5 I B 3 im b7T m; •«/«. 7/\':''{;v: <-'-V ^ w m %a > \i--'. 9 H 1^ A;"-?' Jlrir< -^«»r^»ll^•. -i«.«rf'. ^«!I» •' ItSiA-. ^■ItWJiJRMW^yx 9 ^ 3 1 » »» 5 » » 1 > ■> J 3 5 J 5 , 5 5 ■> > J J J DSTKIV ITORK , ]D).A][P]F'wi]fi,'XQ^ & 4:® 200 BIK-O.-MJ"' Twim *5c lit^; ii AMd [I 1 M.^ m^/mmm rLLUSTRATED BY TEX STEEL ENOP.ATIXGS. D NEW-YORK : APPLETON AXD COMPANY, 200 BROADWAY M.DCCC.Lni. Ay// G5I5 t c C ff t I PREFACK TIST the new volume now offered to tlie -*- reading public, the editor has the plea- sure of presenting some of the finest produc- tions of the popular writers of the present day — writers who are now in the field, actuated by the impulses of the j)i^esent stirring age, and keeping up to the pre- sent high standard of moral and artistical merit required in works of fiction, even of the lighter and livelier description. In the choice and arrangement of mate- rials for the volume, it has been the editor's aim to exhibit a great variety of subjects and of styles, so as to render the contents of the voume " ever pleasing ever new." The embelhshments are engraved in the MG4i88 PREFACE. best style of art, from designs of the ablest artists. To some persons tlie preparation of books of tbe class to wliicli this volume belongs, may seem a very limiible and trivial occu- pation : but it lias an important use. Dif- fused among a numerous class of readers in the higher ranks of society, these tasteful and elegant volumes are generally read for amusement solelv. But where, as in the in- stance of the Eose, it has been the editor's aim to mingle with entertainment, a large amount of instruction in moral virtue and the conduct of life, the reader who has taken up the volume merely to amuse an idle hour, often lays it down with the con- sciousness that he has learnt lessons which will serve to direct his course in many of the relations of life, and which may exert a salutary influence on his whole future ex- istence. CONTENTS. Page . MoRxrxG TT^viK, 9 The Grouxd Ash, 11 Sea, Eaeth, axd Heaven, 34 The Poor, 37 The lost Dahlia, 38 EvExixG Hours, 57 LovixG Hearts, 61 Aunt Deborah, 63 Verses, 97 My Early Days, 99 Captain PoPHAii at his Country House, . 101 The Sleeping Child, 129 The Exiles of Capri, 131 She's Dead, ...... 155 The Inn-keeper's Son, 157 The Heiress and her Wooers, .... 160 6 fONTKNTS. Page. Sonnet, 208 The Queen of the Houk, 209 MOEWELL, 211 The Cavalier's Whispeb, 230 The Warrior's Departure, 231 A Peep into the Office of a Savings' Bank, • 233 Mignonette, 253 Autumn's Last Flowers, 256 An Evening Walk, 257 His Only A:itBiTioN, 259 The Bells of Lorloches, 274 Maey Eussell Mitford, 282 % LIST OF ILLUSTEATIOXS. Page. MoE>TXG Walk, .... Frontispiece. The Poor, Lovcca Heaets, My Eaelt Days, 37 69 99 The Sleepin-g Child, ... * 121 The Ixxkeepee's So:>5', . . . • ^^* 209 The Quee:>* or the Houb, . . • • The "Waerior's Depaktuke, . . • 231 An EvEyrsa Walk, .... 257 ^ 3 -> 3 > ' ) > J ',?, THE MORNING WALK. BY HENRY VAUGHAX — 1695. Y\7HEN" first thy eyes unveil give thy soul leave ^ ' To do the like ; our bodies but forerun The spirit's duty ; true hearts spread and heave Unto their God, as flowers do to the sun ; Give him thy first thoughts, then, so shalt thou keep Hiin company all day, and in Him sleep. Yet never sleep the sun up ; prayer should Dawn with the day : there are set awful hours 'Twixt heaven and us ; the manna was not good After sun rising ; far day sullies flowers ; Eise to prevent the sun ; sleep doth sins glut. And Heaven's gate opens when the world is shut. Walk with thy fellow-creatures ; note the hush And wliispering among them. jSTot a sprig Or leaf but hath its morning hymn ; each bush And oak doth know I Am — Canst thou not sing ? 1 10 THE MORNING WALK. Oh leave thy cares and follies ! go this way, And \t^m 'art sure te pvosD(;.r \dl the day. Se.rye GrQd hefor^.the. wqrlc^; let Ilim not go Urlt'il.'thoti .h'sfst .a'b1f^sing:;/'^'Stie,n resign The whole untojiim, and remember who Prevailed by wrestling, ere the sun did shine. Pour oil upon the stones, weep for thy sin, Then journey on, and have an eye to heav'n. Mornings are mysteries, the first world's youth, Man's resurrection, and the future's bud, Shroud in their births ; the crown of life, light, truth, Is styled their star, the stone and hidden food : Three blessings rest upon them, one of which Should move — they make us holy, happy, rich. When the world's up, and every swarm abroad, Keep well thy temper, mix not with each day ; Dispatch necessities ; life hath a load Wliicli must be carried on, and safely may ; Yet keep those cares without thee ; let thy heart Be God's alone, and choose the better part. THE GEOUXD-ASH. AMOXGST the many pleasant circumstances attendant on a love of flowers — that sort of love which leads us into the woods for the earhest primrose, or to the river side for the latest forget- me-not, and carries us to the parching heath or the watery mere to procure for the cultivated, or, if I may use the expression, the tame beauties of the parterre, the soil that they love ; amongst the many gratifications which such pursuits bring with them, such as seeing in the seasons in which it shows best, the prettiest, coyest, most unhackneyed scenery, and taking, with just motive enough for stimulus and for reward, drives and walks which ap- proach to fatigue, without being fatigued ; amongst all the dehghts consequent on a love of flowers, I know none m-eater than the half unconscious and wholly unintended manner in which such expedi- 12 THE GROUND-ASH. tions make us acquainted witli the peasant children of remote and out-of-the-way regions, the inhabit- ants of the wild woodlands and still Avilder com- mons of the hilly part of the north of Hampshire, wdiich forms so strong a contrast wdth this sunny and populous county of Berks, whose very fields are gay and neat as gardens, and whose roads are as level and even as a gravel w^alk. Two of the most interesting of these flow^er- formed acquaintances, w^ere my little fiiends Hariy and Bessy Leigh. Every year I go to the Everley w^oods to gather wild lilies of the valley. It is one of the delights that May — the charming, ay, and the merry month of May, which I love as fondly as ever that bright and joyous season was loved by our older poets — regularly brings in her train ; one of those rational pleasures in w^hich (and it is the great point of superiority over pleasures that are artificial and w^orldly) there is no disappointment. About four years ago, I made such a visit. The day was glorious, and we had driven through lanes per- fumed by the fresh green birch, with its bark silvery and many-tinted, and over commons where the very air was loaded with the heavy fi-agrance THE GROUND-ASH. 13 of the furze, au odor resembling in richness its golden blossoms, just as the scent of the birch is cool, refreshing, and penetrating, like the exquisite color of its young leaves, until we reached the top of the hill, where, on one side, the inclosed wood, where the lilies grow, sank gradually, in an amphi- theatre of natural terraces, to a piece of water at the bottom ; whilst on the other, the wild open heath formed a sort of promontory overhanging a steep ravine, through which a slow and sluggish stream crept along amongst stunted alders, until it was lost in the deep recesses of Lidhurst Forest, over the tall trees of which we hterally looked down. We had come without a servant ; and on arri\dnof at the 2'ate of the wood with neither hu- man figure nor human habitation in sight, and a high-blooded and high-spirited horse in the phae- ton, we began to feel all the awkwardness of our situation. My companion, however, at length espied a thin wreath of smoke issuing fi-om a small clay-built hut thatched with fiirze, built against the steepest part of the hill, of which it seemed a mere excrescence, about half-way down the decli- vity ; and, on calling aloud, two children, who had been picking up dry stumps of heath and gorse. 14 THE GROUND-ASH. and collecting them in a heap for fuel at the door of their hovel, first carefully deposited tlieir little load, and then came running to know what we wanted. If we had wondered to see human beings Hving in a habitation, which, both for space and appear- ance, w^ould have been despised by a pig of any pretension, as too small and too mean for his ac- commodation, so we were again surprised at the strange union of poverty and content evinced by the apparel and countenances of its yoimg inmates. The children, bareheaded and barefooted, and with little more clothing than one shabby-looking gar- ment, were yet as fine, sturdy, hardy, ruddy, sun- burnt urchins, as one should see on a summer day. They were clean, too : the stunted bit of raiment was patched, but not ragged ; and when the girl (for, although it was rather difficult to distinguish between the brother and sister, the pair were of difi'erent sexes), when the bright-eyed, square-made, upright little damsel clasped her tw^o brown hands together, on the top of her head, pressed down her thick curls, looking at us and listening to us with an air of the most intelligent attention that returned our curiosity with interest ; and when the boy, in THE GROUND-ASH. 15 answer to our inquiry, if he could hold a horse, clutched the reins with his small fingers, and planted himself beside our high-mettled steed with an air of firm determination, that seemed to say, " I'm your master ! Run away if you dare !" we both of us felt that they were subjects for a picture, and that, though Sir Joshua might not have painted them, Gainsborough and our own Colhns would. But besides their exceeding picturesqueness, the evident content, and helpfulness, and industry of these httle creatures was delightful to look at and to think of. In convei-sation they were at once very civil and respectful (Bessy dropping her little curtsey, and Hany putting his hand to the lock of hair where the hat should have been, at every sentence they uttered), and perfectly frank and un- fearing. In answer to our questions, they told us that " Father was a broom-maker, from the low country; that he had come to these parts and married mother, and built their cottage, because houses were so scarce hereabouts, and because of its convenience to the heath ; that they had done very well till the last winter, when poor father had had the fever for five months, and they had had 16 THE GROUND-ASII. much ado to g-et on ; l)iit that fothcr was brave again now, and was building another house (bouse ! !) larger and iiner, upon Squire Benson's lands : the squire bad promised tbem a garden from the waste, and mother hoped to keep a pig. They were trying to get all the money they could to buy the pig : and what his honor had promised them for holding the horse, was all to be given to mother for that purpose." It was impossible not to be charmed with these children. We went again and again to the Everley Avood, partly to gather lilies, partly to rejoice in the trees with their young leaves so beautiful in texture as well as in color, but chiefly to indulge ourselves in the pleasure of talking to the children, of adding something to their scanty stock of cloth- ing (Bessy ran as fast as her feet could carry her to the clear pool at the bottom of the wood, to look at herself in her new bonnet), and of assisting in the accumulations of the Grand Pig Savings' Bank, by engaging Harry to hold the horse, and Bessy to help fill the hly basket. This employment, by showing that the lilies had a money value, put a new branch of traffic into the heads of these thouo'htful children, already ac- THE GROUND-ASH. 1*7 customed to gather heath for their father's brooms, and to collect the dead furze which served as fuel to the family. After gaining permission of the farmer who rented the wood, and ascertaining that we had no objection, they set about making nose- gays of the flowers, and collecting the roots for sale, and actually stood two Saturdays in Belford market (the smallest merchant of a surety that ever appeared in that rural Exchange) to dispose of their wares ; havino* obtained a cast in a wao^on there and back, and carrying home faithfully every penny of their gainings, to deposit in the common stock. The next year we lost sight of them. Xo smoke issued from the small chimney by the hiil-side. The hut itself was half demolished by wind and weather ; its tenants had emigrated to the new house on Squire Benson's land ; and after two or three attempts to understand and to follow the di- rections as to the spot given us by the good farmer at Everley, we were forced to give up the search. Accident, the great discoverer and recoverer of lost goods, at last restored to us these good little children. It happened as follows : — In new potting some large hydrangeas, we were 18 THE GROUND-ASII. seized with a desire to give the Llue tinge to the petals, which so greatly improves the beauty of that fine bold flower, and which is so desirable when they are placed, as these were destined to be, in the midst of red and pink blossoms, fuchsias, sal- vias, and geraniums. Accordingly, w^e sallied forth to a place called the Moss, a wild tract of moor- land lying about a mile to the right of the road to Everley, and ffimous for the red bog, produced, I presume, by chalybeate springs, which, when mix- ed with the fine Bagshot silver sand, is so effectual in changing the color of flowers. It w^as a bleak gusty day in February, raining by fits, but not with sufficient violence to deter me from an exj^edition to which I had taken a fancy. Putting up, therefore, the head and apron of the phaeton, and followed by one lad (the shrewd boy Dick) on horseback, and another (John, the steady gardening youth) in a cart laden wdth tubs and sacks, sj^ades and watering.pots, to procure and con- tain the bog mould (for we were prudently deter • mined to provide for all emergencies, and to carry with us fit receptacles to receive our treasure, whe- ther it presented itself in the form of red eailh or of red mud), our little procession set forth early in THE GROUND-ASH. 19 the afternoon, towards the wildest and most dreary piece of scenery that I have ever met with in this part of the country. Wild and dreary of a truth was the Moss, and the stormy sky, the moaning wind, and the occa- sional gushes of driving rain, suited well Avith the dark and cheerless reo-ion into which we had en- tered by a road, if a rude cart-track may be so called, such as shall seldom be encountered in this land of Macadamization. And yet, partly perhaps from their novelty, the wild day and the wild scene- ry had for me a^strange and thrilling charm. The ground, covered with the sea-green moss, whence it derived its name, mingled in the higher parts with brown patches of heather, and dark bushes of stunted furze, was broken with deep hollows full of stao-nant water ; some almost black, others covered with the rusty scum which denoted the presence of the powerful mineral, upon whose agency we relied for performing that strange piece of natural magic which may almost be called the transmutation of flowers. Towards the ruddiest of these pools, situated in a deep glen, our active coadjutors, leaving phaeton, cart, and horses, on the brow of the hill, began roll- 20 THE GROUND-ASII. ing and tossing the several tubs, buckets, watering- pots, sacks, and spades, which were destined for the removal and conveyance of the much coveted bog ; we followed, amused and pleased, as, in cer- tain moods, physical and mental, people are pleas- ed and amused at self-imposed diflficulties, down the abrupt and broken descent ; and for some time the process of digging among the mould at the edge of the bank went steadily on. In a few minutes, however, Dick, whose quick and restless eye was never long bent on any single object, most of all when that object presented itself in the form of work, exclaimed to his comrade, " Look at those children wandering about amongst the firs, like the babes in the wood in the old bal- lad. What can they be about ?" And looking in the direction to which he pointed, we saw, amidst the gloomy fir plantations, which formed a dark and massive border nearly round the Moss, our old friends Harry and Bessy Leigh, collecting, as it seemed, the fir cones with which the ground was strewed, and depositing them carefully in a large basket. A manful shout from my companion soon brought the children to our side — good, busy, cheerful, and THE GROU>'D-ASH. 21 healthy-looking as ever, and marvellously improved in the matter of equipment. Harry had been pro- moted to a cap, which added the grace of a flour- ish to his brow ; Bessy had added the luxury of a pinafore to her nondescript garments ; and both pairs of little feet were advanced to the certain cMg- nity, although somewhat equivocal comfort, of shoes and stockino-s. The world had gone well with them, and with their parents. The house was built. Upon re- mounting the hill, and advancing a little tarther into the centre of the Moss, we saw the comfort- able low-browed cottao;e full of Uo-ht and shadow, of juttings out, and corners and angles of every sort and description, with a garden stretching along the side, backed and sheltered by the tall impene- trable plantation, a wall of trees, against whose dark masses a wreath of lio-lit smoke was curlino- whose fragrance seemed really to perfume the win- ter air. The pig had been bought, fatted, and kill- ed ; but other pigs were inhabiting the sty, almost as larofe as their former dwellino-, which stood at the end of their garden ; and the children told Avith honest joy how all this prosperity had come about. Their father, takino^ some brooms to mv kind 22 THE GROUND-ASII. friend Lady Denys, liad seen some of the orna- mental baskets used for flowery upon a lawn, and liad been struck with the fancy of trying to make some, decorated with fir cones ; and he had been so successful in this profitable manufacture, that he had had more orders than he could execute. Lady Den3^s had also, with characteristic benevolence, put the children to her Sunday-school. One mis- fortune had a little overshadowed the sunshine. Squire Benson had died, and the consent to the erection of the cottage being only verbal, the at- torney who managed for the infant heir, a ward in Chancery, had claimed the property. But the matter had been compromised upon the payment of such a rent as the present prospects of the fam- ily would fairly allow. Besides collecting fir cones for the baskets, they picked up all they could in that pine forest (for it was little less), and sold such as were discolored, or otherwise unfit for work- ing up, to Lady Denys and other persons who liked the fine aromatic odor of these the pleasant- est of pastilles, in their dressing-room or drawing- room fires. " Did I like the smell ? We had a cart there — might they bring us a hamper full ?" And it was with great difiiculty that a trifling pre- THE GROUND-ASH. 23 sent (for we did not think of offering money as 2Kiyment) could be forced upon the grateful chil- dren. ^ " We," they said, " had been their first friends." For what very small assistance the poor are often deeply, permanently thankful I Well says the great poet — "I've heard of hearts unkind, good deeds With ill deeds still returning ; Alas, the gratitude of mau Hath oftener left me mourning !" Wordsworth. Again for above a year we lost sight of our little fovorites, for such thev were with both of us ; thouo-h absence, indisposition, business, company — engage- ments, in short, of many sorts — combined to keep us from the Moss for upwards of a twelvemonth. Early in the succeediug April, however, it happen- ed that, discussing with some morning visitors the course of a beautiftil winding brook (one of the tributaries to the Loddon, which bright and brim- ming river has nearly as many sources as the Xile), one of them observed that the well-head was in Lanson Wood, and that it was a bit of scenery more like thg burns of the Xorth Countrie (my 24 THE GROUND-ASII. visitor was a Northumbrian) than any thing he had seen in the south. Surely I had seen it ? I was half ashamed to confess that I had not — (how of- ten are we obliged to confess that we have not seen the beauties wliieh lie close to our doors, too near for observation ?) — and the next day proving fine, I determined to repair my omission. It was a soft and balmy April morning, just at that point of the flowery spring when violets and primroses are lingering under the northern hedge- rows, and cowslips and orchises peeping out upon the sunnv banks. Mv driver was the clever, shrewd, arch boy Dick ; and the first part of our way lay along the green winding lanes which lead to Ever- ley ; we then turned to the left, and putting up our phaeton at a small farm-house, where my attendant (who found acquaintances every where) was inti- mate, we proceeded to the wood ; Dick accompany- ing me, carrying my flower-basket, opening the gates, and taking care of my dog Dash, a very beautiful thorough-bred Old English spaniel, who was a little apt, Avhen he got into a wood, to run after the game, and forget to come out again. I have seldom seen any thing in woodland scenery more picturesque and attractive than the THE GROUND-ASH. 25 old coppice of Lanton, on that soft and balmy April morning. The underwood was nearly cut, and bundles of long split poles for hooping barrels were piled together against the tall oak trees, bursting with their sap ; whilst piles of faggots were built up in other parts of the copse, and one or two saw-pits, with light open sheds erected over them, whence issued the measured sound of the saw and the occasional voices of the workmen, almost concealed by their subterranean position, were placed in the hollows. At the far side of the coppice, the operation of hewing down the imder- wood was still proceeding, and the sharp strokes of the axe and the bill, softened by distance, came across the monotonous jar of the never-ceasing saw. The surface of the ground was prettily tumbled about, comprehending as pleasant a variety of hill and dale as could well be comprised in some thirty acres. It declined, however, generally speaking, towards the centre of the coppice, along which a small, very small rivulet, scarcely more than a run- let, wound its way in a thousand sraceful meanders. Tracking upward the course of the little stream, we soon arrived at that which had been the osten- 26 THE GROUND-ASH. sible object of our drive — the spot whence it sprung. It was a steep irregular acclivity on the highest side of the wood, a mound, I had almost said a rock, of earth, cloven in two about the middle, but with so nari'ow a fissure that the brushwood which grew on either side nearly filled up the opening, so that the source of the spring still remained con- cealed, although the rapid gushing of the water made a pleasant music in that pleasant place ; and here and there a sunbeam, striking upon the spark- ling stream, shone with a bright and glancing light amidst the dark ivies, and brambles, and mossy stumps of trees, that grew around. This mound had apparently been cut a year or two ago, so that it presented an appearance of mingled wildness and gayety, that contrasted very agreeably with the rest of the coppice ; whose trodeen-down flowers I had grieved over, even whilst admiring the picturesque effect of the wood- cuttei-s and their several ojierations. Here, how- ever, reigned the floAvery spring in all her glory. Violets, pansies, orchises, oxslips, the elegant wood- sorrel, the delicate wood anemone, and the enam- elled wild hyacinth, were sprinkled profusely THE GROUND-ASH. 27 amongst the mosses, and lichens, and dead leaves, which formed so rich a carpet beneath our feet. Primroses, above all, vrere there of almost every hue, from the rare and pearly white, to the deepest pinkish purple, colored by some diversity of soil, the pretty freak of nature's gardening ; whilst the common yellow blossom — commonest and prettiest of all — peeped out from amongst the boughs in the stump of an old willow, like (to borrow the simile of a dear friend, now no more) a canar}' bird from its cage. The wild geranium was al- ready showing its pink stem and scarlet-edged leaves, themselves almost gorgeous enough to pass for flowers ; the periwinkle, with its ^\Teaths of shining foliage, was hanging in garlands over the precipitous descent ; and the lily of the valley, the fragrant woodroof, and the silvery wild garliek, were just peeping from the earth in the most sheltered nooks. Charmed to find myself sur- rounded by so much beauty, I had scrambled, with much ado, to the top of the woody cliff (no other word can convey an idea of its precipitous abruptness), and was vainly attempting to trace by my eye the actual course of the spring, which was, by the clearest evidence of sound, gushing from 28 THE GROUND-ASH. the fount many feet below me ; when a pecuhar whistle of delight (for whistling was to Dick, al- though no ordinary proficient in our common tongue, another language), and a tremendous scrambling amongst the bushes, gave token that my faithful attendant had met with something as agree- able to his fancy, as the primroses and orchises had proved to mine. Guided by a repetition of the whistle, I soon saw my trusty adherent spanning the chasm like a Colossus, one foot on one bank, the other on the opposite — each of which appeared to me to be resting, so to say, on nothing — tugging away at a long twig that grew on the brink of the precij^ice, and exceedingly likely to resolve the inquiry as to the source of the Loddon, by plum^jing souse into the fountain-head. I, of course, called out to warn him ; and he equally, of course, went on with his labor, without paying the slightest attention to my caution. On the contrary, having possessed him- self of one straight slender twig, wbich, to my great astonishment, he wound round his fingers, and de- posited in his pocket, as one should do by a bit of pack-thread, he apparently, during the operation, caught sight of another. Testifying his delight by THE GROUND-ASH. 29 a second whistle, which, having his knife in his mouth, one wonders how he could accompHsh ; and scrambHno; with the fearless darino- of a monkey up the perpendicular bank, supported by strings of ivy, or ledges of roots, and clinging by hand and foot to the frail bramble or the slippery moss, leaping like a squirrel from bough to bough, and yet, by happy boldness, escaping all danger, he attained his object as easily as if he had been upon level ground. Three, four, five times was the knowing, joyous, triumphant whistle sounded, and every time with a fresh peril and a fresh escape. At last, the young gentleman, panting and breath- less, stood at my side, and I began to question him as to the treasure he had been pursuing. " It's the ground-ash, ma'am," responded master Dick, taking one of the coils from his pocket ; "the best riding-switch in the world. All the whips that ever were made are nothing to it. Only see how strong it is, how light, and how sup- ple ! You may twist it a thousand ways without breaking. It won't break, do what you will. Each of these, now, is worth half-a-crown or three shil- ling's, for they are the scarcest things possible. They grow up at a little distance from -the root of 30 THE GROUXD-ASH. an old tree, like a sucker from a rose-bush. Great luck, indeed !" continued Dick, putting up his treasure with another joyful whistle; "it was but t'other day that Jack Barlow offered me half-a- guinea for four, if I could but come by them. I shall certainly keep the best, though, for myself — unless, ma'am, you would be pleased to accept it for the purpose of whipping Dash." Whipping Dash ! ! ! Well have I said that Dick was as saucy as a lady's page or a king's jester. Talk of whipping Dash ! Why, the young gentleman knew perfectly well that I had rather be whipt myself twenty times over. The very sound seemed a profanation. Whip my Dash ! Of course I read master Dick a lecture for this iri-everent mention of m}^ pet, who, poor fellow, hearing his name called in question, came up in all innocence to fondle me ; to wdiich grave remonstrance the hopeful youth replied by another whistle, half of penitence, half of amusement. These discoui-ses brought us to the bottom of the mound, and turning round a clump of haw- thorn and holly, we espied a little damsel with a basket at her side, and a large knife in her hand, carefully digging up a large root of Avhite prim- THE GROUND-ASH. 31 roses, and immediately recognized my old acquaint- ance, Bessy Leigh. She was, as before, clean, and healthy, and tidy, and unaffectedly glad to see me ; but the joyous- ness and buoyancy which had made so much of her original charm, were greatly diminished. It was clear that poor Bessy had suffered worse griefs than those of cold and hunger ; and upon ques- tioning her, so it turned out. Her father had died, and her mother had been ill, and the long hard winter had been hard to get through ; and then the rant had come upon her, and the steward (for the young gentleman himself was a minor) had threatened to turn them out if it were not paid to a day — the very next day after that on which we were speaking ; and her mother had been afraid the}' must go to the workhouse, which would have been a sad thing, because now she had got so much washing to do, and Harry was so clever at basket-makino;, that there was every chance, this rent once paid, of their getting on comfortably. '• And the rent will be paid now, ma'am, thank God I" added Bessy, her sweet face brio^hteniniT ; "for we want only a o-uinea of the whole sum, and Ladv Denys has employed me to 32 THE GROUND-ASH. get scarce wild-flowers for lier Avood, and has pro- mised me luilf-a-guinea for what I have carried her, and this last parcel, which I am to take to the lodge to-night ; and Mr. John Barlow, her groom, has offered Harry tw^elve and sixpence for five ground-ashes that Harry has been so lucky as to find by the spring, and Hariy is gone to cut them : so that now we shall get on bravely, and mother need not fret any longer. I hope no harm will befall Harry in getting the ground-ash, though, for it's a noted dangerous place. But he's a careful boy." Just at this point of her little speech, poor Bessy was interrupted by her brother, who ran dowm the declivity exclaiming, " They're gone, Bessy ! — they're gone ! somebody has taken them ! the ground-ashes are gone !" Dick put his hand irresolutely to his pocket, and then, uttering a dismal whistle, pulled it resolutely out again, with a hardness, or an affectation of hard- ness, common to all lads from the prince to the stable-boy. I also put my hand into my pocket, and found, with the deep disappointment which often punishes such carelessness, that I had left my purse at home. THE GROUND-ASH. 33 All that I could do, therefore, was to bid the poor children be comforted, and ascertain at what time Bessy intended to take her roots, which in the midst of her distress she continued to dig up, to my ex- cellent friend Lady Denys. I then, exhorting them to hope the best, made my way quickly out of the wood. Ai-riving at the gate, I missed my attendant. Before, however, I had reached the farm at which we had left our phaeton, I heard his gayest and most triumphant whistle behind me. Thinking of the poor children, it jarred upon my feehngs. " Where have you been loitering, sir ?" I asked, in a sterner voice than he had probably ever heard from me before. " Where have I been ?" repUed he ; " giving lit- tle Harry the ground-ashes, to be sure : I felt just as if I had stolen them. And now, I do beheve," continued he, with a prodigious burst of whisthng, which seemed to me as melodious as the song of the nightingale, " I do believe," quoth Dick, " that I am happier than they are. I would not have kept those ground-ashes, no, not for fifty pounds !" 