Kitabı oku: «Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 70, No. 433, November 1851», sayfa 3

Perhaps we are hardly correct in calling the temper and spirit we have here alluded to Byronian; they are common to all ages and to many minds, though signally developed by that poet, and in our own epoch. Probably the future historian of this period of our literature will attribute much of this peculiar exhibition of bitterness and despondency to the sanguine hopes first excited and then disappointed by the French Revolution. He will probably say of certain regions of our literature, that the whole bears manifest traces of volcanic origin. Pointing to some noble eminence, which seems to have been eternally calm, he will conjecture that it owed its elevation to the same force which raised the neighbouring Ætna. Applying the not very happy language of geology, he may describe it as "a crater of elevation;" which, being interpreted, means no crater at all, but an elevation produced by the like volcanic agency: the crater itself is higher up in the same mountain range.

There still remains one other small volume of Mr Taylor's poetry, which we must not pass over entirely without mentioning. The Eve of the Conquest, and other Poems. The chief piece here is of the nature of a dramatic scene. Harold, the night before the battle of Hastings, converses with his daughter, unfolds some passages of his past life, and vindicates himself in his quarrel with that William the Norman who, on the morrow, was to add the title of Conqueror to his name. But as it will be more agreeable to vary the nature of our quotations, we shall make the few extracts we have space for from the lyric poems which follow.

The "Lago Varese" will be, we suspect, the favourite with most readers. The image of the Italian girl is almost as distinctly reflected in the verse as it would have been in her own native lake.

 
"And sauntering up a circling cove,
I found upon the strand
A shallop, and a girl who strove
To drag it to dry land.
I stood to see – the girl looked round – her face
Had all her country's clear and definite grace.
 
 
She rested with the air of rest
So seldom seen, of those
Whose toil remitted gives a zest,
Not languor, to repose.
Her form was poised, yet buoyant, firm, though free,
And liberal of her bright black eyes was she.
 
 
The sunshine of the Southern face,
At home we have it not;
And if they be a reckless race,
These Southerns, yet a lot
More favoured, on the chequered earth is theirs;
They have life's sorrows, but escape its cares.
 
 
There is a smile which wit extorts
From grave and learned men,
In whose austere and servile sports
The plaything is a pen;
And there are smiles by shallow worldlings worn,
To grace a lie or laugh a truth to scorn:
 
 
And there are smiles with less alloy
Of those who, for the sake
Of some they loved, would kindle joy
Which they cannot partake;
But hers was of the kind which simply say,
They came from hearts ungovernably gay."
 

The "Lago Lugano" is a companion picture, written "sixteen summers" after, and on a second visit to Italy. One thing we notice, that in this second poem almost all that is beautiful is brought from the social or political reflections of the writer: it is not the outward scene that lies reflected in the verse. He is thinking more of England than of Italy.

 
"Sore pains
They take to set Ambition free, and bind
The heart of man in chains."
 

And the best stanza in the poem is that which is directly devoted to his own country: —

 
"Oh, England! 'Merry England,' styled of yore!
Where is thy mirth? Thy jocund laughter, where?
The sweat of labour on the brow of care
Make a mute answer – driven from every door!
The May-pole cheers the village green no more,
Nor harvest-home, nor Christmas mummers rare.
The tired mechanic at his lecture sighs;
And of the learned, which, with all his lore,
Has leisure to be wise?"
 

With some verses from a poem called "St Helen's-Auckland" we close our extracts. The author revisits the home of his boyhood: —

 
"How much is changed of what I see,
How much more changed am I,
And yet how much is left – to me
How is the distant nigh!
 
 
The walks are overgrown and wild,
The terrace flags are green —
But I am once again a child,
I am what I have been.
 
 
The sounds that round about me rise
Are what none other hears;
I see what meets no other eyes,
Though mine are dim with tears.
 
 
In every change of man's estate
Are lights and guides allowed;
The fiery pillar will not wait,
But, parting, sends the cloud.
 
 
Nor mourn I the less manly part
Of life to leave behind;
My loss is but the lighter heart,
My gain the graver mind."
 

