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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59,
+No. 364, February 1846, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: September 8, 2009 [EBook #29938]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brendan OConnor, Jonathan Ingram and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Library of Early Journals.)
+
+
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+
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+
+
+
+BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
+
+
+  NO. CCCLXIV.          FEBRUARY, 1846.          VOL. LIX.
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS.
+
+  SERVIA AND THE "SERVIAN QUESTION,"                          129
+
+  THE STUDENT OF SALAMANCA. PART IV.,                         149
+
+  SOMETHING MORE ABOUT MUSIC,                                 169
+
+  MARTHA BROWN,                                               184
+
+  MARLBOROUGH. NO. III.,                                      195
+
+  RECOLLECTIONS OF A LOVER OF SOCIETY,                        215
+
+  IT'S ALL FOR THE BEST,                                      231
+
+  A PEEP INTO THE WHIG PENNY POST-BAG,                        247
+
+  EAST AND WEST,                                              248
+
+  AN APOLOGY FOR A REVIEW,                                    249
+
+
+
+
+  EDINBURGH:
+  WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;
+  AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
+
+  _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._
+
+  SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.
+
+
+
+
+  BLACKWOOD'S
+  EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
+
+
+
+  NO. CCCLXIV.   FEBRUARY, 1846.   VOL. LIX.
+
+
+
+
+SERVIA AND THE "SERVIAN QUESTION."
+
+
+The principality of Servia was, a few years since, scarcely known to the
+English public except as an obscure province of the Ottoman empire, into
+which few travellers had penetrated; and of the population, internal
+resources, &c., of which, little information existed, and little
+curiosity was felt. But the singular political drama of which it has
+lately been the theatre, and the patriotic resolution by which its
+people, though deprived of support from their legitimate suzerain, the
+Sultan, menaced by the power of Russia, and abandoned to their fate by
+the other great powers of Europe, have yet succeeded in establishing
+their independence, and maintaining in his place the ruler whom they had
+chosen, has invested Servia with a degree of interest in the eyes of
+Europe, which gives value to whatever tends to dispel our ignorance of a
+country, which, by the new position it has assumed, has shown good title
+to take rank as "the youngest member of the European family." A work,
+therefore, which should give the same clear insight, even to a limited
+extent, into the present condition and future prospects of Servia, as
+was given some years since in regard to Hungary and Transylvania, by the
+well-known volumes of Mr Paget, would at this time be a valuable
+addition to our literature; but we are compelled to say, that this
+desideratum is far from being adequately supplied by the publication now
+before us. The author's descriptive powers are by no means of a high
+order;--mountain and valley, castle and river, pass before us, in his
+pages, without any definite impression being produced of their features
+or scenery; and while page after page is filled with criticisms of the
+accommodations and _cuisine_ at his different halting-places, and
+verbatim reports of dialogues, on trivial subjects, between _Author_, on
+the one part, and _Renegade_, _Cadi_, _Dervish_, _President_, and other
+_dramatis personæ_, on the other, we look in vain for that extent and
+accuracy of information which we might have expected from a traveller
+who has enjoyed more than ordinary opportunities of mixing familiarly
+with Servians of all ranks and degrees, from the prince to the peasant
+and making himself acquainted with their feelings and national
+character. The deficiency of political information would appear even
+more remarkable. Though the author was personally acquainted with M.
+Petronevich, one of the leaders of the National party, whom he visited
+in his exile at Widdin; and though he was subsequently resident at
+Belgrade for some time after the restoration of this able minister and
+his colleague, M. Wucicz, to their country, scarcely an allusion escapes
+him throughout, to the political movements which led either to their
+banishment or their recall. As various circumstances and expressions,
+however, lead us to suppose that Mr Paton's tour may have had reference
+to objects which do not appear on the surface of the narrative, this
+mysterious silence may not be without good reasons; and we shall deal
+with him, accordingly, simply as a traveller in a hitherto untrodden
+track, which we hope, erelong, to see more fully explored. Mr Paget, we
+believe, is now a naturalized denizen of Transylvania: cannot he find
+leisure for an excursion across the Save?
+
+Mr Paton announces himself, in the title-page, as the author of a work
+entitled "The Modern Syrians," with which it has not been our good
+fortune to meet; but from the conclusion of which we presume the thread
+of the present narrative is to be taken up, as he presents himself,
+_sans ceremonie_, on the pier of Beyrout, preparing to embark on board
+an Austrian steamer for Constantinople:--"I have been four years in the
+East, and feel that I have had quite enough of it for the present." On
+the third day they touched at Rhodes, "a perfectly preserved city and
+fortress of the middle ages, with every variety of mediæval
+battlement--so perfect is the illusion, that one wonders the warder's
+horn should be mute, and the walls devoid of bowman, knight, and
+squire." Though these ancient bulwarks of Christendom, within which the
+White-Cross chivalry, under d'Aubusson and L'Isle-Adam, so long
+withstood the might of the Osmanli, are thus briefly dismissed, Mr Paton
+immediately after devotes five pages to some choice flowers of
+Transatlantic rhetoric, culled from the small-talk of one of his
+fellow-passengers, whom he calls "an American Presbyterian
+_clergyman_"--though we grievously suspect him to have been a boatswain,
+who had jumped from the forecastle to the pulpit by one of those
+free-and-easy transitions not unusual in the "free and enlightened
+republic." At Smyrna, he signalized his return to the "land of the
+Franks," (which we had always imagined to be Europe,) by ordering a
+beefsteak and a bottle of porter, and bespeaking the paper of a
+Manchester traveller in drab leggings--and we at last find him safe in
+Constantinople. For all that concerns the city of the Sultan, he
+contents himself with referring his readers to the volumes of Mr
+White--and certainly they could not have been left in better hands; and
+so, "after a week of delightful repose," during which he was greatly
+indebted to the hospitality of the embassy, "I embarked on board a
+steamer, skirted the western coast of the Black Sea, and landed on the
+following morning in Varna."
+
+We may pass over the "delightfully keen impressions" which Mr Paton
+records as produced by the contrast between the shores of Bulgaria and
+the Syrian climes he had lately left; the practical result of which was,
+that "a rattling blast from the Black Sea, more welcome than all the
+balmy spices of Arabia," made it advisable to don a pea-jacket! The
+fortifications of Varna, we are informed, were thoroughly repaired in
+1843; "and from Varna to Roustchouk is three days' journey--the latter
+half of the road being agreeably diversified with wood, corn, and
+pasture, and many of the fields enclosed." A reference to the map will
+show that this "agreeably diversified" road passes under the famous
+lines of Shumla, and through many fields of fierce and stubborn fight
+between Turk and Russ, in the days before the Sultan was delivered over
+by his allies to his enemy, on the faith of a _military_ report from a
+man who had never seen a regiment of regular troops under arms![1]--but
+Mr Paton appears to consider such matters as exclusively the province
+of _militaires_, and passes on at once to Roustchouk, which he found "a
+fortress of vast extent; but, as it is commanded by the heights from
+which I was descending, it appeared to want strength if approached from
+the south. The ramparts were built with great solidity; but rusty old
+dismounted cannon, obliterated embrasures, and palisades rotten from
+exposure to the weather, showed that to stand a siege it must undergo a
+considerable repair." Several days were devoted to a general
+reconnoissance of the place; but the result was not satisfactory--"I
+must say that Roustchouk pleased me less than any town of its size I had
+seen in the East. The streets are dirty and badly paved, without a
+single good bazar or café to kill time in, or a single respectable
+edifice of any description to look at." A dinner with a Bulgarian family
+led us to expect some details of domestic economy; but, in place of
+this, we are regaled with the bad French of a hybrid Frank, who assured
+_Author_ that Bukarest was equal to Paris or London; and when forced to
+admit that he had never seen either of those capitals, covered his
+retreat by maintaining that it was at least far superior to Galate and
+Braila! Hearing, however, that the Defterdar, an Egyptian Turk, had
+resided many years in England, and spole English fluently, Mr Paton
+sought an interview; and after "taking a series of short and rapid
+whiffs from my pipe," while considering the best way of breaking the
+ice, opened his battery by telling the Defterdar, "that few Orientals
+could draw a distinction between politics and geography; but that with a
+man of his calibre and experience I was safe from misconstruction--that
+I was collecting materials for a work on the Danubian provinces, and
+that for any information which he might give me, consistently with his
+official position, I should feel much indebted, as I thought I was least
+likely to be misunderstood by stating clearly the object of ny journey,
+while information derived from the fountain-head was most valuable. The
+Defterdar, after commending my openness, said, 'I suspect that you will
+find very little to remark in the pashalik of Silistria. It is an
+agricultural country, and the majority of the inhabitants are Turks. The
+Rayahs are very peaceable, and pay few taxes, considering the
+agricultural wealth of the country. You may rest assured that there is
+not a province of the empire better governed than the pashalik of
+Silistria. We have no malcontents within the province; but there are a
+few Hetarist scoundrels at Braila, who wish to disturb the tranquillity
+of Bulgaria; but the Walachian government has taken measures to prevent
+them from carrying their projects into execution.'"
+
+Having thus put his readers in possession of this full, true, and
+particular account, derived from exclusive official sources, of all that
+is to be learned of the pashalik of Silistria, we next find Mr Paton,
+after two days steaming on the Danube, at Widdin, where the exiled
+Servian minister, M. Petronovich, was then resident, under the
+protection of the Pasha, whose name is known to all the world as the
+destroyer of the Janissaries and the defender of Shumla, the once
+formidable Hussein. To this redoubted personage, now apparently verging
+on eighty, Mr Paton was introduced by M. Petronevich at an evening
+audience, it being contrary to etiquette to receive visits by day during
+the Ramadan--and found him "sitting in the corner of the divan at his
+ease, being afflicted with gout, in the old ample Turkish costume. The
+white beard, the dress of the Pasha, the rich but faded carpet, the roof
+of elaborate but dingy wooden arabesque, were all in perfect keeping;
+and the dubious light of two thick wax candles rising two or three feet
+from the floor, but seemed to bring out the picture, which carried me a
+generation back to the pashas of the old school." Hussein has since
+retired from his government, to enjoy the immense fortune which he has
+accumulated by commercial speculations--the last specimen of the
+"malignant and turbaned Turk" of former days, whose war shout was heard
+under the walls of Vienna; and who will now be replaced by a
+smooth-faced hybrid in fez and frock-coat, waging a paper war with the
+ambassadors of the _protecting_ powers in defence of the few sovereign
+rights still permitted to the Porte--such is the Pasha of the present
+day! The town of Widdin found even less favour in our traveller's eyes
+than Roustchouk. "Lying so nicely on the bank of the Danube, which here
+makes such beautiful curves, and marked on the map with capital letters,
+it ought (such was my notion) to be a place having at least one
+well-built and well-stocked bazar, a handsome seraglio, and some
+good-looking mosques. Nothing of the sort;"--and thus, sorely
+disappointed in his reasonable expectations, he proceeded on his way in
+a car drawn by two horses, which in six hours brought him to the banks
+of the Timok, the river which separates Servia from Bulgaria. The
+Servian population, among whom he now first found himself, struck him as
+a superior race, both physically and morally, compared with those whom
+he had just left, possessing a manliness of address and demeanour
+unknown to the serfs of Bulgaria; and, instead of the woolly caps and
+frieze clothes of the latter, the peasants wore the red fez, and were
+generally dressed in blue cloth. The plough cultivation of Bulgaria was
+now exchanged for the innumerable herds of swine, which form the staple
+commodity of Servia, fed in the immense oak woods which cover the
+country. "They form" (as Mr Paget informs us in his work on Hungary) "a
+very important article of trade between Servia and Vienna; and I doubt
+if Smithfield could show better shapes or better feeding than the market
+of a Servian village." Continuing his route along the banks of the
+Danube to New Orsova, where he crossed to the Hungarian bank, he again
+posted, with "an enormously stout Wallachian matron" for a travelling
+companion, to Drenkova, whence another steamer conveyed him to Semlin,
+and half an hour's pull down the Danube and up the Save (the line of the
+two rivers being distinctly marked at the confluence by the muddy colour
+of the former, and the clearness of the latter) landed him safe at
+Belgrade.
+
+We may here mention an amusing anecdote, related in another part of the
+volume, in connexion with the town of Panczova below Semlin, where "the
+town-major, after swallowing countless boxes of Morison's pills died in
+the belief that he had not begun to take them soon enough. The
+consumption of these drugs at that time almost surpassed belief. There
+was scarcely a sickly or hypochondriac person, from the Hill of Presburg
+to the Iron Gates, who had not taken large quantities of them." _Mais
+voilà le mot d'enigme._ "'The Anglomania,"' was the answer to a query of
+the author, "'is nowhere stronger than in this part of the world.
+Whatever comes from England, be it Congreve rockets or vegetable pills,
+must needs be perfect. Dr Morison is indebted to his high office (!) for
+the enormous consumption of his drugs. It is clear that the President of
+the British College must be a man in the enjoyment of the esteem of the
+government and the faculty of medicine; and his title is a passport to
+his pills in foreign countries.' I laughed heartily, and explained that
+the British College of Health, and the College of Physicians, were not
+identical." We well remember a statement some years since among the
+innumerable puffs of the arch-quack, (now gone, we believe, to that
+bourn whither so many of his patients had preceded him,) that in
+gratitude for the countless cures of incurable diseases by the
+"Universal Vegetable Medicine," a statute of the Hygeist had been
+erected in Bukarest, not in his native brass, but 'in his habit as he
+lived;' and a woodcut was appended of the _ipsissimus_ Morison, with his
+mustached phiz and tight frock-coat. As Bukarest is a long way off, we
+held this at the time for a pious fraud; but Mr Paton's anecdote gives
+it at least probability. _Vive la charlatanerie!_
+
+The hospitality of Mr Consul-general Fonblanque, and the attentions of
+the numerous friends of M. Petronevich, soon made Mr Paton quite at home
+at Belgrade, where he remained till the end of the year 1843, having
+arrived some time in the autumn, since the re-election of Prince
+Alexander, and the exile of Petronevich, and his colleague Wucziz, took
+place in July of that year. He found Belgrade much Europeanized since a
+previous visit which he had paid it in 1839,--"It was then quite an
+Oriental town; but now the haughty _parvenu_ spire of the cathedral, a
+new and large, but tasteless structure, with a profusely gilt bell-tower
+in the Russian manner, throws into the shade the minarets of the
+mosques, graceful even in decay. Many of the bazar shops have been
+fronted and glazed; the Oriental dress has become much rarer; and
+houses, several stories high, in the German fashion, are springing up
+every where." The Turkish governor was at this time Hafiz Pasha, the
+unsuccessful commander at Nezib, lately appointed in the room of Kiamil,
+who had been displaced at the mandate of Russia for the share he had
+taken in the first election of Prince Alexander; but his jurisdiction is
+now confined to the fortress and the Turkish quarter, which lies along
+the Danube; the remainder of the town, lying piled street upon street up
+the steep bank of the Save, being under the Servian authorities. During
+his stay, Mr Paton paid frequent visits to the Pasha, whom he generally
+found in an audience room overlooking the precipitous descent to the
+Danube, "studying _at_ the maps: he seemed to think that nothing would
+be so useful to Turkey as good roads, made to run from the principal
+ports of Asia Minor, up to the depôts of the interior, so as to connect
+Sivas, Tokat, Angora, Koniah, Kaiserieh, &c., with Samsoon, Tersoos, and
+other ports." The ramparts of the fortress are said to be in good
+condition, though "very unlike the magnificent towers it the last scene
+of the _Siege of Belgrade_ at Drury-Lane,"--a piece of useful
+information for play-going Cockneys--and the _Lange Gasse_, or main
+street, with the palace of Prince Eugene, built during the Austrian
+occupation of Servia from 1717 to 1789, is still standing, though half
+choked up with bazar shops and Turkish houses. The Prince holds no
+formal levees; but Mr Paton was present at a dinner given to the _corps
+diplomatique_ in the palace, and was received in a saloon "with inlaid
+and polished parquet; the chairs and sofas covered with crimson and
+white satin damask, which is an unusual luxury in these regions; the
+roof admirably painted in subdued colours, in the best Vienna style.
+High white porcelain urn-like stoves heated the suite of rooms. The
+Prince, a muscular, middle-sized, dark-complexioned man, with a serious
+composed air, wore a plain blue military uniform;[2] the Princess, and
+her _dames de compagnie_, wore the graceful native Servian costume; the
+Pasha the Nizam dress, and the _Nishan Iftihar_, (diamond decoration of
+his rank;) Baron Lieven, the Russian Commissioner, in the uniform of a
+general, glittered with innumerable orders;[3] Colonel Philippovich, a
+man of distinguished talents, represented Austria; the Archbishop, in
+his black velvet cap, a large enamelled cross hanging by a massive gold
+chain from his neck, sat in stately isolation; and the six feet four
+inches high Garashanin, minister of the interior, conversed with Stojan
+Simitch, the president of the senate, one of the few Servians in high
+office who retains his old Turkish costume, and has a frame that reminds
+one of the Farnese Hercules. Then what a medley of languages--Servian,
+German, Russian, Turkish, and French, all in full buzz! We proceeded to
+the dining-room, where the _cuisine_ was in every respect in the German
+manner. When the dessert appeared, the Prince rose with a creaming glass
+of champagne in his hand, and proposed the health of the Sultan,
+acknowledged by the Pasha; and then, after a short pause, the health of
+Czar Nicolay Paulovich, acknowledged by Baron Lieven; then came the
+health of other crowned heads. Baron Lieven now rose, and proposed the
+health of the Prince. The Pasha and the Princess were toasted in turn;
+and then Mr Wastchenko, the Russian Consul-general, rose, and in
+animated terms drank to the prosperity of Servia. The entertainment,
+which commenced at one o'clock, was prolonged to an advanced period of
+the afternoon, and closed with coffee, liqueurs, and chibouques, in the
+drawing-room: the Princess and the ladies having previously withdrawn to
+the private apartments."
+
+At the end of the year, Mr Paton returned to England; and after an
+absence of six months, returned in August 1844 to the banks of the Save,
+reaching Belgrade at the moment when preparations were being made for
+the triumphal reception of the patriot ministers Wuczicz and
+Petronevich, who had at length been restored to their country by the
+tardy intervention of England. The day of their arrival was celebrated
+by a universal jubilee. Surrounded by an immense cavalcade, the exiles
+paraded the streets, amid the rapturous acclamations of the multitude,
+to the great portal of the cathedral, where they were received by the
+Archbishop and clergy:--"They kissed the cross and the gospels, which
+the Archbishop presented to them, and, kneeling down, returned thanks
+for their safe restoration. The Archbishop then advanced to the edge of
+the platform and began a discourse, describing the grief the nation had
+experienced at their departure, the universal joy for their return, and
+the hope that they would ever keep peace and union in view in all
+matters of state, and that in their duties to the state they must never
+forget their responsibility to the Most High. Wuczicz, dressed in the
+coarse frieze jacket and boots of a Servian peasant, heard, with a
+reverential inclination of the head, the discourse of the prelate, but
+nought relaxed one muscle of that adamantine visage: the finer but more
+luminous features of Petronevich were under the control of a less
+powerful will. At certain passages his intelligent eye was moistened
+with tears. Two deacons then prayed successively for the Sultan, the
+Emperor of Russia, and the Prince,--and now uprose from every tongue,
+and every heart, a hymn for the longevity of Wuczicz and Petronevich.
+'The Solemn Song for Many Days' is the title of this sublime chant,
+which is so old that its origin is lost in the obscure dawn of
+Christianity in the East, and so massive, so nobly simple, as to be
+beyond the ravages of time, and the caprices of convention." The town
+was illuminated in the evening; and a ball was given at the new Konak or
+palace, built by the exiled Prince Michael, which was attended "by all
+the rank and fashion of Belgrade--senators of the old school, in their
+benishes and shalwars, and senators of the new school, in pantaloons and
+stiff cravats," which we agree with Mr Paton in considering as no
+improvement on the graceful costume of the East. The Servian ladies,
+however, have in general the good taste to retain the old national
+costume; and "no head-dress that I have seen in the Levant is better
+calculated to set off beauty. From a small Greek fez they suspend a gold
+tassel, which contrasts with the black and glossy hair, which is laid
+smooth and flat down the temple. The sister of the Princess, who was
+admitted to be the handsomest woman in the room, with her tunic of
+crimson velvet, embroidered in gold, and faced with sable, would have
+been, in her strictly indigenous costume, the queen of any fancy ball in
+old Europe."
+
+While occupied by his preparations for a tour into the interior, Mr
+Paton one day encountered "a strange figure, with a long white beard,
+and a Spanish cap, mounted on a sorry horse"--this was no other than
+Holman, the well-known blind traveller, whom he had last seen at Aleppo,
+and who, having passed in safety, under the safeguard of his infirmity,
+through the most dangerous parts of Bosnia, was now on his way to
+Walachia. He instantly recognised Mr Paton's voice, and mentioned his
+name on being told where he had last seen him; and after a walk on the
+esplanade, in which the objects in view were described to him, while
+turning his face to the different points of the compass, he appeared to
+have acquired a tolerably clear idea of Belgrade. Another visitor of Mr
+Paton, Milutinovich, the best living poet of Servia, on hearing the name
+of Holman, (of whose wanderings in the four quarters of the globe he had
+read in the _Augsburg Gazette_,) was so awe-struck at finding himself in
+the presence of even a greater traveller than Robinson Crusoe, (whose
+adventures Mr Paton found regarded as an authentic narrative by the
+monks of Manasia,) that he reverentially kissed his beard, praying aloud
+that he might return home in safety. When the day of departure
+approached, "orders were sent by the minister of the interior to all
+governors and employés, enjoining them to furnish me with every
+assistance, and with whatever information I might require;" and all
+preparations being completed, Mr Paton and his man Paul set off
+horseback, like Dr Syntax and Patrick, for the highlands and woodlands
+of Servia.
+
+Shabatz (more correctly Czabacz,) a town on the Save, between forty and
+fifty miles above Belgrade, and one of the few garrisons still retained
+by the Turks, was the first point of destination; and reaching it on the
+second day, he was hospitably received by _Gospody_ (Monsieur) Ninitch,
+the government collector, to whom he had an introductory letter from the
+minister Garashanin. Before the revolution, Shabatz numbered 20,000
+Osmanlis, the sites of whose kiosks and gardens are still pointed out on
+the _Polje_, or open space between the town and the fortress,--at
+present the only Moslems are the garrison of Bosniak _Redif_ or militia,
+occupying the dilapidated fortifications. It is the episcopal seat of
+one of the Archbishop's three suffragans; and the author, accompanied by
+his friend the collector, paid his respects to the Bishop, whom he had
+previously met at Belgrade. The conversation turned principally on the
+system of national education, by which, in a few years, reading and
+writing will be universal among the peasantry, while the sons of the
+better classes are prepared, by instruction in German, &c., for a
+further course of study in the Gymnasium of Belgrade, the germ of a
+future university. A proof of the taste now spreading for general
+literature was afforded by the library of the Archpriest, "Jowan
+Paulovich, a self-taught ecclesiastic: the room in which he received us
+was filled with books, mostly Servian, but among them I perceived German
+translations of Shakspeare, Young's _Night Thoughts_, and a novel of
+Bulwer's." The son of this priest was studying mining engineering at the
+expense of government, at Schemnitz in Hungary, a capacity in which he
+may one day do good service to his country, as the great mineral riches
+believed to exist in Servia are hitherto wholly unexplored. Having
+completed the circuit of all the notables in Shabatz, including Luka
+Lasaravich, a once redoubted lieutenant of Kara-George, and now an
+octagenarian merchant, with thirteen wounds on his body, Mr Paton
+prepared for a fresh start, drinking health and long life to his kind
+host and hostess in a glass of _slivovitsa_, or plum brandy, the
+national liqueur. But his good wishes were not destined to be fulfilled;
+for within a month an abortive attempt at a rising was made by the
+partisans of the exiled Obrenovich family, a troop of whom, disguised as
+Austrian hussars, entered Shabatz, and shot the good collector dead as
+he issued from his house to enquire the cause of the disturbance. The
+attempt, however, was futile, and the whole party were taken and
+executed.
+
+The road to Losnitza, whither our traveller was now bending his way, lay
+through the Banat of Matchva, a rich tract of land, with a "charmingly
+accidented" chain of mountains, the Gutchevo range, in the distance.
+"Even the brutes bespoke the harmony of creation; for, singular to say,
+we saw several crows perched on the backs of swine!" Towards evening we
+entered a region of cottages among gardens inclosed by bushes, trees,
+and verdant fences, with the rural quiet and cleanliness of an English
+village in the last century lighted by an Italian sunset. "In this
+sylvan paradise he was encountered by a pandour, who conducted him to
+the house of the _Natchalnik_, or governor of the province, a gaunt,
+greyheaded follower of Kara-George, who had been selected for this post
+from his courage and military experience, since the hostile
+neighbourhood of the Bosniaks, on the other side the Drina, between whom
+and the Servians a deadly religious and national hatred exists, rendered
+it necessary to be always on the alert." But before pursuing his route
+to Sokol,[4] a sky-threatening fortress, respecting which his curiosity
+had been excited by the account given of it by M. Ninitch, he was
+persuaded by the Natchalnik to attend a peasant festival held at the
+monastery of Tronosha, to celebrate the anniversary of its consecration.
+The next day, accordingly, he set off with the Natchalnik and his
+companions, all gallantly armed and mounted, and in gala dresses covered
+with gold embroidery; and, dashing up hill and down dale, through the
+majestic forests which covered the ascent of the mountains, they arrived
+in due time at Tronosha, "an edifice with strong walls, towers, and
+posterns, more like a secluded and fortified manor-house in the
+seventeenth century than a convent; for such establishments, in former
+times, were often subject to the unwelcome visits of minor marauders."
+After returning thanks for their safe arrival, according to custom, in a
+chapel with paintings in the old Byzantine style, "crimson-faced saints
+looking up to a golden sky," they proceeded to inspect the preparations
+for the approaching fête, in a green glade running up to the foot of the
+hill on which stood the monastery, and dined with the Igoumen, ([Greek:
+Êgoumenoz],) or Superior, and the monks, in the refectory. The healths
+of the Prince, and of Wuczicz and Petronevich, were given after dinner
+as toasts--a laudable custom, which appears to be in orthodox observance
+in Servia--after which a song was sung in their honour by one of the
+monks, to whom Mr Paton (whose special aversion he seems to have
+incurred, for some reason not exactly apparent) applies the epithet of a
+"clerical Lumpacivagabundus," which we quote for the benefit of such of
+our friends as may chance to be skilled in the unknown tongue. Meanwhile
+the assembled peasantry outside were in the full tide of merriment; and,
+on the following morning, Mr Paton was roused from slumbers, in which "I
+dreamed I know not what absurdities," by a chorus of countless voices,
+and, hurrying out, found the peasants he had seen the evening before,
+with a large accession to their numbers, on their knees in the avenue
+leading to the church, and following "the chant of a noble old hymn. The
+whole pit of this theatre of verdure appeared covered with a carpet of
+crimson and white; for such were the prevailing colours of the costumes.
+The upper tunic of the women was a species of surtout of undyed cloth,
+bordered with a design of red cloth of a finer description. The
+stockings, in colour and texture, resembled those of Persia (?), but
+were generally embroidered at the ankle with gold and silver thread.
+When I thought of the trackless solitude of the sylvan ridges around me,
+I seemed to witness one of the early communions of Christianity, in
+those ages when incense ascended to the Olympic deities in gorgeous
+temples, while praise to the true God rose from the haunts of the wolf,
+the lonely cavern, or the subterranean vault."
+
+After witnessing this interesting reunion of a regenerated and Christian
+nation, Mr Paton took leave of the Superior, who parted from him with
+the words--"God be praised that Servia has at length seen the day when
+strangers come from afar to see and know the people!" and, passing
+through the double ranks of the peasantry, who took leave of him with
+the valediction of _Srentnj poot!_ (a good journey,) repeated by a
+thousand voices, he rode on through the never-ceasing oak-forests,
+broken here and there by plantations of every variety of tree, to
+Krupena. Here he was received by the captain of the district at the
+head of a small troop of irregular cavalry, and hospitably entertained
+for the night. On the following day he started, "toiling upwards through
+woods and wilds of a more rocky character than on the previous day," to
+the ridge of the Gutchevo range, whence he looked down on Sokol, a
+fortress still held by the Turks, and which, on its inaccessible
+position, "built" (as described by M. Ninitch) "on the capital of a
+column of rock," was the only one never taken by the Servians; while the
+background was formed by the mountains of Bosnia, rising range over
+range in the distance. They reached the valley by a narrow winding path
+on the face of a precipitous descent, and entered the town; but their
+visit was ill-timed. It was Ramadan; the Disdar Aga was, or was said to
+be, asleep, and the castle could not be seen in his absence; and Mr
+Paton's enquiries from the Mutsellim, who acted as their cicerone, as to
+the height of the rock on which the citadel was built above the valley,
+only made him suspected of being an engineer surveying the stronghold
+with a view to its capture. After climbing up a pinnacle of rock which
+overlooked the abyss, he was compelled to return _re infectâ_; "and when
+we got a little way along the valley, I looked back; Sokol looked like a
+little castle of Edinburgh placed in the clouds; and a precipice on the
+other side of the valley presented a perpendicular stature of not less
+than five hundred feet."
+
+A few hours travelling from Sokol brought Mr Paton to Liuhovia on the
+Drina, the precipitous banks of which, covered with wood, present
+numerous points of picturesque beauty; but at a short distance above
+this town, which is the quarantine station on the road between Belgrade
+and Seraievo it ceases to form the boundary of Servia and Bosnia, being
+entirely within the latter frontier. Thence ascending the valley of the
+Rogaschitza, a small stream tributary to the Drina, and crossing a ridge
+which parts the waters flowing into the Drina and into the Morava, he
+descended into the tract watered by the Morava, the national river of
+Servia; the first town in which was Ushitza, one of the fortresses still
+garrisoned by the Turks, and the scene of desperate conflicts during the
+war of independence. In past times it was a place of great importance,
+and contained sixty thousand inhabitants, being the entrepôt of the
+trade between Servia and Bosnia; but this commerce has been almost
+ruined by the establishment of the quarantine; and most of the Servian
+inhabitants, in consequence of a bloody affray with the Turks, have
+transferred themselves to Poshega, a town at two hours' distance, and
+formerly a Roman colony, of which Mr. Paton found a relic in a fragment
+of a Latin inscription built into the wall of the church. From Poshega
+Mr P. continued his route down the rich valley of the Morava, here
+several miles wide, to Csatsak, the residence of a bishop and a
+_Natchalnik_; where the old Turkish town is in process of being
+superseded by a new foundation, which, "like Poshega and all these new
+places, consists of a circular or square market-place, with bazar shops
+in the Turkish manner, and straight streets diverging from it." Mr Paton
+waited on the bishop, "a fine specimen of the church-militant; a stout
+fiery man of sixty, in full furred robes, and black velvet cap," who had
+been, during the rule of Milosh, an energetic denouncer of his
+extortions and monopolies, and was consequently in high favour since the
+change of dynasty. The cathedral (we are informed) was "a most ancient
+edifice of Byzantine architecture," of which we should have been glad to
+have had some particulars; but Mr Paton's remarks are confined to
+complaints of the wearisome length of the mass, at which the bishop
+presided, "dressed in crimson velvet and white satin, embroidered with
+gold, which had cost £300 at Vienna; and as he sat in his chair, with
+mitre on head and crosier in hand, looked, with his bushy white beard,
+an imposing representative of spiritual authority." Taking leave of this
+formidable prelate, Mr Paton proceeded to Karanovatz, in the rich plain
+round which, surrounded by hills which are compared to the last
+picturesque undulations of the Alps near Vicenz or Verona, the river
+Ybar falls into the Morava, not far fron the ancient convent of
+Zhitchka Jicha, where seven Servian kings of the Neman dynasty were
+crowned, a door being broken in the wall for the entrance of each
+monarch, and built up again on his departure: and here our traveller,
+turning to the right, and ascending the course of the Ybar, struck
+southwards into the highlands
+
+The character of the mountains among which he now found himself, was
+widely different from the picturesque oak forests of the Gutchevo range,
+which he had traversed in the early part of his tour. "Tall cedars
+replaced the oak and beech; the scanty herbage was covered with
+hoar-frost; the clear brooks murmured chillingly down the unshaded
+gullies; and a grand line of sterile peaks to the south showed me that I
+was approaching the backbone of the Balkan. There is a total want of
+arable land in this part of Servia, and the pasture is neither good nor
+abundant; but the Ybar is the most celebrated stream in Servia for large
+quantities of trout." Still ascending the steep mountain-paths, while
+the scenery became wilder and wilder, they at length reached the convent
+of Studenitza, one of the most ancient foundations in Servia, having
+been built by Neman, the first monarch of the dynasty bearing his name,
+who died in 1195. Like most monastic edifices in Servia, it is a
+castellated building, with walls whose massive strength is well
+calculated to resist an attack not supported by artillery; and, on
+entering the wicket, Mr Paton was received "by a fat, feeble-voiced,
+lymphatic-faced superior, leaning on a long staff"--from whom he could
+get no other reply to all his inquiries than "_Blagodarim_, (I thank
+you.") The magnificent church of white marble, one of the finest
+specimens now existing of Byzantine architecture, was built in 1314 (as
+an inscription imports) by Stephen Vrosh; but it had suffered severely
+at different times from the bigotry of the Turks. "The curiously twisted
+pillars of the outer door were sadly chipped, while noseless angels, and
+fearfully mutilated lions, guarded the inner portal. Passing through a
+vestibule, we saw the remains of the font, which must have been
+magnificent; and, covered with a cupola, the stumps of the white marble
+columns which support it are still visible. Entering the church, I saw
+on the right the tomb of St Simeon, the sainted king of Servia; beside
+it hung his banner with the half-moon on it, the insigni_um_(!) of the
+South Slavonic nation from the dawn of heraldry; and near the altar was
+the body of his son, St Stephen, the patron saint of Servia." Another
+day's journey through the same rugged and sterile scenery, in a
+direction due south, during which they passed the Demir-kapu, on Iron
+Gate, on the bank of the Ybar, where there is only room for a single led
+horse in a passage cut through the rock, brought them to the quarantine
+station on the river Raska, two hours' distance from Novibazar in
+Bosnia, which it was Mr Paton's intention to visit, attended by a
+Servian quarantine officer.
+
+The conversion of the Bosniaks to Islam was effected by force, on the
+conquest of the country in 1463, by Mohammed II., the only instance in
+the career of Turkish conquest in which the injunction of the Prophet
+against compulsory proselytism has been violated; but they have always
+held the faith, thus forced on them, with the zeal of renegades, and are
+now the most fanatic and bigoted Moslems in the empire. The Christians
+resident in their territory are subject to every species of tyranny and
+maltreatment, several instances of which, related by refugees in Servia,
+are given in the work before us. A Frank traveller is a sight scarcely
+known; and Mr Paton soon had abundant evidence, on his approach to
+Novibazar, which lies in a fertile plain about a mile and a half in
+diameter, surrounded by low hills, that his visit here would be even
+less favourably received than at Sokol. The gipsies, whose tents covered
+the plain, and who here profess Islamism, cried furiously after them,
+"See, how the Royal Servians now-a-days have the audacity to enter
+Novibazar on horseback!" Youssouf Bey, the governor, was said to be
+asleep in his harem, (the usual Not-at-home of an Oriental,) but, as
+they afterwards ascertained, was actually afraid to receive them; and
+while they were sauntering round the town, a savage-looking Bosniak
+starting up, exclaimed, "Giaours, kafirs, spies! I know what you come
+for!--Do you expect to see your cross one day planted on the castle?"
+The threat of a complaint to the Bey only provoked fresh insolence; and,
+warned by a Christian bystander that the whole town would soon be in
+commotion, they prudently beat a retreat, and reached the Servian
+frontier in safety.
+
+After this narrow escape from Bosniak hospitality, Mr Paton's next
+object was the Kopaunik mountain, lying a little to the south, and from
+the top of which (as he had been informed at Csatsak) a panoramic view
+of all Servia might be obtained; and having prevailed on the captain of
+the district to accompany him, they crossed the Ybar, and reached the
+summit with little difficulty, if (as seems to be implied) the whole
+ascent was accomplished on horseback. "The Kopaunik is not much above
+6000 English feet above the level of the sea. But it is so placed in the
+Servian basin, that the eye embraces the whole breadth from Bosnia to
+Bulgaria, and very nearly the whole length from Macedonia to Hungary.
+When at length I stood on the highest peak, the prospect was literally
+gorgeous. Servia lay rolled out at my feet. There lay the field of
+Kossovo, where Amurath defeated Lasar, and entombed the ancient empire
+of Servia. I mused an instant on this great landmark of European
+history, and following the finger of an old peasant who accompanied us,
+I looked eastwards, and saw Deligrad, the scene of one of the bloodiest
+fights that preceded the resurrection of Servia as a principality. The
+Morava glistened in its wide valley like a silver thread in a carpet of
+green, beyond which the dark mountains of Rudnik rose to the north;
+while the frontiers of Bosnia, Albania, Macedonia, and Bulgaria, walled
+in the prospect."
+
+After luxuriating to his heart's content in the contemplation of this
+magnificent panorama, and taking leave of his companion, Mr Paton
+descended the north-eastern slope of the mountain; and lodging for the
+night in a shepherd's hut, where he found an officer sent by the
+Natchalnik of Krushevatz to meet him, arrived next day at Zhupa. "Here
+the aspect of the country changed--the verdant hills became chalky, and
+covered with vineyards, which, before the fall of the empire, were
+celebrated;" and after partaking of a repast, in which choice grapes and
+clotted cream (a national dish in Turkey) formed the dessert, they
+pushed on in all haste, and reached Krushevatz (often marked in the maps
+by its Turkish name of Aladja-Hissar) late at night. He was hospitably
+received by the Natchalnik, whose wife kissed the visitor's hand on his
+arrival, in compliance with the old Servian customs, now fast wearing
+out, which assign to woman a social position intermediate between the
+seclusion of eastern manners and the graceful precedence which she
+enjoys in the west. The next morning, they walked out to inspect the
+town, which was the metropolis of the Servian kingdom immediately before
+its overthrow by the Turks; and which, lying as it does in the midst of
+the rich vale of the Morava, which here expands into a wide and fertile
+plain, extending from the foot of the mountains by which it is flanked
+to the river, occupies a site well adapted for all inland capital. The
+author here introduces a dissertation on the history, laws, and customs
+of the ancient monarchy; but as our own business is rather with Servia
+as it is, than Servia as it was, we shall pass unnoticed the glories of
+the house of Neman--the warlike trophies of Stephan Dushan the Powerful,
+at whose approach the Greek Emperor trembled within the walls of
+Constantinople--and the tragical fate of Knes Lasar, with whom Servian
+independence fell on the fatal plain of Kossovo, June 15, 1389. Of the
+palace of Lasar in Krushevatz, only the gateway and the ruined walls are
+now remaining; but the chapel, having been converted by the Turks into
+an arsenal, is still in perfect preservation. "It is a curious monument
+of the period, in a Byzantine sort of style, but not for a moment to be
+compared in beauty to the church of Studenitza. Above one of the doors
+is carved the double eagle, the insigni_um_ (!!) of empire; but instead
+of having body to body, and wings and beaks pointed outwards, as in the
+arms of Austria and Russia, the bodies are separated, and beak looks
+inward to beak. The late governor had the Vandalism to whitewash the
+exterior; but the Natchalnik told me, that under the whitewash fine
+bricks were disposed in diamond figures between the stones. This antique
+principle of tessellation, applied by the Byzantines to perpendicular
+walls, and occasionally adopted and varied _ad infinitum_ by the
+Saracens, is magnificently illustrated in the upper exterior of the
+ducal palace of Venice."
+
+A grand field-day against the bears and boars in the forest, with a
+couple of hundred peasants as beaters, had been arranged by the
+Natchalnik for his guest's amusement; but their plans were frustrated by
+the unpropitious state of the weather; and as soon as it became
+favourable, we find Mr Paton again in motion, ascending the eastern
+branch of the Morava to Alexinate, the quarantine station on the
+Bulgarian frontier, where the British govermnent has established a
+_konak_ or residence for the Queen's messengers, who here await, on the
+extreme verge of the sanatory system, the return of the Tartars with
+despatches from Constantinople. He found it tenanted by Captain W----,
+whose guest he became for several days, to his infinite
+satisfaction:--"It seemed so odd, and yet was so very comfortable, to
+have roast-beef, plum-pudding, sherry, brown stout, Stilton cheese, and
+other insular groceries, at the foot of the Balkan. There was, moreover,
+a small library, with which the temporary occupants of the konak killed
+the month's interval between arrival and departure." He was compelled,
+however, to tear himself from the delights of an English cuisine; and on
+arriving at Tiupria, (more properly Kiupri-Ravenatz,) where he first
+heard tidings of the emeute at Shabatz, and the murder of his friend the
+collector Ninitch, he diverged from his route to visit the monasteries
+of Ravanitza and Manasia, the former of which was the burial-place of
+Lasar. But as his reminiscences of these saintly retreats are rather
+convivial than antiquarian, we shall pass on at once to Svilainitza,
+(the place of silk,) where he was entertained in the chateau of M.
+Ressavatz, the richest man in Servia; the only chateau-residence as he
+tells us, which he saw in the country. This part of Servia appears
+indeed to be, as Mr Paton says--"Ressavatz quà, Ressavatz là"--since to
+the patriotism and command of capital of this enlightened family, it
+owes not only the introduction of the growth of silk as above-mentioned,
+but the construction of an excellent macadamized road, by which Mr Paton
+travelled on the following day, through a country richly cultivated and
+interspersed with lofty oaks, to Posharevatz, (commonly written
+Passarowitz,) where he was welcomed on his arrival by another of the
+name of Ressavatz, the Natchalnik of the place. Posharevatz is
+celebrated in history for the treaty there concluded in 1718, by which,
+in consequence of the victories of Prince Eugene, Bosnia and Servia
+passed under the dominion of Austria for twenty years, till restored to
+the Porte at the peace of Belgrade in 1739: in the present day it is a
+place of considerable importance, both as the capital of a province of
+ninety thousand inhabitants, and the seat of a court of judicial appeal
+for Eastern Servia. By the president of this court Mr Paton was
+entertained at dinner, where he met all the élite of Posharevatz; "and
+the president having made some punch, which showed profound acquaintance
+eith the jurisprudence of conviviality, the best amateurs of Posharevatz
+sung their best songs, which pleased me somewhat, for my ears had
+gradually been broken into the habits of the Servian muse. Being pressed
+myself to sing an English national song, I gratified their curiosity
+with 'God save the Queen,' and 'Rule Britannia,' explaining that these
+two songs contained the essence of English nationality; the one
+expressive of our unbounded loyalty, the other of our equally unbounded
+dominion." And now having extracted, to the best of our ability, the
+plums from the pudding of Mr Paton's _gastronomic_ circuit of Servia, in
+which, (as he cordially admits,) "by inter-_larding_ my discourse with
+sundry apophthegms of _Bacon_, and stale paradoxes of Rochefaucault, I
+passed current considerably above my real value," we shall here leave
+him to find his way by the beaten track through Semendria, Belgrade, and
+Vienna, to England. But before proceeding to the consideration of the
+"Servian Question," a point scarcely touched on in the volume before us,
+it will not be amiss to give a brief summary of the social condition and
+internal organization of the Servian nation, on which Mr Paton gives
+some valuable information in his concluding chapters.
+
+The Servian territory extends about one hundred and seventy miles from
+east to west, along the Danube and Save, the boundaries being the rivers
+Timok and Drina; and one hundred miles in extreme breadth from Belgrade
+to the frontier of Albania. The population, after the expulsion of the
+Turks, was roughly estimated, under Milosh, as somewhat exceeding half a
+million; but, from the internal peace which the country has since
+enjoyed, and the plenty and prosperity which prevails among the
+peasantry, there can be little doubt that it has since greatly
+increased. As not more than one-sixth of the soil is supposed to be in
+cultivation, there is abundance of excellent land undisposed of; as
+every man, therefore, with ordinary industry can support himself and his
+family, abject want and pauperism are almost unknown. The innumerable
+herds of swine, which form the staple commodity of the country, both for
+home consumption and export, rove freely through the oak and beech
+forests which cover great part of Servia, and in which every one is at
+liberty to cut as much timber as he pleases, only an inconsiderable
+portion being reserved as state property for the public service. There
+are no indirect taxes; and as the _poresa_, or capitation tax, paid by
+each head of a family, the maximum of which is six dollars a-year, is
+the only impost (except a trifling quit-rent for the land) levied by the
+government, "it must be admitted," (as Mr Paton observes,) "that the
+peasantry of Servia have drawn a high prize in the lottery of
+existence." The harvest is a period of general festivity; all labour in
+common in getting in the corn, the proprietor providing entertainment
+for his industrious guests; "but in the vale of the lower Morava, where
+there is less pasture and more corn, this is not sufficient, and hired
+Bulgarians assist." Though in a comparatively southern latitude, the
+vegetable productions are those of a more northern climate; Mr Paton
+never saw an olive-tree, and the grapes and melons, though abundant, are
+inferior to those of Hungary; but the plum, from which the national
+liqueur, _slivovitsa_, is made, every where abounds, almost every
+village having its plum-orchard. With all these means and appliances for
+good living close at hand, it is evident that there is not much prospect
+of a famine in Servia, till the productions of the soil fall short of
+the demands of the population--a consummation which cannot happen for
+many generations to come.
+
+The national character of the Servian is compared by Mr Paton to that of
+the Scotch Highlander; and it is not without strong points of
+resemblance. "He is brave in battle, highly hospitable; delights in
+simple and plaintive music and poetry, his favourite instruments being
+the bagpipe and fiddle; unlike the Greek, he shows little aptitude for
+trade; and, unlike the Bulgarian, he is very lazy in agricultural
+pursuits."
+
+In the cleanliness of their persons and houses, they present a
+favourable contrast to most of the other Slavic populations; and their
+personal appearance is also advantageous. "They are a remarkably tall
+and robust race of men; in form and feature they bespeak strength of
+body and energy of mind; but one seldom sees that thoroughbred look, so
+frequently found in the poorest peasants of Italy and Greece. The women
+I think very pretty. They are not so well-shaped as the Greeks; but
+their complexions are fine, their hair generally black and glossy, and
+their head-dress particularly graceful; and not being addicted to the
+bath, like other eastern women, they prolong their beauty beyond the
+average period." The spirit of nationality, and zeal for national
+improvement, which pervades the population almost as one man, is
+strongly marked by many incidents related in Mr Paton's pages, and one
+is so remarkable that we cannot forbear quoting it. An idiot boy, to
+whom he had given a glass of _slivovitza_, "taking off his greasy fez,
+said, 'I drink to our prince Kara-Georgovich, and the progress and
+enlightenment of the nation.' He was too stupid to entertain these
+sentiments himself; but if the determination to rise were not in the
+minds of the people, it would not be on the lips of an oaf in an
+insignificant hamlet." Nor is the progress of intellectual development
+behind this patriotic zeal for national independence in the march of
+regeneration. "In the whole range of the Slavic family, no nation
+possesses so extensive a collection of excellent popular poetry," with
+which the British public has been in some measure made acquainted by the
+translations of Dr Bowring. "The romantic beauty of their country--the
+relics of a wild mythology, which has some resemblance to that of Greece
+and Scandinavia--the adventurous character of the population--the
+vicissitudes of guerilla warfare--are all given in a dialect which for
+musical sweetness is to other Slavonic tongues what the Italian is to
+the languages of Western Europe." The Servian Anthology has been
+collected by Dr Wuk Stephanovich, the author of several works on
+national topics; and there are several living poets, among whom,
+Milutinovich, already mentioned, is reputed _facile princeps_. The only
+newspaper now printed at Belgrade is the _State Gazette_, which
+prudently avoids all remarks on Austrian or Russian policy; and the only
+annual is the _Golubitza_, (Dove,) a miscellany in prose and verse,
+neatly got up in imitation of the German Taschenbücher, and edited by M.
+Hadschitch, the framer of the code of laws. In the Lyceum, lectures on
+law are delivered by M. Simonovich, bred an Hungarian advocate, and
+formerly editor of the _Courier_, a newspaper now discontinued; but the
+study of law, as well as its practitioners, is said to be unpopular in
+Servia at present; and Professor John Shafarik is an able and popular
+lecturer on Slavic history, literature, and antiquities; of the latter,
+there is a collection in the museum of the institution, as well as a
+rich mineralogical cabinet collected by Baron Herder, and including
+specimens of silver, lead, and copper ore, as well as marble, white as
+that of Carrara. A Literary Society has also been formed for the
+encouragement of popular literature, and the formation of a complete
+dictionary of the language--the seal of which represents an uncultivated
+field, with the rising sun shining on a monument bearing the arms of
+Servia.
+
+The administrative senate consists of twenty-one members, named by the
+Prince for life; four of whom are ministers. Stojan Simitch, who has
+been before mentioned, the present vice-president (the presidency being
+an imaginary office,) is a Servian of the old school, in whom talent and
+shrewdness have supplied the place of education; but the most remarkable
+member of the cabinet is M. Petronevich, now minister for foreign
+affairs. He was at one time in a commercial house at Trieste, and
+subsequently for nine years a hostage for Servia at Constantinople--"he
+is astute by nature and education, but has a good heart and a capacious
+intellect; and, in the course of a very tortuous political career, has
+kept the advancement of Servia constantly in view. He is one of the very
+few public men in Servia, in whom the Christian and Western love of
+_community_ has triumphed over the Oriental allegiance to _self_; and
+this disinterestedness, in spite of his defects, is the secret of his
+popularity." His partner in exile, M. Wuczicz, is now commander of the
+military force and minister of the interior, in which latter office he
+succeeded Garashanin; the standing army is a mere skeleton force; but
+every Servian is a soldier, and bound to provide himself with arms, thus
+forming a national militia, of which the effective strength is estimated
+at little less than 100,000 men. The military command of each of the
+seventeen provinces is vested in the Natchalnik, under whom are the
+captains of the several cantons, usually three in each province; these
+officers superintend the police, and report to the minister at war. As
+minister of the interior, he is charged also with the superintendence of
+ecclesiastical affairs, the spiritual head of which, the Archbishop of
+Belgrade, though acknowledging the supremacy of the Greek Patriarch, is
+virtually independent within the province; his salary, as well as that
+of the three bishops and the inferior clergy, is paid by the state, that
+of the primate being about £800 a-year, and of his suffragans half as
+much. The administration of justice (as settled by the Sultan's _hatti
+shereef_ of 1838, which may be regarded as the Servian constitution) is
+vested in local courts in each province, consisting of a president and
+three members, from which an appeal lies to the supreme courts of
+Belgrade and Posharevatz; but reference is always made in the first
+instance, in minor cases, to the _Courts of Peace_ (as they are called,)
+consisting of the village magnates, with whose patriarchal arbitration
+the litigants are usually satisfied, law and lawyers not being held in
+high estimation. "The courts of law have something of the promptitude of
+Oriental justice, without its flagrant venality;" but the salaries of
+the judges are small, that of the president of the appeal court at
+Belgrade not exceeding £300 a-year. But it is the financial department
+that presents the most striking contrast to other European states, in
+the unheard-of phenomenon of a national debt due not _from_ but _to_ the
+government; the revenue so much exceeding the expenditure, that a sum of
+a hundred thousand ducats has been lent to the people at six per cent,
+and forms an item on the credit side of the budget! The total annual
+outlay, according to the financial returns, including the tribute to the
+Porte and the civil list of the Prince, (the latter equivalent to about
+£20,000 English,) is 830,000 dollars; while the income reaches 887,000,
+principally derived from the _poresa_, or capitation-tax paid by heads
+of families, a separate tax being levied on bachelors. Such is at
+present the flourishing state of the principality of Servia, "the
+youngest member of the European family," the views of Russia on which,
+somewhat prematurely developed by the famous "Servian question," will be
+more clearly understood by a preliminary sketch of its previous history.
+
+The political existence of modern Servia may be considered to date from
+1804, in February of which year a general rising took place of the
+Christian population against the Moslems, provoked by the massacres and
+atrocities committed by the spahis, who held lands in the province by
+military tenure, and whose chiefs had thrown off the authority of the
+Pasha of Belgrade, and embraced the party of the famous Paswan-Oghlu,
+Pasha of Widdin, who was then in open revolt against Selim III., as the
+champion of the janissaries and the _ancien regime_, against the civil
+and military reforms which the Sultan was striving to introduce. The
+principal leaders of the Servians were Slavatz, (or as Mr Paton calls
+him, if the same person is intended, Glavash,) and George Petrovich,
+surnamed _Kara_ or _Czerni_, (black,) the son of a peasant in the
+district of Kragejewatz, who afterwards migrated to Topola, which has
+therefore been held by the Servians as the place whence sprung their
+liberator,[5] and where an annual festival is held in his honour. He was
+in his youth a _Hayduk_ or klepht; and having been forced to fly from
+Servia for taking part in an unsuccessful insurrection, had served
+several years in the Austrian army. His successes were at first viewed
+with satisfaction by the Porte; and the obnoxious chiefs, driven to take
+refuge in Belgrade, were there seized and put to death by the Pasha; but
+it soon became evident that the Servians, once in arms and victorious,
+would not be satisfied without complete independence. Semendria and
+other fortresses fell into their hands; and Kara George, by the
+unanimous voice of his countrymen, was declared _hospodar_ or prince.
+The Porte now directed an invasion of Servia by a mingled force of forty
+thousand Turks and Bosniaks; but the Moslem army was totally overthrown
+near Shabatz, Aug. 8, 1806, by seven thousand foot and two thousand
+horse under Kara George, and driven across the Drina with the loss of
+their commander and many other chiefs. It was now apparent that Servia
+was not to be reduced by force of arms; and conferences were opened, by
+which the Sultan engaged to grant them a local and national government,
+with free exercise of their religion. But the negotiation failed, from
+the demands of the Porte that they should surrender their arms, and
+leave the fortresses in the hands of the Turks; and while it was yet
+pending, Kara George carried Belgrade with great slaughter, by a
+_coup-de-main_, on the night of Dec. 13, 1806, thus completing the
+expulsion of the Turks from Servia, with the exception of Szoko, (Mr
+Paton's Sokol,) and a few other strongholds which still remained in
+their hands.
+
+The war which broke out in the following year between Russia and the
+Porte, secured Servia against any further attacks from the Turks; and
+Kara George, thus freed from apprehensions of invasion, endeavoured to
+introduce some degree of order and civil organization into the country.
+A sort of federal senate, to which each of the twelve districts into
+which the principality was then divided sent a member, met annually at
+Belgrade to regulate the finances and internal affairs of the country;
+and though the freedom of their deliberations was impeded by the
+presence of the _wayvodes_ or military governors, at the head of their
+armed retainers, whom even the authority of Kara George was unable to
+coerce, the success of their efforts to establish schools and promote
+the interests of civilization, indicated a degree of enlightened policy
+little to have been expected from a people but half emancipated from
+Turkish bondage. Kara George, meanwhile, who had received from the
+Emperor Alexander the rank of lieutenant-general, did good service to
+his Russian allies; and though signally defeated in an invasion of
+Bosnia, repulsed with triumphant success every attempt of the Turks to
+enter Servia. But his energies were paralysed by the disaffection of the
+subordinate chiefs; and when Russia, pressed by the advance of Napoleon,
+concluded in 1812 the peace of Bukarest, there was only a nugatory
+stipulation, in the eighth clause of the treaty, that the internal
+administration should be left with the Servians, "as to the subjects of
+the Sublime Porte in the islands of the Archipelago;" the fortresses to
+remain in the hands of the Turks. But no sooner was the Porte relieved
+from the presence of the enemy, than an overwhelming force was poured
+into Servia; and Kara George, unable to resist, fled into Hungary, and
+afterwards took refuge in Russia.
+
+The character of this remarkable man is well portrayed in a despatch,
+quoted by Mr Paton, of the afterwards well-known Diebitsch, who was the
+confidential agent of Russia in Servia, in 1810-11:--"His countenance
+shows a greatness of mind not to be mistaken; and when we consider times
+and circumstances, and his want of education, we must admit that his
+mind is of a masculine and commanding order. The imputation of cruelty
+appears to be unjust. When the country was without the shadow of a
+constitution, and when he commanded an unorganized and uncultivated
+nation, he was compelled to be severe; he dared not relax his
+discipline; but now that there are courts of law and legal forms, he
+hands every thing over to the tribunals. He has very little to say for
+himself, and is rude in his manners; but his judgments in civil affairs
+are promptly and soundly formed, and to great talents he joins unwearied
+industry. As a soldier, there is but one opinion of his talents,
+bravery, and enduring firmness." The portrait prefixed to the present
+volume, from a painting in the possession of the reigning Prince, the
+duplicate of one executed for the Emperor Alexander, bears out the
+character thus given of the Servian hero:--"The countenance expressed
+not only intelligence, but a certain refinement, which one would
+scarcely expect in a warrior peasant; but all his contemporaries agree
+in representing him to have possessed an inherent superiority and
+nobility of nature, which, in any station, would have raised him above
+his equals."
+
+At this juncture, when Servia lay at the mercy of the Turks, Milosh
+Obrenovich appeared on the scene. He had originally been a swineherd,
+and afterwards an officer of Kara George; but he now sided with the
+Turks, to whom he rendered efficient aid in cutting off the other
+popular leaders who still continued in arms. But the execution of
+Slavatz, and other chiefs who had also made their submission, by order
+of Soliman Pasha of Belgrade, showed him that his own fate was only
+deferred; and, escaping into his native district of Rudnik, he once more
+raised the standard of freedom. The peasantry rose _en masse_, and the
+campaign was generally to the advantage of Milosh, who displayed great
+bravery and military skill; but Soliman Pasha was at length recalled,
+and an accommodation effected, by which Milosh became hospodar, under
+the suzerainté of the Sultan, Belgrade and a few fortresses only
+remaining in the hands of the Turks. As the resident Turkish population
+had almost wholly disappeared during the war, Milosh was now absolute
+master of the country, and was delivered from all fears of a rival, by
+the death of Kara George, who, in 1817, misled by false representations,
+had returned from Petersburg to Servia; but was betrayed by Milosh, and
+put to death by the Turks.[6] Though unable to read or write, his rule
+was marked by ability and vigour. He repressed robberies and offences
+against property with merciless severity, frequently causing malefactors
+to be hung to the next tree, without form of trial;--and improved the
+internal communications by the formation of an excellent road through
+the forests, from the Turkish frontier at Nissa to Belgrade. In his
+political relations with Russia and the Porte, he steered a middle
+course with consummate dexterity, constantly maintaining a good
+understanding with the cabinet of St Petersburg; while, in 1830, he
+succeeded in obtaining from the Sultan a firman, by which the dignity of
+prince was declared hereditary in his family; and it was further
+provided, that such Turks as still retained land in Servia should
+dispose of their estates within a limited period, and quit the province.
+Another firman, in 1833, released the Servians from the payment of
+_kharaj_ (the capitation tax paid by rayahs) and all other dues and
+imposts, in consideration of an annual tribute of 2,300,000 piastres
+(£23,000) to be paid to the Porte; the right of levying taxes was
+conceded to the Servian government, and all fortresses erected by the
+Turks, since the commencement of the war in 1804, were to be rased.[7]
+These concessions, which rendered the dependence of Servia on the Porte
+little more than nominal, were doubtless granted through the secret
+influence of Russia, whose obvious interest it was to weaken the
+connexion between her destined prey and its titular suzerain; but the
+despotic power thus placed in the hands of Milosh, was exercised with a
+degree of arrogance and contempt of vested rights, which soon rendered
+him highly unpopular. No carriage but his was allowed to appear in the
+streets of Belgrade; and, while all political rights were withheld from
+the people, he amassed immense wealth by arbitrary confiscations, by
+levying heavy taxes and import duties, and by establishing oppressive
+monopolies of articles of necessary consumption, particularly salt,
+veins of which, discovered by Baron Herder near the Kopaunik mountain,
+he forbade to be worked under severe penalties, in order to keep in his
+own hands the importation from Walachia. The discontent of the national
+party, headed by the _primates_ (as they are called) of the
+municipalities, at length broke out into flame--fomented (as it was then
+believed) by Russia, who was jealous of the influence acquired over
+Milosh by Colonel Hodges, appointed in 1836 consul-general for England,
+and with whom he was on the point of concluding a commercial treaty. A
+_hatti-shereef_ at this juncture (December 1838) arrived from the Porte,
+obtained (as it is said) through the advice of Colonel Hodges, and
+containing a form of constitution for Servia, regulating the legal
+tribunals, the functions of the ministry, &c., and ordaining the
+formation of a legislative council of seventeen members, as a check on
+the despotism of the Prince. But the crisis had already arrived. The
+senate took the initiative, by charging Milosh with embezzlement of the
+public property, and calling him to account; and, after a vain attempt
+to make a stand against the popular indignation, he fled with his
+treasures into Hungary. An attempt to recover his power having proved
+ineffectual, he at length abdicated in favour of his son, Milan; who,
+dying soon after, was succeeded by his brother, Michael, under the
+guardianship of his mother, Liubitza. But the same system still
+continued; and all efforts to procure any redress of grievances proving
+fruitless, a general outbreak took place in September 1842, the prime
+movers in which were Wucicz and Petronevich, who for several years had
+been the recognised heads of the popular party. As it was found that the
+few troops round the Prince were not to be depended upon, he quitted
+Belgrade, accompanied by his mother and the French and English consuls,
+and repaired to Semlin; and after some fruitless negotiation, the
+sovereignty was declared vacant by the representatives of the nation,
+with the concurrence of the Turkish governor, Kiamil Pasha.
+
+As it was well known that the Obrenovich family had been for some time
+in bad odour at Petersburg, this movement was at first universally
+attributed to Russian influence; but it soon became apparent that its
+only motive was the spontaneous assertion by the Servians of the rights
+and liberties withheld from them; and the steps for a fresh election, in
+pursuance of the provisions of the _hatti-shereefs_ were taken with
+perfect order and unanimity. A firman was issued by the Sultan, in right
+of his suzerainté; and the unanimous and enthusiastic choice of the
+nation fell on Alexander, son of the well-remembered Kara George, who
+was forthwith inaugurated in the cathedral of Belgrade, by the
+Archbishop, and received from the Porte the _berat_ or patent, necessary
+for his confirmation in his new dignity. His accession was officially
+notified by the Ottoman ministers, to the Russian envoy at
+Constantinople but this evidence of good understanding and unity of
+interest between the Porte and her vassal, was a formidable and
+unexpected obstacle to the sinister designs of Russia which was to be
+counteracted at all hazards; and the course adopted for this purpose,
+unparalleled perhaps in the annals of diplomacy, cannot be better
+understood than from the able and lucid statement of Lord Beaumont in
+his place in parliament, on the 5th of May following. [It must first be
+well remembered that neither in the treaty of Bukarest, nor in any
+subsequent convention, was a shadow of a right of _veto_, or
+interference in any way in the election of a prince of Servia, conveyed
+to Russia, (as in the joint nomination with the Porte of the hospodars
+of the Trans-Danubian principalities,) and the only ground on which such
+interference could rest, was that enunciated by Baron Lieven, with
+somewhat remarkable frankness in a Russ diplomatist, to Mr Paton, that
+"Servia owed her political existence solely to Russia, which gave the
+latter a moral right of intervention over and above the stipulations of
+treaties, to which no other power could pretend"--a statement false both
+in fact and inference, since it was by their own good swords, unaided by
+Russia or any other European power with either men or money,[8] that the
+Servians won their freedom; and the nugatory stipulation in the treaty
+of Bukarest, had been all along left a dead letter.] "Russia, neglecting
+all international law, sent an agent of her own into Servia, to
+investigate the internal proceedings of an independent state, and, on
+receiving his report, directed that agent to state his complaints,
+without consulting any other power, to the Divan. Now, he would venture
+to say, that a greater or more direct insult than this, was never
+offered to an independent state, and he could not conceive any act that
+could be a more gross and positive violation of the treaties of
+Bukarest, Akerman, and Adrianople, under which alone she could set up a
+right to be informed of what passed in Servia. Though Georgevich was
+elected by the people, according to the constitution of the province,
+and though the validity of his election was acknowledged by the Divan,
+and confirmed by the Porte, Russia demanded that the election should be
+set aside; and this demand was made by that power in such an overbearing
+manner, as to show to the world that Turkey was under the control of
+Russia, and must act in conformity with the dictates of the Czar."
+
+In this extremity, the Porte appealed for support to Great Britain and
+Austria, two of the powers who were parties to the quintuple treaty
+signed at London, July 15, 1840, for the express object of ensuring the
+integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire; and the appeal was
+backed by strong representations from Sir Stratford Canning, the British
+ambassador at Constantinople, to his home government. But the British
+government was (as Lord Palmerston observed, with much sarcastic truth,
+in the House of Commons on August 15) "in the same condition in which
+they had too often of late been found in foreign affairs, without any
+opinion of their own on the subject, (hear;) and determined to act with
+Austria, thereby risking the sacrifice of our own interests for a remote
+Austrian interest in which we had no concern. Austria at first
+determined to support Servia; but there came an _urgent appeal_ from
+Russia; and Austria recommended Servia to yield." The nature of this
+"urgent appeal" will be well understood by those who are aware of the
+morbid fear entertained by Austria of Russian extension among the Slavic
+populations in Hungary; and of which Russia availing herself, (as
+remarked by Mr Paget,) "by exerting the influence which similarity of
+language, and, in some parts, of religion, gives her over them, has
+hitherto frightened Austria into doing almost any thing she likes." "The
+Sultan" (continued Lord Palmerston) "was now forced to submit. He
+annulled the election of Prince Georgevich; he consented to a popular
+election; he recalled the two popular leaders, Wucicz and Petronevich,
+to Constantinople; and even appointed a Russian general, Baron Lieven,
+his commissioner, in conjunction with a Turkish officer, to go into
+Servia to see his orders carried into execution."
+
+So far Lord Palmerston; and the accuracy of the information possessed by
+the British Cabinet to combat these strong facts, may be estimated, from
+Sir Robert Peel's calling Prince Alexander, a man of thirty-five, and
+the worthy inheritor of his father's great qualities, "an infatuated
+youth"--on the authority (it is said) of a letter from Mr Fonblanque!
+But we must return from the English debates to the progress of the drama
+in Servia, where the commissioners found the Servians, in defiance of
+the great powers, and in spite of the hopelessness of aid from
+Constantinople, preparing for national resistance. The Prince refused to
+abdicate, alleging that the firman by which he had been appointed had
+never been revoked, and that universal anarchy would result from his
+resigning the reins of government, since no _kaimakams_, or regents _pro
+tempore_, had been named by the Porte--an omission which is supposed not
+to have been altogether unintentional; and the whole nation rose in
+commotion at the bare mention of the recall of Wucicz and Petronevich;
+the crowd exclaiming, when Wucicz told them that 'the Servian forests
+would not be less green were two old trees cut down, "No! a thousand
+times no!" and rushing with arms in their hands to the presence of
+Hafiz-Pasha, (who had been appointed on Kiamil's recall on the mandate
+of Russia for his share in the revolution,) announced their
+determination to maintain their prince and his counsellors; to which
+Hafiz assented, no doubt, with secret gratification. While the
+proceedings were thus stayed by the unexpected resolution shown by the
+Servians, Russian emissaries were traversing the country in all
+directions, striving in vain to stir up a revolt in favour of the
+Obrenovich family, whose former partisans, it was found, were now their
+strongest opponents; and inciting the Christians in Bosnia and Bulgaria
+to rise against the Moslems, by the hope of obtaining independent
+governments under hospodars of their own, like the other principalities.
+On the other hand, the Servian population was ready to rise _en masse_
+in defence of its liberties, and was further cheered by the report that
+thirty thousand of the Slavic races under Austrian dominion were ready
+to join them in the struggle for national freedom; while the Porte,
+roused to unexpected energy by the accumulation of wrong heaped upon it,
+reinforced the garrison of Belgrade with three thousand fresh troops,
+and formed encampments to the amount of near one hundred thousand men at
+Constantinople and Adrianople, for the ostensible purpose of overawing
+the spirit of revolt among the Bulgarians. The National Assembly, which
+had in the mean time met at Belgrade, declared the election of Prince
+Alexander legal and valid, and refused to abrogate it; and as the agents
+of Russia found that their original object could only be effected by an
+invasion, an act which (even had the season left time to march an army
+to the Danube) might have exceeded even the long-suffering of the other
+powers who were parties to the treaty of 1840, it was resolved, for the
+sake of appearances, to repair the false step as far as possible by a
+show of moderation. It was accordingly announced that the principal
+objections of Russia to the late election arose from the informality
+with which the proceedings had been conducted; that Prince Alexander
+would be admitted as a candidate, (a concession very distasteful to
+Austria, who apprehended that the talent and popularity of the prince
+might attract her own Slavic subjects under his rule;) and that the late
+prince, Michael, should be excluded from competition. This could only
+lead to one result; and Alexander, having _pro formâ_ resigned his
+authority, a _hatti-shereef_ was sent from the Porte, and he was again
+elected with even greater enthusiasm than before.
+
+But Russia, though foiled in her main object, had still another move in
+reserve. The _berat_, or letter-patent of the Sultan, was still
+necessary for the confirmation of the new prince; and July 27, M. Titoff
+(who had succeeded M. Boutenieff as Russian envoy to the Porte)
+announced to the Divan the will of his master, that this important
+document should be withheld till Wucicz and Petronevich, "the authors of
+the late disturbances," had left the country. The ministers of the
+Porte, unsupported by the ambassadors of France and England, who
+remained passive, had no alternative but to yield to this audacious act
+of intervention, which was communicated by Baron Lieven to the Servian
+kaimakams appointed during the interregnum. "As soon as the intelligence
+was spread among the people, the universal exclamation was--'We will not
+suffer them to be taken from us--they are our protectors, our
+benefactors;'" but submission was inevitable, and, in the middle of
+August, the two ministers repaired to Widdin, where they were received
+with high distinction by Hussein Pasha. They remained in exile a year,
+when the interdict was withdrawn by Russia, as it is said in consequence
+of British intervention, but more probably from finding, that,
+notwithstanding their absence, it was impossible to stir up faction
+against Prince Alexander. The circumstances of their return have been
+already given from Mr Paton's account; and we can little doubt, that on
+his next interview with the Prince, after his faithful counsellors had
+been restored to him, "he showed no trace of that reserve and timidity
+which foreigners had remarked in him a year before."
+
+Such is the plain unvarnished account of the late transactions in
+Servia, in which the true character of Russian policy, and the means by
+which it is carried out, have been unveiled before the eyes of Europe in
+a manner sufficient to enlighten those which are not closed in wilful
+blindness. "Europe has been apprised, if she wishes to be so," (says the
+_Journal des Debats_,) "that there is in the East, independent of
+Turkey, a point of resistance against the encroachments of Russia;" and
+this _great fact_ derives double value from that point being found in
+one of those Slavic populations which it is the grand object and aim of
+Russia to unite under her iron sceptre. But (in the eloquent language of
+Mr Paget) "we knew that if Europe did awake, the progress of Russia was
+stopped; we knew that her gigantic power would crumble away, and nothing
+remain but the hatred of the world, of the injustice and cruelty by
+which it had been raised."
+
+  F. H.
+
+     _Servia, the Youngest Member of the European Family; or, a
+     Residence in Belgrade, and Travels in the Highlands and Woodlands
+     of the Interior, during the Years 1843 and 1844._ By ANDREW
+     ARCHIBALD PATON, Esq., Author of the "Modern Syrians."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] This was the explanation actually given by Develuz, our consul at
+Adrianople, of his exaggerated account of the strength of Diebitsch's
+army, at the moment when Diebitsch's best hope was, that he might effect
+his retreat across the Balkan with the shattered and debilitated remnant
+of his troops! Yet on this authority the Sultan was recommended to yield
+at discretion, and the treaty of Adrianople was signed!
+
+[2] The present Prince, on public occasions, always wears the fez with
+an aigrette of diamonds, as a recognition of the suzerainté of the
+Porte; his predecessor, Michel Obrenovich, gave great offence by wearing
+a cocked hat.
+
+[3] The old Emperor, Francis of Austria, when a Russian general was to
+be presented, would say, "Now bring in the northern firmament, and all
+its stars."
+
+[4] Sokol must here be a slip of the pen for Szoko. Sokol, the
+birth-place of the famous Mohammed Sokolli, vizier of Soliman the
+Magnificent and his two successors, is in the heart of Bosnia, near
+Gradachatz.
+
+[5] In the supplement to the _Biographie Universelle_, vol. lxi., a
+strange tale is told, that Czerni George was a native of Nanci, who fled
+in his youth to Servia--but this is a mere romance.
+
+[6] Lamartine (_Voyage en Orient_) and other writers represent Kara
+George as having died in confinement in an Austrian fortress, soon after
+his flight in 1813-an error which has probably arisen from a confusion
+between his fate and that of Alexander Hypsilantis, who headed the
+insurrection in Walachia in 1821, and died in Mongatz, after three
+years' imprisonment.
+
+[7] These firmans, with the _hatti-shereef_ of 1838, &c., were printed
+and laid before the House of Commons in May 1843.
+
+[8] The contrast in this respect, between the progress and results of
+the Servian and Greek revolutions, is forcibly stated in an extract from
+a MS. document by Wuk Stephanovich, author of the Servian Anthology, in
+Parish's _Diplomatic History of the Monarchy of Greece_.--Pp. 387-90.
+
+
+
+
+THE STUDENT OF SALAMANCA.
+
+PART IV.
+
+     "Y asi entre otras razones le dijo que no tuviese pena del suceso
+     de Camila, porque sín duda la herida era ligera."--CERVANTES. _El
+     Curioso Impertinente._
+
+
+The unexpected and opportune appearance of Mariano Torres, at the moment
+of Herrera's escape, requires a few words of explanation. When Rodil, on
+the morrow of the skirmish with Zumalacarregui in the Lower Amezcoa,
+evacuated that valley, he proceeded to distribute a portion of his army
+amongst various garrisons; and then, with the remainder, marched to
+Biscay in pursuit of Don Carlos, who, having as yet no place of security
+from his enemies, was wandering about attended by a handful of
+followers. Amongst the troops left in Navarre by the Christino general,
+was the cavalry regiment to which Herrera and Torres belonged, and this
+was ordered to the plains of the Ebro. The day after its arrival at the
+town of Viana, a battalion marched in from Pampeluna, and with it came
+Sergeant Velasquez, who, after his escape from the Carlists, had taken
+refuge in that fortress. Great was the consternation of Torres on
+learning the surprise of the escort and capture of his friend, and his
+grief was warmly sympathized in by the other officers of the regiment,
+with whom Herrera was a universal favourite. But Torres was not the man
+to content himself with idle regrets and unavailing lamentations, and he
+resolved to rescue Herrera, if it were possible, even at the hazard of
+his own life. He confided his project to the colonel of his regiment,
+who, with some difficulty, was induced to acquiesce in it, and to grant
+him leave of absence. This obtained, he disguised himself as a private
+soldier, and boldly plunged into the centre of Navarre in quest of
+Zumalacarregui and his army. He had little difficulty in finding them:
+he announced himself as a deserter from the Christinos, and, without
+attracting unusual notice or suspicion, was enrolled in a Navarrese
+battaline, which, a day or two afterwards, marched to the village where
+Herrera was kept prisoner. Although by the interference of Count
+Villabuena, and the dexterity of Paco and the gipsy, Mariano's daring
+self-devotion was rendered superfluous, it had its uses, inasmuch as his
+disappearance with Herrera prevented the slightest suspicion from
+falling upon those who had really contrived and effected the escape. The
+gipsy, after guiding the two friends to Salvatierra, and receiving an
+ample reward from Herrera, performed the secret service with which
+Zumalacarregui had charged him, returned to that general with a ready
+framed excuse for the slight delay in its execution, and pocketed the
+ten additional onzas promised him by Paco. The muleteer, still weak from
+his wound, was the last man to be suspected; and of the Count's
+participation in the affair, no one, excepting Major Villabuena, for a
+moment dreamed. Don Baltasar, remembering his cousin's anxiety
+concerning Herrera, certainly entertained a notion that he had in some
+way or other facilitated his escape; but of this he could obtain no
+proof, nor, had he been able to do so, would it have been for his own
+interest to expose the Count, whom he was desirous, on the contrary, to
+conciliate. It was a vague and undefined apprehension of some attempt at
+a rescue, that had led him, at so late an hour on the night of the
+escape, to prowl in the vicinity of Herrera's prison.
+
+The autumn and winter of 1834 passed away without any material change in
+the position of the personages of our narrative. The war continued with
+constantly increasing spirit and ferocity, and each month was marked by
+new and important successes on the part of the Carlists. The plains of
+Vittoria, the banks of the Ebro, the mountains of central and northern
+Navarre, were alternately the scene of encounters, in which the skill of
+Zumalacarregui, and the zeal and intrepidity of his troops, proved an
+overmatch for the superior numbers of the Christinos. In vain did the
+government of the Queen Regent, persevering in spite of its many
+reverses, send its best troops and most experienced generals to that
+corner of the peninsula where civil strife raged: it was only that the
+troops might be decimated, and the generals forfeit their former
+reputation in repeated and disastrous defeats. Although the country and
+climate were such as to render temporary repose in winter quarters most
+desirable for the contending armies, the idea of such an indulgence was
+scarcely for a moment entertained, and the winter campaign proved as
+active as the summer one. The arrival of Mina to take the chief command
+of the Queen's forces, and the severity of the measures he adopted,
+rendered the character of the war more sanguinary and cruel than it had
+been since its commencement; and although, in numerous instances, the
+nearest relatives and dearest friends were fighting on contrary sides,
+it became impossible for them to obtain intelligence of each other's
+welfare. It was by no means surprising, therefore, that eight months
+elapsed, and the spring arrived, without Herrera hearing any thing of
+Count Villabuena or his daughter; and that the Count, on the other hand,
+remained ignorant of the proceedings of the young man whose life he had
+saved, and in whose fate he could not but feel interested, save through
+the occasional rumour of some dashing exploit, by which Herrera
+maintained and increased the high reputation he had early acquired in
+the ranks of the Christinos. His gallantry did not go unrewarded, and
+the opening of the spring campaign found him in command of a squadron,
+and on the high-road to further promotion.
+
+Whilst Herrera was thus gaining fame and honour, his rival, Major
+Villabuena, had no reason to complain of his services being overlooked.
+His courage was undoubted, his military skill by no means contemptible,
+and these qualities had procured him a colonel's commission and a staff
+appointment. But, in spite of these advantages, Don Baltasar was
+dissatisfied and unhappy. His object in joining the Carlists had not
+been promotion, still less a zeal for the cause, but the appropriation
+to himself of the fair hand and broad lands of Rita de Villabuena. His
+prospect of obtaining these, however, seemed each day to diminish. The
+favour with which the Count regarded him had lasted but during the first
+days of their acquaintance, and had since been materially impaired by
+the discovery of various unpleasing traits in Don Baltasar's character,
+and particularly by his endeavours to urge the death of Herrera in
+opposition to the wishes of his kinsman. Moreover, there could be little
+sympathy or durable friendship between men of such opposite qualities
+and dispositions. Count Villabuena had the feelings and instincts of a
+nobleman, in the real, not the conventional sense of the term: he was
+proud to a fault, stern, and unyielding, but frank, generous, and
+upright. Don Baltasar was treacherous, selfish, and unscrupulous. He
+felt himself cowed and humbled by the superiority of the Count, whom he
+began secretly to detest; and who, whilst still keeping on good, or at
+least courteous, terms with his cousin, became daily more averse to his
+alliance, and more decided to support Rita in her rejection of his suit.
+
+As a natural consequence of Zumalacarregui's successes, they of the
+absolutist party in Spain who had openly declared for Don Carlos, and
+who, during the first year of the war, had been hunted from post to
+pillar, and frequently compelled to seek concealment in caves and
+forests from the pursuit of the foe, found themselves, in the spring of
+1835, in possession of a considerable tract of country, including a few
+fortified places. _El Lobo Caño_, the Grey-haired Wolf, as his followers
+had styled Don Carlos, in allusion to his hair having become bleached on
+the mountain and in the bivouac, began to collect around him the
+semblance of a court; and various ladies, the wives and daughters of his
+partisans, who had been in temporary exile in France, recrossed the
+frontier and hazarded themselves in the immediate vicinity of the scene
+of war. Amongst others, Rita de Villabuena, who had been residing with
+some friends at the French town of Pau, implored, and with difficulty
+obtained, her father's permission to rejoin him. A house was prepared
+for her reception in the small town of Segura in Guipuzcoa, whence, in
+case of need, a speedy retreat might be made to the adjacent sierras of
+Mutiloa and Aralar, and here she arrived, under her father's escort,
+towards the commencement of the month of May.
+
+One of the first who hastened to pay court to the young and beautiful
+heiress, was, as might be expected, Colonel Baltasar de Villabuena. But
+his reception was in the highest degree discouraging, and he was able to
+assure himself, that if any variation had taken place in Rita's
+sentiments, it was by no means in his favour. His only remaining hope,
+therefore, was in an appeal to the Count, whom he still believed to be,
+for the family reasons already adverted to, desirous of a union between
+Rita and himself. This appeal he resolved to take an early opportunity
+of making. A valuable estate, which Rita had inherited from her mother,
+lay within the tract of country already conquered by the Carlists; and
+although the revenue it yielded was greatly diminished by the disturbed
+state of Navarre, and the contributions levied for the carrying on of
+the war, it was still sufficiently important to excite the cupidity of
+Don Baltasar, and to render him doubly anxious to obtain, on any terms,
+the hand of his cousin.
+
+It was on a bright May morning, three days subsequently to Rita's
+arrival at Segura, that a small train of horsemen was seen winding along
+the declivitous paths that lead across the sierra of Elgua, a part of
+the northern boundary of the province of Alava. The snows with which,
+during the long winter, the upper portion of these mountains had been
+covered, had disappeared in the warm rays of the spring sun, and
+disclosed peaks of grey rock, and patches of table-land strewn with
+flints, producing little besides a few Alpine plants, which, in defiance
+of the scanty nourishment they found, and of the keen air that blew over
+those elevated summits, boldly expanded their blossoms in the pleasant
+sunshine. Lower down, and on that part of the southern side of the
+mountain over which the cavalcade now proceeded, masses of forest-trees
+sprang out of the more plentiful soil, and overshadowed the rocky path
+that rang under the horses' feet; the dusky foliage of the fir-tree, the
+brighter green of the oak, and the broad angular leaves of the sycamore,
+mingling in rich variety. Now the path lay through some dried-up
+water-course, half filled with loose stones, whose elevated sides, over
+the edges of which the tendrils of innumerable creeping plants dangled
+and swung, bounded the view on either hand; whilst overhead the
+interwoven branches afforded, through their thick leafage, but scanty
+glimpses of the bright blue sky. Presently, emerging from the ravine,
+the road, if such it might be called, ran along the shelf of a
+precipice, below which successive ranges of luxuriant foliage, varied
+here and there by a projecting crag, or enlivened by the dash and
+sparkle of a waterfall, continued to the level below. From the foot of
+the mountains, an extensive plain stretched out to a distance of several
+leagues, its smiling and fertile fields thickly sprinkled with villages
+and farm-houses. To the left front rose the old Moorish castle of
+Guevara; and at a greater distance, more to the westward, and near the
+centre of the plain, were seen the imperfect fortifications and lofty
+church-towers of the city of Vittoria.
+
+The foremost of the horsemen, who, on the day referred to, were thus
+scrambling, to the great discomfort of their steeds, down the steep and
+rugged sides of the sierra, avoiding, for reasons of safety, the
+high-road from Salinas to Vittoria, which lay at a league or two on
+their right, was a man of middle age and tawny complexion, mounted on a
+lean and uncomely, but surefooted horse, whose long tail, which, if
+allowed to flow at will, would have swept the ground, was doubled up
+into a sort of club, about a foot long, and tightly bound with worsted
+ribands of bright and varied colours. The thick and abundant mane had
+been carefully plaited, with the exception of the foremost tuft, left
+hanging down between the ears, and from beneath which the wild eyes of
+the animal glanced shyly at the different objects he passed, pretty much
+as did those of the rider from under his bushy and projecting eye-brows.
+The horseman was dressed in a loose jacket of black sheep-skin, the wool
+rubbed off in many places, fastened down the front by copper clasps and
+chains that had once boasted a gilding, and bound at edges with coarse
+crimson velvet, which, from time and dirt, had become as dark as the
+principal material of the garment. Between the loose short trousers and
+the clumsy half-boots, replacing the sandals that were the customary
+wear of the person described, several inches of lean and sinewy leg were
+visible. A coloured handkerchief, tied round the head, and from beneath
+which a quantity of shaggy black hair escaped, rusty iron spurs, with
+huge jingling rowels, and a well-stuffed leathern wallet slung across
+his body, completed the equipment of the horseman, in whom the reader
+will perhaps already have recognised Jaime, the gipsy esquilador, now
+acting as guide to the persons who followed. These consisted of Count
+Villabuena and his cousin, Don Baltasar, both well mounted on powerful
+chargers, and cloaked from chin to heel; for they had been early in the
+saddle, and, although now in the month of May, the morning air upon the
+mountains was keen and searching. They were followed, at a short
+distance, by an escort of forty Carlist cavalry, strange, wild-looking
+figures, whose scanty equipment, and the little uniformity of their
+clothing, might have excited the derision of better provided troops; but
+whose muscular forms and hardy aspect, as well as the serviceable state
+of their carbines and lances, gave promise of their proving efficient
+defenders and formidable foes.
+
+Not having been bred to the profession of arms, Count Villabuena was, in
+a strictly military point of view, of little use to his party; but his
+intimate acquaintance with Navarre and the Basque provinces, with the
+customs, feelings, and prejudices of their inhabitants, rendered him
+invaluable in all administrative arrangements and combinations, and in
+these he cheerfully and actively exerted himself. It was on a mission of
+this nature that he was now proceeding, having left Oñate early that
+morning, to attend a meeting of influential Alavese Carlists, which was
+to take place at the village of Gamboa, on the north side of the plain
+of Vittoria. Although the country he had to pass through was not then
+occupied, and only occasionally visited, by the Christinos, an escort
+was necessary; and, besides this escort, Colonel Villabuena had
+volunteered to accompany his cousin. His object in so doing was to
+obtain an opportunity for an uninterrupted conversation with the Count,
+on the subject of his pretensions to the hand of Rita.
+
+This conversation had taken place, and its result had been most
+unsatisfactory to Don Baltasar. The Count plainly told him that it was
+not his intention to force the inclinations of his daughter; and that,
+as she was averse to the proposed alliance, he himself had abandoned the
+idea of its taking place. A long and stormy discussion ensued, and
+Baltasar accused the Count of having deceived him, and induced him to
+join a cause, the ultimate triumph of which was impossible, by holding
+out hopes that he never intended to realize. The Count replied by
+reminding Don Baltasar, that when he had urged him to serve his rightful
+monarch, and not under the banner of a usurper, the only arguments he
+had used were those of loyalty and duty; and that the proposed marriage
+was a private arrangement entirely contingent upon his daughter's
+acquiescence. Sharp retorts and angry words followed, until the
+conversation was brought to a close by the Count's checking his horse,
+and allowing the escort, which had previously been at some distance
+behind, to come up with them. The cousins then rode on, still side by
+side, but silent, and as far apart as the narrow path would allow, the
+Count haughty and indignant, Don Baltasar sullen and dogged.
+
+Whilst this occurred in the mountains, the persons whom Count Villabuena
+came to meet were assembling at the place of rendezvous in the village
+of Gamboa. From various country lanes and roads, substantial-looking
+men, wrapped in heavy brown cloaks, and riding punchy mountain horses,
+were seen to emerge, for the most part singly, and at the careless,
+deliberate pace least calculated to excite suspicion of their going to
+other than their ordinary avocations. Some of these were alcaldes and
+regidores from the neighbouring villages, others landed proprietors in
+the vicinity. Now and then a lean, anxious priest, perched upon a high
+saddle, his feet encased in clumsy wooden stirrups, his head covered
+with an enormous hat, of which the brim, curled up at the sides over the
+crown, projected half a yard before and behind him, came ambling into
+the village, distributing his _benedicites_ amongst the peasant women
+and children, who stood at the doors of the houses bowing reverently to
+the _padre cura_. One man, dressed in the coarsest and commonest garb of
+a labourer, came up upon an ill-looking mule, and received a loud and
+joyful welcome from the persons already assembled. He was a wealthy
+proprietor, whose estates lay within the Christino lines, and had been
+compelled to adopt this disguise to avoid notice. The arrival of another
+person, to all appearance a charcoal-burner, with grimy face and hands,
+riding a ragged pony, across which a couple of sacks, black from the
+charcoal they had contained, were thrown by way of saddle, was hailed
+with similar demonstrations of joy. He was a rich merchant and national
+guardsman from Vittoria, secretly well affected to Don Carlos.
+
+The place where the Carlists first assembled was not in a house, but on
+a paved platform, extending along one side of the large church, by which
+it was masked from the view of persons approaching from the direction of
+Vittoria. A sort of cloister, with stone benches beneath it, ran along
+the wall of the church, and in front of the platform was a broad
+greensward, used as a playground by the village children. Whilst the
+Carlists grouped themselves in the cloisters, talking eagerly together,
+and waiting the coming of Count Villabuena, their horses and ponies
+stood saddled and bridled upon the green, held by peasant boys, and in
+readiness for their owners to mount and ride away at a moment's notice,
+or on the first signal of alarm. Of the mountain path by which the Count
+was expected to arrive, only about a mile was visible from the platform,
+after which it disappeared over the brow of a low wood-crowned eminence
+that rose to the north, partially intercepting the view of the sierra.
+On this eminence a peasant was stationed to watch for the Count; whilst
+on the other side of the village, at a short distance upon the road to
+Vittoria, another vedette was posted, to give notice of the appearance
+of any of the foraging or reconnoitring parties which the Christinos not
+unfrequently sent out in this direction.
+
+It was considerably past noon, and the members of the Junta, for such
+did the assembly style itself, were beginning to wax impatient for the
+arrival of the Count, without whom the business for which they had met
+could not be proceeded with, when the watcher upon the hill gave the
+concerted signal by waving his cap in the air, uttering at the same time
+one of those far-sounding cries, peculiar to the inhabitants of
+mountainous regions. Upon this announcement, the Carlists descended from
+the platform into the road that ran past one of its extremities, and
+took their way, with grave and dignified demeanour, to the dwelling of
+the priest, in which the meeting was to be held. This house, according
+to custom one of the most spacious and comfortable in the village, was
+situated at about musket-shot from the church, and a little detached
+from the other buildings. Annexed to it was a long garden, bordering the
+road, and divided from it by a low hedge; beyond the garden was a vast
+and level field, and, on the eastern side of that, a tract of marshy
+ground, thickly covered with a lofty growth of willow and alder trees,
+extended to a considerable distance. The Carlists had traversed nearly
+the whole length of the garden hedge, and the foremost of them were
+close to the door of the house, when they were startled by the loud
+blast of a horn, with which the peasant sentry upon the Vittoria road
+had been furnished, to give the alarm if needful. They simultaneously
+paused, and anxiously listened for a repetition of the sound. It came; a
+third and a fourth blast were sounded, and with such hurried vehemence
+of tone as denoted pressing danger. Yet the peril could scarcely be so
+imminent as the quick repetition of the signal would seem to denote;
+for, from the place where the vedette was posted, he would command a
+view of any advancing troops nearly half an hour before they could reach
+the village, and those who had aught to fear from them would have ample
+time to effect their escape. But the horn continued sounding, ever
+louder and louder,--the Carlists gazed at each other in dismay, and some
+few made a movement towards their horses, as if to mount and fly.
+Suddenly a fat and joyous-looking alcalde, whose protuberant paunch and
+ruby nose were evidence of his love for the wine-skin, although the
+chalky tint that had overspread his features at the first sound of
+alarm, did not say much for his intrepidity, burst out into a loud
+laugh, which caused his companions to stare at him in some wonder and
+displeasure.
+
+"By the blessed St. Jago!" exclaimed he, "the idiot has mistaken our
+friends for our enemies. He has been looking over his shoulder instead
+of before him, and has caught a sight of the Señor Conde and his escort.
+See yonder."
+
+The Carlists looked in the direction pointed out, and on the top of the
+hill over which Count Villabuena was expected to approach, they saw
+three horsemen standing, one of whom was sweeping the village and the
+adjacent country with a field-glass, apparently seeking the cause and
+meaning of the violent fanfare that had so much alarmed the respectable
+Junta. Behind these three men, who were no others than the Count, his
+cousin, and their guide, the lance-flags of the escort were visible,
+although the soldiers themselves were still out of sight, having halted
+just here arriving on the crest of the hill. The countenances of the
+Carlists, which for a moment had contracted with alarm, were beginning
+again to expand, as the plausibility of their companion's explanation
+occurred to them, when suddenly they saw the Count and his companions
+turn their horses in all haste, and disappear behind the hill. At the
+same moment, and before they could guess at the meaning of this
+manoeuvre, a shout was heard, a troop of Christino dragoons debouched
+from behind the willow wood, deployed upon the field, and charged across
+it in open order, their lances levelled,[9] and the pennons fluttering
+above their horses' ears. In less time than it takes to write it, they
+had crossed the field, dashed into the garden, and, breaking through the
+hedge, clattered over the rough streets of the village in pursuit, of
+the unfortunate priests and alcaldes, who, taken entirely by surprise,
+knew not which way to run to avoid the danger that menaced them. Some
+few who had time to get on horseback, scampered off, but were pursued
+and overtaken by the better-mounted dragoons; others crept into houses
+and stables, or flung themselves into ditches; and the majority, seeing
+no possibility of escape, threw themselves on their knees, and, in
+piteous accents, implored mercy. This was not refused.
+
+"Give quarter, and make prisoners," was the command uttered in the
+clear, sonorous tones of Luis Herrera, who led the party; "they are
+unarmed--spare their lives."
+
+The order was obeyed, and only one or two of the more desperate, who
+produced concealed weapons, and endeavoured to defend themselves,
+received trifling sabre-cuts from the exasperated dragoons.
+
+But although Don Baltasar, on first obtaining a view of the Queen's
+cavalry, and before he knew what force was approaching the village, had
+retired behind the brow of the hill. It was by no means his intention to
+make a precipitate retreat without ascertaining the strength of the
+enemy, and endeavouring, if possible, to rescue the captive Junta.
+Whilst the Count and the escort retraced their steps down the hill, and
+halted in the fields upon its north side, whence they had the option of
+returning to the mountains by the way they had come, or of striking off
+into the high-road to Salinas and Oñate, which ran at a short distance
+to their right, Colonel Villabuena and the gipsy, concealed amongst the
+trees that clothed the summit of the eminence, noted what passed in the
+village. They at once saw how the surprise had occurred. The Junta had
+not expected an enemy to approach by any other road than that from
+Vittoria, and had consequently stationed sentries in no other direction.
+That such would be the case, had been foreseen by the Christinos, who
+having received, through their spies, information of the intended
+meeting had sent out troops upon the Pampeluna road, with orders, after
+proceeding a certain distance, to strike off to the left, and, availing
+themselves of the cover afforded by a large tract of wood and swamp, to
+take Gamboa in rear or flank. The manoeuvre had been rapidly and
+skilfully executed; and Luis Herrera, who, with his squadron, had been
+sent upon this duty, arrived with one half of his men within a few
+hundred yards of the village before he was perceived by the Carlist
+vedette. His other troop he had detached to his right, in order that, by
+making a wider sweep, they might get in rear of Gamboa, and prevent the
+possible escape of any of the rebels. This detachment, ignorant of the
+country, and puzzled by the numerous lanes and paths which crossed each
+other in every direction, had lost its way, and was still at some
+distance from the village when Herrera charged into it.
+
+When Colonel Villabuena had made his observations, and ascertained that
+the number of the enemy but little exceeded that of his own men, he rode
+out of the wood and rejoined the escort, resolved to take advantage of
+the Christinos being dispersed, and, unexpectant of an attack, to make a
+dash at them, which, he doubted not, would be fully successful.
+Previously, however, and although the Count had no military rank, it was
+a matter of common courtesy, not to say of duty, to communicate with
+him, and ask his consent to dispose of an escort which had been sent for
+his protection. But here the sullen temper of Don Baltasar, and the
+rankling irritation left by his recent altercation with his kinsman,
+showed themselves. Followed by the gipsy, he rode to the front of the
+lancers, who were drawn up in line, and, without addressing a syllable
+to the Count, or appearing to notice his presence, gave, in a sharp
+abrupt tone, the necessary words of command. The men moved off to the
+left. The Count, highly sensitive on matters of etiquette, and indignant
+at being treated by Don Baltasar as a person of no importance, unworthy
+of being consulted, allowed the troop to march away without giving any
+indication of an intention to follow or accompany it. Don Baltasar
+looked round, hesitated for a moment, and then seeing that the Count
+remained motionless, and took no notice of the departure of his escort,
+he rode back to him.
+
+"The enemy are few," said he, abruptly; "I shall attack them."
+
+Count Villabuena bowed his head coldly.
+
+"Scant measure of courtesy, colonel," said he. "Angry feelings should
+not make you forget the conduct of a _caballero_."
+
+On hearing himself thus rebuked, an expression of anger and deadly hate
+overspread the sombre countenance of Don Baltasar, and he scowled at the
+Count as though about to deal him a stab. But his eye sank beneath the
+calm, cold, contemptuous gaze of Count Villabuena. He said nothing: and
+again wheeling his charger, galloped furiously back to the head of his
+men, followed, at a more deliberate pace, by his cousin. Passing swiftly
+over a few fields, the little troop swept round the base of the hill,
+dashed across the level, and appeared upon the road at half a mile from
+the village. On obtaining a view of the latter, Don Baltasar at once saw
+that he was not likely to have so cheap a bargain of the Christinos as
+he had anticipated. Herrera had too much experience in this description
+of warfare to be easily caught; and although, upon first entering
+Gamboa, the dragoons had unavoidably dispersed in pursuit of the
+fugitives, he had lost no time in reassembling them; and, whilst a few
+men kept the prisoners already made, and searched the houses for others,
+he himself had formed upon the road a party fully equal in number to
+that commanded by Don Baltasar. Nothing daunted, however, at finding the
+enemy on his guard, the Carlist colonel drew his sabre and turned to his
+men.
+
+"_A ellos!_" he cried. "At them, boys, for Spain and the King!"
+
+The lancers replied to his words by a loud hurra, and the little party
+advanced, at first at a moderate pace, in order not to blow the horses
+before the decisive moment should arrive. The Count, forgetting private
+animosity in the excitement and exhilaration of the moment, rode
+cheerfully at the side of his cousin, and drew the sword which, although
+a civilian, the perilous and adventurous life he led induced him
+invariably to carry. At the same moment Herrera's trumpeter sounded the
+assembly, and those of the dragoons who had dismounted hurried to their
+horses. Before, however, the distance between the opposite parties had
+been diminished by many yards, the blast of the Christino trumpets was
+replied to by another, and, upon looking back, Don Baltasar saw a fresh
+party of dragoons just appearing upon the road, about a mile in his
+rear. It was the second troop of Herrera's squadron coming to the
+support of their leader.
+
+"Curse and confound them!" cried Baltasar, his face darkening with rage
+and disappointment. "Halt--files about! And now, boys, legs must do it,
+for they are three to one."
+
+And he led the way back into the fields, followed by his men at a rapid
+pace, but in good order.
+
+Without a moment's delay, Herrera, leaving a few dragoons to guard the
+prisoners, dashed across the country in pursuit of the Carlists. His
+example was followed by Torres, who commanded the other detachment. The
+fugitives had a good start, and were soon behind the hill; but the
+Christino horses were fresher, and although less accustomed to climb the
+mountains, in the plain they were swifter of foot. Don Baltasar, now
+riding in rear of his men, cast a glance over his shoulder.
+
+"They gain on us," said he, in a low tone, and as if to himself. "It is
+impossible to reach the sierra. If we could, we should be safe. There
+are positions that we could hold on foot with our carbines, where they
+would not dare attack us."
+
+"We shall never reach them," said the Count. "Let us turn and fight
+whilst yet there is time."
+
+"The bridge! the bridge!" cried the gipsy, who, notwithstanding the
+gaunt appearance of his steed, had kept well up with the soldiers. "If
+we gain that, we are safe. A child could pull it down."
+
+"Right, by God!" cried Baltasar glancing in some surprise at the adviser
+of an expedient which he had himself overlooked. "Spur, men, spur; but
+keep together."
+
+Every rowel was struck into the flanks of the straining, panting horses
+and the Carlists rapidly neared a small river, which, rising in some of
+the adjacent mountains, flowed in rear of the little hill already
+referred to, and parallel to the sierra whence Count Villabuena and his
+companions had recently descended. The land, for some distance on either
+side of the stream, was uncultivated, covered with furze and yellow
+broom, and sprinkled with trees and clumps of high bushes. Across the
+river, only a few months previously, a rude but solid stone bridge had
+afforded a passage; but the bridge had been broken down soon after the
+commencement of the war, and the stream, which, although not more than
+seven or eight yards broad, was deep, and had steep high banks was now
+traversed by means of four planks, laid side by side, but not fastened
+together, and barely wide enough to give passage to a bullock cart. Over
+this imperfect and rickety causeway, the retreating Carlists galloped,
+the boards bending and creaking beneath their horses' feet. When all had
+passed, Don Baltasar flung himself from his saddle, and aided by the
+gipsy and by several of his men who had also dismounted, seized the
+planks, and strove, by main strength, to tear their extremities from the
+clay in which they were embedded. The Christinos, who were within a
+couple of hundred yards of the river, set up a shout of fury when they
+perceived the intention of their enemies. By the sinewy hands of
+Baltasar and his soldiers, three of the boards were torn from the earth
+and flung into the stream. The fourth gave way as Herrera came up, the
+first man of his party, and, regardless of the narrow footing it
+afforded, was about to risk the perilous voyage. Violently curbing his
+horse, he but just escaped falling headlong into the stream. A shout of
+exultation from the Carlists, and the discharge of several carbines
+greeted the disappointed Christinos, who promptly returned the fire;
+whilst, as was usual when they came within earshot, the complimentary
+epithets of "Sons of Priests," and "_Soldados de la Puta_," accompanied
+by volleys of imprecations, were bandied between the soldiers on either
+side of the stream.
+
+"Is there any bridge or ford at hand?" said Baltasar hastily to the
+gipsy.
+
+"None within a quarter of a league," was the reply.
+
+"Then we will have a shot at them."
+
+Herrera and Count Villabuena were again opposed to each other, and each
+acknowledged the other's presence by a brief smile of recognition.
+
+A smart skirmish now began. All was smoke, noise, and confusion. The
+Count rode up to his cousin, who was on the right of his men.
+
+"Let us retire," said he. "No advantage is to be gained by this idle
+skirmishing. Infantry may be at hand, and delay will endanger our
+retreat."
+
+"Not so fast," replied Baltasar; "we will empty a few saddles before we
+go."
+
+"The escort was sent for my safety," said the Count, haughtily. "You are
+not doing your duty in thus risking it."
+
+"I have not been twenty years a soldier to learn my duty from you, sir,"
+said Baltasar, fiercely. "Aim at the officers, men. A doubloon for him
+who picks off the captain."
+
+Stimulated by the promised reward, several of the Carlists directed
+their fire at Herrera, who was on the left of the dragoons, exactly
+opposite to, and within sixty paces of, Don Baltasar. The bullets flew
+thick around Luis, but none touched him, and Baltasar himself drew a
+pistol from his holster to take aim at his opponent. Disgusted at his
+cousin's intemperate speech and imprudent conduct, the Count
+contemptuously turned his back upon him and approached the stream,
+regardless that by so doing he brought himself into a cross fire of
+friends and foes.
+
+"This is useless, Herrera," said he, "draw off your men."
+
+The words had scarcely left his lips, when his hand relinquished its
+hold of the bridle, by a convulsive movement he threw himself back in
+the saddle, and fell heavily to the ground, struck by a ball. A cry of
+horror from Luis was echoed by one of consternation from the Carlists,
+on witnessing the fall of a man whom they all loved and respected.
+
+"Where can we cross the stream?" demanded Herrera of one of his men, who
+knew the country.
+
+"To our left there is a ford, but at some distance."
+
+"Cease firing," cried Herrera. The trumpet sounded the necessary call,
+the Christinos hastily formed up and started at a gallop in the
+direction of the ford. Don Baltasar advanced to the spot where his
+cousin lay prostrate. Count Villabuena was lying on his back, his teeth
+set, his eyes wide open and fixed, his clenched hands full of earth and
+grass. Baltasar turned away with a slight shudder.
+
+"He is dead," said he to the subaltern of the escort. "To take the body
+with us would but impede our retreat, already difficult enough. The
+living must not be endangered for the sake of the dead. Forward, men!"
+
+And, without further delay, the Carlists set off at a brisk pace towards
+the mountains, which they reached before the Christinos had found and
+passed the distant ford. When the dragoons arrived at the foot of the
+sierra, Don Baltasar and his men were already out of sight amongst its
+steep and dangerous paths; and Herrera, compelled to abandon the
+pursuit, returned mournfully to the river bank, to seek, and, if it
+could be found, to convey to Vittoria the body of Count Villabuena.
+
+Leaving Herrera to his mournful duty, let us conduct our readers to an
+apartment in a house on the outskirts of the town of Segura. The
+interior, which was plainly but commodiously furnished, indicated
+feminine tastes and occupations, breathing that perfume of elegance
+which the presence of woman ever communicates. Vases of flowers decked
+the sideboards; a few books, the works of the best Spanish poets, lay
+upon the table; and a guitar, unstrung, it is true, was suspended
+against the wall. Two persons occupied the apartment. One of them, who
+was seated on a low stool at its inner extremity, near to the folding
+doors that separated it from an antichamber, was a robust, ruddy-cheeked
+Navarrese girl, whose abundant hair, of which the jet blackness atoned
+for the coarse texture, hung in a thick plait down her back, and whose
+large red fingers were busily engaged in knitting. At the other end of
+the apartment, close to the open window, through which she intently
+gazed, was a being of very different mould. On a high-backed elbow-chair
+of ancient oak sat Rita de Villabuena, pensive and anxious, her fair
+face and golden tresses seeming fairer and brighter from the contrast
+with the dark quaint carving against which they reposed. Her cheek was
+perhaps paler than when first we made her acquaintance; anxiety for her
+lover, and, latterly, for her father, was the cause; but her beauty had
+lost nothing by the change, for the shade of melancholy upon her
+features seemed, by adding to the interest her expressive countenance
+inspired, rather to enhance than diminish its charm. She was now
+watching for her father, who had led her to expect his return at about
+this time. Over the stone balustrade of her balcony, she commanded a
+view of the road along which he was to approach; and upon the farthest
+visible point of it, where a bend round a group of trees concealed its
+continuation, her gaze was riveted. Although the Count had assured her,
+before his departure, that his journey was unattended with risk, Rita's
+arrival upon the scene of war was too recent for her to escape
+uneasiness during his absence. Some hours before the time at which his
+return could reasonably be looked for, she had taken her post at the
+window, and although, at the persuasion of her attendant, a simple
+country girl, recently installed as her _donçella_, she had more than
+once endeavoured to fix her attention on a book, or to distract it by
+some of her usual occupations, the effort had each time been made in
+vain, and she had again resumed her anxious watch. In every horseman, or
+muleteer, who turned the angle of the road, she thought she recognised
+the guide, who, two days previously, had accompanied her father from
+Segura, and her heart throbbed with a feeling of joyful relief till a
+nearer approach convinced her of her error.
+
+Could the vision of Rita de Villabuena have penetrated the copse that
+bounded her view in that direction, she would have perceived, towards
+four of the afternoon, not her father, alas! but another horseman,
+attended by the gipsy guide, riding at a rapid pace along the road. On
+reaching the trees aforesaid, however, they deviated from the track into
+a lane inclosed between hedges, which led round the town, and again
+joined the road on its further side. To explain this manoeuvre, it is
+necessary to retrace our steps, and to follow the movements of Colonel
+Villabuena after his return to Oñate on the preceding evening.
+
+When the first excitement of the skirmish and subsequent flight had
+subsided, and the detachment of Carlists, after giving their horses a
+moment's breathing-time upon one of the higher levels of the sierra,
+resumed their march at a more leisurely pace, the thoughts of Don
+Baltasar became concentrated on the one grand object of deriving the
+utmost possible advantage from the death of his cousin. By that event
+the estates of the Villabuena family were now his own, those, at least,
+that lay within the Carlist territory. These, however, were
+comparatively of little value; and although the far more extensive ones,
+that had been confiscated by the Queen's government, might possibly be
+redeemed by a prompt abjuration of the cause of Don Carlos, a measure at
+the adoption of which Don Baltasar was by no means so scrupulous as to
+hesitate, yet even that would not fully satisfy him. He had other views
+and wishes. As far as his selfish nature would admit of the existence of
+such a feeling, he was deeply in love with Rita; the coldness with which
+she treated him had only served to stimulate his passion; and he was
+bent upon making her his at any price, and by any means. He was
+sufficiently acquainted with her character to be convinced that his
+prospect of obtaining her hand was any thing but improved by her
+father's death and that to her the wealthy possessor of her family's
+estates would be as unwelcome a wooer as the needy soldier of fortune.
+He did not doubt that, after the first violence of her grief should
+subside, she would return to France, where some of her mother's
+relatives were resident; and that, when next he heard of her, it would
+be as the bride of his fortunate rival. The picture thus conjured up
+caused him to grind his teeth with fury; and he swore to himself a deep
+oath that she should be his at any risk, and if, by the boldest and most
+unscrupulous measures, that consummation could be brought about. A plan
+occurred to him which he thought could not fail of success, and by which
+the obstinacy of the self-willed girl must, he believed, be overcome. It
+was a hazardous scheme, even in that unsettled and war-ridden country,
+where men were too much occupied in party strife to attend to the strict
+administration of justice; but Baltasar did not lack resolution, and the
+prize was worth the peril. One thing he wanted; a bold and quick-witted
+confederate, and him it was not so easy to find. No man had fewer
+friends in his own class than Don Baltasar, and by his inferiors he was
+generally detested on account of his harsh and overbearing demeanour. Of
+this he was aware; and he vainly racked his brain to find a man in whom
+he could confide. The details of his nefarious project were already
+arranged in his mind, and only this one difficulty had yet to be
+overcome; when, at two hours after dark, he entered the streets of
+Oñate. Hopeless of being served for affection's sake, he was meditating
+whom he could make his own by bribery, when a light from an open window
+flashed across the street, and illuminated the unprepossessing profile
+of Jaime the gipsy, who, in his capacity of guide, was riding in front,
+and a little on one side of Colonel Villabuena. The sight of those
+sinister features, on which rapacity and cunning had set their stamp,
+was as a sudden revelation to Don Baltasar, to whom it instantly
+occurred that the gitano was the very man he sought. The circumstance of
+his belonging to a race despised, and almost persecuted, by the people
+amongst whom they dwelt, was an additional guarantee against any
+compunctious scruples on his part; his occupation of a spy bespoke him
+at once daring and venal, and Colonel Villabuena doubted not that he
+should find him a willing and useful instrument.
+
+The soldiers filed off to their quarters; and Baltasar, after desiring
+the gipsy to come to him in an hour's time, betook himself to the
+posada. When Jaime had given his horse an ample feed, and groomed him
+with a care that showed the value he set upon his services, he made a
+hasty meal in a neighbouring taberna, and repaired to the Colonel's
+quarters. His stealthy tap at the door was replied to by an impatient
+"_adelante_," and he entered the room.
+
+A scarcely tasted supper was upon the table, and Don Baltasar was pacing
+the apartment, his brow knit and apparently deep in thought. On
+beholding the gipsy, he arranged his features into their most amiable
+expression, and advanced towards him with an assumed air of frank
+good-humour.
+
+"I have to thank you, Jaime," said he, "for your promptness and presence
+of mind this morning. Had you not thought of what we all forgot, and
+suggested the pulling down of the bridge, few, if any of us, would have
+seen Oñate to-night. I shall report your conduct most favourably to the
+General, who will doubtless reward it."
+
+The esquilador slightly bowed his head, but, with the exception of that
+movement, made no reply; nor did any expression of satisfaction at the
+praise bestowed upon him light up his dark countenance.
+
+"Meanwhile," continued Don Baltasar, "I will discharge my personal
+obligation to you in a more solid manner than by mere thanks."
+
+And he held out a handful of dollars, which, the next instant,
+disappeared in one of Jaime's capacious pockets. This time a muttered
+word or two of thanks escaped the lips of the taciturn esquilador.
+
+"Whither do you now proceed?" enquired Baltasar. "Are you to rejoin the
+General? What are your orders?"
+
+"I am no man's servant," replied the gipsy, "and have no orders to
+obey. When your General requires my services, we make a bargain, I to
+act, he to pay. I risk my life for his gold, and if I deceive him I know
+the penalty. But the service once rendered, I am my own man again."
+
+"So then," said Baltasar, "you are not bound to Zumalacarregui; and
+should any other offer you better pay for lighter service, you are free
+to take it?"
+
+"That's it," replied the gipsy.
+
+There was a short pause, during which Colonel Villabuena attentively
+scanned the countenance of Jaime, who remained impassive, and with eyes
+fixed upon the ground, as though to prevent their expression from being
+read. Baltasar resumed--
+
+"Say then that I were to ensure you a large reward for the performance
+of services far less dangerous than those you daily render at a less
+price, would you accept or refuse the offer?"
+
+"I must know what I am to do, and what to get," said the gipsy, this
+time raising his eyes to Don Baltasar's face.
+
+"Can you be silent?" said Baltasar.
+
+"When I am paid for it--as the grave," was the reply.
+
+"In short, if I understand you rightly," said the Colonel with an easy
+smile, "you will do any thing at a price."
+
+"Any thing," returned the unabashed gipsy. "It is not a small risk that
+will frighten me, if the reward is proportionate."
+
+"We shall suit one another charmingly," said Baltasar; "for what I
+require will expose you to little danger, and your reward shall be of
+your own fixing."
+
+And, without further preamble, he proceeded to unfold to the gipsy the
+outline of a scheme requiring his cooperation, the nature of which will
+best be made known to the reader by the march of subsequent events.
+
+The sinking sun and rapidly lengthening shadows proclaimed the approach
+of evening, and Rita de Villabuena, still seated at her window, watched
+for her father's arrival, when the trot of a horse, which stopped at the
+door of the house, caused her to start from her seat, and hurry to the
+balcony. Her anxiety was converted into the most lively alarm when she
+saw the Count's gipsy guide alighting alone from his horse; a
+presentiment of evil came over her, she staggered back into the room,
+and sank almost fainting upon a chair. Recovering herself, however, she
+was hurrying to the door of the apartment, when it opened, and Paco the
+muleteer, who had lately been attached to her father as orderly, and
+whom the Count had left as a protection to his daughter, made his
+appearance.
+
+"The gipsy is here, Señora," said he; "he brings news of his Excellency
+the Conde."
+
+"Admit him instantly," cried Rita, impatiently. "Where did you leave my
+father?" she enquired, as the esquilador entered the room. "Is he well?
+Why does he not return?"
+
+"I left the Señor Conde at a convent near Lecumberri," replied the
+gipsy.
+
+"Near Lecumberri?" repeated Rita; "it was not in that direction he went.
+He left this for the plains of Vittoria."
+
+"He did so, Señora," answered the gipsy; "but before we were half-way to
+Oñate, we were met by a courier with despatches for the Señor Conde, who
+immediately turned bridle, and ordered the escort to do the same. It was
+past midnight when we again reached Segura; and, not to cause alarm, we
+marched round the town, and continued our route without stopping.
+
+"And your errand now?" exclaimed Rita. The gipsy seemed to hesitate
+before replying.
+
+"The Señor Conde is wounded," said he, at last.
+
+"Wounded!" repeated Rita, in the shrill accents of alarm. "You are not
+telling truth--they have killed him! Oh, tell me all! Say, is my father
+still alive?"
+
+And, clasping her hands together, she seemed about to throw herself at
+the feet of Jaime, whilst her anxious glance strove to read the truth
+upon his countenance. It was a strange contrast presented by that lovely
+and elegant creature and the squalid, tawny gipsy; an angel
+supplicating some evil spirit, into whose power she had temporarily
+fallen, might so have looked.
+
+"The Señor Conde's wound is severe," said Jaime. "On his way yesterday
+afternoon to attend a meeting of the Navarrese Junta in the valley of
+Lanz, he fell in with a party of Christino cavalry, and, although his
+escort repulsed them, he himself received a hurt in the skirmish."
+
+"My father wounded and suffering!" exclaimed Rita in extreme agitation,
+passing her hand over her forehead in the manner of one bewildered by
+some stunning and terrible intelligence. "I will go to him instantly.
+Quick, Paco, the mules! Micaela, my mantilla! We must set out at once."
+
+The servants hurried away to obey the orders of their mistress, and
+prepare for instant departure, and the gipsy was about to follow, when
+Rita detained him, and overwhelmed him with questions concerning her
+father's state, to all of which Jaime replied in a manner that somewhat
+tranquillized her alarm, although it produced no change in her
+resolution to set off immediately to join him. This, indeed, the
+esquilador informed her, was her father's wish, as he found that he
+should be detained some time in his present quarters by the consequences
+of his wound.
+
+Although all haste was used in the necessary preparations, the sun was
+close to the horizon before Rita and her attendants left Segura, and
+took the road to Lecumberri, at about two leagues from which, as Jaime
+told them, and in the heart of the sierra, was situated the convent that
+was their destination. The distance was not great; but, owing to the
+mountains, the travellers could hardly expect to reach the end of their
+journey much before daybreak. Paco, who viewed this hasty departure with
+any thing but a well-pleased countenance, urged Rita to postpone setting
+off till the following morning, alleging the difficult nature of the
+roads they must traverse, and which led for a considerable part of the
+way over a steep and almost trackless sierra. But Rita's anxiety would
+brook no delay, and the little cavalcade set out. It consisted of Rita
+and her waiting-maid, mounted upon mules, and of the gipsy and Paco upon
+their horses; Paco leading a third mule, upon which, by the care of
+Micaela, a hastily packed portmanteau had been strapped. The gipsy rode
+in front; thirty paces behind him came the women, and the muleteer
+brought up the rear. Jaime had betrayed some surprise, and even
+discomposure, when he found that Paco was to accompany them; but he did
+not venture to make any objection to so natural an arrangement.
+
+Taking advantage of the goodness of the road, which for the first league
+or two was tolerably smooth and level, the travellers pushed on for
+nearly two hours at a steady amble, which, had the nature of the ground
+allowed them to sustain it, would have brought them to their journey's
+end much sooner than was really to be the case. The sun had set, the
+moon had not yet risen, and the night was very dark. Jaime, who
+continued to maintain a short interval between his horse and the mules
+of Rita and her attendant, kept shifting his restless glances from one
+side of the road to the other, as though he would fain have penetrated
+the surrounding gloom. He was passing a thicket that skirted the road,
+when a cautious "Hist!" inaudible to his companions, arrested his
+attention. He immediately pulled up his horse, and, dismounting,
+unstrapped the surcingle of his saddle. On perceiving this, Rita stopped
+to enquire the cause of the delay, but the gipsy requested her to
+proceed.
+
+"My horse's girths are loose, Señora," said he in explanation. "Be good
+enough to ride on, and I will overtake you immediately."
+
+Rita rode on, and Paco followed, without paying any attention to so
+common an occurrence as the slackening of a girth. Scarcely, however,
+had he passed the gipsy some fifty paces, when the latter left his
+horse, who remained standing motionless in the middle of the road, and
+approached the thicket. Just within the shadow of the foremost trees, a
+man on horseback, muffled in a cloak, was waiting. It was Colonel
+Villabuena.
+
+"All is well," said the gipsy; "and you have only to ride forward and
+prepare for our reception."
+
+"Who is with you?" said Don Baltasar, in a dissatisfied tone.
+
+"The lady and her donçella, and Paco, her father's orderly."
+
+"Fool!" cried Baltasar; "why did you let him come? His presence may ruin
+my plan."
+
+"How could I help it?" retorted Jaime. "If I had objected he would have
+suspected me. He's as cunning as a fox, and did not swallow the story
+half as well as his mistress. But her impatience decided it. Nothing
+would serve her but setting out immediately."
+
+"He must be disposed of," said Baltasar. "There's many a mountain
+precipice between this and our destination," he added meaningly.
+
+Jaime shook his head.
+
+"I might do it," said he; "but if I failed, and he is a wary and active
+fellow, the chances are that he would do the same kind office for me,
+and return with the lady."
+
+"Humph!" said Baltasar. "Well, he shall be cared for. And now ride on. I
+shall be at the convent an hour before you. Remember to take the longest
+road."
+
+The gipsy nodded, returned to his horse, and, springing lightly into the
+saddle, galloped after his companions. Don Baltasar remained a short
+time longer in the thicket, and then emerging upon the road, followed
+Rita and her party at a deliberate pace. From time to time he stopped,
+and listened for the sound of their horses' footsteps. If he could hear
+it, he halted till it became inaudible, and then again moved on. His
+object evidently was to keep as near to the travellers as he could
+without allowing his proximity to be suspected.
+
+It was nearly midnight, and Rita and her companions had been for some
+time amongst the mountains, when they reached a place where the road, or
+rather track, they followed, split and branched off in two different
+directions. Jaime, who, since they had entered the sierra, had abridged
+the distance between himself and his companions, and now rode just in
+front of Rita's mule, was taking the right hand path, when Paco called
+out to him that the left was the shortest and best.
+
+"You are mistaken," said Jaime abruptly, continuing in the direction he
+had first taken.
+
+But Paco would not be put off in so unceremonious a manner, and he rode
+up to the gipsy. "I tell you," said he, "that I know this country well,
+and the left hand road is the one to take."
+
+"How long is it since you travelled it?" inquired Jaime.
+
+"Only last autumn," was the reply, "and then for the twentieth time."
+
+"Well," said the esquilador, "it may be the shortest; but if you had
+ridden along it this morning, as I did, you would hardly call it the
+best. The winter rains have washed away the path, and left the bare
+rocks so slippery and uneven, that I could scarcely get my horse over
+them in daylight, and by night I should make sure of breaking his legs
+and my own neck."
+
+"I know nothing of this convent you are taking us to," said Paco, in a
+sulky tone; "but if it stands, as you tell me, to the north of
+Lecumberri, this road will lengthen our journey an hour or more."
+
+"Scarcely so much," said Jaime. "At any rate," added he doggedly, "it is
+I who answer to the Count for the Señora's safety, and I shall therefore
+take the road I think best."
+
+Paco was about to make an angry reply, but Rita interfered, and the
+discussion terminated in the gipsy having his own way. Three minutes
+later Don Baltasar arrived at the division of the roads, paused,
+listened, and heard the faint echo of the horses' hoofs upon the right
+hand path. With an exclamation of satisfaction, he struck his spurs into
+the flanks of his steed, and at as rapid a pace as the uneven ground
+would permit, ascended the contrary road, the shortest, and, as Paco had
+truly asserted, by far the best to the convent whither Rita de
+Villabuena was proceeding.
+
+Over rocks and through ravines, and along the margin of precipices, Don
+Baltasar rode, threading, in spite of the darkness, the difficult and
+often dangerous mountain-paths, with all the confidence of one well
+acquainted with their intricacies. At last, after a long descent, he
+entered a narrow valley, or rather a mountain-gorge, which extended in
+the form of nearly a semicircle, and for a distance of about three
+miles, between two steep and rugged lines of hill. Upon finding himself
+on level ground, he spurred his horse, and passing rapidly over the
+dew-steeped grass of a few fields, entered a beaten track that ran along
+the centre of the valley. The moon was now up, silvering the summits of
+the groups of trees with which the narrow plain was sprinkled, and
+defining the gloomy peaks of the sierra against the star-spangled sky.
+By its light Don Baltasar rode swiftly along, until, arriving near the
+further end of the valley, he came in sight of an extensive edifice,
+beautifully situated on the platform of a low hill, and sheltered to the
+north and east by lofty mountains. The building was of grey stone, and
+formed three sides of a square; the side that was at right angles with
+the two others being considerably the longest, and the wings connected
+by a wall of solid masonry, in the centre of which was an arched portal.
+In front, and on one side of the convent, for such, as a single glance
+was sufficient to determine, was the purpose to which the roomy
+structure was appropriated, the ground was bare and open, until the
+platform began to sink towards the plain; and then the sunny southern
+slope had been turned to the best account. Luxuriant vineyards, a
+plantation of olive-trees, and a large and well-stocked orchard covered
+it, whilst the level at its foot was laid out in pasture and
+corn-fields. The space between the back of the convent and the mountains
+was filled up by a thick wood, affording materials for the blazing fires
+which, in the winter months, the keen airs from the hills would render
+highly acceptable. The forest also extended round and close up to the
+walls of the right wing of the building. From the roof of the left wing
+rose a lofty open tower, where was seen hanging the ponderous mass of
+bronze by whose sonorous peal the pious inmates were summoned to their
+devotions.
+
+Urging his horse up the steep and winding path that led to the front of
+the convent, Don Baltasar seized and pulled a chain that hung beside the
+gate. The clank of a bell immediately followed, and Baltasar, receding a
+little from the door, looked up at the windows. No light was visible at
+any of them, and the most profound stillness reigned. After waiting for
+about a minute, the Carlist colonel again rang, and he was about to
+repeat the summons for a third time, when a faint gleam of light in the
+court warned him that some one was afoot. Presently a small wicket in
+the centre of the gate was opened, and the pinched and crabbed features
+of the lay-sister who acted as portress showed themselves at the
+aperture. In a voice rendered unusually shrill and querulous by vexation
+at having her rest broken, she demanded who it was thus disturbing the
+slumbers of the sisterhood.
+
+"I come," said Baltasar, "to speak with your lady abbess, Doña Carmen de
+Forcadell, upon matters of the utmost importance. Admit me instantly,
+for my business presses."
+
+"The lady abbess," peevishly returned the portress, "cannot be disturbed
+before matins. If you choose to wait till then, I will tell her you are
+here, and she will perhaps see you."
+
+"I must see her at once," replied Baltasar, waxing wroth at this delay,
+when every moment was of importance to his projects. "Tell her that Don
+Baltasar is here, and she will give orders to admit me."
+
+Whilst he spoke, the lay sister raised her glimmering lantern to the
+wicket, in order to take a survey of this peremptory applicant for
+admission. The view thus obtained of his features apparently did not
+greatly impress her in his favour, or at any rate did not render her
+more disposed to open the solid barrier between them.
+
+"Baltasar or Benito," cried she, "it is all one to Mariquita. You may
+wait till the matin bell rings. Fine times, indeed, when every thieving
+guerilla thinks he may find free quarters where he pleases! No, no,
+señor, stay where you are; the fresh air will cool your impatience. It
+will be daybreak in an hour, and that will be time enough for your
+errand, whatever it is."
+
+It was with no small difficulty that Don Baltasar restrained his spleen
+during the old woman's harangue. When it came to a close, however, and
+he saw that she persisted in leaving him on the outside of the gate till
+the usual hour for opening it, he lost all patience. Before the portress
+could shut the wicket, close to which she was standing, he thrust his
+hand and arm through it, and grasped her by her skinny throat. The lay
+sister set up a yell of alarm and pain.
+
+"Jesus Maria! _Al socorro!_ Help, help!" screamed she; the last words
+dying away in a gurgling sound, as Don Baltasar tightened his hold upon
+her windpipe.
+
+"Silence, you old jade!" cried the fierce soldier in a suppressed tone,
+"you will alarm the whole convent. You have the keys in your hand--I
+heard them clank. Open the gate instantly, or by all the saints in
+heaven, I throttle you where you stand."
+
+The increased pressure of his fingers warned the old woman that he would
+keep his word; and, yielding to so novel and convincing a mode of
+argument, she made use of the keys whose jingle she had imprudently
+allowed to be heard. Two heavy locks shot back, and a massive bar was
+withdrawn; and when, by pushing against it, Don Baltasar had convinced
+himself that the gate was open, he released the gullet of the trembling
+sister, and entered the paved court. In grievous trepidation the
+portress was retreating to her lodge, which stood just within the gate,
+when an upper window of the convent opened, and a female voice enquired,
+in commanding tones, the cause of the uproar. Don Baltasar seemed to
+recognise the voice, and he rode up beneath the window whence it
+proceeded.
+
+"Carmen," said he, "is it you?"
+
+"Who is that?" was the rejoinder, in accents which surprise or alarm
+rendered slightly tremulous.
+
+"Baltasar," replied the officer. "I must see you instantly, on a matter
+of life or death."
+
+There was a moment's pause. "Remain where you are," said the person at
+the window; "I will come down to you."
+
+The portress, finding that the intruder was known to the lady abbess,
+for she it was whom Baltasar had addressed as Carmen, now refastened the
+gate, and crept grumbling to her cell. Don Baltasar waited. Presently a
+door in the right wing of the convent was opened, a tall female form,
+clothed in flowing drapery, and carrying a taper in her hand, appeared
+at it and beckoned him to enter. Tying his horse to a ring in the wall,
+he obeyed the signal.
+
+The room into which, after passing through a corridor, Colonel
+Villabuena was now introduced, was one of those appropriated to the
+reception of guests and visitors to the convent. The apartment was
+plainly furnished with a table and a few wooden chairs; and in a recess
+hung a large ebony crucifix, before which was placed a hassock, its
+cloth envelope worn threadbare by the knees of the devout. But if the
+room of itself offered little worthy of note, the case was far different
+with the person who now ushered Don Baltasar into it. This was a woman
+about forty years old, possessed of one of those marked and
+characteristic physiognomies which painters are fond of attributing to
+the inhabitants of southern Europe. Her age was scarcely to be read upon
+her face, whose slight furrows seemed traced by violent passions rather
+than by the hand of time: she had the remains of great beauty, although
+wanting in the intellectual; and the expression of her face, her
+compressed lips, and the fixed look of her eyes, went far to neutralize
+the charm which her regular features, and the classical oval of her
+physiognomy, would otherwise have possessed. The outline of her tall
+figure was veiled, but not concealed, by her monastic robe, from the
+loose sleeves of which protruded her long thin white hands. After
+closing the door, she seated herself beside a table, upon which she
+reposed her elbow, and motioned her visiter to a chair. A slight degree
+of agitation was perceptible in her manner, as she waited in silence for
+Don Baltasar to communicate the motive of his unseasonable arrival. This
+he speedily did.
+
+"You must do me a service, Carmen," said he. "My cousin Rita is now
+within an hour's ride of this place. She comes hither expecting to find
+her father. She must be detained captive."
+
+"What!" exclaimed the abbess, "is your suit so hopeless as to render
+such hazardous measures adviseable? What is to be gained by such an act
+of violence? Her father will inevitably seek and discover her, and
+disgrace and disappointment will be the sole result of your mad scheme."
+
+"Her father," replied Baltasar gloomily, "will give us no trouble."
+
+"How?--no trouble! If all be true that I have heard of Count Villabuena,
+and of his affection for his only surviving child, he is capable of
+devoting his life to the search for her."
+
+"Count Villabuena," said Baltasar, "now stands before you. The father of
+Rita is dead."
+
+"Dead!" exclaimed the abbess with a start. "How and when did he die?"
+
+"He was shot in a skirmish."
+
+"In a skirmish!" repeated Doña Carmen. "He held no military command."
+
+"I was escorting him with a few men to attend a junta. We were attacked
+by a superior force, from which we escaped, thanks to an intervening
+river. A few shots were exchanged, the Count thrust himself into the
+fire, and fell."
+
+The abbess seemed to reflect a moment, and then fixed a keen and
+searching look upon the countenance of Baltasar.
+
+"Was your loss in men severe?" said she abruptly.
+
+"No--yes--" replied Baltasar, slightly confused. "I believe there were
+several wounded. Why do you ask?"
+
+"And the Count's death gives you the Villabuena estates?"
+
+"It does so," answered Baltasar.
+
+The dark penetrating eyes of the abbess still remained fixed, with a
+peculiar expression of enquiry and suspicion, upon the countenance of
+Colonel Villabuena. He tried at first to sustain their gaze, but was
+unable to do so. He looked down, and a slight paleness came over his
+features.
+
+"I have no time to answer questions," said he, with a rough brutality of
+manner which seemed assumed to veil embarrassment. "My plan is arranged,
+but promptness of execution is essential to its success. Rita must be
+detained here, where none will think of seeking her, till she becomes my
+wife. Your power in this place is unlimited, and your word law; you will
+have no difficulty in secluding her in some corner where none shall see
+her but those in whom you can fully confide. Make the necessary
+preparations. Each moment she may arrive."
+
+Whilst Baltasar was speaking, Doña Carmen remained with her brow
+supported on her hand, silent and sunk in reflection. She now sprang
+impetuously from her chair.
+
+"I will have naught to do with it," cried she; "you would entangle me in
+a labyrinth of crime, whence the only issue would be ignominy and
+punishment. You must find others to aid you in your machinations."
+
+In his turn Baltasar rose from his seat, and, approaching the abbess,
+led her back to her chair.
+
+"Carmen," said he, in a suppressed voice, and from between his set
+teeth, "is it to me that you say 'I will not?'--Carmen," he continued,
+speaking low, and with his face very near to hers, "there was a time
+when, for love of you and to do your bidding, I feared no punishment
+here or hereafter. Have you already forgotten it? 'I hate him,' were
+your words, as I sat at your feet in yon sunny Andalusian bower--'I hate
+him, and in proportion to my hatred should be my gratitude to him who
+rid me of his odious presence.' That night the _serenos_ found the body
+of Don Fernando de Forcadell stiff and cold upon the steps of his villa.
+He had had a dispute at the _monté_ table, and two men were sent to
+Ceuta on suspicion of the deed. Only two persons knew who had really
+done it. Ha! Carmen, only two persons!"
+
+During this terrible recapitulation, the abbess sat motionless as a
+statue, for which indeed, in her white robe and with her marble pale
+complexion, she might almost have been taken. She covered her face with
+her hands, and her bosom heaved so violently, that the loose folds of
+drapery which shrouded it rose and fell like the waves of a troubled
+ocean. When Baltasar ceased speaking she removed her hands, and
+exhibited a countenance livid as that of a corpse. Her almost
+preternatural paleness, the dark furrows under her eyes, and the tension
+of every feature, added ten years to her apparent age.
+
+"Is that all?" she said, in a hollow voice, to her tormentor.
+
+     "And one of those persons," resumed the pitiless Baltasar, without
+     replying to her question, "swore by earth and by heaven, and by the
+     God who made them both, never to forget the service that I--that
+     the other person, I would say--had rendered her, and to be ready to
+     requite it whenever he should point out the way. Years have flown
+     by since that day, and the feelings that united those two persons
+     have long since changed; but a promise made as that one was--a
+     promise sealed with blood--can never pass away till it has been
+     redeemed. Carmen, I claim its fulfilment."
+
+Baltasar paused. "Fiend!" exclaimed the abbess, "what would you of me?"
+
+"I have already told you," said Villabuena. "It is no crime, nothing
+that need alarm your conscience, recently grown so tender; but a good
+deed, rather, since it will prevent the daughter of a noble house from
+throwing herself away on an adventurer and a rebel, and give her hand to
+him for whom her father destined it. She is as yet unaware of the
+Count's death. She will learn it here, and no place fitter. Your pious
+consolations will soothe her grief. I shall leave her in your
+guardianship, and, when the first violence of her sorrow is over,
+return, to find means of overcoming her puerile objections to my suit.
+But I am a fool," exclaimed he, interrupting himself, "to lose in idle
+talk time that is so precious! They must already be in sight of the
+convent. Lead me to a window whence we may observe their approach, and
+whilst watching for it we can make our final arrangements."
+
+He took the hand of the abbess, and she led the way, mechanically, to
+the door of an inner room. Passing through two other apartments, they
+reached one at the extremity of the wing, from the window of which a
+view was obtained for a considerable distance down the valley. The
+prospect that presented itself to them on pausing before this window,
+was so enchantingly beautiful, that it seemed to produce an effect, and
+to exercise a softening influence, even upon the depraved and vicious
+nature of Don Baltasar. At any rate, a full minute elapsed during which
+he stood in silence and contemplation.
+
+The view afforded by the valley in question, upon that pleasant May
+morning, was indeed of almost unparalleled loveliness. The sun, which
+had already risen behind the eastern hills, but not yet surmounted them,
+threw its first rays across their summits, and illuminated the opposite
+mountains, bathing their pinnacles in a golden glow, whilst their lower
+steeps remained in comparative darkness. In the depths of the valley the
+last shades of twilight still seemed to linger, and masses of thin grey
+vapour rolled in billows over the rich vegetation and vivid verdure of
+the fields. The most fantastic variety of form was exhibited by the
+surrounding mountain wall; here it rose in turrets and towers, there
+spread out into crags, then again fell in blank abrupt precipices, their
+edges fringed with shrubs, the recesses of their sides sheltering
+wild-flowers of the most varied hues, whose sprays and blossoms waved in
+the sweet breath of morning. Equally varied, and as delicately
+beautiful, were the ethereal tints of the mountain tops, to which the
+cloudless sky seemed to impart a tinge of its azure. On the edge of a
+ravine, midway up a mountain, were seen a few crumbling walls, and a
+fragment of a broken tower, sole remains of some ancient stronghold,
+which, centuries before, had frowned over the vale. The hut of a
+goatherd or charcoal-burner, here and there dotted the hill-side; and at
+the southern limit of the valley, just before its change of direction
+took it out of sight of the convent, were visible the houses of a small
+hamlet, surrounded by plantations, and half buried amidst blossoms of
+the tenderest rose-colour and most dazzling white. Masses of beech and
+ilex clothed the lower slopes of the mountains, and from out of their
+dark setting of foliage the grey walls of the Dominican convent arose
+like a pale and shadowy spectre. The fresh brightness of spring was the
+characteristic of the whole scene; the year seemed rejoicing in its
+youthful vigour, and to express its delight by millions of mute voices,
+which spoke out of each leaf and twig that danced in the breeze. Nor
+were other and audible voices wanting. The lark was singing in the sky,
+the grasshopper had begun its chirp, the rills and rivulets that
+splashed or trickled from the hills, gave out their indistinct murmur;
+whilst, heard far above these voices of nature, the toll of the matin
+bell resounded through the valley, calling the devoutly disposed to
+their morning thanksgiving.
+
+The angelus had ceased to ring when Rita and her party came in sight of
+the Dominican convent, their horses and mules giving evidence, by their
+jaded appearance, of having been ridden far, and over rough and painful
+roads. The gipsy rode in front, vigilant and unfatigued--although he had
+now been in the saddle, with little intermission, for a whole day and
+night--and was followed by Rita, to whose delicate frame the long ride
+had been an exertion as unusual as it was trying. But a resolute spirit
+had compensated for physical weakness, and, uncomplaining, she had borne
+up against the hardships of the preceding ten hours. She was pale and
+harassed; her hair, uncurled by the night fogs, hung in dank masses
+round her face, and her fragile form was unable to maintain its upright
+position. Micaela, the waiting-maid, yawned incessantly, and audibly
+groaned at each rough stumble or uncomfortable movement of her mule.
+Several times during the drowsy morning hours, she had nearly fallen
+from her saddle, and had to thank Paco, who had taken his station beside
+her, for saving her from more than one tumble. Paco, either out of
+respect to the presence of Rita, or concern for the Count's misfortune,
+rode along, contrary to his custom, in profound silence, and without
+indulging in any of those snatches of muleteers' songs with which it was
+his wont to beguile the tedium of a march.
+
+Upon nearing the place where she expected to find her father, Rita's
+impatience to behold him, and to ascertain for herself the exact extent
+of the injury he had received, increased to a feverish degree, and on
+reaching the convent gate, already open for her reception, she sprang
+from her mule without assistance. But she had over-rated her strength;
+her limbs, stiffened by the long ride and the cold night air, refused
+their service, and she would have fallen to the ground had not Paco, who
+was already off his horse, given her the support of his arm. The
+portress and another old lay sister were the only persons visible in the
+court, and the last of these invited Rita to accompany her into the
+convent. Paco held out his horse's bridle and those of the mules to
+Jaime, intending to follow his young mistress, but the gipsy hesitated
+to take them, and the lay sister, perceiving Paco's intention,
+interposed to prevent its execution.
+
+"You must remain here," said she; "I have no orders to admit men into
+the convent, nor can I, without express orders from the lady abbess."
+
+Paco obeyed the injunction, and the three women disappeared through a
+door of the right wing of the building. They had been gone less than a
+minute, when the lay sister again came forth, and, approaching the
+gipsy, desired him to follow her. He did so, and Paco remained alone
+with the horses.
+
+With eager step, and a heart palpitating with anxiety, Rita followed her
+guide into the convent, making, as she went, anxious enquiries
+concerning her father's health. To her first question the old woman
+replied by an inarticulate mumble; and upon its repetition, a brief "I
+do not know; the lady abbess will see you,"--checked any further attempt
+upon a person who either could not or would not give the much wished-for
+information. Passing through a corridor and up a staircase, the lay
+sister ushered Rita into an apartment of comfortable appearance.
+
+"I will inform the abbess of your arrival," said she, as she went out
+and closed the door.
+
+Five minutes elapsed, and Rita, to whom this delay was as inexplicable
+as her impatience to see her father was great, was about to leave the
+room and seek or enquire the way to his apartment, when the abbess made
+her appearance.
+
+"Holy mother!" exclaimed Rita, advancing to meet her with clasped hands
+and tearful eyes, "is my father doing well? Conduct me to him, I beseech
+you."
+
+Struck by the beauty of the fair creature who thus implored her, and
+touched, perhaps, by the painful anxiety expressed in her trembling
+voice, and pale and interesting countenance, Doña Carmen almost
+hesitated to communicate her fatal tidings.
+
+"I have painful intelligence for you, Señora," said she. "The Count,
+your father"--
+
+"He is wounded; I know it," interrupted Rita. "Is he worse? Oh, let me
+see him!--This instant see him!"
+
+"It is impossible," said the abbess. "The bullet that struck him was too
+surely aimed. Your father is dead!"
+
+For an instant Rita gazed at the speaker as though unable fully to
+comprehend the terrible announcement, and then, with one shriek of
+heartfelt agony, she sank senseless to the ground.
+
+The shrill and thrilling scream uttered by the bereaved daughter, rang
+through the chambers and corridors of the convent, and reached the ears
+of Paco, who had remained in the court, waiting with some impatience for
+the return of the gipsy, and for intelligence concerning the health of
+the Count. Abandoning his horse, he rushed instinctively to the door by
+which Rita had entered the building. It was closed, but not fastened,
+and passing through it he found himself in a long corridor, traversed by
+two shorter ones, and at whose extremity, through a grated window, was
+visible the foliage of the forest surrounding that side of the convent.
+Not a living creature was to be seen; and Paco paused, uncertain in what
+direction to proceed. He listened for a repetition of the cry, but none
+came. Suddenly a door, close to which he stood, was opened, and before
+he could turn his head to ascertain by whom, he was seized from behind,
+and thrown violently upon the paved floor of the corridor. The attack
+had been so vigorous and unexpected, that Paco had no time for
+resistance before he found himself stretched upon his back; but then he
+struggled furiously against his assailants, who were no others than Don
+Baltasar and the gipsy. So violent were his efforts, that he got the
+gipsy under him, and was on the point of regaining his feet, when
+Colonel Villabuena drew a pistol from the breast of his coat, and with
+its but-end dealt him a severe blow on the head. The unlucky muleteer
+again fell stunned upon the ground. In another minute his hands were
+tightly bound, and Don Baltasar and his companion carried him swiftly
+down one of the transversal corridors. Descending a flight of stone
+steps, the two men with their burthen entered a range of subterranean
+cloisters, at whose extremity was a low and massive door, which Don
+Baltasar opened, and they entered a narrow cell, having a straw pallet
+and earthen water-jug for sole furniture. Close to the roof of this
+dismal dungeon was an aperture in the wall, through which a strong iron
+grating, and the rank grass that grew close up to it, allowed but a
+faint glimmer of daylight to enter. Placing their prisoner upon the
+straw bed, Don Baltasar and Jaime took away his sabre and the large
+knife habitually carried by Spaniards of his class. They then unbound
+his hands, and, carefully securing the door behind them, left him to the
+gloom and solitude of his dungeon.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[9] From an early period of the war, the Spanish dragoon regiments, both
+light and heavy, were armed with the lance, that weapon being considered
+the most efficient for the mountain warfare in which they were
+frequently engaged.
+
+
+
+
+SOMETHING MORE ABOUT MUSIC.
+
+
+We mused on music some while ago; and as the subject still haunts
+us--very much after the manner of an obstinate ghost that refuses to be
+laid, even by the choicest Latin--we are strongly disposed to try the
+effect of giving it full swing for once; and in idle mood, too idle to
+oppose ourselves to its tyranny, letting it carry us whither it will, in
+the hope that, in return for our complacence, it may in future suffer us
+to conduct our meditations according to our own pleasure, and give that
+sad and serious thought, which their merits demand, to the gravities of
+this life--to corn-laws and _poor_-laws, (of all sorts!) and the Irish
+question, and the debates to which all these give occasion, in reading
+which we have already worn out we know not how many pairs of spectacles,
+and one pair of excellent eyes; and last, not least, to the marchings
+and counter-marchings of the House of Commons, in which we are deeply
+interested.
+
+With such a course of study before us, we are disposed to make the most
+of our holiday; and should we chance to be a little too frisky, it must
+be borne in mind that retribution is at hand, and that we shall speedily
+become as solemn as ever a fool in the land, as dull as an owl bathing
+its eyes in the morning sunshine, which--having overslept itself--it
+takes for the full moon, and dismal enough to satisfy the most ardent
+advocate of the religious duty of being miserable,--eschewing laughter
+as we would the tax-gatherer, and refreshing our oppressed spirits alone
+with serious jokes, and such merriment as may be presented to us under
+the sanction and recommendation of a college of dissenting divines!
+
+But our harp will be a mingled one, for so is our theme; having a
+sympathy alike for our mirthful and sorrowful moments, which it alike
+spiritualizes; striking the light, gleesome chord to the one, and
+attuning the soul to more ethereal joy; while by its soft influence it
+tones down the harshness of bitter, _unavailing_ sorrow, and woos the
+heart, misanthropizing under the pangs of grief or unrequited love--pent
+up in its own solitude, unpitied and uncared for--and filled with dark
+thoughts, and sad sounds, and tones of plaintive winds, sighing through
+the cypress and doleful yew with mournful melody around the
+resting-place of the loved and lost, to submissive lamentings, and slow
+stealing tears that assuage its aching anguish and tranquillize the
+spirit, leading it to the hope of a brighter future, in whose dawning
+beams it will, ere-long, show like "the tender grass, clear-shining
+after rain"--more glistening and beautiful for the invigorating dews of
+the cloud which had overhung it, and beneath whose gloom its beauty
+faded away--for very trouble!
+
+How often have we found that hard, _bitter_ mood into which the mind
+under the pressure of suffering which is irremediable, and which has to
+be borne alone, is so apt to decline--feeling the harder and the
+bitterer for the careless, galling gaiety of all around--softened,
+subdued, yea, utterly broken up by the sweet notes of "some old familiar
+strain," that steal on the willing ear, freshening and exhilarating the
+spirit like a breezy morning in June, when it seems a sin to be
+wretched; the twittering birds on dancing boughs crying shame on us, for
+what is not only wrong, but, as we begin to feel, needless--not to say
+foolish; and we return from our stroll, wondering what in the world we
+have done with that load on our chest with which we began our
+walk--ending in a regular ramble--and which it then seemed incumbent on
+us, nay, a sacred duty, to pant under for the term of our natural lives;
+relieving ourselves by such sighs and groans as appeared to us the
+appropriate forms of expression for all human beings under the sun--made
+on purpose to be unhappy; we especially, fulfilling the end of our
+creation. And as we mark the change that has passed upon us--the
+bounding circulation in place of flagging energies--full, calm
+breathing, instead of the slow, short respiration of sadness--with
+reverent heart we bless nature, and, may we say also, nature's great
+Architect, all-merciful, all-loving!
+
+Such on us is frequently the effect of music; the heaviness of heart,
+caused by the weary rubs of this rough world, or the result of a
+temperament that has a constitutionally jarring string in it, is as it
+were _drawn out_, and sweetness and calm-breathing tranquillity infused
+in its stead; while our nerves become as the harmonious strings of a
+harp, that respond in sympathy with the master chords of one with which
+it is in unison, and whereon the fresh breeze of morning lightly plays,
+calling forth sounds of joy and gladness. Therefore do we _love_ it,
+with a warmth of affection that may perchance appear extravagant to
+those whose robust, well-balanced minds, clothed with strong, healthy,
+unsusceptible bodies--people who are always in good spirits, unless
+there be a reason for the contrary--may render them independent of such
+external influences, for we must acknowledge, that we do at times
+express this our affection in somewhat unmeasured phrase, as one who
+stays not accurately to calculate, and weigh with cool precision, the
+virtues of a friend, thus laying ourselves open to the unmitigated
+condemnation of those who soar above, (or sink below!) such sympathies.
+
+Be it so! We are not about to enter into any vindication of ourselves;
+we shall not even attempt to convince these dull souls, that it is
+possible for elevated feeling, and repose and tenderness of mind, to be
+indebted for their origin to such insignificant and material sources as
+catgut and brass wire--and that they are not therefore to be
+undervalued; though by way of illustration of the influence of matter
+over spirit, we would remind them of their own humane and charitable
+feelings _after_ dinner, compared with the fierce, nay, atrocious
+sentiments, which their consciences convict them of having entertained,
+before the pangs of their raging hunger had been appeased by that
+inestimable mollifier of men's hearts and tempers. For the cause of
+their insensibility to such impressions--a natural incapacity for
+receiving them--it is vain to seek a remedy, however willing we might be
+to apply one; but where cure is impracticable, palliatives are
+frequently admissible, and we would suggest that one may be found in
+this case, in the patients' treating the unhappy privation under which
+they labour with greater tenderness than has been their wont, throwing
+over it that veil of oblivion and charity with which they so gracefully
+conceal their other defects, instead of obtruding it on public
+observation, under the singular misconception of its being an admirable
+feature in their character, a something of which a man ought to be
+proud. Conduct like this, they may rest assured, will not fail of being
+appreciated and rewarded by the corresponding delicacy with which all,
+who are not utterly barbarous, invariably treat him who, by the
+deprecating humility with which he seeks to conceal his deficiencies,
+betrays his painful cognisance of their existence.
+
+We are aware that this is a turning of the tables upon them which they
+may not be disposed to admire--to be placed at the bar, when they
+expected a seat on the Bench, and were just smoothing down their ermine,
+and adjusting their wigs, in order to enter on their duties with the
+greater impressiveness and dignity; but they must believe us when we
+tell them, that we, too, have an opinion on this subject, to which we
+must be permitted to attribute as high authority as they possibly can to
+their own; and that, tried by this standard, they, being found wanting,
+would inevitably have been brought up for judgment, but for a merciful
+leaning, (sanctioned by legal precedent,) which prompts us rather to try
+the salutary effect of admonition and good counsel, than to proceed at
+once to inflict extreme penalties on the offenders--in short, that we
+are not in a hanging humour, or they should swing for it!
+
+Grim, rough Luther, laying about him with his ponderous mace, and making
+giant Pope tremble in the deepest recesses of his stronghold, lest he
+should grow utterly savage with his perpetual warfare--albeit a "Holy
+war"--humanized and spiritualized himself with his lute--(who does not
+sympathize with his unfailing "Deus noster refugium," that divine stay
+of his stout heart that trembled not at men or devils!) Ken, undaunted
+opponent of the tyranny of a king--meek sufferer for that monarch's
+lawful rights, rose at day-dawn, or so soon as the first brief slumber
+had recruited his exhausted frame, to give thanks unto the King of kings
+in strains that, handed down to us, yet thrill the heart by their
+fervent piety, and plain, vigorous verse, and animate it to a stricter
+more manly rectitude. Herbert--saintliest of men and priests--after his
+sacred toils, refreshed his spirit with "divine music;" the more
+melodious to his ear, that his heart was teeming with the harmony of
+that "good-will towards man," which seeks and finds its due expression
+in active exertions on their behalf--disdaining not the lowliest
+occasion of serving with hearty zeal the lowliest of his neighbours.
+Rest assured, then, O reader! whosoever thou art, that it is not for
+_thee_ to pretend to despise it!
+
+Ponder the rather on the _power_ of that art, that could soothe the
+perturbed soul of Israel's wrath-sent king--mad and moody--and even
+expel the evil spirit that goaded him; and on its _dignity_--for
+prophets of old, when the Divine inspiration came upon them, revealing
+to their purified eyes the "vision of the Almighty," uttered their "dark
+sayings upon the harp."
+
+What a plague it sometimes is to be hag-ridden by a tune, racing through
+one's head, with a never-ending always-beginningness, as though a
+thousand imps were singing it in one's ears. Wherever you may be,
+whomsoever with, whatsoever doing, still ring on those incessant tones
+of perchance the merriest of all jigs, till--it is Sunday morning, and
+you are preparing for church--you leave your house with the entire and
+miserable conviction, that, seated in your pew in the very face of the
+congregation-genteel sinners in silks, and satins, and feathers--you
+will betray your long-concealed suffering by giving vent to that
+interminable "Rory O'More," the moment you open your lips for the
+emission of "All people that on earth do dwell;" so ensuring your rapid
+transfer to the street, under the escort of the man with the
+parti-coloured coat and black wand, whose Sabbath duties of jerking the
+Sunday scholars, and rapping their heads with that authoritative cane,
+are unceremoniously interfered with on your behalf. Misery and disgrace
+stare you in the face, and all through an undue titillation of that part
+of your sensorium that takes cognisance of musical sounds; a titillation
+not to be subdued by endeavouring to direct your attention from it to
+the very gravest of all subjects; nor propitiated even by audibly
+chanting the offending strain, previously retiring into the furthest
+corner of your coal-cellar, to prevent your unwilling profanity on
+shocking the strictly conscientious ears of your household. This is
+bad--and yet it is but a mild form of this morbid affection, which, in
+its most intense degree, torments the sufferer from fever, (or one
+stunned by some sudden and violent grief,) when certain sounds, words,
+or tunes, accidentally determined, thrill through the head with the
+steadiness and vehement action of the piston of a steam-engine--beat,
+beat, beat!--every note seeming to fall on the excited brain like the
+blow of a hammer; while, as the fever and pain increase, the more
+rapidly and heavily do those torturing notes pursue their furious chase.
+We well remember, under an attack of disorder in the neighbourhood of
+the brain, causing severe suffering, lying--we know not how long, it
+might be a thousand years for any thing we knew--singing over and over
+again _in our mind_, for we were speechless with pain, the 148th psalm,
+which we had just chanced to hear sung, in Brady and Tate's version, to
+a new and somewhat peculiar tune. Oh, how those "dreadful whales" and
+"glittering scales" did quaver and quiver in our poor head! Lying like a
+log--for pain neither permitted us to stir nor groan--still rattled on,
+hard and quick, the rumbling bass and shrill tenor of that most
+inappropriately jubilant composition--"cherubim and seraphim," "fire,
+hail, and snow," succeeding each other with a railway velocity that
+there was no resisting; no sooner had we got to "stands ever fast," than
+round again we went to the "boundless realms of joy," and so on, on,
+on, through each dreary minute of those dreary hours, an infinity, or
+perchance but twenty-four, according as time is computed by clocks or by
+agonised human beings. It made a capital Purgatory; one which we have
+even deemed every way adequate to those slight delinquencies of which we
+may have been guilty, and which are appointed, as it is understood, to
+be expiated in this way.
+
+At times some simple air, or even a single chord of unusual, but
+apparently obvious harmony, will haunt us with a peculiar sweetness,
+producing a soothing, gentle sadness, as though we listened to distant
+bells, whose music is borne in surges on the breeze that sways the
+golden corn on a sunny Sabbath, when our pathway lies through the
+undulating fields, already "white unto the harvest;" where the pleasant
+rustling of the ripened grain, as it is stirred by the soft wind, is
+sweet and soothing; and the gay poppy, and other less obtrusive, though
+not less beautiful wild-flowers, bloom at our loitering feet. In the
+power of exciting such feeling, what can equal our old English ballads?
+There is an inexpressible charm in these, and we would almost give our
+fingers to be able to describe that indescribable _something_, which
+constitutes their peculiar fascination and power over the imagination.
+Most plain, most artless, does their composition appear; like the
+natural out-breathing of the heart in its sunny moments; and yet--as
+with all earthly brightness--with a trace of cloud on that sunshine.
+They are redolent of the "olden time;" and as they fall softly on the
+ear, the antique hall, with its groined roof, and mullioned window,
+glowing with rich heraldic devices, through which the many-tinted lights
+fall tenderly on arch and pillar, and elaborately fretted walls, studded
+with ancestral armour, rises up before us; and with the melting tones of
+the lute, mingles the low, clear voice of a gentle maiden, whose small
+foot and brocaded train are just seen from behind yonder deeply
+sculptured oaken screen. What innocence is in that voice! and how
+expressive are the chords that accompany it--less elaborate and
+fantastic, perchance, than might win favour in our vitiated ears; but
+natural, harmonious, full, and in exquisite subordination to the air,
+which they fill up and enrich, instead of overpowering with misplaced
+beauty.
+
+And now a movement of the singer reveals still more of the quaint,
+beautiful costume, with its heavy, yet graceful folds, while--aha! what
+else do we see?--a plumed hat thrown carelessly on the ground; the armed
+heel, glittering rapier, and slashed sleeve, just visible, betokening
+that its owner is not far off, and that the lady fair has not, as we had
+thought, been wasting her sweetness, either of voice or countenance, on
+that comfortable-looking pet dog or caged linnet. Sing on, pretty one!
+for well do gallant knights love to hear their stern deeds sung by
+innocent lips; and _right well_, to listen to the strain that tells how
+the heart of "lady-bright" is won by noble daring. But what means that
+sudden break in the song, and the confused sweep of the strings, as
+though the lute had slipped from its owner's grasp; while the masculine
+paraphernalia which we had just discovered disappears altogether behind
+that most impervious and curiosity-mocking screen? No great harm done,
+or that light laugh had not escaped the lips so suddenly silenced; and
+the offending cavalier is doubtless forgiven on the spot, as they
+amicably retreat to that deep oriel, framed apparently for the express
+purpose of excluding _intrusionists_ like ourselves, who would fain
+follow, where, it is evident, we are marvellously little wanted! Well,
+well!--maidens will be maidens, we trow, and lovemaking in the olden
+time is, we suppose, after all, vastly like the same performance by more
+modern actors. Leave we them to their light-heartedness:--and yet we
+could linger long in this ancient chamber,
+
+     "With quaint oak-carving lined and ceiled;"
+
+so calm, so cool, so repose-breathing,--the shrill twitter of the
+swallow the only sound now heard amid its silence; the fleecy clouds,
+throwing that rich interior into alternate light and shade, as they sail
+lazily along the deep blue sky--the only moving objects, save the long
+wreaths of ivy, that, green as the tender buds of spring, tap lightly
+against the casement, as they are swayed by the impulses of the summer
+breeze. Beyond, is an old-fashioned garden--a _pleasance_, as it would
+be called--and truly is it one; with its trim walks, its terraces, and
+moss-grown urns, around which luxuriant creepers are entwined--its
+impervious hedges--its close-shorn lawn, decked with appropriate
+statues, and its yew-trees, clipped into fantastic shapes; while the
+ivy-covered walls that bound it, afford a shelter from the blasts that
+too often allay the sunshine of our northern climate, and render it a
+spot where 'tis sweet to saunter, in idle or quiet contemplative mood,
+at glowing sunset; or chaster beauty of summer evening, when the pure,
+cold moon mingles her passionless lustre with the gorgeous hues that
+still linger around the portals of the west--bright train of the
+departing monarch that has passed to the sway of a new hemisphere!
+
+Here could we linger in genial meditation, while from the dark pannelled
+walls look down upon us lovely countenances of those who, centuries ago,
+have called this _home_--portraits whose calm, meek dignity so far
+transcends the more active style in which it too often pleases us
+moderns to glare from our gilt frames, "looking delightfully with all
+our might, and staring violently at nothing;" costume and truth being
+utterly outraged,--the _roturier's_ wife mapped in the ermine of the
+duchess, and perchance dandling on her maternal lap what appears to be a
+dancing dog in its professional finery, but which, on closer inspection,
+turns out to be an imp of a child, made a fool of by its mother and
+milliner; and my lady--in inadequate garments, and a pair of wings,
+flourishing as some heathen divinity or abstract virtue! Look at those
+girlish features, just mantling into fairest womanhood, with their sweet
+serious look, exhibiting all the self-possession of simplicity; the
+drapery and other accessories natural, and in perfect keeping with the
+unpretending character of the whole; and then turn to some recent
+"portrait of a lady," with what toleration you may. Contrast for one
+moment that fine ancestral face, dignified and unmoved as the mighty
+ocean slumbering in his strength, with the eager visage of one of the
+latest "batch," (cooked, without much regard to the materials, for some
+ministerial exigency,) who would appear to be standing in rampant
+defence of his own brand-new coronet, emulative of the well-gilt lion
+which supports that miracle of ingenuity rather than research, his
+brightly emblazoned coat-of-arms; whose infinitude of charges and
+quarterings do honour to the inventive genius of the Herald's Office,
+and are enough to make the Rouge Dragon of three centuries ago claw out
+the eyes of the modern functionary.
+
+But, oh dear, dear! where are our ballads all this while? Drifted sadly
+to leeward, we fear, according to a bad habit of ours, of letting any
+breeze, from whatever point of the compass it may chance to blow, fill
+our sails, and float us away before it, utterly unmindful of our
+original purpose and destination. Thus have we, to the tune of an old
+Hall and its garniture, sailed away from that which we were
+aiming--trying to find out, and describe the peculiar fascination of our
+loved old ballads; flattering ourselves, perhaps, that we were escaping
+a difficulty which we feared to meet.
+
+There is a quaint cheerfulness in them, toned down with a shade--the
+shadow of a shade--of the most touching melancholy, effected, we can
+scarcely tell how, by an exquisitely felicitous, though but slight
+introduction of the minor key, perchance but a single note or chord. But
+that suffices, and it is as a sudden vision of our home, far off among
+the mountains, or in the "happy valley" of our fathers, passing before
+us in the gay crowded city, bringing plaintive thoughts of remembered
+joys, and quietude, and childish innocence. Old ballads are like April
+skies, all smiles and tears, sunshine and swift-flitting clouds, that
+serve but to heighten the loveliness they concealed for a while. They
+are like,--nay, we despair; none but our own Shakspeare can express what
+we should vainly puzzle ourselves to describe, the essence of the "old
+and antique song."
+
+  "Mark it, Cesario; it is old and plain;
+  The spinsters and the knitters in the sun
+  And the free maids that weave their thread with bones,
+  Do use to chaunt it; it is silly sooth,
+  And dallies with the innocence of love,
+  Like the old age."
+
+Ay! like gray eld fondling sunny childhood, gazing on the wavy hair, and
+pure brow, and calm yet kindling eye, with a fond sad pleasure; for in
+that young exulting spirit he sees the sure inheritor of his own fading
+honours, the usurper of his strength, and influence, and worship,
+rapidly passing away from his feeble grasp; and as he gazes, though his
+lips pour willing benedictions on the unconscious supplanter, there
+lingers in his heart the sorrowful, "He shall increase, but I shall
+decrease."
+
+Something akin in their sad soothing effect, are the _waits_, (dear
+reader, you do not need to be told what these are? Wordsworth has
+immortalized them;) simple, rude, and inharmonious as they would be in
+the clear, truth-telling daylight, but strange, witching, and half
+unearthly, when heard between the pauses of some fantastic dream in the
+deep midnight; when,
+
+            "All around,
+  The stars are watching with their thousand eyes;"
+
+those same stars that peered down on this earth, in "earnest gaze," on
+the first act of that most awful drama, when, in "the winter wild, the
+heaven-born child"--Him in whom all nations of the world were
+blessed--was placed in his rude cradle at Bethlehem: in commemoration of
+whose advent--and _this_ is one secret of their pathos, waking high
+thoughts in the soul, too long brooding over and degrading itself with
+the mean cares and hopes of this life--the humble musicians make night
+tuneful, "scraping the chords with strenuous hand."
+
+A blessing on them as they go, softening our hard, unloving hearts! In
+our childhood it was one of our most cherished pleasures to
+lie--half-sleeping, half-waking--listening to them, as the sounds, at
+times discordant enough, though of that we recked not, rose and fell in
+pleasing cadence, as the winter wind rose and fell, wafting the notes
+that, faint and fainter still, at last died away in the distance.
+
+We and our room-companion were under a solemn engagement, each to other,
+to waken the little sleepy thing beside him, when the more watchful
+became aware of the approach of the itinerant minstrels; and woe to the
+one who had forgotten this duty! It would have required no little
+"music" to soothe the "savage breast" of the aggrieved one; for--as we
+are pathetically reminded by the old song--"Christmas comes but once
+a-year," and so often, but no more, did we know that our chance of
+hearing this seductive harmony occurred. Hence our wrath, if through the
+neglect, the "breach of promise" of another, so solemnly pledged, we
+missed it. And even now, dear as is the oblivion of night and dreamless
+sleep to the spirit, harassed and world-worn, that in outgrowing its
+child-like feelings and happiness, has, alas! also out-grown what its
+increase of worldly wisdom can hardly make amends for--the child-like
+purity, and intense enjoyment of simple pleasures, which marked its
+earlier years--even now, weary and dull-hearted as we are become, we
+would not willingly lose this delight of our happier days, although it
+fall on the still darkness like wail for a departed friend, unsealing
+the fount of mournful memories, whose bitter waters gush from their
+stricken rock; sad as are its associations, they are of that sadness
+whereby the "heart is made better."
+
+What think ye of the drum as a musical instrument? Is there not
+something magnificent in it, albeit suggestive of a distant wheelbarrow
+on rough paving-stones, or heavily laden cart in the distance? This
+latter, by the way,--we appeal with confidence to any musical soul
+present for confirmation of our assertion--being decidedly its equal, in
+effect, any day; as in our _happy_ infancy we found out to our sorrow,
+from being frequently deceived by its dull booming, which our vivid
+imagination at once pronounced to be its parchment representative; as we
+writhed and wriggled with agony on our unhonoured bench (selected, and
+adhered to, for constancy was our _forte_, chiefly on account of its
+being out of the reach of the cane, and commanding a good view of the
+street) in a perfect fever, poor little soul, to squirl away books and
+slates, and scamper after the soldiers. Scarlet has been said to be like
+the sound of a trumpet; surely then a drum must be taken as the exponent
+of that ferocious mixture yclept thunder and lightning, erst dear to
+country bumpkins, and rendered classical by Master Moses Primrose's
+coat. It can scarcely be described as _music_, but rather as sound with
+an idea in it--the connecting link between mere noise and musical
+expression. Kettle-drums,
+
+      "Whose sullen dub,
+  Is like the hooping of a tub,"
+
+we hate; and never see them in a concert-room without heartily wishing
+they and their tatooer might tumble, helter-skelter, from their topmost
+perch into the very lowest depth, if there be one lower than another, of
+the orchestra; and thereby sustain such a compound fracture, attended by
+loss of substance, as should put it out of their power, for that night
+at least, to torture our fastidious ears. Being of a melancholy
+temperament, we are unfortunately, at times, subject to most ludicrous
+fancies; and as these ungainly instruments loom on our disgusted eye, we
+cannot, for the life of us, help imagining them moulds for a couple of
+enormous gooseberry puddings; and we verily pant at the idea of the sea
+of melted butter, or yellow cream, requisite to mollify their
+acidity--and then we laugh like a hyena at the nightmareish vision, and
+so are disgraced, for it is at a "serious opera:" therefore, we repeat
+it, do we hate them, cordially and perseveringly. They are horrid
+things, and ought to be excommunicated. And when employed in military
+bands--why, a horse looks a complete fool between a couple of these
+gigantic basins, each with its long tag-rag of unmeaning velvet,
+beplastered and bedizened with lace and gold, streaming from it; and the
+unlucky performer perched between them, exactly like an old
+market-woman, bolstered up between a brace of paniers or
+milk-pails;--any thing but a fierce dragoon, or most chivalrous hussar.
+But peace be to the kettle-drums,--ay, _peace be to them_, say we! and
+may our ears never again be subjected to the torture of hearing Handel's
+massive chorus, or Beethoven's fearfully dramatic harmony, disfigured by
+their most abominable bangs, or villanous rumble-grumble.
+
+Now all this is rank nonsense--we are fully aware of it; and it is a
+most foolish, unjust prejudice of ours against drums--kettle or
+otherwise, as it may please Apollo--which are most respectable members
+of musical society, and good--very good--in their way; were it only as a
+foil to the enchanting, inspiriting, maddening strains of the horn, the
+shrill pipe, the regal trumpet, and the various other instruments of our
+military music, of which we are more passionate admirers, almost ready
+to follow the drum ourselves. Oh, the supreme delight of having one's
+arms and legs shot off to such soul-elevating sounds, to the tune of
+Rule Britannia, and somebody or other's march! "Britons strike home"
+thrills through the air, and you scarcely feel that you are spitted by a
+Polish lancer; a flourish of trumpets, and enter a troop of horse, that
+trot briskly over you as you lie smashed by a round-shot, but heedless
+of the exhibition of their unceremonious heels to your injuries, for are
+you not sustained by that "point of war"--mercilessly beaten at your
+elbow, without the slightest regard to the effect it may have on your
+cracked head, for which you are indebted to the last trooper who spurred
+his charger over you: who would care for his vulgar limbs under such
+excitement? But if this part of our military economy be intended to
+inspire cowards with courage, and string them up to a disregard of all
+the chances of warfare, in the way of bullet and sabre, why--_why_ is
+not so valuable an idea carried out to the full extent of its
+requirement, and a military band instituted for the comfort and
+encouragement of the patients (every whit as nervous as if they were
+under arms) of Guy's Hospital? Why should not the case of poor bedfast
+wretches in cap and gown, and pale faces, meet with as much
+consideration as that of your clodpole in scarlet and an 'Albert hat?'
+(Heaven forgive the prince for making such simpletons of our handsome
+Englishmen!) Look to it, ye governors of such institutions, and look to
+it, ye charitable and humane, who empty your purses into the blandly
+presented plate to buy shoes and stockings for the kangaroos. Consider
+the case of your afflicted countrymen, and relieve the plethora of your
+coffers by providing them music, every way equal to that enjoyed by
+troops going into action; music so entrancing that an arm or leg whipped
+off shall, under its influence, be no object to them; and let them drink
+down their odious physic to such masterly compositions of the first
+artists as shall sweeten the bitterest potion, and elicit a chorus of
+blessings on the taste and liberality of their munificent benefactors.
+But we fear that our pleading will be vain--Englishmen, poor, sick, and
+suffering, are intolerably uninteresting; not to be named on the same
+day with the happy possessors of woolly locks, flat noses, and
+copper-coloured skins; these being personal qualifications calculated to
+excite the intense sympathies of the many whose charity neither begins
+nor ends "at home." Yet, in the spirit of the little girl, who, on the
+denial of her request that she might be married, substituted the more
+modest one of a piece of bread and butter; if unsuccessful in this
+particular, we will be content to lower our tone, and, in place of the
+luxury we have recommended, simply require all whom it may concern to
+give the poor--their own!--honest wages for their honest labour.
+
+We may perhaps be accused of having a Turkish taste in music (after the
+pattern of that Sultan's, who was chiefly fascinated with the jarring
+process of tuning the instruments, a thing abhorred by "gods and men")
+if we venture to own the strange, thrilling effect once produced on us
+by the discordant, yet withal imposing clangour of some half dozen
+regimental bands (all of them, mark you, playing different tunes!) which
+struck up simultaneously as my Lord ----, the then commander-in-chief,
+(whose spirit has since mingled with the shades of the heroes who had
+preceded him, not to the hall of Odin, but we trust to a more Christian
+place,) made his appearance, with his brilliant staff, on ---- Moor;
+whither he came down ostensibly for the purpose of reviewing the
+troops--really, to marry his nephew and heir to the grand-daughter of a
+manufacturing millionnaire. (Commercial gold, or heraldic _or_, is a
+good modern "tricking;" though we query whether our ancestors would have
+countenanced such bad heraldry, or been content with such abatements of
+honour on their old shields!)
