Kitabı oku: «Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844», sayfa 8

 
“Pictures like these, dear madam, to design,
Asks no firm hand, and no unerring line;
Some wandering touches, some reflected light,
Some flying stroke, alone can hit ’em right.”
 

Where the touches are more exact and delicate, where the strokes are laid on with the painful labour of a Flemish pencil, where the business and the bosoms of men are addressed more directly, there it is we shall find proofs of the view and purpose of the author; such traits are the key with the leather strap that verified the judgment of Sancho’s kinsmen. To what purpose should a Frenchman, writing in the time of Louis XIV., censure the rapacity of innkeepers, and the wretchedness of their extorted accommodation, when France, from the time of Chaucer to the present hour, has been famous for the civility of the one and the convenience of the other? To what purpose, if the French government were to be criticised, enumerate the danger of high-roads, and the caverns unexplored by a negligent administration,   in which bandits found a refuge? If France was aimed at, how does it happen that the literature of its golden age is the subject of attack, and a perverted and fantastic style of writing assigned to an epoch remarkable for the severity and precision of its taste? If Spain is meant, the attack is perfectly intelligible, as the epoch is exactly that when Spanish taste began to degenerate, and the style of Spanish writers to become vicious, inflated, and fantastic, in imitation of Gongora, who did so much to ruin the literature of his country; as other writers of much less ability, but who addressed themselves to a public far inferior in point of taste to that of Gongora, have recently done in England. Nothing could be worse chosen than such a topic. As well might England be attacked now for its disregard of commerce and its enthusiastic love of genius, or France for its contempt of military glory. When Gil Blas was published, France was undoubtedly the model of civilized Europe, the fountain from whence other stars drew light. To ridicule the bad taste of the age of Malebranche, the master of Addison, and of Boileau, the master of Pope, will appear ridiculous to an Englishman. To accuse the vicious style which prevailed in the age of Bossuet, Fénélon, and Pascal, will appear monstrous to every one with the least tincture of European literature.

Let us apply this mode of reasoning to some instance in which national prejudice and interest cannot be concerned. Let us suppose that some one were to affirm that the Adelphi of Terence was not a translation from Menander; among the incorrigible pedants who think Niebuhr a greater authority on Roman history than Cicero, he would not want for proselytes. Let us see what he might allege—he might urge that Terence had acknowledged obligations to Menander on other occasions, and that on this he seemed rather studiously to disclaim it, pointing out Diphilus as his original—he might insist that Syrus could only have been the slave of a Roman master, that Sannio corresponded exactly with our notions of a Roman pander, that Æschinus was the picture of a dissolute young patrician—in short, that through the transparent veil of Grecian drapery it was easy to detect the sterner features of Roman manners and society; nay more, he might insist on the marriage of Micio at the close of the drama, as Neufchateau does upon the drunkenness of Guyomar, as alluding to some anecdote of the day, and at any rate as the admitted invention of Terence himself. He might challenge the advocates of Menander to produce the Greek original from which the play was borrowed; he might reject the Greek idioms which abound in that masterpiece of the Roman stage with contempt, as beneath his notice; and disregard the names which betray a Grecian origin, the allusions to the habits of Grecian women, to the state of popular feeling at Athens, and the administration of Athenian law, with supercilious indifference. All this such a reasoner might do, and all this M. Neufchateau has done. But would such a tissue of cobweb fallacies disguise the truth from any man of ordinary taste and understanding? Such a man would appeal to the whole history of Terence; he would show that he was a diligent translator of the Greek writers of the middle comedy, that his language in every other line betrayed a Grecian origin, that the plot was not Roman, that the scene was not Roman, that the customs were not Roman; he would say, if he had patience to reason with his antagonist, that a fashionable rake, a grasping father, an indulgent uncle, a knavish servant, an impudent ruffian, and a timid clown, were the same at Rome, at Thebes, and at Athens, in London, Paris, or Madrid. He would ask, of what value were such broad and general features common to a species, when the fidelity of an individual likeness was in question? He would say, that the incident quoted as a proof of originality, served only, by its repugnance to Grecian manners, and its inferiority to the work in which it was inserted, to prove that the rest was the production of another writer. He would quote the translations from fragments still extant, which the work, exquisite as it is, contains, as proofs of a still more beautiful original. Lastly, he would cite the “Dimidiate Menander” of Cæsar, as a proof of the opinion   entertained of his genius by the great writers of his own country; and when he had done this, he might enquire with confidence whether any one existed capable of forming a judgment upon style, or of distinguishing one author from another, who would dispute the position for which he contended.

