II.

Twenty-five years have passed away, with all their changes--their many changes; and now,

'Gone are the heads of silvery hair, And the young that were have a brow of care:'

And the babe of twenty-five years ago is now a man, ready to rush into the thickest and the hottest of the great battle of life.

It was Christmas time; the trees were bare on Woodthorpe Chase; the lawns were whitened by a recent shower of snow, and crisped by a sharp frost; the stars were coming out in the cold cloudless sky; and two enormous fires, high piled with Christmas logs, blazed, crackled, and roared in the huge oaken chimneys of the great oak hall. Mrs. Beauchamp and her son sat together in the drawing-room, in momentary expectation of the arrival of their Christmas guests--a party of cousins, who lived at about ten miles' distance from Woodthorpe Hall. Edmund Beauchamp was now a very promising young man, having hitherto fulfilled the hopes and answered the cares of his fond and anxious mother. He had already reaped laurels at school and college, and his enlightened and liberal views, and generous, enthusiastic mind, gave earnest of a career alike honourable and useful. In person and features, though both were agreeable, he did not much resemble his mother; but he had the same large, soft, thoughtful eyes, the same outward tranquillity of demeanour hiding the same earnest spirit. At present he was silent, and seemed meditative. Mrs. Beauchamp gazed at him long and fondly, and as she gazed, her mother's heart swelled with love and pride, and her eyes glistened with heartfelt joy. At last she remarked, "I hope the Sharpes's new governess is as nice a person as the old one."

"Oh, much nicer!" cried Edmund suddenly, and as if awakening from a reverie.

"Indeed! I used to think Miss Smith a very nice person."

"Oh, so she was--very good-natured and obliging; but Miss Dalton is altogether a different sort of person."

"I wonder you never told me you found her so agreeable."

"I--Oh, I did not----That is, you never asked me."

"Is she young?"

"Yes--not much above twenty I should think."

"Is she pretty?"

"I--I don't exactly know," he said, hesitating and colouring; "I suppose--most persons----I should think she is." "How foolish I am!" thought Edmund. "What will my mother think of all this?" He then continued in a more composed manner--"She is a very excellent girl at least. She is the daughter of a London merchant--a remarkably honourable man--who has been ruined by these bad times; and though brought up in luxury, and with the expectation of large fortune, she has conformed to her circumstances in the most cheerful manner, and supports, it seems, with the fruits of her talents and industry, two little sisters at school. The Sharpes are all so fond of her, and she is the greatest favorite imaginable with the children." Edmund spoke with unwonted warmth. His mother looked at him half-sympathisingly, half-anxiously. She seemed about to speak, when the sound of carriage wheels, and the loud knock of a footman at the hall-door, announced the arrival of the Sharpes, and Mrs. Beauchamp and her son hastened into the hall to welcome their guests. Mrs. Beauchamp's eye sought for the stranger,

## partly because she was a stranger, and partly from the interest in her

her son's conversation had created. But Miss Dalton was the last to enter.

Edmund had not erred in saying she was a pretty girl. Even beneath the cumbrous load of cloaks and furs in which she was now enveloped, you could detect the exquisite proportions of her _petite_ figure, and the sprightly grace of her carriage; while a pretty winter bonnet set off to advantage a face remarkable for the intelligence and vivacity of its expression. Her features, though not regular, were small, while the brilliancy of her colour, though her complexion was that of a brunette, lent a yet brighter glow to her sparkling dark eyes, and contrasted well with the glossy black ringlets which shaded her animated countenance. At this moment, however, her little head was carried somewhat haughtily, and there was a sort of something not unlike bashfulness or awkwardness in her manner which seemed hardly natural to it. The truth was, Miss Dalton had come very unwillingly to share in the festivities of Woodthorpe Hall. She was not acquainted with Mrs. Beauchamp, and report said she was a very dignified lady, which Fanny Dalton interpreted to mean a very proud one; and from her change of circumstances, rendered unduly sensitive, she dreaded in her hostess the haughty neglect or still haughtier condescension by which vulgar and shallow minds mark out their sense of another's social inferiority. And therefore it was that she held her head so high, and exhibited the constraint of manner to which I have alluded. But all her pride and shyness quickly melted before the benign presence and true heart-politeness of Mrs. Beauchamp. Dignified the latter certainly was; but her dignity was tempered with the utmost benevolence of expression, and the most winning sweetness of manner; and when she took the hand of her little stranger-guest between both of hers, and holding it kindly, said, "You are the only stranger here, Miss Dalton; but for my sake you must try to feel at home," an affection for Mrs. Beauchamp entered into the heart of the young girl, which has continued ever since steadily to increase. That she should conceive such an affection was not unnatural, for there was something in the appearance and manners of Mrs. Beauchamp, combined with her position in life, calculated to strike the imagination and touch the feelings of a warm-hearted and romantic girl such as Fanny Dalton, more especially one circumstanced as she was. Even her previous prejudice, with the reaction natural to a generous mind, was likely to heighten her subsequent admiration. But it is not so easy to account for the sudden interest the pretty governess created at first sight in the heart of her hostess. Many girls as pretty and as intelligent looking as Miss Dalton she had seen before, without their having inspired a spark of the tenderness she felt towards this unknown stranger. She could not comprehend it herself. She was not prone "to take fancies," as the phrase is; and yet, whatever might be the case, certain it was that there was a nameless something about this girl, which seemed to touch one of the deepest chords of her nature, and to cause her heart to yearn towards her with something like a mother's love. She felt that if Miss Dalton were all that she had heard, and that if she should really prove her son's choice, he should not be gainsaid by her.

The Christmas party at Woodthorpe Hall was generally a merry one; and this year it was even merrier than usual. Fanny Dalton was the life of the party; her disposition was naturally a lively one, and this hour of sunshine in her clouded day called forth all its vivacity. But Fanny was not only clever, lively, and amiable; her conduct and manners occasionally displayed traits of spirit--nay, of pride; the latter, however, of a generous rather than an egotistical description. Nothing was so certain to call it forth as any tale of meanness or oppression. One morning Miss Sharpe had been relating an anecdote of a gentleman in the neighborhood who had jilted (odious word!) an amiable and highly estimable young lady, to whom he had long been engaged, in order to marry a wealthy and titled widow. There were many aggravating circumstances attending the whole affair, which had contributed to excite still more against the offender the indignation of all right-thinking persons. The unfortunate young lady was reported to be dying of a broken heart.

Fanny, who had been all along listening to the narration with an eager and interested countenance, now exclaimed--"Dying of a broken heart! Poor thing! But if I were she, _I_ would not break my heart--I would scorn him as something far beneath me, poor and unimportant as I am. No, I might break my heart for the loss of a true lover, but never for the loss of a false one!" As Fanny's eyes shone, and her lip curled with a lofty contempt, as her naturally clear, merry tones grew deeper and stronger with the indignation she expressed, a mist seemed suddenly to be cleared away from the eyes of Mrs. Beauchamp, and in that slight young girl she beheld the breathing image of one whom she had once intimately known and dearly loved--in those indignant accents she seemed to recognize the tones of a voice long since heard, but the echoes of which yet lingered in her heart. Why she had so loved Fanny Dalton was no mystery now--she saw in her but the gentler type of him whom she had once believed the master of her destiny--even of Philip Hayforth, long unheard of, but never forgotten. But what connection could there be between Philip Hayforth and Fanny Dalton? and whence this strange resemblance, which lay not so much in form or in feature, as in that nameless, intangible similarity of expression, gesture, manner, and voice, so frequently exhibited by members of the same family.

As soon as Mrs. Beauchamp could quit the table, she withdrew to her own room, where she remained for some time in deep meditation, the result of which was a determination to fathom the mystery, if mystery there was. It was just possible, too, that the attempt might assist her to find a key to the riddle of her own destiny.

Accordingly, on the afternoon of the same day, she took an opportunity of being alone with Miss Dalton and her son, to say to the former--"I think you told me, my dear, that your father was alive?"

"Oh yes, thank God, _he_ is alive! How I wish you knew him, Mrs. Beauchamp! I think you would like him, and I am _sure_ he would like and admire you."

"Does your father at all resemble you in appearance?"

"I am not sure. I have been told that I was like him, and I always consider it a great compliment; for papa is still a very handsome man, and was of course even handsomer when he was young, and before his hair became grey. I have a miniature likeness of him, taken before his marriage, which I have with me, and will show you, if you will so far indulge my vanity."

Mrs. Beauchamp having replied that she should like exceedingly to see it, Fanny tripped away, and returned in a few minutes, carrying in her hand a handsome, but old-fashioned, morocco case. Mrs. Beauchamp had never seen it before, but she well remembered having given directions for the making of a case of that very size, shape, and color, for a miniature which was to have been painted for her. Her heart began to beat. She seemed upon the brink of a discovery. Fanny now opened the case, and placing it before Mrs. Beauchamp, exclaimed, "Now, isn't he a handsome man?" But Mrs. Beauchamp could not answer. One glance had been sufficient. A cold mist gathered before her eyes, and she was obliged to lean for support, upon the back of a chair.

"Dear Mrs. Beauchamp, are you ill?"

"My dear mother!" cried Edmund.

"It is nothing," she answered, quickly recovering herself; "only a little faintness." And then with the self-command which long habit had made easy, she sat down and continued with her usual calm sweetness--"I could almost fancy I had seen your father; but I do not remember ever knowing any one of the name of Dalton but yourself."

"Oh, but perhaps you might have seen him before he changed his name; and yet it seems hardly likely. His name used to be Hayforth; but by the will of his former partner, who, dying without near relations, left papa all his money, he took the name of Dalton. The money is all gone now, to be sure," she continued with the faintest possible sigh; "but we all loved the dear old man, and so we still keep his name."

Fanny had seated herself beside Mrs. Beauchamp, and as she finished speaking, the latter, obeying the impulse of her heart, drew her towards her and kissed her. Fanny, whose feelings were not only easily touched, and very strong, but even unusually demonstrative, threw her arms round Mrs. Beauchamp, and cried, with tears in her eyes, "How kind you are to me, Mrs. Beauchamp! You could hardly be kinder, if you were my mother."

"Dear Fanny," she answered in a low and affectionate tone, "I wish, indeed, I were your mother!"

As she spoke, Edmund, who had been standing in a window apart, made a sudden movement towards the two ladies, but as suddenly checked himself. At this moment his eyes encountered those of his mother, and colouring violently, he abruptly quitted the room. This little scene passed quite unnoticed by Fanny, who at the instant was thinking only of Mrs. Beauchamp, and of her own gentle mother, now beneath the sod.

The daughter of Philip Hayforth became a frequent guest at Woodthorpe Hall, spending most of her Sundays with Mrs. Beauchamp, who would frequently drive over to the Sharpes's for her of a Saturday afternoon, and send her back on the Monday morning. She was invited to spend the Easter holidays at the Hall--a most welcome invitation, as she was not to return home till the midsummer vacation. A most agreeable time were these Easter holidays! Never had Fanny seemed more bright and joyous. Her presence operated as perpetual sunshine on the more pensive natures of the mother and son. It was therefore a great surprise to Mrs. Beauchamp when, one day at luncheon, about a week before the time fixed for the termination of her visit, Fanny announced her intention of leaving Woodthorpe that afternoon, if her friend could spare her the carriage.

"I can certainly spare it, Fanny; but I should like to know the reason of this sudden determination?"

"You must excuse my telling you, Mrs. Beauchamp; but I hope you will believe me when I say that it is from a sense of duty." As she spoke, she raised her head with a proud look, her eyes flashed, and she spoke in the haughty tone which always brought before Mrs. Beauchamp the image of her early lover; for it was in her proud moments that Fanny most resembled her father.

"Far be it from me, Fanny," she replied, with her wonted sweetness and benignity, "to ask any one to tamper with duty; but, my child, our faults, our _pride_ frequently mislead us. You shall go to-night, if you please; but I wish, for my sake, you could stay at least till to-morrow morning. I have not offended you, Fanny?"

"Oh, dearest Mrs. Beauchamp!" and the poor girl burst into tears. "I wish--I _wish_ I could only show you how I love you--how grateful I am for all your goodness; but you will never, never know."

Mrs. Beauchamp looked anxiously at her, and began, "Fanny"----But suddenly stopped, as if she knew not how to proceed. Immediately afterwards the young girl left the room, silently and passionately kissing Mrs. Beauchamp's hand as she passed her on her way to the door.

A few hours later in the day, as Mrs. Beauchamp sat reading in her boudoir, according to her custom at that particular hour, Edmund abruptly entered the little room in a state of agitation quite foreign to his ordinary disposition and habits.

"Mother!" he cried.

"My love! what is the matter?"

"Mother! I love Fanny Dalton--I love her with all my soul. I think her not only the loveliest and most charming of women, but the best and truest! I feel that she might make my life not only happier, but better. Oh, mother! is not love as real a thing as either wealth or station? Is it not as sufficient for all noble works? Is it not in some shape the only motive for all real improvement? It seems to me that such is the lesson I have been learning from you all my life long."

"And in that you have learned it I am deeply grateful, and far more than repaid for all my care and anxiety on your account; and now thank you for your confidence, my dear Edmund, though I think you might have bestowed it after a calmer fashion. It would have been better, I think, to have said all those violent things to Fanny than to me."

"I _have_ said more than all these to Fanny, and--she has rejected me!"

"Rejected you! my dearest Edmund! I am grieved indeed; but I do not see how I can help you."

"And yet I should not be quite hopeless if you would plead my cause. Miss Dalton says that you have loaded her with kindness which she can never repay; that she values your affection beyond all expression; and that she is determined not to prove herself unworthy of it by being the means of disappointing the expectations you may have formed for your son, for whom, she says, she is no match either in wealth or station. She would not listen to me when I attempted to speak to her but this instant in the Laurel Walk, but actually _ran_ away, positively commanding me not to follow; and yet, I do think, if she had decidedly disliked me, she would have given me to understand so at once, without mentioning you. Mother! what do _you_--what _do_ you think?"

"You shall hear presently, Edmund; but in the first place let us find Miss Dalton."

They went out together, and had not sought her long, when they discovered her pacing perturbedly up and down a broad walk of closely-shaven grass, inclosed on both sides by a tall impenetrable fence of evergreens. As soon as she saw them, she advanced quickly to meet them, her face covered with blushes, but her bearing open and proud. Ere Mrs. Beauchamp had time to speak, she exclaimed, "Mrs. Beauchamp, I do not deserve your reproaches. Never till this morning was I aware of Mr. Beauchamp's sentiments towards me. Dear, kind friend, I would have suffered any tortures rather than that this should have happened."

Fanny was violently agitated; while Mrs. Beauchamp, on the contrary, preserved a calm exterior. She took one of the young girl's hands between both of hers, and answered soothingly, "Compose yourself, my dear Fanny, I entreat you. Believe me, I do not blame you for the affection my son has conceived for you."

"Oh thank you! Indeed you only do me justice."

"But, Fanny, I blame you very much for another reason."

"For what reason, then, madam?"

"For the same reason which now causes your eye to flash, and makes you call your friend by a ceremonious title. I blame you for your _pride_, which has made you think of me harshly and unjustly. Unkind Fanny! What reason have I ever given you to think me heartless or worldly? Do you not know that those who love are equals? and that if it be a more blessed thing to give, yet to a generous heart, for that very reason, it ought to be a pleasure to receive? Are you too proud, Fanny, to take any thing from us, or is it because my son's affection is displeasing to you that you have rejected him?"

Fanny was now in tears, and even sobbing aloud. "Oh, forgive me," she cried, "forgive me! I acknowledge my fault. I see that what I believed to be a sense of duty was at least partly pride. Oh, Mrs. Beauchamp, you would forgive me if you only knew how miserable I was making myself too!"

"Were you--were you indeed making _yourself_ miserable?" cried Edmund. "Oh say so again, dearest Fanny; and say you are happy now!"

Mrs. Beauchamp smiled fondly as she answered, "I will do more than forgive you, my poor Fanny, if you will only love my son. Will you make us both so happy?"

Fanny only replied by a rapid glance at Edmund, and by throwing herself into the arms of Mrs. Beauchamp, which were extended to receive her. And as she was pressed to that fond, maternal heart, she whispered audibly, "My mother!--our mother!"

Mrs. Beauchamp then taking her hand, and placing it in that of her son, said with evident emotion, "Only make Edmund happy, Fanny, and all the gratitude between us will be due on my side; and oh, my children, as you value your future peace, believe in each other through light and darkness. And may Heaven bless you both!" She had turned towards the house, when she looked back to ask, "Shall I countermand the carriage, Fanny?" And Edmund added, half-tenderly, half-slyly, "Shall you go to-morrow?"

Fanny's tears were scarcely dry, and her blushes were deeper than ever, but she answered immediately, with her usual lively promptitude, "That depends upon the sort of entertainment you may provide as an inducement to prolong my visit."

And Edmund, finding that he had no chance with Fanny where repartee or badinage was in question, had recourse again to the serious vein, and rejoined, "If my power to induce you to prolong your visit were at all equal to my will, you would remain for ever, my own dearest Fanny."

We must now pass over a few months. The early freshness and verdure of spring had passed away, and the bloom and the glory of summer had departed. The apple-trees were now laden with their rosy treasures, the peach was ripe on the sunny wall, and the summer darkness of the woods had but just begun to be varied by the appearance of a few yellow leaves. It was on a September afternoon, when the soft light of the autumn sunset was bathing in its pale golden rays the grey turrets of Woodthorpe Hall, and resting like a parting smile on the summits of the ancestral oaks and elms, while it cast deep shadows, crossed with bright gleams, on the spreading lawns, or glanced back from the antlers of the deer, as they ever and anon appeared in the hollows of the park or between the trees, that a travelling carriage passed under the old Gothic archway which formed the entrance to Woodthorpe Park, and drove rapidly towards the Hall. It contained Edmund and Fanny, the newly-married pair, who had just returned from a wedding trip to Paris. They were not, however, the only occupants of the carriage. With them was Mr. Dalton, whom we knew in former days as Philip Hayforth, and who had been specially invited by Mrs. Beauchamp to accompany the bride and bridegroom on their return to Woodthorpe Hall.

And now the carriage stops beneath the porch, and in the arched doorway stands a noble and graceful figure--the lady of the mansion. The slanting sunbeams, streaming through the stained windows at the upper end of the oak hall, played upon her dress of dark and shining silk, which was partly covered by a shawl or mantle of black lace, while her sweet pale face was lighted up with affection, and her eyes were full of a grave gladness. Her fair hair, just beginning to be streaked with silver, was parted over her serene forehead, and above it rested a simple matronly cap of finest lace. Emily Beauchamp was still a beautiful woman--beautiful even as when in the early prime of youth and love she had stood in the light of the new-born day, clad in her robes of vestal whiteness. The change in her was but the change from morning to evening--from spring to autumn; and to some hearts the waning light and the fading leaves have a charm which sunshine and spring-time cannot boast. Having fondly but hastily embraced her son and daughter, she turned to Mr. Dalton, and with cordial warmth bade him welcome to Woodthorpe Hall. He started at the sound of the gentle, earnest tones which, as if by magic, brought palpably before him scenes and images which lay far remote, down the dim vista of years, obscured, almost hidden, by later interest and more pressing cares. He looked in Mrs. Beauchamp's face, and a new wonder met him in the glance of her large brown eyes, so full of seriousness and benignity, while the smooth white hand which yet held his in its calm friendly clasp seemed strangely like one he had often pressed, but which had always trembled as he held it. What could all this mean? Was he dreaming? He was aroused from the reverie into which he had fallen by the same voice which had at first arrested his attention.

"We must try to become acquainted as quickly as possible, Mr. Dalton," said Mrs. Beauchamp, "and learn to be friends for our children's sake."

Bowing low, he replied, "I have already learned from my daughter to know and to esteem Mrs. Beauchamp."

The more Mr. Dalton saw of Mrs. Beauchamp, the more bewildered he became. He fancied what appeared to him the strangest impossibilities, and yet he found it impossible to believe that there was no ground for his vague conjectures. His life had been one of incessant toil, lately one of heavy distress and anxious cares, which had frequently sent him to a sleepless pillow; but never had he spent a more wakeful night than this, his first under the stately roof which his daughter--his darling Fanny--called that of her home. He felt that he could not endure another day of this uncertainty. He must be satisfied at all hazards, and he resolved to make an opportunity, should such not spontaneously present itself. But he was spared the necessity; for after breakfast the following morning his hostess offered to show him the grounds--an offer which, with his desired end in view, he eagerly accepted. They commenced their walk in silence, and seemed as if both were suddenly under the influence of some secret spell. At last, in a hoarse voice and a constrained manner, Mr. Dalton abruptly inquired, "Pray, madam, may I ask--though I fear the question may seem an unceremonious, perhaps a strange one--if you have any relations of the name of Sherwood?"

He saw her start, as she answered with forced composure, "Yes, Mr. Dalton, I have. It was indeed my own name before I married."

As she made this avowal, both stood still, it would seem by a sort of tacit, mutual consent, and earnestly looked at each other.

Philip Hayforth Dalton was now a man past the meridian of life; his once handsome and still striking countenance was deeply marked with lines of sorrow and care, and his dark luxuriant locks were thinned and grizzled, while his features, which had long been schooled to betray no sign of emotion of a transient or superficial nature, were now, as his eyes met those of Mrs. Beauchamp's, convulsed as by the working of a strong passion. A slight blush tinged Emily's usually pale cheek; she drew a rapid breath, and her voice faltered perceptibly as she said at last, "Yes, Philip Hayforth, I am Emily Sherwood!"

Not immediately did he reply either by word or look--not till she had asked somewhat eagerly, "We are friends, Mr. Dalton--are we not?"

Pride wrestled for a minute with the better nature of Philip Hayforth; but whether it were that his self-command was now greater than in the fiery and impassioned season of youth, or that it was difficult to maintain anger and resentment in the gentle, soothing, and dignified presence in which he now found himself, I undertake not to tell; but certain it is that this time at least he crushed the old demon down, and forced himself to answer, though with a formal manner and somewhat harsh tone, "Friends, Mrs. Beauchamp! Certainly, we are friends, if _you_ wish it. Your goodness to my poor motherless Fanny has completely cancelled all wrongs ever done to Fanny's father. Let the past be forgotten!"

"Not so, if you please," she answered gently, "rather let it be explained. Mr. Dalton, we are neither of us young now, and have both, I trust, outlived the rashness of youth. Never till our mutual truth is made mutually clear, can we be the friends we ought to be--the friends I wish we were for Edmund's and Fanny's sake. Let us both speak plainly and boldly, and without fear of offence on either side. I promise, on mine, to take none at the truth, whatever it may be."

Mr. Dalton, as she spoke, regarded her earnestly and wonderingly, saying, as she finished, half in reverie, half addressing her, it would seem, "The same clear good sense, the same sweet good temper, which I had persuaded myself was but the effect of a delusive imagination! But I entreat your pardon, madam, and I promise as you have done."

"Tell me then, truly, Mr. Dalton, why you never answered the last letter I wrote to you, or acknowledged the receipt of the purse I sent?"

He started, as if he had received a pistol-shot; the formal, distant Mr. Dalton had disappeared, and the eager, vehement Philip Hayforth stood before her once more. "I did answer it, Emily. Out of the fulness of my heart--and how full it was I cannot tell you now--I answered your letter; but you, Emily, you never answered mine."

"Indeed I never received it."

It was some minutes after this announcement ere either was able to speak, but at last Mr. Dalton exclaimed, "Oh how I have wronged you? Emily, at this instant I catch, as it were, at the bottom of a dark gulf a glimpse of the evil of my nature. I begin to believe that I have cherished a devil in my bosom, and called it by the name of a good angel. Emily, if I am not too old to improve, you will have been the instrument of my improvement. I do not ask you to forgive me, generous woman, because I feel that you have already done so."

Mrs. Beauchamp felt what it must have cost the proud man to make this acknowledgment, and she honored him for the effort. "We have both been to blame," she said, "and therefore stand in need of mutual forgiveness. But it would be idle now to lament the past; rather let us rejoice that our friendship, re-established on the firm basis of perfect confidence, is cemented by the union of our dear children."

Mr. Dalton only answered by offering her his arm, with the kind and familiar politeness of an old friend, as she looked a little fatigued, and they walked together some distance in silence. At last Mrs. Beauchamp inquired, "Was Fanny's mother like herself?"

"No, Emily. My poor dead Fanny," and his voice trembled slightly, "was very sweet and amiable, but not at all like my living one."

"Your marriage was happy then? I am glad of that."

"I should have been the most ungrateful of men had it not been so; and yours too, Emily I hope"----

He stopt, he hardly knew why, while, with her eyes fixed on the ground, she answered slowly, "I am happy, very happy now!"

A feeling of profound respect and admiration held Mr. Dalton silent for a few seconds, and then he said, in the tone of one who expresses an earnest conviction, "You are the most noble minded woman I ever knew."

Mrs. Beauchamp made no answer, and it was not till they stood together in the hall, that she said in her natural tone of kind and calm cheerfulness, "And now, Mr. Dalton, let us look for Edmund and Fanny; and if you please, in order that they may learn of our mistakes that trust is the nobler part of love, we shall tell them this story of THE LOST LETTER."

LIFE AT A WATERING-PLACE.

THE LIONNE.

By Charles Astor Bristed.

From Frazer's Magazine.

One day at Oldport Springs went off pretty much like another. There was the same continual whirl, and flurry, and toiling after pleasure--never an hour of repose--scarcely enough cessation for the two or three indispensable meals. When they had walked, and flirted, and played ten-pins, and driven, and danced all day, and all night till two in the morning, the women retired to their rooms, and the men retired to the gambling-house (which being an illegal establishment had, on that account, a greater charm in their eyes), and kept it up there till broad daylight; notwithstanding which, they always contrived to appear at breakfast a few hours after as fresh as ever, and ready to begin the same round of dissipation. Indeed it was said that Tom Edwards and his most ardent followers among the boys never went to bed at all, but on their return from "fighting the tiger," bathed, changed their linen, and came down to the breakfast-room, taking the night's sleep for granted. It was a perpetual scene of excitement, relieved only by the heavy and calm figure of Sumner, who, silent and unimpassioned, largely capacious of meat and drink, a recipient of every diversion, without being excited by any, went through all the bowling, and riding, and polking, and gambling, with the gravity of a _commis_ performing the national French dance at the Mabille. There was much rivalry in equipages, especially between Ludlow, Benson, and Loewenberg, who drove the three four-in-hands of the place, and emulated one another in horses, harness, and vehicles--even setting up attempts at liveries, in which they found some imitators (for you can't do any thing in America, however unpopular, without being imitated): and every horse, wagon, man-servant, and livery, belonging to every one, was duly chronicled in the Oldport correspondence of the _Sewer_ and the _Jacobin_, which journals were wont one day to Billingsgate the "mushroom aristocracy of wealth," and the next to play Jenkins for their glorification. Le Roi, who owned no horses, and had given up dancing as soon as he found that there were many of the natives who could out-dance him, and that the late hours were bad for his complexion, attached himself to any or every married lady who was at all distinguished for beauty or fortune; and then went about asking, with an ostentatious air of mystery,--_"Est-ce qu' on parle beaucoup de moi et Madame Chose?"_ Sometimes he deigned to turn aside for an heiress; and as he was a very amusing and rather ornamental man, the girls were always glad to have his company; but the good speculations took care not to fall in love with him, or to give him sufficient encouragement (although a Frenchman does not require a great deal) to justify a declaration on his part. Perhaps the legend about the mutual-benefit subscription club hurt his prospects, or it may have been his limited success in dancing. The same reason--as much, at least, as the assumed one of their vulgarity--kept Mr. Simpson, and other "birds" of his set, out of the exclusive society. For dancing was the one great article in the code of the fashionables to which all other amusements or occupations were subordinate. There was a grand dress-ball once a week at one or other of the hotels, and two undress-balls--_hops_ they were called: but most of the exclusives went to these also in full dress, and both balls and hops usually lasted till three or four in the morning. Then on the off-nights "our set" got up their own little extempore balls in the large public parlor, to the music of some volunteer pianist, and when the weather was bad they danced in the same place all day; when it was good these informal _matinees_ did not generally last more than two or three hours. Then there were serenades given about day-break, by young men who were tired of "the tiger"--nominally to some particular ladies, but virtually, of course, to the whole hotel, or nearly so--and the only music they could devise for these occasions were waltzes or polkas. Ashburner made a calculation that, counting in the serenades, the inhabitants of Oldport were edified by waltz, polka, and redowa music (in those days the _Schottisch_ was not), eleven hours out of the twenty-four, daily. And at last, when Mr. Monson, the Cellarius of New-York, came down with various dancing-girls, native and imported, to give lessons to such aspiring young men as might desire it, first Mrs. Harrison and other women, who, though wealthy and well-known, were not exactly "of us," used to drop in to look at the fun; and, finally, all the exclusives, irresistibly attracted by the sound of fiddles and revolving feet, thronged the little room up-stairs, where the dancing class was assembled, and from looking on, proceeded to join in the exercises. Ladies, beaux, and dancing-girls, were all mingled together, whirling and capering about in an apartment fifteen feet square, which hardly gave them room to pass one another. Benson was the only person who entered his protest against the proceeding. He declared it was a shame that his countrywomen should degrade themselves so before foreigners; but his expostulations were only laughed at: nor could he even persuade his wife and sister-in-law to quit the place, though he stalked off himself in high dudgeon, and wrote a letter to the _Episcopal Banner_, inveighing against the shameless dissipation of the watering-places. For Harry was on very good terms with the religious people in New-York, and was professedly a religious man, and had some sort of idea that he mixed with the fashionables to do them good; which was much like what we sometimes hear of a parson who follows the hounds to keep the sportsmen from swearing, and about as successful. Trying with all his might to serve God, and to live with the exclusives, he was in a fair way to get a terrible fall between two stools.

