. The next day passing the same way, he 
 found them changed to a shrub (tea) which the earth 
 never before produced. Having eaten some of its 
 leaves he felt his spirits much exhilarated, and his 
 strength restored. He recommended this aliment to 
 his disciples and followers. The reputation of tea in 
 creased, and from that time it continued to be gener 
 ally used." 
 
 The pamphlet goes on to state the properties of the 
 different kinds of tea, describing Pekoe as the best of 
 teas (qu? hence the prevailing of the Pico (ease over 
 Borghese s), and declares it to be peculiarly agreeable 
 (Pekoe te-j) to poets and ladies as follows : 
 
 "The warmth conveyed to the stomach of man by 
 tea-drinking at his various meals, becomes essential to 
 him, nor would the crystal steam of the poet suffice 
 for the healthy powers of digestion in the artificial 
 state of existence in which we are placed. A learned 
 
206 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 writer declares that tea is particularly adapted for the 
 ordinary beverage of young women, and the individual 
 who, until the day of her marriage, has never tasted 
 wine or any fermented liquor, is the one who is 
 most likely to fulfil the great end of her existence 
 the handing down to posterity a strong and well-or 
 ganized offspring." 
 
 A visit to this emporium is well worth curiosity s 
 while, and tea can there be bought in large or small 
 quantities, and in prices much below those of grocers. 
 
 WOMKN IN THEIR JUNE. The early decay of fe 
 male beauty, consequent on neglect of physical edu 
 cation and the corroding dryness of our climate, has 
 given an American value to the immature April and 
 May of female seasons, and a corresponding depreci 
 ation to the riper June. The article which we copy 
 
 woman may be in her loneness in her loneness 
 and the fairer for that loneness. You may think it 
 is bespeaking favor and patience with a vengeance." 
 
 REFINED CHARITIES. Our readers were made 
 aware, a few days since, that we had received very 
 great pleasure from a visit to an institution hitherto 
 unknown to us the " Asylum for Aged and Indigent 
 Ladies." That so beautiful a charity, conducted 
 with so happy a method, should never have come to 
 our knowledge, struck us as probably a singular 
 chance in our own hearsay but we find that others, 
 as likely to be interested in it as ourself, were equally 
 in the dark, and one lady (quite the most active Dor 
 cas of our acquaintance) took our account to be an 
 ingenious device to suggest such an institution ! That 
 a large two-winged building, with a sculptured tablet 
 
 below, from the Brooklyn Star, expresses, we believe, I se . 1 in front, stating its purpose, and so filled that it 
 
 the opinion of the best judges of these exotics from 
 a better world, and emboldens us to express a long- 
 entertained belief that the most loveable age of un 
 married woman s life commences, at the earliest, at 
 twenty-Jive, and lasts as long after as she shows no dim 
 inution of sensibility, and no ravages of time. Women 
 improve so much longer than men (improve by the 
 loving and suffering that spoils men), that we wonder 
 they have never found an historic anatomist of their 
 later stages. We suggest it to pens at a loss. Here 
 follow our contemporary s opinions : 
 
 My dear sir, if you ever marry, marry an old 
 maid a good old maid who is serious, and simple, 
 and true. I hate these double-minded misses, who 
 are all the time hunting after a husband. I tell you 
 that when a woman gets to be twenty-eight, she 
 settles into a calm rather she " anchors in deep wa 
 ters, and safe from shore." There never was a set, or 
 class, or community of persons, so belied as these 
 ancient ladies. Look upon it as no reproach to a 
 woman that she is not married at thirty or thirty-five. 
 Above all, fall not into the vulgar notion of romances, 
 and shallow wits unlearned in women s hearts, be 
 cause they never had the love of a true woman that 
 these are continually lying in wait to catch bachelors 
 hearts. For one woman who has floated into the 
 calm of her years, who is anxious to fix you, I will 
 find you fifty maidens in their teens, and just out, who 
 lay a thousand snares to entrap you, and with more 
 cold-blooded intent for whether is worse, that one of 
 singleness of purpose should seek to lean on you for 
 life, or that one should seek you as a lover, to excite 
 jealousy in others, or as a last resort. 
 
 " Marry a healthy, well-bred woman, between 
 twenty-eight and thirty-five, who is inclined to love 
 you, and never bewilder your brains with suspicions 
 about whether she has intentions on you or not. This 
 is the rock of vanity upon which many a man has 
 wrecked his best feelings and truest inclinations. Our 
 falseness, and the falseness of society, and more than 
 all, the false and hollow tone of language upon this 
 subject, leave very little courage for a straightforward 
 and independent course in the matter. What matter 
 if a woman likes you, and shows that she does, hon 
 estly, and wishes to marry you ? the more reason for 
 self-congratulation but not for vanity. What matter 
 if she be young or not, so she be loveable? I won t 
 say what matter if she be plain or not for everybody 
 knows that that is no matter where love is, though it 
 may have some business in determining the senti 
 ment. I don t know what has led me into this course 
 of remark. The last thing I should have expected 
 on sitting down to write, is, that I should have fallen 
 into a lecture on matrimony. I am not an old maid 
 myself, yet ; but I have a clearer eye to their virtues 
 
 might be taken up to heaven by its "knit corners, 
 like the sheet full of living things let down to the 
 apostle on the housetop that such a building, with 
 such a purpose, should exist unsuspected in one of 
 the streets of New i r ork, is somewhat a marvel. But 
 we were not prepared for TWO such surprises! We 
 have since discovered another charity that was wholly 
 unknown to us, as delicate, if not as poetically beau 
 tiful, and we begin to think that the old saying is 
 true ministering spirits do walk the earth, unrecog 
 nised in their tender ministrations, and 
 
 " The tears that we forget to note, the angels wipe away." 
 
 Our second discovery is of an institution called the 
 DEPOSITORY intended for the benefit of 
 reverse of fortune, 
 
 LADIKS 
 
 those persons ivho have experienced 
 
 and who can not come before the public, while, at the 
 same time, they may, from necessity, wish to dispose of 
 useful and ornamental work, if it could be done pri 
 vately, and to advantage" The institution supports 
 a store for the sale of needlework, &c., and any one 
 of its twenty-five managers may receive an application 
 and give a " permit" to the lady in want this one 
 manager alone the possessor of the secret of the lady s 
 wants and mode of supplying them. Work, drawings, 
 &c., are thus purchased by the society s funds, and 
 sold by the hired saleswoman of the society, and a 
 veil is thus hung between delicacy and the rude con 
 tact of open want a veil which prevents more pain, 
 probably, than the food which prevents only bodily 
 suffering. 
 
 This beautiful charity has now been in existence 
 twelve years, and by its tenth report (we have no later 
 one) we find that fourteen hundred dollars were paid 
 out for work in the twelve months preceding. This 
 sum is not large, and it shows that the subscriptions to 
 the funds of the society are less liberal than could be 
 desired. We should think that the bare knowledge 
 of the existence of such societies as this and the one 
 beforementioned, would start streams of gift-laden 
 sympathy toward them, and we think they but need 
 wider publicity. We are not authorized to mention 
 in print the names of the treasurer or directresses, 
 but the report lies on our table, and we shall be happy 
 to give the information to any individual applying at 
 our office. 
 
 We copy the following astounding intelligence 
 from a Montreal paper : 
 
 " ANNEXATION OF THE STATE OF MAINE. After 
 all that has been said of Texas and Oregon, and the 
 desire entertained by the people of the United States 
 to enlarge their territory by the acquisition of im- 
 nense tracts, it will surprise many, and add much 
 
 than I have had, and begin to feel how dignified a ! the protocols that will be issued, to learn that the state 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 207 
 
 of Maine, disgusted ivith slavery and repudiation, and 
 feeling a community of interests uith those of north of 
 forty-jive degrees, has petitioned her majesty Queen 
 Victoria to readmit her to the old family circle of John 
 Bull, where property is respected, and where there is 
 neither vote by ballot, Lynch law, slavery, nor repudia 
 tion. 
 
 " It is generally surmised that his honor, Judge 
 Preble is charged with khis delicate mission, and that 
 the petition will be sent through his excellency Lord 
 Metcalfe, by the next steamer, though the ostensible 
 ground of his honor s visit to Montreal is the railroad 
 to Portland ; and it is evident that if the admission is 
 agreed on, and is prompt and immediate, all the stock 
 will be at once subscribed by the home government, 
 and presented to the new confederation. 
 
 " Part of New Hampshire, Vermont, and that por 
 tion of New York bordering on the St. Lawrence, 
 will, it is thought, follow this laudable example. 
 
 " N. B. No STATE THAT HAS REPUDIATED NEED 
 APPLY." 
 
 We were born in Portland, and by annexation, as 
 above, are likely to turn out a " a Britisher from the 
 provinces!" President Polk is to lose us Queen 
 Victoria is to have us! Lucky we were presented to 
 her majesty while we were a republican court-eligible 
 before we sank, that is to say, from a " distinguished 
 foreigner" into a provincial editor! We should never 
 have had formal certainty of having lodged exclu 
 sively for the space of a minute, in the queen s eye, 
 had Maine annexed herself before we were brought to 
 the notice of " Gold Stick in Waiting." So much, 
 at least, it was better to have been temporarily a 
 Yankee ! 
 
 There is one other difference to be considered, 
 while we are measuring the matter at the top we 
 cease to be a competitor for the presidency ! Our 
 glorious fifteen millionth of capability for "No. 1" 
 drops from us as treason to Victoria ! We are re 
 duced to the prospect of dying the inferior of Louis 
 Philippe (!) without the benefit of a doubt. We be 
 come also, doubtless, the inferior of all the titled gen 
 tlemen catalogued in the " red book," many of whom, 
 till Maine was annexed, welcomed us to walk into 
 their houses, without mentally seeing us pass under 
 the yoke over the door. We are to unlearn " Yan 
 kee Doodle," and learn "God save the Queen." We 
 are to call this half-savage country " The States," 
 and keep the birthdays of the queen s annuals. We 
 are to glory in standing armies, national debt, and 
 London fog and porter, and begin to hesitate in our 
 speech, and wear short whiskers. The change in 
 our prayer-book is not much. We are to do our ci 
 phering in pounds, and that will plague us ! We are 
 to be interested in Canada politics and Lord Met- 
 calfe s erysipelas. We are to belong to a country 
 where births are published, as the first sign* that peo 
 ple know all about you, and that you must stay put. 
 (This last strikes us as the worst part of it.) We are 
 to pass for an Englishman on our travels, in the states 
 and elsewhere, and that is agreeable, because our 
 suavity will be unexpected. The larger features of 
 our metamorphosis we omit for future consideration 
 
 but, as far as these personal ones go, we fear we 
 
 had a better chance as a Yankee ! We were what we 
 could make ourselves we are to be what others make 
 us. Queen Victoria, on the whole, will oblige us by 
 not laying her hands on our Maine ! 
 
 poetic feeling, and will do for the heart, what the 
 single japonica does to the dress give the finishing 
 expression, no way else so felicitously effective. 
 Those who make love before this book gets into use, 
 will work like savages with arrows before the discove 
 ry of gunpowder. Those whose best thoughts die 
 in birth, for lack of recognition and ready-made cloth 
 ing, will wonder how they were ever comfortable 
 without it. Our Cumberland correspondent spent a 
 whole letter, wondering why we, who were constantly 
 quoting the book, had never written a critique upon 
 it. Our reason for not doing so or rather for first 
 making our readers thoroughly alive to its beauty by 
 extract is indirectly given in the book itself, in the 
 chapter called " Indirect Influences." See how ex 
 quisitely it is done : 
 
 Behold those broken arches, that oriel all unglazed, 
 
 That crippled line of columns creeping in the sun, 
 
 The delicate shaft stricken midway, and the flyine 
 
 buttress, 
 
 Idly stretching forth to hold up tufted ivy : 
 Thinkest thou the thousand eyes that shine with rapture on 
 
 a ruin, 
 Would have looked with half their wonder on the perfect 
 
 pile? 
 And wherefore not but that light hints, suggesting unseen 
 
 beauties, 
 
 Fill the complacent gazer with self-grown conceits ? 
 And so, the rapid sketch winneth more praise to the 
 
 painter, 
 
 Than the consummate work elaborated on his easel : 
 And so, the Helvetic lion caverned in the living rock- 
 Hath more of majesty and force, than if upon a. marble 
 
 pedestal. 
 
 " Tell me, daughter of taste, what hath charmed thine ear in 
 
 music? 
 
 Is it the labored theme, the curious fugue or cento 
 Nay rather the sparkles of intelligence flashing from some 
 
 strange note, 
 
 Or the soft melody of sounds far sweeter for simplicity ? 
 Tell me, thou son of science, what hath filled thy mind in 
 
 reading ? 
 
 Is it the volume of detail where all is orderly set down 
 And they that read may run, nor need to stop and think ; 
 The book carefully accurate, that counteth thee no betUT 
 
 than a fool, 
 
 Gorging the passive mind with annotated notes? 
 Nay rather the half-suggested thoughts, the riddles thou 
 
 mayst solve, 
 The fair ideas, coyly peeping like young loves out of 
 
 roses, 
 
 The quaint arabesque conceptions, half-cherub and half- 
 flower, 
 The light analogy, or deep allusion, trusted to thy learn- 
 
 The confidence implied in thy skill to unravel meaning 
 
 mysteries ! 
 
 For ideas are ofttimes shy of the close furniture of words, 
 And thought, wherein only is power, may be best conveyed by 
 
 The flash that lighteth up a valley, amid the dark midnight 
 of a storm, 
 
 Coineth the mind with that scene sharper than fifty sum 
 mers." 
 
 The book of which this exquisite passage is a part, 
 is called "proverbial philosophy." It is by Martin 
 Farquhar Tupper, of Christ church, Oxford, and an 
 American edition of it has lain in the bookstores for 
 two years, wholly unsaleable ! It can afford to " bide 
 its time," and mean-time, we shall enrich our readers 
 with it, bit by bit. 
 
 A FUTURE PASSION, IN THE EGO. We have had a 
 book for some time, that is destined to be an Ameri 
 can passion. Once rend, it infatuates for it expres 
 
 A RGUMENT FOR SEDAN CHAIRS. 
 
 MR. EDITOR : You stand accredited as the ready 
 friend of luxurious elegance, the happy mingler of 
 those foreign ingredients, the utile with the duln. 
 ! My dear sir, why have you never said a word in favor 
 -.. .. .,..-,- of the SEDAN-CHAIRS ? The very name carries one 
 brief and beautiful figure every possible <[ back to the days of Pope and Add.son ; to the routs. 
 
208 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 and masquerades and Ranelagh of London, in the 
 reign of wits. Even Cowper celebrates it: 
 
 " Possess ye therefore, ye who, borne about 
 In chariot and sedans, know no fatigue 
 But that of idleness. 
 
 It is an Italian stggietta; and thus defined by an 
 old writer : a kind of chaire used in Italy to carrie 
 men and women up and downe. It seems to have 
 emigrated to London from Sedan, the birthplace of 
 Turenne. Dryden used it for the lectica of the Ro 
 mans : 
 
 " Some beg for absent persons, feign them sick, 
 Close mewed in their sedans for want of air. 
 And for their wives present an empty chair. 
 
 " Were you ever in one ? Then you will agree that 
 it is as necessary in Broadway as a gondola in Venice. 
 Think of Pope s two pages and a chair. Our 
 thousand and one idlers, who are too ragged to beg, 
 and too poor to keep a cab, might flourish their poles 
 to some purpose in front of St. Paul s a better class 
 of chairmen than some we wot of. They need not 
 have so heavy a load, nor so great a peril, as those 
 who, according to Swift, helped in the Trojan horse: 
 
 " Troy chairmen bore the wooden steed, 
 
 Pregnant with Greeks, impatient to be freed, 
 Tho.=e bully Greeks, who, as the moderns do, 
 Instead of paying chairmen, run them through. 
 
 " The new police woulJ defend the glass from any 
 roystering blood, who, as Prior sings : 
 
 " Breaks watchmen s heads and chairmen s glasses 
 And thence proceeds to nicking sashes. 
 
 Opposition may be expected: there was such at the 
 cab-epocha. But who can even name a cab, without 
 ignominy. Think of a trundling box a packing-case 
 on wheels surmounted by a top-heavy Milesian, 
 enthroned on a remnant of Chatham-street-great-coat, 
 forcing you along sidewise by a series of thumps, and 
 then, with a paroxysm that tries every ball and socket, 
 dumping you on the trottoir! Our semi-tropical 
 climate demands a protection from the sun : some 
 thing emulating the oriental palanquin ; a parasol 
 which shall preclude fatigue and dust, as well as sun 
 light which shall transport the delicate woman with 
 the gentlest conceivable carriage, and into the very 
 hall of the stately mansion. What, prithee, can 
 answer these conditions but the sedan-chair? I al 
 ready see you in one, peering through the sky-blue 
 curtain, as you swim through your evening survey. 
 The corporation will at once adjust a bill of rates ; 
 the thing is done. " LUNARIUS." 
 