The sum and substance of all M. Neufchateau’s argument is the slight assumption, that every allusion to a man eminent for wit and genius, must be intended for a Frenchman. Of this nature is the affirmation that Triaquero is meant for Voltaire; and the still more intrepid declaration, that Lope de Vega and Calderon de la Barca are cited, not as Spanish authors, but as types by which Corneille and Racine are shadowed out. It is true that the passage is exactly applicable to Calderon and Lope de Vega; and for that reason, as they are great comic writers, can hardly apply equally well to Corneille and Racine. But such trifling difficulties are as dust when placed in the balance with the inveterate opinion to which we have already alluded.

According to the principles adopted by M. Neufchateau, Gil Blas might be adapted to any court, or age, or country. For instance, if Triaquero, meaning a charlatan, (which, by the way, it does not,) refers of necessity to Voltaire, might not any Englishman, if the work had been published recently, insist that the work must have been written by an Englishman, as the allusion could apply to no one so well as him, who, having been a judge without law, and a translator of Demosthenes without Greek, had, to his other titles to public esteem, added that of being an historian without research?

The difference between Dr Sangrado and our hydropathists is merely that between hot and cold water, by no means excluding an allusion to the latter, under the veil, as M. Neufchateau has it, of Spanish manners. Would it be quite impossible to find in St James’s Street, or in certain buildings at no great distance from the Thames, the exact counterparts of Don Matthias de Silva and his companions? Gongora, indeed, in spite of his detestable taste, was a man of genius; and therefore to find his type among us would be difficult, if not impossible, unless an excess of the former quality, for which he was conspicuous, might counterbalance a deficiency in the latter. Are our employés less pompous and empty than Gil Blas and his companions? our squires less absurd and ignorant than the hidalgoes of Valencia? Let any one read some of the pamphlets on Archbishop Whately’s Logic, or attend an examination in the schools at Oxford, and then say if the race of those who plume themselves on the discovery, that Greek children cried when they were whipped is extinct? To be sure, as the purseproud insolence of a nouveau riche, and indeed of parvenus generally, is quite unknown among us, nobody could rely on those points of resemblance. But with regard to the other topics, would it not be fair to say, in answer to such an argument—All this is mere commonplace generality; such are the characters of every country where European institutions exist, or European habits are to be found? Something more tangible and specific is requisite to support your claim. You are to prove that the picture is a portrait of a particular person—and you say it has eyes and a nose; so have all portraits. But where are the strokes that constitute identity, and determine the original?—There is no mention of Crockford’s or of the Missionary Society, of the Old Bailey or the Foundling Hospital; and if Ordonez is named, who gets rich by managing the affairs of the poor, this can never be meant for a satire on the blundering pedantry of your Somerset-house commissioners.—Here is no hint that can be tortured into a glance at fox-hunters, or game-preservers, of the society for promoting rural deans, at your double system of contradictory law, at special pleading at quarter-sessions,²⁶ at the technical rigour   of your institutions, at the delay, chicanery, and expense of your judicial proceedings, at the refinement, ease, wit, gayety, and disinterested respect for merit, which, as every body knows, distinguish your social character; nothing is said of the annual meeting of chemists, geologists, and mathematicians, so beneficial to the real interests of science, by making a turn for tumid metaphor and the love of display necessary ingredients in the character of its votaries, extirpating from among them that simplicity which was so fatal an obstacle to the progress of Newton,—and turning the newly discovered joint of an antediluvian reptile into a theme of perennial and ambitious declamation; nothing is said about those discussions on baptismal fonts, those discoveries of trochees for iambics, or the invention of new potatoe boilers, which in the days of Hegel, Berryer, Schlosser, Savigny, and Cousin, are the glory and delight of England; in short, there is nothing to fix the allusions on which you rely on to distinguish them from those which might be applicable to Paris, Vienna, or Madrid.