+
+The wild sounds streamed on the crisp morning air--'twas one of those
+September days whose mature beauty rivals the budding grace of
+spring--with a strange wayward beauty, a barbaric grandeur, that carried
+away both our heart and ears; and we enjoyed it to the full as much as
+did the steed of a military lady present, that verily danced with the
+tingling delight. We had a fellow feeling with the brute, and could
+ourselves, grave and sensible as we are, have pranced about in an
+ecstasy of admiration, which was by no means allayed when the deep-toned
+sullen music--for such it is to us--of the artillery uttered its
+majestic bass to the sharp ringing fire of musketry. While, as wreath
+after wreath of the light morning mist floated away before the breeze,
+the glittering files and compact bristling squares, the centaur-like
+cavalry, and stealthy riflemen gliding along the windings of the copse,
+became apparent, stretching far into the distance; now hidden for a
+moment by the rolling vapour from a discharge of firearms, then, as it
+curled above them, dimming the clear sky, glancing bright in the sun,
+which blithely kissed sabre and epaulet, and dancing plume, and the
+knightly-looking pennoned weapon of the picturesque lancer. Truly the
+scene was beautiful, and one to breathe a warlike spirit into the most
+unexcitable. And we gazed in a paroxysm of admiration at the exquisite
+evolutions and fierce charges that seemed as though they must bear all
+before them, till this perfection of discipline came to an end, and the
+long files of troops had taken their slow dusty departure; when, hot and
+fagged, and with bright colours still dancing before our eyes, we
+returned to our home. There, as each "pleasure has its pain," we found
+that one was superinduced on ours, in the shape of a robbery of our
+plate committed while we were staring ourselves out of countenance at
+the gay spectacle; our faithless domestics having taken that opportunity
+of indulging their own taste for the "sublime and beautiful." 'Tis to be
+hoped they got enough of the "beautiful" at the show, as we indulged
+them with a touch of the "sublime" (which has one of its sources in
+_terror_) when we discovered our loss. But we enjoyed the review
+thoroughly for all that, and are ready for another to-morrow, first
+taking the precaution to "lock up all our treasure," warned by a
+catastrophe which nearly reduced us to wooden spoons and hay-makers.
+
+Military music! But to feel its power fully, let it be heard when the
+exulting strains that are wont to fill the air with exuberant harmony
+are saddened into the sweet, mournful, heart-breaking notes that steal
+on the ear at a soldier's funeral, and the gaudy splendour of military
+array has passed into the drear pomp of that most touching, most
+monitory sight. Faint mournful bugle-notes are wafted fitfully on the
+wind, plumes and glittering weapons glance and disappear as the
+procession advances, now hidden by the hedge-rows, now flashing on the
+sight, in the autumnal sun, as it winds slowly along the devious road;
+louder and louder swell those short abrupt trumpet-notes as it draws
+near, till the whole sad array, in its affecting beauty, is presented to
+the eye. The _life in death_ that pervades the melancholy
+ceremonial!--"Our brother is not dead, but sleepeth," seems written on
+the impressive pageant; and we almost expect, while we gaze, to see the
+deep slumber chased from the closed eyelids, and the recumbent form
+start up again to claim the warlike weapons with which it was wont to be
+girt, and that now lie, as if awaiting their master's grasp, in
+unavailing display on the funereal pall. But a mightier than he has for
+ever wrenched them from his hold, and vain the sword, the helm, the
+spear, in that unequal conflict. The last contest is over, and "he is in
+peace."
+
+  "Brother, wrapp'd in quiet sleep,
+  Thou hast ceased to watch and weep;
+  Wipe the toil-drops from thy brow,
+  War and strife are over now;
+  Bow the head, and bend the knee,
+  For the crown of victory."
+
+But suppose not pathos confined to the "bugle's wailing sound," and the
+sad subdued bursts of well-modulated military music--to the long files
+of slow-pacing troops with reversed arms, and the riderless steed,
+vainly caparisoned for the battle, that proclaim the obsequies of a
+chief. We are not ashamed to confess that the tear has been wrung from
+our eye by the plaintive notes of the few rude instruments that alone
+lament over the poor private's simple bier--the inharmonious fife, and
+the measured beats of the muffled drum; while the dull tramp of the
+appointed mourners following a comrade to his obscure resting-place
+falls chilly on the heart. Though even he, lowly in death as in life,
+shares with his leader in the brief wild honours of a soldier's
+grave--the sharp volleys of musketry pealing over his narrow home, a
+strange farewell to its passionless inhabitant, on whom the sanctity of
+the tomb has already passed; the unholy sound falls voiceless on his
+dull ear, fast closed until
+
+  "The last loud trumpet-notes on high
+  Peal through the echoing sky,
+  And cleave the quivering ground"--
+
+breaking, with dreadful summons, "the eternal calm wherewith the grave
+is bound."
+
+"Facilis descensus!" We cannot say that we admire the hurdy-gurdy, that
+synthesis of a grindstone and a Jew's-harp, yea, of all that is
+detestable, musically speaking, which must have owed its origin to a
+desire on the part of Jupiter _Musicus_, in a bad temper, to invent a
+suitable purgatory for expiating the sins of delinquent musicians;
+affording, on this supposition, an exquisite illustration of the perfect
+adaptation of means to an end--one well worthy the attention of all
+future writers on that subject. Independently of the nuisance of its
+inexpressibly harsh-jingling tones, (as, if you were being hissed by a
+quantity of rusty iron wire,) it always gives us the fidget to hear it
+for the sake of poor Abel, (surely its only admirer,) grinding away for
+dear life, to the extreme exacerbation of the bears growling beneath,
+under the combined irritation of no supper and his abominable tinkling.
+How they must have longed to gobble him up, were it only for the sake
+of popping an extinguisher on the "zit zan zounds" overhead! It was the
+reverse of the old tale, "no song no supper;" for they got the song,
+instead of a supper on the nice plump artist, which they would have
+liked much better. We wish he had stuck to his text, and persisted in
+his refusal to play; for then the fate that awaited him would but have
+been poetical justice for his utter and criminal want of taste--an
+adequate retribution on a wretch patronising an instrument whose
+demerits transcend every adjective that occurs to us at this present
+moment.
+
+But as we cannot, even in the wildest freaks of our imagination,
+conceive of any one really liking the hurdy-gurdy--nay, we are prepared
+to demonstrate much affection absolutely impossible--we incline to think
+there must have been some corruption of this tradition in the course of
+its being handed down to us, so far at least as concerns the name of the
+instrument played at such a price; and on the antiquarian principle that
+consonants are changeable at pleasure, and vowels go for nothing, we
+take leave for hurdy-gurdy (what a vulgar sound it has!) to read flute,
+violin, lute, or, in short, any other presentable musical instrument
+that may chance to find the greatest favour in our eyes. A change which
+has the twofold merit of saving Abel's character for taste, and
+preserving so excellent a story from carrying a lie on the face of it;
+and for this service of ours, we desire alike the thanks of musicians
+and moralists, to whom we most respectfully present our improved
+version, as suitable for circulation by the most fastidious artist, or
+rigid precisian.
+
+Mercy on us! What a rattling and clattering of doors and windows! The
+windows will certainly be blown in at last, for they strain and creak
+like a ship at sea; and how the wind roars and bellows in the chimney,
+as if Æolus and all his noisy crew were met on a tipsy revel!
+There--that last gust shook the house! It is to be hoped the chimneys
+stand with their feather-edge to it, or we shall have a stack or two
+about our ears in a trice. We wonder whether the cellars would be the
+safest place, or, indeed, whether there is a safe place about the house
+at all! We have often heard of the music of the wind, but never felt
+less disposed to admire it in our life--for the gale has been howling in
+our ears all day; and this last hour or two, there has been, as the
+sailors say, a fresh hand at the bellows; so that we are in no humour to
+sentimentalize on what is, within a few yards of us, curling the dark
+waves, that, since the day in which their fluctuation was first decreed,
+have swallowed up so much of what is goodly and beloved of this earth,
+and that now roar as if for their prey! of which may the great God that
+ruleth over the sea, as well as the dry land, disappoint their ravening
+jaws! We shrink and are half appalled at their clamour, while we are on
+the point of uttering a hasty vow never again to locate ourselves at the
+sea-side, though it were prescribed by fifty physicians; or, at all
+events, not so very near that dun mass of troubled waters, blending on
+the horizon in strange confusion with the lowering, tempestuous sky. Who
+could believe, as he views them in their milder mood, as we did
+yesterday--lying placid as a clear lake among the mountains, wherein the
+bright face of heaven is mirrored, reflecting each light cloud that
+floats in the deep azure, or the many-tinted hues of evening--that anon,
+lashed into foaming wrath, they should devour "rich fruit of earth, and
+human kind," the gold, and the gems, and the priceless treasures wrung
+from both hemispheres; and the young, the brave, the loved--the bright
+locks, and the manly beauty, and the hoary head; crushing their diverse
+hopes into one watery ruin, surging a wild tumultuous dirge over their
+one fathomless tomb! And then, sated with destruction, smile and glisten
+beneath the morning sunbeams with all the sportiveness of child-like
+innocence.
+
+No, no--speak not to us of the "music of the wind." For to us, in our
+gloomy moods, it breathes but of desolation, sorrow, and suffering;
+while, as the blast rises higher, its sentimental mournfulness is
+mingled with painful thoughts, which press on our spirit, of the peril
+in which it places so many of our fellow-creatures; and, "God help the
+poor souls at sea!" rises earnestly in our heart, and even
+unconsciously passes the barrier of our lips, as we retire, utterly
+unsympathizing with the selfish enjoyment of those who delight to wrap
+up themselves, warm and cozy, in their curtained and downy repose,
+lulled to deeper slumber by the blustering cold in which others are
+shivering, or, haply, contending with the winds and waves so soon to
+overwhelm them. And in our more ordinary everyday humour--if it chance
+to rise above what in our humble opinion ought to be its maximum, a
+gentle refreshing breeze, just enough to waft sweet woodland sounds, or
+ripple the quiet stream--why, it discomposes and discomforts us,
+whistling, howling, and rattling among slates and chimney-tops, and
+making whirligigs of the dust, in the town; and in the country,
+_soughing_ among the boughs, as though the trees had got some horrible
+secret which they were whispering to each other, while their long arms
+lash each other as if for a wager; the whole exciting in us a most
+uneasy and undefinable sensation, as though we had done something wrong,
+and were every minute expecting to be found out! A sensation which might
+fairly be deemed punishment sufficient for all the minor offences of
+this offensive world, and which we most decidedly object to having
+inflicted on us for nothing.
+
+"The music of the wind!" Why, what can be more detestable than the wind
+whistling through a key-hole? or singing its shrill melancholy song
+among the straining cordage of the storm-threatened ship? Then,
+uninteresting accidents happen during squally weather: hats are blown
+off; coat-tails, and eke the flowing garments of the gentler sex, flap,
+as if waging war with their distressed wearers; grave dignified persons
+are compelled to scud along before the gale, shorn of all the
+impressiveness of their wonted solemn gait, holding, perchance, their
+shovel-hat firmly on with both hands; and finally, there is neither
+pathos nor glory in having your head broken by a chimney-pot, or volant
+weathercock. No, the wide sea is an emblem of all that is deceitful and
+false, smiling most blandly when preparing to devour you; and the wind
+is only one shade more respectable--nay, perchance the worse of the two;
+for the waters, in the self-justifying, neighbour-condemning spirit,
+apparently inherent in human nature--and for which Father Adam be
+thanked--may very possibly lay the blame of their fickleness upon it,
+and bring a host of witnesses into court to testify to their general
+good behaviour--their calmness, and amenity, and inoffensiveness, till
+exposed to the evil influence of Æolus's unruly troop--the most
+wholesale agitators going, and never so happy as when raising a riot.
+
+N.B.--The whole tribe of zephyrs, gentle airs, and evening and morning
+breezes, will please to consider themselves as _not_ included under the
+term _wind_; to which alone, in its common-place hectoring style, this
+tirade is meant to apply.
+
+(We hate any thing important being popped within a parenthesis, but as
+the literary sin pinches us less than the immorality, we must here state
+what truth requires us to say--that the above, being written during a
+fit of the spleen, induced by the hubbub of winds and waters adverted
+to, must be received by the candid reader with considerable allowance.)
+
+So much for the wind, which has blown _music_ completely out of our head
+for a while. What a pity we did not bethink us of placing our Æolian
+harp in the window, before it had sunk into those short angry gusts
+which are now alone heard--the mere dregs of the gale; and so have drawn
+our inspiration from that which puffed it out! But, somehow or other,
+our bright thoughts generally present themselves too late to be of any
+use; and this is one in that predicament!
+
+Some people profess to be never tired of music, but to enjoy it _à
+l'outrance_, at all times and in all places. With such, we must own, we
+have no sympathy. With all our _love_--not mere liking--for the art, we
+still hold that it is indebted for its charm to the categories of time
+and place, at least as much as its neighbours; for (but this confession
+should be made in the smallest, most modest-looking type in the world)
+there are both times and places when we hate it cordially, and fervently
+wish that neither harmony, nor its ancestor, melody, had ever been
+invented. In some such mood as made the very heavens themselves odious
+and pestilential to Hamlet, does music appear to us as unlike itself, as
+they really were to his crazed imagination of them; and we look forward
+with malicious pleasure to the time when, if Dryden is to be
+believed--but your poets are not always prophets--"music shall untune
+the sky," as a period when all the miseries it has inflicted on us shall
+be amply revenged by its perpetrating, or assisting at, this gigantic
+mischief. 'Tis then that your first-fiddle is but impertinent
+catgut--your fluent organ a vile box of whistles, fit representative of
+its _Tube_-al inventor--and the sweetest pipe ever resonant with the
+clear, music-breathing air of Italy, or bravely struggling against the
+damper atmosphere of our humid isle, sounds harsh and shrilly in our
+ears, instead of soothing our "savage breast," which seems to marshal
+all its powers the more emphatically to give the poet the lie. This--now
+that we are in the confessional--we are free to own--yea, it is
+incumbent on us to do ourselves this justice--is only when we are in one
+of our unamiable moods, luckily about as rare as snow at mid-summer, but
+correspondingly chilling and shocking to the genial ones around
+us,--ourselves usually most so, like quiet sunshine in November. We are,
+by nature, the meekest of individuals--a "falcon-hearted dove," or
+anything else, pretty and poetical, that might give the idea of our
+possessing a brave heart under a most gentle exterior; but when roused,
+then indeed are we a very dragon; or rather, to keep up our former
+simile, (which we think a taking one, though, alas! it is not our own,)
+and delineate, by one expressive phrase, a mouldering, rage kept in
+check; by the constitutional cowardice on which it is superinduced--then
+are we a pigeon-hearted hawk, wanting only the courage to be desperately
+cross! (An impertinent friend, who has been looking over our shoulder,
+suggests that ourselves, under the two above-named phrases, would be
+better adumbrated by the figure of a dish of skimmed milk, and that same
+milk curdled! A plague on friends, say we! the most impertinent
+impertinencies that fall to our lot in this cross-cornered world are
+sure to emanate from them.)
+
+Another of our sins which--to make "a clean breast"--we must confess, is
+that of fickleness in our loves; an occasional flirting with other arts
+and sciences, in their turn--for we protest against the profligacy of
+making love to more than one at once! We string together fearful and
+unreadable lengths of iambics, and dactyles, and trochaics, and write
+sonnets to the bright queen of night, beginning "O thou!" and stick fast
+in the middle of sorely-laboured and at length baffling extempores to
+this, that, and t'other; and, wickeder still, then we din them into the
+ears of a wretched friend, who having once, in the extremity of his
+courtesy, unhappily proved himself a good listener, is, for his sins,
+fated to continue so to the end of the chapter--_i.e._, our interminable
+rhymes; til, tired of exchanging our bad prose for worse poetry, (and
+having the fear of his maledictions before our eyes,) we throw it aside
+in a pet. Then comes a change over our spirit; and we dabble in
+paint-pots, and flourish a palette, and are great on canvass, and in
+chalks, and there is a mingled perfume of oil and turpentine in our
+_studio_ (whilome study) that is to us highly refreshing, and good
+against fainting; and we make tours in search of the picturesque,
+climbing over stone walls, and what not, to gain some hill-top whence we
+may see the sun set or the moon rise, haply getting soused in a
+peat-drain for our pains--and we pencil sketches from nature, really
+very like; and the blue mountains, the solemn sunsets, and purple
+shadows among the woods, or falling on the tawny sands, girdling the
+sea, whose blue-gray melts into the horizon, throw us into quick
+ecstasies of delight that almost paralyse the adventurous hand as it
+seeks, often vainly, to transfer the quick-changing loveliness to the
+enduring canvass. And then we fling away our pencils in despair, and
+worship, with all the devotion of which ignorance is the mother, (for we
+never handled the chisel,) the serene beauty of sculpture; most
+passionless, most intellectual art, breathing the repose of divinity,
+the grand inaction of the All-powerful; shadowing forth in this its
+perfection, sublime truth, with its faint, troubled, yet still sublime
+reflection, error;--the "without passions" of Divine revelation, and its
+perversion, its undue development, the unconsciousness, issuing in the
+final perfection of annihilation, of Braminical deity. So are the
+extremes of truth and error linked--the error depending for its
+existence on its antagonist truth. Painting is objective, sculpture
+subjective, throwing the mind more upon itself, to seek there the hidden
+forms of grace and beauty yet unmanifested by pencil or chisel. The one
+appeals more to the senses, the other to the imagination and the mind;
+exciting ideas rather than presenting them. Painting, sublimate it as
+you will, is still of the earth; albeit a purer one than this desolated
+habitation in which the sons of Adam mourn their exile--even the
+unviolated Eden; of which it is one of the fairest, tenderest
+emanations, reaching forward to the angelic, yet still a child of earth
+with mortality on its brow. Sculpture is of the gods, with its Titanic
+majesty, and calm, celestial grace.
+
+But next succeeds one of our hard, stern, misanthropical fits, in which
+verjuice and aloes might be taken as the type of our condition, and we
+propound strange heresies concerning the affections, social and
+domestic; the leading one being that they are greater inlets to misery
+than happiness, and that mankind would have been less wretched had they
+grown up, like blades of grass, alone and separate; a cheerless
+doctrine, but one which misanthropical logic legitimately deduces from
+the more comprehensive one, that in this world evil is more potential
+than good--more active and influential in its own nature. And we
+bitterly call to mind all the treachery with which our trustfulness has
+been met--our leaning on that broken reed, friendship--the placing our
+whole hope and stay on some loved one who has failed us in our
+extremity;--we call up (and how they throng at that call!) these gloomy
+recollections, clad in all the terrors of the dark and indistinct past,
+to build ourselves up in our gloomy creed. And in our utter weariness of
+soul, the thought of an uninterrupted sentient existence is oppressive:
+and we passionately wish that the rest of the grave might not be
+vouchsafed to our body alone, but that our spirit also might sleep a
+deep, tranquil sleep, until the great day of awakening. 'Tis a dreary
+mood--like clouded moonlight on troubled, turbid waters! And we could
+roast Love with his own torch--and we see every thing through crape
+spectacles, and have no clarity for the softer, more refined emotions
+and contemplations; so we plunge our head and ears into a chaos of most
+musty, dusty metaphysics; and by the time we are nearly choked with
+them, and have reasoned ourselves, first, out of all intercourse with an
+external world, secondly, out of its existence, thirdly, out of our own,
+we are right glad to be brought back to our senses, and our old love,
+whom we embrace with all the ardour of reconciliation after a lover's
+quarrel, and willingly yield ourselves to the humanizing effect of
+music--grave or gay, as our mood may dictate, either perfect after its
+kind.
+
+Reader, should you haply be of the extreme North, has it ever chanced to
+you to be present at our glorious English cathedral service? If not,
+congratulate yourself on this enjoyment in reserve for you; and when you
+next visit our end of the little island, pass not, we beseech you, those
+Gothic towers, massive and rich, or taper spires rising majestically
+above the cloistered arches, buttresses, and pinnacles, of these
+monuments of the piety, consummate skill, and humility of our ancestors;
+for no modern black board, with gilt letters, proclaims the name of
+their founders, who have sought a simple, perchance a nameless, tomb
+within the sacred walls they have reared. Pass within that lofty
+doorway; and the silence, the stillness, the vastness within, awe the
+heart! From the care and turmoil without, one step has placed us lonely
+as in a desert;--from the surges of life to the presence of the dead,
+who sleep around as if under the more immediate keeping of the Mighty
+One in His holy temple! And if, entering, a solitary memorial of the
+more clouded faith which they inherited from their fathers--the jewel,
+dimmed by its frail setting--should meet the eye, start not, with the
+pride of knowledge, from the meek petition, "Ora pro me," enscrolled
+beneath that mitred effigy, worn by the thoughtless feet of the
+generations passed away; but believe, and fear not to do so, that "it is
+accepted according to that a man hath," and that the sincere devotion of
+the heart, even when erroneously expressed, through _involuntary_
+ignorance, shall not be rejected by that just Being who seeks not to
+reap where He hath not sowed; but that it may come up as holy incense
+before Him, when our cold, unloving, orthodox prayers, backed by our
+heathenish lives, and meaner offerings on the altar of our God, shall
+return, blighted and blighting, into our own bosoms. Or should you be
+too petrified with pious horror at this--Popery, as with your longest,
+dismalest face, you will style it--to think with any charity of those
+who dwelt but in the twilight of your open day--the very verger, sleek,
+round, and smiling, as he stands by you in his sake-robes, shall, in his
+honest zeal, supply an antidote for the evil, moralizing on the vanity
+of such supplications, and winding up his simple homily with the
+significant--"Where the tree falleth, there it shall lie!" Think on
+that, rigid critic, and take heed how _you_ fall!--nor, if you have the
+capacity for finding "good in every thing," will you disdain to learn
+the lesson of instruction, which your own heart had failed to supply,
+from so lowly a source.
+
+But you still curl your sanctimonious lip, and shrug your pious
+shoulders, in intimation of your knowing vastly better than your poor,
+ignorant forefathers! Ah, well--then _live_ better; that is all we have
+got to say to you!
+
+Our very parish churches are now emulating the impressive ceremonial and
+exquisite musical service of the cathedral. Enter, then, with us one
+that has seemed, in some degree, to revive the glory of the olden time,
+when men, as they received, gave lavishly for the service of the altar;
+nor meted out their offerings with the niggard hand that is moved by the
+heart of this generation; unmoved, unwarmed, but boastful of its
+_light_--the light of a moonbeam playing on an iceberg! There is the
+long sweep of the nave, with the open chancel (not separated from the
+former by the richly carved and fretted screen, which, however beautiful
+in itself, mars the grand effect of the whole) leading to the altar--we
+are old-fashioned people, and fear not to offend by this old-fashioned
+term--whose sacred garniture glows beneath the many tints of the fine
+eastern window, with its monograms and emblems, and flowing-robed
+apostles, through which the mellowed summer sun shines obliquely,
+throwing strange, grotesque, many-coloured shadows on the walls and
+pavement; while on either side tall lancet-shaped windows, thickly
+covered with heraldic devices, bear modest record to the willing service
+of those whose munificence has reared the pile, and give increased light
+and richness to the scene. The great western window, also covered with
+armorial bearings, throws a dim, yet kindling, tint on the stone font
+aptly placed beneath it, as figurative of its character--initial to that
+further sacrament, meetly celebrated where the star of Him who first
+blessed it proclaimed His advent to the expectant world. While
+throughout the holy building, high-springing arch, and sombre aisle, and
+vaulted ceiling, and curiously-wrought oaken roof; all combine to
+impress the mind with awe and admiration, with thoughts of the past and
+hopes for the future.
+
+But this is not all: these are but the glories of art, worthily
+employed, indeed, in the service of the temple; 'tis but the body
+without the life, the soul that animates it. Return at the decline of
+day, when "man, who goeth forth unto his labour even unto the evening,"
+has received a respite from his ordained toil, and seeks to refresh and
+elevate his spirit, wearied and worn down with the low, inevitable cares
+of the day, with the mingled prayer and chant, "rising and falling as on
+angels' wings," that duly, at each appointed eve, swell through the
+consecrated structure, filling its concave with solemn melody. The last
+flush of evening has died in the west, and the scattered worshippers are
+indistinctly seen by the dim lights, which, bringing out into strong
+relief the parts immediately adjacent to the massive yet graceful
+pillars to which they are attached, throw the rest of the interior into
+deeper gloom, brought into sharp contrast with the illuminated
+portions, by intersecting arch, clustered shaft, and all the endless
+intricacies of Gothic architecture; exuberant with profusely decorated
+spandrils, sculptured bosses, light flying buttresses, and delicate
+fan-like tracery. How beautiful and hushed is all around! Now the
+stillness is broken by approaching footsteps, and the white-robed train
+of priests and choristers is seen advancing along the aisle, the organ
+uttering its impressive modulations to soothe the heart, and still its
+tumult of worldly care and feelings, that these may not, "like birds of
+evil wing," mar the sacrifice about to be offered on its unworthy altar.
+And then, amid the succeeding silence, fall on the ear--ay, on the very
+soul!--the words of Holy Writ, deprecating the wrath of an offended
+Creator, announcing pardon to the repentant, and cleansing from the
+pollution of guilt to the heart, vexed with the defilement of this evil
+world, and yearning after the purity of that higher existence for which,
+erst designed, the inherited frailty of its nature, and the threefold
+temptations that unweariedly beset it, have rendered it unfit and
+unworthy.
+
+How clear, simple, yet most thrilling, is the enunciation of those
+words! and mark the superb harmony with which, proceeding in the sacred
+service, the single plaintively modulated voice of the officiating
+minister is answered by the choral supplications of the assembled
+worshippers--swelling out in joyous exulting tones, and dying away in
+sorrowful minor cadence, as though the shadow of sin and suffering fell
+on those pathways to the highest heaven, clouding the radiance unmeet
+for mortal eye! And if rude tremulous notes, from some of the lowly ones
+who, still habited in their garb of daily toil, kneel by our side--for,
+in that house, distinctions are there none--mingle with the harmony,
+they mingle not harshly, for there is melody in the heart, and it is the
+voice of a brother; not the less "bone of our bone, and flesh of our
+flesh," that the blessings of this life have been more sparingly
+bestowed on him--perchance to crown him more abundantly with glory and
+honour in that which is to come. Succeeding each other, the antiphonal
+chant--venerable with the port of near eighteen centuries; yea, with the
+hoar of Jewish, as well as Christian antiquity--the exuberant anthem
+with its ponderous chorus, and again, the joyous, melancholy, choral
+response, wherein blend the voices of childish innocence, strong
+manhood, and plaintive age, hear us on to the close;--that threefold
+blessing which none may hear unmoved, and whose magnitude seems to
+transcend our poor belief, as we reverently bow, in awed silence, musing
+on its unfathomable import; while the deep, mellow voice that pronounced
+it still lingers on the ear.
+
+How imposing is the sight! One kneeling throng around--the indistinct
+light, that clothes with mysterious grace the beautiful lineaments of
+the Gothic structure--the bright gleam on the white and flowing
+vestments;--and the _stillness!_ broken at length by a low, sad melody,
+in accordance with the subdued tone resting on all, gradually rising
+into the more swelling chords of the solemn organ, that, earthly strains
+though they be, seen not unmeet to mingle with those exalted ones that
+have gone before--rousing the heart from its more celestial
+contemplations, and by gentle transition--like a descending
+dove--bringing it down from its heavenward flight to that earth with
+which its present daily and active duties are concerned, the more fitly
+and cheerfully performed when thus hallowed; for, be it remembered, the
+preparation for that unseen world to which we are tending, is the best
+preparation for our continuance in this.
+
+But the last wave of harmony has died away in the sounding aisles; one
+by one the lights are extinguished, throwing the varied beauty of arch,
+and niche, and pillar, into indistinguishable and fast deepening shade;
+and, last of the train, we, with heart tranquillized and elevated by the
+service of that evening hour, slowly follow the departing worshippers
+into the still, clear night.
+
+  M. J.
+
+
+
+
+MARTHA BROWN.
+
+BY AN ANCIENT CONTRIBUTOR.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.
+
+
+Sir,--It is twenty years since I first contributed to your Magazine;--it
+was rather a brief article, and was not inserted in the early part of
+the work. In short, it consisted of a few lines in the Obituary at the
+end of the Number, and was as follows:--"Died at Bunderjumm, in the East
+Indies, Thomas Sneezum, Esq., much and justly regretted by a numerous
+circle of friends and acquaintances." He was my uncle, sir, and I was
+his heir,--a highly respectable man, and a remarkable judge of bullocks.
+He was in the Commissariat, and died worth forty thousand pounds. If you
+saw his monument, on the wall of our parish church, and read his
+character, you would know what a beautiful sympathy exists between a
+dead uncle and a grateful nephew. I took the name of Sneezum in addition
+to my own--bought an estate, and an immense number of books--and
+cultivated my land and literature with the greatest care. I planted
+trees--I drained meadows--and wrote books. The trees grew--the meadows
+flourished--but the books never came to an end. Something always
+interfered. I never could get the people in my novels disposed of. When
+they began talking, they talked for ever; when they fought duels, they
+were always killed; and, by the time I had got them into the middle of a
+scrape, I always forgot how I had intended to get them out of it. In
+history, it was very nearly the same. Centuries jostled against each
+other like a railway collision. I confused Charlemagne with Frederick
+Barbarossa, and the Cardinal Richelieu with M. Thiers. So, with the
+exception of the article I alluded to, in your Magazine, and a few
+letters on the present potato disease in the Gardener's Guide, I am a
+Great Unpublished--in the same way as I understand there are a number of
+extraordinary geniuses in the dramatic line, who have called themselves
+the Great Unacted. I can only hope that advancing civilization will
+bring better days to us both--types for me--actors for them.
+
+At the time of the lamented death of my uncle, I was about thirty years
+of age, and for ten years before that, had been sleeping partner in a
+house in Liverpool; and I can honestly say I did my part of the duty to
+the perfect satisfaction of all concerned. I slept incessantly--not
+exactly in a house in Liverpool but in a very comfortable one--the
+drawing-room floor, near the Regent's Park. Twice a-year a balance-sheet
+came in, and a little ready money. I put the money carefully away in a
+drawer, and threw the balance-sheet in the fire. It was a very happy
+life, for I subscribed to a circulating library, and wrote the
+beginnings of books continually.
+
+One day, about six months after I was in possession of the fortune, I
+heard a ring at the bell. There was something in the ring different from
+any I had ever heard before--a sort of sweet, modest tingling kind of a
+ring. I felt as if somebody was shaking my hand all the time; and, on
+looking back on the event, I think there must be something in mesmerism
+and every thing else--homoeopathy and the water cure included; for it
+was certainly quite unaccountable on ordinary principles--but so it was.
+The maid was very slow in answering the bell. There was another pull.
+The same mysterious effects--a sort of jump--a tremor as it were, not at
+all unpleasant, but very odd--so I went to the door myself; and there
+fixed on me, in the most extraordinary manner, were two of the blackest
+eyes I ever saw--illuminating cheeks of a dark yellow colour, and
+increasing the whiteness of the most snowy teeth--the brightest,
+glistenest, shiningest, teeth that can possibly be imagined. She
+wore--for I may as well tell you it was a woman--she wore a flowing
+white veil upon her head, the queerest petticoats, and funniest
+shoes--at that time I had not seen the Chinese Collection and thought it
+was Desdemona (whom I had seen Mr Kean put to death a few nights before)
+"walking" in some of Othello's clothes. What she said, or if she said
+any thing, I was too much astonished to make out; but she walked into my
+room, smiling with her wonderful teeth, and curtsying with the
+extraordinary petticoats down to the very floor--and calling me "Massa
+Sib."
+
+"My good woman," I said, "I am afraid you make a mistake. I don't know
+any one of the name of Sib;" but I checked myself, for I thought she
+perhaps mistook me--I wore prodigious whiskers at that time--for a
+gallant colonel, whose name begins with that euphonious syllable.
+
+"No, no--no colonel," she said; "me wants _you_--me no care for
+colonels." What could she possibly want with me? I had never seen the
+woman before, or any body like her, except a picture of the Queen of
+Sheba when she was on a visit to Solomon. Could this woman come from
+Sheba? Could she take me for--no, no--she couldn't possibly take me for
+Solomon. So I was quite non-plussed.
+
+"You no get no letter, Massa Sib, to tell you we was to come--eh?"
+
+A letter? a letter?--I had had a hundred and fifty letters, but put them
+all into a box. How was it possible for me to read such a number? and
+who did she mean by _us_? How many more of then were coming?
+
+"Massa Sib vill be so fond of him's babba--him vill"----
+
+A dreadful thought came into my head--a conspiracy to extort money--a
+declaration at Bow Street--a weekly allowance. "Woman!" I said, "what,
+in heaven's name, do you mean by babba?"
+
+"Dee little babb; it is so pretty--so like him papa."
+
+"And whose baby is it? for I suppose it's a baby you mean, by your
+chatter about a babb."
+
+"Your's. Oh! you will so lubb it."
+
+"Mine? you detestable impostor, I never had such a thing in all my
+life."
+
+"And here it is--oh, dee pretty dear!"
+
+And at that moment, another woman, dressed in the same outlandish style
+as herself, brought up a little round parcel, that looked like a bundle
+of clothes, and, before I had time to say a word, or shut the door, or
+fly, placed it in my arms; and then both the women showed their
+glistening teeth, stretching from ear to ear, and screamed out in
+chorus, "You vill so lubb dee babba--it is such a pretty dear!"
+
+I stood in a state of stupefaction for some time, but the dark-visaged
+visitors by no means shared my inactivity; they ran, and screamed, and
+bustled; trotted down stairs, jumped up again, and filled the whole
+passage; then the drawing-room; then the little bedroom behind it, with
+trunks, and bags, and band-boxes, and bird-cages full of parrots, and
+cloaks, and shawls; till at last, when I started from my trance--in
+doing which, nearly let the baby fall--I found my whole house taken
+possession of, and the two women apparently as much at home as if they
+had lived with me twenty years.
+
+I unrolled the shawls and things from the baby's face. It was an infant
+about a year old, and opened its eyes as I was looking at it, and looked
+so wisely and sagaciously at me in return, that I could almost believe
+it knew as much of the proceeding as I did--and this it might very
+easily have done, without being a miracle of premature information, for
+I had not the remotest conception of what the whole thing was about. So
+I laid the child on the sofa, and went to the bell to ring for a
+policeman.
+
+"Oh, don't ring him bell, ve are so comfitable here!" said one of the
+women. "Yesha vill go home 'gain, and I vill habb little bed in t'oder
+room, and vill sleep vid dee babb--so nice!"
+
+"Oh, you will--will you? We'll see about that," I answered, astonished
+at the woman's impudence. "I will get you and your little lump of
+Newcastle"--this was an allusion to her colour--"turned out into the
+street."
+
+"Oh, Massa Moggan vill soon be here! Him wrote letter a veek since; but
+him vill come to-day."
+
+"Oh!"----
+
+So I did not pull the bell, but looked at the two intruders just as
+Macready looks at the witches in _Macbeth_; for Mr Morgan was my legal
+adviser, and had been my uncle's agent, and transacted all the business
+connected with the succession; and I had such confidence in him that I
+never opened his letters, and had of course thrown the note they talked
+of into the great wooden box that was the receptacle of all my
+correspondence.
+
+In the mean time, the baby began to squall.
+
+"Take the brat away, and I'll tell a little bit of my mind to Mr
+Morgan," I said, grinding my teeth in a horrible passion; and, in a
+moment, the two women disappeared with the child, roaring and screaming,
+as if they had stuck pins into it on purpose to drive me mad.
+
+If I had been a man of a tragic turn of mind, and fond of giving vent to
+the passion of a scene, I would have walked up and down the room,
+striking myself on the brow or breast, and shouting, "Confusion!
+distraction!" and other powerful words which Mr Kean used to deliver
+with astonishing emphasis; but I had no talent for the intense, and
+threw myself on the sofa, exclaiming, "Here's a pretty go!"
+
+And a pretty go it undoubtedly was--two black women and a
+saffron-coloured baby established with me, as if I had been married to a
+Hottentot; and my sister-in-law, as is very often the case, had come to
+attend to her nieces' morals and education.
+
+"So! Mr Morgan, what is the meaning of all this?"
+
+But before I had time for further exclamations, my friend Mr Morgan, who
+had come quietly into the room, interrupted me----
+
+"Hush, my dear Sneezum--you are delighted, I'm sure. A most interesting
+incident--eh, Sneezum?"
+
+"Oh! these things do all very well in a book," I began; "but, by jingo,
+sir, it's a very different thing in real life; and I tell you very
+fairly, I'd sooner be married at once than have all the troubles of
+bringing up a set of children that I have nothing to do with."
+
+"Children! my dear Sneezum?"
+
+"To be sure; how do I know that some more black women mayn't come--with
+some more children--till my house grows like a gallery of bronzed
+figures; but I'll sell them--see if I don't; I'll pack them all on an
+Italian boy's head-board, and sell them to the doctors--every one."
+
+"You labour under a mistake, my dear Sneezum. You've got my letter?"
+
+"Yes--I got it--but"----
+
+"Oh, then, of course you are too happy to show such respect to the
+wishes of the defunct."
+
+"What defunct?"
+
+"Your uncle."
+
+"What! uncle Sneezum?" and a wonderful light seemed to break in upon my
+mind.--"He sent this baby here?"
+
+Mr Morgan nodded his head; and, being a man of great caution, he only
+put his finger in a mysterious manner alongside of his nose, and said--
+
+"Secrets in all families, Sneezum."
+
+"Oho! well--but the women--they're ugly customers, both of them; uncle
+Sneezum was no judge of beauty."
+
+"The women! what do you mean?" said Mr Morgan.
+
+"Ay, which of them is it? but you need hardly tell, for I should never
+know which of them you meant; they're a great deal liker each other than
+any two peas _I_ ever saw. Are we to call her Mrs Sneezum?"
+
+Here Mr Morgan burst into a great laugh.
+
+"My dear Sneezum, you are always trying to find out some wonderful scene
+or other to put into one of your books. No, no--these are two nurses;
+one will remain in charge of the child, the other returns immediately to
+Calcutta."
+
+"And where will the one that is to remain--where will she live?" I asked
+with a fearful presentiment of something shockingly unpleasant. But
+before he had time to answer, the black visage of the nurse herself
+appeared at the door, smiling with more blindingly white teeth than
+ever.
+
+"We have took dee room below dis--dee babb is in dee beautiful bed, and
+ve vill never leave Massa Sib--never no more--so nice!"
+
+So I was booked, and felt it useless to complain.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Fifteen years passed on most happily. I established myself, or rather
+old Morgan established me, in my present house; he paid £25,000 for the
+estate; and I have gone on, as I told you at the beginning of this
+letter, cultivating my farm and my talents with the utmost care. The
+little girl grew and grew till I thought she would never stop; and by
+the time she was sixteen she was at least an inch taller than I was.
+Many people like those prodigious women of five feet six--I'm only five
+feet five myself, which I believe was the exact measurement of Napoleon;
+and I must confess that when I looked on Martha Brown--that was her
+name--a sort of compliment I always thought to the complexion of her
+Hindoo mother--I could not imagine how she could be the child of such a
+curious old-fashioned looking individual as I had heard my uncle Sneezum
+was. Well, she grew tall--and grew stout--and grew clever; and if old
+Morgan had been her father himself, he could not have taken more care of
+her. He was always down at Goslingbury, (that's the name of my place--I
+sometimes put "Park" after it; but the lawn is now in turnips, and not
+the least like Blenheim,) and his wife, and his two daughters, and his
+little boy--in fact, the whole family; and though, I confess, they were
+always most friendly and attentive to _me_, their principal cares were
+bestowed on Martha Brown. I never push myself where I perceive my
+company is not greatly desired; so I went out to see the planting, or
+thin the copses, or make new fences, or superintend the ploughing, or
+betook myself to my study, and gave full way to the wildest flights of
+fancy in my everlasting first chapters of a novel or romance.
+
+Sir,--It was at that time--now nearly four years ago--that I began a
+work which I don't believe the most hostile criticism--but I will not
+boast; it will be enough to say that I consider it equal to any two
+introductory chapters I ever read. The whole of the first consists in a
+description of my own house--the name of course changed, and the
+locality removed to another county. I give the number of the rooms, the
+width of the passages, the height of ceilings, and a description of the
+new lifting-hinges to the dining-room door, that raise it over the
+turkey carpet, without sacrificing, as is usual, an inch of the lower
+part, and leaving a great interval at the sill. The fields are also very
+particularly described, and in some instances the exact measurement
+given; it gives such an appearance of reality, as may be seen in
+Ainsworth and others; and the second chapter is devoted, or meant to be
+devoted, to the living interests of the story--the _dramatis personæ_,
+as it were--with hopes, fears, griefs, and the other passions alluded to
+in Collins's ode.
+
+Mystery has an indescribable charm, which is the thing that makes me so
+fond of riddles; and so I determined to have a hero or a heroine, I did
+not care which, of a most unexampled kind. But how to invent an
+unexampled hero, I could not imagine. Some disgusting fellow had always
+done it before: even a blackamoor had been taken up--for there was that
+horrid Othello; a Jew--there was Sheva; a puppy--there was Pelham; a
+pickpocket--there was Jack Sheppard; and at last, as the sweet source of
+mystery, and the pleasantest one to unravel, I thought I would take
+myself. Yes, I would be the hero of my own book; and as to a heroine,
+why, one of the Misses Morgan, or Martha Brown, or old Mrs Morgan, or
+the Indian nurse, (whose name was Ayah, which is Sanscrit or Cherokee
+for her situation,) any body would do. I was not at all particular; so I
+began my own description.
+
+It is amazing how little difference there is between man and man. A very
+few touches judiciously applied, would make Roebuck into Wellington,
+especially if Roebuck held the brush himself. Involuntarily I found my
+height increasing, my _embonpoint_ diminishing, my eyes brightening, my
+hair disporting in wavy ringlets over a majestic brow, till at the end
+of the second page I was Theodore Fitzhedingham, twenty-five years of
+age, with several grandfathers and grandmothers distinguished in history
+before the Norman conquest, and a clear rent-roll of forty thousand
+a-year. And yet, after all, it was my own individual self, Thomas Smith
+Sneezum--not, perhaps, exactly as I was at that moment--but as I had
+often and often fancied myself when I had gone through a course of
+Thaddeus of Warsaws, and other chronicles of the brave and beautiful.
+For, I confess, I was no wiser than other people, and it is well known
+they have an amazing tendency to identify themselves with the characters
+of the books they read, which perhaps accounts for the contempt that
+Doctors' or Clergymen's wives in country villages entertain for any body
+of the name of Snookes; and gives them so prodigious an opinion of their
+own importance, that they wouldn't visit a stockbroker or flannel
+manufacturer for the world. But there I was, stuck in the third page of
+the second chapter--Theodore Fitzhedingham--blessed with all that
+handsomeness, and rolling in all that money, and not able to move hand
+or foot, or in short make the least progress towards the _dénouement_ of
+the story. For, with all my study, I could not manufacture a heroine out
+of any of the girls around me. Miss Letitia Morgan had false teeth--I
+found it quite impossible to make a heroine of _her_; and besides, I was
+not even sure of the genuineness of the long curls at the side of her
+face. For, you will observe, that the beautifying process I have
+mentioned above; seems strictly confined to one's own particular case.
+No lying and swopping, and altering and amending, would make those long
+brown artificial incisors--you saw a roll of the gold wire every time
+she laughed--into a row of pearls encased in a casket of ruby. That is
+my description of white teeth in red lips, and I think it is far from
+bad. Then Miss Sophia was immensely tall, and immensely thin; and in the
+mornings when she appeared _en negligée_, as they say in the _Morning
+Post_, her clothes hung straight down in perpendicular descent, so that
+she looked exactly like the canvass air funnels that you see in a
+steam-boat: and there were no outs and ins, or ups and downs, about her
+figure from top to toe; and I found it impossible, for a particular
+reason, to supply these deficiencies by the exercise of my ingenuity in
+description And that particular reason was this,--that she did it
+herself. Lord! what a change took place on Miss Sophia as you saw her
+gliding about the room like a half emptied pillow-case in the morning,
+and the grand and _distinguée_ (_Morning Post_ again) individual that
+choked up all the doorways, and occupied whole sofas, when you met her
+at a party at night. Then there were such flounces and tucks, and
+furbelows,--she sailed through the room enveloped in such awful
+circumgyrations of muslin--so pulled in at the waist, and so inflated
+every where else, that she looked--as you saw only her neck and
+shoulders emerging from the enormous circle in which the rest of her was
+buried--like an intrepid æronaut who has fallen by some accident through
+a hole in the balloon, and you were lost in calculations of the length
+of darning-needle that would be needed to reach to the _vera
+superficies_. Now if I invent, I like to have the honour of the
+invention entirely to myself; and I found it impracticable to extract a
+heroine from seven or eight spring gauze petticoats, and a roll of
+millinery below the waist, that looked like a military cloak rolled up
+on the crupper of a life-guardsman's saddle. Then poor Martha Brown was
+too young, and at that time too bashful, for a heroine; and besides,
+there was no getting over the blot on her birth. Theodore Fitzhedingham
+could never think of paying attention to the daughter of a Hindoo woman
+and old Sneezum, the bullock contractor of Bunderjumm. One day I had
+been at work in one of the plantations, and just as I was marking with
+my hand-axe a birch tree to be felled, a thought came into my head. I
+left the cross half executed, and threw the axe on the bank, hurried
+home, and locked myself in the study. Pen and paper were lying before
+me, and in a moment I had got deep into the introduction of my heroine.
+She was an orphan thrown on Fitzhedingham's care--young, beautiful,
+accomplished, but of unknown mysterious parentage--and the _dénouement_
+to consist in the discovery that her father was----but I won't mention
+it just now, for half the value of these things consists in the
+surprise. I will give you a page or two of it, only begging you to
+remark how entirely a man's style alters when he gets into a serious
+work. Here I go gabbling on and on to you, without much regard to style,
+or perhaps to grammar--(if there are any slips in it, have the kindness
+to correct them before you show this to any one)--but the instant I take
+up my pen to write a portion of my novel, I get dignified and heroic,
+perhaps you will say a little stiff, but I assure you I have formed
+myself on the best models. The passage I alluded to was this:--
+
+"To all the graces of external beauty Maria Valentine de Courcy united
+all the captivations of the intellect--all the attractions of the
+understanding,--all the enchantments of the soul. Cast in the finest
+mould of earthly loveliness--radiant in all the charms of youth, of
+innocence, and of integrity--she was the loved of all approachers--the
+idol of all observers--the appropriator of all affections. A little more
+ethereal, she would have been a goddess--a little less celestial, she
+would have been a more ordinary woman than she was. For her nature was
+of too lofty a kind--her spirit of too sublimated a character--her
+disposition of too beatified a placidity, to allow her to be classed
+with the other individuals constituting the female sex. A period of many
+years had elapsed since she first took up her residence among the proud
+halls--the baronial corridors--the heraldic passages of Fitzhedingham
+Castle. Winter had found her wandering in the snowy lanes--Spring had
+noticed her careering in the budding meadows--Summer had beheld her
+perambulating through the flowery grove--and Autumn had kept his eye on
+her as she galloped her managed palfrey through the umbrageous orchard,
+or skimmed in her light bark over the pellucid bosom of the silver lake.
+For many years such had been her unvarying course; and if loveliness has
+a charm--if innocence has an attraction--if youth has a
+witchery--all--all--were concentrated in the noble figure and
+exquisitely-chiselled countenance of the subject of our sketch. The
+colouring of a Titian, the elasticity of a Rubens, the magnificence of a
+Michael Angelo Buonaparte."--
+
+"Sneezum, Sneezum!" cried old Morgan, kicking with all his might at the
+study-door; and interrupting me before I could exactly settle how the
+sentence was to be properly ended--"Come and bid poor Billy good-bye."
+
+"Billy? who's Billy?" I thought--a little perplexed, perhaps, with the
+labours of composition.
+
+"Come; he's off this minute for Dublin, where he joins the
+Trigonometrical Survey--a great honour for a fellow not six months in
+the Engineers."
+
+The old fool was talking about his son William Morgan, who had been at
+Goslingbury (Park, when I get the turnips up and the grass sown) for a
+month--a nice merry young man; and so clever at mathematics, and
+hydraulics, and other scientific pursuits, that he had won all the
+prizes at Addiscombe; and, though only a second lieutenant, was chosen
+to conduct a great survey of Ireland.
+
+"I'm coming," I said; and bundled away my description of Maria Valentine
+de Courcy; and away old Morgan and I went to the lawn, where we expected
+to find the soldier. But no soldier, nor any body else, was to be seen.
+
+"His mother and sisters are making fools of themselves, I daresay," said
+I, "blubbering and crying over the boy, as if he was going out to settle
+in New Zealand."
+
+"I suspect there's a good deal of crying going on," replied old Morgan;
+"let us look into the summer-house at the top of the garden." So we
+hurried up the grass walk; and just as we got to the door, I was in the
+very act of stepping into the bower, and old Morgan close on my heels,
+when a man, with a handkerchief held to his eyes, rushed distractedly
+upon us, and rolled us both down the steps, as if we had been pushed by
+a bull; and in a minute or so, when I came to myself; I found my heels
+in a gooseberry bush, and my head tight-jammed into a flower-pot; old
+Morgan had rolled over into the next bed, which was prepared for celery,
+and he lay in one of the long troughs, with his hands folded across his
+breast, and evidently persuaded that he was his own effigy on the top of
+his own tomb. And this was all the leave-taking we had with the
+engineer; for, in an agony of grief at parting from his mother, and
+perhaps to hide his crying, he had hurried out blindfolded, and took no
+more notice of his host and his father than if we had been a couple of
+old cabbage-stalks. However, I got up as soon as I was able, and
+assisted Morgan once more upon his feet. This time we proceeded more
+cautiously into the summer-house; and on the bench we saw Martha Brown
+sitting and sobbing with all her might, with her head on Mrs Morgan's
+shoulder, and Miss Sophia holding a bottle of salts to her nose; while a
+tear, every now and then, rolled slowly over the tip of her own; and
+Miss Letitia chafing the sufferer's hands, and occasionally giving them
+a thump, as if to guard against a fit of hysterics.
+
+Those Hindoos are certainly beautifully made. I never saw any thing more
+graceful than the recumbent figure of Martha Brown; and I think that was
+the first time I remarked that she was no longer a child. Up to that
+moment I had scarcely observed her size; but there she was--a regular
+full-grown woman--though, I must say, she was behaving rather like an
+infant, to keep whimpering and sobbing in such a ridiculous way, merely
+because I had fallen down-stairs.
+
+"What is all this?" I said; "has any body hurt the child?"
+
+"No, no, Mr Sneezum!" exclaimed Mrs Morgan, without looking at me;
+"leave her alone for a minute or two; it will soon be over."
+
+"How do feel, dear?" enquired Miss Letitia.
+
+"Are you any better, love?" asked Miss Sophia.
+
+And it was very evident they gave themselves no concern about the nearly
+fatal accident we had met with, which had affected poor Martha so
+deeply; so I became a little warm.
+
+"Very pretty--very pretty this--upon my word! What in heaven's name is
+the matter with you all? Here has been that blundering booby William,
+pushed his father and me down-stairs, and Martha seems the only one that
+would care a farthing if we had both been killed."
+
+Upon this the girl made a great effort, and lifted up her head; but the
+moment her eyes rested on me she gave a great scream--wild laughter
+mixed with the most dreadful sobs; and she was fairly off in an
+hysterical attack.
+
+"Why, she's worse than she was," I said; but old Morgan took me aside.
+
+"Don't you see," he said, "that she's of a most affectionate, gentle
+nature, and that William's rushing off in the way he did"--
+
+"Ay, to be sure, and upsetting me in such a dangerous manner. Poor
+thing! is it all for my sake do you think she's crying?" So I went and
+took her hand, and said--"Don't cry, Martha, don't cry--I'm not a bit
+hurt--so be a good girl, and don't vex yourself any more."
+
+Upon this, Mrs Morgan looked at me as if she thought me deranged--so did
+Miss Letitia--and so did Miss Sophia; and even Martha, when she looked
+at me again, fell back in fresh fit, holloing "His head! his head"--and
+this time it was more laughter than sobs.
+
+"Come away--come away," said old Morgan at last; "no wonder you frighten
+them all to death. What the deuce is that you've got on your head?"
+
+And there stood I with my brows enveloped by the flower-pot.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+I saw the Morgans were making a dead set to take me in. Sometimes it was
+Miss Letitia, and sometimes Miss Sophia--and always the mother. To hear
+that woman talk of her daughters, you would swear that two such were
+never known on earth before. Their sweetness--their temper--their
+beauty--the numbers of people that were in love with them--the hosts of
+rich and handsome fellows they had rejected, and the decided turn both
+of them had for a quiet country life, and the society of a
+well-educated, intellectual man of a certain age. She was a wonderful
+woman Mrs Morgan, and I really believe she thought she was speaking the
+simple truth all the time. But it wouldn't do--I judged for myself, and
+never took the least notice of all her hints and boastings. I tried to
+have them less about the house than they used to be; but nothing would
+keep them away--they always pretended it was for the sake of Martha
+Brown--a very likely story that they should trouble their heads about my
+uncle's anonymous contribution to the population returns, when his
+veritable nephew and heir was to be had by hook or crook. But I don't
+mean any disparagement by that to the poor little girl herself--far from
+it--she was the nicest creature in the world, and really not so black as
+I had thought; and she was now nearly twenty-one, and played and
+sung--and such an excellent critic, too! I always read my writings to
+her the moment they were finished, and she never found the slightest
+fault in any of them. I had left my description of Maria Valentine de
+Courcy incompleted for several years--for it is a long time now since
+the foolish adventure of the flower-pot first showed me that she took a
+tenderer interest in me than merely that of a cousin--and I now
+determined to give my second chapter the finishing touch, and consult
+her on the farther conduct of the story.
+
+"Martha," I said, "I wish you would listen for a minute or two to what
+I've written."
+
+So she sat down in my study, and worked a flower in an Ottoman square,
+and was evidently prepared to listen with the utmost attention.
+
+"It is the rest of the second chapter."
+
+"Oh, are you only there yet? I was in hopes you had come to the end of
+the story."
+
+To the end of the story! Could the girl be hinting that I ought to tell
+her my mind; for I must tell you, I had so completely got over all
+prejudice about her birth, that I was strongly tempted to give an
+additional proof of my veneration for my uncle's memory, by giving his
+poor little orphan my name. Can she mean any thing by wishing me to come
+to the end of the story?
+
+"How do you mean to wind up?" she asked.
+
+"Oh! in a most mysterious and surprising manner; but we haven't got near
+the _dénouement_ yet. There must be a duel, of course--a
+misunderstanding--and a rival."
+
+"Oh! Theodore Fitzhedingham has no occasion to fear a rival," said
+Martha, pretending to have lost the stitch.
+
+"No! 'Pon my word that's very good of you. Do you really think that
+Maria Valentine de Courcy will prefer him to every one else?"
+
+"She will be a very foolish, a very ungrateful girl, if she doesn't--for
+hasn't he loved her ever since she was a child?"
+
+"Well, Martha, you are certainly a very nice, a very affectionate girl;
+and I may as well put your mind at rest at once by telling you"--
+
+"Sneezum! Sneezum!"
+
+There was old Morgan again kicking at the study door, and holloing
+Sneezum with all his might. I had taken Martha's hand, and was just
+going to tell her to make preparations to become Mrs Sneezum in a week
+or two. I let go her hand, and rushed to the door.
+
+"What the mischief do you want?"
+
+"Why, here's Billy come back again," he said; "won't you come and give a
+welcome to poor Billy?"
+
+"No; I be hang'd if I do. He has never apologized for pushing me down
+the steps; tell him to get out of my house; I have not forgot what alarm
+my accident caused to poor Martha. Don't you remember it, my dear?"
+
+But there sat Martha--sometimes red and sometimes white--with tears in
+her eyes, and her lips half open, like the picture of St Cecilia.
+
+"There! the very recollection of it frightens her to death. Go to your
+room, my dear, and I'll send this blustering fellow out of the house."
+
+She glided out of the study without speaking a word, and I hurried to
+the drawing-room, but no Billy was there. His mother and sisters were
+luckily in London, so I turned angrily round on the father.
+
+"A pretty fellow this son of yours--never one word of apology, either to
+me or Martha--I won't have him roystering here at all hours, frightening
+affectionate little girls with his violence."
+
+"Who is it he has frightened?" enquired old Morgan; "who are the
+affectionate girls you mean? I'm sure he has never caused the least
+alarm to his sisters in his life."
+
+"Perhaps not--perhaps not, Mr Morgan; but there is another girl that I
+wouldn't have any injury done to on any account. In fact, I may as well
+tell you at once, that Martha evidently expects me to provide for her
+happiness, and I am going to do it."
+
+"Well, nothing can be fairer--but how?"
+
+"Why, as to any little blot on her birth, I don't care much about it.
+Uncle was a kind friend to me, and I really think I can't do better than
+give a good steady husband to his child."
+
+"Bravo! bravo! when you have found her."
+
+"What do you mean by--when I have found her?"
+
+"Why, have you never read the letters?"
+
+"No; I never read letters. They're all in the wooden box."
+
+"Then where, when, or how, have you encountered a daughter of your
+uncle?"
+
+"Why, Martha Brown. I tell you I don't dislike a little dash of Hindoo
+blood; it's like curry, and gives a flavour."
+
+"And who is the husband you have chosen for her?"
+
+"Myself."
+
+Old Morgan burst into a prodigious laugh, but I was in no humour to
+stand such nonsense. I got into a furious passion--he answered in an
+insulting manner--and so I ordered him to get out of my house, him and
+his son, and all his baggage.
+
+"Certainly, certainly, Mr Sneezum, but you'll repent of it; and, as to
+your marrying Martha, you'll just as soon marry the Princess-Royal."
+
+When he was gone, I went in search of Martha to settle the matter at
+once. There was a circular basin among the shrubs upon the lawn, with a
+nymph cowering under a waterfall that fell all round her like a veil--a
+very pretty ornament to the grounds--and at one side of it was a little
+arbour, where I used often to sit and see the sun make rainbows out of
+the spray that rose round the head of the nymph. To get to it, it was
+necessary to walk on the ledge of the wall that rose a little above the
+water in the basin, and this I was induced to do; for, as I was
+searching for Martha, I thought I heard a voice in the arbour, and I
+hurried on to tell her what I had done to old Morgan. I stept steadily
+on tiptoe along the coping-stone--for I wished to surprise her--but on
+getting to the opening of the arbour, a sight met my eyes that made me
+lose my balance all of a sudden; and with a start of rage and
+indignation, I stept backward into the pond, and was forced to battle
+among the water-lilies for my life. Martha rushed from the arbour and
+held out her hands in vain; but the person with her--a tall young man,
+with bushy whiskers and an enormous pair of mustaches--leapt into the
+basin and lifted me on to the bank, just as I had found it useless to
+try any longer to rise above the broad leaves that floated on the top,
+and made up my mind to give it up as a bad job. When I came to myself my
+preserver was gone, but Martha was supporting my head.
+
+"Oh, you double-faced, deceitful gipsy!" I began. "Who would have
+thought you would be sitting, hand locked in hand, with a horrid fellow
+like the ruffian that was with you in the bower?"
+
+"The ruffian! My dear guardian, don't you know him?"
+
+"How should I? I never saw the vagabond's ugly face before."
+
+"Why, it's William Morgan--how strange you shouldn't recognise him!"
+
+"Well, if it were twenty William Morgans, that's no reason you should
+sit with your hand in his like the sign of the fire-office over our
+stable-door."
+
+"Oh, he's such an old friend! Recollect, sir, we grew up together, and
+now how can you keep your anger against him? He has saved your life."
+
+"After first startling me into the water. No, no; I'll have none of the
+Morgans here. I'll go and get changed, and then I'll finish what I was
+going to tell you when Morgan came to the door."
+
+I was inflexible; I wouldn't let one of the Morgans into my house. Miss
+Letitia wrote a letter of four pages, and Miss Sophia enclosed a sonnet.
+Nothing would do. I resolved to keep Martha all to myself; and, for fear
+of other adventures in the bower, I gave her positive orders not to
+leave the house. I set people to watch her. I threatened to hang her
+Ayah with my own hands, and showed her the very bough of the tree I
+would do it on, if Martha was allowed to speak to any body but myself. I
+resolved to marry her in a week; and, merely to prevent her being
+harassed by the Morgans in the interval, I took all these precautions.
+After that, I determined to pardon the whole family, and had even
+prepared a letter asking them all to dinner on our wedding-day. Martha
+did not seem inconsolable. Day after day passed away; and, to show how
+easy I was in my mind, I went on with the last chapter of my novel,
+leaving all the middle part to be filled up at my leisure.
+
+One morning--it was last Wednesday--I went into the study, and had just
+taken pen in hand, when I recollected that that was the very day I had
+summoned all the labourers on the estate to resist the approach of the
+levellers and engineers of a disgusting railway that was determined to
+force itself right through my garden and close under the dining-room
+windows. I went out to the barn--all the men were there. I gave orders
+to them to warn the intruders off; if they resisted, to knock them down
+without ceremony and keep them in custody till I could get them before a
+magistrate. Having satisfied my mind on these points, I felt so sure of
+my object being gained in both respects--that is, Martha and the
+railway--that I dispatched my letter to old Morgan, inviting the whole
+family to dine with me on Friday, the day I had fixed on for the
+marriage. Martha sat by my side in the study, and went on with the
+everlasting Ottoman square. I read to her--
+
+"'Is it in the circle of possible events--is it a contingency to be
+calculated on in the decrees of fate,' exclaimed Theodore
+Fitzhedingham--(this was the finest bit out of my last chapter)--'that
+the girl I have loved--the paragon I have worshipped--the angel I have
+adored, is, indeed no longer the humbly born maid I thought her but the
+descendant of princes--the kinswoman of emperors--the inheritrix of
+kings?'
+
+"'It certainly is far from false, nay, it is absolutely true,' returned
+Maria Valentine de Courcy, with a condescending smile, 'that I am not
+the person you have taken me for, but oh! beloved Theodore--faithful
+Fitzhedingham, need I tell you that my love is unaltered, my affections
+are unabated, my heart unchanged'"----
+
+"Sir! sir!" cried voice at the door, "they be come." I hurried out; my
+servant was armed with the poker, I seized the hall tongs as I passed
+through; and on the lawn, in the coolest possible manner, were about
+half a dozen fellows smoking their cigars, and occasionally looking
+through a bright brass instrument upon a three-legged stand, and noting
+down the result with the greatest nonchalance.
+
+"Oho!" I cried, and rushed at the intruders, "run for the people in the
+barn, Thomas. Who are you, you infernal interloping vagabonds?"
+
+"Engineers of the Episcopal and Universal Railway Company, sir, and we
+will trouble you to stand out of the way," said a tall blackguard,
+scarcely deigning to look at me.
+
+"Oh, you are, are you? Just wait a minute till my men come up, and I'll
+have you and your railway ducked in the horsepond."
+
+"Don't interrupt us, old man," replied the scientific ruffian; "if we do
+any damage, charge it to the Company--we have seventy-five thousand
+shares, and can afford to pay any claims."
+
+"Here!" I cried to the men, "catch that long villain with the dwarf
+telescope and take him into the house; if I don't get him six weeks of
+the treadmill my name is not Tom Sneezum."
+
+The man made a stout resistance, but at last was overpowered, and
+carried into the hall. I helped to repel the others, and as they were
+tolerably civil, now that the ringleader was gone, I contented myself
+with walking them to the very end of my boundaries, and gave them
+notice, that if they ventured to return, I would treat them exactly as I
+had done their chief. This whole business did not take up more than an
+hour; and before going home, I walked across to Major Slowtops, the
+nearest magistrate, and luckily found him at home. He promised to
+trounce the fellow handsomely when I brought him; and telling him I
+would be back with the culprit and the witnesses in half an hour, I
+returned in no little triumph to Goslingbury.
+
+"Where is the vagabond?" I exclaimed, when I got into the house.
+
+"He's been gone this hour, sir," said Thomas, hardly able to keep in a
+laugh.
+
+"Gone! who let him go?"
+
+"Why, he ordered the carriage, sir, and him and Miss Martha is off for
+London."
+
+"Are you mad, Thomas?--what is it you're speaking of? Where is the
+rascally leveller of the railway?"
+
+"Lor', sir--don't you know? It was only Mr William at one of his tricks.
+The moment he took off the spectacles we all knew him, and Miss Martha
+seemed so pleased"--
+
+"Did she?"
+
+"Oh, yes! and Mr William--but they say he's Captain Morgan now--laughed
+so. It was certainly a rare good surprise--wasn't it, sir?"
+
+I rushed into my study. "Let her go!" I said, "the false, deceitful
+Hottentot, or Hindoo, or whatever she is; she's as black as my hat, and
+a disgrace to my old uncle." So I stood very quietly, brooding over my
+misfortune--if a misfortune it was--and revenging myself by tearing into
+a million pieces the beginning and the end of my romantic novel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Here we are, Sneezum, my boy!" said old Morgan, on the Friday, at about
+two o'clock; "I've come on before, to tell you to get into good-humour;
+for perhaps you've forgotten the invitations you gave us all for
+to-day."
+
+"What has become of the young woman?" I asked, with a very disdainful
+look; "my uncle's unowned little girl?"
+
+"Do you mean William's wife?" inquired Mr Morgan; "they were married
+this morning, at St George's, Hanover Square, and will take you for an
+hour or two on their way to the North."
+
+"I think, sir, as her guardian--not to say her cousin"----
+
+"There, my dear Sneezum, you are altogether wrong; she was no relation
+of your uncle. She was the daughter of a Mr Brown of the Commissariat,
+and left to your uncle's charge; you, of course, succeeded to the
+guardianship as his representative; but she is no more a Hindoo than you
+are."
+
+"That makes it worse, sir."
+
+"Come, come, old Sneezum, don't keep up your anger; recollect you are
+old enough to be her father, and that she likes you next in the whole
+world to William. Shake hands with them, and be friends; and if you ever
+had the folly to think of marrying her, keep your own secret, and nobody
+will be a bit the wiser."
+
+I thought old Morgan advised very wisely--so, if you show this to any
+body, alter the names a little; for I would not have it known for the
+world.--Believe me, sir, your obedient servant,
+
+  T. S. S.
+
+
+
+
+MARLBOROUGH.
+
+NO. III.
+
+
+The campaign of 1707 opened under very different auspices to the Allies
+from any which had preceded it:--Blenheim had saved Germany, Ramilies
+had delivered Brabant. The power of the Grande Monarque no longer made
+Europe tremble. The immense advantage which he had gained in the outset
+of the contest, by the declaration of the governor of Flanders for the
+cause of the Bourbons, and the consequent transference of the Flemish
+fortresses into his hands, had been lost. It was more than lost--it had
+been won to the enemy. Brussels, Antwerp, Menin, Ath, Ostend, Ghent,
+Dendermonde, Louvain, now acknowledged the Archduke Charles for their
+sovereign; the states of Brabant had sent in their adhesion to the Grand
+Alliance. Italy had been lost as rapidly as it had been won; the stroke
+of Marlborough at Ramilies had been re-echoed at Turin; and Eugene had
+expelled the French arms from Piedmont as effectually as Marlborough had
+from Flanders. Reduced on all sides to his own resources, wakened from
+his dream of foreign conquests, Louis XIV. now sought only to defend his
+own frontier; and the arms which had formerly been at the gates of
+Amsterdam, and recently carried terror into the centre of Germany, were
+now reduced to a painful defensive on the Scheldt and the Rhine.
+
+These great advantages would, in all probability, notwithstanding the
+usual supineness and divisions of the Allied Powers, have led to their
+obtaining signal success in the next campaign, had not their attention
+been, early in spring, arrested, and their efforts paralyzed by a new
+and formidable actor on the theatre of affairs. This was no less a man
+than CHARLES XII. KING OF SWEDEN; who, after having defeated the
+coalition of the northern sovereigns formed for his destruction,
+dictated peace to Denmark at Copenhagen, dethroned the King of Poland,
+and wellnigh overturned the empire of Russia--had now advanced his
+victorious standards into the centre of Germany, and at the head of an
+army hitherto invincible, fifty thousand strong, stationed himself at
+Dresden, where he had become the arbiter of Europe, and threatened
+destruction to either of the parties engaged in the contest on the Rhine
+against whom he chose to direct his hostility.
+
+This extraordinary man approached closer than any warrior of modern
+times to the great men of antiquity. More nearly even than Napoleon, he
+realized the heroes of Plutarch--a Stoic in pacific, he was a Cæsar in
+military life. He had all their virtues, and a considerable share of
+their barbarism. Achilles did not surpass him in the thirst for warlike
+renown, nor Hannibal in the perseverance of his character and the
+fruitfulness of his resources; like Alexander, he would have wept
+because a world did not remain to conquer. Indefatigable in fatigue,
+resolute in determination, a lion in heart, he knew no fear but that of
+his glory being tarnished. Endowed by nature with a constitution of
+iron, he was capable of undergoing a greater amount of fatigue than any
+of his soldiers: at the siege of Stralsund, when some of his officers
+were sinking under the exhaustion of protracted watching, he desired
+them to retire to rest, and himself took their place. Outstripping his
+followers in speed, at one time he rode across Germany, almost alone, in
+an incredibly short space of time: at another, he defended himself for
+days together, at the head of a handful of attendants, in a barricaded
+house, against ten thousand Turks. Wrapt up in the passion for fame, he
+was insensible to the inferior desires which usually rouse or mislead
+mankind. Wine had no attractions, women no seductions for him: he was
+indifferent to personal comforts or accommodations; his fare was as
+simple, his dress as plain, his lodging as rude, as those of the meanest
+of his followers. To one end alone his attention was exclusively
+directed, on one acquisition alone his heart was set. Glory, military
+glory, was the ceaseless object of his ambition; all lesser desires
+were concentrated in this ruling passion; for this he lived, for this
+he died.
+
+That his military abilities were of the very highest order, may be
+judged of by the fact that, with the resources of the poor monarchy of
+Sweden, not at that period containing two millions of inhabitants, he
+entirely defeated a coalition of Russia, Denmark, and Poland, headed by
+the vast capacity and persevering energy of Peter the Great, and
+numbering not less than forty millions of subjects under its various
+sovereigns. Nor let it be said that these nations were rude in the
+military art, and unfit to contend in the field with the descendants of
+the followers of Gustavus Adolphus. The Danes are the near neighbours
+and old enemies of the Swedes; their equals in population, discipline,
+and warlike resources. Thirty years had not elapsed since the Poles had
+delivered Europe from Mussulman bondage by the glorious victory of
+Vienna, under John Sobieski, over two hundred thousand Turks. Europe has
+since had too much reason to know what are the military resources of
+Russia, against which all the power of Western Europe, in recent times,
+has been so signally shattered; and though the soldiers of Peter the
+Great were very different, in point of discipline, from those that
+repelled the legions of Napoleon, yet their native courage was the same,
+and they were directed by an energy and perseverance, on the part of the
+Czar, which never has been exceeded in warlike annals. What then must
+have been the capacity of the sovereign, who, with the resources of a
+monarchy not equalling those of Scotland at this time, could gain such
+extraordinary success over so powerful a coalition, from the mere force
+of indefatigable energy, military ability, and heroic determination!
+
+Charles, however, had many faults. He was proud, overbearing, and
+opinionative. Like all men of powerful original genius, he was confident
+in his own opinion, and took counsel from none; but, unfortunately, he
+often forgot also to take counsel from himself. He did not always weigh
+the objections against his designs with sufficient calmness to give them
+fair play, or allow his heroic followers a practical opportunity of
+crowning his enterprises with success. He had so often succeeded against
+desperate, and apparently hopeless, odds, that he thought himself
+invincible, and rushed headlong into the most dreadful perils, with no
+other preparation to ward them off but his own calmness in danger, his
+inexhaustible fecundity of resources, and the undaunted courage, as well
+as patience of fatigue and privation, with which he had inspired his
+followers. It is surprising, however, how often they extricated him from
+his difficulties; and even in his last expedition against Russia, which
+terminated in the disaster of Pultowa, he would, to all appearance, have
+proved successful, if the Tartar chief, Mazeppa, had proved faithful to
+his engagement. Like Hannibal, his heroic qualities had inspired a
+multifarious army--_colluvies omnium gentium_--with one homogeneous
+spirit, rendered them subject to his discipline, faithful to his
+standard, obedient to his will. But in some particulars his private
+character was still more exceptionable, and stained with the vices as
+well as virtues of the savage character. Though not habitually cruel, he
+was stern, vindictive, and implacable; and his government has been
+stained by some acts of atrocious barbarity at which humanity shudders,
+and which must ever leave an indelible stain on his memory.
+
+Louis XIV., in his distress, was naturally anxious to gain the support
+of so powerful an ally, who was now at Dresden at the head of
+fifty-three thousand veteran soldiers, ready to fall on the rear of
+Marlborough's army, that threatened the defensive barrier of France in
+the Low Countries. Every effort, accordingly, was made to gain Charles
+over to the French interest. The ancient alliance of France with Sweden,
+their mutual cause of complaint against the Emperor, the glories of
+Gustavus Adolphus and the thirty years' war, in which they had stood
+side by side, were held forth to dazzle his imagination or convince his
+judgment. The Swedish monarch appeared ready to yield to these efforts.
+He brought forward various real or imaginary grounds of complaint
+against the German powers, for infractions of the constitution of the
+empire, of which he put himself forth as the guarantee, as heir to the
+crown and fame of Gustavus Adolphus, as well as for sundry insults
+alleged to have been committed against the Swedish crown or subjects.
+These various subjects of complaint were sedulously inflamed by the
+French agents; and the weight of their arguments was not a little
+increased by the knowledge of the fact, that they were authorized to
+offer Count Piper, the prime minister of Charles, 300,000 livres
+(L.12,000), to quicken his movements in favour of the cabinet of
+Versailles, besides bribes in proportion to the subordinate ministers of
+the Swedish monarch.[10]
+
+Marlborough, as well he might, was extremely uneasy at this negotiation,
+which he soon discovered by secret information, as well as the
+undisguised reluctance of the German powers to furnish the contingents
+for which they were bound for the ensuing campaign. Indeed, it could
+hardly be expected that the Northern powers in Germany should send their
+chief disposable forces to swell Marlborough's army beyond the Rhine,
+when so warlike a monarch, at the head of fifty thousand men, was in the
+centre of the empire, with his intentions as yet undeclared, and exposed
+to the influence of every imaginable seduction. He dispatched,
+accordingly, General Grumbkow, an adroit and intelligent diplomatist,
+who had been sent by the King of Prussia on a mission to the Allied
+headquarters, to Dresden, to endeavour to ascertain the real intentions
+of the Swedish monarch. He was not long of discovering that Charles had
+assumed an angry tone towards the confederates, only in order to extract
+favourable terms of accommodation from them, and that Muscovy was the
+real object on which his heart was set. His despatches convey a curious
+and highly interesting picture of Charles and the Swedish court and army
+at this important juncture.[11] The negotiation went on for some time
+with varying success; but at length matters were brought to a crisis, by
+the King of Sweden declaring that he would treat with none but
+Marlborough in person.
+
+This immediately led to the English general repairing to the court of
+Charles XII. at Dresden. He left the Hague on the 20th April
+accordingly; and after visiting Hanover on the way, where, as usual,
+there were some jealousies to appease, arrived at the Swedish camp of
+Alt-Ranstadt on the 28th. The Duke drove immediately to the headquarters
+of Count Piper, from whom he received the most flattering assurance of
+the gratification which the Swedish monarch had felt at his arrival. He
+was shortly after introduced to the monarch, to whom he delivered a
+letter from the Queen of England, and at the same time addressed him in
+the following flattering terms:--"I present to your Majesty a letter,
+not from the chancery, but from the heart of the Queen, my mistress, and
+written with her own hand. Had not her sex prevented it, she would have
+crossed the sea, to see a prince admired by the whole universe. I am in
+this particular more happy than the Queen, and I wish I could serve some
+campaigns under so great a general as your Majesty, that I might learn
+what I yet want to know in the art of war."[12]
+
+This adroit compliment from so great and justly celebrated a commander,
+produced an immediate effect on the Swedish monarch, who was
+passionately desirous of military glory. His satisfaction was visible in
+his countenance, and he returned a gracious answer in these terms:--"The
+Queen of Great Britain's letter and your person are both very acceptable
+to me, and I shall always have the utmost regard for the interposition
+of her Britannic Majesty and the interests of the Grand Alliance. It is
+much against my will that I have been obliged to give umbrage to any of
+the parties engaged in it. I have had just cause to come into this
+country with my troops; but you may assure the Queen, my sister, that my
+design is to depart from hence as soon as I have obtained the
+satisfaction I demand, but not till then. However, I shall do nothing
+that can tend to the prejudice of the common cause in general, or of the
+Protestant religion, of which I shall always glory to be a zealous
+protector." This favourable answer was immediately followed by an
+invitation to dine with the King, by whom he was placed on his right
+hand, and honoured with the most flattering attention. In the course of
+the evening the conversation turned chiefly on military matters, in
+which Marlborough exerted himself with such skill and success, that he
+had another long private audience of Charles; and before his departure,
+that monarch even exceeded his views, and declared that there could be
+no security for the peace of Europe till France was reduced to the rank
+she held at the date of the treaty of Westphalia.
+
+Though the address and abilities of Marlborough, however, had thus
+removed the chief danger to be apprehended from the presence of the
+Swedish monarch at Dresden, yet other matters of great delicacy remained
+still for adjustment, which required all his prudence and skill to bring
+to a satisfactory issue. Not the least of these difficulties arose from
+the zeal of the King of Sweden for the protection of the Protestant
+religion, and his desire to revive and secure the privileges granted to
+the German Protestants by the treaty of Westphalia. As Marlborough
+justly apprehended that the Court of Vienna might take umbrage at these
+demands, and so be diverted from the objects of the Grand Alliance, he
+exerted himself to the utmost to convince his Majesty that the great
+object in the mean time, even as regarded the Protestant faith, was to
+humble the French monarch, who had shown himself its inveterate enemy by
+the atrocious persecutions consequent on the revocation of the Edict of
+Nantes; and that, if this were once done, the Emperor would be unable to
+prevent any stipulations being inserted in favour of the Reformed faith
+in the general peace which might follow. Charles was convinced by these
+arguments, which, in truth, were well-founded, and even went so far as
+to propose a secret convention with England for the promotion of the
+Protestant interest; a proposal which, so embarrassing at the moment
+when Great Britain was in close alliance with the Emperor, Marlborough
+contrived to elude with admirable dexterity. Another matter of great
+delicacy was the conduct to be observed towards the dethroned King of
+Poland, Augustus, who was also at Dresden, and of course viewed with the
+utmost jealousy the close intimacy between Marlborough and his
+formidable enemy Charles. Here, however, the diplomatic skill of the
+English general overcame all difficulties, and by skilfully taking
+advantage of his pecuniary embarrassments, after his territories had
+been ravaged and exhausted by the Swedish forces, and engaging that the
+Emperor should take a large part of his troops into his pay, he
+succeeded at once in gaining over the dethroned monarch, and securing a
+considerable body of fresh troops for the service of the Allies. By
+these means, aided by the judicious bestowing of considerable pensions
+on Count Piper and the chief Swedish ministers, paid in advance,
+Marlborough succeeded in entirely allaying the storm which had
+threatened his rear, and left the Saxon capital, after a residence of
+ten days, perfectly secure of the pacific intentions of the Swedish
+monarch, and having fully divined the intended direction of his forces
+toward Moscow.[13]
+
+The brilliant success with which this delicate and important negotiation
+terminated, naturally induced a hope that vigorous operations would be
+undertaken by the Allied powers, and that the great successes of the
+preceding campaign would be so far improved, as to compel the Court of
+France to submit to such terms as the peace of Europe, and the
+independence of the adjoining States, required. It was quite the
+reverse, and Marlborough had again the indescribable mortification of
+seeing month after month of the summer of 1707 glide away, without one
+single measure conducive to the common cause, or worthy of the real
+strength of the Allied powers, having been attempted. They had all
+relapsed into their former and fatal jealousies and procrastination. The
+Dutch, notwithstanding the inestimable services which Marlborough had
+rendered to their Republic, had again become distrustful, and authorized
+their field-deputies to thwart and mar all his operations. They made no
+concealment of their opinion, that their interests were now secured, and
+that the blood and treasure of the United Provinces should no longer be
+wasted in enterprises in which the Emperor or Queen of England alone
+were concerned. They never failed accordingly to interfere when any
+aggressive movement was in contemplation; and even when the Duke, in the
+course of his skilful marches and countermarches, had gained the
+opportunity for which he longed, of bringing the enemy to an engagement
+on terms approaching to an equality, never failed to interpose with
+their fatal negative, and prevent any thing being attempted. They did
+this, in particular, under the most vexatious circumstances, on the 27th
+May, near Nevilles, where Marlborough had brought his troops into the
+presence of the enemy with every prospect of signalizing that place by a
+glorious victory. A council of war forbade an engagement despite
+Marlborough's most earnest entreaties, and compelled him in consequence
+to fall back to Branheim, to protect Louvain and Brussels. The
+indignation of the English general at this unworthy treatment, and at
+the universal selfishness of the Allied powers, exhaled in bitter terms
+in his private correspondence.[14]
+
+The consequence of this determination on the part of the Dutch
+field-deputies to prevent any serious operation being undertaken, was,
+that the whole summer passed away in a species of armed truce, or a
+series of manoeuvres so insignificant, as to be unworthy of the name
+of a campaign. Vendôme, who commanded the French, though at the head of
+a gallant army above eighty thousand strong, had too much respect for
+his formidable antagonist to hazard any offensive operation, or run the
+risk of a pitched battle, unless in defence of his own territory. On the
+other hand, Marlborough, harassed by the incessant opposition of the
+Dutch deputies, and yet not strong enough to undertake any operation of
+importance without the support of their troops, was reduced to merely
+nominal or defensive operations. The secret of this ruinous system,
+which was at the time the subject of loud complaints, and appeared
+wholly inexplicable, is now fully revealed by the published despatches.
+The Dutch were absolutely set on getting an accession of territory, and
+a strong line of barrier towns, set apart for them out of the _Austrian_
+Netherlands; and as the Emperor, not unnaturally, objected to being
+shorn of his territories, as a remuneration for his efforts in favour of
+European independence, they resolved to thwart all the measures of the
+Allied generals, in the hope that, it the end, they would in this manner
+prevail in their demands with the Allied cabinets.[15]
+
+It was not, however, in the Low Countries alone that the selfish views
+and jealousies of the Allies prevented any operation of importance from
+being undertaken, and blasted all the fair prospects which the brilliant
+victories of the preceding campaign had afforded. In Spain, the Allies
+had suffered a fearful reverse by the battle of Almanza, which in a
+manner ruined the Austrian prospects in the Peninsula, and rendered some
+operation indispensable, to relieve the pressure felt by the Allies in
+that quarter. Peterborough, whose great military abilities had hitherto
+nearly alone sustained their sinking cause in Spain, had been deprived
+of his command in Catalonia, from that absurd jealousy of foreigners
+which in every age has formed so marked a feature in the Spanish
+character. His successor, Lord Galway, was far from possessing his
+military abilities, and every thing presaged that, unless a great effort
+was immediately made, the crown of Spain, the prize for which all
+contended in the war, would be lost to the Allied powers. Nor was the
+aspect of affairs more promising on the Rhine. The Margrave of Baden had
+there died; and his army, before a successor could be appointed,
+sustained a signal defeat at Stodhoffen. This disaster having opened the
+gates of Germany, Marshal Villars, at the head of a powerful French
+army, burst into the Palatinate, which he ravaged with fire and sword.
+To complete the catalogue of disasters, the disputes between the King of
+Sweden and the Emperor were again renewed, and conducted with such
+acrimony, that it required all the weight and address of Marlborough to
+prevent a rupture, threatening fatal consequences, from breaking out
+between these powers.
+
+Surrounded by so many difficulties, Marlborough wisely judged that the
+most pressing danger was that in Spain, and that the first thing to be
+done was to stop the progress of the Bourbon armies in that quarter. As
+the forces in the Peninsula afforded no hopes of effecting that object,
+he conceived, with reason, that the only way to make an effectual
+diversion in that quarter was to take advantage of the superiority of
+the Allies in Piedmont, since the decisive victory of Turin in the
+preceding year, and threaten Provence with a serious irruption. For this
+purpose, Marlborough no sooner heard of the disasters in Spain, than he
+urged in the strongest manner upon the Allied courts to push Prince
+Eugene with his victorious army across the Maritime Alps, and lay siege
+to Toulon. Such an offensive movement, which might be powerfully aided
+by the English fleet in the Mediterranean, would at once remove the war
+from the Italian plains, fix it in the south of France, and lead to the
+recall of a considerable part of the French forces now employed beyond
+the Pyrenees. But though the reasons for this expedition were thus
+pressing, and it afforded the only feasible prospect of bringing affairs
+round in the Peninsula; yet the usual jealousies of the coalesced
+powers, the moment it was proposed, opposed insurmountable objections to
+its being carried into effect. It was objected to the siege of Toulon,
+that it was a maritime operation, of value to England alone: the Emperor
+insisted on the Allied forces being exclusively employed in the
+reduction of the fortresses yet remaining in the hands of the French in
+the Milanese; while Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, between whom and the
+Imperialists the most violent jealousy had arisen, threatened to
+withdraw altogether from the alliance, unless Eugene's army was directed
+to the protection and consolidation of his dominion. The real reason of
+these obstacles thrown by the Emperor in the way of these operations,
+was, that he had ambitious designs of his own on Naples, and he had, to
+facilitate their accomplishment, concluded a secret convention with
+Louis for a sort of neutrality or understanding in Italy, which enabled
+that monarch to direct the forces employed, or destined to be employed
+there, to the Spanish peninsula. Marlborough's energetic
+representations, however, at length prevailed over all these
+difficulties; and the reduction of the Milanese having been completed,
+the Emperor, in the end of June, consented to Prince Eugene invading
+Provence at the head of thirty-five thousand men.[16]
+
+The invasion of the territory of the Grande Monarque accordingly took
+place, and was supported by a powerful English squadron, which, as
+Eugene's army advanced into Provence by the Col di Tende, kept the
+sea-coast in a constant state of alarm. No resistance, as Marlborough
+had predicted, was attempted; and the Allies, almost without firing a
+shot, arrived at the heights of Vilate, in the neighbourhood of Toulon,
+on the 27th July. Had Eugene been aware of the real condition of the
+defences, and the insubordination which prevailed in the garrison, he
+might, without difficulty, have made himself master of this important
+fortress. But from ignorance of these propitious circumstances, he
+deemed it necessary to commence operations against it in form; and the
+time occupied in the necessary preparations for a siege proved fatal to
+the enterprise. The French made extraordinary efforts to bring troops to
+the menaced point; and, amongst other reinforcements, thirteen
+battalions and nine squadrons were detached from Vendôme's army in the
+Netherlands. No sooner did Marlborough hear of this detachment, than he
+concentrated his forces, and made a forward movement to bring Vendôme to
+battle, to which the Dutch deputies had at length consented; but that
+general, after some skilful marches and countermarches, retired to an
+intrenched camp under the guns of Lille, of such strength as to bid
+defiance to every attack for the remainder of the campaign. Meanwhile
+the troops, converging towards Toulon, having formed a respectable array
+in his rear, Eugene was under the necessity of raising the siege, and he
+retired, as he had entered the country, by the Col di Tende, having
+first embarked his heavy artillery and stores on board the English
+fleet. But though the expedition thus failed in its ostensible object,
+it fully succeeded in its real one, which was to effect a diversion in
+the south of France, and relieve the pressure on the Spanish peninsula,
+by giving the armies of Louis employment in the defence of their own
+territory.
+
+Marlborough led his army into winter quarters in the end of October, and
+Vendôme did the same; the weather being so thoroughly broken as to
+render it impossible to keep the field. He repaired first to Frankfort,
+where he met the Elector of Hanover, and then to the Hague, where he
+exerted himself to inspire a better feeling in the Dutch government, and
+to get Eugene appointed to the supreme command in Spain: a project which
+afforded the only feasible prospect of retrieving affairs in the
+Peninsula, and which, if adopted, might have changed the fate and
+ultimate issue of the war. Neither the Emperor nor the court of Madrid,
+however, would consent to this arrangement; the former, because he
+feared to lose that great general in Italy, the latter because they
+feared to gain him in Spain. Marlborough, meanwhile, embarked for
+England on the 7th November, where his presence had now become
+indispensably necessary to arrest the progress of court and
+parliamentary intrigues, which threatened to prove immediately fatal to
+his influence and ascendancy.
+
+The origin of these intrigues was to be found not merely in the asperity
+of party feeling which, at that time, owing to the recent Revolution,
+prevailed to a degree never before paralleled in English history, and
+the peculiar obloquy to which Marlborough was exposed, owing to the part
+he had taken in that transaction; but to another cause of a private
+nature, but which, in all courts, and especially under a female reign,
+is likely to produce important public results. During Marlborough's
+absence from court, owing to his commanding the armies in Flanders, his
+influence with the Queen had sensibly declined, and that of another
+materially increased. Queen Anne had become alienated from her former
+favourite, the Duchess of Marlborough, and, what is very remarkable, in
+consequence of the growing ascendancy of a person recommended by the
+duchess herself. Worn out with the incessant fatigue of attendance on
+the royal person, the duchess had recommended a poor relative of her
+own, named Abigail Hill, to relieve her of part of her laborious duties.
+This young lady, who possessed considerable talents, and a strong desire
+for intrigue and elevation, had been educated in High Church and Tory
+principles, and she had not been long about the royal person before she
+began to acquire an influence over the Queen's mind. Harley, whose
+ambition and spirit of intrigue were at least equal to her own, was not
+slow in perceiving the new source of influence thus opened up in the
+royal household, and a close alliance was soon established between them.
+These matters are not beneath the dignity of history; they are the
+secret springs on which its most important changes sometimes depend.
+Abigail Hill soon after bestowed her hand on Mr Masham, who had also
+been placed in the Queen's household by the duchess, and, under the name
+of MRS MASHAM, became the principal instrument in Marlborough's fall,
+and the main cause of the fruit of the glorious victories of the English
+general being lost by the treaty of Utrecht.
+
+Though the ascendancy of Mrs Masham, and the treacherous part she was
+playing to her benefactress, had long been evident to others, yet the
+Duchess of Marlborough long continued blind to it. Her marriage,
+however, opened the eyes of the duchess, and, soon after the promotion
+of Davies and Blackhall, both avowed Tories, not free from the
+imputation of Jacobitism, to the Episcopal bench, in opposition to the
+recommendation of Marlborough and Godolphin, gave convincing proof that
+their influence at court in the disposal even of the highest offices,
+had been supplanted by that of the new favourite. The consequences were
+highly prejudicial to Marlborough. The Whigs, who were not fully aware
+of this secret influence, and who had long distrusted him on account of
+his former connexion with James II., and envied him on account of his
+great services to the country, and lustre at court, now joined the
+Tories in bitter enmity against him. He was accused of protracting the
+war for his own private purposes; and the man who had refused the
+government of the Netherlands, and £60,000 a-year, lest it should breed
+jealousies in the alliance, was accused of checking the career of
+victory from sordid motives connected with the profits of the war. His
+brother Churchill was prosecuted by Halifax and the Whigs on the charge
+of neglect of duty; and the intercession of the duke, though made in
+humble terms, was not so much as even honoured with a reply. The
+consequences of this decline of court favour were soon apparent.
+Recruits and supplies were forwarded to the army with a very scanty
+hand--the military plans and proposals of the duke were either overruled
+or subjected to a rigid and often inimical examination--and that
+division of responsibility and weakening of power became apparent, which
+is so often in military, as well as political transactions, the
+forerunner of disaster.
+
+Matters were in this untoward state, when Marlborough, in the middle of
+November, returned from the Hague to London. The failure before Toulon,
+the disasters in Spain, the nullity of the campaign in Flanders, were
+made the subject of unbounded outcry in the country; and the most
+acrimonious debates took place in Parliament, in the course of which
+violent reproaches were thrown on Marlborough, and all his great
+services to his country seemed to be forgotten. Matters even went so
+far, that it was seriously proposed to draft fifteen thousand men from
+Flanders to reinforce the armies in Spain, although it might easily be
+foreseen that the only effect of this would be to drive the Dutch to a
+separate peace, and lose the whole of Brabant, wrested at such an
+expense of blood and treasure from the French arms. The Session of
+Parliament was one incessant scene of vehement contention; but at length
+the secret league of Harley with Mrs Masham and the Tories became so
+apparent, that all his colleagues refused to attend a cabinet council to
+which he was summoned, and he was obliged to retire. This decisive step
+restored confidence between Marlborough and the Whigs, and for a time
+re-established his influence in the government; but Mrs Masham's sway
+over the Queen was not so easily subverted, and, in the end, proved
+fatal both to his fortune and the career of glory he had opened to his
+country.
+
+Desirous of retaliating upon England the insult which the Allied armies
+had inflicted upon France by the invasion of Provence, Louis XIV. now
+made serious preparations for the invasion of Great Britain, with the
+avowed object of re-establishing the Chevalier of St George, the heir of
+James II., on the throne from which that unhappy monarch had been
+expelled. Under Marlborough's able direction, to whom, as
+commander-in-chief, the defensive measures were entrusted, every thing
+was soon put in a train to avert the threatened danger. Scotland was the
+scene where an outbreak was to be apprehended, and all the disposable
+forces of the empire, including ten battalions brought over from
+Flanders, were quickly sent to that country. The _habeas corpus_ act was
+suspended. Edinburgh Castle was strongly garrisoned, and the British
+squadron so skilfully disposed in the North Seas, that when the
+Chevalier with a French squadron put to sea, he was so closely watched,
+that after vainly attempting to land, both in the Firth of Forth and the
+neighbourhood of Inverness, he was obliged to return to Dunkirk. This
+auspicious event entirely restored Marlborough's credit with the nation,
+and dispelled every remnant of suspicion with which the Whigs regarded
+him in relation to the exiled family; and though his influence with the
+court was secretly undermined, his power, to outward appearance, was
+unbounded; and he resumed the command of the army in the beginning of
+April 1708, with authority as paramount as he had enjoyed on any former
+occasion.
+
+Every thing announced a more important campaign than the preceding had
+proved in the Low Countries. Encouraged by the little progress which the
+Allies had made in the former campaign, Louis XIV. had been induced to
+make the most vigorous efforts to accumulate a preponderating force, and
+re-establish his affairs in that quarter. Vendôme's army had, by great
+exertion, been raised to a hundred thousand men, and at the same time
+secret communications were opened with a considerable portion of the
+inhabitants in some of the frontier fortresses of Brabant, in order to
+induce then on the first favourable opportunity to surrender them to the
+French arms. The unpopularity of the Dutch authorities in those towns,
+and the open pretensions which they put forth to wrest them from the
+Emperor, and deliver them over at a general peace to the hated rule of
+Protestant Holland, rendered those advances peculiarly acceptable.
+Vendôme's instructions were to act on the offensive, though in a
+cautious manner; to push forward in order to take advantage of these
+favourable dispositions, and endeavour to regain the important ground
+which had been lost during the panic which followed the battle of
+Ramilies.
+
+On their side the Allies had not been idle; and preparations had been
+made for transferring the weight of the contest to the Low Countries.
+The war in Italy being in a manner terminated by the entire expulsion of
+the French from that peninsula, and their secret convention for a sort
+of suspension of active operations with the Emperor in that quarter,
+Prince Eugene had been brought to the theatre of real hostilities on the
+northern frontier of France. It was agreed that two great armies should
+be formed, one in Brabant under Marlborough, and the other on the
+Moselle under Eugene; that the Elector of Hanover should act on the
+defensive on the Rhine; that Eugene should join the English general, and
+that with their united force they should force the French general to a
+battle. This well conceived plan met with the usual resistance on the
+part of the Allied powers, which compelled Marlborough to repair in
+person to Hanover, to smooth over the objections of its Elector.
+Meanwhile the dissensions and difficulties of the cabinet in London
+increased to such a degree, that he had scarcely quitted England when he
+was urged by Godolphin, and the majority of his own party, to return, as
+the only means of saving them from shipwreck. Marlborough, however, with
+that patriotic spirit which ever distinguished him, and not less than
+his splendid abilities formed so honourable a feature in his character,
+refused to leave the seat of war, and left his political friends to
+shift for themselves as they best could. Having obtained a promise from
+Eugene that he would join him before the month expired he joined the
+army at Ghent on the 9th May 1708, and on the same day reviewed the
+British division stationed in that city.
+
+An event soon occurred which showed how wide-spread were the intrigues
+of the French in the Flemish towns, and how insecure was the foundation
+on which the authority of the Allies rested there. An accidental
+circumstance led to the discovery of a letter put into the post-office
+of Ghent, containing the whole particulars of a plan for admitting the
+French troops into the citadel of Antwerp. Vendôme at the same time made
+a forward movement to take advantage of these attempts; but Marlborough
+was on his guard, and both frustrated the intended rising in Antwerp,
+and barred the way against the attempted advance of the French army.
+Disconcerted by the failure of this enterprise, Vendôme moved to
+Soignies at the head of an hundred thousand men, where he halted at the
+distance of three leagues from the Allied armies. A great and decisive
+action was confidently expected in both armies; as, although Marlborough
+could not muster above eighty thousand combatants, it was well known he
+would not decline a battle, although he was not as yet sufficiently
+strong to assume the offensive. Vendôme, however, declined attacking the
+Allies where they stood, and, filing to the right to Braine la Leude,
+close to the field of Waterloo, again halted in a position, threatening
+at once both Louvain and Brussels. Moving parallel to him, but still
+keeping on the defensive, Marlborough retired to Anderleet. No sooner
+had he arrived there, than intelligence was received of a farther
+movement to the right on the part of the French general, which indicated
+an intention to make Louvain the object of attack. Without losing an
+instant, Marlborough marched on that very night with the utmost
+expedition, amidst torrents of rain, to Parc, where he established
+himself in such strong ground, covering Louvain, that Vendôme, finding
+himself anticipated in his movements, fell back to Braine-le-Leude
+without firing a shot.[17]
+
+Though Marlborough, however, had in this manner foiled the movement of
+the French general, he was in no condition to undertake offensive
+operations until the arrival of Eugene's army from the Moselle raised
+his force nearer to an equality with the preponderating masses of the
+enemy, headed by so able a general as Vendôme. The usual delays,
+however, of the German powers, for long prevented this object being
+attained. For about a month Marlborough was retained in a state of
+forced inactivity from this cause, during which period he bitterly
+complained, "that the slowness of the German powers was such as to
+threaten the worst consequences." At length, however, the pressing
+representations of the English general, seconded by the whole weight of
+Prince Eugene, overcame the tardiness of the German Electors, and the
+army of the Moselle began its march towards Brabant. But the Prince was
+too far distant to bring up his troops to the theatre of active
+operations before decisive events had taken place; and fortunately for
+the glory of England, to Marlborough alone and to his army belongs the
+honour of one of the most decisive victories recorded in its annals.
+
+Encouraged by his superiority of numbers, and the assurances of support
+he received from the malecontents in the Flemish towns, Vendôme, who was
+both an able and enterprising general, put in execution, in the
+beginning of July, a design which he had long meditated, for the purpose
+of expelling the Allies from Brabant. This was by a sudden irruption to
+make himself master of Ghent, with several of the citizens of which he
+had established a secret correspondence. This city commands the course
+of the Scheldt and the Lys, and lay in the very centre of Marlborough's
+water communications; and as the fortifications of Oudenarde were in a
+very dilapidated state, it was reasonable to suppose that its reduction
+would speedily follow. The capture of these fortresses would at once
+break up Marlborough's communications, and sever the connecting link
+between Flanders and Brabant, so as to compel the English army to fall
+back to Antwerp and the line of the Scheldt, and thus deprive them of
+the whole fruits of the victory of Ramilies. Such was the able and
+well-conceived design of the French general, which promised the most
+brilliant results; and against a general less wary and able than
+Marlborough, unquestionably would have obtained them.
+
+Vendôme executed the first part of this design with vigour and success.
+On the evening of the 4th July he suddenly broke up from
+Braine-le-Leude, and marching rapidly all night, advanced towards Hall
+and Tubise, dispatching at the same time, parties towards such towns in
+that quarter as had maintained a correspondence with him. One of these
+parties, by the connivance of the watch, made itself master of Ghent. At
+the same time Bruges was surrendered to another party under the Count de
+la Motte; the small but important fort of Plassendael was carried by
+storm, and a detachment sent to recover Ghent found the gates shut by
+the inhabitants, who had now openly joined the enemy, and invested the
+Allied garrison in the citadel.
+
+Marlborough no sooner heard of this movement than he followed with his
+army; but he arrived in the neighbourhood of Tubise in time only to
+witness their passage of the Senne, near that place. Giving orders to
+his troops to prepare for battle, he put himself in motion at one next
+morning, intending to bring the enemy to an immediate action. The
+activity of Vendôme, however, baffled his design. He made his men, weary
+as they were, march all night and cross the Dender at several points,
+breaking down the bridges between Alort and Oerdegun, and the Allies
+only arrived in time to make three hundred prisoners from the rearguard.
+Scarcely had they recovered from this disappointment, when intelligence
+arrived of the surprise of Ghent and Bruges; while, at the same time,
+the ferment in Brussels, owing to the near approach of the French to
+that capital, became so great, that there was every reason to apprehend
+a similar disaster, from the disaffection of some of its inhabitants.
+The most serious apprehensions also were entertained for Oudenarde, the
+garrison of which was feeble, and its works dilapidated. Marlborough,
+therefore, dispatched instant orders to Lord Chandos, who commanded at
+Ath, to collect all the detachments he could from the garrisons in the
+neighbourhood, and throw himself into that fortress, and with such
+diligence were these orders executed that Oudenarde was secured against
+a _coup-de-main_, before the French outposts appeared before it.
+Vendôme, however, felt himself strong enough to undertake its siege in
+form. He drew his army round it; the investment was completed on the
+evening of the 9th, and a train of heavy artillery ordered from Tournay,
+to commence the siege,[18] while he himself with the covering army, took
+post in a strong camp at Lessines, on the river Dender.
+
+Such was the chagrin experienced by Marlborough at these untoward
+events, that he was thrown into a fever, the result of fatigue,
+watching, and anxiety. His physician earnestly counselled him to leave
+the camp, and retire to Brussels, as the only means of arresting his
+distemper; but nothing could induce him to leave his post at such a
+crisis. He continued in his tent accordingly, and the orders were issued
+by Marshal Overkirk. He was greatly relieved on the 7th, by the arrival
+of Prince Eugene, who, finding his troops could not come up in time, had
+left his cavalry at Maestricht, and hastened in person, though without
+any followers but his personal suite, to take part in the approaching
+conflict. Great was the joy of Marlborough on learning the arrival of so
+illustrious a general; not a feeling of jealousy crossed the breast of
+either of these great men. His first words to Eugene were--"I am not
+without hopes of congratulating your Highness on a great victory; for my
+troops will be animated by the presence of so distinguished a
+commander." Eugene warmly approved the resolution he had taken of
+instantly attacking the enemy: and a council of war having been
+summoned, their united opinion prevailed over the objections of the
+Dutch deputies, who were now seriously alarmed for their barrier, and it
+was resolved to give battle to the enemy in his position in front of
+OUDENARDE.[19]
+
+The Allies broke up at two in the morning of the 9th July, and advanced
+towards the French frontiers at Lessines in four great columns. So rapid
+and well ordered was the march, that before noon the heads of the
+columns reached Herfilingen, fourteen miles fron Asche, whence they had
+started. Bridges were rapidly thrown over the Dender, and it was crossed
+early on the following morning in presence of Eugene and Marlborough,
+whom the animation of the great events in progress, had, in a manner,
+raised from the bed of sickness.[20] Here the duke halted, and the
+troops encamped in their order of march with their right on the Dender
+and their front covered by a small stream which falls into that river.
+By this bold and rapid movement, Vendôme's well-concerted plan was
+entirely disconcerted; Marlborough had thrown himself between the French
+and their own frontier; he had rendered himself master of their
+communications; and instead of seeking merely to cover his own
+fortresses, threatened to compel them to fall back, in order to regain
+their communications, and abandon the whole enterprise which had
+commenced with such prospects of success. Vendôme was extremely
+disconcerted at this able movement, and he gave immediate orders to fall
+back upon Gavre, situated on the Scheldt below Oudenarde, where it was
+intended to cross that river.
+
+No sooner was this design made manifest, than Marlborough followed with
+all his forces, with the double design of raising the investment of
+Oudenarde, and if possible forcing the enemy to give battle, under the
+disadvantage of doing so in a retreat. Anxious to improve their
+advantage, the Allied generals pushed forward with the utmost
+expedition, hoping to come up with the enemy when his columns and
+baggage were close upon the Scheldt, or in the very act of crossing that
+river. Colonel Cadogan, with a strong advanced guard, was pushed forward
+by daybreak on the 11th towards the Scheldt which he reached by eleven,
+and immediately threw bridges over, across which the whole cavalry and
+twelve battalions of foot were immediately thrown. They advanced to the
+summit of the plateau on the left bank of the river, and formed in
+battle array, the infantry opposite Eynes, the cavalry extending on the
+left towards Schaerken. Advancing slowly on in this regular array down
+the course of the river on its left bank, Cadogan was not long of coming
+in sight of the French rearguard under Biron, with whom he had some
+sharp skirmishing. Meanwhile, Marlborough and Eugene were pressing the
+passage at the bridges with all imaginable activity; but the greater
+part of their army had not yet got across. The main body was still half
+a league from the Scheldt, and the huge clouds of dust which arose from
+the passage of the artillery and carriages in that direction, inspired
+Vendôme with the hope that he might cut off the advanced guard which was
+over the Scheldt, before the bulk of the Allied forces could get across
+to their relief. With this view he halted his troops, and drew them up
+hastily in order of battle. This brought on the great and glorious
+action which followed, towards the due understanding of which, a
+description of the theatre of combat is indispensable.
+
+     "At the distance of a mile north of Oudenarde, is the village of
+     Eynes. Here the ground rises into a species of low, but spacious
+     amphitheatre. From thence it sweeps along a small plain, till it
+     nearly reaches the glacis of Oudenarde, where it terminates in the
+     village of Bevere. To the west the slope ascends to another broad
+     hill called the Bosercanter; and at the highest point of the
+     eminence stands a windmill, shaded by a lofty lime-tree, forming
+     conspicuous objects from the whole adjacent country. From thence
+     the ground gradually declines towards Mardlen; and the eye glancing
+     over the humid valley watered by the Norken, rests on another range
+     of uplands, which, gently sinking, at length terminates near Asper.
+     Within this space, two small streams, descending from the lower
+     part of the hill of Oycke, embrace a low tongue of land, the centre
+     of which rises to a gentle elevation. The borders of these rivulets
+     are crossed by frequent enclosures, surrounding the farm-yards of
+     Barwaen, Chobon, and Diepenbeck. Near the source of one of these
+     streams is a castellated mansion; at that of the other is the
+     hamlet of Rhetelhouk, embosomed in a wooded nook. These streams
+     unite at the hamlet of Scharken, and their united current flows in
+     a marshy bed to the Scheldt, which it reaches near Eynes. The
+     Norken, another river traversing the field, runs for a considerable
+     distance parallel to the Scheldt, until, passing by Asper, it
+     terminates in a stagnant canal, which joins the Scheldt below
+     Gavre. Its borders, like those of the other streams, are skirted
+     with coppice-wood thickets; behind are the enclosures surrounding
+     the little plain. Generally speaking, this part of Flanders is even
+     not merely of picturesque beauty and high cultivation, but great
+     military strength; and it is hard to say whether its numerous
+     streams, hanging banks, and umbrageous woods, add most to its
+     interest in the eye of a painter, or to its intricacy and defensive
+     character in warlike operations."[21]
+
+As fast as the Allies got across the Scheldt, Marlborough formed them
+along the high grounds stretching from Bevere to Mooreghem Mill, with
+their right resting on the Scheldt. Vendôme's men stretched across the
+plain, from the hill of Asper on the left, to Warreghem on the right. A
+considerable body of cavalry and infantry lay in front of their position
+in Eynes, of which they had retained possession since they had repulsed
+Cadogan's horse. No sooner had the English general got a sufficient
+number of troops up, than he ordered that gallant officer to advance and
+retake that village. The infantry attacked in front, crossing the
+rivulet near Eynes; while the horse made a circuit, and passing higher,
+made their appearance in their rear, when the conflict was warmly going
+on in front. The consequence was, that the village was carried with
+great loss to the enemy, three entire battalions were cut off and made
+prisoners, and eight squadrons cut to pieces in striving to make their
+way across the steep and tangled banks of the Norken. This sharp blow
+convinced the French leaders that a general action was unavoidable; and
+though, from the vigour with which it had been struck, their remained
+little hope of overpowering the Allied advanced guard before the main
+body came up, yet they resolved, contrary to the opinion of Vendôme, who
+had become seriously alarmed, to persist in the attack, and risk all on
+the issue of a general engagement.[22]
+
+It was four in the afternoon when the French commenced the action in
+good earnest. The Duke of Burgundy ordered General Grimaldi to lead
+Sistern's squadron across the Norken, apparently with the view of
+feeling his way preparatory to a general attack; but when he arrived on
+the margin of the stream, and saw the Prussian cavalry already formed on
+the other side, he fell back to the small plain near the Mill of
+Royeghorn. Vendôme, meanwhile, directed his left to advance, deeming
+that the most favourable side to attack, but the Duke of Burgundy, who
+nominally had the supreme command, and who was jealous of Vendôme's
+reputation, countermanded this order; alleging that an impassable morass
+separated the two armies in that quarter. Those contradictory orders
+produced indecision in the French lines, and Marlborough, divining its
+cause, instantly took advantage of it. Judging with reason that the real
+attack of the enemy would be made on his left by their right, in front
+of the castle of Bevere, he drew the twelve battalions of foot under
+Cadogan from Heurne and Eynes, which they occupied, and reinforced the
+left with them; while the bridges of the Norken were strongly occupied,
+and musketeers disposed in the woods on their sides. Marlborough
+himself, at the head of the Prussian horse, advanced by Heurne, and took
+post on the flank of the little plain of Diepenbeck, where it was
+evident the heat of the action would ensue. A reserve of twenty British
+battalions, with a few guns, took post near Schaerken, and proved of the
+most essential service in the struggle which ensued. Few pieces of
+artillery were brought up on either side; the rapidity of the movements
+on both having outstripped the slow pace at which those ponderous
+implements of destruction were then conveyed.[23]
+
+Hardly were these defensive arrangements completed, when the tempest was
+upon them. The whole French right wing, consisting of thirty battalions,
+embracing the French and Swiss guards, and the flower of their army,
+debouched from the woods and hedges near Groemvelde, and attacking four
+battalions stationed there, quickly compelled them to retreat. Advancing
+then in the open plain, they completely outflanked the Allied left, and
+made themselves masters of the hamlets of Barwaen and Banlaney. This
+success exposed the Allies to imminent danger; for in their rear was
+the Scheldt, flowing lazily in a deep and impassable current, through
+marshy meadows, crossed only by a few bridges, over which retreat would
+be impossible in presence of a victorious enemy; and the success against
+the Allied left exposed to be cut off from their only resource in such a
+case, the friendly ramparts of Oudenarde.
+
+Anxiously observing the rapid progress of the French on his left,
+Marlborough successively drew brigade after brigade from his right, and
+moved them to the quarter which was now severely pressed. The hostile
+lines fought with the most determined resolution. Every bridge, every
+ditch, every wood, every hamlet, every inclosure, was obstinately
+contested; and so incessant was the roll of musketry, that, seen from a
+distance, the horizon seemed an unbroken line of fire. Hitherto
+Marlborough and Eugene had remained together; but now, as matters had
+reached the crisis, they separated. The English general bestowed on
+Prince Eugene the command of his right, where the British battalions,
+whose valour he had often praised, were placed. He himself, with the
+Prussian horse on the banks of the Norken, kept the enemy's left in
+check; while with his own left he endeavoured to outflank the enemy, and
+retaliate upon then the manoeuvre which they had attempted against
+him. This bold movement was attended with severe loss, but it proved
+completely successful. Eugene was soon warmly engaged, and at first
+wellnigh overpowered by the superior numbers and vehement onset of the
+enemy. But Marlborough, whose eye was every where, no sooner observed
+this, than he dispatched Cadogan with his twelve English battalions to
+his support. Encouraged by this aid, Eugene moved forward General
+Natzmer, at the head of the Prussian heavy horse and cuirassiers, to
+charge the enemy's second lines near the Mill of Royeghem; while he
+himself renewed the attack on their infantry near Herlehorn. Both
+attacks proved successful. The enemy were expelled on the right from the
+enclosure of Avelchens, and the battle restored in that quarter; while,
+at the same time, their second line was drivers back into the enclosures
+of Royeghem. But this last success was not achieved without a very heavy
+loss; for the Prussian horse were received by so terrible a fire of
+musketry from the hedges near Royeghem, into which they had pushed the
+enemy's second line, that half of then were stretched on the plain, and
+the remainder recoiled in disorderly flight.
+
+Meanwhile, Marlborough himself was not less actively engaged on the
+Allied left. At the head of the Hanoverian and Dutch battalions, he
+there pressed forward against the hitherto victorious French right. The
+vigour inspired by his presence quickly altered the state of affairs in
+that quarter. Barlaney and Barwaen were soon regained, but not without
+the most desperate resistance; for not only did the enemy obstinately
+contest every field and enclosure, but, in their fury, set fire to such
+of the houses as could no longer be maintained. Despite all these
+obstacles, hovever, the English general fairly drove them back, at the
+musket's point, fron one enclosure to another, till he reached the
+hamlet of Diepenbeck, where the resistance proved so violent that he was
+compelled to pause. His vigilant eye, however, erelong observed, that
+the hill of Oycke, which flanked the enemy's extreme right, was
+unoccupied. Conceiving that their right might be turned by this
+eminence, he directed Overkirk, with the reserve cavalry, and twenty
+Dutch and Danish battalions, to occupy it. The veteran marshal executed
+this important, and, as it proved, decisive movement, with his wonted
+alacrity and spirit. The wooded dells round the castle of Bevere soon
+rung with musketry; the enemy, forced out of them, was driven over the
+shoulder of the Bosercanter; soon it was passed, and the mill of Oycke,
+and the plateau behind it, occupied by the Danish and Dutch battalions.
+Arrived on the summit, Overkirk made his men bring up their left
+shoulders, so as to wheel inwards, and form a vast semicircle round the
+right wing of the French, which, far advanced beyond the centre, was now
+thrown back, and grouped into the little plain of Diepenbeck. Observing
+the effect of this movement, Marlborough directed Overkirk to press
+forward his left still farther, so as to seize the passes of Mullem and
+mill of Royeghem, by which the communication between the enemy's right
+and centre was maintained. This order was executed with vigour and
+success by the Prince of Orange and General Oxenstiern. The progress of
+the extreme Allied left round the rear of the French right, was observed
+by the frequent flashes of their musketry on the heights above Mullem,
+down to which they descended, driving the enemy with loud cheers, which
+re-echoed over the whole field of battle, before them. The victory was
+now gained. Refluent from all quarters, enveloped on every side, the
+whole French right was hurled together, in wild confusion, into the
+plain of Diepenbeck; where seven regiments of horse, which made a noble
+effort to stem the flood of disaster, was all cut to pieces or taken.
+
+Seeing his right wing on the verge of destruction, Vendôme made a
+gallant effort to rescue it. Dismounting from his horse, he led the
+infantry of his left near Mullem, to the aid of their devoted comrades.
+But the thick and frequent enclosures broke their array; the soldiers
+were dismayed by the loud shouts of victory from their right; and when
+they emerged from the enclosures; and approached the plain of
+Diepenbeck, the firm countenance of the British horse, drawn up on its
+edge, and the sturdy array of their infantry under Eugene, which
+advanced to meet them, rendered the effort abortive. Meanwhile darkness
+set in, but the battle still raged on all sides; and the frequent
+flashes of the musketry on the heights around, intermingled with the
+shouts of the victors, showed but too clearly how nearly the extremity
+of danger was approaching to the whole French army. So completely were
+they enveloped, that the advanced guard of the right under Eugene, and
+the left under the Prince of Orange, met on the heights in the French
+rear, and several volleys were exchanged between there, before the error
+was discovered, and, by great exertions of their respective commanders,
+the useless butchery was stopped. To prevent a repetition of such
+disasters orders were given to the whole troops to halt where they
+stood, and to this precaution many owed their safety as it was
+impossible in the darkness to distinguish friend from foe. But it
+enabled great part of the centre and left of the French to escape
+unobserved, which, had daylight continued for two hours longer, would
+have been all taken or destroyed. Their gallant right was left to its
+fate; while Eugene, by directing the drums of his regiments to beat the
+French _assemblée_, made great numbers of their left and centre
+prisoners. Some thousands of the right slipped unobserved to the
+westward near the castle of Bevere, and made their way in a confused
+body toward France, but the greater part of that wing were killed or
+taken. Vendôme with charateristic presence of mind formed a rearguard of
+a few battalions and twenty-five squadrons, with which he covered the
+retreat of the centre and left; but the remainder of those parts of the
+army fell into total confusion, and fled headlong in wild disorder
+towards Ghent.[24]
+
+We have the authority of Marborough for the assertion, that "if he had
+had two hours more of daylight the French army would have been
+irretrievably routed, great part of it killed or taken, and the war
+terminated on that day."[25] As it was, the blow struck was prodigious,
+and entirely altered the character and issue of the campaign. The French
+lost six thousand men in killed and wounded, besides nine thousand
+prisoners and one hundred standards wrested from them in fair fight. The
+Allied were weakened by five thousand men for the French were superior
+in number and fought well, having been defeated solely by the superior
+generalship of the Allied commanders.[26]
+
+No sooner did daylight appear, than forty squadrons were detached
+towards Ghent in pursuit of the enemy; while Marlborough himself, with
+characteristic humanity, visited the field of battle, doing his utmost
+to assuage the sufferings, and provide for the cure of the numerous
+wounded--alike friend and foe--who encumbered its bloody expanse. Count
+Lottnow was sent with thirty battalions and fifty squadrons, to possess
+himself of the lines which the enemy had constructed between Ipres and
+Warneton, which that officer did with vigour and success, making five
+hundred prisoners. This was the more fortunate, as, at the moment they
+were taken, the Duke of Berwick, with the French army from the Moselle,
+was hastening up, and had exhorted the garrison to defend the lines to
+the last extremity. At the same time, the corresponding Allied army,
+commanded by Eugene, arrived at Brussels, so that both sides were
+largely reinforced. Berwick's corps, which consisted of thirty-four
+battalions and fifty-five squadrons, was so considerable, that it raised
+Vendôme's army again to an hundred thousand men. With this imposing
+mass, that able general took post in a camp behind the canal of Bruges,
+and near Ghent, which he soon strongly fortified, and which commanded
+the navigation both of the Scheldt and the Lys. He rightly judged, that
+as long as he was there at the head of such a force, the Allies would
+not venture to advance into France; though it lay entirely open to their
+incursions, as Marlborough was between him and Paris.[27]
+
+Encouraged by this singular posture of the armies, Marlborough strongly
+urged upon the Allied council of war the propriety of relinquishing all
+lesser objects, passing the whole fortified towns on the frontier, and
+advancing straight towards the French capital.[28] This bold counsel,
+however--which, if acted on, would have been precisely what Wellington
+and Blucher did a century after, in advancing from the same country, and
+perhaps attended with similar success--was rejected. Eugene, and the
+remainder of the council, considered the design too hazardous, while
+Vendôme with so great an army lay intrenched in their rear, threatening
+their communications. It was resolved, therefore, to commence the
+invasion of the territory of the Grande Monarque, by the siege of the
+great frontier fortress of LILLE, the strongest and most important place
+in French Flanders, and the possession of which would give the Allies a
+solid footing in the enemy's territory. This, however, was a most
+formidable undertaking; for not only was the place itself of great
+strength, and with a citadel within its walls still stronger, but it was
+garrisoned by Marshal Boufflers, one of the ablest officers in the
+French service, with fifteen thousand choice troops, and every requisite
+for a vigorous defence. On the other hand, Vendôme, at the head of an
+hundred thousand men, lay in an impregnable camp between Ghent and
+Bruges, ready to interrupt or raise the siege; and his position there
+extremely hampered Marlborough in bringing forward the requisite
+equipage for so great an undertaking, as it interrupted the whole water
+navigation of the country, by which it could best be effected. The
+dragging it up by land, would require sixteen thousand horses.
+Nevertheless it was resolved to undertake the enterprise, sanguine hopes
+being entertained, that, rather than see so important a fortress fall,
+Vendôme would leave his intrenched camp, and give the Allies an
+opportunity of bringing him again to battle on equal terms.[29]
+
+No sooner was the undertaking resolved on, than the most vigorous
+measures were adopted to carry it into execution. The obstacles which
+presented themselves, however, were great indeed, and proved even more
+formidable than had been at first anticipated. Every gun, every waggon,
+every round of ammunition, required to be transported from Holland; and
+even the nearest depôt for ordinary and military stores for the Allies,
+was Brussels, situated twenty-five leagues off. Sixteen thousand horses
+were requisite to transport the train which brought these stores, partly
+from Maestricht, partly from Holland; and when in a line of march, it
+stretched over fifteen miles. Prince Eugene, with fifty-three battalions
+and ninety squadrons, covered the vast moving mass--Marlborough himself
+being ready, at a moment's notice, in his camp near Menin, to support
+him, if necessary. Between these two great men there existed then, as
+ever, the most entire cordiality.[30] Their measures were all taken in
+concord, and with such ability, that though Vendôme lay on the flank of
+the line of march, which extended over above seventy miles, not a gun
+was taken, nor a carriage lost; and the whole reached the camp at
+Helchin in safety, on the 12th August, whither Marlborough had gone to
+meet it. So marvellous were the arrangements made for the safe conduct
+of this important convoy, and so entire their success, that they excited
+the admiration of the French, and in no slight degree augmented the
+alarm of their generals, who had hitherto treated the idea of Lille
+being besieged, with perfect derision. "Posterity," says the French
+annalist, Feuqueres, "will scarcely believe the fact, though it is an
+undoubted truth. Never was a great enterprise conducted with more skill
+and circumspection."[31]
+
+Prince Eugene was entrusted with the conduct of the siege, while
+Marlborough commanded the covering army. The former commenced the
+investment of the place on the 13th August, while Marlborough remained
+at Helchin, taking measures for the protection of the convoys, which
+were incessantly coming up from Brussels. At length the whole were
+passed, and arrived in safety in the camp before Lille, amounting to one
+hundred and twenty heavy guns, forty mortars, twenty howitzers, and four
+hundred ammunition waggons. Eugene's army for the siege consisted of
+fifty-three battalions and ninety squadrons, in all about forty thousand
+men. Marlborough's covering force was sixty-nine battalions and one
+hundred and forty squadrons, numbering nearly sixty thousand men. But
+the force of the French was still more considerable in the field.
+Vendôme and Berwick united on the 30th, on the plain between Grammont
+and Lessines, and on the 2d September advanced towards Lille with one
+hundred and forty battalions and two hundred and fifty squadrons,
+mustering one hundred thousand combatants, besides twenty thousand left,
+under Count de la Motte, to cover Ghent and Bruges. But Marlborough had
+no fears for the result, and ardently longed for a general action, which
+he hoped would one way or other conclude the war. "If we have a second
+action," says he, "and God blesses our just cause, this, in all
+likelihood, will be our last campaign; for I think they would not
+venture a battle, but are resolved to submit to any condition, if the
+success be on our side; and if they get the better, they will think
+themselves masters; so that, if there should be an action, it is like to
+be the last this war. If God continues on our side, we have nothing to
+fear, our troops being good, though not so numerous as theirs. I dare
+say, before half the troops have fought, success will declare, I trust
+in God, on our side; and then I may have what I earnestly wish for
+quick."[32]
+
+No sooner was Marlborough informed of the junction of Vendôme and
+Berwick, than, anticipating the direction they would follow, and the
+point at which they would endeavour to penetrate through, and raise the
+siege, he marched parallel to the enemy, and arrived on the 4th
+September at a position previously selected, having his right at
+Noyelle, and his left at Peronne. So correctly had he divined the
+designs of the able generals to whom he was opposed, that, within two
+hours after he had taken up his ground, the united French army appeared
+in his front. Notwithstanding their great superiority of forces, the
+enemy, however, did not venture to attack, and the two armies remained
+watching each other for the next fortnight, without any movement being
+attempted on either side.[33]
+
+Meanwhile, Eugene was actively prosecuting the siege of Lille. Trenches
+were opened on the 22d, and a heavy fire was opened from eighty pieces
+of cannon. On the following night, an outwork, called the Chapel of St
+Magdalene, was stormed and taken. The second parallel was soon
+completed, and some farther outworks carried; and the whole battering
+guns having at length been mounted, a breach was effected in the salient
+angle of one of the horn-works, and on the same night a lodgement was
+effected. A vigorous sortie, on the 10th September, hardly retarded the
+progress of the operations, and a sap was made under the covered way.
+Marlborough, who visited the besiegers' lines on the 18th, however,
+expressed some displeasure at the slow progress of the siege; and in
+consequence, on the 20th, another assault was hazarded. It was most
+obstinately resisted, but at length the assailants overcame all
+opposition and bursting in, carried a demi-bastion and several adjoining
+works, though with a loss of two thousand men. Great as this loss was,
+it was not so severe as that of one officer who fell; for Eugene
+himself, transported with ardour, had taken part in the assault, and was
+seriously wounded. This grievous casualty not only gave the utmost
+distress to Marlborough, but immensely augmented his labours; for it
+threw upon him at once the direction of the siege, and the command of
+the covering army. Every morning at break of day he was on horseback to
+observe Vendôme's army; and if all was quiet in front, he rode to the
+lines and directed the siege in person till evening, when he again
+returned to the camp of the covering force. By thus in a manner doubling
+himself, this great man succeeded in preventing any serious
+inconvenience being experienced even from so great a catastrophe as
+Eugene's wound, and he infused such vigour into the operations of the
+siege, that, on the 23d September, great part of the tenaillons were
+broken, with a large portion of the covered way. At the same time the
+ammunition of the garrison began to fail so much in consequence of the
+constant fire they had kept up for above a month, that Marshal Boufflers
+sent intimation to Vendôme, that unless a supply of that necessary
+article was speedily obtained, he should be obliged to surrender.[34]
+
+The French generals, aware how much the fortress was straitened, were
+meanwhile straining every nerve to raise the siege; but such was the
+terror inspired by Marlborough's presence, and the skill with which his
+defensive measures were taken, that they did not venture to hazard an
+attack on the covering army. But a well-conceived project of Vendôme's,
+for throwing a supply of powder into the fortress, in part succeeded;
+although many of the horsemen who carried it were cut off, some
+succeeded in making their way in through the Allied lines, and
+considerably raised the spirits of the garrison, as well as prolonged
+their means of defence. But meanwhile the ammunition of the besiegers
+was falling short, as well as that of the besieged; and as the enemy
+were completely masters of the communication with Brussels, no resource
+remained but to get it up from Ostend. A convoy was formed there
+accordingly by General Erle, and set out on the 27th September,
+consisting of seven hundred waggons, escorted by General Webb with ten
+thousand men. Count de la Motte instantly set out with the troops under
+his command from the vicinity of Ghent, and came up with the convoy in
+the defile of Wynandals. A sharp action ensued, and the French advanced
+to the attack with their wonted impetuosity. But Webb's defensive
+arrangements were so skilful, and the fire kept up by his troops so
+vigorous, that the enemy were utterly routed; and the convoy forcing its
+way, reached Menin on the following day, and entered the Allied camp,
+amidst the acclamations of the whole army, on the 30th September.[35]
+
+The safe arrival of this convoy gave new energy to the operations of the
+siege; while the recovery of Eugene relieved Marlborough of half the
+labour under which, to use his own words, he had been for a fortnight
+"rather dead than alive." Three days after the whole tenaillon was
+carried, and the troops established directly opposite the breaches of
+the ramparts. Meanwhile Vendôme opened the sluices, and inundated the
+country to the very borders of the dyke, so as to intercept
+Marlborough's communication with Ostend, and prevent the arrival of
+stores from it. But the English general defeated this device by bringing
+the stores up in flat-bottomed boats from Ostend to Leffinghen, and
+thence conveying them in carriages, mounted on very high wheels, to the
+camp. Cadogan greatly distinguished himself in this difficult service.
+Overkirk died at this critical juncture, to the great regret of
+Marlborough, who could then ill spare his ardent and patriotic spirit.
+Meanwhile, however, the siege continued to advance, and fifty-five heavy
+guns thundered from the counterscarp on the breaches, while thirty-six
+mortars swept all the works which commanded them. Finding himself unable
+to withstand the assault which was now hourly expected, Boufflers, on
+the 22d October, beat a parley, and capitulated; having sustained, with
+unparalleled resolution, a siege of sixty days, of which thirty were
+with open trenches. Penetrated with admiration at his gallant defence,
+Eugene granted the French general and his brave garrison the most
+honourable terms. The gates were surrendered on the 23d, and the
+remainder of the garrison, still five thousand strong, retired into the
+citadel,[36] where they prolonged their defence for six weeks more.
+
+Thus had Marlborough the glory, in one campaign, of defeating, in
+pitched battle, the best general and most powerful army possessed by
+France, and capturing its strongest frontier fortress, the masterpiece
+of Vauban, under the eyes of one hundred and twenty thousand assembled
+from all quarters for its relief. He put the keystone at the same time
+into this arch of glory, by again declining the magnificent offer of the
+government of the Low Countries, with its appointment of sixty thousand
+a-year for life, a second time pressed upon him by King Charles, from an
+apprehension that such an offer might give umbrage to the government of
+Holland, or excite jealousy in the Queen's government at home.[37]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[10] _Coxe_, III. 156. _Instructions pour le Sieur Recoux. Cardonell
+Papers_.
+
+[11] "Count Piper said, 'We made war on Poland only to subsist; our
+design in Saxony is only to terminate the war; but for the Muscovite he
+shall pay _les pots cassées_, and we will treat the Czar in a manner
+which posterity will hardly believe.' I secretly wished that already he
+was in the heart of Muscovy. After dinner he conveyed me to
+headquarters, and introduced me to his Majesty. He asked me whence I
+came, and where I had served. I replied, and mentioned my good fortune
+in having served three campaigns under your Highness. He questioned me
+much, particularly concerning your Highness and the English troops; and
+you may readily believe that I delineated my hero in the most lively and
+natural colours. Among other particulars, he asked me if your Highness
+yourself led the troops to the charge. I replied, that as all the troops
+were animated with the same ardour for fighting, that was not necessary;
+but that you were every where, and always in the hottest of the action,
+and gave your orders with that coolness which excites general
+admiration. I then related to him that you had been thrown from your
+horse, the death of your aide-de-camp Borafield, and many other things.
+He took great pleasure in this recital, and made me repeat the same
+thing twice. I also said that your Highness always spoke of his Majesty
+with esteem and admiration, and ardently desired to pay you his
+respects. He observed, 'That is not likely, but I should be delighted to
+see a general of whom I have heard so much.' They intend vigorously to
+attack the Muscovites, and expect to dethrone the Czar, compelling him
+to discharge all his foreign officers, and pay several millions as an
+indemnity. Should he refuse such conditions, the King is resolved to
+exterminate the Muscovites, and make their country a desert. God grant
+he may persist in this decision, rather than demand the restitution, as
+some assert, of the Protestant churches in Silesia! The Swedes in
+general are modest, but do not scruple to declare themselves invincible
+when the King is at their head."--_General Grumbkow to Marlborough, Jan.
+11 and_ 31, 1707. _Coxe_, III. 159-161.
+
+[12] _Coxe_, III. 167-169. The authenticity of this speech is placed
+beyond doubt by Lediard, who was then in Saxony, and gives it
+_verbatim_.
+
+[13] _Coxe_, III. 174-182.
+
+[14] "I cannot venture unless I am certain of success; for the
+inclinations in Holland are so strong for peace, that, if we had the
+least disadvantage, it would make them act very extravagant. I must own
+every country we have to do with, acts, in my opinion, so contrary to
+the general good, that it makes me quite weary of serving. The Emperor
+is in the wrong in almost every thing he does."--_Marlborough to
+Godolphin, June 27, 1707_; _Coxe_, III. 261.
+
+[15] _Despatches_, III. 142-207.--So much were the Dutch alienated from
+the common cause at this time, and set on acquisitions of their own,
+that they beheld with undisguised satisfaction the battle of Almanza,
+and disasters in Spain, as likely to render the Emperor more tractable
+in considering their proceedings in Flanders. "The States," says
+Marlborough, "received the news of this fatal stroke with less concern
+than I expected. This blow has made so little impression in the great
+towns in this country, that the _generality of the people have shown
+satisfaction at it rather then otherwise_, which I attribute mainly to
+the aversion to the present government."--_Marlborough to Godolphin,
+May_ 13, 1707. _Coxe_, III. 204.
+
+[16] _Coxe_, III. 196-205.
+
+[17] _Marlborough's Despatches_, IV. 49.
+
+[18] _Desp._ IV. 95-101. _Coxe_, IV. 128-131.
+
+[19] _Desp._ IV. 79-102. _Coxe_, IV. 130-132.
+
+[20] "The treachery of Ghent, continual marching, and some letters I
+have received from England, (from the Queen and the Duchess,) have so
+vexed me, that I was yesterday in so great a fever, that the doctor
+would have persuaded me to have gone to Brussels; but I thank God I am
+now better, and by the next post I hope to answer your letters. The
+States have used this country so ill, that I noways doubt but all the
+towns in it will play us the same trick as Ghent if they have the
+power."--_Marlborough to Godolphin, July 9, 1708._ _Coxe_, IV. 38.
+
+[21] The above description of the field of Oudenarde is mainly taken
+from _Coxe_, IV. 134-135; but the author, from personal inspection of
+the field, can attest its accuracy.
+
+[22] _Coxe_, IV. 140-143.
+
+[23] _Marlborough to Count Piper, 15th July 1708.--Desp._ IV. 115.
+_Coxe_, IV. 144-145.
+
+[24] _Coxe_, IV. 146-151. _Marlborouqh to Count Piper, 16th July
+1708.--Desp._ IV. 115. _Duke of Berwck's Mem._ II. 12.
+
+[25] _Marlborough à M. De Themgue, 15th July 1708.--Desp._ IV. 111.
+
+[26] _Desp._ IV. 111. Berwick himself states the prisoners at
+9000.--_Marlborough_, II. 12. _Marlborough to the Duchess_, _July_ 16,
+1708.--_Coxe_, IV. 157.
+
+[27] _Marlborough to Lord Godolphin, July 16 and 19, 1708._--_Coxe_, IV.
+158, 159.
+
+[28] Conscious of the panic which prevailed in France, and aware that
+some brilliant enterprise was requisite to prevent the Dutch from
+listening to separate overtures for peace, Marlborough proposed to meet
+at Lille, and penetrate by the northern frontier into the heart of
+France. An expedition fitted out in England was to co-operate on the
+coast. But the design of penetrating direct into France seemed too bold
+even to Eugene, and, of course, encouraged strong opposition from a
+government so timid and vacillating as that of Holland.--_Coxe_, IV.
+165.
+
+[29] _Marlborough to Godolphin, July 23, 1708._--_Coxe_, IV. 165.
+
+[30] "I need not tell you how much I desire the nation may be at last
+eased of a burdensome war, by an honourable peace; and no one can judge
+better than yourself of the sincerity of my wishes to enjoy a little
+retirement at a place you have contributed in a great measure to make so
+desirable. I thank you for your good wishes to myself on this occasion.
+_I dare say, Prince Eugene and I shall never differ about our
+laurels._"--_Marlborough to Mr Travers_, July 30, 1708.
+
+[31] _Coxe_, IV. 216-219.
+
+[32] _Marlborough to Godolphin, August 30, 1708._--_Coxe_, IV. 222.
+
+[33] _Desp_. IV. 241-260.
+
+[34] _Desp_. IV. 260-271. _Marlborough to Godolphin, September 24,
+1708._--_Coxe_, IV. 243.
+
+[35] _Marlborough to Godolphin, October 1, 1708._--_Coxe_, IV. 254.
+
+[36] _Desp._ IV. 271, _Marlborough to Godolphin, October 24,
+1708._--_Coxe_, IV. 263, 264.
+
+[37] "You will find me, my Prince, always ready to renew the patent for
+the government of the Low Countries, formerly sent to you, and to extend
+_it for your life_."--_King Charles to Marlborough, August 8, 1708._
+_Coxe_, IV. 245.
+
+
+
+
+RECOLLECTIONS OF A LOVER OF SOCIETY.
+
+
+Many years ago, I was struck with the remark--that if any one would
+write down, from week to week, the prominent events which occurred in
+his time, he must make a book which many would like to read.
+
+I took the hint; and here I give a portion of my Recollections. Not that
+I have ever kept a regular Journal, a matter which I now regret; but I
+have mingled a good deal in general life, I have seen nearly all the
+remarkable characters of Europe in the most stirring period of the
+world, and I have seen the beginning as well as the end of that most
+extraordinary of all national catastrophes, the French Revolution.
+
+At all times fond of associating with my fellow men, taking a strong
+interest in public opinions, having strong opinions of my own, and
+witnessing the most singular changes in almost every form of public, of
+personal, and of national impressions, I have had my full share of
+experience in the ways of men. And I now offer it to those who would
+refresh their remembrances of memorable men, things, and times.
+
+For the purpose of dealing in the fairest possible manner with my
+readers, I have looked into the various records of those events which
+might have escaped my memory. But I have not suffered them to bias
+opinions conceived long since, and conceived in the spirit of sincerity.
+Such is my design. It is given to the public with a perfect freedom from
+all party influence; with a total avoidance of all personality; with
+that calmness of retrospect which best becomes one who has no desire to
+share in the passions of the world; and with that wish of the French
+almanack-maker, which lies at the bottom of many a bulkier enterprise
+than mine--
+
+     "Je veux infiniment qu'on me lise."
+
+
+1800.
+
+_January 1._--The nineteenth century has commenced with one of those
+events, which deserve to mark epochs. On this day the UNION Of Ireland
+with England has begun. The church bells are ringing, at this moment, in
+all quarters. Flags are flying on the various government establishments.
+A new Imperial flag is hoisted at the Tower, and I now hear the guns
+saluting it with their roar.
+
+The last century was the era of Intrigue in politics, in war, in courts,
+in every thing. In England, the Revolution at the close of the Century
+before had extinguished the power of Despotism. Popery had perished
+under the heel of Protestantism. The Jacobite had fled from the face of
+the Williamite. The sword was seen no longer. But the strifes of party
+succeeded the struggles of Religion; and Parliament became the scene of
+those conflicts, which, in the century before, would have been fought in
+the field.
+
+I strongly doubt which age exhibits the national character in a more
+elevated point of view. The war of Charles I. was a period of proud
+feeling. It was the last burst of Chivalry. Men of rank and fortune
+periled both from a sense of honour, and some of the noblest who fell on
+the royal side, were as fully convinced of the royal errors as the
+orators of Parliament; but their sense of honour urged them to the
+sacrifice, and they freely shed their blood for a King, whose
+faithlessness and folly were to be redeemed only by his martyrdom.
+
+From the period of the Revolution, the character of the country had
+changed. Still bold, sensitive, and capable of sacrifice, it had grown
+more contemptuous of political romance, more clear-sighted as to public
+merits, and more fixed on substantial claims. The latter part of the
+seventeenth century had seen the worthless and treacherous Charles II.
+brought back by the nobles and gentry of the land in a national triumph.
+The middle of the eighteenth century saw the expulsion of the Pretender,
+a gallant and adventurous prince, whose only adherents were the Scottish
+chiefs, and whose most determined opponents were the whole multitude of
+England.
+
+France had lost her Chivalric spirit nearly a hundred years before. It
+had died with Francis I. The wars of the League were wars of Chicane;
+Artifice in arms, Subtlety in steel coats. The profligacy of the courts
+of Louis Quatorze, and his successors, dissolved at once the morals and
+the mind of France. That great country exhibited, to the eye of Europe,
+the aspect of the most extravagant license, and the most rapid decay.
+There lay the great voluptuary, under the general gaze; like one of its
+feudal lords dying of his own debauch--lying helpless from infirmity,
+surrounded with useless pomp, and in the sight of luxuries which he
+could taste no more--until death came, and he was swept away from his
+place among men.
+
+Germany was unknown even in Europe, but by the military struggles of
+Prussia and Austria. But the objects were trifling, and the result was
+more trifling still. Prussia gained Silesia, and Austria scarcely felt
+the loss, in an Empire extending from the Rhine to the Euxine. Then came
+peace, lassitude, and oblivion once more. But this languid century was
+to close with a tremendous explosion. A Belgian revolt was followed by a
+French Revolution. The wearisome continuance of the calm was broken up
+by a tornado, and when the surges subsided again, they exhibited many a
+wreck of thrones flung upon the shore.
+
+What is to be the next great change? What inscription shall be written
+by the historian on the sepulchre of the coming hundred years? Will they
+exhibit the recovery of the power of opinion by Kings, or the mastery of
+its power by the People? Will Europe be a theatre of State intrigue, as
+of old, or a scene of Republican violence? It would require a prophet to
+pronounce the reality.
+
+But I can already see symptoms of change; stern demands on the higher
+classes; sullen discontents in every country; an outcry for
+representative government throughout Europe. The example of France has
+not been lost upon the populace; the millions of Europe, who have seen
+the mob of the capital tear down the throne, will not forget the lesson.
+They may forget the purchase, or they may disregard the miseries of the
+purchase, in the pride of the possession. But we shall not have another
+French Revolution. We shall have no more deifications of the axe, no
+more baptisms in blood, no more display of that horrid and fearful
+ceremonial with which France, like the ancient idolators, offered her
+children to Moloch, and drowned the shrieks and groans of the dying in
+the clangour of trumpets and the acclamations of the multitude. Those
+scenes were too terrible to be renewed. The heart of man shrinks from
+liberty obtained by this dreadful violation of all its feelings. Like
+the legendary compacts with the Evil One, the fear of the Bond would
+embitter the whole intermediate indulgence; and even the populace would
+be startled at a supremacy, to be obtained only by means of such utter
+darkness, and followed by such awful retribution.
+
+
+31.--A piece of intelligence has arrived to-day, which has set all the
+World of London in commotion. It is no less than a direct challenge to
+our good King. Chivalry is not yet dead, as I supposed. After expulsion
+from the sunny plains of Italy and Spain, it has revived among the polar
+snows.
+
+The Russian Emperor has actually published this defiance to the world,
+in the St Petersburg _Gazette_. "It is said that his majesty the
+Emperor, perceiving that the European powers cannot come to an
+accommodation, and wishing to put an end to a war which has raged eleven
+years, has conceived the idea of appointing a place, to which he will
+invite the other potentates to engage together with himself in single
+combat, in Lists which shall be marked out. For which purpose they shall
+bring with them, to act as their esquires, umpires, and heralds, their
+most enlightened ministers and able generals, as Thugut, Pitt, and
+Bernstorff. He will bring, on his part, Counts Pahlen and Kutusoff."
+
+The first impression on the appearance of this singular document was
+surprise; the next, of course, was ridicule. The man must have utterly
+lost his senses. He has been for some months playing the most fantastic
+tricks in his capital: cutting off people's beards if they happen to
+displease his taste as a barber, cutting off coat-skirts if they offend
+his taste as a tailor, ordering the passers-by to pay him a kind of
+Oriental homage, and threatening to send every body to Siberia. Under
+such circumstances, the air of Russia is supposed to be unfavourable to
+royal longevity.
+
+
+The death of a singular character occurred a few days since, a
+_protegée_ of Hannah More, and, as might be expected from that lady's
+publishing habits, rendered sufficiently conspicuous by her pen. She was
+a total stranger, apparently a German by her pronunciation of English,
+yet carefully avoiding to speak any foreign language. She was first
+found taking refuge under a haystack, apparently in a state of insanity,
+and determined to die there. The peasantry, who occasionally brought her
+food, of course soon gave her a name, and, as she was evidently a
+gentlewoman, they called her the lady of the haystack. Hannah More, who
+had unquestionably some humanity, though she was rather too fond of its
+public exhibition, made her the heroine of a tale, and thus drew upon
+her considerable notice. She was prevailed on, though with some
+difficulty, to leave the haystack; and after a residence of a
+considerable period in the country, supported by subscriptions, she was
+removed, on its being ascertained that she was incurably insane, to an
+hospital in London, where, after continuing several years, she died.
+
+Her case excited great curiosity for the time, and every effort was made
+in Germany to ascertain her family, and give some notice of her
+condition. One of the most remarkable circumstances in her insanity, was
+her guarded silence on the subject of her relatives. Though she rambled
+into all conceivable topics, she could not be induced to give the
+slightest clue to their names. The moment any attempt at their discovery
+was made, all her feelings seemed to be startled; she shrank at once,
+looked distressed, and became silent. Hannah More's "Tale of Woe," was
+therefore a well-meant effort to attract attention to an unhappy
+creature, who was determined to give no knowledge of herself to the
+world.
+
+
+Lord Camelford's eccentricities are well known, but the world has given
+him credit for more than he deserves. He was unluckily a duellist almost
+by profession, and thus as dangerous to associate with as a mad bull.
+Yet I have heard traits of a generosity on his part as lavish as his
+manners are eccentric. He is, however, so well known to be alert in the
+use of the pistol, and to be of fiery temper, that some curious stories
+are told of the alarm inspired by his presence. One of those is now
+running the round of the Clubs.
+
+Some days ago, his lordship, walking into a coffee-house, and taking up
+the evening paper, began poring over its paragraphs. A coxcomb in an
+adjoining box, who had frequently called to the waiter for the paper,
+walked over to Lord Camelford's box, and, seeing him lay down the paper
+for the moment while he was sipping his coffee, took it up, and walked
+off with it without ceremony. His lordship bore the performance without
+exhibiting any sign of disturbance, but waited till he saw the intruder
+engaged in its paragraphs. He then quietly walked over, and with all the
+eyes of the Coffeehouse upon him, snuffed out the fellow's candles, and
+walked back to his own seat. The fellow, astonished and furious,
+demanded the name of the person who had served him in this contemptuous
+manner. His lordship threw him his card. He took it--read "Lord
+Camelford" aloud--seemed petrified for a moment, and in the next
+snatched up his hat, and made but one step to the door, followed by the
+laugh of the whole room.
+
+But his lordship has, like Hamlet, method in his madness. A report was
+lately spread that he had resolved, in case of Horne Tooke's rejection
+by the House as member for Old Sarum, that he would bring in his own
+black footman. This report he resented and denied, sending a letter to
+the newspapers, of which this is a fragment:--
+
+     "A report, as preposterous as unfounded, has lately found its way
+     abroad, stating that I meditated a gross and indecent insult upon
+     the dignity of the legislature, by using an influence which I am
+     supposed to possess, for the purpose of introducing an improper
+     character into the formation of its body.
+
+     "It becomes me to set the public right, by solemnly assuring them,
+     that no such idea was ever in contemplation for one moment; and
+     that I am at a loss to discover how the rumour originated; as, so
+     far from being capable of harbouring a wish to add to the
+     embarrassments of an unhappy and dejected people, it would be the
+     pride and glory of my heart, if I had the power to place such
+     persons in situations of responsibility, as, by their talents and
+     integrity, might preserve our Laws and Government and
+     Constitution."
+
+
+The eccentricities of the unfortunate Emperor of Russia have come to
+even a more rapid end than I had expected. A courier has just arrived
+with the startling intelligence, that the Czar was found dead in his
+chamber. The whole transaction is for the moment covered with extreme
+obscurity; but it is to be feared that what the Frenchman, with equal
+cleverness and wickedness, called the Russian trial by Jury, has been
+acted on in this instance, and that the Russian annals have been stained
+with another Imperial catastrophe.
+
+How natural and magnificent are Shakspeare's reflections on the
+anxieties that beset a crown--
+
+  "Oh, polished perturbation! golden care,
+  That keeps the ports of Slumber open wide
+  To many a watchful night: O Majesty!
+  When thou cost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit
+  Like a rich armour worn in heat of day,
+  That scalds with safety."
+
+
+If Voltaire's definition be true, that swindling is the perfection of
+civilization, and that the more civilized, the more subtle we become,
+England may boast of a swindler that seems to have brought the art to
+its highest perfection. She is a female, not at all of the showy order,
+which beguiles so many understandings through the eyes--an insignificant
+and mean person, with an ordinary face, not at all exhibiting manners
+superior to her appearance, yet certainly of the most superb ambition in
+the art of tricking the World. Where she began her adventures first,
+remains to be developed by future biography. At length she appeared in
+the neighbourhood of Greenwich, and, representing herself there as an
+heiress, took a handsome house, and contrived, in the usual way, to make
+all the tradesmen in the neighbourhood contribute to its furnishing. By
+the simplicity and plausibility of her manner, she even obtained loans
+to the amount of some thousands, to set her household in motion, until
+her affairs were settled. An heiress must, of course, have a carriage;
+but this clever person was not content with doing things in an ordinary
+way, but set up three. While her house was being prepared,--which she
+ordered to be done by the first artists in their way, the walls being
+painted in fresco,--she drove down to Brighton in her travelling
+carriage, with four horses and two outriders. She gave an order for the
+furnishing of her house to the amount of £4000, and commissioned from
+Hatchett, the celebrated coachmaker, a first-rate chariot, with all
+kinds of expensive mountings and mouldings, to be ready for the Queen's
+birthday, when she was to be introduced at court by the wife of one of
+the Secretaries of State. In the interval, she drove daily through the
+West End, dropping her cards at the houses of persons of public name.
+She thus proceeded for a while triumphantly; but having, in the
+intoxication of her success, given the names of some persons of rank as
+her relatives, inquiry was made amongst them, and the relationship being
+of course disowned, suspicion was suddenly excited. Nothing could exceed
+her indignation on the subject; but the tradesmen, thus rendered only
+more suspicious, attempted to recover their furniture. The caption was
+at last made, and bailiffs were put into the house, with the
+expectation of apprehending the lady herself. However, she was adroit
+enough to discover her danger, and to her house she returned no more.
+Search was made after her, and it was said that she was discovered and
+thrown into jail. But she suddenly disappeared; and failing her own
+legacy, left to the unlucky people who had given her credit, a long
+legacy of general quarrel and mutual disappointment.
+
+
+When Fox was asked whether he had any faith in Political Economy, the
+doctrines of which had become fashionable in his day, from the writings
+of Turgot and the French school, he answered--"That it was too undefined
+for his comprehension; that its views were either too large, or too
+indistinct, to give his mind the feeling of certainty."
+
+He well might say this, when no two of the modern Political Economists
+agree, and when all the theories of the last age are laughed at by all
+the theorists of the present. In the middle of the seventeenth century
+Sir William Petty, one of the most acute, and also one of the most
+practical men of his time, pronounced that the population of England
+would take three hundred and sixty years to double--the fact being, that
+it has doubled within about a seventh part of that period. Of London he
+predicts, that its growth must finally stop in 1842; and that then its
+population must amount to half the population of England. Yet London is
+still growing, day by day, and yet its population scarcely exceeds a
+twentieth of the whole.
+
+
+The Emperor Paul, in the beginning of his reign, was a favourite with
+the soldiery, whom he indulged in all possible ways, giving them money,
+distributing promotion lavishly among them, and always pronouncing them
+the bulwark of his throne. But when his brain began to give way, his
+first experiments were with the soldiery, and he instantly became
+unpopular. The former dress of the Russian soldier was remarkable alike
+for its neatness and its convenience. He wore large pantaloons of red
+cloth, the ends of which were stuffed into his boots; the boots were of
+flexible leather, and an excellent and easy protection for the legs and
+feet. He wore a jacket of red and green, with a girdle round the waist;
+his head was protected by a light helmet. The whole dress thus
+consisting of two garments, light, showy, and looking the true dress for
+a soldier.
+
+Paul's evil genius, which induced him to change every thing, began with
+that most perilous of all things to tamper with--the army of a great
+military power. He ordered the Austrian costume to be adopted. Nothing
+could equal the general indignation. The hair must be powdered, curled,
+and pomatumed; a practice which the Russian, who washed his locks every
+day, naturally abhorred. The long tail made him the laugh of his
+countrymen. His boots, to which he had been accustomed from his infancy,
+and which form a distinctive part of the national costume, were to be
+taken off, and to be substituted by the tight German spatterdash and the
+shoe, the one pinching the leg, and the other perpetually falling off
+the foot, wherever the march happened to be in the wet. The consequence
+was, infinite discontent, and desertion to a great extent--a thing never
+heard of in the service before.
+
+It may be conceived with what disdain those frivolous, yet mischievous,
+innovations must have been regarded by those Russian officers who had
+known the reality of service. Suvaroff was then in Italy with his army.
+One morning a large packet was brought to him by an Imperial courier. To
+his astonishment, and the amusement of his staff, it was but models of
+tails and curls. Suvaroff gave vent to a sneer, a much more fatal thing
+than a sarcasm, in some Russian verses, amounting to--
+
+  "Hair-powder is not gunpowder;
+  Curls are not cannon;
+  Tails are not bayonets."
+
+The general's rough poetry was instantly popular; it spread through the
+army, it travelled back to Russia, it reached the Imperial ear; the
+Czar was stung by the burlesque, and Suvaroff was recalled.
+
+Few things are more remarkable, than the slowness with which common
+sense acts, even in matters which should evidently be wholly under its
+guidance. It might appear that the mere necessities of war would dictate
+the equipment of the soldier; namely, that it should be light, simple,
+and safe, as far as is possible. Yet the equipment of the European
+soldier, at the commencement of the French war, seemed to be intended
+only to give him trouble, to encumber him, and to expose his personal
+safety. The Austrian soldier's dress was an absolute toilette. The
+Prussian, even with all the intelligence of the Great Frederic to model
+it, was enough to perplex a French milliner, and to occupy the wearer
+half the day in putting it off and on. The English uniform was modelled
+on the Prussian, and our unlucky soldier was compelled to employ his
+hours in tying his queue, powdering his hair, buttoning on his
+spatterdashes, and polishing his musket-barrel. The heavy dragoons all
+wore cocked hats, of all coverings of the head the most unprotecting and
+the most inconvenient. The French light troops, too, all wore cocked
+hats. The very colour of the royal French uniform, as well as the
+Austrian, was white, of all colours the most unfitted for the rough work
+of the bivouack, and also injurious, as shewing the immediate stain of
+blood.
+
+It actually took twenty years to teach the general officers of the
+European armies, that men could fight without spatterdashes, that
+hair-powder was not heroism, and that long tails were only an imitation
+of the monkey; that muskets did not fire the worse for having brown
+barrels, and that the cuirass was a better defence for the body of the
+dragoon than a cloth waistcoat, however covered with embroidery. But why
+shall not improvement go a little farther? Why shall not the arm of the
+dragoon be a little protected as well as his body? A slight and simple
+covering of steel rings would effect the purpose, and it is an important
+one; for a slight wound in the arm disables him even more than a wound
+in the body, unless the latter wound should be mortal at once. But why,
+also, should not the foot soldier wear something equivalent to the
+cuirass? The weight might be made trifling, it might be carried at the
+back of his knapsack except when in actual engagement, and it would save
+thousands of lives; for the most dangerous wounds are in the front, and
+a wound in the abdomen is almost incurable. Five shillings' worth of
+tin-plate might protect the soldier for his lifetime; and there can be
+no doubt, that the consciousness of having such a protection would
+render troops more efficient. Of the bravery of the British there can be
+no doubt; but there can be just as little doubt, that every increase to
+the personal security of troops renders them calmer under fire, and of
+course fitter for obedience in the exigiencies of service. Besides, it
+is a public duty to the brave men in our service, not to expose them
+needlessly on any occasion; and they _are_ exposed needlessly, when they
+are sent into the field without every protection which our skill can
+give. But are we demanding armour for the foot soldiers? No; the armour
+of the old times of Chivalry would be too heavy, and impede the activity
+of those movements, of which so much of military success depends. The
+defensive arms of the Roman soldier were simply a small light helmet, a
+light cuirass, and greaves, or boots bound with brass. Yet with these
+his average march was twenty miles a-day, carrying sixty pounds weight
+of provisions and baggage on his back. The weight of his sword, his two
+lances, and his intrenching tools and palisade, was not reckoned.
+
+
+Buonaparte has made a Concordat with the Pope. The laughers have
+attacked him in the following epigram:--
+
+  Politique plus fin que General Eubile,
+  Bien plus ambitieux que Louis dit le Grand.
+  Pour être Roi d'Egypte, il croit à l'Alkoran,
+  Pour être Roi de France, il croit à l'Evangile.
+
+Our English epitaphs are often as disgraceful to the national taste, as
+their levity is unsuitable to the place of the dead. I am not aware
+whether this epitaph, by the most amiable of poets, Cowper, has been
+preserved among his works. It is on the tomb of a Mrs Hamilton:--
+
+  "Pause here and think--a monitory rhyme
+  Demands one moment of thy fleeting time.
+  Consult Life's silent clock. Thy glowing vein
+  Seems it to say--'Health here has long to reign?'--
+  Hast thou the vigour of thy youth? an eye
+  That beams delight: a heart untaught to sigh?
+  Yet fear. Youth ofttimes, healthful and at ease,
+  Anticipates a day it never sees.
+  And many a tomb, like Hamilton's, aloud
+  Exclaims--Prepare thee for an early shroud!"
+
+In the course of this year died three remarkable men, Lavater, Gilbert
+Wakefield, and Heberden, the famous physician. Perhaps no man of his day
+excited more general attention throughout Europe than John Gaspar
+Lavater; and this is the more remarkable, when we recollect that he was
+but a simple Swiss pastor at Zurich--minister of the church of St Peter.
+When about thirty years' old, his mind was first turned to the study of
+Physiognomy. He shortly after published some parts of a work on the
+subject, in which he broached a new theory; viz. that the countenance
+gave representative evidences of the powers and comparative vigour of
+the understanding. The subject of Physiognomy had been already treated
+of by the German writers; but, as Voltaire observes, the business of
+German philosophy is to make philosophy inaccessible; and their
+treatises had sunk into oblivion. Yet the science itself, if science it
+is to be called, is so natural, so universally, however involuntarily,
+practised, and frequently so useful in its practice, that its revival
+became instantly popular:--a large part of its popularity, however,
+being due to the novelty of Lavater's system, the animation of his
+language, and that enthusiastic confidence in his discovery, which is
+always amongst the most powerful means of convincing the majority of
+mankind. Something also is due to the happy idea of illustrating his
+conceptions by a great number of portraits, which added amusement to the
+general interest of the volumes. Passion possesses great influence in
+the world, and Physiognomy became the fashion. His books spread through
+every part of the Continent, and nothing can be more striking than the
+ardour with which they were received. If Switzerland is proud of his
+popularity, the mysticism of Germany was delighted with his mysticism;
+and the literary coteries of France, at whose head were all the ladies
+of the court, were his most vehement disciples. Nothing was read, for a
+considerable period, but the pages of Lavater. It has been said, that
+scarcely a domestic would be hired without a physiognomical examination,
+and reference to the pages of Lavater.
+
+His personal conduct sustained his public popularity; his gentle
+manners, his general benevolence, and his eloquence in the pulpit,
+endeared him to the people. He was the most popular preacher in Zurich,
+less from his abilities, than on the softness of his voice, and the
+tenderness of his manner.
+
+The objections occasionally started to his theories only increased his
+hold upon the national affections. For the period he was the
+physiognomical apostle of Switzerland. Some of his admirers went so far,
+as to lay his quarto on the table beside the Scriptures, and regard it
+as a species of Natural Revelation.
+
+Even when the novelty lost its charm, the locality preserved his
+reputation. Switzerland, in those days, was the peculiar resort of all
+the leading personages of Europe; all travellers of distinction visited
+the country, and generally made some stay in its cities; and all visited
+Lavater. What has become of his Album, I have not heard; but its
+autographs must have made it invaluable to a collector of the signatures
+of eminent names.
+
+But, whether tempted by vanity, or betrayed by original feebleness of
+intellect, the harmless physiognomist at length suffered himself to
+announce doctrines equally hazardous to the Religion, and the Policy, of
+the Canton. The habits of the times were latitudinarian in religion, and
+revolutionary in politics. Some unlucky opinions, uttered in the folly
+of the hour, brought Lavater under the charge of a leaning to Rome in
+the one, and to France in the other; he bore up for a while against
+both. But the invasion of Switzerland by the French armies, suddenly
+made him a vigorous denouncer of Republican ambition, and he was soon to
+be its victim. In the storming of Zurich by Moreau, he was severely
+wounded in the streets; and though he was rescued, and his wounds were
+healed, he never recovered the injury. He languished, though in full
+possession of his intellectual powers, until he died.
+
+What his theology was, can scarcely be defined; but if he had not
+adopted Physiognomy as the study of his life, his temperament might have
+excited him to try the effect of a new Religion. He was said to have
+believed in the continuance of the power of working miracles, and to
+have equally believed in the modern power of exorcists. Fortunately his
+talent was turned to a harmless pursuit; and he amused, without
+bewildering, the minds of men.
+
+The grand principle of his physiognomical system is, that human
+character is to be looked for, not as is usually supposed, in the
+movable features and lines of the face, but in its solid structure. And
+he also imagined that the degree of intellectual acuteness is to be
+ascertained by the same indications. But his theory in the former
+instance is but feebly supported by fact; for it is by the movements of
+the features that the passions are most distinctly displayed: and in the
+latter, his theory is constantly contradicted by facts, for many of the
+most powerful minds that the world has ever seen have been masked under
+heavy countenances.
+
+Perhaps the true limit of the Science is to be discovered by the
+knowledge of its use. Every man is more or less a physiognomist. It is
+of obvious importance for us to have some knowledge of the passions and
+propensities of our fellow men; for these constitute the instruments of
+human association, and form the dangers or advantages of human
+intercourse. Thus, a countenance of ill temper or of habitual guile, of
+daring violence or of brutish profligacy, warns the spectator at once.
+But the knowledge of intellectual capacity is comparatively unimportant
+to us as either a guide or a protection, and it is therefore not given,
+but left to be ascertained by its practical operation.
+
+Phrenology has since taken up the challenge which Physiognomy once gave
+to mankind:--equally ingenious and equally fantastic, equally offering a
+semblance of truth, and equally incapable of leading us beyond the
+simple observation which strikes the eye. A well-formed head will
+probably contain a well-formed brain; and a well-formed brain will
+probably be the fittest for the operations of the intellect. But beyond
+this, Phrenology has not gone, and probably will never go. The attempts
+to define the faculties by their position in the structure of the bone
+or the brain, have been so perpetually contradicted by fact; its
+prognostics of capacity have been so perpetually defeated; and its
+mistakes of character have been so constantly thrown into burlesque by
+the precipitancy and presumption of its advocates--that common sense has
+abandoned it altogether; it has by common consent been abandoned to
+enthusiasts; and to assert its right to the name of a Science, would now
+hazard the title of its advocate to rationality.
+
+
+The life of Gilbert Wakefield is one among the many instances of
+vigorous learning and strong intellect, made a source of misery to their
+possessor by a want of common prudence. His whole life might be
+characterized in three words--courage, caprice, and misfortune. After
+having attained a Cambridge fellowship, acquired distinction in
+classical criticism, and entered into the Church, he suddenly began to
+entertain notions hostile to the liturgy, and became classical tutor of
+the dissenting academy of Warrington. For ten years he laboured in this
+obscure vocation, or with private pupils, now chiefly turning his
+classical studies to the illustration of the New Testament. At the end
+of this period, he became classical tutor of the dissenting College in
+Hackney. But even Dissent could not tolerate his opinions; for a volume
+which he published, tending to lower the value of public worship, gave
+offence, and speedily dissolved the connexion. His classical knowledge
+was now brought into more active use, and he published Annotations on
+the Greek tragedies, and editions of some of the Roman poets.
+Unfortunately, the popular follies on the subject of the French
+Revolution tempted him to try his pen as a Pamphleteer; and a letter
+written in reply to the Bishop of Llandaff, rendered him liable to a
+prosecution: he was found guilty, and sentenced to an imprisonment of
+two years in Dorchester jail. This imprisonment was unfortunately fatal;
+for whether from his confinement, or the vexation of mind which must be
+the natural consequence, his liberation found him exhausted in strength,
+though still the same bold and indefatigable being which he had been
+through the whole course of his wayward life. Still he had many friends,
+and between the spirit of party, and the more honourable spirit of
+personal regard, the large subscription of £5000 was raised for his
+family. But his career was now rapidly drawing to a close. He had been
+but a few months relieved from his prison, when his constitution sank
+under an attack of typhus, and he died in his forty-sixth year, at an
+age which in other men is scarcely more than the commencement of their
+maturity--is actually the most vigorous period of all their powers; and
+in an undecayed frame gives the securest promise of longevity. With all
+his eccentricities, and he had many, he had the reputation of being an
+amiable man.
+
+
+Heberden was at the head of English Medicine in his day. He was a man of
+vigorous understanding and accomplished knowledge. He began life as a
+scholar, entering Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship. Adopting
+physic as his profession, he continued in Cambridge for ten years; until
+the usual ambition of country practitioners to be known in the
+metropolis, urged him to try his fortunes in London.
+
+The example of this able, and ultimately successful man, is not without
+its value, as an encouragement to perseverance under the most
+discouraging obstacles, when they happen to come in the way of
+individuals of sound scholarship and substantial strength of mind.
+Heberden lingered in London without success for some years; and at
+length, conceiving that his ill-fortune was beyond remedy, had formed
+his resolution to return to the country.
+
+At this period some lucky chance changed his purpose. He became known;
+rapidly rose into practice, and assumed the rank due to his ability.
+Similar circumstances had occurred in the career of the celebrated
+Edmund Burke, who was at two different periods on the point of leaving
+England for America, in despair of distinction at home. The late Lord
+Eldon had even given up his chambers in London, and announced his
+intention of commencing as a country practitioner of the law; when, at
+the suggestion of a legal friend, he made the experiment of "trying
+another term." Business suddenly flowed in upon him, and the
+disheartened barrister was soon floated on to the highest dignities of
+his profession. Even the illustrious Wellington himself is said, at one
+time, to have entertained serious thoughts of directing himself to a
+civil career, and to have been prevented only by the difficulty of
+finding an immediate employment. The delay gave room for the fortunate
+change in his prospects, which soon made him the first officer in
+Europe.
+
+Heberden wrote a great variety of Tracts on his own science; suffered no
+improvement in medicine, or public topic connected with general health,
+to escape him; cultivated his original scholarship to the last; enjoyed
+the friendship of the scientific world throughout his career; and
+enjoyed life itself to an unusual duration, dying in his ninety-first
+year.
+
+
+The anxieties of Europe are, for a while, at least, at an end. The
+preliminaries of peace with France were signed on October the 1st, and
+yesterday the 9th, Lauriston, first aide-de-camp to Bonaparte, arrived
+in town. The populace were all civility to him so were the ministers.
+The French ambassador, Otto, immediately took him to Downing Street,
+where he was complimented by Lord Hawkesbury. Lauriston is a general in
+the Republican service, with a handsome figure, which, covered with
+lace, and the showy decorations of his rank, quite enchanted the
+multitude of gazers.
+
+At the peace of 1782, the pleasantry of George Selwyn, on the arrival of
+the French ambassador, a remarkably little man, was, "That France had
+sent them the preliminaries of peace, by the preliminaries of an
+ambassador." Whatever may be the fate of the present preliminaries, the
+jest will not apply to the present envoy, who looks the soldier, and
+would evidently make a dashing hussar. His progress through the streets
+was, from the first, followed by acclamation. But at length it became a
+kind of triumph. The zeal of the rabble, (probably under good guidance,
+for the French _employés_ comprehend those little arrangements
+perfectly,) determined on drawing the carriage. The harness was taken
+off, the horses enjoyed a sinecure, the coachman sat in uneasy idleness
+on his box, and the crowd tugged away in their best style. The
+procession slowly moved through the principal streets of the West End,
+till it reached the Foreign Office. After a pause there, for the
+delivery of his credentials, Lauriston went to the Admiralty, where St
+Vincent, the first lord, (albeit no lover of Frenchmen,) received the
+stranger with a good-humoured shake of the hand, and, on parting with
+him, made a little speech to the mob, recommending it to them "to take
+care and not overset the carriage."
+
+In the evening London was illuminated, and looked as brilliant as lights
+and transparencies could make it. An odd incident during the day,
+however, showed of what tetchy materials a great populace is made. Otto,
+the French resident, in preparing his house for the illumination, had
+hung in its front a characteristic motto, in coloured lamps, consisting
+of the three words--"France, Concord, England." A party of sailors, who
+had rambled through the streets to see the preparations for the night,
+could not bring their tongues to relish this juxtaposition; which they
+read as if it were, "France _conquered_ England." The mob gathered, and
+were of the same opinion. Jack began to talk loud, and to speak of the
+motto as a national insult. Fortunately, however, before the matter
+could proceed to breaking windows, or perhaps worse, some of the envoy's
+servants informed their master of the equivocal nature of his motto. The
+obnoxious word was changed accordingly, and the illumination in the
+evening (which was most splendid,) displayed the
+motto--"France--Peace--England."
+
+
+The North, too, has not been without its festivities. Alexander of
+Russia has been crowned with all the pomp of a successor of Catherine,
+and the Lord of an Empire five thousand miles long, and touching almost
+the Tropics, and almost the Pole. Moscow, of course, was the scene. All
+that barbaric pomp and European luxury could combine, was to be seen in
+the displays of the double coronation of the Czar and Czarina.
+Alexander, disdaining the royal habit of being drawn in a carriage,
+however gilded; or remembering that he was the monarch of a nation of
+horsemen, King of the Tartar world, moved in the midst of his great
+lords and cavalry, mounted on a fine English charger, and was received
+every where with boundless acclamations.
+
+The memory of kings is seldom long-lived in despotic governments. But
+Paul's is already extinguished, or survives only in the rejoicing of the
+people to have got rid of him. His nature was not ungenerous, but his
+caprice had become so intolerable, that his longer life would probably
+have seen some desperate outbreak in the Empire.
+
+The Czar is handsome, according to Russian ideas of beauty,--tall, and
+well-proportioned. The people are delighted to find themselves under his
+authority, and the peculiar affability of his manner to the English at
+Moscow, is regarded as a pledge of the reconciliation of Russia to the
+system of our politics and our trade.
+
+Russia, more than any other monarchy, requires a powerful, direct, and
+vigilant administration. The enormous extent of her territory exposes
+her to perpetual abuses in her provincial governments. The barbarism of
+a vast portion of her population, demands the whole capacity of an
+enlightened Sovereign, to raise it in the rank of human nature.
+
+To this hour the question is doubtful, whether Moscow ought not to have
+continued the seat of government. It is true that then Russia would
+probably have had no Baltic fleet. But ought she ever to have had a
+Baltic fleet? Ought she to have attempted a maritime superiority, with
+sea locked up in ice for six months of the year; a territory meant for a
+wilderness, and incapable of becoming anything better, in which the
+Russian sovereigns have condemned themselves to the life of one of their
+own bears, cold, wild, and comfortless? All the stoves on earth cannot
+make a St Petersburg winter endurable by any thing but a fish or a
+marmozet; while Moscow offered a glorious climate, unlimited space for a
+capital city, a fertile country, a fine landscape, a central position
+for the head of an empire, with Europe in its front, and Asia at its
+back.
+
+The choice of St Petersburg has probably cramped the growth of Russian
+power. Even Poland has only given her a desert, a kingdom scantily
+cultivated, scantily peopled, discontented serfdom and a broken
+frontier. Yet all may be for the best. Moscow, as the head of the
+Empire, might have made her too powerful, and Europe might have seen a
+Russian Gengis Khan.
+
+
+The Town is ringing with an extraordinary feat of pedestrianism; the
+first exploit of a young Scotchman, Barclay of Ury. He had betted £5000
+that he would walk ninety miles in twenty-one and a half hours, and has
+won, leaving an hour and seventeen minutes to spare.
+
+Feats of this order have a value, as showing the powers of the human
+frame. They would otherwise be merely vulgar gambling. But if it is of
+importance to know the extent of the mental powers, those of the body
+also have their uses; and an effeminate generation would only have to
+prepare themselves by the exercises of this young gentleman, to be able
+to dispense with post-chaises and the gout. The walker is but twenty-two
+years old; and he has finished his exploit without any injury to his
+frame, and, it may be presumed, with a considerable advantage to his
+finances. All the "Sporting world," as they are named, were on the
+ground, which was a measured mile, on the road between York and Hull;
+lamps were erected to light the principal performer during the night. A
+cottage at the road-side received him for refreshment, and change of
+dress, at intervals. A militia regiment, which happened to be on its
+march from Hull, halted and filed on either side of the road, with the
+gallantry of sportsmen, to give him free way; and the general interest
+taken in this singular performance was surprising. The only drawback was
+the evident activity of his frame, and his power of endurance; for after
+the first thirty miles the betting began to be wholly in his favour, and
+the spirit of speculation shrunk from that period, and long before the
+close no bets would be taken. From daylight, multitudes thronged to the
+course. All the carriages, of which such numbers pass along this
+communication between the two great northern towns, went to the side of
+the road; even the mails gave way. The affair seemed national, and if
+the gallant pedestrian had failed, it might have been followed by a
+general mourning in the Ridings.
+
+
+One of the great Histrionic Dynasty, Stephen Kemble, has lately amused
+the Town by his performance of Falstaff. He exhibited the humours of the
+jovial knight with skill enough to make the audiences laugh. But he was
+perhaps the first actor who ever played the _fat_ knight to the life.
+His remarkable corpulence qualified him to play the character without
+stuffing. The good-humour of his visage was fully equalled by the
+protuberance of his stomach; and if the "totus in se teres atque
+rotundus" of Horace, is the poet's definition of a good man, the actor
+rose to the summit of human virtue. The best prologue, since the days of
+Garrick, ushered in this singular performance.
+
+  "A Falstaff here to-night, by nature made,
+  Lends to your favourite bard his pond'rous aid;
+  No man in buckram he, no stuffing gear!
+  No feather bed, nor e'en a pillow here!
