University of Virginia Library

LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL

LADY RAVELGOLD.

1. CHAPTER I.

Rule a Wife.

It was what is called by people on the continent a
“London day.” A thin, gray mist drizzled down
through the smoke which darkened the long cavern
of Fleet street; the sidewalks were slippery and clammy;
the drays slid from side to side on the greasy
pavement, creating a perpetual clamor among the
lighter carriages with which they came in contact;
the porters wondered that “gemmen” would carry
their umbrellas up when there was no rain, and the
gentlemen wondered that porters should be permitted
on the sidewalks; there were passengers in box-coats,
though it was the first of May, and beggars with bare
breasts, though it was chilly as November; the boys
were looking wistfully into the hosier's windows who
were generally at the pastry-cook's; and there were
persons who wished to know the time, trying in vain
to see the dial of St. Paul's through the gamboge atmosphere.

It was twelve o'clock, and a plain chariot with a
simple crest on the panels, slowly picked its way
through the choked and disputed thoroughfare east
of Temple Bar. The smart glazed hat of the coachman,
the well-fitted drab greatcoat and gaiters of the
footman, and the sort of half-submissive, half-contemptuous
look on both their faces (implying that they
were bound to drive to the devil if it were miladi's orders,
but that the rabble of Fleet street was a leetle too
vulgar for their contact), expressed very plainly that
the lady within was a denizen of a more privileged
quarter, but had chosen a rainy day for some compulsory
visit to “the city.”

At the rate of perhaps a mile an hour, the well-groomed
night-horses (a pair of smart, hardy, twelve-mile
cabs, all bottom, but little style, kept for night-work
and forced journeys) had threaded the tortuous
entrails of London, and had arrived at the arch of a
dark court in Throgmorton street. The coachman
put his wheels snug against the edge of the sidewalk,
to avoid being crushed by the passing drays, and settled
his many-caped benjamin about him; while the
footman spread his umbrella, and making a balustrade
of his arm for his mistress's assistance, a closely-veiled
lady descended and disappeared up the wet and ill-paved
avenue.

The green-baize door of Firkins and Co. opened on
its silent hinges and admitted the mysterious visiter,
who, inquiring of the nearest clerk if the junior partner
were in, was shown to a small inner room containing
a desk, two chairs, a coal fire, and a young gentleman.
The last article of furniture rose on the lady's
entrance, and as she threw off her veil he made a low
bow, with the air of a gentleman, who is neither surprised
nor embarrassed, and pushing aside the door-check,
they were left alone.

There was that forced complaisance in the lady's
manner on her first entrance, which produced the
slightest possible elevation in a very scornful lip owned
by the junior partner, but the lady was only forty-five,
highborn, and very handsome, and as she looked at
the fine specimen of nature's nobility, who met her
with a look as proud and yet as gentle as her own, the
smoke of Fleet street passed away from her memory,
and she became natural and even gracious. The
effect upon the junior partner was simply that of removing
from his breast the shade of her first impression.

“I have brought you,” said his visiter, drawing a
card from her reticule, “an invitation to the dutchess
of Hautaigle's ball. She sent me half a dozen to fill
up for what she calls `ornamentals'—and I am sure I
shall scarce find another who comes so decidedly under
her grace's category.”

The fair speaker had delivered this pretty speech
in the sweetest and best-bred tone of St. James's,
looking the while at the toe of the small brodequin
which she held up to the fire—perhaps thinking only
of drying it. As she concluded her sentence, she
turned to her companion for an answer, and was surprised
at the impassive politeness of his bow of acknowledgment.

“I regret that I shall not be able to avail myself of
your ladyship's kindness,” said the junior partner, in
the same well-enunciated tone of courtesy.

“Then,” replied the lady with a smile, “Lord Augustus
Fitz-Moi, who looks at himself all dinner-time
in a spoon, will be the Apollo of the hour. What a
pity such a handsome creature should be so vain!—
By-the-way, Mr. Firkins, you live without a looking-glass,
I see.”

“Your ladyship reminds me that this is merely a
place of business. May I ask at once what errand
has procured me the honor of a visit on so unpleasant
a day?”

A slight flush brightened the cheek and forehead
of the beautiful woman, as she compressed her lips,
and forced herself to say with affected ease, “The
want of five hundred pounds.”

The junior partner paused an instant, while the lady
tapped with her boot upon the fender in ill-dissembled
anxiety, and then, turning to his desk, he filled up the

check without remark, presented it, and took his hat
to wait on her to her carriage. A gleam of relief and
pleasure shot over her countenance as she closed her
small jewelled hand over it, followed immediately by a
look of embarrassed inquiry into the face of the unquestioning
banker.

“I am in your debt already.”

“Thirty thousand pounds, madam!”

“And for this you think the securities on the estate
of Rockland—”

“Are worth nothing, madam! But it rains. I regret
that your ladyship's carriage can not come to the
door. In the old-fashioned days of sedan-chairs, now,
the dark courts of Lothbury must have been more attractive.
By-the-way, talking of Lothbury, there is
Lady Rosberry's fête champétre next week. If you
should chance to have a spare card—”

“Twenty, if you like—I am too happy—really, Mr.
Firkins—”

“It's on the fifteenth; I shall have the honor of
seeing your ladyship there! Good-morning! Home,
coachman!”

“Does this man love me?” was Lady Ravelgold's
first thought, as she sank back in her returning chariot.
“Yet no! he was even rude in his haste to be
rid of me. And I would willingly have stayed too, for
there is something about him of a mark that I like.
Ay, and he must have seen it—a lighter encouragement
has been interpreted more readily. Five hundred
pounds!—really five hundred pounds! And thirty
thousand at the back of it! What does he mean?
Heavens! if he should be deeper than I thought! If
he should wish to involve me first!”

And spite of the horror with which the thought was
met in the mind of Lavy Ravelgold, the blush over
her forehead died away into a half smile and a brighter
tint in her lips; and as the carriage wound slowly
on through the confused press of Fleet street and the
Strand, the image of the handsome and haughty young
banker shut her eyes from all sounds without, and she
was at her own door in Grosvenor square before she
had changed position or wandered half a moment from
the subject of those busy dreams.

2. CHAPTER II.

The morning of the fifteenth of May seemed to
have been appointed by all the flowers as a jubilee of
perfume and bloom. The birds had been invited, and
sang in the summer with a welcome as full-throated
as a prima donna singing down the tenor in a duet;
the most laggard buds turned out their hearts to the
sunshine, and promised leaves on the morrow; and
that portion of London that had been invited to Lady
Roseberry's fête, thought it a very fine day! That
portion which was not, wondered how people would
go sweltering about in such a glare for a cold dinner!

At about half past two, a very elegant dark-green
cab without a crest, and with a servant in whose slight
figure and plain blue livery there was not a fault,
whirled out at the gate of the Regent's Park, and took
its way up the well-watered road leading to Hampstead.
The gentlemen whom it passed or met turned
to admire the performance of the dark-gray horse, and
the ladies looked after the cab as if they could see the
handsome occupant once more through its leather
back. Whether by conspiracy among the coachmakers,
or by an aristocracy of taste, the degree of
elegance in a turn-out attained by the cab just described,
is usually confined to the acquaintances of
Lady —; that list being understood to enumerate
all “the nice young men” of the West End, beside
the guardsmen. (The ton of the latter, in all matters
hat affect the style of the regiment, is looked after by
the club and the colonel.) The junior Firkins seemed
an exception to this exclusive rule. No “nice man”
could come from Lothbury, and he did not visit Lady
—; but his horse was faultless, and when he turned
into the gate of Rose-Eden, the policeman at the
porter's lodge, though he did not know him, thought
it unnecessary to ask for his name. Away he spattered
up the hilly avenue, and giving the reins to his
groom at the end of a green arbor leading to the reception-lawn,
he walked in and made his bow to Lady
Roseberry, who remarked, “How very handsome!
Who can he be?”—and the junior partner walked on
and disappeared down an avenue of laburnums.

Ah! but Rose-Eden looked a paradise that day!
Hundreds had passed across the close-shaven lawn,
with a bow to the lady-mistress of this fair abode. Yet
the grounds were still private enough for Milton's pair,
so lost were they in the green labyrinths of hill and
dale. Some had descended through heavily-shaded
paths to a fancy dairy, built over a fountain in the bottom
of a cool dell; and here, amid her milk-pans of
old and costly china, the prettiest maid in the country
round pattered about upon a floor of Dutch tiles, and
served her visiters with creams and ices—already, as it
were, adapted to fashionable comprehension. Some
had strayed to the ornamental cottages in the skirts
of the flower-garden—poetical abodes, built from a
picturesque drawing, with imitation roughness; thatch,
lattice-window, and low palling, all complete; and inhabited
by superannuated dependants of Lord Roseberry,
whose only duties were to look like patriarchs,
and give tea and new cream-cheese to visiters on fêtedays.
Some had gone to see the silver and gold pheasants
in their wire-houses, stately aristocrats of the game
tribe, who carry their finely-pencilled feathers like
“Marmalet Madarus,” strutting in hoop and farthingale.
Some had gone to the kennels, to see setters
and pointers, hounds and terriers, lodged like gentlemen,
each breed in its own apartment—the puppies, as
elsewhere, treated with most attention. Some were
in the flower-garden, some in the greenhouses, some
in the graperies, aviaries, and grottoes; and at the side
of a bright sparkling fountain, in the recesses of a fir-grove,
with her foot upon its marble lip, and one hand
on the shoulder of a small Cupid who archly made a
drinking-cup of his wing, and caught the bright water
as it fell, stood Lady Imogen Ravelgold, the loveliest
girl of nineteen that prayed night and morning within
the parish of May Fair, listening to very passionate
language from the young banker of Lothbury.

A bugle on the lawn rang a recall. From every
alley, and by every path, poured in the gay multitude,
and the every path, poured in the gay multitude,
and the smooth sward looked like a plateau of animated
flowers, waked by magic from a broidery on
green velvet. Ah! the beautiful demi-toilettes!—so
difficult to attain, yet, when attained, the dress most
modest, most captivating, most worthy the divine grace
of woman. Those airy hats, sheltering from the sun,
yet not enviously concealing a feature or a ringlet that
a painter would draw for his exhibition-picture!
Those summery and shapeless robes, covering the
person more to show its outline better, and provoke
more the worship, which, like all worship, is made
more adoring by mystery! Those complexions which
but betray their transparency in the sun; lips in which
the blood is translucent when between you and the
light; cheeks finer-grained than alabaster, yet as cool
in their virgin purity as a tint in the dark corner of a
Ruysdael: the human race was at less perfection in
Athens in the days of Lais—in Egypt in the days of
Cleopatra—than that day on the lawn of Rose-Eden.

Cart-loads of ribands, of every gay color, had been
laced through the trees in all directions; and amid
every variety of foliage, and every shade of green, the
tulip-tints shone vivid and brilliant, like an American
forest after the first frost. From the left edge of the

lawn, the ground suddenly sunk into a dell, shaped
like an amphitheatre, with a level platform at its bottom,
and all around, above and below, thickened a
shady wood. The music of a delicious band stole up
from the recesses of a grove, draped as an orchestra
and green-room on the lower side, and while the
audience disposed themselves in the shade of the upper
grove, a company of players and dancing-girls
commenced their theatricals.—Imogen Ravelgold,
who was separated, by a pine tree only, from the junior
partner, could scarce tell you, when it was finished,
what was the plot of the play.

The recall-bugle sounded again, and the band
wound away from the lawn, playing a gay march.
Followed Lady Roseberry and her suite of gentlemen,
followed dames and their daughters, followed all who
wished to see the flight of my lord's falcons. By a
narrow path and a wicket-gate, the long music-guided
train stole out upon an open hill-side, looking down
on a verdant and spreading meadow. The band played
at a short distance behind the gay groups of spectators,
and it was a pretty picture to look down upon
the splendidly-dressed falconer and his men, holding
their fierce birds upon their wrists, in their hoods and
jesses, a foreground of old chivalry and romance;
while far beyond extended, like a sea over the horizon,
the smoke-clad pinnacles of busy and every-day London.
There are such contrasts of the eyes of the
rich!

The scarlet hood was taken from the trustiest
falcon, and a dove, confined, at first, with a string,
was thrown up, and brought back, to excite his attention.
As he fixed his eye upon him, the frightened
victim was let loose, and the falcon flung off; away
skimmed the dove in a low flight over the meadow,
and up to the very zenith, in circles of amazing swiftness
and power, sped the exulting falcon, apparently
forgetful of his prey, and bound for the eye of the sun
with his strong wings and his liberty. The falconer's
whistle and cry were heard; the dove circled round
the edge of the meadow in his wavy flight; and down,
with the speed of lightning, shot the falcon, striking
his prey dead to the earth before the eye could settle
on his form. As the proud bird stood upon his
victim, looking around with a lifted crest and fierce eye,
Lady Imogen Ravengold heard, in a voice of which
her heart knew the music, “They who soar highest
strike surest; the dove lies in the falcon's bosom.”

3. CHAPTER III.

The afternoon had, meantime, been wearing on,
and at six the “breakfast” was announced. The
tents beneath which the tables were spread were in
different parts of the grounds, and the guests had
made up their own parties. Each sped to his rendezvous,
and as the last loiterers disappeared from
the lawn, a gentleman in a claret coat and a brown
study, found himself stopping to let a lady pass who
had obeying the summons as tardily as himself. In
a white chip hat, Hairbault's last, a few lilies of the
valley laid among her raven curls beneath, a simple
white robe, the chef-d'œuvre of Victotine in style and
tournure, Lady Ravelgold would have been the belle
of the fête, but for her daughter.

“Well emerged from Lothbury!” she said, courtesying,
with a slight flush over her features, but immediately
taking his arm; “I have lost my party, and
meeting you is opportune. Where shall we breakfast?”

There was a small tent standing invitingly open on
the opposite side of the lawn, and by the fainter rattle
of soup-spoons from that quarter, it promised to be
less crowded than the others. The junior partner
would willingly have declined the proffered honor, but
he saw at a glance that there was no escape, and submitted
with a grace.

“You know very few people here,” said his fair
creditor, taking the bread from her napkin.

“Your ladyship and one other.”

“Ah, we shall have dancing by-and-by, and I must
introduce you to my daughter. By the way, have
you no name from your mother's side? `Firkins'
sounds so very odd. Give me some prettier word to
drink in this champagne.”

“What do you think of Tremlet?”

“Too effeminate for your severe style of beauty—
but it will do. Mr. Tremlet, your health! Will you
give me a little of the paté before you? Pray, if it
is not indiscreet, how comes that classic profile, and
more surprising still, that distinguished look of yours,
to have found no gayer destiny than the signing of
`Firkins and Co.' to notes of hand? Though I thought
you became your den in Lothbury, upon my honor you
look more at home here.”

And Lady Ravengold fixed her superb eyes upon
the beautiful features of her companion, wondering
partly why he did not speak, and partly why she had
not observed before that he was incomparably the
handsomest creature she had ever seen.

“I can regret no vocation,” he answered after a
moment, “which procures me an acquaintance with
your ladyship's family.”

“There is an arriére pensée in that formal speech,
Mr. Tremlet. You are insincere. I am the only
one in my family whom you know, and what pleasure
have you taken in my acquaintance? And, now
I think of it, there is a mystery about you, which, but
for the noble truth written so legibly on your features,
I should be afraid to fathom. Why have you suffered
me to over-draw my credit so enormously, and without
a shadow of a protest?”

When Lady Ravelgold had disburdened her heart
of this direct question, she turned half round and
looked her companion in the face with an intense
interest, which produced upon her own features an
expression of earnestness very uncommon upon their
pale and impassive lines. She was one of those persons
of little thought, who care nothing for causes or
consequences, so that the present difficulty is removed,
or the present hour provided with its wings; but the
repeated relief she had received from the young banker,
when total ruin would have been the consequence of
his refusal, and his marked coldness in his manner to
her, had stimulated the utmost curiosity of which she
was capable. Her vanity, founded upon her high rank
and great renown as a beauty, would have agreed that
he might be willing to get her into his power at that
price, had he been less agreeable in his own person,
or more eager in his manner. But she had wanted
money sufficiently to know, that thirty thousand pounds
are not a bagatelle, and her brain was busy till she discovered
the equivalent he sought for it. Meantime
her fear that he would turn out to be a lover, grew
rapidly into a fear that he would not.

Lady Ravelgold had been the wife of a dissolute
earl, who had died, leaving his estate inextricably involved.
With no male heir to the title or property,
and no very near relation, the beautiful widow shut
her eyes to the difficulties by which she was surrounded,
and at the first decent moment after the
death of her lord, she had re-entered the gay society
of which she had been the bright and particular star,
and never dreamed either of diminishing her establishment,
or of calculating her possible income. The
first heavy draft she had made upon the house of
Firkins and Co., her husband's bankers, had been returned
with a statement of the Ravelgold debt and
credit on their books, by which it appeared that Lord
Ravelgold had overdrawn four or five thousand pounds
before his death, and that from some legal difficulties,

nothing could be realized from the securities given
on his estates. This bad news arrived on the morning
of a fête to be given by the Russian ambassador, at
which her only child. Lady Imogen, was to make her
debùt in society. With the facility of disposition
which was peculiar to her, Lady Ravelgold thrust the
papers into her drawer, and determining to visit her
banker on the following morning, threw the matter
entirely from her mind and made preparations for the
ball. With the Russian government the house of
Firkins and Co. had long carried on very extensive
fiscal transactions, and in obedience to instructions
from the emperor, regular invitations for the embassy
fêtes were sent to the bankers, accepted occasionally
by the junior partner only, who was generally supposed
to be a natural son of old Firkins. Out of the
banking-house he was known as Mr. Tremlet, and it
was by this name, which was presumed to be his
mother's, that he was casually introduced to Lady
Imogen on the night of the fête, while she was separated
from her mother in the dancing-room. The consequence
was a sudden, deep, ineffaceable passion in
the bosom of the young banker, checked and silenced,
but never lessened or chilled by the recollection of
the obstacle of his birth. The impression of his subdued
manner, his worshipping, yet most respectful
tones, and the bright soul that breathed through his
handsome features with his unusual excitement, was,
to say the least, favorable upon Lady Imogen, and they
parted on the night of the fête, mutually aware of each
other's preference.

On the following morning Lady Ravelgold made
her proposed visit to the city; and inquiring for Mr.
Firkins, was shown in as usual to the junior partner,
to whom the colloquial business of the concern had
long been intrusted. To her surprise she found no
difficulty in obtaining the sum of money which had
been refused her on the preceding day—a result which
she attributed to her powers of persuasion, or to some
new turn in the affairs of the estate; and for two years
these visits had been repeated at intervals of three or
four months, with the same success, though not with
the same delusion as to the cause. She had discovered
that the estate was worse than nothing, and the
junior partner cared little to prolong his têtes-à-têtes
with her, and, up to the visit with which this tale
opened, she had looked to every succeeding one with
increased fear and doubt.

During these two years, Tremlet had seen Lady
Imogen occasionally at balls and public places, and
every look they exchanged wove more strongly between
them the subtle threads of love. Once or twice
she had endeavored to interest her mother in conversation
on the subject, with the intention of making
a confidence of her feelings; but Lady Ravengold,
when not anxious, was giddy with her own success,
and the unfamiliar name never rested a moment on her
ear. With this explanation to render the tale intelligible,
“let us,” as the French say, “return to our
muttons.”

Of the conversation between Tremlet and her mother,
Lady Imogen was an unobserved and astonished
witness. The tent which they had entered was large,
with a buffet in the centre, and a circular table waited
on by servants within the ring; and, just concealed
by the drapery around the pole, sat Lady Imogen
with a party of her friends, discussing very seriously
the threatened fashion of tight sleeves. She had half
risen, when her mother entered, to offer her a seat by
her side, but the sight of Tremlet, who immediately
followed, had checked the words upon her lip, and to
her surprise they seated themselves on the side that
was wholly unoccupied, and conversed in a tone inaudible
to all but themselves. Not aware that her
lover knew Lady Ravelgold, she supposed that they
might have been casually introduced, till the earnest
ness of her mother's manner, and a certain ease between
them in the little courtesies of the table, assured
her that this could not be their first interview. Tremlet's
face was turned from her, and she could not
judge whether he was equally interested; but she
had been so accustomed to consider her mother as
irresistible when she chose to please, that she supposed
it of course; and very soon the heightened color of
Lady Ravelgold, and the unwavering look of mingled
admiration and curiosity which she bent upon the
handsome face of her companion, left no doubt in her
mind that her reserved and exclusive lover was in the
dangerous toils of a rival whose power she knew.
From the mortal pangs of a first jealousy, Heaven send
thee deliverance, fair Lady Imogen!

“We shall find our account in the advances on
your ladyship's credit;” said Tremlet, in reply to the
direct question that was put to him. “Meantime
permit me to admire the courage with which you look
so disagreeable a subject in the face.”

“For `disagreeable subject,' read `Mr. Tremlet.'
I show my temerity more in that. Apropos of faces,
yours would become the new fashion of cravat. The
men at Crockford's slip the ends through a ring of
their lady-love's, if they chance to have one—thus!”
and untying the loose knot of his black satin cravat,
Lady Ravelgold slipped over the ends a diamond of
small value, conspicuously set in pearls.

“The men at Crockford's,” said Tremlet, hesitating
to commit the rudeness of removing the ring,
“are not of my school of manners. If I had been so
fortunate as to inspire a lady with a preference for me,
I should not advertise it on my cravat.”

“But suppose the lady were proud of her preference
as dames were of the devotion of their knights in the
days of chivalry—would you not wear her favor as
conspicuously as they?”

A flush of mingled embarrassment and surprise
shot over the forehead of Tremlet, and he was turning
the ring with his fingers, when Lady Imogen, attempting
to pass out of the tent, was stopped by her
mother.

“Imogen, my daughter! this is Mr. Tremlet. Lady
Imogen Ravelgold, Mr. Tremlet!”

The cold and scarce perceptible bow which the
wounded girl gave to her lover, betrayed no previous
acquaintance to the careless Lady Ravelgold. Without
giving a second thought to her daughter, she held
her glass for some champagne to a passing servant,
and as Lady Imogen and her friends crossed the lawn
to the dancing-tent, she resumed the conversation
which they had interrupted; while Tremlet, with his
heart brooding on the altered look he had received,
listened and replied almost unconsciously; yet from
this very circumstance, in a manner which was interpreted
by his companion as the embarrassment of a
timid and long-repressed passion for herself.

While Lady Ravelgold and the junior partner were
thus playing at cross purposes over their champagne
and bons-bons, Grisi and Lablanche were singing a
duet from I Puritani, to a full audience in the saloon;
the drinking young men sat over their wine at the
nearly-deserted tables; Lady Imogen and her friends
waltzed to Collinet's band, and the artisans were busy
below the lawn, erecting the machinery for the fireworks.
Meantime every alley and avenue, grot and
labyrinth, had been dimly illuminated with colored
lamps, showing like vari-colored glow-worms amid
the foliage and shells; and if the bright scenery of
Rose-Eden had been lovely by day, it was fay-land
and witchery by night. Fatal impulse of our nature,
that these approaches to paradise in the “delight of
the eye,” stir only in our bosoms the passions upon
which law and holy writ have put ban and bridle!

“Shall we stroll down this alley of crimson lamps?”
said Lady Ravelgold, crossing the lawn from the tent

where their coffee had been brought to them, and putting
her slender arm far into that of her now pale and
silent companion.

A lady in a white dress stood at the entrance of that
crimson avenue, as Tremlet and his passionate admirer
disappeared beneath the closing lines of the
long perspective, and, remaining a moment gazing
through the unbroken twinkle of the confusing lamps,
she pressed her hand hard upon her forehead, drew
up her form as if struggling with some irrepressible
feeling, and in another moment was whirling in the
waltz with Lord Ernest Fitzantelope, whose mother
wrote a complimentary paragraph about their performance
for the next Saturday's Court Journal.

The bugle sounded, and the band played a march
upon the lawn. From the breakfast tents, from the
coffee-rooms, from the dance, from the card-tables,
poured all who wished to witness the marvels that lie
in saltpetre. Gentlemen who stood in a tender attitude
in the darkness, held themselves ready to lean the
other way when the rockets blazed up, and mammas
who were encouraging flirtations with eligibles, whispered
a caution on the same subject to their less experienced
daughters.

Up sped the missiles, round spun the wheels, fair
burned the pagodas, swift flew the fire-doves off and
back again on their wires, and softly floated down
through the dewy atmosphere of that May night the
lambent and many-colored stars, flung burning from
the exploded rockets. Device followed device, and
Lady Imogen almost forgot, in her child's delight at
the spectacle, that she had taken into her bosom a
green serpent, whose folds were closing like suffocation
about her heart.

The finalè was to consist of a new light, invented
by the pyrotechnist, promised to Lady Roseberry to
be several degrees brighter than the sun—comparatively
with the quantity of matter. Before this last
flourish came a pause; and while all the world were
murmuring love and applause around her, Lady
Imogen, with her eyes fixed on an indefinite point in
the darkness, took advantage of the cessation of light
to feed her serpent with thoughts of passionate and
uncontrollable pain. A French attaché, Phillipiste to
the very tips of his mustache, addressed to her ear,
meantime, the compliments he had found most effective
in the Chaussée d'Antin.

The light burst suddenly from a hundred blazing
points, clear, dazzling, intense—illuminating, as by
the instantaneous burst of day, the farthest corner of
Rose-Eden. And Monsieur Mangepoire, with a
French contempt for English fireworks, took advantage
of the first ray to look into Lady Imogen's eyes.

“Mais, Miladi!” was his immediate exclamation,
after following their direction with a glance, “ce n'est
qu'un tableau vivant, cela! Help, gentlemen! Elle
s'évanôuit. Some salts! Misericorde! Mon Dieu!
Mon Dieu!” And Lady Imogen Ravelgold was carried
fainting to Lady Roseberry's chamber.

In a small opening at the end of a long avenue of
lilacs, extended from the lawn in the direction of
Lady Imogen's fixed and unconscious gaze, was presented,
by the unexpected illumination, the tableau
vivant, seen by her ladyship and Monsieur Mangepoire
at the same instant—a gentleman drawn up to
his fallest height, with his arms folded, and a lady
kneeling on the ground at his feet with her arms
stretched up to his bosom.

4. CHAPTER IV.

A little after two o'clock on the following
Wednesday, Tremlet's cabriolet stopped near the
perron of Willis's rooms in King street, and while he
sent up his card to the lady patronesses for his ticket
to that night's Almack's, he busied himself in looking
into the crowd of carriages about him, and reading on
the faces of their fair occupants the hope and anxiety
to which they were a prey till John the footman
brought them tickets or despair. Drawn up on the
opposite side of the street, stood a family-carriage of
the old style, covered with half the arms of the herald's
office, and containing a fat dowager and three very overdressed
daughters. Watching them, to see the effect
of their application, stood upon the sidewalk three or
four young men from the neighboring club-house, and
at the moment Tremlet was observing these circumstances,
a foreign britscka, containing a beautiful woman
of a reputation better understood than expressed
in the conclave above stairs, flew round the corner of
St. James's street, and very nearly drove into the open
mouth of the junior partner's cabriolet.

“I will bet you a Ukraine colt against this fine bay
of yours,” said the Russian secretary of legation, advancing
from the group of dandies to Tremlet, “that
miladi, yonder, with all the best blood of England in
her own and her daughters' red faces, gets no tickets
this morning.”

“I'll take a bet upon the lady who has nearly
extinguished me, if you like,” answered Tremlet,
gazing with admiration at the calm, delicate, child-like
looking creature, who sat before him in the
britscka.

“No!” said the secretary, “for Almack's is a republic
of beauty, and she'll be voted in without either
blood or virtue. Par exémple, Lady Ravelgold's
voucher is good here, though she does study tableaux
in Lothbury—eh, Tremlet?”

Totally unaware of the unlucky discovery by the
fireworks at Lady Roseberry's fête, Tremlet colored
and was inclined to take the insinuation as an affront;
but a laugh from the dandies drew off his companion's
attention, and he observed the dowager's footman
standing at her coach window with his empty hands
held up in most expressive negation, while the three
young ladies within sat aghast, in all the agonies of
disappointed hopes. The lumbering carriage got into
motion—its ineffective blazonry paled by the mortified
blush of its occupants—and, as the junior partner
drove away, philosophizing on the arbitrary opinions
and unprovoked insults of polite society, the britscka
shot by, showing him, as he leaned forward, a lovely
woman who bent on him the most dangerous eyes in
London, and an Almack's ticket lying on the unoccupied
cushion beside her.

The white redievo upon the pale blue wall of Almack's
showed every crack in its stucco flowers, and
the faded chaperons who had defects of a similar description
to conceal, took warning of the walls, and
retreated to the friendlier dimness of the tea-room.
Collinet was beginning the second set of quadrilles,
and among the fairest of the surpassingly beautiful
women who were moving to his heavenly music, was
Lady Imogen Ravelgold, the lovelier to-night for the
first heavy sadness that had ever dimmed the roses
in her cheek. Her lady-mother divided her thoughts
between what this could mean, and whether Mr.
Tremlet would come to the ball; and when, presently
after, in the dos-a-dos, she forgot to look at her daughter,
on seeing that gentleman enter, she lost a very
good opportunity for a guess at the cause of Lady
Imogen's paleness.

To the pure and true eye that appreciates the
divinity of the form after which woman is made, it
would have been a glorious feast to have seen the perfection
of shape, color, motion, and countenance, shown
that night on the bright floor of Almack's. For the
young and beautiful girls whose envied destiny is to
commence their woman's history in this exclusive

hall, there exists aids to beauty known to no other
class or nation. Perpetual vigilance over every limb
from the cradle up; physical education of a perfection,
discipline, and judgment, pursued only at great
expense and under great responsibility; moral education
of the highest kind, habitual consciousness of
rank, exclusive contact with elegance and luxury, and
a freedom of intellectual culture which breathes a soul
through the face before passion has touched it with a
line or a shade—these are some of the circumstances
which make Almack's the cynosure of the world for
adorable and radiant beauty.

There were three ladies who had come to Almack's
with a definite object that night, each of whom was
destined to be surprised and foiled: Lady Ravelgold,
who feared she had been abrupt with the inexperienced
banker, but trusted to find him softened by a day or
two's reflection; Mrs. St. Leger, the lady of the
britscka who had ordered supper for two on her arrival
at home from her morning's drive, and intended
to have the company of the handsome creature she
had nearly run over in King street; and Lady Imogen
Ravelgold as will appear in the sequel.

Tremlet stood in the entrance from the tea-room a
moment, gathering courage to walk alone into such a
dazzling scene, and then, having caught a glimpse of
the glossy lines of Lady Imogen's head at the farthest
end of the room, he was advancing toward her, when he
was addressed by a lady who leaned against one of the
slender columns of the orchestra. After a sweetly-phrased
apology for having nearly knocked out his
braits that morning with her horses' fore feet, Mrs. St.
Leger took his arm, and walking deliberately two or
three times up and down the room, took possession, at
last, of a banquette on the highest range, so far from any
other person, that it would have been a marked rudeness
to have left her alone. Tremlet took his seat by
her with this instinctive feeling, trusting that some of
her acquaintances would soon approach, and give him
a fair excuse to leave her; but he soon became
amused with her piquant style of conversation, and,
not aware of being observed, fell into the attitude of a
pleased and earnest listener.

Lady Ravelgold's feelings during this petit entretien,
were of a very positive description. She had
an instinctive knowledge, and consequently a jealous
dislike of Mrs. St. Leger's character; and, still under
the delusion that the young banker's liberality was
prompted by a secret passion for herself, she saw her
credit in the city and her hold upon the affections of
Tremlet (for whom she had really conceived a violent
affection), melting away in every smile of the dangerous
woman who engrossed him. As she looked around
for a friend, to whose ear she might communicate
some of the suffocating poison in her own heart, Lady
Imogen returned to her from a galopade; and, like a
second dagger into the heart of the pure-minded girl,
went this second proof of her lover's corrupt principle
and conduct. Unwilling to believe even her own eyes
on the night of Lady Roseberry's fête, she had summoned
resolution on the road home to ask an explanation
of her mother. Embarrassed by the abrupt question,
Lady Ravelgold felt obliged to make a partial
confidence of the state of her pecuniary affairs; and
to clear herself, she represented Tremlet as having
taken advantage of her obligations to him, to push a
dishonorable suit. The scene disclosed by the sudden
blaze of the fireworks being thus simply explained
Lady Imogen determined at once to give up
Tremlet's acquaintance altogether; a resolution which
his open flirtation with a woman of Mrs. St. Leger's
character served to confirm. She had, however, one
errand with him, prompted by her filial feelings and
favored by an accidental circumstance which will appear.

“Do you believe in animal magnetism?” asked
Mrs. St. Leger, “for by the fixedness of Lady Ravelgold's
eyes in this quarter,something is going to happen
to one of us.”

The next moment the Russian secretary approached
and took his seat by Mrs. St. Leger, and with
diplomatic address contrived to convey to Tremlet's
ear that Lady Ravelgold wished to speak with him.
The banker rose, but the quick wit of his companion
comprehended the manœuvre.

“Ah! I see how it is,” she said, “but stay—you'll
sup with me to-night? Promise me—parole d'honneur!”

“Parole!” answered Tremlet, making his way
out between the seats, half pleased and half embarrassed.

“As for you, Monsieur le Secretaire,” said Mrs.
St. Leger, “you have forfeited my favor, and may
sup elsewhere. How dare you conspire against me?”

While the Russian was making his peace, Tremlet
crossed over to Lady Ravelgold; but, astonished
at the change in Lady Imogen, he soon broke in
abruptly upon her mother's conversation, to ask her
to dance. She accepted his hand for a quadrille;
but as they walked down the room in search of a vis-à-vis.
she complained of heat, and asked timidly if he
would take her to the tea-room.

“Mr. Tremlet,” she said, fixing her eyes upon the
cup of tea which he had given her, and which she
found some difficulty in holding, “I have come here
to-night to communicate to you some important information,
to ask a favor, and to break off an acquaintance
which has lasted too long.”

Lady Imogen stopped, for the blood had fled from
her lips, and she was compelled to ask his arm for a
support. She drew herself up to her fullest height
the next moment, looked at Tremlet, who stood in
speechless astonishment, and with a strong effort, commenced
again in a low, firm tone—

“I have been acquainted with you some time, sir,
and have never inquired, nor knew more than your
name, up to this day. I suffered myself to be pleased
too blindly—”

“Dear Lady Imogen!”

“Stay a moment, sir! I will proceed directly to
my business. I received this morning a letter from
the senior partner of a mercantile house in the city,
with which you are connected. It is written on the
supposition that I have some interest in you, and informs
me that you are not, as you yourself suppose,
the son of the gentleman who writes the letter.”

“Madam!”

“That gentleman, sir, as you know, never was
married. He informs me that in the course of many
financial visits to St. Petersburgh, he formed a friendship
with Count Manteuffel, then minister of finance
to the emperor, whose tragical end, in consequence
of his extensive defalcations, is well known. In
brief, sir, you were his child, and were taken by this
English banker, and carefully educated as his own, in
happy ignorance, as he imagined, of your father's misfortunes
and mournful death.”

Tremlet leaned against the wall, unable to reply
to this astounding intelligence, and Lady Imogen
went on.

“Your title and estates have been restored to you
at the request of your kind benefactor, and you are
now the heir to a princely fortune, and a count of
the Russian empire. Here is the letter, sir, which
is of no value to me now. Mr. Tremlet! one word
more, sir.”

Lady Imogen grasped for breath.

“In return, sir, for much interest given you heretofore—in
return, sir, for this information—”

“Speak, dear Lady Imogen!”

“Spare my mother!”

“Mrs. St. Leger's carriage stops the way!” shouted

a servant at that moment, at the top of the stairs;
and as if there were a spell in the sound to nerve her
resolution anew, Lady Imogen Ravelgold shook the
tears from her eyes, bowed coldly to Tremlet, and
passed out into the dressing-room.

“If you please, sir,” said a servant, approaching the
amazed banker, “Mrs. St. Leger waits for you in her
carriage.”

“Will you come home and sup with us?” said
Lady Ravelgold at the same instant, joining him in
the tea-room.

“I shall be only too happy, Lady Ravelgold.”

The bold coachman of Mrs. St. Leger continued
to “stop the way,” spite of policemen and infuriated
footmen, for some fifteen minutes. At the end of
that time Mr. Tremlet appeared, handing down
Lady Ravelgold and her daughter, who walked to
their chariot, which was a few steps behind; and
very much to Mrs. St. Leger's astonishment, the
handsome banker sprang past her horses' heads a
minute after, jumped into his cabriolet, which stood
on the opposite side of the street, and drove after
the vanishing chariot as if his life depended on overtaking
it. Still Mrs. St. Leger's carriage “stopped
the way.” But, in a few minutes after, the same
footman who had summoned Tremlet in vain, returned
with the Russian secretary, doomed in blessed
unconsciousness to play the pis aller at her tête-à-tête supper in Spring Gardens.

5. CHAPTER V.

If Lady Ravelgold showed beautiful by the uncompromising
light and in the ornamented hall of
Almack's, she was radiant as she came through the
mirror door of her own loved-contrived and beauty-breathing
boudoir. Tremlet had been showed into
this recess of luxury and elegance on his arrival, and
Lady Ravelgold and her daughter, who preceded her
by a minute or two, had gone to their chambers, the
first to make some slight changes in her toilet, and
the latter (entirely ignorant of her lover's presence in
the house), to be alone with a heart never before in
such painful need of self-abandonment and solitude.

Tremlet looked about him in the enchanted room
in which he found himself alone, and, spite of the
prepossessed agitation of his feelings, the voluptuous
beauty of every object had the effect to divert and
tranquillize him. The light was profuse, but it came
softened through the thinnest alabaster; and while
every object in the room was distinctly and minutely
visible, the effect of moonlight was not more soft and
dreamy. The general form of the boudoir was an
oval, but within the pilasters of folded silk with their
cornices of gold, lay crypts containing copies exquisitely
done in marble of the most graceful statues of antiquity,
one of which seemed, by the curtain drawn
quite aside and a small antique lamp burning near it,
to be the divinity of the place—the Greek Antinous,
with his drooped head and full, smooth limbs, the
most passionate and life-like representation of voluptuous
beauty that intoxicates the slumberous air of
Italy. Opposite this, another niche contained a few
books, whose retreating shelves swung on a secret
door, and as it stood half open, the nodding head of a
snowy magnolia leaned through, as if pouring from
the lips of its broad chalice the mingled odors of the
unseen conservatory it betrayed. The first sketch in
crayons of a portrait of Lady Ravelgold by young
Lawrence, stood against the wall, with the frame half
buried in a satin ottoman; and, as Tremlet stood before
it, admiring the clear, classic outline of the head
and bust, and wondering in what chamber of his brain
the gifted artist had found the beautiful drapery in
which he had drawn her, the dim light glanced faintly
on the left, and the broad mirror by which he had
entered swung again on its silver hinges, and admitted
the very presentment of what he gazed on. Lady
Ravelgold had removed the jewels from her hair, and
the robe of wrought lace, which she had worn that
night over a boddice of white satin laced loosely below
the bosom. In the place of this she had thrown upon
her shoulders a flowing wrapper of purple velvet,
made open after the Persian fashion, with a short and
large sleeve, and embroidered richly with gold upon
the skirts. Her admirable figure, gracefully defined
by the satin petticoat and boddice, showed against the
gorgeous purple as it flowed back in her advancing
motion, with a relief which would have waked the very
soul of Titian; her complexion was dazzling and
faultless in the flattering light of her own rooms; and
there are those who will read this who know how the
circumstances which surround a woman—luxury,
elegance, taste, or the opposite of these—enhance or
dim, beyond help or calculation, even the highest order
of woman's beauty.

Lady Ravelgold held a bracelet in her hand as she
came in.

“In my own house,” she said, holding the glittering
jewel to Tremlet, “I have a fancy for the style
antique. Tasseline, my maid, has gone to bed, and
you must do the devoir of a knight, or an abigail, and
loop up this Tyrian sleeve. Stay—look first at the
model—that small statue of Cytheris, yonder! Not
the shoulder—for you are to swear mine is prettier—
but the clasp. Fasten it like that. So! Now take
me for a Grecian nymph the rest of the evening”

“Lady Ravelgold!”

“Hermione or Agläe, if you please! But let us
ring for supper!”

As the bell sounded, a superb South American
trulian darted in from the conservatory, and, spreading
his gorgeous black and gold wings a moment
over the alabaster shoulder of Lady Ravelgold, as if
he took a pleasure in prolonging the first touch as
he alighted, turned his large liquid eye fiercely on
Tremlet.

“Thus it is,” said Lady Ravelgold, “we target our
old favorites in our new. See how jealous he is!”

“Supper is served, miladi!” said a servant entering.

“A hand to each, then, for the present,” she said,
putting one into Tremlet's, and holding up the trulian
with the other. “He who behaves best shall drink
first with me.”

“I beg your ladyship's pardon,” said Tremlet,
drawing back, and looked at the servant, who immediately
left the room. “Let us understand each
other! Does Lady Imogen sup with us to-night?”

“Lady Imogen has retired,” said her mother, in
some surprise.

“Then, madam, will you be seated one moment and
listen to me?”

Lady Ravelgold sat down on the nearest ottoman,
with the air of a person too high bred to be taken by
surprise, but the color deepened to crimson in the
centre of her cheek, and the bird on her hand betrayed
by one of his gurgling notes that he was held
more tightly than pleased him. With a calm and decisive
tone, Tremlet went through the explanation
given in the previous parts of this narration. He declared
his love for Lady Imogen, his hopes (which he
had doubts of his birth) that Lady Ravelgold's increasing
obligations and embarrassments and his own wealth
might weigh against his disadvantages; and now, his
honorable descent being established, and his rank entitling
him to propose for her hand, he called upon
Lady Ravelgold to redeem her obligations to him by
an immediate explanation to her daughter of his conduct
toward herself, and by lending her whole influence
to the success of his suit.

Five minutes are brief time to change a lover into a
son-in-law; and Lady Ravelgold, as we have seen in
the course of this story, was no philosopher. She
buried her face in her hands, and sat silent for a while
after Tremlet had concluded: but the case was a very
clear one. Ruin and mortification were in one scale,
mortification and prosperity in the other. She rose,
pale but decided, and requesting Monsieur le conte
Manteuffel to await her a few minutes, ascended to
her daughter's chamber.

“If you please, sir,” said a servant, entering in about
half an hour, “miladi and Lady Imogen beg that you
will join them in the supper-room.”

6. CHAPTER VI.

The spirit of beauty, if it haunt in such artificial atmospheres
as Belgrave square, might have been pleased
to sit invisibly on the vacant side of Lady Ravelgold's
table. Tremlet had been shown in by the servant to a
small apartment, built like a belvidere over the garden,
half boudoir in its character, yet intended as a supper-room,
and at the long window (opening forth upon
descending terraces laden with flowers, and just now
flooded with the light of a glorious moon) stood Lady
Imogen, with her glossy head laid against the casement,
and the palm of her left hand pressed close upon
her heart. If those two lights—the moon faintly shed
off from the divine curve of her temple, and the stained
rose-lamp pouring its mellow tint full on the heavenly
shape and whiteness of her shoulder and neck—if those
two lights, I say, could have been skilfully managed,
Mr. Lawrence! what a picture you might have made
of Lady Imogen Ravelgold!

“Imogen, my daughter! Mr. Tremlet!” said her
mother as he entered.

Without changing her position, she gave him the
hand she had been pressing on her heart.

“Mr. Tremlet!” said Lady Ravelgold, evidently
entering into her daughter's embarrassment, “trouble
yourself to come to the table and give me a bit of this
pheasant. Imogen, George waits to give you some
champagne.”

“Can you forgive me?” said the beautiful girl, before
turning to betray her blushing cheek and suffused
eyes to her mother.

Tremlet stopped as if to pluck a leaf from the verbena
at her feet, and passed his lips over the slight fingers
he held.

“Pretty trulian!” murmured Lady Ravelgold to her
bird, as he stood on the edge of her champagne-glass,
and curving his superb neck nearly double, contrived
to drink from the sparkling brim—“pretty trulian!
you will be merry after this! What ancient Sybarite,
think you, Mr. Tremlet, inhabits the body of this
bright bird? Look up, mignon, and tell us if you were
Hylas or Alcibiades! Is the pheasant good, Mr. Tremlet?”

“Too good to come from Hades, miladi. Is it true
that you have your table supplied from Crockford's?”

“Tout bonnement! I make it a principle to avoid all
great anxieties, and I can trust nobody but Ude. He
sends my dinners quite hot, and if there is a particular
dish of game, he drives round at the hour and gives it
the last turn in my own kitchen. I should die, to be
responsible for my dinners. I don't know how people
get on that have no grand artiste. Pray, Mr. Tremlet
(I beg pardon—Monsieur le conte, perhaps I should
say?”)

“No, no, I implore you! `Tremlet' has been spoken
too musically to be so soon forgotten. Tremlet or
Charles, which you will!”

Lady Ravelgold put her hand in his, and looked
from his face to her daughter's with a smile, which as
sured him that she had obtained a victory over herself.
Shrinking immediately, however, from anything like
sentiment (with the nervous dread of pathos so peculiar
to the English), she threw off her trulian, that
made a circle and alighted on the emerald bracelet of
Lady Imogen, and rang the bell for coffee.

“I flatter myself, Mr. Tremlet,” she said, “that I
have made a new application of the homœopathic philosophy.
Hahnemann, they say, cures fevers by aggravating
the disease; and when I can not sleep, I
drink coffee. J'en suis passablement fiére! You did
not know I was a philosopher?”

“No, indeed!”

“Well, take some of this spiced mocha. I got it of
the Turkish ambassador, to whom I made beaux yeux
on purpose. Stop! you shall have it in the little tinsel
cups he sent me. George, bring those filagree
things! Now, Mr. Tremlet, imagine yourself in the
serail du Bosphore—Imogen and I two lovely Circassians,
par exemple! Is it not delicious? Talking of
the Bosphorus, nobody was classical enough to understand
the device in my coiffure to-night.”

“What was it?” asked Tremlet, absently, gazing
while he spoke, with eyes of envy at the trulian, who
was whetting his bill backward and forward on the
clear bright lips of Lady Imogen.

“Do you think my profile Grecian?” asked Lady
Ravelgold.

“Perfectly!”

“And my hair is coiffed à la Grec?”

“Most becomingly.”

“But still you won't see my golden grasshopper!
Do you happen to know, sir, that to wear the golden
grasshopper was the birthright of an Athenian? I saw
it in a book. Well! I had to explain it to everybody.
By-the-way, what did that gambler, George Heriot,
mean, by telling me that its legs should be black?—
`All Greeks have black legs,' said he, yawning in his
stupid way. What did he mean, Mr. Tremlet?”

“`Greeks' and blacklegs are convertible terms. He
thought you were more au fait of the slang dictionary.
Will you permit me to coax my beautiful rival from
your hand, Lady Imogen?”

She smiled, and put forward her wrist, with a bend
of its slender and alabaster lines which would have
drawn a sigh from Praxiteles. The trulian glanced
his fiery eyes from his mistress's face to Tremlet's,
and as the strange hand was put out to take him from
his emerald perch, he flew with the quickness of lightning
into the face of her lover, and buried the sharp
beak in his lip. The blood followed copiously, and
Lady Imogen, startled from her timidity, sprang from
her chair and pressed her hands one after the other
upon the wound, in passionate and girlish abandonment.
Lady Ravelgold hurried to her dressing-room
for something to stanch the wound, and, left alone
with the divine creature who hung over him. Tremlet
drew her to his bosom and pressed his cheek long and
closely to hers, while to his lips, as if to keep in life,
clung her own crimsoned and trembling fingers.

“Imogen!” said Lady Ravelgold, entering, “take
him to the fountain in the garden and wash the wound:
then put on this bit of gold-beater's skin. I will come
to you when I have locked up the trulian. Is it painful,
Mr. Tremlet?”

Tremlet could not trust his voice to answer, but
with his arm still around Lady Imogen, he descended
by the terrace of flowers to the fountain.

They sat upon the edge of the marble basin, and
the moonlight striking through the jet of the fountain,
descended upon them like a rain of silver. Lady Imogen
had recovered from her fright, and buried her face
in her hands, remembering into what her feelings had
betrayed her; and Tremlet, sometimes listening to the
clear bell-like music of the descending water, sometimes
uttering the broken sentences which are most

eloquent in love, sat out the hours till the stars began
to pale, undisturbed by Lady Ravelgold, who, on the
upper stair of the terrace, read by a small lamp, which,
in the calm of that heavenly summer night, burned
unflickeringly in the open air.

It was broad daylight when Tremlet, on foot, sauntered
slowly past Hyde Park corner on his way to the
Albany. The lamps were still struggling with the
brightening approach to sunrise, the cabmen and their
horses slept on the stand by the Green Park, and with
cheerful faces the laborers went to their work, and with
haggard faces the night-birds of dissipation crept wearily
home. The well-ground dust lay in confused heelmarks
on the sidewalk, a little dampened by the night-dew;
the atmosphere in the street was clear, as it never
is after the stir of day commences; a dandy, stealing
out from Crockford's, crossed Piccadilly, lifting up his
head to draw in long breaths of the cool air, after the
closeness of over-lighted rooms and excitement; and
Tremlet, marking none of these things, was making
his way through a line of carriages slowly drawing up
to take off their wearied masters from a prolonged fête
at Devonshire house, when a rude hand clapped him
on the shoulder.

“Monsieur Tremlet!”

“Ah, Baron! bien bon jour!”

“Bien rencontrè, Monsieur! You have insulted a
lady to-night, who has confided her cause to my hands.
Madam St. Leger, sir, is without a natural protector,
and you have taken advantage of her position to insult
her—grossly, Mr. Tremlet, grossly!”

Tremlet looked at the Russian during this extraordinary
address, and saw that he was evidently highly
excited with wine. He drew him aside into Berkeley
street, and in the calmest manner attempted to explain
what was not very clear to himself. He had totally
forgotten Mrs. St. Leger. The diplomate, though
quite beyond himself with his excitement, had sufficient
perception left to see the weak point of his statement;
and infuriated with the placid manner in which
he attempted to excuse himself, suddenly struck his
glove into his face, and turned upon his heel. They
had been observed by a policeman, and at the moment
that Tremlet, recovering from his astonishment, sprang
forward to resent the blow, the gray-coated guardian
of the place laid his hand upon his collar and detained
him till the baron had disappeared.

More than once on his way to the Albany, Tremlet
surprised himself forgetting both the baron and the insult,
and feeding his heart in delicious abandonment
with the dreams of his new happiness. He reached
his rooms and threw himself on the bed, forcing from
his mind, with a strong effort, the presence of Lady
Imogen, and trying to look calmly on the unpleasant
circumstance before him. A quarrel which, the day
before, he would have looked upon merely as an inconvenience,
or which, under the insult of a blow, he
would have eagerly sought, became now an almost insupportable
evil. When he reflected on the subject
of the dispute—a contention about a woman of doubtful
reputation taking place in the same hour with a
first avowal from the delicate and pure Lady Imogen—
when he remembered the change in his fortunes,
which he had as yet scarcely found time to realize—
on the consequences to her who was so newly dear to
him, and on all he might lose, now that life had become
invaluable—his thoughts were almost too painful
to bear. How seldom do men play with an equal stake
in the game of taking life, and how strange it is that
equality of weapons is the only comparison made necessary
by the laws of honor!

Tremlet was not a man to be long undecided. He
rose, after an hour's reflection, and wrote as follows:—

There was a bridal on the following Monday at St.
George's church, and the Russian secretary stood behind
the bridegroom. Lady Ravelgold had never been
seen so pale, but her face was clear of all painful feeling;
and it was observed by one who knew her well,
that her beauty had acquired, during the brief engagement
of her daughter, a singular and undefinable elevation.
As the carriages with their white favors turned
into Bond street, on their way back to Belgrave square,
the cortége was checked by the press of vehicles, and
the Russian, who accompanied Lady Ravelgold in her
chariot, found himself opposite the open britscka of a
lady who fixed her glass full upon him without recognising
a feature of his face.

“I am afraid you have affronted Mrs. St. Leger,
baron!” said Lady Ravelgold.

“Or I should not have been here!” said the Russian;
and as they drove up Piccadilly, he had just time
between Bond street and Milton Crescent to tell her
ladyship the foregone chapter of this story.

The trulian, on that day, was fed with wedding-cake,
and the wound on Mr. Tremlet's lip was not cured by
letting alone.

PALETTO'S BRIDE.

1. CHAPTER I.

“My daughter!” said the count Spinola.

The lady so addressed threw off a slight mantle and
turned her fair features inquiringly to her father. Heedless
of the attention he had arrested, the abstracted
count paced up and down the marble pavement of his
hall, and when, a moment after, Francesca came to
him for his good-night kiss, he imprinted it silently
on her forehead, and stepped out on the balcony to
pursue, under the aiding light of the stars, thoughts
that were more imperative than sleep.

There had been a fête of great splendor in the ducal
gardens of the Boboli, and Francesca Spinola had
shown there, as usual, the most radiant and worshipped
daughter of the nobilita of Florence. The melancholy
duke himself (this was in the days of his first
marriage) had seemed even gay in presenting her with
flowers which he had gathered at her side, with the
dew on them (in an alley glittering with the diamonds on
noble bosoms, and dewdrops on roses that would slumber,
though it was the birth-night of a princess), and

marked as was the royal attention to the envied beauty,
it was more easily forgiven her than her usual triumphs—for
it cost no one a lover. True to his conjugal
vows, the sad-featured monarch paid to beauty
only the homage exacted alike by every most admirable
work of nature.

The grand-duke Leopold had not been the only admirer
whose attentions to Francesca Spinola had been
remarked. A stranger, dressed with a magnificence
that seemed more fitted for a masquerade than a court-hall,
and yet of a mien that promised danger to the
too inquisitive, had entered alone, and, marking out the
daughter of the haughty count from the first, had
procured an introduction, no one knew how, and
sought every opportunity which the intervals of the
dance afforded, to place himself at her side. Occupied
with the courtly devoirs of his rank, the count
was, for a while, unaware of what struck almost every
one else, and it was only when the stranger's name
was inquired of him by the duke, that his dark and
jealous eye fell upon a face whose language of kindling
and undisguised admiration a child would have interpreted
aright. It was one of those faces that are of
no degree—that may belong to a barbaric king, or to
a Greek slave—that no refinement would improve, and
no servile habits degrade; faces which take their
changes from an indomitable and powerful soul, and
are beyond the trifling impression of the common usages
of life. Spinola was offended with the daring and
passionate freedom of the stranger's gaze upon his
daughter; but he hesitated to interrupt their conversation
too rudely. He stayed to exchange a compliment
with some fair obstruction in his way across the
crowded saloon, and, in the next moment, Francesca
stood alone.

“Who left you this moment, my Francesca?” asked
the count, with affected unconcern.

“I think, a Venetian,” she answered.

“And his name?”

“I know not, my father!”

The count's face flashed.

“Who presented him to my darling?” he asked,
again forcing himself to composure.

Francesca colored; and, with downcast eyes, answered:—

“No one, my father! He seemed to know me, and
I thought I might have forgotten him.”

Spinola turned on his heel, and, after a few vain inquiries,
and as vain a search for the stranger, ordered
his attendants, and drove silently home.

It was close upon the gray of the morning, and the
count still leaned over the stone-railing of his balcony.
Francesca had been gone an hour to her chamber.
A guitar-string sounded from the street below, and, a
moment after, a manly and mellow voice broke into a
Venetian barcarole, and sang with a skill and tenderness
which a vestal could scarce have listened to unmoved.
Spinola stepped back and laid his hand upon
his sword; but, changing his thought, he took a lamp
from the wall within, and crept noiselessly to his
daughter's chamber. She lay within her silken curtains,
with her hands crossed on her bosom, and from
her parted lips came the low breath of innocent and
untroubled sleep. Reassured, the count closed her
window and extinguished his lamp; and, when the
guitar was no longer heard echoing from the old
palace walls, and the rich voice of the serenader had
died away with his footsteps, the lord of the Palazzo
Spinola betook himself to sleep with a heart somewhat
relieved of its burden.

On the following day, the count pleaded the early-coming
heats of summer; and, with slight preparation,
left Florence for his summer-palace in the Apennines.
When Francesca joined him cheerfully, and
even gayly, in his sudden plan, he threw aside the
jealous fears that had haunted his breast, and forgot
the stranger and his barcarole. The old trees of his
maison de plaisance were heavy with the leaves of the
Italian May; the statues stood cool in the shade; the
mountain rivulets forgot their birth in the rocky
brooks, and ran over channels of marble, and played
up through cactus-leaves and sea-shells, and nereids'
horns, all carved by the contemporaries of Donatello.
“And here,” thought the proud noble, “I am á l'ecart
of the designs of adventurers, and the temptations and
dangers of gayety, and the child of my hopes will refresh
her beauty and her innocence, under the watchful
eye, ever present, of my love.

Francesca Spinola was one of those Italian natures
of which it is difficult for the inhabitants of other
climes to conceive. She had no feelings. She had
passions. She could love—but it sprang in an instant
to its fullest power—and maidenly reserve and hesitation
were incompatible with its existence. She had
listened, unmoved, to all the adulation of the duke's
court, and had been amused with the devotion of all
around her—but never touched. The voice of the
stranger at the fête of the Boboli—the daring words
he had addressed to her—had arrested her attention;
and it needed scarce the hour—which flew like a moment
at his side—to send a new sensation, like a tempest,
through her heart. She reasoned upon nothing
—asked nothing; but, while she gave up her soul
wholly to a passion hitherto unfelt, the deep dissimulation
which seems a natural part of the love of that
burning clime, prompted her, by an unquestioned impulse,
to conceal it entirely from her father. She had
counterfeited sleep when nearly surprised in listening
to the barcarole, and she had little need to counterfeit
joy at her departure for the mountains.

The long valley of the Arno lay marked out upon
the landscape by a wreath of vapor, stealing up as if
enamored of the fading color of the clouds; and far
away, like a silver bar on the rim of the horizon, shone
the long line of the Mediterranean. The mountain
sides lay bathed in azure; and, echoing from the
nearest, came the vesper-bells of Vallombrosa. Peace
and purity were stamped upon the hour.

“My child,” said the softened count, drawing Francesca
to his bosom, as they stood looking off upon
this scene from the flowery terrace beneath the portico;
“does my child love me?”

Francesca placed her hands upon his shoulders and
kissed him for reply.

“I feel impelled,” he continued, “to talk to you
while this beautiful hour is around us, of an affection
that resembles it.”

“Resembles the sunset, my father?”

“Yes! Shall I tell you how? By affecting with
its soft influence every object under the bend of the
sky! My Francesca! there are parents who love
their children, and love them well, and yet find feelings
for other attachments, and devotion for every
other interest in life. Not so mine! My love for
my child is a whole existence poured into hers.
Look at me, Francesca! I am not old. I am capable,
perhaps, of other love than a parent's. There are
among the young and beautiful who have looked on
me with favoring eyes. My blood runs warm yet, and
my step is as full of manhood—perhaps my heart as
prompt to be gay—as ever. I mean to say that I am
not too old for a lover. Does my daughter think so?”

“I have been long vain of your beauty, dear father,”
said Francesca, threading her hand in his dark
curls.

“There are other things that might share your
empire in my heart—politics, play, the arts—a hundred
passions which possess themselves of men whose
fortune or position gives them means and leisure.
Now listen, my daughter! You have supplanted all
these! You have filled my heart with yourself.

I am tempted to love—my heart is my daughter's.
I am asked to play—my thoughts are with my child.
I have neither time for politics, nor attention for the
arts—my being breathes through my child. I am
incapable of all else. Do you hear me, Francesca?”

“I do, dear father!”

“Then, one moment more! I can not conceal my
thoughts from you, and you will pardon love like mine
for ungrounded fears. I liked not the stranger at the
duke's palace.”

Francesca stole a quick look at her father, and,
with the rapidity of light, her dark eye resumed its
tranquillity.

“I say I liked him not! No one knew him! He
is gone, no one knows whither! I trust he will never
be seen more in Florence. But I will not disguise
from you that I thought you—pleased with him!”

“Father!”

“Forgive me if I wrong you—but, without pursuing
the subject, let your father implore you, on his
knees, for the confidence of your heart. Will you
tell me your thoughts, Francesca? Will you love
me with but the thousandth part of my adoration, my
devotion, for my child?”

“Father! I will!”

The count rose from the knee on which he had
fallen, gave his daughter a long embrace, and led her
in. And that night she fled over the Tuscan border,
into neighboring Romagna, and, with the stranger at
her side, sped away, under the cover of night, toward
the shores of the Brenta.

Like a city of secrets, sleeps silent Venice. Her
sea-washed foundations are buried under the smooth
glass of the tide. Her palace-entrances are dark caverns,
impenetrable to the eye. Her veiled dames are
unseen in their floating chambers, as they go from
street to street; and mysteriously and silently glide to
and fro those swift gondolas, black as night, yet carrying
sadness and mirth, innocence and guilt, alike
swiftly, mysteriously, and silently. Water, that betrays
no footstep, and covers all with the same mantle
of light, fills her streets. Silence, that is the seal of
secrecy, reigns day and night over her thousand
palaces.

For an hour the smooth mirror of the broad canal
that sweeps under the Rialto, had not been divided by
the steel prow of a gondola. Francesca Spinola stood
at the window of a chamber in a palace of gorgeous
magnificence, watching that still water for the coming
of her husband. The silver lines of the moon stole
back imperceptibly, as her full orb sailed up the
heavens, and the turrets of the old architecture of
Venice, drawn clearly on the unruffled bosom of the
canal, seemed retiring before a consuming sheet of
silver. The silence seemed painful. To the ear of
the beautiful Florentine, the want of the sound of a
footstep, of the echo of some distant wheel, the utter
death of all sound common to even the stillest hour of
a paved city, seemed oppressive and awful. Behind
her burned lamps of alabaster, and perfumes filled the
chamber, and on a cushion of costly velvet lay a mean
and unornamented guitar. Its presence in so costly a
palace was a secret yet withheld. She wished to
toach its strings, if only to disperse the horro of silence.
But she raised her fingers, and again, without
touching it, leaned out and watched the dark arch of
the Rialto.

A gondola, with a single oar, sped swiftly from its
black shadow. It could not be Paletto. He had
gone with his two faithful servants to St. Mark's.
The oar ceased—the bark headed in—the water
splashed on the marble stair—and the gondolier stepped
on shore. Ah, who but Paletto had such a form
as stood there in the moonlight?

“Are we to be married again,” said Francesca, as
her husband entered the chamber, “that you have
once more disguised yourself as a fisherman?”

Paletto turned from the light, and took up the
mysterious guitar. “It is no night to be in-doors, my
Francesca! Come with me to the lagoon, and I will
tell you the story of this despised instrument. Will
you come?” he pursued, as she stood looking at him
in wonder at his strange dress and disturbed look.
“Will you come, my wife?”

“But you have returned without your gondoliers!”
she said, advancing a step to take his hand.

“I have rowed a gondola ere now,” he answered;
and, without further explanation, he led her down the
lofty staircase, and seating her in the stern of the bark
which he had brought with him, stepped upon the
platform, and, with masterly skill and power, drove it
like a shadow under the Rialto.

He who has watched the horn of a quarter-moon
gliding past the towers, pinnacles and palaces of the
drifting clouds, and in his youthful and restless brain,
fancied such must be the smooth delight and changing
vision of a traveller in strange lands—one who has
thus dreamed in his boyhood will scarce shoot though
Venice for the first time in a gondola, without a
sense of familiarity with the scene and motion. The
architecture of the clouds is again drifting past, and
himself seems borne onward by the silver shallop of
the moon.

Francesca sat on the low cushion of the gondola,
watching and wondering. How should her luxurious
Paletto have acquired the exquisite skill with which
he drove the noiseless boat like a lance-fly over the
water. Another gondola approached or was left behind,
the corner of a palace was to be rounded, or the
black arch of a bridge to be shot under, and the
peculiar warning-cry of the gondoliers, giving notice
of their unheard approach, fell from his lips so mechanically,
that the hireling oarsmen of the city, marvelling
at his speed, but never doubting that it was a
comrade of the Piazza, added the “fratello mio” to
their passing salutation. She saw by every broad
beam of light, which, between the palaces, came down
across them, a brow clouded and a mind far from the
oar he turned so skilfully. She looked at the gondola
in which she sat. It was old and mean. In the prow
lay a fisher's net, and the shabby guitar, thrown upon
it, seemed now, at least, not out of place. She looked
up at Paletto once more, and, in his bare throat and
bosom, his loose cap and neglected hair, she could
with difficulty recognise the haughty stranger of the
Boboli. She spoke to him. It was necessary to
break the low-born spell that seemed closing around
her. Paletto started at her voice, and suspending his
oar, while the gondola still kept way as if with its own
irresistible volition, he passed his hand over his eyes
and seemed waking from some painful dream.

The gondola was now far out in the lagoon.—
Around them floated an almost impalpable vapor
just making the moonlight visible, and the soft click
of the water beneath the rising and dropping prow was
the only sound between them and the cloudless heaven.
In that silence Paletto strung his guitar and sang to
his bride with a strange energy. She listened and
played with his tangled locks, but there seemed a spell
upon her tongue when she would ask the meaning of
this mystery.

“Francesca!” he said at last, raising his head from
her lap.

“What says my fisherman?” she replied, holding
up his rough cap with a smile.

Paletto started, but recovering his composure, instantly
took the cap from her jewelled fingers and
threw it carelessly upon his head.

“Francesca! who is your husband?”

“Paletto?”

“And who is Paletto?”

“I would have asked sometimes, but your kisses
have interrupted me. Yet I know enough.”

“What know you?”

“That he is a rich and noble seignior of Venice!”

“Do I look one to-night?”

“Nay—for a masquerade, I have never seen a
better! Where learned you to look so like a fisherman
and row so like a gondolier?”

Paletto frowned.

“Francesca!” said he folding his arms across his
bosom, “I am the son of a fisherman, and I was bred
to row the gondola beneath you!”

The sternness of his tone checked the smile upon
her beautiful lip, and when she spoke it was with a
look almost as stern as his own.

“You mock me too gravely, Paletto! But come!
I will question you in your own humor. Who educated
the fisherman's son?”

“The fisherman.”

“And his palace and his wealth—whence came
they, Signor Pescatore?”

The scornful smile of incredulity with which this
question was asked, speedily fled from her lip as Paletto
answered it.

“Listen! Three months since I had never known
other condition than a fisherman of the lagoon, nor
worn other dress than this in which you see me. The
first property I ever possessed beyond my day's earnings,
was this gondola. It was my father's, Giannotto
the fisherman. When it became mine by his death,
I suddenly wearied of my tame life, sold boat and nets,
and with thoughts which you can not understand,
but which have brought you here, took my way to
the Piazza. A night of chance, begun with the whole
of my inheritance staked upon a throw, left me master
of wealth I had never dreamed of. I became a
gay signore. It seemed to me that my soul had gone
out of me, and a new spirit, demoniac if you will, had
taken possession. I no longer recognised myself. I
passed for an equal with the best-born, my language
altered, my gait, my humor. One strong feeling alone
predominated—an insane hatred to the rank in which
you were born, Francesca! It was strange, too, that
I tried to ape its manners. I bought the palace you
have just left, and filled it with costly luxuries. And
then there grew upon me the desire to humiliate that
rank—to pluck down to myself some one of its proud
and cherished daughters—such as you!”

Francesca muttered something between her teeth,
and folded her small arms over her bosom. Paletto
went on.

“I crossed to Florence with this sole intention.
Unknown and uninvited, I entered the palace at the
fête of the Boboli, and looked around for a victim.
You were the proudest and most beautiful. I chose
you and you are here.”

Paletto looked at her with a smile, and never sunbeam
was more unmixed with shadow than the smile
which answered it on the lips of Spinola's daughter.

“My Paletto!” she said, “you have the soul of a
noble, and the look of one, and I am your bride. Let
us return to the palace!”

“I have no palace but this!” he said, striking his
hand like a bar of iron upon the side of the gondola.

`You have not heard out my tale.”

Francesca sat with a face unmoved as marble.

“This night, at play, I lost all. My servants are
dismissed, my palace belongs to another, and with
this bark which I had repurchased, I am once more
Paletto the fisherman!”

A slight heave of the bosom of the fair Florentine
was her only response to this astounding announcement.
Her eyes turned slowly from the face of the
fisherman, and fixing apparently on some point far out
in the Adriatic, she sat silent, motionless, and cold.

“I am a man, Francesca!” said Paletto after a pause
which, in the utter stillness of the lagoon around them,
seemed like a suspension of the breathing of nature,
and “I have not gone through this insane dream without
some turning aside of the heart. Spite of myself,
I loved you and I could not dishonor you. We
are married, Francesca!”

The small dark brows of the Florentine lowered
till the silken lashes they overhung seemed starting
from beneath her forehead. Her eyes flashed fire
below.

“Bene!” said Paletto, rising to his feet; “one
word more while we have silence around us and are
alone. You are free to leave me, and I will so far repair
the wrong I have done you, as to point out the
way. It will be daylight in an hour. Fly to the
governor's palace, announce your birth, declare that
you were forced from your father by brigands, and
claim his protection. The world will believe you, and
the consequences to myself I will suffer in silence.”

With a sudden, convulsive motion, Francesca thrust
out her arm, and pointed a single finger toward Venice.
Paletto bent to his oar, and quivering in every seam
beneath its blade, the gondola sped on his way. The
steel prow struck fire on the granite steps of the
Piazza, the superb daughter of Spinola stepped over
the trembling side, and with a half-wave of her hand,
strode past the Lion of St. Mark, and approached the
sentinel at the palace-gate. And as her figure was
lost among the arabesque columns shaded from the
moon, Paletto's lonely gondola shot once more silently
and slowly from the shore.

2. CHAPTER II.

The smooth, flat pavement of the Borg'ognisanti
had been covered since morning with earth, and the
windows and balconies on either side were flaunting
with draperies of the most gorgeous colors. The
riderless horse-races, which conclude the carnival in
Florence, were to be honored by the presence of the
court. At the far extremity of the street, close by the
gate of the Cascine, an open veranda, painted in fresco,
stood glittering with the preparations for the royal party,
and near it the costlier hangings of here and there a
window or balustrade, showed the embroidered crests
of the different nobles of Tuscany. It was the people's
place and hour, and beneath the damask and cloth of
gold, the rough stone windows were worn smooth by
the touch of peasant hands, and the smutched occupants,
looking down from the balconies above, upon
the usupers of their week-day habitations, formed, to
the stranger's eye, not the least interesting feature of
the scene.

As evening approached, the balconies began to
show their burden of rank and beauty, and the street
below filled with the press of the gay contadini.
The ducal cortege, in open carriages, drove down
the length of the course to their veranda at the gate,
but no other vehicle was permitted to enter the serried
crowd; and, on foot like the peasant-girl, the
noble's daughter followed the servants of her house,
who slowly opened for her a passage to the balcony
she sought. The sun-light began to grow golden.
The convent-bell across the Arno rang the first peal
of vespers, and the horses were led in.

It was a puzzle to any but an Italian how that race
was to be run. The entire population of Florence
was crowded into a single narrow street—men, women,
and children, struggling only for a foothold. The signal
was about to be given for the start, yet no attempt
was made to clear a passage. Twenty high-spirited
horses fretted behind the rope, each with a dozen
spurs hung to his surcingales, which, at the least motion,

must drive him onward like the steed of Mazeppa.
Gay ribands were braided in their manes, and the
bets ran high. All sounded and looked merry, yet it
would seem as if the loosing of the start-rope must be
like the letting in of destruction upon the crowd.

In a projecting gallery of a house on the side next
the Arno, was a party that attracted attention, somewhat
from their rank and splendid attire, but more
from the remarkable beauty of a female, who seemed
their star and idol. She was something above the
middle height of the women of Italy, and of the style
of face seen in the famous Judith of the Pitti—dark,
and of melancholy so unfathomable as almost to affray
the beholder. She looked a brooding prophetess;
yet through the sad expression of her features
there was a gleam of fierceness, that to the more critical
eye betrayed a more earthly gleam of human passion
and suffering. As if to belie the maturity of years
of which such an expression should be the work, an
ungloved hand and arm of almost childlike softness
and roundness lay on the drapery of the railed gallery;
and stealing from that to her just-perfected form, the
gazer made a new judgment of her years, while he
wondered what strange fires had forced outward the
riper lineaments of her character.

The count Fazelli, the husband of this fair dame,
stood within reach of her hand, for it was pressed on
his arm with no gentle touch, yet his face was turned
from her. He was a slight youth, little older, apparently,
than herself, of an effeminate and yet wilful cast
of countenance, and would have been pronounced by
women (what a man would scarce allow him to be)
eminently handsome. Effeminate coxcomb as he was,
he had power over the stronger nature beside him, and
of such stuff, in courts and cities, are made sometimes
the heroes whose success makes worthier men almost
forswear the worship due to women.

There were two other persons in the balconies of
the Corso, who were actors in the drama of which this
was a scene. The first was the prima donna of the
Cocomero, to whose rather mature charms the capricious
Fazelli had been for a month paying a too open
homage; and the second was a captain in the duke's
guard, whose personal daring in the extermination of
a troop of brigands, had won for him some celebrity
and his present commission. What thread of sympathy
rested between so humble an individual and the
haughty countess Fazelli, will be shown in the sequel.
Enough for the present, that, as he stood leaning
against the pillar of an opposite gallery, looking carelessly
on the preparations for the course, that proud
dame saw and remembered him.

A blast from a bugle drew all eyes to the starting-post,
and in another minute the rope was dropped, and
the fiery horses loosed upon their career. Right into
the crowd, as if the bodies of the good citizens of
Florence were made of air, sprang the goaded troop,
and the impossible thing was done, for the suffocating
throngs divided like waves before the prow, and united
again as scathless and as soon. The spurs played
merrily upon the flanks of the affrighted animals, and
in an instant they had swept through the Borg'ognisanti,
and disappeared into the narrow lane leading to
the Trinita. It was more a scramble than a race, yet
there must be a winner, and all eyes were now occupied
in gazing after the first glimpse of his ribands as
he was led back in triumph.

Uncompelled by danger, the suffocating crowd made
way with more difficulty for the one winning horse
than they had done for the score that had contended
with him. Yet, champing the bit, and tossing his
ribands into the air, he came slowly back, and after
passing in front of the royal veranda, where a small
flag was thrown down to be set into the rosette of his
bridle, he returned a few steps, and was checked by
the groom under the balcony of the prima donna. A
moment after, the winning flag was waving from the
rails above, and as the sign that she was the owner of
the victorious horse was seen by the people, a shout
arose which thrilled the veins of the fair singer more
than all the plaudits of the Cocomero. It is thought
to be pleasant to succeed in that for which we have
most struggled—that for which our ambition and our
efforts are known to the world—to be eminent, in
short, in our metier, our vocation. I am inclined to
think it natural to most men, however, and to all possessors
of genius, to undervalue that for which the
world is most willing to praise them, and to delight
more in excelling in that which seems foreign to their
usual pursuits, even if it be a trifle. It is delightful to
disappoint the world by success in anything. Detraction,
that follows genius to the grave, sometimes admits
its triumph, but never without the “back-water”
that it could do no more. The fine actress had won a
shout from assembled Florence, yet off the scene. She
laid one hand upon her heart, and the other, in the
rash exultation of the moment, ventured to wave a
kiss of gratitude to the count Fazelli.

As that favored signor crossed to offer his congratulations,
his place beside the countess was filled by a
young noble, who gave her the explanatory information—that
the horse was Fazelli's gift. Calmly, almost
without a sign of interest or emotion, she turned her
eyes upon the opposite balcony. A less searching and
interested glance would have discovered, that if the
young count had hitherto shared the favor of the admired
singer with his rivals, he had no rival now.
There was in the demeanor of both an undisguised
tenderness that the young countess had little need to
watch long, and retiring from the balcony, she accepted
the attendance of her communicative companion,
and was soon whirling in her chariot over the Ponte
St. Angelo, on her way to the princely palace that
would soon cease to call her its mistress.

Like square ingots of silver, the moonlight came
through the battlements of the royal abode of the
Medici. It was an hour before day. The heavy heel
of the sentry was the only sound near the walls of the
Pitti, save, when he passed to turn, the ripple of the
Arno beneath the arches of the jeweller's bridge broke
faintly on the ear. The captain of the guard had
strolled from the deep shadow of the palace into the
open moonlight, and leaned against a small stone shrine
of the Virgin set into the opposite wall, watching musingly
the companionable and thought-stirring emperess
of the night.

“Paletto!” suddenly uttered a voice near him.

The guardsman started, but instantly recovered his
position, and stood looking over his epaulet at the
intruder, with folded arms.

“Paletto!” she said again, in a lower and more appealing
tone—“will you listen to me?”

“Say on, Countess Fazelli!”

“Countess Fazelli no longer, but Paletto's wife!”

“Ha! ha!” laughed the guardsman bitterly, “that
story is old, for so false a one.”

“Scorn me not! I am changed.” The dark eyes
of Francesca Cappone lifted up, moist and full, into
the moonlight, and fixing them steadfastly on the soldier's,
she seemed to demand that he should read her
soul in them. For an instant, as he did so, a troubled
emotion was visible in his own features, but a new
thought seemed to succeed the feeling, and turning
away with a cold gesture, he said, “I knew you false,
but till now I thought you pure. Tempt me not to
despise as well as hate you!”

“I have deserved much at your hand,” she answered,
with a deeper tone, “but not this. You are my husband,
Paletto!”

“One of them!” he replied, with a sneer.

Francesca clasped her hands in agony. “I have
come to you,” she said, “trusting the generous nature

which I have proved so well. I can not live unloved.
I deserted you, for I was ignorant of myself. I have
tried splendor and the love of my own rank, but one
is hollow and the last is selfish. Oh, Paletto! what
love is generous like yours?”

The guardsman's bosom heaved, but he did not turn
to her. She laid her hand upon his arm: “I have
come to implore you to take me back, Paletto. False
as I was to you, you have been true to me. I would
be your wife again. I would share your poverty, if
you were once more a fisherman on the lagoon. Are
you inexorable, Paletto?”

Her hand stole up to his shoulder: she crept closer
to him, and buried her head, unrepelled, in his bosom.
Paletto laid his hand upon the mass of raven hair
whose touch had once been to him so familiar, and
while the moon drew their shadows as one on the
shrine of the Virgin, the vows of early love were repeated
with a fervor unknown hitherto to the lips of
Cappone's daughter, and Paletto replied, not like a
courtly noble, but like that which was more eloquent
—his own love-prompted and fiery spirit.

The next day there was a brief but fierce rencontre
between Count Fazelli and the guardsman Paletto, at
the door of the church of Santa Trinita. Francesca
had gone openly with her husband to vespers, attended
by a monk. When attracked by the young count
as the daring abducer of his wife, he had placed her
under that monk's protection till the quarrel should be
over, and, with the same holy man to plead his cause,
he boldly claimed his wife at the duke's hands, and
bore her triumphantly from Florence.

I heard this story in Venice. The gondolier Paletto,
they say, still rows his boat on the lagoon: and
sometimes his wife is with him, and sometimes a daughter,
whose exquisite beauty, though she is still a child,
is the wonder of the Rialto as he passes under. I
never chanced to see him, but many a stranger has
hired the best oar of the Piazza, to pull out toward the
Adriatic in the hope of finding Paletto's boat and getting
a glimpse of his proud and still most beautiful
wife—a wife, it is said, than whom a happier or more
contented one with her lot lives not in the “city of
the sea.”

VIOLANTA CESARINI.

1. CHAPTER I.

It was an eve fit for an angel's birthnight (and we
know angels are born in this loving world), and while
the moon, as if shining only for artists' eyes, drew the
outlines of palace and chapel, stern turret and serenaded
belvidere, with her silver pencil on the street,
two grave seniors, guardians in their own veins of the
blood of two lofty names known long to Roman story,
leaned together over a balcony of fretted stone, jutting
out upon the Corso, and affianced a fair and noble
maid of seventeen summers to a gentleman whose
character you shall learn, if we come safe to the sequel.

“The cardinal has offered me a thousand scudi for
my Giorgione, said the old count Malaspina, at last,
changing his attitude and the subject at the same
time.

“Anima di porco!” exclaimed the other, “what stirs
the curtain? The wind is changing, Malaspina. Let
us in! So, he offers but a thousand! I shall feel my
rheumatism to-morrow with this change. But a thousand!—ha!
ha! Let us in, let us in!”

“Let us out, say I!” murmured two lips that were
never made of cherries, though a bird would have
pecked at them; and stealing from behind the curtain,
whose agitation had persuaded her father that the wind
was rising, Violanta Cesarini, countess in her own right,
and beautiful by Heaven's rare grace, stepped forth
into the moonlight.

She drew a long breath as she looked down into the
Corso. The carriages were creeping up and down at
a foot-pace, and the luxurious dames, thrown back on
their soft cushions, nodded to the passers-by, as they
recognised friends and acquaintances where the moonlight
broke through; crowds of slow promenaders loitered
indolently on, now turning to look at the berry-brown
back of a contadini, with her stride like a tragedy-queen,
and her eyes like wells of jet, and now
leaning against a palace wall, while a wandering harp-girl
sung better for a baiocco than noble ladies for the
praise of a cardinal; at one corner stood an artist with
his tablet, catching some chance effect perhaps in the
drapery of a marble saint, perhaps in the softer drapery
of a sinner; the cafés, far up and dawn, looked
like festas out of doors, with their groups of gayly-dressed
idlers, eating sherbets and buying flowers; a
gray friar passed now with his low-toned benedicite;
and again a black cowl with a face that reddened the
very moonbeam that peeped under; hunchbacks contended
testily for the wall, and tall fellows (by their
long hair and fine symmetry, professed models for
sculptors and painters) yielded to them with a gibe.
And this is Rome when the moon shines well, and on
this care-cheating scene looked down the countess
Violanta, with her heart as full of perplexity as her
silk boddice-lace would bear without breaking.