2 SEA, EAETH, AND HEAYEN. BY MRS. T. K. HERVEY. I. T OlsG fathoms down beneath the deep, •^ To know how many corses sweep TVith streaming hair, — each one alone, By billow rock'd or tempest strown, Tossing for ever; "Where the land-breeze sounds no sigh, "Where the redden'd corals lie, Upon whose summits peak'd and high The doom'd barks shiver ; Oh, Sea ! it is a fearful thing ! — To hear the birds above thee sing. Yet know how many a hope is furl'd That flew beyond thy watery world To the tropic's glow ! Or, northward plumed, the storm defying, Still the outworn pinion plying Towards some cold land where love undying Should melt the snow ! SEA, EARTH, AND HEAVEN. 35 n. • To know, on every shore we tread, That some to stranger-graves are led. And deem — poor joy ! — the grass grows best "Where never loving foot hath press'd In sorrow's crushing ; By East, — by "West, — far isles away, To wist not where Death next may lay His icy touch, — till none i' the clay Hears the heart rushing ! Oh, Earth ! it is a thing of woe ! — To feel sweet gales around thee blow. Yet know that there be some who ne'er Shall feel again that breathsome air, Joyful or sad ; ^N'e'er mark again the hues that streak Thy nighted brow or sunbright cheek : Dear Earth '.—dear Earth ! the thought to speak Makes the heart mad 1 ni. To know there is a land far off, Bevond the doubter's, scorner's scoff. Too high for mortal bhss to deem — Out of the region of all dream, "Where not a pang Shall wring the pulse that maddens here ; "Where there are joys that ask no tear, And sorrow's serpent ne'er shall rear Its poison-fang ; 36 SEA, EARTH, AND HEAVEN. Oil, IJeaven! it is a blessed thing! — To wait yon trumpet's summoning, When, life's fierce battle lost and won, mff That peal shall shake the steadfast sun ! And all shall meet Where IIis great way the angels keep, Who " giveth his beloved sleep" — Where is nor grave, nor storm, nor deep- At God's own feet I u THE POOR HxYVE pity on them, for their life Is full of grief and care ; •You do not know one half the woes The very poor must bear ; You do not see the silent tears, By many a mother shed, As childhood offers up the prayer 'Give us our daily bread.' " THE LOST DAHLIA. IF to have " had losses " be, as affirmed by Dog- berry in one of Shakspeare's most charming plays, and corroborated by Sir Walter Scott in one of his most charming romances — (those two names do well in juxtaposition, the great Englishman ! the great Scotsman !) — If to have " had losses " be a main proof of credit and respectability, then am I one of the most responsible persons in the whole county of Berks. To say nothing of the graver matters which figure in a banker's book, and make, in these days of pounds, shillings, and pence, so large a part of the domestic tragedy of life — put- ting wholly aside all the grander transitions of property in house and land, of money on mortgage, and money in the funds — and yet I might put in my claim to no trifling amount of ill luck in that way also, if I had a mind to try my hand at a dis- THE LOST DAHLIA. 39 mal story) — counting for nought all weightier grievances, there is not a lady within twenty miles who can produce so large a hst of small losses as my unfortunate self. From the day when, a tiny damsel of some four years old, I first had a pocket-handkerchief to lose, down to this very night — I will not say how many years after — when, as I have just discovered, I have most certainly lost from my pocket the new cam- bric kerchief which I deposited therein a little before dinner, scarcely a week has passed without some part of my goods and chattels being retm-ned miss- ing. Gloves, muffs, parasols, reticules, have each of them a provoking knack of falling from my hands ; boas glide from my neck, lings slip from my fingers, the bow has vanished from my cap, the veil from my bonnet, the sandal from my foot, the brooch from my collar, and the collar from my brooch. The trinket which I liked best, a jewel- led pin, the fii'st gift of a dear fiiend (luckily the friendship is not necessarily appended to the token), dropped from my shawl in the midst of the high road ; and of shawls themselves there is no end to the loss. The two prettiest that I ever had in my hfe, one a splendid specimen of Glasgow manufacture — 40 THE LOST DAHLIA. a scarlet hardly to be distinguished from Cashmere, the other a lighter and cheaper fabric, white in the centre, with a delicate sprig, and a border harmoni- ously compounded of the deepest blue, the brightest orange, and the richest brown, disappeared in two successive summers and winters, in the very bloom of their novelty, from the folds of the phaeton, in which they had been deposited for safety — feirly blown overboard ! If I left things about, they were lost. If I put them away, they were lost. They were lost in the drawers — they were lost out. And if for a miracle I had them safe under lock and key, why, then, I lost my keys ! I was certainly the most unlucky person under the sun. If there was nothing else to lose, I was fain to lose myself — I mean my way ; bewildered in these Aberleigh lanes of ours, or in the woodland recesses of the Penge, as if haunted by that ftiiry, Robin Goodfel- low, who led Hermia and Helena such a dance in the Midsummer Night's Dream. Alas ! that there should be no Fairies now-a-days, or rather no true believers in Fairies, to help us to bear the burthen of our own mortal carelessness. It was not quite all carelessness, though ! Some ill luck did minorle with a o-reat deal of mismanaofe- THE LOST DAHLIA. 41 raent, as the " one poor liapp'orth of bread " with the huge gallon of sack in the bill of which Poins picked Falstatf 's pocket when he was asleep behind the arras. Things belonging to me, or things that I cared for, did contrive to get lost, without my having any hand in the matter. For instance, if out of the variety of "talking birds," starhngs, jackdaws, and magpies, which my father delights to entertain, any one particularly diverting or ac- complished, more than usually coaxing and mis- chievous, happened to attract my attention, and to pay me the compHment of following at my heels, or perching upon my shoulder, the gentleman was sure to hop oif. My favorite mare. Pearl, the pretty docile creature, which draws my httle phae- ton, has such a talent for leaping, that she is no sooner turned out in either of our meadows, than she disappears. x\nd Dash himself, paragon of spaniels, pet of pets, beauty of beauties, has only one shade of imperfection — would be thoroughly faultless, if it were not for a slight tendency to run away. He is regularly lost four or five times every winter, and has been oftener ciied through the streets of Belford, and advertised in the county newspapei*s, than comports with a dog of his dig- 42 THE LOST DAHLIA. nity. Now, these mischances clearly belong to that class of accidents commonly called casualties, and are quite unconnected with any infirmity of temperament on my part. I cannot help Pearl's proficiency in jumping, nor Dash's propensity to wander through the country; neither had I any hand in the loss which has given its title to this paper, and which, after so much previous dallying, I am at length about to narrate. The autumn before last, that is to say, above a year ago, the boast and glory of my little garden was a dahlia called the Phoebus. How it came there, nobody very distinctly knew, nor where it came fi-om, nor how we came by it, nor how it came by its own most appropriate name. Neither the lad who tends our flowers, nor my father ,the person chiefly concerned in procuring them, nor I myself, who more even than my father or John take delight and pride in their beauty, could recol- lect who gave us this most splendid plant, or avIio first instructed us as to the style and title by which it was known, Certes never was blossom fitlier named. Regular as the sun's face in an almanac, it had a tint of golden scarlet, of ruddy yellow, which realized Shakspeare's gorgeous expression of THE LOST DAHLIA. 43 " flame colored." The sky at sunset sometimes put on such a hue, or a fire at Christmas when it burns red as well as bright. The blossom w^as dazzling to look upon. It seemed as if there were light in the leaves, hke that colored lamp of a flower, the Oriental Poppy. Phcebus was not too glorious a name for that dahlia. The Golden- haired Apollo might be proud of such an emblem. It was worthy of the god of day ; a very Phoenix of floral beauty. Everv dahha fancier who came into our p-arden, or who had an opportunity of seeing a bloom else- where; and, sooth to say, we were rather ostenta- tious in our display ; John put it into stands, and jai-s, and baskets, and dishes ; Dick stuck it into Dash's collar, his own button-hole, and Pearl's bri- dle ; my father presented it to such lady visitors as he delighted to honor ; and I, who have the habit of dangling a flower, generally a sweet one, caught myself more than once rejecting the spicy clove and the starry jessamine, the blossomed myr- tle and the tuberose, my old fragrant favorites, for this scentless (but triumphant) beauty ; every body who beheld the Phoebus begged for a plant or a cutting ; and we, generous in our ostentation, 44 THE LOST DAHLIA. willing to redeem the vice by the virtue, promised as many plants and cuttings as we could reasonably imagine the root might be made to produce* — perhaps rather more ; and half the dahlia growei-s round rejoiced over the glories of the gorgeous flower, and speculated, as the wont is now, upon seedling after seedling to the twentieth generation. Alas for the vanity of human expectations ! Feb- ruary came, the twenty-second of February, the very St. Valentine of dahlias, when the roots which have been buried in the ground during the winter are disinterred and placed in a hot-bed to put forth their first shoots previous to the grand operations of potting and dividing them. Of course, the first object of search in the choicest corner of the nicelv-labelled hoard, was the Phoebus ; but no Phoebus was forth- coming: root and label had vanished bodily! There was, to be sure, a dahha without a label, * It is wonderful how many plants may, by dint of forc- ing, and cutting, and forcing again, be extracted from one root. But the experiment is not always safe. Nature some- times avenges herself for the encroachments of art, by weak- ening the progeny. The JSTapoleon Dahlia, for instance, the finest of last year's seedlings, being over-propagated, this season has hardly produced one perfect bloom, even in the hands of the most skilful cultivators. THE LOST DAHLIA. 45 which we ^yollld gladly have transformed into the missing treasure; but as we spedily discovered a label without a dahlia, it was but too obvious that they belonged to each other. Until last year we might have had plenty of the consolation which results from such divorces of the name fi-om the thing ; for our labels, sometimes written upon parch- ment, sometimes upon leather, sometimes upon wood, as each material happened to be recommend- ed by gardening authorities, and fastened on with packthread, or whip-cord, or silk twist, had gene- rally parted company from the roots, and frequent- ly become utterly illegible, producing a state of confusion which most undoubtedly we never ex- pected to regret ; but this year we had followed the one perfect system of labels of ungiazed china, highly varnished after writing on them, and fasten- ed on by wire ; and it had answered so completely that one, and one only, had broken from its moor- ing"s. No hope could be gathered fi-om that quar- ter. The Phoebus was gone. So much was clear ; and our loss beinor fully ascertained, we all be2:an, as the custom is, to divert our grief and exercise our ingenuity by different guesses as to the fate of the vanished treasure. 46 THE LOST DAHLIA. My father, althoiio-h certain that he had wntten the hihel, and wired the root, had his misgivings about the place in which it had been deposited, and half suspected that it had slipt in amongst a basket which he had sent as a present to Ireland ; I myself, judging from a similar accident w^hich had once happened to a choice hyacinth bulb, part- ly thought that one or other of us might have put it for care and safety in some such very snug cor- ner, that it would be six months or more before it turned up ; John, impressed with a high notion of the money-value of the property, and estimating it something as a keeper of the regalia might esti- mate the most precious of the crown jewels, boldly affirmed that it was stolen ; and Dick, who had just had a demele with the cook, upon the score of her refusal to dress a beef-steak for a sick grey- hound, asserted, between jest and earnest, that that hard-hearted official had either ignorantly or ma- liciously boiled the root for a Jerusalem artichoke, and that we, who stood lamenting over our regret- ted Phoebus, had actually eaten it, dished up wdth white sauce. John turned pale at the thought. The beautiful story of the Falcon, in Boccaccio, which the young knight killed to regale his mis- THE LOST DAHLIA. 47 tress, or the still more tragical history of Coiici, who minced his rival's heart, and served it up to his wife, could not have affected hira more deeply. We grieved over our lost dahlia, as if it had been a thino- of life. Grie^^ng, however, would not repair our loss; and we determined, as the only chance of becom- ing again possessed of this beautiful flower, to visit, as soon as the dahlia season began, all the celebrat- ed collections in the neighborhood, especially all those from which there was any chance of our hav- ing procured the root which had so mysteriously vanished. Early in September, I set forth on my voyage of discovery — my voyages, I ought to say ; for every day I and my pony-phaeton made our way to whatever garden within our reach bore a suffi- ciently high character to be suspected of harboring the good Dahlia Phoebus. Monday we called at Lady A.'s ; Tuesday at General B.'s ; Wednesday at Sir John C.'s ; Thurs- day at Mrs. D.'s ; Friday at Lord E.'s ; and Satur- day at Mr. F.'s. We might as well have staid at home ; not a Phoebus had they, or any thing like one. 48 THE LOST DAHLIA. We then visited the nurseries, from Browns, at Slough, a princely establishment, worthy of its re- gal neighborhood, to the pretty rural gardens at South Warnborough, not forgetting our own most intelligent and obliging nurseryman, Mr. Sutton of Reading — (Belford Regis, I mean) — whose collec- tion of flowers of all sorts is amongst the most choice and select that I have ever known. Hun- dreds of maofnificent blossoms did we see in our progress, but not the blossom we wanted. There was no lack, heaven knows, of dahlias of the desired color. Besides a score of " Orange Perfections," bearing the names of their respective growers, we were introduced to four Princes of Orange, three Kings of Holland, two Williams the Third, and one Lord Roden.* We were even * The nomenclature of dahlias is a curious sign of the times. It rivals in oddity that of the Eacing Calendar. Next to the peerage, Shakspeare and Homer seem to be the chief sources whence they have derived their appellations. Thus we have Hectors and Diomedes of all colors, a very black Othello, and a very fair Desdcmona. One beautiful blossom, which seems like a white ground thickly rouged with carmine, is called "the Honorable Mrs. Harris ;" and it is droll to observe how punctiliously the working garden- ers retain the dignified prefix in speaking of the flower. I heard the other day of a serious dahlia grower who had call- THE LOST DAHLIA. 49 shown a bloom called the Phoebus, about as like to our Phoebus, " as I to Hercules." But the true Phoebus, " the real Simon Pure," was as far to seek as ever. Learnedly did I descant with the learned in dah- lias over the merits of my lost beauty. "It was a cupped flower, Mr. Sutton," quoth I, to my agree- able and sympathizing listener ; (gardeners are a most cultivated and gentlemanly race ;) " a cupped dahlia, of the genuine metropolitan shape ; large as the Criterion, regular as the Springfield Rival, perfect as Dodd's Mary, with a long bloom stalk like those good old flowers, the Countess of Liver- pool and the Widnalls Perfection. And such a free blower, and so true ! I am quite sure that there is not so good a dahlia this year. I prefer it to ' Corinne,' over and over." And Mr. Sutton ed his seedlings after his favorite preachers, so that -we shall have the Eeverend Edward So-and-so, and the Reverend John Such-an-one, fraternizing with the profane Ariels and Imogenes, the Giaours and Medoras of the old catalogue. So much the better. Floriculture is amongst the most inno- cent and humanizing of all pleasures, and every thing which tends to diifusesuch pursuits amongst those who have too few amusements, is a point gained for happiness and for virtue. 60 THE LOST DAULIA. assented and condoled, and I was as near to being comforted as anybody could be, wlio bad lost such a flower as the Phoebus. After so many vain researches, most persons would have abandoned the pursuit in despair. But despair is not in my nature. I have a comfortable share of the quality which the possessor is wont to call perseverance — whilst the uncivil world is apt to designate it by the name of obstinacy — and do not easily give in. Then the chase, however fruitless, led, like other chases, into beautiful scen- ery, and formed an excuse for my visiting or re- i^isiting many of the prettiest places in the county. Two of the most remarkable spots in the neigh- borhood are, as it happens, famous for their collec- tions of dahlias — Strathfield-saye, the seat of the Duke of WelHngton, and the ruins of Reading Abbey. Nothing can well be prettier than the drive to Strathfield-saye, passing, as we do, through a great part of Heckfield Heath,* a tract of wild woodland, * It may be interesting to the lovers of literature to hear that my accomplished friend Mrs. Trollope was " raised," as her friends the Americans would say, upon this spot. Her father, the Eev. William Milton, himself a very clever man, and an able mechanician and engineer, held the living of Heckfield for many years. 4 THE LOST DAHLIA. 51 a forest, or ratlier a cliase, fiill of fine sylvan beauty — thickets of fern and holly, and hawthorn and birch, surmounted by oaks and beeches, and inter- spersed with lawny glades and deep pools, letting light into the picture. Nothing can be prettier than the approach to the duke's lodge. And the en- trance to the demesne, through a deep dell dark with magnificent firs, fi-om which we emerge into a finely wooded park of the richest verdure, is also striking and impressive. But the distinctive fea- ture of the place (for the mansion, merely a com- fortable and convenient nobleman's house, hardly responds to the fame of its owner) is the grand avenue of noble elms, three quarters of a mile long, which leads to the front door. It is difiicult to imag-ine any thing which more completely realizes the poetical fancy, that the pillars and arches of a Gothic cathedral were borrowed from the interlac- ing of the branches of trees planted at stated inter- vals, than this avenue, in which Xature has so com- pletely succeeded in outrivalling her handmaiden Art, that not a single trunk, hardly even a bough or a twig, appears to mar the grand regularity of the design as a piece of pei-spective. No cathe- dral aisle was ever more perfect; and the effect, 52 THE LOST DAHLIA. under every variety of aspect, the magical light and shadow of the cold white moonshine, the cold green light of a cloudy day, and the glancing sun- beams which pierce through the leafy umbrage in the bright summer noon, are such as no words can convey. Separately considered, each tree (and the north of Hampshire is celebrated for the size and shape of its elms) is a model of stately growth, and they are now just at perfection, probably about a hundred and thirty yeai*s old. There is scarcely perhaps in the Jdngdom such another avenue. On one side of this noble approach is the garden, where, under the care of the skilful and excellent gardener, Mr. Cooper, so many magnificent dahlias are raised, but where, alas ! the Phcebus was not ; and between that and the mansion is the sunny, shady paddock, with its rich pasture and its roomy stable, where, for so many years, Copenhagen, the charger who carried the Duke at Waterloo, formed so great an object of attraction to the visitors of Strathfield-saye.* Then came the house itself, and then I returned home. * Copenliagen — (I had the honor of naming one of Mr. Cooper's dahlias after him — a sort of 'bay dahUa, if I may be permitted the expression) — Copenhagen was a most inter- THE LOST DAHLIA. 53 Well ! this was one beautiful and fi-uitless drive. The ruins of Reading Abbey formed another as fruitless, and still more beautiful. esting horse. He died last year at the age of twenty-seven. He was therefore in his prime on the day of Waterloo, when the duke (then and still a man of iron) rode him for seven- teen hours and a half without dismounting. When his Grace got off, he patted him, and the horse kicked, to the great de- light of his brave rider, as it proved that he was not beaten by that tremendous day's work. After his return, this paddock was assigned to him, in which he passed the rest of his life in the most perfect comfort that can be imagined ; fed twice a day (latterly upon oats broken for him), with a comforta- ble stable to retire to, and a rich pasture in which to range. The late amiable duchess used regularly to feed him with bread, and this kindness had given him the habit (especially after her death) of approaching every lady with confiding familiarity. He had been a fine animal, of middle size and a chestnut color, but latterly he exhibited an interestiiig specimen of natural decay, in a state as nearly that of na- ture as can well be found in a civilized country. He had lost an eye from age, and had become lean and feeble, and, in the manner which he approached even a casual visitor, there was something of the demand of sympathy, the ap- peal to human kindness, which one has so often observed from a very old dog towards his master. Poor Copenhagen, who, when alive, furnished so many reliques from his mane and tail to enthusiastic young ladies, who had his hair set in brooches and rings, was, after being interred with mili- tary honors, dug up by some miscreant (never, I believe, discovered), and one of his hoofs cut off, it is to be pre- sumed, for a memorial, although one that would hardly go K 4 THE LOST DAHLIA. Whether in the " palmy state " of the faith of Rome, the pillared aisles of the Abbey church might have vied in grandeur with the avenue at Strathfield- saye, I can hardly say ; but certainly, as they stand, the venerable arched gateway, the rock-like masses of wall, the crumbling cloisters, and the exquisite finish of the surbases of the columns and other frag- ments, fresh as if chiselled yesterday, which are reappearing in the excavations now making, there is an interest which leaves the grai^deur of life, palaces and their pageantry, parks and their adorn- ments, all grandeur except the indestructible gran- deur of nature, at an immeasurable distance. The place was a history. Centuries passed before us as we thought of the magnificent monastery, the third in size and splendor in England, with its area of thirty acres between the walls — and gazed upon it now ! And yet, even now, how beautiful ! Trees of every growth mingling with those gray ruins, creepers wreathing their fantastic garlands around in the compass of a ring. A very fine portrait of Copen- hagen has been executed by my young friend Edmund Havell, a youth of seventeen, whose genius as an animal painter, will certainly place liim second only to Landseer. THE LOST DAHLIA. 55 the mouldering arches, gorgeows flowers flourisliing in the midst of that decay ! I almost forgot my search for the dear Phoebus, as I rambled with my friend Mr. Malone, the gardener, a man who would in any station be remarkable for acuteness and acquirement, amongst the august remains of the venerable abbey, with the history of which he was as conversant as with his own immediate profession. There was no speaking of smaller objects in the presence of the mighty past ! Gradually chilled by so much unsuccess, the ar- dor of my pursuit began to abate. I began to ad- mit the merits of other dahlias of divers colors, and actually caught myself committing the inconstancy of considering which of the four Princes of Orange I should bespeak for next year. Time, in short, was beginning to play his part as the great com- forter of human afflictions, and the poor Phoebus seemed as likely to be forgotten as a last year's bonnet, or a last week's newspaper — when, happen- ing to walk with my father to look at a field of his, a pretty bit of upland pasture about a mile off, I was struck, in one comer where the manure for dressing had been deposited, and a heap of eai-th and dung still remained, to be spread, I suppose, 56 THE LOST DAHLIA. next spring, witli some tall plant surmounted with bright flowers. Could it be ? — was it possible ? — did my eyes play me false ? — No ; there it was, upon a dunghill — the object of all my researches and lamentations, the identical Phoebus! the lost dahlia ! EVENma HOUKS. A FEAGMEXT. BY THE LADY EMMELINE STUART WORTLEY. tK pale hours of evening often, thoughts grow calm X and feelings soften; Memory's reign beginneth then, Spirit-stars then 'gin their shining, with those proud ones that are lining Yon cerulean, mystic Plain. Then we start from Life's gay folly, while the Dream- er Melancholy Teacheth lessons true and sage ; Each time that her voice she raises, diamond-words and pearled phrases Drop — as tells the fairy page. Pangs and griefs and fears and terrors, doubts and deep repented errors, Build the Soul's great altar-stairs ; 3 58 EVENING HOURS. Each dire sorrow of our bosoms, from its thorns shoots lovely blossoms, — Flowers and fruits spring up from cares. Cares have flowers and fruit excelling, and within our spirits dwelling Make them nobl j pure and high ; They teach patience and reflection, they exalt and light Afiection, Climbing nearer toward the sky. Thus in Eve's calm hours it seeraeth, many a truth- light gravely gleameth, Buried in the blaze of Day ; Then scarce heard are heart-deep histories — blazing grave of worlds and mysteries! — Day ! thou scatterest those away. But in hours of evening often, when the thoughts and feelings soften, ' High and solemn truths are shown; More we know of our own Being, when Earth's vain distractions fleeing, Leave our Souls again our own ! * Still the Heart, intense and fervent, is, like Fire, a noble servant, Ever prompt, and keen, and strong ; EVENING HOURS. 59 But it is a fearful Master, spreading danger and Disaster ; If ve yield, \q rue it lona: ! Governed and controlled, it spreadetli light and life around, and aideth In each brave and glorious deed ; But, Oh ! watch and rule it ever, for it seeks, with strong endeavor, Still to govern thee, and lead. And that Heart so quick and fervent, is, like Fire, a generous servant. Fresh and strong, and prompt and true ; But, hke Fire, a dreadful master I spreading doom and dire disaster. Mighty, mighty to undo ! Sorrow is a sovereign Teacher, Sorrow is a golden Preacher ; She can tame it best, and school: When her solemn yoke it beareth, when her awful voice it heareth, 'Twould no longer wish to rule. Sorrow is a wondrous Teacher, Sorrow is a gracious Preacher, All her arrowy pangs have tongues ; And they utter rich revealings, talking to the thoughts, the feelings, Chanting deeply mighty songs. 