There are no people less disposed than ourselves to detract from the merit of eminent French writers; they are always clear, elegant, and judicious; often acute, eloquent, and profound. There is no department of prose literature in which they do not equal us; there are many in which they are unquestionably our superiors. Unlike our authors, who, on those subjects which address the heart and reason jointly, adopt the style of a treatise on the differential calculus; and when pure science is their topic, lead us to suppose (if it were not for their disgusting pomposity) they had chosen for their model the florid confusion of a tenth-rate novel;—the French write on scientific subjects with simplicity and precision, and on moral, æsthetic, and theoretical questions with spirit, earnestness, and sensibility. Having said so much, we must however add, that a liberal and ingenious acknowledgment of error is not among the shining qualities of our neighbours. When a question is at issue in which they imagine the literary reputation of their country to be at stake, it is the dexterity of the advocate, rather than the candour of the judge, that we must look for in their dissertations. He who has argued on the guilt of Mary with a Scotchman, or the authenticity of the three witnesses with a newly made archdeacon, and with a squire smarting under an increasing poor-rate or the corn-laws, may form a just conception of the task he will undertake in endeavouring to persuade a French critic that his countrymen are in the wrong. The patient, if he does not, as it has sometimes happened in the cases to which we have referred, become “pugil et medicum urget,” is sure, as in those instances, to triumph over all the proofs which reason can suggest, or that the hellebore of nine Anticyras could furnish him with capacity to understand. Of this the work of M. Neufchateau is a striking proof. Truth is on one side, Le Sage’s claim to originality on the other; and he supports the latter: we do not say that he is willing, rather than abandon his client, to assert a falsehood; but we are sure that, in order to defend him, he is ready to believe absurdities.

The degree of moral guilt annexed to such conduct as that which we attribute to Le Sage, is an invidious topic, not necessarily connected with our subject, and upon which we enter with regret.

Lessing accused Wieland of having destroyed a palace, that he might build a cottage with its materials. However highly we may think of the original, we can hardly suppose such an expression applicable to Gil Blas. Of the name of the author whose toil Le Sage thus appropriated, charity   obliges us to suppose that he was ignorant; but we should not forget that the case of Le Sage is not precisely that of a person who publishes, as an original, a translation from a printed work, as Wieland did with his copy of Rowe’s Lady Jane Grey, and Lord Byron with his copy of the most musical lines in Goethe. The offence of Le Sage more resembles that imputed (we sincerely believe without foundation) to Raphael; namely, that after the diligent study of some ancient frescoes, he suffered them to perish, in order to conceal his imitation. But we hasten to close these reflections, which tenderness to the friend and companion of our boyhood, and gratitude to him who has enlivened many an hour, and added so much to our stock of intellectual happiness, forbid us to prolong. Let those who feel that they could spurn the temptation, in comparison with which every other that besets our miserable nature is as dross—the praise yielded by a polished and fastidious nation to rare and acknowledged genius—denounce as they will the infirmity of Le Sage. But let them be quite sure, that instead of being above a motive to which none but minds of some refinement are accessible, they are not below it. Let them be sure that they do not take dulness for integrity, and that the virtue, proof to intellectual triumphs, and disdaining “the last infirmity of noble minds,” would not sink if exposed to the ordeal of a service of plate, or admission in some frivolous coterie. For ourselves we will only say, “Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas.”

For these reasons, then, which depend on the nature of the thing, and which no testimony can alter—reasons which we cannot reject without abandoning all those principles which carry with them the most certain instruction, and are the surest guides of human life—we think the main fact contended for by M. Llorente, that is, the Spanish origin of Gil Blas, undeniable; and the subordinate and collateral points of his system invested with a high degree of probability; the falsehood of a conclusion fairly drawn from such premises as we have pointed out would be nearer akin to a metaphysical impossibility; and so long as the light of every other gem that glitters in a nation’s diadem is faint and feeble when compared with the splendour of intellectual glory, Spain will owe a debt of gratitude to him among her sons who has placed upon her brow the jewel which France (as if aggression for more material objects could not fill up the measure of her injustice towards that unhappy land) has kept so long, and worn so ostentatiously.