I dare say you did not observe, if you were in Rome
that night, and strolling, as you would have been in
the Corso (this was three years ago last May, and if
you were in the habit of reading the Diario di Roma,
the story will not be new to you); you did not observe,
I am sure, that a thread ran across from the balcony I
speak of, in the Palazzo Cesarim, to a high window
in an old palace opposite, inhabited, as are many
palaces in Rome, by a decayed family and several artists.
On the two sides of this thread, pressed, while
she mused, the slight fingers of Violanta Cesarini;
and, as if it descended from the stars at every pull
which the light May-breeze gave it in passing, she
turned her soft blue eyes upward, and her face grew
radiant with hope—not such as is fed with star-gazing!

Like a white dove shooting with slant wings downward
a folded slip of paper flew across on this invisible
thread, and, by heaven's unflickering lamp, Violanta
read some characters traced with a rough crayon, but
in most sweet Italian. A look upward, and a nod, as
if she were answering the stars that peeped over her,
and the fair form had gone with its snowy robes from
the balcony, and across the high window from which
the messenger had come, dropped the thick and impenetrable
folds of the gray curtain of an artist.

It was a large upper room, such as is found in the
vast houses of the decayed nobility of Rome, and of
its two windows one was roughly boarded up to exclude
the light, while a coarse gray cloth did nearly
the same service at the other, shutting out all but an
artist's modicum of day. The walls of rough plaster
were covered with grotesque drawings, done apparently
with bits of coal, varied here and there with scraps of
unframed canvass, nailed carelessly up, and covered
with the study of some head, by a famous master. A
large table on one side of the room was burdened with
a confused heap of brushes, paint-bags, and discolored
cloths, surmounted with a clean palette; and not far
off stood an easel, covered with thumb-marks of all

dyes, and supporting a new canvass, on which was
outlined the figure of a nymph, with the head finished
in a style that would have stirred the warm blood of
Raphael himself with emulous admiration. A low
flock bed, and a chair without a bottom, but with a
large cloak hung over its back, a pair of foils and a
rapier, completed so much of the furniture of the
room as belonged to a gay student of Corregio's art,
who wrote himself Biondo Amieri.

By the light of the same antique lamp, hung on a
rusty nail against the wall, you might see a very good
effect on the face of an unfinished group in marble,
of which the model, in plaster, stood a little behind,
representing a youth with a dagger at his heart, arrested
in the act of self-murder by a female whose
softened resemblance to him proclaimed her at the first
glance his sister. A mallet, chisels, and other implements
used in sculpture, lay on the rough base of
the unfinished group, and half-disclosed, half-concealed,
by a screen covered with prints by some curious
female hand, stood a bed with white curtains, and
an oratory of carved oak at its head, supporting a
clasped missal. A chair or two, whose seats of worked
satin had figured one day in more luxurious neighborhood,
a table covered with a few books and several
drawings from the antique, and a carefully-locked
escritoire, served, with other appearances, to distinguish
this side of the room as belonging to a separate
occupant, of gentler taste or nurture.

While the adventurous Violanta is preparing herself
to take advantage of the information received by
her secret telegraph, I shall have time, dear reader,
to put you up to a little of the family history of the
Cesarini, necessary no less to a proper understanding
of the story, than to the heroine's character for discretion.
On the latter point, I would suggest to you,
you may as well suspend your opinion.

It is well known to all the gossips in Rome, that,
for four successive generations, the marquises of
Cesarini have obtained dispensations of the pope for
marrying beautiful peasant-girls from the neighborhood
of their castle, in Romagna. The considerable
sums paid for these dispensations, reconciled the holy
see to such an unprecedented introduction of vulgar
blood into the veins of the nobility, and the remarkable
female beauty of the race (heightened by the addition
of nature's aristocracy to its own), contributed to maintain
good will at a court, devoted above all others to
the cultivation of the fine arts, of which woman is the
Eidolon and the soul. The last marquis, educated
like his fathers, in their wild domain among the mountains,
selected, like them, the fairest wild-flower that
sprung at his feet, and after the birth of one son, applied
for the tardy dispensation. From some unknown
cause (possibly a diminished bribe, as the marquis
was less lavish in his disposition than his predecessors),
the pope sanctioned the marriage, but refused
to legitimatize the son, unless the next born
should be a daughter. The marchioness soon after
retired (from mortification it is supposed) to her home
in the mountains and after two years of close seclusion,
returned to Rome, bringing with her an infant
daughter, then three months of age, destined to be the
heroine of our story. No other child appearing, the
young Cesarini was legitimatized, and with his infant
sister passed most of his youth at Rome. Some three
or four years before the time when our tale commences,
this youth, who had betrayed always, a coarse
and brutal temper, administered his stiletto to a gentleman
on the Corso, and flying from Rome, became
a brigand in the Abruzzi. His violence and atrocity
in this congenial life, soon put him beyond hope of
pardon, and on his outlawry by the pope, Violanta became
the heiress of the estates of Cesarini.

The marchioness had died when Violanta was between
seven and eight years of age, leaving her, by a
death-bed injunction, in the charge of her own constant
attendant, a faithful servant from Romagno, supposed
to be distant kinswoman to her mistress. With
this tried dependant, the young countess was permitted
to go where she pleased, at all hours when not attended
by her masters, and seeing her tractable and
lovely, the old marquis, whose pride in the beauty of
his family was the passion next to love of money in
his heart, gave himself little trouble, and thought himself
consoled for the loss of his son in the growing attractions
and filial virtues of his daughter.

On a bright morning in early spring, six years before
the date of our tale, the young countess and her attendant
were gathering wild flowers near the fountain
of Egeria (of all spots of earth, that on which the wild
flowers are most profuse and sweetest), when a deformed
youth, who seemed to be no stranger to Donna
Bettina, addressed Violanta in a tone of voice so musical,
and with a look so kindly and winning, that the
frank child took his hand, and led him off in search of
cardinals and blue-bells, with the familiarity of an established
playfellow. After this day, the little countess
never came home pleased from a morning drive and
ramble in which she had not seen her friend Signor
Giulio; and the romantic baths of Caracalla, and the
many delicious haunts among the ruins about Rome,
had borne witness to the growth of a friendship, all
fondness and impulse on the part of Violanta, all tenderness
and delicacy on that of the deformed youth.
By what wonderful instinct they happened always to
meet, the delighted child never found time or thought
to inquire.

Two or three years passed on thus, and the old
marquis had grown to listen with amused familiarity
to his daughter's prattle about the deformed youth,
and no incident had varied the pleasant tenor of their
lives and rambles, except that, Giulio once falling ill,
Bettina had taken the young countess to his home,
where she discovered that, young as he was, he made
some progress in moulding in clay, and was destined for
a sculptor. This visit to the apartment of an obscure
youth, however, the marquis had seen fit to object to;
and though, at his daughter's request, he sent the
young sculptor an order for his first statue, he peremptorily
forbade all further intercourse between him
and Violanta. In the paroxysm of her grief at the
first disgrace she had ever fallen into with her master,
Bettina disclosed to her young mistress, by way of
justification, a secret she had been bound by the
most solemn oaths to conceal, and of which she now
was the sole living depository—that this deformed
youth was born in the castle of the Cesarini, in Romagna,
of no less obscure parentage than the castle's
lord and lady, and being the first child after the dispensation
of marriage, and a son, he was consequently
the rightful heir to the marquisate and estates of Cesarini;
and the elder son, by the terms of that dispensation,
was illegitimate.

This was astounding intelligence to Violanti, who,
nevertheless, child as she was, felt its truth in the
yearnings of her heart to Giulio; but it was with no
little pains and difficulty on Bettina's part, that she was
persuaded to preserve the secret from her father. The
Romagnese knew her master's weakness; and as the
birth of the child had occurred during his long absence
from the castle, and the marchioness, proud of
her eldest-born, had determined from the first that he
alone should enjoy the name and honors of his father,
it was not very probable that upon the simple word of
a domestic, he would believe a deformed hunchback
to be his son and heir.

The intermediate history of Giulio, Bettina knew
little about, simply informing her mistress, that disgusted
with his deformity, the unnatural mother had
sent him to nurse in a far-off village of Romagna, and
that the interest of a small sum which the marquis

supposed had been expended on masses for the souls
of his ancestors, was still paid to his foster-parents for
his use.

From the time of this disclosure, Violanta's life had
been but too happy. Feeling justified in contriving
secret interviews with her brother; and possessing the
efficient connivance of Bettina, who grew, like herself,
almost to worship the pure-minded and the gentle
Giulio, her heart and her time were blissfully crowded
with interest. So far, the love that had welled from
her heart had been all joyous and untroubled.

It was during the absence of the marquis and his
daughter from Rome, and in an unhealthy season,
that Giulio, always delicate in health and liable to excessive
fits of depression, had fallen ill in his solitary
room, and, but for the friendly care of a young artist
whom he had long known, must have died of want
and neglect. As he began to recover, he accepted the
offer of Amieri, his friend, to share with him a lodging
in the more elevated air of the Corso, and, the more
readily, that this room chanced to overlook the palace
of Cesarina. Here Violanta found him on her return,
and though displeased that he was no longer alone,
she still continued, when Amieri was absent, to see
him sometimes in his room, and their old haunts
without the walls were frequented as often as his
health and strength would permit. A chance meeting
of Violanta and Amieri in his own studio, however,
made it necessary that he should be admitted to their
secret, and the consequence of that interview, and
others which Violanta found it impossible to avoid,
was a passion in the heart of the enthusiastic painter,
which consumed, as it well might, every faculty of
his soul.

We are thus brought to an evening of balmy May,
when Giulio found himself alone. Biondo had been
painting all day on the face of his nymph, endeavoring
in vain to give it any other features than those of the
lady of his intense worship, and having gone out to
ramble for fresh air and relaxation in the Corso,
Giulio thought he might venture to throw across his
ball of thread and send a missive to his sister, promising
her an uninterrupted hour of his society.

With these preliminaries, our story will now run
smoothly on.

2. CHAPTER II.

“Come in, carissima!” said the low, silver-toned
voice of the deformed sculptor, as a female figure, in
the hood and cloak of an old woman, crossed the
threshold of his chamber.

“Dear Giulio!” And she leaned slightly over the
diminutive form of her brother, and first kissing his
pale forehead, while she unfastened the clasp of
Bettina's cloak of black silk, threw her arms about
him as the disguise fell off, and multiplied, between
her caresses, the endearing terms in which the language
of that soft clime is so prodigal.

They sat down at the foot of his group in marble,
and each told the little history of the hours they had
spent apart. They grew alike as they conversed;
for theirs was that resemblance of the soul, to which
the features answer only when the soul is breathing
through. Unless seen together, and not only together,
but gazing on each other in complete abandonment
of heart, the friends that knew them best would have
said they were unlike. Yet Amieri's nymph on the
canvass was like both, for Amieri drew from the picture
burnt on his own heart by love, and the soul of Violanta
lay breathing beneath every lineament.

“You have not touched the marble to-day!” said
the countess, taking the lamp from its nail, and shedding
the light aslant on the back of the statue.

“No! I have lifted the hammer twenty times to
break it in pieces.”

“Ah! dearest Giulio! talk not thus! Think it is
my image you would destroy!”

“If it were, and truly done, I would sooner strike
the blessed crucifix. But, Violanta! there is a link
wanting in this deformed frame of mine! The sense
of beauty, or the power to body it forth, wants room in
me. I feel it—I feel it!”

Violanta ran to him and pressed the long curls that
fell over his pallid temples to her bosom. There was
a tone of conviction in his voice that she knew not how
to answer.

He continued, as if he were musing aloud:—

“I have tried to stifle this belief in my bosom, and
have never spoken of it till now—but it is true!
Look at that statue! Parts of it are like nature—
but it wants uniformity—it wants grace—it wants
what I want—proportion! I never shall give it that,
because I want the sense, the consciousness, the emotion,
of complete godlike movement. It is only the
well formed who feel this. Sculptors may imitate
gods! for they are made in God's image. But oh,
Violanta! I am not!”

“My poor brother!”

“Our blessed Savior was not more beautiful than
the Apollo,” he passionately continued, “but could I
feel like the Apollo! Can I stand before the clay and
straighten myself to his attitude, and fancy, by the
most delirious effort of imagination, that I realize in
this frame, and could ever have conceived and moulded
his indignant and lofty beauty? No—no—no!”

“Dear—dear Giulio.” He dropped his head again
and she felt his tears penetrate to her bosom.

“Leave this melancholy theme,” she said, in an
imploring tone, “and let us talk of other things, I have
something to tell you, Giulio!”

“Raphael was beautiful,” he said, raising himself
up, unconscious of the interruption, “and Giorgione,
and Titian, both nobly formed, and Michael Angelo
had the port of an archangel! Yes, the soul inhabits
the whole body, and the sentiment of beauty moves
and quickens through it all. My tenement is cramped!—Violanta!”

“Well, dear brother!”

“Tell me your feelings when you first breathe the
air in a bright morning in spring. Do you feel graceful?
Is there a sensation of beauty? Do you lift
yourself and feel swan-like and lofty, and worthy of
the divine image in which you breathe. Tell me
truly, Violanta.”

“Yes, brother!”

“I knew it! I have a faint dream of such a feeling—a
sensation that is confined to my brain somehow
which I struggle to express in motion—but if I lift
my finger, it is gone. I watch Amieri sometimes,
when he draws. He pierces my very soul by assuming,
always, the attitude on his canvass. Violanta!
how can I stand like a statue that would please the
eye?”

“Giulio! Giulio!”

“Well, I will not burden you with my sadness.
Let us look at Biondo's nymph. Pray the Virgin he
come not in the while—for painting, by lamp-light,
shows less fairly than marble.”

He took the lamp, and while Violanta shook the
tears from her eyes, he drew out the pegs of the easel,
and lowered the picture to the light.

“Are you sure Amieri will not come in, Giulio?”
inquired his sister, looking back timidly at the door
while she advanced.

“I think he will not. The Corso is gay to night,
and his handsome face and frank carriage, win greetings,
as the diamond draws light. Look at his picture,
Violanta! With what triumph he paints! How
different from my hesitating hand! The thought that

is born in his fancy, collects instant fire in his veins
and comes prompt and proportionate to his hand. It
looks like a thing born, not wrought! How beautiful
you are, my Violanta! He has done well—brave
Biondo!”

“It is like me, yet fairer.”

“I wish it were done! There is a look on the lips
that is like a sensation I feel sometimes on my own I
almost feel as if I should straighten and grow fair as it
advances. Would it not be a blessed thing, Violanta?”

“I love you as you are, dear Giulio!”

“But I thirst to be loved like other men! I would
pass in the street and not read pity in all eyes. I
would go out like Biondo, and be greeted in the street
with `Mio bravo!' `Mio bello!' I would be beloved
by some one that is not my sister, Violanta! I would
have my share—only my share—of human joy and regard.
I were better dead than be a hunchback. I
would die, but for you—to-night—yes, to night.”

With a convulsive hand he pulled aside the curtain,
and sent a long, earnest look up to the stars. Violanta
had never before heard him give words to his melancholy
thoughts, and she felt appalled and silenced by
the inexpressible poignancy of his tones, and the feverish,
tearless, broken-heartedness of his whole manner.
As she took his hand, there was a noise in the street
below, and presently after, a hurried step was heard
on the stair, and Amieri rushed in, seized the rapier
which hung over his bed and without observing Violanta,
was flying again from the apartment.

“Biondo!” cried a voice which would have stayed
him were next breath to have been drawn in heaven.

“Contessa Violanta!”

“What is it, Amieri? Where go you now?”
asked Giulio, gliding between him and the door.
Biondo's cheek and brow had flushed when first arrested
by the voice of the countess, but now he stood
silent and with his eyes on the floor, pale as the statue
before him.

“A quarrel, Giulio!” he said at length.

“Biondo!” The countess sprang to his side with
the simple utterance of his name, and laid her small
hand on his arm. “You shall not go! You are dear
to us—dear to Guilio, Signor Amieri! If you love us
—if you care for Giulio—nay, I will say it—if you
care for me, dear Biondo, put not your life in peril.”

“Lady!” said the painter, bowing his head to his
wrist, and kissing lightly the small white fingers that
pressed it, “if I were to lose my life this hour, I should
bless with my dying lips the occasion which had drawn
from you the blessed words I hear. But the more
life is valuable to me by your regard, the more need
you should not delay me. I am waited for. Farewell!”

Disengaging himself from Violanta's grasp, quickly
but gently, Amieri darted through the door, and was
gone.

3. CHAPTER III.

Biondo had readily found a second in the first
artist he met on the Corso, and after a rapid walk
they turned on the lonely and lofty wall of the Palatine,
to look back on the ruins of the Forum.—At a
fountain side, not far beyond, he had agreed to find
his antagonist; but spite of the pressing business of
the hour, the wonderful and solemn beauty of the ruins
that lay steeped in moonlight at his feet, awoke, for
an instant, all of the painter in his soul.

“Is it not glorious, Lenzoni?” he said, pointing with
his rapier to the softened and tall columns that carried
their capitals among the stars.

“We have not come out to sketch, Amieri!” was
the reply.

“True, caro! but my fingers work as if the pencil
was in them, and I forget revenge while I see what I
shall never sketch again!”

Lenzoni struck his hand heavily on Amieri's shoulder,
as if to wake him from a dream, and looked close
into his face.

“If you fight in this spirit, Biondo —”

“I shall fight with heart and soul, Lenzoni; fear
me not! But when I saw, just now, the bel'effetto of
the sharp-drawn shadows under the arch of Constantine,
and felt instinctively for my pencil, something
told me, at my heart's ear—you will never trace line
again, Amieri!”

“Take heart, caro amico!”

My heart is ready, but my thoughts come fast!
What were my blood, I can not but reflect, added to
the ashes of Rome? We fight in the grave of an
empire! But you will not philosophize, dull Lenzoni!
Come on to the fountain!”

The moon shone soft on the greensward rim of the
neglected fountain that once sparkled through the
“gold palace” of Nero. The white edges of half-buried
marble peeped here and there from the grass,
and beneath the shadow of an ivy-covered and tottering
arch, sang a nightingale, the triumphant possessor
of life amid the forgotten ashes of the Cæsars.
Amieri listened to his song.

“You are prompt, signor!” said a gay-voiced gentleman,
turning the corner of the ruined wall, as
Biondo, still listening to the nightingale, fed his heart
with the last sweet words of Violanta.

“`Sempre pronto,' is a good device,” answered Lenzoni,
springing to his feet. “Will you fight, side to
the moon, signors, or shall we pull straws for the
choice of light?”

Amieri's antagonist was a strongly-made man of
thirty, costly in his dress, and of that class of features
eminently handsome, yet eminently displeasing. The
origin of the quarrel was an insulting observation,
coupled with the name of the young countess Cesarini,
which Biondo, who was standing in the shadow
of a wall, watching her window from the Corso, accidentally
overheard. A blow on the mouth was the
first warning the stranger received of a listener's
neighborhood, and after a momentary struggle they
exchanged cards, and separated to meet in an hour,
with swords, at the fountain, on the Palatine.

Amieri was accounted the best foil in the ateliers of
Rome, but his antagonist, the count Lamba Malaspina
had just returned from a long residence in France,
and had the reputation of an accomplished swordsman.
Amieri was slighter in person, but well-made, and
agile as a leopard; but when Lenzoni looked into the
cool eye of Malaspina, the spirit and fire which he
would have relied upon to ensure his friend success in
an ordinary contest, made him tremble now.

Count Lamba bowed, and they crossed swords.
Amieri had read his antagonist's character, like his
friend, and, at the instant their blades parted, he broke
down his guard with the quickness of lightning, and
wounded him in the face. Malaspina smiled as he
crossed his rapier again, and in the next moment
Amieri's sword flew high above his head, and the
count's was at his breast.

“Ask for your life, mio bravo!” he said, as calmly
as if they had met by chance in the Corso.

“A'morte! villain and slanderer!” cried Amieri, and
striking the sword from his bosom, he aimed a blow
at Malaspina, which by a backward movement, was
received on the point of the blade. Transfixed through
the wrist, Amieri struggled in vain against the superior
strength and coolness of his antagonist, and falling
on his knee, waited in silence for his death-blow,
Malaspina drew his sword gently as possible from the
wound, and recommending a tourniquet to Lenzoni
till a surgeon could be procured, washed the blood

from his face in the fountain, and descended into the
Forum, humming the air of a new song.

Faint with loss of blood, and with his left arm
around Lenzoni's neck, Biondo arrived at the surgeon's
door.

“Can you save his hand?” was the first eager question.

Amieri held up his bleeding wrist with difficulty,
and the surgeon shook his head as he laid the helpless
fingers in his palm. The tendon was entirely
parted.

“I may save the hand,” he said, “but he will never
use it more!”

Amieri gave his friend a look full of anguish, and
fell back insensible.

“Poor Biondo!” said Lenzoni, as he raised his
pallid head from the surgeon's pillow. “Death were
less misfortune than the loss of a hand like thine.
The foreboding was too true, alas! that thou never
wouldst use pencil more!”

4. CHAPTER IV.

The frowning battlements of St. Angelo were
brightened with the glare of lamps across the Tiber,
and the dark breast of the river was laced with bars of
gold like the coat of a captain of dragoons. Here and
there lay a boat in mid-stream, and while the drift of
the current was counteracted by an occasional stroke
at the oar, the boatman listened to the heavenly strains
of a waltz, dying and triumphing in alternate cadences
upon the breath of night and the pope's band. A
platform was built out over the river, forming a continuation
of the stage; the pit was floored over, and
all draped like a Persian harem; and thus began a
masquerade at the Teatro della Pergola at Rome,
which stands, if you will take the trouble to remember,
close by the bridge and castle of St. Angelo upon
the bank of the “yellow Tiber.”

The entrance of the crowd to the theatre was like a
procession intended to represent the things of which
we are commanded not to make graven images, nor
to bow down and worship them. There was the likeness
of everything in heaven above and on the earth
beneath, and in the waters under the earth. There
were angels, devils, serpents, birds, beasts, fishes, and
fair women—of which none except the last occasioned
much transgression of the commandment. Oddly
enough, the fishes waltzed—and so did the beasts and
fair women, the serpents and birds—pairing off as they
came within sound of the music, with a defiance of
natural antipathies which would have driven a naturalist
out of his senses.

A chariot drove up with the crest of the Cesarini
on the pannel, and out of it stepped rather a stiff figure
dressed as a wandering palmer, with serge and scallop-shells,
followed by a masked hunchback whose costume,
even to the threadbare spot on the ridge of his
deformity, was approved, by the loungers at the door,
in a general “bravissimo.” They entered the dressing-room,
and the cloak-keeper was not surprised
when the lump was withdrawn in the shape of a pad
of wool, and by the aid of a hood and petticoat of
black silk, the deformed was transformed into a slender
domino, undistinguished but for the grace and elasticity
of her movements. The attendant was surprised,
however, when having stepped aside to deposite
the pad given in charge to her, she turned and saw the
domino fitting from the room, but the hunchback
with his threadbare hump still leaning on the palmer's
arm!

“Santissima Vergine!” she exclaimed, pulling out
her cross and holding it between herself and Giulio,
“the fiend—the unholy fiend!”

Donna Bettina laughed under her palmer's cowl,
and drawing Giulio's arm within her own, they mingled
in the masquerade.

The old count Cesarini arrived a few minutes after
in one of the equipages of the Malaspina, accompanied
by a red-cross knight in a magnificent armor, his
sword-hilt sparkling with diamonds, and the bars of
his visor half-drawn, yet showing a beard of jetty and
curling black, and a mouth of the most regular, yet
unpleasant beauty. The upper part of his face was
quite concealed, yet the sneer on his lips promised a
cold and unfeeling eye.

“As a hunchback, did you say, count?”

“It was her whim,” answered Cesarini. “She has
given alms to a poor sculptor with that deformity till
her brain is filled with it. Pray the saints to affect
not your offspring, Lamba!”

Malaspina surveyed himself in the long mirror at
the entrance of the saloon, and smiled back incredulously
with his white teeth.

“I gave Bettina strict orders not to leave her side,”
said Cesarini. “You will find the old donna by her
palmer's dress. The saints speed your suite, Lamba!
I will await you in the card-room when the dance
wearies you!”

It was not for some time after the two old nobles
had affianced their children, that Cesarini had found
a fitting opportunity to break the subject to his daughter.
When he did so, somewhat to his embarrassment,
Violanta listened to it without surprise; and
after hearing all he had to say upon the honorable descent,
large fortune, and courtly accomplishments of
the young count Lamba, she only permitted her father
to entertain any future hope on the subject, upon
the condition, that, till she was of age, her proposed
husband should not even be presented to her. For
this victory over the most cherished ambition of the
old count, Violanta was indebted partly to the holy
see, and partly to some qualities in her own character,
of which her father knew the force. He was aware
with what readiness the cardinal would seize upon the
slightest wish she might express to take the veil and
bring her possessions into the church, and he was
sufficiently acquainted with the qualities of a Cesarini,
not to drive one of their daughters to extremity.

With some embarrassment the old count made a
clean breast to Malaspina and his son, and was exhausting
language in regrets, when he was relieved by
an assurance from Lamba that the difficulty increased
his zest for the match, and that, with Cesarini's permission,
he would find opportunities to encounter her
in her walks as a stranger, and make his way after the
romantic taste which he supposed was alone at the bottom
of her refusal. For success in this, Count Lamba
relied on his personal beauty and on that address in
the arts of adventure which is acquired by a residence
in France.

Since his duel, Amieri had been confined to his
bed with a violent fever, dangerously aggravated by
the peculiar nature of his calamity. The love of the
pencil was the breath of his soul, and in all his
thoughts of Violanta, it was only as a rival of the
lofty fame of painters who had made themselves the
companions of kings, that he could imagine himself a
claimant for her love. It seemed to him that his
nerveless hand had shut out heaven's entire light.

Giulio had watched by his friend with the faithful
fondness of a woman, and had gathered from his moments
of delirium, what Biondo had from delicacy to
Violanta never revealed to his second, Lenzoni—the
cause of his quarrel with Malaspina. Touched with
this chivalric tenderness toward his sister, the kind
Giulio hung over him with renewed affection, and
when, in subsequent ravings, the maimed youth betrayed
the real sting of his misfortune—the death of
his hopes of her love—the unambitious brother resolved

in his heart that if he could aid him by service
or sacrifice, by influence with Violanta, or by making
the almost desperate attempt to establish his own
claims to the name and fortunes of Cesarini, he would
devote himself to his service heart and soul.

During the confinement of Amieri to his room, the
young countess had of course been unable to visit her
brother, and as he scarce left the patient's side for a
moment, their intercourse for two or three weeks had
been entirely interrupted. On the first day the convalescent
youth could walk out, she had stolen to the
studio, and heard from Giulio the whole history of
the duel and its consequences. When he had finished
his narrative, Violanta sat, for a few minutes, lost in
thought.

“Giulio!” she said at last, with a gayety of tone
which startled him.

“Violanta!”

“Did you ever remark that our voices are very
much alike?”

“Biondo often says so.”

“And you have a foot almost as small as mine.”

“I have not the proportions of a man, Violanta!”

“Nay, brother, but I mean that—that—we might
pass for each other, if we were masked. Our height
is the same. Stand up, Giulio!”

“You would not mock me!” said the melancholy
youth with a faint smile, as he rose and set his bent
back beside the straight and lithe form of his sister.

“Listen to me, amato-bene!” she replied, sitting
down and drawing him upon her knee, after satisfying
himself that there was no perceptible difference in
their height. “Put your arm about my neck, and
love me while I tell you of my little plot.”

Giulio impressed a kiss upon the clear, alabaster
forehead of the beautiful girl, and looked into her face
inquiringly.

“There is to be a masquerade at La Pergola,” she
said—“a superb masquerade given to some prince!
And I am to go, Giulio mio!”

“Well,” answered the listener, sadly.

“But do you not seem surprised that I am permitted
to go! Shall I tell you the reason why papa gave me
permission?”

“If you will, Violanta!”

“A little bird told me that Malaspina means to be
there!”

“And you will go to meet him?”

“You shall go to meet him, and I —” she hesitated
and cast down the long dark fringes of her eyes;
“I will meet Biondo!”

Giulio clasped her passionately to his heart.

“I see!—I see!” he cried, springing upon his feet,
as he anticipated the remaining circumstances of the
plot. “We shall be two hunchbacks—they will little
think that we are two Cesarini. Dear, noble Violanta!
you will speak kindly to Biondo. Send Bettina for
the clothes, carina mia! You will get twin masks in
the Corso. And, Violanta?”

“What, Giulio?”

“Tell Bettina to breathe no word of our project to
Amieri! I will persuade him to go but to see you
dance! Poor Amieri! Dear, dear sister! Farewell
now! He will be returning, and you must be gone.
The Holy Virgin guard you, my Violanta!”

5. CHAPTER V.

The reader will long since have been reminded, by
the trouble we have to whip in and flog up the lagging
and straggling members of our story, of a flock of
sheep driven unwillingly to market. Indeed, to stop
at the confessional (as you will see many a shepherd
of the Campagna, on his way to Rome), this tale of
many tails should have been a novel. You have, in
brief, what should have been well elaborated, embarrassed
with difficulties, relieved by digressions, tipped
with a moral, and bound in two volumes, with a portrait
of the author. We are sacrificed to the spirit of the
age. The eighteenth century will be known in
hieroglyphics by a pair of shears. But, “to return to
our muttons.”

The masquerade went merrily on, or, if there were
more than one heavy heart among those light heels,
it was not known, as the newspapers say, “to our reporter.”
One, there certainly was—heavy as Etna on
the breast of Enceladus. Biondo Amieri sat in a corner
of the gallery, with his swathed hand laid before
him, pale as a new statue, and with a melancholy in
his soft dark eyes, which would have touched the executioners
of St. Agatha. Beside him sat Lenzoni,
who was content to forego the waltz for a while, and
keep company for pity with a friend who was too busy
with his own thoughts to give him word or look, but
still keeping sharp watch on the scene below, and
betraying by unconscious ejaculations how great a
penance he had put on himself for love and charity.

“Ah, la bella musica, Biondo!” he exclaimed
drumming on the banquette, while his friend held
up his wounded hand to escape the jar, “listen to that
waltz, that might set fire to the heels of St. Peter.
Corpo di Bacco! look at the dragon!—a dragon
making love to a nun, Amieri! Ah! San Pietro!
what a foot! Wait till I come, sweet goblin! That
a goblin's tail should follow such ankles, Biondo!
Eh! bellissimo! the knight! Look at the red-cross
knight, Amieri! and—what?—il gobbo, by St. Anthony!
and the red-cross takes him for a woman!
It is Giulio, for there never were two hunchbacks so
wondrous like! Ecco, Biondo!”

But there was little need to cry “look” to Amieri,
now. A hunchback, closely masked, and leaning on
a palmer's arm, made his way slowly through the
crowd, and a red-cross knight, a figure gallant enough
to have made a monarch jealous, whispered with courteous
and courtly deference in his ear.

“Cielo! it is she!” said Biondo, with mournful
earnestness, not heeding his companion, and laying
his hand upon his wounded wrist, as if the sight he
looked on gave it a fresher pang.

“She?” answered Lenzoni, with a laugh. “If it
is not he—not gobbo Giulio—I'll eat that cross-hilted
rapier! What `she' should it be, caro Biondo!”

“I tell thee,” said Amieri, “Giulio is asleep at the
foot of his marred statue! I left him but now, he is
too ill with his late vigils to be here—but his clothes,
I may tell thee, are borrowed by one who wears them
as you see. Look at the foot, Lenzoni!”

“A woman, true enough, if the shoe were all!
But I'll have a close look! Stay for me, dear Amieri!
I will return ere you have looked twice at them!”

And happy, with all his kind sympathy, to find a
fair apology to be free, Lenzoni leaped over the
benches and mingled in the crowd below.

Left alone, Biondo devoured with his eyes, every
movement of the group in which he was so deeply
interested, and the wound in his hand seemed burning
with a throb of fire, while he tried in vain to detect,
in the manner of the hunchback, that coyness
which might show, even through a mask, dislike or
indifference. There was even, he thought (and he
delivered his soul over to Apollyon in the usual phrase
for thinking such ill of such an angel); there was
even in her manner a levity and freedom of gesture
for which the mask she wore should be no apology.
He was about to curse Malaspina for having spared
his life at the fountain, when some one jumped lightly
over the seat, and took a place beside him. It was
a female in a black domino, closely masked, and
through the pasteboard mouth protruded the bit of

ivory, commonly held in the teeth by maskers, to disguise
the voice.

“Good evening to you, fair signor!”

“Good even to you, lady!”

“I am come to share your melancholy, signor!”

“I have none to give away unless you will take all;
and just now, my fair one, it is rather anger than sadness.
If it please you, leave me!”

“What if I am more pleased to stay!”

“Briefly, I would be alone. I am not of the festa.
I but look on, here!” And Biondo turned his shoulder
to the mask, and fixed his eyes again on the hunchback,
who having taken the knight's arm, was talking
and promenading most gayly between him and the
palmer.

“You have a wounded hand, signor!” resumed his
importunate neighbor.

“A useless one, lady. Would it were well!”

“Signor Melancholy, repine not against providence.
I that am no witch, tell thee that thou wilt yet bless
Heaven that this hand is disabled.”

Biondo turned and looked at the bold prophetess,
but her disguise was impenetrable.

“You are a masker, lady, and talk at random!”

“No! I will tell you the thought uppermost in your
bosom!”

“What is it?”

“A longing for a pluck at the red-cross, yonder!”

“True, by St. Mary!” said Biondo, starting energetically:
“but you read it in my eyes!”

“I have told you your first thought, signor, and I will
give you a hint of the second. Is there a likeness
between a nymph on canvass, and a gobbo in a mask!”

“Giulio!” exclaimed Amieri, turning suddenly
round; but the straight back of the domino met his
eye, and totally bewildered, he resumed his seat, and
slowly perused the stranger from head to foot.

“Talk to me as if my mask were the mirror of your
soul, Amieri,” said the soft but disguised voice.
“You need sympathy in this mood, and I am your
good angel. Is your wrist painful to-night?”

“I can not talk to you,” he said, turning to resume
his observation on the scene below. “If you know
the face beneath the gobbo's mask, you know the
heaven from which I am shut out. But I must gaze
on it still.”

“Is it a woman?”

“No! an angel.”

“And encourages the devil in the shape of Malaspina?
You miscall her, Amieri!”

The answer was interrupted by Lenzoni, who ran
into the gallery, but seeing his friend beset by a mask,
he gave him joy of his good luck, and refusing to interrupt
the tête-à-tête, disappeared with a laugh.

“Brave, kind Lenzoni!” said the stranger.

“Are you his good angel, too?” asked Amieri,
surprised again at the knowledge so mysteriously displayed.

“No! Little as you know of me you would not be
willing to share me with another! Say, Amieri! love
you the gobbo on the knight's arm?”

“You have read me riddles less clear, my fair incognita!
I would die at morn but to say farewell to
her at midnight!”

“Do you despair of her love?”

“Do I despair of excelling Raphael with these
unstrung fingers? I never hoped—but in my dreams,
lady!”

“Then hope, waking! For as there is truth in
heaven, Violanta Cesarini loves you, Biondo!”

Laying his left hand sternly on the arm of the
stranger, Biondo raised his helpless wrist and pointed
toward the hunchback, who, seated by the red-cross
knight, played with the diamond cross of his sword-hilt,
while the palmer turned his back, as if to give
two lovers an opportunity.

With a heart overwhelmed with bitterness, he then
turned to the mocking incognito. Violanta sat beside
him!

Holding her mask between her and the crowd below,
the maiden blush mounted to her temples, and
the long sweeping lashes dropped over her eyes their
veiling and silken fringes. And while the red-cross
knight still made eloquent love to Giulio in the saloon
of the masquerade, Amieri and Violanta, in their unobserved
retreat, exchanged vows, faint and choked
with emotion on his part, but all hope, encouragement,
and assurance, on hers

6. CHAPTER VI.

“Will you waltz?” said a merry-voiced domino
to the red-cross knight, a few minutes after tapping
him smartly on the corslet with her black fan, and
pointing, for the first step, a foot that would have
tempted St. Anthony.

“By the mass!” answered Malaspina, “I should
pay an ill compliment to the sweetest voice that ever
enchanted human ear” (and he bowed low to Guilio),
“did I refuse invitation so sweetly toned. Yet my
Milan armor is not light!”

“I have been refusing his entreaties this hour,”
said Giulio, as the knight whirled away with Violanta,
“for though I can chatter like a woman, I should
dance like myself. He is not unwilling to show his
grace to `his lady-mistress!' Ha! ha! It is worth
while to sham the petticoat for once to see what fools
men are when they would please a woman! But,
close mask! Here comes the count Cesarini!”

“How fares my child?” said the old noble, leaning
over the masked Giulio, and touching with his lips the
glossy curl which concealed his temple. Are you
amused, idolo mio?”

A sudden tremor shot through the frame of poor
Giulio at the first endearment ever addressed to his
ear by the voice of a parent. The tears coursed down
under his mask, and for all answer to the question, he
could only lay his small soft hand in his father's and
return his pressure with irresistible strength and emotion.

“You are not well, my child!” he said, surprised at
not receiving an answer, “this ugly hump oppresses
you! Come to the air! So—lean on me, caro tesoro!
We will remove the hump presently. A Cesarini with
a hump indeed! Straighten yourself, my life, my
child, and you will breathe more freely!”

Thus entered, at one wound, daggers and balm into
the heart of the deformed youth; and while Bettina,
trembling in every limb, grew giddy with fear as they
made their way through the crowd, Giulio, relieved
by his tears, nerved himself with a strong effort and
prepared to play out his difficult part with calmness.

They threaded slowly the crowded maze of waltzers,
and, emerging from the close saloons, stood at last in
the gallery overhanging the river. The moon was
rising, and touched with a pale light the dark face of
the Tiber; the music came faintly out to the night
air, and a fresh west wind, cool and balmy from the
verdant campagna, breathed softly through the lattices.

Refusing a chair, Giulio leaned over the balustrade,
and the count stood by his side and encircled his waist
with his arm.

“I can not bear this deformity, my Violanta!” he
said, “you look so unlike my child with it; I need
this little hand to reassure me.”

“Should you know that was my hand, father?” said
Giulio.

“Should I not! I have told you a thousand times
that the nails of a Cesarini were marked—let me see

you again—by the arch of this rosy line! See, my
little Gobbo! They are like four pink fairy shells of
India laid over rolled leaves of roses. What was the
poet's name who said that of the old countess Giulia
Cesarini—la bella Giulia?”

“Should you have known my voice, father?” asked
Giulio, evading the question.

“Yes, my darling, why ask me?”

“But, father!—if I had been stolen by brigands
from the cradle—or you had not seen me for many,
many years—and I had met you to-night as a gobbo
and had spoken to you—only in sport—and had
called you `father, dear father!' should you have
known my voice? would you have owned me for a
Cesarini?”

“Instantly, my child!”

“But suppose my back had been broken—suppose
I were a gobbo—a deformed hunchback indeed, indeed—but
had still nails with a rosy arch, and the
same voice with which I speak to you now—and
pressed your hand thus—and loved you—would you
disown me, father?”

Giulio had raised himself while he spoke, and taken
his hand from his father's with a feeling that life or
death would be in his answer to that question. Cesarini
was disturbed, and did not reply for a moment.

“My child!” said he at last, “there is that in your
voice that would convince me you are mine, against
all the evidence in the universe. I can not imagine
the dreadful image you have conjured up, for the
Cesarini are beautiful and straight by long inheritance.
But if a monster spoke to me thus, I should love
him! Come to my bosom, my blessed child! and
dispel those wild dreams! Come, Violanta!”

Giulio attempted to raise his arms to his father's
neck, but the strength that had sustained him so well,
began to ebb from him. He uttered some indistinct
words, lifted his hand to his mask as if to remove it
for breath, and sunk slowly to the floor.

“It is your son, my lord!” cried Bettina. “Lift
him, Count Cesarini! Lift your child to the air before
he dies!”

She tore off his mask and disclosed to the thunder-stricken
count the face of the stranger! As he stood
pale and aghast, too much confounded for utterance or
action, the black domino tripped into the gallery, followed
by the red-cross knight, panting under his armor.

“Giulio! my own Giulio!” cried Violanta, throwing
herself on her knees beside her pale and insensible
brother, and covering his forehead and lips with kisses.
“Is he hurt? Is he dead? Water! for the love
of Heaven! Will no one bring water?” And tearing
away her own mask, she lifted him from the
ground, and, totally regardless of the astonished group
who looked on in petrified silence, fanned and caressed
him into life and consciousness.

“Come away, Violanta!” said her father at last, in
a hoarse voice.

“Never, my father! he is our own blood! How
feel you now, Giulio?”

“Better, sweet! where is Biondo?”

“Near by! But you shall go home with me.
Signor Malaspina, as you hope for my favor, lend my
brother an arm. Bettina, call up the chariot. Nay,
father! he goes home with me, or I with him, we
never part more!”

The red-cross knight gave Giulio an arm, and leaning
on him and Violanta, the poor youth made his
way to the carriage. Amieri sat at the door, and received
only a look as she passed, and helping Giulio
tenderly in, she gave the order to drive swiftly home,
and in a few minutes they entered together the palace
of their common inheritance.

It would be superfluous to dwell on the incidents
of the sequel, which were detailed in the Diario di
Roma, and are known to all the world. The hunchback
Count Cesarini has succeeded his father in his
title and estates, and is beloved of all Rome. The
next heir to the title is a son (now two years of age)
of the countess Amieri, who is to take the name of
Cesarini on coming to his majority. They live together
in the old palazzo, and all strangers go to see
their gallery of pictures, of which none are bad, except
some well intended but not very felicitously executed
compositions by one Lenzoni.

Count Lamba Malaspina is at present in exile, having
been convicted of drawing a sword on a disabled gentleman,
on his way from a masquerade at La Pergola.
His seclusion is rendered the more tolerable by the
loss of his teeth, which were rudely thrust down his
throat by this same Lenzoni (fated to have a finger in
every pie) in defence of the attacked party on that occasion.
You will hear Lenzoni's address (should you
wish to purchase a picture of his painting) at the Caffé
del Gioco, opposite the trattoria of La Bella Donna
in the Corso.

PASQUALI, THE TAILOR OF VENICE.

1. CHAPTER I.

Giannino Pasquali was a smart tailor some five
years ago, occupying a cool shop on one of the smaller
canals of Venice. Four pairs of suspenders, a print
of the fashions, and a motley row of the gay-colored
trousers worn by the gondoliers, ornamented the window
looking on the dark alley in the rear, and, attached
to the post of the water-gate on the canal side,
floated a small black gondola, the possession of which
afforded the same proof of prosperity of the Venetian
tailor which is expressed by a horse and buggy at the
door of a snip in London. The place-seeking traveller,
who, nez en l'air, threaded the tangled labyrinth
of alleys and bridges between the Rialto and St.
Mark's, would scarce have observed the humble shop-window
of Pasquali, yet he had a consequence on the
Piazza, and the lagoon had seen his triumphs as an
amateur gondolier. Giannino was some thirty years
of age, and his wife Fiametta, whom he had married
for her zecchini, was on the shady side of fifty.

If the truth must be told, Pasquali had discovered
that, even with a bag of sequins for eye-water, Fiametta
was not always the most lovely woman in
Venice. Just across the canal lived old Donna
Bentoccata, the nurse, whose daughter Turturilla
was like the blonde in Titian's picture of the Marys;
and to the charms of Turturilla, even seen through
the leaden light of poverty, the unhappy Pasquali was
far from insensible.

The festa of San Antonio arrived after a damp week
of November, and though you would suppose the atmosphere
of Venice not liable to any very sensible increase
of moisture, Fiametta, like people who live on
land, and who have the rheumatism as a punishment
for their age and ugliness, was usually confined to her
brazero of hot coals till it was dry enough on the Lido
for the peacocks to walk abroad. On this festa, however,
San Antonio being, as every one knows, the
patron saint of Padua, the Padovese were to come
down the Brenta, as was their custom, and cross over
the sea to Venice to assist in the celebration; and
Fiametta once more thought Pasquali loved her for
herself alone when he swore by his rosary that unless
she accompanied him to the festa in her wedding dress,
he would not turn an oar in the race, nor unfasten his
gondola from the door-post. Alas! Fiametta was

married in the summer solstice, and her dress was
permeable to the wind as a cobweb or gossamer. Is
it possible you could have remembered that, oh, wicked
Pasquali?

It was a day to puzzle a barometer; now bright,
now rainy; now gusty as a corridor in a novel, and
now calm as a lady after a fit of tears. Pasquali was
up early and waked Fiametta with a kiss, and, by way
of unusual tenderness, or by way of ensuring the wedding
dress, he chose to play dressing maid, and arranged
with his own hands her jupon and fezzoletta.
She emerged from her chamber looking like a slice
of orange-peel in a flower-bed, but smiling and nodding,
and vowing the day warm as April, and the sky
without a cloud. The widening circles of an occasional
drop of rain in the canal were nothing but the
bubbles bursting after a passing oar, or perhaps the last
flies of summer. Pasquali swore it was weather to win
down a peri.

As Fiametta stepped into the gondola, she glanced
her eyes over the way and saw Turturilla, with a face
as sorrowful as the first day in Lent, seated at her
window. Her lap was full of work, and it was quite
evident that she had not thought of being at the festa.
Fiametta's heart was already warm, and it melted quite
at the view of the poor girl's loneliness.

“Pasquali mio!” she said, in a deprecating tone,
as if she were uncertain how the proposition would
be received, “I think we could make room for poor
Turturilla!”

A gleam of pleasure, unobserved by the confiding
sposa, tinted faintly the smooth olive cheek of Pasquali.

“Eh! diavolo!” he replied, so loud that the sorrowful
seamstress heard, and hung down her head
still lower; “must you take pity on every cheese-paring
of a regezza who happens to have no lover!
Have reason! have reason! The gondola is narrower
than your brave heart my fine Fiametta!” And away
he pushed from the water-steps.

Turturilla rose from her work and stepped out upon
the rusty gratings of the balcony to see them depart.
Pasquali stopped to grease the notch of his oar, and
between that and some other embarrassments, the
gondola was suffered to float directly under her
window. The compliment to the generous nature
of Fiametta, was, meantime, working, and as she was
compelled to exchange a word or two with Turturilla
while her husband was getting his oar into the socket,
it resulted (as he thought it very probable it would),
in the good wife's renewing her proposition, and making
a point of sending the deserted girl for her holyday
bonnet. Pasquali swore through all the saints
and angels by the time she had made herself ready,
though she was but five minutes gone from the window,
and telling Fiametta in her ear that she must consider
it as the purest obligation, he backed up to the steps of
old Donna Bentoccata, helped in her daughter with a
better grace than could have been expected, and with
one or two short and deep strokes, put forth into the
grand canal with the velocity of a lance-fly.

A gleam of sunshine lay along the bosom of the
broad silver sheet, and it was beautiful to see the
gondolas with their gay colored freights all hastening
in one direction, and with swift track to the festa.
Far up and down they rippled the smooth water, here
gliding out from below a palace-arch, there from a narrow
and unseen canal, the steel beaks curved and flashing,
the water glancing on the oar-blades, the curtains
moving, and the fair women of Venice leaning out and
touching hands as they neared neighbor or acquaintance
in the close-pressing gondolas. It was a beautiful
sight, indeed, and three of the happiest hearts in
that swift gliding company were in Pasquali's gondola,
though the bliss of Fiametta, I am compelled to say,
was entirely owing to the bandage with which love is
so significantly painted. Ah! poor Fiametta!

From the Lido, from Fusina, from under the Bridge
of Sighs, from all quarters of the lagoon, and from all
points of the floating city of Venice, streamed the flying
gondolas to the Giudecca. The narrow walk
along the edge of the long and close-built island was
thronged with booths and promenaders, and the black
barks by hundreds bumped their steel noses against
the pier as the agitated water rose and fell beneath
them. The gondolas intended for the race pulled
slowly up and down, close to the shore, exhibiting
their fairy-like forms and their sinewy and gayly dressed
gondoliers to the crowds on land and water; the
bands of music, attached to different parties, played
here and there a strain; the criers of holy pictures
and gingerbread made the air vocal with their lisping
and soft Venetian; and all over the scene, as if it was
the light of the sky or some other light as blessed but
less common, shone glowing black eyes, black as
night, and sparkling as the stars on night's darkest
bosom. He who thinks lightly of Italian beauty
should have seen the women of Venice on St. Antonio's
day '32, or on any or at any hour when their
pulses are beating high and their eyes alight—for they
are neither one nor the other always. The women
of that fair clime, to borrow the simile of Moore, are
like lava-streams, only bright when the volcano kindles.
Their long lashes cover lustreless eyes, and their blood
shows dully through the cheek in common and listless
hours. The calm, the passive tranquillity in which
the delicate graces of colder climes find their element
are to them a torpor of the heart when the blood scarce
seems to flow. They are wakeful only to the energetic,
the passionate, the joyous movements of the
soul.

Pasquali stood erect in the prow of his gondola, and
stole furtive glances at Turturilla while he pointed
away with his finger to call off the sharp eyes of Fiametta;
but Fiametta was happy and unsuspicious.
Only when now and then the wind came up chilly
from the Adriatic, the poor wife shivered and sat
closer to Turturilla, who in her plainer but thicker
dress, to say nothing of younger blood, sat more comfortably
on the black cushion and thought less about
the weather. An occasional drop of rain fell on the
nose of poor Fiametta, but if she did not believe it was
the spray from Pasquali's oar, she at least did her best
to believe so; and the perfidious tailor swore by St.
Anthony that the clouds were as dry as her eyelashes.
I never was very certain that Turturilla was not in the
secret of this day's treacheries.

The broad centre of the Giudecca was cleared, and
the boats took their places for the race. Pasquali
ranged his gondola with those of the other spectators,
and telling Fiametta in her ear that he should sit on
the other side of Turturilla as a punishment for their
malapropos invitation, he placed himself on the small
remainder of the deep cushion on the farthest side
from his now penitent spouse, and while he complained
almost rudely of the narrowness of his seat, he
made free to hold on by Turturilla's waist which no
doubt made the poor girl's mind more easy on the
subject of her intrusion.

Who won and who lost the race, what was the
device of each flag, and what bets and bright eyes
changed owners by the result, no personage of this
tale knew or cared, save Fiametta. She looked on
eagerly. Pasquali and Turturilla, as the French say,
trouvaient autress chats á frotter.

After the decision of the grand race, St. Antonio
being the protector, more particularly of the humble
(“patron of pigs” in the saints' calendar), the seignoria
and the grand people generally, pulled away for St.
Mark's, leaving the crowded Giudecca to the people.
Pasquali, as was said before, had some renown as a
gondolier. Something what would be called in other
countries a scrub race, followed the departure of the

winning boat, and several gondolas, holding each one
person only, took their places for the start. The
tailor laid his hand on his bosom, and, with the smile
that had first stirred the heart and the sequins of
Fiametta, begged her to gratify his love by acting as
his make-weight while he turned an oar for the pig of
St. Antonio. The prize roasted to an appetizing
crisp, stood high on a platter in front of one of the
booths on shore, and Fiametta smacked her lips,
overcame her tears with an effort, and told him, in
accents as little as possible like the creak of a dry oar
in the socket, that he might set Turturilla on shore.

A word in her ear, as he handed her over the gunwale,
reconciled Bonna Bentoccata's fair daughter to
this conjugal partiality, and stripping his manly figure
of its upper disguises, Pasquali straightened out his
fine limbs, and drove his bark to the line in a style that
drew applause from even his competitors. As a mark
of their approbation, they offered him an outside place
where his fair dame would be less likely to be spattered
with the contending oars; but he was too generous
to take advantage of this considerate offer, and crying
out as he took the middle, “ben pronto, signori!” gave
Fiametta a confident look and stood like a hound in
the leash.

Off they went at the tap of the drum, poor Fiametta
holding her breath and clinging to the sides of the
gondola, and Pasquali developing skill and muscle—
not for Fiametta's eyes only. It was a short, sharp
race, without jockeying or management, all fair play
and main strength, and the tailor shot past the end of
the Giudecca a boat's length ahead. Much more applauded
than a king at a coronation or a lord-mayor
taking water at London stairs, he slowly made his way
back to Turturilla, and it was only when that demure
damsel rather shrunk from sitting down in two inches
of water, that he discovered how the disturbed element
had quite filled up the hollow of the leather cushion
and made a peninsula of the uncomplaining Fiametta.
She was as well watered, as a favorite plant in a flower-garden.

“Pasquali mio!” she said in an imploring tone,
holding up the skirt of her dress with the tips of her
thumb and finger, “could you just take me home
while I change my dress.”

“One moment, Fiametta cara! they are bringing
the pig!”

The crisp and succulent trophy was solemnly placed
in the prow of the victor's gondola, and preparation
was made to convoy him home with a triumphant
procession. A half hour before it was in order to
move—an hour in first making the circuit of the grand
canal, and an hour more in drinking a glass and exchanging
good wishes at the stairs of the Rialto, and
Donna Fiametta had sat too long by two hours and a
half with scarce a dry thread on her body. What
afterward befell will be seen in the more melancholy
sequel.

2. CHAPTER II.

The hospital of St. Girolamo is attached to the
convent of that name, standing on one of the canals
which put forth on the seaward side of Venice. It is
a long building, with its low windows and latticed
doors opening almost on the level of the sea, and the
wards for the sick are large and well aired; but, except
when the breeze is stirring, impregnated with a
saline dampness from the canal, which, as Pasquali
remarked, was good for the rheumatism. It was not
so good for the patient.

The loving wife Fiametta grew worse and worse
after the fatal festa, and the fit of rheumatism brought
on by the slightness of her dress and the spattering he
had given her in the race, had increased by the end of
the week, to a rheumatic fever. Fiametta was old
and tough, however, and struggled manfully (woman
as she was) with the disease, but being one night a
little out of her head, her loving husband took occasion
to shudder at the responsibility of taking care of
her, and jumping into his gondola, he pulled across to
St. Girolamo and bespoke a dry bed and a sister of
charity, and brought back the pious father Gasparo
and a comfortable litter. Fiametta was dozing when
they arrived, and the kind-hearted tailor willing to
spare her the pain of knowing that she was on her way
to the hospital for the poor, set out some meat and
wine for the monk, and sending over for Turturilla
and the nurse to mix the salad, they sat and ate away
the hours till the poor dame's brain should be wandering
again.

Toward night the monk and Dame Bentoccata were
comfortably dozing with each other's support (having
fallen asleep at table), and Pasquali with a kiss from
Turturilla, stole softly up stairs. Fiametta was mutturing
unquietly, and working her fingers in the palms
of her hands, and on feeling her pulse he found the
fever was at its height. She took him, besides, for the
prize pig of the festa, for he knew her wits were fairly
abroad. He crept down stairs, gave the monk a strong
cup of coffee to get him well awake, and, between the
four of them, they got poor Fiametta into the litter,
drew the curtains tenderly around and deposited her
safely in the bottom of the gondola.

Lightly and smoothly the winner of the pig pulled
away with his loving burden, and gliding around the
slimy corners of the palaces, and hushing his voice
as he cried out “right!” or “left!” to guard the
coming gondoliers of his vicinity, he arrived, like a
thought of love to a maid's mind in sleep, at the door
of St. Girolamo. The abbess looked out and said,
“Benedicite!” and the monk stood firm on his brown
sandals to receive the precious burden from the arms
of Pasquali. Believing firmly that it was equivalent
to committing her to the hand of St. Peter, and of
course abandoning all hope of seeing her again in
this world, the soft-hearted tailor wiped his eye as
she was lifted in, and receiving a promise from Father
Gasparo that he would communicate faithfully the
state of her soul in the last agony, he pulled, with
lightened gondola and heart, back to his widower's
home and Turturilla.

For many good reasons, and apparent as good, it is
a rule in the hospital of St. Girolamo, that the sick
under its holy charge shall receive the visit of neither
friend nor relative. If they recover, they return to
their abodes to earn candles for the altar of the restoring
saint. If they die, their clothes are sent to their
surviving friends, and this affecting memorial, besides
communicating the melancholy news, affords all the
particulars and all the consolation they are supposed
to require upon the subject of their loss.

Waiting patiently for Father Gasparo and his bundle,
Pasquali and Turturilla gave themselves up to hopes,
which on the tailor's part (we fear it must be admitted),
augured a quicker recovery from grief than might be
credited to an elastic constitution. The fortune of
poor Fiametta was sufficient to warrant Pasquali in
neglecting his shop to celebrate every festa that the
church acknowledged, and for ten days subsequent to
the committal of his wife to the tender mercies of St.
Girolamo, five days out of seven was the proportion of
merry holydays with his new betrothed.

They were sitting one evening in the open piazza
of St. Mark, in front of the most thronged café of
that matchless square. The moon was resting her
silver disk on the point of the Campanile, and the
shadows of thousands of gay Venetians fell on the
immense pavement below, clear and sharply drawn
as a black cartoon. The four extending sides of the

square lay half in shades half in light, with their
innumerable columns and balconies and sculptured
work, and, frowning down on all, in broken light and
shadow, stood the arabesque structure of St. Mark's
itself dizzying the eyes with its mosaics and confused
devices, and thrusting forth the heads of her four
golden-collared steeds into the moonbeams, till they
looked on that black relief, like the horses of Pluto
issuing from the gates of Hades. In the centre of
the square stood a tall woman, singing, in rich contralto,
and old song of the better days of Venice; and
against one of the pillars, Polichinello had backed
his wooden stage, and beat about his puppets with
an energy worthy of old Dandolo and his helmeted
galley-men. To those who wore not the spectacles
of grief or discontent, the square of St. Mark's that
night was like some cozening tableau. I never saw
anything so gay.

Everybody who has “swam in a gondola,” knows
how the cafés of Venice thrust out their checkered
awnings over a portion of the square, and filled the
shaded space below with chairs and marble tables.
In a corner of the shadow thus afforded, with ice and
coffee on a small round slab between them, and the
flat pavement of the public promenade under their feet,
sat our two lovers. With neither hoof nor wheel to
drown or interrupt their voices (as in cities whose
streets are stones, not water), they murmured their
hopes and wishes in the softest language under the
sun, and with the sotto voce acquired by all the inhabitants
of this noiseless city. Turturilla had taken ice to
cool her and coffee to take off the chill of her ice, and
a biechiere del perfetto amore to reconcile these two
antagonists in her digestion, when the slippers of a
monk glided by, and in a moment the recognised
Father Gasparo made a third in the shadowy corner.
The expected bundle was under his arm, and he was
on his way to Pasquali's dwelling. Having assured
the disconsolate tailor that she had unction and wafer
as became the wife of a citizen of Venice like himself,
he took heart and grew content that she was in heaven.
It was a better place, and Turturilla for so little as a
gold ring, would supply her place in his bosom.

The moon was but a brief week older when Pasquali
and Turturilla stood in the church of our lady
of grief, and Father Gasparo within the palings of the
altar. She was as fair a maid as ever bloomed in the
garden of beauty beloved of Titian, and the tailor was
nearer worth nine men to look at, than the fraction of
a man considered usually the exponent of his profession.
Away mumbled the good father upon the matrimonial
service, thinking of the old wine and rich
pastries that were holding their sweetness under cork
and crust only till he had done his ceremony, and
quicker by some seconds than had ever been achieved
before by priest or bishop, he arrived at the putting on
of the ring. His hand was tremulous, and (oh unlucky
omen!) he dropped it within the gilden fence
of the chancel. The choristers were called, and
Father Gasparo dropped on his knees to look for it—
but if the devil had not spirited it away, there was no
other reason why that search was in vain. Short of
an errand to the goldsmith on the Rialto, it was at
last determined the wedding could not proceed. Father
Gasparo went to hide his impatience within the
restiary, and Turturilla knelt down to pray against the
arts of Sathanas. Before they had settled severally
to their pious occupations, Pasquali was half way to
the Rialto.

Half an hour elapsed, and then instead of the light
grazing of a swift-sped gondola along the church
stairs, the splash of a sullen oar was heard, and Pasquali
stepped on shore. They had hastened to the
door to receive him—monk, choristers and bride—
and to their surprise and bewilderment, he waited to
hand out a woman in a strange dress, who seemed dis
posed, bridegroom as he was, to make him wait her
leisure. Her clothes fitted her ill, and she carried in
her hand a pair of shoes, it was easy to see were never
made for her. She rose at last, and as her face became
visible, down dropped Turturilla and the pious
father, and motionless and aghast stood the simple
Pasquali. Fiametta stepped on shore!

In broken words Pasquali explained. He had
landed at the stairs near the fish market, and with two
leaps reaching the top, sped off past the buttress in
the direction of the goldsmith, when his course was
arrested by encountering at full speed, the person of
an old woman. Hastily raising her up, he recognised
his wife, who, fully recovered, but without a gondola,
was threading the zig-zag alleys on foot, on her way
to her own domicil. After the first astonishment was
over, her dress explained the error of the good father
and the extent of his own misfortune. The clothes
had been hung between the bed of Fiametta and that
of a smaller woman who had been long languishing
of a consumption. She died, and Fiametta's clothes,
brought to the door by mistake, were recognised by
Father Gasparo and taken to Pasquali.

The holy monk, chop-fallen and sad, took his solitary
way to the convent, but with the first step he felt
something slide into the heel of his sandal. He sat
down on the church stairs and absolved the devil from
theft—it was the lost ring, which had fallen upon his
foot and saved Pasquali the tailor from the pains of
bigamy.

THE BANDIT OF AUSTRIA.

—La Bruyere.

Fast and rebukingly rang the matins from the
towers of St. Etienne, and, though unused to wake,
much less to pray, at that sunrise hour, I felt a compunctious
visiting as my postillion cracked his whip
and flew past the sacred threshold, over which tripped,
as if every stroke would be the last, the tardy yet
light-footed mass-goers of Vienna. It was my first
entrance into this Paris of Germany, and I stretched
my head from the window to look back with delight
upon the fretted gothic pile, so cumbered with ornament,
yet so light and airy—so vast in the area it
covered, yet so crusted in every part with delicate device
and sculpture. On sped the merciless postillion,
and the next moment we rattled into the court-yard of
the hotel.

I gave my keys to the most faithful and intelligent
of valets—an English boy of sixteen, promoted from
white top-boots and a cabriolet in London, to a plain
coat and almost his master's friendship upon the continent—and
leaving him to find rooms to my taste,
make them habitable and get breakfast, I retraced my
way to ramble a half hour through the aisles of St.
Etienne.

The lingering bell was still beating its quick and
monotonous call, and just before me, followed closely
by a female domestic, a veiled and slightly-formed lady
stepped over the threshold of the cathedral, and took
her way by the least-frequented aisle to the altar. I
gave a passing glance of admiration at the small ankle
and dainty chaussure betrayed by her hurried step;
but remembering with a slight effort that I had sought

the church with at least some feeble intentions of religious
worship, I crossed the broad nave to the opposite
side, and was soon leaning against a pillar, and
listening to the heavenly-breathed music of the voluntary,
with a confused, but I trust, not altogether unprofitable
feeling of devotion.

The peasants, with their baskets standing beside
them on the tesselated floor, counted their beads upon
their knees; the murmur, low-toned and universal,
rose through the vibrations of the anthem with an accompaniment
upon which I have always thought the
great composers calculated, no less than upon the
echoing arches, and atmosphere thickened with incense;
and the deep-throated priest muttered his
Latin prayer, more edifying to me that it left my
thoughts to their own impulses of worship, undemeaned
by the irresistible littleness of criticism, and
unchecked by the narrow bounds of another's comprehension
of the Divinity. Without being in any
leaning of opinion a son of the church of Rome, I
confess my soul gets nearer to heaven; and my religious
tendencies, dulled and diverted from improvement
by a life of travel and excitement, are more
gratefully ministered to, in the indistinct worship of
the catholics. It seems to me that no man can pray
well through the hesitating lips of another. The
inflated style or rhetorical efforts of many, addressing
Heaven with difficult grammar and embarrassed
logic—and the weary monotony of others, repeating
without interest and apparently without
thought, the most solemn appeals to the mercy of
the Almighty—are imperfect vehicles, at least to
me, for a fresh and apprehensive spirit of worship.
The religious architecture of the catholics favors the
solitary prayer of the heart. The vast floor of the
cathedral, the far receding aisles with their solemn
light, to which penetrate only the indistinct murmur
of priest and penitent, and the affecting wail or triumphant
hallelujah of the choir; the touching attitudes
and utter abandonment of all around to their
unarticulated devotions; the freedom to enter and depart,
unquestioned and unnoticed, and the wonderful
impressiveness of the lofty architecture, clustered
with mementoes of death, and presenting through
every sense, some unobtrusive persuasion to the duties
of the spot—all these, I can not but think, are aids,
not unimportant to devout feeling, nor to the most
careless keeper of his creed and conscience, entirely
without salutary use.

My eye had been resting unconsciously on the
drapery of a statue, upon which the light of a painted
oriel window threw the mingled dyes of a peacock.
It was the figure of an apostle; and curious at last to
see whence the colors came which turned the saintly
garb into a mantle of shot silk, I strayed toward the
eastern window, and was studying the gorgeous dyes
and grotesque drawing of an art lost to the world, when
I discovered that I was in the neighborhood of the
pretty figure that had tripped into church so lightly
before me. She knelt near the altar, a little forward
from one of the heavy gothic pillars, with her maid
beside her, and, close behind knelt a gentleman, who
I observed at a second glance, was paying his devotions
exclusively to the small foot that peeped from
the edge of a snowy peignoir, the dishabille of which
was covered and betrayed by a lace-veil and mantle.
As I stood thinking what a graceful study her figure
would make for a sculptor, and what an irreligious impertinence
was visible in the air of the gentleman behind,
he leaned forward as if to prostrate his face upon
the pavement, and pressed his lips upon the slender
sole of (I have no doubt) the prettiest shoe in Vienna.
The natural aversion which all men have for each
other as strangers, was quickened in my bosom by a
feeling much more vivid, and said to be quite as natural—resentment
at any demonstration by another of
preference for the woman one has admired. If I have
not mistaken human nature, there is a sort of imaginary
property which every man feels in a woman he has
looked upon with even the most transient regard,
which is violated malgré lui, by a similar feeling on
the part of any other individual.

Not sure that the gentleman, who had so suddenly
become my enemy, had any warrant in the lady's connivance
for his attentions, I retreated to the shelter
of the pillar, and was presently satisfied that he was as
much a stranger to her as myself, and was decidedly
annoying her. A slight advance in her position to
escape his contact gave me the opportunity I wished,
and stepping upon the small space between the skirt
of her dress and the outpost of his ebony cane, I began
to study the architecture of the roof with great seriousness.
The gothic order, it is said, sprang from the
first attempts at constructing roofs from the branches
of trees, and is more perfect as it imitates more closely
the natural wilderness with its tall tree-shafts and interlacing
limbs. With my eyes half shut I endeavored
to transport myself to an American forest, and convert
the beams and angles of this vast gothic structure
into a primitive temple of pines, with the sunshine
coming brokingly through; but the delusion, otherwise
easy enough, was destroyed by the cherubs roosting
on the cornices, and the apostles and saints perched
as it were in the branches; and, spite of myself, I
thought it represented best Shylock's “wilderness of
monkeys.”

“S'il vous plait, monsieur!” said the gentleman,
pulling me by the pantaloons as I was losing myself
in these ill-timed speculations.

I looked down.

“Vous me gênez, monsiêur!”

“J'en suis bien sure, monsieur!”—and I resumed my
study of the roof, turning gradually round till my heels
were against his knees, and backing peu-à-peu.

It has often occurred to me as a defect in the system
of civil justice, that the time of the day at which a
crime is committed is never taken into account by judge
or jury. The humors of an empty stomach act so energetically
on the judgment and temper of a man, and
the same act appears so differently to him, fasting and
full, that I presume an inquiry into the subject would
prove that few offences against law and human pity
were ever perpetrated by villains who had dined. In
the adventure before us, the best-disposed reader will
condemn my interference in a stranger's gallantries as
impertinent and quixotic. Later in the day, I should
as soon have thought of ordering water-cresses for the
gentleman's dindon aux truffes.

I was calling myself to account something after the
above fashion, the gentleman in question standing near
me, drumming on his boot with his ebony cane, when
the lady rose, threw her rosary over her neck, and
turning to me with a graceful smile, courtesied slightly
and disappeared. I was struck so exceedingly with
the intense melancholy in the expression of the face—
an expression so totally at variance with the elasticity
of the step, and the promise of the slight and riante
figure and air—that I quite forgot I had drawn a
quarrel on myself, and was loitering slowly toward the
door of the church, when the gentleman I had offended
touched me on the arm, and in the politest manner
possible requested myaddress. We exchanged cards,
and I hastened home to breakfast, musing on the
facility with which the current of our daily life may be
thickened. I fancied I had a new love on my hands,
and I was tolerably sure of a quarrel—yet I had been
in Vienna but fifty-four minutes by Bréguet.

My breakfast was waiting, and Percie had found
time to turn a comb through his brown curls, and get
the dust off his gaiters. He was tall for his age, and
(unaware to himself, poor boy!) every word and action
reflected upon the handsome seamstress in Cranbourne

Alley, whom he called his mother—for he showed
blood. His father was a gentleman, or there is no
truth in thorough-breeding. As I looked at him, a
difficulty vanished from my mind.

“Percie!”

“Sir!”

“Get into your best suit of plain clothes, and if a
foreigner calls on me this morning, come in and forget
that you are a valet. I have occasion to use you for
a gentleman.”

“Yes, sir!”

“My pistols are clean, I presume?”

“Yes, sir!”

I wrote a letter or two, read a volume of “Ni
jamais, ni toujours,” and about noon a captain of
dragoons was announced, bringing me the expected
cartel. Percie came in, treading gingerly in a pair
of tight French boots, but behaving exceedingly like
a gentleman, and after a little conversation, managed on
his part strictly according to my instructions, he took
his came and walked off with his friend of the steel
scabbard to become acquainted with the ground.

The gray of a heavenly summer morning was
brightening above the chimneys of the fair city of
Vienna as I stepped into a caléche, followed by Percie.
With a special passport (procured by the politeness
of my antagonist) we made our sortie at that early
hour from the gates, and crossing the glacis, took the
road to the banks of the Danube. It was but a mile
from the city, and the mist lay low on the face of the
troubled current of the river, while the towers and
pinnacles of the silent capital cut the sky in clear and
sharp lines—as if tranquillity and purity, those immaculate
hand-maidens of nature, had tired of innocence
and their mistress—and slept in town!

I had taken some coffee and broiled chicken before
starting, and (removed thus from the category of the
savage unbreakfasted) I was in one of those moods of
universal benevolence, said (erroneously) to be produced
only by a clean breast and milk diet. I could
have wept, with Wordsworth, over a violet.

My opponent was there with his draggon, and Percie,
cool and gentlemanlike, like a man who “had
served,” looked on at the loading of the pistols, and
gave me mine with a very firm hand, but with a moisture
and anxiety in his eye which I have remembered
since. We were to fire any time after the counting
of three, and having no malice against my friend,
whose impertinence to a lady was (really!) no business
of mine. I intended, of course, to throw away my fire.

The first word was given and I looked at my antagonist,
who, I saw at a glance, had no such gentle
intentions. He was taking deliberate aim, and in the
four seconds that elapsed between the remaining two
words, I changed my mind (one thinks so fast when
his leisure is limited!) at least twenty times whether I
should fire at him or no.

“Trois!” pronounced the dragoon, from a throat
like a trombone, and with the last thought, up flew
my hand, and as my pistol discharged in the air, my
friend's shot struck upon a large turquoise which I
wore on my third finger, and drew a slight pencil-line
across my left organ of causality. It was welf aimed
for my temple, but the ring had saved me.

Friend of those days, regretted and unforgotten!
days of the deepest sadness and heart-heaviness, yet
somehow dearer in remembrance than all the joys I
can recall—there was a talisman in thy parting gift thou
didst not think would be, one day, my angel!

“You will be able to wear your hair over the scar,
sir!” said Percie, coming up and putting his finger on
the wound.

“Monsieur!” said the dragoon, advancing to Percie
after a short conference with his principal, and
looking twice as fierce as before.

“Monsieur!” said Percie, wheeling short upon him.

“My friend is not satisfied. He presumes that
monsieur l' Anglais wishes to trifle with him.”

“Then let your friend take care of himself,” said I,
roused by the unprovoked murderousness of the feeling.
Load the pistols, Percie! In my country,” I
continued, turning to the dragoon, “a man is disgraced
who fires twice upon an antagonist who has spared
him! Your friend is a ruffian, and the consequences
be on his own hand!”

We took our places and the first word was given,
when a man dashed between us on horseback at top-speed.
The violence with which he drew rein brought
his horse upon his haunches, and he was on his feet in
half a breath.

The idea that he was an officer of the police was
immediately dissipated by his step and air. Of the
finest athletic form I had ever seen, agile, graceful,
and dressed pointedly well, there was still an indefinable
something about him, either above or below
a gentleman—which, it was difficult to say. His
features were slight, fair, and, except a brow too
heavy for them and a lip of singular and (I thought)
habitual defiance, almost feminine. His hair grew
long and had been soigné, probably by more caressing
fingers than his own, and his rather silken mustache
was glossy with some odorent oil. As he
approached me and took my hand, with a clasp like a
smith's vice, I observed these circumstances, and could
have drawn his portrait without ever seeing him again
—so marked a man was he, in every point and feature.

His business was soon explained. He was the
husband of the lady my opponent had insulted, and
that pleasant gentleman could, of course, make no objection
to his taking my place. I officiated as tèmoin,
and, as they took their position, I anticipated for the
draggon and myself the trouble of carrying them both
off the field. I had a practical assurance of my friend's
pistol, and the stranger was not the looking man to
miss a hair's breadth of his aim.

The word was not fairly off my lips when both
pistols cracked like one discharge, and high into the
air sprang my revengeful opponent, and dropped like
a clod upon the grass. The stranger opened his
waistcoat, thrust his fore-finger into a wound in his
left breast, and slightly closing his teeth, pushed a
bullet through, which had been checked by the bone
and lodged in the flesh near the skin. The surgeon
who had accompanied my unfortunate antagonist, left
the body, which he had found beyond his art, and
readily gave his assistance to stanch the blood of my
preserver; and jumping with the latter into my calêche,
I put Percie upon the stranger's horse, and we drove
back to Vienna.

The market people were crowding in at the gate,
the merry peasant girls glanced at us with their blue,
German eyes, the shopmen laid out their gay wares
to the street, and the tide of life ran on as busily and
as gayly, though a drop had been extracted, within
scarce ten minutes, from its quickest vein. I felt a
revulsion at my heart, and grew faint and sick. Is a
human life—is my life worth anything, even a thought,
to my fellow-creatures? was the bitter question forced
upon my soul. How icily and keenly the unconscious
indifference of the world penetrates to the nerve and
marrow of him who suddenly realizes it.

We dashed through the kohl-market, and driving
into the porte-cochére of a dark-looking house in one
of the cross streets of that quarter, were ushered into
apartments of extraordinary magnificence.

2. CHAPTER II.

“What do you want, Percie?”

He was walking into the room with all the deliberate
politeness of a “gold-stick-in-waiting.”

“I beg pardon, sir, but I was asked to walk up, and
I was not sure whether I was still a gentleman.”

It instantly struck me that it might seem rather
infra dig to the chevalier (my new friend had thus
announced himself) to have had a valet for a second, and
as he immediately after entered the room, having stepped
below to give orders about his horse, I presented
Percie as a gentleman and my friend, and resumed my
observation of the singular apartment in which I found
myself.

The effect on coming first in at the door, was that
of a small and lofty chapel, where the light struggled
in from an unseen aperture above the altar. There
were two windows at the farther extremity, but curtained
so heavily, and set so deeply into the wall, that
I did not at first observe the six richly-carpeted steps
which led up to them, nor the luxuriously cushioned
seats on either side of the casement, within the niche,
for those who would mount thither for fresh air. The
walls were tapestried, but very ragged and dusty, and
the floor, through there were several thicknesses of the
heavy-piled, small, Turkey carpets laid loosely over it,
was irregular and sunken. The corners were heaped
with various articles I could not at first distinguish.
My host fortunately gave me an opportunity to gratify
my curiosity by frequent absences under the house-keeper's
apology (odd I thought for a chevalier) of
expediting breakfast; and with the aid of Percie, I
tumbled his chattels about with all necessary freedom.

“That,” said the chevalier, entering, as I turned out
the face of a fresh colored picture to the light, “is a
capo d'opera of a French artist, who painted it, as you
may say, by the gleam of the dagger.”

“A cool light, as a painter would say!”

“He was a cool fellow, sir, and would have handled
a broadsword better than a pencil.”

Percie stepped up while I was examining the exquisite
finish of the picture, and asked very respectfully
if the chevalier would give him the particulars
of the story. It was a full-length portrait of a young
and excessively beautiful girl, of apparently scarce
fifteen, entirely nude, and lying upon a black velvet
couch, with one foot laid on a broken diadem, and her
right hand pressing a wild rose to her heart.

“It was the fancy, sir,” continued the chevalier,
“of a bold outlaw, who loved the only daughter of a
noble of Hungary.”

“Is this the lady, sir?” asked Percie, in his politiest
valet French.

The chevalier hesitated a moment and looked over
his shoulder as if he might be overheard.

“This is she—copied to the minutest shadow of a
hair! He was a bold outlaw, gentlemen, and had
plucked the lady from her father's castle with his
own hand.”

“Against her will?” interrupted Percie, rather
energetically.

“No!” scowled the chevalier, as if his lowering
brows had articulated the word, “by her own will and
connivance; for she loved him.”

Percie drew a long breath, and looked more closely
at the taper limbs and the exquisitely-chiselled
features of the face, which was turned over the
shoulder with a look of timid shame inimitably true
to nature.

“She loved him,” continued our fierce narrator,
who, I almost began to suspect was the outlaw himself,
by the energy with which he enforced the tale,
“and after a moonlight ramble or two with him in the
forest of her father's domain, she fled and became his
wife. You are admiring the hair, sir! It is as
luxuriant and glossy now!”

“If you please, sir, it is the villain himself!” said
Percie in an undertone.

“Bref,” continued the chevalier, either not understanding
English or not heeding the interruption, “an
adventurous painter, one day hunting the picturesque
in the neighborhood of the outlaw's retreat, surprised
this fair creature bathing in one of the loneliest mountain-streams
in Hungary. His art appeared to be his
first passion, for he hid himself in the trees and drew
her as she stood dallying on the margin of the small
pool in which the brook loitered; and so busy was he
with his own work, or so soft was the mountain moss
under its master's tread, that the outlaw looked, unperceived
the while, over his shoulder, and fell in love
anew with the admirable counterfeit. She looked
like a naiad, sir, new-born of a dew-drop and a violet.”

I nodded an assent to Percie.

“The sketch, excellent as it seemed, was still un
finished when the painter, enamored as he might
well be, of these sweet limbs, glossy with the shining
water, flug down his book and sprang toward her
The outlaw—”

“Struck him to the heart? Oh Heaven!” said
Percie, covering his eyes as if he could see the
murder.

“No! he was a student of the human soul, and deferred
his vengeance.”

Percie looked up and listened, like a man whose
wits were perfectly abroad.

“He was not unwilling since her person had been
seen irretrievably, to know how his shrinking Iminild
(this was her name of melody) would have escaped,
had she been found alone.”

“The painter”—prompted Percie, impatient for
the sequel.

“The painter flew over rock and brake, and sprang
into the pool in which she was half immersed; and
my brave gril—”

He hesitated, for he had betrayed himself.

“Ay—she is mine, gentlemen; and I am Yvain,
the outlaw—my brave wife, I say with a single bound
leaped to the rock where her dress was concealed,
seized a short spear which she used as a staff in her
climbing rambles, and struck it through his shoulder
as he pursued!”

“Bravely done!” I thought aloud.

“Was it not? I came up the next moment, but the
spear stuck in his shoulder, and I could not fall upon
a wounded man. We carried him to our ruined
castle in the mountains, and while my Iminild cured
her own wound, I sent for his paints, and let him
finish his bold beginning with a difference of my own.
You see the picture.”

“Was the painter's love cured with his wound!”
I asked with a smile.

“No, by St. Stephen! He grew ten times more
enamored as he drew. He was as fierce as a welk
hawk, and as willing to quarrel for his prey. I could
have driven my dagger to his heart a hundred times
for the mutter of his lips and the flash of his dark eyes
as he fed his gaze upon her: but he finished the picture,
and I gave him a fair field. He chose the broadsword,
and hacked away at me like a man.”

“And the result”—I asked.

“I am here!” replied the outlaw significantly.

Percie leaped upon the carpeted steps, and pushed
back the window for fresh air; and, for myself, I scarce
knew how to act under the roof of a man, who, though
he confessed himself an outlaw and almost an assassin,
was bound to me by the ties of our own critical adventure,
and had confided his condition to me with so
ready a reliance on my honor. In the midst of my
dilemma, while I was pretending to occupy myself
with examining a silver mounted and peaked saddle,
which I found behind the picture in the corner, a deep
and unpleasant voice announced breakfast.