Talking of religion brings us naturally to Sunday, which at Oldport was really required as a day of rest. But whether it would have been so or not is doubtful, only that the Puritan habits of the country made dancing on that day impossible. It was a violation of public opinion, and of the actual law of the land, which no one cared to attempt. The fashionables were thus left almost without resource. The young men went off to dine somewhere in the vicinity, not unfrequently taking with them some of Mr. Monson's dancing-girls; the wearied men, and the women generally, were in a sad state of listlessness. Some of them literally went to bed and slept for the rest of the week; others, in very despair of something to do, went to church and fell asleep there. Ashburner took advantage of the lull to fill up his journal, and put down his observations on the society about him, in which he had remarked some striking peculiarities, apart from the dancing mania and other outward and open characteristics.

The first thing that surprised him was the great number of misunderstandings and quarrels existing among the not very large number of people who composed the fashionable set. They seemed to quarrel with their relatives in preference, as a matter of course; and to admit strangers very readily to the privilege of relatives. The Robinsons were at feud with all their cousins: Benson with most of his, except Ludlow. Ludlow, White, Sumner, every man he knew, had his set of private enemies, with whom he was not on speaking or bowing terms. Mrs. Harrison, who was very friendly to most of the men, scarcely spoke to a single woman in the place; but this was, perhaps, only carrying the war into Africa, as the ladies of "our set" generally had intended not to recognize her as one of them. These numberless feuds made it very difficult to arrange an excursion, or to get up a dinner at the _restaurant_ of a "colored gentleman," whose timely settlement in Oldport had enabled Mr. Grabster's guests to escape in some measure the pangs of hunger. On studying the cause of these disagreeable hostilities, he found that, among relatives, they were often caused by disputes upon money matters; that between persons not related they frequently sprung from the most trivial sources--frivolous points of etiquette, petty squabbles at cards, imaginary jealousies--but that in both cases the majority of them could be traced to the all-pervading spirit of scandal. His purely intellectual education, if it had not made him somewhat of a misogynist, had at least prevented him from gaining any accurate knowledge or appreciation of women: he set them down _en masse_ as addicted to gossip, and was not surprised to find in the American ladies what he assumed as a characteristic of the whole sex. But he was surprised to find the same quality so prevalent among the men. Not that they were in the habit of killing reputations to give themselves _bonnes fortunes_, as Frenchmen might have done under similar circumstances; their defamatory gossip was more about men than about women, and seemed to arise partly from a general disbelief in virtue, and partly from inability to maintain an interesting conversation on other than personal topics. And though much of this evil speaking was evidently prompted by personal enmities, much also of it seemed to originate in no hostile feeling at all; and it was this that

## particularly astonished Ashburner, to find men speaking disparagingly of

their friends--those who were so in the real sense of that much-abused term. Thus there could be no reasonable doubt that the cousins, Benson and Ludlow, were much attached to each other, and fond of each other's society; that either would have been ready to take up the other's quarrel, or endorse his notes, had circumstances required it. Yet Harry could never refrain from laughing before third parties at Gerard's ignorance of books, and making him the hero of all the Mrs. Malaprop-isms he could pick up or invent; or, as we have seen, speaking very disrespectfully of the motives which had led him to commit matrimony; and Gerard was not slow to make corresponding comments on various foibles of Harry. But the spirit of detraction was most fully developed in men who were not professionally idle, but had, or professed to have, some little business on hand. Of this class was Arthur Sedley, an old acquaintance and groomsman of Benson, and a barrister--(they are beginning to talk about barristers now in New-York, though it is a division of labor not generally recognized in the country)--of some small practice. Really well educated, well read, and naturally clever, his cleverness and knowledge were vastly more disagreeable than almost any amount of ignorance or stupidity could have been. When he cut up right and left every man or woman who came on the _tapis_, his sarcasms were so neatly pointed that it was impossible to help laughing with him; but it was equally impossible to escape feeling that, as soon as your back was turned, he would be laughing at you. Riches and rich people were the commonest subject of his sneers, yet he lost no opportunity of toadying a profitable connection, and was always supposed to be on the look-out for some heiress.

The next thing which made Ashburner marvel was the extreme youth of the fashionable set, particularly the male portion of it; or, to speak more critically, the way in which the younger members of the set had suppressed their elders, and constituted themselves _the_ society. A middle-aged man, particularly if, like Loewenberg, he happened to be rich, might be admitted to terms of equality, but the papas and mammas were absolutely set aside, and became mere formulas and appendages. The old people were nowhere; no one looked after their comfort in a crowd, or consulted them about any arrangement till after the arrangement was made. They had no influence and no authority. When Miss Friskin rode a wild colt bareheaded through the streets of Oldport, or danced the Redowa with little Robinson in so very _chateau-rouge_ a style that even Mrs. Harrison turned away, poor Mrs. Friskin could interpose no impediment to the young lady's amusement; and even her father, the respected senior of the wealthy firm, Friskin & Co., who must have heard from afar of his daughter's vagaries (for all these things were written in the note-book of the _Sewer_), seemed never to have dreamed of the propriety or possibility of coming up to Oldport to put a stop to them. When Tom Edwards was squandering his fortune night after night at the faro-table, and his health day after day in ceaseless dissipation, there was no old friend of his family who dared to give him advice or warning, for there was none to whose advice or warning he would have listened. Once when Ashburner was conversing with Benson on some subject which brought on a reference to this inverse order of things, the latter gave his explanation of it, which was to this effect:--

"The number of foreigners among us, either travelling for pleasure or settled for purposes of business, is so great that they become an appreciable element in our society. It is, therefore, requisite that a fashionable should be able to associate easily with foreigners; and for this it is necessary that he or she should have some knowledge of foreign customs and languages, and, in the first place, of the French language. Now, if we go back a generation, we shall find that the men of that day were not educated to speak French. Go into the Senate Chamber at Washington, for instance, and you will not meet with many of the honorable senators who can converse in the recognized language of courts. Many of our most distinguished statesmen and _diplomats_ can speak no tongue but their own. And to descend to private life, with which we have more particularly to do, when a foreigner presents himself with his letters at the dwelling of an old city merchant or professional man, it is generally the younger branches of the family who are called on to amuse him and play interpreters for the rest. This gives the young people a very decided advantage over their elders, and it is not surprising that they have become a little vain of it. And similarly with regard to foreign dresses, dances, cookery, and habits generally. The young men, having been the latest abroad, are the freshest and best informed in these things. It does not require any great experience or wisdom to master them, only some personal grace and aptitude for imitation to start with, and an _a plomb_ to which ignorance is more conducive than knowledge. Hence the standard of excellence has become one of superficial accomplishment, and the man of matured mind who enters into competition with these handsome, showy, and illiterate boys, puts himself at a discount. Look at Loewenberg. All his literary acquirements and artistic tastes (and he really has a great deal of both) go for nothing. The little beaux can speak nearly as many languages as he can, and dance and dress better. The only thing they can appreciate about him is his money, and the horses and dinners consequent thereon. If little Robinson, there, with his _ne plus ultra_ tie and varnished shoes, were to have the same fortune left him to-morrow, he would be the better man of the two, because he can polk better, and because, being neither a married man nor the agent of a respectable house, he can gamble and do other things which Loewenberg's position does not allow him to do."

This was a great confession for Benson to make against the country; nevertheless, it was not perfectly satisfactory to Ashburner, who thought that it did not explain all the phenomena of the case. It seemed to him that there was at work a radical spirit of insubordination, and a principle of overturning the formerly recognized order of domestic rule. The little children ate and drank what they liked, went to bed when they liked, and altogether were very independent of their natural rulers. Benson's boy rode rough-shod over his nurse, bullied his mother, and only deigned to mind his father occasionally. The wives ruled their husbands despotically, and acted as if they had taken out a patent for avenging the inferiority of their sex in other parts of the world. Benson did not like dancing: he only danced at all because he thought it his business to know a little of every thing, and because society thought it the duty of every young man who was not lame to understand the polka. But his wife kept him going at every ball for six hours, during five of which he was bored to death. Ludlow, whose luxurious living made violent exercise necessary for his health, and who, therefore, delighted in fencing, boxing, and "constitutionals" that would have tired a Cantab, was made to drive about Mrs. Ludlow all day till he hated the sight of his own horses. As to Mrs. Harrison, she treated her husband, when he made his appearance at Oldport (which was not very often) as unceremoniously as one would an old trunk, or any other piece of baggage which is never alluded to or taken notice of except when wanted for immediate use.

Ashburner first met this lady a very few days after his arrival at Oldport; indeed, she was so conspicuous a figure in the place that one could not be there long without taking notice of her. About mid-day there was usually a brief interval between the ten-pin bowling and the informal dance; and during one of these pauses he perceived on the smoking-piazza where ladies seldom ventured, a well-dressed and rather handsome woman smoking a cigarette, and surrounded by a group of beaux of all sizes, from men like White and Sumner to the little huge-cravated boys in their teens. She numbered in her train at least half-a-dozen of these cavaliers, and was playing them off against one another and managing them all at once, as a circus-rider does his four horses, or a juggler his four balls. In a country where beauty is the rule rather than the exception, she was not a remarkable beauty--at least, she did not appear such to Ashburner, from that distance; nor was her dress, though sufficiently elegant and becoming, quite so artistically put on as that of Mrs. Benson and the other belles of the set; still there was clearly something very attractive and striking about her, and he was immediately induced to inquire her name, and, on learning that she was a real lady (though not of "our set" of ladies), to request an introduction to her. But Benson, to whom he first applied, instead of jumping at the opportunity with his usual readiness to execute or anticipate his friend's wishes, boggled exceedingly, and put off the introduction under frivolous and evidently feigned pretences. It was so uncommon for Benson to show any diffidence in such matters, and his whole air said so plainly, "I will do this out of friendship for you if you wish it, but for my own part I would rather not," that Ashburner saw there was something in the wind, and let the subject drop. Ludlow, to whom he next had recourse, told him, with the utmost politeness but in very decided terms, that "his family" (he was careful not to insist on his own personality in the affair) "had not the honor of Mrs. Harrison's acquaintance." The next man who happened to come along was Mr. Simpson, and to him Ashburner made application, thinking that, perhaps, the fair smoker might more properly belong to the "second set," though so surrounded by the beaux of the first. But even Simpson, though the last man in the world to be guilty of any superfluous delicacy, hesitated very much, and made some allusion to Mrs. Simpson; and then Ashburner began to comprehend the real state of the case,--that most of the married women had declared war against Mrs. Harrison, that she had retaliated upon them all, and that the husbands were drawn into their wives' quarrels, and obliged to fight shy of her before strangers. It was clear, then, that he must apply to a bachelor; and accordingly he waylaid Sumner, who "was too happy" to introduce him at once in due form.

As Ashburner came up to Mrs. Harrison she began to play off her eyes at him, and he then perceived that they constituted her chief beauty. They were of that deep blue which, in certain lights, passes for black,--large, expressive, and pleasing; the sort of eyes that go right through a man and look him down to nothing. Indeed, they had such effect on him that he lost all distinctive idea of her other features. Her manner, too, had something very attractive, though he could not have defined wherein it consisted. She did not exhibit the _empressement_ with which most of her countrywomen seek to put a stranger at his ease at once; or the _exigence_ of a spoiled lady waiting to be amused; or the haughtiness of a great lady, who does not care if she is amused herself and deigns no effort to amuse others. Neither did she attack him with raillery and irony, as Mrs. Benson had done on their first meeting. But she behaved as if she were used to seeing men like Ashburner every day of her life, and was willing to meet them half-way and be agreeable to them, if they were so to her, without taking any particular trouble, for there was no appearance of effort to please, or even of any strong desire to please, in her words and gestures; yet she _did_ please and attract very decidedly.

"So I saw you in Mrs. Harrison's train!" said Benson, when they next met.

"Yes, and I fancy I know why you hesitated to introduce me."

As Ashburner spoke he glanced towards the parlor, where "our set"--Mrs. Benson, of course, conspicuous among them--were engaged in their ordinary occupation of dancing.

"Oh, I assure you, _madame_ is not disposed to be jealous, nor am I a man to take part in women's quarrels. I don't like the lady myself, to begin with; and were I a bachelor, should have as little to say to her as I have now. In the first place she is too old----"

"Too old! she cannot be thirty."

"Of course a lady never _is_ thirty, until she is fifty, at least; but at any rate I may say, without sacrilege, that Mrs. H. is pretty high up in the twenties. Now, at that age a woman ought--not to give up society, that would be an absurdity in the other extreme, but--to leave the romping dances and the young men to the girls, who want them more and whom they become better. Then I don't like her face. You must have taken notice that all the upper part of it is fine and intellectual, and she has glorious eyes----"

"Yes," said Ashburner.

"But all the lower part is heavy and over-sensuous. Now, not only does this, in my opinion, entirely disfigure a woman's looks, but it suggests unpleasant ideas of her character. A man may have that ponderous chin and voluptuous mouth, without their disturbing the harmony of an otherwise handsome face. I do not think a woman can; and as in the physical so in the moral. A man can stand a much greater amount of sensuousness in his composition than a woman. I do not mean to allude to the different standards of morality for the two sexes admitted by society; for I don't admit it, and think it very unjust; and I am proud to say that our people generally entertain more virtuous as well as more equitable views on this point than the Europeans. I mean literally that a man having so many opportunities for leading an active life, and being able to reason himself into or out of a great many things to or from which a woman's only guide is her feelings, may be very sensuous without its doing any positive harm to himself or others; but with a woman, who is compelled to lead a comparatively idle life, such an element predominating in her character is sure to bring her into mischief."

"Do you mean to say, then, that----" and Ashburner stopped short, but his look implied the remainder of his interrupted question.

"Do you ask me from a personal motive?"

Ashburner colored, and was proceeding to disclaim any such motive with an air of injured innocence.

"No, I don't mean any thing of the sort," said Benson, who felt that he had gone rather too far, and might unintentionally have slandered his countrywoman. "I believe the lady is as pure as--as my wife, or any one else. The number of her beaux, and the equality with which she treats them, prove conclusively to my mind that her flirting never runs into any thing worse. I don't think a woman runs any danger of that kind when she has such a lot of cavaliers; they keep watch on her and on one another. I remember when my brother lived in town, he once was away from home for two or three weeks, and when he came back an old maid who lived in his street, and used to keep religious watch over the goings-out and comings-in of every one in the vicinity, said to him, "How very gay your wife is, Mr. Benson! she has been walking with a different gentleman every day since you were gone.' 'Dear me!' says Carl; 'a different man every day! How glad I am! If you had told me she was walking with the _same_ man every day I might have been a little scared.' But a woman may be perfectly chaste herself, and yet cause a great deal of unchasteness in other people. Here is this Mrs. Harrison, smoking cigarettes--and cigars, too, sometimes, in the open air; drinking grog at night, and sometimes in the morning; letting Tom Edwards and the foolish boys who imitate him talk slang to her without putting them down; always ready for a walk or drive with the last handsome young man who has arrived; and utterly ignoring her husband, except when she makes some slighting mention of him for not sending her money enough: what is the effect of all this upon the men? The foreigners; there are plenty of them here every season; I wonder there are so few this time: instead of one decent Frenchman like Le Roi, you usually find half-a-dozen disreputable ones; Englishmen many, not always of the best sort; Germans, Russians, and Spaniards, occasionally: they all are inclined to look upon her--especially considering her belligerent attitude towards the rest of the female population--as something _tres legere_, and to attempt to go a little too far with her. Then she puts them down fast enough, and they in spite say things about her, the discredit of which extends to our ladies generally--in short, she exposes the country before foreigners. Then for the natives, she catches some poor boy just loose upon the world, dances with, flatters him--for she has a knack of flattering people without seeming to do so, especially by always appearing to take an interest in what is said to her,--keeps him dangling about her for a while; then some day he says or does something to make a fool of himself, and she extinguishes him. The man gets a check of this sort at his entry into society that is enough to make him a misogynist for life. And the little scenes that she used to get up last summer with married men, just to make their wives jealous!"

"Which, I suppose, is the reason none of your wives will let you speak to her?" said Ashburner, who began to feel, he hardly knew why, a sentiment of partisanship for Mrs. Harrison. "But granting that her face, as you describe it, is an index of her character, I should draw from that exactly the opposite inference. I believe that the women who make mischief in the way you mention are your unsensuous and passionless ones--that the perfect flirt, single or married, must be a perfectly cold woman, because it is only one of such a temperament who can thus trifle with others without danger to herself. I speak hesitatingly, for all women are a mystery, and my experience is as yet very limited; but such opportunities of observation as have fallen to my lot confirm me in the theory."

Somewhat to Ashburner's surprise his friend made no attempt to controvert his argument. He only turned it aside, saying,----

"Well, I don't like her, at any rate. If I had no other reason, the way she talks of her husband would be enough to make me."

"Oh, there _is_ a Mr. Harrison, then? One hears so little of him----"

"And sees so nothing of him, you may say."

"Exactly--that I took him for a mythological personage--a cousin of our Mrs. Harris."

"Nevertheless I assure you Mr. Harrison exists very decidedly--a Wall-street speculator, and well known as such by business people, a capital man behind a trotter, an excellent judge of wine. Probably he will come here from the city once or twice before we leave, and I shall find an opportunity to introduce you to him, for he is really worth knowing and considerable of a man, as we say--no fool at all, except in the way he lets his wife bully him."

"If he made an unsuitable match that does not show his wisdom conspicuously."

"It was an unsuitable match enough, Heaven knows! But when he proposed he was in the state of mind in which sensible people do the most foolish things. He was a great man in stocks--controlled the market at one time--had been buying largely just before the election of '44, when we all expected Henry Clay would get in with plenty to spare. When Polk was elected, great was the terror of all respectable citizens. My brother caught such a fright then that I don't think he has fairly recovered from it to this day. How the stocks did tumble down! Harrison had about nine millions on his hands; he couldn't keep such a fund, and was forced to sell at any price, and lost just one third. Just as he was beginning to pick himself up after the shock and wonder, like the sailor whom the conjurer blew up, what was to come next? Mr. Whitey of the _Jacobin_, now the honorable Pompey Whitey--and one doesn't see why he shouldn't be, for after all an editor is not, generally speaking, a greater blackguard than most of our Congressmen--Whitey, I say, who for our sins is nominally attached to the Conservative party, conceived the bright idea of overbidding the enemy for popular favor, and proposed--no, he didn't actually propose in so many words, but only strongly hinted at the desirableness of the measure--that there should be no more paying rent, and a general division of property. I am not sure but there were some additional suggestions on the expediency of abolishing the Christian religion and the institution of matrimony, but that has nothing to do with politics. This last drop in the bucket quite overflowed poor Harrison; so, as if he had said to himself, "Let us eat and drink and get married, for to-morrow we shall have a proscription and _novae tabulae_," he rushed off and proposed to Miss Macintyre."

"Then, if she accepted him after he lost his fortune, it shows she did not marry for money, at any rate."

"There you have missed it. He lost the whole of _a_ fortune, but not the whole of _his_. He must have a million of dollars left, and a man with that is not poor in any country--certainly it was a great catch for Miss Macintyre, without a red cent of her own. She jilted a Frenchman for him: the unfortunate, or fortunate cast-off had ordered much jewelry and other wedding presents, and when left in the lurch he quietly proposed that, as he had no longer any use for the articles, Harrison, who had, should take them off his hands; and this offer was accepted. Very French in him to make it--don't you think so?--and rather American in the other to take it. Well, I hope Harrison will come this way soon; I should really like you to know him."

One or two days after this conversation Ashburner met his friend walking up and down the interminable piazza of the Bath Hotel, arm-in-arm with a middle-aged man, who presented as great a contrast to Benson's usual associates, and to Benson himself, as could well be imagined. The new-comer was short of stature and square-built, rather ugly, and any thing but graceful; he wore very good clothes, but they were badly put on, and looked as if they had never undergone the brush since leaving the tailor's hands; he wore no gloves, and in short had altogether an unfashionable appearance. But though indubitably an unfashionable man, he did not give you the impression of a vulgar one; there was nothing snobbish or pretentious in his ugliness, and his cavernous black eye could have belonged only to an intelligent and able man. Benson was joking or pressing upon him some matter which he seemed unwilling to explain.

"But do tell me," said Harry, as they passed Ashburner, "what _have_ you been doing to yourself? Sprained your finger by working too hard the night before last packet day? or tumbled down from running too fast in Wall-street, and not thinking which way you were going?" And he took in his own delicate white hand the rough paw of the stranger, which was

## partly bound up as if suffering from some recent injury.

"If you must know," said the other, stopping short his walk, "I broke my knuckles on an Irish hackman's teeth. Last week the fellow drove me from the North River boat to my house in Union Square, and I offered him seventy-five cents. He was very insolent and demanded a dollar. If I had had a dollar-note about me I might have given it to him, but it happened that I had only the six shillings in change; and so, knowing that was two shillings more than his legal fare, I became as positive as he. At last he seized my trunk, and then I could not resist the temptation of giving him a left-hander that sent him clean down the steps into the gutter."

"And then?

"He made a great bawling, and was beginning to draw a crowd about the house, when I walked off to the nearest police-station; and as it turned out that my gentleman was known as a troublesome character, they threatened to take away his license and have him sent to Blackwell's Island if he didn't keep quiet; so he was too glad to make himself scarce."

"By Jove, you deserve a testimonial from the city! I once got twenty dollars damages from an omnibus-driver for running into my brougham, knocking off a wheel, and dumping my wife and child into the street; and I thought it was a great exploit, but this performance of yours throws me into the shade."

Just then Benson caught sight of Ashburner, and excusing himself to the other, rushed up to him.

"Let me tell you now, before I forget it. We are going over to the glen to-morrow to dine, and in fact spend the day there. You'll come, of course?"

"With great pleasure," said Ashburner; "but pray don't let me take you away from your friend."

"Oh, that's only Harrison."

We meant, of course, our set, with such foreign lions as the place afforded, foremost among whom stood Ashburner and Le Roi. Benson, Ludlow, and some of the other married men undertook to arrange it, always under the auspices of the Robinsons.

These Robinsons were evidently the leaders in every movement of the fashionables, but why they were so was not so clear--at least, to Ashburner, though he had abundant opportunities of studying the whole family. There was a father in some kind of business, who occupied the usual position of New-York fathers; that is to say, he made the money for the rest of the family to spend, and showed himself at Oldport once a fortnight or so--possibly to pay the bills. There was a mother, stout and good-humored, rather vulgar, very fussy, and no end of a talker: she always reminded Ashburner of an ex-lady-mayoress. There were three or four young men, sons and cousins, with the usual amount of white tie and the ordinary dexterity in the polka; and two daughters, both well out of their teens. The knowing ones said that one of these young ladies was to have six thousand a year by her grandfather's will, and the other little or nothing; but it was not generally understood which was the heiress, and the old lady manoeuvred with them as if _both_ were. This fact, however, was not sufficient to account for their rank as _belles_, since there were several other girls in their circle quite as well, or better off. Nor had their wit or talent any share in giving them their position; on the contrary, people used to laugh at the _betises_ of the Robinsons, and make them the butt of real or imaginary good stories. And, in point of birth, they were not related to the Van Hornes, the Bensons, the Vanderlyns, or any of the old Dutch settlers; nor like White Ludlow, and others of their set, sprung from the British families of long standing in the city. On the very morning of the proposed excursion Sedley was sneering at them for _parvenus_, and trying to amuse Ashburner at their expense with some ridiculous stories about them.

"And yet," said the Englishman, "these people are your leaders of fashion. You can't do any thing without them. They are the head of this excursion that we are just going upon." Benson tells me "the Robinsons are to be there," as if that settled the propriety and desirability of my being there also."

"As to that," replied Sedley, "fashionable society is a vast absurdity anywhere, and it is only natural that absurd people should be at the head of it. The Robinsons want to be fashionable--it is their only ambition--they try hard for it; and it is generally the case that those who devote themselves to any pursuit have some success in it, and only right that it should be so. Then they are hopelessly good-natured folks, that you can't insult or quarrel with." Sedley had so little of this quality himself that he looked on the possession of it as a weakness rather than a virtue. "Then they are very fond of good living."

"Yes, I remember hearing Benson say that he always liked to feed Mrs. Robinson at a ball,--it was a perfect pleasure to see her eat; and that when Loewenberg, in the pride of his heart, gave a three-days' _dejeuner_, or lunch, or whatever it was, after his marriage, she was seen there three times each day."

"And he might have told you that they are as liberal of their own good things as fond of those of others. Old Robinson has some first-rate Madeira, better by a long chalk than that Vanderlyn Sercial that Harry Benson is always cramming down your throat--metaphorically, I mean, not literally. The young men like to drop in there of an evening, for they are sure to find a good supper and plenty of materials ready for punch and polka. Then they always manage to catch the newest lions. When I first saw you in their carriage along-side of Miss Julia, I said to myself, "That Englishman must be somebody, or the Robinsons would not have laid hold of him so soon." But their two seasons in Paris were the making of them,--and the unmaking, too, in another sense; for they ate such a hole in their fortune--or, rather, their French guests did for them--that it has never recovered its original dimensions to this day. They took a grand hotel, and gave magnificent balls, and filled their rooms with the Parisian aristocracy. My uncle, who is an _habitue_ of Paris, was at the Jockey Club one day, and heard two exquisites talking about them. "_Connaissez-vous ce Monsieur Robinson?_" asked one. "_Est-ce que je le connais!_" replied the other, shrugging his shoulders. "_Je mange ses diners, je danse a ses bals; v'la tout." Voila tout_, indeed! That is just all our people get by keeping open house for foreigners."

Just then Benson and Ludlow came up, the former under much excitement, and the latter in a sad state of profanity. As they both insisted on talking at once, it was some time before either was intelligible; at length Ashburner made out that the excursion had met with a double check. In the first place, all the bachelors had demanded that Mrs. Harrison should be of the party, in which they were sustained by Loewenberg, who, though partly naturalized by his marriage, still considered himself sufficiently a stranger to be above all spirit of clique. All the other married men had objected, but the Harrisonites ultimately carried their point. Of the two principal opponents, Ludlow was fairly talked off his feet by the voluble _patois_ of Loewenberg, and Benson completely put down by the laconic and inflexible Sumner. So far so bad, but worse was to follow; for after the horses had been ordered, and most of the ladies, including the Robinsons, bonneted and shawled for the start, the _lionne_, who had, doubtless, heard of the unsuccessful attempt to blackball her, and wished to make a further trial of her power, suddenly professed a headache, whereupon her

## partisans almost unanimously declared that, as she couldn't go, they

didn't want to go; and thus the whole affair had fallen through. Such was the substance of their melancholy intelligence, which they had hardly finished communicating when a _dea ex machina_ appeared in the person of Mrs. Benson. She declared that it was "a shame," and "too bad," and she "had never," &c.; and brought her remarks to a practical conclusion by vowing that _she_ would go, at any rate, whoever chose to stay with that woman; "and if no one else goes with us I'm sure Mr. Ashburner will:" at which Ashburner was fain to express his readiness to follow her to the end of the world, if necessary. Then she followed up her advantage by sending a message to Sumner, which took him captive immediately; and as she was well seconded by the Robinsons, who on their part had brought over Le Roi, the party was soon reorganized pretty much on its original footing. When the cause of all the trouble found herself likely to be left in a minority her headache vanished immediately, in time for her to secure beaux enough to fill her barouche, and Mr. Harrison was put into a carriage with the musicians. Mrs. Benson's vehicle was equally well filled; and Harry, who, by his wife's orders, and much against his own will, had lent his wagon and ponies to a young Southerner that was doing the amiable to Miss Vanderlyn, had nothing left for it but to go on horseback; in which Ashburner undertook to join him, having heard that there was a good bit of turf on the road to the glen.

