II.

THE CASCADE HUMBLETH ITSELF.

Under the dams I go, With sullen plash, And humbled dash, On giant wheels below, That proudly turn where huge fires burn, Mocking the sunset glow!

As the "feeders" I enter, High windows shake, And brick walls quake, Deep to their very centre, While _I_ painfully sob to the taunting throb In the heart of my mill tormentor.

Afar up the arid hill, Huger wheels are turning-- Fiercer fires are burning-- The mountain torrent is still! And I mourn me now for the thicket's green In the grove where our surging line was see.

Man with his stalwart arms, Plying the axe and spade-- Reft the grove of its shade, Dissolving nature's charms; With genius to plan it blasted the granite, As involving the earthquake's aid.

Nothing of freedom now I know! For the glare of the brick, The machinery click, And the mist from the wheels below, Blindeth and stunneth--I faint--I reel. I yield my charm to the spell of steel!

HERMAN MELVILLE'S WHALE.[4]

The new nautical story by the always successful author of _Typee_, has for its name-giving subject a monster first introduced to the world of print by Mr. J. N. Reynolds, ten or fifteen years ago, in a paper for the _Knickerbocker_, entitled _Mocha Dick_. We received a copy when it was too late to review it ourselves for this number of the _International_, and therefore make use of a notice of it which we find in the London _Spectator_:

"This sea novel is a singular medley of naval observation, magazine article writing, satiric reflection upon the conventionalisms of civilized life, and rhapsody run mad. So far as the nautical parts are appropriate and unmixed, the portraiture is truthful and interesting. Some of the satire, especially in the early parts, is biting and reckless. The chapter-spinning is various in character; now powerful from the vigorous and fertile fancy of the author, now little more than empty though sounding phrases. The rhapsody belongs to wordmongering where ideas are the staple; where it takes the shape of narrative or dramatic fiction, it is phantasmal--an attempted description of what is impossible in nature and without probability in art; it repels the reader instead of attracting him.

[4] The Whale. By Herman Melville, Author of "Typee," "Omoo," "Redburn," "Mardi," "White Jacket." In three volumes. Published by Bentley.

[Moby Dick, or the Whale: By Herman Melville: 1 vol. 12mo. New-York, Harper & Brothers.]

"The elements of the story are a South Sea whaling voyage, narrated by Ishmael, one of the crew of the ship Pequod, from Nantucket. Its 'probable' portions consist of the usual sea matter in that branch of the industrial marine; embracing the preparations for departure, the voyage, the chase and capture of whale, with the economy of cutting up, &c., and the peculiar discipline of the service. This matter is expanded by a variety of digressions on the nature and characteristics of the sperm whale, the history of the fishery, and similar things, in which a little knowledge is made the excuse for a vast many words. The voyage is introduced by several chapters in which life in American seaports is rather broadly depicted.

"The 'marvellous' injures the book by disjointing the narrative, as well as by its inherent want of interest, at least as managed by Mr. Melville. In the superstition of some whalers, (grounded upon the malicious foresight which occasionally characterizes the attacks of the sperm fish upon the boats sent to capture it,) there is a _white_ whale which possesses supernatural power. To capture or even to hurt it is beyond the art of man; the skill of the whaler is useless; the harpoon does not wound it; it exhibits a contemptuous strategy in its attacks upon the boats of its pursuers; and happy is the vessel were only loss of limb, or of a single life, attends its chase. Ahab, the master of the Pequod--a mariner of long experience, stern resolve, and indomitable courage, the high hero of romance, in short, transferred to a whale-ship--has lost his leg in a contest with the white whale. Instead of daunting Ahab, the loss exasperates him; and by long brooding over it his reason becomes shaken. In this condition, he undertakes the voyage; making the chase of his fishy antagonist the sole abject of his thoughts, and, so far as he can without exciting overt insubordination among his officers, the object of his proceedings.

"Such a groundwork is hardly natural enough for a regular-built novel, though it might form a tale, if properly managed. But Mr. Melville's mysteries provoke wonder at the author rather than terror at the creation; the soliloquies and dialogues of Ahab, in which the author attempts delineating the wild imaginings of monomania, and exhibiting some profoundly speculative views of things in general, induce weariness or skipping; while the whole scheme mars, as we have said, the nautical continuity of story--greatly assisted by various chapters of a bookmaking kind.

"Perhaps the earliest chapters are the best although they contain little adventure. Their topics are fresher to English readers than the whale-chase, and they have more direct satire. One of the leading personages in the voyage is Queequeg, a South Sea Islander, that Ishmael falls in with at New-Bedford, and with whom he forms a bosom friendship.

"Queequeg was a native of Kokovoko, an island far away to the West and South. It is not down in any map; true places never are.

"While yet a new-hatched savage, running wild about his native woodlands in a grass clout, followed by the nibbling goats, as if he were a green sapling,--even then, in Queequeg's ambitious soul lurked a strong desire to see something more of Christendom than a specimen whaler or two. His father was a high chief, a king; his uncle a high priest; and on the maternal side he boasted aunts who were the wives of unconquerable warriors. There was excellent blood in his veins--royal stuff; though sadly vitiated, I fear, by the cannibal propensity he nourished in his untutored youth.

"A Sag Harbour ship visited his father's bay; and Queequeg sought a passage to Christian lands. But the ship having her full complement of seamen, spurned his suit; and not all the King his father's influence could prevail. But Queequeg vowed a vow. Alone in his canoe, he paddled off to a distant strait, which he knew the ship must pass through when she quitted the island. On one side was a coral reef; on the other a low tongue of land, covered with mangrove thickets, that grew out into the water. Hiding his canoe, still afloat, among these thickets, with its prow seaward, he sat down in the stern, paddle low in hand; and when the ship was gliding by, like a flash he darted out--gained her side--with one backward dash of his foot capsized and sank his canoe--climbed up the chains--and throwing himself at full length upon the deck, grappled a ring-bolt there, and swore not to let it go though hacked in pieces.

"In vain the captain threatened to throw him overboard--suspended a cutlass over his naked wrists: Queequeg was the son of a king, and Queequeg budged not. Struck by his desperate dauntlessness, and his wild desire to visit Christendom, the captain at last relented, and told him he might make himself at home. But this fine young savage--this sea Prince of Whales--never saw the captain's cabin. They put him down among the sailors, and made a whaleman of him. But, like the Czar Peter content to toil in the ship-yards of foreign cities, Queequeg disdained no seeming ignominy, if thereby he might haply gain the power of enlightening his untutored countrymen. For at bottom--so he told me--he was actuated by a profound desire to learn among the Christians the arts whereby to make his people still happier than they were, and more than that, still better than they were. But, alas! the practices of whalemen soon convinced him that even Christians could be both miserable and wicked, infinitely more so than all his father's heathens. Arrived at last in old Sag Harbour, and seeing what the sailors did there, and then going on to Nantucket, and seeing how they spent their wages in that place also, poor Queequeg gave it up for lost. Thought he, it's a wicked world in all meridians: I'll die a Pagan.

"The strongest point of the book is its 'characters.' Ahab, indeed, is a melodramatic exaggeration, and Ishmael is little more than a mouthpiece; but the harpooners, the mates, and several of the seamen, are truthful portraitures of the sailor as modified by the whaling service. The persons ashore are equally good, though they are soon lost sight of. The two Quaker owners are the author's means for a hit at the religious hypocrisies. Captain Bildad, an old sea-dog, has got rid of every thing pertaining to the meeting-house save an occasional 'thou' and 'thee.' Captain Peleg, in American phrase, 'professes religion.' The following extract exhibits the two men when Ishmael is shipped:

"I began to think that it was high time to settle with myself at what terms I would be willing to engage for the voyage. I was already aware that in the whaling business they paid no wages, but all hands, including the captain, received certain shares of the profits, called _lays_; and that these lays were proportioned to the degree of importance pertaining to the respective duties of the ship's company. I was also aware that, being a green hand at whaling, my own lay would not be very large: but, considering that I was used to the sea, could steer a ship, splice a rope, and all that, I made no doubt that, from all I had heard, I should be offered at least the two hundred and seventy-fifth lay--that is, the two hundred and seventy-fifth part of the clear net proceeds of the voyage, whatever that might eventually amount to. And though the two hundred and seventy-fifth lay was what they called a rather _long lay_, yet it was better than nothing; and if we had a lucky voyage, might pretty nearly pay for the clothing I would wear out on it, not to speak of my three years' beef and board, for which I would not have to pay one stiver.

"It might be thought that this was a poor way to accumulate a princely fortune: and so it was, a very poor way indeed. But I am one of those that never take on about princely fortunes, and am quite content if the world is ready to board and lodge me while I am putting up at this grim sign of the Thunder-cloud. Upon the whole, I thought that the two hundred and seventy-fifth lay would be about the fair thing, but would not have been surprised had I been offered the two hundredth, considering I was of a broad-shouldered make.

"But one thing, nevertheless, that made me a little distrustful about receiving a generous share of the profits, was this: ashore, I had heard something of both Captain Peleg and his unaccountable old crony Bildad; how that they, being the principal proprietors of the Pequod, therefore the other and more in considerable and scattered owners left nearly the whole management of the ship's affairs to these two. And I did not know but that the stingy old Bildad might have a deal to say about shipping hands, especially as I now found him on board the Pequod, quite at home there in the cabin, and reading his Bible, as if at his own fireside. Now, while Peleg was vainly trying to mend a pen with his jack-knife, old Bildad, to my no small surprise, considering that he was such an interested party in these proceedings--Bildad never heeded us, but went on mumbling to himself out of his book, '_Lay_ not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth--'

"'Well, Captain Bildad,' interrupted Peleg, 'what d'ye say--what lay shall we give this young man?'

"'Thou knowest best,' was the sepulchral reply; 'the seven hundred and seventy-seventh wouldn't be too much--would it--'where moth and rust do corrupt, but _lay_--'

"Lay indeed, thought I, and such a lay!--the seven hundred and seventy-seventh! Well, old Bildad, you are determined that I, for one, shall not _lay_ up many _lays_ here below, where moth and rust do corrupt. It was an exceedingly _long lay_ that, indeed; and though from the magnitude of the figure it might at first deceive a landsman, yet the slightest consideration will show that, though seven hundred and seventy-seven is a pretty large number, yet when you come to make a _teenth_ of it, you will then see, I say, that the seven hundred and seventy-seventh part of a farthing is a good deal less than seven hundred and seventy-seven gold doubloons. And so I thought at the time.

"'Why, b---- t your eyes, Bildad!' cried Peleg, 'thou dost not want to swindle this young man! he must have more than that?'

"'Seven hundred and seventy-seventh,' again said Bildad, without lifting his eyes; and then went on mumbling--'for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.'

"'I am going to put him down for the three hundredth,' said Peleg; 'do ye hear that, Bildad? The three hundredth lay, I say.'

"Bildad laid down his book, and, turning solemnly towards him, said, 'Captain Peleg, thou hast a generous heart; but thou must consider the duty thou owest to the other owners of this ship--widows and orphans, many of them; and that, if we too abundantly reward the labors of this young man, we may be taking the bread from those widows and those orphans. The seven hundred and seventy-seventh lay, Captain Peleg.'

"'Thou Bildad!' roared Peleg, starting up, and clattering about the cabin, 'B---- t ye, Captain Bildad; if I had followed thy advice in these matters, I would afore now had a conscience to lug about that would be heavy enough to founder the largest ship that ever sailed round Cape Horn.'

"'Captain Peleg,' said Bildad steadily, 'thy conscience may be drawing ten inches of water or ten fathoms--I can't tell; but as thou art still an impenitent man, Captain Peleg, I greatly fear lest thy conscience be but a leaky one, and will in the end sink thee foundering down to the fiery pit, Captain Peleg,'"

"It is a canon with some critics that nothing should be introduced into a novel which it is physically impossible for the writer to have known: thus, he must not describe the conversation of miners in a pit if they _all_ perish. Mr. Melville hardly steers clear of this rule, and he continually violates another, by beginning in the autobiographical form and changing _ad libitum_ into the narrative. His catastrophe overrides all rule: not only is Ahab, with his boat's-crew, destroyed in his last desperate attack upon the white whale, but the Pequod herself sinks with all on board into the depths of the illimitable ocean. Such is the go-ahead method."

A STORY WITHOUT A NAME[5]

WRITTEN FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE

BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.

## CHAPTER L.

Sir Philip Hastings, I have said, was reading a Greek book when Mr. Short entered the library. His face was grave, and very stern; but all traces of the terrible agitation with which he had quited the side of his wife's death-bed, were now gone from his face. He hardly looked up when the surgeon entered. He seemed not only reading, but absorbed by what he read. Mr. Short thought the paroxysm of grief was passed, and that the mind of Sir Philip Hastings, settling down into a calm melancholy, was seeking its habitual relief in books. He knew, as every medical man must know, the various whimsical resources to which the heart of man flies, as if for refuge, in moments of great affliction. The trifles with which some will occupy themselves--the intense abstraction for which others will labor--the imaginations, the visions, the fancies to which others again will apply, not for consolation, not for comfort; but for escape from the one dark predominant idea. He said a few words to Sir Philip then, of a kindly but somewhat commonplace character, and the baronet looked up, gazing at him across the candles which stood upon the library table. Had Mr. Short's attention been particularly called to Sir Philip's countenance, he would have perceived at once, that the pupils of the eyes were strangely and unnaturally contracted, and that from time to time a certain nervous twitching of the muscles curled the lip, and indented the cheek. But he did not remark these facts: he merely saw that Sir Philip was reading: that he had recovered his calmness; and he judged that that which might be strange in other men, might not be strange in him. In regard to what he believed the great cause of Sir Philip's grief, his wife's death, he thought it better to say nothing; but he naturally concluded that a father would be anxious to hear of a daughter's health under such circumstances, and therefore he told him that Emily was better and more composed.

[5] Concluded from page 499.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by G. P. R. James, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York.

Sir Philip made a slight, but impatient motion of the hand, but Mr. Short went on to say, "As she was so severely and terribly affected, Sir Philip, I have given Mistress Emily a composing draught, which has already had the intended effect of throwing her into profound slumber. It will insure her, I think, at least six, if not seven hours of calm repose, and I trust she will rise better able to bear her grief than she would be now, were she conscious of it."

Sir Philip muttered something between his teeth which the surgeon did not hear, and Mr. Short proceeded, saying, "Will you permit me to suggest, Sir Philip, that it would be better for you too, my dear sir, to take something which would counteract the depressing effect of sorrow."

"I thank you, sir, I thank you," replied Sir Philip, laying his hand upon the book; "I have no need. The mind under suffering seeks medicines for the mind. The body is not affected. It is well--too well. Here is my doctor;" and he raised his hand and let it fall upon the book again.

"Well then, I will leave you for to-night, Sir Philip," said the surgeon; "to-morrow I must intrude upon you on business of great importance. I will now take my leave."

Sir Philip rose ceremoniously from his chair and bowed his head; gazing upon the surgeon as he left the room and shut the door, with a keen, cunning, watchful look from under his overhanging eyebrows.

"Ha!" he said, when the surgeon had left the room, "he thought to catch me--to find out what I intended to do--slumber!--calm, tranquil repose--so near a murdered mother! God of heaven!" and he bent down his head till his forehead touched the pages of the book, and remained with his face thus concealed for several minutes.

It is to be remarked that not one person, with a single exception, to whom the circumstances of Lady Hastings' death were known, even dreamed of suspecting Emily. They all knew her, comprehended her character, loved her, had faith in her, except her own unhappy father. But with him, if the death of his unhappy wife were terrible, his suspicions of his daughter were a thousand fold more so. To his distorted vision a multitude of circumstances brought proof all powerful. "She has tried to destroy her father," he thought, "and she has not scrupled to destroy her mother. In the one case there seemed no object. In the other there was the great object of revenge, with others perhaps more mean, but not less potent. Try her cause what way I will, the same result appears. The mother opposes the daughter's marriage to the man she loves--threatens to frustrate the dearest wish of her heart--and nothing but death will satisfy her. This is the end then of all these reveries--these alternate fits of gloom and levity. The ill balanced mind has lost its equipoise, and all has given way to passion. But what must I do--oh God! what must I do?"

His thoughts are here given, not exactly as they presented themselves; for they were more vague, confused, and disjointed; but such was the sum and substance of them. He raised his head from the book and looked up, and after thinking for a moment or two he said, "This Josephus--this Jew--gives numerous instances, if I remember right, of justice done by fathers upon their children--ay, and by the express command of God. The priest of the Most High was punished for yielding to human weakness in the case of his sons. The warrior Jephtha spared not his best beloved. What does the Roman teach? Not to show pity to those the nearest to us by blood, the closest in affection, where justice demands unwavering execution. It must be so. There is but the choice left, to give her over to hands of strangers, to add public shame, and public punishment to that which justice demands, or to do that myself which they must inevitably do. She must die--such a monster must not remain upon the earth. She has plotted against her father's life--she has colleagued with his fraudulent enemies--she has betrayed the heart that fondly trusted her--she has visited secretly the haunts of a low, vulgar ruffian--she has aided and abetted those who have plundered her own parents--she has ended by the murder of the mother who so fondly loved her. I--I am bound, by every duty to society, to deliver it from one, who for my curse, and its bane, I brought into the world. She must be put to death; and no hand but mine must do it."

He gazed gloomily down upon the table for several minutes, and then paced the room rapidly with agony in every line of his face. He wrung his hands hard together. He lifted up his eyes towards heaven, and often, often, he cried out, "Oh God! Oh God! Is there no hope?--no doubt?--no opening for pause or hesitation?"

"None, none, none," he said at length, and sank down into his chair again.

His eye wandered round the room, as if seeking some object he could not see, and then he murmured, "So beautiful--so young--so engaging--just eighteen summers; and yet such a load of crime!"

He bent his head again, and a few drops of agony fell from his eyes upon the table. Then clasping his forehead tight with his hand, he remained for several minutes thoughtful and silent. He seemed to grow calmer; but it was a deceitful seeming; and there was a wild, unnatural light in his eyes which, notwithstanding all the apparent shrewdness of his reasoning--the seeming connection and clearness of his argument, would have shown to those expert in such matters, that there was something not right within the brain.

At length he said to himself in a whisper, as if he was afraid that some one should hear him, "She sleeps--the man said she sleeps--now is the time--I must not hesitate--I must not falter--now is the time!" and he rose and approached the door.

Once, he stopped for a moment--once, doubt and irresolution took possession of him. But then he cast them off, and moved on again.

With a slow step, but firm and noiseless tread, he crossed the hall and mounted the stairs. No one saw him: the servants were scattered: there was no one to oppose his progress, or to say, "Forbear!"

He reached his daughter's room, opened the door quietly, went in, and closed it. Then he gazed eagerly around. The curtains were withdrawn: his fair, sweet child lay sleeping calmly as an infant. He could see all around. Father and child were there. There was no one else.

Still he gazed around, seeking perhaps for something with which to do the fatal deed! His eye rested on a packet of papers upon the table. It contained those which Marlow had left with poor gentle Emily to justify her to her father in case of need.

Oh, would he but take them up! Would he but read the words within!

He turns away--he steals toward the bed!

Drop the curtain! I can write no more.

Emily is gone!

## CHAPTER LI.

When Mr. Short, the surgeon, left the presence of Sir Philip Hastings, he found the butler seated in an arm-chair in the hall, cogitating sadly over all the lamentable events of the day. He was an old servant of the family, and full of that personal interest in every member of it which now, alas, in these times of improvement and utilitarianism (or as it should be called, selfishness reduced to rule), when it seems to be the great object of every one to bring men down to the level of a mere machine, is no longer, or very rarely, met with. He rose as soon as the surgeon appeared, and inquired eagerly after his poor master. "I am afraid he is touched here, sir," he said, laying his finger on his forehead. "He has not been at all right ever since he came back from London, and I am sure, when he came down to-night, calling out in such a way about gathering herbs, I thought he had gone clean crazy."

"He has become quite calm and composed now," replied Mr. Short; "though of course he is very sad: but as I can do no good by staying with him, I must go down to the farm for my horse, and ride away where my presence is immediately wanted."

"They have brought your horse up from the farm, sir," said the butler. "It is in the stable-yard."

Thither Mr. Short immediately proceeded, mounted, and rode away. When he had gone about five miles, or perhaps a little more, he perceived that two horsemen were approaching him rapidly, and he looked sharp towards them, thinking they might be Mr. Atkinson and the groom. As they came near, the outlines of the figures showed him that such was not the case; but the foremost of the two pulled up suddenly as he was passing, and Marlow's voice exclaimed, "Is that Mr. Short?"

"Yes, sir, yes, Mr. Marlow," replied the surgeon. "I am very glad indeed you have come; for there has been terrible work this day at the house of poor Sir Philip Hastings. Lady Hastings is no more, and----"

"I have heard the whole sad history," replied Marlow, "and am riding as fast as possible to see what can be done for Sir Philip, and my poor Emily. I only stopped to tell you that Mrs. Hazleton has been taken, the vial of medicine found upon her, and that she has boldly confessed the fact of having poisoned poor Lady Hastings. You will find her and Atkinson, the high constable, at the house of Mrs. Warmington.--Good night, Mr. Short; good night;" and Marlow spurred on again.

The delay had been very short, but it was fatal.

When Marlow reached the front entrance of the court, he threw his rein to the groom, and without the ceremony of ringing, entered the house. There was a lamp burning in the hall, which was vacant; but Marlow heard a step upon the great staircase, and looked up. A dark shadowy figure was coming staggering down, and as it entered the sphere of the light in the hall, Marlow recognized the form, rather than the features, of Sir Philip Hastings. His face was ashy pale: not a trace of color was discernible in any part: the very lips were white; and the gray hair stood ragged and wild upon his head. His haggard and sunken eye fell upon Marlow; but he was passing onward to the library, as if he did not know him, tottering and reeling like a drunken man, when Marlow, very much shocked, stopped him, exclaiming, "Good God, Sir Philip, do you no know me?"

The unhappy man started, turned round and grasped him tightly by the wrist, saying in a hoarse whisper, and looking over his shoulder towards the staircase, "Do not go there, do not go there--come hither--you do not know what has happened."

"I do, indeed, Sir Philip," replied Marlow in a soothing tone, "I have heard----"

"No, no, no, no!" said Sir Philip Hastings. "No one knows but I--there was no one there--I did it all myself.--Come hither, I say!" and he drew Marlow on towards the library.

"He has lost his senses," thought Marlow. "I must try and soothe him before I see my poor Emily. I will try and turn his mind to other things;" and, suffering himself to be led forward, he entered the library with Sir Philip Hastings, who instantly cast himself into a chair, and pressed his hands before his eyes.

Marlow stood and gazed at him for a moment in silent compassion, and then he said, "Take comfort, Sir Philip. Take comfort. I bring you a great store of news; and what I have to tell will require great bodily and mental exertions from you, to deal with all the painful circumstances in which you are placed. I have followed out every thread of the shameful conspiracy against you--not a turning of the whole rascally scheme is undiscovered."

"She had her share in that too," said Sir Philip, looking up in his face, with a wild, uncertain sort of questioning look.

"I know it," replied Marlow, thinking he spoke of Mrs. Hazleton, "She was the prime mover in it all."

Sir Philip wrung his hands tight, one within the other, murmuring "Oh, God; oh, God!"

"But," continued Marlow, "she will soon expiate her crimes; for she has been taken, and proofs of her guilt found upon her, so strong and convincing, that she did not think fit even to conceal the fact, but confessed her crime at once."

Sir Philip started, and grasped both the arms of the chair in which he sat, tight in his thin white hands, gazing at Marlow with a look of bewildered horror that cannot be described. Marlow went on, however, saying, "I had previously told her, indeed, that I had discovered all her dark and treacherous schemes--how she had labored to make this whole family miserable--how she had attempted to blacken the character of my dear Emily--imitated her handwriting--induced you to misunderstand her whole conduct, and thrown dark hints and suspicions in your way. She knew that she could not escape this charge, even if she could conceal her guilt of to-day, and she confessed the whole."

"Who--who--who?" cried Sir Philip Hastings, almost in a scream. "Of whom are you talking, man?"

"Of Mrs. Hazleton," replied Marlow. "Were you not speaking of her?"

Sir Philip Hastings stretched forth his hands, as if to push him farther from him; but his only reply was a deep groan, and, after a moment's pause, Marlow proceeded, "I thought you were speaking of her--of her whose task it has been, ever since poor Emily's ill-starred visit to her house, to calumniate and wrong that dear innocent girl--to make you think her guilty of bitter indiscretions, if not great crimes--who, more than any one, aided to wrong you, and who now openly avows that she placed the poison in your poor wife's room in order to destroy her."

"And I have killed her!--and I have killed her!" cried Sir Philip Hastings, rising up erect and tall--"and I have killed her!"

"Good God, whom?" exclaimed Marlow, with his heart beating as if it would burst through his side. "Whom do you mean, sir?"

Sir Philip remained silent for a moment, pressing his hands tight upon his temples, and then answered in a slow, solemn voice, "Your Emily--my Emily--my own sweet--" but he did not finish the sentence; for ere the last words could be uttered, he fell forward on the floor like a dead man.

For an instant, stupified and horror-struck, Marlow remained motionless, hardly comprehending, hardly believing what he had heard. The next instant, however, he rushed out of the library, and found the butler with the late Lady Hastings' maid, passing through the back of the house towards the front staircase.