+  But all good honest flesh, and blood, and bone,
+  And weighing, more or less--some _thirty_ stone.
+  Upon the northern coast, by chance, we caught him:
+  And hither, in a broad-wheel'd waggon, brought him;
+  For in a chaise the varlet ne'er could enter,
+  And no mail-coach on such a fare would venture.
+  Blest with unwieldiness, at least his size
+  Will favour find in every critic's eyes;
+  And should his humour, and his mimic art,
+  Bear due proportion to his outer part,
+  As once 'twas said of Macklin in the Jew,
+  'This is the very Falstaff Shakspeare drew.'
+  To you, with diffidence, he bids me say,
+  Should you approve, you may command his stay,
+  To lie and swagger here another day.
+  If not, to better men he'll leave his sack,
+  And go as ballast, in a collier, back."
+
+
+1802.
+
+This French peace will not last. The parties to this unnatural wedlock
+are beginning to grumble already; and this, too, when the bans are still
+in every body's ears. The French, however, have begun the quarrel, by
+sending out a huge fleet, with 30,000 men on board, to St Domingo. This
+our minister regards as a daring exploit, which may finish by turning on
+Jamaica. The negroes are every where in exultation; for they cannot be
+made to believe that France intends any thing but a general
+emancipation; and that her expedition, however it be apparently against
+Touissaint, is sent for a general overthrow of the whites.
+
+Long discussions have taken place between the two governments, all
+ending in the usual way. France protesting her honour, and England
+proclaiming her alarms; both amounting to so much paper wasted. But our
+West India squadron has been reinforced; and the First Consul has found
+employment for a daring soldiery, who cannot live in quiet; found
+offices for some hundreds of officials, the most petitioning and
+perplexing race of mankind; and found a topic for the Coffeehouses,
+which he naturally thinks much better employed in talking about St
+Domingo, than in criticising his proceedings at home.
+
+Another source of grumbling between these two ill-assorted parties. At
+the very Marriage feast an apple of discord has been thrown in, and that
+apple is Switzerland. France will suffer but one republic, and that must
+be the World. The presumption of a little pigeon-house of Republics
+among the Alps insults her feelings; and all must run under the wing of
+the great Republican Eagle, or be grasped by her talons. An army has
+been ordered to march to Berne. The Swiss will probably resist, but they
+will certainly be beaten. Republics are sometimes powerful in attack;
+they are always feeble in defence. They are at best but a mob; and,
+while the mob can rush on, they may trample down opposition. But a mob,
+forced to the defensive, thinks of nothing but running away. The
+strength of a monarchy alone can bind men together for an effectual
+resistance. Switzerland will get the fraternal embrace, and be as much
+fettered as St Domingo.
+
+
+Who are to be the heirs of General Claude Martin? The man never knew
+that he had a grandfather, and probably was as much in doubt about his
+heirs. What he was himself, nobody seems to know. But this man of
+obscurity has died worth half a million sterling! So much for India and
+her adventurers.
+
+When a boy, he entered into the French service. By some chance or other
+he found himself in India; there offered himself to the Nabob of
+Lucknow, disciplined his troops, rose to the rank of commandant of the
+Rajah's troops, or some similar position, and amassed the half million.
+He was a splendid distributor, however, and has given away by his will
+six hundred thousand rupees--a sum large enough to buy any thing in
+France but the First Consul.
+
+
+Francis, Duke of Bedford, has just died. The reports vary as to the
+cause. The general opinion is, that in playing rackets, or in some other
+rough exercise, he overstrained himself, and produced a return of a
+disease to which he had been for some years liable. The details of his
+death are too painful to be entered into. The first surgical assistance
+was brought down to Woburn. An operation was performed, which for some
+days gave hope, but it was too late. Mortification ensued, and he died,
+to the great regret of a large circle of personal friends; to the great
+loss of his party, which was Whig in the highest degree; and to the
+general sorrow of the country. He was a handsome man with a showy
+figure, and the manners, and, what was better, the spirit of a nobleman.
+He was magnificent in his household, and not less magnificent in his
+sense of duty as a landlord and country gentleman. He first established
+those great Agricultural Meetings by which the breed of British cattle
+was so greatly improved; Agriculture took the shape of a science, and
+the Agricultural interest, the true strength of a country, took its
+place among the pillars of the Empire.
+
+By a sort of fashion, the leading country gentlemen always began public
+life as Whigs. And although the Bedford family had gone through every
+form of politics, from the days of their founder, Russell, under Henry
+the VIII., and especially in the person of the Duke of Bedford's
+unpopular, but able, grandfather, the Duke espoused the party of Fox
+with the devotion of an enthusiast.
+
+He was thus brought into some unfortunate collisions with the bolder
+spirits and more practised talents of the Treasury Bench; and though,
+from his position in the House of Lords, secure from direct attack by
+the great leaders of Government, he was struck by many a shaft which he
+had neither the power to repel nor to return.
+
+An unlucky piece of hardihood, in attacking the royal grant of a pension
+of three thousand a year to the greatest writer, philosopher, and
+politician of the age, Edmund Burke, provoked a rejoinder, which must
+have put any man to the torture. Burke's pamphlet in defence of his
+pension, was much less a defence than an assault. He broke into the
+enemy's camp at once, and "swept all there with huge two-handed sway."
+He traced the history of the Bedford opulence up to its origin, which he
+loftily pronounced to be personal sycophancy and public spoil--the
+plunder of the Abbeys, obtained by subserviency to a Tyrant. The
+eloquence of this terrible castigation unhappily embalmed the scorn. And
+so long as the works of this great man are read, and they will be read
+so long as the language endures, the honours of Francis Duke of Bedford
+will go down dismantled to posterity.
+
+But his private character was amiable, and the closing hours of his
+career were manly. On its being announced to him that an operation was
+necessary, he asked only for "two hours delay to settle his affairs;"
+and he occupied those two hours in writing to his brothers, and to some
+friends. He then offered to submit to be bound, if the operators should
+think it necessary; but they replied, "that they relied fully on his
+Grace's firmness of mind." He bore the trial with remarkable fortitude.
+But the disorder took an unfavourable turn, and on the third day he
+expired.
+
+
+The retirement of Pitt from the Ministry, has given his successor,
+Addington, the honour of making the peace. But the services of the great
+Master are not eclipsed by the fortunes of the follower. Addington is
+universally regarded as the shadow of Pitt; moving only as he moves;
+existing by his existence; and exhibiting merely in outline his reality.
+Every one believes that Pitt must return to power; and those who are
+inclined to think sulkily of all ministers, look upon the whole as an
+intrigue, to save Pitt's honour to the Irish Roman Catholics, and yet
+preserve his power. Those rumours have received additional strength from
+a grand dinner given the other day in the city, on his birthday, at
+which his friends mustered in great force, and his name was toasted with
+the most lavish panegyric. Among the rest, a song, said to be by George
+Rose, of whose claims to the laurel no one had ever heard before--was
+received with great applause. Some of its stanzas were sufficiently
+applicable.
+
+  "No Jacobin rites in our fêtes shall prevail,
+  Ours the true feast of reason, the soul's social flow;
+  Here we cherish the friend, while the patriot we hail,
+  As true to his country--as stern to her foe.
+        Impress'd with his worth,
+        We indulge in our mirth,
+  And bright shines the planet that ruled at his birth.
+  Round the orbit of Britain, oh, long may it move,
+  Like the satellite circling the splendours of Jove!
+
+  "To the name of a Pitt, in the day of the past,
+  Her rank 'mid the nations our country may trace;
+  Though his statue may moulder, his memory will last,
+  The great and the good live again in their race;
+        Ere to time's distant day,
+        Our marble convey
+  The fame that now blooms, and will know no decay,
+  Our fathers' example our breasts shall inspire
+  And we'll honour the Son as they honour'd the Sire."
+
+
+The public doubts of the peace are at length settled. A note has been
+sent from the Foreign Office to the Lord Mayor, announcing that the
+definitive treaty had been finally settled at Amiens, on the 27th of
+March, by the plenipotentiaries of England, France, Spain, and the
+Batavian Republic. The treaty, as it transpires, is the source of
+general cavil. It leaves to France all her conquests, while England
+restores every thing except Ceylon and Trinidad; the one a Dutch colony,
+and the other a Spanish; both powers having been our Allies at the
+commencement of the war. The Cape is to be given back to the Dutch; but
+Malta, the principal bone of contention, is to be garrisoned by a
+Neapolitan force, until a Maltese garrison can be raised, and the island
+is then to be declared independent, under the guarantee of all the great
+powers of Europe. The French government affected to display great
+reluctance to conclude even this treaty, which has thus taken six months
+of negotiation since the exchange of preliminaries. At one time, orders
+were sent for the Channel fleet to put to sea. Yet there can be no
+question that France desired this Peace, whether as a resting time for a
+fresh attack, or from the mere exhaustion of war. She had already gained
+every object that she could hope to obtain by arms in her present
+condition, and her natural policy was to secure what she had thus
+attained. The two grand prizes of her ambition, Egypt and the command of
+the Mediterranean, had been boldly aimed at, but she had lost both, and
+both were now evidently hopeless. Some of those straws, too, had been
+thrown up, which, if they show nothing else, show the direction of the
+wind; and there were evident signs in the almost royal pomp of the First
+Consul, in the appointments of officers of state for ten years, and the
+constituting the Consulate an office for life; in the preparations for
+the return of the emigrants, and in the superb receptions at the
+Tuilleries--that Bonaparte already contemplated the last days of the
+republic. To what new shape of power his ambition looks is yet only in
+conjecture. But he is ambitious, daring, and unscrupulous--the idol of
+the army, and the wonder of the people. He may shrink, like Cæsar, from
+the diadem, or he may assume, like Cromwell, the power of a king,
+without the name; but the field is open before him, and France can offer
+no competition.
+
+
+Darwin, the author of the "Botanic Garden," has just died at the age of
+seventy-one. His death will leave a chasm, though one not incapable of
+being filled up, in our didactic poetry. His "Loves of the Plants" was a
+new idea, thrown into agreeable verse; and a new idea is always
+popular. For a while his poem obtained great celebrity: but Nature alone
+is permanent; and after the first surprise wore off, the quaintness of
+his inventions, and the minute artifice of his poetic machinery,
+repelled the public taste. The Linnæan system, partly indecent, and
+partly ridiculous, was felt to be wholly unfitted for the blazonry of
+versification; and his poem, the labour of years, sank into obscurity as
+rapidly as it had risen into distinction. It is now wholly unread, and
+almost wholly forgotten; yet it contains bold passages, and exhibits
+from time to time happiness of epithet, and harmony of language. Its
+subject degrades the poem; its casual allusions constitute its merit.
+Vegetable loves must be an absurdity in any language; but Darwin's mind
+was furnished with variety of knowledge, and he lavished it on his
+subject with Oriental profusion. He had eloquence, but he wanted
+feeling; knowledge, but he wanted taste; and invention, but he wanted
+nature. The want of any one of the three would have been dangerous to
+his fame as a poet, but his deficiency in the three together left him to
+drop into remediless oblivion.
+
+
+A curious attempt hast just shown the popular opinion of ministerial
+honesty. The Attorney-General has prosecuted, and brought to conviction,
+a fellow in some low trade, who, hearing that Mr Addington was prime
+minister, and thinking of course that a prime minister could do all
+things, sent an actual offer of £2000 to him for a place in the Customs,
+on which he happened to set his heart. Unluckily for the applicant, he
+was a century too late. However those matters might have been managed a
+hundred years ago, less tangible means than money now rule the world.
+Besides, no man who knew any thing of Addington, ever attached a
+suspicion of the kind to him. Erskine made a speech in the defence, the
+best that could be made on such a subject, but not the most flattering
+to the vanity of his client. It was that he was a blockhead, and had no
+idea of the absurdity that he was committing. Among other instances of
+his ignorance, he said, that when he saw the subpoena served upon him,
+he thought that it was the appointment to his place. But even his
+idiotism could not save him, and the affair ended in his being sentenced
+to three months' imprisonment, and £100 fine.
+
+
+Christie, the auctioneer, the other day, gave a happy specimen of the
+eloquence of the hammer. He is at the head of his trade, and sells all
+the remarkable things. On this occasion the Pigot diamond had come into
+his hands. It is a very fine brilliant, but objected to by the
+connoisseurs as not having sufficient depth. It was valued at £40,000.
+But at this sale the auctioneer could not raise its price above £9500,
+or guineas. He then appealed to his audience, a crowd of the fair and
+fashionable,--
+
+"How unfortunate," said he, "is it, for the owners of this incomparable
+production, that they should have brought it into the market in a
+country so famed for female beauty as England! Here the charms of the
+sex require no such additions; here the eyes of the ladies sparkle with
+brilliancy which outvies all the gems of the East. In other countries
+this incomparable stone would be sought as a necessary aid; here it can
+be valued only as a splendid superfluity." The room rang with applause.
+
+
+One of the heroes of Junius has just died; the veteran Wellbore Ellis,
+Lord Mendip. This man's whole life was spent in public employments. He
+was the son of an Irish bishop, whose brother--such were the curious
+qualities of the time--took orders in the Popish Church, followed the
+Pretender, and died a Popish bishop. Young Ellis, after an education at
+Westminster and Oxford, was brought into parliament under the Pelhams,
+who made him a lord of the Admiralty. Under the Newcastle administration
+which followed, he was appointed to the lucrative post of Irish
+vice-treasurer, which he held undisturbed through all the struggles of
+the Cabinet till the Grenville administration, when he was raised still
+higher, and became Secretary at War.
+
+The Grenvilles fell; the Marquis of Rockingham brought in his friends
+and Ellis was superseded in his Irish office by Colonel Barré. For five
+unlucky years he continued in that Limbo of patriots, exclusion from
+place. At length, the Premiership of Lord North recalled him. He again
+obtained the Vice-treasurership, and in the final distress of that
+unpopular administration, was for a short time raised even to the
+Colonial Secretaryship. But North was driven from power, and all his
+adherents fell along with him. Rockingham, the North and Fox coalition,
+and Pitt, exhibited a succession of premierships, which ended in the
+exclusion of the whole Whig principle, in all its shapes and shades, for
+twenty years. Ellis was now growing old; he was rich; he had been a
+public man for upwards of forty years; he had been fiercely abused by
+the opposition writers while he continued in office, and fiercely
+attacked by the government writers when in opposition. He had thus his
+full share of all that public life furnishes to its subjects, and he
+seemed inclined to spend the remainder of his days in quiet. But the
+French Revolution came. Startled at the ruin with which its progress
+threatened all property, he joined that portion of the Whigs which
+allied itself with the great Minister. The Duke of Portland entered the
+cabinet, and Wellbore Ellis was raised to the peerage. There his career,
+not unworthily, closed; and his remaining years were given to private
+society, to books, of which he had a celebrated collection, and to the
+recollections of the Classics, of which he possessed an early mastery.
+He was an acute and accomplished man. The fiery indignation of Junius
+rather threw a light than inflicted an injury on his character. That
+first of political satirists spared none; and the universal nature of
+his attacks made men receive them, as they receive a heavy shower,
+falling on all alike, and drenching the whole multitude together.
+
+
+Bonaparte has taken the first step to a throne: he has established
+nobility. The Republic having abolished all titles, a peerage was, for a
+while, impossible. But he has formed a military Caste, which, without
+hazarding his popularity with the Parisians, increases his popularity
+with the troops, and has all the advantages of a noblesse, with all the
+dependency of its members on the head of the State. He has named this
+Institution the Legion of Honour. It is to consist of several classes,
+the first comprehending the great officers of state, generals who have
+distinguished themselves, and ancient men of science. It has sixteen
+Cohorts, with palaces allotted to them in Paris and the provinces, for
+the headquarters of the cohorts. Grants of land are also proposed for
+the support of these officers and their residences, with distributions
+and pensions for the lower ranks of the soldiery, to whom the "croix
+d'honneur" is given.
+
+Thus the old reign of titles, orders, crosses, and an established Class
+of society, has begun once more; a large portion of the most influential
+personages of France are thus bound to the head of the government, the
+hopes of every man, however humble in soldiership or in science, are
+pointed to the attainment of this public honour, as well as personal
+provision, and the general purchase of power is virtually declared, with
+the general consent of this versatile nation.
+
+
+Ten thousand pounds have just been voted to Jenner, for his discovery of
+the vaccine inoculation. The liberality of parliament was never more
+rationally employed. The history of the man, and the discovery, have
+been long before the public. But the most curious circumstance of the
+whole is, that the facts of the disease, and the remedy, should have
+remained for any one to discover in the nineteenth century. They were
+known to the peasantry of Gloucestershire probably from the first days
+of cow milking. That the most disfiguring of all diseases, in every
+country of Europe and Asia, and the most pestilential in a large portion
+of the globe, could be arrested by a disease from the udders of a cow,
+seems never to have entered into human thoughts, though the fact that
+those who had the vaccine disease never suffered from the smallpox, was
+known to the country physicians.
+
+But Jenner's chief merit was his fortunate conjecture, that the
+infection might be propagated from one human subject to another. This
+was the greatest medical discovery since that of the Circulation of the
+Blood.
+
+
+
+
+IT'S ALL FOR THE BEST.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+"It's all for the best, you may depend upon it," said Frank Trevelyan,
+addressing his companion, Vernon Wycherley, as those two young men were
+pursuing a beaten track across one of those wild wastes that form so
+prevalent a feature in most of the mining districts of Cornwall.
+
+"All for the best, indeed?" repeated Vernon interrogatively. "Can it be
+all for the best to have a whole batch of poems I've been racking my
+brains about for the last year and a half--and which even you yourself,
+hard as you are to please, admitted were worthy of praise--to have all
+these, not only rejected by every publisher I offered them to, but to be
+actually returned with a recommendation to give up all idea of ever
+offering them to public notice?"
+
+"But which convinces me still more that matters have turned out for the
+best; and that if your poetical effusions had been published, they would
+have brought you far more ridicule than praise," thought Frank. But at
+the same time, not wishing to hurt his companion's feelings, he
+said--"Yet, probably, when you have again revised the manuscripts, and
+bestowed some of your masterly finishing touches here and there, you
+will, after all, congratulate yourself upon the source of your present
+disappointment."
+
+"That's an impossibility--an utter impossibility," returned Vernon
+Wycherley--"for were I to look through them a hundred times, I should
+never alter a word.----But stay--Look! look!--what is that I see? Two
+ladies on horseback, I declare! who could have anticipated meeting with
+such an occurrence in so outlandish a place?"
+
+The place was by no means undeserving of the remark, being devoid of any
+kind of vegetation, except some straggling heath and a few patches of
+stunted gorse, which here and there sprung up amidst the rugged
+spar-stones that, intermixed with rude crags of granite, were thickly
+scattered over this wide waste, which, throughout its vast extent,
+afforded as perfect a picture of sterility as can be well conceived.
+With this brief outline of the scenery, we must next attempt to describe
+the parties who were wandering over it.
+
+Frank Trevelyan was about two-and-twenty. In figure he was rather below
+the middle height, and being slightly made and with the proportions of a
+tall man, he looked much less than he actually was. His features were
+not handsome, but he possessed what in a man is far more important--a
+highly intelligent and intellectual cast of countenance. He wore his
+hair, which was light and curly, cut very close, and incipient whiskers
+adorned the outline of his lower jaw. He was dressed in a gray tweed
+wrapper, with trousers of the Brougham pattern, and he sported a
+hat--black, but whether beaver or gossamer we are uninformed--high in
+the crown, but very narrow in the brim, bearing altogether no very
+remote resemblance to an inverted flower-pot.
+
+His companion was about the same age, but the latter had made so much
+better use of his growing years, as to have shot up to something more
+than six feet in height; yet his figure, though slender, exhibited no
+appearance of weakness. His features were passably good--the nose
+perhaps rather too projecting; but his teeth were unexceptionable. He
+had a clear complexion, with a good fresh colour in his cheeks, which
+were still covered with the down of youth, but without imparting the
+slightest appearance of effeminacy. A foraging-cap of gray woven
+horse-hair, with a preposterous shade projecting out in front, covered
+his head; a loose blouse enveloped the upper, whilst checkered
+inexpressibles enclosed the lower man. Unlike his companion, he wore his
+hair, which was rather dark, very long, both at the sides and behind;
+and the rudiments of mustaches were perceptible upon his upper lip; but
+whether they were to be allowed to attain a more luxuriant maturity, or
+their brief existence was to be prematurely cut short by the destroying
+razor, was, at the time we speak of, involved in doubt, that being a
+subject which, though it engrossed much of his thoughts, the proprietor
+had hitherto been unable to make up his mind upon. Each of our two
+heroes bore a light kind of knapsack upon his back; their general
+appearance marked them to be gentlemen, whilst their attire and
+accoutrements denoted they were pursuing a pedestrian tour.
+
+But softly! the ladies approach. See how elegantly they canter their
+steeds over the only smooth piece of turf our travellers had met with
+throughout the whole extent of gloomy commons they had that morning
+traversed.
+
+"Ay, that's right! Pull up in time, my lovely ones, ere you get amongst
+the rascally mole-hills; and then you'll not only ride the safer, but
+afford us at the same time a chance of obtaining a view of your pretty
+faces," thought friend Frank; whilst similar thoughts, although perhaps
+arranged in more elegant terms, were passing through the mind of his
+companion. But if the curiosity of the two pedestrians was great, their
+admiration proved far greater when the objects which excited those
+feelings, on a nearer approach, proved to be two as lovely young women
+as the most fastidious admirer of beauty could wish to gaze upon. One of
+them, indeed, displayed such matchless charms to the youthful poet's
+eyes, as at the very first glance to form to his excited fancy the
+beau-ideal of perfect loveliness.
+
+"What an angel!" he mentally exclaimed; "upon such a form I could
+continue to gaze enraptured for"----
+
+How long he never said, for ere he had time to give utterance to the
+thought, he stumbled over one of the surrounding mole-hills, and
+staggering forward several paces with extended arms, he ultimately fell
+prostrate on the ground, close by the side of the innocent yet moving
+cause of his misadventure, and with such force, as to bury the whole of
+his countenance in the soft heavings of a similar hillock to the one he
+had so inadvertently tripped over.
+
+Luckily for him, the place his physiognomy alighted upon was of so soft
+and yielding a nature, that though he stamped a perfect model of his
+features in the clay, the features themselves were unimpaired, otherwise
+than by the earthy colouring communicated to them by so pressing a
+contact, which perfectly satisfied the fair equestrians (who had the
+kindness to pull up and express their hopes that he was not seriously
+hurt) that the actual damage sustained was of a very superficial nature.
+
+"And I suppose you intend to say that this is all for the best?"
+observed Vernon in rather a rueful tone, as, the ladies having ridden
+on, he was attempting to rub off the dirt from his face with his pocket
+handkerchief--the first wipe of which was sufficient to show him how
+much the effects of his tumble had changed the natural hue of his
+complexion.
+
+"To be sure I do," answered Frank "and any man less unreasonable than
+yourself would say so too."
+
+"What! say it was all for the best for him, like an awkward booby, to
+fall sprawling in the dirt, thereby making himself a laughing-stock to
+that beautiful, angelic creature? Oh! only look, my dear Frank, only
+look--see her--see both of them! Why, as I live, they are almost ready
+to fall off the very backs of their horses from the laughter my
+blundering awkwardness has excited. Oh, it's really dreadful--I must
+turn my head another way. I can bear the sight of it no longer!"
+
+"But only think how much worse it would have been if your phiz, instead
+of the soft earth, had encountered one of the hard spar-stones that are
+so plentifully strewed about here?"
+
+"And supposing it had--wouldn't it have been better, at the cost of
+little pain and suffering, to have excited the compassion, instead of
+the laughter of that heavenly creature?"
+
+"But hardly at the sacrifice of your nose, I should say," rejoined
+Frank, "which, from the deep impression it has made in the clay, must
+have been smashed flat as a pancake had it battled out the matter with
+the stones."
+
+The young poet had a great regard for his nose, and his companion's
+remarks upon the subject were so palpable, that he was not only silenced
+but convinced.
+
+"I say here, my man. Here, Jan, Jan, I say," bawled out our friend
+Frank, to what he was pleased to style a straw-yard savage in the
+disguise of a gentleman's servant on horseback, who, whilst engaged in
+the pleasant employment of munching an apple, had allowed the ladies he
+was attending to canter off some distance a-head, and was then in the
+act of passing, at a very moderate pace, close by our two heroes, but
+pulled up his nag at the summons, and, touching his hat, replied, in the
+singing accent of the western Cornishmen--" Your sarvant, gen'lmen both;
+what 'ud ye plaze to have, sir?--though my name b'aint Jan, plaze yer
+honours."
+
+"What is it then?--Bill, Dick, Tom, Harry, Ben, Jim, Nic, Mike, Mathey,
+or Peter?"
+
+"Neither, maester, plaze your honour, sir," said the man, with a grin
+that denoted he was entering into the humour of the thing, and who, as
+well as Frank, was a bit of a wag in his way. "Timothy's my name, at
+your sarvice, gen'lmen--what 'ud your honours plaze to have of I?"
+
+"What I would have, Timothy," answered Frank, "is for you to tell me who
+those two young ladies are that you are in attendance upon?"
+
+"Maester's two dafters," replied Timothy.
+
+"And who's maester?" asked Frank.
+
+"The squire, to be sure," answered his man.
+
+"And what's squire's name?" inquired Frank.
+
+"Potts--Squire Potts," replied Timothy--at which announcement Vernon
+Wycherley lifted up both eyes and hands in unfeigned amazement.
+
+"And the young ladies?" resumed the questioner.
+
+"Lor, sir! I ha'n't a got time to bide and tell'ee no more. See they be
+'most out of sight a'ready, and I shall have to ride a brave pace to
+catch mun again--and most dead wi' thest, too, I be's a'ready."
+
+Frank, who plainly saw Timothy's drift, dived his hand into the deep
+recesses of his trousers' pockets.--Timothy, who witnessed the act, not
+altogether an unexpected one, drew nearer and nearer, and when close
+alongside of Frank, cramming the remainder of the apple into his mouth,
+he dropped the hand that had conveyed it there, as if by the merest
+accident in the world, within easy reach of the interrogator's, who,
+slipping into it a coin of sufficient importance, small as it was, to
+raise a grin of delight in the groom's countenance, again asked him the
+names of the two young ladies.
+
+"Heerken, and I'll tell'ee," he answered. "She with the light hair and
+eyes, she's Miss Bessie; and she with the dark hair and eyes, she's
+called Miss Molly--that's she's name." And having so said, Timothy rode
+off at a rapid pace.
+
+"Can it be possible!" exclaimed Vernon Wycherley--"can it be possible
+that so lovely a being--one who seems too beautiful to tread the
+earth"----
+
+"And so rides on horseback over it; is that what you mean?" interrupted
+Frank.
+
+"No, you know very well it is not what I mean," answered Vernon
+petulantly. "My wonder is, how one so elegant could be called by such a
+name as that knave uttered."
+
+"What! Molly Potts, eh? that I believe was the name he mentioned?"
+interposed Frank.
+
+"Pshaw, nonsense!" retorted his companion; "it can't be her name. The
+idea's too preposterous to be true. That insolent clown has dared to try
+to hoax us; for which I promise him, if I were his master, I'd break
+every bone in his good-for-nothing body. Molly Potts! It never can be
+so. The thing's quite out of the question--utterly impossible!"
+
+"Impossible or not, I don't see that it's likely to make much difference
+either to you or me," observed Frank; "for the chances are, we never set
+eyes upon either of them again."
+
+"Then," said Vernon, "I almost wish that I, at least, had never set
+eyes upon one of them at all. To know that such an angel moves about on
+earth, and to think that I may never see her more, must ever form a
+source of deep regret; and yet it seems strange--very strange--that
+I--I--who have ever looked upon the fairest of the sex unmoved, should
+be so struck as I was here by a mere glance."
+
+"A very hard hit, certainly," said Frank: "I never saw a fellow more
+completely floored."
+
+"Better book that to tell again," retorted vernon; "it really is so
+seldom you do say a witty thing, that it's a pity it should be lost upon
+these dull moors."
+
+"Then, unless we intend to follow the fate of my wit," resumed Frank,
+"we must step out a little faster to get out of them; which we sha'n't
+do under a couple of miles' walk more, I promise you."
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Frank Trevelyan's statement proved tolerably correct as to distance, for
+little more than two miles brought our travellers clear of the rugged
+moorlands; when, after ascending the brow of a steep hill, a sight broke
+suddenly upon them, which, though unlike the scenery they had previously
+passed over, presented if possible a more dreary picture. As far as the
+eye could reach, nothing could be discerned but one vast wilderness of
+undulating sandy hillocks, totally devoid of vegetation, except a kind
+of coarse rush, which, in spite of the shifting nature of the soil, had
+here and there contrived to spring up and take root; and now to add to
+this cheerless aspect, the sky, which hitherto had been bright and
+clear, began to lower with those dark threatening clouds which form the
+sure forerunner of a heavy squall of wind and rain--no pleasant thing
+for two lightly-clad pedestrians to be overtaken with in a bleak open
+country on a chill November day. Even Frank, who, with his merry chat,
+had latterly kept his companion's spirits alive, the latter of whom had
+begun to complain both of hunger and fatigue--even Frank felt
+disconcerted at the desolate prospect before him, as well as
+disappointed at not discovering the mining village, containing the snug
+little public-house, which he had been informed he should fall in with
+at the termination of the stony moorlands. Resolved however to put the
+best face he could upon the matter, our little hero assured his tall
+comrade that another half hour would be sure to bring them to the
+desired spot, where he was certain they would obtain both rest and
+refreshment--two things they much needed--having walked on unceasingly
+for several hours since their early morning's meal without having eaten
+or drunk any thing, and the sun by this time had begun to sink low in
+the horizon. Scarcely, however, had they crossed the narrow valley that
+divided these two barren wastes from each other, and had commenced
+ascending the steep beaten path that passed through the sandy desert,
+than the storm, which had been previously brewing, burst forth with
+relentless fury, the rain descending in torrents, accompanied by fierce
+gusts of wind, that, whirling aloft the loose drifting sands, swept them
+onwards in dense clouds before the gale, forming an overpowering and
+blinding deluge that perplexed our tourists exceedingly.
+
+"This is all for the best, I suppose," suggested Vernon Wycherley, who,
+uncomfortable as he was, couldn't help enjoying the luxury of having a
+hit at his fellow-traveller, and thus proving himself for once at any
+rate to have been on the right side of the argument.
+
+"All for the best, did you say?" replied Frank. "All for the best?--ay,
+to be sure it is--though we ourselves may perhaps be too short-sighted
+to see the drift of it."
+
+"See the drift!" interposed Vernon--"See the drift! Why, we not only see
+it, but feel it. The benefit to be derived from it is what I want you to
+convince me of, Master Frank."
+
+The truth of Vernon's observation was too palpable to be denied; for
+both he and his companion were half-choked and nearly blinded by the
+clouds of sand that, in the course they were pursuing, blew directly in
+their faces, and which even the rain seemed to have no effect in
+allaying; till as last the peppering became so severe, that our
+travellers were actually compelled to turn their backs upon the enemy.
+Hardly, however, had they done this, ere Frank joyfully exclaimed--"It
+_is_ all for the best after all, and that I'll soon convince you of,
+Master Vernon. Cast your piercing peepers through the thick of it, and
+you'll see the very place we want to find, which, if the storm hadn't
+compelled us to face to the right about, we should have passed by
+without discovering, concealed as it is in the narrow gorge we have just
+crossed. So cheer up, I say, old fellow, and let us both put our best
+foot foremost, and see how soon we can get there."
+
+Vernon required no further persuasion, and the desired house of
+entertainment was soon reached. Here our wet and weary travellers had
+the good fortune to meet with that comfort of all comforts to persons so
+situated--a blazing kitchen-fire, which afforded them an opportunity of
+drying their wet clothes, and at the same time to enjoy the sight of the
+cookery of some tempting rashers and eggs, which, with the unequalled
+accompaniment of fried potatoes, was soon after duly set out for them in
+the sole parlour the house afforded, where they found a good fire had
+been prepared for their reception.
+
+"Would you like a bottle of Guinness's porter with your dinners,
+gen'lmen?" asked a very pretty and tidily dressed young woman, who
+waited upon them.
+
+"To be sure we would, my pretty Mary," replied Mr Vernon Wycherley, "and
+thank you for the hint into the bargain; I'm sure I should never have
+dreamt of meeting with Dublin stout amidst the wilds of Cornwall."
+
+"Us do always kip it," observed Mary.
+
+"Then a bottle of it, if you please, my pretty girl," resumed the poet.
+"Ay, that's right, out with the cork--never mind the froth, Mary--never
+mind the froth."
+
+"It is indeed prime stuff!" he added, replacing his empty glass upon the
+table; "and upon my life, Frank, this is a perfect feast; and never did
+I enjoy one more. Things really have turned out a great deal better than
+I expected."
+
+"Or, in other words, have turned out all for the best," observed Frank,
+looking up for a moment from his plate, the contents of which had
+previously absorbed his whole attention; and elevating his glass as a
+signal for Mary to fill it with the tempting beverage, which she, well
+understanding, instantly obeyed; and having drained every drop of it, he
+resumed--"So you see, Master Vernon, you stand convicted by your own
+confession, that your former doubts and misgivings were without
+foundation; added to which, you can't help agreeing with me, that our
+present gratification is still further enhanced by the few trivial
+difficulties we just before met with."
+
+Vernon was not inclined to concede to all his companion had just said,
+and, in fact, was mentally arranging the proper language in which to
+express his dissent, when a fresh arrival of piping-hot rashers turned
+the current of his thoughts towards the eggs and bacon, about which,
+instead of saying any thing, he quietly helped himself to, and then
+handed over the dish to his friend.
+
+
+"I feel rather tired with my walk to-day," observed Mr Vernon Wycherley,
+who, having at last eaten to his heart's content, had pressed an extra
+chair into his service, for the purpose of resting his long and wearied
+legs thereupon. "Every thing here," he continued, glancing his eye
+around the tidily furnished little room--"every thing here looks clean
+and comfortable. I wonder if we could get accommodated with beds,
+instead of having to tramp it three miles further over the sandbanks in
+this uncertain weather, in order to reach our original destination at
+the next village?"
+
+"I wish we could, with all my heart," answered Frank; "and here comes
+Mary with some more stout, who can tell us all about it." And so the
+handmaiden was questioned accordingly, who replied, in a tone of evident
+disappointment, "Lar bless ee, sir, there b'aint a bed to be had in the
+whole place; fay there b'aint, I can assure ee not, if ye'd offer pounds
+o' gold for 'un; for ever since Wheal Costly, just handy by here, has
+turned out so rich, there's no quarters to be had for the sight of folks
+that be employed about her. There's only seven beds in all this here
+housen; and, besides the family, there be no less than sex-and-thirty
+miners a quartering here; they takes sex out o' the seven beds, and
+mistus and I and all the childer do fill the t'othern all night, and
+when us do turn out, then maister and his comarade do turn in--and 'tis
+the same all through town[38]--an' by ma fath an' troth, I zem there
+b'aint, at this very moment, a bed without a pair in 'un for miles
+round."
+
+"But how do the folks here contrive to pig it away together six in a
+bed?" inquired Mr Vernon Wycherley. "Your beds must be very large,
+otherwise I should fancy such close stowage to be hardly possible."
+
+"O na, sir, you don't onderstand," replied the maid, hardly able to
+restrain herself from laughing outright at the stranger's gross
+ignorance of mining habits; "not pair[39] o' six all to bed together to
+one time; you da see miners do work to bal[40] eight hours to a spell,
+and has sexteen to stay 'bove ground; so one and his comarade sleeps
+their first eight hours 'bove ground, and then turns out for the next
+pair; and so they goes on, one pair in and t'other pair out, so that
+between sex on 'um, the bed's never to say quite empty."
+
+"And can never, of course, require a warming-pan," remarked Frank.
+
+"Lar! tha b'est a queer little chap," thought Mary; but being too polite
+to say as much, she merely smiled pleasantly at the remark, as she
+tripped out of the room.
+
+"Well, as we must toddle further, it's of little use to put so grave a
+face upon it, old fellow," observed Frank to his poetical friend, who
+was indulging in a reverie, with his eyes fixed in vacancy towards the
+burning embers in the grate.
+
+"Eh! what?" demanded Vernon, with the usual start of an absent literary
+man, whose attention is suddenly awakened. Frank repeated his previous
+remark.
+
+"My thoughts were far, far away from hence," said Mr Vernon Wycherley;
+"the subject of them was my comedy, which, as you know, I intend to
+offer for the prize at the Haymarket."
+
+"Your comedy be hanged!" interrupted Frank.
+
+"I fear that even a direr fate than that awaits it," resumed its author.
+"Oh! if I had but seen _her_ before I arranged my female
+characters--have carried her beauteous image in my mind, as now I
+mentally behold her"--
+
+"What! Molly Potts?" interposed Mr Frank Trevelyan, with a look of arch
+innocence--such a funny look it was, as no man living but Frank himself
+could possibly have given.
+
+"Pshaw," said Vernon impatiently, "how can you find the heart to mention
+her name, if such indeed it be, in that disagreeable tone and manner? It
+is enough to drive away every poetic idea connected with her. If you can
+only mention her name in that cold tone of contempt, I'd thank you to
+hold your tongue about her altogether."
+
+With this remark, the poet took a manuscript book from a pocket in his
+blouse, and with contracted brow, he made an entry there in pencil of
+some happy thought the moment had just then suggested, which occupying
+some minutes, his companion in the interval walked to the window to
+examine into the appearance of the weather, and perceiving that the rain
+had ceased, and one bright star already twinkled in the sky, he
+suggested the propriety of preparing for their immediate departure, in
+order that they might get over as much of their ground as they possibly
+could before dark.
+
+Having been directed to the path they were to pursue, which was a
+different one from that they had gone over when overtaken by the storm,
+though apparently leading in the same direction, our travellers again
+resumed their route. There was still good light when they started, and
+as long as it continued--but which was a very short time--the novelty
+of the surrounding desert of sand imparted some degree of interest to
+the scene; but, in proportion as the darkness closed in, the spirits of
+the pedestrians began to flag. Still, however, Frank strove to cheer up
+his companion, who was by far the most weary and dispirited of the two,
+and, as a never-failing remedy, began to talk to him about his intended
+comedy--its plot, and some of the most striking scenes and characters.
+The result was just as he had anticipated, and its author, who just
+before had dragged himself along in moody silence, or only replied in
+listless monosyllables, began to chat away upon the much-loved topic in
+the most animated manner possible; and so much were both engrossed with
+the subject, as not to perceive that, whilst traversing one of those
+level pieces of turf that few and far between formed a kind of tiny
+oasis in this desert, they had altogether missed the footpath.
+
+Just at this unfortunate crisis it had become exceedingly dark, and the
+heavy clouds fast gathering overhead promised another shower; which
+promise was fulfilled even more speedily than they anticipated, and down
+came the rain pouring away in hissing torrents upon our pedestrians,
+who, unable to regain the lost footpath, strolled on for some time
+without the remotest notion of the direction they ought to take. They
+were not, however, very long in finding that they had again gotten
+amongst the loose sandbanks, which, being dispersed around in steep
+undulating hillocks, were exceedingly fatiguing to traverse even by
+daylight; it is needless, then, to say how much this difficulty was
+increased when the traveller was involved in darkness, and at the same
+time ignorant of the direction he ought to pursue. Nor was this the
+worst evil to which our two wanderers were exposed. A considerable
+number of mines had been opened in these wastes, and though the working
+of them had been abandoned for several years, yet the shafts were still
+open, many of them wholly unprotected either by rail or embankment, and
+the aperture being even with the surface, and not wider than the mouth
+of an ordinary-sized well, no one could possibly discern his danger in a
+night so dark as it then was. A more fatal snare for entrapping a
+benighted traveller could scarcely have been devised. But neither Vernon
+nor Frank had the remotest suspicion of this danger; or, in fact, any
+fears beyond the dread of spending the night in this howling wilderness.
+
+At last, to their great relief, the rain subsided, and the clouds
+breaking away disclosed the great bear and polar star, which afforded
+them an unerring point to steer by, and raised strong hopes that if the
+sky remained clear, and their legs would only hold out long enough
+against the excessive fatigue of scrambling over the steep hillocks,
+they might, by pursuing a perfectly straight course, at last get clear
+of this desert spot, and reach a better kind of country, where they
+might meet with some habitation or other that would at least afford them
+rest and shelter until daybreak.
+
+Now, when matters have become very bad, any change for the better,
+however slight it be, imparts some cheering influence; and the relief
+our drenched pedestrians felt from the mere ceasing of the rain, and
+exchanging the dull lowering sky for the clear dark-blue starlight,
+proved enough to renovate their drooping hearts, and to excite them to
+make the best use they could of their limbs; so that by persevering they
+at last reached a part of the waste where the travelling became less
+irksome, the drifting sand having, in this particular part, formed
+itself into larger hills, which, in course of time, had become coated
+with short grass, and thus afforded very pleasant ground to walk over.
+But this relief from fatigue was attended with increased peril to the
+erring wanderers, who were now in the very midst of abandoned mines,
+whose shafts yawned around them in every direction, many of which they
+passed almost within a hair's-breadth of, unaware of the dangers that
+thus lay in their path, and only congratulating themselves on the
+improved state of the ground they had to walk over.
+
+Now Vernon Wycherley, who had been for some short time turning the
+matter over in his mind, began to fancy he had found a poser for his
+fellow-traveller, to whom he remarked, that however fortunate they might
+consider themselves when they got out of their present difficulties,
+there could be no possible advantage whatever in their having gotten
+into them.
+
+"I don't agree with you even there," said Frank; "one advantage there
+will be on the score of experience, as it cannot fail to furnish us with
+an accurate knowledge of what a person's sensations are when he loses
+his way in a wilderness of sandbanks in a dark and stormy night in
+November."
+
+"And is that all the advantage you can point out?" interposed Mr Vernon
+Wycherley.
+
+"All? No, not one-half," resumed Frank. "Will it not supply both of us
+with everlasting materials for spinning yarns to match other travellers'
+tales, as well as furnish you with an endless topic for your poetic and
+dramatic pen? And besides, I've no doubt there are lots of other
+advantages we shall eventually derive benefit from, though they may for
+ever remain hidden amongst the many mysteries that man is never designed
+to know."
+
+"You really are the most extraordinary fellow I ever met with," rejoined
+Vernon, "striving, as you ever do, to cook up good of some kind or other
+out of the most evil materials; and every misfortune, by some wonderful
+philosophy hatched up by your ingenious brain, you pretend to convert
+into a benefit. Why, old fellow, Mansel of Trinity actually told
+me--mind I've only his word for it, perhaps not the best authority in
+the world either--but he positively assured me, that you tried to
+convince him that your being taken ill on the third day of your
+examination, which was thus cut short in the middle, and which caused
+you to rank far lower than you otherwise would have done amongst the
+wranglers, was the most fortunate event that possibly could have
+happened to you."
+
+"And that is my firm conviction still," said Frank, with the utmost
+coolness.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Vernon in amazement, "you surely cannot be in earnest
+in what you say?"
+
+"Indeed I am," resumed Frank; "for, had I taken higher honours my dear
+old governor would never have rested satisfied unless I had devoted
+myself either to study of the law or politics, both of which I hate,
+instead of permitting me, at some future time, to become a quiet country
+parson.--But what extraordinary light is that?" he exclaimed, on
+perceiving a narrow stream of fire, apparently at no great distance,
+shoot up above the brow of a low hill just before them?"
+
+"A singular kind of meteor, certainly," observed the poet. "I never saw
+one like it before."
+
+"Very like a sky-rocket; wasn't it?" observed Frank; "and a sky-rocket
+I've no doubt it was; and as this happens to be the night of the 5th of
+November, I dare say it proceeds from the very village to which we are
+bound--an important place too, it should seem, from sporting
+sky-rockets. Ah! there goes another. Huzza! we shall soon be amongst
+them.--Oh! merciful Heaven!" he exclaimed, as his companion suddenly
+vanished from his sight, having stepped inadvertently into the mouth of
+one of those dangerous shafts we have before alluded to. A heavy sound
+denoted the fearful depth to which he had been precipitated, which was
+shortly followed by a loud, hollow crash, caused by a fall of some
+fragments of detached earth, which, from the great depth it had to
+descend, occupied several seconds ere it reached the bottom of this deep
+abyss.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Frank Trevelyan, almost petrified with horror at the dreadful
+catastrophe, which there was just then sufficient light to enable him to
+discern the nature of, remained for some moments riveted to the spot
+from whence he had witnessed its occurrence; but soon partially
+recovering his bewildered faculties, he fell upon his hands and knees,
+and approaching the mouth of the shaft, called out, in a tone of
+agonizing anxiety to his companion, but with scarcely a hope of being
+responded to, when a faint voice, though from an awful depth, assured
+him he was yet alive; but, it was to be feared, dreadfully injured; and,
+in plain truth, he was in a situation of even greater danger than his
+fellow-traveller was then aware of. Poor Vernon Wycherley had fallen
+upwards of sixty feet perpendicularly, and had alighted on a projection
+of the ground, occasioned by a drift that had been made in the workings,
+which alone prevented him from being hurled to the bottom of the pit,
+which was of vast depth, though partially filled with water. As it was,
+his situation was so perilous, that it seemed only to add to the agony
+of impending death, with a very remote prospect of deliverance. Every
+thing depended upon his being able to secure himself upon the point of
+ground where he then rested; and this being loosened by the force with
+which he had fallen upon it, was gradually crumbling from beneath him,
+every particle of which, as it gave way, splashing in the water at the
+bottom of the shaft produced a deafening crash, which sound rendered him
+fearfully conscious of the probability of the whole mass, upon which his
+sole chance for safety depended, sinking under him, before the necessary
+assistance could arrive. This it soon did to such a degree, that, in
+spite of all his efforts, he gradually sank lower and lower, until,
+unable longer to retain a footing, his legs were overhanging the awful
+gulf, and he was rapidly sliding off, when, by a desperate effort, he
+threw up his feet, so that they reached the opposite side of the shaft,
+whilst his body still remained on the projecting drift, against which he
+firmly planted his back, and with his feet on the opposite side, he was
+thus enabled to gain a stationary position; yet, even then, the soil
+continually crumbling away, rendered it doubtful how long he might be
+able to retain it.
+
+Frank Trevelyan was, however, as we before mentioned, unaware of the
+full extent of his friend's peril, and only dreading the effects of what
+had already occurred, he no sooner heard the welcome sound of his voice,
+than, bidding him keep up a good heart, for that he plainly heard the
+voices of a number of persons at no great distance, from some of whom he
+should be able to procure all the aid he required. Having so said, he
+started off at speed towards the spot from whence he could still hear
+the humming noise of many voices, indicating an assemblage of a large
+company of persons no great way off--and so towards this spot he ran at
+a rapid pace, regardless of the risk he incurred in thus racing along,
+as it were blindfold, in so dangerous a locality. But the fact is, a
+thought of his own personal safety never once entered his head: Vernon's
+accident, and its probable consequences, engrossed his every thought.
+Another rocket served to show him he was taking the right direction; and
+at so rapid a pace did he proceed, that the enlivening sounds of voices
+became more and more distinct, when, topping the brow of the hill, a
+blue light, most opportunely lighted up, disclosed to him at a very
+short distance on the opposite side of the valley, a substantial
+gentleman's house, in front of which a motley and mixed medley of some
+couple of hundred people or more--some of them gentlemen, but the
+majority consisting of miners and agricultural labourers--were
+assembled, either as actors, assistants, or lookers-on, at a display of
+various kinds of fire-works that was then going forward.
+
+A sight so welcome to our little hero's hopes imparted fresh vigour to
+his limbs; and he darted down the steep declivity at the imminent danger
+of his neck, but happily reached the bottom in safety, just as the light
+which had aided him in his descent expired, which then made every thing
+appear even darker than before. Consequently, Frank, not espying the
+brook that intervened betwixt himself and the object he was striving to
+reach, tumbled over head and ears into one of its deepest pools; but
+being a swimmer, and the stream but narrow though the pool was deep, he
+soon attained the summit of the opposite bank; when a hedge, almost
+close at hand, alone seemed to separate him from the people whose
+assistance he was so anxious to secure. The hedge was easily clambered
+over, though an impediment he had not anticipated awaited him on the
+other side, in the form of a small fishpond, into which he bundled, and
+so got a second ducking. But as this pond, or rather that portion of it
+into which he had fallen, was not deep, he soon splashed across it, to
+the amazement of the assembled party who witnessed the feat, which a
+fresh blue-light, just then ignited, afforded them ample means of
+doing--the heavy souse he had made in tumbling in, and the splutter he
+made in floundering out again, having already attracted their attention
+to the spot--which, as he seemed to have selected the very widest part
+of the whole pool, was the very last of all others any one could have
+suspected an entry to have been made on the premises.
+
+Unconscious of the surprise he had thus excited, Frank Trevelyan rushed
+forward into the midst of the assembled group, and seizing hold upon a
+stout little old gentleman who seemed to be the leading man of the
+party, endeavoured, as well as his exhausted state would permit, to
+explain the fearful misadventure which had just occurred. The
+intelligence excited an exclamation of horror from all who heard it.
+
+"What a dreadful death!" exclaimed the old gentleman.
+
+"Oh! don't say so, for heaven's sake," cried Frank--"He may be, and I
+fear is, much hurt; but I trust he may yet be saved."
+
+"Impossible!" said half a dozen voices. "Why, the shaft's hundreds of
+feet deep."
+
+"But my companion is yet far from the bottom of it," resumed
+Frank--"Something or other has interposed to prevent his falling lower.
+He spoke, and told me so--Oh! for mercy's sake make haste, and you may
+yet preserve his life."
+
+"What a horrible situation!" exclaimed the old gentleman; "but no time
+must be lost in talking about it, or inquiring into the why or the
+wherefore. So here you, Timothy, John Clarke, Harris, Tom Carpenter, run
+for your lives, every man Jack of you to the farm, where you'll find
+plenty rope;--and here, miners, my dear men--do you bestir
+yourselves--succeed or not, I'll pay you well. Could any thing be more
+fortunate?" continued the old gentleman, soliloquising to
+himself--"could any thing be more fortunate than our show of fire-works
+bringing all the miners of the parish about our ears; the very best
+hands in the world, from woeful experience in like matters, to render
+aid in an accident of this kind."
+
+No one required to be told a second time; and almost ere the words were
+out of the worthy squire's mouth, every body had dispersed here and
+there to procure ropes, and whatever might be required; all of which
+were collected with a celerity almost incredible; and then off started
+plenty of able and willing hands, all in eager haste to accomplish the
+charitable object they were bent upon.
+
+And now we must return to poor Vernon Wycherley, whom we left pent up in
+a narrow dungeon many feet beneath the surface, enveloped in darkness,
+and with difficulty sustaining an irksome and even painful position, by
+keeping his body jammed across, and, as it were, forming a kind of
+bridge over this awful chasm; whilst the loose soil, upon whose unstable
+foundation his only chance of safety depended, gradually crumbling away,
+kept his attention unceasingly alive to the certain fate that awaited
+him when unable longer to retain his hold; the horrors of which were
+still further augmented by the deafening din that thundered forth as
+each detached mass reached the water far, far below. Few men, indeed,
+could have sustained a sufficient degree of self-possession to have held
+on a minute under such trying circumstances; but our tall young hero was
+possessed of that true kind of courage, which, though disinclined to
+seek out danger for mere danger's sake, is never daunted by its
+approach, however fearful or unexpected it may be; and thus he was
+enabled to await his impending fate with calm resignation. Strange, too,
+as it may appear, his thoughts, notwithstanding his appalling situation,
+would now and then wander to common everyday matters. Even the events of
+that very afternoon occurred to him, and the beauteous form he had been
+so much struck with passed in fancy before his eyes. "Would she pity his
+fate?" he asked himself--"alas! no--how was she to know any thing about
+it? Poor Frank, too," he thought, "what can he say to my unexpected, and
+probably fatal accident? I fear all his philosophy will, at least this
+time, fail of convincing him;--it is _all for the best_, but better for
+myself, perhaps, than him, as far as chances of being saved go; for with
+his little legs, it must have been all over with him some time before
+this. But, gracious Heaven! may not such a catastrophe have already
+happened to him?"
+
+The start this last thought excited had well nigh proved fatal--a large
+quantity of earth became detached even by this slight movement, and at
+the same time caused a change of position, which, though very slight,
+was yet sufficient to produce a fresh action on the muscles, previously
+cramped from the unusual strain upon then, and thereby causing so much
+pain, that the sufferer was nearly relaxing his hold, the retention of
+which became more arduous every moment; whilst the time thus occupied
+seemed prolonged to almost tenfold the term of its ordinary duration.
+Never, therefore, was sound more welcome to his ears, than the hoarse
+and agitated tone with which his friend, Frank Trevelyan, shouted out to
+him down the mouth of the shaft; whilst the cheers with which his reply
+was hailed from several persons who had already reached the spot,
+assured him that the much-wished-for relief was at hand. Nor was there,
+indeed, a moment then to lose; for even during the short time it took in
+adjusting the rope, and getting ready a light, with which an adventurous
+miner, well skilled in such matters, was about to descend, poor Vernon's
+strength was rapidly declining; and, conscious of his increasing
+weakness, he called out earnestly to those above to make haste, as he
+could hold on no longer, and that the ground was fast slipping away from
+under him. Anxiously indeed throbbed every breast during the interval
+occupied by the miner's descent, and breathless was the suspense with
+which each awaited the signal to pull away again upon the rope, which
+had scarcely been given, when a heavy rumbling sound, followed by a
+whirring noise, and terminating in a tremendous booming crash, whose
+fearful din and uproar it is impossible to describe, caused a thrill of
+horror to pass through the frame of every bystander; whilst Frank,
+uttering a loud cry, threw himself with his face upon the ground, and
+grasped the turf in all the frenzied agony of grief, till the loud
+cheers that made the welkin ring again, aroused him to a state of
+consciousness, when all his grief was turned into joy by discovering the
+friend whose loss he had just begun to deplore, again safely landed on
+the earth's surface, and apparently but little the worse for his
+extraordinary tumble.
+
+The noise which had caused so much unnecessary alarm was produced by the
+projecting mass, which, loosened by Vernon's violent descent upon it,
+had given way the instant it lost the partial support caused by the
+pressure of his body against it.
+
+Fortunately for the sufferer, there was no lack of medical aid. The
+village doctor, who had been present at the fire-works, had the humane,
+or business-like consideration to betake himself as speedily as possible
+from thence to the place where his services were so likely to be needed;
+whilst the old gentleman, who had taken so active a part in the late
+transaction, had himself also practised the healing art in the early
+part of his life. To the gratification of all present, these two
+gentlemen, after a cursory examination, reported that no bones were
+broken, and that although the right wrist was sprained, and the left leg
+much bruised, yet that the other injuries were of a very trifling
+nature; so much so indeed, that being helped on the back of the pony
+which had brought the old gentleman to the scene of action, the patient
+rode without much difficulty to the mansion from whence the assistance
+had been derived; and which, although then attained by a more circuitous
+route than the one Frank had previously gone, was less than a mile
+distant.
+
+Nothing, indeed, could exceed the kind hospitality of the old gentleman,
+who, as Frank had supposed, turned out to be the proprietor of the house
+and grounds he had made his entry upon in so unusual and unexpected a
+manner. Determined to act out the character of the good Samaritan to
+the very letter, the squire, for so every body called him, would insist
+upon taking the patient to his own house, as well as that Frank should
+remain to assist in taking care of him; alleging that there was no other
+place for miles around where they could be properly accommodated; and if
+there was, they should not go there as long as he had a house to shelter
+them. Vernon was too glad to find any kind of resting-place to refuse so
+generous an offer, and it required very little pressing to induce Master
+Frank Trevelyan to accept the invitation; for, somehow or other, he had
+just at the very moment begun to fancy that the late occurrence was but
+the commencement of a series of adventures, which a further acquaintance
+with their new friend might lead to. But the reasons which induced him
+to take such a fancy into his head, we must for the present forbear
+mentioning.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Vernon Wycherley, in spite of all his late perils, enjoyed a good
+night's rest, and on awakening about daylight on the following morning,
+he found that, barring a little pain and a great deal of stiffness about
+his sprained wrist and bruised leg, combined with slight soreness all
+over, he was not much the worse for his accident, and so he told Frank,
+who just at that very moment had popped his head into the room to see
+how he was getting on.
+
+"And really, friend Frank," observed the patient, "I ought to be
+thankful for the snug quarters I've fallen into, as well as for my
+providential and almost miraculous escape."
+
+"Which," interrupted Frank, "your medical friends here say you must at
+present think as little about as you can, and not talk about at all."
+
+"Well, well, old fellow, their advice is doubtless very good; but it
+shall not for all that prevent my indulging in feelings of thankfulness
+to heaven for my deliverance."
+
+"Not an uncomfortable room this," observed Frank, looking around it.
+
+"Can any thing convey an air of greater comfort?" said Vernon. "There's
+a look of cheerful cleanliness about it that's quite delightful; and as
+for the bed, I never rested my wearied limbs before on one I liked
+better."
+
+"Ay," said Frank, "and all through the house, from attic to cellar, I'll
+venture to say you'll find things just the same."
+
+"Why, you can scarcely have had sufficient time or opportunity to
+ascertain that yet, I should imagine," observed Vernon; "for, with all
+the modest assurance with which you are so superabundantly blessed, you
+can't have already been paul-prying, and poking that impudent nose of
+yours into every hole and corner of it."
+
+"Certainly not," answered Frank, "but I've seen quite enough to form a
+pretty accurate judgment that the bulk will tally with the sample--a
+conclusion I can arrive at without the aid of my nasal organ. A fact may
+be ascertained without one's poking their nose to the bottom of it--a
+very unsatisfactory, as well as uncertain, mode of proceeding, take my
+word for it. Why, I wouldn't undertake to ascertain even the height or
+depth of a molehill by so uncertain a process."
+
+"And will you never forget that unlucky blunder of mine?" asked Mr
+Vernon Wycherley.
+
+"Never, I promise you," replied Frank.
+
+"Well, then, if you can't forget it, I suppose you can cease talking
+about it; and, by way of a more pleasing subject, suppose you tell me
+something about the people here--the old gentleman, the only member of
+the family I've yet seen, appears to possess a very host of
+good-nature."
+
+"And a very good-natured host he has proved," interrupted Frank.
+
+"That's right," said Vernon;--"very well for you; so book it, to tell
+again, and make the most of it."
+
+"I shall do no such thing," rejoined Frank, "as no words I can employ
+would do justice to our honest entertainer, who is without exception the
+happiest and merriest little fellow I ever met with, possessing a
+countenance full of mirth and good-humour, and a heart overflowing with
+benevolence--a downright hearty good fellow, a thorough trump--a regular
+brick, and no mistake at all about the matter, as our little friend,
+Major Rodd, would say. And I say, Vernon, you've no idea what a
+delightful evening I spent after I'd tuck'd you in for the night. I
+never in my life met so entertaining a man before--a mere glimpse of his
+good-natured face is sufficient to drive away a very legion of
+blue-devils, although, by the by, those are fiends that never haunt me;
+and then we had a famous spread by way of supper--jugged hare--a
+woodcock--the first I've yet seen for the season--and lots of snipes."
+
+"All of which, I dare say, you did ample justice to," interposed Mr
+Vernon Wycherley.
+
+"More than justice, friend Vernon--more than justice; for I ate the best
+portion of the woodcock, in addition to a fair allowance of the jugged
+hare I'd taken before--and then finished off with the snipes--the whole
+being accompanied with some excellent home-brewed ale."
+
+"Well, enough about the supper; but tell me, was there nobody but
+yourself and the squire to partake of it?"
+
+"Oh yes! the doctor staid to supper, but was obliged to start and visit
+a patient who had sent for him, which compelled him to commence a five
+miles' ride ere he had well time to finish his meal."
+
+"You saw no ladies, then?"
+
+"Yes, but I did though--that is, I saw the lady of the house; and much
+as I liked master, I don't know but I liked mistress more--such a dear,
+kind-hearted creature--and so good-looking, Vernon--one of the sort that
+would never look old, or grow ugly, even if she lived to the age of
+Methusalem. And her fondness for her old man is quite delightful--none
+of your my-dearing or my-loving nonsense, or anxiety about every thing
+he likes to eat and drink disagreeing with him; but good, downright,
+honest, hearty affection, which was beautifully displayed in the happy
+smile with which she regarded the old fellow, and witnessed how truly he
+seemed to be enjoying himself. That's what I'd recommend all wives to do
+who wish to preserve their good looks. A woman's beauty depends so much
+upon expression, that if that's spoilt, farewell to all her charms, and
+which nothing tends more to bring about than a countenance soured with
+imaginary cares, instead of lighted up with thankfulness for innumerable
+blessings--that's what makes half the women wither away into wrinkles so
+early in life; whilst nothing renders their beauty so lasting as that
+placid look of pure benevolence, which emanates from a heart full of
+thankfulness to God--affection for those nearest and dearest to them,
+and good-will towards all mankind."
+
+"Thank ye, Frank--thank ye for these pretty little sentiments--very good
+remarks, certainly, and true; but I think you'd better keep them to
+bestow upon the future Mrs Trevelyan; I dare say you may find them
+useful then. And now, have you any further news to tell me this
+morning?"
+
+"Yes, I believe I have. I was just going to tell you about the fair
+ladies we met on the downs yesterday; but I've a great mind not to do
+so."
+
+"Eh? what? where?" interrupted Vernon. "Oh! do tell me--have you seen
+them?"
+
+"No," answered Frank demurely, "I haven't seen even the shadow of their
+petticoats."
+
+"Is this Squire Potts', then? eh!"
+
+"Not impossible," rejoined Frank with most provoking coolness; "at
+least," he continued, "I know nothing to the contrary, for never having
+heard our worthy squire's cognomen, I see no reason why he may not be
+called Potts as well as any thing else."
+
+"Pshaw," said Vernon impatiently, "and is that all you have to tell me?
+I really fancied you had heard or seen something."
+
+"And so I have," rejoined Frank.
+
+"Whom, then? eh! Do tell me!" demanded Vernon, eagerly.
+
+"Timothy," replied Frank.
+
+"Timothy!" reiterated the poet.
+
+"Ay, Timothy, to be sure; what d'ye think of that, Mr Vernon Wycherley?"
+
+"Why, it leads me to hope," replied that gentleman, "that we may meet
+the ladies themselves ere long, or"--
+
+No _or_ in the matter," interrupted Frank; "I've made up my mind to meet
+them both at breakfast this very morning; and no mistake, as our gallant
+little friend the major says--for I'm pretty certain those lovely birds
+of paradise roosted last night somewhere or other about the premises."
+
+"But as you say you've seen Timothy, haven't you been able to get any
+thing out of him?"
+
+"No," replied Frank; "for as all his business seems to be confined to
+out-of-doors work, he only came once or twice into the room where we
+were upon some trifling excuse or other; but, in reality, I've no doubt
+to have a peep at your humble servant, whom the rogue instantly
+recognised; and when no one was looking, he tipped me a sly wink of the
+eye, at the same time pointing with his thumb over his shoulder, and
+directing his eyes towards the ceiling, thereby indicating, as I
+thought, that those I wished the most to see had already betaken
+themselves to bed."
+
+"Then I trust they were not packed off on purpose that you might not see
+them?" observed the young poet.
+
+"Quite the reverse, Vernon, I assure you, for I'm quite confident they
+were so packed off in order that they mightn't see me."
+
+"You surprise me indeed--can it be possible that one so affable and
+open-hearted as our squire here appears to be, should hesitate to let
+his daughters see so harmless a specimen of the human race as my
+particular friend Mr Francis Trevelyan? But ah! I see how it is," Vernon
+continued, and his countenance fell as he said so. "I see how it is--he
+doubts our being gentlemen; a circumstance quite sufficient to account
+for the absence of the young ladies."
+
+"Don't let that notion trouble you," interposed our little hero; "your
+particular friend, Mr Francis Trevelyan, as you have been pleased to
+style him, has removed every unfavourable impression a first glance of
+your two yards of humanity might have produced--you know the old saying,
+'Show me your associates and I'll tell you what you are.'"
+
+"Then," interposed Vernon, "the impression here must be, that I'm one of
+the most impudent dogs living."
+
+"Nothing of the kind," resumed Frank; "that is, if they judge of you by
+your humble servant, whom they consider an exceedingly modest young man,
+which was the sole reason the two girls were kept out of the way, and
+sent off so early to bed; though by the by I'm almost ashamed to say"--
+
+"Don't talk of your shame, Frank," interrupted Vernon, "a very different
+kind of thing, though too often confounded with modesty. It's the
+latter--It's your modesty--I wish to hear about."
+
+"Why, the plain state of the case," rejoined Frank, "was, that our
+good-natured friend the squire, from an imperfect knowledge of the
+natural boldness of my disposition, (call it impudence, if you will,)
+supposed me incapable of facing the battery of laughter my extraordinary
+appearance would have exposed me to, had I come within view of his fair
+daughters."
+
+"Your appearance is queer enough at all times I must confess," observed
+Vernon, "and still more so in your travelling costume; but still hardly
+enough so, I should have thought, to have produced quite so powerful an
+effect as you have just mentioned."
+
+"You wouldn't say so, or have thought so, either, had you seen the
+strange figure of fun I made. Just now for a moment fancy my limited
+proportions enveloped in the squire's ample toggery--(who more than
+makes up in breadth all he wants in height,)--only fancy me so attired
+and where could you look for a more complete personification of a living
+scarecrow?"
+
+"I can fancy it all," said Vernon Wycherley, laughing exceedingly at the
+idea of his companion so arrayed; "but do tell me," he continued, "what
+could have induced you to put on so ridiculous a masquerade."
+
+"What else could I do?" rejoined Frank, "unless I turned in supperless
+to bed, or had it brought up to me there, neither of which suited my
+inclination--for, you see, what the rain we encountered had left undone
+in the drenching way, the brook I blundered over head and ears into had
+completely effected; and though my subsequent souse just afterwards into
+the fishpond could make me no wetter, that deficiency was amply made up
+for in mud; and as I had thrown off my knapsack, I had no precise notion
+where, in order that I might run all the lighter without it, which has
+only just now been picked up and returned to me, and so not a dry rag of
+my own to help myself to, I was right glad to rig myself out in the
+squire's clothes, which, fitting me like what our friend the admiral
+would say, 'purser's shirt upon a handspike,' made me look for all the
+world like an unstuffed effigy of a Guy Fawkes--a figure so
+superlatively ridiculous, that two light-hearted young girls, who were
+unable to help wellnigh laughing themselves from off their horses' backs
+at the sight of a youthful poet employing his nose as a pick-axe, could
+scarcely be expected to look unmoved on so ludicrous an object as I
+was."
+
+"Spare me, Frank--spare me!" exclaimed Vernon. "How shall I be able to
+remove the ridiculous association which must be connected with that
+unlucky tumble?"
+
+"The more important one you made so shortly afterwards, I'll undertake
+to say, will produce the desired effect," said Frank.
+
+"Oh! don't talk about that now, pray," interposed Vernon with a shudder,
+and turning pale at the sudden recollection of his recent peril; which
+Frank perceiving, and aware of the indiscretion he had so thoughtlessly
+committed by alluding to, and to avert his friend's mind from dwelling
+any longer upon it, he rattled on as fast as he could about various
+other matters, describing in glowing terms all he had seen, heard, or
+conjectured, about the place they were then in. "What a contrast," he
+said, "the mere separation of a narrow valley has made between the
+desolate wastes we have traversed for the last two days, and the fertile
+spot where we now are, which, though deficient in timber, is beyond
+measure fertile in corn, and contains, I am told, some excellent
+shooting--that is partridge shooting; for a pheasant is here a kind of
+_rara avis in terris_, and as little likely to be met with as the very
+black swan itself; but then it's a fine country for woodcocks, whilst
+the bottoms almost swarm with snipes; all of which the squire has
+promised to show me in the course of the day, and for days to come, if I
+feel so inclined; for he won't hear a word of our leaving for at least
+ten days, or a week at the very shortest."
+
+"But how, my dear fellow, can we accept an invitation of this kind from
+an utter stranger, whom"----
+
+"No stranger at all," interrupted Frank. "He tells me your governor is
+one of his oldest and most esteemed friends; and as for myself--but
+stay--hush!--hark! I hear the old gentleman's voice, and he's coming
+this way too, or I'm very much mistaken."
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The squire was one of those persons who generally give audible notice of
+their approach as soon as they enter their house, or pass through from
+one part of it to another; and our two heroes heard him, whilst in the
+act of ascending the stairs, bawling out to the ladies above that it was
+high time for them to be up and moving; and hammering away at the first
+door he came to, he called out--"Come, come, young ladies, wake up, wake
+up--chase away your balmy slumbers, and kick Morpheus out of bed without
+further ceremony.
+
+  'Come Miss Mary,
+            [_"Her loved name!" exclaimed
+                Vernon within._
+  All contrary,
+  How does your garden grow?
+  With silver bells,
+  And cockle shells
+  And cockles all of a row.'
+
+"Nothing like early rising for planting the roses in your cheeks--and
+if that argument," said he to himself, "won't make a young woman bundle
+herself from under the bed-clothes, I don't know what will." And then he
+walked on to the room in which Frank had slept, and which was the
+adjoining one to Vernon's, he began to drum away upon the door there;
+calling out, at the same time--"Come, Frank--Mr Trevelyan--if you intend
+to have a view of the sea before breakfast, as you proposed last
+evening, it's high time you should be up and stirring."
+
+"I'm up and stirred already, sir," said Frank, popping his head out of
+the adjoining room door.
+
+"Yes; you're up to any thing, I see," said the squire, good-humouredly
+extending his hand to his guest, as he entered the room; "and how's my
+patient this morning?" he continued, advancing towards the bed. "Ah!" he
+said, having felt Vernon's pulse, "just as I hoped, and indeed fully
+expected--you couldn't possibly be doing better; a little--very little
+care for a day or two, is all you seem to require. I looked in before
+this morning to see how you were getting on, and found you snoring away
+so comfortably, that, judging all was as it should be, I wouldn't
+disturb you with my inquiries."
+
+"Snoring!" repeated Vernon, in alarmed surprise, looking exceedingly
+disconcerted, and doubting almost whether he had heard aright.
+
+"Ay, snoring," resumed the squire; "but never mind that, my hearty
+fellow--the best men snore sometimes, take my word for it; and, I dare
+say, it wasn't loud enough to disturb the young ladies. It was pretty
+loud, though, I must confess; but still I think it could hardly reach so
+far, particularly when your door was shut."
+
+"But I found it wide open," observed Frank, by no means ill-amused to
+see how annoyed his companion was at the conviction of having snored,
+and the possibility of such sounds having reached the ears of one _so
+lovely_. Oh, how Vernon longed to hurl his pillow, or even any harder
+missile within his reach, at the saucy little fellow's head who was
+looking so provokingly pleased with his distress, and which the presence
+of the squire alone restrained him from making a left-handed attempt at,
+for his right was, as we before mentioned, disabled for the present by
+his late accident. But Vernon was too good a judge to attempt any thing
+of the kind, or show any exhibition of displeasure before his kind
+entertainer who, telling him he must act as his doctor, having, as he
+said, been bred to, and practised for several years in the medical
+profession, examined into the state of his sprains and bruises, and told
+him he would soon be all right again, but that he must be content to
+spend a few hours longer in bed, where his breakfast of gruel should be
+sent up to him; and then, accompanied by Frank, he took his departure.
+
+The old gentleman, however, gave the ladies a fresh hail as he passed by
+their bedroom door, to which two or three voices replied simultaneously,
+but in tones far less musical than Frank expected; and it seemed to him
+very different from what he had heard from the fair equestrians of the
+preceding day, when they kindly expressed their hopes that the sprawling
+poet had received no injury from his tumble.
+
+"Ah! I see how it is," thought he to himself; "these pretty creatures,
+like too many of their sex, have a couple of tones to their voices--one
+for home, and the other for company. There's one-half of my admiration
+gone already." But wishing, at the same time, to put the best
+construction he could upon the matter, he tried to persuade himself that
+they must have taken cold, poor things! in consequence of having been
+caught in the heavy shower of the preceding day; and this it was which
+had caused the hoarseness of their voices. "I have known it have that
+effect before now on other people," he thought, "and why might not the
+same happen to these fair damsels; who, though lovely as angels, can
+scarcely escape from 'all the ills that flesh is heir to,' amongst which
+a cold, attended with hoarseness, can hardly be reckoned the worst?"
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[38] Any collection of houses, or even a single farm-house, is termed a
+town in Cornwall.
+
+[39] In Cornwall, any number beyond two is termed a pair.
+
+[40] "Bal" signifies a mine.
+
+
+
+
+A PEEP INTO THE WHIG PENNY POST-BAG.
+
+
+  MY DEAR MEMBER--I send you a powerful petition,
+  For absolute, instant, entire abolition.
+  This question our Chamber is taking a lead in
+  Composed, as you know, of the Flowers of Dunedin,
+  Intelligent Druggists, rhetorical Quakers,
+  Broad acres--a few--but no want of wiseacres.
+  All are perfectly clear that these horrid restrictions
+  Are the proximate cause of our present afflictions,
+  Obstructing the bowels, as 'twere, of the nation,
+  And entirely deranging our whole circulation.
+
+  To expel these bad humours, we earnestly urge
+  A dose, night and morning, of Russell's _new_ Purge;
+  Not the old wishy-washy affair of the _fixture_,
+  But the new out-and-out Morisonian mixture.
+
+  In the mean time 'tis well that the Noble concoctor
+  Has succeeded in ousting the family Doctor.
+  Peel's a perfect old wife--twaddles on about diet,
+  About exercise, air, mild aperients, and quiet;
+  Would leave Nature alone to her vigour elastic,
+  And never exhibit a drug that is drastic.
+  Doctor Russell's the man for a good searching pill,
+  Or a true thorough drench that will cure or will kill.
+  For bleeding and blistering, and easy bravado,
+  (Not to speak of hot water,) he passes Sangrado.
+  He stickles at nothing, from simple phlebotomy,
+  As our friend Sidney said, to a case of lithotomy:
+  And I'll venture to say, that this latest specific,
+  When taken, will prove to be no soporific.
+  Might I just hint how happy 'twould make me to be
+  Sole Agent down here for the great Patentee?
+
+  _Entre nous_, what can mean these unpleasant surmises?
+  I scarce know what prognosis to form of the crisis:
+  And our friends, quite perplex'd at this puzzling delay,
+  Can't imagine how scruples should stand in the way.
+  Must the grand Opus Magnum be brought to a fix,
+  Because some jarring drugs are unwilling to mix?
+  His lordship, I'm certain, would cut the thing shorter,
+  If he'd borrow a touch of my pestle and mortar.
+
+  Ere we part, I must give you a hint of the truth:
+  We Free Churchmen can't stomach your views of Maynooth.
+  If you value your seat, as a friend I would urge ye,
+  Steer clear of endowing the Catholic Clergy;
+  A bolus (or bonus) so very unhallow'd
+  Would in Scotland, I'm sure, not be easily swallow'd.
+
+  By an early reply we should all be elated,
+  And 'twould tell if from Windsor again it were dated.
+
+
+  DEAR DRUGGIST---You've open'd your jocular vein,
+  And I fain would reply in the same pleasant strain;
+  But let those laugh who win--I have only to say,
+  That we are--_as we were:_ and all done by Lord Grey--
+  The most arrogant, wayward, capricious of men,
+  (Though this last little sketch must not seem from my pen.)
+  Only think of objecting that Palmerston's name
+  In a fortnight would set East and West in a flame:
+  About mere peace or war a commotion to make,
+  When the Party's existence was plainly at stake!
+  When office was offer'd, to cast it behind,
+  And to talk of such trash as the good of mankind!
+  It is clear, my good friend, such a crotchety prig
+  Has but little pretence to the title of Whig.
+
+  On the part I have played in this luckless transaction,
+  I confess I look back with unmix'd satisfaction.
+  From the first I said _this_--and 'tis pleasant to feel
+  Thus at ease with one's self--"I'm for total repeal.
+  Stick to that, my Lord John, and all scruples I stifle:
+  Any office, or none, is to me a mere trifle;"
+  (Though, of course, my dear Mac, for the purest of ends,
+  I was willing to help both myself and my friends.)
+  "Any office I'll take, that can give you relief--
+  From the Whip of the House to Commander-in-chief."
+  Oh! If all of the party had acted as I did,
+  In how noble a band would Lord John have presided!
+
+  But--"'tis best as it is:" we may grieve, yet we shouldn't:
+  Peel can carry the measure--'tis certain we couldn't:
+  Though we hoped, if our reign was once fairly begun,
+  It might last till--we did what was not to be done.
+
+  I think, (though thus leaving old views in the lurch,)
+  We should _not_ have establish'd the Catholic Church.
+  To speak for my colleagues, in me would be vanity:
+  They might differ; but I should have thought it insanity.
+
+  In the hope that our friends in Auld Reeky are "brawly,"
+  I remain yours, in confidence, T. B. Mac----y.
+
+
+EAST AND WEST.
+
+  Sweet is the song, whose radiant tissue glows
+    With many a colour of the orient sky;
+    Rich with a theme to gladden ear and eye--
+  The love-tale of the Nightingale and Rose.
+
+  Nor speeds the lay less surely to the mark
+    That paints in homely hues two neighbours sweet,
+    Born on our own bleak fields, companions meet,
+  The modest Mountain-daisy and the Lark.
+
+  The fond attachments of a flower and bird!
+    That things so fair a mutual bond obey,
+    And gladly bask in love's delightful ray,
+  Who would deny, and doubt the poet's word?
+
+  Or who would limit love's and fancy's reign?
+    Their hardy growth here springs as fresh and fair,
+    Far from the sun and summer gale, as there
+  Where Gul for Bulbul decks her gay domain.
+
+  'Tis poesy, whose hands with kindly art,
+    Of kindred feelings weaves this mystic band,
+    To knit the Scottish to the Iranian strand,
+  And reach wherever beats a human heart.
+
+
+
+
+AN APOLOGY FOR A REVIEW.
+
+
+It is not our general practice to review books of travels; nor, in
+truth, in noticing these little volumes, do we introduce any exception
+to that general rule. Under what precise category in literature they may
+fall, would admit, as Sir Thomas Browne observes as to the song sung by
+the Sirens, of a wide solution. Plainly, however, in the ordinary sense
+of the term, travels they are not. They will form no substitute for
+Murray's admirable hand-books; for on the merits or demerits of
+competing hostelries, which Mr Murray justly regards as a question of
+vital importance--the very be-all, and often end-all of a tour--these
+volumes throw no light. In statistics they are barren enough. To the
+gentlemen of the rule and square, who think that the essential spirit of
+architecture can be fathomed by measurement, they will be found a blank.
+And though abounding in allusions, which betray, without obtruding, an
+intimate acquaintance with ancient literature, and sufficient in
+congenial minds to awaken a train of memories, classic or romantic,
+medieval or modern; they contain few dates, no dissertations, no
+discussion of vexed questions as to the ownership of statues, baths,
+temples, or circuses; or the other disputed points which have so long
+been the subject of strife in the antiquarian arena. And, really, when
+we consider the way in which, in the course of a century, all the old
+landmarks on the antiquarian map have been broken up, and the monuments
+of antiquity made to change hands; how Nibbi supersedes Winckelman, only
+to be superseded in turn; how a temple is converted into a senate-house;
+one man's villa into another; how Caracalla is driven from his circus to
+make way for Romulus; how Peace resigns her claim to a Pagan temple to
+make way for a Christian basilica of Constantine; how statues, arches,
+gardens, baths, forums, obelisks, or columns, are in a constant state of
+transition, so far as regards their nomenclature; and, to borrow the
+conceit of Quevedo, nothing about Rome remains permanent save that which
+was fugitive--namely, old Tiber himself; we rather feel grateful to the
+tourist who is content to take up the last theory without further
+discussion, and to spare us the grounds on which the last change of
+title has been adopted. What, indeed, matters it, in so far as the
+imagination is concerned, by what emperor, consul, or dictator, these
+mighty remains were reared or ruined? Whether these Titanian halls first
+echoed to the voices of Pagan or the chant of Christian priests? Whether
+this inexplicable labyrinth of vaults and cells, and buried gardens
+which overrun the Esquiline, where the work of art and nature is so
+strangely melted and fused together by "the alchymy of vegetation,"
+really formed part of the golden house of the monstrous Nero; or of the
+baths of him, the gentlest of the Cæsars, who, when he had gone to rest
+without doing a good action, regretted that he had lost a day? Equally
+they remain monuments of the grandeur of the minds which gave them
+birth; mysterious, suggestive--perhaps the more suggestive, the more
+awakening curiosity and interest, from the very obscurity in which their
+origin, purposes, or fortunes are shrouded. And if individual
+associations become dim or doubtful, they merge in the clear light which
+these gigantic fragments, betraying, even in ruin, their original beauty
+of proportion and grandeur of conception, throw upon the lofty and
+enduring character of the Roman people.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These volumes, then, as we have said, will neither replace Murray, nor
+form a substitute for Eustace. Neither is their interest mainly owing to
+mere vivid or literal portraiture; by painting in words, as an artist
+would do by forms and colours, and enrolling before us a visible
+panorama, such as might present a clear image of the scenes described
+here to those who had never witnessed them. Their charm--for a charm, we
+trust, they will have to a considerable number of readers--arises simply
+from the truth with which they seize, and the happy expression in which
+they embody, _the spirit of the spot_; marking, by a few expressive
+touches, the moral as well as the physical aspect of the scene, and
+awakening in the reader a train of associations often novel in
+conception, as well as felicitous in expression; but which appear in
+general so congenial and appropriate, that we are willing to persuade
+ourselves they are a reproduction of thoughts, and dreams, and fancies,
+which had occurred to ourselves in contemplating the same objects. Hence
+it is to those, who have already witnessed the scenes described, that
+these volumes address themselves. They do not paint pictures, but revive
+impressions; they call up or steady imperfectly defined images; bring
+forward into light struggling memories;--and, by a union of brief
+description, classic or historical allusions, picturesque and
+significant epithets, and reflections hinted at, rather than wrought
+out, they very successfully accomplish their object--that of realizing
+to the eye of the mind that distinctive and prevailing expression which
+each aspect of nature, like each movement of the human face, wears in
+itself, and is calculated to awaken in others--cheerful, sombre,
+majestic, or awe-inspiring, according to the nature of the scene, the
+associations past and present with which it is surrounded, and the
+conditions, or, as a painter would term it, accidents under which it has
+been viewed.
+
+While we say that Mr Whyte has generally been very successful in his
+aim, we must not be understood to express by any means an unqualified
+probation of the taste in which these volumes are conceived, or the plan
+on which they are constructed. The train of reflection is _sometimes_
+too obviously an afterthought--not spontaneously evoked at the moment by
+the influences of the scene, but evidently devised and wrought up into
+point and _apparent_ application by a subsequent process. We have dreams
+which were never dreamt, and reveries which are any thing but
+involuntary. There are too many Tristram Shandy transitions, sundry
+cockneyisms in expression, (we use the word in a wide sense,) and one or
+two jokes which make the blood run cold. Lastly, we are compelled to say
+that we repose much more confidence in the writer's taste in
+architecture than in painting. It is enough to say that he evinces no
+feeling for the more simple and majestic compositions of Raphael; while
+the powerful contrasts, and magic of light and shadow displayed by
+Guercino and Tintoret, seem to exercise an undue fascination on his
+mind. It is only to the injurious effect produced by these blemishes
+that we can attribute the slender success with which the volumes have
+been attended; for at this moment we do not recollect having seen them
+noticed by any of those who assume to themselves the right of
+distributing the rewards and punishments of criticism.
+
+Let us now look at one or two of Mr Whyte's sketches of Rome, or rather
+of the train of thought called up by wanderings among its ruins, tracing
+the broken sweep of its ancient walls, or wandering among the stately
+aqueducts and nameless tombs of its dreary Campagna.
+
+     _Fragments of Italy and the Rhineland._ London: 1841._
+
+     _A Pilgrim's Reliquary._ By the REV. T. H. WHYTE, M.A. London:
+     1845.
+
+     THE WALLS OF ROME.
+
+     "I wonder whether it be the fault of mine own inattention, or the
+     absence of good taste in others, that I have heard and read so
+     little of the Walls of Rome! To me they rank among the few, out of
+     all the Wonders of the Eternal City that have exceeded my
+     expectations. Solitude, their peculiar characteristic, has great
+     charms for a companionless enthusiast like myself: it is, moreover,
+     a description of solitude, the very reverse of melancholy. Mile
+     after mile have I repeatedly roamed along the outer Pomoerium of
+     those solitary rampires, and encountered perhaps a goatherd and his
+     pretty flock, the tinkle of whose bells formed the only
+     accompaniment to the honey notes of the blackbird:--or, perhaps, in
+     sonorous solemnity, some great Bell would suddenly boom upon the
+     silence, and be taken up in various tones from a hundred quarters,
+     no vestige, mean time, of Minster or Monastery being visible;
+     nothing but that enormous Adamantine Circlet rearing itself into
+     the sky on one side, and the gateways and walls of villas and
+     vineyards occupying the other. You might fancy those tolling chimes
+     belonging to some City hidden by Enchantment.
+
+     "Still, as I have proceeded in my mood, half enjoying, half
+     moralizing the scene, those hundred towers, like Titan warders
+     placed around the Seven Hills, would each after each look down upon
+     me from their high and silent stations; till, as I came to know
+     them, they seemed to meet my gaze with the sedate and pleasant
+     welcome of a venerable friend. They were the incessant associates
+     of my solitude, and I was never wearied of them. Of a surety their
+     vast Circuit (fifteen miles) gives ample time and space enough for
+     rumination!
+
+     "Their colossal cubits are the most perfect exemplar of
+     Architectural sublimity. Their dismantled Battlements have no
+     Watchman but Antiquity, no Herald but Tradition, and hear no
+     clamour louder than the Church or Convent bells, or the dirge which
+     the wind wails over them through the melancholy Cypress and the
+     moaning Pine. The broad old belt of short flowery turf at the base,
+     the Violet, the Gilliflower, and the vermilion spotted Mignonette,
+     on their breast, and the chaplet of wilding shrubs upon their
+     brows, give them a charm in the most common-place observation. With
+     me, truant as I have been to the Classic page, it seemed a natural
+     process of my desultory mind, to revert from a contemplation of
+     such pensive dreamy realities of waking enjoyment as I have
+     described, to visions, startling in their august grandeur, of the
+     everlasting past,--visions of their great Architect, Aurelian; of
+     their greater Restorer, Belisarius!
+
+     "These monstrous walls! I cannot divest myself of a certain awe and
+     fascination, as if of a supernatural appearance, which attracts and
+     detains me about them; not even the Colosseum more. There seems
+     something so ghastly, so spectral, in the mockery of their
+     unnecessary circuit, their impregnable strength, their countless
+     towers, arrogating to themselves the circumference of a day's
+     journey--and all for what? To guard a city, which, once dropsied
+     with grandeur, has now shrunk with the disease into comparative
+     atrophy; a city, which, having boastfully demanded their aid, has
+     now abandoned them for miles. It is as though one should wrap a
+     triumphal robe about a corpse, or place a giant's helmet upon a
+     skeleton's skull. It is no poetical figure to look upon them as an
+     eternal satire upon the great littleness of empire. The melancholy
+     pride of their dimensions needs not the hollow wind, which howls
+     around their towers, or the wondering sun, which lingers over their
+     shrubby ramparts, to proclaim in the ears of thrones and senates
+     the warning of Rome's ambition, the moral of Rome's downfall! It is
+     but a poor recompense to their present unhonoured solitude, that
+     their melancholy battlements are emblazed at intervals with the
+     pontifical escutcheons. Those triple tiaras and cross keys, so
+     perpetually recurring, do not half so much consecrate as they are
+     themselves consecrated by the lonely bulwarks of this desolated
+     city of the Cæsars!"
+
+
+THE VILLA BORGHESE.
+
+     "With the exception of an ostentatious parade of paltry equipages,
+     tarnished liveries, and wretched horses on the Corso, and a frantic
+     attempt at an opera, Rome, in May, is a picturesque receptacle for
+     monks, and goatherds, and nightingales, and bells. Like some
+     haunted place, it appears to be beloved and frequented only by the
+     apparitions of an obsolete race. Yet many minds will find it
+     infinitely more congenial thus, than amidst all the popular
+     splendours of its holy week.
+
+     "Her tranquillity, nay, her very desolation, is enchanting. The
+     summer's-day circuit of the Seven Hills seems all your own. You
+     wander whither you will, meeting few, and disturbed by none. In
+     short, the very antiquity of the place is one perpetual novelty,
+     and its grave monotony a serene recreation. I write this in the
+     Villa Borghese, beneath groves of acacias, redolent with odours,
+     and booming with myriads of bees, the yellow hay in aromatic
+     quiles, pitched like pavilions below the old red walls of Rome, and
+     nightingales and blackbirds contending in gushes of ecstatic song!
+
+     "Though not new to me, I had little conception of the intrinsic
+     loveliness of the Villa Borghese till to-day. Picture to yourself a
+     large village of the most variegated and romantic character;
+     Church, casino, albergo, and farm, scattered amidst the turfy
+     glades of a forest; and that forest composed of such trees as the
+     beech, the elm, the ilex, and, above all, the sovereign pinaster,
+     whose enormous trunks seem to have _condescended_ to arrange
+     themselves into avenues; the most charmingly artificial glades of
+     the glossiest verdure, and vistas haunted by legions of dim waning
+     statues; hero or demigod, nymph or faun, for ever intermingling but
+     never interfering with each other; their various places of
+     rendezvous emblazed with flowers of a thousand colours, and
+     flashing with fountains of the most graceful fancies possible;
+     while every vista discloses some antique portico, or rotunda, or
+     vestibule of those gems that men call temples! Picture these scenes
+     on some such May-day as this,
+
+        'When God hath shower'd the earth;'
+
+     the dark evergreens rejoicing in the rain-drops, and the new-born
+     leaves of silky green, transparent with the moisture, which had
+     reluctantly ceased to shine on their delicate tapestries. Crown all
+     this with a country palace, of lofty Italian magnificence, a
+     treasure-house of antiquity, painting, and sculpture, disclosing
+     the statues, frescoes, and gilding, of its noble façade and massive
+     campaniles, at the extremity of its darkest grove of evergreens,
+     glittering in this rainbow sunlight, and you may have some
+     impression of the Villa Borghese.
+
+     "Such silence and solemnity, that you would never dream you were
+     near the busy haunt of men, were it not, that a long linked
+     diapason of bells, modulated by every possible inflection of their
+     lofty language, convinced you that you were basking amidst all this
+     voluptuous quiet, beneath the walls of a concealed city, and that
+     city--ROME!"
+
+
+THE RUINS.--THE CAMPAGNA.
+
+     "This afternoon we drove along the Via Appia Nova. The sun, rolling
+     his chariot amidst a cavalcade of wild clouds, along the ruddy
+     array of shattered arches, variegating the grassy plain with its
+     uncouth palatial and sepulchral ruins, in ebony and gold,
+     illuminated the purple and green recesses of the Sabine hills, and
+     caressing with capricious fleetness their woody towers and towns,
+     bequeathed to the north a calm blue vault, wherein, as in some
+     regal hall of state, the dome of St Peter's, the rotunda of the
+     Colosseum, the vast basilicas of Santa Maria Maggiore, and San
+     Giovanni Laterana, that embattled sepulchre of Cecilia, and those
+     lofty masses of the Pamfilipine, which hovered in the horizon like
+     a feathery vapour, proclaim the illustrious domicile of Rome.
+
+     "The Temple of the Divus Rediculus (or whatever other title it may
+     rejoice in) is one of those lovely little phantasies of
+     architecture that one might imagine a London citizen would have
+     coveted for a summer-house. The brilliant contrast between its
+     vermilion pilasters and its pale yellow wall, the delicate moulding
+     of its slender bricks and the elaborate elegance of its decoration,
+     not to omit its pleasing, though diminutive proportions, arising
+     from the wild green turf of this melancholy region, can scarcely
+     fail of affecting with at least a spark of fancy, the flattest
+     spirit of this work-day world. For my own part, I should be much
+     less disposed to pronounce it a temple than a tomb; and, in fact,
+     the whole appearance of this wide dull tract seems eminently
+     adapted to sepulchral piles. It is most melancholy, most funereal;
+     and even that glorious sun, and those majestic aqueducts, soaring,
+     as they do, to salute his lustre, and to emulate his glory, cannot
+     efface the feeling, that such a scene, and such memorials, should
+     be visited only in the gloom of a sad and stormy sky; either amidst
+     the sympathetic moans of an autumnal tempest, or the waning and
+     mournful glimpses of an autumnal twilight."
+
+
+THE COLOSSEUM.
+
+     "It was the twilight, that brief, that exquisite interval, which
+     flings its purporoseate veil between the palace gates of day and
+     night. You might have fancied it the car of Diana rolling on to
+     some Olympian festival, and preceded by Venus, the only other
+     planet visible in the sky. What a canopy!--Not the gaudiest
+     velabrum that the ostentatious munificence of her Cæsars extended
+     above its gilded cordage, ever equalled the empyrean pomp of this
+     soft sky. Never could the artificial rains of perfumed water
+     surpass the dewy fragrance that steals around from evening's
+     thousand urns.
+
+     "I say it was the twilight when we entered these gloomy corridors,
+     whose solemn circuit uncoils its colonnades around the lordly pile;
+     but before we had traversed half their extent night began her
+     reign, and when we entered the arena it was difficult to say
+     whether those faintly flushed skies, that single sparkling star, or
+     the pallid hectic of the youthful moon produced the pathetic light
+     that illuminated this enormous architecture.
+
+     "As it now stands, the Colosseum is _indeed_ a wreck, rendered
+     absolutely frightful by repair; and whether by sunlight or
+     moonlight, compels you to lament the 'melancholy activity' which,
+     utterly inadequate to the restoration of its pristine glory, has
+     deprived it of all those adventitious ornaments, trees, and
+     herbage, and a thousand beautiful flowers, which, if they could not
+     conceal, at least served to soften its injuries, and which
+     mitigated the desolation they were unable to repair.
+
+     "Of course a thousand imaginations and memories hunt each other
+     through one's head and heart in such a place and at such an hour as
+     this, but to-night there were realities, which, where they do not
+     dispel, must always reinforce such phantasies.
+
+     "Before the steps of the great cross in the centre, garnished with
+     all the emblems of the passion, knelt a respectably dressed group,
+     apparently father, mother, and daughter, absorbed in a rapture of
+     devotion. The lamps were lighted before the fourteen shrines, which
+     Benedict the Fourteenth erected around the arena, and flung a dusky
+     light upon the successive stagioni of our Saviour's sufferings, by
+     which each is distinguished; and we saw a solitary peasant, in the
+     dark costume of his country, evidently faint and toil-worn, rise
+     from his oraisons at _one_ shrine, only to sink upon his knees
+     before _another_.
+
+     "Ah! it was at once a simple and sagacious stroke of that priestly
+     sovereign, who, in these prophaned ruins, planted the Cross, and,
+     by a mightier spell than the magician's wand, arrested the rapacity
+     of its patrician plunderers!"
+
+Do not sketches such as these revive for us all those feelings which
+Rome awakened in ourselves, bringing back the clime, the sky, the
+loneliness, the mingled feeling of grandeur and situation--the gentle
+melancholy with which the eternal city impresses even the least
+imaginative mind? To us they appear to embody more of the poetry of
+travel than many a work which figures under the mask of poesy.
+
+How much has been written on Venice, from Schiller and Radcliffe to
+Madame de Staël and Madame Dudevant! and yet we hardly know if any one,
+with the exception of the last, has more completely imbued his mind with
+the peculiar spirit of Venice, or reflected its impressions with more
+truth than Mr Whyte. Schiller, indeed, and Mrs Radcliffe, had never
+witnessed the scenes they described; their portraiture is the result
+merely of reading and description, warmed and vivified by the glow of
+their own imagination. Hence the glimpses of Venice conveyed in
+Schiller's beautiful fragment of the _Armenian_, are mere general
+outlines--true enough so far as they go, but faintly drawn, and
+destitute, as we might say, of local colour. Mrs Radcliffe's moonlight
+landscapes--masques and music--exhibit with great beauty one aspect of
+the city, but only one.
+
+Very different are the Venetian _Sketches_ of Madame Dudevant. She has
+drunk in the inspiration of Venice on the spot, has penetrated the very
+heart of its mystery, and reproduces the impressions which an intimacy
+with its peculiarities produces, with a degree of truth, force, and
+poetical feeling, that impart the most captivating charm to her Venetian
+_Letters_. Mr Whyte's _Fragments_ exhibit much of the same sensibility,
+the same just perception of the spirit of Venice; and though they have
+not that brilliancy of style which the pictures of the French authoress
+possess, there is often even in this respect great beauty both of
+thought and expression. Mr Whyte, indeed, took the right course to
+enable him thoroughly to understand and appreciate Venice. Instead of
+confining himself to the stately vision of the Grand Canal, or the
+wizard magnificence of St Mark's, he seems to have habitually traced all
+the lesser canals; the little Rii, which, like small veins, shoot off
+from the great arteries of the Grand Canal and the Giudecca, carrying
+the circulation of the Adriatic through this unique city; exploring
+their high, dark, and narrow recesses, pondering on the strange
+contrasts of misery and magnificence, squalid filth and luxurious
+ornament, which they present side by side; and heightening the
+impression thus created, by selecting all varieties of aspects, from the
+bright flashing sunshine pouring down into these dark chasms, as into a
+well, to the shadowy evening, the magic contrasts of moonlight, the
+gloom of wind and rain howling through the balconies, driving the ocean
+wave impetuously through these water-ways, and beating against their
+thousand bridges; or those thunder-storms--nowhere more magnificent
+than at Venice--where the gleam of the lightning forms so fearful a
+contrast with the Cimmerian gloom of the canal, and the peals are
+reverberated with such magnificence from those piles of masonry with
+which they are lined. There is, indeed, no spectacle that can be
+conceived, more impressive than some of these smaller canals,
+particularly if you enter them towards sundown. You glide into a gulf of
+buildings, rising high on each side--almost meeting above your
+head--most of them ruinous and dilapidated, sinking by piecemeal into
+the green element which they have displaced for centuries, but which,
+through the slow agency of the sap and mine, is visibly resuming his
+oozy empire. You pass some church with its unfinished marble face.
+Again, a set of poor rickety and mean edifices follow; when suddenly you
+come upon some pile of massy grandeur, looming gigantic in the twilight,
+in whose colossal, but beautiful proportions, you can trace the hand of
+Sammichele or Sansovino. You come nearer, and perceive the fretted
+windows broken, stuffed with rags, and patched with paper; rough boards
+nailed up against the gilded beams; grand portals, of which the doors
+have disappeared, allowing the eye to penetrate into a dark perspective
+within: perhaps a sign-board over-tops a glorious cornice of grim masks
+or armorial bearings; and from latticed windows, on which Palladio had
+lavished all the delicate beauty of his architecture, some flaunting and
+gaudy rags are hung out to dry. You enquire what is the building, and to
+whom it belongs, and you are answered: It is the palace of one of the
+classic nobility of ancient Venice--now tenanted by a Hebrew, who lets
+out the apartments at so many _lire_ a month!
+
+But let Mr Whyte speak for himself.
+
+
+THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS.
+
+     "The Canal Orfano, the Ponte di Sospiri! what a day to behold these
+     long pictured images of darknes and terror, for the first time!
+     Such a blaze of May sunshine, such a soothing repose broken by a
+     few distant bells or the nearer laugh of the gay Gondoliers. I
+     looked upon the narrow, immured waters under the Bridge of Sighs,
+     then to the high arch that like the heavy embossed clasp of some
+     old solemn book united its decorated Gothic Piles (those volumes of
+     bloody Story) on either side, and instead of shuddering at
+     inquisitions and racks, and Piombi and Pozzi, as in common decency
+     I ought, away fled my intractable thoughts to merry England's old
+     Sabbath Chimes, her village spires, village greens, village elm
+     lanes, and decent peasantry.
+
+     "Yet those high and antique abodes of venerable crime, those wild
+     barbaric piles, in which old age palliates and almost hallows
+     infamy! giving it somewhat the same prescriptive sanctuary as
+     Milton bestows on the Palace of his Pandemonium! That cruel
+     slinking flood, the only firmament the stone vaulted pits below
+     were conscious of! Each looked as malignant and dangerous as they
+     could, beneath the triumph of such a glorious sun; that light to
+     which their aspect once was hateful, and their deeds untold.
+
+     "My gondolier dipt his oar into the canal just under the Bridge of
+     Sighs, and at half its length it was arrested by a hollow substance
+     which he told me was the marble roof of the Pozzi, whose
+     unfathomable tiers of dungeons stretched one under another beneath
+     this dreadful water gallery. It was not here, however, that the
+     secret midnight drownings took place, (as I had fancied,) but in
+     that widest, deepest portion of the Canal Orfano, far out in the
+     Lagoons situated between the towery Isola Servilio and the lovely
+     groves and monastery of San Grazia. This murder-hole of the
+     Adriatic is called Marani, and to this day it is forbidden to fish
+     in its accursed depth. To-day it looks not only innocent, but
+     gloriously bright.
+
+     "I was out in the Lagoons this evening, for the purpose of visiting
+     by twilight that solitary Isle of St Clements, where Monks exchange
+     the voluntary seclusion for penal dungeons, (l'un vaut bien
+     l'autre!) the sky glowing with its last light, lingered over its
+     tall belfry and few old trees, and a sea as smooth as a crystal
+     pavement slept at the base of its grim walls, all in vain;
+     Campanile, Convent, Grove, and that pyramidal Powder Magazine,
+     looked obdurately sullen enough to tell their own uses, had I not
+     known their chronicle."
+
+
+THE SMALL CANALS.
+
+     "I thence directed my gondolier to row under the Bridge of Sighs,
+     through the intricacies of the interior canals; and if ever a man
+     wished to be fed to the full with solemn, ay, appalling gloom, he
+     may be gratified by following my example. From the weltering
+     surface of a labyrinth of channels, let him look up till it wearies
+     him, to the awful roofs of the mansions, whose walls of
+     immeasurable height, and scarfed with black masses of shadow and
+     glaring moonlight, seem to close over his head and to barricade his
+     path, as they interlace and confound each other in endless
+     circuits; and he will have quite enough to kindle the torch of his
+     darker imagination, even if he did not know those tremendous gulfs
+     of masonry to be Venice, and those heart-sinking portals and
+     windows of barbaric sculpture, the homes of her inexorable
+     oligarchy. Yes, you may anticipate Naples, you may picture to
+     yourself Rome, and Florence may have fulfilled much of your
+     previous fancies; but no conception can prepare you for Venice.
+
+     "What enchantment lingers still about every stone of this mourning
+     city! My affection for her dismantled palaces is almost morbid.
+
+         'Like an unrighteous and an unburied ghost,'
+
+     do I nightly haunt that Tartarus of antique masonry, the interior
+     canals of Venice, uniformly entering or departing from them by the
+     Bridge of Sighs. To me their hideous height, their appalling gloom,
+     (for the meridian cannot touch their waters, and the moon glides
+     like a spectre over their huge parapets,) their bewildering
+     intricacies, their joyless weltering floods, the countless bridges,
+     each with its sculptured monster-heads yawning as if to swallow up
+     the silently sweeping gondola in its arch of shadow; their deep
+     dead silence only broken by the sullen plash of the oar, the dreary
+     word of warning uttered by the gondoliers before turning a sharp
+     angle, or the shrill rattling creak of innumerable crickets; but
+     principally those old Gothic posterns with deep-ribbed archways,
+     like rat-holes in proportion to the enormous piles, and their
+     thresholds level with the water, some blockaded with ponderous
+     doors, others developing their long withdrawn passage by a lamp,
+     that not only makes darkness _visible_, but _frightful_; while
+     others (as in the Martinengo palace to-night) disclose wide
+     pillared halls, and stately staircases, and moonlight courts --to
+     me, I say, all these attributes of the interior of Venice are
+     irresistible. Were you to see these old porticos by a summer's
+     daylight, you would not fail to find an old fig tree in broad leaf
+     and full of fruit, or a lattice-work of vine, most pleasantly green
+     in its deep court, where sun and shadow hold divided reign; while
+     the hundred shaped windows of those gloomy walls are variegated
+     with geranium and carnation, and perhaps a sweet dark eye fairer
+     than either.
+
+     "They are so obviously the symbols of her hollow oligarchy itself,
+     which to the world and to the sun in heaven, (like the brave
+     palaces on her chief canal,) displayed a gallant guise, at once
+     sublime, glittering, and august; while, within, its tortuous policy
+     was twisted into murky and inextricable labyrinths, of which
+     Necessity, Secresy, and Suspicion, formed the keystone; where
+     Danger lurked at every winding, and whose darkling portals were
+     watched by Mystery, and Stratagem, and Disgrace, and Fate!
+
+     "It is impossible to scrutinize these dread abysms of mansions,
+     without experiencing that strange mixture of repugnance and
+     attraction which certain spectacles are wont to call forth in
+     animated nature. It is impossible to mark their melancholy and
+     downfallen, yet portentous aspect, without deeming them at once the
+     theatre and monument of those 'secret, black, and midnight crimes,'
+     which history and tradition ascribe to the domestic, as well as to
+     the state policy, of this Gehenna of fourteen centuries dominion.
+
+        'Visendus Ater flumine languido
+        Cocytus errans.'
+
+     "Perhaps it would be difficult to conceive any thing more abhorrent
+     to the soul and body of man, than the time, manner, and place, of
+     death, distinguishing those executions which have rendered the
+     gulfs of the Canal Orfano immemorably infamous.
+
+     "To me, the element, in its most serene and smiling state, wears a
+     look of furtive menace; and I am free to confess, that even when
+     gliding on a mid-summer night over that sweetest Lake of
+     Derwentwater, beneath the shadows of its moonlit isles and fair
+     pavilions, I have not been without a certain sensation of
+     uncomfortable awe. But what must have been the feelings of the
+     victim, whether criminal or innocent, who, from this accurst
+     Maranna, cast around him his last straining look of agony, and
+     uttered his last cry of supplication or despair! The conviction
+     that his family, parent, wife, or son, were at that hour of horror
+     in profound ignorance _sometimes_ of his very absence, _often_ of
+     its cause, or at least, only perplexed with conjecture, and
+     _always_ unconscious of its horrible event, must have constituted
+     no trifling pang in that mortal hour. Then that old familiar,
+     though melancholy, water, more terrible to his feelings than the
+     dreariest wilderness of ocean! For, girdling the dusky horizon,
+     could he not see the domes and campaniles of Venice, perhaps the
+     very lamps in his own palace windows, from whose festal saloons he
+     had just been decoyed; just distant enough to be beyond the reach
+     of help? but too, too near for that despairing gaze that recognized
+     and bade adieu for ever at the same glance? There too were not
+     those nestling lovely islands, each with its convent tower gleaming
+     to the moon, and from which the sonorous bells were tolling, the
+     sacred Anthems swelling for the last time on his ear! Alas! those
+     chaunted masses were not for _his_ conflicting soul; yea, it would
+     have a strange comfort to feel that passing bell was proclaiming to
+     the world that his spirit was parting from its scarcely worn weeds!
+     But no! even that miserable solace was prohibited to _him_; he was
+     to be obliterated from society, and his inexorable judges had
+     decreed that society was not to know that he was gone. No grave for
+     his dust; no monument for his name, to palliate his faults and
+     perpetuate his virtues. The ghastly element that moaned and
+     shuddered under the Gondola, as if remorseful for its own
+     involuntary cruelties, was to spread its weltering pall over his
+     hearseless bones."
+
+
+THE BELLS OF VENICE.
+
+     "The islands constituting the Venetian Archipelago are about fifty
+     in number, of various size and extremely picturesque. They were
+     each of them the seat of a monastery or nunnery, till Napoleon
+     came, who overthrew these saintly receptacles, converting them into
+     forts, mills, public gardens, &c. In short, these islands are among
+     the most beautiful contingents of this magic scene. Each has its
+     graceful campanile, and its various structures of castle, convent,
+     mill, or summer-house; each its due girdle of blue sea, fenced by
+     walls that rise round its margent, and embroidered with groves and
+     arbours of the most delightful green.
+
+     "This evening I cruised past many of them in my gondola after
+     sunset; and was particularly struck with the beauty of the large
+     Isle of Murano, and its attendant San Michaele (the latter one
+     entire cemetery,) whose thin tall campaniles throw up their slender
+     figures in fine relief against the long wavy purple of the
+     Acharnean Hills in the west, at the head of the Adriatic.
+
+     "Night gathered round, as we floated under that prodigious monument
+     of the departed majesty of the Republic, the arsenal, whose
+     ramparts high and endless, and as ugly as either, lay weltering
+     many a rood upon their wooden piles. Every bell in the city was
+     tolling for Nones, and sang aloud to the surrounding islands, whose
+     campaniles replied with sympathetic thunder, a solemn diapason of
+     Corybantine brass, to my taste, wonderfully in unison with the
+     funeral mole of the defunct Arsenal, the repose of the purple
+     mountains, and the fainting splendour of that twinned vault and
+     pavement, the opal sea and sky, smooth, soft, and bright enough for
+     Juno and Amphitrite to hold a gossip, each from her own imperial
+     element.
+
+     "Probably it is to the peculiarity of its situation, that one may
+     attribute the sweetly solemn melodies produced by the bells of
+     Venice. Flinging their prolonged notes down those immense hollows
+     of architecture, sweeping round their narrow streets, and floating
+     over their liquid pavement, they derive every advantage from that
+     element which always so fondly detains and dallies with music, in
+     addition to the depth and power with which they are endowed, by
+     those pillared and winding concaves, that, like the tubes of some
+     vast organ, receive and redouble the airy strain.
+
+     "Whatever be the case, I never felt any thing so fully coming up to
+     my idea, of 'most musical, most melancholy.'"
+
+We bid Mr Whyte adieu, in the hope that, if a second edition of these
+volumes be called for, he will subject them to a very thorough
+revision--connecting together many passages, which, though relating to
+the same subject, are at present unnaturally disjoined--omitting much,
+which, instead of heightening, interferes with the effect which it is
+his object to produce--and, above all, eschewing the indulgence of
+pleasantries which certainly produces no corresponding impression on his
+readers.
+
+_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work._
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume
+59, No. 364, February 1846, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH ***
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine (Vol. LIX, No. CCCLXIV), by Various Authors.
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59,
+No. 364, February 1846, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: September 8, 2009 [EBook #29938]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brendan OConnor, Jonathan Ingram and the Online
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+</pre>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h1>BLACKWOOD'S</h1>
+<h1>EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.</h1>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><span class="smcap">No</span>. CCCLXIV.&nbsp; FEBRUARY, 1846.&nbsp; <span class="smcap">Vol</span>. LIX.</h2>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS.</h2>
+
+<div class='centered'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="2" width="65%" cellspacing="0" summary="CONTENTS">
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Servia and the "Servian Question,"</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_129'><b>129</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Student of Salamanca,</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_149'><b>149</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Something more about Music,</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_169'><b>169</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Martha Brown,</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_184'><b>184</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Marlborough</span>,</td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_195'><b>195</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Recollections of a Lover of Society,</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_215'><b>215</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">It's all for the Best,</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_231'><b>231</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Peep into the Whig Penny Post-Bag,</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_247'><b>247</b></a></td></tr>
+
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">East and West,</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#east'><b>248</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><span class="smcap">An Apology for a Review,</span></td><td align='right'><a href='#Page_249'><b>249</b></a></td></tr>
+
+</table></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h3>EDINBURGH:</h3>
+<h3>WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;</h3>
+<h3>AND 22, PALL-MALL, LONDON.</h3>
+<h4><i>To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed</i>.</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.</h4>
+<h4>PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.</h4>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>BLACKWOOD'S</h2>
+<h2>EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.</h2>
+<p>&nbsp;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span></p>
+<h2><span class="smcap">No</span>. CCCLXIV.<span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span> FEBRUARY, 1846.<span class="spacer">&nbsp;</span> <span class="smcap">Vol</span>. LIX.</h2>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SERVIA_AND_THE_SERVIAN_QUESTION" id="SERVIA_AND_THE_SERVIAN_QUESTION"></a>SERVIA AND THE "SERVIAN QUESTION."</h2>
+
+
+<p>The principality of Servia was, a few years since, scarcely known to the
+English public except as an obscure province of the Ottoman empire, into
+which few travellers had penetrated; and of the population, internal
+resources, &amp;c., of which, little information existed, and little
+curiosity was felt. But the singular political drama of which it has
+lately been the theatre, and the patriotic resolution by which its
+people, though deprived of support from their legitimate suzerain, the
+Sultan, menaced by the power of Russia, and abandoned to their fate by
+the other great powers of Europe, have yet succeeded in establishing
+their independence, and maintaining in his place the ruler whom they had
+chosen, has invested Servia with a degree of interest in the eyes of
+Europe, which gives value to whatever tends to dispel our ignorance of a
+country, which, by the new position it has assumed, has shown good title
+to take rank as "the youngest member of the European family." A work,
+therefore, which should give the same clear insight, even to a limited
+extent, into the present condition and future prospects of Servia, as
+was given some years since in regard to Hungary and Transylvania, by the
+well-known volumes of Mr Paget, would at this time be a valuable
+addition to our literature; but we are compelled to say, that this
+desideratum is far from being adequately supplied by the publication now
+before us. The author's descriptive powers are by no means of a high
+order;&mdash;mountain and valley, castle and river, pass before us, in his
+pages, without any definite impression being produced of their features
+or scenery; and while page after page is filled with criticisms of the
+accommodations and <i>cuisine</i> at his different halting-places, and
+verbatim reports of dialogues, on trivial subjects, between <i>Author</i>, on
+the one part, and <i>Renegade</i>, <i>Cadi</i>, <i>Dervish</i>, <i>President</i>, and other
+<i>dramatis person&aelig;</i>, on the other, we look in vain for that extent and
+accuracy of information which we might have expected from a traveller
+who has enjoyed more than ordinary opportunities of mixing familiarly
+with Servians of all ranks and degrees, from the prince to the peasant
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> making himself acquainted with their feelings and national
+character. The deficiency of political information would appear even
+more remarkable. Though the author was personally acquainted with M.
+Petronevich, one of the leaders of the National party, whom he visited
+in his exile at Widdin; and though he was subsequently resident at
+Belgrade for some time after the restoration of this able minister and
+his colleague, M. Wucicz, to their country, scarcely an allusion escapes
+him throughout, to the political movements which led either to their
+banishment or their recall. As various circumstances and expressions,
+however, lead us to suppose that Mr Paton's tour may have had reference
+to objects which do not appear on the surface of the narrative, this
+mysterious silence may not be without good reasons; and we shall deal
+with him, accordingly, simply as a traveller in a hitherto untrodden
+track, which we hope, erelong, to see more fully explored. Mr Paget, we
+believe, is now a naturalized denizen of Transylvania: cannot he find
+leisure for an excursion across the Save?</p>
+
+<p>Mr Paton announces himself, in the title-page, as the author of a work
+entitled "The Modern Syrians," with which it has not been our good
+fortune to meet; but from the conclusion of which we presume the thread
+of the present narrative is to be taken up, as he presents himself,
+<i>sans ceremonie</i>, on the pier of Beyrout, preparing to embark on board
+an Austrian steamer for Constantinople:&mdash;"I have been four years in the
+East, and feel that I have had quite enough of it for the present." On
+the third day they touched at Rhodes, "a perfectly preserved city and
+fortress of the middle ages, with every variety of medi&aelig;val
+battlement&mdash;so perfect is the illusion, that one wonders the warder's
+horn should be mute, and the walls devoid of bowman, knight, and
+squire." Though these ancient bulwarks of Christendom, within which the
+White-Cross chivalry, under d'Aubusson and L'Isle-Adam, so long
+withstood the might of the Osmanli, are thus briefly dismissed, Mr Paton
+immediately after devotes five pages to some choice flowers of
+Transatlantic rhetoric, culled from the small-talk of one of his
+fellow-passengers, whom he calls "an American Presbyterian
+<i>clergyman</i>"&mdash;though we grievously suspect him to have been a boatswain,
+who had jumped from the forecastle to the pulpit by one of those
+free-and-easy transitions not unusual in the "free and enlightened
+republic." At Smyrna, he signalized his return to the "land of the
+Franks," (which we had always imagined to be Europe,) by ordering a
+beefsteak and a bottle of porter, and bespeaking the paper of a
+Manchester traveller in drab leggings&mdash;and we at last find him safe in
+Constantinople. For all that concerns the city of the Sultan, he
+contents himself with referring his readers to the volumes of Mr
+White&mdash;and certainly they could not have been left in better hands; and
+so, "after a week of delightful repose," during which he was greatly
+indebted to the hospitality of the embassy, "I embarked on board a
+steamer, skirted the western coast of the Black Sea, and landed on the
+following morning in Varna."</p>
+
+<p>We may pass over the "delightfully keen impressions" which Mr Paton
+records as produced by the contrast between the shores of Bulgaria and
+the Syrian climes he had lately left; the practical result of which was,
+that "a rattling blast from the Black Sea, more welcome than all the
+balmy spices of Arabia," made it advisable to don a pea-jacket! The
+fortifications of Varna, we are informed, were thoroughly repaired in
+1843; "and from Varna to Roustchouk is three days' journey&mdash;the latter
+half of the road being agreeably diversified with wood, corn, and
+pasture, and many of the fields enclosed." A reference to the map will
+show that this "agreeably diversified" road passes under the famous
+lines of Shumla, and through many fields of fierce and stubborn fight
+between Turk and Russ, in the days before the Sultan was delivered over
+by his allies to his enemy, on the faith of a <i>military</i> report from a
+man who had never seen a regiment of regular troops under arms!<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a>&mdash;but
+Mr Paton appears to consider such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> matters as exclusively the province
+of <i>militaires</i>, and passes on at once to Roustchouk, which he found "a
+fortress of vast extent; but, as it is commanded by the heights from
+which I was descending, it appeared to want strength if approached from
+the south. The ramparts were built with great solidity; but rusty old
+dismounted cannon, obliterated embrasures, and palisades rotten from
+exposure to the weather, showed that to stand a siege it must undergo a
+considerable repair." Several days were devoted to a general
+reconnoissance of the place; but the result was not satisfactory&mdash;"I
+must say that Roustchouk pleased me less than any town of its size I had
+seen in the East. The streets are dirty and badly paved, without a
+single good bazar or caf&eacute; to kill time in, or a single respectable
+edifice of any description to look at." A dinner with a Bulgarian family
+led us to expect some details of domestic economy; but, in place of
+this, we are regaled with the bad French of a hybrid Frank, who assured
+<i>Author</i> that Bukarest was equal to Paris or London; and when forced to
+admit that he had never seen either of those capitals, covered his
+retreat by maintaining that it was at least far superior to Galate and
+Braila! Hearing, however, that the Defterdar, an Egyptian Turk, had
+resided many years in England, and spole English fluently, Mr Paton
+sought an interview; and after "taking a series of short and rapid
+whiffs from my pipe," while considering the best way of breaking the
+ice, opened his battery by telling the Defterdar, "that few Orientals
+could draw a distinction between politics and geography; but that with a
+man of his calibre and experience I was safe from misconstruction&mdash;that
+I was collecting materials for a work on the Danubian provinces, and
+that for any information which he might give me, consistently with his
+official position, I should feel much indebted, as I thought I was least
+likely to be misunderstood by stating clearly the object of ny journey,
+while information derived from the fountain-head was most valuable. The
+Defterdar, after commending my openness, said, 'I suspect that you will
+find very little to remark in the pashalik of Silistria. It is an
+agricultural country, and the majority of the inhabitants are Turks. The
+Rayahs are very peaceable, and pay few taxes, considering the
+agricultural wealth of the country. You may rest assured that there is
+not a province of the empire better governed than the pashalik of
+Silistria. We have no malcontents within the province; but there are a
+few Hetarist scoundrels at Braila, who wish to disturb the tranquillity
+of Bulgaria; but the Walachian government has taken measures to prevent
+them from carrying their projects into execution.'"</p>
+
+<p>Having thus put his readers in possession of this full, true, and
+particular account, derived from exclusive official sources, of all that
+is to be learned of the pashalik of Silistria, we next find Mr Paton,
+after two days steaming on the Danube, at Widdin, where the exiled
+Servian minister, M. Petronovich, was then resident, under the
+protection of the Pasha, whose name is known to all the world as the
+destroyer of the Janissaries and the defender of Shumla, the once
+formidable Hussein. To this redoubted personage, now apparently verging
+on eighty, Mr Paton was introduced by M. Petronevich at an evening
+audience, it being contrary to etiquette to receive visits by day during
+the Ramadan&mdash;and found him "sitting in the corner of the divan at his
+ease, being afflicted with gout, in the old ample Turkish costume. The
+white beard, the dress of the Pasha, the rich but faded carpet, the roof
+of elaborate but dingy wooden arabesque, were all in perfect keeping;
+and the dubious light of two thick wax candles rising two or three feet
+from the floor, but seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> to bring out the picture, which carried me a
+generation back to the pashas of the old school." Hussein has since
+retired from his government, to enjoy the immense fortune which he has
+accumulated by commercial speculations&mdash;the last specimen of the
+"malignant and turbaned Turk" of former days, whose war shout was heard
+under the walls of Vienna; and who will now be replaced by a
+smooth-faced hybrid in fez and frock-coat, waging a paper war with the
+ambassadors of the <i>protecting</i> powers in defence of the few sovereign
+rights still permitted to the Porte&mdash;such is the Pasha of the present
+day! The town of Widdin found even less favour in our traveller's eyes
+than Roustchouk. "Lying so nicely on the bank of the Danube, which here
+makes such beautiful curves, and marked on the map with capital letters,
+it ought (such was my notion) to be a place having at least one
+well-built and well-stocked bazar, a handsome seraglio, and some
+good-looking mosques. Nothing of the sort;"&mdash;and thus, sorely
+disappointed in his reasonable expectations, he proceeded on his way in
+a car drawn by two horses, which in six hours brought him to the banks
+of the Timok, the river which separates Servia from Bulgaria. The
+Servian population, among whom he now first found himself, struck him as
+a superior race, both physically and morally, compared with those whom
+he had just left, possessing a manliness of address and demeanour
+unknown to the serfs of Bulgaria; and, instead of the woolly caps and
+frieze clothes of the latter, the peasants wore the red fez, and were
+generally dressed in blue cloth. The plough cultivation of Bulgaria was
+now exchanged for the innumerable herds of swine, which form the staple
+commodity of Servia, fed in the immense oak woods which cover the
+country. "They form" (as Mr Paget informs us in his work on Hungary) "a
+very important article of trade between Servia and Vienna; and I doubt
+if Smithfield could show better shapes or better feeding than the market
+of a Servian village." Continuing his route along the banks of the
+Danube to New Orsova, where he crossed to the Hungarian bank, he again
+posted, with "an enormously stout Wallachian matron" for a travelling
+companion, to Drenkova, whence another steamer conveyed him to Semlin,
+and half an hour's pull down the Danube and up the Save (the line of the
+two rivers being distinctly marked at the confluence by the muddy colour
+of the former, and the clearness of the latter) landed him safe at
+Belgrade.</p>
+
+<p>We may here mention an amusing anecdote, related in another part of the
+volume, in connexion with the town of Panczova below Semlin, where "the
+town-major, after swallowing countless boxes of Morison's pills died in
+the belief that he had not begun to take them soon enough. The
+consumption of these drugs at that time almost surpassed belief. There
+was scarcely a sickly or hypochondriac person, from the Hill of Presburg
+to the Iron Gates, who had not taken large quantities of them." <i>Mais
+voil&agrave; le mot d'enigme.</i> "'The Anglomania,"' was the answer to a query of
+the author, "'is nowhere stronger than in this part of the world.
+Whatever comes from England, be it Congreve rockets or vegetable pills,
+must needs be perfect. Dr Morison is indebted to his high office (!) for
+the enormous consumption of his drugs. It is clear that the President of
+the British College must be a man in the enjoyment of the esteem of the
+government and the faculty of medicine; and his title is a passport to
+his pills in foreign countries.' I laughed heartily, and explained that
+the British College of Health, and the College of Physicians, were not
+identical." We well remember a statement some years since among the
+innumerable puffs of the arch-quack, (now gone, we believe, to that
+bourn whither so many of his patients had preceded him,) that in
+gratitude for the countless cures of incurable diseases by the
+"Universal Vegetable Medicine," a statute of the Hygeist had been
+erected in Bukarest, not in his native brass, but 'in his habit as he
+lived;' and a woodcut was appended of the <i>ipsissimus</i> Morison, with his
+mustached phiz and tight frock-coat. As Bukarest is a long way off, we
+held this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> at the time for a pious fraud; but Mr Paton's anecdote gives
+it at least probability. <i>Vive la charlatanerie!</i></p>
+
+<p>The hospitality of Mr Consul-general Fonblanque, and the attentions of
+the numerous friends of M. Petronevich, soon made Mr Paton quite at home
+at Belgrade, where he remained till the end of the year 1843, having
+arrived some time in the autumn, since the re-election of Prince
+Alexander, and the exile of Petronevich, and his colleague Wucziz, took
+place in July of that year. He found Belgrade much Europeanized since a
+previous visit which he had paid it in 1839,&mdash;"It was then quite an
+Oriental town; but now the haughty <i>parvenu</i> spire of the cathedral, a
+new and large, but tasteless structure, with a profusely gilt bell-tower
+in the Russian manner, throws into the shade the minarets of the
+mosques, graceful even in decay. Many of the bazar shops have been
+fronted and glazed; the Oriental dress has become much rarer; and
+houses, several stories high, in the German fashion, are springing up
+every where." The Turkish governor was at this time Hafiz Pasha, the
+unsuccessful commander at Nezib, lately appointed in the room of Kiamil,
+who had been displaced at the mandate of Russia for the share he had
+taken in the first election of Prince Alexander; but his jurisdiction is
+now confined to the fortress and the Turkish quarter, which lies along
+the Danube; the remainder of the town, lying piled street upon street up
+the steep bank of the Save, being under the Servian authorities. During
+his stay, Mr Paton paid frequent visits to the Pasha, whom he generally
+found in an audience room overlooking the precipitous descent to the
+Danube, "studying <i>at</i> the maps: he seemed to think that nothing would
+be so useful to Turkey as good roads, made to run from the principal
+ports of Asia Minor, up to the dep&ocirc;ts of the interior, so as to connect
+Sivas, Tokat, Angora, Koniah, Kaiserieh, &amp;c., with Samsoon, Tersoos, and
+other ports." The ramparts of the fortress are said to be in good
+condition, though "very unlike the magnificent towers it the last scene
+of the <i>Siege of Belgrade</i> at Drury-Lane,"&mdash;a piece of useful
+information for play-going Cockneys&mdash;and the <i>Lange Gasse</i>, or main
+street, with the palace of Prince Eugene, built during the Austrian
+occupation of Servia from 1717 to 1789, is still standing, though half
+choked up with bazar shops and Turkish houses. The Prince holds no
+formal levees; but Mr Paton was present at a dinner given to the <i>corps
+diplomatique</i> in the palace, and was received in a saloon "with inlaid
+and polished parquet; the chairs and sofas covered with crimson and
+white satin damask, which is an unusual luxury in these regions; the
+roof admirably painted in subdued colours, in the best Vienna style.
+High white porcelain urn-like stoves heated the suite of rooms. The
+Prince, a muscular, middle-sized, dark-complexioned man, with a serious
+composed air, wore a plain blue military uniform;<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> the Princess, and
+her <i>dames de compagnie</i>, wore the graceful native Servian costume; the
+Pasha the Nizam dress, and the <i>Nishan Iftihar</i>, (diamond decoration of
+his rank;) Baron Lieven, the Russian Commissioner, in the uniform of a
+general, glittered with innumerable orders;<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Colonel Philippovich, a
+man of distinguished talents, represented Austria; the Archbishop, in
+his black velvet cap, a large enamelled cross hanging by a massive gold
+chain from his neck, sat in stately isolation; and the six feet four
+inches high Garashanin, minister of the interior, conversed with Stojan
+Simitch, the president of the senate, one of the few Servians in high
+office who retains his old Turkish costume, and has a frame that reminds
+one of the Farnese Hercules. Then what a medley of languages&mdash;Servian,
+Ger<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>man, Russian, Turkish, and French, all in full buzz! We proceeded to
+the dining-room, where the <i>cuisine</i> was in every respect in the German
+manner. When the dessert appeared, the Prince rose with a creaming glass
+of champagne in his hand, and proposed the health of the Sultan,
+acknowledged by the Pasha; and then, after a short pause, the health of
+Czar Nicolay Paulovich, acknowledged by Baron Lieven; then came the
+health of other crowned heads. Baron Lieven now rose, and proposed the
+health of the Prince. The Pasha and the Princess were toasted in turn;
+and then Mr Wastchenko, the Russian Consul-general, rose, and in
+animated terms drank to the prosperity of Servia. The entertainment,
+which commenced at one o'clock, was prolonged to an advanced period of
+the afternoon, and closed with coffee, liqueurs, and chibouques, in the
+drawing-room: the Princess and the ladies having previously withdrawn to
+the private apartments."</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the year, Mr Paton returned to England; and after an
+absence of six months, returned in August 1844 to the banks of the Save,
+reaching Belgrade at the moment when preparations were being made for
+the triumphal reception of the patriot ministers Wuczicz and
+Petronevich, who had at length been restored to their country by the
+tardy intervention of England. The day of their arrival was celebrated
+by a universal jubilee. Surrounded by an immense cavalcade, the exiles
+paraded the streets, amid the rapturous acclamations of the multitude,
+to the great portal of the cathedral, where they were received by the
+Archbishop and clergy:&mdash;"They kissed the cross and the gospels, which
+the Archbishop presented to them, and, kneeling down, returned thanks
+for their safe restoration. The Archbishop then advanced to the edge of
+the platform and began a discourse, describing the grief the nation had
+experienced at their departure, the universal joy for their return, and
+the hope that they would ever keep peace and union in view in all
+matters of state, and that in their duties to the state they must never
+forget their responsibility to the Most High. Wuczicz, dressed in the
+coarse frieze jacket and boots of a Servian peasant, heard, with a
+reverential inclination of the head, the discourse of the prelate, but
+nought relaxed one muscle of that adamantine visage: the finer but more
+luminous features of Petronevich were under the control of a less
+powerful will. At certain passages his intelligent eye was moistened
+with tears. Two deacons then prayed successively for the Sultan, the
+Emperor of Russia, and the Prince,&mdash;and now uprose from every tongue,
+and every heart, a hymn for the longevity of Wuczicz and Petronevich.
+'The Solemn Song for Many Days' is the title of this sublime chant,
+which is so old that its origin is lost in the obscure dawn of
+Christianity in the East, and so massive, so nobly simple, as to be
+beyond the ravages of time, and the caprices of convention." The town
+was illuminated in the evening; and a ball was given at the new Konak or
+palace, built by the exiled Prince Michael, which was attended "by all
+the rank and fashion of Belgrade&mdash;senators of the old school, in their
+benishes and shalwars, and senators of the new school, in pantaloons and
+stiff cravats," which we agree with Mr Paton in considering as no
+improvement on the graceful costume of the East. The Servian ladies,
+however, have in general the good taste to retain the old national
+costume; and "no head-dress that I have seen in the Levant is better
+calculated to set off beauty. From a small Greek fez they suspend a gold
+tassel, which contrasts with the black and glossy hair, which is laid
+smooth and flat down the temple. The sister of the Princess, who was
+admitted to be the handsomest woman in the room, with her tunic of
+crimson velvet, embroidered in gold, and faced with sable, would have
+been, in her strictly indigenous costume, the queen of any fancy ball in
+old Europe."</p>
+
+<p>While occupied by his preparations for a tour into the interior, Mr
+Paton one day encountered "a strange figure, with a long white beard,
+and a Spanish cap, mounted on a sorry horse"&mdash;this was no other than
+Holman, the well-known blind traveller, whom he had last seen at Aleppo,
+and who, having passed in safety, under the safeguard of his infirmity,
+through the most dangerous parts of Bosnia, was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> now on his way to
+Walachia. He instantly recognised Mr Paton's voice, and mentioned his
+name on being told where he had last seen him; and after a walk on the
+esplanade, in which the objects in view were described to him, while
+turning his face to the different points of the compass, he appeared to
+have acquired a tolerably clear idea of Belgrade. Another visitor of Mr
+Paton, Milutinovich, the best living poet of Servia, on hearing the name
+of Holman, (of whose wanderings in the four quarters of the globe he had
+read in the <i>Augsburg Gazette</i>,) was so awe-struck at finding himself in
+the presence of even a greater traveller than Robinson Crusoe, (whose
+adventures Mr Paton found regarded as an authentic narrative by the
+monks of Manasia,) that he reverentially kissed his beard, praying aloud
+that he might return home in safety. When the day of departure
+approached, "orders were sent by the minister of the interior to all
+governors and employ&eacute;s, enjoining them to furnish me with every
+assistance, and with whatever information I might require;" and all
+preparations being completed, Mr Paton and his man Paul set off
+horseback, like Dr Syntax and Patrick, for the highlands and woodlands
+of Servia.</p>
+
+<p>Shabatz (more correctly Czabacz,) a town on the Save, between forty and
+fifty miles above Belgrade, and one of the few garrisons still retained
+by the Turks, was the first point of destination; and reaching it on the
+second day, he was hospitably received by <i>Gospody</i> (Monsieur) Ninitch,
+the government collector, to whom he had an introductory letter from the
+minister Garashanin. Before the revolution, Shabatz numbered 20,000
+Osmanlis, the sites of whose kiosks and gardens are still pointed out on
+the <i>Polje</i>, or open space between the town and the fortress,&mdash;at
+present the only Moslems are the garrison of Bosniak <i>Redif</i> or militia,
+occupying the dilapidated fortifications. It is the episcopal seat of
+one of the Archbishop's three suffragans; and the author, accompanied by
+his friend the collector, paid his respects to the Bishop, whom he had
+previously met at Belgrade. The conversation turned principally on the
+system of national education, by which, in a few years, reading and
+writing will be universal among the peasantry, while the sons of the
+better classes are prepared, by instruction in German, &amp;c., for a
+further course of study in the Gymnasium of Belgrade, the germ of a
+future university. A proof of the taste now spreading for general
+literature was afforded by the library of the Archpriest, "Jowan
+Paulovich, a self-taught ecclesiastic: the room in which he received us
+was filled with books, mostly Servian, but among them I perceived German
+translations of Shakspeare, Young's <i>Night Thoughts</i>, and a novel of
+Bulwer's." The son of this priest was studying mining engineering at the
+expense of government, at Schemnitz in Hungary, a capacity in which he
+may one day do good service to his country, as the great mineral riches
+believed to exist in Servia are hitherto wholly unexplored. Having
+completed the circuit of all the notables in Shabatz, including Luka
+Lasaravich, a once redoubted lieutenant of Kara-George, and now an
+octagenarian merchant, with thirteen wounds on his body, Mr Paton
+prepared for a fresh start, drinking health and long life to his kind
+host and hostess in a glass of <i>slivovitsa</i>, or plum brandy, the
+national liqueur. But his good wishes were not destined to be fulfilled;
+for within a month an abortive attempt at a rising was made by the
+partisans of the exiled Obrenovich family, a troop of whom, disguised as
+Austrian hussars, entered Shabatz, and shot the good collector dead as
+he issued from his house to enquire the cause of the disturbance. The
+attempt, however, was futile, and the whole party were taken and
+executed.</p>
+
+<p>The road to Losnitza, whither our traveller was now bending his way, lay
+through the Banat of Matchva, a rich tract of land, with a "charmingly
+accidented" chain of mountains, the Gutchevo range, in the distance.
+"Even the brutes bespoke the harmony of creation; for, singular to say,
+we saw several crows perched on the backs of swine!" Towards evening we
+entered a region of cottages among gardens inclosed by bushes, trees,
+and verdant fences, with the rural quiet and cleanliness of an English
+village in the last century lighted by an Ita<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>lian sunset. "In this
+sylvan paradise he was encountered by a pandour, who conducted him to
+the house of the <i>Natchalnik</i>, or governor of the province, a gaunt,
+greyheaded follower of Kara-George, who had been selected for this post
+from his courage and military experience, since the hostile
+neighbourhood of the Bosniaks, on the other side the Drina, between whom
+and the Servians a deadly religious and national hatred exists, rendered
+it necessary to be always on the alert." But before pursuing his route
+to Sokol,<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a> a sky-threatening fortress, respecting which his curiosity
+had been excited by the account given of it by M. Ninitch, he was
+persuaded by the Natchalnik to attend a peasant festival held at the
+monastery of Tronosha, to celebrate the anniversary of its consecration.
+The next day, accordingly, he set off with the Natchalnik and his
+companions, all gallantly armed and mounted, and in gala dresses covered
+with gold embroidery; and, dashing up hill and down dale, through the
+majestic forests which covered the ascent of the mountains, they arrived
+in due time at Tronosha, "an edifice with strong walls, towers, and
+posterns, more like a secluded and fortified manor-house in the
+seventeenth century than a convent; for such establishments, in former
+times, were often subject to the unwelcome visits of minor marauders."
+After returning thanks for their safe arrival, according to custom, in a
+chapel with paintings in the old Byzantine style, "crimson-faced saints
+looking up to a golden sky," they proceeded to inspect the preparations
+for the approaching f&ecirc;te, in a green glade running up to the foot of the
+hill on which stood the monastery, and dined with the Igoumen, (&#7977;&#947;&#959;&#965;&#956;&#949;&#957;&#959;&#962;,) or Superior, and the monks, in the refectory. The healths
+of the Prince, and of Wuczicz and Petronevich, were given after dinner
+as toasts&mdash;a laudable custom, which appears to be in orthodox observance
+in Servia&mdash;after which a song was sung in their honour by one of the
+monks, to whom Mr Paton (whose special aversion he seems to have
+incurred, for some reason not exactly apparent) applies the epithet of a
+"clerical Lumpacivagabundus," which we quote for the benefit of such of
+our friends as may chance to be skilled in the unknown tongue. Meanwhile
+the assembled peasantry outside were in the full tide of merriment; and,
+on the following morning, Mr Paton was roused from slumbers, in which "I
+dreamed I know not what absurdities," by a chorus of countless voices,
+and, hurrying out, found the peasants he had seen the evening before,
+with a large accession to their numbers, on their knees in the avenue
+leading to the church, and following "the chant of a noble old hymn. The
+whole pit of this theatre of verdure appeared covered with a carpet of
+crimson and white; for such were the prevailing colours of the costumes.
+The upper tunic of the women was a species of surtout of undyed cloth,
+bordered with a design of red cloth of a finer description. The
+stockings, in colour and texture, resembled those of Persia (?), but
+were generally embroidered at the ankle with gold and silver thread.
+When I thought of the trackless solitude of the sylvan ridges around me,
+I seemed to witness one of the early communions of Christianity, in
+those ages when incense ascended to the Olympic deities in gorgeous
+temples, while praise to the true God rose from the haunts of the wolf,
+the lonely cavern, or the subterranean vault."</p>
+
+<p>After witnessing this interesting reunion of a regenerated and Christian
+nation, Mr Paton took leave of the Superior, who parted from him with
+the words&mdash;"God be praised that Servia has at length seen the day when
+strangers come from afar to see and know the people!" and, passing
+through the double ranks of the peasantry, who took leave of him with
+the valediction of <i>Srentnj poot!</i> (a good journey,) repeated by a
+thousand voices, he rode on through the never-ceasing oak-forests,
+broken here and there by plantations of every variety of tree, to
+Krupena. Here he was received<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> by the captain of the district at the
+head of a small troop of irregular cavalry, and hospitably entertained
+for the night. On the following day he started, "toiling upwards through
+woods and wilds of a more rocky character than on the previous day," to
+the ridge of the Gutchevo range, whence he looked down on Sokol, a
+fortress still held by the Turks, and which, on its inaccessible
+position, "built" (as described by M. Ninitch) "on the capital of a
+column of rock," was the only one never taken by the Servians; while the
+background was formed by the mountains of Bosnia, rising range over
+range in the distance. They reached the valley by a narrow winding path
+on the face of a precipitous descent, and entered the town; but their
+visit was ill-timed. It was Ramadan; the Disdar Aga was, or was said to
+be, asleep, and the castle could not be seen in his absence; and Mr
+Paton's enquiries from the Mutsellim, who acted as their cicerone, as to
+the height of the rock on which the citadel was built above the valley,
+only made him suspected of being an engineer surveying the stronghold
+with a view to its capture. After climbing up a pinnacle of rock which
+overlooked the abyss, he was compelled to return <i>re infect&acirc;</i>; "and when
+we got a little way along the valley, I looked back; Sokol looked like a
+little castle of Edinburgh placed in the clouds; and a precipice on the
+other side of the valley presented a perpendicular stature of not less
+than five hundred feet."</p>
+
+<p>A few hours travelling from Sokol brought Mr Paton to Liuhovia on the
+Drina, the precipitous banks of which, covered with wood, present
+numerous points of picturesque beauty; but at a short distance above
+this town, which is the quarantine station on the road between Belgrade
+and Seraievo it ceases to form the boundary of Servia and Bosnia, being
+entirely within the latter frontier. Thence ascending the valley of the
+Rogaschitza, a small stream tributary to the Drina, and crossing a ridge
+which parts the waters flowing into the Drina and into the Morava, he
+descended into the tract watered by the Morava, the national river of
+Servia; the first town in which was Ushitza, one of the fortresses still
+garrisoned by the Turks, and the scene of desperate conflicts during the
+war of independence. In past times it was a place of great importance,
+and contained sixty thousand inhabitants, being the entrep&ocirc;t of the
+trade between Servia and Bosnia; but this commerce has been almost
+ruined by the establishment of the quarantine; and most of the Servian
+inhabitants, in consequence of a bloody affray with the Turks, have
+transferred themselves to Poshega, a town at two hours' distance, and
+formerly a Roman colony, of which Mr. Paton found a relic in a fragment
+of a Latin inscription built into the wall of the church. From Poshega
+Mr P. continued his route down the rich valley of the Morava, here
+several miles wide, to Csatsak, the residence of a bishop and a
+<i>Natchalnik</i>; where the old Turkish town is in process of being
+superseded by a new foundation, which, "like Poshega and all these new
+places, consists of a circular or square market-place, with bazar shops
+in the Turkish manner, and straight streets diverging from it." Mr Paton
+waited on the bishop, "a fine specimen of the church-militant; a stout
+fiery man of sixty, in full furred robes, and black velvet cap," who had
+been, during the rule of Milosh, an energetic denouncer of his
+extortions and monopolies, and was consequently in high favour since the
+change of dynasty. The cathedral (we are informed) was "a most ancient
+edifice of Byzantine architecture," of which we should have been glad to
+have had some particulars; but Mr Paton's remarks are confined to
+complaints of the wearisome length of the mass, at which the bishop
+presided, "dressed in crimson velvet and white satin, embroidered with
+gold, which had cost &pound;300 at Vienna; and as he sat in his chair, with
+mitre on head and crosier in hand, looked, with his bushy white beard,
+an imposing representative of spiritual authority." Taking leave of this
+formidable prelate, Mr Paton proceeded to Karanovatz, in the rich plain
+round which, surrounded by hills which are compared to the last
+picturesque undulations of the Alps near Vicenz or Verona, the river
+Ybar falls into the Morava, not far fron the ancient con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>vent of
+Zhitchka Jicha, where seven Servian kings of the Neman dynasty were
+crowned, a door being broken in the wall for the entrance of each
+monarch, and built up again on his departure: and here our traveller,
+turning to the right, and ascending the course of the Ybar, struck
+southwards into the highlands</p>
+
+<p>The character of the mountains among which he now found himself, was
+widely different from the picturesque oak forests of the Gutchevo range,
+which he had traversed in the early part of his tour. "Tall cedars
+replaced the oak and beech; the scanty herbage was covered with
+hoar-frost; the clear brooks murmured chillingly down the unshaded
+gullies; and a grand line of sterile peaks to the south showed me that I
+was approaching the backbone of the Balkan. There is a total want of
+arable land in this part of Servia, and the pasture is neither good nor
+abundant; but the Ybar is the most celebrated stream in Servia for large
+quantities of trout." Still ascending the steep mountain-paths, while
+the scenery became wilder and wilder, they at length reached the convent
+of Studenitza, one of the most ancient foundations in Servia, having
+been built by Neman, the first monarch of the dynasty bearing his name,
+who died in 1195. Like most monastic edifices in Servia, it is a
+castellated building, with walls whose massive strength is well
+calculated to resist an attack not supported by artillery; and, on
+entering the wicket, Mr Paton was received "by a fat, feeble-voiced,
+lymphatic-faced superior, leaning on a long staff"&mdash;from whom he could
+get no other reply to all his inquiries than "<i>Blagodarim</i>, (I thank
+you.") The magnificent church of white marble, one of the finest
+specimens now existing of Byzantine architecture, was built in 1314 (as
+an inscription imports) by Stephen Vrosh; but it had suffered severely
+at different times from the bigotry of the Turks. "The curiously twisted
+pillars of the outer door were sadly chipped, while noseless angels, and
+fearfully mutilated lions, guarded the inner portal. Passing through a
+vestibule, we saw the remains of the font, which must have been
+magnificent; and, covered with a cupola, the stumps of the white marble
+columns which support it are still visible. Entering the church, I saw
+on the right the tomb of St Simeon, the sainted king of Servia; beside
+it hung his banner with the half-moon on it, the insigni<i>um</i>(!) of the
+South Slavonic nation from the dawn of heraldry; and near the altar was
+the body of his son, St Stephen, the patron saint of Servia." Another
+day's journey through the same rugged and sterile scenery, in a
+direction due south, during which they passed the Demir-kapu, on Iron
+Gate, on the bank of the Ybar, where there is only room for a single led
+horse in a passage cut through the rock, brought them to the quarantine
+station on the river Raska, two hours' distance from Novibazar in
+Bosnia, which it was Mr Paton's intention to visit, attended by a
+Servian quarantine officer.</p>
+
+<p>The conversion of the Bosniaks to Islam was effected by force, on the
+conquest of the country in 1463, by Mohammed II., the only instance in
+the career of Turkish conquest in which the injunction of the Prophet
+against compulsory proselytism has been violated; but they have always
+held the faith, thus forced on them, with the zeal of renegades, and are
+now the most fanatic and bigoted Moslems in the empire. The Christians
+resident in their territory are subject to every species of tyranny and
+maltreatment, several instances of which, related by refugees in Servia,
+are given in the work before us. A Frank traveller is a sight scarcely
+known; and Mr Paton soon had abundant evidence, on his approach to
+Novibazar, which lies in a fertile plain about a mile and a half in
+diameter, surrounded by low hills, that his visit here would be even
+less favourably received than at Sokol. The gipsies, whose tents covered
+the plain, and who here profess Islamism, cried furiously after them,
+"See, how the Royal Servians now-a-days have the audacity to enter
+Novibazar on horseback!" Youssouf Bey, the governor, was said to be
+asleep in his harem, (the usual Not-at-home of an Oriental,) but, as
+they afterwards ascertained, was actually afraid to receive them; and
+while they were sauntering round the town, a savage-look<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>ing Bosniak
+starting up, exclaimed, "Giaours, kafirs, spies! I know what you come
+for!&mdash;Do you expect to see your cross one day planted on the castle?"
+The threat of a complaint to the Bey only provoked fresh insolence; and,
+warned by a Christian bystander that the whole town would soon be in
+commotion, they prudently beat a retreat, and reached the Servian
+frontier in safety.</p>
+
+<p>After this narrow escape from Bosniak hospitality, Mr Paton's next
+object was the Kopaunik mountain, lying a little to the south, and from
+the top of which (as he had been informed at Csatsak) a panoramic view
+of all Servia might be obtained; and having prevailed on the captain of
+the district to accompany him, they crossed the Ybar, and reached the
+summit with little difficulty, if (as seems to be implied) the whole
+ascent was accomplished on horseback. "The Kopaunik is not much above
+6000 English feet above the level of the sea. But it is so placed in the
+Servian basin, that the eye embraces the whole breadth from Bosnia to
+Bulgaria, and very nearly the whole length from Macedonia to Hungary.
+When at length I stood on the highest peak, the prospect was literally
+gorgeous. Servia lay rolled out at my feet. There lay the field of
+Kossovo, where Amurath defeated Lasar, and entombed the ancient empire
+of Servia. I mused an instant on this great landmark of European
+history, and following the finger of an old peasant who accompanied us,
+I looked eastwards, and saw Deligrad, the scene of one of the bloodiest
+fights that preceded the resurrection of Servia as a principality. The
+Morava glistened in its wide valley like a silver thread in a carpet of
+green, beyond which the dark mountains of Rudnik rose to the north;
+while the frontiers of Bosnia, Albania, Macedonia, and Bulgaria, walled
+in the prospect."</p>
+
+<p>After luxuriating to his heart's content in the contemplation of this
+magnificent panorama, and taking leave of his companion, Mr Paton
+descended the north-eastern slope of the mountain; and lodging for the
+night in a shepherd's hut, where he found an officer sent by the
+Natchalnik of Krushevatz to meet him, arrived next day at Zhupa. "Here
+the aspect of the country changed&mdash;the verdant hills became chalky, and
+covered with vineyards, which, before the fall of the empire, were
+celebrated;" and after partaking of a repast, in which choice grapes and
+clotted cream (a national dish in Turkey) formed the dessert, they
+pushed on in all haste, and reached Krushevatz (often marked in the maps
+by its Turkish name of Aladja-Hissar) late at night. He was hospitably
+received by the Natchalnik, whose wife kissed the visitor's hand on his
+arrival, in compliance with the old Servian customs, now fast wearing
+out, which assign to woman a social position intermediate between the
+seclusion of eastern manners and the graceful precedence which she
+enjoys in the west. The next morning, they walked out to inspect the
+town, which was the metropolis of the Servian kingdom immediately before
+its overthrow by the Turks; and which, lying as it does in the midst of
+the rich vale of the Morava, which here expands into a wide and fertile
+plain, extending from the foot of the mountains by which it is flanked
+to the river, occupies a site well adapted for all inland capital. The
+author here introduces a dissertation on the history, laws, and customs
+of the ancient monarchy; but as our own business is rather with Servia
+as it is, than Servia as it was, we shall pass unnoticed the glories of
+the house of Neman&mdash;the warlike trophies of Stephan Dushan the Powerful,
+at whose approach the Greek Emperor trembled within the walls of
+Constantinople&mdash;and the tragical fate of Knes Lasar, with whom Servian
+independence fell on the fatal plain of Kossovo, June 15, 1389. Of the
+palace of Lasar in Krushevatz, only the gateway and the ruined walls are
+now remaining; but the chapel, having been converted by the Turks into
+an arsenal, is still in perfect preservation. "It is a curious monument
+of the period, in a Byzantine sort of style, but not for a moment to be
+compared in beauty to the church of Studenitza. Above one of the doors
+is carved the double eagle, the insigni<i>um</i> (!!) of empire; but instead
+of having body to body, and wings and beaks pointed outwards, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> in the
+arms of Austria and Russia, the bodies are separated, and beak looks
+inward to beak. The late governor had the Vandalism to whitewash the
+exterior; but the Natchalnik told me, that under the whitewash fine
+bricks were disposed in diamond figures between the stones. This antique
+principle of tessellation, applied by the Byzantines to perpendicular
+walls, and occasionally adopted and varied <i>ad infinitum</i> by the
+Saracens, is magnificently illustrated in the upper exterior of the
+ducal palace of Venice."</p>
+
+<p>A grand field-day against the bears and boars in the forest, with a
+couple of hundred peasants as beaters, had been arranged by the
+Natchalnik for his guest's amusement; but their plans were frustrated by
+the unpropitious state of the weather; and as soon as it became
+favourable, we find Mr Paton again in motion, ascending the eastern
+branch of the Morava to Alexinate, the quarantine station on the
+Bulgarian frontier, where the British govermnent has established a
+<i>konak</i> or residence for the Queen's messengers, who here await, on the
+extreme verge of the sanatory system, the return of the Tartars with
+despatches from Constantinople. He found it tenanted by Captain W&mdash;&mdash;,
+whose guest he became for several days, to his infinite
+satisfaction:&mdash;"It seemed so odd, and yet was so very comfortable, to
+have roast-beef, plum-pudding, sherry, brown stout, Stilton cheese, and
+other insular groceries, at the foot of the Balkan. There was, moreover,
+a small library, with which the temporary occupants of the konak killed
+the month's interval between arrival and departure." He was compelled,
+however, to tear himself from the delights of an English cuisine; and on
+arriving at Tiupria, (more properly Kiupri-Ravenatz,) where he first
+heard tidings of the emeute at Shabatz, and the murder of his friend the
+collector Ninitch, he diverged from his route to visit the monasteries
+of Ravanitza and Manasia, the former of which was the burial-place of
+Lasar. But as his reminiscences of these saintly retreats are rather
+convivial than antiquarian, we shall pass on at once to Svilainitza,
+(the place of silk,) where he was entertained in the chateau of M.
+Ressavatz, the richest man in Servia; the only chateau-residence as he
+tells us, which he saw in the country. This part of Servia appears
+indeed to be, as Mr Paton says&mdash;"Ressavatz qu&agrave;, Ressavatz l&agrave;"&mdash;since to
+the patriotism and command of capital of this enlightened family, it
+owes not only the introduction of the growth of silk as above-mentioned,
+but the construction of an excellent macadamized road, by which Mr Paton
+travelled on the following day, through a country richly cultivated and
+interspersed with lofty oaks, to Posharevatz, (commonly written
+Passarowitz,) where he was welcomed on his arrival by another of the
+name of Ressavatz, the Natchalnik of the place. Posharevatz is
+celebrated in history for the treaty there concluded in 1718, by which,
+in consequence of the victories of Prince Eugene, Bosnia and Servia
+passed under the dominion of Austria for twenty years, till restored to
+the Porte at the peace of Belgrade in 1739: in the present day it is a
+place of considerable importance, both as the capital of a province of
+ninety thousand inhabitants, and the seat of a court of judicial appeal
+for Eastern Servia. By the president of this court Mr Paton was
+entertained at dinner, where he met all the &eacute;lite of Posharevatz; "and
+the president having made some punch, which showed profound acquaintance
+eith the jurisprudence of conviviality, the best amateurs of Posharevatz
+sung their best songs, which pleased me somewhat, for my ears had
+gradually been broken into the habits of the Servian muse. Being pressed
+myself to sing an English national song, I gratified their curiosity
+with 'God save the Queen,' and 'Rule Britannia,' explaining that these
+two songs contained the essence of English nationality; the one
+expressive of our unbounded loyalty, the other of our equally unbounded
+dominion." And now having extracted, to the best of our ability, the
+plums from the pudding of Mr Paton's <i>gastronomic</i> circuit of Servia, in
+which, (as he cordially admits,) "by inter-<i>larding</i> my discourse with
+sundry apophthegms of <i>Bacon</i>, and stale par<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>adoxes of Rochefaucault, I
+passed current considerably above my real value," we shall here leave
+him to find his way by the beaten track through Semendria, Belgrade, and
+Vienna, to England. But before proceeding to the consideration of the
+"Servian Question," a point scarcely touched on in the volume before us,
+it will not be amiss to give a brief summary of the social condition and
+internal organization of the Servian nation, on which Mr Paton gives
+some valuable information in his concluding chapters.</p>
+
+<p>The Servian territory extends about one hundred and seventy miles from
+east to west, along the Danube and Save, the boundaries being the rivers
+Timok and Drina; and one hundred miles in extreme breadth from Belgrade
+to the frontier of Albania. The population, after the expulsion of the
+Turks, was roughly estimated, under Milosh, as somewhat exceeding half a
+million; but, from the internal peace which the country has since
+enjoyed, and the plenty and prosperity which prevails among the
+peasantry, there can be little doubt that it has since greatly
+increased. As not more than one-sixth of the soil is supposed to be in
+cultivation, there is abundance of excellent land undisposed of; as
+every man, therefore, with ordinary industry can support himself and his
+family, abject want and pauperism are almost unknown. The innumerable
+herds of swine, which form the staple commodity of the country, both for
+home consumption and export, rove freely through the oak and beech
+forests which cover great part of Servia, and in which every one is at
+liberty to cut as much timber as he pleases, only an inconsiderable
+portion being reserved as state property for the public service. There
+are no indirect taxes; and as the <i>poresa</i>, or capitation tax, paid by
+each head of a family, the maximum of which is six dollars a-year, is
+the only impost (except a trifling quit-rent for the land) levied by the
+government, "it must be admitted," (as Mr Paton observes,) "that the
+peasantry of Servia have drawn a high prize in the lottery of
+existence." The harvest is a period of general festivity; all labour in
+common in getting in the corn, the proprietor providing entertainment
+for his industrious guests; "but in the vale of the lower Morava, where
+there is less pasture and more corn, this is not sufficient, and hired
+Bulgarians assist." Though in a comparatively southern latitude, the
+vegetable productions are those of a more northern climate; Mr Paton
+never saw an olive-tree, and the grapes and melons, though abundant, are
+inferior to those of Hungary; but the plum, from which the national
+liqueur, <i>slivovitsa</i>, is made, every where abounds, almost every
+village having its plum-orchard. With all these means and appliances for
+good living close at hand, it is evident that there is not much prospect
+of a famine in Servia, till the productions of the soil fall short of
+the demands of the population&mdash;a consummation which cannot happen for
+many generations to come.</p>
+
+<p>The national character of the Servian is compared by Mr Paton to that of
+the Scotch Highlander; and it is not without strong points of
+resemblance. "He is brave in battle, highly hospitable; delights in
+simple and plaintive music and poetry, his favourite instruments being
+the bagpipe and fiddle; unlike the Greek, he shows little aptitude for
+trade; and, unlike the Bulgarian, he is very lazy in agricultural
+pursuits."</p>
+
+<p>In the cleanliness of their persons and houses, they present a
+favourable contrast to most of the other Slavic populations; and their
+personal appearance is also advantageous. "They are a remarkably tall
+and robust race of men; in form and feature they bespeak strength of
+body and energy of mind; but one seldom sees that thoroughbred look, so
+frequently found in the poorest peasants of Italy and Greece. The women
+I think very pretty. They are not so well-shaped as the Greeks; but
+their complexions are fine, their hair generally black and glossy, and
+their head-dress particularly graceful; and not being addicted to the
+bath, like other eastern women, they prolong their beauty beyond the
+average period." The spirit of nationality, and zeal for national
+improvement, which pervades the population almost as one man, is
+strongly marked by many incidents related in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> Mr Paton's pages, and one
+is so remarkable that we cannot forbear quoting it. An idiot boy, to
+whom he had given a glass of <i>slivovitza</i>, "taking off his greasy fez,
+said, 'I drink to our prince Kara-Georgovich, and the progress and
+enlightenment of the nation.' He was too stupid to entertain these
+sentiments himself; but if the determination to rise were not in the
+minds of the people, it would not be on the lips of an oaf in an
+insignificant hamlet." Nor is the progress of intellectual development
+behind this patriotic zeal for national independence in the march of
+regeneration. "In the whole range of the Slavic family, no nation
+possesses so extensive a collection of excellent popular poetry," with
+which the British public has been in some measure made acquainted by the
+translations of Dr Bowring. "The romantic beauty of their country&mdash;the
+relics of a wild mythology, which has some resemblance to that of Greece
+and Scandinavia&mdash;the adventurous character of the population&mdash;the
+vicissitudes of guerilla warfare&mdash;are all given in a dialect which for
+musical sweetness is to other Slavonic tongues what the Italian is to
+the languages of Western Europe." The Servian Anthology has been
+collected by Dr Wuk Stephanovich, the author of several works on
+national topics; and there are several living poets, among whom,
+Milutinovich, already mentioned, is reputed <i>facile princeps</i>. The only
+newspaper now printed at Belgrade is the <i>State Gazette</i>, which
+prudently avoids all remarks on Austrian or Russian policy; and the only
+annual is the <i>Golubitza</i>, (Dove,) a miscellany in prose and verse,
+neatly got up in imitation of the German Taschenb&uuml;cher, and edited by M.
+Hadschitch, the framer of the code of laws. In the Lyceum, lectures on
+law are delivered by M. Simonovich, bred an Hungarian advocate, and
+formerly editor of the <i>Courier</i>, a newspaper now discontinued; but the
+study of law, as well as its practitioners, is said to be unpopular in
+Servia at present; and Professor John Shafarik is an able and popular
+lecturer on Slavic history, literature, and antiquities; of the latter,
+there is a collection in the museum of the institution, as well as a
+rich mineralogical cabinet collected by Baron Herder, and including
+specimens of silver, lead, and copper ore, as well as marble, white as
+that of Carrara. A Literary Society has also been formed for the
+encouragement of popular literature, and the formation of a complete
+dictionary of the language&mdash;the seal of which represents an uncultivated
+field, with the rising sun shining on a monument bearing the arms of
+Servia.</p>
+
+<p>The administrative senate consists of twenty-one members, named by the
+Prince for life; four of whom are ministers. Stojan Simitch, who has
+been before mentioned, the present vice-president (the presidency being
+an imaginary office,) is a Servian of the old school, in whom talent and
+shrewdness have supplied the place of education; but the most remarkable
+member of the cabinet is M. Petronevich, now minister for foreign
+affairs. He was at one time in a commercial house at Trieste, and
+subsequently for nine years a hostage for Servia at Constantinople&mdash;"he
+is astute by nature and education, but has a good heart and a capacious
+intellect; and, in the course of a very tortuous political career, has
+kept the advancement of Servia constantly in view. He is one of the very
+few public men in Servia, in whom the Christian and Western love of
+<i>community</i> has triumphed over the Oriental allegiance to <i>self</i>; and
+this disinterestedness, in spite of his defects, is the secret of his
+popularity." His partner in exile, M. Wuczicz, is now commander of the
+military force and minister of the interior, in which latter office he
+succeeded Garashanin; the standing army is a mere skeleton force; but
+every Servian is a soldier, and bound to provide himself with arms, thus
+forming a national militia, of which the effective strength is estimated
+at little less than 100,000 men. The military command of each of the
+seventeen provinces is vested in the Natchalnik, under whom are the
+captains of the several cantons, usually three in each province; these
+officers superintend the police, and report to the minister at war. As
+minister of the interior, he is charged also with the superintendence of
+ecclesiastical affairs, the spiritual head of which, the Archbishop of
+Belgrade, though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> acknowledging the supremacy of the Greek Patriarch, is
+virtually independent within the province; his salary, as well as that
+of the three bishops and the inferior clergy, is paid by the state, that
+of the primate being about &pound;800 a-year, and of his suffragans half as
+much. The administration of justice (as settled by the Sultan's <i>hatti
+shereef</i> of 1838, which may be regarded as the Servian constitution) is
+vested in local courts in each province, consisting of a president and
+three members, from which an appeal lies to the supreme courts of
+Belgrade and Posharevatz; but reference is always made in the first
+instance, in minor cases, to the <i>Courts of Peace</i> (as they are called,)
+consisting of the village magnates, with whose patriarchal arbitration
+the litigants are usually satisfied, law and lawyers not being held in
+high estimation. "The courts of law have something of the promptitude of
+Oriental justice, without its flagrant venality;" but the salaries of
+the judges are small, that of the president of the appeal court at
+Belgrade not exceeding &pound;300 a-year. But it is the financial department
+that presents the most striking contrast to other European states, in
+the unheard-of phenomenon of a national debt due not <i>from</i> but <i>to</i> the
+government; the revenue so much exceeding the expenditure, that a sum of
+a hundred thousand ducats has been lent to the people at six per cent,
+and forms an item on the credit side of the budget! The total annual
+outlay, according to the financial returns, including the tribute to the
+Porte and the civil list of the Prince, (the latter equivalent to about
+&pound;20,000 English,) is 830,000 dollars; while the income reaches 887,000,
+principally derived from the <i>poresa</i>, or capitation-tax paid by heads
+of families, a separate tax being levied on bachelors. Such is at
+present the flourishing state of the principality of Servia, "the
+youngest member of the European family," the views of Russia on which,
+somewhat prematurely developed by the famous "Servian question," will be
+more clearly understood by a preliminary sketch of its previous history.</p>
+
+<p>The political existence of modern Servia may be considered to date from
+1804, in February of which year a general rising took place of the
+Christian population against the Moslems, provoked by the massacres and
+atrocities committed by the spahis, who held lands in the province by
+military tenure, and whose chiefs had thrown off the authority of the
+Pasha of Belgrade, and embraced the party of the famous Paswan-Oghlu,
+Pasha of Widdin, who was then in open revolt against Selim III., as the
+champion of the janissaries and the <i>ancien regime</i>, against the civil
+and military reforms which the Sultan was striving to introduce. The
+principal leaders of the Servians were Slavatz, (or as Mr Paton calls
+him, if the same person is intended, Glavash,) and George Petrovich,
+surnamed <i>Kara</i> or <i>Czerni</i>, (black,) the son of a peasant in the
+district of Kragejewatz, who afterwards migrated to Topola, which has
+therefore been held by the Servians as the place whence sprung their
+liberator,<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> and where an annual festival is held in his honour. He was
+in his youth a <i>Hayduk</i> or klepht; and having been forced to fly from
+Servia for taking part in an unsuccessful insurrection, had served
+several years in the Austrian army. His successes were at first viewed
+with satisfaction by the Porte; and the obnoxious chiefs, driven to take
+refuge in Belgrade, were there seized and put to death by the Pasha; but
+it soon became evident that the Servians, once in arms and victorious,
+would not be satisfied without complete independence. Semendria and
+other fortresses fell into their hands; and Kara George, by the
+unanimous voice of his countrymen, was declared <i>hospodar</i> or prince.
+The Porte now directed an invasion of Servia by a mingled force of forty
+thousand Turks and Bosniaks; but the Moslem army was totally overthrown
+near Shabatz, Aug. 8, 1806, by seven thousand foot and two thousand
+horse under Kara George, and driven across the Drina with the loss of
+their commander and many other chiefs. It was now apparent that Servia
+was not to be reduced by force<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> of arms; and conferences were opened, by
+which the Sultan engaged to grant them a local and national government,
+with free exercise of their religion. But the negotiation failed, from
+the demands of the Porte that they should surrender their arms, and
+leave the fortresses in the hands of the Turks; and while it was yet
+pending, Kara George carried Belgrade with great slaughter, by a
+<i>coup-de-main</i>, on the night of Dec. 13, 1806, thus completing the
+expulsion of the Turks from Servia, with the exception of Szoko, (Mr
+Paton's Sokol,) and a few other strongholds which still remained in
+their hands.</p>
+
+<p>The war which broke out in the following year between Russia and the
+Porte, secured Servia against any further attacks from the Turks; and
+Kara George, thus freed from apprehensions of invasion, endeavoured to
+introduce some degree of order and civil organization into the country.
+A sort of federal senate, to which each of the twelve districts into
+which the principality was then divided sent a member, met annually at
+Belgrade to regulate the finances and internal affairs of the country;
+and though the freedom of their deliberations was impeded by the
+presence of the <i>wayvodes</i> or military governors, at the head of their
+armed retainers, whom even the authority of Kara George was unable to
+coerce, the success of their efforts to establish schools and promote
+the interests of civilization, indicated a degree of enlightened policy
+little to have been expected from a people but half emancipated from
+Turkish bondage. Kara George, meanwhile, who had received from the
+Emperor Alexander the rank of lieutenant-general, did good service to
+his Russian allies; and though signally defeated in an invasion of
+Bosnia, repulsed with triumphant success every attempt of the Turks to
+enter Servia. But his energies were paralysed by the disaffection of the
+subordinate chiefs; and when Russia, pressed by the advance of Napoleon,
+concluded in 1812 the peace of Bukarest, there was only a nugatory
+stipulation, in the eighth clause of the treaty, that the internal
+administration should be left with the Servians, "as to the subjects of
+the Sublime Porte in the islands of the Archipelago;" the fortresses to
+remain in the hands of the Turks. But no sooner was the Porte relieved
+from the presence of the enemy, than an overwhelming force was poured
+into Servia; and Kara George, unable to resist, fled into Hungary, and
+afterwards took refuge in Russia.</p>
+
+<p>The character of this remarkable man is well portrayed in a despatch,
+quoted by Mr Paton, of the afterwards well-known Diebitsch, who was the
+confidential agent of Russia in Servia, in 1810-11:&mdash;"His countenance
+shows a greatness of mind not to be mistaken; and when we consider times
+and circumstances, and his want of education, we must admit that his
+mind is of a masculine and commanding order. The imputation of cruelty
+appears to be unjust. When the country was without the shadow of a
+constitution, and when he commanded an unorganized and uncultivated
+nation, he was compelled to be severe; he dared not relax his
+discipline; but now that there are courts of law and legal forms, he
+hands every thing over to the tribunals. He has very little to say for
+himself, and is rude in his manners; but his judgments in civil affairs
+are promptly and soundly formed, and to great talents he joins unwearied
+industry. As a soldier, there is but one opinion of his talents,
+bravery, and enduring firmness." The portrait prefixed to the present
+volume, from a painting in the possession of the reigning Prince, the
+duplicate of one executed for the Emperor Alexander, bears out the
+character thus given of the Servian hero:&mdash;"The countenance expressed
+not only intelligence, but a certain refinement, which one would
+scarcely expect in a warrior peasant; but all his contemporaries agree
+in representing him to have possessed an inherent superiority and
+nobility of nature, which, in any station, would have raised him above
+his equals."</p>
+
+<p>At this juncture, when Servia lay at the mercy of the Turks, Milosh
+Obrenovich appeared on the scene. He had originally been a swineherd,
+and afterwards an officer of Kara George; but he now sided with the
+Turks, to whom he rendered efficient aid in cutting off the other
+popular leaders who still continued in arms. But the execution of
+Slavatz, and other chiefs who had also made their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> submission, by order
+of Soliman Pasha of Belgrade, showed him that his own fate was only
+deferred; and, escaping into his native district of Rudnik, he once more
+raised the standard of freedom. The peasantry rose <i>en masse</i>, and the
+campaign was generally to the advantage of Milosh, who displayed great
+bravery and military skill; but Soliman Pasha was at length recalled,
+and an accommodation effected, by which Milosh became hospodar, under
+the suzeraint&eacute; of the Sultan, Belgrade and a few fortresses only
+remaining in the hands of the Turks. As the resident Turkish population
+had almost wholly disappeared during the war, Milosh was now absolute
+master of the country, and was delivered from all fears of a rival, by
+the death of Kara George, who, in 1817, misled by false representations,
+had returned from Petersburg to Servia; but was betrayed by Milosh, and
+put to death by the Turks.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a> Though unable to read or write, his rule
+was marked by ability and vigour. He repressed robberies and offences
+against property with merciless severity, frequently causing malefactors
+to be hung to the next tree, without form of trial;&mdash;and improved the
+internal communications by the formation of an excellent road through
+the forests, from the Turkish frontier at Nissa to Belgrade. In his
+political relations with Russia and the Porte, he steered a middle
+course with consummate dexterity, constantly maintaining a good
+understanding with the cabinet of St Petersburg; while, in 1830, he
+succeeded in obtaining from the Sultan a firman, by which the dignity of
+prince was declared hereditary in his family; and it was further
+provided, that such Turks as still retained land in Servia should
+dispose of their estates within a limited period, and quit the province.