Poetry is no longer the most popular form of literature amongst us, and the drama is understood to be the least popular form of poetry. If this be the case, Mr Taylor has the additional merit of having won his way to celebrity under singular disadvantages. But, in truth, such poetry as Mr Taylor's could never appeal to the multitude. Literature of any kind which requires of the reader himself to think in order to enjoy, can never be popular. It is impossible to deny that the dramas we have been reviewing demand an effort, in the first instance, on the part of the reader: he must sit down to them with something of the spirit of the student. But, having done this, he will find himself amply repaid. As he advances in the work, he will read with increased pleasure; he will read it the second time with greater delight than the first; and if he were to live twenty years, and were to read such a drama as Philip Van Artevelde every year of his life, he would find in it some fresh source of interest to the last.

As we have not contented ourselves with selecting beautiful passages of writing from Mr Taylor's dramas, but have attempted such an analysis of the three principal characters they portray as may send the reader to their reperusal with additional zest, so neither have we paused to dispute the propriety of particular parts, or to notice blemishes and defects. We would not have it understood that we admire all that Mr Taylor has written. Of whom could we say this? We think, for instance, that, throughout his dramas, from the first to the last, he treats the monks too coarsely. His portraiture borders upon farce. His Father John shows that he can do justice to the character of the intelligent and pious monk. Admitting that this character is rare, we believe that the extremely gross portraiture which we have elsewhere is almost equally rare. This last, however, is so frequently introduced, that it will pass with the reader as Mr Taylor's type of the monkish order. The monks could never have been more ignorant than the surrounding laity, and they were always something better in morals and in true piety. We are quite at a loss, too, to understand Mr Taylor's fondness for the introduction into his dramas of certain songs or ballads, which are not even intended to be poetical. To have made them so, he would probably contend, would have been a dramatic impropriety. Very well; but let us have as few of such things as may be, and as short as possible. In Edwin the Fair they are very numerous; and those which are introduced in Philip Van Artevelde we could gladly dispense with. We could also very willingly have dispensed with the conversation of those burgesses of Bruges who entertained the Earl of Flanders with some of these ballads. We agree with the Earl, that their hospitalities are a sore affliction. Tediousness may be very dramatic, but it is tediousness still – a truth which our writer, intent on the delineations of his character, sometimes forgets. But defects like these it is sufficient merely to have hinted at. That criticism must be very long and ample indeed, of the dramas of Mr Taylor, in which they ought to occupy any considerable space.

A LEGEND OF GIBRALTAR

CHAPTER I

The Governor's residence at Gibraltar was, in days of Spanish domination, a religious house, and still retains the name of the Convent. Two sides of a long quadrangular gallery, traversing the interior of the building, are hung with portraits of officers present at the great siege in 1779-83, executed in a style which proves that Pre-Raphaelite painters existed in those days. One of these portraits represents my grandfather. To judge from a painting of him by Sir Joshua, and a small miniature likeness, both still in possession of the family, he must have been rather a good-looking old gentleman, with an affable, soldierlike air, and very respectable features. The portrait at the Convent is doubtless a strong likeness, but by no means so flattering; it represents him much as he might have appeared in life, if looked at through a cheap opera-glass. A full inch has been abstracted from his forehead, and added to his chin; the bold nose has become a great promontory in the midst of the level countenance; the eyes have gained in ferocity what they have lost in speculation, and would, indeed, go far to convey a disagreeable impression of my ancestor's character, but for the inflexible smile of the mouth. Altogether, the grimness of the air, the buckram rigidity of figure, and the uncompromising hardness of his shirt-frill and the curls of his wig, are such as are to be met with in few works of art, besides the figure-heads of vessels, the signboards of country inns, and the happiest efforts of Messrs Millais and Hunt.

However, my grandfather is no worse off than his compeers. Not far from this one is another larger painting, representing a council of officers held during the siege, where, notwithstanding the gravity of the occasion and the imminence of the danger, not a single face in the intrepid assembly wears the slightest expression of anxiety or fear, or, indeed, of anything else; and though my progenitor, in addition to the graces of the other portrait, is here depicted with a squint, yet he is by no means the most ill-looking individual present. But the illustrious governor, Eliott, has suffered more than anybody at the hands of the artist. Besides figuring in the production aforesaid, a statue of him stands in the Alameda, carved in some sort of wood, unluckily for him, of a durable nature. The features are of a very elevated cast, especially the nose; the little legs seem by no means equal to the task of sustaining the enormous cocked-hat; and the bearing is so excessively military, that it has been found necessary to prop the great commander from behind to prevent him from falling backwards.

