Kitabı oku: «Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 60, No. 372, October 1846»

WILD SPORTS AND NATURAL HISTORY OF THE HIGHLANDS. ¹

This year we have been a defaulter on the Moors. Not that our eye has become more dim, our aim less sure, or our understanding weaker than of yore; but we are no longer subject to the same keen and burning impulses which used periodically to beset us towards the beginning of our departed Augusts, inflaming our destructive organs, and driving us to the heather, as the stag is said to be driven by instinct to the shores of the sea. Somehow or other, we now take things much more coolly. We no longer haunt the shop of Dickson – that most excellent and unassuming of gunmakers – for weeks before the shooting-season, discussing the comparative excellences of cartridge and plain shot, or refitting our battered apparatus with the last ingenuities of Sykes. Our talk is not of pointers or of setters; neither do we think it incumbent upon us to perambulate Princes Street in a shooting-jacket, or with the dissonance of hobnailed shoes. We can even look upon the northern steamers, surcharged with all manner of ammunition, crammed from stem to stern with Cockney tourists and sportsmen, carriages and cars, hampers, havresacks, and hair trunks, steering their way from our noble frith towards the Highlands, without the slightest wish to become one of that gay and gallant crew. Incredible as it may appear, we actually wrote an article upon the twelfth of August last; nor was the calm, even tenor of our thoughts for a moment interrupted by the imaginary whirr of the gor-cock. For the life of us, we cannot recollect what sort of a day it was. To be sure, we were early up and at work – that is, as early as we ever are, somewhere about ten: we wrote on steadily until dinner-time, with no more intermission than was necessary for the discussion of a couple of glasses of Madeira. After a slight and salubrious meal, we again tackled to the foolscap, and by nine o'clock dismissed the printer's devil to his den with a quarter of a ream of manuscript. We then strolled up to our club, where, for the first time, we were reminded of the nature of the anniversary, by the savour of roasted grouse. So, with a kind of melancholy sigh for the impairment of our blunted energies, we sat down to supper, and leisurely explored the pungent pepper about the backbone of the bird of the mountain.

But empty streets, hot sun, and dust like that of the Sahara, are combined nuisances too formidable for the most tranquil or indolent nature. It is not good for any one to be the last man left in town. You become an object of suspicion to the porters – that is, the more superannuated portion of them, for the rest are all gone to carry bags upon the moors – who, seeing you continue from day to day sidling along the deserted streets, begin to entertain strange doubts as to the real probity of your character, or, at all events, as to your absolute sanity. If you are a lawyer, and remain in town throughout August and September, your own conscience will tell you at once that you are nothing short of an arrant sneak. Are there not ten other months in the year throughout which you may cobble condescendences, without emulating the endurance of Chibert, and confining yourself in an oven, to the manifest endangerment of your liver, for the few paltry guineas which may occasionally come tumbling in? Will any agent of sense consider you a better counsel, or a more estimable plodder, because you affect an exaggerated passion for Morrison's Decisions, and refuse to be divorced even for a week from your dalliance with Shaw and Dunlop? Is that unfortunate Lord Ordinary on the Bills to be harassed day and night, deprived of his morning drive, and deranged in his digestive organs, on account of your unhallowed lust for fees? Is your unhappy clerk, whose wife and children have long since been dismissed to cheap bathing-quarters on the coast of Fife, where at this moment they are bobbing up and down among the tangled rocks, skirling as the waves come in, or hunting for diminutive crabs and cavies in the sea-worn pools – is that most oppressed and martyred of all mankind to be kept, by your relentless fiat, or rather wicked obstinacy, from participating in the same sanatory amusements with Bill, and Harry, and Phemie, and the rest of his curly-headed weans? Think you that the complaints of Mrs Screever will not be heard and registered against you in heaven, as, mateless and disconsolate, she cheapens haddocks in the market, or plucks sea-pinks along the cliffs of hoary Anstruther or of Crail? Shame upon you! Recollect, for the sake of others, if not for your own, that you call yourself a gentleman and a Christian. Shut up your house from top to bottom – fee the policeman to watch it – wafer a ticket on the window, directing all parcels to be sent to the grocer with whom you have deposited the key – give poor Girzy a holiday to visit her friends at Carnwath – and be off yourself, as fast as you can, wherever your impulses may lead you, either to the Highlands with rod and gun, or, if you are no sportsman, to Largs, or Ardrossan, or Dunoon, pleasant places all, where you may saunter along the shore undisturbed from morn until dewy eve, hire a boat at a shilling the hour, and purvey your own whitings; or haply, if you are in good luck, take a prominent part in the proceedings of a regatta, and make nautical speeches after dinner to the intense amusement of your audience.

But you say you are a physician. Well, then, cannot you leave your patients to die in peace? It is six months since you were called in to attend that old lady, who has a large jointure and a predisposition to jaundice. You have visited her regularly once a day – sometimes twice – prescribed for her a whole pharmacopeia of drugs – blistered her, bled her, leeched her – curtailed her of wholesome diet, forbidden cordial waters, and denounced the needful cinnamon. Dare you lay your hand on your heart and say that you think her better? Not you. Why not, then, give the poor old woman, who is not only harmless, but an excellent subscriber to several Tract societies, one chance more of a slightly protracted existence? Restore to her her natural food and adventitious comforts. Send her away to Cheltenham or Harrowgate, or some such other vale of Avoca, where, at all events, she may get fresh air, clean lodgings, and lots of mineral water. So shall you escape the pangs of an awakened conscience, and your deathbed be haunted by the thoughts of at least one homicide the less.

What we say to one we say to all. Stockbroker! you are a good fellow in the main, and you never meant to ruin your clients. It was not your fault that they went so largely into Glenmutchkins, and made such unfortunate attempts to bear the Biggleswade Junction. But why should you continue to tempt the poor devils at this flat season of the year, and with a glutted market, into any further purchases of scrip? You know very well, that until November, at the earliest, there is not the most distant prospect of a rise, and you have already pocketed, believe us, a remarkably handsome commission. Do not be in too great a hurry to kill the goose with the golden eggs. A rest for a month or so will make them all the keener for speculation afterwards, and nurse their appetite for premiums. We foresee a stirring winter, if you will but take things quietly in the interim. Assemble your brethren together – shut up the Exchange by common consent during the dog-days – convert your lists into wadding, and let Mammon have a momentary respite. – Writer to the Signet! is it fair to be penning letters, each of which costs your employer three and fourpence, when they are certain to remain unanswered? Do not do it. This is capital time for taking infeftments, and those instruments of sasine may well suffice to plump out the interior of a game-bag. No better witnesses in the world than a shepherd and an illicit distiller; and sweet will be your crowning caulker as you take instruments of earth and stone, peat and divot, and the like, in the hands of Angus and Donald, by the side of the spring, far up in the solitary mountain. Therefore, again we say, be off as speedily as you can to the moors, and leave the Deserted City to sun and dust, and the vigilance of a perspiring Town Council.

Example, they say, is better than precept – we might demur to the doctrine, but we are not in a disputatious humour. For we too are bound, though late, to the land of grouse – indeed we have already accomplished the greater part of our journey, and are writing this article in a pleasant burgh of the west, separated only by an arm of the sea, across which the bright-sailed yachts are skimming, from a long range of heathery hills, whereon we hope, if it pleases fortune, to do some execution on the morrow. Our three pointers, Orleans, Tours, and Bordeaux – so named after the speculation that enabled us to purchase them – are basking in the sun on the little green beneath our window; whilst Scrip, our terrier and constant companion, is perched upon the sill, barking with all his might at a peripatetic miscreant of a minstrel, who for the last half hour has been grinding Gentle Zitella to shreds in his barrel organ. We have tried in vain to move him with coppers dexterously shied so as to hit him if possible on the head, but the nuisance will not abate. We must follow the example of the Covenanters, and put an end to him at the expenditure of a silver shot. "There, our good fellow, is a shilling for you – have the kindness to move on a few doors further; there are some sick folks in this house. At the end of the row you will find a family remarkably addicted to music – the house with the green blinds – you understand us? Thank you!" And in a few moments we hear his infernal instrument, now not unpleasantly remote, doling out the popular air of the Glasgow Chappie, for the edification of the intolerable Gorbalier who poisoned our passage down the Clyde by constituting himself our Cicerone, and explaining the method by which one might discriminate the Railway boats from those of the Castle Company, by the peculiar ochreing of their funnels.

Did we intend to remain here much longer, we should be compelled in self-defence to clear the neighbourhood. This is not so impracticable as at first sight may appear. We have made acquaintance with a very pleasant fellow of a Bauldy – quite a genius in his way – who has a natural talent for the French horn. To him an old key-bugle would be an inestimable treasure, and we doubt not that with a few instructions he would become such a proficient as to serenade the suburb day and night. Nor would our conscience reproach us for having made one human creature supremely happy, even at the cost of the emigration of a few dozen others. But fortunately we have no need to recur to any such experiment. To-morrow we shall enact the part of Macgregor with our foot upon our native heather; and for one evening, wherever the locality, we could not find a more apt or pleasant companion than Mr Charles St John, whose sporting journals are at last published in the Home and Colonial Library.

We make this preliminary statement the more readily, because for divers reasons we had hardly expected to find the work so truly excellent of its kind; and had there been any shortcomings, assuredly we should have been foul of St John. In the first place, we entertained, and do still entertain, the opinion that very few English sportsmen are capable of writing a work which shall treat not only of the Wild Sports, but of the Natural History of the Highlands. They belong to a migratory class, and seldom exchange the comforts of their clubs for the inconveniences of northern rustication, at least before the month of June. Now and then, indeed, you may meet with some of them, whose passion for angling amounts to a mania, by the side of the Tweed or the Shin, long before the mavis has hatched her young. But these are usually elderly grey-coated men, whose whole faculties are bent upon hackles – the patriarchs of a far nobler school than that of Walton – magnificent throwers of the fly – salmonicides of the first water – yet in our humble estimation not very conversant with any other subject under heaven. Their sporting error – rather let us call it misfortune – is that they do not generalise. By the middle of September their occupation for the year is over. Shortly afterwards they assemble, like swallows about to leave our shores, on the banks of the Tweed, which river is permitted by the mercy of the British Parliament to remain open for a short time longer. There they angle on, kill their penultimate and ultimate fish; and finally, at the approach of winter, retreat to warmer quarters, and recapitulate the campaigns of the summer over port of the most generous vintage. These are clearly not the men to indite the Wild Sports and Natural History of the North.

The other section of English sportsmen come later and depart a little earlier. They are the renters of moors, crack sportsmen in every sense of the word, who resort to Ross-shire as regularly as they afterwards emigrate to Melton. Now, as to their slaughtering powers, we entertain not the shadow of a doubt. Steady shots and deadly are they from their youth upwards – trained, it may be, upon level ground, but still unerring in their aim. If not so wiry-sinewed, and sound of wind as the Caledonian, their pluck is undeniable, and their perseverance praiseworthy in the extreme. Show them the birds, and they will bring them to bag – give them a fair chance at a red-deer, and the odds are that next minute he shall be rolling in blood upon the heather. But this, let it be observed, is after all a mere matter of tooling. To be a good shot is only one branch of the finished sportsman's accomplishment, and it enters not at all into the conformation of the naturalist. We would not give a brace of widgeons for the best description ever written of a week's sport in the Highlands, or indeed any where else, provided it contained nothing more than an account of the killed and wounded, some facetious anecdotes regarding the lives of the gillies, and a narrative of the manner in which the author encountered and overcame a hart. Even the adventures of a night in a still will hardly make the book go down. We want an eye accustomed to look to other things beyond the sight of a gun-barrel – we want to know more about the quarry than the mere fact that it was flushed, fired at, and killed. Death can come but once to the black-cock as to the warrior, but are their lives to be accounted as nothing? Ponto we allow to be a beautiful brute – a little too thin-skinned, perhaps, for the moors, and apt, in case of mist, to lapse into a state of ague – yet, notwithstanding, punctual at his points, and cheap at twenty guineas of the current money of the realm. Howbeit we care not for his biography. To us it is matter of the smallest moment from what breed he is descended, by whose gamekeeper he was broken, neither are we covetous as to statistics of the number of his brothers and sisters uterine. It is of course gratifying to know that our southern acquaintance approves of the sport he has met with in a particular district; and that on the twelfth, not only the bags but the ponies were exuberantly loaded with a superfluity of fud and feather. Such intelligence would have been listened to most benignly had it been accompanied by a box of game duly addressed to us at Ambrose's – as it is, we accept the fact without any spasm of extraordinary pleasure.

There are, we allow, some sporting tours from which we have derived both profit and gratification; but the locality of these is usually remote and unexplored. We like to hear of salmon-fishing in the Naamsen, and of forty and fifty pounders captured in its brimful rapids – of bear-skalls in Sweden, buffalo-hunting in the prairies, or the chase of the majestic lion in Caffreland or Morocco. Such narratives have the charm of novelty; and if, now and then, they border a little upon the marvellous or miraculous, we do our best to summon up faith sufficient to bolt them all. We by no means objected to Monsieur Violet's account of the estampades in California, or of the snapping turtles in the cane-brakes of the Red River. He was, at all events, graphic in his descriptions; and the zoology to which he introduced us, if not genuine, was of a gigantic and original kind. In fact, no sort of voyage or travel is readable unless it be strewn thickly with incident and adventure, and these of a startling character. Nobody cares now-a-days about meteorological observations, or dates, or distances, or names of places; we have been tired with these things from the days of Dampier downwards. Nor need any navigator hope to draw the public attention to his facts unless he possesses besides a deal of the talent of the novelist. If incident does not lie in his path, he must go out of his way to seek it – if even then it should not appear, there is an absolute necessity for inventing it. What a book of travels in Central Africa could we not write, if any one would be kind enough to furnish us with a mere outline of the route, and the authentic soundings of the Niger!

Scotland, however, is tolerably well known to the educated people of the sister country, and her productions have ceased to be a marvel. Grouse are common as howtowdies in the London market; and even red-deer venison, if asked for, may be had for a price. There is no great mystery in the staple commodity of our sports. Something, it is true, may still be said with effect regarding deer-stalking – a branch of the art venatory which few have the opportunity to study, and of those few a small fraction only can attain to a high degree. Grouse are to be found on every hill, black-game in almost every correi; few are the woods, at the present day, unhaunted by the roe; but the red-deer – the stag of ten – he of the branches and the tines – is, in most parts of the country save in the great forests, a casual and a wandering visitor; and many a summer's day you may clamber over cairn and crag, inspect every scaur and glen, and sweep the horizon around with your telescope, without discovering the waving of an antler, or the impress of a transitory footprint. But this subject is soon exhausted. Scrope has done ample justice to it, and left but a small field untrodden to any literary successor. The Penny Magazine, if we mistake not, disposed several years ago of otter-hunting, and the chase of the fox as practised in the rocky regions; and finally, Colquhoun – he of the Moor and the Loch – with more practical knowledge and acute observation than any of his predecessors, reduced Highland sporting to a science, and became the Encyclopedist of the feræ naturæ of the hills. With these authorities already before us, it was not unnatural that we should have entertained doubts as to the capabilities of any new writer, not native nor to the custom born.

Neither did the puff preliminary, which heralded the appearance of this volume, prepossess us strongly in its favour. What mattered it to the sensible reader whether or no "the attention of the public has already been called to this journal by the Quarterly Review of December 1845?" The book was not published, had not an existence, until seven or eight months after that article – a reasonably indifferent one, by the way – was penned; and yet we are asked to take that sort of pre-Adamite notice as a verdict in its favour! Now, we object altogether to this species of side-winded commendation, this reviewing, or noticing, or extracting from manuscripts before publication, more especially in the pages of a great and influential Review. It is always injudicious, because it looks like the work of a coterie. In the present case it was doubly unwise, because this volume really required no adventitious aid whatever, and certainly no artifice, to recommend it to the public favour.

Whilst, however, we consider it our duty to say thus much, let it not be supposed that we are detracting from the merits of the extracts contained in that article of the Quarterly. On the contrary, they impressed us at the time with a high idea of the graphic power of the writer, and presented an agreeable contrast to the general prolixity of the paper. It is even possible that we are inclined to underrate the efforts of the critic on account of his having forestalled us by printing The Muckle Hart of Benmore– a chapter which we should otherwise have certainly enshrined within the columns of Maga. – At all events it is now full time that we should address ourselves more seriously to the contents of the volume.

Mr St John, we are delighted to observe, is not a sportsman belonging to either class which we have above attempted to describe. He is not the man whose exploits will be selected to swell the lists of slaughtered game in the pages of the provincial newspapers; for he has the eye and the heart of a naturalist, and, as he tells us himself, after a pleasant description of the wild animals which he has succeeded in domesticating – "though naturally all men are carnivorous, and, therefore, animals of prey, and inclined by nature to hunt and destroy other creatures, and, although I share in this our natural instinct to a great extent, I have far more pleasure in seeing these different animals enjoying themselves about me, and in observing their different habits, than I have in hunting down and destroying them."

Most devoutly do we wish that there were many more sportsmen of the same stamp! For ourselves, we confess to an organ of destructiveness not of the minimum degree. We never pass a pool, and hear the sullen plunge of the salmon, without a bitter imprecation upon our evil destiny if we chance to have forgotten our rod; and a covey rising around us, when unarmed, is a plea for suicide. But this feeling, as Mr St John very properly expresses it, is mere natural instinct – part of our original Adam, which it is utterly impossible to subdue. But give us rod or gun. Let us rise and strike some three or four fresh-run fish, at intervals of half-an-hour – let us play, land, and deposit them on the bank, in all the glory of their glittering scales, and it is a hundred to one if we shall be tempted to try another cast, although the cruives are open, the water in rarest trim, and several hours must elapse ere the advent of the cock-a-leekie. In like manner, we prefer a moor where the game is sparse and wild, to one from which the birds are rising at every twenty yards; nor care we ever to slaughter more than may suffice for our own wants and those of our immediate friends. And why should we? There is something not only despicable, but, in our opinion, absolutely brutal, in the accounts which we sometimes read of wholesale massacres committed on the moors, in sheer wanton lust for blood. Fancy a great hulking Saxon, attended by some half-dozen gamekeepers, with a larger retinue of gillies, sallying forth at early morning upon ground where the grouse are lying as thick and tame as chickens in a poultry-yard – loosing four or five dogs at a time, each of which has found his bird or his covey before he has been freed two minutes from the couples – marching up in succession to each stationary quadruped – kicking up the unfortunate pouts, scarce half-grown, from the heather before his feet – banging right and left into the middle of them, and – for the butcher shoots well – bringing down one, and sometimes two, at each discharge. The red-whiskered keeper behind him, who narrowly escaped transportation, a few years ago, for a bloody and ferocious assault, hands him another gun, ready-loaded; and so on he goes, for hour after hour, depopulating God's creatures, of every species, without mercy, until his shoulder is blue with the recoil, and his brow black as Cain's, with the stain of the powder left, as he wipes away the sweat with his stiff and discoloured hand. At evening, the pyramid is counted, and lo, there are two hundred brace!

Is this sporting, or is it murder? Not the first certainly, unless the term can be appropriately applied to the hideous work of the shambles. Indeed, between knocking down stots or grouse in this wholesale manner, we can see very little distinction; except that, in the one case, there is more exertion of the muscles, and in the other a clearer atmosphere to nerve the operator to his task. Murder is a strong term, so we shall not venture to apply it; but cruelty is a word which we may use without compunction; and from that charge, at least, it is impossible for the glutton of the moors to go free.

Great humanity and utter absence of wantonness in the prosecution of his sport, is a most pleasing characteristic of Mr St John. He well understands the meaning of Wordsworth's noble maxim, —

 
"Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels;"
 

and can act upon it without cant, without cruelty, and, above all, without hypocrisy. And truly, when we consider where he has been located for the last few years, in a district which offers a greater variety of game to the sportsman than any other in Great Britain, his moderation becomes matter of legitimate praise. Here is his own description of the locality wherein he has pitched his tent: —

"I have lived for several years in the northern counties of Scotland, and during the last four or five in the province of Moray, a part of the country peculiarly adapted for collecting facts in Natural History, and for becoming intimate with the habits of many of our British wild birds and quadrupeds. Having been in the habit of keeping an irregular kind of journal, and of making notes of any incidents which have fallen under my observation connected with the zoology of the country, I have now endeavoured, by dint of cutting and pruning those rough sketches, to put them into a shape calculated to amuse, and perhaps, in some slight degree, to instruct some of my fellow-lovers of Nature. From my earliest childhood I have been more addicted to the investigation of the habits and manners of every kind of living animal than to any more useful avocation, and have in consequence made myself tolerably well acquainted with the domestic economy of most of our British feræ naturæ, from the field-mouse and wheatear, which I stalked and trapped in the plains and downs of Wiltshire during my boyhood, to the red-deer and eagle, whose territory I have invaded in later years on the mountains of Scotland. My present abode in Morayshire is surrounded by as great a variety of beautiful scenery as can be found in any district in Britain; and no part of the country can produce a greater variety of objects of interest either to the naturalist or to the lover of the picturesque. The rapid and glorious Findhorn, the very perfection of a Highland river, here passes through one of the most fertile plains in Scotland, or indeed in the world; and though a few miles higher up it rages through the wildest and most rugged rocks, and through the romantic and shaded glens of the forests of Darnaway and Altyre, the stream, as if exhausted, empties itself peaceably and quietly into the Bay of Findhorn – a salt-water loch of some four or five miles in length, entirely shut out by different points of land from the storms which are so frequent in the Moray Frith, of which it forms a kind of creek. At low-water this bay becomes an extent of wet sand, with the river Findhorn and one or two smaller streams winding through it, till they meet in the deeper part of the basin near the town of Findhorn, where there is always a considerable depth of water, and a harbour for shipping.

"From its sheltered situation and the quantity of food left on the sands at low-water, the Bay of Findhorn is always a great resort of wild-fowl of all kinds, from the swan to the teal, and also of innumerable waders of every species; while occasionally a seal ventures into the mouth of the river in pursuit of salmon. The bay is separated from the main water of the Frith by that most extraordinary and peculiar range of country called the Sandhills of Moray – a long, low range of hills formed of the purest sand, with scarcely any herbage, excepting here and there patches of bent or broom, which are inhabited by hares, rabbits, and foxes. At the extreme point of this range is a farm of forty or fifty acres of arable land, where the tenant endeavours to grow a scanty crop of grain and turnips, in spite of the rabbits and the drifting sands. From the inland side of the bay stretch the fertile plains of Moray, extending from the Findhorn to near Elgin in a continuous flat of the richest soil, and comprising districts of the very best partridge-shooting that can be found in Scotland, while the streams and swamps that intersect it afford a constant supply of wild-fowl. As we advance inland we are sheltered by the wide-extending woods of Altyre, abounding with roe and game; and beyond these woods again is a very extensive range of a most excellent grouse-shooting country, reaching for many miles over a succession of moderately-sized hills which reach as far as the Spey.

"On the west of the Findhorn is a country beautifully dotted with woods, principally of oak and birch, and intersected by a dark, winding burn, full of fine trout, and the constant haunt of the otter. Between this part of the country and the sea-coast is a continuation of the Sandhills, interspersed with lakes, swamps, and tracts of fir-wood and heather. On the whole, I do not know so varied or interesting a district in Great Britain, or one so well adapted to the amusement and instruction of a naturalist or sportsman. In the space of a morning's walk you may be either in the most fertile or the most barren spot of the country. In my own garden every kind of wall-fruit ripens to perfection, and yet at the distance of only two hours' walk you may either be in the midst of heather and grouse, or in the sandy deserts beyond the bay, where one wonders how even the rabbits can find their living.