 We have been but in one city where sedans were 
 in use Dublin. What struck us, in using them (and 
 that is what the reader cares most to know, we pre 
 sume) was the being shut up where it was warm and 
 dry, and let out where it was warm and dry. The 
 sedan is a small close carriage an easy chair en 
 closed by windows carried on poles by two men. 
 They come into your drawing-room if, you wish, shut 
 you up in a carriage by the fireside, and carry you, 
 without the slightest jar or contact with out-of-doors, 
 into the house where you are to dine or dance no 
 wet sidewalk and no gust of cold wind, snow, or rain ! 
 They are cheaper than carriages because men are 
 easier kept than horses, and as a sedan-chairman can 
 also follow some other trade in the daytime, we 
 should think it would be good economy to introduce 
 them to New York. Many a delicate woman might 
 then go to parties or theatres with a quarter of the 
 present risk to lungs or head-dress ! 
 
 PRINCE S GARDENS. We have received an im 
 mense catalogue of the fruit-trees, plants, flowers, 
 
 vines, and berries, comprised in this ark of vegetation 
 at Flushing, and we should think from the account 
 of Prince s gardens, and the prodigal variety of this 
 catalogue, that the establishment would be better 
 worth visiting than any object of curiosity in the 
 neighborhood. It is now in the hands of the third 
 generation of descendants from the original founder 
 no slight marvel of constancy of pursuit in this 
 country ! 
 
 But we have found a singular pleasure in this cata 
 logue no less than a perfect feast upon the names and 
 descriptions of the fruits and flowers ! It reads like a 
 directory of some city of fairies, with a description of 
 the fairy-citizens written out against their names. 
 We can fancy a delightful visiting-list of people an 
 swering to these descriptions of fruits and flowers. 
 Here are a few of the characters : 
 
 Different APPLKS are described as " flesh stained 
 with red, perfumed;" "snow-white flesh, musky 
 sweet;" " fair, beautiful, pleasant flavor, sprightly ;" 
 "tender, juicy, keeps well;" "remains juicy till 
 late;" "red flesh, a curiosity," etc., etc. Different 
 pears are described as " rich, sugary, delicious 
 aroma ;" " most splendid, extra delicious, none more 
 estimable, grows vigorously, bears soon ;" " beautiful, 
 aromatic, bears young, greatly esteemed ;" " rich, 
 musky ;" " excellent, slow to yield fruit ;" " thin skin, 
 sweet, very good;" "new native variety, estimable, 
 handsome;" "very large, skin shining, flesh crisp, 
 agreeable flavor, excellent," &c. Different peaches 
 are described as "oval, splendid, luscious;" estitna- 
 ble, foliage curled, peculiar;" "waxen appearance, 
 globular, delicious flavor," &c. Different scrapes are 
 described as " large, estimable, vigorous;" "sweet, 
 firm, thick skin, hangs long, monstrous clusters ;" 
 " monstrous fox variety; " Willis s larire black ;" (?) 
 "sprightly, pure for wine," etc. Different roses are 
 called by name and described "formidable red;" 
 "glory of the reds;" insurmountable beauty;" 
 "new Dutch virgin s blush;" "sombre agreeable;" 
 " Watson s blush; 1 "red prolific;" "pale rose, deep 
 centre;" "deep rose, very robust;" "bluish violet, 
 superb, singular;" "bright pink, flaked with scarlet;" 
 "pubescent yellow flowering;" "white quilled;" 
 "extra magnificent;" " splendid, full, double-shaded 
 blush, monstrous size," etc., etc. 
 
 Such names and definitions, of anything, were 
 enough to bring one to Flushing, and Mr. Prince 
 may look out for us very early in May, catalogue in 
 hand, to see beauties he has described so glowingly ! 
 We trust the list of adjectives we have put so venture 
 somely close together in our cool columns will not 
 explode in type, with spontaneous combustion! 
 
 LETTERS OF INTRODUCTION. The following query 
 may be answered briefly enough by quoting only Eu 
 ropean usage, but the propriety of an American varia 
 tion occurs to us, and we will write a line on the sub 
 ject first giving the suggestive note : 
 
 " SIR : My friend N., usually a well-informed, 
 though rather an obstinate individual, is about to 
 travel, and asked me for a letter of introduction to a 
 friend abroad. The letter is written, and is submit 
 ted to his perusal, after which he hands it back to be 
 sealed, insisting that the rule is inflexible that all let 
 ters should be sealed. I refuse to affix the wax, 
 holding that a letter of introduction should be open. 
 
 " We leave the question to your decision. As my 
 friend N. can not sail until the question is decided, an 
 early decision will oblige him and your humble ser 
 vant, " B." 
 
 With very ceremonious people, and cereinonious 
 notes of introduction, it is usual to affix a seal upon 
 the outside of the letter, leaving it to be read and 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 209 
 
 fastened by the bearer, before delivery. If the let 
 ter extends beyond the mere stating of who the 
 bearer is, and the desire that he should be kindly re 
 ceived, or if it treats of other matters, it is given 
 sealed. Either mode is perfectly allowable, for if the 
 bearer objects to a sealed letter, he can ask the con 
 tents when he receives it. It is more common, how 
 ever, to give, it unsealed. 
 
 Briefly, now, to the point we are coming to : let 
 ters of introduction, in this country, should be ad 
 dressed to the women and not to the men, and should 
 go more into details of what the bearer is and what is 
 his errand of travel, and therefore should be sealed. 
 We have long been aware of a prevailing impression 
 that Americans treat letters of introduction with a 
 very uncivilized inattention, and so (hey do because the 
 etiquetical and hospitable cares of American families 
 are in charge of the wife, and the husband is very likely 
 to stick the letter into a pigeon-hole of his desk, and 
 
 character of the ten thousand other workies whom 
 I Mr. Willis could name. Some think that he 
 ! means to be witty, and alludes ironically to the "up- 
 I per ten." This is a great mystery. 
 
 " The constituent elements of japonica-dom and 
 i dandy-dom may be seen daily in Broadway, between 
 j the hours of twelve and three. All the beauty above 
 ! Bleecker street wanders at that time down as far as 
 j the Park, hazarding even the contamination of the 
 I vulgar crowd, in the hope of securing an appetite for 
 j dinner. The liveried lacqueys, who oscillate upon a 
 j black board behind the carriages of our republican 
 nabobs, sport their gayest trappings: I had the pleas- 
 I ure of seeing one yesterday in a drab cut-away with 
 gold lace and yellow facings, and white silk stockings 
 with purple velvet smalls! What is this great coun 
 try coming to ? We Gothamites do sometimes make 
 ourselves ridiculous, by aping what as a people we 
 profess to despise. It is rumored that a deputntiot 
 
 forget all about it. The wife in America does all the L of English small-potato baronets may be expected 
 ornamental. To see a rich man come down the steps |j in this city next summer; and that the object of their 
 of his own house (almost anywhere " up town") you !i transatlantic mission is, to establish an aristocratic 
 would take him to be a tradesman who had been in to ji nucleus among our upper ten thousand." 1 A her- 
 collect a bill. To see the wife follow, you would at ij aid s college has already been set on foot; and I have 
 
 once acknowledge that she looked as though she lived 
 in the house, and fancy that she was probably an 
 noyed to see that man pass out by the front door ! 
 From making himself a slate to keep his wife a god 
 dess, the American loses all idea of the propriety of 
 looking like a mate for his wife, and he unconsciously 
 ceases to take any care of the civilities to which his 
 own manners give so little value, and neglects all 
 persons who have not had the tact to be presented 
 first to the ornamental moiety. It should be an 
 American usage, therefore, growing out of the inferi 
 ority of the husband s breeding to the wife s, that let 
 ters of introduction should be addressed to the woman. 
 Of course, as she has no opportunity to inquire 
 into the bearer s position or habits, these should be 
 more minutely set down, and the letter should be 
 sealed. 
 
 " FINDINGS." We see advertised continually cer- j 
 tain commodities called "findings," which we under 
 stand are what hatters and shoemakers require be 
 sides peltry and leather. There are findings for 
 newspapers, too what the editors require besides 
 leaders and news and it may gratify our subscribers 
 to know, that out of the weary slip-slop which we 
 commonly scribble after making up the Mirror s lead 
 ers and news, our contemporaries supply themselves 
 with the greater part of their ornamental " findings." 
 Like every other editor, we are in the habit of giving 
 a line or two occasionally, in the body of our paper, 
 
 heard that it enjoys considerable patronage. It is 
 proposed to build wings on either side of the up-town 
 opera-house the one to be assigned to this herald s 
 college, and the other to the university of fashion, 
 of which Mr. Willis is to be president. Some say 
 that Colonel Webb has applied for the vice-presiden 
 cy, but I can not vouch for this. 
 
 "The chief feature of the Broadway Journal is a 
 
 defence by Mr. Poe of his attack upon Longfellow, 
 
 &c. It is as stupid as might be expected from a man 
 
 ! who used to do up such very small prosodial criti- 
 
 cisms for Graham s Magazine. Mr. Poe comes down 
 
 ; rather severely on Willis he therefore has probably 
 
 discontinued his services at the Mirror office." 
 
 One mistake in the above : Mr. Poe left us some 
 \ time before writing in the Broadway Journal, and to 
 ] edit that journal ; and he never offended us by a c"riti- 
 i cism, nor could he, except by personalities, in which 
 I he never indulges. 
 
 SCHILLER AND GOETHE. Mr. Calvert of Balti 
 more has given us, as translator, a most agreeable 
 collection of gossippy letters the undress of two 
 great minds, of the age just closed behind us. What 
 we most wish to comment on, however (the book 
 speaks for itself), is Mr. Calvert s own the preface, 
 in which he indignantly and most properly rebukes 
 the last orator of the " Phi Beta Kappa Society," for 
 a short-sighted and illiberal attack on the memory of 
 Goethe. We found it difficult, at the time, to restrain 
 
 to the wares of our most liberal advertisers, and it ap- J an outbreak of disgust, but the oration was not pub- 
 
 1 lished for some time, and we were unwilling to take 
 ground upon a newspaper report of it. Meantime, 
 our natural alacrity at forgeti ing disagreeable things 
 dropped it out of memory. We are not sorry that a 
 condemnation of it is now recorded in a book that 
 must live. 
 
 Mr. Calvert puts the truth thus forcibly : " How 
 little outward testimony survives about Shakspere ; 
 but whoso can read his poetry, may get a knowledge 
 of the man surer and more absolute than could have 
 been gotten even from the fullest contemporaneous opin 
 ions. As the tree is known by its fruit, we know that 
 
 pears that even this wastage of business notices 
 considered spice enough for other papers to be sea 
 soned with. The Boston Transcript spices its little 
 sheet very often with these parings of our daily apple. 
 Here is part of a letter which contains a touch : 
 
 "The leading articles in the Mirror and Commer 
 cial Advertiser for the last day or two have been de 
 voted to the all-engrossing topic, the spring style of 
 hats. After admitting that knowingness could no 
 further go than Beebe & Costar went, Willis winds 
 up thus : For ourself and ten thousand other workies 
 whom we could name, the sadder model of Orlando 
 Fish timid, proper, and thoughtful is perhaps more 
 appropriate. This passage has produced a great 
 sensation in dandy-dom. The Fish party are in rap 
 tures, and could hug Willis to their very bosoms; 
 the opposition is in a fury. Nobody can tell what 
 the result may be. Willis dare not venture out, it is 
 thought without a body-guard of Fishites. There 
 are, moreover, many surmises with regard to the 
 14 
 
 the parent of the Shaksperian progeny must have 
 been a man in whom, in close alliance with a kingly 
 intellect, dwelt, as well the virtues that ennoble, as 
 the graces that beautify and the affections that sweeten 
 life. Into whatever errors an ardent temperament 
 may have drawn him, they dim not the lucent image 
 of him, fixed in our minds by study of his works; 
 nay, we presume not to wish them uncommitted, lest 
 
210 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 an attempt to better such a bounteous gift from God, 
 should mar, but by a tittle, the original proportions of 
 one, the sum of whose life has been to the world an un- 
 measurable benefaction. When a bad man s brain 
 shall give birth to an Iphiginea, a Clara, a Mignon, 
 you may pluck pomegranates from Plymouth rock, 
 and reap corn on the sands of Sahara. 
 
 "On a formal public occasion (the Phi Beta Kap 
 pa oration at Cambridge in 1844), a blind and 
 most rude assault has been made on one of the 
 mightiest of the dead, whose soul lives on earth, and 
 will for ages live in the exaltation of the loftiest 
 minds. Out of stale German gossip, out of shallow 
 waitings of prosaic critics, shallower clamors of pseudo- 
 patriots, uncharitable magnification of common failings, 
 were compounded calumny against one of the fore 
 most men of the world, and the most honored man of 
 a people rich in virtue and genius." 
 
 Quite aside from the defence of Goethe, we think 
 there is an obvious presentment here of the continual 
 manner of treating all kinds of eminence and celeb 
 rity, here, in our own country, and at this present hour. 
 As the proverb says : 
 
 " Thankfully take refuge in obscurity, 
 For, if thou claimest merit, thy sin shall be proclaimed 
 
 upon the housetops ! 
 
 Consider them of old, the great, the good, the learned ; 
 Did those speed in favor ? were they loved and admired ? 
 Was every prophet had in honor ? and every deserving one 
 
 remembered to his praise ? 
 It were weariness to count up noble names neglected in 
 
 their lives, 
 The scorned, defamed, insulted, but the excellent of the 
 
 earth. 
 For good men are the health of the world, valued only 
 
 when it perisheth. 
 
 Living genius is seen among infirmities wherefrom the com 
 moner are free, 
 And there be many cares, and man knoweth little of his 
 
 brother ! 
 Feebly we appreciate a motive, and slowly keep pace with 
 
 a feeling. 
 
 Yet, once more, griever at neglect, hear me to thy comfort : 
 Neglect? LIBEL ON A WORLD, WHERE HALF TH^T WORLD 
 
 IS WOMAN ! 
 
 No man yet deserved, who found not some to love him ! 
 0, woman ! self- forgetting woman ! poetry of human life ! 
 Many a word of comfort, many a deed of magnanimity, 
 Many a stream of milk and honey pour ye freely on the 
 earth !" 
 
 STEWART S STABLE ECONOMY. We covet three 
 things in the Arab s condition his loose trousers, his 
 country without fences, and his freedom to live with 
 his horse. That we have once had the centaur variety 
 in the human race, men-quadrupeds, and have once 
 known horseflesh as " flesh of our flesh," the natural 
 longing to prance, when we first get into the open air 
 after long confinement, is but one of many evidences. 
 In a mere notice of a book, however, we have no 
 leisure to trace back a problem of physiology. We 
 merely wish to convey to such of our enviable readers 
 as can resume the centaur (by loving and living with a 
 horse in the country), the treasure they have in a book 
 which shows them how to make their life (the horse 
 half of it) a luxury instead of an endurance, and to give 
 our own five years enjoyment in breaking, petting, and 
 improving horses, by aid of this same book, as expe 
 rienced commendation. We had the English edition 
 of Stewart s books on horses, but the Appletons have 
 republished the "Stable Economy," with "notes 
 adapting it to American food and climate," by Mr. 
 Allen, the able editor of the Agriculturist, and it is 
 now an invaluable vade-mecum, for all men who have 
 the luxury of a stable. 
 
 We can not help repeating that a visitable stable, 
 with friends in it in the shape of horses with horses 
 in it one has himself broken and trained a stable to 
 which the ladies like to go after breakfast, and where 
 
 a gentleman can throw on his own saddle and bridle, 
 and gallop oft , without needing first to find his groom- 
 that this is the next best luxury our country affords, 
 after ladies society. (Horses, that is to say, before 
 politics or stocks, under male discussion.) 
 
 The stable at Gordon castle (approachable by a 
 covered passage from the principal hall) was a fre 
 quent resort for the ladies after breakfast ; and we 
 have seen women, the highest in rank at the English 
 court, going in and out of the stalls, patting the favor 
 ites they were to ride later in the day, and discussing 
 their beauty with the simplicity and frankness of 
 Arabs in the desert. While we are building country- 
 houses and forming habits in America, it is well to 
 know all the luxury we can enjoy in rural life, and no 
 one should build stable, or own horse, without con 
 sulting the excellent directions for stabling and using 
 the horse, in this book of Stewart s. 
 