MICHAEL KALLIPHOURNAS

Few of the events of our life afford us greater pride than revisiting a well-known and celebrated city after many years’ absence. The pleasure derived from the hope of enjoyment, the self-satisfaction flowing from the presumption of our profound knowledge of the place, and the feeling of mental superiority attached to our discernment in returning to the spot, which, at the moment, appears to us the particular region of the earth peculiarly worthy of a second visit—or a third, as the case may be—all combine to stuff the lining of the diligence, the packsaddle of the Turkish post-horse, or the encumbrance on the back of the camel which may happen to convey us, with something softer than swandown. Time soon brings the demon of discontent to our society. The city and its inhabitants appear changed—rarely for the better, always less to our taste. Ameliorations and improvements seem to us positive evils; we sigh for the good old times, for the dirty streets of Paris, the villanous odours of Rome, the banditti of Naples, the obsequiousness of Greece, and the contempt, with the casual satisfaction of being spit upon, of Turkey. In short, we feel the want of our youth every where.

I enjoyed all the delights and regrets which mere local associations can call up, a few months ago, on revisiting Athens after many years’ absence. On the 6th of May 1827, I had witnessed the complete defeat of the Greek army. I had beheld the delhis of Kutayia sabring the flying troops of Lord Cochrane and General Church, and seen 1500 men slain by the sword in less than half an hour, amidst the roll of an ill-sustained and scattered fire of musketry. The sight was heartbreaking, but grand. The Turkish cavalry came sweeping down to the beach, until arrested by the fire of the ships. Lord Cochrane and his aide-de-camp, Dr Goss, themselves had been compelled to plunge more than knee-deep in the Ægean ere they could gain their boat. On the hill of the Phalerum I had heard General Gueheneuc criticise the manœuvres of the commander-in-chief, and General Heideck disparage the quality of his coffee. As the Austrian steamer which conveyed me entered the Piræus, my mind reverted to the innumerable events which had been crowded into my life in Greece. A new town rose out of the water before my eyes as if by enchantment; but I felt indignant that the lines of Colonel Gordon, and the tambouria of Karaiskaki, should be effaced by modern houses and a dusty road. As soon as I landed, I resolved to climb the Phalerum, and brood over visions of the past. But I had not proceeded many steps from the quay, lost in my sentimental reverie, ere I found that reflection ought not to begin too soon at the Piræus. I was suddenly surrounded by about a dozen individuals who seemed determined to prevent me from continuing my walk. On surveying them, they appeared dressed for a costume ball of ragamuffins. Europe, Asia, and Africa had furnished their wardrobe. The most prominent figure among them was a tall Arab, in the nizam of Mehemet Ali, terminated with a Maltese straw hat. His companions exhibited as singular a taste in dress as himself. Some wore sallow Albanian petticoats, carelessly tied over the wide and dusky nether garments of Hydriots, their upper man adorned by sailors’ jackets and glazed hats; others were tightly buttoned up in European garments, with their heads lost in the enormous fez of Constantinople. This antiquarian society of garments, fit representatives to a stranger of the Bavaro-Hellenic kingdom of Otho the gleaner, and the three donative powers, informed me that it consisted of charioteers. Each member of the society speaking on his own account, and all at the same time—a circumstance I afterwards found not uncommon in other antiquarian and literary societies at Athens—asked me if I was going to Athens: εἰς Ἀθήνας was the phrase. The Arab and a couple of Maltese alone said “Ees teen Atheena.” Entrapped into   a reply by the classic sound, I unwittingly exclaimed “Malista—Verily I am.”

The shouts my new friends uttered on hearing me speak Greek cannot be described. Their volubility was suddenly increased a hundredfold; and had all the various owners of the multitudinous garments before me arisen to reclaim their respective habiliments, it could hardly have been greater. I could not have believed it possible that nine Greeks, aided by two Maltese and a single Arab, could have created such a din. The speakers soon perceived that it was utterly impossible for me to hear their eloquent addresses, as they could no longer distinguish the sounds of their own voices; so with one accord they disappeared, and ere I had proceeded many steps again surrounded me, rushing forward with their respective vehicles, into which they eagerly invited me to mount. If their habiliments consisted of costumes run mad, their chariots were not less varied, and afforded an historical study in locomotion. Distant capitals and a portion of the last century must have contributed their representatives to the motley assemblage. The tall Arab drove a superb fiacre of the days of hoops, a vehicle for six insides; phaetons, chariots, droschkies, and britskas, Strong’s omnibus, and Rudhart’s stuhlwagen, gigs, cars, tilburies, cabriolets, and dogcarts, were all there, and each pushing to get exactly before me. Lord Palmerston’s kingdom is doubtless a Whig satire on monarchy; the scene before me appeared a Romaic satire on the Olympic games. I forgot my melancholy sentiment, and resolved to join the fun, by attempting to dodge my persecutors round the corners of the isolated houses and deep lime-pits which King Otho courteously terms streets. I forgot that barbarians were excluded from the Olympic games, not on account of the jealousy of the Greeks, but because no barbarian could display the requisite skill. The charioteers and their horses knew the ground so much better than I did, that they blockaded me at every turn; so, in order to gain the rocky ground, I started off towards the hill of the Phalerum pursued by the pancosmium of vehicles. On the first precipitous elevation I turned to laugh at my pursuers, when, to my horror, I saw Strong’s omnibus lumbering along in the distance, surrounded by a considerable crowd, and I distinguished the loud shouts of the mob:—Ποῦ εἶναι ὁ τρελός ὁ Ἄγγλος; “Where is the mad Englishman?” So my melancholy was conducting me to madness.