"Taking a deliberate and cool aim at her shoulder, I pulled the trigger; but, alas! the wet had got between the cap and nipple-end. All that followed was a harmless snap: the deer heard it, and, starting from their food, rushed together in a confused heap, as if to give Donald a fair chance at the entire flock, a kind of shot he rather rejoiced in. Before I could get a dry cap on my gun, snap, snap, went both his barrels; and when I looked up, it was but to see the whole herd quietly trotting up the hill, out of shot, but apparently not very much frightened, as they had not seen us, or found out exactly where the sound came from. 'We are just twa fules, begging your honour's pardon, and only fit to weave hose by the ingle,' said Donald. I could not contradict him. The mischief was done; so we had nothing for it but to wipe out our guns as well as we could, and proceed on our wandering. We followed the probable line of the deers' march, and before night saw them in a distant valley feeding again quite unconcernedly.

"'Hark! what is that?' said I, as a hollow roar like an angry bull was heard not far from us. 'Kep down, kep down,' said Donald, suiting the action to the word, and pressing me down with his hand; 'it's just a big staig.' All the hinds looked up, and, following the direction of their heads, we saw an immense hart coming over the brow of the hill three hundred yards from us. He might easily have seen us, but seemed too intent on the hinds to think of any thing else. On the height of the hill he halted, and, stretching out his neck and lowering his head, bellowed again. He then rushed down the hill like a mad beast: when half-way down he was answered from a distance by another stag. He instantly halted, and, looking in that direction, roared repeatedly, while we could see in the evening air, which had become cold and frosty, his breath coming out of his nostrils like smoke. Presently he was answered by another and another stag, and the whole distance seemed alive with them. A more unearthly noise I never heard, as it echoed and re-echoed through the rocky glens that surrounded us.

"The setting sun threw a strong light on the first comer, casting a kind of yellow glare on his horns and head, while his body was in deep shade, giving him a most singular appearance, particularly when combined with his hoarse and strange bellowing. As the evening closed in, their cries became almost incessant, while here and there we heard the clash of horns as two rival stags met and fought a few rounds together. None, however, seemed inclined to try their strength with the large hart who had first appeared. The last time we saw him, in the gloom of the evening, he was rolling in a small pool of water, with several of the hinds standing quietly round him; while the smaller stags kept passing to and fro near the hinds, but afraid to approach too close to their watchful rival, who was always ready to jump up and dash at any of them who ventured within a certain distance of his seraglio. 'Donald,' I whispered, 'I would not have lost this sight for a hundred pounds.' 'Deed no, its grand,' said he. 'In all my travels on the hill I never saw the like.' Indeed it is very seldom that chances combine to enable a deer-stalker to quietly look on at such a strange meeting of deer as we had witnessed that evening. But night was coming on, and though the moon was clear and full, we did not like to start off for the shepherd's house, through the swamps and swollen burns among which we should have had to pass; nor did we forget that our road would be through the valley where all this congregation of deer were. So after consulting, we turned off to leeward to bivouac amongst the rocks at the back of the hill, at a sufficient distance from the deer not to disturb them by our necessary occupation of cooking the trout, which our evening meal was to consist of. Having hunted out some of the driest of the fir-roots which were in abundance near us, we soon made a bright fire out of view of the deer, and, after eating some fish, and drying our clothes pretty well, we found a snug corner in the rocks, where, wrapped up in our plaids and covered with heather, we arranged ourselves to sleep.

"Several times during the night I got up and listened to the wild bellowing of the deer: sometimes it sounded close to us, and at other times far away. To an unaccustomed ear it might easily have passed for the roaring of a host of much more dangerous wild beasts, so loud and hollow did it sound. I awoke in the morning cold and stiff, but soon put my blood into circulation by running two or three times up and down a steep bit of the hill. As for Donald, he shook himself, took a pinch of snuff, and was all right. The sun was not yet above the horizon, though the tops of the mountains to the west were already brightly gilt by its rays, and the grouse-cocks were answering each other in every direction."

A graphic and most true description! The same gathering of the deer, but on a far larger scale, may be seen in the glens near the centre of Sutherland, hard by the banks of Loch Naver. Many hundreds of them congregate there together at the bleak season of their love; and the bellowing of the stags may be heard miles off among the solitude of the mountain. Nor is it altogether safe at that time to cross their path. The hart – a dangerous brute whenever brought to bay – then appears to lose all trace of his customary timidity, and will advance against the intruder, be he who he may, with levelled antler and stamping hoof, as becomes the acknowledged leader, bashaw, and champion of the herd. Also among the Coolin hills, perhaps the wildest of all our Highland scenery, where the dark rain-clouds of the Atlantic stretch from peak to peak of the jagged heights – where the ghostlike silence strikes you with unwonted awe, and the echo of your own footfall rings startlingly on the ear from the metallic cliffs of Hyperstein.

What is it, Ian? As we live, Orleans is pointing in yon correi, and Bordeaux backing him like a Trojan. Soho, Tours! Now for it. Black game, we rather think. Well roaded, dogs! Bang! An old cock. Ian, you may pick him up.

LETTERS AND IMPRESSIONS FROM PARIS. ²

The gay metropolis of France has not lacked chroniclers, whether indigenous or foreign. And no wonder. The subject is inexhaustible, the mine can never be worn out. Paris is a huge kaleidoscope, in which the slightest movement of the hand of time produces fantastic changes and still recurring novelties. Central in position, it is the rendezvous of Europe. London is respected for its size, wealth, and commerce, and as the capital of the great empire on which the sun never sets; Paris is loved for its pleasures and pastimes, its amusements and dissipations. The one is the money-getter's Eldorado, the other the pleasure-seeker's paradise. The former is viewed with wonder and admiration; for size it is a province, for population a kingdom. But Paris, the modern Babel, with its boulevards and palaces, its five-and-twenty theatres, its gaudy restaurants and glittering coffee-houses, its light and cheerful aspect, so different from the soot-grimed walls of the English capital, is the land of promise to truant gentlemen and erratic ladies, whether from the Don or the Danube, the Rhine or the Wolga, from the frozen steppes of the chilly north, or the orange groves of the sunny south. A library has been written to exhibit its physiognomy; thousands of pens have laboured to depict the peculiarities of its population, floating and stationary.

Amongst those who have most recently attempted the task, Mr Karl Gutzkow, a dramatist of some fame in his own land, holds a respectable place. He has recorded in print the results of two visits to Paris, paid in 1842 and in the present year. The self-imposed labour has been creditably performed; much truth and sharpness of observation are manifest in his pages, although here and there a triviality forces a smile, a far-fetched idea or a bizarre opinion causes a start. Mr Gutzkow partakes a fault common to many of his countrymen – a tendency to extremes, an aptness either to trifle or to soar, now playing on the ground with the children, then floating in the clouds with mystical familiars, or on a winged hobbyhorse. Desultory in style, he neglects the classification of his subject. Abruptly passing from the grave to the light, from the solid to the frothy, he breaks off a profound disquisition or philosophical argument to chatter about the new vaudeville, and glides from a scandalous anecdote of an actress into the policy of Louis Philippe. His frequent and capricious transitions are not disagreeable, and help one pleasantly enough through the book, but a methodical arrangement would be more favourable to the reader's memory. As it is, we lay down the volume with a perfect jumble in our brains, made up of the sayings, doings, qualities, and characteristics of actors, authors, statesmen, communists, journalists, and of the various other classes concerning whom Mr Gutzkow discourses, introducing them just as they occur to him, or as he happened to meet with them, and in some instances returning three or four times to the same individual. The first part of the book, which is the most lengthy and important, is in the form of letters, and was perhaps actually written to friends in Germany. This would account for its desultoriness and medley of matter. The second portion, written during or subsequently to a recent visit to Paris, serves as an appendix, and as a rectification of what came before. The author troubles himself little about places; he went to see Parisians rather than to gaze at Paris, to study men rather than to admire monuments, and has the good sense to avoid prattling about things that have been described and discussed by more common-place writers than himself. Well provided with introductions, he made the acquaintance of numerous notabilities, both political and literary, and of them he gives abundant details: an eager play-goer, his theatrical criticisms are bold, minute, and often exceedingly happy; an observant man, his remarks on the social condition of Paris and of France are both acute and interesting. Let us follow him page by page through his fifth letter or chapter, the first that relates to Paris. Those that precede contain an account of his journey from Hanover. On his entrance into France, he encounters various petty disagreeables, in the shape of ill-hung vehicles, sulky conductors, bad dinners, extravagant prices, and attempts at extortion, which stir up his bile, accustomed as he is to the moderate charges, smiling waiters, and snug although slow eilwagens of his own country. But he has resolved neither to grumble at trifles nor to judge hastily. A visit to France, and especially to Paris, has long been his darling project. His greatest fear is to be disappointed – imagination, especially that of a German, is so apt to outrun reality.

"Every sou upon which I read 'Republique Française,' every portrait of the unhappy Louis upon the coarse copper money, makes such impression on me, that I no longer think of any thing but the historical ground under my feet; and consoled for my trifling grievances, upon a fine spring morning I enter the great Babel through the Barrière St Denis.

"I am in France, in Paris. I must reflect, in order to ascertain what was my first thought. As a boy, I hated France and loved Paris. My thoughts clung fast to Germany's fall and Germany's greatness; my feelings, my fancy, ranged through the French capital, of which I had early heard much from my father, who had twice marched thither as a Prussian soldier and conqueror." Then come sundry reflections on the July revolution, and its effect on Europe. "These are chains of thought which hereafter will occupy us much. I must now think for a while of the France that I brought with me, because the one I have found is likely to lead me astray. Louis Philippe, Guizot, the armed peace, the peace at all price, the chamber of peers, the attempts on the king's life, the deputies, the épiciers, the great men and the little intrigues, art and science, Véry, Vefour, Musard – I am really puzzled not to forget something of what I previously knew. A hackney-coach horse, lying dead upon the boulevard, preoccupies me more than yonder hôtel des Capucins, where Guizot gives his dinners. A wood-pavement at the end of the Rue Richelieu sets me a-thinking more than the bulletin of to-day's Débats. They pave Paris with wood to deprive revolutions of building materials. Barricades are not to be made out of blocks. Better that those who cannot hear should be run over than that those who cannot see should risk to fall from their high estate."

Considering that, when this was written, all the wood-pavement in Paris might have been covered with a Turkey carpet, and that up to this day its superficies has very little increased, Mr Gutzkow's discovery has much the appearance of a mare's nest. A better antidote to the stone within Paris is to be found in the stone around it. The fortifications will match the barricades. But it would be unfair to criticise too severely the crude impressions of a novice, suddenly set down amidst the turmoil, bustle, tumult, and fever of the French capital. From the pavements we pass to the promenaders.

"Pity that black should this year be the fashion for ladies' dresses. The mourning garments clash with the freshness of spring. The heavens are blue, the sun shines, the trees already burst into leaf, the fountains round the obelisk throw their countless diamonds into the air. The exhibition of pictures has just opened. Shall I go thither, and exchange this violet-scented atmosphere for the odour of the varnish? In Paris the exhibition comes with the violets – in Berlin with the asters. I prefer the autumn show at Berlin to the spring exhibition in Paris; also intrinsically, with respect to art. Our German painters have more poetry. With us painting is lyric – here all is, or strives to be, dramatic. Every picture seems to thrust itself forward and demand applause. I see great effects, but little feeling. Religion is represented by a few gigantic altar-pieces. They are the offerings of a devotion which only thinks of the saints because new churches require new pictures. New churches consist of stone, wood, gold, silver, an organ, an altar-piece. These pictures of saints belong to the ministry of public works; it is easy to see that they have been done to order. Besides them, the gallery is full of Oriental scenes, family pictures and portraits. The first are to inspire enthusiasm for Algiers, the second illustrate the happiness of wedded life, the last are matrimonial advertisements in oil colour. In the family groups, children and little dogs are most prominent; of the male portraits the beard is the principal part. It is useless to look for men here; one sees nothing but hair. Everybody wears a beard à la mode du moyen âge – flâneurs, coachmen, marquises, artisans. On all sides one is surrounded with Vandyke and Rubens heads, poetical beards and hair, contrasting strangely with prosaic eyes, pallid lips, and the graceless costumes of the nineteenth century."

After some more very negative praise of French art, Mr Gutzkow gets sick of turpentine and confinement, and rushes out of the Louvre into the sunshine and the Champs Elysées, where the sight of the throng of dashing equipages, gay cavaliers, and pretty amazons, instead of causing him to throw up his hat and bless his stars for having conducted him into such ways of pleasantness, renders him melancholy and metaphysical. He is moralising on the Parisian ladies, when a cloud of dust and the clatter of cavalry give a new turn to his reflections. "Here," he exclaims, "comes an example of earthly happiness. Louis Philippe, King of the French, surrounded by a half squadron of his body-guard; a narrow and scarcely perceptible window in his deep six-horse carriage; a King, flying by, resting not, leaning back in his coach, not venturing to look out, breathing with difficulty under the shirt of mail which, according to popular belief, he ever wears beneath his clothes. But of this more hereafter." Quite enough as it is, Mr Gutzkow; and you are right, being in so gloomy a mood, to run off to the Theatre Français, and try to dissipate your vapours by seeing Rachel in Chimène. An unfavourable criticism of that actress, retracted at a later period, closes the chapter. Chimène is one of Rachel's worst parts, and her critic was not in his best humour. He found her cold, and deficient in voice. Subsequently, in Joan of Arc, she fully redeemed herself in his opinion, although he had seen the best German actresses in Schiller's tragedy of that name, with which the work of Soumet ill bears comparison. Here, he acknowledges, she raised herself to an artistical elevation to which no German actress of the present day can hope to attain.

The next actress of whom Mr Gutzkow records his judgment, is the queen of the vaudeville, the faded but still fascinating Dejazet. From the classic hall of the "Français" to the agreeable little den of iniquity at the other end of the Palais Royal, the distance was not great, but the transition was very violent. It was passing from a funeral to an orgie, thus to leave Phèdre for Frétillon, Rachel for Dejazet. "She performed in a little piece called the Fille de Dominique, in which she represents the daughter of a deceased royal comedian of the days of Molière. She comes to Paris to get admitted into the troop to which her father belonged. She is to give proofs of her talents, and has already done so before any one suspects it. She has been to Baron, the comedian, and presented herself alternately as a peasant girl, a fantastical lady, and as a young drummer of the Royal Guard. She is seen by the audience in all these parts. Her first word, her first step, convinced me of the great fidelity of her acting. She is no queen, no fairy, or great dame out of Scribe's comedies, but the peasant girl, the grisette, the heroine of the vaudeville. All about her is arch, droll, true. Her gestures are extraordinarily correct and steady; and in spite of her harsh counter-tenor, and of an organ in which many a wild night and champagne debauch may be traced, she sings her couplets with clearness of intonation, grace of execution, and not unfrequently with most touching effect. I am at a loss fully to explain and define her very peculiar style of acting."

Mr Gutzkow thought that the French public had become careless of Dejazet, even when he first saw her, now four years ago. We believe he is mistaken, and that she is as much appreciated as ever, in spite of her five and forty years, soon to be converted into fifty. Although haggard from vigils and dissipation, neither on the stage nor off it does she look her age. The good heart and joyous disposition that have endeared her to her comrades of the buskin, have in some degree neutralized the effects of her excesses. On his second visit to Paris, our author finds her grown exceedingly old, and depreciates as much as he before praised her – calls her a rouged corpse, and makes all manner of uncivil and unsavoury comments and comparisons. He goes so far as to style her acting in 1846, languid, feeble, and insipid. Qui trop dit, ne dit rien, and this is palpable exaggeration. We perceive scarcely any difference in Dejazet now and five years ago. Her singing voice may be a little less sure, her eyes a trifle hollower – she may need rather more paint to conceal the inroads of time on her piquante and spirituelle physiognomy, but she preserves the same spirit and vivacity, verve and vigour. Her appearance this spring at the Variétés theatre, in the vaudeville of Gentil Bernard, was a triumph of talent over time; and crowded houses, attracted not by the excellence of the piece, but by the perfection of the acting, proved that Dejazet is still, which she long has been, the pet of the Parisians. She is an extraordinary actress – so true to nature, possessed of such perfect judgment, and grace of gesticulation. Not a movement of her hand, a turn of her head, an inflexion of her voice, but has its signification and produces its effect. Her performance in the picturesque and bustling second act of Gentil Bernard is faultless. The frequenters of St James's theatre have this summer had an opportunity of appreciating it. At Paris she was better supported. Lafont makes a very fair La Tulipe, but not so good a one as Hoffmann. The inferior parts, also, were far better filled on the Boulevard des Italiens, than in King Street, St James's, where the whole weight of the protracted and not very interesting vaudeville rested upon the shoulders of Dejazet.

The success of Rachel has roused the ambition and raised the reputation of the daughters of Israel, who are now quite in vogue at the Paris theatres. Mesdemoiselles Rebecca and Worms, at the "Français," are both Jewesses; at the minor theatre of the "Folies Dramatiques," Judith delights a motley audience by her able enactment of the grisette. Instances have been known of very Christian young ladies feigning themselves of the faith of Moses, in hope that the fraud might facilitate their admission to the Thespian arena.

A severe judgment is passed by Mr Gutzkow upon the present state of musical art and representations in the French capital. The opera, he affirms, and not without reason, is on its last legs, sustained only by the ballet, by the beauty of the scenery and costumes. Duprez has had his day, Madame Stolz is among the middlings, Barroilhet alone may be reckoned a first-rate singer. Our author saw the Elísir d'Amore given by a company which he says would hardly be listened to in a German provincial town. Madame Stolz was then absent on a starring expedition. The ballet of Paquita was some compensation for the poorness of the singing. "At the 'Italiens' I heard the Barber of Seville, with Lablache, Ronconi, Tagliafico, Mario, and Persiani. This opera is considered the triumph of the Italian company; but I confess that the magnificence of the theatre, the high charge for admission, the Ohs! and Ahs! of the English women in the boxes, just arrived from London, and who had never before heard good music, were all insufficient to blind me with respect to the merits of the performance. I look upon the Italian opera at Paris as a mystification on the very largest scale, a thorough classic-Italian swindle. That a German company, composed of our best opera singers, would be infinitely superior to this Italian one, appears to me to admit of no dispute; but even at an ordinary theatre in Germany or Italy, one hears as good singing, perhaps with the exception of Lablache in Bartolo– and even he is cold and careless, devoid of freshness, and always seems to say to the audience, 'You stupid people, take that for your twelve francs a-seat!' The quackery of this theatre becomes the more intelligible when we reflect that, in all Paris, there is no other where a single note of Italian opera music can be heard, the Italians having the monopoly of the sweet melodies of their native country. The Grand Opera, and the Opera Comique, deal in French music only; and the pleasure obtainable in any small German town possessing a theatre, that, namely, of hearing Norma, the Somnambula, and other similar operas, is nowhere to be procured except by paying extravagant prices to these half-dozen Italians." This statement is not quite correct. The Opera Comique, it is true, gives nothing but French music, and poor enough it is. In this particular, the Parisians are not difficult to satisfy. A good libretto, smart scenery, a hard-handed claque, a few skilful reclames, and laudatory paragraphs in the newspapers, will create an enthusiasm even for the insipid music of Monsieur Halévy, and sustain the Mousquetaires de la Reine, or similar mawkish compositions, through a whole season. But at the Académie Royale, good operas are to be heard, although the singing be deficient. Meyerbeer, Rossini, and Donizetti are not the names of Frenchmen; and the operas of these and other foreign composers are constantly given in the Rue Lepelletier.

"Several German opera companies have visited Paris; have begun well, and finished badly. And here our most brilliant singers would meet the same fate, because they would be allowed to sing nothing but German music; and German operas are not listened to in Paris. But if it were possible, with only a moderately good German company, to give Norma, the Barber, Robert the Devil, the Huguenots, and Mozart's operas, (omitting the dialogue,) that company, supported by a good orchestra, and performing in a decent theatre, would carry all before them, and return to Germany laden with fame and gold. But that is the difficulty. In France every one must stick to a speciality. From the German they will hear nothing but German music, and the representation of other operas is positively forbidden him."

Without going the lengths that Mr Gutzkow does, or by any means coinciding in his sweeping censure of the artists who now furnish forth the Italian theatres of London and Paris, we doubt whether it is not fashion, as much as the excellence of the music, that draws the élite of French and English society to the Haymarket and the Salle Ventadour, and whether a German company of equal intrinsic merit would receive adequate patronage and encouragement in either capital, supposing even that they were allowed their choice of operas, and had the benefit of a handsome theatre and an able management. Certainly they would not get the enormous salaries which, in combination with the greediness of managers, and the manœuvres of ticket-sellers, render the enjoyment of a good opera, in London at least, a luxury attainable but by an exceedingly limited class.

Although the prices of admission to most of the Paris theatres are moderate, they are occasionally raised by illegitimate stratagems. This is especially the case when a new piece is performed from which much is expected, or concerning which, by puffery or for other reasons, the public curiosity has been greatly excited. On such occasions, the first few representations are sometimes rendered doubly and even trebly productive. The prices cannot be raised at the theatre itself without express permission from the authorities, and as this is seldom granted, another plan is resorted to. The box-office is transferred de facto from the corridor of the theatre to the open street. Whoever applies for tickets is told that there is not one left to any part of the house. Nothing then remains but to have recourse to the ticket-brokers, who carry on their disreputable commerce in the streets or at the wine-shops. In the Rue Montmartre, within a few doors of the Boulevard, there is a marchand de vin, whose establishment is a grand rendezvous of these gentry. They are the agents of the managers of the theatres. The latter sell all the tickets to themselves a fortnight beforehand, inscribing on the coupons the names of imaginary buyers, and then distribute them amongst the brokers, who sell them in front of the theatre to eager theatrical amateurs, as a great favour, and as the last obtainable tickets, at two or three times the regulation price. The theatre pockets the profits, minus a brokerage. In this manner a first representation at the large theatre of the Porte St Martin may be made to yield ten thousand francs. When a theatre is out of vogue, and filling poorly, the same system is adopted; but in the contrary sense. The marchands de billets are provided with tickets which they sell at less than the established price.

When De Balzac's drama, Les Expédients de Quinola, was brought out at the "Odeon," he compounded to receive the proceeds of the first three nights, in lieu of a share of each representation whilst the piece should run. The play had been greatly talked of, the steam had been got up in every way, and the public was in a fever. It is customary enough in Paris for dramatic authors, in order at once to get paid for their labours, to barter their droits d'auteur for the entire profits of the first representations. Scribe does it at the Français. When the tickets are sold at the usual prices, this financial arrangement is regular enough, and concerns nobody but author and manager. But that would not satisfy Balzac, who is notorious for his avarice. He set the brokers to work, and drove the prices up to the highest possible point, fifteen francs for a stall, instead of five, a hundred francs for a box and so forth. "Under such circumstances," says Mr Gutzkow, "it cannot be wondered if people forgot Eugenie Grandet and the Père Goriot, and hissed his play. To-day, nearly a hundred criticisms of Quinola have appeared. It is my belief, that, instead of reading them, Balzac is counting his five-franc pieces." The drama fell from want of merit as well as from the indignation excited by the author's greed. Although Balzac's books are read and admired – some of them at least – personally he is most unpopular. He is accused, and not without reason, of arrogance and avarice. His assumption and conceit are evident in his works. He has sacrificed his fame to love of gold; for one good book he has produced two that are trash; by speculating on his reputation, he has undermined and nearly destroyed it. Moreover, he has committed the enormous blunder of affecting to despise the press, which consequently shows him no mercy. For a fortnight after the appearance of Quinola– which, although defective as a dramatic composition, was not without its merits – the unlucky play served as a daily laughing-stock and whipping-post to the battalion of Parisian critics. Janin led the way; a host of minor wasps followed in his wake, and threw themselves with deafening hum and sharp sting against the devoted head of M. de Balzac. He bore their aggravating assaults with great apparent indifference, consoled for want of friends by well-lined pockets.