My grandfather, John Flinders, joined the garrison of Gibraltar as a major of infantry a few years before the siege. He was then forty-seven years of age, and up to that time had remained one of the most determined old bachelors that ever existed. Not that he ever declaimed against matrimony in the style of some of our young moderns, who fancy themselves too strong-minded to marry; the truth being that they remain single either because they have not been gifted by nature with tastes sufficiently strong to like one woman better than another, or else, because no woman ever took the trouble to lay siege to them. My grandfather had never married, simply, I believe, because matrimony had never entered his head. He seldom ventured, of his own choice, into ladies' society, but, when he did, no man was more emphatically gallant to the sex. One after one, he saw his old friends abandoning the irresponsible ease of bachelorhood for the cares of wedded life; but while he duly congratulated them on their felicity, and officiated as godfather to their progeny, he never seemed to anticipate a similar destiny for himself. All his habits showed that he had been too long accustomed to single harness to go cleverly as one of a pair. He had particular hours of rising, and going to bed; of riding out and returning; of settling himself down for the evening to a book and pipe, which the presence of a helpmate would have materially deranged. And therefore, without holding any Malthusian tenets, without pitying his Benedick acquaintances, or entertaining a thought of the sex which would have been in the least decree derogatory to the character of a De Coverley, his castles in the air were never tenanted by any of his own posterity.

It was fortunate for my grandfather that in his time people did not suffer so much as now from that chronic inflammation of the conscience, which renders them perfectly miserable unless they are engaged in some tangible pursuit – "improving their minds," or "adding to the general stock of information." A more useless, contented person never existed. He never made even a show of employing himself profitably, and never complained of weariness in maintaining the monotonous jog-trot of his simple daily life. He read a good deal, certainly, but it was not to improve his mind, only to amuse himself. Strong-minded books, to stimulate his thinking faculties, would have had no charms for him; he would as soon have thought of getting galvanised for the pleasure of looking at his muscles. And I don't know whether it was not just as well. In systematically cultivating his mind, he would merely have been laying a top-dressing on a thin soil – manuring where there would never have been a crop – and some pleasant old weeds would have been pulled up in the process. A green thistly common, even though a goose could hardly find sustenance there, is nature still, which can hardly be said of a patch of earth covered with guano.

So my grandfather went on enjoying himself without remorse after his own fashion, and never troubled himself to think – an operation that would have been inconvenient to himself, and productive of no great results to the world. He transplanted his English habits to Gibraltar; and, after being two years there, knew nothing more of Spain or Spaniards than the view of the Andaluçian hills from the Rock, and a short constitutional daily ride along the beach beyond the Spanish lines, to promote appetite and digestion, afforded him. And so he might have continued to vegetate during the remainder of his service there, but for a new acquaintance that he made about this time.

Frank Owen, commonly called Garry Owen by his familiars, was one of those joyous spirits whose pleasant faces and engaging manners serve as a perpetual act of indemnity for all breaches of decorum, and trespasses over social and conventional fences, committed by them in the gaiety of their hearts. In reproving his many derelictions of military duty, the grim colonel of the regiment would insensibly exchange his habitual tone of severe displeasure for one of mild remonstrance – influenced, probably, quite as much, in secret, by the popularity of the unrepentant offender, as by any personal regard for him. Captain Hedgehog, who had shot a man through the heart for corking his face one night when he was drunk, and all contact with whose detonating points of honour was as carefully avoided by his acquaintance as if they had been the wires of a spring-gun, sustained Garry's reckless personalities with a sort of warning growl utterly thrown away upon the imperturbable wag, who would still persist, in the innocence of his heart, in playing round the den of this military cockatrice. And three months after his arrival in Gibraltar, being one day detected by a fierce old Spanish lady in the very act of kissing her daughter behind the little señorita's great painted fan, his good-humoured impudence converted the impending storm into a mild drizzle of reproof, ending in his complete restoration to favour.