“Wolfen is rather a grim chamberlain,” said the
chevalier, bowing with the grace and smile of the
softest courtier, “but he will usher you to breakfast
and I am sure you stand in need of it. For myself,

I could eat worse meat than my grandfather with this
appetite.”

Percie gave me a look of inquiry and uneasiness
when he found we were to follow the rough domestic
through the dark corridors of the old house, and
through his underbred politeness of insisting on following
his host, I could see that he was unwilling to
trust the outlaw with the rear; but a massive and
broad door, flung open at the end of the passage, let
in upon us presently the cool and fresh air from a
northern exposure, and, stepping forward quickly to
the threshold, we beheld a picture which changed the
current and color of our thoughts.

In the bottom of an excavated area, which, as
well as I could judge, must be forty feet below the
level of the court, lay a small and antique garden,
brilliant with the most costly flowers, and cooled by
a fountain gushing from under the foot of a nymph in
marble. The spreading tops of six alleys of lindens
reaching to the level of the street, formed a living
roof to the grot-like depths of the garden, and concealed
it from all view but that of persons decending
like ourselves from the house; while, instead of
walls to shut in this paradise in the heart of a city,
sharply-inclined slopes of green-sward leaned in
under the branches of the lindens, and completed the
fairy-like enclosure of shade and verdure. As we
descended the rose-laden steps and terraces, I observed,
that, of the immense profusion of flowers in
the area below, nearly all were costly exotics, whose
pots were set in the earth, and probably brought
away from the sunshine only when in high bloom;
and as we rounded the spreading basin of the fountain
which broke the perspective of the alley, a table,
which had been concealed by the marble nymph,
and a skilfully-disposed array of rhododendrons lay
just beneath our feet, while a lady, whose features
I could not fail to remember, smiled up from her
couch of crimson cushions and gave us a graceful
welcome.

The same taste for depth which had been shown
in the room sunk below the windows, and the garden
below the street, was continued in the kind of marble
divan in which we were to breakfast. Four steps
descending from the pavement of the alley introduced
us into a circular excavation, whose marble seats,
covered with cushions of crimson silk, surrounded a
table laden with the substantial viands which are
common to a morning meal in Vienna, and smoking
with coffee, whose aroma (Percie agreed with me)
exceeded even the tube roses in grateful sweetness.
Between the cushions at our backs and the pavements
just above the level of our heads, were piled circles
of thickly-flowering geraniums, which enclosed
us in rings of perfume, and, pouring from the cup of
a sculptured flower, held in the hand of the nymph,
a smooth stream like a silver rod supplied a channel
grooved around the centre of the marble table, through
which the bright water, with the impulse of its descent,
made a swift revolution and disappeared.

It was a scene to give memory the lie if it could
have recalled the bloodshed of the morning. The
green light flecked down through the lofty roof upon
the glittering and singing water; a nightingale in a
recess of the garden, gurgled through his wires as if
intoxicated with the congenial twilight of his prison;
the heavy-cupped flowers of the tropics nodded with
the rain of the fountain spray; the distant roll of
wheels in the neighboring streets came with an
assurance of reality to this dream-land, yet softened
by the unreverberating roof and an air crowded with
flowers and trembling with the pulsations of falling
water; the lowering forehead of the outlaw cleared
up like a sky of June after a thunder-shower, and his
voice grew gentle and caressing; and the delicate
mistress of all (by birth, Countess Iminild), a crea
ture as slight as Psyche, and as white as the lotus,
whose flexile stem served her for a bracelet, welcomed
us with her soft voice and humid eyes, and
saddened by the event of the morning, looked on her
husband with a tenderness that would have assoiled
her of her sins against delicacy, I thought even in the
mind of an angel.

“We live, like truth, here, in the bottom of a well,”
said the countess to Percie, as she gave him his coffee;
“how do you like my whimsical abode, sir?”

“I should like any place where you were, Miladi!”
he answered, blushing and stealing his eyes across at
me, either in doubt how far he might presume upon
his new character, or suspecting that I should smile
at his gallantry.

The outlaw glanced his eyes over the curling head
of the boy, with one of those just perceptible smiles
which developed, occasionally, in great beauty, the
gentle spirit in his bosom; and Iminild, pleased with
the compliment or the blush, threw off her pensive
mood, and assumed in an instant, the coquettish air
which had attracted my notice as she stepped before
me into the church of St. Etienne.

“You had hard work,” she said, “to keep up
with your long-legged draggon yesterday, Monsieur
Percie!”

“Miladi?” he answered, with a look of inquiry.

“Oh, I was behind you, and my legs are not much
longer than yours. How he strided away with his
long spurs, to be sure! Do you remember a smart
young gentleman with a blue cap that walked past
you on the glacis occasionally.”

“Ah, with laced boots, like a Hungarian?”

“I see I am ever to be known by my foot,” said
she, putting it out upon the cushion, and turning it
about with naive admiration; “that poor captain of
the imperial guard paid dearly for kissing it, holy
virgin!” and she crossed herself and was silent for a
moment.

“If I might take the freedom, chevalier,” I said,
“pray how came I indebted to your assistance in this
affair?”

“Iminild has partly explained,” he answered.
“She knew, of course, that a challenge would follow
your interference, and it was very easy to know that
an officer of some sort would take a message in the
course of the morning to Le Prince Charles, the only
hotel frequented by the English d'un certain gens.

I bowed to the compliment.

“Arriving in Vienna late last night, I found Iminild
(who had followed this gentleman and the dragoon
unperceived) in possession of all the circumstances;
and, but for oversleeping myself this morning, I should
have saved your turquoise, mon seigneur!”

“Have you lived here long, Miladi?” asked Percie,
looking up into her eyes with an unconscious
passionateness which made the countess Iminild color
slightly, and bite her lips to retain an expression of
pleasure.

“I have not lived long, anywhere, sir!” she answered
half archly, “but I played in this garden when not
much older than you!”

Percie looked confused and pulled up his cravat.

“This house said the chevalier, willing apparently
to spare the countess a painful narration, “is the
property of the old count Ildefert, my wife's father.
He has long ceased to visit Vienna, and has left it, he
supposes, to a stranger. When Iminild tires of the
forest, she comes here, and I join her if I can find
time. I must to the saddle to-morrow, by St. Jacques!”

The word had scarce died on his lips when the door
by which we had entered the garden was flung open,
and the measured tread of gens-d'armes resounded in
the corridor. The first man who stood out upon the
upper terrace was the draggon who had been second
to my opponent.

“Traiter and villain!” muttered the outlaw between
his teeth, “I thought I remembered you! It is that
false comrade Berthold, Iminild!”

Yvain had risen from the table as if but to stretch
his legs; and drawing a pistol from his bosom he
cocked it as he quietly stepped up into the garden.
I saw at a glance that there was no chance for his
escape, and laid my hand on his arm.

“Chevalier!” I said, “surrender and trust to opportunity.
It is madness to resist here.”

“Yvain!” said Iminild, in a low voice, flying to his
side as she comprehended his intention, “leave me
that vengeance, and try the parapet. I'll kill him before
he sleeps! Quick! Ah, Heavens!”

The dragoon had turned at that instant to fly, and
with suddenness of thought the pistol flashed, and
the traitor dropped heavily on the terrace. Springing
like a cat up the slope of green sward, Yvain stood
an instant on the summit of the wall, hesitating where
to jump beyond, and in the next moment rolled heavily
back, stabbed through and through with a bayonet
from the opposite side.

The blood left the lips and cheek of Iminild; but
without a word or a sign of terror, she sprang to the
side of the fallen outlaw and lifted him up against
her knee. The gens-d'armes rushed to the spot, but
the subaltern who commanded them yielded instantly
to my wish that they should retire to the skirts of the
garden; and, sending Percie to the fountain for water,
we bathed the lips and forehead of the dying man and
set him against the sloping parapet. With one hand
grasping the dress of Iminild and the other clasped in
mine, he struggled to speak.

“The cross!” he gasped, “the cross!”

Iminild drew a silver crucifix from her bosom.

“Swear on this,” he said, putting it to my lips and
speaking with terrible energy, “swear that you will
protect her while you live!”

“I swear!”

He shut our hands together convulsively, gasped
slightly as if he would speak again, and, in another
instant sunk, relaxed and lifeless, on the shoulder of
Iminild.

3. CHAPTER III.

The fate and history of Yvain, the outlaw, became,
on the following day, the talk of Vienna. He had
been long known as the daring horse-stealer of Hungary;
and, though it was not doubted that his sway
was exercised over plunderers of every description,
even pirates upon the high seas, his own courage and
address were principally applied to robbery of the well-guarded
steeds of the emperor and his nobles. It was
said that there was not a horse in the dommions of
Austria whose qualities and breeding were not known
to him, nor one he cared to have which was not in his
concealed stables in the forest. The most incredible
stories were told of his horsemanship. He would so
disguise the animal on which he rode, either by forcing
him into new paces or by other arts only known to himself,
that be would make the tour of the Glacis on the
emperor's best horse, newly stolen, unsuspected even
by the royal grooms. The roadsters of his own troop
were the best steeds bred on the banks of the Danube;
but, though always in the highest condition, they
would never have been suspected to be worth a florin
till put upon their mettle. The extraordinary escapes
of his band from the vigilant and well-mounted gens-d'armes
were thus accounted for; and, in most of the
villages in Austria, the people, on some market-day
or other, had seen a body of apparently ill-mounted
peasants suddenly start off with the speed of lightning
at the appearance of gens-d'armes, and, flying over
fence and wall, draw a straight course for the mountains,
distancing their pursuers with the ease of swallows
on the wing.

After the death of Yvain in the garden, I had been
forced with Percie into a carriage, standing in the
court, and accompanied by a guard, driven to my
hotel, where I was given to understand that I was to
remain under arrest till further orders. A sentinel at
the door forbade all ingress or egress except to the
people of the house: a circumstance which was only
distressing to me, as it precluded my inquiries after
the countress Iminild, of whom common rumor, the
servants informed me, made not the slightest mention.

Four days after this, on the relief of the guard at
noon, a subaltern, entered my room and informed me
that I was at liberty. I instantly made preparations to
go out, and was drawing on my boots, when Percie,
who had not yet recovered from the shock of his
arrest, entered in some alarm, and informed me that
one of the royal grooms was in the court with a letter,
which he would deliver only into my own hands. He
had orders beside, he said, not to leave his saddle.
Wondering what new leaf of my destiny was to turn
over, I went below and received a letter, with apparently
the imperial seal, from a well-dressed groom in the
livery of the emperor's brother, the king of Hungary.
He was mounted on a compact, yet fine-limbed horse,
and both horse and rider were as still as if cut in
marble.

I returned to my room and broke the seal. It was
a letter from Iminild, and the bold bearer was an out-law
disguised! She had heard that I was to be released
that morning, and desired me to ride out on the
road to Gratz. In a postscript she begged I would
request Monsieur Percie to accompany me.

I sent for horses, and, wishing to be left to my own
thoughts, ordered Percie to fall behind, and rode
slowly out of the southern gate. If the countess
Iminild were safe, I had enough of the adventure for
my taste. My oath bound me to protect this wild and
unsexed woman, but farther intercourse with a hand
of outlaws, or farther peril of my head for no reason
that either a court of gallantry or of justice would recognise,
was beyond my usual programme of pleasant
events. The road was a gentle ascent, and with the
bridle on the neck of my hack I paced thoughtfully on,
till, at a slight turn, we stood at a fair height above
Vienna.

“It is a beautiful city, sir,” said Percie, riding up.

“How the deuce could she have escaped?” said I,
thinking aloud.

“Has she escaped, sir? Ah, thank Heaven!” exclaimed
the passionate boy, the tears rushing to his
eyes.

“Why, Percie!” I said with a tone of surprise
which called a blush into his face, “have you really
found leisure to fall in love amid all this imbroglio?”

“I beg pardon, my dear master!” he replied in a
confused voice, “I scarce know what it is to fall in
love; but I would die for Miladi Iminild.”

“Not at all an impossible sequel, my poor boy!
But wheel about and touch your hat, for her comes
some one of the royal family!”

A horseman was approaching at an easy canter,
over the broad and unfenced plain of table-land which
overlooks Vienna on the south, attended by six mounted
servants in the white kerseymere frocks, braided
with the two-headed black eagle, which distinguish the
members of the imperial household.

The carriages on the road stopped while he passed,
the foot-passengers touched their caps, and, as he came
near, I perceived that he was slight and young, but
rode with a confidence and a grace not often attained.
His horse had the subdued, half-fiery action of an
Arab, and Percie nearly dropped from his saddle when
the young horseman suddenly drove in his spurs,

and with almost a single vault stood motionless before
us.

“Monsieur!”

“Madame la Contesse!”

I was uncertain how to receive her, and took refuge
in civility. Whether she would be overwhelmed with
the recollection of Yvain's death, or had put away the
thought altogether with her masculine firmness, was
a dilemma for which the eccentric contradictions of
her character left me no probable solution. Motioning
with her hand after saluting me, two of the party
rode back and forward in different directions, as if
patrolling; and giving a look between a tear and a
smile at Percie, she placed her hand in mine, and
shook off her sadness with a strong effort.

“You did not expect so large a suite with your
protégée,” she said, rather gayly, after a moment.

“Do I understand that you come now to put yourself
under my protection?” I asked in reply.

“Soon, but not now, nor here. I have a hundred
men at the foot of Mount Semering, whose future
fate, in some important respects, none can decide but
myself. Yvain was always prepared for this, and
everything is en train. I come now but to appoint a
place of meeting. Quick! my patrole comes in, and
some one approaches whom we must fly. Can you
await me at Gratz?”

“I can and will!”

She put her slight hand to my lips, waved a kiss
at Percie, and away with the speed of wind, flew her
swift Arab over the plain, followed by the six horsemen,
every one of whom seemed part of the animal
that carried him—he rode so admirably.

The slight figure of Iminild in the close fitting dress
of a Hungarian page, her jacket open and her beautiful
limbs perfectly defined, silver fringes at her ankles
and waist, and a row of silver buttons gallonné down
to the instep, her bright, flashing eyes, her short curls
escaping from her cap and tangled over her left temple,
with the gold tassel, dirk and pistol at her belt and
spurs upon her heels—it was an apparition I had
scarce time to realize, but it seemed painted on my
eyes. The cloud of dust which followed their rapid
flight faded away as I watched it, but I saw her still.

“Shall I ride back and order post-horses, sir!”
asked Percie standing up in his stirrups.

“No; but you may order dinner at six. And Percie!”
he was riding away with a gloomy air; “you
may go to the police and get our passports for Venice.”

“By the way of Gratz, sir!”

“Yes, simpleton!”

There is a difference between sixteen and twenty-six,
I thought to myself, as the handsome boy flogged
his horse into a gallop. The time is gone when I
could love without reason. Yet I remember when a
feather, stuck jauntily into a bonnet, would have made
any woman a princess; and in those days, Heaven help
us! I should have loved this woman more for her
galliardize than ten times a prettier one with all the
virtues of Dorcas. For which of my sins am I made
guardian to a robber's wife, I wonder!

The heavy German postillions, with their cocked
hats and yellow coats, got us over the ground after a
manner, and toward the sunset of a summer's evening
the tall castle of Gratz, perched on a pinnacle of rock
in the centre of a vast plain, stood up boldly against
the reddening sky. The rich fields of Styria were
ripening to an early harvest the people sat at their
doors with the look of household happiness for which
the inhabitants of these “despotic countries” are so
remarkable; and now and then on the road the rattling
of steel scabbards drew my attention from a book or a
revery, and the mounted troops, so perpetually seen
on the broad roads of Austria, lingered slowly past
with their dust and baggage-trains.

It had been a long summer's day, and, contrary to
my usual practice, I had not mounted, even for half a
post, to Percie's side in the rumble. Out of humor
with fate for having drawn me into very embarrassing
circumstances—out of humor with myself for the
quixotic step which had first brought it on me—and a
little of out humor with Percie (perhaps from an unacknowledged
jealousy of Iminild's marked preference
for the varlet), I left him to toast alone in the sun,
while I tried to forget him and myself in “Le Marquis
de Pontangos.” What a very clever book it is, by
the way!

The pompous sergeant of the guard performed his
office upon my passport at the gate—giving me at
least a kreutzer worth of his majesty's black sand in
exchange for my florin and my English curse (I said
before I was out of temper, and he was half an hour
writing his abominable name), and leaving my carriage
and Percie to find their way together to the hotel, I
dismounted at the foot of a steep street and made my
way to the battlements of the castle, in search of scenery
and equanimity.

Ah! what a glorious landscape! The precipitous
rock on which the old fortress is built seems dropped
by the Titans in the midst of a plain, extending miles
in every direction, with scarce another pebble. Close
at its base run the populous streets, coiling about it
like serpents around a pyramid, and away from the
walls of the city spread the broad fields, laden, as far
as the eye can see, with tribute for the emperor! The
tall castle, with its armed crest, looks down among the
reapers.

“You have not lost your friend and lover, yet you
are melancholy!” said a voice behind me, that I was
scarce startled to hear.

“Is it you, Iminild?”

“Scarce the same—for Iminild was never before so
sad. It is something in the sunset. Come away while
the woman keeps down in me, and let us stroll through
the Plaza, where the band is playing. Do you love
military music?”

I looked at the costume and figure of the extraordinary
creature before I ventured with her on a
public promenade. She was dressed like one of the
travelling apprentices of Germany, with cap and bleuzer.
and had assumed the air of the craft with a success
absolutely beyond detection. I gave her my arm and
we sauntered through the crowd, listening to the
thrilling music of one of the finest bands in Germany.
The privileged character and free manners of the
wandering craftsmen whose dress she had adopted,
I was well aware, reconciled, in the eyes of the inhabitants,
the marked contrast between our conditions
in life. They would simply have said, if they had
made a remark at all, that the Englishman was bon
enfant and the craftsman bon camarade.

“You had better look at me, messieurs!” said the
dusty apprentice, as two officers of the regiment passed
and gave me the usual strangers' stare; “I am better
worth your while by exactly five thousand florins.”

“And pray how?” I asked.

“That price is set on my head!”

“Heavens! and you walk here!”

“They kept you longer than usual with your pass
port, I presume?”

“At the gate? yes.”

“I came in with my pack at the time. They have
orders to examine all travellers and passports with
unusual care, these sharp officials! But I shall get
out as easily as I got in!”

“My dear countess!” I said, in a tone of serious
remonstrance, “do not trifle with the vigilance of the
best police in Europe! I am your guardian, and you
owe my advice some respect. Come away from the
square and let us talk of it in earnest.”

“Wise seignior! suffer me to remind you how

deftly I slipped through the fingers of these gentry
after our tragedy in Vienna, and pay my opinion some
respect! It was my vanity that brought me, with
my lackeys, to meet you à la prince royale so near
Vienna; and hence this alarm in the police, for I was
seen and suspected. I have shown myself to you
in my favorite character, however, and have done
with such measures. You shall see me on the road
to-morrow, safe as the heart in your bosom. Where
is Monsieur Percie!”

“At the hotel. But stay! can I trust you with
yourself?”

“Yes, and dull company, too! A revoir!”

And whistling the popular air of the craft she had
assumed, the countess Iminild struck her long staff
on the pavement, and with the gait of a tired and
habitual pedestrian, disappeared by a narrow street
leading under the precipitory battlements of the
castle.

Percie made his appearance with a cup of coffee
the following morning, and, with the intention of posting
a couple of leagues to breakfast, I hurried through
my toilet and was in my carriage an hour after sunrise.
The postillion was in his saddle and only waited
for Percie, who, upon inquiry, was nowhere to be
found. I sat fifteen minutes, and just as I was beginning
to be alarmed he ran into the large court of
the hotel, and, crying out to the postillions that all
was right, jumped into his place with an agility,
it struck me, very unlike his usual gentlemanlike
deliberation. Determining to take advantage of the
first up-hill to catechize him upon his matutinal rambles,
I read the signs along the street till we pulled
up at the gate.

Iminild's communication had prepared me for unusual
delay with my passport, and I was not surprised
when the officer, in returning it to me, requested me
as a matter of form, to declare, upon my honor, that
the servant behind my carriage was an Englishman,
and the person mentioned in my passport.

“Foi d'honneur, monsieur,” I said, placing my hand
politely on my heart, and off trotted the postillion,
while the captain of the guard, flattered with my civility,
touched his foraging-cap, and sent me a German
blessing through his mustache.

It was a divine morning, and the fresh and dewy
air took me back many a year, to the days when I
was more familiar with the hour. We had a long
trajet across the plain, and unlooping an antivibration
tablet, for the invention of which my ingenuity took
great credit to itself (suspended on caoutchouc cords
from the roof of the carriage—and deserving of a
patent I trust you will allow!) I let off my poetical
vein in the following beginning to what might have
turned out, but for the interruption, a very edifying
copy of verses:—

A foot thrust into my carriage-window rudely broke
the thread of these delicate musings. The postillion
was on a walk, and before I could get my wits back
from their wool-gathering, the countess Iminild, in
Percie's clothes, sat laughing on the cushion beside
me.

“On what bird's back has your ladyship descended
from the clouds?” I asked with unfeigned astonishment.

“The same bird has brought us both down—c'est
à dire, if you are not still en l'air,” she added, looking
from my scrawled tablets to my perplexed face.

“Are you really and really the countess Iminild?”
I asked with a smile, looking down at the trowsered
feet and loose-fitting boots of the pseudo-valet.

“Yes, indeed! but I leave it to you to swear,
`foi d'honneur,' that a born countess is an English
valet!” And she laughed so long and merrily that
the postillion looked over his yellow epaulets in astonishment.

“Kind, generous Percie!” she said, changing her
tone presently to one of great feeling, “I would scarce
believe him last night when he informed me, as as inducement
to leave him behind, that he was only a servant!
You never told me this. But he is a gentleman,
in every feeling as well as in every feature, and,
by Heavens! he shall be a menial no longer!”

This speech, begun with much tenderness, rose,
toward the close, to the violence of passion; and
folding her arms with an air of defiance, the lady-outlaw
threw herself back in the carriage.

“I have no objection,” I said, after a short silence,
“that Percie should set up for a gentleman. Nature
has certainly done her part to make him one; but till
you can give him means and education, the coat which
you wear, with such a grace, is his safest shell. `Ants
live safely till they have gotten wings, says the old
proverb.”

The blowing of the postillion's horn interrupted the
argument, and, a moment after, we were rolled up,
with German leisure, to the door of the small inn where
I had designed to breakfast. Thinking it probable
that the people of the house, in so small a village,
would be too simple to make any dangerous comments
upon our appearance, I politely handed the countess
out of the carriage, and ordered plates for two.

“It is scarce worth while,” she said, as she heard
the order, “for I shall remain at the door on the look
out. The eil-waggen, for Trieste, which was to leave
Gratz an hour after us, will be soon here, and (if my
friends have served me well), Percie in it. St. Mary
speed him safely!”

She strode away to a small hillock to look out for the
lumbering diligence, with a gait that was no stranger
to, “doublet and hose.” It soon came on with its
usual tempest of whip-cracking and bugle-blasts, and
nearly overturning a fat burgher, who would have
proffered the assistance of his hand, out jumped a
petticoat, which I saw, at a glance, gave a very embarrassed
motion to gentleman Percie.

“This young lady,” said the countess, dragging
the striding and unwilling damsel into the little parlot
where I was breakfasting “travels under the charge of
a deaf old brazier, who has been requested to protect her
modesty as far as Laybach. Make a courtesy, child!”

“I beg pardon, sir!” began Percie.

“Hush, hush! no English! Walls have ears, and
your voice is rather gruffish, mademoiselle. Show
me your passport? Cunegunda Von Krakenpate,
eighteen years of age, blue eyes, nose and chin middling,
etc! There is the conductor's horn! Allez
vite! We meet at Laybach. Adieu, charmante
femme! Adieu!”

And with the sort of caricatured elegance which
women always assume in their imitations of our sex,
Countess Iminild, in frock-coat and trowsers, helped
into the diligence, in hood and petticoat, my “tiger
from Cranbourne-alley!

4. CHAPTER IV.

Spite of remonstrance on my part, the imperative
countess, who had asserted her authority more than
once on our way to Laybach, insisted on the company
of Miss Cunegunda Von Krakenpate, in an
evening walk around the town. Fearing that Percie's
masculine stride would betray him, and objecting
to lend myself to a farce with my valet, I opposed
the freak as long as it was courteous—but it was not
the first time I had learned that a spoiled woman
would have her own way, and too vexed to laugh, I
soberly promenaded the broad avenue of the capital
of Styria, with a valet en demoiselle, and a dame en
valet.

It was but a few hours hence to Planina, and Iminild,
who seemed to fear no risk out of a walled city, waited
on Percie to the carriage the following morning, and
in a few hours we drove up to the rural inn of this
small town of Littorale.

I had been too much out of humor to ask the
countess, a second time, what errand she could have
in so rustic a neighborhood. She had made a mystery
of it, merely requiring of me that I should defer all
arrangements for the future, as far as she was concerned,
till we had visited a spot in Littorale, upon which
her fate in many respects depended. After twenty
fruitless conjectures, I abandoned myself to the course
of circumstances, reserving only the determination, if it
should prove a haunt of Yvain's troop, to separate at
once from her company and await her at Trieste.

Our dinner was preparing at the inn, and tired of
the embarrassment Percie exhibited in my presence,
I walked out and seated myself under an immense
linden, that every traveller will remember, standing
in the centre of the motley and indescribable clusters
of buildings, which serve the innkeeper and blacksmith
of Planina for barns, forge, dwelling, and out-houses.
The tree seems the father of the village.
It was a hot afternoon, and I was compelled to dispute
the shade with a congregation of cows and double-jointed
posthorses; but finding a seat high up on the
root, at last I busied myself with gazing down the
road, and conjecturing what a cloud of dust might contain,
which, in an opposite direction from that which
we had come, was slowly creeping onward to the inn.

Four roughly-harnessed horses at length, appeared,
with their traces tied over their backs—one of them
ridden by a man in a farmer's frock. They struck me
at first as fine specimens of the German breed of
draught-horses, with their shaggy fetlocks and long
manes; but while they drank at the trough which
stood in the shade of the linden, the low tone in which
the man checked their greedy thirst, and the instant
obedience of the well-trained animals, awakened at
once my suspicions that we were to become better
acquainted. A more narrow examination convinced
me that, covered with dust and disguised with coarse
harness as they were, they were four horses of such
bone and condition, as were never seen in a farmer's
stables. The rider dismounted at the inn door, and
very much to the embarrassment of my suppositions,
the landlord, a stupid and heavy Boniface, greeted him
with the familiarity of an old acquaintance, and in answer,
apparently to an inquiry, pointed to my carriage,
and led him into the house.

“Monsieur Tyrell,” said Iminild, coming out to
me a moment after, “a servant whom I had expected
has arrived with my horses, and with your consent,
they shall be put to your carriage immediately.”

“To take us where?”

“To our place of destination.”

“Too indefinite, by half, countess! Listen to me!
I have very sufficient reason to fancy that, in leaving
the post-road to Trieste, I shall leave the society of
honest men. You and your `minions of the moon'
may be very pleasant, but you are not very safe companions;
and having really a wish to die quietly in
my bed—”

The countess burst into a laugh.

“If you will have the character of the gentleman
you are about to visit from the landlord here—”

“Who is one of your ruffians himself, I'll be sworn!”

“No, on my honor! A more innocent old beer-guzzler
lives not on the road. But I will tell you
thus much, and it ought to content you. Ten miles
to the west of this dwells a country gentleman, who,
the landlord will certify, is as honest a subject of his
gracious majesty as is to be found in Littorale. He
lives freely on his means, and entertains strangers
occasionally from all countries, for he has been a
traveller in his time. You are invited to pass a day
or two with this Mynheer Krakenpate (who, by the
way, has no objection to pass for father of the young
lady you have so kindly brought from Laybach),
and he has sent you his horses, like a generous host,
to bring you to his door. More seriously, this was
a retreat of Yvain's, where he would live quietly and
play bon citoyen, and you have nothing earthly to fear
in accompanying me thither. And now will you wait
and eat the greasy meal you have ordered, or will you
save your appetite for la fortune de pot at Mynheer
Krakenpate's, and get presently on the road!”

I yielded rather to the seducing smile and captivating
beauty of my pleasing ward, than to any confidence
in the honesty of Mynheer Krakenpate; and
Percie being once more ceremoniously handed in, we
left the village at the sober trot becoming the fat steeds
of a landholder. A quarter of a mile of this was quite
sufficient for Iminild, and a word to the postillion
changed, like a metamorphosis, both horse and rider.
From a heavy unelastic figure, he rose into a gallant
and withy horseman, and, with one of his low-spoken
words, away flew the four compact animals, treading
lightly as cats, and, with the greatest apparent ease,
putting us over the ground at the rate of fourteen
miles in the hour.

The dust was distanced, a pleasant breeze was
created by the motion, and when at last we turned
from the main road, and sped off to the right at the
same exhilarating pace, I returned Iminild's arch
look of remonstrance with my best-humored smile
and an affectionate je me fie à vous! Miss Krakenpate,
I observed, echoed the sentiment by a slight pressure
of the countess's arm, looking very innocently out of
the window all the while.

A couple of miles, soon done, brought us round the
face of a craggy precipice, forming the brow of a hill,
and with a continuation of the turn, we drew up at the
gate of a substantial-looking building, something between
a villa and a farm-house, built against the rock,
as if for the purpose of shelter from the north winds.
Two beautiful Angora hounds sprang out at the noise,
and recognised Iminild through all her disguise, and
presently, with a look of forced courtesy, as if not quite
sure whether he might throw off the mask, a stout
man of about fifty, hardly a gentleman, yet above a
common peasant in his manners, stepped forward from
the garden to give Miss Krakenpate his assistance in
alighting.

“Dinner in half an hour!” was Iminild's brief
greeting, and, stepping between her bowing dependant
and Percie, she led the way into the house.

I was shown into a chamber, furnished scarce above
the common style of a German inn, where I made a
hungry man's despatch in my toilet, and descended
at once to the parlor. The doors were all open upon
the ground floor, and, finding myself quite alone, I
sauntered from room to room, wondering at the scantiness
of the furniture and general air of discomfort, and
scarce able to believe that the same mistress presided
over this and the singular paradise in which I had

first found her at Vienna. After visiting every corner
of the ground floor with a freedom which I assumed in
my character as guardian, it occurred to me that I
had not yet found the dining-room, and I was making
a new search, when Iminild entered.

I have said she was a beautiful woman. She was
dressed now in the Albanian costume, with the additional
gorgeousness of gold emhroidery, which might
distinguish the favorite child of a chief of Suli. It
was the male attire, with a snowy white juktanilla
reaching to the knee, a short jacket of crimson velvet,
and a close-buttoned vest of silver cloth, fitting admirably
to her girlish bust, and leaving her slender and
pearly neck to rise bare and swan-like into the masses
of her clustering hair. Her slight waist was defined
by the girdle of fine linen edged with fringe of gold,
which was tied coquettishly over her left side and fell
to her ankle, and below the embroidered leggin appeared
the fairy foot, which had drawn upon me all this
long train of adventure, thrust into a Turkish slipper
with a sparkling emerald on its instep. A feronière
of the yellowest gold sequins bound her hair back
from her temples, and this was the only confinement
to the dark brown meshes which, in wavy lines and
in the richest profusion, fell almost to her feet. The
only blemish to this vision of loveliness was a flush
about her eyes. The place had recalled Yvain to her
memory.

“I am about to disclose to you secrets,” said she,
laying her hand on my arm, “which have never been
revealed but to the most trusty of Yvain's confederates.
To satisfy those whom you will meet you must swear
to me on the same cross which he pressed to your lips
when dying, that you will never violate, while I live,
the trust we repose in you.”

“I will take no oath,” I said: “for you are leading
me blindfolded. If you are not satisfied with the
assurance that I can betray no confidence which honor
would preserve, hungry as I am, I will yet dine in
Planina.”

“Then I will trust to the faith of an Englishman.
And now I have a favor, not to beg, but to insist upon
—that from this moment you consider Percie as dismissed
from your service, and treat him, while here
at least, as my equal and friend.”

“Willingly!” I said; and as the word left my lips,
enter Percie in the counterpart dress of Iminild, with
a silver-sheathed ataghan at his side, and the bluish
muzzles of a pair of Egg's hair-triggers peeping from
below his girdle. To do the rascal justice, he was as
handsome in his new toggery as his mistress, and carried
it as gallantly. They would have made the prettiest
tableau as Juan and Haidée.

“Is there any chance that these `persuaders' may
be necessary,” I asked, pointing to his pistols which
awoke in my mind a momentary suspicion.

“No—none that I can foresee—but they are loaded.
A favorite, among men whose passions are professionally
wild,” she continued with a meaning glance at
Percie; “should be ready to lay his hand on them,
even if stirred in his sleep!”

I had been so accustomed to surprises of late, that
I scarce started to observe, while Iminild was speaking,
that an old-fashioned clock, which stood in a
niche in the wall, was slowly swinging out upon
hinges. A narrow aperture of sufficient breadth to
admit one person at a time, was disclosed when it
had made its entire revolution, and in it stood, with
a lighted torch, the stout landlord Von Krakenpate.
Iminild looked at me an instant as if to enjoy my
surprise.

“Will you lead me in to dinner, Mr. Tyrell?” she
said at last, with a laugh.

“If we are to follow Mynheer Von Krakenpate,” I
replied, “give me hold of the skirt of your juktanilla,
rather, and let me follow! Do we dine in the cellar?”

I stepped before Percie, who was inclined to take
advantage of my hesitation to precede me, and followed
the countess into the opening, which, from
the position of the house, I saw must lead directly
into the face of the rock. Two or three descending
steps convinced me that it was a natural opening enlarged
by art; and after one or two sharp turns, and
a descent of perhaps fifty feet, we came to a door
which, suddenly flung open by our torch-bearer,
deluged the dark passage with a blaze of light which
the eyesight almost refused to bear. Recovering
from my amazement, I stepped over the threshold
of the door, and stood upon a carpet in a gallery of
sparkling stalactites, the dazzling reflection of innumerable
lamps flooding the air around, and a long
snow-white vista of the same brilliancy and effect
stretching downward before me. Two ridges of
the calcareous strata running almost parallel over
our heads, formed the cornices of the descending
corridor, and from these, with a regularity that
seemed like design, the sparkling pillars, white as
alabaster, and shaped like inverted cones, dropped
nearly to the floor, their transparent points resting on
the peaks of the corresponding stalagmites, which of
a darker hue and coarser grain, seemed designed as
bases to a new order of architectural columns. The
reflection from the pure crystalline rock gave to this
singular gallery a splendor which only the palace of
Aladdin could have equalled. The lamps were hung
between in irregular but effective ranges, and in our
descent, like Thalaba, who refreshed his dazzled eyes
in the desert of snow by looking on the green wings of
the spirit bird, I was compelled to bend my eyes perpetually
for relief upon the soft, dark masses of hair
which floated upon the lovely shoulders of Iminild.

At the extremity of the gallery we turned short to
the right, and followed an irregular passage, sometimes
so low that we could scarce stand upright, but
all lighted with the same intense brilliancy, and formed
of the same glittering and snow-white substance. We
had been rambling on thus far perhaps ten minutes,
when suddenly the air, which I had felt uncomfortably
chill, grew warm and soft, and the low reverberation
of running water fell delightfully on our ears.
Far ahead we could see two sparry columns standing
close together, and apparently closing up the way.

“Courage! my venerable guardian!” cried Iminild.
laughing over her shoulder; “you will see your dinner
presently. Are you hungry, Percie?”

“Not while you look back, Madame la Comtesse!”
answered the callow gentleman, with an instinctive
tact at his new vocation.

We stood at the two pillars which formed the extremity
of the passage, and looked down upon a scene
of which all description must be faint and imperfect.
A hundred feet below ran a broad subterraneous river,
whose waters sparkling in the blaze of a thousand
torches, sprang into light from the deepest darkness,
crossed with foaming rapidity the bosom of the vast
illuminated cavern, and disappeared again in the same
inscrutable gloom. Whence it came or whither it
fled was a mystery beyond the reach of the eye. The
deep recesses of the cavern seemed darker for the intense
light gathered about the centre.

After the first few minutes of bewilderment. I endeavored
to realize in detail the wondrous scene before
me. The cavern was of an irregular shape, but
all studded above with the same sparry incrustation,
thousands upon thousands of pendent stalactites glittering
on the roof, and showering back light upon the
clusters of blazing torches fastened everywhere upon
the shelvy sides. Here and there vast columns,
alabaster white, with bases of gold color, fell from the
roof to the floor, like pillars left standing in the ruined
aisle of a cathedral, and from corner to corner ran
their curtains of the same brilliant calcareous spar,

shaped like the sharp edge of a snow-drift, and almost
white. It was like laying bare the palace of some
king-wizard of the mine to gaze down upon it.

“What think you of Mynheer Krakenpate's taste
in a dining-room, Monsieur Tyrell?” asked the countess,
who stood between Percie and myself, with a
hand on the shoulder of each.

I had scarce found time, as yet, to scrutinize the
artificial portion of the marvellous scene, but, at the
question of Iminild, I bent my gaze on a broad platform,
rising high above the river on its opposite bank,
the rear of which was closed in by perhaps forty irregular
columns, leaving between them and the sharp
precipice on the river-side, an area, in height and extent
of about the capacity of a ball-room. A rude
bridge, of very light construction, rose in a single
arch across the river, forming the only possible access
to the platform from the side where we stood, and,
following the path back with my eye, I observed a
narrow and spiral staircase, partly of wood and partly
cut in the rock, ascending from the bridge to the gallery
we had followed hither. The platform was carpeted
richly, and flooded with intense light, and in its
centre stood a gorgeous array of smoking dishes,
served after the Turkish fashion, with a cloth upon
the floor, and surrounded with cushions and ottomans
of every shape and color. A troop of black slaves,
whose silver anklets, glittered as they moved, were
busy bringing wines and completing the arrangements
for the meal.

“Allons, mignon!” cried Iminild, getting impatient
and seizing Percie's arm, “let us get over the river,
and perhaps Mr. Tyrell will look down upon us with
his grands yeux while we dine. Oh, you will come
with us! Suivez done!”

An iron door, which I had not hitherto observed,
let us out from the gallery upon the staircase, and
Mynheer Von Krakenpate carefully turned the key
behind us. We crept slowly down the narrow staircase
and reached the edge of the river, where the
warm air from the open sunshine came pouring through
the cavern with the current, bringing with it a smell
of green fields and flowers, and removing entirely the
chill of the cavernous and confined atmosphere I had
found so uncomfortable above. We crossed the
bridge, and stepping upon the elastic carpets piled
thickly on the platform, arranged ourselves about the
smoking repast, Mynheer Von Krakenpate sitting down
after permission from Iminild, and Percie by order of
the same imperative dictatress, throwing his graceful
length at her feet.

5. CHAPTER V.

“Take a lesson in flattery from Percie, Mr. Tyrell,
and be satisfied with your bliss in my society without
asking for explanations. I would fain have the use
of my tongue (to swallow) for ten minutes, and I see
you making up your mouth for a question. Try this
pilau! It is made by a Greek cook, who fries, boils,
and stews, in a kitchen with a river for a chimney.”

“Precisely what I was going to ask you. I was
wondering how you cook without smoking your snow-white
roof.”

“Yes, the river is a good slave, and steals wood as
well. We have only to cut it by moonlight and commit
it to the current.”

“The kitchen-it down stream, then?”

“Down stream; and down stream lives jolly Perdicaris
the cook, who having lost his nose in a sea-fight,
is reconciled to forswear sunshine and mankind,
and cook rice for pirates.”

“Is it true then that Yvain held command on the
sea?”

“No, not Yvain, but Tranchcœur—his equal in
command over this honest confederacy. By the way,
he is your countryman, Mr. Tyrell, though he fights
under a nom de guerre. You are very likely to see
him, too, for his bark is at Trieste, and he is the only
human being besides myself (and my company here)
who can come and go at will in this robber's paradise.
He is a lover of mine, parbleu! and since Yvain's
death, Heaven knows what fancy he may bring hither
in his hot brain! I have armed Percie for the
hazard?”

The thin nostrils of my friend from Cranbourne-alley
dilated with prophetic dislike of a rival thus
abruptly alluded to, and there was that in his face
which would have proved, against all the nurses'
oaths in Christendom, that the spirit of a gentleman's
blood ran warm through his heart. Signor Tranchcœur
must be gentle in his suit, I said to myself,
or he will find what virtue lies in a hair-trigger!
Percie had forgot to eat since the mention of the
pirate's name, and sat with folded arms and his right
hand on his pistol.

A black slave brought in an omelette souffleé, as
light and delicate as the chef-d'œuvre of an artiste in
the Palais Royal. Iminild spoke to him in Greek, as
he knelt and placed it before her.

“I have a presentiment,” she said, looking at me
as the slave disappeared, “that Tranchcœur will be
here presently. I have ordered another omelette on the
strength of the feeling, for he is fond of it, and may be
soothed by the attention.”

“You fear him, then?”

“Not if I were alone, for he is as gentle as a woman
when he has no rival near him—but I doubt his relish
of Percie. Have you dined?”

“Quite.”

“Then come and look at my garden, and have a
peep at old Perdicaris. Stay here, Percie, and finish
your grapes, mon-mignon! I have a word to say to
Mr. Tyrell.”

We walked across the platform, and passing between
two of the sparry columns forming its boundary,
entered upon a low passage which led to a large
opening, resembling singularly a garden of low shrubs
turned by some magic to sparkling marble.

Two or three hundred of these stalagmite cones,
formed by the dripping of calcareous water from the
roof (as those on the roof were formed by the same
fluid which hardened and pondered), stood about in
the spacious area, every shrub having an answering
cone on the roof, like the reflection of the same marble
garden in a mirror. One side of this singular
apartment was used as a treasury for the spoils of the
band, and on the points of the white cones hung
pitchers and altar lamps of silver, gold drinking-cups,
and chains, and plate and jewellery of every age and
description. Farther on were piled, in unthrifty confusion,
heaps of velvets and silks, fine broadcloths,
French gloves, shoes, and slippers, brocades of Genoa,
pieces of English linen, damask curtains still fastened
to their cornices, a harp and mandolin, cases of
damaged bons-bons, two or three richly-bound books,
and (last and most valuable in my eyes), a miniature
bureau, evidently the plunder of some antiquary's
treasure, containing in its little drawers antique gold
coins of India, carefully dated and arranged, with a
list of its contents half torn from the lid.

“You should hear Tranchcœur's sermons on
these pretty texts,” said the countess, trying to thrust
open a bale of Brusa silk with her Turkish slipper.

“He will beat off the top of a stalagmite with his
sabre-hilt, and sit down and talk over his spoils and the
adventures they recall, till morning dawns.”

“And how is that discovered in this sunless cave?”

“By the perfume. The river brings news of it,
and fills the cavern with the sun's first kisses. Those

violets `kiss and tell,' Mr. Tyrell! Apropos des
bottes, let us look into the kitchen.”

We turned to the right, keeping on the same level,
and a few steps brought us to the brow of a considerable
descent forming the lower edge of the carpeted
platform, but separated from it by a wall of close
stalactites. At the bottom of the descent ran the
river, but just along the brink, forming a considerable
crescent, extended a flat rock, occupied by all the
varied implements of a kitchen, and lighted by the
glare of two or three different fires blazing against
the perpendicular limit of the cave. The smoke of
these followed the inclination of the wall, and was
swept entirely down with the current of the river.
At the nearest fire stood Perdicaris, a fat, long-haired
and sinister-looking rascal, his noseless face glowing
with the heat, and at his side waited, with a silver
dish, the Nubian slave who had been sent for Tranchcœur's
omelette.

“One of the most bloody fights of my friend the
rover,” said Iminild, “was with an armed slaver, from
whom he took these six pages of mine. They have
reason enough to comprehended an order, but too
little to dream of liberty. They are as contented as
tortoises, ici-bas.”

“Is there no egress hence but by the iron door?”

“None that I know of, unless one could swim up
this swift river like a salmon. You may have surmised
by this time, that we monopolize an unexplored
part of the great cave of Adelsberg. Common report
says it extends ten miles under ground, but common
report has never burrowed as far as this, and I doubt
whether there is any communication. Father Krakenpate's
clock conceals an entrance, discovered first by
robbers, and handed down by tradition, Heaven knows
how long. But—hark! Tranchcœur, by Heaven!
my heart foreboded it!”

I sprang after the countess, who, with her last exclamation,
darted between two of the glittering columns
separating us from the platform, and my first glance
convinced me that her fullest anticipations of the
pirate's jealousy were more than realized. Percie
stood with his back to a tall pillar on the farther side,
with his pistol levelled, calm and unmoveable as a
stalactite; and, with his sabre drawn and his eyes
flashing fire, a tall powerfully-built man in a sailor's
dress, was arrested by Iminild in the act of rushing on
him. “Stop! or you die, Tranchcœur!” said the
countess, in a tone of trifling command. “He is my
guest!”

“He is my prisoner, madame!” was the answer, as
the pirate changed his position to one of perfect repose
and shot his sabre into his sheath, as if a brief delay
could make little difference.

“We shall see that,” said the countess, once more,
with as soft a voice as was ever heard in a lady's
boudoir; and stepping to the edge of the platform,
she touched with her slipper a suspended gong, which
sent through the cavern a shrill reverberation heard
clearly over the rushing music of the river.

In an instant the click of forty muskets from the
other side fell on our ears; and, at a wave of her
hand, the butts rattled on the rocks, and all was still
again.

“I have not trusted myself within your reach,
Monsieur Tranchcœur,” said Iminild, flinging herself
carelessly on an ottoman, and motioning to Percie to
keep his stand, “without a score or two of my free-riders
from Mount Semering to regulate your conscience.
I am mistress here, sir! You may sit
down!”

Tranchcœur had assumed an air of the most gentlemanly
tranquillity, and motioning to one of the
slaves for his pipe, he politely begged pardon for
smoking in the countess's presence, and filled the
enamelled bowl with Shiraz tobacco.

“You heard of Yvain's death?” she remarked after
a moment passing her hand over her eyes.

“Yes, at Venice.”

“With his dying words, he gave me and mine in
charge to this Englishman. Mr. Tyrell, Monsieur
Tranchcœur.”

The pirate bowed.

“Have you been long from England?” he asked
with an accent and voice that even in that brief
question, savored of the nonchalant English of the
west end.

“Two years!” I answered.

“I should have supposed much longer from your
chivalry in St. Etienne, Mr. Tyrell. My countrymen
generally are less hasty. Your valet there,” he continued,
looking sneeringly at Percie, “seems as quick
on the trigger as his master.”

Percie turned on his heel, and walked to the edge
of the platform as if uneasy at the remark, and Iminild
rose to her feet.

“Look you, Tranchcœur! I'll have none of your
sneers. That youth is as well-born and better bred
than yourself, and with his consent, shall have the
authority of the holy church ere long to protect my
property and me. Will you aid me in this, Mr.
Tyrell?”

“Willingly, countess!”

“Then, Tranchcœur, farewell! I have withdrawn
from the common stock Yvain's gold and jewels, and
I trust to your sense of honor to render me at Venice
whatever else of his private property may be concealed
in the island.”

“Iminild!” cried the pirate, springing to his feet.
“I did not think to show a weakness before this
stranger, but I implore you to delay!”

His bosom heaved with strong emotion as he spoke,
and the color fled from his bronzed features as if he
were struck with a mortal sickness.

“I can not lose you, Iminild! I have loved you
too long. You must—”

She motioned to Percie to pass on.

“By Heaven, you shall!” he cried, in a voice suddenly
become hoarse with passion; and reckless of
consequences, he leaped across the heaps of cushion,
and, seizing Percie by the throat, flung him with
terrible and headlong violence into the river.

A scream from Iminild, and the report of a musket
from the other side, rang at the same instant through
the cavern, and as I rushed forward to seize the pistol
which he had struck from Percie's hand, his half-drawn
sabre slid back powerless into the sheath, and
Tranchcœur dropped heavily on his knee.

“I am peppered, Mr. Tyrell!” he said, waving me
off with difficult effort to smile, “look after the boy,
if you care for him! A curse on her German wolves!”

Percie met me on the bridge, supporting Iminild,
who hung on his neck, smothering him with kisses.

“Where is that dog of a pirate?” she cried, suddenly
snatching her ataghan from the sheath and flying
across the platform. “Tranchcœur!”

Her hand was arrested by the deadly pallor and
helpless attitude of the wounded man, and the weapon
dropped as she stood over him.

“I think it is not mortal,” he said, groaning as he
pressed his hand to his side, “but take your boy out
of my sight! Iminild!”

“Well, Tranchcœur!”

“I have not done well—but you know my nature
—and my love! Forgive me, and farewell! Send
Bertram to stanch this blood—I get faint! A little
wine, Iminild!”

He took the massive flagon from her hand, and
drank a long draught, and then drawing to him a cloak
which lay near, he covered his head and dropped on
his side as if to sleep.

Iminild knelt beside him and tore open the shirt

beneath his jacket, and while she busied herself in
stanching the blood, Perdicaris, apparently well prepared
for such accidents, arrived with a surgeon's
probe, and, on examination of the wound, assured
Iminild that she might safely leave him. Washing
her hands in the flagon of wine, she threw a cloak over
the wet and shivering Percie, and, silent with horror
at the scene behind us, we made our way over the
bridge, and in a short time, to my infinite relief, stood
in the broad moonlight on the portico of Mynheer
Krakenpate.

My carriage was soon loaded with the baggage and
treasure of the countess, and with the same swift
horses that had brought us from Planina, we regained
the post-road, and sped on toward Venice by the
Friuli. We arrived on the following night at the fair
city so beloved of romance, and with what haste I
might, I procured a priest and married the Countess
Iminild to gentleman Percie.

As she possessed now a natural guardian, and a
sufficient means of life, I felt released from my death
vow to Yvain, and bidding farewell to the “happy
couple,” I resumed my quiet habit of travel, and three
days after my arrival at Venice, was on the road to
Padua by the Brenta.

OONDER-HOOFDEN, OR THE UNDERCLIFF.
A TALE OF THE VOYAGE OF HENDRICK HUDSON.

1. CHAPTER I.

“It is but an arm of the sea, as I told thee, skipper,”
said John Fleming, the mate of the “Halve-Mane,”
standing ready to jam down the tiller and bring-to,
if his master should agree with him in opinion.

Hudson stood by his steersman, with folded arms,
now looking at the high-water mark on the rocks,
which betrayed a falling tide, now turning his ear
slightly forward to catch the cry of the man who stood
heaving the lead from the larboard bow. The wind
drew lightly across the starboard quarter, and, with a
counter-tide, the little vessel stole on scarce perceptibly,
though her mainsail was kept full—the slowly
passing forest trees on the shore giving the lie to the
merry and gurgling ripple at the prow.

The noble river, or creek, which they had followed
in admiring astonishment for fifty miles, had hitherto
opened fairly and broadly before them, though, once
or twice, its widening and mountain-girt bosom had
deceived the bold navigator into the belief, that he
was entering upon some inland lake. The wind still
blew kindly and steadily from the southeast, and the
sunset of the second day—a spectacle of tumultuous
and gorgeous glory which Hudson attributed justly
to the more violet atmospheric laws of an unsettled
continent—had found them apparently closed in by
impenetrable mountains, and running immediately on
the head shore of an extended arm of the sea.

“She'll strike before she can follow her helm,”
cried the young sailor in an impatient tone, yet still
with habitual obedience keeping her duly on her
course.

“Port a little!” answered the skipper, a moment
after, as if he had not heard the querulous comment
of his mate.

Fleming's attention was withdrawn an instant by
a low guttural sound of satisfaction, which reached
his ear as the head of the vessel went round, and,
casting his eye amidships, he observed the three
Indians who had come off to the Half-Moon in a
canoe, and had been received on board by the master,
standing together in the chains, and looking forward
to the rocks they were approaching with countenances
of the most eager interest.

“Master Hendrick!” he vociferated in the tone of
a man who can contain his anger no longer, “will you
look at these grinning red-devils, who are rejoicing to
see you run so blindly ashore?”

The adventurous little bark was by this time within
a biscuit toss of a rocky point that jutted forth into
the river with the grace of a lady's foot dallying with
the water in her bath; and, beyond the sedgy bank
disappeared in an apparent inlet, barely deep enough,
it seemed to the irritated steersman, to shelter a
canoe.

As the Half-Moon obeyed her last order, and headed
a point more to the west, Hudson strode forward to
the bow, and sprang upon the windlass, stretching his
gaze eagerly into the bosom of the hills that were now
darkening with the heavy shadows of twilight, though
the sky was still gorgeously purple overhead.

The crew had by this time gathered with unconscious
apprehension at the halyards, ready to let go
at the slightest gesture of the master, but, in the slow
progress of the little bark, the minute or two which
she took to advance beyond the point on which his
eye was fixed, seemed an age of suspense.

The Half-Moon seemed now almost immoveable,
for the current, which convinced Hudson there was
a passage beyond, set her back from the point with
increasing force, and the wind lulled a little with the
sunset. Inch by inch, however, she crept on, till at
last the silent skipper sprang from the windlass upon
the bowsprit, and running out with the agility of a
boy, gave a single glance ahead, and the next moment
had the tiller in his hand, and cried out with a
voice of thunder, “Stand by the halyards! helm's-a-lee!”

In a moment, as if his words had been lightning,
the blocks rattled, the heavy boom swung round like
a willow spray, and the white canvass, after fluttering
an instant in the wind, filled and drew steadily on the
other tack.

Looks of satisfaction were exchanged between the
crew, who expected the next instant an order to take
in the sail and drop anchor; but the master was at the
helm, and to their utter consternation, he kept her
steadily to the wind, and drove straight on, while a
gorge, that, in the increasing darkness, seemed the
entrance to a cavern, opened its rocky sides as they
advanced.

The apprehensions of the crew were half lost in
their astonishment at the grandeur of the scene. The
cliffs seemed to close up behind them; a mountain,
that reached apparently to the now colorless clouds,
rose up gigantic, in the increasing twilight, over the
prow; on the right, where the water seemed to bend,
a craggy precipice extended its threatening wall; and
in the midst of this round bay, which seemed to them
to be an enclosed lake in the bottom of an abyss, the
wind suddenly took them aback, the Halve-Mane lost
her headway, and threatened to go on the rocks with
the current, and audible curses at his folly reached
the ears of the determined master.

More to divert their attention than with a prognostic
of the direction of the wind, Hudson gave the
order to tack, and, more slowly this time, but still
with sufficient expedition, the movement was executed,
and the flapping sails swung round. The halyards
were not belayed before the breeze, rushing
down a steep valley on the left, struck full on
the larboard quarter, and, running sharp past the face
of the precipice over the starboard bow, Hudson
pointed out, exultingly, to his astonished men, the
broad waters of the mighty river, extending far through
the gorge beyond—the dim purple of the lingering

day, which had been long lost to the cavernous and
overshadowed pass they had penetrated, tinting its far
bosom like the last faint hue of the expiring dolphin.

The exulting glow of triumph suffused the face
of the skipper, and relinquishing the tiller once more
to the mortified Fleming, he walked forward to look
out for an anchorage. The Indians, who still stood
in the chains together, and who had continued to
express their satisfaction as the vessel made her way
through the pass, now pointed eagerly to a little
bay on the left, across which a canoe was shooting
like the reflection of a lance in the air, and, the wind
dying momently away, Hudson gave the order to
round to, and dropped his anchor for the night.

In obedience to the politic orders of Hudson the
men were endeavoring, by presents and signs, to
induce the Indians to leave the vessel, and the master
himself stood on the poop with his mate, gazing
back on the wonderful scene they had passed through.

“This passage,” said Hudson, musingly, “has been
rent open by an earthquake, and the rocks look still as
if they felt the agony of the throe.”

“It is a pity the earthquake did its job so raggedly,
then!” answered his sulky companion, who had not
yet forgiven the mountains for the shame their zig-zag
precipices had put upon his sagacity.

At that instant a sound, like that of a heavy body
sliding into the water, struck the ear of Fleming,
and looking quickly over the stern, he saw one of
the Indians swimming from the vessel with a pillow
in his hand, which he had evidently stolen from the
cabin window. To seize a musket, which lay ready
for attack on the quarter-deck, and fire upon the poor
savage, was the sudden thought and action of a man on
the watch, for a vent to incensed feelings.

The Indian gave a yell which mingled wildly with
the echoes of the report from the reverberating hills,
and springing waist-high out of the water, the gurgling
eddy closed suddenly over his head.

The canoe in which the other savages were already
embarked shot away, like an arrow, to the shore, and
Hudson, grieved and alarmed inexpressibly at the fool-hardy
rashness of his mate, ordered all hands to arms,
and established a double watch for the night.

Hour after hour, the master and the non-repentant
Fleming paced fore and aft, each in his own
quarter of the vessel, watching the shore and the
dark face of the water with straining eyes: but no
sound came from the low cliff round which the flying
canoe had vanished, and the stars seemed to
wink almost audibly in the dread stillness of nature.
The men alarmed at the evident agitation of Hudson,
who, in these pent-up waters, anticipated a most effective
and speedy revenge from the surrounding
tribes, drowsed not upon their watch, and the gray
light of the morning began to show faintly over the
mountains before the anxious master withdrew his
aching eyes from the still and star waters.

2. CHAPTER II.

Like a web woven of gold by the lightning, the
sun's rays ran in swift threads from summit to summit
of the dark green mountains, and the soft mist
that slept on the breast of the river began to lift like
the slumberous lid from the eye of woman, when her
dream is broken at dawn. Not so poetically were
these daily glories regarded, however, by the morning
watch of the Half-Moon, who, between the desire to
drop asleep with their heads on the capstan, and the
necessity of keeping sharper watch lest the Indians
should come off through the rising mist, bore the
double pains of Tantalus and Sysiphus—ungratified
desire at their lips and threatening ruin over their heads.

After dividing the watch at the break of day, Hudson,
with the relieved part of his crew, had gone below,
and might have been asleep an hour, when Eleming
suddenly entered the cabin and laid his hand upon
his shoulder. The skipper sprang from his berth
with the habitual readiness of a seaman, and followed
his mate upon deck, where he found his men standing
to their arms, and watching an object that, to his first
glance, seemed like a canoe sailing down upon them
through the air. The rash homicide drew close to
Hendrick as he regarded it, and the chatter of his
teeth betrayed that, during the long and anxious
watches of the night, his conscience had not justified
him for the hasty death he had awarded to a fellow-creature.

“She but looms through the mist!” said the skipper,
after regarding the advancing object for a moment.
“It is a single canoe, and can scarce harm us. Let
her come alongside!”

The natural explanation of the phenomenon at once
satisfied the crew, who had taken their superstitious
fears rather from Fleming's evident alarm than from
their own want of reflection; but the guilty man himself
still gazed on the advancing phantom, and when
a slight stir of the breeze raised the mist like the corner
of a curtain, and dropped the canoe plain upon
the surface of the river, he turned gloomily on his
heel, and muttered in an undertone to Hudson“It
brings no good, Skipper Hendrick!”

Meanwhile the canoe advanced slowly. The single
paddle which propelled her paused before every turn,
and as the mist lifted quite up and showed a long
green line of shore between its shadowy fringe and
the water, an Indian, highly-painted, and more ornamented
than any they had hitherto seen, appeared
gazing earnestly at the vessel, and evidently approaching
with fear and caution.

The Half-Moon was heading up the river with
the rising tide, and Hudson walked forward to the
bows to look at the savage more closely. By the
eagle and bear, so richly embroidered in the gay-colored
quills of the porcupine on his belt of wampum,
he presumed him to be a chief; and glancing
his eye into the canoe, he saw the pillow which had
occasioned the death of the plunderer the night before,
and on it lay two ears of corn, and two broken arrows.
Pausing a moment as he drew near, the Indian pointed
to these signs of peace, and Hudson, in reply, spread
out his open hands and beckoned him to come on
board. In an instant the slight canoe shot under the
starboard bow, and with a noble confidence which the
skipper remarked upon with admiration, the tall savage
sprang upon the deck and laid the hand of the commander
to his breast.

The noon arrived, hot and sultry, and there, was no
likelihood of a wind till sunset. The chief had been
feasted on board, and had shown, in his delight, the
most unequivocal evidence of good feeling; and even
Fleming, at last, who had drank more freely than usual
during the morning, abandoned his suspicion, and
joined in amusing the superb savage who was their
guest. In the course of the forenoon, another canoe
came off, paddled by a single young woman, whom
Fleming, recognised as having accompanied the plunderers
the night before, but in his half-intoxicated
state, it seemed to recall none of his previous bodings,
and to his own surprise, and that of the crew, she
evidently regarded him with particular favor, and by
pertinacious and ingenious signs, endeavored to induce
him to go ashore with her in the canoe. The
particular character of her face and form would have
given the mate a clue to her probable motives, had he
been less reckless from his excitement. She was
taller than is common for females of the savage tribes,
and her polished limbs, as gracefully moulded in their

dark hues as those of the mercury of the fountain,
combined, with their slightness, a nerve and steadiness
of action which betrayed strength and resolution
of heart and frame. Her face was highly beautiful,
but the voluptuous fulness of the lips was contradicted
by a fierce fire in her night-dark eyes, and a quickness
of the brow to descend, which told of angry passions
habitually on the alert. It was remarked by Hans
Christaern, one of the crew, that when Fleming left
her for an instant, she abstracted herself from the
other joyous groups, and, with folded arms and looks
of brooding thoughtfulness, stood looking over the
stern; but immediately on his reappearance, her
snowy teeth became visible between her relaxing lips,
and she resumed her patient gaze upon his countenance,
and her occasional efforts to draw him into the
canoe.

Quite regardless of the presence of the woman, the
chief sat apart with Hudson, communicating his ideas
by intelligent signs, and after a while, the skipper
called his mate, and informed him that, as far as he
could understand, the chief wished to give them a
feast on shore. “Arm yourselves well,” said he,
“though I look for no treachery from this noble pagan;
and if chance should put us in danger, we shall be
more than a match for the whole tribe. Come with
me, Fleming,” he continued, after a pause, “you are
too rash with your firearms to be left in command.
Man the watch, four of you, and the rest get into the
long-boat. We'll while away these sluggish hours,
though danger is in it”

The men sprang gayly below for their arms, and
were soon equipped and ready, and the chief, with an
expression of delight, put off in his canoe, followed
more slowly by the heavy long-boat, into which Hudson,
having given particular orders to the watch to let
no savages on board during his absence, was the last
to embark. The woman, whom the chief had called
to him before his departure by the name of Kihyalee,
sped off before in her swift canoe to another point of
the shore, and when Fleming cried out from the bow
of the boat, impatiently motioning her to follow, she
smiled in a manner that sent a momentary shudder
through the veins of the skipper who chanced to observe
the action, and by a circular movement of her
arm conveyed to him that she should meet him from
the other side of the hill. As they followed the chief,
they discovered the wigwams of an Indian village behind
the rocky point for which she was making, and
understood that the chief had sent her thither on some
errand connected with his proposed hospitality.

A large square rock, which had the look of having
been hurled with some avalanche from the mountain,
lay in the curve of a small beach of sand, surrounded
by the shallow water, and, on the left of this, the chief
pointed out to the skipper a deeper channel, hollowed
by the entrance of a mountain-torrent into the river,
through which he might bring his boat to land. At
the edge of this torrent's bed, the scene of the first act
of hospitality to our race upon the Hudson, stands at
this day the gate to the most hospitable mansion on
the river, as if the spirit of the spot had consecrated it
to its first association with the white man.

The chief led the way when the crew had disembarked,
by a path skirting the deep-worn bed of the
torrent, and after an ascent of a few minutes, through
a grove of tall firs, a short turn to the left brought
them upon an open table of land, a hundred and fifty
feet above the river shut in by a circle of forest-trees,
and frowned over on the east by a tall and bald cliff,
which shot up in a perpendicular line to the height
of three hundred feet. From a cleft in the face of
this precipice a natural spring oozed forth, drawing
a darker line down the sun-parched rock, and feeding
a small stream that found its way to the river on the
northern side of the platform just mentioned, creating
between itself and the deeper torrent to the south, a
sort of highland peninsula, now constituting the estate
of the hospitable gentleman above alluded to.

Hudson looked around him with delight and surprise
when he stood on the highest part of the broad
natural table selected by the chief for his entertainment.
The view north showed a cleft through the
hills, with the river coiled like a lake in its widening
bed, while a blue and wavy line of mountains formed
the far horizon at its back; south, the bold eminences,
between which he had found his adventurous
way, closed in like the hollowed sides of a bright-green
vase, with glimpses of the river lying in its
bottom like crystal; below him descended a sharp
and wooded bank, with the river at its foot, and
directly opposite rose a hill in a magnificent cone to
the very sky, sending its shadow down through the
mirrored water, as if it entered to some inner world.
The excessive lavishness of the foliage clothed these
bold natural features with a grace and richness altogether
captivating to the senses, and Hudson long
stood, gazing around him, believing that the tales of
brighter and happier lands were truer than he had
deemed, and that it was his lucky destiny to have been
the discoverer of a future Utopia.

A little later, several groups of Indians were seen
advancing from the village, bearing the materials for
a feast, which they deposited under a large tree, indicated
by the chief. It was soon arranged, and Hudson
with his men surrounded the dishes of shell and
wood, one of which, placed in the centre, contained a
roasted dog, half buried in Indian-corn. While the
chief and several of his warriors sat down in company
with the whites, the young men danced the calumet-dance
to the sound of a rude drum, formed by drawing
a skin tightly over a wooden bowl, and near them, in
groups, stood the women and children of the village,
glancing with looks of curiosity from the feats of the
young men to the unaccustomed faces of the strangers.

Among the women stood Kihyalee, who kept her
large bright eyes fixed almost fiercely upon Fleming,
yet when he looked toward her, she smiled and turned
as if she would beckon him away—a bidding which he
tried in vain to obey, under the vigilant watch of his
master.

The feast went on, and the Indians having produced
gourds, filled with a slight intoxicating liquor made
from the corn, Hudson offered to the chief, some
spirits from a bottle which he had intrusted to one
of the men to wash down the expected roughness of
the savage viands. The bottle passed in turn to the
mate, who was observed to drink freely, and, a few
minutes after, Hudson rising to see more nearly a trial
of skill with the bow and arrow, Fleming found the
desired opportunity, and followed the tempting Kihyalee
into the forest.

The sun began to throw the shadows of the tall
pines in gigantic pinnacles along the ground, and the
youths of the friendly tribe, who had entertained the
great navigator, ceased from their dances and feats
of skill, and clustered around the feast-tree. Intending
to get under weigh with the evening breeze and
proceed still farther up the river, Hudson rose to collect
his men, and bid the chief farewell. Taking the
hand of the majestic savage and putting it to his
breast, to express in his own manner the kind feelings
he entertained for him, he turned toward the path
by which he came, and was glancing round at his men,
when Hans Christaern inquired if he had sent the
mate back to the vessel.

“Der teufel, no!” answered the skipper, missing
him for the first time; “has he been long gone?”

“A full hour!” said one of the men.

Hudson put his hand to his head, and remembered
the deep wrong Fleming had done to the tribe. Retribution,

he feared, had over-taken him—but how was
it done so silently? How had the guilty man been
induced to leave his comrades, and accelerate his
doom by his own voluntary act?

The next instant resolved the question. A distant
and prolonged scream, as of a man in mortal agony,
drew all eyes to the summit of the beetling cliff, which
overhung them. On its extremest verge, outlined
distinctly against the sky, stood the tall figure of Kihyalee,
holding from her, yet poised over the precipice,
the writhing form of her victim, while in the other
hand, flashing in the rays of the sun, glittered the
bright hatchet she had plucked from his girdle. Infuriated
at the sight, and suspecting collision on the
part of the chief, Hudson drew his cutlass and gave
the order to stand to arms, but as he turned, the gigantic
savage had drawn an arrow to its head with incredible
force, and though it fell far short of its mark, there
was that in the action and in his look which, in the
passing of a thought, changed the mind of the skipper.
In another instant, the hesitating arm of the widowed
Kihyalee descended, and loosening her hold upon the
relaxed body of her victim, the doomed mate fell
heavily down the face of the precipice.

The chief turned to Hudson, who stood trembling
and aghast at the awful scene, and plucked the remaining
arrows from his quiver, he broke them and
threw himself on the ground. The tribe gathered
around their chief, Hudson moved his hand to them
in token of forgiveness, and in a melancholy silence
the crew took their way after him to the shore.

THE PICKER AND PILER.

The nature of the strange incident I have to relate
forbids me to record either place or time.

On one of the wildest nights in which I had ever
been abroad, I drove my panting horses through a
snowdrift breast high, to the door of a small tavern in
the western country. The host turned out unwillingly
at the knock of my whip handle on the outer door,
and, wading before the tired animals to the barn, which
was nearly inaccessible from the banks of snow, he
assisted me in getting off their frozen harnesses, and
bestowing them safely for the night.

The “bar-room” fire burnt brightly, and never was
fire more welcome. Room was made for me by four
or five rough men who sat silent around it, and with a
keen comprehension of “pleasure after pain,” I took
off my furs and moccasins, and stretched my cold contracted
limbs to the blaze. When, a few minutes
after, a plate of cold salt beef was brought me, with a
corn cake and a mug of “flip” hissing from the poker,
it certainly would have been hard to convince me that
I would have put on my coats and moccasins again to
have ridden a mile to paradise.

The faces of my new companions, which I had not
found time to inspect very closely while my supper
lasted, were fully revealed by the light of a pitch-pine
knot, thrown on the hearth by the landlord, and their
grim reserve and ferocity put me in mind, for the first
time since I had entered the room, of my errand in
that quarter of the country.

The timber-tracts which lie convenient to the rivers
of the west, offer to the refugee and desperado of every
description, a resource from want and (in their own
opinion) from crime, which is seized upon by all at
least who are willing to labor. The owners of the extensive
forests, destined to become so valuable, are
mostly men of large speculation, living in cities, who,
satisfied with the constant advance in the price of
lumber, consider their pine-trees as liable to nothing
but the laws of nature, and leave them unfenced and
unprotected, to increase in size and value till the land
beneath them is wanted for culture. It is natural
enough that solitary settlers, living in the neighborhood
of miles of apparently unclaimed land, should
think seldom of the owner, and in time grow to the
opinion of the Indian, that the Great Spirit gave the
land, the air, and the water, to all his children, and
they are free to all alike. Furnishing the requisite
teams and implements, therefore, the inhabitants of
these tracts collect a number of the stragglers through
the country, and forming what is called a “bee,” go
into the nearest woods, and for a month or more, work
laboriously at selecting, and felling the tallest and
straightest pines. In their rude shanty at night they
have bread, pork, and whiskey, which hard labor makes
sufficiently palatable, and the time is passed merrily
till the snow is right for sledding. The logs are then
drawn to the water sides, rafts are formed, and the
valuable lumber, for which they paid nothing but their
labor is run to the cities for their common advantage.

The only enemies of this class of men are the agents
who are sometimes sent out in the winter to detect
them in the act of felling or drawing off timber, and
in the dark countenances around the fire, I read this
as the interpretation of my own visit to the woods.
They soon brightened and grew talkative when they
discovered that I was in search of hands to fell and
burn, and make clearing for a farm; and after a talk
of an hour or two, I was told in answer to my inquiries,
that all the “men people” in the country were busy
“Iumbering for themselves,” unless it were—
the “Picker and Piler.”

As the words were pronounced, a shrill neigh
outside the door pronounced the arrival of a new-comer.

“Talk of the devil”—said the man in a lower tone,
and without finishing the proverb he rose with a
respect which he had not accorded to me, to make
room for the Picker and Piler.

A man of rather low stature entered, and turned to
drive back his horse, who had followed him nearly in.
I observed that the animal had neithersaddle nor bridle.
Shutting the door upon him without violence, he exchanged
nods with one or two of the men, and giving
the handlord a small keg which he had brought, he
pleaded haste for refusing the offered chair, and stood
silent by the fire. His features were blackened with
smoke, but I could see that they were small and regular,
and his voice, though it conveyed in its deliberate
accents an indefinable resolution, was almost femininely
soft and winning.

“That stranger yonder has got a job for you,” said
the landlord, as he gave him back the keg and received
the money.

Turning quickly upon me, he detected me in a very
eager scrutiny of himself, and for a moment I was
thrown too much off my guard to address him.

“Is it you, sir?” he asked, after waiting a moment.

“Yes,—I have some work to be done hereabouts,
but—you seem in a hurry. Could you call here to-morrow.”

“I may not be here again in a week.”

“Do you live far from here?” He smiled.

“I scarce know where I live, but I am burning a
piece of wood a mile or two up the run, and if you
would like a warmer bed than the landlord will give
you—”

That personage decided the question for me by
telling me in so many words that I had better go.
His beds were all taken up, and my horses should be
taken care of till my return. I saw that my presence
had interrupted something, probably the formation of
a “bee,” and more willingly than I would have believed
possible an hour before, I resumed my furs and
wrappers, and declared that I was ready. The Picker

and Piler had inspired me, and I knew not why, with
an involuntary respect and liking.

“It is a rough night, sir,” said he, as he shouldered
a rifle he had left outside, and slung the keg by a
leather strap over the neck of his horse, “but I will
soon show you a better climate. Come, sir, jump on!”

“And you?” I said inquisitively, as he held his
horse by the mane for me to mount. It was a Canadian
pony, scarce larger than a Newfoundland dog.

“I am more used to the road, sir, and will walk.
Come?”

It was no time to stand upon etiquette, even if it
had been possible to resist the strange tone of authority
with which he spoke. So without more ado, I
sprang upon the animal's back, and holding on by the
long tuft upon his withers, suffered him passively to
plunge through the drift after his master.

Wondering at the readiness with which I had entered
upon this equivocal adventure, but never for an
instant losing confidence in my guide, I shut my eyes
to the blinding cold, and accommodated my limbs as
well as I could to the bare back and scrambling paces
of the Canadian. The Picker and Piler strode on
before, the pony following like a spaniel at his heels,
and after a half hour's tramp, during which I had
merely observed that we were rounding the base of a
considerable hill, we turned short to the right, and
were met by a column of smoke, which, lifting, the
moment after, disclosed the two slopes of a considerable
valley enveloped in one sea of fire. A red, lurid
cloud, overhung it at the tops of the tallest trees, and
far and wide, above that, spread a covering of black
smoke, heaving upward in vast and billowy masses, and
rolling away on every side into the darkness.

We approached a pine of gigantic height, on fire
to the very peak, not a branch left on the trunk, and
its pitchy knots distributed like the eyes of the lamprey,
burning pure and steady amid the irregular flame. I
had once or twice, with an instinctive wish to draw
rein, pulled hard upon the tangled tuft in my hand,
but master and horse kept on. This burning tree,
however, was the first of a thousand, and as the pony
turned his eyes away from the intense heat to pass between
it and a bare rock, I glanced into the glowing
labyrinth beyond, and my faith gave way. I jumped
from his back and hailed the Picker and Piler, with a
halloo scarcely audible amid the tumult of the crackling
branches. My voice did not evidently reach his
ear, but the pony, relieved from my weight, galloped
to his side, and rubbed his muzzle against the unoccupied
hand of his master.

He turned back immediately. “I beg pardon,” he
said, “I have that to think of just now which makes
me forgetful. I am not surprised at your hesitation,
but mount again and trust the pony.”

The animal turned rather unwillingly at his master's
bidding, and a little ashamed of having shown
fear, while a horse would follow, I jumped again on
his back.

“If you find the heat inconvenient, cover your face.”
And with this laconic advice, the Picker and Piler
turned on his heel, and once more strode away before
us.

Sheltering the sides of my face by holding up the
corners of my wrapper with both hands, I abandoned
myself to the horse. He overtook his master with a
shuffling canter, and putting his nose as close to the
ground as he could carry it without stumbling, followed
closely at his heels. I observed, by the green
logs lying immediately along our path, that we were
following an avenue of prostrate timber which had been
felled before the wood was fired; but descending
presently to the left, we struck at once into the deep
bed of a brook, and by the lifted head and slower gait
of the pony, as well as my own easier respiration, I
found that the hollow through which it ran, contained
a body of pure air unreached by the swaying curtains
of smoke or the excessive heat of the fiery currents
above. The pony now picked his way leisurely along
the brookside, and while my lungs expanded with the
relief of breathing a more temperate atmosphere, I
raised myself from my stooping posture in a profuse
perspiration, and one by one disembarrassed myself
from my protectives against the cold.

I had lost sight for several minutes of the Picker
and Piler, and presumed by the pony's desultory
movements that he was near the end of his journey,
when, rounding a shelvy point of rock, we stood suddenly
upon the brink of a slight waterfall, where the
brook leaped four or five feet into a shrunken dell, and
after describing a half circle on a rocky platform, resumed
its onward course in the same direction as before.
This curve of the brook and the platform it
enclosed lay lower than the general level of the forest,
and the air around and within it, it seemed to me, was
as clear and genial as the summer noon. Over one
side, from the rocky wall, a rude and temporary roof
of pine slabs drooped upon a barricade of logs, forming
a low hut, and before the entrance of this, at the moment
of my appearance, stood a woman and a showily-dressed
young man, both evidently confused at the
sudden apparition of the Picker and Piler. My eyes
had scarce rested on the latter, when, from standing
at his fullest height with his rifle raised as if to beat
the other to the earth, he suddenly resumed his stooping
and quiet mien, set his rifle against the rock, and
came forward to give me his hand.

“My daughter!” he said, more in the way of explanation
than introduction, and without taking further
notice of the young man whose presence seemed
so unwelcome, he poured me a draught from the keg
he had brought, pointed to the water falling close at
my hand, and threw himself at his length upon the
ground.

The face and general appearance of the young man,
now seated directly opposite me, offered no temptation
for more than a single glance, and my whole attention
was soon absorbed by the daughter of my singular
host, who, crossing from the platform to the hut,
divided her attention between a haunch of venison
roasting before a burning log of hickory, and the arrangement
of a few most primitive implements for our
coming supper. She was slight, like her father, in
form, and as far as I had been able to distinguish his
blackened features, resembled him in the general outline.
But in the place of his thin and determined
mouth, her lips were round and voluptuous, and
though her eye looked as if it might wake, it expressed,
even in the presence of her moody father, a
drowsy and soft indolence, common enough to the
Asiatics, but seldom seen in America. Her dress was
coarse and careless, but she was beautiful with every
possible disadvantage, and, whether married or not,
evidently soon to become a mother.

The venison was placed before us on the rock, and
the young man, uninvited, and with rather an air of
bravado, cut himself a steak from the haunch and
broiled it on the hickory coals, while the daughter kept
as near him as her attention to her father's wants would
permit, but neither joined us in eating, nor encouraged
my attempts at conversation. The Picker and Piler
ate in silence, leaving me to be my own carver, and
finishing his repast by a deep draught from the keg
which had been the means of our acquaintance, he
sprang upon his feet and disappeared.

“The wind has changed,” said the daughter, looking
up at the smoke, “and he has gone to the western
edge to start a new fire. It's a full half mile, and he'll
be gone an hour.”

This was said with a look at me which was anything
but equivocal. I was de trop. I took up the
rifle of the Picker and Piler, forgetting that there was

probably nothing to shoot in a burning wood, and remarking
that I would have a look for a deer, jumped
up the water-fall side, and was immediately hidden by
the rocks.

I had no conception of the scene that lay around
me. The natural cave or hollow of rock in which the
hut lay embosomed, was the centre of an area of perhaps
an acre, which had been felled in the heart of the
wood before it was set on fire. The forest encircled
it with blazing columns, whose capitals were apparently
lost in the sky, and curtains of smoke and
flame, which flew as if lashed into ribands by a whirlwind.
The grandeur, the violence, the intense brightness
of the spectacle, outran all imagination. The
pines, on fire to the peak, and straight as arrows,
seemed to resemble, at one moment the conflagration
of an eastern city, with innumerable minarets abandoned
to the devouring element. At the next moment,
the wind, changing its direction, swept out every
vestige of smoke, and extinguished every tongue of
flame, and the tall trees, in clear and flameless ignition,
standing parallel in thousands, resembled some
blinding temple of the genii, whose columns of
miraculous rubies, sparkling audibly, outshone the
day. By single glances, my eye penetrated into aisles
of blazing pillars, extending far into the forest, and the
next instant, like a tremendous surge alive with serpents
of fire, the smoke and flame swept through it,
and it seemed to me as if some glorious structure had
been consumed in the passing of a thought. For a
minute, again, all would be still except the crackling
of the fibres of the wood, and with the first stir of the
wind, like a shower of flashing gems, the bright coals
rained down through the forest, and for a moment the
earth glowed under the trees as if its whole crust were
alive with one bright ignition.

With the pungency of the smoke and heat, and the
variety and bewilderment of the spectacle, I found my
eyes and brain growing giddy. The brook ran cool
below, and the heat had dried the leaves in the small
clearing, and with the abandonment of a man overcome
with the sultriness of summer, I lay down on the
rivulet's bank, and dipped my head and bathed my
eyes in the running water. Close to its surface there
was not a particle of smoke in the air, and, exceedingly
refreshed with its temperate coolness, I lay for sometime
in luxurious ease, trying in vain to fancy the
winter that howled without. Frost and cold were
never more difficult to realize in midsummer, though
within a hundred rods, probably, a sleeping man would
freeze to death in an hour.

“I have a better bed for you in the shanty,” said the
Picker and Piler, who had approached unheard in the
noise of the fires; and suddenly stood over me.

He took up his rifle, which I had laid against a
prostrate log, and looked anxiously toward the descent
to the hut.