We grieve to hear the bad accounts of Mademoiselle Rachel's private propensities and public prospects given by Janin, or, at least, by Mr Gutzkow, who in another place enters into further details of the fair tragedian's irregularities. It is difficult to imagine Chimène smoking a cigar, Phèdre sitting over a punch-bowl, the Maid of Orleans intriguing with a journalist, even though it be admitted that the lords of the feuilleton are also tyrants of the stage, and toss about their foulards with a tolerable certainty of their being gratefully and submissively picked up. We will hope, however, either that Janin was pleased to mystify Gutzkow, thinking it perhaps very allowable to pass a joke on the curious German who had ferreted him out in his quatrième, or that Gutzkow has fathered upon Janin the floating reports and calumnious inuendos of the theatrical coffee-houses.

Mr Gutzkow went to see George Sand. This was his great ambition, his burning desire. He is an enthusiastic admirer of her works and of her genius. It is to be inferred from what he tells us, that he did not find it easy to obtain an introduction. Madame Dudevant lives retired, and likes not to be trotted out for the entertainment of the curious. She is particularly distrustful of tourists. They have sketched her in grotesque outline, respecting neither her mysteries nor her confidence. But Mr Gutzkow was resolved to see the outside of her house, pending the time that he might obtain access to its interior. So away he went to the Rue Pigale, No. 16, chattered with the portress, peeped into the garden, gazed at the windows which George Sand, "when exhausted with mental labour, is wont to open to cool her bosom in the fresh air." Considering that this was in the month of March, some time had probably elapsed since the lady had done any thing so imprudent. From a chapter of Lelia or Mauprat to an equinoctial breeze! There is a catarrh in the mere notion of the transition. However, Mr Gutzkow viewed the matter with a poet's eye – the window, we mean to say – and after gazing his fill, departed, musing as he went. A fortnight later he was admitted to see the jewel whose casket he had contemplated with so much veneration. "I have been to see George Sand. She wrote to me: 'You will find me at home any evening. If, however, I am engaged with a lawyer or compelled to go out, you must not impute it to want of courtesy. I am entangled in a lawsuit in which you will see a trait of our French usages, for which my patriotism must needs blush. I plead against my publisher, who wants to constrain me to write a romance according to his pleasure – that is to say, advocating his principles. Life passes away in the saddest necessities, and is only preserved by anxieties and sacrifices. You will find a woman of forty years old, who has employed her whole life not in pleasing by her amiability, but in offending by her candour. If I displease your eyes, I shall, at any rate, preserve in your heart the place that you have conceded me. I owe it to the love of truth, a passion whose existence you have distinguished and felt in my literary attempts.'

"I went to see her in the evening. In a small room, scarce ten feet square, she sat sewing by the fire, her daughter opposite to her. The little apartment was sparingly lighted by a lamp with a dark shade. There was no more light than sufficed to illumine the work with which mother and daughter were busied. On a divan in one corner, and in dark shadow, sat two men, who, according to French custom, were not introduced to me. They kept silence, which increased the solemn, anxious tension of the moment. A gentle breathing, an oppressive heat, a great tightness about the heart. The flame of the lamp flickered dimly, in the chimney the charcoal glowed away into white shimmering ashes, a ghostlike ticking was the only sound heard. The ticking was in my waistcoat pocket. It was my watch, not my heart." How intensely German is all this overwrought emotion about nothing! Fortunately a chair was at hand, into which the impressionable dramatist dropped himself. His first speech was a blunder, for it sounded like a preparation.

"'Pardon my imperfect French. I have read your works too often, and Scribe's comedies too seldom. From you one learns the mute language of poetry, from Scribe the language of conversation.'"

To which compliment Aurora Dudevant merely replied: "'How do you like Paris?'

"'I find it as I had expected. – A lawsuit like yours is a novelty. How does it proceed?'

"A bitter smile for sole reply.

"'What is understood in France by contrainte par corps?'

"'Imprisonment.'

"'Surely they will not throw a woman into prison to compel her to write a romance. What does your publisher mean by his principles?'

"'Those which differ from mine. He finds me too democratic.'

"And mechanics do not buy romances, thought I. 'Does the Revue Indépendante make good progress?'

"'Very considerable, for a young periodical.'"

And so on for a couple of pages. But George Sand was on her guard, and stuck to generalities. She would not allow her visitor to draw her out, as he would gladly have done. She had been already too much gossiped about and calumniated in print. She had an intuitive perception of the approaching danger. She nosed the intended book. Nevertheless, and although reserved, she was very amiable; talked about the drama – when Mr Gutzkow, remembering her unsuccessful play of Cosima, tried to change the subject – inquired after Bettina, spoke respectfully of Germany – of which, however, she does not profess to know any thing – and even smoked a cigar.

"George Sand laid aside her work, arranged the fire, and lighted one of those innocent cigars which contain more paper than tobacco, more coquetry than emancipation. I was now able, for the first time, to obtain a good view of her features. She is like her portraits, but less stout and round than they make her. She has a look of Bettina. Since that time she has grown larger.

"'Who translates me in Germany?'

"'Fanny Tarnow, who styles her translations bearbeitungen.'

"'Probably she omits the so-called immoral passages.'

"She spoke this with great irony. I did not answer, but glanced at her daughter, who cast down her eyes. The pause that ensued was of a second, but it expressed the feelings of an age."

Although Mr Gutzkow's visits to Paris were each but of a few weeks' duration, and notwithstanding that he had much to do, many persons to call upon and things to see, he now and then felt himself upon the brink of ennui. This especially in the evenings, which, he says, would be insupportable without the theatres. To foreigners they certainly would be so, and to many Parisians. The theatre, the coffee-house, the reading-room, the unvarying and at last wearisome lounge on the boulevards, compose the resources of the stranger in Paris. Access to domestic circles he finds extremely difficult, rarely obtainable. Many imagine, on this account, that in Paris there is no such thing as domestic life, that the quiet evenings with books, music, and conversation, the fireside coteries so delightful in England and Germany, are unknown in the French metropolis. If not unknown, they are, at any rate, much rarer. "The stranger complains especially," says Mr Gutzkow, "that his letters of introduction carry him little further than the antechamber. He misses nothing so much as the opportunity of passing his evenings in familiar intercourse with some family who should admit him to their intimacy." This want is most perceptible at the season when Mr Gutzkow was at Paris, March and April, treacherous and rainy months, comprising Lent, during which Paris is comparatively dull, and when many persons, either from religious scruples or from weariness of winter and carnival gaieties, refuse parties, and cease to give their weekly or fortnightly soirées, often more agreeable as an habitual resort than balls and entertainments of greater pretensions. Mr Gutzkow complains bitterly of the bad weather. The climate of Paris is certainly the reverse of good. The heat oppressively great in summer, rain intolerably abundant for seven or eight months of the twelve. If London has its fogs, Paris has its deluge, and its consequences, oceans of mud, which, in the narrow streets of the French capital, are especially obnoxious. The Boulevards and the Rues de Rivoli and De la Paix are really the only places where one is tolerably secure from the splashing of coach and scavenger.

"A rainy day," writes Mr Gutzkow, on the 22nd March; "the sky grey, the Seine muddy, the streets filthy and slippery. You take refuge in the passages, and in the Palais Royal. Appointments are made in the passages and reading-rooms. Dinner at the Bœuf à la Mode, at the Grand Vatel or Restaurant Anglais, reserving Véry, Véfour, the Rocher de Cancale, for a brighter day and more cheerful mood."

"Paris is too large in bad weather, and too small in fine. Really, when the sun shines, Paris is very small. The fashionable part of the Boulevards, the Rue Vivienne, the Rue Richelieu, the Palais Royal, in all that region you are soon so much at home that your face is known to every shopkeeper. Always the same impressions. In the daytime often insipid; more cheerful at night, when the gas-lights gleam. The art of false appearances is here brought to the greatest perfection. The commonest shops are so arranged as to deceive the eye. Mirrors reflect the wares, and give the establishment an artificial extension, by lamplight a fantastical grandeur. You try the different restaurants, dining sometimes here, sometimes there, and gradually becoming initiated in the mysteries of the carte; for the most part avoiding all complicated preparations, and confining yourself to the dishes au naturel, as the surest means of not eating cat for calf. In the Palais Royal the shops are very dear, only the dinners on the first floor are cheap, and ennui is to be had gratis. Since so many handsome passages have been opened through the streets, the Palais Royal has lost its vogue. Some say that its decline began with its morality. The Cabinets particuliers, formerly of such evil repute, are now the smoking rooms of the coffeehouses. The Galerie d'Orleans is still the most frequented part of the Palais Royal. Here the loungers pull out their watches every five minutes; they all wait either for a friend or for dinner-time. Meanwhile they saunter to and fro, and admire the skill of their tailors in the range of mirrors on either side of the gallery.

"I followed the boulevards, the other day, from the Madeleine to the Column of July – a distance which it took me almost two hours to accomplish. From the Portes St Denis and St Martin, the boulevards lose their metropolitan aspect. They become more countrified and homely. The magnificence of the shops and coffeehouses diminishes and at last disappears. The luxurious gives way to the useful, the comfortable to the needy. At the Château d'Eau, where the boulevard turns off at a right angle, four or five theatres stand together. Here is the road to the Père la Chaise. Here fell the victims of Fieschi's infernal machine. From one of these little houses the murderous discharge was made. From which, I will not ask. Perhaps no one could tell me. Paris has forgotten her revolutions.

"Further on, the Goddess of Liberty flashes on us from the summit of the July Column. Why in that dancer-like attitude? It may show the artist's skill, but it is undignified, and seems to challenge the stormwind which once already blew down Freedom's Goddess from the Pantheon. Upon the column are engraved the names of the heroes of July.

"What stood formerly upon this spot? Upon yonder little house I read, 'Tavern of the Bastile.' This, then, was the birthplace of French freedom, of the freedom of the world. Upon this site, now bare, stood the fortress-prison, whose gloomy interior beheld for centuries the crimes of tyrants, the violence of despotism, whereof nought but dark rumours transpired to the world without. On the 14th July 1789, came the dawn. The Bastile was destroyed, and not one stone of it remained upon another. It is awfully impressive to contemplate this place, now so naked and empty, once so gloomily shadowed.

"We enter the suburb of the workmen, the faubourg St Antoine, the former ally and reliance of the Jacobins. Here things have a ruder and more strongly marked aspect. It is a sort of Frankfurt Sachsenhausen. By the Rue St Antoine we again reach the interior of the city, its most industrious and busy quarter. I love these working-day wanderings in the regions of labour. I prefer them to all the Sunday promenades upon the broad pavements of luxury. True that each of these intricate and dirty streets has its own particular and often nauseous odour. Here are the soapboilers, yonder a slaughter-house, here again, in the Rue des Lombards, the atmosphere is laden with the scent of spices and drugs. In the cellars, men, with shirt-sleeves rolled up, crush brimstone and pepper and a hundred other things in huge iron mortars; a noise and smell which reminds me of the treacle-grinders on the Rialto at Venice. And here, also, in these narrow alleys and dingy lanes, historical associations linger. Yonder is the battered chapel of St Méry, where, eight years ago, four hundred republicans, intrenched in the cloisters, strove against the whole armed might of Paris, and were overcome only by artillery. To-day the French Opposition takes things more easily. Its demonstrations are dinners, as in Germany. The popping of champagne corks causes no bloodshed. Written speeches, an article in a newspaper, a toast to the maintenance of order, another against tentatives insensées; – it will be long before such an opposition attains its end."

Mr Gutzkow, who does not conceal his ultra-liberal opinions, seems almost to regret the revolutionary days, and to pity Paris for the tranquillity which a firm and judicious government has at length succeeded in establishing within its walls. Had a republican outbreak taken place during his abode in the French capital, one might have expected to find him raising impromptu battalions from the eighty thousand Germans and Alsatians, who form an important item of the Parisian population. His doctrines will hardly gain him much favour with the powers that be in his own country. But for that he evidently cares little. He is one of the progress; Young Germany reckons in him a stanch and devoted partisan. With his democratic tendencies, and in Paris, where monuments of revolutions abound, and where a thousand names and places recall the struggles between the people and their rulers, it is not wonderful that his enthusiasm occasionally boils over, and that he vents or hints opinions which maturer reflection would perhaps induce him to repudiate.

A visit to Michel Chevalier suggests a comparison between the different modes of attaining to public honours and ministerial office in France and in Germany. "Most delightful to me was the acquaintance of Chevalier. Delightful and afflicting. Afflicting when I contrasted the treatment of talent in Germany with that which it meets in France. Michel Chevalier, the accomplished writer who knows how to handle so well and agreeably the dry topics of national economy, of railways and public works, ten years ago was a St Simonian. When the association of Menilmontant was prosecuted by the French government, he was condemned to a year's imprisonment. But those who persecuted him for his principles, prized him for his talents. Instead of letting him undergo his punishment, as would have been the case in Germany, they gave him money and sent him to North America, commissioned to make observations upon that country. Chevalier published, in the Journal des Debats, his able letters from the United States, returned to France, became professor at the University, and, a year ago, was made counsellor of state." In opposition to this example, Mr Gutzkow traces the progress of the German candidate for his office; pipes, beer, and dogs at the university, plucked in his examination, a place in an administration, counsellor, knight of several orders, vice-president of a province, president of a province, minister.

Although there are in Paris more Germans than foreigners of any other nation, little is seen and heard of them. They do not hang together, and form a society of their own, as do the English, and even the Spaniards and Italians. They may be classed under the heads of political refugees, artisans, men of science and letters, merchants and bankers. Few of them are of sufficient rank and importance to represent their nation with dignity, or sufficiently wealthy to make themselves talked of for their lavish expenditure and magnificent establishments. They have not, like the English, colonized and appropriated to themselves one of the best quarters of Paris. Mr Gutzkow complains of the scanty kindness and attention shown to his countrymen by the richer class of German residents. "I was in a drawing-room," he says, "whose owner was indebted for his fortune to a marriage with a German lady. Yet the Germans there present were neglected both by host and hostess. The German artist or scholar must not reckon on a Schickler or a Rothschild to introduce him into the higher circles of Parisian life. These rich bankers are of the same breed as the German waiters in Switzerland and Alsace, who, even when waiting upon Germans, pretend to understand only French. Music is the German's best passport to French society. You may be a great scientific genius, and find no admission at the renowned soirées of the Countess Merlin. Do but offer to take a part in one of the musical choruses, to strengthen the bass or the tenor, and you are welcome without name or fame, and even without varnished boots."

We have been diffuse upon the lighter texts afforded us by Mr Gutzkow's work, and must abstain from touching upon its graver portions. They will repay perusal. A vein of satire, sometimes verging on bitterness, is here and there perceptible in his pages. It forms no unpleasant seasoning to a very palatable book.

VISIT TO THE VLADIKA OF MONTENEGRO

The people of the old Illyricum have shown a marvellous consistency of character through all the changes that have affected the other nations of the Roman empire. They exist now as they did of old, a hardy race of borderers, not quite civilised, and not quite barbarous – Christian in fact, and Turkish to a great extent in appearance. Living on the borders of the two empires, they exhibit the national characteristics of each in transitu towards the other. Of all civilised Europe, it is perhaps here only that the practice of carrying arms universally and commonly prevails – a custom which we have very old historical authority for considering as the characteristic mark of unsettled, predatory, and barbarous manners – an opinion which will be abundantly confirmed by a glance at the neighbouring Albanians. Any thing original is possessed of one element of interest, especially when it has been so sturdily preserved; and sturdy, indeed, have the Illyrians been. In spite of the polished condition of the empire of which they form a constituent part, and of the constant steamers up and down the Adriatic promoting intercourse with the world, they remain much as they used to be, and so do they seem likely to remain indefinitely.

Perhaps the secret of their stability may be, that visitors pass all around them, but seldom come among them. People visit the coast to look at Spalatro for Diocletian's sake, at Pola for its magnificent amphitheatre, and for the memory of Constantine's unhappy son, and perhaps at Ragusa. But this is pretty well all they could do conveniently, which is the same thing as to say, it is all that nineteen travellers out of twenty would do. In those places where visits are paid by prescription, the traveller would find, as is likely, nothing of distinct nationality. Such places are like well-frequented inns, where any body and every body is at home, and where every body influences the manners for the time being – there will be found cafés, carriages, and ciceroni.

But the case is far different in the more abstruse parts of this region – in those districts of which some have subsided into the domain of the Turks, some remain independent, and a narrow strip only is reserved – the wreck of the old Empire. All are defaulters in the march of civilisation. But the independent Montenegrini retain in full force the odour of barbaric romance. They occupy a small territory, not noticed in many maps, shut in by the Turks on all sides, except where, for a narrow space, they border on Austria. But they pay no sort of subjection to either of these mighty powers. With Austria they maintain friendly intelligence on the footing of the proudest sovereignty, and an unqualified assertion of the right of nations. With the Turks their relations are of a ruder and more interesting kind.

The Montenegrini alone of Europe follow the political model of modern Rome. Their political head is their ecclesiastical superior. The regal and episcopal offices, conjointly held, are hereditary in collateral succession, since the reigning prince is bound to celibacy. In the consecration of their bishops, they pay no regard to canonical age, and the authorities of the Greek church seem to bend to the peculiar exigencies of the case. The reigning Vladika was consecrated at the age of eighteen. His power is, in fact, supreme, though formally qualified by the assessorship of a senate, who, though entitled to advise, would outstep their bounds did they attempt to direct. Indeed, legal authority among such a clan of barbarians can only subsist by despotism. Where every hand is armed, and violent death a familiar object, the power that rules must be enabled to act immediately and without appeal. To graduate authority among them, except in the case of military command, exercised by immediate delegation from the chief, would be to render it contemptible.

And such a bishop as now occupies this throne has not been seen since the martial days of the fighting Pope Julius. The old stories of prelates clad in armour, and fighting at the head of their troops, astonish us, but are regarded as altogether antiquated. Yet among those hills is exhibited a scene that may realise the wildest descriptions of romance or history. That the people are a people of warriors, is not so surprising when we consider their locality, their ancestry, and the circumstances of their life. If they were merely marauders, we should be no more struck with the singularity of their state than we are with the vagabondism of the Albanians. A wild country, a wandering population, and distance from executive restraints, may, in any case, bring natural ferocity to a harvest of violence and rapine. But the Montenegrini disclaim the name of robbers and the practice of evil. They consider themselves to be engaged in a warfare, not only justifiable, but meritorious, and over bloodshed they cast the veil of religious zeal.

It seems to be a fact that their violence is for the Turks only. So far as we could gain intelligence, they do not molest Christians; and experience enables us to speak with pleasure of our own hospitable reception. But against the Turks their hatred is intense, their valour and rage unquenchable. It is not to be supposed that any Turk would be so foolish as to attempt the passage of their territory, except under express assurance of safe conduct; but should one do so, he would find ineffectual the strongest escort with which the Sultan could furnish him. The savage nature of the district must prevent the combined action of regular troops, or of any troops unacquainted with the localities; and from behind the crags an unseen enemy would wither the ranks of the invader. Indeed, it would appear that the passage is not safe for a Turk even under the assurance of a truce. A tragical accident was the subject of conversation at the time of our visit. A body of the enemy had been surprised and cut off, notwithstanding the subsistence of a truce. Ignorance on the part of the assaulters was the ready plea; and a message had been dispatched to make such reparation as could be found in apologies and restitution of effects. But the thing looked ill. A truce must soon become notorious throughout so confined a region, and among a people of whom, if not every one engaged personally in the field, every one had his heart and soul there. It is to be feared that the obligations of good faith are qualified in the case of a Mahomedan; and however we may lament, we can hardly view with astonishment so natural a consequence of their bloody education. "Hates any man the thing he would not kill?" – and hatred to the Turks is the dawning idea of the Montenegrino child, and the master-passion of the dying warrior.

With certain saving clauses, we may compare the position of the Montenegrini to that of the old knights of Malta. Rhodes and Malta are hardly more isolated, and are more accessible than this mountain region. If there be a wide difference between the gentle blood and European dignities of the knights, and the rude estate of the mountaineers, there is between them a brotherhood of courage, inflexibility, and devoted opposition to Mahomet. Each company may stand forth as having discharged a like office, distinguished by the characteristic differences of the two branches of the church. The knights, noble, polished, and temporally influential, defended the weak point of Western Christendom – the sea; the Montenegrini, unpolished, ignorant, of little worldly account, but great zeal, have done their part for Eastern Christendom, in opposing the continental power of the Turks. The unpolished nature of their life and actions has been in the spirit of the church to which they belong. They have been rude but steady, and stand alone in their strength. They have resisted not only the power of Mahomedanism on the one side, but have also refrained from amalgamation with the western Christians, remaining firm in that allegiance to the sec of Constantinople, which the Sclavonians derived from their first missionaries.³

There is one point of superiority in the case of these barbarians as compared with that of the military knights. They have never been conquered, never driven from their fastnesses. The knights defended Rhodes with valour such as never has been surpassed; and to this day the recollection moves the apathetic spirit of the Turks; and the monstrous burying-grounds in the suburbs are witnesses of the slaughter of the assailants. Yet Rhodes was evacuated, and the Order obliged to seek another settlement. But the Montenegrini have never been conquered. They have withstood the whole power of the mightiest sultans, in whose territories they have been as an ever-present nest of hornets, always ready to sally forth, losing no opportunity of destruction. These Osmanlis, who so lately were the proudest of nations, have been themselves baffled and defied by a handful of Christians. Their enthusiasm, their numbers, their artillery, their commanding possession of the lake of Scutari, all have failed to bring under their power a handful of some hundred and fifty thousand men. The cross, once planted in this rugged soil, has taken effectual root, and continues still to flash confusion on the followers of Islam. It is the symbol of our faith that is carried before the mountaineers when they go forth to battle; and it still inspirits them, as it did those legions of the faithful who first learned to reverence its virtue.

We must not carry things too far. It would be absurd to claim for these people the general merit of devotion; to suppose that as a general rule they are actuated by the love of religion. Alas! they are undoubtedly very ignorant of the religion for which they fight. Yet, so far as knowledge serves them, they are religious; where error is the consequence of ignorance, we may grieve, but should be slow to condemn. Some are probably led to heroism by liberal devotion to the person of the Bishop; some because they have been nursed in the idea that Turks are their natural enemies, whom to destroy is a work of merit. But, nevertheless, they exhibit the spectacle of a people who, proceeding on a principle of religion, however that principle be obscured, have instituted, and long have maintained, a crusade against the religious fanatics who once made Europe tremble. Their spirit at least contains the commendable elements of constancy, simplicity, and heroism.

It was my fortune to pay a visit to this extraordinary people under favourable circumstances. Visits to them are very rare. Sometimes a stray soldier's yacht, from Corfu, finds its way to Cattaro; but generally only in its course up the Adriatic. These military visitants are commonly more intent on woodcocks than the picturesque, and game does not particularly enrich these regions. For very many years there has been an account of only one English visiting-party besides ourselves. We were led thither by the happy favour of circumstance. Our party was numerous, and certainly must have been the most distinguished that the Vladika has had the opportunity of entertaining. It consisted of the captain and several officers of an English man-of-war, reinforced by the accession of a couple of volunteers from the officers of the Austrian garrison of Cattaro.

We were all glad to have the opportunity of satisfying our eyes on the subject of the marvellous tales whose confused rumour had reached us. We were not young travellers, and it was not a little that would astonish us – but we felt that if the reality in this case were at all like the report, we might all afford to be astonished. It was a singular thing that so little should be known about these people almost in their neighbourhood – for Corfu is not two hundred miles distant. But perhaps the reason may be, that they are not to be seen beyond their own confined region, and are easily confounded with the irregular tribes of Albanians.