My alarm dispelled all my reminiscences of Lord Cochrane, and my visions of the Olympic games. I sprang into the droschky of a Greek sailor, who drove over the rocks as if he only expected his new profession to endure for a single day. We were soon on the Piræus road, which I well knew runs along the foundations of one of the long walls; but I was too glad to escape, like Lord Palmerston and M. Thiers, unscathed from the imbroglio I had created, to honour even Themistocles with a single thought. My charioteer was a far better specimen of the present, than foundations of long walls, ruined temples, and statues without noses, can possibly be of the past. He informed me he was a sailor: by so doing, he did not prove to me that he estimated my discernment very highly, for that fact required no announcement. He added, however, what was more instructive; to wit, that he had received the droschky with the horses, that morning, from a Russian captain, in payment of a bad debt. He had resolved to improviso the coachman, though he had never driven a horse before in his life—εὔκολον εἶναι—“it is an easy matter;” and he drove like Jehu, shouted like Stentor, and laughed like the Afrite of Caliph Vathek. He ran over nobody, in spite of his vehemence. Perhaps his horses were wiser than himself: indeed I have remarked, that the populace of Greece is universally more sagacious than its rulers. In taking leave of this worthy tar at the Hotel de Londres, I asked him gravely if he thought that, in case Russia, England, or France should one day take Greece in payment of a bad debt, they would act wisely to drive her as hard as he drove his horses? He opened his eyes at me as if he was about to unskin his head, and began to reflect in silence; so, perceiving that he entertained a very high opinion of my wisdom, I availed myself of the opportunity   to advise him to moderate his pace a little in future, if he wished his horses to survive the week.

During my stay at Athens, King Otho was absent from his capital; so that, though I lost the pleasure of beholding the beautiful and graceful queen, I escaped the misfortune of being dishonoured by receiving the cross of an officer of the order of the Redeemer. His Hellenic majesty takes a peculiar satisfaction in hanging this decoration at the buttonholes of those who served Greece during the revolutionary war; while he suspends the cross of Commander round the necks, or ornaments with the star of the order the breasts, of all the Bavarians who have assisted him in relieving Greece of the Palmerstonian plethora of cash gleaned from the three powers. For my own part, I am not sure but that I should have made up my mind to return the cross, with a letter full of polite expressions of contempt for the supposed honour, and a few hints of pity for the donor; as a very able and distinguished friend of Greece, whose services authorized him so to act, did a few days before my arrival.

On attempting to find my way through Bavarian Athens, I was as much at a loss as Lady Francis Egerton, and could not help exclaiming, “Voila des rues qui ont bien peu de logique!” After returning two or three times to the church Kamkarea, against whose walls half the leading streets of the new city appear to run bolt up, I was compelled to seek the assistance of a guide. At length I found out the dwelling once inhabited by my friend Michael Kalliphournas. A neat white villa, with green Venetian blinds, smiling in a court full of ruins and rubbish, had replaced the picturesque but rickety old Turkish kouak of my former recollections. I enquired for the owner in vain; the property, it was said, belonged to his sister; of the brother nobody had heard, and I was referred for information to the patriotic and enterprising Demarch, or mayor, who bears the same name.

In the end my enquiries were successful, and their result seemed miraculous. To my utter astonishment I learned that Michael had become a monk, and dwelt in the monastery of Pentelicus; but I could obtain no explanation of the mystery. His relations referred me to the monk himself—strangers had never heard of his existence. How often does a revolution like that of Greece, when the very organization of society is shaken, compress the progress of a century within a few years! There remained nothing for me but to visit the monastery, and seek a solution of the singular enigma from my friend’s own mouth; so, joining a party of travellers who were about to visit the marble quarries of Pentelicus, and continue their excursion to the plain of Marathon, I set out on such a morning as can only be witnessed under the pure sky of Attica.