 GRUND S LETTERS FROM EUROPE. In Godey s 
 Lady s Book for April we find one of these best 
 epistles of the day, and (to tell the truth) we read 
 them with very little satisfaction, for they leave us 
 with a want to go where they are written. The April 
 number of Godey is principally the work of unwedded 
 quills (no less than ten misses numbered among the 
 contributors !), but we have read it with great satis 
 faction, and felicitate our old friend upon the bril 
 liancy of his maiden troop. Godey is the pioneer of 
 magazines, and he has a tact at collection and selec 
 tion, which has put him where he is-^-safe at high- 
 water mark in enduring prosperity. Success to him. 
 
 By-the-way though we have no room to expatiate 
 on the several papers in this number the " Sketch of 
 Joseph Bonaparte" is capital. Is that by a " miss" 
 too? 
 
 And apropos, Godey! What a vile word "miss" 
 is, to express the sweetest thing in nature ! Why 
 should the idol of mankind be called a "miss?" 
 Why should the charming word heifer be degraded to 
 the use of kine? We say "degraded," for it once 
 served ladies as a synonym for the proudest of virgin 
 sweethearts. Ben Jonson, in his play of the "Silent 
 Woman," thus writes a speech for his hero : 
 
 " But heare me, faire lady, I do also love her whom 
 I shall choose for my heifer, to be the first and prin 
 cipal in all fashions." 
 
 The derivation of the word heifer is so complimen 
 tary ! It comes from two Anglo-Saxon words, which 
 signify " to step superbly," as a young creature who 
 has borne no burthens. With this explanation, we 
 trust our friend Godey will no longer hesitate to ad 
 vertise his fair contributors as the bright lights of 
 IIEIFERDOM disusing henceforth, for ever, the dispar 
 aging epithet of misses. 
 
 LETTER FROM THE EDITOR S ROOM. 
 
 NEW YORK, FRIDAY, March 21. 
 To a lady-friend in the country. I am up to the 
 knees in newspapers, and write to you under the stare 
 of nine pigeon-holes, stuffed with literary portent. 
 Were there such a thing (in this world of everythings) 
 as papyral magnetism, you would get a letter, not 
 only typical in itself, but typical of a flood in which 
 my identity is fast drowning. Oh, the drown of news, 
 weighed unceasingly little events and great ones 
 against little more than the trouble of snipping round 
 with scissors ! To a horrid death to a miraculous 
 preservation to a heart-gush of poesy to a marriage 
 to a crime to the turn of a political crisis to 
 flashing wit and storied agonies giving but the one 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 211 
 
 invariable first thought " Shall I cut it out ?" Alas, 
 dear beauty-monarch of all you survey! your own 
 obituary, were I to read it in a newspaper of to-mor 
 row, would speak scarce quicker to my heart than to 
 those scissors of undiscriminnting circum-cision ! 
 With the knowledge that the sky above me was en 
 riched, as Florence once was, by the return of its 
 long-lost and best model of beauty, I should ask, 
 with be-paragraphed grief "will her death do for 
 the Mirror ?" 
 
 But you are alive to laugh at me alive to be (is 
 your lip all ready for a curl ?) the "straw" for me, 
 drowning, to catch at ! I write to you, to-day, to 
 vary routine ! Happy they who can see but one face 
 when they write ! 1 am trying hard to see only yours 
 trying hard, by mental recapitulation of eyes like 
 fringed inkstands, passionate nostrils, and chin of in 
 domitable calm, to forget the vague features of my 
 many-nosed public. Oh, the dread loss of one-at-a- 
 titne-ativeness ! Oh, the exile to the sad land of 
 nominative plural! Oh, the unprized luxury of see 
 ing but little, and seeing that little for yourself! 
 
 But this is a letter from town, and you want the 
 gossip. Spring is here getting ready to go into the 
 country. The dust and shutter-banging of the tem 
 pestuous equinox, have, for three days, banished the 
 damageables from Broadway, and I know not the 
 complexion of the spring fashions, now four days old. 
 I was in a gay circle last night where some things 
 were talked of hm ! let me remember Mrs. Mow- 
 ATT S forthcoming comedy was one topic. Do you 
 know this Corinne of the temperate latitudes? An 
 exact copy, in marble, of her neck and head, would 
 show you a Sapphic bust of most meaning and clear- 
 lined beauty, and there is inspiration in the color of 
 her living eyes and in the prodigal abundance of her 
 floral hair. All this beauty she wastes and thinks 
 nothing of busied only with the lining of a head, 
 which some tropical angel fashioned as he would have 
 turned out a magnolia. She has genius, and her 
 lamp burns within. But it takes more than genius to 
 write comedy, and more than beauty (though it should 
 not) to give it success, and I tremble for the lovely 
 dramatist. The excitement about it is great the 
 actors all like their roles the stage-manager says it is 
 good the public are wishing to be pleased and will 
 flock to the experiment and with all my heart, I 
 pray for a "house" continually "brought down." I 
 enclose you a sketch of the plot from the New World 
 of this morning : 
 
 " The subject is well chosen. Fashion that is, 
 the effort to show offdazzlingly in society is, in this 
 country, a fact of sufficient body and consistence to 
 afford material for an original comedy and the inci 
 dents and peculiarities of manner and character at 
 tending the effort, are often abundantly ludicrous and 
 grotesque to make the comedy laughable. The glass 
 of fashion, held fairly up in New York, will show 
 some amusing scenes, quite new to the stage. 
 
 "The characters of the piece are selected and group 
 ed, we think, with character and judgment. An un 
 educated woman of fashion, driving her husband into 
 dishonesty and crime by her crime and extravagance 
 a pretended French count, who knows, at least, all 
 the police courts of Europe very thoroughly a clever 
 French waiting maid, who finds in the said count an 
 old acquaintance a negro valet of all work rejoicing 
 in a scarlet livery, and much inclined to grandilo 
 quencea rich old farmer, from Cattaraugus, carry 
 ing the moral of the piece, and no small part of its 
 humor, stoutly on upon his broad shoulders a Fanny- 
 Forester-like country girl, transplanted into the city 
 from Geneva, to work out the plot, and get the good 
 luck of the catastrophe these are the main person 
 ages. An old maid a small poet a solemn dandy, 
 styled Fogg a confidential clerk called Snobson, and 
 
 clearly belonging to the large family of Snobs a walk 
 ing gentleman, and a young coquette, are thrown in 
 as make-weights. Here is certainly a goodly drama 
 tic array. 
 
 "The dialogue is written with taste and spirit. It 
 has few passages of what is called fine writing, but 
 it embodies enough of wit, and fancy, and observa 
 tion, to keep the attention of the reader constantly and 
 pleasurably excited. A riged criticism, resolved upon 
 fault-finding, might say that the conclusion of this 
 piece is too clearly apparent from its commencement, 
 and that the action moves too sloxvly through the 
 first three acts. But admitting all this, the comedy 
 certainly has great merit, and, if well brought out, 
 will have a run. We believe that its first night will 
 be greeted by a large audience, and we most cordially 
 bespeak for it the favorable consideration to which it 
 is, in every regard, entitled." 
 
 Forrest s fate among the London Philistines is 
 another matter of chat. The Macready critics are 
 down upon him Foster of the Examiner, Macready s 
 bull-dog, heaviest and foremost. This was to have 
 been expected, of course. The gravelly bottom of 
 Macready s throat has been forced upon the English, 
 for so long, as the only sarcophagus of Shakspere, 
 that the bringing of the dry bones to life, in an open 
 mouth, and the marring of the sexton s vocation, was 
 not submitted to without a grumble. An English 
 critic predicts that Forrest "will play down the grum 
 blers yet," and I trust he will do so. He is the kind 
 of man to say with old Chapman : 
 
 " Give me the spirit that on life s rough sea 
 Would have his sails filled with lusty wind, 
 Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack, 
 And his rapt ship run-on her side so low 
 That she drinks water, and her keel ploughs air." 
 
 He is twenty times the man, and the actor, that Mac- 
 j ready is, and the English will find out his mark if he 
 I ! stay long enough. Meantime they are enchanted 
 | with Miss Cushman, who, the "Examiner says , is a 
 ! " feminized caricature of Macready s physiognomy." 
 I like her, by the way, and rejoice in her success as 
 much as I wish a better appreciation of Forrest. 
 
 What else shall I tell you? The Mirror s won 
 drous "rise and progress," profitably and firmly seated, 
 i after less than six months of industrious existence, is 
 j a marvel that even your beauty may rejoice in for 
 it will bring me to your feet (by paying the expenses 
 ! of transit) when the summer comes over us. Where 
 I are you going to Baden it this summer ? At Sara- 
 toga? 1 like that place, because you can there, and 
 there alone, be an island in a sea of people. Where 
 there are fewer, you are added to the continent of 
 sociability, and have no privileges. Shall we say the 
 last week in August ? 
 
 Bottom of the page. Scarce room to write my 
 self Yours 
 
 AN IDEA FOR TATTERSALL S. There are luxuries 
 which rich men forego, not for the money but for the 
 mind they cost. Hundreds of people in this city, for 
 instance, could very well afford a carriage, but they 
 can not afford the trouble of buying horses, the care 
 of looking after grooms, nor the anxieties inseparable 
 from horse-owning in this country of perpetual new 
 servants. In England this want is provided for by the 
 system the livery-stable keepers call jobbing. Lady 
 Blessington s two or three different equipages for in 
 stance are allowed to be the prettiest and best ap 
 pointed in London. Yet she owns neither carriages, 
 horses, nor harness. She pays a certain sum per 
 annum to be provided with what she wants in the 
 way of equipages, and keeps only her own coachmau 
 
212 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 and footmen. A new carriage is furnished whenever 
 wanted, and of whatever style is wanted (the jobber 
 finding no trouble probably in disposing of the one 
 given up) and a sick or lame horse is replaced imme 
 diately from a stable where the first blood and shape 
 are alone kept. Her ladyship thus knows precisely 
 what her driving is to cost her for the year, and 
 transfers to the jobber all the risk, anxiety, and 
 trouble. 
 
 A wealthy New-Yorker, a day or two since, made 
 a very handsome offer to a livery-stable keeper to 
 furnish him a carriage on this same plan, and the of 
 fer was refused. But, though a single customer of 
 this kind might be troublesome, combination (that great 
 secret of luxurious economies) might " make it an 
 swer." Twenty nice carriages, let out to private 
 gentlemen at $1,000, or $1,500 a year each, might be 
 looked after by one jobber well versed in horseflesh, 
 and his taste and experience would turn out better 
 equipages than could be got up by private individuals. 
 The twenty stables now kept up would be combined 
 in one (this in itself, no small saving) and the rich 
 man might be driven in better style, for less money 
 than it now costs him, and better than all without 
 the vexatious care, vigilance and anxiety of keeping a 
 private carriage. 
 
 P. S. We can safely say that we are entirely disin 
 terested in the proposed arrangement ! 
 
 GRAHAM FOR APRIL. The equinox brought us 
 such detestable weather, that instead of our usual two 
 hours airing of brains under a hat, we lay on our 
 back yesterday afternoon and read "Graham." How ! 
 does the man get so many good things! Grund, | 
 Fanny Forester, Mrs. C. H. Butler, Win. Lander, 
 Mrs. Embury, Mrs. Osgood, Mr. Peterson all have 
 written their best for this number. Our friend Fanny s 
 story of "Nickie Ben" seems to us particularly fresh, 
 bright, and original. Mr. Grund s letter from Paris 
 is full of intelligence, and among other things, he thus | 
 speaks of Eugene Sue and his two tasters : 
 
 "He lives now, by the product of his industry, in 
 princely style ; but his enjoyments are troubled by ! 
 the constant fear of being poisoned by his political : 
 and religious adversaries. He has, therefore, con- ! 
 traded an intimate friendship with two large, beautiful \ 
 Newfoundland dogs, who are his constant dinner and j 
 breakfast companions, and who always cat first of every \ 
 dish that is brought on the table. If these judges of | 
 gastronomy pronounce in favor of it, by first eating a ! 
 large quantity, with apparent relish, the author of j 
 " The Mysteries" and " The Wandering Jew" him 
 self partakes of it without farther scruple. He be 
 lieves dogs much more faithful than men, and the 
 sagacious instincts of a regular Newfoundlander su 
 perior to the science of chymists and physicians." 
 
 Poor dogs! Considering that they would doubtless 
 have been wagging their tails in Paradise, but for 
 Adam s transgression, it seems hard to make them 
 die, for a human master, besides! 
 
 But, to turn to the first leaf lo ! the brigadier ! There 
 he stands, looking as amiable as if he had just nabbed 
 a flying thought for a song, his smile a little more 
 rigid, however, and his phiz a little thinner than his 
 accommodating wont. The picture is enough like 
 him, notwithstanding, for all "business purposes." 
 We think him better looking than the artist has 
 "c/one" him, and this we request the ladies (who sing 
 his songs) to allow for. The magazine opens with a 
 critical biography, exceedingly well done, and (the 
 brigadier below stairs playing salesman) we see noth 
 ing to prevent our quoting a note of our own to the 
 writer : 
 
 NEW YORK, Feb. 1, 1845. 
 
 Mr DEAR SIR : To ask me for my idea of General 
 Morris is like asking the left hand s opinion of the 
 dexterity of the right. I have lived so long with the 
 "brigadier," known him so intimately, worked so con 
 stantly at the same rope, and thought so little of ever 
 separating from him (except by precedence of ferriage 
 over the Styx), that it is hard to shove him from me 
 to the perspective distance hard to shut my own par 
 tial eyes, and look at him through other people s. I 
 will try, however, and as it is done with but one foot 
 off from the treadmill of my ceaseless vocation, you 
 will excuse both abruptness and brevity. 
 
 Morris is the best known poet of the country by 
 acclamation, not by criticism. He is just what poets 
 would be if they sung, like birds, without criticism ; 
 and it is a peculiarity of his fame, that it seems as 
 regardless of criticism as a bird in the air. Nothing 
 can stop a song of his. It is very easy to say that 
 they are easy to do. They have a momentum, some 
 how, that is difficult for others to give, and that speeds 
 them to the far goal of popularity the best proof 
 consisting in the fact that he can, at any moment, get 
 fifty dollars for a song, unread, when the whole 
 remainder of the American Parnassus could not sell 
 one to the same buyer for a shilling. 
 
 It may, or may not, be one secret of his popularity, 
 but it is a truth that Morris s heart is at the level of 
 most other people s, and his poetry flows out by that 
 door. He stands breast high in the common stream 
 of sympathy, and the fine oil of his poetic feeling 
 goes from him upon an element it is its nature to float 
 upon, and which carries it safe to other bosoms, with 
 little need of deep diving or high flying. His senti 
 ments are simple, honest, truthful, and familiar; his 
 language is pure and eminently musical, and he is 
 prodigally full of the poelry of everyday feeling. 
 These are days when poets try experiments ; and 
 while others succeed by taking the world s breath 
 away with flights and plunges, Morris uses his feet to 
 walk quietly with nature. Ninety-nine people in a 
 hundred, taken as they come in the census, would find 
 more to admire in Morris s songs than in the writings 
 of any other American poet ; and that is a parish in 
 the poetical episcopate, well worthy a wise man s nur 
 ture and prizing. 
 
 As to the man Morris my friend I can hardly 
 venture to "burn incense on his mustache," as the 
 French say write his praises under his very nose 
 but, as far off as Philadelphia, you may pay the prop 
 er tribute to his loyal nature and manly excellences. 
 His persona] qualities have made him universally pop 
 ular, but this overflow upon the world does not impov 
 erish him for his friends. I have outlined a true 
 poet, and a fine fellow fill up the picture to your 
 liking. Yours, very truly, 
 
 N. P. WILLIS. 
 
 We get, from literary fledglings, at least one letter 
 per diem, requesting detailed advice on the quo modo 
 of a first flight in prose or poesy. We really suppose 
 we have, or are to have, an end to our life, and we like 
 to economise time. So we publish a letter, which we 
 once had occasion to write, and which must serve as 
 a circular a letter which we recorded in our diary 
 when it was written recorded with the following 
 preface : 
 
 There lies before me now, upon my table, a letter 
 of three tolerably compact pages, addressed to a 
 young gentleman of college, who is " bit by the 
 dipsas" of authorship. His mother, a sensible, plain, 
 farmer s widow, chanced to be my companion for a 
 couple of days, in a stage-coach, and while creeping 
 over the mountains between the Hudson and the Sus- 
 quehannah, she paid my common sense the compli- 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 213 
 
 ment of unburthening a very stout heart to me. 
 Since her husband s death, she has herself managed 
 the farm, and by active, personal oversight, has con 
 trived " to make both ends so far lap" (to use her own 
 expression), as to keep her only boy at college. By 
 her description, he is a slenderish lad in his constitu 
 tion, fond of poetry, and bent on trying his fortune 
 with his pen, as soon as he has closed his thumb and 
 finger on his degree. The good dame wished for the 
 best advice I could give him on the subject, leaving it 
 to me (after producing a piece of his poetry from her 
 pocket, published in one of the city papers) to en 
 courage or dissuade. I apprehended a troublesome 
 job of it, but after a very genial conversation (on the 
 subject of raising turkeys, in which she quite agreed 
 with me, that they were cheaper bought than raised, 
 when corn was fifty cents a bushel greedy gobblers !). 
 I reverted to the topic of poetry, and promised to 
 write the inspired sophomore my views as to his pros 
 pects. Need I record it ? that long letter affects me 
 like an unsigned bank-note like something which 
 might so easily have been money like a leak in the 
 beer-bnrrel like a hole in the meal-bag! It irks me 
 to lose them three fair pages a league s drift to lee 
 ward a mortal morning s work, and no odor lucri 
 
 thence arising ! I can not stand it, Mrs. , and 
 
 Mr. Sophomore ! You are welcome to the 
 
 autograph copy, but faith ! I must print it. There is 
 a superfluity of adjectives (intended, as it was, for 
 private perusal), but I will leave them out in the copy. 
 