"Which is Emily's room?" he cried,--"Which is Emily's room?"

"She is asleep, sir," said the maid.

"Which is her room?" cried Marlow, vehemently. "He is mad--he is mad--your master is mad--he says he has killed her. Which is her room?" and he darted up the staircase.

"The third on the right, sir," cried the butler, following with the maid, as fast as possible; and Marlow darted towards the door.

A fit of trembling, however, seized him as he laid his hand upon the lock. "He must have exaggerated," he said to himself. "He has been unkind--harsh--he calls that killing her--I will open it gently," and he and the two servants entered it nearly together.

All was quiet. All was still. The light was burning on the table. There was a large heavy pillow cast down by the side of the bed, and the bed coverings were in some disorder.

No need of such a stealthy pace, Marlow! You may tread firm and boldly. Even your beloved step will not wake her. The body sleeps till the day of judgment. The spirit has gone where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.

The beautiful face was calm and tranquil; though beneath each of the closed eyes was a deep bluish mark, and the lips had lost their redness. The fair delicate hands grasped the bed-clothes tightly, and the whole position of the figure showed that death had not taken place without a convulsive struggle. Marlow tried, with trembling hands, to unclasp the fingers from the bed-clothes, and though he could not do it, he fancied he felt warmth in the palms of the hands. A momentary gleam of hope came upon him. More assistance was called: every effort that could be suggested was made; but it was all in vain. Consciousness--breath--life--could never be restored. There was not a dry eye amongst all those around, when the young lover, giving up the hopeless task, cast himself on his knees by the bedside, and pressed his face upon the dead hand of her whom he had loved so well.

Just at that moment the voice of Sir Philip Hastings was heard below singing a stanza of some light song. It was the most horrible sound that ever was heard!

Two of the servants ran down in haste, and the sight of the living was as terrible as that of the dead. Philip Hastings had recovered from his fit without assistance, had raised himself, and was now walking about the room with the same sort of zigzag, tottering step with which he had met Marlow on his return. A stream of blood from a wound which he had inflicted on his forehead when he fell, was still pouring down his face, rendering its deathlike paleness only the more ghastly. His mouth was slightly drawn aside, giving a strange sinister expression to his countenance; but from his eyes, once so full of thought and intellect, every trace of reason had vanished. He held his hands before him, and the fingers of the one beat time upon the back of the other to the air that he was singing, and which he continued to sing even after the entrance of the servants. He uttered not a word to them on their appearance: he took not the slightest notice of them till the butler, seeing his condition, took him by the arm, and asked if he had not better go to bed.

Then, Sir Philip attempted to answer, but his words when spoken were indistinct as well as confused, and it became evident that he had a stroke of palsy. The servants knew hardly what to do. Marlow they did not dare to disturb in his deep grief: the surgeon was by this time far away: their mistress, and her fair unhappy daughter were dead: their master had become an idiot. It was the greatest possible relief to them when they beheld Mr. Dixwell the clergyman enter the library. Some boy employed about the stables or the kitchen, had carried down a vague tale of the horrors to the Rectory; and the good clergyman, though exhausted with all the fatigues and anxiety of the day, had hurried down at once to see what could be done for the survivors of that doomed family. He comprehended the situation of Sir Philip Hastings in a moment; but he put many questions to the butler as to what preceded the terrible event, the effects of which he beheld. The old servant answered little. To most of the questions he merely shook his head sadly; but that mute reply was sufficient; and Mr. Dixwell, taking Sir Philip by the hand, said, "You had better retire to rest, sir--you are not well."

Sir Philip Hastings gave an unmeaning smile, but followed the clergyman mildly, and having seen him to a bedroom, and left him in the hands of his servants, Mr. Dixwell turned his step towards the chamber of poor Emily.

Marlow had risen from his knees; but was still standing by the bedside with his arms folded on his chest. His face was stern and sorrowful; but perfectly calm.

Mr. Dixwell approached quietly, and in a melancholy tone, addressed to him some words of consolation--commonplace enough indeed, but well intended.

Marlow laid his hand upon the clergyman's arm, and pointed to Emily's beautiful but ghastly face. He only added, "In vain!--Do what is needful--Do what is right--I am incapable;" and leaving the room, he descended to the library, where he closed the door, and remained in silence and solitude till day broke on the following morning.

## CHAPTER LII.

Mrs. Warmington became a person of some importance with the people of Hartwell. All thoughts were turned towards her house. Everybody wished they could get in and see and hear more; for the news had spread rapidly and wide, colored and distorted; but yet falling far short of the whole terrible truth. When Mr. Short himself arrived in town, he found three other magistrates had already assembled, and that Mr. Atkinson and Sir Philip Hastings' groom, John, were already giving them some desultory and informal information as to the apprehension of Mr. Hazleton and its causes. The first consideration after his appearance amongst them, was what was to be done with the prisoner; for one of the justices--a gentleman of old family in the county, who had not much liked the appointment of the surgeon to the bench, and had generally found motives for differing in opinion with him ever since--objected to leaving Mrs. Hazleton, even for the night, in any other place than the common jail. The more merciful opinion of the majority, however, prevailed. Atkinson gave every assurance that the constable whom he had placed in charge of the lady was perfectly to be depended upon, and that the room in which she was locked up, was too high to admit the possibility of escape. Thus it was determined that Mrs. Hazleton should be left where she was for the night, and brought before the magistrates for examination at an early hour on the following morning.

Even after this decision was come to, however, the conversation or consultation, if it may be so called, was prolonged for some time in a gossiping, idle sort of way. Gentlemen sat upon the edge of the table with their hats on, or leaned against the mantelpiece, beating their boots with their riding-whips, and some marvelled, and some inquired, and some expounded the law with the dignity and confidence, if not with the sagacity and learning of a Judge. They were still engaged in this discussion when the news of Emily's death was brought to Hartwell, and produced a painful and terrible sensation in the breasts of the lightest and most careless of those present. The man who conveyed the intelligence brought also a summons to Mr. Short to return immediately to Sir Philip Hastings, and only waiting to get a fresh horse, the surgeon set out upon his return with a very sad and sorrowful heart. He would not disturb Mr. Marlow; though he was informed that he was in the library; but he remained with Sir Philip Hastings himself during the greater part of the night, and only set out for his own house to take a little repose before the meeting of the magistrates, some quarter of an hour before the first dawn of day.

Full of painful thoughts he rode on at a quick pace, till the yellow and russet hues of the morning began to appear in the east. He then slackened his pace a little, and naturally, as he approached the house of Mrs. Warmington, he raised his eye towards the windows of the room in which he knew that the beautiful demon, who had produced so much misery to others and herself, had been imprisoned.

Mr. Short was riding on; but suddenly a sound met his ear, and as his eyes ran down the building from the windows above, to a small plot of grass which the lady of the house called the lawn, he drew up his horse, and rode sharply up to the gate.

But it is time now to turn to Mrs. Hazleton. Lodged in the upper chamber which had been decided upon as the one fittest for their purpose, by Mr. Atkinson and the rest, with the constable from Hartwell domiciled in the ante-room, and the door between locked, Mrs. Hazleton gave herself up to despair; for her state of mind well deserved that name, although her feelings were very different from those which are commonly designated by that name. Surely to feel that every earthly hope has passed away--to see that further struggle for any object of desire is vain--to know that the struggles which have already taken place have been fruitless--to feel that their objects have been base, unworthy, criminal--to perceive no gleam of light on either side of the tomb--to have the present a wilderness, the future an abyss, the past and its memories a hell--surely this is despair! It matters not with what firmness, or what fierceness it may be borne: it matters not what fiery passions, what sturdy resolutions, what weak regrets, what agonizing fears, mingle with the state. This is despair! and such was the feeling of Mrs. Hazleton. She saw vast opportunities, a splendid position in society, wealth, beauty, wit, mind, accomplishments, all thrown away, and for the gratification of base passions exchanged for disgrace, and crime, and a horrible death. It was a bad bargain; but she felt she had played her whole for revenge and had lost; and she abode the issue resolutely.

All these advantages which I have enumerated, and many more, Mrs. Hazleton had possessed; but she wanted two things which are absolutely necessary to human happiness and human virtue--heart and principle. The one she never could have obtained; for by nature she was heartless. The other might have been bestowed upon her by her parents. But they had failed to do so; for their own proper principles had been too scanty for them to bestow any on their daughter. Yet, strange to say, the lack of heart somewhat mitigated the intensity of the lady's sufferings now. She felt not her situation as bitterly as other persons with a greater portion of sensibility would inevitably have done. She had so trained herself to resist all small emotions, that they had in reality become obliterated. Fiery passions she could feel; for the earthquake rends the granite which the chisel will not touch, and these affected her now as much as ever.

At that very moment, as she sat there, with her head resting on her hand, what is the meaning of that stern, knitted brow, that fixed, steadfast gaze forward, that tight compression of the lips and teeth? At that moment Nero's wish was in the bosom of Mrs. Hazleton. Could she have slaughtered half the human race to blot out all evidence of her crimes, and to escape the grinning shame which she knew awaited her, she would have done it without remorse. Other feelings, too, were present. A sense of anger at herself for having suffered herself to be in the slightest degree moved or agitated by any thing that had occurred; a determined effort, too, was there--I will not call it a struggle--to regain entire command of herself--to be as calm, as graceful, as self-possessed, as dignified as when in high prosperity with unsullied fame. It might be, in a certain sense, playing a part, and doubtless the celebrated Madame Tiquet did the same; but she was playing a part for her own eyes, as well as those of others. She resolved to be firm, and she was firm. "Death," she said, "is before me: for that I am prepared. It cannot agitate a nerve, or make a limb shake. All other evils are trifles compared with this. Why then should I suffer them to affect me in the least? No, no, they shall not see me quail!"

After she had thus thought for some two hours, gaining more and more self-command every moment, as she turned and returned all the points of her situation in her own mind, and viewed them in every different aspect, she rose to retire to rest, lay down, and tried to sleep. At first importunate thought troubled her. The same kind of ideas went on--the same reasonings upon them--and slumber for more than one hour would not visit her eyelids. But she was a very resolute woman, and at length she determined that she would not think: she would banish thought altogether; she would not let the mind rest for one moment upon any subject whatsoever; and she succeeded. The absence of thought is sleep; and she slept; but resolution ended where sleep begun, and the images she had banished waking, returned to the mind in slumber. Her rest was troubled. Growing fancies seemed to come thick upon her mind; though the eyes remained closed, the features were agitated; the lips moved. Sometimes she laughed; sometimes she moaned piteously; sometimes tears found their way through her closed eyelids; and sobs struggled in her bosom.

At length, between three and four o'clock in the morning, Mrs. Hazleton rose up in bed. She opened her eyes, too; but there was a dull glassy look about them--a fixed leaden stare, not natural to her waking hours. Slowly she got out of bed, approached the table, took up a candle which she had left burning there, and which was now nearly down to the socket, and walked straight to the door, saying aloud, "Very dark--very dark--every thing is dark."

She tried the door, but found it locked; and the constable slept on. She then returned to the table, seated herself, and for some five or ten minutes continued to twist her long hair round her fingers. She then rose again, and went straight to the window, threw it up, and seemed to look out. "Chilly--chilly," she said. "I must walk to warm myself."

The sill of the window was somewhat high, but that was no obstacle; for there was a chair near, and Mrs. Hazleton placed it for herself with as much care as if she had been wide awake. When this was done she stepped lightly upon it, and put her knee upon the window-sill, raised herself suddenly upright, and struck her head sharply against the upper part of the window. It is probable that the blow woke her, but at all events it destroyed her balance, and she fell forward at once out of the window.

There was a loud shriek, and then a deep groan. But the constable slept on, and no one knew the fate that had befallen her 'till Mr. Short, the surgeon, passing the house, was attracted to the spot where she had fallen, by a moan, and the sight of a white object lying beneath the window.

A loud ringing of the bell, and knocking at the door, soon roused the inhabitants of the house, and the mangled form of Mrs. Hazleton was carried in and stretched upon a bed. She was not dead; and although almost every bone was broken, except the skull, and the terrible injuries she had received precluded all possibility of recovery, she regained her senses before three o'clock of the same day, and continued to linger for somewhat more than a fortnight in agonies both of mind and body, too terrible to be described. With the rapid, though gradual weakening of the corporeal frame, the powers of the mind became enfeebled--the vigorous resolution failed--the self-command abandoned her. Half an hour's death she could have borne with stoical firmness, but a fortnight's was too much. The thoughts she could shut out in vigorous health, forced themselves upon her as she lay there like a crushed worm, and the tortures of hell got hold upon her, long before the spirit departed. Yet a sparkle of the old spirit showed itself even to her last hour. That she was conscious of an eternity, that she was convinced of after judgment, of the reward of good, and of the punishment of evil, that she believed in a God, a hell, a heaven, there can be no doubt--indeed her words more than once implied it--and the anguish of mind under which she seemed to writhe proved it. But yet, she refused all religious consolation; expressed no penitence: no sorrow for what she had done, and scoffed at the surgeon when he hinted that repentance might avail her even then. It seemed that, as with the earthly future, she had made up her mind at once, when first detected, to meet her fate boldly; so with the judgment of the immortal future, she was resolute to encounter it unbending. When urged, nearly at her last hour, to show some repentance, she replied in the weak and faltering voice of death, but in as determined a tone as ever, "It is all trash. An hour's repentance could do no good even if I could repent. But I do not. Nobody does repent. They regret their failure, are terrified by their punishment; but they and I would do exactly the same again if we hoped for success and impunity. Talk to me no more of it. I do not wish to think of hell till it has hold upon me, if that should ever be."

She said no more from that moment forward, and in about an hour after, her spirit went to meet the fate she had so boldly dared.

But few persons remain to be noticed in this concluding chapter, and with regard to their after history, the imagination of the reader might perhaps be left to deal, without further information. A few words, however, may be said, merely to give a clue to their after fate.

The prosecution of Mr. Shanks, the attorney, was carried on but languidly, and it is certain that he was not convicted of the higher offence of forgery. On some charge, however, it would seem he was sentenced to two years imprisonment, and the last that is heard of him, shows him blacking shoes at the inn in Carrington, then a very old man, in the reign of George the First.

Sir Philip Hastings never recovered his senses, nor did he seem to have any recollection of the horrible events with which his earthly history may be said to have closed; but his life was not far extended. For about six months he continued in the same lamentable state in which we have last depicted him, sometimes singing, sometimes laughing, and sometimes absorbed in deep melancholy. At the end of that period, another paralytic stroke left him in a state of complete fatuity, from which in two years he was relieved by death.

If the reader will look into the annals of the reign of Queen Anne he will find frequent mention in the campaigns of Marlborough and Eugene, of a Major, a Colonel, and a General Marlow. They were all the same person; and they will find that officer often reported as severely wounded. I cannot trace his history much farther; but the genealogies of those times show, that in 1712, one Earl of Launceston died at the age of eighty-seven, and was succeeded by the eighth Earl, who only survived three years, and the title with him became extinct, as it is particularly marked that he died unmarried. As this last of the race is distinguished by the title of Lieutenant-General, the Earl of Launceston, there can be no doubt that this was the lover and promised husband of poor Emily Hastings.

It is a sad tale, and rarely perhaps has any such tragedy darkened the page of domestic history in England. A whole family were swept away, and most of those connected with them, in a very short space of time; but it is not the number of deaths within that period that gives its gloominess to the page--for every domestic history is little but a record of deaths--but the circumstances. Youth, beauty, virtue, gentleness, kindness, honor, integrity, punctilious rectitude: reason, energy, wisdom, sometimes, nay often, have no effect as a screen, from misfortune, sorrow, and death. Were this world all, what a frightful chaos would human life be. But the very sorrows and adversities of the good, prove that there is a life beyond, where all will be made even.

THE END.

From Bentley's Miscellany.

CALCUTTA.

There are in Calcutta four colleges established by Government, besides numerous other institutions for the diffusion of learning. Education, indeed, is very general in the metropolis, and there are but few, even among the natives, making any pretensions to respectability, who have not some acquaintance with European literature. I have heard as pure English spoken by Hindoos in Calcutta as by men of rank in London, and pieces from our poets recited by a lad of color with a correctness of diction and eloquence that would have done credit to any of our youth at home. Go where you will in Calcutta, enter the narrowest streets and the most obscure alleys, and you will find pedagogues engaged in teaching Pinnock or Goldsmith to the children, and ragged urchins of three or four years old shouting in concert, B-l-a, bla; c-l-a, cla. And then turn your eyes in an opposite direction; look at the wealthy and the noble of mature age, enter their houses, and what will you see and hear? You will see their dwellings furnished and their tables laid out in _English_ style; you will see them possessed of libraries composed of the best works of the most approved _English_ authors; you will see _English_ newspapers regularly filed; you will see them corresponding in _English_ with their friends and connections; and you will hear them conversing on the topics of the day or their own private affairs in the _English_ tongue. A person who had never travelled beyond the metropolis would be apt, on seeing all this, to exclaim, "The people will soon be thoroughly Anglicised!" But it is all confined to Calcutta, and even there is rather, perhaps, the result of a wish to outshine, than of a desire to improve.

A Mechanics' Institute was a few years since established in Calcutta. Institutions of this kind are particularly required in India, where the national systems of agriculture, commerce, mechanics, science, literature, and philosophy are so wretched; where prejudice and superstition impede improvement, and sloth and ignorance have had so long a reign. It is surely the duty of those who seek affluence in that country to encourage them, and thus endeavor to benefit the land from whose resources they expect to gain it. But, in spite of the old adage, "What's in a name?" the fate of this institution proved that there is something very important in the nomenclature of a thing. The title "Mechanic" is in a manner _despised_ by the European community of Calcutta and their Euratian brethren; and so long as the Institute continued to bear the title which distinguished it as dedicated to such, notwithstanding the plainness with which it exhibited its claims to support as an institution calculated to disseminate a correct and practical knowledge of science, and a familiar acquaintance with the fine arts throughout the empire, and by the improvements such a knowledge would induce ulteriorly to promote the interests of all connected with India; notwithstanding appeals to the press, public lectures and private solicitations; notwithstanding the most brilliant speeches of the most eloquent orators (among whom may be particularly mentioned Mr. George Thompson), it languished for want of support, gradually decayed, and seemed about to yield up the ghost. It was at last suggested, that though the expedients above alluded to had failed to stay the progress of disease, or invigorate the system, one, powerful as a galvanic battery, yet remained to be tried, a new nomenclature. It was proposed that the vulgar title of "Mechanics' Institute" should be thrown off, and the elegant and euphonious one of "The Lyceum" adopted. This was done; and wonderful was the effect. The young and tender tree revived in an instant, refreshing streams of cash were poured in abundance upon its roots; the very nobles of the land came forward to tend it, and now it flourishes and blooms, and promises ere long to produce a rich abundance of fruit. Still it is in reality the same as before in all but its name.

I have alluded to Mr. George Thompson. His arrival in India in 1843 was greeted by all classes of the community with joy. All had heard of his eloquence and his ability, of the interest he had exhibited in the affairs of, and his design in visiting, India, and therefore hailed him as the champion of her interests. Hindoo and Mussulman flocked eagerly around the standard he raised as a patriot leader, listened to his addresses, and, as he enlarged on their rights and wrongs (so far as he knew them) felt discontent, hatred to the rulers of their country, and bold resolutions to free it from their tyranny, rising within them. The press lauded and flattered him; invitations overwhelmed him; patriotic societies rose from nonentity at his presence; and his person and character were themes of inquiry and constant disquisition; imitative would-be orators sprang up in multitudes, and poured forth torrents of anger and abuse against Government, and all was excitement, all radicalism. Suddenly the man on whom the eyes of the people were fixed as their instructor and guide left the metropolis, and when he again appeared in it, did so in the character of ambassador from the Great Mogul. With what abuse he then met, let the periodicals of the day testify. "Where now," it was asked, "are his magniloquent professions of philanthropy, his self-devotedness, and his zeal in the cause of India?"

In India, as in England, the public appetite for the drama seems to have been satiated. There is a very elegant theatre in Calcutta, but it is now closed. It languished for want of support, though several talented performers were attached to it. Mrs. Leach, its founder and greatest ornament, was an exquisite actress. A Miss Cowley and a Miss Baxter, too, were both superior and elegant actresses. The latter preserved the theatre to the community on a former occasion, when it seemed about to fall. A circumstance, as true as it is laughable, connected with this theatre, occurred in 1841. Two ladies, engaged in England for it, and sent out, were actually entered among the "imports manifest" for the port of Calcutta, as goods consigned to the manager of the playhouse!

The newspaper is as necessary an adjunct to the breakfast table in Calcutta as it is in London. The military man looks eagerly for accounts from the north-west; turns to the lists of promotions and staff appointments, and forgets not to cast his eye at the obituary; the civilian searches for the advertisements which announce fresh arrivals of horses from Persia, Burmah, and Arabia; spinsters' and oilmen's stores from England; and wines and fruits from France; just glancing at the drafts of laws about to be enacted, and conning over the programme of the next races; and the merchant studies the accounts relative to indigo, sugar, and saltpetre. But the greatest excitement prevails when the mail from England is due. How eagerly is it looked for, and when it arrives, how are its contents scanned and analyzed!

There are six English newspapers published in Calcutta and its neighborhood. The editors are all men of experience and talent, who know how to suit the appetites of their customers. An English reader, however, taking up one of our Indian newspapers, would think it a very dull affair, for he would find one-third of it editorial and local news, another third advertisements, and the remainder, extracts from the London magazines. Now this is what just suits the Anglo-Indians. The advertisements tell them what to do with their money, the residue informs them of what is going on, and gives them the very pith of literature without putting them to the trouble of cutting it from the crust.

The Indian press has been stigmatized in England as a "licentious," a "rascally," and an "unscrupulous" one. This is very far from being the case. It has its faults, but they are not of such a kind. Indeed, it seems to me, that in point of purity, honesty, and morality, it may challenge comparison with the press of Great Britain itself, and most decidedly it possesses a powerful influence with the executive. It has been the means, within the last few years, of causing the abolition of lotteries, the appointment of deputy magistrates, and many other measures tending to the moralization and welfare of the country. It scans and fearlessly criticises the acts of Government; it shows a spirit of active benevolence in pleading the cause of the injured, to whatever class they may belong; and proves itself impartially just.

In addition to newspapers several magazines and other periodicals are published in Calcutta. The whole of the periodical publications amount in number to forty. A Quarterly Review has lately been added to those, and also a Magazine, the intended publication of which, and its character, were announced in so curious a manner, that I shall copy the advertisement at full length for the benefit of the reader: "In the press, and will be published on the 1st of July, and continued monthly, a new periodical, entitled, The British India Magazine, and Daily and Monthly Treasury, a most useful Writing and Reading Table Manual of Reference, Memoranda, Expenditure, and Literature, to which is added a Precis of the News of the past month, Political, Fashionable, Social, Commercial, Humorous, and Scientific. It is equally adapted for ladies in general, as for Gentlemen of the Civil, Military, and Uncovenanted Services, Members of the Legal and Medical Professions, Merchants, Indigo and Sugar Planters, and Planters' Assistants, Captains and Officers of Ships, Clerks in Mercantile Houses, &c., or in fact, for all Persons by whom due order and regularity in the expenditure of their Time and Income is considered an object worthy of notice. It is compiled upon a method perfectly novel in the annals of the Press, be it American, Asiatic, or European, and may be had (per dak) in all parts of British India."

There, dear reader, match that in Europe, if you can! "Why this is a real Vade Mecum; and, mark you! a _most_ useful one--one equally adapted for ladies in general as for gentlemen, or in fact for _all_ persons." Doubtless it will have a prodigious circulation as soon as its merits are fully known. I have not met with any one who has read it.

Books published in India, whatever may be their nature, seldom repay the cost of print and paper. Even the Calcutta newspapers have between them all no more than three or four thousand subscribers, and yet our countrymen there read a great deal. But the works which have emanated from the pens of Anglo-Indian writers have in general been so dull and spiritless, that the community has learned to regard all such with indifference; and as the booksellers regularly supply the newest and best European productions, these inferior viands are almost entirely neglected. An annual has once or twice been published, but did not meet with sufficient patronage to allow of its being regularly continued.

The police of India has always been inefficient. Robberies committed under the very noses of the watchmen are common. When they should be on the look-out, they are found sleeping, and when they are awake are careless and negligent. The worst of them in all India are to be found in its great metropolis; in Calcutta, indeed, they seem to possess no honesty or fidelity, and often turn out greater rogues than those they bring to justice. Policemen in the confidence of the European authorities have before now been discovered to be at the head of

## parties of Thugs, to whom they have thus had the means of communicating

all necessary intelligence.

The native _employés_ in our courts of justice are equally corrupt. Every Hindoo and Mussulman who has occasion to resort to these courts, takes with him a bribe, knowing that unless he does so, it will be all but impossible for him to obtain a fair and impartial hearing. The _omlah_ who should decline a bribe, would be accounted a fool by his fellow officials. And so some of them make fortunes; _e. g._, a _sheristader_ at one of our civil courts, who had been only ten years in that office, on a salary of one hundred rupees a month, and with no other income save a trifling share in a small patrimonial estate, managed, a short time back, to purchase landed property to the value of fifty thousand rupees.