"If you go that way," said Mrs. Robinson, when he announced his intention, "you will have another companion. Mr. Edwards means to ride."

Ashburner had seen Edwards driving a magnificent trotter about Oldport, but could not exactly fancy him outside of a horse, and conjectured that he would not make quite so good a figure as when leading the redowa down a long ball-room. But the hero of the dance was not forthcoming for some time, so they mounted, Benson his pet Charlie, and the Englishman the best horse the stables of Oldport could furnish, which it is hardly necessary to say was not too good a one, and were leaving the village leisurely to give the carriages a good start of them, when they heard close behind the patter of a light-stepping horse, and the next moment Tom Edwards ranged up along side. The little man rode a bright bay mare, rising above fifteen hands, nearly full-blooded, but stepping steadily and evenly, without any of that fidget and constant change of gait which renders so many blood-horses any thing but agreeable to ride, and carrying her head and tail to perfection. He wore white cord trousers, a buff waistcoat, and a very natty white hair-cloth cap. His coat was something between a summer sack and a cutaway,--the color, a rich green of some peculiar and indescribable shade. His spurs were very small, but highly polished; and, instead of a whip, he carried a little red cane with a carved ivory head. In his marvellously fitting white buckskin glove he managed a rein of some mysterious substance that looked like a compound of india-rubber and sea-weed. He sat his mare beautifully--with a little too much aim at effect, perhaps; but gracefully and firmly at the same time. Ashburner glanced at his own poor beast and wished for Daredevil, whose antics he had frequently controlled with great success at Devilshoof; and Benson could not help looking a little mortified, for Charlie was not very well off for tail, and had recollections of his harness days, which made him drop his head at times and pull like a steam engine; besides which, Harry--partly, perhaps, from motives of economy, partly, as he said, because he thought it snobbish to ride in handsome toggery--always mounted in the oldest clothes he had, and with a well-used bridle and saddle. But there was no help for it now, so off the three went together at a fair trot, and soon overtook most of the party, Edwards putting his spurs into the bay mare and showing off her points and his horsemanship at every successive vehicle they passed.

The piece of turf which Benson had promised his friend was not quite so smooth as Newmarket heath, but it was more than three-quarters of a mile long, and sufficiently level to be a great improvement on the heavy and sandy road. So unaccustomed, however, are Americans to "riding on grass," that Edwards could not be persuaded to quit the main path until Benson had repeatedly challenged him to a trot on the green. As soon as the two horses were fairly along-side they went off, without waiting the signal from their riders, at a pace which kept Ashburner at a hand-gallop. For awhile they were neck-and-neck, Benson and Charlie hauling against each other, the rider with his weight thrown back in the stirrups and laboring to keep his "fast crab" from breaking, while the mare struck out beautifully with a moderate pull of the rein. Then as Benson, who carried no whip, began to get his horse more in hand, he raised a series of yells in true jockey fashion, to encourage his own animal and to break up Edwards's. The mare skipped--Tom caught her in an instant, but she fell off in her stroke from being held up, and Charlie headed her a length; then he gave her her head, and she broke--once, twice, three times; and every time Benson drew in his horse, who was now well settled down to his work, and waited for Edwards to come on. At last, his mare and he both lost their tempers at once. She started for a run, and he dropped the reins on her back and let her go. At the same instant Benson stuck both spurs into Charlie, who was a rare combination of trotter and runner, and away went the two at full gallop. Ashburner's hack was left behind at once, but he could see them going on close together, tooling their horses capitally; Edwards's riding, being the more graceful, and Benson's the more workmanlike; the mare leading a trifle, as he thought, and Charlie pressing her close. Suddenly Edwards waved his cane as in triumph, but the next moment he and his mare disappeared, as if the earth had swallowed them up, while Benson's horse sheered off ten feet to the left.

TO ONE IN AFFLICTION.

By John R. Thompson.

From the Southern Literary Messenger.

Dear friend! if word of mine could seal The bitter fount of all thy tears, And, through the future's cloudy years, Some glimpse of sunshine yet reveal--

That word I might not dare to speak: A father's sorrow o'er his child So sacred seems and undefiled, To bid it cease we may not seek.

Thy little boy has passed away From mortal sight and mortal love, To join the shining choir above And dwell amid the perfect day;

All robed in spotless innocence, And fittest for celestial things, O'ershadowed by her rustling wings The angel softly led him hence:

As pure as if the gentle rain Of his baptismal morn had sought His bosom's depths, and e'ery thought Had sweetly cleansed from earthly stain:

Such blest assurance brings, I know, To bleeding hearts but sad relief-- The dark and troubled tide of grief _Must_ have its ebb and flow--

And most of all when thou dost plod, _Alone_, upon these wintry days, Along the old familiar ways Wherein _his_ little feet have trod.

And thou dost treasure up his words, The fragments of his earnest talk, On some remembered morning walk, When, at the song of earliest birds,

He'd ask of thee, with charmed look, And smile upon his features spread, Whose careful hand the birds had fed, And filled the ever-running brook?

Or viewing, from the distant glade, The dim horizon round his home, With simplest speech and air would come And ask why were the mountains made?

Be strong, my friend, these days of doom Are but the threads of darkest hue, That daily enter to renew The warp of the Eternal Loom.

And when to us it shall be given In joy _to see the other side_ These threads the brightest shall abide In the fair tapestries of Heaven!

MY NOVEL:

OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.

By Pisistratus Caxton.

_Continued from page 421._

From Blackwood's Magazine

## PART VI.--CHAPTER XIII.

Whatever may be the ultimate success of Miss Jemima Hazeldean's designs upon Dr. Riccabocca, the Machiavellian sagacity with which the Italian had counted upon securing the services of Lenny Fairfield was speedily and triumphantly established by the result. No voice of the Parson's, charmed he ever so wisely, could persuade the peasant boy to go and ask pardon of the young gentleman, to whom, because he had done as he was bid, he owed an agonizing defeat and a shameful incarceration. And, to Mrs. Dale's vexation, the widow took the boy's part. She was deeply offended at the unjust disgrace Lenny had undergone in being put in the stocks; she shared his pride, and openly approved his spirit. Nor was it without great difficulty that Lenny could be induced to resume his lessons at school; nay, even to set foot beyond the precincts of his mother's holding. The point of the school at last he yielded, though sullenly; and the Parson thought it better to temporize as to the more unpalatable demand. Unluckily Lenny's apprehensions of the mockery that awaited him in the merciless world of his village were realized. Though Stirn at first kept his own counsel, the Tinker blabbed the whole affair. And after the search instituted for Lenny on the fatal night, all attempt to hush up what had passed would have been impossible. So then Stirn told his story, as the Tinker had told his own; both tales were very unfavorable to Leonard Fairfield. The pattern boy had broken the Sabbath, fought with his betters, and been well mauled into the bargain; the village lad had sided with Stirn and the authorities in spying out the misdemeanors of his equals; therefore Leonard Fairfield, in both capacities of degraded pattern boy and baffled spy, could expect no mercy;--he was ridiculed in the one, and hated in the other.

It is true that, in the presence of the schoolmaster, and under the eye of Mr. Dale, no one openly gave vent to malignant feelings; but the moment those checks were removed, popular persecution began.

Some pointed and mowed at him; some cursed him for a sneak, and all shunned his society; voices were heard in the hedgerows, as he passed through the village at dusk, "Who was put in the stocks?--baa!" "Who got a bloody nob for playing spy to Nick Stirn?--baa!" To resist this species of aggression would have been a vain attempt for a wiser head and a colder temper than our poor pattern boy's. He took his resolution at once, and his mother approved it; and the second or third day after Dr. Riccabocca's return to the Casino, Lenny Fairfield presented himself on the terrace with a little bundle in his hand. "Please, sir," said he to the Doctor, who was sitting cross-legged on the balustrade, with his red silk umbrella over his head.

"Please, sir, if you'll be good enough to take me now, and give me any hole to sleep in, I'll work for your honor night and day; and as for the wages, mother says 'just suit yourself, sir.'"

"My child," said the Doctor, taking Lenny by the hand, and looking at him with the sagacious eye of a wizard, "I knew you would come! and Giacomo is already prepared for you! As to wages, we'll talk of them by-and-by."

Lenny being thus settled, his mother looked for some evenings on the vacant chair, where he had so long sate in the place of her beloved Mark; and the chair seemed so comfortless and desolate, thus left all to itself, that she could bear it no longer.

Indeed the village had grown as distasteful to her as to Lenny--perhaps more so; and one morning she hailed the Steward as he was trotting his hog-maned cob beside the door, and bade him tell the Squire that "she would take it very kind if he would let her off the six months' notice for the land and premises she held--there were plenty to step into the place at a much better rent."

"You're a fool," said the good-natured Steward; "and I'm very glad you did not speak to that fellow Stirn instead of to me. You've been doing extremely well here, and have the place, I may say, for nothing."

"Nothin' as to rent, sir, but a great deal as to feeling," said the widow. "And now Lenny has gone to work with the foreign gentleman, I should like to go and live near him."

"Ah, yes--I heard Lenny had taken himself off to the Casino--more fool he; but, bless your heart, 'tis no distance--two miles or so. Can't he come home every night after work?"

"No, sir," exclaimed the widow almost fiercely; "he shan't come home here, to be called bad names and jeered at!--he whom my dead good man was so fond and proud of. No, sir; we poor folks have our feelings, as I said to Mrs. Dale, and as I will say to the Squire hisself. Not that I don't thank him for all favors--he be a good gentleman if let alone; but he says he won't come near us till Lenny goes and axes pardin. Pardin for what, I should like to know? Poor lamb! I wish you could ha' seen his nose, sir--as big as your two fists. Ax pardin! If the Squire had had such a nose as that, I don't think it's pardin he'd been ha' axing. But I let's the passion get the better of me--I humbly beg you'll excuse it, sir. I'm no scollard, as poor Mark was, and Lenny would have been, if the Lord had not visited us otherways. Therefore just get the Squire to let me go as soon as may be; and as for the bit o' hay and what's on the grounds and orchard, the new-comer will no doubt settle that."

The Steward, finding no eloquence of his could induce the widow to relinquish her resolution, took her message to the Squire. Mr. Hazeldean, who was indeed really offended at the boy's obstinate refusal to make the _amende honorable_ to Randal Leslie, at first only bestowed a hearty curse or two on the pride and ingratitude both of mother and son. It may be supposed, however, that his second thoughts were more gentle, since that evening, though he did not go himself to the widow, he sent his "Harry." Now, though Harry was sometimes austere and _brusque_ enough on her own account, and in such business as might especially be transacted between herself and the cottagers, yet she never appeared as the delegate of her lord except in the capacity of a herald-of-peace and mediating angel. It was with good heart, too, that she undertook this mission, since, as we have seen, both mother and son were great favorites of hers. She entered the cottage with the friendliest beam in her bright blue eye, and it was with the softest tone of her frank cordial voice that she accosted the widow. But she was no more successful than the Steward had been. The truth is, that I don't believe the haughtiest duke in the three kingdoms is really so proud as your plain English rural peasant, nor half so hard to propitiate and deal with when his sense of dignity is ruffled. Nor are there many of my own literary brethren (thin-skinned creatures though we are) so sensitively alive to the Public Opinion, wisely despised by Dr. Riccabocca, as the same peasant. He can endure a good deal of contumely sometimes, it is true, from his superiors, (though, thank Heaven! _that_ he rarely meets with unjustly;) but to be looked down upon, and mocked, and pointed at by his own equals--his own little world--cuts him to the soul. And if you can succeed in breaking his pride, and destroying this sensitiveness, then he is a lost being. He can never recover his self-esteem, and you have chucked him half way--a stolid, inert, sullen victim--to the perdition of the prison or the convict-ship.

Of this stuff was the nature both of the widow and her son. Had the honey of Plato flowed from the tongue of Mrs. Hazeldean, it could not have turned into sweetness the bitter spirit upon which it descended. But Mrs. Hazeldean, though an excellent woman, was rather a bluff, plain-spoken one--and, after all, she had some little feeling for the son of a gentleman, and a decayed fallen gentleman, who, even by Lenny's account, had been assailed without any intelligible provocation; nor could she, with her strong common sense, attach all the importance which Mrs. Fairfield did to the unmannerly impertinence of a few young cubs, which she said truly, "would soon die away if no notice was taken of it." The widow's mind was made up, and Mrs. Hazeldean departed--with much chagrin and some displeasure.

Mrs. Fairfield, however, tacitly understood that the request she had made was granted, and early one morning her door was found locked--the key left at a neighbor's to be given to the Steward; and, on farther inquiry, it was ascertained that her furniture and effects had been removed by the errand-cart in the dead of the night. Lenny had succeeded in finding a cottage, on the road-side, not far from the Casino; and there, with a joyous face, he waited to welcome his mother to breakfast, and show how he had spent the night in arranging her furniture.

"Parson!" cried the Squire, when all this news came upon him, as he was walking arm-in-arm with Mr. Dale to inspect some proposed improvement in the Alms-house, "this is all your fault. Why did not you go and talk to that brute of a boy, and that dolt of a woman? You've got 'soft sawder enough,' as Frank calls it in his new-fashioned slang."

"As if I had not talked myself hoarse to both!" said the Parson in a tone of reproachful surprise at the accusation. "But it was in vain! O Squire, if you had taken my advice about the stocks--_quieta non movere_!"

"Bother!" said the Squire. "I suppose I am to be held up as a tyrant, a Nero, a Richard the Third, or a Grand Inquisitor, merely for having things smart and tidy! Stocks indeed!--your friend Rickeybockey said he was never more comfortable in his life--quite enjoyed sitting there. And what did not hurt Rickeybockey's dignity (a very gentlemanlike man he is, when he pleases) ought to be no such great matter to Master Leonard Fairfield. But 'tis no use talking! What's to be done now? The woman must not starve; and I'm sure she can't live out of Rickeybockey's wages to Lenny--(by the way, I hope he don't board him upon his and Jackeymo's leavings: I hear they dine upon newts and sticklebacks--faugh!) I'll tell you what, Parson, now I think of it--at the back of the cottage which she has taken there are some fields of capital land just vacant. Rickeybockey wants to have 'em, and sounded me as to the rent when he was at the Hall. I only half promised him the refusal. And he must give up four or five acres of the best land round the cottage to the widow--just enough for her to manage--and she can keep a dairy. If she want capital, I'll lend her some in your name--only don't tell Stirn; and as for the rent--we'll talk of that when we see how she gets on, thankless obstinate jade that she is! You see," added the Squire, as if he felt there was some apology due for this generosity to an object whom he professed to consider so ungrateful, "her husband was a faithful servant, and so--I wish you would not stand there staring me out of countenance, but go down to the woman at once, or Stirn will have let the land to Rickeybockey, as sure as a gun. And hark ye, Dale, perhaps you can contrive, if the woman is so cursedly stiff-backed, not to say the land is mine, or that it is any favor I want to do her--or, in short, manage it as you can for the best." Still even this charitable message failed. The widow knew that the land was the Squire's, and worth a good L3 an acre. "She thanked him humbly for that and all favors; but she could not afford to buy cows, and she did not wish to be beholden to any one for her living. And Lenny was well off at Mr. Rickeybockey's, and coming on wonderfully in the garden way--and she did not doubt she could get some washing; at all events, her haystack would bring in a good bit of money, and she should do nicely, thank their honors."

Nothing farther could be done in the direct way, but the remark about the washing suggested some mode of indirectly benefiting the widow. And a little time afterwards, the sole laundress in that immediate neighborhood happening to die, a hint from the Squire obtained from the landlady of the inn opposite the Casino such custom as she had to bestow, which at times was not inconsiderable. And what with Lenny's wages, (whatever that mysterious item might be,) the mother and son contrived to live without exhibiting any of those physical signs of fast and abstinence which Riccabocca and his valet gratuitously afforded to the student in animal anatomy.

## CHAPTER XIV.

Of all the wares and commodities in exchange and barter, wherein so mainly consists the civilization of our modern world, there is not one which is so carefully weighed--so accurately measured--so plumbed and gauged--so doled and scraped--so poured out in _minima_ and balanced with scruples--as that necessary of social commerce called "an apology!" If the chemists were half so careful in vending their poisons, there would be a notable diminution in the yearly average of victims to arsenic and oxalic acid. But, alas, in the matter of apology, it is not from the excess of the dose, but the timid, niggardly, miserly manner in which it is dispensed, that poor humanity is hurried off to the Styx! How many times does a life depend on the exact proportions of an apology! Is it a hairbreadth too short to cover the scratch for which you want it? Make your will--you are a dead man! A life do I say?--a hecatomb of lives! How many wars would have been prevented, how many thrones would be standing, dynasties flourishing--commonwealths brawling round a _bema_, or fitting out galleys for corn and cotton--if an inch or two more of apology had been added to the proffered ell! But then that plagy, jealous, suspicious, old vinegar-faced Honor, and her partner Pride--as penny-wise and pound-foolish a she-skinflint as herself--have the monopoly of the article. And what with the time they lose in adjusting their spectacles, hunting in the precise shelf for the precise quality demanded, then (quality found) the haggling as to quantum--considering whether it should be Apothecary's weight or Avoirdupois, or English measure or Flemish--and, finally, the hullaboloo they make if the customer is not perfectly satisfied with the monstrous little he gets for his money,--I don't wonder, for my part, how one loses temper and patience, and sends Pride, Honor, and Apology, all to the devil. Aristophanes, in his "Comedy of _Peace_" insinuates a beautiful allegory by only suffering that goddess, though in fact she is his heroine, to appear as a mute. She takes care never to open her lips. The shrewd Greek knew very well that she would cease to be Peace, if she once began to chatter. Wherefore, O reader, if ever you find your pump under the iron heel of another man's boot, heaven grant that you may hold your tongue, and not make things past all endurance and forgiveness by bawling out for an apology!

## CHAPTER XV.

But the Squire and his son, Frank, were large-hearted generous creatures in the article of apology, as in all things less skimpingly dealt out. And seeing that Leonard Fairfield would offer no plaister to Randal Leslie, they made amends for his stinginess by their own prodigality. The Squire accompanied his son to Rood Hall, and none of the family choosing to be at home, the Squire in his own hand, and from his own head, indited and composed an epistle which might have satisfied all the wounds which the dignity of the Leslies had ever received.

This letter of apology ended with a hearty request that Randall would come and spend a few days with his son. Frank's epistle was to the same purport, only more Etonian and less legible.

It was some days before Randall's replies to these epistles were received. The replies bore the address of a village near London, and stated that the writer was now reading with a tutor preparatory to entrance at Oxford, and could not, therefore, accept the invitation extended to him.

For the rest, Randall expressed himself with good sense, though not with much generosity, he excused his participation in the vulgarity of such a conflict by a bitter but short allusion to the obstinacy and ignorance of the village boor; and did not do what you, my kind reader, certainly would have done under similar circumstances--viz. intercede in behalf of a brave and unfortunate antagonist. Most of us like a foe better after we have fought him--that is, if we are the conquering party; this was not the case with Randal Leslie. There, so far as the Etonian was concerned, the matter rested. And the Squire, irritated that he could not repair whatever wrong that young gentleman had sustained, no longer felt a pang of regret as he passed by Mrs. Fairfield's deserted cottage.

## CHAPTER XVI.

Lenny Fairfield continued to give great satisfaction to his new employers, and to profit in many respects by the familiar kindness with which he was treated. Riccabocca, who valued himself on penetrating into character, had from the first seen that much stuff of no common quality and texture was to be found in the disposition and mind of the English village boy. On farther acquaintance, he perceived that, under a child's innocent simplicity, there were the workings of an acuteness that required but development and direction. He ascertained that the pattern boy's progress at the village school proceeded from something more than mechanical docility and readiness of comprehension. Lenny had a keen thirst for knowledge, and through all the disadvantages of and circumstance, there were the indications of that natural genius which converts disadvantages themselves into stimulants. Still, with the germs of good qualities lay the embryos of those which, difficult to separate, and hard to destroy, often mar the produce of the soil. With a remarkable and generous pride in self-repute, there was some stubbornness; with great sensibility to kindness, there was also strong reluctance to forgive affront.

This mixed nature in an uncultivated peasant's breast interested Riccabocca, who, though long secluded from the commerce of mankind, still looked upon man as the most various and entertaining volume which philosophical research can explore. He soon accustomed the boy to the tone of a conversation generally subtle and suggestive; and Lenny's language and ideas became insensibly less rustic and more refined. Then Riccabocca selected from his library, small as it was, books that, though elementary, were of a higher cast than Lenny could have found within his reach at Hazeldean. Riccabocca knew the English language well, better in grammar, construction, and genius than many a not ill-educated Englishman; for he had studied it with the minuteness with which a scholar studies a dead language, and amidst his collection he had many of the books which had formerly served him for that purpose. These were the first works he had lent to Lenny. Meanwhile Jackeymo imparted to the boy many secrets in practical gardening and minute husbandry, for at that day farming in England (some favored counties and estates excepted) was far below the nicety to which the art has been immemorially carried in the north of Italy--where, indeed, you may travel for miles and miles as through a series of market-gardens--so that, all these things considered, Leonard Fairfield might be said to have made a change for the better. Yet in truth, and looking below the surface, that might be fair matter of doubt. For the same reason which had induced the boy to fly his native village, he no longer repaired to the church of Hazeldean. The old intimate intercourse between him and the Parson became necessarily suspended, or bounded to an occasional kindly visit from the father--visits which grew more rare, and less familiar, as he found his former pupil in no want of his services, and wholly deaf to his mild entreaties to forget and forgive the past, and come at least to his old seat in the parish church. Lenny still went to church--a church a long way off in another parish--but the sermons did not do him the same good as Parson Dale's had done; and the clergyman, who had his own flock to attend to, did not condescend, as Parson Dale would have done, to explain what seemed obscure, and enforce what was profitable, in private talk, with that stray lamb from another's fold.

Now I question much if all Dr. Riccabocca's sage maxims, though they were often very moral, and generally very wise, served to expand the peasant boy's native good qualities, and correct his bad, half so well as the few simple words, not at all indebted to Machiavelli, which Leonard had once reverently listened to when he stood by his father's chair, yielded up for the moment to the good Parson, worthy to sit in it; for Mr. Dale had a heart in which all the fatherless of the parish found their place. Nor was this loss of tender, intimate, spiritual love so counterbalanced by the greater facilities for purely intellectual instruction, as modern enlightenment might presume. For, without disputing the advantage of knowledge in a general way, knowledge, in itself, is not friendly to content. Its tendency, of course, is to increase the desires, to dissatisfy us with what is, in order to urge progress to what may be; and, in that progress, what unnoticed martyrs among the many must fall, baffled and crushed by the way! To how large a number will be given desires they will never realize, dissatisfaction of the lot from which they will never rise! _Allons!_ one is viewing the dark side of the question. It is all the fault of that confounded Riccabocca, who has already caused Lenny Fairfield to lean gloomily on his spade, and, after looking round and seeing no one near him, groan out querulously--

"And am I born to dig a potato ground?"

_Pardieu_, my friend Lenny, if you live to be seventy, and ride in your carriage;--and by the help of a dinner-pill digest a spoonful of curry, you may sigh to think what a relish there was in potatoes, roasted in ashes after you had digged them out of that ground with your own stout young hands. Dig on, Lenny Fairfield, dig on! Dr. Riccabocca will tell you that there was once an illustrious personage[R] who made experience of two very different occupations--one was ruling men, the other was planting cabbages; he thought planting cabbages much the pleasanter of the two!

## CHAPTER XVII.

Dr. Riccabocca had secured Lenny Fairfield, and might therefore be considered to have ridden his hobby in the great whirligig with adroitness and success. But Miss Jemima was still driving round in her car, bundling the reins, and flourishing the whip, without apparently having got an inch nearer to the flying form of Dr. Riccabocca.

Indeed, that excellent and only too susceptible spinster, with all her experience of the villany of man, had never conceived the wretch to be so thoroughly beyond the reach of redemption as when Dr. Riccabocca took his leave, and once more interred himself amidst the solitudes of the Casino, without having made any formal renunciation of his criminal celibacy. For some days she shut herself up in her own chamber, and brooded with more than her usual gloomy satisfaction on the certainty of the approaching crash. Indeed, many signs of that universal calamity which, while the visit of Riccabocca lasted, she had permitted herself to consider ambiguous, now became luminously apparent. Even the newspaper, which during that credulous and happy period had given half a column to births and marriages, now bore an ominously long catalogue of deaths; so that it seemed as if the whole population had lost heart, and had no chance of repairing its daily losses. The leading articles spoke, with the obscurity of a Pythian, of an impending CRISIS. Monstrous turnips sprouted out from the paragraphs devoted to general news. Cows bore calves with two heads, whales were stranded in the Humber, showers of frogs descended in the High-street of Cheltenham.

All these symptoms of the world's decrepitude and consummation, which by the side of the fascinating Riccabocca might admit of some doubt is to their origin and cause, now, conjoined with the worst of all, viz.--the frightfully progressive wickedness of man--left to Miss Jemima no ray of hope save that afforded by the reflection that she could contemplate the wreck of matter without a single sentiment of regret.

Mrs. Dale, however, by no means shared the despondency of her fair friend, and, having gained access to Miss Jemima's chamber, succeeded, though not without difficulty, in her kindly attempts to cheer the drooping spirits of that female philanthropist. Nor, in her benevolent desire to speed the car of Miss Jemima to its hymenial goal, was Mrs. Dale so cruel towards her male friend, Dr. Riccabocca, as she seemed to her husband. For Mrs. Dale was a woman of shrewdness and penetration, as most quick-tempered women are; and she knew that Miss Jemima was one of those excellent young ladies who are likely to value a husband in proportion to the difficulty of obtaining him. In fact, my readers of both sexes must often have met, in the course of their experience, with that peculiar sort of feminine disposition, which requires the warmth of the conjugal hearth to develop all its native good qualities; nor is it to be blamed over-much if, innocently aware of this tendency in its nature, it turns towards what is best fitted for its growth and improvement, by laws akin to those which make the sun-flower turn to the sun or the willow to the stream. Ladies of this disposition, permanently thwarted in their affectionate bias, gradually languish away into intellectual inanition, or sprout out into those abnormal eccentricities which are classed under the general name of "oddity" or "character." But, once admitted to their proper soil, it is astonishing what healthful improvement takes place--how the poor heart, before starved and stinted of nourishment, throws out its suckers, and bursts into bloom and fruit. And thus many a belle from whom the beaux have stood aloof, only because the puppies think she could be had for the asking, they see afterwards settled down into true wife and fond mother, with amaze at their former disparagement, and a sigh at their blind hardness of heart.

In all probability, Mrs. Dale took this view of the subject; and certainly, in addition to all the hitherto dormant virtues which would be awakened in Miss Jemima when fairly Mrs. Riccabocca, she counted somewhat upon the mere worldly advantage which such a match would bestow upon the exile. So respectable a connection with one of the oldest, wealthiest and most popular families in the shire, would in itself give him a position not to be despised by a poor stranger in the land; and though the interest of Miss Jemima's dowry might not be much, regarded in the light of English pounds, (not Milanese _lire_,) still it would suffice to prevent that gradual process of dematerialization which the lengthened diet upon minnows and sticklebacks had already made apparent in the fine and slow-evanishing form of the philosopher.

Like all persons convinced of the expediency of a thing, Mrs. Dale saw nothing wanting but opportunities to insure success. And that these might be forthcoming, she not only renewed with greater frequency, and more urgent instance than ever, her friendly invitations to Riccabocca to drink tea and spend the evening, but she artfully so chafed the Squire on his sore point of hospitality, that the doctor received weekly a pressing solicitation to dine and sleep at the Hall.

At first the Italian pished and grunted, and said _Cospetto_, and _Per Bacco_, and _Diavola_, and tried to creep out of so much proffered courtesy. But, like all single gentlemen, he was a little under the tyrannical influence of his faithful servant; and Jackeymo, though he could bear starving as well as his master when necessary, still, when he had the option, preferred roast beef and plum-pudding. Moreover, that vain and incautious confidence of Riccabocca, touching the vast sum at his command, and with no heavier drawback than that of so amiable a lady as Miss Jemima--who had already shown him (Jackeymo) many little delicate attentions--had greatly whetted the cupidity which was in the servant's Italian nature? a cupidity the more keen because, long debarred its legitimate exercise on his own mercenary interests, he carried it all to the account of his master's!