 Thus runs the letter: 
 
 DKAR SIR: You will probably not recognise the 
 handwriting in which you are addressed, but by cast 
 ing your eye to the conclusion of the letter, you will 
 see that it comes from an old stager in periodical lit 
 erature; and of that, as a profession, I am requested 
 by your mother to give you, as she phrases it, "the 
 cost and yield." You will allow what right you please 
 to my opinions, and it is only with the authority of 
 having lived by the pen, that I pretend to offer any 
 hints on the subject for your guidance. As "the 
 farm" can afford you nothing beyond your education, 
 you will excuse me for presuming that you need in 
 formation mainly as to the livelihood to be got from 
 literature. 
 
 Your mother thinks it is a poor market for pota 
 toes, where potatoes are to be had for nothing, and 
 that is simply the condition of American literature (as 
 protected by law). The contributors to the numer 
 ous periodicals of England, are the picked men of 
 thousands the accepted of hosts rejected the flower 
 of a highly-educated and refined people soldiers, 
 sailors, lords, ladies, and lawyers all at leisure, all 
 anxious to turn a penny, all ambitious of print and 
 profit; and this great army, in addition to the hun 
 dreds urged by need and pure literary zeal fliis great 
 army, I say, are before you in the market, offering 
 their wares to your natural customer, at a price for 
 which you can not afford to sell nothing ! It is true 
 that by this state of the literary market, you have 
 fewer competitors among your countrymen the best 
 talent of the country being driven, by necessity, into 
 less congenial and more profitable pursuits; but even 
 with this advantage (none but doomed authors in the 
 field) you would probably find it difficult, within five 
 years after you graduated, to convert your best piece 
 of poetry into a genuine dollar. I allow you, at the 
 same time, full credit for your undoubted genius. 
 
 You naturally inquire how American authors live. 
 I answer, by being English authors. There is no 
 American author who lives by his pen, for whom Lon 
 don is not the chief market. Those whose books sell 
 only in this country, make scarce the wages of a day- 
 laborer always excepting religious writers, and the 
 authors of school-books, and such works as owe their 
 popularity to extrinsic causes. To begin on leaving 
 
 college, with legitimate book-making writing novels, 
 
 tales, volumes of poetry, &c., you must have at least 
 
 five years support from some other source, for until 
 
 you get a name, nothing you could write would pay 
 
 "board and lodging;" and "getting a name" in 
 
 America, implies having first got a name in England. 
 
 Then we have almost no professed, mere authors. 
 
 They have vocations of some other character, also. 
 
 Men like Dana, Bryant, Sprague, Halleck, Kennedy, 
 
 Wetmore, though, no doubt, it is the first wish of 
 
 their hearts to devote all their time to literature, are 
 
 kept, by our atrocious laws of copyright, in paths less 
 
 j honorable to their country, but more profitable to 
 
 I themselves, and by far the greatest number of discour- 
 
 j aged authors are " broken on the wheel" of the pub- 
 
 I lie press. Gales, Walsh, Chandler, Buckingham, and 
 
 | other editors of that stamp, are men driven aside from 
 
 authorship, their proper vocation. 
 
 Periodical writing seems the natural novitiate to 
 : literary fame in our country, and I understand from 
 your mother that through this lies your chosen way. 
 | I must try to give you as clear an idea as possible of 
 j the length and breadth of it, and perhaps I can best 
 j do so by contrasting it with another career, which (if 
 | advice were not always useless) I should sooner 
 advise. 
 
 Y"our mother s farm, then, consisting of near a hun 
 dred acres, gives a net produce of about five hundred 
 dollars a year hands p;iid, I mean, and seed, wear and 
 | ! tear of tools, team, <?cc., first subtracted. She has 
 j; lived as comfortable as usual for the last three or four 
 I years, and still contrived to lay by the two hundred 
 and fifty dollars expended annually on your educa 
 tion. Were you at home, your own labor and over- 
 ! sight would add rather more than two hundred dollars 
 , to the income, and with good luck you might call 
 i yourself a farmer with five hundred dollars, as the 
 I Irish say, "to the fore." Your vocation, at the same 
 | time, is dignified, and such as would reflect favorably 
 : on your reputation, should you hereafter become in 
 any way eminent. During six months in the year, 
 you would scarce find more than an hour or two in 
 the twenty-four to spare from sleep or labor; but in 
 the winter months, with every necessary attention to 
 your affairs out of doors, still find as much leisure for 
 study and composition as most literary men devote to 
 those purposes. I say nothing of the pabulum of 
 rural influences on your mind, but will just hint at 
 another incidental advantage you may not have 
 thought of. viz. : that the public show much more 
 alacrity in crowning an author, if he does not make 
 bread and butter of the laurels! In other words, if 
 you are a farmer, you are supposed (by a world not 
 very brilliant in its conclusions) to expend the most of 
 your mental energies (as they do) in making your 
 | living; and your literature goes for an "aside" 
 waste-water, as the millers phrase it a very material 
 premise in both criticism and public estimation. 
 
 At your age, the above picture would have been 
 thrown away on myself, and I presume (inviting as it 
 seems to my world-weary eyes) it is thrown away now 
 upon you. I shall therefore try to present to you the 
 lights and shadows of the picture which seem to you 
 more attractive. 
 
 Your first step will be to select New York as the 
 city which is to be illustrated by your residence, and 
 to commence a search after some literary occupation. 
 You have a volume of poetry which has been returned 
 to you by your " literary agent," with a heavy charge 
 for procuring the refusal of every publisher to under 
 take it, and with your pride quite taken out of you, 
 you are willing to devote your Latin and Greek, your 
 acquaintance with prosody and punctuation, and a very 
 middling proficiency in chicography (no offence 
 your mother showed me your autograph list of bills 
 for the winter term) all this store of accomplishment 
 
214 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 you offer to employ for a trifle besides meat, lodging, 
 and apparel. These, you say, are surely moderate 
 expectations for an educated man, and such wares, so 
 cheap, must find a ready market. Of such stuff, you 
 know that editors are made, and in the hope of finding 
 a vacant editorial chair, you pocket your MSS., and 
 commence inquiry. At the end of the month, you 
 begin to think yourself the one person on earth for 
 whom there seems no room. There is no editor 
 wanted, no sub-editor wanted, no reporter, no proof 
 reader, no poet ! There are passable paragraphists by 
 scores educated young men, of every kind, of prom 
 ising talent, who, for twenty dollars a month, would 
 joyfully do twice what you propose give twice as 
 much time, and furnish twice as much "copy." But 
 as you design, of course, to "go into society," and 
 gather your laurels as they blossom, you can not 
 see your way very clearly with less than a hay 
 maker s wages. You proceed with your inquiries, 
 however, and are, at last, quite convinced that few 
 things are more difficult than to coin uncelebrated 
 brains into current money that the avenues for the 
 employment of the head, only, are emulously crowd 
 ed that there are many more than you had supposed 
 who have the same object as yourself, and that, what 
 ever fame may be in its meridian and close, its morn 
 ing is mortification and starvation. 
 
 The "small end of the horn" has a hole in it, how 
 ever, and the bitter stage of experience I have just 
 described, might be omitted in your history, if, by any 
 other means, you could be made small enough to go 
 in. The most considerable diminution of size, per 
 haps, is the getting rid, for the time, of all idea of 
 "living like a gentleman" (according to the common I 
 acceptation of the phrase). To be willing to satisfy I 
 hunger in any clean and honest way, to sleep in any I 
 clean and honest place, and to wear anything clean and 
 honestly paid for, are phases of the crescent moon of 
 fame, not very prominently laid down in our imaginary 
 chart ; but they are, nevertheless, the first indication 
 of that moon s waxing. I see by the advertisements, 
 that there are facilities now for cheap living, which did 
 not exist " when George the Third was king." A 
 dinner (of beef, bread, and potatoes, with a bottle of 
 wine) is offered, by an advertiser, of the savory name 
 of G for a shilling, and a breakfast, most invi 
 tingly described, is offered for sixpence. I have no 
 doubt a lodging might be procured at the same mod 
 est rate of charge. " Society" does not move on this 
 plane, it is true, but society is not worth seeking at 
 any great cost, while you are obscure, and if you ll 
 wait till the first moment when it would be agreeable 
 (the moment when it thinks it worth while to caress 
 you), it will come to you, like Mohammed to the moun 
 tain. And like the mountain s moving to Mohammed, 
 you will find any premature ambition on the subject. 
 
 Giving up the expectation of finding employment 
 suited to your taste, you will, of course, be " open to 
 offers," and I should counsel you to take any that 
 would pay, which did not positively shut the door 
 upon literature. At the same wages you had better 
 direct covers in a newspaper office, than contribute 
 original matter which costs you thought, yet is not 
 appreciated ; and in fact, as I said before with refer 
 ence to farming, a subsistence not directly obtained 
 by brain-work, is a material advantage to an author. 
 Eight hours of mere mechanical copying, and two 
 hours of leisurely composition, will tire you less, and 
 produce more for your reputation than twelve hours 
 of intellectual drudgery. The publishers and book 
 sellers have a good deal of work for educated men 
 proof-reading, compiling, corresponding, &c., and this 
 is a good step to higher occupation. As you moder 
 ate your wants, of course you enlarge your chances 
 for employment. 
 
 Getting up in the world is like walking through a 
 
 mist your way opens as you get on. I should say, 
 that with tolerable good fortune, you might make by 
 your pen, two hundred dollars the first year, and in 
 crease your income a hundred dollars annually, for 
 five years. This, as a literary " operative." After 
 that period, you would either remain stationary, a 
 mere " workey," or your genius would discover "by 
 the dip of the divining rod," where, in the well- 
 searched bowels of literature, lay an unworked vein 
 of ore. In the latter case, you would draw that one 
 prize in a thousand blanks of which the other com 
 petitors in the lottery of fame feel as sure as yourself. 
 
 As a "stock" or "starring" player upon the liter 
 ary stage, of course you desire a crowded audience, 
 and it is worth your while, perhaps, to inquire (more 
 curiously than is laid down in most advices to authors) 
 what is the number and influence of the judicious, 
 and what nuts it is politic to throw to the groundlings. 
 Abuse is, in criticism, what shade is in a picture, dis 
 cord in harmony, acid in punch, salt in seasoning. 
 Unqualified praise is the death of Tarpeia, and to be 
 neither praised nor abused is more than death it is 
 inanition. Query how to procure yourself to be 
 abused ? In your chymical course next year, you will 
 probably give a morning s attention to the analysis of 
 the pearl, among other precious substances, and you 
 will be told by the professor, that it is the consequence 
 of an excess of carbonate of lime in the flesh of the 
 oyster in other words, the disease of the sub-aque 
 ous animal who produces it. Now, to copy this poli 
 tic invalid to learn wisdom of an oyster find out 
 what is the most pungent disease of your style, and 
 hug it till it becomes a pearl. A fault carefully 
 studied is the germ of a peculiarity, and a peculiarity 
 is a pearl of great price to an author. The critics 
 begin very justly by hammering at it as a fault, and 
 after it is polished into a peculiarity, they still ham 
 mer at it as a fault, and the noise they make attracts 
 attention to the pearl, and up you come from the deep 
 sea of obscurity, not the less intoxicated with the sun 
 shine, because, but for your disease, you would never 
 have seen it. 
 
 With one more very plain piece of counsel, I have 
 done. Never take the note of any man connected 
 with literature, if he will cash it for fifty per cent. 
 
 BREAKFASTS AND THE QUARTERLY. Mr. Lock- 
 hart can never do harm except indirectly. His asser 
 tions and his criticisms are taken with more than the 
 "grain of salt." Mr. Cooper may have a private 
 quarrel with him for some of his ungentlemanly 
 phraseology, but for the literary part of the criticism 
 on " England," it will stand in the place of a good ad 
 vertisement to the book, and there ends all its good 
 and evil. In the following passage, however, a blow 
 (most unwise and most injurious) is struck at one of 
 the pleasantest usages of English hospitality : 
 
 "We suspect that Mr. Cooper will not think Mr. 
 Rogers s breakfasts quite so admirable, nor the other 
 twenty so transcendantly agreeable, when he learns 
 that it is by no means usual to invite strangers to 
 breakfast in London, and that such breakfasts are 
 generally given when the guest is one about whose 
 manners, character, or social position, there is some 
 uncertainly a breakfast is a kind of mezzo-termine, 
 between a mere visit and the more intimate hospitality 
 of a dinner. It is, as it were, a state of probation." 
 Quarterly Review for October. 
 
 As the great organ of the tory party in England, 
 the Quarterly might fairly be taken by a foreigner as 
 an authority upon a point of English manners. The 
 consequence follows, that he can not be invited to break 
 fast without fair ground to presume it an insult. Shots 
 have been exchanged upon slighter ground. At the 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 215 
 
 best, a suspicion is thrown upon this mode of hospi- j him as a gentleman and a friend. I can not, if it 
 tality which deprives it entirely of its easy and confi 
 dential character; and that it is an injury to society 
 which could only be corrected by the publication of || 
 a correct portrait of Mr. Lockhart. No one after 
 
 were proper, quote the exact words he used ; but, 
 this 
 
 seeing it would credit any assertion he might make 
 
 j 
 
 upon a subject involving a knowledge of good-fellow- ] 
 ship. 
 
 The editor of the Quarterly looks his vocation bet- i 
 ter than any man it has been my fortune to see. In i 
 his gait and voice there is a feline resemblance which | 
 is remarkable. It is impossible for a human being to 
 be more like a cat. To aid the likeness, he is slightly i 
 parry-toed, and when you see him creeping along 
 Pall Mall on his way to the club, you can not avoid 
 the impression that he is mousing. In his person he 
 is extremely thin, and, but for his mouth, Lockhart 
 would look like a gentleman. In that feature lies a 
 whole epitome of the man. The lips are short, and 
 of barely the thickness of the skin, and habitually 
 drawn in close against the teeth. To this feature, 
 which resembles somewhat the mouth of a small 
 purse, all the countenance seems subordinate. The ] 
 contraction pulls upon every muscle of his face, and i 
 upon every muscle is stamped the malice of which 
 his mouth is the living and most legible type. 
 
 This description of the man is very apropos of his 
 opinions of breakfast. I presume he was never asked 
 to an unceremonious breakfast in his life. Would 
 any one in his senses begin his day by sitting down 
 opposite to such a face for a couple of hours ? Not 
 willingly, I should think. 
 
 I presume every Englishman except the editor of 
 the Quarterly will agree that to ask a stranger to 
 breakfast is much more flattering than to invile him 
 to dinner. Engagements to breakfast, indeed, are 
 almost always made at dinner. The reply to a letter 
 of introduction is usually a card and an invitation to j 
 dine. If your host is pleased with you, nothing is j 
 more common than for him to say at parting, " You 
 have been so engrossed that I have scarce spoken to 
 you come and breakfast with me to-morrow at nine." 
 You accept, and you improve on acquaintance into a J 
 friend. In a snug library, all ceremony put off, the { 
 mind tranquil and sincere, you enter upon a different 
 class of subjects, more familiar, more confidential, j 
 The attention of your host is more undivided, and 
 your conversation leads you to make engagements for 
 the day, or the evening ; and thus a man with whom ; 
 you might have discussed the corn-laws or the new : 
 opera, forty times, across the glare of a dinner-table, 
 and only known at last as a talker of commonplaces, 
 becomes a pleasant friend, perhaps an intimate com 
 panion. 
 