Enter a criminal court, whether the deponent swear by the water of the Ganges held in his hand, or by the Koran laid on his head, or by licking off salt from a sword, or by placing a milk-jug on his back, or any other mode practised among them, you will find that perjury and the grossest exaggeration are with him far more common than truth. If he has received a light box or a gentle kick, he will make oath that he has been half murdered; and if he has been robbed of an article worth twenty rupees, will swear its value was a hundred!

A judge has seldom a more conflicting mass of evidence before him on which to decide the merits of a case, than he has who seeks by investigating the principles and conduct of this people to form an opinion of their general character. It seems to me that, as a nation, there is no other people so profligate, so licentious and avaricious, so addicted to lying, dishonesty, procrastination, gossip, and perpetual egotism, so servile, so litigious, and so filthy; and no other so barren of nearly every good quality. Their code of morality, to judge from their practice, is a huge mass of every thing bad, mingled with a few almost imperceptible grains of some things that are good.

In India, when we look around us and see the fertility of the earth, the abundance of grain and fruit it produces, we feel astonished that those engaged in agriculture should be, as they really are, almost destitute of a bare subsistence. The Irish peasantry are rarely so badly off as those of Hindostan. Inquiry shows us this is the result of a system prevailing throughout the country, the oppression of the ryots by the Zemindars. Yes, it is not the taxes, which are comparatively light, that cause this evil, but the exactions of the rich natives from the poor ones. The peasantry have no money, they require advances to enable them to cultivate, these are granted to them at the most exorbitant rate of usury by the landlords, and as the one party never gets out of debt, so the other never ceases its extortions.

Thus the poor are kept poor. The personal property of a peasant seldom exceeds three or four shillings in value. His wardrobe consists of a piece of coarse cloth, just large enough to gird round his body, a similar piece thrown across the shoulders, and a skull-cap or turban, made of long strips of the same material. And as for his household goods, a few drinking vessels, an earthen jar, an iron plate, and a rickety bedstead comprise in general the whole.

Very little attention is paid in Calcutta, or anywhere else in India, to home politics. Indeed they are never discussed at table. Let a man have been ever so violent a Tory or zealous a Whig, six months in India will generally find him, so far as his discourse can testify, neuter. One reason of this is, that if he should attempt to introduce political subjects in conversation, he would not be listened to. It is only when India and Indian interests are concerned, that even a powerful debate in the House meets with the slightest attention. Theatricals, races, retiring funds, public characters, civil and military appointments, these, and such like subjects, form the ordinary topics of discourse. And you may always know when a man has lived any time in India, for a little of the Eastern spice is sure to be found in all his conversation. He cannot conceal it.

An anecdote was one day related to me, which exemplifies the sad condition of those habitual consumers of opium, many of whom are to be found among the natives. A Hindoo gentleman, who was accustomed to indulge in it, being about to remove to a distant and almost uninhabited province, in which he knew it would be difficult to procure opium, laid in a large quantity of it to take with him, and made arrangements for having more regularly forwarded. Soon after his arrival at his destination, one of his servants decamped, robbing him of a large amount in money, and a variety of other articles, among which his entire stock of opium was included. The period at which he expected his first auxiliary supply was yet distant; but he immediately sent for a quantity to his agent; as this however did not arrive for a considerable time, he was at a loss for his usual stimulant, pined away in a few days for want of it, and in less than a fortnight died.

There are numerous low chop-houses and taverns in Calcutta, to which our poorer countrymen resort, and these are the nests of profligacy and licentiousness. Impositions too, of the grossest and most atrocious nature, are practised by the proprietors of some, on those who frequent them.

While in the country I made one of a small party at an annual festival, given by the native officers of a Government establishment in the neighborhood. The worthy _baboo_, who was at the head of the concern, had resolved to prepare for the half-dozen Europeans whom he expected to honor the feast with their presence, two things, of which most _Feringees_ approve, viz., a _pillau_ and a bottle of brandy. Being a Hindoo, however, he had substituted pieces of cheese for meat in the stew, thinking, no doubt, that it would make but little difference to us. Of course, we could not touch it; but we did not mind its loss, as the _aqua vitæ_ yet remained. The master of the ceremonies, however, had forgotten to provide a corkscrew. In this emergency one of our number offered to save the trouble of sending for one by knocking off the neck of the bottle with the butt of his riding-whip. This he attempted, but, missing his aim, broke the bottle and spilt all the liquor. It was too late to send for more, and, as we did not find any thing else to our relish, we came away after all, much to the vexation of our host, without having tasted either bit or drop.

How different in the effects they produce on the heart, and in the sentiments they awaken, are the various seasons of the year in India to the same in our native land. How sweetly speaks the changing year to the minds of the unsophisticated and innocent of England's children! Are their hearts oppressed by misfortune? with the spring they revive, and, like nature, shake off the torpor into which, overcome by their sorrows, they were sinking, while Hope, with the flowers, buds once more sweetly forth. The summer sun brings with it cheerfulness and joy; hearts and hopes together expand; they watch, with anxiety and pleasure, the ripening of the dainty fruits, which promise in autumn to replenish their board; they sport in the new-mown and perfume-exhaling fields; they bathe in the clear, unruffled stream, and feel convinced that earth has not yet been despoiled by sin of all its charms, that there are pursuits at once pure and delightful, that man is not made to mourn but to rejoice, and that in nature, the beneficence of the Deity is demonstrated. Even stern winter has something pleasant in his countenance, and is kind enough to make them sometimes long for his return while enjoying the smiles of seasons more congenial; for they with rapture anticipate a meeting with the friends whom he assembles; the sweet congratulations, the merry tales, the laughter-exciting songs, which will then burst forth from affectionate and happy hearts, and make the blazing hearth a scene of unalloyed ecstasy. But it is not thus in the arid and joyless East. We watch the approach of spring with apprehension, for it brings in its train disease and death; we shrink, and seek in the mountains a refuge from the fiery temper and scorching breath of summer; autumn's gloom makes all nature distasteful to us; and winter, though it affords a temporary relief from pain, is totally unproductive of pleasure.

During the early part of his Indian career, the military officer in the Hon. Company's service, finds that nearly all the labor, though but a small share of the honor or profit, of sustaining our hardly-earned reputation, falls on his shoulders, and on those of his comrades. The honor is almost entirely engrossed, and what little falls to his share is entirely eclipsed by that allotted to his superiors in rank; the income he derives from his position is insignificant when compared with that of his contemporaries of the civil service. The civilian, it is well known, has a far better chance of making a fortune in twenty, than the soldier in forty years. From the period of his arrival in the country, until after having studied and passed an examination in the Hindee and Persian languages, he is reported qualified for the public service, and receives an appointment; the former enjoys a salary superior to that which is paid to the latter as the allowance of an ensign or cornet. The military man cannot obtain any staff employ which affords an augmentation of pay until he shows himself well qualified in the native languages. Then again, the civilian, if he manifest any ability, may, in ten or twelve years, rise to a high and lucrative post; whereas the poor scarlet-coated hero, unless he have the good fortune to get a quarter-master, or interpreter-ship, or to be appointed an aid-de-camp, has to vegetate on two hundred rupees _per mensem_, for some thirteen or fourteen years, when he may receive an additional hundred with a lieutenancy. Supposing him, however, to have obtained a good snug berth, his income will be a trifle when compared with that of the civilian, who escaped from the school-bench at the same time as himself, while he is always exposed to changes and inconveniences of which the latter knows nothing. But the sub has one comfort amidst all this: "In due time," thinks he, "I may hope to be a general."

"Hope told a flattering tale,"

is, however, the exclamation of many an old veteran in his declining years; and still oftener is it the sorrowful evidence of those who live to mourn over the early extinction of even the most brilliant prospects entertained by youthful relatives, who have fallen a prey to the inclemencies of a climate which their constitutions were unfitted to sustain.

But, after all, fortunes are not now-a-days made, even by the most _fortunate_ of our countrymen, so easily as they were some fifty, or even thirty years ago. Nor are we even worthy of comparison with the natives of India in this respect. On the station of Cawnpore are now residing the two sons of a man who, report says, was nothing more than a common _bobarchee_, or cook, in the household of the late king of Lucknow, but who, by his skill in spicing wine, and manufacturing peculiarly delicious draughts of an inebriating nature, attracted the notice of his majesty, a man of licentious and depraved habits, accounted an orthodox Mussulman, but exceedingly fond of the bottle. The monarch having tasted a sample of his _bobarchee's_ elixir, to reward his skill and encourage his merit, presented him with a situation near the royal person, and as, while holding this appointment, he continued to afford him the highest satisfaction, advanced him step by step, and at length, on a vacancy occurring, as a mark of his especial favor, gave him the post of prime minister.

This office he continued to hold until his master's decease; and in the mean time obtained so great an influence with the monarch that his majesty is said to have been little better than an automaton, whose movements were regulated by his hand. His chief object, like that of all his countrymen, being to amass wealth, he tyrannized over the people, and left no stone unturned beneath which he deemed it possible that wealth might be discovered. One mode of "raising the wind" was frequently practised by him. A merchant, or other rich man, having just completed the erection of a large and magnificent abode, in which to spend luxuriously the remainder of his days, the minister would forward to him an official dispatch, intimating that the spot on which he had built must be immediately cleared for state purposes, and that no compensation would be given him.

Astonished and perplexed at such a notice from an authority it was useless to dispute, the unfortunate victim would, perhaps, endeavor, by pointing out some other eligible spot for the presumed purpose of the government, and offering a _muzzur_ of, it may be, ten thousand rupees, to avert the threatened calamity; but to no purpose, for the wily man, who had risen from the office of a slave to the highest post under the crown, would at first accept of no terms. The petitioner, therefore, turned away in despair, and went back to his house, to which, after a few hours, an emissary of the minister would follow him with a message, intimating that should any thing worthy his acceptance be presented to the premier in his private character, he would use his influence with the king to have the order revoked. Elated with this apparent chance of escape, the unlucky individual thus destined to be "squeezed" would, perhaps, offer a sum larger than the minister had anticipated. But even this was sure to be indignantly refused, and not until the victim had been visited over and over again, and no hope of any larger offer remained, would the bribe be accepted. Thus, and by a variety of other means, the _bobarchee_ gathered a vast amount of wealth. On the death of the monarch who had so blindly favored and elevated him, he fared but poorly, however, for the new king threw him into prison. It was now _his_ turn to bribe, and a timely present of fifty lacs of rupees to an influential person procured his release. Even then he had an immense fortune remaining, and thinking it best to secure both his person and his money against further annoyance and depredation, he left Lucknow, and settled down in our dominions.

While residing in Calcutta, I was brought into frequent contact with individuals belonging to the Eurasian or half-caste population, and as comparatively little is known of this class of people in England, I shall here make a few remarks on their character.

They are generally the descendants of European fathers by native mothers. The great majority of them are of Portuguese, many of British, and some of French extraction. Altogether they form a community by themselves, as distinct from the European society around them as from the Hindoos and Mahommedans. They do not travel; here they live and multiply, marrying generally among themselves. As they are daily increasing in number, they will, of course, in time become so numerous as to consider themselves a nation, and to demand a place in history. Should such, however, be the case, I do not think they will occupy a very high position in the scale of nations. Great talent (I will not mention _genius_) and sterling abilities seem very scarce amongst them. They devote no attention to the cultivation of the arts, they manifest no zeal in the pursuits of science, no independence, no brotherly feeling towards each other. The females, at best, receive but a superficial education, it generally extending only to reading, writing, and the mechanical performance of music, dancing, and ornamental needlework, and in none of these do they show any extraordinary skill. As girls they are flirts and coquettes; as women they are vain, idle, and slovenly.

Let me be candid, however. I have found among the Eurasians men possessing a versatility of talent that would do honor to any of our own countrymen, and females adorned with every grace and accomplishment. But such characters are very, _very_ scarce.

From Sharpe's Magazine

REVOLUTIONS OF RUSSIA

THE ACCESSION OF NICHOLAS I., 1825.

FROM THE FRENCH OF ALEXANDER DUMAS.

The death of the Emperor Alexander placed the inhabitants of his empire in mourning; for the grief and loyalty of the lower classes were sincere, and their attachment to his person almost idolatrous in its character. The public feeling was increased by the prospect of the reign of an unpopular sovereign afflicted with mental malady, and devoid of courtesy.

As for the Grand-duke Nicholas, no one thought of him, but the Russian people dreaded the accession of Constantine, whom they considered their sovereign in right of his primogeniture. In no country in the world has this natural law been so repeatedly broken. Every person in Russia was aware that the heir-presumptive had purchased his marriage with a Polish lady, the object of his ardent affections, by the resignation of his claims to the succession, but that he would abide by that act seemed a conjecture too improbable to be entertained by any one. Constantine was nevertheless sincere when he abandoned his rights, and he hastened to assure his next brother that he was so, by his youngest brother the Grand-duke Michael, through whom he forwarded a letter confirming his resignation of the throne, and acknowledging his next brother as his sovereign. The courier from St. Petersburg crossed the Grand-duke Michael, and brought letters from Nicholas acknowledging Constantine as his Emperor, and urging him to ascend the throne. The wife of Constantine joined her entreaties to those of the next heir, and with rare devotion offered to resign her consort rather than that should give up the empire for her. Constantine, over whose mental agonies the soothing influence of the fair Pole possessed a magical power, continued firm in his resolution to remain in the condition of a subject, and he adhered to the determination he had expressed in the important document of which the Grand-duke Michael was the bearer, and which is here subjoined:

"MY VERY DEAR BROTHER,--I received yesterday, with feelings of profound sorrow, intelligence of the death of our adored sovereign, and my benefactor, the Emperor Alexander. In hastening to assure you of the painful feelings this misfortune has excited in my mind, I do only my duty in announcing to you that I have forwarded to her Imperial Majesty, our august mother, a letter, in which I declare, that in consequence of the rescript I obtained from the late Emperor, bearing date February the 2d, 1822, permitting my renunciation of the throne, it is now my unalterable determination to give up to you all my rights to the Empire of Russia. I entreated, at the same time, our beloved mother, to make this declaration public, that the same may be put into immediate execution. After this declaration, I regard it as a sacred duty to beseech your Imperial Majesty to receive the first from me, the oath of fidelity and submission, and to permit me to say that I do not aspire to any other title or dignity than that of Czarowitz, with which my august father deigned to honor my services. My solo happiness, hereafter, will consist in giving your Imperial Majesty continual proofs of my unbounded devotion and respect for your person, of which thirty years of constant and zealous service to the Emperors, my father and brother, are the pledge, in which sentiments I wish to serve your Imperial Majesty, and your successors, until the end of my life, in my present situation and functions.

"I am, with the most profound respect, "CONSTANTINE."

Upon the receipt of the dispatches which followed this letter, the Grand-duke, called to reign over a vast Empire, by the repeated abdication of his brother of the rights of primogeniture, no longer hesitated,--he published the former correspondence between the Emperor Alexander and the Grand-duke Constantine, with the document already quoted upon the 25th of December, 1825, and fixed the morrow for his recognition as their sovereign by his people.

The inhabitants of St. Petersburg, relieved from their dread of a second Paul by the abdication of the heir-presumptive, began to reflect with hope upon the promise which the talents and pure moral character of their new sovereign afforded them. The handsomest and bravest man in his dominions, his fine person attracted attention, and his reserved manners excited awe. His grave carriage, his downcast look, only raised to penetrate to the soul the man who ventured to observe him, with a glance which compelled him to know and reverence his master--his haughty manner of interrogation, so unlike the suavity of Alexander, or the bluntness of Constantine, had isolated him from the rest of the imperial family, and centred him in the bosom of his own domestic circle. The Russian people, feeling their need of a guide, at once comprehended that the cold dignity of this prince concealed an indomitable will, and that, if they themselves had not chosen their new sovereign, God had considered their need, and given to the Russians, who were at once too polished and too barbarous, a man who would grasp the sceptre in an iron hand covered with a velvet glove.

The morrow, though considered as a day of joy and festivity, was preceded by some rumors that, like the breath of an approaching tempest, gave warning that some great national crisis was at hand. It was whispered in the evening of the 25th that the abdication of the Czarowitz was a forgery, and that Constantine, then exercising the authority of Viceroy of Poland, was on full march for St. Petersburg with an army to claim the empire as his birthright. In addition to this startling rumor, it was said that several regiments, and among them that of Moscow, had determined to take the oath to no Russian prince but Constantine; and the words, "Let Nicholas live, but let Constantine reign," were heard at intervals in the streets as an intimation of the state of the military pulse.

In fact, the conspiracy which had disturbed the last days of the Emperor Alexander was about to raise its head, and seize upon the Great-Duke Constantine's name as its rallying point. This Prince, who had passed his life with the army, was beloved by the soldiers, and the conspirators, who understood little of the character of their new sovereign, supposed the revolt of the regiments stationed in St. Petersburg would compel him to resign his recently acquired rights. They would then summon Constantine to receive the empire, and with it the constitution they had prepared. If he refused to accept it, they intended to imprison him and the rest of the imperial family. They would then establish a republic, an oligarchy in which the despotism of the many would replace the despotism of one. Such was the design of a party composed of military aristocrats, who, bolder than the murderers of Paul, dared, by open force and secret fraud, to contest the throne of Russia with its new sovereign. The soldiers, devoted to Constantine, they designed to make their blind instruments in a conspiracy of which that Prince was not the real object, but their own aggrandisement.

Faithful to their plans, the Prince Stah---- and the two Bes---- went to the barracks of the 2d, 3d, 5th and 6th companies of the Regiment of Moscow, whom they knew to be devoted to Constantine. The Prince then informed these men that they were deceived respecting the abdication of the Czarowitz, and pointed out Alexander B---- to their attention, whom he affirmed had been sent from Warsaw to warn them against taking the oath to the Grand-duke Nicholas. The address of Alexander B----, confirming this astounding communication, excited a great sensation among the troops, of which the Prince took advantage by ordering them to load and present. At that instant the Aide-de-camp Verighny and Major-General Fredericks, who commanded the grenadiers, having the charge of the flag, came to invite the officers to visit the colonel of the regiment. Prince Stah----, who believed the favorable moment was come, ordered the soldiers to repulse the grenadiers with _coup-de-crosses_, and to take away their flag, at the same time throwing himself upon Major-General Fredericks, whom B----, on the other side, menaced with a pistol, with the stock of which he felled him to the earth; then, turning upon Major Schenshine, commander of the brigade, who ran to the assistance of his colleague, he knocked him down in a moment, and flinging himself among the grenadiers, successively wounded Grenadier Krassoffski, Colonel Khavosschinski, and Subaltern Moussieff; and cutting his way to the flag, seized and elevated it with a loud and triumphant hurrah. To that cry, and to the sight of the blood so boldly shed to win the flag, the greater part of the regiment replied, "Long live Constantine! down with Nicholas!" Prince Stah----, followed by four hundred men whom he had seduced from their duty, then marched, with drums beating, to the Admiralty quarter.

At the gate of the winter palace, the aide-de-camp, the bearer of the news of the revolt, encountered another officer, who brought tidings from the barracks of the grenadier corps of equally alarming import. When that regiment were preparing to take the oath of fidelity to the Emperor Nicholas, the sub-lieutenant Kojenikoff threw himself before the advanced-guard, exclaiming, "It is not to the Grand-duke Nicholas we ought to make oath, but to the Emperor Constantine." He was told that the Czarowitz had abdicated in his next brother's favor. "It is false," was his reply; "totally false; he is on the march for St. Petersburg to reward the faithful and punish the guilty."

The regiment, notwithstanding these outcries, continued its march, took the oath of allegiance to the new sovereign, and returned into quarters, without showing any disposition resembling revolt. At dinner-time Lieutenant Suthoff, who had taken the pledge of obedience with the rest, entered at that moment, and addressed himself to his own company in a manner calculated to excite their attention: "My friends, we were wrong to obey the order; the other regiments are in open revolt; they have refused to take the oath, and are at this moment in the Place of the Senate;--put on your uniforms, arm, come on, and follow me; I have your pay in my pocket, which I am ready to distribute without waiting for the ceremony of an order."

"But is what you say quite true?" cried many voices.

"Stay, here is Lieutenant Panoff,--like myself, one of your best friends,--ask him."

"My friends," remarked Panoff, anticipating their question, "you all know that Constantine is your only lawful emperor, and that they wish to dethrone him."

"Live Constantine!" replied the soldiers.

"Live Nicholas!" exclaimed Colonel Sturler, the commander of the regiment, throwing himself courageously into the hall. "They are deceiving you, my friends; the Czarowitz has really abdicated, and you have now no other emperor than the Grand-duke Nicholas. Live Nicholas!"

"Live Constantine!" responded the soldiers.

"You are mistaken, soldiers; you are about to take a fatal step; you are deceived," again shouted the colonel.

"Comrades, do not abandon me; follow me," cried Panoff; "let those who are for Constantine, unite with me in the cry, 'Long live Constantine!'"

More than three parts of those present joined in the cry of "Long live Constantine!"

"To the Admiralty! to the Admiralty!" said Panoff, drawing his sword; "follow me, soldiers, follow me."

With a wild hurrah two hundred soldiers followed their leader to the place he indicated, whither, though by a different route, the insurgent portion of the Regiment of Moscow had already preceded them.

Milarodowich, the military governor of St. Petersburg, a cavalry general, whose splendid charges on the field had gained him the appellation of the Russian Murat, was by this time at the palace, to communicate to his new sovereign the dispositions he had made for the defence of his throne and the capital. He had directed the troops upon whose fidelity he thought he could rely, to march to the winter palace. The first battalion of the regiment Preobrajenski, three regiments of the guard Paulowski, and the battalion of the Sapper and Miners, were those he considered fit for this important service.

The emperor saw then that the mutiny was more general than he anticipated; he therefore sent by Major-general Meidhart, to carry orders to the Semenowski guard to repress the mutineers, and to the horse-guards, to hold themselves in readiness to mount. He went down himself to the corps of chief guards of the winter palace, where the regiment of Finland guards were at that time on duty, and ordered them to load their muskets and invest the principal avenues of the palace. At that very moment tumultuous sounds interrupted the voice of the sovereign, occasioned by the approach of the third and sixth companies of the Regiment of Moscow, headed by Prince Stah----, and the two B----, with the captured flag proudly displayed to the wind, and drums beating, to the ominous cry of "Long live Constantine! Down with Nicholas!" The rebel troops debouched on the Admiralty Square, but whether they thought themselves not sufficiently strong, or that they dreaded facing majesty with these treasonable demonstrations, they did not march upon the winter palace, but took up their position against the senate, where they were immediately joined by the grenadier corps, and sixty men in frocks with pistols in their hands, who mingled themselves among the rebel soldiers.

The emperor at this crisis appeared from under one of the arches of the palace, approached the grating, and threw a rapid glance on his revolted subjects. He was paler than usual, but was composed and calm. It was whispered that he had resolved to die as became a Christian emperor, and that he had confessed and received absolution of the Church, before he took leave of his family. Every eye was fixed upon him, when the hard gallop of a squadron of cuirassiers was heard on the side of the marble palace; it was the horse-guards, headed by Count Orloff, one of the bravest and most faithful friends of the emperor. Before him the gates expanded; he leaped from his charger, while the regiment ranged itself before the palace. The roll of the drums announced instantly the approach of the grenadiers of Preobrajenski, which arrived in battalions. They entered the court of the palace, where they found the emperor with the empress, and their eldest son, the little Grand-duke Alexander; behind them were ranged the Chevalier guard, who formed an angle with the cuirassiers, leaving between them an open space, which was quickly filled up by the artillery. The revolted regiments regarded these military dispositions with apparent carelessness, while their cries of "Long live Constantine!" "Down with Nicholas!" evidently proved that they expected, and waited there for reinforcements.

While affairs were in this state at the palace, the Grand-duke Michael, at the barracks, was opposing his personal influence to the flood-tide of rebellion. Some happy results had followed these attempts, and the bold resolution taken by Count Lieven, captain of the sixth company of the Regiment of Moscow, who arrived in time to shut the gates against the battalion, then about to join their rebel comrades. Placing himself before the soldiers, he drew his sword, and swore on his honor to pass the weapon through the body of the first man who should make a seditious movement to re-open them. At this threat, a young sub-lieutenant advanced, pistol in hand, towards Count Lieven, with the evident intention of blowing out his brains. The count, with admirable presence of mind, struck the officer a blow with the pummel of his sword, which made the instrument leap from his hands; the lieutenant took up the pistol and once more took aim at the count. The young nobleman crossed his arms, and confronted the mutinous officer, while the regiment, mute and motionless, looked on like the seconds of this singular duel. The lieutenant drew back a few steps, followed by the heroic count, who offered him his unarmed breast as if in defiance of his attempt. The lieutenant fired, but the ball took no effect: that it did not strike that generous breast appeared miraculous. Some one knocked at the door.

"Who is there?" asked many voices.

"His Imperial Highness the Grand-duke Michael," replied those without.

Some instants of profound silence followed this announcement. Count Lieven availed himself of the general stupefaction to open the door, no person attempting to prevent that action.

The Grand-duke entered on horseback, followed by the officers of ordnance.

"What means this inaction at a moment of danger?" asked the Grand-duke. "Am I among traitors or loyal soldiers?"