+Another firman, in 1833, released the Servians from the payment of
+<i>kharaj</i> (the capitation tax paid by rayahs) and all other dues and
+imposts, in consideration of an annual tribute of 2,300,000 piastres
+(&pound;23,000) to be paid to the Porte; the right of levying taxes was
+conceded to the Servian government, and all fortresses erected by the
+Turks, since the commencement of the war in 1804, were to be rased.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a>
+These concessions, which rendered the dependence of Servia on the Porte
+little more than nominal, were doubtless granted through the secret
+influence of Russia, whose obvious interest it was to weaken the
+connexion between her destined prey and its titular suzerain; but the
+despotic power thus placed in the hands of Milosh, was exercised with a
+degree of arrogance and contempt of vested rights, which soon rendered
+him highly unpopular. No carriage but his was allowed to appear in the
+streets of Belgrade; and, while all political rights were withheld from
+the people, he amassed immense wealth by arbitrary confiscations, by
+levying heavy taxes and import duties, and by establishing oppressive
+monopolies of articles of necessary consumption, particularly salt,
+veins of which, discovered by Baron Herder near the Kopaunik mountain,
+he forbade to be worked under severe penalties, in order to keep in his
+own hands the importation from Walachia. The discontent of the national
+party, headed by the <i>primates</i> (as they are called) of the
+municipalities, at length broke out into flame&mdash;fomented (as it was then
+believed) by Russia, who was jealous of the influence acquired over
+Milosh by Colonel Hodges, appointed in 1836 consul-general for England,
+and with whom he was on the point of concluding a commercial treaty. A
+<i>hatti-shereef</i> at this juncture (December 1838) arrived from the Porte,
+obtained (as it is said) through the advice of Colonel Hodges, and
+containing a form of constitution for Servia, regulating the legal
+tribunals, the functions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> of the ministry, &amp;c., and ordaining the
+formation of a legislative council of seventeen members, as a check on
+the despotism of the Prince. But the crisis had already arrived. The
+senate took the initiative, by charging Milosh with embezzlement of the
+public property, and calling him to account; and, after a vain attempt
+to make a stand against the popular indignation, he fled with his
+treasures into Hungary. An attempt to recover his power having proved
+ineffectual, he at length abdicated in favour of his son, Milan; who,
+dying soon after, was succeeded by his brother, Michael, under the
+guardianship of his mother, Liubitza. But the same system still
+continued; and all efforts to procure any redress of grievances proving
+fruitless, a general outbreak took place in September 1842, the prime
+movers in which were Wucicz and Petronevich, who for several years had
+been the recognised heads of the popular party. As it was found that the
+few troops round the Prince were not to be depended upon, he quitted
+Belgrade, accompanied by his mother and the French and English consuls,
+and repaired to Semlin; and after some fruitless negotiation, the
+sovereignty was declared vacant by the representatives of the nation,
+with the concurrence of the Turkish governor, Kiamil Pasha.</p>
+
+<p>As it was well known that the Obrenovich family had been for some time
+in bad odour at Petersburg, this movement was at first universally
+attributed to Russian influence; but it soon became apparent that its
+only motive was the spontaneous assertion by the Servians of the rights
+and liberties withheld from them; and the steps for a fresh election, in
+pursuance of the provisions of the <i>hatti-shereefs</i> were taken with
+perfect order and unanimity. A firman was issued by the Sultan, in right
+of his suzeraint&eacute;; and the unanimous and enthusiastic choice of the
+nation fell on Alexander, son of the well-remembered Kara George, who
+was forthwith inaugurated in the cathedral of Belgrade, by the
+Archbishop, and received from the Porte the <i>berat</i> or patent, necessary
+for his confirmation in his new dignity. His accession was officially
+notified by the Ottoman ministers, to the Russian envoy at
+Constantinople but this evidence of good understanding and unity of
+interest between the Porte and her vassal, was a formidable and
+unexpected obstacle to the sinister designs of Russia which was to be
+counteracted at all hazards; and the course adopted for this purpose,
+unparalleled perhaps in the annals of diplomacy, cannot be better
+understood than from the able and lucid statement of Lord Beaumont in
+his place in parliament, on the 5th of May following. [It must first be
+well remembered that neither in the treaty of Bukarest, nor in any
+subsequent convention, was a shadow of a right of <i>veto</i>, or
+interference in any way in the election of a prince of Servia, conveyed
+to Russia, (as in the joint nomination with the Porte of the hospodars
+of the Trans-Danubian principalities,) and the only ground on which such
+interference could rest, was that enunciated by Baron Lieven, with
+somewhat remarkable frankness in a Russ diplomatist, to Mr Paton, that
+"Servia owed her political existence solely to Russia, which gave the
+latter a moral right of intervention over and above the stipulations of
+treaties, to which no other power could pretend"&mdash;a statement false both
+in fact and inference, since it was by their own good swords, unaided by
+Russia or any other European power with either men or money,<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> that the
+Servians won their freedom; and the nugatory stipulation in the treaty
+of Bukarest, had been all along left a dead letter.] "Russia, neglecting
+all international law, sent an agent of her own into Servia, to
+investigate the internal proceedings of an independent state, and, on
+receiving his report, directed that agent to state his complaints,
+without consulting any other power, to the Divan. Now, he would venture
+to say, that a greater or more direct insult than this, was never
+offered to an independent state, and he could not conceive any act that
+could be a more gross and positive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> violation of the treaties of
+Bukarest, Akerman, and Adrianople, under which alone she could set up a
+right to be informed of what passed in Servia. Though Georgevich was
+elected by the people, according to the constitution of the province,
+and though the validity of his election was acknowledged by the Divan,
+and confirmed by the Porte, Russia demanded that the election should be
+set aside; and this demand was made by that power in such an overbearing
+manner, as to show to the world that Turkey was under the control of
+Russia, and must act in conformity with the dictates of the Czar."</p>
+
+<p>In this extremity, the Porte appealed for support to Great Britain and
+Austria, two of the powers who were parties to the quintuple treaty
+signed at London, July 15, 1840, for the express object of ensuring the
+integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire; and the appeal was
+backed by strong representations from Sir Stratford Canning, the British
+ambassador at Constantinople, to his home government. But the British
+government was (as Lord Palmerston observed, with much sarcastic truth,
+in the House of Commons on August 15) "in the same condition in which
+they had too often of late been found in foreign affairs, without any
+opinion of their own on the subject, (hear;) and determined to act with
+Austria, thereby risking the sacrifice of our own interests for a remote
+Austrian interest in which we had no concern. Austria at first
+determined to support Servia; but there came an <i>urgent appeal</i> from
+Russia; and Austria recommended Servia to yield." The nature of this
+"urgent appeal" will be well understood by those who are aware of the
+morbid fear entertained by Austria of Russian extension among the Slavic
+populations in Hungary; and of which Russia availing herself, (as
+remarked by Mr Paget,) "by exerting the influence which similarity of
+language, and, in some parts, of religion, gives her over them, has
+hitherto frightened Austria into doing almost any thing she likes." "The
+Sultan" (continued Lord Palmerston) "was now forced to submit. He
+annulled the election of Prince Georgevich; he consented to a popular
+election; he recalled the two popular leaders, Wucicz and Petronevich,
+to Constantinople; and even appointed a Russian general, Baron Lieven,
+his commissioner, in conjunction with a Turkish officer, to go into
+Servia to see his orders carried into execution."</p>
+
+<p>So far Lord Palmerston; and the accuracy of the information possessed by
+the British Cabinet to combat these strong facts, may be estimated, from
+Sir Robert Peel's calling Prince Alexander, a man of thirty-five, and
+the worthy inheritor of his father's great qualities, "an infatuated
+youth"&mdash;on the authority (it is said) of a letter from Mr Fonblanque!
+But we must return from the English debates to the progress of the drama
+in Servia, where the commissioners found the Servians, in defiance of
+the great powers, and in spite of the hopelessness of aid from
+Constantinople, preparing for national resistance. The Prince refused to
+abdicate, alleging that the firman by which he had been appointed had
+never been revoked, and that universal anarchy would result from his
+resigning the reins of government, since no <i>kaimakams</i>, or regents <i>pro
+tempore</i>, had been named by the Porte&mdash;an omission which is supposed not
+to have been altogether unintentional; and the whole nation rose in
+commotion at the bare mention of the recall of Wucicz and Petronevich;
+the crowd exclaiming, when Wucicz told them that 'the Servian forests
+would not be less green were two old trees cut down, "No! a thousand
+times no!" and rushing with arms in their hands to the presence of
+Hafiz-Pasha, (who had been appointed on Kiamil's recall on the mandate
+of Russia for his share in the revolution,) announced their
+determination to maintain their prince and his counsellors; to which
+Hafiz assented, no doubt, with secret gratification. While the
+proceedings were thus stayed by the unexpected resolution shown by the
+Servians, Russian emissaries were traversing the country in all
+directions, striving in vain to stir up a revolt in favour of the
+Obrenovich family, whose former partisans, it was found, were now their
+strongest opponents; and inciting the Christians in Bosnia and Bulgaria
+to rise against the Moslems, by the hope of obtaining independent
+governments under hospodars of their own, like the other principalities.
+On the other hand, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> Servian population was ready to rise <i>en masse</i>
+in defence of its liberties, and was further cheered by the report that
+thirty thousand of the Slavic races under Austrian dominion were ready
+to join them in the struggle for national freedom; while the Porte,
+roused to unexpected energy by the accumulation of wrong heaped upon it,
+reinforced the garrison of Belgrade with three thousand fresh troops,
+and formed encampments to the amount of near one hundred thousand men at
+Constantinople and Adrianople, for the ostensible purpose of overawing
+the spirit of revolt among the Bulgarians. The National Assembly, which
+had in the mean time met at Belgrade, declared the election of Prince
+Alexander legal and valid, and refused to abrogate it; and as the agents
+of Russia found that their original object could only be effected by an
+invasion, an act which (even had the season left time to march an army
+to the Danube) might have exceeded even the long-suffering of the other
+powers who were parties to the treaty of 1840, it was resolved, for the
+sake of appearances, to repair the false step as far as possible by a
+show of moderation. It was accordingly announced that the principal
+objections of Russia to the late election arose from the informality
+with which the proceedings had been conducted; that Prince Alexander
+would be admitted as a candidate, (a concession very distasteful to
+Austria, who apprehended that the talent and popularity of the prince
+might attract her own Slavic subjects under his rule;) and that the late
+prince, Michael, should be excluded from competition. This could only
+lead to one result; and Alexander, having <i>pro form&acirc;</i> resigned his
+authority, a <i>hatti-shereef</i> was sent from the Porte, and he was again
+elected with even greater enthusiasm than before.</p>
+
+<p>But Russia, though foiled in her main object, had still another move in
+reserve. The <i>berat</i>, or letter-patent of the Sultan, was still
+necessary for the confirmation of the new prince; and July 27, M. Titoff
+(who had succeeded M. Boutenieff as Russian envoy to the Porte)
+announced to the Divan the will of his master, that this important
+document should be withheld till Wucicz and Petronevich, "the authors of
+the late disturbances," had left the country. The ministers of the
+Porte, unsupported by the ambassadors of France and England, who
+remained passive, had no alternative but to yield to this audacious act
+of intervention, which was communicated by Baron Lieven to the Servian
+kaimakams appointed during the interregnum. "As soon as the intelligence
+was spread among the people, the universal exclamation was&mdash;'We will not
+suffer them to be taken from us&mdash;they are our protectors, our
+benefactors;'" but submission was inevitable, and, in the middle of
+August, the two ministers repaired to Widdin, where they were received
+with high distinction by Hussein Pasha. They remained in exile a year,
+when the interdict was withdrawn by Russia, as it is said in consequence
+of British intervention, but more probably from finding, that,
+notwithstanding their absence, it was impossible to stir up faction
+against Prince Alexander. The circumstances of their return have been
+already given from Mr Paton's account; and we can little doubt, that on
+his next interview with the Prince, after his faithful counsellors had
+been restored to him, "he showed no trace of that reserve and timidity
+which foreigners had remarked in him a year before."</p>
+
+<p>Such is the plain unvarnished account of the late transactions in
+Servia, in which the true character of Russian policy, and the means by
+which it is carried out, have been unveiled before the eyes of Europe in
+a manner sufficient to enlighten those which are not closed in wilful
+blindness. "Europe has been apprised, if she wishes to be so," (says the
+<i>Journal des Debats</i>,) "that there is in the East, independent of
+Turkey, a point of resistance against the encroachments of Russia;" and
+this <i>great fact</i> derives double value from that point being found in
+one of those Slavic populations which it is the grand object and aim of
+Russia to unite under her iron sceptre. But (in the eloquent language of
+Mr Paget) "we knew that if Europe did awake, the progress of Russia was
+stopped; we knew that her gigantic power would crumble away, and nothing
+remain but the hatred of the world, of the injustice and cruelty by
+which it had been raised."</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+F. H.
+</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Servia, the Youngest Member of the European Family; or, a
+Residence in Belgrade, and Travels in the Highlands and Woodlands
+of the Interior, during the Years 1843 and 1844.</i> By <span class="smcap">Andrew
+Archibald Paton</span>, Esq., Author of the "Modern Syrians." </p></div><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="THE_STUDENT_OF_SALAMANCA" id="THE_STUDENT_OF_SALAMANCA"></a>THE STUDENT OF SALAMANCA.</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Part</span> IV.</h3>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Y asi entre otras razones le dijo que no tuviese pena del suceso
+de Camila, porque s&iacute;n duda la herida era ligera."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Cervantes.</span> <i>El
+Curioso Impertinente.</i> </p></div>
+
+
+<p>The unexpected and opportune appearance of Mariano Torres, at the moment
+of Herrera's escape, requires a few words of explanation. When Rodil, on
+the morrow of the skirmish with Zumalacarregui in the Lower Amezcoa,
+evacuated that valley, he proceeded to distribute a portion of his army
+amongst various garrisons; and then, with the remainder, marched to
+Biscay in pursuit of Don Carlos, who, having as yet no place of security
+from his enemies, was wandering about attended by a handful of
+followers. Amongst the troops left in Navarre by the Christino general,
+was the cavalry regiment to which Herrera and Torres belonged, and this
+was ordered to the plains of the Ebro. The day after its arrival at the
+town of Viana, a battalion marched in from Pampeluna, and with it came
+Sergeant Velasquez, who, after his escape from the Carlists, had taken
+refuge in that fortress. Great was the consternation of Torres on
+learning the surprise of the escort and capture of his friend, and his
+grief was warmly sympathized in by the other officers of the regiment,
+with whom Herrera was a universal favourite. But Torres was not the man
+to content himself with idle regrets and unavailing lamentations, and he
+resolved to rescue Herrera, if it were possible, even at the hazard of
+his own life. He confided his project to the colonel of his regiment,
+who, with some difficulty, was induced to acquiesce in it, and to grant
+him leave of absence. This obtained, he disguised himself as a private
+soldier, and boldly plunged into the centre of Navarre in quest of
+Zumalacarregui and his army. He had little difficulty in finding them:
+he announced himself as a deserter from the Christinos, and, without
+attracting unusual notice or suspicion, was enrolled in a Navarrese
+battaline, which, a day or two afterwards, marched to the village where
+Herrera was kept prisoner. Although by the interference of Count
+Villabuena, and the dexterity of Paco and the gipsy, Mariano's daring
+self-devotion was rendered superfluous, it had its uses, inasmuch as his
+disappearance with Herrera prevented the slightest suspicion from
+falling upon those who had really contrived and effected the escape. The
+gipsy, after guiding the two friends to Salvatierra, and receiving an
+ample reward from Herrera, performed the secret service with which
+Zumalacarregui had charged him, returned to that general with a ready
+framed excuse for the slight delay in its execution, and pocketed the
+ten additional onzas promised him by Paco. The muleteer, still weak from
+his wound, was the last man to be suspected; and of the Count's
+participation in the affair, no one, excepting Major Villabuena, for a
+moment dreamed. Don Baltasar, remembering his cousin's anxiety
+concerning Herrera, certainly entertained a notion that he had in some
+way or other facilitated his escape; but of this he could obtain no
+proof, nor, had he been able to do so, would it have been for his own
+interest to expose the Count, whom he was desirous, on the contrary, to
+conciliate. It was a vague and undefined apprehension of some attempt at
+a rescue, that had led him, at so late an hour on the night of the
+escape, to prowl in the vicinity of Herrera's prison.</p>
+
+<p>The autumn and winter of 1834 passed away without any material change in
+the position of the personages of our narrative. The war continued with
+constantly increasing spirit and ferocity, and each month was marked by
+new and important successes on the part of the Carlists. The plains of
+Vittoria, the banks of the Ebro, the mountains of central and northern
+Navarre, were alternately the scene of encounters, in which the skill of
+Zumalacarregui, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> zeal and intrepidity of his troops, proved an
+overmatch for the superior numbers of the Christinos. In vain did the
+government of the Queen Regent, persevering in spite of its many
+reverses, send its best troops and most experienced generals to that
+corner of the peninsula where civil strife raged: it was only that the
+troops might be decimated, and the generals forfeit their former
+reputation in repeated and disastrous defeats. Although the country and
+climate were such as to render temporary repose in winter quarters most
+desirable for the contending armies, the idea of such an indulgence was
+scarcely for a moment entertained, and the winter campaign proved as
+active as the summer one. The arrival of Mina to take the chief command
+of the Queen's forces, and the severity of the measures he adopted,
+rendered the character of the war more sanguinary and cruel than it had
+been since its commencement; and although, in numerous instances, the
+nearest relatives and dearest friends were fighting on contrary sides,
+it became impossible for them to obtain intelligence of each other's
+welfare. It was by no means surprising, therefore, that eight months
+elapsed, and the spring arrived, without Herrera hearing any thing of
+Count Villabuena or his daughter; and that the Count, on the other hand,
+remained ignorant of the proceedings of the young man whose life he had
+saved, and in whose fate he could not but feel interested, save through
+the occasional rumour of some dashing exploit, by which Herrera
+maintained and increased the high reputation he had early acquired in
+the ranks of the Christinos. His gallantry did not go unrewarded, and
+the opening of the spring campaign found him in command of a squadron,
+and on the high-road to further promotion.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Herrera was thus gaining fame and honour, his rival, Major
+Villabuena, had no reason to complain of his services being overlooked.
+His courage was undoubted, his military skill by no means contemptible,
+and these qualities had procured him a colonel's commission and a staff
+appointment. But, in spite of these advantages, Don Baltasar was
+dissatisfied and unhappy. His object in joining the Carlists had not
+been promotion, still less a zeal for the cause, but the appropriation
+to himself of the fair hand and broad lands of Rita de Villabuena. His
+prospect of obtaining these, however, seemed each day to diminish. The
+favour with which the Count regarded him had lasted but during the first
+days of their acquaintance, and had since been materially impaired by
+the discovery of various unpleasing traits in Don Baltasar's character,
+and particularly by his endeavours to urge the death of Herrera in
+opposition to the wishes of his kinsman. Moreover, there could be little
+sympathy or durable friendship between men of such opposite qualities
+and dispositions. Count Villabuena had the feelings and instincts of a
+nobleman, in the real, not the conventional sense of the term: he was
+proud to a fault, stern, and unyielding, but frank, generous, and
+upright. Don Baltasar was treacherous, selfish, and unscrupulous. He
+felt himself cowed and humbled by the superiority of the Count, whom he
+began secretly to detest; and who, whilst still keeping on good, or at
+least courteous, terms with his cousin, became daily more averse to his
+alliance, and more decided to support Rita in her rejection of his suit.</p>
+
+<p>As a natural consequence of Zumalacarregui's successes, they of the
+absolutist party in Spain who had openly declared for Don Carlos, and
+who, during the first year of the war, had been hunted from post to
+pillar, and frequently compelled to seek concealment in caves and
+forests from the pursuit of the foe, found themselves, in the spring of
+1835, in possession of a considerable tract of country, including a few
+fortified places. <i>El Lobo Ca&ntilde;o</i>, the Grey-haired Wolf, as his followers
+had styled Don Carlos, in allusion to his hair having become bleached on
+the mountain and in the bivouac, began to collect around him the
+semblance of a court; and various ladies, the wives and daughters of his
+partisans, who had been in temporary exile in France, recrossed the
+frontier and hazarded themselves in the immediate vicinity of the scene
+of war. Amongst others,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> Rita de Villabuena, who had been residing with
+some friends at the French town of Pau, implored, and with difficulty
+obtained, her father's permission to rejoin him. A house was prepared
+for her reception in the small town of Segura in Guipuzcoa, whence, in
+case of need, a speedy retreat might be made to the adjacent sierras of
+Mutiloa and Aralar, and here she arrived, under her father's escort,
+towards the commencement of the month of May.</p>
+
+<p>One of the first who hastened to pay court to the young and beautiful
+heiress, was, as might be expected, Colonel Baltasar de Villabuena. But
+his reception was in the highest degree discouraging, and he was able to
+assure himself, that if any variation had taken place in Rita's
+sentiments, it was by no means in his favour. His only remaining hope,
+therefore, was in an appeal to the Count, whom he still believed to be,
+for the family reasons already adverted to, desirous of a union between
+Rita and himself. This appeal he resolved to take an early opportunity
+of making. A valuable estate, which Rita had inherited from her mother,
+lay within the tract of country already conquered by the Carlists; and
+although the revenue it yielded was greatly diminished by the disturbed
+state of Navarre, and the contributions levied for the carrying on of
+the war, it was still sufficiently important to excite the cupidity of
+Don Baltasar, and to render him doubly anxious to obtain, on any terms,
+the hand of his cousin.</p>
+
+<p>It was on a bright May morning, three days subsequently to Rita's
+arrival at Segura, that a small train of horsemen was seen winding along
+the declivitous paths that lead across the sierra of Elgua, a part of
+the northern boundary of the province of Alava. The snows with which,
+during the long winter, the upper portion of these mountains had been
+covered, had disappeared in the warm rays of the spring sun, and
+disclosed peaks of grey rock, and patches of table-land strewn with
+flints, producing little besides a few Alpine plants, which, in defiance
+of the scanty nourishment they found, and of the keen air that blew over
+those elevated summits, boldly expanded their blossoms in the pleasant
+sunshine. Lower down, and on that part of the southern side of the
+mountain over which the cavalcade now proceeded, masses of forest-trees
+sprang out of the more plentiful soil, and overshadowed the rocky path
+that rang under the horses' feet; the dusky foliage of the fir-tree, the
+brighter green of the oak, and the broad angular leaves of the sycamore,
+mingling in rich variety. Now the path lay through some dried-up
+water-course, half filled with loose stones, whose elevated sides, over
+the edges of which the tendrils of innumerable creeping plants dangled
+and swung, bounded the view on either hand; whilst overhead the
+interwoven branches afforded, through their thick leafage, but scanty
+glimpses of the bright blue sky. Presently, emerging from the ravine,
+the road, if such it might be called, ran along the shelf of a
+precipice, below which successive ranges of luxuriant foliage, varied
+here and there by a projecting crag, or enlivened by the dash and
+sparkle of a waterfall, continued to the level below. From the foot of
+the mountains, an extensive plain stretched out to a distance of several
+leagues, its smiling and fertile fields thickly sprinkled with villages
+and farm-houses. To the left front rose the old Moorish castle of
+Guevara; and at a greater distance, more to the westward, and near the
+centre of the plain, were seen the imperfect fortifications and lofty
+church-towers of the city of Vittoria.</p>
+
+<p>The foremost of the horsemen, who, on the day referred to, were thus
+scrambling, to the great discomfort of their steeds, down the steep and
+rugged sides of the sierra, avoiding, for reasons of safety, the
+high-road from Salinas to Vittoria, which lay at a league or two on
+their right, was a man of middle age and tawny complexion, mounted on a
+lean and uncomely, but surefooted horse, whose long tail, which, if
+allowed to flow at will, would have swept the ground, was doubled up
+into a sort of club, about a foot long, and tightly bound with worsted
+ribands of bright and varied colours. The thick and abundant mane had
+been carefully plaited, with the exception of the foremost tuft, left
+hanging down between the ears, and from beneath which the wild<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> eyes of
+the animal glanced shyly at the different objects he passed, pretty much
+as did those of the rider from under his bushy and projecting eye-brows.
+The horseman was dressed in a loose jacket of black sheep-skin, the wool
+rubbed off in many places, fastened down the front by copper clasps and
+chains that had once boasted a gilding, and bound at edges with coarse
+crimson velvet, which, from time and dirt, had become as dark as the
+principal material of the garment. Between the loose short trousers and
+the clumsy half-boots, replacing the sandals that were the customary
+wear of the person described, several inches of lean and sinewy leg were
+visible. A coloured handkerchief, tied round the head, and from beneath
+which a quantity of shaggy black hair escaped, rusty iron spurs, with
+huge jingling rowels, and a well-stuffed leathern wallet slung across
+his body, completed the equipment of the horseman, in whom the reader
+will perhaps already have recognised Jaime, the gipsy esquilador, now
+acting as guide to the persons who followed. These consisted of Count
+Villabuena and his cousin, Don Baltasar, both well mounted on powerful
+chargers, and cloaked from chin to heel; for they had been early in the
+saddle, and, although now in the month of May, the morning air upon the
+mountains was keen and searching. They were followed, at a short
+distance, by an escort of forty Carlist cavalry, strange, wild-looking
+figures, whose scanty equipment, and the little uniformity of their
+clothing, might have excited the derision of better provided troops; but
+whose muscular forms and hardy aspect, as well as the serviceable state
+of their carbines and lances, gave promise of their proving efficient
+defenders and formidable foes.</p>
+
+<p>Not having been bred to the profession of arms, Count Villabuena was, in
+a strictly military point of view, of little use to his party; but his
+intimate acquaintance with Navarre and the Basque provinces, with the
+customs, feelings, and prejudices of their inhabitants, rendered him
+invaluable in all administrative arrangements and combinations, and in
+these he cheerfully and actively exerted himself. It was on a mission of
+this nature that he was now proceeding, having left O&ntilde;ate early that
+morning, to attend a meeting of influential Alavese Carlists, which was
+to take place at the village of Gamboa, on the north side of the plain
+of Vittoria. Although the country he had to pass through was not then
+occupied, and only occasionally visited, by the Christinos, an escort
+was necessary; and, besides this escort, Colonel Villabuena had
+volunteered to accompany his cousin. His object in so doing was to
+obtain an opportunity for an uninterrupted conversation with the Count,
+on the subject of his pretensions to the hand of Rita.</p>
+
+<p>This conversation had taken place, and its result had been most
+unsatisfactory to Don Baltasar. The Count plainly told him that it was
+not his intention to force the inclinations of his daughter; and that,
+as she was averse to the proposed alliance, he himself had abandoned the
+idea of its taking place. A long and stormy discussion ensued, and
+Baltasar accused the Count of having deceived him, and induced him to
+join a cause, the ultimate triumph of which was impossible, by holding
+out hopes that he never intended to realize. The Count replied by
+reminding Don Baltasar, that when he had urged him to serve his rightful
+monarch, and not under the banner of a usurper, the only arguments he
+had used were those of loyalty and duty; and that the proposed marriage
+was a private arrangement entirely contingent upon his daughter's
+acquiescence. Sharp retorts and angry words followed, until the
+conversation was brought to a close by the Count's checking his horse,
+and allowing the escort, which had previously been at some distance
+behind, to come up with them. The cousins then rode on, still side by
+side, but silent, and as far apart as the narrow path would allow, the
+Count haughty and indignant, Don Baltasar sullen and dogged.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst this occurred in the mountains, the persons whom Count Villabuena
+came to meet were assembling at the place of rendezvous in the village
+of Gamboa. From various country lanes and roads, substantial-looking
+men, wrapped in heavy brown cloaks, and riding punchy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> mountain horses,
+were seen to emerge, for the most part singly, and at the careless,
+deliberate pace least calculated to excite suspicion of their going to
+other than their ordinary avocations. Some of these were alcaldes and
+regidores from the neighbouring villages, others landed proprietors in
+the vicinity. Now and then a lean, anxious priest, perched upon a high
+saddle, his feet encased in clumsy wooden stirrups, his head covered
+with an enormous hat, of which the brim, curled up at the sides over the
+crown, projected half a yard before and behind him, came ambling into
+the village, distributing his <i>benedicites</i> amongst the peasant women
+and children, who stood at the doors of the houses bowing reverently to
+the <i>padre cura</i>. One man, dressed in the coarsest and commonest garb of
+a labourer, came up upon an ill-looking mule, and received a loud and
+joyful welcome from the persons already assembled. He was a wealthy
+proprietor, whose estates lay within the Christino lines, and had been
+compelled to adopt this disguise to avoid notice. The arrival of another
+person, to all appearance a charcoal-burner, with grimy face and hands,
+riding a ragged pony, across which a couple of sacks, black from the
+charcoal they had contained, were thrown by way of saddle, was hailed
+with similar demonstrations of joy. He was a rich merchant and national
+guardsman from Vittoria, secretly well affected to Don Carlos.</p>
+
+<p>The place where the Carlists first assembled was not in a house, but on
+a paved platform, extending along one side of the large church, by which
+it was masked from the view of persons approaching from the direction of
+Vittoria. A sort of cloister, with stone benches beneath it, ran along
+the wall of the church, and in front of the platform was a broad
+greensward, used as a playground by the village children. Whilst the
+Carlists grouped themselves in the cloisters, talking eagerly together,
+and waiting the coming of Count Villabuena, their horses and ponies
+stood saddled and bridled upon the green, held by peasant boys, and in
+readiness for their owners to mount and ride away at a moment's notice,
+or on the first signal of alarm. Of the mountain path by which the Count
+was expected to arrive, only about a mile was visible from the platform,
+after which it disappeared over the brow of a low wood-crowned eminence
+that rose to the north, partially intercepting the view of the sierra.
+On this eminence a peasant was stationed to watch for the Count; whilst
+on the other side of the village, at a short distance upon the road to
+Vittoria, another vedette was posted, to give notice of the appearance
+of any of the foraging or reconnoitring parties which the Christinos not
+unfrequently sent out in this direction.</p>
+
+<p>It was considerably past noon, and the members of the Junta, for such
+did the assembly style itself, were beginning to wax impatient for the
+arrival of the Count, without whom the business for which they had met
+could not be proceeded with, when the watcher upon the hill gave the
+concerted signal by waving his cap in the air, uttering at the same time
+one of those far-sounding cries, peculiar to the inhabitants of
+mountainous regions. Upon this announcement, the Carlists descended from
+the platform into the road that ran past one of its extremities, and
+took their way, with grave and dignified demeanour, to the dwelling of
+the priest, in which the meeting was to be held. This house, according
+to custom one of the most spacious and comfortable in the village, was
+situated at about musket-shot from the church, and a little detached
+from the other buildings. Annexed to it was a long garden, bordering the
+road, and divided from it by a low hedge; beyond the garden was a vast
+and level field, and, on the eastern side of that, a tract of marshy
+ground, thickly covered with a lofty growth of willow and alder trees,
+extended to a considerable distance. The Carlists had traversed nearly
+the whole length of the garden hedge, and the foremost of them were
+close to the door of the house, when they were startled by the loud
+blast of a horn, with which the peasant sentry upon the Vittoria road
+had been furnished, to give the alarm if needful. They simultaneously
+paused, and anxiously listened for a repetition of the sound. It came; a
+third and a fourth blast were sounded, and with such hurried vehemence
+of tone as denoted pressing danger.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> Yet the peril could scarcely be so
+imminent as the quick repetition of the signal would seem to denote;
+for, from the place where the vedette was posted, he would command a
+view of any advancing troops nearly half an hour before they could reach
+the village, and those who had aught to fear from them would have ample
+time to effect their escape. But the horn continued sounding, ever
+louder and louder,&mdash;the Carlists gazed at each other in dismay, and some
+few made a movement towards their horses, as if to mount and fly.
+Suddenly a fat and joyous-looking alcalde, whose protuberant paunch and
+ruby nose were evidence of his love for the wine-skin, although the
+chalky tint that had overspread his features at the first sound of
+alarm, did not say much for his intrepidity, burst out into a loud
+laugh, which caused his companions to stare at him in some wonder and
+displeasure.</p>
+
+<p>"By the blessed St. Jago!" exclaimed he, "the idiot has mistaken our
+friends for our enemies. He has been looking over his shoulder instead
+of before him, and has caught a sight of the Se&ntilde;or Conde and his escort.
+See yonder."</p>
+
+<p>The Carlists looked in the direction pointed out, and on the top of the
+hill over which Count Villabuena was expected to approach, they saw
+three horsemen standing, one of whom was sweeping the village and the
+adjacent country with a field-glass, apparently seeking the cause and
+meaning of the violent fanfare that had so much alarmed the respectable
+Junta. Behind these three men, who were no others than the Count, his
+cousin, and their guide, the lance-flags of the escort were visible,
+although the soldiers themselves were still out of sight, having halted
+just here arriving on the crest of the hill. The countenances of the
+Carlists, which for a moment had contracted with alarm, were beginning
+again to expand, as the plausibility of their companion's explanation
+occurred to them, when suddenly they saw the Count and his companions
+turn their horses in all haste, and disappear behind the hill. At the
+same moment, and before they could guess at the meaning of this
+manoeuvre, a shout was heard, a troop of Christino dragoons debouched
+from behind the willow wood, deployed upon the field, and charged across
+it in open order, their lances levelled,<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> and the pennons fluttering
+above their horses' ears. In less time than it takes to write it, they
+had crossed the field, dashed into the garden, and, breaking through the
+hedge, clattered over the rough streets of the village in pursuit, of
+the unfortunate priests and alcaldes, who, taken entirely by surprise,
+knew not which way to run to avoid the danger that menaced them. Some
+few who had time to get on horseback, scampered off, but were pursued
+and overtaken by the better-mounted dragoons; others crept into houses
+and stables, or flung themselves into ditches; and the majority, seeing
+no possibility of escape, threw themselves on their knees, and, in
+piteous accents, implored mercy. This was not refused.</p>
+
+<p>"Give quarter, and make prisoners," was the command uttered in the
+clear, sonorous tones of Luis Herrera, who led the party; "they are
+unarmed&mdash;spare their lives."</p>
+
+<p>The order was obeyed, and only one or two of the more desperate, who
+produced concealed weapons, and endeavoured to defend themselves,
+received trifling sabre-cuts from the exasperated dragoons.</p>
+
+<p>But although Don Baltasar, on first obtaining a view of the Queen's
+cavalry, and before he knew what force was approaching the village, had
+retired behind the brow of the hill. It was by no means his intention to
+make a precipitate retreat without ascertaining the strength of the
+enemy, and endeavouring, if possible, to rescue the captive Junta.
+Whilst the Count and the escort retraced their steps down the hill, and
+halted in the fields upon its north side, whence they had the option of
+returning to the mountains by the way they had come, or of striking off
+into the high-road to Salinas and O&ntilde;ate, which ran at a short distance
+to their right, Colonel Villabuena and the gipsy, concealed amongst the
+trees<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> that clothed the summit of the eminence, noted what passed in the
+village. They at once saw how the surprise had occurred. The Junta had
+not expected an enemy to approach by any other road than that from
+Vittoria, and had consequently stationed sentries in no other direction.
+That such would be the case, had been foreseen by the Christinos, who
+having received, through their spies, information of the intended
+meeting had sent out troops upon the Pampeluna road, with orders, after
+proceeding a certain distance, to strike off to the left, and, availing
+themselves of the cover afforded by a large tract of wood and swamp, to
+take Gamboa in rear or flank. The man&oelig;uvre had been rapidly and
+skilfully executed; and Luis Herrera, who, with his squadron, had been
+sent upon this duty, arrived with one half of his men within a few
+hundred yards of the village before he was perceived by the Carlist
+vedette. His other troop he had detached to his right, in order that, by
+making a wider sweep, they might get in rear of Gamboa, and prevent the
+possible escape of any of the rebels. This detachment, ignorant of the
+country, and puzzled by the numerous lanes and paths which crossed each
+other in every direction, had lost its way, and was still at some
+distance from the village when Herrera charged into it.</p>
+
+<p>When Colonel Villabuena had made his observations, and ascertained that
+the number of the enemy but little exceeded that of his own men, he rode
+out of the wood and rejoined the escort, resolved to take advantage of
+the Christinos being dispersed, and, unexpectant of an attack, to make a
+dash at them, which, he doubted not, would be fully successful.
+Previously, however, and although the Count had no military rank, it was
+a matter of common courtesy, not to say of duty, to communicate with
+him, and ask his consent to dispose of an escort which had been sent for
+his protection. But here the sullen temper of Don Baltasar, and the
+rankling irritation left by his recent altercation with his kinsman,
+showed themselves. Followed by the gipsy, he rode to the front of the
+lancers, who were drawn up in line, and, without addressing a syllable
+to the Count, or appearing to notice his presence, gave, in a sharp
+abrupt tone, the necessary words of command. The men moved off to the
+left. The Count, highly sensitive on matters of etiquette, and indignant
+at being treated by Don Baltasar as a person of no importance, unworthy
+of being consulted, allowed the troop to march away without giving any
+indication of an intention to follow or accompany it. Don Baltasar
+looked round, hesitated for a moment, and then seeing that the Count
+remained motionless, and took no notice of the departure of his escort,
+he rode back to him.</p>
+
+<p>"The enemy are few," said he, abruptly; "I shall attack them."</p>
+
+<p>Count Villabuena bowed his head coldly.</p>
+
+<p>"Scant measure of courtesy, colonel," said he. "Angry feelings should
+not make you forget the conduct of a <i>caballero</i>."</p>
+
+<p>On hearing himself thus rebuked, an expression of anger and deadly hate
+overspread the sombre countenance of Don Baltasar, and he scowled at the
+Count as though about to deal him a stab. But his eye sank beneath the
+calm, cold, contemptuous gaze of Count Villabuena. He said nothing: and
+again wheeling his charger, galloped furiously back to the head of his
+men, followed, at a more deliberate pace, by his cousin. Passing swiftly
+over a few fields, the little troop swept round the base of the hill,
+dashed across the level, and appeared upon the road at half a mile from
+the village. On obtaining a view of the latter, Don Baltasar at once saw
+that he was not likely to have so cheap a bargain of the Christinos as
+he had anticipated. Herrera had too much experience in this description
+of warfare to be easily caught; and although, upon first entering
+Gamboa, the dragoons had unavoidably dispersed in pursuit of the
+fugitives, he had lost no time in reassembling them; and, whilst a few
+men kept the prisoners already made, and searched the houses for others,
+he himself had formed upon the road a party fully equal in number to
+that commanded by Don Baltasar. Nothing daunted, however, at finding the
+enemy on his guard, the Carlist colonel drew his sabre and turned to his
+men.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>A ellos!</i>" he cried. "At them, boys, for Spain and the King!"</p>
+
+<p>The lancers replied to his words by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span> a loud hurra, and the little party
+advanced, at first at a moderate pace, in order not to blow the horses
+before the decisive moment should arrive. The Count, forgetting private
+animosity in the excitement and exhilaration of the moment, rode
+cheerfully at the side of his cousin, and drew the sword which, although
+a civilian, the perilous and adventurous life he led induced him
+invariably to carry. At the same moment Herrera's trumpeter sounded the
+assembly, and those of the dragoons who had dismounted hurried to their
+horses. Before, however, the distance between the opposite parties had
+been diminished by many yards, the blast of the Christino trumpets was
+replied to by another, and, upon looking back, Don Baltasar saw a fresh
+party of dragoons just appearing upon the road, about a mile in his
+rear. It was the second troop of Herrera's squadron coming to the
+support of their leader.</p>
+
+<p>"Curse and confound them!" cried Baltasar, his face darkening with rage
+and disappointment. "Halt&mdash;files about! And now, boys, legs must do it,
+for they are three to one."</p>
+
+<p>And he led the way back into the fields, followed by his men at a rapid
+pace, but in good order.</p>
+
+<p>Without a moment's delay, Herrera, leaving a few dragoons to guard the
+prisoners, dashed across the country in pursuit of the Carlists. His
+example was followed by Torres, who commanded the other detachment. The
+fugitives had a good start, and were soon behind the hill; but the
+Christino horses were fresher, and although less accustomed to climb the
+mountains, in the plain they were swifter of foot. Don Baltasar, now
+riding in rear of his men, cast a glance over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"They gain on us," said he, in a low tone, and as if to himself. "It is
+impossible to reach the sierra. If we could, we should be safe. There
+are positions that we could hold on foot with our carbines, where they
+would not dare attack us."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall never reach them," said the Count. "Let us turn and fight
+whilst yet there is time."</p>
+
+<p>"The bridge! the bridge!" cried the gipsy, who, notwithstanding the
+gaunt appearance of his steed, had kept well up with the soldiers. "If
+we gain that, we are safe. A child could pull it down."</p>
+
+<p>"Right, by God!" cried Baltasar glancing in some surprise at the adviser
+of an expedient which he had himself overlooked. "Spur, men, spur; but
+keep together."</p>
+
+<p>Every rowel was struck into the flanks of the straining, panting horses
+and the Carlists rapidly neared a small river, which, rising in some of
+the adjacent mountains, flowed in rear of the little hill already
+referred to, and parallel to the sierra whence Count Villabuena and his
+companions had recently descended. The land, for some distance on either
+side of the stream, was uncultivated, covered with furze and yellow
+broom, and sprinkled with trees and clumps of high bushes. Across the
+river, only a few months previously, a rude but solid stone bridge had
+afforded a passage; but the bridge had been broken down soon after the
+commencement of the war, and the stream, which, although not more than
+seven or eight yards broad, was deep, and had steep high banks was now
+traversed by means of four planks, laid side by side, but not fastened
+together, and barely wide enough to give passage to a bullock cart. Over
+this imperfect and rickety causeway, the retreating Carlists galloped,
+the boards bending and creaking beneath their horses' feet. When all had
+passed, Don Baltasar flung himself from his saddle, and aided by the
+gipsy and by several of his men who had also dismounted, seized the
+planks, and strove, by main strength, to tear their extremities from the
+clay in which they were embedded. The Christinos, who were within a
+couple of hundred yards of the river, set up a shout of fury when they
+perceived the intention of their enemies. By the sinewy hands of
+Baltasar and his soldiers, three of the boards were torn from the earth
+and flung into the stream. The fourth gave way as Herrera came up, the
+first man of his party, and, regardless of the narrow footing it
+afforded, was about to risk the perilous voyage. Violently curbing his
+horse, he but just escaped falling headlong into the stream. A shout of
+exultation from the Carlists, and the discharge of several carbines<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+greeted the disappointed Christinos, who promptly returned the fire;
+whilst, as was usual when they came within earshot, the complimentary
+epithets of "Sons of Priests," and "<i>Soldados de la Puta</i>," accompanied
+by volleys of imprecations, were bandied between the soldiers on either
+side of the stream.</p>
+
+<p>"Is there any bridge or ford at hand?" said Baltasar hastily to the
+gipsy.</p>
+
+<p>"None within a quarter of a league," was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>"Then we will have a shot at them."</p>
+
+<p>Herrera and Count Villabuena were again opposed to each other, and each
+acknowledged the other's presence by a brief smile of recognition.</p>
+
+<p>A smart skirmish now began. All was smoke, noise, and confusion. The
+Count rode up to his cousin, who was on the right of his men.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us retire," said he. "No advantage is to be gained by this idle
+skirmishing. Infantry may be at hand, and delay will endanger our
+retreat."</p>
+
+<p>"Not so fast," replied Baltasar; "we will empty a few saddles before we
+go."</p>
+
+<p>"The escort was sent for my safety," said the Count, haughtily. "You are
+not doing your duty in thus risking it."</p>
+
+<p>"I have not been twenty years a soldier to learn my duty from you, sir,"
+said Baltasar, fiercely. "Aim at the officers, men. A doubloon for him
+who picks off the captain."</p>
+
+<p>Stimulated by the promised reward, several of the Carlists directed
+their fire at Herrera, who was on the left of the dragoons, exactly
+opposite to, and within sixty paces of, Don Baltasar. The bullets flew
+thick around Luis, but none touched him, and Baltasar himself drew a
+pistol from his holster to take aim at his opponent. Disgusted at his
+cousin's intemperate speech and imprudent conduct, the Count
+contemptuously turned his back upon him and approached the stream,
+regardless that by so doing he brought himself into a cross fire of
+friends and foes.</p>
+
+<p>"This is useless, Herrera," said he, "draw off your men."</p>
+
+<p>The words had scarcely left his lips, when his hand relinquished its
+hold of the bridle, by a convulsive movement he threw himself back in
+the saddle, and fell heavily to the ground, struck by a ball. A cry of
+horror from Luis was echoed by one of consternation from the Carlists,
+on witnessing the fall of a man whom they all loved and respected.</p>
+
+<p>"Where can we cross the stream?" demanded Herrera of one of his men, who
+knew the country.</p>
+
+<p>"To our left there is a ford, but at some distance."</p>
+
+<p>"Cease firing," cried Herrera. The trumpet sounded the necessary call,
+the Christinos hastily formed up and started at a gallop in the
+direction of the ford. Don Baltasar advanced to the spot where his
+cousin lay prostrate. Count Villabuena was lying on his back, his teeth
+set, his eyes wide open and fixed, his clenched hands full of earth and
+grass. Baltasar turned away with a slight shudder.</p>
+
+<p>"He is dead," said he to the subaltern of the escort. "To take the body
+with us would but impede our retreat, already difficult enough. The
+living must not be endangered for the sake of the dead. Forward, men!"</p>
+
+<p>And, without further delay, the Carlists set off at a brisk pace towards
+the mountains, which they reached before the Christinos had found and
+passed the distant ford. When the dragoons arrived at the foot of the
+sierra, Don Baltasar and his men were already out of sight amongst its
+steep and dangerous paths; and Herrera, compelled to abandon the
+pursuit, returned mournfully to the river bank, to seek, and, if it
+could be found, to convey to Vittoria the body of Count Villabuena.</p>
+
+<p>Leaving Herrera to his mournful duty, let us conduct our readers to an
+apartment in a house on the outskirts of the town of Segura. The
+interior, which was plainly but commodiously furnished, indicated
+feminine tastes and occupations, breathing that perfume of elegance
+which the presence of woman ever communicates. Vases of flowers decked
+the sideboards; a few books, the works of the best Spanish poets, lay
+upon the table; and a guitar, unstrung, it is true, was suspended
+against the wall. Two persons occu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>pied the apartment. One of them, who
+was seated on a low stool at its inner extremity, near to the folding
+doors that separated it from an antichamber, was a robust, ruddy-cheeked
+Navarrese girl, whose abundant hair, of which the jet blackness atoned
+for the coarse texture, hung in a thick plait down her back, and whose
+large red fingers were busily engaged in knitting. At the other end of
+the apartment, close to the open window, through which she intently
+gazed, was a being of very different mould. On a high-backed elbow-chair
+of ancient oak sat Rita de Villabuena, pensive and anxious, her fair
+face and golden tresses seeming fairer and brighter from the contrast
+with the dark quaint carving against which they reposed. Her cheek was
+perhaps paler than when first we made her acquaintance; anxiety for her
+lover, and, latterly, for her father, was the cause; but her beauty had
+lost nothing by the change, for the shade of melancholy upon her
+features seemed, by adding to the interest her expressive countenance
+inspired, rather to enhance than diminish its charm. She was now
+watching for her father, who had led her to expect his return at about
+this time. Over the stone balustrade of her balcony, she commanded a
+view of the road along which he was to approach; and upon the farthest
+visible point of it, where a bend round a group of trees concealed its
+continuation, her gaze was riveted. Although the Count had assured her,
+before his departure, that his journey was unattended with risk, Rita's
+arrival upon the scene of war was too recent for her to escape
+uneasiness during his absence. Some hours before the time at which his
+return could reasonably be looked for, she had taken her post at the
+window, and although, at the persuasion of her attendant, a simple
+country girl, recently installed as her <i>don&ccedil;ella</i>, she had more than
+once endeavoured to fix her attention on a book, or to distract it by
+some of her usual occupations, the effort had each time been made in
+vain, and she had again resumed her anxious watch. In every horseman, or
+muleteer, who turned the angle of the road, she thought she recognised
+the guide, who, two days previously, had accompanied her father from
+Segura, and her heart throbbed with a feeling of joyful relief till a
+nearer approach convinced her of her error.</p>
+
+<p>Could the vision of Rita de Villabuena have penetrated the copse that
+bounded her view in that direction, she would have perceived, towards
+four of the afternoon, not her father, alas! but another horseman,
+attended by the gipsy guide, riding at a rapid pace along the road. On
+reaching the trees aforesaid, however, they deviated from the track into
+a lane inclosed between hedges, which led round the town, and again
+joined the road on its further side. To explain this manoeuvre, it is
+necessary to retrace our steps, and to follow the movements of Colonel
+Villabuena after his return to O&ntilde;ate on the preceding evening.</p>
+
+<p>When the first excitement of the skirmish and subsequent flight had
+subsided, and the detachment of Carlists, after giving their horses a
+moment's breathing-time upon one of the higher levels of the sierra,
+resumed their march at a more leisurely pace, the thoughts of Don
+Baltasar became concentrated on the one grand object of deriving the
+utmost possible advantage from the death of his cousin. By that event
+the estates of the Villabuena family were now his own, those, at least,
+that lay within the Carlist territory. These, however, were
+comparatively of little value; and although the far more extensive ones,
+that had been confiscated by the Queen's government, might possibly be
+redeemed by a prompt abjuration of the cause of Don Carlos, a measure at
+the adoption of which Don Baltasar was by no means so scrupulous as to
+hesitate, yet even that would not fully satisfy him. He had other views
+and wishes. As far as his selfish nature would admit of the existence of
+such a feeling, he was deeply in love with Rita; the coldness with which
+she treated him had only served to stimulate his passion; and he was
+bent upon making her his at any price, and by any means. He was
+sufficiently acquainted with her character to be convinced that his
+prospect of obtaining her hand was any thing but improved by her
+father's death and that to her the wealthy possessor of her fa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span>mily's
+estates would be as unwelcome a wooer as the needy soldier of fortune.
+He did not doubt that, after the first violence of her grief should
+subside, she would return to France, where some of her mother's
+relatives were resident; and that, when next he heard of her, it would
+be as the bride of his fortunate rival. The picture thus conjured up
+caused him to grind his teeth with fury; and he swore to himself a deep
+oath that she should be his at any risk, and if, by the boldest and most
+unscrupulous measures, that consummation could be brought about. A plan
+occurred to him which he thought could not fail of success, and by which
+the obstinacy of the self-willed girl must, he believed, be overcome. It
+was a hazardous scheme, even in that unsettled and war-ridden country,
+where men were too much occupied in party strife to attend to the strict
+administration of justice; but Baltasar did not lack resolution, and the
+prize was worth the peril. One thing he wanted; a bold and quick-witted
+confederate, and him it was not so easy to find. No man had fewer
+friends in his own class than Don Baltasar, and by his inferiors he was
+generally detested on account of his harsh and overbearing demeanour. Of
+this he was aware; and he vainly racked his brain to find a man in whom
+he could confide. The details of his nefarious project were already
+arranged in his mind, and only this one difficulty had yet to be
+overcome; when, at two hours after dark, he entered the streets of
+O&ntilde;ate. Hopeless of being served for affection's sake, he was meditating
+whom he could make his own by bribery, when a light from an open window
+flashed across the street, and illuminated the unprepossessing profile
+of Jaime the gipsy, who, in his capacity of guide, was riding in front,
+and a little on one side of Colonel Villabuena. The sight of those
+sinister features, on which rapacity and cunning had set their stamp,
+was as a sudden revelation to Don Baltasar, to whom it instantly
+occurred that the gitano was the very man he sought. The circumstance of
+his belonging to a race despised, and almost persecuted, by the people
+amongst whom they dwelt, was an additional guarantee against any
+compunctious scruples on his part; his occupation of a spy bespoke him
+at once daring and venal, and Colonel Villabuena doubted not that he
+should find him a willing and useful instrument.</p>
+
+<p>The soldiers filed off to their quarters; and Baltasar, after desiring
+the gipsy to come to him in an hour's time, betook himself to the
+posada. When Jaime had given his horse an ample feed, and groomed him
+with a care that showed the value he set upon his services, he made a
+hasty meal in a neighbouring taberna, and repaired to the Colonel's
+quarters. His stealthy tap at the door was replied to by an impatient
+"<i>adelante</i>," and he entered the room.</p>
+
+<p>A scarcely tasted supper was upon the table, and Don Baltasar was pacing
+the apartment, his brow knit and apparently deep in thought. On
+beholding the gipsy, he arranged his features into their most amiable
+expression, and advanced towards him with an assumed air of frank
+good-humour.</p>
+
+<p>"I have to thank you, Jaime," said he, "for your promptness and presence
+of mind this morning. Had you not thought of what we all forgot, and
+suggested the pulling down of the bridge, few, if any of us, would have
+seen O&ntilde;ate to-night. I shall report your conduct most favourably to the
+General, who will doubtless reward it."</p>
+
+<p>The esquilador slightly bowed his head, but, with the exception of that
+movement, made no reply; nor did any expression of satisfaction at the
+praise bestowed upon him light up his dark countenance.</p>
+
+<p>"Meanwhile," continued Don Baltasar, "I will discharge my personal
+obligation to you in a more solid manner than by mere thanks."</p>
+
+<p>And he held out a handful of dollars, which, the next instant,
+disappeared in one of Jaime's capacious pockets. This time a muttered
+word or two of thanks escaped the lips of the taciturn esquilador.</p>
+
+<p>"Whither do you now proceed?" enquired Baltasar. "Are you to rejoin the
+General? What are your orders?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am no man's servant," replied the gipsy, "and have no orders to
+obey.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> When your General requires my services, we make a bargain, I to
+act, he to pay. I risk my life for his gold, and if I deceive him I know
+the penalty. But the service once rendered, I am my own man again."</p>
+
+<p>"So then," said Baltasar, "you are not bound to Zumalacarregui; and
+should any other offer you better pay for lighter service, you are free
+to take it?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's it," replied the gipsy.</p>
+
+<p>There was a short pause, during which Colonel Villabuena attentively
+scanned the countenance of Jaime, who remained impassive, and with eyes
+fixed upon the ground, as though to prevent their expression from being
+read. Baltasar resumed&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Say then that I were to ensure you a large reward for the performance
+of services far less dangerous than those you daily render at a less
+price, would you accept or refuse the offer?"</p>
+
+<p>"I must know what I am to do, and what to get," said the gipsy, this
+time raising his eyes to Don Baltasar's face.</p>
+
+<p>"Can you be silent?" said Baltasar.</p>
+
+<p>"When I am paid for it&mdash;as the grave," was the reply.</p>
+
+<p>"In short, if I understand you rightly," said the Colonel with an easy
+smile, "you will do any thing at a price."</p>
+
+<p>"Any thing," returned the unabashed gipsy. "It is not a small risk that
+will frighten me, if the reward is proportionate."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall suit one another charmingly," said Baltasar; "for what I
+require will expose you to little danger, and your reward shall be of
+your own fixing."</p>
+
+<p>And, without further preamble, he proceeded to unfold to the gipsy the
+outline of a scheme requiring his cooperation, the nature of which will
+best be made known to the reader by the march of subsequent events.</p>
+
+<p>The sinking sun and rapidly lengthening shadows proclaimed the approach
+of evening, and Rita de Villabuena, still seated at her window, watched
+for her father's arrival, when the trot of a horse, which stopped at the
+door of the house, caused her to start from her seat, and hurry to the
+balcony. Her anxiety was converted into the most lively alarm when she
+saw the Count's gipsy guide alighting alone from his horse; a
+presentiment of evil came over her, she staggered back into the room,
+and sank almost fainting upon a chair. Recovering herself, however, she
+was hurrying to the door of the apartment, when it opened, and Paco the
+muleteer, who had lately been attached to her father as orderly, and
+whom the Count had left as a protection to his daughter, made his
+appearance.</p>
+
+<p>"The gipsy is here, Se&ntilde;ora," said he; "he brings news of his Excellency
+the Conde."</p>
+
+<p>"Admit him instantly," cried Rita, impatiently. "Where did you leave my
+father?" she enquired, as the esquilador entered the room. "Is he well?
+Why does he not return?"</p>
+
+<p>"I left the Se&ntilde;or Conde at a convent near Lecumberri," replied the
+gipsy.</p>
+
+<p>"Near Lecumberri?" repeated Rita; "it was not in that direction he went.
+He left this for the plains of Vittoria."</p>
+
+<p>"He did so, Se&ntilde;ora," answered the gipsy; "but before we were half-way to
+O&ntilde;ate, we were met by a courier with despatches for the Se&ntilde;or Conde, who
+immediately turned bridle, and ordered the escort to do the same. It was
+past midnight when we again reached Segura; and, not to cause alarm, we
+marched round the town, and continued our route without stopping.</p>
+
+<p>"And your errand now?" exclaimed Rita. The gipsy seemed to hesitate
+before replying.</p>
+
+<p>"The Se&ntilde;or Conde is wounded," said he, at last.</p>
+
+<p>"Wounded!" repeated Rita, in the shrill accents of alarm. "You are not
+telling truth&mdash;they have killed him! Oh, tell me all! Say, is my father
+still alive?"</p>
+
+<p>And, clasping her hands together, she seemed about to throw herself at
+the feet of Jaime, whilst her anxious glance strove to read the truth
+upon his countenance. It was a strange contrast presented by that lovely
+and elegant creature and the squalid, tawny gipsy; an angel
+supplicating<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> some evil spirit, into whose power she had temporarily
+fallen, might so have looked.</p>
+
+<p>"The Se&ntilde;or Conde's wound is severe," said Jaime. "On his way yesterday
+afternoon to attend a meeting of the Navarrese Junta in the valley of
+Lanz, he fell in with a party of Christino cavalry, and, although his
+escort repulsed them, he himself received a hurt in the skirmish."</p>
+
+<p>"My father wounded and suffering!" exclaimed Rita in extreme agitation,
+passing her hand over her forehead in the manner of one bewildered by
+some stunning and terrible intelligence. "I will go to him instantly.
+Quick, Paco, the mules! Micaela, my mantilla! We must set out at once."</p>
+
+<p>The servants hurried away to obey the orders of their mistress, and
+prepare for instant departure, and the gipsy was about to follow, when
+Rita detained him, and overwhelmed him with questions concerning her
+father's state, to all of which Jaime replied in a manner that somewhat
+tranquillized her alarm, although it produced no change in her
+resolution to set off immediately to join him. This, indeed, the
+esquilador informed her, was her father's wish, as he found that he
+should be detained some time in his present quarters by the consequences
+of his wound.</p>
+
+<p>Although all haste was used in the necessary preparations, the sun was
+close to the horizon before Rita and her attendants left Segura, and
+took the road to Lecumberri, at about two leagues from which, as Jaime
+told them, and in the heart of the sierra, was situated the convent that
+was their destination. The distance was not great; but, owing to the
+mountains, the travellers could hardly expect to reach the end of their
+journey much before daybreak. Paco, who viewed this hasty departure with
+any thing but a well-pleased countenance, urged Rita to postpone setting
+off till the following morning, alleging the difficult nature of the
+roads they must traverse, and which led for a considerable part of the
+way over a steep and almost trackless sierra. But Rita's anxiety would
+brook no delay, and the little cavalcade set out. It consisted of Rita
+and her waiting-maid, mounted upon mules, and of the gipsy and Paco upon
+their horses; Paco leading a third mule, upon which, by the care of
+Micaela, a hastily packed portmanteau had been strapped. The gipsy rode
+in front; thirty paces behind him came the women, and the muleteer
+brought up the rear. Jaime had betrayed some surprise, and even
+discomposure, when he found that Paco was to accompany them; but he did
+not venture to make any objection to so natural an arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>Taking advantage of the goodness of the road, which for the first league
+or two was tolerably smooth and level, the travellers pushed on for
+nearly two hours at a steady amble, which, had the nature of the ground
+allowed them to sustain it, would have brought them to their journey's
+end much sooner than was really to be the case. The sun had set, the
+moon had not yet risen, and the night was very dark. Jaime, who
+continued to maintain a short interval between his horse and the mules
+of Rita and her attendant, kept shifting his restless glances from one
+side of the road to the other, as though he would fain have penetrated
+the surrounding gloom. He was passing a thicket that skirted the road,
+when a cautious "Hist!" inaudible to his companions, arrested his
+attention. He immediately pulled up his horse, and, dismounting,
+unstrapped the surcingle of his saddle. On perceiving this, Rita stopped
+to enquire the cause of the delay, but the gipsy requested her to
+proceed.</p>
+
+<p>"My horse's girths are loose, Se&ntilde;ora," said he in explanation. "Be good
+enough to ride on, and I will overtake you immediately."</p>
+
+<p>Rita rode on, and Paco followed, without paying any attention to so
+common an occurrence as the slackening of a girth. Scarcely, however,
+had he passed the gipsy some fifty paces, when the latter left his
+horse, who remained standing motionless in the middle of the road, and
+approached the thicket. Just within the shadow of the foremost trees, a
+man on horseback, muffled in a cloak, was waiting. It was Colonel
+Villabuena.</p>
+
+<p>"All is well," said the gipsy; "and you have only to ride forward and
+prepare for our reception."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Who is with you?" said Don Baltasar, in a dissatisfied tone.</p>
+
+<p>"The lady and her don&ccedil;ella, and Paco, her father's orderly."</p>
+
+<p>"Fool!" cried Baltasar; "why did you let him come? His presence may ruin
+my plan."</p>
+
+<p>"How could I help it?" retorted Jaime. "If I had objected he would have
+suspected me. He's as cunning as a fox, and did not swallow the story
+half as well as his mistress. But her impatience decided it. Nothing
+would serve her but setting out immediately."</p>
+
+<p>"He must be disposed of," said Baltasar. "There's many a mountain
+precipice between this and our destination," he added meaningly.</p>
+
+<p>Jaime shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"I might do it," said he; "but if I failed, and he is a wary and active
+fellow, the chances are that he would do the same kind office for me,
+and return with the lady."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph!" said Baltasar. "Well, he shall be cared for. And now ride on. I
+shall be at the convent an hour before you. Remember to take the longest
+road."</p>
+
+<p>The gipsy nodded, returned to his horse, and, springing lightly into the
+saddle, galloped after his companions. Don Baltasar remained a short
+time longer in the thicket, and then emerging upon the road, followed
+Rita and her party at a deliberate pace. From time to time he stopped,
+and listened for the sound of their horses' footsteps. If he could hear
+it, he halted till it became inaudible, and then again moved on. His
+object evidently was to keep as near to the travellers as he could
+without allowing his proximity to be suspected.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly midnight, and Rita and her companions had been for some
+time amongst the mountains, when they reached a place where the road, or
+rather track, they followed, split and branched off in two different
+directions. Jaime, who, since they had entered the sierra, had abridged
+the distance between himself and his companions, and now rode just in
+front of Rita's mule, was taking the right hand path, when Paco called
+out to him that the left was the shortest and best.</p>
+
+<p>"You are mistaken," said Jaime abruptly, continuing in the direction he
+had first taken.</p>
+
+<p>But Paco would not be put off in so unceremonious a manner, and he rode
+up to the gipsy. "I tell you," said he, "that I know this country well,
+and the left hand road is the one to take."</p>
+
+<p>"How long is it since you travelled it?" inquired Jaime.</p>
+
+<p>"Only last autumn," was the reply, "and then for the twentieth time."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the esquilador, "it may be the shortest; but if you had
+ridden along it this morning, as I did, you would hardly call it the
+best. The winter rains have washed away the path, and left the bare
+rocks so slippery and uneven, that I could scarcely get my horse over
+them in daylight, and by night I should make sure of breaking his legs
+and my own neck."</p>
+
+<p>"I know nothing of this convent you are taking us to," said Paco, in a
+sulky tone; "but if it stands, as you tell me, to the north of
+Lecumberri, this road will lengthen our journey an hour or more."</p>
+
+<p>"Scarcely so much," said Jaime. "At any rate," added he doggedly, "it is
+I who answer to the Count for the Se&ntilde;ora's safety, and I shall therefore
+take the road I think best."</p>
+
+<p>Paco was about to make an angry reply, but Rita interfered, and the
+discussion terminated in the gipsy having his own way. Three minutes
+later Don Baltasar arrived at the division of the roads, paused,
+listened, and heard the faint echo of the horses' hoofs upon the right
+hand path. With an exclamation of satisfaction, he struck his spurs into
+the flanks of his steed, and at as rapid a pace as the uneven ground
+would permit, ascended the contrary road, the shortest, and, as Paco had
+truly asserted, by far the best to the convent whither Rita de
+Villabuena was proceeding.</p>
+
+<p>Over rocks and through ravines, and along the margin of precipices, Don
+Baltasar rode, threading, in spite of the darkness, the difficult and
+often dangerous mountain-paths, with all the confidence of one well
+acquainted with their intricacies. At last, after a long descent, he
+entered a narrow valley, or rather a mountain-gorge, which extended in
+the form of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> nearly a semicircle, and for a distance of about three
+miles, between two steep and rugged lines of hill. Upon finding himself
+on level ground, he spurred his horse, and passing rapidly over the
+dew-steeped grass of a few fields, entered a beaten track that ran along
+the centre of the valley. The moon was now up, silvering the summits of
+the groups of trees with which the narrow plain was sprinkled, and
+defining the gloomy peaks of the sierra against the star-spangled sky.
+By its light Don Baltasar rode swiftly along, until, arriving near the
+further end of the valley, he came in sight of an extensive edifice,
+beautifully situated on the platform of a low hill, and sheltered to the
+north and east by lofty mountains. The building was of grey stone, and
+formed three sides of a square; the side that was at right angles with
+the two others being considerably the longest, and the wings connected
+by a wall of solid masonry, in the centre of which was an arched portal.
+In front, and on one side of the convent, for such, as a single glance
+was sufficient to determine, was the purpose to which the roomy
+structure was appropriated, the ground was bare and open, until the
+platform began to sink towards the plain; and then the sunny southern
+slope had been turned to the best account. Luxuriant vineyards, a
+plantation of olive-trees, and a large and well-stocked orchard covered
+it, whilst the level at its foot was laid out in pasture and
+corn-fields. The space between the back of the convent and the mountains
+was filled up by a thick wood, affording materials for the blazing fires
+which, in the winter months, the keen airs from the hills would render
+highly acceptable. The forest also extended round and close up to the
+walls of the right wing of the building. From the roof of the left wing
+rose a lofty open tower, where was seen hanging the ponderous mass of
+bronze by whose sonorous peal the pious inmates were summoned to their
+devotions.</p>
+
+<p>Urging his horse up the steep and winding path that led to the front of
+the convent, Don Baltasar seized and pulled a chain that hung beside the
+gate. The clank of a bell immediately followed, and Baltasar, receding a
+little from the door, looked up at the windows. No light was visible at
+any of them, and the most profound stillness reigned. After waiting for
+about a minute, the Carlist colonel again rang, and he was about to
+repeat the summons for a third time, when a faint gleam of light in the
+court warned him that some one was afoot. Presently a small wicket in
+the centre of the gate was opened, and the pinched and crabbed features
+of the lay-sister who acted as portress showed themselves at the
+aperture. In a voice rendered unusually shrill and querulous by vexation
+at having her rest broken, she demanded who it was thus disturbing the
+slumbers of the sisterhood.</p>
+
+<p>"I come," said Baltasar, "to speak with your lady abbess, Do&ntilde;a Carmen de
+Forcadell, upon matters of the utmost importance. Admit me instantly,
+for my business presses."</p>
+
+<p>"The lady abbess," peevishly returned the portress, "cannot be disturbed
+before matins. If you choose to wait till then, I will tell her you are
+here, and she will perhaps see you."</p>
+
+<p>"I must see her at once," replied Baltasar, waxing wroth at this delay,
+when every moment was of importance to his projects. "Tell her that Don
+Baltasar is here, and she will give orders to admit me."</p>
+
+<p>Whilst he spoke, the lay sister raised her glimmering lantern to the
+wicket, in order to take a survey of this peremptory applicant for
+admission. The view thus obtained of his features apparently did not
+greatly impress her in his favour, or at any rate did not render her
+more disposed to open the solid barrier between them.</p>
+
+<p>"Baltasar or Benito," cried she, "it is all one to Mariquita. You may
+wait till the matin bell rings. Fine times, indeed, when every thieving
+guerilla thinks he may find free quarters where he pleases! No, no,
+se&ntilde;or, stay where you are; the fresh air will cool your impatience. It
+will be daybreak in an hour, and that will be time enough for your
+errand, whatever it is."</p>
+
+<p>It was with no small difficulty that Don Baltasar restrained his spleen
+during the old woman's harangue.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> When it came to a close, however, and
+he saw that she persisted in leaving him on the outside of the gate till
+the usual hour for opening it, he lost all patience. Before the portress
+could shut the wicket, close to which she was standing, he thrust his
+hand and arm through it, and grasped her by her skinny throat. The lay
+sister set up a yell of alarm and pain.</p>
+
+<p>"Jesus Maria! <i>Al socorro!</i> Help, help!" screamed she; the last words
+dying away in a gurgling sound, as Don Baltasar tightened his hold upon
+her windpipe.</p>
+
+<p>"Silence, you old jade!" cried the fierce soldier in a suppressed tone,
+"you will alarm the whole convent. You have the keys in your hand&mdash;I
+heard them clank. Open the gate instantly, or by all the saints in
+heaven, I throttle you where you stand."</p>
+
+<p>The increased pressure of his fingers warned the old woman that he would
+keep his word; and, yielding to so novel and convincing a mode of
+argument, she made use of the keys whose jingle she had imprudently
+allowed to be heard. Two heavy locks shot back, and a massive bar was
+withdrawn; and when, by pushing against it, Don Baltasar had convinced
+himself that the gate was open, he released the gullet of the trembling
+sister, and entered the paved court. In grievous trepidation the
+portress was retreating to her lodge, which stood just within the gate,
+when an upper window of the convent opened, and a female voice enquired,
+in commanding tones, the cause of the uproar. Don Baltasar seemed to
+recognise the voice, and he rode up beneath the window whence it
+proceeded.</p>
+
+<p>"Carmen," said he, "is it you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Who is that?" was the rejoinder, in accents which surprise or alarm
+rendered slightly tremulous.</p>
+
+<p>"Baltasar," replied the officer. "I must see you instantly, on a matter
+of life or death."</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's pause. "Remain where you are," said the person at
+the window; "I will come down to you."</p>
+
+<p>The portress, finding that the intruder was known to the lady abbess,
+for she it was whom Baltasar had addressed as Carmen, now refastened the
+gate, and crept grumbling to her cell. Don Baltasar waited. Presently a
+door in the right wing of the convent was opened, a tall female form,
+clothed in flowing drapery, and carrying a taper in her hand, appeared
+at it and beckoned him to enter. Tying his horse to a ring in the wall,
+he obeyed the signal.</p>
+
+<p>The room into which, after passing through a corridor, Colonel
+Villabuena was now introduced, was one of those appropriated to the
+reception of guests and visitors to the convent. The apartment was
+plainly furnished with a table and a few wooden chairs; and in a recess
+hung a large ebony crucifix, before which was placed a hassock, its
+cloth envelope worn threadbare by the knees of the devout. But if the
+room of itself offered little worthy of note, the case was far different
+with the person who now ushered Don Baltasar into it. This was a woman
+about forty years old, possessed of one of those marked and
+characteristic physiognomies which painters are fond of attributing to
+the inhabitants of southern Europe. Her age was scarcely to be read upon
+her face, whose slight furrows seemed traced by violent passions rather
+than by the hand of time: she had the remains of great beauty, although
+wanting in the intellectual; and the expression of her face, her
+compressed lips, and the fixed look of her eyes, went far to neutralize
+the charm which her regular features, and the classical oval of her
+physiognomy, would otherwise have possessed. The outline of her tall
+figure was veiled, but not concealed, by her monastic robe, from the
+loose sleeves of which protruded her long thin white hands. After
+closing the door, she seated herself beside a table, upon which she
+reposed her elbow, and motioned her visiter to a chair. A slight degree
+of agitation was perceptible in her manner, as she waited in silence for
+Don Baltasar to communicate the motive of his unseasonable arrival. This
+he speedily did.</p>
+
+<p>"You must do me a service, Carmen," said he. "My cousin Rita is now
+within an hour's ride of this place. She comes hither expecting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> to find
+her father. She must be detained captive."</p>
+
+<p>"What!" exclaimed the abbess, "is your suit so hopeless as to render
+such hazardous measures adviseable? What is to be gained by such an act
+of violence? Her father will inevitably seek and discover her, and
+disgrace and disappointment will be the sole result of your mad scheme."</p>
+
+<p>"Her father," replied Baltasar gloomily, "will give us no trouble."</p>
+
+<p>"How?&mdash;no trouble! If all be true that I have heard of Count Villabuena,
+and of his affection for his only surviving child, he is capable of
+devoting his life to the search for her."</p>
+
+<p>"Count Villabuena," said Baltasar, "now stands before you. The father of
+Rita is dead."</p>
+
+<p>"Dead!" exclaimed the abbess with a start. "How and when did he die?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was shot in a skirmish."</p>
+
+<p>"In a skirmish!" repeated Do&ntilde;a Carmen. "He held no military command."</p>
+
+<p>"I was escorting him with a few men to attend a junta. We were attacked
+by a superior force, from which we escaped, thanks to an intervening
+river. A few shots were exchanged, the Count thrust himself into the
+fire, and fell."</p>
+
+<p>The abbess seemed to reflect a moment, and then fixed a keen and
+searching look upon the countenance of Baltasar.</p>
+
+<p>"Was your loss in men severe?" said she abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;yes&mdash;" replied Baltasar, slightly confused. "I believe there were
+several wounded. Why do you ask?"</p>
+
+<p>"And the Count's death gives you the Villabuena estates?"</p>
+
+<p>"It does so," answered Baltasar.</p>
+
+<p>The dark penetrating eyes of the abbess still remained fixed, with a
+peculiar expression of enquiry and suspicion, upon the countenance of
+Colonel Villabuena. He tried at first to sustain their gaze, but was
+unable to do so. He looked down, and a slight paleness came over his
+features.</p>
+
+<p>"I have no time to answer questions," said he, with a rough brutality of
+manner which seemed assumed to veil embarrassment. "My plan is arranged,
+but promptness of execution is essential to its success. Rita must be
+detained here, where none will think of seeking her, till she becomes my
+wife. Your power in this place is unlimited, and your word law; you will
+have no difficulty in secluding her in some corner where none shall see
+her but those in whom you can fully confide. Make the necessary
+preparations. Each moment she may arrive."</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Baltasar was speaking, Do&ntilde;a Carmen remained with her brow
+supported on her hand, silent and sunk in reflection. She now sprang
+impetuously from her chair.</p>
+
+<p>"I will have naught to do with it," cried she; "you would entangle me in
+a labyrinth of crime, whence the only issue would be ignominy and
+punishment. You must find others to aid you in your machinations."</p>
+
+<p>In his turn Baltasar rose from his seat, and, approaching the abbess,
+led her back to her chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Carmen," said he, in a suppressed voice, and from between his set
+teeth, "is it to me that you say 'I will not?'&mdash;Carmen," he continued,
+speaking low, and with his face very near to hers, "there was a time
+when, for love of you and to do your bidding, I feared no punishment
+here or hereafter. Have you already forgotten it? 'I hate him,' were
+your words, as I sat at your feet in yon sunny Andalusian bower&mdash;'I hate
+him, and in proportion to my hatred should be my gratitude to him who
+rid me of his odious presence.' That night the <i>serenos</i> found the body
+of Don Fernando de Forcadell stiff and cold upon the steps of his villa.
+He had had a dispute at the <i>mont&eacute;</i> table, and two men were sent to
+Ceuta on suspicion of the deed. Only two persons knew who had really
+done it. Ha! Carmen, only two persons!"</p>
+
+<p>During this terrible recapitulation, the abbess sat motionless as a
+statue, for which indeed, in her white robe and with her marble pale
+complexion, she might almost have been taken. She covered her face with
+her hands, and her bosom heaved so violently, that the loose folds of
+drapery which shrouded it rose and fell like the waves of a troubled
+ocean. When Baltasar ceased speaking she removed her hands, and
+exhibited a counte<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>nance livid as that of a corpse. Her almost
+preternatural paleness, the dark furrows under her eyes, and the tension
+of every feature, added ten years to her apparent age.</p>
+
+<p>"Is that all?" she said, in a hollow voice, to her tormentor.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"And one of those persons," resumed the pitiless Baltasar, without
+replying to her question, "swore by earth and by heaven, and by the
+God who made them both, never to forget the service that I&mdash;that
+the other person, I would say&mdash;had rendered her, and to be ready to
+requite it whenever he should point out the way. Years have flown
+by since that day, and the feelings that united those two persons
+have long since changed; but a promise made as that one was&mdash;a
+promise sealed with blood&mdash;can never pass away till it has been
+redeemed. Carmen, I claim its fulfilment." </p></div>
+
+<p>Baltasar paused. "Fiend!" exclaimed the abbess, "what would you of me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have already told you," said Villabuena. "It is no crime, nothing
+that need alarm your conscience, recently grown so tender; but a good
+deed, rather, since it will prevent the daughter of a noble house from
+throwing herself away on an adventurer and a rebel, and give her hand to
+him for whom her father destined it. She is as yet unaware of the
+Count's death. She will learn it here, and no place fitter. Your pious
+consolations will soothe her grief. I shall leave her in your
+guardianship, and, when the first violence of her sorrow is over,
+return, to find means of overcoming her puerile objections to my suit.
+But I am a fool," exclaimed he, interrupting himself, "to lose in idle
+talk time that is so precious! They must already be in sight of the
+convent. Lead me to a window whence we may observe their approach, and
+whilst watching for it we can make our final arrangements."</p>
+
+<p>He took the hand of the abbess, and she led the way, mechanically, to
+the door of an inner room. Passing through two other apartments, they
+reached one at the extremity of the wing, from the window of which a
+view was obtained for a considerable distance down the valley. The
+prospect that presented itself to them on pausing before this window,
+was so enchantingly beautiful, that it seemed to produce an effect, and
+to exercise a softening influence, even upon the depraved and vicious
+nature of Don Baltasar. At any rate, a full minute elapsed during which
+he stood in silence and contemplation.</p>
+
+<p>The view afforded by the valley in question, upon that pleasant May
+morning, was indeed of almost unparalleled loveliness. The sun, which
+had already risen behind the eastern hills, but not yet surmounted them,
+threw its first rays across their summits, and illuminated the opposite
+mountains, bathing their pinnacles in a golden glow, whilst their lower
+steeps remained in comparative darkness. In the depths of the valley the
+last shades of twilight still seemed to linger, and masses of thin grey
+vapour rolled in billows over the rich vegetation and vivid verdure of
+the fields. The most fantastic variety of form was exhibited by the
+surrounding mountain wall; here it rose in turrets and towers, there
+spread out into crags, then again fell in blank abrupt precipices, their
+edges fringed with shrubs, the recesses of their sides sheltering
+wild-flowers of the most varied hues, whose sprays and blossoms waved in
+the sweet breath of morning. Equally varied, and as delicately
+beautiful, were the ethereal tints of the mountain tops, to which the
+cloudless sky seemed to impart a tinge of its azure. On the edge of a
+ravine, midway up a mountain, were seen a few crumbling walls, and a
+fragment of a broken tower, sole remains of some ancient stronghold,
+which, centuries before, had frowned over the vale. The hut of a
+goatherd or charcoal-burner, here and there dotted the hill-side; and at
+the southern limit of the valley, just before its change of direction
+took it out of sight of the convent, were visible the houses of a small
+hamlet, surrounded by plantations, and half buried amidst blossoms of
+the tenderest rose-colour and most dazzling white. Masses of beech and
+ilex clothed the lower slopes of the mountains, and from out of their
+dark setting of foliage the grey walls of the Dominican convent arose
+like a pale and shadowy spectre. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> fresh brightness of spring was the
+characteristic of the whole scene; the year seemed rejoicing in its
+youthful vigour, and to express its delight by millions of mute voices,
+which spoke out of each leaf and twig that danced in the breeze. Nor
+were other and audible voices wanting. The lark was singing in the sky,
+the grasshopper had begun its chirp, the rills and rivulets that
+splashed or trickled from the hills, gave out their indistinct murmur;
+whilst, heard far above these voices of nature, the toll of the matin
+bell resounded through the valley, calling the devoutly disposed to
+their morning thanksgiving.</p>
+
+<p>The angelus had ceased to ring when Rita and her party came in sight of
+the Dominican convent, their horses and mules giving evidence, by their
+jaded appearance, of having been ridden far, and over rough and painful
+roads. The gipsy rode in front, vigilant and unfatigued&mdash;although he had
+now been in the saddle, with little intermission, for a whole day and
+night&mdash;and was followed by Rita, to whose delicate frame the long ride
+had been an exertion as unusual as it was trying. But a resolute spirit
+had compensated for physical weakness, and, uncomplaining, she had borne
+up against the hardships of the preceding ten hours. She was pale and
+harassed; her hair, uncurled by the night fogs, hung in dank masses
+round her face, and her fragile form was unable to maintain its upright
+position. Micaela, the waiting-maid, yawned incessantly, and audibly
+groaned at each rough stumble or uncomfortable movement of her mule.
+Several times during the drowsy morning hours, she had nearly fallen
+from her saddle, and had to thank Paco, who had taken his station beside
+her, for saving her from more than one tumble. Paco, either out of
+respect to the presence of Rita, or concern for the Count's misfortune,
+rode along, contrary to his custom, in profound silence, and without
+indulging in any of those snatches of muleteers' songs with which it was
+his wont to beguile the tedium of a march.</p>
+
+<p>Upon nearing the place where she expected to find her father, Rita's
+impatience to behold him, and to ascertain for herself the exact extent
+of the injury he had received, increased to a feverish degree, and on
+reaching the convent gate, already open for her reception, she sprang
+from her mule without assistance. But she had over-rated her strength;
+her limbs, stiffened by the long ride and the cold night air, refused
+their service, and she would have fallen to the ground had not Paco, who
+was already off his horse, given her the support of his arm. The
+portress and another old lay sister were the only persons visible in the
+court, and the last of these invited Rita to accompany her into the
+convent. Paco held out his horse's bridle and those of the mules to
+Jaime, intending to follow his young mistress, but the gipsy hesitated
+to take them, and the lay sister, perceiving Paco's intention,
+interposed to prevent its execution.</p>
+
+<p>"You must remain here," said she; "I have no orders to admit men into
+the convent, nor can I, without express orders from the lady abbess."</p>
+
+<p>Paco obeyed the injunction, and the three women disappeared through a
+door of the right wing of the building. They had been gone less than a
+minute, when the lay sister again came forth, and, approaching the
+gipsy, desired him to follow her. He did so, and Paco remained alone
+with the horses.</p>
+
+<p>With eager step, and a heart palpitating with anxiety, Rita followed her
+guide into the convent, making, as she went, anxious enquiries
+concerning her father's health. To her first question the old woman
+replied by an inarticulate mumble; and upon its repetition, a brief "I
+do not know; the lady abbess will see you,"&mdash;checked any further attempt
+upon a person who either could not or would not give the much wished-for
+information. Passing through a corridor and up a staircase, the lay
+sister ushered Rita into an apartment of comfortable appearance.</p>
+
+<p>"I will inform the abbess of your arrival," said she, as she went out
+and closed the door.</p>
+
+<p>Five minutes elapsed, and Rita, to whom this delay was as inexplicable
+as her impatience to see her father was great, was about to leave the
+room and seek or enquire the way to his apartment, when the abbess made
+her appearance.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Holy mother!" exclaimed Rita, advancing to meet her with clasped hands
+and tearful eyes, "is my father doing well? Conduct me to him, I beseech
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Struck by the beauty of the fair creature who thus implored her, and
+touched, perhaps, by the painful anxiety expressed in her trembling
+voice, and pale and interesting countenance, Do&ntilde;a Carmen almost
+hesitated to communicate her fatal tidings.</p>
+
+<p>"I have painful intelligence for you, Se&ntilde;ora," said she. "The Count,
+your father"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"He is wounded; I know it," interrupted Rita. "Is he worse? Oh, let me
+see him!&mdash;This instant see him!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is impossible," said the abbess. "The bullet that struck him was too
+surely aimed. Your father is dead!"</p>
+
+<p>For an instant Rita gazed at the speaker as though unable fully to
+comprehend the terrible announcement, and then, with one shriek of
+heartfelt agony, she sank senseless to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>The shrill and thrilling scream uttered by the bereaved daughter, rang
+through the chambers and corridors of the convent, and reached the ears
+of Paco, who had remained in the court, waiting with some impatience for
+the return of the gipsy, and for intelligence concerning the health of
+the Count. Abandoning his horse, he rushed instinctively to the door by
+which Rita had entered the building. It was closed, but not fastened,
+and passing through it he found himself in a long corridor, traversed by
+two shorter ones, and at whose extremity, through a grated window, was
+visible the foliage of the forest surrounding that side of the convent.
+Not a living creature was to be seen; and Paco paused, uncertain in what
+direction to proceed. He listened for a repetition of the cry, but none
+came. Suddenly a door, close to which he stood, was opened, and before
+he could turn his head to ascertain by whom, he was seized from behind,
+and thrown violently upon the paved floor of the corridor. The attack
+had been so vigorous and unexpected, that Paco had no time for
+resistance before he found himself stretched upon his back; but then he
+struggled furiously against his assailants, who were no others than Don
+Baltasar and the gipsy. So violent were his efforts, that he got the
+gipsy under him, and was on the point of regaining his feet, when
+Colonel Villabuena drew a pistol from the breast of his coat, and with
+its but-end dealt him a severe blow on the head. The unlucky muleteer
+again fell stunned upon the ground. In another minute his hands were
+tightly bound, and Don Baltasar and his companion carried him swiftly
+down one of the transversal corridors. Descending a flight of stone
+steps, the two men with their burthen entered a range of subterranean
+cloisters, at whose extremity was a low and massive door, which Don
+Baltasar opened, and they entered a narrow cell, having a straw pallet
+and earthen water-jug for sole furniture. Close to the roof of this
+dismal dungeon was an aperture in the wall, through which a strong iron
+grating, and the rank grass that grew close up to it, allowed but a
+faint glimmer of daylight to enter. Placing their prisoner upon the
+straw bed, Don Baltasar and Jaime took away his sabre and the large
+knife habitually carried by Spaniards of his class. They then unbound
+his hands, and, carefully securing the door behind them, left him to the
+gloom and solitude of his dungeon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="SOMETHING_MORE_ABOUT_MUSIC" id="SOMETHING_MORE_ABOUT_MUSIC"></a>SOMETHING MORE ABOUT MUSIC.</h2>
+
+
+<p>We mused on music some while ago; and as the subject still haunts
+us&mdash;very much after the manner of an obstinate ghost that refuses to be
+laid, even by the choicest Latin&mdash;we are strongly disposed to try the
+effect of giving it full swing for once; and in idle mood, too idle to
+oppose ourselves to its tyranny, letting it carry us whither it will, in
+the hope that, in return for our complacence, it may in future suffer us
+to conduct our meditations according to our own pleasure, and give that
+sad and serious thought, which their merits demand, to the gravities of
+this life&mdash;to corn-laws and <i>poor</i>-laws, (of all sorts!) and the Irish
+question, and the debates to which all these give occasion, in reading
+which we have already worn out we know not how many pairs of spectacles,
+and one pair of excellent eyes; and last, not least, to the marchings
+and counter-marchings of the House of Commons, in which we are deeply
+interested.</p>
+
+<p>With such a course of study before us, we are disposed to make the most
+of our holiday; and should we chance to be a little too frisky, it must
+be borne in mind that retribution is at hand, and that we shall speedily
+become as solemn as ever a fool in the land, as dull as an owl bathing
+its eyes in the morning sunshine, which&mdash;having overslept itself&mdash;it
+takes for the full moon, and dismal enough to satisfy the most ardent
+advocate of the religious duty of being miserable,&mdash;eschewing laughter
+as we would the tax-gatherer, and refreshing our oppressed spirits alone
+with serious jokes, and such merriment as may be presented to us under
+the sanction and recommendation of a college of dissenting divines!</p>
+
+<p>But our harp will be a mingled one, for so is our theme; having a
+sympathy alike for our mirthful and sorrowful moments, which it alike
+spiritualizes; striking the light, gleesome chord to the one, and
+attuning the soul to more ethereal joy; while by its soft influence it
+tones down the harshness of bitter, <i>unavailing</i> sorrow, and woos the
+heart, misanthropizing under the pangs of grief or unrequited love&mdash;pent
+up in its own solitude, unpitied and uncared for&mdash;and filled with dark
+thoughts, and sad sounds, and tones of plaintive winds, sighing through
+the cypress and doleful yew with mournful melody around the
+resting-place of the loved and lost, to submissive lamentings, and slow
+stealing tears that assuage its aching anguish and tranquillize the
+spirit, leading it to the hope of a brighter future, in whose dawning
+beams it will, ere-long, show like "the tender grass, clear-shining
+after rain"&mdash;more glistening and beautiful for the invigorating dews of
+the cloud which had overhung it, and beneath whose gloom its beauty
+faded away&mdash;for very trouble!</p>
+
+<p>How often have we found that hard, <i>bitter</i> mood into which the mind
+under the pressure of suffering which is irremediable, and which has to
+be borne alone, is so apt to decline&mdash;feeling the harder and the
+bitterer for the careless, galling gaiety of all around&mdash;softened,
+subdued, yea, utterly broken up by the sweet notes of "some old familiar
+strain," that steal on the willing ear, freshening and exhilarating the
+spirit like a breezy morning in June, when it seems a sin to be
+wretched; the twittering birds on dancing boughs crying shame on us, for
+what is not only wrong, but, as we begin to feel, needless&mdash;not to say
+foolish; and we return from our stroll, wondering what in the world we
+have done with that load on our chest with which we began our
+walk&mdash;ending in a regular ramble&mdash;and which it then seemed incumbent on
+us, nay, a sacred duty, to pant under for the term of our natural lives;
+relieving ourselves by such sighs and groans as appeared to us the
+appropriate forms of expression for all human beings under the sun&mdash;made
+on purpose to be unhappy; we especially, fulfilling the end of our
+creation. And as we mark the change that has passed upon us&mdash;the
+bounding circulation in place of flagging energies&mdash;full, calm
+breathing, instead of the slow, short respiration of sadness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>&mdash;with
+reverent heart we bless nature, and, may we say also, nature's great
+Architect, all-merciful, all-loving!</p>
+
+<p>Such on us is frequently the effect of music; the heaviness of heart,
+caused by the weary rubs of this rough world, or the result of a
+temperament that has a constitutionally jarring string in it, is as it
+were <i>drawn out</i>, and sweetness and calm-breathing tranquillity infused
+in its stead; while our nerves become as the harmonious strings of a
+harp, that respond in sympathy with the master chords of one with which
+it is in unison, and whereon the fresh breeze of morning lightly plays,
+calling forth sounds of joy and gladness. Therefore do we <i>love</i> it,
+with a warmth of affection that may perchance appear extravagant to
+those whose robust, well-balanced minds, clothed with strong, healthy,
+unsusceptible bodies&mdash;people who are always in good spirits, unless
+there be a reason for the contrary&mdash;may render them independent of such
+external influences, for we must acknowledge, that we do at times
+express this our affection in somewhat unmeasured phrase, as one who
+stays not accurately to calculate, and weigh with cool precision, the
+virtues of a friend, thus laying ourselves open to the unmitigated
+condemnation of those who soar above, (or sink below!) such sympathies.</p>
+
+<p>Be it so! We are not about to enter into any vindication of ourselves;
+we shall not even attempt to convince these dull souls, that it is
+possible for elevated feeling, and repose and tenderness of mind, to be
+indebted for their origin to such insignificant and material sources as
+catgut and brass wire&mdash;and that they are not therefore to be
+undervalued; though by way of illustration of the influence of matter
+over spirit, we would remind them of their own humane and charitable
+feelings <i>after</i> dinner, compared with the fierce, nay, atrocious
+sentiments, which their consciences convict them of having entertained,
+before the pangs of their raging hunger had been appeased by that
+inestimable mollifier of men's hearts and tempers. For the cause of
+their insensibility to such impressions&mdash;a natural incapacity for
+receiving them&mdash;it is vain to seek a remedy, however willing we might be
+to apply one; but where cure is impracticable, palliatives are
+frequently admissible, and we would suggest that one may be found in
+this case, in the patients' treating the unhappy privation under which
+they labour with greater tenderness than has been their wont, throwing
+over it that veil of oblivion and charity with which they so gracefully
+conceal their other defects, instead of obtruding it on public
+observation, under the singular misconception of its being an admirable
+feature in their character, a something of which a man ought to be
+proud. Conduct like this, they may rest assured, will not fail of being
+appreciated and rewarded by the corresponding delicacy with which all,
+who are not utterly barbarous, invariably treat him who, by the
+deprecating humility with which he seeks to conceal his deficiencies,
+betrays his painful cognisance of their existence.</p>
+
+<p>We are aware that this is a turning of the tables upon them which they
+may not be disposed to admire&mdash;to be placed at the bar, when they
+expected a seat on the Bench, and were just smoothing down their ermine,
+and adjusting their wigs, in order to enter on their duties with the
+greater impressiveness and dignity; but they must believe us when we
+tell them, that we, too, have an opinion on this subject, to which we
+must be permitted to attribute as high authority as they possibly can to
+their own; and that, tried by this standard, they, being found wanting,
+would inevitably have been brought up for judgment, but for a merciful
+leaning, (sanctioned by legal precedent,) which prompts us rather to try
+the salutary effect of admonition and good counsel, than to proceed at
+once to inflict extreme penalties on the offenders&mdash;in short, that we
+are not in a hanging humour, or they should swing for it!</p>
+
+<p>Grim, rough Luther, laying about him with his ponderous mace, and making
+giant Pope tremble in the deepest recesses of his stronghold, lest he
+should grow utterly savage with his perpetual warfare&mdash;albeit a "Holy
+war"&mdash;humanized and spiritualized himself with his lute&mdash;(who does not
+sympathize with his unfailing "Deus<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> noster refugium," that divine stay
+of his stout heart that trembled not at men or devils!) Ken, undaunted
+opponent of the tyranny of a king&mdash;meek sufferer for that monarch's
+lawful rights, rose at day-dawn, or so soon as the first brief slumber
+had recruited his exhausted frame, to give thanks unto the King of kings
+in strains that, handed down to us, yet thrill the heart by their
+fervent piety, and plain, vigorous verse, and animate it to a stricter
+more manly rectitude. Herbert&mdash;saintliest of men and priests&mdash;after his
+sacred toils, refreshed his spirit with "divine music;" the more
+melodious to his ear, that his heart was teeming with the harmony of
+that "good-will towards man," which seeks and finds its due expression
+in active exertions on their behalf&mdash;disdaining not the lowliest
+occasion of serving with hearty zeal the lowliest of his neighbours.
+Rest assured, then, O reader! whosoever thou art, that it is not for
+<i>thee</i> to pretend to despise it!</p>
+
+<p>Ponder the rather on the <i>power</i> of that art, that could soothe the
+perturbed soul of Israel's wrath-sent king&mdash;mad and moody&mdash;and even
+expel the evil spirit that goaded him; and on its <i>dignity</i>&mdash;for
+prophets of old, when the Divine inspiration came upon them, revealing
+to their purified eyes the "vision of the Almighty," uttered their "dark
+sayings upon the harp."</p>
+
+<p>What a plague it sometimes is to be hag-ridden by a tune, racing through
+one's head, with a never-ending always-beginningness, as though a
+thousand imps were singing it in one's ears. Wherever you may be,
+whomsoever with, whatsoever doing, still ring on those incessant tones
+of perchance the merriest of all jigs, till&mdash;it is Sunday morning, and
+you are preparing for church&mdash;you leave your house with the entire and
+miserable conviction, that, seated in your pew in the very face of the
+congregation-genteel sinners in silks, and satins, and feathers&mdash;you
+will betray your long-concealed suffering by giving vent to that
+interminable "Rory O'More," the moment you open your lips for the
+emission of "All people that on earth do dwell;" so ensuring your rapid
+transfer to the street, under the escort of the man with the
+parti-coloured coat and black wand, whose Sabbath duties of jerking the
+Sunday scholars, and rapping their heads with that authoritative cane,
+are unceremoniously interfered with on your behalf. Misery and disgrace
+stare you in the face, and all through an undue titillation of that part
+of your sensorium that takes cognisance of musical sounds; a titillation
+not to be subdued by endeavouring to direct your attention from it to
+the very gravest of all subjects; nor propitiated even by audibly
+chanting the offending strain, previously retiring into the furthest
+corner of your coal-cellar, to prevent your unwilling profanity on
+shocking the strictly conscientious ears of your household. This is
+bad&mdash;and yet it is but a mild form of this morbid affection, which, in
+its most intense degree, torments the sufferer from fever, (or one
+stunned by some sudden and violent grief,) when certain sounds, words,
+or tunes, accidentally determined, thrill through the head with the
+steadiness and vehement action of the piston of a steam-engine&mdash;beat,
+beat, beat!&mdash;every note seeming to fall on the excited brain like the
+blow of a hammer; while, as the fever and pain increase, the more
+rapidly and heavily do those torturing notes pursue their furious chase.
+We well remember, under an attack of disorder in the neighbourhood of
+the brain, causing severe suffering, lying&mdash;we know not how long, it
+might be a thousand years for any thing we knew&mdash;singing over and over
+again <i>in our mind</i>, for we were speechless with pain, the 148th psalm,
+which we had just chanced to hear sung, in Brady and Tate's version, to
+a new and somewhat peculiar tune. Oh, how those "dreadful whales" and
+"glittering scales" did quaver and quiver in our poor head! Lying like a
+log&mdash;for pain neither permitted us to stir nor groan&mdash;still rattled on,
+hard and quick, the rumbling bass and shrill tenor of that most
+inappropriately jubilant composition&mdash;"cherubim and seraphim," "fire,
+hail, and snow," succeeding each other with a railway velocity that
+there was no resisting; no sooner had we got to "stands ever fast," than
+round again we went to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> "boundless realms of joy," and so on, on,
+on, through each dreary minute of those dreary hours, an infinity, or
+perchance but twenty-four, according as time is computed by clocks or by
+agonised human beings. It made a capital Purgatory; one which we have
+even deemed every way adequate to those slight delinquencies of which we
+may have been guilty, and which are appointed, as it is understood, to
+be expiated in this way.</p>
+
+<p>At times some simple air, or even a single chord of unusual, but
+apparently obvious harmony, will haunt us with a peculiar sweetness,
+producing a soothing, gentle sadness, as though we listened to distant
+bells, whose music is borne in surges on the breeze that sways the
+golden corn on a sunny Sabbath, when our pathway lies through the
+undulating fields, already "white unto the harvest;" where the pleasant
+rustling of the ripened grain, as it is stirred by the soft wind, is
+sweet and soothing; and the gay poppy, and other less obtrusive, though
+not less beautiful wild-flowers, bloom at our loitering feet. In the
+power of exciting such feeling, what can equal our old English ballads?
+There is an inexpressible charm in these, and we would almost give our
+fingers to be able to describe that indescribable <i>something</i>, which
+constitutes their peculiar fascination and power over the imagination.
+Most plain, most artless, does their composition appear; like the
+natural out-breathing of the heart in its sunny moments; and yet&mdash;as
+with all earthly brightness&mdash;with a trace of cloud on that sunshine.
+They are redolent of the "olden time;" and as they fall softly on the
+ear, the antique hall, with its groined roof, and mullioned window,
+glowing with rich heraldic devices, through which the many-tinted lights
+fall tenderly on arch and pillar, and elaborately fretted walls, studded
+with ancestral armour, rises up before us; and with the melting tones of
+the lute, mingles the low, clear voice of a gentle maiden, whose small
+foot and brocaded train are just seen from behind yonder deeply
+sculptured oaken screen. What innocence is in that voice! and how
+expressive are the chords that accompany it&mdash;less elaborate and
+fantastic, perchance, than might win favour in our vitiated ears; but
+natural, harmonious, full, and in exquisite subordination to the air,
+which they fill up and enrich, instead of overpowering with misplaced
+beauty.</p>
+
+<p>And now a movement of the singer reveals still more of the quaint,
+beautiful costume, with its heavy, yet graceful folds, while&mdash;aha! what
+else do we see?&mdash;a plumed hat thrown carelessly on the ground; the armed
+heel, glittering rapier, and slashed sleeve, just visible, betokening
+that its owner is not far off, and that the lady fair has not, as we had
+thought, been wasting her sweetness, either of voice or countenance, on
+that comfortable-looking pet dog or caged linnet. Sing on, pretty one!
+for well do gallant knights love to hear their stern deeds sung by
+innocent lips; and <i>right well</i>, to listen to the strain that tells how
+the heart of "lady-bright" is won by noble daring. But what means that
+sudden break in the song, and the confused sweep of the strings, as
+though the lute had slipped from its owner's grasp; while the masculine
+paraphernalia which we had just discovered disappears altogether behind
+that most impervious and curiosity-mocking screen? No great harm done,
+or that light laugh had not escaped the lips so suddenly silenced; and
+the offending cavalier is doubtless forgiven on the spot, as they
+amicably retreat to that deep oriel, framed apparently for the express
+purpose of excluding <i>intrusionists</i> like ourselves, who would fain
+follow, where, it is evident, we are marvellously little wanted! Well,
+well!&mdash;maidens will be maidens, we trow, and lovemaking in the olden
+time is, we suppose, after all, vastly like the same performance by more
+modern actors. Leave we them to their light-heartedness:&mdash;and yet we
+could linger long in this ancient chamber,</p>
+
+<p class="center">"With quaint oak-carving lined and ceiled;"</p>
+
+<p>so calm, so cool, so repose-breathing,&mdash;the shrill twitter of the
+swallow the only sound now heard amid its silence; the fleecy clouds,
+throwing that rich interior into alternate light and shade, as they sail
+lazily along the deep blue sky&mdash;the only moving objects, save<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> the long
+wreaths of ivy, that, green as the tender buds of spring, tap lightly
+against the casement, as they are swayed by the impulses of the summer
+breeze. Beyond, is an old-fashioned garden&mdash;a <i>pleasance</i>, as it would
+be called&mdash;and truly is it one; with its trim walks, its terraces, and
+moss-grown urns, around which luxuriant creepers are entwined&mdash;its
+impervious hedges&mdash;its close-shorn lawn, decked with appropriate
+statues, and its yew-trees, clipped into fantastic shapes; while the
+ivy-covered walls that bound it, afford a shelter from the blasts that
+too often allay the sunshine of our northern climate, and render it a
+spot where 'tis sweet to saunter, in idle or quiet contemplative mood,
+at glowing sunset; or chaster beauty of summer evening, when the pure,
+cold moon mingles her passionless lustre with the gorgeous hues that
+still linger around the portals of the west&mdash;bright train of the
+departing monarch that has passed to the sway of a new hemisphere!</p>
+
+<p>Here could we linger in genial meditation, while from the dark pannelled
+walls look down upon us lovely countenances of those who, centuries ago,
+have called this <i>home</i>&mdash;portraits whose calm, meek dignity so far
+transcends the more active style in which it too often pleases us
+moderns to glare from our gilt frames, "looking delightfully with all
+our might, and staring violently at nothing;" costume and truth being
+utterly outraged,&mdash;the <i>roturier's</i> wife mapped in the ermine of the
+duchess, and perchance dandling on her maternal lap what appears to be a
+dancing dog in its professional finery, but which, on closer inspection,
+turns out to be an imp of a child, made a fool of by its mother and
+milliner; and my lady&mdash;in inadequate garments, and a pair of wings,
+flourishing as some heathen divinity or abstract virtue! Look at those
+girlish features, just mantling into fairest womanhood, with their sweet
+serious look, exhibiting all the self-possession of simplicity; the
+drapery and other accessories natural, and in perfect keeping with the
+unpretending character of the whole; and then turn to some recent
+"portrait of a lady," with what toleration you may. Contrast for one
+moment that fine ancestral face, dignified and unmoved as the mighty
+ocean slumbering in his strength, with the eager visage of one of the
+latest "batch," (cooked, without much regard to the materials, for some
+ministerial exigency,) who would appear to be standing in rampant
+defence of his own brand-new coronet, emulative of the well-gilt lion
+which supports that miracle of ingenuity rather than research, his
+brightly emblazoned coat-of-arms; whose infinitude of charges and
+quarterings do honour to the inventive genius of the Herald's Office,
+and are enough to make the Rouge Dragon of three centuries ago claw out
+the eyes of the modern functionary.</p>
+
+<p>But, oh dear, dear! where are our ballads all this while? Drifted sadly
+to leeward, we fear, according to a bad habit of ours, of letting any
+breeze, from whatever point of the compass it may chance to blow, fill
+our sails, and float us away before it, utterly unmindful of our
+original purpose and destination. Thus have we, to the tune of an old
+Hall and its garniture, sailed away from that which we were
+aiming&mdash;trying to find out, and describe the peculiar fascination of our
+loved old ballads; flattering ourselves, perhaps, that we were escaping
+a difficulty which we feared to meet.</p>
+
+<p>There is a quaint cheerfulness in them, toned down with a shade&mdash;the
+shadow of a shade&mdash;of the most touching melancholy, effected, we can
+scarcely tell how, by an exquisitely felicitous, though but slight
+introduction of the minor key, perchance but a single note or chord. But
+that suffices, and it is as a sudden vision of our home, far off among
+the mountains, or in the "happy valley" of our fathers, passing before
+us in the gay crowded city, bringing plaintive thoughts of remembered
+joys, and quietude, and childish innocence. Old ballads are like April
+skies, all smiles and tears, sunshine and swift-flitting clouds, that
+serve but to heighten the loveliness they concealed for a while. They
+are like,&mdash;nay, we despair; none but our own Shakspeare can express what
+we should vainly puzzle ourselves to describe, the essence of the "old
+and antique song."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Mark it, Cesario; it is old and plain;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The spinsters and the knitters in the sun</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And the free maids that weave their thread with bones,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Do use to chaunt it; it is silly sooth,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And dallies with the innocence of love,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Like the old age."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>Ay! like gray eld fondling sunny childhood, gazing on the wavy hair, and
+pure brow, and calm yet kindling eye, with a fond sad pleasure; for in
+that young exulting spirit he sees the sure inheritor of his own fading
+honours, the usurper of his strength, and influence, and worship,
+rapidly passing away from his feeble grasp; and as he gazes, though his
+lips pour willing benedictions on the unconscious supplanter, there
+lingers in his heart the sorrowful, "He shall increase, but I shall
+decrease."</p>
+
+<p>Something akin in their sad soothing effect, are the <i>waits</i>, (dear
+reader, you do not need to be told what these are? Wordsworth has
+immortalized them;) simple, rude, and inharmonious as they would be in
+the clear, truth-telling daylight, but strange, witching, and half
+unearthly, when heard between the pauses of some fantastic dream in the
+deep midnight; when,</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 6em;">"All around,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The stars are watching with their thousand eyes;"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>those same stars that peered down on this earth, in "earnest gaze," on
+the first act of that most awful drama, when, in "the winter wild, the
+heaven-born child"&mdash;Him in whom all nations of the world were
+blessed&mdash;was placed in his rude cradle at Bethlehem: in commemoration of
+whose advent&mdash;and <i>this</i> is one secret of their pathos, waking high
+thoughts in the soul, too long brooding over and degrading itself with
+the mean cares and hopes of this life&mdash;the humble musicians make night
+tuneful, "scraping the chords with strenuous hand."</p>
+
+<p>A blessing on them as they go, softening our hard, unloving hearts! In
+our childhood it was one of our most cherished pleasures to
+lie&mdash;half-sleeping, half-waking&mdash;listening to them, as the sounds, at
+times discordant enough, though of that we recked not, rose and fell in
+pleasing cadence, as the winter wind rose and fell, wafting the notes
+that, faint and fainter still, at last died away in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>We and our room-companion were under a solemn engagement, each to other,
+to waken the little sleepy thing beside him, when the more watchful
+became aware of the approach of the itinerant minstrels; and woe to the
+one who had forgotten this duty! It would have required no little
+"music" to soothe the "savage breast" of the aggrieved one; for&mdash;as we
+are pathetically reminded by the old song&mdash;"Christmas comes but once
+a-year," and so often, but no more, did we know that our chance of
+hearing this seductive harmony occurred. Hence our wrath, if through the
+neglect, the "breach of promise" of another, so solemnly pledged, we
+missed it. And even now, dear as is the oblivion of night and dreamless
+sleep to the spirit, harassed and world-worn, that in outgrowing its
+child-like feelings and happiness, has, alas! also out-grown what its
+increase of worldly wisdom can hardly make amends for&mdash;the child-like
+purity, and intense enjoyment of simple pleasures, which marked its
+earlier years&mdash;even now, weary and dull-hearted as we are become, we
+would not willingly lose this delight of our happier days, although it
+fall on the still darkness like wail for a departed friend, unsealing
+the fount of mournful memories, whose bitter waters gush from their
+stricken rock; sad as are its associations, they are of that sadness
+whereby the "heart is made better."</p>
+
+<p>What think ye of the drum as a musical instrument? Is there not
+something magnificent in it, albeit suggestive of a distant wheelbarrow
+on rough paving-stones, or heavily laden cart in the distance? This
+latter, by the way,&mdash;we appeal with confidence to any musical soul
+present for confirmation of our assertion&mdash;being decidedly its equal, in
+effect, any day; as in our <i>happy</i> infancy we found out to our sorrow,
+from being frequently deceived by its dull booming, which our vivid
+imagination at once pronounced to be its parchment representative; as we
+writhed and wriggled with agony on our unhonoured bench (selected, and
+adhered to, for constancy was our <i>forte</i>, chiefly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> on account of its
+being out of the reach of the cane, and commanding a good view of the
+street) in a perfect fever, poor little soul, to squirl away books and
+slates, and scamper after the soldiers. Scarlet has been said to be like
+the sound of a trumpet; surely then a drum must be taken as the exponent
+of that ferocious mixture yclept thunder and lightning, erst dear to
+country bumpkins, and rendered classical by Master Moses Primrose's
+coat. It can scarcely be described as <i>music</i>, but rather as sound with
+an idea in it&mdash;the connecting link between mere noise and musical
+expression. Kettle-drums,</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;">"Whose sullen dub,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Is like the hooping of a tub,"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>we hate; and never see them in a concert-room without heartily wishing
+they and their tatooer might tumble, helter-skelter, from their topmost
+perch into the very lowest depth, if there be one lower than another, of
+the orchestra; and thereby sustain such a compound fracture, attended by
+loss of substance, as should put it out of their power, for that night
+at least, to torture our fastidious ears. Being of a melancholy
+temperament, we are unfortunately, at times, subject to most ludicrous
+fancies; and as these ungainly instruments loom on our disgusted eye, we
+cannot, for the life of us, help imagining them moulds for a couple of
+enormous gooseberry puddings; and we verily pant at the idea of the sea
+of melted butter, or yellow cream, requisite to mollify their
+acidity&mdash;and then we laugh like a hyena at the nightmareish vision, and
+so are disgraced, for it is at a "serious opera:" therefore, we repeat
+it, do we hate them, cordially and perseveringly. They are horrid
+things, and ought to be excommunicated. And when employed in military
+bands&mdash;why, a horse looks a complete fool between a couple of these
+gigantic basins, each with its long tag-rag of unmeaning velvet,
+beplastered and bedizened with lace and gold, streaming from it; and the
+unlucky performer perched between them, exactly like an old
+market-woman, bolstered up between a brace of paniers or
+milk-pails;&mdash;any thing but a fierce dragoon, or most chivalrous hussar.
+But peace be to the kettle-drums,&mdash;ay, <i>peace be to them</i>, say we! and
+may our ears never again be subjected to the torture of hearing Handel's
+massive chorus, or Beethoven's fearfully dramatic harmony, disfigured by
+their most abominable bangs, or villanous rumble-grumble.</p>
+
+<p>Now all this is rank nonsense&mdash;we are fully aware of it; and it is a
+most foolish, unjust prejudice of ours against drums&mdash;kettle or
+otherwise, as it may please Apollo&mdash;which are most respectable members
+of musical society, and good&mdash;very good&mdash;in their way; were it only as a
+foil to the enchanting, inspiriting, maddening strains of the horn, the
+shrill pipe, the regal trumpet, and the various other instruments of our
+military music, of which we are more passionate admirers, almost ready
+to follow the drum ourselves. Oh, the supreme delight of having one's
+arms and legs shot off to such soul-elevating sounds, to the tune of
+Rule Britannia, and somebody or other's march! "Britons strike home"
+thrills through the air, and you scarcely feel that you are spitted by a
+Polish lancer; a flourish of trumpets, and enter a troop of horse, that
+trot briskly over you as you lie smashed by a round-shot, but heedless
+of the exhibition of their unceremonious heels to your injuries, for are
+you not sustained by that "point of war"&mdash;mercilessly beaten at your
+elbow, without the slightest regard to the effect it may have on your
+cracked head, for which you are indebted to the last trooper who spurred
+his charger over you: who would care for his vulgar limbs under such
+excitement? But if this part of our military economy be intended to
+inspire cowards with courage, and string them up to a disregard of all
+the chances of warfare, in the way of bullet and sabre, why&mdash;<i>why</i> is
+not so valuable an idea carried out to the full extent of its
+requirement, and a military band instituted for the comfort and
+encouragement of the patients (every whit as nervous as if they were
+under arms) of Guy's Hospital? Why should not the case of poor bedfast
+wretches in cap and gown, and pale faces, meet with as much
+consideration as that of your clodpole in scarlet and an 'Albert hat?'
+(Heaven forgive the prince for making such simpletons of our handsome
+Englishmen!) Look<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> to it, ye governors of such institutions, and look to
+it, ye charitable and humane, who empty your purses into the blandly
+presented plate to buy shoes and stockings for the kangaroos. Consider
+the case of your afflicted countrymen, and relieve the plethora of your
+coffers by providing them music, every way equal to that enjoyed by
+troops going into action; music so entrancing that an arm or leg whipped
+off shall, under its influence, be no object to them; and let them drink
+down their odious physic to such masterly compositions of the first
+artists as shall sweeten the bitterest potion, and elicit a chorus of
+blessings on the taste and liberality of their munificent benefactors.
+But we fear that our pleading will be vain&mdash;Englishmen, poor, sick, and
+suffering, are intolerably uninteresting; not to be named on the same
+day with the happy possessors of woolly locks, flat noses, and
+copper-coloured skins; these being personal qualifications calculated to
+excite the intense sympathies of the many whose charity neither begins
+nor ends "at home." Yet, in the spirit of the little girl, who, on the
+denial of her request that she might be married, substituted the more
+modest one of a piece of bread and butter; if unsuccessful in this
+particular, we will be content to lower our tone, and, in place of the
+luxury we have recommended, simply require all whom it may concern to
+give the poor&mdash;their own!&mdash;honest wages for their honest labour.</p>
+
+<p>We may perhaps be accused of having a Turkish taste in music (after the
+pattern of that Sultan's, who was chiefly fascinated with the jarring
+process of tuning the instruments, a thing abhorred by "gods and men")
+if we venture to own the strange, thrilling effect once produced on us
+by the discordant, yet withal imposing clangour of some half dozen
+regimental bands (all of them, mark you, playing different tunes!) which
+struck up simultaneously as my Lord &mdash;&mdash;, the then commander-in-chief,
+(whose spirit has since mingled with the shades of the heroes who had
+preceded him, not to the hall of Odin, but we trust to a more Christian
+place,) made his appearance, with his brilliant staff, on &mdash;&mdash; Moor;
+whither he came down ostensibly for the purpose of reviewing the
+troops&mdash;really, to marry his nephew and heir to the grand-daughter of a
+manufacturing millionnaire. (Commercial gold, or heraldic <i>or</i>, is a
+good modern "tricking;" though we query whether our ancestors would have
+countenanced such bad heraldry, or been content with such abatements of
+honour on their old shields!)</p>
+
+<p>The wild sounds streamed on the crisp morning air&mdash;'twas one of those
+September days whose mature beauty rivals the budding grace of
+spring&mdash;with a strange wayward beauty, a barbaric grandeur, that carried
+away both our heart and ears; and we enjoyed it to the full as much as
+did the steed of a military lady present, that verily danced with the
+tingling delight. We had a fellow feeling with the brute, and could
+ourselves, grave and sensible as we are, have pranced about in an
+ecstasy of admiration, which was by no means allayed when the deep-toned
+sullen music&mdash;for such it is to us&mdash;of the artillery uttered its
+majestic bass to the sharp ringing fire of musketry. While, as wreath
+after wreath of the light morning mist floated away before the breeze,
+the glittering files and compact bristling squares, the centaur-like
+cavalry, and stealthy riflemen gliding along the windings of the copse,
+became apparent, stretching far into the distance; now hidden for a
+moment by the rolling vapour from a discharge of firearms, then, as it
+curled above them, dimming the clear sky, glancing bright in the sun,
+which blithely kissed sabre and epaulet, and dancing plume, and the
+knightly-looking pennoned weapon of the picturesque lancer. Truly the
+scene was beautiful, and one to breathe a warlike spirit into the most
+unexcitable. And we gazed in a paroxysm of admiration at the exquisite
+evolutions and fierce charges that seemed as though they must bear all
+before them, till this perfection of discipline came to an end, and the
+long files of troops had taken their slow dusty departure; when, hot and
+fagged, and with bright colours still dancing before our eyes, we
+returned to our home. There, as each "pleasure has its pain," we found
+that one was superinduced on ours, in the shape of a robbery of our
+plate committed while we were staring ourselves out of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span> countenance at
+the gay spectacle; our faithless domestics having taken that opportunity
+of indulging their own taste for the "sublime and beautiful." 'Tis to be
+hoped they got enough of the "beautiful" at the show, as we indulged
+them with a touch of the "sublime" (which has one of its sources in
+<i>terror</i>) when we discovered our loss. But we enjoyed the review
+thoroughly for all that, and are ready for another to-morrow, first
+taking the precaution to "lock up all our treasure," warned by a
+catastrophe which nearly reduced us to wooden spoons and hay-makers.</p>
+
+<p>Military music! But to feel its power fully, let it be heard when the
+exulting strains that are wont to fill the air with exuberant harmony
+are saddened into the sweet, mournful, heart-breaking notes that steal
+on the ear at a soldier's funeral, and the gaudy splendour of military
+array has passed into the drear pomp of that most touching, most
+monitory sight. Faint mournful bugle-notes are wafted fitfully on the
+wind, plumes and glittering weapons glance and disappear as the
+procession advances, now hidden by the hedge-rows, now flashing on the
+sight, in the autumnal sun, as it winds slowly along the devious road;
+louder and louder swell those short abrupt trumpet-notes as it draws
+near, till the whole sad array, in its affecting beauty, is presented to
+the eye. The <i>life in death</i> that pervades the melancholy
+ceremonial!&mdash;"Our brother is not dead, but sleepeth," seems written on
+the impressive pageant; and we almost expect, while we gaze, to see the
+deep slumber chased from the closed eyelids, and the recumbent form
+start up again to claim the warlike weapons with which it was wont to be
+girt, and that now lie, as if awaiting their master's grasp, in
+unavailing display on the funereal pall. But a mightier than he has for
+ever wrenched them from his hold, and vain the sword, the helm, the
+spear, in that unequal conflict. The last contest is over, and "he is in
+peace."</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Brother, wrapp'd in quiet sleep,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thou hast ceased to watch and weep;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Wipe the toil-drops from thy brow,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">War and strife are over now;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bow the head, and bend the knee,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For the crown of victory."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>But suppose not pathos confined to the "bugle's wailing sound," and the
+sad subdued bursts of well-modulated military music&mdash;to the long files
+of slow-pacing troops with reversed arms, and the riderless steed,
+vainly caparisoned for the battle, that proclaim the obsequies of a
+chief. We are not ashamed to confess that the tear has been wrung from
+our eye by the plaintive notes of the few rude instruments that alone
+lament over the poor private's simple bier&mdash;the inharmonious fife, and
+the measured beats of the muffled drum; while the dull tramp of the
+appointed mourners following a comrade to his obscure resting-place
+falls chilly on the heart. Though even he, lowly in death as in life,
+shares with his leader in the brief wild honours of a soldier's
+grave&mdash;the sharp volleys of musketry pealing over his narrow home, a
+strange farewell to its passionless inhabitant, on whom the sanctity of
+the tomb has already passed; the unholy sound falls voiceless on his
+dull ear, fast closed until</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"The last loud trumpet-notes on high</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Peal through the echoing sky,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And cleave the quivering ground"&mdash;</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>breaking, with dreadful summons, "the eternal calm wherewith the grave
+is bound."</p>
+
+<p>"Facilis descensus!" We cannot say that we admire the hurdy-gurdy, that
+synthesis of a grindstone and a Jew's-harp, yea, of all that is
+detestable, musically speaking, which must have owed its origin to a
+desire on the part of Jupiter <i>Musicus</i>, in a bad temper, to invent a
+suitable purgatory for expiating the sins of delinquent musicians;
+affording, on this supposition, an exquisite illustration of the perfect
+adaptation of means to an end&mdash;one well worthy the attention of all
+future writers on that subject. Independently of the nuisance of its
+inexpressibly harsh-jingling tones, (as, if you were being hissed by a
+quantity of rusty iron wire,) it always gives us the fidget to hear it
+for the sake of poor Abel, (surely its only admirer,) grinding away for
+dear life, to the extreme exacerbation of the bears growling beneath,
+under the combined irritation of no supper and his abominable tinkling.
+How they must have longed to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> gobble him up, were it only for the sake
+of popping an extinguisher on the "zit zan zounds" overhead! It was the
+reverse of the old tale, "no song no supper;" for they got the song,
+instead of a supper on the nice plump artist, which they would have
+liked much better. We wish he had stuck to his text, and persisted in
+his refusal to play; for then the fate that awaited him would but have
+been poetical justice for his utter and criminal want of taste&mdash;an
+adequate retribution on a wretch patronising an instrument whose
+demerits transcend every adjective that occurs to us at this present
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>But as we cannot, even in the wildest freaks of our imagination,
+conceive of any one really liking the hurdy-gurdy&mdash;nay, we are prepared
+to demonstrate much affection absolutely impossible&mdash;we incline to think
+there must have been some corruption of this tradition in the course of
+its being handed down to us, so far at least as concerns the name of the
+instrument played at such a price; and on the antiquarian principle that
+consonants are changeable at pleasure, and vowels go for nothing, we
+take leave for hurdy-gurdy (what a vulgar sound it has!) to read flute,
+violin, lute, or, in short, any other presentable musical instrument
+that may chance to find the greatest favour in our eyes. A change which
+has the twofold merit of saving Abel's character for taste, and
+preserving so excellent a story from carrying a lie on the face of it;
+and for this service of ours, we desire alike the thanks of musicians
+and moralists, to whom we most respectfully present our improved
+version, as suitable for circulation by the most fastidious artist, or
+rigid precisian.</p>
+
+<p>Mercy on us! What a rattling and clattering of doors and windows! The
+windows will certainly be blown in at last, for they strain and creak
+like a ship at sea; and how the wind roars and bellows in the chimney,
+as if &AElig;olus and all his noisy crew were met on a tipsy revel!
+There&mdash;that last gust shook the house! It is to be hoped the chimneys
+stand with their feather-edge to it, or we shall have a stack or two
+about our ears in a trice. We wonder whether the cellars would be the
+safest place, or, indeed, whether there is a safe place about the house
+at all! We have often heard of the music of the wind, but never felt
+less disposed to admire it in our life&mdash;for the gale has been howling in
+our ears all day; and this last hour or two, there has been, as the
+sailors say, a fresh hand at the bellows; so that we are in no humour to
+sentimentalize on what is, within a few yards of us, curling the dark
+waves, that, since the day in which their fluctuation was first decreed,
+have swallowed up so much of what is goodly and beloved of this earth,
+and that now roar as if for their prey! of which may the great God that
+ruleth over the sea, as well as the dry land, disappoint their ravening
+jaws! We shrink and are half appalled at their clamour, while we are on
+the point of uttering a hasty vow never again to locate ourselves at the
+sea-side, though it were prescribed by fifty physicians; or, at all
+events, not so very near that dun mass of troubled waters, blending on
+the horizon in strange confusion with the lowering, tempestuous sky. Who
+could believe, as he views them in their milder mood, as we did
+yesterday&mdash;lying placid as a clear lake among the mountains, wherein the
+bright face of heaven is mirrored, reflecting each light cloud that
+floats in the deep azure, or the many-tinted hues of evening&mdash;that anon,
+lashed into foaming wrath, they should devour "rich fruit of earth, and
+human kind," the gold, and the gems, and the priceless treasures wrung
+from both hemispheres; and the young, the brave, the loved&mdash;the bright
+locks, and the manly beauty, and the hoary head; crushing their diverse
+hopes into one watery ruin, surging a wild tumultuous dirge over their
+one fathomless tomb! And then, sated with destruction, smile and glisten
+beneath the morning sunbeams with all the sportiveness of child-like
+innocence.</p>
+
+<p>No, no&mdash;speak not to us of the "music of the wind." For to us, in our
+gloomy moods, it breathes but of desolation, sorrow, and suffering;
+while, as the blast rises higher, its sentimental mournfulness is
+mingled with painful thoughts, which press on our spirit, of the peril
+in which it places so many of our fellow-creatures; and, "God help the
+poor souls at sea!" rises ear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>nestly in our heart, and even
+unconsciously passes the barrier of our lips, as we retire, utterly
+unsympathizing with the selfish enjoyment of those who delight to wrap
+up themselves, warm and cozy, in their curtained and downy repose,
+lulled to deeper slumber by the blustering cold in which others are
+shivering, or, haply, contending with the winds and waves so soon to
+overwhelm them. And in our more ordinary everyday humour&mdash;if it chance
+to rise above what in our humble opinion ought to be its maximum, a
+gentle refreshing breeze, just enough to waft sweet woodland sounds, or
+ripple the quiet stream&mdash;why, it discomposes and discomforts us,
+whistling, howling, and rattling among slates and chimney-tops, and
+making whirligigs of the dust, in the town; and in the country,
+<i>soughing</i> among the boughs, as though the trees had got some horrible
+secret which they were whispering to each other, while their long arms
+lash each other as if for a wager; the whole exciting in us a most
+uneasy and undefinable sensation, as though we had done something wrong,
+and were every minute expecting to be found out! A sensation which might
+fairly be deemed punishment sufficient for all the minor offences of
+this offensive world, and which we most decidedly object to having
+inflicted on us for nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"The music of the wind!" Why, what can be more detestable than the wind
+whistling through a key-hole? or singing its shrill melancholy song
+among the straining cordage of the storm-threatened ship? Then,
+uninteresting accidents happen during squally weather: hats are blown
+off; coat-tails, and eke the flowing garments of the gentler sex, flap,
+as if waging war with their distressed wearers; grave dignified persons
+are compelled to scud along before the gale, shorn of all the
+impressiveness of their wonted solemn gait, holding, perchance, their
+shovel-hat firmly on with both hands; and finally, there is neither
+pathos nor glory in having your head broken by a chimney-pot, or volant
+weathercock. No, the wide sea is an emblem of all that is deceitful and
+false, smiling most blandly when preparing to devour you; and the wind
+is only one shade more respectable&mdash;nay, perchance the worse of the two;
+for the waters, in the self-justifying, neighbour-condemning spirit,
+apparently inherent in human nature&mdash;and for which Father Adam be
+thanked&mdash;may very possibly lay the blame of their fickleness upon it,
+and bring a host of witnesses into court to testify to their general
+good behaviour&mdash;their calmness, and amenity, and inoffensiveness, till
+exposed to the evil influence of &AElig;olus's unruly troop&mdash;the most
+wholesale agitators going, and never so happy as when raising a riot.</p>
+
+<p>N.B.&mdash;The whole tribe of zephyrs, gentle airs, and evening and morning
+breezes, will please to consider themselves as <i>not</i> included under the
+term <i>wind</i>; to which alone, in its common-place hectoring style, this
+tirade is meant to apply.</p>
+
+<p>(We hate any thing important being popped within a parenthesis, but as
+the literary sin pinches us less than the immorality, we must here state
+what truth requires us to say&mdash;that the above, being written during a
+fit of the spleen, induced by the hubbub of winds and waters adverted
+to, must be received by the candid reader with considerable allowance.)</p>
+
+<p>So much for the wind, which has blown <i>music</i> completely out of our head
+for a while. What a pity we did not bethink us of placing our &AElig;olian
+harp in the window, before it had sunk into those short angry gusts
+which are now alone heard&mdash;the mere dregs of the gale; and so have drawn
+our inspiration from that which puffed it out! But, somehow or other,
+our bright thoughts generally present themselves too late to be of any
+use; and this is one in that predicament!</p>
+
+<p>Some people profess to be never tired of music, but to enjoy it <i>&agrave;
+l'outrance</i>, at all times and in all places. With such, we must own, we
+have no sympathy. With all our <i>love</i>&mdash;not mere liking&mdash;for the art, we
+still hold that it is indebted for its charm to the categories of time
+and place, at least as much as its neighbours; for (but this confession
+should be made in the smallest, most modest-looking type in the world)
+there are both times and places when we hate it cordially, and fervently
+wish that neither harmony, nor its ancestor, melody, had ever been
+invented. In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> some such mood as made the very heavens themselves odious
+and pestilential to Hamlet, does music appear to us as unlike itself, as
+they really were to his crazed imagination of them; and we look forward
+with malicious pleasure to the time when, if Dryden is to be
+believed&mdash;but your poets are not always prophets&mdash;"music shall untune
+the sky," as a period when all the miseries it has inflicted on us shall
+be amply revenged by its perpetrating, or assisting at, this gigantic
+mischief. 'Tis then that your first-fiddle is but impertinent
+catgut&mdash;your fluent organ a vile box of whistles, fit representative of
+its <i>Tube</i>-al inventor&mdash;and the sweetest pipe ever resonant with the
+clear, music-breathing air of Italy, or bravely struggling against the
+damper atmosphere of our humid isle, sounds harsh and shrilly in our
+ears, instead of soothing our "savage breast," which seems to marshal
+all its powers the more emphatically to give the poet the lie. This&mdash;now
+that we are in the confessional&mdash;we are free to own&mdash;yea, it is
+incumbent on us to do ourselves this justice&mdash;is only when we are in one
+of our unamiable moods, luckily about as rare as snow at mid-summer, but
+correspondingly chilling and shocking to the genial ones around
+us,&mdash;ourselves usually most so, like quiet sunshine in November. We are,
+by nature, the meekest of individuals&mdash;a "falcon-hearted dove," or
+anything else, pretty and poetical, that might give the idea of our
+possessing a brave heart under a most gentle exterior; but when roused,
+then indeed are we a very dragon; or rather, to keep up our former
+simile, (which we think a taking one, though, alas! it is not our own,)
+and delineate, by one expressive phrase, a mouldering, rage kept in
+check; by the constitutional cowardice on which it is superinduced&mdash;then
+are we a pigeon-hearted hawk, wanting only the courage to be desperately
+cross! (An impertinent friend, who has been looking over our shoulder,
+suggests that ourselves, under the two above-named phrases, would be
+better adumbrated by the figure of a dish of skimmed milk, and that same
+milk curdled! A plague on friends, say we! the most impertinent
+impertinencies that fall to our lot in this cross-cornered world are
+sure to emanate from them.)</p>
+
+<p>Another of our sins which&mdash;to make "a clean breast"&mdash;we must confess, is
+that of fickleness in our loves; an occasional flirting with other arts
+and sciences, in their turn&mdash;for we protest against the profligacy of
+making love to more than one at once! We string together fearful and
+unreadable lengths of iambics, and dactyles, and trochaics, and write
+sonnets to the bright queen of night, beginning "O thou!" and stick fast
+in the middle of sorely-laboured and at length baffling extempores to
+this, that, and t'other; and, wickeder still, then we din them into the
+ears of a wretched friend, who having once, in the extremity of his
+courtesy, unhappily proved himself a good listener, is, for his sins,
+fated to continue so to the end of the chapter&mdash;<i>i.e.</i>, our interminable
+rhymes; til, tired of exchanging our bad prose for worse poetry, (and
+having the fear of his maledictions before our eyes,) we throw it aside
+in a pet. Then comes a change over our spirit; and we dabble in
+paint-pots, and flourish a palette, and are great on canvass, and in
+chalks, and there is a mingled perfume of oil and turpentine in our
+<i>studio</i> (whilome study) that is to us highly refreshing, and good
+against fainting; and we make tours in search of the picturesque,
+climbing over stone walls, and what not, to gain some hill-top whence we
+may see the sun set or the moon rise, haply getting soused in a
+peat-drain for our pains&mdash;and we pencil sketches from nature, really
+very like; and the blue mountains, the solemn sunsets, and purple
+shadows among the woods, or falling on the tawny sands, girdling the
+sea, whose blue-gray melts into the horizon, throw us into quick
+ecstasies of delight that almost paralyse the adventurous hand as it
+seeks, often vainly, to transfer the quick-changing loveliness to the
+enduring canvass. And then we fling away our pencils in despair, and
+worship, with all the devotion of which ignorance is the mother, (for we
+never handled the chisel,) the serene beauty of sculpture; most
+passionless, most intellectual art, breathing the repose of divinity,
+the grand inaction of the All-powerful; shadowing forth in this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> its
+perfection, sublime truth, with its faint, troubled, yet still sublime
+reflection, error;&mdash;the "without passions" of Divine revelation, and its
+perversion, its undue development, the unconsciousness, issuing in the
+final perfection of annihilation, of Braminical deity. So are the
+extremes of truth and error linked&mdash;the error depending for its
+existence on its antagonist truth. Painting is objective, sculpture
+subjective, throwing the mind more upon itself, to seek there the hidden
+forms of grace and beauty yet unmanifested by pencil or chisel. The one
+appeals more to the senses, the other to the imagination and the mind;
+exciting ideas rather than presenting them. Painting, sublimate it as
+you will, is still of the earth; albeit a purer one than this desolated
+habitation in which the sons of Adam mourn their exile&mdash;even the
+unviolated Eden; of which it is one of the fairest, tenderest
+emanations, reaching forward to the angelic, yet still a child of earth
+with mortality on its brow. Sculpture is of the gods, with its Titanic
+majesty, and calm, celestial grace.</p>
+
+<p>But next succeeds one of our hard, stern, misanthropical fits, in which
+verjuice and aloes might be taken as the type of our condition, and we
+propound strange heresies concerning the affections, social and
+domestic; the leading one being that they are greater inlets to misery
+than happiness, and that mankind would have been less wretched had they
+grown up, like blades of grass, alone and separate; a cheerless
+doctrine, but one which misanthropical logic legitimately deduces from
+the more comprehensive one, that in this world evil is more potential
+than good&mdash;more active and influential in its own nature. And we
+bitterly call to mind all the treachery with which our trustfulness has
+been met&mdash;our leaning on that broken reed, friendship&mdash;the placing our
+whole hope and stay on some loved one who has failed us in our
+extremity;&mdash;we call up (and how they throng at that call!) these gloomy
+recollections, clad in all the terrors of the dark and indistinct past,
+to build ourselves up in our gloomy creed. And in our utter weariness of
+soul, the thought of an uninterrupted sentient existence is oppressive:
+and we passionately wish that the rest of the grave might not be
+vouchsafed to our body alone, but that our spirit also might sleep a
+deep, tranquil sleep, until the great day of awakening. 'Tis a dreary
+mood&mdash;like clouded moonlight on troubled, turbid waters! And we could
+roast Love with his own torch&mdash;and we see every thing through crape
+spectacles, and have no clarity for the softer, more refined emotions
+and contemplations; so we plunge our head and ears into a chaos of most
+musty, dusty metaphysics; and by the time we are nearly choked with
+them, and have reasoned ourselves, first, out of all intercourse with an
+external world, secondly, out of its existence, thirdly, out of our own,
+we are right glad to be brought back to our senses, and our old love,
+whom we embrace with all the ardour of reconciliation after a lover's
+quarrel, and willingly yield ourselves to the humanizing effect of
+music&mdash;grave or gay, as our mood may dictate, either perfect after its
+kind.</p>
+
+<p>Reader, should you haply be of the extreme North, has it ever chanced to
+you to be present at our glorious English cathedral service? If not,
+congratulate yourself on this enjoyment in reserve for you; and when you
+next visit our end of the little island, pass not, we beseech you, those
+Gothic towers, massive and rich, or taper spires rising majestically
+above the cloistered arches, buttresses, and pinnacles, of these
+monuments of the piety, consummate skill, and humility of our ancestors;
+for no modern black board, with gilt letters, proclaims the name of
+their founders, who have sought a simple, perchance a nameless, tomb
+within the sacred walls they have reared. Pass within that lofty
+doorway; and the silence, the stillness, the vastness within, awe the
+heart! From the care and turmoil without, one step has placed us lonely
+as in a desert;&mdash;from the surges of life to the presence of the dead,
+who sleep around as if under the more immediate keeping of the Mighty
+One in His holy temple! And if, entering, a solitary memorial of the
+more clouded faith which they inherited from their fathers&mdash;the jewel,
+dimmed by its frail setting&mdash;should meet the eye, start not, with the
+pride of knowledge, from the meek petition,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> "Ora pro me," enscrolled
+beneath that mitred effigy, worn by the thoughtless feet of the
+generations passed away; but believe, and fear not to do so, that "it is
+accepted according to that a man hath," and that the sincere devotion of
+the heart, even when erroneously expressed, through <i>involuntary</i>
+ignorance, shall not be rejected by that just Being who seeks not to
+reap where He hath not sowed; but that it may come up as holy incense
+before Him, when our cold, unloving, orthodox prayers, backed by our
+heathenish lives, and meaner offerings on the altar of our God, shall
+return, blighted and blighting, into our own bosoms. Or should you be
+too petrified with pious horror at this&mdash;Popery, as with your longest,
+dismalest face, you will style it&mdash;to think with any charity of those
+who dwelt but in the twilight of your open day&mdash;the very verger, sleek,
+round, and smiling, as he stands by you in his sake-robes, shall, in his
+honest zeal, supply an antidote for the evil, moralizing on the vanity
+of such supplications, and winding up his simple homily with the
+significant&mdash;"Where the tree falleth, there it shall lie!" Think on
+that, rigid critic, and take heed how <i>you</i> fall!&mdash;nor, if you have the
+capacity for finding "good in every thing," will you disdain to learn
+the lesson of instruction, which your own heart had failed to supply,
+from so lowly a source.</p>
+
+<p>But you still curl your sanctimonious lip, and shrug your pious
+shoulders, in intimation of your knowing vastly better than your poor,
+ignorant forefathers! Ah, well&mdash;then <i>live</i> better; that is all we have
+got to say to you!</p>
+
+<p>Our very parish churches are now emulating the impressive ceremonial and
+exquisite musical service of the cathedral. Enter, then, with us one
+that has seemed, in some degree, to revive the glory of the olden time,
+when men, as they received, gave lavishly for the service of the altar;
+nor meted out their offerings with the niggard hand that is moved by the
+heart of this generation; unmoved, unwarmed, but boastful of its
+<i>light</i>&mdash;the light of a moonbeam playing on an iceberg! There is the
+long sweep of the nave, with the open chancel (not separated from the
+former by the richly carved and fretted screen, which, however beautiful
+in itself, mars the grand effect of the whole) leading to the altar&mdash;we
+are old-fashioned people, and fear not to offend by this old-fashioned
+term&mdash;whose sacred garniture glows beneath the many tints of the fine
+eastern window, with its monograms and emblems, and flowing-robed
+apostles, through which the mellowed summer sun shines obliquely,
+throwing strange, grotesque, many-coloured shadows on the walls and
+pavement; while on either side tall lancet-shaped windows, thickly
+covered with heraldic devices, bear modest record to the willing service
+of those whose munificence has reared the pile, and give increased light
+and richness to the scene. The great western window, also covered with
+armorial bearings, throws a dim, yet kindling, tint on the stone font
+aptly placed beneath it, as figurative of its character&mdash;initial to that
+further sacrament, meetly celebrated where the star of Him who first
+blessed it proclaimed His advent to the expectant world. While
+throughout the holy building, high-springing arch, and sombre aisle, and
+vaulted ceiling, and curiously-wrought oaken roof; all combine to
+impress the mind with awe and admiration, with thoughts of the past and
+hopes for the future.</p>
+
+<p>But this is not all: these are but the glories of art, worthily
+employed, indeed, in the service of the temple; 'tis but the body
+without the life, the soul that animates it. Return at the decline of
+day, when "man, who goeth forth unto his labour even unto the evening,"
+has received a respite from his ordained toil, and seeks to refresh and
+elevate his spirit, wearied and worn down with the low, inevitable cares
+of the day, with the mingled prayer and chant, "rising and falling as on
+angels' wings," that duly, at each appointed eve, swell through the
+consecrated structure, filling its concave with solemn melody. The last
+flush of evening has died in the west, and the scattered worshippers are
+indistinctly seen by the dim lights, which, bringing out into strong
+relief the parts immediately adjacent to the massive yet graceful
+pillars to which they are attached, throw the rest of the interior into
+deeper gloom, brought into sharp contrast with the illuminated
+portions,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> by intersecting arch, clustered shaft, and all the endless
+intricacies of Gothic architecture; exuberant with profusely decorated
+spandrils, sculptured bosses, light flying buttresses, and delicate
+fan-like tracery. How beautiful and hushed is all around! Now the
+stillness is broken by approaching footsteps, and the white-robed train
+of priests and choristers is seen advancing along the aisle, the organ
+uttering its impressive modulations to soothe the heart, and still its
+tumult of worldly care and feelings, that these may not, "like birds of
+evil wing," mar the sacrifice about to be offered on its unworthy altar.
+And then, amid the succeeding silence, fall on the ear&mdash;ay, on the very
+soul!&mdash;the words of Holy Writ, deprecating the wrath of an offended
+Creator, announcing pardon to the repentant, and cleansing from the
+pollution of guilt to the heart, vexed with the defilement of this evil
+world, and yearning after the purity of that higher existence for which,
+erst designed, the inherited frailty of its nature, and the threefold
+temptations that unweariedly beset it, have rendered it unfit and
+unworthy.</p>
+
+<p>How clear, simple, yet most thrilling, is the enunciation of those
+words! and mark the superb harmony with which, proceeding in the sacred
+service, the single plaintively modulated voice of the officiating
+minister is answered by the choral supplications of the assembled
+worshippers&mdash;swelling out in joyous exulting tones, and dying away in
+sorrowful minor cadence, as though the shadow of sin and suffering fell
+on those pathways to the highest heaven, clouding the radiance unmeet
+for mortal eye! And if rude tremulous notes, from some of the lowly ones
+who, still habited in their garb of daily toil, kneel by our side&mdash;for,
+in that house, distinctions are there none&mdash;mingle with the harmony,
+they mingle not harshly, for there is melody in the heart, and it is the
+voice of a brother; not the less "bone of our bone, and flesh of our
+flesh," that the blessings of this life have been more sparingly
+bestowed on him&mdash;perchance to crown him more abundantly with glory and
+honour in that which is to come. Succeeding each other, the antiphonal
+chant&mdash;venerable with the port of near eighteen centuries; yea, with the
+hoar of Jewish, as well as Christian antiquity&mdash;the exuberant anthem
+with its ponderous chorus, and again, the joyous, melancholy, choral
+response, wherein blend the voices of childish innocence, strong
+manhood, and plaintive age, hear us on to the close;&mdash;that threefold
+blessing which none may hear unmoved, and whose magnitude seems to
+transcend our poor belief, as we reverently bow, in awed silence, musing
+on its unfathomable import; while the deep, mellow voice that pronounced
+it still lingers on the ear.</p>
+
+<p>How imposing is the sight! One kneeling throng around&mdash;the indistinct
+light, that clothes with mysterious grace the beautiful lineaments of
+the Gothic structure&mdash;the bright gleam on the white and flowing
+vestments;&mdash;and the <i>stillness!</i> broken at length by a low, sad melody,
+in accordance with the subdued tone resting on all, gradually rising
+into the more swelling chords of the solemn organ, that, earthly strains
+though they be, seen not unmeet to mingle with those exalted ones that
+have gone before&mdash;rousing the heart from its more celestial
+contemplations, and by gentle transition&mdash;like a descending
+dove&mdash;bringing it down from its heavenward flight to that earth with
+which its present daily and active duties are concerned, the more fitly
+and cheerfully performed when thus hallowed; for, be it remembered, the
+preparation for that unseen world to which we are tending, is the best
+preparation for our continuance in this.</p>
+
+<p>But the last wave of harmony has died away in the sounding aisles; one
+by one the lights are extinguished, throwing the varied beauty of arch,
+and niche, and pillar, into indistinguishable and fast deepening shade;
+and, last of the train, we, with heart tranquillized and elevated by the
+service of that evening hour, slowly follow the departing worshippers
+into the still, clear night.</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+M. J.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="MARTHA_BROWN" id="MARTHA_BROWN"></a>MARTHA BROWN.</h2>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">By an Ancient Contributor</span>.</h4>
+
+<h4>TO THE EDITOR OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.</h4>
+
+
+<p>Sir,&mdash;It is twenty years since I first contributed to your Magazine;&mdash;it
+was rather a brief article, and was not inserted in the early part of
+the work. In short, it consisted of a few lines in the Obituary at the
+end of the Number, and was as follows:&mdash;"Died at Bunderjumm, in the East
+Indies, Thomas Sneezum, Esq., much and justly regretted by a numerous
+circle of friends and acquaintances." He was my uncle, sir, and I was
+his heir,&mdash;a highly respectable man, and a remarkable judge of bullocks.
+He was in the Commissariat, and died worth forty thousand pounds. If you
+saw his monument, on the wall of our parish church, and read his
+character, you would know what a beautiful sympathy exists between a
+dead uncle and a grateful nephew. I took the name of Sneezum in addition
+to my own&mdash;bought an estate, and an immense number of books&mdash;and
+cultivated my land and literature with the greatest care. I planted
+trees&mdash;I drained meadows&mdash;and wrote books. The trees grew&mdash;the meadows
+flourished&mdash;but the books never came to an end. Something always
+interfered. I never could get the people in my novels disposed of. When
+they began talking, they talked for ever; when they fought duels, they
+were always killed; and, by the time I had got them into the middle of a
+scrape, I always forgot how I had intended to get them out of it. In
+history, it was very nearly the same. Centuries jostled against each
+other like a railway collision. I confused Charlemagne with Frederick
+Barbarossa, and the Cardinal Richelieu with M. Thiers. So, with the
+exception of the article I alluded to, in your Magazine, and a few
+letters on the present potato disease in the Gardener's Guide, I am a
+Great Unpublished&mdash;in the same way as I understand there are a number of
+extraordinary geniuses in the dramatic line, who have called themselves
+the Great Unacted. I can only hope that advancing civilization will
+bring better days to us both&mdash;types for me&mdash;actors for them.</p>
+
+<p>At the time of the lamented death of my uncle, I was about thirty years
+of age, and for ten years before that, had been sleeping partner in a
+house in Liverpool; and I can honestly say I did my part of the duty to
+the perfect satisfaction of all concerned. I slept incessantly&mdash;not
+exactly in a house in Liverpool but in a very comfortable one&mdash;the
+drawing-room floor, near the Regent's Park. Twice a-year a balance-sheet
+came in, and a little ready money. I put the money carefully away in a
+drawer, and threw the balance-sheet in the fire. It was a very happy
+life, for I subscribed to a circulating library, and wrote the
+beginnings of books continually.</p>
+
+<p>One day, about six months after I was in possession of the fortune, I
+heard a ring at the bell. There was something in the ring different from
+any I had ever heard before&mdash;a sort of sweet, modest tingling kind of a
+ring. I felt as if somebody was shaking my hand all the time; and, on
+looking back on the event, I think there must be something in mesmerism
+and every thing else&mdash;hom&oelig;opathy and the water cure included; for it
+was certainly quite unaccountable on ordinary principles&mdash;but so it was.
+The maid was very slow in answering the bell. There was another pull.
+The same mysterious effects&mdash;a sort of jump&mdash;a tremor as it were, not at
+all unpleasant, but very odd&mdash;so I went to the door myself; and there
+fixed on me, in the most extraordinary manner, were two of the blackest
+eyes I ever saw&mdash;illuminating cheeks of a dark yellow colour, and
+increasing the whiteness of the most snowy teeth&mdash;the brightest,
+glistenest, shiningest, teeth that can possibly be imagined. She
+wore&mdash;for I may as well tell you it was a woman&mdash;she wore a flowing
+white veil upon her head, the queerest petticoats, and funniest
+shoes&mdash;at that time I had not seen the Chinese Collection and thought it
+was Desdemona (whom I had seen Mr Kean put to death a few nights before)
+"walk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>ing" in some of Othello's clothes. What she said, or if she said
+any thing, I was too much astonished to make out; but she walked into my
+room, smiling with her wonderful teeth, and curtsying with the
+extraordinary petticoats down to the very floor&mdash;and calling me "Massa
+Sib."</p>
+
+<p>"My good woman," I said, "I am afraid you make a mistake. I don't know
+any one of the name of Sib;" but I checked myself, for I thought she
+perhaps mistook me&mdash;I wore prodigious whiskers at that time&mdash;for a
+gallant colonel, whose name begins with that euphonious syllable.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no&mdash;no colonel," she said; "me wants <i>you</i>&mdash;me no care for
+colonels." What could she possibly want with me? I had never seen the
+woman before, or any body like her, except a picture of the Queen of
+Sheba when she was on a visit to Solomon. Could this woman come from
+Sheba? Could she take me for&mdash;no, no&mdash;she couldn't possibly take me for
+Solomon. So I was quite non-plussed.</p>
+
+<p>"You no get no letter, Massa Sib, to tell you we was to come&mdash;eh?"</p>
+
+<p>A letter? a letter?&mdash;I had had a hundred and fifty letters, but put them
+all into a box. How was it possible for me to read such a number? and
+who did she mean by <i>us</i>? How many more of then were coming?</p>
+
+<p>"Massa Sib vill be so fond of him's babba&mdash;him vill"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>A dreadful thought came into my head&mdash;a conspiracy to extort money&mdash;a
+declaration at Bow Street&mdash;a weekly allowance. "Woman!" I said, "what,
+in heaven's name, do you mean by babba?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dee little babb; it is so pretty&mdash;so like him papa."</p>
+
+<p>"And whose baby is it? for I suppose it's a baby you mean, by your
+chatter about a babb."</p>
+
+<p>"Your's. Oh! you will so lubb it."</p>
+
+<p>"Mine? you detestable impostor, I never had such a thing in all my
+life."</p>
+
+<p>"And here it is&mdash;oh, dee pretty dear!"</p>
+
+<p>And at that moment, another woman, dressed in the same outlandish style
+as herself, brought up a little round parcel, that looked like a bundle
+of clothes, and, before I had time to say a word, or shut the door, or
+fly, placed it in my arms; and then both the women showed their
+glistening teeth, stretching from ear to ear, and screamed out in
+chorus, "You vill so lubb dee babba&mdash;it is such a pretty dear!"</p>
+
+<p>I stood in a state of stupefaction for some time, but the dark-visaged
+visitors by no means shared my inactivity; they ran, and screamed, and
+bustled; trotted down stairs, jumped up again, and filled the whole
+passage; then the drawing-room; then the little bedroom behind it, with
+trunks, and bags, and band-boxes, and bird-cages full of parrots, and
+cloaks, and shawls; till at last, when I started from my trance&mdash;in
+doing which, nearly let the baby fall&mdash;I found my whole house taken
+possession of, and the two women apparently as much at home as if they
+had lived with me twenty years.</p>
+
+<p>I unrolled the shawls and things from the baby's face. It was an infant
+about a year old, and opened its eyes as I was looking at it, and looked
+so wisely and sagaciously at me in return, that I could almost believe
+it knew as much of the proceeding as I did&mdash;and this it might very
+easily have done, without being a miracle of premature information, for
+I had not the remotest conception of what the whole thing was about. So
+I laid the child on the sofa, and went to the bell to ring for a
+policeman.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't ring him bell, ve are so comfitable here!" said one of the
+women. "Yesha vill go home 'gain, and I vill habb little bed in t'oder
+room, and vill sleep vid dee babb&mdash;so nice!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you will&mdash;will you? We'll see about that," I answered, astonished
+at the woman's impudence. "I will get you and your little lump of
+Newcastle"&mdash;this was an allusion to her colour&mdash;"turned out into the
+street."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Massa Moggan vill soon be here! Him wrote letter a veek since; but
+him vill come to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>So I did not pull the bell, but looked at the two intruders just as
+Macready looks at the witches in <i>Macbeth</i>; for Mr Morgan was my legal
+adviser, and had been my uncle's agent, and transacted all the business
+connected<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> with the succession; and I had such confidence in him that I
+never opened his letters, and had of course thrown the note they talked
+of into the great wooden box that was the receptacle of all my
+correspondence.</p>
+
+<p>In the mean time, the baby began to squall.</p>
+
+<p>"Take the brat away, and I'll tell a little bit of my mind to Mr
+Morgan," I said, grinding my teeth in a horrible passion; and, in a
+moment, the two women disappeared with the child, roaring and screaming,
+as if they had stuck pins into it on purpose to drive me mad.</p>
+
+<p>If I had been a man of a tragic turn of mind, and fond of giving vent to
+the passion of a scene, I would have walked up and down the room,
+striking myself on the brow or breast, and shouting, "Confusion!
+distraction!" and other powerful words which Mr Kean used to deliver
+with astonishing emphasis; but I had no talent for the intense, and
+threw myself on the sofa, exclaiming, "Here's a pretty go!"</p>
+
+<p>And a pretty go it undoubtedly was&mdash;two black women and a
+saffron-coloured baby established with me, as if I had been married to a
+Hottentot; and my sister-in-law, as is very often the case, had come to
+attend to her nieces' morals and education.</p>
+
+<p>"So! Mr Morgan, what is the meaning of all this?"</p>
+
+<p>But before I had time for further exclamations, my friend Mr Morgan, who
+had come quietly into the room, interrupted me&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Hush, my dear Sneezum&mdash;you are delighted, I'm sure. A most interesting
+incident&mdash;eh, Sneezum?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! these things do all very well in a book," I began; "but, by jingo,
+sir, it's a very different thing in real life; and I tell you very
+fairly, I'd sooner be married at once than have all the troubles of
+bringing up a set of children that I have nothing to do with."</p>
+
+<p>"Children! my dear Sneezum?"</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure; how do I know that some more black women mayn't come&mdash;with
+some more children&mdash;till my house grows like a gallery of bronzed
+figures; but I'll sell them&mdash;see if I don't; I'll pack them all on an
+Italian boy's head-board, and sell them to the doctors&mdash;every one."</p>
+
+<p>"You labour under a mistake, my dear Sneezum. You've got my letter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes&mdash;I got it&mdash;but"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, then, of course you are too happy to show such respect to the
+wishes of the defunct."</p>
+
+<p>"What defunct?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your uncle."</p>
+
+<p>"What! uncle Sneezum?" and a wonderful light seemed to break in upon my
+mind.&mdash;"He sent this baby here?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr Morgan nodded his head; and, being a man of great caution, he only
+put his finger in a mysterious manner alongside of his nose, and said&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Secrets in all families, Sneezum."</p>
+
+<p>"Oho! well&mdash;but the women&mdash;they're ugly customers, both of them; uncle
+Sneezum was no judge of beauty."</p>
+
+<p>"The women! what do you mean?" said Mr Morgan.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, which of them is it? but you need hardly tell, for I should never
+know which of them you meant; they're a great deal liker each other than
+any two peas <i>I</i> ever saw. Are we to call her Mrs Sneezum?"</p>
+
+<p>Here Mr Morgan burst into a great laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Sneezum, you are always trying to find out some wonderful scene
+or other to put into one of your books. No, no&mdash;these are two nurses;
+one will remain in charge of the child, the other returns immediately to
+Calcutta."</p>
+
+<p>"And where will the one that is to remain&mdash;where will she live?" I asked
+with a fearful presentiment of something shockingly unpleasant. But
+before he had time to answer, the black visage of the nurse herself
+appeared at the door, smiling with more blindingly white teeth than
+ever.</p>
+
+<p>"We have took dee room below dis&mdash;dee babb is in dee beautiful bed, and
+ve vill never leave Massa Sib&mdash;never no more&mdash;so nice!"</p>
+
+<p>So I was booked, and felt it useless to complain.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Chapter II.</span></h4>
+
+<p>Fifteen years passed on most happily. I established myself, or rather
+old Morgan established me, in my present house; he paid &pound;25,000 for the
+estate; and I have gone on, as I told you at the beginning of this
+letter, cultivating my farm and my talents with the utmost care. The
+little girl grew and grew till I thought she would never stop; and by
+the time she was sixteen she was at least an inch taller than I was.
+Many people like those prodigious women of five feet six&mdash;I'm only five
+feet five myself, which I believe was the exact measurement of Napoleon;
+and I must confess that when I looked on Martha Brown&mdash;that was her
+name&mdash;a sort of compliment I always thought to the complexion of her
+Hindoo mother&mdash;I could not imagine how she could be the child of such a
+curious old-fashioned looking individual as I had heard my uncle Sneezum
+was. Well, she grew tall&mdash;and grew stout&mdash;and grew clever; and if old
+Morgan had been her father himself, he could not have taken more care of
+her. He was always down at Goslingbury, (that's the name of my place&mdash;I
+sometimes put "Park" after it; but the lawn is now in turnips, and not
+the least like Blenheim,) and his wife, and his two daughters, and his
+little boy&mdash;in fact, the whole family; and though, I confess, they were
+always most friendly and attentive to <i>me</i>, their principal cares were
+bestowed on Martha Brown. I never push myself where I perceive my
+company is not greatly desired; so I went out to see the planting, or
+thin the copses, or make new fences, or superintend the ploughing, or
+betook myself to my study, and gave full way to the wildest flights of
+fancy in my everlasting first chapters of a novel or romance.</p>
+
+<p>Sir,&mdash;It was at that time&mdash;now nearly four years ago&mdash;that I began a
+work which I don't believe the most hostile criticism&mdash;but I will not
+boast; it will be enough to say that I consider it equal to any two
+introductory chapters I ever read. The whole of the first consists in a
+description of my own house&mdash;the name of course changed, and the
+locality removed to another county. I give the number of the rooms, the
+width of the passages, the height of ceilings, and a description of the
+new lifting-hinges to the dining-room door, that raise it over the
+turkey carpet, without sacrificing, as is usual, an inch of the lower
+part, and leaving a great interval at the sill. The fields are also very
+particularly described, and in some instances the exact measurement
+given; it gives such an appearance of reality, as may be seen in
+Ainsworth and others; and the second chapter is devoted, or meant to be
+devoted, to the living interests of the story&mdash;the <i>dramatis person&aelig;</i>,
+as it were&mdash;with hopes, fears, griefs, and the other passions alluded to
+in Collins's ode.</p>
+
+<p>Mystery has an indescribable charm, which is the thing that makes me so
+fond of riddles; and so I determined to have a hero or a heroine, I did
+not care which, of a most unexampled kind. But how to invent an
+unexampled hero, I could not imagine. Some disgusting fellow had always
+done it before: even a blackamoor had been taken up&mdash;for there was that
+horrid Othello; a Jew&mdash;there was Sheva; a puppy&mdash;there was Pelham; a
+pickpocket&mdash;there was Jack Sheppard; and at last, as the sweet source of
+mystery, and the pleasantest one to unravel, I thought I would take
+myself. Yes, I would be the hero of my own book; and as to a heroine,
+why, one of the Misses Morgan, or Martha Brown, or old Mrs Morgan, or
+the Indian nurse, (whose name was Ayah, which is Sanscrit or Cherokee
+for her situation,) any body would do. I was not at all particular; so I
+began my own description.</p>
+
+<p>It is amazing how little difference there is between man and man. A very
+few touches judiciously applied, would make Roebuck into Wellington,
+especially if Roebuck held the brush himself. Involuntarily I found my
+height increasing, my <i>embonpoint</i> diminishing, my eyes brightening, my<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+hair disporting in wavy ringlets over a majestic brow, till at the end
+of the second page I was Theodore Fitzhedingham, twenty-five years of
+age, with several grandfathers and grandmothers distinguished in history
+before the Norman conquest, and a clear rent-roll of forty thousand
+a-year. And yet, after all, it was my own individual self, Thomas Smith
+Sneezum&mdash;not, perhaps, exactly as I was at that moment&mdash;but as I had
+often and often fancied myself when I had gone through a course of
+Thaddeus of Warsaws, and other chronicles of the brave and beautiful.
+For, I confess, I was no wiser than other people, and it is well known
+they have an amazing tendency to identify themselves with the characters
+of the books they read, which perhaps accounts for the contempt that
+Doctors' or Clergymen's wives in country villages entertain for any body
+of the name of Snookes; and gives them so prodigious an opinion of their
+own importance, that they wouldn't visit a stockbroker or flannel
+manufacturer for the world. But there I was, stuck in the third page of
+the second chapter&mdash;Theodore Fitzhedingham&mdash;blessed with all that
+handsomeness, and rolling in all that money, and not able to move hand
+or foot, or in short make the least progress towards the <i>d&eacute;nouement</i> of
+the story. For, with all my study, I could not manufacture a heroine out
+of any of the girls around me. Miss Letitia Morgan had false teeth&mdash;I
+found it quite impossible to make a heroine of <i>her</i>; and besides, I was
+not even sure of the genuineness of the long curls at the side of her
+face. For, you will observe, that the beautifying process I have
+mentioned above; seems strictly confined to one's own particular case.
+No lying and swopping, and altering and amending, would make those long
+brown artificial incisors&mdash;you saw a roll of the gold wire every time
+she laughed&mdash;into a row of pearls encased in a casket of ruby. That is
+my description of white teeth in red lips, and I think it is far from
+bad. Then Miss Sophia was immensely tall, and immensely thin; and in the
+mornings when she appeared <i>en neglig&eacute;e</i>, as they say in the <i>Morning
+Post</i>, her clothes hung straight down in perpendicular descent, so that
+she looked exactly like the canvass air funnels that you see in a
+steam-boat: and there were no outs and ins, or ups and downs, about her
+figure from top to toe; and I found it impossible, for a particular
+reason, to supply these deficiencies by the exercise of my ingenuity in
+description And that particular reason was this,&mdash;that she did it
+herself. Lord! what a change took place on Miss Sophia as you saw her
+gliding about the room like a half emptied pillow-case in the morning,
+and the grand and <i>distingu&eacute;e</i> (<i>Morning Post</i> again) individual that
+choked up all the doorways, and occupied whole sofas, when you met her
+at a party at night. Then there were such flounces and tucks, and
+furbelows,&mdash;she sailed through the room enveloped in such awful
+circumgyrations of muslin&mdash;so pulled in at the waist, and so inflated
+every where else, that she looked&mdash;as you saw only her neck and
+shoulders emerging from the enormous circle in which the rest of her was
+buried&mdash;like an intrepid &aelig;ronaut who has fallen by some accident through
+a hole in the balloon, and you were lost in calculations of the length
+of darning-needle that would be needed to reach to the <i>vera
+superficies</i>. Now if I invent, I like to have the honour of the
+invention entirely to myself; and I found it impracticable to extract a
+heroine from seven or eight spring gauze petticoats, and a roll of
+millinery below the waist, that looked like a military cloak rolled up
+on the crupper of a life-guardsman's saddle. Then poor Martha Brown was
+too young, and at that time too bashful, for a heroine; and besides,
+there was no getting over the blot on her birth. Theodore Fitzhedingham
+could never think of paying attention to the daughter of a Hindoo woman
+and old Sneezum, the bullock contractor of Bunderjumm. One day I had
+been at work in one of the plantations, and just as I was marking with
+my hand-axe a birch tree to be felled, a thought came into my head. I
+left the cross half executed, and threw the axe on the bank, hurried
+home, and locked myself in the study. Pen and paper were lying before
+me, and in a moment I had got deep into the introduction of my heroine.
+She was an orphan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> thrown on Fitzhedingham's care&mdash;young, beautiful,
+accomplished, but of unknown mysterious parentage&mdash;and the <i>d&eacute;nouement</i>
+to consist in the discovery that her father was&mdash;&mdash;but I won't mention
+it just now, for half the value of these things consists in the
+surprise. I will give you a page or two of it, only begging you to
+remark how entirely a man's style alters when he gets into a serious
+work. Here I go gabbling on and on to you, without much regard to style,
+or perhaps to grammar&mdash;(if there are any slips in it, have the kindness
+to correct them before you show this to any one)&mdash;but the instant I take
+up my pen to write a portion of my novel, I get dignified and heroic,
+perhaps you will say a little stiff, but I assure you I have formed
+myself on the best models. The passage I alluded to was this:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"To all the graces of external beauty Maria Valentine de Courcy united
+all the captivations of the intellect&mdash;all the attractions of the
+understanding,&mdash;all the enchantments of the soul. Cast in the finest
+mould of earthly loveliness&mdash;radiant in all the charms of youth, of
+innocence, and of integrity&mdash;she was the loved of all approachers&mdash;the
+idol of all observers&mdash;the appropriator of all affections. A little more
+ethereal, she would have been a goddess&mdash;a little less celestial, she
+would have been a more ordinary woman than she was. For her nature was
+of too lofty a kind&mdash;her spirit of too sublimated a character&mdash;her
+disposition of too beatified a placidity, to allow her to be classed
+with the other individuals constituting the female sex. A period of many
+years had elapsed since she first took up her residence among the proud
+halls&mdash;the baronial corridors&mdash;the heraldic passages of Fitzhedingham
+Castle. Winter had found her wandering in the snowy lanes&mdash;Spring had
+noticed her careering in the budding meadows&mdash;Summer had beheld her
+perambulating through the flowery grove&mdash;and Autumn had kept his eye on
+her as she galloped her managed palfrey through the umbrageous orchard,
+or skimmed in her light bark over the pellucid bosom of the silver lake.
+For many years such had been her unvarying course; and if loveliness has
+a charm&mdash;if innocence has an attraction&mdash;if youth has a
+witchery&mdash;all&mdash;all&mdash;were concentrated in the noble figure and
+exquisitely-chiselled countenance of the subject of our sketch. The
+colouring of a Titian, the elasticity of a Rubens, the magnificence of a
+Michael Angelo Buonaparte."&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Sneezum, Sneezum!" cried old Morgan, kicking with all his might at the
+study-door; and interrupting me before I could exactly settle how the
+sentence was to be properly ended&mdash;"Come and bid poor Billy good-bye."</p>
+
+<p>"Billy? who's Billy?" I thought&mdash;a little perplexed, perhaps, with the
+labours of composition.</p>
+
+<p>"Come; he's off this minute for Dublin, where he joins the
+Trigonometrical Survey&mdash;a great honour for a fellow not six months in
+the Engineers."</p>
+
+<p>The old fool was talking about his son William Morgan, who had been at
+Goslingbury (Park, when I get the turnips up and the grass sown) for a
+month&mdash;a nice merry young man; and so clever at mathematics, and
+hydraulics, and other scientific pursuits, that he had won all the
+prizes at Addiscombe; and, though only a second lieutenant, was chosen
+to conduct a great survey of Ireland.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm coming," I said; and bundled away my description of Maria Valentine
+de Courcy; and away old Morgan and I went to the lawn, where we expected
+to find the soldier. But no soldier, nor any body else, was to be seen.</p>
+
+<p>"His mother and sisters are making fools of themselves, I daresay," said
+I, "blubbering and crying over the boy, as if he was going out to settle
+in New Zealand."</p>
+
+<p>"I suspect there's a good deal of crying going on," replied old Morgan;
+"let us look into the summer-house at the top of the garden." So we
+hurried up the grass walk; and just as we got to the door, I was in the
+very act of stepping into the bower, and old Morgan close on my heels,
+when a man, with a handkerchief held to his eyes, rushed distractedly
+upon us, and rolled us both down the steps, as if we had been pushed by
+a bull; and in a minute or so, when I came to myself; I found my heels
+in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> a gooseberry bush, and my head tight-jammed into a flower-pot; old
+Morgan had rolled over into the next bed, which was prepared for celery,
+and he lay in one of the long troughs, with his hands folded across his
+breast, and evidently persuaded that he was his own effigy on the top of
+his own tomb. And this was all the leave-taking we had with the
+engineer; for, in an agony of grief at parting from his mother, and
+perhaps to hide his crying, he had hurried out blindfolded, and took no
+more notice of his host and his father than if we had been a couple of
+old cabbage-stalks. However, I got up as soon as I was able, and
+assisted Morgan once more upon his feet. This time we proceeded more
+cautiously into the summer-house; and on the bench we saw Martha Brown
+sitting and sobbing with all her might, with her head on Mrs Morgan's
+shoulder, and Miss Sophia holding a bottle of salts to her nose; while a
+tear, every now and then, rolled slowly over the tip of her own; and
+Miss Letitia chafing the sufferer's hands, and occasionally giving them
+a thump, as if to guard against a fit of hysterics.</p>
+
+<p>Those Hindoos are certainly beautifully made. I never saw any thing more
+graceful than the recumbent figure of Martha Brown; and I think that was
+the first time I remarked that she was no longer a child. Up to that
+moment I had scarcely observed her size; but there she was&mdash;a regular
+full-grown woman&mdash;though, I must say, she was behaving rather like an
+infant, to keep whimpering and sobbing in such a ridiculous way, merely
+because I had fallen down-stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"What is all this?" I said; "has any body hurt the child?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, Mr Sneezum!" exclaimed Mrs Morgan, without looking at me;
+"leave her alone for a minute or two; it will soon be over."</p>
+
+<p>"How do feel, dear?" enquired Miss Letitia.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you any better, love?" asked Miss Sophia.</p>
+
+<p>And it was very evident they gave themselves no concern about the nearly
+fatal accident we had met with, which had affected poor Martha so
+deeply; so I became a little warm.</p>
+
+<p>"Very pretty&mdash;very pretty this&mdash;upon my word! What in heaven's name is
+the matter with you all? Here has been that blundering booby William,
+pushed his father and me down-stairs, and Martha seems the only one that
+would care a farthing if we had both been killed."</p>
+
+<p>Upon this the girl made a great effort, and lifted up her head; but the
+moment her eyes rested on me she gave a great scream&mdash;wild laughter
+mixed with the most dreadful sobs; and she was fairly off in an
+hysterical attack.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, she's worse than she was," I said; but old Morgan took me aside.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you see," he said, "that she's of a most affectionate, gentle
+nature, and that William's rushing off in the way he did"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, to be sure, and upsetting me in such a dangerous manner. Poor
+thing! is it all for my sake do you think she's crying?" So I went and
+took her hand, and said&mdash;"Don't cry, Martha, don't cry&mdash;I'm not a bit
+hurt&mdash;so be a good girl, and don't vex yourself any more."</p>
+
+<p>Upon this, Mrs Morgan looked at me as if she thought me deranged&mdash;so did
+Miss Letitia&mdash;and so did Miss Sophia; and even Martha, when she looked
+at me again, fell back in fresh fit, holloing "His head! his head"&mdash;and
+this time it was more laughter than sobs.</p>
+
+<p>"Come away&mdash;come away," said old Morgan at last; "no wonder you frighten
+them all to death. What the deuce is that you've got on your head?"</p>
+
+<p>And there stood I with my brows enveloped by the flower-pot.</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Chapter III.</span></h4>
+
+<p>I saw the Morgans were making a dead set to take me in. Sometimes it was
+Miss Letitia, and sometimes Miss Sophia&mdash;and always the mother. To hear
+that woman talk of her daughters, you would swear that two such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> were
+never known on earth before. Their sweetness&mdash;their temper&mdash;their
+beauty&mdash;the numbers of people that were in love with them&mdash;the hosts of
+rich and handsome fellows they had rejected, and the decided turn both
+of them had for a quiet country life, and the society of a
+well-educated, intellectual man of a certain age. She was a wonderful
+woman Mrs Morgan, and I really believe she thought she was speaking the
+simple truth all the time. But it wouldn't do&mdash;I judged for myself, and
+never took the least notice of all her hints and boastings. I tried to
+have them less about the house than they used to be; but nothing would
+keep them away&mdash;they always pretended it was for the sake of Martha
+Brown&mdash;a very likely story that they should trouble their heads about my
+uncle's anonymous contribution to the population returns, when his
+veritable nephew and heir was to be had by hook or crook. But I don't
+mean any disparagement by that to the poor little girl herself&mdash;far from
+it&mdash;she was the nicest creature in the world, and really not so black as
+I had thought; and she was now nearly twenty-one, and played and
+sung&mdash;and such an excellent critic, too! I always read my writings to
+her the moment they were finished, and she never found the slightest
+fault in any of them. I had left my description of Maria Valentine de
+Courcy incompleted for several years&mdash;for it is a long time now since
+the foolish adventure of the flower-pot first showed me that she took a
+tenderer interest in me than merely that of a cousin&mdash;and I now
+determined to give my second chapter the finishing touch, and consult
+her on the farther conduct of the story.</p>
+
+<p>"Martha," I said, "I wish you would listen for a minute or two to what
+I've written."</p>
+
+<p>So she sat down in my study, and worked a flower in an Ottoman square,
+and was evidently prepared to listen with the utmost attention.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the rest of the second chapter."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, are you only there yet? I was in hopes you had come to the end of
+the story."</p>
+
+<p>To the end of the story! Could the girl be hinting that I ought to tell
+her my mind; for I must tell you, I had so completely got over all
+prejudice about her birth, that I was strongly tempted to give an
+additional proof of my veneration for my uncle's memory, by giving his
+poor little orphan my name. Can she mean any thing by wishing me to come
+to the end of the story?</p>
+
+<p>"How do you mean to wind up?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! in a most mysterious and surprising manner; but we haven't got near
+the <i>d&eacute;nouement</i> yet. There must be a duel, of course&mdash;a
+misunderstanding&mdash;and a rival."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Theodore Fitzhedingham has no occasion to fear a rival," said
+Martha, pretending to have lost the stitch.</p>
+
+<p>"No! 'Pon my word that's very good of you. Do you really think that
+Maria Valentine de Courcy will prefer him to every one else?"</p>
+
+<p>"She will be a very foolish, a very ungrateful girl, if she doesn't&mdash;for
+hasn't he loved her ever since she was a child?"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Martha, you are certainly a very nice, a very affectionate girl;
+and I may as well put your mind at rest at once by telling you"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Sneezum! Sneezum!"</p>
+
+<p>There was old Morgan again kicking at the study door, and holloing
+Sneezum with all his might. I had taken Martha's hand, and was just
+going to tell her to make preparations to become Mrs Sneezum in a week
+or two. I let go her hand, and rushed to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"What the mischief do you want?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, here's Billy come back again," he said; "won't you come and give a
+welcome to poor Billy?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I be hang'd if I do. He has never apologized for pushing me down
+the steps; tell him to get out of my house; I have not forgot what alarm
+my accident caused to poor Martha. Don't you remember it, my dear?"</p>
+
+<p>But there sat Martha&mdash;sometimes red and sometimes white&mdash;with tears in
+her eyes, and her lips half open, like the picture of St Cecilia.</p>
+
+<p>"There! the very recollection of it frightens her to death. Go to your
+room, my dear, and I'll send this blustering fellow out of the house."</p>
+
+<p>She glided out of the study without<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> speaking a word, and I hurried to
+the drawing-room, but no Billy was there. His mother and sisters were
+luckily in London, so I turned angrily round on the father.</p>
+
+<p>"A pretty fellow this son of yours&mdash;never one word of apology, either to
+me or Martha&mdash;I won't have him roystering here at all hours, frightening
+affectionate little girls with his violence."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is it he has frightened?" enquired old Morgan; "who are the
+affectionate girls you mean? I'm sure he has never caused the least
+alarm to his sisters in his life."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps not&mdash;perhaps not, Mr Morgan; but there is another girl that I
+wouldn't have any injury done to on any account. In fact, I may as well
+tell you at once, that Martha evidently expects me to provide for her
+happiness, and I am going to do it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, nothing can be fairer&mdash;but how?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, as to any little blot on her birth, I don't care much about it.