The scenery of our ride is now familiar to tourists. Parnes or Parnethus with its double top,²⁷ Brilessus or Pentelicus with its numerous rills and fountains, and Hymettus with its balmy odours, have been “hymned by loftier harps than mine.” My companions proved gay and agreeable young men. They knew every body at Athens, and every thing, and willingly communicated their stores of knowledge. I cannot resist recounting some of the anecdotes I heard, as they do no discredit to the noble princes to whom they relate.

When an English prince visited Athens, King Otho, who it seems is his own minister, and conducts business quite in a royal way, learned that he was no Whig, and instantly conceived the sublime idea of making use of his royal highness’s services to obtain Lord Palmerston’s dismissal from office. The monarch himself arranged the plan of his campaign. The prince was invited to a fête champêtre at Phyle, and when the party was distributed in the various carriages, he found himself planted in a large barouche opposite the king and queen. King Otho then opened his   intrigue; he told the prince of the notes in favour of constitutional government and economical administration which Lord Palmerston had written, and Sir Edmund Lyons had presented; and he exclaimed, “I assure you, my dear prince, all this is done merely to vex me, because I would not keep that speculating charlatan Armansperg! Lord Palmerston cares no more about a constitution, nor about economy, than Queen Victoria, or you and I. When the Duc de Broglie, who has really more conscience than our friend the Viscount, proposed that Greece should be pestered with a constitution and such stuff, Palmerston answered very judiciously, ‘Greece—bah!—Greece is not fit for a constitution, nor indeed for any other government but that of my nabob!’ Now, my dear prince, Queen Victoria can never mean to offend me, the sovereign of Greece, when the Ottoman empire is so evidently on the eve of dismemberment; and,” quoth Otho the gleaner, “I am deeply offended, at which her British majesty must feel grievously distressed.” The prince doubtless thought her majesty’s distress was not inconsolable; but he only assured his Hellenic majesty that he could be of no possible use to him in his delicate intrigue at the court of St James’s. He tried to get a view of the scenery, and to turn the conversation on the state of the country; but Otho was not so easily repulsed. He insisted that the prince should communicate his sentiments to Queen Victoria; and, in spite of all the assurances he received of the impossibility of meddling with diplomatic business in such a way, his Hellenic majesty, to this very day, feels satisfied that Lord Palmerston was sent to the right-about for offending him; and he is firmly persuaded that, unless Lord Aberdeen furnish him with as many millions as he demands to secure his opposition to Russia, the noble earl will not have a long tenor of office.

A young Austrian of our party shouted, “Ah, it requires to be truly bon garçon, like the English prince, to submit to be so bored, even by a king! But,” added he, “our gallant Fritz managed matters much better. The Archduke Frederick, who behaved so bravely at Acre, and so amiably lately in London, heard, it seems, of the treatment the prince had met with, and resolved to cure his majesty of using his guests in such style. Being invited to a party at Pentelicus, he was aware that he would be placed alone on the seat, with his back to the horses, and deprived of every chance of seeing the country, if it were only that the diplomatic intrigue at the court of Queen Victoria might remain concealed from the lynx-eyed suspicion of the corps diplomatique of Athens; for King Otho fancies his intrigues always remain the profoundest secrets. When the archduke handed the lovely queen into the carriage, politeness compelled King Otho to make a cold offer to the young sailor to follow; the archduke bowed profoundly, sprang into the carriage, and seated himself beside her majesty. The successor of Agamemnon followed, looking more grim than Hercules Furens: he stood for a moment bolt upright in the carriage, hoping his guest would rise and vacate his seat; but the young man was already actively engaged in conversation. The Emperor of the East—in expectancy—was compelled to sit down with his back to the horses, and study the landscape in that engaging manner of viewing scenery. Never was a fête given by a sulkier host than King Otho that day proved to be. In returning, the archduke had a carriage to himself. When questioned on the subject of his ride, he only remarked that he always suffered dreadfully from sickness when he rode with his back to the horses. He was sure, therefore, that King Otho had placed him beside the queen to avoid that horrible inconvenience.”