 I have not the Quarterly Review by me at this mo 
 ment, but, if I do not mistake, the breakfasfs with the 
 poet Rogers, described by Mr. Cooper, furnish the i 
 text for Mr. Lockhart s " new light" upon this sub- < 
 ject. I am happy to have it in my power to set our j 
 countrymen right upon the estimation in which | 
 Cooper is held by that polished and venerable amphyt- 
 rion. It was kindly and complimentarily done of 
 Mr. Rogers to talk a great deal of a compatriot, 
 of whose talents he justly supposed every American 
 should be proud. I was enjoying (according to 
 Mr. Lockhart) the equivocal honor of breakfast 
 ing with him an honor which, questionable or not, 
 I shared with one of the most distinguished for 
 eigners then in England. This latter gentleman pro 
 fessed the highest enthusiasm for the works of Cooper, 
 and took pains to draw out the venerable poet on the , 
 subject of his personal manners, conversation, &c. A j 
 handsomer eulogium of an absent author I never 
 heard. Mr. Rogers admired the bold independence 
 of his cast of mind, and spoke in the highest terms of 
 
 subtract from this praise all you please to fancy might 
 have been said in kindness or compliment to a com 
 patriot, there was still enough left to gratify the self- 
 love of the most exacting. 
 
 If Mr. Lockhnrt had ever been similarly honored, 
 he would have excused Mr. Cooper for dwelling com 
 placently on the " breakfasts in St. James s Place." 
 Rogers has lived in the very core of all that is pre 
 cious or memorable of two ages of English wit, liter 
 ature, and politics, himself oftenest the bright centre 
 around which it gathered. His manners are amenity 
 itself, his wit is celebrated, his powers of narration 
 delightful. With all this he seems to forget his own 
 fame and himself, and never to have known envy or 
 ill-will. As he sits at that small breakfast-table, his 
 head silvery white, the bland smile of intellectual en 
 joyment upon his lips, talking or listening with equal 
 pleasure, and with the greatest tact and delicacy, al 
 ternately drawing out the resources of his guests, and 
 exhibiting modestly his own, he is a picture of tran 
 quil, dignified, and green old age, which it were a pity 
 to have travelled far and not seen. I felicitate Mr. 
 Cooper on the possession of his esteem and friend 
 ship. I please myself with remembering that I have 
 seen him. I pity Mr. Lockhart that the class of en 
 tertainments of which this is one, is reserved for those 
 whose faces will not "spoil the cream." 
 
 Between butchering for Fraser and dissecting for 
 the Quarterly, Mr. Lockhart may have derived a suf 
 ficient revenue to " give dinners ;" but he forgets that 
 more amiable literature is not so saleable, and that his 
 brother authors are compelled to entertain strangers at 
 breakfast. Taboo that meal, and, good heavens ! 
 what becomes of the " great army of writers" in Lon 
 don, who, over " tea and toast," in their quiet lodg 
 ings, give the admiring pilgrim of literature a feast of 
 reason one alone worth all the dinners of May fair ? 
 
 What becomes of younger sons, and callow orators, 
 and lawyers in the temple, who, over red herrings and 
 coffee, let the amused guest into the secrets of their 
 menus-plaisirs, and trenching a half-crown, at the 
 most, upon their slender pockets, send him away de 
 lighted with their gay hospitality. Breakfasts! What 
 would you know of authors and artists without 
 breakfasts? You see but half the man in his works. 
 Would you rather breakfast with Chantrey in his stu 
 dio, and hear him criticise his own marble, or dine 
 with him at Lord Lansdowne s, and listen to his bavar- 
 daqc upon fly-fishing? Would you rather see gentle 
 Barry Cornwall, smothered and silent, among wits and 
 lordlings at " miladi s," or breakfast with him in his 
 crammed library in St. John s Wood, and hear him 
 read one of his unpublished songs, with the tears in 
 his eyes, and the children at his knee, breathless with 
 listening ? Would you rather meet Moore, over a 
 cup of tea, in the shop-parlor at Longman s, in Pat 
 ernoster row, or see him at one of the show-dinners 
 of this publishing Mecenas, at his villa in Hamp- 
 stead ? Out upon the malicious hand that would sow 
 distrust and suspicion in these delightful by-paths of 
 hospitality ! 
 
 An author is always a double existence, and it is 
 astonishing how different may be the intellectual man 
 from his everyday representative. Lockhart, the au 
 thor of Valerius, Adam Blair, and the Life of Sir 
 Walter Scott, is a splendid and delightful intellect 
 no one can deny it. Mr. Lockhart, the gentleman 
 who looks as if he had a perpetual inclination to 
 whistle, and who does the bourreau for the Quarterly, 
 is an individual I should rather meet anywhere than 
 at breakfast. Heaven send him a relaxation of his 
 facial muscles, and a little charity to leave the world 
 with. 
 
216 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 A SPRING DAY IN WINTER. A spring day some 
 times bursts upon us in December. One scarcely 
 knows whether the constant warmth of the fire, or the 
 fresh sunny breathings from the open window, are the 
 most welcome. At such a time, the curtains swing 
 lazily to the mild wind as it enters, and the light green 
 leaves of the sheltered flowers stir and erect them- ! 
 
 EVANESCENT IMPRESSIONS I have very often, in 
 the fine passages of society such as occur some 
 times in the end of an evening, or when a dinner 
 party has dwindled to an unbroken circle of choice 
 and congenial spirits, or at any of those times when 
 conversation, stripped of all reserve or check, is 
 poured out in the glowing and unfettered enthusiasm 
 
 selves with an out-of-door vigor, and the shuffled steps | to which convivial excitement alone gives the confi- 
 
 and continued voices of the children in the street, j 
 have the loitering and summer-like sound of June. I 
 do not know whether it is not a cockney feeling, but 
 with all my love for the country, fixed as it is by the 
 recollections of a life mostly spent in the " green 
 fields" I sometimes "babble of," there is something in 
 a summer morning in the city, which the wet, warm 
 woods, and the solitary, though lonely haunts of the 
 country do not, after all the poetry that has been 
 "spilt upon them" (as Neal would say), at all equal. 
 
 dence necessary to its flow I have often wished, at 
 such times, that the voice and manner of the chance 
 and fleeting eloquence about us could be arrested and 
 written down for others beside ourselves to see and 
 admire. In a chance conversation at a party, in the 
 bagatelle rattle of a dance, in a gay hour over coffee 
 and sandwiches en famille, wherever you meet those 
 whom you love or value, there will occur pieces of 
 dialogue, jeux d esprit, passages of feeling or fun 
 trifles, it is true, but still such trifles as make eras in 
 
 Whether it is that we find so much sympathy in the , the calendar of happiness which you would give the 
 
 many faces that we meet, made happy by the same 
 sweet influences, or whatever else may be the reason, 
 certes, I never take my morning walk on such a day, 
 without a leaping in my heart, which, from all I can 
 gather by dream or revelation, has a touch in it of 
 Paradise. I returned once, on such a day, from an 
 hour s ramble after breakfast. The air rushed past 
 my temples with the grateful softness of spring, and 
 every face that passed had the open, inhaling expres 
 sion which is given by the simple joy of existence. 
 The sky had the deep clearness of noon. The clouds 
 were winnowed in light parallel curves, looking like 
 white shells inlaid on the arched heavens ; the smooth, 
 glassy bay was like a transparent abyss opening to the 
 earth s centre, and edging away underneath, with a ! 
 slope of hills, and spires, and leafless woods, copied | 
 minutely and perfectly from the upper landscape, and 
 the naked elms seemed almost clothed as the teeming 
 eye looked on them, and the brown hills took a teint 
 of green so freshly did the summer fancies crowd 
 into the brain with the summer softness of the sun 
 shine and air. The mood is rare in which the sight 
 of human faces does not give us pleasure. It is a 
 
 j world to rescue from their ephemeral destiny. They 
 I are, perhaps, the soundings of a spirit too deep for 
 ordinary life to fathom, or the gracefulness of a fancy 
 I linked with too feminine a nature to bear the eye of 
 the world, or the melting of a frost of reserve from 
 the diffident genius they are traces of that which is 
 fleeting, or struck out like phosphorus from the sea 
 by irregular chance and you want something quicker 
 and rarer than formal description to arrest it warm 
 and natural, and detain it in its place till it can be 
 looked upon. 
 
 THE FIRST FEELING OF WINTER. How delight 
 fully the first feeling of winter comes on the mind ! 
 What a throng of tranquillizing and affectionate 
 thoughts accompany its first bright fires, and the 
 sound, out of doors, of ils first chilling winds. Oh, 
 when the leaves are driven in troops through the 
 streets, at nightfall, and the figures of the passers-by 
 j hurry on, cloaked and stooping with the cold, is there 
 a pleasanter feeling in the world than to enter the 
 closed and carpeted room, with its shaded lamps, and 
 
 curious occupation to look on them as they pass" 1 1 itS gial warmth, and its cheerful faces about the 
 __j .....j.. .i-.f.. i_.i j i , " y r 7 1! evening table ! I hope that I speak your own senti- 
 
 and study their look and meaning, and wonder at the 
 providence of God, which can provide, in this crowded 
 world, an object and an interest for all. With what 
 a singular harmony the great machine of society goes 
 on! So many thousand minds, and each with its 
 peculiar cast and its positive difference from its fellow, 
 and yet no dangerous interference, and no discord 
 audible above the hum of its daily revolution. I 
 could not help feeling a religious thrill, as I passed 
 face after face, with this thought in my mind, and saw 
 each one earnest and cheerful, each one pressing on 
 with its own object, without waiting or caring for the 
 equally engrossing object of the other. The man of 
 business went on with an absorbed look, caring only 
 to thread his way rapidly along the street. The stu - 
 dent strided by with the step of exercise, his lips 
 parted to admit the pleasant air to his refreshed lungs, 
 and his eye wandering with bewildered pleasure from 
 object to object. The schoolboy looked wistfully up 
 and down the street, and lingered till the last stroke 
 of the bell summoned him tardily in. The woman 
 ish school-girl, with her veil coquettishly drawn, still 
 flirted with her boyish admirer, though it was " after 
 nine," and the child, with its soiled satchel and shining 
 face, loitered seriously along the sidewalk, making 
 acquaintance with every dog, and picking up every 
 stone on its unwilling way. The spell of the atmo 
 sphere was universal, and yet all kept on their several 
 courses, and the busy harmony of employment went 
 steadily and unl rokenly on. How rarely we turn 
 upon ourselves, and remember how wonderfully we 
 are made and governed ! 
 
 rnent, dear reader, when I prefer to every place and 
 time, in the whole calendar of pleasure, a winter 
 evening at home the "sweet, sweet home" of child 
 hood, with its unreserved love and its unchanged and 
 unmeasured endearments. We need not love gayety 
 the less. The light and music and beauty of * the 
 dance will always breed a floating delight in the brain 
 that has not grown dull to life s finer influences ; yet 
 the pleasures of home, though serener are deeper, 
 and I am sure that the world may be searched over in 
 vain for a sense of joy so even and unmingled. It is 
 a beautiful trait of Providence that the balance is 
 kept so truly between our many and different bles 
 sings. It were a melancholy thing to see the sum 
 mer depart with its superb beauty, if the heart did not 
 freshen as it turned in from its decay to brood upon 
 its own treasures. The affections wander under the 
 enticement of all the outward loveliness of nature, 
 and it is necessary to unwind the spell, that their rich 
 kindness may not become scattered and visionary. 1 
 have a passion for these simple theories, which I trust 
 will be forgiven. I indulge in them as people pun. 
 They are too shadowy for logic, it is true like the 
 wings of the glendoveer, in Kehama, gauze-like and 
 filmy, but flying high withal. You may not grow 
 learned, but you surely will grow poetical upon them. 
 I would as lief be praised by a blockhead as be asked 
 the reason. 
 
 THE POET SHELLEY. Shelley has a private nook 
 in my affections. He is so unlike all other poets that 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 217 
 
 I can not mate him. He is like his ov/n " skylark" 
 among birds. He does not keep ever up in the thin 
 air with Byron, like the eagle, nor sing with Keats 
 low and sweetly like the thrush, nor, like the dove 
 sitting always upon her nest, brood with Wordsworth 
 over the affections. He begins to sing when the 
 morning wakes him, and as he grows wild with his 
 own song, he mounts upward, 
 
 " And singing ever soars, and soaring ever singeth ;" 
 
 and it is wonderful how he loses himself, like the 
 delirious bird in the sky, and with a verse which may 
 be well compared for its fine delicacy with her little 
 wings, penetrates its far depths fearlessly and full of 
 joy. There is something very new in this mingled 
 trait of fineness and sublimity. Milton and Byron 
 seem made for the sky. Their broad wings always 
 strike the air with the same solemn majesty. But 
 Shelley, near the ground, is a very " bird in a bower, 
 running through his merry compass as if he never 
 dreamed of the upward and invisible heavens. Withal, 
 Shelley s genius is too fiery to be moody. He was a 
 melancholy man, but it was because he was crossed I 
 in the daily walk of life, and such anxieties did not 
 touch his imagination. It was above far, far above 
 them. His poetry was not, like that of other poets, 
 linked with his common interests ; and if it " un 
 bound the serpent of care from his heart," as doubt 
 less it did, it was by making him forget that it was 
 there. He conceived and wrote in a wizard circle. 
 The illiberal world was the last thing remembered, 
 and its annoying prejudices, gall him as they might in 
 the exercise of his social duties, never followed over 
 the fiery limit of his fancy. Never have we seen 
 such pure abstraction from earthliness as in the tem 
 per of his poetry. It is the clear, intellectual lymph, 
 unalloyed and unpolluted. 
 
 Aw AUTHOR S JUDGMENT OF HIS OWN WORKS. 
 It is a false notion that the writer is no judge of his 
 own book. Verses in manuscript and verses in print, 
 in the first place, are very different things, and the 
 mood of writing and the mood of reading what one 
 has written, are very different moods. We do not 
 know how it is with others, but we open our own 
 volume with the same impression of strangeness and 
 novelty that we do another s. The faults strike us at 
 once, and so do the beauties, if there are any, and we 
 read coolly in a new garb, the same things which 
 upon paper recalled the fever of composition, and 
 rendered us incapable of judgment. As far as I can 
 discover by others experience and my own, no writer 
 understands the phenomena of composition. It is 
 impossible to realize, in reading, that which is to him 
 impassioned, the state of feeling which produced it. 
 His own mind is to himself a mystery and a wonder. 
 The thought stands before him, visible to his outward 
 eye, which he does not remember has ever haunted 
 him. The illustration from nature is often one which 
 he does not remember to have noticed the trait of 
 character, or the peculiar pencilling of a line in beauty 
 altogether new and startling. He is affected to tears 
 or mirth, his taste is gratified or shocked, his fancy 
 amused or his cares beguiled, as if he had never be 
 fore seen it. It is his own mind, but he does not rec 
 ognise it. He is like the peasant-child taken and 
 dressed richly ; he does not know himself in his new 
 adornments. There is a wonderful metamorphosis in 
 print. The author has written under strong excite 
 ment, and with a development and reach of his own 
 powers which would amuse him were he conscious 
 of the process. There are dim and far chambers in 
 the mind which are never explored by reason. Im 
 
 sometimes, and brings out their treasures to the light 
 ignorant of their value, and almost believing that 
 the dreams when they glitter are admired. There 
 are phantoms which haunt the perpetual twilight of 
 the inner mind, which are arrested only by the daring 
 hand of an overwrought fancy, and like a need done 
 in a dream, the difficult steps are afterward but faintly 
 remembered. It is wonderful how the mind accumu 
 lates by unconscious observation how the teint of a 
 cloud, or the expression of an eye, or the betrayal of 
 character by a word, will lie for years forgotten in the 
 memory till it is brought out by some searching 
 thought to its owner s wonder. 
 
 FROST It is winter veritable winter with bona- 
 
 fidc frost, and cramping cold, and a sun as clear and 
 powerless as moonlight. The windows glitter with 
 the most fantastic frost-work. Cities, with their 
 spires and turrets, ranks of spears, files of horsemen 
 every gorgeous and brilliant array told of in ro 
 mance or song, start out of that mass of silvery trace 
 ry, like the processions of a magic mirror. What a 
 miraculous beauty there is in frost ! What fine work 
 in its radiant crystals ! What mystery in its exact 
 proportions and its maniform varieties ! The feathery 
 snow-flake, the delicate rime, the transparent and 
 sheeted ice, the magnificent ice-berg moving down 
 the sea like a mountain of light how beautiful are 
 they all, and how wonderful is it, that, break and 
 scatter them as you will, you find under every form 
 the same faultless angles, the same crystalline and 
 sparkling radiation. It sometimes grows suddenly 
 cold at noon. There has been a heavy mist all the 
 morning, and as the north wind comes sharply in, the 
 air clears and leaves it frozen upon everything, with 
 the thinness of palpable air. The trees are clothed 
 with a fine white vapor, as if a cloud had been arrested 
 and fixed motionless in the branches. They look, in 
 the twilight, like gigantic spirits, standing in broad 
 ranks, and clothed in drapery of supernatural white 
 ness and texture. On close examination, the crystals 
 are as fine as needles, and standing in perfect parallel 
 ism, pointing in the direction of the wind. They are 
 like fringes of the most minute threads, edging every 
 twig and filament of the tree, so that the branches are 
 thickened by them, and have a shadowy and mysteri 
 ous look, as if a spirit foliage had staged out from the 
 naked limbs. It is not so brilliant as the common 
 rime seen upon the trees after a frozen rain, but it is 
 infinitely more delicate and spiritual, and to me seems 
 a phenomenon of exquisite novelty and beauty. 
 