+Uncle was a kind friend to me, and I really think I can't do better than
+give a good steady husband to his child."</p>
+
+<p>"Bravo! bravo! when you have found her."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by&mdash;when I have found her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, have you never read the letters?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I never read letters. They're all in the wooden box."</p>
+
+<p>"Then where, when, or how, have you encountered a daughter of your
+uncle?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Martha Brown. I tell you I don't dislike a little dash of Hindoo
+blood; it's like curry, and gives a flavour."</p>
+
+<p>"And who is the husband you have chosen for her?"</p>
+
+<p>"Myself."</p>
+
+<p>Old Morgan burst into a prodigious laugh, but I was in no humour to
+stand such nonsense. I got into a furious passion&mdash;he answered in an
+insulting manner&mdash;and so I ordered him to get out of my house, him and
+his son, and all his baggage.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, certainly, Mr Sneezum, but you'll repent of it; and, as to
+your marrying Martha, you'll just as soon marry the Princess-Royal."</p>
+
+<p>When he was gone, I went in search of Martha to settle the matter at
+once. There was a circular basin among the shrubs upon the lawn, with a
+nymph cowering under a waterfall that fell all round her like a veil&mdash;a
+very pretty ornament to the grounds&mdash;and at one side of it was a little
+arbour, where I used often to sit and see the sun make rainbows out of
+the spray that rose round the head of the nymph. To get to it, it was
+necessary to walk on the ledge of the wall that rose a little above the
+water in the basin, and this I was induced to do; for, as I was
+searching for Martha, I thought I heard a voice in the arbour, and I
+hurried on to tell her what I had done to old Morgan. I stept steadily
+on tiptoe along the coping-stone&mdash;for I wished to surprise her&mdash;but on
+getting to the opening of the arbour, a sight met my eyes that made me
+lose my balance all of a sudden; and with a start of rage and
+indignation, I stept backward into the pond, and was forced to battle
+among the water-lilies for my life. Martha rushed from the arbour and
+held out her hands in vain; but the person with her&mdash;a tall young man,
+with bushy whiskers and an enormous pair of mustaches&mdash;leapt into the
+basin and lifted me on to the bank, just as I had found it useless to
+try any longer to rise above the broad leaves that floated on the top,
+and made up my mind to give it up as a bad job. When I came to myself my
+preserver was gone, but Martha was supporting my head.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you double-faced, deceitful gipsy!" I began. "Who would have
+thought you would be sitting, hand locked in hand, with a horrid fellow
+like the ruffian that was with you in the bower?"</p>
+
+<p>"The ruffian! My dear guardian, don't you know him?"</p>
+
+<p>"How should I? I never saw the vagabond's ugly face before."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it's William Morgan&mdash;how strange you shouldn't recognise him!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if it were twenty William Morgans, that's no reason you should
+sit with your hand in his like the sign of the fire-office over our
+stable-door."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Oh, he's such an old friend! Recollect, sir, we grew up together, and
+now how can you keep your anger against him? He has saved your life."</p>
+
+<p>"After first startling me into the water. No, no; I'll have none of the
+Morgans here. I'll go and get changed, and then I'll finish what I was
+going to tell you when Morgan came to the door."</p>
+
+<p>I was inflexible; I wouldn't let one of the Morgans into my house. Miss
+Letitia wrote a letter of four pages, and Miss Sophia enclosed a sonnet.
+Nothing would do. I resolved to keep Martha all to myself; and, for fear
+of other adventures in the bower, I gave her positive orders not to
+leave the house. I set people to watch her. I threatened to hang her
+Ayah with my own hands, and showed her the very bough of the tree I
+would do it on, if Martha was allowed to speak to any body but myself. I
+resolved to marry her in a week; and, merely to prevent her being
+harassed by the Morgans in the interval, I took all these precautions.
+After that, I determined to pardon the whole family, and had even
+prepared a letter asking them all to dinner on our wedding-day. Martha
+did not seem inconsolable. Day after day passed away; and, to show how
+easy I was in my mind, I went on with the last chapter of my novel,
+leaving all the middle part to be filled up at my leisure.</p>
+
+<p>One morning&mdash;it was last Wednesday&mdash;I went into the study, and had just
+taken pen in hand, when I recollected that that was the very day I had
+summoned all the labourers on the estate to resist the approach of the
+levellers and engineers of a disgusting railway that was determined to
+force itself right through my garden and close under the dining-room
+windows. I went out to the barn&mdash;all the men were there. I gave orders
+to them to warn the intruders off; if they resisted, to knock them down
+without ceremony and keep them in custody till I could get them before a
+magistrate. Having satisfied my mind on these points, I felt so sure of
+my object being gained in both respects&mdash;that is, Martha and the
+railway&mdash;that I dispatched my letter to old Morgan, inviting the whole
+family to dine with me on Friday, the day I had fixed on for the
+marriage. Martha sat by my side in the study, and went on with the
+everlasting Ottoman square. I read to her&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Is it in the circle of possible events&mdash;is it a contingency to be
+calculated on in the decrees of fate,' exclaimed Theodore
+Fitzhedingham&mdash;(this was the finest bit out of my last chapter)&mdash;'that
+the girl I have loved&mdash;the paragon I have worshipped&mdash;the angel I have
+adored, is, indeed no longer the humbly born maid I thought her but the
+descendant of princes&mdash;the kinswoman of emperors&mdash;the inheritrix of
+kings?'</p>
+
+<p>"'It certainly is far from false, nay, it is absolutely true,' returned
+Maria Valentine de Courcy, with a condescending smile, 'that I am not
+the person you have taken me for, but oh! beloved Theodore&mdash;faithful
+Fitzhedingham, need I tell you that my love is unaltered, my affections
+are unabated, my heart unchanged'"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Sir! sir!" cried voice at the door, "they be come." I hurried out; my
+servant was armed with the poker, I seized the hall tongs as I passed
+through; and on the lawn, in the coolest possible manner, were about
+half a dozen fellows smoking their cigars, and occasionally looking
+through a bright brass instrument upon a three-legged stand, and noting
+down the result with the greatest nonchalance.</p>
+
+<p>"Oho!" I cried, and rushed at the intruders, "run for the people in the
+barn, Thomas. Who are you, you infernal interloping vagabonds?"</p>
+
+<p>"Engineers of the Episcopal and Universal Railway Company, sir, and we
+will trouble you to stand out of the way," said a tall blackguard,
+scarcely deigning to look at me.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you are, are you? Just wait a minute till my men come up, and I'll
+have you and your railway ducked in the horsepond."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't interrupt us, old man," replied the scientific ruffian; "if we do
+any damage, charge it to the Company&mdash;we have seventy-five thousand
+shares, and can afford to pay any claims."</p>
+
+<p>"Here!" I cried to the men, "catch that long villain with the dwarf
+telescope and take him into the house; if I don't get him six weeks of
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> treadmill my name is not Tom Sneezum."</p>
+
+<p>The man made a stout resistance, but at last was overpowered, and
+carried into the hall. I helped to repel the others, and as they were
+tolerably civil, now that the ringleader was gone, I contented myself
+with walking them to the very end of my boundaries, and gave them
+notice, that if they ventured to return, I would treat them exactly as I
+had done their chief. This whole business did not take up more than an
+hour; and before going home, I walked across to Major Slowtops, the
+nearest magistrate, and luckily found him at home. He promised to
+trounce the fellow handsomely when I brought him; and telling him I
+would be back with the culprit and the witnesses in half an hour, I
+returned in no little triumph to Goslingbury.</p>
+
+<p>"Where is the vagabond?" I exclaimed, when I got into the house.</p>
+
+<p>"He's been gone this hour, sir," said Thomas, hardly able to keep in a
+laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Gone! who let him go?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, he ordered the carriage, sir, and him and Miss Martha is off for
+London."</p>
+
+<p>"Are you mad, Thomas?&mdash;what is it you're speaking of? Where is the
+rascally leveller of the railway?"</p>
+
+<p>"Lor', sir&mdash;don't you know? It was only Mr William at one of his tricks.
+The moment he took off the spectacles we all knew him, and Miss Martha
+seemed so pleased"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Did she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes! and Mr William&mdash;but they say he's Captain Morgan now&mdash;laughed
+so. It was certainly a rare good surprise&mdash;wasn't it, sir?"</p>
+
+<p>I rushed into my study. "Let her go!" I said, "the false, deceitful
+Hottentot, or Hindoo, or whatever she is; she's as black as my hat, and
+a disgrace to my old uncle." So I stood very quietly, brooding over my
+misfortune&mdash;if a misfortune it was&mdash;and revenging myself by tearing into
+a million pieces the beginning and the end of my romantic novel.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>"Here we are, Sneezum, my boy!" said old Morgan, on the Friday, at about
+two o'clock; "I've come on before, to tell you to get into good-humour;
+for perhaps you've forgotten the invitations you gave us all for
+to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"What has become of the young woman?" I asked, with a very disdainful
+look; "my uncle's unowned little girl?"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean William's wife?" inquired Mr Morgan; "they were married
+this morning, at St George's, Hanover Square, and will take you for an
+hour or two on their way to the North."</p>
+
+<p>"I think, sir, as her guardian&mdash;not to say her cousin"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"There, my dear Sneezum, you are altogether wrong; she was no relation
+of your uncle. She was the daughter of a Mr Brown of the Commissariat,
+and left to your uncle's charge; you, of course, succeeded to the
+guardianship as his representative; but she is no more a Hindoo than you
+are."</p>
+
+<p>"That makes it worse, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, come, old Sneezum, don't keep up your anger; recollect you are
+old enough to be her father, and that she likes you next in the whole
+world to William. Shake hands with them, and be friends; and if you ever
+had the folly to think of marrying her, keep your own secret, and nobody
+will be a bit the wiser."</p>
+
+<p>I thought old Morgan advised very wisely&mdash;so, if you show this to any
+body, alter the names a little; for I would not have it known for the
+world.&mdash;Believe me, sir, your obedient servant,</p>
+
+<p class="author">
+T. S. S.<br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="MARLBOROUGH" id="MARLBOROUGH"></a>MARLBOROUGH.</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">No</span>. III.</h3>
+
+
+<p>The campaign of 1707 opened under very different auspices to the Allies
+from any which had preceded it:&mdash;Blenheim had saved Germany, Ramilies
+had delivered Brabant. The power of the Grande Monarque no longer made
+Europe tremble. The immense advantage which he had gained in the outset
+of the contest, by the declaration of the governor of Flanders for the
+cause of the Bourbons, and the consequent transference of the Flemish
+fortresses into his hands, had been lost. It was more than lost&mdash;it had
+been won to the enemy. Brussels, Antwerp, Menin, Ath, Ostend, Ghent,
+Dendermonde, Louvain, now acknowledged the Archduke Charles for their
+sovereign; the states of Brabant had sent in their adhesion to the Grand
+Alliance. Italy had been lost as rapidly as it had been won; the stroke
+of Marlborough at Ramilies had been re-echoed at Turin; and Eugene had
+expelled the French arms from Piedmont as effectually as Marlborough had
+from Flanders. Reduced on all sides to his own resources, wakened from
+his dream of foreign conquests, Louis XIV. now sought only to defend his
+own frontier; and the arms which had formerly been at the gates of
+Amsterdam, and recently carried terror into the centre of Germany, were
+now reduced to a painful defensive on the Scheldt and the Rhine.</p>
+
+<p>These great advantages would, in all probability, notwithstanding the
+usual supineness and divisions of the Allied Powers, have led to their
+obtaining signal success in the next campaign, had not their attention
+been, early in spring, arrested, and their efforts paralyzed by a new
+and formidable actor on the theatre of affairs. This was no less a man
+than <span class="smcap">Charles XII. King of Sweden</span>; who, after having defeated the
+coalition of the northern sovereigns formed for his destruction,
+dictated peace to Denmark at Copenhagen, dethroned the King of Poland,
+and wellnigh overturned the empire of Russia&mdash;had now advanced his
+victorious standards into the centre of Germany, and at the head of an
+army hitherto invincible, fifty thousand strong, stationed himself at
+Dresden, where he had become the arbiter of Europe, and threatened
+destruction to either of the parties engaged in the contest on the Rhine
+against whom he chose to direct his hostility.</p>
+
+<p>This extraordinary man approached closer than any warrior of modern
+times to the great men of antiquity. More nearly even than Napoleon, he
+realized the heroes of Plutarch&mdash;a Stoic in pacific, he was a C&aelig;sar in
+military life. He had all their virtues, and a considerable share of
+their barbarism. Achilles did not surpass him in the thirst for warlike
+renown, nor Hannibal in the perseverance of his character and the
+fruitfulness of his resources; like Alexander, he would have wept
+because a world did not remain to conquer. Indefatigable in fatigue,
+resolute in determination, a lion in heart, he knew no fear but that of
+his glory being tarnished. Endowed by nature with a constitution of
+iron, he was capable of undergoing a greater amount of fatigue than any
+of his soldiers: at the siege of Stralsund, when some of his officers
+were sinking under the exhaustion of protracted watching, he desired
+them to retire to rest, and himself took their place. Outstripping his
+followers in speed, at one time he rode across Germany, almost alone, in
+an incredibly short space of time: at another, he defended himself for
+days together, at the head of a handful of attendants, in a barricaded
+house, against ten thousand Turks. Wrapt up in the passion for fame, he
+was insensible to the inferior desires which usually rouse or mislead
+mankind. Wine had no attractions, women no seductions for him: he was
+indifferent to personal comforts or accommodations; his fare was as
+simple, his dress as plain, his lodging as rude, as those of the meanest
+of his followers. To one end alone his attention was exclusively
+directed, on one acquisition alone his heart was set. Glory, military
+glory, was the ceaseless object of his ambition; all lesser desires
+were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> concentrated in this ruling passion; for this he lived, for this
+he died.</p>
+
+<p>That his military abilities were of the very highest order, may be
+judged of by the fact that, with the resources of the poor monarchy of
+Sweden, not at that period containing two millions of inhabitants, he
+entirely defeated a coalition of Russia, Denmark, and Poland, headed by
+the vast capacity and persevering energy of Peter the Great, and
+numbering not less than forty millions of subjects under its various
+sovereigns. Nor let it be said that these nations were rude in the
+military art, and unfit to contend in the field with the descendants of
+the followers of Gustavus Adolphus. The Danes are the near neighbours
+and old enemies of the Swedes; their equals in population, discipline,
+and warlike resources. Thirty years had not elapsed since the Poles had
+delivered Europe from Mussulman bondage by the glorious victory of
+Vienna, under John Sobieski, over two hundred thousand Turks. Europe has
+since had too much reason to know what are the military resources of
+Russia, against which all the power of Western Europe, in recent times,
+has been so signally shattered; and though the soldiers of Peter the
+Great were very different, in point of discipline, from those that
+repelled the legions of Napoleon, yet their native courage was the same,
+and they were directed by an energy and perseverance, on the part of the
+Czar, which never has been exceeded in warlike annals. What then must
+have been the capacity of the sovereign, who, with the resources of a
+monarchy not equalling those of Scotland at this time, could gain such
+extraordinary success over so powerful a coalition, from the mere force
+of indefatigable energy, military ability, and heroic determination!</p>
+
+<p>Charles, however, had many faults. He was proud, overbearing, and
+opinionative. Like all men of powerful original genius, he was confident
+in his own opinion, and took counsel from none; but, unfortunately, he
+often forgot also to take counsel from himself. He did not always weigh
+the objections against his designs with sufficient calmness to give them
+fair play, or allow his heroic followers a practical opportunity of
+crowning his enterprises with success. He had so often succeeded against
+desperate, and apparently hopeless, odds, that he thought himself
+invincible, and rushed headlong into the most dreadful perils, with no
+other preparation to ward them off but his own calmness in danger, his
+inexhaustible fecundity of resources, and the undaunted courage, as well
+as patience of fatigue and privation, with which he had inspired his
+followers. It is surprising, however, how often they extricated him from
+his difficulties; and even in his last expedition against Russia, which
+terminated in the disaster of Pultowa, he would, to all appearance, have
+proved successful, if the Tartar chief, Mazeppa, had proved faithful to
+his engagement. Like Hannibal, his heroic qualities had inspired a
+multifarious army&mdash;<i>colluvies omnium gentium</i>&mdash;with one homogeneous
+spirit, rendered them subject to his discipline, faithful to his
+standard, obedient to his will. But in some particulars his private
+character was still more exceptionable, and stained with the vices as
+well as virtues of the savage character. Though not habitually cruel, he
+was stern, vindictive, and implacable; and his government has been
+stained by some acts of atrocious barbarity at which humanity shudders,
+and which must ever leave an indelible stain on his memory.</p>
+
+<p>Louis XIV., in his distress, was naturally anxious to gain the support
+of so powerful an ally, who was now at Dresden at the head of
+fifty-three thousand veteran soldiers, ready to fall on the rear of
+Marlborough's army, that threatened the defensive barrier of France in
+the Low Countries. Every effort, accordingly, was made to gain Charles
+over to the French interest. The ancient alliance of France with Sweden,
+their mutual cause of complaint against the Emperor, the glories of
+Gustavus Adolphus and the thirty years' war, in which they had stood
+side by side, were held forth to dazzle his imagination or convince his
+judgment. The Swedish monarch appeared ready to yield to these efforts.
+He brought forward various real or imaginary grounds of complaint
+against the German powers, for infractions of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> constitution of the
+empire, of which he put himself forth as the guarantee, as heir to the
+crown and fame of Gustavus Adolphus, as well as for sundry insults
+alleged to have been committed against the Swedish crown or subjects.
+These various subjects of complaint were sedulously inflamed by the
+French agents; and the weight of their arguments was not a little
+increased by the knowledge of the fact, that they were authorized to
+offer Count Piper, the prime minister of Charles, 300,000 livres
+(L.12,000), to quicken his movements in favour of the cabinet of
+Versailles, besides bribes in proportion to the subordinate ministers of
+the Swedish monarch.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+<p>Marlborough, as well he might, was extremely uneasy at this negotiation,
+which he soon discovered by secret information, as well as the
+undisguised reluctance of the German powers to furnish the contingents
+for which they were bound for the ensuing campaign. Indeed, it could
+hardly be expected that the Northern powers in Germany should send their
+chief disposable forces to swell Marlborough's army beyond the Rhine,
+when so warlike a monarch, at the head of fifty thousand men, was in the
+centre of the empire, with his intentions as yet undeclared, and exposed
+to the influence of every imaginable seduction. He dispatched,
+accordingly, General Grumbkow, an adroit and intelligent diplomatist,
+who had been sent by the King of Prussia on a mission to the Allied
+headquarters, to Dresden, to endeavour to ascertain the real intentions
+of the Swedish monarch. He was not long of discovering that Charles had
+assumed an angry tone towards the confederates, only in order to extract
+favourable terms of accommodation from them, and that Muscovy was the
+real object on which his heart was set. His despatches convey a curious
+and highly interesting picture of Charles and the Swedish court and army
+at this important juncture.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a> The negotiation went on for some time
+with varying success; but at length matters were brought to a crisis, by
+the King of Sweden declaring that he would treat with none but
+Marlborough in person.</p>
+
+<p>This immediately led to the English general repairing to the court of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+Charles XII. at Dresden. He left the Hague on the 20th April
+accordingly; and after visiting Hanover on the way, where, as usual,
+there were some jealousies to appease, arrived at the Swedish camp of
+Alt-Ranstadt on the 28th. The Duke drove immediately to the headquarters
+of Count Piper, from whom he received the most flattering assurance of
+the gratification which the Swedish monarch had felt at his arrival. He
+was shortly after introduced to the monarch, to whom he delivered a
+letter from the Queen of England, and at the same time addressed him in
+the following flattering terms:&mdash;"I present to your Majesty a letter,
+not from the chancery, but from the heart of the Queen, my mistress, and
+written with her own hand. Had not her sex prevented it, she would have
+crossed the sea, to see a prince admired by the whole universe. I am in
+this particular more happy than the Queen, and I wish I could serve some
+campaigns under so great a general as your Majesty, that I might learn
+what I yet want to know in the art of war."<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a></p>
+
+<p>This adroit compliment from so great and justly celebrated a commander,
+produced an immediate effect on the Swedish monarch, who was
+passionately desirous of military glory. His satisfaction was visible in
+his countenance, and he returned a gracious answer in these terms:&mdash;"The
+Queen of Great Britain's letter and your person are both very acceptable
+to me, and I shall always have the utmost regard for the interposition
+of her Britannic Majesty and the interests of the Grand Alliance. It is
+much against my will that I have been obliged to give umbrage to any of
+the parties engaged in it. I have had just cause to come into this
+country with my troops; but you may assure the Queen, my sister, that my
+design is to depart from hence as soon as I have obtained the
+satisfaction I demand, but not till then. However, I shall do nothing
+that can tend to the prejudice of the common cause in general, or of the
+Protestant religion, of which I shall always glory to be a zealous
+protector." This favourable answer was immediately followed by an
+invitation to dine with the King, by whom he was placed on his right
+hand, and honoured with the most flattering attention. In the course of
+the evening the conversation turned chiefly on military matters, in
+which Marlborough exerted himself with such skill and success, that he
+had another long private audience of Charles; and before his departure,
+that monarch even exceeded his views, and declared that there could be
+no security for the peace of Europe till France was reduced to the rank
+she held at the date of the treaty of Westphalia.</p>
+
+<p>Though the address and abilities of Marlborough, however, had thus
+removed the chief danger to be apprehended from the presence of the
+Swedish monarch at Dresden, yet other matters of great delicacy remained
+still for adjustment, which required all his prudence and skill to bring
+to a satisfactory issue. Not the least of these difficulties arose from
+the zeal of the King of Sweden for the protection of the Protestant
+religion, and his desire to revive and secure the privileges granted to
+the German Protestants by the treaty of Westphalia. As Marlborough
+justly apprehended that the Court of Vienna might take umbrage at these
+demands, and so be diverted from the objects of the Grand Alliance, he
+exerted himself to the utmost to convince his Majesty that the great
+object in the mean time, even as regarded the Protestant faith, was to
+humble the French monarch, who had shown himself its inveterate enemy by
+the atrocious persecutions consequent on the revocation of the Edict of
+Nantes; and that, if this were once done, the Emperor would be unable to
+prevent any stipulations being inserted in favour of the Reformed faith
+in the general peace which might follow. Charles was convinced by these
+arguments, which, in truth, were well-founded, and even went so far as
+to propose a secret convention with England for the promotion of the
+Protestant interest;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> a proposal which, so embarrassing at the moment
+when Great Britain was in close alliance with the Emperor, Marlborough
+contrived to elude with admirable dexterity. Another matter of great
+delicacy was the conduct to be observed towards the dethroned King of
+Poland, Augustus, who was also at Dresden, and of course viewed with the
+utmost jealousy the close intimacy between Marlborough and his
+formidable enemy Charles. Here, however, the diplomatic skill of the
+English general overcame all difficulties, and by skilfully taking
+advantage of his pecuniary embarrassments, after his territories had
+been ravaged and exhausted by the Swedish forces, and engaging that the
+Emperor should take a large part of his troops into his pay, he
+succeeded at once in gaining over the dethroned monarch, and securing a
+considerable body of fresh troops for the service of the Allies. By
+these means, aided by the judicious bestowing of considerable pensions
+on Count Piper and the chief Swedish ministers, paid in advance,
+Marlborough succeeded in entirely allaying the storm which had
+threatened his rear, and left the Saxon capital, after a residence of
+ten days, perfectly secure of the pacific intentions of the Swedish
+monarch, and having fully divined the intended direction of his forces
+toward Moscow.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<p>The brilliant success with which this delicate and important negotiation
+terminated, naturally induced a hope that vigorous operations would be
+undertaken by the Allied powers, and that the great successes of the
+preceding campaign would be so far improved, as to compel the Court of
+France to submit to such terms as the peace of Europe, and the
+independence of the adjoining States, required. It was quite the
+reverse, and Marlborough had again the indescribable mortification of
+seeing month after month of the summer of 1707 glide away, without one
+single measure conducive to the common cause, or worthy of the real
+strength of the Allied powers, having been attempted. They had all
+relapsed into their former and fatal jealousies and procrastination. The
+Dutch, notwithstanding the inestimable services which Marlborough had
+rendered to their Republic, had again become distrustful, and authorized
+their field-deputies to thwart and mar all his operations. They made no
+concealment of their opinion, that their interests were now secured, and
+that the blood and treasure of the United Provinces should no longer be
+wasted in enterprises in which the Emperor or Queen of England alone
+were concerned. They never failed accordingly to interfere when any
+aggressive movement was in contemplation; and even when the Duke, in the
+course of his skilful marches and countermarches, had gained the
+opportunity for which he longed, of bringing the enemy to an engagement
+on terms approaching to an equality, never failed to interpose with
+their fatal negative, and prevent any thing being attempted. They did
+this, in particular, under the most vexatious circumstances, on the 27th
+May, near Nevilles, where Marlborough had brought his troops into the
+presence of the enemy with every prospect of signalizing that place by a
+glorious victory. A council of war forbade an engagement despite
+Marlborough's most earnest entreaties, and compelled him in consequence
+to fall back to Branheim, to protect Louvain and Brussels. The
+indignation of the English general at this unworthy treatment, and at
+the universal selfishness of the Allied powers, exhaled in bitter terms
+in his private correspondence.<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></p>
+
+<p>The consequence of this determination on the part of the Dutch
+field-deputies to prevent any serious operation being undertaken, was,
+that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> the whole summer passed away in a species of armed truce, or a
+series of man&oelig;uvres so insignificant, as to be unworthy of the name
+of a campaign. Vend&ocirc;me, who commanded the French, though at the head of
+a gallant army above eighty thousand strong, had too much respect for
+his formidable antagonist to hazard any offensive operation, or run the
+risk of a pitched battle, unless in defence of his own territory. On the
+other hand, Marlborough, harassed by the incessant opposition of the
+Dutch deputies, and yet not strong enough to undertake any operation of
+importance without the support of their troops, was reduced to merely
+nominal or defensive operations. The secret of this ruinous system,
+which was at the time the subject of loud complaints, and appeared
+wholly inexplicable, is now fully revealed by the published despatches.
+The Dutch were absolutely set on getting an accession of territory, and
+a strong line of barrier towns, set apart for them out of the <i>Austrian</i>
+Netherlands; and as the Emperor, not unnaturally, objected to being
+shorn of his territories, as a remuneration for his efforts in favour of
+European independence, they resolved to thwart all the measures of the
+Allied generals, in the hope that, it the end, they would in this manner
+prevail in their demands with the Allied cabinets.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+<p>It was not, however, in the Low Countries alone that the selfish views
+and jealousies of the Allies prevented any operation of importance from
+being undertaken, and blasted all the fair prospects which the brilliant
+victories of the preceding campaign had afforded. In Spain, the Allies
+had suffered a fearful reverse by the battle of Almanza, which in a
+manner ruined the Austrian prospects in the Peninsula, and rendered some
+operation indispensable, to relieve the pressure felt by the Allies in
+that quarter. Peterborough, whose great military abilities had hitherto
+nearly alone sustained their sinking cause in Spain, had been deprived
+of his command in Catalonia, from that absurd jealousy of foreigners
+which in every age has formed so marked a feature in the Spanish
+character. His successor, Lord Galway, was far from possessing his
+military abilities, and every thing presaged that, unless a great effort
+was immediately made, the crown of Spain, the prize for which all
+contended in the war, would be lost to the Allied powers. Nor was the
+aspect of affairs more promising on the Rhine. The Margrave of Baden had
+there died; and his army, before a successor could be appointed,
+sustained a signal defeat at Stodhoffen. This disaster having opened the
+gates of Germany, Marshal Villars, at the head of a powerful French
+army, burst into the Palatinate, which he ravaged with fire and sword.
+To complete the catalogue of disasters, the disputes between the King of
+Sweden and the Emperor were again renewed, and conducted with such
+acrimony, that it required all the weight and address of Marlborough to
+prevent a rupture, threatening fatal consequences, from breaking out
+between these powers.</p>
+
+<p>Surrounded by so many difficulties, Marlborough wisely judged that the
+most pressing danger was that in Spain, and that the first thing to be
+done was to stop the progress of the Bourbon armies in that quarter. As
+the forces in the Peninsula afforded no hopes of effecting that object,
+he conceived, with reason, that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> only way to make an effectual
+diversion in that quarter was to take advantage of the superiority of
+the Allies in Piedmont, since the decisive victory of Turin in the
+preceding year, and threaten Provence with a serious irruption. For this
+purpose, Marlborough no sooner heard of the disasters in Spain, than he
+urged in the strongest manner upon the Allied courts to push Prince
+Eugene with his victorious army across the Maritime Alps, and lay siege
+to Toulon. Such an offensive movement, which might be powerfully aided
+by the English fleet in the Mediterranean, would at once remove the war
+from the Italian plains, fix it in the south of France, and lead to the
+recall of a considerable part of the French forces now employed beyond
+the Pyrenees. But though the reasons for this expedition were thus
+pressing, and it afforded the only feasible prospect of bringing affairs
+round in the Peninsula; yet the usual jealousies of the coalesced
+powers, the moment it was proposed, opposed insurmountable objections to
+its being carried into effect. It was objected to the siege of Toulon,
+that it was a maritime operation, of value to England alone: the Emperor
+insisted on the Allied forces being exclusively employed in the
+reduction of the fortresses yet remaining in the hands of the French in
+the Milanese; while Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, between whom and the
+Imperialists the most violent jealousy had arisen, threatened to
+withdraw altogether from the alliance, unless Eugene's army was directed
+to the protection and consolidation of his dominion. The real reason of
+these obstacles thrown by the Emperor in the way of these operations,
+was, that he had ambitious designs of his own on Naples, and he had, to
+facilitate their accomplishment, concluded a secret convention with
+Louis for a sort of neutrality or understanding in Italy, which enabled
+that monarch to direct the forces employed, or destined to be employed
+there, to the Spanish peninsula. Marlborough's energetic
+representations, however, at length prevailed over all these
+difficulties; and the reduction of the Milanese having been completed,
+the Emperor, in the end of June, consented to Prince Eugene invading
+Provence at the head of thirty-five thousand men.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+<p>The invasion of the territory of the Grande Monarque accordingly took
+place, and was supported by a powerful English squadron, which, as
+Eugene's army advanced into Provence by the Col di Tende, kept the
+sea-coast in a constant state of alarm. No resistance, as Marlborough
+had predicted, was attempted; and the Allies, almost without firing a
+shot, arrived at the heights of Vilate, in the neighbourhood of Toulon,
+on the 27th July. Had Eugene been aware of the real condition of the
+defences, and the insubordination which prevailed in the garrison, he
+might, without difficulty, have made himself master of this important
+fortress. But from ignorance of these propitious circumstances, he
+deemed it necessary to commence operations against it in form; and the
+time occupied in the necessary preparations for a siege proved fatal to
+the enterprise. The French made extraordinary efforts to bring troops to
+the menaced point; and, amongst other reinforcements, thirteen
+battalions and nine squadrons were detached from Vend&ocirc;me's army in the
+Netherlands. No sooner did Marlborough hear of this detachment, than he
+concentrated his forces, and made a forward movement to bring Vend&ocirc;me to
+battle, to which the Dutch deputies had at length consented; but that
+general, after some skilful marches and countermarches, retired to an
+intrenched camp under the guns of Lille, of such strength as to bid
+defiance to every attack for the remainder of the campaign. Meanwhile
+the troops, converging towards Toulon, having formed a respectable array
+in his rear, Eugene was under the necessity of raising the siege, and he
+retired, as he had entered the country, by the Col di Tende, having
+first embarked his heavy artillery and stores on board the English
+fleet. But though the expedition thus failed in its ostensible object,
+it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> fully succeeded in its real one, which was to effect a diversion in
+the south of France, and relieve the pressure on the Spanish peninsula,
+by giving the armies of Louis employment in the defence of their own
+territory.</p>
+
+<p>Marlborough led his army into winter quarters in the end of October, and
+Vend&ocirc;me did the same; the weather being so thoroughly broken as to
+render it impossible to keep the field. He repaired first to Frankfort,
+where he met the Elector of Hanover, and then to the Hague, where he
+exerted himself to inspire a better feeling in the Dutch government, and
+to get Eugene appointed to the supreme command in Spain: a project which
+afforded the only feasible prospect of retrieving affairs in the
+Peninsula, and which, if adopted, might have changed the fate and
+ultimate issue of the war. Neither the Emperor nor the court of Madrid,
+however, would consent to this arrangement; the former, because he
+feared to lose that great general in Italy, the latter because they
+feared to gain him in Spain. Marlborough, meanwhile, embarked for
+England on the 7th November, where his presence had now become
+indispensably necessary to arrest the progress of court and
+parliamentary intrigues, which threatened to prove immediately fatal to
+his influence and ascendancy.</p>
+
+<p>The origin of these intrigues was to be found not merely in the asperity
+of party feeling which, at that time, owing to the recent Revolution,
+prevailed to a degree never before paralleled in English history, and
+the peculiar obloquy to which Marlborough was exposed, owing to the part
+he had taken in that transaction; but to another cause of a private
+nature, but which, in all courts, and especially under a female reign,
+is likely to produce important public results. During Marlborough's
+absence from court, owing to his commanding the armies in Flanders, his
+influence with the Queen had sensibly declined, and that of another
+materially increased. Queen Anne had become alienated from her former
+favourite, the Duchess of Marlborough, and, what is very remarkable, in
+consequence of the growing ascendancy of a person recommended by the
+duchess herself. Worn out with the incessant fatigue of attendance on
+the royal person, the duchess had recommended a poor relative of her
+own, named Abigail Hill, to relieve her of part of her laborious duties.
+This young lady, who possessed considerable talents, and a strong desire
+for intrigue and elevation, had been educated in High Church and Tory
+principles, and she had not been long about the royal person before she
+began to acquire an influence over the Queen's mind. Harley, whose
+ambition and spirit of intrigue were at least equal to her own, was not
+slow in perceiving the new source of influence thus opened up in the
+royal household, and a close alliance was soon established between them.
+These matters are not beneath the dignity of history; they are the
+secret springs on which its most important changes sometimes depend.
+Abigail Hill soon after bestowed her hand on Mr Masham, who had also
+been placed in the Queen's household by the duchess, and, under the name
+of <span class="smcap">Mrs Masham</span>, became the principal instrument in Marlborough's fall,
+and the main cause of the fruit of the glorious victories of the English
+general being lost by the treaty of Utrecht.</p>
+
+<p>Though the ascendancy of Mrs Masham, and the treacherous part she was
+playing to her benefactress, had long been evident to others, yet the
+Duchess of Marlborough long continued blind to it. Her marriage,
+however, opened the eyes of the duchess, and, soon after the promotion
+of Davies and Blackhall, both avowed Tories, not free from the
+imputation of Jacobitism, to the Episcopal bench, in opposition to the
+recommendation of Marlborough and Godolphin, gave convincing proof that
+their influence at court in the disposal even of the highest offices,
+had been supplanted by that of the new favourite. The consequences were
+highly prejudicial to Marlborough. The Whigs, who were not fully aware
+of this secret influence, and who had long distrusted him on account of
+his former connexion with James II., and envied him on account of his
+great services to the country, and lustre at court, now joined the
+Tories in bitter enmity against him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> He was accused of protracting the
+war for his own private purposes; and the man who had refused the
+government of the Netherlands, and &pound;60,000 a-year, lest it should breed
+jealousies in the alliance, was accused of checking the career of
+victory from sordid motives connected with the profits of the war. His
+brother Churchill was prosecuted by Halifax and the Whigs on the charge
+of neglect of duty; and the intercession of the duke, though made in
+humble terms, was not so much as even honoured with a reply. The
+consequences of this decline of court favour were soon apparent.
+Recruits and supplies were forwarded to the army with a very scanty
+hand&mdash;the military plans and proposals of the duke were either overruled
+or subjected to a rigid and often inimical examination&mdash;and that
+division of responsibility and weakening of power became apparent, which
+is so often in military, as well as political transactions, the
+forerunner of disaster.</p>
+
+<p>Matters were in this untoward state, when Marlborough, in the middle of
+November, returned from the Hague to London. The failure before Toulon,
+the disasters in Spain, the nullity of the campaign in Flanders, were
+made the subject of unbounded outcry in the country; and the most
+acrimonious debates took place in Parliament, in the course of which
+violent reproaches were thrown on Marlborough, and all his great
+services to his country seemed to be forgotten. Matters even went so
+far, that it was seriously proposed to draft fifteen thousand men from
+Flanders to reinforce the armies in Spain, although it might easily be
+foreseen that the only effect of this would be to drive the Dutch to a
+separate peace, and lose the whole of Brabant, wrested at such an
+expense of blood and treasure from the French arms. The Session of
+Parliament was one incessant scene of vehement contention; but at length
+the secret league of Harley with Mrs Masham and the Tories became so
+apparent, that all his colleagues refused to attend a cabinet council to
+which he was summoned, and he was obliged to retire. This decisive step
+restored confidence between Marlborough and the Whigs, and for a time
+re-established his influence in the government; but Mrs Masham's sway
+over the Queen was not so easily subverted, and, in the end, proved
+fatal both to his fortune and the career of glory he had opened to his
+country.</p>
+
+<p>Desirous of retaliating upon England the insult which the Allied armies
+had inflicted upon France by the invasion of Provence, Louis XIV. now
+made serious preparations for the invasion of Great Britain, with the
+avowed object of re-establishing the Chevalier of St George, the heir of
+James II., on the throne from which that unhappy monarch had been
+expelled. Under Marlborough's able direction, to whom, as
+commander-in-chief, the defensive measures were entrusted, every thing
+was soon put in a train to avert the threatened danger. Scotland was the
+scene where an outbreak was to be apprehended, and all the disposable
+forces of the empire, including ten battalions brought over from
+Flanders, were quickly sent to that country. The <i>habeas corpus</i> act was
+suspended. Edinburgh Castle was strongly garrisoned, and the British
+squadron so skilfully disposed in the North Seas, that when the
+Chevalier with a French squadron put to sea, he was so closely watched,
+that after vainly attempting to land, both in the Firth of Forth and the
+neighbourhood of Inverness, he was obliged to return to Dunkirk. This
+auspicious event entirely restored Marlborough's credit with the nation,
+and dispelled every remnant of suspicion with which the Whigs regarded
+him in relation to the exiled family; and though his influence with the
+court was secretly undermined, his power, to outward appearance, was
+unbounded; and he resumed the command of the army in the beginning of
+April 1708, with authority as paramount as he had enjoyed on any former
+occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Every thing announced a more important campaign than the preceding had
+proved in the Low Countries. Encouraged by the little progress which the
+Allies had made in the former campaign, Louis XIV. had been induced to
+make the most vigorous efforts to accumulate a preponderating force, and
+re-establish his affairs in that quarter. Vend&ocirc;me's army had, by great
+exertion, been raised to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> a hundred thousand men, and at the same time
+secret communications were opened with a considerable portion of the
+inhabitants in some of the frontier fortresses of Brabant, in order to
+induce then on the first favourable opportunity to surrender them to the
+French arms. The unpopularity of the Dutch authorities in those towns,
+and the open pretensions which they put forth to wrest them from the
+Emperor, and deliver them over at a general peace to the hated rule of
+Protestant Holland, rendered those advances peculiarly acceptable.
+Vend&ocirc;me's instructions were to act on the offensive, though in a
+cautious manner; to push forward in order to take advantage of these
+favourable dispositions, and endeavour to regain the important ground
+which had been lost during the panic which followed the battle of
+Ramilies.</p>
+
+<p>On their side the Allies had not been idle; and preparations had been
+made for transferring the weight of the contest to the Low Countries.
+The war in Italy being in a manner terminated by the entire expulsion of
+the French from that peninsula, and their secret convention for a sort
+of suspension of active operations with the Emperor in that quarter,
+Prince Eugene had been brought to the theatre of real hostilities on the
+northern frontier of France. It was agreed that two great armies should
+be formed, one in Brabant under Marlborough, and the other on the
+Moselle under Eugene; that the Elector of Hanover should act on the
+defensive on the Rhine; that Eugene should join the English general, and
+that with their united force they should force the French general to a
+battle. This well conceived plan met with the usual resistance on the
+part of the Allied powers, which compelled Marlborough to repair in
+person to Hanover, to smooth over the objections of its Elector.
+Meanwhile the dissensions and difficulties of the cabinet in London
+increased to such a degree, that he had scarcely quitted England when he
+was urged by Godolphin, and the majority of his own party, to return, as
+the only means of saving them from shipwreck. Marlborough, however, with
+that patriotic spirit which ever distinguished him, and not less than
+his splendid abilities formed so honourable a feature in his character,
+refused to leave the seat of war, and left his political friends to
+shift for themselves as they best could. Having obtained a promise from
+Eugene that he would join him before the month expired he joined the
+army at Ghent on the 9th May 1708, and on the same day reviewed the
+British division stationed in that city.</p>
+
+<p>An event soon occurred which showed how wide-spread were the intrigues
+of the French in the Flemish towns, and how insecure was the foundation
+on which the authority of the Allies rested there. An accidental
+circumstance led to the discovery of a letter put into the post-office
+of Ghent, containing the whole particulars of a plan for admitting the
+French troops into the citadel of Antwerp. Vend&ocirc;me at the same time made
+a forward movement to take advantage of these attempts; but Marlborough
+was on his guard, and both frustrated the intended rising in Antwerp,
+and barred the way against the attempted advance of the French army.
+Disconcerted by the failure of this enterprise, Vend&ocirc;me moved to
+Soignies at the head of an hundred thousand men, where he halted at the
+distance of three leagues from the Allied armies. A great and decisive
+action was confidently expected in both armies; as, although Marlborough
+could not muster above eighty thousand combatants, it was well known he
+would not decline a battle, although he was not as yet sufficiently
+strong to assume the offensive. Vend&ocirc;me, however, declined attacking the
+Allies where they stood, and, filing to the right to Braine la Leude,
+close to the field of Waterloo, again halted in a position, threatening
+at once both Louvain and Brussels. Moving parallel to him, but still
+keeping on the defensive, Marlborough retired to Anderleet. No sooner
+had he arrived there, than intelligence was received of a farther
+movement to the right on the part of the French general, which indicated
+an intention to make Louvain the object of attack. Without losing an
+instant, Marlborough marched on that very night with the utmost
+expedition, amidst torrents of rain, to Parc, where he established
+himself in such strong<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> ground, covering Louvain, that Vend&ocirc;me, finding
+himself anticipated in his movements, fell back to Braine-le-Leude
+without firing a shot.<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a></p>
+
+<p>Though Marlborough, however, had in this manner foiled the movement of
+the French general, he was in no condition to undertake offensive
+operations until the arrival of Eugene's army from the Moselle raised
+his force nearer to an equality with the preponderating masses of the
+enemy, headed by so able a general as Vend&ocirc;me. The usual delays,
+however, of the German powers, for long prevented this object being
+attained. For about a month Marlborough was retained in a state of
+forced inactivity from this cause, during which period he bitterly
+complained, "that the slowness of the German powers was such as to
+threaten the worst consequences." At length, however, the pressing
+representations of the English general, seconded by the whole weight of
+Prince Eugene, overcame the tardiness of the German Electors, and the
+army of the Moselle began its march towards Brabant. But the Prince was
+too far distant to bring up his troops to the theatre of active
+operations before decisive events had taken place; and fortunately for
+the glory of England, to Marlborough alone and to his army belongs the
+honour of one of the most decisive victories recorded in its annals.</p>
+
+<p>Encouraged by his superiority of numbers, and the assurances of support
+he received from the malecontents in the Flemish towns, Vend&ocirc;me, who was
+both an able and enterprising general, put in execution, in the
+beginning of July, a design which he had long meditated, for the purpose
+of expelling the Allies from Brabant. This was by a sudden irruption to
+make himself master of Ghent, with several of the citizens of which he
+had established a secret correspondence. This city commands the course
+of the Scheldt and the Lys, and lay in the very centre of Marlborough's
+water communications; and as the fortifications of Oudenarde were in a
+very dilapidated state, it was reasonable to suppose that its reduction
+would speedily follow. The capture of these fortresses would at once
+break up Marlborough's communications, and sever the connecting link
+between Flanders and Brabant, so as to compel the English army to fall
+back to Antwerp and the line of the Scheldt, and thus deprive them of
+the whole fruits of the victory of Ramilies. Such was the able and
+well-conceived design of the French general, which promised the most
+brilliant results; and against a general less wary and able than
+Marlborough, unquestionably would have obtained them.</p>
+
+<p>Vend&ocirc;me executed the first part of this design with vigour and success.
+On the evening of the 4th July he suddenly broke up from
+Braine-le-Leude, and marching rapidly all night, advanced towards Hall
+and Tubise, dispatching at the same time, parties towards such towns in
+that quarter as had maintained a correspondence with him. One of these
+parties, by the connivance of the watch, made itself master of Ghent. At
+the same time Bruges was surrendered to another party under the Count de
+la Motte; the small but important fort of Plassendael was carried by
+storm, and a detachment sent to recover Ghent found the gates shut by
+the inhabitants, who had now openly joined the enemy, and invested the
+Allied garrison in the citadel.</p>
+
+<p>Marlborough no sooner heard of this movement than he followed with his
+army; but he arrived in the neighbourhood of Tubise in time only to
+witness their passage of the Senne, near that place. Giving orders to
+his troops to prepare for battle, he put himself in motion at one next
+morning, intending to bring the enemy to an immediate action. The
+activity of Vend&ocirc;me, however, baffled his design. He made his men, weary
+as they were, march all night and cross the Dender at several points,
+breaking down the bridges between Alort and Oerdegun, and the Allies
+only arrived in time to make three hundred prisoners from the rearguard.
+Scarcely had they recovered from this disappoint<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>ment, when intelligence
+arrived of the surprise of Ghent and Bruges; while, at the same time,
+the ferment in Brussels, owing to the near approach of the French to
+that capital, became so great, that there was every reason to apprehend
+a similar disaster, from the disaffection of some of its inhabitants.
+The most serious apprehensions also were entertained for Oudenarde, the
+garrison of which was feeble, and its works dilapidated. Marlborough,
+therefore, dispatched instant orders to Lord Chandos, who commanded at
+Ath, to collect all the detachments he could from the garrisons in the
+neighbourhood, and throw himself into that fortress, and with such
+diligence were these orders executed that Oudenarde was secured against
+a <i>coup-de-main</i>, before the French outposts appeared before it.
+Vend&ocirc;me, however, felt himself strong enough to undertake its siege in
+form. He drew his army round it; the investment was completed on the
+evening of the 9th, and a train of heavy artillery ordered from Tournay,
+to commence the siege,<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a> while he himself with the covering army, took
+post in a strong camp at Lessines, on the river Dender.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the chagrin experienced by Marlborough at these untoward
+events, that he was thrown into a fever, the result of fatigue,
+watching, and anxiety. His physician earnestly counselled him to leave
+the camp, and retire to Brussels, as the only means of arresting his
+distemper; but nothing could induce him to leave his post at such a
+crisis. He continued in his tent accordingly, and the orders were issued
+by Marshal Overkirk. He was greatly relieved on the 7th, by the arrival
+of Prince Eugene, who, finding his troops could not come up in time, had
+left his cavalry at Maestricht, and hastened in person, though without
+any followers but his personal suite, to take part in the approaching
+conflict. Great was the joy of Marlborough on learning the arrival of so
+illustrious a general; not a feeling of jealousy crossed the breast of
+either of these great men. His first words to Eugene were&mdash;"I am not
+without hopes of congratulating your Highness on a great victory; for my
+troops will be animated by the presence of so distinguished a
+commander." Eugene warmly approved the resolution he had taken of
+instantly attacking the enemy: and a council of war having been
+summoned, their united opinion prevailed over the objections of the
+Dutch deputies, who were now seriously alarmed for their barrier, and it
+was resolved to give battle to the enemy in his position in front of
+<span class="smcap">Oudenarde</span>.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Allies broke up at two in the morning of the 9th July, and advanced
+towards the French frontiers at Lessines in four great columns. So rapid
+and well ordered was the march, that before noon the heads of the
+columns reached Herfilingen, fourteen miles fron Asche, whence they had
+started. Bridges were rapidly thrown over the Dender, and it was crossed
+early on the following morning in presence of Eugene and Marlborough,
+whom the animation of the great events in progress, had, in a manner,
+raised from the bed of sickness.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a> Here the duke halted, and the
+troops encamped in their order of march with their right on the Dender
+and their front covered by a small stream which falls into that river.
+By this bold and rapid movement, Vend&ocirc;me's well-concerted plan was
+entirely disconcerted; Marlborough had thrown himself between the French
+and their own frontier; he had rendered himself master of their
+communications; and instead of seeking merely to cover his own
+fortresses, threaten<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span>ed to compel them to fall back, in order to regain
+their communications, and abandon the whole enterprise which had
+commenced with such prospects of success. Vend&ocirc;me was extremely
+disconcerted at this able movement, and he gave immediate orders to fall
+back upon Gavre, situated on the Scheldt below Oudenarde, where it was
+intended to cross that river.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner was this design made manifest, than Marlborough followed with
+all his forces, with the double design of raising the investment of
+Oudenarde, and if possible forcing the enemy to give battle, under the
+disadvantage of doing so in a retreat. Anxious to improve their
+advantage, the Allied generals pushed forward with the utmost
+expedition, hoping to come up with the enemy when his columns and
+baggage were close upon the Scheldt, or in the very act of crossing that
+river. Colonel Cadogan, with a strong advanced guard, was pushed forward
+by daybreak on the 11th towards the Scheldt which he reached by eleven,
+and immediately threw bridges over, across which the whole cavalry and
+twelve battalions of foot were immediately thrown. They advanced to the
+summit of the plateau on the left bank of the river, and formed in
+battle array, the infantry opposite Eynes, the cavalry extending on the
+left towards Schaerken. Advancing slowly on in this regular array down
+the course of the river on its left bank, Cadogan was not long of coming
+in sight of the French rearguard under Biron, with whom he had some
+sharp skirmishing. Meanwhile, Marlborough and Eugene were pressing the
+passage at the bridges with all imaginable activity; but the greater
+part of their army had not yet got across. The main body was still half
+a league from the Scheldt, and the huge clouds of dust which arose from
+the passage of the artillery and carriages in that direction, inspired
+Vend&ocirc;me with the hope that he might cut off the advanced guard which was
+over the Scheldt, before the bulk of the Allied forces could get across
+to their relief. With this view he halted his troops, and drew them up
+hastily in order of battle. This brought on the great and glorious
+action which followed, towards the due understanding of which, a
+description of the theatre of combat is indispensable.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"At the distance of a mile north of Oudenarde, is the village of
+Eynes. Here the ground rises into a species of low, but spacious
+amphitheatre. From thence it sweeps along a small plain, till it
+nearly reaches the glacis of Oudenarde, where it terminates in the
+village of Bevere. To the west the slope ascends to another broad
+hill called the Bosercanter; and at the highest point of the
+eminence stands a windmill, shaded by a lofty lime-tree, forming
+conspicuous objects from the whole adjacent country. From thence
+the ground gradually declines towards Mardlen; and the eye glancing
+over the humid valley watered by the Norken, rests on another range
+of uplands, which, gently sinking, at length terminates near Asper.
+Within this space, two small streams, descending from the lower
+part of the hill of Oycke, embrace a low tongue of land, the centre
+of which rises to a gentle elevation. The borders of these rivulets
+are crossed by frequent enclosures, surrounding the farm-yards of
+Barwaen, Chobon, and Diepenbeck. Near the source of one of these
+streams is a castellated mansion; at that of the other is the
+hamlet of Rhetelhouk, embosomed in a wooded nook. These streams
+unite at the hamlet of Scharken, and their united current flows in
+a marshy bed to the Scheldt, which it reaches near Eynes. The
+Norken, another river traversing the field, runs for a considerable
+distance parallel to the Scheldt, until, passing by Asper, it
+terminates in a stagnant canal, which joins the Scheldt below
+Gavre. Its borders, like those of the other streams, are skirted
+with coppice-wood thickets; behind are the enclosures surrounding
+the little plain. Generally speaking, this part of Flanders is even
+not merely of picturesque beauty and high cultivation, but great
+military strength; and it is hard to say whether its numerous
+streams, hanging banks, and umbrageous woods, add most to its
+interest in the eye of a painter, or to its intricacy and defensive
+character in warlike operations."<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a> </p></div>
+
+<p>As fast as the Allies got across the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> Scheldt, Marlborough formed them
+along the high grounds stretching from Bevere to Mooreghem Mill, with
+their right resting on the Scheldt. Vend&ocirc;me's men stretched across the
+plain, from the hill of Asper on the left, to Warreghem on the right. A
+considerable body of cavalry and infantry lay in front of their position
+in Eynes, of which they had retained possession since they had repulsed
+Cadogan's horse. No sooner had the English general got a sufficient
+number of troops up, than he ordered that gallant officer to advance and
+retake that village. The infantry attacked in front, crossing the
+rivulet near Eynes; while the horse made a circuit, and passing higher,
+made their appearance in their rear, when the conflict was warmly going
+on in front. The consequence was, that the village was carried with
+great loss to the enemy, three entire battalions were cut off and made
+prisoners, and eight squadrons cut to pieces in striving to make their
+way across the steep and tangled banks of the Norken. This sharp blow
+convinced the French leaders that a general action was unavoidable; and
+though, from the vigour with which it had been struck, their remained
+little hope of overpowering the Allied advanced guard before the main
+body came up, yet they resolved, contrary to the opinion of Vend&ocirc;me, who
+had become seriously alarmed, to persist in the attack, and risk all on
+the issue of a general engagement.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>
+
+<p>It was four in the afternoon when the French commenced the action in
+good earnest. The Duke of Burgundy ordered General Grimaldi to lead
+Sistern's squadron across the Norken, apparently with the view of
+feeling his way preparatory to a general attack; but when he arrived on
+the margin of the stream, and saw the Prussian cavalry already formed on
+the other side, he fell back to the small plain near the Mill of
+Royeghorn. Vend&ocirc;me, meanwhile, directed his left to advance, deeming
+that the most favourable side to attack, but the Duke of Burgundy, who
+nominally had the supreme command, and who was jealous of Vend&ocirc;me's
+reputation, countermanded this order; alleging that an impassable morass
+separated the two armies in that quarter. Those contradictory orders
+produced indecision in the French lines, and Marlborough, divining its
+cause, instantly took advantage of it. Judging with reason that the real
+attack of the enemy would be made on his left by their right, in front
+of the castle of Bevere, he drew the twelve battalions of foot under
+Cadogan from Heurne and Eynes, which they occupied, and reinforced the
+left with them; while the bridges of the Norken were strongly occupied,
+and musketeers disposed in the woods on their sides. Marlborough
+himself, at the head of the Prussian horse, advanced by Heurne, and took
+post on the flank of the little plain of Diepenbeck, where it was
+evident the heat of the action would ensue. A reserve of twenty British
+battalions, with a few guns, took post near Schaerken, and proved of the
+most essential service in the struggle which ensued. Few pieces of
+artillery were brought up on either side; the rapidity of the movements
+on both having outstripped the slow pace at which those ponderous
+implements of destruction were then conveyed.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<p>Hardly were these defensive arrangements completed, when the tempest was
+upon them. The whole French right wing, consisting of thirty battalions,
+embracing the French and Swiss guards, and the flower of their army,
+debouched from the woods and hedges near Groemvelde, and attacking four
+battalions stationed there, quickly compelled them to retreat. Advancing
+then in the open plain, they completely outflanked the Allied left, and
+made themselves masters of the hamlets of Barwaen and Banlaney. This
+success exposed the Allies to imminent dan<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span>ger; for in their rear was
+the Scheldt, flowing lazily in a deep and impassable current, through
+marshy meadows, crossed only by a few bridges, over which retreat would
+be impossible in presence of a victorious enemy; and the success against
+the Allied left exposed to be cut off from their only resource in such a
+case, the friendly ramparts of Oudenarde.</p>
+
+<p>Anxiously observing the rapid progress of the French on his left,
+Marlborough successively drew brigade after brigade from his right, and
+moved them to the quarter which was now severely pressed. The hostile
+lines fought with the most determined resolution. Every bridge, every
+ditch, every wood, every hamlet, every inclosure, was obstinately
+contested; and so incessant was the roll of musketry, that, seen from a
+distance, the horizon seemed an unbroken line of fire. Hitherto
+Marlborough and Eugene had remained together; but now, as matters had
+reached the crisis, they separated. The English general bestowed on
+Prince Eugene the command of his right, where the British battalions,
+whose valour he had often praised, were placed. He himself, with the
+Prussian horse on the banks of the Norken, kept the enemy's left in
+check; while with his own left he endeavoured to outflank the enemy, and
+retaliate upon then the man&oelig;uvre which they had attempted against
+him. This bold movement was attended with severe loss, but it proved
+completely successful. Eugene was soon warmly engaged, and at first
+wellnigh overpowered by the superior numbers and vehement onset of the
+enemy. But Marlborough, whose eye was every where, no sooner observed
+this, than he dispatched Cadogan with his twelve English battalions to
+his support. Encouraged by this aid, Eugene moved forward General
+Natzmer, at the head of the Prussian heavy horse and cuirassiers, to
+charge the enemy's second lines near the Mill of Royeghem; while he
+himself renewed the attack on their infantry near Herlehorn. Both
+attacks proved successful. The enemy were expelled on the right from the
+enclosure of Avelchens, and the battle restored in that quarter; while,
+at the same time, their second line was drivers back into the enclosures
+of Royeghem. But this last success was not achieved without a very heavy
+loss; for the Prussian horse were received by so terrible a fire of
+musketry from the hedges near Royeghem, into which they had pushed the
+enemy's second line, that half of then were stretched on the plain, and
+the remainder recoiled in disorderly flight.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Marlborough himself was not less actively engaged on the
+Allied left. At the head of the Hanoverian and Dutch battalions, he
+there pressed forward against the hitherto victorious French right. The
+vigour inspired by his presence quickly altered the state of affairs in
+that quarter. Barlaney and Barwaen were soon regained, but not without
+the most desperate resistance; for not only did the enemy obstinately
+contest every field and enclosure, but, in their fury, set fire to such
+of the houses as could no longer be maintained. Despite all these
+obstacles, hovever, the English general fairly drove them back, at the
+musket's point, fron one enclosure to another, till he reached the
+hamlet of Diepenbeck, where the resistance proved so violent that he was
+compelled to pause. His vigilant eye, however, erelong observed, that
+the hill of Oycke, which flanked the enemy's extreme right, was
+unoccupied. Conceiving that their right might be turned by this
+eminence, he directed Overkirk, with the reserve cavalry, and twenty
+Dutch and Danish battalions, to occupy it. The veteran marshal executed
+this important, and, as it proved, decisive movement, with his wonted
+alacrity and spirit. The wooded dells round the castle of Bevere soon
+rung with musketry; the enemy, forced out of them, was driven over the
+shoulder of the Bosercanter; soon it was passed, and the mill of Oycke,
+and the plateau behind it, occupied by the Danish and Dutch battalions.
+Arrived on the summit, Overkirk made his men bring up their left
+shoulders, so as to wheel inwards, and form a vast semicircle round the
+right wing of the French, which, far advanced beyond the centre, was now
+thrown back, and grouped into the little plain of Diepenbeck.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> Observing
+the effect of this movement, Marlborough directed Overkirk to press
+forward his left still farther, so as to seize the passes of Mullem and
+mill of Royeghem, by which the communication between the enemy's right
+and centre was maintained. This order was executed with vigour and
+success by the Prince of Orange and General Oxenstiern. The progress of
+the extreme Allied left round the rear of the French right, was observed
+by the frequent flashes of their musketry on the heights above Mullem,
+down to which they descended, driving the enemy with loud cheers, which
+re-echoed over the whole field of battle, before them. The victory was
+now gained. Refluent from all quarters, enveloped on every side, the
+whole French right was hurled together, in wild confusion, into the
+plain of Diepenbeck; where seven regiments of horse, which made a noble
+effort to stem the flood of disaster, was all cut to pieces or taken.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing his right wing on the verge of destruction, Vend&ocirc;me made a
+gallant effort to rescue it. Dismounting from his horse, he led the
+infantry of his left near Mullem, to the aid of their devoted comrades.
+But the thick and frequent enclosures broke their array; the soldiers
+were dismayed by the loud shouts of victory from their right; and when
+they emerged from the enclosures; and approached the plain of
+Diepenbeck, the firm countenance of the British horse, drawn up on its
+edge, and the sturdy array of their infantry under Eugene, which
+advanced to meet them, rendered the effort abortive. Meanwhile darkness
+set in, but the battle still raged on all sides; and the frequent
+flashes of the musketry on the heights around, intermingled with the
+shouts of the victors, showed but too clearly how nearly the extremity
+of danger was approaching to the whole French army. So completely were
+they enveloped, that the advanced guard of the right under Eugene, and
+the left under the Prince of Orange, met on the heights in the French
+rear, and several volleys were exchanged between there, before the error
+was discovered, and, by great exertions of their respective commanders,
+the useless butchery was stopped. To prevent a repetition of such
+disasters orders were given to the whole troops to halt where they
+stood, and to this precaution many owed their safety as it was
+impossible in the darkness to distinguish friend from foe. But it
+enabled great part of the centre and left of the French to escape
+unobserved, which, had daylight continued for two hours longer, would
+have been all taken or destroyed. Their gallant right was left to its
+fate; while Eugene, by directing the drums of his regiments to beat the
+French <i>assembl&eacute;e</i>, made great numbers of their left and centre
+prisoners. Some thousands of the right slipped unobserved to the
+westward near the castle of Bevere, and made their way in a confused
+body toward France, but the greater part of that wing were killed or
+taken. Vend&ocirc;me with charateristic presence of mind formed a rearguard of
+a few battalions and twenty-five squadrons, with which he covered the
+retreat of the centre and left; but the remainder of those parts of the
+army fell into total confusion, and fled headlong in wild disorder
+towards Ghent.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p>
+
+<p>We have the authority of Marborough for the assertion, that "if he had
+had two hours more of daylight the French army would have been
+irretrievably routed, great part of it killed or taken, and the war
+terminated on that day."<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> As it was, the blow struck was prodigious,
+and entirely altered the character and issue of the campaign. The French
+lost six thousand men in killed and wounded, besides nine thousand
+prisoners and one hundred standards wrested from them in fair fight. The
+Allied were weakened by five thousand men for the French were superior
+in number and fought well, having been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> defeated solely by the superior
+generalship of the Allied commanders.<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a></p>
+
+<p>No sooner did daylight appear, than forty squadrons were detached
+towards Ghent in pursuit of the enemy; while Marlborough himself, with
+characteristic humanity, visited the field of battle, doing his utmost
+to assuage the sufferings, and provide for the cure of the numerous
+wounded&mdash;alike friend and foe&mdash;who encumbered its bloody expanse. Count
+Lottnow was sent with thirty battalions and fifty squadrons, to possess
+himself of the lines which the enemy had constructed between Ipres and
+Warneton, which that officer did with vigour and success, making five
+hundred prisoners. This was the more fortunate, as, at the moment they
+were taken, the Duke of Berwick, with the French army from the Moselle,
+was hastening up, and had exhorted the garrison to defend the lines to
+the last extremity. At the same time, the corresponding Allied army,
+commanded by Eugene, arrived at Brussels, so that both sides were
+largely reinforced. Berwick's corps, which consisted of thirty-four
+battalions and fifty-five squadrons, was so considerable, that it raised
+Vend&ocirc;me's army again to an hundred thousand men. With this imposing
+mass, that able general took post in a camp behind the canal of Bruges,
+and near Ghent, which he soon strongly fortified, and which commanded
+the navigation both of the Scheldt and the Lys. He rightly judged, that
+as long as he was there at the head of such a force, the Allies would
+not venture to advance into France; though it lay entirely open to their
+incursions, as Marlborough was between him and Paris.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></p>
+
+<p>Encouraged by this singular posture of the armies, Marlborough strongly
+urged upon the Allied council of war the propriety of relinquishing all
+lesser objects, passing the whole fortified towns on the frontier, and
+advancing straight towards the French capital.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> This bold counsel,
+however&mdash;which, if acted on, would have been precisely what Wellington
+and Blucher did a century after, in advancing from the same country, and
+perhaps attended with similar success&mdash;was rejected. Eugene, and the
+remainder of the council, considered the design too hazardous, while
+Vend&ocirc;me with so great an army lay intrenched in their rear, threatening
+their communications. It was resolved, therefore, to commence the
+invasion of the territory of the Grande Monarque, by the siege of the
+great frontier fortress of <span class="smcap">Lille</span>, the strongest and most important place
+in French Flanders, and the possession of which would give the Allies a
+solid footing in the enemy's territory. This, however, was a most
+formidable undertaking; for not only was the place itself of great
+strength, and with a citadel within its walls still stronger, but it was
+garrisoned by Marshal Boufflers, one of the ablest officers in the
+French service, with fifteen thousand choice troops, and every requisite
+for a vigorous defence. On the other hand, Vend&ocirc;me, at the head of an
+hundred thousand men, lay in an impregnable camp between Ghent and
+Bruges, ready to interrupt or raise the siege; and his position there
+extremely hampered Marlborough in bringing forward the requisite
+equipage for so great an undertaking, as it interrupted the whole water
+navigation of the country, by which it could best be effected. The
+dragging it up by land, would require sixteen thousand horses.
+Nevertheless it was resolved to undertake the enterprise, sanguine hopes
+being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> entertained, that, rather than see so important a fortress fall,
+Vend&ocirc;me would leave his intrenched camp, and give the Allies an
+opportunity of bringing him again to battle on equal terms.<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a></p>
+
+<p>No sooner was the undertaking resolved on, than the most vigorous
+measures were adopted to carry it into execution. The obstacles which
+presented themselves, however, were great indeed, and proved even more
+formidable than had been at first anticipated. Every gun, every waggon,
+every round of ammunition, required to be transported from Holland; and
+even the nearest dep&ocirc;t for ordinary and military stores for the Allies,
+was Brussels, situated twenty-five leagues off. Sixteen thousand horses
+were requisite to transport the train which brought these stores, partly
+from Maestricht, partly from Holland; and when in a line of march, it
+stretched over fifteen miles. Prince Eugene, with fifty-three battalions
+and ninety squadrons, covered the vast moving mass&mdash;Marlborough himself
+being ready, at a moment's notice, in his camp near Menin, to support
+him, if necessary. Between these two great men there existed then, as
+ever, the most entire cordiality.<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> Their measures were all taken in
+concord, and with such ability, that though Vend&ocirc;me lay on the flank of
+the line of march, which extended over above seventy miles, not a gun
+was taken, nor a carriage lost; and the whole reached the camp at
+Helchin in safety, on the 12th August, whither Marlborough had gone to
+meet it. So marvellous were the arrangements made for the safe conduct
+of this important convoy, and so entire their success, that they excited
+the admiration of the French, and in no slight degree augmented the
+alarm of their generals, who had hitherto treated the idea of Lille
+being besieged, with perfect derision. "Posterity," says the French
+annalist, Feuqueres, "will scarcely believe the fact, though it is an
+undoubted truth. Never was a great enterprise conducted with more skill
+and circumspection."<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a></p>
+
+<p>Prince Eugene was entrusted with the conduct of the siege, while
+Marlborough commanded the covering army. The former commenced the
+investment of the place on the 13th August, while Marlborough remained
+at Helchin, taking measures for the protection of the convoys, which
+were incessantly coming up from Brussels. At length the whole were
+passed, and arrived in safety in the camp before Lille, amounting to one
+hundred and twenty heavy guns, forty mortars, twenty howitzers, and four
+hundred ammunition waggons. Eugene's army for the siege consisted of
+fifty-three battalions and ninety squadrons, in all about forty thousand
+men. Marlborough's covering force was sixty-nine battalions and one
+hundred and forty squadrons, numbering nearly sixty thousand men. But
+the force of the French was still more considerable in the field.
+Vend&ocirc;me and Berwick united on the 30th, on the plain between Grammont
+and Lessines, and on the 2d September advanced towards Lille with one
+hundred and forty battalions and two hundred and fifty squadrons,
+mustering one hundred thousand combatants, besides twenty thousand left,
+under Count de la Motte, to cover Ghent and Bruges. But Marlborough had
+no fears for the result, and ardently longed for a general action, which
+he hoped would one way or other conclude the war. "If we have a second
+action," says he, "and God blesses our just cause, this, in all
+likelihood, will be our last campaign; for I think they would not
+venture a battle, but are resolved to submit to any condition, if the
+success be on our side; and if they get the better, they will think<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+themselves masters; so that, if there should be an action, it is like to
+be the last this war. If God continues on our side, we have nothing to
+fear, our troops being good, though not so numerous as theirs. I dare
+say, before half the troops have fought, success will declare, I trust
+in God, on our side; and then I may have what I earnestly wish for
+quick."<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a></p>
+
+<p>No sooner was Marlborough informed of the junction of Vend&ocirc;me and
+Berwick, than, anticipating the direction they would follow, and the
+point at which they would endeavour to penetrate through, and raise the
+siege, he marched parallel to the enemy, and arrived on the 4th
+September at a position previously selected, having his right at
+Noyelle, and his left at Peronne. So correctly had he divined the
+designs of the able generals to whom he was opposed, that, within two
+hours after he had taken up his ground, the united French army appeared
+in his front. Notwithstanding their great superiority of forces, the
+enemy, however, did not venture to attack, and the two armies remained
+watching each other for the next fortnight, without any movement being
+attempted on either side.<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a></p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Eugene was actively prosecuting the siege of Lille. Trenches
+were opened on the 22d, and a heavy fire was opened from eighty pieces
+of cannon. On the following night, an outwork, called the Chapel of St
+Magdalene, was stormed and taken. The second parallel was soon
+completed, and some farther outworks carried; and the whole battering
+guns having at length been mounted, a breach was effected in the salient
+angle of one of the horn-works, and on the same night a lodgement was
+effected. A vigorous sortie, on the 10th September, hardly retarded the
+progress of the operations, and a sap was made under the covered way.
+Marlborough, who visited the besiegers' lines on the 18th, however,
+expressed some displeasure at the slow progress of the siege; and in
+consequence, on the 20th, another assault was hazarded. It was most
+obstinately resisted, but at length the assailants overcame all
+opposition and bursting in, carried a demi-bastion and several adjoining
+works, though with a loss of two thousand men. Great as this loss was,
+it was not so severe as that of one officer who fell; for Eugene
+himself, transported with ardour, had taken part in the assault, and was
+seriously wounded. This grievous casualty not only gave the utmost
+distress to Marlborough, but immensely augmented his labours; for it
+threw upon him at once the direction of the siege, and the command of
+the covering army. Every morning at break of day he was on horseback to
+observe Vend&ocirc;me's army; and if all was quiet in front, he rode to the
+lines and directed the siege in person till evening, when he again
+returned to the camp of the covering force. By thus in a manner doubling
+himself, this great man succeeded in preventing any serious
+inconvenience being experienced even from so great a catastrophe as
+Eugene's wound, and he infused such vigour into the operations of the
+siege, that, on the 23d September, great part of the tenaillons were
+broken, with a large portion of the covered way. At the same time the
+ammunition of the garrison began to fail so much in consequence of the
+constant fire they had kept up for above a month, that Marshal Boufflers
+sent intimation to Vend&ocirc;me, that unless a supply of that necessary
+article was speedily obtained, he should be obliged to surrender.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p>
+
+<p>The French generals, aware how much the fortress was straitened, were
+meanwhile straining every nerve to raise the siege; but such was the
+terror inspired by Marlborough's presence, and the skill with which his
+defensive measures were taken, that they did not venture to hazard an
+attack on the covering army. But a well-conceived project of Vend&ocirc;me's,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+for throwing a supply of powder into the fortress, in part succeeded;
+although many of the horsemen who carried it were cut off, some
+succeeded in making their way in through the Allied lines, and
+considerably raised the spirits of the garrison, as well as prolonged
+their means of defence. But meanwhile the ammunition of the besiegers
+was falling short, as well as that of the besieged; and as the enemy
+were completely masters of the communication with Brussels, no resource
+remained but to get it up from Ostend. A convoy was formed there
+accordingly by General Erle, and set out on the 27th September,
+consisting of seven hundred waggons, escorted by General Webb with ten
+thousand men. Count de la Motte instantly set out with the troops under
+his command from the vicinity of Ghent, and came up with the convoy in
+the defile of Wynandals. A sharp action ensued, and the French advanced
+to the attack with their wonted impetuosity. But Webb's defensive
+arrangements were so skilful, and the fire kept up by his troops so
+vigorous, that the enemy were utterly routed; and the convoy forcing its
+way, reached Menin on the following day, and entered the Allied camp,
+amidst the acclamations of the whole army, on the 30th September.<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a></p>
+
+<p>The safe arrival of this convoy gave new energy to the operations of the
+siege; while the recovery of Eugene relieved Marlborough of half the
+labour under which, to use his own words, he had been for a fortnight
+"rather dead than alive." Three days after the whole tenaillon was
+carried, and the troops established directly opposite the breaches of
+the ramparts. Meanwhile Vend&ocirc;me opened the sluices, and inundated the
+country to the very borders of the dyke, so as to intercept
+Marlborough's communication with Ostend, and prevent the arrival of
+stores from it. But the English general defeated this device by bringing
+the stores up in flat-bottomed boats from Ostend to Leffinghen, and
+thence conveying them in carriages, mounted on very high wheels, to the
+camp. Cadogan greatly distinguished himself in this difficult service.
+Overkirk died at this critical juncture, to the great regret of
+Marlborough, who could then ill spare his ardent and patriotic spirit.
+Meanwhile, however, the siege continued to advance, and fifty-five heavy
+guns thundered from the counterscarp on the breaches, while thirty-six
+mortars swept all the works which commanded them. Finding himself unable
+to withstand the assault which was now hourly expected, Boufflers, on
+the 22d October, beat a parley, and capitulated; having sustained, with
+unparalleled resolution, a siege of sixty days, of which thirty were
+with open trenches. Penetrated with admiration at his gallant defence,
+Eugene granted the French general and his brave garrison the most
+honourable terms. The gates were surrendered on the 23d, and the
+remainder of the garrison, still five thousand strong, retired into the
+citadel,<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> where they prolonged their defence for six weeks more.</p>
+
+<p>Thus had Marlborough the glory, in one campaign, of defeating, in
+pitched battle, the best general and most powerful army possessed by
+France, and capturing its strongest frontier fortress, the masterpiece
+of Vauban, under the eyes of one hundred and twenty thousand assembled
+from all quarters for its relief. He put the keystone at the same time
+into this arch of glory, by again declining the magnificent offer of the
+government of the Low Countries, with its appointment of sixty thousand
+a-year for life, a second time pressed upon him by King Charles, from an
+apprehension that such an offer might give umbrage to the government of
+Holland, or excite jealousy in the Queen's government at home.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="RECOLLECTIONS_OF_A_LOVER_OF_SOCIETY" id="RECOLLECTIONS_OF_A_LOVER_OF_SOCIETY"></a>RECOLLECTIONS OF A LOVER OF SOCIETY.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Many years ago, I was struck with the remark&mdash;that if any one would
+write down, from week to week, the prominent events which occurred in
+his time, he must make a book which many would like to read.</p>
+
+<p>I took the hint; and here I give a portion of my Recollections. Not that
+I have ever kept a regular Journal, a matter which I now regret; but I
+have mingled a good deal in general life, I have seen nearly all the
+remarkable characters of Europe in the most stirring period of the
+world, and I have seen the beginning as well as the end of that most
+extraordinary of all national catastrophes, the French Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>At all times fond of associating with my fellow men, taking a strong
+interest in public opinions, having strong opinions of my own, and
+witnessing the most singular changes in almost every form of public, of
+personal, and of national impressions, I have had my full share of
+experience in the ways of men. And I now offer it to those who would
+refresh their remembrances of memorable men, things, and times.</p>
+
+<p>For the purpose of dealing in the fairest possible manner with my
+readers, I have looked into the various records of those events which
+might have escaped my memory. But I have not suffered them to bias
+opinions conceived long since, and conceived in the spirit of sincerity.
+Such is my design. It is given to the public with a perfect freedom from
+all party influence; with a total avoidance of all personality; with
+that calmness of retrospect which best becomes one who has no desire to
+share in the passions of the world; and with that wish of the French
+almanack-maker, which lies at the bottom of many a bulkier enterprise
+than mine&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center">"Je veux infiniment qu'on me lise." </p>
+
+
+<h3>1800.</h3>
+
+<p><i>January 1.</i>&mdash;The nineteenth century has commenced with one of those
+events, which deserve to mark epochs. On this day the <span class="smcap">UNION</span> Of Ireland
+with England has begun. The church bells are ringing, at this moment, in
+all quarters. Flags are flying on the various government establishments.
+A new Imperial flag is hoisted at the Tower, and I now hear the guns
+saluting it with their roar.</p>
+
+<p>The last century was the era of Intrigue in politics, in war, in courts,
+in every thing. In England, the Revolution at the close of the Century
+before had extinguished the power of Despotism. Popery had perished
+under the heel of Protestantism. The Jacobite had fled from the face of
+the Williamite. The sword was seen no longer. But the strifes of party
+succeeded the struggles of Religion; and Parliament became the scene of
+those conflicts, which, in the century before, would have been fought in
+the field.</p>
+
+<p>I strongly doubt which age exhibits the national character in a more
+elevated point of view. The war of Charles I. was a period of proud
+feeling. It was the last burst of Chivalry. Men of rank and fortune
+periled both from a sense of honour, and some of the noblest who fell on
+the royal side, were as fully convinced of the royal errors as the
+orators of Parliament; but their sense of honour urged them to the
+sacrifice, and they freely shed their blood for a King, whose
+faithlessness and folly were to be redeemed only by his martyrdom.</p>
+
+<p>From the period of the Revolution, the character of the country had
+changed. Still bold, sensitive, and capable of sacrifice, it had grown
+more contemptuous of political romance, more clear-sighted as to public
+merits, and more fixed on substantial claims. The latter part of the
+seventeenth century had seen the worthless and treacherous Charles II.
+brought back by the nobles and gentry of the land in a national triumph.
+The middle of the eighteenth century saw the expulsion of the Pretender,
+a gallant and adventurous prince, whose only adherents were the Scottish
+chiefs, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> whose most determined opponents were the whole multitude of
+England.</p>
+
+<p>France had lost her Chivalric spirit nearly a hundred years before. It
+had died with Francis I. The wars of the League were wars of Chicane;
+Artifice in arms, Subtlety in steel coats. The profligacy of the courts
+of Louis Quatorze, and his successors, dissolved at once the morals and
+the mind of France. That great country exhibited, to the eye of Europe,
+the aspect of the most extravagant license, and the most rapid decay.
+There lay the great voluptuary, under the general gaze; like one of its
+feudal lords dying of his own debauch&mdash;lying helpless from infirmity,
+surrounded with useless pomp, and in the sight of luxuries which he
+could taste no more&mdash;until death came, and he was swept away from his
+place among men.</p>
+
+<p>Germany was unknown even in Europe, but by the military struggles of
+Prussia and Austria. But the objects were trifling, and the result was
+more trifling still. Prussia gained Silesia, and Austria scarcely felt
+the loss, in an Empire extending from the Rhine to the Euxine. Then came
+peace, lassitude, and oblivion once more. But this languid century was
+to close with a tremendous explosion. A Belgian revolt was followed by a
+French Revolution. The wearisome continuance of the calm was broken up
+by a tornado, and when the surges subsided again, they exhibited many a
+wreck of thrones flung upon the shore.</p>
+
+<p>What is to be the next great change? What inscription shall be written
+by the historian on the sepulchre of the coming hundred years? Will they
+exhibit the recovery of the power of opinion by Kings, or the mastery of
+its power by the People? Will Europe be a theatre of State intrigue, as
+of old, or a scene of Republican violence? It would require a prophet to
+pronounce the reality.</p>
+
+<p>But I can already see symptoms of change; stern demands on the higher
+classes; sullen discontents in every country; an outcry for
+representative government throughout Europe. The example of France has
+not been lost upon the populace; the millions of Europe, who have seen
+the mob of the capital tear down the throne, will not forget the lesson.
+They may forget the purchase, or they may disregard the miseries of the
+purchase, in the pride of the possession. But we shall not have another
+French Revolution. We shall have no more deifications of the axe, no
+more baptisms in blood, no more display of that horrid and fearful
+ceremonial with which France, like the ancient idolators, offered her
+children to Moloch, and drowned the shrieks and groans of the dying in
+the clangour of trumpets and the acclamations of the multitude. Those
+scenes were too terrible to be renewed. The heart of man shrinks from
+liberty obtained by this dreadful violation of all its feelings. Like
+the legendary compacts with the Evil One, the fear of the Bond would
+embitter the whole intermediate indulgence; and even the populace would
+be startled at a supremacy, to be obtained only by means of such utter
+darkness, and followed by such awful retribution.</p>
+
+
+<p>31.&mdash;A piece of intelligence has arrived to-day, which has set all the
+World of London in commotion. It is no less than a direct challenge to
+our good King. Chivalry is not yet dead, as I supposed. After expulsion
+from the sunny plains of Italy and Spain, it has revived among the polar
+snows.</p>
+
+<p>The Russian Emperor has actually published this defiance to the world,
+in the St Petersburg <i>Gazette</i>. "It is said that his majesty the
+Emperor, perceiving that the European powers cannot come to an
+accommodation, and wishing to put an end to a war which has raged eleven
+years, has conceived the idea of appointing a place, to which he will
+invite the other potentates to engage together with himself in single
+combat, in Lists which shall be marked out. For which purpose they shall
+bring with them, to act as their esquires, umpires, and heralds, their
+most enlightened ministers and able generals, as Thugut, Pitt, and
+Bernstorff. He will bring, on his part, Counts Pahlen and Kutusoff."</p>
+
+<p>The first impression on the appearance of this singular document was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span>
+surprise; the next, of course, was ridicule. The man must have utterly
+lost his senses. He has been for some months playing the most fantastic
+tricks in his capital: cutting off people's beards if they happen to
+displease his taste as a barber, cutting off coat-skirts if they offend
+his taste as a tailor, ordering the passers-by to pay him a kind of
+Oriental homage, and threatening to send every body to Siberia. Under
+such circumstances, the air of Russia is supposed to be unfavourable to
+royal longevity.</p>
+
+
+<p>The death of a singular character occurred a few days since, a
+<i>proteg&eacute;e</i> of Hannah More, and, as might be expected from that lady's
+publishing habits, rendered sufficiently conspicuous by her pen. She was
+a total stranger, apparently a German by her pronunciation of English,
+yet carefully avoiding to speak any foreign language. She was first
+found taking refuge under a haystack, apparently in a state of insanity,
+and determined to die there. The peasantry, who occasionally brought her
+food, of course soon gave her a name, and, as she was evidently a
+gentlewoman, they called her the lady of the haystack. Hannah More, who
+had unquestionably some humanity, though she was rather too fond of its
+public exhibition, made her the heroine of a tale, and thus drew upon
+her considerable notice. She was prevailed on, though with some
+difficulty, to leave the haystack; and after a residence of a
+considerable period in the country, supported by subscriptions, she was
+removed, on its being ascertained that she was incurably insane, to an
+hospital in London, where, after continuing several years, she died.</p>
+
+<p>Her case excited great curiosity for the time, and every effort was made
+in Germany to ascertain her family, and give some notice of her
+condition. One of the most remarkable circumstances in her insanity, was
+her guarded silence on the subject of her relatives. Though she rambled
+into all conceivable topics, she could not be induced to give the
+slightest clue to their names. The moment any attempt at their discovery
+was made, all her feelings seemed to be startled; she shrank at once,
+looked distressed, and became silent. Hannah More's "Tale of Woe," was
+therefore a well-meant effort to attract attention to an unhappy
+creature, who was determined to give no knowledge of herself to the
+world.</p>
+
+
+<p>Lord Camelford's eccentricities are well known, but the world has given
+him credit for more than he deserves. He was unluckily a duellist almost
+by profession, and thus as dangerous to associate with as a mad bull.
+Yet I have heard traits of a generosity on his part as lavish as his
+manners are eccentric. He is, however, so well known to be alert in the
+use of the pistol, and to be of fiery temper, that some curious stories
+are told of the alarm inspired by his presence. One of those is now
+running the round of the Clubs.</p>
+
+<p>Some days ago, his lordship, walking into a coffee-house, and taking up
+the evening paper, began poring over its paragraphs. A coxcomb in an
+adjoining box, who had frequently called to the waiter for the paper,
+walked over to Lord Camelford's box, and, seeing him lay down the paper
+for the moment while he was sipping his coffee, took it up, and walked
+off with it without ceremony. His lordship bore the performance without
+exhibiting any sign of disturbance, but waited till he saw the intruder
+engaged in its paragraphs. He then quietly walked over, and with all the
+eyes of the Coffeehouse upon him, snuffed out the fellow's candles, and
+walked back to his own seat. The fellow, astonished and furious,
+demanded the name of the person who had served him in this contemptuous
+manner. His lordship threw him his card. He took it&mdash;read "Lord
+Camelford" aloud&mdash;seemed petrified for a moment, and in the next
+snatched up his hat, and made but one step to the door, followed by the
+laugh of the whole room.</p>
+
+<p>But his lordship has, like Hamlet, method in his madness. A report was
+lately spread that he had resolved, in case of Horne Tooke's rejection
+by the House as member for Old Sarum, that he would bring in his own
+black footman. This report he resented and denied, sending a letter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> to
+the newspapers, of which this is a fragment:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"A report, as preposterous as unfounded, has lately found its way
+abroad, stating that I meditated a gross and indecent insult upon
+the dignity of the legislature, by using an influence which I am
+supposed to possess, for the purpose of introducing an improper
+character into the formation of its body.</p>
+
+<p>"It becomes me to set the public right, by solemnly assuring them,
+that no such idea was ever in contemplation for one moment; and
+that I am at a loss to discover how the rumour originated; as, so
+far from being capable of harbouring a wish to add to the
+embarrassments of an unhappy and dejected people, it would be the
+pride and glory of my heart, if I had the power to place such
+persons in situations of responsibility, as, by their talents and
+integrity, might preserve our Laws and Government and
+Constitution." </p></div>
+
+
+<p>The eccentricities of the unfortunate Emperor of Russia have come to
+even a more rapid end than I had expected. A courier has just arrived
+with the startling intelligence, that the Czar was found dead in his
+chamber. The whole transaction is for the moment covered with extreme
+obscurity; but it is to be feared that what the Frenchman, with equal
+cleverness and wickedness, called the Russian trial by Jury, has been
+acted on in this instance, and that the Russian annals have been stained
+with another Imperial catastrophe.</p>
+
+<p>How natural and magnificent are Shakspeare's reflections on the
+anxieties that beset a crown&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Oh, polished perturbation! golden care,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That keeps the ports of Slumber open wide</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To many a watchful night: O Majesty!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When thou cost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Like a rich armour worn in heat of day,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That scalds with safety."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<p>If Voltaire's definition be true, that swindling is the perfection of
+civilization, and that the more civilized, the more subtle we become,
+England may boast of a swindler that seems to have brought the art to
+its highest perfection. She is a female, not at all of the showy order,
+which beguiles so many understandings through the eyes&mdash;an insignificant
+and mean person, with an ordinary face, not at all exhibiting manners
+superior to her appearance, yet certainly of the most superb ambition in
+the art of tricking the World. Where she began her adventures first,
+remains to be developed by future biography. At length she appeared in
+the neighbourhood of Greenwich, and, representing herself there as an
+heiress, took a handsome house, and contrived, in the usual way, to make
+all the tradesmen in the neighbourhood contribute to its furnishing. By
+the simplicity and plausibility of her manner, she even obtained loans
+to the amount of some thousands, to set her household in motion, until
+her affairs were settled. An heiress must, of course, have a carriage;
+but this clever person was not content with doing things in an ordinary
+way, but set up three. While her house was being prepared,&mdash;which she
+ordered to be done by the first artists in their way, the walls being
+painted in fresco,&mdash;she drove down to Brighton in her travelling
+carriage, with four horses and two outriders. She gave an order for the
+furnishing of her house to the amount of &pound;4000, and commissioned from
+Hatchett, the celebrated coachmaker, a first-rate chariot, with all
+kinds of expensive mountings and mouldings, to be ready for the Queen's
+birthday, when she was to be introduced at court by the wife of one of
+the Secretaries of State. In the interval, she drove daily through the
+West End, dropping her cards at the houses of persons of public name.
+She thus proceeded for a while triumphantly; but having, in the
+intoxication of her success, given the names of some persons of rank as
+her relatives, inquiry was made amongst them, and the relationship being
+of course disowned, suspicion was suddenly excited. Nothing could exceed
+her indignation on the subject; but the tradesmen, thus rendered only
+more suspicious, attempted to recover their furniture. The caption was
+at last made, and bailiffs<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> were put into the house, with the
+expectation of apprehending the lady herself. However, she was adroit
+enough to discover her danger, and to her house she returned no more.
+Search was made after her, and it was said that she was discovered and
+thrown into jail. But she suddenly disappeared; and failing her own
+legacy, left to the unlucky people who had given her credit, a long
+legacy of general quarrel and mutual disappointment.</p>
+
+
+<p>When Fox was asked whether he had any faith in Political Economy, the
+doctrines of which had become fashionable in his day, from the writings
+of Turgot and the French school, he answered&mdash;"That it was too undefined
+for his comprehension; that its views were either too large, or too
+indistinct, to give his mind the feeling of certainty."</p>
+
+<p>He well might say this, when no two of the modern Political Economists
+agree, and when all the theories of the last age are laughed at by all
+the theorists of the present. In the middle of the seventeenth century
+Sir William Petty, one of the most acute, and also one of the most
+practical men of his time, pronounced that the population of England
+would take three hundred and sixty years to double&mdash;the fact being, that
+it has doubled within about a seventh part of that period. Of London he
+predicts, that its growth must finally stop in 1842; and that then its
+population must amount to half the population of England. Yet London is
+still growing, day by day, and yet its population scarcely exceeds a
+twentieth of the whole.</p>
+
+
+<p>The Emperor Paul, in the beginning of his reign, was a favourite with
+the soldiery, whom he indulged in all possible ways, giving them money,
+distributing promotion lavishly among them, and always pronouncing them
+the bulwark of his throne. But when his brain began to give way, his
+first experiments were with the soldiery, and he instantly became
+unpopular. The former dress of the Russian soldier was remarkable alike
+for its neatness and its convenience. He wore large pantaloons of red
+cloth, the ends of which were stuffed into his boots; the boots were of
+flexible leather, and an excellent and easy protection for the legs and
+feet. He wore a jacket of red and green, with a girdle round the waist;
+his head was protected by a light helmet. The whole dress thus
+consisting of two garments, light, showy, and looking the true dress for
+a soldier.</p>
+
+<p>Paul's evil genius, which induced him to change every thing, began with
+that most perilous of all things to tamper with&mdash;the army of a great
+military power. He ordered the Austrian costume to be adopted. Nothing
+could equal the general indignation. The hair must be powdered, curled,
+and pomatumed; a practice which the Russian, who washed his locks every
+day, naturally abhorred. The long tail made him the laugh of his
+countrymen. His boots, to which he had been accustomed from his infancy,
+and which form a distinctive part of the national costume, were to be
+taken off, and to be substituted by the tight German spatterdash and the
+shoe, the one pinching the leg, and the other perpetually falling off
+the foot, wherever the march happened to be in the wet. The consequence
+was, infinite discontent, and desertion to a great extent&mdash;a thing never
+heard of in the service before.</p>
+
+<p>It may be conceived with what disdain those frivolous, yet mischievous,
+innovations must have been regarded by those Russian officers who had
+known the reality of service. Suvaroff was then in Italy with his army.
+One morning a large packet was brought to him by an Imperial courier. To
+his astonishment, and the amusement of his staff, it was but models of
+tails and curls. Suvaroff gave vent to a sneer, a much more fatal thing
+than a sarcasm, in some Russian verses, amounting to&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Hair-powder is not gunpowder;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Curls are not cannon;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tails are not bayonets."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>The general's rough poetry was instantly popular; it spread through the
+army, it travelled back to Russia, it reached the Imperial ear; the
+Czar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> was stung by the burlesque, and Suvaroff was recalled.</p>
+
+<p>Few things are more remarkable, than the slowness with which common
+sense acts, even in matters which should evidently be wholly under its
+guidance. It might appear that the mere necessities of war would dictate
+the equipment of the soldier; namely, that it should be light, simple,
+and safe, as far as is possible. Yet the equipment of the European
+soldier, at the commencement of the French war, seemed to be intended
+only to give him trouble, to encumber him, and to expose his personal
+safety. The Austrian soldier's dress was an absolute toilette. The
+Prussian, even with all the intelligence of the Great Frederic to model
+it, was enough to perplex a French milliner, and to occupy the wearer
+half the day in putting it off and on. The English uniform was modelled
+on the Prussian, and our unlucky soldier was compelled to employ his
+hours in tying his queue, powdering his hair, buttoning on his
+spatterdashes, and polishing his musket-barrel. The heavy dragoons all
+wore cocked hats, of all coverings of the head the most unprotecting and
+the most inconvenient. The French light troops, too, all wore cocked
+hats. The very colour of the royal French uniform, as well as the
+Austrian, was white, of all colours the most unfitted for the rough work
+of the bivouack, and also injurious, as shewing the immediate stain of
+blood.</p>
+
+<p>It actually took twenty years to teach the general officers of the
+European armies, that men could fight without spatterdashes, that
+hair-powder was not heroism, and that long tails were only an imitation
+of the monkey; that muskets did not fire the worse for having brown
+barrels, and that the cuirass was a better defence for the body of the
+dragoon than a cloth waistcoat, however covered with embroidery. But why
+shall not improvement go a little farther? Why shall not the arm of the
+dragoon be a little protected as well as his body? A slight and simple
+covering of steel rings would effect the purpose, and it is an important
+one; for a slight wound in the arm disables him even more than a wound
+in the body, unless the latter wound should be mortal at once. But why,
+also, should not the foot soldier wear something equivalent to the
+cuirass? The weight might be made trifling, it might be carried at the
+back of his knapsack except when in actual engagement, and it would save
+thousands of lives; for the most dangerous wounds are in the front, and
+a wound in the abdomen is almost incurable. Five shillings' worth of
+tin-plate might protect the soldier for his lifetime; and there can be
+no doubt, that the consciousness of having such a protection would
+render troops more efficient. Of the bravery of the British there can be
+no doubt; but there can be just as little doubt, that every increase to
+the personal security of troops renders them calmer under fire, and of
+course fitter for obedience in the exigiencies of service. Besides, it
+is a public duty to the brave men in our service, not to expose them
+needlessly on any occasion; and they <i>are</i> exposed needlessly, when they
+are sent into the field without every protection which our skill can
+give. But are we demanding armour for the foot soldiers? No; the armour
+of the old times of Chivalry would be too heavy, and impede the activity
+of those movements, of which so much of military success depends. The
+defensive arms of the Roman soldier were simply a small light helmet, a
+light cuirass, and greaves, or boots bound with brass. Yet with these
+his average march was twenty miles a-day, carrying sixty pounds weight
+of provisions and baggage on his back. The weight of his sword, his two
+lances, and his intrenching tools and palisade, was not reckoned.</p>
+
+
+<p>Buonaparte has made a Concordat with the Pope. The laughers have
+attacked him in the following epigram:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Politique plus fin que General Eubile,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bien plus ambitieux que Louis dit le Grand.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pour &ecirc;tre Roi d'Egypte, il croit &agrave; l'Alkoran,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Pour &ecirc;tre Roi de France, il croit &agrave; l'Evangile.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Our English epitaphs are often as disgraceful to the national taste, as
+their levity is unsuitable to the place of the dead. I am not aware
+whether this epitaph, by the most amiable of poets, Cowper, has been
+preserved among his works. It is on the tomb of a Mrs Hamilton:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Pause here and think&mdash;a monitory rhyme</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Demands one moment of thy fleeting time.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Consult Life's silent clock. Thy glowing vein</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Seems it to say&mdash;'Health here has long to reign?'&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hast thou the vigour of thy youth? an eye</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">That beams delight: a heart untaught to sigh?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Yet fear. Youth ofttimes, healthful and at ease,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Anticipates a day it never sees.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And many a tomb, like Hamilton's, aloud</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Exclaims&mdash;Prepare thee for an early shroud!"</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>In the course of this year died three remarkable men, Lavater, Gilbert
+Wakefield, and Heberden, the famous physician. Perhaps no man of his day
+excited more general attention throughout Europe than John Gaspar
+Lavater; and this is the more remarkable, when we recollect that he was
+but a simple Swiss pastor at Zurich&mdash;minister of the church of St Peter.
+When about thirty years' old, his mind was first turned to the study of
+Physiognomy. He shortly after published some parts of a work on the
+subject, in which he broached a new theory; viz. that the countenance
+gave representative evidences of the powers and comparative vigour of
+the understanding. The subject of Physiognomy had been already treated
+of by the German writers; but, as Voltaire observes, the business of
+German philosophy is to make philosophy inaccessible; and their
+treatises had sunk into oblivion. Yet the science itself, if science it
+is to be called, is so natural, so universally, however involuntarily,
+practised, and frequently so useful in its practice, that its revival
+became instantly popular:&mdash;a large part of its popularity, however,
+being due to the novelty of Lavater's system, the animation of his
+language, and that enthusiastic confidence in his discovery, which is
+always amongst the most powerful means of convincing the majority of
+mankind. Something also is due to the happy idea of illustrating his
+conceptions by a great number of portraits, which added amusement to the
+general interest of the volumes. Passion possesses great influence in
+the world, and Physiognomy became the fashion. His books spread through
+every part of the Continent, and nothing can be more striking than the
+ardour with which they were received. If Switzerland is proud of his
+popularity, the mysticism of Germany was delighted with his mysticism;
+and the literary coteries of France, at whose head were all the ladies
+of the court, were his most vehement disciples. Nothing was read, for a
+considerable period, but the pages of Lavater. It has been said, that
+scarcely a domestic would be hired without a physiognomical examination,
+and reference to the pages of Lavater.</p>
+
+<p>His personal conduct sustained his public popularity; his gentle
+manners, his general benevolence, and his eloquence in the pulpit,
+endeared him to the people. He was the most popular preacher in Zurich,
+less from his abilities, than on the softness of his voice, and the
+tenderness of his manner.</p>
+
+<p>The objections occasionally started to his theories only increased his
+hold upon the national affections. For the period he was the
+physiognomical apostle of Switzerland. Some of his admirers went so far,
+as to lay his quarto on the table beside the Scriptures, and regard it
+as a species of Natural Revelation.</p>
+
+<p>Even when the novelty lost its charm, the locality preserved his
+reputation. Switzerland, in those days, was the peculiar resort of all
+the leading personages of Europe; all travellers of distinction visited
+the country, and generally made some stay in its cities; and all visited
+Lavater. What has become of his Album, I have not heard; but its
+autographs must have made it invaluable to a collector of the signatures
+of eminent names.</p>
+
+<p>But, whether tempted by vanity, or betrayed by original feebleness of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+intellect, the harmless physiognomist at length suffered himself to
+announce doctrines equally hazardous to the Religion, and the Policy, of
+the Canton. The habits of the times were latitudinarian in religion, and
+revolutionary in politics. Some unlucky opinions, uttered in the folly
+of the hour, brought Lavater under the charge of a leaning to Rome in
+the one, and to France in the other; he bore up for a while against
+both. But the invasion of Switzerland by the French armies, suddenly
+made him a vigorous denouncer of Republican ambition, and he was soon to
+be its victim. In the storming of Zurich by Moreau, he was severely
+wounded in the streets; and though he was rescued, and his wounds were
+healed, he never recovered the injury. He languished, though in full
+possession of his intellectual powers, until he died.</p>
+
+<p>What his theology was, can scarcely be defined; but if he had not
+adopted Physiognomy as the study of his life, his temperament might have
+excited him to try the effect of a new Religion. He was said to have
+believed in the continuance of the power of working miracles, and to
+have equally believed in the modern power of exorcists. Fortunately his
+talent was turned to a harmless pursuit; and he amused, without
+bewildering, the minds of men.</p>
+
+<p>The grand principle of his physiognomical system is, that human
+character is to be looked for, not as is usually supposed, in the
+movable features and lines of the face, but in its solid structure. And
+he also imagined that the degree of intellectual acuteness is to be
+ascertained by the same indications. But his theory in the former
+instance is but feebly supported by fact; for it is by the movements of
+the features that the passions are most distinctly displayed: and in the
+latter, his theory is constantly contradicted by facts, for many of the
+most powerful minds that the world has ever seen have been masked under
+heavy countenances.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the true limit of the Science is to be discovered by the
+knowledge of its use. Every man is more or less a physiognomist. It is
+of obvious importance for us to have some knowledge of the passions and
+propensities of our fellow men; for these constitute the instruments of
+human association, and form the dangers or advantages of human
+intercourse. Thus, a countenance of ill temper or of habitual guile, of
+daring violence or of brutish profligacy, warns the spectator at once.
+But the knowledge of intellectual capacity is comparatively unimportant
+to us as either a guide or a protection, and it is therefore not given,
+but left to be ascertained by its practical operation.</p>
+
+<p>Phrenology has since taken up the challenge which Physiognomy once gave
+to mankind:&mdash;equally ingenious and equally fantastic, equally offering a
+semblance of truth, and equally incapable of leading us beyond the
+simple observation which strikes the eye. A well-formed head will
+probably contain a well-formed brain; and a well-formed brain will
+probably be the fittest for the operations of the intellect. But beyond
+this, Phrenology has not gone, and probably will never go. The attempts
+to define the faculties by their position in the structure of the bone
+or the brain, have been so perpetually contradicted by fact; its
+prognostics of capacity have been so perpetually defeated; and its
+mistakes of character have been so constantly thrown into burlesque by
+the precipitancy and presumption of its advocates&mdash;that common sense has
+abandoned it altogether; it has by common consent been abandoned to
+enthusiasts; and to assert its right to the name of a Science, would now
+hazard the title of its advocate to rationality.</p>
+
+
+<p>The life of Gilbert Wakefield is one among the many instances of
+vigorous learning and strong intellect, made a source of misery to their
+possessor by a want of common prudence. His whole life might be
+characterized in three words&mdash;courage, caprice, and misfortune. After
+having attained a Cambridge fellowship, acquired distinction in
+classical criticism, and entered into the Church, he suddenly began to
+entertain notions hostile to the liturgy, and became classical tutor of
+the dissenting academy of Warrington. For ten years he laboured in this
+obscure vocation, or with private pupils, now chiefly turning his
+classical studies to the illustration of the New Testament. At the end
+of this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> period, he became classical tutor of the dissenting College in
+Hackney. But even Dissent could not tolerate his opinions; for a volume
+which he published, tending to lower the value of public worship, gave
+offence, and speedily dissolved the connexion. His classical knowledge
+was now brought into more active use, and he published Annotations on
+the Greek tragedies, and editions of some of the Roman poets.
+Unfortunately, the popular follies on the subject of the French
+Revolution tempted him to try his pen as a Pamphleteer; and a letter
+written in reply to the Bishop of Llandaff, rendered him liable to a
+prosecution: he was found guilty, and sentenced to an imprisonment of
+two years in Dorchester jail. This imprisonment was unfortunately fatal;
+for whether from his confinement, or the vexation of mind which must be
+the natural consequence, his liberation found him exhausted in strength,
+though still the same bold and indefatigable being which he had been
+through the whole course of his wayward life. Still he had many friends,
+and between the spirit of party, and the more honourable spirit of
+personal regard, the large subscription of &pound;5000 was raised for his
+family. But his career was now rapidly drawing to a close. He had been
+but a few months relieved from his prison, when his constitution sank
+under an attack of typhus, and he died in his forty-sixth year, at an
+age which in other men is scarcely more than the commencement of their
+maturity&mdash;is actually the most vigorous period of all their powers; and
+in an undecayed frame gives the securest promise of longevity. With all
+his eccentricities, and he had many, he had the reputation of being an
+amiable man.</p>
+
+
+<p>Heberden was at the head of English Medicine in his day. He was a man of
+vigorous understanding and accomplished knowledge. He began life as a
+scholar, entering Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship. Adopting
+physic as his profession, he continued in Cambridge for ten years; until
+the usual ambition of country practitioners to be known in the
+metropolis, urged him to try his fortunes in London.</p>
+
+<p>The example of this able, and ultimately successful man, is not without
+its value, as an encouragement to perseverance under the most
+discouraging obstacles, when they happen to come in the way of
+individuals of sound scholarship and substantial strength of mind.
+Heberden lingered in London without success for some years; and at
+length, conceiving that his ill-fortune was beyond remedy, had formed
+his resolution to return to the country.</p>
+
+<p>At this period some lucky chance changed his purpose. He became known;
+rapidly rose into practice, and assumed the rank due to his ability.
+Similar circumstances had occurred in the career of the celebrated
+Edmund Burke, who was at two different periods on the point of leaving
+England for America, in despair of distinction at home. The late Lord
+Eldon had even given up his chambers in London, and announced his
+intention of commencing as a country practitioner of the law; when, at
+the suggestion of a legal friend, he made the experiment of "trying
+another term." Business suddenly flowed in upon him, and the
+disheartened barrister was soon floated on to the highest dignities of
+his profession. Even the illustrious Wellington himself is said, at one
+time, to have entertained serious thoughts of directing himself to a
+civil career, and to have been prevented only by the difficulty of
+finding an immediate employment. The delay gave room for the fortunate
+change in his prospects, which soon made him the first officer in
+Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Heberden wrote a great variety of Tracts on his own science; suffered no
+improvement in medicine, or public topic connected with general health,
+to escape him; cultivated his original scholarship to the last; enjoyed
+the friendship of the scientific world throughout his career; and
+enjoyed life itself to an unusual duration, dying in his ninety-first
+year.</p>
+
+
+<p>The anxieties of Europe are, for a while, at least, at an end. The
+preliminaries of peace with France were signed on October the 1st, and
+yesterday the 9th, Lauriston, first aide-de-camp to Bonaparte, arrived
+in town. The populace were all civility to him so were the ministers.
+The French ambassador, Otto, immediately took<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> him to Downing Street,
+where he was complimented by Lord Hawkesbury. Lauriston is a general in
+the Republican service, with a handsome figure, which, covered with
+lace, and the showy decorations of his rank, quite enchanted the
+multitude of gazers.</p>
+
+<p>At the peace of 1782, the pleasantry of George Selwyn, on the arrival of
+the French ambassador, a remarkably little man, was, "That France had
+sent them the preliminaries of peace, by the preliminaries of an
+ambassador." Whatever may be the fate of the present preliminaries, the
+jest will not apply to the present envoy, who looks the soldier, and
+would evidently make a dashing hussar. His progress through the streets
+was, from the first, followed by acclamation. But at length it became a
+kind of triumph. The zeal of the rabble, (probably under good guidance,
+for the French <i>employ&eacute;s</i> comprehend those little arrangements
+perfectly,) determined on drawing the carriage. The harness was taken
+off, the horses enjoyed a sinecure, the coachman sat in uneasy idleness
+on his box, and the crowd tugged away in their best style. The
+procession slowly moved through the principal streets of the West End,
+till it reached the Foreign Office. After a pause there, for the
+delivery of his credentials, Lauriston went to the Admiralty, where St
+Vincent, the first lord, (albeit no lover of Frenchmen,) received the
+stranger with a good-humoured shake of the hand, and, on parting with
+him, made a little speech to the mob, recommending it to them "to take
+care and not overset the carriage."</p>
+
+<p>In the evening London was illuminated, and looked as brilliant as lights
+and transparencies could make it. An odd incident during the day,
+however, showed of what tetchy materials a great populace is made. Otto,
+the French resident, in preparing his house for the illumination, had
+hung in its front a characteristic motto, in coloured lamps, consisting
+of the three words&mdash;"France, Concord, England." A party of sailors, who
+had rambled through the streets to see the preparations for the night,
+could not bring their tongues to relish this juxtaposition; which they
+read as if it were, "France <i>conquered</i> England." The mob gathered, and
+were of the same opinion. Jack began to talk loud, and to speak of the
+motto as a national insult. Fortunately, however, before the matter
+could proceed to breaking windows, or perhaps worse, some of the envoy's
+servants informed their master of the equivocal nature of his motto. The
+obnoxious word was changed accordingly, and the illumination in the
+evening (which was most splendid,) displayed the
+motto&mdash;"France&mdash;Peace&mdash;England."</p>
+
+
+<p>The North, too, has not been without its festivities. Alexander of
+Russia has been crowned with all the pomp of a successor of Catherine,
+and the Lord of an Empire five thousand miles long, and touching almost
+the Tropics, and almost the Pole. Moscow, of course, was the scene. All
+that barbaric pomp and European luxury could combine, was to be seen in
+the displays of the double coronation of the Czar and Czarina.
+Alexander, disdaining the royal habit of being drawn in a carriage,
+however gilded; or remembering that he was the monarch of a nation of
+horsemen, King of the Tartar world, moved in the midst of his great
+lords and cavalry, mounted on a fine English charger, and was received
+every where with boundless acclamations.</p>
+
+<p>The memory of kings is seldom long-lived in despotic governments. But
+Paul's is already extinguished, or survives only in the rejoicing of the
+people to have got rid of him. His nature was not ungenerous, but his
+caprice had become so intolerable, that his longer life would probably
+have seen some desperate outbreak in the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>The Czar is handsome, according to Russian ideas of beauty,&mdash;tall, and
+well-proportioned. The people are delighted to find themselves under his
+authority, and the peculiar affability of his manner to the English at
+Moscow, is regarded as a pledge of the reconciliation of Russia to the
+system of our politics and our trade.</p>
+
+<p>Russia, more than any other monarchy, requires a powerful, direct, and
+vigilant administration. The enormous extent of her territory exposes
+her to perpetual abuses in her provincial governments. The barbarism of
+a vast portion of her population,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> demands the whole capacity of an
+enlightened Sovereign, to raise it in the rank of human nature.</p>
+
+<p>To this hour the question is doubtful, whether Moscow ought not to have
+continued the seat of government. It is true that then Russia would
+probably have had no Baltic fleet. But ought she ever to have had a
+Baltic fleet? Ought she to have attempted a maritime superiority, with
+sea locked up in ice for six months of the year; a territory meant for a
+wilderness, and incapable of becoming anything better, in which the
+Russian sovereigns have condemned themselves to the life of one of their
+own bears, cold, wild, and comfortless? All the stoves on earth cannot
+make a St Petersburg winter endurable by any thing but a fish or a
+marmozet; while Moscow offered a glorious climate, unlimited space for a
+capital city, a fertile country, a fine landscape, a central position
+for the head of an empire, with Europe in its front, and Asia at its
+back.</p>
+
+<p>The choice of St Petersburg has probably cramped the growth of Russian
+power. Even Poland has only given her a desert, a kingdom scantily
+cultivated, scantily peopled, discontented serfdom and a broken
+frontier. Yet all may be for the best. Moscow, as the head of the
+Empire, might have made her too powerful, and Europe might have seen a
+Russian Gengis Khan.</p>
+
+
+<p>The Town is ringing with an extraordinary feat of pedestrianism; the
+first exploit of a young Scotchman, Barclay of Ury. He had betted &pound;5000
+that he would walk ninety miles in twenty-one and a half hours, and has
+won, leaving an hour and seventeen minutes to spare.</p>
+
+<p>Feats of this order have a value, as showing the powers of the human
+frame. They would otherwise be merely vulgar gambling. But if it is of
+importance to know the extent of the mental powers, those of the body
+also have their uses; and an effeminate generation would only have to
+prepare themselves by the exercises of this young gentleman, to be able
+to dispense with post-chaises and the gout. The walker is but twenty-two
+years old; and he has finished his exploit without any injury to his
+frame, and, it may be presumed, with a considerable advantage to his
+finances. All the "Sporting world," as they are named, were on the
+ground, which was a measured mile, on the road between York and Hull;
+lamps were erected to light the principal performer during the night. A
+cottage at the road-side received him for refreshment, and change of
+dress, at intervals. A militia regiment, which happened to be on its
+march from Hull, halted and filed on either side of the road, with the
+gallantry of sportsmen, to give him free way; and the general interest
+taken in this singular performance was surprising. The only drawback was
+the evident activity of his frame, and his power of endurance; for after
+the first thirty miles the betting began to be wholly in his favour, and
+the spirit of speculation shrunk from that period, and long before the
+close no bets would be taken. From daylight, multitudes thronged to the
+course. All the carriages, of which such numbers pass along this
+communication between the two great northern towns, went to the side of
+the road; even the mails gave way. The affair seemed national, and if
+the gallant pedestrian had failed, it might have been followed by a
+general mourning in the Ridings.</p>
+
+
+<p>One of the great Histrionic Dynasty, Stephen Kemble, has lately amused
+the Town by his performance of Falstaff. He exhibited the humours of the
+jovial knight with skill enough to make the audiences laugh. But he was
+perhaps the first actor who ever played the <i>fat</i> knight to the life.
+His remarkable corpulence qualified him to play the character without
+stuffing. The good-humour of his visage was fully equalled by the
+protuberance of his stomach; and if the "totus in se teres atque
+rotundus" of Horace, is the poet's definition of a good man, the actor
+rose to the summit of human virtue. The best prologue, since the days of
+Garrick, ushered in this singular performance.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"A Falstaff here to-night, by nature made,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Lends to your favourite bard his pond'rous aid;</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">No man in buckram he, no stuffing gear!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">No feather bed, nor e'en a pillow here!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But all good honest flesh, and blood, and bone,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And weighing, more or less&mdash;some <i>thirty</i> stone.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Upon the northern coast, by chance, we caught him:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And hither, in a broad-wheel'd waggon, brought him;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For in a chaise the varlet ne'er could enter,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And no mail-coach on such a fare would venture.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Blest with unwieldiness, at least his size</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Will favour find in every critic's eyes;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And should his humour, and his mimic art,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bear due proportion to his outer part,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As once 'twas said of Macklin in the Jew,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'This is the very Falstaff Shakspeare drew.'</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To you, with diffidence, he bids me say,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Should you approve, you may command his stay,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To lie and swagger here another day.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">If not, to better men he'll leave his sack,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And go as ballast, in a collier, back."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<h3>1802.</h3>
+
+<p>This French peace will not last. The parties to this unnatural wedlock
+are beginning to grumble already; and this, too, when the bans are still
+in every body's ears. The French, however, have begun the quarrel, by
+sending out a huge fleet, with 30,000 men on board, to St Domingo. This
+our minister regards as a daring exploit, which may finish by turning on
+Jamaica. The negroes are every where in exultation; for they cannot be
+made to believe that France intends any thing but a general
+emancipation; and that her expedition, however it be apparently against
+Touissaint, is sent for a general overthrow of the whites.</p>
+
+<p>Long discussions have taken place between the two governments, all
+ending in the usual way. France protesting her honour, and England
+proclaiming her alarms; both amounting to so much paper wasted. But our
+West India squadron has been reinforced; and the First Consul has found
+employment for a daring soldiery, who cannot live in quiet; found
+offices for some hundreds of officials, the most petitioning and
+perplexing race of mankind; and found a topic for the Coffeehouses,
+which he naturally thinks much better employed in talking about St
+Domingo, than in criticising his proceedings at home.</p>
+
+<p>Another source of grumbling between these two ill-assorted parties. At
+the very Marriage feast an apple of discord has been thrown in, and that
+apple is Switzerland. France will suffer but one republic, and that must
+be the World. The presumption of a little pigeon-house of Republics
+among the Alps insults her feelings; and all must run under the wing of
+the great Republican Eagle, or be grasped by her talons. An army has
+been ordered to march to Berne. The Swiss will probably resist, but they
+will certainly be beaten. Republics are sometimes powerful in attack;
+they are always feeble in defence. They are at best but a mob; and,
+while the mob can rush on, they may trample down opposition. But a mob,
+forced to the defensive, thinks of nothing but running away. The
+strength of a monarchy alone can bind men together for an effectual
+resistance. Switzerland will get the fraternal embrace, and be as much
+fettered as St Domingo.</p>
+
+
+<p>Who are to be the heirs of General Claude Martin? The man never knew
+that he had a grandfather, and probably was as much in doubt about his
+heirs. What he was himself, nobody seems to know. But this man of
+obscurity has died worth half a million sterling! So much for India and
+her adventurers.</p>
+
+<p>When a boy, he entered into the French service. By some chance or other
+he found himself in India; there offered himself to the Nabob of
+Lucknow, disciplined his troops, rose to the rank of commandant of the
+Rajah's troops, or some similar position, and amassed the half million.
+He was a splendid distributor, however,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> and has given away by his will
+six hundred thousand rupees&mdash;a sum large enough to buy any thing in
+France but the First Consul.</p>
+
+
+<p>Francis, Duke of Bedford, has just died. The reports vary as to the
+cause. The general opinion is, that in playing rackets, or in some other
+rough exercise, he overstrained himself, and produced a return of a
+disease to which he had been for some years liable. The details of his
+death are too painful to be entered into. The first surgical assistance
+was brought down to Woburn. An operation was performed, which for some
+days gave hope, but it was too late. Mortification ensued, and he died,
+to the great regret of a large circle of personal friends; to the great
+loss of his party, which was Whig in the highest degree; and to the
+general sorrow of the country. He was a handsome man with a showy
+figure, and the manners, and, what was better, the spirit of a nobleman.
+He was magnificent in his household, and not less magnificent in his
+sense of duty as a landlord and country gentleman. He first established
+those great Agricultural Meetings by which the breed of British cattle
+was so greatly improved; Agriculture took the shape of a science, and
+the Agricultural interest, the true strength of a country, took its
+place among the pillars of the Empire.</p>
+
+<p>By a sort of fashion, the leading country gentlemen always began public
+life as Whigs. And although the Bedford family had gone through every
+form of politics, from the days of their founder, Russell, under Henry
+the VIII., and especially in the person of the Duke of Bedford's
+unpopular, but able, grandfather, the Duke espoused the party of Fox
+with the devotion of an enthusiast.</p>
+
+<p>He was thus brought into some unfortunate collisions with the bolder
+spirits and more practised talents of the Treasury Bench; and though,
+from his position in the House of Lords, secure from direct attack by
+the great leaders of Government, he was struck by many a shaft which he
+had neither the power to repel nor to return.</p>
+
+<p>An unlucky piece of hardihood, in attacking the royal grant of a pension
+of three thousand a year to the greatest writer, philosopher, and
+politician of the age, Edmund Burke, provoked a rejoinder, which must
+have put any man to the torture. Burke's pamphlet in defence of his
+pension, was much less a defence than an assault. He broke into the
+enemy's camp at once, and "swept all there with huge two-handed sway."
+He traced the history of the Bedford opulence up to its origin, which he
+loftily pronounced to be personal sycophancy and public spoil&mdash;the
+plunder of the Abbeys, obtained by subserviency to a Tyrant. The
+eloquence of this terrible castigation unhappily embalmed the scorn. And
+so long as the works of this great man are read, and they will be read
+so long as the language endures, the honours of Francis Duke of Bedford
+will go down dismantled to posterity.</p>
+
+<p>But his private character was amiable, and the closing hours of his
+career were manly. On its being announced to him that an operation was
+necessary, he asked only for "two hours delay to settle his affairs;"
+and he occupied those two hours in writing to his brothers, and to some
+friends. He then offered to submit to be bound, if the operators should
+think it necessary; but they replied, "that they relied fully on his
+Grace's firmness of mind." He bore the trial with remarkable fortitude.
+But the disorder took an unfavourable turn, and on the third day he
+expired.</p>
+
+
+<p>The retirement of Pitt from the Ministry, has given his successor,
+Addington, the honour of making the peace. But the services of the great
+Master are not eclipsed by the fortunes of the follower. Addington is
+universally regarded as the shadow of Pitt; moving only as he moves;
+existing by his existence; and exhibiting merely in outline his reality.
+Every one believes that Pitt must return to power; and those who are
+inclined to think sulkily of all ministers, look upon the whole as an
+intrigue, to save Pitt's honour to the Irish Roman Catholics, and yet
+preserve his power. Those rumours have received additional strength from
+a grand dinner given the other day in the city, on his birthday, at
+which his friends mustered in great force, and his name was toasted with
+the most lavish panegyric.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> Among the rest, a song, said to be by George
+Rose, of whose claims to the laurel no one had ever heard before&mdash;was
+received with great applause. Some of its stanzas were sufficiently
+applicable.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"No Jacobin rites in our f&ecirc;tes shall prevail,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ours the true feast of reason, the soul's social flow;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Here we cherish the friend, while the patriot we hail,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As true to his country&mdash;as stern to her foe.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Impress'd with his worth,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">We indulge in our mirth,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And bright shines the planet that ruled at his birth.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Round the orbit of Britain, oh, long may it move,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Like the satellite circling the splendours of Jove!</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"To the name of a Pitt, in the day of the past,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Her rank 'mid the nations our country may trace;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Though his statue may moulder, his memory will last,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The great and the good live again in their race;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Ere to time's distant day,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;">Our marble convey</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The fame that now blooms, and will know no decay,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Our fathers' example our breasts shall inspire</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And we'll honour the Son as they honour'd the Sire."</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<p>The public doubts of the peace are at length settled. A note has been
+sent from the Foreign Office to the Lord Mayor, announcing that the
+definitive treaty had been finally settled at Amiens, on the 27th of
+March, by the plenipotentiaries of England, France, Spain, and the
+Batavian Republic. The treaty, as it transpires, is the source of
+general cavil. It leaves to France all her conquests, while England
+restores every thing except Ceylon and Trinidad; the one a Dutch colony,
+and the other a Spanish; both powers having been our Allies at the
+commencement of the war. The Cape is to be given back to the Dutch; but
+Malta, the principal bone of contention, is to be garrisoned by a
+Neapolitan force, until a Maltese garrison can be raised, and the island
+is then to be declared independent, under the guarantee of all the great
+powers of Europe. The French government affected to display great
+reluctance to conclude even this treaty, which has thus taken six months
+of negotiation since the exchange of preliminaries. At one time, orders
+were sent for the Channel fleet to put to sea. Yet there can be no
+question that France desired this Peace, whether as a resting time for a
+fresh attack, or from the mere exhaustion of war. She had already gained
+every object that she could hope to obtain by arms in her present
+condition, and her natural policy was to secure what she had thus
+attained. The two grand prizes of her ambition, Egypt and the command of
+the Mediterranean, had been boldly aimed at, but she had lost both, and
+both were now evidently hopeless. Some of those straws, too, had been
+thrown up, which, if they show nothing else, show the direction of the
+wind; and there were evident signs in the almost royal pomp of the First
+Consul, in the appointments of officers of state for ten years, and the
+constituting the Consulate an office for life; in the preparations for
+the return of the emigrants, and in the superb receptions at the
+Tuilleries&mdash;that Bonaparte already contemplated the last days of the
+republic. To what new shape of power his ambition looks is yet only in
+conjecture. But he is ambitious, daring, and unscrupulous&mdash;the idol of
+the army, and the wonder of the people. He may shrink, like C&aelig;sar, from
+the diadem, or he may assume, like Cromwell, the power of a king,
+without the name; but the field is open before him, and France can offer
+no competition.</p>
+
+
+<p>Darwin, the author of the "Botanic Garden," has just died at the age of
+seventy-one. His death will leave a chasm, though one not incapable of
+being filled up, in our didactic poetry. His "Loves of the Plants" was a
+new<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> idea, thrown into agreeable verse; and a new idea is always
+popular. For a while his poem obtained great celebrity: but Nature alone
+is permanent; and after the first surprise wore off, the quaintness of
+his inventions, and the minute artifice of his poetic machinery,
+repelled the public taste. The Linn&aelig;an system, partly indecent, and
+partly ridiculous, was felt to be wholly unfitted for the blazonry of
+versification; and his poem, the labour of years, sank into obscurity as
+rapidly as it had risen into distinction. It is now wholly unread, and
+almost wholly forgotten; yet it contains bold passages, and exhibits
+from time to time happiness of epithet, and harmony of language. Its
+subject degrades the poem; its casual allusions constitute its merit.
+Vegetable loves must be an absurdity in any language; but Darwin's mind
+was furnished with variety of knowledge, and he lavished it on his
+subject with Oriental profusion. He had eloquence, but he wanted
+feeling; knowledge, but he wanted taste; and invention, but he wanted
+nature. The want of any one of the three would have been dangerous to
+his fame as a poet, but his deficiency in the three together left him to
+drop into remediless oblivion.</p>
+
+
+<p>A curious attempt hast just shown the popular opinion of ministerial
+honesty. The Attorney-General has prosecuted, and brought to conviction,
+a fellow in some low trade, who, hearing that Mr Addington was prime
+minister, and thinking of course that a prime minister could do all
+things, sent an actual offer of &pound;2000 to him for a place in the Customs,
+on which he happened to set his heart. Unluckily for the applicant, he
+was a century too late. However those matters might have been managed a
+hundred years ago, less tangible means than money now rule the world.
+Besides, no man who knew any thing of Addington, ever attached a
+suspicion of the kind to him. Erskine made a speech in the defence, the
+best that could be made on such a subject, but not the most flattering
+to the vanity of his client. It was that he was a blockhead, and had no
+idea of the absurdity that he was committing. Among other instances of
+his ignorance, he said, that when he saw the subpoena served upon him,
+he thought that it was the appointment to his place. But even his
+idiotism could not save him, and the affair ended in his being sentenced
+to three months' imprisonment, and &pound;100 fine.</p>
+
+
+<p>Christie, the auctioneer, the other day, gave a happy specimen of the
+eloquence of the hammer. He is at the head of his trade, and sells all
+the remarkable things. On this occasion the Pigot diamond had come into
+his hands. It is a very fine brilliant, but objected to by the
+connoisseurs as not having sufficient depth. It was valued at &pound;40,000.
+But at this sale the auctioneer could not raise its price above &pound;9500,
+or guineas. He then appealed to his audience, a crowd of the fair and
+fashionable,&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"How unfortunate," said he, "is it, for the owners of this incomparable
+production, that they should have brought it into the market in a
+country so famed for female beauty as England! Here the charms of the
+sex require no such additions; here the eyes of the ladies sparkle with
+brilliancy which outvies all the gems of the East. In other countries
+this incomparable stone would be sought as a necessary aid; here it can
+be valued only as a splendid superfluity." The room rang with applause.</p>
+
+
+<p>One of the heroes of Junius has just died; the veteran Wellbore Ellis,
+Lord Mendip. This man's whole life was spent in public employments. He
+was the son of an Irish bishop, whose brother&mdash;such were the curious
+qualities of the time&mdash;took orders in the Popish Church, followed the
+Pretender, and died a Popish bishop. Young Ellis, after an education at
+Westminster and Oxford, was brought into parliament under the Pelhams,
+who made him a lord of the Admiralty. Under the Newcastle administration
+which followed, he was appointed to the lucrative post of Irish
+vice-treasurer, which he held undisturbed through all the struggles of
+the Cabinet till the Grenville administration, when he was raised still
+higher, and became Secretary at War.</p>
+
+<p>The Grenvilles fell; the Marquis of Rockingham brought in his friends
+and Ellis was superseded in his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> Irish office by Colonel Barr&eacute;. For five
+unlucky years he continued in that Limbo of patriots, exclusion from
+place. At length, the Premiership of Lord North recalled him. He again
+obtained the Vice-treasurership, and in the final distress of that
+unpopular administration, was for a short time raised even to the
+Colonial Secretaryship. But North was driven from power, and all his
+adherents fell along with him. Rockingham, the North and Fox coalition,
+and Pitt, exhibited a succession of premierships, which ended in the
+exclusion of the whole Whig principle, in all its shapes and shades, for
+twenty years. Ellis was now growing old; he was rich; he had been a
+public man for upwards of forty years; he had been fiercely abused by
+the opposition writers while he continued in office, and fiercely
+attacked by the government writers when in opposition. He had thus his
+full share of all that public life furnishes to its subjects, and he
+seemed inclined to spend the remainder of his days in quiet. But the
+French Revolution came. Startled at the ruin with which its progress
+threatened all property, he joined that portion of the Whigs which
+allied itself with the great Minister. The Duke of Portland entered the
+cabinet, and Wellbore Ellis was raised to the peerage. There his career,
+not unworthily, closed; and his remaining years were given to private
+society, to books, of which he had a celebrated collection, and to the
+recollections of the Classics, of which he possessed an early mastery.
+He was an acute and accomplished man. The fiery indignation of Junius
+rather threw a light than inflicted an injury on his character. That
+first of political satirists spared none; and the universal nature of
+his attacks made men receive them, as they receive a heavy shower,
+falling on all alike, and drenching the whole multitude together.</p>
+
+
+<p>Bonaparte has taken the first step to a throne: he has established
+nobility. The Republic having abolished all titles, a peerage was, for a
+while, impossible. But he has formed a military Caste, which, without
+hazarding his popularity with the Parisians, increases his popularity
+with the troops, and has all the advantages of a noblesse, with all the
+dependency of its members on the head of the State. He has named this
+Institution the Legion of Honour. It is to consist of several classes,
+the first comprehending the great officers of state, generals who have
+distinguished themselves, and ancient men of science. It has sixteen
+Cohorts, with palaces allotted to them in Paris and the provinces, for
+the headquarters of the cohorts. Grants of land are also proposed for
+the support of these officers and their residences, with distributions
+and pensions for the lower ranks of the soldiery, to whom the "croix
+d'honneur" is given.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the old reign of titles, orders, crosses, and an established Class
+of society, has begun once more; a large portion of the most influential
+personages of France are thus bound to the head of the government, the
+hopes of every man, however humble in soldiership or in science, are
+pointed to the attainment of this public honour, as well as personal
+provision, and the general purchase of power is virtually declared, with
+the general consent of this versatile nation.</p>
+
+
+<p>Ten thousand pounds have just been voted to Jenner, for his discovery of
+the vaccine inoculation. The liberality of parliament was never more
+rationally employed. The history of the man, and the discovery, have
+been long before the public. But the most curious circumstance of the
+whole is, that the facts of the disease, and the remedy, should have
+remained for any one to discover in the nineteenth century. They were
+known to the peasantry of Gloucestershire probably from the first days
+of cow milking. That the most disfiguring of all diseases, in every
+country of Europe and Asia, and the most pestilential in a large portion
+of the globe, could be arrested by a disease from the udders of a cow,
+seems never to have entered into human thoughts, though the fact that
+those who had the vaccine disease never suffered from the smallpox, was
+known to the country physicians.</p>
+
+<p>But Jenner's chief merit was his fortunate conjecture, that the
+infection might be propagated from one human subject to another. This
+was the greatest medical discovery since that of the Circulation of the
+Blood.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="ITS_ALL_FOR_THE_BEST" id="ITS_ALL_FOR_THE_BEST"></a>IT'S ALL FOR THE BEST.</h2>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Chapter I.</span></h4>
+
+
+<p>"It's all for the best, you may depend upon it," said Frank Trevelyan,
+addressing his companion, Vernon Wycherley, as those two young men were
+pursuing a beaten track across one of those wild wastes that form so
+prevalent a feature in most of the mining districts of Cornwall.</p>
+
+<p>"All for the best, indeed?" repeated Vernon interrogatively. "Can it be
+all for the best to have a whole batch of poems I've been racking my
+brains about for the last year and a half&mdash;and which even you yourself,
+hard as you are to please, admitted were worthy of praise&mdash;to have all
+these, not only rejected by every publisher I offered them to, but to be
+actually returned with a recommendation to give up all idea of ever
+offering them to public notice?"</p>
+
+<p>"But which convinces me still more that matters have turned out for the
+best; and that if your poetical effusions had been published, they would
+have brought you far more ridicule than praise," thought Frank. But at
+the same time, not wishing to hurt his companion's feelings, he
+said&mdash;"Yet, probably, when you have again revised the manuscripts, and
+bestowed some of your masterly finishing touches here and there, you
+will, after all, congratulate yourself upon the source of your present
+disappointment."</p>
+
+<p>"That's an impossibility&mdash;an utter impossibility," returned Vernon
+Wycherley&mdash;"for were I to look through them a hundred times, I should
+never alter a word.&mdash;&mdash;But stay&mdash;Look! look!&mdash;what is that I see? Two
+ladies on horseback, I declare! who could have anticipated meeting with
+such an occurrence in so outlandish a place?"</p>
+
+<p>The place was by no means undeserving of the remark, being devoid of any
+kind of vegetation, except some straggling heath and a few patches of
+stunted gorse, which here and there sprung up amidst the rugged
+spar-stones that, intermixed with rude crags of granite, were thickly
+scattered over this wide waste, which, throughout its vast extent,
+afforded as perfect a picture of sterility as can be well conceived.
+With this brief outline of the scenery, we must next attempt to describe
+the parties who were wandering over it.</p>
+
+<p>Frank Trevelyan was about two-and-twenty. In figure he was rather below
+the middle height, and being slightly made and with the proportions of a
+tall man, he looked much less than he actually was. His features were
+not handsome, but he possessed what in a man is far more important&mdash;a
+highly intelligent and intellectual cast of countenance. He wore his
+hair, which was light and curly, cut very close, and incipient whiskers
+adorned the outline of his lower jaw. He was dressed in a gray tweed
+wrapper, with trousers of the Brougham pattern, and he sported a
+hat&mdash;black, but whether beaver or gossamer we are uninformed&mdash;high in
+the crown, but very narrow in the brim, bearing altogether no very
+remote resemblance to an inverted flower-pot.</p>
+
+<p>His companion was about the same age, but the latter had made so much
+better use of his growing years, as to have shot up to something more
+than six feet in height; yet his figure, though slender, exhibited no
+appearance of weakness. His features were passably good&mdash;the nose
+perhaps rather too projecting; but his teeth were unexceptionable. He
+had a clear complexion, with a good fresh colour in his cheeks, which
+were still covered with the down of youth, but without imparting the
+slightest appearance of effeminacy. A foraging-cap of gray woven
+horse-hair, with a preposterous shade projecting out in front, covered
+his head; a loose blouse enveloped the upper, whilst checkered
+inexpressibles enclosed the lower man. Unlike his companion, he wore his
+hair, which was rather dark, very long, both at the sides and behind;
+and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> rudiments of mustaches were perceptible upon his upper lip; but
+whether they were to be allowed to attain a more luxuriant maturity, or
+their brief existence was to be prematurely cut short by the destroying
+razor, was, at the time we speak of, involved in doubt, that being a
+subject which, though it engrossed much of his thoughts, the proprietor
+had hitherto been unable to make up his mind upon. Each of our two
+heroes bore a light kind of knapsack upon his back; their general
+appearance marked them to be gentlemen, whilst their attire and
+accoutrements denoted they were pursuing a pedestrian tour.</p>
+
+<p>But softly! the ladies approach. See how elegantly they canter their
+steeds over the only smooth piece of turf our travellers had met with
+throughout the whole extent of gloomy commons they had that morning
+traversed.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, that's right! Pull up in time, my lovely ones, ere you get amongst
+the rascally mole-hills; and then you'll not only ride the safer, but
+afford us at the same time a chance of obtaining a view of your pretty
+faces," thought friend Frank; whilst similar thoughts, although perhaps
+arranged in more elegant terms, were passing through the mind of his
+companion. But if the curiosity of the two pedestrians was great, their
+admiration proved far greater when the objects which excited those
+feelings, on a nearer approach, proved to be two as lovely young women
+as the most fastidious admirer of beauty could wish to gaze upon. One of
+them, indeed, displayed such matchless charms to the youthful poet's
+eyes, as at the very first glance to form to his excited fancy the
+beau-ideal of perfect loveliness.</p>
+
+<p>"What an angel!" he mentally exclaimed; "upon such a form I could
+continue to gaze enraptured for"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>How long he never said, for ere he had time to give utterance to the
+thought, he stumbled over one of the surrounding mole-hills, and
+staggering forward several paces with extended arms, he ultimately fell
+prostrate on the ground, close by the side of the innocent yet moving
+cause of his misadventure, and with such force, as to bury the whole of
+his countenance in the soft heavings of a similar hillock to the one he
+had so inadvertently tripped over.</p>
+
+<p>Luckily for him, the place his physiognomy alighted upon was of so soft
+and yielding a nature, that though he stamped a perfect model of his
+features in the clay, the features themselves were unimpaired, otherwise
+than by the earthy colouring communicated to them by so pressing a
+contact, which perfectly satisfied the fair equestrians (who had the
+kindness to pull up and express their hopes that he was not seriously
+hurt) that the actual damage sustained was of a very superficial nature.</p>
+
+<p>"And I suppose you intend to say that this is all for the best?"
+observed Vernon in rather a rueful tone, as, the ladies having ridden
+on, he was attempting to rub off the dirt from his face with his pocket
+handkerchief&mdash;the first wipe of which was sufficient to show him how
+much the effects of his tumble had changed the natural hue of his
+complexion.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure I do," answered Frank "and any man less unreasonable than
+yourself would say so too."</p>
+
+<p>"What! say it was all for the best for him, like an awkward booby, to
+fall sprawling in the dirt, thereby making himself a laughing-stock to
+that beautiful, angelic creature? Oh! only look, my dear Frank, only
+look&mdash;see her&mdash;see both of them! Why, as I live, they are almost ready
+to fall off the very backs of their horses from the laughter my
+blundering awkwardness has excited. Oh, it's really dreadful&mdash;I must
+turn my head another way. I can bear the sight of it no longer!"</p>
+
+<p>"But only think how much worse it would have been if your phiz, instead
+of the soft earth, had encountered one of the hard spar-stones that are
+so plentifully strewed about here?"</p>
+
+<p>"And supposing it had&mdash;wouldn't it have been better, at the cost of
+little pain and suffering, to have excited the compassion, instead of
+the laughter of that heavenly creature?"</p>
+
+<p>"But hardly at the sacrifice of your nose, I should say," rejoined
+Frank, "which, from the deep impression it has made in the clay,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> must
+have been smashed flat as a pancake had it battled out the matter with
+the stones."</p>
+
+<p>The young poet had a great regard for his nose, and his companion's
+remarks upon the subject were so palpable, that he was not only silenced
+but convinced.</p>
+
+<p>"I say here, my man. Here, Jan, Jan, I say," bawled out our friend
+Frank, to what he was pleased to style a straw-yard savage in the
+disguise of a gentleman's servant on horseback, who, whilst engaged in
+the pleasant employment of munching an apple, had allowed the ladies he
+was attending to canter off some distance a-head, and was then in the
+act of passing, at a very moderate pace, close by our two heroes, but
+pulled up his nag at the summons, and, touching his hat, replied, in the
+singing accent of the western Cornishmen&mdash;" Your sarvant, gen'lmen both;
+what 'ud ye plaze to have, sir?&mdash;though my name b'aint Jan, plaze yer
+honours."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it then?&mdash;Bill, Dick, Tom, Harry, Ben, Jim, Nic, Mike, Mathey,
+or Peter?"</p>
+
+<p>"Neither, maester, plaze your honour, sir," said the man, with a grin
+that denoted he was entering into the humour of the thing, and who, as
+well as Frank, was a bit of a wag in his way. "Timothy's my name, at
+your sarvice, gen'lmen&mdash;what 'ud your honours plaze to have of I?"</p>
+
+<p>"What I would have, Timothy," answered Frank, "is for you to tell me who
+those two young ladies are that you are in attendance upon?"</p>
+
+<p>"Maester's two dafters," replied Timothy.</p>
+
+<p>"And who's maester?" asked Frank.</p>
+
+<p>"The squire, to be sure," answered his man.</p>
+
+<p>"And what's squire's name?" inquired Frank.</p>
+
+<p>"Potts&mdash;Squire Potts," replied Timothy&mdash;at which announcement Vernon
+Wycherley lifted up both eyes and hands in unfeigned amazement.</p>
+
+<p>"And the young ladies?" resumed the questioner.</p>
+
+<p>"Lor, sir! I ha'n't a got time to bide and tell'ee no more. See they be
+'most out of sight a'ready, and I shall have to ride a brave pace to
+catch mun again&mdash;and most dead wi' thest, too, I be's a'ready."</p>
+
+<p>Frank, who plainly saw Timothy's drift, dived his hand into the deep
+recesses of his trousers' pockets.&mdash;Timothy, who witnessed the act, not
+altogether an unexpected one, drew nearer and nearer, and when close
+alongside of Frank, cramming the remainder of the apple into his mouth,
+he dropped the hand that had conveyed it there, as if by the merest
+accident in the world, within easy reach of the interrogator's, who,
+slipping into it a coin of sufficient importance, small as it was, to
+raise a grin of delight in the groom's countenance, again asked him the
+names of the two young ladies.</p>
+
+<p>"Heerken, and I'll tell'ee," he answered. "She with the light hair and
+eyes, she's Miss Bessie; and she with the dark hair and eyes, she's
+called Miss Molly&mdash;that's she's name." And having so said, Timothy rode
+off at a rapid pace.</p>
+
+<p>"Can it be possible!" exclaimed Vernon Wycherley&mdash;"can it be possible
+that so lovely a being&mdash;one who seems too beautiful to tread the
+earth"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"And so rides on horseback over it; is that what you mean?" interrupted
+Frank.</p>
+
+<p>"No, you know very well it is not what I mean," answered Vernon
+petulantly. "My wonder is, how one so elegant could be called by such a
+name as that knave uttered."</p>
+
+<p>"What! Molly Potts, eh? that I believe was the name he mentioned?"
+interposed Frank.</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw, nonsense!" retorted his companion; "it can't be her name. The
+idea's too preposterous to be true. That insolent clown has dared to try
+to hoax us; for which I promise him, if I were his master, I'd break
+every bone in his good-for-nothing body. Molly Potts! It never can be
+so. The thing's quite out of the question&mdash;utterly impossible!"</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible or not, I don't see that it's likely to make much difference
+either to you or me," observed Frank; "for the chances are, we never set
+eyes upon either of them again."</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said Vernon, "I almost wish that I, at least, had never set<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+eyes upon one of them at all. To know that such an angel moves about on
+earth, and to think that I may never see her more, must ever form a
+source of deep regret; and yet it seems strange&mdash;very strange&mdash;that
+I&mdash;I&mdash;who have ever looked upon the fairest of the sex unmoved, should
+be so struck as I was here by a mere glance."</p>
+
+<p>"A very hard hit, certainly," said Frank: "I never saw a fellow more
+completely floored."</p>
+
+<p>"Better book that to tell again," retorted vernon; "it really is so
+seldom you do say a witty thing, that it's a pity it should be lost upon
+these dull moors."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, unless we intend to follow the fate of my wit," resumed Frank,
+"we must step out a little faster to get out of them; which we sha'n't
+do under a couple of miles' walk more, I promise you."</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Chapter II.</span></h4>
+
+<p>Frank Trevelyan's statement proved tolerably correct as to distance, for
+little more than two miles brought our travellers clear of the rugged
+moorlands; when, after ascending the brow of a steep hill, a sight broke
+suddenly upon them, which, though unlike the scenery they had previously
+passed over, presented if possible a more dreary picture. As far as the
+eye could reach, nothing could be discerned but one vast wilderness of
+undulating sandy hillocks, totally devoid of vegetation, except a kind
+of coarse rush, which, in spite of the shifting nature of the soil, had
+here and there contrived to spring up and take root; and now to add to
+this cheerless aspect, the sky, which hitherto had been bright and
+clear, began to lower with those dark threatening clouds which form the
+sure forerunner of a heavy squall of wind and rain&mdash;no pleasant thing
+for two lightly-clad pedestrians to be overtaken with in a bleak open
+country on a chill November day. Even Frank, who, with his merry chat,
+had latterly kept his companion's spirits alive, the latter of whom had
+begun to complain both of hunger and fatigue&mdash;even Frank felt
+disconcerted at the desolate prospect before him, as well as
+disappointed at not discovering the mining village, containing the snug
+little public-house, which he had been informed he should fall in with
+at the termination of the stony moorlands. Resolved however to put the
+best face he could upon the matter, our little hero assured his tall
+comrade that another half hour would be sure to bring them to the
+desired spot, where he was certain they would obtain both rest and
+refreshment&mdash;two things they much needed&mdash;having walked on unceasingly
+for several hours since their early morning's meal without having eaten
+or drunk any thing, and the sun by this time had begun to sink low in
+the horizon. Scarcely, however, had they crossed the narrow valley that
+divided these two barren wastes from each other, and had commenced
+ascending the steep beaten path that passed through the sandy desert,
+than the storm, which had been previously brewing, burst forth with
+relentless fury, the rain descending in torrents, accompanied by fierce
+gusts of wind, that, whirling aloft the loose drifting sands, swept them
+onwards in dense clouds before the gale, forming an overpowering and
+blinding deluge that perplexed our tourists exceedingly.</p>
+
+<p>"This is all for the best, I suppose," suggested Vernon Wycherley, who,
+uncomfortable as he was, couldn't help enjoying the luxury of having a
+hit at his fellow-traveller, and thus proving himself for once at any
+rate to have been on the right side of the argument.</p>
+
+<p>"All for the best, did you say?" replied Frank. "All for the best?&mdash;ay,
+to be sure it is&mdash;though we ourselves may perhaps be too short-sighted
+to see the drift of it."</p>
+
+<p>"See the drift!" interposed Vernon&mdash;"See the drift! Why, we not only see
+it, but feel it. The benefit to be derived from it is what I want you to
+convince me of, Master Frank."</p>
+
+<p>The truth of Vernon's observation was too palpable to be denied; for
+both he and his companion were half-choked and nearly blinded by the
+clouds of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> sand that, in the course they were pursuing, blew directly in
+their faces, and which even the rain seemed to have no effect in
+allaying; till as last the peppering became so severe, that our
+travellers were actually compelled to turn their backs upon the enemy.
+Hardly, however, had they done this, ere Frank joyfully exclaimed&mdash;"It
+<i>is</i> all for the best after all, and that I'll soon convince you of,
+Master Vernon. Cast your piercing peepers through the thick of it, and
+you'll see the very place we want to find, which, if the storm hadn't
+compelled us to face to the right about, we should have passed by
+without discovering, concealed as it is in the narrow gorge we have just
+crossed. So cheer up, I say, old fellow, and let us both put our best
+foot foremost, and see how soon we can get there."</p>
+
+<p>Vernon required no further persuasion, and the desired house of
+entertainment was soon reached. Here our wet and weary travellers had
+the good fortune to meet with that comfort of all comforts to persons so
+situated&mdash;a blazing kitchen-fire, which afforded them an opportunity of
+drying their wet clothes, and at the same time to enjoy the sight of the
+cookery of some tempting rashers and eggs, which, with the unequalled
+accompaniment of fried potatoes, was soon after duly set out for them in
+the sole parlour the house afforded, where they found a good fire had
+been prepared for their reception.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you like a bottle of Guinness's porter with your dinners,
+gen'lmen?" asked a very pretty and tidily dressed young woman, who
+waited upon them.</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure we would, my pretty Mary," replied Mr Vernon Wycherley, "and
+thank you for the hint into the bargain; I'm sure I should never have
+dreamt of meeting with Dublin stout amidst the wilds of Cornwall."</p>
+
+<p>"Us do always kip it," observed Mary.</p>
+
+<p>"Then a bottle of it, if you please, my pretty girl," resumed the poet.
+"Ay, that's right, out with the cork&mdash;never mind the froth, Mary&mdash;never
+mind the froth."</p>
+
+<p>"It is indeed prime stuff!" he added, replacing his empty glass upon the
+table; "and upon my life, Frank, this is a perfect feast; and never did
+I enjoy one more. Things really have turned out a great deal better than
+I expected."</p>
+
+<p>"Or, in other words, have turned out all for the best," observed Frank,
+looking up for a moment from his plate, the contents of which had
+previously absorbed his whole attention; and elevating his glass as a
+signal for Mary to fill it with the tempting beverage, which she, well
+understanding, instantly obeyed; and having drained every drop of it, he
+resumed&mdash;"So you see, Master Vernon, you stand convicted by your own
+confession, that your former doubts and misgivings were without
+foundation; added to which, you can't help agreeing with me, that our
+present gratification is still further enhanced by the few trivial
+difficulties we just before met with."</p>
+
+<p>Vernon was not inclined to concede to all his companion had just said,
+and, in fact, was mentally arranging the proper language in which to
+express his dissent, when a fresh arrival of piping-hot rashers turned
+the current of his thoughts towards the eggs and bacon, about which,
+instead of saying any thing, he quietly helped himself to, and then
+handed over the dish to his friend.</p>
+
+
+<p>"I feel rather tired with my walk to-day," observed Mr Vernon Wycherley,
+who, having at last eaten to his heart's content, had pressed an extra
+chair into his service, for the purpose of resting his long and wearied
+legs thereupon. "Every thing here," he continued, glancing his eye
+around the tidily furnished little room&mdash;"every thing here looks clean
+and comfortable. I wonder if we could get accommodated with beds,
+instead of having to tramp it three miles further over the sandbanks in
+this uncertain weather, in order to reach our original destination at
+the next village?"</p>
+
+<p>"I wish we could, with all my heart," answered Frank; "and here comes
+Mary with some more stout, who can tell us all about it." And so the
+handmaiden was questioned accordingly, who replied, in a tone of evident
+disappointment, "Lar bless ee, sir, there b'aint a bed to be had in the
+whole place; fay there b'aint, I can assure ee not, if ye'd offer pounds
+o' gold for 'un; for ever since Wheal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> Costly, just handy by here, has
+turned out so rich, there's no quarters to be had for the sight of folks
+that be employed about her. There's only seven beds in all this here
+housen; and, besides the family, there be no less than sex-and-thirty
+miners a quartering here; they takes sex out o' the seven beds, and
+mistus and I and all the childer do fill the t'othern all night, and
+when us do turn out, then maister and his comarade do turn in&mdash;and 'tis
+the same all through town<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a>&mdash;an' by ma fath an' troth, I zem there
+b'aint, at this very moment, a bed without a pair in 'un for miles
+round."</p>
+
+<p>"But how do the folks here contrive to pig it away together six in a
+bed?" inquired Mr Vernon Wycherley. "Your beds must be very large,
+otherwise I should fancy such close stowage to be hardly possible."</p>
+
+<p>"O na, sir, you don't onderstand," replied the maid, hardly able to
+restrain herself from laughing outright at the stranger's gross
+ignorance of mining habits; "not pair<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> o' six all to bed together to
+one time; you da see miners do work to bal<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a> eight hours to a spell,
+and has sexteen to stay 'bove ground; so one and his comarade sleeps
+their first eight hours 'bove ground, and then turns out for the next
+pair; and so they goes on, one pair in and t'other pair out, so that
+between sex on 'um, the bed's never to say quite empty."</p>
+
+<p>"And can never, of course, require a warming-pan," remarked Frank.</p>
+
+<p>"Lar! tha b'est a queer little chap," thought Mary; but being too polite
+to say as much, she merely smiled pleasantly at the remark, as she
+tripped out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, as we must toddle further, it's of little use to put so grave a
+face upon it, old fellow," observed Frank to his poetical friend, who
+was indulging in a reverie, with his eyes fixed in vacancy towards the
+burning embers in the grate.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh! what?" demanded Vernon, with the usual start of an absent literary
+man, whose attention is suddenly awakened. Frank repeated his previous
+remark.</p>
+
+<p>"My thoughts were far, far away from hence," said Mr Vernon Wycherley;
+"the subject of them was my comedy, which, as you know, I intend to
+offer for the prize at the Haymarket."</p>
+
+<p>"Your comedy be hanged!" interrupted Frank.</p>
+
+<p>"I fear that even a direr fate than that awaits it," resumed its author.
+"Oh! if I had but seen <i>her</i> before I arranged my female
+characters&mdash;have carried her beauteous image in my mind, as now I
+mentally behold her"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What! Molly Potts?" interposed Mr Frank Trevelyan, with a look of arch
+innocence&mdash;such a funny look it was, as no man living but Frank himself
+could possibly have given.</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw," said Vernon impatiently, "how can you find the heart to mention
+her name, if such indeed it be, in that disagreeable tone and manner? It
+is enough to drive away every poetic idea connected with her. If you can
+only mention her name in that cold tone of contempt, I'd thank you to
+hold your tongue about her altogether."</p>
+
+<p>With this remark, the poet took a manuscript book from a pocket in his
+blouse, and with contracted brow, he made an entry there in pencil of
+some happy thought the moment had just then suggested, which occupying
+some minutes, his companion in the interval walked to the window to
+examine into the appearance of the weather, and perceiving that the rain
+had ceased, and one bright star already twinkled in the sky, he
+suggested the propriety of preparing for their immediate departure, in
+order that they might get over as much of their ground as they possibly
+could before dark.</p>
+
+<p>Having been directed to the path they were to pursue, which was a
+different one from that they had gone over when overtaken by the storm,
+though apparently leading in the same direction, our travellers again
+resumed their route. There was still good light when they started, and
+as long as it continued&mdash;but which was a very short<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> time&mdash;the novelty
+of the surrounding desert of sand imparted some degree of interest to
+the scene; but, in proportion as the darkness closed in, the spirits of
+the pedestrians began to flag. Still, however, Frank strove to cheer up
+his companion, who was by far the most weary and dispirited of the two,
+and, as a never-failing remedy, began to talk to him about his intended
+comedy&mdash;its plot, and some of the most striking scenes and characters.
+The result was just as he had anticipated, and its author, who just
+before had dragged himself along in moody silence, or only replied in
+listless monosyllables, began to chat away upon the much-loved topic in
+the most animated manner possible; and so much were both engrossed with
+the subject, as not to perceive that, whilst traversing one of those
+level pieces of turf that few and far between formed a kind of tiny
+oasis in this desert, they had altogether missed the footpath.</p>
+
+<p>Just at this unfortunate crisis it had become exceedingly dark, and the
+heavy clouds fast gathering overhead promised another shower; which
+promise was fulfilled even more speedily than they anticipated, and down
+came the rain pouring away in hissing torrents upon our pedestrians,
+who, unable to regain the lost footpath, strolled on for some time
+without the remotest notion of the direction they ought to take. They
+were not, however, very long in finding that they had again gotten
+amongst the loose sandbanks, which, being dispersed around in steep
+undulating hillocks, were exceedingly fatiguing to traverse even by
+daylight; it is needless, then, to say how much this difficulty was
+increased when the traveller was involved in darkness, and at the same
+time ignorant of the direction he ought to pursue. Nor was this the
+worst evil to which our two wanderers were exposed. A considerable
+number of mines had been opened in these wastes, and though the working
+of them had been abandoned for several years, yet the shafts were still
+open, many of them wholly unprotected either by rail or embankment, and
+the aperture being even with the surface, and not wider than the mouth
+of an ordinary-sized well, no one could possibly discern his danger in a
+night so dark as it then was. A more fatal snare for entrapping a
+benighted traveller could scarcely have been devised. But neither Vernon
+nor Frank had the remotest suspicion of this danger; or, in fact, any
+fears beyond the dread of spending the night in this howling wilderness.</p>
+
+<p>At last, to their great relief, the rain subsided, and the clouds
+breaking away disclosed the great bear and polar star, which afforded
+them an unerring point to steer by, and raised strong hopes that if the
+sky remained clear, and their legs would only hold out long enough
+against the excessive fatigue of scrambling over the steep hillocks,
+they might, by pursuing a perfectly straight course, at last get clear
+of this desert spot, and reach a better kind of country, where they
+might meet with some habitation or other that would at least afford them
+rest and shelter until daybreak.</p>
+
+<p>Now, when matters have become very bad, any change for the better,
+however slight it be, imparts some cheering influence; and the relief
+our drenched pedestrians felt from the mere ceasing of the rain, and
+exchanging the dull lowering sky for the clear dark-blue starlight,
+proved enough to renovate their drooping hearts, and to excite them to
+make the best use they could of their limbs; so that by persevering they
+at last reached a part of the waste where the travelling became less
+irksome, the drifting sand having, in this particular part, formed
+itself into larger hills, which, in course of time, had become coated
+with short grass, and thus afforded very pleasant ground to walk over.
+But this relief from fatigue was attended with increased peril to the
+erring wanderers, who were now in the very midst of abandoned mines,
+whose shafts yawned around them in every direction, many of which they
+passed almost within a hair's-breadth of, unaware of the dangers that
+thus lay in their path, and only congratulating themselves on the
+improved state of the ground they had to walk over.</p>
+
+<p>Now Vernon Wycherley, who had been for some short time turning the
+matter over in his mind, began to fancy he had found a poser for his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+fellow-traveller, to whom he remarked, that however fortunate they might
+consider themselves when they got out of their present difficulties,
+there could be no possible advantage whatever in their having gotten
+into them.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't agree with you even there," said Frank; "one advantage there
+will be on the score of experience, as it cannot fail to furnish us with
+an accurate knowledge of what a person's sensations are when he loses
+his way in a wilderness of sandbanks in a dark and stormy night in
+November."</p>
+
+<p>"And is that all the advantage you can point out?" interposed Mr Vernon
+Wycherley.</p>
+
+<p>"All? No, not one-half," resumed Frank. "Will it not supply both of us
+with everlasting materials for spinning yarns to match other travellers'
+tales, as well as furnish you with an endless topic for your poetic and
+dramatic pen? And besides, I've no doubt there are lots of other
+advantages we shall eventually derive benefit from, though they may for
+ever remain hidden amongst the many mysteries that man is never designed
+to know."</p>
+
+<p>"You really are the most extraordinary fellow I ever met with," rejoined
+Vernon, "striving, as you ever do, to cook up good of some kind or other
+out of the most evil materials; and every misfortune, by some wonderful
+philosophy hatched up by your ingenious brain, you pretend to convert
+into a benefit. Why, old fellow, Mansel of Trinity actually told
+me&mdash;mind I've only his word for it, perhaps not the best authority in
+the world either&mdash;but he positively assured me, that you tried to
+convince him that your being taken ill on the third day of your
+examination, which was thus cut short in the middle, and which caused
+you to rank far lower than you otherwise would have done amongst the
+wranglers, was the most fortunate event that possibly could have
+happened to you."</p>
+
+<p>"And that is my firm conviction still," said Frank, with the utmost
+coolness.</p>
+
+<p>"What!" exclaimed Vernon in amazement, "you surely cannot be in earnest
+in what you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Indeed I am," resumed Frank; "for, had I taken higher honours my dear
+old governor would never have rested satisfied unless I had devoted
+myself either to study of the law or politics, both of which I hate,
+instead of permitting me, at some future time, to become a quiet country
+parson.&mdash;But what extraordinary light is that?" he exclaimed, on
+perceiving a narrow stream of fire, apparently at no great distance,
+shoot up above the brow of a low hill just before them?"</p>
+
+<p>"A singular kind of meteor, certainly," observed the poet. "I never saw
+one like it before."</p>
+
+<p>"Very like a sky-rocket; wasn't it?" observed Frank; "and a sky-rocket
+I've no doubt it was; and as this happens to be the night of the 5th of
+November, I dare say it proceeds from the very village to which we are
+bound&mdash;an important place too, it should seem, from sporting
+sky-rockets. Ah! there goes another. Huzza! we shall soon be amongst
+them.&mdash;Oh! merciful Heaven!" he exclaimed, as his companion suddenly
+vanished from his sight, having stepped inadvertently into the mouth of
+one of those dangerous shafts we have before alluded to. A heavy sound
+denoted the fearful depth to which he had been precipitated, which was
+shortly followed by a loud, hollow crash, caused by a fall of some
+fragments of detached earth, which, from the great depth it had to
+descend, occupied several seconds ere it reached the bottom of this deep
+abyss.</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Chapter III.</span></h4>
+
+<p>Frank Trevelyan, almost petrified with horror at the dreadful
+catastrophe, which there was just then sufficient light to enable him to
+discern the nature of, remained for some moments riveted to the spot
+from whence he had witnessed its occurrence; but soon partially
+recovering his bewildered faculties, he fell upon his hands and knees,
+and approaching the mouth of the shaft, called out, in a tone of
+agonizing anxiety to his companion, but with scarcely a hope of being
+responded to, when a faint voice, though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> from an awful depth, assured
+him he was yet alive; but, it was to be feared, dreadfully injured; and,
+in plain truth, he was in a situation of even greater danger than his
+fellow-traveller was then aware of. Poor Vernon Wycherley had fallen
+upwards of sixty feet perpendicularly, and had alighted on a projection
+of the ground, occasioned by a drift that had been made in the workings,
+which alone prevented him from being hurled to the bottom of the pit,
+which was of vast depth, though partially filled with water. As it was,
+his situation was so perilous, that it seemed only to add to the agony
+of impending death, with a very remote prospect of deliverance. Every
+thing depended upon his being able to secure himself upon the point of
+ground where he then rested; and this being loosened by the force with
+which he had fallen upon it, was gradually crumbling from beneath him,
+every particle of which, as it gave way, splashing in the water at the
+bottom of the shaft produced a deafening crash, which sound rendered him
+fearfully conscious of the probability of the whole mass, upon which his
+sole chance for safety depended, sinking under him, before the necessary
+assistance could arrive. This it soon did to such a degree, that, in
+spite of all his efforts, he gradually sank lower and lower, until,
+unable longer to retain a footing, his legs were overhanging the awful
+gulf, and he was rapidly sliding off, when, by a desperate effort, he
+threw up his feet, so that they reached the opposite side of the shaft,
+whilst his body still remained on the projecting drift, against which he
+firmly planted his back, and with his feet on the opposite side, he was
+thus enabled to gain a stationary position; yet, even then, the soil
+continually crumbling away, rendered it doubtful how long he might be
+able to retain it.</p>
+
+<p>Frank Trevelyan was, however, as we before mentioned, unaware of the
+full extent of his friend's peril, and only dreading the effects of what
+had already occurred, he no sooner heard the welcome sound of his voice,
+than, bidding him keep up a good heart, for that he plainly heard the
+voices of a number of persons at no great distance, from some of whom he
+should be able to procure all the aid he required. Having so said, he
+started off at speed towards the spot from whence he could still hear
+the humming noise of many voices, indicating an assemblage of a large
+company of persons no great way off&mdash;and so towards this spot he ran at
+a rapid pace, regardless of the risk he incurred in thus racing along,
+as it were blindfold, in so dangerous a locality. But the fact is, a
+thought of his own personal safety never once entered his head: Vernon's
+accident, and its probable consequences, engrossed his every thought.
+Another rocket served to show him he was taking the right direction; and
+at so rapid a pace did he proceed, that the enlivening sounds of voices
+became more and more distinct, when, topping the brow of the hill, a
+blue light, most opportunely lighted up, disclosed to him at a very
+short distance on the opposite side of the valley, a substantial
+gentleman's house, in front of which a motley and mixed medley of some
+couple of hundred people or more&mdash;some of them gentlemen, but the
+majority consisting of miners and agricultural labourers&mdash;were
+assembled, either as actors, assistants, or lookers-on, at a display of
+various kinds of fire-works that was then going forward.</p>
+
+<p>A sight so welcome to our little hero's hopes imparted fresh vigour to
+his limbs; and he darted down the steep declivity at the imminent danger
+of his neck, but happily reached the bottom in safety, just as the light
+which had aided him in his descent expired, which then made every thing
+appear even darker than before. Consequently, Frank, not espying the
+brook that intervened betwixt himself and the object he was striving to
+reach, tumbled over head and ears into one of its deepest pools; but
+being a swimmer, and the stream but narrow though the pool was deep, he
+soon attained the summit of the opposite bank; when a hedge, almost
+close at hand, alone seemed to separate him from the people whose
+assistance he was so anxious to secure. The hedge was easily clambered
+over, though an impediment he had not anticipated awaited him on the
+other side,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> in the form of a small fishpond, into which he bundled, and
+so got a second ducking. But as this pond, or rather that portion of it
+into which he had fallen, was not deep, he soon splashed across it, to
+the amazement of the assembled party who witnessed the feat, which a
+fresh blue-light, just then ignited, afforded them ample means of
+doing&mdash;the heavy souse he had made in tumbling in, and the splutter he
+made in floundering out again, having already attracted their attention
+to the spot&mdash;which, as he seemed to have selected the very widest part
+of the whole pool, was the very last of all others any one could have
+suspected an entry to have been made on the premises.</p>
+
+<p>Unconscious of the surprise he had thus excited, Frank Trevelyan rushed
+forward into the midst of the assembled group, and seizing hold upon a
+stout little old gentleman who seemed to be the leading man of the
+party, endeavoured, as well as his exhausted state would permit, to
+explain the fearful misadventure which had just occurred. The
+intelligence excited an exclamation of horror from all who heard it.</p>
+
+<p>"What a dreadful death!" exclaimed the old gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! don't say so, for heaven's sake," cried Frank&mdash;"He may be, and I
+fear is, much hurt; but I trust he may yet be saved."</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible!" said half a dozen voices. "Why, the shaft's hundreds of
+feet deep."</p>
+
+<p>"But my companion is yet far from the bottom of it," resumed
+Frank&mdash;"Something or other has interposed to prevent his falling lower.
+He spoke, and told me so&mdash;Oh! for mercy's sake make haste, and you may
+yet preserve his life."</p>
+
+<p>"What a horrible situation!" exclaimed the old gentleman; "but no time
+must be lost in talking about it, or inquiring into the why or the
+wherefore. So here you, Timothy, John Clarke, Harris, Tom Carpenter, run
+for your lives, every man Jack of you to the farm, where you'll find
+plenty rope;&mdash;and here, miners, my dear men&mdash;do you bestir
+yourselves&mdash;succeed or not, I'll pay you well. Could any thing be more
+fortunate?" continued the old gentleman, soliloquising to
+himself&mdash;"could any thing be more fortunate than our show of fire-works
+bringing all the miners of the parish about our ears; the very best
+hands in the world, from woeful experience in like matters, to render
+aid in an accident of this kind."</p>
+
+<p>No one required to be told a second time; and almost ere the words were
+out of the worthy squire's mouth, every body had dispersed here and
+there to procure ropes, and whatever might be required; all of which
+were collected with a celerity almost incredible; and then off started
+plenty of able and willing hands, all in eager haste to accomplish the
+charitable object they were bent upon.</p>
+
+<p>And now we must return to poor Vernon Wycherley, whom we left pent up in
+a narrow dungeon many feet beneath the surface, enveloped in darkness,
+and with difficulty sustaining an irksome and even painful position, by
+keeping his body jammed across, and, as it were, forming a kind of
+bridge over this awful chasm; whilst the loose soil, upon whose unstable
+foundation his only chance of safety depended, gradually crumbling away,
+kept his attention unceasingly alive to the certain fate that awaited
+him when unable longer to retain his hold; the horrors of which were
+still further augmented by the deafening din that thundered forth as
+each detached mass reached the water far, far below. Few men, indeed,
+could have sustained a sufficient degree of self-possession to have held
+on a minute under such trying circumstances; but our tall young hero was
+possessed of that true kind of courage, which, though disinclined to
+seek out danger for mere danger's sake, is never daunted by its
+approach, however fearful or unexpected it may be; and thus he was
+enabled to await his impending fate with calm resignation. Strange, too,
+as it may appear, his thoughts, notwithstanding his appalling situation,
+would now and then wander to common everyday matters. Even the events of
+that very afternoon occurred to him, and the beauteous form he had been
+so much struck with passed in fancy before his eyes. "Would she pity his
+fate?" he asked himself&mdash;"alas! no&mdash;how was she to know any thing about
+it? Poor Frank, too," he thought, "what can he say to my unexpected, and
+proba<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>bly fatal accident? I fear all his philosophy will, at least this
+time, fail of convincing him;&mdash;it is <i>all for the best</i>, but better for
+myself, perhaps, than him, as far as chances of being saved go; for with
+his little legs, it must have been all over with him some time before
+this. But, gracious Heaven! may not such a catastrophe have already
+happened to him?"</p>
+
+<p>The start this last thought excited had well nigh proved fatal&mdash;a large
+quantity of earth became detached even by this slight movement, and at
+the same time caused a change of position, which, though very slight,
+was yet sufficient to produce a fresh action on the muscles, previously
+cramped from the unusual strain upon then, and thereby causing so much
+pain, that the sufferer was nearly relaxing his hold, the retention of
+which became more arduous every moment; whilst the time thus occupied
+seemed prolonged to almost tenfold the term of its ordinary duration.
+Never, therefore, was sound more welcome to his ears, than the hoarse
+and agitated tone with which his friend, Frank Trevelyan, shouted out to
+him down the mouth of the shaft; whilst the cheers with which his reply
+was hailed from several persons who had already reached the spot,
+assured him that the much-wished-for relief was at hand. Nor was there,
+indeed, a moment then to lose; for even during the short time it took in
+adjusting the rope, and getting ready a light, with which an adventurous
+miner, well skilled in such matters, was about to descend, poor Vernon's
+strength was rapidly declining; and, conscious of his increasing
+weakness, he called out earnestly to those above to make haste, as he
+could hold on no longer, and that the ground was fast slipping away from
+under him. Anxiously indeed throbbed every breast during the interval
+occupied by the miner's descent, and breathless was the suspense with
+which each awaited the signal to pull away again upon the rope, which
+had scarcely been given, when a heavy rumbling sound, followed by a
+whirring noise, and terminating in a tremendous booming crash, whose
+fearful din and uproar it is impossible to describe, caused a thrill of
+horror to pass through the frame of every bystander; whilst Frank,
+uttering a loud cry, threw himself with his face upon the ground, and
+grasped the turf in all the frenzied agony of grief, till the loud
+cheers that made the welkin ring again, aroused him to a state of
+consciousness, when all his grief was turned into joy by discovering the
+friend whose loss he had just begun to deplore, again safely landed on
+the earth's surface, and apparently but little the worse for his
+extraordinary tumble.</p>
+
+<p>The noise which had caused so much unnecessary alarm was produced by the
+projecting mass, which, loosened by Vernon's violent descent upon it,
+had given way the instant it lost the partial support caused by the
+pressure of his body against it.</p>
+
+<p>Fortunately for the sufferer, there was no lack of medical aid. The
+village doctor, who had been present at the fire-works, had the humane,
+or business-like consideration to betake himself as speedily as possible
+from thence to the place where his services were so likely to be needed;
+whilst the old gentleman, who had taken so active a part in the late
+transaction, had himself also practised the healing art in the early
+part of his life. To the gratification of all present, these two
+gentlemen, after a cursory examination, reported that no bones were
+broken, and that although the right wrist was sprained, and the left leg
+much bruised, yet that the other injuries were of a very trifling
+nature; so much so indeed, that being helped on the back of the pony
+which had brought the old gentleman to the scene of action, the patient
+rode without much difficulty to the mansion from whence the assistance
+had been derived; and which, although then attained by a more circuitous
+route than the one Frank had previously gone, was less than a mile
+distant.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing, indeed, could exceed the kind hospitality of the old gentleman,
+who, as Frank had supposed, turned out to be the proprietor of the house
+and grounds he had made his entry upon in so unusual and unexpected a
+manner. Determined to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> act out the character of the good Samaritan to
+the very letter, the squire, for so every body called him, would insist
+upon taking the patient to his own house, as well as that Frank should
+remain to assist in taking care of him; alleging that there was no other
+place for miles around where they could be properly accommodated; and if
+there was, they should not go there as long as he had a house to shelter
+them. Vernon was too glad to find any kind of resting-place to refuse so
+generous an offer, and it required very little pressing to induce Master
+Frank Trevelyan to accept the invitation; for, somehow or other, he had
+just at the very moment begun to fancy that the late occurrence was but
+the commencement of a series of adventures, which a further acquaintance
+with their new friend might lead to. But the reasons which induced him
+to take such a fancy into his head, we must for the present forbear
+mentioning.</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Chapter IV.</span></h4>
+
+<p>Vernon Wycherley, in spite of all his late perils, enjoyed a good
+night's rest, and on awakening about daylight on the following morning,
+he found that, barring a little pain and a great deal of stiffness about
+his sprained wrist and bruised leg, combined with slight soreness all
+over, he was not much the worse for his accident, and so he told Frank,
+who just at that very moment had popped his head into the room to see
+how he was getting on.</p>
+
+<p>"And really, friend Frank," observed the patient, "I ought to be
+thankful for the snug quarters I've fallen into, as well as for my
+providential and almost miraculous escape."</p>
+
+<p>"Which," interrupted Frank, "your medical friends here say you must at
+present think as little about as you can, and not talk about at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, well, old fellow, their advice is doubtless very good; but it
+shall not for all that prevent my indulging in feelings of thankfulness
+to heaven for my deliverance."</p>
+
+<p>"Not an uncomfortable room this," observed Frank, looking around it.</p>
+
+<p>"Can any thing convey an air of greater comfort?" said Vernon. "There's
+a look of cheerful cleanliness about it that's quite delightful; and as
+for the bed, I never rested my wearied limbs before on one I liked
+better."</p>
+
+<p>"Ay," said Frank, "and all through the house, from attic to cellar, I'll
+venture to say you'll find things just the same."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you can scarcely have had sufficient time or opportunity to
+ascertain that yet, I should imagine," observed Vernon; "for, with all
+the modest assurance with which you are so superabundantly blessed, you
+can't have already been paul-prying, and poking that impudent nose of
+yours into every hole and corner of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly not," answered Frank, "but I've seen quite enough to form a
+pretty accurate judgment that the bulk will tally with the sample&mdash;a
+conclusion I can arrive at without the aid of my nasal organ. A fact may
+be ascertained without one's poking their nose to the bottom of it&mdash;a
+very unsatisfactory, as well as uncertain, mode of proceeding, take my
+word for it. Why, I wouldn't undertake to ascertain even the height or
+depth of a molehill by so uncertain a process."</p>
+
+<p>"And will you never forget that unlucky blunder of mine?" asked Mr
+Vernon Wycherley.</p>
+
+<p>"Never, I promise you," replied Frank.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, then, if you can't forget it, I suppose you can cease talking
+about it; and, by way of a more pleasing subject, suppose you tell me
+something about the people here&mdash;the old gentleman, the only member of
+the family I've yet seen, appears to possess a very host of
+good-nature."</p>
+
+<p>"And a very good-natured host he has proved," interrupted Frank.</p>
+
+<p>"That's right," said Vernon;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>&mdash;"very well for you; so book it, to tell
+again, and make the most of it."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall do no such thing," rejoined Frank, "as no words I can employ
+would do justice to our honest entertainer, who is without exception the
+happiest and merriest little fellow I ever met with, possessing a
+countenance full of mirth and good-humour, and a heart overflowing with
+benevolence&mdash;a downright hearty good fellow, a thorough trump&mdash;a regular
+brick, and no mistake at all about the matter, as our little friend,
+Major Rodd, would say. And I say, Vernon, you've no idea what a
+delightful evening I spent after I'd tuck'd you in for the night. I
+never in my life met so entertaining a man before&mdash;a mere glimpse of his
+good-natured face is sufficient to drive away a very legion of
+blue-devils, although, by the by, those are fiends that never haunt me;
+and then we had a famous spread by way of supper&mdash;jugged hare&mdash;a
+woodcock&mdash;the first I've yet seen for the season&mdash;and lots of snipes."</p>
+
+<p>"All of which, I dare say, you did ample justice to," interposed Mr
+Vernon Wycherley.</p>
+
+<p>"More than justice, friend Vernon&mdash;more than justice; for I ate the best
+portion of the woodcock, in addition to a fair allowance of the jugged
+hare I'd taken before&mdash;and then finished off with the snipes&mdash;the whole
+being accompanied with some excellent home-brewed ale."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, enough about the supper; but tell me, was there nobody but
+yourself and the squire to partake of it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes! the doctor staid to supper, but was obliged to start and visit
+a patient who had sent for him, which compelled him to commence a five
+miles' ride ere he had well time to finish his meal."</p>
+
+<p>"You saw no ladies, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but I did though&mdash;that is, I saw the lady of the house; and much
+as I liked master, I don't know but I liked mistress more&mdash;such a dear,
+kind-hearted creature&mdash;and so good-looking, Vernon&mdash;one of the sort that
+would never look old, or grow ugly, even if she lived to the age of
+Methusalem. And her fondness for her old man is quite delightful&mdash;none
+of your my-dearing or my-loving nonsense, or anxiety about every thing
+he likes to eat and drink disagreeing with him; but good, downright,
+honest, hearty affection, which was beautifully displayed in the happy
+smile with which she regarded the old fellow, and witnessed how truly he
+seemed to be enjoying himself. That's what I'd recommend all wives to do
+who wish to preserve their good looks. A woman's beauty depends so much
+upon expression, that if that's spoilt, farewell to all her charms, and
+which nothing tends more to bring about than a countenance soured with
+imaginary cares, instead of lighted up with thankfulness for innumerable
+blessings&mdash;that's what makes half the women wither away into wrinkles so
+early in life; whilst nothing renders their beauty so lasting as that
+placid look of pure benevolence, which emanates from a heart full of
+thankfulness to God&mdash;affection for those nearest and dearest to them,
+and good-will towards all mankind."</p>
+
+<p>"Thank ye, Frank&mdash;thank ye for these pretty little sentiments&mdash;very good
+remarks, certainly, and true; but I think you'd better keep them to
+bestow upon the future Mrs Trevelyan; I dare say you may find them
+useful then. And now, have you any further news to tell me this
+morning?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I believe I have. I was just going to tell you about the fair
+ladies we met on the downs yesterday; but I've a great mind not to do
+so."</p>
+
+<p>"Eh? what? where?" interrupted Vernon. "Oh! do tell me&mdash;have you seen
+them?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," answered Frank demurely, "I haven't seen even the shadow of their
+petticoats."</p>
+
+<p>"Is this Squire Potts', then? eh!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not impossible," rejoined Frank with most provoking coolness; "at
+least," he continued, "I know nothing to the contrary, for never having
+heard our worthy squire's cognomen, I see no reason why he may not be
+called Potts as well as any thing else."</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw," said Vernon impatiently, "and is that all you have to tell me?