"You are in the midst of the most faithful of your regiments," replied the Count, "of which your Imperial Highness shall have immediate proof." Then raising his drawn sword, he cried, "Long live the Emperor Nicholas!"

"Long live the Emperor Nicholas!" shouted the soldiers with one voice.

The young sub-lieutenant attempted to speak, but Count Lieven stopped him by touching his arm. "Silence, sir; I shall not mention what has passed; and you will ruin yourself by the utterance of a syllable."

His magnanimity awed and convinced the disloyal officer.

"Lieven, I confide to you the conduct of this regiment," remarked the Grand-duke emphatically.

"I will answer for its loyalty with my life, your Imperial Highness," replied the Count.

The Grand-duke departed, and on his rounds, if he received no enthusiastic greeting, at least found what he sought, obedience to the authority of the Emperor Nicholas.

Reinforcements came in on every side; the Sappers and Miners drew up in order of battle, before the palace of the Hermitage; the rest of the Regiment of Moscow, rescued from the stain of rebellion by the courage and address of Count Lieven, now proudly debouched by the Perspective of Niewski. The sight of these troops gave a delusive hope to the revolted, who, believing them to be on their side, greeted them with loud cheers; but they were instantly undeceived, for the new-comers ranged themselves along the Hotel of the Tribunals, facing the palace, and with the Cuirassiers, Artillery, and Chevalier guards, inclosed the revolted in a circle of steel.

A moment after, they heard the chant of the priests. It was the Patriarch, who came out of the church of Casan, followed by all his clergy, and preceded by the holy banners. He now commanded the revolted "in the name of heaven, to return to their duty." The soldiers, for the first time perhaps in their lives, regarded with contempt the pictures which they had been accustomed from infancy to regard with superstitious veneration, and they desired the Patriarch "to let them alone, since if heavenly things belonged to the priestly jurisdiction, they could take care of those of earth." The Patriarch continued his injunctions to obedience, notwithstanding this discouraging rebuff, but the Emperor ordered him to desist and retire. Nicholas himself was resolved to make one effort to bring back these rebels to their duty.

Those who surrounded the Emperor wished to prevent him from risking his person, but he boldly replied, "It is my game that is playing, and it is but fair play on my part to set my life on the stake."

He ordered the gate to be opened, but scarcely had he been obeyed, before the Grand-duke Michael approached him, and whispered in his ear that that part of the Regiment Preobrajenski by which he was then surrounded, had made common cause with the rebels, and that the Prince T., their commander, whose absence he had remarked with astonishment, was at the head of the conspiracy. Nicholas remembered that four-and-twenty years before the same regiment had kept guard before the red palace, while its Colonel, Prince Talitzen, strangled the Emperor Paul, his father.

His situation was terrible, but he did not even change countenance; he only showed that he had formed a desperate resolution. In an instant he turned and gave his orders to one of his generals, "Bring me hither the Grand-duke."

The general returned with the young prince: the Emperor raised the boy in his arms, and advancing to the grenadiers, said, "Soldiers, if I am killed, behold your sovereign. Open your ranks; I confide him to your loyalty."

A long, loud hurrah, a cry of enthusiasm that came from the very heart of these suspected soldiers, reëchoed to that of the Emperor, whose magnanimous confidence had won their admiration. The most guilty among them dropped their weapons and opened their arms to receive the heir of the Empire. The imperial pledge was placed with colors in the midst of the regiment, a guarded and sacred asylum for honor and innocence.

The Emperor mounted his horse and went out of the gate, where he was met by his generals, who implored him not to go any further, as the rebels openly avowed their intention of killing their sovereign, and their arms were loaded. The Emperor made a sign to them with his hand to leave him a free passage, and forbidding them to accompany him, spurred his horse and galloped forward till he arrived within pistol-shot. "Soldiers," cried he, "I am told that you wish to kill me. Is that true? If it is, here I am!"

There was a pause, while the Emperor sat on horseback, remaining like an equestrian statue between the two bodies of troops. Twice the word fire was heard among the rebel ranks, and twice some feeling of respect to the dauntless courage of the sovereign restrained the execution of the order; but at the third command some muskets loaded with ball were discharged, which whistled past the Emperor without striking him, but wounded, at a hundred paces behind him, Colonel Velho and many soldiers.

At that moment the Grand-duke Michael and Count Milarodowich galloped towards the Emperor, the regiment of cuirassiers and those of the Chevalier guards made a forward movement--the artillerymen were about to apply their matches to the cannon.

"Halt," cried the Emperor. All obeyed. "General," said he to Count Milarodowich, "go to these unfortunate men and endeavor to bring them to their allegiance."

The Count and the Grand-duke Michael rode forward, but the rebels received them with a shower of ball, accompanied by their war-cry, "Live Constantine!"

"Soldiers," cried the Count, who was conspicuous alike by his fine martial figure and splendid uniform covered with orders; "soldiers, behold this sabre," and he flourished above his head a magnificent Turkish one, the hilt of which was set with jewels, and advancing with it to the front ranks of the rebels, he continued, "This sabre was given me by his Imperial Highness the Czarowitz, and on my honor, I will make oath upon its blade, that you have been deceived, that the Czarowitz has abdicated the imperial crown, and that your real and legitimate sovereign is the Emperor Nicholas."

Cries of "Live Constantine!" and the report of a pistol were the replies given by the revolted to the address of the Count, whose action with the sword arm had left his side exposed to the enemy. He was seen to reel in the saddle. Another pistol was aimed at the Grand-duke Michael, but the soldiers of the Marine, though included in the revolt, seized the arm of the assassin.

Count Orloff and the cuirassiers faced the heavy fire of the musketry, and enveloped in their ranks the wounded Milarodowich, the Grand-duke Michael and the Emperor Nicholas, whom they carried off by force to the palace.

The Count, wounded to death, sat his horse with difficulty, and the moment he arrived at the palace, fell into the arms of those who surrounded him.

The Emperor, notwithstanding the late unfortunate attempt, still wished to make one last endeavor to bring back the revolted, but while he was issuing orders to that effect, the Grand-duke Michael seized the match: "Fire," cried he, "fire upon the assassins." At that moment four cannons opened upon the rebels, and paid with usury the deaths they had sent into the loyal ranks of the imperialists. Before the voice of the Emperor could stop the slaughter, a second discharge followed the first. The effect of these volleys within reach of pistol-shot was terrible. More than sixty men of the grenadier corps of the Regiment of Moscow and the Marine guards fell; the rebel troops fled, some by the street Galernain, some by the English quay or by the bridge Isaac, others across the frozen waters of the Neva, then a plain of ice, but all were hotly pursued by the Chevalier guards at full gallop.

That evening Count Milarodowich, who was struggling with the agonies of death, expressed a wish to see the bullet which had given him his mortal wound. The chirurgeon, who had successfully traced and extracted the ball, put it into his patient's hand. The expiring warrior carefully examined the missive, its weight, and form, and found it deficient in calibre. "I am satisfied," said he, "that ball was aimed by no soldier." Five minutes after these words, he breathed his last. He then paid the debt of nature, the only debt he ever paid in his life. Handsome, valiant, the finest horseman in the army, and the idol of his own soldiers, the Russian Murat lost his life by the hand of a Russian, but not of a Russian soldier. The rival of the _cidevant_ King of Naples loved display in every shape; but the field of battle, at the head of his cavalry, was the theatre on which he best loved to exhibit his martial form, splendid horsemanship, and daring courage. The gaming-table found him as reckless of his fortune as the field of his life, and the bravest cavalry general in the Russian service was a ruined gamester, loaded with debts which his death acquitted by leaving him insolvent. In paying the debt of nature Count Milarodowich surrendered his only personal possession.

The next day, at nine o'clock in the morning, while the population of his capital was yet uncertain whether the rebellion was effectually crushed, Nicholas, Emperor of Russia, gave his hand to the Empress to assist her into a droski which stood before the gates of the winter-palace, and drove through the streets of St. Petersburg. He stopped before the barracks as if to offer his bold bosom to the bullet or the steel of the assassin. The sight of his fine countenance, shadowed by the floating plumes of his military hat, far from exciting treasonable demonstrations, awakened lively expressions of loyalty and devotion to his person, and cries of "Long live Nicholas!" greeted his fortunate rashness. The Russian people knew and recognized in him a brave man and great sovereign.

The trial of the chief conspirators took place under the shadow of night and secrecy; they were brought from all parts of the empire to St. Petersburg. The sentence, but not the examination of the guilty, alone was made public; eighty persons were condemned to death, or life-long exile in Siberia. The most powerful, according to the custom of Russia, increased the population of Siberia; among these we find the name of Prince T.: his wife, with rare devotion, petitioned and obtained from the Emperor permission to accompany her husband to that dreary land of woe and crime. The decimation of the disloyal but seduced regiments was an act of severe military justice that astonished Europe, but secured the tranquillity of Russia. The son of the Emperor Paul, whose life and death had been the stake of the military contest of December, 1825, might be better excused than any other man for that tremendous sentence. He had been fired upon by his own soldiers while unarmed and confiding his person to their generosity; his brother, and his plenipotentiary, Count Milarodowich, had been aimed at by assassins, and the Count had died of his wound.

A flash of magnanimity enlightened this cloud of severity. In the list of conspirators the Emperor remarked the name of Suwarrow, a name dear to Russia and associated with her victories. He chose to examine this young man, the grandson of the great field-marshal, himself. His countenance and manner, unusually gentle, seemed to inspire confidence. The questions he asked this lieutenant only required a simple affirmative or denial, and they were not of a nature to elicit a confession of guilt. "Gentlemen, you see and hear," remarked the Emperor to his council, "it is as I have told you, a Suwarrow cannot be a rebel," and he acquitted the prisoner, and gave him a captain's commission and sent him back to his regiment; but unfortunately for the conspirators, this lieutenant was the only person who bore that favored name. All were not Suwarrows.

It was remarked that those who were executed uttered these words as their last legacy to posterity, "Live Russia! Live Liberty! our avengers are at hand!" Their war-cry of "Live Constantine!" false to their hearts, was not repeated by lips which the presence of death had rendered then the echo of truth.

The funeral pomp of the widowed Empress Elizabeth, whose remains were brought for interment to St. Petersburg in this same month of December, turned the thoughts of its inhabitants from these scenes of civil strife and the executions that followed them, to a Princess, whom for twenty-four years they had regarded as a link between the human and angelic natures. The memory of these events seemed buried in that sepulchre, which the tears of a grateful people had consecrated to the remembrance of the consort of the deceased Emperor Alexander.

From Nimrod's Bacchanalia Memorabilia.

DRINKING EXPERIENCES.

The pleasure imparted by wine to me is great, but very short-lived: it appears to mount, as it were, to a crisis; after which it somewhat rapidly declines. In fact, it does not enliven me beyond a certain pitch. It then ceases its charms; doubtless, because my stomach, the centre of all sympathy, feels oppressed by it. I grow dull, my head aches, I am inclined for sleep, and wish for bed.--But it does not rob me of self-possession, nor incline me to wrangle or quarrel. On the contrary, it excites my love, not my hatred, and greatly expands my heart. I have granted many a favor, and promised many more, by the inspiration of the jolly god. I have shaken hands with, sworn eternal friendship for, many a man, and made love to many a woman, for whom, vulgarly speaking, I cared not a rush. In short, I have a hundred times made a fool of myself by talking, boasting--not lying, for I have ever held that low vice in abhorrence--and occasionally laid wagers, and matched horses, without a chance of winning. But, as I have already stated, I never was so overcome by wine as not to know where I was, and what I said. In fact, it never had the power to make me forget that I was born a gentleman; and I am happy in the reflection, that I have travelled thus far through life without having been once called upon to make an apology for an insult given, either when drunk or sober; nor to demand but two, and those were the result of excess in wine. One was tendered to me on the first dawn of returning reason; the other, I am sorry to say, at the pistol's mouth. But the events I am alluding to occurred many years back, when, as a well-known sporting old earl of the last century said of himself, "the devil was very strong in me."

I never was drunk, from drinking spirits, more than twice, which was with very strong brandy and water. Now he that praises drunkenness is a sot convicted on his own evidence; but were I to drink for what is called drinking's sake--that is, to acquire an artificial state of pleasurable excitement--brandy should be the liquor I should fly to to secure it. The "divine luxuries of opium" I never yet tasted; but the powers of wine upon me are, comparatively with brandy, truly insignificant. At the period I am alluding to, it not only appeared to afford me a sure panacea for all evils, past, present, and to come, but to open unlimited prospects of future bliss. I felt as if I were possessed of more than human powers, and that there was nothing I willed I could not do. In short, it eventually made me mad; and, on each occasion, I nearly lost my life, together with my senses. On the one, I attempted to go to sea, by moonlight, in a small open boat, without either rudder or sail, and in the current of a strong tide running out of a Welsh bay; on the other, although more than two hundred miles distant from it, I got upon a coachbox to go to London, in my evening dress; and did "go," till I tumbled off it into the road. To the latter excursion I was no doubt indebted to my early propensity to driving coaches; but having at no time of my life had a fancy for the sea, I owed my intended aquatic trip to a member of the yacht club, who was my partner in the debauch. Death, says Johnson, is more than usually unwelcome to a rich man; and as my friend is possessed of ten thousand a year, he was by no means a fit subject to be mangled by Welsh crabs. Had we, however, accomplished our purpose in unmooring the boat, we should never have been heard of in this world any more. The day would have come upon us both "unawares."

To return to wine. The effect of wine is generally supposed to invigorate the understanding, and to stimulate the mental powers--of poets, especially. Thus Horace asks Bacchus whither he is about to transport him? But by the words "_tui plenum_," I think he must have meant full, not of his wine, but of his divinity, without the aid of which he felt himself unequal to pen a panegyric upon Octavius. Now, were I to say that it is in the power of wine to sink me below mortality--in other words, to make a brute of me--I should certainly go beyond my tether; but I can safely assert that, if I were a poet, so far from realizing Horace's expectations of it, it would lead me _down_, not up, the hill. In fact, when under its immediate influence--I do not mean drunk, but "pretty considerably sprung," as the term is--I can scarcely indite a common letter. It appears to stultify my ordinary capacities. I must, however, admit that, on the first waking after a plentiful allowance of good wine, some bright thoughts have come across my mind, and, when not lost by an intervening nap, have been found worthy of being noted down, and now and then made serviceable. It would indeed be an act of ingratitude to the jolly god, were I to omit the fact, that I once did rise from my bed, at four o'clock in the morning, after having sacrificed largely the overnight, and wrote the best thing I ever did write; at least, so said a certain learned sergeant, who now wears a silk gown, and who told me he would have given five hundred pounds to have been the author of it. But it never saw the light. It was a satire; and "_Nulla venenato litera mixta joco est_," has ever been, and shall ever continue to be, my motto. I wish not to dip my pen in gall.

I have found wine, taken to excess for only a few days, to depress the mind more than the body; that is to say, when, as a friend of mine expresses himself, "the _animus_ is flown;" and I once heard this natural effect of over-mental excitement admirably illustrated by a very illiterate coachman of the old school. "Was Jem drunk when he upset his coach the other night?" was a question I put to one of this fraternity some years back, when drinking to excess with them was the order of both day and night. "Why, sir," he replied, "he warn't drunk, nor he warn't sober; _the liquor was a-dying in him, and he was stupid_." Now, this strongly resembles my own case. Had I to write for a prize, and that prize were immortality, I would not depend much upon the assistance of Bacchus. I would rather rely on my own natural powers, gently stimulated by wine when they flagged.

In all ages of the world, however, clever men, and poets especially, have been more or less addicted to drinking to excess. The austere Cato, the voluptuous Cæsar, were each given to what Seneca calls the _intemperantia bibendi_--notwithstanding which, according to Seneca, the wisdom of the former received no blemish from this cause. His daughter, indeed, admitted that it softened the rigor of her father's virtues. Titus, the delight of human kind, sat late after his dinner: his brother, Domitian, the tyrant and fly-tormentor, never later than the setting sun. The influence of wine upon poets has long since been proverbial. Poetry, in fact, has been called the wine of the mind; and wine, like love, makes poets. The old Greeks drank and sang; and Anacreon would not have been Anacreon, but for the inspiring juice of the grape, as he himself tells us in his celebrated hymn to the full-blown rose--

"Crown me, and instant, god of wine, Strains from my lyre shall reach thy shrine."

Indeed, the first prize contended for by poets was a cask of wine; and the Bacchic hymn was called "The Hymn of the Cask." Horace, in fact, pronounces a water-drinking poet to be little worth--even the springs of Castalia will not avail; but after his bottle of Falernian, he boldly asserts, in his ode to Bacchus, in which he wishes to soap Cæsar, that no daring was then too great for his muse.

Both Homer and Horace must have liked wine, and experience on occasions its good effects, or they would not have been the authors of such glowing panegyrics upon it. It is true the latter is moral in the midst of his gayety, uniting the wisdom of the philosopher with the playfulness of the poet; still, and notwithstanding he preaches up moderation in desires, as the chief source of human happiness, he must have been _secretly_ attached to the Epicurean school, in our acceptation of that term. We may, I think, glean this from various passages of his several works, and especially from the compliment he pays Tibullus on the knowledge he displays of the _savoir vivre_ at his own house and table. Again, although in his ode to Apollo he wished us to believe he did not like it, the one to his Cask is an incentive to _drinking_. In another to Telephus, he himself gets "as drunk as a lord;" and had a pretty good bousing match on his escape from the tree, as well as at his party on Cæsar's birth-day. Then how does he promise to welcome Macænas when he came to sup with him? _To take a hundred bumpers with him for friendship's sake!_ Neither is this all. Notwithstanding his telling his friend that his wine was not such as _he_ ought to drink, it is evident he did not "think small beer of it" himself. He notes its age, seals the casks with his own hands, and taps a fresh one on any very memorable occasion. In short, but for a bodily infirmity to which he was subject, there is little doubt but he would have been one of the jolly dogs of his own day. At all events, as has been elegantly said of him, "he tuned his harp to pleasure, and to easy temper of his own soul."

How happens it, it may be asked, that not a single Grecian has ascended Parnassus for so many ages back, and that the vocal hills of Arcadia no longer resound to the Doric reed? There are, we know, several reasons given for this, such as a despotic government, alteration in the language, &c., &c.; but the most powerful cause of the literary degeneracy of this once justly celebrated people is, doubtless, in the substitution of the enervating luxuries of coffee, tobacco, and opium, for the invigorating powers of good wine. It was not so in Anacreon's days.

Let us now turn to the eminently gifted men of later times. Sir Richard Steele spent half his hours in a tavern. In fact, he may be said to have measured time by the bottle; as on being sent for by his wife, he returned for answer that "he would be with her in half a bottle." The like may be said of Savage; and Addison was as dull as an alderman till he was three parts drunk. Neither would he stop at that point. It is on record of him that he once drank till he vomited in the company of Voltaire; which called forth the cutting remark, that the only good thing that came out of his mouth, in Voltaire's presence, was the wine that had gone into it. It is also recorded of Pitt, but I cannot vouch for the truth of it, that two bottles of port wine per diem was his usual allowance, and that it was to _potens Bacchus_ he was indebted for the almost superhuman labor he went through during his short, but actively employed life. His friend and colleague, Harry Dundas, a clever man also in his way, went the pace with him over the mahogany; and the joke about the Speaker in his chair, after they had dined together, cannot be forgotten. Pitt could see no Speaker; but his friend, like Horace with the candle, saw two. Sheridan, latterly, without wine, was a driveller. He sacrificed to it talents such as no man I ever heard or read of possessed, for no subject appeared to be beyond his reach. I knew him when I was a boy, and thought him then something more than human. The learned Porson would get drunk in a pothouse--so would Robert Burns, the poet; and Byron drank brandy and water by bucketsful. Fox was a thirsty soul, and drank far too much wine for either a politician or a play-man; yet, like Nestor over the bowl, he was always great. But a contemporary of his, likewise a great play-man and a clever fellow, out-heroded Herod. He estimated his losses in hogsheads of claret; and it was humorously said of John Taylor--for such was his name--that, after a certain hour of the night, "he could not be removed _without a permit_, as he had more than a dozen of claret on board." Two of the finest actors that ever graced the British stage could scarcely be kept sober enough to perform their parts: But enough of this. Wine taken in excess is the bane of talent. Like fire upon incense, it may cause rich fumes to escape; but the dregs and refuse, when the sacrifice is ended, are little worth. By a long continuance, indeed, in any vicious indulgence, the mind, like the body, is reduced to a state of atrophy; and knowledge, like food, passes through it without adding to its strength. But repeated vinous intoxication soonest unfits a man for either mental or bodily exertion. Equally with the effect of violent love, so powerfully set forth by the poet Lucretius, it creates an indolence and listlessness which damps all noble pursuits, as well as a neglect of all useful affairs--

"Labitur interea res et vadimonia fiunt; Languent officia, atque ægrotat fama vacillans."

There are countries--half civilised ones, of course--in which intoxication is esteemed the greatest of human pleasures; and Lord Bacon thought it only second to love. Much of the folly of drunkenness, however, in the middle and upper orders of society, proceeds from a laudable desire to exercise in the extreme the rites of hospitality. To the "honest pride of hospitality," as Byron calls it, many a man who hates drinking, has given many a slice of his perhaps already shaken constitution. And here is really something like an excuse. Independently of the making welcome our friends, and seeing ourselves surrounded by them under our own roof, being one of the first among the ordinary comforts of life, hospitality has ever been considered a primary social duty. The best definition of real hospitality is given by Cicero, who admits that there is nothing that contributes more effectually to the happiness of human life than society,--distinguishing from the sensual gratification of the palate, the pleasing relaxation of the mind, which he says is best produced by the freedom of social converse, always most agreeable at the table. Neither does he appear to be an enemy to a cheerful glass; and we must admire the definition he gives of drinking parties. "The Greeks," says he, "call them by a word which signifies computations, whereas we more emphatically denominate them convivial meetings; intimating thereby, that it is in a communication of this nature that life is most truly enjoyed." That Cicero, however, was temperate, may be concluded by the fact of his having written when past his sixtieth year his celebrated Philippies, in which his powers of reasoning are more vigorous, and his language more touching, than in any of his former and younger orations. He used wine in moderation; and it is thus that it answers the ends of Providence. It then exhilarates and strengthens the mind, as well as the body, and, like the bloom on the female cheek, beautifies it, and shows health.

There are said to be three modes of bearing the ills of life, indifference, philosophy, and religion; and many add--the bottle. But the effect of wine on grief is of a doubtful nature. It may deaden the pang for a while, but it will return on the morrow with redoubled force, and with the powers of the sufferer less equal to contend with it. Nevertheless, the maxim of Anacreon, that "when Bacchus enters our cares sleep," is in part true; and a temporary oblivion of care and disappointment is generally produced by an agreeable party and good cheer. And thus is Shakespeare justified in calling wine the merry cheerer of the human heart, as well as others who have asserted that it not only creates pleasure, but mitigates pain. For the latter purpose, indeed, it was formerly given to condemned malefactors, previously to their suffering; "Give strong drink to him who is ready to perish," says the author of the book of Proverbs, "and wine unto them that be of heavy hearts. _Let him drink, and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more._"

If a tranquil mind and freedom from pain make up the sum of a happy life, how great is the value of this cordial drop, and how thankful should we be for it! How sacred and profane writers agree in the essential qualities of the pure juice, especially in the relief of wretchedness. "See the blind beggar dance, the cripple sing," is no exaggeration of its power in lessening anguish from past misfortunes, or present ills; but in the following translation of a fragment of Bacchylides, we see what rays of brightness it can throw over our future prospects:

"Thirsty comrade! would'st thou know All the raptures that do flow From those sweet compulsive rules Of our ancient drinking schools? First, the precious draught shall raise Amorous thoughts in giddy maze, Mingling Bacchus' present treasure With the hopes of higher pleasure. Next, shall chase through empty air All th' intolerant hosts of care; Give thee conquest, riches, power; Bid thee scale the guarded tower; Bid thee reign o'er land and sea With unquestioned sov'reignty. Thou thy palace shall behold, Bright with ivory and gold; While each ship that ploughs the main, Filled with Egypt's choicest grain, Shall unload her ponderous store, Thirsty comrade, at thy door."

Yet guided by my own experience, of the various effects of wine on the mind, I cannot go quite the length of some of its panegyrists. So far, indeed, from thinking with Ovid that it takes even the wrinkles out of the face, I am more inclined to believe that it adds to their number by the excitement that it creates; and although the festive pleasures of the table, in addition to the society of friends, may cheer the heart, and even irradiate gloom, the talisman is not there by which the cause may be reached, and the pain destroyed, beyond the hour.

"Though gay companions o'er the bowl Dispel awhile the sense of ill; Though pleasure fires the madd'ning soul, The heart--the heart is lonely still."

No--although I fear I am about to speak without experience now--it is my opinion, that neither the resources of the philosopher, nor the consolations of religion, nor conscious worth, unaccompanied by native fortitude and energy of mind, are of much avail against real grief. Why they should not be, is no business of mine to inquire; nor would it be becoming me to question the designs of Providence. But this much I may affirm without fear of offence,--Human life is prudently chequered with good and evil; and the most likely way to enjoy it, is to make the best of the one while the other is away.