 THE CLOSING YEAR. It is a melancholy task to 
 reckon with the departed year. To trace back the 
 curious threads of affection through its many-colored 
 woof, and knot anew its broken places to number 
 the missing objects of interest, the dead and the neg 
 lected to sum up the broken resolutions, the defer 
 red hopes, the dissolved phantoms of anticipation, and 
 the many wanderings from the leading star of duty 
 
 this is indeed a melancholy task, but, withal, a 
 
 profitable, and, it may sometimes be, a pleasant and a 
 soothing one. It is wonderful in what short courses 
 the objects of this world move. They are like arrows 
 feebly shot. A year a brief year, is full of things 
 dwindled and finished and forgotten. Nothing keeps 
 evenly on. What is there in the running calendar 
 of the year that has departed, which has kept its place 
 and its magnitude ? Here and there an aspirant for 
 , fame still stretches after his eluding shadow here and 
 I 1 there an enthusiast still clings to his golden drenm 
 
 gination in her rapt phrensy wanders blindly there |: here and there (and alas ! how rarely) a friend kcq>9 
 
218 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 his truth, and a lover his fervor hut how many more, 
 that were as ambitious, as enthusiastic, as loving as 
 these, when this year began, are now sluggish, and 
 cold, and false ? You may keep a record of life, and 
 as surely as it is human, it will be a fragmented and 
 disjointed history, crowded with unaccountableness 
 and change. There is nothing constant. The links 
 of life are" for ever breaking, but we rush on still. A 
 fellow-traveller drops from our side into the grave a 
 guiding star of hope vanishes from the sky a creature 
 of our affections, a child or an idol, is snatched from 
 us perhaps nothing with which we began the race is 
 left to us, and yet we do not halt. " Onward still 
 onward" is the eternal cry, and as the past recedes, 
 the broken ties are forgotten, and the present and future 
 occupy us alone. 
 
 There are bright chapters in the past, however. If 
 our lot is capricious and broken, it is also new and 
 various. One friend has grown cool, but we have 
 won another. One chance was less fortunate than 
 we expected, but another was better. We have en 
 countered one man s prejudices, but, in so doing, we 
 have unexpectedly flattered the partialities of his 
 neighbor. We have neglected a recorded duty, but a 
 deed of charity done upon impulse, has brought up 
 the balance. In an equable temper of mind, memory, 
 to a man of ordinary goodness of heart, is pleasant 
 company. A careless rhymer, whose heart is better 
 than his head, says 
 
 " I would not escape from memory s land, 
 
 For all the eye can view ; 
 For there s dearer dust in memory s land, 
 
 Than the ore of rich Peru. 
 I clasp the fetter by memory twined, 
 The wanderer s heart and soul to bind." 
 
 It was a good thought suggested by an ingenious 
 friend of mine, to make one s will annually, and re 
 member all whom we love in it in the degree of their 
 deservings. I have acted upon the hint since, and 
 truly it is keeping a calendar of one s life. I have 
 little to bequeath, indeed a manuscript or two, some 
 half dozen pictures, and a score or two of much- 
 thumbed and choice authors but, slight as these 
 poor mementoes are, it is pleasant to rate their differ 
 ence, and write against them the names of our friends, 
 as we should wish them left if we knew we were pres 
 ently to die. It would be a satisfying thought in sick 
 ness, that one s friends would have a memorial to 
 suggest us when we were gone that they would 
 know we wished to be remembered by them, and re 
 membered them among the first. And it is pleasant, 
 too, while alive, to change the order of appropriation 
 with the ever-varying evidences of affection. It is a 
 relief to vexation and mortified pride to erase the 
 name of one unworthy or false, and it is delightful, 
 as another gets nearer to your heart, with the gradual 
 and sure test of intimacy, to prefer him in your secret 
 register. 
 
 If I should live to be old, I doubt not it will be a 
 pleasant thing to look over these little testaments. 
 It is difficult, now, with their kind offices and pleasant 
 faces ever about one, to realize the changes of feeling 
 between the first and the last more difficult still to 
 imagine, against any of those familiar names, the 
 significant asterisk which marks the dead yet if the 
 common chances of human truth, and the still more 
 desperate changes of human life, continue it is 
 melancholy to think what a miracle it would be if 
 even half this list, brief and youthful as it is, should 
 be, twenty years hence, living and unchanged. 
 
 The festivities of this part of the year always seem 
 ed to me mistimed and revolting. I know not what 
 color the reflections of others take, but to me it is 
 simply the feeling of escape the released breath of 
 fear after a period of suspense and danger. Accident, 
 misery, death, have been about us in their invisible 
 
 shapes, and while one is tortured with pain, and 
 another reduced to wretchedness, and another struck 
 into the grave beside us, we know not why orhow, we are 
 still living and prosperous. It is next to a miracle that 
 we are so. We have been on the edge of chasms con 
 tinually. Our feet have tottered, our bosoms have 
 been grazed by the thick shafts of disease had our 
 eyes been spirit-keen we should have been dumb with 
 fear at our peril. If every tenth sunbeam were a 
 deadly arrow if the earth were full of invisible abysses 
 if poisons were sown thickly in the air, life would 
 hardly be more insecure. We can stand upon our 
 threshold and see it. The vigorous are stricken down 
 by an invisible hand the active and busy suddenly 
 disappear death is caught in the breath of the night 
 wind, in the dropping of the dew. There is no place 
 or moment in which that horrible phantom is not 
 gliding among us. It is natural at each period of 
 escape to rejoice fervently and from the heart ; but I 
 know not, if others look upon death with the same 
 irrepressible horror that I do, how their joy can be so 
 thoughtlessly trifling. It seems to me, matter for 
 deep, and almost fearful congratulation. It should 
 be expressed in religious places and with the solemn 
 voice of worship ; and when the period has thus been 
 marked, it should be speedily forgotten lest its cloud 
 become depressing. I am an advocate for all the 
 gayety that the spirits will bear. I would reserve no 
 particle of the treasure of happiness. The world is 
 dull enough at the best. But do not mistake its 
 temper. Do not press into the service of gay pleasure 
 the thrilling solemnities of life. I think anything 
 which reminds me of death, solemn ; any time, when 
 our escape from it is thrust irresistibly upon the mind, 
 a solemn time; and such is the season of the new 
 year. It should be occupied by serious thoughts. 
 It is the time to reckon with one s heart to renew 
 and form resolutions to forgive and reconcile and 
 redeem. 
 
 MIDNIGHT. The bell struck as the word was writ 
 ten ! Twelve and how many-toned in the human 
 ear are the measured strokes that have proclaimed it. 
 The well and contemplative, the sick and restless, the 
 reveller hailing it as the empress of the hours, and the 
 patient and solemn watcher by the dead, counting it 
 on his vigil, and shuddering at the dreadful silence it 
 makes audible sleepless ambition starting from its 
 waking dream, and sleeping guilt blessedly aroused 
 from its nightmare of detection with what a different 
 voice and meaning do the tremulous and lengthened 
 cadences of that same bell fall upon the different ears 
 that listen to them ! Yet it is so with everything 
 about us and the boldest and best lesson of philoso 
 phy is that which teaches us that outward circum 
 stances have no color of their own that the universe 
 is within us that the eye sees no light or shadow, 
 and the ear hears no music or jar, and the senses re 
 ceive no impression of pain or pleasure, but as the 
 inward eye is light or shaded, the inward ear attuned 
 or discordant, and the inward sense painful or pleas 
 urable. It is a glorious creed for by it, he who 
 governs his own soul holds the key of the universe. 
 Its colors are put on at his bidding, its music wakes 
 at his desire, and its magnificent changes, arbitrary 
 and omnipotent as they seem, take form and pressure 
 from the small, still thought in his bosom ! Yet how 
 difficult it is! How true, that "he who ruleth his 
 own spirit is greater than he that taketh a city." 
 To put down at will the maniform spectres of 
 thought to suppress fear and discouragement, and 
 sadness that comes up uncalled to lay a finger on 
 the lip of complaint, and seal up a tear in its cell, and 
 press down, with a stern fetter, the ungovernable 
 nerve of unrest to " lay commandment" on a throb- 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 219 
 
 bing pulse, and break the wings of a too earnest ima 
 gination, and smother, in their first rising, the thou 
 sand impatient feelings that come out of time and 
 season this it is that the anchorite in his cell, and 
 the master spirit in his career, and the student, wast 
 ing over his lamp, may pray, and wrestle, and search 
 into many mysteries for in vain ! 
 
 In my days of idleness (a habit, by-the-by, which 
 should be put down as a nervous complaint in the 
 books) I occupied, for some nine hours in the day, a 
 window opposite a city-clock. It was a tolerable 
 amusement, between breakfast and recitation, to watch 
 the passing of the hours, "hand over hand." 1 thought 
 then, as I think now, that thegreat deficiency in the con 
 struction of the human mind, is the want of something 
 on the principle of the stop-watch, to suspend its ope 
 rations at will but it is no slight relief, since I must 
 think, to have a dial-plate, or a nail in the wall, or any 
 object that it is no trouble to see, to serve as a nu 
 cleus to thought. By-and-by, with the force of hab 
 it, the dial became necessary. I could not think 
 tranquilly without it. My pulses beat sixty in the 
 minute. My imagination built by the hour nine 
 ten twelve castles a day, as the lectures interfered 
 more or less with my repose. 
 
 In the course of time, I fell into the habit of mu 
 sing on the circumstances dependant on the arrival of 
 the hours, and as my mood happened to be gay or 
 gloomy, I pondered, with the strong sympathy of un 
 occupied feelings, on the happiness or misery they 
 brought. If it was a bright sunny forenoon in May, 
 and the eggs had been well boiled at breakfast, the 
 striking of the clock sny twelve stirred a thousand 
 images of pleasure. The boys just leaping out of 
 school, the laborer released from his toil, the belle 
 stepping forth for a promenade, the patient in the in 
 terval of his fever all came up in my imagination, 
 and their several feelings, with all the heightening of 
 imagination, becnme my own. If the weather was 
 hot, on the contrary, or the professor had bored me 
 at lecture, or if my claret was pricked at dinner, I 
 Buffered the miseries of an hospital. There goes the 
 clock say four! Some poor fellow now, at this very 
 moment, is baring his limb to the surgeon the after 
 noon is at the hottest, and the sick are getting restless 
 and weary some hectic consumptive, fallen, per 
 haps, into a chance sleep, is waked, by the trouble 
 some punctuality of his nurse, to take his potion it 
 is the hour the dying man is told he can not survive. 
 Every misery imaginable under the sun rose in phan 
 toms around me, and I suffered and groaned under 
 the concentrated horrors of them all. It serves to 
 show how the mind is its own slave or its own master. 
 And so, having arrived at the moral, with your leave, 
 dear reader, for it is " past one," I will to bed. Good 
 night! 
 
 SNOW. The black, unsightly pavement, every 
 stone of which you know with as cursed a particular 
 ity as the chinks in the back of your fireplace, cov 
 ered with white. The heavy-wheeled carts, which 
 the day before shook the ground under you, and split 
 your ears with their merciless noise, replaced by sleds 
 with musical bells, driven swiftly and skilfully past. 
 The smoked houses, with their provokingly-regular 
 windows and mean doors, that have disturbed the sen 
 timent of grace in your fancy every walk you have 
 taken for months, all laden, and tipped, and frosted 
 into lines and surfaces of beauty ; faultless icicles 
 hanging from the eaves of the shutters, and sparkling 
 crystals of snow edging every projecting stone 
 magic could not exceed it! If the horn of Astol- 
 pho had been blown from the cupola of the state- 
 house, and the whole city had run mad, things could 
 not have looked more strangely new and delightful. 
 
 And the sleighing other people like it, and for their 
 sake I blessed Piovidence for another item. I like it 
 myself for the first mile. But with the loss of sen 
 sation in our feet and hands, I have a trick of grow 
 ing very unhappy. I am content, after one ride, with 
 seeing a sleigh through a parlor-window. 
 
 Eight o clock how merrily the sleigh-bells ring 
 to-night! One comes into hearing as another is lost, 
 and the loud, laughing, and merry voices of the gay 
 riders come up to my retired room in the veriest con 
 trast to my own quiet occupation. How more than 
 solitude it separates one from humanity, to live in the 
 midst of the gay world and take no part in its enjoy 
 ments ! An eremite in the crowd is the only con 
 tented solitary. In the midst of the heaviest sadness 
 the heart feels in this wretched world, the form of 
 distant pleasure is beautiful. We must live near that 
 treacherous dame to know how sorrows lurk in her 
 shadow. Break down the imagination as you will, and 
 bind it by the most relentless memories to your sick 
 heart, it will steal away to scenes you had thought 
 forgotten, and come back fired with their false beau 
 ty, to tempt you to try their winning flatteries once 
 more. It is only by knowing that you can call gay- 
 ety at any moment to your side, that you can quite 
 forget it ; and the studious tenant of a garret, to 
 whose solitude the mingled murmur of a city comes 
 constantly up who can abandon his books whenever 
 the fancy takes him, for the crowd, and enter and 
 throng on with it after its fleeting lure is the only 
 man who, with youtli and the common gifts of Provi 
 dence, can heartily despise it. 
 
 And he if contrast is (as who will deny that has 
 followed after the impossible spirit of contentment, till 
 hope is dead within him) if contrast is, I say, the 
 only bliss in life then does he, the scholar in the 
 crowd, live with a most excellent wisdom. He is 
 roused from communion with a spirit whose immor 
 tal greatness has outlived twenty generations, by the 
 passing mirth of a fool whose best deed will not live 
 in the world s memory an hour. He sits and pores 
 upon an eternal truth, or fires his fancy with heavenly 
 poetry, or winds about him the enchantments of truth- 
 woven fiction, or searches the depths of his own suffi 
 cient heart for the sublime wisdom of human nature, 
 and from the very midst he is plucked back to this 
 every-day world, and compelled to the use of faculties 
 in which a brute animal equals or surpasses him! 
 One moment following the employment of an angel, 
 the next contending with meanness and cunning for 
 his daily bread now kindled to rapture with some 
 new form of beauty, and now disgusted to loathing 
 with some new-developed and unredeemable baseness 
 in his fellow-men. What contrast is there like this ? 
 Who knows so well as a scholar the true sweetness 
 of surprise ? the delightful and only spice of this oth 
 erwise contemptible life novel sensation 1 
 
 CHANGE. How natural it is, like the host in the 
 rhyme, to 
 
 " Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest !" 
 
 How true a similitude it is of every change, not only 
 of time and season, but of feeling and fancy. I have 
 just walked from the window where I stood looking 
 upon the two elms that have refreshed my eye with 
 their lively verdure the summer long, and the adven 
 turous vine, overtopping our neighbor s chimneys, that 
 was covered but a week ago with masses of splendid 
 crimson and scarlet, and with the irresistible regret I feel 
 always at the decay of nature powerful within me, I have 
 seated myself at the fire, with a gladness in the sup 
 planting pleasures of winter, that brings with it, not 
 only a consolation for the loss, but an immediate for- 
 
220 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 getfulness of the past. " Nothing," says Goethe, " is 
 more delightful than to feel a new passion rising when 
 the flame that burned before is not quite extin 
 guished, as, when the sun sets, we turn with pleasure 
 to the rising moon." Who would give a fig for 
 friendship ! Who would waste golden hours in win 
 ning regard ! Who, with this lesson before him, 
 would do aught but look well to his reckoning with 
 heaven, and turn in upon his own soul what time and 
 talents are Isft to him after ! It is a bitter philosophy 
 to learn. The outward world is my first love, and, 
 with all my disappointment, it is difficult at first to 
 set up a new altar for the inner. I would not be as 
 cetic ; neither would I be so happy that, like Poly- 
 crates, I must throw my ring into the sea that I may 
 have something to lament; but I believe he has the 
 true savoir vivre, who, believing fully in the world s 
 unprofitableness, is willing to be amused by it, and 
 who, conversant with its paths and people, has better 
 places and friends (solitude and his books) to which 
 he can enter and shut the door to be at peace. 
 