Thus tempted by his enemy, and betrayed by his servant, the unfortunate Riccabocca fell, though with eyes not unblinded, into the hospitable snares extended for the destruction of his--celibacy! He went often to the parsonage, often to the Hall, and by degrees the sweets of the social domestic life, long denied him, began to exercise their enervating charm upon the stoicism of our poor exile. Frank had now returned to Eton. An unexpected invitation had carried off Captain Higginbotham to pass a few weeks at Bath, with a distant relation, who had lately returned from India, and who, as rich as Croesus, felt so estranged and solitary in his native isle, that, when the Captain "claimed kindred there," to his own amaze "he had his claims allowed;" while a very protracted sitting of Parliament still delayed in London the Squire's habitual visitors in the later summer; so that--a chasm thus made in his society--Mr. Hazeldean welcomed with no hollow cordiality the diversion or distraction he found in the foreigner's companionship. Thus, with pleasure to all parties, and strong hopes to the two female conspirators, the intimacy between the Casino and Hall rapidly thickened; but still not a word resembling a distinct proposal did Dr. Riccabocca breathe. And still, if such an idea obtruded itself on his mind, it was chased therefrom with so determined a _Diavolo_, that perhaps, if not the end of the world, at least the end of Miss Jemima's tenure in it, might have approached, and seen her still Miss Jemima, but for a certain letter with a foreign postmark that reached the doctor one Tuesday morning.

## CHAPTER XVIII.

The servant saw that something had gone wrong, and, under pretence of syringing the orange trees, he lingered near his master, and peered through the sunny leaves upon Riccabocca's melancholy brows.

The doctor sighed heavily. Nor did he, as was his wont, after some such sigh, mechanically take up that dear comforter, the pipe. But though the tobacco pouch lay by his side on the balustrade, and the pipe stood against the wall between his knees, child-like lifting up its lips to the customary caress--he heeded neither the one nor the other, but laid the letter silently on his lap, and fixed his eyes upon the ground.

"It must be bad news indeed!" thought Jackeymo, and desisted from his work. Approaching his master, he took up the pipe and the tobacco pouch, and filled the bowl slowly, glancing all the while to that dark musing face on which, when abandoned by the expression of intellectual vivacity, or the exquisite smile of Italian courtesy, the deep downward lines revealed the characters of sorrow. Jackeymo did not venture to speak; but the continued silence of his master disturbed him much. He laid that peculiar tinder which your smokers use upon the steel, and struck the spark--still not a word, nor did Riccabocca stretch forth his hand.

"I never knew him in this taking before," thought Jackeymo; and delicately he insinuated the neck of the pipe into the nerveless fingers of the hand that lay supine on those quiet knees--the pipe fell to the ground.

Jackeymo crossed himself, and began praying to his sainted namesake with great fervor.

The doctor rose slowly, and, as if with effort, he walked once or twice to and fro the terrace; and then he halted abruptly, and said--

"Friend!"

"Blessed Monsignore San Giacomo, I knew thou wouldst hear me!" cried the servant; and he raised his master's hand to his pipe, then abruptly turned away and wiped his eyes. "Friend," repeated Riccabocca, and this time with a tremulous emphasis, and in the softest tone of a voice never wholly without the music of the sweet South, "I would talk to thee of my child."----

## CHAPTER XIX.

"The letter, then, relates to the Signorina. She is well?"

"Yes, she is well now. She is in our native Italy."

Jackeymo raised his eyes involuntarily towards the orange-trees, and the morning breeze swept by and bore to him the odor of their blossoms.

"Those are sweet even here, with care," said he, pointing to the trees. "I think I have said that before to the Padrone."

But Riccabocca was now looking again at the letter, and did not notice either the gesture or the remark of his servant.

"My aunt is no more!" said he, after a pause.

"We will pray for her soul!" answered Jackeymo, solemnly. "But she was very old, and had been a long time ailing. Let it not grieve the Padrone too keenly, at that age, and with those infirmities, death comes as a friend."

"Peace be to her dust!" returned the Italian. "If she had her faults, be they now forgotten for ever; and in the hour of my danger and distress, she sheltered my infant! That shelter is destroyed. This letter is from the priest, her confessor. You know that she had nothing at her own disposal to bequeath my child, and her property passes to the male heir--mine enemy."

"Traitor!" muttered Jackeymo; and his right hand seemed to feel for the weapon which the Italians of lower rank often openly wear in their girdles.

"The priest," resumed Riccabocca, calmly, "has rightly judged in removing my child as a guest from the house in which my enemy enters as lord."

"And where is the Signorina?"

"With that poor priest. See, Giacomo--here, here--this is her handwriting at the end of the letter--the first lines she ever yet traced to me."

Jackeymo took off his hat, and looked reverently on the large characters of a child's writing. But large as they were, they seemed indistinct, for the paper was blistered with the child's tears, and on the place where they had _not_ fallen, there was a round fresh moist stain of the tear that had dropped from the lids of the father. Riccabocca renewed,--"The priest recommends a convent."

"To the devil with the priest!" cried the servant; then crossing himself rapidly, he added, "I did not mean that, Monsignore San Giacomo--forgive me! But your excellency[S] does not think of making a nun of his only child!"

"And yet why not?" said Riccabocca, mournfully; "what can I give her in the world? Is the land of the stranger a better refuge than the home of peace in her native clime?"

"In the land of the stranger beats her father's heart!"

"And if that beat were stilled, what then? Ill fares the life that a single death can bereave of all. In a convent at least (and the priest's influence can obtain her that asylum amongst her equals and amidst her sex) she is safe from trial and penury--to her grave."

"Penury! Just see how rich we shall be when we take those fields at Michaelmas."

"_Pazzie!_" (follies) said Riccabocca, listlessly. "Are these suns more serene than ours, or the soil more fertile? Yet in our own Italy, saith the proverb, 'he who sows land, reaps more care than corn.' It were different," continued the father after a pause, and in a more irresolute tone, "if I had some independence, however small, to count on--nay, if among all my tribe of dainty relatives there were but one female who would accompany Violante to the exile's hearth--Ishmael had his Hagar. But how can we two rough-bearded men provide for all the nameless, wants and cares of a frail female child? And she has been so delicately reared--the woman-child needs the fostering hand and tender eye of a woman."

"And with a word," said Jackeymo, resolutely, "the Padrone might secure to his child all that he needs, to save her from the sepulchre of a convent; and ere the autumn leaves fall, she might be sitting on his knee. Padrone, do not think that you can conceal from me the truth, that you love your child better than all things in the world--now the Patria is as dead to you as the dust of your fathers--and your heart-strings would crack with the effort to tear her from them, and consign her to a convent. Padrone, never again to hear her voice--never again to see her face! Those little arms that twined round your neck that dark night, when we fled fast for life and freedom, and you said, as you felt their clasp, 'Friend, all is not yet lost!'"

"Giacomo!" exclaimed the father, reproachfully, and his voice seemed to choke him. Riccabocca turned away, and walked restlessly to and fro the terrace; then, lifting his arms with a wild gesture as he still continued his long irregular strides, he muttered, "Yes, heaven is my witness that I could have borne reverse and banishment without a murmur, had I permitted myself that young partner in exile and privation. Heaven is my witness that, if I hesitate now, it is because I would not listen to my own selfish heart. Yet never, never to see her again--my child! And it was but as the infant that I beheld her! O friend, friend----" (and, stopping short with a burst of uncontrollable emotion, he bowed his head upon his servant's shoulder;) "thou knowest what I have endured and suffered at my hearth, as in my country; the wrong, the perfidy, the--the--" His voice again failed him; he clung to his servant's breast, and his whole frame shook.

"But your child, the innocent one--I think now only of her!" faltered Giacomo, struggling with his own sobs.

"True, only of her," replied the exile, raising his face--"only of her. Put aside thy thoughts for thyself, friend--counsel me. If I were to send for Violante, and if, transplanted to these keen airs, she drooped and died--look, look--the priest says that she needs such tender care; or if I myself were summoned from the world, to leave her in it alone, friendless, homeless, breadless perhaps at the age of woman's sharpest trial against temptation, would she not live to mourn the cruel egotism that closed on her infant innocence the gates of the House of God?"

Giacomo was appalled by this appeal; and indeed Riccabocca had never before thus reverently spoken of the cloister. In his hours of philosophy, he was wont to sneer at monks and nuns, priesthood and superstition. But now, in that hour of emotion, the Old Religion reclaimed her empire; and the skeptical world-wise man, thinking only of his child, spoke and felt with a child's simple faith.

## CHAPTER XX.

"But again I say," murmured Jackeymo, scarce audibly, and after a long silence, "if the Padrone would make up his mind--to marry!"

He expected that his master would start up in his customary indignation at such a suggestion--nay, he might not have been sorry so to have changed the current of feeling; but the poor Italian only winced slightly, and mildly withdrawing himself from his servant's supporting arm, again paced the terrace, but this time quietly and in silence. A quarter of an hour thus passed. "Give me the pipe," said Dr. Riccabocca, passing into the Belvidere.

Jackeymo again struck the spark, and, wonderfully relieved at the Padrone's return to his usual adviser, mentally besought his sainted namesake to bestow a double portion of soothing wisdom on the benignant influences of the weed.

## CHAPTER XXI.

Dr. Riccabocca had been some little time in the solitude of the Belvidere, when Lenny Fairfield, not knowing that his employer was therein, entered to lay down a book which the Doctor had lent him, with injunctions to leave on a certain table when done with. Riccabocca looked up at the sound of the young peasant's step.

"I beg your honor's pardon--I did not know----"

"Never mind; lay the book there. I wish to speak with you. You look well, my child; this air agrees with you as well as that of Hazeldean?"

"Oh yes, sir."

"Yet it is higher ground, more exposed?"

"That can hardly be, sir," said Lenny; "there are many plants grow here which don't flourish at the Squire's. The hill yonder keeps off the east wind, and the place lays to the south."

"Lies, not _lays_, Lenny. What are the principal complaints in these parts?"

"Eh, sir?"

"I mean what maladies, what diseases?"

"I never heard tell of any, sir, except the rheumatism."

"No low fevers?--no consumption?"

"Never heard of them, sir."

Riccabocca drew a long breath, as if relieved.

"That seems a very kind family at the Hall."

"I have nothing to say against it," answered Lenny, bluntly. "I have not been treated justly. But as that book says, sir, 'It is not every one who comes into the world with a silver spoon in his mouth.'"

Little thought the Doctor that those wise maxims may leave sore thoughts behind them. He was too occupied with the subject most at his own heart to think then of what was in Lenny Fairfield's.

"Yes; a kind, English, domestic family. Did you see much of Miss Hazeldean?"

"Not so much as of the Lady."

"Is she liked in the village, think you?"

"Miss Jemima? Yes. She never did harm. Her little dog bit me once--she did not ask me to beg its pardon, she asked mine! She's a very nice young lady; the girls say she's very affable; and," added Lenny with a smile, "there are always more weddings going on when she's down at the Hall."

"Oh!" said Riccabocca. Then, after a long whiff, "Did you ever see her play with the little children? Is she fond of children, do you think?"

"Lord, sir, you guess every thing! She's never so pleased as when she's playing with the babies."

"Humph!" grunted Riccabocca. "Babies--well, that's womanlike. I don't mean exactly babies, but when they're older--little girls."

"Indeed, sir, I dare say; but," said Lenny, primly, "I never as yet kept company with the little girls."

"Quite right, Lenny; be equally discreet all your life. Mrs. Dale is very intimate with Miss Hazeldean--more than with the Squire's lady. Why is that, think you?"

"Well, sir," said Leonard, shrewdly, "Mrs. Dale has her little tempers, though she's a very good lady; and Madam Hazeldean is rather high, and has a spirit. But Miss Jemima is so soft: any one could live with Miss Jemima, as Joe and the servants say at the Hall."

"Indeed! Get my hat out of the parlor, and--just bring a clothesbrush, Lenny. A fine sunny day for a walk."

After this most mean and dishonorable inquisition into the character and popular repute of Miss Hazeldean, Signore Riccabocca seemed as much cheered up and elated as if he had committed some very noble action; and he walked forth in the direction of the Hall with a far lighter and livelier step than that with which he had paced the terrace.

"Monsignore San Giacomo, by thy help and the pipe's, the Padrone shall have his child!" muttered the servant, looking up from the garden.

## CHAPTER XXII.

Yet Dr. Riccabocca was not rash. The man who wants his wedding-garment to fit him must allow plenty of time for the measure. But, from that day, the Italian notably changed his manner towards Miss Hazeldean. He ceased that profusion of compliment in which he had hitherto carried off in safety all serious meaning. For indeed the Doctor considered that compliments, to a single gentleman, were what the inky liquid it dispenses is to the cuttle-fish, that by obscuring the water sails away from its enemy. Neither did he, as before, avoid prolonged conversations with that young lady, and contrive to escape from all solitary rambles by her side. On the contrary, he now sought every occasion to be in her society; and, entirely dropping the language of gallantry, he assumed something of the earnest tone of friendship. He bent down his intellect to examine and plumb her own. To use a very homely simile, he blew away that froth which there is on the surface of mere acquaintanceships, especially with the opposite sex; and which, while it lasts, scarce allows you to distinguish between small beer and double X. Apparently Dr. Riccabocca was satisfied with his scrutiny--at all events, under that froth there was no taste of bitter. The Italian might not find any great strength of intellect in Miss Jemima, but he found that, disentangled from many little whims and foibles--which he had himself the sense to perceive were harmless enough if they lasted, and not so absolutely constitutional but what they might be removed by a tender hand--Miss Hazeldean had quite enough sense to comprehend the plain duties of married life; and if the sense could fail, it found a substitute in good old homely English principles and the instincts of amiable kindly feelings.

I know not how it is, but your very clever man never seems to care so much as your less gifted mortals for cleverness in his helpmate. Your scholars, and poets, and ministers of state, are more often than not found assorted with exceedingly humdrum good sort of women, and apparently like them all the better for their deficiencies. Just see how happily Racine lived with his wife, and what an angel he thought her, and yet she had never read his plays. Certainly Goethe never troubled the lady who called him "Mr. Privy Councillor" with whims about 'monads,' and speculations on 'color,' nor those stiff metaphysical problems on which one breaks one's shins in the Second Part of the Faust. Probably it may be that such great geniuses--knowing that, as compared with themselves, there is little difference between your clever woman and your humdrum woman--merge at once all minor distinctions, relinquish all attempts that could not but prove unsatisfactory, at sympathy in hard intellectual pursuits, and are quite satisfied to establish that tie which, after all, best resists wear and tear--viz. the tough household bond between one human heart and another.

At all events, this, I suspect, was the reasoning of Dr. Riccabocca, when one morning, after a long walk with Miss Hazeldean, he muttered to himself--

"Duro con duro Non fece mai buon muro."

Which may bear the paraphrase, "Bricks without mortar would make a very bad wall." There was quite enough in Miss Jemima's disposition to make excellent mortar: the Doctor took the bricks to himself.

When his examination was concluded, our philosopher symbolically evinced the result he had arrived at by a very simple proceeding on his part--which would have puzzled you greatly if you had not paused, and meditated thereon, till you saw all that it implied. _Dr. Riccabocca took off his spectacles!_ He wiped them carefully, put them into their shagreen case, and locked them in his bureau:--that is to say, he left off wearing his spectacles.

You will observe that there was a wonderful depth of meaning in that critical symptom, whether it be regarded as a sign outward, positive, and explicit, or a sign metaphysical, mystical, and esoteric. For, as to the last--it denoted that the task of the spectacles was over; that, when a philosopher has made up his mind to marry, it is better henceforth to be short-sighted--nay, even somewhat purblind--than to be always scrutinizing the domestic felicity to which he is about to resign himself, through a pair of cold, unillusory barnacles. And for the things beyond the hearth, if he cannot see without spectacles, is he not about to ally to his own defective vision a good sharp pair of eyes, never at fault where his interests are concerned? On the other hand, regarded positively, categorically, and explicitly, Dr. Riccabocca, by laying aside those spectacles, signified that he was about to commence that happy initiation of courtship, when every man, be he ever so much a philosopher, wishes to look as young and as handsome as time and nature will allow. Vain task to speed the soft language of the eyes through the medium of those glassy interpreters! I remember, for my own part, that once, on a visit to Adelaide, I was in great danger of falling in love--with a young lady, too, who would have brought me a very good fortune--when she suddenly produced from her reticule a very neat pair of No. 4, set in tortoise-shell, and, fixing upon me their Gorgon gaze, froze the astonished Cupid into stone! And I hold it a great proof of the wisdom of Riccabocca, and of his vast experience in mankind, that he was not above the consideration of what your pseudo sages would have regarded as foppish and ridiculous trifles. It argued all the better for that happiness which is our being's end and aim, that, in condescending to play the lover, he put those unbecoming petrifiers under lock and key.

And certainly, now the spectacles were abandoned, it was impossible to deny that the Italian had remarkably handsome eyes. Even through the spectacles, or lifted a little above them, they were always bright and expressive; but without those adjuncts, the blaze was softer and more tempered: they had that look which the French call _veloute_, or velvety; and he appeared altogether ten years younger. If our Ulysses, thus rejuvinated by his Minerva, has not fully made up his mind to make a Penelope of Miss Jemima, all I can say is, that he is worse than Polyphemus, who was only an Anthropophagos;----

He preys upon the weaker sex, and is a Gynopophagite!

## CHAPTER XXIII.

"And you commission me, then, to speak to our dear Jemima?" said Mrs. Dale, joyfully, and without any bitterness whatever in that "dear."

_Dr. Riccabocca._--"Nay, before speaking to Miss Hazeldean, it would surely be proper to know how far my addresses would be acceptable to the family."

_Mrs. Dale._--"Ah!"

_Dr. Riccabocca._--"The Squire is of course the head of the family."

_Mrs. Dale_ (absent and _distrait_.)--"The Squire--yes, very true--quite proper." (Then looking up, and with _naivete_)--"Can you believe me, I never thought of the Squire. And he is such an odd man, and has so many English prejudices, that really--dear me, how vexatious that it should never once have occurred to me that Mr. Hazeldean had a voice in the matter! Indeed, the relationship is so distant--it is not like being her father; and Jemima is of age, and can do as she pleases; and--but, as you say, it is quite proper that he should be consulted as the head of the family."

_Dr. Riccabocca._--"And do you think that the Squire of Hazeldean might reject my alliance! Pshaw! that's a grand word, indeed;--I mean, that he might object very reasonably to his cousin's marriage with a foreigner, of whom he can know nothing, except that which in all countries is disreputable, and is said in this to be criminal--poverty."

_Mrs. Dale_ (kindly.)--"You misjudge us poor English people, and you wrong the Squire, Heaven bless him! for we were poor enough when he singled out my husband from a hundred for the minister of his parish, for his neighbor and his friend. I will speak to him fearlessly----"

_Dr. Riccabocca._--"And frankly. And now I have used that word, let me go on with the confession which your kindly readiness, my fair friend, somewhat interrupted. I said that if I might presume to think my addresses would be acceptable to Miss Hazeldean and her family, I was too sensible of her amiable qualities not to--not to--"

_Mrs. Dale_ (with demure archness.)--"Not to be the happiest of men--that's the customary English phrase, Doctor."

_Riccabocca_ (gallantly.)--"There cannot be a better. But," continued he, seriously, "I wish it first to be understood that I have--been married before."

_Mrs. Dale_ (astonished.)--"Married before!"

_Riccabocca._--"And that I have an only child, dear to me--inexpressibly dear. That child, a daughter, has hitherto lived abroad; circumstances now render it desirable that she should make her home with me. And I own fairly that nothing has so attached me to Miss Hazeldean, nor so induced my desire for our matrimonial connection, as my belief that she has the heart and the temper to become a kind mother to my little one."

_Mrs. Dale_ (with feeling and warmth.)--"You judge her rightly there."

_Riccabocca._--"Now, in pecuniary matters, as you may conjecture from my mode of life, I have nothing to offer to Miss Hazeldean correspondent with her own fortune, whatever that may be!"

_Mrs. Dale._--"That difficulty is obviated by settling Miss Hazeldean's fortune on herself, which is customary in such cases."

Dr. Riccabocca's face lengthened. "And my child, then?" said he, feelingly. There was something in that appeal so alien from all sordid and merely personal mercenary motives, that Mrs. Dale could not have had the heart to make the very rational suggestion--"But that child is not Jemima's, and you may have children by her."

She was touched, and replied, hesitatingly--"But, from what you and Jemima may jointly possess, you can save something annually--you can insure your life for your child. We did so when our poor child whom we lost was born," (the tears rushed into Mrs. Dale's eyes;) "and I fear that Charles still insures his life for my sake, though Heaven knows that--that.----"

The tears burst out. That little heart, quick and petulant though it was, had not a fibre of the elastic muscular tissues which are mercifully bestowed on the hearts of predestined widows. Dr. Riccabocca could not pursue the subject of life insurances further. But the idea--which had never occurred to the foreigner before, though so familiar to us English people when only possessed of a life income--pleased him greatly. I will do him the justice to say, that he preferred it to the thought of actually appropriating to himself and to his child a portion of Miss Hazeldean's dower.

Shortly afterwards he took his leave, and Mrs. Dale hastened to seek her husband in his study, inform him of the success of her matrimonial scheme, and consult him as to the chance of the Squire's acquiescence therein. "You see," said she, hesitatingly, "though the Squire might be glad to see Jemima married to some Englishman, yet, if he asks who and what is this Dr. Riccabocca, how am I to answer him?"

"You should have thought of that before," said Mr. Dale, with unwonted asperity; "and, indeed, if I had ever believed any thing serious could come out of what seemed to me so absurd, I should long since have requested you not to interfere in such matters. Good heavens!" continued the Parson, changing color, "if we should have assisted, underhand as it were, to introduce into the family of a man to whom we owe so much, a connection that he would dislike! how base we should be!--how ungrateful!"

Poor Mrs. Dale was frightened by this speech, and still more by her husband's consternation and displeasure. To do Mrs. Dale justice, whenever her mild partner was really either grieved or offended, her little temper vanished--she became as meek as a lamb. As soon as she recovered the first shock she experienced, she hastened to dissipate the Parson's apprehensions. She assured him that she was convinced that, if the Squire disapproved of Riccabocca's pretensions, the Italian would withdraw them at once, and Mrs. Hazeldean would never know of his proposals. Therefore, in that case, no harm would be done.

This assurance coincided with Mr. Dale's convictions as to Riccabocca's scruples on the point of honor, tended much to compose the good man; and if he did not, as my reader of the gentler sex would expect from him, feel alarm lest Miss Jemima's affections should have been irretrievably engaged, and her happiness thus put in jeopardy by the Squire's refusal, it was not that the Parson wanted tenderness of heart, but experience in woman-kind; and he believed, very erroneously, that Miss Jemima Hazeldean was not one upon whom a disappointment of that kind would produce a lasting impression. Therefore Mr. Dale, after a pause of consideration, said kindly----

"Well, don't vex yourself--and I was to blame quite as much as you. But, indeed, I should have thought it easier for the Squire to have transplanted one of his tall cedars into his kitchen-garden, than for you to inveigle Dr. Riccabocca into matrimonial intentions. But a man who could voluntarily put himself into the parish stocks for the sake of experiment, must be capable of any thing! However, I think it better that I, rather than yourself, should speak to the Squire, and I will go at once."

## CHAPTER XXIV.

The Parson put on the shovel hat, which--conjoined with other details in his dress peculiarly clerical, and already, even then, beginning to be out of fashion with churchmen--had served to fix upon him, emphatically, the dignified but antiquated style and cognomen of "Parson;" and took his way towards the Home Farm, at which he expected to find the Squire. But he had scarcely entered upon the village green when he beheld Mr. Hazeldean, leaning both hands on his stick, and gazing intently upon the parish stocks. Now, sorry am I to say that, ever since the Hegira of Lenny and his mother, the anti-stockian and revolutionary spirit in Hazeldean, which the memorable homily of our Parson had awhile averted or suspended, had broken forth afresh. For though, while Lenny was present to be moved and jeered at, there had been no pity for him, yet no sooner was he removed from the scene of trial, than a universal compassion for the barbarous usage he had received produced what is called "the reaction of public opinion." Not that those who had mowed and jeered repented them of their mockery, or considered themselves in the slightest degree the cause of his expatriation. No; they, with the rest of the villagers, laid all the blame upon the stocks. It was not to be expected that a lad of such exemplary character could be thrust into that place of ignominy, and not be sensible of the affront. And who, in the whole village, was safe, if such goings-on and puttings-in were to be tolerated in silence, and at the expense of the very best and quietest lad the village had ever known? Thus, a few days after the widow's departure, the stocks was again the object of midnight desecration: it was bedaubed and bescratched--it was hacked and hewed--it was scrawled all over with pithy lamentations for Lenny, and laconic execrations for tyrants. Night after night new inscriptions appeared, testifying the sarcastic wit and the vindictive sentiment of the parish. And perhaps the stocks themselves were only spared from axe and bonfire by the convenience they afforded to the malice of the disaffected: they became the Pasquin of Hazeldean.

As disaffection naturally produces a correspondent vigor in authority, so affairs had been lately administered with greater severity than had been hitherto wont in the easy rule of the Squire and his predecessors. Suspected persons were naturally marked out by Mr. Stirn, and reported to his employer, who, too proud or too pained to charge them openly with ingratitude, at first only passed them by in his walks with a silent and stiff inclination of his head; and afterwards gradually yielding to the baleful influence of Stirn, the Squire grumbled forth that "he did not see why he should be always putting himself out of his way to show kindness to those who made such a return. There ought to be a difference between the good and the bad." Encouraged by this admission, Stirn had conducted himself towards the suspected parties, and their whole kith and kin, with the iron-handed justice that belonged to his character. For some, habitual donations of milk from the dairy, and vegetables from the gardens, were surlily suspended: others were informed that their pigs were always trespassing on the woods in search of acorns; or that they were violating the Game Laws in keeping lurchers. A beer-house, popular in the neighborhood, but of late resorted to over-much by the grievance-mongers, (and no wonder, since they had become the popular party,) was threatened with an application to the magistrates for the withdrawal of its license. Sundry old women, whose grandsons were notoriously ill-disposed towards the stocks, were interdicted from gathering dead sticks under the avenues, on pretence that they broke down the live boughs; and, what was more obnoxious to the younger members of the parish than most other retaliatory measures, three chestnut trees, one walnut, and two cherry trees, standing at the bottom of the park, and which had, from time immemorial, been given up to the youth of Hazeldean, were now solemnly placed under the general defence of "private property." And the crier had announced that, henceforth, all depredators on the fruit trees in Copse Hollow would be punished with the utmost rigor of the law. Stirn, indeed, recommended much more stringent proceedings than all these indications of a change of policy, which, he averred, would soon bring the parish to its senses--such as discontinuing many little jobs of unprofitable work that employed the surplus labor of the village. But there the Squire, falling into the department, and under the benigner influence of his Harry, was as yet not properly hardened. When it came to a question that affected the absolute quantity of loaves to be consumed by the graceless mouths that fed upon him, the milk of human kindness--with which Providence has so bountifully supplied that class of the mammalia called the "Bucolic," and of which our Squire had an extra "yield"--burst forth, and washed away all the indignation of the harsher Adam.

Still your policy of half measures, which irritates without crushing its victims, which flaps an exasperated wasp-nest with a silk pocket handkerchief, instead of blowing it up with a match and train, is rarely successful; and, after three or four other and much guiltier victims than Lenny had been incarcerated in the stocks, the parish of Hazeldean was ripe for any enormity. Pestilent jacobinical tracts, conceived and composed in the sinks of manufacturing towns--found their way into the popular beer-house--heaven knows how, though the Tinker was suspected of being the disseminator by all but Stirn, who still, in a whisper, accused the Papishers. And, finally, there appeared amongst the other graphic embellishments which the poor stocks had received, the rude _gravure_ of a gentleman in a broad-brimmed hat and top-boots, suspended from a gibbet, with the inscription beneath--"A warnin to hall tirans--mind your hi!--sighnde Captins Traw."

It was upon this significant and emblematic portraiture that the Squire was gazing when the parson joined him.

"Well, Parson," said Mr. Hazeldean, with a smile which he meant to be pleasant and easy, but which was exceedingly bitter and grim, "I wish you joy of your flock--you see they have just hanged me in effigy!"

The Parson stared, and, though greatly shocked, smothered his emotions; and attempted, with the wisdom of the serpent and the mildness of the dove, to find another original for the effigy.

"It is very bad," quoth he, "but not so bad as all that, Squire; that's not the shape of your hat. It is evidently meant for Mr. Stirn."

"Do you think so?" said the Squire softened. "Yet the top-boots--Stirn never wears top-boots."