60 EVENING HOURS. Life ! thou Ladder, all of fire, as we still are strug- gling higher, Shrinking, we thy terrors learn; Every step we tread with trembling — oft unto our- selves dissembling How, perchance, they scorch and burn. LOYING HEARTS. BY ATJGrSTINE DUGANNE. A TELL me not the world is dark, ^ With shadows lengthening to the tomb ; Mine eyes would rather fondly mark Where sunlight flashes through the gloom ; And I would fain in error dwell, If truth such darksome lore imparts, And rather die than e'er dispel My dream of loving hearts. Their perfume would forsake the flowers. The golden hues of summer fade, The hushed birds droop in withered bowers. And sunny brooklets sink to shade ; And o'er the soul of living things Would fall the gloom that ne'er departs. If from my bright imaginings Were banished loving hearts. 62 LOVING HEARTS. They are around us and above, Half hidden as in wild-wood leaves, Close nestled some white-breasted dove ; And he is happy who believes That they are living, though unseen, Like light, ere from the cloud it starts, And he is truly blest, I ween. Who loves those loving hearts. AUNT DEBORAH. 4 GROSSER old woman than Mrs. Deborah -^ Thornby was certainly not to be found in the whole village of Hilton. Worth, in country phrase, a power of money, and living (to borrow another rustic expression) upon her means, the exercise of her extraordinary faculty for grumbling and scold- ing seemed the sole occupation of her existence, her only pursuit, solace, and amusement; and really it would have been a great pity to have de- prived the poor woman of a pastime so consolatory to herself, and which did harm to nobody : her family consisting only of an old laborer, to guard the house, take care of her horse, her cow, and her chaise and cart, and work in the garden, who was happily, for his comfort, stone deaf, and could not hear her vituperation, and of a parish girl of twelve, to do the indoor work, who had been so used to 64 AUNT DEBORAH. be scolded all her life, that she minded the noise no more than a miller minds the clack of his mill, or than people who live in a churchyard mind the sound of the church bells, and would probably, from long habit, have felt some miss of the sound had it ceased, of which, by the way, there was small danger, so long as Mrs. Deborah continued in this life. Her crossness was so far innocent that it hurt nobody except lierself. But she was also cross-grained, and that evil quality is unluckily apt to injure other people ; and did so very ma- terially in the present instance. Mrs. Deborah was the only daughter of old Simon Thornby, of Chalcott great farm ; she had had one brother, who having married the rosy- cheeked daughter of the parish clerk, a girl with no portion except her modesty, her good-nature, and her prettiness, had been discarded by his father, and after trying various ways to gain a living, and failing in all, had finally died broken-hearted, leav- ing the unfortunate clerk's daughter, rosy-cheeked no longer, and one little boy, to the tender mercy of his family. Old Simon showed none. He drove his son's widow from the door as he had before driven off his son ; and when he also died, an event AUNT DEBORAH. 65 which occurred within a year or two, bequeathed all his property to his daughter Deborah. This bequest was exceedingly agreeable to Mrs. Deborah (for she was already of an age to assume that title), who valued money, not certainly for the comforts and luxuries which it may be the means of procuring, nor even for its own sake, as the phrase goes, but for that which, to a woman of her temper, was perhaps the highest that she was capable of enjoying, the power which wealth con- fers over all who are connected with or dependent on its possessor. The principal subjects of her despotic dominion were the young widow and her boy, whom she placed in a cottage near her own house, and "with whose comfort and happiness she dallied pretty much as a cat plays with the mouse which she has got into her clutches, and lets go only to catch a2:ain, or an ancrler with the trout which he has fairly hooked, and merely suffers to struggle in the stream until it is sufficiently exliausted to bring to land. She did not mean to be cruel, but she could not help it ; so her poor mice were mocked with the semblance of liberty, although suiTOunded by restraints ; and the awful paw seemingly sheathed 3* 66 AUNT DEBORAH. in velvet, whilst they were in reality never out of reach of the horrors of the pat. . It sometimes, however, happens that the little mouse makes her escape from madam pussy at the very moment when she seems to have the unlucky trembler actually AA'ithin her claws ; and so it occurred in the present instance. The dwelhnir to which Mrs. Deborah retired after the death of her father, was exceedingly romantic and beautiful in point of situation. It was a small but picturesque farm-house, on the very banks of the Loddon, a small branch of which, diverging from the parent stream, and crossed by a pretty footbridge, swept round the homestead, the orchard and garden, and went winding along the water meadows in a thousand glittering meanders, until it was lost in the rich woodlands which formed the back-ground of the picture. In the month of May, when the orchard was full of its rosy and pearly blossoms, a forest of lovely bloom, the meadows yellow with cowslips, and the clear brim- ming river, bordered by the golden tufts of the water ranunculus, and garlanded by the snowy flowers of the hawthorn and the wild cherry, the thin wreath of smoke curling from the tall, old- AUNT DEBORAH. 67 fashioned chimneys of the pretty irregular building, with its porch, and its bay-windows, and gable- ends full of light and shadow, — in that month of beauty it would be difficult to imagine a more beautiful or a more English landscape. On the other side of the narrow winding road, parted from Mrs. Deborah's demesne by a long low bridge of many arches, stood a little rustic mill, and its small low-browed cottage, with its own varied back-ground of garden and fruit trees and thickly wooded meadows, extending in long per- spective, a smiling verdant valley of many miles. Now Chalcott mill, reckoned by every body else the prettiest point in her prospect, was to Mrs. De- borah not merely an eye-sore, but a heart-sore, not on its own account ; cantankerous as she was, she had no quarrel with the innocent buildings, but for the sake of its inhabitants. Honest John Stokes, the miller, was her cousin- german. People did say that some forty years be- fore there had been question of a marriage between the parties ; and really they both denied the thing with so much vehemence and fury, that one should almost be tempted to believe there was some truth in the report. Certain it is, that if they had been 68 AUNT DEBORAH. that wretclied thing a mismatched couple, and had gone on snarUng together all their lives, they could not have hated each other more zealously. One shall not often meet with any thing so perfect in its way as that aversion. It was none of your silent hatreds that never come to words; nor of your civil hatreds, that veil themselves under smooth phrases and smiling looks. Their ill-will was fi-ank, open, and above-board. They could not afford to come to an absolute breach, because it would have deprived them of the pleasure of quarrelling ; and in spite of the frequent complaints they were wont to make of their near neighborhood, I am convinced that they derived no small gratification from the opportunities which it afforded them of saying dis- agreeable things to each other. And yet Mr. John Stokes was a well-meaning man, and Mrs. Deborah Thornby was not an ill- meaning woman. But she was, as I have said be- fore, cross in the grain ; and he — why he was one of those plain-dealing personages Avho will speak their whole mind, and who pique themselves upon that sort of sincerity which is comprised in telling to another all the ill that they have ever heard, or thought, or imagined concerning him, in repeating. 7 , i i 1 5 5 > i -y t ; » » > > J > J 3i "> y 5 » » 3 5 5 J -> ■> • J 3 J J > > > AUNT DEBORAH. 69 as if it were a point of duty, all the harm that one neio-hbor says of another, and in denouncing, as if it were a sin, whatever the unlucky person whom they address may happen to do, or to leave undone. " I am none of your palavering chaps, to flummer over an old vixen for the sake of her strong-box. I hate such falseness. I speak the truth and care for no man," quoth John Stokes. And accordingly John Stokes never saw Mrs. Deborah Thornby but he saluted her, pretty much as his mastiff accosted her favorite cat ; erected his bristles, looked at her with savage, bloodshot eyes, showed his teeth, and vented a sound something between a snarl and a growl ; whilst she (like the four-footed tabby) set up her back and spit at him in return. They met often, as I have said, for the enjoy- ment of quarrelling ; and as whatever he advised she was pretty sure not to do, it is probable that his remonstrances in favor of her friendless re- lations served to confirm her in the small tyranny which she exercised towards them. Such being the state of feehng between these two jangling cousins, it may be imagined with what indio-nation Mi*s. Deborah found John Stokes, 10 AUNT DEBORAH. upon the death of his wife, removing her widowed sister-in-law from the cottage in which she had placed her, and bringing her home to the mill, to officiate as his housekeeper, and take charge of a lovely little girl, his only child. She vow^ed one of those vows of anger which I fear are oftener kej)t than the vows of love, to strike both mother and son out of her will (by the way, she had a super- stitious horror of that disagreeable ceremony, and even the temptation of choosing new legatees whenever the old displeased her, had not been sufficient to induce her to make one, — the threat did as well), and never to speak to either of them again as long as she lived. She proclaimed this resolution at the rate of twelve times an hour (that is to say, once in five minutes), every day for a fortnight ; and in spite of her well-known caprice, there seemed for once in her life reason to believe that she would keep her word. Those prudent and sagacious persons who are so good as to take the superintendence of other peo- ple's affairs, and to tell by the look of the foot where the shoe pinches and where it does not, all united in blaming the poor widow for withdrawing AUNT DEBORAH. Vl herself and her son from Mrs. Deborah's protection. But besides that no human being can adequately estimate the misery of leading a life of dependence upon one to whom scolding was as the air she breathed, without it she must die, a penurious dependence too, which supplied grudgingly the humblest wants, and yet would not permit the exertions by which she would joyfully have en- deavored to support herself; — besides the tempta- tion to exchano-e Mrs. Deborah's incessant maun- dering for the Miller's rough kindness, and her scanty fare for the coarse plenty of his board, — besides these homely but natural temptations — hardly to be adequately allowed for by those who have passed their hves amidst smihng kindness and luxurious abundance ; besides these motives, she had a stronger and dearer in her desire to rescue her boy from the dangers of an enforced and miserable idleness, and to put him in the way of earning his bread by honest industry. Through the interest of his grandfather the pa- rish clerk, the little Edward had been early placed in the Hilton free school, where he had acquitted himself so much to the satisfaction of the master, that at ' twelve years old he was the head boy on 72 AUNT DEBORAH. the foundation, and took precedence of the other nine-and-twenty wearers of the full-skirted blue coats, leathern belts, and tasseled caps, in the va- rious arts of reading, writing, ciphering, and men- suration. He could flourish a swan without ever taking his pen from the paper. Nay, there is little doubt but from long habit he could have flourished it blindfold, like the man who had so often model- led the wit of Ferney in breadcrumbs, that he could produce little busts of Voltaire with his hands under the table ; he had not his equal in Practice or the Rule of Three, and his piece, when sent round at Christmas, w^as the admiration of the whole parish. Unfortunately, his arrival at this pre-eminence was also the siofnal of his dismissal from the free school. He returned home to his mother, and as Mrs. Deborah, although hourly complaining of the expense of supporting a great lubberly boy in idle- ness, refused to apprentice him to any trade, and even forbade his finding employment in helping her deaf man of all work to cultivate her garden, which the poor lad, naturally industrious and active, begged her permission to do, his mother, consider- ing that no uncertain expectations of money at the AUNT DEBORAH. 73 death of his kinswoman could counterbalance the certain evil of dragging on his days in penury and indolence during her life, wisely determined to be- take herself to the mill, and accept John Stokes's offer of sending Edward to a friend in town, for the purpose of being placed with a civil engineer ; — a destination with which the boy himself — a fine, intelligent youth, by the way, tall and manly, -svith black eyes that talked and laughed, and curling- dark hair, — was delighted in every point of ^-iew. He longed for a profession for which he had a decided turn ; he longed to see the world as per- sonified by the city of cities, the unparagoned London ; and he longed more than either to get away from Aunt Deborah, the storm of whose vituperation seemed ringing in his ears so long as he continued within sight of her dwelling. One would think the clack of the mill and the prattle of his pretty cousin Cicely might have drowned it, but it did not. Nothing short of leadng the spin- ster fifty miles behind, and setting the great city between him and her, could efface the impression. " I hope I am not ungrateful," thought Edward to himself, as he was trudging London-ward, after taking a tender leave of all at the mill ; I hope I 74 AUNT DEBORAH. am not ungrateful. I do not think I am, for I would give my right arm, ay, or my life, if it would serve master John Stokes, or please dear Cissy. But really I do hope never to come within hearing of Aunt Deborah again, she storms so. I wonder whether all old Avomen are so cross. I don't think my mother will be, nor Cissy. I am sure Cissy won't. Poor Aunt Deborah ! I suppose she can't help it." And with this indulgent con- clusion, Edward wended on his way. Aunt Deborah's mood was by no means so pa- cific. She staid at home, fretting, fuming, and chafing, and storming herself hoarse — which, as the people at the mill took good care to keej^ out of earshot, was all so much good scolding thrown away. The state of things since Edward's depar- ture had been so decisive, that even John Stokes thought it wiser to keep himself aloof for a time ; and although they pretty well guessed that she would take measures to put in effect her threat of disinheritance, the first outward demonstration came in the shape of a young man (gentleman I suppose he called himself — ay, there is no doubt but he wrote himself Esquire) who attended her to AUNT DEBORAH. 75 chureli a few Sundays after, and was admitted to the honor of sitting in the same pew. Nothinof could be more unlike om* fiiend Ed- ward than the strano;er. Fair, freckled, lio-ht- eyed, with invisible eyebrows and eyelashes, in- significant in feature, pert and perking in expres- sion, and in fisfure so dwarfed and stunted, that though in point of age he had evidently attained his full gi'ow^th (if one may use the expression to such a he-doll), Robert at fifteen would have made two of him, — such was the new favorite. So far as appearance went, for certain Mrs. Deborah had not chanored for the better. Gradually it oozed out, as, somehow or other, news, like water, will find a vent, however small the cranny, — by slow degrees it came to be under- stood that ^Irs. Deborah's ^•isitor was a certain Mr. Adolphus Lynfield, clerk to an attorney of no great note in the good town of Belford Regis, and nearly related, as he affirmed, to the Thornby family. Upon hearing these tidings, John Stokes, the son of old Simon Thornby's sister, marched across the road, and finding the door upon the latch, en- tered unannounced into the presence of his enemy. " I think it my duty to let you know, cousin 76 AUNT DEBORAH. Deborah, that this here chap's an impostor — a sham — and that you are a fool," was his conciha- tory opening. " Search the register. The Thorn- bys have been yeomen of this parish ever since the time of Elizabeth — more shame to you for forcing the last of the race to seek his bread elsewhere ; and if vou can find such a name as Lynfield amongst 'era, I'll give you leave to turn me into a pettifogging lawyer — that's all. Saunderses, and Symondses, and Stokeses, and Mays, you'll find in plenty, but never a Lynfield. Lynfield, quotha 1 it sounds like a made-up name in a story-book ! And as for 'Dolphus, why there never was any thing like it in all the generation, excqpt my good old great aunt Dolly, and that stood for Dorothy. All our names have been Christian-hke. and Eng- lish, Toms, and Jacks, and Jems, and Bills, and Sims, and Neds — poor fellow ! None of jour out- landish 'Dolphuses. Dang it, I believe the foolish woman likes the chap the better for having a name she can't speak ! Remember, I warn you he's a sham !" And ofi" strode the honest miller, leaving Mrs. Deborah too angry for reply, and confirmed both in her prejudice and prepossession by the natural effect of that spirit of contradiction which AUNT DEBORAH. / / formed so large an ingTedient in her composition, and was not "vvhollv wantina; in that of John Stokes. Years passed away, and in spite of frequent ebbs and flows, the tide of Mrs. Deborah's favor continued to set towards Mr. Adolphus Lynfield. Once or twice indeed, report had said that he was fairly discarded, but the very appearance of the good miller, anxious to improve the opportunity for his protege, had been sufficient to determine his cousin to reinstate Mr. Adolphus in her good graces. Whether she really liked him is doubtful. He entertained too good an opinion of himself to be very successful in gaining that of other people. That the gentleman was not deficient in "left- handed wisdom," was proved pretty clearly by most of his actions ; for instance, when routed by the downright miller from the position which he had taten up of a near kinsman by the father's side, he, hke an able tactician, wheeled about and called cousins with Mrs. Deborah's mother; and as that good lady happened to have borne the very general, almost universal, name of Smith, which is next to anonymous, even John Stokes could not dislodge hhn from that intrenchment. But he was 18 AUNT DEBORAH. not always so dexterous. Cunning in him lacked the crowning perfection of hiding itself under the appearance of honesty. His art never looked like nature. It stared you in the face, and could not deceive the dullest observer. His very flattery had a tone of falseness that affronted the person flatter- ed ; and Mrs. Deborah, in particular, w'ho did not want for shrewdness, found it so distasteful, that she would certainly have discarded him upon that one ground of offence, had not lier love of power been unconsciously propitiated by the percej)tion of the eftbits which he made, and the degradation to which he submitted, in the vain attempt to please her. She liked the homage offered to " les beaux yeiix de sa cassette,'''' pretty much as a young beauty likes the devotion extorted by her charms, and for the sake of the incense tolerated the wor- shipper. Nevertheless there were moments when the con- ceit which I have mentioned as the leading char- acteristic of Mr. Adolphus Lynfield had well nigh banished him from Chalcott. Piquing himself on the variety and extent of his knowledge, the uni- versality of his genius, he of course jDaid the penalty of other universal geniuses, by being in no small AUNT DEBORAH. 79 degree superficial. Not content with understand- ing every trade better than those who had followed it all their lives, he had a most unlucky propensity to put his devices into execution, and as his infor- mation was, for the most part, picked up from the column headed " varieties," in the county newspa- per, where of course there is some chaff mingled with the grain, and as the figments in question were generally understood and imperfectly recol- lected, it is really surprising that the young gentle- man did not occasion more mischief than actually occurred by the quips and cpiiddities which he de- hghted to put in practice whenever he met with any one simple enough to peiTuit the exercise of his talents. Some damage he did effect by his experiments, as Mrs. Deborah found to her cost. He killed a bed of old-fashioned spice cloves, the pride of her heart, by salting the ground to get rid of the worms. Her broods of geese also, and of turkeys, fell victims to a new and infalHble mode of feeding, which was to make them twice as fat in half the time. Somehow or other, they all died under the operation. So did half a score of fine apple-trees, under an improved method of grafting ; whilst a 80 * AUNT DEBORAH. magnificent brown Bury pear, that covered one end of the house, perished by the grand discovery of severing the bark to increase the crop. He lamed Mrs. Deborah's old horse by doctoring him for a prick in shoeing, and ruined her favorite cow, the best milch cow in the county, by a most needless attempt to increase her milk. Now these mischances and misdemeanors, ay, or the half of them, w^ould undoubtedly have oc- casioned Mr. Adolphus's dismission, and the recall of poor Edward, every account of whom was in the highest degree favorable, had the worthy mil- ler been able to refi'ain from lecturing his cousin upon her neglect of the one, and her partiality for the other. It was really astonishing that John Stokes, a man of sagacity in all other respects, never could understand that scolding was of all devisable processes the least likely to succeed in carrying his point with one who was such a proficient in that accomplishment, that if the old penalty for female scolds, the ducking-stool, had continued in fashion, she would have stood an excellent chance of attaining to that distinction. But so it was. The same blood coursed through their veins, and AUNT DEBORAH. 81 his tempestuous good-will and her fiery anger took the same form of violence and passion. Nothing but these lectures could have kept Mrs. Deborah constant in the train of such a trum- pery, jiggetting, fidgetty little personage as Mr. Adolphus, — the more especially as her heart was assailed in its better and softer parts, by the quiet respectfulness of Mrs. Thornby's demeanor, who never forgot that she had experienced her protection in the hour of need, and by the irresistible good- nature of Cicely, a smihng, rosy, sunny-looking creature, whose only vocation in this world seemed to be the trying to make every body as happy as herself. Mrs. Deborah (with such a humanizing taste, she could not, in spite of her cantankerous temper, be all bad), loved flowers : and Cicely, a rover of the woods and fields from early childhood, and no despicable practical gardener, took care to keep her beaupots constantly supplied from the first snowdrop to the last china rose. Nothing was too large for Cicely's good-will, nothing too small. Huge chimney jars of lilacs, laburnums horse-chestnuts, peonies, and the golden and gorgeous double furze ; china jugs filled with magnificent double stocks, and rich wall- 4 82 AUNT DEBORAH. flowers,* with their bitter-sweet odor, hke the taste of orange marmalade, pinks, sweet-peas, and mig- nonette, from her own Httle garden, or woodland posies that might beseem the hand of the faerie queen, comjDosed of those gems of flowers, the scar- let pimpernel, and the blue anagaUis, the rosy star of the wild geranium, with its aromatic crimson- tipped leaves, the snowy star of the white ochil, and that third starry flower the yellow loose-strife, the milk vetch, purple, or pink, or cream colored, backed by moss-like leaves and lilac blossoms of * Few flowers (and almost all look best when arranged eacli in its separate vase), — few look so well together as the four sorts of double wallflowers. The common dark (the old bloody warrior— I have a love for these graphic names— wordsjwhich paint), the common dark, the common yellow, the new and more intensely colored dark, and that new gold color still so rare, which is in tint, form, growth, hardiness, and profusion, one of the most valuable acqui- sitions to the flower-garden. "When placed together in a jar, the brighter blossoms seem to stand out from those of the deeper hue, with exactly the sort of relief, the harmonious combination of light and shade, that one sometimes sees in the rich gilt carving of an old flower-wreathed picture-frame, or, better still, it might seem a pot of flowers chased in gold, by Benvenuto Cillini, in which the workmanship out- valued the metal. Many beaupots are gayer, many sweeter, but this is the richest, both for scent and color, that I have ever seen. AUNT DEBORAH. 83 the loiisewort, and overhung hy the fi-agrant bells and cool o^reen leaves of the lily of the vallev. It would puzzle the gardener to surpass the elegance and delicacy of such a nosegay. Ofterings like these did our miller's maiden de- light to bring at all seasons, and under all circum- stances, whether of peace or war between the heads of the two opposite houses ; and whenever there chanced to be a lull in the storm, she availed her- self of the opportunity to add to her simple tribute a dish of eels fi-om the mill-stream, or perch from the river. That the thought of Edward (" dear Edward," as she always called him) might not add somewhat of alacrity to her attentions to his way- ward aunt, I will not venture to deny, but she would have done the same if Edward had not been in existence, from the mere effect of her own peace- making spirit, and a generosity of nature which found more pleasure in giving than in possessing. A sweet and happy creature was Cicely ; it was difficult even for Mrs. Deborah to resist her gentle voice and artless smiles. Affairs were in this posture between the belliger- ents, sometimes war to the knife, sometimes a truce under favor of Cissy's white flag, when one Octo- 84 AUNT DEBORAH. ber evening, John Stokes entered the dwelling of his kinswoman to inform her that Edward's appren- ticeship had been some time at an end, that he had come of age about a month ago, and that his master, for whom he had continued to work, was so satisfied of his talents, industry, and integrity, that he had offered to take him into partnership or a sum incredibly moderate, considering the advanta2:es which such a connection would insure. " You have more than the money wanted in the Belford Bank, money that ought to have been his," quoth John Stokes, " besides all your property in land and houses and the funds ; and if you did advance this sum, which all the world knows is only a small part of what should have belonged to him in rip-ht of his father, it would be as safe as if it was in the Bank of England, and the interest paid half-yearly. You ought to give it him out and out ; but of course you won't even lend it," pursued this judicious negotiator; "you keep all your money for that precious chap, Mr. 'Dolphus, to make ducks and drakes with after you are dead ; a fine jig he'll dance over your grave. You know, I suppose, that we've got the fellow in a cleft stick about that petition the other day ? He persuaded AUNT DEBORAH. 85 old Jacob, who's as deaf as a post, to put his mark to it, and when he was gone, Jacob came to me (I'm the only man in the parish who can make him hear) to ask what it was about. So upon my explaining the matter, Jacob found he had got into the wrong box. But as the chap had taken away his petition, and Jacob could not scrat<:'h out his name, what does he do but set his mark to ours o' t'other side ; and we've wrote all about it to Sir Robert to ex-plain to the Parhament, lest seeing Jacob's name both ways like, they should think 'twas he, poor fellow, that meant to humbug 'em. A pretty figure Mr. 'Dolphus '11 cut when the story comes to be told in the House of Commons! Buli that's not the worst. He took the petition to the work- house, and meeting with little Fan Ropley, who had been taught to write at our charity-school, and is quick at her pen, he makes her sign her name at full leno-th, and then strikes a dot over the e to turn it into Francis, and persuade the gTeat folk up at Lunnun, that little Fan's a growTi- up man. If that chap won't come some day to be transported for forgery, my name's not John Stokes ! Well, dame, will you let Xed liave the money ? Yes or no ?" 