+I really fancied you had heard or seen something."</p>
+
+<p>"And so I have," rejoined Frank.</p>
+
+<p>"Whom, then? eh! Do tell me!" demanded Vernon, eagerly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Timothy," replied Frank.</p>
+
+<p>"Timothy!" reiterated the poet.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, Timothy, to be sure; what d'ye think of that, Mr Vernon Wycherley?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, it leads me to hope," replied that gentleman, "that we may meet
+the ladies themselves ere long, or"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>No <i>or</i> in the matter," interrupted Frank; "I've made up my mind to meet
+them both at breakfast this very morning; and no mistake, as our gallant
+little friend the major says&mdash;for I'm pretty certain those lovely birds
+of paradise roosted last night somewhere or other about the premises."</p>
+
+<p>"But as you say you've seen Timothy, haven't you been able to get any
+thing out of him?"</p>
+
+<p>"No," replied Frank; "for as all his business seems to be confined to
+out-of-doors work, he only came once or twice into the room where we
+were upon some trifling excuse or other; but, in reality, I've no doubt
+to have a peep at your humble servant, whom the rogue instantly
+recognised; and when no one was looking, he tipped me a sly wink of the
+eye, at the same time pointing with his thumb over his shoulder, and
+directing his eyes towards the ceiling, thereby indicating, as I
+thought, that those I wished the most to see had already betaken
+themselves to bed."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I trust they were not packed off on purpose that you might not see
+them?" observed the young poet.</p>
+
+<p>"Quite the reverse, Vernon, I assure you, for I'm quite confident they
+were so packed off in order that they mightn't see me."</p>
+
+<p>"You surprise me indeed&mdash;can it be possible that one so affable and
+open-hearted as our squire here appears to be, should hesitate to let
+his daughters see so harmless a specimen of the human race as my
+particular friend Mr Francis Trevelyan? But ah! I see how it is," Vernon
+continued, and his countenance fell as he said so. "I see how it is&mdash;he
+doubts our being gentlemen; a circumstance quite sufficient to account
+for the absence of the young ladies."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let that notion trouble you," interposed our little hero; "your
+particular friend, Mr Francis Trevelyan, as you have been pleased to
+style him, has removed every unfavourable impression a first glance of
+your two yards of humanity might have produced&mdash;you know the old saying,
+'Show me your associates and I'll tell you what you are.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Then," interposed Vernon, "the impression here must be, that I'm one of
+the most impudent dogs living."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing of the kind," resumed Frank; "that is, if they judge of you by
+your humble servant, whom they consider an exceedingly modest young man,
+which was the sole reason the two girls were kept out of the way, and
+sent off so early to bed; though by the by I'm almost ashamed to say"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Don't talk of your shame, Frank," interrupted Vernon, "a very different
+kind of thing, though too often confounded with modesty. It's the
+latter&mdash;It's your modesty&mdash;I wish to hear about."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, the plain state of the case," rejoined Frank, "was, that our
+good-natured friend the squire, from an imperfect knowledge of the
+natural boldness of my disposition, (call it impudence, if you will,)
+supposed me incapable of facing the battery of laughter my extraordinary
+appearance would have exposed me to, had I come within view of his fair
+daughters."</p>
+
+<p>"Your appearance is queer enough at all times I must confess," observed
+Vernon, "and still more so in your travelling costume; but still hardly
+enough so, I should have thought, to have produced quite so powerful an
+effect as you have just mentioned."</p>
+
+<p>"You wouldn't say so, or have thought so, either, had you seen the
+strange figure of fun I made. Just now for a moment fancy my limited
+proportions enveloped in the squire's ample toggery&mdash;(who more than
+makes up in breadth all he wants in height,)&mdash;only fancy me so attired
+and where could you look for a more complete personification of a living
+scarecrow?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can fancy it all," said Vernon Wycherley, laughing exceedingly at the
+idea of his companion so arrayed; "but do tell me," he continued, "what
+could have induced you to put on so ridiculous a masquerade."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"What else could I do?" rejoined Frank, "unless I turned in supperless
+to bed, or had it brought up to me there, neither of which suited my
+inclination&mdash;for, you see, what the rain we encountered had left undone
+in the drenching way, the brook I blundered over head and ears into had
+completely effected; and though my subsequent souse just afterwards into
+the fishpond could make me no wetter, that deficiency was amply made up
+for in mud; and as I had thrown off my knapsack, I had no precise notion
+where, in order that I might run all the lighter without it, which has
+only just now been picked up and returned to me, and so not a dry rag of
+my own to help myself to, I was right glad to rig myself out in the
+squire's clothes, which, fitting me like what our friend the admiral
+would say, 'purser's shirt upon a handspike,' made me look for all the
+world like an unstuffed effigy of a Guy Fawkes&mdash;a figure so
+superlatively ridiculous, that two light-hearted young girls, who were
+unable to help wellnigh laughing themselves from off their horses' backs
+at the sight of a youthful poet employing his nose as a pick-axe, could
+scarcely be expected to look unmoved on so ludicrous an object as I
+was."</p>
+
+<p>"Spare me, Frank&mdash;spare me!" exclaimed Vernon. "How shall I be able to
+remove the ridiculous association which must be connected with that
+unlucky tumble?"</p>
+
+<p>"The more important one you made so shortly afterwards, I'll undertake
+to say, will produce the desired effect," said Frank.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! don't talk about that now, pray," interposed Vernon with a shudder,
+and turning pale at the sudden recollection of his recent peril; which
+Frank perceiving, and aware of the indiscretion he had so thoughtlessly
+committed by alluding to, and to avert his friend's mind from dwelling
+any longer upon it, he rattled on as fast as he could about various
+other matters, describing in glowing terms all he had seen, heard, or
+conjectured, about the place they were then in. "What a contrast," he
+said, "the mere separation of a narrow valley has made between the
+desolate wastes we have traversed for the last two days, and the fertile
+spot where we now are, which, though deficient in timber, is beyond
+measure fertile in corn, and contains, I am told, some excellent
+shooting&mdash;that is partridge shooting; for a pheasant is here a kind of
+<i>rara avis in terris</i>, and as little likely to be met with as the very
+black swan itself; but then it's a fine country for woodcocks, whilst
+the bottoms almost swarm with snipes; all of which the squire has
+promised to show me in the course of the day, and for days to come, if I
+feel so inclined; for he won't hear a word of our leaving for at least
+ten days, or a week at the very shortest."</p>
+
+<p>"But how, my dear fellow, can we accept an invitation of this kind from
+an utter stranger, whom"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"No stranger at all," interrupted Frank. "He tells me your governor is
+one of his oldest and most esteemed friends; and as for myself&mdash;but
+stay&mdash;hush!&mdash;hark! I hear the old gentleman's voice, and he's coming
+this way too, or I'm very much mistaken."</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Chapter V.</span></h4>
+
+<p>The squire was one of those persons who generally give audible notice of
+their approach as soon as they enter their house, or pass through from
+one part of it to another; and our two heroes heard him, whilst in the
+act of ascending the stairs, bawling out to the ladies above that it was
+high time for them to be up and moving; and hammering away at the first
+door he came to, he called out&mdash;"Come, come, young ladies, wake up, wake
+up&mdash;chase away your balmy slumbers, and kick Morpheus out of bed without
+further ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'Come Miss Mary,</span><br />
+
+<span style="margin-left: 8em;">[<i>"Her loved name!" exclaimed</i></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;"><i>Vernon within.</i></span><br />
+
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">All contrary,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">How does your garden grow?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">With silver bells,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And cockle shells</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And cockles all of a row.'</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing like early rising for plant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>ing the roses in your cheeks&mdash;and
+if that argument," said he to himself, "won't make a young woman bundle
+herself from under the bed-clothes, I don't know what will." And then he
+walked on to the room in which Frank had slept, and which was the
+adjoining one to Vernon's, he began to drum away upon the door there;
+calling out, at the same time&mdash;"Come, Frank&mdash;Mr Trevelyan&mdash;if you intend
+to have a view of the sea before breakfast, as you proposed last
+evening, it's high time you should be up and stirring."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm up and stirred already, sir," said Frank, popping his head out of
+the adjoining room door.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; you're up to any thing, I see," said the squire, good-humouredly
+extending his hand to his guest, as he entered the room; "and how's my
+patient this morning?" he continued, advancing towards the bed. "Ah!" he
+said, having felt Vernon's pulse, "just as I hoped, and indeed fully
+expected&mdash;you couldn't possibly be doing better; a little&mdash;very little
+care for a day or two, is all you seem to require. I looked in before
+this morning to see how you were getting on, and found you snoring away
+so comfortably, that, judging all was as it should be, I wouldn't
+disturb you with my inquiries."</p>
+
+<p>"Snoring!" repeated Vernon, in alarmed surprise, looking exceedingly
+disconcerted, and doubting almost whether he had heard aright.</p>
+
+<p>"Ay, snoring," resumed the squire; "but never mind that, my hearty
+fellow&mdash;the best men snore sometimes, take my word for it; and, I dare
+say, it wasn't loud enough to disturb the young ladies. It was pretty
+loud, though, I must confess; but still I think it could hardly reach so
+far, particularly when your door was shut."</p>
+
+<p>"But I found it wide open," observed Frank, by no means ill-amused to
+see how annoyed his companion was at the conviction of having snored,
+and the possibility of such sounds having reached the ears of one <i>so
+lovely</i>. Oh, how Vernon longed to hurl his pillow, or even any harder
+missile within his reach, at the saucy little fellow's head who was
+looking so provokingly pleased with his distress, and which the presence
+of the squire alone restrained him from making a left-handed attempt at,
+for his right was, as we before mentioned, disabled for the present by
+his late accident. But Vernon was too good a judge to attempt any thing
+of the kind, or show any exhibition of displeasure before his kind
+entertainer who, telling him he must act as his doctor, having, as he
+said, been bred to, and practised for several years in the medical
+profession, examined into the state of his sprains and bruises, and told
+him he would soon be all right again, but that he must be content to
+spend a few hours longer in bed, where his breakfast of gruel should be
+sent up to him; and then, accompanied by Frank, he took his departure.</p>
+
+<p>The old gentleman, however, gave the ladies a fresh hail as he passed by
+their bedroom door, to which two or three voices replied simultaneously,
+but in tones far less musical than Frank expected; and it seemed to him
+very different from what he had heard from the fair equestrians of the
+preceding day, when they kindly expressed their hopes that the sprawling
+poet had received no injury from his tumble.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! I see how it is," thought he to himself; "these pretty creatures,
+like too many of their sex, have a couple of tones to their voices&mdash;one
+for home, and the other for company. There's one-half of my admiration
+gone already." But wishing, at the same time, to put the best
+construction he could upon the matter, he tried to persuade himself that
+they must have taken cold, poor things! in consequence of having been
+caught in the heavy shower of the preceding day; and this it was which
+had caused the hoarseness of their voices. "I have known it have that
+effect before now on other people," he thought, "and why might not the
+same happen to these fair damsels; who, though lovely as angels, can
+scarcely escape from 'all the ills that flesh is heir to,' amongst which
+a cold, attended with hoarseness, can hardly be reckoned the worst?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="A_PEEP_INTO_THE_WHIG_PENNY_POST-BAG" id="A_PEEP_INTO_THE_WHIG_PENNY_POST-BAG"></a>A PEEP INTO THE WHIG PENNY POST-BAG.</h2>
+
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="smcap">My Dear Member</span>&mdash;I send you a powerful petition,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For absolute, instant, entire abolition.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This question our Chamber is taking a lead in</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Composed, as you know, of the Flowers of Dunedin,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Intelligent Druggists, rhetorical Quakers,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Broad acres&mdash;a few&mdash;but no want of wiseacres.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">All are perfectly clear that these horrid restrictions</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Are the proximate cause of our present afflictions,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Obstructing the bowels, as 'twere, of the nation,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And entirely deranging our whole circulation.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To expel these bad humours, we earnestly urge</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A dose, night and morning, of Russell's <i>new</i> Purge;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Not the old wishy-washy affair of the <i>fixture</i>,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But the new out-and-out Morisonian mixture.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the mean time 'tis well that the Noble concoctor</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Has succeeded in ousting the family Doctor.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Peel's a perfect old wife&mdash;twaddles on about diet,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">About exercise, air, mild aperients, and quiet;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Would leave Nature alone to her vigour elastic,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And never exhibit a drug that is drastic.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Doctor Russell's the man for a good searching pill,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or a true thorough drench that will cure or will kill.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For bleeding and blistering, and easy bravado,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(Not to speak of hot water,) he passes Sangrado.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">He stickles at nothing, from simple phlebotomy,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">As our friend Sidney said, to a case of lithotomy:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And I'll venture to say, that this latest specific,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When taken, will prove to be no soporific.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Might I just hint how happy 'twould make me to be</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sole Agent down here for the great Patentee?</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Entre nous</i>, what can mean these unpleasant surmises?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I scarce know what prognosis to form of the crisis:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And our friends, quite perplex'd at this puzzling delay,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Can't imagine how scruples should stand in the way.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Must the grand Opus Magnum be brought to a fix,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Because some jarring drugs are unwilling to mix?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">His lordship, I'm certain, would cut the thing shorter,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">If he'd borrow a touch of my pestle and mortar.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ere we part, I must give you a hint of the truth:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We Free Churchmen can't stomach your views of Maynooth.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">If you value your seat, as a friend I would urge ye,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Steer clear of endowing the Catholic Clergy;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">A bolus (or bonus) so very unhallow'd</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Would in Scotland, I'm sure, not be easily swallow'd.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">By an early reply we should all be elated,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And 'twould tell if from Windsor again it were dated.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Dear Druggist</span>&mdash;-You've open'd your jocular vein,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And I fain would reply in the same pleasant strain;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But let those laugh who win&mdash;I have only to say,</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">That we are&mdash;<i>as we were:</i> and all done by Lord Grey&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The most arrogant, wayward, capricious of men,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(Though this last little sketch must not seem from my pen.)</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Only think of objecting that Palmerston's name</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In a fortnight would set East and West in a flame:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">About mere peace or war a commotion to make,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When the Party's existence was plainly at stake!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">When office was offer'd, to cast it behind,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And to talk of such trash as the good of mankind!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">It is clear, my good friend, such a crotchety prig</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Has but little pretence to the title of Whig.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">On the part I have played in this luckless transaction,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I confess I look back with unmix'd satisfaction.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From the first I said <i>this</i>&mdash;and 'tis pleasant to feel</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Thus at ease with one's self&mdash;"I'm for total repeal.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Stick to that, my Lord John, and all scruples I stifle:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Any office, or none, is to me a mere trifle;"</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">(Though, of course, my dear Mac, for the purest of ends,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I was willing to help both myself and my friends.)</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">"Any office I'll take, that can give you relief&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">From the Whip of the House to Commander-in-chief."</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Oh! If all of the party had acted as I did,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In how noble a band would Lord John have presided!</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">But&mdash;"'tis best as it is:" we may grieve, yet we shouldn't:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Peel can carry the measure&mdash;'tis certain we couldn't:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Though we hoped, if our reign was once fairly begun,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">It might last till&mdash;we did what was not to be done.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I think, (though thus leaving old views in the lurch,)</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">We should <i>not</i> have establish'd the Catholic Church.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">To speak for my colleagues, in me would be vanity:</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">They might differ; but I should have thought it insanity.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">In the hope that our friends in Auld Reeky are "brawly,"</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">I remain yours, in confidence, T. B. Mac&mdash;&mdash;y.</span><br />
+</p>
+
+
+<h3><a name="east" id="east"></a>EAST AND WEST.</h3>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Sweet is the song, whose radiant tissue glows</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">With many a colour of the orient sky;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Rich with a theme to gladden ear and eye&mdash;</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The love-tale of the Nightingale and Rose.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Nor speeds the lay less surely to the mark</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That paints in homely hues two neighbours sweet,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Born on our own bleak fields, companions meet,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The modest Mountain-daisy and the Lark.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">The fond attachments of a flower and bird!</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">That things so fair a mutual bond obey,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">And gladly bask in love's delightful ray,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Who would deny, and doubt the poet's word?</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Or who would limit love's and fancy's reign?</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Their hardy growth here springs as fresh and fair,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Far from the sun and summer gale, as there</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Where Gul for Bulbul decks her gay domain.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'Tis poesy, whose hands with kindly art,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Of kindred feelings weaves this mystic band,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">To knit the Scottish to the Iranian strand,</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And reach wherever beats a human heart.</span><br />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<h3>AN APOLOGY FOR A REVIEW.</h3>
+
+
+<p>It is not our general practice to review books of travels; nor, in
+truth, in noticing these little volumes, do we introduce any exception
+to that general rule. Under what precise category in literature they may
+fall, would admit, as Sir Thomas Browne observes as to the song sung by
+the Sirens, of a wide solution. Plainly, however, in the ordinary sense
+of the term, travels they are not. They will form no substitute for
+Murray's admirable hand-books; for on the merits or demerits of
+competing hostelries, which Mr Murray justly regards as a question of
+vital importance&mdash;the very be-all, and often end-all of a tour&mdash;these
+volumes throw no light. In statistics they are barren enough. To the
+gentlemen of the rule and square, who think that the essential spirit of
+architecture can be fathomed by measurement, they will be found a blank.
+And though abounding in allusions, which betray, without obtruding, an
+intimate acquaintance with ancient literature, and sufficient in
+congenial minds to awaken a train of memories, classic or romantic,
+medieval or modern; they contain few dates, no dissertations, no
+discussion of vexed questions as to the ownership of statues, baths,
+temples, or circuses; or the other disputed points which have so long
+been the subject of strife in the antiquarian arena. And, really, when
+we consider the way in which, in the course of a century, all the old
+landmarks on the antiquarian map have been broken up, and the monuments
+of antiquity made to change hands; how Nibbi supersedes Winckelman, only
+to be superseded in turn; how a temple is converted into a senate-house;
+one man's villa into another; how Caracalla is driven from his circus to
+make way for Romulus; how Peace resigns her claim to a Pagan temple to
+make way for a Christian basilica of Constantine; how statues, arches,
+gardens, baths, forums, obelisks, or columns, are in a constant state of
+transition, so far as regards their nomenclature; and, to borrow the
+conceit of Quevedo, nothing about Rome remains permanent save that which
+was fugitive&mdash;namely, old Tiber himself; we rather feel grateful to the
+tourist who is content to take up the last theory without further
+discussion, and to spare us the grounds on which the last change of
+title has been adopted. What, indeed, matters it, in so far as the
+imagination is concerned, by what emperor, consul, or dictator, these
+mighty remains were reared or ruined? Whether these Titanian halls first
+echoed to the voices of Pagan or the chant of Christian priests? Whether
+this inexplicable labyrinth of vaults and cells, and buried gardens
+which overrun the Esquiline, where the work of art and nature is so
+strangely melted and fused together by "the alchymy of vegetation,"
+really formed part of the golden house of the monstrous Nero; or of the
+baths of him, the gentlest of the C&aelig;sars, who, when he had gone to rest
+without doing a good action, regretted that he had lost a day? Equally
+they remain monuments of the grandeur of the minds which gave them
+birth; mysterious, suggestive&mdash;perhaps the more suggestive, the more
+awakening curiosity and interest, from the very obscurity in which their
+origin, purposes, or fortunes are shrouded. And if individual
+associations become dim or doubtful, they merge in the clear light which
+these gigantic fragments, betraying, even in ruin, their original beauty
+of proportion and grandeur of conception, throw upon the lofty and
+enduring character of the Roman people.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>These volumes, then, as we have said, will neither replace Murray, nor
+form a substitute for Eustace. Neither is their interest mainly owing to
+mere vivid or literal portraiture; by painting in words, as an artist
+would do by forms and colours, and enrolling before us a visible
+panorama, such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> as might present a clear image of the scenes described
+here to those who had never witnessed them. Their charm&mdash;for a charm, we
+trust, they will have to a considerable number of readers&mdash;arises simply
+from the truth with which they seize, and the happy expression in which
+they embody, <i>the spirit of the spot</i>; marking, by a few expressive
+touches, the moral as well as the physical aspect of the scene, and
+awakening in the reader a train of associations often novel in
+conception, as well as felicitous in expression; but which appear in
+general so congenial and appropriate, that we are willing to persuade
+ourselves they are a reproduction of thoughts, and dreams, and fancies,
+which had occurred to ourselves in contemplating the same objects. Hence
+it is to those, who have already witnessed the scenes described, that
+these volumes address themselves. They do not paint pictures, but revive
+impressions; they call up or steady imperfectly defined images; bring
+forward into light struggling memories;&mdash;and, by a union of brief
+description, classic or historical allusions, picturesque and
+significant epithets, and reflections hinted at, rather than wrought
+out, they very successfully accomplish their object&mdash;that of realizing
+to the eye of the mind that distinctive and prevailing expression which
+each aspect of nature, like each movement of the human face, wears in
+itself, and is calculated to awaken in others&mdash;cheerful, sombre,
+majestic, or awe-inspiring, according to the nature of the scene, the
+associations past and present with which it is surrounded, and the
+conditions, or, as a painter would term it, accidents under which it has
+been viewed.</p>
+
+<p>While we say that Mr Whyte has generally been very successful in his
+aim, we must not be understood to express by any means an unqualified
+probation of the taste in which these volumes are conceived, or the plan
+on which they are constructed. The train of reflection is <i>sometimes</i>
+too obviously an afterthought&mdash;not spontaneously evoked at the moment by
+the influences of the scene, but evidently devised and wrought up into
+point and <i>apparent</i> application by a subsequent process. We have dreams
+which were never dreamt, and reveries which are any thing but
+involuntary. There are too many Tristram Shandy transitions, sundry
+cockneyisms in expression, (we use the word in a wide sense,) and one or
+two jokes which make the blood run cold. Lastly, we are compelled to say
+that we repose much more confidence in the writer's taste in
+architecture than in painting. It is enough to say that he evinces no
+feeling for the more simple and majestic compositions of Raphael; while
+the powerful contrasts, and magic of light and shadow displayed by
+Guercino and Tintoret, seem to exercise an undue fascination on his
+mind. It is only to the injurious effect produced by these blemishes
+that we can attribute the slender success with which the volumes have
+been attended; for at this moment we do not recollect having seen them
+noticed by any of those who assume to themselves the right of
+distributing the rewards and punishments of criticism.</p>
+
+<p>Let us now look at one or two of Mr Whyte's sketches of Rome, or rather
+of the train of thought called up by wanderings among its ruins, tracing
+the broken sweep of its ancient walls, or wandering among the stately
+aqueducts and nameless tombs of its dreary Campagna.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p><i>Fragments of Italy and the Rhineland.</i> London: 1841.<br />
+
+<i>A Pilgrim's Reliquary.</i> By the <span class="smcap">Rev. T. H. Whyte, M.A.</span> London:
+1845. </p></div>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><h4><span class="smcap">The Walls of Rome.</span></h4>
+
+<p>"I wonder whether it be the fault of mine own inattention, or the
+absence of good taste in others, that I have heard and read so
+little of the Walls of Rome! To me they rank among the few, out of
+all the Wonders of the Eternal City that have exceeded my
+expectations. Solitude, their peculiar characteristic, has great
+charms for a companionless enthusiast like myself: it is, moreover,
+a description of solitude, the very reverse of melancholy. Mile
+after mile have I repeatedly roamed along the outer Pom&oelig;rium of
+those solitary rampires, and encountered perhaps a goatherd and his
+pretty flock, the tinkle of whose bells formed the only
+accompaniment to the honey notes of the blackbird:&mdash;or, perhaps, in
+sonorous solemnity, some great Bell would suddenly boom upon the
+silence, and be taken up in various tones from a hundred quarters,
+no vestige, mean time, of Minster or Monastery being visible;
+nothing but that enormous Adamantine Circlet rearing itself into
+the sky on one side, and the gate<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>ways and walls of villas and
+vineyards occupying the other. You might fancy those tolling chimes
+belonging to some City hidden by Enchantment.</p>
+
+<p>"Still, as I have proceeded in my mood, half enjoying, half
+moralizing the scene, those hundred towers, like Titan warders
+placed around the Seven Hills, would each after each look down upon
+me from their high and silent stations; till, as I came to know
+them, they seemed to meet my gaze with the sedate and pleasant
+welcome of a venerable friend. They were the incessant associates
+of my solitude, and I was never wearied of them. Of a surety their
+vast Circuit (fifteen miles) gives ample time and space enough for
+rumination!</p>
+
+<p>"Their colossal cubits are the most perfect exemplar of
+Architectural sublimity. Their dismantled Battlements have no
+Watchman but Antiquity, no Herald but Tradition, and hear no
+clamour louder than the Church or Convent bells, or the dirge which
+the wind wails over them through the melancholy Cypress and the
+moaning Pine. The broad old belt of short flowery turf at the base,
+the Violet, the Gilliflower, and the vermilion spotted Mignonette,
+on their breast, and the chaplet of wilding shrubs upon their
+brows, give them a charm in the most common-place observation. With
+me, truant as I have been to the Classic page, it seemed a natural
+process of my desultory mind, to revert from a contemplation of
+such pensive dreamy realities of waking enjoyment as I have
+described, to visions, startling in their august grandeur, of the
+everlasting past,&mdash;visions of their great Architect, Aurelian; of
+their greater Restorer, Belisarius!</p>
+
+<p>"These monstrous walls! I cannot divest myself of a certain awe and
+fascination, as if of a supernatural appearance, which attracts and
+detains me about them; not even the Colosseum more. There seems
+something so ghastly, so spectral, in the mockery of their
+unnecessary circuit, their impregnable strength, their countless
+towers, arrogating to themselves the circumference of a day's
+journey&mdash;and all for what? To guard a city, which, once dropsied
+with grandeur, has now shrunk with the disease into comparative
+atrophy; a city, which, having boastfully demanded their aid, has
+now abandoned them for miles. It is as though one should wrap a
+triumphal robe about a corpse, or place a giant's helmet upon a
+skeleton's skull. It is no poetical figure to look upon them as an
+eternal satire upon the great littleness of empire. The melancholy
+pride of their dimensions needs not the hollow wind, which howls
+around their towers, or the wondering sun, which lingers over their
+shrubby ramparts, to proclaim in the ears of thrones and senates
+the warning of Rome's ambition, the moral of Rome's downfall! It is
+but a poor recompense to their present unhonoured solitude, that
+their melancholy battlements are emblazed at intervals with the
+pontifical escutcheons. Those triple tiaras and cross keys, so
+perpetually recurring, do not half so much consecrate as they are
+themselves consecrated by the lonely bulwarks of this desolated
+city of the C&aelig;sars!" </p></div>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">The Villa Borghese.</span></h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"With the exception of an ostentatious parade of paltry equipages,
+tarnished liveries, and wretched horses on the Corso, and a frantic
+attempt at an opera, Rome, in May, is a picturesque receptacle for
+monks, and goatherds, and nightingales, and bells. Like some
+haunted place, it appears to be beloved and frequented only by the
+apparitions of an obsolete race. Yet many minds will find it
+infinitely more congenial thus, than amidst all the popular
+splendours of its holy week.</p>
+
+<p>"Her tranquillity, nay, her very desolation, is enchanting. The
+summer's-day circuit of the Seven Hills seems all your own. You
+wander whither you will, meeting few, and disturbed by none. In
+short, the very antiquity of the place is one perpetual novelty,
+and its grave monotony a serene recreation. I write this in the
+Villa Borghese, beneath groves of acacias, redolent with odours,
+and booming with myriads of bees, the yellow hay in aromatic
+quiles, pitched like pavilions below the old red walls of Rome, and
+nightingales and blackbirds contending in gushes of ecstatic song!</p>
+
+<p>"Though not new to me, I had little conception of the intrinsic
+loveliness of the Villa Borghese till to-day. Picture to yourself a
+large village of the most variegated and romantic character;
+Church, casino, albergo, and farm, scattered amidst the turfy
+glades of a forest; and that forest composed of such trees as the
+beech, the elm, the ilex, and, above all, the sovereign pinaster,
+whose enormous trunks seem to have <i>condescended</i> to arrange
+themselves into avenues; the most charmingly artificial<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> glades of
+the glossiest verdure, and vistas haunted by legions of dim waning
+statues; hero or demigod, nymph or faun, for ever intermingling but
+never interfering with each other; their various places of
+rendezvous emblazed with flowers of a thousand colours, and
+flashing with fountains of the most graceful fancies possible;
+while every vista discloses some antique portico, or rotunda, or
+vestibule of those gems that men call temples! Picture these scenes
+on some such May-day as this,</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+'When God hath shower'd the earth;'
+</p>
+
+<p>the dark evergreens rejoicing in the rain-drops, and the new-born
+leaves of silky green, transparent with the moisture, which had
+reluctantly ceased to shine on their delicate tapestries. Crown all
+this with a country palace, of lofty Italian magnificence, a
+treasure-house of antiquity, painting, and sculpture, disclosing
+the statues, frescoes, and gilding, of its noble fa&ccedil;ade and massive
+campaniles, at the extremity of its darkest grove of evergreens,
+glittering in this rainbow sunlight, and you may have some
+impression of the Villa Borghese.</p>
+
+<p>"Such silence and solemnity, that you would never dream you were
+near the busy haunt of men, were it not, that a long linked
+diapason of bells, modulated by every possible inflection of their
+lofty language, convinced you that you were basking amidst all this
+voluptuous quiet, beneath the walls of a concealed city, and that
+city&mdash;<span class="smcap">Rome!</span>" </p></div>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">The Ruins.&mdash;The Campagna.</span></h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"This afternoon we drove along the Via Appia Nova. The sun, rolling
+his chariot amidst a cavalcade of wild clouds, along the ruddy
+array of shattered arches, variegating the grassy plain with its
+uncouth palatial and sepulchral ruins, in ebony and gold,
+illuminated the purple and green recesses of the Sabine hills, and
+caressing with capricious fleetness their woody towers and towns,
+bequeathed to the north a calm blue vault, wherein, as in some
+regal hall of state, the dome of St Peter's, the rotunda of the
+Colosseum, the vast basilicas of Santa Maria Maggiore, and San
+Giovanni Laterana, that embattled sepulchre of Cecilia, and those
+lofty masses of the Pamfilipine, which hovered in the horizon like
+a feathery vapour, proclaim the illustrious domicile of Rome.</p>
+
+<p>"The Temple of the Divus Rediculus (or whatever other title it may
+rejoice in) is one of those lovely little phantasies of
+architecture that one might imagine a London citizen would have
+coveted for a summer-house. The brilliant contrast between its
+vermilion pilasters and its pale yellow wall, the delicate moulding
+of its slender bricks and the elaborate elegance of its decoration,
+not to omit its pleasing, though diminutive proportions, arising
+from the wild green turf of this melancholy region, can scarcely
+fail of affecting with at least a spark of fancy, the flattest
+spirit of this work-day world. For my own part, I should be much
+less disposed to pronounce it a temple than a tomb; and, in fact,
+the whole appearance of this wide dull tract seems eminently
+adapted to sepulchral piles. It is most melancholy, most funereal;
+and even that glorious sun, and those majestic aqueducts, soaring,
+as they do, to salute his lustre, and to emulate his glory, cannot
+efface the feeling, that such a scene, and such memorials, should
+be visited only in the gloom of a sad and stormy sky; either amidst
+the sympathetic moans of an autumnal tempest, or the waning and
+mournful glimpses of an autumnal twilight." </p></div>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">The Colosseum.</span></h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It was the twilight, that brief, that exquisite interval, which
+flings its purporoseate veil between the palace gates of day and
+night. You might have fancied it the car of Diana rolling on to
+some Olympian festival, and preceded by Venus, the only other
+planet visible in the sky. What a canopy!&mdash;Not the gaudiest
+velabrum that the ostentatious munificence of her C&aelig;sars extended
+above its gilded cordage, ever equalled the empyrean pomp of this
+soft sky. Never could the artificial rains of perfumed water
+surpass the dewy fragrance that steals around from evening's
+thousand urns.</p>
+
+<p>"I say it was the twilight when we entered these gloomy corridors,
+whose solemn circuit uncoils its colonnades around the lordly pile;
+but before we had traversed half their extent night began her
+reign, and when we entered the arena it was difficult to say
+whether those faintly flushed skies, that single sparkling star, or
+the pallid hectic of the youthful moon produced the pathetic light
+that illuminated this enormous architecture.</p>
+
+<p>"As it now stands, the Colosseum is <i>indeed</i> a wreck, rendered
+absolutely frightful by repair; and whether by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> sunlight or
+moonlight, compels you to lament the 'melancholy activity' which,
+utterly inadequate to the restoration of its pristine glory, has
+deprived it of all those adventitious ornaments, trees, and
+herbage, and a thousand beautiful flowers, which, if they could not
+conceal, at least served to soften its injuries, and which
+mitigated the desolation they were unable to repair.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course a thousand imaginations and memories hunt each other
+through one's head and heart in such a place and at such an hour as
+this, but to-night there were realities, which, where they do not
+dispel, must always reinforce such phantasies.</p>
+
+<p>"Before the steps of the great cross in the centre, garnished with
+all the emblems of the passion, knelt a respectably dressed group,
+apparently father, mother, and daughter, absorbed in a rapture of
+devotion. The lamps were lighted before the fourteen shrines, which
+Benedict the Fourteenth erected around the arena, and flung a dusky
+light upon the successive stagioni of our Saviour's sufferings, by
+which each is distinguished; and we saw a solitary peasant, in the
+dark costume of his country, evidently faint and toil-worn, rise
+from his oraisons at <i>one</i> shrine, only to sink upon his knees
+before <i>another</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! it was at once a simple and sagacious stroke of that priestly
+sovereign, who, in these prophaned ruins, planted the Cross, and,
+by a mightier spell than the magician's wand, arrested the rapacity
+of its patrician plunderers!" </p></div>
+
+<p>Do not sketches such as these revive for us all those feelings which
+Rome awakened in ourselves, bringing back the clime, the sky, the
+loneliness, the mingled feeling of grandeur and situation&mdash;the gentle
+melancholy with which the eternal city impresses even the least
+imaginative mind? To us they appear to embody more of the poetry of
+travel than many a work which figures under the mask of poesy.</p>
+
+<p>How much has been written on Venice, from Schiller and Radcliffe to
+Madame de Sta&euml;l and Madame Dudevant! and yet we hardly know if any one,
+with the exception of the last, has more completely imbued his mind with
+the peculiar spirit of Venice, or reflected its impressions with more
+truth than Mr Whyte. Schiller, indeed, and Mrs Radcliffe, had never
+witnessed the scenes they described; their portraiture is the result
+merely of reading and description, warmed and vivified by the glow of
+their own imagination. Hence the glimpses of Venice conveyed in
+Schiller's beautiful fragment of the <i>Armenian</i>, are mere general
+outlines&mdash;true enough so far as they go, but faintly drawn, and
+destitute, as we might say, of local colour. Mrs Radcliffe's moonlight
+landscapes&mdash;masques and music&mdash;exhibit with great beauty one aspect of
+the city, but only one.</p>
+
+<p>Very different are the Venetian <i>Sketches</i> of Madame Dudevant. She has
+drunk in the inspiration of Venice on the spot, has penetrated the very
+heart of its mystery, and reproduces the impressions which an intimacy
+with its peculiarities produces, with a degree of truth, force, and
+poetical feeling, that impart the most captivating charm to her Venetian
+<i>Letters</i>. Mr Whyte's <i>Fragments</i> exhibit much of the same sensibility,
+the same just perception of the spirit of Venice; and though they have
+not that brilliancy of style which the pictures of the French authoress
+possess, there is often even in this respect great beauty both of
+thought and expression. Mr Whyte, indeed, took the right course to
+enable him thoroughly to understand and appreciate Venice. Instead of
+confining himself to the stately vision of the Grand Canal, or the
+wizard magnificence of St Mark's, he seems to have habitually traced all
+the lesser canals; the little Rii, which, like small veins, shoot off
+from the great arteries of the Grand Canal and the Giudecca, carrying
+the circulation of the Adriatic through this unique city; exploring
+their high, dark, and narrow recesses, pondering on the strange
+contrasts of misery and magnificence, squalid filth and luxurious
+ornament, which they present side by side; and heightening the
+impression thus created, by selecting all varieties of aspects, from the
+bright flashing sunshine pouring down into these dark chasms, as into a
+well, to the shadowy evening, the magic contrasts of moonlight, the
+gloom of wind and rain howling through the balconies, driving the ocean
+wave impetuously through these water-ways, and beating against their
+thousand bridges; or those thunder-storms&mdash;nowhere<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> more magnificent
+than at Venice&mdash;where the gleam of the lightning forms so fearful a
+contrast with the Cimmerian gloom of the canal, and the peals are
+reverberated with such magnificence from those piles of masonry with
+which they are lined. There is, indeed, no spectacle that can be
+conceived, more impressive than some of these smaller canals,
+particularly if you enter them towards sundown. You glide into a gulf of
+buildings, rising high on each side&mdash;almost meeting above your
+head&mdash;most of them ruinous and dilapidated, sinking by piecemeal into
+the green element which they have displaced for centuries, but which,
+through the slow agency of the sap and mine, is visibly resuming his
+oozy empire. You pass some church with its unfinished marble face.
+Again, a set of poor rickety and mean edifices follow; when suddenly you
+come upon some pile of massy grandeur, looming gigantic in the twilight,
+in whose colossal, but beautiful proportions, you can trace the hand of
+Sammichele or Sansovino. You come nearer, and perceive the fretted
+windows broken, stuffed with rags, and patched with paper; rough boards
+nailed up against the gilded beams; grand portals, of which the doors
+have disappeared, allowing the eye to penetrate into a dark perspective
+within: perhaps a sign-board over-tops a glorious cornice of grim masks
+or armorial bearings; and from latticed windows, on which Palladio had
+lavished all the delicate beauty of his architecture, some flaunting and
+gaudy rags are hung out to dry. You enquire what is the building, and to
+whom it belongs, and you are answered: It is the palace of one of the
+classic nobility of ancient Venice&mdash;now tenanted by a Hebrew, who lets
+out the apartments at so many <i>lire</i> a month!</p>
+
+<p>But let Mr Whyte speak for himself.</p>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">The Bridge of Sighs.</span></h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The Canal Orfano, the Ponte di Sospiri! what a day to behold these
+long pictured images of darknes and terror, for the first time!
+Such a blaze of May sunshine, such a soothing repose broken by a
+few distant bells or the nearer laugh of the gay Gondoliers. I
+looked upon the narrow, immured waters under the Bridge of Sighs,
+then to the high arch that like the heavy embossed clasp of some
+old solemn book united its decorated Gothic Piles (those volumes of
+bloody Story) on either side, and instead of shuddering at
+inquisitions and racks, and Piombi and Pozzi, as in common decency
+I ought, away fled my intractable thoughts to merry England's old
+Sabbath Chimes, her village spires, village greens, village elm
+lanes, and decent peasantry.</p>
+
+<p>"Yet those high and antique abodes of venerable crime, those wild
+barbaric piles, in which old age palliates and almost hallows
+infamy! giving it somewhat the same prescriptive sanctuary as
+Milton bestows on the Palace of his Pandemonium! That cruel
+slinking flood, the only firmament the stone vaulted pits below
+were conscious of! Each looked as malignant and dangerous as they
+could, beneath the triumph of such a glorious sun; that light to
+which their aspect once was hateful, and their deeds untold.</p>
+
+<p>"My gondolier dipt his oar into the canal just under the Bridge of
+Sighs, and at half its length it was arrested by a hollow substance
+which he told me was the marble roof of the Pozzi, whose
+unfathomable tiers of dungeons stretched one under another beneath
+this dreadful water gallery. It was not here, however, that the
+secret midnight drownings took place, (as I had fancied,) but in
+that widest, deepest portion of the Canal Orfano, far out in the
+Lagoons situated between the towery Isola Servilio and the lovely
+groves and monastery of San Grazia. This murder-hole of the
+Adriatic is called Marani, and to this day it is forbidden to fish
+in its accursed depth. To-day it looks not only innocent, but
+gloriously bright.</p>
+
+<p>"I was out in the Lagoons this evening, for the purpose of visiting
+by twilight that solitary Isle of St Clements, where Monks exchange
+the voluntary seclusion for penal dungeons, (l'un vaut bien
+l'autre!) the sky glowing with its last light, lingered over its
+tall belfry and few old trees, and a sea as smooth as a crystal
+pavement slept at the base of its grim walls, all in vain;
+Campanile, Convent, Grove, and that pyramidal Powder Magazine,
+looked obdurately sullen enough to tell their own uses, had I not
+known their chronicle." </p></div>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">The Small Canals.</span></h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I thence directed my gondolier to row under the Bridge of Sighs,
+through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> the intricacies of the interior canals; and if ever a man
+wished to be fed to the full with solemn, ay, appalling gloom, he
+may be gratified by following my example. From the weltering
+surface of a labyrinth of channels, let him look up till it wearies
+him, to the awful roofs of the mansions, whose walls of
+immeasurable height, and scarfed with black masses of shadow and
+glaring moonlight, seem to close over his head and to barricade his
+path, as they interlace and confound each other in endless
+circuits; and he will have quite enough to kindle the torch of his
+darker imagination, even if he did not know those tremendous gulfs
+of masonry to be Venice, and those heart-sinking portals and
+windows of barbaric sculpture, the homes of her inexorable
+oligarchy. Yes, you may anticipate Naples, you may picture to
+yourself Rome, and Florence may have fulfilled much of your
+previous fancies; but no conception can prepare you for Venice.</p>
+
+<p>"What enchantment lingers still about every stone of this mourning
+city! My affection for her dismantled palaces is almost morbid.</p>
+
+<p class="center">
+'Like an unrighteous and an unburied ghost,'
+</p>
+
+<p>do I nightly haunt that Tartarus of antique masonry, the interior
+canals of Venice, uniformly entering or departing from them by the
+Bridge of Sighs. To me their hideous height, their appalling gloom,
+(for the meridian cannot touch their waters, and the moon glides
+like a spectre over their huge parapets,) their bewildering
+intricacies, their joyless weltering floods, the countless bridges,
+each with its sculptured monster-heads yawning as if to swallow up
+the silently sweeping gondola in its arch of shadow; their deep
+dead silence only broken by the sullen plash of the oar, the dreary
+word of warning uttered by the gondoliers before turning a sharp
+angle, or the shrill rattling creak of innumerable crickets; but
+principally those old Gothic posterns with deep-ribbed archways,
+like rat-holes in proportion to the enormous piles, and their
+thresholds level with the water, some blockaded with ponderous
+doors, others developing their long withdrawn passage by a lamp,
+that not only makes darkness <i>visible</i>, but <i>frightful</i>; while
+others (as in the Martinengo palace to-night) disclose wide
+pillared halls, and stately staircases, and moonlight courts &mdash;to
+me, I say, all these attributes of the interior of Venice are
+irresistible. Were you to see these old porticos by a summer's
+daylight, you would not fail to find an old fig tree in broad leaf
+and full of fruit, or a lattice-work of vine, most pleasantly green
+in its deep court, where sun and shadow hold divided reign; while
+the hundred shaped windows of those gloomy walls are variegated
+with geranium and carnation, and perhaps a sweet dark eye fairer
+than either.</p>
+
+<p>"They are so obviously the symbols of her hollow oligarchy itself,
+which to the world and to the sun in heaven, (like the brave
+palaces on her chief canal,) displayed a gallant guise, at once
+sublime, glittering, and august; while, within, its tortuous policy
+was twisted into murky and inextricable labyrinths, of which
+Necessity, Secresy, and Suspicion, formed the keystone; where
+Danger lurked at every winding, and whose darkling portals were
+watched by Mystery, and Stratagem, and Disgrace, and Fate!</p>
+
+<p>"It is impossible to scrutinize these dread abysms of mansions,
+without experiencing that strange mixture of repugnance and
+attraction which certain spectacles are wont to call forth in
+animated nature. It is impossible to mark their melancholy and
+downfallen, yet portentous aspect, without deeming them at once the
+theatre and monument of those 'secret, black, and midnight crimes,'
+which history and tradition ascribe to the domestic, as well as to
+the state policy, of this Gehenna of fourteen centuries dominion.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">'Visendus Ater flumine languido</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Cocytus errans.'</span><br />
+</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps it would be difficult to conceive any thing more abhorrent
+to the soul and body of man, than the time, manner, and place, of
+death, distinguishing those executions which have rendered the
+gulfs of the Canal Orfano immemorably infamous.</p>
+
+<p>"To me, the element, in its most serene and smiling state, wears a
+look of furtive menace; and I am free to confess, that even when
+gliding on a mid-summer night over that sweetest Lake of
+Derwentwater, beneath the shadows of its moonlit isles and fair
+pavilions, I have not been without a certain sensation of
+uncomfortable awe. But what must have been the feelings of the
+victim, whether criminal or innocent, who, from this accurst
+Maranna, cast around him his last straining look of agony, and
+uttered his last cry of supplication or despair! The conviction
+that his family, parent, wife, or son, were at that hour of horror
+in profound ignorance <i>sometimes</i> of his very absence, <i>often</i> of
+its cause, or at least, only perplexed with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> conjecture, and
+<i>always</i> unconscious of its horrible event, must have constituted
+no trifling pang in that mortal hour. Then that old familiar,
+though melancholy, water, more terrible to his feelings than the
+dreariest wilderness of ocean! For, girdling the dusky horizon,
+could he not see the domes and campaniles of Venice, perhaps the
+very lamps in his own palace windows, from whose festal saloons he
+had just been decoyed; just distant enough to be beyond the reach
+of help? but too, too near for that despairing gaze that recognized
+and bade adieu for ever at the same glance? There too were not
+those nestling lovely islands, each with its convent tower gleaming
+to the moon, and from which the sonorous bells were tolling, the
+sacred Anthems swelling for the last time on his ear! Alas! those
+chaunted masses were not for <i>his</i> conflicting soul; yea, it would
+have a strange comfort to feel that passing bell was proclaiming to
+the world that his spirit was parting from its scarcely worn weeds!
+But no! even that miserable solace was prohibited to <i>him</i>; he was
+to be obliterated from society, and his inexorable judges had
+decreed that society was not to know that he was gone. No grave for
+his dust; no monument for his name, to palliate his faults and
+perpetuate his virtues. The ghastly element that moaned and
+shuddered under the Gondola, as if remorseful for its own
+involuntary cruelties, was to spread its weltering pall over his
+hearseless bones." </p></div>
+
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">The Bells of Venice.</span></h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"The islands constituting the Venetian Archipelago are about fifty
+in number, of various size and extremely picturesque. They were
+each of them the seat of a monastery or nunnery, till Napoleon
+came, who overthrew these saintly receptacles, converting them into
+forts, mills, public gardens, &amp;c. In short, these islands are among
+the most beautiful contingents of this magic scene. Each has its
+graceful campanile, and its various structures of castle, convent,
+mill, or summer-house; each its due girdle of blue sea, fenced by
+walls that rise round its margent, and embroidered with groves and
+arbours of the most delightful green.</p>
+
+<p>"This evening I cruised past many of them in my gondola after
+sunset; and was particularly struck with the beauty of the large
+Isle of Murano, and its attendant San Michaele (the latter one
+entire cemetery,) whose thin tall campaniles throw up their slender
+figures in fine relief against the long wavy purple of the
+Acharnean Hills in the west, at the head of the Adriatic.</p>
+
+<p>"Night gathered round, as we floated under that prodigious monument
+of the departed majesty of the Republic, the arsenal, whose
+ramparts high and endless, and as ugly as either, lay weltering
+many a rood upon their wooden piles. Every bell in the city was
+tolling for Nones, and sang aloud to the surrounding islands, whose
+campaniles replied with sympathetic thunder, a solemn diapason of
+Corybantine brass, to my taste, wonderfully in unison with the
+funeral mole of the defunct Arsenal, the repose of the purple
+mountains, and the fainting splendour of that twinned vault and
+pavement, the opal sea and sky, smooth, soft, and bright enough for
+Juno and Amphitrite to hold a gossip, each from her own imperial
+element.</p>
+
+<p>"Probably it is to the peculiarity of its situation, that one may
+attribute the sweetly solemn melodies produced by the bells of
+Venice. Flinging their prolonged notes down those immense hollows
+of architecture, sweeping round their narrow streets, and floating
+over their liquid pavement, they derive every advantage from that
+element which always so fondly detains and dallies with music, in
+addition to the depth and power with which they are endowed, by
+those pillared and winding concaves, that, like the tubes of some
+vast organ, receive and redouble the airy strain.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever be the case, I never felt any thing so fully coming up to
+my idea, of 'most musical, most melancholy.'" </p></div>
+
+<p>We bid Mr Whyte adieu, in the hope that, if a second edition of these
+volumes be called for, he will subject them to a very thorough
+revision&mdash;connecting together many passages, which, though relating to
+the same subject, are at present unnaturally disjoined&mdash;omitting much,
+which, instead of heightening, interferes with the effect which it is
+his object to produce&mdash;and, above all, eschewing the indulgence of
+pleasantries which certainly produces no corresponding impression on his
+readers.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> This was the explanation actually given by Develuz, our
+consul at Adrianople, of his exaggerated account of the strength of
+Diebitsch's army, at the moment when Diebitsch's best hope was, that he
+might effect his retreat across the Balkan with the shattered and
+debilitated remnant of his troops! Yet on this authority the Sultan was
+recommended to yield at discretion, and the treaty of Adrianople was
+signed!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> The present Prince, on public occasions, always wears the
+fez with an aigrette of diamonds, as a recognition of the suzeraint&eacute; of
+the Porte; his predecessor, Michel Obrenovich, gave great offence by
+wearing a cocked hat.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> The old Emperor, Francis of Austria, when a Russian general
+was to be presented, would say, "Now bring in the northern firmament,
+and all its stars."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Sokol must here be a slip of the pen for Szoko. Sokol, the
+birth-place of the famous Mohammed Sokolli, vizier of Soliman the
+Magnificent and his two successors, is in the heart of Bosnia, near
+Gradachatz.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> In the supplement to the <i>Biographie Universelle</i>, vol.
+lxi., a strange tale is told, that Czerni George was a native of Nanci,
+who fled in his youth to Servia&mdash;but this is a mere romance.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> Lamartine (<i>Voyage en Orient</i>) and other writers represent
+Kara George as having died in confinement in an Austrian fortress, soon
+after his flight in 1813-an error which has probably arisen from a
+confusion between his fate and that of Alexander Hypsilantis, who headed
+the insurrection in Walachia in 1821, and died in Mongatz, after three
+years' imprisonment.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> These firmans, with the <i>hatti-shereef</i> of 1838, &amp;c., were
+printed and laid before the House of Commons in May 1843.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> The contrast in this respect, between the progress and
+results of the Servian and Greek revolutions, is forcibly stated in an
+extract from a MS. document by Wuk Stephanovich, author of the Servian
+Anthology, in Parish's <i>Diplomatic History of the Monarchy of
+Greece</i>.&mdash;Pp. 387-90.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> From an early period of the war, the Spanish dragoon
+regiments, both light and heavy, were armed with the lance, that weapon
+being considered the most efficient for the mountain warfare in which
+they were frequently engaged.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> <i>Coxe</i>, III. 156. <i>Instructions pour le Sieur Recoux.
+Cardonell Papers</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a> "Count Piper said, 'We made war on Poland only to subsist;
+our design in Saxony is only to terminate the war; but for the Muscovite
+he shall pay <i>les pots cass&eacute;es</i>, and we will treat the Czar in a manner
+which posterity will hardly believe.' I secretly wished that already he
+was in the heart of Muscovy. After dinner he conveyed me to
+headquarters, and introduced me to his Majesty. He asked me whence I
+came, and where I had served. I replied, and mentioned my good fortune
+in having served three campaigns under your Highness. He questioned me
+much, particularly concerning your Highness and the English troops; and
+you may readily believe that I delineated my hero in the most lively and
+natural colours. Among other particulars, he asked me if your Highness
+yourself led the troops to the charge. I replied, that as all the troops
+were animated with the same ardour for fighting, that was not necessary;
+but that you were every where, and always in the hottest of the action,
+and gave your orders with that coolness which excites general
+admiration. I then related to him that you had been thrown from your
+horse, the death of your aide-de-camp Borafield, and many other things.
+He took great pleasure in this recital, and made me repeat the same
+thing twice. I also said that your Highness always spoke of his Majesty
+with esteem and admiration, and ardently desired to pay you his
+respects. He observed, 'That is not likely, but I should be delighted to
+see a general of whom I have heard so much.' They intend vigorously to
+attack the Muscovites, and expect to dethrone the Czar, compelling him
+to discharge all his foreign officers, and pay several millions as an
+indemnity. Should he refuse such conditions, the King is resolved to
+exterminate the Muscovites, and make their country a desert. God grant
+he may persist in this decision, rather than demand the restitution, as
+some assert, of the Protestant churches in Silesia! The Swedes in
+general are modest, but do not scruple to declare themselves invincible
+when the King is at their head."&mdash;<i>General Grumbkow to Marlborough, Jan.
+11 and</i> 31, 1707. <i>Coxe</i>, III. 159-161.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a> <i>Coxe</i>, III. 167-169. The authenticity of this speech is
+placed beyond doubt by Lediard, who was then in Saxony, and gives it
+<i>verbatim</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> <i>Coxe</i>, III. 174-182.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> "I cannot venture unless I am certain of success; for the
+inclinations in Holland are so strong for peace, that, if we had the
+least disadvantage, it would make them act very extravagant. I must own
+every country we have to do with, acts, in my opinion, so contrary to
+the general good, that it makes me quite weary of serving. The Emperor
+is in the wrong in almost every thing he does."&mdash;<i>Marlborough to
+Godolphin, June 27, 1707</i>; <i>Coxe</i>, III. 261.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> <i>Despatches</i>, III. 142-207.&mdash;So much were the Dutch
+alienated from the common cause at this time, and set on acquisitions of
+their own, that they beheld with undisguised satisfaction the battle of
+Almanza, and disasters in Spain, as likely to render the Emperor more
+tractable in considering their proceedings in Flanders. "The States,"
+says Marlborough, "received the news of this fatal stroke with less
+concern than I expected. This blow has made so little impression in the
+great towns in this country, that the <i>generality of the people have
+shown satisfaction at it rather then otherwise</i>, which I attribute
+mainly to the aversion to the present government."&mdash;<i>Marlborough to
+Godolphin, May</i> 13, 1707. <i>Coxe</i>, III. 204.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <i>Coxe</i>, III. 196-205.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> <i>Marlborough's Despatches</i>, IV. 49.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> <i>Desp.</i> IV. 95-101. <i>Coxe</i>, IV. 128-131.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <i>Desp.</i> IV. 79-102. <i>Coxe</i>, IV. 130-132.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> "The treachery of Ghent, continual marching, and some
+letters I have received from England, (from the Queen and the Duchess,)
+have so vexed me, that I was yesterday in so great a fever, that the
+doctor would have persuaded me to have gone to Brussels; but I thank God
+I am now better, and by the next post I hope to answer your letters. The
+States have used this country so ill, that I noways doubt but all the
+towns in it will play us the same trick as Ghent if they have the
+power."&mdash;<i>Marlborough to Godolphin, July 9, 1708.</i> <i>Coxe</i>, IV. 38.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> The above description of the field of Oudenarde is mainly
+taken from <i>Coxe</i>, IV. 134-135; but the author, from personal inspection
+of the field, can attest its accuracy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> <i>Coxe</i>, IV. 140-143.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> <i>Marlborough to Count Piper, 15th July 1708.&mdash;Desp.</i> IV.
+115. <i>Coxe</i>, IV. 144-145.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> <i>Coxe</i>, IV. 146-151. <i>Marlborouqh to Count Piper, 16th July
+1708.&mdash;Desp.</i> IV. 115. <i>Duke of Berwck's Mem.</i> II. 12.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> <i>Marlborough &agrave; M. De Themgue, 15th July 1708.&mdash;Desp.</i> IV.
+111.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> <i>Desp.</i> IV. 111. Berwick himself states the prisoners at
+9000.&mdash;<i>Marlborough</i>, II. 12. <i>Marlborough to the Duchess</i>, <i>July</i> 16,
+1708.&mdash;<i>Coxe</i>, IV. 157.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> <i>Marlborough to Lord Godolphin, July 16 and 19,
+1708.</i>&mdash;<i>Coxe</i>, IV. 158, 159.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Conscious of the panic which prevailed in France, and
+aware that some brilliant enterprise was requisite to prevent the Dutch
+from listening to separate overtures for peace, Marlborough proposed to
+meet at Lille, and penetrate by the northern frontier into the heart of
+France. An expedition fitted out in England was to co-operate on the
+coast. But the design of penetrating direct into France seemed too bold
+even to Eugene, and, of course, encouraged strong opposition from a
+government so timid and vacillating as that of Holland.&mdash;<i>Coxe</i>, IV.
+165.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> <i>Marlborough to Godolphin, July 23, 1708.</i>&mdash;<i>Coxe</i>, IV.
+165.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> "I need not tell you how much I desire the nation may be
+at last eased of a burdensome war, by an honourable peace; and no one
+can judge better than yourself of the sincerity of my wishes to enjoy a
+little retirement at a place you have contributed in a great measure to
+make so desirable. I thank you for your good wishes to myself on this
+occasion. <i>I dare say, Prince Eugene and I shall never differ about our
+laurels.</i>"&mdash;<i>Marlborough to Mr Travers</i>, July 30, 1708.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> <i>Coxe</i>, IV. 216-219.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> <i>Marlborough to Godolphin, August 30, 1708.</i>&mdash;<i>Coxe</i>, IV.
+222.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> <i>Desp</i>. IV. 241-260.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> <i>Desp</i>. IV. 260-271. <i>Marlborough to Godolphin, September
+24, 1708.</i>&mdash;<i>Coxe</i>, IV. 243.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> <i>Marlborough to Godolphin, October 1, 1708.</i>&mdash;<i>Coxe</i>, IV.
+254.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> <i>Desp.</i> IV. 271, <i>Marlborough to Godolphin, October 24,
+1708.</i>&mdash;<i>Coxe</i>, IV. 263, 264.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> "You will find me, my Prince, always ready to renew the
+patent for the government of the Low Countries, formerly sent to you,
+and to extend <i>it for your life</i>."&mdash;<i>King Charles to Marlborough, August
+8, 1708.</i> <i>Coxe</i>, IV. 245.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> Any collection of houses, or even a single farm-house, is
+termed a town in Cornwall.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> In Cornwall, any number beyond two is termed a pair.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> "Bal" signifies a mine.</p></div>
+
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+<p class="center"><i>Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work.</i></p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume
+59, No. 364, February 1846, by Various
+
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diff --git a/29938.txt b/29938.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59,
+No. 364, February 1846, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: September 8, 2009 [EBook #29938]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Brendan OConnor, Jonathan Ingram and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Library of Early Journals.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
+
+
+  NO. CCCLXIV.          FEBRUARY, 1846.          VOL. LIX.
+
+
+
+
+  CONTENTS.
+
+  SERVIA AND THE "SERVIAN QUESTION,"                          129
+
+  THE STUDENT OF SALAMANCA. PART IV.,                         149
+
+  SOMETHING MORE ABOUT MUSIC,                                 169
+
+  MARTHA BROWN,                                               184
+
+  MARLBOROUGH. NO. III.,                                      195
+
+  RECOLLECTIONS OF A LOVER OF SOCIETY,                        215
+
+  IT'S ALL FOR THE BEST,                                      231
+
+  A PEEP INTO THE WHIG PENNY POST-BAG,                        247
+
+  EAST AND WEST,                                              248
+
+  AN APOLOGY FOR A REVIEW,                                    249
+
+
+
+
+  EDINBURGH:
+  WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;
+  AND 37, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON.
+
+  _To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed._
+
+  SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE UNITED KINGDOM.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.
+
+
+
+
+  BLACKWOOD'S
+  EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.
+
+
+
+  NO. CCCLXIV.   FEBRUARY, 1846.   VOL. LIX.
+
+
+
+
+SERVIA AND THE "SERVIAN QUESTION."
+
+
+The principality of Servia was, a few years since, scarcely known to the
+English public except as an obscure province of the Ottoman empire, into
+which few travellers had penetrated; and of the population, internal
+resources, &c., of which, little information existed, and little
+curiosity was felt. But the singular political drama of which it has
+lately been the theatre, and the patriotic resolution by which its
+people, though deprived of support from their legitimate suzerain, the
+Sultan, menaced by the power of Russia, and abandoned to their fate by
+the other great powers of Europe, have yet succeeded in establishing
+their independence, and maintaining in his place the ruler whom they had
+chosen, has invested Servia with a degree of interest in the eyes of
+Europe, which gives value to whatever tends to dispel our ignorance of a
+country, which, by the new position it has assumed, has shown good title
+to take rank as "the youngest member of the European family." A work,
+therefore, which should give the same clear insight, even to a limited
+extent, into the present condition and future prospects of Servia, as
+was given some years since in regard to Hungary and Transylvania, by the
+well-known volumes of Mr Paget, would at this time be a valuable
+addition to our literature; but we are compelled to say, that this
+desideratum is far from being adequately supplied by the publication now
+before us. The author's descriptive powers are by no means of a high
+order;--mountain and valley, castle and river, pass before us, in his
+pages, without any definite impression being produced of their features
+or scenery; and while page after page is filled with criticisms of the
+accommodations and _cuisine_ at his different halting-places, and
+verbatim reports of dialogues, on trivial subjects, between _Author_, on
+the one part, and _Renegade_, _Cadi_, _Dervish_, _President_, and other
+_dramatis personae_, on the other, we look in vain for that extent and
+accuracy of information which we might have expected from a traveller
+who has enjoyed more than ordinary opportunities of mixing familiarly
+with Servians of all ranks and degrees, from the prince to the peasant
+and making himself acquainted with their feelings and national
+character. The deficiency of political information would appear even
+more remarkable. Though the author was personally acquainted with M.
+Petronevich, one of the leaders of the National party, whom he visited
+in his exile at Widdin; and though he was subsequently resident at
+Belgrade for some time after the restoration of this able minister and
+his colleague, M. Wucicz, to their country, scarcely an allusion escapes
+him throughout, to the political movements which led either to their
+banishment or their recall. As various circumstances and expressions,
+however, lead us to suppose that Mr Paton's tour may have had reference
+to objects which do not appear on the surface of the narrative, this
+mysterious silence may not be without good reasons; and we shall deal
+with him, accordingly, simply as a traveller in a hitherto untrodden
+track, which we hope, erelong, to see more fully explored. Mr Paget, we
+believe, is now a naturalized denizen of Transylvania: cannot he find
+leisure for an excursion across the Save?
+
+Mr Paton announces himself, in the title-page, as the author of a work
+entitled "The Modern Syrians," with which it has not been our good
+fortune to meet; but from the conclusion of which we presume the thread
+of the present narrative is to be taken up, as he presents himself,
+_sans ceremonie_, on the pier of Beyrout, preparing to embark on board
+an Austrian steamer for Constantinople:--"I have been four years in the
+East, and feel that I have had quite enough of it for the present." On
+the third day they touched at Rhodes, "a perfectly preserved city and
+fortress of the middle ages, with every variety of mediaeval
+battlement--so perfect is the illusion, that one wonders the warder's
+horn should be mute, and the walls devoid of bowman, knight, and
+squire." Though these ancient bulwarks of Christendom, within which the
+White-Cross chivalry, under d'Aubusson and L'Isle-Adam, so long
+withstood the might of the Osmanli, are thus briefly dismissed, Mr Paton
+immediately after devotes five pages to some choice flowers of
+Transatlantic rhetoric, culled from the small-talk of one of his
+fellow-passengers, whom he calls "an American Presbyterian
+_clergyman_"--though we grievously suspect him to have been a boatswain,
+who had jumped from the forecastle to the pulpit by one of those
+free-and-easy transitions not unusual in the "free and enlightened
+republic." At Smyrna, he signalized his return to the "land of the
+Franks," (which we had always imagined to be Europe,) by ordering a
+beefsteak and a bottle of porter, and bespeaking the paper of a
+Manchester traveller in drab leggings--and we at last find him safe in
+Constantinople. For all that concerns the city of the Sultan, he
+contents himself with referring his readers to the volumes of Mr
+White--and certainly they could not have been left in better hands; and
+so, "after a week of delightful repose," during which he was greatly
+indebted to the hospitality of the embassy, "I embarked on board a
+steamer, skirted the western coast of the Black Sea, and landed on the
+following morning in Varna."
+
+We may pass over the "delightfully keen impressions" which Mr Paton
+records as produced by the contrast between the shores of Bulgaria and
+the Syrian climes he had lately left; the practical result of which was,
+that "a rattling blast from the Black Sea, more welcome than all the
+balmy spices of Arabia," made it advisable to don a pea-jacket! The
+fortifications of Varna, we are informed, were thoroughly repaired in
+1843; "and from Varna to Roustchouk is three days' journey--the latter
+half of the road being agreeably diversified with wood, corn, and
+pasture, and many of the fields enclosed." A reference to the map will
+show that this "agreeably diversified" road passes under the famous
+lines of Shumla, and through many fields of fierce and stubborn fight
+between Turk and Russ, in the days before the Sultan was delivered over
+by his allies to his enemy, on the faith of a _military_ report from a
+man who had never seen a regiment of regular troops under arms![1]--but
+Mr Paton appears to consider such matters as exclusively the province
+of _militaires_, and passes on at once to Roustchouk, which he found "a
+fortress of vast extent; but, as it is commanded by the heights from
+which I was descending, it appeared to want strength if approached from
+the south. The ramparts were built with great solidity; but rusty old
+dismounted cannon, obliterated embrasures, and palisades rotten from
+exposure to the weather, showed that to stand a siege it must undergo a
+considerable repair." Several days were devoted to a general
+reconnoissance of the place; but the result was not satisfactory--"I
+must say that Roustchouk pleased me less than any town of its size I had
+seen in the East. The streets are dirty and badly paved, without a
+single good bazar or cafe to kill time in, or a single respectable
+edifice of any description to look at." A dinner with a Bulgarian family
+led us to expect some details of domestic economy; but, in place of
+this, we are regaled with the bad French of a hybrid Frank, who assured
+_Author_ that Bukarest was equal to Paris or London; and when forced to
+admit that he had never seen either of those capitals, covered his
+retreat by maintaining that it was at least far superior to Galate and
+Braila! Hearing, however, that the Defterdar, an Egyptian Turk, had
+resided many years in England, and spole English fluently, Mr Paton
+sought an interview; and after "taking a series of short and rapid
+whiffs from my pipe," while considering the best way of breaking the
+ice, opened his battery by telling the Defterdar, "that few Orientals
+could draw a distinction between politics and geography; but that with a
+man of his calibre and experience I was safe from misconstruction--that
+I was collecting materials for a work on the Danubian provinces, and
+that for any information which he might give me, consistently with his
+official position, I should feel much indebted, as I thought I was least
+likely to be misunderstood by stating clearly the object of ny journey,
+while information derived from the fountain-head was most valuable. The
+Defterdar, after commending my openness, said, 'I suspect that you will
+find very little to remark in the pashalik of Silistria. It is an
+agricultural country, and the majority of the inhabitants are Turks. The
+Rayahs are very peaceable, and pay few taxes, considering the
+agricultural wealth of the country. You may rest assured that there is
+not a province of the empire better governed than the pashalik of
+Silistria. We have no malcontents within the province; but there are a
+few Hetarist scoundrels at Braila, who wish to disturb the tranquillity
+of Bulgaria; but the Walachian government has taken measures to prevent
+them from carrying their projects into execution.'"
+
+Having thus put his readers in possession of this full, true, and
+particular account, derived from exclusive official sources, of all that
+is to be learned of the pashalik of Silistria, we next find Mr Paton,
+after two days steaming on the Danube, at Widdin, where the exiled
+Servian minister, M. Petronovich, was then resident, under the
+protection of the Pasha, whose name is known to all the world as the
+destroyer of the Janissaries and the defender of Shumla, the once
+formidable Hussein. To this redoubted personage, now apparently verging
+on eighty, Mr Paton was introduced by M. Petronevich at an evening
+audience, it being contrary to etiquette to receive visits by day during
+the Ramadan--and found him "sitting in the corner of the divan at his
+ease, being afflicted with gout, in the old ample Turkish costume. The
+white beard, the dress of the Pasha, the rich but faded carpet, the roof
+of elaborate but dingy wooden arabesque, were all in perfect keeping;
+and the dubious light of two thick wax candles rising two or three feet
+from the floor, but seemed to bring out the picture, which carried me a
+generation back to the pashas of the old school." Hussein has since
+retired from his government, to enjoy the immense fortune which he has
+accumulated by commercial speculations--the last specimen of the
+"malignant and turbaned Turk" of former days, whose war shout was heard
+under the walls of Vienna; and who will now be replaced by a
+smooth-faced hybrid in fez and frock-coat, waging a paper war with the
+ambassadors of the _protecting_ powers in defence of the few sovereign
+rights still permitted to the Porte--such is the Pasha of the present
+day! The town of Widdin found even less favour in our traveller's eyes
+than Roustchouk. "Lying so nicely on the bank of the Danube, which here
+makes such beautiful curves, and marked on the map with capital letters,
+it ought (such was my notion) to be a place having at least one
+well-built and well-stocked bazar, a handsome seraglio, and some
+good-looking mosques. Nothing of the sort;"--and thus, sorely
+disappointed in his reasonable expectations, he proceeded on his way in
+a car drawn by two horses, which in six hours brought him to the banks
+of the Timok, the river which separates Servia from Bulgaria. The
+Servian population, among whom he now first found himself, struck him as
+a superior race, both physically and morally, compared with those whom
+he had just left, possessing a manliness of address and demeanour
+unknown to the serfs of Bulgaria; and, instead of the woolly caps and
+frieze clothes of the latter, the peasants wore the red fez, and were
+generally dressed in blue cloth. The plough cultivation of Bulgaria was
+now exchanged for the innumerable herds of swine, which form the staple
+commodity of Servia, fed in the immense oak woods which cover the
+country. "They form" (as Mr Paget informs us in his work on Hungary) "a
+very important article of trade between Servia and Vienna; and I doubt
+if Smithfield could show better shapes or better feeding than the market
+of a Servian village." Continuing his route along the banks of the
+Danube to New Orsova, where he crossed to the Hungarian bank, he again
+posted, with "an enormously stout Wallachian matron" for a travelling
+companion, to Drenkova, whence another steamer conveyed him to Semlin,
+and half an hour's pull down the Danube and up the Save (the line of the
+two rivers being distinctly marked at the confluence by the muddy colour
+of the former, and the clearness of the latter) landed him safe at
+Belgrade.
+
+We may here mention an amusing anecdote, related in another part of the
+volume, in connexion with the town of Panczova below Semlin, where "the
+town-major, after swallowing countless boxes of Morison's pills died in
+the belief that he had not begun to take them soon enough. The
+consumption of these drugs at that time almost surpassed belief. There
+was scarcely a sickly or hypochondriac person, from the Hill of Presburg
+to the Iron Gates, who had not taken large quantities of them." _Mais
+voila le mot d'enigme._ "'The Anglomania,"' was the answer to a query of
+the author, "'is nowhere stronger than in this part of the world.
+Whatever comes from England, be it Congreve rockets or vegetable pills,
+must needs be perfect. Dr Morison is indebted to his high office (!) for
+the enormous consumption of his drugs. It is clear that the President of
+the British College must be a man in the enjoyment of the esteem of the
+government and the faculty of medicine; and his title is a passport to
+his pills in foreign countries.' I laughed heartily, and explained that
+the British College of Health, and the College of Physicians, were not
+identical." We well remember a statement some years since among the
+innumerable puffs of the arch-quack, (now gone, we believe, to that
+bourn whither so many of his patients had preceded him,) that in
+gratitude for the countless cures of incurable diseases by the
+"Universal Vegetable Medicine," a statute of the Hygeist had been
+erected in Bukarest, not in his native brass, but 'in his habit as he
+lived;' and a woodcut was appended of the _ipsissimus_ Morison, with his
+mustached phiz and tight frock-coat. As Bukarest is a long way off, we
+held this at the time for a pious fraud; but Mr Paton's anecdote gives
+it at least probability. _Vive la charlatanerie!_
+
+The hospitality of Mr Consul-general Fonblanque, and the attentions of
+the numerous friends of M. Petronevich, soon made Mr Paton quite at home
+at Belgrade, where he remained till the end of the year 1843, having
+arrived some time in the autumn, since the re-election of Prince
+Alexander, and the exile of Petronevich, and his colleague Wucziz, took
+place in July of that year. He found Belgrade much Europeanized since a
+previous visit which he had paid it in 1839,--"It was then quite an
+Oriental town; but now the haughty _parvenu_ spire of the cathedral, a
+new and large, but tasteless structure, with a profusely gilt bell-tower
+in the Russian manner, throws into the shade the minarets of the
+mosques, graceful even in decay. Many of the bazar shops have been
+fronted and glazed; the Oriental dress has become much rarer; and
+houses, several stories high, in the German fashion, are springing up
+every where." The Turkish governor was at this time Hafiz Pasha, the
+unsuccessful commander at Nezib, lately appointed in the room of Kiamil,
+who had been displaced at the mandate of Russia for the share he had
+taken in the first election of Prince Alexander; but his jurisdiction is
+now confined to the fortress and the Turkish quarter, which lies along
+the Danube; the remainder of the town, lying piled street upon street up
+the steep bank of the Save, being under the Servian authorities. During
+his stay, Mr Paton paid frequent visits to the Pasha, whom he generally
+found in an audience room overlooking the precipitous descent to the
+Danube, "studying _at_ the maps: he seemed to think that nothing would
+be so useful to Turkey as good roads, made to run from the principal
+ports of Asia Minor, up to the depots of the interior, so as to connect
+Sivas, Tokat, Angora, Koniah, Kaiserieh, &c., with Samsoon, Tersoos, and
+other ports." The ramparts of the fortress are said to be in good
+condition, though "very unlike the magnificent towers it the last scene
+of the _Siege of Belgrade_ at Drury-Lane,"--a piece of useful
+information for play-going Cockneys--and the _Lange Gasse_, or main
+street, with the palace of Prince Eugene, built during the Austrian
+occupation of Servia from 1717 to 1789, is still standing, though half
+choked up with bazar shops and Turkish houses. The Prince holds no
+formal levees; but Mr Paton was present at a dinner given to the _corps
+diplomatique_ in the palace, and was received in a saloon "with inlaid
+and polished parquet; the chairs and sofas covered with crimson and
+white satin damask, which is an unusual luxury in these regions; the
+roof admirably painted in subdued colours, in the best Vienna style.
+High white porcelain urn-like stoves heated the suite of rooms. The
+Prince, a muscular, middle-sized, dark-complexioned man, with a serious
+composed air, wore a plain blue military uniform;[2] the Princess, and
+her _dames de compagnie_, wore the graceful native Servian costume; the
+Pasha the Nizam dress, and the _Nishan Iftihar_, (diamond decoration of
+his rank;) Baron Lieven, the Russian Commissioner, in the uniform of a
+general, glittered with innumerable orders;[3] Colonel Philippovich, a
+man of distinguished talents, represented Austria; the Archbishop, in
+his black velvet cap, a large enamelled cross hanging by a massive gold
+chain from his neck, sat in stately isolation; and the six feet four
+inches high Garashanin, minister of the interior, conversed with Stojan
+Simitch, the president of the senate, one of the few Servians in high
+office who retains his old Turkish costume, and has a frame that reminds
+one of the Farnese Hercules. Then what a medley of languages--Servian,
+German, Russian, Turkish, and French, all in full buzz! We proceeded to
+the dining-room, where the _cuisine_ was in every respect in the German
+manner. When the dessert appeared, the Prince rose with a creaming glass
+of champagne in his hand, and proposed the health of the Sultan,
+acknowledged by the Pasha; and then, after a short pause, the health of
+Czar Nicolay Paulovich, acknowledged by Baron Lieven; then came the
+health of other crowned heads. Baron Lieven now rose, and proposed the
+health of the Prince. The Pasha and the Princess were toasted in turn;
+and then Mr Wastchenko, the Russian Consul-general, rose, and in
+animated terms drank to the prosperity of Servia. The entertainment,
+which commenced at one o'clock, was prolonged to an advanced period of
+the afternoon, and closed with coffee, liqueurs, and chibouques, in the
+drawing-room: the Princess and the ladies having previously withdrawn to
+the private apartments."
+
+At the end of the year, Mr Paton returned to England; and after an
+absence of six months, returned in August 1844 to the banks of the Save,
+reaching Belgrade at the moment when preparations were being made for
+the triumphal reception of the patriot ministers Wuczicz and
+Petronevich, who had at length been restored to their country by the
+tardy intervention of England. The day of their arrival was celebrated
+by a universal jubilee. Surrounded by an immense cavalcade, the exiles
+paraded the streets, amid the rapturous acclamations of the multitude,
+to the great portal of the cathedral, where they were received by the
+Archbishop and clergy:--"They kissed the cross and the gospels, which
+the Archbishop presented to them, and, kneeling down, returned thanks
+for their safe restoration. The Archbishop then advanced to the edge of
+the platform and began a discourse, describing the grief the nation had
+experienced at their departure, the universal joy for their return, and
+the hope that they would ever keep peace and union in view in all
+matters of state, and that in their duties to the state they must never
+forget their responsibility to the Most High. Wuczicz, dressed in the
+coarse frieze jacket and boots of a Servian peasant, heard, with a
+reverential inclination of the head, the discourse of the prelate, but
+nought relaxed one muscle of that adamantine visage: the finer but more
+luminous features of Petronevich were under the control of a less
+powerful will. At certain passages his intelligent eye was moistened
+with tears. Two deacons then prayed successively for the Sultan, the
+Emperor of Russia, and the Prince,--and now uprose from every tongue,
+and every heart, a hymn for the longevity of Wuczicz and Petronevich.
+'The Solemn Song for Many Days' is the title of this sublime chant,
+which is so old that its origin is lost in the obscure dawn of
+Christianity in the East, and so massive, so nobly simple, as to be
+beyond the ravages of time, and the caprices of convention." The town
+was illuminated in the evening; and a ball was given at the new Konak or
+palace, built by the exiled Prince Michael, which was attended "by all
+the rank and fashion of Belgrade--senators of the old school, in their
+benishes and shalwars, and senators of the new school, in pantaloons and
+stiff cravats," which we agree with Mr Paton in considering as no
+improvement on the graceful costume of the East. The Servian ladies,
+however, have in general the good taste to retain the old national
+costume; and "no head-dress that I have seen in the Levant is better
+calculated to set off beauty. From a small Greek fez they suspend a gold
+tassel, which contrasts with the black and glossy hair, which is laid
+smooth and flat down the temple. The sister of the Princess, who was
+admitted to be the handsomest woman in the room, with her tunic of
+crimson velvet, embroidered in gold, and faced with sable, would have
+been, in her strictly indigenous costume, the queen of any fancy ball in
+old Europe."
+
+While occupied by his preparations for a tour into the interior, Mr
+Paton one day encountered "a strange figure, with a long white beard,
+and a Spanish cap, mounted on a sorry horse"--this was no other than
+Holman, the well-known blind traveller, whom he had last seen at Aleppo,
+and who, having passed in safety, under the safeguard of his infirmity,
+through the most dangerous parts of Bosnia, was now on his way to
+Walachia. He instantly recognised Mr Paton's voice, and mentioned his
+name on being told where he had last seen him; and after a walk on the
+esplanade, in which the objects in view were described to him, while
+turning his face to the different points of the compass, he appeared to
+have acquired a tolerably clear idea of Belgrade. Another visitor of Mr
+Paton, Milutinovich, the best living poet of Servia, on hearing the name
+of Holman, (of whose wanderings in the four quarters of the globe he had
+read in the _Augsburg Gazette_,) was so awe-struck at finding himself in
+the presence of even a greater traveller than Robinson Crusoe, (whose
+adventures Mr Paton found regarded as an authentic narrative by the
+monks of Manasia,) that he reverentially kissed his beard, praying aloud
+that he might return home in safety. When the day of departure
+approached, "orders were sent by the minister of the interior to all
+governors and employes, enjoining them to furnish me with every
+assistance, and with whatever information I might require;" and all
+preparations being completed, Mr Paton and his man Paul set off
+horseback, like Dr Syntax and Patrick, for the highlands and woodlands
+of Servia.
+
+Shabatz (more correctly Czabacz,) a town on the Save, between forty and
+fifty miles above Belgrade, and one of the few garrisons still retained
+by the Turks, was the first point of destination; and reaching it on the
+second day, he was hospitably received by _Gospody_ (Monsieur) Ninitch,
+the government collector, to whom he had an introductory letter from the
+minister Garashanin. Before the revolution, Shabatz numbered 20,000
+Osmanlis, the sites of whose kiosks and gardens are still pointed out on
+the _Polje_, or open space between the town and the fortress,--at
+present the only Moslems are the garrison of Bosniak _Redif_ or militia,
+occupying the dilapidated fortifications. It is the episcopal seat of
+one of the Archbishop's three suffragans; and the author, accompanied by
+his friend the collector, paid his respects to the Bishop, whom he had
+previously met at Belgrade. The conversation turned principally on the
+system of national education, by which, in a few years, reading and
+writing will be universal among the peasantry, while the sons of the
+better classes are prepared, by instruction in German, &c., for a
+further course of study in the Gymnasium of Belgrade, the germ of a
+future university. A proof of the taste now spreading for general
+literature was afforded by the library of the Archpriest, "Jowan
+Paulovich, a self-taught ecclesiastic: the room in which he received us
+was filled with books, mostly Servian, but among them I perceived German
+translations of Shakspeare, Young's _Night Thoughts_, and a novel of
+Bulwer's." The son of this priest was studying mining engineering at the
+expense of government, at Schemnitz in Hungary, a capacity in which he
+may one day do good service to his country, as the great mineral riches
+believed to exist in Servia are hitherto wholly unexplored. Having
+completed the circuit of all the notables in Shabatz, including Luka
+Lasaravich, a once redoubted lieutenant of Kara-George, and now an
+octagenarian merchant, with thirteen wounds on his body, Mr Paton
+prepared for a fresh start, drinking health and long life to his kind
+host and hostess in a glass of _slivovitsa_, or plum brandy, the
+national liqueur. But his good wishes were not destined to be fulfilled;
+for within a month an abortive attempt at a rising was made by the
+partisans of the exiled Obrenovich family, a troop of whom, disguised as
+Austrian hussars, entered Shabatz, and shot the good collector dead as
+he issued from his house to enquire the cause of the disturbance. The
+attempt, however, was futile, and the whole party were taken and
+executed.
+
+The road to Losnitza, whither our traveller was now bending his way, lay
+through the Banat of Matchva, a rich tract of land, with a "charmingly
+accidented" chain of mountains, the Gutchevo range, in the distance.
+"Even the brutes bespoke the harmony of creation; for, singular to say,
+we saw several crows perched on the backs of swine!" Towards evening we
+entered a region of cottages among gardens inclosed by bushes, trees,
+and verdant fences, with the rural quiet and cleanliness of an English
+village in the last century lighted by an Italian sunset. "In this
+sylvan paradise he was encountered by a pandour, who conducted him to
+the house of the _Natchalnik_, or governor of the province, a gaunt,
+greyheaded follower of Kara-George, who had been selected for this post
+from his courage and military experience, since the hostile
+neighbourhood of the Bosniaks, on the other side the Drina, between whom
+and the Servians a deadly religious and national hatred exists, rendered
+it necessary to be always on the alert." But before pursuing his route
+to Sokol,[4] a sky-threatening fortress, respecting which his curiosity
+had been excited by the account given of it by M. Ninitch, he was
+persuaded by the Natchalnik to attend a peasant festival held at the
+monastery of Tronosha, to celebrate the anniversary of its consecration.
+The next day, accordingly, he set off with the Natchalnik and his
+companions, all gallantly armed and mounted, and in gala dresses covered
+with gold embroidery; and, dashing up hill and down dale, through the
+majestic forests which covered the ascent of the mountains, they arrived
+in due time at Tronosha, "an edifice with strong walls, towers, and
+posterns, more like a secluded and fortified manor-house in the
+seventeenth century than a convent; for such establishments, in former
+times, were often subject to the unwelcome visits of minor marauders."
+After returning thanks for their safe arrival, according to custom, in a
+chapel with paintings in the old Byzantine style, "crimson-faced saints
+looking up to a golden sky," they proceeded to inspect the preparations
+for the approaching fete, in a green glade running up to the foot of the
+hill on which stood the monastery, and dined with the Igoumen, ([Greek:
+Egoumenoz],) or Superior, and the monks, in the refectory. The healths
+of the Prince, and of Wuczicz and Petronevich, were given after dinner
+as toasts--a laudable custom, which appears to be in orthodox observance
+in Servia--after which a song was sung in their honour by one of the
+monks, to whom Mr Paton (whose special aversion he seems to have
+incurred, for some reason not exactly apparent) applies the epithet of a
+"clerical Lumpacivagabundus," which we quote for the benefit of such of
+our friends as may chance to be skilled in the unknown tongue. Meanwhile
+the assembled peasantry outside were in the full tide of merriment; and,
+on the following morning, Mr Paton was roused from slumbers, in which "I
+dreamed I know not what absurdities," by a chorus of countless voices,
+and, hurrying out, found the peasants he had seen the evening before,
+with a large accession to their numbers, on their knees in the avenue
+leading to the church, and following "the chant of a noble old hymn. The
+whole pit of this theatre of verdure appeared covered with a carpet of
+crimson and white; for such were the prevailing colours of the costumes.
+The upper tunic of the women was a species of surtout of undyed cloth,
+bordered with a design of red cloth of a finer description. The
+stockings, in colour and texture, resembled those of Persia (?), but
+were generally embroidered at the ankle with gold and silver thread.
+When I thought of the trackless solitude of the sylvan ridges around me,
+I seemed to witness one of the early communions of Christianity, in
+those ages when incense ascended to the Olympic deities in gorgeous
+temples, while praise to the true God rose from the haunts of the wolf,
+the lonely cavern, or the subterranean vault."
+
+After witnessing this interesting reunion of a regenerated and Christian
+nation, Mr Paton took leave of the Superior, who parted from him with
+the words--"God be praised that Servia has at length seen the day when
+strangers come from afar to see and know the people!" and, passing
+through the double ranks of the peasantry, who took leave of him with
+the valediction of _Srentnj poot!_ (a good journey,) repeated by a
+thousand voices, he rode on through the never-ceasing oak-forests,
+broken here and there by plantations of every variety of tree, to
+Krupena. Here he was received by the captain of the district at the
+head of a small troop of irregular cavalry, and hospitably entertained
+for the night. On the following day he started, "toiling upwards through
+woods and wilds of a more rocky character than on the previous day," to
+the ridge of the Gutchevo range, whence he looked down on Sokol, a
+fortress still held by the Turks, and which, on its inaccessible
+position, "built" (as described by M. Ninitch) "on the capital of a
+column of rock," was the only one never taken by the Servians; while the
+background was formed by the mountains of Bosnia, rising range over
+range in the distance. They reached the valley by a narrow winding path
+on the face of a precipitous descent, and entered the town; but their
+visit was ill-timed. It was Ramadan; the Disdar Aga was, or was said to
+be, asleep, and the castle could not be seen in his absence; and Mr
+Paton's enquiries from the Mutsellim, who acted as their cicerone, as to
+the height of the rock on which the citadel was built above the valley,
+only made him suspected of being an engineer surveying the stronghold
+with a view to its capture. After climbing up a pinnacle of rock which
+overlooked the abyss, he was compelled to return _re infecta_; "and when
+we got a little way along the valley, I looked back; Sokol looked like a
+little castle of Edinburgh placed in the clouds; and a precipice on the
+other side of the valley presented a perpendicular stature of not less
+than five hundred feet."
+
+A few hours travelling from Sokol brought Mr Paton to Liuhovia on the
+Drina, the precipitous banks of which, covered with wood, present
+numerous points of picturesque beauty; but at a short distance above
+this town, which is the quarantine station on the road between Belgrade
+and Seraievo it ceases to form the boundary of Servia and Bosnia, being
+entirely within the latter frontier. Thence ascending the valley of the
+Rogaschitza, a small stream tributary to the Drina, and crossing a ridge
+which parts the waters flowing into the Drina and into the Morava, he
+descended into the tract watered by the Morava, the national river of
+Servia; the first town in which was Ushitza, one of the fortresses still
+garrisoned by the Turks, and the scene of desperate conflicts during the
+war of independence. In past times it was a place of great importance,
+and contained sixty thousand inhabitants, being the entrepot of the
+trade between Servia and Bosnia; but this commerce has been almost
+ruined by the establishment of the quarantine; and most of the Servian
+inhabitants, in consequence of a bloody affray with the Turks, have
+transferred themselves to Poshega, a town at two hours' distance, and
+formerly a Roman colony, of which Mr. Paton found a relic in a fragment
+of a Latin inscription built into the wall of the church. From Poshega
+Mr P. continued his route down the rich valley of the Morava, here
+several miles wide, to Csatsak, the residence of a bishop and a
+_Natchalnik_; where the old Turkish town is in process of being
+superseded by a new foundation, which, "like Poshega and all these new
+places, consists of a circular or square market-place, with bazar shops
+in the Turkish manner, and straight streets diverging from it." Mr Paton
+waited on the bishop, "a fine specimen of the church-militant; a stout
+fiery man of sixty, in full furred robes, and black velvet cap," who had
+been, during the rule of Milosh, an energetic denouncer of his
+extortions and monopolies, and was consequently in high favour since the
+change of dynasty. The cathedral (we are informed) was "a most ancient
+edifice of Byzantine architecture," of which we should have been glad to
+have had some particulars; but Mr Paton's remarks are confined to
+complaints of the wearisome length of the mass, at which the bishop
+presided, "dressed in crimson velvet and white satin, embroidered with
+gold, which had cost L300 at Vienna; and as he sat in his chair, with
+mitre on head and crosier in hand, looked, with his bushy white beard,
+an imposing representative of spiritual authority." Taking leave of this
+formidable prelate, Mr Paton proceeded to Karanovatz, in the rich plain
+round which, surrounded by hills which are compared to the last
+picturesque undulations of the Alps near Vicenz or Verona, the river
+Ybar falls into the Morava, not far fron the ancient convent of
+Zhitchka Jicha, where seven Servian kings of the Neman dynasty were
+crowned, a door being broken in the wall for the entrance of each
+monarch, and built up again on his departure: and here our traveller,
+turning to the right, and ascending the course of the Ybar, struck
+southwards into the highlands
+
+The character of the mountains among which he now found himself, was
+widely different from the picturesque oak forests of the Gutchevo range,
+which he had traversed in the early part of his tour. "Tall cedars
+replaced the oak and beech; the scanty herbage was covered with
+hoar-frost; the clear brooks murmured chillingly down the unshaded
+gullies; and a grand line of sterile peaks to the south showed me that I
+was approaching the backbone of the Balkan. There is a total want of
+arable land in this part of Servia, and the pasture is neither good nor
+abundant; but the Ybar is the most celebrated stream in Servia for large
+quantities of trout." Still ascending the steep mountain-paths, while
+the scenery became wilder and wilder, they at length reached the convent
+of Studenitza, one of the most ancient foundations in Servia, having
+been built by Neman, the first monarch of the dynasty bearing his name,
+who died in 1195. Like most monastic edifices in Servia, it is a
+castellated building, with walls whose massive strength is well
+calculated to resist an attack not supported by artillery; and, on
+entering the wicket, Mr Paton was received "by a fat, feeble-voiced,
+lymphatic-faced superior, leaning on a long staff"--from whom he could
+get no other reply to all his inquiries than "_Blagodarim_, (I thank
+you.") The magnificent church of white marble, one of the finest
+specimens now existing of Byzantine architecture, was built in 1314 (as
+an inscription imports) by Stephen Vrosh; but it had suffered severely
+at different times from the bigotry of the Turks. "The curiously twisted
+pillars of the outer door were sadly chipped, while noseless angels, and
+fearfully mutilated lions, guarded the inner portal. Passing through a
+vestibule, we saw the remains of the font, which must have been
+magnificent; and, covered with a cupola, the stumps of the white marble
+columns which support it are still visible. Entering the church, I saw
+on the right the tomb of St Simeon, the sainted king of Servia; beside
+it hung his banner with the half-moon on it, the insigni_um_(!) of the
+South Slavonic nation from the dawn of heraldry; and near the altar was
+the body of his son, St Stephen, the patron saint of Servia." Another
+day's journey through the same rugged and sterile scenery, in a
+direction due south, during which they passed the Demir-kapu, on Iron
+Gate, on the bank of the Ybar, where there is only room for a single led
+horse in a passage cut through the rock, brought them to the quarantine
+station on the river Raska, two hours' distance from Novibazar in
+Bosnia, which it was Mr Paton's intention to visit, attended by a
+Servian quarantine officer.
+
+The conversion of the Bosniaks to Islam was effected by force, on the
+conquest of the country in 1463, by Mohammed II., the only instance in
+the career of Turkish conquest in which the injunction of the Prophet
+against compulsory proselytism has been violated; but they have always
+held the faith, thus forced on them, with the zeal of renegades, and are
+now the most fanatic and bigoted Moslems in the empire. The Christians
+resident in their territory are subject to every species of tyranny and
+maltreatment, several instances of which, related by refugees in Servia,
+are given in the work before us. A Frank traveller is a sight scarcely
+known; and Mr Paton soon had abundant evidence, on his approach to
+Novibazar, which lies in a fertile plain about a mile and a half in
+diameter, surrounded by low hills, that his visit here would be even
+less favourably received than at Sokol. The gipsies, whose tents covered
+the plain, and who here profess Islamism, cried furiously after them,
+"See, how the Royal Servians now-a-days have the audacity to enter
+Novibazar on horseback!" Youssouf Bey, the governor, was said to be
+asleep in his harem, (the usual Not-at-home of an Oriental,) but, as
+they afterwards ascertained, was actually afraid to receive them; and
+while they were sauntering round the town, a savage-looking Bosniak
+starting up, exclaimed, "Giaours, kafirs, spies! I know what you come
+for!--Do you expect to see your cross one day planted on the castle?"
+The threat of a complaint to the Bey only provoked fresh insolence; and,
+warned by a Christian bystander that the whole town would soon be in
+commotion, they prudently beat a retreat, and reached the Servian
+frontier in safety.
+
+After this narrow escape from Bosniak hospitality, Mr Paton's next
+object was the Kopaunik mountain, lying a little to the south, and from
+the top of which (as he had been informed at Csatsak) a panoramic view
+of all Servia might be obtained; and having prevailed on the captain of
+the district to accompany him, they crossed the Ybar, and reached the
+summit with little difficulty, if (as seems to be implied) the whole
+ascent was accomplished on horseback. "The Kopaunik is not much above
+6000 English feet above the level of the sea. But it is so placed in the
+Servian basin, that the eye embraces the whole breadth from Bosnia to
+Bulgaria, and very nearly the whole length from Macedonia to Hungary.
+When at length I stood on the highest peak, the prospect was literally
+gorgeous. Servia lay rolled out at my feet. There lay the field of
+Kossovo, where Amurath defeated Lasar, and entombed the ancient empire
+of Servia. I mused an instant on this great landmark of European
+history, and following the finger of an old peasant who accompanied us,
+I looked eastwards, and saw Deligrad, the scene of one of the bloodiest
+fights that preceded the resurrection of Servia as a principality. The
+Morava glistened in its wide valley like a silver thread in a carpet of
+green, beyond which the dark mountains of Rudnik rose to the north;
+while the frontiers of Bosnia, Albania, Macedonia, and Bulgaria, walled
+in the prospect."
+
+After luxuriating to his heart's content in the contemplation of this
+magnificent panorama, and taking leave of his companion, Mr Paton
+descended the north-eastern slope of the mountain; and lodging for the
+night in a shepherd's hut, where he found an officer sent by the
+Natchalnik of Krushevatz to meet him, arrived next day at Zhupa. "Here
+the aspect of the country changed--the verdant hills became chalky, and
+covered with vineyards, which, before the fall of the empire, were
+celebrated;" and after partaking of a repast, in which choice grapes and
+clotted cream (a national dish in Turkey) formed the dessert, they
+pushed on in all haste, and reached Krushevatz (often marked in the maps
+by its Turkish name of Aladja-Hissar) late at night. He was hospitably
+received by the Natchalnik, whose wife kissed the visitor's hand on his
+arrival, in compliance with the old Servian customs, now fast wearing
+out, which assign to woman a social position intermediate between the
+seclusion of eastern manners and the graceful precedence which she
+enjoys in the west. The next morning, they walked out to inspect the
+town, which was the metropolis of the Servian kingdom immediately before
+its overthrow by the Turks; and which, lying as it does in the midst of
+the rich vale of the Morava, which here expands into a wide and fertile
+plain, extending from the foot of the mountains by which it is flanked
+to the river, occupies a site well adapted for all inland capital. The
+author here introduces a dissertation on the history, laws, and customs
+of the ancient monarchy; but as our own business is rather with Servia
+as it is, than Servia as it was, we shall pass unnoticed the glories of
+the house of Neman--the warlike trophies of Stephan Dushan the Powerful,
+at whose approach the Greek Emperor trembled within the walls of
+Constantinople--and the tragical fate of Knes Lasar, with whom Servian
+independence fell on the fatal plain of Kossovo, June 15, 1389. Of the
+palace of Lasar in Krushevatz, only the gateway and the ruined walls are
+now remaining; but the chapel, having been converted by the Turks into
+an arsenal, is still in perfect preservation. "It is a curious monument
+of the period, in a Byzantine sort of style, but not for a moment to be
+compared in beauty to the church of Studenitza. Above one of the doors
+is carved the double eagle, the insigni_um_ (!!) of empire; but instead
+of having body to body, and wings and beaks pointed outwards, as in the
+arms of Austria and Russia, the bodies are separated, and beak looks
+inward to beak. The late governor had the Vandalism to whitewash the
+exterior; but the Natchalnik told me, that under the whitewash fine
+bricks were disposed in diamond figures between the stones. This antique
+principle of tessellation, applied by the Byzantines to perpendicular
+walls, and occasionally adopted and varied _ad infinitum_ by the
+Saracens, is magnificently illustrated in the upper exterior of the
+ducal palace of Venice."
+
+A grand field-day against the bears and boars in the forest, with a
+couple of hundred peasants as beaters, had been arranged by the
+Natchalnik for his guest's amusement; but their plans were frustrated by
+the unpropitious state of the weather; and as soon as it became
+favourable, we find Mr Paton again in motion, ascending the eastern
+branch of the Morava to Alexinate, the quarantine station on the
+Bulgarian frontier, where the British govermnent has established a
+_konak_ or residence for the Queen's messengers, who here await, on the
+extreme verge of the sanatory system, the return of the Tartars with
+despatches from Constantinople. He found it tenanted by Captain W----,
+whose guest he became for several days, to his infinite
+satisfaction:--"It seemed so odd, and yet was so very comfortable, to
+have roast-beef, plum-pudding, sherry, brown stout, Stilton cheese, and
+other insular groceries, at the foot of the Balkan. There was, moreover,
+a small library, with which the temporary occupants of the konak killed
+the month's interval between arrival and departure." He was compelled,
+however, to tear himself from the delights of an English cuisine; and on
+arriving at Tiupria, (more properly Kiupri-Ravenatz,) where he first
+heard tidings of the emeute at Shabatz, and the murder of his friend the
+collector Ninitch, he diverged from his route to visit the monasteries
+of Ravanitza and Manasia, the former of which was the burial-place of
+Lasar. But as his reminiscences of these saintly retreats are rather
+convivial than antiquarian, we shall pass on at once to Svilainitza,
+(the place of silk,) where he was entertained in the chateau of M.
+Ressavatz, the richest man in Servia; the only chateau-residence as he
+tells us, which he saw in the country. This part of Servia appears
+indeed to be, as Mr Paton says--"Ressavatz qua, Ressavatz la"--since to
+the patriotism and command of capital of this enlightened family, it
+owes not only the introduction of the growth of silk as above-mentioned,
+but the construction of an excellent macadamized road, by which Mr Paton
+travelled on the following day, through a country richly cultivated and
+interspersed with lofty oaks, to Posharevatz, (commonly written
+Passarowitz,) where he was welcomed on his arrival by another of the
+name of Ressavatz, the Natchalnik of the place. Posharevatz is
+celebrated in history for the treaty there concluded in 1718, by which,
+in consequence of the victories of Prince Eugene, Bosnia and Servia
+passed under the dominion of Austria for twenty years, till restored to
+the Porte at the peace of Belgrade in 1739: in the present day it is a
+place of considerable importance, both as the capital of a province of
+ninety thousand inhabitants, and the seat of a court of judicial appeal
+for Eastern Servia. By the president of this court Mr Paton was
+entertained at dinner, where he met all the elite of Posharevatz; "and
+the president having made some punch, which showed profound acquaintance
+eith the jurisprudence of conviviality, the best amateurs of Posharevatz
+sung their best songs, which pleased me somewhat, for my ears had
+gradually been broken into the habits of the Servian muse. Being pressed
+myself to sing an English national song, I gratified their curiosity
+with 'God save the Queen,' and 'Rule Britannia,' explaining that these
+two songs contained the essence of English nationality; the one
+expressive of our unbounded loyalty, the other of our equally unbounded
+dominion." And now having extracted, to the best of our ability, the
+plums from the pudding of Mr Paton's _gastronomic_ circuit of Servia, in
+which, (as he cordially admits,) "by inter-_larding_ my discourse with
+sundry apophthegms of _Bacon_, and stale paradoxes of Rochefaucault, I
+passed current considerably above my real value," we shall here leave
+him to find his way by the beaten track through Semendria, Belgrade, and
+Vienna, to England. But before proceeding to the consideration of the
+"Servian Question," a point scarcely touched on in the volume before us,
+it will not be amiss to give a brief summary of the social condition and
+internal organization of the Servian nation, on which Mr Paton gives
+some valuable information in his concluding chapters.
+
+The Servian territory extends about one hundred and seventy miles from
+east to west, along the Danube and Save, the boundaries being the rivers
+Timok and Drina; and one hundred miles in extreme breadth from Belgrade
+to the frontier of Albania. The population, after the expulsion of the
+Turks, was roughly estimated, under Milosh, as somewhat exceeding half a
+million; but, from the internal peace which the country has since
+enjoyed, and the plenty and prosperity which prevails among the
+peasantry, there can be little doubt that it has since greatly
+increased. As not more than one-sixth of the soil is supposed to be in
+cultivation, there is abundance of excellent land undisposed of; as
+every man, therefore, with ordinary industry can support himself and his
+family, abject want and pauperism are almost unknown. The innumerable
+herds of swine, which form the staple commodity of the country, both for
+home consumption and export, rove freely through the oak and beech
+forests which cover great part of Servia, and in which every one is at
+liberty to cut as much timber as he pleases, only an inconsiderable
+portion being reserved as state property for the public service. There
+are no indirect taxes; and as the _poresa_, or capitation tax, paid by
+each head of a family, the maximum of which is six dollars a-year, is
+the only impost (except a trifling quit-rent for the land) levied by the
+government, "it must be admitted," (as Mr Paton observes,) "that the
+peasantry of Servia have drawn a high prize in the lottery of
+existence." The harvest is a period of general festivity; all labour in
+common in getting in the corn, the proprietor providing entertainment
+for his industrious guests; "but in the vale of the lower Morava, where
+there is less pasture and more corn, this is not sufficient, and hired
+Bulgarians assist." Though in a comparatively southern latitude, the
+vegetable productions are those of a more northern climate; Mr Paton
+never saw an olive-tree, and the grapes and melons, though abundant, are
+inferior to those of Hungary; but the plum, from which the national
+liqueur, _slivovitsa_, is made, every where abounds, almost every
+village having its plum-orchard. With all these means and appliances for
+good living close at hand, it is evident that there is not much prospect
+of a famine in Servia, till the productions of the soil fall short of
+the demands of the population--a consummation which cannot happen for
+many generations to come.
+
+The national character of the Servian is compared by Mr Paton to that of
+the Scotch Highlander; and it is not without strong points of
+resemblance. "He is brave in battle, highly hospitable; delights in
+simple and plaintive music and poetry, his favourite instruments being
+the bagpipe and fiddle; unlike the Greek, he shows little aptitude for
+trade; and, unlike the Bulgarian, he is very lazy in agricultural
+pursuits."
+
+In the cleanliness of their persons and houses, they present a
+favourable contrast to most of the other Slavic populations; and their
+personal appearance is also advantageous. "They are a remarkably tall
+and robust race of men; in form and feature they bespeak strength of
+body and energy of mind; but one seldom sees that thoroughbred look, so
+frequently found in the poorest peasants of Italy and Greece. The women
+I think very pretty. They are not so well-shaped as the Greeks; but
+their complexions are fine, their hair generally black and glossy, and
+their head-dress particularly graceful; and not being addicted to the
+bath, like other eastern women, they prolong their beauty beyond the
+average period." The spirit of nationality, and zeal for national
+improvement, which pervades the population almost as one man, is
+strongly marked by many incidents related in Mr Paton's pages, and one
+is so remarkable that we cannot forbear quoting it. An idiot boy, to
+whom he had given a glass of _slivovitza_, "taking off his greasy fez,
+said, 'I drink to our prince Kara-Georgovich, and the progress and
+enlightenment of the nation.' He was too stupid to entertain these
+sentiments himself; but if the determination to rise were not in the
+minds of the people, it would not be on the lips of an oaf in an
+insignificant hamlet." Nor is the progress of intellectual development
+behind this patriotic zeal for national independence in the march of
+regeneration. "In the whole range of the Slavic family, no nation
+possesses so extensive a collection of excellent popular poetry," with
+which the British public has been in some measure made acquainted by the
+translations of Dr Bowring. "The romantic beauty of their country--the
+relics of a wild mythology, which has some resemblance to that of Greece
+and Scandinavia--the adventurous character of the population--the
+vicissitudes of guerilla warfare--are all given in a dialect which for
+musical sweetness is to other Slavonic tongues what the Italian is to
+the languages of Western Europe." The Servian Anthology has been
+collected by Dr Wuk Stephanovich, the author of several works on
+national topics; and there are several living poets, among whom,
+Milutinovich, already mentioned, is reputed _facile princeps_. The only
+newspaper now printed at Belgrade is the _State Gazette_, which
+prudently avoids all remarks on Austrian or Russian policy; and the only
+annual is the _Golubitza_, (Dove,) a miscellany in prose and verse,
+neatly got up in imitation of the German Taschenbuecher, and edited by M.
+Hadschitch, the framer of the code of laws. In the Lyceum, lectures on
+law are delivered by M. Simonovich, bred an Hungarian advocate, and
+formerly editor of the _Courier_, a newspaper now discontinued; but the
+study of law, as well as its practitioners, is said to be unpopular in
+Servia at present; and Professor John Shafarik is an able and popular
+lecturer on Slavic history, literature, and antiquities; of the latter,
+there is a collection in the museum of the institution, as well as a
+rich mineralogical cabinet collected by Baron Herder, and including
+specimens of silver, lead, and copper ore, as well as marble, white as
+that of Carrara. A Literary Society has also been formed for the
+encouragement of popular literature, and the formation of a complete
+dictionary of the language--the seal of which represents an uncultivated
+field, with the rising sun shining on a monument bearing the arms of
+Servia.
+
+The administrative senate consists of twenty-one members, named by the
+Prince for life; four of whom are ministers. Stojan Simitch, who has
+been before mentioned, the present vice-president (the presidency being
+an imaginary office,) is a Servian of the old school, in whom talent and
+shrewdness have supplied the place of education; but the most remarkable
+member of the cabinet is M. Petronevich, now minister for foreign
+affairs. He was at one time in a commercial house at Trieste, and
+subsequently for nine years a hostage for Servia at Constantinople--"he
+is astute by nature and education, but has a good heart and a capacious
+intellect; and, in the course of a very tortuous political career, has
+kept the advancement of Servia constantly in view. He is one of the very
+few public men in Servia, in whom the Christian and Western love of
+_community_ has triumphed over the Oriental allegiance to _self_; and
+this disinterestedness, in spite of his defects, is the secret of his
+popularity." His partner in exile, M. Wuczicz, is now commander of the
+military force and minister of the interior, in which latter office he
+succeeded Garashanin; the standing army is a mere skeleton force; but
+every Servian is a soldier, and bound to provide himself with arms, thus
+forming a national militia, of which the effective strength is estimated
+at little less than 100,000 men. The military command of each of the
+seventeen provinces is vested in the Natchalnik, under whom are the
+captains of the several cantons, usually three in each province; these
+officers superintend the police, and report to the minister at war. As
+minister of the interior, he is charged also with the superintendence of
+ecclesiastical affairs, the spiritual head of which, the Archbishop of
+Belgrade, though acknowledging the supremacy of the Greek Patriarch, is
+virtually independent within the province; his salary, as well as that
+of the three bishops and the inferior clergy, is paid by the state, that
+of the primate being about L800 a-year, and of his suffragans half as
+much. The administration of justice (as settled by the Sultan's _hatti
+shereef_ of 1838, which may be regarded as the Servian constitution) is
+vested in local courts in each province, consisting of a president and
+three members, from which an appeal lies to the supreme courts of
+Belgrade and Posharevatz; but reference is always made in the first
+instance, in minor cases, to the _Courts of Peace_ (as they are called,)
+consisting of the village magnates, with whose patriarchal arbitration
+the litigants are usually satisfied, law and lawyers not being held in
+high estimation. "The courts of law have something of the promptitude of
+Oriental justice, without its flagrant venality;" but the salaries of
+the judges are small, that of the president of the appeal court at
+Belgrade not exceeding L300 a-year. But it is the financial department
+that presents the most striking contrast to other European states, in
+the unheard-of phenomenon of a national debt due not _from_ but _to_ the
+government; the revenue so much exceeding the expenditure, that a sum of
+a hundred thousand ducats has been lent to the people at six per cent,
+and forms an item on the credit side of the budget! The total annual
+outlay, according to the financial returns, including the tribute to the
+Porte and the civil list of the Prince, (the latter equivalent to about
+L20,000 English,) is 830,000 dollars; while the income reaches 887,000,
+principally derived from the _poresa_, or capitation-tax paid by heads
+of families, a separate tax being levied on bachelors. Such is at
+present the flourishing state of the principality of Servia, "the
+youngest member of the European family," the views of Russia on which,
+somewhat prematurely developed by the famous "Servian question," will be
+more clearly understood by a preliminary sketch of its previous history.
+
+The political existence of modern Servia may be considered to date from
+1804, in February of which year a general rising took place of the
+Christian population against the Moslems, provoked by the massacres and
+atrocities committed by the spahis, who held lands in the province by
+military tenure, and whose chiefs had thrown off the authority of the
+Pasha of Belgrade, and embraced the party of the famous Paswan-Oghlu,
+Pasha of Widdin, who was then in open revolt against Selim III., as the
+champion of the janissaries and the _ancien regime_, against the civil
+and military reforms which the Sultan was striving to introduce. The
+principal leaders of the Servians were Slavatz, (or as Mr Paton calls
+him, if the same person is intended, Glavash,) and George Petrovich,
+surnamed _Kara_ or _Czerni_, (black,) the son of a peasant in the
+district of Kragejewatz, who afterwards migrated to Topola, which has
+therefore been held by the Servians as the place whence sprung their
+liberator,[5] and where an annual festival is held in his honour. He was
+in his youth a _Hayduk_ or klepht; and having been forced to fly from
+Servia for taking part in an unsuccessful insurrection, had served
+several years in the Austrian army. His successes were at first viewed
+with satisfaction by the Porte; and the obnoxious chiefs, driven to take
+refuge in Belgrade, were there seized and put to death by the Pasha; but
+it soon became evident that the Servians, once in arms and victorious,
+would not be satisfied without complete independence. Semendria and
+other fortresses fell into their hands; and Kara George, by the
+unanimous voice of his countrymen, was declared _hospodar_ or prince.
+The Porte now directed an invasion of Servia by a mingled force of forty
+thousand Turks and Bosniaks; but the Moslem army was totally overthrown
+near Shabatz, Aug. 8, 1806, by seven thousand foot and two thousand
+horse under Kara George, and driven across the Drina with the loss of
+their commander and many other chiefs. It was now apparent that Servia
+was not to be reduced by force of arms; and conferences were opened, by
+which the Sultan engaged to grant them a local and national government,
+with free exercise of their religion. But the negotiation failed, from
+the demands of the Porte that they should surrender their arms, and
+leave the fortresses in the hands of the Turks; and while it was yet
+pending, Kara George carried Belgrade with great slaughter, by a
+_coup-de-main_, on the night of Dec. 13, 1806, thus completing the
+expulsion of the Turks from Servia, with the exception of Szoko, (Mr
+Paton's Sokol,) and a few other strongholds which still remained in
+their hands.
+
+The war which broke out in the following year between Russia and the
+Porte, secured Servia against any further attacks from the Turks; and
+Kara George, thus freed from apprehensions of invasion, endeavoured to
+introduce some degree of order and civil organization into the country.
+A sort of federal senate, to which each of the twelve districts into
+which the principality was then divided sent a member, met annually at
+Belgrade to regulate the finances and internal affairs of the country;
+and though the freedom of their deliberations was impeded by the
+presence of the _wayvodes_ or military governors, at the head of their
+armed retainers, whom even the authority of Kara George was unable to
+coerce, the success of their efforts to establish schools and promote
+the interests of civilization, indicated a degree of enlightened policy
+little to have been expected from a people but half emancipated from
+Turkish bondage. Kara George, meanwhile, who had received from the
+Emperor Alexander the rank of lieutenant-general, did good service to
+his Russian allies; and though signally defeated in an invasion of
+Bosnia, repulsed with triumphant success every attempt of the Turks to
+enter Servia. But his energies were paralysed by the disaffection of the
+subordinate chiefs; and when Russia, pressed by the advance of Napoleon,
+concluded in 1812 the peace of Bukarest, there was only a nugatory
+stipulation, in the eighth clause of the treaty, that the internal
+administration should be left with the Servians, "as to the subjects of
+the Sublime Porte in the islands of the Archipelago;" the fortresses to
+remain in the hands of the Turks. But no sooner was the Porte relieved
+from the presence of the enemy, than an overwhelming force was poured
+into Servia; and Kara George, unable to resist, fled into Hungary, and
+afterwards took refuge in Russia.
+
+The character of this remarkable man is well portrayed in a despatch,
+quoted by Mr Paton, of the afterwards well-known Diebitsch, who was the
+confidential agent of Russia in Servia, in 1810-11:--"His countenance
+shows a greatness of mind not to be mistaken; and when we consider times
+and circumstances, and his want of education, we must admit that his
+mind is of a masculine and commanding order. The imputation of cruelty
+appears to be unjust. When the country was without the shadow of a
+constitution, and when he commanded an unorganized and uncultivated
+nation, he was compelled to be severe; he dared not relax his
+discipline; but now that there are courts of law and legal forms, he
+hands every thing over to the tribunals. He has very little to say for
+himself, and is rude in his manners; but his judgments in civil affairs
+are promptly and soundly formed, and to great talents he joins unwearied
+industry. As a soldier, there is but one opinion of his talents,
+bravery, and enduring firmness." The portrait prefixed to the present
+volume, from a painting in the possession of the reigning Prince, the
+duplicate of one executed for the Emperor Alexander, bears out the
+character thus given of the Servian hero:--"The countenance expressed
+not only intelligence, but a certain refinement, which one would
+scarcely expect in a warrior peasant; but all his contemporaries agree
+in representing him to have possessed an inherent superiority and
+nobility of nature, which, in any station, would have raised him above
+his equals."
+
+At this juncture, when Servia lay at the mercy of the Turks, Milosh
+Obrenovich appeared on the scene. He had originally been a swineherd,
+and afterwards an officer of Kara George; but he now sided with the
+Turks, to whom he rendered efficient aid in cutting off the other
+popular leaders who still continued in arms. But the execution of
+Slavatz, and other chiefs who had also made their submission, by order
+of Soliman Pasha of Belgrade, showed him that his own fate was only
+deferred; and, escaping into his native district of Rudnik, he once more
+raised the standard of freedom. The peasantry rose _en masse_, and the
+campaign was generally to the advantage of Milosh, who displayed great
+bravery and military skill; but Soliman Pasha was at length recalled,
+and an accommodation effected, by which Milosh became hospodar, under
+the suzerainte of the Sultan, Belgrade and a few fortresses only
+remaining in the hands of the Turks. As the resident Turkish population
+had almost wholly disappeared during the war, Milosh was now absolute
+master of the country, and was delivered from all fears of a rival, by
+the death of Kara George, who, in 1817, misled by false representations,
+had returned from Petersburg to Servia; but was betrayed by Milosh, and
+put to death by the Turks.[6] Though unable to read or write, his rule
+was marked by ability and vigour. He repressed robberies and offences
+against property with merciless severity, frequently causing malefactors
+to be hung to the next tree, without form of trial;--and improved the
+internal communications by the formation of an excellent road through
+the forests, from the Turkish frontier at Nissa to Belgrade. In his
+political relations with Russia and the Porte, he steered a middle
+course with consummate dexterity, constantly maintaining a good
+understanding with the cabinet of St Petersburg; while, in 1830, he
+succeeded in obtaining from the Sultan a firman, by which the dignity of
+prince was declared hereditary in his family; and it was further
+provided, that such Turks as still retained land in Servia should
+dispose of their estates within a limited period, and quit the province.
+Another firman, in 1833, released the Servians from the payment of
+_kharaj_ (the capitation tax paid by rayahs) and all other dues and
+imposts, in consideration of an annual tribute of 2,300,000 piastres
+(L23,000) to be paid to the Porte; the right of levying taxes was
+conceded to the Servian government, and all fortresses erected by the
+Turks, since the commencement of the war in 1804, were to be rased.[7]
+These concessions, which rendered the dependence of Servia on the Porte
+little more than nominal, were doubtless granted through the secret
+influence of Russia, whose obvious interest it was to weaken the
+connexion between her destined prey and its titular suzerain; but the
+despotic power thus placed in the hands of Milosh, was exercised with a
+degree of arrogance and contempt of vested rights, which soon rendered
+him highly unpopular. No carriage but his was allowed to appear in the
+streets of Belgrade; and, while all political rights were withheld from
+the people, he amassed immense wealth by arbitrary confiscations, by
+levying heavy taxes and import duties, and by establishing oppressive
+monopolies of articles of necessary consumption, particularly salt,
+veins of which, discovered by Baron Herder near the Kopaunik mountain,
+he forbade to be worked under severe penalties, in order to keep in his
+own hands the importation from Walachia. The discontent of the national
+party, headed by the _primates_ (as they are called) of the
+municipalities, at length broke out into flame--fomented (as it was then
+believed) by Russia, who was jealous of the influence acquired over
+Milosh by Colonel Hodges, appointed in 1836 consul-general for England,
+and with whom he was on the point of concluding a commercial treaty. A
+_hatti-shereef_ at this juncture (December 1838) arrived from the Porte,
+obtained (as it is said) through the advice of Colonel Hodges, and
+containing a form of constitution for Servia, regulating the legal
+tribunals, the functions of the ministry, &c., and ordaining the
+formation of a legislative council of seventeen members, as a check on
+the despotism of the Prince. But the crisis had already arrived. The
+senate took the initiative, by charging Milosh with embezzlement of the
+public property, and calling him to account; and, after a vain attempt
+to make a stand against the popular indignation, he fled with his
+treasures into Hungary. An attempt to recover his power having proved
+ineffectual, he at length abdicated in favour of his son, Milan; who,
+dying soon after, was succeeded by his brother, Michael, under the
+guardianship of his mother, Liubitza. But the same system still
+continued; and all efforts to procure any redress of grievances proving
+fruitless, a general outbreak took place in September 1842, the prime
+movers in which were Wucicz and Petronevich, who for several years had
+been the recognised heads of the popular party. As it was found that the
+few troops round the Prince were not to be depended upon, he quitted
+Belgrade, accompanied by his mother and the French and English consuls,
+and repaired to Semlin; and after some fruitless negotiation, the
+sovereignty was declared vacant by the representatives of the nation,
+with the concurrence of the Turkish governor, Kiamil Pasha.
+
+As it was well known that the Obrenovich family had been for some time
+in bad odour at Petersburg, this movement was at first universally
+attributed to Russian influence; but it soon became apparent that its
+only motive was the spontaneous assertion by the Servians of the rights
+and liberties withheld from them; and the steps for a fresh election, in
+pursuance of the provisions of the _hatti-shereefs_ were taken with
+perfect order and unanimity. A firman was issued by the Sultan, in right
+of his suzerainte; and the unanimous and enthusiastic choice of the
+nation fell on Alexander, son of the well-remembered Kara George, who
+was forthwith inaugurated in the cathedral of Belgrade, by the
+Archbishop, and received from the Porte the _berat_ or patent, necessary
+for his confirmation in his new dignity. His accession was officially
+notified by the Ottoman ministers, to the Russian envoy at
+Constantinople but this evidence of good understanding and unity of
+interest between the Porte and her vassal, was a formidable and
+unexpected obstacle to the sinister designs of Russia which was to be
+counteracted at all hazards; and the course adopted for this purpose,
+unparalleled perhaps in the annals of diplomacy, cannot be better
+understood than from the able and lucid statement of Lord Beaumont in
+his place in parliament, on the 5th of May following. [It must first be
+well remembered that neither in the treaty of Bukarest, nor in any
+subsequent convention, was a shadow of a right of _veto_, or
+interference in any way in the election of a prince of Servia, conveyed
+to Russia, (as in the joint nomination with the Porte of the hospodars
+of the Trans-Danubian principalities,) and the only ground on which such
+interference could rest, was that enunciated by Baron Lieven, with
+somewhat remarkable frankness in a Russ diplomatist, to Mr Paton, that
+"Servia owed her political existence solely to Russia, which gave the
+latter a moral right of intervention over and above the stipulations of
+treaties, to which no other power could pretend"--a statement false both
+in fact and inference, since it was by their own good swords, unaided by
+Russia or any other European power with either men or money,[8] that the
+Servians won their freedom; and the nugatory stipulation in the treaty
+of Bukarest, had been all along left a dead letter.] "Russia, neglecting
+all international law, sent an agent of her own into Servia, to
+investigate the internal proceedings of an independent state, and, on
+receiving his report, directed that agent to state his complaints,
+without consulting any other power, to the Divan. Now, he would venture
+to say, that a greater or more direct insult than this, was never
+offered to an independent state, and he could not conceive any act that
+could be a more gross and positive violation of the treaties of
+Bukarest, Akerman, and Adrianople, under which alone she could set up a
+right to be informed of what passed in Servia. Though Georgevich was
+elected by the people, according to the constitution of the province,
+and though the validity of his election was acknowledged by the Divan,
+and confirmed by the Porte, Russia demanded that the election should be
+set aside; and this demand was made by that power in such an overbearing
+manner, as to show to the world that Turkey was under the control of
+Russia, and must act in conformity with the dictates of the Czar."
+
+In this extremity, the Porte appealed for support to Great Britain and
+Austria, two of the powers who were parties to the quintuple treaty
+signed at London, July 15, 1840, for the express object of ensuring the
+integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire; and the appeal was
+backed by strong representations from Sir Stratford Canning, the British
+ambassador at Constantinople, to his home government. But the British
+government was (as Lord Palmerston observed, with much sarcastic truth,
+in the House of Commons on August 15) "in the same condition in which
+they had too often of late been found in foreign affairs, without any
+opinion of their own on the subject, (hear;) and determined to act with
+Austria, thereby risking the sacrifice of our own interests for a remote
+Austrian interest in which we had no concern. Austria at first
+determined to support Servia; but there came an _urgent appeal_ from
+Russia; and Austria recommended Servia to yield." The nature of this
+"urgent appeal" will be well understood by those who are aware of the
+morbid fear entertained by Austria of Russian extension among the Slavic
+populations in Hungary; and of which Russia availing herself, (as
+remarked by Mr Paget,) "by exerting the influence which similarity of
+language, and, in some parts, of religion, gives her over them, has
+hitherto frightened Austria into doing almost any thing she likes." "The
+Sultan" (continued Lord Palmerston) "was now forced to submit. He
+annulled the election of Prince Georgevich; he consented to a popular
+election; he recalled the two popular leaders, Wucicz and Petronevich,
+to Constantinople; and even appointed a Russian general, Baron Lieven,
+his commissioner, in conjunction with a Turkish officer, to go into
+Servia to see his orders carried into execution."
+
+So far Lord Palmerston; and the accuracy of the information possessed by
+the British Cabinet to combat these strong facts, may be estimated, from
+Sir Robert Peel's calling Prince Alexander, a man of thirty-five, and
+the worthy inheritor of his father's great qualities, "an infatuated
+youth"--on the authority (it is said) of a letter from Mr Fonblanque!
+But we must return from the English debates to the progress of the drama
+in Servia, where the commissioners found the Servians, in defiance of
+the great powers, and in spite of the hopelessness of aid from
+Constantinople, preparing for national resistance. The Prince refused to
+abdicate, alleging that the firman by which he had been appointed had
+never been revoked, and that universal anarchy would result from his
+resigning the reins of government, since no _kaimakams_, or regents _pro
+tempore_, had been named by the Porte--an omission which is supposed not
+to have been altogether unintentional; and the whole nation rose in
+commotion at the bare mention of the recall of Wucicz and Petronevich;
+the crowd exclaiming, when Wucicz told them that 'the Servian forests
+would not be less green were two old trees cut down, "No! a thousand
+times no!" and rushing with arms in their hands to the presence of
+Hafiz-Pasha, (who had been appointed on Kiamil's recall on the mandate
+of Russia for his share in the revolution,) announced their
+determination to maintain their prince and his counsellors; to which
+Hafiz assented, no doubt, with secret gratification. While the
+proceedings were thus stayed by the unexpected resolution shown by the
+Servians, Russian emissaries were traversing the country in all
+directions, striving in vain to stir up a revolt in favour of the
+Obrenovich family, whose former partisans, it was found, were now their
+strongest opponents; and inciting the Christians in Bosnia and Bulgaria
+to rise against the Moslems, by the hope of obtaining independent
+governments under hospodars of their own, like the other principalities.
+On the other hand, the Servian population was ready to rise _en masse_
+in defence of its liberties, and was further cheered by the report that
+thirty thousand of the Slavic races under Austrian dominion were ready
+to join them in the struggle for national freedom; while the Porte,
+roused to unexpected energy by the accumulation of wrong heaped upon it,
+reinforced the garrison of Belgrade with three thousand fresh troops,
+and formed encampments to the amount of near one hundred thousand men at
+Constantinople and Adrianople, for the ostensible purpose of overawing
+the spirit of revolt among the Bulgarians. The National Assembly, which
+had in the mean time met at Belgrade, declared the election of Prince
+Alexander legal and valid, and refused to abrogate it; and as the agents
+of Russia found that their original object could only be effected by an
+invasion, an act which (even had the season left time to march an army
+to the Danube) might have exceeded even the long-suffering of the other
+powers who were parties to the treaty of 1840, it was resolved, for the
+sake of appearances, to repair the false step as far as possible by a
+show of moderation. It was accordingly announced that the principal
+objections of Russia to the late election arose from the informality
+with which the proceedings had been conducted; that Prince Alexander
+would be admitted as a candidate, (a concession very distasteful to
+Austria, who apprehended that the talent and popularity of the prince
+might attract her own Slavic subjects under his rule;) and that the late
+prince, Michael, should be excluded from competition. This could only
+lead to one result; and Alexander, having _pro forma_ resigned his
+authority, a _hatti-shereef_ was sent from the Porte, and he was again
+elected with even greater enthusiasm than before.
+
+But Russia, though foiled in her main object, had still another move in
+reserve. The _berat_, or letter-patent of the Sultan, was still
+necessary for the confirmation of the new prince; and July 27, M. Titoff
+(who had succeeded M. Boutenieff as Russian envoy to the Porte)
+announced to the Divan the will of his master, that this important
+document should be withheld till Wucicz and Petronevich, "the authors of
+the late disturbances," had left the country. The ministers of the
+Porte, unsupported by the ambassadors of France and England, who
+remained passive, had no alternative but to yield to this audacious act
+of intervention, which was communicated by Baron Lieven to the Servian
+kaimakams appointed during the interregnum. "As soon as the intelligence
+was spread among the people, the universal exclamation was--'We will not
+suffer them to be taken from us--they are our protectors, our
+benefactors;'" but submission was inevitable, and, in the middle of
+August, the two ministers repaired to Widdin, where they were received
+with high distinction by Hussein Pasha. They remained in exile a year,
+when the interdict was withdrawn by Russia, as it is said in consequence
+of British intervention, but more probably from finding, that,
+notwithstanding their absence, it was impossible to stir up faction
+against Prince Alexander. The circumstances of their return have been
+already given from Mr Paton's account; and we can little doubt, that on
+his next interview with the Prince, after his faithful counsellors had
+been restored to him, "he showed no trace of that reserve and timidity
+which foreigners had remarked in him a year before."
+
+Such is the plain unvarnished account of the late transactions in
+Servia, in which the true character of Russian policy, and the means by
+which it is carried out, have been unveiled before the eyes of Europe in
+a manner sufficient to enlighten those which are not closed in wilful
+blindness. "Europe has been apprised, if she wishes to be so," (says the
+_Journal des Debats_,) "that there is in the East, independent of
+Turkey, a point of resistance against the encroachments of Russia;" and
+this _great fact_ derives double value from that point being found in
+one of those Slavic populations which it is the grand object and aim of
+Russia to unite under her iron sceptre. But (in the eloquent language of
+Mr Paget) "we knew that if Europe did awake, the progress of Russia was
+stopped; we knew that her gigantic power would crumble away, and nothing
+remain but the hatred of the world, of the injustice and cruelty by
+which it had been raised."
+
+  F. H.
+
+     _Servia, the Youngest Member of the European Family; or, a
+     Residence in Belgrade, and Travels in the Highlands and Woodlands
+     of the Interior, during the Years 1843 and 1844._ By ANDREW
+     ARCHIBALD PATON, Esq., Author of the "Modern Syrians."
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] This was the explanation actually given by Develuz, our consul at
+Adrianople, of his exaggerated account of the strength of Diebitsch's
+army, at the moment when Diebitsch's best hope was, that he might effect
+his retreat across the Balkan with the shattered and debilitated remnant
+of his troops! Yet on this authority the Sultan was recommended to yield
+at discretion, and the treaty of Adrianople was signed!
+
+[2] The present Prince, on public occasions, always wears the fez with
+an aigrette of diamonds, as a recognition of the suzerainte of the
+Porte; his predecessor, Michel Obrenovich, gave great offence by wearing
+a cocked hat.
+
+[3] The old Emperor, Francis of Austria, when a Russian general was to
+be presented, would say, "Now bring in the northern firmament, and all
+its stars."
+
+[4] Sokol must here be a slip of the pen for Szoko. Sokol, the
+birth-place of the famous Mohammed Sokolli, vizier of Soliman the
+Magnificent and his two successors, is in the heart of Bosnia, near
+Gradachatz.
+
+[5] In the supplement to the _Biographie Universelle_, vol. lxi., a
+strange tale is told, that Czerni George was a native of Nanci, who fled
+in his youth to Servia--but this is a mere romance.
+
+[6] Lamartine (_Voyage en Orient_) and other writers represent Kara
+George as having died in confinement in an Austrian fortress, soon after
+his flight in 1813-an error which has probably arisen from a confusion
+between his fate and that of Alexander Hypsilantis, who headed the
+insurrection in Walachia in 1821, and died in Mongatz, after three
+years' imprisonment.
+
+[7] These firmans, with the _hatti-shereef_ of 1838, &c., were printed
+and laid before the House of Commons in May 1843.
+
+[8] The contrast in this respect, between the progress and results of
+the Servian and Greek revolutions, is forcibly stated in an extract from
+a MS. document by Wuk Stephanovich, author of the Servian Anthology, in
+Parish's _Diplomatic History of the Monarchy of Greece_.--Pp. 387-90.
+
+
+
+
+THE STUDENT OF SALAMANCA.
+
+PART IV.
+
+     "Y asi entre otras razones le dijo que no tuviese pena del suceso
+     de Camila, porque sin duda la herida era ligera."--CERVANTES. _El
+     Curioso Impertinente._
+
+
+The unexpected and opportune appearance of Mariano Torres, at the moment
+of Herrera's escape, requires a few words of explanation. When Rodil, on
+the morrow of the skirmish with Zumalacarregui in the Lower Amezcoa,
+evacuated that valley, he proceeded to distribute a portion of his army
+amongst various garrisons; and then, with the remainder, marched to
+Biscay in pursuit of Don Carlos, who, having as yet no place of security
+from his enemies, was wandering about attended by a handful of
+followers. Amongst the troops left in Navarre by the Christino general,
+was the cavalry regiment to which Herrera and Torres belonged, and this
+was ordered to the plains of the Ebro. The day after its arrival at the
+town of Viana, a battalion marched in from Pampeluna, and with it came
+Sergeant Velasquez, who, after his escape from the Carlists, had taken
+refuge in that fortress. Great was the consternation of Torres on
+learning the surprise of the escort and capture of his friend, and his
+grief was warmly sympathized in by the other officers of the regiment,
+with whom Herrera was a universal favourite. But Torres was not the man
+to content himself with idle regrets and unavailing lamentations, and he
+resolved to rescue Herrera, if it were possible, even at the hazard of
+his own life. He confided his project to the colonel of his regiment,
+who, with some difficulty, was induced to acquiesce in it, and to grant
+him leave of absence. This obtained, he disguised himself as a private
+soldier, and boldly plunged into the centre of Navarre in quest of
+Zumalacarregui and his army. He had little difficulty in finding them:
+he announced himself as a deserter from the Christinos, and, without
+attracting unusual notice or suspicion, was enrolled in a Navarrese
+battaline, which, a day or two afterwards, marched to the village where
+Herrera was kept prisoner. Although by the interference of Count
+Villabuena, and the dexterity of Paco and the gipsy, Mariano's daring
+self-devotion was rendered superfluous, it had its uses, inasmuch as his
+disappearance with Herrera prevented the slightest suspicion from
+falling upon those who had really contrived and effected the escape. The
+gipsy, after guiding the two friends to Salvatierra, and receiving an
+ample reward from Herrera, performed the secret service with which
+Zumalacarregui had charged him, returned to that general with a ready
+framed excuse for the slight delay in its execution, and pocketed the
+ten additional onzas promised him by Paco. The muleteer, still weak from
+his wound, was the last man to be suspected; and of the Count's
+participation in the affair, no one, excepting Major Villabuena, for a
+moment dreamed. Don Baltasar, remembering his cousin's anxiety
+concerning Herrera, certainly entertained a notion that he had in some
+way or other facilitated his escape; but of this he could obtain no
+proof, nor, had he been able to do so, would it have been for his own
+interest to expose the Count, whom he was desirous, on the contrary, to
+conciliate. It was a vague and undefined apprehension of some attempt at
+a rescue, that had led him, at so late an hour on the night of the
+escape, to prowl in the vicinity of Herrera's prison.
+
+The autumn and winter of 1834 passed away without any material change in
+the position of the personages of our narrative. The war continued with
+constantly increasing spirit and ferocity, and each month was marked by
+new and important successes on the part of the Carlists. The plains of
+Vittoria, the banks of the Ebro, the mountains of central and northern
+Navarre, were alternately the scene of encounters, in which the skill of
+Zumalacarregui, and the zeal and intrepidity of his troops, proved an
+overmatch for the superior numbers of the Christinos. In vain did the
+government of the Queen Regent, persevering in spite of its many
+reverses, send its best troops and most experienced generals to that
+corner of the peninsula where civil strife raged: it was only that the
+troops might be decimated, and the generals forfeit their former
+reputation in repeated and disastrous defeats. Although the country and
+climate were such as to render temporary repose in winter quarters most
+desirable for the contending armies, the idea of such an indulgence was
+scarcely for a moment entertained, and the winter campaign proved as
+active as the summer one. The arrival of Mina to take the chief command
+of the Queen's forces, and the severity of the measures he adopted,
+rendered the character of the war more sanguinary and cruel than it had
+been since its commencement; and although, in numerous instances, the
+nearest relatives and dearest friends were fighting on contrary sides,
+it became impossible for them to obtain intelligence of each other's
+welfare. It was by no means surprising, therefore, that eight months
+elapsed, and the spring arrived, without Herrera hearing any thing of
+Count Villabuena or his daughter; and that the Count, on the other hand,
+remained ignorant of the proceedings of the young man whose life he had
+saved, and in whose fate he could not but feel interested, save through
+the occasional rumour of some dashing exploit, by which Herrera
+maintained and increased the high reputation he had early acquired in
+the ranks of the Christinos. His gallantry did not go unrewarded, and
+the opening of the spring campaign found him in command of a squadron,
+and on the high-road to further promotion.
+
+Whilst Herrera was thus gaining fame and honour, his rival, Major
+Villabuena, had no reason to complain of his services being overlooked.
+His courage was undoubted, his military skill by no means contemptible,
+and these qualities had procured him a colonel's commission and a staff
+appointment. But, in spite of these advantages, Don Baltasar was
+dissatisfied and unhappy. His object in joining the Carlists had not
+been promotion, still less a zeal for the cause, but the appropriation
+to himself of the fair hand and broad lands of Rita de Villabuena. His
+prospect of obtaining these, however, seemed each day to diminish. The
+favour with which the Count regarded him had lasted but during the first
+days of their acquaintance, and had since been materially impaired by
+the discovery of various unpleasing traits in Don Baltasar's character,
+and particularly by his endeavours to urge the death of Herrera in
+opposition to the wishes of his kinsman. Moreover, there could be little
+sympathy or durable friendship between men of such opposite qualities
+and dispositions. Count Villabuena had the feelings and instincts of a
+nobleman, in the real, not the conventional sense of the term: he was
+proud to a fault, stern, and unyielding, but frank, generous, and
+upright. Don Baltasar was treacherous, selfish, and unscrupulous. He
+felt himself cowed and humbled by the superiority of the Count, whom he
+began secretly to detest; and who, whilst still keeping on good, or at
+least courteous, terms with his cousin, became daily more averse to his
+alliance, and more decided to support Rita in her rejection of his suit.
+
+As a natural consequence of Zumalacarregui's successes, they of the
+absolutist party in Spain who had openly declared for Don Carlos, and
+who, during the first year of the war, had been hunted from post to
+pillar, and frequently compelled to seek concealment in caves and
+forests from the pursuit of the foe, found themselves, in the spring of
+1835, in possession of a considerable tract of country, including a few
+fortified places. _El Lobo Cano_, the Grey-haired Wolf, as his followers
+had styled Don Carlos, in allusion to his hair having become bleached on
+the mountain and in the bivouac, began to collect around him the
+semblance of a court; and various ladies, the wives and daughters of his
+partisans, who had been in temporary exile in France, recrossed the
+frontier and hazarded themselves in the immediate vicinity of the scene
+of war. Amongst others, Rita de Villabuena, who had been residing with
+some friends at the French town of Pau, implored, and with difficulty
+obtained, her father's permission to rejoin him. A house was prepared
+for her reception in the small town of Segura in Guipuzcoa, whence, in
+case of need, a speedy retreat might be made to the adjacent sierras of
+Mutiloa and Aralar, and here she arrived, under her father's escort,
+towards the commencement of the month of May.
+
+One of the first who hastened to pay court to the young and beautiful
+heiress, was, as might be expected, Colonel Baltasar de Villabuena. But
+his reception was in the highest degree discouraging, and he was able to
+assure himself, that if any variation had taken place in Rita's
+sentiments, it was by no means in his favour. His only remaining hope,
+therefore, was in an appeal to the Count, whom he still believed to be,
+for the family reasons already adverted to, desirous of a union between
+Rita and himself. This appeal he resolved to take an early opportunity
+of making. A valuable estate, which Rita had inherited from her mother,
+lay within the tract of country already conquered by the Carlists; and
+although the revenue it yielded was greatly diminished by the disturbed
+state of Navarre, and the contributions levied for the carrying on of
+the war, it was still sufficiently important to excite the cupidity of
+Don Baltasar, and to render him doubly anxious to obtain, on any terms,
+the hand of his cousin.
+
+It was on a bright May morning, three days subsequently to Rita's
+arrival at Segura, that a small train of horsemen was seen winding along
+the declivitous paths that lead across the sierra of Elgua, a part of
+the northern boundary of the province of Alava. The snows with which,
+during the long winter, the upper portion of these mountains had been
+covered, had disappeared in the warm rays of the spring sun, and
+disclosed peaks of grey rock, and patches of table-land strewn with
+flints, producing little besides a few Alpine plants, which, in defiance
+of the scanty nourishment they found, and of the keen air that blew over
+those elevated summits, boldly expanded their blossoms in the pleasant
+sunshine. Lower down, and on that part of the southern side of the
+mountain over which the cavalcade now proceeded, masses of forest-trees
+sprang out of the more plentiful soil, and overshadowed the rocky path
+that rang under the horses' feet; the dusky foliage of the fir-tree, the
+brighter green of the oak, and the broad angular leaves of the sycamore,
+mingling in rich variety. Now the path lay through some dried-up
+water-course, half filled with loose stones, whose elevated sides, over
+the edges of which the tendrils of innumerable creeping plants dangled
+and swung, bounded the view on either hand; whilst overhead the
+interwoven branches afforded, through their thick leafage, but scanty
+glimpses of the bright blue sky. Presently, emerging from the ravine,
+the road, if such it might be called, ran along the shelf of a
+precipice, below which successive ranges of luxuriant foliage, varied
+here and there by a projecting crag, or enlivened by the dash and
+sparkle of a waterfall, continued to the level below. From the foot of
+the mountains, an extensive plain stretched out to a distance of several
+leagues, its smiling and fertile fields thickly sprinkled with villages
+and farm-houses. To the left front rose the old Moorish castle of
+Guevara; and at a greater distance, more to the westward, and near the
+centre of the plain, were seen the imperfect fortifications and lofty
+church-towers of the city of Vittoria.
+
+The foremost of the horsemen, who, on the day referred to, were thus
+scrambling, to the great discomfort of their steeds, down the steep and
+rugged sides of the sierra, avoiding, for reasons of safety, the
+high-road from Salinas to Vittoria, which lay at a league or two on
+their right, was a man of middle age and tawny complexion, mounted on a
+lean and uncomely, but surefooted horse, whose long tail, which, if
+allowed to flow at will, would have swept the ground, was doubled up
+into a sort of club, about a foot long, and tightly bound with worsted
+ribands of bright and varied colours. The thick and abundant mane had
+been carefully plaited, with the exception of the foremost tuft, left
+hanging down between the ears, and from beneath which the wild eyes of
+the animal glanced shyly at the different objects he passed, pretty much
+as did those of the rider from under his bushy and projecting eye-brows.
+The horseman was dressed in a loose jacket of black sheep-skin, the wool
+rubbed off in many places, fastened down the front by copper clasps and
+chains that had once boasted a gilding, and bound at edges with coarse
+crimson velvet, which, from time and dirt, had become as dark as the
+principal material of the garment. Between the loose short trousers and
+the clumsy half-boots, replacing the sandals that were the customary
+wear of the person described, several inches of lean and sinewy leg were
+visible. A coloured handkerchief, tied round the head, and from beneath
+which a quantity of shaggy black hair escaped, rusty iron spurs, with
+huge jingling rowels, and a well-stuffed leathern wallet slung across
+his body, completed the equipment of the horseman, in whom the reader
+will perhaps already have recognised Jaime, the gipsy esquilador, now
+acting as guide to the persons who followed. These consisted of Count
+Villabuena and his cousin, Don Baltasar, both well mounted on powerful
+chargers, and cloaked from chin to heel; for they had been early in the
+saddle, and, although now in the month of May, the morning air upon the
+mountains was keen and searching. They were followed, at a short
+distance, by an escort of forty Carlist cavalry, strange, wild-looking
+figures, whose scanty equipment, and the little uniformity of their
+clothing, might have excited the derision of better provided troops; but
+whose muscular forms and hardy aspect, as well as the serviceable state
+of their carbines and lances, gave promise of their proving efficient
+defenders and formidable foes.
+
+Not having been bred to the profession of arms, Count Villabuena was, in
+a strictly military point of view, of little use to his party; but his
+intimate acquaintance with Navarre and the Basque provinces, with the
+customs, feelings, and prejudices of their inhabitants, rendered him
+invaluable in all administrative arrangements and combinations, and in
+these he cheerfully and actively exerted himself. It was on a mission of
+this nature that he was now proceeding, having left Onate early that
+morning, to attend a meeting of influential Alavese Carlists, which was
+to take place at the village of Gamboa, on the north side of the plain
+of Vittoria. Although the country he had to pass through was not then
+occupied, and only occasionally visited, by the Christinos, an escort
+was necessary; and, besides this escort, Colonel Villabuena had
+volunteered to accompany his cousin. His object in so doing was to
+obtain an opportunity for an uninterrupted conversation with the Count,
+on the subject of his pretensions to the hand of Rita.
+
+This conversation had taken place, and its result had been most
+unsatisfactory to Don Baltasar. The Count plainly told him that it was
+not his intention to force the inclinations of his daughter; and that,
+as she was averse to the proposed alliance, he himself had abandoned the
+idea of its taking place. A long and stormy discussion ensued, and
+Baltasar accused the Count of having deceived him, and induced him to
+join a cause, the ultimate triumph of which was impossible, by holding
+out hopes that he never intended to realize. The Count replied by
+reminding Don Baltasar, that when he had urged him to serve his rightful
+monarch, and not under the banner of a usurper, the only arguments he
+had used were those of loyalty and duty; and that the proposed marriage
+was a private arrangement entirely contingent upon his daughter's
+acquiescence. Sharp retorts and angry words followed, until the
+conversation was brought to a close by the Count's checking his horse,
+and allowing the escort, which had previously been at some distance
+behind, to come up with them. The cousins then rode on, still side by
+side, but silent, and as far apart as the narrow path would allow, the
+Count haughty and indignant, Don Baltasar sullen and dogged.
+
+Whilst this occurred in the mountains, the persons whom Count Villabuena
+came to meet were assembling at the place of rendezvous in the village
+of Gamboa. From various country lanes and roads, substantial-looking
+men, wrapped in heavy brown cloaks, and riding punchy mountain horses,
+were seen to emerge, for the most part singly, and at the careless,
+deliberate pace least calculated to excite suspicion of their going to
+other than their ordinary avocations. Some of these were alcaldes and
+regidores from the neighbouring villages, others landed proprietors in
+the vicinity. Now and then a lean, anxious priest, perched upon a high
+saddle, his feet encased in clumsy wooden stirrups, his head covered
+with an enormous hat, of which the brim, curled up at the sides over the
+crown, projected half a yard before and behind him, came ambling into
+the village, distributing his _benedicites_ amongst the peasant women
+and children, who stood at the doors of the houses bowing reverently to
+the _padre cura_. One man, dressed in the coarsest and commonest garb of
+a labourer, came up upon an ill-looking mule, and received a loud and
+joyful welcome from the persons already assembled. He was a wealthy
+proprietor, whose estates lay within the Christino lines, and had been
+compelled to adopt this disguise to avoid notice. The arrival of another
+person, to all appearance a charcoal-burner, with grimy face and hands,
+riding a ragged pony, across which a couple of sacks, black from the
+charcoal they had contained, were thrown by way of saddle, was hailed
+with similar demonstrations of joy. He was a rich merchant and national
+guardsman from Vittoria, secretly well affected to Don Carlos.
+
+The place where the Carlists first assembled was not in a house, but on
+a paved platform, extending along one side of the large church, by which
+it was masked from the view of persons approaching from the direction of
+Vittoria. A sort of cloister, with stone benches beneath it, ran along
+the wall of the church, and in front of the platform was a broad
+greensward, used as a playground by the village children. Whilst the
+Carlists grouped themselves in the cloisters, talking eagerly together,
+and waiting the coming of Count Villabuena, their horses and ponies
+stood saddled and bridled upon the green, held by peasant boys, and in
+readiness for their owners to mount and ride away at a moment's notice,
+or on the first signal of alarm. Of the mountain path by which the Count
+was expected to arrive, only about a mile was visible from the platform,
+after which it disappeared over the brow of a low wood-crowned eminence
+that rose to the north, partially intercepting the view of the sierra.
+On this eminence a peasant was stationed to watch for the Count; whilst
+on the other side of the village, at a short distance upon the road to
+Vittoria, another vedette was posted, to give notice of the appearance
+of any of the foraging or reconnoitring parties which the Christinos not
+unfrequently sent out in this direction.
+
+It was considerably past noon, and the members of the Junta, for such
+did the assembly style itself, were beginning to wax impatient for the
+arrival of the Count, without whom the business for which they had met
+could not be proceeded with, when the watcher upon the hill gave the
+concerted signal by waving his cap in the air, uttering at the same time
+one of those far-sounding cries, peculiar to the inhabitants of
+mountainous regions. Upon this announcement, the Carlists descended from
+the platform into the road that ran past one of its extremities, and
+took their way, with grave and dignified demeanour, to the dwelling of
+the priest, in which the meeting was to be held. This house, according
+to custom one of the most spacious and comfortable in the village, was
+situated at about musket-shot from the church, and a little detached
+from the other buildings. Annexed to it was a long garden, bordering the
+road, and divided from it by a low hedge; beyond the garden was a vast
+and level field, and, on the eastern side of that, a tract of marshy
+ground, thickly covered with a lofty growth of willow and alder trees,
+extended to a considerable distance. The Carlists had traversed nearly
+the whole length of the garden hedge, and the foremost of them were
+close to the door of the house, when they were startled by the loud
+blast of a horn, with which the peasant sentry upon the Vittoria road
+had been furnished, to give the alarm if needful. They simultaneously
+paused, and anxiously listened for a repetition of the sound. It came; a
+third and a fourth blast were sounded, and with such hurried vehemence
+of tone as denoted pressing danger. Yet the peril could scarcely be so
+imminent as the quick repetition of the signal would seem to denote;
+for, from the place where the vedette was posted, he would command a
+view of any advancing troops nearly half an hour before they could reach
+the village, and those who had aught to fear from them would have ample
+time to effect their escape. But the horn continued sounding, ever
+louder and louder,--the Carlists gazed at each other in dismay, and some
+few made a movement towards their horses, as if to mount and fly.
+Suddenly a fat and joyous-looking alcalde, whose protuberant paunch and
+ruby nose were evidence of his love for the wine-skin, although the
+chalky tint that had overspread his features at the first sound of
+alarm, did not say much for his intrepidity, burst out into a loud
+laugh, which caused his companions to stare at him in some wonder and
+displeasure.
+
+"By the blessed St. Jago!" exclaimed he, "the idiot has mistaken our
+friends for our enemies. He has been looking over his shoulder instead
+of before him, and has caught a sight of the Senor Conde and his escort.
+See yonder."
+
+The Carlists looked in the direction pointed out, and on the top of the
+hill over which Count Villabuena was expected to approach, they saw
+three horsemen standing, one of whom was sweeping the village and the
+adjacent country with a field-glass, apparently seeking the cause and
+meaning of the violent fanfare that had so much alarmed the respectable
+Junta. Behind these three men, who were no others than the Count, his
+cousin, and their guide, the lance-flags of the escort were visible,
+although the soldiers themselves were still out of sight, having halted
+just here arriving on the crest of the hill. The countenances of the
+Carlists, which for a moment had contracted with alarm, were beginning
+again to expand, as the plausibility of their companion's explanation
+occurred to them, when suddenly they saw the Count and his companions
+turn their horses in all haste, and disappear behind the hill. At the
+same moment, and before they could guess at the meaning of this
+manoeuvre, a shout was heard, a troop of Christino dragoons debouched
+from behind the willow wood, deployed upon the field, and charged across
+it in open order, their lances levelled,[9] and the pennons fluttering
+above their horses' ears. In less time than it takes to write it, they
+had crossed the field, dashed into the garden, and, breaking through the
+hedge, clattered over the rough streets of the village in pursuit, of
+the unfortunate priests and alcaldes, who, taken entirely by surprise,
+knew not which way to run to avoid the danger that menaced them. Some
+few who had time to get on horseback, scampered off, but were pursued
+and overtaken by the better-mounted dragoons; others crept into houses
+and stables, or flung themselves into ditches; and the majority, seeing
+no possibility of escape, threw themselves on their knees, and, in
+piteous accents, implored mercy. This was not refused.
+
+"Give quarter, and make prisoners," was the command uttered in the
+clear, sonorous tones of Luis Herrera, who led the party; "they are
+unarmed--spare their lives."
+
+The order was obeyed, and only one or two of the more desperate, who
+produced concealed weapons, and endeavoured to defend themselves,
+received trifling sabre-cuts from the exasperated dragoons.
+
+But although Don Baltasar, on first obtaining a view of the Queen's
+cavalry, and before he knew what force was approaching the village, had
+retired behind the brow of the hill. It was by no means his intention to
+make a precipitate retreat without ascertaining the strength of the
+enemy, and endeavouring, if possible, to rescue the captive Junta.
+Whilst the Count and the escort retraced their steps down the hill, and
+halted in the fields upon its north side, whence they had the option of
+returning to the mountains by the way they had come, or of striking off
+into the high-road to Salinas and Onate, which ran at a short distance
+to their right, Colonel Villabuena and the gipsy, concealed amongst the
+trees that clothed the summit of the eminence, noted what passed in the
+village. They at once saw how the surprise had occurred. The Junta had
+not expected an enemy to approach by any other road than that from
+Vittoria, and had consequently stationed sentries in no other direction.
+That such would be the case, had been foreseen by the Christinos, who
+having received, through their spies, information of the intended
+meeting had sent out troops upon the Pampeluna road, with orders, after
+proceeding a certain distance, to strike off to the left, and, availing
+themselves of the cover afforded by a large tract of wood and swamp, to
+take Gamboa in rear or flank. The manoeuvre had been rapidly and
+skilfully executed; and Luis Herrera, who, with his squadron, had been
+sent upon this duty, arrived with one half of his men within a few
+hundred yards of the village before he was perceived by the Carlist
+vedette. His other troop he had detached to his right, in order that, by
+making a wider sweep, they might get in rear of Gamboa, and prevent the
+possible escape of any of the rebels. This detachment, ignorant of the
+country, and puzzled by the numerous lanes and paths which crossed each
+other in every direction, had lost its way, and was still at some
+distance from the village when Herrera charged into it.
+
+When Colonel Villabuena had made his observations, and ascertained that
+the number of the enemy but little exceeded that of his own men, he rode
+out of the wood and rejoined the escort, resolved to take advantage of
+the Christinos being dispersed, and, unexpectant of an attack, to make a
+dash at them, which, he doubted not, would be fully successful.
+Previously, however, and although the Count had no military rank, it was
+a matter of common courtesy, not to say of duty, to communicate with
+him, and ask his consent to dispose of an escort which had been sent for
+his protection. But here the sullen temper of Don Baltasar, and the
+rankling irritation left by his recent altercation with his kinsman,
+showed themselves. Followed by the gipsy, he rode to the front of the
+lancers, who were drawn up in line, and, without addressing a syllable
+to the Count, or appearing to notice his presence, gave, in a sharp
+abrupt tone, the necessary words of command. The men moved off to the
+left. The Count, highly sensitive on matters of etiquette, and indignant
+at being treated by Don Baltasar as a person of no importance, unworthy
+of being consulted, allowed the troop to march away without giving any
+indication of an intention to follow or accompany it. Don Baltasar
+looked round, hesitated for a moment, and then seeing that the Count
+remained motionless, and took no notice of the departure of his escort,
+he rode back to him.
+
+"The enemy are few," said he, abruptly; "I shall attack them."
+
+Count Villabuena bowed his head coldly.
+
+"Scant measure of courtesy, colonel," said he. "Angry feelings should
+not make you forget the conduct of a _caballero_."
+
+On hearing himself thus rebuked, an expression of anger and deadly hate
+overspread the sombre countenance of Don Baltasar, and he scowled at the
+Count as though about to deal him a stab. But his eye sank beneath the
+calm, cold, contemptuous gaze of Count Villabuena. He said nothing: and
+again wheeling his charger, galloped furiously back to the head of his
+men, followed, at a more deliberate pace, by his cousin. Passing swiftly
+over a few fields, the little troop swept round the base of the hill,
+dashed across the level, and appeared upon the road at half a mile from
+the village. On obtaining a view of the latter, Don Baltasar at once saw
+that he was not likely to have so cheap a bargain of the Christinos as
+he had anticipated. Herrera had too much experience in this description
+of warfare to be easily caught; and although, upon first entering
+Gamboa, the dragoons had unavoidably dispersed in pursuit of the
+fugitives, he had lost no time in reassembling them; and, whilst a few
+men kept the prisoners already made, and searched the houses for others,
+he himself had formed upon the road a party fully equal in number to
+that commanded by Don Baltasar. Nothing daunted, however, at finding the
+enemy on his guard, the Carlist colonel drew his sabre and turned to his
+men.
+
+"_A ellos!_" he cried. "At them, boys, for Spain and the King!"
+
+The lancers replied to his words by a loud hurra, and the little party
+advanced, at first at a moderate pace, in order not to blow the horses
+before the decisive moment should arrive. The Count, forgetting private
+animosity in the excitement and exhilaration of the moment, rode
+cheerfully at the side of his cousin, and drew the sword which, although
+a civilian, the perilous and adventurous life he led induced him
+invariably to carry. At the same moment Herrera's trumpeter sounded the
+assembly, and those of the dragoons who had dismounted hurried to their
+horses. Before, however, the distance between the opposite parties had
+been diminished by many yards, the blast of the Christino trumpets was
+replied to by another, and, upon looking back, Don Baltasar saw a fresh
+party of dragoons just appearing upon the road, about a mile in his
+rear. It was the second troop of Herrera's squadron coming to the
+support of their leader.
+
+"Curse and confound them!" cried Baltasar, his face darkening with rage
+and disappointment. "Halt--files about! And now, boys, legs must do it,
+for they are three to one."
+
+And he led the way back into the fields, followed by his men at a rapid
+pace, but in good order.
+
+Without a moment's delay, Herrera, leaving a few dragoons to guard the
+prisoners, dashed across the country in pursuit of the Carlists. His
+example was followed by Torres, who commanded the other detachment. The
+fugitives had a good start, and were soon behind the hill; but the
+Christino horses were fresher, and although less accustomed to climb the
+mountains, in the plain they were swifter of foot. Don Baltasar, now
+riding in rear of his men, cast a glance over his shoulder.
+
+"They gain on us," said he, in a low tone, and as if to himself. "It is
+impossible to reach the sierra. If we could, we should be safe. There
+are positions that we could hold on foot with our carbines, where they
+would not dare attack us."
+
+"We shall never reach them," said the Count. "Let us turn and fight
+whilst yet there is time."
+
+"The bridge! the bridge!" cried the gipsy, who, notwithstanding the
+gaunt appearance of his steed, had kept well up with the soldiers. "If
+we gain that, we are safe. A child could pull it down."
+
+"Right, by God!" cried Baltasar glancing in some surprise at the adviser
+of an expedient which he had himself overlooked. "Spur, men, spur; but
+keep together."
+
+Every rowel was struck into the flanks of the straining, panting horses
+and the Carlists rapidly neared a small river, which, rising in some of
+the adjacent mountains, flowed in rear of the little hill already
+referred to, and parallel to the sierra whence Count Villabuena and his
+companions had recently descended. The land, for some distance on either
+side of the stream, was uncultivated, covered with furze and yellow
+broom, and sprinkled with trees and clumps of high bushes. Across the
+river, only a few months previously, a rude but solid stone bridge had
+afforded a passage; but the bridge had been broken down soon after the
+commencement of the war, and the stream, which, although not more than
+seven or eight yards broad, was deep, and had steep high banks was now
+traversed by means of four planks, laid side by side, but not fastened
+together, and barely wide enough to give passage to a bullock cart. Over
+this imperfect and rickety causeway, the retreating Carlists galloped,
+the boards bending and creaking beneath their horses' feet. When all had
+passed, Don Baltasar flung himself from his saddle, and aided by the
+gipsy and by several of his men who had also dismounted, seized the
+planks, and strove, by main strength, to tear their extremities from the
+clay in which they were embedded. The Christinos, who were within a
+couple of hundred yards of the river, set up a shout of fury when they
+perceived the intention of their enemies. By the sinewy hands of
+Baltasar and his soldiers, three of the boards were torn from the earth
+and flung into the stream. The fourth gave way as Herrera came up, the
+first man of his party, and, regardless of the narrow footing it
+afforded, was about to risk the perilous voyage. Violently curbing his
+horse, he but just escaped falling headlong into the stream. A shout of
+exultation from the Carlists, and the discharge of several carbines
+greeted the disappointed Christinos, who promptly returned the fire;
+whilst, as was usual when they came within earshot, the complimentary
+epithets of "Sons of Priests," and "_Soldados de la Puta_," accompanied
+by volleys of imprecations, were bandied between the soldiers on either
+side of the stream.
+
+"Is there any bridge or ford at hand?" said Baltasar hastily to the
+gipsy.
+
+"None within a quarter of a league," was the reply.
+
+"Then we will have a shot at them."
+
+Herrera and Count Villabuena were again opposed to each other, and each
+acknowledged the other's presence by a brief smile of recognition.
+
+A smart skirmish now began. All was smoke, noise, and confusion. The
+Count rode up to his cousin, who was on the right of his men.
+
+"Let us retire," said he. "No advantage is to be gained by this idle
+skirmishing. Infantry may be at hand, and delay will endanger our
+retreat."
+
+"Not so fast," replied Baltasar; "we will empty a few saddles before we
+go."
+
+"The escort was sent for my safety," said the Count, haughtily. "You are
+not doing your duty in thus risking it."
+
+"I have not been twenty years a soldier to learn my duty from you, sir,"
+said Baltasar, fiercely. "Aim at the officers, men. A doubloon for him
+who picks off the captain."
+
+Stimulated by the promised reward, several of the Carlists directed
+their fire at Herrera, who was on the left of the dragoons, exactly
+opposite to, and within sixty paces of, Don Baltasar. The bullets flew
+thick around Luis, but none touched him, and Baltasar himself drew a
+pistol from his holster to take aim at his opponent. Disgusted at his
+cousin's intemperate speech and imprudent conduct, the Count
+contemptuously turned his back upon him and approached the stream,
+regardless that by so doing he brought himself into a cross fire of
+friends and foes.
+
+"This is useless, Herrera," said he, "draw off your men."
+
+The words had scarcely left his lips, when his hand relinquished its
+hold of the bridle, by a convulsive movement he threw himself back in
+the saddle, and fell heavily to the ground, struck by a ball. A cry of
+horror from Luis was echoed by one of consternation from the Carlists,
+on witnessing the fall of a man whom they all loved and respected.
+
+"Where can we cross the stream?" demanded Herrera of one of his men, who
+knew the country.
+
+"To our left there is a ford, but at some distance."
+
+"Cease firing," cried Herrera. The trumpet sounded the necessary call,
+the Christinos hastily formed up and started at a gallop in the
+direction of the ford. Don Baltasar advanced to the spot where his
+cousin lay prostrate. Count Villabuena was lying on his back, his teeth
+set, his eyes wide open and fixed, his clenched hands full of earth and
+grass. Baltasar turned away with a slight shudder.
+
+"He is dead," said he to the subaltern of the escort. "To take the body
+with us would but impede our retreat, already difficult enough. The
+living must not be endangered for the sake of the dead. Forward, men!"
+
+And, without further delay, the Carlists set off at a brisk pace towards
+the mountains, which they reached before the Christinos had found and
+passed the distant ford. When the dragoons arrived at the foot of the
+sierra, Don Baltasar and his men were already out of sight amongst its
+steep and dangerous paths; and Herrera, compelled to abandon the
+pursuit, returned mournfully to the river bank, to seek, and, if it
+could be found, to convey to Vittoria the body of Count Villabuena.
+
+Leaving Herrera to his mournful duty, let us conduct our readers to an
+apartment in a house on the outskirts of the town of Segura. The
+interior, which was plainly but commodiously furnished, indicated
+feminine tastes and occupations, breathing that perfume of elegance
+which the presence of woman ever communicates. Vases of flowers decked
+the sideboards; a few books, the works of the best Spanish poets, lay
+upon the table; and a guitar, unstrung, it is true, was suspended
+against the wall. Two persons occupied the apartment. One of them, who
+was seated on a low stool at its inner extremity, near to the folding
+doors that separated it from an antichamber, was a robust, ruddy-cheeked
+Navarrese girl, whose abundant hair, of which the jet blackness atoned
+for the coarse texture, hung in a thick plait down her back, and whose
+large red fingers were busily engaged in knitting. At the other end of
+the apartment, close to the open window, through which she intently
+gazed, was a being of very different mould. On a high-backed elbow-chair
+of ancient oak sat Rita de Villabuena, pensive and anxious, her fair
+face and golden tresses seeming fairer and brighter from the contrast
+with the dark quaint carving against which they reposed. Her cheek was
+perhaps paler than when first we made her acquaintance; anxiety for her
+lover, and, latterly, for her father, was the cause; but her beauty had
+lost nothing by the change, for the shade of melancholy upon her
+features seemed, by adding to the interest her expressive countenance
+inspired, rather to enhance than diminish its charm. She was now
+watching for her father, who had led her to expect his return at about
+this time. Over the stone balustrade of her balcony, she commanded a
+view of the road along which he was to approach; and upon the farthest
+visible point of it, where a bend round a group of trees concealed its
+continuation, her gaze was riveted. Although the Count had assured her,
+before his departure, that his journey was unattended with risk, Rita's
+arrival upon the scene of war was too recent for her to escape
+uneasiness during his absence. Some hours before the time at which his
+return could reasonably be looked for, she had taken her post at the
+window, and although, at the persuasion of her attendant, a simple
+country girl, recently installed as her _doncella_, she had more than
+once endeavoured to fix her attention on a book, or to distract it by
+some of her usual occupations, the effort had each time been made in
+vain, and she had again resumed her anxious watch. In every horseman, or
+muleteer, who turned the angle of the road, she thought she recognised
+the guide, who, two days previously, had accompanied her father from
+Segura, and her heart throbbed with a feeling of joyful relief till a
+nearer approach convinced her of her error.
+
+Could the vision of Rita de Villabuena have penetrated the copse that
+bounded her view in that direction, she would have perceived, towards
+four of the afternoon, not her father, alas! but another horseman,
+attended by the gipsy guide, riding at a rapid pace along the road. On
+reaching the trees aforesaid, however, they deviated from the track into
+a lane inclosed between hedges, which led round the town, and again
+joined the road on its further side. To explain this manoeuvre, it is
+necessary to retrace our steps, and to follow the movements of Colonel
+Villabuena after his return to Onate on the preceding evening.
+
+When the first excitement of the skirmish and subsequent flight had
+subsided, and the detachment of Carlists, after giving their horses a
+moment's breathing-time upon one of the higher levels of the sierra,
+resumed their march at a more leisurely pace, the thoughts of Don
+Baltasar became concentrated on the one grand object of deriving the
+utmost possible advantage from the death of his cousin. By that event
+the estates of the Villabuena family were now his own, those, at least,
+that lay within the Carlist territory. These, however, were
+comparatively of little value; and although the far more extensive ones,
+that had been confiscated by the Queen's government, might possibly be
+redeemed by a prompt abjuration of the cause of Don Carlos, a measure at
+the adoption of which Don Baltasar was by no means so scrupulous as to
+hesitate, yet even that would not fully satisfy him. He had other views
+and wishes. As far as his selfish nature would admit of the existence of
+such a feeling, he was deeply in love with Rita; the coldness with which
+she treated him had only served to stimulate his passion; and he was
+bent upon making her his at any price, and by any means. He was
+sufficiently acquainted with her character to be convinced that his
+prospect of obtaining her hand was any thing but improved by her
+father's death and that to her the wealthy possessor of her family's
+estates would be as unwelcome a wooer as the needy soldier of fortune.
+He did not doubt that, after the first violence of her grief should
+subside, she would return to France, where some of her mother's
+relatives were resident; and that, when next he heard of her, it would
+be as the bride of his fortunate rival. The picture thus conjured up
+caused him to grind his teeth with fury; and he swore to himself a deep
+oath that she should be his at any risk, and if, by the boldest and most
+unscrupulous measures, that consummation could be brought about. A plan
+occurred to him which he thought could not fail of success, and by which
+the obstinacy of the self-willed girl must, he believed, be overcome. It
+was a hazardous scheme, even in that unsettled and war-ridden country,
+where men were too much occupied in party strife to attend to the strict
+administration of justice; but Baltasar did not lack resolution, and the
+prize was worth the peril. One thing he wanted; a bold and quick-witted
+confederate, and him it was not so easy to find. No man had fewer
+friends in his own class than Don Baltasar, and by his inferiors he was
+generally detested on account of his harsh and overbearing demeanour. Of
+this he was aware; and he vainly racked his brain to find a man in whom
+he could confide. The details of his nefarious project were already
+arranged in his mind, and only this one difficulty had yet to be
+overcome; when, at two hours after dark, he entered the streets of
+Onate. Hopeless of being served for affection's sake, he was meditating
+whom he could make his own by bribery, when a light from an open window
+flashed across the street, and illuminated the unprepossessing profile
+of Jaime the gipsy, who, in his capacity of guide, was riding in front,
+and a little on one side of Colonel Villabuena. The sight of those
+sinister features, on which rapacity and cunning had set their stamp,
+was as a sudden revelation to Don Baltasar, to whom it instantly
+occurred that the gitano was the very man he sought. The circumstance of
+his belonging to a race despised, and almost persecuted, by the people
+amongst whom they dwelt, was an additional guarantee against any
+compunctious scruples on his part; his occupation of a spy bespoke him
+at once daring and venal, and Colonel Villabuena doubted not that he
+should find him a willing and useful instrument.