"No more do you--except in hunting. If you look again, those are not tops--they are leggings--Stirn wears leggings. Besides, that flourish, which is meant for a nose, is a kind of a hook like Stirn's; whereas your nose--though by no means a snub--rather turns up than not, as the Apollo's does, according to the plaster cast in Riccabocca's parlor."

"Poor Stirn!" said the Squire, in a tone that evinced complacency, not unmingled with compassion, "that's what a man gets in this world by being a faithful servant, and doing his duty with zeal for his employer. But you see that things have come to a strange pass, and the question now is, what course to pursue. The miscreants hitherto have defied all vigilance, and Stirn recommends the employment of a regular nightwatch with a lanthorn and bludgeon."

"That may protect the stocks certainly; but will it keep those detestable tracts out of the beer-house?"

"We shall shut the beer-house up at the next sessions."

"The tracts will break out elsewhere--the humor's in the blood!"

"I've half a mind to run off to Brighton or Leamington--good hunting at Leamington--for a year, just to let the rogues see how they can get on without me!"

The Squire's lip trembled.

"My dear Mr. Hazeldean," said the Parson, taking his friend's hand, "I don't want to parade my superior wisdom; but if you had taken my advice, _quieta non movere_. Was there ever a parish so peaceable as this, or a country-gentleman so beloved as you were before you undertook the task which has dethroned kings and ruined states--that of wantonly meddling with antiquity, whether for the purpose of uncalled-for repairs or the revival of obsolete uses."

At this rebuke, the Squire did not manifest his constitutional tendencies to choler; but he replied almost meekly, "If it were to do again, faith, I would leave the parish to the enjoyment of the shabbiest pair of stocks that ever disgraced a village. Certainly I meant it for the best--an ornament to the green; however, now they are rebuilt, the stocks must be supported. Will Hazeldean is not the man to give way to a set of thankless rapscallions."

"I think," said the Parson, "that you will allow that the House of Tudor, whatever its faults, was a determined resolute dynasty enough--high-hearted and strong-headed. A Tudor would never have fallen into the same calamities as the poor Stuart did!"

"What the plague has the House of Tudor got to do with my stocks?"

"A great deal. Henry the VIII. found a subsidy so unpopular that he gave it up; and the people, in return, allowed him to cut off as many heads as he pleased, besides those in his own family. Good Queen Bess, who, I know, is your idol in history----"

"To be sure! she knighted my ancestor at Tilbury Fort."

"Good Queen Bess struggled hard to maintain a certain monopoly; she saw it would not do, and she surrendered it with that frank heartiness which becomes a sovereign, and makes surrender a grace."

"Ha! and you would have me give up the stocks?"

"I would much rather they had stayed as they were, before you touched them; but, as it is, if you could find a good plausible pretext--and there is an excellent one at hand;--the sternest kings open prisons, and grant favors, upon joyful occasions. Now a marriage in the royal family is of course a joyful occasion!--and so it should be in that of the King of Hazeldean." Admire that artful turn in the Parson's eloquence!--it was worthy of Riccabocca himself. Indeed, Mr. Dale had profited much by his companionship with that Machiavellian intellect.

"A marriage--yes; but Frank has only just got into long tails!"

"I did not allude to Frank, but to your cousin Jemima!"

## CHAPTER XXV.

The Squire staggered as if the breath had been knocked out of him, and, for want of a better seat, sat down on the stocks.

All the female heads in the neighboring cottages peered, themselves unseen, through the casements. What could the Squire be about?--what new mischief did he meditate? Did he mean to fortify the stocks? Old Gaffer Solomons, who had an indefinite idea of the lawful power of squires, and who had been for the last ten minutes at watch on his threshold, shook his head and said--"Them as a cut out the mon, a-hanging, as a put it in the Squire's head!"

"Put what?" asked his granddaughter.

"The gallus!" answered Solomons--"he be a-goin' to have it hung from the great elm-tree. And the Parson, good mon, is a-quoting Scripter agin it--you see, he's a taking off his gloves, and a putting his two han's togither, as he do when he pray for the sick, Jeany."

That description of the Parson's mien and manner, which, with his usual niceness of observation, Gaffer Solomons thus sketched off, will convey to you some idea of the earnestness with which the Parson pleaded the cause he had undertaken to advocate. He dwelt much upon the sense of propriety which the foreigner had evinced in requesting that the Squire might be consulted before any formal communication to his cousin; and he repeated Mrs. Dale's assurance, that such were Riccabocca's high standard of honor and belief in the sacred rights of hospitality, that, if the Squire withheld his consent to his proposals, the Parson was convinced that the Italian would instantly retract them. Now, considering that Miss Hazeldean was, to say the least, come to years of discretion, and the Squire had long since placed her property entirely at her own disposal, Mr. Hazeldean was forced to acquiesce in the Parson's corollary remark, "That this was a delicacy which could not be expected from every English pretender to the lady's hand." Seeing that he had so far cleared ground, the Parson went on to intimate, though with great tact, that, since Miss Jemima would probably marry sooner or later, (and, indeed, that the Squire could not wish to prevent her,) it might be better for all parties concerned that it should be with some one who, though a foreigner, was settled in the neighborhood, and of whose character what was known was certainly favorable, than run the hazard of her being married for her money by some adventurer or Irish fortune-hunter at the watering-places she yearly visited. Then he touched lightly on Riccabocca's agreeable and companionable qualities; and, concluded with a skilful peroration upon the excellent occasion the wedding would afford to reconcile Hall and parish, by making a voluntary holocaust of the stocks.

As he concluded, the Squire's brow, before thoughtful, though not sullen, cleared up benignly. To say truth, the Squire was dying to get rid of the stocks, if he could but do so handsomely and with dignity; and if all the stars in the astrological horoscope had conjoined together to give Miss Jemima "assurance of a husband," they could not so have served her with the Squire, as that conjunction between the altar and the stocks which the Parson had effected!

Accordingly, when Mr. Dale had come to an end, the Squire replied with great placidity and good sense, "That Mr. Rickeybockey had behaved very much like a gentleman, and that he was very much obliged to him; that he (the Squire) had no right to interfere in the matter, farther than with his advice; that Jemima was old enough to choose for herself, and that, as the Parson had implied, after all, she might go farther and fare worse--indeed, the farther she went, (that is, the longer she waited,) the worse she was likely to fare. I own, for my part," continued the Squire, "that, though I like Rickeybockey very much, I never suspected that Jemima was caught with his long face; but there's no accounting for tastes. My Harry, indeed, was more shrewd, and gave me many a hint, for which I only laughed at her. Still I ought to have thought it looked queer when Mounseer took to disguising himself by leaving off his glasses, ha--ha! I wonder what Harry will say; let's go and talk to her."

The Parson, rejoiced at this easy way of taking the matter, hooked his arm into the Squire's, and they walked amicably towards the Hall. But on coming first into the gardens, they found Mrs. Hazeldean herself, clipping dead leaves or fading flowers from her rose-trees. The Squire stole slily behind her, and startled her in her turn by putting his arm round her waist, and saluting her smooth cheek with one of his hearty kisses; which, by the way, from some association of ideas, was a conjugal freedom that he usually indulged whenever a wedding was going on in the village.

"Fie, William!" said Mrs. Hazeldean coyly, and blushing as she saw the Parson, "Well, who's going to be married now?"

"Lord, was there ever such a woman?--she's guessed it!" cried the Squire in great admiration. "Tell her all about it, Parson."

The Parson obeyed.

Mrs. Hazeldean, as the reader may suppose, showed much less surprise than her husband had done; but she took the news graciously, and made much the same answer as that which had occurred to the Squire, only with somewhat more qualification and reserve. "Signor Riccabocca had behaved very handsomely; and though a daughter of the Hazeldeans of Hazeldean might expect a much better marriage in a worldly point of view, yet as the lady in question had deferred finding one so long, it would be equally idle and impertinent now to quarrel with her choice--if indeed she should decide on accepting Signor Riccabocca. As for fortune, that was a consideration for the two contracting parties. Still, it ought to be pointed out to Miss Jemima that the interest of her fortune would afford but a very small income. That Dr. Riccabocca was a widower was another matter for deliberation; and it seemed rather suspicious that he should have been hitherto so close upon all matters connected with his former life. Certainly his manners were in his favor, and as long as he was merely an acquaintance, and at most a tenant, no one had a right to institute inquiries of a strictly private nature; but that, when he was about to marry a Hazeldean of Hazeldean, it became the Squire at least to know a little more about him--who and what he was. Why did he leave his own country? English people went abroad to save; no foreigner would choose England as a country in which to save money! She supposed that a foreign doctor was no very great things; probably he had been a professor in some Italian university. At all events, if the Squire interfered at all, it was on such points that he should request information.

"My dear madam," said the Parson, "what you say is extremely just. As to the causes which have induced our friend to expatriate himself, I think we need not look far for them. He is evidently one of the many Italian refugees whom political disturbances have driven to our shore, whose boast is to receive all exiles of whatever party. For his respectability of birth and family he certainly ought to obtain some vouchers. And if that be the only objection, I trust we may soon congratulate Miss Hazeldean on a marriage with a man who, though certainly very poor, has borne privations without a murmur; has preferred all hardships to debt; has scorned to attempt betraying her into any clandestine connection; who, in short, has shown himself so upright and honest, that I hope my dear Mr. Hazeldean will forgive him if he is only a Doctor--probably of Laws--and not, as most foreigners pretend to be, a marquis, or a baron at least."

"As to that," cried the Squire, "'tis the best think I know about Rickeybockey, that he don't attempts to humbug us by any such foreign trumpery. Thank heaven, the Hazeldeans of Hazeldean were never turf-hunters and title-mongers; and if I never ran after an English lord, I should certainly be devilishly ashamed of a brother-in-law whom I was forced to call markee or count! I should feel sure he was a courier, or runaway valley-de-sham. Turn up your nose at a doctor, indeed, Harry!--pshaw, good English style that! Doctor! my aunt married a Doctor of Divinity--excellent man--wore a wig, and was made a dean! So long as Rickeybockey is not a doctor of physic, I don't care a button. If he's _that_, indeed, it would be suspicious; because, you see, those foreign doctors of physic are quacks, and tell fortunes, and go about on a stage with a Merry-Andrew."

"Lord, Hazeldean! where on earth did you pick up that idea?" said Harry, laughing.

"Pick it up!--why, I saw a fellow myself at the cattle fair last year--when I was buying short-horns--with a red waistcoat and a cocked hat, a little like the Parson's shovel. He called himself Doctor Phoscophornio--wore a white wig and sold pills! The Merry-Andrew was the funniest creature--in salmon-colored tights--turned head over heels, and said he came from Timbuctoo. No, no; if Rickeybockey's a physic Doctor, we shall have Jemima in a pink tinsel dress, tramping about the country in a caravan!"

At this notion, both the Squire and his wife laughed so heartily that the Parson felt the thing was settled, and slipped away, with the intention of making his report to Riccabocca.

## CHAPTER XXVI.

It was with a slight disturbance of his ordinary suave and well-bred equanimity that the Italian received the information, that he need apprehend no obstacle to his suit from the insular prejudices or the worldly views of the lady's family. Not that he was mean and cowardly enough to recoil from the near and unclouded prospect of that felicity which he had left off his glasses to behold with unblinking naked eyes:--no, there his mind was made up; but he had met with very little kindness in life, and he was touched not only by the interest in his welfare testified by a heretical priest, but by the generosity with which he was admitted into a well-born and wealthy family, despite his notorious poverty and his foreign descent. He conceded the propriety of the only stipulation, which was conveyed to him by the Parson with all the delicacy that became a man professionally habituated to deal with the subtler susceptibilities of mankind--viz., that, amongst Riccabocca's friends or kindred, some one should be found whose report would confirm the persuasion of his respectability entertained by his neighbors;--he assented, I say, to the propriety of this condition; but it was not with alacrity and eagerness. His brow became clouded. The Parson hastened to assure him that the Squire was not a man _qui stupet in titulis_, (who was besotted with titles,) that he neither expected nor desired to find an origin and rank for his brother-in-law above that decent mediocrity of condition to which it was evident, from Riccabocca's breeding and accomplishments, he could easily establish his claim. "And though," said he, smiling, "the Squire is a warm politician in his own country, and would never see his sister again, I fear, if she married some convicted enemy of our happy constitution, yet for foreign politics he does not care a straw; so that if, as I suspect, your exile arises from some quarrel with your government--which, being foreign, he takes for granted must be insupportable--he would but consider you as he would a Saxon who fled from the iron hand of William the Conqueror, or a Lancastrian expelled by the Yorkists in our Wars of the Roses."

The Italian smiled. "Mr. Hazeldean shall be satisfied," said he simply. "I see, by the Squire's newspaper, that an English gentleman who knew me in my own country has just arrived in London. I will write to him for a testimonial, at least to my probity and character. Probably he may be known to you by name--nay, he must be, for he was a distinguished officer in the late war. I allude to Lord L'Estrange."

The parson started.

"You know Lord L'Estrange?--a profligate bad man, I fear."

"Profligate!--bad!" exclaimed Riccabocca. "Well, calumnious as the world is, I should never have thought that such expressions would be applied to one who, though I knew him but little--knew him chiefly by the service he once rendered to me--first taught me to love and revere the English name!"

"He may be changed since----" The parson paused.

"Since when?" asked Riccabocca, with evident curiosity.

Mr. Dale seemed embarrassed. "Excuse me," said he, "it is many years ago; and, in short, the opinion I then formed of the gentleman in question was based upon circumstances which I cannot communicate."

The punctilious Italian bowed in silence but he still looked as if he should have liked to prosecute inquiry.

After a pause, he said, "Whatever your impressions respecting Lord L'Estrange, there is nothing, I suppose, which would lead you to doubt his honor, or reject his testimonial in my favor?"

"According to fashionable morality," said Mr. Dale, rather precisely, "I know of nothing that could induce me to suppose that Lord L'Estrange would not, in this instance, speak the truth. And he has unquestionably a high reputation as a soldier, and a considerable position in the world." Therewith the Parson took his leave. A few days afterwards Dr. Riccabocca inclosed to the Squire, in a blank envelope, a letter he had received from Harley L'Estrange. It was evidently intended for the Squire's eye, and to serve as a voucher for the Italian's respectability; but this object was fulfilled, not in the coarse form of a direct testimonial, but with a tact and delicacy which seemed to show more than the fine breeding to be expected from one in Lord L'Estrange's station. It argued that most exquisite of all politeness which comes from the heart: a certain tone of affectionate respect (which even the homely sense of the Squire felt, intuitively, proved far more in favor of Riccabocca than the most elaborate certificate of his qualities and antecedents) pervaded the whole, and would have sufficed in itself to remove all scruples from a mind much more suspicious and exacting than that of the Squire of Hazeldean. But, lo and behold! an obstacle now occurred to the Parson, of which he ought to have thought long before--viz., the Papistical religion of the Italian. Dr. Riccabocca was professedly a Roman Catholic. He so little obtruded that fact--and, indeed, had assented so readily to any animadversions upon the superstition and priestcraft which, according to Protestants, are the essential characteristics of Papistical communities--that it was not till the hymeneal torch, which brings all faults to light, was fairly illumined for the altar, that the remembrance of a faith so cast into the shade burst upon the conscience of the Parson. The first idea that then occurred to him was the proper and professional one--viz., the conversion of Dr. Riccabocca. He hastened to his study, took down from his shelves long neglected volumes of controversial divinity, armed himself with an arsenal of authorities, arguments, and texts; then, seizing the shovel-hat, posted off to the Casino.

## CHAPTER XXVII.

The Parson burst upon the philosopher like an avalanche! He was so full of his subject that he could not let it out in prudent driblets. No, he went souse upon the astounded Riccabocca--

"Tremendo, Jupiter ipse ruens tumultu."

The sage--shrinking deeper into his arm-chair, and drawing his dressing-robe more closely round him--suffered the Parson to talk for three quarters of an hour, till indeed he had thoroughly proved his case; and, like Brutus, "paused for a reply."

Then said Riccabocca mildly, "In much of what you have urged so ably, and so suddenly, I am inclined to agree. But base is the man who formally forswears the creed he has inherited from his fathers, and professed since the cradle up to years of maturity, when the change presents itself in the guise of a bribe;--when, for such is human nature, he can hardly distinguish or disentangle the appeal to his reason from the lure to his interests--here a text, and there a dowry!--here Protestantism, there Jemima!--Own, my friend, that the soberest casuist would see double under the inebriating effects produced by so mixing his polemical liquors. Appeal, my good Mr. Dale, from Philip drunken to Philip sober!--from Riccabocca intoxicated with the assurance of your excellent lady, that he is about to be "the happiest of men," to Riccabocca accustomed to his happiness, and carrying it off with the seasoned equability of one grown familiar with stimulants--in a word, appeal from Riccabocca the wooer to Riccabocca the spouse. I may be convertible, but conversion is a slow process; courtship should be a quick one--ask Miss Jemima. _Finalmente_, marry me first, and convert me afterwards!"

"You take this too jestingly," began the Parson; "and I don't see why, with your excellent understanding, truths so plain and obvious should not strike you at once."

"Truths," interrupted Riccabocca profoundly, "are the slowest growing things in the world! It took 1500 years from the date of the Christian era to produce your own Luther, and then he flung his Bible at Satan, (I have seen the mark made by the book on the wall of his prison in Germany,) besides running off with a nun, which no Protestant clergyman would think it proper and right to do now-a-days." Then he added, with seriousness, "Look you, my dear sir,--I should lose my own esteem if I were even to listen to you now with becoming attention,--now, I say, when you hint that the creed I have professed may be in the way of my advantage. If so, I must keep the creed and resign the advantage. But if, as I trust--not only as a Christian, but a man of honor--you will defer this discussion, I will promise to listen to you hereafter; and though, to say truth, I believe that you will not convert me, I will promise you faithfully never to interfere with my wife's religion."

"And any children you may have?"

"Children!" said Dr. Riccabocca, recoiling--"you are not contented with firing your pocket-pistol right in my face; you must also pepper me all over with small-shot. Children! well, if they are girls, let them follow the faith of their mother; and if boys, while in childhood, let them be contented with learning to be Christians; and when they grow into men, let them choose for themselves which is the best form for the practice of the great principles which all sects have in common."

"But," began Mr. Dale again, pulling a large book from his pocket.

Dr. Riccabocca flung open the window, and jumped out of it.

It was the rapidest and most dastardly flight you could possibly conceive; but it was a great compliment to the argumentative powers of the Parson, and he felt it as such. Nevertheless, Mr. Dale thought it right to have a long conversation, both with the Squire and Miss Jemima herself, upon the subject which his intended convert had so ignominiously escaped.

The Squire, though a great foe to Popery, politically considered, had also quite as great a hatred to turn-coats and apostates. And in his heart he would have despised Riccabocca if he could have thrown off his religion as easily as he had done his spectacles. Therefore he said simply--"Well, it is certainly a great pity that Rickeybockey is not of the Church of England, though, I take it, that would be unreasonable to expect in a man born and bred under the nose of the Inquisition," (the Squire firmly believed that the Inquisition was in full force in all the Italian states, with whips, racks, and thumbscrews; and, indeed, his chief information of Italy was gathered from a perusal he had given in early youth to _The One-Handed Monk_;) "but I think he speaks very fairly, on the whole, as to his wife and children. And the thing's gone too far now to retract. It is all your fault for not thinking of it before; and I've now just made up my mind as to the course to pursue respecting those--d----d stocks!"

As for Miss Jemima, the Parson left her with a pious thanksgiving that Riccabocca at least was a Christian, and not a Pagan, Mahometan, or Jew!

## CHAPTER XXVIII.

There is that in a wedding which appeals to a universal sympathy. No other event in the lives of their superiors in rank creates an equal sensation amongst the humbler classes.

From the moment the news had spread throughout the village that Miss Jemima was to be married, all the old affection for the Squire and his house burst forth the stronger for its temporary suspension. Who could think of the stocks in such a season? They were swept out of fashion--hunted from remembrance as completely as the question of Repeal or the thought of Rebellion from the warm Irish heart, when the fair young face of the Royal Wife beamed on the sister isle.

Again cordial courtesies were dropped at the thresholds by which the Squire passed to his home farm; again the sunburnt brows uncovered--no more with sullen ceremony--were smoothed into cheerful gladness at his nod. Nay, the little ones began again to assemble at their ancient rendezvous by the stocks, as if either familiarized with the phenomenon, or convinced that, in the general sentiment of good-will, its powers of evil were annulled.

The Squire tasted once more the sweets of the only popularity which is much worth having, and the loss of which a wise man would reasonably deplore; viz., the popularity which arises from a persuasion of our goodness, and a reluctance to recall our faults. Like all blessings, the more sensibly felt from previous interruption, the Squire enjoyed this restored popularity with an exhilarated sense of existence; his stout heart beat more vigorously, his stalwart step trod more lightly; his comely English face looked comelier and more English than ever;--you would have been a merrier man for a week to have come within hearing of his jovial laugh.

He felt grateful to Jemima and to Riccabocca as the special agents of Providence in this general _integratio amoris_. To have looked at him, you would suppose that it was the Squire who was going to be married a second time to his Harry!

One may well conceive that such would have been an inauspicious moment for Parson Dale's theological scruples. To have stopped that marriage--chilled all the sunshine it diffused over the village--seen himself surrounded again by long, sulky visages,--I verily believe, though a better friend of Church and State never stood on a hustings, that, rather than court such a revulsion, the Squire would have found jesuitical excuses for the marriage if Riccabocca had been discovered to be the Pope in disguise! As for the stocks, their fate was now irrevocably sealed. In short, the marriage was concluded--first privately, according to the bridegroom's creed, by a Roman Catholic clergyman, who lived in a town some miles off, and next publicly in the village church of Hazeldean.

It was the heartiest rural wedding! Village girls strewed flowers on the way;--a booth was placed amidst the prettiest scenery of the park, on the margin of the lake--for there was to be a dance later in the day; an ox was roasted whole. Even Mr. Stirn--no, Mr. Stirn was _not_ present, so much happiness would have been the death of him! And the Papisher too, who had conjured Lenny out of the stocks; nay, who had himself sat in the stocks for the very purpose of bringing them into contempt--the Papisher! he had as lief Miss Jemima had married the devil! Indeed, he was persuaded that, in point of fact, it was all one and the same. Therefore Mr. Stirn had asked leave to go and attend his uncle the pawnbroker, about to undergo a torturing operation for the stone! Frank was there, summoned from Eton for the occasion--having grown two inches taller since he left--for the one inch of which nature was to be thanked, for the other a new pair of resplendent Wellingtons. But the boy's joy was less apparent than that of others. For Jemima was a special favorite with him, as she would have been with all boys--for she was always kind and gentle, and made many pretty presents whenever she came from the watering-places. And Frank knew that he should miss her sadly, and thought she had made a very queer choice.

Captain Higginbotham had been invited; but, to the astonishment of Jemima, he had replied to the invitation by a letter to herself, marked "_private and confidential_." "She must have long known," said the letter, "of his devoted attachment to her; motives of delicacy, arising from the narrowness of his income and the magnanimity of his sentiments, had alone prevented his formal proposals; but now that he was informed (he could scarcely believe his senses, or command his passions) that her relations wished to force her into a BARBAROUS marriage with a foreigner of MOST FORBIDDING APPEARANCE, and most _abject circumstances_, he lost not a moment in laying at her feet his own hand and fortune. And he did this the more confidently, inasmuch as he could not but be aware of Miss Jemima's SECRET feelings towards him, while he was _proud_ and _happy_ to say, that his dear and distinguished cousin, Mr. Sharpe Currie, had honored him with a warmth of regard, which justified the most _brilliant_ EXPECTATIONS--likely to be _soon_ realized--as his eminent relative had contracted a _very bad liver complaint_ in the service of his country, and could not last long!"

In all the years they had known each other, Miss Jemima, strange as it may appear, had never once suspected the Captain of any other feelings to her than those of a brother. To say that she was not gratified by learning her mistake, would be to say that she was more than woman. Indeed, it must have been a source of no ignoble triumph to think that she could prove her disinterested affection to her dear Riccabocca, by a prompt rejection of this more brilliant offer. She couched the rejection, it is true, in the most soothing terms. But the Captain evidently considered himself ill used; he did not reply to the letter, and did not come to the wedding.

To let the reader into a secret, never known to Miss Jemima, Captain Higginbotham was much less influenced by Cupid than by Plutus in the offer he had made. The Captain was one of that class of gentlemen who read their accounts by those corpse-lights, or will-o'-the-wisps, called _expectations_. Ever since the Squire's grandfather had left him--then in short clothes--a legacy of L500, the Captain had peopled the future with expectations! He talked of his expectations as a man talks of shares in a Tontine; they might fluctuate a little--be now up and now down--but it was morally impossible, if he lived on, but that he should be a _millionaire_ one of these days. Now, though Miss Jemima was a good fifteen years younger than himself, yet she always stood for a good round sum in the ghostly books of the Captain. She was an _expectation_ to the full amount of her L4000, seeing that Frank was an only child, and it would be carrying coals to Newmarket to leave _him_ any thing.

Rather than see so considerable a cipher suddenly spunged out of his visionary ledger--rather than so much money should vanish clean out of the family, Captain Higginbotham had taken what he conceived, if a desperate, at least a certain, step for the preservation of his property. If the golden horn could not be had without the heifer, why, he must take the heifer into the bargain. He had never formed to himself an idea that a heifer so gentle would toss and fling him over. The blow was stunning. But no one compassionates the misfortunes of the covetous, though few perhaps are in greater need of compassion. And leaving poor Captain Higginbotham to retrieve his illusory fortunes as he best may among "the expectations" which gathered round the form of Mr. Sharpe Currie, who was the crossest old tyrant imaginable, and never allowed at his table any dishes not compounded with rice, which played Old Nick with the Captain's constitutional functions,--I return to the wedding at Hazeldean, just in time to see the bridegroom--who looked singularly well on the occasion--hand the bride (who, between sunshiny tears and affectionate smiles, was really a very interesting and even a pretty bride, as brides go) into a carriage which the Squire had presented to them, and depart on the orthodox nuptial excursion amidst the blessings of the assembled crowd.

It may be thought strange by the unreflective that these rural spectators should so have approved and blessed the marriage of a Hazeldean of Hazeldean with a poor, outlandish, long-haired foreigner; but, besides that Riccabocca, after all, had become one of the neighborhood, and was proverbially 'a civil-spoken gentleman,' it is generally noticeable that on wedding occasions the bride so monopolizes interest, curiosity, and admiration, that the bridegroom himself goes for little or nothing. He is merely the passive agent in the affair--the unregarded cause of the general satisfaction. It was not Riccabocca himself that they approved and blessed--it was the gentleman in the white waistcoat who had made Miss Jemima--Madam Rickeybocky!

Leaning on his wife's arm, (for it was a habit of the Squire to lean on his wife's arm rather than she on his, when he was specially pleased; and there was something touching in the sight of that strong sturdy frame thus insensibly, in hours of happiness, seeking dependence on the frail arm of woman),--leaning, I say, on his wife's arm, the Squire, about the hour of sunset, walked down to the booth by the lake.

All the parish--young and old, man, woman, and child--were assembled there, and their faces seemed to bear one family likeness, in the common emotion which animated all, as they turned to his frank fatherly smile. Squire Hazeldean stood at the head of the long table: he filled a horn with ale from the brimming tankard beside him. Then he looked round, and lifted his hand to request silence; and, ascending the chair, rose in full view of all. Every one felt that the Squire was about to make a speech, and the earnestness of the attention was proportioned to the rarity of the event; for (though he was not unpractised in the oratory of the hustings), only thrice before had the Squire made what could fairly be called 'a speech' to the villagers of Hazeldean--once on a kindred festive occasion, when he had presented to them his bride--once in a contested election for the shire, in which he took more than ordinary interest, and was not quite so sober as he ought to have been--once in a time of great agricultural distress, when, in spite of reduction of rents, the farmers had been compelled to discard a large number of their customary laborers; and when the Squire had said,--"I have given up keeping the hounds, because I want to make a fine piece of water (that was the origin of the lake), and to drain all the low lands round the park. Let every man who wants work come to me!" And that sad year the parish rates of Hazeldean were not a penny the more.

Now, for the fourth time, the Squire rose, and thus he spoke. At his right hand, Harry; at his left, Frank. At the bottom of the table, as vice-president, Parson Dale, his little wife behind him, only obscurely seen. She cried readily, and her handkerchief was already before her eyes.