The powerful influence of wine on society is estimated by Dr. Johnson, in the _Rambler_: "In the bottle," says he, "discontent seeks for comfort, cowardice for courage, and bashfulness for confidence." Nothing is more true than this; although it sometimes happens that the first is looked for in vain, the second proves false, and the latter exceeds its bounds. The union of sensual and intellectual enjoyment, however, is requisite to complete the happiness of "the double animal"--the perfect man; and as all mankind are not philosophers, much less abstract ones, after-dinner conversation would generally be flat without the genial influence of good wine. Indeed, the wit of the wittiest man, and the most agreeable companion I ever sat down with, appeared to rise in brilliancy with every glass he drank; and when, to use an expression of his own, he felt himself "vinously inclined,"--that is to say, when he had what Cicero calls the "_furor vinolentus_" upon him, there were no bounds to his humorous sallies.

Upon old men wine is generally well bestowed.

"----Give me a bowl of wine; I have not that alacrity of spirit Nor cheer of mind that I was wont to have,"

exclaims the bold King Richard; and I once heard a fine old sportsman, and very worthy man, declare, after a bottle of good port, that he would not exchange the present--his eightieth year--for the gayest he had ever spent.

Luckily for the credit of the human race--although Cleopatra hunted and _drank_ with Antony--there has been, in all ages of the world, a sense of shame attached to the vice of drunkenness in women, having any pretensions to character, as something contrary to their more refined nature. By the ancient Roman laws it was punishable even by death; and we find that even the abandoned women who celebrated the Bacchanalia were ashamed to do so, except under the disguise of masks.

To the credit of the present age, drunkenness in women is not a common failing; but when they once yield to the vice, they have less moderation in the indulgence of it than men have. That such was the case in other ages and countries, may be gleaned from a passage in a comic play-writer, contemporary with Plato, which has been thus accurately rendered:

"Remark how wisely ancient art provides, The broad-brimmed cup, with flat expanded sides; A cup contrived for _man's_ discreeter use, And sober potions of the generous juice. But _woman's_ more ambitious, thirsty soul Soon long'd to revel in the plenteous bowl; Deep and capacious as the swelling hold Of some stout bark, she shaped the hollow mould; Then, turning out a vessel like a tun, Simpering, exclaimed--_Observe, I drink but one_."

To return to the effect of wine on the ruder sex. Next to a smoky house and a scolding wife, it is the greatest trial of the temper to which that of man is exposed. In fact, it is a test by which it may be proved; and the advice of Horace is excellent, _not to choose a friend till we have put him to this test_. Addison is likewise happy in his remark on this point. "Wine," says he, "is not to be drunk by all who can swallow;" and truer words were never written. It has an extraordinary effect upon low and uncultivated minds; as was exemplified in late times, when war prices and abundance of money placed it within the reach of the English commonalty. Rows and broils, with marked insolence towards superiors, were the concomitant results. Neither is the observation of Pliny a whit less just. He says truth is vulgarly and _properly_ attributed to wine; and I am decidedly of his opinion. In fact, our English term, "disguised in liquor," is improperly used; inasmuch as a blackguard when drunk is in his nature a blackguard when sober. The tongue, says the Bible, is at all times an unruly member; but when under the influence of wine, it is still more apt to run riot. Then, again, drunken men are given to "err in vision and stumble in judgment," and to put constructions upon words which they were not intended to convey. When we sacrifice to Bacchus, we are not favored by Mercury; and the well-known adage of "wine in, wit out," is but an abbreviation of the equally well proved axiom, that wine raises the imagination, but depresses the judgment.

Neither is the highly bred gentleman, if much addicted to intoxication, quite safe to be admitted into close friendship, inasmuch as he renders himself, by the practice, unworthy of confidence. Wine so unlocks the cabinet of the heart, that it is easily looked into when we are off our guard.

From an article in the "Home Book of the Picturesque," just published by G. P. Putnam.

AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN SCENERY COMPARED.

BY J. FENIMORE COOPER.

The great distinction between American and European scenery, as a whole, is to be found in the greater want of finish in the former than in the latter, and to the greater superfluity of works of art in the old world than in the new. Nature has certainly made some differences, though there are large portions of continental Europe that, without their artificial accessories, might well pass for districts in our own region; and which forcibly remind the traveller of his native home. As a whole, it must be admitted that Europe offers to the senses sublimer views and certainly grander, than are to be found within our own borders, unless we resort to the Rocky Mountains, and the ranges in California and New Mexico.

In musing on these subjects, the mind of the untravelled American naturally turns first towards England. He has pictured to himself landscapes and scenery on which are impressed the teeming history of the past. We shall endeavour to point out the leading distinctions between the scenery of England and that of America, therefore, as the course that will probably be most acceptable to the reader.

The prevalent characteristic of the English landscape is its air of snugness and comfort. In these respects it differs entirely from its neighbor, France. The English, no doubt, have a great deal of poverty and squalid misery among them. But it is kept surprisingly out of the ordinary view. Most of it, indeed, is to be found in the towns, and even in them it is concealed in out of the way places and streets seldom entered by the stranger.

There are places in America, more especially in the vicinities of the large towns, that have a strong resemblance to the more crowded portions of England, though the hedge is usually wanting and the stone wall is more in favor among ourselves than it appears ever to have been among our ancestors. The great abundance of wood, in this country, too, gives us the rail and the board for our fences, objects which the lovers of the picturesque would gladly see supplanted by the brier and the thorn. All that part of Staten Island, which lies nearest to the quarantine ground, has a marked resemblance to what we should term suburban English landscape. The neighborhoods of most of the old towns in the northern States, have more or less of the same character; it being natural that the descendants of Englishmen should have preserved as many of the usages of their forefathers as were practicable. We know of no portion of this country that bears any marked resemblance to the prevalent characteristics of an ordinary French landscape. In France there are two great distinctive features that seem to divide the materials of the views between them. One is that of a bald nakedness of formal _grandes routes_, systematically lined with trees, a total absence of farm-houses, fences, hedges, and walls, little or no forest, except in particular places, scarcely any pieces of detached woods, and a husbandry that is remarkable for its stiffness and formality. The fields of a French acclivity, when the grain is ripe, or ripening, have a strong resemblance to an ordinary Manchester pattern-card, in which the different cloths, varying in color, are placed under the eye at one glance. The effect of this is not pleasing. The lines being straight and the fields exhibiting none of the freedom of nature. Stiffness and formality, indeed, impair the beauty of nine-tenths of the French landscapes; though as a whole the country is considered fine, and is certainly very productive. The other distinctive feature to which we allude is of a directly contrary character, being remarkable for the affluence of its objects. It often occurs in that country that the traveller finds himself on a height that commands a view of great extent, which is literally covered with _bourgs_ or small towns and villages. This occurs particularly in Normandy, in the vicinity of Paris and as one approaches the Loire. In such places it is no unusual thing for the eye to embrace, as it might be in a single view, some forty or fifty cold, grave-looking, chiselled _bourgs_ and villages, almost invariably erected in stone. The effect is not unpleasant, for the subdued color of the buildings has a tendency to soften the landscape and to render the whole solemn and imposing. We can recall many of these scenes that have left indelible impressions on the mind, and which, if not positively beautiful in a rural sense, are very remarkable. That from the heights of Montmorenci, near Paris, is one of them; and there is another, from the hill of St. Catharine, near Rouen, that is quite as extraordinary.

The greater natural freedom that exists in an ordinary American landscape, and the abundance of detached fragments of wood, often render the views of this country strikingly beautiful when they are of sufficient extent to conceal the want of finish in the details, which require time and long-continued labor to accomplish. In this particular we conceive that the older portions of the United States offer to the eye a general outline of view that may well claim to be even of a higher cast, than most of the scenery of the old world.

There is one great charm, however, that it must be confessed is nearly wanting among us. We allude to the coast. Our own is, with scarcely an exception, low, monotonous and tame. It wants Alpine rocks, bold promontories, visible heights inland, and all those other glorious accessories of the sort that render the coast of the Mediterranean the wonder of the world. It is usual for the American to dilate on the size of his bays and rivers, but objects like these require corresponding elevation in the land. Admirable as is the bay of New-York for the purposes of commerce, it holds but a very subordinate place as a landscape among the other havens of the world. The comparison with Naples that has so often been made, is singularly unjust, there not being two bays of any extent to be found, that are really less alike than these. It was never our good fortune to see Constantinople or Rio de Janeiro, the two noblest and most remarkable scenes of this kind, as we have understood, known to the traveller. But we much question if either will endure the test of rigid and severe examination better than the celebrated Gulf of Napoli. The color of the water, alone, is a peculiar beauty of all the Mediterranean bays: it is the blue of the deep sea, carried home to the very rocks of the coast. In this respect, the shores of America, also, have less claim to beauty than those of Europe, generally. The waters are green, the certain sign of their being shallow. Similar tints prevail in the narrow seas between Holland and England. The name of Holland recalls a land, however, that is even lower than any portion of our own with which we are acquainted. There are large districts in Holland that are actually below the level of the high tides of the sea. This country is a proof how much time, civilization, and persevering industry, may add even to the interest of a landscape. While the tameness of the American coast has so little to relieve it or to give it character, in Holland it becomes the source of wonder and admiration. The sight of vast meadows, villages, farm-houses, churches, and other works of art, actually lying below the level of the adjacent canals, and the neighboring seas, wakes in the mind a species of reverence for human industry. This feeling becomes blended with the views, and it is scarcely possible to gaze upon a Dutch landscape without seeing, at the same time, ample pages from the history of the country and the character of its people. On this side of the ocean, there are no such peculiarities. Time, numbers, and labor, are yet wanting to supply the defects of nature, and we must be content, for a while, with the less teeming pictures drawn in our youth and comparative simplicity.

On the American coast the prevailing character is less marked at the northward and eastward than at the southward. At some future day, the Everglades of Florida may have a certain resemblance to Holland. They are the lowest land, we believe, in any part of this country.

Taking into the account the climate and its productions, the adjacent mountains, the most picturesque outlines of the lakes, and the works of art which embellish the whole, we think that most lovers of natural scenery would prefer that around the lakes of Como and Maggiore to that of any other place familiarly known to the traveller. Como is ordinarily conceived to carry off the palm in Europe, and it is not probable that the great mountains of the East or any part of the Andes, can assemble as many objects of grandeur, sweetness, magnificence and art, as are to be found in this region. Of course, our own country has nothing of the sort to compare with it. The Rocky Mountains, and the other great ranges in the recent accession of territory, must possess many noble views, especially as one proceeds south; but the accessories are necessarily wanting, for a union of art and nature can alone render scenery perfect.

In the way of the wild, the terrific, and the grand, nature is sufficient of herself: but Niagara is scarcely more imposing than she is now rendered lovely by the works of man. It is true that the celebrated cataract has a marked sweetness of expression, if we may use such a term, that singularly softens its magnificence, and now that men are becoming more familiar with its mysteries, and penetrating into its very mists, by means of a small steamboat, the admirer of nature discovers a character different from that which first strikes the senses.

We regard it as hypercritical to speak of the want of Alpine scenery around Niagara. On what scale must the mountains be moulded to bear a just comparison, in this view of the matter, with the grandeur of the cataract! The Alps, the Andes, and the Himmalaya, would scarcely suffice to furnish materials necessary to produce the contrast, on any measurement now known to the world. In fact the accessories, except as they are blended with the Falls themselves, as in the wonderful gorge through which the river rushes, in an almost fathomless torrent, as if frightened at its own terrific leap; the Whirlpool, and all that properly belongs to the stream, from the commencement of the Rapids, or, to be more exact, from the placid, lake-like scenery above these Rapids, down to the point where the waters of this mighty strait are poured into the bosom of the Ontario, strike us as being in singular harmony with the views of the Cataract itself.

The Americans may well boast of their waterfalls, and of their lakes, notwithstanding the admitted superiority of upper Italy and Switzerland in connection with the highest classes of the latter. They form objects of interest over a vast surface of territory, and greatly relieve the monotony of the inland views. We do not now allude to the five great lakes, which resemble seas and offer very much the same assemblage of objects to the eye; but to those of greatly inferior extent, that are sparkling over so much of the surface of the northern states. The east, and New-York in particular, abound in them, though farther west the lover of the picturesque must be content to receive the prairie in their stead. It would be a great mistake, however, to attempt to compare any of these lakes with the finest of the old world; though many of them are very lovely and all contribute to embellish the scenery. Lake George itself could not occupy more than a fourth or fifth position in a justly graduated scale of the lakes of Christendom; though certainly very charming to the eye, and of singular variety in its aspects. In one particular, indeed, this lake has scarcely an equal. We allude to its islands, which are said to equal the number of the days in the year. Points, promontories, and headlands are scarcely ever substitutes for islands, which add inexpressibly to the effect of all water-views.

It has been a question among the admirers of natural scenery, whether the presence or absence of detached farm-houses, of trees, hedges, walls and fences, most contribute to the effect of any inland view. As these are three great points of distinction between the continent of Europe and our own country, we shall pause a moment to examine the subject a little more in detail. When the towns and villages are sufficiently numerous to catch the attention of the eye, and there are occasional fragments of forest in sight, one does not so much miss the absence of that appearance of comfort and animated beauty that the other style of embellishment so eminently possesses. A great deal, however, depends, as respects these particulars, on the nature of the architecture and the color of the buildings and fences. It is only in very particular places and under very dull lights, that the contrast between white and green is agreeable. A fence that looks as if it were covered with clothes hung out to dry, does very little towards aiding the picturesque. And he who endeavors to improve his taste in these

## particulars, will not fail to discover in time that a range of country

which gives up its objects, chiselled and distinct, but sober, and sometimes sombre, will eventually take stronger hold of his fancy than one that is glittering with the fruits of the paint and the whitewash brushes. We are never dissatisfied with the natural tints of stone, for the mind readily submits to the ordering of nature; and though one color may be preferred to another, each and all are acceptable in their proper places. Thus, a marble structure is expected to be white, and as such, if the building be of suitable dimensions and proportions, escapes our criticism, on account of its richness and uses. The same may be said of other hues, when not artificial; but we think that most admirers of nature, as they come to cultivate their tastes, settle down into a preference for the gray and subdued over all the brighter tints that art can produce. In this particular, then, we give the preference to the effects of European scenery, over that of this country, where wood is so much used for the purposes of building, and where the fashion has long been to color it with white. A better taste, however, or what we esteem as such, is beginning to prevail, and houses in towns and villages are now not unfrequently, even painted in subdued colors. We regard the effect as an improvement, though to our taste no hue, in its artificial objects, so embellishes a landscape as the solemn color of the more sober, and less meretricious looking stones.

We believe that a structure of white, with green blinds, is almost peculiar to this country. In the most propitious situations, and under the happiest circumstances, the colors are unquestionably unsuited to architecture, which, like statuary, should have but one tint. If, however, it be deemed essential to the flaunting tastes of the mistress of some mansion, to cause the hues of the edifice in which she resides to be as gay as her _toilette_, we earnestly protest against the bright green that is occasionally introduced for such purposes. There is a graver tint, of the same color, that entirely changes the expression of a dwelling. Place two of these houses in close proximity, and scarcely an intellectual being would pass them, without saying that the owner of the one was much superior to the owner of the other in all that marks the civilized man. Put a third structure in the immediate vicinity of these two, that should have but one color on its surface, including its blinds, and we think that nine persons in ten, except the very vulgar and uninstructed, would at once jump to the conclusion that the owner of this habitation was in tastes and refinement superior to both his neighbors. A great improvement, however, in rural as well as in town architecture, is now in the course of introduction throughout all the northern states. More attention is paid to the picturesque than was formerly the case, and the effects are becoming as numerous as they are pleasing. We should particularize New Haven, as one of those towns that has been thus embellished of late years, and there are other places of nearly equal size that might be mentioned as having the same claims to an improved taste. But to return to the great distinctive features between an ordinary American landscape and a similar scene in Europe. Of the artificial accessories it is scarcely necessary to say any more. One does not expect to meet with a ruined castle or abbey, or even fortress, in America; nor, on the other hand, does the traveller look for the forests of America, or that abundance of wood which gives to nearly every farm a sufficiency for all the common wants of life, on the plains and heights of the old world. Wood there certainly is, and possibly enough to meet the ordinary wants of the different countries, but it is generally in the hands of the governments or the great proprietors, and takes the aspect of forests of greater or less size that are well cared for, cleared and trimmed like the grounds of a park.

Germany has, we think, in some respects a strong resemblance to the views of America. It is not so much wanting in detached copses and smaller plantations of trees as the countries farther south and east of it, while it has less of the naked aspect in general that is so remarkable in France. Detached buildings occur more frequently in Germany than in France especially, and we might add also in Spain. The reader will remember that it is a prevalent usage throughout Europe, with the exception of the British Islands, Holland, and here and there a province in other countries, for the rural population to dwell in villages. This practice gives to the German landscape, in particular, a species of resemblance to what is ordinarily termed park scenery, though it is necessarily wanting in much of that expression which characterizes the embellishments that properly belong to the latter. With us this resemblance is often even stronger, in consequence of the careless graces of nature and the great affluence of detached woods. The distinguishing feature existing in the farm-house, fences and outbuildings. Of a cloudy day, a distant view in America often bears this likeness to the park, in a very marked degree, for then the graces of the scene are visible to the eye, while the defects of the details are too remote to be detected.

The mountain scenery of the United States, though wanting in grandeur, and in that wild sublimity which ordinarily belongs to a granite formation, is not without attractions that are singularly its own. The great abundance of forest, the arable qualities of the soil, and the peculiar blending of what may be termed the agricultural and the savage, unite to produce landscapes of extraordinary beauty and gracefulness. Vast regions of country possessing this character are to be found in almost all the old states, for after quitting the coast for a greater or less distance, varying from one to two hundred miles, the ranges of the Alleghanies interpose between the monotonous districts of the Atlantic shores and the great plains of the west. We are of opinion that as civilization advances, and the husbandman has brought his lands to the highest state of cultivation, there will be a line of mountain scenery extending from Maine to Georgia, in a north and south direction, and possessing a general width of from one to two hundred miles, from east to west, that will scarcely have a parallel in any other quarter of the world, in those sylvan upland landscapes, which, while they are wanting in the sublimity of the Alpine regions, share so largely in the striking and effective.

It is usual for the American to boast of his rivers, not only for their size and usefulness, but for their beauties. A thousand streams, that in older regions would have been rendered memorable, ages since, by the poet, the painter, art in every form, and the events of a teeming history, flow within the limits of the United States still unsung, and nearly unknown. As yet, something is ordinarily wanting, in the way of finish, along the banks of these inferior water-courses. But occasionally, in places where art has, as it might be, accidentally assisted nature, they come into the landscape with the most pleasing influence on its charms. In this respect, the peculiarity of the country is rather in a want of uniformity than in any want of material. To us, it would seem that all the northern states of America, at least, are far better watered than common, and that consequently they possess more of this species of beauty. As for the great streams, the largest, perhaps, have the least claims to high character in this respect in both the old and the new world. The Rhine is an exception, however, for it would be difficult to find another river of equal length and with the same flow of water, that possesses the same diversity of character or one so peculiar. At its source it descends from the high glaciers of the Alps a number of howling brooks, which forcing their way through the upper valleys, unite below in a straggling, rapid, but shallow stream, that finds its way into the lake of Constance, out of which it issues a compact, rapid river, imposing by its volume of water, rather than by its breadth, or any other advantage. Its cataracts, so celebrated in the old world, can scarcely claim to be the equal of the Cohoes, or many others of the secondary falls of this country, though the Rhine has always an abundance of water, which the Mohawk has not. On quitting Switzerland, this remarkable stream assumes many aspects, and decorates, beyond a doubt, as much landscape scenery as falls to the share of any other stream in the known world. We do not think it, however, in its best parts, equal to the Hudson in its whole length, though the characters of these two rivers are so very different as scarcely to admit of a fair comparison. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of the Rhine is its termination, for after embellishing and serving the purposes of such an extent of country in the very heart of Europe, it disappears, as it might be, in a number of straggling, uninteresting, turbid waters, among the marshes of Holland. This is a very different exit from that which characterizes the majestic flow of the Hudson into the Atlantic.

England has no great rivers to boast of, though she has a few of singular claims to notice, on account of the great flow of the tides and the vast amount of commerce that they bear on the bosom. The Thames, so renowned in history, is as uninteresting as possible, until it passes above the bridges of London, where it becomes an ordinary pretty sylvan stream.

The Seine, another river, familiar in name, at least, to every reader, has much higher claims than its neighbor of the British Islands, in the way of natural beauty. This stream, from Rouen to the Channel, is not without some very fine scenery, as well as possessing a very variant and interesting character, with both natural and artificial accessories, to say nothing of the historical, that draw largely on the attention.

Italy has many rivers that are celebrated in song or story, but not one, we think, that should rank high, on the ground of landscape beauty. Most of her streams are so dependent on the melting of the snows in the Apennines and Alps, as to be either howling torrents, or meagre, straggling pools. The Arno, the Po, the Adige, the Tiber, and all the other rivers of that peninsula, are obnoxious to these objections. Even the Tiber, which is navigable as high as Rome, for vessels of a light draft, is either a tranquil thread, or one of those noisy, turbid streams that overflow their banks and often appear at a loss to know in which direction to pour their waters.

The day is not distant, when America must possess a vast extent of territory of a character directly the reverse of that we have described in our mountain scenery, but which, nevertheless, will not be without a certain magnificence from its extent, productions and fertility. We allude to the great plains of the West; those which lie between the bases of the Alleghanies and the semi-sterile steppes that are known in this part of the world as the great prairies. Lombardy, teeming as she is, with population, vines, and all the productions of a fertile soil, in the possession of millions, sinks into insignificance before the vast plains that are destined to be her rivals in this quarter of the world. Perhaps New-York alone could furnish nearly as much of this character of country as is to be found in Upper Italy; for, stretching from the shores of Ontario towards the southern ranges of uplands, and as far east as Utica, is spread to the eye a vast extent of the most fertile plain, slightly relieved in places with a rolling surface of very respectable claims to natural beauty. We question if greater fertility is to be found in any part of the world, than is met with in the region last mentioned, though drainage and the other works of an advanced state of husbandry, are still much wanting to bring forth both its fertility and its beauties.

New-York, indeed, in the way of scenery, has very high claims to variety, gracefulness, and even grandeur, among the mountains of the counties bordering on Champlain. By grandeur, however, let there be no mistake, by receiving the term in any other than a limited sense. Any well delineated view of a high-class Swiss scene, must at once convince even the most provincial mind among us that nothing of the sort is to be found in America, east of the Rocky mountains. Nevertheless, the Adirondack has claims to a wild grandeur, which, if it do not approach magnificence, is of a character to impress a region with the seal of a very noble nature. The lovers of the picturesque sustain a great loss by means of the numerous lines of railroads that have recently come into existence. This is true of both Europe and America. In the course of time, it will be found that every where a country presents its best face towards its thoroughfares. Every thing that depends on art, naturally takes this aspect, for men are as likely to put on their best appearance along a wayside in the country as on the streets of a town. All that has been done, therefore, in past ages, in these

## particulars, is being deranged and in some instances deformed by the

necessity of preserving levels, and avoiding the more valuable portions of a country, in order to diminish expense. Thus villages and towns are no longer entered by their finest passages, producing the best effects; but the traveller is apt to find his view limited by ranges of sheds, out-houses, and other deformities of that nature. Here and there, some work of art, compelled by necessity, furnishes a relief to this deformity. But on the whole, the recent system of railroads has as yet done very little towards adding much to the picturesque for the benefit of the traveller. Here and there is to be found an exception, however, to this rule; portions of the Erie railroad, and the whole of the Hudson River, as well as that along the Rhine, necessarily possessing the advantage of sharing in the sublimity and grace through which they pass. Time will, of course, remedy the defects of the whole arrangement; and a new front will be presented, as it may be, to the traveller throughout the civilized world. Whether human ingenuity will yet succeed in inventing substitutes for the smoke and other unpleasant appliances of a railroad train, remains to be seen; but we think few will be disposed to differ from us, when we say that in our view of the matter this great improvement of modern intercourse has done very little towards the embellishment of a country in the way of landscapes. The graceful winding curvatures of the old highways, the acclivities and declivities, the copses, meadows and woods, the half-hidden church, nestling among the leaves of its elms and pines, the neat and secluded hamlet, the farm-house, with all its comforts and sober arrangements, so disposed as to greet the eye of the passenger, will long be hopelessly looked for by him who flies through those scenes, which, like a picture placed in a false light, no longer reflects the genius and skill of the artist.