ELINOR TRAVIS
A Tale in Three Chapters
Chapter the Last

I resolved to seek Rupert Sinclair no more, and I kept my word with cruel fidelity. But what could I do? Had I not seen him with my own eyes – had I not passed within a few feet of him, and beheld him, to my indignation and bitter regret, avoiding his house, sneaking basely from it, and retreating into the next street, because that house contained his wife and her paramour? Yes —paramour! I disbelieved the world no longer. There could be no doubt of the fact. True, it was incomprehensible – as incomprehensible as terrible! Rupert Sinclair, pure, sensitive, high-minded, and incorrupt, was incapable of any act branded by dishonour, and yet no amount of dishonour could be greater than that attached to the conduct which I had heard of and then witnessed. So it was – a frightful anomaly! a hideous discrepancy! Such as we hear of from time to time, and are found within the experience of every man, unhinging his belief, giving the lie to virtue, staggering the fixed notions of the confiding young, and confirming the dark conclusions of cold and incredulous age.

I hated London. The very air impure with the weight of the wickedness which I knew it to contain; and I resolved to quit the scene without delay. As for the mansion in Grosvenor Square, and its aristocratic inhabitants, I had never visited then with my own free will, or for my own profit and advantage: I forsook them without a sigh. For Rupert's sake I had submitted to insult from the overbearing lackeys of Railton House, and suffered the arrogance of the proud and imbecile lord himself. Much more I could have borne gladly and cheerfully to have secured his happiness, and to have felt that he was still as pure as I had known him in his youth.

To say that my suspicions were confirmed by public rumour, is to say nothing. The visits of Lord Minden were soon spoken of with a sneer and a grin by every one who could derive the smallest satisfaction from the follies and misfortunes of one who had borne himself too loftily in his prosperity to be spared in the hour of his trial. The fact, promulgated, spread like wildfire. The once fashionable and envied abode became deserted. There was a blot upon the door, which, like the plague-cross, scared even the most reckless and the boldest. The ambitious father lost sight of his ambition in the degradation that threatened his high name; and the half-conscientious, half-worldly mother forgot the instincts of her nature in the tingling consciousness of what the world would say. Rupert was left alone with the wife of his choice, the woman for whom he had sacrificed all – fortune, station, reputation – and for whom he was yet ready to lay down his life. Cruel fascination! fearful sorcery!

London was no place for such a man. Urged as much by the battling emotions of his own mind as by the intreaties of his wife, he determined to leave it for ever. And in truth the time had arrived. Inextricably involved, he could no longer remain with safety within reach of the strong arm of the law. His debts stared him in the face at every turn; creditors were clamorous and threatening; the horrible fact had been conveyed from the lips of serving-men to the ears of hungry tradesmen, who saw in the announcement nothing but peril to the accounts which they had been so anxious to run up, and now were equally sedulous in keeping down. It had always been known that Rupert Sinclair was not a rich man; it soon was understood that he was also a forsaken one. One morning three disreputable ill-looking characters were seen walking before the house of Mr Sinclair. When they first approached it, there was a sort of distant respect in their air very foreign to their looks and dress, which might indeed have been the result of their mysterious occupation, and no real respect at all. As they proceeded in their promenade, became familiar with the place, and attracted observation, their confidence increased, their respect retreated, and their natural hideous vulgarity shone forth. They whistled, laughed, made merry with the gentleman out of livery next door, and established a confidential communication with the housemaid over the way. Shortly one separated from the rest – turned into the mews at the corner of the street, and immediately returned with a bench that he had borrowed at a public-house. His companions hailed him with a cheer – the bench was placed before the door of Sinclair's house; the worthies sat and smoked, sang ribald songs, and uttered filthy jokes. A crowd collected, and the tale was told. Rupert had fled the country; the followers of a sheriff's officer had barricadoed his once splendid home, and, Cerberus-like, were guarding the entrance into wretchedness and gloom.

Heaven knows! there was little feeling in Lord Railton. Some, as I have already intimated, still existed in the bosom of his wife, whom providence had made mother to save her from an all-engrossing selfishness; but to do the old lord justice, he was shaken to the heart by the accumulated misfortunes of his child – not that he regarded those misfortunes in any other light than as bringing discredit on himself, and blasting the good name which it had been the boast of his life to uphold and keep clear of all attaint. But this bastard sympathy was sufficient to unman and crush him. He avoided the society of men, and disconnected himself from all public business. Twenty years seemed added to his life when he walked abroad with his head turned towards the earth, as though it were ashamed to confront the public gaze; the furrows of eighty winters were suddenly ploughed into a cheek that no harsh instrument had ever before impaired or visited. In his maturity he was called upon to pay the penalty of a life spent in royal and luxurious ease. He had borne no burden in his youth. It came upon him like an avalanche in the hour of his decline. It is not the strong mind that gives way in the fiery contest of life; the weakest vessel has the least resistance. About six months after Rupert had quitted England, slight eccentricities in the conduct of Lord Railton attracted the notice of his lordship's medical attendant, who communicated his suspicions to Lady Railton, and frightened her beyond all expression with hints at lunacy. Change of air and scene were recommended – a visit to Paris – to the German baths – any where away from England and the scene of trouble. The unhappy Lady Railton made her preparations in a day. Before any body had time to suspect the cause of the removal, the family was off, and the house in Grosvenor Square shut up.

They travelled to Wiesbaden, two servants only accompanied them, and a physician who had charge of his lordship, and towards whom her ladyship was far less patronising and condescending than she had been to the tutor of her son. If misfortune had not elevated her character, it had somewhat chastened her spirit, and taught her the dependency of man upon his fellow man, in spite of the flimsy barriers set up by vanity and pride. Lord Railton was already an altered man when he reached the capital of Nassau. The separation from every object that could give him pain had at once dispelled the clouds that pressed upon his mind; and the cheerful excitement of the journey given vigour and elasticity to his spirit. He enjoyed life again; and his faculties, mental and physical, were restored to him uninjured. Lady Railton would have wept with joy had she been another woman. As it was, she rejoiced amazingly.

The first day in Wiesbaden was an eventful one. Dinner was ordered, and his lordship was dressing, whilst Lady Railton amused herself in the charming gardens of the hotel at which they stopped. Another visitor was there – a lady younger than herself, but far more beautiful, and apparently of equal rank. One look proclaimed the stranger for a countrywoman, a second was sufficient for an introduction.

"This is a lovely spot," said Lady Railton, whose generally silent tongue was easily betrayed into activity on this auspicious morning.

"Do you think so?" answered the stranger, laughing as she spoke; "you are a new comer, and the loveliness of the spot is not yet darkened by the ugliness of the creatures who thrive upon it. Wait awhile."

"You have been here some time?" continued Lady Railton, inquiringly.

"Ja wohl!" replied the other, mimicking the accent of the German.

"And the loveliness has disappeared?"

"Ja wohl!" repeated the other with a shrug.

"You speak their language, I perceive?" said Lady Railton.

"I can say 'Ja wohl,' 'Brod,' and 'Guten morgen' – not another syllable. I was entrapped into those; but not another step will I advance. I take my stand at 'Guten morgen.'"

Lady Railton smiled.

"'Tis not a sweet language, I believe," she continued.

"As sweet as the people, believe me, who are the uncleanest race in Christendom. You will say so when you have passed three months at Wiesbaden."

"I have no hope of so prolonged a stay – rather, you would have me say 'no fear.'"

"Oh! pray remain and judge for yourself. Begin with his Highness the Duke, who dines every day with his subjects at the table-d'hôte of this hotel, and end with that extraordinary domestic animal, half little boy half old man, who fidgets like a gnome about him at the table. Enter into what they call the gaieties of this horrid place – eat their food – drink their wine – look at the gambling – talk to their greasy aristocracy – listen to their growl – contemplate the universal dirt, and form your own conclusions."

"I presume you are about to quit this happy valley!"

The lovely stranger shook her head.

"Ah no! Fate and – worse than fate! – a self-willed husband!"

"I perceive. He likes Germany, and you" —

"Submit!" said the other, finishing the sentence with the gentlest sigh of resignation.

"You have amusements here?"

"Oh, a mine of them! We are the fiercest gamesters in the world; we eat like giants; we smoke like furnaces, and dance like bears."

The ladies had reached the open window of the saal that led into the garden. They stopped. The dinner of one was about to be served up; the husband of the other was waiting to accompany her to the public gardens. They bowed and parted. A concert was held at the hotel that evening. The chief singers of the opera at Berlin, passing through the town, had signified their benign intention to enlighten the worthy denizens of Nassau, on the subject of "high art" in music. The applications for admission were immense. The chief seats were reserved by mine host, "as in private duty bound," for the visitors at his hotel; and the chiefest, as politeness and interest dictated, for the rich and titled foreigners: every Englishman being rich and noble in a continental inn.

The young physician recommended his lordship by all means to visit the concert. He had recommended nothing but enjoyment since they quitted London. His lordship's case was one, he said, requiring amusement; he might have added that his own case was another – requiring, further, a noble lord to pay for it. Lord Railton obeyed his medical adviser always when he suggested nothing disagreeable. Lady Railton was not sorry to have a view of German life, and to meet again her gay and fascinating beauty of the morning.

The hall was crowded; and at an early hour of the evening the lovely stranger was established in the seat reserved for her amidst "the favoured guests." Her husband was with her, a tall pale man, troubled with grief or sickness, very young, very handsome, but the converse of his wife, who looked as blooming as a summer's morn, as brilliant and as happy. Not the faintest shadow of a smile swept across his pallid face. Laughter beamed eternally from her eyes, and was enthroned in dimples on her cheek. He was silent and reserved, always communing with himself, and utterly regardless of the doings of the world about him. She had eyes, ears, tongue, thought, feeling, sympathy only for the busy multitude, and seemed to care to commune with herself as little – as with her husband. A movement in the neighbourhood announced the arrival of fresh comers. Lord Railton appeared somewhat flustered and agitated by suddenly finding himself in a great company, and all the more nervous from a suspicion that he was regarded as insane by every one he passed: then came the young physician, as if from a bandbox, with a white cravat, white gloves, white waistcoat, white face, and a black suit of clothes, supporting his lordship, smiling upon him obsequiously, and giving him professional encouragement and approval: and lastly stalked her ladyship herself with the airs and graces of a fashionable duchess, fresh as imported, and looking down upon mankind with touching superciliousness and most amiable contempt. She caught sight of her friend of the morning on her passage, and they exchanged bland looks of recognition.

The youthful husband had taken no notice of the fresh arrival. Absorbed by his peculiar cares, whatever they might be, he sat perfectly still, unmoved by the preparations of the actors and the busy hum of the spectators. His head was bent towards the earth, to which he seemed fast travelling, and which, to all appearances, would prove a happier home for him than that he found upon its surface. Two or three songs had been given with wonderful effect. Every one had been encored, and bouquets had already been thrown to the prima donna of the Berlin opera. Never had Wiesbaden known such delight. Mine host, who stood at the entrance of the saal, perspiring with mingled pride and agitation, contemplated the scene with a joy that knew no bounds. He was very happy. Like Sir Giles Overreach, he was "joy all over." The young physician had just put an eye-glass to an eye that had some difficulty in screwing it on, with the intention of killing a young and pretty vocalist with one irresistible glance, when he felt his arm clenched by his patient with a passionate vigour that not only seriously damaged his intentions with respect to the young singer, but fairly threw him from his equilibrium. He turned round, and saw the unhappy nobleman, as he believed, in an epileptic fit. His eyes were fixed – his lip trembling – his whole frame quivering. His hand still grasped the arm of the physician, and grasped it the firmer the more the practitioner struggled for release. There was a shudder, a cry – the old man fell – and would have dropped to the floor had he not been caught by the expert and much alarmed physician. A scene ensued. The singer stopped, the audience rose – the fainting man was raised and carried out. The noise had attracted the notice of one who needed an extraordinary provocation to rouse him from his accustomed lethargy. As the invalid passed him, the husband of the merry beauty cast one glance towards his deathlike countenance. It was enough. No, not enough. Another directed to the unhappy lady who followed the stricken lord, was far more terrible, more poignant and acute. It sent a thousand daggers to his heart, every one wounding, hacking, killing. He sunk upon his seat, and covered his streaming eyes with wan and bloodless hands.

"Rupert!" said Elinor, whispering in his ear, "you are ill – let us go."

"Elinor, it's he, it's he!" he stammered in the same voice.

"Who?"

"My father!"

"And that lady?"

"My mother!"

"Good heaven! Lady Railton!"

"I have killed him," continued Rupert. "I have killed him!"

Before the confusion consequent upon the removal of Lord Railton had subsided, Elinor, with presence of mind, rose from her seat, and implored her husband to do the like. He obeyed, hardly knowing what he did, and followed her instinctively. Like a woman possessed, she ran from the scene, and did not stop until she reached her own apartments. Rupert kept at her side, not daring to look up. When he arrived at his room, he was not aware that he had passed his parents in his progress – that the eyes of his wife and his mother had again encountered, and that the sternest scowl of the latter had been met by the most indignant scorn of the former. To this pass had arrived the pleasant acquaintance established three hours before in the hotel garden.

Whilst Elinor Sinclair slept that melancholy night, Rupert watched at his father's door. He believed him to be mortally ill, and he accused himself in his sorrow of the fearful crime of parricide. He had made frequent inquiries, and to all one answer had been returned. The noble lord was still unconscious: her ladyship could not be seen. It was not until the dawn of morning that a more favourable bulletin was issued, and his lordship pronounced once more sensible and out of danger. Rupert withdrew – not to rest, but to write a few hurried lines to his mother – begging one interview, and conjuring her to concede it, even if she afterwards resolved to see him no more. The interview was granted.

It led to no good result. Another opportunity for reconciliation and peace came only to be rejected. It availed little that Providence provided the elements of happiness, whilst obstinacy and wilful pride refused to combine them for any useful end. Lady Railton loved her son with the fondness of a mother. Life, too, had charms for so worldly a soul as hers; yet the son could be sacrificed, and life itself parted with, ere the lofty spirit bend, and vindictive hatred give place to meek and gentle mercy. The meeting was very painful. Lady Railton wept bitter tears as she beheld the wreck that stood before her – the care-worn remains of a form that was once so fair to look at – so grateful to admire; but she stood inflexible. She might have asked every thing of her son which he might honourably part with, and still her desires have fallen short of the sacrifices he was prepared to offer for the misery he had caused. She had but ONE request to make – it was the condition of her pardon – but it was also the test of his integrity and manhood.

He must part with the woman he had made his wife!

The evening of the day found Rupert Sinclair and his wife on the road from Wiesbaden, and his parents still sojourners at the hotel.

Rupert had not told Elinor of the sum that had been asked for the forgiveness of a mother he loved – the friendship of a father at whose bed-side nature and duty summoned him with appeals so difficult to resist. He would not grieve her joyous spirit by the sad announcement. He had paid the price of affection, not cheerfully – not triumphantly – but with a breaking and a tortured heart. He knew the treasure to be costly: he would have secured it had it been twice as dear. They arrived at Frankfort.

"And whither now?" asked Elinor, almost as soon as they alighted.

"Here for the present, dearest," answered Rupert. "To-morrow whither you will."

"Thank heaven for a safe deliverance from the Duke of Nassau!" exclaimed the wife. "Well, Rupert, say no more that I am mistress of your actions. I have begged for months to be released from that dungeon, but ineffectually. This morning a syllable from the lips of another has moved you to do what was refused to my long prayers."

Rupert answered not.

"To-morrow, then, to Paris?" coaxingly inquired the wife.

A shadow passed across the countenance of the husband.

"Wherefore to Paris?" he answered. "The world is wide enough. Choose an abiding-place and a home any where but in Paris."

"And why not there?" said Elinor, with vexation. "Any where but where I wish. It is always so – it has always been so."

"No, Elinor," said Rupert calmly – "not always. You do us both injustice."

"I have no pleasure," she continued, "amongst these dull and addle-headed people – who smoke and eat themselves into a heaviness that's insupportable. But Paris is too gay for your grave spirit, Rupert; and to sacrifice your comfort to my happiness would be more than I have any right to hope for or to ask."

Sinclair answered not again. Reproach had never yet escaped his lips: it was not suffered to pass now. How little knew the wife of the sacrifices which had already been wrung from that fond and faithful bosom: and which it was still disposed to make, could it but have secured the happiness of one or both!

Is it necessary to add, that within a week the restless and wandering pair found themselves in the giddy capital of France! Sinclair, as in every thing, gave way before the well-directed and irresistible attacks of one whose wishes, on ordinary occasions, he was too eager to forestall. His strong objections to a residence in Paris were as nothing against the opposition of the wife resolved to gain her point and vanquish. Paris was odious to him on many grounds. It was paradise to a woman created for pleasure – alive and herself only when absorbed in the mad pursuit of pleasure. Sinclair regarded a sojourn in Paris as fatal to the repose which he yearned to secure: his wife looked upon it as a guarantee for the joyous excitement which her temperament rendered essential to existence. General Travis was in Paris; so was the Earl of Minden; so were many other stanch allies and friends of the lady, who had so suddenly found herself deprived of friends and supporters in the very height of her dominion and triumph. Sinclair had no desire to meet with any of these firm adherents; but, on the contrary, much reason to avoid them. He made one ineffectual struggle, and as usual – submitted to direction.

If the lady had passed intoxicating days in London, she led madder ones in France. Again she became the heroine and queen of a brilliant circle, the admired of all admirers, the mistress of a hundred willing and too obedient slaves. Nothing could surpass the witchery of her power: nothing exceed the art by which she raised herself to a proud eminence, and secured her footing. The arch smile, the clever volubility, the melting eye, the lovely cheek, the incomparable form, all united to claim and to compel the admiration which few were slow to render. Elinor had been slighted in England: she revenged herself in France. She had been deserted – forsaken by her own: she was the more intent upon the glowing praise and worship of the stranger. Crowds flocked around her, confessing her supremacy: and whilst women envied and men admired, Rupert Sinclair shrunk from publicity with a heart that was near to breaking – and a soul oppressed beyond the power of relief.

A gleam of sunshine stole upon Rupert Sinclair in the midst of his gloom and disappointment. Elinor gave promise of becoming a mother. He had prayed for this event; for he looked to it as the only means of restoring to him affections estranged and openly transferred to an unfeeling world. The volatile and inconsiderate spirit, which no expostulation or entreaties of his might tame, would surely be subdued by the new and tender ties so powerful always in riveting woman's heart to duty. His own character altered as the hour approached which must confer upon him a new delight as well as an additional anxiety. He became a more cheerful and a happier man: his brow relaxed; his face no longer bore upon it the expression of a settled sorrow and an abiding disappointment. He walked more erect, less shy, grew more active, less contemplative and reserved. Months passed away, quickly, if not altogether happily, and Elinor Sinclair gave birth to a daughter.

Rupert had not judged correctly. However pleasing may be the sacred influence of a child upon the disposition and conduct of a mother in the majority of instances, it was entirely wanting here. Love of distinction, of conquest, of admiration, had left no room in the bosom of Elinor Sinclair for the love of offspring, which Rupert fondly hoped would save his partner from utter worldliness, and himself from final wretchedness. To receive the child from heaven, and to make it over for its earliest nourishment and care to strange cold hands, were almost one and the same act. The pains of nature were not assuaged by the mother's rejoicings: the pride of the father found no response in the heart of his partner. The bitter trial of the season past – returning strength vouchsafed – and the presence of the stranger was almost forgotten in the brilliancy of the scene to which the mother returned with a whettened appetite and a keener relish.

Far different the father! The fountain of love which welled in his devoted breast met with no check as it poured forth freely and generously towards the innocent and lovely stranger, that had come like a promise and a hope to his heart. Here he might feast his eyes without a pang: here bestow the full warmth of his affection, without the fear of repulse or the torture of doubt. His home became a temple – one small but darling room an altar – his daughter, a divinity. He eschewed the glittering assemblies in which his wife still dazzled most, and grew into a hermit at the cradle of his child. It was a fond and passionate love that he indulged there – one that absorbed and sustained his being – that gave him energy when his soul was spent, and administered consolation in the bitterest hour of his sad loneliness – the bitterest he had known as yet.

I have said that Lord Minden was in Paris when Sinclair and his wife arrived there. The visits of this nobleman to the house of Rupert in London, and the strange conduct of Rupert himself in connexion with those visits, had helped largely to drive the unfortunate pair from their native country. Still those visits were renewed in the French capital, and the conduct of Sinclair lost none of its singularity. The Parisians were not so scandalized as their neighbours across the water by the marked attentions of his lordship to this unrivalled beauty. Nobody could be blind to the conduct of Lord Minden, yet nobody seemed distressed or felt morally injured by the constant contemplation of it. If the husband thought proper to approve, it was surely no man's business to be vexed or angry. Mr Sinclair was a good easy gentleman, evidently vain of his wife's attractions, and of his lordship's great appreciation of them. His wife was worshipped, and the fool was flattered. But was this all? Did he simply look on, or was he basely conniving at his own dishonour? In England public opinion had decided in favour of the latter supposition; and public feeling, outraged by such flagrant wickedness, had thrust the culprits, as they deserved, from the soil which had given them birth, and which they shamefully polluted.

Nearly two years had elapsed, and the exiles were still in the fascinating city to which the ill-fated Elinor had carried her too easily-led husband. The time had passed swiftly enough. Elinor had but one occupation – the pursuits of pleasure. Sinclair had only one – the care of his daughter. He had bestowed a mother's tenderness upon the neglected offspring, and watched its young existence with a jealous anxiety that knew no rest – and not in vain. The budding creature had learned to know its patient nurse, and to love him better than all its little world. She could walk, and prattle in her way, and her throne was upon her father's lap. She could pronounce his name; she loved to speak it; – she could distinguish his eager footstep; she loved to hear it. Rupert was born for this. To love and to be loved with the truth, simplicity, and power of childhood, was the exigency of his being and the condition of his happiness. Both were satisfied – yet he was not happy.

It was a winter's evening. For a wonder, Elinor was at home: She had not been well during the day, and had declared her intention of spending the evening with her child and husband – rare indulgence! The sacrifice had cost her something, for she was out of spirits and ill at ease in her new character. Her husband sat lovingly at her side – his arm about her waist – his gleeful eye resting upon the lovely child that played and clung about his feet.

[And this man was a party to his own dishonour! a common pandar! the seller of yonder wife's virtue, the destroyer of yonder child's whole life of peace! Reader, believe it not! – against conviction, against the world, believe it not!]

"To-morrow, Elinor," said Sinclair musingly, "is your birthday. Had you forgotten it?"

Elinor turned pale. Why, I know not.

"Yes," she answered hurriedly, "I had. It is my birthday."

"We must pass the day together: we will go into the country. Little Alice shall be of the party, and shall be taught to drink her mamma's health. Won't you, Alice?"

The child heard its name spoken by familiar lips, and laughed.

"Will Lord Minden, dear, be back? He shall accompany us."

"He will not," said Elinor, trembling with illness.

"More's the pity," replied Rupert. "Alice will hardly be happy for a day without Lord Minden. She has cried for him once or twice already. But you are ill, dearest. Go to rest."

"Not yet," said Elinor, "I shall be better soon. Come, Alice, to mamma."

It was an unwonted summons, and the child stared. She had seldom been invited to her mother's arms; and the visits, when made, were generally of short duration. There seemed some heart in Elinor to-night. Rupert observed it. He caught the child up quickly, placed her in her mother's lap, and kissed them both.

In the act, a tear – a mingled drop of bitterness and joy – started to his eye and lingered there.

Strange contrast! His face suddenly beamed with new-born delight: hers was as pale as death.

"Is she not lovely, Elinor?" asked Rupert, looking on them both with pride.

"Very!" was the laconic and scarce audible answer; and the child was put aside again.

"Elinor," said Sinclair, with unusual animation, "rest assured this precious gift of Heaven is sent to us for good; our days of trouble are numbered. Peace and true enjoyment are promised in that brow."

A slight involuntary shudder thrilled the frame of the wife, as she disengaged herself from her husband's embrace. She rose to retire.

"I will go to my pillow," she said. "You are right. I need rest. Good-night!"