## CHAPTER XXIX.--THE SQUIRE'S SPEECH.

"Friends and neighbors:--I thank you kindly for coming round me this day, and for showing so much interest in me and mine. My cousin was not born amongst you as I was, but you have known her from a child. It is a familiar face, and one that never frowned, which you will miss at your cottage doors, as I and mine will miss it long in the old hall----"

Here there was a sob from some of the women, and nothing was seen of Mrs. Dale but the white handkerchief. The Squire himself paused, and brushed away a tear with the back of his hand. Then he resumed, with a sudden change of voice that was electrical--"For we none of us prize a blessing till we have lost it! Now, friends and neighbors,--a little time ago, it seemed as if some ill-will had crept into the village--ill-will between you and me, neighbors!--why, that is not like Hazeldean!"

The audience hung their heads! You never saw people look so thoroughly ashamed of themselves. The Squire proceeded--"I don't say it was all your fault; perhaps it was mine."

"Noa-noa-noa," burst forth in a general chorus.

"Nay, friends," continued the Squire humbly, and in one of those illustrative aphorisms which, if less subtle than Riccabocca's, were more within reach of the popular comprehension; "nay--we are all human; and every man has his hobby; sometimes he breaks in the hobby, and sometimes the hobby, if it is very hard in the mouth, breaks in him. One man's hobby has an ill habit of always stopping at the public house! (Laughter.) Another man's hobby refuses to stir a peg beyond the door where some buxom lass patted its neck the week before--a hobby I rode pretty often when I went courting my good wife here! (Much laughter and applause.) Others, have a lazy hobby, that there's no getting on;--others, a runaway hobby that there's no stopping: but to cut the matter short, my favorite hobby, as you well know, is always trotted out to any place on my property which seems to want the eye and hand of the master. I hate (cried the Squire warming), to see things neglected and decayed, and going to the dogs! This land we live in is a good mother to us, and we can't do too much for her. It is very true, neighbors, that I owe her a good many acres, and ought to speak well of her; but what then? I live amongst you, and what I take from the rent with one hand, I divide amongst you with the other, (low, but assenting murmurs.) Now the more I improve my property, the more mouths it feeds. My great-grandfather kept a Field-Book, in which were entered not only the names of all the farmers and the quantity of land they held, but the average number of the laborers each employed. My grandfather and father followed his example: I have done the same. I find, neighbors, that our rents have doubled since my great-grandfather began to make the book. Ay--but there are more than four times the number of laborers employed on the estate, and at much better wages too! Well, my men, that says a great deal in favor of improving property, and not letting it go to the dogs. (Applause.) And therefore, neighbors, you will kindly excuse my hobby: it carries grist to your mill. (Reiterated applause.) Well--but you will say, 'What's the Squire driving at?' Why this, my friends: There was only one worn-out, dilapidated, tumble-down thing in the Parish of Hazeldean, and it became an eyesore to me; so I saddled my hobby, and rode at it. O ho! you know what I mean now! Yes, but neighbors, you need not have taken it so to heart. That was a scurvy trick of some of you to hang me in effigy, as they call it."

"It warn't you," cried a voice in the crowd, "it war Nick Stirn."

The Squire recognized the voice of the tinker; but though he now guessed at the ringleader,--on that day of general amnesty, he had the prudence and magnanimity not to say, "Stand forth, Sprott: thou art the man." Yet his gallant English spirit would not suffer him to come off at the expense of his servant.

"If it was Nick Stirn you meant," said he gravely, "more shame for you. It showed some pluck to hang the master; but to hang the poor servant, who only thought to do his duty, careless of what ill-will it brought upon him, was a shabby trick--so little like the lads of Hazeldean, that I suspect the man who taught it to them was never born in the parish. But let bygones be bygones. One thing is clear, you don't take kindly to my new pair of stocks! They have been a stumbling-block and a grievance, and there's no denying that we went on very pleasantly without them. I may also say that in spite of them we have been coming together again lately. And I can't tell you what good it did me to see your children playing again on the green, and your honest faces, in spite of the stocks, and those diabolical tracts you've been reading lately, lighted up at the thought that something pleasant was going on at the Hall. Do you know, neighbors, you put me in mind of an old story which, besides applying to the Parish, all who are married, and all who intend to marry, will do well to recollect. A worthy couple, named John and Joan, had lived happily together many a long year, till one unlucky day they bought a new bolster. Joan said the bolster was too hard, and John that it was too soft. So, of course, they quarrelled. After sulking all day, they agreed to put the bolster between them at night." (Roars of laughter amongst the men; the women did not know which way to look, except, indeed, Mrs. Hazeldean, who, though she was more than usually rosy, maintained her innocent genial smile, as much as to say, "There is no harm in the Squire's jests.") The orator resumed--"After they had thus lain apart for a little time, very silent and sullen, John sneezed. 'God bless you!' says Joan over the bolster. 'Did you say God bless me?' cries John;--'then here goes the bolster!'"

Prolonged laughter and tumultuous applause.

"Friends and neighbors," said the Squire when silence was restored, and lifting the horn of ale, "I have the pleasure to inform you that I have ordered the stocks to be taken down, and made into a bench for the chimney nook of our old friend Gaffer Solomons yonder. But mind me, lads, if ever you make the Parish regret the loss of the stocks, and the overseers come to me with long faces and say, 'the stocks must be rebuilded,' why--" Here from all the youth of the village rose so deprecating a clamor, that the Squire would have been the most bungling orator in the world if he had said a word further on the subject. He elevated the horn over his head--"Why, that's my old Hazeldean again! Health and long life to you all!"

The Tinker had sneaked out of the assembly, and did not show his face in the village for the next six months. And as to those poisonous tracts, in spite of their salubrious labels, "the Poor Man's Friend," or "the Rights of Labor," you could no more have found one of them lurking in the drawers of the kitchen-dressers in Hazeldean, than you would have found the deadly nightshade on the flower-stands in the drawing-room of the Hall. As for the revolutionary beer-house, there was no need to apply to the magistrates to shut it up; it shut itself up before the week was out.

O young head of the great House of Hapsburg, what a Hazeldean you might have made of Hungary! What a "_Moriamur pro rege nostro_" would have rang in your infant reign,--if you had made such a speech as the Squire's!

FOOTNOTES:

[R] The Emperor Diocletian.

[S] The title of Excellency does not, in Italian, necessarily express any exalted rank: but it is often given by servants to their masters.

Historical Review of the Month.

In this number of the _International_, copying the example of the oldest magazine in the world, _The Gentleman's_, which for a hundred years has found its account in such a department, we present a carefully prepared and succinct summary of the history of the world, as it has come to our knowledge during the past month. It is intended hereafter to continue this feature in the _International_, devoting to it such attention that our pages shall always be deserving of consultation as an authority in regard to contemporary events. In the general characteristics of this department we shall offer nothing very original; the examples of our English contemporaries will be generally adhered to; but the utmost care and candor will be evinced in every _resume_ of affairs or opinions admitted to our pages.

THE UNITED STATES.

As the session of Congress draws near to its close, its proceedings become more animated and interesting. It is already evident, however, that but few of the questions recommended for its consideration can be disposed of before its adjournment. One of its most important acts was the passage of the Cheap Postage Bill, in the House, on the seventeenth of January, by a vote of 130 to 75. This bill provides for a uniform rate of three cents per half-ounce, on letters, and a material reduction in the rates charged for newspapers and periodicals. The Senate Committee to whom the bill was referred, have reported amendments raising the postage to five cents on unpaid letters, striking out the provision allowing newspapers to go free within thirty miles of their place of publication, and reducing postage on magazines fifty per cent when prepaid. The French Spoliation Bill, after considerable discussion, passed the Senate on Friday, January 24th. The bill provides for the payment of claims based on the detention of vessels in the port of Bordeaux, the forcible capture and detention of American citizens, and depredations on American commerce in the West Indies, to the amount of $5,000,000.

The bill to ascertain and settle Private Land Claims in California, introduced by Mr. Fremont towards the close of last session, was called up by Mr. Gwin, his colleague, on the twenty-seventh of January. Mr. Gwin offered a substitute, which was agreed to in Committee of the Whole, when the bill was reported to the Senate. After a most animated debate, in which the bill was strongly opposed by Mr. Benton, it finally passed the Senate on the sixth of February.

The bill introduced in the House for the establishment of Branch Mints in New-York and San Francisco gave rise to an exciting debate. The bill was discussed for several days, the Pennsylvania members opposing it in a body. Its defeat was finally accomplished on Wednesday, February 5th. Since then Mr. Gwin has introduced in the Senate a separate bill for the establishment of a Branch Mint in San Francisco. A joint resolution, reported to the Senate by Mr. Rusk, providing that dead letters remaining in the post-offices of California and Oregon shall be opened at the post-office in San Francisco, under care of a special agent, was adopted.

In the Senate, February 5th, the Committee on Foreign Relations, of which Mr. Foote is chairman, reported a resolution that in all future treaties by the United States, provisions should be made for settling difficulties by arbitration, before resorting to war. The Judiciary Committee also reported in favor of Messrs. Winthrop and Ewing (senators appointed by the governors of Massachusetts and Ohio to fill vacancies) holding their seats till their regularly-elected successors appear to claim their places. Mr. Winthrop, however, on Friday, February 7th, presented the credentials of his successor, Mr. Rantoul, (who had not yet arrived,) and vacated his seat. The credentials of Mr. Bright, as senator from Indiana for the ensuing term, were presented on the twenty-eighth of January.

A bill for the relief of Mrs. Charlotte Lynch, mother of Miss Anne C. Lynch, the poetess, passed the House by a majority of 11. It had previously passed the Senate. Mrs. Lynch is the only surviving child of Colonel Ebenezer Gray, of the Connecticut line, who served in the army of the Revolution. The bill provides five years' full pay, as an equivalent for the losses sustained by him through the substitution of the commutation certificates issued in 1783.

The American Minister at Rio Janeiro has transmitted some important information to the Government in regard to the Brazilian traffic in slaves under the American flag. A considerable portion of the infamous trade, by which from forty to fifty thousand negroes are annually imported into Brazil, is carried on in American-built vessels, under the protection of our flag. It has been found impossible to enforce the Brazilian statutes on the subject, the authorities charged with their execution, almost without exception, conniving at the traffic. In spite of the exertions of the American Minister, our flag is still used as a protection, and its influence is given to the support of the slave-dealer. The communications of the American Minister have been referred by the Senate to the Committee on Commerce. Mr. Clay spoke at some length in favor of adopting more efficient measures to prevent American vessels and seamen from engaging in the slave-trade.

The project of establishing a line of steamers between several American ports and the coast of Africa, Gibraltar, and England,--familiarly known as the "Ebony Line,"--has been strongly recommended to Congress by petitions from all quarters. The Legislature of Virginia, and the Constitutional Convention of the same State, now in session, have both passed resolutions in its favor. Several other States have done, or are about to do the same thing. The session is already so far advanced, however, that the subject will probably be left without action for the next Congress.

The Senate Committee on the Post-office has reported in favor of granting to a company the right of way and subscription to the stock of an Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company.

Mr. Kaufman, a member of the House, from Texas, died very suddenly on the thirty-first of January. His funeral took place on the Monday following, February 3d. Mr. Kaufman was born in Pennsylvania in 1813, graduated in Princeton College in 1833, practiced law in Louisiana, and removed to Texas in 1835.

The subject of most general interest in the political world is the election of United States Senator, in a number of the States, for the term commencing on the 4th of March. Several elections have taken place, and others have not been accomplished in spite of repeated ballots. In New-York, the Constitution provides for an election on the first Wednesday of February. On that day the Whig candidate, ex-Governor Hamilton Fish, received a majority of 37 in the House: the Senate, after two ineffectual ballots, adjourned. A special law will therefore be required to elect a senator. In Massachusetts, the Democratic candidate, Robert Rantoul, Jr., was elected to fill the vacancy occasioned by Mr. Webster's acceptance of a place in the Cabinet. All attempts to elect a senator for the ensuing term have failed up to this period. Mr. Sumner, the Free Soil candidate, lacked but two votes of an election on the twelfth ballot, but afterwards lost. It was finally postponed to the twenty-seventh of February. In the Ohio Legislature, ten successive ballots were cast without arriving at an election, after which the subject was indefinitely postponed. In Rhode Island, General Charles T. James, the Democratic candidate, was elected; in Florida, Stephen R. Mallory, in place of Hon. D. L. Yulee, both Democrats; and in Delaware, James A. Bayard, Democrat, in the place of Mr. Wales, the present Whig senator. Hon. Henry Dodge was reelected by the Legislature of Wisconsin, by a majority of one, on the fifth vote. In Pennsylvania, Hon. Richard Brodhead was elected in place of Mr. Sturgeon, both members of the Democratic party. Henry S. Geyer, Whig, has been elected by the State of Missouri, as United States Senator, in place of Col. Thomas H. Benton, who is superseded after an uninterrupted service of thirty years.

William H. Ross, the new Governor of Delaware, was inaugurated at Dover, on the twenty-first of January. The most important feature of his address was the recommendation of a revision of the State Constitution. George F. Fort, the new Governor of New Jersey, has been inaugurated. His address takes ground in favor of the compromise measures passed by Congress. He also advocates the Free School System, and the election of Judges by the people. Governor French, of Illinois, in his annual message, represents the State as being in a prosperous condition, the revenue being sufficient to meet the demands upon the treasury. He recommends a geological survey of the State, and the passage of a Homestead Exemption Law. The schools of the State are in a flourishing condition. The message of Governor Dewey, of Wisconsin, also shows an improved condition of State affairs. The finances are represented as being sound, and the credit of the State relieved from all fear of bankruptcy. Apprehensions of danger to the citizens residing north of Wisconsin river, from the return of the Winnebagoes, have been quieted by the appointment of an agent to confer with that tribe. The message of Governor Ramsey to the second Legislative Assembly of Minnesota Territory is an interesting document. Among other subjects recommended to the attention of the Assembly are the agricultural interests of the Territory, and the improvement of the Mississippi river, both above and below the Falls of St. Anthony. The extinction of the Indian title at Pembina will admit of the laws of the Territory being extended over the half-breeds at that place. It is said that there are hundreds of half-breed hunters on the British side of the line, who are only waiting the extinction of the Indian title to change their homes and allegiance. The assessed value of property in the five principal counties of Minnesota is $805,417.48.

The returns of the Seventh Census will shortly be completed. A number of States have recently sent in their full reports, among which are the following: New-York 3,099,000, being an increase of 670,029 since 1840; Virginia 1,428,863, an increase of 189,066; Maryland 580,633, an increase of 111,401; New Hampshire 317,999, an increase of 33,425; Missouri 681,547, an increase of 297,845; Ohio 1,981,940, an increase of 462,473; Kentucky 993,344, an increase of 213,516; Indiana, 990,000; New Jersey 490,763, an increase of 117,874; and Wisconsin, 305,556. The entire population of the United States in 1850 is estimated at 23,500,000.

A warrant for the arrest of Governor Quitman of Mississippi, for

## participation in the Cuban Expedition, was issued by Judge Gholson in

New Orleans, early in January. Governor Quitman at first resisted the authority, but afterwards resigned his office as Governor, and on the seventh of February reached New Orleans, under arrest. He appeared in court, and gave bail for future appearance, asking a speedy trial.

Several diplomatic appointments have recently been made. Hon. Richard H. Bayard, who was appointed Charge d'Affaires to Belgium, has departed for his mission. Hon. Robert C. Schenck, of Ohio, has been appointed Minister to Brazil, and Hon. J. S. Pendleton, of Virginia, Charge d'Affaires to New Grenada. The Chevalier Gomez, Special Envoy to Rome from the states of Guatemala and San Salvador, has arrived at Washington, and assumed, provisionally, the office of Charge from those states. He has addressed a letter to the Secretary of State in relation to the present condition of the Central American States.

General Mosquera, ex-President of New Grenada, is now travelling in this country, and was lately in Washington, where he received distinguished attentions. General Paez, the distinguished exile from Venezuela, is also in Washington. Dr. Frank Taylor, of Pennsylvania, who has recently returned from Constantinople and Asia Minor, has received letters from the illustrious Kossuth, addressed to the Secretary of State, and soliciting the intervention of the United States with the Turkish Government, to procure the release of himself and his compatriots, and their transportation to the United States. Mr. Webster immediately complied with the request, and has dispatched instructions to Mr. Marsh, the American Minister at Constantinople, to procure from the Turkish Government the release of the Hungarians.

The frigate St. Lawrence has sailed from New-York for Southampton, with articles for the World's Fair. She carries out between four and five hundred articles, embracing nearly all branches of manufacture, and the principal mineral and agricultural productions of the country. The contributions are in charge of Charles F. Stansbury, Esq., agent of the Central Committee of Washington. The tender of the authorities of Southampton, offering the use of that port, with free transportation of the goods to Vauxhall, London, has been accepted by the Secretary of State.

There have been several serious wrecks, with loss of life, on the Atlantic coast and the Mississippi river. The steamboat America, which left Wilmington, N.C., on the fourteenth of January, for Mobile, foundered on the 29th. The schooner Champion, of Boston, picked up one boat's crew, containing six men. A second boat, containing ten men, was picked up by the schooner Star, and taken to Washington. A third boat, containing six men, has not been heard from. The steamer John Adams, on her way from New Orleans to Cincinnati, struck on a snag in the Mississippi river, on the morning of January 27th. The cabin parted from the hull, which went down in sixty feet water. Out of 230 cabin and deck passengers, firemen, and crew, 123 were lost, of whom 82 were German and Irish emigrants, and returning Californians. On the ninth of February, the steamer Autocrat, from New Orleans to Memphis, came in contact with the steamer Magnolia, coming down the river, and sank instantly. Thirty lives were lost.

A calamitous fire took place at New Orleans, on the eighteenth of January, destroying the magnificent St. Charles Hotel, together with two churches and several other buildings. The total loss is about $500,000, less than half of which was covered by insurance. Jenny Lind arrived at New Orleans from Havana on the 8th of February. Her reception was in the highest degree enthusiastic. Her first concert took place on the 10th, the receipts therefrom amounting to $20,000. The first ticket was purchased for $240 by a New Orleans hatter, the fortunate drawer of Powers' Greek Slave in the Cincinnati Art Union.

Two more of the unfortunate Hungarian refugees have reached this city: Captain Eduard Becsey, who served during the war as adjutant to General Bern, and Lieutenant Aurel Kiring. Captain Becsey was taken prisoner by the Russians, and carried to Kiev, on the Dneiper, where he was detained a year. After being released, he made his way to the Mediterranean, and obtained a passage to New-York.

Our latest news from Eagle Harbor, the port of the mining region on Lake Superior, state that the propeller Independence, which had just taken on board her last cargo of copper for the season, was blown on shore by a heavy gale, and imbedded in the sand, where she must remain till Spring. The Napoleon had arrived from Saut St. Mary, with provisions and stores for the winter.

Texas papers of the thirty-first of January state that Judge Rollins, the United States Agent, had effected a treaty with the Indians, providing for a cessation of hostilities, and the restoration of all stolen property and prisoners. Lieuts. Smith and Mechler had completed a survey of the Rio Grande from its mouth to a point about four hundred and fifty miles above Camargo. They report that the river can be made navigable for boats of light draught to a short distance above Loredo for several months in the year. Col. Anderson, of the corps of Topographical Engineers has received orders to make a survey of the Brazos and Guadalupe rivers. A fight had occurred between Lieutenant King, with seven men, of the Texan volunteers, and a body of Indians, who were driving off a number of stolen horses. They were pursued for fifteen or twenty miles, when they abandoned the horses, and escaped with the loss of three or four of their number. The total vote on the Pierce Boundary Bill, as officially reported, is 9,250 ayes, 3,366 noes.

On the eighteenth of December the whole of the American Boundary Commission had arrived at Paso del Norte, with the exception of an ox-train carrying supplies. The military escort, under the command of Col. Craig, was encamped on the American side of the Rio del Norte, but was soon to start for the copper-mines near the headwaters of the Gila. The Mexican Commissioner, General Conde, with his escort, was quartered in the town of El Paso. Several conferences took place between the Commissioners before they could agree on the starting-point for the boundary, the existing maps being as inconsistent with the terms of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo as with the topography of the country itself. The winter, throughout the valley of the Del Norte has been very severe. The thermometer fell to six degrees at El Paso on the sixth of December, and the Rio Grande was frozen over for the first time in the memory of the inhabitants.

The settlements of New Mexico are threatened with scarcity. On the tenth of January corn was selling at three dollars the bushel, and vegetables not to be had at any price. The appearance of the agents for taking the census of New-Mexico had occasioned great alarm among the pueblos or villages. They feared that the account of their property was taken by the Government for the purpose of extortion and seizure. The Apaches have committed no depredations of late, but the Navajoes have broken their treaty by stealing several thousand sheep from the settlements on the Rio del Norte.

In the Utah Territory the Mormons have temporarily settled the question of slavery, by leaving it to the choice of the slaves themselves. If the slave chooses to leave his master, there is no power to retain him; if he chooses to stay, no one is allowed to interfere.

Our news from California is to the first of January. The steamers Carolina and Columbus sailed from San Francisco on that day, with 330 passengers and about $1,500,000 in gold dust. Business was very dull, both in the ports and inland towns of California, and the trading communities among the mines. The immense shipments of goods which had arrived from the Atlantic States had produced a complete stagnation in the market, bringing many kinds of merchandise below cost prices. After the first showers of the rainy season, early in December, the miners withdrew to the dry diggings, when the rains ceased, and three or four weeks of clear and delightful weather left them without employment. The richest localities are very thickly populated, the miners having built themselves log-cabins and organized communities for the winter. On parts of Feather river, the American Fork, and the Mokelumne, Tuolumne, and Mariposa rivers, the diggings were still yielding a good return. New discoveries of rich veins of quartz-bearing gold continue to be made. A mine of silver ore, of a very rich quality, is reported to have been discovered in the neighborhood of Monterey. A company is being formed at that place for the purpose of working the mine upon an extensive scale. The Sacramento papers state that a large mine of lead, in an almost pure state, exists near Johnson's Ranche, about thirty miles from that city. The ore is represented to lie on the surface of the earth, in heavy masses, so that vast quantities could be obtained without sinking a shaft.

On the evening of December 14th another fire broke out in San Francisco, in a large zinc building owned by Cooke, Baker & Co. By the exertions of the firemen and the citizens the conflagration was subdued, after consuming this building and three or four others of less value. The large building belonging to the Pacific Mail Steamship Company was in the utmost danger, having been greatly scorched by the flames. The total loss by this fire was $75,000. The city, on the first of January, was fully prepared for the rainy season. By the enterprise of the inhabitants, upward of seven and a half miles of street had been graded and four miles planked, while capacious piers and wharves were built far out into the bay, so that vessels were enabled to load and unload without the use of lighters. The cholera had entirely disappeared, not only from San Francisco, but from all parts of California. Its ravages have been much lighter than was anticipated, a fact which speaks well for the health of the country.

The _Pacific News_ contains some interesting statistics of the condition of San Francisco at the close of the year 1850. The population of the city is estimated at 35,000. One hundred and seven miles of street are already laid out, one quarter of which is built upon and occupied. The business streets are substantially built of brick or iron. In addition to seventeen large auction firms and eight express companies, the city boasts of ten first class hotels and seven daily papers. The amount of gold-dust regularly shipped and entered for exportation during the year 1850 was $30,000,000; the estimated amount taken away by passengers, $12,000,000. The amount of bullion received was $1,722,600. The number of vessels which arrived during the year was 1,743 bringing 35,333 male and 1,248 female passengers; the number of clearances amounts to 1,461 vessels, carrying away 26,593 male and eight female passengers. The total value of the merchandise received by foreign and domestic vessels during the year was between four and five millions of dollars. In addition to 14 steamers running regularly between San Francisco and Panama, and three on the Oregon route, there are 45 steamers and 270 other craft of various kinds on the bay and inland streams.

We have news from Oregon to the middle of December, at which time the Legislature was in session. The message of Governor Gaines recommends the establishment of a liberal system of education, and asks for the passage of a law for protection against the Indian tribes. It also maintains the importance of a liberal policy on the part of the General Government in the donation of lands to actual settlers. The country appears to be in a highly prosperous condition; all the towns on the Columbia and its tributaries are growing rapidly. The news from the gold placers on the Klamath and Umpqua rivers, near the borders of California, is encouraging as to the yield of dust, but the Oregonians place their main reliance on their agricultural interests. The yield of wheat is said to be not only double per acre that of the Atlantic States, but it is a never-failing crop. The people in Oregon City are agitating the subject of a railroad to connect the Willamette Valley with the Columbia river, at some point accessible to large vessels. It is estimated that the whole cost will only be about $500,000, which it is proposed to raise in one thousand shares of $500 each. Twelve months, it is believed, will complete the work.

EUROPE.

On the first of February, England was in a tranquil condition, the anti-Papal agitation having almost entirely subsided. The journals were engaged in discussing law reform, the New-York Revised Code being commended as a model in many quarters. In the Queen's speech at the opening of Parliament--an advance copy having been forwarded to this country--a thorough reform of the Equity courts is recommended, as well as the introduction of an act for the registration of deeds, equally applicable to each of the three kingdoms. Her Majesty alludes in terms of comparative mildness to the Wiseman affair, commending the question to the attention of Parliament. Public opinion is strongly in favor of a large reduction in taxation, and it is anticipated that the window tax will be abolished. The quarterly returns of the revenue have been highly satisfactory, since, notwithstanding the abolition of the tax on bricks and the reduction of the stamp duty, the income exceeds that of the previous year by about L165,000.

The great crystal palace in Hyde Park is rapidly advancing towards its completion. The immense structure is exciting the wonder and admiration of the metropolis, and the opening of the fair is anticipated with great interest. The strength of the building has been amply tested by a severe storm of hail and wind, which passed over without breaking a pane of glass. All quarters of the world are sending specimens of their manufactures and natural productions. South Africa, Australia, and the islands of the sea will be represented, while Cashmere shawls, robes of pearl, and Runjeet Singh's golden saddle, will be sent from India.

The U.S. Mail steamer Atlantic, which sailed from Liverpool on the twenty-eighth of December, arrived in the harbor of Cork on the twenty-second of January, having been at sea twenty-five days. When in lat. 46 deg. 12', lon. 41 deg. 30', about midway between Cape Clear and New-York, her main shaft broke, rendering the engines useless. After running westward two days under sail, a heavy gale arose, when Captain West put her head about, and made for Cork, a distance of 1400 miles, which she made in eleven days. The steamer Cambria was instantly chartered to take her place, but most of her passengers left Liverpool in the Africa, on February 1st. It is stated on the authority of Earl Monteagle, that the British Government have resolved to make Holyhead the port of arrival and departure for the transatlantic mail steamers.

In France, a ministerial revolution has taken place, resulting in widening the breach between President Napoleon and the National Assembly. Several general orders of General Changarnier to the army of Paris having been published in one of the journals, in which he commands the troops to pay no attention to any orders but those of the Lieutenant-General. Changarnier was called upon in the Assembly for explanation. He denied that these instructions were meant to be permanent, but only to be put in force when an emeute was apprehended. His conduct was approved by the Assembly, but Louis Napoleon, who had long regarded Changarnier with fear and jealousy, withdrew from him the command of the army at Paris, which he divided between two or three generals of lower rank. This gave rise to a most excited debate in the National Assembly, in which Lamartine made a speech in the President's defence. Baroche, Minister of the Interior, General Changarnier, M. Thiers, and General Cavaignac followed, the three latter speakers taking strong ground against the ministry. After several days of stormy discussion, the resolution of M. de St. Beuve, that the Assembly "declares that it has no confidence in the ministry," was carried by a majority of 139. The ministers tendered their resignation to the President the same evening. A ministerial interregnum followed, which was terminated on the twenty-fourth of January by a message of the President, appointing a "transition ministry," composed of employees from the different departments, not one of them having a seat in the Assembly. The following is the list, as given in the _Moniteur_:

Public Instruction M. Giraud, (de l'Institute.) Interior M. Vaisse. Foreign Affairs M. Brennier. War General Randon. Marine Admiral Levaillant. Commerce M. Schneider. Finances M. de Germiny. Public Works M. Magne. Justice M. de Royer.

Lamartine, it is stated, was urged by Louis Napoleon to accept an appointment in the ministry, but declined on account of his being bound to furnish his publishers with two volumes a month, under heavy penalties.

The Conference of the German States at Dresden was opened with much ceremony early in January. All the states were represented, but the negotiations were kept profoundly secret. It has transpired, however, that the formation of the new Diet agreed upon gives two votes to Prussia, two to Austria, one each to Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, and Wurtemberg, and three more portioned among the smaller principalities, making eleven in all. It is also understood that a Provisional Central Power will be proclaimed, Prussia and Austria retaining to themselves exclusively the right of deciding for the Confederation all questions of peace and war.