“I am little inclined for sleep,” I answered, “and
perhaps you will give me an hour of conversation here.
The scene is new to me”—

“I have another guest to dispose of,” he answered,
“and we shall be more out of the smoke near the
shanty.”

I was not surprised, as I jumped upon the platform,
to find him angrily separating his daughter and the
stranger. The girl entered the hut, and with a decisive
gesture, he pointed the young man to a “shake-down”
of straw in the remotest corner of the rocky
enclosure.

“With your leave, old gentleman,” said the intruder,
after glancing at his intended place of repose,
“I'll find a crib for myself.” And springing up the
craggy rock opposite the door of the shanty he gathered
a slight heap of brush, and threw it into a hollow
left in the earth by a tree, which, though full grown
and green, had been borne to the earth and partly
uprooted by the falling across it of an overblown and
gigantic pine. The earth and stones had followed the
uptorn mass, forming a solid upright wall, from which,
like struggling fingers, stretching back in agony to
the ground from which they had parted, a few rent
and naked roots pointed into the cavity. The sequel
will show why I am so particular in this description.

“When peace was declared between England and
this country,” said the Picker and Piler (after an
hour's conversation, which had led insensibly to his
own history), I was in command of a privateer. Not
choosing to become a pirate, by continuing the cruise,
I was set ashore in the West Indies by a crew in open
mutiny. My property was all on board, and I was
left a beggar. I had one child, a daughter, whose
mother died in giving her birth.

“Having left a sufficient sum for her education in
the hands of a brother of my own, under whose roof
she had passed the first years of her life, I determined
to retrieve my fortunes before she or my friends should
be made acquainted with my disaster.

“Ten years passed over, and I was still a wanderer
and a beggar.

“I determined to see my child, and came back
like one from the dead, to my brother's door. He had
forgotten me, and abused his trust. My daughter,
then seventeen, and such as you see her here, was the
drudge in the family of a stranger—ignorant and friendless.
My heart turned against mankind with this last
drop in a bitter cup, and, unfitted for quiet life, I looked
around for some channel of desperate adventure.
But my daughter was the perpetual obstacle. What
to do with her? She had neither the manners nor
the education of a lady, and to leave her a servant was
impossible. I started with her for the west, with the
vague design of joining some tribe of Indians, and
chance and want have thrown me into the only mode
of life on earth that could now be palatable to me.”

“Is it not lonely,” I asked, “after your stirring adventures?”

“Lonely! If you knew the delight with which I
live in the wilderness, with a circle of fire to shut out
the world! The labor is hard it is true, but I need it,
to sleep and forget. There is no way else in which I
could seclude my daughter. Till lately, she has been
contented, too. We live a month together in one
place—the centre like this of a burning wood. I can
bear hardship, but I love a high temperature—the
climate of the tropics—and I have it here. For weeks
I forget that it is winter, tending my fires and living
on the game I have stored up. There is a hollow or
a brook—a bed or a cave, in every wood, where the
cool air, as here, sinks to the bottom, and there I can
put up my shanty, secure from all intrusion—but such
as I bring upon myself.”

The look he gave to the uprooted ash and the
sleeper beneath it, made an apology for this last clause
unnecessary. He thought not of me.

“Some months since,” continued the Picker and
Piler, in a voice husky with suppressed feeling, “I
met the villain who sleeps yonder, accidentally, as I
met you. He is the owner of this land. After
engaging to clear and burn it, I invited him, as I
did yourself, from a momentary fever for company
which sometimes comes over the solitary, to go with
me to the fallow I was clearing. He loitered in the
neighborhood awhile, under pretext of hunting, and
twice on my return from the village, I found that my
daughter had seen him. Time has betrayed the
wrong he inflicted on me.

The voice of the agitated father sank almost to a
whisper as he pronounced the last few words, and,
rising from the rock on which we were sitting, he
paced for a few minutes up and down the platform in
silence.

The reader must fill up from his own imagination

the drama of which this is but the outline, for the
Picker and Piler was not a man to be questioned, and
I can tell but what I saw and heard. In the narration
of his story he seemed but recapitulating the prominent
events for his own self-converse, rather than attempting
to tell a tale to me, and it was hurried over
as brokenly and briefly as I have put it down. I sat in
a listening attitude after he concluded, but he seemed
to have unburthened his bosom sufficiently, and his
lips were closed with stern compression.

“You forget,” he said, after pacing awhile, “that I
offered you a place to sleep. The night wears late.
Stretch yourself on that straw, with your cloak over
you. Good night!”

I lay down and looked up at the smoke rolling
heavily into the sky till I slept.

I awoke, feeling chilled, for the rock sheltered me
from the rays of the fire. I stepped out from the
hollow. The fires were pale with the gray of the
morning, and the sky was visible through the smoke.
I looked around for a place to warm myself. The
hickory log had smouldered out, but a fire had been
kindled under the overblown pine, and its pitchy heart
was now flowing with the steady brilliancy of a torch.
I took up one of its broken branches, cracked it on my
knee, and stirring up the coals below, soon sent up a
merry blaze, which enveloped the whole trunk.

Turning my back to the increasing heat, I started,
for, creeping toward me, with a look of eagerness for
which I was at a loss to account, came the Picker and
Piler.

“Twice doomed!” he muttered between his teeth,
“but not by me!”

He threw down a handful of pitch pine knots, laid
his axe against a burning tree, and with a branch of
hemlock, swept off the flame from the spot where the
fire was eating through, as if to see how nearly it was
divided.

I began to think him insane, for I could get no
answer to my questions, and when he spoke, it was
half audible, and with his eyes turned from me fixedly.
I looked in the same direction, but could see nothing
remarkable. The seducer slept soundly beneath his
matted wall, and the rude door of the shanty was behind
us. Leaving him to see phantoms in the air, as
I thought, I turned my eyes to the drips of the waterfall,
and was absorbed in memories of my own, when
I saw the girl steal from the shanty, and with one
bound overleap the rocky barrier of the platform. I
laid my hand on the shoulder of my host, and pointed
after her, as with stealthy pace looking back occasionally
to the hut, where she evidently thought her
father slept, she crept round toward her lover.

“He dies!” cried the infuriated man; but as he
jumped from me to seize his axe, the girl crouched
out of sight, and my own first thought was to awake
the sleeper. I made two bounds and looked back, for
I heard no footstep.

“Stand clear!” shouted a voice of almost supernatural
shrillness! and as I caught sight of the Picker
and Piler standing enveloped in smoke upon the burning
tree, with his axe high in the air, the truth flashed
on me.

Down came the axe into the very heart of the pitchy
flame, and trembling with the tremendous smoke, the
trunk slowly bent upward from the fire.

The Picker and Piler sprang clear, the overborne
ash creaked and heaved, and with a sick giddiness in
my eyes, I look at the unwarned sleeper.

One half of the dissevered pine fell to the earth,
and the shock startled him from his sleep. A whole
age seemed to me elapsing while the other rose with
the slow lift of the ash. As it slid heavily away, the
vigorous tree righted, like a giant springing to his
feet. I saw the root pin the hand of the seducer to
the earth—a struggle—a contortion and the leafless
and waving top of the recovered and upright tree
rocked with its effort, and a long, sharp cry had gone
out echoing through the woods, and was still. I felt
my brain reel.

Blanched to a livid paleness, the girl moved about
in the sickly daylight, when I recovered; but the
Picker and Piler, with a clearer brow than I had yet
seen him wear, was kindling fires beneath the remnants
of the pine.

KATE CREDIFORD.

I found myself looking with some interest at the
back of a lady's head. The theatre was crowded, and
I had come in late, and the object of my curiosity,
whoever she might be, was listening very attentively to
the play.—She did not move. I had time to build a
life-time romance about her before I had seen a feature
of her face. But her ears were small and of an exquisite
oval, and she had that rarest beauty of woman
—the hair arched and joined to the white neck with
the same finish as on the temples. Nature often
slights this part of her masterpiece.

The curtain dropped, and I stretched eagerly forward
to catch a glimse of the profile.—But no! she
sat next one of the slender pilasters, and with her head
leaned against it, remained immovable.

I left the box, and with some difficulty made my
way into the crowded pit. Elbowing, apologizing,
persevering, I at last gained a point where I knew I
could see my incognita at the most advantage. I
turned—pshaw!—how was it possible I had not recognised
her?

Kate Crediford!

There was no getting out again, for a while at least,
without giving offence to the crowd I had jostled so
unceremoniously. I sat down—vexed—and commenced
a desperate study of the figure of Shakspere on
the drop-curtain.

Of course I had been a lover of Miss Crediford's,
or I could not have turned with indifference from the
handsomest woman in the theatre. She was very
beautiful—there was no disputing. But we love women
a little for what we do know of them, and a great
deal more for what we do not. I had love-read Kate
Crediford to the last leaf. We parted as easily as a
reader and a book. Flirtation is a circulating library,
in which we seldom ask twice for the same volume,
and I gave up Kate to the next reader, feeling no
property even in the marks I had made in her perusal.
A little quarrel sufficed as an excuse for the closing of
the book, and both of us studiously avoided a reconciliation.

As I sat in the pit, I remembered suddenly a mole
on her left cheek, and I turned toward her with the
simple curiosity to knew whether it was visible at that
distance. Kate looked sad. She still leaned immoveable
against the slight column, and her dark eyes, it
struck me, were moist. Her mouth, with this peculiar
expression upon her countenance, was certainly
inexpressibly sweet—the turned-down corners ending
in dimples, which in that particular place, I have always
observed, are like wells of unfathomable melancholy.
Poor Kate! what was the matter with her?

As I turned back to my dull study of the curtain, a
little pettish with myself for the interest with which I
had looked at an old flame, I detected half a sigh
under my white waistcoat; but instantly persuading
myself that it was a disposition to cough, coughed, and
began to hum “suoni la tromba.” The curtain rose
and the play went on.

It was odd that I never had seen Kate in that humor
before. I did not think she could be sad. Kate
Crediford sad! Why, she was the most volatile, light-hearted,
care-for-nothing coquette that ever held up
her fingers to be kissed. I wonder, has any one really
annoyed you, my poor Kate! thought I. Could I,
by chance, be of any service to you—for, after all, I
owe you something! I looked at her again.

Strange that I had ever looked at that face without
emotion! The vigils of an ever-wakeful, ever-passionate,
yet ever-tearful and melancholy spirit, seemed set,
and kept under those heavy and motionless eyelids.
And she, as I saw her now, was the very model and
semblance of the character that I had all my life been
vainly seeking! This was the creature I had sighed
for when turning away from the too mirthful tenderness
of Kate Crediford! There was something new,
or something for the moment miswritten, in that
familiar countenance.

I made my way out of the pit with some difficulty,
and returned to sit near her. After a few minutes, a
gentleman in the next box rose and left the seat vacant
on the other side of the pilaster against which she
leaned. I went around while the orchestra were playing
a loud march, and, without being observed by the
thoughtful beauty, seated myself in the vacant place.

Why did my eyes flush and moisten, as I looked
upon the small white hand lying on the cushioned
barrier between us! I knew every vein of it, like the
strings of my own heart.—I had held it spread out in
my own, and followed its delicate blue traceries with
a rose-stem, for hours and hours, while imploring, and
reproaching, and reasoning over love's lights and
shadows. I knew the feel of every one of those exquisite
fingers—those rolled up rose-leaves, with nails
like pieces cut from the lip of a shell! Oh, the
promises I had kissed into oaths on that little chef-d'œuvre
of nature's tinted alabaster! the psalms and
sermons I had sat out holding it, in her father's pew!
the moons I had tired out of the sky, making of it a
bridge for our hearts passing backward and forward!
And how could that little wretch of a hand, that knew
me better than its own other hand (for we had been
more together), lie there, so unconscious of my presence?
How could she—Kate Crediford—sit next to
me as she was doing, with only a stuffed partition between
us, and her head leaning on one side of a pilaster,
and mine on the other, and never start, nor recognise,
nor be at all aware of my neighborhood? She was
not playing a part, it was easy to see. Oh, I knew
those little relaxed fingers too well! Sadness, indolent
and luxurious sadness, was expressed in her countenance,
and her abstraction was unfeigned and contemplative.
Could she have so utterly forgotten me—
magnetically, that is to say?—Could the atmosphere
about her, that would once have trembled betrayingly
at my approach, like the fanning of an angel's invisible
wing, have lost the sense of my presence?

I tried to magnetize her hand. I fixed my eyes on
that little open palm, and with all the intensity I could
summon, kissed it mentally in its rosy centre. I reproached
the ungrateful little thing for its dulness and
forgetfulness, and brought to bear upon it a focus of
old memories of pressures and caresses, to which a
stone would scarce have the heart to be insensible.

But I belie myself in writing this with a smile. I
watched those unmoving fingers with a heart. I could
not see the face, nor read the thought, of the woman
who had once loved me, and who sat near me, now, so
unconsciously—but if a memory had stirred, if a pulse
had quickened its beat, those finely-strung fingers I
well know would have trembled responsively. Had
she forgotten me altogether? Is that possible? Can
a woman close the leaves of her heart over a once-loved
and deeply-written name, like the waves over a vessel's
track—like the air over the division of a bird's flight?

I had intended to speak presently to Miss Crediford,
but every moment the restraint became greater. I felt
no more privileged to speak to her than the stranger
who had left the seat I occupied. I drew back, for
fear of encroaching on her room, or disturbing the
folds of her shawl. I dared not speak to her. And,
while I was arguing the matter to myself, the party
who were with her, apparently tired of the play, arose
and left the theatre, Kate following last, but unspoken
to, and unconscious altogether of having been near
any one whom she knew.

I went home and wrote to her all night, for there was
no sleeping till I had given vent to this new fever at my
heart. And in the morning, I took the leading thoughts
from my heap in incoherent scribblings, and embodied
them more coolly in a letter:—

“You will think, when you look at the signature,
that this is to be the old story. And you will be as
much mistaken as you are in believing that I was ever
your lover, till a few hours ago. I have declared love
to you, it is true. I have been happy with you, and
wretched without you; I have thought of you, dreamed
of you, haunted you, sworn to you, and devoted to
you all and more than you exacted, of time and outward
service and adoration; but I love you now for
the first time in my life. Shall I be so happy as to
make you comprehend this startling contradiction?

“There are many chambers in the heart, Kate; and
the spirits of some of us dwell, most fondly and secretly,
in the chamber of tears—avowedly, however, in the
outer and ever-open chamber of mirth. Over the
sacred threshold, guarded by sadness, much that we
select and smile upon, and follow with adulation in
the common walks of life, never passes. We admire
the gay. They make our melancholy sweeter by contrast,
when we retire within ourselves. We pursue
them. We take them to our hearts—to the outer
vestibules of our hearts—and if they are gay only, they
are content with the unconsecrated tribute which we
pay them there. But the chamber within is, meantime,
lonely. It aches with its desolation. The echo
of the mirthful admiration without jars upon its
mournful silence.—It longs for love, but love toned
with its own sadness—love that can penetrate deeper
than smiles ever came—love that, having once entered,
can be locked in with its key of melancholy, and
brooded over with the long dream of a life-time. But
that deep-hidden and unseen chamber of the heart
may be long untenanted. And, meantime, the spirit
becomes weary of mirth, and impatiently quenches the
fire even upon its outer altar, and in the complete
loneliness of a heart that has no inmate or idol, gay
or tearful, lives mechanically on.

“Do you guess at my meaning, Kate?—Do you
remember the merriment of our first meeting? Do
you remember in what a frolic of thoughtlessness you
first permitted me to raise to my lips those restless
fingers? Do you remember the mock condescension,
the merry haughtiness, the rallying and feigned incredulity,
with which you first received my successive
steps of vowing and love-making—the arch look when
it was begun, the laugh when it was over, the untiring
follies we kept up, after vows plighted, and the future
planned and sworn to? That you were in earnest, as
much as you were capable of being, I fully believe.
You would not else have been so prodigal of the sweet
bestowings of a maiden's tenderness. But how often
have I left you with the feeling, that in the hours I
had passed with you, my spirit had been alone! How
often have I wondered if there were depths in my heart,
which love can never reach! How often mourned
that in the procession of love there was no place allotted
for its sweetest and dearest followers—tears and
silence! Oh, Kate! sweet as was that sun-gleam of
early passion, I did not love you! I tired of your

smiles, waiting in vain for your sadness. I left you,
and thought of you no more?

“But now (and you will be surprised to know that
I have been so near to you unperceived)—I have drank
an intoxication from one glance into your eyes, which
throws open to you every door of my heart, subdues
to your control every nerve and feeling of my existence.
Last night, I sat an hour, tracing again the
transparent and well-remembered veins upon your
hand, and oh! how the language written in those
branching and mystic lines had changed in meaning
and power.—You were sad. I saw you from a distance,
and, with amazement at an expression upon
your face which I had never before seen. I came and
sat near you. It was the look I had longed for when
I knew you, and when tired of your mirth. It was
the look I had searched the world for, combined with
such beauty as yours. It was a look of tender and
passionate melancholy, which revealed to me an unsuspected
chamber in your heart—a chamber of tears.
Ah, why were you never sad before? Why have we
lost—why have I lost the eternity's worth of sweet
hours when you love me with that concealed treasure
in your bosom?—Alas! that angels must walk the
world, unrecognised, till too late! Alas, that I have
held in my arms and pressed to my lips, and loosed
again with trifling and weariness, the creature whom
it was my life's errand, the thirst and passionate longing
of my nature, to find and worship!

“Oh, Heaven! with what new value do I now
number over your adorable graces of person! How
spiritualized is every familiar feature, once so deplorably
misappreciated!—How compulsive of respectful
adoration is that flexible waist, that step of aerial lightness,
that swan-like motion, which I once dared to
praise triflingly and half-mockingly, like the tints of a
flower or the chance beauty of a bird! And those
bright lips! How did I ever look on them, and not
know that within their rosy portal slept voiceless, for
a while, the controlling spell of my destiny—the tearful
spirit followed and called in my dreams, with perpetual
longing? Strange value given to features and
outward loveliness by qualities within! Strange
witchery of sadness in a woman! Oh, there is, in
mirth and folly, dear Kate, no air for love's breathing,
still less of food for constancy, or of holiness to consecrate
and heighten beauty of person.

“What can I say else, except implore to be permitted
to approach you—to offer my life to you—to
begin, thus late, after being known so long, the worship
which till death is your due? Pardon me if I
have written abruptly and wildly. I shall await your
answer in an agony of expectation. I do not willingly
breathe till I see you—till I weep at your feet over my
blindness and forgetfulness. Adieu! but let it not be
for long I pray you!”

I despatched this letter, and it would be difficult to
embody in language the agony I suffered in waiting
for a reply. I walked my room, that endless morning,
with a death-pang in every step—so fearful was I—so
prophetically fearful—that I had forfeited for ever the
heart I had once flung from me.

It was noon when a letter arrived. It was in a handwriting
new to me. But it was on the subject which
possessed my existence, and it was of final import.
It follows:—

But I never called on Mrs. Samuel Smithers.

FLIRTATION AND FOX-CHASING.

I was moping one day in solitary confinement in
quarantine at Malta, when, in a turn between my stone
window and the back wall I saw the yards of a vessel
suddently cross the light, and heard the next moment
the rattle of a chain let go, and all the bustle of a
merchantman coming to anchor. I had the privilege
of promenading between two ring-bolts on the wharf
below the lazaretto, and with the attraction of a newcomer
to the sleepy company of vessels under the
yellow flag, I lost no time in descending the stone
stairs, and was immediately joined by my vigilant sentinel,
the guardiano, whose business it was to prevent
my contact with the other visiters to the wharf. The
tricolor flew at the peak of the stranger, and we easily
made out that she was a merchantman from Marseilles,
subject therefore to a week's quarantine on account
of the cholera. I had myself come from a
plague port, Smyrna, and was subjected to twenty
days' quarantine, six of which had passed; so that the
Frenchman, though but beginning his imprisonment,
was in a position comparatively enviable.

I had watched for an hour the getting of the vessel
into mooring trim, and was beginning to conclude
that she had come without passengers, when a gentleman
made his appearance on deck, and the jolly-boat
was immediately lowered and manned. A traveller's
baggage was handed over the side, the gentleman took
leave of the captain, and, in obedience to directions
from the quarantine officer on the quarterdeck, the
boat was pulled directly to the wharf on which I stood.
The guardiano gave me a caution to retire a little, as
the stranger was coming to take possession of the next
apartment to my own, and must land at the stairs near
by; but, before I had taken two steps backward, I
began to recognise features familar to me, and with a
turn of the head as he sprang on the wharf the identity
was established completely. Tom Berryman, by all
that was wonderful! I had not seen him since we
were suspended from college together ten years before.
Forgetting lazaretto and guardiano, and all the salt
water between New Haven and Malta, I rushed up to
Tom with the cordiality of other days (a little sharpened
by abstinence from society), and we still had hold
of hands with a firm grip, when the quarantine master
gravely accosted us, and informed my friend that he
had incurred an additional week by touching me—in
short, that he must partake of the remainder of my
quarantine.

Aghast and chap-fallen as Berryman was at the consequences
of our rencontre (for he had fully calculated
on getting into Malta in time for the carnival), he was
somewhat reconciled to his lot by being permitted to
share my room and table instead of living his week in
solitude; and, by enriching our supplies a little from

town, sleeping much, and chatting through the day in
the rich sunshine of that climate of Paradise, we contrived
to shove off the fortnight without any very intolerable
tedium.

My friend and I had begun our travels differently—
he taken England first, which I proposed visiting last.
It is of course the bonne bouche of travel to everybody,
and I was very curious to know Tom's experiences;
and, as I was soon bound thitherward, anxious to pick
out of his descriptions some chart of the rocks and
shoals in the “British channel” of society.

I should say, before quoting my friend, that he was
a Kentuckian, with the manner (to ladies) of mingled
devotion and nonchalance so popular with the sex,
and a chivalric quality of man altogether. His father's
political influence had obtained for him personal letters
of introduction from the president, and, with this advantage,
and his natural air of fashion, he had found
no obstacle to choosing his society in England;
choosing the first, of course, like a true republican!

We were sitting on the water-steps with our feet
immersed up to the ankles (in January too), and in
reply to some question of mine as to the approachability
of noble ladies by such plebeian lovers as himself,
Tom told me the story which follows. I take the
names at random, of course, but, in all else, I shall try
to “tell the tale as 'twas told to me.”

Why, circumstances, as you know, sometimes put
people in the attitude of lovers whether they will or no;
and it is but civil in such a case, to do what fate expects
of you. I knew too much of the difference between
crockery and porcelain to enter English society
with the remotest idea of making love within the red
book of the peerage, and though I've a story to tell, I
swear I never put a foot forward till I thought it was
knightly devoir; inevitable, though ever so ridiculous.
Still, I must say, with a beautiful and unreserved
woman beside one, very much like other beautiful and
unreserved woman, a republican might be pardoned for
forgetting the invisible wall. “Right honorable” loveliness
has as much attraction about it, let me tell you,
and is quite as difficult to resist, as loveliness that is
honored, right or wrong, and a man must be brought
up to it, as Englishmen are, to see the heraldric dragons
and griffins in the air when a charming girl is talking
to him.

Eh? But to begin with the “Tityre tu patulæ.”

I had been passing a fortnight at the hunting lodge
of that wild devil, Lord —, in the Scotch Highlands,
and what with being freely wet outside every day, and
freely wet inside every night, I had given my principle
of life rather a disgust to its lodgings, and there were
some symptoms of preparation for leave-taking. Unwilling
to be ill in a bachelor's den, with no solace
tenderer than a dandy lord's tiger, I made a twilight
flit to the nearest post-town, and tightening my life-screws
a little with the aid of the village apothecary,
started southward the next morning with four posters.

I expected to be obliged to pull up at Edinboro', but
the doctor's opiates, and abstinence, and quiet did
more for me than I had hoped, and I went on very
comfortably to Carlisle. I arrived at this place after
nightfall, and found the taverns overflowing with the
crowds of a fair, and no bed to be had unless I could
make one in a quartette of snoring graziers. At the
same time there was a great political meeting at
Edinboro', and every leg of a poster had gone north
—those I had brought with me having been trans-hitched
to a return chaise, and gone off while I was
looking for accommodations.

Regularly stranded, I sat down by the tap-room
fire, and was mourning my disaster, when the horn
of the night-coach reached my ear, and in the minute
of its rattling up to the door, I hastily resolved that it
was the least of two evils, and booked myself accordingly.
There was but one vacant place, an outsider!
With hardly time enough to resolve, and none to repent,
I was presently rolling over the dark road, chilled
to the bone in the first five minutes, and wet through
with a “Scotch mist” in the next half hour. Somewhere
about daybreak we rolled into the little town
of —, five miles from the seat of the earl of Tresethen,
to whose hospitalities I stood invited, and I went
to bed in a most comfortable inn and slept till noon.

Before going to bed I had written a note to be despatched
to Tresethen castle, and the earl's carriage
was waiting for me when I awoke. I found myself
better than I had expected, and dressing at once for
dinner, managed to reach the castle just in time to
hand in Lady Tresethen. Of that dinner I but remember
that I was the only guest, and that the earl
regretted his daughter's absence from table, Lady
Caroline having been thrown that morning from her
horse. I fainted somewhere about the second remove,
and recovered my wits some days after, on the safe side
of the crisis of a fever.

I shall never forget that first half hour of conscious
curiosity. An exquisite sense of bodily repose mingled
with a vague notion of recent relief from pain, made
me afraid to speak lest I should awake from a dream,
yet, if not a dream, what a delicious reality! A lady
of most noble presence, in a half-mourning dress, sat
by the side of a cheerful fire, turning her large dark eyes
on me, in the pauses of a conversation with a gray-headed
servant. My bed was of the most sumptuous
luxury; the chamber was hung with pictures and
draped with spotless white; the table covered with
the costliest elegancies of the toilet; and in the gentle
and deferential manner of the old liveried menial, and
the subdued tones of inquiry by the lady, there was a
refinement and tenderness which, with the keen susceptibility
of my senses, “lapt me in Elysium.” I was
long in remembering where I was. The lady glided
from the room, the old servant resumed his seat by
my bedside, other servants in the same livery came
softly in on errands of service, and, at the striking of
the half hour by a clock on the mantelpiece, the lady
returned, and I was raised to receive something from
her hand. As she came nearer, I remembered the
Countess Tresethen.

Three days after this I was permitted to take the
air of a conservatory which opened from the countess's
boudoir. My old attendant assisted me to dress, and,
with another servant, took me down in a fauteuil. I
was in slippers and robe-de-chambre, and presumed
that I should see no one except the kind and noble
Lady Tresethen, but I had scarce taken one turn up
the long alley of flowering plants, when the countess
came toward me from the glass door beyond, and on
her arm a girl leaned for support, whose beauty—

(Here Tom dabbled his feet for some minutes in
the water in silence.)

God bless me! I can never give you an idea of it!
It was a new revelation of woman to me; the opening
of an eighth seal. In the minute occupied by her
approach, my imagination (accelerated, as that faculty
always is, by the clairvoyance of sickness), had gone
through a whole drama of love—fear, adoration, desperation,
and rejection—and so complete was it, that
in after moments when these phases of passion came
round in the proper lapse of days and weeks, it seemed
to me that I had been through with them before; that
it was all familiar; that I had met and loved in some
other world, this same glorious creature, with the
same looks, words, and heart-ache; in the same conservatory
of bright flowers, and faith, myself in the
same pattern of a brocade dressing-gown!

Heavens! what a beautiful girl was that Lady Caroline!
Her eyes were of a light gray, the rim of the

lids perfectly inky with the darkness of the long sweeping
lashes, and in her brown hair there was a gold
lustre that seemed somehow to illuminate the curves
of her small head like a halo. Her mouth had too
much character for a perfectly agreeable first impression.
It was nobility and sweetness educated over
native high spirit and scornfulness—the nature shining
through the transparent blood, like a flaw through
enamel. She would have been, in other circumstances,
a maid of Saragossa or a Gertrude Von Wart;
a heroine; perhaps a devil. But her fascination was
resistless!

“My daughter,” said Lady Tresethen (and in that
beginning was all the introduction she thought necessary),
“is, like yourself, an invalid just escaped from
the doctor; you must congratulate each other. Are
you strong enough to lend her an arm, Mr. Berryman?”

The countess left us, and with the composure of a
sister who had seen me every day of my life, Lady
Caroline took my arm and strolled slowly to and fro,
questioning me of my shooting at the lodge, and talking
to me of her late accident, her eyes sometimes
fixed upon her little embroidered slippers, as they
peeped from her snowy morning dress, and sometimes
indolently raised and brought to bear on my flushed
cheek and trembling lips; her singular serenity operating
on me as anything but a sedative! I was taken
up stairs again, after an hour's conversation, in a fair
way for a relapse, and the doctor put me under embargo
again for another week, which, spite of all the
renewed care and tenderness of Lady Tresethen,
seemed to me an eternity! I'll not bother you with
what I felt and thought all that time!

It was a brilliant autumnal day when I got leave to
make my second exodus, and with the doctor's permission
I prepared for a short walk in the park. I
declined the convoy of the old servant, for I had heard
Lady Caroline's horse gallop away down the avenue,
and I wished to watch her return unobserved. I had
just lost sight of the castle in the first bend of the path,
when I saw her quietly walking her horse under the
trees at a short distance, and the moment after she
observed and came toward me at an easy canter. I
had schooled myself to a little more self-possession,
but I was not prepared for such an apparition of splendid
beauty as that woman on horseback. She rode an
Arabian bay of the finest blood; a lofty, fiery, matchless
creature, with an expression of eye and nostril
which I could not but think a proper pendant to her
own, limbed as I had seldom seen a horse, and his
arched neck, and forehead, altogether, proud as a steed
for Lucifer. She sat on him as if it were a throne
she was born to, and the flow of her riding-dress
seemed as much a part of him as his mane. He appeared
ready to bound into the air, like Pegasus, but
one hand calmly stroked his mane, and her face was
as tranquil as marble.

“Well met!” she said; “I was just wishing for a
cavalier. What sort of a horse would you like, Mr.
Berryman? Ellis!” (speaking to her groom), “is old
Curtal taken up from grass?”

“Yes, miladi!”

“Curtal is our invalid horse, and as you are not
very strong, perhaps his easy pace will be best for you.
Bring him out directly, Ellis. We'll just walk along
the road a little way; for I must show you my Arabian;
and we'll not go back to ask mamma's permission,
for we shouldn't get it! You won't mind riding
a little way, will you?”

Of course I would have bestrided a hippogriff at
her bidding, and when the groom came out, leading
a thorough-bred hunter, with apparently a very elastic
and gentle action, I forgot the doctor and mounted
with great alacrity. We walked our horses slowly
down the avenue and out at the castle gate, followed
by the groom, and after trying a little quicker pace on
the public road, I pronounced old Curtal worthy of
her ladyship's eulogium, and her own Saladin worthy,
if horse could be worthy, of his burthen.

We had ridden perhaps a mile, and Lady Caroline
was giving me a slight history of the wonderful feats
of the old veteran under me, when the sound of a horn
made both horses prick up their ears, and on rising
a little acclivity, we caught sight of a pack of hounds
coming across the fields directly toward us, followed
by some twenty red-coated horsemen. Old Curtal
trembled and showed a disposition to fret, and I observed
that Lady Caroline dexterously lengthened
her own stirrup and loosened the belt of her riding-dress,
and the next minute the hounds were over the
hedge, and the horsemen, leap after leap, after them,
and with every successive jump, my own steed reared
and plunged unmanageably.

“Indeed, I can not stand this!” cried Lady Caroline,
gathering up her reins, “Ellis! see Mr. Berryman
home!” and away went the flying Arabian over
the hedge with a vault that left me breathless with
astonishment. One minute I made the vain effort to
control my own horse and turn his head in the other
direction, but my strength was gone. I had never
leaped a fence in my life on horseback, though a
tolerable rider on the road; but before I could think
how it was to be done, or gather myself together for
the leap, Curtal was over the hedge with me, and
flying across a ploughed field like the wind—Saladin
not far before him. With a glance-ahead I saw the
red coats rising into the air and disappearing over
another green hedge, and though the field was crossed
in twenty leaps, I had time to feel my blood run cold
with the prospect of describing another parabola in
the air, and to speculate on the best attitude for a
projectile on horseback. Over went Saladin like a
greyhound, but his mistress's riding-cap caught the
wind at the highest point of the curve, and flew back
into my face as Curtal rose on his haunches, and over
I went again, blinded and giddy, and, with the cap
held flat against my bosom by the pressure of the air,
flew once more at a tremendous pace onward. My
feet were now plunged to the instep in the stirrups,
and my back, too weak to support me erect, let me
down to my horse's mane, and one by one, along the
skirt of a rising woodland, I could see the red coats
dropping slowly behind. Right before me like a
meteor, however, streamed back the loosened tresses
of Lady Caroline, and Curtal kept close on the track
of Saladin, neither losing nor gaining an inch apparently,
and nearer and nearer sounded the baying of the
hounds, and clearer became my view of the steady and
slight waist riding so fearlessly onward. Of my horse
I had neither guidance nor control. He needed none.
The hounds had crossed a morass, and we were rounding
a half-circle on an acclivity to come up with them,
and Curtal went at it too confidently to be in error.
Evenly as a hand-gallop on a green sward his tremendous
pace told off, and if his was the ease of muscular
power, the graceful speed of the beautiful creature
moving before me seemed the aerial buoyancy of a
bird. Obstructions seemed nothing. That flowing
dress and streaming hair sailed over rocks and ditches,
and over them, like their inseparable shadow, glided
I, and, except one horseman who still kept his distance
ahead, we seemed alone in the field. The
clatter of hoofs, and the exclamations of excitement
had ceased behind me, and though I was capable of
no exertion beyond that of keeping my seat, I no
longer feared the leap nor the pace, and began to anticipate
a safe termination to my perilous adventure.
A slight exclamation from Lady Caroline reached my
ear and I looked forward. A small river was before
us, and, from the opposite bank, of steep clay, the
rider who had preceded us was falling back, his horse's

forefeet high in the air, and his arms already in the
water. I tried to pull my reins. I shouted to my
horse in desperation. And with the exertion, my
heart seemed to give way within me. Giddy and faint
I abandoned myself to my fate. I just saw the flying
heels of Saladin planted on the opposite bank and the
streaming hair still flying onward, when, with a bound
that, it seemed to me, must rend every fibre of the
creature beneath me, I saw the water gleam under
my feet, and still I kept on. We flew over a fence
into a stubble field, the hounds just before us, and over
a gate into the public highway, which we followed for
a dozen bounds, and then, with a pace slightly moderated,
we successively cleared a low wall and brought
up, on our horses' haunches, in the midst of an uproar
of dogs, cows, and scattering poultry—the fox having
been run down at last in the enclosure of a barn. I
had just strength to extricate my feet from the stirrups,
take Lady Caroline's cap, which had kept its place
between my elbows and knees, and present it to her
as she sat in her saddle, and my legs gave way under
me. I was taken into the farmhouse, and, at the close
of a temporary ellipse, I was sent back to Tresethen
Castle in a post-chaise, and once more handed over to
the doctor!

Well, my third siege of illness was more tolerable,
for I received daily, now, some message of inquiry or
some token of interest from Lady Caroline, though I
learned from the countess that she was in sad disgrace
for her inveiglement of my trusting innocence. I also
received the cards of the members of the hunt, with
many inquiries complimeatary to what they were
pleased to consider American horsemanship, and I
found that my seizure of the flying cap of Lady Caroline
and presentation of it to her ladyship at “the
death,” was thought to be worthy, in chivalry of
Bayard, and in dexterity of Ducrow. Indeed, when
let out again to the convalescent walk in the conservatory,
I found that I was counted a hero even by the
stately earl. There slipped a compliment, too, here
and there, through the matronly disapprobation of
Lady Tresethen—and all this was too pleasant to put
aside with a disclaimer—so I bid truth and modesty
hold their peace, and took the honor the gods chose
to provide!

But now came dangers more perilous than my ride
on Curtal. Lady Caroline was called upon to be kind
to me! Daily as the old servant left me in the alley
of japonicas, she appeared from the glass door of her
mother's boudoir and devoted herself to my comfort—
walking with me, while I could walk, in those fragrant
and balmy avenues of flowers, and then bringing me
into her mother's luxurious apartment, where books,
and music, and conversation as frank and untrammelled
as man in love could ask, wiled away the day. Wiled
it away?—winged it—shod it with velvet and silence,
for I never knew how it passed! Lady Caroline had
a mind of the superiority stamped so consciously on
her lip. She anticipated no consequences from her
kindness, therefore she was playful and unembarrassed.
She sang to me, and I read to her. Her rides were
given up, and Saladin daily went past the window to
his exercise, and with my most zealous scrutiny I
could detect in her face neither impatience of confinement
nor regret at the loss of weather fitter for
pleasures out of doors. Spite of every caution with
which hope could be chained down, I was flattered.

You smile—(Tom said, though he was looking
straight into the water, and had not seen my face for
half an hour)—but, without the remotest hope of
taking Lady Caroline to Kentucky, or of becoming
English on the splendid dowry of the heiress of Tresethen, I still felt it impossible to escape from my lover's
attitude—impossible to avoid hoarding up symptoms,
encouragements, flatteries, and all the moonshine of amatory
anxiety. I was in love—and who reasons in love?

One morning, after I had become an honorary
patient—an invalid only by sufferance—and was slowly
admitting the unwelcome conviction that it was
time for me to be shaping my adieux—the conversation
took rather a philosophical turn. The starting
point was a quotation in a magazine from Richter:
“Is not a man's universe within his head, whether a
king's diadem or a torn scullcap be without?”—and I
had insisted rather strenuously on the levelling privilege
we enjoyed in the existence of a second world around
us—the world of revery and dream—wherein the tyranny,
and check, and the arbitrary distinctions of the
world of fact, were never felt—and where he, though
he might be a peasant, who had the consciousness in
his soul that he was a worthy object of love to a princess,
could fancy himself beloved and revel in imaginary
possession.

“Why,” said I, turning with a sudden flush of self-confidence
to Lady Caroline, “Why should not the
passions of such a world, the loving and returning of
love in fancy, have the privilege of language? Why
should not matches be made, love confessed, vows exchanged,
and fidelity sworn, valid within the realm of
dream-land only? Why should I not say to you, for
example, I adore you, dear lady, and in my world of
thought you shall, if you so condescend, be my bride
and mistress; and why, if you responded to this and
listened to my vows of fancy, should your bridegroom
of the world of fact feel his rights invaded?”

“In fancy let it be then!” said Lady Caroline, with
a blush and a covert smile, and she rang the bell for
luncheon.

Well, I still lingered a couple of days, and on the
last day of my stay at Tresethen, I became sufficiently
emboldened to take Lady Caroline's hand behind the
fountain of the conservatory, and to press it to my lips
with a daring wish that its warm pulses belonged to
the world of fancy.

She withdrew it very kindly, and (I thought) sadly,
and begged me to go to the boudoir and bring her a
volume of Byron that lay on her work-table.

I brought it, and she turned over the leaves a moment,
and, with her pencil, marked two lines and gave
me the book, bidding me an abrupt good morning.
I stood a few minutes with my heart beating and my
brain faint, but finally summoned courage to read—

I left Tresethen the next morning, and —

“Hold on, Tom!” cried I—“there comes the boat
with our dinner from Valletta, and we'll have your
sorrows over our Burgundy.”

“Sorrows!” exclaimed Tom, “I was going to tell
you of the fun I had at her wedding!”

“Lord preserve us!”

“Bigamy—wasn't it?—after our little nuptials in
dream-land! She told her husband all about it at the
wedding breakfast, and his lordship (she married the
Marquis of —) begged to know the extent of my
prerogatives. I was sorry to confess that they did not
interfere very particularly with his!”

THE POET AND THE MANDARIN.

The moon shone like glorified and floating dew on
the bosom of the tranquil Pei-ho, and the heart of the
young poet Le-pih was like a cup running over with
wine. It was no abatement of his exulting fulness
that he was as yet the sole possessor of the secret of
his own genius. Conscious of exquisite susceptibility
to beauty, fragrance and music (the three graces of

the Chinese), he was more intent upon enjoying his
gifts than upon the awakening of envy for their possession—the
latter being the second leaf in the book of
genius, and only turned over by the finger of satiety.
Thoughtless of the acquisition of fame as the youthful
poet may be, however, he is always ready to anticipate
its fruits, and Le-pih committed but the poet's
error, when, having the gem in his bosom which
could buy the favor of the world, he took the favor
for granted without producing the gem.

Kwonfootse had returned a conqueror, from the wars
with the Hwong-kin, and this night, on which the
moon shone so gloriously, was the hour of his triumph,
for the Emperor Tang had condescended to honor
with his presence, a gala given by the victorious general
at his gardens on the Pei-ho. Softened by his
exulting feelings (for though a brave soldier, he was
as haughty as Luykong the thunder-god, or Hwuyloo
the monarch of fire), the warlike mandarin threw open
his gardens on this joyful night, not only to those who
wore in their caps the gold ball significant of patrician
birth, but to all whose dress and mien warranted their
appearance in the presence of the emperor.

Like the realms of the blest shone the gardens of
Kwonfootse. Occupying the whole valley of the
Pei-ho, at a spot where it curved like the twisted
cavity of a shell, the sky seemed to shut in the grounds
like the cover of a vase, and the stars seemed but the
garden-lights overhead. From one edge of the vase
to the other—from hill-top to hill-top—extended a
broad avenue, a pagoda at either extremity glittering
with gold and scarlet, the sides flaming with colored
lamps and flaunting with gay streamers of barbarian
stuffs, and the moonlit river cutting it in the centre, the
whole vista, at the first glance, resembling a girdle of
precious stones with a fastening of opal. Off from
this central division radiated in all directions alleys of
camphor and cinnamon trees, lighted with amorous
dimness, and leading away to bowers upon the hill-side,
and from every quarter resounded music, and in
every nook was seen feasting and merriment.

In disguise, the emperor and imperial family mingled
in the crowd, and no one save the host and his daughters
knew what part of the gardens was honored with
their presence. There was, however, a retreat in the
grounds, sacred to the privileged few, and here, when
fatigued or desirous of refreshment, the royal personages
laid aside disguise and were surrounded with
the deferential honors of the court. It was so contrived
that the access was unobserved by the people,
and there was, therefore, no feeling of exclusion to
qualify the hilarity of the entertainment, Kwonfootse,
with all his pride, looking carefully to his popularity.
At the foot of each descent, upon the matted banks
of the river, floated gilded boats with lamps burning in
their prows, and gayly-dressed boatmen offering conveyance
across to all who required it; but there were
also, unobserved by the crowd, boats unlighted and
undecorated holding off from the shore, which, at a
sign given by the initiated, silently approached a marble
stair without the line of the blazing avenue, and taking
their freight on board, swiftly pulled up the moonlit
river, to a landing concealed by the shoulder of the hill.
No path led from the gardens hither, and from no point
of view could be overlooked the more brilliant scene
of imperial revel.

It was verging toward midnight when the unknown
poet, with brain floating in a celestial giddiness of delight,
stood on the brink of the gleaming river. The boats
plied to and fro with their freights of fair damsels and
gayly-dressed youths, the many-colored lamps throwing
a rainbow profusion of tints on the water, and
many a voice addressed him with merry invitation, for
Le-pih's beauty, so famous now in history, was of no
forbidding stateliness, and his motions, like his countenance,
were as frankly joyous as the gambols of a
young leopard. Not inclined to boisterous gayety at
the moment, Le-pih stepped between the lamp-bearing
trees of the avenue, and folding his arms in his silken
vest, stood gazing in revery on the dancing waters.
After a few moments, one of the dark boats on which
he had unconsciously fixed his gaze drew silently
toward him, and as the cushioned stern was brought
round to the bank, the boatman made a reverence to
his knees and sat waiting the poet's pleasure.

Like all men born to good fortune, Le-pih was
prompt to follow the first beckonings of adventure, and
asking no questions, he quietly embarked, and with a
quick dip of the oars the boat shot from the shore and
took the descending current. Almost in the next instant
she neared again to the curving and willow-fringed
margin of the stream, and lights glimmered through
the branches, and sweet, low music became audible,
and by rapid degrees, a scene burst on his eye, which
the first glimpse into the gate of paradise (a subsequent
agreeable surprise, let us presume) could scarcely have
exceeded.

Without an exchange of a syllable between the
boatman and his freight, the stern was set against a
carpeted stair at the edge of the river, and Le-pih disembarked
with a bound, and stood upon a spacious
area lying in a lap of the hill, the entire surface carpeted
smoothly with Persian stuffs, and dotted here and there
with striped tents piched with poles of silver. Garlands
of flowers hung in festoons against the brilliant-colored
cloths, and in the centre of each tent stood a
low tablet surrounded with couches and laden with
meats and wine. The guests, for whom this portion
of the entertainment was provided, were apparently
assembled at a spot farther on, from which proceeded
the delicious music heard by the poet in approaching;
and, first entering one of the abandoned tents for a
goblet of wine, Le-pih followed to the scene of attraction.

Under a canopy of gold cloth held by six bearers,
stood the imperial chair upon a raised platform—not
occupied, however, the august Tang reclining more at
his ease, a little out of the circle, upon cushions
canopied by the moonlight. Around upon the steps
of the platform and near by, were grouped the noble
ladies of the court and the royal princesses (Tang
living much in the female apartments and his daughters
numbering several score), and all, at the moment
of Le-pih's joining the assemblage, turning to observe
a damsel with a lute, to whose performance the low
sweet music of the band had been a prelude. The
first touch of the strings betrayed a trembling hand,
and the poet's sympathies were stirred, though from
her bent posture and her distant position he had not
yet seen the features of the player. As the tremulous
notes grew firmer, and the lute began to give out a
flowing harmony, Le-pih approached, and at the same
time, the listening groups of ladies began to whisper
and move away, and of those who remained, none
seemed to listen with pleasure except Kwonfootse and
the emperor. The latter, indeed, rivalled the intruding
bard in his interest, rolling over upon the cushions
and resting on the other imperial elbow in close attention.

Gaining confidence evidently from the neglect of
her auditory, or, as is natural to women, less afraid of
the judgment of the other sex, who were her only
listeners, the fair Taya (the youngest daughter of
Kwonfootse), now joined her voice to her instrument,
and sang with a sweetness that dropped like a plummet
to the soul of Le-pih. He fell to his knee upon
a heap of cushions and leaned eagerly forward. As
she became afterward one of his most passionate
themes, we are enabled to reconjure the features that
were presented to his admiring wonder. The envy
of the princesses was sufficient proof that Taya was of
rare beauty; she had that wonderful perfection of

feature to which envy pays its bitterest tribute, which
is apologized for if not found in the poet's ideal, which
we thirst after in pictures and marble, of which loveliness
and expression are but lesser degrees—fainter
shadowings. She was adorably beautiful. The outer
corners of her long almond-shaped eyes, the dipping
crescent of her forehead, the pencil of her eyebrow
and the indented corners of her mouth—all these
turned downward; and this peculiarity which, in faces
of a less elevated character, indicates a temper morose
and repulsive, in Taya's expressed the very soul of
gentle and lofty melancholy. There was something
infantine about her mouth, the teeth were so small
and regular, and their dazzling whiteness, shining between
lips of the brilliant color of a cherry freshly
torn apart, was in startling contrast with the dark
lustre of her eyes. Le-pih's poetry makes constant
allusion to those small and snowy teeth, and the turned-down
corners of the lips and eyes of his incomparable
mistress.

Taya's song was a fragment of that celebrated
Chinese romance from which Moore has borrowed so
largely in his loves of the angels, and it chanced to
be particularly appropriate to her deserted position
(she was alone now with her three listeners), dwelling as
it did upon the loneliness of a disguised Peri, wandering
in exile upon earth. The lute fell from her hands
when she ceased, and while the emperor applauded,
and Kwonfootse looked on her with paternal pride,
Le-pih modestly advanced to the fallen instrument,
and with a low obeisance to the emperor and a hesitating
apology to Taya, struck a prelude in the same
air, and broke forth into an impulsive expression of
his feelings in verse. It would be quite impossible to
give a translation of this famous effusion with its
oriental load of imagery, but in modifying it to the
spirit of our language (giving little more than its thread
of thought), the reader may see glimpses of the material
from which the great Irish lyrist spun his woof
of sweet fable. Fixing his keen eyes upon the bright
lips just closed, Le-pih sang:—

The song over, Le-pih sat with his hands folded
across the instrument and his eyes cast down, and
Taya gazed on him with wondering looks, yet slowly,
and as if unconsciously, she took from her breast a
rose, and with a half-stolen glance at her father, threw
it upon the lute. But frowningly Kwonfootse rose
from his seat and approached the poet.

“Who are you?” he demanded angrily, as the bard
placed the rose reverently in his bosom.

“Le-pih!”

With another obeisance to the emperor, and a deeper
one to the fair Taya, he turned, after this concise answer,
upon his heel, lifting his cap to his head, which,
to the rage of Kwonfootse, bore not even the gold ball
of aristocracy.

“Bind him for the bastinado!” cried the infuriated
mandarin to the bearers of the canopy.

The six soldiers dropped their poles to the ground,
but the emperor's voice arrested them.

“He shall have no violence but from you, fair
Taya,” said the softened monarch; “call to him by
the name he has just pronounced, for I would hear
that lute again!”

“Le-pih! Le-pih!” cried instantly the musical
voice of the fair girl.

The poet turned and listened, incredulous of his
own ears.

“Le-pih! Le-pih!” she repeated, in a soft tone.

Half-hesitating, half-bounding, as if still scarce believing
he had heard aright, Le-pih flew to her feet,
and dropped to one knee upon the cushion before her,
his breast heaving and his eyes flashing with eager
wonder. Taya's courage was at an end, and she sat
with her eyes upon the ground.

“Give him the lute, Kwonfootse!” said the emperor,
swinging himself on the raised chair with an
abandonment of the imperial avoirdupois, which set
ringing violently the hundred bells suspended in the
golden fringes.

“Let not the crow venture again into the nest of
the eagle,” muttered the mandarin between his teeth
as he handed the instrument to the poet.

The sound of the bells brought in the women and
courtiers from every quarter of the privileged area,
and, preluding upon the strings to gather his scattered
senses, while they were seating themselves around
him, Le-pih at last fixed his gaze upon the lips of
Taya, and commenced his song to an irregular harmony
well adapted to extempore verse. We have tried
in vain to put this celebrated song of compliment into
English stanzas. It commenced with a description
of Taya's beauty, and an enumeration of things she
resembled, dwelling most upon the blue lily, which
seems to have been Le-pih's favorite flower. The
burthen of the conclusion, however, is the new value
everything assumed in her presence. “Of the light
in this garden,” he says, “there is one beam worth all
the glory of the moon, for it sleeps on the eye of Taya.
Of the air about me there is one breath which my soul
drinks like wine—it is from the lips of Taya. Taya
looks on a flower, and that flower seems to me, with
its pure eye, to gaze after her for ever. Taya's jacket
of blue silk is my passion. If angels visit me in my
dreams, let them be dressed like Taya. I love the
broken spangle in her slipper better than the first star
of evening. Bring me, till I die, inner leaves from
the water-lily, since white and fragrant like them are
the teeth of Taya. Call me, should I sleep, when
rises the crescent moon, for the blue sky in its bend
curves like the drooped eye of Taya,” &c., &c.

“By the immortal Fo!” cried the emperor, raising
himself bolt upright in his chair, as the poet ceased,
“you shall be the bard of Tang! Those are my sentiments
better expressed! The lute, in your hands,
is my heart turned inside out! Lend me your gold
chain, Kwonfootse, and, Taya! come hither and put
it on his neck!”

Taya glided to the emperor, but Le-pih rose to his
feet, with a slight flush on his forehead, and stood
erect and motionless.

“Let it please your imperial majesty,” he said,
after a moment's pause, “to bestow upon me some
gift less binding than a chain.”

“Carbuncle of Budha! What would the youth have”
exclaimed Tang in astonishment. “Is not the gold
chain of a mandarin good enough for his acceptance?”

“My poor song,” replied Le-pih, modestly casting
down his eyes, “is sufficiently repaid by your majesty's
praises. The chain of the mandarin would gall the
neck of the poet. Yet—if I might have a reward
more valuable—”

“In Fo's name what is it?” said the embarrassed
emperor.

Kwonfootse laid his hand on his cimeter, and his
daughter blushed and trembled.

“The broken spangle on the slipper of Taya!” said
Le-pih, turning half indifferently away.

Loud laughed the ladies of the court, and Kwonfootse
walked from the bard with a look of contempt,
but the emperor read more truly the proud and delicate
spirit that dictated the reply; and in that moment
probably commenced the friendship with which, to the
end of his peaceful reign, Tang distinguished the most
gifted poet of his time.

The lovely daughter of the mandarin was not behind
the emperor in her interpretation of the character of
Le-pih, and as she stepped forward to put the detached
spangle into his hand, she bent on him a look full
of earnest curiosity and admiration.

“What others give me,” he murmured in a low
voice, pressing the worthless trifle to his lips, “makes
me their slave; but what Taya gives me is a link that
draws her to my bosom.”

Kwonfootse probably thought that Le-pih's audience
had lasted long enough, for at this moment the
sky seemed bursting into flame with a sudden tumult
of fireworks, and in the confusion that immediately
succeeded, the poet made his way unquestioned to
the bank of the river, and was reconveyed to the spot
of his first embarkation, in the same silent manner with
which he had approached the privileged area.

During the following month, Le-pih seemed much
in request at the imperial palace, but, to the surprise
of his friends, the keeping of “worshipful society”
was not followed by any change in his merry manners,
nor apparently by any improvement in his worldly
condition. His mother still sold mats in the public
market, and Le-pih still rode, every few days, to the
marsh, for his panniers of rushes, and to all comers,
among his old acquaintances, his lute and song were
as ready and gratuitous as ever.

All this time, however, the fair Taya was consuming
with a passionate melancholy which made startling
ravages in her health, and the proud mandarin, whose
affection for his children was equal to his pride, in vain
shut his eyes to the cause, and eat up his heart with
mortification. When the full moon came round again,
reminding him of the scenes the last moon had shone
upon, Kwonfootse seemed suddenly lightened of his
care, and his superb gardens on the Pei-ho were suddenly
alive with preparations for another festival. Kept
in close confinement, poor Taya fed on her sorrow,
indifferent to the rumors of marriage which could
concern only her sisters; and the other demoiselles
Kwonfootse tried in vain, with fluttering hearts, to pry
into their father's secret. A marriage it certainly was
to be, for the lanterns were painted of the color of
peach-blossoms—but whose marriage?

It was an intoxicating summer's morning, and the
sun was busy calling the dew back to heaven, and the
birds wild with entreating it to stay (so Le-pih describes
it), when down the narrow street in which the
poet's mother piled her vocation, there came a gay
procession of mounted servants with a led horse richly
caparisoned, in the centre. The one who rode before
held on his pommel a velvet cushion, and upon it lay
the cap of a noble, with its gold ball shining in the sun.
Out flew the neighbors as the clattering hoofs came
on, and roused by the cries and the barking of dogs,
forth came the mother of Le-pih, followed by the
poet himself, but leading his horse by the bridle, for
he had just thrown on his panniers, and was bound
out of the city to cut his bundle of rushes. The poet
gazed on the pageant with the amused curiosity of
others, wondering what it could mean, abroad at so
early an hour; but, holding back his sorry beast to
let the prancing horsemen have all the room they re
quired, he was startled by a reverential salute from
the bearer of the velvet cushion, who, drawing up his
followers in front of the poet's house, dismounted and
requested to speak with him in private.

Tying his horse to the door-post, Le-pih led the
way into the small room, where sat his mother braiding
her mats to a cheerful song of her son's making,
and here the messenger informed the bard, with much
circumstance and ceremony, that in consequence of
the pressing suit of Kwonfootse, the emperor had been
pleased to grant to the gifted Le-pih, the rank expressed
by the cap borne upon the velvet cushion, and
that as a noble of the celestial empire, he was now a
match for the incomparable Taya. Furthermore the
condescending Kwonfootse had secretly arranged the
ceremonial for the bridal, and Le-pih was commanded
to mount the led horse and come up with his cap and
gold ball to be made forthwith supremely happy.

An indefinable expression stole over the features of
the poet as he took up the cap, and placing it on his
head, stood gayly before his mother. The old dame
looked at him a moment, and the tears started to her
eyes. Instantly Le-pih plucked it off and flung it on
the waste heap at her side, throwing himself on his
knees before her in the same breath, and begging her
forgiveness for his silly jest.

“Take back your bauble to Kwonfootse!” he said,
rising proudly to his feet, “and tell him that the emperor,
to whom I know how to excuse myself, can
easily make a poet into a noble, but he can not make
a noble into a poet. The male bird does not borrow
its brighter plumage from its mate, and she who marries
Le-pih will braid rushes for his mother!”

Astonished, indeed, were the neighbors, who had
learned the errand of the messenger from his attendants
without, to see the crest-fallen man come forth again
with his cap and cushion. Astonished much more
were they, ere the gay cavalcade were well out of sight,
to see Le-pih appear with his merry countenance and
plebeian cap, and, mounting his old horse, trot briskly
away, sickle in hand, to the marshes. The day passed
in wondering and gossip, interrupted by the entrance
of one person to the house while the old dame was
gone with her mats to the market, but she returned
duly before sunset, and went in as usual to prepare
supper for her son.

The last beams of day were on the tops of the
pagodas when Le-pih returned, walking beside his
heavy-laden beast, and singing a merry song. He
threw off his rushes at the door and entered, but his
song was abruptly checked, for a female sat on a low
seat by his mother, stooping over a half-braided mat,
and the next moment, the blushing Taya lifted up her
brimming eyes and gazed at him with silent but pleading
love.

Now, at last, the proud merriment and self respecting
confidence of Le-pih were overcome. His eyes
grew flushed and his lips trembled without utterance.
With both his hands pressed on his beating heart, he
stood gazing on the lovely Taya.

“Ah!” cried the old dame, who sat with folded
hands and smiling face, looking on at a scene she did
not quite understand, though it gave her pleasure,
“Ah! this is a wife for my boy, sent from heaven!
No haughty mandarin's daughter she! no proud minx,
to fall in love with the son and despise the mother!
Let them keep their smart caps and gift-horses for
those who can be bought at such prices! My son is
a noble by the gift of his Maker—better than an emperor's
gold ball! Come to your, supper, Le-pih!
Come, my sweet daughter!”

Taya placed her finger on her lip, and Le-pih
agreed that the moment was not yet come to enlighten
his mother as to the quality of her guest. She was
not long in ignorance, however, for before they could
seat themselves at table, there was a loud knocking at

the door, and before the old dame could bless herself,
an officer entered and arrested the daughter of Kwonfootse
by name, and Le-pih and his mother at the
same time, and there was no dismissing the messenger
now. Off they marched, amid the silent consternation
and pity of the neighbors—not toward the palace
of justice, however, but to the palace of the emperor,
where his majesty, to save all chances of mistake,
chose to see the poet wedded, and sit, himself, at the
bridal feast. Tang had a romantic heart, fat and
voluptuous as he was, and the end of his favor to Le-pih
and Taya was the end of his life.

MEENA DIMITY;
OR, WHY MR. BROWN CRASH TOOK THE TOUR.

Fashion is arbitrary, we all know. What it was
that originally gave Sassafras street the right to despise
Pepperidge street, the oldest inhabitant of the
village of Slimford could not positively say. The
courthouse and jail were in Sassafras street; but the
orthodox church and female seminary were in Pepperidge
street. Two directors of the Slimford bank
lived in Sassafras street—two in Pepperidge street.
The Dyaper family lived in Sassafras street—the
Dimity family in Pepperidge street; and the fathers
of the Dyaper girls and the Dimity girls were worth
about the same money, and had both made it in the
lumber line. There was no difference to speak of in
their respective mode of living—none in the education
of the girls—none in the family gravestones or
church-pews. Yet, deny it who liked, the Dyapers
were the aristocracy of Slimford.

It may be a prejudice, but I am inclined to think
there is always something in a nose. (I am about to
mention a trifle, but trifles are the beginning of most
things, and I would account for the pride paramount
of the Dyapers, if it is any way possible.) The most
stylish of the Miss Dyapers—Harriet Dyaper—had a
nose like his grace the Duke of Wellington. Neither
her father nor mother had such a feature; but
there was a foreign umbrella in the family with exactly
the same shaped nose on the ivory handle. Old
Dyaper had once kept a tavern, and he had taken this
umbrella from a stranger for a night's lodging. But
that is neither here nor there. To the nose of Harriet
Dyaper, resistlessly and instinctively, the Dimity
girls had knocked under at school. There was authority
in it; for the American eagle had such a nose,
and the Duke of Wellington had such a nose; and
when, to these two warlike instances, was added the
nose of Harriet Dyaper, the tripod stood firm. Am
I visionary in believing that the authority introduced
into that village by a foreigner's umbrella (so unaccountable
is fate) gave the dynasty to the Dyapers?

I have mentioned but two families—one in each of
the two principal streets of Slimford. Having a little
story to tell, I can not afford to distract my narrative
with unnecessary “asides;” and I must not only
omit all description of the other Sassafrasers and
Pepperidgers, but I must leave to your imagination
several Miss Dyapers and several Miss Dimitys—Harriet
Dyaper and Meena Dimity being the two exclusive
objects of my hero's Sunday and evening attentions.

For eleven months in the year, the loves of the
ladies of Slimford were presided over by indigenous
Cupids. Brown Crash and the other boys of the village
had the Dyapers and the Dimitys for that respective
period to themselves. The remaining month,
when their sun of favor was eclipsed, was during the
falling of the leaf, when the “drummers” came up to
dun. The townish clerks of the drygoods merchants
were too much for the provincials. Brown Crash
knocked under and sulked, owing, as he said, to the
melancholy depression accompanying the fall of the
deciduous vegetation. But I have not yet introduced
you to my hero.

Brown Crash was the Slimford stage-agent. He
was the son of a retired watch-maker, and had been
laughed at in his boyhood for what they called his
“airs.” He loved, even as a lad, to be at the tavern
when the stage came in, and help out the ladies.
With instinctive leisureliness he pulled off his cap
as soon after the “whoa-hup” as was necessary (and
no sooner), and asked the ladies if they would “alight
and take dinner,” with a seductive smile which began,
as the landlord said, “to pay.” Hence his promotion.
At sixteen he was nominated stage-agent, and thence-forward
was the most conspicuous man in the village;
for “man” he was, if speech and gait go for anything.

But we must minister a moment to the reader's
inner sense; for we do not write altogether for Slimford
comprehension. Brown Crash had something
in his composition “above the vulgar” If men's
qualities were mixed like salads, and I were giving a
“recipe for Brown Crashes,” in Mrs. Glass's style, I
should say his two principal ingredients were a dictionary
and a dunghill cock—for his language was as
ornate as his style of ambulation was deliberate
and imposing. What Brown Crash would have been,
born Right Honorable, I leave (with the smaller Dyapers
and Dimitys) to the reader's fancy. My object
is to show what he was, minus patrician nurture and
valuation. Words, with Brown Crash, were susceptible
of being dirtied by use. He liked a clean towel—he
preferred an unused phrase. But here stopped
his peculiarities. Below the epidermis he was like
other men, subject to like tastes and passions. And
if he expressed his loves and hates with grandiloquent
imagery, they were the honest loves and hates of a
week-day world—no finer nor flimsier for their bedecked
plumage.

To use his own phrase, Brown frequented but two
ladies in Slimford—Miss Harriet Dyaper and Miss
Meena Dimity. The first we have described in
describing her nose, for her remainder was comparatively
inconsiderable. The latter was “a love,” and
of course had nothing peculiar about her. She was
a lamp—nothing till lighted. She was a mantle—
nothing, except as worn by the owner. She was a
mirror—blank and unconscious till something came
to be reflected. She was anything, loved—unloved,
nothing! And this (it is our opinion after half a
life) is the most delicious and adorable variety of
woman that has been spared to us from the museum
of specimen angels. (A remark of Brown Crash's,
by the way, of which he may as well have the credit.)

Now Mr. Crash had an ambitious weakness for the
best society, and he liked to appear intimate with the
Dyapers. But in Meena Dimity there was a secret
charm which made him wish she was an ever-to-be-handed-out
lady-stage-passenger. He could have
given her a hand, and brought in her umbrella and
bandbox, all day long. In his hours of pride he
thought of the Dyapers—in his hours of affection of
Meena Dimity. But the Dyapers looked down upon
the Dimitys; and to play his card delicately between
Harriet and Meena, took all the diplomacy of Brown
Crash. The unconscious Meena would walk up
Sassafras street when she had his arm, and the scornful
Harriet would be there with her nose over the
front gate to sneer at them. He managed as well as
he could. He went on light evenings to the Dyapers—on
dark evenings to the Dimitys. He took
town-walks with the Dyapers—country-walks with

the Dimitys. But his acquaintance with the Dyapers
hung by the eyelids. Harriet liked him; for he was
the only beau in Slimford whose manners were not
belittled beside her nose. But her acquaintance with
him was a condescension, and he well knew that he
could not “hold her by the nose” if she were offended.
Oh no! Though their respective progenitors
were of no very unequal rank—though a horologist
and a “boss lumberman” might abstractly be equals—
the Dyapers had the power! Yes—they could lift
him to themselves, or dash him down to the Dimitys;
and all Slimford would agree in the latter case that
he was a “slab” and a “small potato!”

But a change came o'er the spirit of Brown Crash's
dream! The drummers were lording it in Slimford,
and Brown, reduced to Meena Dimity (for he was too
proud to play second fiddle to a town dandy), was
walking with her on a dark night past the Dyapers.
The Dyapers were hanging over the gate unluckily,
and their Pearl-street admirers sitting on the top rail
of the fence.

“Who is it?” said a strange voice.

The reply, sent upward from a scornfully projecting
under lip, rebounded in echoes from the tense
nose of Miss Dyaper.

“A Mr. Crash, and a girl from the back street!”

It was enough. A hot spot on his cheek, a warm
rim round his eyes, a pimply pricking in his skin,
and it was all over! His vow was made. He coldly
bid Meena good night at her father's door, and went
home and counted his money. And from that hour,
without regard to sex, he secretly accepted shillings
from gratified travellers, and “stood treat” no more.

Saratoga was crowded with the dispersed nuclei of
the metropolises. Fashion, wealth, and beauty, were
there. Brown Crash was there, on his return from a
tour to Niagara and the lakes.

“Brown Crash, Esq.,” was one of the notabilities
of Congress Hall. Here and there a dandy “could
not quite make him out;” but there was evidently
something uncommon about him. The ladies thought
him “of the old school of politeness,” and the politicians
thought he had the air of one used to influence
in his county. His language was certainly very
choice and peculiar, and his gait was conscious dignity
itself. He must have been carefully educated;
yet his manners were popular, and he was particularly
courteous on a first introduction. The elegance and
ease with which he helped the ladies out of their
carriages were particularly remarked, and a shrewd
observer said of him, that “that point of high breeding
was only acquired by daily habit. He must have
been brought up where there were carriages and ladies.”
A member of congress, who expected to run
for governor, inquired his county, and took wine
with him. His name was mentioned by the letter-writers
from the springs. Brown Crash was in his
perihelion!

The season leaned to its close, and the following
paragraph appeared in the New York American:—

“Fashionable Intelligence.—The company at the
Springs is breaking up. We understand that the
Vice-President and Brown Crash, Esq., have already
left for their respective residences. The latter gentleman,
it is understood, has formed a matrimonial
engagement with a family of wealth and distinction
from the south. We trust that these interesting
bonds, binding together the leading families of the
far-divided extremities of our country, may tend to
strengthen the tenacity of the great American Union!”

It was not surprising that the class in Slimford who
knew everything—the milliners, to-wit—moralized
somewhat bitterly on Mr. Crash's devotion to the
Dyapers after his return, and his consequent slight to
Meena Dimity. “If that was the effect of fashion
and distinction on the heart, Mr. Crash was welcome
to his honors! Let him marry Miss Dyaper, and
they wished him much joy of her nose; but they
would never believe that he had not ruthlessly broken
the heart of Meena Dimity, and he ought to be
ashamed of himself, if there was any shame in such
a dandy.”

But the milliners, though powerful people in their
way, could little affect the momentum of Brown
Crash's glories. The paragraph from the “American”
had been copied into the “Slimford Advertiser,”
and the eyes of Sassafras street and Pepperidge street
were alike opened. They had undervalued their indigenous
“prophet.” They had misinterpreted and
misread the stamp of his superiority. He had been
obliged to go from them to be recognised. But he
was returned. He was there to have reparation
made—justice done. And now, what office would he
like, from Assessor to Pathmaster, and would he be
good enough to name it before the next town-meeting.
Brown Crash was king of Slimford!

And Harriet Dyaper! The scorn from her lip had
gone, like the blue from a radish! Notes for “B.
Crash,Esq.,” showered from Sassafras street—bouquets
from old Dyaper's front yard glided to him, per black
boy—no end to the endearing attentions, undisguised
and unequivocal. Brown Crash and Harriet Dyaper
were engaged, if having the front parlor entirely given
up to them of an evening meant anything—if his
being expected every night to tea meant anything—
if his devoted (though she thought rather cold) attentions
meant anything.

They did n't mean anything! They all did n't
mean anything! What does the orthodox minister
do, the third Sunday after Brown Crash's return, but
read the banns of matrimony between that faithless
man and Meena Dimity!

But this was not to be endured. Harriet Dyaper
had a cousin who was a “strapper.” He was boss of
a sawmill in the next county, and he must be sent for.

He was sent for.

The fight was over. Boss Dyaper had undertaken
to flog Brown Crash, but it was a drawn battle—for
the combatants had been pulled apart by their coattails.
They stepped into the barroom and stood recovering
their breath. The people of Slimford
crowded in, and wanted to have the matter talked
over. Boss Dyaper bolted out his grievance.

“Gentlemen!” said Brown Crash, with one of his
irresistible come-to-dinner smiles, “I am culpable,
perhaps, in the minutiæ of this business—justifiable,
I trust you will say, in the general scope and tendency.
You, all of you, probably, had mothers, and some of
you have wives and sisters; and your `silver cord'
naturally sympathizes with a worsted woman. But,
gentlemen, you are republicans! You, all of you,
are the rulers of a country very large indeed; and
you are not limited in your views to one woman, nor
to a thousand women—to one mile, nor to a thousand
miles. You generalize! you go for magnificent principles,
gentlemen! You scorn high-and-mightiness,
and supercilious aristocracy!”

“Hurra for Mr. Crash!” cried a stagedriver from
the outside.

“Well, gentleman! In what I have done, I have
deserved well of a republican country! True—it has
been my misfortune to roll my Juggernaut of principle
over the sensibilities of that gentleman's respectable
female relative. But, gentlemen, she offended,
remedilessly and grossly, one of the sovereign
people! She scorned one of earth's fairest daughters,
who lives in a back street! Gentlemen, you know
that pride tripped up Lucifer! Shall a tiptop angel fall
for it, and a young woman who is nothing particular

be left scornfully standing? Shall Miss Dyaper have
more privileges than Lucifer? I appreciate your indignant
negative!

“But, gentlemen, I am free to confess, I had also
my republican private end. You know my early history.
You have witnessed my struggles to be respected
by my honorable contemporaries. If it be my
weakness to be sensitive to the finger of scorn, be it
so. You will know how to pardon me. But I will
be brief. At a particular crisis of my acquaintance
with Miss Dyaper, I found it expedient to transfer my
untrammelled tendernesses to Pepperidge street. My
heart had long been in Pepperidge street. But,
gentlemen, to have done it without removing from
before my eyes the contumelious finger of the scorn
of Sassafras street, was beyond my capabilities of endurance.
In justice to my present `future,' gentlemen,
I felt that I must remove `sour grapes' from my
escutcheon—that I must soar to a point, whence,
swooping proudly to Meena Dimity, I should pass
the Dyapers in descending!

(Cheers and murmurs.)

“Gentlemen and friends! This world is all a fleeting
show. The bell has rung, and I keep you from
your suppers. Briefly. I found the means to travel
and test the ring of my metal among unprejudiced
strangers. I wished to achieve distinction and return
to my birthplace; but for what? Do me justice,
gentlemen. Not to lord it in Sassafras street. Not
to carry off a Dyaper with triumphant elation!
Not to pounce on your aristocratic No. 1, and
link my destiny with the disdainful Dyapers! No!
But to choose where I liked, and have the credit
of liking it! To have Slimford believe that if I
preferred their No. 2, it was because I liked it better
than No. 1. Gentlemen, I am a republican! I
may find my congenial spirit among the wealthy—I
may find it among the humble. But I want the libcrty
to choose. And I have achieved it, I trust you
will permit me to say. Having been honored by the
dignitaries of a metropolis—having consorted with a
candidate for gubernatorial distinction—having been
recorded in a public journal as a companion of the
Vice-President of this free and happy country—you
will believe me when I declare that I prefer Pepperidge
street to Sassafras—you will credit my sincerity,
when, having been approved by the Dyapers' betters,
I give them the go-by for the Dimitys! Gentlemen,
I have done.”

The reader will not be surprised to learn that Mr.
Brown Crash is now a prominent member of the
legislature, and an excessive aristocrat—Pepperidge
street and very democratic speeches to the contrary
notwithstanding.

THE POWER OF AN “INJURED LOOK.”

1. CHAPTER I.

I had a sort of candle-light acquaintance with Mr.
Philip McRueit when we were in college. I mean to
say that I had a daylight repugnance to him, and never
walked with him, or talked with him, or rode with
him, or sat with him; and, indeed, seldom saw him—
expect as one of a club oyster-party of six. He was
a short, sharp, satirical man (nicknamed “my cruet,”
by his cronies—rather descriptively!) but as plausible
and as vindictive as Mephistopheles before and after
the ruin of a soul. In some other state of existence
I had probably known and suffered by Phil. McRueit
—for I knew him like the sleeve of an old coat, the
first day I laid eyes on him; though other people
seemed to have no such instinct. Oh, we were not
new acquaintances—from whatever star he had been
transported, for his sins, to this planet of dirt. I think
he was of the same opinion, himself. He chose between
open warfare and conciliation in the first five
minutes—after seeing me as a stranger—chose the
latter.

Six or seven years after leaving college, I was following
my candle up to bed rather musingly, one night
at the Astor, and on turning a corner, I was obliged to
walk round a short gentleman who stood at the head
of the stairs in an attitude of fixed contemplation. As
I weathered the top of his hat rather closely, I caught
the direction of his eye, and saw that he was regarding,
very fixedly, a pair of rather dusty kid slippers,
which had been set outside the door, probably for
cleaning, by the occupant of the chamber opposite.
As the gentleman did not move, I turned on the half
landing of the next flight of stairs, and looked back,
breaking in, by my sudden pause, upon his fit of abstraction.
It was McRueit, and on recognising me,
he immediately beckoned me to his side.

“Does it strike you,” said he, “that there is anything
peculiar in that pair of shoes?”

“No—except that they certify to two very small
feet on the other side of the door.”

“Not merely `small,' my dear fellow! Do you
see where the pressure has been in those slender shoes,
how straight the inside line, how arched the instep,
how confidingly flat the pressure downward of the
little great toe! It's a woman of sweet and relying
character who wore that shoe to-day, and I must know
her. More, sir, I must marry her! Ah, you laugh
—but I will! There's a magnetism in that pair of
shoes addressed to me only. Beg your pardon—good
night—I'll go down stairs and find out her number—
`74!' I'll be well acquainted with `74' by this time
to-morrow!”

For the unconscious young lady asleep in that room,
I lay awake half the night, troubled with foreboding
pity. I knew the man so well, I was so certain that
he would leave nothing possible undone to carry out
this whimsical purpose! I knew that from that moment
was levelled, point-blank, at the lady, whoever
she might be (if single) a battery of devilish and pertinactious
ingenuity which would carry most any
small fort of a heart, most any way barricaded and
defended. He was well off; he was well-looking
enough; he was-deep and crafty. But if he did win
her, she was gone! gone, I knew, from happiness,
like a stone from a sling. He was a tyrant—subtle
in his cruelties to all people dependant on him—and
her life would be one of refined torture, neglect, betrayal,
and tears.

A fit of intermittent disgust for strangers, to which
all persons living in hotels are more or less liable,
confined my travels, for some days after this rencontre,
to the silence-and-slop thorough-fare of the back
stairs, “Coming to my feed” of society one rainy
morning, I went into the drawing-room after breakfast,
and was not surprised to see McRueit in a posture of
absorbed attention beside a lady. His stick stood on
the floor, and with his left cheek rested on the gold
head, he was gazing into her face, and evidently keeping
her perfectly at her ease as to the wants and gaps
of conversation, as he knew how to do—for he was the
readiest man with his brick and mortar whom I ever
had encountered.

“Who is that lady?” I asked of an omni-acquainted
old bachelor friend of mine.

“Miss Jonthee Twitt—and what can be the secret
of that rather exclusive gentleman's attention to her.
I can not fancy.”

I pulled a newspaper from my pocket, and seating
myself in one of the deep windows, commenced rather
a compassionate study of Miss Twitt—intending fully,
if I should find her interesting, to save her from the
clutches of my detestable classmate.

She was a slight, hollow-chested, consumptive-looking
girl, with a cast of features that any casual
observer would be certain to describe as “interesting.”
With the first two minutes' gaze upon her, my sympathies
were active enough for a crusade against a
whole army of connubial tyrants. I suddenly paused,
however. Something McRueit said made a change
in the lady's countenance. She sat just as still; she
did not move her head from its negligent posture; her
eyebrows did not contract; her lips did not stir; but
the dull, sickly-colored lids descended calmly and
fixedly till they hid from sight the upper edges of the
pupils! and by this slight but infallible sign I knew
—but the story will tell what I knew. Napoleon was
nearly, but not quite right, when he said that there
was no reliance to be placed on peculiarities of feature
or expression.

2. CHAPTER II.

In August of that same year, I followed the world
to Saratoga. In my first reconnoitre of the drawing-room
of Congress Hall, I caught the eye of Mr. McRueit,
and received from him a cordial salutation.
As I put my head right, upon its pivot, after an easy
nod to my familiar aversion, my eyes fell upon Miss
Jonthee Twitt—that was—for I had seen, in the
newspapers of two months before, that the resolve
(born of the dusty slipper outside her door), had been
brought about, and she was now on the irrevocable
side of a honeymoon sixty days old.

Her eyelid was down upon the pupil—motionless,
concentrated, and vigilant as a couched panther—and
from beneath the hem of her dress curved out the
high arched instep of a foot pointed with desperate
tension to the carpet; the little great toe (whose relying
pressure on the soiled slipper Mr. McRueit had
been captivated by), now rigid with as strong a purpose
as spiritual homeopathy could concentrate in so
small a tenement. I thought I would make Mr. and
Mrs. McRueit the subject of quiet study while I remained
at Saratoga.

But I have not mentioned the immediate cause of
Mrs. McRueit's resentment. Her bridegroom was
walking up and down the room with a certain Mrs.
Wanmaker, a widow, who was a better woman than
she looked to be, as I chanced to know, but as nobody
could know without the intimate acquaintance with
Mrs. Wanmaker upon which I base this remark.
With beauty of the most voluptuous cast, and a
passion for admiration which induced her to throw
out every possible lure to men any way worth her
time as victims, Mrs. Wanmaker's blood was as
“cold as the flow of Iser,” and her propriety, in fact,
wholly impregnable. I had been myself “tried on”
by the widow Wanmaker, and twenty caravan-marches
might have been made across the Desert of Sahara,
while the conviction I have just stated was “getting
through my hair.” It was not wonderful, therefore,
that both the bride and her (usually) most penetratious
bridegroom, had sailed over the widow's shallows, unconscious
of soundings. She was a “deep” woman,
too—but in the love line.

I thought McRueit singularly off his guard, if it
were only for “appearances.” He monopolized the
widow effectually, and she thought it worth her while
to let the world think him (a bridegroom and a rising
young politician), mad for her, and, truth to say, they
carried on the war strenuously. Perfectly certain as I
was that “the whirligig of time” would “bring about
the revenges” of Mrs. McRueit, I began to feel a
meantime pity for her, and had myself presented duly
by McRueit the next morning after breakfast.

It was a tepid, flaccid, revery-colored August morning,
and the sole thought of the universe seemed to
be to sit down. The devotees to gayety and mineral
water dawdled out to the porticoes, and some sat on
chairs under the trees, and the dandies lay on the
grass, and the old ladies on the steps and the settees,
and here and there, a man on the balustrade, and, in
the large swing, vis-à-vis, sat McRueit and the widow
Wanmaker, chattering in an undertone quite inaudible.
Mrs. McRueit sat on a bench, with her back
against one of the high-shouldered pine trees in the
court-yard, and I had called McRueit out of his swing
to present me. But he returned immediately to the
widow.

I thought it would be alleviative and good-natured
to give Mrs. McRueit an insight to the harmlessness
of Mrs. Wanmaker, and I had done so very nearly to
my satisfaction, when I discovered that the slighted
wife did not care sixpence about the fact, and that,
unlike Hamlet, she only knew seems. The more I
developed the innocent object of the widow's outlay
of smiles and confidentialities, the more Mrs. McRueit
placed herself in a posture to be remarked by the
loungers in the court-yeard and the dawdlers on the
portico, and the more she deepened a certain look—
you must imagine it for the present, dear reader. It
would take a razor's edge of analysis, and a Flemish
paint-pot and patience, to carve that injured look into
language, or paint it truthfully to the eye! Juries
would hang husbands, and recording angels “ruthlessly
overcharge,” upon the unsupported evidence of
such a look. She looked as if her heart must have
suffocated with forbearance long before she began to
look so. She looked as if she had forgiven and wept,
and was ready to forgive and weep again. She looked
as if she would give her life if she could conceal “her
feelings,” and as if she was nerving soul, and heart,
and eyelids, and lachrymatory glands—all to agony—
to prevent bursting into tears with her unutterable
anguish! It was the most unresisting, unresentful,
patient, sweet miserableness! A lamb's willingness
to “furnish forth another meal” of chops and sweet-bread,
was testy to such meek endurance! She was
evidently a martyr, a victim, a crushed flower, a “poor
thing!” But she did, now and then—unseen by anybody
but me—give a glance from that truncated orb
of a pupil of hers, over the top of her handkerchief,
that, if incarnated, would have made a hole in the hide
of a rhinoceros! It was triumph, venom, implacability—such
as I had never before seen expressed in human
glances.