+
+The soldiers filed off to their quarters; and Baltasar, after desiring
+the gipsy to come to him in an hour's time, betook himself to the
+posada. When Jaime had given his horse an ample feed, and groomed him
+with a care that showed the value he set upon his services, he made a
+hasty meal in a neighbouring taberna, and repaired to the Colonel's
+quarters. His stealthy tap at the door was replied to by an impatient
+"_adelante_," and he entered the room.
+
+A scarcely tasted supper was upon the table, and Don Baltasar was pacing
+the apartment, his brow knit and apparently deep in thought. On
+beholding the gipsy, he arranged his features into their most amiable
+expression, and advanced towards him with an assumed air of frank
+good-humour.
+
+"I have to thank you, Jaime," said he, "for your promptness and presence
+of mind this morning. Had you not thought of what we all forgot, and
+suggested the pulling down of the bridge, few, if any of us, would have
+seen Onate to-night. I shall report your conduct most favourably to the
+General, who will doubtless reward it."
+
+The esquilador slightly bowed his head, but, with the exception of that
+movement, made no reply; nor did any expression of satisfaction at the
+praise bestowed upon him light up his dark countenance.
+
+"Meanwhile," continued Don Baltasar, "I will discharge my personal
+obligation to you in a more solid manner than by mere thanks."
+
+And he held out a handful of dollars, which, the next instant,
+disappeared in one of Jaime's capacious pockets. This time a muttered
+word or two of thanks escaped the lips of the taciturn esquilador.
+
+"Whither do you now proceed?" enquired Baltasar. "Are you to rejoin the
+General? What are your orders?"
+
+"I am no man's servant," replied the gipsy, "and have no orders to
+obey. When your General requires my services, we make a bargain, I to
+act, he to pay. I risk my life for his gold, and if I deceive him I know
+the penalty. But the service once rendered, I am my own man again."
+
+"So then," said Baltasar, "you are not bound to Zumalacarregui; and
+should any other offer you better pay for lighter service, you are free
+to take it?"
+
+"That's it," replied the gipsy.
+
+There was a short pause, during which Colonel Villabuena attentively
+scanned the countenance of Jaime, who remained impassive, and with eyes
+fixed upon the ground, as though to prevent their expression from being
+read. Baltasar resumed--
+
+"Say then that I were to ensure you a large reward for the performance
+of services far less dangerous than those you daily render at a less
+price, would you accept or refuse the offer?"
+
+"I must know what I am to do, and what to get," said the gipsy, this
+time raising his eyes to Don Baltasar's face.
+
+"Can you be silent?" said Baltasar.
+
+"When I am paid for it--as the grave," was the reply.
+
+"In short, if I understand you rightly," said the Colonel with an easy
+smile, "you will do any thing at a price."
+
+"Any thing," returned the unabashed gipsy. "It is not a small risk that
+will frighten me, if the reward is proportionate."
+
+"We shall suit one another charmingly," said Baltasar; "for what I
+require will expose you to little danger, and your reward shall be of
+your own fixing."
+
+And, without further preamble, he proceeded to unfold to the gipsy the
+outline of a scheme requiring his cooperation, the nature of which will
+best be made known to the reader by the march of subsequent events.
+
+The sinking sun and rapidly lengthening shadows proclaimed the approach
+of evening, and Rita de Villabuena, still seated at her window, watched
+for her father's arrival, when the trot of a horse, which stopped at the
+door of the house, caused her to start from her seat, and hurry to the
+balcony. Her anxiety was converted into the most lively alarm when she
+saw the Count's gipsy guide alighting alone from his horse; a
+presentiment of evil came over her, she staggered back into the room,
+and sank almost fainting upon a chair. Recovering herself, however, she
+was hurrying to the door of the apartment, when it opened, and Paco the
+muleteer, who had lately been attached to her father as orderly, and
+whom the Count had left as a protection to his daughter, made his
+appearance.
+
+"The gipsy is here, Senora," said he; "he brings news of his Excellency
+the Conde."
+
+"Admit him instantly," cried Rita, impatiently. "Where did you leave my
+father?" she enquired, as the esquilador entered the room. "Is he well?
+Why does he not return?"
+
+"I left the Senor Conde at a convent near Lecumberri," replied the
+gipsy.
+
+"Near Lecumberri?" repeated Rita; "it was not in that direction he went.
+He left this for the plains of Vittoria."
+
+"He did so, Senora," answered the gipsy; "but before we were half-way to
+Onate, we were met by a courier with despatches for the Senor Conde, who
+immediately turned bridle, and ordered the escort to do the same. It was
+past midnight when we again reached Segura; and, not to cause alarm, we
+marched round the town, and continued our route without stopping.
+
+"And your errand now?" exclaimed Rita. The gipsy seemed to hesitate
+before replying.
+
+"The Senor Conde is wounded," said he, at last.
+
+"Wounded!" repeated Rita, in the shrill accents of alarm. "You are not
+telling truth--they have killed him! Oh, tell me all! Say, is my father
+still alive?"
+
+And, clasping her hands together, she seemed about to throw herself at
+the feet of Jaime, whilst her anxious glance strove to read the truth
+upon his countenance. It was a strange contrast presented by that lovely
+and elegant creature and the squalid, tawny gipsy; an angel
+supplicating some evil spirit, into whose power she had temporarily
+fallen, might so have looked.
+
+"The Senor Conde's wound is severe," said Jaime. "On his way yesterday
+afternoon to attend a meeting of the Navarrese Junta in the valley of
+Lanz, he fell in with a party of Christino cavalry, and, although his
+escort repulsed them, he himself received a hurt in the skirmish."
+
+"My father wounded and suffering!" exclaimed Rita in extreme agitation,
+passing her hand over her forehead in the manner of one bewildered by
+some stunning and terrible intelligence. "I will go to him instantly.
+Quick, Paco, the mules! Micaela, my mantilla! We must set out at once."
+
+The servants hurried away to obey the orders of their mistress, and
+prepare for instant departure, and the gipsy was about to follow, when
+Rita detained him, and overwhelmed him with questions concerning her
+father's state, to all of which Jaime replied in a manner that somewhat
+tranquillized her alarm, although it produced no change in her
+resolution to set off immediately to join him. This, indeed, the
+esquilador informed her, was her father's wish, as he found that he
+should be detained some time in his present quarters by the consequences
+of his wound.
+
+Although all haste was used in the necessary preparations, the sun was
+close to the horizon before Rita and her attendants left Segura, and
+took the road to Lecumberri, at about two leagues from which, as Jaime
+told them, and in the heart of the sierra, was situated the convent that
+was their destination. The distance was not great; but, owing to the
+mountains, the travellers could hardly expect to reach the end of their
+journey much before daybreak. Paco, who viewed this hasty departure with
+any thing but a well-pleased countenance, urged Rita to postpone setting
+off till the following morning, alleging the difficult nature of the
+roads they must traverse, and which led for a considerable part of the
+way over a steep and almost trackless sierra. But Rita's anxiety would
+brook no delay, and the little cavalcade set out. It consisted of Rita
+and her waiting-maid, mounted upon mules, and of the gipsy and Paco upon
+their horses; Paco leading a third mule, upon which, by the care of
+Micaela, a hastily packed portmanteau had been strapped. The gipsy rode
+in front; thirty paces behind him came the women, and the muleteer
+brought up the rear. Jaime had betrayed some surprise, and even
+discomposure, when he found that Paco was to accompany them; but he did
+not venture to make any objection to so natural an arrangement.
+
+Taking advantage of the goodness of the road, which for the first league
+or two was tolerably smooth and level, the travellers pushed on for
+nearly two hours at a steady amble, which, had the nature of the ground
+allowed them to sustain it, would have brought them to their journey's
+end much sooner than was really to be the case. The sun had set, the
+moon had not yet risen, and the night was very dark. Jaime, who
+continued to maintain a short interval between his horse and the mules
+of Rita and her attendant, kept shifting his restless glances from one
+side of the road to the other, as though he would fain have penetrated
+the surrounding gloom. He was passing a thicket that skirted the road,
+when a cautious "Hist!" inaudible to his companions, arrested his
+attention. He immediately pulled up his horse, and, dismounting,
+unstrapped the surcingle of his saddle. On perceiving this, Rita stopped
+to enquire the cause of the delay, but the gipsy requested her to
+proceed.
+
+"My horse's girths are loose, Senora," said he in explanation. "Be good
+enough to ride on, and I will overtake you immediately."
+
+Rita rode on, and Paco followed, without paying any attention to so
+common an occurrence as the slackening of a girth. Scarcely, however,
+had he passed the gipsy some fifty paces, when the latter left his
+horse, who remained standing motionless in the middle of the road, and
+approached the thicket. Just within the shadow of the foremost trees, a
+man on horseback, muffled in a cloak, was waiting. It was Colonel
+Villabuena.
+
+"All is well," said the gipsy; "and you have only to ride forward and
+prepare for our reception."
+
+"Who is with you?" said Don Baltasar, in a dissatisfied tone.
+
+"The lady and her doncella, and Paco, her father's orderly."
+
+"Fool!" cried Baltasar; "why did you let him come? His presence may ruin
+my plan."
+
+"How could I help it?" retorted Jaime. "If I had objected he would have
+suspected me. He's as cunning as a fox, and did not swallow the story
+half as well as his mistress. But her impatience decided it. Nothing
+would serve her but setting out immediately."
+
+"He must be disposed of," said Baltasar. "There's many a mountain
+precipice between this and our destination," he added meaningly.
+
+Jaime shook his head.
+
+"I might do it," said he; "but if I failed, and he is a wary and active
+fellow, the chances are that he would do the same kind office for me,
+and return with the lady."
+
+"Humph!" said Baltasar. "Well, he shall be cared for. And now ride on. I
+shall be at the convent an hour before you. Remember to take the longest
+road."
+
+The gipsy nodded, returned to his horse, and, springing lightly into the
+saddle, galloped after his companions. Don Baltasar remained a short
+time longer in the thicket, and then emerging upon the road, followed
+Rita and her party at a deliberate pace. From time to time he stopped,
+and listened for the sound of their horses' footsteps. If he could hear
+it, he halted till it became inaudible, and then again moved on. His
+object evidently was to keep as near to the travellers as he could
+without allowing his proximity to be suspected.
+
+It was nearly midnight, and Rita and her companions had been for some
+time amongst the mountains, when they reached a place where the road, or
+rather track, they followed, split and branched off in two different
+directions. Jaime, who, since they had entered the sierra, had abridged
+the distance between himself and his companions, and now rode just in
+front of Rita's mule, was taking the right hand path, when Paco called
+out to him that the left was the shortest and best.
+
+"You are mistaken," said Jaime abruptly, continuing in the direction he
+had first taken.
+
+But Paco would not be put off in so unceremonious a manner, and he rode
+up to the gipsy. "I tell you," said he, "that I know this country well,
+and the left hand road is the one to take."
+
+"How long is it since you travelled it?" inquired Jaime.
+
+"Only last autumn," was the reply, "and then for the twentieth time."
+
+"Well," said the esquilador, "it may be the shortest; but if you had
+ridden along it this morning, as I did, you would hardly call it the
+best. The winter rains have washed away the path, and left the bare
+rocks so slippery and uneven, that I could scarcely get my horse over
+them in daylight, and by night I should make sure of breaking his legs
+and my own neck."
+
+"I know nothing of this convent you are taking us to," said Paco, in a
+sulky tone; "but if it stands, as you tell me, to the north of
+Lecumberri, this road will lengthen our journey an hour or more."
+
+"Scarcely so much," said Jaime. "At any rate," added he doggedly, "it is
+I who answer to the Count for the Senora's safety, and I shall therefore
+take the road I think best."
+
+Paco was about to make an angry reply, but Rita interfered, and the
+discussion terminated in the gipsy having his own way. Three minutes
+later Don Baltasar arrived at the division of the roads, paused,
+listened, and heard the faint echo of the horses' hoofs upon the right
+hand path. With an exclamation of satisfaction, he struck his spurs into
+the flanks of his steed, and at as rapid a pace as the uneven ground
+would permit, ascended the contrary road, the shortest, and, as Paco had
+truly asserted, by far the best to the convent whither Rita de
+Villabuena was proceeding.
+
+Over rocks and through ravines, and along the margin of precipices, Don
+Baltasar rode, threading, in spite of the darkness, the difficult and
+often dangerous mountain-paths, with all the confidence of one well
+acquainted with their intricacies. At last, after a long descent, he
+entered a narrow valley, or rather a mountain-gorge, which extended in
+the form of nearly a semicircle, and for a distance of about three
+miles, between two steep and rugged lines of hill. Upon finding himself
+on level ground, he spurred his horse, and passing rapidly over the
+dew-steeped grass of a few fields, entered a beaten track that ran along
+the centre of the valley. The moon was now up, silvering the summits of
+the groups of trees with which the narrow plain was sprinkled, and
+defining the gloomy peaks of the sierra against the star-spangled sky.
+By its light Don Baltasar rode swiftly along, until, arriving near the
+further end of the valley, he came in sight of an extensive edifice,
+beautifully situated on the platform of a low hill, and sheltered to the
+north and east by lofty mountains. The building was of grey stone, and
+formed three sides of a square; the side that was at right angles with
+the two others being considerably the longest, and the wings connected
+by a wall of solid masonry, in the centre of which was an arched portal.
+In front, and on one side of the convent, for such, as a single glance
+was sufficient to determine, was the purpose to which the roomy
+structure was appropriated, the ground was bare and open, until the
+platform began to sink towards the plain; and then the sunny southern
+slope had been turned to the best account. Luxuriant vineyards, a
+plantation of olive-trees, and a large and well-stocked orchard covered
+it, whilst the level at its foot was laid out in pasture and
+corn-fields. The space between the back of the convent and the mountains
+was filled up by a thick wood, affording materials for the blazing fires
+which, in the winter months, the keen airs from the hills would render
+highly acceptable. The forest also extended round and close up to the
+walls of the right wing of the building. From the roof of the left wing
+rose a lofty open tower, where was seen hanging the ponderous mass of
+bronze by whose sonorous peal the pious inmates were summoned to their
+devotions.
+
+Urging his horse up the steep and winding path that led to the front of
+the convent, Don Baltasar seized and pulled a chain that hung beside the
+gate. The clank of a bell immediately followed, and Baltasar, receding a
+little from the door, looked up at the windows. No light was visible at
+any of them, and the most profound stillness reigned. After waiting for
+about a minute, the Carlist colonel again rang, and he was about to
+repeat the summons for a third time, when a faint gleam of light in the
+court warned him that some one was afoot. Presently a small wicket in
+the centre of the gate was opened, and the pinched and crabbed features
+of the lay-sister who acted as portress showed themselves at the
+aperture. In a voice rendered unusually shrill and querulous by vexation
+at having her rest broken, she demanded who it was thus disturbing the
+slumbers of the sisterhood.
+
+"I come," said Baltasar, "to speak with your lady abbess, Dona Carmen de
+Forcadell, upon matters of the utmost importance. Admit me instantly,
+for my business presses."
+
+"The lady abbess," peevishly returned the portress, "cannot be disturbed
+before matins. If you choose to wait till then, I will tell her you are
+here, and she will perhaps see you."
+
+"I must see her at once," replied Baltasar, waxing wroth at this delay,
+when every moment was of importance to his projects. "Tell her that Don
+Baltasar is here, and she will give orders to admit me."
+
+Whilst he spoke, the lay sister raised her glimmering lantern to the
+wicket, in order to take a survey of this peremptory applicant for
+admission. The view thus obtained of his features apparently did not
+greatly impress her in his favour, or at any rate did not render her
+more disposed to open the solid barrier between them.
+
+"Baltasar or Benito," cried she, "it is all one to Mariquita. You may
+wait till the matin bell rings. Fine times, indeed, when every thieving
+guerilla thinks he may find free quarters where he pleases! No, no,
+senor, stay where you are; the fresh air will cool your impatience. It
+will be daybreak in an hour, and that will be time enough for your
+errand, whatever it is."
+
+It was with no small difficulty that Don Baltasar restrained his spleen
+during the old woman's harangue. When it came to a close, however, and
+he saw that she persisted in leaving him on the outside of the gate till
+the usual hour for opening it, he lost all patience. Before the portress
+could shut the wicket, close to which she was standing, he thrust his
+hand and arm through it, and grasped her by her skinny throat. The lay
+sister set up a yell of alarm and pain.
+
+"Jesus Maria! _Al socorro!_ Help, help!" screamed she; the last words
+dying away in a gurgling sound, as Don Baltasar tightened his hold upon
+her windpipe.
+
+"Silence, you old jade!" cried the fierce soldier in a suppressed tone,
+"you will alarm the whole convent. You have the keys in your hand--I
+heard them clank. Open the gate instantly, or by all the saints in
+heaven, I throttle you where you stand."
+
+The increased pressure of his fingers warned the old woman that he would
+keep his word; and, yielding to so novel and convincing a mode of
+argument, she made use of the keys whose jingle she had imprudently
+allowed to be heard. Two heavy locks shot back, and a massive bar was
+withdrawn; and when, by pushing against it, Don Baltasar had convinced
+himself that the gate was open, he released the gullet of the trembling
+sister, and entered the paved court. In grievous trepidation the
+portress was retreating to her lodge, which stood just within the gate,
+when an upper window of the convent opened, and a female voice enquired,
+in commanding tones, the cause of the uproar. Don Baltasar seemed to
+recognise the voice, and he rode up beneath the window whence it
+proceeded.
+
+"Carmen," said he, "is it you?"
+
+"Who is that?" was the rejoinder, in accents which surprise or alarm
+rendered slightly tremulous.
+
+"Baltasar," replied the officer. "I must see you instantly, on a matter
+of life or death."
+
+There was a moment's pause. "Remain where you are," said the person at
+the window; "I will come down to you."
+
+The portress, finding that the intruder was known to the lady abbess,
+for she it was whom Baltasar had addressed as Carmen, now refastened the
+gate, and crept grumbling to her cell. Don Baltasar waited. Presently a
+door in the right wing of the convent was opened, a tall female form,
+clothed in flowing drapery, and carrying a taper in her hand, appeared
+at it and beckoned him to enter. Tying his horse to a ring in the wall,
+he obeyed the signal.
+
+The room into which, after passing through a corridor, Colonel
+Villabuena was now introduced, was one of those appropriated to the
+reception of guests and visitors to the convent. The apartment was
+plainly furnished with a table and a few wooden chairs; and in a recess
+hung a large ebony crucifix, before which was placed a hassock, its
+cloth envelope worn threadbare by the knees of the devout. But if the
+room of itself offered little worthy of note, the case was far different
+with the person who now ushered Don Baltasar into it. This was a woman
+about forty years old, possessed of one of those marked and
+characteristic physiognomies which painters are fond of attributing to
+the inhabitants of southern Europe. Her age was scarcely to be read upon
+her face, whose slight furrows seemed traced by violent passions rather
+than by the hand of time: she had the remains of great beauty, although
+wanting in the intellectual; and the expression of her face, her
+compressed lips, and the fixed look of her eyes, went far to neutralize
+the charm which her regular features, and the classical oval of her
+physiognomy, would otherwise have possessed. The outline of her tall
+figure was veiled, but not concealed, by her monastic robe, from the
+loose sleeves of which protruded her long thin white hands. After
+closing the door, she seated herself beside a table, upon which she
+reposed her elbow, and motioned her visiter to a chair. A slight degree
+of agitation was perceptible in her manner, as she waited in silence for
+Don Baltasar to communicate the motive of his unseasonable arrival. This
+he speedily did.
+
+"You must do me a service, Carmen," said he. "My cousin Rita is now
+within an hour's ride of this place. She comes hither expecting to find
+her father. She must be detained captive."
+
+"What!" exclaimed the abbess, "is your suit so hopeless as to render
+such hazardous measures adviseable? What is to be gained by such an act
+of violence? Her father will inevitably seek and discover her, and
+disgrace and disappointment will be the sole result of your mad scheme."
+
+"Her father," replied Baltasar gloomily, "will give us no trouble."
+
+"How?--no trouble! If all be true that I have heard of Count Villabuena,
+and of his affection for his only surviving child, he is capable of
+devoting his life to the search for her."
+
+"Count Villabuena," said Baltasar, "now stands before you. The father of
+Rita is dead."
+
+"Dead!" exclaimed the abbess with a start. "How and when did he die?"
+
+"He was shot in a skirmish."
+
+"In a skirmish!" repeated Dona Carmen. "He held no military command."
+
+"I was escorting him with a few men to attend a junta. We were attacked
+by a superior force, from which we escaped, thanks to an intervening
+river. A few shots were exchanged, the Count thrust himself into the
+fire, and fell."
+
+The abbess seemed to reflect a moment, and then fixed a keen and
+searching look upon the countenance of Baltasar.
+
+"Was your loss in men severe?" said she abruptly.
+
+"No--yes--" replied Baltasar, slightly confused. "I believe there were
+several wounded. Why do you ask?"
+
+"And the Count's death gives you the Villabuena estates?"
+
+"It does so," answered Baltasar.
+
+The dark penetrating eyes of the abbess still remained fixed, with a
+peculiar expression of enquiry and suspicion, upon the countenance of
+Colonel Villabuena. He tried at first to sustain their gaze, but was
+unable to do so. He looked down, and a slight paleness came over his
+features.
+
+"I have no time to answer questions," said he, with a rough brutality of
+manner which seemed assumed to veil embarrassment. "My plan is arranged,
+but promptness of execution is essential to its success. Rita must be
+detained here, where none will think of seeking her, till she becomes my
+wife. Your power in this place is unlimited, and your word law; you will
+have no difficulty in secluding her in some corner where none shall see
+her but those in whom you can fully confide. Make the necessary
+preparations. Each moment she may arrive."
+
+Whilst Baltasar was speaking, Dona Carmen remained with her brow
+supported on her hand, silent and sunk in reflection. She now sprang
+impetuously from her chair.
+
+"I will have naught to do with it," cried she; "you would entangle me in
+a labyrinth of crime, whence the only issue would be ignominy and
+punishment. You must find others to aid you in your machinations."
+
+In his turn Baltasar rose from his seat, and, approaching the abbess,
+led her back to her chair.
+
+"Carmen," said he, in a suppressed voice, and from between his set
+teeth, "is it to me that you say 'I will not?'--Carmen," he continued,
+speaking low, and with his face very near to hers, "there was a time
+when, for love of you and to do your bidding, I feared no punishment
+here or hereafter. Have you already forgotten it? 'I hate him,' were
+your words, as I sat at your feet in yon sunny Andalusian bower--'I hate
+him, and in proportion to my hatred should be my gratitude to him who
+rid me of his odious presence.' That night the _serenos_ found the body
+of Don Fernando de Forcadell stiff and cold upon the steps of his villa.
+He had had a dispute at the _monte_ table, and two men were sent to
+Ceuta on suspicion of the deed. Only two persons knew who had really
+done it. Ha! Carmen, only two persons!"
+
+During this terrible recapitulation, the abbess sat motionless as a
+statue, for which indeed, in her white robe and with her marble pale
+complexion, she might almost have been taken. She covered her face with
+her hands, and her bosom heaved so violently, that the loose folds of
+drapery which shrouded it rose and fell like the waves of a troubled
+ocean. When Baltasar ceased speaking she removed her hands, and
+exhibited a countenance livid as that of a corpse. Her almost
+preternatural paleness, the dark furrows under her eyes, and the tension
+of every feature, added ten years to her apparent age.
+
+"Is that all?" she said, in a hollow voice, to her tormentor.
+
+     "And one of those persons," resumed the pitiless Baltasar, without
+     replying to her question, "swore by earth and by heaven, and by the
+     God who made them both, never to forget the service that I--that
+     the other person, I would say--had rendered her, and to be ready to
+     requite it whenever he should point out the way. Years have flown
+     by since that day, and the feelings that united those two persons
+     have long since changed; but a promise made as that one was--a
+     promise sealed with blood--can never pass away till it has been
+     redeemed. Carmen, I claim its fulfilment."
+
+Baltasar paused. "Fiend!" exclaimed the abbess, "what would you of me?"
+
+"I have already told you," said Villabuena. "It is no crime, nothing
+that need alarm your conscience, recently grown so tender; but a good
+deed, rather, since it will prevent the daughter of a noble house from
+throwing herself away on an adventurer and a rebel, and give her hand to
+him for whom her father destined it. She is as yet unaware of the
+Count's death. She will learn it here, and no place fitter. Your pious
+consolations will soothe her grief. I shall leave her in your
+guardianship, and, when the first violence of her sorrow is over,
+return, to find means of overcoming her puerile objections to my suit.
+But I am a fool," exclaimed he, interrupting himself, "to lose in idle
+talk time that is so precious! They must already be in sight of the
+convent. Lead me to a window whence we may observe their approach, and
+whilst watching for it we can make our final arrangements."
+
+He took the hand of the abbess, and she led the way, mechanically, to
+the door of an inner room. Passing through two other apartments, they
+reached one at the extremity of the wing, from the window of which a
+view was obtained for a considerable distance down the valley. The
+prospect that presented itself to them on pausing before this window,
+was so enchantingly beautiful, that it seemed to produce an effect, and
+to exercise a softening influence, even upon the depraved and vicious
+nature of Don Baltasar. At any rate, a full minute elapsed during which
+he stood in silence and contemplation.
+
+The view afforded by the valley in question, upon that pleasant May
+morning, was indeed of almost unparalleled loveliness. The sun, which
+had already risen behind the eastern hills, but not yet surmounted them,
+threw its first rays across their summits, and illuminated the opposite
+mountains, bathing their pinnacles in a golden glow, whilst their lower
+steeps remained in comparative darkness. In the depths of the valley the
+last shades of twilight still seemed to linger, and masses of thin grey
+vapour rolled in billows over the rich vegetation and vivid verdure of
+the fields. The most fantastic variety of form was exhibited by the
+surrounding mountain wall; here it rose in turrets and towers, there
+spread out into crags, then again fell in blank abrupt precipices, their
+edges fringed with shrubs, the recesses of their sides sheltering
+wild-flowers of the most varied hues, whose sprays and blossoms waved in
+the sweet breath of morning. Equally varied, and as delicately
+beautiful, were the ethereal tints of the mountain tops, to which the
+cloudless sky seemed to impart a tinge of its azure. On the edge of a
+ravine, midway up a mountain, were seen a few crumbling walls, and a
+fragment of a broken tower, sole remains of some ancient stronghold,
+which, centuries before, had frowned over the vale. The hut of a
+goatherd or charcoal-burner, here and there dotted the hill-side; and at
+the southern limit of the valley, just before its change of direction
+took it out of sight of the convent, were visible the houses of a small
+hamlet, surrounded by plantations, and half buried amidst blossoms of
+the tenderest rose-colour and most dazzling white. Masses of beech and
+ilex clothed the lower slopes of the mountains, and from out of their
+dark setting of foliage the grey walls of the Dominican convent arose
+like a pale and shadowy spectre. The fresh brightness of spring was the
+characteristic of the whole scene; the year seemed rejoicing in its
+youthful vigour, and to express its delight by millions of mute voices,
+which spoke out of each leaf and twig that danced in the breeze. Nor
+were other and audible voices wanting. The lark was singing in the sky,
+the grasshopper had begun its chirp, the rills and rivulets that
+splashed or trickled from the hills, gave out their indistinct murmur;
+whilst, heard far above these voices of nature, the toll of the matin
+bell resounded through the valley, calling the devoutly disposed to
+their morning thanksgiving.
+
+The angelus had ceased to ring when Rita and her party came in sight of
+the Dominican convent, their horses and mules giving evidence, by their
+jaded appearance, of having been ridden far, and over rough and painful
+roads. The gipsy rode in front, vigilant and unfatigued--although he had
+now been in the saddle, with little intermission, for a whole day and
+night--and was followed by Rita, to whose delicate frame the long ride
+had been an exertion as unusual as it was trying. But a resolute spirit
+had compensated for physical weakness, and, uncomplaining, she had borne
+up against the hardships of the preceding ten hours. She was pale and
+harassed; her hair, uncurled by the night fogs, hung in dank masses
+round her face, and her fragile form was unable to maintain its upright
+position. Micaela, the waiting-maid, yawned incessantly, and audibly
+groaned at each rough stumble or uncomfortable movement of her mule.
+Several times during the drowsy morning hours, she had nearly fallen
+from her saddle, and had to thank Paco, who had taken his station beside
+her, for saving her from more than one tumble. Paco, either out of
+respect to the presence of Rita, or concern for the Count's misfortune,
+rode along, contrary to his custom, in profound silence, and without
+indulging in any of those snatches of muleteers' songs with which it was
+his wont to beguile the tedium of a march.
+
+Upon nearing the place where she expected to find her father, Rita's
+impatience to behold him, and to ascertain for herself the exact extent
+of the injury he had received, increased to a feverish degree, and on
+reaching the convent gate, already open for her reception, she sprang
+from her mule without assistance. But she had over-rated her strength;
+her limbs, stiffened by the long ride and the cold night air, refused
+their service, and she would have fallen to the ground had not Paco, who
+was already off his horse, given her the support of his arm. The
+portress and another old lay sister were the only persons visible in the
+court, and the last of these invited Rita to accompany her into the
+convent. Paco held out his horse's bridle and those of the mules to
+Jaime, intending to follow his young mistress, but the gipsy hesitated
+to take them, and the lay sister, perceiving Paco's intention,
+interposed to prevent its execution.
+
+"You must remain here," said she; "I have no orders to admit men into
+the convent, nor can I, without express orders from the lady abbess."
+
+Paco obeyed the injunction, and the three women disappeared through a
+door of the right wing of the building. They had been gone less than a
+minute, when the lay sister again came forth, and, approaching the
+gipsy, desired him to follow her. He did so, and Paco remained alone
+with the horses.
+
+With eager step, and a heart palpitating with anxiety, Rita followed her
+guide into the convent, making, as she went, anxious enquiries
+concerning her father's health. To her first question the old woman
+replied by an inarticulate mumble; and upon its repetition, a brief "I
+do not know; the lady abbess will see you,"--checked any further attempt
+upon a person who either could not or would not give the much wished-for
+information. Passing through a corridor and up a staircase, the lay
+sister ushered Rita into an apartment of comfortable appearance.
+
+"I will inform the abbess of your arrival," said she, as she went out
+and closed the door.
+
+Five minutes elapsed, and Rita, to whom this delay was as inexplicable
+as her impatience to see her father was great, was about to leave the
+room and seek or enquire the way to his apartment, when the abbess made
+her appearance.
+
+"Holy mother!" exclaimed Rita, advancing to meet her with clasped hands
+and tearful eyes, "is my father doing well? Conduct me to him, I beseech
+you."
+
+Struck by the beauty of the fair creature who thus implored her, and
+touched, perhaps, by the painful anxiety expressed in her trembling
+voice, and pale and interesting countenance, Dona Carmen almost
+hesitated to communicate her fatal tidings.
+
+"I have painful intelligence for you, Senora," said she. "The Count,
+your father"--
+
+"He is wounded; I know it," interrupted Rita. "Is he worse? Oh, let me
+see him!--This instant see him!"
+
+"It is impossible," said the abbess. "The bullet that struck him was too
+surely aimed. Your father is dead!"
+
+For an instant Rita gazed at the speaker as though unable fully to
+comprehend the terrible announcement, and then, with one shriek of
+heartfelt agony, she sank senseless to the ground.
+
+The shrill and thrilling scream uttered by the bereaved daughter, rang
+through the chambers and corridors of the convent, and reached the ears
+of Paco, who had remained in the court, waiting with some impatience for
+the return of the gipsy, and for intelligence concerning the health of
+the Count. Abandoning his horse, he rushed instinctively to the door by
+which Rita had entered the building. It was closed, but not fastened,
+and passing through it he found himself in a long corridor, traversed by
+two shorter ones, and at whose extremity, through a grated window, was
+visible the foliage of the forest surrounding that side of the convent.
+Not a living creature was to be seen; and Paco paused, uncertain in what
+direction to proceed. He listened for a repetition of the cry, but none
+came. Suddenly a door, close to which he stood, was opened, and before
+he could turn his head to ascertain by whom, he was seized from behind,
+and thrown violently upon the paved floor of the corridor. The attack
+had been so vigorous and unexpected, that Paco had no time for
+resistance before he found himself stretched upon his back; but then he
+struggled furiously against his assailants, who were no others than Don
+Baltasar and the gipsy. So violent were his efforts, that he got the
+gipsy under him, and was on the point of regaining his feet, when
+Colonel Villabuena drew a pistol from the breast of his coat, and with
+its but-end dealt him a severe blow on the head. The unlucky muleteer
+again fell stunned upon the ground. In another minute his hands were
+tightly bound, and Don Baltasar and his companion carried him swiftly
+down one of the transversal corridors. Descending a flight of stone
+steps, the two men with their burthen entered a range of subterranean
+cloisters, at whose extremity was a low and massive door, which Don
+Baltasar opened, and they entered a narrow cell, having a straw pallet
+and earthen water-jug for sole furniture. Close to the roof of this
+dismal dungeon was an aperture in the wall, through which a strong iron
+grating, and the rank grass that grew close up to it, allowed but a
+faint glimmer of daylight to enter. Placing their prisoner upon the
+straw bed, Don Baltasar and Jaime took away his sabre and the large
+knife habitually carried by Spaniards of his class. They then unbound
+his hands, and, carefully securing the door behind them, left him to the
+gloom and solitude of his dungeon.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[9] From an early period of the war, the Spanish dragoon regiments, both
+light and heavy, were armed with the lance, that weapon being considered
+the most efficient for the mountain warfare in which they were
+frequently engaged.
+
+
+
+
+SOMETHING MORE ABOUT MUSIC.
+
+
+We mused on music some while ago; and as the subject still haunts
+us--very much after the manner of an obstinate ghost that refuses to be
+laid, even by the choicest Latin--we are strongly disposed to try the
+effect of giving it full swing for once; and in idle mood, too idle to
+oppose ourselves to its tyranny, letting it carry us whither it will, in
+the hope that, in return for our complacence, it may in future suffer us
+to conduct our meditations according to our own pleasure, and give that
+sad and serious thought, which their merits demand, to the gravities of
+this life--to corn-laws and _poor_-laws, (of all sorts!) and the Irish
+question, and the debates to which all these give occasion, in reading
+which we have already worn out we know not how many pairs of spectacles,
+and one pair of excellent eyes; and last, not least, to the marchings
+and counter-marchings of the House of Commons, in which we are deeply
+interested.
+
+With such a course of study before us, we are disposed to make the most
+of our holiday; and should we chance to be a little too frisky, it must
+be borne in mind that retribution is at hand, and that we shall speedily
+become as solemn as ever a fool in the land, as dull as an owl bathing
+its eyes in the morning sunshine, which--having overslept itself--it
+takes for the full moon, and dismal enough to satisfy the most ardent
+advocate of the religious duty of being miserable,--eschewing laughter
+as we would the tax-gatherer, and refreshing our oppressed spirits alone
+with serious jokes, and such merriment as may be presented to us under
+the sanction and recommendation of a college of dissenting divines!
+
+But our harp will be a mingled one, for so is our theme; having a
+sympathy alike for our mirthful and sorrowful moments, which it alike
+spiritualizes; striking the light, gleesome chord to the one, and
+attuning the soul to more ethereal joy; while by its soft influence it
+tones down the harshness of bitter, _unavailing_ sorrow, and woos the
+heart, misanthropizing under the pangs of grief or unrequited love--pent
+up in its own solitude, unpitied and uncared for--and filled with dark
+thoughts, and sad sounds, and tones of plaintive winds, sighing through
+the cypress and doleful yew with mournful melody around the
+resting-place of the loved and lost, to submissive lamentings, and slow
+stealing tears that assuage its aching anguish and tranquillize the
+spirit, leading it to the hope of a brighter future, in whose dawning
+beams it will, ere-long, show like "the tender grass, clear-shining
+after rain"--more glistening and beautiful for the invigorating dews of
+the cloud which had overhung it, and beneath whose gloom its beauty
+faded away--for very trouble!
+
+How often have we found that hard, _bitter_ mood into which the mind
+under the pressure of suffering which is irremediable, and which has to
+be borne alone, is so apt to decline--feeling the harder and the
+bitterer for the careless, galling gaiety of all around--softened,
+subdued, yea, utterly broken up by the sweet notes of "some old familiar
+strain," that steal on the willing ear, freshening and exhilarating the
+spirit like a breezy morning in June, when it seems a sin to be
+wretched; the twittering birds on dancing boughs crying shame on us, for
+what is not only wrong, but, as we begin to feel, needless--not to say
+foolish; and we return from our stroll, wondering what in the world we
+have done with that load on our chest with which we began our
+walk--ending in a regular ramble--and which it then seemed incumbent on
+us, nay, a sacred duty, to pant under for the term of our natural lives;
+relieving ourselves by such sighs and groans as appeared to us the
+appropriate forms of expression for all human beings under the sun--made
+on purpose to be unhappy; we especially, fulfilling the end of our
+creation. And as we mark the change that has passed upon us--the
+bounding circulation in place of flagging energies--full, calm
+breathing, instead of the slow, short respiration of sadness--with
+reverent heart we bless nature, and, may we say also, nature's great
+Architect, all-merciful, all-loving!
+
+Such on us is frequently the effect of music; the heaviness of heart,
+caused by the weary rubs of this rough world, or the result of a
+temperament that has a constitutionally jarring string in it, is as it
+were _drawn out_, and sweetness and calm-breathing tranquillity infused
+in its stead; while our nerves become as the harmonious strings of a
+harp, that respond in sympathy with the master chords of one with which
+it is in unison, and whereon the fresh breeze of morning lightly plays,
+calling forth sounds of joy and gladness. Therefore do we _love_ it,
+with a warmth of affection that may perchance appear extravagant to
+those whose robust, well-balanced minds, clothed with strong, healthy,
+unsusceptible bodies--people who are always in good spirits, unless
+there be a reason for the contrary--may render them independent of such
+external influences, for we must acknowledge, that we do at times
+express this our affection in somewhat unmeasured phrase, as one who
+stays not accurately to calculate, and weigh with cool precision, the
+virtues of a friend, thus laying ourselves open to the unmitigated
+condemnation of those who soar above, (or sink below!) such sympathies.
+
+Be it so! We are not about to enter into any vindication of ourselves;
+we shall not even attempt to convince these dull souls, that it is
+possible for elevated feeling, and repose and tenderness of mind, to be
+indebted for their origin to such insignificant and material sources as
+catgut and brass wire--and that they are not therefore to be
+undervalued; though by way of illustration of the influence of matter
+over spirit, we would remind them of their own humane and charitable
+feelings _after_ dinner, compared with the fierce, nay, atrocious
+sentiments, which their consciences convict them of having entertained,
+before the pangs of their raging hunger had been appeased by that
+inestimable mollifier of men's hearts and tempers. For the cause of
+their insensibility to such impressions--a natural incapacity for
+receiving them--it is vain to seek a remedy, however willing we might be
+to apply one; but where cure is impracticable, palliatives are
+frequently admissible, and we would suggest that one may be found in
+this case, in the patients' treating the unhappy privation under which
+they labour with greater tenderness than has been their wont, throwing
+over it that veil of oblivion and charity with which they so gracefully
+conceal their other defects, instead of obtruding it on public
+observation, under the singular misconception of its being an admirable
+feature in their character, a something of which a man ought to be
+proud. Conduct like this, they may rest assured, will not fail of being
+appreciated and rewarded by the corresponding delicacy with which all,
+who are not utterly barbarous, invariably treat him who, by the
+deprecating humility with which he seeks to conceal his deficiencies,
+betrays his painful cognisance of their existence.
+
+We are aware that this is a turning of the tables upon them which they
+may not be disposed to admire--to be placed at the bar, when they
+expected a seat on the Bench, and were just smoothing down their ermine,
+and adjusting their wigs, in order to enter on their duties with the
+greater impressiveness and dignity; but they must believe us when we
+tell them, that we, too, have an opinion on this subject, to which we
+must be permitted to attribute as high authority as they possibly can to
+their own; and that, tried by this standard, they, being found wanting,
+would inevitably have been brought up for judgment, but for a merciful
+leaning, (sanctioned by legal precedent,) which prompts us rather to try
+the salutary effect of admonition and good counsel, than to proceed at
+once to inflict extreme penalties on the offenders--in short, that we
+are not in a hanging humour, or they should swing for it!
+
+Grim, rough Luther, laying about him with his ponderous mace, and making
+giant Pope tremble in the deepest recesses of his stronghold, lest he
+should grow utterly savage with his perpetual warfare--albeit a "Holy
+war"--humanized and spiritualized himself with his lute--(who does not
+sympathize with his unfailing "Deus noster refugium," that divine stay
+of his stout heart that trembled not at men or devils!) Ken, undaunted
+opponent of the tyranny of a king--meek sufferer for that monarch's
+lawful rights, rose at day-dawn, or so soon as the first brief slumber
+had recruited his exhausted frame, to give thanks unto the King of kings
+in strains that, handed down to us, yet thrill the heart by their
+fervent piety, and plain, vigorous verse, and animate it to a stricter
+more manly rectitude. Herbert--saintliest of men and priests--after his
+sacred toils, refreshed his spirit with "divine music;" the more
+melodious to his ear, that his heart was teeming with the harmony of
+that "good-will towards man," which seeks and finds its due expression
+in active exertions on their behalf--disdaining not the lowliest
+occasion of serving with hearty zeal the lowliest of his neighbours.
+Rest assured, then, O reader! whosoever thou art, that it is not for
+_thee_ to pretend to despise it!
+
+Ponder the rather on the _power_ of that art, that could soothe the
+perturbed soul of Israel's wrath-sent king--mad and moody--and even
+expel the evil spirit that goaded him; and on its _dignity_--for
+prophets of old, when the Divine inspiration came upon them, revealing
+to their purified eyes the "vision of the Almighty," uttered their "dark
+sayings upon the harp."
+
+What a plague it sometimes is to be hag-ridden by a tune, racing through
+one's head, with a never-ending always-beginningness, as though a
+thousand imps were singing it in one's ears. Wherever you may be,
+whomsoever with, whatsoever doing, still ring on those incessant tones
+of perchance the merriest of all jigs, till--it is Sunday morning, and
+you are preparing for church--you leave your house with the entire and
+miserable conviction, that, seated in your pew in the very face of the
+congregation-genteel sinners in silks, and satins, and feathers--you
+will betray your long-concealed suffering by giving vent to that
+interminable "Rory O'More," the moment you open your lips for the
+emission of "All people that on earth do dwell;" so ensuring your rapid
+transfer to the street, under the escort of the man with the
+parti-coloured coat and black wand, whose Sabbath duties of jerking the
+Sunday scholars, and rapping their heads with that authoritative cane,
+are unceremoniously interfered with on your behalf. Misery and disgrace
+stare you in the face, and all through an undue titillation of that part
+of your sensorium that takes cognisance of musical sounds; a titillation
+not to be subdued by endeavouring to direct your attention from it to
+the very gravest of all subjects; nor propitiated even by audibly
+chanting the offending strain, previously retiring into the furthest
+corner of your coal-cellar, to prevent your unwilling profanity on
+shocking the strictly conscientious ears of your household. This is
+bad--and yet it is but a mild form of this morbid affection, which, in
+its most intense degree, torments the sufferer from fever, (or one
+stunned by some sudden and violent grief,) when certain sounds, words,
+or tunes, accidentally determined, thrill through the head with the
+steadiness and vehement action of the piston of a steam-engine--beat,
+beat, beat!--every note seeming to fall on the excited brain like the
+blow of a hammer; while, as the fever and pain increase, the more
+rapidly and heavily do those torturing notes pursue their furious chase.
+We well remember, under an attack of disorder in the neighbourhood of
+the brain, causing severe suffering, lying--we know not how long, it
+might be a thousand years for any thing we knew--singing over and over
+again _in our mind_, for we were speechless with pain, the 148th psalm,
+which we had just chanced to hear sung, in Brady and Tate's version, to
+a new and somewhat peculiar tune. Oh, how those "dreadful whales" and
+"glittering scales" did quaver and quiver in our poor head! Lying like a
+log--for pain neither permitted us to stir nor groan--still rattled on,
+hard and quick, the rumbling bass and shrill tenor of that most
+inappropriately jubilant composition--"cherubim and seraphim," "fire,
+hail, and snow," succeeding each other with a railway velocity that
+there was no resisting; no sooner had we got to "stands ever fast," than
+round again we went to the "boundless realms of joy," and so on, on,
+on, through each dreary minute of those dreary hours, an infinity, or
+perchance but twenty-four, according as time is computed by clocks or by
+agonised human beings. It made a capital Purgatory; one which we have
+even deemed every way adequate to those slight delinquencies of which we
+may have been guilty, and which are appointed, as it is understood, to
+be expiated in this way.
+
+At times some simple air, or even a single chord of unusual, but
+apparently obvious harmony, will haunt us with a peculiar sweetness,
+producing a soothing, gentle sadness, as though we listened to distant
+bells, whose music is borne in surges on the breeze that sways the
+golden corn on a sunny Sabbath, when our pathway lies through the
+undulating fields, already "white unto the harvest;" where the pleasant
+rustling of the ripened grain, as it is stirred by the soft wind, is
+sweet and soothing; and the gay poppy, and other less obtrusive, though
+not less beautiful wild-flowers, bloom at our loitering feet. In the
+power of exciting such feeling, what can equal our old English ballads?
+There is an inexpressible charm in these, and we would almost give our
+fingers to be able to describe that indescribable _something_, which
+constitutes their peculiar fascination and power over the imagination.
+Most plain, most artless, does their composition appear; like the
+natural out-breathing of the heart in its sunny moments; and yet--as
+with all earthly brightness--with a trace of cloud on that sunshine.
+They are redolent of the "olden time;" and as they fall softly on the
+ear, the antique hall, with its groined roof, and mullioned window,
+glowing with rich heraldic devices, through which the many-tinted lights
+fall tenderly on arch and pillar, and elaborately fretted walls, studded
+with ancestral armour, rises up before us; and with the melting tones of
+the lute, mingles the low, clear voice of a gentle maiden, whose small
+foot and brocaded train are just seen from behind yonder deeply
+sculptured oaken screen. What innocence is in that voice! and how
+expressive are the chords that accompany it--less elaborate and
+fantastic, perchance, than might win favour in our vitiated ears; but
+natural, harmonious, full, and in exquisite subordination to the air,
+which they fill up and enrich, instead of overpowering with misplaced
+beauty.
+
+And now a movement of the singer reveals still more of the quaint,
+beautiful costume, with its heavy, yet graceful folds, while--aha! what
+else do we see?--a plumed hat thrown carelessly on the ground; the armed
+heel, glittering rapier, and slashed sleeve, just visible, betokening
+that its owner is not far off, and that the lady fair has not, as we had
+thought, been wasting her sweetness, either of voice or countenance, on
+that comfortable-looking pet dog or caged linnet. Sing on, pretty one!
+for well do gallant knights love to hear their stern deeds sung by
+innocent lips; and _right well_, to listen to the strain that tells how
+the heart of "lady-bright" is won by noble daring. But what means that
+sudden break in the song, and the confused sweep of the strings, as
+though the lute had slipped from its owner's grasp; while the masculine
+paraphernalia which we had just discovered disappears altogether behind
+that most impervious and curiosity-mocking screen? No great harm done,
+or that light laugh had not escaped the lips so suddenly silenced; and
+the offending cavalier is doubtless forgiven on the spot, as they
+amicably retreat to that deep oriel, framed apparently for the express
+purpose of excluding _intrusionists_ like ourselves, who would fain
+follow, where, it is evident, we are marvellously little wanted! Well,
+well!--maidens will be maidens, we trow, and lovemaking in the olden
+time is, we suppose, after all, vastly like the same performance by more
+modern actors. Leave we them to their light-heartedness:--and yet we
+could linger long in this ancient chamber,
+
+     "With quaint oak-carving lined and ceiled;"
+
+so calm, so cool, so repose-breathing,--the shrill twitter of the
+swallow the only sound now heard amid its silence; the fleecy clouds,
+throwing that rich interior into alternate light and shade, as they sail
+lazily along the deep blue sky--the only moving objects, save the long
+wreaths of ivy, that, green as the tender buds of spring, tap lightly
+against the casement, as they are swayed by the impulses of the summer
+breeze. Beyond, is an old-fashioned garden--a _pleasance_, as it would
+be called--and truly is it one; with its trim walks, its terraces, and
+moss-grown urns, around which luxuriant creepers are entwined--its
+impervious hedges--its close-shorn lawn, decked with appropriate
+statues, and its yew-trees, clipped into fantastic shapes; while the
+ivy-covered walls that bound it, afford a shelter from the blasts that
+too often allay the sunshine of our northern climate, and render it a
+spot where 'tis sweet to saunter, in idle or quiet contemplative mood,
+at glowing sunset; or chaster beauty of summer evening, when the pure,
+cold moon mingles her passionless lustre with the gorgeous hues that
+still linger around the portals of the west--bright train of the
+departing monarch that has passed to the sway of a new hemisphere!
+
+Here could we linger in genial meditation, while from the dark pannelled
+walls look down upon us lovely countenances of those who, centuries ago,
+have called this _home_--portraits whose calm, meek dignity so far
+transcends the more active style in which it too often pleases us
+moderns to glare from our gilt frames, "looking delightfully with all
+our might, and staring violently at nothing;" costume and truth being
+utterly outraged,--the _roturier's_ wife mapped in the ermine of the
+duchess, and perchance dandling on her maternal lap what appears to be a
+dancing dog in its professional finery, but which, on closer inspection,
+turns out to be an imp of a child, made a fool of by its mother and
+milliner; and my lady--in inadequate garments, and a pair of wings,
+flourishing as some heathen divinity or abstract virtue! Look at those
+girlish features, just mantling into fairest womanhood, with their sweet
+serious look, exhibiting all the self-possession of simplicity; the
+drapery and other accessories natural, and in perfect keeping with the
+unpretending character of the whole; and then turn to some recent
+"portrait of a lady," with what toleration you may. Contrast for one
+moment that fine ancestral face, dignified and unmoved as the mighty
+ocean slumbering in his strength, with the eager visage of one of the
+latest "batch," (cooked, without much regard to the materials, for some
+ministerial exigency,) who would appear to be standing in rampant
+defence of his own brand-new coronet, emulative of the well-gilt lion
+which supports that miracle of ingenuity rather than research, his
+brightly emblazoned coat-of-arms; whose infinitude of charges and
+quarterings do honour to the inventive genius of the Herald's Office,
+and are enough to make the Rouge Dragon of three centuries ago claw out
+the eyes of the modern functionary.
+
+But, oh dear, dear! where are our ballads all this while? Drifted sadly
+to leeward, we fear, according to a bad habit of ours, of letting any
+breeze, from whatever point of the compass it may chance to blow, fill
+our sails, and float us away before it, utterly unmindful of our
+original purpose and destination. Thus have we, to the tune of an old
+Hall and its garniture, sailed away from that which we were
+aiming--trying to find out, and describe the peculiar fascination of our
+loved old ballads; flattering ourselves, perhaps, that we were escaping
+a difficulty which we feared to meet.
+
+There is a quaint cheerfulness in them, toned down with a shade--the
+shadow of a shade--of the most touching melancholy, effected, we can
+scarcely tell how, by an exquisitely felicitous, though but slight
+introduction of the minor key, perchance but a single note or chord. But
+that suffices, and it is as a sudden vision of our home, far off among
+the mountains, or in the "happy valley" of our fathers, passing before
+us in the gay crowded city, bringing plaintive thoughts of remembered
+joys, and quietude, and childish innocence. Old ballads are like April
+skies, all smiles and tears, sunshine and swift-flitting clouds, that
+serve but to heighten the loveliness they concealed for a while. They
+are like,--nay, we despair; none but our own Shakspeare can express what
+we should vainly puzzle ourselves to describe, the essence of the "old
+and antique song."
+
+  "Mark it, Cesario; it is old and plain;
+  The spinsters and the knitters in the sun
+  And the free maids that weave their thread with bones,
+  Do use to chaunt it; it is silly sooth,
+  And dallies with the innocence of love,
+  Like the old age."
+
+Ay! like gray eld fondling sunny childhood, gazing on the wavy hair, and
+pure brow, and calm yet kindling eye, with a fond sad pleasure; for in
+that young exulting spirit he sees the sure inheritor of his own fading
+honours, the usurper of his strength, and influence, and worship,
+rapidly passing away from his feeble grasp; and as he gazes, though his
+lips pour willing benedictions on the unconscious supplanter, there
+lingers in his heart the sorrowful, "He shall increase, but I shall
+decrease."
+
+Something akin in their sad soothing effect, are the _waits_, (dear
+reader, you do not need to be told what these are? Wordsworth has
+immortalized them;) simple, rude, and inharmonious as they would be in
+the clear, truth-telling daylight, but strange, witching, and half
+unearthly, when heard between the pauses of some fantastic dream in the
+deep midnight; when,
+
+            "All around,
+  The stars are watching with their thousand eyes;"
+
+those same stars that peered down on this earth, in "earnest gaze," on
+the first act of that most awful drama, when, in "the winter wild, the
+heaven-born child"--Him in whom all nations of the world were
+blessed--was placed in his rude cradle at Bethlehem: in commemoration of
+whose advent--and _this_ is one secret of their pathos, waking high
+thoughts in the soul, too long brooding over and degrading itself with
+the mean cares and hopes of this life--the humble musicians make night
+tuneful, "scraping the chords with strenuous hand."
+
+A blessing on them as they go, softening our hard, unloving hearts! In
+our childhood it was one of our most cherished pleasures to
+lie--half-sleeping, half-waking--listening to them, as the sounds, at
+times discordant enough, though of that we recked not, rose and fell in
+pleasing cadence, as the winter wind rose and fell, wafting the notes
+that, faint and fainter still, at last died away in the distance.
+
+We and our room-companion were under a solemn engagement, each to other,
+to waken the little sleepy thing beside him, when the more watchful
+became aware of the approach of the itinerant minstrels; and woe to the
+one who had forgotten this duty! It would have required no little
+"music" to soothe the "savage breast" of the aggrieved one; for--as we
+are pathetically reminded by the old song--"Christmas comes but once
+a-year," and so often, but no more, did we know that our chance of
+hearing this seductive harmony occurred. Hence our wrath, if through the
+neglect, the "breach of promise" of another, so solemnly pledged, we
+missed it. And even now, dear as is the oblivion of night and dreamless
+sleep to the spirit, harassed and world-worn, that in outgrowing its
+child-like feelings and happiness, has, alas! also out-grown what its
+increase of worldly wisdom can hardly make amends for--the child-like
+purity, and intense enjoyment of simple pleasures, which marked its
+earlier years--even now, weary and dull-hearted as we are become, we
+would not willingly lose this delight of our happier days, although it
+fall on the still darkness like wail for a departed friend, unsealing
+the fount of mournful memories, whose bitter waters gush from their
+stricken rock; sad as are its associations, they are of that sadness
+whereby the "heart is made better."
+
+What think ye of the drum as a musical instrument? Is there not
+something magnificent in it, albeit suggestive of a distant wheelbarrow
+on rough paving-stones, or heavily laden cart in the distance? This
+latter, by the way,--we appeal with confidence to any musical soul
+present for confirmation of our assertion--being decidedly its equal, in
+effect, any day; as in our _happy_ infancy we found out to our sorrow,
+from being frequently deceived by its dull booming, which our vivid
+imagination at once pronounced to be its parchment representative; as we
+writhed and wriggled with agony on our unhonoured bench (selected, and
+adhered to, for constancy was our _forte_, chiefly on account of its
+being out of the reach of the cane, and commanding a good view of the
+street) in a perfect fever, poor little soul, to squirl away books and
+slates, and scamper after the soldiers. Scarlet has been said to be like
+the sound of a trumpet; surely then a drum must be taken as the exponent
+of that ferocious mixture yclept thunder and lightning, erst dear to
+country bumpkins, and rendered classical by Master Moses Primrose's
+coat. It can scarcely be described as _music_, but rather as sound with
+an idea in it--the connecting link between mere noise and musical
+expression. Kettle-drums,
+
+      "Whose sullen dub,
+  Is like the hooping of a tub,"
+
+we hate; and never see them in a concert-room without heartily wishing
+they and their tatooer might tumble, helter-skelter, from their topmost
+perch into the very lowest depth, if there be one lower than another, of
+the orchestra; and thereby sustain such a compound fracture, attended by
+loss of substance, as should put it out of their power, for that night
+at least, to torture our fastidious ears. Being of a melancholy
+temperament, we are unfortunately, at times, subject to most ludicrous
+fancies; and as these ungainly instruments loom on our disgusted eye, we
+cannot, for the life of us, help imagining them moulds for a couple of
+enormous gooseberry puddings; and we verily pant at the idea of the sea
+of melted butter, or yellow cream, requisite to mollify their
+acidity--and then we laugh like a hyena at the nightmareish vision, and
+so are disgraced, for it is at a "serious opera:" therefore, we repeat
+it, do we hate them, cordially and perseveringly. They are horrid
+things, and ought to be excommunicated. And when employed in military
+bands--why, a horse looks a complete fool between a couple of these
+gigantic basins, each with its long tag-rag of unmeaning velvet,
+beplastered and bedizened with lace and gold, streaming from it; and the
+unlucky performer perched between them, exactly like an old
+market-woman, bolstered up between a brace of paniers or
+milk-pails;--any thing but a fierce dragoon, or most chivalrous hussar.
+But peace be to the kettle-drums,--ay, _peace be to them_, say we! and
+may our ears never again be subjected to the torture of hearing Handel's
+massive chorus, or Beethoven's fearfully dramatic harmony, disfigured by
+their most abominable bangs, or villanous rumble-grumble.
+
+Now all this is rank nonsense--we are fully aware of it; and it is a
+most foolish, unjust prejudice of ours against drums--kettle or
+otherwise, as it may please Apollo--which are most respectable members
+of musical society, and good--very good--in their way; were it only as a
+foil to the enchanting, inspiriting, maddening strains of the horn, the
+shrill pipe, the regal trumpet, and the various other instruments of our
+military music, of which we are more passionate admirers, almost ready
+to follow the drum ourselves. Oh, the supreme delight of having one's
+arms and legs shot off to such soul-elevating sounds, to the tune of
+Rule Britannia, and somebody or other's march! "Britons strike home"
+thrills through the air, and you scarcely feel that you are spitted by a
+Polish lancer; a flourish of trumpets, and enter a troop of horse, that
+trot briskly over you as you lie smashed by a round-shot, but heedless
+of the exhibition of their unceremonious heels to your injuries, for are
+you not sustained by that "point of war"--mercilessly beaten at your
+elbow, without the slightest regard to the effect it may have on your
+cracked head, for which you are indebted to the last trooper who spurred
+his charger over you: who would care for his vulgar limbs under such
+excitement? But if this part of our military economy be intended to
+inspire cowards with courage, and string them up to a disregard of all
+the chances of warfare, in the way of bullet and sabre, why--_why_ is
+not so valuable an idea carried out to the full extent of its
+requirement, and a military band instituted for the comfort and
+encouragement of the patients (every whit as nervous as if they were
+under arms) of Guy's Hospital? Why should not the case of poor bedfast
+wretches in cap and gown, and pale faces, meet with as much
+consideration as that of your clodpole in scarlet and an 'Albert hat?'
+(Heaven forgive the prince for making such simpletons of our handsome
+Englishmen!) Look to it, ye governors of such institutions, and look to
+it, ye charitable and humane, who empty your purses into the blandly
+presented plate to buy shoes and stockings for the kangaroos. Consider
+the case of your afflicted countrymen, and relieve the plethora of your
+coffers by providing them music, every way equal to that enjoyed by
+troops going into action; music so entrancing that an arm or leg whipped
+off shall, under its influence, be no object to them; and let them drink
+down their odious physic to such masterly compositions of the first
+artists as shall sweeten the bitterest potion, and elicit a chorus of
+blessings on the taste and liberality of their munificent benefactors.
+But we fear that our pleading will be vain--Englishmen, poor, sick, and
+suffering, are intolerably uninteresting; not to be named on the same
+day with the happy possessors of woolly locks, flat noses, and
+copper-coloured skins; these being personal qualifications calculated to
+excite the intense sympathies of the many whose charity neither begins
+nor ends "at home." Yet, in the spirit of the little girl, who, on the
+denial of her request that she might be married, substituted the more
+modest one of a piece of bread and butter; if unsuccessful in this
+particular, we will be content to lower our tone, and, in place of the
+luxury we have recommended, simply require all whom it may concern to
+give the poor--their own!--honest wages for their honest labour.
+
+We may perhaps be accused of having a Turkish taste in music (after the
+pattern of that Sultan's, who was chiefly fascinated with the jarring
+process of tuning the instruments, a thing abhorred by "gods and men")
+if we venture to own the strange, thrilling effect once produced on us
+by the discordant, yet withal imposing clangour of some half dozen
+regimental bands (all of them, mark you, playing different tunes!) which
+struck up simultaneously as my Lord ----, the then commander-in-chief,
+(whose spirit has since mingled with the shades of the heroes who had
+preceded him, not to the hall of Odin, but we trust to a more Christian
+place,) made his appearance, with his brilliant staff, on ---- Moor;
+whither he came down ostensibly for the purpose of reviewing the
+troops--really, to marry his nephew and heir to the grand-daughter of a
+manufacturing millionnaire. (Commercial gold, or heraldic _or_, is a
+good modern "tricking;" though we query whether our ancestors would have
+countenanced such bad heraldry, or been content with such abatements of
+honour on their old shields!)
+
+The wild sounds streamed on the crisp morning air--'twas one of those
+September days whose mature beauty rivals the budding grace of
+spring--with a strange wayward beauty, a barbaric grandeur, that carried
+away both our heart and ears; and we enjoyed it to the full as much as
+did the steed of a military lady present, that verily danced with the
+tingling delight. We had a fellow feeling with the brute, and could
+ourselves, grave and sensible as we are, have pranced about in an
+ecstasy of admiration, which was by no means allayed when the deep-toned
+sullen music--for such it is to us--of the artillery uttered its
+majestic bass to the sharp ringing fire of musketry. While, as wreath
+after wreath of the light morning mist floated away before the breeze,
+the glittering files and compact bristling squares, the centaur-like
+cavalry, and stealthy riflemen gliding along the windings of the copse,
+became apparent, stretching far into the distance; now hidden for a
+moment by the rolling vapour from a discharge of firearms, then, as it
+curled above them, dimming the clear sky, glancing bright in the sun,
+which blithely kissed sabre and epaulet, and dancing plume, and the
+knightly-looking pennoned weapon of the picturesque lancer. Truly the
+scene was beautiful, and one to breathe a warlike spirit into the most
+unexcitable. And we gazed in a paroxysm of admiration at the exquisite
+evolutions and fierce charges that seemed as though they must bear all
+before them, till this perfection of discipline came to an end, and the
+long files of troops had taken their slow dusty departure; when, hot and
+fagged, and with bright colours still dancing before our eyes, we
+returned to our home. There, as each "pleasure has its pain," we found
+that one was superinduced on ours, in the shape of a robbery of our
+plate committed while we were staring ourselves out of countenance at
+the gay spectacle; our faithless domestics having taken that opportunity
+of indulging their own taste for the "sublime and beautiful." 'Tis to be
+hoped they got enough of the "beautiful" at the show, as we indulged
+them with a touch of the "sublime" (which has one of its sources in
+_terror_) when we discovered our loss. But we enjoyed the review
+thoroughly for all that, and are ready for another to-morrow, first
+taking the precaution to "lock up all our treasure," warned by a
+catastrophe which nearly reduced us to wooden spoons and hay-makers.
+
+Military music! But to feel its power fully, let it be heard when the
+exulting strains that are wont to fill the air with exuberant harmony
+are saddened into the sweet, mournful, heart-breaking notes that steal
+on the ear at a soldier's funeral, and the gaudy splendour of military
+array has passed into the drear pomp of that most touching, most
+monitory sight. Faint mournful bugle-notes are wafted fitfully on the
+wind, plumes and glittering weapons glance and disappear as the
+procession advances, now hidden by the hedge-rows, now flashing on the
+sight, in the autumnal sun, as it winds slowly along the devious road;
+louder and louder swell those short abrupt trumpet-notes as it draws
+near, till the whole sad array, in its affecting beauty, is presented to
+the eye. The _life in death_ that pervades the melancholy
+ceremonial!--"Our brother is not dead, but sleepeth," seems written on
+the impressive pageant; and we almost expect, while we gaze, to see the
+deep slumber chased from the closed eyelids, and the recumbent form
+start up again to claim the warlike weapons with which it was wont to be
+girt, and that now lie, as if awaiting their master's grasp, in
+unavailing display on the funereal pall. But a mightier than he has for
+ever wrenched them from his hold, and vain the sword, the helm, the
+spear, in that unequal conflict. The last contest is over, and "he is in
+peace."
+
+  "Brother, wrapp'd in quiet sleep,
+  Thou hast ceased to watch and weep;
+  Wipe the toil-drops from thy brow,
+  War and strife are over now;
+  Bow the head, and bend the knee,
+  For the crown of victory."
+
+But suppose not pathos confined to the "bugle's wailing sound," and the
+sad subdued bursts of well-modulated military music--to the long files
+of slow-pacing troops with reversed arms, and the riderless steed,
+vainly caparisoned for the battle, that proclaim the obsequies of a
+chief. We are not ashamed to confess that the tear has been wrung from
+our eye by the plaintive notes of the few rude instruments that alone
+lament over the poor private's simple bier--the inharmonious fife, and
+the measured beats of the muffled drum; while the dull tramp of the
+appointed mourners following a comrade to his obscure resting-place
+falls chilly on the heart. Though even he, lowly in death as in life,
+shares with his leader in the brief wild honours of a soldier's
+grave--the sharp volleys of musketry pealing over his narrow home, a
+strange farewell to its passionless inhabitant, on whom the sanctity of
+the tomb has already passed; the unholy sound falls voiceless on his
+dull ear, fast closed until
+
+  "The last loud trumpet-notes on high
+  Peal through the echoing sky,
+  And cleave the quivering ground"--
+
+breaking, with dreadful summons, "the eternal calm wherewith the grave
+is bound."
+
+"Facilis descensus!" We cannot say that we admire the hurdy-gurdy, that
+synthesis of a grindstone and a Jew's-harp, yea, of all that is
+detestable, musically speaking, which must have owed its origin to a
+desire on the part of Jupiter _Musicus_, in a bad temper, to invent a
+suitable purgatory for expiating the sins of delinquent musicians;
+affording, on this supposition, an exquisite illustration of the perfect
+adaptation of means to an end--one well worthy the attention of all
+future writers on that subject. Independently of the nuisance of its
+inexpressibly harsh-jingling tones, (as, if you were being hissed by a
+quantity of rusty iron wire,) it always gives us the fidget to hear it
+for the sake of poor Abel, (surely its only admirer,) grinding away for
+dear life, to the extreme exacerbation of the bears growling beneath,
+under the combined irritation of no supper and his abominable tinkling.
+How they must have longed to gobble him up, were it only for the sake
+of popping an extinguisher on the "zit zan zounds" overhead! It was the
+reverse of the old tale, "no song no supper;" for they got the song,
+instead of a supper on the nice plump artist, which they would have
+liked much better. We wish he had stuck to his text, and persisted in
+his refusal to play; for then the fate that awaited him would but have
+been poetical justice for his utter and criminal want of taste--an
+adequate retribution on a wretch patronising an instrument whose
+demerits transcend every adjective that occurs to us at this present
+moment.
+
+But as we cannot, even in the wildest freaks of our imagination,
+conceive of any one really liking the hurdy-gurdy--nay, we are prepared
+to demonstrate much affection absolutely impossible--we incline to think
+there must have been some corruption of this tradition in the course of
+its being handed down to us, so far at least as concerns the name of the
+instrument played at such a price; and on the antiquarian principle that
+consonants are changeable at pleasure, and vowels go for nothing, we
+take leave for hurdy-gurdy (what a vulgar sound it has!) to read flute,
+violin, lute, or, in short, any other presentable musical instrument
+that may chance to find the greatest favour in our eyes. A change which
+has the twofold merit of saving Abel's character for taste, and
+preserving so excellent a story from carrying a lie on the face of it;
+and for this service of ours, we desire alike the thanks of musicians
+and moralists, to whom we most respectfully present our improved
+version, as suitable for circulation by the most fastidious artist, or
+rigid precisian.
+
+Mercy on us! What a rattling and clattering of doors and windows! The
+windows will certainly be blown in at last, for they strain and creak
+like a ship at sea; and how the wind roars and bellows in the chimney,
+as if AEolus and all his noisy crew were met on a tipsy revel!
+There--that last gust shook the house! It is to be hoped the chimneys
+stand with their feather-edge to it, or we shall have a stack or two
+about our ears in a trice. We wonder whether the cellars would be the
+safest place, or, indeed, whether there is a safe place about the house
+at all! We have often heard of the music of the wind, but never felt
+less disposed to admire it in our life--for the gale has been howling in
+our ears all day; and this last hour or two, there has been, as the
+sailors say, a fresh hand at the bellows; so that we are in no humour to
+sentimentalize on what is, within a few yards of us, curling the dark
+waves, that, since the day in which their fluctuation was first decreed,
+have swallowed up so much of what is goodly and beloved of this earth,
+and that now roar as if for their prey! of which may the great God that
+ruleth over the sea, as well as the dry land, disappoint their ravening
+jaws! We shrink and are half appalled at their clamour, while we are on
+the point of uttering a hasty vow never again to locate ourselves at the
+sea-side, though it were prescribed by fifty physicians; or, at all
+events, not so very near that dun mass of troubled waters, blending on
+the horizon in strange confusion with the lowering, tempestuous sky. Who
+could believe, as he views them in their milder mood, as we did
+yesterday--lying placid as a clear lake among the mountains, wherein the
+bright face of heaven is mirrored, reflecting each light cloud that
+floats in the deep azure, or the many-tinted hues of evening--that anon,
+lashed into foaming wrath, they should devour "rich fruit of earth, and
+human kind," the gold, and the gems, and the priceless treasures wrung
+from both hemispheres; and the young, the brave, the loved--the bright
+locks, and the manly beauty, and the hoary head; crushing their diverse
+hopes into one watery ruin, surging a wild tumultuous dirge over their
+one fathomless tomb! And then, sated with destruction, smile and glisten
+beneath the morning sunbeams with all the sportiveness of child-like
+innocence.
+
+No, no--speak not to us of the "music of the wind." For to us, in our
+gloomy moods, it breathes but of desolation, sorrow, and suffering;
+while, as the blast rises higher, its sentimental mournfulness is
+mingled with painful thoughts, which press on our spirit, of the peril
+in which it places so many of our fellow-creatures; and, "God help the
+poor souls at sea!" rises earnestly in our heart, and even
+unconsciously passes the barrier of our lips, as we retire, utterly
+unsympathizing with the selfish enjoyment of those who delight to wrap
+up themselves, warm and cozy, in their curtained and downy repose,
+lulled to deeper slumber by the blustering cold in which others are
+shivering, or, haply, contending with the winds and waves so soon to
+overwhelm them. And in our more ordinary everyday humour--if it chance
+to rise above what in our humble opinion ought to be its maximum, a
+gentle refreshing breeze, just enough to waft sweet woodland sounds, or
+ripple the quiet stream--why, it discomposes and discomforts us,
+whistling, howling, and rattling among slates and chimney-tops, and
+making whirligigs of the dust, in the town; and in the country,
+_soughing_ among the boughs, as though the trees had got some horrible
+secret which they were whispering to each other, while their long arms
+lash each other as if for a wager; the whole exciting in us a most
+uneasy and undefinable sensation, as though we had done something wrong,
+and were every minute expecting to be found out! A sensation which might
+fairly be deemed punishment sufficient for all the minor offences of
+this offensive world, and which we most decidedly object to having
+inflicted on us for nothing.
+
+"The music of the wind!" Why, what can be more detestable than the wind
+whistling through a key-hole? or singing its shrill melancholy song
+among the straining cordage of the storm-threatened ship? Then,
+uninteresting accidents happen during squally weather: hats are blown
+off; coat-tails, and eke the flowing garments of the gentler sex, flap,
+as if waging war with their distressed wearers; grave dignified persons
+are compelled to scud along before the gale, shorn of all the
+impressiveness of their wonted solemn gait, holding, perchance, their
+shovel-hat firmly on with both hands; and finally, there is neither
+pathos nor glory in having your head broken by a chimney-pot, or volant
+weathercock. No, the wide sea is an emblem of all that is deceitful and
+false, smiling most blandly when preparing to devour you; and the wind
+is only one shade more respectable--nay, perchance the worse of the two;
+for the waters, in the self-justifying, neighbour-condemning spirit,
+apparently inherent in human nature--and for which Father Adam be
+thanked--may very possibly lay the blame of their fickleness upon it,
+and bring a host of witnesses into court to testify to their general
+good behaviour--their calmness, and amenity, and inoffensiveness, till
+exposed to the evil influence of AEolus's unruly troop--the most
+wholesale agitators going, and never so happy as when raising a riot.
+
+N.B.--The whole tribe of zephyrs, gentle airs, and evening and morning
+breezes, will please to consider themselves as _not_ included under the
+term _wind_; to which alone, in its common-place hectoring style, this
+tirade is meant to apply.
+
+(We hate any thing important being popped within a parenthesis, but as
+the literary sin pinches us less than the immorality, we must here state
+what truth requires us to say--that the above, being written during a
+fit of the spleen, induced by the hubbub of winds and waters adverted
+to, must be received by the candid reader with considerable allowance.)
+
+So much for the wind, which has blown _music_ completely out of our head
+for a while. What a pity we did not bethink us of placing our AEolian
+harp in the window, before it had sunk into those short angry gusts
+which are now alone heard--the mere dregs of the gale; and so have drawn
+our inspiration from that which puffed it out! But, somehow or other,
+our bright thoughts generally present themselves too late to be of any
+use; and this is one in that predicament!
+
+Some people profess to be never tired of music, but to enjoy it _a
+l'outrance_, at all times and in all places. With such, we must own, we
+have no sympathy. With all our _love_--not mere liking--for the art, we
+still hold that it is indebted for its charm to the categories of time
+and place, at least as much as its neighbours; for (but this confession
+should be made in the smallest, most modest-looking type in the world)
+there are both times and places when we hate it cordially, and fervently
+wish that neither harmony, nor its ancestor, melody, had ever been
+invented. In some such mood as made the very heavens themselves odious
+and pestilential to Hamlet, does music appear to us as unlike itself, as
+they really were to his crazed imagination of them; and we look forward
+with malicious pleasure to the time when, if Dryden is to be
+believed--but your poets are not always prophets--"music shall untune
+the sky," as a period when all the miseries it has inflicted on us shall
+be amply revenged by its perpetrating, or assisting at, this gigantic
+mischief. 'Tis then that your first-fiddle is but impertinent
+catgut--your fluent organ a vile box of whistles, fit representative of
+its _Tube_-al inventor--and the sweetest pipe ever resonant with the
+clear, music-breathing air of Italy, or bravely struggling against the
+damper atmosphere of our humid isle, sounds harsh and shrilly in our
+ears, instead of soothing our "savage breast," which seems to marshal
+all its powers the more emphatically to give the poet the lie. This--now
+that we are in the confessional--we are free to own--yea, it is
+incumbent on us to do ourselves this justice--is only when we are in one
+of our unamiable moods, luckily about as rare as snow at mid-summer, but
+correspondingly chilling and shocking to the genial ones around
+us,--ourselves usually most so, like quiet sunshine in November. We are,
+by nature, the meekest of individuals--a "falcon-hearted dove," or
+anything else, pretty and poetical, that might give the idea of our
+possessing a brave heart under a most gentle exterior; but when roused,
+then indeed are we a very dragon; or rather, to keep up our former
+simile, (which we think a taking one, though, alas! it is not our own,)
+and delineate, by one expressive phrase, a mouldering, rage kept in
+check; by the constitutional cowardice on which it is superinduced--then
+are we a pigeon-hearted hawk, wanting only the courage to be desperately
+cross! (An impertinent friend, who has been looking over our shoulder,
+suggests that ourselves, under the two above-named phrases, would be
+better adumbrated by the figure of a dish of skimmed milk, and that same
+milk curdled! A plague on friends, say we! the most impertinent
+impertinencies that fall to our lot in this cross-cornered world are
+sure to emanate from them.)
+
+Another of our sins which--to make "a clean breast"--we must confess, is
+that of fickleness in our loves; an occasional flirting with other arts
+and sciences, in their turn--for we protest against the profligacy of
+making love to more than one at once! We string together fearful and
+unreadable lengths of iambics, and dactyles, and trochaics, and write
+sonnets to the bright queen of night, beginning "O thou!" and stick fast
+in the middle of sorely-laboured and at length baffling extempores to
+this, that, and t'other; and, wickeder still, then we din them into the
+ears of a wretched friend, who having once, in the extremity of his
+courtesy, unhappily proved himself a good listener, is, for his sins,
+fated to continue so to the end of the chapter--_i.e._, our interminable
+rhymes; til, tired of exchanging our bad prose for worse poetry, (and
+having the fear of his maledictions before our eyes,) we throw it aside
+in a pet. Then comes a change over our spirit; and we dabble in
+paint-pots, and flourish a palette, and are great on canvass, and in
+chalks, and there is a mingled perfume of oil and turpentine in our
+_studio_ (whilome study) that is to us highly refreshing, and good
+against fainting; and we make tours in search of the picturesque,
+climbing over stone walls, and what not, to gain some hill-top whence we
+may see the sun set or the moon rise, haply getting soused in a
+peat-drain for our pains--and we pencil sketches from nature, really
+very like; and the blue mountains, the solemn sunsets, and purple
+shadows among the woods, or falling on the tawny sands, girdling the
+sea, whose blue-gray melts into the horizon, throw us into quick
+ecstasies of delight that almost paralyse the adventurous hand as it
+seeks, often vainly, to transfer the quick-changing loveliness to the
+enduring canvass. And then we fling away our pencils in despair, and
+worship, with all the devotion of which ignorance is the mother, (for we
+never handled the chisel,) the serene beauty of sculpture; most
+passionless, most intellectual art, breathing the repose of divinity,
+the grand inaction of the All-powerful; shadowing forth in this its
+perfection, sublime truth, with its faint, troubled, yet still sublime
+reflection, error;--the "without passions" of Divine revelation, and its
+perversion, its undue development, the unconsciousness, issuing in the
+final perfection of annihilation, of Braminical deity. So are the
+extremes of truth and error linked--the error depending for its
+existence on its antagonist truth. Painting is objective, sculpture
+subjective, throwing the mind more upon itself, to seek there the hidden
+forms of grace and beauty yet unmanifested by pencil or chisel. The one
+appeals more to the senses, the other to the imagination and the mind;
+exciting ideas rather than presenting them. Painting, sublimate it as
+you will, is still of the earth; albeit a purer one than this desolated
+habitation in which the sons of Adam mourn their exile--even the
+unviolated Eden; of which it is one of the fairest, tenderest
+emanations, reaching forward to the angelic, yet still a child of earth
+with mortality on its brow. Sculpture is of the gods, with its Titanic
+majesty, and calm, celestial grace.
+
+But next succeeds one of our hard, stern, misanthropical fits, in which
+verjuice and aloes might be taken as the type of our condition, and we
+propound strange heresies concerning the affections, social and
+domestic; the leading one being that they are greater inlets to misery
+than happiness, and that mankind would have been less wretched had they
+grown up, like blades of grass, alone and separate; a cheerless
+doctrine, but one which misanthropical logic legitimately deduces from
+the more comprehensive one, that in this world evil is more potential
+than good--more active and influential in its own nature. And we
+bitterly call to mind all the treachery with which our trustfulness has
+been met--our leaning on that broken reed, friendship--the placing our
+whole hope and stay on some loved one who has failed us in our
+extremity;--we call up (and how they throng at that call!) these gloomy
+recollections, clad in all the terrors of the dark and indistinct past,
+to build ourselves up in our gloomy creed. And in our utter weariness of
+soul, the thought of an uninterrupted sentient existence is oppressive:
+and we passionately wish that the rest of the grave might not be
+vouchsafed to our body alone, but that our spirit also might sleep a
+deep, tranquil sleep, until the great day of awakening. 'Tis a dreary
+mood--like clouded moonlight on troubled, turbid waters! And we could
+roast Love with his own torch--and we see every thing through crape
+spectacles, and have no clarity for the softer, more refined emotions
+and contemplations; so we plunge our head and ears into a chaos of most
+musty, dusty metaphysics; and by the time we are nearly choked with
+them, and have reasoned ourselves, first, out of all intercourse with an
+external world, secondly, out of its existence, thirdly, out of our own,
+we are right glad to be brought back to our senses, and our old love,
+whom we embrace with all the ardour of reconciliation after a lover's
+quarrel, and willingly yield ourselves to the humanizing effect of
+music--grave or gay, as our mood may dictate, either perfect after its
+kind.
+
+Reader, should you haply be of the extreme North, has it ever chanced to
+you to be present at our glorious English cathedral service? If not,
+congratulate yourself on this enjoyment in reserve for you; and when you
+next visit our end of the little island, pass not, we beseech you, those
+Gothic towers, massive and rich, or taper spires rising majestically
+above the cloistered arches, buttresses, and pinnacles, of these
+monuments of the piety, consummate skill, and humility of our ancestors;
+for no modern black board, with gilt letters, proclaims the name of
+their founders, who have sought a simple, perchance a nameless, tomb
+within the sacred walls they have reared. Pass within that lofty
+doorway; and the silence, the stillness, the vastness within, awe the
+heart! From the care and turmoil without, one step has placed us lonely
+as in a desert;--from the surges of life to the presence of the dead,
+who sleep around as if under the more immediate keeping of the Mighty
+One in His holy temple! And if, entering, a solitary memorial of the
+more clouded faith which they inherited from their fathers--the jewel,
+dimmed by its frail setting--should meet the eye, start not, with the
+pride of knowledge, from the meek petition, "Ora pro me," enscrolled
+beneath that mitred effigy, worn by the thoughtless feet of the
+generations passed away; but believe, and fear not to do so, that "it is
+accepted according to that a man hath," and that the sincere devotion of
+the heart, even when erroneously expressed, through _involuntary_
+ignorance, shall not be rejected by that just Being who seeks not to
+reap where He hath not sowed; but that it may come up as holy incense
+before Him, when our cold, unloving, orthodox prayers, backed by our
+heathenish lives, and meaner offerings on the altar of our God, shall
+return, blighted and blighting, into our own bosoms. Or should you be
+too petrified with pious horror at this--Popery, as with your longest,
+dismalest face, you will style it--to think with any charity of those
+who dwelt but in the twilight of your open day--the very verger, sleek,
+round, and smiling, as he stands by you in his sake-robes, shall, in his
+honest zeal, supply an antidote for the evil, moralizing on the vanity
+of such supplications, and winding up his simple homily with the
+significant--"Where the tree falleth, there it shall lie!" Think on
+that, rigid critic, and take heed how _you_ fall!--nor, if you have the
+capacity for finding "good in every thing," will you disdain to learn
+the lesson of instruction, which your own heart had failed to supply,
+from so lowly a source.
+
+But you still curl your sanctimonious lip, and shrug your pious
+shoulders, in intimation of your knowing vastly better than your poor,
+ignorant forefathers! Ah, well--then _live_ better; that is all we have
+got to say to you!
+
+Our very parish churches are now emulating the impressive ceremonial and
+exquisite musical service of the cathedral. Enter, then, with us one
+that has seemed, in some degree, to revive the glory of the olden time,
+when men, as they received, gave lavishly for the service of the altar;
+nor meted out their offerings with the niggard hand that is moved by the
+heart of this generation; unmoved, unwarmed, but boastful of its
+_light_--the light of a moonbeam playing on an iceberg! There is the
+long sweep of the nave, with the open chancel (not separated from the
+former by the richly carved and fretted screen, which, however beautiful
+in itself, mars the grand effect of the whole) leading to the altar--we
+are old-fashioned people, and fear not to offend by this old-fashioned
+term--whose sacred garniture glows beneath the many tints of the fine
+eastern window, with its monograms and emblems, and flowing-robed
+apostles, through which the mellowed summer sun shines obliquely,
+throwing strange, grotesque, many-coloured shadows on the walls and
+pavement; while on either side tall lancet-shaped windows, thickly
+covered with heraldic devices, bear modest record to the willing service
+of those whose munificence has reared the pile, and give increased light
+and richness to the scene. The great western window, also covered with
+armorial bearings, throws a dim, yet kindling, tint on the stone font
+aptly placed beneath it, as figurative of its character--initial to that
+further sacrament, meetly celebrated where the star of Him who first
+blessed it proclaimed His advent to the expectant world. While
+throughout the holy building, high-springing arch, and sombre aisle, and
+vaulted ceiling, and curiously-wrought oaken roof; all combine to
+impress the mind with awe and admiration, with thoughts of the past and
+hopes for the future.
+
+But this is not all: these are but the glories of art, worthily
+employed, indeed, in the service of the temple; 'tis but the body
+without the life, the soul that animates it. Return at the decline of
+day, when "man, who goeth forth unto his labour even unto the evening,"
+has received a respite from his ordained toil, and seeks to refresh and
+elevate his spirit, wearied and worn down with the low, inevitable cares
+of the day, with the mingled prayer and chant, "rising and falling as on
+angels' wings," that duly, at each appointed eve, swell through the
+consecrated structure, filling its concave with solemn melody. The last
+flush of evening has died in the west, and the scattered worshippers are
+indistinctly seen by the dim lights, which, bringing out into strong
+relief the parts immediately adjacent to the massive yet graceful
+pillars to which they are attached, throw the rest of the interior into
+deeper gloom, brought into sharp contrast with the illuminated
+portions, by intersecting arch, clustered shaft, and all the endless
+intricacies of Gothic architecture; exuberant with profusely decorated
+spandrils, sculptured bosses, light flying buttresses, and delicate
+fan-like tracery. How beautiful and hushed is all around! Now the
+stillness is broken by approaching footsteps, and the white-robed train
+of priests and choristers is seen advancing along the aisle, the organ
+uttering its impressive modulations to soothe the heart, and still its
+tumult of worldly care and feelings, that these may not, "like birds of
+evil wing," mar the sacrifice about to be offered on its unworthy altar.
+And then, amid the succeeding silence, fall on the ear--ay, on the very
+soul!--the words of Holy Writ, deprecating the wrath of an offended
+Creator, announcing pardon to the repentant, and cleansing from the
+pollution of guilt to the heart, vexed with the defilement of this evil
+world, and yearning after the purity of that higher existence for which,
+erst designed, the inherited frailty of its nature, and the threefold
+temptations that unweariedly beset it, have rendered it unfit and
+unworthy.
+
+How clear, simple, yet most thrilling, is the enunciation of those
+words! and mark the superb harmony with which, proceeding in the sacred
+service, the single plaintively modulated voice of the officiating
+minister is answered by the choral supplications of the assembled
+worshippers--swelling out in joyous exulting tones, and dying away in
+sorrowful minor cadence, as though the shadow of sin and suffering fell
+on those pathways to the highest heaven, clouding the radiance unmeet
+for mortal eye! And if rude tremulous notes, from some of the lowly ones
+who, still habited in their garb of daily toil, kneel by our side--for,
+in that house, distinctions are there none--mingle with the harmony,
+they mingle not harshly, for there is melody in the heart, and it is the
+voice of a brother; not the less "bone of our bone, and flesh of our
+flesh," that the blessings of this life have been more sparingly
+bestowed on him--perchance to crown him more abundantly with glory and
+honour in that which is to come. Succeeding each other, the antiphonal
+chant--venerable with the port of near eighteen centuries; yea, with the
+hoar of Jewish, as well as Christian antiquity--the exuberant anthem
+with its ponderous chorus, and again, the joyous, melancholy, choral
+response, wherein blend the voices of childish innocence, strong
+manhood, and plaintive age, hear us on to the close;--that threefold
+blessing which none may hear unmoved, and whose magnitude seems to
+transcend our poor belief, as we reverently bow, in awed silence, musing
+on its unfathomable import; while the deep, mellow voice that pronounced
+it still lingers on the ear.
+
+How imposing is the sight! One kneeling throng around--the indistinct
+light, that clothes with mysterious grace the beautiful lineaments of
+the Gothic structure--the bright gleam on the white and flowing
+vestments;--and the _stillness!_ broken at length by a low, sad melody,
+in accordance with the subdued tone resting on all, gradually rising
+into the more swelling chords of the solemn organ, that, earthly strains
+though they be, seen not unmeet to mingle with those exalted ones that
+have gone before--rousing the heart from its more celestial
+contemplations, and by gentle transition--like a descending
+dove--bringing it down from its heavenward flight to that earth with
+which its present daily and active duties are concerned, the more fitly
+and cheerfully performed when thus hallowed; for, be it remembered, the
+preparation for that unseen world to which we are tending, is the best
+preparation for our continuance in this.
+
+But the last wave of harmony has died away in the sounding aisles; one
+by one the lights are extinguished, throwing the varied beauty of arch,
+and niche, and pillar, into indistinguishable and fast deepening shade;
+and, last of the train, we, with heart tranquillized and elevated by the
+service of that evening hour, slowly follow the departing worshippers
+into the still, clear night.
+
+  M. J.
+
+
+
+
+MARTHA BROWN.
+
+BY AN ANCIENT CONTRIBUTOR.
+
+TO THE EDITOR OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.
+
+
+Sir,--It is twenty years since I first contributed to your Magazine;--it
+was rather a brief article, and was not inserted in the early part of
+the work. In short, it consisted of a few lines in the Obituary at the
+end of the Number, and was as follows:--"Died at Bunderjumm, in the East
+Indies, Thomas Sneezum, Esq., much and justly regretted by a numerous
+circle of friends and acquaintances." He was my uncle, sir, and I was
+his heir,--a highly respectable man, and a remarkable judge of bullocks.
+He was in the Commissariat, and died worth forty thousand pounds. If you
+saw his monument, on the wall of our parish church, and read his
+character, you would know what a beautiful sympathy exists between a
+dead uncle and a grateful nephew. I took the name of Sneezum in addition
+to my own--bought an estate, and an immense number of books--and
+cultivated my land and literature with the greatest care. I planted
+trees--I drained meadows--and wrote books. The trees grew--the meadows
+flourished--but the books never came to an end. Something always
+interfered. I never could get the people in my novels disposed of. When
+they began talking, they talked for ever; when they fought duels, they
+were always killed; and, by the time I had got them into the middle of a
+scrape, I always forgot how I had intended to get them out of it. In
+history, it was very nearly the same. Centuries jostled against each
+other like a railway collision. I confused Charlemagne with Frederick
+Barbarossa, and the Cardinal Richelieu with M. Thiers. So, with the
+exception of the article I alluded to, in your Magazine, and a few
+letters on the present potato disease in the Gardener's Guide, I am a
+Great Unpublished--in the same way as I understand there are a number of
+extraordinary geniuses in the dramatic line, who have called themselves
+the Great Unacted. I can only hope that advancing civilization will
+bring better days to us both--types for me--actors for them.
+
+At the time of the lamented death of my uncle, I was about thirty years
+of age, and for ten years before that, had been sleeping partner in a
+house in Liverpool; and I can honestly say I did my part of the duty to
+the perfect satisfaction of all concerned. I slept incessantly--not
+exactly in a house in Liverpool but in a very comfortable one--the
+drawing-room floor, near the Regent's Park. Twice a-year a balance-sheet
+came in, and a little ready money. I put the money carefully away in a
+drawer, and threw the balance-sheet in the fire. It was a very happy
+life, for I subscribed to a circulating library, and wrote the
+beginnings of books continually.
+
+One day, about six months after I was in possession of the fortune, I
+heard a ring at the bell. There was something in the ring different from
+any I had ever heard before--a sort of sweet, modest tingling kind of a
+ring. I felt as if somebody was shaking my hand all the time; and, on
+looking back on the event, I think there must be something in mesmerism
+and every thing else--homoeopathy and the water cure included; for it
+was certainly quite unaccountable on ordinary principles--but so it was.
+The maid was very slow in answering the bell. There was another pull.
+The same mysterious effects--a sort of jump--a tremor as it were, not at
+all unpleasant, but very odd--so I went to the door myself; and there
+fixed on me, in the most extraordinary manner, were two of the blackest
+eyes I ever saw--illuminating cheeks of a dark yellow colour, and
+increasing the whiteness of the most snowy teeth--the brightest,
+glistenest, shiningest, teeth that can possibly be imagined. She
+wore--for I may as well tell you it was a woman--she wore a flowing
+white veil upon her head, the queerest petticoats, and funniest
+shoes--at that time I had not seen the Chinese Collection and thought it
+was Desdemona (whom I had seen Mr Kean put to death a few nights before)
+"walking" in some of Othello's clothes. What she said, or if she said
+any thing, I was too much astonished to make out; but she walked into my
+room, smiling with her wonderful teeth, and curtsying with the
+extraordinary petticoats down to the very floor--and calling me "Massa
+Sib."
+
+"My good woman," I said, "I am afraid you make a mistake. I don't know
+any one of the name of Sib;" but I checked myself, for I thought she
+perhaps mistook me--I wore prodigious whiskers at that time--for a
+gallant colonel, whose name begins with that euphonious syllable.
+
+"No, no--no colonel," she said; "me wants _you_--me no care for
+colonels." What could she possibly want with me? I had never seen the
+woman before, or any body like her, except a picture of the Queen of
+Sheba when she was on a visit to Solomon. Could this woman come from
+Sheba? Could she take me for--no, no--she couldn't possibly take me for
+Solomon. So I was quite non-plussed.
+
+"You no get no letter, Massa Sib, to tell you we was to come--eh?"
+
+A letter? a letter?--I had had a hundred and fifty letters, but put them
+all into a box. How was it possible for me to read such a number? and
+who did she mean by _us_? How many more of then were coming?
+
+"Massa Sib vill be so fond of him's babba--him vill"----
+
+A dreadful thought came into my head--a conspiracy to extort money--a
+declaration at Bow Street--a weekly allowance. "Woman!" I said, "what,
+in heaven's name, do you mean by babba?"
+
+"Dee little babb; it is so pretty--so like him papa."
+
+"And whose baby is it? for I suppose it's a baby you mean, by your
+chatter about a babb."
+
+"Your's. Oh! you will so lubb it."
+
+"Mine? you detestable impostor, I never had such a thing in all my
+life."
+
+"And here it is--oh, dee pretty dear!"
+
+And at that moment, another woman, dressed in the same outlandish style
+as herself, brought up a little round parcel, that looked like a bundle
+of clothes, and, before I had time to say a word, or shut the door, or
+fly, placed it in my arms; and then both the women showed their
+glistening teeth, stretching from ear to ear, and screamed out in
+chorus, "You vill so lubb dee babba--it is such a pretty dear!"
+
+I stood in a state of stupefaction for some time, but the dark-visaged
+visitors by no means shared my inactivity; they ran, and screamed, and
+bustled; trotted down stairs, jumped up again, and filled the whole
+passage; then the drawing-room; then the little bedroom behind it, with
+trunks, and bags, and band-boxes, and bird-cages full of parrots, and
+cloaks, and shawls; till at last, when I started from my trance--in
+doing which, nearly let the baby fall--I found my whole house taken
+possession of, and the two women apparently as much at home as if they
+had lived with me twenty years.
+
+I unrolled the shawls and things from the baby's face. It was an infant
+about a year old, and opened its eyes as I was looking at it, and looked
+so wisely and sagaciously at me in return, that I could almost believe
+it knew as much of the proceeding as I did--and this it might very
+easily have done, without being a miracle of premature information, for
+I had not the remotest conception of what the whole thing was about. So
+I laid the child on the sofa, and went to the bell to ring for a
+policeman.
+
+"Oh, don't ring him bell, ve are so comfitable here!" said one of the
+women. "Yesha vill go home 'gain, and I vill habb little bed in t'oder
+room, and vill sleep vid dee babb--so nice!"
+
+"Oh, you will--will you? We'll see about that," I answered, astonished
+at the woman's impudence. "I will get you and your little lump of
+Newcastle"--this was an allusion to her colour--"turned out into the
+street."
+
+"Oh, Massa Moggan vill soon be here! Him wrote letter a veek since; but
+him vill come to-day."
+
+"Oh!"----
+
+So I did not pull the bell, but looked at the two intruders just as
+Macready looks at the witches in _Macbeth_; for Mr Morgan was my legal
+adviser, and had been my uncle's agent, and transacted all the business
+connected with the succession; and I had such confidence in him that I
+never opened his letters, and had of course thrown the note they talked
+of into the great wooden box that was the receptacle of all my
+correspondence.
+
+In the mean time, the baby began to squall.
+
+"Take the brat away, and I'll tell a little bit of my mind to Mr
+Morgan," I said, grinding my teeth in a horrible passion; and, in a
+moment, the two women disappeared with the child, roaring and screaming,
+as if they had stuck pins into it on purpose to drive me mad.
+
+If I had been a man of a tragic turn of mind, and fond of giving vent to
+the passion of a scene, I would have walked up and down the room,
+striking myself on the brow or breast, and shouting, "Confusion!
+distraction!" and other powerful words which Mr Kean used to deliver
+with astonishing emphasis; but I had no talent for the intense, and
+threw myself on the sofa, exclaiming, "Here's a pretty go!"
+
+And a pretty go it undoubtedly was--two black women and a
+saffron-coloured baby established with me, as if I had been married to a
+Hottentot; and my sister-in-law, as is very often the case, had come to
+attend to her nieces' morals and education.
+
+"So! Mr Morgan, what is the meaning of all this?"
+
+But before I had time for further exclamations, my friend Mr Morgan, who
+had come quietly into the room, interrupted me----
+
+"Hush, my dear Sneezum--you are delighted, I'm sure. A most interesting
+incident--eh, Sneezum?"
+
+"Oh! these things do all very well in a book," I began; "but, by jingo,
+sir, it's a very different thing in real life; and I tell you very
+fairly, I'd sooner be married at once than have all the troubles of
+bringing up a set of children that I have nothing to do with."
+
+"Children! my dear Sneezum?"
+
+"To be sure; how do I know that some more black women mayn't come--with
+some more children--till my house grows like a gallery of bronzed
+figures; but I'll sell them--see if I don't; I'll pack them all on an
+Italian boy's head-board, and sell them to the doctors--every one."
+
+"You labour under a mistake, my dear Sneezum. You've got my letter?"
+
+"Yes--I got it--but"----
+
+"Oh, then, of course you are too happy to show such respect to the
+wishes of the defunct."
+
+"What defunct?"
+
+"Your uncle."
+
+"What! uncle Sneezum?" and a wonderful light seemed to break in upon my
+mind.--"He sent this baby here?"
+
+Mr Morgan nodded his head; and, being a man of great caution, he only
+put his finger in a mysterious manner alongside of his nose, and said--
+
+"Secrets in all families, Sneezum."
+
+"Oho! well--but the women--they're ugly customers, both of them; uncle
+Sneezum was no judge of beauty."
+
+"The women! what do you mean?" said Mr Morgan.
+
+"Ay, which of them is it? but you need hardly tell, for I should never
+know which of them you meant; they're a great deal liker each other than
+any two peas _I_ ever saw. Are we to call her Mrs Sneezum?"
+
+Here Mr Morgan burst into a great laugh.
+
+"My dear Sneezum, you are always trying to find out some wonderful scene
+or other to put into one of your books. No, no--these are two nurses;
+one will remain in charge of the child, the other returns immediately to
+Calcutta."
+
+"And where will the one that is to remain--where will she live?" I asked
+with a fearful presentiment of something shockingly unpleasant. But
+before he had time to answer, the black visage of the nurse herself
+appeared at the door, smiling with more blindingly white teeth than
+ever.
+
+"We have took dee room below dis--dee babb is in dee beautiful bed, and
+ve vill never leave Massa Sib--never no more--so nice!"
+
+So I was booked, and felt it useless to complain.
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Fifteen years passed on most happily. I established myself, or rather
+old Morgan established me, in my present house; he paid L25,000 for the
+estate; and I have gone on, as I told you at the beginning of this
+letter, cultivating my farm and my talents with the utmost care. The
+little girl grew and grew till I thought she would never stop; and by
+the time she was sixteen she was at least an inch taller than I was.
+Many people like those prodigious women of five feet six--I'm only five
+feet five myself, which I believe was the exact measurement of Napoleon;
+and I must confess that when I looked on Martha Brown--that was her
+name--a sort of compliment I always thought to the complexion of her
+Hindoo mother--I could not imagine how she could be the child of such a
+curious old-fashioned looking individual as I had heard my uncle Sneezum
+was. Well, she grew tall--and grew stout--and grew clever; and if old
+Morgan had been her father himself, he could not have taken more care of
+her. He was always down at Goslingbury, (that's the name of my place--I
+sometimes put "Park" after it; but the lawn is now in turnips, and not
+the least like Blenheim,) and his wife, and his two daughters, and his
+little boy--in fact, the whole family; and though, I confess, they were
+always most friendly and attentive to _me_, their principal cares were
+bestowed on Martha Brown. I never push myself where I perceive my
+company is not greatly desired; so I went out to see the planting, or
+thin the copses, or make new fences, or superintend the ploughing, or
+betook myself to my study, and gave full way to the wildest flights of
+fancy in my everlasting first chapters of a novel or romance.
+
+Sir,--It was at that time--now nearly four years ago--that I began a
+work which I don't believe the most hostile criticism--but I will not
+boast; it will be enough to say that I consider it equal to any two
+introductory chapters I ever read. The whole of the first consists in a
+description of my own house--the name of course changed, and the
+locality removed to another county. I give the number of the rooms, the
+width of the passages, the height of ceilings, and a description of the
+new lifting-hinges to the dining-room door, that raise it over the
+turkey carpet, without sacrificing, as is usual, an inch of the lower
+part, and leaving a great interval at the sill. The fields are also very
+particularly described, and in some instances the exact measurement
+given; it gives such an appearance of reality, as may be seen in
+Ainsworth and others; and the second chapter is devoted, or meant to be
+devoted, to the living interests of the story--the _dramatis personae_,
+as it were--with hopes, fears, griefs, and the other passions alluded to
+in Collins's ode.
+
+Mystery has an indescribable charm, which is the thing that makes me so
+fond of riddles; and so I determined to have a hero or a heroine, I did
+not care which, of a most unexampled kind. But how to invent an
+unexampled hero, I could not imagine. Some disgusting fellow had always
+done it before: even a blackamoor had been taken up--for there was that
+horrid Othello; a Jew--there was Sheva; a puppy--there was Pelham; a
+pickpocket--there was Jack Sheppard; and at last, as the sweet source of
+mystery, and the pleasantest one to unravel, I thought I would take
+myself. Yes, I would be the hero of my own book; and as to a heroine,
+why, one of the Misses Morgan, or Martha Brown, or old Mrs Morgan, or
+the Indian nurse, (whose name was Ayah, which is Sanscrit or Cherokee
+for her situation,) any body would do. I was not at all particular; so I
+began my own description.
+
+It is amazing how little difference there is between man and man. A very
+few touches judiciously applied, would make Roebuck into Wellington,
+especially if Roebuck held the brush himself. Involuntarily I found my
+height increasing, my _embonpoint_ diminishing, my eyes brightening, my
+hair disporting in wavy ringlets over a majestic brow, till at the end
+of the second page I was Theodore Fitzhedingham, twenty-five years of
+age, with several grandfathers and grandmothers distinguished in history
+before the Norman conquest, and a clear rent-roll of forty thousand
+a-year. And yet, after all, it was my own individual self, Thomas Smith
+Sneezum--not, perhaps, exactly as I was at that moment--but as I had
+often and often fancied myself when I had gone through a course of
+Thaddeus of Warsaws, and other chronicles of the brave and beautiful.
+For, I confess, I was no wiser than other people, and it is well known
+they have an amazing tendency to identify themselves with the characters
+of the books they read, which perhaps accounts for the contempt that
+Doctors' or Clergymen's wives in country villages entertain for any body
+of the name of Snookes; and gives them so prodigious an opinion of their
+own importance, that they wouldn't visit a stockbroker or flannel
+manufacturer for the world. But there I was, stuck in the third page of
+the second chapter--Theodore Fitzhedingham--blessed with all that
+handsomeness, and rolling in all that money, and not able to move hand
+or foot, or in short make the least progress towards the _denouement_ of
+the story. For, with all my study, I could not manufacture a heroine out
+of any of the girls around me. Miss Letitia Morgan had false teeth--I
+found it quite impossible to make a heroine of _her_; and besides, I was
+not even sure of the genuineness of the long curls at the side of her
+face. For, you will observe, that the beautifying process I have
+mentioned above; seems strictly confined to one's own particular case.
+No lying and swopping, and altering and amending, would make those long
+brown artificial incisors--you saw a roll of the gold wire every time
+she laughed--into a row of pearls encased in a casket of ruby. That is
+my description of white teeth in red lips, and I think it is far from
+bad. Then Miss Sophia was immensely tall, and immensely thin; and in the
+mornings when she appeared _en negligee_, as they say in the _Morning
+Post_, her clothes hung straight down in perpendicular descent, so that
+she looked exactly like the canvass air funnels that you see in a
+steam-boat: and there were no outs and ins, or ups and downs, about her
+figure from top to toe; and I found it impossible, for a particular
+reason, to supply these deficiencies by the exercise of my ingenuity in
+description And that particular reason was this,--that she did it
+herself. Lord! what a change took place on Miss Sophia as you saw her
+gliding about the room like a half emptied pillow-case in the morning,
+and the grand and _distinguee_ (_Morning Post_ again) individual that
+choked up all the doorways, and occupied whole sofas, when you met her
+at a party at night. Then there were such flounces and tucks, and
+furbelows,--she sailed through the room enveloped in such awful
+circumgyrations of muslin--so pulled in at the waist, and so inflated
+every where else, that she looked--as you saw only her neck and
+shoulders emerging from the enormous circle in which the rest of her was
+buried--like an intrepid aeronaut who has fallen by some accident through
+a hole in the balloon, and you were lost in calculations of the length
+of darning-needle that would be needed to reach to the _vera
+superficies_. Now if I invent, I like to have the honour of the
+invention entirely to myself; and I found it impracticable to extract a
+heroine from seven or eight spring gauze petticoats, and a roll of
+millinery below the waist, that looked like a military cloak rolled up
+on the crupper of a life-guardsman's saddle. Then poor Martha Brown was
+too young, and at that time too bashful, for a heroine; and besides,
+there was no getting over the blot on her birth. Theodore Fitzhedingham
+could never think of paying attention to the daughter of a Hindoo woman
+and old Sneezum, the bullock contractor of Bunderjumm. One day I had
+been at work in one of the plantations, and just as I was marking with
+my hand-axe a birch tree to be felled, a thought came into my head. I
+left the cross half executed, and threw the axe on the bank, hurried
+home, and locked myself in the study. Pen and paper were lying before
+me, and in a moment I had got deep into the introduction of my heroine.
+She was an orphan thrown on Fitzhedingham's care--young, beautiful,
+accomplished, but of unknown mysterious parentage--and the _denouement_
+to consist in the discovery that her father was----but I won't mention
+it just now, for half the value of these things consists in the
+surprise. I will give you a page or two of it, only begging you to
+remark how entirely a man's style alters when he gets into a serious
+work. Here I go gabbling on and on to you, without much regard to style,
+or perhaps to grammar--(if there are any slips in it, have the kindness
+to correct them before you show this to any one)--but the instant I take
+up my pen to write a portion of my novel, I get dignified and heroic,
+perhaps you will say a little stiff, but I assure you I have formed
+myself on the best models. The passage I alluded to was this:--
+
+"To all the graces of external beauty Maria Valentine de Courcy united
+all the captivations of the intellect--all the attractions of the
+understanding,--all the enchantments of the soul. Cast in the finest
+mould of earthly loveliness--radiant in all the charms of youth, of
+innocence, and of integrity--she was the loved of all approachers--the
+idol of all observers--the appropriator of all affections. A little more
+ethereal, she would have been a goddess--a little less celestial, she
+would have been a more ordinary woman than she was. For her nature was
+of too lofty a kind--her spirit of too sublimated a character--her
+disposition of too beatified a placidity, to allow her to be classed
+with the other individuals constituting the female sex. A period of many
+years had elapsed since she first took up her residence among the proud
+halls--the baronial corridors--the heraldic passages of Fitzhedingham
+Castle. Winter had found her wandering in the snowy lanes--Spring had
+noticed her careering in the budding meadows--Summer had beheld her
+perambulating through the flowery grove--and Autumn had kept his eye on
+her as she galloped her managed palfrey through the umbrageous orchard,
+or skimmed in her light bark over the pellucid bosom of the silver lake.
+For many years such had been her unvarying course; and if loveliness has
+a charm--if innocence has an attraction--if youth has a
+witchery--all--all--were concentrated in the noble figure and
+exquisitely-chiselled countenance of the subject of our sketch. The
+colouring of a Titian, the elasticity of a Rubens, the magnificence of a
+Michael Angelo Buonaparte."--
+
+"Sneezum, Sneezum!" cried old Morgan, kicking with all his might at the
+study-door; and interrupting me before I could exactly settle how the
+sentence was to be properly ended--"Come and bid poor Billy good-bye."
+
+"Billy? who's Billy?" I thought--a little perplexed, perhaps, with the
+labours of composition.
+
+"Come; he's off this minute for Dublin, where he joins the
+Trigonometrical Survey--a great honour for a fellow not six months in
+the Engineers."
+
+The old fool was talking about his son William Morgan, who had been at
+Goslingbury (Park, when I get the turnips up and the grass sown) for a
+month--a nice merry young man; and so clever at mathematics, and
+hydraulics, and other scientific pursuits, that he had won all the
+prizes at Addiscombe; and, though only a second lieutenant, was chosen
+to conduct a great survey of Ireland.
+
+"I'm coming," I said; and bundled away my description of Maria Valentine
+de Courcy; and away old Morgan and I went to the lawn, where we expected
+to find the soldier. But no soldier, nor any body else, was to be seen.
+
+"His mother and sisters are making fools of themselves, I daresay," said
+I, "blubbering and crying over the boy, as if he was going out to settle
+in New Zealand."
+
+"I suspect there's a good deal of crying going on," replied old Morgan;
+"let us look into the summer-house at the top of the garden." So we
+hurried up the grass walk; and just as we got to the door, I was in the
+very act of stepping into the bower, and old Morgan close on my heels,
+when a man, with a handkerchief held to his eyes, rushed distractedly
+upon us, and rolled us both down the steps, as if we had been pushed by
+a bull; and in a minute or so, when I came to myself; I found my heels
+in a gooseberry bush, and my head tight-jammed into a flower-pot; old
+Morgan had rolled over into the next bed, which was prepared for celery,
+and he lay in one of the long troughs, with his hands folded across his
+breast, and evidently persuaded that he was his own effigy on the top of
+his own tomb. And this was all the leave-taking we had with the
+engineer; for, in an agony of grief at parting from his mother, and
+perhaps to hide his crying, he had hurried out blindfolded, and took no
+more notice of his host and his father than if we had been a couple of
+old cabbage-stalks. However, I got up as soon as I was able, and
+assisted Morgan once more upon his feet. This time we proceeded more
+cautiously into the summer-house; and on the bench we saw Martha Brown
+sitting and sobbing with all her might, with her head on Mrs Morgan's
+shoulder, and Miss Sophia holding a bottle of salts to her nose; while a
+tear, every now and then, rolled slowly over the tip of her own; and
+Miss Letitia chafing the sufferer's hands, and occasionally giving them
+a thump, as if to guard against a fit of hysterics.
+
+Those Hindoos are certainly beautifully made. I never saw any thing more
+graceful than the recumbent figure of Martha Brown; and I think that was
+the first time I remarked that she was no longer a child. Up to that
+moment I had scarcely observed her size; but there she was--a regular
+full-grown woman--though, I must say, she was behaving rather like an
+infant, to keep whimpering and sobbing in such a ridiculous way, merely
+because I had fallen down-stairs.
+
+"What is all this?" I said; "has any body hurt the child?"
+
+"No, no, Mr Sneezum!" exclaimed Mrs Morgan, without looking at me;
+"leave her alone for a minute or two; it will soon be over."
+
+"How do feel, dear?" enquired Miss Letitia.
+
+"Are you any better, love?" asked Miss Sophia.
+
+And it was very evident they gave themselves no concern about the nearly
+fatal accident we had met with, which had affected poor Martha so
+deeply; so I became a little warm.
+
+"Very pretty--very pretty this--upon my word! What in heaven's name is
+the matter with you all? Here has been that blundering booby William,
+pushed his father and me down-stairs, and Martha seems the only one that
+would care a farthing if we had both been killed."
+
+Upon this the girl made a great effort, and lifted up her head; but the
+moment her eyes rested on me she gave a great scream--wild laughter
+mixed with the most dreadful sobs; and she was fairly off in an
+hysterical attack.
+
+"Why, she's worse than she was," I said; but old Morgan took me aside.
+
+"Don't you see," he said, "that she's of a most affectionate, gentle
+nature, and that William's rushing off in the way he did"--
+
+"Ay, to be sure, and upsetting me in such a dangerous manner. Poor
+thing! is it all for my sake do you think she's crying?" So I went and
+took her hand, and said--"Don't cry, Martha, don't cry--I'm not a bit
+hurt--so be a good girl, and don't vex yourself any more."
+
+Upon this, Mrs Morgan looked at me as if she thought me deranged--so did
+Miss Letitia--and so did Miss Sophia; and even Martha, when she looked
+at me again, fell back in fresh fit, holloing "His head! his head"--and
+this time it was more laughter than sobs.
+
+"Come away--come away," said old Morgan at last; "no wonder you frighten
+them all to death. What the deuce is that you've got on your head?"
+
+And there stood I with my brows enveloped by the flower-pot.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+I saw the Morgans were making a dead set to take me in. Sometimes it was
+Miss Letitia, and sometimes Miss Sophia--and always the mother. To hear
+that woman talk of her daughters, you would swear that two such were
+never known on earth before. Their sweetness--their temper--their
+beauty--the numbers of people that were in love with them--the hosts of
+rich and handsome fellows they had rejected, and the decided turn both
+of them had for a quiet country life, and the society of a
+well-educated, intellectual man of a certain age. She was a wonderful
+woman Mrs Morgan, and I really believe she thought she was speaking the
+simple truth all the time. But it wouldn't do--I judged for myself, and
+never took the least notice of all her hints and boastings. I tried to
+have them less about the house than they used to be; but nothing would
+keep them away--they always pretended it was for the sake of Martha
+Brown--a very likely story that they should trouble their heads about my
+uncle's anonymous contribution to the population returns, when his
+veritable nephew and heir was to be had by hook or crook. But I don't
+mean any disparagement by that to the poor little girl herself--far from
+it--she was the nicest creature in the world, and really not so black as
+I had thought; and she was now nearly twenty-one, and played and
+sung--and such an excellent critic, too! I always read my writings to
+her the moment they were finished, and she never found the slightest
+fault in any of them. I had left my description of Maria Valentine de
+Courcy incompleted for several years--for it is a long time now since
+the foolish adventure of the flower-pot first showed me that she took a
+tenderer interest in me than merely that of a cousin--and I now
+determined to give my second chapter the finishing touch, and consult
+her on the farther conduct of the story.
+
+"Martha," I said, "I wish you would listen for a minute or two to what
+I've written."
+
+So she sat down in my study, and worked a flower in an Ottoman square,
+and was evidently prepared to listen with the utmost attention.
+
+"It is the rest of the second chapter."
+
+"Oh, are you only there yet? I was in hopes you had come to the end of
+the story."
+
+To the end of the story! Could the girl be hinting that I ought to tell
+her my mind; for I must tell you, I had so completely got over all
+prejudice about her birth, that I was strongly tempted to give an
+additional proof of my veneration for my uncle's memory, by giving his
+poor little orphan my name. Can she mean any thing by wishing me to come
+to the end of the story?
+
+"How do you mean to wind up?" she asked.
+
+"Oh! in a most mysterious and surprising manner; but we haven't got near
+the _denouement_ yet. There must be a duel, of course--a
+misunderstanding--and a rival."
+
+"Oh! Theodore Fitzhedingham has no occasion to fear a rival," said
+Martha, pretending to have lost the stitch.
+
+"No! 'Pon my word that's very good of you. Do you really think that
+Maria Valentine de Courcy will prefer him to every one else?"
+
+"She will be a very foolish, a very ungrateful girl, if she doesn't--for
+hasn't he loved her ever since she was a child?"
+
+"Well, Martha, you are certainly a very nice, a very affectionate girl;
+and I may as well put your mind at rest at once by telling you"--
+
+"Sneezum! Sneezum!"
+
+There was old Morgan again kicking at the study door, and holloing
+Sneezum with all his might. I had taken Martha's hand, and was just
+going to tell her to make preparations to become Mrs Sneezum in a week
+or two. I let go her hand, and rushed to the door.
+
+"What the mischief do you want?"
+
+"Why, here's Billy come back again," he said; "won't you come and give a
+welcome to poor Billy?"
+
+"No; I be hang'd if I do. He has never apologized for pushing me down
+the steps; tell him to get out of my house; I have not forgot what alarm
+my accident caused to poor Martha. Don't you remember it, my dear?"
+
+But there sat Martha--sometimes red and sometimes white--with tears in
+her eyes, and her lips half open, like the picture of St Cecilia.
+
+"There! the very recollection of it frightens her to death. Go to your
+room, my dear, and I'll send this blustering fellow out of the house."
+
+She glided out of the study without speaking a word, and I hurried to
+the drawing-room, but no Billy was there. His mother and sisters were
+luckily in London, so I turned angrily round on the father.
+
+"A pretty fellow this son of yours--never one word of apology, either to
+me or Martha--I won't have him roystering here at all hours, frightening
+affectionate little girls with his violence."
+
+"Who is it he has frightened?" enquired old Morgan; "who are the
+affectionate girls you mean? I'm sure he has never caused the least
+alarm to his sisters in his life."
+
+"Perhaps not--perhaps not, Mr Morgan; but there is another girl that I
+wouldn't have any injury done to on any account. In fact, I may as well
+tell you at once, that Martha evidently expects me to provide for her
+happiness, and I am going to do it."
+
+"Well, nothing can be fairer--but how?"
+
+"Why, as to any little blot on her birth, I don't care much about it.
+Uncle was a kind friend to me, and I really think I can't do better than
+give a good steady husband to his child."
+
+"Bravo! bravo! when you have found her."
+
+"What do you mean by--when I have found her?"
+
+"Why, have you never read the letters?"
+
+"No; I never read letters. They're all in the wooden box."
+
+"Then where, when, or how, have you encountered a daughter of your
+uncle?"
+
+"Why, Martha Brown. I tell you I don't dislike a little dash of Hindoo
+blood; it's like curry, and gives a flavour."
+
+"And who is the husband you have chosen for her?"
+
+"Myself."
+
+Old Morgan burst into a prodigious laugh, but I was in no humour to
+stand such nonsense. I got into a furious passion--he answered in an
+insulting manner--and so I ordered him to get out of my house, him and
+his son, and all his baggage.
+
+"Certainly, certainly, Mr Sneezum, but you'll repent of it; and, as to
+your marrying Martha, you'll just as soon marry the Princess-Royal."
+
+When he was gone, I went in search of Martha to settle the matter at
+once. There was a circular basin among the shrubs upon the lawn, with a
+nymph cowering under a waterfall that fell all round her like a veil--a
+very pretty ornament to the grounds--and at one side of it was a little
+arbour, where I used often to sit and see the sun make rainbows out of
+the spray that rose round the head of the nymph. To get to it, it was
+necessary to walk on the ledge of the wall that rose a little above the
+water in the basin, and this I was induced to do; for, as I was
+searching for Martha, I thought I heard a voice in the arbour, and I
+hurried on to tell her what I had done to old Morgan. I stept steadily
+on tiptoe along the coping-stone--for I wished to surprise her--but on
+getting to the opening of the arbour, a sight met my eyes that made me
+lose my balance all of a sudden; and with a start of rage and
+indignation, I stept backward into the pond, and was forced to battle
+among the water-lilies for my life. Martha rushed from the arbour and
+held out her hands in vain; but the person with her--a tall young man,
+with bushy whiskers and an enormous pair of mustaches--leapt into the
+basin and lifted me on to the bank, just as I had found it useless to
+try any longer to rise above the broad leaves that floated on the top,
+and made up my mind to give it up as a bad job. When I came to myself my
+preserver was gone, but Martha was supporting my head.
+
+"Oh, you double-faced, deceitful gipsy!" I began. "Who would have
+thought you would be sitting, hand locked in hand, with a horrid fellow
+like the ruffian that was with you in the bower?"
+
+"The ruffian! My dear guardian, don't you know him?"
+
+"How should I? I never saw the vagabond's ugly face before."
+
+"Why, it's William Morgan--how strange you shouldn't recognise him!"
+
+"Well, if it were twenty William Morgans, that's no reason you should
+sit with your hand in his like the sign of the fire-office over our
+stable-door."
+
+"Oh, he's such an old friend! Recollect, sir, we grew up together, and
+now how can you keep your anger against him? He has saved your life."
+
+"After first startling me into the water. No, no; I'll have none of the
+Morgans here. I'll go and get changed, and then I'll finish what I was
+going to tell you when Morgan came to the door."
+
+I was inflexible; I wouldn't let one of the Morgans into my house. Miss
+Letitia wrote a letter of four pages, and Miss Sophia enclosed a sonnet.
+Nothing would do. I resolved to keep Martha all to myself; and, for fear
+of other adventures in the bower, I gave her positive orders not to
+leave the house. I set people to watch her. I threatened to hang her
+Ayah with my own hands, and showed her the very bough of the tree I
+would do it on, if Martha was allowed to speak to any body but myself. I
+resolved to marry her in a week; and, merely to prevent her being
+harassed by the Morgans in the interval, I took all these precautions.
+After that, I determined to pardon the whole family, and had even
+prepared a letter asking them all to dinner on our wedding-day. Martha
+did not seem inconsolable. Day after day passed away; and, to show how
+easy I was in my mind, I went on with the last chapter of my novel,
+leaving all the middle part to be filled up at my leisure.
+
+One morning--it was last Wednesday--I went into the study, and had just
+taken pen in hand, when I recollected that that was the very day I had
+summoned all the labourers on the estate to resist the approach of the
+levellers and engineers of a disgusting railway that was determined to
+force itself right through my garden and close under the dining-room
+windows. I went out to the barn--all the men were there. I gave orders
+to them to warn the intruders off; if they resisted, to knock them down
+without ceremony and keep them in custody till I could get them before a
+magistrate. Having satisfied my mind on these points, I felt so sure of
+my object being gained in both respects--that is, Martha and the
+railway--that I dispatched my letter to old Morgan, inviting the whole
+family to dine with me on Friday, the day I had fixed on for the
+marriage. Martha sat by my side in the study, and went on with the
+everlasting Ottoman square. I read to her--
+
+"'Is it in the circle of possible events--is it a contingency to be
+calculated on in the decrees of fate,' exclaimed Theodore
+Fitzhedingham--(this was the finest bit out of my last chapter)--'that
+the girl I have loved--the paragon I have worshipped--the angel I have
+adored, is, indeed no longer the humbly born maid I thought her but the
+descendant of princes--the kinswoman of emperors--the inheritrix of
+kings?'
+
+"'It certainly is far from false, nay, it is absolutely true,' returned
+Maria Valentine de Courcy, with a condescending smile, 'that I am not
+the person you have taken me for, but oh! beloved Theodore--faithful
+Fitzhedingham, need I tell you that my love is unaltered, my affections
+are unabated, my heart unchanged'"----
+
+"Sir! sir!" cried voice at the door, "they be come." I hurried out; my
+servant was armed with the poker, I seized the hall tongs as I passed
+through; and on the lawn, in the coolest possible manner, were about
+half a dozen fellows smoking their cigars, and occasionally looking
+through a bright brass instrument upon a three-legged stand, and noting
+down the result with the greatest nonchalance.
+
+"Oho!" I cried, and rushed at the intruders, "run for the people in the
+barn, Thomas. Who are you, you infernal interloping vagabonds?"
+
+"Engineers of the Episcopal and Universal Railway Company, sir, and we
+will trouble you to stand out of the way," said a tall blackguard,
+scarcely deigning to look at me.
+
+"Oh, you are, are you? Just wait a minute till my men come up, and I'll
+have you and your railway ducked in the horsepond."
+
+"Don't interrupt us, old man," replied the scientific ruffian; "if we do
+any damage, charge it to the Company--we have seventy-five thousand
+shares, and can afford to pay any claims."
+
+"Here!" I cried to the men, "catch that long villain with the dwarf
+telescope and take him into the house; if I don't get him six weeks of
+the treadmill my name is not Tom Sneezum."
+
+The man made a stout resistance, but at last was overpowered, and
+carried into the hall. I helped to repel the others, and as they were
+tolerably civil, now that the ringleader was gone, I contented myself
+with walking them to the very end of my boundaries, and gave them
+notice, that if they ventured to return, I would treat them exactly as I
+had done their chief. This whole business did not take up more than an
+hour; and before going home, I walked across to Major Slowtops, the
+nearest magistrate, and luckily found him at home. He promised to
+trounce the fellow handsomely when I brought him; and telling him I
+would be back with the culprit and the witnesses in half an hour, I
+returned in no little triumph to Goslingbury.
+
+"Where is the vagabond?" I exclaimed, when I got into the house.
+
+"He's been gone this hour, sir," said Thomas, hardly able to keep in a
+laugh.
+
+"Gone! who let him go?"
+
+"Why, he ordered the carriage, sir, and him and Miss Martha is off for
+London."
+
+"Are you mad, Thomas?--what is it you're speaking of? Where is the
+rascally leveller of the railway?"
+
+"Lor', sir--don't you know? It was only Mr William at one of his tricks.
+The moment he took off the spectacles we all knew him, and Miss Martha
+seemed so pleased"--
+
+"Did she?"
+
+"Oh, yes! and Mr William--but they say he's Captain Morgan now--laughed
+so. It was certainly a rare good surprise--wasn't it, sir?"
+
+I rushed into my study. "Let her go!" I said, "the false, deceitful
+Hottentot, or Hindoo, or whatever she is; she's as black as my hat, and
+a disgrace to my old uncle." So I stood very quietly, brooding over my
+misfortune--if a misfortune it was--and revenging myself by tearing into
+a million pieces the beginning and the end of my romantic novel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Here we are, Sneezum, my boy!" said old Morgan, on the Friday, at about
+two o'clock; "I've come on before, to tell you to get into good-humour;
+for perhaps you've forgotten the invitations you gave us all for
+to-day."
+
+"What has become of the young woman?" I asked, with a very disdainful
+look; "my uncle's unowned little girl?"
+
+"Do you mean William's wife?" inquired Mr Morgan; "they were married
+this morning, at St George's, Hanover Square, and will take you for an
+hour or two on their way to the North."
+
+"I think, sir, as her guardian--not to say her cousin"----
+
+"There, my dear Sneezum, you are altogether wrong; she was no relation
+of your uncle. She was the daughter of a Mr Brown of the Commissariat,
+and left to your uncle's charge; you, of course, succeeded to the
+guardianship as his representative; but she is no more a Hindoo than you
+are."
+
+"That makes it worse, sir."
+
+"Come, come, old Sneezum, don't keep up your anger; recollect you are
+old enough to be her father, and that she likes you next in the whole
+world to William. Shake hands with them, and be friends; and if you ever
+had the folly to think of marrying her, keep your own secret, and nobody
+will be a bit the wiser."
+
+I thought old Morgan advised very wisely--so, if you show this to any
+body, alter the names a little; for I would not have it known for the
+world.--Believe me, sir, your obedient servant,
+
+  T. S. S.
+
+
+
+
+MARLBOROUGH.
+
+NO. III.
+
+
+The campaign of 1707 opened under very different auspices to the Allies
+from any which had preceded it:--Blenheim had saved Germany, Ramilies
+had delivered Brabant. The power of the Grande Monarque no longer made
+Europe tremble. The immense advantage which he had gained in the outset
+of the contest, by the declaration of the governor of Flanders for the
+cause of the Bourbons, and the consequent transference of the Flemish
+fortresses into his hands, had been lost. It was more than lost--it had
+been won to the enemy. Brussels, Antwerp, Menin, Ath, Ostend, Ghent,
+Dendermonde, Louvain, now acknowledged the Archduke Charles for their
+sovereign; the states of Brabant had sent in their adhesion to the Grand
+Alliance. Italy had been lost as rapidly as it had been won; the stroke
+of Marlborough at Ramilies had been re-echoed at Turin; and Eugene had
+expelled the French arms from Piedmont as effectually as Marlborough had
+from Flanders. Reduced on all sides to his own resources, wakened from
+his dream of foreign conquests, Louis XIV. now sought only to defend his
+own frontier; and the arms which had formerly been at the gates of
+Amsterdam, and recently carried terror into the centre of Germany, were
+now reduced to a painful defensive on the Scheldt and the Rhine.
+
+These great advantages would, in all probability, notwithstanding the
+usual supineness and divisions of the Allied Powers, have led to their
+obtaining signal success in the next campaign, had not their attention
+been, early in spring, arrested, and their efforts paralyzed by a new
+and formidable actor on the theatre of affairs. This was no less a man
+than CHARLES XII. KING OF SWEDEN; who, after having defeated the
+coalition of the northern sovereigns formed for his destruction,
+dictated peace to Denmark at Copenhagen, dethroned the King of Poland,
+and wellnigh overturned the empire of Russia--had now advanced his
+victorious standards into the centre of Germany, and at the head of an
+army hitherto invincible, fifty thousand strong, stationed himself at
+Dresden, where he had become the arbiter of Europe, and threatened
+destruction to either of the parties engaged in the contest on the Rhine
+against whom he chose to direct his hostility.
+
+This extraordinary man approached closer than any warrior of modern
+times to the great men of antiquity. More nearly even than Napoleon, he
+realized the heroes of Plutarch--a Stoic in pacific, he was a Caesar in
+military life. He had all their virtues, and a considerable share of
+their barbarism. Achilles did not surpass him in the thirst for warlike
+renown, nor Hannibal in the perseverance of his character and the
+fruitfulness of his resources; like Alexander, he would have wept
+because a world did not remain to conquer. Indefatigable in fatigue,
+resolute in determination, a lion in heart, he knew no fear but that of
+his glory being tarnished. Endowed by nature with a constitution of
+iron, he was capable of undergoing a greater amount of fatigue than any
+of his soldiers: at the siege of Stralsund, when some of his officers
+were sinking under the exhaustion of protracted watching, he desired
+them to retire to rest, and himself took their place. Outstripping his
+followers in speed, at one time he rode across Germany, almost alone, in
+an incredibly short space of time: at another, he defended himself for
+days together, at the head of a handful of attendants, in a barricaded
+house, against ten thousand Turks. Wrapt up in the passion for fame, he
+was insensible to the inferior desires which usually rouse or mislead
+mankind. Wine had no attractions, women no seductions for him: he was
+indifferent to personal comforts or accommodations; his fare was as
+simple, his dress as plain, his lodging as rude, as those of the meanest
+of his followers. To one end alone his attention was exclusively
+directed, on one acquisition alone his heart was set. Glory, military
+glory, was the ceaseless object of his ambition; all lesser desires
+were concentrated in this ruling passion; for this he lived, for this
+he died.
+
+That his military abilities were of the very highest order, may be
+judged of by the fact that, with the resources of the poor monarchy of
+Sweden, not at that period containing two millions of inhabitants, he
+entirely defeated a coalition of Russia, Denmark, and Poland, headed by
+the vast capacity and persevering energy of Peter the Great, and
+numbering not less than forty millions of subjects under its various
+sovereigns. Nor let it be said that these nations were rude in the
+military art, and unfit to contend in the field with the descendants of
+the followers of Gustavus Adolphus. The Danes are the near neighbours
+and old enemies of the Swedes; their equals in population, discipline,
+and warlike resources. Thirty years had not elapsed since the Poles had
+delivered Europe from Mussulman bondage by the glorious victory of
+Vienna, under John Sobieski, over two hundred thousand Turks. Europe has
+since had too much reason to know what are the military resources of
+Russia, against which all the power of Western Europe, in recent times,
+has been so signally shattered; and though the soldiers of Peter the
+Great were very different, in point of discipline, from those that
+repelled the legions of Napoleon, yet their native courage was the same,
+and they were directed by an energy and perseverance, on the part of the
+Czar, which never has been exceeded in warlike annals. What then must
+have been the capacity of the sovereign, who, with the resources of a
+monarchy not equalling those of Scotland at this time, could gain such
+extraordinary success over so powerful a coalition, from the mere force
+of indefatigable energy, military ability, and heroic determination!
+
+Charles, however, had many faults. He was proud, overbearing, and
+opinionative. Like all men of powerful original genius, he was confident
+in his own opinion, and took counsel from none; but, unfortunately, he
+often forgot also to take counsel from himself. He did not always weigh
+the objections against his designs with sufficient calmness to give them
+fair play, or allow his heroic followers a practical opportunity of
+crowning his enterprises with success. He had so often succeeded against
+desperate, and apparently hopeless, odds, that he thought himself
+invincible, and rushed headlong into the most dreadful perils, with no
+other preparation to ward them off but his own calmness in danger, his
+inexhaustible fecundity of resources, and the undaunted courage, as well
+as patience of fatigue and privation, with which he had inspired his
+followers. It is surprising, however, how often they extricated him from
+his difficulties; and even in his last expedition against Russia, which
+terminated in the disaster of Pultowa, he would, to all appearance, have
+proved successful, if the Tartar chief, Mazeppa, had proved faithful to
+his engagement. Like Hannibal, his heroic qualities had inspired a
+multifarious army--_colluvies omnium gentium_--with one homogeneous
+spirit, rendered them subject to his discipline, faithful to his
+standard, obedient to his will. But in some particulars his private
+character was still more exceptionable, and stained with the vices as
+well as virtues of the savage character. Though not habitually cruel, he
+was stern, vindictive, and implacable; and his government has been
+stained by some acts of atrocious barbarity at which humanity shudders,
+and which must ever leave an indelible stain on his memory.
+
+Louis XIV., in his distress, was naturally anxious to gain the support
+of so powerful an ally, who was now at Dresden at the head of
+fifty-three thousand veteran soldiers, ready to fall on the rear of
+Marlborough's army, that threatened the defensive barrier of France in
+the Low Countries. Every effort, accordingly, was made to gain Charles
+over to the French interest. The ancient alliance of France with Sweden,
+their mutual cause of complaint against the Emperor, the glories of
+Gustavus Adolphus and the thirty years' war, in which they had stood
+side by side, were held forth to dazzle his imagination or convince his
+judgment. The Swedish monarch appeared ready to yield to these efforts.
+He brought forward various real or imaginary grounds of complaint
+against the German powers, for infractions of the constitution of the
+empire, of which he put himself forth as the guarantee, as heir to the
+crown and fame of Gustavus Adolphus, as well as for sundry insults
+alleged to have been committed against the Swedish crown or subjects.
+These various subjects of complaint were sedulously inflamed by the
+French agents; and the weight of their arguments was not a little
+increased by the knowledge of the fact, that they were authorized to
+offer Count Piper, the prime minister of Charles, 300,000 livres
+(L.12,000), to quicken his movements in favour of the cabinet of
+Versailles, besides bribes in proportion to the subordinate ministers of
+the Swedish monarch.[10]
+
+Marlborough, as well he might, was extremely uneasy at this negotiation,
+which he soon discovered by secret information, as well as the
+undisguised reluctance of the German powers to furnish the contingents
+for which they were bound for the ensuing campaign. Indeed, it could
+hardly be expected that the Northern powers in Germany should send their
+chief disposable forces to swell Marlborough's army beyond the Rhine,
+when so warlike a monarch, at the head of fifty thousand men, was in the
+centre of the empire, with his intentions as yet undeclared, and exposed
+to the influence of every imaginable seduction. He dispatched,
+accordingly, General Grumbkow, an adroit and intelligent diplomatist,
+who had been sent by the King of Prussia on a mission to the Allied
+headquarters, to Dresden, to endeavour to ascertain the real intentions
+of the Swedish monarch. He was not long of discovering that Charles had
+assumed an angry tone towards the confederates, only in order to extract
+favourable terms of accommodation from them, and that Muscovy was the
+real object on which his heart was set. His despatches convey a curious
+and highly interesting picture of Charles and the Swedish court and army
+at this important juncture.[11] The negotiation went on for some time
+with varying success; but at length matters were brought to a crisis, by
+the King of Sweden declaring that he would treat with none but
+Marlborough in person.
+
+This immediately led to the English general repairing to the court of
+Charles XII. at Dresden. He left the Hague on the 20th April
+accordingly; and after visiting Hanover on the way, where, as usual,
+there were some jealousies to appease, arrived at the Swedish camp of
+Alt-Ranstadt on the 28th. The Duke drove immediately to the headquarters
+of Count Piper, from whom he received the most flattering assurance of
+the gratification which the Swedish monarch had felt at his arrival. He
+was shortly after introduced to the monarch, to whom he delivered a
+letter from the Queen of England, and at the same time addressed him in
+the following flattering terms:--"I present to your Majesty a letter,
+not from the chancery, but from the heart of the Queen, my mistress, and
+written with her own hand. Had not her sex prevented it, she would have
+crossed the sea, to see a prince admired by the whole universe. I am in
+this particular more happy than the Queen, and I wish I could serve some
+campaigns under so great a general as your Majesty, that I might learn
+what I yet want to know in the art of war."[12]
+
+This adroit compliment from so great and justly celebrated a commander,
+produced an immediate effect on the Swedish monarch, who was
+passionately desirous of military glory. His satisfaction was visible in
+his countenance, and he returned a gracious answer in these terms:--"The
+Queen of Great Britain's letter and your person are both very acceptable
+to me, and I shall always have the utmost regard for the interposition
+of her Britannic Majesty and the interests of the Grand Alliance. It is
+much against my will that I have been obliged to give umbrage to any of
+the parties engaged in it. I have had just cause to come into this
+country with my troops; but you may assure the Queen, my sister, that my
+design is to depart from hence as soon as I have obtained the
+satisfaction I demand, but not till then. However, I shall do nothing
+that can tend to the prejudice of the common cause in general, or of the
+Protestant religion, of which I shall always glory to be a zealous
+protector." This favourable answer was immediately followed by an
+invitation to dine with the King, by whom he was placed on his right
+hand, and honoured with the most flattering attention. In the course of
+the evening the conversation turned chiefly on military matters, in
+which Marlborough exerted himself with such skill and success, that he
+had another long private audience of Charles; and before his departure,
+that monarch even exceeded his views, and declared that there could be
+no security for the peace of Europe till France was reduced to the rank
+she held at the date of the treaty of Westphalia.
+
+Though the address and abilities of Marlborough, however, had thus
+removed the chief danger to be apprehended from the presence of the
+Swedish monarch at Dresden, yet other matters of great delicacy remained
+still for adjustment, which required all his prudence and skill to bring
+to a satisfactory issue. Not the least of these difficulties arose from
+the zeal of the King of Sweden for the protection of the Protestant
+religion, and his desire to revive and secure the privileges granted to
+the German Protestants by the treaty of Westphalia. As Marlborough
+justly apprehended that the Court of Vienna might take umbrage at these
+demands, and so be diverted from the objects of the Grand Alliance, he
+exerted himself to the utmost to convince his Majesty that the great
+object in the mean time, even as regarded the Protestant faith, was to
+humble the French monarch, who had shown himself its inveterate enemy by
+the atrocious persecutions consequent on the revocation of the Edict of
+Nantes; and that, if this were once done, the Emperor would be unable to
+prevent any stipulations being inserted in favour of the Reformed faith
+in the general peace which might follow. Charles was convinced by these
+arguments, which, in truth, were well-founded, and even went so far as
+to propose a secret convention with England for the promotion of the
+Protestant interest; a proposal which, so embarrassing at the moment
+when Great Britain was in close alliance with the Emperor, Marlborough
+contrived to elude with admirable dexterity. Another matter of great
+delicacy was the conduct to be observed towards the dethroned King of
+Poland, Augustus, who was also at Dresden, and of course viewed with the
+utmost jealousy the close intimacy between Marlborough and his
+formidable enemy Charles. Here, however, the diplomatic skill of the
+English general overcame all difficulties, and by skilfully taking
+advantage of his pecuniary embarrassments, after his territories had
+been ravaged and exhausted by the Swedish forces, and engaging that the
+Emperor should take a large part of his troops into his pay, he
+succeeded at once in gaining over the dethroned monarch, and securing a
+considerable body of fresh troops for the service of the Allies. By
+these means, aided by the judicious bestowing of considerable pensions
+on Count Piper and the chief Swedish ministers, paid in advance,
+Marlborough succeeded in entirely allaying the storm which had
+threatened his rear, and left the Saxon capital, after a residence of
+ten days, perfectly secure of the pacific intentions of the Swedish
+monarch, and having fully divined the intended direction of his forces
+toward Moscow.[13]
+
+The brilliant success with which this delicate and important negotiation
+terminated, naturally induced a hope that vigorous operations would be
+undertaken by the Allied powers, and that the great successes of the
+preceding campaign would be so far improved, as to compel the Court of
+France to submit to such terms as the peace of Europe, and the
+independence of the adjoining States, required. It was quite the
+reverse, and Marlborough had again the indescribable mortification of
+seeing month after month of the summer of 1707 glide away, without one
+single measure conducive to the common cause, or worthy of the real
+strength of the Allied powers, having been attempted. They had all
+relapsed into their former and fatal jealousies and procrastination. The
+Dutch, notwithstanding the inestimable services which Marlborough had
+rendered to their Republic, had again become distrustful, and authorized
+their field-deputies to thwart and mar all his operations. They made no
+concealment of their opinion, that their interests were now secured, and
+that the blood and treasure of the United Provinces should no longer be
+wasted in enterprises in which the Emperor or Queen of England alone
+were concerned. They never failed accordingly to interfere when any
+aggressive movement was in contemplation; and even when the Duke, in the
+course of his skilful marches and countermarches, had gained the
+opportunity for which he longed, of bringing the enemy to an engagement
+on terms approaching to an equality, never failed to interpose with
+their fatal negative, and prevent any thing being attempted. They did
+this, in particular, under the most vexatious circumstances, on the 27th
+May, near Nevilles, where Marlborough had brought his troops into the
+presence of the enemy with every prospect of signalizing that place by a
+glorious victory. A council of war forbade an engagement despite
+Marlborough's most earnest entreaties, and compelled him in consequence
+to fall back to Branheim, to protect Louvain and Brussels. The
+indignation of the English general at this unworthy treatment, and at
+the universal selfishness of the Allied powers, exhaled in bitter terms
+in his private correspondence.[14]
+
+The consequence of this determination on the part of the Dutch
+field-deputies to prevent any serious operation being undertaken, was,
+that the whole summer passed away in a species of armed truce, or a
+series of manoeuvres so insignificant, as to be unworthy of the name
+of a campaign. Vendome, who commanded the French, though at the head of
+a gallant army above eighty thousand strong, had too much respect for
+his formidable antagonist to hazard any offensive operation, or run the
+risk of a pitched battle, unless in defence of his own territory. On the
+other hand, Marlborough, harassed by the incessant opposition of the
+Dutch deputies, and yet not strong enough to undertake any operation of
+importance without the support of their troops, was reduced to merely
+nominal or defensive operations. The secret of this ruinous system,
+which was at the time the subject of loud complaints, and appeared
+wholly inexplicable, is now fully revealed by the published despatches.
+The Dutch were absolutely set on getting an accession of territory, and
+a strong line of barrier towns, set apart for them out of the _Austrian_
+Netherlands; and as the Emperor, not unnaturally, objected to being
+shorn of his territories, as a remuneration for his efforts in favour of
+European independence, they resolved to thwart all the measures of the
+Allied generals, in the hope that, it the end, they would in this manner
+prevail in their demands with the Allied cabinets.[15]
+
+It was not, however, in the Low Countries alone that the selfish views
+and jealousies of the Allies prevented any operation of importance from
+being undertaken, and blasted all the fair prospects which the brilliant
+victories of the preceding campaign had afforded. In Spain, the Allies
+had suffered a fearful reverse by the battle of Almanza, which in a
+manner ruined the Austrian prospects in the Peninsula, and rendered some
+operation indispensable, to relieve the pressure felt by the Allies in
+that quarter. Peterborough, whose great military abilities had hitherto
+nearly alone sustained their sinking cause in Spain, had been deprived
+of his command in Catalonia, from that absurd jealousy of foreigners
+which in every age has formed so marked a feature in the Spanish
+character. His successor, Lord Galway, was far from possessing his
+military abilities, and every thing presaged that, unless a great effort
+was immediately made, the crown of Spain, the prize for which all
+contended in the war, would be lost to the Allied powers. Nor was the
+aspect of affairs more promising on the Rhine. The Margrave of Baden had
+there died; and his army, before a successor could be appointed,
+sustained a signal defeat at Stodhoffen. This disaster having opened the
+gates of Germany, Marshal Villars, at the head of a powerful French
+army, burst into the Palatinate, which he ravaged with fire and sword.
+To complete the catalogue of disasters, the disputes between the King of
+Sweden and the Emperor were again renewed, and conducted with such
+acrimony, that it required all the weight and address of Marlborough to
+prevent a rupture, threatening fatal consequences, from breaking out
+between these powers.
+
+Surrounded by so many difficulties, Marlborough wisely judged that the
+most pressing danger was that in Spain, and that the first thing to be
+done was to stop the progress of the Bourbon armies in that quarter. As
+the forces in the Peninsula afforded no hopes of effecting that object,
+he conceived, with reason, that the only way to make an effectual
+diversion in that quarter was to take advantage of the superiority of
+the Allies in Piedmont, since the decisive victory of Turin in the
+preceding year, and threaten Provence with a serious irruption. For this
+purpose, Marlborough no sooner heard of the disasters in Spain, than he
+urged in the strongest manner upon the Allied courts to push Prince
+Eugene with his victorious army across the Maritime Alps, and lay siege
+to Toulon. Such an offensive movement, which might be powerfully aided
+by the English fleet in the Mediterranean, would at once remove the war
+from the Italian plains, fix it in the south of France, and lead to the
+recall of a considerable part of the French forces now employed beyond
+the Pyrenees. But though the reasons for this expedition were thus
+pressing, and it afforded the only feasible prospect of bringing affairs
+round in the Peninsula; yet the usual jealousies of the coalesced
+powers, the moment it was proposed, opposed insurmountable objections to
+its being carried into effect. It was objected to the siege of Toulon,
+that it was a maritime operation, of value to England alone: the Emperor
+insisted on the Allied forces being exclusively employed in the
+reduction of the fortresses yet remaining in the hands of the French in
+the Milanese; while Victor Amadeus, Duke of Savoy, between whom and the
+Imperialists the most violent jealousy had arisen, threatened to
+withdraw altogether from the alliance, unless Eugene's army was directed
+to the protection and consolidation of his dominion. The real reason of
+these obstacles thrown by the Emperor in the way of these operations,
+was, that he had ambitious designs of his own on Naples, and he had, to
+facilitate their accomplishment, concluded a secret convention with
+Louis for a sort of neutrality or understanding in Italy, which enabled
+that monarch to direct the forces employed, or destined to be employed
+there, to the Spanish peninsula. Marlborough's energetic
+representations, however, at length prevailed over all these
+difficulties; and the reduction of the Milanese having been completed,
+the Emperor, in the end of June, consented to Prince Eugene invading
+Provence at the head of thirty-five thousand men.[16]
+
+The invasion of the territory of the Grande Monarque accordingly took
+place, and was supported by a powerful English squadron, which, as
+Eugene's army advanced into Provence by the Col di Tende, kept the
+sea-coast in a constant state of alarm. No resistance, as Marlborough
+had predicted, was attempted; and the Allies, almost without firing a
+shot, arrived at the heights of Vilate, in the neighbourhood of Toulon,
+on the 27th July. Had Eugene been aware of the real condition of the
+defences, and the insubordination which prevailed in the garrison, he
+might, without difficulty, have made himself master of this important
+fortress. But from ignorance of these propitious circumstances, he
+deemed it necessary to commence operations against it in form; and the
+time occupied in the necessary preparations for a siege proved fatal to
+the enterprise. The French made extraordinary efforts to bring troops to
+the menaced point; and, amongst other reinforcements, thirteen
+battalions and nine squadrons were detached from Vendome's army in the
+Netherlands. No sooner did Marlborough hear of this detachment, than he
+concentrated his forces, and made a forward movement to bring Vendome to
+battle, to which the Dutch deputies had at length consented; but that
+general, after some skilful marches and countermarches, retired to an
+intrenched camp under the guns of Lille, of such strength as to bid
+defiance to every attack for the remainder of the campaign. Meanwhile
+the troops, converging towards Toulon, having formed a respectable array
+in his rear, Eugene was under the necessity of raising the siege, and he
+retired, as he had entered the country, by the Col di Tende, having
+first embarked his heavy artillery and stores on board the English
+fleet. But though the expedition thus failed in its ostensible object,
+it fully succeeded in its real one, which was to effect a diversion in
+the south of France, and relieve the pressure on the Spanish peninsula,
+by giving the armies of Louis employment in the defence of their own
+territory.
+
+Marlborough led his army into winter quarters in the end of October, and
+Vendome did the same; the weather being so thoroughly broken as to
+render it impossible to keep the field. He repaired first to Frankfort,
+where he met the Elector of Hanover, and then to the Hague, where he
+exerted himself to inspire a better feeling in the Dutch government, and
+to get Eugene appointed to the supreme command in Spain: a project which
+afforded the only feasible prospect of retrieving affairs in the
+Peninsula, and which, if adopted, might have changed the fate and
+ultimate issue of the war. Neither the Emperor nor the court of Madrid,
+however, would consent to this arrangement; the former, because he
+feared to lose that great general in Italy, the latter because they
+feared to gain him in Spain. Marlborough, meanwhile, embarked for
+England on the 7th November, where his presence had now become
+indispensably necessary to arrest the progress of court and
+parliamentary intrigues, which threatened to prove immediately fatal to
+his influence and ascendancy.
+
+The origin of these intrigues was to be found not merely in the asperity
+of party feeling which, at that time, owing to the recent Revolution,
+prevailed to a degree never before paralleled in English history, and
+the peculiar obloquy to which Marlborough was exposed, owing to the part
+he had taken in that transaction; but to another cause of a private
+nature, but which, in all courts, and especially under a female reign,
+is likely to produce important public results. During Marlborough's
+absence from court, owing to his commanding the armies in Flanders, his
+influence with the Queen had sensibly declined, and that of another
+materially increased. Queen Anne had become alienated from her former
+favourite, the Duchess of Marlborough, and, what is very remarkable, in
+consequence of the growing ascendancy of a person recommended by the
+duchess herself. Worn out with the incessant fatigue of attendance on
+the royal person, the duchess had recommended a poor relative of her
+own, named Abigail Hill, to relieve her of part of her laborious duties.
+This young lady, who possessed considerable talents, and a strong desire
+for intrigue and elevation, had been educated in High Church and Tory
+principles, and she had not been long about the royal person before she
+began to acquire an influence over the Queen's mind. Harley, whose
+ambition and spirit of intrigue were at least equal to her own, was not
+slow in perceiving the new source of influence thus opened up in the
+royal household, and a close alliance was soon established between them.
+These matters are not beneath the dignity of history; they are the
+secret springs on which its most important changes sometimes depend.
+Abigail Hill soon after bestowed her hand on Mr Masham, who had also
+been placed in the Queen's household by the duchess, and, under the name
+of MRS MASHAM, became the principal instrument in Marlborough's fall,
+and the main cause of the fruit of the glorious victories of the English
+general being lost by the treaty of Utrecht.
+
+Though the ascendancy of Mrs Masham, and the treacherous part she was
+playing to her benefactress, had long been evident to others, yet the
+Duchess of Marlborough long continued blind to it. Her marriage,
+however, opened the eyes of the duchess, and, soon after the promotion
+of Davies and Blackhall, both avowed Tories, not free from the
+imputation of Jacobitism, to the Episcopal bench, in opposition to the
+recommendation of Marlborough and Godolphin, gave convincing proof that
+their influence at court in the disposal even of the highest offices,
+had been supplanted by that of the new favourite. The consequences were
+highly prejudicial to Marlborough. The Whigs, who were not fully aware
+of this secret influence, and who had long distrusted him on account of
+his former connexion with James II., and envied him on account of his
+great services to the country, and lustre at court, now joined the
+Tories in bitter enmity against him. He was accused of protracting the
+war for his own private purposes; and the man who had refused the
+government of the Netherlands, and L60,000 a-year, lest it should breed
+jealousies in the alliance, was accused of checking the career of
+victory from sordid motives connected with the profits of the war. His
+brother Churchill was prosecuted by Halifax and the Whigs on the charge
+of neglect of duty; and the intercession of the duke, though made in
+humble terms, was not so much as even honoured with a reply. The
+consequences of this decline of court favour were soon apparent.
+Recruits and supplies were forwarded to the army with a very scanty
+hand--the military plans and proposals of the duke were either overruled
+or subjected to a rigid and often inimical examination--and that
+division of responsibility and weakening of power became apparent, which
+is so often in military, as well as political transactions, the
+forerunner of disaster.
+
+Matters were in this untoward state, when Marlborough, in the middle of
+November, returned from the Hague to London. The failure before Toulon,
+the disasters in Spain, the nullity of the campaign in Flanders, were
+made the subject of unbounded outcry in the country; and the most
+acrimonious debates took place in Parliament, in the course of which
+violent reproaches were thrown on Marlborough, and all his great
+services to his country seemed to be forgotten. Matters even went so
+far, that it was seriously proposed to draft fifteen thousand men from
+Flanders to reinforce the armies in Spain, although it might easily be
+foreseen that the only effect of this would be to drive the Dutch to a
+separate peace, and lose the whole of Brabant, wrested at such an
+expense of blood and treasure from the French arms. The Session of
+Parliament was one incessant scene of vehement contention; but at length
+the secret league of Harley with Mrs Masham and the Tories became so
+apparent, that all his colleagues refused to attend a cabinet council to
+which he was summoned, and he was obliged to retire. This decisive step
+restored confidence between Marlborough and the Whigs, and for a time
+re-established his influence in the government; but Mrs Masham's sway
+over the Queen was not so easily subverted, and, in the end, proved
+fatal both to his fortune and the career of glory he had opened to his
+country.
+
+Desirous of retaliating upon England the insult which the Allied armies
+had inflicted upon France by the invasion of Provence, Louis XIV. now
+made serious preparations for the invasion of Great Britain, with the
+avowed object of re-establishing the Chevalier of St George, the heir of
+James II., on the throne from which that unhappy monarch had been
+expelled. Under Marlborough's able direction, to whom, as
+commander-in-chief, the defensive measures were entrusted, every thing
+was soon put in a train to avert the threatened danger. Scotland was the
+scene where an outbreak was to be apprehended, and all the disposable
+forces of the empire, including ten battalions brought over from
+Flanders, were quickly sent to that country. The _habeas corpus_ act was
+suspended. Edinburgh Castle was strongly garrisoned, and the British
+squadron so skilfully disposed in the North Seas, that when the
+Chevalier with a French squadron put to sea, he was so closely watched,
+that after vainly attempting to land, both in the Firth of Forth and the
+neighbourhood of Inverness, he was obliged to return to Dunkirk. This
+auspicious event entirely restored Marlborough's credit with the nation,
+and dispelled every remnant of suspicion with which the Whigs regarded
+him in relation to the exiled family; and though his influence with the
+court was secretly undermined, his power, to outward appearance, was
+unbounded; and he resumed the command of the army in the beginning of
+April 1708, with authority as paramount as he had enjoyed on any former
+occasion.
+
+Every thing announced a more important campaign than the preceding had
+proved in the Low Countries. Encouraged by the little progress which the
+Allies had made in the former campaign, Louis XIV. had been induced to
+make the most vigorous efforts to accumulate a preponderating force, and
+re-establish his affairs in that quarter. Vendome's army had, by great
+exertion, been raised to a hundred thousand men, and at the same time
+secret communications were opened with a considerable portion of the
+inhabitants in some of the frontier fortresses of Brabant, in order to
+induce then on the first favourable opportunity to surrender them to the
+French arms. The unpopularity of the Dutch authorities in those towns,
+and the open pretensions which they put forth to wrest them from the
+Emperor, and deliver them over at a general peace to the hated rule of
+Protestant Holland, rendered those advances peculiarly acceptable.
+Vendome's instructions were to act on the offensive, though in a
+cautious manner; to push forward in order to take advantage of these
+favourable dispositions, and endeavour to regain the important ground
+which had been lost during the panic which followed the battle of
+Ramilies.
+
+On their side the Allies had not been idle; and preparations had been
+made for transferring the weight of the contest to the Low Countries.
+The war in Italy being in a manner terminated by the entire expulsion of
+the French from that peninsula, and their secret convention for a sort
+of suspension of active operations with the Emperor in that quarter,
+Prince Eugene had been brought to the theatre of real hostilities on the
+northern frontier of France. It was agreed that two great armies should
+be formed, one in Brabant under Marlborough, and the other on the
+Moselle under Eugene; that the Elector of Hanover should act on the
+defensive on the Rhine; that Eugene should join the English general, and
+that with their united force they should force the French general to a
+battle. This well conceived plan met with the usual resistance on the
+part of the Allied powers, which compelled Marlborough to repair in
+person to Hanover, to smooth over the objections of its Elector.
+Meanwhile the dissensions and difficulties of the cabinet in London
+increased to such a degree, that he had scarcely quitted England when he
+was urged by Godolphin, and the majority of his own party, to return, as
+the only means of saving them from shipwreck. Marlborough, however, with
+that patriotic spirit which ever distinguished him, and not less than
+his splendid abilities formed so honourable a feature in his character,
+refused to leave the seat of war, and left his political friends to
+shift for themselves as they best could. Having obtained a promise from
+Eugene that he would join him before the month expired he joined the
+army at Ghent on the 9th May 1708, and on the same day reviewed the
+British division stationed in that city.
+
+An event soon occurred which showed how wide-spread were the intrigues
+of the French in the Flemish towns, and how insecure was the foundation
+on which the authority of the Allies rested there. An accidental
+circumstance led to the discovery of a letter put into the post-office
+of Ghent, containing the whole particulars of a plan for admitting the
+French troops into the citadel of Antwerp. Vendome at the same time made
+a forward movement to take advantage of these attempts; but Marlborough
+was on his guard, and both frustrated the intended rising in Antwerp,
+and barred the way against the attempted advance of the French army.
+Disconcerted by the failure of this enterprise, Vendome moved to
+Soignies at the head of an hundred thousand men, where he halted at the
+distance of three leagues from the Allied armies. A great and decisive
+action was confidently expected in both armies; as, although Marlborough
+could not muster above eighty thousand combatants, it was well known he
+would not decline a battle, although he was not as yet sufficiently
+strong to assume the offensive. Vendome, however, declined attacking the
+Allies where they stood, and, filing to the right to Braine la Leude,
+close to the field of Waterloo, again halted in a position, threatening
+at once both Louvain and Brussels. Moving parallel to him, but still
+keeping on the defensive, Marlborough retired to Anderleet. No sooner
+had he arrived there, than intelligence was received of a farther
+movement to the right on the part of the French general, which indicated
+an intention to make Louvain the object of attack. Without losing an
+instant, Marlborough marched on that very night with the utmost
+expedition, amidst torrents of rain, to Parc, where he established
+himself in such strong ground, covering Louvain, that Vendome, finding
+himself anticipated in his movements, fell back to Braine-le-Leude
+without firing a shot.[17]
+
+Though Marlborough, however, had in this manner foiled the movement of
+the French general, he was in no condition to undertake offensive
+operations until the arrival of Eugene's army from the Moselle raised
+his force nearer to an equality with the preponderating masses of the
+enemy, headed by so able a general as Vendome. The usual delays,
+however, of the German powers, for long prevented this object being
+attained. For about a month Marlborough was retained in a state of
+forced inactivity from this cause, during which period he bitterly
+complained, "that the slowness of the German powers was such as to
+threaten the worst consequences." At length, however, the pressing
+representations of the English general, seconded by the whole weight of
+Prince Eugene, overcame the tardiness of the German Electors, and the
+army of the Moselle began its march towards Brabant. But the Prince was
+too far distant to bring up his troops to the theatre of active
+operations before decisive events had taken place; and fortunately for
+the glory of England, to Marlborough alone and to his army belongs the
+honour of one of the most decisive victories recorded in its annals.
+
+Encouraged by his superiority of numbers, and the assurances of support
+he received from the malecontents in the Flemish towns, Vendome, who was
+both an able and enterprising general, put in execution, in the
+beginning of July, a design which he had long meditated, for the purpose
+of expelling the Allies from Brabant. This was by a sudden irruption to
+make himself master of Ghent, with several of the citizens of which he
+had established a secret correspondence. This city commands the course
+of the Scheldt and the Lys, and lay in the very centre of Marlborough's
+water communications; and as the fortifications of Oudenarde were in a
+very dilapidated state, it was reasonable to suppose that its reduction
+would speedily follow. The capture of these fortresses would at once
+break up Marlborough's communications, and sever the connecting link
+between Flanders and Brabant, so as to compel the English army to fall
+back to Antwerp and the line of the Scheldt, and thus deprive them of
+the whole fruits of the victory of Ramilies. Such was the able and
+well-conceived design of the French general, which promised the most
+brilliant results; and against a general less wary and able than
+Marlborough, unquestionably would have obtained them.
+
+Vendome executed the first part of this design with vigour and success.
+On the evening of the 4th July he suddenly broke up from
+Braine-le-Leude, and marching rapidly all night, advanced towards Hall
+and Tubise, dispatching at the same time, parties towards such towns in
+that quarter as had maintained a correspondence with him. One of these
+parties, by the connivance of the watch, made itself master of Ghent. At
+the same time Bruges was surrendered to another party under the Count de
+la Motte; the small but important fort of Plassendael was carried by
+storm, and a detachment sent to recover Ghent found the gates shut by
+the inhabitants, who had now openly joined the enemy, and invested the
+Allied garrison in the citadel.
+
+Marlborough no sooner heard of this movement than he followed with his
+army; but he arrived in the neighbourhood of Tubise in time only to
+witness their passage of the Senne, near that place. Giving orders to
+his troops to prepare for battle, he put himself in motion at one next
+morning, intending to bring the enemy to an immediate action. The
+activity of Vendome, however, baffled his design. He made his men, weary
+as they were, march all night and cross the Dender at several points,
+breaking down the bridges between Alort and Oerdegun, and the Allies
+only arrived in time to make three hundred prisoners from the rearguard.
+Scarcely had they recovered from this disappointment, when intelligence
+arrived of the surprise of Ghent and Bruges; while, at the same time,
+the ferment in Brussels, owing to the near approach of the French to
+that capital, became so great, that there was every reason to apprehend
+a similar disaster, from the disaffection of some of its inhabitants.
+The most serious apprehensions also were entertained for Oudenarde, the
+garrison of which was feeble, and its works dilapidated. Marlborough,
+therefore, dispatched instant orders to Lord Chandos, who commanded at
+Ath, to collect all the detachments he could from the garrisons in the
+neighbourhood, and throw himself into that fortress, and with such
+diligence were these orders executed that Oudenarde was secured against
+a _coup-de-main_, before the French outposts appeared before it.
+Vendome, however, felt himself strong enough to undertake its siege in
+form. He drew his army round it; the investment was completed on the
+evening of the 9th, and a train of heavy artillery ordered from Tournay,
+to commence the siege,[18] while he himself with the covering army, took
+post in a strong camp at Lessines, on the river Dender.
+
+Such was the chagrin experienced by Marlborough at these untoward
+events, that he was thrown into a fever, the result of fatigue,
+watching, and anxiety. His physician earnestly counselled him to leave
+the camp, and retire to Brussels, as the only means of arresting his
+distemper; but nothing could induce him to leave his post at such a
+crisis. He continued in his tent accordingly, and the orders were issued
+by Marshal Overkirk. He was greatly relieved on the 7th, by the arrival
+of Prince Eugene, who, finding his troops could not come up in time, had
+left his cavalry at Maestricht, and hastened in person, though without
+any followers but his personal suite, to take part in the approaching
+conflict. Great was the joy of Marlborough on learning the arrival of so
+illustrious a general; not a feeling of jealousy crossed the breast of
+either of these great men. His first words to Eugene were--"I am not
+without hopes of congratulating your Highness on a great victory; for my
+troops will be animated by the presence of so distinguished a
+commander." Eugene warmly approved the resolution he had taken of
+instantly attacking the enemy: and a council of war having been
+summoned, their united opinion prevailed over the objections of the
+Dutch deputies, who were now seriously alarmed for their barrier, and it
+was resolved to give battle to the enemy in his position in front of
+OUDENARDE.[19]
+
+The Allies broke up at two in the morning of the 9th July, and advanced
+towards the French frontiers at Lessines in four great columns. So rapid
+and well ordered was the march, that before noon the heads of the
+columns reached Herfilingen, fourteen miles fron Asche, whence they had
+started. Bridges were rapidly thrown over the Dender, and it was crossed
+early on the following morning in presence of Eugene and Marlborough,
+whom the animation of the great events in progress, had, in a manner,
+raised from the bed of sickness.[20] Here the duke halted, and the
+troops encamped in their order of march with their right on the Dender
+and their front covered by a small stream which falls into that river.
+By this bold and rapid movement, Vendome's well-concerted plan was
+entirely disconcerted; Marlborough had thrown himself between the French
+and their own frontier; he had rendered himself master of their
+communications; and instead of seeking merely to cover his own
+fortresses, threatened to compel them to fall back, in order to regain
+their communications, and abandon the whole enterprise which had
+commenced with such prospects of success. Vendome was extremely
+disconcerted at this able movement, and he gave immediate orders to fall
+back upon Gavre, situated on the Scheldt below Oudenarde, where it was
+intended to cross that river.
+
+No sooner was this design made manifest, than Marlborough followed with
+all his forces, with the double design of raising the investment of
+Oudenarde, and if possible forcing the enemy to give battle, under the
+disadvantage of doing so in a retreat. Anxious to improve their
+advantage, the Allied generals pushed forward with the utmost
+expedition, hoping to come up with the enemy when his columns and
+baggage were close upon the Scheldt, or in the very act of crossing that
+river. Colonel Cadogan, with a strong advanced guard, was pushed forward
+by daybreak on the 11th towards the Scheldt which he reached by eleven,
+and immediately threw bridges over, across which the whole cavalry and
+twelve battalions of foot were immediately thrown. They advanced to the
+summit of the plateau on the left bank of the river, and formed in
+battle array, the infantry opposite Eynes, the cavalry extending on the
+left towards Schaerken. Advancing slowly on in this regular array down
+the course of the river on its left bank, Cadogan was not long of coming
+in sight of the French rearguard under Biron, with whom he had some
+sharp skirmishing. Meanwhile, Marlborough and Eugene were pressing the
+passage at the bridges with all imaginable activity; but the greater
+part of their army had not yet got across. The main body was still half
+a league from the Scheldt, and the huge clouds of dust which arose from
+the passage of the artillery and carriages in that direction, inspired
+Vendome with the hope that he might cut off the advanced guard which was
+over the Scheldt, before the bulk of the Allied forces could get across
+to their relief. With this view he halted his troops, and drew them up
+hastily in order of battle. This brought on the great and glorious
+action which followed, towards the due understanding of which, a
+description of the theatre of combat is indispensable.
+
+     "At the distance of a mile north of Oudenarde, is the village of
+     Eynes. Here the ground rises into a species of low, but spacious
+     amphitheatre. From thence it sweeps along a small plain, till it
+     nearly reaches the glacis of Oudenarde, where it terminates in the
+     village of Bevere. To the west the slope ascends to another broad
+     hill called the Bosercanter; and at the highest point of the
+     eminence stands a windmill, shaded by a lofty lime-tree, forming
+     conspicuous objects from the whole adjacent country. From thence
+     the ground gradually declines towards Mardlen; and the eye glancing
+     over the humid valley watered by the Norken, rests on another range
+     of uplands, which, gently sinking, at length terminates near Asper.
+     Within this space, two small streams, descending from the lower
+     part of the hill of Oycke, embrace a low tongue of land, the centre
+     of which rises to a gentle elevation. The borders of these rivulets
+     are crossed by frequent enclosures, surrounding the farm-yards of
+     Barwaen, Chobon, and Diepenbeck. Near the source of one of these
+     streams is a castellated mansion; at that of the other is the
+     hamlet of Rhetelhouk, embosomed in a wooded nook. These streams
+     unite at the hamlet of Scharken, and their united current flows in
+     a marshy bed to the Scheldt, which it reaches near Eynes. The
+     Norken, another river traversing the field, runs for a considerable
+     distance parallel to the Scheldt, until, passing by Asper, it
+     terminates in a stagnant canal, which joins the Scheldt below
+     Gavre. Its borders, like those of the other streams, are skirted
+     with coppice-wood thickets; behind are the enclosures surrounding
+     the little plain. Generally speaking, this part of Flanders is even
+     not merely of picturesque beauty and high cultivation, but great
+     military strength; and it is hard to say whether its numerous
+     streams, hanging banks, and umbrageous woods, add most to its
+     interest in the eye of a painter, or to its intricacy and defensive
+     character in warlike operations."[21]
+
+As fast as the Allies got across the Scheldt, Marlborough formed them
+along the high grounds stretching from Bevere to Mooreghem Mill, with
+their right resting on the Scheldt. Vendome's men stretched across the
+plain, from the hill of Asper on the left, to Warreghem on the right. A
+considerable body of cavalry and infantry lay in front of their position
+in Eynes, of which they had retained possession since they had repulsed
+Cadogan's horse. No sooner had the English general got a sufficient
+number of troops up, than he ordered that gallant officer to advance and
+retake that village. The infantry attacked in front, crossing the
+rivulet near Eynes; while the horse made a circuit, and passing higher,
+made their appearance in their rear, when the conflict was warmly going
+on in front. The consequence was, that the village was carried with
+great loss to the enemy, three entire battalions were cut off and made
+prisoners, and eight squadrons cut to pieces in striving to make their
+way across the steep and tangled banks of the Norken. This sharp blow
+convinced the French leaders that a general action was unavoidable; and
+though, from the vigour with which it had been struck, their remained
+little hope of overpowering the Allied advanced guard before the main
+body came up, yet they resolved, contrary to the opinion of Vendome, who
+had become seriously alarmed, to persist in the attack, and risk all on
+the issue of a general engagement.[22]
+
+It was four in the afternoon when the French commenced the action in
+good earnest. The Duke of Burgundy ordered General Grimaldi to lead
+Sistern's squadron across the Norken, apparently with the view of
+feeling his way preparatory to a general attack; but when he arrived on
+the margin of the stream, and saw the Prussian cavalry already formed on
+the other side, he fell back to the small plain near the Mill of
+Royeghorn. Vendome, meanwhile, directed his left to advance, deeming
+that the most favourable side to attack, but the Duke of Burgundy, who
+nominally had the supreme command, and who was jealous of Vendome's
+reputation, countermanded this order; alleging that an impassable morass
+separated the two armies in that quarter. Those contradictory orders
+produced indecision in the French lines, and Marlborough, divining its
+cause, instantly took advantage of it. Judging with reason that the real
+attack of the enemy would be made on his left by their right, in front
+of the castle of Bevere, he drew the twelve battalions of foot under
+Cadogan from Heurne and Eynes, which they occupied, and reinforced the
+left with them; while the bridges of the Norken were strongly occupied,
+and musketeers disposed in the woods on their sides. Marlborough
+himself, at the head of the Prussian horse, advanced by Heurne, and took
+post on the flank of the little plain of Diepenbeck, where it was
+evident the heat of the action would ensue. A reserve of twenty British
+battalions, with a few guns, took post near Schaerken, and proved of the
+most essential service in the struggle which ensued. Few pieces of
+artillery were brought up on either side; the rapidity of the movements
+on both having outstripped the slow pace at which those ponderous
+implements of destruction were then conveyed.[23]
+
+Hardly were these defensive arrangements completed, when the tempest was
+upon them. The whole French right wing, consisting of thirty battalions,
+embracing the French and Swiss guards, and the flower of their army,
+debouched from the woods and hedges near Groemvelde, and attacking four
+battalions stationed there, quickly compelled them to retreat. Advancing
+then in the open plain, they completely outflanked the Allied left, and
+made themselves masters of the hamlets of Barwaen and Banlaney. This
+success exposed the Allies to imminent danger; for in their rear was
+the Scheldt, flowing lazily in a deep and impassable current, through
+marshy meadows, crossed only by a few bridges, over which retreat would
+be impossible in presence of a victorious enemy; and the success against
+the Allied left exposed to be cut off from their only resource in such a
+case, the friendly ramparts of Oudenarde.