 WINTER TRIP TO NAHANT. The old chronicler, 
 Time, strides on over the holyday seasons as if noth 
 ing could make him loiter. It may be a hallucina 
 tion, but a winter s day, spite of the calendar, is as 
 long to me as two summer ones. I do not feel the 
 scene pass. There is no measure kept on my senses 
 by its evenly-told pulse. The damp morning, and the 
 silent noon, and the golden twilight, come and go; 
 and if 1 breathe the freshness of the one, and sleep 
 under the repose of the other, and gaze upon the 
 beauties of the third, why, the end of existence seems 
 answered. Labor is not in harmony with it. The 
 thought that disturbs a nerve is an intrusion. Life s 
 rapid torrent loiters in a pool, and its bubbles all break 
 and are forgotten. Indolence is the mother of phi 
 losophy, and I " let the world slide." I think with 
 Rousseau, that " the best book does but little good to 
 the world, and much harm to the author." I remem 
 ber Colton s three difficulties of authorship, and Pel- 
 ham s flattering unction to idleness, ihat " learning is 
 the bane of a poet." The " mossy cell of peace," 
 with its 
 
 " Dreams that move before the half-shut eye, 
 And its gay castles in the clouds that pass," 
 
 is a very Eden ; and, of all the flowers of the field, 
 that which has the most meaning is your lily that 
 " toils not, neither does it spin;" and of all the herbs 
 of the valley, the 
 
 " Yellow lysimacha that gives sweet rest," 
 
 has the most medicinal balm. I am of the school of 
 Epicurus. I no longer think the "judicious voluptu 
 ousness" of Godwin dangerous. Like the witch of 
 Atlas, I could " pitch my tent upon the plain of the 
 calm Mere," and rise and fall for ever to its indolent 
 swell. And speaking of idleness (I admire Mochin- 
 go s talent for digression "Now thou speakest of 
 immortality, how fs thy wife, Andrew") one of the 
 pleasantest ways of indulging that cardinal virtue 
 used to be by an excursion to Nahant. Establishing 
 myself unostentatiously upon the windward quarter 
 of the boat, to avoid the vile volatile oils from the 
 machinery Shelley in one hand, perhaps, or Elia, or 
 quaint Burton (English editions, redolent in Russia, 
 and printed as with types of silver) with one of these, 
 I say, to refresh the eye and keep the philosophic 
 vein breathing freely, the panorama of the bay passes 
 silently before my eye island after island, sail after 
 sail, like the conjurations of a magic mirror. And 
 this is all quiet, let me tell you all in harmony with 
 
 the Socratic humor for the reputable steamer Ousa- 
 tonic (it distresses me daily that it was not spelt with 
 an H) is none of your fifteen-milers none of your 
 high-pressure cut-waters, driving you through the 
 air, breathless with its unbecoming velocity, and with 
 the fear of the boiler before your eyes but with a 
 dignified moderation, consistent with a rational doubt 
 of the integrity of a copper-kettle, and a natural ab 
 horrence of hot water, she glides safely and softly 
 over her half-dozen miles an hour, and lands you, 
 cool and good-humored, upon the rocky peninsula, 
 for a consideration too trifling to be mentioned in a 
 well-bred period. And then if the fates will me an 
 agreeable companion (I wish we had time to describe 
 my beau-ideal), how delightful, as Apple island is 
 neared, with its sweep of green banks and its magnifi 
 cent elms every foot of its tiny territory green and 
 beautiful how delightful to speculate upon the char 
 acter of its eccentric occupant, and repeat the thou 
 sand stories told of him, and peer about his solitary 
 cottage to catch a glimpse of his erect figure, and 
 draw fanciful portraits of his daughter, who, the world 
 says, for the sixteen years of her sweet life, has had 
 only the range of those limited lawns, which she may 
 ramble over in an hour and, as the boat glides by, to 
 watch the fairy isle sleeping, if the bay is calm, with 
 its definite shadow, and looking like a sphere, floating 
 past in the air, covered with luxuriant verdure. It is 
 but a brief twelve miles from Boston to Nahant, and 
 the last four stretch out beyond the chain of islands, 
 upon the open sea. To a city-bred eye and fancy 
 there is a refreshing novelty, added to the expanding 
 influence of so broad a scene, which has in it a vigor 
 ous and delightful stimulus. The mind gets out of 
 its old track. The bnck-ground of the mental picture 
 is changed, and it affects the whole. The illimitable 
 sky and water draw out the imagination to its remo 
 test link, and the far apart and shining sails, each cov 
 ering its little and peculiar world, and sped with the 
 thousand hopes of those for whom its lonely adven 
 turers are tracking the uncertain sea, win on the mind 
 to follow them upon their perilous way, and breathe 
 for them the " God speed" of unconscious interest. 
 It is a beautiful and magic sight to see them gliding 
 past each other on their different courses, impelled 
 by the same invisible wind, now dark with shadow, 
 and now turning full to the light, and specking the 
 horizon, like the white birds careering along the edge 
 of its definite line. The sea grows upon you as you 
 see it more. The disappointment felt at first in its 
 extent wears away, as you remember its vast stretch 
 under those blue depths, which your eye can not 
 search ; and the waste of its " untrampled floor," and 
 the different depths at which the different spoils of 
 the sunk ships have balanced and hung, and the innu 
 merable tribes who range their own various regions 
 of pressure, from the darkest caverns to the thin and 
 lighted chambers at its surface, all come step by step 
 upon the mind, and crowd it with a world of wonder 
 ing speculation. It is delightful to sit with the 
 agreeable companion spoken of, and with the green 
 waves heaving about us, to indulge in these wayward 
 and unprofitable imaginations. It is a splendid range 
 for a wild-winged thought that measureless sea ! I 
 love to talk of its strange mysteries. I love to go 
 down with one who will not check me with cold ob 
 jections, and number and shape out its inhabitants. 
 With such a fellow-wanderer, I have found palaces 
 that surpass Aladdin s, and beings to whom the upper 
 and uncondensed water has a suffocating thinness. 
 But these are idle speculations to the world s eye, 
 gentle reader, and should be reserved for your private 
 ear. We will go, some summer afternoon, and talk 
 them over together on the deck of that same delib 
 erate steamer. You have no idea how many things 
 are untold of the deep sea how many dreams of it 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 221 
 
 an idler man than yourself will weave out of its green 
 depths in his after-dinner musings. 
 
 SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. " Gentle Sir Philip Sid 
 ney," says Tom Nash, in two sweetly-flowing senten 
 ces of his Pierce Penniless, " thou knewest what be 
 longed to a scholar; thou knewest what pains, what 
 toil, what travel, conduct to perfection ; well couldst | 
 thou give every virtue his encouragement, every art j 
 his due, every writer his desert, cause none more i 
 virtuous, witty, or learned, than thyself. But thou 
 art dead in thy grave, and hast left too few successors 
 of thy glory ; too few to cherish the sons of the mu 
 ses, or water those budding hopes with their plenty, 
 which thy bounty erst planted." "He was not only j 
 of an excellent wit," relates, in his own confused and i 
 rambling way, the eminent antiquarian John Aubrey, j 
 who was born not more than forty years after Sidney s 
 decease, "but extremely beautiful; he much resembled I 
 his sister, but his hair was not red, but a little incli 
 ning, viz., a dark amber color. If I were to find fault 
 in it, methinks it is not masculine enough; yet he j 
 was a person of great courage."* " He was, if ever ; 
 there was one," says another writer, " a gentleman j 
 finished and complete, in whom mildness was associa 
 ted with courage, erudition mollified by refinement, 
 and courtliness dignified by truth. England will ever 
 place him among the noblest of her sons; and the 
 light of chivalry, which was his guide and beacon, 
 will ever lend its radiance to illume his memory. He 
 died at the age of thirty-two, and if the lives of Mil 
 ton and Dryden had not been prolonged beyond that 
 period, where would have been their renown?" 
 
 Glorious Sidney ! It stirs the blood warmly about 
 one s heart to think of him. It is somewhat late in j 
 the day, I know, to eulogize him ; but his bright | 
 honor and his beautiful career, are among my earliest I 
 historical recollections, and I have remembered it j 
 since with the passionate interest that in every one s 
 mind burns in, with an enamel of love, some one of 
 the bright images presented in boyhood. You have 
 some such idol of fancy, I dare answer for it, reader 
 of mine some young (for young he must be, or af 
 fection stiffens into respect) some young and famous, 
 and withal courtly, and perhaps " beautiful," winner I 
 of a name. It is Gaston de Foix, perhaps, with his , 
 fierce thirst for glory (the pictures of him by the old , 
 masters are models of manly beauty), or the fourth i 
 Henry, with his temper of romance (the handsomest 
 man in his kingdom), or (if you loved your classics) i 
 Alcibiades (you forget, of course, that he was a volup- ! 
 tuary), or the generous Antony (" Shakspere s" rather ! 
 than the historian s), or Hylas, or Endymion, or 
 Phaeton (he cleared the first few planets in fine style), 
 or some other fonnosus puer adored and sung by the 
 glorious old bards upon the shores of Tiber or Ilissus. 
 He rises to your mind as I mention it a figure of 
 graceful youth, the slight and elegant proportions of 
 the boy, just ripening into the muscular fulness of 
 manhood his neck rising with a free majesty from \ 
 his shoulders, and his eye kindling with some passing 
 thought of glory, answered by the proud and deliber- ! 
 ate curving of his lip, and the animated expansion of I 
 his nostril. You see him with your mind s eye the 
 classic model and classic dream of your scholar-days, j 
 when the sound of the leaves in the tree over you had 
 the swell of an hexameter in your ear, and your 
 thoughts came in Latin, and a line of Homer sprung ! 
 to your lips in your involuntary soliloquies. Ah ! | 
 those were days for dreams ! Who would not let 
 slip the straining grasp of manhood be it at wealth, 
 fame, power anything for which he is flinging his 
 youth and gladness, and all his best treasures, behind ! 
 Very much the description of Shelley. 
 
 him to be once more the careless dreamer that he 
 was to lie once more upon a hill-side, and forget 
 everything in the unquestioned and unshadowed bles 
 sedness of a boy ! 
 
 DEATH-LOVE AND WARNING. It was getting tow 
 ard midnight when a party of young noblemen came 
 out from one of the clubs of St. James street. The 
 servant of each, as he stepped upon the pavement, 
 threw up the wooden apron of the cabriolet, and 
 sprung to the head of the horse; but, as to the des 
 tination of the equipages for the evening, there seem 
 ed to be some dissensions among the noble masters. 
 Between the line of coroneted vehicles, stood a 
 hackney-coach, and a person in an attitude of expectan 
 cy pressed as near the exhilarated group as he could 
 without exciting immediate attention. 
 
 " Which way?" said he whose vehicle was nearest, 
 standing with his foot on the step. 
 
 " All together, of course," said another. " Let s 
 make a night of it." 
 
 " Pardon me," said the clear and sweet voice of 
 the last out from the club ; " I secede for one. Go 
 your ways, gentlemen !" 
 
 "Now, what the deuse is afoot?" said the fore 
 most, again stepping back on the sidewalk. " Don t 
 let him off, Fitz! Is your cab here, Byron, or will 
 you let me drive you? By Jove, you sha n t leavens!" 
 
 "But you shall leave me, and so you are not for 
 sworn, my friend ! In plain phrase, I won t go with 
 you ! And I don t know where I shall go ; so spare 
 your curiosity the trouble of asking. I have a presenti 
 ment that I am wanted by devil or angel 
 
 I see a hand you can not see. " 
 
 " And a very pretty hand it is, I dare swear," said 
 the former speaker, jumping into his cab and starting 
 off with a spring of his blood horse, followed by all 
 the vehicles at the club-door, save one. 
 
 Byron stood looking after them a moment, and 
 raised his hat and pressed his hand hard on his fore 
 head. The unknown person who had been lurking 
 near, seemed willing to leave him for a moment to his 
 thoughts, or was embarrassed at approaching a stran 
 ger. As Byron turned with his halting step to descend 
 the steps, however, he came suddenly to his side. 
 
 "My lord !" he said, and was silent, as if waiting 
 for permission to go on. 
 
 " Well," replied Byron, turning to him without the 
 least surprise, and lookingly closely into his face by 
 the light of the street-lamp. 
 
 " I come to you with an errand which perhaps " 
 
 " A strange one, I am sure ; but I am prepared for 
 it I have been forewarned of it. What do you re 
 quire of me ? for I am ready !" 
 
 " This is strange !" exclaimed the man " Has 
 another messenger, then " 
 
 "None except a spirit for my heart alone told me 
 I should be wanted at this hour. Speak at once." 
 
 44 My lord, a dying girl has sent for you !" 
 
 44 Do I knor her?" 
 
 44 She has never seen you. Will you come at once 
 and on the way I will explain to you what I can of 
 this singular errand ; though, indeed, when it is told 
 you, you know all that I comprehend." 
 
 They were at the door of the hackney-coach, and 
 Byron entered it without further remark. 
 
 <4 Back again!" said the stranger, as the coachman 
 closed the door, " and drive for dear life, for we shall 
 scarce be in time, I fear !" 
 
 The heavy tongue of St. Paul s church struck 
 twelve as the rolling vehicle hurried on through the 
 now lonely street, and though so far from the place 
 whence they started, neither of the two occupants 
 
222 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 had spoken. Byron sat with bare head and folded 
 arms in the corner of the coach ; and the stranger, 
 with his hat crowded over his eyes, seemed repressing 
 some violet emotion ; and it was only when they 
 stopped before a low door in a street close upon the 
 river, that the latter found utterance. 
 
 " Is she alive ?" he hurriedly asked of a woman 
 who came out at the sound of the carriage-wheels. 
 
 " She was a moment since but be quick !" 
 
 Byron followed quickly on the heels of his com 
 panion, and passing through a dimly lighted entry to 
 the door of a back-room, they entered. A lamp, 
 shaded by a curtain of spotless purity, threw a faint 
 light upon a bed, upon which lay a girl, watched by 
 a physician and a nurse. The physician had just re 
 moved a small mirror from her lips, and holding it to 
 the light, he whispered that she still breathed. As 
 Byron passed the edge of the curtain, however, the 
 dying girl moved the fingers of the hand lying on the 
 coverlet, and slowly opened on him her languid eyes 
 eyes of inexpressible depth and lustre. No one had 
 spoken. 
 
 "Here he is," she murmured. "Raise me, mother, 
 while I have time to speak to him." 
 
 Byron looked around the small chamber, trying in 
 vain to break the spell of awe which the scene threw 
 over him. An apparition from the other world could 
 not have checked more fearfully and completely the 
 worldly and scornful under-current of his nature. 
 He stood with his heart beating almost audibly, and 
 his knees trembled beneath him, awaiting what he 
 prophetically felt to be a warning from the very gate 
 of heaven. 
 
 Propped with pillows, and left by her attendants, 
 the dying girl turned her head toward the proud, 
 noble poet, standing by her bedside, and a slight blush 
 overspread her features, while a smile of angelic 
 beauty stole through her lips. In that smile the 
 face reawakened to its former loveliness, and seldom 
 had he who now gazed breathlessly upon her, looked 
 on such spiritual and incomparable beauty. The 
 spacious forehead and noble contour, still visible, of 
 the emaciated lips, bespoke genius impressed upon a 
 tablet all feminine in its language ; and in the motion 
 of her hand, and even in the slight movement of her 
 graceful neck, there was something that still breathed 
 of surpassing elegance. It was the shadowy wreck 
 of no ordinary mortal passing away humble as were 
 the surroundings, and strange as had been his sum 
 mons to her bedside. 
 
 " And this is Byron ?" she said at last, in a voice 
 bevvilderingly sweet even through its weakness. 
 " My lord ! I could not die without seeing you 
 without relieving my soul of a mission with which it 
 has long been burthened. Come nearer for I have 
 no time left for ceremony, and I must say what I 
 have to say and die! Beautiful," she said, "beauti 
 ful as the dream of him which has so long haunted 
 me! the intellect and the person of a spirit of light ! 
 Pardon me, my lord, that, at a moment so important to i 
 yourself, the remembrance of an earthly feeling has i 
 been betrayed into expression." 
 
 She paused a moment, and the bright color that had 
 shot through her cheek and brow faded, and her 
 countenance resumed its heavenly serenity. 
 
 " I am near enough to death," she resumed 
 "near enough to point you almost to heaven from; 
 where I am; and it is on my heart like the one errand i 
 of my life like the bidding of God to implore you 
 to prepare for judgment. Oh, my lord! with your 
 glorious powers, with your wondrous gifts, be not | 
 lost! Do not, for the poor pleasures of a world like ; 
 this, lose an eternity in which your great mind will 
 outstrip the intelligence of angels. Measure this i 
 iiought scan the worth of angelic bliss with the I 
 intellect which has ranged so gloriously through the 
 
 universe ; do not, on this one momentous subject 
 of human interest on this alone be not short 
 sighted !" 
 