There are many persons with but one idea, and that
a good one. Mrs. McRueit, I presume, was incapable
of appreciating my interest in her. At any rate
she played the same game with me as with other
people, and managed her affairs altogether with perfect
unity. It was in vain that I endeavored to hear
from her tongue what I read in the lowering pupil of
her eye. She spoke of McRueit with evident reluctance,
but always with discretion—never blaming
him, nor leaving any opening that should betray resentment,
or turn the current of sympathy from herself.
The result was immediate. The women in the
house began to look black upon McRueit. The men
“sent him to Coventry” more unwillingly, for he was
amusing and popular—but “to Coventry” he went!
And at last the widow Wanmaker became aware that
she was wasting her time on a man whose attentions
were not wanted elsewhere—and she (the unkindest
cut of all) found reasons for looking another way when
he approached her. He had became aware, during

this process, what was “in the wind,” but he knew
too much to stay in the public eye when it was inflamed.
With his brows lowering, and his face
gloomy with feelings I could easily interpret, he took
the early coach on the third morning after my introduction
to Mrs. McRueit, and departed, probably for
a discipline trip, to some place where sympathy with
his wife would be less dangerous.

3. CHAPTER III.

I think, that within the next two or three years, I
heard McRueit's name mentioned several times, or
saw it in the papers, connected with strong political
movements. I had no very definite idea of where he
was residing, however. Business called me to a
western county, and on the road I fell into the company
of a great political schemer and partisan—one
of those joints (of the feline political body), the next
remove from the “cat's paw.” Finding that I cared
not a straw for politics, and that we were going to the
same town, he undertook the blandishment of an overflow
of confidence upon me, probably with the remote
possibility that he might have occasion to use me. I
gave in to it so far as courteously to receive all his
secrets, and we arrived at our destination excellent
friends.

The town was in a ferment with the coming election
of a member for the legislature, and the hotel being
very crowded, Mr. Develin (my fellow-traveller) and
myself were put into a double-bedded room. Busy
with my own affairs, I saw but little of him, and he
seemed quite too much occupied for conversation, till
the third night after our arrival. Lying in bed with
the moonlight streaming into the room, he began to
give me some account of the campaign, preparing for,
around us, and presently mentioned the name of
McRueit—(the name, by the way, that I had seen
upon the placards, without caring particularly to inquire
whether or not it was “mine ancient” aversion).

“They are not aware,” said Mr. Develin, after
talking on the subject awhile, “that this petty election,
is, in fact, the grain of sand that is to turn the presidential
scale. If McRueit should be elected (as I
am sorry to say there seems every chance he will be),
Van Buren's doom is sealed. I have come a little
too late here. I should have had time to know something
more of this man McRueit—”

“Perhaps I can give you some idea of him,” interrupted
I, “for he has chanced to be more in my way
than I would have bargained for. But what do you
wish to know particularly?” (I spoke, as the reader
will see, in the unsuspecting innocence of my heart.)

“Oh—anything—anything! Tell me all you know
of him!”

Mr. Develin's vividness rather surprised me, for he
raised himself on his elbow in bed—but I went on and
narrated very much what I have put down for the
reader in the two preceding chapters.

“How do you spell Mrs. Wanmaker's name?”
asked my imbedded vis-à-vis, as I stopped and turned
over to go to sleep.

I spelt it for him.

He jumped out of bed, dressed himself and left the
room. Will the reader permit me to follow him, like
Asmodeus, giving with Asmodean brevity the knowledge
I afterward gained of his use of my involuntary
revelation?

Mr. Develin roused the active member of the Van
Buren committee from his slumber, and in an hour
had the printers of their party paper at work upon a
placard. A large meeting was to be held the next
day in the town-hall, during which both candidates, it
was supposed, would address the people. Ladies
were to occupy the galleries. The hour came round.
Mrs. McRueit's carriage drove into the village a few
minutes before eleven, and as she stopped at a shop
for a moment, a letter was handed her by a boy. She
sat still and read it. She was alone. Her face turned
livid with paleness after its first flush, and forgetting
her errand at the shop, she drove on to the town-hall.
She took her seat in a prominent part of the gallery.
The preliminaries were gone through with, and her
husband rose to speak. He was a plausible orator,
an eloquent man. But there was a sentiment circulating
in the audience—something whispered from man
to man—that strangely took off the attention of the
audience. He could not, as he had never before found
difficulty in doing, keep their eyes upon his lips.
Every one was gazing on his wife! And there she
sat—with her INJURED LOOK!—pale, sad, apparently
striving to listen and conceal her mental suffering. It
was as convincing to the audience of the truth of the
insinuation that was passing from mouth to mouth—
as convincing as would have been a revelation from
Heaven. McRueit followed the many upturned eyes
at last, and saw that they were bent on his wife, and
that—once more—after years of conciliation, she wore
THAT INJURED LOOK! His heart failed him. He
evidently comprehended that the spirit that had driven
him from Saratoga, years before—popular sympathy
with women—had overtaken him and was plotting
against him once more. His speech began to lose
its concentration. He talked wide. The increasing
noise overpowered him, and he descended at last from
the platform in the midst of a universal hiss. The
other candidate rose and spoke; and at the close of
his speech the meeting broke up, and as they dispersed,
their eyes were met at every corner with a
large placard, in which “injured wife,” “unfaithful
husband,” “widow W—n—k—r,” were the words in
prominent capitals. The election came on the next
day, and Mr. McRueit being signally defeated, Mr.
Van Buren's election to the Presidency (if Mr. Develin
knew anything) was made certain—brought about by
a woman's INJURED LOOK.

My business in the county was the purchase of land,
and for a year or two afterward, I was a great deal
there. Feeling that I had unintentionally furnished
a weapon to his enemies, I did penance by cultivating
McRueit. I went often to his house. He was at
first a good deal broken up by the sudden check to
his ambition, but he rallied with a cliange in his
character for which I was not prepared. He gave up
all antagonism toward his wife. He assumed a new
manner to her. She had been skilfully managed before—but
he took her now confidingly behind his
shield. He felt overmastered by the key she had to
popular sympathy, and he determined wisely to make
it turn in his favor. By assiduity, by tenderness,
childlikeness, he succeeded in completely convincing
her that he had but one out-of-doors wish—that of
embellishing her existence by his success. The effort
on her was marvellous. She recovered her health,
gradually changed to a joyous and earnest promoter
of her husband's interests, and they were soon a marked
model in the county for conjugal devotion. The
popular impression soon gained ground that Mr. McRueit
had been shamefully wronged by the previous
prejudice against his character as a husband. The
tide that had already turned, soon swelled to a flood,
and Mr. McRueit now—but Mr. McRueit is too powerful
a person in the present government to follow any
farther. Suffice it to say that he might return to Mrs.
Wanmaker and his old courses if he liked—for his
wife's INJURED LOOK is entirely fattened out of possibility
by her happiness. She weighs two hundred, and
could no more look injured than Sir John Falstaff.

BEWARE OF DOGS AND WALTZING.

The birds that flew over County Surrey on the
twelfth of June, 1835, looked down upon a scene of
which many a “lord of creation,” travelling only by
the roads, might well have envied them the seeing.
For, ever so merry let it be within the lordly parks of
England, the trees that look over the ring fence upon
the world without, keep their countenance—aristocrats
that they are! Round and round Beckton Park you
might have travelled that sunny day, and often within
arrow-shot of its hidden and fairy lawn, and never
suspected, but by the magnetic tremor in your veins,
that beautiful women were dancing near by, and “marvellous
proper men,” more or less enamored, looking
on—every pink and blue girdle a noose for a heart,
of course, and every gay waistcoat a victim venturing
near the trap (though this last is mentioned entirely
on my own responsibility).

But what have we to do with the unhappy exiles
without this pretty paradise! You are an invited
guest, dear reader. Pray walk in!

Did you ask about the Becktons? The Becktons
are people blessed with money and a very charming
acquaintance. That is enough to know about them.
Yet stay! Sir Thomas was knighted for his behavior
at some great crisis in India (for he made his fortune
in India)—and Lady Beckton is no great beauty, but
she has the mania of getting handsome people together,
and making them happier than belongs properly to
handsome people's destiny. And this, I think, must
suffice for a first introduction.

The lawn, as you see, has the long portico of the
house on one side of it, a bend of the river on two
other sides, and a thick shrubbery on the fourth.
The dancing-floor is in the centre, inlaid at the level
of the smooth sward, and it is just now vibrating to
the measured step of the mazurka—beautifully danced,
we must say!

And now let me point out to you the persons most
concerned in this gossip of mine.

First, the ladies.

Miss Blakeney—(and she was never called anything
but Miss Blakeney—never Kate, or Kitty, or Kathleen,
I mean, though her name was Catherine)—Miss
Blakeney is that very stylish, very striking, very
magnificent girl, I think I may say, with the white
chip hat and black feather. Nobody but Miss Blakeney
could venture to wear just the dress she is sporting,
but she must dash, though she is in half-mourning,
and, faith! there is nothing out of keeping, artistically
speaking, after all. A white dress embroidered
with black flowers, dazzling white shoulders turned
over with black lace, white neck and forchead (brilliantly
white), waved over and kissed by luxuriant black
ringlets (brilliantly black). And very white temples
with very black eyes, and very white eyelids with long
black lashes, and, since those dazzling white teeth
were without a contrast, there hung upon her neck a
black cross of ebony—and now we have put her in
black and white, where she will “stay put.” Scripta
verba manent, saith the cautionary proverb.

Here and there, you observe, there is a small Persian
carpet spread on the sward for those who like to
lounge and look at the dancers, and though a score of
people, at least, are availing themselves of this oriental
luxury, no one looks so modestly pretty, half-couched
on the richly-colored woof, as that simply dressed
blonde, with a straw hat in her lap, and her light
anburn curls taking their saucy will of her blue-veined
neck and shoulders. That lady's plain name is Mabel
Brown, and, like yourself, many persons have wished
to change it for her. She is half-married, indeed, to
several persons here present, for there is one conseming
party. Mais l'autre ne vout pas, as a French novelist
laments, it stating a similar dilemma. Meantime, Miss
Brown is the adopted sister of the black and white Miss
Blakeney.

One more exercise of my function of cicerone!

Lying upon the bank of the river, with his shoulder
against that fine oak, and apparently deeply absorbed
in the fate of the acorn-cups which he throws into the
current, you may survey the elegant person of Mr.
Lindsay Maud—a gentleman whom I wish you to take
for rather more than his outer seeming, since he will
show you at the first turn of his head, that he cares
nothing for your opinion, though entitled, as the
diplomatists phrase it, to your “high consideration.”
Mr. Maud is twenty-five, more or less—six feet, or
thereabouts. He has the sanguineous tint, rather
odd for so phlegmatic a person as he seems. His
nose is un petit peu rétroussè, his lips full, and his
smile easy and ready. His eyes are like the surface
of a very deep well. Curling brown hair, broad and
calm forehead, merry chin with a dimple in it, and
mouth expressive of great good humor, and quite
enough of fastidiousness. If this is not your beau
ideal, I am very sorry—but experience went to show
that Lindsay Maud was a very agreeable man, and
pleased generally where he undertook it.

And now, if you please, having done the honors, I
will take up the story en simple conteur.

The sky was beginning to blush about the sun's
going to bed, and the dancers and archers were pairing
off, couple by couple, to stroll and cool in the dim
shrubberies of Beckton Park. It was an hour to
breakfast, so called, for breakfast was to be served in
the darker edge of the twilight. With the aforenamed
oak-tree between him and the gay company,
Mr. Lindsay Maud beguiled his hunger (for hungry
he was), by reading a volume of that very clever novel,
“Le Pere Goriot,” and, chapter by chapter, he
“cocked up his ear,” as the story-books say, hoping
to hear the cheerful bell of the tower announce the
serving of the soup and champagne.

“Well, Sir Knight Faineant!” said Lady Beckton,
stepping in suddenly between his feet and the river
brink, “since when have you turned woman-hater,
and enrolled among the unavailables? Here have you
lain all day in the shade, with scores of nice girls
dancing on the other side of your hermit tree, and not
a sign of life—not a look even to see whether my
party, got up with so much pains, flourished or languished!
I'll cross you out of my little book, recreant!”

Maud was by this time on his feet, and he penitently
and respectfully kissed the fingers threateningly
held up to him—for the unpardonable sin in a single
man is to appear unamused, let alone failing to amuse
others—at a party sworn to be agreeable.

“I have but half an apology,” he said, “that of
knowing that your parties go swimmingly off, whether
I pull an oar or no; but I deserve not the less to be
crossed out of your book. Something ails me. I am
growing old, or my curiosity has burnt out, or I am
touched with some fatal lethargy. Upon my word I
would as lief listen to a Latin sermon as chat for the
next half hour with the prettiest girl at Beckton!
There's no inducement, my dear Lady Beckton!
I'm not a marrying man, you know; and flirtation—
flirtation is such tiresome repetition—endless reading
of prefaces, and never coming to the agreeable first
chapter. But I'll obey orders. Which is the destitute
woman? You shall see how I will redeem my damaged
reputation!”

But Lady Beckton, who seldom refused an offer
from a bean to make himself useful at-her parties,
seemed hardly to listen to Maud's justification. She
placed her arm in his, and led him across the bridge
which spanned the river a little above, and they were
presently out of hearing in one of the cool and shaded
avenues of the park.

“A penny for your thought!” said Maud, after
walking at her side a few minutes in silence.

“It is a thought, certainly, in which pennies are
concerned,” replied Lady Beckton, “and that is why
I find any trouble in giving expression to it. It is
difficult enough to talk with gentlemen about love, but
that is easy to talking about money.”

“Yet they make a pretty tandem, money on the
lead!”

“Oh! are you there?” exclaimed Lady Beckton,
with a laugh; “I was beginning too far back, altogether!
My dear Lindsay, see how much better I
thought of you than you deserved! I was turning
over in my mind with great trepidation and embarrassment
how I should venture to talk to you about a money-and-love
match!”

“Indeed! for what happy man?”

“Toi m%ecirc;eme, mon ami!”

“Heavens! you quite take away my breath! Spare
yourself the overture, my dear Lady Beckton! I
agree! I am quite ready—sold from this hour if you
can produce a purchaser, and possession given immediately!”

“Now you go too fast; for I have not time to banter,
and I wish to see my way in earnest before I leave you.
Listen to me. I was talking you over with Beckton
this morning. I'll not trouble you with the discussion—it
would make you vain, perhaps. But we arlived
at this: Miss Blakeney would be a very good
match for you, and if you are inclined to make a demonstration
that way, why, we will do what we can to
make it plain sailing. Stay with us a week, for instance,
and we will keep the Blakeneys. It's a sweet
month for pairing, and you are an expeditious love-maker,
I know. Is it agreed?”

“You are quite serious!”

“Quite!”

“I'll go back with you to the bridge, kindest of
friends, and return and ramble here till the bell rings,
by myself. I'll find you at table, by-and-by, and express
my gratitude at least. Will that be time enough
for an answer?”

“Yes—but no ceremony with me! Stay and
ponder where you are! Au revoir! I must see after
my breakfast!”

And away tripped the kind-hearted Lady Beckton.

Maud resumed his walk. He was rather taken
aback. He knew Miss Blakeney but as a waltzing
partner, yet that should be but little matter; for he
had long ago made up his mind that, if he did not
marry rich, he could not marry at all.

Maud was poor—that is to say, he had all that an
angel would suppose necessary in this hungry and cold
world—assurance of food and clothing—in other words,
three hundred a year. He had had his unripe time
like other youths, in which he was ready to marry for
love and no money; but his timid advances at that
soft period had not been responsibly met by his first
course of sweethearts, and he had congratulated himself
and put a price on his heart accordingly. Meantime,
he thought, the world is a very entertaining
place, and the belonging to nobody in particular, has
its little advantages.

And very gayly sped on the second epoch of Mr.
Lindsay Maud's history. He lived in a country where,
to shine in a profession, requires the “audace, patience
et volonté de quoi renverser le monde,” and having turned
his ambition well about, like a strange coin that
might perhaps have passed current in other times, he
laid it away with romance and chivalry, and other
things suited only to the cabinets of the curious. He
was well born. He was well bred. He was a fair
candidate for the honors of a “gay man about town”
—that untaxed exempt—that guest by privilege—that
irresponsible denizen of high life, possessed of every
luxury on earth except matrimony and the pleasures
of payment. And, for a year or two, this was very
delightful. He had a half dozen of those charming
female friendships which, like other ephemera in this
changing world, must die or turn into something else
at the close of a season, and, if this makes the feelings
very hard, it makes the manners very soft; and Maud
was content with the compensation. If he felt, now
and then, that he was idling life away, he looked about
him and found countenance at least; for all his friends
were as idle, and there was an analogy to his condition
in nature (if need were to find one), for the butterfly
had his destiny like the bee, and was neither
pitied nor reproached that he was not a honey-maker.

But Maud was now in a third lustrum of his existence,
and it was tinted somewhat differently from the
rose-colored epochs precedent. The twilight of
satisfied curiosity had fallen imperceptibly around
him. The inner veils of society had one by one lifted,
and there could be nothing new for his eye in the
world to which he belonged.

A gay party, which was once to him as full of unattained
objects as the festal mysteries of Eleusinia to
a rustic worshipper of Ceres, was now as readable at
a glance as the stripes of a backgammon-board. He
knew every man's pretensions and chances, every woman's
expectations and defences. Not a damsel whose
defects he had not discovered, whose mind he had not
sounded, whose dowry he did not know. Not a beauty,
married or single, whose nightly game in society he
could not perfectly foretell; not an affection unoccupied
of which he could not put you down the cost of engaging
it in your favor, the chances of constancy, the
dangers of following or abandoning. He had no stake
in society, meantime, yet society itself was all his
world. He had no ambitions to further by its aid.
And until now, he had looked on matrimony as a
closed door—for he had neither property, nor profession
likely to secure it, and circumstances like these,
in the rank in which he moved, are comprehended
among the “any impediments.” To have his own
way, Maud would have accepted no invitations except
to dine with the beaux esprits, and he would have concentrated
the remainder of his leisure and attentions
upon one agreeable woman (at a time)—two selfishnesses
very attractive to a blasé, but not permitted to
any member of society short of a duke or a Cræsus.

And now, with a new leaf turning over in his dull
book of life—a morning of a new day breaking on
his increasing night—Lindsay Maud tightly screwed
his arms across his breast, and paced the darkening
avenue of Beckton Park. The difference between
figuring as a fortune-hunter, and having a fortune
hunted for him by others, he perfectly understood.
In old and aristocratic societies, where wealth is at
the same time so much more coveted and so much
more difficult to win, the eyes of “envy, malice, and
all uncharitableness,” are alike an omnipresent argus,
in their watch over the avenues to its acquisition. No
step, the slightest, the least suspicious, is ever taken
toward the hand of an heiress, or the attainment of
an inheritance, without awakening and counter-working
of these busy monsters; and, for a society-man,
better to be a gambler or seducer, better to have all
the fashionable vices ticketed on his name, than to
stand affiched as a fortune-hunter. If to have a fortune
cleverly put within reach by a powerful friend,
however, be a proportionate beatitude, blessed was
Maud. So thought he, at least, as the merry bell of
Beckton tower sent its summons through the woods,
and his revery gave place to thoughts of something
more substantial.

And thus far, oh adorable reader! (for I see what
unfathomable eyes are looking over my shoulder) thus
far, like an artist making a sketch, of which one part
is to be finished, I have dwelt a little on the touches
of my pencil. But, by those same unfathomable eyes

I know (for in those depths dwell imagination), that
if the remainder be done ever so lightly in outline,
even then there will be more than was needed for the
comprehension of the story. Thy ready and boundless
fancy, sweet lady, would supply it all. Given,
the characters and scene, what fair creature who has
loved, could fail to picture forth the sequel and its
more minute surroundings, with rapidity and truth
daguerreotypical?

Sketchily, then, touch we the unfinished dénouement
of our story.

The long saloon was already in glittering progress
wken Maud entered. The servants in their blue and
white liveries were gliding rapidly about with the terrestrial
nutriment for eyes celestial—to-wit, wines and
oysters.

Half blinded with the glare of the numberless
lights, he stood a moment at the door.

“Lady Beckton's compliments, and she has reserved
a seat for you!” said a footman approaching
him.

He glanced at the head of the table. The vacant
chair was near Lady Beckton and opposite Miss Blakeney.
“Is a vis-a-vis better for love-making than a
seat at the lady's ear?” thought Maud. But Lady
Beckton's tactics were to spare his ear and dazzle his
eye, without reference especially to the corresponding
impressions on the eyes and ear of the lady. And
she had the secondary object of avoiding any betrayal
of her designs till they were too far matured to be defeated
by publicity.

“Can you tell me, Mr. Maud,” said the sweet
voice of Mabel Brown as he drew his chair to the
table, “what is the secret of Lady Beckton's putting
you next me so pertinaciously?”

“A greater regard for my happiness than yours,
probably,” said Maud; “but why `pertinaciously?'
Has there been a skirmish for this particular chair?”

“No skirmish, but three attempts at seizure by
three of my admirers.”

“If they admire you more than I, they are fitter
companions for a tête-à-tête than a crowded party,”
said Maud. “I am as near a lover as I can be, and
be agreeable!”

To this Maud expected the gay retort due to a bagatelle
of gallantry; but the pretty Mabel was silent.
The soup disappeared and the entremets were served.
Maud was hungry, and he had sent a cutlet and a
glass of Johannisberg to the clamorous quarter before
he ventured to look toward his hostess.

He felt her eye upon him. A covert smile stole
through her lips as they exchanged glances.

“Yes?” she asked, with a meaning look.

“Yes!”

And in that dialogue of two monosyllables Lady
Beckton presumed that the hand and five thousand a
year of Miss Catherine Blakeney, were virtually made
over to Mr. Lindsay Maud. And her diplomacy
made play to that end without farther deliberation.

Very unconscious indeed that she was under the
eye of the man who had entered into a conspiracy to
become her husband, Miss Blakeney sat between a
guardsman and a diplomatist, carrying on the war in
her usual trenchant and triumphant fashion. She
looked exceedingly handsome—that Maud could not
but admit. With no intention of becoming responsible
for her manners, he would even have admired,
as he often had done, her skilful coquetries and adroit
displays of the beauty with which nature had endowed
her. She succeeded, Maud thought, in giving
both of her admirers the apparent preference (apparent
to themselves, that is to say), and considering her
vis-a-vis worth a chance shaft at least, she honored
that very attentive gentleman with such occasional
notice, as, under other circumstances, would have
been far from disagreeable. It might have worn a
better grace, however, coming from simple Miss
Blakeney. From the future Mrs. Lindsay Maud, he
could have wished those pretty inveiglements very
much reduced and modified.

At his side, the while, sweet Mabel Brown carried
on with him a conversation, which to the high tone
of merriment opposite, was like the intermitted murmur
of a brook heard in the pauses of merry instruments.
At the same time that nothing brilliant or
gay seemed to escape her notice, she toned her own
voice and flow of thought so winningly below the excitement
around her, that Maud, who was sensible of
every indication of superiority, could not but pay her
a silent tribute of admiration. “If this were but the
heiress!” he ejaculated inwardly. But Mabel Brown
was a dependant.

Coffee was served.

The door at the end of the long saloon was suddenly
thrown open, and as every eye turned to gaze
into the blazing ballroom, a march with the full power
of the band burst upon the ear.

The diplomatist who had been sitting at the side
of Miss Blakeney was a German, and a waltzer comme
il y en a peu. At the bidding of Lady Beckton, he
put his arm around the waist of the heiress, and bore
her away to the delicious music of Strauss, and, by
general consent, the entire floor was left to this pair
for a dozen circles. Miss Blakeney was passionately
fond of waltzing, and built for it, like a Baltimore
clipper for running close to the wind. If she had a
fault that her friends were afraid to jog her memory
about, it was the wearing her dresses a flounce too
short. Her feet and ankles were Fenella's own, while
her figure and breezy motion would have stolen Endymion
from Diana. She waltzed too well for a
lady—all but well enough for a premiere danseuse de
l'opera. Lady Beckton was a shrewd woman, but
she made a mistake in crying “encore!” when this
single couple stopped from their admired pas de deux.
She thought Maud was just the man to be captivated
by that display. But the future Mrs. Lindsay Maud
must not have ankles for general admiration. Oh, no!

Maud wished to efface the feeling this exhibition
had caused by sharing in the excitement.

“Miss Brown,” he said, as two or three couples
went off, “permit me the happiness of one turn!”
and, scarce waiting for an answer, he raised his arm
to encircle her waist.

Mabel took his hands, and playfully laid them
across each other on his own breast in an attitude of
resignation.

“I never waltz,” she said. “But don't think me
a prude! I don't consider it wrong in those who
think it right.”

“But with this music tugging at your heels!” said
Maud, who did not care to express how much he admired
the delicacy of her distinction.

“Ah, with a husband or a brother, I should think
one could scarce resist bounding away; but I can
not—”

“Can not what?—can not take me for either?” interrupted
Maud, with an air of affected malice that
covered a very strong desire to ask the question in
earnest.

She turned her eyes suddenly upon him with a rapid
look of inquiry, and, slightly coloring, fixed her attention
silently on the waltzers.

Lady Beckton came, making her way through the
crowd. She touched Maud on the arm.

“`Hold hook and line—is it not?” she said, in a
whisper.

After an instant's hesitation, Maud answered.
“Yes!”—but pages, often, would not suffice to express
all that passes through the mind in “an instant's
hesitation.” All Lindsay Maud's prospects and circumstances
were reviewed in that moment; all his

many steps by which he had arrived at the conclusion
that marriage with him must be a matter of convenance
merely; all his put-down impulses and built-up resolutions;
all his regrets, consolations, and offsets; all
his better and worser feelings; all his former loves
(and in that connexion, strangely enough, Mabel
Brown); all his schemes, in short, for smothering his
pain in the sacrifice of his heart, and making the
most of the gain to his pocket, passed before him in
that half minute's review. But he said “Yes!”

The Blakeney carriage was dismissed that night,
with orders to bring certain dressing-maids and certain
sequents of that useful race, on the following
morning to Beckton Park, and the three persons who
composed the Blakeney party, an old aunt, Miss
Blakeney, and Mabel Brown, went quietly to bed under
the hospitable roof of Lady Beckton.

How describe (and what need of it, indeed!) a week
at an English country-house, with all its age of
chances for loving and hating, its eternity of opportunities
for all that hearts can have to regulate in this
shorthand life of ours? Let us come at once to the
closing day of this visit.

Maud lay late abed on the day that the Blakeneys
were to leave Beckton Park. Fixed from morning
till night in the firm resolution at which he had arrived
with so much trouble and self-control, he was
dreaming from night till morning of a felicity in
which Miss Blakeney had little share. He wished
the marriage could be all achieved in the signing of a
bond. He found that he had miscalculated his philosophy
in supposing that he could venture to loose
thought and revery upon the long-forbidden subject
of marriage. In all the scenes eternally being conjured
up to his fancy—scenes of domestic life—the
bringing of Miss Blakeney into the picture was an
after effort. Mabel Brown stole into it, spite of himself—the
sweetest and dearest feature of that enchanting
picture, in its first warm coloring by the heart.
But, day by day, he took the place assigned him by
Lady Beckton at the side of Miss Blakeney, riding,
driving, dining, strolling, with reference to being near
her only, and still scarce an hour could pass in which,
spite of all effort to the contrary, he did not betray
his passionate interest in Mabel Brown.

He arose and breakfasted. Lady Beckton and the
young ladies were bonneted and ready for a stroll in
the park woods, and her ladyship came and whispered
in Maud's ear, as he leaned over his coffee, that he
must join them presently, and that she had prepared
Miss Blakeney for an interview with him, which she
would arrange as they rambled.

“Take no refusal!” were her parting words as she
stepped out upon the verandah.

Maud strolled leisurely toward the rendezvous indicated
by Lady Beckton. He required all the time
he could get to confirm his resolutions and recover
his usual mainticn of repose. With his mind made
up at last, and a face in which few would have read
the heart in fetters beneath, he jumped a wicker-fence,
and, by a cross path, brought the ladies in
view. They were walking separately, but as his footsteps
were heard, Lady Beckton slipped her arm into
Miss Brown's, and commenced apparently a very earnest
undertone of conversation. Miss Blakeney
turned. Her face glowed with exercise, and Maud
confessed to himself that he rarely had seen so beautiful
a woman.

“You are come in time, Mr. Maud,” she said, “for
something is going on between my companions from
which I am excluded.”

“En revanche, suppose we have our little exclusive
secret!” said Maud, offering his arm.

Miss Blakeney colored slightly, and consented to
obey the slight resistance of his arm by which they
fell behind. A silence of a few moments followed,
for if the proposed secret were a proposal of marriage,
it had been too bluntly approached. Maud felt
that he must once more return to indifferent topics,
and lead on the delicate subject at his lips with more
tact and preparation.

They rose a slight elevation in the walk which overlooked
the wilder confines of the park. A slight
smoke rose from a clump of trees, indicating an intrusion
of gipsies within, and the next instant, a deep-mouthed
bark rang out before them, and the two ladies
came rushing back in violent terror, assailed at
every step of their flight by a powerful and infuriated
mastiff. Maud ran forward immediately, and succeeded
in driving the dog back to the tents; but on his
return he found only the terrified Mabel, who, leaning
against a tree, and partly recovered from her
breathless flight, was quietly awaiting him.

“Here is a change of partners as my heart would
have it!” thought Maud, as he drew her slight arm
within his own. “The transfer looks to me like the
interposition of my good angel, and I acept the
warning!”

And in words that needed no management to bring
them skilfully on—with the eloquence of a heart released
from fetters all but intolerable, and from a
threatened slavery for life—Lindsay Maud poured
out the fervent passion of his heart to Mabel Brown.
The crust of a selfish and artificial life broke up in
the tumult of that declaration, and he found himself
once more natural and true to the instincts and better
impulses of his character. He was met with the
trembling response that such pure love looks for
when it finds utterance, and without a thought of
worldly calculation, or a shadow of a scheme for their
means and manner of life, they exchanged promises
to which the subsequent ceremony of marriage was
but the formal seal.

And at the announcement of this termination to
her matrimonial schemes. Lady Beckton seemed
much more troubled than Miss Blakeney.

But Lady Beckton's disappointment was somewhat
modified when she discovered that Miss Blakeney had
long before secretly endowed her adopted sister Mabel
with the half of her fortune.

THE INLET OF PEACH-BLOSSOMS.

The Emperor Yuentsoong, of the dynasty Chow,
was the most magnificent of the long-descended succession
of Chinese sovereigns. On his first accession
to the throne, his character was so little understood,
that a conspiracy was set on foot among the yellow-caps,
or eunuchs, to put out his eyes, and place upon
the throne the rebel Szema, in whose warlike hands,
they asserted, the empire would more properly maintain
its ancient glory. The gravity and reserve which
these myrmidons of the palace had construed into
stupidity and fear, soon assumed another complexion,
however. The eunuchs silently disappeared; the
mandarins and princes whom they had seduced from
their allegiance, were made loyal subjects by a generous
pardon: and in a few days after the period fixed
upon for the consummation of the plot, Yuentsoong
set forth in complete armor at the head of his troops
to give battle to the rebel in the mountains.

In Chinese annals this first enterprise of the youthful
Yuentsoong is recorded with great pomp and particularity.
Szema was a Tartar prince of uncommon
ability, young like the emporor, and, during the few
last imbecile years of the old sovereign, he had gathered
strength in his rebellion, till now he was at the
head of ninety thousand men, all soldiers of repute

and tried valor. The historian has unfortunately
dimmed the emperor's fame to European eyes, by attributing
his wonderful achievements in this expedition
to his superiority in arts of magic. As this account
of his exploits is only prefatory to our tale, we
will simply give the reader an idea of the style of the
historian, by translating literally a passage or two of
his description of the battle:—

“Szema now took refuge within a cleft of the
mountain, and Yuentsoong, upon his swift steed, outstripping
the body-guard in his ardor, dashed amid
the paralyzed troops with poised spear, his eyes fixed
only on the rebel. There was a silence of an instant,
broken only by the rattling hoofs of the intruder, and
then, with dishevelled hair and waving sword, Szema
uttered a fearful imprecation. In a moment the wind
rushed, the air blackened, and with the suddenness of
a fallen rock, a large cloud enveloped the rebel, and
innumerable men and horses issued out of it. Wings
flapped against the eyes of the emperor's horse, hellish
noises screamed in his ears, and, completely beyond
control, the animal turned and fled back through
the narrow pass, bearing his imperial master safe into
the heart of his army.

“Yuentsoong, that night, commanded some of his
most expert soldiers to scale the beetling heights of
the ravine, bearing upon their backs the blood of
swine, sheep and dogs, with other impure things, and
these they were ordered to shower upon the combatants
at the sound of the imperial clarion. On the following
morning. Szema came forth again to offer battie,
with flags displayed, drums beating, and shouts
of triumph and defiance. As on the day previous, the
bold emperor divided, in his impatience, rank after
rank of his own soldiery, and, followed closely by his
body-guard, drove the rebel army once more into their
fastness. Szema sat upon his warhorse as before, intrenched
amid his officers and ranks of the tallest Tartar
spearmen, and as the emperor contended hand to
hand with one of the opposing rebels, the magic imprecation
was again uttered, the air again filled with
cloudy horsemen and chariots, and the mountain shaken
with discordant thunder. Backing his willing
steed, the emperor blew a long sharp note upon his
silver clarion, and in an instant the sun broke through
the darkness, and the air seemed filled with paper men,
horses of straw, and phantoms dissolving into smoke.
Yuentsoong and Szema now stood face to face, with
only mortal aid and weapons.”

The historian goes on to record that the two armies
suspended hostilities at the command of their leaders,
and that the emperor and his rebel subject having engaged
in single combat, Yuentsoong was victorious,
and returned to his capital with the formidable enemy,
whose life he had spared, riding beside him like a
brother. The conqueror's career, for several years
after this, seems to have been a series of exploits of
personal valor, and the Tartar prince shared in all his
dangers and pleasures, his inseparable friend. It was
during this period of romantic friendship that the
events occurred which have made Yuentsoong one of
the idols of Chinese poetry.

By the side of a lake in a distant province of the
empire, stood one of the imperial palaces of pleasure,
seldom visited, and almost in ruins. Hither, in one
of his moody periods of repose from war, came the
conqueror Yuentsoong, for the first time in years separated
from his faithful Szema. In disgnise, and
with only one or two attendants, he established himself
in the long silent halls of his ancestor Tsinchemong,
and with his boat upon the lake, and his spear
in the forest, seemed to find all the amusement of
which his melancholy was susceptible. On a certain
day in the latter part of April, the emperor had set
his sail to a fragrant south wind, and reclining on the
cushions of his bark, watched the shore as it softly
and silently glided past, and, the lake being entirely
encircled by the imperial forest, he felt immersed in
what he believed to be the solitude of a deserted paradise.
After skirting the fringed sheet of water in
this manner for several hours, he suddenly observed
that he had shot through a streak of peach-blossoms
floating from the shore, and at the same moment he
became conscious that his boat was slightly headed
off by a current setting outward. Putting up his
helm, he returned to the spot, and beneath the drooping
branches of some luxuriant willows, thus early in
leaf, he discovered the mouth of an inlet, which, but
for the floating blossoms it brought to the lake, would
have escaped the notice of the closest observer. The
emperor now lowered his sail, unshipped the slender
mast, and betook him to the oars, and as the current
was gentle, and the inlet wider within the mouth, he
sped rapidly on, through what appeared to be but a
lovely and luxuriant vale of the forest. Still, those
blushing betrayers of some flowering spot beyond,
extended like a rosy clue before him, and with impulse
of muscles swelled and indurated in warlike exercise,
the swift keel divided the besprent mirror winding
temptingly onward, and, for a long hour, the royal
oarsman untiringly threaded this sweet vein of the
wilderness.

Resting a moment on his oars while the slender
bark still kept her way, he turned his head toward
what seemed to be an opening in the forest on the
left, and in the same instant the boat ran, head on, to
the shore, the inlet at this point almost doubling on
its course. Beyond, by the humming of bees, and
the singing of birds, there should be a spot more open
than the tangled wilderness he had passed, and disengaging
his prow from the alders, he shoved the boat
again into the stream, and pulled round a high rock,
by which the inlet seemed to have been compelled to
curve its channel. The edge of a bright green meadow
now stole into the perspective, and, still widening
with his approach, disclosed a slightly rising terrace
clustered with shrubs, and studded here and there
with vases; and farther on, upon the same side of the
stream, a skirting edge of peach-trees, loaded with the
gay blossoms which had guided him hither.

Astonished at these signs of habitation in what was
well understood to be a privileged wilderness, Yuentsoong
kept his boat in mid-stream, and with his eyes
vigilantly on the alert, slowly made headway against
the current. A few strokes with his oars, however,
traced another curve of the inlet, and brought into
view a grove of ancient trees scattered over a gently
ascending lawn, beyond which, hidden by the river
till now by the projecting shoulder of a mound, lay a
small pavilion with gilded pillars, glittering like fairy
work in the sun. The emperor fastened his boat to a
tree leaning over the water, and with his short spear
in his hand, bounded upon the shore, and took his
way toward the shining structure, his heart beating
with a feeling of wonder and interest altogether new.
On a nearer approach, the bases of the pillars seemed
decayed by time, and the gilding weather-stained and
tarnished, but the trellised porticoes on the southern
aspect were laden with flowering shrubs, in vases of
porcelain, and caged birds sang between the pointed
arches, and there were manifest signs of luxurious
taste, elegance, and care.

A moment, with an indefinable timidity, the emperor
paused before stepping from the green sward
upon the marble floor of the pavilion, and in that
moment a curtain was withdrawn from the door, and
a female, with step suddenly arrested by the sight of
the stranger, stood motionless before him. Ravished
with her extraordinary beauty, and awe-struck with
the suddenness of the apparition and the novelty of
the adventure, the emperor's tongue cleaved to his
mouth, and ere he could summon resolution, even

for a gesture of courtesy, the fair creature had fled
within, and the curtain closed the entrance as before.

Wishing to recover his composure, so strangely
troubled, and taking it for granted that some other inmate
of the house would soon appear, Yuentsoong
turned his steps aside to the grove, and with his head
bowed, and his spear in the hollow of his arm, tried
to recall more vividly the features of the vision he
had seen. He had walked but a few paces, when
there came toward him from the upper skirt of the
grove, a man of unusual stature and erectness, with
white hair, unbraided on his shoulders, and every sign
of age except infirmity of step and mien. The emperor's
habitual dignity had now rallied, and on his
first salutation, the countenance of the old man softened,
and he quickened his pace to meet and give him
welcome.

“You are noble?” he said, with confident inquiry.

Yuentsoong colored slightly.

“I am,” he replied, “Lew-melin, a prince of the
empire.”

“And by what accident here?”

Yuentsoong explained the clue of the peach-blossoms,
and represented himself as exiled for a time to
the deserted palace upon the lakes.

“I have a daughter,” said the old man, abruptly,
“who has never looked on human face, save mine.”

“Pardon me!” replied his visiter; “I have thoughtlessly
intruded on her sight, and a face more heavenly
fair—”

The emperor hesitated, but the old man smiled encouragingly.

“It is time,” he said, “that I should provide a
younger defender for my bright Teh-leen, and Heaven
has sent you in the season of peach-blossoms, with
provident kindness.[1] You have frankly revealed to
me your name and rank. Before I offer you the hospitality
of my roof, I must tell you mine. I am
Choo-tseen, the outlaw, once of your own rank, and
the general of the Celestial army.”

The emperor started, remembering that this celebrated
rebel was the terror of his father's throne.

“You have heard my history,” the old man continued.
“I had been, before my rebellion, in charge
of the imperial palace on the lake. Anticipating an
evil day, I secretly prepared this retreat for my family;
and when my soldiers deserted me at the battle of
Ke-chow, and a price was set upon my head, hither I
fled with my women and children; and the last alive
is my beautiful Teh-leen. With this brief outline of
my life, you are at liberty to leave me as you came,
or to enter my house, on the condition that you become
the protector of my child.”

The emperor eagerly turned toward the pavilion,
and, with a step as light as his own, the erect and
stately outlaw hastened to lift the curtain before him.
Leaving his guest for a moment in the outer apartment,
he entered to an inner chamber in search of his
daughter, whom he brought, panting with fear, and
blushing with surprise and delight, to her future lover
and protector. A portion of an historical tale so delicate
as the description of the heroine is not work for
imitators, however, and we must copy strictly the portrait
of the matchless Teh-leen, as drawn by Le-pih,
the Anacreon of Chinese poetry, and the contemporary
and favorite of Yuentsoong.

“Teh-leen was born while the morning star shone
upon the bosom of her mother. Her eye was like
the unblemished blue lily, and its light like the white
gem unfractured. The plum-blossom is most fragrant
when the cold has penetrated its stem, and the
mother of Teh-leen had known sorrow. The head
of her child drooped in thought, like a violet overladen
with dew. Bewildering was Teh-leen. Her
mouth's corners were dimpled, yet pensive. The
arch of her brows was like the vein in the tulip's
heart, and the lashes shaded the blushes on her cheek.
With the delicacy of a pale rose, her complexion put
to shame the floating light of day. Her waist, like a
thread in fineness, seemed ready to break; yet was it
straight and erect, and feared not the fanning breeze;
and her shadowy grace was as difficult to delineate, as
the form of the white bird rising from the ground by
moonlight. The natural gloss of her hair resembled
the uncertain sheen of calm water, yet without the
false aid of unguents. The native intelligence of her
mind seemed to have gained strength by retirement,
and he who beheld her, thought not of her as human.
Of rare beauty, of rarer intellect was Teh-leen, and
her heart responded to the poet's lute.”

We have not space, nor could we, without copying
directly from the admired Le-pih, venture to describe
the bringing of Teh-leen to court, and her surprise at
finding herself the favorite of the emperor. It is a
romantic circumstance, besides, which has had its
parallels in other countries. But the sad sequel to
the loves of poor Teh-leen is but recorded in the cold
page of history; and if the poet, who wound up the
climax of her perfections, with her susceptibility to
his lute, embalmed her sorrows in verse, he was probably
too politic to bring it ever to light. Pass we to
these neglected and unadorned passages of her history.

Yuentsoong's nature was passionately devoted and
confiding; and, like two brothers with one favorite
sister, lived together Teh-leen, Szema, and the emperor.
The Tartar prince, if his heart knew a mistress
before the arrival of Teh-leen at the palace, owned
afterward no other than her; and fearless of check
or suspicion from the noble confidence and generous
friendship of Yuentsoong, he seemed to live but for
her service, and to have neither energies nor ambition
except for the winning of her smiles. Szema was of
great personal beauty, frank when it did not serve him
to be wily, bold in his pleasures, and of manners almost
femininely soft and voluptuous. He was renowned
as a soldier, and, for Teh-leen, he became a
poet and master of the lute; and, like all men formed
for ensnaring the heart of women, he seemed to forget
himself in the absorbing devotion of his idolatry. His
friend, the emperor, was of another mould. Yuentsoong's
heart had three chambers—love, friendship,
and glory. Teh-leen was but a third in his existence,
yet he loved her—the sequel will show how well! In
person he was less beautiful than majestic, of large
stature, and with a brow and lip naturally stern and
lofty. He seldom smiled, even upon Teh-leen, whom
he would watch for hours in pensive and absorbed delight;
but his smile, when it did awake, broke over
his sad countenance like morning. All men loved and
honored Yuentsoong, and all men, except only the
emperor, looked on Szema with antipathy. To such
natures as the former, women give all honor and approbation;
but for such as the latter, they reserve
their weakness!

Wrapt up in his friend and mistress, and reserved
in his intercourse with his counsellors, Yuentsoong
knew not that, throughout the imperial city, Szema
was called “the kieu,” or robber-bird, and his fair
Teh-leen openly charged with dishonor. Going out
alone to hunt as was his custom, and having left his
signet with Szema, to pass and repass through the
private apartments at his pleasure, his horse fell with
him unaccountably in the open field. Somewhat
superstitious, and remembering that good spirits sometimes
“knit the grass,” when other obstacles fail to
bar our way into danger, the emperor drew rein and
returned to his palace. It was an hour after noon,
and having dismissed his attendants at the city gate,
he entered by a postern to the imperial garden, and
bethought himself of the concealed couch in a cool

grot by a fountain (a favorite retreat, sacred to himself
and Teh-leen), where he fancied it would be refreshing
to sleep away the sultriness of the remaining
hours till evening. Sitting down by the side of the
murmuring fount, he bathed his feet, and left his slippers
on the lip of the basin to be unencumbered in
his repose within, and so with unechoing step entered
the resounding grotto. Alas! there slumbered the
faithless friend with the guilty Teh-leen upon his
bosom!

Grief struck through the noble heart of the emperor
like a sword in cold blood. With a word he
could consign to torture and death the robber of his
honor, but there was agony in his bosom deeper than
revenge. He turned silently away, recalled his horse
and huntsmen, and, outstripping all, plunged on
through the forest till night gathered around him.

Yuentsoong had been absent many days from his
capitol, and his subjects were murmuring their fears
for his safety, when a messenger arrived to the counsellors
informing them of the appointment of the
captive Tartar prince to the government of the province
of Szechuen, the second honor of the Celestial
empire. A private order accompanied the announcement,
commanding the immediate departure of Szema
for the scene of his new authority. Inexplicable as
was this riddle to the multitude, there were those who
read it truly by their knowledge of the magnanimous
soul of the emperor; and among these was the crafty
object of his generosity. Losing no time, he set forward
with great pomp for Szechuen, and in their joy
to see him no more in the palace, the slighted princes
of the empire forgave his unmerited advancement.
Yuentsoong returned to his capitol; but to the terror
of his counsellors and people, his hair was blanched
white as the head of an old man! He was pale as
well, but he was cheerful and kind beyond his wont,
and to Teh-leen untiring in pensive and humble attentions.
He pleaded only impaired health and restless
slumbers as an apology for nights of solitude.
Once, Teh-leen penetrated to his lonely chamber, but
by the dim night lamp she saw that the scroll over her
window[2] was changed, and instead of the stimulus to
glory which formerly hung in golden letters before
his eyes, there was a sentence written tremblingly in
black:—

Six months from this period the capitol was thrown
into a tumult with the intelligence that the province
of Szechuen was in rebellion, and Szema at the head
of a numerous army on his way to seize the throne
of Yuentsoong. This last sting betrayed the serpent
even to the forgiving emperor, and tearing the reptile
at last from his heart, he entered with the spirit of
other times into the warlike preparations. The imperial
army was in a few days on its march, and at
Keo-yang the opposing forces met and prepared for
encounter.

With a dread of the popular feeling toward Teh-leen,
Yuentsoong had commanded for her a close
litter, and she was borne after the imperial standard in
the centre of the army. On the eve before the battle,
ere the watch-fires were lit, the emperor came to
her tent, set apart from his own, and with the delicate
care and kind gentleness from which he never varied,
inquired how her wants were supplied, and bade her,
thus early, farewell for the night; his own custom of
passing among his soldiers on the evening previous to
an engagement, promising to interfere with what was
usually his last duty before retiring to his couch.
Teh-leen on this occasion seemed moved by some
irrepressible emotion, and as he rose to depart, she fell
forward upon her face, and bathed his feet with her
tears. Attributing it to one of those excesses of feeling
to which all, but especially hearts ill at ease, are
liable, the noble monarch gently raised her, and, with
repeated efforts at reassurance, committed her to the
hands of her women. His own heart beat far from
tranquilly, for, in the excess of his pity for her grief
he had unguardedly called her by one of the sweet
names of their early days of love—strange word now
upon his lip—and it brought back, spite of memory
and truth, happiness that would not be forgotten!

It was past midnight, and the moon was riding high
in heaven, when the emperor, returning between the
lengthening watch-fires, sought the small lamp which,
suspended like a star above his own tent, guided him
back from the irregular mazes of the camp. Paled
by the intense radiance of the moonlight, the small
globe of alabaster at length became apparent to his
weary eye, and with one glance at the peaceful beauty
of the heavens, he parted the curtained door beneath
it, and stood within. The Chinese historian asserts
that a bird, from whose wing Teh-leen had once
plucked an arrow, restoring it to liberty and life, and
in grateful attachment to her destiny, removed the
lamp from the imperial tent, and suspended it over
hers. The emperor stood beside her couch. Startled
at his inadvertent error, he turned to retire; but the
lifted curtain let in a flood of moonlight upon the
sleeping features of Teh-leen, and like dew-drops, the
undried tears glistened in her silken lashes. A lamp
burned faintly in the inner apartment of the tent, and
her attendants slept soundly. His soft heart gave
way. Taking up the lamp, he held it over his beautiful
mistress, and once more gazed passionately and
unrestrainedly on her unparalleled beauty. The
past—the early past—was alone before him. He forgave
her—there, as she slept, unconscious of the
throbbing of his injured, but noble heart, so close
beside her—he forgave her in the long silent abysses
of his soul! Unwilling to wake her from her tranquil
slumber, but promising to himself, from that hour,
such sweets of confiding love as had well nigh been
lost to him for ever, he imprinted one kiss upon the
parted lips of Teh-leen, and sought his couch for
slumber.

Ere daybreak the emperor was aroused by one of
his attendants with news too important for delay.
Szema, the rebel, had been arrested in the imperial
camp, disguised, and on his way back to his own
forces, and like wildfire, the information had spread
among the soldiery, who, in a state of mutinous
excitement, were with difficulty restrained from rushing
upon the tent of Teh-leen. At the door of his
tent, Yuentsoong found messengers from the alarmed
princes and officers of the different commands, imploring
immediate aid and the imperial presence to allay
the excitement, and while the emperor prepared to
mount his horse, the guard arrived with the Tartar
prince, ignominiously tied, and bearing marks of
rough usage from his indignant captors.

“Loose him!” cried the emperor, in a voice of
thunder.

The cords were severed, and with a glance whose
ferocity expressed no thanks, Szema reared himself
up to his fullest height, and looked scornfully around
him. Daylight had now broke, and as the group
stood upon an eminence in sight of the whole army,
shouts began to ascend, and the armed multitude,
breaking through all restraint, rolled in toward the
centre. Attracted by the commotion, Yuentsoong
turned to give some orders to those near him, when

Szema suddenly sprang upon an officer of the guard,
wrenched his drawn sword from his grasp, and in an
instant was lost to sight in the tent of Teh-leen. A
sharp scream, a second of thought, and forth again
rushed the desperate murderer, with his sword flinging
drops of drops of blood, and ere a foot stirred in the
paralyzed group, the avenging cimeter of Yuentsoong
had cleft him to the chin.

A hush, as if the whole army was struck dumb by
a bolt from heaven, followed this rapid tragedy.
Dropping the polluted sword from his hand, the
emperor, with uncertain step, and the pallor of death
upon his countenance, entered the fatal tent.

He came no more forth that day. The army was
marshalled by the princes, and the rebels were routed
with great slaughter; but Yuentsoong never more
wielded sword. “He pined to death,” says the historian,
“with the wane of the same moon that shone
upon the forgiveness of Teh-leen.”

THE BELLE OF THE BELFRY;
OR, THE DARING LOVER.

A grisette is something else beside a “mean girl”
or a “gray gown,” the French dictionary to the contrary
notwithstanding. Bless me! you should see the
grisettes of Rochepot! And if you wished to take a
lesson in political compacts, you should understand
the grisette confederacy of Rochepot! They were
working-girls, it is true—dressmakers, milliners, shoe-binders,
tailoresses, flowermakers, embroideresses—
and they never expected to be anything more aristocratic.
And in that content lay their power.

The grisettes of Rochepot were a good fourth of
the female population. They had their jealousies,
and little scandals, and heart-burnings, and plottings,
and counterplottings (for they were women) among
themselves. But they made common cause against
the enemy. They would bear no disparagement.
They knew exactly what was due to them, and what
was due to their superiors, and they paid and gave
credit in the coin of good manners, as can not be done
in countries of “liberty and equality.” Still there
were little shades of difference in the attention shown
them by their employers, and they worked twice as
much in a day when sewing for Madame Durozel,
who took her dinner with them, sans façon in the
work-room, as for old Madame Chiquette, who dined
all alone in her grand saloon, and left them to eat by
themselves among their shreds and scissors. But
these were not slights which they seriously resented.
Wo only to the incautious dame who dared to scandalize
one of their number, or dispute her dues, or
encroach upon her privileges! They would make
Rochepot as uncomfortable for her, parbleu! as a
kettle to a slow-boiled lobster.

But the prettiest grisette of Rochepot was not often
permitted to join her companions in their self-chaperoned
excursions on the holydays. Old Dame
Pomponney was the sexton's widow, and she had the
care of the great clock of St. Roch, and of one only
daughter; and excellent care she took of both her
charges. They lived all three in the belfry—dame,
clock, and daughter—and it was a bright day for
Thénais when she got out of hearing of that “tick,
tick, tick,” and of the thumping of her mother's
cane on the long staircase, which always kept time
with it.

Not that old Dame Pomponney had any objection
to have her daughter convenably married. She had
been deceived in her youth (or so it was whispered)
by a lover above her condition, and she vowed, by the
cross on her cane, that her daughter should have no
sweetheart above a journeyman mechanic. Now the
romance of the grisettes (parlons bas!) was to have
one charming little flirtation with a gentleman before
they married the leather-apron—just to show that,
had they by chance been born ladies, they could have
played their part to the taste of their lords. But it
was at this game that Dame Pomponney had burnt her
fingers, and she had this one subject for the exercise
of her powers of mortal aversion.

When I have added that, four miles from Roche
pot, stood the château de Brevanne, and that the old
Count de Brevanne was a proud aristocrat of the an
cien régime, with one son, the young Count Felix,
whom he had educated at Paris, I think I have prepared
you tolerably for the little romance I have to
tell you.

It was a fine Sunday morning that a mounted hussar
appeared in the street of Rochepot. The grisettes
were all abroad in their holyday parure, and the gay
soldier soon made an acquaintance with one of them
at the door of the inn, and informed her that he had
been sent on to prepare the old barracks for his troop.
The hussars were to be quartered a month at Rochepot.
Ah! what a joyous bit of news! And six officers
beside the colonel! And the trumpeters were
miracles at playing quadrilles and waltzes! And not
a plain man in the regiment—except always the
speaker. And none, except the old colonel, had ever
been in love in his life. But as this last fact required
to be sworn to, of course he was ready to kiss the
book—or, in the absence of the bock, the next most
sacred object of his adoration.

“Finissez donc, Monsieur!” exclaimed his pretty
listener, and away she ran to spread the welcome intelligence
with its delightful particulars.

The next day the troop rode into Rochepot, and
formed in the great square in front of St. Roch; and
by the time the trumpeters had played themselves red
in the face, the hussars were all appropriated, to a
man—for the grisettes knew enough of a marching
regiment to lose no time. They all found leisure to
pity poor Thénais, however, for there she stood in
one of the high windows of the belfry, looking down
on the gay crowd below, and they knew very well
that old Dame Pomponney had declared all soldiers
to be gay deceivers, and forbidden her daughter to
stir into the street while they were quartered at
Rochepot.

Of course the grisettes managed to agree as to each
other's selection of a sweetheart from the troop, and
of course each hussar thankfully accepted the pair of
eyes that fell to him. For, aside from the limited
duration of their stay, soldiers are philosophers, and
know that “life is short,” and it is better to “take the
goods the gods provide.” But “after everybody was
helped,” as they say at a feast, there appeared another
short jacket and foraging cap, very much to the relief
of red-headed Susette, the shoebinder, who had
been left out in the previous allotment. And Susette
made the amiable accordingly, but to no purpose, for
the lad seemed an idiot with but one idea—looking
for ever at St. Roch's clock to know the time of day!
The grisettes laughed and asked their sweethearts his
name, but they significantly pointed to their foreheads
and whispered something about poor Robertin's being
a privileged follower of the regiment and a protegé of
the colonel.

Well, the grisettes flirted, and the old clock of St.
Roch ticked on, and Susette and Thénais, the plainest
and the prettiest girl in the village, seemed the
only two who were left out in the extra dispensation
of lovers. And poor Robertin still persisted in occupying
most of his leisure with watching the time
of day.

It was on the Sunday morning after the arrival of
the troop that old Dame Pomponney went up, as
usual, to do her Sunday's duty in winding up the
clock. She had previously locked the belfry door to
be sure that no one entered below while she was
above; but—the Virgin help us!—on the top stair,
gazing into the machinery of the clock with absorbed
attention, sat one of those devils of hussars! “Thief,”
“vagabond,” and “house-breaker,” were the most
moderate epithets with which Dame Pomponney accompanied
the enraged beating of her stick on the
resounding platform. She was almost beside herself
with rage. And Thénais had been up to dust the
wheels of the clock! And how did she know that
that scélérat of a trooper was not there all the time!

But the intruder, whose face had been concealed
till now, turned suddenly round and began to gibber
and grin like a possessed monkey. He pointed at the
clock, imitated the “tick, tick, tick,” laughed till the
big bell gave out an echo like a groan, and then suddenly
jumped over the old dame's stick and ran down
stairs.

“Eh, Sainte Vierge!” exclaimed the old dame, “it's
a poor idiot after all! And he has stolen up to see
what made the clock tick! Ha! ha! ha! Well!—
well! I can not come up these weary stairs twice a
day, and I must wind up the clock before I go down
to let him out. `Tick, tick, tick!'—poor lad! poor
ad! They must have dressed him up to make fun
of him—those vicious troopers! Well!—well!”

And with pity in her heart, Dame Pomponney hobbled
down, stair after stair, to her chamber in the
square turret of the belfry, and there she found the
poor idiot on his knees before Thénais, and Thénais
was just preparing to put a skein of thread over his
thumbs, for she thought she might make him useful
and amuse him with the winding of it till her mother
came down. But as the thread got vexatiously entangled,
and the poor lad sat as patiently as a wooden
reel, and it was time to go below to mass, the dame
thought she might as well leave him there till she
came back, and down she stumped, locking the door
very safely behind her.

Poor Thénais was very lonely in the belfry, and
Dame Pomponney, who had a tender heart where her
duty was not involved, rather rejoiced when she returned,
to find an unusual glow of delight on her
daughter's cheek; and if Thénais could find so much
pleasure in the society of a poor idiot lad, it was a
sign, too, that her heart was not gone altogether after
those abominable troopers. It was time to send the
innocent youth about his business, however, so she
gave him a holyday cake and led him down stairs and
dismissed him with a pat on his back and a strict injunction
never to venture again up to the “tick, tick,
tick.” But as she had had a lesson as to the accessibility
of her bird's nest, she determined thenceforth
to lock the door invariably and carry the key in her
pocket.

While poor Robertin was occupied with his researches
into the “tick, tick, tick,” never absent a
day from the neighborhood of the tower, the more
fortunate hussars were planning to give the grisettes
a fête champétre. One of the saints' days was coming
round, and, the weather permitting, all the vehicles
of the village were to be levied, and, with the troop-hourses
in harness, they were to drive to a small wooded
valley in the neighborhood of the château de
Brevanne, where seclusion and a mossy carpet of
grass were combined in a little paradise for such enjoyment.

The morning of this merry day dawned, at last,
and the grisettes and their admirers were stirring be-times,
for they were to breakfast sur l'herbe, and they
were not the people to turn breakfast into dinner. The
sky was clear, and the dew was not very heavy on the
grass, and merrily the vehicles rattled about the town,
picking up their fair freights from its obscurest corners.
But poor Thénais looked out, a sad prisoner,
from her high window in the belfry.

It was a half hour after sunrise and Dame Pomponney
was creeping up stairs after her matins, thanking
Heaven that she had been firm in her refusals—at
least twenty of the grisettes having gathered about
her, and pleaded for a day's freedom for her imprisoned
daughter. She rested on the last landing but one
to take a little breath—but hark!—a man's voice talking
in the belfry! She listened again, and quietly
slipped her feet out of her high-heeled shoes. The
voice was again audible—yet how could it be! She
knew that no one could have passed up the stair, for
the key had been kept in her pocket more carefully
than usual, and, save by the wings of one of her own
pigeons, the belfry window was inaccessible, she was
sure. Still the voice went on in a kind of pleading
murmur, and the dame stole softly up in her stockings,
and noiselessly opened the door. There stood
Thénais at the window, but she was alone in the room.
At the same instant the voice was heard again, and
sure now that one of those desperate hussars had
climbed the tower, and unable to control her rage at
the audacity of the attempt, Dame Pomponney clutched
her cane and rushed forward to aim a blow at the
military cap now visible at the sill of the window.
But at the same instant the head of the intruder was
thrown back, and the gibbering and idiotic smile of
poor Robertin checked her blow in its descent, and
turned all her anger into pity. Poor, silly lad! he
had contrived to draw up the garden ladder and place
it upon the roof of the stone porch below, to climb
and offer a flower to Thénais! Not unwilling to have
her daughter's mind occupied with some other thought
than the forbidden excursion, the dame offered her
hand to Robertin and drew him gently in at the window.
And as it was now market-time she bid Thénais
be kind to the poor boy, and locking the door
behind her, trudged contentedly off with her stick and
basket.

I am sorry to be obliged to record an act of filial
disobedience in the heroine of my story. An hour
after, Thénais was welcomed with acclamations as she
suddenly appeared with Robertin in the midst of the
merry party of grisettes. With Robertin—not as he
had hitherto been seen, his cap on the back of his
head and his under lip hanging loose like an idiot's—
but with Robertin, gallant, spirited, and gay, the handsomest
of hussars, and the most joyous of companions.
And Thénais, spite of her hasty toilet and the cloud
of conscious disobedience which now and then shaded
her sweet smile, was, by many degrees, the belle of
the hour; and the palm of beauty, for once in the
world at least, was yielded without envy. The grisettes
dearly love a bit of romance, too, and the circumventing
of old Dame Pomponney by his ruse of
idiocy, and the safe extrication of the prettiest girl
of the village from that gloomy old tower, was quite
enough to make Robertin a hero, and his sweetheart
Thénais more interesting than a persecuted princess.

And, seated on the ground while their glittering
cavaliers served them with breakfast, the light-hearted
grisettes of Rochepot were happy enough to be envied
by their betters. But suddenly the sky darkened,
and a slight gust murmuring among the trees, announced
the coming up of a summer storm. Sauve
qui peut! The soldiers were used to emergencies,
and they had packed up and reloaded their cars and
were under way for shelter almost as soon as the
grisettes, and away they all fled toward the nearest
grange—one of the dependencies of the château de
Brevanne.

But Robertin, now, had suddenly become the director
and ruling spirit of the festivities. The soldiers

treated him with instinctive deference, the old farmer
of the grange hurried out with his keys and unlocked
the great storehouse, and disposed of the horses under
shelter; and by the time the big drops began to
fall, the party were dancing gayly and securely on the
dry and smooth thrashing-floor, and the merry harmony
of the martial trumpets and horns rang out far
and wide through the gathering tempest.

The rain began to come down very heavily, and the
clatter of a horse's feet in a rapid gallop was heard in
one of the pauses in the waltz. Some one seeking
shelter, no doubt. On went the bewitching music
again, and at this moment two or three couples ceased
waltzing, and the floor was left to Robertin and Thénais,
whose graceful motions drew all eyes upon them
in admiration. Smiling in each other's faces, and
wholly unconscious of any other presence than their
own, they whirled blissfully around—but there was
now another spectator. The horseman who had been
heard to approach, had silently joined the party, and
making a courteous gesture to signify that the dancing
was not to be interrupted, he smiled back the
courtesies of the pretty grisettes—for, aristocratic as
he was, he was a polite man to the sex, was the Count
de Brevanne.

“Felix!” he suddenly cried out, in a tone of surprise
and anger.

The music stopped at that imperative call, and
Robertin turned his eyes, astonished, in the direction
from which it came.

The name was repeated from lip to lip among the
grisettes, “Felix!” “Count Felix de Brevanne!”

But without deigning another word, the old man
pointed with his riding-whip to the farm-house. The
disguised count respectfully bowed his head, but held
Thénais by the hand and drew her gently with him.

“Leave her! disobedient boy!” exclaimed the
father.

But as Count Felix tightened his hold upon the
small hand he held, and Thénais tried to shrink back
from the advancing old man, old Dame Pomponney,
streaming with rain, broke in unexpectedly upon the
scene.

“Disgrace not your blood,” said the Count de Brevanne
at that moment.

The offending couple stood alone in the centre of
the floor, and the dame comprehended that her daughter
was disparaged.

“And who is disgraced by dancing with my daughter?”
she screamed with furious gesticulation.

The old noble made no answer, but the grisettes,
in an under tone, murmured the name of Count
Felix!

“Is it he—the changeling! the son of a poor gardener,
that is disgraced by the touch of my daughter?”

A dead silence followed this astounding exclamation.
The old dame had forgotten herself in her rage,
and she looked about with a terrified bewilderment—
but the mischief was done. The old man stood aghast.
Count Felix clung still closer to Thénais, but his
face expressed the most eager inquisitiveness. The
grisettes gathered around Dame Pomponney, and the
old count, left standing and alone, suddenly drew his
cloak about him and stepped forth into the rain; and
in another moment his horse's feet were heard clattering
away in the direction of the château de Brevanne.

We have but to tell the sequel.

The incautious revelation of the old dame turned
out to be true. The dying infant daughter of the
Marchioness de Brevanne had been changed for the
healthy son of the count's gardener, to secure an heir
to the name and estates of the nearly extinct family
of Brevanne. Dame Pomponney had assisted in
this secret, and but for her heart full of rage at the
moment, to which the old count's taunt was but the
last drop, the secret would probably have never been
revealed. Count Felix, who had played truant from
his college at Paris, to come and hunt up some of his
childish playfellows, in disguise, had remembered and
disclosed himself to the little Thénais, who was not
sorry to recognise him, while he played the idiot in
the belfry. But of course there was now no obstacle
to their union, and united they were. The old count
pardoned him, and gave the new couple a portion of
his estate, and they named their first child Robertin,
as was natural enough.

PASSAGES FROM AN EPISTOLARY JOURNAL.
KEPT ON A LATE VISIT TO ENGLAND.

Ship Gladiator, off the Isle of Wight,
Evening of June 9th, 1839.

The bullet which preserves the perpendicular of
my cabin-lamp is at last still, I congratulate myself;
and with it my optic nerve resumes its proper and
steady function. The vagrant tumblers, the peripatetic
teeth-brushes, the dancing stools, the sidling wash-basins
and et-ceteras, have returned to a quiet life.
The creaking bulk-heads cry no more. I sit on a
trunk which will not run away with me, and pen and
paper look up into my face with their natural sobriety
and attention. I have no apology for not writing to
you, except want of event since we parted. There is
not a milestone in the three thousand four hundred
miles I have travelled. “Travelled!” said I. I am
as unconscious of having moved from the wave on
which you left me at Staten Island as the prisoner in
the hulk. I have pitched forward and backward, and
rolled from my left cheek to my right; but as to any
feeling of having gone onward I am as unconscious
of it as a lobster backing after the ebb. The sea is a
dreary vacuity, in which he, perhaps, who was ever
well upon it, can find material for thought. But for
one, I will sell, at sixpence a month, all copyhold
upon so much of my life as is destined “to the deep,
the blue, the black” (and whatever else he calls it) of
my friend the song-writer.

Yet there are some moments recorded, first with a
sigh, which we find afterward copied into memory
with a smile. Here and there a thought has come
to me from the wave, snatched listlessly from the
elements—here and there a word has been said which
on shore should have been wit or good feeling—here
and there a good morning, responded to with an effort,
has, from its courtesy or heartiness, left an impression
which will make to-morrow's parting phrases more
earnest than I had anticipated.—With this green isle
to windward, and the smell of earth and flowers coming
to my nostrils once more, I begin to feel an interest
in several who have sailed with me. Humanity,
killed in me invariably by salt water, revives, I think,
with this breath of hawthorn.

The pilot tells us that the Montreal, which sailed
ten days before us, has not yet passed up the channel,
and that we have brought with us the first west wind
they have had in many weeks. The sailors do not
know what to say to this, for we had four parsons on
board, and, by all sea-canons, they are invariable
Jonahs. One of these gentlemen, by the way, is an
abolitionist, on a begging crusade for a school devoted
to the amalgam of color, and very much to the amusement
of the passengers he met the steward's usual
demand for a fee with an application for a contribution
to the funds of his society! His expectations

from British sympathy are large, for he is accompanied
by a lay brother “used to keeping accounts,”
whose sole errand is to record the golden results of
his friend's eloquence. But “eight bells” warn me
to bed; so when I have recorded the good qualities
of the Gladiator, which are many, and those of her
captain, which are more, I will put out my sea-lamp
for the last time, and get into my premonitory “six
feet by two.”

The George Inn, Portsmouth.—This is a morning
in which (under my circumstances) it would be difficult
not to be pleased with the entire world. A fair
day in June, newly from sea, and with a journey of
seventy miles before me on a swift coach, through
rural England, is what I call a programme of a pleasant
day. Determined not to put myself in the way
of a disappointment, I accepted, without the slightest
hesitation, on landing at the wharf, the services of an
elderly gentleman in shabby black, who proposed to
stand between me and all my annoyances of the
morning. He was to get my baggage through the
customs, submit for me to all the inevitable impositions
of tide-waiters, secure my place in the coach,
bespeak me a fried sole and green peas, and sum up
his services, all in one short phrase of l. s. d. So
putting my temper into my pocket, and making up
my mind to let roguery take the wall of me for one
day unchallenged, I mounted to the grassy ramparts
of the town to walk off the small remainder of sea-air
from my stomach, and admire everything that came
in my way. I would recommend to all newly-landed
passengers from the packets to step up and accept of
the sympathy of the oaks of the “king's bastion” in
their disgust for the sea. Those sensible trees,
leaning toward the earth, and throwing out their
boughs as usual to the landward, present to the seaward
exposure a turned-up and gnarled look of nausea
and disgust, which is as expressive to the commonest
observer as a sick man's first look at his bolus. I
have great affinity with trees, and I believe implicitly
that what is disagreeable to the tree can not be pleasant
to the man. The salt air is not so corrosive here
as in the Mediterranean, where the leaves of the olive
are eaten off entirely on the side toward the sea; but
it is quite enough to make a sensible tree turn up its
nose, and in that attitude stands most expressively
every oak on the “king's bastion.”

The first few miles out of Portsmouth form one
long alley of ornamented cottages—wood-bine creeping
and roses flowering over them all. If there were
but two between Portsmouth and London—two even
of the meanest we saw—a traveller from any other
land would think it worth his while to describe them
minutely. As there are two thousand (more or less),
they must pass with a bare mention. Yet I became
conscious of a new feeling in seeing these rural paradises;
and I record it as the first point in which I find
myself worse for having become a “dweller in the
shade.” I was envious. Formerly, in passing a
tasteful retreat, or a fine manor, I could say, “What
a bright lawn! What a trim and fragrant hedge!
What luxuriant creepers! I congratulate their
fortunate owner!” Now it is, “How I wish I had
that hedge at Glenmary! How I envy these people
their shrubs, trellices, and flowers!” I wonder not
a little how the English emigrant can make a home
among our unsightly stumps that can ever breed a
forgetfulness of all these refined ruralities.

After the first few miles, I discovered that the two
windows of the coach were very limited frames for
the rapid succession of pictures presented to my eye,
and changing places with William, who was on the
top of the coach, I found myself between two tory
politicians, setting forth to each other most eloquently
the mal-administrations of the whigs, and the queen's
mismanagement. As I was two months behind the
English news, I listened with some interest. They
made out to their own satisfaction that the queen was
a silly girl; that she had been caught in a decided
fib about Sir Robert Peel's exactions with respect to
the household; and one of the Jeremiahs, who seemed
to be a sturdy grazier, said that “in 'igh life the
queen-dowager's 'ealth was now received uniwersally
with three times three, while Victoria's was drank in
solemn silence.” Her majesty received no better
treatment at the hands of a whig on the other end of
the seat; and as we whirled under the long park fence
of Claremont, the country palace of Leopold and the
Princess Charlotte, he took the pension of the Belgian
king for the burden of his lamentation, and, between
whig and tory, England certainly seemed to be in
a bad way. This Claremont, it will be remembered
by the readers of D'Israeli's novels, is the original of
the picture of the luxurious maison de plaisance, drawn
in the young duke.

We got glimpses of the old palace at Esher, of
Hampton court, of Pitt's country seat at Putney, and
of Jane Porter's cottage at Esher, and in the seventh
hour from leaving Portsmouth (seventy-four miles)
we found the vehicles thickening, the omnibuses
passing, the blue-coated policemen occurring at short
intervals, and the roads delightfully watered—symptoms
of suburban London. We skirted the privileged
paling of Hyde Park; and I could see, over the rails,
the flying and gay-colored equipages, the dandy horsemen,
the pedestrian ladies followed by footmen with
their gold sticks, the fashionable throng, in short,
which, separated by an iron barrier from all contact
with unsightliness and vulgarity, struts its hour in this
green cage of aristocracy.

Around the triumphal arch opposite the duke of
Wellington's was assembled a large crowd of carriages
and horsemen. The queen was coming from Buckingham
palace through the Green park, and they
were waiting for a glimpse of her majesty on horse-back.
The regulator whirled mercilessly on; but
far down, through the long avenues of trees, I could
see a movement of scarlet liveries, and a party coming
rapidly toward us on horseback. We missed the
queen by a couple of minutes.

It was just the hour when all London is abroad,
and Piccadilly was one long cavalcade of splendid
equipages on their way to the park. I remembered
many a face, and many a crest; but either the faces
had beautified in my memory, or three years had
done time's pitiless work on them all. Near Devonshire
house I saw, fretting behind the slow-moving
press of vehicles, a pair of magnificent and fiery blood
horses, drawing a coach, which, though quite new,
was of a color and picked out with a peculiar stripe
that was familiar to my eye. The next glance convinced
me that the livery was that of Lady B.; but,
for the light chariot in which she used to drive, here
was a stately coach—for the one tall footman, two—
for the plain but elegant harness, a sumptuous and
superb caparison—the whole turn-out on a scale of
splendor unequalled by anything around us. Another
moment decided the doubt—for as we came against
the carriage, following, ourselves, an embarrassed
press of vehicles, her ladyship appeared, leaning back
in the corner with her wrists-crossed, the same in the
grace of her attitude and the elegance of her toilet,
but stouter, more energetic, and graver in the expression
of her face, than I ever remembered to have seen
her. From the top of the stage-coach I looked,
unseen, directly down upon her, and probably got, by
chance, a daylight and more correct view of her
countenance than I should obtain in a year of opera
and drawing-room observation.

Tired and dusty, we were turned from hotel to hotel,

all full and overflowing; and finding at last a corner
at Raggett's, in Dover street, we dressed, dined,
and posted to Woolwich. Unexpected and mournful
news closed our first day in England with tears.

I drove up to London the second day after our arrival,
and having a little “Grub-street” business, made
my way to the purlieus of publishers in Paternoster
row. If you could imagine a paper mine, with a very
deep-cut shaft laid open to the surface of the earth,
you might get some idea of Ivy lane. One walks
along through its dim subterranean light, with no idea
of breathing the proper atmosphere of day and open
air. A strong smell of new books in the nostrils, and
one long stripe of blue sky much farther off than usual,
are the predominant impressions.

From the dens of the publishers, I wormed my way
through the crowds of Cheapside and the Strand, toward
that part of London which, as Horace Smith says,
is “open at the top.” Something in the way of a
ship's fender, to save the hips and elbows, would sell
well I should think to pedestrians in London. What
crowds, to be sure! On a Sunday in New York,
when all the churches are pouring forth their congregations
at the same moment, you have seen a faint
image of the Strand. The style of the hack cabriolets
is very much changed since I was in London. The
passenger sits about as high up from the ground as he
would in a common chair—the body of the vehicle
suspended from the axle instead of being placed upon
it, and the wheels very high. The driver's seat would
suit a sailor, for it answers to the ship's tiller, well astern.
He whips over the passenger's head. I saw one or
two private vehicles built on this principle, certainly
one of safety, though they have something the beauty
of a prize hog.

The new National Gallery in Trafalgar square, not
finished when I left England, opened upon me as I
entered Charing Cross, with what I could not but feel
was a very fine effect, though critically, its “pepper-boxity”
is not very creditable to the architect. Fine
old Northumberland house, with its stern lion atop on
one side, the beautiful Club house on the other, St.
Martin's noble church and the Gallery—with such a
fine opening in the very cor cordium of London, could
not fail of producing a noble metropolitan view.

The street in front of the gallery was crowded with
carriages, showing a throng of visiters within; and
mounting the imposing steps (the loftiness of the vestibule
dropping plump as I paid my shilling entrance),
I found myself in a hall whose extending lines of pillars
ran through the entire length of the building,
offering to the eye a truly noble perspective. Off
from this hall, to the right and left, lay the galleries
of antique and modern paintings, and the latter were
crowded with the fair and fashionable mistresses of the
equipages without. You will not care to be bothered
with criticisms on pictures, and mine was a cursory
glance—but a delicious, full-length portrait of a noble
lady by Grant, whose talent is now making some noise
in London, a glorious painting of Van Amburgh
among his lions by Edwin Landseer, and a portrait of
Miss Pardoe in a Turkish costume, with her pretty
feet coiled under her on a Persian carpet, by Pickersgill,
are among those I remember. I found a great
many acquaintances in the gallery: and I was sitting upon
a bench with a lady, who pointed out to me a portrait
of Lord Lyndhurst in his chancellor's wig and robes
—a very fine picture of a man of sixty or thereabouts.
Directly between me and it, as I looked, sidled a person
with his back to me, cutting off my view very provokingly.
“When this dandy gets out of the way with
his eyeglass,” said I, “I shall be able to see the picture.”
My friend smiled. “Who do you take the
dandy to be?” It was a well-formed man, dressed in
the top of the fashion, with a very straight back, curl
ing brown hair, and the look of perhaps thirty years
of age. As he passed on and I caught his profile, I
saw it was Lord Lyndhurst himself.

I had not seen Taglioni since the first representation
of the Sylphide, eight or nine years ago at Paris
Last night I was at the opera, and saw her in La
Gitana; and except that her limbs are the least in the
world rounder and fuller, she is, in person, absolutely
unchanged. I can appreciate now, better than I could
then (when opera dancing was new to me), what it is
that gives this divine woman the right to her proud
title of La Déesse de la Danse. It is easy for the
Ellslers, and Augusta, and others, who are said to be
only second to her, to copy her flying steps, and even
to produce, by elasticity of limb, the beautiful effect
of touching the earth, like a thing afloat, without being
indebted to it for the rebound. But Taglioni alone
finishes the step, or the pirouette, or the arrowy bound
over the scene, as calmly, as accurately, as faultlessly,
as she begins it. She floats out of a pirouette as if,
instead of being made giddy, she had been lulled by
it into a smiling and child-like dream, and instead of
trying herself and a plomb (as is seen in all other dancers,
by their effort to recover composure), it had been
the moment when she had rallied and been refreshed.
The smile, so expressive of enjoyment in her own
grace, which steals over Taglioni's lips when she closes
a difficult step, seems communicated, in an indefinable
languor, to her limbs. You can not fancy her fatigued
when, with her peculiar softness of motion, she
courtesies to the applause of the enchanted audience,
and walks lightly away. You are never apprehensive
that she has undertaken too much. You never detect,
as you do in all other dancers, defects slurred
over adroitly, and movements that, from their anticipating
the music of the ballet, are known by the critical
eye to cover some flaw in the step, from giddiness
or loss of balance. But oh what a new relation bears
the music to the dance, when this spirit of grace replaces
her companions in the ballet! Whether the
motion seems born of the music, or the music floats
out of her dreamy motion, the enchanted gazer might
be almost embarrassed to know.

In the new ballet of La Gitana, the music is based
upon the Mazurka. The story is the old one of the
child of a grandee of Spain, stolen by gipsies, and recovered
by chance in Russia. The gradual stealing
over her of a recollection of music she had heard in
her childhood was the finest piece of pantomimic acting
I ever saw. But there is one dance, the Cachucha,,
introduced at the close of the ballet, in which Taglioni
has enchanted the world anew. It could only be done
by herself; for there is a succession of flying movements
expressive of alarm, in the midst of which she
alights and stands poised upon the points of her feet,
with a look over her shoulder of fierté and animation
possible to no other face, I think, in the world. It
was like a deer standing with expanded nostril and
neck uplifted to its loftiest height, at the first scent of
his pursuers in the breeze. It was the very soul of
swiftness embodied in a look! How can I describe it
to you?

My last eight hours have been spent between Bedlam
and the opera—one of those antipodal contrasts
of which London life affords so marry. Thanks to
God, and to the Howards who have arisen in our time,
a madhouse is no longer the heart-rending scene that
it used to be; and Bedlam, though a place of melan-choly
imprisonment, is as cheering a spectacle to the
humane as imprisonment can be made by care and
kindness. Of the three hundred persons who are inmates
of its wards, the greater part seemed quiet and
content, some playing at ball in the spacious court-yards,
some lying on the grass, and some working voluntarily

at a kind of wheel arranged for raising water
to their rooms.