The old world enjoys an advantage as regards the picturesque and pleasing, in connection with its towns, that is wholly unknown, unless it may be in the way of exception, among ourselves. The necessity, in the middle ages, of building for defence, and the want of artillery before the invention of gunpowder, contributed to the construction of military works for the protection of the towns in Europe, that still remain, owing to their durable materials, often producing some of the finest effects that the imagination could invent to embellish a picture. Nothing of the sort, of course, is to be met with here, for we have no castles, have never felt the necessity of fortified towns, and had no existence at the period when works of this nature came within the ordinary appliances of society. On the contrary, the utilitarian spirit of the day labors to erase every inequality from the surface of the American town, substituting convenience for appearance. It is probable there is no one who, in the end, would not give a preference to these new improvements for a permanent residence; but it is not to be denied that so far as the landscape is concerned, the customs of the middle ages constructed much the most picturesque and striking collections of human habitations. Indeed, it is scarcely possible for the mind to conceive of objects of this nature, that are thrown together with finer effects, than are to be met with among the mountainous regions, in particular, of Europe. We illustrate one or two that are to be met with in the Apennines, and the Alps, and even in Germany, as proofs of what we say. The eye, of itself, will teach the reader, that Richmond and Boston, and Washington and Baltimore, and half-a-dozen other American towns that do possess more or less of an unequal surface, must yield the palm to those gloriously beautiful objects of the old world. When it is remembered, too, how much time has multiplied these last, it can be seen that there are large districts in the mountain regions of the other hemisphere, that enjoy this superiority over us, if superiority it can be called, to possess the picturesque, at the expense of the convenient. The imagination can scarcely equal the pictures of this nature that often meet the eye in the southern countries of Europe. Villages, with the chiselled outlines of castles, gray, sombre, but distinct, are often seen, perched on the summits of rocky heights, or adhering, as it might be, to their sides, in situations that are frequently even appalling, and which invariably lend a character of peculiar beauty to the view. There are parts of Europe in which the traveller encounters these objects in great numbers, and if an American, they never fail to attract his attention, as the wigwam and the bark canoe, and the prairie with lines of bisons, would catch the eye of a wayfarer from the old world. To these humbler mountain pictures, must be added many a castle and strong-hold, of royal or semi-royal origin, that are met with on the summits of abrupt and rocky eminences farther north. Germany has many of these strong-holds, which are kept up to the present day, and which are found to be useful as places of security, as they are certainly peculiar and interesting in the landscape.

It has often been said by scientific writers, that this country affords many signs of an origin more recent than the surface of Europe. The proofs cited are the greater depths of the ravines wrought by the

## action of the waters following the courses of the torrents, and the

greater and general aspect of antiquity that is impressed on natural objects in the other hemisphere. This theory, however, has met with a distinguished opponent in our own time. Without entering at all into the merits of this controversy, we shall admit that to the ordinary eye America generally is impressed with an air of freshness, youthfulness, and in many instances, to use a coarse but expressive term, rawness, that are seldom, if ever, met with in Europe. It might perhaps be easy to account for this by the labors of man, alone, though we think that natural objects contribute their full share towards deepening the picture. We know of no mountain summits on this side of the Atlantic that wear the hoary hues of hundreds that are seen on the other side of the water; and nearly everywhere in this country that the eye rests on a mountain-top, it encounters a rounded outline of no very decided tints, unless, indeed, it may actually encounter verdure. To our eye, this character of youthfulness is very strongly perceptible throughout those portions of the republic with which we are personally acquainted, and we say this without reference to the recent settlements, which necessarily partake of this character, but to the oldest and most finished of our own landscapes. The banks of the Hudson, for instance, have not the impress of time as strongly marked on their heights and headlands, and bays, and even mountains, as the banks of the Rhine; and we have often even fancied that this distinguishing feature between the old and new worlds is to be traced on nearly every object of nature or art. Doubtless the latter has been the principal agent in producing these effects; but it is undeniable that they form a leading point of distinction in the general character of the scenery of the two continents. As for England, it has a shorn and shaven aspect that reminds one of the husbandman in his Sunday's attire; for we have seen that island in February, when, owing to the great quantity of its grain and the prevalent humidity of the atmosphere, it really appeared to us to possess more verdure than it did in the subsequent July and August.

There is one feature in European scenery, generally, more prevalent, however, in Catholic than in other countries, to which we must allude before we close. The bourg, or town, with its gray castellated outlines, and possibly with walls of the middle ages, is, almost invariably, clustered around the high, pointed roofs and solemn towers of the church. With us, how different is the effect! Half a dozen ill-shaped, and yet pretending cupolas, and other ambitious objects, half the time in painted wood, just peer above the village, while the most aspiring roof is almost invariably that of the tavern. It may be easy enough to account for this difference, and to offer a sufficient apology for its existence. But to the observant lover of the picturesque the effect is not only unpleasant but often repulsive. No one of ordinary liberality would wish to interfere with freedom of conscience in order to obtain fine landscapes; but this is one of the hundred instances in which the thoughtful man finds reason to regret that the church, as it exists among us, is not really more Catholic.

To conclude, we concede to Europe much the noblest scenery, in its Alps, Pyrenees, and Apennines; in its objects of art, as a matter of course; in all those effects which depend on time and association, in its monuments, and in this impress of the past which may be said to be reflected in its countenance; while we claim for America the freshness of a most promising youth, and a species of natural radiance that carries the mind with reverence to the source of all that is glorious around us.

From the United Service Magazine

A BULL FIGHT AT RONDA.

The ride from Gibraltar to San Roque is familiar to all the inhabitants of the rock, and notwithstanding that the soil, the natives, and their costume vary much from similar objects in England, and that the plants and scenery are totally of a foreign character, yet from the number of English people on the road, one finds it difficult to believe one's-self in Spain until on the other side of San Roque.

This last small town is prettily situated on a hill, about five miles from Gibraltar. On passing the drawbridge which crosses the ditch at the Landport point, we got on the isthmus which traverses the inundation, situated at the North Front of this isolated fortress, and which is the only avenue of access or egress. The approach to this is also guarded by two strong outposts. The last of these, called the old North Front, furnishes sentries which guard the intermediate posts between it and the Spanish lines. On arriving at the end of the isthmus, we crossed a place which is called the Neutral ground, and reached a small village garrisoned by a wing of a Spanish regiment, who are there stationed to intercept smugglers. On leaving the village there is no regular road, but those wishing to proceed to Spain have to ride or walk by the shore for a distance of about two miles, until they reach a plain, which is crossed by a road leading to a small village called Campo. This place is often resorted to by the gentry of Gibraltar, who find it much cooler during summer than their residences in the streets of the town. After passing this village, which had certainly little of interest about it, we rode by a circuitous road, generally hedged on each side by plants of the cactus and aloes, and but little wooded, till we reached San Roque.

Here we saw in miniature what may be called a specimen of a Spanish town; the windows at the lower story of the houses barred with cages of iron called _regas_, which completely obstruct all entrance by that mode, rendering them in fact like jails. The streets paved with large stones, quite dry, and disposed so irregularly as to make them the most disagreeable to ride in that I ever witnessed. Then there was the small alameda, with its walks, and trees quite neat and regular; where the beauties of the rural town paced with their mantillas and fans: on the other side was a barrack, which contained a Spanish regiment, who were drilling and exercising when we arrived. These were swarthy-looking fellows, mostly young and undersized.

As we rode away from the town we descended by a rugged stony road, which was very rough, and in some places nearly precipitous. Our party consisted of four officers besides myself, two mules containing our clothes and provisions, and a guide and servant on horseback. We got packed up in panniers all the loose beer and cold meat, tea, coffee, sugar, biscuit, sausages, hams, and other edibles which we should require for a week's consumption, and did not find that we had at all exceeded our computation, for with the exception of eggs, fowls, milk, butter, chocolate, and indifferent wine, we could get nothing in the way of eating and drinking at the different villages we stopped at. Our cavalcade was consequently delayed very much by being obliged to keep with the mules. We went along this very rough and rugged stony track, which could scarcely be called a road, for about two miles; we then crossed some hills. The country for about three miles from San Roque was quite open.

Here it was that we arrived at a mountain pass, which was very thickly planted on each side with brushwood, shrubs, and fern. So thick and impervious was the cover for those who might choose to lie in ambush, that a band of many men, at least amounting to sixty, might have rested concealed quite close to the path which we rode on. I am not disposed to be credulous relative to stories which travellers tell on the subject of hairbreadth escapes and adventures; but, certainly in this country, more than any in Europe, there is presented a more continuous series of scenes which one's fancy might suppose calculated to be the resort of outlawed marauders or wandering bandits. I had heard numerous accounts of parties having been waylaid, and of the danger consequent upon travelling in Spain, and the disposition of the country people is so prone to exaggerate, that every day adds a fresh instance to the catalogue of incidents which those who listen to them hear recorded.

The nature of the scenery which we were passing through was such as to recall to our mind the spirited groups of Salvator Rosa's coloring, or the sketches so graphically described by Cervantes or Le Sage.

We had not ridden further than a few yards when two men rushed from the cover with their firelocks to their shoulders, and called out "Alto, alto." Their action, their dress, the tone which they used made me conclude that they were bandits, and I rode up to one of our party, the only one who was armed (who carried a pair of pistols in his saddlebags), and asked him to lend me one of them. He had not time to answer before one of the men approached me with his firelock to his shoulder, and said, in Spanish, "I can hit a sombrero at two hundred yards distance." Another of our party advised me to answer him civilly, for, he said, "I see four men from different quarters who have their firelocks levelled at you." On this I demanded of him if he wanted money, or wished for something to drink. He seemed more indignant at this supposition, and informed us that he and his party were carbineros or revenue officers, who were stationed there to intercept any smugglers who might be proceeding into Spain. He said that he would be obliged in any case to detain our mules, and that from what I had said he should be obliged to keep us prisoners until he heard from the Governor at Algeciras. Then the rest of his party all made their appearance, each of them armed with firelock and pistols, and having with them the mules belonging to one of the parties of officers who had been going to Ronda. After a deal of altercation, we rode back with them and decided upon the plan of sending two of our party to Algeciras to the Governor, to ask him relative to the state of the case. It was vexatious being delayed, but there was no help for it.

When the two officers started we were about twelve miles from Algeciras. We then rode through a wild country much wooded with shrubs, groves of oleanders, orange groves, hedges of grapes, and other exotics, which are so rare and so much prized at home, and, crossing two rivers, we reached the sea beach at some distance from Algeciras. The mode of crossing the river was by large movable boats which had pullies attached to their frames on deck, and ropes which were fastened to the beams on shore at one end, and at the other to some leathern thongs which the men fastened to their shoulders, and towing them on board, soon passed the boat over from one bank to the other. When we were on the beach, the leader of the party of carbineros fired his piece at a gull which passed and wounded him, but the bird, who was hit in the wing, rested on the water.

We did not ride far before our two friends returned, and heartily welcome they were. They produced a paper signed by the Governor, a Spanish General at Algeciras, which ordered our instant liberation; they said that he was very indignant when he heard of our capture. The leader of the party of carbineros on this was satisfied, and gave up the pistols which he had captured from the officer who carried them, and bid us farewell. We then had to ride to San Roque, and on our way back, had much amusement in talking over our adventure. I was certainly very glad that we had offered no resistance to these people; but had we left our mules in their charge it would have been most inconvenient, and in fact I think scarcely safe. The party which preceded us had reason to be very thankful, for by our means they obtained safe carriage for their mules, which they would not have seen for some days, had it not been for our having come up with them. So we were obliged to take up our quarters for that night at the inn at San Roque, which was a nice clean place, and kept by an Englishman and his wife. It is altogether much more like an English house in its accommodation than a Spanish one, which, it is needless to add, is speaking much in its praise. In the evening at dinner the principal topic of conversation was this adventure of ours, and we heard some accounts of the modes of travelling in Spain, and the direful amount of smuggling which exists between its confines and Gibraltar, from an old inhabitant of the rock. He told us a story of his having been stopped, and having his horse taken from him, and being obliged to walk a number of miles. He never saw the horse again, and never heard a word of the robbers who stopped him, and yet he said that it happened at about six miles distance from San Roque.

The next morning the weather was certainly beautiful, and numerous

## parties came in from Gibraltar, to breakfast at San Roque, previous to

their long ride to Gaucin, a distance of thirty miles. The merriment that prevailed, the novelty of the expected scenes, the beauty of the wild romantic country they were about to enter, the good spirits and freedom of manners of all, made every party seem exhilarated and happy. Some were dressed in the style of the Spanish Majos, and armed with pistols and daggers. The generality wore light jackets, sashes, and trousers: also the sombrero was very much in use. The Spanish masta, that most useful appendage to a traveller's equipment, was over most of the saddles. We were all enabled to rest confident in the assurance of not being molested or waylaid upon the road, as, being the regular day for visitors to proceed to Ronda, the authorities had posted soldiers in different parts of the road. We came up with and passed many groups of Spaniards. The men were dressed with short jackets, sometimes laced, and having a vast number of small buttons, large red sash, leggings with rows of buttons all the way down on each side, and boltinas or leathern hose worn open. They all wore the sombrero, and most of them were armed with firelocks, slung from their shoulders. The colored mantas, as usual, were strapped on the saddles, in order to render the riding easy, to serve as a cloak in the event of rain, and to answer for bed-clothes on their arrival at the Fonda, where they were going to sleep. The ladies of the Spanish parties were mounted either on mules or barricos seated on cushions, which were strapped on pads, placed on the animals with two cross sticks on the shoulder and two on its crupper. The ladies all wore mantillas, and with the exception of the number of petticoats which they invariably wear, their dress did not vary much from that of English country people. We passed through a broken hilly country until we reached the cork-wood--that forest which stretches for about ten miles from east to west, a most picturesque spot, composed principally of cork-trees and some orange groves. At about ten miles from San Roque we arrived at the Bocea de Leones, that most dangerous pass, where the country was wild and the scenery romantic. There were stationed here some Spanish cavalry who guarded the pass. They were all fine able-bodied men, mounted on strong black horses; they wore blue double-breasted coats, buff belts, jack-boots, and large cocked hats. Past the cork-wood the country was broken and hilly, thickly planted with shrubs and evergreens; reeds and brushwood were also numerous. After this we got into a valley which was well cultivated, and the plantations lay thickly studded with oleanders and wild roses, and we saw frequently a white plant resembling the myrtle. The grounds had a gay and fresh appearance. When we were passing one of the fields where the laborers were at work we saw the curious manner in which the lower order of Spaniards eat--their mess of _gaypacho_ was in a large bowl, which was placed in the centre of a circle formed by about sixty men, and each supplied with a spoon; they then dipped the spoon into this capacious bowl, one after another, in regular routine, until the food was finished.

We crossed about twelve different streams in going through this valley, and soon after passing the last, we came to an orange grove, through which the ride was agreeable. The delicious fruit was in abundance, loading the trees on each side of the way, when we arrived at the foot of the hill on which Gaucin is situated, and had an ascent of nearly three miles, which was winding and rugged before we reached the road leading into the town. The difficulty of the road, the nearly impassable ascent of the cliffs, the circuitous track of the route, made it a matter of surprise to us that a town such as this we were approaching should have been built on a site where the supply of almost any articles of merchandise was so inconvenient. Groups of hundreds of children lined the passes calling out to us incessantly, "Oh tio om cherito." We entered the town and were long before we could accommodate ourselves with a night's lodging, which however at last we managed to procure at the private house of a man who called himself a captain in the Spanish army. It was very uncomfortable, although perhaps the best that could be had in the town, and they charged exorbitantly. The town is most picturesquely situated upon a lofty height. After our long ride, which was over such a rough and broken country, we did not feel much disposed to saunter about, but as the evening was far advanced we stayed within doors. We procured merely the means of cooking, and milk, eggs, and fowl; but the people made themselves very agreeable, and we had great amusement and laughter. We set off early the next morning and commenced by descending the lofty mound upon which the town is built, by as tortuous and harassing a path as that by which we approached it. However, after we had proceeded about two miles a vista of as romantic and pleasing a kind as any I had ever seen in any other country opened before me. In the continuous range of hills which lined the road, the vineyards covered both the sides and tops for several miles around, and the valleys in the distance were thickly planted with chestnut woods: further on, the vast range of the ronda sierra lined the horizon.

The outline of these mountains was bold and their scenery grand. Their sides and summits were studded throughout with towns, embosomed in the vast woods of chestnuts. They loomed beautiful and picturesque in the different intervals, and it wanted only water to render it an Elysium upon earth. After keeping this in view for several miles, and through a narrow and precipitous track, we came to a line of mountain scenery where the hills were altogether barren, except where, far down their sides, the corn fields were planted, where the road was much worse. We saw another town which went by the name of Gaucin also, and had a large redoubt to defend it, on its right flank; then the route circled round the mountains towards Attogate. We could not take our horses out of a foot pace, and very often I dismounted to lead mine down the craggy rocks. No horses but those shod in the Spanish fashion could manage to get through these descents. Towards the entrance of Attogate it was rather more uneven and dangerous, and I heard that one of the horsemen of the party that preceded us had been thrown. We passed through the miserable village, which was as wretched as any thing that I had ever seen even in Ireland, and went on still by a mountain path, and round by lofty hills, for about three miles. We then got sight of a very spacious plain, like an immense amphitheatre; to the west and to the east were the ranges of the Ronda hills, and to the north, as we approached, was a precipitous cliff of about two thousand feet in height, upon the summit of which was situated the town of Ronda. This seemed at the distance like a large perpendicular mass of earth. From the first place where we viewed it until our entrance to the town, the road or path was even more rugged than that which we traversed during most part of the day.

We entered the old town and passed the remains of many Moorish ruins, through a stony street, with houses built like most of the Spanish ones, and came to a large bridge which crossed a ravine through which the river flows. This bridge is at a height of about one thousand feet from the level of the river. We then passed through the plaza and came to the street where we found a lodging. As the bull fights were not to commence until four P.M., the next day, we had a little leisure to look about us. In the streets all the crowded shops showed that an unusual influx of strangers had come to visit the place. We saw some splendid houses; one I particularly remarked, which belonged to the Marquis de Salvittierra; its lofty gateway of stone covered with devices and figures in alto-relievo, reminded me, with the motto inscribed over the summit of its arch, of the entrance to an Eastern palace. My companion, who was taking a sketch of it, after he had finished his labor was standing with me admiring this arch, which had evidently been the work of the Saracen invaders, when we saw two ladies in mantillas, both daughters of the late Marquis, who were walking towards its entrance. We told them in Spanish that we were foreigners--Englishmen, who had come to Ronda to visit it during the time of the fair, and in place of being annoyed at our seeming forwardness in thus addressing them, they invited us into the house. We went through corridors, futios, and up the staircase, which was ornamented with some tolerable paintings, and entered into one of the salas, or large rooms. When we arrived the two graceful girls, one of whom was about twenty and the other about sixteen, stood with their arms folded before them, and their head slightly bowing. They had each large fans in their hands. Their dress was stylish; their slippers beautiful and small; their black lace mantillas waving round their hair; their dress completely of black, made their figures seem elegant and their countenances interesting. Their eyes had the deep languor of the southern aspect, more than the playful loveliness which frequently is seen with those of their age. Their features were regular, and their teeth, which they showed in smiling to us when we entered, were of dazzling whiteness. I recollected the Spanish words used in salutation, viz.: "A los fies di usted mi senorita," and on hearing it in the foreign accent it was great amusement to them, as they repeated it from one to the other. We conversed on various subjects relative to the town, the scenery, the approaching feasts, the bull fights, and after a little time took our leave, charmed with their agreeable and pleasing conversation. All the halls, corridors, and chambers of this palace were adorned with pictures, but the rooms were furnished rather scantily, as seems the Spanish custom.

In the evening we went to the Alameda, where we saw numerous groups of Spanish beauties promenading. Certainly no female figures which I have ever met with look better than the Spanish women. Their walk has been often noticed by different writers, and yet I have never read any description that does it justice. It is not the least like the affected wriggling gait of the French women or the frigid stride of the English, but a light, graceful step combining elegance and ease. They all seem to walk in the same way, and as it forms a great part of their daily occupation, it is no wonder that they should excel in it. Their language of the fans is another peculiarity of the country. I was shown it by a lady; it is a series of signs by which a lady lets the man who looks at her know what her wishes are, either of disdain, reproof, or encouragement, and is well known and recognized. I should recommend every gentleman who wishes to stay in the country to learn it.

We met our two charming friends, the Spanish Marquis's daughters, and walked with them on the Alameda until it was dark. The grounds are prettily laid out, and the view from the western height which overlooks the precipitous descent which I spoke of, viewed from a distance, is truly superb. There the winding stream and the country which bounds it embrace the foot of the perpendicular declivity.

The next day we heard nothing but preparations for the grand show, which was to take place in a circus exactly opposite the lodging we had got into. The Spanish cavalry, dressed in yellow coats and large jack-boots, lined the streets and played their band in front of our windows. All orders and classes, young and old, dressed in their gayest costume, were seen going about the town. The persons who lived in our house, who were a Spanish officer and his family, all got tickets of admission which we paid for. The box or partition which we hired, we took in common with the officers of another regiment, who had also ridden over from Gibraltar to witness the bull fights.

The arena when we entered was surrounded by a concourse of about 1,500 people, many of whom were ladies, but the majority of the meaner orders. The amphitheatre or plaza, as it is called by the Spaniards, was about the same size as that at Milan. The architecture had, however, no resemblance to that of the Italian city. The diameter was about 200 feet. Various writers have noticed the interest which the Spaniards take in these sights; and the multitude which surrounded the amphitheatre, seated either in the boxes or standing in the tiers, which were level with the arena of combat, all seemed eagerly expectant of the arrival of the different actors in the scene.

About a quarter past four in the afternoon, a trumpet sounded, and on the opening of the side doors, five picadors entered, followed at a few paces by three mules abreast, drawing a pole like a swingle tree, with a chain attached to it. They were mounted each on a sorry, miserable hack-horse. They were dressed in yellow jackets, covered with beads of silver and all sorts of ornaments; broad white sombreros, decked all round with ribbons, yellow chamois leather trowsers, stuffed out with cork and cotton, and coated inside the leather with iron plates. After the mules with their car, came the three matadors, in order. Their dress was perfectly superb; it was a close fitting majos dress, ornamented with silver lacing and beading. The names of these matadors were Montes, Espesa, and Ximenes. The first wore a beautiful rose-colored tunic, and his hair tied behind with ribbons, and crimson-colored leggings, &c. The dress of the second was of the same form, only varying in color, being all pink. The dress of the third was also the same in cut, but of a black color. These three, as well as the chulos, wore silk stockings. The chulos followed next in succession, and were dressed similar to the matadors, but not so grandly. They, as well as the matadors, all carried a large cloth, of silk texture, which was either red, blue, or yellow. The chulos were about five in number. They all advanced across the arena to where the Alcalde was seated, whilst the trumpets sounded, and as soon as these ceased to blow, the mules with their car left the arena by the same door as that by which they arrived, and the remainder of the procession dispersed to the different parts of the circus. After a lapse of two or three minutes, the centre door opened, and a furious black bull rushed in the most impetuous manner into the circus, and charged the different picadors. The first was not hurt, but the second and third picador had their horses ripped open. This was really a most revolting sight, for even after these cruel inflictions upon the poor horses, and when their entrails were hanging out, the picadors who rode them goaded them still onwards. The attendants in the circus joined in this act of cruelty. I do not think that Byron was far wrong in saying of these sights--

"Such the ungentle sport that oft invites The Spanish maid and cheers the Spanish swain. Nurtured in blood, betimes, his heart delights In vengeance, gloating on another's pain."

The fourth picador broke his spear in meeting the rushing of this bull. The bull bled much from this, and at the fifth charge he ripped up another horse. I watched every turn of the "hearty fight," and noted it in my tablet. Though not quite what I considered in my English ideas as _sport_, yet it was altogether so novel that I question if I ever joined in a hunt which gave me greater interest. It would, however, be extremely unjust to make any comparison between our manly sport and this cruel spectacle, or even to mention them in the same breath.

The chulos now began at intervals to provoke the bull by advancing towards him with their colored cloaks spread, and urging him to follow them. Their activity was most remarkable. Whenever the bull approached them close, they left their cloaks, and vaulted up the partition. One of them, whom I saw pressed quite close, jumped clean over the bull's head, and many such feats of agility we saw, both at this time and during the whole of the exhibition. After several efforts made to provoke him, the bull jumped over the wooden partition which separated the amphitheatre from the arena, a height of about five feet, called by the Spaniards the barrero. Of course this caused much terror and sensation, as many were standing quite close, and the rush was quite awful: however, after running half round, he jumped into the circus again. He then struck a picador, leaped the inclosure, and stayed a shorter time than at first, when he again jumped out, after several attempts on the part of the chulos to provoke him, and when he appeared wearied and fainter from his exertions and from the loss of blood.

On this the Alcalde caused the trumpets to sound and the banderilleros came in, each carrying two stakes about a yard long and fringed with short flags. They ran close to the animal, and plunged these stakes, called banderillos, into the bull's shoulders. Four of these were let fly and plunged into his flesh, and the trumpets again sounded for the matadors to stick him with a sword. Montes undertook this bull, and drawing a long sword, he stood before him until the bull got near enough, when he stuck him between the shoulders. The chulos provoked him a second time, and Montes again wounded him. The attack of the chulos was repeated, when Montes planted his sword in the animal's shoulder, but instantly withdrew it. Twice more the chulos came to the attack, and on each occasion the bull's shoulder was laid open by Montes, but at the sixth onslaught, the matador plunged his sword up to the hilt in the mangled flesh, and the bull fell. Then entered a man dressed like a chulo, with a dagger called a puntilla, and which gave to its owner the designation of a puntillero, and struck it in the neck of the prostrate animal, which immediately expired. When this was ascertained, the mules who had formed part of the opening procession, and had then withdrawn, reappeared, and the carcase of the bull was tied to the swingle tree, and dragged out of the arena.