Her words were hurried. There was a wildness about her eye that denoted malady of the mind rather than of body. Rupert detained her.

"When you have heard from Mr Wilson, let me know. I wish to arrange an interview with him, and have not the heart to write myself. Tell him I am in town – that I must see him."

"I will do it. Can I offer you a glass of wine, Mr Sinclair, or any refreshment? You look pale and languid."

"None, I thank you!"

"And the little lady in the parlour?"

"I am obliged to you – nothing. I must go to her – I have kept her waiting. Good-morning, sir."

Sinclair joined his daughter, and proceeded with her to his hotel. She was still his constant companion. He did not move without her. His anxiety to have the child always at his side bordered on insanity. Whether he quitted his home for amusement or business, she must accompany him, and clasp the only hand that he had now to offer her. He dreaded to be alone, and no voice soothed him but that of the little chatterer. How fond he was of it – of her – who shall say! or how necessary to his existence the treasure he had snatched from ruin in the hour of universal wreck!

Before visiting his lawyer, Sinclair had dispatched a private communication to his old serving-man, John Humphreys, who, upon the breaking up of Rupert's establishment, had returned to the service of Lord Railton, his ancient master. That trusty servant was already at the hotel when Sinclair reached it.

"You have spoken to nobody of my being here, Humphreys," said Rupert, when he saw him.

"To nobody, your honour."

"Then follow me!"

When they had come to Sinclair's private room, he continued —

"My father, Humphreys – Tell me quickly how he is."

"Oh, a world better, sir."

"Thank God! And my mother?"

"Breaking, sir. This last affair" —

"They are in town?"

"Yes, your honour – you will call upon them, won't you? It will do her ladyship's heart good to see you again – though, saving your honour's presence, you looks more like a spectre than a human being."

"No, Humphreys, I cannot see them. They must not even know that I am now in London. I would have avoided this interview, could I have quitted England again without some information respecting them. I shall be detained here for a few days – it may be for weeks – but I return again to the Continent, never again to leave it."

"Do you think them foreign doctors understand your case, sir?"

"My case!"

"Yes, sir – you are not well, I am sure. You want feeding and building up – English beef and beer. Them foreigners are killing you."

Rupert smiled.

"You'll excuse me, sir, but laughing isn't a good sign, when a man has reason to cry."

Rupert shuddered.

"I beg your pardon, sir – I didn't mean that," continued the honest fellow. "I did not refer to your feelings. I meant your health, sir. Live well, sir; eat good English fare, and take the bilious pills when you are out of sorts."

John Humphreys was dismissed with many thanks for his sympathy and advice, and with strict injunctions to maintain silence respecting Rupert's movements. Had Sinclair learned that his parents were ill, or needful of his presence, he would have gone to them at once. They were well – why should he molest them, or bring fresh anguish to their declining years?

I received the communication of Sinclair's lawyer, and answered it respectfully, refusing the interview that was asked. As I have already intimated, I had avoided his house and himself from the very moment that I had obtained what seemed ocular demonstration of guilt, which that of his friend and patron, the Earl of Minden himself, could not surpass. Whilst reports of that guilt came to me through the medium of servants, however trustworthy, and strangers, however disinterested, I had resisted them as cruel inventions and palpable slanders. With the attestation of my own eyes, I should have been an idiot had I come to any but one conclusion, how degrading soever that might be to my friend, or contradictory to all my past experience or preconceived hopes. Nothing, I solemnly vowed, should induce me to speak again to the man, branded with infamy so glaring, brought by his own folly and vice so low. I had heard, in common with the rest of the world, of the elopement, and possibly with less surprise than the majority of my fellow-men. If I wondered at all at the affair, it was simply as to how much Rupert had been paid for his consent, and as to the value he had fixed upon his reputation and good name. I received the application of the lawyer, and declined to accede to it.

As I sat reading in my room, upon the second morning after I had dispatched my answer to Mr Cribbs, of Carey Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, I was roused by a knock at the inner door. I requested my visitor to walk in. He did so. – Rupert Sinclair, and his child, stood before me!

I was fearfully shocked. He looked, indeed, more like a ghost than a living man. Fifty years of pain and anxiety seemed written on a brow that had not numbered thirty summers. His eye was sunk, his cheek was very wan and pallid. There was no expression in his countenance; he stood perfectly passionless and calm. The little girl was a lovely creature. A sickening sensation passed through me as I mentally compared her lineaments with those of the joyous creature whom I had met in Bath, and then referred to those of the poor father, so altered, so wofully and so wonderfully changed! She clung to that father with a fondness that seemed to speak of his desertion, and of his reliance upon her for all his little happiness. I was taken by surprise; I knew not what to do; the memory of past years rushed back upon me. I saw him helpless and forsaken. I could not bid him from my door; I could not speak an unkind word.

I placed a chair before the man, whose strength seemed scarce sufficient to support its little burden.

"Sinclair," I exclaimed, "you are ill!"

"I am!" he answered. "Very ill; worse than I had feared. They tell me I must leave the country, and seek milder air. I shall do so shortly; for her sake, not my own."

The little Alice put her delicate and alabaster hand about her parent's face, and patted it to express her gratitude or warm affection. My heart bled in spite of me.

"You refused to meet me, Wilson," said Sinclair quietly.

I blushed to think that I had done so; for I forgot every thing in the recollection of past intimacy, and in the consciousness of what I now beheld. I made no answer.

"You refused to meet me," he repeated. "You did me injustice. I know your thoughts, your cruel and unkind suspicions. I have come to remove them. Walter, you have cursed my name; you shall live to pity my memory."

"Rupert," I stammered, "whatever I may have thought or done, I assert that I have not willingly done you injustice. I have" —

I looked at the child, unwilling to say more in that innocent and holy presence.

Sinclair understood me. He asked permission for her to retire into an adjoining room. I told him that there was no one there to keep her company. He answered, that it did not matter; she was used to be alone, and to wait hours for her parent when business separated them in a stranger's house. "They made it up at home," he added, "and she was happier so than in the society of her governess."

"Is it not so, Alice?" he asked, kissing her as he led her from the apartment.

She answered with a kiss as warm as his, and a smile brighter than any he could give.

"Wilson," began Sinclair, as soon as he returned to me, "you know my history. The whole world knows it, and enjoys it. I have come to England to disannul our marriage. That over, I must save this life if possible: the doctors tell me I am smitten – that I shall droop and die. The mild air of Italy alone can save me. Oh, I wish to live for that young creature's sake! I cannot yet afford to die."

"Things are not so bad, I trust."

He shook his head, and proceeded.

"You, Wilson, must further my views. I have acquainted my solicitor with our former intimacy, and of the part which you took in this unfortunate business. You may accelerate the affair by your co-operation and aid. You must not deny it! Three months to me now are worth ten times as many years. I need peace of mind – repose. I would seek them in the grave, and gladly, but for her. I must find them in a land that will waft health to me, and give me strength for coming duties. You must stand by me now, if ever; you must not leave me, Wilson, till we have reached the opposite shore, and are safely landed."

"What can I do!"

"Much! The solicitor says, every thing. Your evidence is of the utmost consequence. Your assistance cannot be dispensed with. See him, and he will tell you more. We cannot depart until the marriage is dissolved. Should I die, she must have no claim upon that tender innocent!"

"Rupert," I exclaimed, "shall I speak plainly to you?"

"Ay," he answered, growing erect, and looking me full in the face, "as a man!"

"You demand of me," I continued, "a simple impossibility! I can do nothing for you. I can give you no help, no counsel. Ask your own once-faithful conscience, that once stern and honest monitor, how I, of all men, can befriend you? I may speak only to destroy you and your cause together. Seek a better ally – a less shackled adviser. Is it not publicly known? – do I not know it? Rupert, you have told me to speak plainly, and I will, I must. I say, do I not know that you yourself pandered to her profligacy? Did I not, with these eyes, which, would to Heaven, had been blind ere they had seen that miserable day – did I not, with these eyes, behold you walking before your door, whilst Lord Minden was closeted with your wife? Did you not turn back when you discovered he was there? Did I not see you turn back? Answer me, Rupert. Did I? – did I?"

"You did," he answered, with perfect equanimity.

"And," I continued, "acknowledging this horror, you ask me to advance your cause, and to speak on your behalf!"

"I do," he said, with a majestic calmness that confounded and abashed me – so prophetic was it of an approaching justification, so thoroughly indicative of truth and innocence.

"I do," he repeated, looking at me steadily, and speaking with more emotion as he proceeded. "Listen to me, Walter. I am a dying man! Say what they will, the seeds of an incurable disease are sown within me. Do what I may, my hours are numbered, and life is nearly spanned. I speak to you as a dying man. You saw that child! She is friendless, motherless, and will be shortly fatherless. I am about to consign her to Heaven and its mercy. I cannot utter falsehood upon the verge of eternity, leaving that dear pledge behind me. Upon my sacred honour, I speak the truth. Listen to it, and believe, as you would believe a messenger accredited from the skies. I have been a fool, an idiot, weaker than the creature whom the law deprives of self-control, and places in the custody of guards and keepers; but my honour is as spotless as you yourself could wish it. You knew of my difficulties: something you knew also of my introduction to the Earl of Minden – an aged villain – yes aged and old enough to disarm suspicion, if no stronger reason existed to destroy it; but there was a stronger. I marvelled at the extraordinary interest evinced for a stranger by this powerful and wealthy nobleman; but wonder ceased with explanation – and explanation from whom? from one whom I trusted as myself – from my wife, whom I loved better than myself. It is nothing that I look back with sickening wonder now. I was her devoted husband then, and I believed her. I would have believed her had she drawn upon my credulity a thousand times more largely. What devil put the lie into her soul I know not, but early in the friendship of this lord, she confided to me the fact that General Travis was not her father; she had been consigned to him, she said, at an early age, but her actual parent was who? – the brother of this same Lord Minden. It was a plausible tale coming from her lips. I did not stay to doubt it. Other lies were necessary to maintain the great falsehood; but the fabric which they raised was well-proportioned and consistent in its parts. Why did I not enter my home when Lord Minden was closeted with my wife? You will remember that we speak of a time when there was daily discussion concerning my promotion. 'Her uncle,' she said again and again, 'would do nothing for me if I were present. He was a singular and obstinate man, and would make our fortune in his own way. He was angry with me for running off with his niece – whom, though illegitimate, he had destined for greater honour than even an alliance with Lord Railton's heir; he was further hurt at Lord Railton's treatment of Elinor, and the proud neglect of my mother; the conduct of my parents had inspired him with a dislike for their son, and although for Elinor's sake he would advance our interests, yet he would not consult me, or meet me in the matter. If I were present, her uncle would say nothing – do nothing. This was reiterated day after day. From fountains that are pure, we look not for unclean waters. Trusting her with my whole heart and soul, I should have committed violence to my nature had I doubted her. It was impossible: with the plausibility of Satan, she had the loveliness of angels! Now I see the artifice and fraud – now I feel the degradation – now the horrible position in which I stood is too frightfully apparent! But what avails it all! God forgive me for my blindness! He knows my innocence!"

The injured and unhappy husband stopped from sheer exhaustion. Shame overspread my face; bitter reproaches filled my heart. I had done him cruel wrong. I rose from my seat, and embraced him. I fell upon my knees, and asked his forgiveness.

"Walter," he said, with overflowing eyes; "you do not think me guilty?"

"Punish me not, Rupert," I answered, "by asking me the question. The sorceress was a subtle one. I knew her to be so."

"Name her not, friend," proceeded Sinclair; "I have already forgiven her. I seek to forget her. Life is hateful to me, yet I must live if possible for my darling Alice. You will return to town with me, will you not, and hasten on this business?"

"I will not leave you, Rupert," I replied, "till I have seen you safely through it, and on the seas. We will lose no time. Let us go to London this very day."

No time was lost. We set out in the course of a few hours, and the next day were closeted with Mr Cribbs. Letters produced by Sinclair corroborated all that he had said touching the cheat that had been played upon him. Astounded as I had been by his explanation, it would have argued more for my wisdom, to say nothing of my friendship, had I suspected at the outset some artifice of the kind, and shown more eagerness to investigate the matter, than to conclude the hitherto unspotted Sinclair so pre-eminently base. The fault of his nature was credulity. Did I not know that he trusted all men with the simplicity of childhood, and believed in the goodness of all things with the faith and fervour of piety itself? Had I no proofs of the wilyness of the woman's heart, and of the witchery of her tongue? A moment's reflection would have enabled me to be just. It was not the smallest triumph of the artful Elinor that her scheme robbed me of that reflection, and threw me, and all the world besides, completely off the scent.

Mr Cribbs was the very man to carry on this interesting case. He lost not a moment. He had been concerned, as he acknowledged, in more actions of the kind than could be satisfactory to himself, or complimentary to the virtue of his country, and he knew the salient points of a case by a kind of moral instinct. His witnesses were marshaled – his plan was drawn out; every thing promised complete success, and the day of trial rapidly approached.

That day of trial, however, Rupert was not to see. The great anxiety which he suffered in the preparation of his unhappy cause – the affliction he had already undergone, preying upon a shattered frame, proved too great an obstacle to the slow appliances of healing nature. He sank gradually beneath the weight of his great sorrows. About a month previously to the coming off of the suit which he had brought against the Earl of Minden, conscious of growing still weaker and weaker, he resolved to have a consultation of his physicians, and to obtain from them their honest opinion of his condition. That consultation was held. The opinion was most unfavourable. Rupert heard it without a sigh, and prepared for his great change.

He spent the day upon which his doom was pronounced – alone. The following day found him at an early hour at the family mansion in Grosvenor Square, – not alone, – for his little Alice was with him. He knocked at the door, – the well-known porter opened it, and started at the melancholy man he saw. Sorrow and sickness claim respect, and they found it here. The porter knew not whether he should please his master by admitting the visitors, but he did not think of turning them away. They passed on. His name was announced to his mother. She came to him at once.

"Rupert!" cried Lady Railton, looking at him with astonishment.

"Mother," he answered placidly, "I have brought you my child – the innocent and unoffending. She will be an orphan soon – as you may guess. You will protect and be a mother to her?"

The proudest of women was sufficiently humbled. The prodigal was received with a tenderness that came too late – a welcome that had nothing of rejoicing. He was forgiven, but his pardon availed him nothing. He was watched and attended with affectionate care, when watching and attention could not add an hour to his life, or one consolation to his bruised spirit. The trial came on, a verdict was pronounced in favour of the plaintiff. The knot that had been violently tied was violently broken asunder. Upon the evening preceding that day, Rupert Sinclair had finished with the earth. He died, with his little darling kneeling at his side. He died, breathing her name.

Years have passed since that hour. I have seen much since I followed my poor friend to his last resting-place. It has been my lot to behold a proud and haughty woman instructed by misfortune, and elevated by human grief. Lady Railton repaired the folly of a life by her conduct towards the child committed to her charge. She did her duty to the lovely Alice; she fulfilled her obligations to her father. – I have seen vice terribly punished. A few months ago, I stood at a pauper's grave. It was the grave of Elinor Travis. Deserted by Lord Minden, she descended in the scale of vice, – for years she lived in obscurity, – she was buried at the public charge. The family of General Travis has long since been extinct. The money with which his daughter supplied him in Lyons enabled him to compound with a merchant, whose name he had forged, and to leave Europe for ever.

The little Alice is a matron now, but lovely in the meridian of her virtuous life, as in her earlier morn. She is the mother of a happy family – herself its brightest ornament.

HOCHELAGA. ⁴

Let not the unsophisticated reader be alarmed at the somewhat barbarous and unintelligible word that heads this article. Let him not be deterred by a name from the investigation of facts, nor hindered by the repulsive magic of harshly-sounding syllables from rambling with us through the pages of an amusing and clever book. Hochelaga is neither a heathen god nor a Mohawk chief, an Indian cacique nor a Scandinavian idol, but simply the ancient and little known name of a well-known and interesting country. Under it is designated a vast and flourishing territory, a bright jewel in England's crown, a land whose daily increasing population, if only partially of British origin, yet is ruled by British laws, and enjoys the blessings of British institutions. On the continent of North America, over whose southern and central portions the banner of republicanism exultingly floats, a district yet remains where monarchical government and conservative principles are upheld and respected. By nature it is far from being the most favoured region of that New World which Columbus first discovered and Spaniards and English first colonized. It has neither the mineral wealth of Mexico nor the luxuriant fertility of the Southern States. Within its limits no cotton fields wave or sugar-canes rustle; the tobacco plant displays not its broad and valuable leaf; the crimson cochineal and the purple indigo are alike unknown; no mines of silver and gold freight galleons for the Eastern world. Its produce is industriously wrung from stubborn fields and a rigid climate – not generously, almost spontaneously, yielded by a glowing temperature and teeming soil. The corn and timber which it exchanges for European manufactures and luxuries, are results of the white man's hard and honest labour, not of the blood and sweat and ill-requited toil of flagellated negroes and oppressed Indians. From the Lakes and the St Lawrence to Labrador and the Bay of Hudson this country extends. Its name is Canada.

Mr Eliot Warburton, a gentleman favourably known to the English public, as author of a pleasant book of travel in the East, has given the sanction and benefit of his editorship to a narrative of rambles and observations in the Western hemisphere. We put little faith in editorships; favour and affection have induced many able men to endorse indifferent books; and we took up Hochelaga with all due disposition to be difficult, and to resist an imposition, had such been practised. Even the tender and touching compliments exchanged between author and editor in their respective prefaces, did not mollify us, or dispose us to look leniently upon a poor production. We are happy to say that we were speedily disarmed by the contents of the volumes; that we threw aside the critical cat-o'-nine-tails, whose deserved and well-applied lashes have made many a literary sinner to writhe, and prepared for the more grateful task of commending the agreeable pages of an intelligent and unprejudiced traveller. Since the latter chooses to be anonymous, we have no right to dispel his incognito, or to seek so to do. Concerning him, therefore, we will merely state what may be gathered from his book; that he is plump, elderly, good-tempered, and kind-hearted, and, we suspect, an ex-militaire.

Before opening the campaign in Canada, let us, for a moment, step ashore in what our author styles the fishiest of modern capitals, St John's, Newfoundland. Here codfish are the one thing universal; acres of sheds roofed with cod, laid out to dry, boats fishing for cod, ships loading with it, fields manured with it, and, best of all, fortunes made by it. The accomplishments of the daughter, the education of the son, the finery of the mother, the comforts of the father, all are paid for with this profitable fish. The population subsist upon it; figuratively, not literally. For, although the sea is alive with cod, the earth covered with it, and the air impregnated with its odour, it is carefully banished from the dinner table, and "an observation made on its absence from that apparently appropriate position, excited as much astonishment as if I had made a remark to a Northumberland squire that he had not a head-dish of Newcastle coals." But the abundance which renders it unpalatable to the Newfoundlanders, procures them more acceptable viands, and all the luxuries of life. The climate ungenial, the soil barren, crops are difficult to obtain, and rarely ripen; even potatoes and vegetables are but scantily compelled from the niggard earth; fish, the sole produce, is the grand article of barter. In exchange for his lenten ration of bacallao, the Spaniard sends his fruits and Xeres, the Portuguese his racy port, the Italian his Florence oil and Naples maccaroni. Every where, but especially in those "countries of the Catholic persuasion" where the fasts of the Romish church are most strictly observed, Newfoundland finds customers for its cod and suppliers of its wants.

Excepting in the case of a boundary question to settle, or a patriot revolt to quell, Canada obtains in England a smaller share than it deserves of the public thoughts. It does not appeal to the imagination by those attractive elements of interest which so frequently rivet attention on others of our colonies. India is brought into dazzling relief by its Oriental magnificence and glitter, and by its feats of arms; the West Indies have wealth and an important central position; our possessions towards the South pole excite curiosity by their distance and comparative novelty. But Canada, pacific and respectable, plain and unpretending, to many suggests no other idea than that of a bleak and thinly-peopled region, with little to recommend it, even in the way of picturesque scenery or natural beauty. Those who have hitherto entertained such an opinion may feel surprised at the following description of Quebec.

"Take mountain and plain, sinuous river and broad tranquil waters, stately ship and tiny boat, gentle hill and shady valley, bold headland and rich fruitful fields, frowning battlement and cheerful villa, glittering dome and rural spire, flowery garden and sombre forest – group them all into the choicest picture of ideal beauty your fancy can create – arch it over with a cloudless sky – light it up with a radiant sun, and, lest the sheen should be too dazzling, hang a veil of lighted haze over all, to soften the lines and perfect the repose; you will then have seen Quebec on this September morning."

The internal arrangements of the chief port and second town of Canada do not correspond with its external appearance and charming environs. The public buildings are ugly; the unsymmetrical streets twist and turn in every possible direction – are narrow and of quaint aspect, composed of houses irregularly placed and built. The suburbs, chiefly peopled by French Canadians, are of wood, with exception of the churches, hospitals, and convents. The population of the city, which now amounts to forty thousand souls, has increased fifteen thousand during the last fifteen years. The people are as motley as their dwellings; in all things there is a curious mixture of French and English. "You see over a corner house, 'Cul de Sac Street;' on a sign-board, 'Ignace Bougainville, chemist and druggist.' In the shops, with English money you pay a Frenchman for English goods; the piano at the evening party of Mrs What's-her-name makes Dutch concert with the music of Madame Chose's soirée in the next house. Sad to say, the two races do not blend; they are like oil and water – the English the oil, being the richer and at the top." The difference of descent tells its tale; the restless, grumbling Anglo-Saxon pushes his way upwards, energetic and indefatigable; the easy-going, contented French-Canadian, remains where he is, or rather sinks than rises. The latter has many good qualities; he is honest, sober, hardy, kind, and courteous. Brave and loyal, he willingly takes the field in defence of the established government and of British rights. The most brilliant exploit of the last American war is recorded of three hundred French Canadians under M. de Salaberry, who, by their resolute maintenance of a well-selected position, compelled General Hampton, with a park of artillery and a body of troops twenty times as numerous as themselves, to evacuate Lower Canada. Simple, credulous, and easily worked upon, it was at the incitation of a few knaves and adventurers that a portion of the French population were brought to share in the rebellion of 1837. There is little danger of another such outbreak, even though colonial demagogues should again agitate, French republicans again rave about British tyranny towards their oppressed brethren, and though the refuse and rabble of the States should once more assemble upon the frontier to aid and abet an insurrection. The abortive result of the last revolt, the little sympathy it found amongst the masses of the population, the judicious and conciliatory measures of recent governors, have combined to win over the disaffected, and to convince them that it is for their true interest to continue under the mild rule of Great Britain. An excellent feeling has been shown by all parties during our late difficult relations with the United States. "The Americans are altogether mistaken," said the leader of the Upper Canada reformers, "if they suppose that political differences in Canada arise from any sympathy with them or their institutions; we have our differences, but we are perfectly able to settle them ourselves, and will not suffer their interference."

"My countrymen," said one of the most influential French Canadians, during a discussion on the militia bill, "would be the first to rush to the frontier, and joyfully oppose their breasts to the foe; the last shot fired on this continent in defence of the British crown will be by the hand of a French Canadian. By habits, feeling, and religion, we are monarchists and conservatives."