On the end of a bench in one of the courts, quite
apart from the other patients, sat the youth who came
up two hundred miles from the country to marry the
queen! You will remember the story of his forcing
himself into Buckingham palace. He was a stout,
sandy-haired, sad-looking young man, of perhaps
twenty-four; and with his arms crossed, and his eyes
on the ground, he sat like a statue, never moving even
an eyelash while we were there. There was a very
gentlemanlike man working at the waterwheel, or
rather walking round, with his hand on the bar, in a
gait that would have suited the most finished exquisite
of a drawing-room—Mr. Davis, who shot (I think)
at Lord Londonderry. Then in an upper room we
saw the Captain Brown who shook his fist in the
queen's face when she went to the city—really a most
officer-like and handsome fellow; and in the next
room, poor old Hatfield, who shot at George the Third,
and has been in Bedlam for forty years—quite sane!
He was a gallant dragoon, and his face is seamed with
scars got in battle before his crime. He employs himself
with writing poetry on the death of his birds and
cats whom he has outlived in prison—all the society
he has had in this long and weary imprisonment. He
received us very courteously, and called our attention
to his favorite canary showed us his poetry, and all
with a sad, mild, subdued resignation, that quite
moved me.

In the female wards I saw nothing very striking, except
one very noble-looking woman who was standing
at her grated window, entirely absorbed in reading the
Bible. Her face expressed the most heart-rending
melancholy I had ever witnessed. She has been for
years under the terrible belief that she has committed
“the unpardonable sin,” and though quiet all the day,
her agony at night becomes horrible. What a comment
on a much-practised mode of preaching the mild
and forgiving religion of our Savior!

As I was leaving one of the wards, a young woman
of nineteen or twenty came up to me with a very polite
courtesy, and said, “Will you be so kind as to
have me released from this dreadful place?” “I am
afraid I can not,” said I. “Then,” she replied, laying
her hand on my arm, with a most appealing earnestness,
“perhaps you will on Monday—you know
I've nothing to pack!” The matron here interposed,
and led her away, but she kept her eyes on us till the
door closed. She was confined there for the murder
of her child.

We visited the kitchens, wash-houses, bakery, &c.,
&c.—all clean, orderly, and admirable, and left our
names on the visiters' book, quite of the opinion of a
Frenchman who was there just before us, and who had
written under his own name this expressive praise:—
“J'ai visité certains palais moins beaux et moins bien
entretenus que cette maison de la folie.”

Two hours after, I was listening to the overture of
La Cenerentola, and watching the entrance to the opera
of the gay, the celebrated, and the noble. In the
house I had left, night had brought with it (as it does
always to the insane) a maddening and terrific exaltation
of brain and spirit—but how different from that
exaltation of brain and spirit sought at the same hour,
by creatures of the same human family, at the opera!
It was difficult not to wonder at the distribution of
allotments to mankind. In a box on the left of me sat
the queen, keeping time with a fan to the delicious
singing of Pauline Garcia, her favorite minister standing
behind her chair, and her maids of honor around
—herself the smiling, youthful, and admired sovereign
of the most powerful nation on earth! I thought of
the poor girl in her miserable cell at Bedlam imploring
release.

The queen's face has thinned and grown more oval
since I saw her at a drawing-room, four years ago, as
Princess Victoria. She has been compelled to think
since then, and such exigencies, in all stations of life,
work out the expression of the face. She has now
what I should pronounce a decidedly intellectual
countenance, a little petulant withal when she turns
to speak, but, on the whole, quite beautiful enough
for a virgin queen. No particular attention seemed
paid to her by the audience. She was dressed less
gayly than many others around her. Her box was at
the left side of the house, undistinguished by any mark
of royalty, and a stranger would never have suspected
her presence.

Pauline Garcia sang better than I thought it possible
for any one to sing after Malibran was dead. She
has her sister's look about the forehead and eyes, and
all her sister's soul and passionateness in her style of
singing. Her face is otherwise very plain, but, plain
as it is, and young as she is, the opera-going public
prefer her already to the beautiful and more powerful
Grisi. The latter long triumphant prima donna is
said to be very unhappy at her eclipse by this new favorite;
and it is curious enough to hear the hundred
and one faults found in the declining songstress by
those who once would not admit that she could be
transcended on earth. A very celebrated person, whom
I remembered, when in London before, giving Grisi
the most unqualified eulogy, assured the gay admirers
in her box last night that she had always said that
Grisi had nothing but lungs and fine eyes. She was
a great healthy Italian girl, and could sing in tune;
but soul or sentiment she never had! Poor Grisi!
Hers is the lot of all who are so unhappy as to have
been much admired. “Le monde ne hail rien autant
que ses idoles quand ils sont à terre,” said the wise La
Bruyère.

Some of the most delightful events in one's travels
are those which afford the least matériel for description,
and such is our séjour of a few days at the vicarage
of B—. It was a venerable old house with
pointed gables, elaborate and pointed windows, with
panes of glass of the size of the palm of the hand,
low doors, narrow staircases, all sorts of unsuspected
rooms, and creepers outside, trellised and trained to
every corner and angle. Then there was the modern
wing, with library and dining-room, large windows,
marble fireplaces, and French paper; and in going
from your bedroom to breakfast, you might fancy
yourself stepping from Queen Elizabeth's time to
Queen Victoria's. A high hedge of holly divided the
smoothly-shaven lawn from the churchyard, and in
the midst of the moss-grown headstones stood a gray
old church with four venerable towers, one of the most
picturesque and beautiful specimens of the old English
architecture that I have ever seen. The whole
group, church, vicarage, and a small hamlet of vine-covered
and embowered stone cottages, lay in the lap
of a gently rising sweep of hills, and all around were
spread landscapes of the finished and serene character
peculiar to England—rich fields framed in flowering
hedges, clumps of forest trees, glimpses of distant
parks, country seats, and village spires, and on the
horizon a line of mist-clad hills, scarce ever more distinct
than the banks of low-lying clouds retiring after
a thunderstorm in America.

Early on Sunday morning we were awakened by
the melody of the bells in the old towers; and with
brief pauses between the tunes, they were played upon
most musically, till the hour for the morning services.
We have little idea in America of the perfection to
which the chiming of bells is carried in England. In
the towers of this small rural church are hung eight
bells of different tone, and the tunes played on them
by the more accomplished ringers of the neighboring
hamlet are varied endlessly. I lay and listened to the

simple airs as they died away over the valley, with a
pleasure I can scarcely express. The morning was
serene and bright, the perfume of the clematis and
jasmine flowers at the window penetrated to the curtains
of my bed, and Sunday seemed to have dawned
with the audible worship and palpable incense of nature.
We were told at breakfast that the chimes had
been unusually merry, and were a compliment to ourselves,
the villages always expressing thus their congratulations
on the arrival of guests at the vicarage.
The compliment was repeated between services, and a
very long peal rang in the twilight—our near relationship
to the vicar's family authorizing a very special
rejoicing.

The interior of the church was very ancient looking
and rough, the pews of unpainted oak, and the
massive stone walls simply whitewashed. The congregation
was small, perhaps fifty persons, and the
men were (with two exceptions) dressed in russet
carters' frocks, and most of them in leather leggins.
The children sat on low benches placed in the centre
of the one aisle, and the boys, like their fathers, were
in smock frocks of homespun, their heavy shoes shod
with iron like horses' hoofs, and their little legs buttoned
up in the impenetrable gaiters of coarse leather.
They looked, men and boys, as if they were intended
to wear but one suit in this world.

I was struck with the solemnity of the service, and
the decorous attention of men, women, and children,
to the responses. It was a beautiful specimen of
simple and pastoral worship. Each family had the
name of their farm or place of residence printed on
the back of the pew, with the number of seats to
which they were entitled, probably in proportion to
their tithes. The “living” is worth, if I remember
right, not much over a hundred pounds—an insufficient
sum to support so luxurious a vicarage as is
appended to it; but, happily for the people, the vicar
chances to be a man of fortune, and he unites in his
excellent character the exemplary pastor with the
physician and lord of the manor. I left B— with
the conviction that if peace, contentment, and happiness,
inhabit one spot more than all others in a world
whose allotments are so difficult to estimate, it is the
vicarage in the bosom of that rural upland.

We left B— at twelve in the Brighton “Age”—
the “swell coach” of England. We were to dine
thirty miles nearer London, at — Park, and we did
the distance in exactly three hours, including a stop
of fifteen minutes to dine. We are abused by all
travellers for our alacrity in dining on the road; but
what stage-coach in the United States ever limited
its dining time to fifteen minutes, and what American
dinner of roast, pastry, and cheese, was ever despatched
so briefly? Yet the travellers to Brighton are of
the better class; and whose who were my fellow-passengers
the day I refer to were particularly well
dressed and gentlemanly—yet all of them achieved a
substantial dinner of beef, pudding, and cheese, paid
their bills, and drained their glass of porter, within
the quarter of an hour. John Bull's blindness to the
beam in his own eye is perhaps owing to the fact that
this hasty meal is sometimes called a “lunch!”

The two places beside our own in the inside were
occupied by a lady and her maid and two children—
an interpretation of the number two to which I would
not have agreed if I could have helped it. We can not
always tell at first sight what will be most amusing,
however; and the child of two years, who sprawled
over my rheumatic knees with her mother's permission,
thereby occasioning on my part a most fixed
look out of the window, furnished me after a while
with a curious bit of observation. At one of the
commons we passed, the children running out from a
gipsy encampment flung bunches of heath flowers
into the coach, which the little girl appropriated, and
commenced presenting rather graciously to her mother,
the maid, and Mrs. W., all of whom received them
with smiles and thanks. Having rather a sulky face
of my own when not particularly called on to be
pleased, the child omitted me for a long time in her
distributions. At last, after collecting and re-distributing
the flowers for about an hour, she grew suddenly
grave, laid the heath all out upon her lap, selected the
largest and brightest flowers, and made them into a
nosegay. My attention was attracted by the seriousness
of the child's occupation; and I was watching
her without thinking my notice observed, when she
raised her eyes to me very timidly, turned her new
bouquet over and over, and at last, with a blush,
deeper than I ever saw before upon a child, placed
the flowers in my hand and hid her face in her mother's
bosom. My sulkiness gave way, of course, and the
little coquette's pleasure in her victory was excessive.
For the remainder of the journey, those who had
given her their smiles too readily were entirely neglected,
and all her attentions were showered upon the
only one she had found it difficult to please. I thought
it as pretty a specimen of the ruling passion strong in
baby-hood as I ever saw. It was a piece of finished
coquetry in a child not old enough to speak plain.

The coachman of “the age” was a young man of
perhaps thirty, who is understood to have run through
a considerable fortune, and drives for a living—but he
was not at all the sort of looking person you would
fancy for a “swell whip.” He drove beautifully, and
helped the passengers out and in, lifted their baggage,
&c., very handily, but evidently shunned notice, and
had no desire to chat with the “outsides.” The excessive
difficulty in England of finding any clean way
of making a living after the initiatory age is passed—
a difficulty which reduced gentlemen feel most keenly—probably
forced this person as it has others to
take up a vocation for which the world fortunately
finds an excuse in eccentricity. He touches his hat
for the half crown or shilling, although probably if it
were offered to him when the whip was out of his
hand he would knock the giver down for his impertinence.
I may as well record here, by the way, for
the benefit of those who may wish to know a comparison
between the expense of travelling here and at
home, that for two inside places for thirty miles the
coach fare was two pounds, and the coachman's fee
five shillings, or half-a-crown each inside. To get
from the post town to — Park (two miles) cost me
five-and-sixpence for a “fly,” so that for thirty-two
miles travel I paid 2l. 10s. 6d., a little more than
twelve dollars.

And speaking of vocations, it would be a useful
lesson to some of our ambitious youths to try a beginning
at getting a living in England. I was never
at all aware of the difficulty of finding even bread and
salt for a young man, till I had occasion lately to endeavor
to better the condition of a servant of my own
—a lad who has been with me four or five years, and
whose singular intelligence, good principles, and high
self-improvement, fitted him, I thought, for any confidential
trust or place whatever. His own ideas, too
(I thought, not unreasonably), had become somewhat
sublimated in America, and he was unwilling to continue
longer as a servant. He went home to his
mother, a working-woman of London, and I did my
utmost, the month I was in town, inquiring among all
classes of my friends, advertising, &c., to find him any
possible livelihood above menial service. I was met
everywhere with the same answer: “There are
hundreds of gentlemen's sons wearing out their youth
in looking for the same thing.” I was told daily that
it was quite in vain—that apprenticeships were as
much sought as clerkships, and that every avenue to
the making of a sixpence was overcrammed and inaccessible.

My boy and his mother at last came to
their senses; and, consenting to apply once more for
a servant's place, he was fortunate enough to engage
as valet to a bachelor, and is now gone with his new
master on a tour to France. As Harding the painter
said to me, when he returned after his foreign trip,
“England is a great place to take the nonsense out of
people.”

When London shall have become the Rome or
Athens of a fallen empire (qu. will it ever?) the termini
of the railways will be among its finest ruins.
That of the Birmingham and Liverpool track is almost
as magnificent as that flower of sumptuousness,
the royal palace of Caserta, near Naples. It is really
an impressive scene simply to embark for “Brummagem;”
and there is that utility in all this showy
expenditure for arch, gateway, and pillar, that no one
is admitted but the passenger, and you are refreshingly
permitted to manage your baggage, &c., without
the assistance of a hundred blackguards at a shilling
each. Then there are “ladies” waiting-rooms,” and
“gentlemen's waiting-rooms,” and attached to them
every possible convenience, studiously clean and orderly.
I wish the president and directors of the Utica
and other American railroads would step over and
take a sumptuary hint.

The cars are divided into stalls, i. e. each passenger
is cushioned off by a stuffed partition from his neighbor's
shoulder, and sleeps without offence or encroachment.
When they are crowded, that is an admirable
arrangement; but I have found it very comfortable in
long journeys in America to take advantage of an
empty car, and stretch myself to sleep along the
vacant seat. Here, full or empty, you can occupy
but your upright place. In every car are suspended
lamps to give light during the long passages through
the subterranean tunnels.

We rolled from under the Brobdignag roof of the
terminus, as the church of Mary-le-bone (Cockney
for Marie-la-bonne, but so carved on the frieze) struck
six. Our speed was increased presently to thirty
miles in the hour; and with the exception of the
slower rate in passing the tunnels, and the slackening
and getting under way at the different stations, this
rate was kept up throughout. We arrived at Liverpool
(205 miles or upward) at three o'clock, our
stoppages having exceeded an hour altogether.

I thought, toward the end, that all this might be
very pleasant with a consignment of buttons, or an
errand to Gretna Green. But for the pleasure of the
thing, I would as lief sit in an arm-chair and see bales
of striped green silk unfolded for eight hours, as travel
the same length of time by the railroad. (I have described
in this simile exactly the appearance of the
fields as you see them in flying past.) The old women
and cabbages gain by it, perhaps, for you can not
tell whether they are not girls and roses. The washerwoman
at her tub follows the lady on the lawn so
quickly that you confound the two irresistibly—the
thatched cottages look like browsing donkeys, and the
browsing donkeys like thatched cottages—you ask the
name of a town, and by the time you get up your
finger, your point at a spot three miles off—in short,
the salmon well packed in straw on the top of the
coach, and called fresh-fish after a journey of 200
miles, sees quite as much of the country as his most
intellectual fellow-passenger. I foresee in all this a
new distinction in phraseology. “Have you travelled
in England?” will soon be a question having no
reference to railroads. The winding turnpike and
cross-roads, the coaches and post-carriages, will be
resumed by all those who consider the sense of sight
as useful in travel, and the bagmen and letter-bags
will have almost undisputed possession of the rail-cars.

The Adelphi is the Astor house of Liverpool, a
very large and showy hotel near the terminus of the
railway. We were shown into rather a magnificent
parlor on our arrival; and very hungry with rail-roading
since six in the morning, we ordered dinner at
their earliest convenience. It came after a full hour,
and we sat down to four superb silver covers, anticipating
a meal corresponding to the stout person and
pompous manners of the fattest waiter I have seen in my
travels. The grand cover was removed with a flourish
and disclosed—divers small bits of second-hand beef-steak,
toasted brown and warped at the corners by a
second fire, and on the removal of the other three
silver pagodas, our eyes were gratified by a dish of
peas that had been once used for green soup, three
similarly toasted and warped mutton chops, and three
potatoes. Quite incredulous of the cook's intentions,
I ventured to suggest to the waiter that he had probably
mistaken the tray and brought us the dinner of
some sportsman's respectable brace of pointers; but
on being assured that there were no dogs in the cellar.
I sent word to the master of the house that we had
rather a preference for a dinner new and hot, and
would wait till he could provide it. Half an hour
more brought up the landlord's apologies and a fresh
and hot beef-steak, followed by a tough-crusted apple-pie,
custard, and cheese—and with a bottle of Moselle,
which was good, we finished our dinner at one of the
most expensive and showy hotels in England. The
manners and fare at the American hotels being always
described as exponents of civilization by English
travellers, I shall be excused for giving a counter-picture
of one of the most boasted of their own.

Regretting exceedingly that the recent mourning
of my two companions must prevent their presence
at the gay festivities of Eglinton, I put them on board
the steamer, bound on a visit to relatives in Dublin,
and returned to the Adelphi to wait en garçon for the
Glasgow steamer of Monday. My chamber is a large
and well-furnished room, with windows looking out
on the area shut in by the wings of the house; and I
must make you still more contented at the Astor, by
describing what is going on below at this moment.
It is half-past eight, and a Sunday morning. All the
bells of the house, it seems to me, are ringing, most
of them very impatiently, and in the area before the
kitchen windows are six or eight idle waiters, and four
or five female scullions, playing, quarrelling, scolding,
and screaming; the language of both men and women
more profane and indecent than anything I have ever
before chanced to hear, and every word audible in
every room in this quarter of the hotel. This has
been going on since six this morning; and I seriously
declare I do not think I ever heard as much indecent
conversation in my life as for three mortal hours must
have “murdered sleep” for every lady and gentleman
lodged on the rear side of the “crack hotel” of Liverpool.

Sick of the scene described above, I went out just
now to take a turn or two in my slippers in the long
entry. Up and down, giving me a most appealing
stare whenever we met, dawdled also the fat waiter
who served up the cold victuals of yesterday. He
evidently had some errand with me, but what I did
not immediately fathom. At last he approached—

“You—a—got your things, sir?”

“What things?”

“The stick and umbrella, I carried to your bed-room,
sir.”

“Yes, thank you,” and I resumed my walk.

The waiter resumed his, and presently approached
again.

“You—a—don't intend to use the parlor again, sir?”

“No: I have explained to the master of the house
that I shall breakfast in the coffee-room” And again
I walked on.

My friend began again at the next turn.

“You—a—pay for those ladies' dinner yourself,
sir?”

“Yes.” I walked on once more.

Once more approaches my fat incubus, and with a
twirl of the towel in his hand looks as if he would fain
be delivered of something.

“Why the d—l am I badgered in this way?” I
stormed out at last, losing patience at his stammering
hesitation, and making a move to get round the fat
obstruction and pursue my walk.

“Will you—a—remember the waiter, if you please,
sir?”

“Oh! I was not aware that I was to pay the waiter
at every meal. I generally do it when I leave the
house. Perhaps you'll be kind enough to let me
finish my walk, and trust me till to-morrow morning?”

P. S. Evening in the coffee-room.—They say the
best beginning in love is a decided aversion, and badly
as I began at Liverpool, I shall always have a tender
recollection of it for the admirable and unequalled
luxury of its baths. A long and beautiful Grecian
building crests the head of George's pier, built by the
corporation of Liverpool, and devoted exclusively to
salt-water baths. I walked down in the twilight to
enjoy this refreshing luxury, and it being Sunday
evening. I was shown into the ladies' end of the
building. The room where I waited till the bath
was prepared was a lofty and finely proportioned
apartment, elegantly furnished, and lined with superbly
bound books and pictures, the tables covered with
engravings, and the whole thing looked like a central
apartment in a nobleman's residence. A boy showed
me presently into a small drawing-room, to which was
attached a bath closet, the two rooms lined, boudoir
fashion, with chintz, a clock over the bath, a nice
carpet and stove, in short, every luxury possible to
such an establishment. I asked the boy if the gentlemen's
baths were as elegant as these. “Oh yes,” he
said: “there are two splendid pictures of Niagara
Falls and Catskill.” “Who painted them?” “Mr.
Wall.” “And whose are they?” “They belong to
our father, sir!” I made up my mind that “our
father” was a man of taste and a credit to Liverpool.

I have just returned from the dinner given to Macready
at the Freemason's tavern. The hall, so celebrated
for public “feeds,” is a beautiful room of a
very showy style of architecture, with three galleries,
and a raised floor at the end usually occupied by the
cross table. It accommodated on this occasion four
hundred persons.

From the peculiar object of the meeting to do
honor to an actor for his intellectual qualities, and for
his efforts to spiritualise and elevate the stage, there
probably never was collected together in one room so
much talent and accomplishment. Artists, authors,
critics, publishers, and amateurs of the stage—a large
body in London—made up the company. My attention
was called by one of my neighbors to the singularly
superior character of the heads about us, and I
had already observed the striking difference, both in
head and physiognomy, between this and a common
assemblage of men. Most of the persons connected
with the press, it was said, were present; and perhaps
it would have been a worthy service to the world had
some shorn Samson, among the authors, pulled the
temple upon the heads of the Philistines.

The cry of “make way!” introduced the duke of
Sussex, the chairman of the meeting—a stout, mild-looking.
dignified old man, wearing a close black scull-cap
and the star and riband. He was followed by
Lord Conyngham, who, as grand chamberlain, had
done much to promote the interests of the drama; by
Lord Nugent (whom I had last seen sailing a scampavia
in the bay of Corfu), by Sir Lytton Bulwer, Mr.
Sheil, Sir Martin Shee, Young, the actor, Mr. Milnes,
the poet, and other distinguished men. I should
have said, by the way Mr. Macready followed next
his royal highness.

The cheering and huzzas, as this procession walked
up the room, were completely deafening. Macready
looked deadly pale and rather overcome; and amid
the waving of handkerchiefs and the stunning uproan
of four hundred “gentlemen and scholars,” the duke
placed the tragedian at his right hand, and took his
seat before the turbot.

The dinner was an uncommonly bad one; but of
this I had been forewarned, and so had taken a provisory
chop at the club. I had leisure, therefore, to
look about me, and truly there was work enough for
the eyes. M—'s head interested me more than
any one's else, for it was the personification of his
lofty, liberal, and poetic genius. His hair, which
was long and profuse, curled in tendrils over the
loftiest forehead; but about the lower part of the face
lay all the characteristics which go to make up a
voluptuous yet generous, an enthusiastic and fiery,
yet self-possessed and well directed character. He was
excessively handsome; yet it was the beauty of
Masaniello, or Salvator Rosa, with more of intellect
than both together. All in all, I never saw a finer
face for an artist; and judging from his looks and
from his works (he is perhaps twenty-four), I would
stake my sagacity on a bold prophecy of his greatness.

On the same side were the L—s, very quiet-looking
men, and S— the portrait-painter, a merry-looking
grenadier, and L— B— the poet, with a
face like a poet. Near me was L—, the painter,
poet, novelist, song and music writer, dramatist, and
good fellow—seven characters of which his friends
scarce know in which he is most excellent—and he
has a round Irish face, with a bright twinkle in his
eye, and a plump little body which carries off all his
gifts as if they were no load at all.—And on my left
was S—, the glorious painter of Vemce, of the
battle of Trafalgar, the unequalled painter of the sea
in all its belongings; and you would take him for a
gallant lieutenant of the navy, with the fire of a score
of battles asleep in his eye, and the roughening of a
hundred tempests in his cheek. A franker and more
manly face would not cross your eye in a year's travel.

Mr. J— was just beyond, a tall, sagacious-looking,
good humored person of forty-five. He was a
man of very kind manners, and was treated with great
marks of liking and respect by all about him. But
directly opposite to me sat so exact a picture of Paul
Pry as he is represented on the stage, particularly of
my friend Finn in that character, that it was difficult
not to smile in looking at him. To my surprise, I
heard some one behind me point him out, soon after,
as the well-known original in that character—the
gentleman, whose peculiarities of person, as well as
manners, were copied in the farce of Mr. Poole.—
“That's my name—what's yours?” said he the moment
after he had seated himself, thrusting his card
close to the nose of the gentleman next him. I took
it of course for a piece of fun between two very old
friends, but to my astonishment the gentlemen next
him was as much astonished as I.

The few servants scattered up and down were deaf
to everything but calls for champagne (furnished only
at an extra charge when called for—a very mean
system for a public dinner, by the way), and the
wines on the table seemed selected to drive one to
champagne or the doctor. Each person had four
plates, and when used, they were to be put under the
bench, or on the top of your head, or to be sat upon,
or what you would, except to be taken away, and the
soup and fish, and the roast and boiled and all, having
been put on together, was all removed at one fell
swoop—the entire operation of dinner having lasted

just twenty-five minutes. Keep this fact till we are recorded
by some new English traveller as the most expeditious
eaters in Christendom.

Here end my croakings, however, for the speeches
commenced directly, and admirable they were. To
the undoing of much prejudice got by hearsay, I
listened to Bulwer. He is, beyond all comparison,
the most graceful and effective speaker I ever heard
in England. All the world tells you that he makes
signal failures in oratory—yet he rose, when his health
was drank, and, in self-possessed, graceful, unhesitating
language, playful, yet dignified, warm, yet not
extravagant, he replied to the compliments of his
royal highness, and brought forward his plan (as you
have seen it reported in the papers) for the erection
of a new theatre for the legitimate drama and Macready.
I remember once hearing that Bulwer had a
belief in his future eminence as an orator—and I would
warrant his warmest anticipations in that career of
ambition. He is a better speaker than Sheil, who followed
him, and Sheil is renowned as an orator. Really
there is nothing like one's own eyes and ears in this
world of envy and misrepresentation.

D— sat near Sheil, at the cross table, very silent,
as is his custom and that of most keen observers.
The courtly Sir M— S— was near B—, looking
like some fine old picture of a wit of Charles the
second's time, and he and Y— the actor made two
very opposite and gentlemanlike speeches. I believe
I have told you nearly all that struck me, except what
was reported in the gazettes, and that you have no
need to read over again. I got away at eleven, and
reached the opera in time to hear the last act of the
Puritani, and see the Elsslers dance in the ballet, and
with a look-in at a ball, I concluded one of those exhausting,
exciting, overdone London days, which are
pleasanter to remember than to enjoy, and pleasanter
to read about than either.

One of the most elegant and agreeable persons I
ever saw was Miss P—, and I think her conversation
more delightful to remember than any person's
I ever knew. A distinguished artist told me that he
remembered her when she was his beau-ideal of female
beauty; but in those days she was more “fancy-rapt,”
and gave in less to the current and spirit of society.
Age has made her, if it may be so expressed, less
selfish in her use of thought, and she pours it forth,
like Pactolus—that gold which is sand from others.
She is still what I should call a handsome woman, or,
if that be not allowed, she is the wreck of more than
a common allotment of beauty, and looks it. Her
person is remarkably erect, her eyes and eyelids (in
this latter resembling Scott) very heavily moulded,
and her smile is beautiful. It strikes me that it always
is so—where it ever was. The smile seems to be the
work of the soul.

I have passed months under the same roof with Miss
P—, and nothing gave me more pleasure than to
find the company in that hospitable house dwindled
to a “fit audience though few,” and gathered around
the figure in deep mourning which occupied the
warmest corner of the sofa. In any vein, and à-propos
to the gravest and the gayest subject, her well-stored
mind and memory flowed forth in the same rich current
of mingled story and reflection, and I never saw
an impatient listener beside her. I recollect, one evening
a lady's singing “Auld Robin Gray,” and some
one remarking (rather unsentimentally), at the close,
“By-the-by, what is Lady — (the authoress of the
ballad) doing with so many carpenters. Berkeley
square is quite deafened with their hammering!”
“A-propos of carpenters and Lady —,” said Miss
P—, “this same charming ballad-writer owes something
to the craft. She was better-born than provided
with the gifts of fortune, and in her younger days was
once on a visit to a noble house, when to her dismay
a large and fashionable company arrived, who brought
with them a mania for private theatricals. Her wardrobe
was very slender, barely sufficient for the ordinary
events of a week-day, and her purse contained one
solitary shilling. To leave the house was out of the
question, to feign illness as much so, and to decline
taking a part was impossible, for her talent and sprightliness
were the hope of the theatre. A part was cast
for her, and, in despair, she excused herself from the
gay party bound to the country town to make purchases
of silk and satin, and shut herself up, a prey to
mortified low spirits. The character required a smart
village dress, and it certainly did not seem that it could
come out of a shilling. She sat at her window, biting
her lips, and turning over in her mind whether she
could borrow of some one, when her attention was attracted
to a carpenter, who was employed in the construction
of a stage in the large hall, and who, in the
court below, was turning off from his plane broad and
long shavings of a peculiarly striped wood. It struck
her that it was like riband. The next moment she
was below, and begged of the man to give her half-a-dozen
lengths as smooth as he could shave them. He
performed his task well, and depositing them in her
apartment, she set off alone on horseback to the village,
and with her single shilling succeeded in purchasing
a chip hat of the coarsest fabric. She carried
it home, exultingly, trimmed it with her pine shavings,
and on the evening of the performance appeared with
a white dress, and hat and belt-ribands which were
the envy of the audience. The success of her invention
gave her spirits and assurance, and she played to
admiration. The sequel will justify my first remark.
She made a conquest on that night of one of her titled
auditors, whom she afterward married. You will allow
that Lady — may afford to be tolerant of carpenters.”

An eminent clergyman one evening became the subject
of conversation, and a wonder was expressed that
he had never married. “That wonder,” said Miss
P—, “was once expressed to the reverend gentleman
himself in my hearing, and he told a story in answer
which I will tell you—and perhaps, slight as it
may seem, it is the history of other hearts as sensitive
and delicate as his own. Soon after his ordination,
he preached once every Sabbath, for a clergyman in
a small village not twenty miles from London. Among
his auditors, from Sunday to Sunday, he observed a
young lady, who always occupied a certain seat, and
whose close attention began insensibly to grow to him
an object of thought and pleasure. She left the
church as soon as service was over, and it so chanced
that he went on for a year without knowing her name;
but his sermon was never written without many a
thought how she would approve it, nor preached with
satisfaction unless he read approbation in her face.
Gradually he came to think of her at other times than
when writing sermons, and to wish to see her on other
days than Sundays; but the weeks slipped on, and
though he fancied she grew paler and thinner, he
never brought himself to the resolution either to ask
her name or to seek to speak with her. By these
silent steps, however, love had worked into his heart,
and he had made up his mind to seek her acquaintance
and marry her, if possible, when one day he was
sent for to minister at a funeral. The face of the
corpse was the same that had looked up to him Sunday
after Sunday, till he had learned to make it a part
of his religion and his life. He was unable to perform
the service, and another clergyman present officiated;
and after she was buried, her father took him aside and
begged his pardon for giving him pain—but he could
not resist the impulse to tell him that his daughter
had mentioned his name with her last breath, and he
was afraid that a concealed affection for him had hur

ried her to the grave. Since that, said the clergyman
in question, my heart has been dead within me, and I
look forward only. I shall speak to her in heaven.”

London is wonderfully embellished within the last
three years—not so much by new buildings, public or
private, but by the almost insane rivalry that exists
among the tradesmen to outshow each other in the expensive
magnificence of their shops. When I was in
England before, there were two or three of these palaces
of columns and plate-glass—a couple of shawl-shops,
and a glass warehouse or two, but now the
west end and the city have each their scores of establishments
of which you would think the plate-glass
alone would ruin anybody but Aladdin. After an absence
of a month from town lately, I gave myself the
always delightful treat of an after-dinner ramble among
the illuminated palaces of Regent street and its neighborhood,
and to my surprise, found four new wonders
of this description—a shawl-house in the upper Regent
Circus, a silk-mercer's in Oxford street, a whipmaker's
in Regent street, and a fancy stationer's in the
Quadrant—either of which establishments fifty years
ago would have been the talk of all Europe. The
first-mentioned warehouse lines one of the quarters of
the Regent Circus, and turns the corner of Oxford
street with what seems but one window—a series of
glass plates, only divided by brass rods, reaching from
the ground to the roof—window-panes twelve feet high,
and four or five feet broad! The opportunity which
this immense transparency of front gives for the display
of goods is proportionately improved; and in the
mixture of colors and fabrics to attract attention there
is evidently no small degree of art—so harmonious are
the colors and yet so gorgeous the show. I see that
several more renovations are taking place in different
parts of both “city” and “town;” and London promises,
somewhere in the next decimals, to complete its
emergence from the chrysalis with a glory to which
eastern tales will be very gingerbread matters indeed.

If I may judge by my own experience and by what
I can see in the streets, all this night-splendor out of
doors empties the play-houses—for I would rather
walk Regent street of an evening than see ninety-nine
plays in a hundred; and so think, apparently, multitudes
of people, who stroll up and down the clean and
broad London sidewalks, gazing in at the gorgeous
succession of shop-windows, and by the day-bright
glare of the illumination exchanging nods and smiles
—the street, indeed, becoming gradually a fashionable
evening promenade, as cheap as it is amusing and delightful.
There are large classes of society, who find
the evenings long in their dingy and inconvenient
homes, and who must go somewhere; and while the
streets were dark, and poorly paved and lighted, the
play-house was the only resort where they could beguile
their cares with splendor and amusement, and
in those days theatricals flourished, as in these days
of improved thoroughfares and gay shops they evidently
languish. I will lend a hint to the next essayist
on the “Decline of the Drama.”

The increased attractiveness of London, from thus
disclosing the secrets of its wondrous wealth, compensates
in a degree for what increases as rapidly on me
—the distastefulness of the country, from the forbidding
and repulsive exclusiveness of high garden-walls,
impermeable shrubberies, and every sort of contrivance
for confining the traveller to the road, and nothing but
the road. What should we say in America to travelling
miles between two brick walls, with no prospect
but the branches of overhanging trees from the invisible
park lands on either side, and the alley of cloudy
sky overhead? How tantalizing to pass daily by a
noble estate with a fine specimen of architecture in its
centre, and see no more of it than a rustic lodge and
some miles of the tops of trees over a paling! All
this to me is oppressive—I feel abridged of breathing-room
and eyesight—deprived of my liberty—robbed
of my horizon Much as I admire high preservation
and cultivation, I would compromise for a “snake-fence”
all over England.

On a visit to a friend a week or two since in the
neighborhood of London, I chanced, during a long
walk, to get a glimpse over the wall of a nicely-gravelled
and secluded path, which commanded what the
proprietor's fence enviously shut from the road—a
noble view of London and the Thames. Accustomed
to see people traversing my own lawn and fields in
America without question, as suits their purpose, and
tired of the bricks, hedges and placards of blacking
and pills, I jumped the fence, and with feelings of
great relief and expansion aired my eyes and my imagination
in the beautiful grounds of my friend's opulent
neighbor. The Thames with its innumerable
steamers, men-of-war, yachts, wherries, and ships—a
vein of commercial and maritime life lying between the
soft green meadows of Kent and Essex—formed a delicious
picture of contrast and meaning beauty, which
I gazed upon with great delight for—some ten minutes.
In about that time I was perceived by Mr. B—'s
gardener, who, with a very pokerish-looking stick in
his hand, came running toward me, evidently, by his
pace, prepared for a vigorous pursuit, of the audacious
intruder. He came up to where I stood, quite out of
breath, and demanded, with a tight grasp of his stick,
what business I had there. I was not very well prepared
with an answer, and short of beating the man
for his impudence (which in several ways might have
been a losing job), I did not see my way very clearly
out of Mr. B—'s grounds. My first intention, to
call on the proprietor and apologise for my intrusion
while I complained of the man's insolence, was defeated
by the information, evidently correct, that Mr.
B— was not resident at the place, and so I was walked
out of the lodge-gate with a vagabond's warning—
never to let him “catch me there again!” So much
for my liberal translation of a park-fence!

This spirit of exclusion makes itself even more disagreeably
felt where a gentleman's paling chances to
include any natural curiosity. One of the wildest, as
well as most exquisitely beautiful spots on earth, is
the Dargle, in the county Wicklow, in Ireland. It is
interesting, besides, as belonging to the estate of the
orator and patriot Grattan. To get to it, we were let
through a gate by an old man, who received a
douceur; we crossed a newly-reaped field, and came
to another gate; another person opened this, and we
paid another shilling. We walked on toward the
glen, and in the middle of the path, without any object
apparently but the toll, there was another locked
gate, and another porter to pay; and when we made
our exit from the opposite extremity of the grounds,
after seeing the Dargle, there was a fourth gate and a
fourth porter. The first field and fee belonged, if I
remember rightly, to a Captain Somebody, but the
other three gates belong to the present Mr. Grattan,
who is very welcome to my three shillings, either as
a tribute to his father's memory, or to the beauty ofTinnehinch
and the Dargle. But on whichever
ground he pockets it, the mode of assessment is, to say
the least, ungracious. Without subjecting myself
to the charge of a mercenary feeling, I think I may
say that the enthusiasm for natural scenery is very
much clipped and belittled by seeing it at a shilling
the perch—paying the money and taking the look. I
should think no sum lost which was expended in
bringing me to so romantic a glen as the Dargle; but
it should be levied somewhere else than within sound
of its wild waterfall—somewhere else than midway
between the waterfall and the fine mansion of Tinnehinch.

The fish most “out of water” in the world is certainly
a Frenchman in England without acquaintances.
The illness of a friend has lately occasioned
me one or two hasty visits to Brighton; and being
abandoned on the first evening to the solitary mercies
of the coffee-room of the hotel, I amused myself not
a little with watching the ennui of one of these unfortunate
foreigners, who was evidently there simply to
qualify himself to say that he had been at Brighton
in the season. I arrived late, and was dining by myself
at one of the small tables, when, without looking
up, I became aware that some one at the other end of
the room was watching me very steadily. The place
was as silent as coffee-rooms usually are after the
dinner-hour, the rustling of newspapers the only sound
that disturbed the digestion of the eight or ten persons
present, when the unmistakeable call of “Vaitare!”
informed me that if I looked up I should encounter
the eyes of a Frenchman. The waiter entered at the
call, and after a considerable parley with my opposite
neighbor, came over to me and said in rather an
apologetic tone, “Beg pardon, sir, but the shevaleer
wishes to know if your name is Coopair.” Not very
much inclined, fatigued as I was, for a conversation
in French, which I saw would be the result of a polite
answer to his question, I merely shook my head, and
took up the newspaper. The Frenchman drew a long
sigh, poured out his last glass of claret, and crossing
his thumbs on the edge of the table, fell into a profound
study of the grain of the mahogany.

What with dawdling over coffee and tea and reading
half-a-dozen newspapers, I whiled away the time till
ten o'clock, pitying occasionally the unhappy chevalier,
who exhibited every symptom of a person bored to
the last extremity. One person after another called
for a bed-room candle, and exit finally the Frenchman
himself, making me, however, a most courteous
bow as he passed out. There were two gentlemen
left in the room, one a tall and thin old man of seventy,
the other a short portly gentleman of fifty or thereabouts,
both quite bald. They rose together and
came to the fire near which I was sitting.

“That last man who went out calls himself a chevalier,”
said the thin gentleman.

“Yes,” said his stout friend—“he took me for a
Mr. Cooper he had travelled with.”

“The deuce he did,” said the other—“why he
took me for a Mr. Cooper, too, and we are not very
much alike.”

“I beg pardon, gentlemen,” said I—“he took me
for this Mr. Cooper too.”

The Frenchman's ruse was discovered. It was instead
of a snuff-box—a way he had of making acquaintance.
We had a good laugh at our triple resemblance
(three men more unlike it would be difficult
to find), and bidding the two Messrs. Cooper
good night, I followed the ingenious chevalier up
stairs.

The next morning I came down rather late to breakfast,
and found my friend chipping his egg-shells to
pieces at the table next to the one I had occupied the
night before. He rose immediately with a look of
radiant relief in his countenance, made a most elaborate
apology for having taken me for Mr. Cooper
(whom I was so like, cependant, that we should be
mistaken for each other by our nearest friends), and
in a few minutes, Mr. Cooper himself, if he had entered
by chance, would have returned the compliment,
and taken me for the chevalier's most intimate friend
and fellow-traveller.

I remained three or four days at Brighton, and
never discovered in that time that the chevalier's ruse
succeeded with any other person. I was his only
successful resemblance to “Monsieur Coopair.” He
always waited breakfast for me in the coffee-room,
and when I called for my bill on the last morning, he
dropped his knife and asked if I was going to London
—and at what hour—and if I would be so obliging as
to take a place for him in the same coach.

It was a remarkably fine day; and with my friend
by my side outside of “the Age,” we sped on toward
London, the sun getting dimmer and dimmer, and the
fog thicker and more chilly at every mile farther from
the sea. It was a trying atmosphere for the best of
spirits—let alone the ever-depressed bosom of a stranger
in England. The coach stopped at the Elephant
and Castle, and I ordered down my baggage, and informed
my friend, for the first time, that I was bound
to a country-house six miles from town. I scarce
know how I had escaped telling him of it before, but
his “impossible mon ami!” was said in a tone and
accompanied with a look of the most complete surprise
and despair. I was evidently his only hope in
London.

I went up to town a day or two after; and in making
my way to Paternoster Row, I saw my friend on
the opposite side of the strand, with his hands thrust
up to the wrists in the pockets of his “Taglioni,” and
his hat jammed down over his eyes, looking into the
shop windows without much distinction between the
trunkmaker's and the printsellers—evidently miserable
beyond being amused at anything. I was too
much in a hurry to cross over and resume my office
of escape-valve to his ennui, and I soon outwalked his
slow pace, and lost sight of him. Whatever title he
had to the “chevalier” (and he was decidedly too
deficient in address to belong to the order “d'industrie”),
he had no letter of recommendation in his
personal appearance, and as little the air of even a
Frenchman of “quality” as any man I ever saw in
the station of a gentleman. He is, in short, the person
who would first occur to me if I were to see a
paragraph in the times headed “suicide by a foreigner.”

Revenons un peu. Brighton at this season (November)
enjoys a climate, which, as a change from the
heavy air in the neighborhood of London, is extremely
exhilarating and agreeable. Though the first day of
my arrival was rainy, a walk up the west cliff gave me a
feeling of elasticity and lightness of spirits, of which I
was beginning to forget the very existence, in the
eternal fogs of the six months I had passed inland.
I do not wonder at the passion of the English for
Brighton. It is, in addition to the excellence of the
air, both a magnificent city and the most advantageous
ground for the discomfiture of the common enemy,
“winter and rough weather.” The miles of broad
gravel-walk just out of reach of the surf of the sea, so
hard and so smoothly rolled that they are dry in five
minutes after the rain has ceased to fall, are alone no
small item in the comfort of a town of professed idlers
and invalids. I was never tired of sauntering along
this smooth promenade so close to the sea. The
beautiful children, who throng the walks in almost all
weathers (and what children on earth are half as
beautiful as English children?) were to me a constant
source of pleasure and amusement. Tire of this, and
by crossing the street you meet a transfer of the gay
throngs of Regent street and Hyde Park, with splendid
shops and all the features of a metropolis, while
midway between the sea and this crowded sidewalk
pours a tide of handsome equipages, parties on horse-back,
and vehicles of every description, all subservien
to exercise and pleasure.

My first visit to Brighton was made in a very cold
day in summer, and I saw it through most unfavorable
spectacles. But I should think that along the cliffs,
where there are no trees or vendure to be seen, there
is very little apparent difference between summer and
winter; and coming here with the additional clothing
of a severer season, the temperature of the elastic and
saline air is not even chilly. The most delicate children

play upon the beach in days when there is no
sunshine; and invalids, wheeled out in these convenient
bath chairs, sit for hours by the seaside, watching
the coming and retreating of the waves, apparently
without any sensation of cold—and this in December.
In America (in the same latitudes with Leghorn and
Venice), an invalid sitting out of doors at this season
would freeze to death in half an hour. Yet it was as
cold in August, in England, as it has been in November,
and it is this temperate evenness of the weather
throughout the year which makes English climate,
on the whole, perhaps the healthiest in the world.

In the few days I was at Brighton, I became very
fond of the perpetual loud beat of the sea upon the
shore. Whether, like the “music of the spheres,”
it becomes at last “too constant to be heard,” I did
not ask—but I never lost the consciousness of it except
when engaged in conversation, and I found it
company to my thoughts when I dined or walked
alone, and a most agreeable lullaby at night. This
majestic monotone is audible all over Brighton, indoors
and out, and nothing overpowers it but the
wind in a storm; it is even then only by fits, and the
alternation of the hissing and moaning of the blast
with the broken and heavy plash of the waters, is so
like the sound of a tempest at sea (the whistling in the
rigging, and the burst of the waves), that those who
have been at Brighton in rough weather have realized
all of a storm at sea but the motion and the sea-sickness—rather
a large but not an undesirable diminution
of experience.

Calling on a friend at Brighton, I was introduced
casually to a Mr. Smith. The name, of course, did
not awaken any immediate curiosity, but a second
look at the gentleman did—for I thought I had never
seen a more intellectual or finer head. A fifteen
minutes' conversation, which touched upon nothing
that could give me a clue to his profession, still satisfied
me that so distinguished an address, and so keen
an eye, could belong to no nameless person, and I was
scarcely surprised when I read upon his card at parting—
Horace Smith. I need not say it was a very
great pleasure to meet him. I was delighted, too,
that the author of books we love as much as “Zillah,”
and “Brambletye-House,” looks unlike other men.
It gratifies somehow a personal feeling—as if those
who had won so much admiration from us should, for
our pride's sake, wear the undeniable stamp of superiority—as
if we had acquired a property in him by
loving him. How natural it is, when we have talked
and thought a great deal about an author, to call him
“ours.” “What Smith? Why our Smith—Horace
Smith”—is as common a dialogue between persons
who never saw him as it is among his personal friends.

These two remarkable brothers, James and Horace
Smith, are both gifted with exteriors such as are not
often possessed with genius—yet only James is so
fortunate as to have stumbled upon a good painter.
Lonsdale's portrait of James Smith, engraved by
Cousens, is both the author and the man—as fine a
picture of him, with his mind seen through his features,
as was ever done. But there is an engraved picture
extant of the author of Zillah, that, though it is no
likeness of the author, is a detestable caricature of the
man. Really this is a point about which distinguished
men, in justice to themselves, should take some
little care. Sir Thomas Lawrence's portraits, and
Sir Joshua Reynolds's, are a sort of biography of the
eminent men they painted. The most enduring
history, it has been said, is written in coins. Certainly
the most effective biography is expressed in portraits.
Long after the book and your impressions of
the character of which it treats have become dim in
your memory your impression of the features and
mien of a hero or a poet, as received from a picture,
remains indelible. How often does the face belie the
biography—making us think better or worse of the
man, after forming an opinion from a portrait in words,
that was either partial or malicious! I am persuaded
the world would think better of Shelley, if there were
a correct and adequate portrait of his face; as it has
been described to me by one or two who knew him.
How much of the Byronic idolatry is born and fed
from the idealized pictures of him treasured in every
portfolio! Sir Thomas Lawrence, Chalon, and Parris,
have composed between them a biography of Lady
Blessington, that have made her quite independent
of the “memoirs” of the next century. And who, I
may safely ask, even in America, has seen the nice,
cheerful, sensible, and motherly face which prefaces
the new edition of “The Manners of the American
Domestics” (I beg pardon for giving the title from my
Kentucky copy), without liking Mrs. Trollope a great
deal better, and at once dismissing all idea of “the
bazar” as a libel on that most lady-like countenance?

I think Lady S— had more talent and distinction
crowded into her pretty rooms, last night, than I ever
before saw in such small compass. It is a bijou of a
house, full of gems of statuary and painting, but all
its capacity for company lies in a small drawing-room,
a smaller reception-room, and a very small, but very
exquisite boudoir—yet to tell you who were there
would read like Colburn's list of authors, added to a
paragraph of noble diners-out from the Morning Post.

The largest lion of the evening certainly was the
new Persian ambassador, a man six feet in his slippers;
a height which, with his peaked calpack, of a foot and
a half, superadded, keeps him very much among the
chandeliers. The principal article of his dress does
not diminish the effect of his eminence—a long white
shawl worn like a cloak, and completely enveloping
him from beard to toe. From the twisted shawl
around his waist glitters a dagger's hilt, lumped with
diamonds—and diamonds, in most dazzling profusion,
almost cover his breast. I never saw so many
together except in a cabinet of regalia. Close behind
this steeple of shawl and gem, keeps, like a short
shadow when the sun is high, his excellency's secretary,
a dwarfishly small man, dressed also in cashmere
and calpack, and of a most ill-favored and bow-stringish
countenance and mien. The master and man seem
chosen for contrast, the countenance of the ambassador
expressing nothing but serene good nature. The
ambassador talks, too, and the secretary is dumb.

T— H— stood bolt upright against a mirror-door,
looking like two T— H—s trying to see
which was taller. The one with his face to me looked
like the incarnation of the John Bull newspaper, for
which expression he was indebted to a very hearty
face, and a very round subject for a buttoned-up coat;
while the H— with his back to me looked like an
author, for which he was indebted to an exclusive view
of his cranium. I dare say Mr. H— would agree
with me that he was seen, on the whole, at a most enviable
advantage. It is so seldom we look, beyond the
man, at the author.

I have rarely seen a greater contrast in person and
expression than between H— and B—, who stood
near him. Both were talking to ladies—one bald,
burly, upright, and with a face of immovable gravity,
the other slight, with a profusion of curling hair, restless
in his movements, and of a countenance which
lights up with a sudden inward illumination. H—'s
partner in the conversation looked into his face with a
ready-prepared smile for what he was going to say,
B—'s listened with an interest complete, but without
effort. H— was suffering from what I think is the
common curse of a reputation for wit—the expectation
of the listener had outrun the performance.

H— B—, whose diplomatic promotion goes on
much faster than can be pleasing to “Lady Cheveley,”

has just received his appointment to Paris—the object
of his first wishes. He stood near his brother, talking
to a very beautiful and celebrated woman, and I
thought, spite of her ladyship's unflattering description,
I had seldom seen a more intellectual face, or a
more gentlemanly and elegant exterior.

Late in the evening came in his royal highness the
duke of C—, and I wondered, as I had done many
times before, when in company with one of these royal
brothers, at the uncomfortable etiquette so laboriously
observed toward them. Wherever he moved in the
crowded rooms, everybody rose and stood silent, and
by giving way much more than for any one else, left
a perpetual circular space around him, in which, of
course, his conversation had the effect of a lecture to
a listening audience. A more embarrassed manner
and a more hesitating mode of speech than the duke's,
I can not conceive. He is evidently gêné to the last
degree with this burdensome deference; and one
would think that in the society of highly-cultivated
and aristocratic persons, such as were present, he
would be delighted to put his highness into his pocket
when the footman leaves him at the door, and hear no
more of it till he goes again to his carriage. There
was great curiosity to know whether the duke would
think it etiquetical to speak to the Persian, as in consequence
of the difference between the shah and the
British envoy the tall minister is not received at the
court of St. James. Lady S— introduced them,
however, and then the duke again must have felt his
rank nothing less than a nuisance. It is awkward
enough, at any time, to converse with a foreigner who
has not forty English words in his vocabulary, but
what with the duke's hesitating and difficult utterance,
the silence and attention of the listening guests, and
the Persian's deference and complete inability to comprehend
a syllable, the scene was quite painful.

There was some of the most exquisite amateur singing
I ever heard after the company thinned off a little,
and the fashionable song of the day was sung by a
most beautiful woman in a way to move half the company
to tears. It is called “Ruth,” and is a kind of
recitative of the passage in Scripture, “Where thou
goest I will go,” &c.

I have driven in the park several days, admiring the
queen on horseback, and observing the changes in the
fashions of driving, equipages, &c., &c. Her majesty
seems to me to ride very securely and fearlessly,
though it is no wonder that in a country where everybody
rides, there should be bolder and better horse-women.
Miss Quentin, one of the maids of honor,
said to be the best female equestrian in England,
“takes the courage out” of the queen's horse every
morning before the ride—so she is secured against one
class of accidents. I met the royal party yesterday in
full gallop near the centre of Rotten Row, and the two
grooms who ride ahead had brief time to do their work
of making the crowd of carriages give way. On came
the queen upon a dun-colored, highly-groomed horse,
with her prime minister on one side of her and Lord
Byron upon the other, her cortège of maids of honor
and ladies and lords in waiting checking their more
spirited horses, and preserving always a slight distance
between themselves and her majesty. Victoria's round
and plump figure looks extremely well in her dark-green
riding-dress, but I thought the man's hat unbecoming.
Her profile is not sufficiently good for
that trying style, and the cloth riding-cap is so much
prettier, that I wonder she does not remember that
“nice customs courtesy to great queens,” and wear
what suits her. She rode with her mouth open, and
looked exhilarated with the exercise. Lord Melbourne,
it struck me, was the only person in her party whose
face had not the constrained look of consciousness of
observation.

I observe that the “crack men” ride without martingals,
and that the best turnouts are driven without
a check-rein. The outstretched neck which is the
consequence, has a sort of Arab or blood look, probably
the object of the change; but the drooping head
when the horse is walking or standing seems to me
ugly and out of taste. All the new carriages are built
near the ground. The low park-phæton, light as a
child's plaything, and drawn by a pair of ponies, is the
fashionable equipage. I saw the prettiest thing conceivable
of this kind yesterday in the park—a lady
driving a pair of small cream-colored horses of great
beauty, with her two children in the phæton, and two
grooms behind mounted on cream-colored saddle-horses,
all four of the animals of the finest shape and
action. The new street cabs (precisely the old-fashioned
sedan-chair suspended between four wheels, a
foot from the ground) are imitated by private carriages,
and driven with two horses—ugly enough. The cabphæton,
is in great fashion, with either one or two
horses. The race of ponies is greatly improved since
I was in England. They are as well-shaped as the
large horse, with very fine coats and great spirit. The
children of the nobility go scampering through the
park upon them, looking like horsemen and horse-women
seen through a reversed opera-glass. They
are scarce larger than a Newfoundland dog, but they
patter along with great speed. There is one fine lad
of about eight years, whose parents seem to have very
little care for his neck, and who, upon a fleet, milk-white,
long-tailed pony, is seen daily riding at a rate
of twelve miles an hour through the most crowded
streets, with a servant on a tall horse plying whip and
spur to keep up with him. The whole system has the
droll effect of a mixture of Lilliput and Brobdignag.

We met the king of Oude a few days since at a party,
and were honored by an invitation to dine with his
majesty at his house in the Regent's park. Yesterday
was the appointed day; and with the pleasant anticipation
of an oriental feast, we drove up at seven,
and were received by his turbaned ayahs, who took
shawl and hat with a reverential salaam, and introduced
us to the large drawing-room overlooking the park.
The king was not yet down; but in the corner sat
three parsees or fire-worshippers, guests like ourselves,
who in their long white linen robes, bronze faces, and
high caps, looked like anything but “diners-out” in
London. To our surprise they addressed us in excellent
English, and we were told afterward that they
were all learned men—facts not put down to the credit
of the Ghebirs in Lalla Rookh.

We were called out upon the balcony to look at a
balloon that was hovering over the park, and on stepping
back into the drawing-room, we found the company
all assembled, and our royal host alone wanting.
There were sixteen English ladies present, and five
white gentlemen beside myself. The Orient, however,
was well represented. In a corner, leaning silently
against a table, stood Prince Hussein Mirza, the
king's cousin, and a more romantic and captivating
specimen of Hindoo beauty could scarcely be imagined.
He was slender, tall, and of the clearest olive
complexion, his night-black hair falling over his
shoulders in profusion, and his large antelope eyes
fixed with calm and lustrous surprise upon the half-denuded
forms sitting in a circle before him. We
heard afterward that he has conceived a most uncontrollable
and unhappy passion for a high-born and
beautiful English girl whom he met in society, and
that it is with difficulty he is persuaded to come out
of his room. His dress was of shawls most gracefully
draped about him, and a cap of gold cloth was thrown
carelessly on the side of his head. Altogether he was
like a picture of the imagination.

A middle-aged stout man, ashy black, with Grecian

features, and a most determined and dignified expression
of mouth, sat between Lady — and Miss Porter,
and this was the wakeel or ambassador of the
prince of Sutara, by name Afzul Ali. He is in England
on business for his master, and if he does not succeed
it will be no fault of his under lip. His secretary,
Keeram Ali, stood behind him—the wakeel dressed in
shawls of bright scarlet, with a white cashmere turban,
and the scribe in darker stuffs of the same fashion.
Then there was the king's physician, a short, wiry,
merry-looking, quick-eyed Hindoo, with a sort of quizzical
angle in the pose of his turban: the high-priest,
also a most merry-looking Oriental, and Ali Acbar, a
Persian attaché. I think these were all the Asiatics.

The king entered in a few minutes, and made the
circuit of the room, shaking hands most cordially with
all his guests. He is a very royal-looking person indeed.
Perhaps you might call him too corpulent, if
his fine height (a little over six feet), and very fine
proportions, did not give his large size a character of
majesty. His chest is full and round, and his walk
erect and full of dignity. He has the Italian olive
complexion, with straight hair, and my own remark at
first seeing him was that of many others, “How like
a bronze cast of Napoleon!” The subsequent study
of his features remove this impression, however, for
he is a most “merry monarch,” and is seldom seen
without a smile. His dress was a mixture of oriental
and English fashions—a pair of baggy blue pantaloons,
bound around the waist with a rich shawl, a splendid
scarlet waistcoat buttoned close over his spacious
chest, and a robe of very fine snuff-colored cloth something
like a loose dressing-gown without a collar. A
cap of silver cloth, and a brilliant blue satin cravat
completed his costume, unless in his covering should
be reckoned an enormous turquoise ring, which almost
entirely concealed one of his fingers.

Ekbal-ood-Dowlah, Nawaub of Oude (his name and
title), is at present appealing to the English against
his uncle, who usurps his throne by the aid and countenance
of the East India company. The Mohammedan
law, as I understand, empowers a king to choose
his successor from his children without reference
to primogeniture, and the usurper, though an elder
brother, having been imbecile from his youth, Ekbal's
father was selected by the then king of Oude to succeed
him. The question having been referred to
Lord Wellesley, however, then governor of India, he
decided that the English law of primogeniture should
prevail, or in other words (as the king's friends say)
preferred to have for the king of a subject province an
imbecile who would give him no trouble. So slipped
from the Nawaub's hands a pretty kingdom of six
millions of faithful Mohammedans! I believe this is
the “short” of the story. I wonder (we are reproached
so very often by the English for our treatment of
the Indians) whether a counter-chapter of “expedient
wrong” might not be made out from the history of the
Indians under British government in the east?

Dinner was announced with a Hindostanee salaam,
and the king gave his arm to Lady —. The rest
of us “stood not upon the order of our going,” and
I found myself seated at table between my wife and a
Polish countess, some half dozen removes from the
Nawaub's right hand. His highness commenced helping
those about him most plentifully from a large
pillau talking all the while most merrily in broken
English, or resorting to Hindostanee and his interpreter
whenever his tongue got into trouble. With
the exception of one or two English joints, all the
dishes were prepared with rice or saffron, and (wine
being forbidden by the Mahommedan law) iced water
was served round from Indian coolers freely. For
one, I would have compounded for a bottle of wine
by taking the sin of the entire party on my soul, for,
what with the exhaustion of a long London day, and
the cloying quality of the Nawaub's rich dishes, I
began to be sorry I had not brought a flask in my
pocket. His majesty's spirits seemed to require no
aid from wine. He talked constantly, and shrewdly,
and well. He impresses every one with a high
estimate of his talents, though a more complete and
undisguised child of nature I never saw. Good sense,
with good humor, frankness, and simplicity, seem to
be his leading qualities.

We were obliged to take our leave early after dinner,
having other engagements for the evening, but
while coffee was serving, the Hindostanee cook, a
funny little old man, came in to receive the compliments
of the company upon his dinner, and to play
and dance for his majesty's amusement. He had at
his back a long Indian drum, which he called his
“tum tum,” and playing himself an accompaniment
upon this, he sang two or three comic songs in his
own language to a sort of wild yet merry air, very
much to the delight of all the orientals. Singer,
dancer, musician, and cook, the king certainly has a
jewel of a servant in him.

One moment bowing ourselves out from the presence
of a Hindoo king, and the next beset by an Irishman
with “Heaven bless your honor for the sixpence
you mean to give me!” what contrasts strike the traveller
in this great heart of the world! Paddy lighted
us to our carriage with his lantern, implored the coachman
to “dhrive carefully,” and then stood with his
head bent to catch the sound upon the pavement of
another sixpence for his tenderness. Wherever there
is a party in the fashionable quarters of London, these
Tantaluses flit about with their lanterns—for ever at
the door of pleasure, yet shivering and starving for
ever in their rags. What a life!

One of the most rational and agreeable of the fashionable
resorts in London is Kensington Gardens, on the
days when the royal band plays from five to seven
near the bridge of the Serpentine. Some twenty of
the best instrumental musicians of London station
themselves under the trees in this superb park (for
though called “gardens,” it is but a park with old
trees and greensward), and up and down the fine silky
carpet stroll hundreds of the fashionables of “May
fair and Belgrave square,” listening a little perhaps,
and chattering a great deal certainly. It is a good
opportunity to see what celebrated beauties look like
by daylight; and, truth to say, one comes to the conclusion
there, that candle-light is your true kalydor.
It is very ingeniously contrived by the grand chamber-lain
that this public music should be played in a far
away corner of the park, inaccessible except by those
who have carriages. The plebeians, for whose use
and pleasure it seems at first sight graciously contrived,
are pretty well sifted by the two miles walk,
and a very aristocratic and well-dressed assembly indeed
is that of Kensington gardens.

Near the usual stand of the musicians runs a bridle-path
for horsemen, separated from the greensward by
a sunk fence, and as I was standing by the edge of the
ditch yesterday, the queen rode by, pulling up to listen
to the music, and smile right and left to the crowd of
cavaliers drawn up in the road. I pulled off my hat
and stood uncovered instinctively, but looking around
to see how the promenaders received her, I found to
my surprise that with the exception of a bald-headed
nobleman whem I chanced to know, the Yankee stood
alone in his homage to her.

I thought before I left America that I should find
the stamp of the new reign on manners, usages, conversation,
and all the outer form and pressure of society.
One can not fancy England under Elizabeth to
have struck a stranger as did England under James.
We think of Shakspere, Leicester, and Raleigh, and
conclude that under a female sovereign chivalry at

least shines brighter, and poetry should. A good
deal to my disappointment, I have looked in vain for
even a symptom of the queen's influence on anything.
She is as completely isolated in England, as entirely
above and out of the reach of the sympathies and
common thoughts of society, as the gilt grasshopper
on the steeple. At the opera and play, half the
audience do not even know she is there; in the park,
she rides among the throng with scarcely a head
turned to look after her; she is unthought of, and
almost unmentioned at balls, routes, and soirées; in
short, the throne seems to stand on glass—with no one
conductor to connect it with the electric chain of human
hearts and sympathies.

MY ADVENTURES AT THE TOURNAMENT.

That Irish Channel has, as the English say, “a
nasty way with it.” I embarked at noon on the 26th,
in a magnificent steamer, the Royal Sovereign, which
had been engaged by Lord Eglinton (as per advertisement)
to set down at Ardrossan all passengers bound
to the tournament. This was a seventeen hours' job,
including a very cold, blowy, and rough night; and
of the two hundred passengers on board, one half
were so biest as to have berths or settees—the others
were unblest, indeed.

I found on board several Americans; and by the
time I had looked at the shape of the Liverpool harbor,
and seen one or two vessels run in before a slapping
breeze, the premonitory symptom (which had
already sent many to their berths) sent me to mine.
The boat was pitching backward and forward with a
sort of handsaw action that was not endurable. By
foregoing my dinner and preserving a horizontal position,
I escaped all sickness, and landed at Ardrossan
at six the next morning, with a thirty-six hours' fast
upon me, which I trusted my incipient gout would remember
as a per contra to the feast in the promised
“banquet.”

Ardrossan, built chiefly, I believe, by Lord Eglinton's
family, and about eight miles from the castle, is
a small but very clean and thirfty-looking hamlet on
that part of the western coast of Scotland which lies
opposite the Isle of Arran. Alisa Rock, famous in
song, slumbers like a cloud in the southwestern horizon.
The long breakers of the channel lay their lines
of foam almost upon the street, and the harbor is
formed by a pier jutting out from a little promontory
on the northern extremity of the town. The one
thoroughfare of Ardrossan is kept clean by the broom
of every wind that sweeps the Irish sea. A cleaner or
bleaker spot I never saw.

A Gael, who did not comprehend a syllable of such
English as a Yankee delivers, shouldered my portmanteau
without direction or request, and travelled
away to the inn, where he deposited it and held out
his hand in silence. There was certainly quite enough
said between us; and remembering the boisterous accompaniment
with which the claims of porters are
usually pushed upon one's notice, I could well wish
that Gaelic tide-waiters were more common.

“Any room, landlord?” was the first question.—
“Not a cupboard, sir,” was the answer.—“Can you
give me some breakfast?” asked fifty others in a breath.
—“Breakfast will be put upon all the tables presently,
gentlemen,” said the dismayed Boniface, glancing at
the crowds who were pouring in, and, Scotchmanlike,
making no promises to individuals.—“Landlord!”
vociferated a gentleman from the other side of the
hall—“what the devil does this mean? Here's the
room I engaged a fortnight ago occupied by a dozen
people shaving and dressing!”—“I canna help it, sir!
Ye're welcome to turn 'em a' out—if ye can!” said
the poor man, lifting up his hands in despair, and retreating
to the kitchen. The hint was a good one,
and taking up my own portmanteau, I opened a door
in one of the passages. It led into a small apartment,
which in more roomy times might have been a pantry,
but was now occupied by three beds and a great variety
of baggage. There was a twopenny glass on the
mantel-piece, and a drop or two of water in a pitcher,
and where there were sheets I could make shift for a
towel. I found presently, by the way, that I had had
a narrow escape of surprising some one in bed, for
the sheet which did duty as a napkin was still warm
with the pressure of the newly-fled occupant.

Three or four smart-looking damsels in caps looked
in while I was engaged in my toilet, and this, with one
or two slight observations made in the apartment, convinced
me that I had intruded on the dormitory of the
ladies' maids belonging to the various parties in the
house. A hurried “God bless us!” as they retreated,
however, was all either of reproach or remonstrance
that I was troubled with; and I emerged with a
smooth chin in time for breakfast, very much to the
envy and surprise of my less enterprising companions.

There was a great scramble for the tea and toast;
but, uniting forces with a distinguished literary man
whose acquaintance I had been fortunate enough to
make on board the steamer, we managed to get places
at one of the tables, and achieved our breakfasts in
tolerable comfort. We were still eight miles from
Eglinton, however, and a lodging was the next matter
of moment. My friend thought he was provided for
nearer the castle, and I went into the street, which I
found crowded with distressed-looking people, flying
from door to door, with ladies on their arms and wheelbarrows
of baggage at their heels, the townspeople
standing at the doors and corners staring at the novel
spectacle in open-mouthed wonder. Quite in a dilemma
whether or not to go on to Irvine (which, being
within two miles of the castle, was probably much
more over-run than Ardrossan), I was standing at the
corner of the street, when a Liverpool gentleman,
whose kindness I must record as well as my pleasure
in his society for the two or three days we were together,
came up and offered me a part of a lodging he
had that moment taken. The bed was what we call
in America a bunk, or a kind of berth sunk into the
wall, and there were two in the same garret, but the
sheets were clean; and there was a large bible on the
table—the latter a warrant for civility, neatness, and
honesty, which, after many years of travel, I have
never found deceptive. I closed immediately with
my friend; and whether it was from a smack of authorship
or no, I must say I took to my garret very
kindly.

It was but nine o'clock, and the day was on my
hands. Just beneath the window ran a railroad, built
to bring coal to the seaside, and extending to within
a mile of the castle; and with some thirty or forty
others, I embarked in a horse-car for Eglinton to see
the preparations for the following day's tournament.
We were landed near the park gate, after an hour's
drive through a flat country blackened with coal-pits;
and it was with no little relief to the eye that I entered
upon a smooth and gravelled avenue, leading by
a mile of shaded windings to the castle. The day was
heavenly; the sun-flecks lay bright as “patines of
gold” on the close-shaven grass beneath the trees;
and I thought that nature had consented for once to
remove her eternal mist-veil from Scotland, and let
pleasure and sunshine have a holyday together. The
sky looked hard and deep; and I had no more apprehension

of rain for the morrow than I should have had
under a July sun in Asia.

Crossing a bright little river (the Lugton, I think
it is called), whose sloping banks, as far as I could see
up and down, were shaven to the rich smoothness of
“velvet of three-pile,” I came in sight of the castle
towers. Another bridge over a winding of the same
river lay to the left, a Gothic structure of the most
rich and airy mould, and from either end of this extended
the enclosed passage for the procession to the
lists. The castle stood high upon a mound beyond. Its
round towers were half concealed by some of the finest
trees I ever saw; and though less antique and of a less
frowning and rude aspect than I had expected, it was
a very perfect specimen of modern castellated architecture.
On ascending to the lawn in front of the
castle, I found that it was built less upon a mound
than upon the brow of a broad plateau of table-land,
turned sharply by the Lugton, close under the castle
walls—a natural sight of singular beauty. Two Saracenic-looking
tents of the gayest colors were pitched
upon the bright-green lawn at a short distance, and
off to the left, by several glimpses through the trees,
I traced along the banks of the river the winding enclosures
for the procession.

The large hall was crowded with servants; but presuming
that a knight who was to do his devoir so conspicuously
on the morrow would not be stirring at so
early an hour, I took merely a glance of the armor
upon the walls in passing, and deferring the honor of
paying my respects, crossed the lawn and passed over
the Lugton by a rustic foot-bridge in search of the
lists. A cross-path (leading by a small temple enclosed
with wire netting, once an aviary, perhaps, but
now hung around in glorious profusion with game,
venison, a boar's head, and other comestibles), brought
me in two or three minutes to a hill-side overlooking
the chivalric arena. It was a beautiful sight of itself
without plume or armor. In the centre of a verdant
plain, shut in by hills of an easy slope, wooded richly,
appeared an oblong enclosure glittering at either end
with a cluster of tents, striped with the gayest colors
of the rainbow. Between them, on the farther side,
stood three galleries, of which the centre was covered
with a Gothic roof highly ornamented, the four front
pillars draped with blue damask, and supporting a canopy
over the throne intended for the queen of beauty.
A strongly-built barrier extended through the lists;
and heaps of lances, gay flags, and the heraldic ornaments,
still to be added to the tents, lay around on
the bright grass in a picture of no little richness. I
was glad afterward that I had seen thus much with
the advantage of an unclouded sun.

In returning, I passed in the rear of the castle, and
looked into the temporary pavilions crected for the
banquet and ball. They were covered exteriorly with
rough board and sails, and communicated by an enclosed
gallery with one of the larger apartments of the
castle. The workmen were still nailing up the drapery,
and arranging lamps and flowers; but with all this disadvantage,
the effect of the two immense halls, lined as
they were with crimson and white in broad alternate
stripes, resembling in shape and fashion two gigantic
tents, was exceedingly imposing. Had the magnificent
design of Lord Eglinton been successfully carried out,
it would have been a scene, with the splendor of the
costumes, the lights, music, and revelry, unsurpassed,
probably, by anything short of enchantment.

PRINCIPAL DAY.

I was awakened at an early hour the morning after
my arrival at Ardrossan by a band of music in the
street. My first feeling was delight at seeing a bit of
blue sky of the size of my garret skylight, and a dazzling
sunshine on the floor. “Skirling” above all the
other instruments of the band, the Highland bagpipe
made the air reel with “A' the blue bonnets are over
the border,” and, hoisting the window above my head.
I strained over the house-leads to get a look at the
performer. A band of a dozen men in kilt and bonnet
were marching up and down, led by a piper, something
in the face like the heathen representations of Boreas;
and on a long line of roughly-constructed rail-cars
were piled, two or three deep, a crowd resembling, at
first sight, a crushed bed of tulips. Bonnets of every
cut and color, from the courtier's green velvet to the
shepherd's homely gray, struggled at the top; and
over the sides hung red legs and yellow legs, cross-barred
stockings and buff boots, bare feet and pilgrim's
sandals. The masqueraders scolded and laughed, the
boys halloed, the quiet people of Ardrossan stared in
grave astonishment, and, with the assistance of some
brawny shoulders, applied to the sides of the overladen
vehicles, the one unhappy horse got his whimsical
load under way for the tournament.

Train followed train, packed with the same motley
array; and at ten o'clock, after a clean and comfortable
Scotch breakfast in our host's little parlor, we sallied
forth to try our luck in the scramble for places.
After a considerable fight we were seated, each with a
man in his lap, when we were ordered down by the
conductor, who informed us that the chief of the
Campbells had taken the car for his party, and that,
with his band in the succeeding one, he was to go in
state (upon a railroad!) to Eglinton. Up swore half-a-dozen
Glasgow people, usurpers like ourselves, that
they would give way for no Campbell in the world;
and finding a stout hand laid on my leg to prevent my
yielding to the order to quit, I gave in to what might
be called as pretty a bit of rebellious republicanism as
you would find on the Mississippi. The conductor
stormed, but the Scotch bodies sat firm; and as Scot
met Scot in the fight, I was content to sit in silence
and take advantage of the victory. I learned afterward
that the Campbell chieftain was a Glasgow manufacturer;
and though he undoubtedly had a right to
gather his clan, and take piper and eagle's plume, there
might, possibly, be some jealous disapprebation at the
bottom of his townsmen's rudeness.

Campbell and his party presently appeared, and a
dozen or twenty very fine looking men they were. One
of the ladies, as well as I could see through the black
lace veil thrown over her cap and plumes, was a remarkably
handsome woman; and I was very glad when
the matter was compromised, and the Campbells were
distributed among our company. We jogged on at a
slow pace toward the tournament, passing thousands
of pedestrians, the men all shod, and the women all
barefoot, with their shoes in their hands, and nearly
every one, in accordance with Lord Eglinton's printed
request, showing some touch of fancy in his dress. A
plaid over the shoulder, or a Glengary bonnet, or, perhaps,
a goose-feather stuck jauntily in the cap, was
enough to show the feeling of the wearer, and quite
enough to give the crowd, all in all, a most festal and
joyous aspect.

The secluded bit of road between the rail-track and
the castle lodge, probably never before disturbed by
more than two vehicles at a time, was thronged with a
press of wheels, as closely jammed as Fleet street at
noon. Countrymen's carts piled with women and
children like loads of market-baskets in Kent; post-chaises
with exhausted horses and occupants straining
their eyes forward for a sight of the castle; carriages
of the neighboring gentry with “bodkins” and overpacked
dickeys, all in costume; stout farmers on
horseback, with plaid and bonnet; gingerbread and
ale-carts, pony-carts, and coal-carts; wheelbarrows
with baggage, and porters with carpet-bags and hat-boxes,

were mixed up in merry confusion with the
most motley throng of pedestrians it has ever been my
fortune to join. The vari-colored tide poured in at
the open gate of the castle; and if I had seen no other
procession, the long-extended mass of caps, bonnets,
and plumes, winding through that shaded and beautiful
avenue, would have repaid me for no small proportion
of my subsequent discomfort. I remarked, by the
way, that I did not see a hat in the entire mile between
the porter's lodge and the castle.

The stables, which lay on the left of the approach
(a large square structure with turret and clock, very
like four methodist churches, dos-à-dos), presented
another busy and picturesque scene—horses half-caparisoned,
men-at-arms in buff and steel, and the
gay liveries of the nineteenth century paled by the revived
glories of the servitude of more knightly times.
And this part of the scene, too, had its crowd of laughing
and wondering spectators.

On reaching the Gothic bridge over the Lugton,
we came upon a cordon of police who encircled the
castle, turning the crowd off by the bridge in the direction
of the lists. Sorry to leave my merry and
motley fellow-pedestrians, I presented my card of invitation
and passed on alone to the castle. The sun
was at this time shining with occasional cloudings-over;
and the sward and road, after the two or three
fine days we had had, were in the best condition for
every purpose of the tournament.

Two or three noble trees with their foliage nearly
to the ground stood between me and the front of the
castle, as I ascended the slope above the river; and
the lifting of a stage curtain could scarce be more
sudden, or the scene of a drama more effectively composed,
than the picture disclosed by the last step upon
the terrace. Any just description of it, indeed, must
read like a passage from the “prompter's book.” I
stood for a moment, exactly where you would have
placed an audience. On my left rose a noble castle
with four round towers, the entrance thronged with
men-at-arms, and busy comers and goers in every
variety of costume. On the greensward in front of the
castle lounged three or four gentlemen archers in
suits of green silk and velvet. A cluster of grooms
under an immense tree on the right were fitting two
or three superb horses with their armor and caparisons,
while one beautiful blood palfrey, whose fine limbs
and delicately veined head and neck were alone visible
under his embroidered saddle and gorgeous trappings
of silk, was held by two “tigers” at a short distance.
Still farther on the right, stood a cluster of gayly decorated
tents; and in and out of the looped-up curtain
of the farthest passed constantly the slight forms of
lady archers in caps with snowy plumes, kirtles of
green velvet, and petticoats of white satin, quivers at
their backs and bows in their hands—one tall and
stately girl (an Ayrshire lady of very uncommon
beauty, whose name I took some pains to inquire),
conspicuous by her grace and dignity above all.

The back-ground was equally well composed—the
farther side of the lawn making a sharp descent to the
small river which bends around the castle, the opposite
shore thronged with thousands of spectators watching
the scene I have described; and in the distance behind
them, the winding avenue, railed in for the procession,
hidden and disclosed by turns among the
noble trees of the park, and alive throughout its whole
extent with the multitudes crowding to the lists.
There was a chivalric splendor in the whole scene,
which I thought at the time would repay one for a
long pilgrimage to see it—even should the clouds,
which by this time were coming up very threateningly
from the horizon, put a stop to the tournament altogether.

On entering the castle hall, a lofty room hung
round with arms, trophies of the chase, ancient
shields, and armor of every description, I found myself
in a crowd of a very merry and rather a motley
character—knights half armed, esquires in buff, palmers,
halberdiers, archers, and servants in modern
livery, here and there a lady, and here and there a
spectator like myself, and in a corner by one of the
Gothic windows—what think you?—a minstrel?—a
gray-haired harper?—a jester? Guess again—a reporter
for the Times! With a “walking dictionary”
at his elbow, in the person of the fat butler of the
castle, he was inquiring out the various characters in
the crowd, and the rapidity of his stenographic jottings-down
(with their lucid apparition in print two
days after in London) would, in the times represented
by the costumes about him, have burnt him at the
stake for a wizard with the consent of every knight in
Christendom.

I was received by the knight-marshal of the lists,
who did the honors of hospitality for Lord Eglinton
during his preparation for the “passage of arms;”
and finding an old friend under the gray beard and
scallop shell of a venerable palmer, whose sandal and
bare toes I chanced to stumble over, we passed in
together to the large dining-room of the castle.
“Lunch” was on the long table, and some two hundred
of the earl's out-lodging guests were busy at
knife and fork, while here and there were visible some
of those anachronisms which, to me, made the zest
of the tournament—pilgrims eating Périgord pies,
esquires dressing after the manner of the thirteenth
century diving most scientifically into the richer veins
of pátés de foie-gras, dames in ruff and farthingale discussing
blue blanc-mange, and a knight with an over-night
headache calling out for a cup of tea!

On returning to the hall of the castle, which was
the principal place of assemblage, I saw with no little
regret that ladies were coming from their carriages
under umbrellas. The fair archers tripped in doors
from their crowded tent, the knight of the dragon,
who had been out to look after his charger, was being
wiped dry by a friendly pocket handerckief, and all
countenances had fallen with the barometer. It was
time for the procession to start, however, and the
knights appeared, one by one, armed cap-à-pie, all
save the helmet, till at last the hall was crowded with
steel-clad and chivalric forms; and they waited only
for the advent of the queen of beauty. After admiring
not a little the manly bearing and powerful “thewes
and sinews” displayed by the array of modern English
nobility in the trying costumes and harness of olden
time, I stepped out upon the lawn with some curiosity
to see how so much heavy metal was to be got into a
demipique saddle. After one or two ineffectual attempts,
foiled partly by the restlessness of his horse,
the first knight called ingloriously for a chair. Another
scrambled over with great difficulty; and I fancy,
though Lord Waterford and Lord Eglinton, and one
other whom I noticed, mounted very gallantly and
gracefully, the getting to saddle was possibly the most
difficult feat of the day. The ancient achievement
of leaping on the steed's back from the ground in
complete armor would certainly have broken the
spine of any horse present, and was probably never
done but in story. Once in the saddle, however,
English horsemanship told well; and one of the finest
sights of the day I thought was the breaking away of
a powerful horse from the grooms, before his rider had
gathered up his reins, and a career at furious speed
through the open park, during which the steel-encumbered
horseman rode as safely as a fox-hunter, and
subdued the affrighted animal, and brought him back
in a style worthy of a wreath from the queen of
beauty.