8G AUNT DEBORAH. That Mrs. Deborah should have suffered the good miller to proceed with his harangue without interruption, can only be accounted for on the score of the loudness of tone on which he piqued himself with so much justice. When she did take up the word, her re^lj made up in volubility and virulence for any deficiency in sound, concluding by a formal renunciation of her nephew, and a command to his zealous advocate never again to appear within her dooi-s. Upon which, honest John vowed he never would, and departed. Two or three days after this quarrel, Mr. Adol- phus ha\4ng arriv^ed, as happened not unfrequently, to spent the afternoon at Chalcott, persuaded his hostess to accompany him to see a pond drawn at the Hall, to which, as the daughter of one of Sir Robert's old tenants, she would undoubtely have the right of entree ; and Mrs. Deborah assented to his request, partly because the weather was fine, and the distance short, partly, it may be, from a lurking desire to take her chance as a bystander of a dish of fish ; they who need such windfalls least, being commonly those who are most desirous to put themselves in their way. Mr. Adolphus Lynfield's reasons were obvious AUNT DEBORAH. 8*7 eiiougli. Besides the ennui of a tete-a-tete, all flat- tery on one side and contradiction on the other, he was naturally of the fidgetty restless temperament which hates to be long confined to one place or one occupation, and can never hear of a gathering of people, whatever might be the occasion, without lono-ino- to find himself amono;st them. Moreover, he had, or professed to have, a passion for field sports of every description; and having that very season contrived, with his usual curious infehcity, to get into as many scrapes in shooting as shall last most sportsmen their whole lives — having shot a spaniel instead of a hare, a keeper instead of a partridge, and his own foot instead of a pheasant, and finally, having been taken up for a poacher, although wholly innocent of the death of any bird that ever wore feathei*s, — after all these woeful experiences (to say nothing of mischances in angling which might put to shame those of our friend Mr. Thompson), he found himself particularly well disposed to a diversion which appeared to combine in most choice union the appearance of sporting, which he considered essential to his re- putation, with a most happy exemption from the usual sporting requisites, exertion or skill. All that 88 AUNT DEBORAH. he would have to do would be to look on and talk, — to throw out a hint here and a suggestion there, and find fault with every thing and every body, like a man who imderstood what was going forward. The weather was most propitious; a bright breezy sunny October day, with light snowy clouds, chased by a keen crisp wind across the deep blue heavens, — and the beautiful park, the turf of an emerald green, contrasting ^vith the brown fern and tawny woods, rivalling in richness and bright- ness the vivid hues of the autumnal sky. Nothing could exceed the gorgeous tinting of the magnifi- cent trees, which, whether in detached clumps or forest-like masses, formed the pride and glory of the place. The oak still retaining its dark and heavy verdure ; the elm letting fall a shower of yellow leaves, that tinged the ground beneath ; the deep orange of the horse-chestnut, the beech vary- ing from ruddy gold to greenish brown ; and above all, the shining green of the holly, and the rich purplish red of the old thorns, those hoary thorns, the growth of centuries, gave to this old English gentleman's seat much of the variety and beauty of the American backwoods. The house, a stately ancient mansion, from the porch of which you AUNT DEBORAH. 89 might expect to see Sir Eoger de Coverley issue, stood lialf-way np a gentle liill, finely backed by woods of great extent ; and the pond, which was the object of the visit, was Avithin sight of the windows, but so skiUully veiled by trees, as to appear of much greater extent than it really was. The master and mistress of the Hall, with their pretty daughters, were absent on a tour : — Is any Enghsh country family ever at home in the month of October in these days of fashionable enterprise ? They were gone to visit the temples of Thebes, or the ruins of Carthage, the Fountains of the Nile or the Falls of Niagara, St. Sophia, or the Kremhn, or some such pretty little excursion, which ladies and gentlemen now talk of as familiarly " as maids of puppy dogs." They were away. But enough of the household remained at Ghalcott, to compose, with a few visitoi*s, a sufiSciently numerous and ani- mated group. The first person whom Mrs. Deborah espied (and it is remarkable that we always see first those whom we had rather not see at all), was her old enemy, the miller, — a fisherman of so much experience and celebrity, that his presence might have been reckon- ed upon as certain — busily engaged, together with 4* 90 AUNT DEBORAH. some half-dozen stout and active coadjutors, in dragging the net ashore, amidst a chorus of excla- mations and cautions from the various assistants, and the breathless expectation of the spectators on the bank, amongst whom were Mrs. Thornby and Cicely, accompanied by a tall, athletic young man of dark complexion, with peculiarly bright eyes and curling hair, whom his aunt immediately recognized as Edward. " How improved he is !" was the thought that flashed across her mind, as with an air of respectful alacrity he stepped forward to meet her ; but the miller, in tugging at his nets, happened to look to- wards them, and ashamed that he of all men should see her change of feeling, she turned away abruptly without acknowledging his salutation, and walked off to the other side ^ith her attendant, Mr. Adol- phus. " Drat the perverse old jade !" exclaimed John Stokes, involuntarily, as he gave a mighty tug, which brought half the net ashore. " She's heavy, my good sir !" observed the pom- pous butler, conceiving that the honest miller's ex- clamation had reference to the sport ; " only see -.*i m AUNT DEBORAH. 91 how full she is! We shall have a magnificent haul !" And the spectators, male and female, crowded round, and the fishermen exerted themselves so ef- ficiently, that in two minutes the net was on dry land. " Nothing but weeds and rubbish !" ejaculated the disappointed butler, a peculiarly blank look taking the place of his usual self-importance. "What can have become of the fish?" '' The net has been improperly drawn," observed Mr. Adolphus ; " I myself saw four or five large carp just before it was dragged ashore I" " Better fling you in. Master 'Dolphus, by way of bait !" ejaculated our friend the miller ; " I've seen jacks in this pond that would make no more bones of swallowing a leg or an arm of such an atomy as you, if they did not have a try at the whole body, than a shark would of bolting down Punch in the show ; as to carp, every body that ever fished a pond knows their tricks. Catch them in a^ net if you can. They swim round and round, just to let you look at 'em, and then they drop plump into the mud, and lie as still and as close as so many stones. But come, Mr. Tompkins," con- 92 AUNT DEBORAH. tinned honest John, addressing the bntler, " we'll try again. I'm minded that we shall have better hick this time. Here are some brave large tench, which never move till the water is distnrbed ; we shall have a good chance for them as well as for the jacks. Now, steady there, you in the boat. Throw her in, boys, and mind you don't draw too fast !" So to work they all went again. All was proceeding prosperously, and the net, evidently well filled with fish, was dragging slowly to land, when John Stokes shouted suddenly from the other side of the pond — " Dang it, if that un- lucky chap, Master 'Dolphus there, has not got hold of the top of the net ! He'll pull it over. See, that great jack has got out already. Take the net from him, Tom ! He'll let all the fish loose, and tumble in himself, and the water at that part is deep enough to drown twenty such mannikins. Not that I think drowning likely to be his fate, — witness that petition business," muttered John to himself in a sort of parenthesis. "Let go, I say, or you will be in. Let go, can't ye ?" added he, in his loudest tone. And with the word, Mr. Adolphus, still strug- gling to retain his hold of the net, lost his balance ■^ AUXT DEBORAH. 93 and fell in, and catching at the person next him, who happened to be Mrs. Deborah, with the hope of savin o; himself, di-a^ored her in after him. Both sank, and amidst the confusion that en- sued, the shrieks and sobs of the women, the oaths and exclamations of the men, the danger was so imminent that both might have been drowned, had not Edward Thornby, hastily flinging off his coat and hat, plunged in and rescued Mi-s. Deborah, whilst good John Stokes, running round the head of the pond as nimbly as a boy, did the same kind office for his prime ayei-sion, the attorney's clerk. What a sound kernel is sometimes hidden under a rouo'h and ruQ^o-ed rind I Mr. Adolphus, more fi-ightened than hurt, and with so much of the conceit washed out of him by his involuntary cold bath, that it might be ac- counted one of the most fortunate accidents in his life, was conyeyed to the hall; but her own house being almost equally near, Mrs. Deborah was at once taken home, and put comfortably to bed in her own chamber. About two hours afterwards, the whole of the miller's family, Mrs. Thornby still pallid and trem- bling, Cicely smiling through her tears, and her 94 AUNT DEBORAH. father as blunt and free-spoken as ever, were assem- bled round tlie homely couch of their maiden cousin. " I tell you I must have the lawyer fetched di- rectly. I can't sleep till I have made my will ;" said Mrs. Deborah. " Better not," responded John Stokes ; " you'll want it altered to-morrow." " What's that you say, cousin John ?" inquired the spinster. "That if you make your will to night, you'll change jour mind to-morrow," reiterated Jolin Stokes. " Ned's going to be married to my Cicely," add- ed he, " and that you mayn't like, or if you did like it this week, you might not like it next. So you'd better let matters rest as they are." " You're a provoking man, John Stokes," said his cousin — "a very provoking obstinate man. But I'll convince you for once. Take that key, "Mrs. Thornby," quoth she, raising herself in bed, and fumbling in an immense pair of pockets for a small old-fashioned key, " and open the 'scrutoire, and give me the pen and ink, and the old narrow brown book, that you'll find at the top. Not like his man-ying Cicely ! Why I always have loved AUNT DEBORAH. 95 that child — don't cry Cissy ! — and have ahvays had cause, for she has been a kind Httle creature to me. Those dahhas came from her, and the sweet posy," pursued Mi-s. Deborah, pointing to a nose- gay of autumn flowers, the old fragrant monthly rose, mignionette, heliotrope, cloves, and jessamine, which stood by the bedside. " Ay, that's the book, Mrs. Thornby ; and there. Cissy," continued Aunt Deborah, filling up the check, with a sum far larger than that required for the partnei-ship — "there, Cissy, is your mamage portion. Don't cry so, child I" said she, as the affectionate girl hung round her neck in a passion of grateful tears — " don't cry, but find out Edward, and send for the lawyer, for I'm determined to settle ray aff'airs to night. And now, John Stokes, I know I've been a cross old woman, but . . . . " " Cousin Deborah," interrupted John, seizing her withered hand with a gripe like a smith's vice, — " Cousin Deborah, thou hast acted nobly, ainl I beg thy pardon once for all. God bless thee ! — Dano' it," added the honest miller to himself, " I do verily believe that this squabbling has been mainly my fault, and that if I had not been so provoking- she would not have been so contrary. Well, she 90 AUNT DEBORAH. has made us all happy, and we must try to make her happy in return. If we did not, we should de- serve to be soused in the fish pond along with that unhappy chap, Master 'Dolphus. For my part," continued the good yeoman, forming with great earnestness a solemn resolution — " for my part, I've fully made up my mind never to contradict her again, say what she will. No, not if she says black's white ! It's contradiction that makes wo- man contrary; it sets their backs up, like. I'll never contradict her again so long as my name's John Stokes." VEESES. BY ADA TREVAXION. THE leaves are falling on the ground, ■^ The vale is damp and chill ; The wheat is gathered to the store, "Which waved upon the hill : The summer birds have taken wing. The sky looks wan and gray ; And from the coppice calls the crow Through all the gloomy day. The joyous bee is heard no more Amid the faded bowers ; Low lying in their silent graves Are all the gentle flowers : The azure fount is choked and dumb, And 'neath the rivulet The water-blooms have left the stalks On which thev late were set. t^ 98 VERSES. The fall of leaves, and wane of flowers, Make sad a lonely heart; Tliey, like the loveliest of our race, From this world soon depart : But as the dark is changed to light When morning's dawn-beams pour, So death's long night shall turn to-day When Time itself is o'er. '1)1 i 5 ^ > t 1 ■'■*■»■> 1 1 > 9 i > » J 53 9 » > ■> J > J ' J MY EAELY DAYS. MY early days, my early days, Ye morning stars that linger yet ; And beam as dear departing rays, When every other star has set : Spray of the ocean of my life. Blossoms of fruit all faded now ; Ye golden sands in old Time's glass, Ye green leaves on a withered bough ; Oh ! where are ye^ and where am I ? Where is that happy, sinless child ? That chased the gaudy butterfly, As gay as that, and far more wild. Am / that bold and fearless boy. That fished the flood and climbed the height ? All health and truth, all life and joy, First in the frolic or the fight. 100 MY EARLY DAYS. Ah no! — where once the sunlight shone I wander now^ amid the shade ; The hopes that led my boyhood on, Are wither'd all, or all betray'd. I cannot bear to gaze again, On visions that could fade so fast ; Nor 'mid a present scene of pain, Cast back a thought on blisses past. I "•"l", , CAPTAm POPHAM AT HIS COUNTEY-HOUSE. BY WILLIAM HOWITT. /\UR friend Popliam had. seen pretty well of ^ service. Being the only child of an old officer, whose only property consisted of his commission, his wife, sundiy chests of baggage, and our embryo captain, he had, at the earliest possible age, obtained an ensign's commission in a foot regiment, through the especial representations at the Horse Guards of the services of his father by a superior officer. Popham might truly enough be said to have literally fought his way through the world, for he had been sent out to all quarters of it. He had passed some years in the purgatory of Gibraltar and the Peak of Teneriffe, — had shot Caffres at the Cape, broiled in India, and frozen in Canada. / 102 CAPT. I'OPIIAM AT "HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. . He^ was well acquainted with Nova Scotia, New BiTinswick; Jampica" a^id Demerara. As he never expected to possess more than his father had done, at forty he was r. captain and a bachelor; but at that age fortune had taken an unexpected turn. There was an old aunt who was as rich as a Jewess. She had neither child nor chick, and Popham had always been advised to make himself particularly agreeable to her ; but it did not by any means ac- cord with his peculiar genius. On the contrary, he had always, before going abroad, and on any little intervals of home service, that he had takenn particu- lar delight in quizzing her, playing oflf tricks upon her, and behaving to her in a very cavalier fashion. His father had said to him, twenty times "Bob, what a fool you are ! Don't you see that your aunt is the only creature in the family that has a doit? and she could make a man of you at once." It was all in vain. Bob Popham enjoyed nothing so much as a joke at the expense of his aunt, and of contradicting her, when all the world besides was caressing and flattering her. " There's nothing for it," said his father; "but Bob's roughing it abroad ; lie has not the least white in his eye, and CAPT. POPHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. 103 will be as poor a3 a rat, or as T am, to the day of his death." Well, Bob weut abroad, to the north and the south, the east and the west, and in the meantime his father and mother went into the other world. His annt still lived on, beloved and cherished by every body. She was a very plain old lady ; no matter, — she had a large estate, and every body de- clared she was young and handsome as ever. She was of a penurious and rather crabbed temper ; no matter, — the good-natured world around never suf- fered itself to be annoyed at it. People rather liked it. They did not care a straw for chips in ponidge ; they liked something piquant and original. So the old lady only kept very shabby Httle lodgings in town, and an old man and w^oman in her house at Crackskull Common, in Suriy, w^here she seldom went. In fact, she had no need of a house at all, for all sorts of houses were open to her. She always took cai-e to have a handsome carriage, and a couple of fine fellows in Hvery. That was her sole extravagance, and it answered well. During the season she was surrounded by friends, old and young, and might have spent all her days amongst them. In the daytime, shopping and making Y" 104 CAPT. POPHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. calls ; in the evening, to dinners and places of amusement. It cost her nothing*. Opera boxes, boxes at theatres, tickets for all sorts of concerts and exhibitions were showered upon her ; and it was so very nice for a number of young ladies to have places in her carriage on all these occasions. The -old lady took as much pleasure as her con- stitution was capable of, for she never lost sight of that. She was very chary of her health, — hated doctors, and cherished her own soul and body in an admirable manner. Every thing, in fact, that could make a little old lady comfortable was at her command. She did not luxuriate much, it is true, in her own lodgings, but a score of wealthy houses were open to her. She was pressed to live in them altogether — the best place in the drawing-room and at the dinner-table — the softest easy chair and foot-stool — the snuggest bed-room — and the most bountiful attentions were bestowed upon her ; and long before the season closed, her engagements for the country had filled up all the time till the fol- lowing one. The moment that the queen had dismissed parliament, and the fashionable world, to their delimits of distant halls and castles, the old lady was on her way amongst the very first de- CAPT. POFHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. 105 partures. She was bound on a round of visits and hospitalities of the most cordial kind, — and she had a charm about her that never lost its fasci- nation. Grave senators, great lords and dukes too, ladies of the hio-hest rank and of the most eminent talents and accomplishments, and yoimg men and maidens of the most amiable quahties, all united in rendering the old lady's hfe as agreeable as possible. What was her gi*and charm ? Was she witty, learned, generous, brilliant or pathetic in her powers of conversation ? — was she remarkable for her feeling of the beautiful, and for angelic poetiy ? No : the secret of her delio'htfulness did not He 7 O in any of these, — she was always to be found li\-ing on the clover of high life, — her two stout men and her maid flourished in the most plentifid of servants' halls, — her horses were always as sleek and fat as the best stables and grooms could make them ; but nobody ever heard her saying any thing wondei-fal, or doing any thing wonderful. People who did not know her often wondered what such a queer old fi-ight was doicg in the company and places they found her in. She had, however, a talisman that kept all pleasant and affectionate around her, and was capable of converting the most 5 106 CAPT. rOPHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. supercilious puppy or disdainful dame from con- tempt to adoration in a second. It consisted of a single and very simple sentence, " Well, I don't know whom I must leave my money to, after all." With that " open sesame," the old lady travel- led in triimaph all round the country for thirty years. There were a score or two of people who were either marked out bv themselves or others as quite certain to have all the old lady's Avealth. There were, in fact, some hundreds who had so feasted and feted her, — had made their houses her home, for months, for so many years together, — who had spent so much, and put themselves so much out of the way to convince the old lady of their entire and eternal devotion to her, that for her to do any thing but leave them all she had, would be to prove herself a perfect monster. If, therefore, the old woman did not prove a perfect monster, at least with some hundred or more of her worshippers, why, then she must have been a most wonderful woman indeed 1 At length she died ! All old ladies must die some time, however extraordinary and necromantic in their sphere they may be. She died at the goodly age of eighty-seven, and after having lain ('APT. POrilAM AT HIS COUNTKY-HOUSE. 107 at a dear friend's house for nine months, with nurses, doctors, and sitters-up proper for so dear an old lady, her physician had kindly inquired whether she had made her Avill. Her kind friends were too disinterested to ask this aw^kward question them- selves, except through the bland man of medicine, and she had rephed with a heavenly smile and an affectionate pressure of the hand to her dear host- ess, who sat at her bed-side, " that she had ; it was at her lawyers', Messrs. Catch and Hold, in towTi, and those dearest to her would find all right." She died as we have said. The will was opened ; and, oh I what a monster of ino-ratitude that old woman really was ! There w^as not a name in the document but one, and it was that of the quizzing, teazing, ungracious, and ungrateful Bob Popham I All the world was astonished ; and Captain Pop- ham most of all ! " What an artful old Jezebel I" exclaimed a hundred and fifty of her kind and in- defatigable friends. " "\^^lat a funny old girl !" said Captain Popham ; " what a famous dead take- in for all those fussy sycophants !" These ejacula- tions he uttered over a letter which he had just re- ceived as he entered the door of the mess-room at Fermoy, in Ireland, where his regiment was lying. 108 CAPT. POPHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. His man had run after him, out of breath, to giv^e it him, for the honest fellow had an instinctive feel- ing that there was luck in it, and there was need of it. The Captain tliat day had had a scurvy trick played oft" upon him. That morning, before going out to parade, he had taken out his gold watch, which cost him sixty guineas — one of those few luxuries which he had indulged in at lucky moments in the course of his career ; and, with a melancholy look, had said, " That goes to my un- cle ; there's nothing else for it !" lie had been astoundingly out of luck of late. Before leaving England he had lost some heavy bets. Here he had lost two of his finest horses by an epidemic, and as he had nothing but his pay, as was well known, and no expectations, — for he could as soon have calculated on a fortune-telling gipsy as on his aunt, — he was in very bad cue indeed. He had tried for a loan every possible old acquaintance that he could call to mind within the rang'e of a most excellent memory, and being confoundedly dunned, as is always the case when a man is a- ground, — and the only letters he had for some weeks received being either from old friends, press- ing for repayment of old debts, or from the inex- CAPT. POPHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. 109 orable race of attorneys, threatening all manner of desperate proceedings, — liis mind was made up, and liis ^Yatcll must go to pay for lodgings and for sundry other petty aifairs. When Captain Popham returned from parade, he was going to cast his eyes for a farewell look on his watch, and then send it off by his man Tom ; but the watch was not there. " Tom thinks I am careless," said Popham, " in leaving my watch about," and he rang the bell. " Tom," said he, as that individual appeared, " where did you put my watch?" "Watch, sir!" said Tom, with an evi- dent consternation. "Why, sir, you sent for it from parade." " Never !" said the Captain, turning deadly pale. " Never ! What makes you say so ?" "Say so!" repeated Tom, as if his faculties had been knocked down into his heels, and wanted a good while to get up again. " Why, sir, there came a man, — he looked like a groom, — and he said you had called him to you on the parade ground, and bade him fetch your watch, which lay on the c/u'wi/ey-piece." " Chimney-piece !" exclaimed the Captain ; "how 110 CAPT. POPHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. could any body know that ? T do not recollect ever laying it there before." " Well, sir, sure as I'm alive sir, that's what he said ; says he, ' it lies on the chimley -piece, and the Captain wants his great coat, for he thinks it will rain.' " " And did you let him have them ?" " Of course, sir ; what else could I do ?" " Good God !" said the Captain ; " then you've ruined me, Tom. I have not a ftirthing left. But you must have seen the man ; you would soon know him !" " Gad ! I'll run out and see ; but as I'm alive I never seed the man afore; and, Oh Lord! Oh, Lord ! if he's otF, what shall I do ?" Tom absquatulated, as our American fi-iends say, most piteously and precipitately, and was soon at all likely quarters of inquiry, but in vain. All the grooms and officers' servants were lirst astound- ed, and then thought it a " deuced clever sell," and Tom and his Captain remained disconsolate. When fortune's wheel has brought you to the bottom, if it goes on, as the wise of all ages have assured us, it must turn you up again, — and this was precisely Captain Popham's experience. The CAPT. POPHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. Ill letter that Tom had scoured after him ^^-ith, on be- ing opened, occasioned Popham to laugh aloud and utter the exclamations which we have recorded above. The Captain soon gratified the curiosity of his brother officers, and now no longer afraid of any body knowing the poverty that was past, he added, for their edification, the adventure of the ■watch and great coat. The two strange incidents comino- too-ether threw a wonderful exhilaration over the mess. It was voted that it could not do less than drink everlasting happiness to Popham's excellent aunt — the cleverest old woman, according to the unanimous opinion of the whole regimental staff, that had gone to heaven for years past ; and Pophara was only too happy to order a handsome supply of champagne. There never was a merrier mess in any age or nation ; and the Captain found no difficulty in preparing for his hasty departure to England to take possession of his property, except in deciding which of the many purses thrust upon him he should accept the loan of. A few days saw him at his estate in Surrey. He had seen his lawyer, his banker, his bailiff, and had ridden over his farms and throuo-h his woods. All was extremely satisfactory. It was a splendid 112 CAPT. POPHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. autumn, about the middle of September, extremely dry and ^varm. The Captain had well tired him- self with shooting, in company with the keeper ; and one night, sleeping Avith his windoAv open, as he was accustomed to do to a very late season of the year, he was awohe about two o'clock in the morning by a rustling sound in the garden into which his room looked. " The wind must be ris- ing," thought the Captain, half waking, and turning over. Another more vigorous shake, as of a tree, roused him up, and listening, he felt convinced that some one was paying a visit to a splendid pear- tree, full of fi-uit^ just ready for plucking, on the lawn before his windoAV. The next moment Cap- tain Popham was out of bed, and with admirable quietness had approached the window and fixed his eye on the pear-tree. There was a piece of a moon lingering low in the west, but enough to show him a man in the very middle of his tree, letting down a basket full of his pears by a rope to another fellow below. " Oho ! " thought the Captain ; " I must give these felloAvs a friendly warning not to come here again. Just send them an intelligible message that we think we have quite leisure enough to collect CAPT. POPHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. 