When such sentiments are expressed by the heads of the opposition, there is little fear for Canada, and ambitious democrats must be content to push southwards. In a northerly direction it would be absurd for them to expect either to propagate their principles or extend their territory. They believe that in the event of a war with England, twenty or thirty thousand militia would speedily overrun and conquer Canada. In a clear and comprehensive statement of Canada's means of defence, the author of Hochelaga shows the folly of this belief, which assuredly can only be seriously entertained by men overweeningly presumptuous or utterly oblivious of the events of thirty years ago. When, in 1812, we came to loggerheads with our Yankee cousins, and they walked into Canada, expecting, as they now would, to walk over it, they soon found that they were to take very little by their motion. The whole number of British troops then in the colony was under two thousand four hundred men. Upper Canada was comparatively a wilderness, occupied by a few scattered labourers, difficult to organise into militia, and including no class out of which officers could be made. Yet, even with this slender opposition, how did the invaders fare? Where were the glorious results so confidently anticipated? Let the defeat at Chrystler's farm, the rout and heavy loss at Queenstown, the surrender of General Hall with his whole army and the territory of Michigan, reply to the question. And to-day how do matters stand? "Within the last twenty years, several entire Scottish clans, under their chiefs – M'Nabs, Glengarys, and others, worthy of their warlike ancestors – have migrated hither. Hardy and faithful men from the stern hills of Ulster, and fiery but kind-hearted peasants from the south of Ireland, with sturdy honest yeomen from Yorkshire and Cumberland, have fixed their homes in the Canadian forests. These immigrants, without losing their love and reverence for the crown and laws of their native country, have become attached to their adopted land, where their stake is now fixed, and are ready to defend their properties and their government against foreign invasion or domestic treason." The militia, composed in great part of the excellent materials just enumerated, is of the nominal strength of 140,000 men. Of these a fourth might take the field, without their absence seriously impeding the commerce and industry of the country. The Canadian arsenals are well supplied, and nearly eight thousand regular troops occupy the various garrisons. Quebec, with its strong fortifications and imposing citadel, may bid defiance to any force that could be brought against it from the States; important works have been erected upon the island of Montreal; Kingston and its adjacent forts would require a large army and corresponding naval force to subdue it; Toronto would give the invaders some trouble. Defensive works exist along the frontier of Lower Canada. In no way has the security of the colonies been neglected, or the possibility of a war overlooked. But there is yet one measure whose adoption the author of Hochelaga strongly urges, whose utility is obvious, and which we trust in due time to see carried out. This is the construction of a railroad, connecting the whole of British America; commencing at Halifax and extending, by Quebec, Montreal, Kingston, and Toronto, to Amherstburg and the far west. The essential portion of the line is that from Halifax to Quebec, by which, when the St Lawrence is closed by ice, troops might be forwarded in a couple of days to the latter city. In the spring of 1847, we are told, the canals will be completed which are to open the great lakes to our fleets. For summer time that may suffice. But the five months' winter must not be overlooked. And apart from the military view of the case, the benefit of such a railway would be enormous. "It will strengthen the intimacy between this splendid colony and the seat of government: the emigrant from home, and the produce from the west, will then pass through British waters and over British territories only, without enriching the coffers of a foreign state. The Americans, with their great mercantile astuteness, are making every effort to divert the trade of Canada into their channels, and to make us in every way dependent on them for our communications. The drawback bill, by which the custom-duties on foreign goods are refunded on their passing into our provinces, has already been attended with great success in obtaining for them a portion of our carrying trade, especially during the winter, when our great highway of the St Lawrence is closed."

A remarkably clean city is Boston, quite Dutch in its propriety, spotless in its purity; smoking in the streets is there prohibited, and chewing has fewer proselytes than in most parts of the States. It is one of the most ancient of American towns, having been founded within ten years after the landing of the first New England settlers. The anniversary of the day when

 
"A band of exiles moor'd their bark
On the wild New England shore,"
 

the 21st December 1620, is still celebrated at Plymouth, the earliest settlement of the pilgrim fathers. Thousands flock from Boston to assist at the ceremony. On the last anniversary, the author of Hochelaga was present. The proceedings of the day commenced with divine service, performed by Unitarian and Baptist ministers. This over, a marshal of the ceremonies proclaimed that the congregation were to form in procession and march to the place where the "Plymouth Rock" had been, there "to heave a sigh." The "heaving" having been accomplished with all due decorum and melancholy – barring that a few unprincipled individuals in the tail of the procession, fearing to be late for dinner, shirked the sighing and took a short cut to the hotel – the banquet, not the least important part of the day's business, commenced. The president sat in a chair which came over with the pilgrims in their ship, the Mayflower. Beside each plate were placed a few grains of dried maize – a memento of the first gift of the friendly natives to the exiles. The dinner went off with much order. A large proportion of the persons present were members of temperance societies, and drank no wine. The grand treat of the evening, at least to an Englishman, was the speechifying. The following resumé is given to us as containing the pith and substance of the majority of the speeches, which were all prepared for the occasion, and, of course, contained much the same thing. The orators usually commenced with "English persecution, continued with, – landing in the howling wilderness – icebound waters – pestilence – starvation – so on to foreign tyranny – successful resistance – chainless eagles – stars and stripes – glorious independence; – then; unheard of progress – wonderful industry – stronghold of Christianity – chosen people – refuge of liberty; – again; insults of haughty Albion – blazes of triumph – queen of the seas deposed for ever – Columbia's banner of victory floating over every thing – fire and smoke – thunder and lightning – mighty republic – boundless empire. When they came to the 'innumerable millions' they were to be a few years hence, they generally sat down greatly exhausted." Mr Everett, the late American minister in London, was present at this dinner, and replied with ability, eloquence, and good feeling, to a speech in which the president had made a neatly turned and friendly reference to Great Britain.

We prefer the American volume of Hochelaga to the Canadian one, although both are highly interesting. But, as he proceeds, the author gains in vivacity and boldness. There is a deal of anecdote and lively sketching in his account of the States; there are also some novel opinions and sound reasoning. The chapter on the prospects of America affords themes for much curious speculation concerning the probable partition of the great republic. The discussion of the subject is, perhaps, a little premature; although our author affirms his belief that many now living will not die till they have seen monarchy introduced into the stronghold of republicanism, and a king governing the slave states of North America. He recognises, in the United States, the germs of three distinct nations, the North, the West, and the South. Slavery and foreign warfare, especially the former, are to be the apples of discord, the wedges to split the now compact mass. The men of the North, enlightened and industrious, commercial and manufacturing, are strenuous advocates of peace. They have shown that they do not fear war; they it was who chiefly fought the great fight of American independence; but peace is essential to their prosperity, and they will not lightly forego its advantages. This will sooner or later form the basis of differences between them and the Western States, whose turbulent sons, rapid in their increase, adventurous and restless, ever pushing forward, like some rolling tide, deeper and deeper into the wilderness, and ever seeking to infringe on neighbours' boundaries, covet the rich woods of Canada, the temperate shores of Oregon, the fertile plains of California. They have dispossessed, almost exterminated, the aborigines; the wild beasts of the forest have yielded and fled before them, the forest itself has made way for their towns and plantations. Growing in numbers and power with a rapidity unparalleled in the world's history, expansion and invasion are to them a second nature, a devouring instinct. This unrestrained impulse will sooner or later urge them to aggressions and produce a war. This they do not fear or object to; little injury can be done to them; but the Northern States, to whose trade war is ruin, will not be passively dragged into a conflict on account of the encroaching propensities of their western brethren. These differences of interests will lead to disputes, ill blood, and finally to separation.

Between South and North, the probabilities of a serious, and no very distant rupture, are strong and manifest. "Slavery" and "Abolition" will be the battle-cries of the respective parties. It may almost be said that the fight has already begun, at least on one side. An avowed abolitionist dare not venture into the South. There are laws for his chastisement, and should those be deemed too lenient, there are plenty of lawless hands outstretched to string him to a tree. A deputy from South Carolina openly declared in the House of Representatives at Washington, that if they caught an abolitionist in their State, they would hang him without judge or jury. A respectable Philadelphian and ardent abolitionist confessed to us, a short time ago, not without some appearance of shame at the state of things implied by the admission, that it would be as much as his life was worth to venture into certain slave-holding states. Hitherto the pro-slavery men have had the best of it; the majority of presidents of the Union have been chosen from their candidates, they have succeeded in annexing Texas, and latterly they have struck up an alliance with the West, which holds the balance between the South and the North, although, at the rate it advances, it is likely soon to outweigh them both. But this alliance is rotten, and cannot endure; the Western men are no partizans of slavery. Meantime, the abolitionists are active; they daily become more weary of having the finger of scorn pointed at them, on account of a practice which they neither benefit by nor approve. Their influence and numbers daily increase; in a few years they will be powerfully in the ascendant, they will possess a majority in the legislative chambers, and vote the extinction of slavery. To this, it is greatly to be feared, the fiery Southerns will not submit without an armed struggle. "Then," says the author of Hochelaga, "who can tell the horrors that will ensue? The blacks, urged by external promptings to rise for liberty, the furious courage and energy of the whites trampling them down, the assistance of the free states to the oppressed, will drive the oppressors to desperation: their quick perception will tell them that their loose republican organization cannot conduct a defence against such odds; and the first popular military leader who has the glory of a success, will become dictator. This, I firmly believe, will be the end of the pure democracy."

May such sinister predictions never be realised! Of the instability of American institutions, we entertain no doubt; and equally persuaded are we, that so vast a country, the interests of whose inhabitants are in many respects so conflicting, cannot remain permanently united under one government. But we would fain believe, that a severance may be accomplished peaceably, and without bloodshed; that the soil which has been converted from a wilderness to a garden by Anglo-Saxon industry and enterprise, may never be ensanguined by civil strife, or desolated by the dissensions and animosities of her sons.

LETTERS ON ENGLISH HEXAMETERS
Letter III

Dear Mr Editor, – I hope you will be of opinion that I have, in my two preceding letters, proved the hexameter to be a good, genuine English verse, fitted to please the unlearned as well as the learned ear; and hitherto prevented from having fair play among our readers of poetry, mainly by the classical affectations of our hexameter writers – by their trying to make a distinction of long and short syllables, according to Latin rules of quantity; and by their hankering after spondees, which the common ear rejects as inconsistent with our native versification. If the attempt had been made to familiarise English ears with hexameters free from these disadvantages, it might have succeeded as completely as it has done in German. And the chance of popular success would have been much better if the measure had been used in a long poem of a religious character; for religious poetry, as you know very well, finds a much larger body of admirers than any other kind, and fastens upon the minds of common readers with a much deeper hold. Religious feeling supplies the deficiency of poetical susceptibility, and imparts to the poem a splendour and solemnity which elevates it out of the world of prose. I do not think it can be doubted that Klopstock's Messiah did a great deal to give the hexameters a firm hold on the German popular ear; and I am persuaded that if Pollok's Course of Time had been written in hexameters, its popularity would have been little less than it is, and the hexameter would have been by this time in a great degree familiarised in our language. Perhaps it may be worth while to give a passage of the Messiah, that your readers may judge whether a hexameter version of the whole would not have been likely to succeed in this country, at the time when the prose translator was so generally read and admired. The version is by William Taylor of Norwich.

The scene is the covenant made between the two first persons of the Trinity on Mount Moriah. The effect is thus described: —

 
"While spake the eternals,
Thrill'd through nature an awful earthquake. Souls that had never
Known the dawning of thought, now started, and felt for the first time.
Shudders and trembling of heart assail'd each seraph; his bright orb
Hush'd as the earth when tempests are nigh, before him was pausing.
But in the souls of future Christians vibrated transports,
Sweet pretastes of immortal existence. Foolish against God,
Aught to have plann'd or done, and alone yet alive to despondence,
Fell from thrones in the fiery abyss the spirits of evil,
Rocks broke loose from the smouldering caverns, and fell on the falling:
Howlings of woe, far-thundering crashes, resounded through hell's vaults."
 

It seems to me that such verses as these might very well have satisfied the English admirers of Klopstock.

You will observe, however, that we have, in the passage which I have quoted, several examples of those forced trochees which I mentioned in my first letter, as one of the great blemishes of English hexameters; namely, these —first tĭme; bright ŏrb; agaīnst Gŏd; hēll's văults. And these produce their usual effect of making the verse in some degree unnatural and un-English.

It is, however, true, that in this respect the German hexametrist has a considerable advantage over the English. Many of the words which are naturally thrown to the end of a verse by the sense, are monosyllables in English, while the corresponding German word is a trochaic dissyllable, which takes its place in the verse smoothly and familiarly. In consequence of this difference in the two languages, the Englishman is often compelled to lengthen his monosyllables by various artifices. Thus, in Herman and Dorothea—

 
"Und er wandte sich schnell; de sah sie ihm Thränen im auge."
"And he turned him quick; then saw she tears in his eyelids."
 

In order that I may not be misunderstood, however, I must say that I by no means intend to proscribe such final trochees as I have spoken of, composed of two monosyllables, but only to recommend a sparing and considerate use of them. They occur in Goethe, though not abundantly. Thus in Herman and Dorothea, we have three together: —

 
"Und es brannten die strassen bis zum markt, und das Haus war,
Meines Vaters hierneben verzchrt und diesar zugleich mit,
Wenig flüchtehen wir. Ich safs, die traurige Nacht durch."
 

None of these trochees, however, are so spondaic as the English ones which I formerly quoted, consisting of a monosyllable-adjective with a monosyllable-substantive – "the weight of his right hand;" or two substantives, as "the heat of a love's fire."

Yet even these endings are admissible occasionally. Every one assents to Harris's recognition of a natural and perfect hexameter in that verse of the Psalms —

 
"Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?"
 

The fact is, that though the English hexameter, well constructed, is acknowledged by an English ear, as completely as any other dactylic or anapæstic measure, it always recalls, in the mind of a classical scholar, the recollection of Greek and Latin hexameters; and this association makes him willing to accept some rhythmical peculiarities which the classical forms and rules seem to justify. The peculiarities are felt as an allusion to Homer and Virgil, and give to the verse a kind of learned grace, which may or may not be pedantic, according to the judgment with which it is introduced. Undoubtedly, if the hexameter ever come to be as familiar in English as it is in German poetry, our best hexametrists will, like theirs, learn to convey, along with the pleasure which belongs to a flowing and familiar native measure, that which arises from agreeable recollections of the rhythms of the great epics of antiquity.

And, I add further, that the recollection of classical hexameters which will thus, in the minds of scholars, always accompany the flow of English hexameters, makes any addition to, or subtraction from, the six standard feet of the verse altogether intolerable. And hence I earnestly protest – and I hope you, Mr Editor, agree with me – against the license claimed by Southey, of using any foot of two or three syllables at the beginning of a line, to avoid the exotic and forced character, which, he says, the verse would assume if every line were to begin with a long syllable. No, no, my dear sir; this will never do. If we are to have hexameters at all, every line must begin with a long syllable. It is true, that this is sometimes difficult to attain. It is a condition which forbids us to begin a line with The, or It, or many other familiar beginnings of sentences. But it is a condition which must be adhered to; and if any one finds it too difficult, he must write something else, and leave hexameters alone. Southey, though he has claimed the license of violating this rule, has not written many of such licentious lines. I suppose the following are intended to be of this description: —

 
"That nōt for lawless devices, nor goaded by desperate fortunes."
"Upōn all seas and shores, wheresoever her rights were offended."
"His rēverend form repose; heavenward his face was directed."
 

The two former lines might easily be corrected by leaving out the first syllable. The other is a very bad line, even if the licence be allowed.

For the same reason it must be considered a very bad fault to have supernumerary syllables, or syllables which would be supernumerary if not cut down by a harsh elision. A final dactyl, requiring an elision to make it fit its place, appears to me very odious. Southey has such: —

 
"wins in the chamber
What he lost in the field, in fancy conquers the conqueror."
"Still it deceiveth the weak, inflameth the rash and the desperate."
"Rich in Italy's works and the masterly labours of Belgium."
 

And no less does the ear repudiate all other violent elisions. I find several in the other translation of the Iliad referred to in your notice of N. N. T.'s. And I am sure Mr Shadwell will excuse my pointing out one or two of them, and will accept in a friendly spirit criticisms which arise from a fellow feeling with him in the love of English hexameters. These occur in his First Iliad.

 
"Wheth'r it's for vow not duly perform'd or for altar neglected."
"Hand on his sword half drawn from its sheath, on a sudd'n from Olympus."
"Fail to regard in his envy the daught'r of the sea-dwelling ancient."
 

Such crushing of words is intolerable. Our hexameters, to be generally acceptable, must flow on smoothly, with the natural pronunciation of the words; at least this is necessary till the national ear is more familiar with the movement than it is at present.

I believe I have still some remarks upon hexameters in store, if your patience and your pages suffice for them: but for the present I wish to say a word or two on another subject closely connected with this; I mean pentameters. The alternate hexameter and pentameter are, for most purposes, a more agreeable measure than the hexameter by itself. The constant double ending is tiresome, as constant double rhymes would be. Southey says, in his angry way, speaking of his hexameters – "the double ending may be censured as double rhymes used to be; but that objection belongs to the duncery." This is a very absurd mode of disposing of one objection, mentioned by him among many others equally formal and minute, which others he pretends to discuss calmly and patiently. The objection is of real weight. Though you might tolerate a double ending here and there in an epic, I am sure, Mr Editor, you would stop your critical ears at the incessant jingle of an epic in which every couplet had a double rhyme. On the other hand, an alternation of double and single endings is felt as an agreeable form of rhythm and rhyme. We have some good examples of it in English; the Germans have more: and the French manifest the same feeling in their peremptory rule for the alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes. And there is another feature which recommends the pentameter combined with the hexameter. This combination carries into effect, on a large scale, a principle which prevails, I believe, in all the finer forms of verse. The principle which I mean is this; – that the metrical structure of the verse must be distinct and pure at the end of each verse, though liberties and substitutions may be allowed at the beginning. Thus, as you know, Mr Editor, the iambics of the Greek tragedians admit certain feet in the early part of the line which they do not allow in the later portions. And in the same manner the hexameter, a dactylic measure, must have the last two feet regular, while the four preceding feet may each be either trissyllabic or dissyllabic. Now, this principle of pure rhythm at the end of each strain, is peculiarly impressed upon the hexameter-pentameter distich. The end of the pentameter, rigorously consisting of two dactyls and a syllable, closes the couplet in such a manner that the metrical structure is never ambiguous; while the remainder of the couplet has liberty and variety, still kept in order by the end of the hexameter; and the double ending of the strain is avoided. I do not know whether you, Mr Editor, will agree with me in this speculation as to the source of the beauty which belongs to the hexameter-pentameter measure: but there can be no doubt that it has always had a great charm wherever dactylic measures have been cultivated. Schiller and Göethe have delighted in it no less than Tyrtæus and Ovid: and I should conceive that this measure might find favour in English ears, even more fully than the mere hexameter.

But, in order that there may be any hope of this, it is very requisite that the course of the verse should be natural and unforced. This is more requisite even than in the hexameter; for, in the pentameter, the verse, if it be at variance with the natural accent, subverts it more completely, and makes the utterance more absurd. But it does not appear to be very difficult to attain to this point. In the model distich quoted by Coleridge —

 
"In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column,
In the pentameter still falling in melody back;"
 

the pentameter is a better verse than the hexameter. Surry's pentameters often flow well, in spite of his false scheme of accentuation.

 
"With strong foes on land, on sea, with contrary tempests,
Still do I cross this wretch, whatso he taketh in hand."
 

I will here terminate my criticisms for the present, but I will offer you, along with them, a specimen of hexameter and pentameter. It is a translation from Schiller, and could not fail to win some favour to the measure, if I could catch any considerable share of the charm of the original, both in versification, language, and thought. Such as the verses are, however, I shall utter them in your critical ear – and am, dear Mr Editor, your obedient,

M. L.

THE DANCE. FROM SCHILLER

 
See with floating tread the bright pair whirl in a wave-like
Swing, and the wingèd foot scarce gives a touch to the floor.
Say, is it shadows that flit unclogg'd by the load of the body?
Say, is it elves that weave fairy-wings under the moon?
So rolls the curling smoke through air on the breath of the zephyr;
So sways the light canoe borne on the silvery lake.
– Bounds the well-taught foot on the sweet-flowing wave of the measure;
Whispering musical strains buoy up the aëry forms.
Now, as if in its rush it would break the chain of the dancers,
Dives an adventurous pair into the thick of the throng.
Quick before them a pathway is formed, and closes behind them;
As by a magical hand, open'd and shut is the way.
Now it is lost to the eye; into wild confusion resolvèd —
Lo! that revolving world loses its orderly frame.
No! from the mass there it gaily emerges and glides from the tangle;
Order resumes her sway, only with alterèd charm.
Vanishing still, it still reappears, the revolving creation,
And, deep-working, a law governs the aspects of change.
Say, how is it that forms ever passing are ever restorèd?
How still fixity stays, even where motion most reigns?
How each, master and free, by his own heart shaping his pathway,
Finds in the hurrying maze simply the path that he seeks?
This thou would'st know? 'Tis the might divine of harmony's empire;
She in the social dance governs the motions of each.
She, like the Goddess⁵ Severe, with the golden bridle of order,
Tames and guides at her will wild and tumultuous strength.
And around thee in vain the word its harmonies utters
If thy heart be not swept on in the stream of the strain,
– Not by the measure of life which beats through all beings around thee,
– Not by the whirl of the dance, which through the vacant abyss
Launches the blazing suns in the spacious sweeps of their orbits.
Order rules in thy sports: so let it rule in thy acts.
 

M. L.

A NEW SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY
At Moulins

"I don't think so," said the lady; and, pulling up the window of the calèche, she sank back on her seat: the postilion gave another crack with his whip, another sacre to his beasts, and they rolled on towards Moulins.

It's an insolent unfeeling world this: when any one is rich enough to ride in a calèche, the poorer man, who can only go in a cabriolet, is despised. Not but that a cabriolet is a good vehicle of its sort: I know of few more comfortable. And then, again, for mine, why I have a kind of affection for it. 'Tis an honest unpretending vehicle: it has served me all the way from Calais, and I will not discard it. What though Maurice wanted to persuade me at Paris that I had better take a britska, as more fashionable? I resisted the temptation; there was virtue in that very deed – 'tis so rare that one resists; and I am still here in my cabriolet: and when I leave thee, honest cab, may I —

"A l'Hôtel de l'Europe?" asked the driver; "'tis an excellent house, and if Monsieur intends remaining there, he will find une table merveilleuse."

Why to the Hotel de l'Europe? said I to myself. I hate these cosmopolitic terms. Am I not in France – gay, delightful France – partaking of the kindness and civility of the country? "A l'Hotel de France!" was my reply.

The driver hereupon pulled up his horses short; – it was no difficult task: the poor beasts had come far: there had been no horses at Villeneuve, and we had come on all the way from St Imbert, six weary leagues. "Connais pas," said the man: "Monsieur is mistaken; besides, madame is so obliging. If there were an Hotel de France, it would be another affair: add to this, that the voiture which has just passed us is going to the hotel."

"Enough – I will go there too;" and, so saying, we got through the Barrière of Moulins.

Now, I know not how it is, but, despite of the fellow's honest air, I had a misgiving that he intended to cheat me. He was leading me to some exorbitant monster of the road, where the unsuspecting traveller would be flayed alive: he was his accomplice – his jackall; I was to be the victim. Had he argued for an hour about the excellence of mine host's table, I had been proof: my Franco-mania and my wish to be independent had certainly taken me to some other hotel. But he said something about the voiture: it was going there. What was that to me? I hate people in great carriages when I am not in them myself. But then, the lady! I had seen nothing but her face, and for an instant. She said "she did not think so." Think what? Mais ses yeux!

Reader, bear with me a while. There is a fascination in serpents, and there is one far more deadly – who has not felt it? – in woman's eyes. Such a face! such features, and such expression! She might have been five-and-twenty – nay, more: girlhood was past with her: that quiet look of self-possession which makes woman bear man's gaze, showed that she knew the pains, perhaps the joys, of wedded life. And yet the fire of youthful imagination was not yet extinct: the spirit of poetry had not yet left her: there was hope, and gaiety, and love in that bright black eye: and there was beauty, witching beauty, in every lineament of her face. Her voice was of the softest – there was music in its tone: and her hand told of other symmetry that could not but be in exquisite harmony. "She did not think so: " why should she have taken the trouble to look out of the carriage window at me as she said these words? Was I known to her – or fancied to be so? As she did not think so, I was determined to know why. "We will go to the Hotel de l'Europe, if you press it;" and away the cabriolet joggled over the roughly paved street.