Seven other bulls were brought out in succession, and attacked in the same manner, with a little variation in the details. The second bull charged two picadors, and did them no damage, but in a third charge he lamed a picador's horse, and received himself a serious gash in the neck. At a fourth charge he ripped open a horse's bowels, and coming on for the fifth and sixth time, threw the horse of another picador prostrate, and when he was on the ground, dug his horns into the bowels of the horse in a most frightful manner. I was never more forcibly reminded of Homer's description of the wolves, who in their charge upon the flock, seize with such fiendish fierceness #"kai enkata panta laphyssei."#

The matador who undertook the third bull had but one eye, and, to render the combat equal, one of the bull's eyes was blinded, an expedient worthy of its cruel inventors. I remarked nothing extraordinary about the baiting or slaughter of this bull, except that one of the chulos, in flying from him, had his clothes torn off, and narrowly escaped being gored.

The sixth bull was a very strong one. In his charges he disabled two picadors, both of whom were obliged to be removed from the arena, and one was perfectly senseless. The infuriated animal then charged a horse, which he killed instantaneously. The mules which I spoke of before, came in, and bore away the horse's carcase. Meanwhile the third matador, Ximenes, struck the bull with a sword up to the hilt, and killed him. He got his ear as a trophy, which he held up in triumph, and was saluted with innumerable vivas from the boxes of the Spanish Senoritas, some of whom wore black, and some white lace mantillas. "Lesa lo dey," also was shouted loudly, meaning, let him have the bull for his courage. As one of the classic writers has it, it turned out "Vox populi vox Dei," for the hero was awarded the prize.

The seventh bull was considered a slow one by the audience, and they commenced shouting out "fuego, fuego." So when the banderilleros were directed to throw their arrows, they fastened squibs and crackers in various parts of the arrow or banderillo, and, on their exploding, the frantic animal went racing round the arena, goaded to madness by the crackers, which continued to go off at every step. This bull was given over to Montes to kill, as a very difficult subject, and the intrepid matador made one or two attempts before he succeeded in closing with him. The last time he plunged his sword between his shoulders, and the bull dropped dead.

The eighth bull was killed after two thrusts, and then the large concourse of people flocked into the circus, and shortly afterwards, it being 7 o'clock, almost every one proceeded on to the Alameda. Next morning, the bull fights were resumed, and the sport, if I may call it by so mild a name, was considered superior. The matadors were differently dressed, and I remarked that all the picadors' horses were blindfolded. Montes, the first time of their contact, drove his sword into the neck of the first bull, a remarkably fine and very fierce animal, and it died in a few seconds afterwards. Four other bulls followed in order, and were all overcome. But the contest of the day was with the sixth bull. This savage animal killed a horse at his first charge. He then flew at another, and gored its sides in a frightful manner, completely lifting the rider off its back. The unfortunate picador was carried out, apparently dead. The bull then broke a horse's forearm, and charging another, ripped it open, though its rider escaped, and, being mounted afresh, behaved in the most heroic way, proving, himself, in fact, quite the lion of the day, whose feats excited the wonder and the applause of the multitude. He approached the box where we were seated, and threw his hat down. Showers of gold and dollars, amounting I should think to about 80, rewarded his compliments "a los Engless." He acknowledged this, by saying that our kindness should be always remembered. This bull was tormented a long time, and certainly the cruelty exhibited was most repulsive. The people quite exulted in the way they drew out the barbed darts from the creature's back, and thrust them in again, in every way that could torture him most. He was, however, at last killed by Montes, after a number of thrusts. After he had been struck the third time by Montes, the blood gushed out from his mouth in torrents, and in about seven seconds he died. In the baiting of the eighth bull, the same picador showed his dexterity. In the third charge which he made, he killed a horse. At first he brought the horse to the ground, and rolled him over as he would a cat; then, having dug his horns into his bowels for some time, at last left him for dead. Two other bulls followed, and with the death of the last, the spectacle terminated.

The third day was appropriated to the exhibition of the first rudiments of bull-fighting, and was a regular gala for the more youthful portion of the community. There is no parallel to this practice at present existing in any part of Europe. The prize-fighting which till lately prevailed in England, independent of the heartiness, and emulative courage of the combatants, was a barbarism of quite another kind, the excitement of which was enhanced by the scope it allowed for gambling. But in bull-fighting there is no chance of making money, nor are wagers ever laid upon the combatants. The spectacle, in fact, is more like the games that took place in imperial Rome, which argue a brutality of feeling worthy of those degraded and sensual times.

The third day there were no matadors, picadors, or chulos, but to the youthful part of the populace, it was one of the most pleasant. The bulls were allowed to enter, and were chased here and there by the populace with sticks. There was a good deal of childish folly and mountebank frivolity in these exhibitions. After the bull had been tormented for about twenty minutes, he was allowed to leave the circus, and they brought in a large tame one, with a bell round his neck, who was followed immediately by the young ones. One of the small bulls who was baited in this way, jumped over the barrier; but being much worried, soon jumped back.

The people moved about the circus, laughing and running, and seemed like schoolboys just allowed out to play, after the hours of study were finished. It seemed to me that the reputed gravity of the Spaniards did not at all extend to the lower orders, or to the women, whose mirth, animation, and playfulness of manner are very striking. The third bull was killed, and this one was the only sacrifice to the sanguinary tastes of the people.

Two large, high, basket-like gabions were afterwards brought in, when two men entered them up to the arms, and it was great diversion to the people to see the bulls, who were successively led into the arena, and whose horns were covered with leather, tossing these baskets about. The men who were inside had got banderillos, which they stuck in the bull's back when he came up to them. This lasted for some time, but at last the crowd grew weary of it, and dispersed.

On this day, Charpur (who certainly was the hero of the play), exhibited his dexterity as a chulos in the scene where the bull killing took place. One of the novices, who was being educated as a matador, drove his sword through the bull's neck, up to the hilt, transfixing a portion of the flesh, and leaving the blade dangling from it. Charpur went up to the bull, and, partly by his cloak and partly by his menaces, led him towards the barrera, when he seized hold of his tail, and holding on by his back, approached his neck, and coolly took the sword out, which he threw on the ground.

Such is the recreation, and such the feats, which are the theme of praise and topic of conversation amongst the Spanish people, who discourse of it as we do of the races at Ascot or Newmarket, or any other resort of the men on the turf. But I certainly did not see one English lady there, notwithstanding the numbers of Spanish mantillas which might have kept them in countenance.

"Yet are Spain's maids no race of Amazons, But formed for all the witching arts of love; In softness and in firmness far above Remoter females, famed for sickening prate."

This, by what I can learn, is the only remnant of the ancient fights which the Goths must have learned from the Romans; cruel and barbarous exhibitions, much "more honored in the breach than in the observance."

The next day we passed in walking about the town. We entered a church, which was built of soft granite, and the internal structure of which reminded me of some that I had seen in Florence and Milan. The arches were Gothic; the columns that supported the cupolas inside, and the different domes into which the aisle was divided, were massive and grand. The paintings seemed not to be from the hands of masters; and the altars, which at a distance seemed so gorgeous, had rather a tinsel glittering sort of appearance on near approach, such as would be called familiarly "gingerbread shows"--but it was very lofty and extensive.

We went next to see the old Moorish palace. Here a staircase, very much dilapidated, led from the interior to the edge of the small river which runs through the whole of Ronda. The town being divided by a very deep ravine, at the bottom of which the river flows, and which is crossed by three bridges. Down this staircase, damp, gloomy, and intricate as it was, we descended, and a guide preceded us with a candle, which, however, scarcely gave us light enough to see our way down the dark and slippery descent. It was constructed, according to the instruction of our cicerone, in the year 800, by one of the Moorish kings, who had it built for the purpose of supplying his palace with water. At the foot of it we came to a sort of window, which going through, we stepped out by the river's side. I ought to mention that at intervals we passed the remains of large chambers and other vaulted apartments, which must evidently have been prisons as dark and loathsome as any which Mrs. Radcliffe, or any other horror-loving romancer, could draw from a morbid imagination. We had to return the same way.

Quitting the palace, we passed through the part of the town which leads by the Marquis of Salvatierras' house, and went on to the fountain, which springs from the solid rock in the midst of the ravine. We then returned homewards. In the evening our fair hostess amused us with singing, dancing, and conversation. One night we had a party of Gipsies, or, as they are called, Rectanos, to dance. They are a curious set of beings, and their habits are as strange as their appearance. They, to me, were very plain, and of a brown color; the men very dark, with long matted beards. They danced the fandangoe, in which a man and woman get up, and moving castanets with their hands, performed such evolutions as, to speak in the mildest way, would greatly astonish English spectators. I was much disappointed with it, as I saw nothing graceful in their movements. All the time they were figuring and lifting their limbs, the party seated kept time with their castanets. At intervals they sang when they were dancing, which reminded me of the nautch-girls in India. They would drink nothing except Rosaria, a sort of stuff distilled from limes, partaking, however, of sweetmeats which were handed round to them, and which they relished so much, that they had a scramble for them. The dress of the women was very gaudy, and of various colors.

I did not think much of these people, but I like what I have seen of the Spanish ladies very much. Their manners are lively, unaffected, and pleasing. The night after this, we went to a party which was given by some officers of another regiment. Here again I had an opportunity of seeing the manners of the Spanish ladies, which were certainly very pleasing.

The next day at 11, we once more mounted our horses, and bidding adieu to our fair hostess, we left the town, the beauties of which have been amply dilated upon by different writers. We pursued the same route as that by which we came, and arrived at Gibraltar a few minutes after the evening gun gave notice of the time to shut the gates of the fortress.

From Chamber's Edinburgh Journal.

VAGARIES OF THE IMAGINATION.

"Fancy it burgundy," said Boniface of his ale--"only fancy it, and it is worth a guinea a quart!" Boniface was a philosopher: fancy can do much more than that. Those who fancy themselves laboring under an affection of the heart are not slow in verifying the apprehension: the uneasy and constant watching of its pulsations soon disturbs the circulation, and malady may ensue beyond the power of medicine. Some physicians believe that inflammation can be induced in any part of the body by a fearful attention being continually directed towards it; indeed it has been a question with some whether the stigmata (the marks of the wounds of our Saviour) may not have been produced on the devotee by the influences of an excited imagination. The hypochondriac has been known to expire when forced to pass through a door which he fancied too narrow to admit his person. The story of the criminal who, unconscious of the arrival of the reprieve, died under the stroke of a wet handkerchief, believing it to be the axe, is well known. Paracelsus held, "that there is in man an imagination which really affects and brings to pass the things that did not before exist; for a man by imagination willing to move his body moves it in fact, and by his imagination and the commerce of invisible powers he may also move another body." Paracelsus would not have been surprised at the feats of electro-biology. He exhorts his patients to have "a good faith, a strong imagination, and they shall find the effects." "All doubt," he says, "destroys work, and leaves it imperfect in the wise designs of nature: it is from faith that imagination draws its strength, it is by faith it becomes complete and realized; he who believeth in nature will obtain from nature to the extent of his faith, and let the object of this faith be real or imaginary, he nevertheless reaps similar results--and hence the cause of superstition."

So early as 1462 Pomponatus of Mantua came to the conclusion, in his work on incantation, that all the arts of sorcery and witchcraft were the result of natural operations. He conceived that it was not improbable that external means, called into action by the soul, might relieve our sufferings, and that there did, moreover, exist individuals endowed with salutary properties; so it might, therefore, be easily conceived that marvellous effects should be produced by the imagination and by confidence, more especially when these are reciprocal between the patient and the person who assists his recovery. Two years after, the same opinion was advanced by Agrippa in Cologne. "The soul," he said, "if inflamed by a fervent imagination, could dispense health and disease, not only in the individual himself, but in other bodies." However absurd these opinions may have been considered, or looked on as enthusiastic, the time has come when they will be gravely examined.

That medical professors have at all times believed the imagination to possess a strange and powerful influence over mind and body is proved by their writings, by some of their prescriptions, and by their oft-repeated direction in the sick-chamber to divert the patient's mind from dwelling on his own state and from attending to the symptoms of his complaint. They consider the reading of medical books which accurately describe the symptoms of various complaints as likely to have an injurious effect, not only on the delicate but on persons in full health; and they are conscious how many died during the time of the plague and the cholera, not only of these diseases but from the dread of them, which brought on all the fatal symptoms. So evident was the effect produced by the detailed accounts of the cholera in the public papers in the year 1849, that it was found absolutely necessary to restrain the publications on the subject. The illusions under which vast numbers acted and suffered have gone, indeed, to the most extravagant extent; individuals, not merely single but in communities, have actually believed in their own transformation. A nobleman of the court of Louis XIV. fancied himself a dog, and would pop his head out of the window to bark at the passengers; while the barking disease at the camp-meetings of the Methodists of North America has been described as "extravagant beyond belief." Rollin and Hecquet have recorded a malady by which the inmates of an extensive convent near Paris were attacked simultaneously every day at the same hour, when they believed themselves transformed into cats, and a universal mewing was kept up throughout the convent for some hours. But of all dreadful forms which this strange hallucination took, none was so terrible as that of the lycanthropy, which at one period spread through Europe; in which the unhappy sufferers, believing themselves wolves, went prowling round the forests uttering the most terrific howlings, carrying off lambs from the flocks, and gnawing dead bodies in their graves.

While every day's experience adds some new proof of the influence possessed by the imagination over the body, the supposed effect of contagion has become a question of doubt. Lately, at a meeting in Edinburgh, Professor Dick gave it as his opinion that there was no such thing as hydrophobia in the lower animals: "what went properly by that name was simply an inflammation of the brain; and the disease, in the case of human beings, was caused by an over-excited imagination, worked upon by the popular delusion on the effects of a bite by rabid animals." The following paragraph from the "Curiosities of Medicine" appears to justify this now common enough opinion:--"Several persons had been bitten by a rabid dog in the Faubourg St. Antoine, and three of them had died in our hospital. A report, however, was prevalent that we kept a mixture which would effectually prevent their fatal termination; and no less than six applicants who had been bitten were served with a draught of colored water, and in no one instance did hydrophobia ensue."

A remarkable cure through a similar aid of the imagination took place in a patient of Dr. Beddoes, who was at that time very sanguine about the effect of nitrous acid gas in paralytic cases. Anxious that it should be imbibed by one of his patients, he sent an invalid to Sir Humphry Davy, with a request that he would administer the gas. Sir Humphry put the bulb of the thermometer under the tongue of the paralytic, to ascertain the temperature of the body, that he might be sure whether it would be affected at all by the inhalation of the gas. The patient, full of faith from what the enthusiastic physician had assured him would be the result, and believing that the thermometer was what was to effect the cure, exclaimed at once that he felt better. Sir Humphry, anxious to see what imagination would do in such a case, did not attempt to undeceive the man, but saying that he had done enough for him that day, desired him to be with him the next morning. The thermometer was then applied as it had been the day before, and for every day during a fortnight--at the end of which time the patient was perfectly cured.

Perhaps there is nothing on record more curious of this kind than the cures unwittingly performed by Chief-Justice Holt. It seems that for a youthful frolic he and his companions had put up at a country inn; they, however, found themselves without the means of defraying their expenses, and were at a loss to know what they should do in such an emergency. Holt, however, perceived that the innkeeper's daughter looked very ill, and on inquiring what was the matter, learned that she had the ague; when, passing himself off for a medical student, he said that he had an infallible cure for the complaint. He then collected a number of plants, mixed them up with various ceremonies, and inclosed them in parchment, on which he scrawled divers cabalistic characters. When all was completed, he suspended the amulet round the neck of the young woman, and, strange to say, the ague left her and never returned. The landlord, grateful for the restoration of his daughter, not only declined receiving any payment from the youths, but pressed them to remain as long as they pleased. Many years after, when Holt was on the bench, a woman was brought before him, charged with witchcraft: she was accused of curing the ague by charms. All she said in defence was, that she did possess a ball which was a sovereign remedy in the complaint. The charm was produced and handed to the judge, who recognized the very ball which he had himself compounded in his boyish days, when out of mere fun he had assumed the character of a medical practitioner.

Many distinguished physicians have candidly confessed that they preferred confidence to art. Faith in the remedy is often not only half the cure, but the whole cure. Madame de Genlis tells of a girl who had lost the use of her leg for five years, and could only move with the help of crutches, while her back had to be supported: she was in such a pitiable state of weakness, the physicians had pronounced her case incurable. She, however, took it into her head that if she was taken to Notre Dame de Liesse she would certainly recover. It was fifteen leagues from Carlepont where she lived. She was placed in the cart which her father drove, while her sister sat by her supporting her back. The moment the steeple of Notre Dame de Liesse was in sight she uttered an exclamation, and said that her leg was getting well. She alighted from the car without assistance, and no longer requiring the help of crutches, she ran into the church. When she returned home the villagers gathered about her, scarcely believing that it was indeed the girl who had left them in such a wretched state, now they saw her running and bounding along, no longer a cripple, but as active as any among them.

Not less extraordinary are the cures which are effected by some sudden agitation. An alarm of fire has been known to restore a patient entirely, or for a time, from a tedious illness: it is no uncommon thing to hear of the victim of a severe fit of the gout, whose feet have been utterly powerless, running nimbly away from some approaching danger. Poor Grimaldi in his declining years had almost quite lost the use of his limbs owing to the most hopeless debility. As he sat one day by the bedside of his wife, who was ill, word was brought to him that a friend waited below to see him. He got down to the parlor with extreme difficulty. His friend was the bearer of heavy news which he dreaded to communicate: it was the death of Grimaldi's son, who, though reckless and worthless, was fondly loved by the poor father. The intelligence was broken as gently as such a sad event could be: but in an instant Grimaldi sprung from his chair--his lassitude and debility were gone, his breathing, which had for a long time been difficult, became perfectly easy--he was hardly a moment in bounding up the stairs which but a quarter of an hour before he had passed with extreme difficulty in ten minutes; he reached the bedside, and told his wife that their son was dead; and as she burst into an agony of grief he flung himself into a chair, and became instantaneously, as it has been touchingly described, "an enfeebled and crippled old man."

The imagination, which is remarkable for its ungovernable influence, comes into action on some occasions periodically with the most precise regularity. A friend once told us of a young relation who was subject to nervous attacks: she was spending some time at the seaside for change of air, but the evening-gun, fired from the vessel in the bay at eight o'clock, was always the signal for a nervous attack: the instant the report was heard she fell back insensible, as if she had been shot. Those about her endeavored if possible to withdraw her thoughts from the expected moment: at length one evening they succeeded, and while she was engaged in an interesting conversation the evening-gun was unnoticed. By and by she asked the hour, and appeared uneasy when she found the time had passed. The next evening it was evident that she would not let her attention be withdrawn: the gun fired, and she swooned away; and when revived, another fainting fit succeeded, as if it were to make up for the omission of the preceding evening! It is told of the great tragic actress Clairon, who had been the innocent cause of the suicide of a man who destroyed himself by a pistol-shot, that ever after, at the exact moment when the fatal deed had been perpetrated--one o'clock in the morning--she heard the shot. If asleep, it awakened her; if engaged in conversation, it interrupted her; in solitude or in company, at home or travelling, in the midst of revelry or at her devotions, she was sure to hear it to the very moment.

The same indelible impression has been made in hundreds of cases, and on persons of every variety of temperament and every pursuit, whether engaged in business, science or art, or rapt in holy contemplation. On one occasion Pascal had been thrown down on a bridge which had no parapet, and his imagination was so haunted for ever after by the danger, that he always fancied himself on the brink of a steep precipice overhanging an abyss ready to ingulf him. This illusion had taken such possession of his mind that the friends who came to converse with him were obliged to place the chairs on which they seated themselves between him and the fancied danger. But the effects of terror are the best known of all the vagaries of the imagination.

A very remarkable case of the influence of imagination occurred between sixty and seventy years since in Dublin, connected with the celebrated frolics of Dalkey Island. It is said Curran and his gay companions delighted to spend a day there, and that with them originated the frolic of electing "a king of Dalkey and the adjacent islands," and appointing his chancellor and all the officers of state. A man in the middle rank of life, universally respected, and remarkable alike for kindly and generous feelings and a convivial spirit, was unanimously elected to fill the throne. He entered with his whole heart into all the humors of the pastime, in which the citizens of Dublin so long delighted. A journal was kept, called the "Dalkey Gazette," in which all public proceedings were inserted, and it afforded great amusement to its conductors. But the mock pageantry, the affected loyalty, and the pretended homage of his subjects, at length began to excite the imagination of "King John," as he was called. Fiction at length became with him reality, and he fancied himself "every inch a king." His family and friends perceived with dismay and deep sorrow the strange delusion which nothing could shake: he would speak on no subject save the kingdom of Dalkey and its government, and he loved to dwell on the various projects he had in contemplation for the benefit of his people, and boasted of his high prerogative: he never could conceive himself divested for one moment of his royal powers, and exacted the most profound deference to his kingly authority. The last year and a half of his life were spent in Swift's hospital for lunatics. He felt his last hours approaching, but no gleam of returning reason marked the parting scene: to the very last instant he believed himself a king, and all his cares and anxieties were for his people. He spoke in high terms of his chancellor, his attorney-general, and all his officers of state, and of the dignitaries of the church: he recommended them to his kingdom, and trusted they might all retain the high offices which they now held. He spoke on the subject with a dignified calmness well becoming the solemn leave-taking of a monarch; but when he came to speak of the crown he was about to relinquish for ever, his feelings were quite overcome, and the tears rolled down his cheeks: "I leave it," said he, "to my people, and to him whom they may elect as my successor!" This remarkable scene is recorded in some of the notices of deaths for the year 1788. The delusion, though most painful to his friends, was far from an unhappy one to its victim: his feelings were gratified to the last while thinking he was occupied with the good of his fellow-creatures--an occupation best suited to his benevolent disposition.

From Household Words.

THE FRENCH FLOWER GIRL.

I was lingering listlessly over a cup of coffee on the Boulevard des Italiens, in June. At that moment I had neither profound nor useful resources of thought. I sat simply conscious of the cool air, the blue sky, the white houses, the lights, and the lions, which combine to render that universally pleasant period known as "after dinner," so peculiarly agreeable in Paris.

In this mood my eyes fell upon a pair of orbs fixed intently upon me. Whether the process was effected by the eyes, or by some pretty little fingers, simply, I cannot say; but, at the same moment, a rose was insinuated into my button-hole, a gentle voice addressed me, and I beheld, in connection with the eyes, the fingers, and the voice, a girl. She carried on her arm a basket of flowers, and was, literally, nothing more nor less than one of the _Bouquetières_ who fly along the Boulevards like butterflies, with the difference that they turn their favorite flowers to a more practical account.

Following the example of some other distracted _décorés_, who I found were sharing my honors, I placed a piece of money--I believe, in my case, it was silver--in the hand of the girl; and, receiving about five hundred times its value, in the shape of a smile and a "_Merci bien Monsieur!_" was again left alone--("desolate," a Frenchman would have said)--in the crowded and carousing Boulevard.

To meet a perambulating and persuasive _Bouquetière_ who places a flower in your coat and waits for a pecuniary acknowledgment, is scarcely a rare adventure in Paris; but I was interested--unaccountably so--in this young girl: her whole manner and bearing was so different and distinct from all others of her calling. Without any of that appearance which, in England, we are accustomed to call "theatrical," she was such a being as we can scarcely believe in out of a ballet. Not, however, that her attire departed--except, perhaps, in a certain coquettish simplicity--from the conventional mode: its only decorations seemed to be ribbons, which also gave a character to the little cap that perched itself with such apparent insecurity upon her head. Living a life that seemed one long summer's day--one floral _fête_--with a means of existence that seemed so frail and immaterial--she conveyed an impression of _unreality_. She might be likened to a Nymph, or a Naiad, but for the certain something that brought you back to the theatre, intoxicating the senses, at once, with the strange, indescribable fascinations of hot chandeliers--close and perfumed air--footlights, and fiddlers.

Evening after evening I saw the same girl--generally at the same place--and, it may be readily imagined, became one of the most constant of her _clientelle_. I learned, too, as many facts relating to her as could be learned where most was mystery. Her peculiar and persuasive mode of disposing of her flowers (a mode which has since become worse than vulgarized by bad imitators) was originally her own graceful instinct--or whim, if you will. It was something new and natural, and amused many, while it displeased none. The sternest of stockbrokers, even, could not choose but be decorated. Accordingly, this new Nydia of Thessaly went out with her basket one day, awoke next morning, and found herself famous.

Meantime there was much discussion, and more mystification, as to who this Queen of Flowers could be--where she lived--and so forth. Nothing was known of her except her name--Hermance. More than one adventurous student--you may guess I am stating the number within bounds--traced her steps for hour after hour, till night set in--in vain. Her flowers disposed of, she was generally joined by an old man, respectably clad, whose arm she took with a certain confidence, that sufficiently marked him as a parent or protector; and the two always contrived sooner or later, in some mysterious manner, to disappear.

After all stratagems have failed, it generally occurs to people to ask a direct question. But this in the present case was impossible. Hermance was never seen except in very public places--often in crowds--and to exchange twenty consecutive words with her, was considered a most fortunate feat. Notwithstanding, too, her strange, wild way of gaining her livelihood, there was a certain dignity in her manner which sufficed to cool the too curious.