113 our own Windsor burgundies. No harm done ; but an effectual fright. A small offence — quite a small offence — and sufficiently punished with a lit- tle small shot." Po^Dham did not say this ; he only thought it ; and while another might have said it, he had found his gun which stood ready charged in the corner near his bed, drew half the charge, and, approach- ing the window, took deliberate aim at the legs of the fellow in the tree. Popham never missed : down dropped the man, crashing through the boughs, and attended by a hurricane of pears, tum- bled with a thump to the earth. The Captain's ears, rather than his eyes, informed him of this, for the latter organs were in quest of the fellow below, as well as the smoke of his piece would allow. When he caught sight of him, he was already in ftill flight across the lawn. " Bang ! " went the second barrel, and a wild shriek of " Oh, Lord ahve ! I'm a dead man ! " assured him that there, too, his discharge had taken effect. For dead men, however, the two pear-gatherers managed to get off at a surprising rate, and the Captain, chuckling to himself, said, " Well, those fellows won't volunteer their aid to gather my burgundies 5* 114 CAPT. POPIIAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. again this year. They will have their own crop of No. 4 to gather out of their legs ; but I am afraid I must have alarmed old John and Betty." While saying this, the Captain was turning com- fortably into bed to finish his sleep, and in less than five minutes was dreaming of chasing Bosjesmen at the Cape. When he awoke in the morning, he looked out, and to his astonishment saw a splendid ass, loaded with a pair of panniers, under his pear- tree, eating the fallen pears with a peculiar relish. The Captain hastened down stairs, meeting in the hall Betty Brantingham, the housekeeper, carrying the tray into the breakfast-room. " Law, sir ! how you did frighten us," said Betty, " with letting off your gun in the night. It made our old hearts jump into our mouths." "I was afraid I might disturb you," said the Cap- tain, taking his hat and going towards the garden ; " but where are the men I shot ?" " Men ! " cried Betty, giving a start, as if electri- fied, and letting the tray fall, but only upon the hall-table, which she had just reached. " Oh, sir ! how you do like to frighten a poor old body." But the Captain was by this time out, and advanc- ing towards the pear-tree, for it was his cue to ap- CAPT. POPHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. 115 pear very savage, and make old Jolm and Betty believe he had nearly, if not all out, killed the men. He was, therefore, looking about with a very eager air, as if in quest of dead bodies. Meantime, John and Bettv Brantino-ham had hurried out after him, and found him surveying the scores of fallen pears, broken boughs, and scattered leaves, with a solemn look. " There is blood on these leaves," said he ; "but I fear the comrades of the rascals have carried them ofiV " Lord above, save us ! " said Betty, all of a trem- ble. "How dreadful!" The Captain now advanced to the wooden fence at the end of the garden. There it was easy to see, by the dirt from their shoes, wdiere one at least had clambered over : and there, too, some blood was reallv discernible. " Let us search the field," said the Captain. " They may be dead in a ditch." He sprang over the fence, and old John clam- bered all of a tremble after him. They searched all round the field, but found no dead men. " But Avhat a capital ass ! " said old John, when they were come back again. "And what fruit!" examining the panniers. And, in fact, never was lie CAPT. POPHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. an ass laden with so superb a load of fruit. " Why, it is the pick," said John, " of all the gentlemen's garden's round." There were peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums and pears, of the most magnificent description. " AVell," said the Captain laughing, " it is no such bad exchange after all. The rogues have got their dessert, and yet they have left us a fine assort- ment of fruit for ours. And what an ass ! Why they must have stolen it, too. Turn it into the paddock ; such a fine fellow is sure to be inqui]-ed after." But, as it turned out, nobody ever did inquire after it. The Captain's exploit made a stupendous noise in the country. The Captain always made the worst of it, althouo-h at the risk of o'ettino- the character of a cruel fellow\ No information ever was obtained of the thieves ; and, years after, that finest specimen of the asinine race might be seen with old John Brantingham on his back, going on his errands, or it was drawinof a handsome little chaise with the Captain's two eldest children in it. That sanie autumn, however, but in the begin- ning of November, the Captain, after an absence in town attending to various matters connected with CAPT. POPHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. 11 T the will and the property, was again at his country- house. As he was reading his morning paper, while Betty Brantino-ham was arrano-ino- his tea- table, he said, — " Lord bless me, Mrs. Brantingham, what num- bers of burglaries there are all about here. I wonder the scoundrels don't visit us." " Xo, sir," said Betty, shaking her head, '' they'll not come here, sir, I'll warrant 'em." " Why not :" said the Captain. " Because," said Betty, " you've got such a name, sir. They say all round here — you'll excuse me, sir, — that you like nothino- so well as shootino- men." "Do they say that?" said the Captain. " They do, sir," said Betty. " Squire Sandiland, out there by Farnborough, told the postman that he had dined with a gentleman that once dined with the officers of your reo-iment, and they told him that you were very fond of shooting bears, quite wild about shooting lions, but that you had rather shoot a man than any thing." '' Did he say that ?'' added the Captain, with a smile. "He did really," added Betty; "but I said I was sure that it was not true." 118 CAPT. POPHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. " Why," said tlie Captain, " it dopeiuls on what sort of a man it is." Betty looked a very queer look at the Captain ; and then added, " Well, bless the Lord, excej:>t for a few apples or pears, or a fowl or two, or so, no robbers never came to this house in Madam Pop- ham's time. They soon get to know — they are cunning customers are those robbers — where there is any thing worth stealing, and where they are good, easy people that w^on't hurt 'em. Madam Popham never kept no plate here. It's all in a strong box at the Bank at Guildford." " Ah ! true," said the Captain. " I had forgotten that : but we will have it here directly." " Oh, Lord, sir !" said Betty ; " why you would not tempt them ? You don't w^ant 'em to come here ?" " Well, as to that," said the Captain, " don't you think, Mrs. Brantingham, that the rogues had better come than go and frighten defenceless ladies and quiet inoffensive clergymen ? For ray part, I am always ready for them ; and I rather like it," continued the Captain, looking firmly at Bett}'. "Vermin should be cleared off, and especially vermin that ought to know better." CAPT. POPHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. 119 Betty Brantingliam stood astonished. " But they don't know better, sir," said she at length, " a many of 'em. They are poor nnenhghtened wretches." "Then suppose we enhghten them," said the Captain, taking a quantity of bullets out of his pocket. " We must put a window thi-ough a few of them, with these." " Oh Lord, sir," said Betty, looking quite fi-ighten- ed, " why you're like that gentleman that they say hves at Carhsle, that drops all rogues he can catch into his well, and shuts a strong oak door down over them ; for that's the only cure for them, he says. But, Heaven bless us, what a hard, fistycuff man it must be." "Upon my word! a grand fellow!" said the Captain, laughing. " Tell John to saddle the ass, and carry a note to Guildford." Betty gave another queer look, as she made a very solemn curtsey, saying, " Yes, sir !" and with- drew. The Captain soon had his plate at home. It was a splendid sight to see it, though rather old fashion- ed. He had it rather paraded, too ; for he sent it in open baskets to a man in the next village fa- mous for waiting at gentlemen's houses, and for 120 CAPT. I'Ol'IIAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. cleaning plate. Every basket had a pillow in the bottom, and the plate, which thus looked much more than it really was, was piled up loftil}^ Basket after basket went, and came back glittering like fire in the sun. It is said that he really had it cleaned twice over. At all events, never had such a display of silver and gold been seen down there, and great was the talk about it. It was enough to tempt all the thieves in the country, and Betty Brantingham seriously, though respectfully, sug- gested whether it were not a tempting of Prov- idence too. But it did not take. The Captain's name was up, and we verily believe that he might have left his plate in the road before his house, or on Crack- skull Common itself, as freely as potboys leave their pots in the care of Providence hung on pallisadoes or lying on steps in the streets of London every where. Robberies, and even murders, there were all round the country, but nobody came near the Captain. At length — it was in the depth of winter — the Captain was awoke with a noise. He felt sure that somebody at length had broken in. He put out his hand to liis gun, which stood as usual ready CAPT. POPHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. 121 loaded, felt in his waistcoat pocket on the chair by his side for a couple of caps, and listened. It ^vas a fact — somebody was astir in the house. He heard dooi-s open and shut below : he lieard footsteps on the stairs. He sprung from his bed, cautiously- opened his door, and hstened. At that instant there came a dreadful cry from the room of the old couple. " Oh, Lord help us ! Oh I ugh ! ugh ! ugh 1" It was the agonized voice of Betty Brant- ingham. " The rogues are murdering her," said the Captain to himself. " This is no joking matter." He dropped a couple of bullets down his barrels, and darted up the flight of stairs to her assistance. As he reached the landing-place opposite to her room, he perceived the door open ; it was so near mornino- that there was a little lio-bt from the window on the far side of the room ; he could see a figure moving by the bed, and the old woman's voice was now audible only in low and lower groans. " They have murdered her I" exclaimed the Captain aloud, simultaneously pulling the trigger of his piece. It flashed in the pan, and at the same moment a piercing shriek in Betty Branting- 122 CAPT. POPHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-IIOUSK. ham's own voice startled him with these woi'ds — " Oh Lord, sir ! what are you doino- ?" The Captain stood ])etrified to the spot. " But what in lieaven's name is the matter ?" he exclaim- ed, as he recovered his speech, but still .feeling as if he were standing* in a horsepond. "Are not they killing you ?" " Good gracious, no !" exclaimed Betty ; " but I've had such a racking fit of toothache ; and I've been down for a di-op of peppermint-water ; and I was just holding on to the bed-post to enable me to abide." The Captain felt his blood run still colder. If his gun had not providentially missed fii-e, Betty Brantingham at this moment had been dead by his hand ! For a lono- time the horror of this frio-htful affair hung on the Captain ; and he really thought if all the thieves in the country came, he should not have a heart to point a gun at them. But vet, a few weeks afterwards, comino- home late and unexpectedly from town, he found that Mrs. Bi-antingham had taken the opportunity of his absence to have a i-eo-ular clearino- out of his bed-room. The cai-pet was up, the floor scoured, CAPT. POPHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. 123 and all the furniture either turned out into the pas- sage or piled upon the bed, in that blessed confu- sion which prevails on such occasions. There was nothing for it but taking up his quarters in a room on the third story, without danger of a damp bed. Jjut the Captain was an old campaigner. He found the room all veiy well, and was presently asleep. Out of this sweet sleep, however, he was roused at midnight by the wildest and most awful cry of murder. It rung clearly and frightfully through the house. It seemed to proceed from the room below him. That could not be a mere fit of Mrs. Brantingham's toothache. He sprung from his bed, but it was pitch dark. The room was perfectly strange to him ; he had no means of procuring a light ; and groping for the door, for liis Hfe he could not find it ! If there be a bewilderment in this world, it is precisely that in which the Captain found himself. He went round and round the room ; stumbled over chairs ; struck his forehead against the sharp edo^e of a wardrobe ; broke his shins as^ainst a chest of drawers, and every moment became more and more confounded. All the time the cries of murdei' resounded in his ears. Then all 124 CAPT. POPHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. became as suddenly still. " It's all over !" ex- claimed the Captain ; " and that cursed door, the devil himself must have conjured it away." AVitli this, quite satisfied that the old people were now lying with their thi'oats cut from ear to ear, and not having any fire-arms in this room, he placed a chair by his bedside as a means of de- fence if he Avere attacked ; and plunging into bed, resigned himself to his fate. Nobody came : the Captain, after a while, dropped asleep, and when he awoke it was about nine in the mornino;. Re- membering the horrid outcries of the night, he got up hastily, and went down stairs to ascertain the extent of the mischief. That the old people were murdered he felt quite certain. Their bed-room door was open : he looked in, but saw no ^bloody corpses. " Can it i-eally be that old woman's toothache again ?" said the Captain ; " why it's quite a nuisance !" He descended to the ground- floor, and there sat Mr. and Mrs. Brantingham at breakfast, as coollv as tliouo-h nothino; whatever had happened. " Why, bless me, Mrs. Brantingham," said the Captain, rather tartly, " I quite believed that you were both murdered." CAPT. POPIIAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. 125 "• Murdered, sir ?" " Yes, you cried ' murder' lustily." " Oh !" said Mrs. Brantingham, looking strangely at her husband. " What a pity we did not think to tell the Captain. I ask you a thousand pardons, sir ; but it was only John's cousin, out of Hamp- shire, — Mr. Roxbv, the shoemakei-, — who came yesterday to bring John a bit of interest he owes him. He's troubled with dreams, sir, and always cries ' murder' in them ; but, bless you ! except for that, he's as innocent as a child." " Where is he, then ?" asked the Captain. " Oh, he's half way home bv this time. He knocked at our door at four o'clock, and said he had been much plagued with dreams, and, being awake, he would set off." "Never let him sleep here again," said the Captain. Such were Captain Popham's adventures in his country-house the first winter of his possession of it. Before the next winter he had made an exten- sive acquaintance in town and country; had formed a laro-e and handsome establishment, and finally got married. The Captain has lived now for some years at 120 CAl'T. POPHAM AT IIIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. Crackslvull Manor, on the very edge of CrackskiiU Common. Buro-laries and robberies abound there- about, and the Captain afiects to wonder that no- body ever thinks of robbing- him, for his plate is worth thousands ; but Betty Brantingham says, " No, they'll never come here." At a great dinner-party, an oracular old Protec- tionist baronet gave it as his opinion regarding so much house-breaking, that the Whigs have done it all. " They have," said he, " undermined all the institutions of the country, and given the rogues a taste for luxury by teaching them to read. They are so cunning now-a-days that they can tell to an inch and to an ounce where plate and money are." " No," said Captain Popham, " we have done it all ourselves. Carelessness in our own camp is sure to expose us to the attacks of the enemy. We know that there is a sad mass of ignorance and poverty in the country, and if we mean to be safe, we must exert ourselves to root it out. If we are fat and lazy, there are plenty that are lean and on the alert. If we will have tempting heaps of plate and money, we should take vigilant and suf- ficient means to secure them. Have an efficient police, and keep it so by looking well after it. See Vy&r^ CAPT. POPHAM AT HIS COL^'TRY-HOUSE. 127 that vour doors and windo\YS are well secure, sir. There is no greater truth, take my word for it, than that where thieves can't get in they won't get in. Hang bells to your shutters and doors. Keep a watchman's rattle in your bed-room. Eat lio-ht suppers, or none at all, and don't let your seiTants muddle their brains with strong beer before they go to bed, and then they won't sleep like so many stones on a moor. Keep a little yaffing dog in- dooi-s as well, or in preference to a big mastiff Avithoiit ; and if roo'ues will come and make an attack on yom- house, g-ive them a vioforous salute from the windows, but don't let them find you lying on your backs in your night-shu-ts while they hold a pistol or a huo-e rustv knife to your nose. That is a very awkward and humiliating situation, and no really good tactician will suffer himself to be caught napping in that way." "That's true enough," said a clergyman at table. " I don't want to flatter Captain Popham, but I believe him, from facts within my knowledge, to be one of the most merciful men in our counti-y ; and I think it veiy likely that the touch of severity which he showed when he first came down amono-st us, has prevented more crimes and the effusion of 128 CAPT. POPHAM AT HIS COUNTRY-HOUSE. more innocent blood than can readily be calcu- lated." "Ay, ay," said the ol.l baronet, "it's all very well. Vicar, but the Captain verifies the old saw — ' When a man's name is up, he may sleep.' " " Precisely so," said the Vicar. THE SLEEPING CHILD. w BY MISS BAERETT. ?TIS aye a solemn thing to me ■^ To look upon a babe that sleeps; "Wearing in its spirit-deeps Tbe unrevealed mystery Of its Adam's taint and woe, "Wbicb, when they revealed be, "Will not let it slumber so! Lying new in life beneath The shadow of the coming death, TVith that soft low quiet breath, As if it felt the sun ! Knowing all things by their blooms Not by their roots! Yea! sun and sky Only by the warmth that comes Out of each I — earth only by The pleasant hues that o'er it run ! And human love, by drops of sweet 6 130 THE SLEEPING CHILD. White nourishment still hanging round The little mouth so slumber bound ! All which broken sentiency Will gather, and unite, and climb, • To an immortality Good or evil, each sublime, Through life and death, to life again. Oh little lids, now closed fast, Must ye learn to droop at last, Over large and burning tears? Oh warm quick body! must thou lie ^1^ "When is done the round of years, ^^F Bare of all the joy and pain. Dust in dust, — thy place up-giving To creeping worms in sentient living? O small frail being, wilt thou stand At God's right hand. Lifting up those sleeping eyes, Dilated by subhmest destinies. In endless waking ? Thrones and Seraphim, Through the long ranks of their solemnities, Sunning thee with calm looks of Heaven's surprise, Thy look alone on Him? Or else self-willed to the godless place — (God keep thy will!) — feel thine own energies, Cold, strong, objectless, like a dead man's clasp, The sleepless, deathless life within thee, grasp, I While myriad faces, like one changeless fiice, With woe, not love's, shall glass thee every where, And overcome thee with thine own despair? THE EXILES OF CAPRI. A TRUE STORY OF MODERX ITALY. BY MRS. DAVID OGILVY. Author of " Traditions of Tuscany," &c., &c. T^ISSIXG goes by favor," saitli the old pro- ■^^ verb, and so does praising. The " Continental Bradshaw " devotes half-a-dozen pages to that Cock- ney-Paris Bnissels, and a column of enthusiasm to Capri ; while Florence and Venice are disposed of in three lines, naming the Envoy, and the zvoisf, not the best, medical men. Who obtained for Capii that honorable mention ? Quoth Bradshaw, "the climate is particularly favorable to all complaints of the bronchia." May be — all I know is, that being myself by habit and repute a victim to that complaint, Capri affected me with a severer return thereof than t had expe- •■•«•;!* 132 THE EXILES OF CAPRI. rienced since I encountered the east winds of onr foggy isle of England. Quoth Bradshaw, " food is there abundant and cheap." May be ; but I knew three respectable ladies nearly starved because they could not live upon cuttle fish and pumpkins. Truly Capri is a land flowing with oil and wine, but the solid flesh is rare. Brahminical cows, that die unmolested in a good old age, are its beef ; its mutton travels over from Naples, eight hours under a burning sun — a method of cooking not quite agreeable. Its fowls have a mixture of bone and yellow fat, utterly destitute of white meat, which our host used to ascjibe to their diet of Indian corn, and which certainly rendered them interest- ing ornithological specimens, but very bad fare. In short, fish is the staple resource of Capri, as it is of the Hebrides ; its fertility reduces its inhab- itants to the same diet as does the barrenness of the Scottish isles. Little delicate anchovies, rich cephalopods, eels curly as small snakes, red glisten- ing mullet, and sarpe, a fish that tastes strongly of the sea-weed on which it feeds ; these were our din- ner materials. When these failed, our host dis- played inexhaustible invention in the concoction of m THE EXILES OF CAPRI. 133 entr^es^ consisting generally of fries. To-day fried potatoes, disguised beyond recognition even by an Irishman ; to-morrow fried Frencli beans, cut into fantastic forms; now a fry of cucuzzoli (a sweet- tasted green sort of gherkin) ; another time of ri- cotto, or curdled cream. But a meal off the joint dear to hungry Britons is not attainable in Capri. This much, O Continental Bradshaw, I write, be- cause due to the sacred cause of truth : I must say amen to all praises of its scenery. I used often to think that in the after-life alone could such eye-joy be surpassed. We lived in a low-roofed house, one single story towards the land, but on the se#- ward side sinking abruptly in a precipice, with a range of offices under a broad airy terrace. On that terrace we sj^ent our days. A large swing lamp hanging from its matted roof acted the part of The Salt. Below it was set a table for servants and children ; above it we ate our own meals like eastern sultans. The matting overhead kept off the sun, while the air came freely in from the sea, and the view unbroken lay before us. The tongues of men and angels could not describe it ; Xaples, twenty-three miles off, was distinctly visible. St. Elmo's Castle, 134 THE EXILES OF CAPRI. like a barometer, registered on its tall crest every atmospheric change. Vesuvius, no longer a twin pair as it appears from the city, at Capri rises in a single cone, with such a gradual slope from the level purple plain, that one fancies it to be a work of man raised step by step above the greensward. Not once during our stay in those vicinities did the hell-mouth send out a flame. "Weary with the gi-eat eruption of March, it lay all July in a dead slumber, only a white puff of cloud hovering as a remembrancer over the crater's top. You did not trace it ascending from the lip ; you only saw it hanging motionless in the clear, blue air. And fearless white villas hung on the skirts of that de- structive volcano, as children cling on to the sabre- tache and sword-belt of a redoubted w^arrior. And a hugh arm of Capri thrust itself out into the blue sea on our right : while in the shadoAV of its per- pendicular rock face, brown naked boys disported themselves among the transparent waters, and the weedy ruins of Roman palaces. Much, much more did that terrace show us, which sank into our heart of hearts, but which refuses to come drily forth and deposit itself on this prosy page. In the evenings we sallied out and THE EXILES OF CAPRl* 135 climbed the steep path leading to tfwn of Capri— a path made for the behoof of shoemshors ; to go up it and to go down it would make an end of the finest and strongest boots sold between Tem- ple Bar and the Crystal Palace. It is composed partly of rough shingle, partly of rude steps more than half worn away. Ohves rise above you, vine- yards and orchards below-you, and every step gives a different and a lovelier view of the Bay, of the promontory of Massa and Campanella, of the wild masses of St. Angelo towering behind, and the far- off Abruzzi peats, and the soKtary mount of Mon- dragone, until, as you reach the old town gate, you turn and behold Ischia, Procida, and Nicita, gleam- ing like topazes in the setting sun. However hot might be the evening, always a cold blast rushed through that dark and ancient archway; conse- quently its two stone benches were more than com- fortably full. Peasants and vine-dressers, fisher- men and loungers, and a number of melancholy men, to whom, Italians as they evidently were, idleness did not seem to bring its own all-sufficient reward. I have been so used to see the southrons enjoying their existence, taking in the sense of be- ing at every pore, that I felt rivetted by these lack- 136 THE EXILES OF CAPRI. lustre faces and aimless wandering eyes. To them the exquisite beauty all around was as a blank. They pined — and for what? For liberty — they were exiles. Then we rambled through the odd old piazza, with its rusty, absurd old jail, in which I once saw a prisoner, who had a just appreciation of the ad- vantages of his lot, staring eagerly at a triumphal arch erected close before his grating, and an illu- minated display of fireworks let off just under his rejoicing eyes ; past the sumptuous and unpictu- resque cathedral, up whose steps were hastening, at the vesper-bell, women with white veils on their black plaits, and swaddled babes on their swarthy shoulders ; and so diving down a narrow water- course, pebbly and rocky, and a torture to all with thin shoes and corns, we came on a lonely descend- ing path, down among fields of poppied grain, and by the gnarled roots of aged olives, through wilder- nesses of myrtles and aniseed, and scabious, and clematis, and lovely little campanulas and saxifrage, down to a round projection of the cliffs jutting out into the sea, walled and provided with stone seats. It was a wild and lonely scene. On our right a lofty rock rose sheer from the strand, sloping land- THE EXILES OF CAPRI. 137 ward towards the town of Capri, but presenting to the ocean a red, furrowed, unscalable precipice, broken only by a cavern midway, inaccessible save to winged fowl. Its highest peak was surmounted by a ruined castle, strongly fortified by the French, and said to be haunted by s'pirits for the sake of its buried treasures. Right in fi'ont of us, cleaving the calm blue wa- ters, were those remarkable rocks, the Farra Leone, three in number, but two of them standing so near that it is only at particular angles you can per- ceive the didsion. In one of them is a hio-h natu- ral arch, under which large boats can pass. Her Majesty's frigate Thetis, with all sails set, was steer- ed in betwixt the shore and the nearest of these rocks. The inhabitants could hardly beheve their eyes when they beheld the success of this rash ex- periment. It proved, however, the immense depth of the water in shore, and the extraordinary height of these loftv rocks, measured from their founda- tion at the bottom of the sea. A ship seen near them foils to the size of a child's toy : their color is a rich brown, their shape fantastically Gothic. All along this side of the island the clifis take the strangest forms — pinnacles, arches, spires, flying 6* 138 THE EXILES OF CAPRI. buttresses, all sorts of combinations, suggest them- selves to the imaginative wanderer. Beyond the Farra Leone lay the Great Sea, rolling down to- wards unseen Sicily and Africa, felt only too palpa- bly in its nightly sirocco blasts. And there on the low beacb of rock a young man sat, and gazed over the trembling surf which whitened the narrow strand below, with such an intense yearning, such a piteous appeal to the unchecked seas and tameless winds, that my heart ached for him — an exile ! I thought of Campbell's exquisite poem, "There came to the beach a poor Exile of Erin," and from that moment the scene became consecrated to me with a higher spell than that of mere natu- ral beauty. We stayed long at Capri, roaming nightly over its rocky paths ; and ever as we went, the place seemed haunted by these mournful-eyed exiles. They saw the myrtle plain, and the rock-wall sil- vered by moonlight, with far different emotions from ours. We had chosen to live in that lonely island ; they were chained down to it like so many little Xapoleons. We could ramble freely even till midnight ; but the drum called them into their hot. cheerless THE EXILES OF CAPRI. 139 quarters just when the outer world was most at- tractive. Some of them were not ashamed to beg, being forbid to dig. 'We inquired their story from the judge, who was often with us in our walks, and he told us the following : — They had formed part of a brigade of volunteers, organized in 1848 to march against the Austrians in Lombardy. They were the free gift of the nation ; and the kino-, sittino- uneasily, like all his confraternity in those days, whose place was upon thrones, outwardly approv- ed of their demonstrative patriotism, and himself saw them embark — thus sanctioning the enterprise. But alas ! Austria triumphed ; and the volunteers, as many as survived, trooped homewards, sorrow- ful and crestfallen. But little knew they what treachery awaited them at their sovereign's hands ! " The same mouth," said St. James, " doth not send forth blessing and cursing ;" but the apostle lived before the days of the Bourbons. The king, quaking as much before the stern Austrian as he had done before the heady populace, ordered these remnants of a sanguinary defeat to be seized and flung into prison. War had pitied their fall from rapturous hope into black despair — 140 THE EXILES OF CAPRI. had abstained from smiting tlieir body, even as Satan lono- dealt with Job; but the Bourbon claimed " skin for skiri." At length in a merciful mood, he had seventy-five of them swept like gar- bage out of his city, and cast on the lonely, isola- ted little Capri, there to subsist on fourpence a-day, strictly overwatched by the military there. " Four- pence a-day !" said one of the exiles to us ; " why it does not keep us in shoes !" and I beheve him. I know we all wore out an incalculable number of strong shoes made on purpose for those stony tracts, during our month's residence on the island. The story of the young officer whom w^e had seen near the Farra Leone was still more touching. He was of good family, and not personally com- promised in any of the political questions. On the contrary, he had served the king on the bloody 18th of Mav, doino- his dutv conscientiously: thouofh aware that his friends and relations were in the Garde Nation ale, he had not* withdrawn from the misery of meetino- them in conflict ; but shortly afterwards he w^as arrested, and sent a pris- oner to Ponza, where for one whole year he was shut up in a town. He knew not how he had g-iven offence to the government. His name was THE EXILES OF CAPRI. 