Driven in by the rain, I was standing at the upper
side of the hall, when a movement in the crowd and
an unusual “making-way” announced the coming of

the “cynosure of all eyes.” She entered from the
interior of the castle with her train held up by two
beautiful pages of ten or twelve years of age, and attended
by two fair and very young maids of honor.
Her jacket of ermine, her drapery of violet and blue
velvet, the collars of superb jewels which embraced
her throat and bosom, and her sparkling crown, were
on her (what they seldom are, but should be only)
mere accessaries to her own predominating and radiant
beauty. Lady Seymour's features are as nearly faultless
as is consistent with expression; her figure and
face are rounded to the complete fulness of the mould
for a Juno; her walk is queenly, and peculiarly unstudied
and graceful, yet (I could not but think then
and since) she was not well chosen for the queen of a
tournament. The character of her beauty, uncommon
and perfect as it is, is that of delicacy and loveliness—the
lily rather than the rose—the modest pearl,
not the imperial diamond. The eyes to flash over a
crowd at a tournament, to be admired from a distance,
to beam down upon a knight kneeling for a public
award of honor, should be full of command, dark,
lustrous, and fiery. Hers are of the sweetest and
most tranquil blue that ever reflected the serene
heaven of a happy hearth—eyes to love, not wonder
at, to adore and rely upon, not admire and tremble for.
At the distance at which most of the spectators of the
tournament saw Lady Seymour, Fanny Kemble's
stormy orbs would have shown much finer, and the
forced and imperative action of a stage-taught head
and figure would have been more applauded than the
quiet, nameless, and indescribable grace lost to all but
those immediately round her. I had seen the Queen
of Beauty in a small society, dressed in simple white,
without an ornament, when she was far more becomingly
dressed and more beautiful than here, and I have
never seen, since, the engravings and prints of Lady
Seymour which fill every window in the London
shops, without feeling that it was a profanation of a
style of loveliness that would be
The day wore on, and the knight-marshal of the
lists (Sir Charles Lamb, the stepfather of Lord
Eglinton, by far the most knightly looking person at
the tournament), appeared in his rich surcoat and
embossed armor, and with a despairing look at the increasing
torrents of rain, gave the order to get to
horse. At the first blast of the trumpet, the thickleaved
trees around the castle gave out each a dozen
or two of gay colored horsemen who had stood almost
unseen under the low-hanging branches—mounted
musicians in silk and gay trappings, mounted men-at-arms
in demi-suits of armor, deputy marshals and
halberdiers; and around the western tower, where
their caparisons had been arranged and their horse-armor
carefully looked to, rode the glittering and
noble company of knights, Lord Eglinton in his armor
of inlaid gold, and Lord Alford, with his athletic
frame and very handsome features, conspicuous above
all. The rain, meantime, spared neither the rich
tabard of the pursuivant, nor the embroidered saddle-cloths
of the queen's impatient palfrey: and after a
half-dozen of dripping detachments had formed and
led on, as the head of the procession, the lady-archers
(who were to go on foot) were called by the marshal
with a smile and a glance upward which might have
been construed into a tacit advice to stay in doors.
Gracefully and majestically, however, with quiver at
her back, and bow in hand, the tall and fair archer of
whose uncommon beauty. I have already spoken,
stepped from the castle loor; and, regardless of the
rain which fell in drops as large as pearls on her unprotected
forehead and snowy shoulders, she took her
place in the procession with her silken-booted troop
picking their way very gingerly over the pools behind
her. Slight as the circumstance may seem, there
was in the manner of the lady, and her calm disregard
of self in the cause she had undertaken, which would
leave me in no doubt where to look for a heroine
were the days of Wallace (whose compatriot she is)
to come over again. The knight-marshal put spurs
to his horse, and re-ordered the little troop to the
castle; and regretting that I had not the honor of the
lady's acquaintance for my authority, I performed my
only chivalric achievement for the day, the sending a
halberdier whom I had chanced to remember as the
servant of an old friend, on a crusade into the castle
for a lady's maid and a pair of dry stockings! Whether
they were found, and the fair archer wore them, or
where she and her silk-shod company have the tournament
consumption, rheumatism, or cough, at this
hour, I am sorry I can not say.

The judge of peace, Lord Saltoun, with his wand,
and retainers on foot bearing heavy battle-axes, was
one of the best figures in the procession; though, as
he was slightly gray, and his ruby velvet cap and saturated
ruff were poor substitutes for a warm cravat
and hat-brim, I could not but associate his fine horse-manship
with a sore throat, and his retainers and their
battle-axes with relays of nurses and hot flannels. The
flower of the tournament, in the representing and
keeping up of the assumed character, however, was its
king, Lord Londonderry. He, too, is a man, I should
think, on the shady side of fifty, but of just the high
preservation and embonpoint necessary for a royal presence.
His robe of red velvet and ermine swept the
ground as he sat in his saddle; and he managed to
keep its immense folds free of his horse's legs, and
yet to preserve its flow in his prancing motion, with a
grace and ease, I must say, which seemed truly imperial.
His palfrey was like a fiery Arabian, all action,
nerve, and fire; and every step was a rearing
prance, which, but for the tranquil self-possession and
easy control of the king, would have given the spectators
some fears for his royal safety. Lord Londo-derry's
whole performance of his part was without a
fault, and chiefly admirable, I thought, from his sustaining
it with that unconsciousness and entire freedom
from mauvaise honte which the English seldom can
command in new or conspicuous situations.

The queen of beauty was called, and her horse led
to the door; but the water ran from the blue saddle-cloth
and housings like rain from a roof, and the storm
seemed to have increased with the sound of her name.
She came to the door, and gave a deprecating look
upward which would have mollified anything but a
Scotch sky, and, by the command of the knight marshal,
retired again to wait for a less chivalric but drier
conveyance. Her example was followed by the other
ladies, and their horses were led riderless in the procession.

The knights were but half called when I accepted
a friend's kind offer of a seat in his carriage to the lists.
The entire park, as we drove along, was one vast expanse
of umbrellas; and it looked from the carriage-window,
like an army of animated and gigantic mushrooms,
shouldering each other in a march. I had no
idea till then of the immense crowd the occasion had
drawn together. The circuitous route railed in for
the procession was lined with spectators six or seven
deep, on either side, throughout its whole extent of a
mile; the most distant recesses of the park were
crowded with men, horses, and vehicles, all pressing
onward; and as we approached the lists we found the
multitude full a quarter of a mile deep, standing on all
the eminences which looked down upon the enclosure,
as closely serried almost as the pit of the opera, and
all eyes bent in one direction, anxiously watching the
guarded entrance. I heard the number of persons
present variously estimated during the day, the estimates

ranging from fifty to seventy-five thousand, but
I should think the latter was nearer the mark.

We presented our tickets at the private door, in the
rear of the principal gallery, and found ourselves introduced
to a very dry place among the supports and
rafters of the privileged structure. The look-out was
excellent in front, and here I proposed to remain, declining
the wet honor of a place above stairs. The
gentleman-usher, however, was very urgent for our
promotion; but as we found him afterward chatting
very familiarly with a party who occupied the seatswe
had selected, we were compelled to relinquish the
flattering unction that he was actuated by an intuitive
sense of our deservings. On ascending to the covered
gallery, I saw, to my surprise, that some of the best
seats in front were left vacant, and here and there,
along the different tiers of benches, ladies were crowding
excessively close together, while before or behind
them there seemed plenty of unoccupied room. A
second look showed me small streams of water coming
through the roof, and I found that a dry seat was
totally unattainable. The gallery held about a thousand
persons (the number Lord Eglinton had invited
to the banquet and ball), and the greater part of these
were ladies, most of them in fancy dresses, and the remainder
in very slight demi-toilette—everybody having
dressed apparently with a full reliance on the morning's
promise of fair weather. Less fortunate than
the multitude outside, the earl's guests seemed not to
have numbered umbrellas among the necessities of a
tournament; and the demand for this despised invention
was sufficient (if merit were ever rewarded) to
clevate it for ever after to a rank among chivalric appointments.
Substitutes and imitations of it were
made of swords and cashmeres; and the lenders of
veritable umbrellas received smiles which should induce
them, one would think, to carry half-a-dozen to
all future tournaments in Scotland. It was pitiable
to see the wreck going on among the perishable elegancies
of Victorine and Herbault—chip hats of the
most faultless tournure collapsing with the wet;
starched ruffs quite flat; dresses passing helplessly
from “Lesbia's” style to “Nora Creina's;” shawls,
tied by anxious mammas over chapeau and coiffure,
crushing pitilessly the delicate fabric of months of invention;
and, more lamentable still, the fair brows and
shoulders of many a lovely woman proving with rainbow
clearness that the colors of the silk or velvet composing
her head-dress were by no means “fast.” The
Irvine archers, by the way, who, as the queen's body-guard,
were compelled to expose themselves to the
rain on the grand staircase, resembled a troop of New-Zealanders
with their faces tattooed of a delicate
green; though, as their Lincoln bonnets were all
made of the same faithless velvet, they were fortunately
streaked so nearly alike as to preserve their uniform.

After a brief consultation between the rheumatisms
in my different limbs, it was decided (since it was vain
to hope for shelter for the entire person) that my cloth-cap
would be the best recipient for the inevitable wet;
and selecting the best of the vacated places, I seated
myself so as to receive one of the small streams as
nearly as possible on my organ of firmness. Here I
was undisturbed, except that once I was asked (my
seat supposed to be a dry one) to give place to a lady
newly arrived, who, receiving my appropriated rivulet
in her neck, immediately restored it to me with many
acknowledgments, and passed on. In point of position,
my seat, which was very near the pavilion of the
queen of beauty, was one of the best at the tournament;
and diverting my aqueduct, by a little management,
over my left shoulder, I contrived to be more
comfortable, probably, than most of my shivering and
melancholy neighbors.

A great agitation in the crowd, and a dampish sound
of coming trumpets, announced the approach of the
procession. As it came in sight, and wound along the
curved passage to the lists, its long and serpentine line
of helmets and glittering armor, gonfalons, spear-points,
and plumes, just surging above the moving sea
of umbrellas, had the effect of some gorgeous and
bright-scaled dragon swimming in troubled waters.
The leaders of the long cavalcade pranced into the
arena at last, and a tremendous shout from the multitude
announced their admiration of the spectacle. On
they came toward the canopy of the queen of beauty,
men-at-arms, trumpeters, heralds, and halberdiers, and
soon after them the king of the tournament, with his
long scarlet robe flying to the tempest, and his rearing
palfrey straining every nerve to show his pride and
beauty. The first shout from the principal gallery
was given in approbation of this display of horsemanship,
as Lord Londonderry rode past; and considering
the damp state of the enthusiasm which prompted
it, it should have been considered rather flattering.
Lord Eglinton came on presently, distinguished above
all others no less by the magnificence of his appointments
than by the case and dignity with which he
rode, and his knightly bearing and stature. His
golden armor sat on him as if he had been used to
wear it; and he managed his beautiful charger, and
bowed in reply to the reiterated shouts of the multitude
and his friends, with a grace and chivalric courtesy
which drew murmurs of applause from the spectators
long after the cheering had subsided.

The jester rode into the lists upon a gray steed,
shaking his bells over his head, and dressed in an odd
costume of blue and yellow, with a broad-flapped hat,
asses' ears, &c. His character was not at first understood
by the crowd, but he soon began to excite merriment
by his jokes, and no little admiration by his
capital riding. He was a professional person, I think
it was said, from Astley's, but as he spoke with a most
excellent Scotch “burr,” he easily passed for an indigenous
“fool.” He rode from side to side of the
lists during the whole of the tournament, borrowing
umbrellas, quizzing the knights, &c.

One of the most striking features of the procession
was the turn-out of the knight of the Gael, Lord
Glenlyon, with seventy of his clansmen at his back
in plaid and philibeg, and a finer exhibition of calves
(without a joke) could scarce be desired. They followed
their chieftain on foot, and when the procession
separated, took up their places in line along the
palisade, serving as a guard to the lists.

After the procession had twice made the circuit of
the enclosure, doing obeisance to the queen of beauty,
the jester had possession of the field while the knights
retired to don their helmets (hitherto carried by their
esquires), and to await the challenge to combat. All
eyes were now bent upon the gorgeous clusters of
tents at either extremity of the oblong area; and in a
very few minutes the herald's trumpet sounded, and
the knight of the swan rode forth, having sent his defiance
to the knight of the golden lion. At another
blast of the trumpet they set their lances in rest, selected
opposite sides of the long fence or barrier running
lengthwise through the lists, and rode furiously
past each other, the fence of course preventing any
contact except that of their lances. This part of the
tournament (the essential part, one would think) was,
from the necessity of the case, the least satisfactory of
all. The knights, though they rode admirably, were
so oppressed by the weight of their armor, and so embarrassed
in their motions by the ill-adjusted joints,
that they were like men of wood, unable apparently
even to raise the lance from the thigh on which it
rested. I presume no one of them either saw where
he should strike his opponent, or had any power of
directing the weapon. As they rode close to the
fence, however, and a ten-foot pole sawed nearly off
in two or three places was laid crosswise on the legs

of each, it would be odd if they did not come in contact;
and the least shock of course splintered the lance
—in other words, finished what was begun by the carpenter's
saw. The great difficulty was to ride at all
under such a tremendous weight, and manage a horse
of spirit, totally unused both to the weight and the
clatter of his own and his rider's armor. I am sure
that Lord Eglinton's horse, for one, would have
bothered Ivanboe himself to “bring to the scratch;”
and Lord Waterford's was the only one that, for all
the fright he showed, might have been selected (as
they all should have been) for the virtue of having
peddled tin-ware. These two knights, by the way, ran
the best career, Lord Eglinton, malgre his bolter,
coming off the victor.

The rain, meantime, had increased to a deluge, the
queen of beauty sat shivering under an umbrella, the
jester's long ears were water-logged, and lay flat on
his shoulders, and everybody in my neighborhood had
expressed a wish for a dry seat and a glass of sherry.
The word “banquet” occurred frequently right and
left; hopes for “mulled wine or something hot before
dinner” stole from the lips of a mamma on the
seat behind; and there seemed to be but one chance
for the salvation of health predominant in the minds
of all, and that was drinking rather more freely than
usual at the approaching banquet. Judge what must
have been the astonishment, vexation, dread, and despair,
of the one thousand wet, shivering, and hungry
caudidates for the feast, when Lord Eglinton rode up
to the gallery unhelmeted, and delivered himself as
follows:—

“Ladies and gentlemen, I had hoped to have given
you all a good dinner; but to my extreme mortification
and regret, I am just informed that the rain has
penetrated the banqueting pavilions, and that, in consequence,
I shall only be able to entertain so many of
my friends as can meet around my ordinary table.”

About as uncomfortable a piece of intelligence, to
some nine hundred and sixty of his audience, as they
could have received, short of a sentence for their immediate
execution.

To comprehend fully the disastrous extent of the
disappointment in the principal gallery, it must be
taken into consideration that the domicils, fixed or
temporary, of the rejected sufferers, were from five to
twenty miles distant—a long ride at best, if begun on
the point of famishing, and in very thin and well-saturated
fancy dresses. Grievance the first, however,
was nothing to grievance the second; viz., that from
the tremendous run upon post-horses and horses of all
descriptions, during the three or four previous days,
the getting to the tournament was the utmost that
many parties could achieve. The nearest baithing-place
was several miles off; and in compassion to the
poor beasts, and with the weather promising fair on
their arrival, most persons had consented to take
their chance for the quarter of a mile from the lists to
the castle, and had dismissed their carriages with
orders to return at the close of the banquet and ball
—daylight the next morning! The castle, everybody
knew, was crammed, from “donjon-keep to turret-top.”
with the relatives and intimate friends of the
noble earl, and his private table could accommodate
no more than these. To get home was the inevitable
alternative.

The rain poured in a deluge. The entire park was
trodden into a slough, or standing in pools of water—
carts, carriages, and horsemen, with fifty thousand
flying pedestrians, crowding every road and avenue.
How to get home with a carriage! How the deuce
to get home without one!

A gentleman, who had been sent out on the errand
of Noah's dove by a lady whose carriage and horses
were ordered at four the following morning, came
back with the mud up to his knees, and reported that
there was not a wheel-barrow to be had for love or
money. Afterthreading the crowd in every direction,
he had offered a large sum, in vain, for a one-horse
cart!

Night was coming on, meantime, very fast; but
absorbed by the distresses of the shivering groups
around me, I had scarce remembered that my own invitation
was but to the banquet and ball—and my
dinner, consequently, nine miles off, at Ardrossan.
Thanking Heaven, that, at least, I had no ladies to
share my evening's pilgrimage, I followed the queen
of beauty down the muddy and slippery staircase, and,
when her majesty had stepped into her carriage, I
stepped over ankles in mud and water, and began my
wade toward the castle.

Six hours of rain, and the trampling of such an immense
multitude of men and horses, had converted
the soft and moist sod and soil of the park into a deep
and most adhesive quagmire. Glancing through the
labyrinth of vehicles on every side, and seeing men
and horses with their feet completely sunk below the
surface, I saw that there was no possibility of shying
the matter, and that wade was the word. I thought,
at first, that I had a claim for a little sympathy on the
score of being rather slenderly shod (the impalpable
sole of a pattern leather-boot being all that separated
me from the subsoil of the estate of Eglinton); but
overtaking, presently, a party of four ladies who had
lost several shoes in the mire, and were positively
wading on in silk stockings, I took patience to myself
from my advantage in the comparison, and thanked
fate for the thinnest sole with leather to keep it on.
The ladies I speak of were under the charge of a most
despairing-looking gentleman, but had neither cloak
nor umbrella, and had evidently made no calculations
for a walk. We differed in our choice of the two
sides of a slough, presently, and they were lost in the
crowd; but I could not help smiling, with all my pity
of their woes, to think what a turning up of prunella
shoes there will be, should Lord Eglinton ever plough
the chivalric field of the Tournament.

As I reached the castle, I got upon the Macadamised
road, which had the advantage of a bottom somewhere,
though it was covered with a liquid mud, of which
every passing foot gave you a spatter to the hips. My
exterior was by this time equally divided between
water and dirt, and I trudged on in comfortable fellowship
with farmers, coal-miners, and Scotch lasses—
envying very much the last, for they carried their
shoes in their hands, and held their petticoats, to say
the least, clear of the mud. Many a good joke they
seemed to have among them, but as they spoke in
Gaelic, it was lost on my Sassenach ears.

I had looked forward with a faint hope to a gingerbread
and ale-cart, which I remembered having seen
in the morning established near the terminus of the
railroad, trusting to refresh my strength and patience
with a glass of anything that goes under the generic
appellation of “summat;” but though the cart was
there, the gingerbread shelf was occupied by a row of
Scotch lasses, crouching together under cover from
the rain, and the pedlar assured me that “there wasna
a drap o' speerit to be got within ten mile o' the castle.”
One glance at the railroad, where a car with a single
horse was beset by some thousands of shoving and
fighting applicants, convinced me that I had a walk
of eight miles to finish my “purgation by” tournament;
and as it was getting too dark to trust to any
picking of the way, I took the middle of the rail-track,
and set forward.

Eight miles in a heavy rain, with boots of the consistence
of brown paper, and a road of alternate deep
mud and broken stone, should entitle one to the green

turban. I will make the pilgrimage of a Hadji from
the “farthest inn” with half the endurance.

I found my Liverpool friends over a mutton-chop
in the snug parlor of our host, and with a strong brew
of hot toddy, and many a laugh at the day's adventures
by land and water, we got comfortably to bed “somewhere
in the small hours.” And so ended the great
day of the tournament.

After witnessing the disasters of the first day, the
demolition of costumes, and the perils by water, of
masqueraders and spectators, it was natural to fancy
that the tournament was over. So did not seem to
think several thousands of newly-arrived persons,
pouring from steamer after steamer upon the pier of
Ardrossan, and in every variety of costume, from the
shepherd's maud to the courtier's satin, crowding to
the rail-cars for Eglinton. It appeared from the
chance remarks of one or two who came to our lodgings
to deposite their carpet-bags, that it had rained
very little in the places from which the steamers had
come, and that they had calculated on the second as
the great day of the joust. No dissuasion had the
least effect upon them, and away they went, bedecked
and merry, the sufferers of the day before looking out
upon them, from comfortable hotel and lodging, with
prophetic pity.

At noon the sky brightened; and as the cars were
running by this time with diminished loads, I parted
from my agreeable friends, and bade adieu to my
garret at Ardrossan. I was bound to Ireland, and my
road lay by Eglinton to Irvine and Ayr. Fellow-passengers
with me were twenty or thirty men in
Glengary bonnets, plaids, &c.; and I came in for my
share of the jeers and jokes showered upon them by
the passengers in the return-cars, as men bound on a
fruitless errand. As we neared the castle, the crowds
of people with disconsolate faces waiting for conveyances,
or standing by the reopened gingerbread carts
in listless idleness, convinced my companions, at last,
that there was nothing to be seen, for that day at least,
at Eglinton. I left them sitting in the cars, undecided
whether to go on or return without losing their places;
and seeing a coach marked “Irvine” standing in the
road, I jumped in without question or ceremony. It
belonged to a private party of gentlemen, who were to
visit the castle and tilting-ground on their way to
Irvine; and as they very kindly insisted on my remaining
after I had apologised for the intrusion, I
found myself “booked” for a glimpse of the second
day's attractions.

The avenue to the castle was as crowded as on the
day before; but it was curious to remark how the
general aspect of the multitude was changed by the
substitution of disappointment for expectation. The
lagging gait and surly silence, instead of the elastic
step and merry joke, seemed to have darkened the
scene more than the withdrawal of the sun, and I was
glad to wrap myself in my cloak, and remember that
I was on the wing. The banner flying at the castle
tower was the only sign of motion I could see in its
immediate vicinity; the sail-cloth coverings of the
pavilion were dark with wet; the fine sward was everywhere
disfigured with traces of mud, and the whole
scene was dismal and uncomfortable. We kept on to
the lists, and found them, as one of my companions
expressed it, more like a cattle-pen after a fair than a
scene of pleasure—trodden, wet, miry, and deserted.
The crowd, content to view them from a distance,
were assembled around the large booths on the ascent
of the rising ground toward the castle, where a band
was playing some merry reels, and the gingerbread
and ale venders plied a busy vocation. A look was
enough; and we shaped our course for Irvine, sympathizing
deeply with the disappointment of the high-spirited
and generous lord of the Tourney. I heard
at Irvine, and farther on, that the tilting would be re
newed, and the banquet and ball given on the succeeding
days; but after the wreck of dresses and peril of
health I had witnessed, I was persuaded that the best
that could be done would be but a slender patching
up of the original glories, as well as a halting rally of
the original spirits of the tournament. So I kept on
my way.

SKETCHES OF TRAVEL.

1. CHAPTER I.
LONDON.

There is an inborn and inbred distrust of “foreigners”
in England—continental foreigners, I should say
—which keeps the current of French and Italian society
as distinct amid the sea of London, as the blue
Rhone in Lake Leman. The word “foreigner,” in
England, conveys exclusively the idea of a dark-complexioned
and whiskered individual, in a frogged coat
and distressed circumstances; and to introduce a
smooth-cheeked, plainly-dressed, quiet-looking person
by that name, would strike any circle of ladies and
gentlemen as a palpable misnomer. The violent and
unhappy contrast between the Parisian's mode of life
in London and in Paris, makes it very certain that few
of those bien nés et convenablement riches will live in
London for pleasure; and then the flood of political
émigrés, for the last half century, has monopolised
hair-dressing, &c., &c., to such a degree, that the
word Frenchman is synonymous in English ears with
barber and dancing-master. If a dark gentleman,
wearing either whisker or mustache, chance of offend
John Bull in the street, the first opprobrious language
he hears—the strongest that occurs to the fellow's
mind—is, “Get out, you — Frenchman!”

All this, malgré the rage for foreign lions in London
society. A well-introduced foreigner gets easily into
this, and while he keeps his cabriolet and confines
himself to frequenting soirées and accepting invitations
to dine, he will never suspect that he is not on an
equal footing with any “milor” in London. If he
wishes to be disenchanted, he has only to change his
lodgings from Long's to Great Russell street; or (bitterer
and readier trial) to propose marriage to the
honorable Augusta or Lady Fanny.

Everybody who knows the society of Paris, knows
something of a handsome and very elegant young
baron of the Faubourg St. Germain, who, with small
fortune, very great taste, and greater credit, contrived
to go on very swimmingly as an adorable roué and
vaurien till he was hard upon twenty-five. At the
first crisis in his affairs, the ladies, who hold all the
politics in their laps, got him appointed consul to
Algiers, or minister to Venezuela, and with this pretty
pretext for selling his horses and dressing-gowns, these
cherished articles brought twice their original value,
saved his loyauté, and set him up in fans and monkeys
at his place of exile. A year of this was enough for
the darling of Paris, and not more than a day before
his desolate loves would have ceased to mourn for
him, he galloped into his hotel with a new fashion of
whiskers, a black female slave, and the most delicious
histories of his adventures during the ages he had
been exiled. Down to the earth and their previous
obscurity dropped the rivals who were just beginning
to usurp his glories. A new stud, an indescribable
vehicle, a suite of rooms à l'Africaine, and a mystery,
preserved at some expense, about his negress, kept all
Paris, including his new creditors, in admiring astonishment

for a year. Among the crowd of his worshippers,
not the last or least fervent, were the fair-haired
and glowing beauties who assemble at the levées of
their ambassador in the Rue St. Honoré, and upon
whom le beau Adolphe had looked as pretty savages,
whose frightful toilets and horrid French accent
might be tolerated one evening in the week—vu le
souper!

Eclipses will arrive as calculated by insignificant
astronomers, however, and debts will become due as
presumed by vulgar tradesmen. Le beau Adolphe
began to see another crisis, and betook himself to his
old advisers, who were desolés to the last degree; but
there was a new government, and the blood of the
Faubourg was at a discount. No embassies were to
be had for nothing. With a deep sigh, and a gentle
tone, to spare his feelings as much as possible, his
friend ventures to suggest to him that it will be necessary
to sacrifice himself.

“Ahi! mais comment!”

“Marry one of these bête Anglaises, who drink
you up with their great blue eyes, and are made of
gold!”

Adolphe buried his face in his gold-fringed oriental
pocket-handkerchief; but when the first agony was
passed, his resolution was taken, and he determined to
go to England. The first beautiful creature he should
see, whose funds were enormous and well-invested,
should bear away from all the love, rank, and poverty
of France, the perfumed hand he looked upon.

A flourishing letter, written in a small, cramped
hand, but with a seal on whose breadth of wax and
blazon all the united heraldry of France was interwoven,
arrived, through the ambassador's despatch
box, to the address of Miladi —, Belgrave square,
announcing, in full, that le beau Adolphe was coming
to London to marry the richest heiress in good society;
and as Paris could not spare him more than a
week, he wished those who had daughters to marry,
answering the description, to be bien prévenus of his
visit and errand. With the letter came a compend of
his genealogy, from the man who spoke French in the
confusion of Babel to le dit Baron Adolphe.

To London came the valet of le beau baron, two
days before his master, bringing his slippers and dressing-gown
to be aired after their sea-voyage across the
channel. To London followed the irresistible youth,
cursing, in the politest French, the necessity which
subtracted a week from a life measured with such
“diamond sparks” as his own in Paris. He sat himself
down in his hotel, sent his man Porphyre with his
card to every noble and rich house, whose barbarian
tenants he had ever seen in the Champs Elysées, and
waited the result. Invitations from fair ladies, who
remembered him as the man the French belles were
mad about, and from literary ladies, who wanted his
whiskers and black eyes to give their soirées the necessary
foreign complexion, flowed in on all sides, and
Monsieur Adolphe selected his most mignon cane and
his happiest design in a stocking, and “rendered himself”
through the rain like a martyr.

No offers of marriage the first evening!

None the second!!

None the third!!!

Le beau Adolphe began to think either that English
papas did not propose their daughters to people as in
France; or, perhaps, that the lady whom he had commissioned
to circulate his wishes had not sufficiently
advertised him. She had, however.

He took advice, and found it would be necessary to
take the first step himself. This was disagreeable,
and he said to himself, “Le jeu ne vaut pas le chandelle;”
but his youth was passing, and his English
fortune was at interest.

He went to Almack's and proposed to the first
authenticated fortune that accepted his hand for a
waltz. The young lady first laughed, and then told
her mother, who told her son, who thought it an insult,
and called out le beau Adolphe, very much to the
astonishment of himself and Porphyre. The thing
was explained, and the baron looked about the next
day for one pas si bête. Found a young lady with
half a million sterling, proposed in a morning call,
and was obliged to ring for assistance, his intended
having gone into convulsions with laughing at him.
The story by this time had got pretty well distributed
through the different strata of London society; and
when le beau Adolphe convinced that he would not
succeed with the noble heiresses of Belgrave square,
condescended, in his extremity, to send his heart by
his valet to a rich little vulgarian, who “never had a
grandfather,” and lived in Harley street, he narrowly
escaped being prosecuted for a nuisance, and, Paris
being now in the possession of the enemy, he buried
his sorrows in Belgium. After a short exile his friends
procured him a vice-consulate in some port in the
north sea, and there probably at this moment he sorrowfully
vegetates.

This is not a story founded upon fact, but literally
true. Many of the circumstances came under my own
observation; and the whole thus affords a laughable
example of the esteem in which what an English fox-hunter
would call a “trashy Frenchman” is held in
England, as well as of the travestie produced by transplanting
the usages of one country to another.

Ridiculous as any intimate mixture of English and
French ideas and persons seems to be in London, the
foreign society of itself in that capital is exceedingly
spiritual and agreeable. The various European embassies
and their attachés, with their distinguished
travellers, from their several countries, accidentally
belonging to each; the French and Italians, married
to English noblemen and gentry, and living in London,
and the English themselves, who have become
cosmopolite by residence in other countries, form a
very large society in which mix, on perfectly equal
terms, the first singers of the opera, and foreign musicians
and artists generally. This last circumstance
gives a peculiar charm to these reunions, though it
imparts a pride and haughty bearing to the prima
donna and her fraternity, which is, at least, sometimes
very inconvenient to themselves. The remark recalls
to my mind a scene I once witnessed in London,
which will illustrate the feeling better than an essay
upon it.

I was at one of those private concerts given at an
enormous expense during the opera season, at which
“assisted” Julia Grisi, Rubini, Lablache, Tamburini,
and Ivanhoff. Grisi came in the carriage of a foreign
lady of rank, who had dined with her, and she walked
into the room looking like an empress. She was
dressed in the plainest white, with her glossy hair put
smooth from her brow, and a single white japonica
dropped over one of her temples. The lady who
brought her chaperoned her during the evening, as if
she had been her daughter, and under the excitement
of her own table and the kindness of her friends, she
sung with a rapture and a freshet of glory (if one may
borrow a word from the Mississippi) which set all
hearts on fire. She surpassed her most applauded
hour on the stage—for it was worth her while. The
audience was composed, almost exclusively, of those
who are not only cultivated judges, but who sometimes
repay delight with a present of diamonds.

Lablache shook the house to its foundations in his
turn; Rubini ran through his miraculous compass
with the ease, truth, and melody, for which his singing
is unsurpassed; Tamburini poured his rich and even
fulness on the ear, and Russian Ivanhoff, the one
southern singing-bird who has come out of the north,
wire-drew his fine and spiritual notes, till they who had
been flushed, and tearful, and silent, when the others

had sang, drowned his voice in the poorer applause
of exclamation and surprise.

The concert was over by twelve, the gold and silver
paper bills of the performance were turned into fans, and
every one was waiting till supper should be announced
—the prima donna still sitting by her friend, but surrounded
by foreign attachés, and in the highest elation
at her own success. The doors of an inner suite of
rooms were thrown open at last, and Grisi's cordon of
admirers prepared to follow her in and wait on her at
supper. At this moment, one of the powdered menials
of the house stepped up and informed her very respectfully
that supper was prepared in a separate room for
the singers!

Medea, in her most tragic hour, never stood so
absolutely the picture of hate as did Grisi for a single
instant, in the centre of that aristocratic crowd. Her
chest swelled and rose, her lips closed over her snowy
teeth, and compressed till the blood left them, and, for
myself, I looked unconsciously to see where she would
strike. I knew, then, that there was more than fancy
—there was nature and capability of the real—in the
imaginary passions she plays so powerfully. A laugh
of extreme amusement at the scene from the highborn
woman who had accompanied her, suddenly
turned her humor, and she stopped in the midst of a
muttering of Italian, in which I could distinguish
only the terminations, and, with a sort of theatrical
quickness of transition, joined heartily in her mirth.
It was immediately proposed by this lady, however,
that herself and their particular circle should join the
insulted prima donna at the lower table, and they succeeded
by this manœuvre in retaining Rubini and the
others, who were leaving the house in a most unequivocal
Italian fury.

I had been fortunate enough to be included in the
invitation, and, with one or two foreign diplomatic
men, I followed Grisi and her amused friend to a
small room on a lower floor, that seemed to be the
housekeeper's parlor. Here supper was set for six
(including the man who had played the piano), and
on the side-table stood every variety of wine and fruit,
and there was nothing in the supper, at least, to make
us regret the table we had left. With a most imperative
gesture and rather an amusing attempt at
English, Grisi ordered the servants out of the room,
and locked the door, and from that moment the conversation
commenced and continued in their own
musical, passionate, and energetic Italian. My long
residence in that country had made me at home in it;
every one present spoke it fluently; and I had an
opportunity I might never have again, of seeing with
what abandonment these children of the sun throw
aside rank and distinction (yet without forgetting it),
and join with those who are their superiors in every
circumstance of life, in the gayeties of a chance hour.

Out of their own country these singers would probably
acknowledge no higher rank than that of the kind
and gifted lady who was their guest; yet, with the
briefest apology at finding the room too cold after the
heat of the concert, they put on their cloaks and hats
as a safeguard to their lungs (more valuable to them
than to others); and as most of the cloaks were the
worse for travel, and the hats opera-hats with two
corners, the grotesque contrast with the diamonds of
one lady, and the radiant beauty of the other, may
easily be imagined.

Singing should be hungry work, by the knife and
fork they played; and between the excavations of
truffle pies, and the bumpers of champagne and burgundy,
the words were few. Lablache appeared to be
an established droll, and every syllable he found time
to utter was received with the most unbounded laughter.
Rubini could not recover from the slight he conceived
put upon him and his profession by the separate table;
and he continually reminded Grisi, who by this time
had quite recovered her good humor, that, the night
before, supping at Devonshire house, the duke of
Wellington had held her gloves on one side, while his
grace, their host attended to her on the other.

“E vero!” said Ivanhoff, with a look of modest admiration
at the prima donna.

“E vero, e bravo!” cried Tamburini, with his sepulchral-talking
tone, much deeper than his singing.

“Si, si, si, bravo!” echoed all the company; and
the haughty and happy actress nodded all round with
a radiant smile, and repeated, in her silver tones,
“Grazie! cari amici! grazie!”

As the servants had been turned out, the removalof
the first course was managed in pic-nic fashion;
and when the fruit and fresh bottles of wine were set
upon the table by the attachés, and younger gentlemen,
the health of the princess who honored them by
her presence was proposed in that language, which, it
seems to me, is more capable than all others of expressing
affectionate and respectful devotion. All uncovered
and stood up, and Grisi, with tears in her eyes,
kissed the hand of her benefactress and friend, and
drank her health in silence.

It is a polite and common accomplishment in Italy
to improvise in verse, and the lady I speak of is well
known among her immediate friends for a singular
facility in this beautiful art. She reflected a moment
or two with the moisture in her eyes, and then commenced,
low and soft, a poem, of which it would be
difficult, nay impossible, to convey, in English, an
idea of its music and beauty. It took us back to Italy,
to its heavenly climate, its glorious arts, its beauty and
its ruins, and concluded with a line of which I remember
the sentiment to have been, “out of Italy every
land is exile!”

The glasses were raised as she ceased, and every
one repeated after her, “Fuori d'Italia tutto e esilio!”

“Ma!” cried out the fat Lablache, holding up his
glass of champagne, and looking through it with one
eye, “siamo ben esiliati qua!” and, with a word of
drollery, the party recovered its gayer tone, and the
humor and wit flowed on brilliantly as before.

The house had long been still, and the last carriage
belonging to the company above stairs had rolled from
the door, when Grisi suddenly remembered a bird that
she had lately bought, of which she proceeded to give
us a description, that probably penetrated to every
corner of the silent mansion. It was a mocking-bird,
that had been kept two years in the opera-house, and
between rehearsal and performance had learned parts
of everything it had overheard. It was the property
of the woman who took care of the wardrobes. Grisi
had accidentally seen it, and immediately purchased
it for two guineas. How much of embellishment there
was in her imitations of her treasure I do not know;
but certainly the whole power of her wondrous voice,
passion, and knowledge of music, seemed drunk up at
once in the wild, various, difficult, and rapid mixture
of the capricious melody she undertook. First came,
without the passage which it usually terminates, the
long, throat-down, gurgling, water-toned trill, in which
Rubini (but for the bird and its mistress, it seemed to
me) would have been inimitable: then, right upon it,
as if it were the beginning of a bar, and in the most
unbreathing continuity, followed a brilliant passage
from the Barber of Seville, run into the passionate
prayer of Anna Bolena in her madness, and followed
by the air of “Suoni la tromba intrepida,” the tremendous
duet in the Puritani, between Tamburini and
Lablache. Up to the sky, and down to the earth
again—away with a note of the wildest gladness, and
back upon a note of the most touching melancholy—
if the bird but half equals the imitation of his mistress,
he were worth the jewel in a sultan's turban.

“Giulia!” “Giulietta!” “Giuliettina!” cried out
one and another, as she ceased, expressing in their

Italian diminutives, the love and delight she had inspired
by her incomparable execution.

The stillness of the house in the occasional pauses
of conversation reminded the gay party, at last, that it
was wearing late. The door was unlocked, and the
half-dozen sleepy footmen hanging about the hall were
despatched for the cloaks and carriages; the drowsy
porter was roused from his deep leathern dormeuse,
and opened the door—and broad upon the street lay
the cold gray light of a summer's morning. I declined
an offer to be set down by a friend's cab, and strolled
off to Hyde Park to surprise myself with a sunrise;
balancing the silent rebuke in the fresh and healthy
countenances of early laborers going to their toil,
against the effervescence of a champagne hour, which,
since such come so rarely, may come, for me, with
what untimeliness they please.

2. CHAPTER II.
THE STREETS OF LONDON.

It has been said, that “few men know how to take
a walk.” In London it requires some experience to
know where to take a walk. The taste of the perambulator,
the hour of the day, and the season of the
year, would each affect materially the decision of the
question.

If you are up early—I mean early for London—say
ten o'clock—we would start from your hotel in Bond
street, and hastening through Regent street and the
Quadrant (deserts at that hour), strike into the zigzag
of thronged alleys, cutting traversely from Coventry
street to Covent Garden. The horses on the cabstand
in the Haymarket “are at this hour asleep.”
The late supper-eaters at Dubourg's and the Café de
l'Europe were the last infliction upon their galled
withers, and while dissipation slumbers they may find
an hour to hang their heads upon the bit, and forget
gall and spavin in the sunshiny drowse of morning.
The cabman, too, nods on his perch outside, careless
of the custom of “them as pays only their fare,” and
quite sure not to get “a gemman to drive” at that unseasonable
hour. The “waterman” (called a “water
man,” as he will tell you, “because he gives hay to
the 'orses”) leans against the gas-lamp at the corner,
looking with a vacant indifference of habit at the
splendid coach with its four blood bays just starting from
the Brighton coach-office in the Crescent. The side-walk
of Coventry street, usually radiant with the
flaunting dresses of the fail and vicious, is now sober
with the dull habiliments of the early-stirring and the
poor. The town (for this is town, not city) beats its
more honest pulse. Industry alone is abroad.

Rupert street on the left is the haunt of shabby-genteel
poverty. To its low-doored chop-houses steal
the more needy loungers of Regent street, and in confined
and greasy, but separate and exclusive boxes,
they cat their mutton-chop and potato, unseen of their
gayer acquaintances. Here comes the half-pay officer,
whose half-pay is halved or quartered with wife
and children, to drink his solitary half-pint of sherry,
and over a niggardly portion of soup and vegetables,
recall, as well as he may in imagination, the gay dinners
at mess, and the companions now grown cold—in
death or worldliness! Here comes the sharper out
of luck, the debtor newly out of prison. And here
comes many a “gay fellow about town,” who will dine
to-morrow, or may have dined yesterday, at a table of
unsparing luxury, but who now turns up Rupert street
at seven, cursing the mischance that draws upon his
own slender pocket for the dinner of to-day. Here
are found the watchful host and the suspicious waiter
—the closely-measured wine, and the more closely-
measured attention—the silent and shrinking company,
the close-drawn curtain, the suppressed call for
the bill, the lingering at the table of those who value
the retreat and the shelter to recover from the embarrassing
recognition and the objectless saunter through
the streets. The ruin, the distress, the despair, that
wait so closely upon the heels of fashion, pass here
with their victims. It is the last step within the
bounds of respectability. They still live “at the West
end,” while they dine in Rupert street. They may
still linger in the park, or stroll in Bond street, till
their better-fledged friends flit to dinner at the clubs,
and within a stone's throw of the luxurious tables and
the gay mirth they so bitterly remember, sit down to
an ill-dressed meal, and satisfy the calls of hunger in
silence. Ah, the outskirts of the bright places in life
are darker for the light that shines so near them!
How much sweeter is the coarsest meal shared with
the savage in the wilderness, than the comparative
comfort of cooked meats and wine in a neighborhood
like this!

Come through this narrow lane into Leicester
square. You cross here the first limit of the fashionable
quarter. The Sablonière hotel is in this square;
but you may not give it as your address unless you
are a foreigner. This is the home of that most miserable
fish out of water—a Frenchman in London.
A bad French hotel, and two or three execrable
French restaurants, make this spot of the metropolis
the most habitable to the exiled habitué of the Palais
Royal. Here he gets a mocking imitation of what, in
any possible degree, is better than the sacré biftek, or
the half-raw mutton-chop and barbarous boiled potato!
Here he comes forth, if the sunshine perchance for
one hour at noon, and paces up and down on the side-walk,
trying to get the better of his bile and his bad
breakfast. Here waits for him at three, the shabby,
but most expensive remise cab, hired by the day for
as much as would support him a month in Paris.
Leicester square is the place for conjurors, bird-fanciers,
showmen, and generally for every foreign
novelty in the line of nostrums and marvels. If there
is a dwarf in London, or a child with two heads, or a
learned pig, you will see one or all in that building, so
radiant with placards, and so thronged with beggars.

Come on through Cranbourne alley. Old clothes,
second-hand stays, idem shawls, capes, collars, and
ladies' articles of ornamental wear generally: cheap
straw-bonnets, old books, gingerbread, and stationery!
Look at this once-expensive and finely-worked muslin
cape! What fair shoulders did it adorn when these
dingy flowers were new—when this fine lace-edging
bounded some heaving bosom, perhaps, like frost-work
on the edge of a snow-drift. It has been the property
of some minion of elegance and wealth, vicious or virtuous,
and by what hard necessity came it here? Ten
to one, could it speak, its history would keep us standing
at this shop window, indifferent alike to the curious
glances of these passing damsels and the gentle
eloquence of the Jew on the other side, who pays us
the unflattering compliment of suggesting an improvement
in our toilet by the purchase of the half-worn
habiliments he exposes.

I like Cranbourne alley, because it reminds me of
Venice. The half-daylight between the high and
overhanging roofs, the just audible hum of voices and
occupation from the different shops, the shuffling of
hasty feet over the smooth flags, and particularly the
absence of horses and wheels, make it (in all but the
damp air and the softer speech) a fair resemblance to
those close passages in the rear of the canals between
St. Mark's and the Rialto. Then I like studying a
pawnbroker's window, and I like ferreting in the old
book-stalls that abound here. It is a good lesson in
humility for an author to see what he can be bought
for in Cranbourne alley. Some “gentle reader,” who

has paid a guinea and a half for you, has resold you
for two-and-sixpence. For three shillings you may
have the three volumes, “as good as new,” and the
shopman, by his civility, pleased to be rid of it on the
terms. If you would console yourself, however, buy
Milton for one-and-sixpence, and credit your vanity
with the eighteen-pence of the remainder.

The labyrinth of alleys between this and Covent
Garden, are redolent of poverty and pot-houses. In
crossing St. Martin's lane, life appears to have become
suddenly a struggle and a calamity. Turbulent
and dirty women are everywhere visible through the
open windows: the half-naked children at the doors
look already care-worn and incapable of a smile; and
the men throng the gin-shops, bloated, surly, and repulsive.
Hurry through this leprous spot in the vast
body of London, and let us emerge in the Strand.

You would think London Strand the main artery
of the world. I suppose there is no thoroughfare on
the face of the earth where the stream of human life
runs with a tide so overwhelming. In any other
street in the world you catch the eye of the passer-by.
In the Strand, no man sees another except as a solid
body, whose contact is to be avoided. You are safe
nowhere on the pavement without all the vigilance of
your senses. Omnibuses and cabs, drays, carriages,
wheelbarrows, and porters, beset the street. Newspaper-hawkers,
pickpockets, shop-boys, coal-heavers,
and a perpetual and selfish crowd dispute the sidewalk.
If you venture to look at a print in a shop-window,
you arrest the tide of passengers, who immediately
walk over you; and, if you stop to speak with a friend,
who by chance has run his nose against yours rather
than another man's, you impede the way, and are
made to understand it by the force of jostling. If you
would get into an omnibus you are quarrelled for by
half-a-dozen who catch your eye at once, and after
using all your physical strength and most of your discrimination,
you are most probably embarked in the
wrong one, and are going at ten miles the hour to
Blackwell, when you are bound to Islington. A
Londoner passes his life in learning the most adroit
mode of threading a crowd, and escaping compulsory
journeys in cabs and omnibuses; and dine with any
man in that metropolis from twenty-five to sixty years
of age, and he will entertain you, from the soup to the
Curacoa, with his hair-breadth escapes and difficulties
with cads and coach-drivers.

3. CHAPTER III.
LONDON.

A Londoner, if met abroad, answers very vaguely
any questions you may be rash enough to put to him
about “the city.” Talk to him of “town,” and he
would rather miss seeing St. Peter's, than appear ignorant
of any person, thing, custom, or fashion, concerning
whom or which you might have a curiosity.
It is understood all over the world that the “city” of
London is that crowded, smoky, jostling, omnibus and
cab-haunted portion of the metropolis of England
which lies east of Temple Bar. A kind of debatable
country, consisting of the Strand, Covent Garden, and
Tottenham Court road, then intervenes, and west of
these lies what is called “the town.” A transit from
one to the other by an inhabitant of either is a matter
of some forethought and provision. If milord, in
Carlton Terrace, for example, finds it necessary to
visit his banker in Lombard street, he orders—not the
blood bay and the cane tilbury which he is wont to
drive in the morning—but the crop roadster in the
cab, with the night harness, and Poppet his tiger in
plain hat and gaiters. If the banker in Lombard
street, on the contrary, emerges from the twilight of
his counting-house to make a morning call on the
wife of some foreign correspondent, lodging at the
Clarendon, he steps into a Piccadilly omnibus, not in
the salt-and-pepper creations of his Cheapside tailor,
but (for he has an account with Stultz also for the
west-end business) in a claret-colored frock of the last
fashion at Crockford's, a fresh hat from New Bond
street, and (if he is young) a pair of cherished boots
from the Rue St. Honoré. He sits very clear of his
neighbors on the way, and, getting out at the crossing
at Farrance's, the pastry cook, steps in and indulges
in a soup, and then walks slowly past the clubs to his
rendezvous, at a pace that would ruin his credit irrevocably
if practised a mile to the eastward. The difference
between the two migrations is, simply, that
though the nobleman affects the plainness of the city;
he would not for the world be taken for a citizen;
while the junior partner of the house of Firkins and
Co. would feel unpleasantly surprised if he were not
supposed to be a member of the clubs, lounging to a
late breakfast.

There is a “town” manner, too, and a “city” manner,
practised with great nicety by all who frequent
both extremities of London. Nothing could be in
more violent contrast, for example, than the manner
of your banker when you dine with him at his country-house,
and the same person when you meet him
on the narrow sidewalk in Throgmorton street. If you
had seen him first in his suburban retreat, you would
wonder how the deuce such a cordial, joyous, spare-nothing
sort of good fellow could ever reduce himself
to the cautious proportions of Change alley. If you
met him first in Change alley, on the contrary, you
would wonder, with quite as much embarrassment,
how such a cold, two-fingered, pucker-browed slave
of mammon could ever, by any license of interpretation,
be called a gentleman. And when you have
seen him in both places, and know him well, if he is
a favorable specimen of his class, you will be astonished
still more to see how completely he will sustain
both characters—giving you the cold shoulder, in a
way that half insults you, at twelve in the morning,
and putting his home, horses, cellar, and servants,
completely at your disposal at four in the afternoon.
Two souls inhabit the banker's body, and each is apparently
sole tenant in turn. As the Hampstead early
coach turns the corner by St. Giles's, on its way to
the bank, the spirit of gain enters into the bosom of
the junior Firkins, ejecting, till the coach passes the
same spot at three in the afternoon, the more gentlemanly
inhabitants. Between those hours, look to
Firkins for no larger sentiment than may be written
upon the blank lines of a note of hand, and expect no
courtesy that would occupy the head or hands of the
junior partner longer than one second by St. Paul's.
With the broad beam of sunshine that inundates the
returning omnibus emerging from Holborn into Tottenham
Court road, the angel of port wine and green
fields passes his finger across Firkins's brow, and
presto! the man is changed. The sight of a long
and narrow strip of paper, sticking from his neighbor's
pocket, depreciates that person in his estimation, he
criticises the livery and riding of the groom trotting
past, says some very true things of the architecture of
the new cottage on the roadside, and is landed at the
end of his own shrubbery, as pleasant and joyous-looking
a fellow as you would meet on that side of
London. You have ridden out to dine with him, and
as he meets you on the lawn, there is still an hour to
dinner, and a blood horse spatters round from the stables,
which you are welcome to drive to the devil if
you like, accompanied either by Mrs. Firkins or himself;
or, if you like it better, there are Mrs. Firkins's
two ponies, and the chaise holds two and the tiger.
Ten to one Mrs. Firkins is a pretty woman, and has

her whims, and when you are fairly on the road, she
proposes to leave the soup and champagne at home
to equalize their extremes of temperature, drive to
Whitehall Stairs, take boat and dine, extempore, at
Richmond. And Firkins, to whom it will be at least
twenty pounds out of pocket, claps his hands and
says—“By Jove, it's a bright thought! touch up the
near pony, Mrs. Firkins.” And away you go, Firkins
amusing himself the whole way from Hampstead to
Richmond, imagining the consternation of his cook
and butler when nobody comes to dine.

There is an aristocracy in the city, of course, and
Firkins will do business with twenty persons in a day
whom he could never introduce to Mrs. Firkins. The
situation of that lady with respect to her society is
(she will tell you in confidence) rather embarrassing.
There are many very worthy persons, she will say,
who represent large sums of money or great interests
in trade, whom it is necessary to ask to the Lodge,
but who are far from being ornamental to her new
blue satin boudoir. She has often proposed to Firkins
to have them labelled in tens and thousands according
to their fortunes; that if, by any unpleasant
accident, Lord Augustus should meet them there, he
might respect them like = in algebra, for what they
stand for. But as it is, she is really never safe in calculating
on a societé choisie to dine or sup. When
Hook or Smith is just beginning to melt out, or Lady
Priscilla is in the middle of a charade, in walks Mr.
Snooks, of the foreign house of Snooks, Son, and
Co.—“unexpectedly arrived from Lisbon, and run
down without ceremony to call on his respectable correspondent.”

“Isn't it tiresome?”

“Very, my dear madam! But then you have the
happiness of knowing that you promote very essentially
your husband's interests, and when he has made
a plum —”

“Yes, very true; and then, to be sure, Firkins has
had to build papa a villa, and buy my brother Wilfred
a commission, and settle an annuity on my aunt, and
fit out my youngest brother Bob to India; and when I
think of what he does for my family, why I don't mind
making now and then a sacrifice; but, after all, it's a
great evil not to be able to cultivate one's own class
of society.”

And so murmurs Mrs. Firkins, who is the prettiest
and sweetest creature in the world, and really loves
the husband she married for his fortune; but as the
prosperity of Haman was nothing while Mordecai sat
at the gate, it is nothing to Mrs. Firkins that her father
lives in luxury, that her brothers are portioned
off, and that she herself can have blue boudoirs and
pony-chaises ad libitum, while Snooks, Son, and Co.,
may at any moment break in upon the charade of
Lady Priscilla!

There is a class of business people in London,
mostly bachelors, who have wisely declared themselves
independent of the West End, and live in a style of
their own in the dark courts and alleys about the Exchange,
but with a luxury not exceeded even in the
silken recesses of May Fair. You will sometimes
meet at the opera a young man of decided style, unexceptionable
in his toilet, and quiet and gentleman-like
in his address, who contents himself with the side
alley of the pit, and looks at the bright circles of beauty
and fashion about him with an indifference it is difficult
to explain. Make his acquaintance by chance,
and he takes you home to supper in a plain chariot on
the best springs Long Acre can turn out; and while
you are speculating where, in the name of the prince
of darkness, these narrow streets will bring you to,
you are introduced through a small door into saloons,
perfect in taste and luxury, where, ten to one, you sup
with the prima donna, or la première danseuse, but
certainly with the most polished persons of your own
sex, not one of whom, though you may have passed a
life in London, you ever met in society before. There
are, I doubt not, in that vast metropolis, hundreds of
small circles of society, composed thus of persons
refined by travel and luxury, whose very existence is
unsuspected by the fine gentleman at the West End,
but who, in the science of living agreeably, are almost
as well entitled to rank among the cognoscenti as Lord
Sefton or the “member for Finsbury.”

4. CHAPTER IV.
LONDON.

You return from your ramble in “the city” by two
o'clock. A bright day “toward,” and the season in
its palmy time. The old veterans are just creeping
out upon the portico of the United Service club, having
crammed “The Times” over their late breakfast,
and thus prepared their politics against surprise for
the day; the broad steps of the Athenæum are as yet
unthronged by the shuffling feet of the literati, whose
morning is longer and more secluded than that of idler
men, but who will be seen in swarms, at four, entering
that superb edifice in company with the employés and
politicians who affect their society. Not a cab stands
yet at the “Travellers,” whose members, noble or
fashionable, are probably at this hour in their dressing-gowns
of brocade or shawl of the orient, smoking
a hookah over Balzac's last romance, or pursuing at
this (to them) desert time of day some adventure which
waited upon their love and leisure. It is early yet for
the park; but the equipages you will see by-and-by
“in the ring” are standing now at Howell and James's,
and while the high-bred horses are fretting at the
door, and the liveried footmen lean on their gold-headed
sticks on the pavement, the fair creature whose
slightest nod these trained minions and their fine-limbed
animals live to obey, sits upon a three-legged
stool within, and in the voice which is a spell upon all
hearts, and with eyes to which rank and genius turn
like Persians to the sun, discusses with a pert clerk
the quality of stockings!

Look at these equipages and their appointments!
Mark the exquisite balance of that claret-bodied chariot
upon its springs—the fine sway of its sumptuous hammer-cloth
in which the un-smiling coachman sits
buried to the middle—the exact fit of the saddles, setting
into the curve of the horses' backs so as not break,
to the most careless eye, the fine lines which exhibit
action and grace! See how they stand together,
alert, fiery, yet obedient to the weight of a silken
thread; and as the coachman sees you studying his
turn-out, observe the imperceptible feel of the reins
and the just-visible motion of his lips, conveying to
the quick ears of his horses the premonitory, and, to
us, inaudible sound, to which, without drawing a
hair's breadth upon the traces, they paw their fine
hoofs, and expand their nostrils impatiently! Come
nearer, and find a speck or a raised hair, if you can,
on these glossy coats! Observe the nice fitness of
the dead-black harness, the modest crest upon the
panel, the delicate picking out of white in the wheels,
and, if you will venture upon a freedom in manners,
look in through the window of rose-teinted glass, and
see the splendid cushions and the costly and perfect
adaptation of the interior. The twinmated footmen
fly to the carriage-door, and the pomatumed clerk who
has enjoyed a tête-à-tête for which a prince-royal might
sigh, and an ambassador negotiate in vain, hands in
his parcel. The small foot presses on the carpeted
step, the airy vehicle yields lightly and recovers from
the slight weight of the descending form, the coachman
inclines his ear for the half-suppressed order

from the footman, and off whirls the admirable structure,
compact, true, steady, but magically free and
fast—as if horses, footmen, and chariot were but the
parts of some complicated centaur—some swift-moving
monster upon legs and wheels!

Walk on a little farther to the Quadrant. Here
commences the most thronged promenade in London.
These crescent colonnades are the haunt of foreigners
on the lookout for amusement, and of strangers in the
metropolis generally. You will seldom find a town-bred
man there, for he prefers haunting his clubs; or,
if he is not a member of them, he avoids lounging
much in the Quadrant, lest he should appear to have
no other resort. You will observe a town dandy
getting fidgety after his second turn in the Quadrant,
while you will meet the same Frenchman there from
noon till dusk, bounding his walk by those columns as
if they were the bars of a cage. The western side
toward Piccadilly is the thoroughfare of the honest
passer-by; but under the long portico opposite, you
will meet vice in every degree, and perhaps more
beauty than on any other pavé in the world. It is
given up to the vicious and their followers by general
consent. To frequent it, or to be seen loitering there
at all, is to make but one impression on the mind of
those who may observe you.

The two sides of Regent street continue to partake
of this distinction to the end. Go up on the left, and
you meet the sober citizen perambulating with his
wife, the lady followed by her footman, the grave and
the respectable of all classes. Go up on the other,
and in color and mien it is the difference between a
grass-walk and a bed of tulips. What proof is here
that beauty is dangerous to its possessor! It is said
commonly of Regent street, that it shows more beauty
in an hour than could be found in all the capitals of
the continent. It is the beauty, however, of brilliant
health—of complexion and freshness, more than of
sentiment or classic correctness. The English features,
at least in the middle and lower ranks, are seldom
good, though the round cheek, the sparkling lip, the
soft blue eyes and hair of dark auburn, common as
health and youth, produce the effect of high and almost
universal beauty on the eye of the stranger. The
rarest thing in these classes is a finely-turned limb,
and to the clumsiness of their feet and ankles must be
attributed the want of grace usually remarked in their
movements.

Regent street has appeared to me the greatest and
most oppressive solitude in the world. In a crowd of
business men, or in the thronged and mixed gardens
of the continent, the pre-occupation of others is less
attractive, or at least, more within our reach, if we
would share in it. Here, it is wealth beyond competition,
exclusiveness and indifference perfectly unapproachable.
In the cold and stern mien of the
practised Londoner, it is difficult for a stranger not to
read distrust, and very difficult for a depressed mind
not to feel a marked repulsion. There is no solitude,
after all, like the solitude of cities.

“O dear, dear London” (says the companion of
Asmodeus on his return from France), “dear even in
October! Regent street, I salute you! Bond street,
my good fellow, how are you? And you, oh, beloved
Oxford street, whom the opium-eater called `stony-hearted,'
and whom I, eating no opium, and speaking
as I find, shall ever consider the most kindly and maternal
of all streets—the street of the middle classes—
busy without uproar, wealthy without ostentation.
Ah, the pretty ankles that trip along thy pavement!
Ah! the odd country-cousin bonnets that peer into
thy windows, which are lined with cheap yellow shawls,
price one pound four shillings, marked in the corner!
Ah! the brisk young lawyers flocking from their quarters
at the back of Holborn! Ah! the quiet old ladies,
living in Duchess street, and visiting thee with their
eldest daughters in the hope of a bargain! Ah, the
bumpkins from Norfolk just disgorged by the Bull and
Mouth—the soldiers—the milliners—the Frenchmen
—the swindlers—the porters with four-post beds on
their backs, who add the excitement of danger to that of
amusement! The various shifting, motley group that
belong to Oxford street, and Oxford street alone! What
thoroughfares equal thee in the variety of human
specimens! in the choice of objects for remark, satire,
admiration! Besides, the other streets seem chalked
out for a sect—narrow-minded and devoted to a coterie.
Thou alone art catholic—all-receiving. Regent street
belongs to foreigners, cigars, and ladies in red silk,
whose characters are above scandal. Bond street belongs
to dandies and picture-dealers. St. James's
street to club loungers and young men in the guards,
with mustaches properly blackened by the cire of
Mr. Delcroix; but thou, Oxford street, what class can
especially claim thee as its own? Thou mockest at
oligarchies; thou knowest nothing of select orders!
Thou art liberal as air—a chartered libertine; accepting
the homage of all, and retaining the stamp of
none. And to call thee `stony-hearted!'—certainly
thou art so to beggars—to people who have not the
WHEREWITHAL. But thou wouldst not be so respectable
if thou wert not capable of a certain reserve to
paupers. Thou art civil enough, in all conscience,
to those who have a shilling in their pocket—those
who have not, why do they live at all?”

5. CHAPTER V.
LONDON.

It is near four o'clock, and in Bond street you
might almost walk on the heads of livery-servants—
at every stride stepping over the heads of two ladies
and a dandy exclusive. Thoroughfare it is none, for
the carriages are creeping on, inch by inch, the blood-horses
“marking time,” the coachman watchful for
his panels and whippletrees, and the lady within her
silken chariot, lounging back, with her eyes upon the
passing line, neither impatient nor surprised at the
delay, for she came there on purpose. Between the
swaying bodies of the carriages, hesitating past, she
receives the smiles and recognitions of all her male
acquaintances; while occasionally a female ally (for
allies against the rest of the sex are as necessary in
society to women, as in war to monarchs)—occasionally,
I say, a female ally announced by the crest upon
the blinker of an advancing horse, arrives opposite her
window, and, with only the necessary delay in passing,
they exchange, perhaps, inquiries for health, but, certainly,
programmes, comprehensive though brief, for
the prosecution of each other's loves or hates. Occasionally
a hack cab, seduced into attempting Bond
street by some momentary opening, finds itself closed
in, forty deep, by chariots, butckas, landaus, and family
coaches; and amid the imperturbable and unanswering
whips of the hammercloth, with a passenger
who is losing the coach by the delay, he must wait,
will-he-nill-he, till some “pottering” dowager has
purchased the old lord his winter flannels, or till the
countess of Loiter has said all she has to say to the
guardsman whom she has met accidentally at Pluck-rose,
the perfumer's. The three tall fellows, with
gold sticks, would see the entire plebeian population
of London thrice-sodden in vitriol, before they would
advance miladi's carriage a step, or appear to possess
eyes or ears for the infuriated cabman.

Bond street, at this hour, is a study for such observers,
as, having gone through an apprenticeship of
criticism upon all the other races and grades of men
and gentlemen in the world, are now prepared to study

their species in its highest fashionable phase—that of
“nice persons” at the West End. The Oxford-street
“swell,” and the Regent-street dandy, if seen here,
are out of place. The expressive word “quiet” (with
its present London signification), defines the dress,
manner, bow, and even physiognomy, of every true
denizen of St. James's and Bond street. The great
principle among men of the clubs, in all these particulars,
is to subdue—to deprive their coats, hats, and
manners, of everything sufficiently marked to be caricatured
by the satirical or imitated by the vulgar.
The triumph of style seems to be that the lines which
define it shall be imperceptible to the common eye—
that it shall require the difficult education which creates
it to know its form and limit. Hence an almost
universal error with regard to English gentlemen—
that they are repulsive and cold. With a thousand
times the heart and real politeness of the Frenchman,
they meet you with the simple and unaffected address
which would probably be that of shades in Elysium,
between whom (we may suppose) there is no longer
etiquette or concealment. The only exceptions to
this rule in London, are, first and alone, Count—,
whose extraordinary and original style, marked as it
is, is inimitable by any man of less brilliant talents
and less beauty of person, and the king's guardsmen,
who are dandies by prescriptive right, or, as it were,
professionally. All other men who are members of
Brooks's and the Traveller's, and frequent Bond street
in the flush of the afternoon, are what would be called
in America, plain, unornamental, and, perhaps, ill-dressed
individuals, who would strike you more by the
absence than the possession of all the peculiarities
which we generally suppose marks a “picked man of
countries.” In America, particularly, we are liable to
error on this point, as, of the great number of our
traveliers for improvement, scarce one in a thousand
remains longer in London than to visit the tower and
the Thames tunnel. The nine hundred and ninety-nine
reside principally, and acquire all they get of foreign
manner and style, at Paris—the very most artificial,
corrupt, and affected school for gentlemen in the
polite world.

Prejudice against any one country is an illiberal
feeling, which common reflection should, and which
enlightened travel usually does, entirely remove.
There is a vulgar prejudice against the English in
almost all countries, but more particularly in ours,
which blinds its entertainers to much that is admirable,
and deprives them of the good drawn from the
best models. The troop of scurrilous critics, the class
of English bagmen, and errant vulgarians of all kinds,
and the industriously-blown coals of old hostilities,
are barriers which an educated mind may well overlook,
and barriers beyond which lie, no doubt, the best
examples of true civilization and refinement the world
ever saw. But we are getting into an essay when we
should be turning down Bruton street, on our way to
the park, with all the fashion of Bond street and May
Fair.

May Fair! what a name for the core of dissipated
and exclusive London! A name that brings with it
only the scent of crushed flowers in a green field, of a
pole wreathed with rose, booths crowded with dancing
peasant-girls, and nature in its holyday! This—to
express the costly, the courtlike, the so-called “heartless”
precinct of fashion and art, in their most authentic
and envied perfection. Mais, les extrêmes se touchent,
and, perhaps, there is more nature in May Fair
than in Rose Cottage or Honeysuckle Lodge.

We stroll on through Berkeley square, by Chesterfield
and Curzon streets to the park gate. What an
aristocratic quiet regins here! How plain are the exteriors
of these houses: how unexpressive these doors,
without a name, of the luxury and high-born pride
within! At the open window of the hall sit the butler
and footman, reading the morning paper, while they
wait to dispense the “not at home” to callers not disappointed.
The rooks are noisy in the old trees of
Chesterfield house. The painted window-screens of
the probably still-slumbering Count —, in his bachelor's
den, are closely drawn, and, as we pass Seymour
place, a crowd of gay cabs and diplomatic chariots,
drawn up before the dark-green door at the farther extremity,
announce to you the residence of one whose
morning and evening levées are alike thronged by distinction
and talent—the beautiful Lady —.

This short turn brings us to the park, which is rapidly
filling with vehicles of every fashion and color,
and with pedestrians and horsemen innumerable. No
hackney-coach, street-cab, cart, or pauper, is allowed
to pass the porters at the several gates: the road is
macadamized and watered, and the grass within the
ring is fresh and verdant. The sun here triumphs
partially over the skirt of London smoke, which sways
backward and forward over the chimneys of Park lane,
and, as far as it is possible so near the dingy halo of
the metropolis, the gay occupants of these varied conveyances
“take the air.”

Let us stand by the railing a moment, and see what
comes by. This is the field of display for the coachman,
who sits upon his sumptuous hammercloth,
and takes more pride in his horses than their owner,
and considers them, if not like his own honor and
blood, very like his own property. Watch the delicate
handling of his ribands, the affected nonchalance of
his air, and see how perfectly, how admirably, how
beautifully, move his blood horses, and how steadily
and well follows the compact carriage! Within (it is
a dark-green calêche, and the liveries are drab, with
red edgings) sits the oriental form and bright spiritual
face of a banker's wife, the daughter of a noble race,
who might have been, but was not, sacrificed in “marrying
into the finance,” and who soars up into the sky
of happiness, like the unconscious bird that has escaped
the silent arrow of the savage, as if her destiny
could not but have been thus fulfilled. Who follows?
D'Israeli, alone in his cab; thoughtful, melancholy,
disappointed in his political schemes, and undervaluing
his literary success, and expressing, in his scholar-like
and beautiful profile, as he passes us, both the thirst
at his heart and the satiety at his lips. The livery of
his “tiger” is neglected, and he drives like a man who
has to choose between running and being run against,
and takes that which leaves him the most leisure for reflection.
Poor D'Israeli! With a kind and generous
heart, talents of the most brilliant order, an ambition
which consumes his soul, and a father who expects
everything from his son; lost for the want of a tact
common to understandings fathoms deep below his
own, and likely to drive in Hyde Park forty years
hence, if he die not of the corrosion of disappointment,
no more distinguished than now, and a thousand times
more melancholy.

An open barouche follows, drawn by a pair of dark
bays, the coachman and footman in suits of plain gray,
and no crest on the panels. A lady, of remarkable
small person, sits, with the fairest foot ever seen, just
peeping from under a cashmere, on the forward cushion,
and from under her peculiarly plain and small
bonnet burn, in liquid fire, the most lambent and
spiritual eyes that night and sleep ever hid from the
world. She is a niece of Napoleon, married to an
English nobleman; and beside her sits her father,
who refused the throne of Tuscany, a noble-looking
man, with an expression of calm and tranquil resignation
in his face, unusually plain in his exterior, and
tess alive than most of the gay promenaders to the
bright scene passing about him. He will play in the
charade at his daughter's soiréc in the evening, however,
and forget his exile and his misfortunes; for he
is a fond father and a true philosopher.

6. CHAPTER VI.
LONDON.

If you dine with all the world at seven, you have
still an hour or more for Hyde Park, and “Rotten
Row:” this half mile between Oxford street and Piccadilly,
to which the fashion of London confines itself,
as if the remainder of the bright green park were forbidden
ground, is now fuller than ever. There is the
advantage in this condensed drive, that you are sure to
see your friends here, earlier or later, in every day—
(for wherever you are to go with horses, the conclusion
of the order to the coachman is, “home by the
park”)—and then if there is anything new in the way
of an arrival, a pretty foreigner, or a fresh face from
the country, some dandy's tiger leaves his master at
the gate, and brings him at his club, over his coffee,
all possible particulars of her name, residence, condition,
and whatever other circumstances fall in his
way. By dropping in at Lady —'s soirèe in the
evening, if you were interested in the face, you may
inform yourself of more than you would have drawn
in a year's acquaintance from the subject of your curiosity.
Malapropos to my remark, here comes a
turn-out, concerning which and its occupant I have
made many inquiries in vain—the pale-colored chariot,
with a pair of grays, dashing toward us from the Seymour
gate. As it comes by you will see, sitting quite
in the corner, and in a very languid and elegant attitude,
a slight woman of perhaps twenty-four, dressed
in the simplest white cottage-bonnet that could be
made, and, with her head down, looking up through
heavy black eyelashes, as if she but waited till she had
passed a particular object, to resume some engrossing
revery. Her features are Italian, and her attitude,
always the same indolent one, has also a redolence of
that land of repose; but there has been an English
taste, and no ordinary one, in the arrangement of that
equipage and its dependants; and by the expression,
never mistaken in London, of the well-appointed menials,
you may be certain that both master and mistress
(if master there be), exact no common deference.
She is always alone, and not often seen in the park;
and whenever I have inquired of those likely to know,
I found that she had been observed, but could get no
satisfactory information. She disappears by the side
toward the Regent's park, and when once out of the
gate, her horses are let off at a speed that distances
all pursuit that would not attract observatin. There
is a look of “Who the deuce can it be?” in the faces
of all the mounted dandies, wherever she passes, for
it is a face which once seen is not easily thought of
with indifference, or forgotten. Immense as London
is, a woman of anything like extraordinary beauty
would find it difficult to live there incognito a week;
and how this fair incomprehensible has contrived to
elude the curiosity of Hyde-park admiration, for nearly
two years, is rather a marvel. There she goes, however,
and without danger of being arrested for a flying
highwayman you could scarcely follow.

It is getting late, and, as we turn down toward the
clubs, we shall meet the last and most fashionable
comers to the park. Here is a horseman, surrounded
with half a dozen of the first young noblemen of England.
He rides a light bay horse with dark legs,
whose delicate veins are like the tracery of silken
threads beneath the gloss of his limbs, and whose
small, animated head seems to express the very essence
of speed and fire. He is the most beautiful
park horse in England; and behind follows a high-bred
milk-white pony, ridden by a small, faultlessly-dressed
groom, who sits the spirited and fretting creature
as if he anticipated every movement before the
fine hoof rose from the ground. He rides admirably,
but his master is more of a study. A luxuriance of
black curls escapes from the broad rim of a peculiar
hat, and forms a relief to the small and sculpture-like
profile of a face as perfect, by every rule of beauty, as
the Greek Antinous. It would be too feminine but
for the muscular neck and broad chest from which
the head rises, and the indications of great personal
strength in the Herculean shoulders. His loose coat
would disguise the proportions of a less admirable
figure; but, au reste, his dress is without fold or
wrinkle, and no figurante of the ballet ever showed
finer or more skilfully developed limbs. He is one
of the most daring in this country of bold riders; but
modifies the stiff English school of equestrianism,
with the ease and grace of that of his own country.
His manner, though he is rather Angtomane, is in
striking contrast to the grave and quiet air of his companions;
and between his recognitions, right and left,
to the passing promenaders, he laughs and amuses
himself with the joyous and thoughtless gayety of a
child. Acknowledged by all his acquaintances to possess
splendid talents, this “observed of all observers”
is a singular instance of a modern Sybarite—content
to sacrifice time, opportunity, and the highest advantages
of mind and body, to the pleasure of the moment.
He seems exempt from all the usual penalities of such
a career. Nothing seems to do its usual work on him
—care, nor exhaustion, nor recklessness, nor the disapprobation
of the heavy-handed opinion of the world.
Always gay, always brilliant, ready to embark at any
moment, or at any hazard, in anything that will amuse
an hour, one wonders how and where such an unwonted
meteor will disappear.

But here comes a carriage without hammercloth or
liveries; one of those shabby-genteel conveyances,
hired by the week, containing three or four persons in
the highest spirits, all talking and gesticulating at once.
As the carriage passes the “beau-knot” (as —, and
his inseparable troop are sometimes called), one or
two of the dandies spur up, and resting their hands on
the windows, offer the compliments of the day to the
only lady within, with the most earnest looks of admiration.
The gentlemen in her company become
silent, and answer to the slight bows of the cavaliers
with foreign monosyllables, and presently the coachman
whips up once more, the horsemen drop off, and
the excessive gayety of the party resumes its tone.
You must have been struck, as the carriage passed,
with the brilliant whiteness and regularity of the lady's
teeth, and still more with the remarkable play of her
lips, which move as if the blood in them were imprisoned
lightning. (The figure is strong, but nothing
else conveys to my own mind what I am trying to describe.)
Energy, grace, fire, rapidity, and a capability
of utter abandoment to passion and expression, live
visibly on those lips. Her eyes are magnificent. Her
nose is regular, with nostrils rimmed round with an
expansive nerve, that gives them constantly the kind
of animation visible in the head of a fiery Arab. Her
complexion is one of those which, dark and wanting
in brilliance by day, light up at night with an alabaster
fairness; and when the glossy black hair, which is
now put away so plainly under her simple bonnet,
falls over her shoulders in heavy masses, the contrast
is radiant. The gentlemen in that carriage are Rubini,
Lablache, and a gentleman who passes for the lady's
uncle; and the lady is Julia Grisi.

The smoke over the heart of the city begins to
thicken into darkness, the gas-lamps are shooting up,
bright and star-like, along the Kensington road, and
the last promenaders disappear. And now the world
of London, the rich and gay portion of it at least,
enjoy that which compensates them for the absence
of the bright nights and skies of Italy—a climate
within doors, of comfort and luxury, unknown under
brighter heavens.

7. CHAPTER VII.
ISLE OF WIGHT—RYDE.

“Instead of parboiling you with a soirée or a dinner,”
said a sensible and kind friend, who called on us
at Ryde, “I shall make a pic-nic to Netley.” And on
a bright, breezy morning of June, a merry party of
some twenty of the inhabitants of the green Isle of
Wight shot away from the long pier, in one of the
swift boats of those waters, with a fair wind for Southampton.

Ryde is the most American-looking town I have
seen abroad; a cluster of white houses and summery
villas on the side of a hill, leaning up from the
sea. Geneva, on the Seneca lake, resembles it. It
is a place of baths, boarding-houses, and people of
damaged constitutions, with very select society, and
quiet and rather primitive habits. The climate is deliciously
soft, and the sun seems always to shine
there.

As we got out into the open channel, I was assisting
the skipper to tighten his bowline, when a beautiful
ship, in the distance, putting about on a fresh track,
caught the sun full on her snowy sails, and seemed to
start like an apparition from the sea.

“She's a liner, sir!” said the bronzed boatman, suspending
his haul to give her a look of involuntary admiration.

“An American packet, you mean?”

“They're the prettiest ships afloat, sir,” he continued,
“and the smartest handled. They're out to New
York, and back again, before you can look round,
a'most. Ah, I see her flag now—stars and stripes.
Can you see it, sir?”

“Are the captains Englishmen, principally?” I
asked.

“No, sir! all `calkylators;' sharp as a needle!”

“Thank you.” said I; “I am a calculator too!”

The conversation ceased, and I thought from the
boatman's look, that he had more respect than love
for us. The cloud of snowy sail traversed the breadth
of the channel with the speed of a bird, wheeled again
upon her opposite tack, and soon disappeared from
view, taking with her the dove of my imagination to
return with an olive-branch from home. It must be
a cold American heart whose strings are not swept by
that bright flag in a foreign land, like a harp with the
impassioned prelude of the master.

Cowes was soon upon our lee, with her fairy fleet
of yachts lying at anchor—Lord Yarborough's frigate-looking
craft asleep amid its dependant brood, with all
its fine tracery of rigging drawn on a cloudless sky, the
picture of what it is, and what all vessels seem to me
a thing for pleasure only. Darting about like a swallow
on the wing, a small, gayly-painted sloop-yacht,
as graceful and slender as the first bow of the new
moon, played off the roadstead for the sole pleasure
of motion, careless whither; and meantime the low-fringed
shores of the Southampton side grew more
and more distinct, and before we had well settled upon
our cushions, the old tower of the abbey lay sharp
over the bow.

We enjoyed the first ramble through the ruins the
better, that to see them was a secondary object. The
first was to select a grassy spot for our table. Threading
the old unroofed vaults with this errand, the pause
of involuntary homage exacted by a sudden burst upon
in arch or a fretted window, was natural and true; and
or those who are disturbed by the formal and trite
enthusiasm of companions who admire by a prompter,
his stalking-horse of another pursuit was not an inlifferent
advantage.

The great roof over the principal nave of the abbey
has fallen in, and lies in rugged and picturesque masses
within the Gothic shell—windows, arches, secret staircases,
and gray walls, all breaking up the blue sky
around, but leaving above, for a smooth and eternal
roof, an oblong and ivy-fringed segment of the blue
plane of heaven. It seems to rest on those crumbling
corners as you stand within.

We selected a rising bank under the shoulder of a
rock, grown over with moss and ivy, and following the
suggestion of a pretty lover of the picturesque, the
shawls and cloaks, with their bright colors, were
thrown over the nearest fragments of the roof, and everybody
unbonneted and assisted in the arrangements. An
old woman who sold apples outside the walls was employed
to build a fire for our teakettle in a niche
where, doubtless, in its holier days, had stood the
effigy of a saint; and at the pedestals of a cluster of
slender columns our attendants displayed upon a table
a show of pasties and bright wines, that, if there be
monkish spirits who walk at Netley, we have added a
poignant regret to their purgatories, that their airy
stomachs can be no more vino ciboque gravati.

We were doing justice to a pretty shoulder of lamb,
with mint sauce, when a slender youth who had been
wandering around with a portfolio, took up an artist's
position in the farther corner of the ruins, and began
to sketch the scene. I mentally felicitated him on the
accident that had brought him to Netley at that particular
moment, for a prettier picture than that before
him an artist could scarce have thrown together. The
inequalities of the floor of the abbey provided a mossy
table for every two or three of the gayly-dressed ladies,
and there they reclined in small and graceful groups,
their white dresses relieved on the luxuriant grass,
and between them, half buried in moss, the sparkling
glasses full of bright wines, and an air of ease and
grace over all, which could belong only to the two
extremes of Arcadian simplicity, or its high-bred imitation.
We amused ourselves with the idea of appearing,
some six months after, in the middle ground
of a landscape, in a picturesque annual; and I am
afraid that I detected, on the first suggestion of the
idea, a little unconscious attitudinizing in some of the
younger members of the party. It was proposed that
the artist should be invited to take wine with us; but
as a rosy-cheeked page donned his gold hat to carry
our compliments, the busy draughtsman was joined
by one or two ladies not quite so attractive-looking as
himself, but evidently of his own party, and our messenger
was recalled. Sequitur—they who would find
adventure should travel alone.

The monastic ruins of England derive a very peculiar
and touching beauty from the bright veil of ivy
which almost buries them from the sun. This constant
and affectionate mourner draws from the moisture
of the climate a vividness and luxuriance which is
found in no other land. Hence the remarkable loveliness
of Netley—a quality which impresses the visiters
to this spot, far more than the melancholy usually
inspired by decay.

Our gayety shocked some of the sentimental people
rambling about the ruins, for it is difficult for those
who have not dined to sympathize with the mirth of
those who have. How often we mistake for sadness
the depression of an empty stomach! How differently
authors and travellers would write, if they commenced
the day, instead of ending it, with meats and wine! I
was led to these reflections by coming suddenly upon
a young lady and her companion (possibly her lover),
in climbing a ruined staircase sheathed within the
wall of the abbey. They were standing at one of the
windows, quite unconscious of my neighborhood, and
looking down upon the gay party of ladies below, who
were still amid the débris of the feast arranging their
bonnets for a walk.

“What a want of soul,” said the lady, “to be eating
and drinking in such a place!”

“Some people have no souls,” responded the gentlean.