Austria still labors under financial embarrassments of an almost hopeless character. As a measure of temporary relief, the Government has contracted two loans, one from Russia, of fifty millions of florins, and the other, of one hundred millions, on state obligations, at six per cent. The manufacturers of Austria strongly oppose the proposed compromise of the Zollverein, and advocate a tariff of a decidedly protective character. Great dissatisfaction has been manifested in Hungary, on account of the newly imposed tax on tobacco, which is one of the principal productions of the country. In consequence of this opposition the excise corps has been greatly enlarged, and serious difficulties are apprehended.

The smaller German states are now completely overruled by the Austrian and Prussian troops. The Elector of Hesse Cassel has returned to his Capital, with his Prime Minister, Hassenpflug, under their protection. The Constitution is virtually abolished by their presence, and those who supported it are subjected to the most shameful persecutions. Many of the best citizens are obliged to leave the country. Schleswig Holstein has been 'pacified' in a similar manner. Through the instrumentality of the Austrian and Prussian Commissioners, backed by a military force, the army of Schleswig Holstein has been disbanded, and the country occupied by the troops of Denmark. On the sixteenth of January, the proclamation of the King of Denmark, administering the oath of fidelity to the military, was read in the marketplace of Rendsburg. Hamburgh has been occupied by 4000 Austrian troops.

A treaty of amity and commerce has been concluded with the Swiss Diet, by Mr. Dudley Mann, Diplomatic Agent of the United States. Its provisions are of the most liberal and friendly character. The entire reciprocity and equality of the citizens of both countries, is guaranteed, so far as the right of establishment is concerned; a citizen of the United States being allowed to settle in one of the Swiss Cantons upon the same conditions as a citizen born in another Canton. Entire and unconditional liberty in disposing of property is mutually stipulated, as well as equal taxation of the individuals established, their exemption from military duties, and the grant of indemnity for damages in case of war. The commercial intercourse of the two countries is also arranged upon the most liberal and advantageous basis. Switzerland has remained tranquil, with the exception of a riot in the Canton of Berne, occasioned by the attempted extradition, on the part of the Government, of a Prussian Jew, a noted socialist, residing at St. Imier. This person was very popular among the poor, who resisted the authorities, whereupon the troops were ordered to be in readiness to support them. The Swiss Government has determined to forward a beautiful stone from the Alps, to be placed in the National Monument to Washington.

ITALY is still in an unquiet state. There seems to be a growing apprehension and uneasiness among all classes in the Papal States, and it is rumored that Pope Pius, wearied with the anxieties of his situation, wishes to resign the Pontificate, and retire to a Convent.

In NAPLES, the Government, alarmed by rumors of Mazzini's revolutionary designs, has made many arrests, and instituted a more vigorous police system. All cafes and places of public amusement are strictly watched. The army is to be increased by 18,000 men, and as English opinions are assigned to be dangerous, those Neapolitans who intended to visit the Great Exhibition in London, have been refused their passports.

AUSTRIAN ITALY is even in a worse condition. Several conspiracies have been discovered, and a large number of arrests made in consequence. A large number of persons have been executed, in the Lombardo-Venetian provinces.

The most interesting news from SPAIN is that of another resignation of the Ministry. The resignation of General Narvaez was not accepted by the Queen, whereupon that gentleman assembled his colleagues, and commissioned them to inform the Queen that unless she released him at once from his office, he should blow his brains out! This threat had the desired effect, and the following Cabinet was then appointed:

President of the Council and Minister of Finance Bravo Murillo. Foreign Office Bertran de Lys. Grace and Justice Gonzales Romero. Home Department Arteta. War Count Mirasol. Marine Bustillos. Commerce, &c. Fernandez Negrete.

The project of a revision of the Constitution, which has been so warmly agitated in Sweden, has entirely failed. The proposition of the King has been rejected by two of the four chambers constituting the Legislative Assembly, three being required in its favor, to form a constitutional majority. Sweden will therefore preserve her present system of a separate representation of the nobility, clergy, citizens, and peasants.

In TURKEY, the subjection of the rebellious Bosnians was consummated on the seventeenth of December, when Omar Pasha made his triumphal entry into Bosna Serai. The captive Pashas and Cadis marched on foot in the procession. It is rumored that the Porte has at length agreed to accept the offer of the British and American Governments to transport the Hungarian refugees to America, and will order their immediate release. Three hundred Polish refugees, who arrived at Constantinople from Varna, on the thirty-first of December, were to be sent to Liverpool at the expense of the Turkish Government. Two Commissioners, Ismet Pasha and Sami Pasha, have been appointed to travel through Asiatic and European Turkey, for the purpose of noting whether the new reforms in favor of the Christians have been carried out.

There is nothing from GREECE, but accounts of the depredations of the robbers which now infest all parts of the country. In the provinces of Acarnania, Levadia and Attica, several villages have been sacked, and the inhabitants put to the torture.

MEXICO

The Mexican Congress assembled in the Capital on the first of January, when General Herrera, the President, made his annual address. He dwelt with satisfaction on the relations existing between the United States and Mexico, considering them much more harmonious and mutually advantageous than was anticipated at the close of the war. The financial condition of the country has been somewhat improved by the retrenchment of the Government expenses and the consolidation of the Interior Debt: a revision of the Revenue Laws is strongly advocated as a still further reform in this direction. President Herrera favors the colonization of the public lands by immigrants from Europe; he also alludes with satisfaction to the increase of manufactures and the improved prospects of the silver mines, which last year yielded upwards of $30,000,000.

The two branches of Congress met on the eighth, to count the votes for the election of the President of the Republic. The votes of twelve States were found to be in favor of General Arista. He was consequently declared to be duly elected. On the fifteenth, in the Chamber of Deputies, in the presence of the Mexican Congress, he took the oath of office and made a short inaugural address, in which he alluded to the maintenance of the federal system as necessary to the prosperity of the country, and pledged himself to preserve peace and order at all hazards. The President of Congress, Don Mariano Yanez, replied in a short address of congratulation. Te Deum was chanted in the Cathedral in the presence of the new President, and in the evening the German residents honored him with a serenade and torch light procession. Arista's Cabinet is composed as follows: Minister of Foreign Affairs, Don Mariano Yanez; Minister of Justice, Don Jose Maria Aguirre; Minister of Finance, Don Manuel Payno; Minister of War and Marine, Don Manuel Robles.

Early in January a rebellion broke out in the State of Guanajuato. The insurgents, headed by two brothers named Liceagas, obtained possession of the city of Guanajuato, with the Government arms and ammunition, but were defeated on the night of the 13th by the Government troops under Generals Bustamente and Uraga. Several of the chiefs were executed, and the movement, which was in favor of Santa Anna, was entirely crushed.

The Tehuantepec treaty was ratified on the 25th of January. On the following day, Mr. Letcher, the American Minister, left the capital for the United States, on leave of absence. Senor Lacunza, the Ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs, has been appointed Minister to England, and Senor Valdiviesco Minister to France. The Mexican Government has ceded in perpetuity to Don Gayetano Rubio, Don Eustace Barron, Senor Garay, and the firm of Yecker, Torre & Co., the whole of the public lands in the State of Sonora, including the mines, between lat. 30 deg. N. and the Gila River. This grant embraces several millions of acres, and the richest mineral land of the Republic. It is said to have been intended to smooth the passage of a bill abolishing all tariff prohibitions, which have hitherto operated greatly to the advantage of the parties named.

Maj. Barnard's Company for surveying the Isthmus of Tehuantepec reached the town of Minatitlan, on the Coatzocoalcos River, in the steamer Alabama, on the 25th of December. At the last accounts, one party had penetrated a distance of sixty miles into the country, a second was engaged in an examination of the river, and a third had set out for Tehuantepec, on the Pacific Coast.

BRITISH AMERICA.

The lawyers in Lower Canada have been making strikes and holding meetings to protest against the imposition of the new tariff regulating their fees. The Bar of Quebec and of Trois Rivieres have struck, declining to serve their clients until the legality of the tariff shall be decided by the Court of Appeals. It has been decided to admit American reprints of English copyright works into Canada, on paying 20 per cent. duty, which is to be paid over by the Custom House to the English authors or proprietors of copyright, who are required to furnish a list of their works. Under this law, American reprints will still be much cheaper than English editions, and popular English authors may therefore look forward to some increase of their revenue. The Imperial Cabinet has also assented to the Post-Office Law, enacted at the last Session of the Canadian Legislature, and establishing a uniform rate of three pence for single letters throughout the British Provinces.

Meetings have been held in Toronto, protesting against the intended removal of the Seat of Government from that city, while, on the other hand, the French members have resolved not to vote the supplies unless it is removed to Quebec in the spring. Lord Elgin, however, has stated that the Seat of Government will be transferred to Quebec at the completion of its two years in Toronto.

THE WEST INDIES.

We have news from Havana to the 3d of February. The administration of Gen. Concha appears to be more liberal and energetic than that of his predecessor, and gives very general satisfaction.

Jenny Lind gave but four concerts in Havana, only the first and last of which were well attended. Her Italian songs produced much more effect than her Swedish ballads. The proceeds of the last concert, amounting to $5000, was devoted to objects of charity. A grand ball was given in her honor by the Count de Penalver, after which she visited Matanzas and the extensive sugar plantations in its neighborhood. Senor Salvi, the great tenor, was engaged by Mr. Barnum to sing at her concerts in New-York, in April. On the 1st February, Frederika Bremer reached Havana, and the two renowned Swedes met, for the first time in the new world.

News from Jamaica to the 1st of February state that the cholera was still prevailing in many localities, although it had decreased in some and entirely disappeared in others.

CENTRAL AMERICA--THE ISTHMUS.

In the State of Nicaragua, the elections have taken place and Don Jose Sacasa has been chosen Director, from the 1st of May, on which the term of Director Raminez expires. The National Convention of Delegates from the States of Nicaragua, Honduras and San Salvador, met at Chinandega on the 21st of December, and organized by choosing as President Don Jose Barrundia, the author of the Central-American Constitution of 1820. The little steamer Director, belonging to the Nicaraguan Company, passed the rapids of Machuca, on San Juan River, and entered Lake Nicaragua on the 1st of January. She is now running between Granada and San Carlos, a distance of 95 miles, at $20 a passenger. The engineers employed to survey the route of the proposed ship canal, were at work between Granada and San Juan del Sur, on the Pacific. By the 1st of January, upwards of four thousand returning Californians had passed through Nicaragua, on their way to the United States.

Disturbances have broken out in some of the mountain provinces of Guatemala, growing out of the refusal of the inhabitants to concur in the policy adopted by the Government at the instance of the English consul, Mr. Chatfield. The insurgents declared in favor of a Federal Union of all the Central-American States. The Government troops, under Gen. Carrera, in attempting to put down this opposition, were defeated at Chiquimula. A blockade of the ports of San Salvador has been ordered by Mr. Chatfield, who threatens Honduras and Nicaragua with a similar blow, unless they accede to certain demands. In a letter to the Nicaraguan Minister of Foreign Affairs, he arbitrarily lays down the boundary line between Honduras, Nicaragua and Musquitia--an assumed kingdom, under cover of which the British authorities have taken possession of the port of San Juan. Mr. Chatfield states that unless these boundaries are accepted, no canal or other improved method of transit across the Isthmus can be established. There is much excitement in Central America, on account of his arbitrary course.

The winter rains are at an end on the Isthmus of Panama, and the roads are in good condition. Upwards of 800 workmen are employed on the Panama Railroad, and the track is already prepared for the rails from Navy Bay, the Atlantic terminus, to Gatun, on the Chagres River, a distance of three and a half miles.

SOUTH AMERICA.

The Congress of VENEZUELA met on 20th of January, all the members being present. It had previously been feared that the Executive Power would be violently seized by Guzman, Vice-President of the Republic, who was one of the unsuccessful candidates in the electoral colleges, in case there should not be a quorum in Congress. Gen. Monagas, brother of the present Executive, lacked only two or three votes of the two-thirds required by the Constitution in the electoral colleges, and having received sixty-five out of the eighty votes of Congress, was declared elected President of Venezuela. Guzman, who had used all his power to defeat Monagas, notwithstanding he was indebted to the latter for his life, met him upon the steps of the Government House after the election, and begged pardon, in tears, for the injuries he had done him. Monagas forgave him, and the happiest results for Venezuela are anticipated from an administration commenced under such circumstances.

The Presidential Election in PERU took place on the 20th of December. The prominent candidates were Generals Echinique and San Ramon, and at the last accounts it was believed the former was elected.

BOLIVIA is entirely tranquil, the health of Gen. Belzu having been completely restored since his attempted assassination, and the conspirators against him, Ballivian and Linares, having fled from the country. The partisans of Ballivian were totally routed in the southern provinces, where they attempted to make a stand, and their leader fled in disguise to Copiape, in Chili. Linares escaped into the Argentine Republic, and a requisition for his delivery was about to be issued.

In CHILI, the extra session of Congress convened on the 16th of December. In his message calling the session, the President recommended to legislative attention, the subjects of reform in the customs and the coinage system, appropriations for the current year, the regulation of the standing army, and a revision of the taxes.

Early in December a destructive fire broke out in Valparaiso, which was finally quelled through the labors of the sailors from the English and French vessels of war lying in the harbor, after destroying $250,000 worth of property. On the 5th of the month, the volcano of Portillo, near Santiago, which had been quiet since 1845, suddenly broke out into violent eruption. The following day a very severe shock of an earthquake was felt, lasting twenty seconds, but fortunately doing little damage. Since then, however, a more violent earthquake has entirely destroyed the city of Conception, in the southern part of Chili.

Hon. Bailey Peyton, the American Minister, left Valparaiso on the 27th of December, in the U.S. Ship _Vincennes_, on a visit to Talcuhuana, the province of Conception and the island of Juan Fernandez. Henri Herz, the distinguished pianist, has been giving concerts in Santiago.

At the latest dates from BRAZIL, nothing of political importance had transpired. Accounts from Buenos Ayres to Dec. 12th, state that there was a prospect of an amicable settlement of the difficulties between that country and Brazil. There had been a conflict between the forces of Paraguay and those of Buenos Ayres, relative to the occupancy of some neutral lands, by the forces of the latter. The finances of the State were said to be in an encouraging condition.

AFRICA.

The Monitor, a paper published at Cape Town, South Africa, gives an account of a dreadful massacre committed by the noted Namagua chief, Yonker Afrikaner, on the neophytes of the German Missionary station at New-Barmen, in Damaraland, between South Africa and the Kingdom of Loango.

A curious piece of history has made its way to us from the island of Madagascar. Rainharo, the Prime Minister of the reigning Queen of the island, determined, in June last, to exterminate all the Christians in the province of Imirena. Accordingly, when they were all assembled one evening at their religious exercises, the various communities were suddenly arrested, to the number of eight thousand, and condemned to death. Eighteen of them had already been executed, when the rest escaped, and surrounding the palace of the young Prince, the heir to the throne of Madagascar, implored his protection. The Queen sent orders through the Prime Minister that they should be given up. The Prince refused, and in the dispute which followed, drew his sword and aimed a blow at the Minister's head, cutting off one of his ears. When the Queen heard of this, fearing a revolt in the province of Imirena, to sustain the Prince, she suffered the Christians to return to their homes and worship as usual. They have since been visited by the Prince, who declares his intention to protect them.

The Republic of LIBERIA was in a flourishing condition at the commencement of the year. Several explorations of the interior have been made, to the distance of two or three hundred miles from the coast. The

## parties brought back enthusiastic accounts of the richness and beauty of

the country and the salubrity of the climate. President Roberts had sent his message to the Liberian Congress, giving a very favorable account of the condition and prospects of the country. The agricultural operations at Bassa Cove and Bexley have produced very satisfactory results. The slave trade is said to be almost destroyed in the neighborhood of Gallinas and Ambrize.

Recent Deaths.

THE REV. WALTER COLTON was born in Rutland, Vermont, about the year 1797. When sixteen years of age he determined to acquire a liberal education, and commenced with industrious energy his preparatory studies. In 1818 he entered Yale College, where he received the Berkleyan Prize in Latin and Greek, and delivered the valedictory poem, when he graduated, in 1822. He soon afterwards entered the Theological Seminary at Andover, where he remained three years, giving much of his tune to literature, and writing, besides various moral and critical dissertations, a _Sacred Drama_, which was acted by the students at one of their rhetorical exhibitions, and an elaborate poem pronounced when his class received their diplomas. On being ordained an evangelist, according to the usage of the Congregational Church, he became Professor of Moral Philosophy and Belles-Lettres in the Scientific and Military Academy at Middletown, then under the presidency of Captain Alden Partridge. Besides attending to the more immediate duties of his position, he wrote while here a prize _Essay on Duelling_; a _Discussion of the Genius of Coleridge_; _The Moral Power of the Poet, Painter, and Sculptor, contrasted_, and many contributions in verse and prose to the public journals, under the signature of "Bertram." In 1828 he resigned his professorship, and settled in Washington, as editor of the _American Spectator_, a weekly gazette which he conducted with industry, and such tact and temper, that he preserved the most intimate relations with the leaders of the political party to which it was most decidedly opposed. He was especially a favorite with President Jackson, who was accustomed to send for him two or three times in a week to sit with him in his private chamber, and when Mr. Colton's health declined, so that a sea voyage was recommended by his physicians, the President offered him without solicitation a consulship or a chaplaincy in the Navy. The latter was accepted, and from 1830 till the end of his life, he continued as a chaplain in the naval service.

His first appointment was to the West India squadron, where his reputation was increased by several incidents illustrative of his personal character. On one occasion a murderous affray had taken place between a boat's crew of American sailors and a party of Spaniards belonging to Pensacola, in which several sailors were killed. Mr. Colton drew up the official report of the outrage, in which he handled the police with just severity. The mayor, himself a Spaniard, and a man of desperate character, was greatly enraged, and swore he would take ample vengeance. He watched his opportunity, and attempted to rush on the chaplain with his long knife before he could protect himself. But the latter, drawing his pistols at the instant, levelled one of them at his breast, and told the mayor if he stirred his hand except to return his knife to its belt, he would put a ball through his heart. The Spaniard hesitated for a few minutes, and reluctantly complied.

Returning from the West Indies Mr. Colton was appointed to the Constellation frigate, and sailed for the Mediterranean, and in the three years during which he was connected with this station, he travelled through Spain, Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor; visited Constantinople, and made his way to Paris and London. The results of his observations he partially gave to the public in volumes entitled _Ship and Shore_, and _A Visit to Constantinople and Athens_. Soon after the publication of these works, he was appointed Historiographer to the South Sea Surveying and Exploring Expedition; but the ultimate reduction of the force designed for the Pacific squadron, and the resignation of his associates, induced him to forego the advantages of this office, for which he had made very careful preparations in ethnographical studies.

He was now stationed at Philadelphia, where he was chaplain successively of the Navy Yard and of the Naval Asylum. In this city we became acquainted with him, and for several years enjoyed his frequent society and intimate friendship, so that few have had more ample opportunities of judging of his character. In 1841 and 1842, with the consent of the Government, he added to his official duties the editorship of the Philadelphia _North American_, and in these and the following years he wrote much upon religious and literary subjects for other journals. We believe it was in 1844 that he delivered before the literary societies of the University of Vermont, a poem entitled _The Sailor_, which has not yet been published. In the summer of 1846 he was married, and we were selected by him for that occasion to fill the office commonly falling to the nearest friend. A few months afterward he was ordered to the Congress, the flag-ship of the Pacific squadron, in which he arrived off the western coast of America soon after the commencement of the late war with Mexico. The incidents of the voyage round Cape Horn are detailed with more than his usual felicity in his book, _Deck and Port_, published last summer in this city by Barnes & Co.

Soon after the arrival of the squadron at Monterey, he was appointed alcalde, or chief magistrate of that city, an office of difficult duties and large responsibilities, demanding the most untiring industry, zeal, and fortitude. These were discharged with eminent faithfulness and ability, so that he won as much the regard of the conquered inhabitants of the country, as the respect of his more immediate associates. In addition to the ordinary duties of his place, Mr. Colton established the first newspaper printed in California, _The Californian_, now published in San Francisco, under the title of the "Alta California;" he built the first _school-house_ in California; and also a large hall for public meetings--said to be the finest building in the state, which the citizens called "Colton Hall," in honor of his public spirit and enterprise. It was during his administration of affairs at Monterey that the discovery of gold in the Sacramento Valley was first made; and, considering the vast importance which this discovery has since assumed, it may not be uninteresting to state that the honor of first making it publicly known in the Atlantic States, whether by accident or otherwise, belongs properly to him. It was first announced in a letter bearing his initials, which appeared in the Philadelphia _North American_, and the next day in a letter also written by him, in the New-York _Journal of Commerce_.

Mr. Colton returned to his home early last summer, with anticipations of years of undisturbed happiness. With a family deeply attached to him, a large circle of friends, good reputation, and a fortune equal to his desires, he applied himself leisurely to the preparation of his MS. journals for the press, and the revision of his earlier publications. He had published, besides _Deck and Port_, already mentioned, _Three Years in California_, and had nearly ready for the printer a much enlarged and improved edition of _Ship and Shore_, which was to be followed by _A Visit to Constantinople, Athens, and the AEgean_, a collection of his _Poems_, and a volume of _Miscellanies of Literature and Religion_. His health however began to decline, and a cold, induced by exposure during a late visit to Washington, ended in granular dropsy, which his physician soon discovered to be incurable. Being in Philadelphia on the 22d of January, we left our hotel to pay him an early visit, and found the death signs upon his door; he had died at two o'clock that morning, surrounded by his relations, and in the presence of his friends the Rev. Albert Barnes and the Rev. Dr. Herman Hooker--died very calmly, without mortal enemies and at peace with God.

Mr. Colton was of an eminently genial nature, fond of society, and with such qualities as made him always a welcome associate. His extensive and various travel had left upon his memory a thousand delightful pictures, which were reflected in his conversation so distinctly and with such skilful preparation of the mind, that his companions lived over his life with him as often as he chose to summon its scenes before them. We believe him to have been very sincere in all the professions of honor and religion, and fully deserving of the respectful regrets with which he will be remembered during the lives of his contemporaries.

AUGUSTE D'AVEZAC, descended from an illustrious French family, was born in the island of St. Domingo, about the year 1787. He was educated at the celebrated college of La Fleche, in France; emigrated to the United States; studied medicine at Edenton, North Carolina; and on the acquisition of Louisiana removed to New Orleans. Here his sister was married to Chancellor Livingston, and he himself became a successful lawyer. When General Jackson arrived in New Orleans, d'Avezac became one of his aid-de-camps, and he served with him to the end of the war, and remained all his life among his most devoted friends. When General Jackson became President he appointed Major d'Avezac _Charge d'Affaires to Naples_, and afterwards to the Netherlands, whence he was recalled by Mr. Van Buren, but under circumstances which did not prevent his hearty support of the President's administration. He then took up his residence in New-York, and in 1841 and 1843 was elected from this city to the Legislature. In 1845, he was appointed _Charge d'Affaires_ to the Hague, and he remained there until superseded last year by Mr. Folsom, when he again returned to New-York, where he died on the 16th ultimo. He was an eminently agreeable man in society, and wrote in French and English with ease and vivacity, upon literature, art, politics, and history.

At the Hague, a _cortege_ of upwards of three thousand persons have just accompanied to the grave, at the premature age of forty-two, M. ASSER, a judge of high reputation in that city, and author of various works on comparative legislation.

France has lost one of her geographical celebrities, M. PIERRE LAPIE, from whose hand have issued a multitude of valuable maps.

DR. HEINRICH FREDERICK LINK, Professor of Botany in the University of Berlin, and Director of the Royal Botanic Garden of that city, died on the first of January, in the eighty-second year of his age. His literary career extends back for more than half a century, his first botanical essay, consisting of some observations on the plants of the Botanic Garden at Rostock, having been published in 1795. He was contemporary with Linnaeus, having been eighteen years old when the great author of the "Systema Naturae" died, and, from his botanical tastes, was probably acquainted with that naturalist's writings long before his decease.

He graduated at Gottingen in 1789, having read on that occasion an inaugural thesis on the Flora of Gottingen, referring more particularly to those found in calcareous districts. Shortly afterwards he was appointed Professor of Botany at Rostock; subsequently he held the same chair at Breslau; but the latter and larger portion of his scientific life was spent at Berlin. He practised at Berlin as a physician among an extensive circle of friends, who had a high opinion of his medical skill. Although the name of Link fills a large space in the literature of botany, his mind was not of the highest order, and his contributions to science are not likely to make a very permanent impression. Still, he was an energetic, active man, with an observant mind, a retentive memory, and with considerable power of systematic arrangement. Hence his works, like those of Linnaeus, have been among the most valuable of the contributions to the botany of the century in which he lived. Of these, his "Elementa Philosophiae Botanicae" may be quoted as the most useful. This work, which was published in 1824, has served as the basis of most of our manuals and introductions to botany since that period. He devoted considerable time and attention to the description of new species of plants, most of which he published in a continuation of Willdenow's "Species Plantarum." With Count Hoffmansegg, he commenced a Flora of Portugal, and he also published a memoir on the plants of Greece. He contributed several valuable papers on physiological botany to the Transactions of the Natural History Society of Berlin; but he has done more service for vegetable physiology in his annual reports than in any other of his writings. They comprise a summary of all that had been published in botany during the year, accompanied with many valuable remarks and sound criticisms of his own. In these reports he had to defend himself and others from the heavy artillery directed against them by Schleiden, who, whilst claiming for himself a large margin for liberty of opinion, is most unscrupulous and pertinaciously offensive towards those who differ from him. In these literary contests, however, Link showed that the experience of above fifty years had not been lost upon him, and he was not unfrequently more than a match for the vigor and logic of his youthful and more precipitate adversary. According to custom, a funeral oration was pronounced over his grave; but unfortunately the clergyman selected being a strictly orthodox person, and not being able to approve of the spirit of the whole of the writings of the deceased, censured them, it is said, in most unbecoming language, to the indignation of the numerous friends present.

The Italian poet LUIGI CARRER, died at Venice on the twenty-third of December.

GENERAL DON JOSE DE SAN MARTIN, formerly the "Protector of Peru," and one of the most deservedly eminent of the public men of the Spanish American States, died in August, 1850, at Bologna, in the seventy-second year of his age. His death has but recently been announced, and we receive the information now, not from Europe or from South America, but by way of the Sandwich Islands. The Honolulu _Polynesian_ of December fourteenth, translating from the _Panameno_, gives us the following

## particulars of his life. General San Martin was a native of one of the

Provinces of Buenos Ayres, but previous to the war of independence, passed over to Spain, where he entered into the army, and distinguished himself at the battle of Baylen. In the Spanish army, he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. After his native country, Buenos Ayres, had declared itself independent of the mother country, he returned from Spain, and fought with great bravery, against Artigas, and in other military contests. He thereby gained so much reputation with his countrymen, that when an expedition to liberate Chile was determined upon, he was the chief chosen to organize and command it. He fulfilled that trust, in an admirable manner, at Mendoza--carried his small army successfully across the Andes, through an able piece of strategy, confided to a brave young Chilian, Don Manuel Rodriguez, at a point where the Spanish forces did not expect the invading army, and signally defeated them, on the plains of _Chacabuco_, near the Capital of Chile. The defeated Spaniards had to retire and concentrate themselves in the South. San Martin occupied the whole country and shut them up in _Talcachuano_. Expecting that the Spaniards would be soon reinforced from Peru, San Martin, with the aid of several foreign officers, French and English, recruited his forces in Chile, and raised his army to about 9000 men. A strong reinforcement having arrived from Peru, at Talcahuano, under the command of General Ossioro, the Spaniards regained possession of the Province of Concepcion, took the offensive, and advanced towards the Capital. San Martin, with forces numerically superior, advanced to drive them back. The two armies met at _"Cancha Rayada,"_ where, on San Martin's birth day, in 1819, the Spaniards attacked his army at night, signally defeated and dispersed them. The only division that retired unbroken, was that commanded by General Don Gregorio de las Heras, and the army of the Andes left on the field its whole artillery, excepting only one piece which was saved by the personal exertions and cool intrepidity of Captain Miller, of that army, now H. B. M. Consul General for these Islands. After that unexpected defeat, the greatest consternation prevailed in the Capital of Chile, the cause of the Republic was considered desperate, but the Supreme Director, General Don Bernardo Ohiggins, made immense exertions to reunite the scattered army and to strengthen it, by new levies; the patriotism of the Chilians roused itself with an energy equal to the emergency; resident foreign merchants, wishing well to the country and alarmed by a report that it was the intention of the Spanish Commander in Chief to shoot them all and confiscate their property (it being then contrary to the laws of Spain that foreigners should reside in or trade with her Colonies without special license), supplied money, arms and accoutrements. An army was thus reformed with extraordinary expedition; its confidence was restored by a troop of cavalry sent to reconnoitre, headed by Major Vial, a brave French officer, who gallantly charged and routed a superior force of the enemy, and, under the command of General San Martin, on the 5th of April, 1850, on the plain of _Maypu_, it defeated the Spanish army so completely, that only a few of the fugitives reached Talcahuano.