Moulins is any thing but one of the most remarkable towns in France: it is large, and yet it is not important: as a centre of communication, nothing: little trade: few manufactures: the houses are low, rather than high; the streets wide, rather than narrow: you can breathe in Moulins, though you may be stifled in Rouen. It is the quiet chef lieu of the Allier, and was once the capital of the Bourbonnais. An air of departing elegance, and even of stateliness, still lingers over it: the streets have the houses of the ancienne noblesse still lining their sides: high walls; that is to say, with a handsome gateway in the middle, and the corps-de-logis just peering above. Retired in their own dignity, and shunning the vulgar world, the old masters of the province here congregated in former days for the winter months; Moulins was then a gay and stirring town; piquet and Boston kept many an old lady and complaisant marquis alive through the long nights of winter; there was a sociable circle formed in many a saloon; the harpsichord was sounded, the minuet was danced, and the petit souper discussed. The president of the court, or the knight of Malta, or M. l'Abbé, came in; or perhaps a gallant gentleman of the regiment of Bourbon or Auvergne joined the circle; and conversation assumed that style of piquant brilliancy tempered with exquisite politeness which existed nowhere but in ancient France, and shall never be met with again. Sad was the day when the Revolution broke over Moulins! all the ancient properties of the country destroyed; blood flowing on many a scaffold; the deserving and the good thrust aside or trampled under foot; the unprincipled and the base pushed into places of power abused, and wealth ill-gotten but worse spent. That bad time has passed away, and Moulins has settled down, like an aged invalid of shattered constitution, the ghost of what it was, into a dull country-town. Yet it is not without its redeeming qualities of literary and even scientific excellence; somewhat of the ancient spirit of disinterested gaiety still remains behind; and it is a place where the traveller may well sojourn for many days.

In the court-yard of the hotel was standing the voiture, which had come in some twenty minutes before us. The femme-de-chambre was carrying up the last package: the postilion had got out of his boots, and had placed them to lean against the wall. The good lady of the house came out to welcome me, and the garçon was ready at the step. It's very true; the freshness, if not the sincerity, of an inn welcome, makes one of the amenities of life: it compensates for the wearisomeness of the road: it is something to look forward to at the end of a fatiguing day; and, what is best, you can have just as much or as little of it as you like. There is no keeping on of your buckram when once you are seated in your inn, – no stiffening up for dinner when you had infinitely rather be quite at your ease. What you want you ask for, without saying, "by your leave," or, "if you please;" and what you ask for, if you are a reasonable man, you get. Let no traveller go to a friend's house if he wants to be comfortable. Let him keep to an inn: he is there, pro tempore, at home.

"I shall stop here to-night, Madame."

"As Monsieur pleases: and to-morrow – ?"

"I will resume my route to Clermont."

"Monsieur is going to the baths of Mont Dor, no doubt?"

"Just so."

"Then, sir, you will have excellent company, and you have done well to come here; Monsieur le Marquis is going on thither to-morrow: and if Monsieur would be so obliging, – but I will run up and ask him and Madame, the sweetest lady in the world, – they will be glad to have you at dinner with them: you are all going to Mont Dor. You will be enchanted: excuse me, I will be back in an instant."

How curious, thought I, that without any doings of my own, I should just be thrown into the way of the person whom my curiosity – my impertinent, or silly curiosity, which you will – prompted me with the desire to meet. The superciliousness of the voiture vanished from my recollection, and my national frigidity was doomed to be thawed into civility, if not into amiableness.

"The Marquis de Mirepoix would be glad of the honour of Monsieur's company at dinner, if he would be so obliging as to excuse ceremony, and the refinements of the toilette." What a charming message! Surely there is an innate grace in this people, notwithstanding their twenty years of blood and revolution, that can never be worn out! Why, they did not even know my name; and on the simple suggestion of the hostess, they consent to sit with me at table! Truly this is the land of politeness, and of kind accommodation: the land of ready access to the stranger, where the ties of his home, withered, or violently snapped asunder, are replaced by the engaging attractions of unostentatious and well-judged civility; and where he is induced to leave his warmest inclinations, if not his heart. Never give up this distinguishing attribute, France, thou land of the brave and the gay! it shall compensate for much of thy waywardness: it shall take off the rough edge of thy egotism: it shall disarm thy ambition: it shall make thee the friend of all the world.

"Il m'a payé trois francs la poste, te dis-je: c'est un gros milord: que sais-je!"

"Diantre! for a cabriolet! Why, they only gave me the tariff and a miserable piece of ten sous as my pour-boire, for a heavy calèche! When I fetched them from the château this morning, I knew how it would be – Monsieur le Marquis is so miserly, so exigeant!"

"I would not be his wife for any thing," said the fille-de-chambre, as she came tripping down stairs, and passed between the two postilions; "an old curmudgeon, to go on in that way with such a wife. Voyez-vous, Pierre, elle est si belle, si douce! c'est une ange! She wants to know who the young Englishman is; qu'en sais-tu, Jean-Marie?"

"He gave us three francs a post; that's all I know."

"Then we have two angels in the house instead of one."

I hate to be long at my toilette at any time; but to delay much in such a matter while travelling is folly. Yet, how shall one get over the interminable plains of France, and pass through those ever succeeding simooms of dust which beset the high-roads of the "fair country," without contracting a certain dinginess of look that makes one intolerable? Fellow-traveller, never take much luggage with thee, if thou hast thy senses rightly awakened; leave those real "impediments" of locomotion behind; take with thee two suits at the most; adapt them to the climate and the land thou intendest to traverse; and, remember, never cease to dress like a gentleman. Take with thee plenty of white cravattes and white waistcoats; they will always make thee look clean when thy ablutions are performed, despite of whatever else may be thy habiliments; carry with thee some varnished boots; encourage the laundresses to the utmost of thy power, and thou wilt always be a suitably dressed man. By the time I had done my toilette there was a tap at the door, and in another minute I was in the salle-à-manger.

The Marquis made me a profound salutation, which I endeavoured to return as well as a stiff Englishman, with a poker up his back, extending right through the spinal column into his head, could be supposed to do. To the Lady I was conscious of stooping infinitely lower; and I even flattered myself that the empressement which I wished to put into my reverence was not unperceived by her. The little fluttering oscillation of the head and form, with which a French lady acknowledges a civility, came forth on her part with exquisite grace. Her husband might be fifty: he was a tall, harsh-looking man; a gentleman certainly, but still not one of the right kind; there was a sort of roué expression about his eyes that inspired distrust, if not repulsion; his features seemed little accustomed to a smile; the tone of his voice was dissonant, and he spoke sharply and quickly. But his wife – his gentle, angelic wife – was the type of what a woman should be. She surpassed not in height that best standard of female proportion, which we give, gentle reader, at some five feet and two inches. She was most delicately formed: her face, of the broad rather than the long oval shape, tapered down to a most exquisitely formed chin; while the arch expression of her mouth and eyes, tempered as it was with an indefinable expression of true feminine softness, gave animation and vivid intelligence to the whole. Who can define the tones of a woman's voice? and that woman one of the most refined and high-bred of her sex? There was a richness and smoothness, and yet such an exquisite softness in it, as entranced the hearer, and could keep him listening to its flow of music for hours together. I am persuaded of it, and the more I think of it the more vividly does it recur to my mind. 'Twas only a single glance – that first glance as I moved upwards from bowing towards a hand which I could willingly have kissed. There was the tale of a whole life conveyed in it; there was the narration of much inward suffering – of thwarted hopes, of disappointed desires – of a longing for deliverance from a weight of oppression – of a praying for a friend and an avenger. And yet there was the timidity of the woman, the observance of conventional forms, the respect of herself, the dread of her master, all tending to keep down the indication of those feelings. And again there came the still-enduring hope of amendment or of remedy. All was in that glance. I felt it in a moment; and the fascination – that mysterious communication of sentiment which runs through the soul as the electric current of its vitality – was completed.

How is it that one instant of time should work those effects in the human mind which are so lasting in their results! Ye unseen powers, spirits or angels, that preside over our actions, and guide us to or from harm, is it that ye communicate some portion of your own ethereal essence to our duller substance at such moments, and give us perceptive faculties which otherwise we never had enjoyed? Or is it that the soul has some secret way of imparting its feelings to another without the intervention of material things, otherwise than to let the immortal spark flash from one being to the other? And oh, ye sceptics, ye dull leaden-hearted mortals! doubt not of the language of the eyes – that common theme of mawkish lovers – but though common, not the less true and certain. Interrogate the looks of a young child – remember even the all-expressive yet mute eyes of a faithful dog; and give me the bright eloquent glance of woman in the pride and bloom of life – 'tis sweeter than all sounds, more universal than all languages.

"I am afraid, Monsieur le Marquis, that I shall be interfering with your arrangements?"

"Ah, mon Dieu! you give us great pleasure. Madame and myself had just been regretting that we should have to pass the evening in this miserable hole of a town. 'Pas de spectacle; c'est embêtant à ne pas en finir.'"

"And Monsieur is likely to be with us to-morrow, mon ami; for my femme-de-chambre tells me that he is going to Mont Dor. Do you know, Monsieur, that just as we were coming into Moulins, we remarked your odd-looking cabriolet de poste. My husband detests them; on the contrary, I like those carriages, for they tell me of happy – I mean to say, of former times. He wanted to wager with me that it was some old-fashioned sulky fellow that had got into it; but, as we passed, I looked out at the window, satisfied myself of the contrary, and told him so. Will you be pleased to take that chair by my side, and as we go on with our dinner we can talk about Mont Dor."

Clermont

As it had been arranged that I should take an hour's start with my cabriolet, and bespeak horses for my companions as I went on, I set off for Clermont early.

As you advance through the Bourbonnais, towards the south, the country warms upon you: warms in its sunny climate, and in the glowing colours of its landscape. Not but that France is smiling enough, even in the north: Witness Normandy, that chosen land of green meadow, rich glebe, stately forests, and winding streams: nor that even in Champagne, where the eye stretches over endless plains, towards the Germanic frontier, there are not rich valleys, and deep woodlands, and sunny glades. Do not quarrel with the chalky ground of the Champenois – remember its wine – think of the imprisoned spirit of the land, that quintessence of all that is French – give it due vent; 'twill reward you for your pains. Oh! certes, France is a gay and a pleasing land. My fastidious and gloomy countrymen may say what they please, and may talk of the beauties of England till they are hoarse again; but there is not less natural beauty in Gaul than in Britain. Take all the broad tracts from London to York, or from Paris to Lyons, France has nothing to dread from the comparison. But, in the Bourbonnais, flat and open as it is, the scene begins to change. The sun shines more genially, more constantly; he shines in good earnest; and your rheumatic pains, if you have any still creeping about your bones, ooze out at every pore, and bid you a long adieu. That grey, cold haze of the north, which dims the horizon in the distant prospect, here becomes warmed into a purpler, pinker tint, borrowed from the Italian side of the Alps: the perpetual brown of the northern soil here puts on an orange tinge: above, the sky is more blue; and around, the passing breeze woos you more lovingly. Come hither, poor, trembling invalid! throw off those blankets and those swathing bandages; trust yourself to the sun, to the land, to the waters of the Bourbonnais; and renovated health, lighter spirits, pleasant days and happy nights, shall be your reward.

How can it be, that in a country where nature is so genially disposed towards the vegetable and the mineral kingdoms of her wide empire, she should have played the niggard so churlishly when she peopled it with human beings? The men of the Bourbonnais are short and ordinary of appearance, remarkable more for the absence than for the presence of physical advantages, and the women are the ugliest in France! – mean and uninviting in person, and repulsive in dress! They are only to be surpassed in this unenviable distinction by those of Auvergne. Taking the two populations together, or rather considering them as one, which no doubt they originally were, they are at the bottom of the physiological scale of this country. Some think them to be the descendants of an ancient tribe that never lost their footing in this centre of the land, when the Gauls drove out their Iberian predecessors. They certainly are not Gauls, nor are they Celts; still less are they Romans or Germans. Are they then autochthonous, like the Athenians? or are they merely the offscourings, the rejected of other populations? Decide about it, ye that are learned in the ethnographic distinctions of our race – but heaven defend us from the Bourbonnaises!

See how those distant peaks rise serenely over the southern horizon! – is it that we have turned towards Helvetia? – for there is snow on the tops of some, and many are there towering in solitary majesty. No, they are the goal of our pilgrimage; they are the ridges of the Monts Dor – the Puys and the extinct volcanoes of ancient France. Look at the Puy de Dôme, that grand and towering peak: what is our friend Ben Nevis to this his Gallic brother, who out-tops him by a thousand feet! And again, look at Mont Dor behind, that hoary giant, as much loftier than the Puy de Dôme as this is than the monarch of the Scottish Highlands! We are coming to the land of real mountains now. Why, that long and comparatively low table-land of granite, from whence they all protrude, and on which they sit as a conclave of gods, is itself higher than the most of the hills of our father-land. These hills, if we have to mount them, shall sorely try the thews of horse and man.

There is something soothing, and yet cheering, in the southern sky, which tells upon the spirits, and consoles the weary heart. Just where the yellow streaks of this low white horizon tell of the intensity of the god of day, come the blue serrated ridges of those mountains across the sight. If I could fly, I would away to those realms of light and warmth – far, far away in the southern clime, where the wants of the body should be few, and where the vigour of life should be great. The glorious south is, like the joyous time of youth, full of hope and promise: all is sunny and bright: there, flowers bloom and birds sing merrily. Turn we our backs to the cold gloomy north, to the wet windy west, to the dry parching east – on to the south!

But what a magnificent plain is this we are entering upon: it is of immense extent. Those distant hills are at least fifty miles from us; and across it, from Auvergne to Le Forez, cannot be less than twenty; and, in the midst, what a gorgeous show of harvests, and gardens, and walnut groves, and all the luxuriance of the continental Flora. This is the Limagne, the garden of France – the choicest spot of the whole country for varied fertility and inexhaustible productiveness. Ages back – let musty geologists tell us how long ago – 'twas a lake, larger than the Lake of Geneva. The volcanic eruptions of the mountains on the west broke down its barriers, and let its waters flow. Now the Allier divides it; and the astonished cultivator digs into virgin strata of fertile loams, the lowest depths of which have never yet been revealed. Corn fields here are not the wide and open inclosures such as we know them in the north and west, where every thing is removed that can hinder a stray sunbeam from shining on the grain: here they are thickly studded with trees – majestic, wide-spread, fruit-laden, walnut-trees; where the corn waves luxuriantly beneath its thickest shade, and closes thickly round its stem. Bread from the grain below, and oil from the kernel above; wine from the hills all around, and honied fruits from many a well-stocked garden; such are the abundant and easily reared produce of this land of promise. A Caledonian farmer, put down suddenly in the Limagne, would think himself in fairy regions; so kindly do all things come in it, so pure and excellent of their sort – in such variety, in such never-failing succession. Purple mountains, red plains, dark green woods, and a sky of pure azure – such is the combination of colours that meets the eye on first coming into Auvergne.

And yet man thrives not much in it; he remains a stunted half-civilized animal – with his black shaggy locks, his brown jacket, red sash, and enormous round beaver; ox-goad in hand, and knife ready to his grip, his appearance accords but ill with the luxuriant beauty of the scene in which he dwells. His diminutive but hardy companion – she who shares his toils in the fields, and serves as his equal if not his better half – is well suited to his purpose, and resembles him in her looks. Here, she can climb the mountain-side as nimbly as her master; here, she can drive the cattle to their far-distant pastures with courage and skill; here, she mounts the hot little mountain-steed, not in female fashion, but with a true masculine stride; laborious and long-enduring, simple, honest, and easily contented; but withal easily provoked, and hard to be appeased without blood; such is the Auvergnat, and his wife.

Riom seemed a picturesque town when we drove through it; but our eyes could not bear to be diverted from the magnificent scenery that kept rising upon us from the south. We had now approached closely to the foot of the mountain-ranges, and their lofty summits were high above us in mid-air. On the right, the Puy de Dôme, cut in half by a line of motionless clouds, reared itself into the blue sky like some gigantic balloon, so round was its summit – so isolated. The granite plateau which constituted its base, was broken into deep and well-wooded ravines; while at intervals there ran out into the Limagne, for many a league, some extended promontory of land, capped all along by a flood of crystallized basalt, which once had flowed in liquid fire from the crater in the ridge. Here and there rose from the plain a small conical hill, crowned with a black mass of basaltic columns, and there again topped with an antique-looking little town or fortress, stationed there, perhaps, from the days of Cæsar. In front stood Gergovia, where Roman and Gallic blood once flowed at the bidding of that great master of war, freely as a mountain torrent; now only a black plain, where the plough is stopped in each furrow by bricks and broken pots, and rusted arms, – tokens of the site of the ancient city.

On turning short round a steeply sloping hill, crowned with a goodly château, and clad on its sides with vines and all kinds of fruit-trees, we saw a deep vale running up into the mountains towards the west, and Clermont covering an eminence in the very midst. What a picturesque outline! How closely the houses stand together – how agreeably do they mix with the trees of the promenades; and how boldly the cathedral comes out from amongst them all! It is a lofty and richly-decorated pile of the fourteenth century; and tells of the labours and the wealth of a foreign land. Anglo-Norman skill and gold are said to have formed it; but however this may be, we know that it witnessed the presence of our gallant Black Prince, and that it once depended on Aquitaine, not on France. Yet what fancy can have possessed its builder to have constructed it of black stone? Why not have sought out the pure white lime-rocks of the flat country, or the grey granite of the hills? This is the deep lava of the neighbouring volcanic quarry; here basalt, and pumice, and cinder, and scoriæ, are pressed into the service of the architect; and there stands a proof of the goodness of the material – hard, sharp, and sonorous, as when the hammer first clinked against its edge five centuries ago.

"Entrons, Monsieur," said the fair Marquise, as I stood with her on the esplanade before the Cathedral – the Marquis had gone to see the commandant. "Entrez donc, 'tis the work of one of your compatriots; and here, though a heretic, you may consider yourself on English ground."

Now, positively, I had never thought a bit about Catholic or Protestant ever since I had quitted my own shores. All I knew was, that I was in a country that gave the same evidences of being Christian as the one that I had left; and that, however frivolous and profligate might be the appearance of its capital, in the rural districts, at least, the people were honest and devout. I was not come to quarrel, nor to find fault with millions of men for thinking differently from – but perhaps acting better than – myself. So we entered.

The old keeper of the benitier bowed his head, and extended his brush; the Marquise touched its extremity, crossed herself, and fell on her knees.

Thou fell spirit of pride, prejudice, ignorance, and mauvaise honte! why didst thou beset me at that moment, and keep me, like a stiff-backed puritan, erect in the house of God? Why, on entering within its sacred limits, did I not acknowledge my own unworthiness to come in, and reverence the sanctity of the place? No; there I stood, half-astonished, half-abashed while the Marquise continued on her knees and made her silent orisons. 'Tis an admirable and a touching custom: there is poetry and religion in the very idea. Cross not that threshold with unholy feet; or if thou dost, confess that unholiness, and beg forgiveness for the transgression ere thou advancest within the walls. I acknowledge that I felt ashamed of myself; yet I knew not what to do. One of the priests passed by: he looked first at the lady and next at me; then humbly bowing towards the altar, went out of the church. My embarrassment increased; but the Marquise arose. "It is good to pray here," she said, in a tone the mildness and sincerity of which made the reproach more cutting. "Let us go forward now."

"I will amend my manners," thought I; "'tis not well to be unconcerned in such things, and when so little makes all the difference."

"Is Monsieur fond of pictures? Look at that painting of the Baptist, how vigorously the figure is drawn! And see what an exquisite Virgin! Or turn your eyes to that southern window, and remark the flood of gorgeous light falling from it on the pillar by its side!"

I was thinking of any thing but the Virgin, or the window, or the light; I was thinking of my companion – so fair, and so devout. Had she not called me a heretic? Had she not already put me to the blush for my lack of veneration? Strange linking of ideas! "Thou art worthy to be an angel hereafter," said I to myself, "as truly thou resemblest what we call angels here."

We were once more at the western door; Madame crossed herself again; we went out.

"Pour l'amour de Dieu, mon bon monsieur!" "Que le ciel vous soit ouvert!" whined out half-a-dozen old crones with extended hands; their shrivelled fingers seeking to pluck at any thing they could get.

Now I had paid away my last sous to the garçon d'écurie at the Poste: so I told them pettishly that I had not a liard to give. A coin tinkled on the ground; it had fallen from the hand of the Marquise; and as I stooped to reach it for her, I saw that it was gold.

"Let them have it, poor things. I thought it was silver; but it has touched holy ground, and 'tis now their own."

I turned round, thrust my purse into the lap of the nearest, and with a light heart led the lady back to the hotel.

POEMS BY ELIZABETH BARRETT BARRETT

A Woman's Shortcomings

1

 
She has laughed as softly as if she sighed;
She has counted six and over,
Of a purse well filled, and a heart well tried —
Oh, each a worthy lover!
They "give her time;" for her soul must slip
Where the world has set the grooving:
She will lie to none with her fair red lip —
But love seeks truer loving.
 

2

 
She trembles her fan in a sweetness dumb,
As her thoughts were beyond her recalling;
With a glance for one, and a glance for some,
From her eyelids rising and falling!
– Speaks common words with a blushful air;
– Hears bold words, unreproving:
But her silence says – what she never will swear —
And love seeks better loving.
 

3

 
Go, lady! lean to the night-guitar,
And drop a smile to the bringer;
Then smile as sweetly, when he is far,
At the voice of an in-door singer!
Bask tenderly beneath tender eyes;
Glance lightly, on their removing;
And join new vows to old perjuries —
But dare not call it loving!
 

4

 
Unless you can think, when the song is done,
No other is soft in the rhythm;
Unless you can feel, when left by One,
That all men beside go with him;
Unless you can know, when unpraised by his breath,
That your beauty itself wants proving;
Unless you can swear – "For life, for death!" —
Oh, fear to call it loving!
 

5

 
Unless you can muse, in a crowd all day,
On the absent face that fixed you;
Unless you can love, as the angels may,
With the breadth of heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,
Through behoving and unbehoving;
Unless you can die when the dream is past —
Oh, never call it loving!
 

A Man's Requirements

1

 
Love me, sweet, with all thou art,
Feeling, thinking, seeing, —
Love me in the lightest part,
Love me in full being.
 

2

 
Love me with thine open youth
In its frank surrender;
With the vowing of thy mouth,
With its silence tender.
 

3

 
Love me with thine azure eyes,
Made for earnest granting!
Taking colour from the skies,
Can heaven's truth be wanting?
 

4

 
Love me with their lids, that fall
Snow-like at first meeting!
Love me with thine heart, that all
The neighbours then see beating.
 

5

 
Love me with thine hand stretched out
Freely – open-minded!
Love me with thy loitering foot, —
Hearing one behind it.
 

6

 
Love me with thy voice, that turns
Sudden faint above me!
Love me with thy blush that burns
When I murmur 'Love me!'
 

7

 
Love me with thy thinking soul —
Break it to love-sighing;
Love me with thy thoughts that roll
On through living – dying.
 

8

 
Love me in thy gorgeous airs,
When the world has crowned thee!
Love me, kneeling at thy prayers,
With the angels round thee.
 

9

 
Love me pure, as musers do,
Up the woodlands shady!
Love me gaily, fast, and true,
As a winsome lady.
 

10

 
Through all hopes that keep us brave,
Further off or nigher,
Love me for the house and grave, —
And for something higher.
 

11

 
Thus, if thou wilt prove me, dear,
Woman's love no fable,
I will love thee– half-a-year —
As a man is able.
 

Maude's Spinning

1

 
He listened at the porch that day
To hear the wheel go on, and on,
And then it stopped – ran back away —
While through the door he brought the sun.
But now my spinning is all done.
 