This youth had brought with him from England a letter from his mother, a widow lady, an old friend of my grandfather, who had some thirty years before held with her a juvenile flirtation. It recommended to his protection her son Frank, about to join the regiment as an ensign, pathetically enlarging on the various excellencies, domestic and religious, which shone forth conspicuously in the youth's character, and of the comfort of contemplating and superintending which she was about to be deprived. In fact, it had led my grandfather to expect a youth of extreme docility and modesty, requiring a protector rather to embolden than to restrain him. After in vain attempting to espy in his young acquaintance any of the characteristics ascribed to him in his mother's letter, the Major, naturally good-natured and accessible to his youthful comrades, very soon suffered himself to be influenced by the good-humour, vigorous vitality, and careless cleverness of the Ensign, to an extent that caused him sometimes to wonder secretly at his own transformation. His retired habits were broken in upon, one after the other, till he had scarcely a secluded hour in his sixteen waking ones to enjoy alone his book and his pipe. His peaceful quarters, silent, in general, as a monk's cell, would now be invaded at all sorts of hours by the jovial Garry, followed by the admiring satellites who usually revolved around him; and the Major, with a sound between a groan and a chuckle, would close his well-beloved volume to listen to the facetious details of, and sometimes to participate in, the uncongenial freaks of the humorous subaltern. Once he had actually consented, at about the hour he usually went to bed, to accompany the youth to a Carnival ball – one of a series of entertainments at which the Catholic youth of the city are wont to idemnify themselves for the mortifications of Lent, and where masks, dominoes, and fancy dresses lend their aid to defeat the vigilance of the lynx-eyed duennas and mammas who look anxiously on, perfectly aware, in general, that their own watchfulness is more to be relied on for nipping in the bud an indiscreet amour, than any innate iciness of temperament or austere propriety in the objects of their care. Not only did the Major mingle in the scene, but he actually, about midnight, found himself figuring in a cotillon with a well-developed señorita of thirteen years, whose glances and deportment showed a precocious proficiency in the arts of flirtation. At this ball Garry had become enamoured beyond all former passions (and they were numerous and inconstant, in general, as if he had been a Grand Turk) of one of his partners, a young Spanish lady. Her graceful figure and motions in the dance had at first captivated him – and when, after dancing with her himself, his eloquent entreaties, delivered in indifferent Spanish, had prevailed on her to lift her mask for one coy moment, the vision of eyes and eyebrows, the common beauties of a Spanish countenance, and the clear rosy complexion, a much more rare perfection, then revealed, had accomplished the utter subjugation of his errant fancy. She had vanished from the ball silently and irremediably, as a houri of Paradise from the awakening eyes of an opium-eating Pacha; and all his attempts to trace her, continued unceasingly for a couple of months afterwards, had proved in vain.

One morning my grandfather was seated at breakfast in the verandah of his quarters, situated high up the rock above the town. Below him lay the roofs, terraced and balconied, and populous with cats, for whose convenience the little flat stone squares at the top of most of the houses appeared to have been devised. Tall towers called mirandas shot up at intervals, from whose summits the half-baked inhabitants, pent within close walls and streets, might catch refreshing glimpses of the blue sea and the hills of Spain – conveniences destined soon afterwards to be ruined by the enemy's fire, or pulled down to avoid attracting it, and never rebuilt. Beyond the white sunny ridge of the line wall came the sharp edge of the bay, rising in high perspective to the purple coast of Spain opposite, which was sprinkled with buildings white as the sails that dotted the water. My grandfather was in a state of great sensual enjoyment, sniffing up the odour of the large geranium bushes that grew in clumps in the little garden in front, and the roses that twined thickly round the trellis of the vine-roofed verandah; sipping thick creamy Spanish chocolate between the mouthfuls of red mullet, broiled in white paper, the flavour of which he was diligently comparing with that of some specimens of the same fish which he remembered to have eaten in his youth in Devonshire; and glancing sideways over the cup at an open volume of Shakspeare, leaned slopingly on the edge of a plate of black figs bursting with ripeness, like trunk hose slashed with crimson. The Major was none of your skimming readers, who glance through a work of art as if it were a newspaper – measure, weigh it, and deliver a critical opinion on it, before the more reverential student has extricated himself from the toils of the first act or opening chapter: not he; he read every word, and affixed a meaning, right or wrong, to all the hard, obsolete ones. The dramatic fitness of the characters was not to be questioned by him, any more than that of the authentic personages of history. He would reason on their acts and proceedings as on those of his own intimate acquaintances. He never could account for Hamlet's madness otherwise than by supposing the Prince must have, some time or other, got an ugly rap on the head – let fall, perhaps, when a baby, by a gin-drinking nurse – producing, as in some persons he had himself from time to time been acquainted with, a temporary aberration of the wits; a piece of original criticism that has not occurred to any of the other commentators on this much-discussed point. Of Iago he has recorded an opinion in an old note-book still extant, where his observations appear in indifferent orthography, and ink yellow with age, that he was a cursed scoundrel – an opinion delivered with all the emphasis of an original detector of crime, anxious that full though tardy justice should be done to the delinquent's memory. But his great favourite was Falstaff: "A wonderful clever fellow, sir," he would say, "and no more a coward than you or I, sir."