141 Pomerini Santomaso. From Ponza he was dis- patched to Capri, and there kept at large. I pitied hira all the more for being in so gorgeous a prison. What an aggravation of captivity to see his home daily before him ! Naples — so far, yet so distinct — separated from him by woree barriei-s than miles of fathomless waters, yet so clear in all its details, that perhaps his keen eye could discern the street in which his father dwelt ; the ranges of white bal- cony, in one of which perhaps his mother might come to lean, and gaze across the Bay to that gol- den clasp at its outlet, the island of her son's exile ! No wonder the captive man preferred to sit on the southern side, where only the wide sea-line spread, cheating his confined spirit with a glimpse of infi- nity. Perhaps he sent his thoughts madly over those seas to the great wild deserts of Sahara far beyond, and longed rather to run freely on its savage sands, than to live a prisoner in the torpid loveliness of Capri. He was a gentlemanly youth to behold, cleanlv, well-shaven, and well-mannered. The judge — a Corsican by birth, and not very tame of blood — had probably some sympathy with his hard case ; he consorted openly with him, playing 142 THE EXILES OF CAPRI. draughts with him in a certain wretched Httle cq/e, or smoking amicably bad tobacco in the open air. Every evening we used thus to find them, if Sig. Bourgeois, the judge, w^ere not officially em- ployed ; and they gi-eeted us with all the Italian courtesy as we passed through the old arch of the city gate, on our way to visit three ladies of our own country. These ladies had repaired to Capri on the strength of its fine air and cheap living. But they had a preference for English fare, and " butcher meat ;" and I have already told you how the market prospered. Moreover, to enjoy the scenery of this rugged rock, you must have tire- less limbs as well as sound lungs ; and one of the sisters was asthmatic, the other rheumatic, besides having greatly impaired eyesight. Amiable, lively, and hospitable, they were ill- fitted for the indolent solitude which Tiberius so much loved ; and the experiment, so far as their happiness was concerned, was a failure. They had gone to a house previously engaged for them by a gentleman well known in Campania as " the King of Capri," — a whimsical invalid, who having found the place agree with his own peculiar constitution, recommended it for the most opposite complaints. THE EXILES OF CAPRI. 143 He did not find the island lonely, for he possessed ^'ineyards and land, and took all the minute interest of an hereditary proprietor in his acquisi- tions and his crops. He had chosen for his friends a house looking, not towards Naples the distinct, but Sicily the invisible. Moreover, it had small, low rooms; and if you opened the window you were deafened by the noisy rabble of children playing in the street, and by dawdling mothers disputing from window to window across the dirty narrow alleys. I much preferred our terrace low down upon the shore. Formerly the island-metropolis was also built upon the beach on the only littlle harbor which the place possesses. But the perpetual inroads of the Turks obliged the inhabitants to re- treat upwards to the ridge or spine of rock which commands both seas, and which, when girded with ramparts and towers, proved nearly impregnable. The Eno'lish and French found this in the davs of Nelson, when they struggled together to possess the golden seal of the Neapolitan Bay. But elderly maiden ladies can hardly be sen- sible of these advantages ; and the fortified little city was full, alas ! of evil smells, bad drains, and 144 THE EXILES OF CAPRI. loud quarrelling voices, from which you could not escape. I think the extreme beauty of many of the young \aragos rather aggravated the annoy- ance ; you were provoked doubly, by the charm and by its incessantly breaking before your eyes. At length there came something to interest our countrywomen, just as they were fairly tired of Capri and its stony magnificence. One evening as they sat at work on their terrace (which com- manded a fine prospect of gray roofs and red chimney -pots), they saw a fire suddenly bursting forth in a house not far ofi". Now, generally speaking, in Italy w^e are not much afraid of fire. The thickness of the house walls, the massive stone staircases, the solid stone floors, the paucity of fiirniture, and largeness of the rooms ; these causes combine to diminish in great measure the perils of a conflagration. The same accident which burned to the ground Raggett's Hotel in London, only burnt a set of bed-curtains and a chair in Florence. And I have more than once seen the beginning of a conflagra- tion which in England would have spread from house to house, and from street to street, in Italv THE EXILES OF CAPRI. 145 got under in an hour, lea^dng one scorclied room as proof of its prowess. Were it otherwise, human life would be in continual danger, for no people are more habitually careless of fire than are the Italians. They burn it on low hearths, unprotected by fender, or g-uard, or bar ; they carry it about in earthen baskets, spilling many a red-hot cinder on their path : they stoop over it with flo^dng petticoats, as it smoul- ders in the open brazier ; nay the women keep it under their clothes as they sit, often rising up for- getfully, and upsetting the hot ashes on the floor. Imagine the consequence in houses where wood is the predominating material ! There must have been somethino- unusual in this Capri fire, for very soon the building was in flames, the wind blew in the direction of the English ladies' house, and their alarm was not unreasonable. They sent for the judge, Sig. Bour- geois : he was absent on business at the other end of the island — nay, I believe he had gone over to Sorrento. The women were shriekinof on the " Maronna^'' as the Capriote dialect hath it : the men stood 146 THE EXILES OF CAPRI. paralyzed, gazing at tlie torrents of flame which every moment burst out in stronger gushes. The hot breath of the devouring element came nearer and nearer to the English ladies, till they felt it on their cheeks. The young exiled officer, Pomerini Santomaso, saw the accident. He called rapidly on his fellow- exiles. With all the sudden energy of a strong man roused, he directed how they were to act. Without hesitation, seventeen of these rushed into the flames. A woman and a child were shut up in a room so surrounded by smoke and Are that escape seemed impossible ; but the exiles succeeded in rescuing them, and finally put out the fire by pulling down the whole of the woodwork, and thus depriving the flames of further fuel. If we consider the site of this conflagration, on the top of a strong ridge, on an island that has only one w^ell within reach (for the othei-s are either low down on the beach, or far away at Ana-capri the inaccessible), we shall better appreciate the heroism of the banished men. Thei-e w^as no appliance as in cities, no fire-engines, nor even fire-buckets, ranged in comely rows at the town portal, as I saw at Nuremberg : the only water to be had came from THE EXILES OF CAPRI. 147 a little distance, and was carried in little heavy earthen jars. It \youkl have tasked too much all their ener- gies, had not a little rain fallen towards the close of their labors, which prevented the wind from carryino- the flames any further ; as it was, the house, a laro;e one, of many stories, as is common abroad, was utterly destroyed. '\\^en it was all over, and the English ladies felt safe, great was their gi-atitude. But one of them, whom I shall call Miss Letitia, was of that order of minds who cannot expend feeling in mere words. She was longing to act, and in her own generous heart im- puted to othei"s the same vivid emotions as she felt. " K the king," cried she, '• knew the gallant con- duct of these poor men, whom he has torn from family and home, surely he would see that they are good subjects, he would gi-ant them gTace." Aye, but who was to inform him ? OiBeials of a despotic government are more used to informing against individuals than in favor of them. The Bourbon has many spies to tell him of his children's errors, none to bring to light their Wrtues. The restoration of one disgraced is not an every-day event in Cam- pania. 148 THE EXILES OF CAPRI. These poor men, too poor to bribe, too insig- nificant to threaten, might have done a thousand such heroic deeds ere their jailors cared to make it known. But there was a brave-hearted woman there, with more moral courage under her cap- ribbons than exists under all the shakos and helmets of the Neapolitan army. " Rather than let such spirits pine away their lives here, I will write myself," quoth she ; and write she did. She sent for all the names of those personally eno;ao-ed at the fire: fourteen were all that she could procure. She enclosed the piece of paper containing these names, exactly as they put them into her supplica, or petition ; and the whole was duly forwarded to his majesty. I can fancy Miss Letitia's anxiety when the bark pushed fairly off. Ten days elapsed, and then came a boat full of gens d'armes, with an order to the judge of the island, that those fourteen were free. The one wdio had supplied the names to Miss Letitia, a fine young Calabrian, came to thank her ; they were called over, he said, in rotation, to hear the good news from the judge, exactly as the names were written in Miss Letitia's list. THE EXILES OF CAPRI. 149 The judge, however, would not believe that the " Signora Inglise" had any thing to do with it. Miss Letitia and her sister, with happy hearts, went down to the beach to see the embarkation of the liberated ones. O, how I would have liked to have seen the sight ! but long ere that I had left the island in ill health. The young men crowded round their benevolent friend, and kissed her hands repeatedly ; in the warmth of their gratitude they did the same to her sister, who, if less energetic, was to the full as sym- pathizing. There was a woman among them, hap- pier even than the respited prisoners. She was the mother of one ; she had fallen sick, probably from long anxiety and hope deferred, and had been per- mitted to come over to Capri to see him. Now she was returning with him to freedom, at least to that diluted freedom which despots bestow upon their subjects. Another of the exiles was the nephew of the famous singer, Lablache, the son of his sister. But in the middle of this joy were some sad faces — the other three, whose names had been omitted from the pardon. Seventeen had dis- tinguislied themselves at the lire, but only fourteen 150 THE EXILES OF CAPRI. had been mentioned in the list. Tliey reminded Miss Letitia of this. " You furnished me with only fourteen names," she replied ; " but I am willing to try once more to melt the royal heart." And this noble woman, who never w^earied in well doing, prepared herself for what is always an obnoxious task, the repetition of a request. On the beach there, in presence of all the exiles, she had the three omitted names scribbled on a dirty slip of paper, the best produce of a Capnote escritoire. Then in a joyous httle party, the fourteen set sail for Naples, their hearts bounding in them that they were free. And do you really think they were, my dear readers ? Alas ! they had found favor in the eyes of the King, but "they were still in the clutches of his vile harriers. They landed at Naples, not to reach home and embrace rejoicing relatives — oh, no ; simply to go to prison ! You see the Bourbon definition of liberty ! It was a great favor to allow them to exchange the large prison of Capri, vaulted by the sky, for one of the gloomy, damp dungeons of the Castel del THE EXILES OF CAPRI. 151 Ovo, ou whose weedy walls the waves beat iin- resistino-lv. Miss Letitia was in agony. After all her exer- tions, was this the result ? She wrote to the King- again, with the other three names, and another boat with gens d\irmes came and fetched them, and took them to the pleasant variety of a metro- politan jail. I suspect, on this latter embarkation, the raptures were less demonstrative. They had already had a sermon on the text, " Put not your trust in princes." Miss Letitia applied to the po- hce. She was informed that it was requisite for each pardoned exile to find some respectable per- son, willing to answer as caution or bail, for their future good conduct. You may beheve how diffi- cult this was of attainment in a nation of spies and of concealed traitors, where every man suspected his neighbor, and friends were betrayed by familiar fiiends. Read the defence of Carlo Poerie, and say, my English brother, how you would like to answer for the a;ood conduct of anv man amono- a society such as he depicts, from fatal experience of its treachery. One or two, however, did obtain this bail ; most of them languished till Christmas, the fii-e having occurred about the end of August. 152 THE EXILES OF CAPRI. But tlieir good angel flagged not in her care ; she went herself to the pohce office ; she had an interview with the director of the police. Ah ! it must have been a fine contrast — those two human spirits thus brought into contact. The British woman, honest, fearless, self-forgetting, pleading ardently the cause of the oppressed; and the Neapolitan man, cun- ning, courteous, and remorselessly untruthful, gloss- ing over the vices of the administration, with smooth lies and quicksand promises ! At last, however, the good genius triumphed, and Miss Letitia had her reward. The seventeen were free! offering up thanksgivings in all the churches, I can answer for them, for the mercies vouchsafed by the Madonna, the King, and the Signora Inglise ! But woe that there is still a dark place ! — that after all I dare not say freely, " Well done, Ferdi- nando Secondo !" He who directed the whole exertions at the fire, who summoned his fellow-exiles, who superintended, encouraged, and shared their danger, the brave and gentle Pomerini Santomaso is still an exile and a prisoner. For him no grace, for him no return : his mother may sit in vain at her balcony, and THE EXILES OF CAPRI. 153 gaze across tlie seas; no little boat-full of gens d'armes brino-s back lier banished son. His fate must be sadder than ever now, left alone in tbat solitary isle, from whose beach he has twice seen men more deeply implicated in rebellion than himself return to liberty and home. You must not think that Miss Letitia deserted him : she TVTote again and again, petitioning the King and the Police (I w^onder which of these twain are the more arbitrary). The officer himself feels comdnced that there is some secret enemy of his, who has the royal ear, and who prejudices the sovereigii against him. Happy country, where the ti-eedom of an innocent man hangs in such a balance ! I have ended. No doubt it was a royal deed, the pardoning of those seventeen ; I cannot call it generous, for the previous act of sending them there involved as much baseness and treachery as would blacken a whole lifetime. But it was just. And it is a more sublimely difficult thing for a Bourbon to be just than for a Victoria to be magnanimous. We cannot in our land comprehend the dire in- fluences of evil education, wicked courtiers, mean advisers, and a degrading superstition bearing on 1 154 THE EXILES OF CAPRI. the character of a Neapohtan king. The best of them have been faineants^ the worst have been tyrants. Honor then to Ferdinando Secondo, that he could for once push aside the hea^y trappings of his mischievous government, and answer directly a direct and simple aj^peal to his better feelings. He has shown us that even for him it is possible to be a good king, once in a way ; and we could weep tears of blood to think how seldom, how very sel- dom he has been allowed to have that opportunity. Vice, licentiousness, and frivolity are the charac- teristics of his court ; falsehood, cruelty, and rapa- city the engines of his government ; brute igno- rance, hopeless slaveiy, an utter incapacity for truth or honor the effects upon his people ! How can I say, "Well done, Ferdinando Secondo, without a sigh, when I remember thee, Pomerini Santomaso? SHE'S DEAD BY W. C. BENNETT. THE sycamore shall hear its bees again — The willow droop its green adown the sun ; But thou, O heart, shalt yearn for spring in vain ! — Thy Mays are done ! Even from the graveyard-elms the rook shall caw Of love ; of love the dove shall make its moan ; New Springs shall see the bliss my glad Spring saw — I, grief alone. O heart ! to whose sweet pulses danced the year, The dirge above thy gladness hath been sung ; The faded hours upon thy youth's sad bier Have grave-flowers flung ! She died — and with her died, O life, for thee. The flush of love, and all hope's cloudless dreams! Sunless — of mirth henceforth thou, heart, must see But moonhght-gleams. 156 she's dead. O, shrouded sweetness ! Lo! those lips are Avliite; The roses of the year no more are red! What is the silver lily to our sight ? Thou— thou art fled ! O, life ! O, sadness ! thou the deepening gloom Of dying Autumn for thy skies would'st crave — Would'st see all beauty, withering to the tomb, Fade oVp her grave ! 3 !■ i . > ' I 111? > •> 1 > • • 3 » ' •> > ) > J 1 •ii';;r„,M.., J,, "ii.,>. « c c < < c c r c f THE INXKEEPEE'S SOjST. BY W. M. THE night was dark, the storm was loud, ^ The ground was shrouded white ; The weary horseman spurred his steed Swift towards the distant light. His way had been a toilsome one ; He sought the roadside inn. As pilgrims on life's dreary road Oft seek a heav'n to win. He reached the door and loudly knocked, Yet long was forced to wait — For sleep had seized on all within — The hour was very late. But roused at length the landlord rose, "With many a snarl and yawn, And let the stranger seek his fire, And rest until the dawn. 158 THE innkeeper's son. The dawn came round — yet still the horse Was in the stable found — And ne'er again did meet his ear His master's footsteps' sound. The innkeeper was grim and old — A man of bad renown ; 'T was said by many, far and near, That death was in his frown. Wild stories were abroad — men said However bleak the night, The traveller should keep away From Bullraan's house of fright. The neighbors met in conference. And loud the clamor grew ; They said the innkeeper should bide The law's deep-searching view. But ere their purpose could be shown, The innkeeper in bed Was found one morning, in his gore — All ghastly— stony— dead. And by his side a paper lay, Enough all hearts to fright ! — Confessing slaughter of his son — The traveller of that night. THE innkeeper's SON. 159 The son had long been o'er the wave ; Estranged had be become — And thus at his own father's inn, He found a bloody home ! They buried Bullman near his son— Aveng'd by his own hand ; The roadside inn stood idle there, And shunn'd on ev^ry hand. m THE HEIRESS AN"D HER WOOERS : OR TELL THE TRUTH ALWAYS. BY Mils. ABDY. " As the Diamond excels every jewel we find, So Truth is the one peerless gem of the mind !" ANEW tragedy was about to be brouglit forth at the Haymarket Theatre. Report spoke loudly of its merits, and report touched closely on the name of its author. Either Talbot or Stratford must have written it ; those regular attendants at rehearsal, who seemed equally interested in every situation, equally at home in every point, through- out the piece. Some said that it was a Beaumont and Fletcher concern, in which both parties were equally implicated; and this conjecture did not appear improbable, for the young men in question THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. 161 were indeed united together in bonds of more tlian ordinary friendship. They had been schoolfellows and brother-collegians ; each was in the enjoyment of an easy indej^endence, and their tastes, pursuits, and ways of h^dng were very similar. So congen- ial, indeed, were they in taste, that they had both fixed their preference on the same lady ! Adelaide Linley was an accomplished and pretty heiress, -who, fortunately for them, was the ward of Mr. Grayson, an eminent solicitor, with whom they had recently renewed an early acquaintance. Rivalry, however, failed of its usual effect in their case, it created no dissension between them; indeed the manner of Adelaide was very far removed from coquetry, and although it was evident that she pre- fen-ed the friends to the rest of her wooers, she showed to neither of them evidence of any feeling beyond those of fiiendship and good will. The night of the tragedy arrived. Mr. and Mrs. Grayson, their ward, and two or three of her " wooers," were in attendance before the risino- of the curtain ; they were just as ignorant as other people touching the precise identity of the drama- tist about to encounter the awful fiat of the pubhc. Talbot and Stratford were sheltered in the deep re- 7* 1G2 THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. cesses of a private box : had tliey been in a public one, nobody could have doubted which was the hero of the evening. Talbot's flushed cheek, eager eye, and nervous restlessness, plainly indicated that the tragedy was not written on the Beaumont and Fletcher plan, but that it owed its existence entire- ly to himself. The curtain rose; the tragedy was admirably performed, and many of the speeches were beauti- fully written ; but it lacked the indescribable charm of stage effect, so necessary to stage success ; the last act was heavy and uninteresting, great disap- probation was expressed, and finally another piece was announced for the succeeding evening ! Adelaide w^as much concerned ; it mattered no- thing to her whether the play was written by Tal- bot or Stratford : she Avished well to each of them, and sympathized in the disappointment of the au- thor. Talbot, who had anticipated stepping for- ward to the front of the box, and gracefully bowing his acknowledgments to the applauding audience, now found himself under the necessitv of m akin 2: an abrupt exit, muttering invectives on their stupid- ity ; and Stratford repaired to his own lodgings, aware that Talbot, in the present state of his mind, THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. 163 was unfitted for the society even of his favorite friend. The next morning, Stratford had half fin ished breakfost when Xalbot entered the room. Stratford was about to accost him with a hvelv remark, that " he hojDcd the severit}^ of the audi- ence had not spoiled his night's rest ;" but a mo- mentary glance at his friend told him that such a remark would be cruelly sarcastic : it was quite clear that his night's rest had been spoiled ; it was quite clear that what had been " sport " to the pub- lic had been " death " to the dramatist ; it was quite clear that the " Russian Brothers," althouo-h they had ceased to exist on the boards of the Hay- market theatre, were still hovering about like sha- dowy apparitions, " to plague the inventor !" "Read these papers," said Talbot, placing four or five newspapers in the hands of Stratford, "and do not wonder that I look and feel miserable at having thus exposed myself to the derision of the world." Stratford hastily finished a cup of coffee, and pushed away a just broken egg; it seemed quite unfeehng to think of eating and drinking in the presence of so much wretchedness. He turned to the dramatic article of one newspaper after another, 164 THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. expecting to find his friend victimized, slandered, and laughed to scorn ; but in reality, as my read- ers may perhaps be prepared to hear, the critiques were very fair, reasonable critiques, indeed ; and it was only the sensitiveness of the author which had converted them into weapons of offence. " I am sure," said Stratford, after the scrutiny was concluded, " the dramatic critic of the ' Times ' speaks very kindly of you ; does not he say that there is much beauty in many of the speeches, only that the drama is unsuited for representa- tion?" " Exactly so," replied Talbot, drily ; " the only defect he finds in it is, that it is perfectly unsuited for the purpose for which it was written !" " But," persisted Stratford, " he says that he is certain you would succeed better in a second attempt." "As I shall most assuredly never make a second attempt," replied Jalbot, " his opinion, or that of any one else on the subject, is of very little im- portance to me." " Surely, however," said Stratford, " it is better to receive the commendation of writers of judg- ment and ability, than the applause of the one- THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. 165 shilling gallery. Arbuscula \yas an actress on the Roman stage, who laughed at the hisses of the populace, while she received the applause of the knio-hts." Talbot only replied to this anecdote by a muttered exclamation of impatience. And here let me give a few words of advice to my readers. Whenever you condole with those in trouble, do it in the old-t'ashioned cut-and-dried way ; it is true that your stock phrases and tedious truisms may cause you to be called a bore, but thousands of highly respectable condoling friends have been called bores before you, and thousands will be called so after you. But if you diverge at all fi-om the beaten track, and attempt to introduce a literary allusion, or venture on a classical illustra- tion, depend upon it you will be cited ever after- wards as an extremely hard-hearted pei-son, intent alone on displaying your own wit or wisdom, in- stead of properly entering into the sorrows of your friend. " The 'Morning Chronicle,' " resumed Stratford, "speaks bighly of the scene between the brothers at the end of the second act." " Yes," replied Talbot, " and the ' Morning Chron- IG(3 THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. icle' winds up its critique by advising me never to write another drama." " Did you not say just now that you never in- tended to do so ?" asked Stratford. " How I wish, Stratford," exclaimed Talbot, im- petuously, " that I could make you enter into my feelings. How very differently you would think and speak if ijou were the author of a condemned tragedy ! " " I do not consider," said Stratford, " that if such were the case, I should in any resj)ect think or speak differently. I should feel far more pleasure in knowing that I had written a work which de- served to be successful, than mortification at the want of good taste in a mixed and misjudging au- dience w^hich had caused it to fail of success." Stratford having been unfortunate in his previous attempts at consolation, had taken some pains to devise a prettily turned speech ; but he little thought how completely successful it would prove — the coun- tenance of Talbot actually lighted up with pleasure. " Are you really sincere in what you have said ?" he replied. "I have a particular reason for wish- ing to know ; do not reply to me in a hurry ; take a few minutes for consideration." THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. 16 Y Somewhat surprised, Stratford began the course of mental examination prescribed by Jiis friend ; and the result of it was, that although he had only- meant to speak civilly, he found that he had been speaking truly ; for Stratford had a great admira- tion for Kterary talents, and a gTeat wish to possess them ; he also knew that Adelaide Linley was a warm admirer of dramatic poetry ; he could not doubt that her judgment would lead her to approve of the " Ptussian Brothers ;" and in regard to its condemnation, she, like every other intelligent per- son, must be fully aware that the plays that read best in the closet are often least adapted to the stao-e. " I have considered the matter again," said Strat- ford, after a pause, " and I repeat what I pre^dously said; I should be glad to be the author of the ' Russian Brothers,' even although it has been con- demned ; but after all, Talbot, how useless is this convei-sation ! no good wishes on your part, or aspiring wishes on my own, can make me the author of a drama to which I never contributed an idea or a line." " Yet," said Talbot, " I do not see why the busi- ness might not be arranged to our mutual satisfac- 168 THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. tion. You -wish to be known as the author of this play ; I, perhaps foohshly and irritably, repent that I ever wrote it ; no one but ourselves is aware which of us is the author : why should you not own it ? I will most joyfully give up my claim to you." Stratford was a little startled at this proposi- tion. " But, should the deception be discovered," he said, "people will allege that, like the jay, I have been strutting in borrowed plumes." " Not at all," replied Talbot ; " your plumes are not borrowed, but are willingly bestowed upon you by the owner ; besides, how should any discovery ensue, except from our own disclosures ? You, of course, will not wish to disown what you consider it a credit to gain ; and for myself, I give you my word, that should the ' Russian Brothers ' be des- tined to attain high celebrity at a future day, I shall never assert my rights of paternity — they are the children of your adoption ; but remember, you adopt them for life." " Willingly," replied Stratford ; " and now let us pay a visit at Mr. Grayson's house. Doubtless, the fair Adelaide will be impatient to pour balm into THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. 