As for the directors of the theatres, they exhibited a most appropriate amount of madness on her account; and I believe that at several of the theatres, Hermance might have commanded her own terms. But only one of these miserable men succeeded in making a tangible proposal, and he was treated with most glorious contempt. There was, indeed, something doubly dramatic in the _Bouquetière's_ disdain of the drama. She who _lived_ a romance could never descend to act one. She would rather be Rosalind than Rachel. She refused the part of Cerito, and chose to be an Alma on her own account.

It may be supposed that where there was so much mystery, imagination would not be idle. To have believed all the conflicting stories about Hermance, would be to come to the conclusion that she was the stolen child of noble parents, brought up by an _ouvrier_; but that somehow her father was a tailor of dissolute habits, who lived a contented life of continual drunkenness, on the profits of his daughter's industry;--that her mother was a deceased duchess--but, on the other hand, as alive, and carried on the flourishing business of a _blanchisseuse_. As for the private life of the young lady herself, it was reflected in such a magic mirror of such contradictory impossibilities, in the delicate discussion held upon the subject, that one had no choice but disbelieve every thing.

One day a new impulse was given to this gossip by the appearance of the _Bouquetière_ in a startling hat of some expensive straw, and of a make bordering on the ostentatious. It could not be doubted that the profits of her light labors were sufficient to enable her to multiply such finery to almost any extent, had she chosen; but in Paris the adoption of a bonnet or a hat, in contradistinction to the little cap of the _grisette_, is considered an assumption of a superior grade, and unless warranted by the "position" of the wearer, is resented as an impertinence. In Paris, indeed, there are only two classes of women--those with bonnets and those without; and these stand in the same relation to one another, as the two great classes into which the world may be divided--the powers that be, and the powers that want to be. Under these circumstances, it may be supposed that the surmises were many and marvellous. The little _Bouquetière_ was becoming proud--becoming a lady;--but how? why? and above all--where? Curiosity was never more rampant, and scandal never more inventive.

For my part, I saw nothing in any of these appearances worthy, in themselves, of a second thought; nothing could have destroyed the strong and strange interest which I had taken in the girl; and it would have required something more potent than a straw hat--however coquettish in crown, and audacious in brim--to have shaken my belief in her truth and goodness. Her presence, for the accustomed few minutes, in the afternoon or evening, became to me--I will not say a necessity, but certainly a habit; and a habit is sufficiently despotic when

"A fair face and a tender voice have made me"--

I will not say "mad and blind," as the remainder of the line would insinuate--but most deliciously in my senses, and most luxuriously wide awake! But to come to the catastrophe--

"One morn we missed _her_ in the accustomed spot"--

Not only, indeed, from "accustomed" and probable spots, but from unaccustomed, improbable, and even impossible spots--all of which were duly searched--was she missed. In short, she was not to be found at all. All was amazement on the Boulevards. Hardened old _flaneurs_ turned pale under their rouge, and some of the younger ones went about with drooping moustaches, which, for want of the _cire_, had fallen into the "yellow leaf."

A few days sufficed, however, for the cure of these sentimentalists. A clever little monkey at the Hippodrome, and a gentleman who stood on his head while he ate his dinner, became the immediate objects of interest, and Hermance seemed to be forgotten. I was one of the few who retained any hope of finding her, and my wanderings for that purpose, without any guide, clue, information, or indication, seem to me now something absurd. In the course of my walks, I met an old man, who was pointed out to me as her father--met him frequently, alone. The expression of his face was quite sufficient to assure me that he was on the same mission--and with about as much chance of success as myself. Once I tried to speak to him; but he turned aside, and avoided me with a manner that there could be no mistaking. This surprised me, for I had no reason to suppose that he had ever seen my face before.

A paragraph in one of the newspapers at last threw some light on the matter. The _Bouquetière_ had never been so friendless or unprotected as people had supposed. In all her wanderings she was accompanied, or rather followed, by her father; whenever she stopped, then he stopped also; and never was he distant more than a dozen yards. I wonder that he was not recognised by hundreds, but I conclude he made some change in his attire or appearance, from time to time. One morning this strange pair were proceeding on their ramble as usual, when passing through a rather secluded street, the _Bouquetière_ made a sudden bound from the pavement, sprung into a post-chaise, the door of which stood open, and was immediately whirled away, as fast as four horses could tear--leaving the old man alone with his despair, and the basket of flowers.

Three months have passed away since the disappearance of the _Bouquetière_; but only a few days since I found myself one evening very dull at one of those "brilliant receptions," for which Paris is so famous. I was making for the door, with a view to an early departure, when my hostess detained me, for the purpose of presenting to me a lady who was monopolizing all the admiration of the evening--she was the newly-married bride of a young German Baron of great wealth, and noted for a certain wild kind of genius, and utter scorn of conventionalities. The next instant I found myself introduced to a pair of eyes that could never be mistaken. I dropped into a vacant chair by their side, and entered into conversation. The Baronne observed that she had met me before, but could not remember where, and in the same breath asked me if I was a lover of flowers.

I muttered something about loving beauty in any shape, and admired a bouquet which she held in her hand.

The Baronne selected a flower, and asked me if it was not a peculiarly fine specimen. I assented; and the flower, not being redemanded, I did not return it. The conversation changed to other subjects, and shortly afterwards the Baronne took her leave with her husband. They left Paris next day for the Baron's family estate, and I have never seen them since.

I learned subsequently that some strange stories had obtained circulation respecting the previous life of the Baronne. Whatever they were, it is very certain that this or some other reason has made the profession of _Bouquetière_ most inconveniently popular in Paris. Young ladies of all ages that can, with any degree of courtesy, be included in that category, and of all degrees of beauty short of the hunch-back, may be seen in all directions intruding their flowers with fatal pertinacity upon inoffensive loungers, and making war upon button-holes that never did them any harm. The youngest of young girls, I find, are being trained to the calling, who are all destined, I suppose, to marry distinguished foreigners from some distant and facetious country.

I should have mentioned before, that a friend calling upon me the morning after my meeting with the Baronne, saw the flower which she had placed in my hand standing in a glass of water on the table. An idea struck me: "Do you know anything of the language of flowers?" I asked.

"Something," was the reply.

"What, then, is the meaning of this?"

"SECRECY."

From the Antheneum

THE THREE ERAS OF OTTOMAN HISTORY[6]

So much has been said and written of late respecting the decline and decrepitude of the Ottoman Empire, that most persons believe that there is nothing to prevent a Russian army from marching up to the gates of Constantinople, and taking possession of the city, except the resistance which might be offered by the other powers of Europe to such an extension of the Russian dominions. Many of our readers will therefore be surprised to learn that the army of the Sultan is at present in a more efficient state than it has been for the last two centuries; and that in the event of a war breaking out between Russia and Turkey, the latter would probably be able to resist, single-handed, the attacks of her formidable and ambitions neighbor. This is the view which Mr. Skene endeavors to establish in the pamphlet before us; and from information which we have ourselves received from other quarters, we entirely agree with the conclusion to which Mr. Skene has come,--that "the power of conquest, possessed by the only state with which there appears the slightest possibility of a rupture taking place, is in general as notoriously exaggerated as that of defence on the part of Turkey is commonly undervalued." To enable the reader to obtain an accurate idea of the present condition of the Ottoman army, Mr. Skene gives a brief but able review of its history. He divides his narrative into three eras: the first contains an account of the military history of Turkey till the destruction of the Janissaries in 1825; the second comprises the period of transition, which followed the destruction of the Janissaries; and the third comprehends the formation of the Nizam, or the regular army of the present day. The annals of the first of these eras are, in fact, the history of the Turkish conquests, and of the decline of the empire.

[6] _The Three Eras of Ottoman History; a Political Essay on the late Reforms of Turkey, considered principally as affecting her Position in the event of a War taking place._ By J. H. SKENE, Esq. Chapman & Hall.

"Through the Janissaries Turkey rose--by them she was about to fall; and without the Nizam, or regular army of Sultan Abdul Medjid, which exists as a consequence of the destruction of the Janissaries, she would never have had any chance of rising again, or even of saving her political independence."

The Janissaries were organized by Sultan Orkhan in the fourteenth century. They bore the title of _Yenitsheri_, or New Troops, in contradistinction to the previous armies, which had been raised by levies of irregular troops, as occasion required. They were a well-disciplined body of troops, and they constituted the principal force of the empire. It was to their valor and efficiency that the Turkish empire owed its existence; and they were almost uniformly successful in all the great battles which they fought till their defeat by Montecuculi at St. Gothard, in 1664. This defeat was the forerunner of a long series of disasters.

"Their career of conquest was over, and it was a career altogether without a parallel in history. Generation after generation had advanced without ever retrograding a single step. A vast empire had arisen out of the hereditary valor and systematic discipline of a portion of the army. It was not the creation of the military genius of an individual like that of Alexander the Great or Napoleon Buonaparte, but it was the result of a successful organization, assisted by the inherent bravery of the Turkish race, which enabled their sultans to follow up from father to son the ambitious scheme of the founder of the dynasty. But, at the close of that era of conquest, the organization of the Janissaries had become corrupt, the prestige of almost invariable good fortune had disappeared, and their internal discipline was declining fast, while their indomitable valor had degenerated into overweening pride, seditious turbulence towards the government, and cruel tyranny over the population."

Towards the end of last century the insubordination and tyranny of the Janissaries had reached their highest point. The dispersion of this formidable body had become absolutely necessary for the salvation of the Ottoman empire; and it was at length effected by Sultan Mahmoud II..

"The value of the Janissaries as a regular army had been sufficiently tested, and the time had now arrived when Sultan Mahmoud II. judged it expedient to cut the Gordian knot. He issued a proclamation, obliging all his troops to submit anew to the discipline which they had cast off for more than a century and a half. The Janissaries refused obedience. The Sultan unfolded the Sacred Standard of the Empire, and placing himself, with his only son and heir, beside it, he appealed to the patriotism of those around him. He drew his dagger, and said, in a loud voice,

"'Do my subjects wish to save the Empire from the humiliation of yielding to a band of seditious miscreants, or do they prefer that I should put an end to that Empire by here stabbing my son and myself in order to rescue it from the disgrace of being trampled upon by traitors?'

"He then ordered that the standard should be planted on the Atmeidan, or Hippodrome; crowds of people, from the highest to the lowest class of society, headed by the _Ullema_, or magistrates, and the _Softa_, or students, assembled round the standard, and, having heard what the Sultan had said from those whom he had addressed, the mob, excited by enthusiasm, hurried away to carry the alarm through the town. All who possessed or could procure arms prepared them, and rushed to attack the barracks of the Janissaries. The corps of artillery, having torn off the badges, which were also worn by those abhorred regiments, that all appearance of fellowship with them might at once be destroyed, commenced the onslaught. Three hours, with 4000 artillerymen and students, incited by that resolute will, which had foreseen and provided for every possible casualty during eighteen years of apparent submission to the tyranny of a _caste_, sufficed to annihilate the military ascendancy which had once made the sovereigns of Europe tremble abroad, as it had the sultans at home. The attack, however, was directed against only one side of the square, and the other three, as well as the neighboring gate of the town, were purposely left open, with the view that those of the Janissaries who did not wish to resist the Sultan's order might escape unharmed; and quarter was given to all who chose to submit. Similar orders having been simultaneously sent to every part of the empire where Janissaries were stationed, the same conditions were offered to 150,000 individuals affiliated to the corps. Of these only 3600 refused them, and they were the most incorrigible of the chiefs. Having been made prisoners they were tried by a regular court of justice, and it was only necessary to prove their identity in order to condemn them, as the Sultan had carefully compiled the proofs of their respective crimes during many years. Eighteen hundred of them were executed, of whom 600 at Constantinople, 1200 being put to death in the provinces; and the remainder were exiled. Although it must have been an appalling sight to behold those 600 corpses lying on the Atmeidan, one cannot help admiring the patriotism elicited on that occasion; when the Janissaries perceived it, they were stupified by the unexpected excitement of the people; and many fled, fully convinced of the impossibility of resisting those over whom they had hitherto domineered with impunity."

The Sultan now set himself to replace the Janissaries by other regular troops; but Russian ambition did not give him time to organize a new army, and he was obliged to fight with his young and undisciplined recruits against the "veteran warrior-slaves of the Czar." The Ottoman army was accordingly defeated; and the war was brought to a close by the disastrous treaty of Adrianople. His successor, the present sultan, Abdul Medjid, has been more fortunate. He has enjoyed several years of peace, which have enabled him to form a powerful and well-disciplined army, of which Mr. Skene gives us a valuable and interesting account. It was established at the beginning of the year 1842:

"It is divided into six separate armies, called _Ordu_ in Turkish. Each of these consists of two services, the Active, or _Nizamia_, and the Reserve, or _Rédiff_. The former contains two corps, under the command of their respective lieutenant-generals (_Férik_); and the latter, also two corps, commanded in time of peace by a brigadier (_Liva_); the whole _Ordu_ being under the orders of a field-marshal (_Mushir_). The general staff of each army is composed of a commander-in-chief, two lieutenant-generals, three brigadiers of infantry, one of whom commands the reserve, two brigadiers of cavalry, and one brigadier of artillery. In each corps there are three regiments of infantry, two of cavalry, and one of artillery, with thirty-three guns. The total strength of these twelve regiments of the active force is 30,000 men, but it is diminished in time of peace by furlough to an effective strength of about 25,000 men in three of the six armies, and of 15,000 in the other three, in consequence of the recruiting system being as yet incomplete in its application all over the Turkish Empire. The whole establishment of this branch amounts, therefore, to 180,000 men, belonging to the

## active service, but its effective strength is at present 123,000. The

reserve of four of the six armies consists in eleven regiments--six of infantry, four of cavalry, and one of artillery; composing a force of 212,000 effective soldiers, while the other two armies have not yet their reserve of soldiers who have served five years. In time of war, however, the reserve would form two corps of 25,000 men in each army; giving a total of 300,000 when this establishment shall have been completed. The two services, therefore, as they now stand, form an effective force of 335,000 men; and when their full strength shall have been filled up it will amount to 480,000. Besides these six armies there are four detached corps; one in the Island of Crete, consisting of three regiments of infantry and one of cavalry, in all 11,000 men; another in the pashalik of Tripoli in Africa, composed of one regiment of infantry and one of cavalry, about 5,000 strong; a third at Tunis of the same strength; and a fourth, which is the central artillery corps, formed of a brigade of sappers and miners with engineer officers, the veteran artillery brigade, and the permanent artillery garrisons of the fortresses on the Hellespont, the Bosphorus, the Danube, in Serbia, on the Adriatic, the coast of Asia Minor, in the islands of the Archipelago, and on the southern shores of the Black Sea; in all 9,000 men. These four corps raise the effective strength of the standing army to 365,000 men. Besides this addition, another augmentation of 32,000 men will be realized by the submission of Bosnia and Northern Albania to the new system; and a further increase of 40,000 men, whom Serbia has engaged to furnish, may be calculated, as well as 18,000 men serving in Egypt, who are destined to reinforce the reserve of the fifth army. The marines, sailors, and workmen, enrolled in brigades, amount to 34,000 men; and the police force, picketed all over the Empire, is nearly 30,000 strong. The grand total of armed men at the disposal of Turkey, in the event of her existing resources being called into play, may, therefore, be quoted at no less than 664,000 men, without having recourse to occasional levies, which are more easily and efficiently realized in Turkey than in any other country."

The service is popular; the troops are well paid, and their material comforts are well provided for:

"The rations consist of meat, bread, rice, and vegetables in abundance every day, besides butter or oil to cook them with.... The military hospitals might serve as a pattern of cleanliness to the first armies of the world, and the medical officers are now perfectly efficient, some of them having studied at European universities, others having become proficients in their art at the medical college of Constantinople, and a few being foreigners. The health of the troops is consequently excellent; so much so, that on one occasion when 50 men out of 3450 were in hospital, it appeared so alarming to the staff of the garrison that a general consultation was held to decide on what steps should be taken to oppose the progress of the sickness. One man in every seventy is no unusual occurrence in the hospitals of the British army; and as for the Russians, they thought little of 12,000 who died at Bucharest in 1829, 10,000 at Varna, and 6000 at Adrianople. The Turkish clothing is excellent; it is strong and warm."

Respecting their probable efficiency in the field, Mr. Skene remarks:

"In their evolutions the Turkish soldiers are rapid, especially the cavalry and artillery, whose horses are excellent; but there may perhaps be some room for improvement in their steadiness. It has been remarked of late at Bucharest, where the Turkish and Russian armies of occupations have their head-quarters, and are consequently often reviewed, that the latter were infinitely slower than the former, and that their light infantry drill was far inferior to that of the Turks, but when moving in line or open column, the Russians, stiff as planks and dreading the lash, kept their distances and dressing somewhat better than the Turks. It may be added in illustration of the respective solicitude of the two armies for the health of the men, that, after one of these field days, three hundred Russians went to the hospital in consequence of exposure to the sun, and one hundred and sixty of them died, while there has not been a single instance of the kind amongst the Turkish troops.

"With such an army as this, formed by a nation whose inherent bravery has never been impugned even by its most prejudiced detractors, it will readily be allowed that, were the campaign of 1829 against the Russians to be fought over again now, the result would be very different, considering how many years the regular troops of the Sultan have been in training, and also how undeniably the Russian army has been falling off, for it was not then to be compared with what it had been in 1815, and it is not now equal to what it was in 1829."

The reserve of the army is organized in the following manner:

"The reserve of the Turkish army is organized in a peculiar manner. It is composed of soldiers who have already served five years in the

## active force, and who are allowed to remain in their native provinces

on furlough, and without pay, for seven years more, during which they assemble for one month of each year at the local head-quarters of their regiment, for the purpose of being drilled; and they then receive their pay, as well as when they are called into active service in time of war. This measure, which was dictated by a spirit of economy, has been eminently successful, inasmuch as a considerable additional force is thus placed at the Sultan's command, without its being a continual burden to the State; and the efficiency of that force has been fully demonstrated of late, when an army of 62,000 men was assembled by Turkey in the space of six weeks, on the occasion of the interruption of her amicable relations with Russia and Austria on account of the Hungarian refugees. In another month, 200,000 men of the _Rédiff_ might have been collected at Constantinople had they been required; and it furnished matter for astonishment to the many foreigners in that capital to behold a thoroughly drilled and disciplined army thus extemporized in a camp, to which a number of mere peasants in appearance had been seen flocking from their villages.

"This system is rendered still more complete by the practice of recruiting regiments from the same districts, in order that, when their five years of active service shall have elapsed, the soldiers may remain together: and the confusion occasioned by embodying pensioners in other countries is avoided in Turkey, where the officers, non-commissioned officers, staff, and rank and file of a regiment continue united, whether on active service or as forming a part of the reserve. They are engaged in agricultural pursuits, or in trade, during their seven years of furlough, being periodically mustered for military exercise, and always ready to move in a body on any point where reinforcements may be necessary, while a salutary feeling of _esprit de corps_ is maintained by making such regiment a separate and distinct body of men, raised in the same locality, and most of its members being personally known to each other."

Mr. Skene does not give us any information respecting the skill and ability of the superior officers. On this point we must confess we are not without apprehensions; for however excellent and efficient the troops of the line may be, their valor and discipline will be thrown away, if the higher officers--which we suspect to be the case--are inferior to those in the Russian service.

The threats of Austria give all this subject importance. Honest Christendom for the first time cries, God for the Turk!

From "The Adventures of a Soldier in Mexico," in the United Service Magazine.

THE CAPTAIN AND THE NEGRO.

A rather ludicrous circumstance, which occurred while we lay at Newport, helped to enliven the usual monotony of a ship's deck while in harbor. A comical sort of a fellow, of the name of Morris, belonging to one of the companies on board, who used to sing Nigger songs, and who, being a very good mimic, could act the Nigger admirably, resolved to turn his talents to account by assuming the character while in harbor, and passing himself off among his comrades, except a few who were in his confidence, as a black cook belonging to the ship--his twofold motive for thus "working the dodge," as he styled it, being partly the fun he expected from the mystification of the men and officers, and

## partly that he might be allowed to bring whisky into the ship, there

being no hindrance to the ship's crew bringing goods on board, as our sentries could not interfere with them. Borrowing, therefore, an old pair of canvas trousers, a Guernsey shirt, and tarpaulin hat from a sailor, and thoroughly engraining his face and hands with the sooty composition requisite to give him the true Ethiopian complexion, he became quite invulnerable to detection by his coat of darkness. In this disguise, he rolled about the deck during the whole forenoon in a

## partial state of intoxication, and came and went between the vessel

and shore, carrying baskets and parcels of suspicious import with the most perfect impunity. Towards evening, he began to sing snatches of Nigger songs, varying the exhibition with a "flare-up" jawing match with some of the soldiers, in the sort of gibberish and broken English so peculiar to the woolly-headed sons of Ham. This comedy afforded considerable amusement, especially to those of his comrades in the secret of his disguise. As he was dexterous in the tongue fence of those encounters of rude wit, and knowing the chinks in the armor of his opponents, he was sometimes able, by a seemingly careless though cunning thrust, to administer a sickener to their vanity, which was the more galling as seeming to come from a dirty and half-drunken Nigger. "Ah, soger," he would say to some poor fellow whom he saw casting a longing eye towards the busy thoroughfares of the city; "captain not let you go ashore, eh? Too bad, eh? much sooner be black ship's cook than soger." "What's that you say, you Nigger?" would most probably be the reply of the soldier, not being in the best temper, and rather indignant at the idea of being an object of commiseration to a Nigger. "Who you call Nigger, eh? Nigger yourself, sar, more Nigger, a good sight, than ship's cook, sar; ship's cook go shore when he please, and get drunk like gentleman, sar; you a white soger Nigger, me black ship's cook Nigger--dat all de difference." Then, as if in soliloquy, in a deprecatory tone, "Eh! by Jorze, boff poor Niggers; soger mos' as 'specable as colored Nigger when he keep heself sober and behave 'screetly, like color gemman." Stung and irritated by the mock sympathy of the Nigger, the soldier would now be for taking a summary revenge out of his ignoble carcase, when some of the darkey's friends would interpose, declaring that he was a good fellow, and they would not see him ill-used. In the mean time, Morris was supposed by the orderly-sergeant of his company to be absent in town, and as such reported to the captain. Thus far, all had gone on swimmingly; but there was a bit of a rather unpleasant surprise preparing for him as the _denouement_ to this farce, which he had acted with so much success, which had probably not entered into his conception of the character, but mightily increased the dramatic effect of the representation as a whole.

The captain of his company, who was a bit of a humorist, either having detected the masquerader himself, or having been informed by some busy person of the strange metamorphosis which one of his men had undergone, it occurred to him that he had an opportunity of giving him a taste of Nigger discipline, that might make him feel more vividly the character he had been representing with so much applause. Sauntering, accordingly, along the deck, with his hands behind him, until he arrived opposite the circle where Morris was exhibiting his antics, he deliberately stepped forward and seized him by the collar, and, pulling out a raw cowhide from behind his back, he began to vigorously belabor poor darkey's shoulders. "O Lor, massa! O Golly! What you trike poor debil for? What hell dis?" shouted Morris, who had no idea that he was discovered, and was willing to submit to a moderate degree of chastisement rather than drop his disguise at that particular juncture. "You infernal grinning scoundrel," cries the captain, still vigorously applying the cowhide, "I have been watching you quarrelling with and aggravating my men all this afternoon; what do you mean, you black rascal, eh? Curse your ugly black countenance, I'll beat you to a jelly, you scoundrel." As he still continued his discipline with the cowhide, showing no symptoms of speedily leaving off, Morris, who was smarting with pain, at last began to think more of preserving his skin than his incognito, and called out lustily, "Captain! I say--stop! I am no Nigger--I am a soldier!" At this there was a general burst of laughter from the soldiers, who crowded round, and seemed to enjoy the scene amazingly; those who did not know that Morris was actually a soldier laughing still more obstreperously at the seeming absurdity of the Nigger's assertion. The captain, though evidently tickled, seemed in no hurry to let him go. "Do you hear the impudence of the black rascal? he says he is a soldier!" said the captain, addressing the men who were standing round. "There, does he look like a soldier!" he continued, as he turned him round for inspection. "Go along, you black rascal, and don't let me catch you among my men again, or I will certainly serve you out with a few more of the same sort." So saying, and administering a few parting salutations of the cowhide as he released him, the captain walked off, chuckling to himself at the joke, which I saw him relating afterwards to some of his brother officers, to their infinite mirth, if one might judge from the peals of laughter which his story elicited. In the mean time, Morris was fain to get rid of his Nigger character as quickly as possible: and having, with the aid of warm water and soap, effected this, he made his appearance on deck, and reported himself as having been asleep in the hold when the roll was called. This the sergeant reported to the captain, who, satisfied, it is probable, with the punishment he had administered with the cowhide, affected to believe his statement, and sent him word by the sergeant to take better care in future.

* * * * *

When Lord Holland was on his death-bed, his friend, George Selwyn, calling to inquire how his lordship was, left his card. This was taken to Lord Holland, who said, "If Mr. Selwyn calls again, show him into my room. If I am alive I shall be glad to see him: if I am dead, I am sure he will be delighted to see me."

From the New Monthly Magazine.

THE VEILED PICTURE. A TRAVELLER'S STORY.