My grandfather proceeded slowly with his meal, holding the cup to his lips with one hand and turning a leaf with the other – an operation which he was delaying till a great mosquito-hawk, (a beautiful brown moth mottled like a pheasant,) that had settled on the page, should think proper to take flight. He had lately come from a parade, as was evidenced by his regimental leather breeches and laced red waistcoat; but a chintz dressing-gown and a pair of yellow Moorish slippers softened down the warlike tone of these garments to one more congenial with his peaceable and festive pursuits. Presently the garden door opened, and a well-known step ascended to the verandah. Frank Owen, dressed in a cool Spanish costume, advanced, and stopping three paces from the Major, took off his tufted sombrero and made a low bow.

"You are the picture, my dear sir," he said, "of serene enjoyment slightly tinged with sensuality. But how long, may I ask, have you taken to breakfasting on spiders?" – pointing, as he took a chair opposite the Major, at an immense red-spotted one that had dropt from the ceiling on the morsel my grandfather was in the act of conveying to his mouth.

The Major tenderly removed the insect by a leg.

"'Tis the worst of these al-fresco meals, Frank," said he. "Yesterday I cut a green lizard in two that had got on my plate, mistaking him for a bit of salad – being, as usual, more intent on my book than my food – and had very near swallowed the tail-half of the unfortunate animal."

"There are worse things than lizards in the world," quoth Garry. "Ants, I should say, were certainly less wholesome" – and he directed the Major's attention to a long black line of those interesting creatures issuing from a hole in the pavement, passing in an unbroken series up my ancestor's left leg, the foot of which rested on the ground, then traversing the cloth, and terminating at the loaf, the object of their expedition.

"Bless me," said the Major, as he rose and shook his breeches gently free from the marauders, "I must be more careful, or I shall chance to do myself a mischief. But they're worst at night. I've been obliged to leave off reading here in the evenings, for it went to my heart to see the moths scorching their pretty gauzy wings in the candle till the wicks were half-choked with them."

"Do you know, Major," said Owen, gravely, "that either this insect diet, or the sedentary life you lead, is making you quite fat, and utterly destroying the symmetry of your figure? In another week there will be one unbroken line of rotundity from your chin to your knees."

My grandfather glanced downward at his waistcoat. "No, my boy, no," said he; "if there had been any difference, I should have known it by my clothes. I don't think I've gained a pound this twelvemonth."

"More than a stone," quoth Garry. "We all remarked it on parade to-day – and remarked it with sorrow. Now, look you, a sea voyage is the very thing to restore your true proportions, and I propose that we shall take a short one together."

"A sea voyage!" quoth my grandfather; "the boy is mad! Not if all the wonders seen by Sinbad the Sailor lay within a day's sail. Did I not suffer enough coming here from England? I don't think," said my grandfather with considerable pathos, "that my digestion has ever been quite right to this day."

"'Sick of a calm,' eh? – Like your friend Mistress Tearsheet," said the youngster. "But I've settled it all, and count on you. Look here," he continued, drawing from his pocket a large printed bill, and unfolding it before my ancestor. At the top appeared in large capitals the words, "Plaza de Toros;" and underneath was a woodcut representing a bull, of whose sex there could be no doubt, gazing, with his tail in the air, and an approving smile on his countenance, on the matadore about to transfix him. Then followed a glowing account in Spanish of the delights of a great bull-fight shortly to take place at Cadiz, setting forth the ferocity of the bulls, the number of horses that might be expected to die in the arena, and the fame of the picadores and espadas who were then and there to exhibit.

The Major shook his head – the captivating prospectus had no charms for him: he had not, as I have before said, an inquiring mind, and habit was so strong in him that a change was like the dislocation of a joint. The Ensign proceeded to paint the delights of the excursion in the brightest colours he could command. They were to go to Cadiz in a boat which he had lately bought – she was a capital sailer – there was a half-deck forward, under which the Major might sleep as comfortably as in his own bed – a cooking apparatus, (and here, as he expatiated on the grills and stews and devils that were to be cooked and eaten, with the additional stimulus to appetite afforded by sea air, there was a spark of relenting in my grandfather's eye.) "You shall return," said the tempter, "with a digestion so completely renovated, that my name shall rise to your tongue at each meal as a grace before meat, and a thanksgiving after it; and as to sea-sickness, why, this Levanter will take us there in twelve hours, so smoothly that you may balance a straw upon your nose the whole way." Finally, the cunning Ensign laid before him an application for leave already made out, and only awaiting his signature.