169 the wounds suffered by one of her adorers ; pity is sometimes aldn to love." " It is more frequently akin to contempt," mur- mured Talbot, in too low a voice to be heard ; but nevertheless the friends proceeded on their way, talkino- much less cheerfullv, and lookino; much less contented than might be supposed, when it is con- sidered that they had recently entered into a com- pact so satisfactory to both of them. I wish I could say that conscience bore any share in their disquietude, and that each felt grieved and humili- ated at the idea that he was violatino- the sacred purity of truth ; but such was not the case. Either Talbot or Stratford would have shrunk from the idea of telling; a falsehood of malio-nity or dishon- esty ; but the polite untruths of convenience or flattery were as " household words" in their voca- bulary. A dim foreboding of evil, however, now seemed to ovei*shadow them. Talbot had some- thing of the same sensation which a man may be supposed to have, who has cast off a troublesome child in a fit of irritation. His trao-edv had been a source of great disappointment and mortification to him ; but still it was his own, it had denved existence fi-om him ; he had spent many tedious 170 THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. days and nights watching over it before lie could bring it to perfection ; he was not quite happy in the idea that he had for ever made over all right and title in it to another. Stratford also was some- what dispirited ; he could not help thinking about a paper in the ' Spectator ' concerning a " Mountain of Miseries," where Jupiter allowed eveiy one to lay down his own misery, and take up that of another person, each individual in the end being bitterly dissatisfied with the result of the experi- ment. Stratford had laid down his literary insig- nificance, and taken up the burden of unsuccessful authorship : should he hve to repent it ? This in the course of a little time will appear. Adelaide Linley sat in the drawing-room of her guardian, eagerly awaiting a visit from her two favorite admirers. She was not alone, neither was one of her "wooers" with her. Her companion was a quiet-looking young man, Avhose i^ersonal appearance had nothing in it to recommend him to notice, although a physiognomist would have been struck with the good expression of his countenance. His name was Alton, and he was the confidential clerk of her guardian. He had never presumed to address the heiress, save with distant respect ; THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. l7l but she valued him for the excellent qualities which had made him a high favorite with Mr. Grayson, and always treated him with kindness and consid- eration. On the present occasion, however, she was e\'idently somewhat out of humor, and ac- cepted the sheet of paper from him, on which he had been transcribing for her some passages from a new poem, with a cold expression of thanks. Alton. lino-ered a moment at the door of the room. " There is peculiar beauty," he said, " in the clos- ing lines of the last passage." " There is," rephed the heiress, carelessly ; " but I should scarcely have thought, Mr. Alton, that you would have taken much interest in poetry : why did you not accompany us last night, to see the new tragedy, although so repeatedly pressed to do so ?" "I had a reason for declining to go, Miss Lin- ley," said Alton. "Probably you disapprove of dramatic repre- sentations," said Adelaide ; '' in which case I ap- prove your consistency and conscientiousness in' refusing to frequent them." Alton would have liked to be approved by Ade- laide ; but he Hked to speak the truth still better. 172 THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. " That was not my reason," he replied ; " I do not disapprove of the drama, nor could I expect any thing that was not perfectly excellent and \m- exceptionable from the reputed authors of the tra- gedy in question — I had another reason." " May I beg to know it ?" said xVdelaide, half in jest and half in earnest. Alton's cheek became flushed, but he replied, "I am not in the habit of withholding the truth, when expressly asked for it. I never go to pubhc amusements, because I object to the expense." Alton could scarcely have made any speech that would more have lowered him in Adelaide's esti- mation. The young can make allowance for " the good old gentlemanly ^dce" of avarice, in those who have lived so many years in the world that gathering gold appears to them as suitable a pas- time for age as that of gathering flowers for child- hood ; but avarice in youth, like a lock of white hair in the midst of sunny curls, seems sadly out of its place. Adelaide knew that Alton received a liberal stipend from her guardian, and that he had also inherited some property from a cousin ; he had not any near relations, he was doubtless hoarding entirely for his own profit; he was a THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. 173 gold worsliipper in a small way, accumulating- the precious metal by petty economies* in London, in- stead of going out manfully to dig it up by lumps in California ! She therefore merely repHed, " Yen are very ^?-?fc?r/i^, ^Ir. Alton," with a marked and meanino- intonation of the last word, which con- verted it into a severe epigram, and took up a book with an air of such unmistakable coldness, that the discomfited economist was o-lad to beat a re- treat. Adelaide's solitude was soon more agreea- bly enlivened by the arrival of Talbot and Strat- ford. Talbot Cjuickly dispelled all emban-assment as to the subject of the tragedy, by playfully say- ing, " I bring with me an ill-fated author, who I am sure you ^vill agree with me deserved much better treatment than he has met with." Hereupon, Adelaide offered words of consolation, and very sweet, kind, and winning words they were ; indeed, Stratford deemed them c^uite sufii- cient to compensate for the failure of a tragedy ; but then, we must remember that Stratford was not really the author of the " Russian Brothers ;" his wounds were only fictitious, and therefore it was no very difiicult task to heal them. Possibly Talbot mio-ht have felt a little uneasv at Adelaide's 174 THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. excess of kindness, had he been present during the whole of Stratford's visit ; but Talbot had soon made his escape to his club ; he had several friends there, who suspected him of having written the tragedy of the jDreceding night ; a few hours ago he had dreaded the idea of meeting them ; but now he encountered them ^vith fearless ojDenness, expressing his concern for the failure of Stratford's tragedy, and remarking that " the poor fellow was so terribly cut up about it, that he had advised him to keep quiet for a few days, and let the affair blow over." Talbot and Stratford dined together ; both were in good s^Dirits ; neither of them had yet begun to feel any of the evils of the deceptive course they were pursuing. A week passed, and the sky was no longer so fair and cloudless. Adelaide's pity for Stratford was evidently far more akin to love than contempt ; she was an admirer of genius, and was never wearied of talking about the tragedy, which had really made a deep impression upon her. She requested Stratford to let her have the rough copy of it ; the request was not so embarrassing as might be supposed, for Stratford had been obliged to ask Talbot to give it to him, that he might be THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. 175 able to answer Adelaide's continual questions as to the conduct of the story and development of the characters : the handwriting of the friends was very similar, and the blotted, interhned manuscript revealed no secrets as to its especial inditer. " Ee- member," said Adelaide, as she playfidly received it, " that I consider this as a gift, not as a loan ; it will probably be introduced into various circles." Talbot was present at the time, and felt a pang of inexpressible acuteness at the idea of the off- spring of his own brain being paraded in " various circles" as the production of Stratford. He could not offer any opposition to Adelaide's intentions ; but he revenged himself by constant taunting allusions to the mortifications of an unsuccessful dramatist, shunned by the manager, scorned by the performers, and even a subject of sarcastic pity to the scene-shifters ! These speeches hurt and oftended Stratford, especially as they were always made in the presence of Captain Nesbitt, another of the " wooers" of the heiress, who shared Talbot's newly-born jealousy of Stratford, and consequently was delighted both to prompt and keep up any line of conversation likely to humiliate him in the 176 THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. presence of bis lady-love. A sliort time ago Talbot and Stratford bad been generous and amicable rivals ; but tbey bad ceased to walk togetber in peace from tlie period wben tbey entered on tbe crooked patbs of dissimulation. Wben Adelaide bad attentively read tbe manuscript tragedy, slie transcribed it in a fair band'; sbe bad already fixed on a destination for it. One of tbe oldest friends of Adelaide's late fatber was a fasbionable London publisber. Adelaide bad kejDt up frequent inter- course witb bim, and waited on bim witb ber manuscript, secure of being kindly received, even if be did not grant ber request. Fortunately, bow- ever, for ber, be bad been present at tbe represen- tation of tbe " Russian Brotbers," and bad been extremely struck witb tbe beauty of tbe dialogue, and be readily agreed to print it. Wben tbe proofs were ready, Adelaide, quite sure that sbe sbould be giving great pleasure to Stratford, an- nounced to bim wbat sbe bad done. Stratford nervously started, and gave a burried, apprebensive glance at Talbot. " It will be certain to be a favorite witb tbe reading pubbc, will it not ?" said Adelaide, ad- dressing Talbot. THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. Ill '"■ I am sure it will," answered Talbot, with ani- mation, forgetting for the moment every thing but that he was the author of the " Russian Brothers," and that the " Russian Brothers " was going to be printed. " How well the scene will read between the brothers at the end of the second act !" " It will indeed," returned Adelaide, with an approving glance at Talbot, whom she had lately- suspected of being somewhat envious of the genius of his rival ; " really we must tiy and inspire our friend with a little more confidence. I don't think he is at all aware of his own talents." " I don't think he is, indeed," said Talbot, with a distant approach to a sneer. "But my favorite passage," pursued Adelaide, " is the soliloquy of Orloif in the third act. Will you repeat it Mr. Stratford T' Stratford began to repeat it as blunderirgly and monotonously as he had been wont to repeat " My name is jSTorval " in his schoolboy days ; but Talbot quickly took possession of it, and recited it with feeling and spirit. " How strange it is," said Adelaide, " that authors rarely give effect to their own writings! But how beautiful is the sentiment of that speech 8 178 Tin: HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. — more beautiful, I tliink, every time one hears it. How did you feel, Mr. Stratford, when you wrote those lines ?" Stratford declared, with sincerity, that he had not the slightest recollection how he felt; and Adelaide asked Talbot to repeat another speech, and praised his memory and feehng, in return for which he praised her good taste. Poor Talbot, he was somewhat in the position of the hero of a German tale : a kind of metempsychosis seemed to have taken place in relation to himself and his friend, and he did not know whether to be dehghted that his tragedy should be admired, or angry that it should be admired as the composition of Stratford. All contradictory feel- ings, however, merged into unmistakable re- sentment and discontent when the tragedy was pubhshed : it became decidedly popular ; the Re- views accorded wonderfully in their commendation of it, and the first edition was speedily sold off. Stratford's name was not prefixed to it, at his own especial request ; he did not want to plunge deeper into the mazes of falsehood than he had already done. But Talbot had proclaimed with such un- wearied persrverance that Stratford was the author THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. 1*79 of the condemned traojedy, that his name on the title-page would have been quite an unnecessary identification. Poor Talbot I he certainly had much to try his patience at present. Stratford re- ceived abundance of invitations in virtue of his successful authorship ; he went to many parties in the character of a hon, where he was treated with much solemn reverence, and his most common- place remark was evidently treasured as the quint- essence of wit and judgment. These festivities Talbot did not wish to share. But frequently Stratford was invited to literarv, real literary parties, where every body in the room was cele- brated for doino' somethino; better than it is done by people in general ; and were any halt-dozen giiests taken at random from the assemblage, they would have sufficed to stud an ordinary party with stars. Here Stratford was introduced to brilhant novelists, exquisite poets, profound scholars, and men of searchino- science. Here also he met with literary women as gentle and unassuming as they were gifted and celebrated, who wore their laurels with as much simplicity as if they had been wild flowers ; and who, so far from possessing any of the old-fashioned pedantry which has aptly been 180 THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. defined as "intellectual tight lacing," were ready to converse on the most trite and every-day sub- jects — casting, however, over every suLject on which they conversed the pure and cheering sun- shine of genius. All these new acquaintances of Stratford's were extremely kind and encouraging in their manner towards him, in<]uiring into his tastes and employ- ments, praising him for that which he had already done, and encoui-ao'ino; him to do more in future. Such society and such conversation would have re- alized Talbot's earliest aspirations, and he could not wilhngly cede those privileges to a man who had never Avritten half-a-dozen lines to deserve them. Yet Talbot was not a vain nor a selfish man ; had Stratford been really gifted by nature with superior abilities to his own, he w^ould have been quite satis- fied that he should have reaped the harvest of them. But that Stratford should be distinguished at once by the notice of the gifted ones of earth, and by the smiles of Adelaide Linley, and that he might himself have been occupying that doubly enviable position, had he only kept in the simple path of truth — it was indeed a trial to the nerves and to the temper. At length, one day, when the rivals were alone, the smouldering fire burst foi'th. THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. 181 "I am very much surprised, Stratford," said Tal- bot, flattering himself that he was speaking in a remarkably cool, self-possessed tone, when in reahty his cheeks were flushed with excitement, and his voice trembled with irritation — " I am very much surprised that you can continue from day to day to eniov literary celebrity to which you must feel that vou have not the shadow of a claim." Stratford did not return an angry answer to his friend ; he was on the winning side, and successM people can always afibrd to be good-tempered. " I do not see," he replied, " how I can possibly escape all the marks of kindness and distinction that are shown to me." " Have you any wish to escape them ?" asked Talbot, sneeringly. "Before you reproach me," said Stratford, "I think you should remember at whose suggestion the deception was first entered into." " I did not foresee the consequences," said Tal- bot. " Pardon me," said Stratford ; " the consequences %vere foreseen by both of us. I remarked that I was unwilling to strut, like the jay, in borrowed plumes; and you replied that if the 'Russian 182 THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. Brothers ' attained the greatest celebrity, you ^YOllld never assert your rights of paternity." "You certainly possess an excellent memory," said Talbot, sarcastically, " whatever other inental attributes you may be deficient in. I remember the promise of secrecy to which you allude, but no promise was made on ijour part ; therefore if you are inclined to descend from youi- usurped position, and give it up to the rightful owner, there is no cause why you should refrain from doing so." "And can you really," asked Stratford, with sur- prise, " expect that I should expose myself to the censure and ridicule of society for the purpose of reinstating you in rights which you voluntarily made over to me ?" Talbot paused some time before he replied. " I feel," he said, " that I have expected too much. I rescind my proposal. I ^^^ll only require you to make known the truth under a strict promise of secrecy to one individual." " And that individual is Adelaide Linley, I con- clude," said Stratford. " It is," rephed Talbot : " let Adelaide but know me as I really am, and I do not heed — at least I will endeavor not to heed — the opinion of the THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. 183 world ; besides, Stratford, recollect that if you many Adelaide, she must certainly find out the deception eventually; she can never believe that the fount of poetry has suddenly dried up within vou : no doubt, indeed, she has already beo-un to wonder that vou have not oiven vent to ' a woful sonnet made to your mistress's eyebrow.' " Stratford returned no answer, but the conversa- tion left a deep impression on his mind ; and he felt that it would indeed be the most honest and upright course that he could pursue, to confess the whole truth to Adelaide, and then silently to with- draw himself from the hterary society of which he was so httle calculated to be a member. Xor was this resolution of Stratford's so great a sacrifice as mio-ht be imao^ined ; he had for some time felt himself verv little at ease amono- his brilhant new associates ; he was aware that he was only " cloth of frieze," although circumstances had for a time matched him with " cloth t)f gold." He could not respond to the hterary quotations and allusions con- stantly made in his presence. He had heard some wonder expressed that he had no scraps in his port- folio to show confidentially to admiring friends ; and the editor of a leading periodical had kindly suo- 184 THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. gested to him a subject for a tale in blank verse, wliich, if written at all in tlie style of the tragedy, should, he said, receive immediate attention from him. Then, in other circles, young ladies had re- quested contributions for their albums, and Ade- laide had more than once exj^ressed her wish to have new words written for some of her favorite old airs. Stratford, the morning after his conversation with Talbot, sought the presence of Adelaide, resolved that, if his courage did not fail him, he would make a confession of his misdeeds, and an offer of his hand and heart before he left the house. He found Adelaide, as he had wished, alone ; she was reading a letter when he entered, and it dropped on the ground as she rose to receive him ; he lifted it up, and recognized the hand in which it was written ; it was that of Captain jS'es- bitt, and the letter appeared to be of some length. Stratford felt disposed to be rather jealous ; Cap- tain Nesbitt was well connected, remarkably hand- some, very hvely, and had, like Captain Absolute, " an air of success about him which was mighty provoking." " Do not let me inteiTupt your perusal of that letter," he said, rather coldly and stiffly. THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. 185 " You have doubtless," said 'Adelaide with a smile, '' seen the handwriting ; you do not pre- vent me from reading the letter — I have just finished it : and although 3'our visit may cause my answer to it to be delayed a little while longer, the delay is of no manner of importance, since I shaU only write a few line-^ of no very agreeable purport." " I pity the poor fellow from my heart," exclaim- ed Stratford, and he spoke with sincerity ; he could afford to pity Captain Xesbitt when he knew that Adelaide was about to reject him. " He does not deserve your pity," said Adelaide. " Can the o'entle and kind-hearted Adelaide ex- press herself so harshly ?" asked Stratford, feeKng more and more generously inclined towards his rival, when he saw how much he was disdained. " I must explain myself," said Adelaide ; " for I should be very soriy tliat you (and the delighted lover actually fancied that he detected a slight em- phasis on the word you) should believe me to be hard-hearted and unkind. Captain Xesbitt has considerably fallen in my estimation during- the last few days. I have received abundant proofs that he does not always love and resgect the truth." 8* 186 THE HEIRESS AND ITER WOOERS, Stratford began to feel rather nervous ; he had a parti ciilar dishke to conversation which turned on the subject of love and respect for the truth. " Captain Nesbitt," continued Adelaide, " Avhen he first became acquainted with me, informed me, that although his present property was but limited, he expected to succeed to the estates of an old and infirm uncle residing in Wales. I was lately in company with a family who happened to live in the immediate neighborhood of this wealthy old uncle ; he has indeed large estates, but he has two sons in excellent health, to inherit them." Adelaide here paused, expecting to hear an ex- clamation of indignant surprise from Stratford; but it was not uttered. Stratford was by no means troubled with an over development of conscientious- ness, and it appeared to him that Captain Nesbitt had committed a very venial offence in keeping two Welsh cousins in the background, who might have interfered so materially with his interests. " Doubtless," he at length remarked, " this sub- terfuge on Captain Nesbitt's part was owing to the excess of his affection for vou." " I doubt it very much," said Adelaide ; " affec- tion is always prone to overrate the good qualities M THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. 187 of its object; now Captain Nesbitt must have greatly underrated mine, if lie could deem it likely that, possessing as I do an ample sufReiency of tlie goods of fortune, it could make any difference to me whether the lover of my choice were wealthy or otherwise." " Could you not in any case deem an untruth excusable V asked Stratford. "In none," rephed Adelaide; "but there are cases in which I deem it particularly inexcusable : the falsehoods of pride or vanity, the assumption of being better, or richer, or wiser than we really are — these are, in my opinion, as contemptible as they are reprehensible." " Men of the world," pursued Stratford, " are apt to think very Httle of an occasional deviation from truth." " Pardon me," said Adelaide, " if I entirely differ from you. Should one man of the world tax an- other with the violation of ti-uth in homely, down- right phrase, what is the consequence ? the insult is considered so unbearable, that in many cases the offender has even been called on to expiate his words with his life. JS'oav, if a departure from truth be so mere a trifle, why should not the accu- 188 THE HEIRESS AND IIEK WOOERS. sation of having departed from trutli be also con- sidered as a trifle ?" Stratford was silent ; liis shallow sophistry could not contend Avith Adelaide's straightforward right- mindedness, and he was rejoiced when the entrance of visitors put an end to the conversation. A tete- a-tete with Adelaide had on that morning no charms for him ; he lacked nerve for either a con- fession or a proposal ! Perhaps, however, it would have been better for Stratford if he could have sum- moned courao-e to have outstaid the visitoi's, and revealed every thing to Adelaide ; for discovery was impending over his head from a quarter where he could not possibly expect it, inasmuch as he was ignorant of the very existence of the person about to give the information. Every one must have been repeatedly called on to remark, that in societj^ there seems to be a mysterious agency perpetually .at work, bearing news from one quarter to another apparently quite unconnected with it. In every class or set we meet with some person who makes us cognizant of the sajdngs and doings of another class oi« set, from which we have been hitherto re- removed at an immeasurable distance. Often the information thus p-ained is desultory and uninterest- THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. 189 ing, and it passes away from our mind almost as soon as we receive it ; occasionally it strikes upon some connecting chord, and we eagerly listen and respond to it. When Adelaide Linley left school, she had, like most vouno' o-irls, a favorite friend, with whom she kept up a regular correspondence, at the rate of three sheets of rose-colored note-paper a week. Emma Penryn, however, lived in Cornwall ; and as year after year passed by, and the friends never met, the correspondence decidedly slackened. Still, however, it was never wholly given up, and Ade- laide had written to her friend shortly after the in- troduction of Talbot and Stratford to her, mention- ing their names, and speaking of them as likely to prove pleasant and desirable acquaintances. The day after Adelaide's interview with Stratford, a letter anived for her from Emma Penryn. She apologized for her long silence, and gave an excel- lent reason for it ; she had been receiving the ad- dresses of a very desirable admirer, who had at length proposed, and been accepted ; he was a Cornish man, and his property lay within a few miles of that of her father. After entering into numerous details regarding the carnage, the trous- 190 THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. seau, and the marriage settlement (young ladies in tlie nineteenth century are very apt to talk and write about the marriage settlement), the bride- elect continued : " I am quite sure you will hear an excellent character of my dear Trebeck, if you mention his name to Mr. Talbot ; only think of their being great friends ; indeed Mr. Talbot was quite confi- dential with Trebeck a year ago, when staying with him in the country-house of a mutual friend, and actually was so kind as to read to him the beauti- ful tragedy of the 'Russian Brothers,' to which he had just put the finishing-stroke. Mr. Talbot did not let any one else know a word about it, and in fact extracted a promise of the strictest secrecy from Trebeck ; the reason was, that he meant to produce the tragedy on the stage, and had a terrible nerv- ous fear of failure, a fear which was unfortunately realized by the event ; I suppose because it was too good for the audience to understand. Trebeck kept the secret most admirably, never breathing a word of it even to me, till the brilliant success of the published play of course took off the embargo of silence, and now we tell it to every body ; and Trebeck, I assure you, is not a little proud of THE HEIRESS AND HER "WOOERS. 191 the confidence reposed in him by his Hteraiy friend." Adelaide read this part of the letter with incre- dulous surprise, imagining that Emma was under some misapprehension ; but when she came to re- flect on past events, she could not but see that it was very likely to be true ; she had several times been much struck "v\'itli the inconsistency of Strat- ford's conversation and his reputed literary talents, and had felt surprised that he should so invariably have resisted all persuasion, even from herself, to give any further proof of his poetical abilities. It might seem astonishing that Talbot should so freely have acquiesced in this usurpation ; but Emma's letter threw light on the subject, by alluding to Talbot's nervous horror of failure, and Adelaide's quick apprehension soon enabled her to see the real state of the case, and to become sorrowfully convinced that Captain Xesbitt was not the only one of her "wooers" who had shown himself re- gardless of the sacred laws of truth. Reluctantly, but steadily, did the young heiress prepare herself to act as she considered for the best under the circumstances. She wrote to Talbot and to Stratford, requesting that they would each wait 192 THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. upon her at the same time on the followang clay. Neither of them suspected the reason of this sum- mons ; Talbot had indeed ahnost forgotten the existence of the silly, good-natured Trebeck : he had read the " Russian Brothers" to him, because, like most writers, he felt the wish, immediately after completing a work, to obtain a hearer for it ; and because, like some writers, he had a great deal of vanity, and had been flattered by the deferential admiration of a man much inferior to him, and from whom he need not fear any distasteful criti- cism. Talbot knew Trebeck to be perfectly honor- able, and if he had ever thought of him at all, he would have remembered the. promise of secrecy he had exacted from him, and would have felt quite at ease. It never entered his mind that circumstances might happen which would induce Trebeck to con- sider himself absolved from his promise, and that, as the " Russian Brothers" had been published with- out a name, it was perfectl}^ natural and probable that the Cornish squire might be ignorant that the London world of letters imputed the authorship of it to Stratford, and not to Talbot. The rivals w^ere punctual to their appointment, anticipating nothing more important than that they should be invited to THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. 