 "What shall I do ?" suddenly burst from Byron s 
 lips in a tone of agony. But with an effort, as if 
 struggling with a death-pang, he again drew up his 
 form and resumed the marble calmness of his counte 
 nance. 
 
 The dying girl, meantime, seemed to have lost 
 herself in prayer. With her wasted hands clasped 
 on her bosom, and her eyes turned upward, the slight 
 motion of her lips betrayed to those around her that 
 
 1 she was pleading at the throne of mercy. The physi- 
 
 cian crept close to her bedside, but with his hand in 
 his breast, and his head bowed, he seemed but watch 
 ing for the moment when the soul should take its 
 
 ! flight. 
 
 She suddenly raised herself on the pillow. Her 
 
 j long brown tresses fell over her shoulders, and a 
 brightness unnatural and almost fearful kindled in her 
 eyes. She seemed endeavoring to speak, and gazed 
 steadfastly at Byron. Slowly, then, and tranquilly 
 she sank back again upon her pillow, and as her hands 
 fell apart, and her eyelids dropped, she murmured, 
 "Come to Heaven!" and the stillness of death was in 
 the room. The spirit had fled. 
 
 The breaking of the silver cord is the first tone from 
 the life-strings of genius, which is answered only in 
 vibrations of affection. This truth, indeed, is touch- 
 ingly shadowed forth in the accompaniments of death. 
 The dark colors in the drapery of life, are dropped in 
 the weaving of the shroud. The discords of music 
 are rejected in the melody of the dirge. The praise 
 upon the marble is the first tribute written without 
 disparagement, and the first suffered without dissent. 
 It is this new relation of the public to a great name 
 this completed and lucent phase of a light in litera 
 ture which seems to make a posthumous recast of 
 criticism one of the legitimate departments of a review. 
 Like the public feeling, the condition and powers of 
 criticism toward an author s fame, are essentially 
 changed by his death. His personal character, and 
 the events of his life the foreground, so to speak, in 
 the picture of his mind, are, till this event, wanting 
 to the critical perspective; and when the hand to cor 
 rect is cold, and the ear to be caressed and wounded 
 is sealed, some of the uses of censure, and all reserve 
 in comparison and final estimate, are done way. 
 
 It is time for the reviews to take up, on this ground, 
 the character and writingsof Hillhouse. The author 
 of Hadad, the most finished and lofty poem of its 
 time, should have been followed, within a year after 
 his death, by a new and reverential appreciation, and 
 living, as he did, in a learned and literary circle of 
 friends, a biography, at least, was looked for, out of 
 which criticism might shape a fresh monument to his 
 genius. Such men as Hillhouse are not common, 
 even in these days of universal authorship. In ac 
 complishment of mind and person, he was probably 
 second to no man. His poems show the first. They 
 are fully conceived, nicely balanced, exquisitely finish 
 ed works for the highest taste to relish, and for the 
 severest student in dramatic style to erect into a model. 
 Hadad was published in 1825, during my second yearin 
 college, and to me it was the opening of a new heaven 
 of imagination. The leading characters possessed me 
 for months, and the bright, clear, harmonious lan 
 guage was, for a long time, constantly in my ears. 
 The author was pointed out to me, soon after, and 
 for once, I saw a poet whose mind was well imaged 
 in his person. In no part of the world have I seen a 
 man of more distinguished mien, or of a more inborn 
 dignity and elegance of address. His person was very 
 
EPHEMERA. 
 
 223 
 
 finely proportioned, his carriage chivalric and high 
 bred, and his countenance purely and brightly intel 
 lectual. Add to this a sweet voice, a stamp of high 
 courtesy on everything he uttered, and singular sim 
 plicity and taste in dress, and you have trie portrait 
 of one who. in other days, would have been the mir 
 ror of chivalry, and the flower of nobles and trou- 
 bndors. Hillhousewas no less distinguished in oratory. 
 There was still remembered, at the time of the pub 
 lication of Hadad, an oration pronounced by him at 
 the taking of his second degree an oration upon 
 "the Education of a Poet," gloriously written, and 
 most eloquently delivered. His poem of "the Judge 
 ment," delivered before the " Phi Beta Kappa Socie 
 ty," added in the same way to his renown, as did a 
 subsequent noble effort of eloquence, to which I listen 
 ed myself, with irresistible enchantment. 
 
 Hillhouse had fallen upon days of thrift, and many 
 years of his life which he should have passed either 
 in his study, or in the councils of the nation, were 
 enslaved to the drudgery of business. His constitu 
 tion seemed to promise him a vigorous manhood, 
 however, and an old age of undiminished fire, and 
 when he left his mercantile pursuits, and retired to 
 the beautiful and poetic home of "Sachem s Wood," 
 his friends looked upon it as the commencement of a 
 ripe and long enduring career of literature. In har 
 mony with such a life were all his surroundings 
 scenery, society, domestic refinement, and companion 
 ship and never looked promise fairer for the realiza 
 tion of a dream of glory. That he had laid out some 
 thing of such a field in the future, I chance to know, 
 for, though my acquaintance with him was slight, he 
 confided to me in a casual conversation, the plan of a 
 series of dramas, different from all he had attempted, 
 upon which he designed to work with the first mood 
 and leisure he could command. And with his high 
 scholarship, knowledge of life, taste and genius, what 
 might not have been expected from its fulfilment ? 
 But his hand is cold, and his lips still, and his light, 
 just risinz to its meridian, is lost now to the world. 
 Love and honor to the memory of such a man. 
 
 BACHELOR BOB S DISCOVERIES. 
 
 " Sad were the lays of merry days, 
 And sweet the songs of sadness." 
 
 " Come !" said Bachelor Bob, as he hitched his 
 chair closer to the table, " quite alone, half past 
 twelve, and two tumblers of toddy for heart-openers, 
 what say you to a little friendly inquisition into your 
 mortal felicity ? You were the gayest man of my 
 acquaintance ten years ago ; you are the gravest 
 now ! Yet you swear by your Lares and Peaates, 
 that (up to the lips as you are in care and trouble) 
 you never were so happy as in these latter days. Do 
 you ssvear this to me from a way you have of hang 
 ing out trap for the world, or are you under a little in 
 nocent delusion ?" 
 
 Bob s hobby is the theory of happiness. Riches 
 and poverty, matrimony and celibacy, youth and age, 
 are subjects of contemplation to Bob, solely with ref 
 erence to their comparative capacity for bliss. He 
 speculates and talks about little else, indeed, and his 
 intercourse with his friends seems to have no other 
 end or aim than to collect evidence as to their happi 
 ness and its causes. On this occasion he was addres 
 sing a friend of mine, Smith, who had been a gay man 
 in his youth (a merry man, truth to say, for he was 
 in a perpetual breeze of high spirits), but who had 
 married, and fallen behindhand in his worldly affairs, 
 and so grown careworn and thoughtful. Smith was 
 rather a poet in a quiet way, though he only used po 
 etry as a sort of longer plummet when his heart got 
 
 off soundings. I am indebted to Bob for the speci 
 mens of his verse-making which I am about to give, 
 | as well as for the conversation which brought them 
 I to light. 
 
 " Why," said Smith, "you have stated a dilemma 
 
 j with two such inevitable horns that argument would 
 
 | scarcely help me out of it. Let me see, what proof 
 
 i can I give you that I am a happier man than I used 
 
 to be, spite of my chapfallen visage ?" 
 
 Smith mused a moment, and reaching over to a 
 desk near his elbow, drew from its private drawer a 
 book with locked covers. It was a well-filled manu 
 script volume, and seemed a collection of prose and 
 verse intermixed. The last page was still covered 
 ! with blotting-paper, and seemed recently written. 
 
 "I am no poet," said Smith, coloring slightly, 
 " but it has been a habit of mine, ever since my cal 
 low days, to record in verse all feelings that were too 
 warm for prose ; sometimes in the fashion of a solilo 
 quy (scripta vcrba), sometimes in verses to the dame 
 or damsel to whom I was indebted for my ignition. 
 Let me see, Bob! we met in Florence, I think ?" 
 " For the first time abroad, yes !" 
 " Well, perhaps that was my gayest time; certainly 
 I do not remember to have been anywhere more gay 
 or reckless. Florence, 1832, um here are some lines 
 written that summer : do you remember the beautiful 
 Irish widow you saw at one of the casino balls ? ad 
 dressed to her, flirt that she was ! But she began all 
 her flirtations with talking of her sorrows, and, if she 
 tried you on, at all " 
 
 " She didn t !" interrupted Bob. 
 "Well, if she had you would have been humbug- 
 j ged with her tender melancholy, as I was. Here are 
 j the verses, and if ever I turned out my lining to the 
 moon, they are true to my inner soul in those days 
 I of frolic. Read these, and then turn to the last page 
 ! and you will find as true a daguerreotype of the inner 
 light of my moping days, written only yesterday." 
 
 Tis late San Marc is beating three 
 
 As I look forth upon the night ; 
 The stars are shining tranquilly, 
 
 And heaven is full of silver light ; 
 The air blows freshly on my brow- 
 Yet why should I be waking now ! 
 
 I ve listened, lady, to thy tone, 
 
 Till in my ear it will not die ; 
 I ve felt for sorrows not my own, 
 
 Till now I can not put them by ; 
 And those sad words and thoughts of thine 
 Have breathed their sadness into mine. 
 
 Tis long though reckoned not by years 
 
 Since, with affections chilled and shocked, 
 I dried a boy s impassioned tears, 
 
 And from the world my feelings locked 
 The work of but one bitter day, 
 
 In which were crowded years of pain ; 
 
 And then I was as gay, again, 
 And thought that I should be for aye ! 
 The world lay open wide and bright, 
 
 And I became its lightest minion, 
 And flew the wording s giddy height 
 
 With reckless and impetuous pinion 
 Life s tide, with me, had turned from shore 
 Ere yet my summers told a score. 
 
 And years have passed, and I have seemed 
 
 Happy to every eye but thine, 
 And they whom most I loved have deemed 
 
 There was no lighter heart than mine ; 
 And, save when some wild passion-tone 
 
 Of music reached the sleeping nerve, 
 Or when in illness and alone 
 
 My spirit from its bent would swerve, 
 My heart was light, my thoughts u-ere free, 
 I tM the thing I seemed to be. 
 
 I came to this bright land, and here, 
 Where I had thought to nerve my wings 
 
 To soar to a more lofty sphere, 
 
 And train myself for sterner things 
 
 The land where I had thought to find 
 No spell but beauty breathed in stone 
 
224 
 
 EPHEMERA. 
 
 To learn idolatries of mind, 
 
 And leave the heart to slumber on 
 Here find I one whose voice awakes 
 
 The sad, dumb angel of my breast, 
 And, as the long, long silence breaks 
 
 Of a strong inward lip suppressed, 
 It seems to me as if a madness 
 
 Had been upon my brain alway 
 
 As if twere phrensy to be gay, 
 And life were only sweet in sadness ! 
 Words from my lips to-night have come 
 That have for years been sealed and dumb. 
 
 It was but yesterday we met, 
 
 We part to-morrow. I would fain 
 With thy departing voice forget 
 
 Its low, deep tone, and seal again 
 My feelings from the light of day, 
 To be to-morrow only gay ! 
 
 But days will pass, and nights will creep, 
 And I shall hear that voice of sadness 
 
 With dreams, as now, untouched by sleep, 
 And spirits out of tune with gladness ; 
 And time must wear, and fame spur on ; 
 Before that victory is re-won ! 
 
 And so farewell ! I would not be 
 
 Forgotten by the only heart 
 To which my own breathes calm and free, 
 
 And let us not as strangers part ! 
 And we shall meet again, perhaps, 
 
 More gayly than we re parting now; 
 For time has, in its briefest lapse, 
 
 A something which clears up the brow, 
 And makes the spirits calm and bright 
 And now to my sad dreams ! Good night ! 
 
 " What a precious hypocrite you were for the mer 
 riest dog in Florence !" exclaimed Bob, as he laid the 
 book open on its back, after reading these lines. 
 " You feel that way ! credat Judteus . "But there are 
 some other poetical lies here what do you mean by 
 we met but yesterday, and we part to-morrow, 
 when I know you dangled after that widow a whole 
 season at the baths ?" 
 
 " Why," said Smith, with one of his old laughs, 
 " there was a supplement to such an outpouring, of 
 course. The reply to my verses was an invitation to 
 join their party the next morning in a pilgrimage to 
 Vallambrosa, and once attached to that lady s suite 
 va pour toujours ! or as long as she chose to keep you. 
 Turn to the next page. Before coming to the verses 
 of my more sober days, you may like to read one 
 more flourish like the last. Those were addressed to 
 the same belle dame, and under a continuance of the 
 same hallucination." 
 
 Bob gravely read : 
 
 My heart s a heavy one to-night, 
 
 Dear Mary, thinking upon thee 
 I know not if my brain is right, 
 
 But everything looks dark to me ! 
 I parted from thy side but now, 
 
 I listened to thy mournful tone, 
 I gazed by starlight on thy brow, 
 
 And we were there unseen alone 
 Yet proud as I should be, and blest, 
 I can not set my heart at rest ! 
 
 Thou lov st me. Thanks, oh God, for this ! 
 
 If I should never sleep again 
 If hope is all a mock of bliss 
 
 I shall not now have lived in vain ! 
 I care not that my eyes are aching 
 
 With this dull fever in my lids 
 I care not that my heart is breaking 
 
 For happiness that Fate forbids 
 The one sweet word that thou hast spoken, 
 
 The one sweet look I met and blessed, 
 
 Would cheer me if my heart were broken 
 
 Would put my wildest thoughts to rest ! 
 I know that I have pressed thy fingers 
 
 Upon my warm lips unforbid 
 I know that in thy memory lingers 
 
 A thought of me, like treasure hid 
 Though to my breast I may not press thee, 
 
 Though I may never call thee mine, 
 I know and, God, I therefore bless thee ! 
 
 No other fills that heart of thine ! 
 And this shall light my shadowed track ! 
 I take my words of sadness back ! 
 
 "What had that flirting widow to do with the gen 
 tle name of Mary ?" exclaimed Bob, after laughing 
 very heartily at the point blank take-in confessed in 
 these very solemn verses. "Enough of love-melan 
 choly, however, my dear Smith ! Let s have a look 
 now *t the poetical side of care and trouble. What 
 do you call it?" 
 
 THE INVOLUNTARY PRAYER OF HAPPINESS. 
 
 I have enough, oh God ! My heart, to-night, 
 Runs over with the fulness of content ; 
 As I look out on the fragrant stars, 
 And from the beauty of the night take in 
 My priceless portion yet myself no more 
 Than in the universe a grain of sand 
 I feel His glory who could make a -world, 
 Yet, in the lost depths of the wilderness 
 Leave not a flower imperfect ! 
 
 Rich, though poor ! 
 
 My low-roofed cottage is, this hour, a heaven ! 
 Music is in it and the song she sings, 
 That sweet-voiced wife of mine, arrests the ear 
 Of my young child, awake upon her knee ; 
 And, with his calm eye on his master s face, 
 My noble hound lies couchant ; and all here 
 All in this little home, yet boundless heaven 
 Are, in such love as I have power to give, 
 Blessed to overflowing ! 
 
 Thou, who look st 
 
 Upon my brimming heart this tranquil eve, 
 Knowest its fulness, as thou dost the dew 
 Sent to the hidden violet by Thee ! 
 And, as that flower from its unseen abode 
 Sends its sweet breath up duly to the sky, 
 Changing its gift to incense so, oh God ! 
 May the sweet drops that to my humble cup 
 Find their far way from Heaven, send back, in prayer, 
 Fragrance at thy throne welcome ! 
 
 Bob paused a moment after reading these lines. 
 
 " They seem in earnest," he said, " and I will 
 sooner believe you were happy when you wrote 
 these, than that you were sad when you wrote the 
 others. But one thing I remark," added Bob, "the 
 devout feeling in these lines written when you are 
 happiest ; for it is commonly thought that tribulation 
 and sadness give the first religious tinge to the ima 
 gination. Yours is but the happiness of Christian 
 resignation, after all." 
 
 " On the contrary," said Smith, " nothing makes 
 me so wicked as care and trouble. I always had, 
 from childhood, a disposition to fall down on my 
 knees and thank God for everything which made me 
 happy, while sorrows of all descriptions stir up my 
 antagonism, and make me feel rather like a devil than 
 a Christian." 
 
 In that case," said Bob, faking up his hat, " good 
 night, and God prosper you ! And as to your happi 
 ness?" 
 
 " Well, what is the secret of my happiness, think 
 you ?" 
 
 "Matrimony," replied Bob- 
 
 132 
 
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