My grandfather made some feeble, objections, which Owen pooh-poohed in his usual off-hand fashion. There was no standing against the youngster's strong will, that, like Aaron's rod, swallowed up all opposition, and at five o'clock that same evening the Major found himself proceeding through the town towards the Waterport for embarkation, by no means fully reconciled to the abandonment of his beloved Lares. My luckless grandfather! did no presentiment warn you of a consequence then hanging in the clouds, that was to change utterly for you the untroubled aspect of those household gods?

Owen had attired himself for the trip in a half-nautical costume – a shirt of light-blue flannel, fastened at the collar with a smart bandana, a bluejacket, loose duck trousers, and a montero cap, which costume became the puppy well enough. He seemed of this opinion himself, as he walked gaily along beside the Major: so did the black-eyed occupants of many houses on each side, who peeped forth smilingly from behind their green lattices, sometimes nodding and kissing their hands – for the Ensign had an incredible acquaintance with the budding and full-blown portion of the population of Gibraltar. The Major had stuck to his buckskins, (which stuck to him in return,) over which he had drawn a pair of jack-boots, and wore his red-laced coat and regimental hat – for in those days that passion for mufti, now so prevalent in the army, did not exist. Whenever he caught sight of any of the greetings bestowed from the windows, he would take off his laced hat, and, fixing his eyes on the tittering señorita, who generally let fall the lattice with a slam, would make her a low bow – and, after each of these acts of courtesy, my grandfather walked on more elated than before.

They passed the drawbridge at Waterport, and, struggling through the crowd of Turks, Jews, infidels, and heretics, who usually throng the quay, entered a shore-boat that was to row them out to where Owen's vessel – the Fair Unknown, as he had christened her, in memory of his unforgotten partner at the Carnival ball – lay moored. In her they found a sailor who was to accompany them on their voyage – a noted contrabandista, called Francisco, whose friendship Owen had lately acquired, and who acted as his lieutenant on his marine excursions. The boat was a neat affair – a small cutter, smartly painted, well found, and capable of holding several persons comfortably; and Francisco was a ruddy, portly, dark-skinned, large-whiskered son of the sea, the picture of good-humour. My grandfather stept in, in his jack-boots. There was much settling of carpet-bags and stowing of provisions in the lockers, and then they hoisted sail, and glided smoothly out from among the shipping into the bay.

The breeze was light and fair, and they went on, as Frank had promised, pleasantly enough. My grandfather for the first time surveyed the scene of his two years' residence from the sea. The grey old rock looked mellow in the evening light, as an elderly gentleman over his wine – the window-panes glanced ruddily, the walls gleamed whitely, and the trees were tinted with a yellower green; behind, in the eastern sky, floated one single purple cloud. As the objects became confused in the distance, the sharp rugged outline of the rock assumed the appearance that has caused the Spaniards to call it El Cuerpo – the appearance of a vast human body laid out on its back, and covered with a winding-sheet, like a dead Titan on his funeral pile – the head towards Spain, the chest arched at Middle Hill, the legs rising gently upward to the knees at O'Hara's Tower, and then sloping down till the feet rest on Europa. The sun went down as they rounded Cabrita Point, and the breeze, freshening, took them swiftly along under the huge hills that rise abruptly upward from the Spanish coast. Then Francisco, lighting a charcoal fire, placed thereon, in a frying-pan, tender steaks thickly strewn with sliced tomatas and onions, from whence arose a steam that brought tears of gratitude and delight into my grandfather's eyes. He anxiously watched the cooking – even threw out slight suggestions, such as another pinch of pepper, an additional onion, a slight dash of cayenne, and the like; and then, settling a plate firmly on the knees of his jack-boots, with a piece of bread and a cup by his side, and a knife and fork pointing upwards in his hands like lightning conductors, gazed cheerfully around him. And when Francisco, rising from his knees, where he had been blowing the charcoal fire, removed the hissing pan towards my grandfather's plate, transferring to it a liberal portion of the contents, the good man, gazing on the white and red streaks of vegetable relieved by the brown background of steak, and the whole picture swimming in a juicy atmosphere of gravy, felt sentiments of positive friendship towards that lawless individual, and, filling a bumper of Xerez, drank success to the voyage.