193 join a party to a flower-sliow or the oj)era-house. Ade- laide did not keep them in suspense, but said that she wished to read to them part of a letter which she had recently received. When she had finished, she told them that she had considered it right to make them acquainted with this statement, and asked if they had any thing to say in refutation of it. They looked confused, and were silent. Strat- ford was the first to speak. " Forgive me for my seeming assumption of talents not my own," he said ; " and remember that my motive was to save a fi'iend from the mortification of acknowledoino; a defeat." "I cannot conceive that such was your only motive," replied Adelaide : " you evidently took pride and pleasure in your new character. Did you attempt to suspend the publication of the drama ? Did you shrink fi-om the distinctions that followed it ? Xo : you courted popularity, and en- joyed it, knowing all the time that you had done nothing to merit it, and that the whole of the ap- plause that you received was in reality the right of your fiiend 1" Adelaide's words sounded a knell to the hopes of Stratford, but they seemed " merry as a mar- 194 THE IlfilRESS AND HER WOOERS. riage-bell " to the eager ears of Talbot. " Dearest Adelaide," he said, " how kindly, how gratifyingly do you speak of my talents ! They are entirely ded- icated to you : all the laurels that they may here- after gain for me shall be laid at your feet !" " Do not trouble yourself to be so very grateful, Mr. Talbot," rejDlied Adelaide. " Yon will be httle obhged to me when you have listened to all that I have to say to you. Your talents are undoubtedly great, but I do not consider that vividness of im- agination and elegance of composition constitute a man of really fine mind, any more than a suit of regimentals and acquaintance with military tactics constitute a brave soldier. I may continue the parallel. You entered the field of battle by your own choice, knowing that it was possible you might meet with defeat. Your first defeat came, and what was the course you pursued ? Did you resolve to try again with added vigor ? No, you deter- mined to conceal that you had tried at all ; you deserted the noble ranks to which you belonged, to sink into the mass of common-place beings ; and should your conduct ever become generally known, rely upon it that all literary men who sit in judg- THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. 195 ment upon you will imanimously sentence you to be cashiered for cowardice !" Stratford breathed a little more freely during this speech : it was a great relief to his feehngs to hear his friend so severely reproved. " I will not," pursued Adelaide, " dwell upon the offence that you have mutually committed in departing from the straight, clear and beautiful path of truth ; you well know my opinion on the subject. I could never feel happy in a near con- nection, or even in an intimate friendship, with any one who did not know and revere truth as I have always done. I shall probably occasionally meet again with both of you, but we must meet hereafter only on the footing of common acquaintance." The disconcerted " wooers," now no longer rivals, took a speedy departure : they exchanged a few^ sentences on their w^ay, in Avhich there was much more of recrimination than of condolence, and then coldly separated. Their friendship had long been at an end. And in the midst of their recent mor- tification, each felt consoled by the thought that he was not compelled to cede Adelaide to the other ! It Avas easy for Adelaide to avoid future intimacy 196 THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. with her two rejected lovers, without causing any remark among her cii-cle of acquaintance. It was now nearly the end of June ; Mr. Gray- son ^vas quite a man of the old school : he did not stay in London till the middle of August, and then repair to Kissengen or Interlachen. He had a pretty country-house a few miles from Lon- don, and always removed to it at Midsummer. Mrs. Grayson, who enjoyed nothing so much as her flower garden, was delighted to escape from the brow^n dusty trees of a London square : and Ade- laide, although she liked public amusements, liked them as " soberly " as Lady Grace in the " Provok- ed Husband," and always professed herself ready to rusticate as soon as the roses were in bloom. Three days after her interview with Talbot and Stratford, she removed from the bustle of London to a region of flow^ers, green trees, and singing- birds. The former friends — now, alas ! friends no longer — travelled abroad. They had each studi- ously contrived to depart on a different day, and to visit a different point of the continent ; but they happened accidentally to meet on a mountain in Switzerland. They passed each other merely with the remarks that " the scenery w^as very grand," THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. 197 and that " tlie panorama of the Lake of Thun, at the Cohseum, had given one 3, capital idea of it !" Stratford returned to London in Januaiy ; Cap- tain Nesbitt was the first person of his acquaint- ance whom he encountered. Now Captain Nesbitt possessed an infallible characteristic of a narrow- minded, mean-spirited man : he never forgave a woman who had refused him, and never omitted an opportunity of speaking ill of her. After hav- ing anathematized Adelaide and her coquetries for some time, he proceeded: "Her marriage, how- ever, will shortly take place, and it is, I think, a fitting conclusion to her airs and graces. Perhaps, as you have only just arrived in Eugland, you are not aware that she is engaged to her guardian's clerk ?" "To Alton!" exclaimed Stratford--" to that Cjuiet^ duU young man.! Impossible ! She used to ridicule his unsocial habits, and also was very severe on his propensity for hoarding money." " However that might be," replied Captain Xes- bitt, " he has proved himself not too dull to devise and succeed in an admirable matrimonial spec- ulation : and as for his system of hoarding, per- 198 1H1-: HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. haps the fair Adelaide, although she objected to it in an indifferent 'person, may not disapprove of it in a husband. Heiresses are always terribly afraid of marrying men Avho are likely to dissipate their money." " When is the marriage to take place ?" asked Stratford, with an affected carelessness. " I believe in a few weeks," said Captain Nesbitt — " that is, if nothing should happen to prevent it. I think I could set it aside at once, if I took inter- est enough in Adelaide to make it worth my whil^ to do so. I could communicate to her something respecting Alton which would decidedly lower him in her opinion." " Indeed !" exclaimed Stratford, eao-erlv. " Has Alton, then, been guilty of any deviation from the truth ?" Poor Stratford ! " He that is giddy thinks the world turns round ;" and he had no idea that a lover could offend in any other way than by devi- atino- from the truth. " I do not know that Alton has told any un- truth," said Captain Nesbitt ; " but I have reason to think that he has kej)t back the truth." " That may do quite as well," thought Stratford, THE HEIRESS A>-D HER WOOERS. 199 " \Ylien one has to deal with so scrupulous a person as Adelaide ;" and lie requested Captain Xesbitt to explain himself. "Alton's father," said Captain Xesbitt, "did not resemble the father in an old sons; of O'Keefe's — " Who, dying, bequeathed to his son a good name !" He was, like his son, a confidential clerk — not, however, to a solicitor, but to a Liverpool merchant. He repaid the confidence of his em2)loTer by em- bezzling simdiT sums of money, which he hazard- ed at the gaming-table. At length the fi-equency of his losses occasioned him to commit a more darino; act than a breach of trust : he foro-ed the name of the merchant to a banking-house check : discoveiy ensued, and he only escaped the punish- ment of the law by committing suicide. This event happened five years ago, and is fresh in the remembrance of many persons in Livei-pool." " But do you not think it likely that Alton may have revealed these facts to Adelaide?" asked Stratford. " I do not think it in the least likely that he should have proved himself such a blockhead I" replied «4r 200 THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. Captain Nesbitt. "Adelaide would never marry the son of a man who only escaped hanging by suicide !" " They do not hang for forgery in these days !" said Stratford. "So much the worse," said Captain Nesbitt. " It is a crime that cannot be too severely punish- ed. I remember hearing that many years ago a man was hanged for forging the ace of spades ; I wish those good old times would come- back again." Stratford was silent ; not all his pique, nor all his jealousy, could induce him to think that it would be desirable for the times to come back again, when a man was hanged for forging the ace of spades ! The next day Stratford called at Mr. Grayson's, and found Adelaide alone in the drawing-room. She looked a httle surprised at seeing him, but re- ceived him as she would have done a common acquaintance. Stratford congratulated her on her future prospects, and uttered some forced commen- dations on the excellence of Alton's character. " He affords a convincing proof," he said, with a little trepidation, "that the son of an unworthy father need not necessarily tread in his steps." THE IIEIKESS AND HER WOOERS. 201 *' There are so many similar instances of that fact," said Adelaide, " that I think there is nothing- astonishing in them. The good or bad qualities of a father are not, like landed estates, entailed upon his son !" " Then you do know," said Stratford, " that Alton's father was an unworthy man ?" Adelaide looked at him with grave, earnest sur- prise. " You have chosen a strange subject of con- vei-sation," she said ; " but I have no objection to satisfy your curiosity. I beard of the circumstance to which you allude from Alton himself." " I conclude," said Stratford, " that Mr. Grayson insisted on his being candid with you, previous to your engagement being concluded ?" " You are quite in the wrong," returned Ade- laide. " Mr. Grayson is much attached to x\lton (whom he is on the point of taking into partner- ship), and was very desirous that he should propose to me. He enjoined him to keep secret the melan- choly circumstances connected with his father, as they could only tend to give me uneasiness ; and it was quite certain that no one else would be so deficient in kind feeling as to mention them to me." Stratfui-d ielt rather embarrassed and uucom- 9 202 THE HEIRESS and her wooers. fortable as Adelaide uttered these words. "Al- ton's • strict and honorable love of truth, how- ever," pursued Adelaide, " led him to disregard this counsel ; some weeks before he proposed to me he made known to me every particular of his father's transgression ; and I assured him, in reply, that I did not consider him in the smallest degTee lowered in excellence by having become good, con- scientious, and truthful, without the aid of parental precept or example." Stratford was determined to discharge a parting aiTOW at the provoking heiress. " You have shown yourself extremely liberal in your opinions," he said ; " and you have the very comforting reflection that, from Mr. Alton's known and remarkable hab- its of frugality, he is never likely to fall into the same snares that proved fatal to his father, but will distinguish himself rather by saving money than by squandering it." " As you appear," said Adelaide, " to speak in rather an ironical tone concerning Alton's econo- mv, I think it due to him to enter into a short ex- planation of his motives. ^YheTi Alton first paid me those marked attentions which I knew must lead to a proposal, I sometimes rallied him on his THE HEIKESS AND HER WOOERS. 203 strict frugality, and sometimes gently reproved him for it : he was not only sparing to himself, hut I felt grieved to remark that, although ever willing to devote time and thought to the poor, he rarely assisted them with monev. He assured me that he had a reason for his conduct, and that he was cer- tain that I should not blame him if I knew it. He added, that the necessity for economy would soon cease, and that he should then have the plea- sure of indulging his natural feehngs of liberality. I was not satisfied with this reply : I required him to give a direct answer to a direct question, and to tell me what were his motives for saving, and why they should exist at one time more than another." " It was very merciless of you," said Stratford. " :N'ot in the least," replied Adelaide. " Alton had given me such proofs of his truthful and hon- orable nature, that I knew, if he held back any com- munication from me, he could only do so because it Avas creditable to him, and because he wished to avoid the appearance of boasting of his own good deeds : and so it indeed proved to be. Alton had for five years been denying himself every enjoy- ment suitable to his age and tastes, for the purpose of saviiio- the sum of monev of which his father 204 THE JIEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. had defrauded his employer. When he first began this undertaking, it seemed likely to prove a very tedious one ; but two years ago he happily received a legacy from a relation, which more than half realized the amount that he required ; still, how- ever, he did not slacken in his laudable energy, and shortly after the conversation to which I have alluded, he was enabled to pay over the Avhole sum, with the accumulated interest, to the Liver- pool merchant, who sent him a lettei' full of the kindest expressions of approbation, concluding with the assurance that he should make his noble act of atonement generally known among all his friends. Therefore by this time every one who has censured the faults and frailties of the father, is engaged in lauding the honor and honesty of the son." Stratford had heard quite enough ; he took a hasty leave, sincerely repenting that he had ever thouo'ht of troublino: the bride-elect with a morn- ing call. Alton and Adelaide were mari-ied in the course of a few weeks ; two years have elapsed since that time, and I am of opinion that the unusual happi- ness they enjoy is greatly to be attributed to the truthfulness which is the decided characteristic of THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS, 205 both of them. I am aware that many of my read- ers will say that it is of little importance whether a married couple, whose interests necessarily bind them together, should mutually love truth, or mu- tually agree in sanctioning the thousand-and-one little falsities of worldly expediency ; but I think that those who hold such an opinion cannot have had many opportunities of closely observing the domestic circles of their friends and neighboi-s. Had they done so, they would have been aware that the beginning of matrimonial unhappiness repeatedly arises from the detection by one party of some sho'ht violation of truth on the part of the other. Often such a ^nolation is committed with no ill intent ; nay, often indeed is it done with the kind motive of sparing some little trouble or anxi- ety to the beloved one. A trifling trouble is con- cealed, a small expense kept in the background, the visit of an intrusive guest unmentioned, or a letter read aloud with the omission of a short part of it, which might be supposed to be unpleasant to the listener. These concealments and misrepre- sentations, in themselves so seemingly slight, be- come of terrific account when frequently repeated ; confidence is shaken, and when once that is the 206 THE HEIRESS AND IIEIl WOOERS. case, conjugal happiness is soon at an end. Ade- laide and her husband are on the most confidential terras, because neither of them ever thinks whe- ther a true remark or communication is agreeable or not ; they speak it because it is the truth ; and if a moment's pain be thus given, the passing cloud breaks almost as soon as it is perceived ; no tem- pests are suffered to gather in the distance, and the heiress constantly congratulates herself that she chose not the handsomest, the cleverest, or the most fashionable, but the most truthful of her " wooers." Of these wooers I have but little to say. Captain Nesbitt is on the point of marriage with a middle-aged widow of good fortune; he was successful in impressing her with the belief that he must ultimately inherit his uncle's pro- perty ; but she was more cautious than ladies of fewer years and less experience might have been, and made so many inquiries about the state of health of the old gentleman, that his nephew was obliged to improvise an apoplectic fit for him ! This intelligence caused the widow to fix the day, but she is providing a very limited trousseau, since she anticipates the " melancholy pleasure" of giv- injx larofe orders in the course of a few weeks at THE HEIRESS AND HER WOOERS. 207 one of tlie " Mansions of Grief" in Regent- street ! Talbot and Stratford seldom meet; indeed, if one becomes introduced into a family, the other almost invariably ceases to \^Isit there. However, there are two points in which they show great sympathy and congeniality of mind. They par- ticularly dislike to hear of the failure of a new piece at the theatre ; and there is no work for which they feel such unmitigated detestation, as one which still engrosses much of the public notice —the tragedy of the " Eussian Brothei-s 1" # *^ SONNE'T. BY EUPHRASIA FANNY IIAWOETH. T ET the pnre garments of the cool gray eve ^ Float o'er thee, like a mother's shelterinir vest Drawn round the child she cradles on her hreast To hush its sobbings ; in thy heart receive Her balmy breathings, like some precious truth A saint dies speaking — or the answering sigh Some lover listens for from lattice high, — Or Fame's first murmur to the eager youth. Listen, and gaze, and draw into thy soul These influxes of earth's selectest bliss ; Let thy worn brow meet Evening's holy kiss With reverence calm ; accept the mild control That for one hour bids grief and passion cease ; An angel treads the earth whose name is Peace ! > > 1 . > J 1 1 > > • » . ' > J > ) 1 J J ' > > > ,,,, J J J » ' > ' J C f c < c e t f e ■ ' ' « c t c f ■ < ' e c c c ' c ' c C • J • ••c t c t f THE QUEEN OF THE HOUR. BY HEXET C. WATSON. IVE wander'd to a pleasant grove, ' ' Beside a dancing rill — A throng of youth I — of light and love Each lieart had drunk its fill. Sweet faces were in plenty there— As fair as June's first flower; But Clara beamed in beauty rare, The queen of that bright hour. We gathered round her when she sang A song of olden days ; And as each word through woodlands rang, We looked unspoken praise. Ah I long our frolic sports were stay'd Beneath that spell of pow'r ; And long we gazed upon the maid — The queen of that blest hour! 9* 210 THE QUEEN OF THE HOUR, Tve seen the lovely oft since then, I've dreamed of lovelier still ; But ne'er shall I behold again Sweet Clara by that rill. And though I seek the courtly hall, And e'en the fairest bow'r, One image shines above them all — The queen of youth's bright hour ! MOB WELL ; OR, THE MODERN PYGMALION. a 9^al£ for th 2usk. m BY EUPHKASIA FAXNY HA'R'ORTH. I. " He stay'd his prayer, and on the statue gazed. Behold, a gentle heaving stirred its brea»t; O'er all the form a flush of rose-light passed ; Along the limbs the azure arteries throbbed. A golden lustre settled on the head, And gleamed amid the mazes of the hair; The rounded cheeks grew vivid with a blush: Ambrosial breathings cleft the curved lips. And softly through the arched nostril stole : Slow rose the silken fringed lids, and eyes, Like violets wet with dew, drank in the light !" Pygmalion. — G. Grbkxwood. u WHY, Horton, old fellow ! is that really you ? where did you spring from ?" " Morris, how glad I am to see you ! Yes, here I am ; at least what is left of me, after the hoiTors of five vears in Calcutta." 212 MORWKLL. Such were the liearty greetings that took place at the Piccadilly corner of Albemarle Street, one sleety, gusty day, in February. Paul Horton had just returned on sick leave from India, where he held a very good civil appointment. His old schoolfellow, Frank Morris, was almost the first person, besides waiters and porters, to whom he had spoken in London ; and Paul had not much difficulty in persuading him to return with him to the hotel close by, where he had taken up his quarters ; the Aveather was too unpropitious to allow of much delay in seeking shelter. "Well," said Paul Horton, when they were fairly housed, again shaking Morris by the hand, " I am so glad to have chanced upon you ! — you can tell me all about every body — first, yourself; — what are you about ? You look as sleek and as fat as if you had all the world your own way, and nobody ever contradicted you !" " And yet I am married," said ISIorris, laugh- ing. " Indeed ! that is news ; and to which of the fair enslavers you have been always raving about these ten years ?" " Oh ! nobody I ever raved about before you MORWELL. 213 went out — it was quite sudden, at last — yet I have never repented I" " That's all right," said Paul. " ^'"ow tell me about some of our fiiends. I am very anxious to hear somethino- of Morwell — he wrote me the oddest letter out to India some time ago — it quite mystifies me." " Oh, you are not the only one mystified about Morwell ! I wish I could tell you any thing of him, poor fellow — any thing satisfactory I mean. It is curious enouo-h vou should ask me about him, for I was just on my way determined to go and see what he is doino;." " Let us go together, then," said Horton ; " and you can tell me what you know as we walk. Is he in town V " He has got a studio in the most unlikely localitv to be molested with visitors — a strano-e place it is — it might have been a palace of a Lombardy duke once. It is at the back of Lom- bard Street. But I must tell you the story. You know, of course, of his great success in that group of ' Cain and Abel ! ' It brought him immediately into notice : his next was ' Herodias,' and then a group of the ' Graces.' " 214 MORWKLL. " I heard something of this," said Ilortoii. " You should have seen him then !" resumed Morris ; " he was so happy, so full of life and genius ! But it did not last long. At that time — about two years ago — I often saw him ; it was just after I married ; and he was paying great attention to my wife's sister, Lucy, as pretty a girl as you could wish to see. I am afraid she thought him more in earnest than he was, and you know what a good-looking fellow he is. Well ! — all at once he grew uncertain in his spirits and in his temper ; more eao-er than ever after his art, and sometimes as desponding about it, and dissatisfied with all he did. Instead of railing against the Royal Academy, and the cellars where the sculpture is exhibited, as he used, he now said he had hardly refrained some- times from breaking his models to atoms, so wretched a caricature of nature they seemed to him. After a time he scarcely noticed Lucy, and at last he never came near us. " I went to his studio once or twice, but he would not let me in to see what he was doing ; he came out to speak to me, and I'll be bound he does the same to-day. "He had taken hold of strange fancies about MORWELL. 215 mesmerism and electricity, and once told me, with a wild look tliat quite alarmed me, tliat lie had been studying- the principles of life and motion, and that if he should pm-sue his experiments like Fran- kenstein, it would not be to make a monster. " After this I saw a model he was beginning : it was of a nymph of Diana, and the most exquisite thing I ever beheld. He was not satisfied himself, and the next time I saw him he had destroyed it. He was going to begin a Yenus, he said ; and when I afterwards saw him told me he was going on with it. I asked him to show me the model, but no- thin 2: would induce him to do so. But here we are in the dingy old street." They rang, and were admitted into a kind of ground-floor parlor — a strange chaos of a place. It contained a large bookcase, full of dusty and antique- lookino- volumes ; on the table Avas a desk and writing materials. In one corner an electrical ma- chine, some anatomical drawings and a skull : also several phials and cmcibles, as if for chemical uses. The fireplace, with its cold embers, looked cheerless enough, and the whole place had an air of mel- ancholy abandonment. When at length, almost tired of waiting, Horton 216 MOKWELL. resolved to proceed to tlie studio^ the sculptor en- tered the room. He had been a noble-looking creature when his friend Paul saw him last, but now he would scarcely have recognized him, so changed was his appearance : his figure was worn and thin, and the hair which fell about his high forehead in luxuriant curls was sprinkled with pre- mature gray ; yet his face, though fallen and sharp- ened, ^vas more full of expression and genius than ever. You saw in his deep, melancholy eye fitful flashes of that fire which w^as consuming him — the bright steel of the sword that was wearinjx out its scab- bard. He w^ore a kind of loose morning gown, and he had a listless, saddened look ; but as soon as he recognized Horton, his whole countenance lighted up. He scarcely looked at Morris ; and after wringing the hand Horton held out to him, he an- swered not a word to his warm greeting, but fling- ing his arms round him, he feirly wept upon his shoulder like a woman. He quickly mastered his emotion, which he seemed ashamed that Morris should observe, and after or- dinary inquiries had been made and answered, the M ORWELL. 217 latter asked how his " Vemis" was, and if she were in a state to be seen. " You shall see," said the artist ; and without the slightest hesitation he led the way to his studio ; after going down a narrow passage, he opened a door which seemed to lead into the interior of another house. They were in a lofty hall, lighted from a dome at the toj), fi'om which they perceived a wide stone staircase, with exquisitely carved banisters. Crossing the hall, the artist led them to a spa- cious apartment on the gTound-floor, also lighted from above ; it was filled with models from antique sculpture. " This," said he, as they passed through, " is my oratory ; these are to make me, as I go to my work, humble yet hopeful, meek and strong. I cannot look on them now, for they have frowned on me of late." Morris stole a look at Horton as the artist said this ; the latter was gazing at Morwell, and expect- ing him to smile, but he was perfectly grave and solemn, and walked through the room as if he had been an acolyte j)assing the altar. The jest died on Horton's lips, and he looked back at Morris with wonder. 218 MORWELL. They went throiigli to tlie studio, whicli was a finely-proportioned room, filled with half-finii^hed models and various implements of art. " And where is the ' Venus V " said Morris, look- ing round. " There !" replied Morwell, calmly pointing to a broken mass of fi*agments. " You do not mean to say you have broken the statue ?" exclaimed Morris ; " why, it was in marble !" "Yes!" said the sculptor, picking up an arm, " this was well enough." " It is perfectly exquisite !" said Horton : " what could induce you to destroy it ? — where is the head ?" " Ah ! there was the failure : look at those lips and chin !" " Well," said Horton, " they are beautiful." " You think so, perhaps, but they are no more like Porphyria than — " " Who is Porphyria ?" exclaimed both his friends. " No matter : look a 1 i > > > > > » 1 •• J J ; > > 1 > 1 > > 1 > » 1 J 1 > ) ) > m' # THE WARPJOE'S DEPARTURE. BY PKOTECS. A HI Edith, dear, I must away, The bugles to the battle call, And I must mingle with the fray, The end of which may see my fall. But fear not, Edith ; never fear, !N"or damp my spirits with despair. For liope smiles through this hour's tear ; There's heav'n above — we mav meet there. And if we win the victory, And laurels crown thy true knight's brow, I'll share my honors here with thee — So, Edith, love, be cheerful now. Oft take young Harold on thy knee, « And tell him of his father's deeds ; Y Teach little I^laflche to love like thee — 'T is all the love a woman needs. I ^ 232 THE warrior's departure. So spake the bold and dauntless knight, Then sprang upon his matchless steed. And as his armor gleam'd with light, Spurred on with dashing speed. And Edith saw him disappear Among the gorgeous, armed band, And long she look'd — through bright and drear. But never clasped again his hand. ♦n^ % A PEEP INTO THE OFFICE OF A SAYINGS' BANK. BY MRS. DAVID OGILVT. Author of " TradiiioM of Tuacan'j," "Hiffkland Mtnstrehy," £c.,