+
+Anxiously observing the rapid progress of the French on his left,
+Marlborough successively drew brigade after brigade from his right, and
+moved them to the quarter which was now severely pressed. The hostile
+lines fought with the most determined resolution. Every bridge, every
+ditch, every wood, every hamlet, every inclosure, was obstinately
+contested; and so incessant was the roll of musketry, that, seen from a
+distance, the horizon seemed an unbroken line of fire. Hitherto
+Marlborough and Eugene had remained together; but now, as matters had
+reached the crisis, they separated. The English general bestowed on
+Prince Eugene the command of his right, where the British battalions,
+whose valour he had often praised, were placed. He himself, with the
+Prussian horse on the banks of the Norken, kept the enemy's left in
+check; while with his own left he endeavoured to outflank the enemy, and
+retaliate upon then the manoeuvre which they had attempted against
+him. This bold movement was attended with severe loss, but it proved
+completely successful. Eugene was soon warmly engaged, and at first
+wellnigh overpowered by the superior numbers and vehement onset of the
+enemy. But Marlborough, whose eye was every where, no sooner observed
+this, than he dispatched Cadogan with his twelve English battalions to
+his support. Encouraged by this aid, Eugene moved forward General
+Natzmer, at the head of the Prussian heavy horse and cuirassiers, to
+charge the enemy's second lines near the Mill of Royeghem; while he
+himself renewed the attack on their infantry near Herlehorn. Both
+attacks proved successful. The enemy were expelled on the right from the
+enclosure of Avelchens, and the battle restored in that quarter; while,
+at the same time, their second line was drivers back into the enclosures
+of Royeghem. But this last success was not achieved without a very heavy
+loss; for the Prussian horse were received by so terrible a fire of
+musketry from the hedges near Royeghem, into which they had pushed the
+enemy's second line, that half of then were stretched on the plain, and
+the remainder recoiled in disorderly flight.
+
+Meanwhile, Marlborough himself was not less actively engaged on the
+Allied left. At the head of the Hanoverian and Dutch battalions, he
+there pressed forward against the hitherto victorious French right. The
+vigour inspired by his presence quickly altered the state of affairs in
+that quarter. Barlaney and Barwaen were soon regained, but not without
+the most desperate resistance; for not only did the enemy obstinately
+contest every field and enclosure, but, in their fury, set fire to such
+of the houses as could no longer be maintained. Despite all these
+obstacles, hovever, the English general fairly drove them back, at the
+musket's point, fron one enclosure to another, till he reached the
+hamlet of Diepenbeck, where the resistance proved so violent that he was
+compelled to pause. His vigilant eye, however, erelong observed, that
+the hill of Oycke, which flanked the enemy's extreme right, was
+unoccupied. Conceiving that their right might be turned by this
+eminence, he directed Overkirk, with the reserve cavalry, and twenty
+Dutch and Danish battalions, to occupy it. The veteran marshal executed
+this important, and, as it proved, decisive movement, with his wonted
+alacrity and spirit. The wooded dells round the castle of Bevere soon
+rung with musketry; the enemy, forced out of them, was driven over the
+shoulder of the Bosercanter; soon it was passed, and the mill of Oycke,
+and the plateau behind it, occupied by the Danish and Dutch battalions.
+Arrived on the summit, Overkirk made his men bring up their left
+shoulders, so as to wheel inwards, and form a vast semicircle round the
+right wing of the French, which, far advanced beyond the centre, was now
+thrown back, and grouped into the little plain of Diepenbeck. Observing
+the effect of this movement, Marlborough directed Overkirk to press
+forward his left still farther, so as to seize the passes of Mullem and
+mill of Royeghem, by which the communication between the enemy's right
+and centre was maintained. This order was executed with vigour and
+success by the Prince of Orange and General Oxenstiern. The progress of
+the extreme Allied left round the rear of the French right, was observed
+by the frequent flashes of their musketry on the heights above Mullem,
+down to which they descended, driving the enemy with loud cheers, which
+re-echoed over the whole field of battle, before them. The victory was
+now gained. Refluent from all quarters, enveloped on every side, the
+whole French right was hurled together, in wild confusion, into the
+plain of Diepenbeck; where seven regiments of horse, which made a noble
+effort to stem the flood of disaster, was all cut to pieces or taken.
+
+Seeing his right wing on the verge of destruction, Vendome made a
+gallant effort to rescue it. Dismounting from his horse, he led the
+infantry of his left near Mullem, to the aid of their devoted comrades.
+But the thick and frequent enclosures broke their array; the soldiers
+were dismayed by the loud shouts of victory from their right; and when
+they emerged from the enclosures; and approached the plain of
+Diepenbeck, the firm countenance of the British horse, drawn up on its
+edge, and the sturdy array of their infantry under Eugene, which
+advanced to meet them, rendered the effort abortive. Meanwhile darkness
+set in, but the battle still raged on all sides; and the frequent
+flashes of the musketry on the heights around, intermingled with the
+shouts of the victors, showed but too clearly how nearly the extremity
+of danger was approaching to the whole French army. So completely were
+they enveloped, that the advanced guard of the right under Eugene, and
+the left under the Prince of Orange, met on the heights in the French
+rear, and several volleys were exchanged between there, before the error
+was discovered, and, by great exertions of their respective commanders,
+the useless butchery was stopped. To prevent a repetition of such
+disasters orders were given to the whole troops to halt where they
+stood, and to this precaution many owed their safety as it was
+impossible in the darkness to distinguish friend from foe. But it
+enabled great part of the centre and left of the French to escape
+unobserved, which, had daylight continued for two hours longer, would
+have been all taken or destroyed. Their gallant right was left to its
+fate; while Eugene, by directing the drums of his regiments to beat the
+French _assemblee_, made great numbers of their left and centre
+prisoners. Some thousands of the right slipped unobserved to the
+westward near the castle of Bevere, and made their way in a confused
+body toward France, but the greater part of that wing were killed or
+taken. Vendome with charateristic presence of mind formed a rearguard of
+a few battalions and twenty-five squadrons, with which he covered the
+retreat of the centre and left; but the remainder of those parts of the
+army fell into total confusion, and fled headlong in wild disorder
+towards Ghent.[24]
+
+We have the authority of Marborough for the assertion, that "if he had
+had two hours more of daylight the French army would have been
+irretrievably routed, great part of it killed or taken, and the war
+terminated on that day."[25] As it was, the blow struck was prodigious,
+and entirely altered the character and issue of the campaign. The French
+lost six thousand men in killed and wounded, besides nine thousand
+prisoners and one hundred standards wrested from them in fair fight. The
+Allied were weakened by five thousand men for the French were superior
+in number and fought well, having been defeated solely by the superior
+generalship of the Allied commanders.[26]
+
+No sooner did daylight appear, than forty squadrons were detached
+towards Ghent in pursuit of the enemy; while Marlborough himself, with
+characteristic humanity, visited the field of battle, doing his utmost
+to assuage the sufferings, and provide for the cure of the numerous
+wounded--alike friend and foe--who encumbered its bloody expanse. Count
+Lottnow was sent with thirty battalions and fifty squadrons, to possess
+himself of the lines which the enemy had constructed between Ipres and
+Warneton, which that officer did with vigour and success, making five
+hundred prisoners. This was the more fortunate, as, at the moment they
+were taken, the Duke of Berwick, with the French army from the Moselle,
+was hastening up, and had exhorted the garrison to defend the lines to
+the last extremity. At the same time, the corresponding Allied army,
+commanded by Eugene, arrived at Brussels, so that both sides were
+largely reinforced. Berwick's corps, which consisted of thirty-four
+battalions and fifty-five squadrons, was so considerable, that it raised
+Vendome's army again to an hundred thousand men. With this imposing
+mass, that able general took post in a camp behind the canal of Bruges,
+and near Ghent, which he soon strongly fortified, and which commanded
+the navigation both of the Scheldt and the Lys. He rightly judged, that
+as long as he was there at the head of such a force, the Allies would
+not venture to advance into France; though it lay entirely open to their
+incursions, as Marlborough was between him and Paris.[27]
+
+Encouraged by this singular posture of the armies, Marlborough strongly
+urged upon the Allied council of war the propriety of relinquishing all
+lesser objects, passing the whole fortified towns on the frontier, and
+advancing straight towards the French capital.[28] This bold counsel,
+however--which, if acted on, would have been precisely what Wellington
+and Blucher did a century after, in advancing from the same country, and
+perhaps attended with similar success--was rejected. Eugene, and the
+remainder of the council, considered the design too hazardous, while
+Vendome with so great an army lay intrenched in their rear, threatening
+their communications. It was resolved, therefore, to commence the
+invasion of the territory of the Grande Monarque, by the siege of the
+great frontier fortress of LILLE, the strongest and most important place
+in French Flanders, and the possession of which would give the Allies a
+solid footing in the enemy's territory. This, however, was a most
+formidable undertaking; for not only was the place itself of great
+strength, and with a citadel within its walls still stronger, but it was
+garrisoned by Marshal Boufflers, one of the ablest officers in the
+French service, with fifteen thousand choice troops, and every requisite
+for a vigorous defence. On the other hand, Vendome, at the head of an
+hundred thousand men, lay in an impregnable camp between Ghent and
+Bruges, ready to interrupt or raise the siege; and his position there
+extremely hampered Marlborough in bringing forward the requisite
+equipage for so great an undertaking, as it interrupted the whole water
+navigation of the country, by which it could best be effected. The
+dragging it up by land, would require sixteen thousand horses.
+Nevertheless it was resolved to undertake the enterprise, sanguine hopes
+being entertained, that, rather than see so important a fortress fall,
+Vendome would leave his intrenched camp, and give the Allies an
+opportunity of bringing him again to battle on equal terms.[29]
+
+No sooner was the undertaking resolved on, than the most vigorous
+measures were adopted to carry it into execution. The obstacles which
+presented themselves, however, were great indeed, and proved even more
+formidable than had been at first anticipated. Every gun, every waggon,
+every round of ammunition, required to be transported from Holland; and
+even the nearest depot for ordinary and military stores for the Allies,
+was Brussels, situated twenty-five leagues off. Sixteen thousand horses
+were requisite to transport the train which brought these stores, partly
+from Maestricht, partly from Holland; and when in a line of march, it
+stretched over fifteen miles. Prince Eugene, with fifty-three battalions
+and ninety squadrons, covered the vast moving mass--Marlborough himself
+being ready, at a moment's notice, in his camp near Menin, to support
+him, if necessary. Between these two great men there existed then, as
+ever, the most entire cordiality.[30] Their measures were all taken in
+concord, and with such ability, that though Vendome lay on the flank of
+the line of march, which extended over above seventy miles, not a gun
+was taken, nor a carriage lost; and the whole reached the camp at
+Helchin in safety, on the 12th August, whither Marlborough had gone to
+meet it. So marvellous were the arrangements made for the safe conduct
+of this important convoy, and so entire their success, that they excited
+the admiration of the French, and in no slight degree augmented the
+alarm of their generals, who had hitherto treated the idea of Lille
+being besieged, with perfect derision. "Posterity," says the French
+annalist, Feuqueres, "will scarcely believe the fact, though it is an
+undoubted truth. Never was a great enterprise conducted with more skill
+and circumspection."[31]
+
+Prince Eugene was entrusted with the conduct of the siege, while
+Marlborough commanded the covering army. The former commenced the
+investment of the place on the 13th August, while Marlborough remained
+at Helchin, taking measures for the protection of the convoys, which
+were incessantly coming up from Brussels. At length the whole were
+passed, and arrived in safety in the camp before Lille, amounting to one
+hundred and twenty heavy guns, forty mortars, twenty howitzers, and four
+hundred ammunition waggons. Eugene's army for the siege consisted of
+fifty-three battalions and ninety squadrons, in all about forty thousand
+men. Marlborough's covering force was sixty-nine battalions and one
+hundred and forty squadrons, numbering nearly sixty thousand men. But
+the force of the French was still more considerable in the field.
+Vendome and Berwick united on the 30th, on the plain between Grammont
+and Lessines, and on the 2d September advanced towards Lille with one
+hundred and forty battalions and two hundred and fifty squadrons,
+mustering one hundred thousand combatants, besides twenty thousand left,
+under Count de la Motte, to cover Ghent and Bruges. But Marlborough had
+no fears for the result, and ardently longed for a general action, which
+he hoped would one way or other conclude the war. "If we have a second
+action," says he, "and God blesses our just cause, this, in all
+likelihood, will be our last campaign; for I think they would not
+venture a battle, but are resolved to submit to any condition, if the
+success be on our side; and if they get the better, they will think
+themselves masters; so that, if there should be an action, it is like to
+be the last this war. If God continues on our side, we have nothing to
+fear, our troops being good, though not so numerous as theirs. I dare
+say, before half the troops have fought, success will declare, I trust
+in God, on our side; and then I may have what I earnestly wish for
+quick."[32]
+
+No sooner was Marlborough informed of the junction of Vendome and
+Berwick, than, anticipating the direction they would follow, and the
+point at which they would endeavour to penetrate through, and raise the
+siege, he marched parallel to the enemy, and arrived on the 4th
+September at a position previously selected, having his right at
+Noyelle, and his left at Peronne. So correctly had he divined the
+designs of the able generals to whom he was opposed, that, within two
+hours after he had taken up his ground, the united French army appeared
+in his front. Notwithstanding their great superiority of forces, the
+enemy, however, did not venture to attack, and the two armies remained
+watching each other for the next fortnight, without any movement being
+attempted on either side.[33]
+
+Meanwhile, Eugene was actively prosecuting the siege of Lille. Trenches
+were opened on the 22d, and a heavy fire was opened from eighty pieces
+of cannon. On the following night, an outwork, called the Chapel of St
+Magdalene, was stormed and taken. The second parallel was soon
+completed, and some farther outworks carried; and the whole battering
+guns having at length been mounted, a breach was effected in the salient
+angle of one of the horn-works, and on the same night a lodgement was
+effected. A vigorous sortie, on the 10th September, hardly retarded the
+progress of the operations, and a sap was made under the covered way.
+Marlborough, who visited the besiegers' lines on the 18th, however,
+expressed some displeasure at the slow progress of the siege; and in
+consequence, on the 20th, another assault was hazarded. It was most
+obstinately resisted, but at length the assailants overcame all
+opposition and bursting in, carried a demi-bastion and several adjoining
+works, though with a loss of two thousand men. Great as this loss was,
+it was not so severe as that of one officer who fell; for Eugene
+himself, transported with ardour, had taken part in the assault, and was
+seriously wounded. This grievous casualty not only gave the utmost
+distress to Marlborough, but immensely augmented his labours; for it
+threw upon him at once the direction of the siege, and the command of
+the covering army. Every morning at break of day he was on horseback to
+observe Vendome's army; and if all was quiet in front, he rode to the
+lines and directed the siege in person till evening, when he again
+returned to the camp of the covering force. By thus in a manner doubling
+himself, this great man succeeded in preventing any serious
+inconvenience being experienced even from so great a catastrophe as
+Eugene's wound, and he infused such vigour into the operations of the
+siege, that, on the 23d September, great part of the tenaillons were
+broken, with a large portion of the covered way. At the same time the
+ammunition of the garrison began to fail so much in consequence of the
+constant fire they had kept up for above a month, that Marshal Boufflers
+sent intimation to Vendome, that unless a supply of that necessary
+article was speedily obtained, he should be obliged to surrender.[34]
+
+The French generals, aware how much the fortress was straitened, were
+meanwhile straining every nerve to raise the siege; but such was the
+terror inspired by Marlborough's presence, and the skill with which his
+defensive measures were taken, that they did not venture to hazard an
+attack on the covering army. But a well-conceived project of Vendome's,
+for throwing a supply of powder into the fortress, in part succeeded;
+although many of the horsemen who carried it were cut off, some
+succeeded in making their way in through the Allied lines, and
+considerably raised the spirits of the garrison, as well as prolonged
+their means of defence. But meanwhile the ammunition of the besiegers
+was falling short, as well as that of the besieged; and as the enemy
+were completely masters of the communication with Brussels, no resource
+remained but to get it up from Ostend. A convoy was formed there
+accordingly by General Erle, and set out on the 27th September,
+consisting of seven hundred waggons, escorted by General Webb with ten
+thousand men. Count de la Motte instantly set out with the troops under
+his command from the vicinity of Ghent, and came up with the convoy in
+the defile of Wynandals. A sharp action ensued, and the French advanced
+to the attack with their wonted impetuosity. But Webb's defensive
+arrangements were so skilful, and the fire kept up by his troops so
+vigorous, that the enemy were utterly routed; and the convoy forcing its
+way, reached Menin on the following day, and entered the Allied camp,
+amidst the acclamations of the whole army, on the 30th September.[35]
+
+The safe arrival of this convoy gave new energy to the operations of the
+siege; while the recovery of Eugene relieved Marlborough of half the
+labour under which, to use his own words, he had been for a fortnight
+"rather dead than alive." Three days after the whole tenaillon was
+carried, and the troops established directly opposite the breaches of
+the ramparts. Meanwhile Vendome opened the sluices, and inundated the
+country to the very borders of the dyke, so as to intercept
+Marlborough's communication with Ostend, and prevent the arrival of
+stores from it. But the English general defeated this device by bringing
+the stores up in flat-bottomed boats from Ostend to Leffinghen, and
+thence conveying them in carriages, mounted on very high wheels, to the
+camp. Cadogan greatly distinguished himself in this difficult service.
+Overkirk died at this critical juncture, to the great regret of
+Marlborough, who could then ill spare his ardent and patriotic spirit.
+Meanwhile, however, the siege continued to advance, and fifty-five heavy
+guns thundered from the counterscarp on the breaches, while thirty-six
+mortars swept all the works which commanded them. Finding himself unable
+to withstand the assault which was now hourly expected, Boufflers, on
+the 22d October, beat a parley, and capitulated; having sustained, with
+unparalleled resolution, a siege of sixty days, of which thirty were
+with open trenches. Penetrated with admiration at his gallant defence,
+Eugene granted the French general and his brave garrison the most
+honourable terms. The gates were surrendered on the 23d, and the
+remainder of the garrison, still five thousand strong, retired into the
+citadel,[36] where they prolonged their defence for six weeks more.
+
+Thus had Marlborough the glory, in one campaign, of defeating, in
+pitched battle, the best general and most powerful army possessed by
+France, and capturing its strongest frontier fortress, the masterpiece
+of Vauban, under the eyes of one hundred and twenty thousand assembled
+from all quarters for its relief. He put the keystone at the same time
+into this arch of glory, by again declining the magnificent offer of the
+government of the Low Countries, with its appointment of sixty thousand
+a-year for life, a second time pressed upon him by King Charles, from an
+apprehension that such an offer might give umbrage to the government of
+Holland, or excite jealousy in the Queen's government at home.[37]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[10] _Coxe_, III. 156. _Instructions pour le Sieur Recoux. Cardonell
+Papers_.
+
+[11] "Count Piper said, 'We made war on Poland only to subsist; our
+design in Saxony is only to terminate the war; but for the Muscovite he
+shall pay _les pots cassees_, and we will treat the Czar in a manner
+which posterity will hardly believe.' I secretly wished that already he
+was in the heart of Muscovy. After dinner he conveyed me to
+headquarters, and introduced me to his Majesty. He asked me whence I
+came, and where I had served. I replied, and mentioned my good fortune
+in having served three campaigns under your Highness. He questioned me
+much, particularly concerning your Highness and the English troops; and
+you may readily believe that I delineated my hero in the most lively and
+natural colours. Among other particulars, he asked me if your Highness
+yourself led the troops to the charge. I replied, that as all the troops
+were animated with the same ardour for fighting, that was not necessary;
+but that you were every where, and always in the hottest of the action,
+and gave your orders with that coolness which excites general
+admiration. I then related to him that you had been thrown from your
+horse, the death of your aide-de-camp Borafield, and many other things.
+He took great pleasure in this recital, and made me repeat the same
+thing twice. I also said that your Highness always spoke of his Majesty
+with esteem and admiration, and ardently desired to pay you his
+respects. He observed, 'That is not likely, but I should be delighted to
+see a general of whom I have heard so much.' They intend vigorously to
+attack the Muscovites, and expect to dethrone the Czar, compelling him
+to discharge all his foreign officers, and pay several millions as an
+indemnity. Should he refuse such conditions, the King is resolved to
+exterminate the Muscovites, and make their country a desert. God grant
+he may persist in this decision, rather than demand the restitution, as
+some assert, of the Protestant churches in Silesia! The Swedes in
+general are modest, but do not scruple to declare themselves invincible
+when the King is at their head."--_General Grumbkow to Marlborough, Jan.
+11 and_ 31, 1707. _Coxe_, III. 159-161.
+
+[12] _Coxe_, III. 167-169. The authenticity of this speech is placed
+beyond doubt by Lediard, who was then in Saxony, and gives it
+_verbatim_.
+
+[13] _Coxe_, III. 174-182.
+
+[14] "I cannot venture unless I am certain of success; for the
+inclinations in Holland are so strong for peace, that, if we had the
+least disadvantage, it would make them act very extravagant. I must own
+every country we have to do with, acts, in my opinion, so contrary to
+the general good, that it makes me quite weary of serving. The Emperor
+is in the wrong in almost every thing he does."--_Marlborough to
+Godolphin, June 27, 1707_; _Coxe_, III. 261.
+
+[15] _Despatches_, III. 142-207.--So much were the Dutch alienated from
+the common cause at this time, and set on acquisitions of their own,
+that they beheld with undisguised satisfaction the battle of Almanza,
+and disasters in Spain, as likely to render the Emperor more tractable
+in considering their proceedings in Flanders. "The States," says
+Marlborough, "received the news of this fatal stroke with less concern
+than I expected. This blow has made so little impression in the great
+towns in this country, that the _generality of the people have shown
+satisfaction at it rather then otherwise_, which I attribute mainly to
+the aversion to the present government."--_Marlborough to Godolphin,
+May_ 13, 1707. _Coxe_, III. 204.
+
+[16] _Coxe_, III. 196-205.
+
+[17] _Marlborough's Despatches_, IV. 49.
+
+[18] _Desp._ IV. 95-101. _Coxe_, IV. 128-131.
+
+[19] _Desp._ IV. 79-102. _Coxe_, IV. 130-132.
+
+[20] "The treachery of Ghent, continual marching, and some letters I
+have received from England, (from the Queen and the Duchess,) have so
+vexed me, that I was yesterday in so great a fever, that the doctor
+would have persuaded me to have gone to Brussels; but I thank God I am
+now better, and by the next post I hope to answer your letters. The
+States have used this country so ill, that I noways doubt but all the
+towns in it will play us the same trick as Ghent if they have the
+power."--_Marlborough to Godolphin, July 9, 1708._ _Coxe_, IV. 38.
+
+[21] The above description of the field of Oudenarde is mainly taken
+from _Coxe_, IV. 134-135; but the author, from personal inspection of
+the field, can attest its accuracy.
+
+[22] _Coxe_, IV. 140-143.
+
+[23] _Marlborough to Count Piper, 15th July 1708.--Desp._ IV. 115.
+_Coxe_, IV. 144-145.
+
+[24] _Coxe_, IV. 146-151. _Marlborouqh to Count Piper, 16th July
+1708.--Desp._ IV. 115. _Duke of Berwck's Mem._ II. 12.
+
+[25] _Marlborough a M. De Themgue, 15th July 1708.--Desp._ IV. 111.
+
+[26] _Desp._ IV. 111. Berwick himself states the prisoners at
+9000.--_Marlborough_, II. 12. _Marlborough to the Duchess_, _July_ 16,
+1708.--_Coxe_, IV. 157.
+
+[27] _Marlborough to Lord Godolphin, July 16 and 19, 1708._--_Coxe_, IV.
+158, 159.
+
+[28] Conscious of the panic which prevailed in France, and aware that
+some brilliant enterprise was requisite to prevent the Dutch from
+listening to separate overtures for peace, Marlborough proposed to meet
+at Lille, and penetrate by the northern frontier into the heart of
+France. An expedition fitted out in England was to co-operate on the
+coast. But the design of penetrating direct into France seemed too bold
+even to Eugene, and, of course, encouraged strong opposition from a
+government so timid and vacillating as that of Holland.--_Coxe_, IV.
+165.
+
+[29] _Marlborough to Godolphin, July 23, 1708._--_Coxe_, IV. 165.
+
+[30] "I need not tell you how much I desire the nation may be at last
+eased of a burdensome war, by an honourable peace; and no one can judge
+better than yourself of the sincerity of my wishes to enjoy a little
+retirement at a place you have contributed in a great measure to make so
+desirable. I thank you for your good wishes to myself on this occasion.
+_I dare say, Prince Eugene and I shall never differ about our
+laurels._"--_Marlborough to Mr Travers_, July 30, 1708.
+
+[31] _Coxe_, IV. 216-219.
+
+[32] _Marlborough to Godolphin, August 30, 1708._--_Coxe_, IV. 222.
+
+[33] _Desp_. IV. 241-260.
+
+[34] _Desp_. IV. 260-271. _Marlborough to Godolphin, September 24,
+1708._--_Coxe_, IV. 243.
+
+[35] _Marlborough to Godolphin, October 1, 1708._--_Coxe_, IV. 254.
+
+[36] _Desp._ IV. 271, _Marlborough to Godolphin, October 24,
+1708._--_Coxe_, IV. 263, 264.
+
+[37] "You will find me, my Prince, always ready to renew the patent for
+the government of the Low Countries, formerly sent to you, and to extend
+_it for your life_."--_King Charles to Marlborough, August 8, 1708._
+_Coxe_, IV. 245.
+
+
+
+
+RECOLLECTIONS OF A LOVER OF SOCIETY.
+
+
+Many years ago, I was struck with the remark--that if any one would
+write down, from week to week, the prominent events which occurred in
+his time, he must make a book which many would like to read.
+
+I took the hint; and here I give a portion of my Recollections. Not that
+I have ever kept a regular Journal, a matter which I now regret; but I
+have mingled a good deal in general life, I have seen nearly all the
+remarkable characters of Europe in the most stirring period of the
+world, and I have seen the beginning as well as the end of that most
+extraordinary of all national catastrophes, the French Revolution.
+
+At all times fond of associating with my fellow men, taking a strong
+interest in public opinions, having strong opinions of my own, and
+witnessing the most singular changes in almost every form of public, of
+personal, and of national impressions, I have had my full share of
+experience in the ways of men. And I now offer it to those who would
+refresh their remembrances of memorable men, things, and times.
+
+For the purpose of dealing in the fairest possible manner with my
+readers, I have looked into the various records of those events which
+might have escaped my memory. But I have not suffered them to bias
+opinions conceived long since, and conceived in the spirit of sincerity.
+Such is my design. It is given to the public with a perfect freedom from
+all party influence; with a total avoidance of all personality; with
+that calmness of retrospect which best becomes one who has no desire to
+share in the passions of the world; and with that wish of the French
+almanack-maker, which lies at the bottom of many a bulkier enterprise
+than mine--
+
+     "Je veux infiniment qu'on me lise."
+
+
+1800.
+
+_January 1._--The nineteenth century has commenced with one of those
+events, which deserve to mark epochs. On this day the UNION Of Ireland
+with England has begun. The church bells are ringing, at this moment, in
+all quarters. Flags are flying on the various government establishments.
+A new Imperial flag is hoisted at the Tower, and I now hear the guns
+saluting it with their roar.
+
+The last century was the era of Intrigue in politics, in war, in courts,
+in every thing. In England, the Revolution at the close of the Century
+before had extinguished the power of Despotism. Popery had perished
+under the heel of Protestantism. The Jacobite had fled from the face of
+the Williamite. The sword was seen no longer. But the strifes of party
+succeeded the struggles of Religion; and Parliament became the scene of
+those conflicts, which, in the century before, would have been fought in
+the field.
+
+I strongly doubt which age exhibits the national character in a more
+elevated point of view. The war of Charles I. was a period of proud
+feeling. It was the last burst of Chivalry. Men of rank and fortune
+periled both from a sense of honour, and some of the noblest who fell on
+the royal side, were as fully convinced of the royal errors as the
+orators of Parliament; but their sense of honour urged them to the
+sacrifice, and they freely shed their blood for a King, whose
+faithlessness and folly were to be redeemed only by his martyrdom.
+
+From the period of the Revolution, the character of the country had
+changed. Still bold, sensitive, and capable of sacrifice, it had grown
+more contemptuous of political romance, more clear-sighted as to public
+merits, and more fixed on substantial claims. The latter part of the
+seventeenth century had seen the worthless and treacherous Charles II.
+brought back by the nobles and gentry of the land in a national triumph.
+The middle of the eighteenth century saw the expulsion of the Pretender,
+a gallant and adventurous prince, whose only adherents were the Scottish
+chiefs, and whose most determined opponents were the whole multitude of
+England.
+
+France had lost her Chivalric spirit nearly a hundred years before. It
+had died with Francis I. The wars of the League were wars of Chicane;
+Artifice in arms, Subtlety in steel coats. The profligacy of the courts
+of Louis Quatorze, and his successors, dissolved at once the morals and
+the mind of France. That great country exhibited, to the eye of Europe,
+the aspect of the most extravagant license, and the most rapid decay.
+There lay the great voluptuary, under the general gaze; like one of its
+feudal lords dying of his own debauch--lying helpless from infirmity,
+surrounded with useless pomp, and in the sight of luxuries which he
+could taste no more--until death came, and he was swept away from his
+place among men.
+
+Germany was unknown even in Europe, but by the military struggles of
+Prussia and Austria. But the objects were trifling, and the result was
+more trifling still. Prussia gained Silesia, and Austria scarcely felt
+the loss, in an Empire extending from the Rhine to the Euxine. Then came
+peace, lassitude, and oblivion once more. But this languid century was
+to close with a tremendous explosion. A Belgian revolt was followed by a
+French Revolution. The wearisome continuance of the calm was broken up
+by a tornado, and when the surges subsided again, they exhibited many a
+wreck of thrones flung upon the shore.
+
+What is to be the next great change? What inscription shall be written
+by the historian on the sepulchre of the coming hundred years? Will they
+exhibit the recovery of the power of opinion by Kings, or the mastery of
+its power by the People? Will Europe be a theatre of State intrigue, as
+of old, or a scene of Republican violence? It would require a prophet to
+pronounce the reality.
+
+But I can already see symptoms of change; stern demands on the higher
+classes; sullen discontents in every country; an outcry for
+representative government throughout Europe. The example of France has
+not been lost upon the populace; the millions of Europe, who have seen
+the mob of the capital tear down the throne, will not forget the lesson.
+They may forget the purchase, or they may disregard the miseries of the
+purchase, in the pride of the possession. But we shall not have another
+French Revolution. We shall have no more deifications of the axe, no
+more baptisms in blood, no more display of that horrid and fearful
+ceremonial with which France, like the ancient idolators, offered her
+children to Moloch, and drowned the shrieks and groans of the dying in
+the clangour of trumpets and the acclamations of the multitude. Those
+scenes were too terrible to be renewed. The heart of man shrinks from
+liberty obtained by this dreadful violation of all its feelings. Like
+the legendary compacts with the Evil One, the fear of the Bond would
+embitter the whole intermediate indulgence; and even the populace would
+be startled at a supremacy, to be obtained only by means of such utter
+darkness, and followed by such awful retribution.
+
+
+31.--A piece of intelligence has arrived to-day, which has set all the
+World of London in commotion. It is no less than a direct challenge to
+our good King. Chivalry is not yet dead, as I supposed. After expulsion
+from the sunny plains of Italy and Spain, it has revived among the polar
+snows.
+
+The Russian Emperor has actually published this defiance to the world,
+in the St Petersburg _Gazette_. "It is said that his majesty the
+Emperor, perceiving that the European powers cannot come to an
+accommodation, and wishing to put an end to a war which has raged eleven
+years, has conceived the idea of appointing a place, to which he will
+invite the other potentates to engage together with himself in single
+combat, in Lists which shall be marked out. For which purpose they shall
+bring with them, to act as their esquires, umpires, and heralds, their
+most enlightened ministers and able generals, as Thugut, Pitt, and
+Bernstorff. He will bring, on his part, Counts Pahlen and Kutusoff."
+
+The first impression on the appearance of this singular document was
+surprise; the next, of course, was ridicule. The man must have utterly
+lost his senses. He has been for some months playing the most fantastic
+tricks in his capital: cutting off people's beards if they happen to
+displease his taste as a barber, cutting off coat-skirts if they offend
+his taste as a tailor, ordering the passers-by to pay him a kind of
+Oriental homage, and threatening to send every body to Siberia. Under
+such circumstances, the air of Russia is supposed to be unfavourable to
+royal longevity.
+
+
+The death of a singular character occurred a few days since, a
+_protegee_ of Hannah More, and, as might be expected from that lady's
+publishing habits, rendered sufficiently conspicuous by her pen. She was
+a total stranger, apparently a German by her pronunciation of English,
+yet carefully avoiding to speak any foreign language. She was first
+found taking refuge under a haystack, apparently in a state of insanity,
+and determined to die there. The peasantry, who occasionally brought her
+food, of course soon gave her a name, and, as she was evidently a
+gentlewoman, they called her the lady of the haystack. Hannah More, who
+had unquestionably some humanity, though she was rather too fond of its
+public exhibition, made her the heroine of a tale, and thus drew upon
+her considerable notice. She was prevailed on, though with some
+difficulty, to leave the haystack; and after a residence of a
+considerable period in the country, supported by subscriptions, she was
+removed, on its being ascertained that she was incurably insane, to an
+hospital in London, where, after continuing several years, she died.
+
+Her case excited great curiosity for the time, and every effort was made
+in Germany to ascertain her family, and give some notice of her
+condition. One of the most remarkable circumstances in her insanity, was
+her guarded silence on the subject of her relatives. Though she rambled
+into all conceivable topics, she could not be induced to give the
+slightest clue to their names. The moment any attempt at their discovery
+was made, all her feelings seemed to be startled; she shrank at once,
+looked distressed, and became silent. Hannah More's "Tale of Woe," was
+therefore a well-meant effort to attract attention to an unhappy
+creature, who was determined to give no knowledge of herself to the
+world.
+
+
+Lord Camelford's eccentricities are well known, but the world has given
+him credit for more than he deserves. He was unluckily a duellist almost
+by profession, and thus as dangerous to associate with as a mad bull.
+Yet I have heard traits of a generosity on his part as lavish as his
+manners are eccentric. He is, however, so well known to be alert in the
+use of the pistol, and to be of fiery temper, that some curious stories
+are told of the alarm inspired by his presence. One of those is now
+running the round of the Clubs.
+
+Some days ago, his lordship, walking into a coffee-house, and taking up
+the evening paper, began poring over its paragraphs. A coxcomb in an
+adjoining box, who had frequently called to the waiter for the paper,
+walked over to Lord Camelford's box, and, seeing him lay down the paper
+for the moment while he was sipping his coffee, took it up, and walked
+off with it without ceremony. His lordship bore the performance without
+exhibiting any sign of disturbance, but waited till he saw the intruder
+engaged in its paragraphs. He then quietly walked over, and with all the
+eyes of the Coffeehouse upon him, snuffed out the fellow's candles, and
+walked back to his own seat. The fellow, astonished and furious,
+demanded the name of the person who had served him in this contemptuous
+manner. His lordship threw him his card. He took it--read "Lord
+Camelford" aloud--seemed petrified for a moment, and in the next
+snatched up his hat, and made but one step to the door, followed by the
+laugh of the whole room.
+
+But his lordship has, like Hamlet, method in his madness. A report was
+lately spread that he had resolved, in case of Horne Tooke's rejection
+by the House as member for Old Sarum, that he would bring in his own
+black footman. This report he resented and denied, sending a letter to
+the newspapers, of which this is a fragment:--
+
+     "A report, as preposterous as unfounded, has lately found its way
+     abroad, stating that I meditated a gross and indecent insult upon
+     the dignity of the legislature, by using an influence which I am
+     supposed to possess, for the purpose of introducing an improper
+     character into the formation of its body.
+
+     "It becomes me to set the public right, by solemnly assuring them,
+     that no such idea was ever in contemplation for one moment; and
+     that I am at a loss to discover how the rumour originated; as, so
+     far from being capable of harbouring a wish to add to the
+     embarrassments of an unhappy and dejected people, it would be the
+     pride and glory of my heart, if I had the power to place such
+     persons in situations of responsibility, as, by their talents and
+     integrity, might preserve our Laws and Government and
+     Constitution."
+
+
+The eccentricities of the unfortunate Emperor of Russia have come to
+even a more rapid end than I had expected. A courier has just arrived
+with the startling intelligence, that the Czar was found dead in his
+chamber. The whole transaction is for the moment covered with extreme
+obscurity; but it is to be feared that what the Frenchman, with equal
+cleverness and wickedness, called the Russian trial by Jury, has been
+acted on in this instance, and that the Russian annals have been stained
+with another Imperial catastrophe.
+
+How natural and magnificent are Shakspeare's reflections on the
+anxieties that beset a crown--
+
+  "Oh, polished perturbation! golden care,
+  That keeps the ports of Slumber open wide
+  To many a watchful night: O Majesty!
+  When thou cost pinch thy bearer, thou dost sit
+  Like a rich armour worn in heat of day,
+  That scalds with safety."
+
+
+If Voltaire's definition be true, that swindling is the perfection of
+civilization, and that the more civilized, the more subtle we become,
+England may boast of a swindler that seems to have brought the art to
+its highest perfection. She is a female, not at all of the showy order,
+which beguiles so many understandings through the eyes--an insignificant
+and mean person, with an ordinary face, not at all exhibiting manners
+superior to her appearance, yet certainly of the most superb ambition in
+the art of tricking the World. Where she began her adventures first,
+remains to be developed by future biography. At length she appeared in
+the neighbourhood of Greenwich, and, representing herself there as an
+heiress, took a handsome house, and contrived, in the usual way, to make
+all the tradesmen in the neighbourhood contribute to its furnishing. By
+the simplicity and plausibility of her manner, she even obtained loans
+to the amount of some thousands, to set her household in motion, until
+her affairs were settled. An heiress must, of course, have a carriage;
+but this clever person was not content with doing things in an ordinary
+way, but set up three. While her house was being prepared,--which she
+ordered to be done by the first artists in their way, the walls being
+painted in fresco,--she drove down to Brighton in her travelling
+carriage, with four horses and two outriders. She gave an order for the
+furnishing of her house to the amount of L4000, and commissioned from
+Hatchett, the celebrated coachmaker, a first-rate chariot, with all
+kinds of expensive mountings and mouldings, to be ready for the Queen's
+birthday, when she was to be introduced at court by the wife of one of
+the Secretaries of State. In the interval, she drove daily through the
+West End, dropping her cards at the houses of persons of public name.
+She thus proceeded for a while triumphantly; but having, in the
+intoxication of her success, given the names of some persons of rank as
+her relatives, inquiry was made amongst them, and the relationship being
+of course disowned, suspicion was suddenly excited. Nothing could exceed
+her indignation on the subject; but the tradesmen, thus rendered only
+more suspicious, attempted to recover their furniture. The caption was
+at last made, and bailiffs were put into the house, with the
+expectation of apprehending the lady herself. However, she was adroit
+enough to discover her danger, and to her house she returned no more.
+Search was made after her, and it was said that she was discovered and
+thrown into jail. But she suddenly disappeared; and failing her own
+legacy, left to the unlucky people who had given her credit, a long
+legacy of general quarrel and mutual disappointment.
+
+
+When Fox was asked whether he had any faith in Political Economy, the
+doctrines of which had become fashionable in his day, from the writings
+of Turgot and the French school, he answered--"That it was too undefined
+for his comprehension; that its views were either too large, or too
+indistinct, to give his mind the feeling of certainty."
+
+He well might say this, when no two of the modern Political Economists
+agree, and when all the theories of the last age are laughed at by all
+the theorists of the present. In the middle of the seventeenth century
+Sir William Petty, one of the most acute, and also one of the most
+practical men of his time, pronounced that the population of England
+would take three hundred and sixty years to double--the fact being, that
+it has doubled within about a seventh part of that period. Of London he
+predicts, that its growth must finally stop in 1842; and that then its
+population must amount to half the population of England. Yet London is
+still growing, day by day, and yet its population scarcely exceeds a
+twentieth of the whole.
+
+
+The Emperor Paul, in the beginning of his reign, was a favourite with
+the soldiery, whom he indulged in all possible ways, giving them money,
+distributing promotion lavishly among them, and always pronouncing them
+the bulwark of his throne. But when his brain began to give way, his
+first experiments were with the soldiery, and he instantly became
+unpopular. The former dress of the Russian soldier was remarkable alike
+for its neatness and its convenience. He wore large pantaloons of red
+cloth, the ends of which were stuffed into his boots; the boots were of
+flexible leather, and an excellent and easy protection for the legs and
+feet. He wore a jacket of red and green, with a girdle round the waist;
+his head was protected by a light helmet. The whole dress thus
+consisting of two garments, light, showy, and looking the true dress for
+a soldier.
+
+Paul's evil genius, which induced him to change every thing, began with
+that most perilous of all things to tamper with--the army of a great
+military power. He ordered the Austrian costume to be adopted. Nothing
+could equal the general indignation. The hair must be powdered, curled,
+and pomatumed; a practice which the Russian, who washed his locks every
+day, naturally abhorred. The long tail made him the laugh of his
+countrymen. His boots, to which he had been accustomed from his infancy,
+and which form a distinctive part of the national costume, were to be
+taken off, and to be substituted by the tight German spatterdash and the
+shoe, the one pinching the leg, and the other perpetually falling off
+the foot, wherever the march happened to be in the wet. The consequence
+was, infinite discontent, and desertion to a great extent--a thing never
+heard of in the service before.
+
+It may be conceived with what disdain those frivolous, yet mischievous,
+innovations must have been regarded by those Russian officers who had
+known the reality of service. Suvaroff was then in Italy with his army.
+One morning a large packet was brought to him by an Imperial courier. To
+his astonishment, and the amusement of his staff, it was but models of
+tails and curls. Suvaroff gave vent to a sneer, a much more fatal thing
+than a sarcasm, in some Russian verses, amounting to--
+
+  "Hair-powder is not gunpowder;
+  Curls are not cannon;
+  Tails are not bayonets."
+
+The general's rough poetry was instantly popular; it spread through the
+army, it travelled back to Russia, it reached the Imperial ear; the
+Czar was stung by the burlesque, and Suvaroff was recalled.
+
+Few things are more remarkable, than the slowness with which common
+sense acts, even in matters which should evidently be wholly under its
+guidance. It might appear that the mere necessities of war would dictate
+the equipment of the soldier; namely, that it should be light, simple,
+and safe, as far as is possible. Yet the equipment of the European
+soldier, at the commencement of the French war, seemed to be intended
+only to give him trouble, to encumber him, and to expose his personal
+safety. The Austrian soldier's dress was an absolute toilette. The
+Prussian, even with all the intelligence of the Great Frederic to model
+it, was enough to perplex a French milliner, and to occupy the wearer
+half the day in putting it off and on. The English uniform was modelled
+on the Prussian, and our unlucky soldier was compelled to employ his
+hours in tying his queue, powdering his hair, buttoning on his
+spatterdashes, and polishing his musket-barrel. The heavy dragoons all
+wore cocked hats, of all coverings of the head the most unprotecting and
+the most inconvenient. The French light troops, too, all wore cocked
+hats. The very colour of the royal French uniform, as well as the
+Austrian, was white, of all colours the most unfitted for the rough work
+of the bivouack, and also injurious, as shewing the immediate stain of
+blood.
+
+It actually took twenty years to teach the general officers of the
+European armies, that men could fight without spatterdashes, that
+hair-powder was not heroism, and that long tails were only an imitation
+of the monkey; that muskets did not fire the worse for having brown
+barrels, and that the cuirass was a better defence for the body of the
+dragoon than a cloth waistcoat, however covered with embroidery. But why
+shall not improvement go a little farther? Why shall not the arm of the
+dragoon be a little protected as well as his body? A slight and simple
+covering of steel rings would effect the purpose, and it is an important
+one; for a slight wound in the arm disables him even more than a wound
+in the body, unless the latter wound should be mortal at once. But why,
+also, should not the foot soldier wear something equivalent to the
+cuirass? The weight might be made trifling, it might be carried at the
+back of his knapsack except when in actual engagement, and it would save
+thousands of lives; for the most dangerous wounds are in the front, and
+a wound in the abdomen is almost incurable. Five shillings' worth of
+tin-plate might protect the soldier for his lifetime; and there can be
+no doubt, that the consciousness of having such a protection would
+render troops more efficient. Of the bravery of the British there can be
+no doubt; but there can be just as little doubt, that every increase to
+the personal security of troops renders them calmer under fire, and of
+course fitter for obedience in the exigiencies of service. Besides, it
+is a public duty to the brave men in our service, not to expose them
+needlessly on any occasion; and they _are_ exposed needlessly, when they
+are sent into the field without every protection which our skill can
+give. But are we demanding armour for the foot soldiers? No; the armour
+of the old times of Chivalry would be too heavy, and impede the activity
+of those movements, of which so much of military success depends. The
+defensive arms of the Roman soldier were simply a small light helmet, a
+light cuirass, and greaves, or boots bound with brass. Yet with these
+his average march was twenty miles a-day, carrying sixty pounds weight
+of provisions and baggage on his back. The weight of his sword, his two
+lances, and his intrenching tools and palisade, was not reckoned.
+
+
+Buonaparte has made a Concordat with the Pope. The laughers have
+attacked him in the following epigram:--
+
+  Politique plus fin que General Eubile,
+  Bien plus ambitieux que Louis dit le Grand.
+  Pour etre Roi d'Egypte, il croit a l'Alkoran,
+  Pour etre Roi de France, il croit a l'Evangile.
+
+Our English epitaphs are often as disgraceful to the national taste, as
+their levity is unsuitable to the place of the dead. I am not aware
+whether this epitaph, by the most amiable of poets, Cowper, has been
+preserved among his works. It is on the tomb of a Mrs Hamilton:--
+
+  "Pause here and think--a monitory rhyme
+  Demands one moment of thy fleeting time.
+  Consult Life's silent clock. Thy glowing vein
+  Seems it to say--'Health here has long to reign?'--
+  Hast thou the vigour of thy youth? an eye
+  That beams delight: a heart untaught to sigh?
+  Yet fear. Youth ofttimes, healthful and at ease,
+  Anticipates a day it never sees.
+  And many a tomb, like Hamilton's, aloud
+  Exclaims--Prepare thee for an early shroud!"
+
+In the course of this year died three remarkable men, Lavater, Gilbert
+Wakefield, and Heberden, the famous physician. Perhaps no man of his day
+excited more general attention throughout Europe than John Gaspar
+Lavater; and this is the more remarkable, when we recollect that he was
+but a simple Swiss pastor at Zurich--minister of the church of St Peter.
+When about thirty years' old, his mind was first turned to the study of
+Physiognomy. He shortly after published some parts of a work on the
+subject, in which he broached a new theory; viz. that the countenance
+gave representative evidences of the powers and comparative vigour of
+the understanding. The subject of Physiognomy had been already treated
+of by the German writers; but, as Voltaire observes, the business of
+German philosophy is to make philosophy inaccessible; and their
+treatises had sunk into oblivion. Yet the science itself, if science it
+is to be called, is so natural, so universally, however involuntarily,
+practised, and frequently so useful in its practice, that its revival
+became instantly popular:--a large part of its popularity, however,
+being due to the novelty of Lavater's system, the animation of his
+language, and that enthusiastic confidence in his discovery, which is
+always amongst the most powerful means of convincing the majority of
+mankind. Something also is due to the happy idea of illustrating his
+conceptions by a great number of portraits, which added amusement to the
+general interest of the volumes. Passion possesses great influence in
+the world, and Physiognomy became the fashion. His books spread through
+every part of the Continent, and nothing can be more striking than the
+ardour with which they were received. If Switzerland is proud of his
+popularity, the mysticism of Germany was delighted with his mysticism;
+and the literary coteries of France, at whose head were all the ladies
+of the court, were his most vehement disciples. Nothing was read, for a
+considerable period, but the pages of Lavater. It has been said, that
+scarcely a domestic would be hired without a physiognomical examination,
+and reference to the pages of Lavater.
+
+His personal conduct sustained his public popularity; his gentle
+manners, his general benevolence, and his eloquence in the pulpit,
+endeared him to the people. He was the most popular preacher in Zurich,
+less from his abilities, than on the softness of his voice, and the
+tenderness of his manner.
+
+The objections occasionally started to his theories only increased his
+hold upon the national affections. For the period he was the
+physiognomical apostle of Switzerland. Some of his admirers went so far,
+as to lay his quarto on the table beside the Scriptures, and regard it
+as a species of Natural Revelation.
+
+Even when the novelty lost its charm, the locality preserved his
+reputation. Switzerland, in those days, was the peculiar resort of all
+the leading personages of Europe; all travellers of distinction visited
+the country, and generally made some stay in its cities; and all visited
+Lavater. What has become of his Album, I have not heard; but its
+autographs must have made it invaluable to a collector of the signatures
+of eminent names.
+
+But, whether tempted by vanity, or betrayed by original feebleness of
+intellect, the harmless physiognomist at length suffered himself to
+announce doctrines equally hazardous to the Religion, and the Policy, of
+the Canton. The habits of the times were latitudinarian in religion, and
+revolutionary in politics. Some unlucky opinions, uttered in the folly
+of the hour, brought Lavater under the charge of a leaning to Rome in
+the one, and to France in the other; he bore up for a while against
+both. But the invasion of Switzerland by the French armies, suddenly
+made him a vigorous denouncer of Republican ambition, and he was soon to
+be its victim. In the storming of Zurich by Moreau, he was severely
+wounded in the streets; and though he was rescued, and his wounds were
+healed, he never recovered the injury. He languished, though in full
+possession of his intellectual powers, until he died.
+
+What his theology was, can scarcely be defined; but if he had not
+adopted Physiognomy as the study of his life, his temperament might have
+excited him to try the effect of a new Religion. He was said to have
+believed in the continuance of the power of working miracles, and to
+have equally believed in the modern power of exorcists. Fortunately his
+talent was turned to a harmless pursuit; and he amused, without
+bewildering, the minds of men.
+
+The grand principle of his physiognomical system is, that human
+character is to be looked for, not as is usually supposed, in the
+movable features and lines of the face, but in its solid structure. And
+he also imagined that the degree of intellectual acuteness is to be
+ascertained by the same indications. But his theory in the former
+instance is but feebly supported by fact; for it is by the movements of
+the features that the passions are most distinctly displayed: and in the
+latter, his theory is constantly contradicted by facts, for many of the
+most powerful minds that the world has ever seen have been masked under
+heavy countenances.
+
+Perhaps the true limit of the Science is to be discovered by the
+knowledge of its use. Every man is more or less a physiognomist. It is
+of obvious importance for us to have some knowledge of the passions and
+propensities of our fellow men; for these constitute the instruments of
+human association, and form the dangers or advantages of human
+intercourse. Thus, a countenance of ill temper or of habitual guile, of
+daring violence or of brutish profligacy, warns the spectator at once.
+But the knowledge of intellectual capacity is comparatively unimportant
+to us as either a guide or a protection, and it is therefore not given,
+but left to be ascertained by its practical operation.
+
+Phrenology has since taken up the challenge which Physiognomy once gave
+to mankind:--equally ingenious and equally fantastic, equally offering a
+semblance of truth, and equally incapable of leading us beyond the
+simple observation which strikes the eye. A well-formed head will
+probably contain a well-formed brain; and a well-formed brain will
+probably be the fittest for the operations of the intellect. But beyond
+this, Phrenology has not gone, and probably will never go. The attempts
+to define the faculties by their position in the structure of the bone
+or the brain, have been so perpetually contradicted by fact; its
+prognostics of capacity have been so perpetually defeated; and its
+mistakes of character have been so constantly thrown into burlesque by
+the precipitancy and presumption of its advocates--that common sense has
+abandoned it altogether; it has by common consent been abandoned to
+enthusiasts; and to assert its right to the name of a Science, would now
+hazard the title of its advocate to rationality.
+
+
+The life of Gilbert Wakefield is one among the many instances of
+vigorous learning and strong intellect, made a source of misery to their
+possessor by a want of common prudence. His whole life might be
+characterized in three words--courage, caprice, and misfortune. After
+having attained a Cambridge fellowship, acquired distinction in
+classical criticism, and entered into the Church, he suddenly began to
+entertain notions hostile to the liturgy, and became classical tutor of
+the dissenting academy of Warrington. For ten years he laboured in this
+obscure vocation, or with private pupils, now chiefly turning his
+classical studies to the illustration of the New Testament. At the end
+of this period, he became classical tutor of the dissenting College in
+Hackney. But even Dissent could not tolerate his opinions; for a volume
+which he published, tending to lower the value of public worship, gave
+offence, and speedily dissolved the connexion. His classical knowledge
+was now brought into more active use, and he published Annotations on
+the Greek tragedies, and editions of some of the Roman poets.
+Unfortunately, the popular follies on the subject of the French
+Revolution tempted him to try his pen as a Pamphleteer; and a letter
+written in reply to the Bishop of Llandaff, rendered him liable to a
+prosecution: he was found guilty, and sentenced to an imprisonment of
+two years in Dorchester jail. This imprisonment was unfortunately fatal;
+for whether from his confinement, or the vexation of mind which must be
+the natural consequence, his liberation found him exhausted in strength,
+though still the same bold and indefatigable being which he had been
+through the whole course of his wayward life. Still he had many friends,
+and between the spirit of party, and the more honourable spirit of
+personal regard, the large subscription of L5000 was raised for his
+family. But his career was now rapidly drawing to a close. He had been
+but a few months relieved from his prison, when his constitution sank
+under an attack of typhus, and he died in his forty-sixth year, at an
+age which in other men is scarcely more than the commencement of their
+maturity--is actually the most vigorous period of all their powers; and
+in an undecayed frame gives the securest promise of longevity. With all
+his eccentricities, and he had many, he had the reputation of being an
+amiable man.
+
+
+Heberden was at the head of English Medicine in his day. He was a man of
+vigorous understanding and accomplished knowledge. He began life as a
+scholar, entering Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship. Adopting
+physic as his profession, he continued in Cambridge for ten years; until
+the usual ambition of country practitioners to be known in the
+metropolis, urged him to try his fortunes in London.
+
+The example of this able, and ultimately successful man, is not without
+its value, as an encouragement to perseverance under the most
+discouraging obstacles, when they happen to come in the way of
+individuals of sound scholarship and substantial strength of mind.
+Heberden lingered in London without success for some years; and at
+length, conceiving that his ill-fortune was beyond remedy, had formed
+his resolution to return to the country.
+
+At this period some lucky chance changed his purpose. He became known;
+rapidly rose into practice, and assumed the rank due to his ability.
+Similar circumstances had occurred in the career of the celebrated
+Edmund Burke, who was at two different periods on the point of leaving
+England for America, in despair of distinction at home. The late Lord
+Eldon had even given up his chambers in London, and announced his
+intention of commencing as a country practitioner of the law; when, at
+the suggestion of a legal friend, he made the experiment of "trying
+another term." Business suddenly flowed in upon him, and the
+disheartened barrister was soon floated on to the highest dignities of
+his profession. Even the illustrious Wellington himself is said, at one
+time, to have entertained serious thoughts of directing himself to a
+civil career, and to have been prevented only by the difficulty of
+finding an immediate employment. The delay gave room for the fortunate
+change in his prospects, which soon made him the first officer in
+Europe.
+
+Heberden wrote a great variety of Tracts on his own science; suffered no
+improvement in medicine, or public topic connected with general health,
+to escape him; cultivated his original scholarship to the last; enjoyed
+the friendship of the scientific world throughout his career; and
+enjoyed life itself to an unusual duration, dying in his ninety-first
+year.
+
+
+The anxieties of Europe are, for a while, at least, at an end. The
+preliminaries of peace with France were signed on October the 1st, and
+yesterday the 9th, Lauriston, first aide-de-camp to Bonaparte, arrived
+in town. The populace were all civility to him so were the ministers.
+The French ambassador, Otto, immediately took him to Downing Street,
+where he was complimented by Lord Hawkesbury. Lauriston is a general in
+the Republican service, with a handsome figure, which, covered with
+lace, and the showy decorations of his rank, quite enchanted the
+multitude of gazers.
+
+At the peace of 1782, the pleasantry of George Selwyn, on the arrival of
+the French ambassador, a remarkably little man, was, "That France had
+sent them the preliminaries of peace, by the preliminaries of an
+ambassador." Whatever may be the fate of the present preliminaries, the
+jest will not apply to the present envoy, who looks the soldier, and
+would evidently make a dashing hussar. His progress through the streets
+was, from the first, followed by acclamation. But at length it became a
+kind of triumph. The zeal of the rabble, (probably under good guidance,
+for the French _employes_ comprehend those little arrangements
+perfectly,) determined on drawing the carriage. The harness was taken
+off, the horses enjoyed a sinecure, the coachman sat in uneasy idleness
+on his box, and the crowd tugged away in their best style. The
+procession slowly moved through the principal streets of the West End,
+till it reached the Foreign Office. After a pause there, for the
+delivery of his credentials, Lauriston went to the Admiralty, where St
+Vincent, the first lord, (albeit no lover of Frenchmen,) received the
+stranger with a good-humoured shake of the hand, and, on parting with
+him, made a little speech to the mob, recommending it to them "to take
+care and not overset the carriage."
+
+In the evening London was illuminated, and looked as brilliant as lights
+and transparencies could make it. An odd incident during the day,
+however, showed of what tetchy materials a great populace is made. Otto,
+the French resident, in preparing his house for the illumination, had
+hung in its front a characteristic motto, in coloured lamps, consisting
+of the three words--"France, Concord, England." A party of sailors, who
+had rambled through the streets to see the preparations for the night,
+could not bring their tongues to relish this juxtaposition; which they
+read as if it were, "France _conquered_ England." The mob gathered, and
+were of the same opinion. Jack began to talk loud, and to speak of the
+motto as a national insult. Fortunately, however, before the matter
+could proceed to breaking windows, or perhaps worse, some of the envoy's
+servants informed their master of the equivocal nature of his motto. The
+obnoxious word was changed accordingly, and the illumination in the
+evening (which was most splendid,) displayed the
+motto--"France--Peace--England."
+
+
+The North, too, has not been without its festivities. Alexander of
+Russia has been crowned with all the pomp of a successor of Catherine,
+and the Lord of an Empire five thousand miles long, and touching almost
+the Tropics, and almost the Pole. Moscow, of course, was the scene. All
+that barbaric pomp and European luxury could combine, was to be seen in
+the displays of the double coronation of the Czar and Czarina.
+Alexander, disdaining the royal habit of being drawn in a carriage,
+however gilded; or remembering that he was the monarch of a nation of
+horsemen, King of the Tartar world, moved in the midst of his great
+lords and cavalry, mounted on a fine English charger, and was received
+every where with boundless acclamations.
+
+The memory of kings is seldom long-lived in despotic governments. But
+Paul's is already extinguished, or survives only in the rejoicing of the
+people to have got rid of him. His nature was not ungenerous, but his
+caprice had become so intolerable, that his longer life would probably
+have seen some desperate outbreak in the Empire.
+
+The Czar is handsome, according to Russian ideas of beauty,--tall, and
+well-proportioned. The people are delighted to find themselves under his
+authority, and the peculiar affability of his manner to the English at
+Moscow, is regarded as a pledge of the reconciliation of Russia to the
+system of our politics and our trade.
+
+Russia, more than any other monarchy, requires a powerful, direct, and
+vigilant administration. The enormous extent of her territory exposes
+her to perpetual abuses in her provincial governments. The barbarism of
+a vast portion of her population, demands the whole capacity of an
+enlightened Sovereign, to raise it in the rank of human nature.
+
+To this hour the question is doubtful, whether Moscow ought not to have
+continued the seat of government. It is true that then Russia would
+probably have had no Baltic fleet. But ought she ever to have had a
+Baltic fleet? Ought she to have attempted a maritime superiority, with
+sea locked up in ice for six months of the year; a territory meant for a
+wilderness, and incapable of becoming anything better, in which the
+Russian sovereigns have condemned themselves to the life of one of their
+own bears, cold, wild, and comfortless? All the stoves on earth cannot
+make a St Petersburg winter endurable by any thing but a fish or a
+marmozet; while Moscow offered a glorious climate, unlimited space for a
+capital city, a fertile country, a fine landscape, a central position
+for the head of an empire, with Europe in its front, and Asia at its
+back.
+
+The choice of St Petersburg has probably cramped the growth of Russian
+power. Even Poland has only given her a desert, a kingdom scantily
+cultivated, scantily peopled, discontented serfdom and a broken
+frontier. Yet all may be for the best. Moscow, as the head of the
+Empire, might have made her too powerful, and Europe might have seen a
+Russian Gengis Khan.
+
+
+The Town is ringing with an extraordinary feat of pedestrianism; the
+first exploit of a young Scotchman, Barclay of Ury. He had betted L5000
+that he would walk ninety miles in twenty-one and a half hours, and has
+won, leaving an hour and seventeen minutes to spare.
+
+Feats of this order have a value, as showing the powers of the human
+frame. They would otherwise be merely vulgar gambling. But if it is of
+importance to know the extent of the mental powers, those of the body
+also have their uses; and an effeminate generation would only have to
+prepare themselves by the exercises of this young gentleman, to be able
+to dispense with post-chaises and the gout. The walker is but twenty-two
+years old; and he has finished his exploit without any injury to his
+frame, and, it may be presumed, with a considerable advantage to his
+finances. All the "Sporting world," as they are named, were on the
+ground, which was a measured mile, on the road between York and Hull;
+lamps were erected to light the principal performer during the night. A
+cottage at the road-side received him for refreshment, and change of
+dress, at intervals. A militia regiment, which happened to be on its
+march from Hull, halted and filed on either side of the road, with the
+gallantry of sportsmen, to give him free way; and the general interest
+taken in this singular performance was surprising. The only drawback was
+the evident activity of his frame, and his power of endurance; for after
+the first thirty miles the betting began to be wholly in his favour, and
+the spirit of speculation shrunk from that period, and long before the
+close no bets would be taken. From daylight, multitudes thronged to the
+course. All the carriages, of which such numbers pass along this
+communication between the two great northern towns, went to the side of
+the road; even the mails gave way. The affair seemed national, and if
+the gallant pedestrian had failed, it might have been followed by a
+general mourning in the Ridings.
+
+
+One of the great Histrionic Dynasty, Stephen Kemble, has lately amused
+the Town by his performance of Falstaff. He exhibited the humours of the
+jovial knight with skill enough to make the audiences laugh. But he was
+perhaps the first actor who ever played the _fat_ knight to the life.
+His remarkable corpulence qualified him to play the character without
+stuffing. The good-humour of his visage was fully equalled by the
+protuberance of his stomach; and if the "totus in se teres atque
+rotundus" of Horace, is the poet's definition of a good man, the actor
+rose to the summit of human virtue. The best prologue, since the days of
+Garrick, ushered in this singular performance.
+
+  "A Falstaff here to-night, by nature made,
+  Lends to your favourite bard his pond'rous aid;
+  No man in buckram he, no stuffing gear!
+  No feather bed, nor e'en a pillow here!
+  But all good honest flesh, and blood, and bone,
+  And weighing, more or less--some _thirty_ stone.
+  Upon the northern coast, by chance, we caught him:
+  And hither, in a broad-wheel'd waggon, brought him;
+  For in a chaise the varlet ne'er could enter,
+  And no mail-coach on such a fare would venture.
+  Blest with unwieldiness, at least his size
+  Will favour find in every critic's eyes;
+  And should his humour, and his mimic art,
+  Bear due proportion to his outer part,
+  As once 'twas said of Macklin in the Jew,
+  'This is the very Falstaff Shakspeare drew.'
+  To you, with diffidence, he bids me say,
+  Should you approve, you may command his stay,
+  To lie and swagger here another day.
+  If not, to better men he'll leave his sack,
+  And go as ballast, in a collier, back."
+
+
+1802.
+
+This French peace will not last. The parties to this unnatural wedlock
+are beginning to grumble already; and this, too, when the bans are still
+in every body's ears. The French, however, have begun the quarrel, by
+sending out a huge fleet, with 30,000 men on board, to St Domingo. This
+our minister regards as a daring exploit, which may finish by turning on
+Jamaica. The negroes are every where in exultation; for they cannot be
+made to believe that France intends any thing but a general
+emancipation; and that her expedition, however it be apparently against
+Touissaint, is sent for a general overthrow of the whites.
+
+Long discussions have taken place between the two governments, all
+ending in the usual way. France protesting her honour, and England
+proclaiming her alarms; both amounting to so much paper wasted. But our
+West India squadron has been reinforced; and the First Consul has found
+employment for a daring soldiery, who cannot live in quiet; found
+offices for some hundreds of officials, the most petitioning and
+perplexing race of mankind; and found a topic for the Coffeehouses,
+which he naturally thinks much better employed in talking about St
+Domingo, than in criticising his proceedings at home.
+
+Another source of grumbling between these two ill-assorted parties. At
+the very Marriage feast an apple of discord has been thrown in, and that
+apple is Switzerland. France will suffer but one republic, and that must
+be the World. The presumption of a little pigeon-house of Republics
+among the Alps insults her feelings; and all must run under the wing of
+the great Republican Eagle, or be grasped by her talons. An army has
+been ordered to march to Berne. The Swiss will probably resist, but they
+will certainly be beaten. Republics are sometimes powerful in attack;
+they are always feeble in defence. They are at best but a mob; and,
+while the mob can rush on, they may trample down opposition. But a mob,
+forced to the defensive, thinks of nothing but running away. The
+strength of a monarchy alone can bind men together for an effectual
+resistance. Switzerland will get the fraternal embrace, and be as much
+fettered as St Domingo.
+
+
+Who are to be the heirs of General Claude Martin? The man never knew
+that he had a grandfather, and probably was as much in doubt about his
+heirs. What he was himself, nobody seems to know. But this man of
+obscurity has died worth half a million sterling! So much for India and
+her adventurers.
+
+When a boy, he entered into the French service. By some chance or other
+he found himself in India; there offered himself to the Nabob of
+Lucknow, disciplined his troops, rose to the rank of commandant of the
+Rajah's troops, or some similar position, and amassed the half million.
+He was a splendid distributor, however, and has given away by his will
+six hundred thousand rupees--a sum large enough to buy any thing in
+France but the First Consul.
+
+
+Francis, Duke of Bedford, has just died. The reports vary as to the
+cause. The general opinion is, that in playing rackets, or in some other
+rough exercise, he overstrained himself, and produced a return of a
+disease to which he had been for some years liable. The details of his
+death are too painful to be entered into. The first surgical assistance
+was brought down to Woburn. An operation was performed, which for some
+days gave hope, but it was too late. Mortification ensued, and he died,
+to the great regret of a large circle of personal friends; to the great
+loss of his party, which was Whig in the highest degree; and to the
+general sorrow of the country. He was a handsome man with a showy
+figure, and the manners, and, what was better, the spirit of a nobleman.
+He was magnificent in his household, and not less magnificent in his
+sense of duty as a landlord and country gentleman. He first established
+those great Agricultural Meetings by which the breed of British cattle
+was so greatly improved; Agriculture took the shape of a science, and
+the Agricultural interest, the true strength of a country, took its
+place among the pillars of the Empire.
+
+By a sort of fashion, the leading country gentlemen always began public
+life as Whigs. And although the Bedford family had gone through every
+form of politics, from the days of their founder, Russell, under Henry
+the VIII., and especially in the person of the Duke of Bedford's
+unpopular, but able, grandfather, the Duke espoused the party of Fox
+with the devotion of an enthusiast.
+
+He was thus brought into some unfortunate collisions with the bolder
+spirits and more practised talents of the Treasury Bench; and though,
+from his position in the House of Lords, secure from direct attack by
+the great leaders of Government, he was struck by many a shaft which he
+had neither the power to repel nor to return.
+
+An unlucky piece of hardihood, in attacking the royal grant of a pension
+of three thousand a year to the greatest writer, philosopher, and
+politician of the age, Edmund Burke, provoked a rejoinder, which must
+have put any man to the torture. Burke's pamphlet in defence of his
+pension, was much less a defence than an assault. He broke into the
+enemy's camp at once, and "swept all there with huge two-handed sway."
+He traced the history of the Bedford opulence up to its origin, which he
+loftily pronounced to be personal sycophancy and public spoil--the
+plunder of the Abbeys, obtained by subserviency to a Tyrant. The
+eloquence of this terrible castigation unhappily embalmed the scorn. And
+so long as the works of this great man are read, and they will be read
+so long as the language endures, the honours of Francis Duke of Bedford
+will go down dismantled to posterity.
+
+But his private character was amiable, and the closing hours of his
+career were manly. On its being announced to him that an operation was
+necessary, he asked only for "two hours delay to settle his affairs;"
+and he occupied those two hours in writing to his brothers, and to some
+friends. He then offered to submit to be bound, if the operators should
+think it necessary; but they replied, "that they relied fully on his
+Grace's firmness of mind." He bore the trial with remarkable fortitude.
+But the disorder took an unfavourable turn, and on the third day he
+expired.
+
+
+The retirement of Pitt from the Ministry, has given his successor,
+Addington, the honour of making the peace. But the services of the great
+Master are not eclipsed by the fortunes of the follower. Addington is
+universally regarded as the shadow of Pitt; moving only as he moves;
+existing by his existence; and exhibiting merely in outline his reality.
+Every one believes that Pitt must return to power; and those who are
+inclined to think sulkily of all ministers, look upon the whole as an
+intrigue, to save Pitt's honour to the Irish Roman Catholics, and yet
+preserve his power. Those rumours have received additional strength from
+a grand dinner given the other day in the city, on his birthday, at
+which his friends mustered in great force, and his name was toasted with
+the most lavish panegyric. Among the rest, a song, said to be by George
+Rose, of whose claims to the laurel no one had ever heard before--was
+received with great applause. Some of its stanzas were sufficiently
+applicable.
+
+  "No Jacobin rites in our fetes shall prevail,
+  Ours the true feast of reason, the soul's social flow;
+  Here we cherish the friend, while the patriot we hail,
+  As true to his country--as stern to her foe.
+        Impress'd with his worth,
+        We indulge in our mirth,
+  And bright shines the planet that ruled at his birth.
+  Round the orbit of Britain, oh, long may it move,
+  Like the satellite circling the splendours of Jove!
+
+  "To the name of a Pitt, in the day of the past,
+  Her rank 'mid the nations our country may trace;
+  Though his statue may moulder, his memory will last,
+  The great and the good live again in their race;
+        Ere to time's distant day,
+        Our marble convey
+  The fame that now blooms, and will know no decay,
+  Our fathers' example our breasts shall inspire
+  And we'll honour the Son as they honour'd the Sire."
+
+
+The public doubts of the peace are at length settled. A note has been
+sent from the Foreign Office to the Lord Mayor, announcing that the
+definitive treaty had been finally settled at Amiens, on the 27th of
+March, by the plenipotentiaries of England, France, Spain, and the
+Batavian Republic. The treaty, as it transpires, is the source of
+general cavil. It leaves to France all her conquests, while England
+restores every thing except Ceylon and Trinidad; the one a Dutch colony,
+and the other a Spanish; both powers having been our Allies at the
+commencement of the war. The Cape is to be given back to the Dutch; but
+Malta, the principal bone of contention, is to be garrisoned by a
+Neapolitan force, until a Maltese garrison can be raised, and the island
+is then to be declared independent, under the guarantee of all the great
+powers of Europe. The French government affected to display great
+reluctance to conclude even this treaty, which has thus taken six months
+of negotiation since the exchange of preliminaries. At one time, orders
+were sent for the Channel fleet to put to sea. Yet there can be no
+question that France desired this Peace, whether as a resting time for a
+fresh attack, or from the mere exhaustion of war. She had already gained
+every object that she could hope to obtain by arms in her present
+condition, and her natural policy was to secure what she had thus
+attained. The two grand prizes of her ambition, Egypt and the command of
+the Mediterranean, had been boldly aimed at, but she had lost both, and
+both were now evidently hopeless. Some of those straws, too, had been
+thrown up, which, if they show nothing else, show the direction of the
+wind; and there were evident signs in the almost royal pomp of the First
+Consul, in the appointments of officers of state for ten years, and the
+constituting the Consulate an office for life; in the preparations for
+the return of the emigrants, and in the superb receptions at the
+Tuilleries--that Bonaparte already contemplated the last days of the
+republic. To what new shape of power his ambition looks is yet only in
+conjecture. But he is ambitious, daring, and unscrupulous--the idol of
+the army, and the wonder of the people. He may shrink, like Caesar, from
+the diadem, or he may assume, like Cromwell, the power of a king,
+without the name; but the field is open before him, and France can offer
+no competition.
+
+
+Darwin, the author of the "Botanic Garden," has just died at the age of
+seventy-one. His death will leave a chasm, though one not incapable of
+being filled up, in our didactic poetry. His "Loves of the Plants" was a
+new idea, thrown into agreeable verse; and a new idea is always
+popular. For a while his poem obtained great celebrity: but Nature alone
+is permanent; and after the first surprise wore off, the quaintness of
+his inventions, and the minute artifice of his poetic machinery,
+repelled the public taste. The Linnaean system, partly indecent, and
+partly ridiculous, was felt to be wholly unfitted for the blazonry of
+versification; and his poem, the labour of years, sank into obscurity as
+rapidly as it had risen into distinction. It is now wholly unread, and
+almost wholly forgotten; yet it contains bold passages, and exhibits
+from time to time happiness of epithet, and harmony of language. Its
+subject degrades the poem; its casual allusions constitute its merit.
+Vegetable loves must be an absurdity in any language; but Darwin's mind
+was furnished with variety of knowledge, and he lavished it on his
+subject with Oriental profusion. He had eloquence, but he wanted
+feeling; knowledge, but he wanted taste; and invention, but he wanted
+nature. The want of any one of the three would have been dangerous to
+his fame as a poet, but his deficiency in the three together left him to
+drop into remediless oblivion.
+
+
+A curious attempt hast just shown the popular opinion of ministerial
+honesty. The Attorney-General has prosecuted, and brought to conviction,
+a fellow in some low trade, who, hearing that Mr Addington was prime
+minister, and thinking of course that a prime minister could do all
+things, sent an actual offer of L2000 to him for a place in the Customs,
+on which he happened to set his heart. Unluckily for the applicant, he
+was a century too late. However those matters might have been managed a
+hundred years ago, less tangible means than money now rule the world.
+Besides, no man who knew any thing of Addington, ever attached a
+suspicion of the kind to him. Erskine made a speech in the defence, the
+best that could be made on such a subject, but not the most flattering
+to the vanity of his client. It was that he was a blockhead, and had no
+idea of the absurdity that he was committing. Among other instances of
+his ignorance, he said, that when he saw the subpoena served upon him,
+he thought that it was the appointment to his place. But even his
+idiotism could not save him, and the affair ended in his being sentenced
+to three months' imprisonment, and L100 fine.
+
+
+Christie, the auctioneer, the other day, gave a happy specimen of the
+eloquence of the hammer. He is at the head of his trade, and sells all
+the remarkable things. On this occasion the Pigot diamond had come into
+his hands. It is a very fine brilliant, but objected to by the
+connoisseurs as not having sufficient depth. It was valued at L40,000.
+But at this sale the auctioneer could not raise its price above L9500,
+or guineas. He then appealed to his audience, a crowd of the fair and
+fashionable,--
+
+"How unfortunate," said he, "is it, for the owners of this incomparable
+production, that they should have brought it into the market in a
+country so famed for female beauty as England! Here the charms of the
+sex require no such additions; here the eyes of the ladies sparkle with
+brilliancy which outvies all the gems of the East. In other countries
+this incomparable stone would be sought as a necessary aid; here it can
+be valued only as a splendid superfluity." The room rang with applause.
+
+
+One of the heroes of Junius has just died; the veteran Wellbore Ellis,
+Lord Mendip. This man's whole life was spent in public employments. He
+was the son of an Irish bishop, whose brother--such were the curious
+qualities of the time--took orders in the Popish Church, followed the
+Pretender, and died a Popish bishop. Young Ellis, after an education at
+Westminster and Oxford, was brought into parliament under the Pelhams,
+who made him a lord of the Admiralty. Under the Newcastle administration
+which followed, he was appointed to the lucrative post of Irish
+vice-treasurer, which he held undisturbed through all the struggles of
+the Cabinet till the Grenville administration, when he was raised still
+higher, and became Secretary at War.
+
+The Grenvilles fell; the Marquis of Rockingham brought in his friends
+and Ellis was superseded in his Irish office by Colonel Barre. For five
+unlucky years he continued in that Limbo of patriots, exclusion from
+place. At length, the Premiership of Lord North recalled him. He again
+obtained the Vice-treasurership, and in the final distress of that
+unpopular administration, was for a short time raised even to the
+Colonial Secretaryship. But North was driven from power, and all his
+adherents fell along with him. Rockingham, the North and Fox coalition,
+and Pitt, exhibited a succession of premierships, which ended in the
+exclusion of the whole Whig principle, in all its shapes and shades, for
+twenty years. Ellis was now growing old; he was rich; he had been a
+public man for upwards of forty years; he had been fiercely abused by
+the opposition writers while he continued in office, and fiercely
+attacked by the government writers when in opposition. He had thus his
+full share of all that public life furnishes to its subjects, and he
+seemed inclined to spend the remainder of his days in quiet. But the
+French Revolution came. Startled at the ruin with which its progress
+threatened all property, he joined that portion of the Whigs which
+allied itself with the great Minister. The Duke of Portland entered the
+cabinet, and Wellbore Ellis was raised to the peerage. There his career,
+not unworthily, closed; and his remaining years were given to private
+society, to books, of which he had a celebrated collection, and to the
+recollections of the Classics, of which he possessed an early mastery.
+He was an acute and accomplished man. The fiery indignation of Junius
+rather threw a light than inflicted an injury on his character. That
+first of political satirists spared none; and the universal nature of
+his attacks made men receive them, as they receive a heavy shower,
+falling on all alike, and drenching the whole multitude together.
+
+
+Bonaparte has taken the first step to a throne: he has established
+nobility. The Republic having abolished all titles, a peerage was, for a
+while, impossible. But he has formed a military Caste, which, without
+hazarding his popularity with the Parisians, increases his popularity
+with the troops, and has all the advantages of a noblesse, with all the
+dependency of its members on the head of the State. He has named this
+Institution the Legion of Honour. It is to consist of several classes,
+the first comprehending the great officers of state, generals who have
+distinguished themselves, and ancient men of science. It has sixteen
+Cohorts, with palaces allotted to them in Paris and the provinces, for
+the headquarters of the cohorts. Grants of land are also proposed for
+the support of these officers and their residences, with distributions
+and pensions for the lower ranks of the soldiery, to whom the "croix
+d'honneur" is given.
+
+Thus the old reign of titles, orders, crosses, and an established Class
+of society, has begun once more; a large portion of the most influential
+personages of France are thus bound to the head of the government, the
+hopes of every man, however humble in soldiership or in science, are
+pointed to the attainment of this public honour, as well as personal
+provision, and the general purchase of power is virtually declared, with
+the general consent of this versatile nation.
+
+
+Ten thousand pounds have just been voted to Jenner, for his discovery of
+the vaccine inoculation. The liberality of parliament was never more
+rationally employed. The history of the man, and the discovery, have
+been long before the public. But the most curious circumstance of the
+whole is, that the facts of the disease, and the remedy, should have
+remained for any one to discover in the nineteenth century. They were
+known to the peasantry of Gloucestershire probably from the first days
+of cow milking. That the most disfiguring of all diseases, in every
+country of Europe and Asia, and the most pestilential in a large portion
+of the globe, could be arrested by a disease from the udders of a cow,
+seems never to have entered into human thoughts, though the fact that
+those who had the vaccine disease never suffered from the smallpox, was
+known to the country physicians.
+
+But Jenner's chief merit was his fortunate conjecture, that the
+infection might be propagated from one human subject to another. This
+was the greatest medical discovery since that of the Circulation of the
+Blood.
+
+
+
+
+IT'S ALL FOR THE BEST.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+"It's all for the best, you may depend upon it," said Frank Trevelyan,
+addressing his companion, Vernon Wycherley, as those two young men were
+pursuing a beaten track across one of those wild wastes that form so
+prevalent a feature in most of the mining districts of Cornwall.
+
+"All for the best, indeed?" repeated Vernon interrogatively. "Can it be
+all for the best to have a whole batch of poems I've been racking my
+brains about for the last year and a half--and which even you yourself,
+hard as you are to please, admitted were worthy of praise--to have all
+these, not only rejected by every publisher I offered them to, but to be
+actually returned with a recommendation to give up all idea of ever
+offering them to public notice?"
+
+"But which convinces me still more that matters have turned out for the
+best; and that if your poetical effusions had been published, they would
+have brought you far more ridicule than praise," thought Frank. But at
+the same time, not wishing to hurt his companion's feelings, he
+said--"Yet, probably, when you have again revised the manuscripts, and
+bestowed some of your masterly finishing touches here and there, you
+will, after all, congratulate yourself upon the source of your present
+disappointment."
+
+"That's an impossibility--an utter impossibility," returned Vernon
+Wycherley--"for were I to look through them a hundred times, I should
+never alter a word.----But stay--Look! look!--what is that I see? Two
+ladies on horseback, I declare! who could have anticipated meeting with
+such an occurrence in so outlandish a place?"
+
+The place was by no means undeserving of the remark, being devoid of any
+kind of vegetation, except some straggling heath and a few patches of
+stunted gorse, which here and there sprung up amidst the rugged
+spar-stones that, intermixed with rude crags of granite, were thickly
+scattered over this wide waste, which, throughout its vast extent,
+afforded as perfect a picture of sterility as can be well conceived.
+With this brief outline of the scenery, we must next attempt to describe
+the parties who were wandering over it.
+
+Frank Trevelyan was about two-and-twenty. In figure he was rather below
+the middle height, and being slightly made and with the proportions of a
+tall man, he looked much less than he actually was. His features were
+not handsome, but he possessed what in a man is far more important--a
+highly intelligent and intellectual cast of countenance. He wore his
+hair, which was light and curly, cut very close, and incipient whiskers
+adorned the outline of his lower jaw. He was dressed in a gray tweed
+wrapper, with trousers of the Brougham pattern, and he sported a
+hat--black, but whether beaver or gossamer we are uninformed--high in
+the crown, but very narrow in the brim, bearing altogether no very
+remote resemblance to an inverted flower-pot.
+
+His companion was about the same age, but the latter had made so much
+better use of his growing years, as to have shot up to something more
+than six feet in height; yet his figure, though slender, exhibited no
+appearance of weakness. His features were passably good--the nose
+perhaps rather too projecting; but his teeth were unexceptionable. He
+had a clear complexion, with a good fresh colour in his cheeks, which
+were still covered with the down of youth, but without imparting the
+slightest appearance of effeminacy. A foraging-cap of gray woven
+horse-hair, with a preposterous shade projecting out in front, covered
+his head; a loose blouse enveloped the upper, whilst checkered
+inexpressibles enclosed the lower man. Unlike his companion, he wore his
+hair, which was rather dark, very long, both at the sides and behind;
+and the rudiments of mustaches were perceptible upon his upper lip; but
+whether they were to be allowed to attain a more luxuriant maturity, or
+their brief existence was to be prematurely cut short by the destroying
+razor, was, at the time we speak of, involved in doubt, that being a
+subject which, though it engrossed much of his thoughts, the proprietor
+had hitherto been unable to make up his mind upon. Each of our two
+heroes bore a light kind of knapsack upon his back; their general
+appearance marked them to be gentlemen, whilst their attire and
+accoutrements denoted they were pursuing a pedestrian tour.
+
+But softly! the ladies approach. See how elegantly they canter their
+steeds over the only smooth piece of turf our travellers had met with
+throughout the whole extent of gloomy commons they had that morning
+traversed.
+
+"Ay, that's right! Pull up in time, my lovely ones, ere you get amongst
+the rascally mole-hills; and then you'll not only ride the safer, but
+afford us at the same time a chance of obtaining a view of your pretty
+faces," thought friend Frank; whilst similar thoughts, although perhaps
+arranged in more elegant terms, were passing through the mind of his
+companion. But if the curiosity of the two pedestrians was great, their
+admiration proved far greater when the objects which excited those
+feelings, on a nearer approach, proved to be two as lovely young women
+as the most fastidious admirer of beauty could wish to gaze upon. One of
+them, indeed, displayed such matchless charms to the youthful poet's
+eyes, as at the very first glance to form to his excited fancy the
+beau-ideal of perfect loveliness.
+
+"What an angel!" he mentally exclaimed; "upon such a form I could
+continue to gaze enraptured for"----
+
+How long he never said, for ere he had time to give utterance to the
+thought, he stumbled over one of the surrounding mole-hills, and
+staggering forward several paces with extended arms, he ultimately fell
+prostrate on the ground, close by the side of the innocent yet moving
+cause of his misadventure, and with such force, as to bury the whole of
+his countenance in the soft heavings of a similar hillock to the one he
+had so inadvertently tripped over.
+
+Luckily for him, the place his physiognomy alighted upon was of so soft
+and yielding a nature, that though he stamped a perfect model of his
+features in the clay, the features themselves were unimpaired, otherwise
+than by the earthy colouring communicated to them by so pressing a
+contact, which perfectly satisfied the fair equestrians (who had the
+kindness to pull up and express their hopes that he was not seriously
+hurt) that the actual damage sustained was of a very superficial nature.
+
+"And I suppose you intend to say that this is all for the best?"
+observed Vernon in rather a rueful tone, as, the ladies having ridden
+on, he was attempting to rub off the dirt from his face with his pocket
+handkerchief--the first wipe of which was sufficient to show him how
+much the effects of his tumble had changed the natural hue of his
+complexion.
+
+"To be sure I do," answered Frank "and any man less unreasonable than
+yourself would say so too."
+
+"What! say it was all for the best for him, like an awkward booby, to
+fall sprawling in the dirt, thereby making himself a laughing-stock to
+that beautiful, angelic creature? Oh! only look, my dear Frank, only
+look--see her--see both of them! Why, as I live, they are almost ready
+to fall off the very backs of their horses from the laughter my
+blundering awkwardness has excited. Oh, it's really dreadful--I must
+turn my head another way. I can bear the sight of it no longer!"
+
+"But only think how much worse it would have been if your phiz, instead
+of the soft earth, had encountered one of the hard spar-stones that are
+so plentifully strewed about here?"
+
+"And supposing it had--wouldn't it have been better, at the cost of
+little pain and suffering, to have excited the compassion, instead of
+the laughter of that heavenly creature?"
+
+"But hardly at the sacrifice of your nose, I should say," rejoined
+Frank, "which, from the deep impression it has made in the clay, must
+have been smashed flat as a pancake had it battled out the matter with
+the stones."
+
+The young poet had a great regard for his nose, and his companion's
+remarks upon the subject were so palpable, that he was not only silenced
+but convinced.
+
+"I say here, my man. Here, Jan, Jan, I say," bawled out our friend
+Frank, to what he was pleased to style a straw-yard savage in the
+disguise of a gentleman's servant on horseback, who, whilst engaged in
+the pleasant employment of munching an apple, had allowed the ladies he
+was attending to canter off some distance a-head, and was then in the
+act of passing, at a very moderate pace, close by our two heroes, but
+pulled up his nag at the summons, and, touching his hat, replied, in the
+singing accent of the western Cornishmen--" Your sarvant, gen'lmen both;
+what 'ud ye plaze to have, sir?--though my name b'aint Jan, plaze yer
+honours."
+
+"What is it then?--Bill, Dick, Tom, Harry, Ben, Jim, Nic, Mike, Mathey,
+or Peter?"
+
+"Neither, maester, plaze your honour, sir," said the man, with a grin
+that denoted he was entering into the humour of the thing, and who, as
+well as Frank, was a bit of a wag in his way. "Timothy's my name, at
+your sarvice, gen'lmen--what 'ud your honours plaze to have of I?"
+
+"What I would have, Timothy," answered Frank, "is for you to tell me who
+those two young ladies are that you are in attendance upon?"
+
+"Maester's two dafters," replied Timothy.
+
+"And who's maester?" asked Frank.
+
+"The squire, to be sure," answered his man.
+
+"And what's squire's name?" inquired Frank.
+
+"Potts--Squire Potts," replied Timothy--at which announcement Vernon
+Wycherley lifted up both eyes and hands in unfeigned amazement.
+
+"And the young ladies?" resumed the questioner.
+
+"Lor, sir! I ha'n't a got time to bide and tell'ee no more. See they be
+'most out of sight a'ready, and I shall have to ride a brave pace to
+catch mun again--and most dead wi' thest, too, I be's a'ready."
+
+Frank, who plainly saw Timothy's drift, dived his hand into the deep
+recesses of his trousers' pockets.--Timothy, who witnessed the act, not
+altogether an unexpected one, drew nearer and nearer, and when close
+alongside of Frank, cramming the remainder of the apple into his mouth,
+he dropped the hand that had conveyed it there, as if by the merest
+accident in the world, within easy reach of the interrogator's, who,
+slipping into it a coin of sufficient importance, small as it was, to
+raise a grin of delight in the groom's countenance, again asked him the
+names of the two young ladies.
+
+"Heerken, and I'll tell'ee," he answered. "She with the light hair and
+eyes, she's Miss Bessie; and she with the dark hair and eyes, she's
+called Miss Molly--that's she's name." And having so said, Timothy rode
+off at a rapid pace.
+
+"Can it be possible!" exclaimed Vernon Wycherley--"can it be possible
+that so lovely a being--one who seems too beautiful to tread the
+earth"----
+
+"And so rides on horseback over it; is that what you mean?" interrupted
+Frank.
+
+"No, you know very well it is not what I mean," answered Vernon
+petulantly. "My wonder is, how one so elegant could be called by such a
+name as that knave uttered."
+
+"What! Molly Potts, eh? that I believe was the name he mentioned?"
+interposed Frank.
+
+"Pshaw, nonsense!" retorted his companion; "it can't be her name. The
+idea's too preposterous to be true. That insolent clown has dared to try
+to hoax us; for which I promise him, if I were his master, I'd break
+every bone in his good-for-nothing body. Molly Potts! It never can be
+so. The thing's quite out of the question--utterly impossible!"
+
+"Impossible or not, I don't see that it's likely to make much difference
+either to you or me," observed Frank; "for the chances are, we never set
+eyes upon either of them again."
+
+"Then," said Vernon, "I almost wish that I, at least, had never set
+eyes upon one of them at all. To know that such an angel moves about on
+earth, and to think that I may never see her more, must ever form a
+source of deep regret; and yet it seems strange--very strange--that
+I--I--who have ever looked upon the fairest of the sex unmoved, should
+be so struck as I was here by a mere glance."
+
+"A very hard hit, certainly," said Frank: "I never saw a fellow more
+completely floored."
+
+"Better book that to tell again," retorted vernon; "it really is so
+seldom you do say a witty thing, that it's a pity it should be lost upon
+these dull moors."
+
+"Then, unless we intend to follow the fate of my wit," resumed Frank,
+"we must step out a little faster to get out of them; which we sha'n't
+do under a couple of miles' walk more, I promise you."
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Frank Trevelyan's statement proved tolerably correct as to distance, for
+little more than two miles brought our travellers clear of the rugged
+moorlands; when, after ascending the brow of a steep hill, a sight broke
+suddenly upon them, which, though unlike the scenery they had previously
+passed over, presented if possible a more dreary picture. As far as the
+eye could reach, nothing could be discerned but one vast wilderness of
+undulating sandy hillocks, totally devoid of vegetation, except a kind
+of coarse rush, which, in spite of the shifting nature of the soil, had
+here and there contrived to spring up and take root; and now to add to
+this cheerless aspect, the sky, which hitherto had been bright and
+clear, began to lower with those dark threatening clouds which form the
+sure forerunner of a heavy squall of wind and rain--no pleasant thing
+for two lightly-clad pedestrians to be overtaken with in a bleak open
+country on a chill November day. Even Frank, who, with his merry chat,
+had latterly kept his companion's spirits alive, the latter of whom had
+begun to complain both of hunger and fatigue--even Frank felt
+disconcerted at the desolate prospect before him, as well as
+disappointed at not discovering the mining village, containing the snug
+little public-house, which he had been informed he should fall in with
+at the termination of the stony moorlands. Resolved however to put the
+best face he could upon the matter, our little hero assured his tall
+comrade that another half hour would be sure to bring them to the
+desired spot, where he was certain they would obtain both rest and
+refreshment--two things they much needed--having walked on unceasingly
+for several hours since their early morning's meal without having eaten
+or drunk any thing, and the sun by this time had begun to sink low in
+the horizon. Scarcely, however, had they crossed the narrow valley that
+divided these two barren wastes from each other, and had commenced
+ascending the steep beaten path that passed through the sandy desert,
+than the storm, which had been previously brewing, burst forth with
+relentless fury, the rain descending in torrents, accompanied by fierce
+gusts of wind, that, whirling aloft the loose drifting sands, swept them
+onwards in dense clouds before the gale, forming an overpowering and
+blinding deluge that perplexed our tourists exceedingly.
+
+"This is all for the best, I suppose," suggested Vernon Wycherley, who,
+uncomfortable as he was, couldn't help enjoying the luxury of having a
+hit at his fellow-traveller, and thus proving himself for once at any
+rate to have been on the right side of the argument.
+
+"All for the best, did you say?" replied Frank. "All for the best?--ay,
+to be sure it is--though we ourselves may perhaps be too short-sighted
+to see the drift of it."
+
+"See the drift!" interposed Vernon--"See the drift! Why, we not only see
+it, but feel it. The benefit to be derived from it is what I want you to
+convince me of, Master Frank."
+
+The truth of Vernon's observation was too palpable to be denied; for
+both he and his companion were half-choked and nearly blinded by the
+clouds of sand that, in the course they were pursuing, blew directly in
+their faces, and which even the rain seemed to have no effect in
+allaying; till as last the peppering became so severe, that our
+travellers were actually compelled to turn their backs upon the enemy.
+Hardly, however, had they done this, ere Frank joyfully exclaimed--"It
+_is_ all for the best after all, and that I'll soon convince you of,
+Master Vernon. Cast your piercing peepers through the thick of it, and
+you'll see the very place we want to find, which, if the storm hadn't
+compelled us to face to the right about, we should have passed by
+without discovering, concealed as it is in the narrow gorge we have just
+crossed. So cheer up, I say, old fellow, and let us both put our best
+foot foremost, and see how soon we can get there."
+
+Vernon required no further persuasion, and the desired house of
+entertainment was soon reached. Here our wet and weary travellers had
+the good fortune to meet with that comfort of all comforts to persons so
+situated--a blazing kitchen-fire, which afforded them an opportunity of
+drying their wet clothes, and at the same time to enjoy the sight of the
+cookery of some tempting rashers and eggs, which, with the unequalled
+accompaniment of fried potatoes, was soon after duly set out for them in
+the sole parlour the house afforded, where they found a good fire had
+been prepared for their reception.
+
+"Would you like a bottle of Guinness's porter with your dinners,
+gen'lmen?" asked a very pretty and tidily dressed young woman, who
+waited upon them.
+
+"To be sure we would, my pretty Mary," replied Mr Vernon Wycherley, "and
+thank you for the hint into the bargain; I'm sure I should never have
+dreamt of meeting with Dublin stout amidst the wilds of Cornwall."
+
+"Us do always kip it," observed Mary.
+
+"Then a bottle of it, if you please, my pretty girl," resumed the poet.
+"Ay, that's right, out with the cork--never mind the froth, Mary--never
+mind the froth."
+
+"It is indeed prime stuff!" he added, replacing his empty glass upon the
+table; "and upon my life, Frank, this is a perfect feast; and never did
+I enjoy one more. Things really have turned out a great deal better than
+I expected."
+
+"Or, in other words, have turned out all for the best," observed Frank,
+looking up for a moment from his plate, the contents of which had
+previously absorbed his whole attention; and elevating his glass as a
+signal for Mary to fill it with the tempting beverage, which she, well
+understanding, instantly obeyed; and having drained every drop of it, he
+resumed--"So you see, Master Vernon, you stand convicted by your own
+confession, that your former doubts and misgivings were without
+foundation; added to which, you can't help agreeing with me, that our
+present gratification is still further enhanced by the few trivial
+difficulties we just before met with."
+
+Vernon was not inclined to concede to all his companion had just said,
+and, in fact, was mentally arranging the proper language in which to
+express his dissent, when a fresh arrival of piping-hot rashers turned
+the current of his thoughts towards the eggs and bacon, about which,
+instead of saying any thing, he quietly helped himself to, and then
+handed over the dish to his friend.
+
+
+"I feel rather tired with my walk to-day," observed Mr Vernon Wycherley,
+who, having at last eaten to his heart's content, had pressed an extra
+chair into his service, for the purpose of resting his long and wearied
+legs thereupon. "Every thing here," he continued, glancing his eye
+around the tidily furnished little room--"every thing here looks clean
+and comfortable. I wonder if we could get accommodated with beds,
+instead of having to tramp it three miles further over the sandbanks in
+this uncertain weather, in order to reach our original destination at
+the next village?"
+
+"I wish we could, with all my heart," answered Frank; "and here comes
+Mary with some more stout, who can tell us all about it." And so the
+handmaiden was questioned accordingly, who replied, in a tone of evident
+disappointment, "Lar bless ee, sir, there b'aint a bed to be had in the
+whole place; fay there b'aint, I can assure ee not, if ye'd offer pounds
+o' gold for 'un; for ever since Wheal Costly, just handy by here, has
+turned out so rich, there's no quarters to be had for the sight of folks
+that be employed about her. There's only seven beds in all this here
+housen; and, besides the family, there be no less than sex-and-thirty
+miners a quartering here; they takes sex out o' the seven beds, and
+mistus and I and all the childer do fill the t'othern all night, and
+when us do turn out, then maister and his comarade do turn in--and 'tis
+the same all through town[38]--an' by ma fath an' troth, I zem there
+b'aint, at this very moment, a bed without a pair in 'un for miles
+round."
+
+"But how do the folks here contrive to pig it away together six in a
+bed?" inquired Mr Vernon Wycherley. "Your beds must be very large,
+otherwise I should fancy such close stowage to be hardly possible."
+
+"O na, sir, you don't onderstand," replied the maid, hardly able to
+restrain herself from laughing outright at the stranger's gross
+ignorance of mining habits; "not pair[39] o' six all to bed together to
+one time; you da see miners do work to bal[40] eight hours to a spell,
+and has sexteen to stay 'bove ground; so one and his comarade sleeps
+their first eight hours 'bove ground, and then turns out for the next
+pair; and so they goes on, one pair in and t'other pair out, so that
+between sex on 'um, the bed's never to say quite empty."
+
+"And can never, of course, require a warming-pan," remarked Frank.
+
+"Lar! tha b'est a queer little chap," thought Mary; but being too polite
+to say as much, she merely smiled pleasantly at the remark, as she
+tripped out of the room.
+
+"Well, as we must toddle further, it's of little use to put so grave a
+face upon it, old fellow," observed Frank to his poetical friend, who
+was indulging in a reverie, with his eyes fixed in vacancy towards the
+burning embers in the grate.
+
+"Eh! what?" demanded Vernon, with the usual start of an absent literary
+man, whose attention is suddenly awakened. Frank repeated his previous
+remark.
+
+"My thoughts were far, far away from hence," said Mr Vernon Wycherley;
+"the subject of them was my comedy, which, as you know, I intend to
+offer for the prize at the Haymarket."
+
+"Your comedy be hanged!" interrupted Frank.
+
+"I fear that even a direr fate than that awaits it," resumed its author.
+"Oh! if I had but seen _her_ before I arranged my female
+characters--have carried her beauteous image in my mind, as now I
+mentally behold her"--
+
+"What! Molly Potts?" interposed Mr Frank Trevelyan, with a look of arch
+innocence--such a funny look it was, as no man living but Frank himself
+could possibly have given.
+
+"Pshaw," said Vernon impatiently, "how can you find the heart to mention
+her name, if such indeed it be, in that disagreeable tone and manner? It
+is enough to drive away every poetic idea connected with her. If you can
+only mention her name in that cold tone of contempt, I'd thank you to
+hold your tongue about her altogether."
+
+With this remark, the poet took a manuscript book from a pocket in his
+blouse, and with contracted brow, he made an entry there in pencil of
+some happy thought the moment had just then suggested, which occupying
+some minutes, his companion in the interval walked to the window to
+examine into the appearance of the weather, and perceiving that the rain
+had ceased, and one bright star already twinkled in the sky, he
+suggested the propriety of preparing for their immediate departure, in
+order that they might get over as much of their ground as they possibly
+could before dark.
+
+Having been directed to the path they were to pursue, which was a
+different one from that they had gone over when overtaken by the storm,
+though apparently leading in the same direction, our travellers again
+resumed their route. There was still good light when they started, and
+as long as it continued--but which was a very short time--the novelty
+of the surrounding desert of sand imparted some degree of interest to
+the scene; but, in proportion as the darkness closed in, the spirits of
+the pedestrians began to flag. Still, however, Frank strove to cheer up
+his companion, who was by far the most weary and dispirited of the two,
+and, as a never-failing remedy, began to talk to him about his intended
+comedy--its plot, and some of the most striking scenes and characters.
+The result was just as he had anticipated, and its author, who just
+before had dragged himself along in moody silence, or only replied in
+listless monosyllables, began to chat away upon the much-loved topic in
+the most animated manner possible; and so much were both engrossed with
+the subject, as not to perceive that, whilst traversing one of those
+level pieces of turf that few and far between formed a kind of tiny
+oasis in this desert, they had altogether missed the footpath.
+
+Just at this unfortunate crisis it had become exceedingly dark, and the
+heavy clouds fast gathering overhead promised another shower; which
+promise was fulfilled even more speedily than they anticipated, and down
+came the rain pouring away in hissing torrents upon our pedestrians,
+who, unable to regain the lost footpath, strolled on for some time
+without the remotest notion of the direction they ought to take. They
+were not, however, very long in finding that they had again gotten
+amongst the loose sandbanks, which, being dispersed around in steep
+undulating hillocks, were exceedingly fatiguing to traverse even by
+daylight; it is needless, then, to say how much this difficulty was
+increased when the traveller was involved in darkness, and at the same
+time ignorant of the direction he ought to pursue. Nor was this the
+worst evil to which our two wanderers were exposed. A considerable
+number of mines had been opened in these wastes, and though the working
+of them had been abandoned for several years, yet the shafts were still
+open, many of them wholly unprotected either by rail or embankment, and
+the aperture being even with the surface, and not wider than the mouth
+of an ordinary-sized well, no one could possibly discern his danger in a
+night so dark as it then was. A more fatal snare for entrapping a
+benighted traveller could scarcely have been devised. But neither Vernon
+nor Frank had the remotest suspicion of this danger; or, in fact, any
+fears beyond the dread of spending the night in this howling wilderness.
+
+At last, to their great relief, the rain subsided, and the clouds
+breaking away disclosed the great bear and polar star, which afforded
+them an unerring point to steer by, and raised strong hopes that if the
+sky remained clear, and their legs would only hold out long enough
+against the excessive fatigue of scrambling over the steep hillocks,
+they might, by pursuing a perfectly straight course, at last get clear
+of this desert spot, and reach a better kind of country, where they
+might meet with some habitation or other that would at least afford them
+rest and shelter until daybreak.
+
+Now, when matters have become very bad, any change for the better,
+however slight it be, imparts some cheering influence; and the relief
+our drenched pedestrians felt from the mere ceasing of the rain, and
+exchanging the dull lowering sky for the clear dark-blue starlight,
+proved enough to renovate their drooping hearts, and to excite them to
+make the best use they could of their limbs; so that by persevering they
+at last reached a part of the waste where the travelling became less
+irksome, the drifting sand having, in this particular part, formed
+itself into larger hills, which, in course of time, had become coated
+with short grass, and thus afforded very pleasant ground to walk over.
+But this relief from fatigue was attended with increased peril to the
+erring wanderers, who were now in the very midst of abandoned mines,
+whose shafts yawned around them in every direction, many of which they
+passed almost within a hair's-breadth of, unaware of the dangers that
+thus lay in their path, and only congratulating themselves on the
+improved state of the ground they had to walk over.
+
+Now Vernon Wycherley, who had been for some short time turning the
+matter over in his mind, began to fancy he had found a poser for his
+fellow-traveller, to whom he remarked, that however fortunate they might
+consider themselves when they got out of their present difficulties,
+there could be no possible advantage whatever in their having gotten
+into them.
+
+"I don't agree with you even there," said Frank; "one advantage there
+will be on the score of experience, as it cannot fail to furnish us with
+an accurate knowledge of what a person's sensations are when he loses
+his way in a wilderness of sandbanks in a dark and stormy night in
+November."
+
+"And is that all the advantage you can point out?" interposed Mr Vernon
+Wycherley.
+
+"All? No, not one-half," resumed Frank. "Will it not supply both of us
+with everlasting materials for spinning yarns to match other travellers'
+tales, as well as furnish you with an endless topic for your poetic and
+dramatic pen? And besides, I've no doubt there are lots of other
+advantages we shall eventually derive benefit from, though they may for
+ever remain hidden amongst the many mysteries that man is never designed
+to know."
+
+"You really are the most extraordinary fellow I ever met with," rejoined
+Vernon, "striving, as you ever do, to cook up good of some kind or other
+out of the most evil materials; and every misfortune, by some wonderful
+philosophy hatched up by your ingenious brain, you pretend to convert
+into a benefit. Why, old fellow, Mansel of Trinity actually told
+me--mind I've only his word for it, perhaps not the best authority in
+the world either--but he positively assured me, that you tried to
+convince him that your being taken ill on the third day of your
+examination, which was thus cut short in the middle, and which caused
+you to rank far lower than you otherwise would have done amongst the
+wranglers, was the most fortunate event that possibly could have
+happened to you."
+
+"And that is my firm conviction still," said Frank, with the utmost
+coolness.
+
+"What!" exclaimed Vernon in amazement, "you surely cannot be in earnest
+in what you say?"
+
+"Indeed I am," resumed Frank; "for, had I taken higher honours my dear
+old governor would never have rested satisfied unless I had devoted
+myself either to study of the law or politics, both of which I hate,
+instead of permitting me, at some future time, to become a quiet country
+parson.--But what extraordinary light is that?" he exclaimed, on
+perceiving a narrow stream of fire, apparently at no great distance,
+shoot up above the brow of a low hill just before them?"
+
+"A singular kind of meteor, certainly," observed the poet. "I never saw
+one like it before."
+
+"Very like a sky-rocket; wasn't it?" observed Frank; "and a sky-rocket
+I've no doubt it was; and as this happens to be the night of the 5th of
+November, I dare say it proceeds from the very village to which we are
+bound--an important place too, it should seem, from sporting
+sky-rockets. Ah! there goes another. Huzza! we shall soon be amongst
+them.--Oh! merciful Heaven!" he exclaimed, as his companion suddenly
+vanished from his sight, having stepped inadvertently into the mouth of
+one of those dangerous shafts we have before alluded to. A heavy sound
+denoted the fearful depth to which he had been precipitated, which was
+shortly followed by a loud, hollow crash, caused by a fall of some
+fragments of detached earth, which, from the great depth it had to
+descend, occupied several seconds ere it reached the bottom of this deep
+abyss.
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Frank Trevelyan, almost petrified with horror at the dreadful
+catastrophe, which there was just then sufficient light to enable him to
+discern the nature of, remained for some moments riveted to the spot
+from whence he had witnessed its occurrence; but soon partially
+recovering his bewildered faculties, he fell upon his hands and knees,
+and approaching the mouth of the shaft, called out, in a tone of
+agonizing anxiety to his companion, but with scarcely a hope of being
+responded to, when a faint voice, though from an awful depth, assured
+him he was yet alive; but, it was to be feared, dreadfully injured; and,
+in plain truth, he was in a situation of even greater danger than his
+fellow-traveller was then aware of. Poor Vernon Wycherley had fallen
+upwards of sixty feet perpendicularly, and had alighted on a projection
+of the ground, occasioned by a drift that had been made in the workings,
+which alone prevented him from being hurled to the bottom of the pit,
+which was of vast depth, though partially filled with water. As it was,
+his situation was so perilous, that it seemed only to add to the agony
+of impending death, with a very remote prospect of deliverance. Every
+thing depended upon his being able to secure himself upon the point of
+ground where he then rested; and this being loosened by the force with
+which he had fallen upon it, was gradually crumbling from beneath him,
+every particle of which, as it gave way, splashing in the water at the
+bottom of the shaft produced a deafening crash, which sound rendered him
+fearfully conscious of the probability of the whole mass, upon which his
+sole chance for safety depended, sinking under him, before the necessary
+assistance could arrive. This it soon did to such a degree, that, in
+spite of all his efforts, he gradually sank lower and lower, until,
+unable longer to retain a footing, his legs were overhanging the awful
+gulf, and he was rapidly sliding off, when, by a desperate effort, he
+threw up his feet, so that they reached the opposite side of the shaft,
+whilst his body still remained on the projecting drift, against which he
+firmly planted his back, and with his feet on the opposite side, he was
+thus enabled to gain a stationary position; yet, even then, the soil
+continually crumbling away, rendered it doubtful how long he might be
+able to retain it.
+
+Frank Trevelyan was, however, as we before mentioned, unaware of the
+full extent of his friend's peril, and only dreading the effects of what
+had already occurred, he no sooner heard the welcome sound of his voice,
+than, bidding him keep up a good heart, for that he plainly heard the
+voices of a number of persons at no great distance, from some of whom he
+should be able to procure all the aid he required. Having so said, he
+started off at speed towards the spot from whence he could still hear
+the humming noise of many voices, indicating an assemblage of a large
+company of persons no great way off--and so towards this spot he ran at
+a rapid pace, regardless of the risk he incurred in thus racing along,
+as it were blindfold, in so dangerous a locality. But the fact is, a
+thought of his own personal safety never once entered his head: Vernon's
+accident, and its probable consequences, engrossed his every thought.
+Another rocket served to show him he was taking the right direction; and
+at so rapid a pace did he proceed, that the enlivening sounds of voices
+became more and more distinct, when, topping the brow of the hill, a
+blue light, most opportunely lighted up, disclosed to him at a very
+short distance on the opposite side of the valley, a substantial
+gentleman's house, in front of which a motley and mixed medley of some
+couple of hundred people or more--some of them gentlemen, but the
+majority consisting of miners and agricultural labourers--were
+assembled, either as actors, assistants, or lookers-on, at a display of
+various kinds of fire-works that was then going forward.
+
+A sight so welcome to our little hero's hopes imparted fresh vigour to
+his limbs; and he darted down the steep declivity at the imminent danger
+of his neck, but happily reached the bottom in safety, just as the light
+which had aided him in his descent expired, which then made every thing
+appear even darker than before. Consequently, Frank, not espying the
+brook that intervened betwixt himself and the object he was striving to
+reach, tumbled over head and ears into one of its deepest pools; but
+being a swimmer, and the stream but narrow though the pool was deep, he
+soon attained the summit of the opposite bank; when a hedge, almost
+close at hand, alone seemed to separate him from the people whose
+assistance he was so anxious to secure. The hedge was easily clambered
+over, though an impediment he had not anticipated awaited him on the
+other side, in the form of a small fishpond, into which he bundled, and
+so got a second ducking. But as this pond, or rather that portion of it
+into which he had fallen, was not deep, he soon splashed across it, to
+the amazement of the assembled party who witnessed the feat, which a
+fresh blue-light, just then ignited, afforded them ample means of
+doing--the heavy souse he had made in tumbling in, and the splutter he
+made in floundering out again, having already attracted their attention
+to the spot--which, as he seemed to have selected the very widest part
+of the whole pool, was the very last of all others any one could have
+suspected an entry to have been made on the premises.
+
+Unconscious of the surprise he had thus excited, Frank Trevelyan rushed
+forward into the midst of the assembled group, and seizing hold upon a
+stout little old gentleman who seemed to be the leading man of the
+party, endeavoured, as well as his exhausted state would permit, to
+explain the fearful misadventure which had just occurred. The
+intelligence excited an exclamation of horror from all who heard it.
+
+"What a dreadful death!" exclaimed the old gentleman.
+
+"Oh! don't say so, for heaven's sake," cried Frank--"He may be, and I
+fear is, much hurt; but I trust he may yet be saved."
+
+"Impossible!" said half a dozen voices. "Why, the shaft's hundreds of
+feet deep."
+
+"But my companion is yet far from the bottom of it," resumed
+Frank--"Something or other has interposed to prevent his falling lower.
+He spoke, and told me so--Oh! for mercy's sake make haste, and you may
+yet preserve his life."
+
+"What a horrible situation!" exclaimed the old gentleman; "but no time
+must be lost in talking about it, or inquiring into the why or the
+wherefore. So here you, Timothy, John Clarke, Harris, Tom Carpenter, run
+for your lives, every man Jack of you to the farm, where you'll find
+plenty rope;--and here, miners, my dear men--do you bestir
+yourselves--succeed or not, I'll pay you well. Could any thing be more
+fortunate?" continued the old gentleman, soliloquising to
+himself--"could any thing be more fortunate than our show of fire-works
+bringing all the miners of the parish about our ears; the very best
+hands in the world, from woeful experience in like matters, to render
+aid in an accident of this kind."
+
+No one required to be told a second time; and almost ere the words were
+out of the worthy squire's mouth, every body had dispersed here and
+there to procure ropes, and whatever might be required; all of which
+were collected with a celerity almost incredible; and then off started
+plenty of able and willing hands, all in eager haste to accomplish the
+charitable object they were bent upon.
+
+And now we must return to poor Vernon Wycherley, whom we left pent up in
+a narrow dungeon many feet beneath the surface, enveloped in darkness,
+and with difficulty sustaining an irksome and even painful position, by
+keeping his body jammed across, and, as it were, forming a kind of
+bridge over this awful chasm; whilst the loose soil, upon whose unstable
+foundation his only chance of safety depended, gradually crumbling away,
+kept his attention unceasingly alive to the certain fate that awaited
+him when unable longer to retain his hold; the horrors of which were
+still further augmented by the deafening din that thundered forth as
+each detached mass reached the water far, far below. Few men, indeed,
+could have sustained a sufficient degree of self-possession to have held
+on a minute under such trying circumstances; but our tall young hero was
+possessed of that true kind of courage, which, though disinclined to
+seek out danger for mere danger's sake, is never daunted by its
+approach, however fearful or unexpected it may be; and thus he was
+enabled to await his impending fate with calm resignation. Strange, too,
+as it may appear, his thoughts, notwithstanding his appalling situation,
+would now and then wander to common everyday matters. Even the events of
+that very afternoon occurred to him, and the beauteous form he had been
+so much struck with passed in fancy before his eyes. "Would she pity his
+fate?" he asked himself--"alas! no--how was she to know any thing about
+it? Poor Frank, too," he thought, "what can he say to my unexpected, and
+probably fatal accident? I fear all his philosophy will, at least this
+time, fail of convincing him;--it is _all for the best_, but better for
+myself, perhaps, than him, as far as chances of being saved go; for with
+his little legs, it must have been all over with him some time before
+this. But, gracious Heaven! may not such a catastrophe have already
+happened to him?"
+
+The start this last thought excited had well nigh proved fatal--a large
+quantity of earth became detached even by this slight movement, and at
+the same time caused a change of position, which, though very slight,
+was yet sufficient to produce a fresh action on the muscles, previously
+cramped from the unusual strain upon then, and thereby causing so much
+pain, that the sufferer was nearly relaxing his hold, the retention of
+which became more arduous every moment; whilst the time thus occupied
+seemed prolonged to almost tenfold the term of its ordinary duration.
+Never, therefore, was sound more welcome to his ears, than the hoarse
+and agitated tone with which his friend, Frank Trevelyan, shouted out to
+him down the mouth of the shaft; whilst the cheers with which his reply
+was hailed from several persons who had already reached the spot,
+assured him that the much-wished-for relief was at hand. Nor was there,
+indeed, a moment then to lose; for even during the short time it took in
+adjusting the rope, and getting ready a light, with which an adventurous
+miner, well skilled in such matters, was about to descend, poor Vernon's
+strength was rapidly declining; and, conscious of his increasing
+weakness, he called out earnestly to those above to make haste, as he
+could hold on no longer, and that the ground was fast slipping away from
+under him. Anxiously indeed throbbed every breast during the interval
+occupied by the miner's descent, and breathless was the suspense with
+which each awaited the signal to pull away again upon the rope, which
+had scarcely been given, when a heavy rumbling sound, followed by a
+whirring noise, and terminating in a tremendous booming crash, whose
+fearful din and uproar it is impossible to describe, caused a thrill of
+horror to pass through the frame of every bystander; whilst Frank,
+uttering a loud cry, threw himself with his face upon the ground, and
+grasped the turf in all the frenzied agony of grief, till the loud
+cheers that made the welkin ring again, aroused him to a state of
+consciousness, when all his grief was turned into joy by discovering the
+friend whose loss he had just begun to deplore, again safely landed on
+the earth's surface, and apparently but little the worse for his
+extraordinary tumble.
+
+The noise which had caused so much unnecessary alarm was produced by the
+projecting mass, which, loosened by Vernon's violent descent upon it,
+had given way the instant it lost the partial support caused by the
+pressure of his body against it.
+
+Fortunately for the sufferer, there was no lack of medical aid. The
+village doctor, who had been present at the fire-works, had the humane,
+or business-like consideration to betake himself as speedily as possible
+from thence to the place where his services were so likely to be needed;
+whilst the old gentleman, who had taken so active a part in the late
+transaction, had himself also practised the healing art in the early
+part of his life. To the gratification of all present, these two
+gentlemen, after a cursory examination, reported that no bones were
+broken, and that although the right wrist was sprained, and the left leg
+much bruised, yet that the other injuries were of a very trifling
+nature; so much so indeed, that being helped on the back of the pony
+which had brought the old gentleman to the scene of action, the patient
+rode without much difficulty to the mansion from whence the assistance
+had been derived; and which, although then attained by a more circuitous
+route than the one Frank had previously gone, was less than a mile
+distant.
+
+Nothing, indeed, could exceed the kind hospitality of the old gentleman,
+who, as Frank had supposed, turned out to be the proprietor of the house
+and grounds he had made his entry upon in so unusual and unexpected a
+manner. Determined to act out the character of the good Samaritan to
+the very letter, the squire, for so every body called him, would insist
+upon taking the patient to his own house, as well as that Frank should
+remain to assist in taking care of him; alleging that there was no other
+place for miles around where they could be properly accommodated; and if
+there was, they should not go there as long as he had a house to shelter
+them. Vernon was too glad to find any kind of resting-place to refuse so
+generous an offer, and it required very little pressing to induce Master
+Frank Trevelyan to accept the invitation; for, somehow or other, he had
+just at the very moment begun to fancy that the late occurrence was but
+the commencement of a series of adventures, which a further acquaintance
+with their new friend might lead to. But the reasons which induced him
+to take such a fancy into his head, we must for the present forbear
+mentioning.
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Vernon Wycherley, in spite of all his late perils, enjoyed a good
+night's rest, and on awakening about daylight on the following morning,
+he found that, barring a little pain and a great deal of stiffness about
+his sprained wrist and bruised leg, combined with slight soreness all
+over, he was not much the worse for his accident, and so he told Frank,
+who just at that very moment had popped his head into the room to see
+how he was getting on.
+
+"And really, friend Frank," observed the patient, "I ought to be
+thankful for the snug quarters I've fallen into, as well as for my
+providential and almost miraculous escape."
+
+"Which," interrupted Frank, "your medical friends here say you must at
+present think as little about as you can, and not talk about at all."
+
+"Well, well, old fellow, their advice is doubtless very good; but it
+shall not for all that prevent my indulging in feelings of thankfulness
+to heaven for my deliverance."
+
+"Not an uncomfortable room this," observed Frank, looking around it.
+
+"Can any thing convey an air of greater comfort?" said Vernon. "There's
+a look of cheerful cleanliness about it that's quite delightful; and as
+for the bed, I never rested my wearied limbs before on one I liked
+better."
+
+"Ay," said Frank, "and all through the house, from attic to cellar, I'll
+venture to say you'll find things just the same."
+
+"Why, you can scarcely have had sufficient time or opportunity to
+ascertain that yet, I should imagine," observed Vernon; "for, with all
+the modest assurance with which you are so superabundantly blessed, you
+can't have already been paul-prying, and poking that impudent nose of
+yours into every hole and corner of it."
+
+"Certainly not," answered Frank, "but I've seen quite enough to form a
+pretty accurate judgment that the bulk will tally with the sample--a
+conclusion I can arrive at without the aid of my nasal organ. A fact may
+be ascertained without one's poking their nose to the bottom of it--a
+very unsatisfactory, as well as uncertain, mode of proceeding, take my
+word for it. Why, I wouldn't undertake to ascertain even the height or
+depth of a molehill by so uncertain a process."
+
+"And will you never forget that unlucky blunder of mine?" asked Mr
+Vernon Wycherley.
+
+"Never, I promise you," replied Frank.
+
+"Well, then, if you can't forget it, I suppose you can cease talking
+about it; and, by way of a more pleasing subject, suppose you tell me
+something about the people here--the old gentleman, the only member of
+the family I've yet seen, appears to possess a very host of
+good-nature."
+
+"And a very good-natured host he has proved," interrupted Frank.
+
+"That's right," said Vernon;--"very well for you; so book it, to tell
+again, and make the most of it."
+
+"I shall do no such thing," rejoined Frank, "as no words I can employ
+would do justice to our honest entertainer, who is without exception the
+happiest and merriest little fellow I ever met with, possessing a
+countenance full of mirth and good-humour, and a heart overflowing with
+benevolence--a downright hearty good fellow, a thorough trump--a regular
+brick, and no mistake at all about the matter, as our little friend,
+Major Rodd, would say. And I say, Vernon, you've no idea what a
+delightful evening I spent after I'd tuck'd you in for the night. I
+never in my life met so entertaining a man before--a mere glimpse of his
+good-natured face is sufficient to drive away a very legion of
+blue-devils, although, by the by, those are fiends that never haunt me;
+and then we had a famous spread by way of supper--jugged hare--a
+woodcock--the first I've yet seen for the season--and lots of snipes."
+
+"All of which, I dare say, you did ample justice to," interposed Mr
+Vernon Wycherley.
+
+"More than justice, friend Vernon--more than justice; for I ate the best
+portion of the woodcock, in addition to a fair allowance of the jugged
+hare I'd taken before--and then finished off with the snipes--the whole
+being accompanied with some excellent home-brewed ale."
+
+"Well, enough about the supper; but tell me, was there nobody but
+yourself and the squire to partake of it?"
+
+"Oh yes! the doctor staid to supper, but was obliged to start and visit
+a patient who had sent for him, which compelled him to commence a five
+miles' ride ere he had well time to finish his meal."
+
+"You saw no ladies, then?"
+
+"Yes, but I did though--that is, I saw the lady of the house; and much
+as I liked master, I don't know but I liked mistress more--such a dear,
+kind-hearted creature--and so good-looking, Vernon--one of the sort that
+would never look old, or grow ugly, even if she lived to the age of
+Methusalem. And her fondness for her old man is quite delightful--none
+of your my-dearing or my-loving nonsense, or anxiety about every thing
+he likes to eat and drink disagreeing with him; but good, downright,
+honest, hearty affection, which was beautifully displayed in the happy
+smile with which she regarded the old fellow, and witnessed how truly he
+seemed to be enjoying himself. That's what I'd recommend all wives to do
+who wish to preserve their good looks. A woman's beauty depends so much
+upon expression, that if that's spoilt, farewell to all her charms, and
+which nothing tends more to bring about than a countenance soured with
+imaginary cares, instead of lighted up with thankfulness for innumerable
+blessings--that's what makes half the women wither away into wrinkles so
+early in life; whilst nothing renders their beauty so lasting as that
+placid look of pure benevolence, which emanates from a heart full of
+thankfulness to God--affection for those nearest and dearest to them,
+and good-will towards all mankind."
+
+"Thank ye, Frank--thank ye for these pretty little sentiments--very good
+remarks, certainly, and true; but I think you'd better keep them to
+bestow upon the future Mrs Trevelyan; I dare say you may find them
+useful then. And now, have you any further news to tell me this
+morning?"
+
+"Yes, I believe I have. I was just going to tell you about the fair
+ladies we met on the downs yesterday; but I've a great mind not to do
+so."
+
+"Eh? what? where?" interrupted Vernon. "Oh! do tell me--have you seen
+them?"
+
+"No," answered Frank demurely, "I haven't seen even the shadow of their
+petticoats."
+
+"Is this Squire Potts', then? eh!"
+
+"Not impossible," rejoined Frank with most provoking coolness; "at
+least," he continued, "I know nothing to the contrary, for never having
+heard our worthy squire's cognomen, I see no reason why he may not be
+called Potts as well as any thing else."
+
+"Pshaw," said Vernon impatiently, "and is that all you have to tell me?
+I really fancied you had heard or seen something."
+
+"And so I have," rejoined Frank.
+
+"Whom, then? eh! Do tell me!" demanded Vernon, eagerly.
+
+"Timothy," replied Frank.
+
+"Timothy!" reiterated the poet.
+
+"Ay, Timothy, to be sure; what d'ye think of that, Mr Vernon Wycherley?"
+
+"Why, it leads me to hope," replied that gentleman, "that we may meet
+the ladies themselves ere long, or"--
+
+No _or_ in the matter," interrupted Frank; "I've made up my mind to meet
+them both at breakfast this very morning; and no mistake, as our gallant
+little friend the major says--for I'm pretty certain those lovely birds
+of paradise roosted last night somewhere or other about the premises."
+
+"But as you say you've seen Timothy, haven't you been able to get any
+thing out of him?"
+
+"No," replied Frank; "for as all his business seems to be confined to
+out-of-doors work, he only came once or twice into the room where we
+were upon some trifling excuse or other; but, in reality, I've no doubt
+to have a peep at your humble servant, whom the rogue instantly
+recognised; and when no one was looking, he tipped me a sly wink of the
+eye, at the same time pointing with his thumb over his shoulder, and
+directing his eyes towards the ceiling, thereby indicating, as I
+thought, that those I wished the most to see had already betaken
+themselves to bed."
+
+"Then I trust they were not packed off on purpose that you might not see
+them?" observed the young poet.
+
+"Quite the reverse, Vernon, I assure you, for I'm quite confident they
+were so packed off in order that they mightn't see me."
+
+"You surprise me indeed--can it be possible that one so affable and
+open-hearted as our squire here appears to be, should hesitate to let
+his daughters see so harmless a specimen of the human race as my
+particular friend Mr Francis Trevelyan? But ah! I see how it is," Vernon
+continued, and his countenance fell as he said so. "I see how it is--he
+doubts our being gentlemen; a circumstance quite sufficient to account
+for the absence of the young ladies."
+
+"Don't let that notion trouble you," interposed our little hero; "your
+particular friend, Mr Francis Trevelyan, as you have been pleased to
+style him, has removed every unfavourable impression a first glance of
+your two yards of humanity might have produced--you know the old saying,
+'Show me your associates and I'll tell you what you are.'"
+
+"Then," interposed Vernon, "the impression here must be, that I'm one of
+the most impudent dogs living."
+
+"Nothing of the kind," resumed Frank; "that is, if they judge of you by
+your humble servant, whom they consider an exceedingly modest young man,
+which was the sole reason the two girls were kept out of the way, and
+sent off so early to bed; though by the by I'm almost ashamed to say"--
+
+"Don't talk of your shame, Frank," interrupted Vernon, "a very different
+kind of thing, though too often confounded with modesty. It's the
+latter--It's your modesty--I wish to hear about."
+
+"Why, the plain state of the case," rejoined Frank, "was, that our
+good-natured friend the squire, from an imperfect knowledge of the
+natural boldness of my disposition, (call it impudence, if you will,)
+supposed me incapable of facing the battery of laughter my extraordinary
+appearance would have exposed me to, had I come within view of his fair
+daughters."
+
+"Your appearance is queer enough at all times I must confess," observed
+Vernon, "and still more so in your travelling costume; but still hardly
+enough so, I should have thought, to have produced quite so powerful an
+effect as you have just mentioned."
+
+"You wouldn't say so, or have thought so, either, had you seen the
+strange figure of fun I made. Just now for a moment fancy my limited
+proportions enveloped in the squire's ample toggery--(who more than
+makes up in breadth all he wants in height,)--only fancy me so attired
+and where could you look for a more complete personification of a living
+scarecrow?"
+
+"I can fancy it all," said Vernon Wycherley, laughing exceedingly at the
+idea of his companion so arrayed; "but do tell me," he continued, "what
+could have induced you to put on so ridiculous a masquerade."
+
+"What else could I do?" rejoined Frank, "unless I turned in supperless
+to bed, or had it brought up to me there, neither of which suited my
+inclination--for, you see, what the rain we encountered had left undone
+in the drenching way, the brook I blundered over head and ears into had
+completely effected; and though my subsequent souse just afterwards into
+the fishpond could make me no wetter, that deficiency was amply made up
+for in mud; and as I had thrown off my knapsack, I had no precise notion
+where, in order that I might run all the lighter without it, which has
+only just now been picked up and returned to me, and so not a dry rag of
+my own to help myself to, I was right glad to rig myself out in the
+squire's clothes, which, fitting me like what our friend the admiral
+would say, 'purser's shirt upon a handspike,' made me look for all the
+world like an unstuffed effigy of a Guy Fawkes--a figure so
+superlatively ridiculous, that two light-hearted young girls, who were
+unable to help wellnigh laughing themselves from off their horses' backs
+at the sight of a youthful poet employing his nose as a pick-axe, could
+scarcely be expected to look unmoved on so ludicrous an object as I
+was."
+
+"Spare me, Frank--spare me!" exclaimed Vernon. "How shall I be able to
+remove the ridiculous association which must be connected with that
+unlucky tumble?"
+
+"The more important one you made so shortly afterwards, I'll undertake
+to say, will produce the desired effect," said Frank.
+
+"Oh! don't talk about that now, pray," interposed Vernon with a shudder,
+and turning pale at the sudden recollection of his recent peril; which
+Frank perceiving, and aware of the indiscretion he had so thoughtlessly
+committed by alluding to, and to avert his friend's mind from dwelling
+any longer upon it, he rattled on as fast as he could about various
+other matters, describing in glowing terms all he had seen, heard, or
+conjectured, about the place they were then in. "What a contrast," he
+said, "the mere separation of a narrow valley has made between the
+desolate wastes we have traversed for the last two days, and the fertile
+spot where we now are, which, though deficient in timber, is beyond
+measure fertile in corn, and contains, I am told, some excellent
+shooting--that is partridge shooting; for a pheasant is here a kind of
+_rara avis in terris_, and as little likely to be met with as the very
+black swan itself; but then it's a fine country for woodcocks, whilst
+the bottoms almost swarm with snipes; all of which the squire has
+promised to show me in the course of the day, and for days to come, if I
+feel so inclined; for he won't hear a word of our leaving for at least
+ten days, or a week at the very shortest."
+
+"But how, my dear fellow, can we accept an invitation of this kind from
+an utter stranger, whom"----
+
+"No stranger at all," interrupted Frank. "He tells me your governor is
+one of his oldest and most esteemed friends; and as for myself--but
+stay--hush!--hark! I hear the old gentleman's voice, and he's coming
+this way too, or I'm very much mistaken."
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+The squire was one of those persons who generally give audible notice of
+their approach as soon as they enter their house, or pass through from
+one part of it to another; and our two heroes heard him, whilst in the
+act of ascending the stairs, bawling out to the ladies above that it was
+high time for them to be up and moving; and hammering away at the first
+door he came to, he called out--"Come, come, young ladies, wake up, wake
+up--chase away your balmy slumbers, and kick Morpheus out of bed without
+further ceremony.
+
+  'Come Miss Mary,
+            [_"Her loved name!" exclaimed
+                Vernon within._
+  All contrary,
+  How does your garden grow?
+  With silver bells,
+  And cockle shells
+  And cockles all of a row.'
+
+"Nothing like early rising for planting the roses in your cheeks--and
+if that argument," said he to himself, "won't make a young woman bundle
+herself from under the bed-clothes, I don't know what will." And then he
+walked on to the room in which Frank had slept, and which was the
+adjoining one to Vernon's, he began to drum away upon the door there;
+calling out, at the same time--"Come, Frank--Mr Trevelyan--if you intend
+to have a view of the sea before breakfast, as you proposed last
+evening, it's high time you should be up and stirring."
+
+"I'm up and stirred already, sir," said Frank, popping his head out of
+the adjoining room door.
+
+"Yes; you're up to any thing, I see," said the squire, good-humouredly
+extending his hand to his guest, as he entered the room; "and how's my
+patient this morning?" he continued, advancing towards the bed. "Ah!" he
+said, having felt Vernon's pulse, "just as I hoped, and indeed fully
+expected--you couldn't possibly be doing better; a little--very little
+care for a day or two, is all you seem to require. I looked in before
+this morning to see how you were getting on, and found you snoring away
+so comfortably, that, judging all was as it should be, I wouldn't
+disturb you with my inquiries."
+
+"Snoring!" repeated Vernon, in alarmed surprise, looking exceedingly
+disconcerted, and doubting almost whether he had heard aright.
+
+"Ay, snoring," resumed the squire; "but never mind that, my hearty
+fellow--the best men snore sometimes, take my word for it; and, I dare
+say, it wasn't loud enough to disturb the young ladies. It was pretty
+loud, though, I must confess; but still I think it could hardly reach so
+far, particularly when your door was shut."
+
+"But I found it wide open," observed Frank, by no means ill-amused to
+see how annoyed his companion was at the conviction of having snored,
+and the possibility of such sounds having reached the ears of one _so
+lovely_. Oh, how Vernon longed to hurl his pillow, or even any harder
+missile within his reach, at the saucy little fellow's head who was
+looking so provokingly pleased with his distress, and which the presence
+of the squire alone restrained him from making a left-handed attempt at,
+for his right was, as we before mentioned, disabled for the present by
+his late accident. But Vernon was too good a judge to attempt any thing
+of the kind, or show any exhibition of displeasure before his kind
+entertainer who, telling him he must act as his doctor, having, as he
+said, been bred to, and practised for several years in the medical
+profession, examined into the state of his sprains and bruises, and told
+him he would soon be all right again, but that he must be content to
+spend a few hours longer in bed, where his breakfast of gruel should be
+sent up to him; and then, accompanied by Frank, he took his departure.
+
+The old gentleman, however, gave the ladies a fresh hail as he passed by
+their bedroom door, to which two or three voices replied simultaneously,
+but in tones far less musical than Frank expected; and it seemed to him
+very different from what he had heard from the fair equestrians of the
+preceding day, when they kindly expressed their hopes that the sprawling
+poet had received no injury from his tumble.
+
+"Ah! I see how it is," thought he to himself; "these pretty creatures,
+like too many of their sex, have a couple of tones to their voices--one
+for home, and the other for company. There's one-half of my admiration
+gone already." But wishing, at the same time, to put the best
+construction he could upon the matter, he tried to persuade himself that
+they must have taken cold, poor things! in consequence of having been
+caught in the heavy shower of the preceding day; and this it was which
+had caused the hoarseness of their voices. "I have known it have that
+effect before now on other people," he thought, "and why might not the
+same happen to these fair damsels; who, though lovely as angels, can
+scarcely escape from 'all the ills that flesh is heir to,' amongst which
+a cold, attended with hoarseness, can hardly be reckoned the worst?"
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[38] Any collection of houses, or even a single farm-house, is termed a
+town in Cornwall.
+
+[39] In Cornwall, any number beyond two is termed a pair.
+
+[40] "Bal" signifies a mine.
+
+
+
+
+A PEEP INTO THE WHIG PENNY POST-BAG.
+
+
+  MY DEAR MEMBER--I send you a powerful petition,
+  For absolute, instant, entire abolition.
+  This question our Chamber is taking a lead in
+  Composed, as you know, of the Flowers of Dunedin,
+  Intelligent Druggists, rhetorical Quakers,
+  Broad acres--a few--but no want of wiseacres.
+  All are perfectly clear that these horrid restrictions
+  Are the proximate cause of our present afflictions,
+  Obstructing the bowels, as 'twere, of the nation,
+  And entirely deranging our whole circulation.
+
+  To expel these bad humours, we earnestly urge
+  A dose, night and morning, of Russell's _new_ Purge;
+  Not the old wishy-washy affair of the _fixture_,
+  But the new out-and-out Morisonian mixture.
+
+  In the mean time 'tis well that the Noble concoctor
+  Has succeeded in ousting the family Doctor.
+  Peel's a perfect old wife--twaddles on about diet,
+  About exercise, air, mild aperients, and quiet;
+  Would leave Nature alone to her vigour elastic,
+  And never exhibit a drug that is drastic.
+  Doctor Russell's the man for a good searching pill,
+  Or a true thorough drench that will cure or will kill.
+  For bleeding and blistering, and easy bravado,
+  (Not to speak of hot water,) he passes Sangrado.
+  He stickles at nothing, from simple phlebotomy,
+  As our friend Sidney said, to a case of lithotomy:
+  And I'll venture to say, that this latest specific,
+  When taken, will prove to be no soporific.
+  Might I just hint how happy 'twould make me to be
+  Sole Agent down here for the great Patentee?
+
+  _Entre nous_, what can mean these unpleasant surmises?
+  I scarce know what prognosis to form of the crisis:
+  And our friends, quite perplex'd at this puzzling delay,
+  Can't imagine how scruples should stand in the way.
+  Must the grand Opus Magnum be brought to a fix,
+  Because some jarring drugs are unwilling to mix?
+  His lordship, I'm certain, would cut the thing shorter,
+  If he'd borrow a touch of my pestle and mortar.
+
+  Ere we part, I must give you a hint of the truth:
+  We Free Churchmen can't stomach your views of Maynooth.
+  If you value your seat, as a friend I would urge ye,
+  Steer clear of endowing the Catholic Clergy;
+  A bolus (or bonus) so very unhallow'd
+  Would in Scotland, I'm sure, not be easily swallow'd.
+
+  By an early reply we should all be elated,
+  And 'twould tell if from Windsor again it were dated.
+
+
+  DEAR DRUGGIST---You've open'd your jocular vein,
+  And I fain would reply in the same pleasant strain;
+  But let those laugh who win--I have only to say,
+  That we are--_as we were:_ and all done by Lord Grey--
+  The most arrogant, wayward, capricious of men,
+  (Though this last little sketch must not seem from my pen.)
+  Only think of objecting that Palmerston's name
+  In a fortnight would set East and West in a flame:
+  About mere peace or war a commotion to make,
+  When the Party's existence was plainly at stake!
+  When office was offer'd, to cast it behind,
+  And to talk of such trash as the good of mankind!
+  It is clear, my good friend, such a crotchety prig
+  Has but little pretence to the title of Whig.
+
+  On the part I have played in this luckless transaction,
+  I confess I look back with unmix'd satisfaction.
+  From the first I said _this_--and 'tis pleasant to feel
+  Thus at ease with one's self--"I'm for total repeal.
+  Stick to that, my Lord John, and all scruples I stifle:
+  Any office, or none, is to me a mere trifle;"
+  (Though, of course, my dear Mac, for the purest of ends,
+  I was willing to help both myself and my friends.)
+  "Any office I'll take, that can give you relief--
+  From the Whip of the House to Commander-in-chief."
+  Oh! If all of the party had acted as I did,
+  In how noble a band would Lord John have presided!
+
+  But--"'tis best as it is:" we may grieve, yet we shouldn't:
+  Peel can carry the measure--'tis certain we couldn't:
+  Though we hoped, if our reign was once fairly begun,
+  It might last till--we did what was not to be done.
+
+  I think, (though thus leaving old views in the lurch,)
+  We should _not_ have establish'd the Catholic Church.
+  To speak for my colleagues, in me would be vanity:
+  They might differ; but I should have thought it insanity.
+
+  In the hope that our friends in Auld Reeky are "brawly,"
+  I remain yours, in confidence, T. B. Mac----y.
+
+
+EAST AND WEST.
+
+  Sweet is the song, whose radiant tissue glows
+    With many a colour of the orient sky;
+    Rich with a theme to gladden ear and eye--
+  The love-tale of the Nightingale and Rose.
+
+  Nor speeds the lay less surely to the mark
+    That paints in homely hues two neighbours sweet,
+    Born on our own bleak fields, companions meet,
+  The modest Mountain-daisy and the Lark.
+
+  The fond attachments of a flower and bird!
+    That things so fair a mutual bond obey,
+    And gladly bask in love's delightful ray,
+  Who would deny, and doubt the poet's word?
+
+  Or who would limit love's and fancy's reign?
+    Their hardy growth here springs as fresh and fair,
+    Far from the sun and summer gale, as there
+  Where Gul for Bulbul decks her gay domain.
+
+  'Tis poesy, whose hands with kindly art,
+    Of kindred feelings weaves this mystic band,
+    To knit the Scottish to the Iranian strand,
+  And reach wherever beats a human heart.
+
+
+
+
+AN APOLOGY FOR A REVIEW.
+
+
+It is not our general practice to review books of travels; nor, in
+truth, in noticing these little volumes, do we introduce any exception
+to that general rule. Under what precise category in literature they may
+fall, would admit, as Sir Thomas Browne observes as to the song sung by
+the Sirens, of a wide solution. Plainly, however, in the ordinary sense
+of the term, travels they are not. They will form no substitute for
+Murray's admirable hand-books; for on the merits or demerits of
+competing hostelries, which Mr Murray justly regards as a question of
+vital importance--the very be-all, and often end-all of a tour--these
+volumes throw no light. In statistics they are barren enough. To the
+gentlemen of the rule and square, who think that the essential spirit of
+architecture can be fathomed by measurement, they will be found a blank.
+And though abounding in allusions, which betray, without obtruding, an
+intimate acquaintance with ancient literature, and sufficient in
+congenial minds to awaken a train of memories, classic or romantic,
+medieval or modern; they contain few dates, no dissertations, no
+discussion of vexed questions as to the ownership of statues, baths,
+temples, or circuses; or the other disputed points which have so long
+been the subject of strife in the antiquarian arena. And, really, when
+we consider the way in which, in the course of a century, all the old
+landmarks on the antiquarian map have been broken up, and the monuments
+of antiquity made to change hands; how Nibbi supersedes Winckelman, only
+to be superseded in turn; how a temple is converted into a senate-house;
+one man's villa into another; how Caracalla is driven from his circus to
+make way for Romulus; how Peace resigns her claim to a Pagan temple to
+make way for a Christian basilica of Constantine; how statues, arches,
+gardens, baths, forums, obelisks, or columns, are in a constant state of
+transition, so far as regards their nomenclature; and, to borrow the
+conceit of Quevedo, nothing about Rome remains permanent save that which
+was fugitive--namely, old Tiber himself; we rather feel grateful to the
+tourist who is content to take up the last theory without further
+discussion, and to spare us the grounds on which the last change of
+title has been adopted. What, indeed, matters it, in so far as the
+imagination is concerned, by what emperor, consul, or dictator, these
+mighty remains were reared or ruined? Whether these Titanian halls first
+echoed to the voices of Pagan or the chant of Christian priests? Whether
+this inexplicable labyrinth of vaults and cells, and buried gardens
+which overrun the Esquiline, where the work of art and nature is so
+strangely melted and fused together by "the alchymy of vegetation,"
+really formed part of the golden house of the monstrous Nero; or of the
+baths of him, the gentlest of the Caesars, who, when he had gone to rest
+without doing a good action, regretted that he had lost a day? Equally
+they remain monuments of the grandeur of the minds which gave them
+birth; mysterious, suggestive--perhaps the more suggestive, the more
+awakening curiosity and interest, from the very obscurity in which their
+origin, purposes, or fortunes are shrouded. And if individual
+associations become dim or doubtful, they merge in the clear light which
+these gigantic fragments, betraying, even in ruin, their original beauty
+of proportion and grandeur of conception, throw upon the lofty and
+enduring character of the Roman people.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+These volumes, then, as we have said, will neither replace Murray, nor
+form a substitute for Eustace. Neither is their interest mainly owing to
+mere vivid or literal portraiture; by painting in words, as an artist
+would do by forms and colours, and enrolling before us a visible
+panorama, such as might present a clear image of the scenes described
+here to those who had never witnessed them. Their charm--for a charm, we
+trust, they will have to a considerable number of readers--arises simply
+from the truth with which they seize, and the happy expression in which
+they embody, _the spirit of the spot_; marking, by a few expressive
+touches, the moral as well as the physical aspect of the scene, and
+awakening in the reader a train of associations often novel in
+conception, as well as felicitous in expression; but which appear in
+general so congenial and appropriate, that we are willing to persuade
+ourselves they are a reproduction of thoughts, and dreams, and fancies,
+which had occurred to ourselves in contemplating the same objects. Hence
+it is to those, who have already witnessed the scenes described, that
+these volumes address themselves. They do not paint pictures, but revive
+impressions; they call up or steady imperfectly defined images; bring
+forward into light struggling memories;--and, by a union of brief
+description, classic or historical allusions, picturesque and
+significant epithets, and reflections hinted at, rather than wrought
+out, they very successfully accomplish their object--that of realizing
+to the eye of the mind that distinctive and prevailing expression which
+each aspect of nature, like each movement of the human face, wears in
+itself, and is calculated to awaken in others--cheerful, sombre,
+majestic, or awe-inspiring, according to the nature of the scene, the
+associations past and present with which it is surrounded, and the
+conditions, or, as a painter would term it, accidents under which it has
+been viewed.
+
+While we say that Mr Whyte has generally been very successful in his
+aim, we must not be understood to express by any means an unqualified
+probation of the taste in which these volumes are conceived, or the plan
+on which they are constructed. The train of reflection is _sometimes_
+too obviously an afterthought--not spontaneously evoked at the moment by
+the influences of the scene, but evidently devised and wrought up into
+point and _apparent_ application by a subsequent process. We have dreams
+which were never dreamt, and reveries which are any thing but
+involuntary. There are too many Tristram Shandy transitions, sundry
+cockneyisms in expression, (we use the word in a wide sense,) and one or
+two jokes which make the blood run cold. Lastly, we are compelled to say
+that we repose much more confidence in the writer's taste in
+architecture than in painting. It is enough to say that he evinces no
+feeling for the more simple and majestic compositions of Raphael; while
+the powerful contrasts, and magic of light and shadow displayed by
+Guercino and Tintoret, seem to exercise an undue fascination on his
+mind. It is only to the injurious effect produced by these blemishes
+that we can attribute the slender success with which the volumes have
+been attended; for at this moment we do not recollect having seen them
+noticed by any of those who assume to themselves the right of
+distributing the rewards and punishments of criticism.
+
+Let us now look at one or two of Mr Whyte's sketches of Rome, or rather
+of the train of thought called up by wanderings among its ruins, tracing
+the broken sweep of its ancient walls, or wandering among the stately
+aqueducts and nameless tombs of its dreary Campagna.
+
+     _Fragments of Italy and the Rhineland._ London: 1841._
+
+     _A Pilgrim's Reliquary._ By the REV. T. H. WHYTE, M.A. London:
+     1845.
+
+     THE WALLS OF ROME.
+
+     "I wonder whether it be the fault of mine own inattention, or the
+     absence of good taste in others, that I have heard and read so
+     little of the Walls of Rome! To me they rank among the few, out of
+     all the Wonders of the Eternal City that have exceeded my
+     expectations. Solitude, their peculiar characteristic, has great
+     charms for a companionless enthusiast like myself: it is, moreover,
+     a description of solitude, the very reverse of melancholy. Mile
+     after mile have I repeatedly roamed along the outer Pomoerium of
+     those solitary rampires, and encountered perhaps a goatherd and his
+     pretty flock, the tinkle of whose bells formed the only
+     accompaniment to the honey notes of the blackbird:--or, perhaps, in
+     sonorous solemnity, some great Bell would suddenly boom upon the
+     silence, and be taken up in various tones from a hundred quarters,
+     no vestige, mean time, of Minster or Monastery being visible;
+     nothing but that enormous Adamantine Circlet rearing itself into
+     the sky on one side, and the gateways and walls of villas and
+     vineyards occupying the other. You might fancy those tolling chimes
+     belonging to some City hidden by Enchantment.
+
+     "Still, as I have proceeded in my mood, half enjoying, half
+     moralizing the scene, those hundred towers, like Titan warders
+     placed around the Seven Hills, would each after each look down upon
+     me from their high and silent stations; till, as I came to know
+     them, they seemed to meet my gaze with the sedate and pleasant
+     welcome of a venerable friend. They were the incessant associates
+     of my solitude, and I was never wearied of them. Of a surety their
+     vast Circuit (fifteen miles) gives ample time and space enough for
+     rumination!
+
+     "Their colossal cubits are the most perfect exemplar of
+     Architectural sublimity. Their dismantled Battlements have no
+     Watchman but Antiquity, no Herald but Tradition, and hear no
+     clamour louder than the Church or Convent bells, or the dirge which
+     the wind wails over them through the melancholy Cypress and the
+     moaning Pine. The broad old belt of short flowery turf at the base,
+     the Violet, the Gilliflower, and the vermilion spotted Mignonette,
+     on their breast, and the chaplet of wilding shrubs upon their
+     brows, give them a charm in the most common-place observation. With
+     me, truant as I have been to the Classic page, it seemed a natural
+     process of my desultory mind, to revert from a contemplation of
+     such pensive dreamy realities of waking enjoyment as I have
+     described, to visions, startling in their august grandeur, of the
+     everlasting past,--visions of their great Architect, Aurelian; of
+     their greater Restorer, Belisarius!
+
+     "These monstrous walls! I cannot divest myself of a certain awe and
+     fascination, as if of a supernatural appearance, which attracts and
+     detains me about them; not even the Colosseum more. There seems
+     something so ghastly, so spectral, in the mockery of their
+     unnecessary circuit, their impregnable strength, their countless
+     towers, arrogating to themselves the circumference of a day's
+     journey--and all for what? To guard a city, which, once dropsied
+     with grandeur, has now shrunk with the disease into comparative
+     atrophy; a city, which, having boastfully demanded their aid, has
+     now abandoned them for miles. It is as though one should wrap a
+     triumphal robe about a corpse, or place a giant's helmet upon a
+     skeleton's skull. It is no poetical figure to look upon them as an
+     eternal satire upon the great littleness of empire. The melancholy
+     pride of their dimensions needs not the hollow wind, which howls
+     around their towers, or the wondering sun, which lingers over their
+     shrubby ramparts, to proclaim in the ears of thrones and senates
+     the warning of Rome's ambition, the moral of Rome's downfall! It is
+     but a poor recompense to their present unhonoured solitude, that
+     their melancholy battlements are emblazed at intervals with the
+     pontifical escutcheons. Those triple tiaras and cross keys, so
+     perpetually recurring, do not half so much consecrate as they are
+     themselves consecrated by the lonely bulwarks of this desolated
+     city of the Caesars!"
+
+
+THE VILLA BORGHESE.
+
+     "With the exception of an ostentatious parade of paltry equipages,
+     tarnished liveries, and wretched horses on the Corso, and a frantic
+     attempt at an opera, Rome, in May, is a picturesque receptacle for
+     monks, and goatherds, and nightingales, and bells. Like some
+     haunted place, it appears to be beloved and frequented only by the
+     apparitions of an obsolete race. Yet many minds will find it
+     infinitely more congenial thus, than amidst all the popular
+     splendours of its holy week.
+
+     "Her tranquillity, nay, her very desolation, is enchanting. The
+     summer's-day circuit of the Seven Hills seems all your own. You
+     wander whither you will, meeting few, and disturbed by none. In
+     short, the very antiquity of the place is one perpetual novelty,
+     and its grave monotony a serene recreation. I write this in the
+     Villa Borghese, beneath groves of acacias, redolent with odours,
+     and booming with myriads of bees, the yellow hay in aromatic
+     quiles, pitched like pavilions below the old red walls of Rome, and
+     nightingales and blackbirds contending in gushes of ecstatic song!
+
+     "Though not new to me, I had little conception of the intrinsic
+     loveliness of the Villa Borghese till to-day. Picture to yourself a
+     large village of the most variegated and romantic character;
+     Church, casino, albergo, and farm, scattered amidst the turfy
+     glades of a forest; and that forest composed of such trees as the
+     beech, the elm, the ilex, and, above all, the sovereign pinaster,
+     whose enormous trunks seem to have _condescended_ to arrange
+     themselves into avenues; the most charmingly artificial glades of
+     the glossiest verdure, and vistas haunted by legions of dim waning
+     statues; hero or demigod, nymph or faun, for ever intermingling but
+     never interfering with each other; their various places of
+     rendezvous emblazed with flowers of a thousand colours, and
+     flashing with fountains of the most graceful fancies possible;
+     while every vista discloses some antique portico, or rotunda, or
+     vestibule of those gems that men call temples! Picture these scenes
+     on some such May-day as this,
+
+        'When God hath shower'd the earth;'
+
+     the dark evergreens rejoicing in the rain-drops, and the new-born
+     leaves of silky green, transparent with the moisture, which had
+     reluctantly ceased to shine on their delicate tapestries. Crown all
+     this with a country palace, of lofty Italian magnificence, a
+     treasure-house of antiquity, painting, and sculpture, disclosing
+     the statues, frescoes, and gilding, of its noble facade and massive
+     campaniles, at the extremity of its darkest grove of evergreens,
+     glittering in this rainbow sunlight, and you may have some
+     impression of the Villa Borghese.
+
+     "Such silence and solemnity, that you would never dream you were
+     near the busy haunt of men, were it not, that a long linked
+     diapason of bells, modulated by every possible inflection of their
+     lofty language, convinced you that you were basking amidst all this
+     voluptuous quiet, beneath the walls of a concealed city, and that
+     city--ROME!"
+
+
+THE RUINS.--THE CAMPAGNA.
+
+     "This afternoon we drove along the Via Appia Nova. The sun, rolling
+     his chariot amidst a cavalcade of wild clouds, along the ruddy
+     array of shattered arches, variegating the grassy plain with its
+     uncouth palatial and sepulchral ruins, in ebony and gold,
+     illuminated the purple and green recesses of the Sabine hills, and
+     caressing with capricious fleetness their woody towers and towns,
+     bequeathed to the north a calm blue vault, wherein, as in some
+     regal hall of state, the dome of St Peter's, the rotunda of the
+     Colosseum, the vast basilicas of Santa Maria Maggiore, and San
+     Giovanni Laterana, that embattled sepulchre of Cecilia, and those
+     lofty masses of the Pamfilipine, which hovered in the horizon like
+     a feathery vapour, proclaim the illustrious domicile of Rome.
+
+     "The Temple of the Divus Rediculus (or whatever other title it may
+     rejoice in) is one of those lovely little phantasies of
+     architecture that one might imagine a London citizen would have
+     coveted for a summer-house. The brilliant contrast between its
+     vermilion pilasters and its pale yellow wall, the delicate moulding
+     of its slender bricks and the elaborate elegance of its decoration,
+     not to omit its pleasing, though diminutive proportions, arising
+     from the wild green turf of this melancholy region, can scarcely
+     fail of affecting with at least a spark of fancy, the flattest
+     spirit of this work-day world. For my own part, I should be much
+     less disposed to pronounce it a temple than a tomb; and, in fact,
+     the whole appearance of this wide dull tract seems eminently
+     adapted to sepulchral piles. It is most melancholy, most funereal;
+     and even that glorious sun, and those majestic aqueducts, soaring,
+     as they do, to salute his lustre, and to emulate his glory, cannot
+     efface the feeling, that such a scene, and such memorials, should
+     be visited only in the gloom of a sad and stormy sky; either amidst
+     the sympathetic moans of an autumnal tempest, or the waning and
+     mournful glimpses of an autumnal twilight."
+
+
+THE COLOSSEUM.
+
+     "It was the twilight, that brief, that exquisite interval, which
+     flings its purporoseate veil between the palace gates of day and
+     night. You might have fancied it the car of Diana rolling on to
+     some Olympian festival, and preceded by Venus, the only other
+     planet visible in the sky. What a canopy!--Not the gaudiest
+     velabrum that the ostentatious munificence of her Caesars extended
+     above its gilded cordage, ever equalled the empyrean pomp of this
+     soft sky. Never could the artificial rains of perfumed water
+     surpass the dewy fragrance that steals around from evening's
+     thousand urns.
+
+     "I say it was the twilight when we entered these gloomy corridors,
+     whose solemn circuit uncoils its colonnades around the lordly pile;
+     but before we had traversed half their extent night began her
+     reign, and when we entered the arena it was difficult to say
+     whether those faintly flushed skies, that single sparkling star, or
+     the pallid hectic of the youthful moon produced the pathetic light
+     that illuminated this enormous architecture.
+
+     "As it now stands, the Colosseum is _indeed_ a wreck, rendered
+     absolutely frightful by repair; and whether by sunlight or
+     moonlight, compels you to lament the 'melancholy activity' which,
+     utterly inadequate to the restoration of its pristine glory, has
+     deprived it of all those adventitious ornaments, trees, and
+     herbage, and a thousand beautiful flowers, which, if they could not
+     conceal, at least served to soften its injuries, and which
+     mitigated the desolation they were unable to repair.
+
+     "Of course a thousand imaginations and memories hunt each other
+     through one's head and heart in such a place and at such an hour as
+     this, but to-night there were realities, which, where they do not
+     dispel, must always reinforce such phantasies.
+
+     "Before the steps of the great cross in the centre, garnished with
+     all the emblems of the passion, knelt a respectably dressed group,
+     apparently father, mother, and daughter, absorbed in a rapture of
+     devotion. The lamps were lighted before the fourteen shrines, which
+     Benedict the Fourteenth erected around the arena, and flung a dusky
+     light upon the successive stagioni of our Saviour's sufferings, by
+     which each is distinguished; and we saw a solitary peasant, in the
+     dark costume of his country, evidently faint and toil-worn, rise
+     from his oraisons at _one_ shrine, only to sink upon his knees
+     before _another_.
+
+     "Ah! it was at once a simple and sagacious stroke of that priestly
+     sovereign, who, in these prophaned ruins, planted the Cross, and,
+     by a mightier spell than the magician's wand, arrested the rapacity
+     of its patrician plunderers!"
+
+Do not sketches such as these revive for us all those feelings which
+Rome awakened in ourselves, bringing back the clime, the sky, the
+loneliness, the mingled feeling of grandeur and situation--the gentle
+melancholy with which the eternal city impresses even the least
+imaginative mind? To us they appear to embody more of the poetry of
+travel than many a work which figures under the mask of poesy.
+
+How much has been written on Venice, from Schiller and Radcliffe to
+Madame de Stael and Madame Dudevant! and yet we hardly know if any one,
+with the exception of the last, has more completely imbued his mind with
+the peculiar spirit of Venice, or reflected its impressions with more
+truth than Mr Whyte. Schiller, indeed, and Mrs Radcliffe, had never
+witnessed the scenes they described; their portraiture is the result
+merely of reading and description, warmed and vivified by the glow of
+their own imagination. Hence the glimpses of Venice conveyed in
+Schiller's beautiful fragment of the _Armenian_, are mere general
+outlines--true enough so far as they go, but faintly drawn, and
+destitute, as we might say, of local colour. Mrs Radcliffe's moonlight
+landscapes--masques and music--exhibit with great beauty one aspect of
+the city, but only one.
+
+Very different are the Venetian _Sketches_ of Madame Dudevant. She has
+drunk in the inspiration of Venice on the spot, has penetrated the very
+heart of its mystery, and reproduces the impressions which an intimacy
+with its peculiarities produces, with a degree of truth, force, and
+poetical feeling, that impart the most captivating charm to her Venetian
+_Letters_. Mr Whyte's _Fragments_ exhibit much of the same sensibility,
+the same just perception of the spirit of Venice; and though they have
+not that brilliancy of style which the pictures of the French authoress
+possess, there is often even in this respect great beauty both of
+thought and expression. Mr Whyte, indeed, took the right course to
+enable him thoroughly to understand and appreciate Venice. Instead of
+confining himself to the stately vision of the Grand Canal, or the
+wizard magnificence of St Mark's, he seems to have habitually traced all
+the lesser canals; the little Rii, which, like small veins, shoot off
+from the great arteries of the Grand Canal and the Giudecca, carrying
+the circulation of the Adriatic through this unique city; exploring
+their high, dark, and narrow recesses, pondering on the strange
+contrasts of misery and magnificence, squalid filth and luxurious
+ornament, which they present side by side; and heightening the
+impression thus created, by selecting all varieties of aspects, from the
+bright flashing sunshine pouring down into these dark chasms, as into a
+well, to the shadowy evening, the magic contrasts of moonlight, the
+gloom of wind and rain howling through the balconies, driving the ocean
+wave impetuously through these water-ways, and beating against their
+thousand bridges; or those thunder-storms--nowhere more magnificent
+than at Venice--where the gleam of the lightning forms so fearful a
+contrast with the Cimmerian gloom of the canal, and the peals are
+reverberated with such magnificence from those piles of masonry with
+which they are lined. There is, indeed, no spectacle that can be
+conceived, more impressive than some of these smaller canals,
+particularly if you enter them towards sundown. You glide into a gulf of
+buildings, rising high on each side--almost meeting above your
+head--most of them ruinous and dilapidated, sinking by piecemeal into
+the green element which they have displaced for centuries, but which,
+through the slow agency of the sap and mine, is visibly resuming his
+oozy empire. You pass some church with its unfinished marble face.
+Again, a set of poor rickety and mean edifices follow; when suddenly you
+come upon some pile of massy grandeur, looming gigantic in the twilight,
+in whose colossal, but beautiful proportions, you can trace the hand of
+Sammichele or Sansovino. You come nearer, and perceive the fretted
+windows broken, stuffed with rags, and patched with paper; rough boards
+nailed up against the gilded beams; grand portals, of which the doors
+have disappeared, allowing the eye to penetrate into a dark perspective
+within: perhaps a sign-board over-tops a glorious cornice of grim masks
+or armorial bearings; and from latticed windows, on which Palladio had
+lavished all the delicate beauty of his architecture, some flaunting and
+gaudy rags are hung out to dry. You enquire what is the building, and to
+whom it belongs, and you are answered: It is the palace of one of the
+classic nobility of ancient Venice--now tenanted by a Hebrew, who lets
+out the apartments at so many _lire_ a month!
+
+But let Mr Whyte speak for himself.
+
+
+THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS.
+
+     "The Canal Orfano, the Ponte di Sospiri! what a day to behold these
+     long pictured images of darknes and terror, for the first time!
+     Such a blaze of May sunshine, such a soothing repose broken by a
+     few distant bells or the nearer laugh of the gay Gondoliers. I
+     looked upon the narrow, immured waters under the Bridge of Sighs,
+     then to the high arch that like the heavy embossed clasp of some
+     old solemn book united its decorated Gothic Piles (those volumes of
+     bloody Story) on either side, and instead of shuddering at
+     inquisitions and racks, and Piombi and Pozzi, as in common decency
+     I ought, away fled my intractable thoughts to merry England's old
+     Sabbath Chimes, her village spires, village greens, village elm
+     lanes, and decent peasantry.
+
+     "Yet those high and antique abodes of venerable crime, those wild
+     barbaric piles, in which old age palliates and almost hallows
+     infamy! giving it somewhat the same prescriptive sanctuary as
+     Milton bestows on the Palace of his Pandemonium! That cruel
+     slinking flood, the only firmament the stone vaulted pits below
+     were conscious of! Each looked as malignant and dangerous as they
+     could, beneath the triumph of such a glorious sun; that light to
+     which their aspect once was hateful, and their deeds untold.
+
+     "My gondolier dipt his oar into the canal just under the Bridge of
+     Sighs, and at half its length it was arrested by a hollow substance
+     which he told me was the marble roof of the Pozzi, whose
+     unfathomable tiers of dungeons stretched one under another beneath
+     this dreadful water gallery. It was not here, however, that the
+     secret midnight drownings took place, (as I had fancied,) but in
+     that widest, deepest portion of the Canal Orfano, far out in the
+     Lagoons situated between the towery Isola Servilio and the lovely
+     groves and monastery of San Grazia. This murder-hole of the
+     Adriatic is called Marani, and to this day it is forbidden to fish
+     in its accursed depth. To-day it looks not only innocent, but
+     gloriously bright.
+
+     "I was out in the Lagoons this evening, for the purpose of visiting
+     by twilight that solitary Isle of St Clements, where Monks exchange
+     the voluntary seclusion for penal dungeons, (l'un vaut bien
+     l'autre!) the sky glowing with its last light, lingered over its
+     tall belfry and few old trees, and a sea as smooth as a crystal
+     pavement slept at the base of its grim walls, all in vain;
+     Campanile, Convent, Grove, and that pyramidal Powder Magazine,
+     looked obdurately sullen enough to tell their own uses, had I not
+     known their chronicle."
+
+
+THE SMALL CANALS.
+
+     "I thence directed my gondolier to row under the Bridge of Sighs,
+     through the intricacies of the interior canals; and if ever a man
+     wished to be fed to the full with solemn, ay, appalling gloom, he
+     may be gratified by following my example. From the weltering
+     surface of a labyrinth of channels, let him look up till it wearies
+     him, to the awful roofs of the mansions, whose walls of
+     immeasurable height, and scarfed with black masses of shadow and
+     glaring moonlight, seem to close over his head and to barricade his
+     path, as they interlace and confound each other in endless
+     circuits; and he will have quite enough to kindle the torch of his
+     darker imagination, even if he did not know those tremendous gulfs
+     of masonry to be Venice, and those heart-sinking portals and
+     windows of barbaric sculpture, the homes of her inexorable
+     oligarchy. Yes, you may anticipate Naples, you may picture to
+     yourself Rome, and Florence may have fulfilled much of your
+     previous fancies; but no conception can prepare you for Venice.
+
+     "What enchantment lingers still about every stone of this mourning
+     city! My affection for her dismantled palaces is almost morbid.
+
+         'Like an unrighteous and an unburied ghost,'
+
+     do I nightly haunt that Tartarus of antique masonry, the interior
+     canals of Venice, uniformly entering or departing from them by the
+     Bridge of Sighs. To me their hideous height, their appalling gloom,
+     (for the meridian cannot touch their waters, and the moon glides
+     like a spectre over their huge parapets,) their bewildering
+     intricacies, their joyless weltering floods, the countless bridges,
+     each with its sculptured monster-heads yawning as if to swallow up
+     the silently sweeping gondola in its arch of shadow; their deep
+     dead silence only broken by the sullen plash of the oar, the dreary
+     word of warning uttered by the gondoliers before turning a sharp
+     angle, or the shrill rattling creak of innumerable crickets; but
+     principally those old Gothic posterns with deep-ribbed archways,
+     like rat-holes in proportion to the enormous piles, and their
+     thresholds level with the water, some blockaded with ponderous
+     doors, others developing their long withdrawn passage by a lamp,
+     that not only makes darkness _visible_, but _frightful_; while
+     others (as in the Martinengo palace to-night) disclose wide
+     pillared halls, and stately staircases, and moonlight courts --to
+     me, I say, all these attributes of the interior of Venice are
+     irresistible. Were you to see these old porticos by a summer's
+     daylight, you would not fail to find an old fig tree in broad leaf
+     and full of fruit, or a lattice-work of vine, most pleasantly green
+     in its deep court, where sun and shadow hold divided reign; while
+     the hundred shaped windows of those gloomy walls are variegated
+     with geranium and carnation, and perhaps a sweet dark eye fairer
+     than either.
+
+     "They are so obviously the symbols of her hollow oligarchy itself,
+     which to the world and to the sun in heaven, (like the brave
+     palaces on her chief canal,) displayed a gallant guise, at once
+     sublime, glittering, and august; while, within, its tortuous policy
+     was twisted into murky and inextricable labyrinths, of which
+     Necessity, Secresy, and Suspicion, formed the keystone; where
+     Danger lurked at every winding, and whose darkling portals were
+     watched by Mystery, and Stratagem, and Disgrace, and Fate!
+
+     "It is impossible to scrutinize these dread abysms of mansions,
+     without experiencing that strange mixture of repugnance and
+     attraction which certain spectacles are wont to call forth in
+     animated nature. It is impossible to mark their melancholy and
+     downfallen, yet portentous aspect, without deeming them at once the
+     theatre and monument of those 'secret, black, and midnight crimes,'
+     which history and tradition ascribe to the domestic, as well as to
+     the state policy, of this Gehenna of fourteen centuries dominion.
+
+        'Visendus Ater flumine languido
+        Cocytus errans.'
+
+     "Perhaps it would be difficult to conceive any thing more abhorrent
+     to the soul and body of man, than the time, manner, and place, of
+     death, distinguishing those executions which have rendered the
+     gulfs of the Canal Orfano immemorably infamous.
+
+     "To me, the element, in its most serene and smiling state, wears a
+     look of furtive menace; and I am free to confess, that even when
+     gliding on a mid-summer night over that sweetest Lake of
+     Derwentwater, beneath the shadows of its moonlit isles and fair
+     pavilions, I have not been without a certain sensation of
+     uncomfortable awe. But what must have been the feelings of the
+     victim, whether criminal or innocent, who, from this accurst
+     Maranna, cast around him his last straining look of agony, and
+     uttered his last cry of supplication or despair! The conviction
+     that his family, parent, wife, or son, were at that hour of horror
+     in profound ignorance _sometimes_ of his very absence, _often_ of
+     its cause, or at least, only perplexed with conjecture, and
+     _always_ unconscious of its horrible event, must have constituted
+     no trifling pang in that mortal hour. Then that old familiar,
+     though melancholy, water, more terrible to his feelings than the
+     dreariest wilderness of ocean! For, girdling the dusky horizon,
+     could he not see the domes and campaniles of Venice, perhaps the
+     very lamps in his own palace windows, from whose festal saloons he
+     had just been decoyed; just distant enough to be beyond the reach
+     of help? but too, too near for that despairing gaze that recognized
+     and bade adieu for ever at the same glance? There too were not
+     those nestling lovely islands, each with its convent tower gleaming
+     to the moon, and from which the sonorous bells were tolling, the
+     sacred Anthems swelling for the last time on his ear! Alas! those
+     chaunted masses were not for _his_ conflicting soul; yea, it would
+     have a strange comfort to feel that passing bell was proclaiming to
+     the world that his spirit was parting from its scarcely worn weeds!
+     But no! even that miserable solace was prohibited to _him_; he was
+     to be obliterated from society, and his inexorable judges had
+     decreed that society was not to know that he was gone. No grave for
+     his dust; no monument for his name, to palliate his faults and
+     perpetuate his virtues. The ghastly element that moaned and
+     shuddered under the Gondola, as if remorseful for its own
+     involuntary cruelties, was to spread its weltering pall over his
+     hearseless bones."
+
+
+THE BELLS OF VENICE.
+
+     "The islands constituting the Venetian Archipelago are about fifty
+     in number, of various size and extremely picturesque. They were
+     each of them the seat of a monastery or nunnery, till Napoleon
+     came, who overthrew these saintly receptacles, converting them into
+     forts, mills, public gardens, &c. In short, these islands are among
+     the most beautiful contingents of this magic scene. Each has its
+     graceful campanile, and its various structures of castle, convent,
+     mill, or summer-house; each its due girdle of blue sea, fenced by
+     walls that rise round its margent, and embroidered with groves and
+     arbours of the most delightful green.
+
+     "This evening I cruised past many of them in my gondola after
+     sunset; and was particularly struck with the beauty of the large
+     Isle of Murano, and its attendant San Michaele (the latter one
+     entire cemetery,) whose thin tall campaniles throw up their slender
+     figures in fine relief against the long wavy purple of the
+     Acharnean Hills in the west, at the head of the Adriatic.
+
+     "Night gathered round, as we floated under that prodigious monument
+     of the departed majesty of the Republic, the arsenal, whose
+     ramparts high and endless, and as ugly as either, lay weltering
+     many a rood upon their wooden piles. Every bell in the city was
+     tolling for Nones, and sang aloud to the surrounding islands, whose
+     campaniles replied with sympathetic thunder, a solemn diapason of
+     Corybantine brass, to my taste, wonderfully in unison with the
+     funeral mole of the defunct Arsenal, the repose of the purple
+     mountains, and the fainting splendour of that twinned vault and
+     pavement, the opal sea and sky, smooth, soft, and bright enough for
+     Juno and Amphitrite to hold a gossip, each from her own imperial
+     element.
+
+     "Probably it is to the peculiarity of its situation, that one may
+     attribute the sweetly solemn melodies produced by the bells of
+     Venice. Flinging their prolonged notes down those immense hollows
+     of architecture, sweeping round their narrow streets, and floating
+     over their liquid pavement, they derive every advantage from that
+     element which always so fondly detains and dallies with music, in
+     addition to the depth and power with which they are endowed, by
+     those pillared and winding concaves, that, like the tubes of some
+     vast organ, receive and redouble the airy strain.
+
+     "Whatever be the case, I never felt any thing so fully coming up to
+     my idea, of 'most musical, most melancholy.'"
+
+We bid Mr Whyte adieu, in the hope that, if a second edition of these
+volumes be called for, he will subject them to a very thorough
+revision--connecting together many passages, which, though relating to
+the same subject, are at present unnaturally disjoined--omitting much,
+which, instead of heightening, interferes with the effect which it is
+his object to produce--and, above all, eschewing the indulgence of
+pleasantries which certainly produces no corresponding impression on his
+readers.
+
+_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work._
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume
+59, No. 364, February 1846, by Various
+
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