But experience having shown that the independence of Chile could never be considered secure so long as the Spaniards retained their hold on Peru, it was resolved to make an attempt to liberate that Vice-Royalty. Colonel Miller, whose promotion after the affair of _Cancha Rayadu_ had been rapid, was sent with a small but active force to land at _Arica_ and operate in the Southern Provinces, where by astute strategy and several brilliant successes he confirmed his high reputation. San Martin soon after followed with the main army, escorted by the Chilian squadron under command of Lord Cochran; in running down the coast, he took in Colonel Miller with his troops, and knowing the powerful diversion that the latter had made in the South, he proceeded northward to Pisco, where a force was landed under the command of Colonel Charles and Colonel Miller, that made itself master of the place, after a bloody combat, in which the former gallantly fell while cheering on his troops, and the latter received several musket balls, one of which passed through his liver.

According to the plan of General San Martin, the force landed to the South of Lima, advanced into the interior to the silver mines of Pasco under the command of General Arenales, where it defeated the Spanish forces under General Oreilly, while San Martin himself, with the main body, effected his landing near Huacho to the North of Lima. By this plan, ably conceived and no less ably executed, the Spaniards were reduced to the Capital and Callao, which port at the same time was strictly blockaded by Lord Cochran's squadron. The fall of both Lima and Callao was only a question of time; it was retarded for some months owing to the great sickness that weakened San Martin's ranks; but these were filled up by desertions from the enemy; the whole regiment of _Numancia_ passed over to the Patriot side, and at last San Martin entered the Capital at the head of his troops, amidst the acclamations of the inhabitants. He was soon after declared Protector of Peru, and General-in-Chief of the Army. Having now a Peruvian character, and having come to liberate--not to conquer the country, he considered it right to create a Peruvian Army. As a _nucleus_ for its formation, the _Peruvian Legion_ (intended to consist of several Batallions), was raised, and placed under the command of Colonel Miller. But Lima and its luxuries proved the _Capua_ of San Martin's army--national jealousies arose between the Buenos Ayrean and the Chilian chiefs--San Martin's confidence in foreign officers and his endeavors to create a national army in Peru gave great umbrage to both; a secret political Lodge was formed among the leading chiefs of corps, and he was openly charged with latent designs to make himself the King or Perpetual Dictator of Peru.

The Spanish army, which had evacuated the Capital unbroken, profiting by these dissensions and the delay of the Patriot army in the Capital, had largely recruited itself in the valley of Jauja; they were every day gaining more strength, while the Patriot army was becoming daily weaker both physically and morally; under these circumstances General San Martin sought an interview with _Bolivar_, at Guayaquil, and shortly after his return to Lima, in 1822, he resigned his high post of Protector and General-in-chief, and embarked for Europe. On his arrival in Europe, after a short visit to the East of Fife, San Martin passed his time chiefly in Brussels and Paris, so much respected by all who knew him, and so esteemed for his probity, that _Sor Aguado_, the rich Spanish Banker, on his death-bed, named San Martin his Executor.

It is believed that he retired from Peru, disgusted with the false charges that were brought against him, and after having obtained a promise from his great rival, Bolivar, that he would finish the war, which it would have been much for San Martin's own glory to have concluded himself. If so, he had the _magnanimity_ to prefer the good of Peru to his own glory, a virtue never found except amongst men of great nobleness of soul. San Martin may have even thought that under the circumstances, his great rival was fitter to conclude the war than he was himself; and if he did so, the result proved at once his modesty and the soundness of his judgment, for when the Peruvian Government had fairly intrusted their destinies to Bolivar, in rapid succession, he fought the bloody battles of Junin and Ayacucho, the result of which was the final and total liberation of Peru.

Nor was Bolivar less just to foreign officers of merit than San Martin. Amongst his Generals and Aid-de-camps ranked General Brawn, General Oleary, Colonel Wilson, and many others; and Colonel Miller (who had been raised to the rank of General), as the reward of his gallant conduct in the last hard-fought fields of Junin and Ayacucho, received the further honor of being declared a _Marescal de Agacucho_. To other officers of Peru, of Chile and of Buenos Ayres, Bolivar was equally just, thus showing that he was superior to any petty jealousy of those chiefs with whose aid San Martin, his illustrious predecessor, had made those great achievements which a weaker mind might have looked upon with envy as, in some respects, overwhelming his own.

FREDERICK BASTIAT, the political economist, whose health had been very feeble for nearly a year, and of whose death last summer in Italy a report was copied into the _International_, died in Rome on the 24th of December. He was born at Bayonne in 1801, and after completing his education, he retired to a quiet village in the department of Landes, to pursue his favorite studies of trade and society. He was successively called to various offices of the department, and to the present National Assembly he was chosen by a vote of 56,000, being the second in the list of seven representing the Landes. His first book, we believe, was _Cobden et la Ligue_, published in 1844, from which period he was an industrious writer. Without being a discoverer of new truths, he possessed in an eminent degree the faculty of expanding, with clearness and vigor, the grounds and the effects of complex natural laws already developed by the technical processes of philosophy. His writings have been exceedingly popular. The whole or nearly the whole, of the tracts written by him under the generic title of 'Sophismes Economiques,' originally appeared in the _Journal des Economistes_--a periodical of which for the last six years he had been a principal supporter. The disease of which he died was a very painful and peculiar affection of the throat. He had suffered from it more or less, for some years; and the hard work of the last session of the Assembly brought the disorder to a crisis which the strength of the patient did not enable him to overcome. He may be regarded as the virtual leader of the Free Trade party in France. He aided with all his energies the Association Francaise pour la Liberte des Echanges, and he did his utmost to spread among his countrymen that new philosophy of trade. His last and most important work, _Les Harmonies Economiques_, we lately noticed in these pages. His _Sophismes Economiques_ were translated a few years ago by a daughter of Langdon Cheves, of South Carolina, and published in this city by Mr. Putnam. The extent to which M. Bastiat was indebted to our countryman, Henry C. Carey, may be inferred from a note in the February number of the _International_, page 402.

BENJAMIN W. CROWNINSHIELD, died in Boston, on Monday the 3d of February. He had left his carriage and entered a store, when he suddenly fell and expired, having previously suffered from a disease of the heart, which is supposed to have been the cause of his death, although he was about 77 years of age. He had been a resident of Boston nearly twenty years, during the greater part of which period he had been retired from public life. He had previously resided in Salem, where the Crowninshields were long distinguished for wealth and commercial enterprise. He was many years a prominent leader of the old democratic republican party. In December, 1814, he received, from President Madison, the appointment of Secretary of the Navy, which office he held (being continued by President Monroe) until he resigned, in November, 1818, when he was succeeded by Smith Thompson, afterwards judge of the Supreme Court. In 1823 he was chosen a member of Congress from Essex South District, and was continued by his constituents in that station until 1831--eight years. He was in Congress when John Quincy Adams was elected President of the United States, by that body; he participated in that election by giving his vote for Mr. A., and was a zealous supporter of his administration, acting subsequently with the whig party. He was repeatedly, at different periods of his life, a member of the state legislature, and although not distinguished for eminent talents, in all the stations which he filled he enjoyed, in a high degree, the public confidence.

PROFESSOR ANSTEY, lately connected with St. Mary's College, at Wilmington, died in the early part of February. He was dismissed from his station on account of intemperate habits, but continued his dissipation until reduced to the utmost destitution, wandering about homeless and friendless. He was discovered at length in an almost frozen state, in an old hovel, with a bottle of whiskey by his side, and soon died from the effects of his suffering. Professor Anstey was a young man of fine classical attainments, and was the author of a work published a year or two since in Philadelphia, entitled, "Elements of Literature, or an introduction to the Study of Rhetoric and Belle Lettres."

DONALD MCKENZIE, born in Scotland, June 15, 1783, died on the 20th of January, at Mayville, in New-York. At the age of seventeen he came over to Canada and joined the North West Company, and continued eight years with them. In 1809 he became one of the partners with the late John Jacob Astor, in establishing the fur trade west of the Rocky Mountains, and with Mr. Hunt, of St. Louis, made the overland route to the mouth of the Columbia River, a feat then rarely attempted, and full of perils, and remained at Astoria until it was surrendered by McDougal to the British. He converted every thing he could into available funds, which he carried safely through the wilderness to Mr. Astor. Washington Irving, in "Astoria," narrates a few of Mr. McKenzie's adventures on the frontiers, although the friends of McKenzie claim that injustice has been done him by Mr. Irving, relative to the betrayal of Astoria. They contend that to him alone was Mr. Astor indebted for all that was saved. After the restoration of peace, McKenzie exerted himself to secure for the United States the exclusive trade of Oregon, but after a long negotiation with Mr. Astor, and through him with Messrs. Madison, Gallatin, and other leading individuals in and out of office, the matter was abandoned, and McKenzie, in March, 1821, joined the Hudson Bay Company, and was immediately appointed one of the Council, and Chief Factor. In August, 1825, he was married to Adelegonde Humburt (who survives him), and was shortly after appointed Governor. At this time he resided at Fort Garry, Red River settlement, where he continued to reside until 1832, in active and prosperous business, in which he amassed a large fortune. In August of the following year he went to reside in Mayville, where he spent the rest of his life.

HORACE EVERETT, LL.D., formerly a distinguished representative in Congress from Vermont, died at Windsor in that State on the 30th of January, in the seventy-second year of his age. Elected to Congress by the opponents of General Jackson, he entered the House of Representatives in 1829, and was continued by his constituents, inhabiting one of the strongest and most enlightened whig districts in the Union, for fourteen consecutive years--his last term expiring in March, 1843. During his career in Congress, he was one of the most prominent whigs of the House, occupying the front rank, as one of the most able of parliamentary debaters, distinguished also as much his good sense and acquirements, as for his eloquence. Among his best speeches, were several on the Indian Bill, so called, growing out of the difficulties between Georgia and the Cherokees.

The London _Morning Chronicle_ has a brief notice of JAMES HARFIELD, who was connected with that journal more than twenty years. His reading, in every department of literature, was prodigious, and his memory almost a phenomenon. On all matters connected with Parliamentary history, precedent, and etiquette in particular, Mr. Harfield was an encyclopaedia of information, while the stores of his learning, in every department, were always freely at the command of his friends and colleagues. In early life, Mr. Harfield was a _protege_ of, and afterwards acted as secretary to, Jeremy Bentham, who acknowledged his sense of his young friend's services by bequeathing to him a magnificent library.

WILLIAM WILSON, a painter of considerable reputation, died in Charleston, S. C, on the 28th of January. The Charleston _Evening News_ says:--"He was a native of Yorkshire, England, but for the last twenty years has resided in this country, and during the last eleven, in Georgia and South Carolina. In all the relations of life, as husband, father, son, and brother, he was irreproachable, while his gentle and winning manners conciliated general esteem and regard. At his death Mr. Wilson had attained a distinguished reputation as a portrait painter, in which department he first attracted attention in 1836, by the exhibition of a portrait of an intimate friend at the first exhibition of the "American Art-Union," at the Apollo Gallery. In 1837 he exhibited several heads of the Academy of Design, which attracted much attention. In 1844 he exhibited a head of a brother artist, which was more generally admired than any similar production for years. In 1846 Mr. W. received a commission from the State of Georgia to execute two portraits--one of William H. Crawford, former Secretary of the Treasury, and the other of Gen. Jackson. After a tedious and troublesome journey to the North, in search of Jarvis's portrait of Crawford, which could not be traced, he returned to Charleston, and while copying from Vanderlyn's portrait of Gen. Jackson in the City Hall, he was presented by Charles Fraser, Esq., with a proof engraving of Jarvis's Crawford, from which, on his return to Augusta, he produced a most striking portrait of Georgia's greatest statesman. These pictures of Jackson and Crawford, which adorn the State House at Milledgeville, will be lasting memorials of his excellence as an artist."

JAMES WALLACE, D.D., the distinguished Mathematician, several years Professor of Mathematics in Columbia College, New-York, died in Lexington District, South Carolina, on the 15th of January. After completing his course of Theology, he was ordained a clergyman of the Roman Catholic Church, and was then appointed to the chair of Mathematics in Georgetown College, D.C. A few years later he removed to Columbia, S. C., and was appointed Professor of Mathematics in South Carolina College. While in New-York he published his justly celebrated "Treatise on Globes and Practical Astronomy," and had prepared materials for an entire course of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, but was compelled to relinquish his design on account of ill-health and advanced age. He was also the author of numerous scientific articles in the Southern Quarterly Review. He possessed one of the choicest and most extensive scientific libraries in the United States, which was almost entirely destroyed by the great conflagration of 1837: the remnant of it, with his scientific apparatus, was bequeathed to the Catholic Theological Seminary of Charleston. He was a resident of South Carolina during the last thirty-eight years.

JOSHUA MILNE, the author of the celebrated treatise on "Annuities and Assurances," we see by the English papers died recently near London at the advanced age of seventy-eight. He is said to have left behind him the most complete collection extant on subjects connected with the statistics of vitality, of which a portion at least will probably be given to the public.

The Hungarian General BEM, expired with the half-century. Born at Tarnon, a Pole, he died at Aleppo, a Turk. In early youth he served in the Russian army against Napoleon in his disastrous campaign. He was the friend, companion, and favorite of the Grand Duke Constantine, until certain indignities to himself and cruelties to his countrymen made him the implacable foe of Russia. He joined the Polish insurrection of 1831, and performed prodigies of valor at the battle of Ostrolenka. Like many others, he became a fugitive and a wanderer. Unsuccessful patriotism reduced the companion of royalty to be a pensioner on the charity of the friends of Poland in London. 1848 gave Bern once more a career. He went to Vienna, and when the people were in the ascendant, in October, he held a command. But the Viennese could not trust the Pole. Incompetent men were placed over him. Vienna fell before the artillery of Windischgratz and Jellachich in November. Slaughter, terror, violation reigned. Never will the Viennese forget the red cloaks of the Croats. The educated youth of Vienna were shot in clusters. Robert Blum was led out to perish. The Odeon, although used as an hospital, was laid in ashes, with the wounded in it. Great rewards were offered for the apprehension of the popular leaders and generals still alive. The search for Bem was vigilant. He doffed the costume of a hackney coachman, filled his vehicle with a Hungarian family of nurses and children, mounted the box under the eyes of spies and soldiers, laughed at inspection, and drove off to Hungary. For ten mouths he was victorious there over the Austrians. "Bem beat the Ban." Splinters from an old wound escaping from his leg all the time, and able only to sit on horseback.

T. S. DAVIES, F.R.S., F.A.S., and a Professor of Mathematics in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, died on the 6th of January at Shooter's Hill, Kent, in the fifty-seventh year of his age. Mr. Davies was a very distinguished mathematician, and the author of several works on mathematics. He possessed, also, extensive and varied acquirements in different branches of science and literature. Nor was he unmindful of the claims of the more humble aspirant to mathematical honors; his encouragement and advice were liberally bestowed, as many deserving young men could testify.

HENRY CHRISTIAN SCHUMACHER, the celebrated Danish Astronomer, died at Altona on the 28th of December, aged about seventy years. He commenced his professional career at the age of twenty-five, as professor of astronomy in the University of Copenhagen. In 1822, his royal master, Frederic VI., caused to be built, expressly that Schumacher might be placed at the head of it, the Observatory of Altona. From 1820 to 1829 he published his "_Auxiliary Tables of Astronomy_", in ten volumes, _quarto_. His _Astronomical Annals_, continued from 1830 to the date of his death, have, with his _Tables_, given him a high and wide reputation. In 1832 the King of Denmark established the reward of a golden medal for the discovery of new microscopic comets; and it was upon his favorite Schumacher exclusively that he devolved the duty of verifying the title of claimants and assigning the medal. Since 1847 Schumacher has been the correspondent of the Academy of Sciences of Paris.

MAXWELL, the Irish novelist, and author of innumerable humorous sketches in the periodical literature of the day, expired on the 29th of December, at Musselberge, near Edinburgh. His generally vigorous health had of late broken down, and he crept into the retirement of this sequestered village to die. He had been in early life a captain in the British army, and was of course the delight of the mess-room, and a general favorite in social circles. He subsequently entered the church, and was some years prebendary of Balla, a wild Connaught church living, without any congregation or cure of souls attached to it; though it afforded what he was admirably capable of dealing with, plenty of game. Of a warm-hearted, kind, and manly temperament, he made friends of all who came within the range of his wit or the circle of his acquaintance. He was the founder of that school which counts the "Harry Lorrequers" and others among its humble disciples; but the "Story of my Life," and "Wild Sports of the West," will not be easily surpassed in the peculiar qualities of that gay and off-hand style of which he was the originator. Among his other more successful works are "Stories of Waterloo," "Hector O'Halloran," and "Rambling Recollections of a Soldier of Fortune." Besides his novels, he wrote "Notes and Reflections during a Ramble in Germany," "Victories of the British Armies," and a "Life of Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington".

ALEXANDER MACDONALD, well known to the public as an antiquary, died early in January at Edinburgh. He was one of Mr. Thompson's earliest assistants in the publication of the "Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland," and other works, undertaken by the Record Commissioners. He was long a most active member of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland; and the library and museum of that body owe much to his industry and intelligence. He edited several volumes of the Maitland Club, to which he contributed "The Register of Ministers in the year 1567"--the earliest extant record of the ecclesiastical appointments of the Reformed Church in Scotland. Mr. Macdonald also largely supplied the materials of Sir Walter Scott's notes and illustrations of the "Waverley Novels." He held many years the office of Keeper of the Register of Deeds and Protests in Scotland.

Scientific Miscellanies

MR. WALSH writes from Paris to the _Journal of Commerce_, in the last month, as follows:

The _Annuaire_, or Annual for the present year, has been issued by the Board of Longitude. M. Arago has appended to it nearly 200 pages on the Calendar in which he treats of all the divisions of time among the ancients and the moderns. This celebrated astronomer does not belie, in this notice, his reputation for handling scientific subjects so as to make them clear to common apprehension. He announces, in his second page, that he has completed and will soon publish a _Treatise of Popular Astronomy_; a desideratum for France. Sir John Herschel has supplied it for English readers, in his Outlines. The present history and explanations of the Calendar may be recommended, as material, to your Professor Loomis. In the section concerning the period at which the Paris clocks were first regulated on the mean or true time, Arago observes: "It will not happen again that an astronomer shall hear for a half hour, the same hour struck by different clocks, as Delambre told me he had often experienced. M. Chabrol, the Prefect of the Department of the Seine, before he would introduce this useful change, required, as a guaranty for himself, a report from the Board of Longitude: he was fearful that the change might provoke the working population to insurrection; that they might refuse to accept a mid-day or noon which, by a contradiction in terms, would not correspond to the middle of the day; which would divide in two unequal portions the time comprised between the rising and the setting of the sun. But this sinister anticipation was not realized; the operation passed without being perceived." It is all important, on the railroads, that the clocks at the different stations should be so regulated. Arago remarks that among the ancients it would have been dangerous to announce the existence of more than seven planets, owing to the "mysterious virtues" ascribed to that number; to complete it the sun was counted among the planets. He discusses the point--which is the first day of the week, and decides for Sunday. He devotes a section to the question--"Will the period come when the days will be equal between themselves, and have the same temperature throughout the year?" He concludes, of course, in the negative. He decides, also, that the nineteenth century began only on the 1st of January, 1801. Particular interest may be attributed to the section on the long series of ages which the ancients invested with the title "The Great Year." The high names of Plato, Cicero, Seneca, Plutarch, should not prevent us from regarding the opinions of antiquity on the relations of the great year, with the events of every kind observable on the earth, as among the crudest conceptions that have descended to the moderns.

At the sitting of the _Academy of Sciences_ on the 24th ult., M. AUGUSTIN CAUCHY read a memoir on the transversal vibrations of ether, and of the dispersion of colors. He furnished a simple, and easily intelligible mathematical theory of the various phenomena of light, and

## particularly, the theory of the dispersion of colors. Lord Brougham read

a paper of his _Researches, Experimental and Analytical, on Light_. His Lordship's ambition is to shine in optics, as in every thing else; but you will see by a London paragraph that his researches have nearly cost him his eyesight. Dr. Aran submitted a Memoir, which seems to be quite important, on local anesthetic medication. "In the medical point of view," he remarks, "the number of cases in which local anesthetic applications may be employed, is truly immense. My experiments and researches, during many months, have conducted me to this practical result, which is worthy of all attention. Whenever an acute pain exists in any part of the animal economy, whether the pain constitute the malady in itself or be only an integral and principal part of it, the physician can relieve the patient of it for a longer or shorter time, by one or various local anesthetic applications. Great service, too, may be rendered by the precedent use of them in various surgical cases. The medication is wonderfully useful in articular acute rheumatism."

"Local anesthetic properties belong to all the agents in which the general have been found. They depend on the degree of fixity of the substance. A number of the anesthetics are irritating for the skin; chloroform in particular. According to Dr. Aran, the best agent for topical use is _ether chlorhydique chlore_. This is efficacious in a few minutes. Monsieur Recamier has submitted to the Academy of Medicine a _galvanic cataplasm_, by which, when it is applied to the skin, the benefit of electricity is fully conveyed, without the least pain. The reporter exclaims, 'Yes, who would have thought it? Electricity is transformed into cataplasm. This mysterious power, which, perhaps, is life itself, is reduced to an humble and common part in pharmaceutical science.'

"At the sitting of the _Academy of Sciences_ on the 30th ult., a very interesting memoir (the 4th) was read by M.A. Masson, with the title, Studies of Electrical Photometry. He thinks that he has ascertained the cause of electrical light. He ascribes the Aurora Borealis to currents of great intensity situate in the higher regions of our atmosphere." The Report of Lieut. J.C. Walsh on his soundings, was referred for examination to Duperroy, the member most eminent in hydrography.

MONSIEUR POUILLET, the great Professor of Physics, has published in Paris a work entitled _General Notions of Natural Philosophy and Meteorology, for the use of young persons_; and Mr. Boussingault, eminent as a scientific agriculturist, the second edition of his _Rural Economy considered in its Relations with Chemistry, Physics, and Mineralogy_. The _Treatise of Mineralogy_ by Dufresnoy, the celebrated Professor, who is of the Academy of Sciences, is complete, and at least equal to any other extant. There are four volumes octavo. The 22d volume of the memoirs of the Academy was ready in September last; the 23d is in the press; the 11th volume of Foreign Communications will appear this month. Twelve vacancies from death of foreign correspondents, are soon to be filled by election. All merit is ascribed to the work of Dr. Fairet, entitled _Clinical Instructions respecting Mental Maladies_. The author, pupil and successor of Pinel and Esquirol, is the physician of the Salpetriere. Along with the able Doctor Voison, he has a noble Lunatic Asylum of his own, not far from the capital.

SIR DAVID BREWSTER, it seems, has become a convert to that part of Animal Magnetism called Electro Biology, and which consists in willing a person to be somebody else. After describing some wonderful experiments, made in the presence of several scientific gentlemen, by a Mr. DARLING, he says, "they were all as convinced as I was, that the phenomena which we witnessed were real phenomena, and as well established as any other facts in physical science. The process by which the operator produces them--the mode by which that process acts upon the mind of the patient--and the reference of the phenomena to some general law in the constitution of man--may long remain unknown; but it is not difficult to see in the recent discoveries of M. DUBOIS REYMOND and MATTEUCIA, and in the laws which regulate the relative intensity of the external and internal impressions on the nerves of sensation, some not very indistinct indications of that remarkable process by which minds of peculiar sensibility are temporarily placed under the dominion of physical influences developed and directed by some living agent."

[Illustration]

Ladies' Fashions for Early Spring.

More attention than previously for many seasons appears to have been given this winter to ladies' fashions, and some that have come out are remarkably tasteful, while generally in fabric and manufacture they appear to be unusually expensive. We compile this month mainly from the London _World of Fashion_.

_Bonnets_ are remarkable for a novel form, the front of the rims continuing large and open, the crowns round, low, and small. Of an elegant style are those made of Orient gray pearl, half satin, half _velours epingle_, having a very rich effect, and decorated with _touffes Marquises_, composed of _marabouts_. Then, we see bonnets of green satin, ornamented at the edge, over the front, and upon the crown, with a stamped velvet imitating lace, and decorated upon the left side with a small _plumet_ in a weeping feather, the ends of which are tied or knotted with green, of two different shades; this is a very favorite and _recherche_ style. Also a bonnet of grayish green velvet, ornamented with a bunch of feathers composed of the _grebe_ and the ostrich. Drooping low feathers of every description are in request for decorating bonnets.

_Ball Dresses_ of light materials are most in vogue, and are generally made of two and three skirts; as white _tulle_, with three skirts, trimmed all round with a broad, open-worked satin ribbon; the third skirt being raised on one side, and attached with a large bouquet of flowers, whilst the ribbon is twisted, and ascends to the side of the waist, where it finishes; the same kind of flowers serves to ornament the sleeves and centre of the corsage, which is also trimmed with a deep drapery of _tulle_. Feather trimmings are in vogue, disposed as fringes of _marabout_, and placed at the edges of the double skirts of _tulle_. Another pretty style, composed also of white _tulle_, and _a double jupes_, the under one having a border of white _marabout_ fringe sprinkled with small golden grains falling over them in a perfect shower; the second _jupe_ having attached to the edge of the hem a narrower fringe; the two sides of the upper skirt being open to the waist, is ornamented upon each side with an embroidery of gold and white silk, caught at regular distances with _noeuds_ of white and gold gauze ribbon, the floating ends of which are edged with fringe; body _a la Grecque_.

_Capotes_ of velvet are considerably lightened in appearance, by a novelty consisting of a kind of open stamped velvet, which is placed over satin; either a pretty contrast in color, or of the same hue; whilst those of plain velvet are relieved with trimmings of black lace, with _mancinis_ formed of the convolvulus, made in green velvet. The form of the present style of _capotes_ is very open in front, flat upon the top of the head, and shallow and sloping at the back. Some are of green satin, trimmed with ribbons of an open pattern in black and green. Others are decorated with rows of fancy ribbon-velvet, the interior having loops of narrow ribbon-velvet of two colors, charmingly blended.

I. A high dress of green silk, the body opening in front _a la demi coeur_; the waist is long and rounded in front; the sleeves, reaching a little below the elbow, are moderately wide, and finished either by a _ruche_ or rich _guimpe_ trimming; the skirt is plain, long, and full. _Pardessus manteau_ of claret velvet, fastening to the throat; it is ornamented with a narrow silk trimming: this _manteau_ is lined with white silk, quilted in large squares. Bonnet of green velvet, with feathers of the same color placed low at the left side.

II. _Robe_ of blue _brocade_; the high body opens in the front nearly to the waist; the fronts of the skirt are lined with amber satin, and a fulling of the same is placed on the edge of the fronts, graduating in width towards the top; it is carried round the neck of the dress; the sleeves are very wide from the elbow, and lined with amber satin; the edge of the sleeve is left plain, but there is a _ruche_ of satin round the middle of the sleeve, just above the elbow. Under dress of jaconet muslin, trimmed with lace or embroidery. Cap of _tulle_, with blue trimmings.

[Illustration]

III. A dress of pink _tulle_, spotted and _brode_ in silver; the _jupe_ composed of three skirts, each waved round the lower part; plain close-fitting body, made very low, and pointed at the waist; the upper

## part decorated with a narrow cape, descending in a point upon the front

of the corsage, and decorated with a splendid bouquet of roses; a second row of frilling forms the loose short sleeve; the whole worn over a dress of pale pink satin; a narrow row of white blonde encircling the neck. The hair is arranged in a similar form to figure I; the only difference being that the _noeud_ of ribbon is replaced by a beautiful drooping branch of pink shaded roses and light foliage; a spray of the three green leaves being placed upon the centre of the front, just over the parting of the hair.

IV. A dress of green satin; the skirt, long and full, has four rows of braid up the front; the body is high, open a little in the front, the braid being carried round it; it is plaited from the shoulder to the waist; wide sleeves, with broad cuffs turned back; they have three rows of braid on them. _Mantelot_ of grey cachmere, the sleeves _a la Maintenon_; the edges are all scalloped and trimmed with braid. Bonnet of ultra marine velvet; a broad black lace is turned back over the edge; it has a deep curtain.

_For a Young Lady's Dress_, _Capote_ formed of rows of narrow pink fancy ribbon. Frock of dark blue cachmere; the skirt trimmed with two rows of ribbon-velvet; the cape formed of narrow folds, open in the front, continued across with bands of velvet. Pantaloons of embroidered cambric.