2

 
He sate beside me, with an oath
That love ne'er ended, once begun;
I smiled – believing for us both,
What was the truth for only one.
And now my spinning is all done.
 

3

 
My mother cursed me that I heard
A young man's wooing as I spun.
Thanks, cruel mother, for that word,
For I have, since, a harder known!
And now my spinning is all done.
 

4

 
I thought – O God! – my first-born's cry
Both voices to my ear would drown!
I listened in mine agony —
It was the silence made me groan!
And now my spinning is all done.
 

5

 
Bury me 'twixt my mother's grave,
Who cursed me on her death-bed lone,
And my dead baby's – (God it save!)
Who, not to bless me, would not moan.
And now my spinning is all done.
 

6

 
A stone upon my heart and head,
But no name written on the stone!
Sweet neighbours! whisper low instead,
"This sinner was a loving one —
And now her spinning is all done."
 

7

 
And let the door ajar remain,
In case that he should pass anon;
And leave the wheel out very plain,
That he, when passing in the sun,
May see the spinning is all done.
 

A Dead Rose

1

 
O rose! who dares to name thee?
No longer roseate now, nor soft, nor sweet;
But barren, and hard, and dry, as stubble-wheat,
Kept seven years in a drawer – thy titles shame thee.
 

2

 
The breeze that used to blow thee
Between the hedge-thorns, and take away
An odour up the lane to last all day, —
If breathing now, – unsweetened would forego thee.
 

3

 
The sun that used to light thee,
And mix his glory in thy gorgeous urn,
Till beam appeared to bloom, and flower to burn, —
If shining now, – with not a hue would dight thee.
 

4

 
The dew that used to wet thee,
And, white first, grow incarnadined, because
It lay upon thee where the crimson was, —
If dropping now, – would darken where it met thee.
 

5

 
The fly that lit upon thee,
To stretch the tendrils of its tiny feet,
Along the leaf's pure edges after heat, —
If lighting now, – would coldly overrun thee.
 

6

 
The bee that once did suck thee,
And build thy perfumed ambers up his hive,
And swoon in thee for joy, till scarce alive, —
If passing now, – would blindly overlook thee.
 

7

 
The heart doth recognise thee,
Alone, alone! The heart doth smell thee sweet,
Doth view thee fair, doth judge thee most complete —
Though seeing now those changes that disguise thee.
 

8

 
Yes and the heart doth owe thee
More love, dead rose! than to such roses bold
As Julia wears at dances, smiling cold! —
Lie still upon this heart – which breaks below thee!
 

Change on Change

1

 
Three months ago, the stream did flow,
The lilies bloomed along the edge;
And we were lingering to and fro, —
Where none will track thee in this snow,
Along the stream, beside the hedge.
Ah! sweet, be free to come and go;
For if I do not hear thy foot,
The frozen river is as mute, —
The flowers have dried down to the root;
And why, since these be changed since May,
Shouldst thou change less than they?
 

2

 
And slow, slow as the winter snow,
The tears have drifted to mine eyes;
And my two cheeks, three months ago,
Set blushing at thy praises so,
Put paleness on for a disguise.
Ah! sweet, be free to praise and go;
For if my face is turned to pale,
It was thine oath that first did fail, —
It was thy love proved false and frail!
And why, since these be changed, I trow,
Should I change less than thou?
 

A Reed

 
I am no trumpet, but a reed!
No flattering breath shall from me lead
A silver sound, a hollow sound!
I will not ring, for priest or king,
One blast that, in re-echoing,
Would leave a bondsman faster bound.
 
 
I am no trumpet, but a reed, —
A broken reed, the wind indeed
Left flat upon a dismal shore!
Yet if a little maid, or child,
Should sigh within it, earnest-mild,
This reed will answer evermore.
 
 
I am no trumpet, but a reed!
Go, tell the fishers, as they spread
Their nets along the river's edge, —
I will not tear their nets at all,
Nor pierce their hands – if they should fall:
Then let them leave me in the sedge.
 

Hector in the Garden

1

 
Nine years old! First years of any
Seem the best of all that come! —
Yet when I was nine, I said
Unlike things! – I thought, instead,
That the Greeks used just as many
In besieging Ilium.
 

2

 
Nine green years had scarcely brought me
To my childhood's haunted spring, —
I had life, like flowers and bees,
In betwixt the country trees,
And the sun, the pleasure, taught me
Which he teacheth every thing.
 

3

 
If the rain fell, there was sorrow; —
Little head leant on the pane, —
Little finger tracing down it
The long trailing drops upon it, —
And the "Rain, rain, come to-morrow,"
Said for charm against the rain.
 

4

 
And the charm was right Canidian,
Though you meet it with a jeer!
If I said it long enough,
Then the rain hummed dimly off;
And the thrush, with his pure Lydian,
Was the loudest sound to hear.
 

5

 
And the sun and I together
Went a-rushing out of doors!
We, our tender spirits, drew
Over hill and dale in view,
Glimmering hither, glimmering thither,
In the footsteps of the showers.
 

6

 
Underneath the chestnuts dripping,
Through the grasses wet and fair,
Straight I sought my garden-ground,
With the laurel on the mound;
And the pear-tree oversweeping
A side-shadow of green air.
 

7

 
While hard by, there lay supinely
A huge giant, wrought of spade!
Arms and legs were stretched at length,
In a passive giant strength, —
And the meadow turf, cut finely,
Round them laid and interlaid.
 

8

 
Call him Hector, son of Priam!
Such his title and degree.
With my rake I smoothed his brow,
And his cheeks I weeded through:
But a rhymer such as I am
Scarce can sing his dignity.
 

9

 
Eyes of gentianella's azure,
Staring, winking at the skies;
Nose of gillyflowers and box;
Scented grasses, put for locks —
Which a little breeze, at pleasure,
Set a-waving round his eyes.
 

10

 
Brazen helm of daffodillies,
With a glitter for the light;
Purple violets, for the mouth,
Breathing perfumes west and south;
And a sword of flashing lilies,
Holden ready for the fight.
 

11

 
And a breastplate, made of daisies,
Closely fitting, leaf by leaf;
Periwinkles interlaced
Drawn for belt about the waist;
While the brown bees, humming praises,
Shot their arrows round the chief.
 

12

 
And who knows, (I sometimes wondered,)
If the disembodied soul
Of old Hector, once of Troy,
Might not take a dreary joy
Here to enter – if it thundered,
Rolling up the thunder-roll?
 

13

 
Rolling this way, from Troy-ruin,
To this body rude and rife,
He might enter and take rest
'Neath the daisies of the breast —
They, with tender roots, renewing
His heroic heart to life.
 

14

 
Who could know? I sometimes started
At a motion or a sound;
Did his mouth speak – naming Troy,
With an οτοτοτοτοι?
Did the pulse of the Strong-hearted
Make the daisies tremble round?
 

15

 
It was hard to answer, often!
But the birds sang in the tree —
But the little birds sang bold,
In the pear-tree green and old;
And my terror seemed to soften,
Through the courage of their glee.
 

16

 
Oh, the birds, the trees, the ruddy
And white blossoms, sleek with rain!
Oh, my garden, rich with pansies!
Oh, my childhood's bright romances!
All revive, like Hector's body,
And I see them stir again!
 

17

 
And despite life's changes – chances,
And despite the deathbell's toll,
They press on me in full seeming! —
Help, some angel! stay this dreaming!
As the birds sang in the branches,
Sing God's patience through my soul!
 

18

 
That no dreamer, no neglecter,
Of the present's work unsped,
I may wake up and be doing,
Life's heroic ends pursuing,
Though my past is dead as Hector,
And though Hector is twice dead.
 

THE CONDE'S DAUGHTER

"I should think we cannot be very far from our destination by this time."

"Why, were one to put faith in my appetite, we must have been at least a good four or five hours en route already; and if our Rosinantes are not able to get over a misère of thirty or forty miles without making as many grimaces about it as they do now, they are not the animals I took them for."

"Come, come – abuse your own as much as you please, but this much I will say for my Nero, though he has occasionally deposited me on the roadside, he is not apt to sleep upon the way at least. Nay, so sure am I of him, that I would wager you ten Napoleons that we are not more than four or five miles from the chateau at this moment."

"Pas si bête, mon cher. I am not fool enough to put my precious Naps in jeopardy, just when I am so deucedly in want of them, too. But a truce to this nonsense. Do you know, Ernest, seriously speaking, I am beginning to think we are great fools for our pains, running our heads into a perilous adventure, with the almost certainty of a severe reprimand from the general, which, I think, even your filial protestations will scarcely save you from, if ever we return alive; and merely to see, what, I dare say, after all, will turn out to be only a pretty face."

"What! – already faint-hearted! – A miracle of beauty such as Darville described is well worth periling one's neck to gaze upon. Besides, is not that our vocation? – and as for reprimands, if you got one as often as I do, you would soon find out that those things are nothing when one is used to them."

"A miracle! – ah, bah! It was the romance of the scene, and the artful grace of the costume, which fascinated his eyes."

"No, no! be just. Recollect that it was not Darville alone, but Delavigne; and even that connoisseur in female beauty, Monbreton himself, difficult as he is, declared that she was perfect. She must be a wonder, indeed, when he could find no fault with her."

"Be it so. I warn you beforehand that I am fully prepared to be disappointed. However, as we are so far embarked in the affair, I suppose we must accomplish it."

"Most assuredly, unless you wish to be the laughing-stock of the whole regiment for the next month; for notwithstanding Darville's boasted powers of discretion, half the subalterns, no doubt, are in possession of the secret of our escapade by this time."

"Well, then, Ernest, as we are launched on this wise expedition, let me sermonise a small portion of prudence into that most giddy brain of yours. Remember that, after all, if those ruthless Spaniards were to discover the trick we are playing them, they would probably make us pay rather too dearly for the frolic. In short, Ernest, I am very much afraid that your étourderie will let the light rather too soon into the thick skulls of those magnificent hidalgos."

"Preach away – I listen in all humility."

"Ernest, Ernest, I give you up; you are incorrigible!" rejoined the other, turning away to hide the laugh which the irresistibly comic expression his friend threw into his countenance had excited.

And who were the speakers of this short dialogue? Two dashing, spirited-looking young men, who, at the close of it, reined in their steeds, in the dilemma of not knowing where to direct them. Theirs was, indeed, a wild-goose chase. Their Chateau en Espagne seemed invisible, as such chateaux usually are; and where it might be found, who was there to tell? – Not one. The scene was a desert – not even a bird animated it; and just before them branched out three roads from the one they had hitherto confidently pursued.

After a moment's silence, the cavaliers both burst into a gay laugh.

"Here's a puzzle, Alphonse!" said the one. "Which of the three roads do you opine?"

"The left, by all means," replied the other; "I generally find it leads me right."

"But if it shouldn't now?"

"Why, then, it only leads us wrong."

"But I don't choose to go wrong."

"And what have you been doing ever since you set out?"

"True; but as we are far enough now from that point, we must e'en make the best of the bad."

"Well, why don't you?"

"Why, if one only knew which was the best."

At this moment the tinkling of a mule's bells, mingled with the song of the muleteer, came on the air.

"Hist! here comes counsel," exclaimed the young man whom the other named Ernest. "Holla, señor hidalgo! do you know the castle of the Conde di Miranda?"

"Yes."

"Where is it?"

"Where it was."

"Near?"

"That's as one finds it."

"And how shall we find it?"

"By reaching it."

"Come, come, hidalgo mio."

"I'm no hidalgo," said the man roughly.

"But you ought to be. I've seen many less deserving of it," resumed the traveller.

"I dare say," retorted the muleteer.

"If you'll conduct us within view of the castle you shall be rewarded."

"As I should well deserve."

"Ah, your deserts may be greater than our purse."

But the man moved on.

"Halte-là, friend! I like your company so well that I must have it a little longer." And the officer pulled out a pistol. "Will you, or will you not, guide us to the castle of the Conde?"

"I will," gruffly replied the man, with a look which showed that he was sorry to be forced to choose the second alternative.

"Can we trust this fellow?" said the younger officer to the elder.

"No – but we can ourselves; and keep a sharp look-out."

"Besides, I shall give him a hint. Hidalgo mio – " he began.

"Señor Franzese," interrupted the muleteer.

"What puts that into your head, hidalgo? Franzese, – why, Don Felix y Cortos, y Sargas, y Nos, y Tierras, y, y, – don't you know an Englishman when you see him?"

"Yes," muttered the Spaniard – "Yes, and a Frenchman, too."

"No, you don't, for here's the proof. Why, what are we, but English officers, carrying despatches to your Conde from our General?"

The muleteer looked doubtingly.

"Why, do you suppose Frenchmen would trust themselves amongst such a set of" —

"Patriots." Exclaimed the other stranger, hastily.

"All I say;" observed the man drily, "is, that if you are friends of the Conde, he will treat you as you deserve. If enemies, the same. So, backward."

"Onward, you mean."

"Ay, for me; but not for you, señores, you have left the castle a mile to the left."

"I guessed right, you see," said Alphonse, "when I guessed left."

The muleteer passed on, and the horsemen followed.

"I say, hidalgo mio," called out Ernest, "what sort of a don is this same Conde?"

"As how?" inquired the muleteer.

"Is he rich?"

"Yes."

"Proud?"

"Yes."

"Old?"

"No."

"Has he a wife?"

"No."

"Has he children?"

"No."

"No!" exclaimed the cavalier with surprise. "No child!"

"You said children, señor."

"He has a child, then?"

"Yes."

"A son?"

"No."

"A daughter?"

"Yes."

"Why, yes and no seems all you have got to say."

"It seems to answer all you have got to ask, señor."

"Is the Doña very handsome?" interrupted Alphonse, impatiently.

"Yes and no, according to taste," replied the muleteer.

"He laughs at us," whispered Ernest in French. The conversation with the muleteer had been, thus far, carried on in Spanish – which Ernest spoke fairly enough. But the observation he thoughtlessly uttered in French seemed to excite the peasant's attention.

"Do you speak English?" asked Ernest.

"Yes," was the reply, in English. "Do you?"

"Me English? ab course. Speak well English," replied Ernest, in the true Gallic-idiom. Then relapsing into the more familiar tongue, he added, "But in Spain I speak Spanish."

By this time the trio had arrived within view of a large castellated building, whose ancient towers, glowing in the last rays of the setting sun, rose majestically from the midst of groves of dark cypress and myrtle which surrounded it.

The muleteer stopped. "There, señores," he said, "stands the castle of the Conde. Half-a-mile further on lies the town of R – , to which, señores," he added, with a sarcastic smile, "you can proceed, should you not find it convenient to remain at the Castello. And now, I presume, as I have guided you so far right, you will suffer me to resume my own direction."

"Yes, as there seems no possibility of making any more mistakes on our way, you are free," replied the gravest of the two. "But stop one moment yet, amigo," and he pointed to a cross-road which, a little further on, diverged from the camino real, "where does that lead to?"

"Amigo!" muttered the man between his teeth, "say enemigo rather!"

"An answer to my question, villano," said the young Frenchman, haughtily – while his hand instinctively groped for the hilt of his sword.

"To R – ," replied the man, as he turned silently and sullenly to retrace his steps.

"Holla, there!" Ernest called out; "you have forgotten your money;" and he held out a purse, but the man was gone. "Va donc, et que le diable t'emporte, brutal!" added Ernest de Lucenay; taking good care, however, this time, that the ebullition of his feelings was not loud enough to reach the ears of the retreating peasant. "Confound it! I would rather follow the track of a tiger through the pathless depth of an Indian jungle alone, than be led by such a savage cicerone."

"Never mind the fellow; we have more than enough to think of in our own affairs," exclaimed his friend, impatiently. "Let us stop here a moment and consult, before we proceed any further. One thing is evident, at all events, that we must contrive to disguise ourselves better if we wish to pass for any thing but Frenchmen. With my knowledge of the English language, and acquaintance with their manners and habits, trifling as it is, I am perfectly certain of imposing on the Spaniards, without any difficulty; but you will as certainly cause a blow up, unless you manage to alter your whole style and appearance. I daresay you have forgotten all my instructions already."

"Bah! Alphonse. Let me alone for puzzling the dons; I'll be as complete a Goddam in five minutes as any stick you ever saw, I warrant you."

"Nothing can appear more perfectly un-English than you do at present. That éveillé look of yours is the very devil;" and Alphonse shook his head, despondingly.

"Incredulous animal! just hold Nero for five minutes, and you shall have ocular demonstration of my powers of acting. Parbleu! you shall see that I can be solemn and awkward enough to frighten half the petites maîtresses of Paris into the vapours." And, so saying, De Lucenay sprang from his saddle, and consigning the bridle into his friend's hands, ran towards a little brook, which trickled through the grass at a short distance from the roadside; but not before he had made his friend promise to abstain from casting any profane glances on his toilet till it was accomplished.

Wisely resolving to avoid temptation, Alphonse turned away, when, to his surprise, he perceived the muleteer halting on a rising ground at a little distance. "By Jove! that insolent dog has been watching us. Scoundrel, will you move on?" he exclaimed in French, raising his voice angrily, when, suddenly recollecting himself, he terminated the unfinished phrase by "Sigue tu camin! Picaro! Bribon!" while he shook his pistol menacingly at the man's head – a threat which did not seem to intimidate him much, for, though he resumed his journey, his rich sonorous voice burst triumphantly forth into one of the patriotic songs; and long after he had disappeared from their eyes, the usual ritournelle, "Viva Fernando! Muera Napoleon!" rang upon the air.

This short interval had more than sufficed for De Lucenay's mysterious operations. And before his friend was tired of fuming and sacreing against Spain and Spaniards, Ernest tapped him on the shoulder, and for once both the young officer's anger and habitual gravity vanished in an uncontrollable fit of laughter. "By Jupiter! it is incredible," he gasped forth, as soon as returning breath would allow him to speak: while Ernest stood silently enjoying his surprise.

"Well, what think you? It will do, will it not? Are you still in fear of a fiasco?"

"Nay! My only fear now is, that the pupil will eclipse the master, and that the more shining light of your talents will cast mine utterly into the shade. By heavens! the transformation is inimitable. Your own father would not know you."

"He would not be the only one in such an unhappy case, then."

Nothing certainly could have been more absurd than the complete metamorphosis which, in those few moments, De Lucenay had contrived to make in his appearance. With the aid of a little fresh water from the rivulet, he had managed to reduce the rich curly locks of his chesnut hair to an almost Quaker flatness; the shirt collar, which had been turned down, was now drawn up to his cheek-bones, and with his hat placed perpendicularly on the crown of his head, one arm crossed under the tails of his coat, and the other balancing his whip, its handle resting on his lips, the corners of which were drawn puritanically down, and his half-closed eyes staring vacantly on the points of his boots, he stood the living picture of an automaton.

"Well, would you not swear that I was a regular boule-dog Anglais?" exclaimed Earnest, stalking up and down for his friend's inspection, while he rounded his shoulders, and carried his chin in the air, in order to increase the resemblance.

"Excellent! – only not so much laisser aller; a little more stiff – more drawn up! That will do – oh, it's perfect!" And again Alphonse burst into a peal of laughter, in which De Lucenay, notwithstanding his newly-assumed gravity, could not refrain from joining.

"Let me see, – That coat fits a great deal too well, too close. We must rip out some of the wadding, just to let it make a few wrinkles; it ought to hang quite loosely, in order to be in character."

"Gently, mon cher!" interposed De Lucenay, as his friend drew out a pen-knife. "To satisfy you, I have injured the sit of my cravat, I have hidden the classic contour of my neck, I have destroyed the Antinöus-like effect of my coiffure– those curls which were the despair of all my rivals in conquest – I have consented to look like a wretch impaled, and thus renounce all the bonnes fortunes that awaited me during the next four-and-twenty hours; and now you venture to propose, with the coolest audacity, that I should crown all these sacrifices by utterly destroying the symmetry of my figure. No, no, mon cher! that is too much; cut yourself up as you please, but spare your friend."

"Vive Dieu!" laughed Alphonse. "It is lucky that you have absorbed such an unreasonable proportion of vanity that you have left none for me. To spare the acuteness of your feelings, I will be the victim. Here goes!" And, so saying, he ripped up the lining of his coat, and scattered a few handfuls of wadding to the winds. "Will that do?"

"Oh, capitally! I would rather you wore it than me; it has as many wrinkles as St Marceau's forehead."

"Forward, then, et vogue la galère!" exclaimed Alphonse, as De Lucenay vaulted into his saddle, and the cavaliers spurred on their horses to a rapid canter.

"Apropos!" exclaimed De Lucenay, as they approached the castle; "we ought to lay our plans, and make a proper arrangement beforehand, like honest, sociable brothers-in-arms; it would never do to stand in each other's light, and mar our mutual hopes of success by cutting each others' throats for the sake of the bella."

"Oh, as for me, you are welcome to all my interest in the Doña's heart beforehand; for I never felt less disposed to fall in love than I do at present."

"You are delightful in theory, caro mio; but as your practice might be somewhat different, suppose we make a little compact, upon fair terms, viz., that the choice is to depend on the señora herself; that whoever she distinguishes, the other is to relinquish his claims at once, and thenceforth devote all his energies to the assistance of his friend. We cannot both carry her off, you know; so it is just as well to settle all these little particulars in good time."

"Oh! as you please. I am quite willing to sign and seal any compact that will set your mind at rest; though, for my part, I declare off beforehand."

"Well, then, it is a done thing; give me your hand on it. Parole d'honneur!" said De Lucenay, stretching out his.

"Parole d'honneur," returned his friend, with a smile.

"But to return to the elopement" —

"Gad! How you fly on! There will be two words to that part of the story, I suspect. Doña Inez will probably not be quite so easily charmed as our dear little grisettes; and she must be consulted, I suppose; unless, indeed, you intend to carry the fort by storm; the current of your love nay not flow as smoothly as you expect."

"Oh, as for that, leave it to me. Spanish women have too good a taste, and we Frenchmen are too irresistible to leave me any fears on that score; besides, she must be devilishly difficult if neither of us suit her. You are dark, and I fair – you are pensive, and I gay – you poetic, and I witty. The deuce is in it, if she does not fall in love with either one or other!

"Add to which, the private reservation, no doubt, that if she has one atom of discernment, it is a certain volage, giddy, young aide-de-camp that she will select."

"Why, if I had but fair play; but as my tongue will not be allowed to shine, I must leave the captivation part to my yeux doux. Who knows, though?" —

"Oh, vanitas vanitatum!" exclaimed Alphonse, with a laugh.

"I might say the same of a certain rebellious aristocrat, who lays claim to the euphonious patronymic of La Tour d'Auvergne, with a pedigree that dates from the Flood, and a string of musty ancestors who might put the patriarchs to the blush; but I am more generous;" and De Lucenay began carelessly to hum a few bars of La Carmagnole.

"Softly!" said his more prudent friend. "We are drawing near the chateau, and you might as well wear a cockade tricolor as let them hear that."

It was an antique, half-Gothic, half-Saracenic looking edifice, which they now approached. A range of light arcades, whose delicate columns, wreathed round with the most graceful foliage, seemed almost too slight to sustain the massive structure which rose above them, surrounded the pian terreno. Long tiers of pointed windows, mingled with exquisite fretwork, and one colossal balcony, with a rich crimson awning, completed the façade. Beneath the portico, numbers of servants and retainers were lounging about, enjoying the fresco. Some, stretched out at full length on the marble benches that lined the open arcades, were fast asleep; others, seated à la Turque upon the ground, were busily engaged in a noisy game of cards. But the largest group of all had collected round a handsome Moorish-looking Andalusian, who, leaning against the wall, was lazily rasping the chords of a guitar that was slung over his shoulder, while he sang one of those charming little Tiranas, to which he improvised the usual nonsense words as he proceeded; anon the deep mellow voices of his auditory would mingle with the "Ay de mi chaira mia! Luz de mi alma!" &c. of the ritournelle, and then again the soft deep tones of the Andalusian rang alone upon the air.