After this verdict, I thought the best thing I could
do was to take care of my body, and I very carefully
backed down the old staircase, which is probably more
hazardous now than in the days when it was used to
admit damsels and haunches of venison to the reverend
fathers.

I reached the bottom in safety, and informed my
friends that they had no souls, but they manifested
the usual unconcern on the subject, and strolled away
through the echoing arches, in search of new points
of view and fresh wild-flowers. “Commend me at
least,” I thought, as I followed on, “to those whose
pulses can be quickened even by a cold pie and a glass
of champagne. Sadness and envy are sown thickly
enough by any wayside.”

We were embarked once more by the middle of the
afternoon, and with a head wind, but smooth water and
cool temperature, beat back to Ryde. If the young
lady and her lover have forgiven or forgotten us, and
the ghosts of Netley, frocked or petticoated, have
taken no umbrage, I have not done amiss in marking
the day with a stone of the purest white. How much
more sensible is a party like this, in the open air, and
at healthy hours, than the untimely and ceremonious
civilities usually paid to strangers. If the world would
mend by moralising, however, we should have had a
Utopia long ago.

8. CHAPTER VIII.
COMPARISON OF THE CLIMATE OF EUROPE AND
AMERICA.

One of Hazlitt's nail-driving remarks is to the effect
that he should like very well to pass the whole of his life
in travelling, if he could anywhere borrow another life
to spend afterward at home. How far action is necessary
to happiness, and how far repose—how far the
appetite for novelty and adventure will drive, and how
far the attractions of home and domestic comfort will
recall us—in short, what are the precise exactions of
the antagonist principles in our bosoms of curiosity
and sloth, energy and sufferance, hope and memory—
are questions which each one must settle for himself,
and which none can settle but he who has passed his
life in the eternal and fruitless search after the happiest
place, climate, and station.

Contentment depends upon many things within our
own control, but, with a certain education, it depends
partly upon things beyond it. To persons delicately
constituted or delicately brought up, and to all idle
persons, the principal ingredient in the cup of enjoyment
is climate; and Providence, that consults “the
greatest happiness of the greatest number,” has made
the poor and the roughly-nurtured independent of the
changes of the wind. Those who have the misfortune
to be delicate as well as poor—those, particularly, for
whom there is no hope but in a change of clime, but
whom pitiless poverty compels to languish in vain
after the reviving south, are happily few; but they
have thus much more than their share of human calamity.

In throwing together my recollections of the climates
with which I have become acquainted in other
lands, I am aware that there is a greater difference of
opinion on this subject than on most others. A man
who has agreeable society about him in Montreal, but
who was without friends in Florence, would be very
likely to bring the climate in for its share of the difference,
and prefer Canada to Italy; and health and
circumstances of all kinds affect, in no slight degree,
our susceptibility to skies and atmosphere. But it is
sometimes interesting to know the impressions of others,
even though they agree not with our own; and I
will only say of mine on this subject, that they are so
far likely to be fair, as I have been blessed with the
same perfect health in all countries, and have been
happy alike in every latitude and season.

It is almost a matter of course to decry the climate
of England. The English writers themselves talk of
the suicidal months; and it is the only country where
part of the livery of a mounted groom is his master's
great-coat strapped about his waist. It is certainly a
damp climate, and the sun shines less in England than
in most other countries. But to persons of full habit
this moisture in the air is extremely agreeable; and
the high condition of all animals in England, from
man downward, proves its healthfulness. A stranger
who has been accustomed to a brighter sky, will, at
first, find a gloom in the gray light so characteristic of
an English atmosphere; but this soon wears off, and
he finds a compensation, as far as the eye is concerned,
in the exquisite softness of the verdure, and
the deep and enduring brightness of the foliage. The
effect of this moisture on the skin is singularly grateful.
The pores become accustomed to a healthy action,
which is unknown in other countries; and the
bloom by which an English complexion is known all
over the world is the index of an activity in this important
part of the system, which, when first experienced,
is almost like a new sensation. The transition
to a dry climate, such as ours, deteriorates the condition
and quality of the skin, and produces a feeling,
if I may so express it, like that of being glazed. It is
a common remark in England, that an officer's wife
and daughters follow his regiment to Canada at the
expense of their complexions; and it is a well-known
fact that the bloom of female beauty is, in our country,
painfully evanescent.

The climate of American is, in many points, very
different from that of France and Great Britain. In
the middle and northern states, it is a dry, invigorating,
bracing climate, in which a strong man may do
more work than in almost any other, and which makes
continual exercise, or occupation of some sort, absolutely
necessary. With the exception of the “Indian
summer,” and here and there a day scattered through
the spring and the hot months, there is no weather
tempered so finely that one would think of passing
the day in merely enjoying it, and life is passed, by
those who have the misfortune to be idle, in continual
and active dread of the elements. The cold is so
acrid, and the heat so sultry, and the changes from
one to the other are so sudden and violent, that no
enjoyment can be depended upon out-of-doors, and
no system of clothing or protection is good for a day
together. He who has full occupation for head and
hand (as by far the greatest majority of our countrymen
have) may live as long in America as in any portion
of the globe—vide the bills of mortality. He
whose spirits lean upon the temperature of the wind,
or whose nerves require a genial and constant atmosphere,
may find more favorable climes; and the habits
and delicate constitutions of scholars and people
of sedentary pursuits generally, in the United States,
prove the truth of the observation.

The habit of regular exercise in the open air, which
is found to be so salutary in England, is scarcely possible
in America. It is said, and said truly, of the
first, that there is no day in the year when a lady may
not ride comfortably on horseback; but with us, the
extremes of heat and cold, and the tempestuous character
of our snows and rains, totally forbid, to a delicate
person, anything like regularity in exercise. The
consequence is, that the habit rarely exists, and the
high and glowing health so common in England, and
consequent, no doubt, upon the equable character of
the climate in some measure, is with us sufficiently

rare to excite remark. “Very English-looking,” is a
common phrase, and means very healthy-looking.
Still our people last—and though I should define the
English climate as the one in which the human frame
is in the highest condition, I should say of America,
that it is the one in which you could get the most
work out of it.

Atmosphere, in England and America, is the first
of the necessaries of life. In Italy, it is the first of its
luxuries. We breathe in America, and walk abroad,
without thinking of these common acts but as a means
of arriving at happiness. In Italy, to breathe and to
walk abroad are themselves happiness. Day after day
—week after week—month after month—you wake
with the breath of flowers coming in at your open
window, and a sky of serene and unfathomable blue,
and mornings and evenings of tranquil, assured, heavenly
purity and beauty. The few weeks of the rainy
season are forgotten in these long halcyon months of
sunshine. No one can have lived in Italy a year, who
remembers anything but the sapphire sky and the
kindling and ever-seen stars. You grow insensibly to
associate the sunshine and moonlight only with the
fountain you have lived near, or the columns of the
temple you have seen from your window, for on no
objects in other lands have you seen their light so
constant.

I scarce know how to convey, in language, the effect
of the climate of Italy on mind and body. Sitting
here, indeed, in the latitude of thirty-nine, in the
middle of April, by a warm fire, and with a cold wind
whistling at the window, it is difficult to recall it, even
to the fancy. I do not know whether life is prolonged,
but it is infinitely enriched and brightened, by
the delicious atmosphere of Italy. You rise in the
morning, thanking Heaven for life and liberty to go
abroad. There is a sort of opiate in the air, which
makes idleness, that would be the vulture of Prometheus
in America, the dove of promise in Italy. It is
delicious to do nothing—delicious to stand an hour
looking at a Savoyard and his monkey—delicious to
sit away the long, silent noon, in the shade of a column,
or on the grass of a fountain—delicious to be
with a friend without the interchange of an idea—to
dabble in a book, or look into the cup of a flower. You do not read, for you wish to enjoy the weather.
You do not visit, for you hate to enter a door while
the weather is so fine. You lie down unwillingly for
your siesta in the hot noon, for you fear you may
oversleep the first coolness of the long shadows of
sunset. The fancy, meantime, is free, and seems liberated
by the same languor that enervates the severer
faculties; and nothing seems fed by the air but
thoughts, which minister to enjoyment.

The climate of Greece is very much that of Italy.
The Mediterranean is all beloved of the sun. Life
has a value there, of which the rheumatic, shivering,
snow-breasting, blue-devilled idler of northern regions
has no shadow, even in a dream. No wonder Dante
mourned and languished for it. No wonder at the
sentiment I once heard from distinguished lips—Fuori
d'Italia tutto e esilio.

This appears like describing a Utopia; but it is
what Italy seemed to me. I have expressed myself
much more to my mind, however, in rhyme, for a
prose essay is, at best, but a cold medium.

9. CHAPTER IX.
STRATFORD-ON-AVON.

“One-p'un'-five outside, sir, two p'un' in.”

It was a bright, calm afternoon in September, promising
nothing but a morrow of sunshine and autumn,
when I stepped in at the “White Horse Cellar,” in
Piccadilly, to take my place in the Tantivy coach for
Stratford-on-Avon. Preferring the outside of the
coach, at least by as much as the difference in the
prices, and accustomed from long habit to pay dearest
for that which most pleased me, I wrote myself down
for the outside, and deposited my two pounds in the
horny palm of the old ex-coachman, retired from the
box, and playing clerk in this dingy den of parcels and
portmanteaus. Supposing my business concluded, I
stood a minute speculating on the weather-beaten,
cramp-handed old Jehu before me, and trying to reconcile
his ideas of “retirement from office” with those
of his almost next door neighbor, the hero of Strathfieldsaye.

I had mounted the first stair toward daylight, when
a touch on the shoulder with the end of a long whip
—a technical “reminder,” which probably came easier
to the old driver than the phrasing of a sentence to a
“gemman”—recalled me to the cellar.

“Fifteen shillin', sir,” said he laconically, pointing
with the same expressive exponent of his profession
to the change for my outside place, which I had left
lying on the counter.

“You are at least as honest as the duke,” I soliloquised,
as I pocketed the six bright and substantial
half-crowns.

I was at the “White Horse Cellar” again the following
morning at six, promising myself with great
sincerity never to rely again on the constancy of an
English sky. It rained in torrents. The four inside
places were all taken, and with twelve fellow-outsides,
I mounted to the wet seat, and begging a little straw
by way of cushion from the ostler, spread my umbrella,
abandoned my knees with a single effort of
mind to the drippings of the driver's weather-proof
upper Benjamin, and away we sped. I was “due” at
the house of a hospitable catholic baronet, a hundred
and two miles from London, at the dinner-hour of that
day, and to wait till it had done raining in England is
to expect the millennium.

London in the morning—I mean the poor man's
morning, daylight—is to me matter for the most
speculative and intense melancholy. Hyde park in
the sunshine of a bright afternoon, glittering with
equipages and gay with the Aladdin splendors of rank
and wealth, is a scene which sends the mercurial qualities
of the blood trippingly through the veins. But
Hyde park at daylight seen from Piccadilly through
fog and rain, is perhaps, of all contrasts, to one who
has frequented it in its bright hours, the most dispiriting
and dreary. To remember that behind the barricaded
and wet windows of Apsley house sleeps the
hero of Waterloo—that under these crowded and fog-wrapped
houses lie, in their dim chambers breathing
of perfume and luxury, the high-born and nobly-moulded
creatures who preserve for the aristocracy
of England the palm of the world's beauty—to remember
this, and a thousand other associations linked with
the spot, is not at all to diminish, but rather to deepen,
the melancholy of the picture. Why is it that the
deserted stage of a theatre, the echo of an empty ball-room,
the loneliness of a frequented promenade in
untimely hours—any scene, in short, of gayety gone
by but remembered—oppresses and dissatisfies the
heart! One would think memory should re-brighten
and re-populate such places.

The wheels hissed through the shallow pools in the
Macadam road, the regular pattering of the small
hoofs in the wet carriage-tracks maintained its quick
and monotonous beat on the ear; the silent driver kept
his eye on the traces, and “reminded” now and then
with but the weight of his slight lash a lagging wheeler
or leader, and the complicated but compact machine
of which the square foot that I occupied had been so
nicely calculated, sped on its ten miles in the hour

with the steadfastness of a star in its orbit, and as independent
of clouds and rain.

“Est ce que monsieur parle Francois?” asked at the
end of the first stage my right-hand neighbor, a little
gentleman, of whom I had hitherto only remarked that
he was holding on to the iron railing of the seat with
great tenacity.

Having admitted in an evil moment that I had been
in France, I was first distinctly made to understand
that my neighbor was on his way to Birmingham
purely for pleasure, and without the most distant object
of business—a point on which he insisted so long,
and recurred to so often, that he succeeded at last in
persuading me that he was doubtless a candidate for
the French clerkship of some exporter of buttons.
After listening to an amusing dissertation on the rashness
of committing one's life to an English stagecoach,
with scarce room enough for the perch of a
parrot, and a velocity so diablement dangereaux, I tired
of my Frenchman; and, since I could not have my
own thoughts in peace, opened a conversation with a
straw-bonnet and shawl on my left—the property, I
soon discovered, of a very smart lady's maid, very indignant
at having been made to change places with
Master George, who, with his mother and her mistress,
were dry and comfortable inside. She “would not
have minded the outside place,” she said, “for there
were sometimes very agreeable gentlemen on the outside,
very!—but she had been promised to go inside,
and had dressed accordingly; and it was very provoking
to spoil a nice new shawl and best bonnet, just
because a great school-boy, that had nothing on that
would damage chose not to ride in the rain.”

“Very provoking, indeed!” I responded, letting in
the rain upon myself unconsciously, in extending my
umbrella forward so as to protect her on the side of
the wind.

“We should have gone down in the carriage, sir,”
she continued, edging a little closer to get the full advantage
of my umbrella; “but John the coachman
has got the hinfluenzy, and my missis wo'n't be driven
by no other coachman; she's as obstinate as a mule,
sir. And, that isn't all I could tell, sir; but I scorns
to hurt the character of one of my own sex.” And
the pretty abigail pursed up her red lips, and looked
determined not to destroy her mistress's character—
unless particularly requested.

I detest what may be called a proper road-book—
even would it be less absurd than it is to write one on
a country so well conned as England.

I shall say nothing, therefore, of Marlow, which
looked the picture of rural loveliness though seen
through fog, nor of Oxford, of which all I remember
is that I dined there with my teeth chattering, and
my knees saturated with rain. All England is lovelyto
the wild eye of an American unused to high cultivation;
and though my enthusiasm was somewhat damp,
I arrived at the bridge over the Avon, blessing England
sufficiently for its beauty, and much more for the speed
of its coaches.

The Avon, above and below the bridge, ran brightly
along between low banks, half sward, half meadow;
and on the other side lay the native town of the immortal
wool-comber—a gay cheerful-looking village,
narrowing in the centre to a closely built street, across
which swung, broad and fair, the sign of the “Red
horse.” More ambitious hotels lay beyond; and
broader streets; but while Washington Irving is remembered
(and that will be while the language lasts),
the quiet inn in which the great Geoffrey thought
and wrote of Shakspere will be the altar of the pilgrim's
devotions.

My baggage was set down, the coachman and guard
tipped their hats for a shilling, and, chilled to the bone,
I raised my hat instinctively to the courtesy of a slender
gentlewoman in black, who, by the keys at her girdle,
should be the landlady. Having expected to see a
rosy little Mrs. Boniface, with a brown pinafore and
worsted mittens, I made up my mind at once that the
inn had changed mistresses. On the right of the old-fashioned
entrance blazed cheerily the kitchen fire,
and with my enthusiasm rather dashed by my disappointment,
I stepped in to make friends with the cook,
and get a little warmth and information.

“So your old mistress is dead, Mrs. Cook,” said I,
rubbing my hands with great satisfaction between the
fire and a well-roasted chicken.

“Lauk, sir, no, she isn't!” answered the rosy lass,
pointing with a dredging-box to the same respectable
lady in black who was just entering to look after me.

“I beg pardon, sir,” she said, dropping a courtesy;
“but are you the gentleman expected by Sir
Charles —?”

“Yes, madam. And can you tell me anything of
your predecessor who had the inn in the days of
Washington Irving?”

She dropped another courtesy, and drew up her
thin person to its full height, while a smile of gratified
vanity stole out at the corners of her mouth.

“The carriage has been waiting some time for you,
sir,” she said, with a softer tone than that in which
she had hitherto addressed me; “and you will hardly
be at C— in time for dinner. You will be coming
over to-morrow or the day after, perhaps, sir; and
then, if you would honor my little room by taking a
cup of tea with me, I should be pleased to tell you all
about it, sir.”

I remembered a promise I had nearly forgotten,
that I would reserve my visit to Stratford till I could
be accompanied by Miss J. P—, whom I was to
have the honor of meeting at my place of destination;
and promising an early acceptance of the kind land-lady's
invitation, I hurried on to my appointment over
the fertile hills of Warwickshire.

I was established in one of those old Elizabethan
country-houses, which, with their vast parks, their
self-sufficing resources of subsistence and company,
and the absolute deference shown on all sides to the
lord of the manor, give one the impression rather of a
little kingdom with a castle in its heart, than of an
abode for a gentleman subject. The house itself
(called, like most houses of this size and consequence
in Warwickshire, a “Court,”) was a Gothic, half-castellated
square, with four round towers, and innumerable
embrasures and windows; two wings in
front, probably more modern than the body of the
house, and again two long wings extending to the rear,
at right angles, and enclosing a flowery and formal
parterre. There had been a trench about it, now
filled up, and at a short distance from the house stood
a polyangular and massive structure, well calculated
for defence, and intended as a strong-hold for the retreat
of the family and tenants in more troubled times.
One of these rear wings enclosed a catholic chapel,
for the worship of the baronet and those of his tenants
who professed the same faith; while on the northern
side, between the house and the garden, stood a large
protestant stone church, with a turret and spire, both
chapel and church, with their clergyman and priest,
dependant on the estate, and equally favored by the
liberal and high-minded baronet. The tenantry formed
two considerable congregations, and lived and worshipped
side by side, with the most perfect harmony
—an instance of real Christianity, in my opinion, which
the angels of heaven might come down to see. A
lovely rural graveyard for the lord and tenants, and a
secluded lake below the garden, in which hundreds of
wild ducks swam and screamed unmolested, completed
the outward features of C— court.

There are noble houses in England, with a door
communicating from the dining-room to the stables,
that the master and his friends may see their favorites,

after dinner, without exposure to the weather. In the
place of this rather bizarre luxury, the oak-panelled
and spacious dining-hall of C— is on a level with
the organ loft of the chapel, and when the cloth is removed,
the large door between is thrown open, and
the noble instrument pours the rich and thrilling
music of vespers through the rooms. When the
service is concluded, and the lights on the altar extinguished,
the blind organist (an accomplished musician,
and a tenant on the estate), continues his voluntaries
in the dark until the hall-door informs him of
the retreat of the company to the drawing-room.
There is not only refinement and luxury in this
beautiful arrangement, but food for the soul and
heart.

I chose my room from among the endless vacant
but equally luxurious chambers of the rambling old
house; my preference solely directed by the portrait
of a nun, one of the family in ages gone by—a picture
full of melancholy beauty, which hung opposite the
window. The face was distinguished by all that in
England marks the gentlewoman of ancient and pure
descent; and while it was a woman with the more
tender qualities of her sex breathing through her features,
it was still a lofty and sainted sister, true to her
cross, and sincere in her vows and seclusion. It was
the work of a master, probably Vandyke, and a picture
in which the most solitary man would find company
and communion. On the other walls, and in most of
the other rooms and corridors, were distributed portraits
of the gentlemen and soldiers of the family, most
of them bearing some resemblance to the nun, but
differing, as brothers in those wild times may be supposed
to have differed, from the gentle creatures of the
same blood, nursed in the privacy of peace.

10. CHAPTER X.
VISIT TO STRATFORD-ON-AVON—SHAKSPERE.

One of the first visits in the neighborhood was naturally
to Stratford-on-Avon. It lay some ten miles
south of us, and I drove down, with the distinguished
literary friend I have before mentioned, in the carriage
of our kind host, securing, by the presence of
his servants and equipage, a degree of respect and attention
which would not have been accorded to us in
our simple character of travellers. The prim mistress
of the “Red Horse,” in her close black bonnet and
widow's weeds, received us at the door with a deeper
courtesy than usual, and a smile of less wintry formality;
and proposing to dine at the inn, and “suck the
brain” of the hostess more at our leisure, we started
immediately for the house of the wool-comber—the
birthplace of Shakspere.

Stratford should have been forbidden ground to
builders, masons, shopkeepers, and generally to all
people of thrift and whitewash. It is now rather a
smart town, with gay calicoes, shawls of the last pattern,
hardware, and millinery, exhibited in all their
splendor down the widened and newer streets; and
though here and there remains a glorious old gloomy
and inconvenient abode, which looks as if Shakspere
might have taken shelter under its eaves, the gayer
features of the town have the best of it, and flaunt their
gaudy and unrespected newness in the very windows
of that immortal birthplace. I stepped into a shop to
inquire the way to it.

“Shiksper's 'ouse, sir? Yes, sir!” said a dapper
clerk, with his hair astonished into the most impossible
directions by force of brushing; “keep to the
right, sir! Shiksper lived in the wite 'ouse, sir—the
'ouse, you see beyond, with the windy swung up, sir.”

A low, old-fashioned house, with a window suspended
on a hinge, newly whitewashed and scrubbed,
stood a little up the street. A sign over the door informed
us in an inflated paragraph, that the immortal
Will Shakspere was born under this roof, and that an
old woman within would show it to us for a consideration.
It had been used until very lately, I had been
told, for a butcher's shop.

A “garrulous old lady” met us at the bottom of the
narrow stair leading to the second floor, and began-not
to say anything of Shakspere—but to show us the
names of Byron, Moore, Rogers, &c., written among
thousands of others on the wall! She had worn out
Shakspere! She had told that story till she was tired
of it! or (what, perhaps, is more probable) most
people who go there fall to reading the names of the
visiters so industriously, that she has grown to think
some of Shakspere's pilgrims greater than Shakspere.

“Was this old oaken chest here in the days of
Shakspere, madam?” I asked.

“Yes, sir, and here's the name of Byron—here with
a capital B. Here's a curiosity, sir.”

“And this small wooden box?”

“Made of Shakspere's mulberry, sir. I had sich a
time about that box, sir. Two young gemmen were
here the other day—just run up, while the coach was
changing horses, to see the house. As soon as they
were gone I misses the box. Off scuds my son to the
`Red Horse,' and there they sat on the top looking as
innocent as may be. `Stop the coach,' says my son
`What do you want?' says the driver. `My mother's
mulberry-box!—Shakspere's mulberry-box!—One of
them 'ere young men's got it in his pocket.' And
true enough, sir, one on 'em had the imperence to
take it out of his pocket, and flings it into-my son's
face; and you know the coach never stops a minnit for
nothing, sir, or he'd a' smarted for it.”

Spirit of Shakspere! dost thou not sometimes walk
alone in this humble chamber! Must one's inmost
soul be fretted and frighted always from its devotion
by an abominable old woman? Why should not such
lucrative occupations be given in charity to the deaf
and dumb? The pointing of a finger were enough in
such spots of earth!

I sat down in despair to look over the book of visiters,
trusting that she would tire of my inattention.
As it was of no use to point out names to those who
would not look, however, she commenced a long story
of an American who had lately taken the whim to
sleep in Shakspere's birth chamber. She had shaken
him down a hed on the floor, and he had passed the
night there. It seemed to bother her to comprehend
why two thirds of her visiters should be Americans—
a circumstance that was abundantly proved by the
books.

It was only when we were fairly in the street that I
began to realize that I had seen one of the most glorious
altars of memory—that deathless Will Shakspere,
the mortal, who was, perhaps (not to speak profanely),
next to his Maker, in the divine faculty of creation
first saw the light through the low lattice on which
we turned back to look.

The single window of the room in which Scott died
at Abbotsford, and this in the birth-chamber of Shakspere,
have seemed to me almost marked with the
touch of the fire of those great souls—for I think we
have an instinct which tells us on the spot where
mighty spirits have come or gone, that they came and
went with the light of heaven.

We walked down the street to see the house where
Shakspere lived on his return to Stratford. It stands
at the corner of a lane, not far from the church where
he was buried, and is a newish un-Shaksperian looking
place—no doubt, if it be indeed the same house, most
profanely and considerably altered. The present proprietor
or occupant of the house or site took upon
himself some time since the odium of cutting down

the famous mulberry-tree planted by the poet's hand
in the garden.

I forgot to mention in the beginning of these notes
that two or three miles before coming to Stratford we
passed through Shottery, where Anne Hathaway lived.
A nephew of the excellent baronet whose guests we
were occupies the house. I looked up and down the
green lanes about it, and glanced my eye round upon
the hills over which the sun has continued to set and
the moon to ride in her love-inspiring beauty ever
since. There were doubtless outlines in the landscape
which had been followed by the eye of Shakspere
when coming, a trembling lover, to Shottrey—doubtless,
teints in the sky, crops on the fields, smoke-wreaths
from the old homesteads on the high hillsides,
which are little altered now. How daringly the
imagination plucks back the past in such places!
How boldly we ask of fancy and probability the thousand
questions we would put, if we might, to the magic
mirror of Agrippa? Did that great mortal love timidly,
like ourselves? Was the passionate outpouring
of his heart simple, and suited to the humble condition
of Anne Hathaway, or was it the first fiery coinage of
Romeo and Othello? Did she know the immortal
honor and light poured upon woman by the love of
genius? Did she know how this common and oftenest
terrestrial passion becomes fused in the poet's bosom
with celestial fire, and, in its wondrous elevation
and purity, ascends lambently and musically to the
very stars? Did she coy it with him? Was she a
woman to him, as commoner mortals find woman—capricious,
tender, cruel, intoxicating, cold—everything
by changes impossible to calculate or foresee? Did
he walk home to Stratford, sometimes, despairing, in
perfect sick-heartedness, of her affection, and was he
recalled by a message or a lover's instinct to find her
weeping and passionately repentant?

How natural it is by such questions and speculations
to betray our innate desire to bring the lofty
spirits of our common mould to our own inward level—
to seek analogies between our affections, passions, appetites,
and theirs—to wish they might have been no more
exalted, no more fervent, no more worthy of the adorable
love of woman than ourselves! The same temper
that prompts the depreciation, the envy, the hatred,
exercised toward the poet in his lifetime, mingles, not
inconsiderably, in the researches so industriously prosecuted
after his death into his youth and history. To
be admired in this world, and much more to be beloved
for higher qualities than his fellow-men, insures to
genius not only to be persecuted in life, but to be
ferreted out with all his frailties and imperfections
from the grave.

The church in which Shakspere is buried stands
near the banks of the Avon, and is a most picturesque
and proper place of repose for his ashes. An avenue
of small trees and vines, ingeniously overlaced, extends
from the street to the principal door, and the
interior is broken up into that confused and accidental
medley of tombs, pews, cross-lights, and pillars, for
which the old churches of England are remarkable.
The tomb and effigy of the great poet lie in an inner
chapel, and are as described in every traveller's book.
I will not take up room with the repetition.

It gives one an odd feeling to see the tomb of his
wife and daughter beside him. One does not realize
before, that Shakspere had wife, children, kinsmen,
like other men—that there were those who had a right
to lie in the same tomb; to whom he owed the charities
of life; whom he may have benefited or offended;
who may have influenced materially his destiny, or
he theirs; who were the inheritors of his household
goods, his wardrobe, his books—people who looked
an him—on Shakspere—as a landholder, a renter of a
pew, a townsman; a relative, in short, who had claims
upon them, not for the eternal homage due to celestial
inspiration, but for the charity of shelter and bread
had he been poor, for kindness and ministry had he
been sick, for burial and the tears of natural affection
when he died. It is painful and embarrassing to the
mind to go to Stratford—to reconcile the immortality
and the incomprehensible power of genius like Shakspere's,
with the space, tenement, and circumstance
of a man! The poet should be like the sea-bird, seen
only on the wing—his birth, his slumber, and his
death, mysteries alike.

I had stipulated with the hostess that my baggage
should be put into the chamber occupied by Washington
Irving. I was shown into it to dress for dinner
—a small neat room, a perfect specimen, in short, of
an English bedroom, with snow-white curtains, a looking-glass
the size of the face, a well-polished grate
and poker, a well-fitted carpet, and as much light as
heaven permits to the climate.

Our dinner for two was served in a neat parlor on
the same floor—an English inn dinner—simple, neat,
and comfortable, in the sense of that word unknown in
other countries. There was just fire enough in the
grate, just enough for two in the different dishes, a
servant who was just enough in the room, and just
civil enough—in short, it was, like everything else in
that country of adaptation and fitness, just what was
ordered and wanted, and no more.

The evening turned out stormy, and the rain pattered
merrily against the windows. The shutters were
closed, the fire blazed up with new brightness, the
well-fitted wax lights were set on the table; and when
the dishes were removed, we replaced the wine with a
tea-tray, and sent for the hostess to give us her company
and a little gossip over our cups.

Nothing could be more nicely understood and defined
than the manner of English hostesses generally
in such situations, and of Mrs. Gardiner particularly
in this. Respectful without servility, perfectly sure
of the propriety of her own manner and mode of expression,
yet preserving in every look and word the
proper distinction between herself and her guests, she
insured from them that kindness and ease of communication
which would make a long evening of social
conversation pass, not only without embarrassment on
either side, but with mutual pleasure and gratification.

“I have brought up, mem,” she said, producing a
well-polished poker from under her black apron, before
she took the chair set for her at the table—“I
have brought up a relic for you to see, that no money
would buy from me.”

She turned it over in my hand, and I read on one
of the flat sides at the bottom—“GEOFFREY CRAYON'S
SCEPTRE.”

“Do you remember Mr. Irving,” asked my friend,
“or have you supposed, since reading his sketch of
Stratford-on-Avon; that the gentleman in number
three might be the person?”

The hostess drew up her thin figure, and the expression
of a person about to compliment herself stole
into the corners of her mouth.

“Why, you see, mem, I am very much in the habit
of observing my guests, and I think I may say I knows
a superior gentleman when I sees him. If you remember,
mem” (and she took down from the mantlepiece
a much-worn copy of the Sketch-Book), “Geoffrey
Crayon tells the circumstance of my stepping in
when it was getting late, and asking if he had rung.
I knows it by that, and then the gentleman I mean
was an American, and I think, mem, besides” (and she
hesitated a little, as if she was about to advance an
original and rather venturesome opinion)—“I think
I can see that gentleman's likeness all through this
book.”

A truer remark or a more just criticism was perhaps
never made on the Sketch-Book. We smiled,
and Mrs. Gardiner proceeded:—

“I was in and out of the coffee-room the night he
arrived, mem, and I sees directly by his modest ways
and timid look that he was a gentleman, and not fit
company for the other travellers. They were all young
men, sir, and business travellers, and you know, mem,
ignorance takes the advantage of modest merit, and after
their dinner they were very noisy and rude. So, I
says to Sarah, the chambermaid, says I, `That nice
gentleman can't get near the fire, and you go and light
a fire in number three, and he shall sit alone, and it
shan't cost him nothing, for I like the look on him.'
Well, mem, he seemed pleased to be alone, and after
his tea, he puts his legs up over the grate, and there
he sits with the poker in his hand till ten o'clock.
The other travellers went to bed, and at last the house
was as still as midnight, all but a poke in the grate
now and then in number three, and every time I heard
it, I jumped up and lit a bed-candle, for I was getting
very sleepy, and I hoped he was getting up to ring for
a light. Well, mem, I nodded and nodded, and still
no ring at the bell. At last I says to Sarah, says I,
`Go into number three, and upset something, for I am
sure that gentleman has fallen asleep.'—`La, ma'am,'
says Sarah, `I don't dare.'—`Well, then,' sayd I, `I'll
go.' So I opens the door, and I says, `If you please,
sir, did you ring?'—little thinking that question would
ever be written down in such a beautiful book, mem.
He sat with his feet on the fender poking the fire, and
a smile on his face, as if some pleasant thought was
in his mind. `No, ma'am,' says he, `I did not.' I
shuts the door, and sits down again, for I hadn't the
heart to tell him that it was late, for he was a gentleman
not to speak rudely to, mem. Well, it was past
twelve o'clock, when the bell did ring. `There,' says
I to Sarah, `thank Heaven he has done thinking, and
we can go to bed.' So he walked up stairs with his
light, and the next morning he was up early and off
to the Shakspere house, and he brings me home a box
of the mulberry-tree, and asks me if I thought it was
genuine, and said it was for his mother in America.
And I loved him still more for that, and I'm sure I
prayed she might live to see him return.”

“I believe she did, Mrs. Gardiner; but how soon
after did you set aside the poker?”

“Why, sir, you see there's a Mr. Vincent that
comes here sometimes, and he says to me one day—
`So, Mrs. Gardiner, you're finely immortalized. Read
that.' So the minuit I read it, I remembered who it
was, and all about it, and I runs and gets the number
three poker, and locks it up safe and sound, and by-and-by
I sends it to Brummagem, and has his name
engraved on it, and here you see it, sir—and I wouldn't
take no money for it.”

I had never the honor to meet or know Mr. Irving,
and I evidently lost ground with the hostess of the
“Red Horse” for that misfortune. I delighted her,
however, with the account which I had seen in a late
newspaper, of his having shot a buffalo in the prairies
of the west; and she soon courtesied herself out, and
left me to the delightful society of the distinguished
lady who had accompanied me. Among all my many
loiterings in many lands, I remember none more intellectually
pure and gratifying, than this at Stratford-on-Avon.
My sleep, in the little bed consecrated by
the slumbers of the immortal Geoffrey, was sweet and
right; and I write myself his debtor for a large share
of the pleasure which genius like his lavishes on the
world.

11. CHAPTER XI.
CHARLECOTE.

Once more posting through Shottery and Stratford-on-Avon,
on the road to Kenilworth and Warwick, I
felt a pleasure in becoming an habitué in Shakspere's
town—in being recognised by the Stratford post-boys,
known at the Stratford inn, and remembered at the
toll-gates. It is pleasant to be welcomed by name
anywhere; but at Stratford-on-Avon, it is a recognition
by those whose fathers or predecessors were the
companions of Shakspere's frolics. Every fellow in
a slouched hat—every idler on a tavern bench—every
saunterer with a dog at his heels on the highway—
should be a deer-stealer from Charlecote. You would
almost ask him, “Was Will Shakspere with you last
night?”

The Lucys still live at Charlecote, immortalized
by a varlet poacher who was tried before old Sir
Thomas for stealing a buck. They have drawn an
apology from Walter Savage Landor for making too
free with the family history, under cover of an imaginary
account of the trial. I thought, as we drove
along in sight of the fine old hall, with its broad park
and majestic trees—very much as it stood in the
days of Sir Thomas, I believe—that most probably
the descendants of the old justice look even now upon
Shakspere more as an offender against the game-laws
than as a writer of immortal plays. I venture to say,
it would be bad tact in a visiter to Charlecote to felicitate
the family on the honor of possessing a park in
which Shakspere had stolen deer—to show more interest
in seeing the hall in which he was tried than in
the family portraits.

On the road which I was travelling (from Stratford
to Charlecote) Shakspere had been dragged as a culprit.
What were his feelings before Sir Thomas!
He felt, doubtless, as every possessor of the divine fire
of genius must feel, when brought rudely in contact
with his fellow-men, that he was too much their superior
to be angry. The humor in which he has drawn
Justice Shallow proves abundantly that he was more
amused then displeased with his own trial. But was
there no vexation at the moment? A reflection, it
might be, from the estimate of his position in the
minds of those who were about him—who looked on
him simply as a stealer of so much venison. Did he
care for Anne Hathaway's opinion then?

How little did Sir Thomas Lucy understand the
relation between judge and culprit on that trial! How
little did he dream he was sitting for his picture to the
pestilent varlet at the bar; that the deer-stealer could
better afford to forgive him than he the deer-stealer!
Genius forgives, or rather forgets, all wrongs done in
ignorance of its immortal presence. Had Ben Jonson
made a wilful jest on a line in his new play, it would
have rankled longer than fine and imprisonment for
deer-stealing. Those who crowd back and trample
upon men of genius in the common walk of life; who
cheat them, misrepresent them, take advantage of their
inattention or their generosity in worldly matters, are
sometimes surprised how their injuries, if not themselves,
are forgotten. Old Adam Woodcock might
as well have held malice against Roland Græme for
the stab in the stuffed doublet of the Abbot of Misrule.

Yet, as I might have remarked in the paragraph
gone before, it is probably not easy to put conscious
and secret superiority entirely between the mind and
the opinions of those around who think differently.
It is one reason why men of genius love more than
the common share of solitude—to recover self-respect.
In the midst of the amusing travesty he was drawing
in his own mind of the grave scene about him, Shakspere
possibly felt at moments as like a detected culprit
as he seemed to the gamekeeper and the justice. It
is a small penalty to pay for the after worship of the
world! The ragged and proverbially ill-dressed
peasants who are selected from the whole campagna,
as models to the sculptors of Rome, care little what
is thought of their good looks in the Corso. The

disguised proportions beneath their rags will be admired
in deathless marble, when the noble who scarce
deigns their possessor a look will lie in forgotten dust
under his stone scutcheon.

12. CHAPTER XII.
WARWICK CASTLE.

Were it not for the “out-heroded” descriptions in
the guide-books, one might say a great deal of Warwick
castle. It is the quality of overdone or ill-expressed
enthusiasm to silence that which is more
rational and real. Warwick is, perhaps, the best kept
of all the famous old castles of England. It is a superb
and admirably-appointed modern dwelling, in the shell,
and with all the means and appliances preserved, of
an ancient stronghold. It is a curious union, too. My
lady's maid and my lord's valet coquet upon the bartizan,
where old Guy of Warwick stalked in his coat-of-mail.
The London cockney, from his two days'
watering at Leamington, stops his pony-chaise, hired
at half-a-crown the hour, and walks Mrs. Popkins
over the old draw-bridge as peacefully as if it were the
threshold of his shop in the Strand. Scot and Frenchman
saunter through fosse and tower, and no ghost of
the middle ages stalks forth, with closed visor, to
challenge these once natural foes. The powdered
butler yawns through an embrasure, expecting “miladi,”
the countess of this fair domain, who in one day's
posting from London seeks relief in Warwick Castle
from the routs and soirées of town. What would old
Guy say, or the “noble imp” whose effigy is among
the escutcheoned tombs of his fathers, if they could
rise through their marble slabs, and be whirled over the
drawbridge in a post-chaise? How indignantly they
would listen to the reckoning within their own portcullis,
of the rates for chaise and postillion. How
astonished they would be at the butler's bow, and the
proffered officiousness of the valet. “Shall I draw
off your lordship's boots? Which of these new vests
from Staub will your lordship put on for dinner?”

Among the pictures at Warwick, I was interested
by a portrait of Queen Elizabeth (the best of that sovereign
I ever saw); one of Machiavelli, one of Essex,
and one of Sir Philip Sidney. The delightful and
gifted woman whom I had accompanied to the castle
observed of the latter, that the hand alone expressed
all his character. I had often made the remark in
real life, but I had never seen an instance on painting
where the likeness was so true. No one could doubt,
who knew Sir Philip Sidney's character, that it was a
literal portrait of his hand. In our day, if you have
an artist for a friend, he makes use of you while you
call, to “sit for the hand” of the portrait on his easel.
Having a preference for the society of artists myself,
and frequenting their studios habitually, I know of
some hundred and fifty unsuspecting gentlemen on
canvass, who have procured for posterity and their
children portraits of their own heads and dress-coats
to be sure, but of the hands of other persons!

The head of Machiavelli is, as is seen in the marble
in the gallery of Florence small, slender, and visibly
“made to creep into crevices.” The face is impassive
and calm, and the lips, though slight and almost feminine,
have an indefinable firmness and character. Essex
is the bold, plain, and blunt soldier history makes
him, and Elizabeth not unqueenly, nor (to my thinking)
of an uninteresting countenance; but, with all
the artist's flattery, ugly enough to be the abode of
the murderous envy that brought Mary to the block.

We paid our five shillings for having been walked
through the marble hall of Castle Warwick, and the
dressing-room of its modern lady, and, gratified much
more by our visit than I have expressed in this brief
description, posted on to Kenilworth.

13. CHAPTER XIII:
KENILWORTH.

On the road from Warwick to Kenilworth, I thought
more of poor Pierce Gaveston than of Elizabeth and
her proud earls. Edward's gay favorite was tried at
Warwick, and beheaded on Blacklow hill, which we
passed soon after leaving the town. He was executed
in June; and I looked about on the lovely hills and
valleys that surround the place of his last moments,
and figured to myself very vividly his despair at this
hurried leave-taking of this bright world in its brightest
spot and hour. Poor Gaveston! It was not in
his vocation to die! He was neither soldier nor prelate,
hermit nor monk. His political sins, for which
he suffered, were no offence against good-fellowship,
and were ten times more venial than those of the
“black dog of Arden,” who betrayed and helped to
murder him. He was the reckless minion of a king,
but he must have been a merry and pleasant fellow;
and now that the world (on our side the water at least),
is grown so grave, one could go back with Old Mortality,
and freshen the epitaph of a heart that took life
more gayly.

As we approached the castle of the proud Leicester,
I found it easier to people the road with the flying
Amy Robsart and her faithful attendant, with Mike Lambourne,
Flibbertigibbet, Richard Varney, and the troop
of mummurs and players, than with the more real
characters of history. To assist the romance, a little
Italian boy, with his organ and monkey, was fording
the brook on his way to the castle, as if its old towers
still held listeners for the wandering minstrel. I
tossed him a shilling from the carriage window, and
while the horses slowly forded the brook, asked him
in his own delicious tongue, where he was from.

“Son' di Firenze, signore!”

“And where are you going?”

“Li! al castello.”

Come from Florence and bound to Kenilworth!
Who would not grind an organ and sleep under a hedge,
to answer the hail of the passing traveller in terms
like these? I have seen many a beggar in Italy,
whose inheritance of sunshine and leisure in that delicious
clime I could have found it in my heart to
envy, even with all its concomitants of uncertainty
and want; but here was a bright-faced and inky-eyed
child of the sun, with his wardrobe and means upon
his back, travelling from one land to another, and loitering
wherever there was a resort for pleasure, without
a friend or a care; and, upon my life, I could have
donned his velveteen jacket, and with his cheerful
heart to button it over, have shouldered his organ,
put my trust in i forestieri, and kept on for Kenilworth.
There really is, I thought, as I left him behind, no
profit or reward consequent upon a life of confinement
and toil; no moss ever gathered by the unturned
stone, that repays, by a thousandth part, the loss of
even this poor boy's share of the pleasures of change.
What would not the tardy winner of fortune give to
exchange his worn-out frame, his unloveable and
furrowed features, his dulled senses, and his vain
regrets, for the elastic frame, the unbroken spirits,
and the redeemable. yet not oppressive poverty of this
Florentine regazzo! The irrecoverable gem of youth
is too often dissolved, like the pearl of Cleopatra, in a
cup which thins the blood and leaves disgust upon
the lip.

The magnificent ruins of Kenilworth broke in upon
my moralities, and a crowd of halt and crippled ciceroni

beset the carriage-door as we alighted at the outer
tower. The neighborhood of the Spa of Leamington,
makes Kenilworth a place of easy resort; and the
beggars of Warwickshire have discovered that your
traveller is more liberal of his coin than your sitter-at-home.
Some dozens of pony-chaises and small, crop
saddle-horses, clustered around the gate, assured us
that we should not muse alone amid the ruins of
Elizabeth's princely gift to her favorite. We passed
into the tilt-yard, leaving on our left the tower in
which Edward was confined, now the only habitable
part of Kenilworth. It gives a comfortable shelter to
an old seneschal, who stands where the giant probably
stood, with Flibbertigibbet under his doublet for a
prompter; but it is not the tail of a rhyme that serves
now for a passport.

Kenilworth, as it now stands, would probably disenchant
almost any one of the gorgeous dreams conjured
up by reading Scott's romance. Yet it is one
of the most superb ruins in the world. It would scarce
be complete to a novel-render, naturally, without a
warder at the gate, and the flashing of a spear-point
and helmet through the embrasures of the tower. A
horseman in armor should pace over the draw-bridge,
and a squire be seen polishing his cuiras through
the opening gate; while on the airy bartizan should
be observed a lady in hoop and farthingale, philandering
with my lord of Leicester in silk doublet and
rapier. In the place of this, the visiter enters Kenilworth
as I have already described, and stepping out
into the tilt-yard, he sees, on an elevation before him,
a fretted and ivy-covered ruin, relieved like a cloud-castle
on the sky; the bright blue plane of the western
heavens shining through window and broken wall,
flecked with waving and luxuriant leaves, and the
crusted and ornamental pinnacles of tottering masonry
and sculpture just leaning to their fall, though the
foundations upon which they were laid, one would
still think, might sustain the firmament. The swelling
root of a creeper has lifted that arch from its base,
and the protruding branch of a chance-sprung tree
(sown perhaps by a field-sparrow) has unseated the
key-stone of the next; and so perish castles and reputations,
the masonry of the human hand, and the
fabrics of human forethought; not by the strength
which they feared, but by the weakness they despised!
Little thought old John of Gaunt, when these rudely-bewn
blocks were heaved into their seat by his herculean
workmen, that, after resisting fire and foe, they
would be sapped and overthrown at last by a vine-tendril
and a sparrow!

Clinging against the outer wall, on that side of the
castle overlooking the meadow, which was overflowed
for the aquatic spots of Kenilworth, stands an antique
and highly ornamental fireplace, which belonged,
doubtless, to the principal hall. The windows on
either side looking forth upon the fields below, must
have been those from which Elizabeth and her train
observed the feats of Arion and his dolphin; and at all
times, the large and spacious chimney-place, from the
castle's first occupation to its last, must have been the
centre of the evening revelry, and conversation of its
guests. It was a hook whereon to hang a revery, and
between the roars of vulgar laughter which assailed
my ears from a party lolling on the grass below, I contrived
to figure to myself, with some distinctness, the
personages who had stood about it. A visit to Kenilworth,
without the deceptions of fancy, would be as
disconnected from our previous enthusiasm on the
subject as from any other scene with which it had no
relation. The general effect at first, in any such spot,
is only to dispossess us, by a powerful violence, of the
cherished picture we had drawn of it in imagination;
and it is only after the real recollection has taken root
and ripened—after months, it may be—that we can
fully bring the visionary characters we have drawn to
inhabit it. If I read Kenilworth now, I see Mike
Lambourne stealing out, not from the ruined postern
which I clambered through, over heaps of rubbish,
but from a little gate that turned noiselessly on its
hinges, in the unreal castle built ten years ago in my
brain.

I had wandered away from my companion, Miss
Jane Porter, to climb up a secret staircase in the wall,
rather too difficult of ascent for a female foot, and
from my elevated position I caught an accidental view
of that distinguished lady through the arch of a Gothic
window, with a background of broken architecture and
foliage—presenting, by chance, perhaps the most fitting
and admirable picture of the authoress of the
Scottish Chiefs, that a painter in his brightest hour
could have fancied. Miss Porter, with her tall and
striking figure, her noble face (said by Sir Martin Shee
to have approached nearer in its youth to his beau
ideal of the female features than any other, and still
possessing the remains of uncommon beauty), is at all
times a person whom it would be difficult to see without
a feeling of involuntary admiration. But standing,
as I saw her at that moment, motionless and erect, in
the morning dress, with dark feathers, which she has
worn since the death of her beloved and gifted sister,
her wrists folded across, her large and still beautiful
eyes fixed on a distant object in the view, and her
nobly-cast lineaments reposing in their usual calm and
benevolent tranquillity, while, around and above her,
lay the material and breathed the spirit over which she
had held the first great mastery—it was a tableau
vivant which I was sorry to be alone to see.

Was she thinking of the great mind that had evoked
the spirits of the ruins she stood among—a mind in
which (by Sir Walter's own confession) she had first
bared the vein of romance which breathed so freely
for the world's delight? Were the visions which
sweep with such supernatural distinctness and rapidity
through the imagination of genius—visions of which
the millionth portion is probably scarce communicated
to the world in a literary lifetime—were Elizabeth's
courtiers, Elizabeth's passions, secret hours, interviews
with Leicester—were the imprisoned king's
nights of loncliness and dread, his hopes, his indignant,
but unheeded thoughts—were all the possible circumstances,
real or imaginary, of which that proud castle
might have been the scene, thronging in those few
moments of revery through her fancy? Or was her
heart busy with its kindly affections, and had the
beauty and interest of the scene but awakened a thought
of one who was most wont to number with her the
sands of those brighter hours?

Who shall say? The very question would perhaps
startle the thoughts beyond recall—so elusive are even
the most angelic of the mind's unseen visitants?

I have recorded here the speculations of a moment
while I leaned over the wall of Kenilworth, but as I
descended by the giddy staircase, a peal of rude
laughter broke from the party in the fosse below, and
I could not but speculate on the difference between
the various classes whom curiosity draws to the spot.
The distinguished mind that conceives a romance
which enchants the world, comes in the same guise
and is treated but with the same respect as theirs.
The old porter makes no distinction in his charge of
half-a-crown, and the grocer's wife who sucks an
orange on the grass, looks at the dark crape hat and
plain exterior—her only standards—and thinks herself
as well dressed, and therefore equal or superior to the
tall lady, whom she presumes is out like herself on a
day's pleasuring. One comes and goes like the other,
and is forgotten alike by the beggars at the gate and
the seneschal within, and thus invisibly and unsuspected,
before our very eyes, does genius gather its golden
fruit, and while we walk in a plain and commonplace
world, with commonplace and sordid thoughts

and feelings, the gifted walk side by side with us in a
world of their own—a world of which we see distant
glimpses in their after-creations, and marvel in what
unsunned mine its gems of thought were gathered!

14. CHAPTER XIV.
A VISIT TO DUBLIN ABOUT THE TIME OF THE QUEEN'S
MARRIAGE.

The usual directions for costume, in the corner of
the court card of invitation, included, on the occasion
of the queen's marriage, a wedding favor, to be worn
by ladies on the shoulder, and by gentlemen on the
left breast. This trifling addition to the dress of the
individual was a matter of considerable importance to
the milliners, hatters, etc., who, in a sale of ten or
twelve hundred white cockades (price from two dollars
to five) made a very pretty profit. The power of giving
a large ball to the more expensive classes, and ordering
a particular addition to the costume—in other
words, of laying a tax on the rich for the benefit of
the poor, is exercised more frequently in Ireland than
in other countries, and serves the double purpose of
popularity to the lord lieutenant, and benefit to any
particular branch of industry that may be suffering
from the decline of a fashion.

The large quadrangular court-yard of the castle
rattled with the tramp of horses' feet and the clatter of
sabres and spurs, and in the uncertain glare of torches
and lamps, the gay colors and glittering arms of the
mounted guard of lancers had a most warlike appearance.
The procession which the guard was stationed
to regulate and protect, rather detracted from the romantic
effect—the greater proportion of equipages
being the covered hack cars of the city—vehicles of
the most unmitigated and ludicrous vulgarity. A
coffin for two, set on its end, with the driver riding on
the turned-down lid, would be a very near resemblance;
and the rags of the driver, and the translucent leanness
of his beast, make it altogether the most deplorable
of conveyances. Here and there a carriage with
liveries, and here and there a sedan-chair with four
stout Milesian calves in blue stockings trotting under
the poles, rather served as a foil than a mitigation of
the effect, and the hour we passed in the line, edging
slowly toward the castle, was far from unfruitful in
amusement. I learned afterward that even those who
have equipages in Dublin go to court in hack cars as
a matter of economy—one of the many indications of
that feeling of lost pride which has existed in Ireland
since the removal of the parliament.

A hall and staircase lined with files of soldiers is not
quite as festive an entrance to a ball as the more common
one of alleys of flowering shrubs; but with a
waltz by a military band resounding from the lofty
ceiling, I am not sure that it does not temper the blood
as aptly for the spirit of the hour. It was a rainy
night, and the streets were dark, and the effect upon
myself of coming suddenly into so enchanted a scene
—arms glittering on either side, and a procession of
uniforms and plumed dames winding up the spacious
stairs—was thrilling, even with the chivalric scenes of
Eglinton fresh in my remembrance.

At the head of the ascent we entered a long hall,
lined with the private servants of Lord Ebrington, and
the ceremony of presentation having been achieved the
week before, we left the throne-room on the right, and
passed directly to St. Patrick's Hall, the grand scene
of the evening's festivities. This, I have said before,
is the finest ball-room I remember in Europe. Twelve
hundred people, seated, dancing, or promenading,
were within its lofty walls on the night whose festivities
I am describing; and at either end a gallery, sup
ported by columns of marble, contained a band of
music, relieving each other with alternate waltzes and
quadrilles. On the long sides of the hail were raised
tiers of divans, filled with chaperons, veteran officers,
and other lookers-on, and at the upper end was raised
a platform with a throne in the centre, and seats on
either side for the family of the lord lieutenant and the
more distinguished persons of the nobility. Lord
Ebrington was rather in his character of a noble host
than that of viceroy, and I did not observe him once
seated under his canopy of state; but with his aids
and some one of the noble ladies of his family on his
arm, he promenaded the hall conversing with his acquaintances,
and seemingly enjoying in a high degree
the brilliant gayety of the scene. His dress, by the
way, was the simple diplomatic dress of most continental
courts, a blue uniform embroidered with gold,
the various orders on his breast forming its principal
distinction. I seldom have seen a man of a more
calm and noble dignity of presence than the lord lieutenant,
and never a face that expressed more strongly
the benevolence and high purity of character for which
he is distinguished. In person, except that he is
taller, he bears a remarkably close resemblance to the
Duke of Wellington.

We can scarcely conceive, in this country of black
coats, the brilliant effect of a large assembly in which
there is no person out of uniform or court-dress—
every lady's head nodding with plumes, and every
gentleman in military scarlet and gold or lace and
embroidery. I may add, too, that in this country of
care-worn and pale faces, we can as little conceive the
effect of an assembly rosy with universal health,
habitually unacquainted with care, and abandoned with
the apparent child-like simplicity of high breeding, to
the inspiring gayety of the hour. The greater contrast,
however, is between a nation where health is the
first care, and one in which health is never thought
of till lost; and light and shade are not more contrasted
than the mere general effect of countenance
in one and in the other. A stranger travelling in our
country, once remarked to me that a party he had attended
seemed like an entertainment given in the convalescent
ward of a hospital—the ladies were so pale
and fragile, and the men so unjoyous and sallow. And
my own invariable impression, in the assemblies I
have first seen after leaving my own country was a
corresponding one—that the men and women had the
rosy health and untroubled gayety of children round a
May-pole. That this is not the effect of climate, I do
most religiously believe. It is over-much care and over-much
carelessness—the corroding care of an avid temerity
in business, and the carelessness of all the functions
of life till their complaints become too imperative to
be disregarded. But this is a theme out of place.

The ball was managed by the grand chamberlain
(Sir William Leeson), and the aids-de-camp of the
lord lieutenant, and except that now and then you
were reminded by the movement around you that you
stood with your back to the representative of royalty,
there was little to draw your attention from the attractions
of the dance. Waltz, quadrille, and gallop, followed
each other in giddy succession, and “what do
you think of Irish beauty?” had been asked me as
often as “how do you like America?” was ever mumbled
through the trumpet of Miss Martineau, when I
mounted with a friend to one of the upper divans, and
tried, what is always a difficult task, and nowhere so
difficult as in Ireland, to call in the intoxicated fancy,
and anatomize the charm of the hour.

Moore's remark has been often quoted—“there is
nothing like an Irish woman to take a man off his
feet;” but whether this figure of speech was suggested
by the little bard's common soubriquet of “Jump-up-and-kiss-me
[3] Tom Moore,” or simply conveyed his

idea of the bewildering character of Irish beauty, it
contains, to any one who has ever travelled (or waltzed)
in that country, a very just, as well as realizing description.
Physically, Irish women are probably the finest
race in the world—I mean, taller, better limbed and
chested, larger eyed, and with more luxuriant hair,
and freer action, than any other nation I have observed.
The Phœnician and Spanish blood which
has run hundreds of years in their veins, still kindles
its dark fire in their eyes, and with the vivacity of the
northern mind and the bright color of the nor hern
skin, these southern qualities mingle in most admirable
and superb harmony. The idea we form of Italian
and Grecian beauty is never realized in Greece and
Italy, but we find it in Ireland, heightened and exceeded.
Cheeks and lips of the delicacy and bright
teint of carnation, with snowy teeth, and hair and eyebrows
of jet, are what we should look for on the palette
of Appelles, could we recall the painter, and reanimate
his far-famed models; and these varied charms, united,
fall very commonly to the share of the fair Milesian
of the upper classes. In other lands of dark eyes, the
rareness of a fine-grained skin, so necessary to a brunette,
makes beauty as rare—but whether it is the
damp softness of the climate or the infusion of Saxon
blood, a coarse skin is almost never seen in Ireland.
I speak now only of the better-born ranks of society,
for in all my travels in Ireland, I did not chance to
see even one peasant-girl of any pretensions to good
looks. From north to south, they looked, to me,
coarse, ill-formed, and repulsive.

I noticed in St. Patrick's Hall what I had remarked
ever since I had been in the country, that with all
their beauty, the Irish women are very deficient in
what in England is called style. The men, on the
contrary, were particularly comme il faut, and as they
are a magnificent race (corresponding to such mothers
and sisters), I frequently observed I had never seen
so many handsome and elegant men in a day. Whenever
I saw a gentleman and lady together, riding,
driving, or walking, my first impression was, almost
universally, that the man was in attendance upon a
woman of an inferior class to his own. This difference
may be partly accounted for by the reduced circumstances
of the gentry of Ireland, which keeps the
daughters at home, that the sons may travel and improve;
but it works differently in America, where,
spite of travel and every other advantage to the contrary,
the daughters of a family are much oftener
lady-like than the sons are gentleman-like. After
wondering for some time, however, why the quick-witted
women of Ireland should be less apt than those
of other countries in catching the air of high breeding
usually deemed so desirable, I began to like them better
for the deficiency, and to find a reason for it in the
very qualities which make them so attractive. Nothing
could be more captivating and delightful than the
manners of Irish women, and nothing, at the same
time, could be more at war with the first principles of
English high breeding—coldness and reténu. The
frank, almost hilarious “how are you?” of an Irish
girl, her whole-handed and cordial grasp, as often in
the day as you meet her, the perfectly un-missy-ish,
confiding, direct character of her conversation, are all
traits which would stamp her as somewhat rudely bred
in England, and as desperately vulgar in New York
or Philadelphia.

Modest to a proverb, the Irish woman is as unsuspecting
of an impropriety as if it were an impossible
thing, and she is as fearless and joyous as a midshipman,
and sometimes as noisy. In a ball-room she
looks ill-dressed, not because her dress was ill-put-on,
but because she dances, not glides, sits down without
care, pulls her flowers to pieces, and if her head-dress
incommodes her, gives it a pull or a push—acts which
would be perfect insanity at Almack's. If she is of
fended, she asks for an explanatino. If she does not
understand you, she confesses her ignorance. If she
wishes to see you the next day, she tells you how and
when. She is the child of nature, and children are
not “stylish.” The niminy-piminy, eye-avoiding,
finger-tipped, drawling, don't-touch-me manner of
some of the fashionable ladies of our country, would
amuse a cold and reserved English woman sufficiently,
but they would drive an Irish girl into hysterics. I
have met one of our fair country-people abroad, whose
“Grecian stoop,” and exquisitely subdued manner,
was invariably taken for a fit of indigestion.

The ball-supper was royally sumptuous, and served
in a long hall thrown open at midnight; and in the
gray of the morning, I left the floor covered with
waltzers, and confessed to an Irish friend, that I never
in my life, not even at Almack's, had seen the half as
much true beauty as had brightened St. Patrick's Hall
at the celebration of the queen's marriage.

15. CHAPTER XV.
CLOSING SCENES OF THE SESSION AT WASHINGTON.

The paradox of “the more one does, the more one
can do,” is resolved in life at Washington with more
success than I have seen it elsewhere. The inexorable
bell at the hotel or boarding-house pronounces the
irrevocable and swift transit of breakfast to all sleepers
after eight. The elastic depths of the pillow have
scarcely yielded their last feather to the pressure of
the sleeper's head, before the drowse is rudely shaken
from his eyelids, and with an alacrity which surprises
himself, he finds his toilet achieved, his breakfast over,
and himself abroad to lounge in the sunshine till the
flag waves on the capitol. He would retire to his
chamber to read during these two or three vacant
hours, but the one chair in his pigeon-hole creaks, or
has no back or bottom, or his anthracite fire is out, or
is too hot for the size of the room; or, in short, Washington,
from whatever cause, is a place where none
read except those who stand up to a padlocked newspaper.
The stars and stripes, moving over the two
wings of the capitol at eleven, announce that the two
chambers of legislation are in session, and the hard-working
idler makes his way to the senate or the
house. He lingers in the lobby awhile, amused with
the button-hole seizers playing the unwilling ears of
members with their claims, or enters the library,
where ladies turn over prints, and enfilade, with their
battery of truant eyes, the comers in at the green
door. He then gropes up the dark staircase to the
senate gallery, and stifles in the pressure of a hot
gallery, forgetting, like listeners at a crowded opera,
that bodily discomfort will unlink the finest harmonies
of song or oratory. Thence he descends to the rotunda
to draw breath and listen to the more practical, but
quite as earnest eloquence of candidates for patents;
and passes, after while, to the crowded gallery of the
house, where, by some acoustic phenomena in the
construction of the building, the voices of the speakers
comes to his ear as articulate as water from a narrownecked
bottle. “Small blame to them!” he thinks,
however: for behind the brexia columns are grouped
all the fair forms of Washington; and in making his
bow to two hundred despotic lawgivers in feathers and
velvet, he is readily consoled that the duller legislators
who yield to their sway are inaudible and forgotten.
To this upper house drop in, occasionally, the younger
or gayer members of the lower, bringing, if not political
scandal, at least some slight résumer of what Mr.
Somebody is beating his desk about below; and thus,
crammed with the day's trifles or the day's business,
and fatigned from heel to eyelid, our idler goes home

at five to dress for dinner and the night's campaign,
having been up and on his legs for ten mortal hours.

Cold water and a little silence in his own room have
rather refreshed him, and he dines at six with a party
of from fifteen to twenty-five persons. He discusses
the vital interests of fourteen millions of people over
a glass of wine with the man whose vote, possibly,
will decide their destiny, and thence hurries to a ball-room
crammed like a perigord-pie, where he pants,
elbows, eats supper, and waltzes till three in the
morning. How human constitutions stand this, and
stand it daily and nightly, from the beginning to the
end of a session, may well puzzle the philosophy of
those who rise and breakfast in comfortable leisure.

I joined the crowd on the twenty-second of February,
to pay my respects to the president, and see the
cheese. Whatever veneration existed in the minds of
the people toward the former, their curiosity in reference
to the latter predominated, unquestionably.
The circular pavé, extending from the gate to the
White House, was thronged with citizens of all classes,
those coming away having each a small brown paper
parcel and a very strong smell; those advancing manifesting,
by shakings of the head and frequent exclamations,
that there may be too much of a good thing,
and particularly of a cheese. The beautiful portico
was thronged with boys and coach-drivers, and the
odor strengthened with every step. We forced our
way over the threshold, and encountered an atmosphere,
to which the mephitic gas floating over Avernus
must be faint and innocuous. On the side of the
hall hung a rough likeness of the general, emblazoned
with eagle and stars, forming a background to the
huge tub in which the cheese had been packed; and
in the centre of the vestibule stood the “fragrant gift,”
surrounded with a dense crowd, who, without crackers,
or even “malt to their cheese,” had, in two hours,
eaten and purveyed away fourteen hundred pounds!
The small segment reserved for the president's use
counted for nothing in the abstractions.

Glad to compromise for a breath of cheeseless air,
we desisted from the struggle to obtain a sight of the
table, and mingled with the crowd in the east room.
Here were diplomates in their gold coats and officers
in uniform, ladies of secretaries and other ladies,
soldiers on volunteer duty, and Indians in war-dress
and paint. Bonnets, feathers, uniforms, and all—it
was rather a gay assemblage. I remembered the descriptions
in travellers' books, and looked out for
millers and blacksmiths in their working gear, and for
rudeness and vulgarity in all. The offer of a mammoth
cheese to the public was likely to attract to the
presidental mansion more of the lower class than would
throng to a common levee. Great-coats there were,
and not a few of them, for the day was raw, and unless
they were hung on the palings outside, they must remain
on the owners' shoulders; but, with a single exception
(a fellow with his coat torn down his back,
possibly in getting at the cheese), I saw no man in a
dress that was not respectable and clean of its kind,
and abundantly fit for a tradesman out of his shop.
Those who were much pressed by the crowd put their
hats on; but there was a general air of decorum
which would surprise any one who had pinned his
faith on travellers. An intelligent Englishman, very
much inclined to take a disgust to mobocracy, expressed
to me great surprise at the decency and proper
behavior of the people. The same experiment in
England, he thought, would result in as pretty a riot
as a paragraph-monger would desire to see.

The president was down stairs in the oval reception
room, and, though his health would not permit him
to stand, he sat in his chair for two or three hours, and
received his friends with his usual bland and dignified
courtesy. By his side stood the lady of the mansion,
dressed in full court costume, and doing the honors
of her place with a grace and amenity which every one
felt, and which threw a bloom over the hour. General
Jackson retired, after a while, to his chamber, and
the president elect remained to support his relative,
and present to her the still thronging multitude, and
by four o'clock the guests were gone, and the “banquet
hall” was deserted. Not to leave a wrong impression
of the cheese, I dined afterward at a table to
which the president had sent a piece of it, and found
it of excellent quality. It is like many other things,
more agreeable in small quantities.

Some eccentric mechanic has presented the president
with a sulkey, made entirely (except the wheels)
of rough-cut hickory, with the bark on. It looks
rude enough, but has very much the everlasting look
of old Hickory himself; and if he could be seen driving
a high-stepping, bony old iron-gray steed in it,
any passer by would see that there was as much fitness
in the whole thing as in the chariot of Bacchus and
his reeling leopards. Some curiously-twisted and
gnarled branches have been very ingeniously turned
into handles and whip-box, and the vehicle is compact
and strong. The president has left it to Mr. Van
Buren.

In very strong contrast to the sulkey, stood close by,
the elegant phaeton, made of the wood of the old
frigate Constitution. It has a seat for two, with a
driver's box, covered with a superb hammercloth, and
set up rather high in front; the wheels and body are
low, and there are bars for baggage behind; altogether,
for hightness and elegance, it would be a creditable
turn out for Long Acre. The material is excessively
beautiful—a fine-grained oak, polished to a very high
degree, with its colors delicately brought out by a coat
of varnish. The wheels are very slender and light, but
strong, and, with all its finish, it looks a vehicle capable
of a great deal of service. A portrait of the Constitution,
under full sail, is painted on the panels.

16. CHAPTER XVI.
THE INAUGURATION.

While the votes for president were being counted
in the senate, Mr. Clay remarked to Mr. Van Buren,
with courteous significance:—

“It is a cloudy day, sir!”

“The sun will shine on the fourth of March!” was
the confident reply.

True to his augury, the sun shone out of heaven
without a cloud on the inaugural morning. The air
was cold, but clear and life-giving; and the broad
avenues of Washington for once seemed not too large
for the throning population. The crowds who had
been pouring in from every direction for several days
before, ransacking the town for but a shelter from the
night, were apparent on the spacious sidewalks; and
the old campaigners of the winter seemed but a thin
sprinkling among the thousands of new and strange
faces. The sun shone alike on the friends and opponents
of the new administration, and, as far as one
might observe in a walk to the capitol, all were made
cheerful alike by its brightness. It was another
augury, perhaps, and may foretell a more extended
fusion under the light of the luminary new risen. In
a whole day passed in a crowd composed of all classes
and parties, I heard no remark that the president would
have been unwilling to hear.

I was at the capitol a half hour before the procession
arrived, and had leisure to study a scene for
which I was not at all prepared. The noble stairease
of the east front of the building leaps over three
arches, under one of which carriages pass to the basement
door; and, as you approach from the gate, the

eye cuts the ascent at right angles, and the sky, broken
by a small spire at a short distance, is visible beneath.
Broad stairs occur at equal distances, with corresponding
projections; and from the upper platform rise
the outer columns of the portico, with ranges of columns
three deep extending back to the pilasters. I
had often admired this front with its many graceful
columns, and its superb flight of stairs, as one of the
finest things I had seen in the world. Like the effect
of the assembled population of Rome waiting to receive
the blessing before the front of St. Peter's, however,
the assembled crowd on the steps and at the
base of the capitol heightened inconceivably the grandeur
of the design. They were piled up like the
people on the temples of Babylon in one of Martin's
sublime pictures—every projection covered, and an
inexpressible soul and character given by their presence
to the architecture. Boys climbed about the
bases of the columns, single figures stood on the posts
of the surrounding railings in the boldest relief against
the sky; and the whole thing was exactly what Paul
Veronese would I have delighted to draw. I stood near
an accomplished artist who is commissioned to fill one
of the panels of the rotunda, and I can not but hope
he may have chosen this magnificent scene for his
subject.

The republican procession, consisting of the presidents
and their families, escorted by a small volunteer
corps, arrived soon after twelve. The General and
Mr. Van Buren were in the constitution phaeton,
drawn by four grays, and as it entered the gate, they
both rode uncovered. Descending from the carriage
at the foot of the steps, a passage was made for them
through the dense crowd, and the tall white head of
the old chieftain, still uncovered, went steadily up
through the agitated mass, marked by its peculiarity
from all around it.

I was in the crowd thronging the opposite side of
the court, and lost sight of the principal actors in this
imposing drama, till they returned from the senate
chamber. A temporary platform had been laid, and
railed in on the broad stair which supports the portico,
and, for all preparation to one of the most important
and most meaning and solemn ceremonies on
earth—for the inauguration of a chief magistrate over a
republic of fifteen millions of freemen—the whole addition
to the open air, and the presence of the people,
was a volume of holy writ. In comparing the impressive
simplicity of this consummation of the wishes of
a mighty people, with the tricked-out ceremonial, and
hollow show, which embarrass a corresponding event
in other lands, it was impossible not to feel that the
moral sublime was here—that a transaction so important,
and of such extended and weighty import, could
borrow nothing from drapery or decoration, and that
the simple presence of the sacred volume, consecrating
the act, spoke more thrillingly to the heart than the
trumpets of a thousand heralds.

The crowd of diplomatists and senators in the rear
of the columns made way, and the ex-president and
Mr. Van Buren advanced with uncovered heads. A
murmur of feeling rose up from the moving mass below,
and the infirm old man, emerged from a sick-chamber,
which his physician had thought it impossible
he should leave, bowed to the people, and, still
uncovered in the cold air, took his seat beneath the
portico. Mr. Van Buren then advanced, and with a
voice remarkably distinct, and with great dignity, read
his address to the people. The air was elastic, and
the day still; and it is supposed that near twenty thousand
persons heard him from his elevated position distinctly.
I stood myself on the outer limit of the
crowd, and though I lost occasionally a sentence from
the interruption near by, his words came clearly articulated
to my ear.

When the address was closed, the chief justice ad
vanced and administered the oath. As the book
touched the lips of the new president, there arose a
general shout, and expression of feeling common
enough in other countries, but drawn with difficulty
from an American assemblage. The sons, and the
immediate friends of Mr. Van Buren, then closed
about him; the ex-president, the chief justice, and
others, gave him the hand of congratulation, and the
ceremony was over. They descended the steps, the
people gave one more shout as they mounted the constitution
carriage together, and the procession returned
through the avenue, followed by the whole population
of Washington.

Mr. Van Buren held a levee immediately afterward,
but I endeavored in vain to get my foot over the
threshold. The crowd was tremendous. At four,
the diplomatic body had an audience; and in replying
to the address of Don Angel Calderon, the president
astonished the gold coats, by addressing them as the
democratic corps. The representatives of the crowned
heads of Europe stood rather unesily under the
epithet, till it was suggested that he possibly meant to
say diplomatic.

17. CHAPTER XVII.
WASHINGTON IN THE SESSION.

There is a sagacity acquired by travel on the subject
of forage and quarters which is useful in all other
cities in the world where one may happen to be a
stranger, but which is as inapplicable to the emergencies
of an arrival in Washington as waltzing in a shipwreck.
It is a capital whose peculiarities are as much
sui generis as those of Venice; but as those who have
become wise by a season's experience neither remain
on the spot to give warning, nor have recorded thei
experiences in a book, the stranger is worse off in a
coach in Washington than in a gondola in the “city
of silver streets.”

It is well known, I believe, that when the future
city of Washington was about being laid out, there
were two large lot-buyers or land-owners, living two
miles apart, each of whom was interested in having
the public buildings upon the centre of his own domain.
Like children quarrelling for a sugar horse,
the subject of dispute was pulled in two, and one got
the head, the other the tail. The capitol stands on a
rising ground in solitary grandeur, and the president's
house and department buildings two miles off on another.
The city straddles and stretches between,
doing its best to look continuous and compact; but
the stranger soon sees that it is, after all, but a “city
of magnificent distances,” built to please nobody on
earth but a hackney-coachman.

The new-comer, when asked what hotel he will
drive to, thinks himself very safe if he chooses that
nearest the capitol—supposing, of course, that, as
Washington is purely a legislative metropolis, the
most central part will naturally be near the scene of
action. He is accordingly set down at Gadsby's, and,
at a price that would startle an English nobleman, he
engages a pigeon-hole in the seventh heaven of that
boundless caravansary. Even at Gadsby's, however,
he finds himself over half a mile from the capitol, and
wonders, for two or three days, why the deuce the
hotel was not built on some of the waste lots at the
foot of Capitol hill, an improvement which might
have saved him, in rainy weather, at least five dollars
a day in hack-hire. Meantime the secretaries and
foreign ministers leave their cards, and the party and
dinner-giving people shower upon him the “small
rain” of pink billets. He sets apart the third or fourth
day to return their calls, and inquires the addresses

of his friends (which they never write on their cards,
because, if they did, it would be no guide), and is told
it is impossible to direct him, but the hackney-coachmen
all know! He calls the least ferocious-looking of the
most bullying and ragged set of tatterdemalions he has
ever seen, and delivers himself and his visiting-list into
his hands. The first thing is a straight drive two
miles away from the capitol. He passes the president's
house, and getting off the smooth road, begins
to drive and drag through cross lanes and open lots,
laid out according to no plan that his loose ideas of
geometry can comprehend, and finds his friends living
in houses that want nothing of being in the country,
but trees, garden, and fences. It looks as if it had
rained naked brick houses upon a waste plain, and
each occupant had made a street with reference to his
own front door. The much-shaken and more-astonished
victim consumes his morning and his temper,
and has made, by dinner-time, but six out of forty
calls, all imperatively due, and all scattered far and
wide with the same loose and irreconcilable geography.

A fortnight's experience satisfies the stranger that
this same journey is worse at night than at morning;
and that, as he leaves his dinner which he pays for at
home, runs the risk of his neck, passes an hour or
two on the road, and ruins himself in hack-hire, it
must be a very—yes, a very pleasant dinner-party to
compensate him. Consequently, he either sends a
“p. p. c.” to all his acquaintances, and lives incog.,
or, which is a more sensible thing, moves up to the
other settlement, and abandons the capitol.

Those who live on the other side of the president's
house are the secretaries, diplomatists, and a few
wealthy citizens. There is no hotel in this quarter,
but there are one or two boarding-houses, and (what
we have been lucky enough to secure ourselves) furnished
lodgings, in which you have everything but
board. Your dinner is sent you from a French cook's
near by, and your servant gets your breakfast—a plan
which gives you the advantage of dining at your own
hour, choosing your own society, and of having covers
for a friend or two whenever it suits your humor, and
at half an hour's warning. There are very few of
these lodgings (which combine many other advantages
over a boarding-house), but more of them would be a
good speculation to house-owners, and I wish it were
suggested, not only here, but in every city in our
country.

Aside from society, the only amusement in Washington
is frequenting the capitol. If one has a great
deal of patience and nothing better to do, this is very
well; and it is very well at any rate till one becomes
acquainted with the heads of the celebrated men in
both the chambers, with the noble architecture of the
building, and the routine of business. This done, it
is time wearily spent for a spectator. The finer orators
seldom speak, or seldom speak warmly, the floor is
oftenest occupied by prosing and very sensible gentlemen,
whose excellent ideas enter the mind more
agreeably by the eye than the ear, or, in other words,
are better delivered by the newspapers, and there is a
great deal of formula and etiquetical sparring which
is not even entertaining to the members, and which
consumes time “consumedly.” Now and then the
senate adjourns when some one of the great orators
has taken the floor, and you are sure of a great effort
the next morning. If you are there in time, and can
sit, like Atlas with a world on your back, you may enjoy
a front seat and hear oratory, unsurpassed, in my
opinion, in the world.

The society in Washington, take it all in all, is by
many degrees the best in the United States. One is
prepared, though I can not conceive why, for the contrary.
We read in books of travels, and we are told
by everybody, that the society here is promiscuous,
rough, inelegant, and even barbarous. This is an
untrue representation, or it has very much changed.

There is no city, probably no village in America,
where the female society is not refined, cultivated, and
elegant. With or without regular advantages, woman
attains the refinements and the tact necessary to polite
intercourse. No traveller ever ventured to complain
of this part of American society. The great deficiency
is that of agreeable, highly-cultivated men, whose pursuits
have been elevated, and whose minds are pliable
to the grace and changing spirit of conversation.
Every man of talents possesses these qualities naturally,
and hence the great advantage which Washington enjoys
over every other city in our country. None but
a shallow observer, or a malicious book maker, would
ever sneer at the exteriors or talk of the ill-breeding
of such men as form, in great numbers, the agreeable
society of this place—for a man of great talents never
could be vulgar; and there is a superiority about most
of these which raises them above the petty standard
which regulates the outside of a coxcomb. Even
compared with the dress and address of men of similar
positions and pursuits in Europe, however (members
of the house of commons, for example, or of the chamber
of deputies in France), it is positively the fact that
the senators and representatives of the United States
have a decided advantage. It is all very well for Mr.
Hamilton, and other scribblers whose books must be
spiced to go down, to ridicule a Washington soirée for
English readers; but if the observation of one who
has seen assemblies of legislators and diplomatists in
all the countries of Europe may be fairly placed
against his and Mrs. Trollope's, I may assert, upon
my own authority, that they will not find, out of May
Fair in England, so well-dressed and dignified a body
of men. I have seen as yet no specimen of the rough
animal described by them and others as the “western
member;” and if David Crockett (whom I was never
so fortunate as to see) was of that description, the race
must have died with him. It is a thing I have learned
since I have been in Washington, to feel a wish that
foreigners should see congress in session. We are
so humbugged, one way and another, by travellers'
lies.

I have heard the observation once or twice from
strangers since I have been here, and it struck myself
on my first arrival, that I had never seen within the
same limit before, so many of what may be called
“men of mark.” You will scarce meet a gentleman
on the sidewalk in Washington who would not attract
your notice, seen elsewhere, as an individual possessing
in his eye or general features a certain superiority.
Never having seen most of the celebrated speakers of
the senate, I busied myself for the first day or two in
examining the faces that passed me in the street, in
the hope of knowing them by the outward stamp
which, we are apt to suppose, belongs to greatness.
I gave it up at last, simply from the great number I
met who might be (for all that features had to do with
it) the remarkable men I sought.

There is a very simple reason why a congress of the
United States should be, as they certainly are, a much
more marked body of men than the English house of
commons or lords, or the chamber of peers or deputies
in France. I refer to the mere means by which, in
either case, they come by their honors. In England
and France the lords and peers are legislators by hereditary
right, and the members of the commons and
deputies from the possession of extensive property or
family influence, or some other cause, arguing, in
most cases, no great personal talent in the individual.
They are legislators, but they are devoted very often
much more heartily to other pursuits—hunting or
farming, racing, driving, and similar out-of-door passions
common to English gentlemen and lords, or the
corresponding penchants of French peers and deputies

It is only the few great leaders and orators who devote
themselves to politics exclusively. With us every
one knows it is quite the contrary. An American
politician delivers himself, body and soul, to his pursuit.
He never sleeps, eats, walks, or dreams, but in
subservience to his aim. He can not afford to have
another passion of any kind till he has reached the
point of his ambition—and then it has become a
mordent necessity from habit. The consequence is,
that no man can be found in an elevated sphere in our
country, who has not had occasion for more than ordinary
talent to arrive there. He inherited nothing of
his distinction, and has made himself. Such ordeals
leave their marks, and they who have thought, and
watched, and struggled, and contended with the passions
of men as an American politician inevitably
must, can not well escape the traces of such work.
It usually elevates the character of the face—it always
strongly marks it.

A-propos of “men of mark;” the dress circle of the
theatre, at Power's benefit, not long since, was graced
by three Indians in full costume—the chief of the
Foxes, the chief of the Ioways, and a celebrated warrior
of the latter tribe, called the Sioux-killer. The
Fox is an old man of apparently fifty, with a heavy,
aquiline nose, a treacherous eye, sharp as an eagle's,
and a person rather small in proportion to his head
and features. He was dressed in a bright scarlet
blanket, and a crown of feathers, with an eagle's plume,
standing erect on the top of his head, all dyed in the
same deep hue. His face was painted to match, except
his lips, which looked of a most ghastly sallow,
in contrast with his fiery nose, forehead, and cheeks.
His tomahawk lay in the hollow of his arm, decked
with feathers of the same brilliant color with the rest
of his drapery. Next him sat the Sioux-killer, in a
dingy blanket, with a crown made of a great quantity
of the feathers of a pea-hen, which fell over his face,
and concealed his features almost entirely. He is
very small, but is famous for his personal feats, having,
among other things, walked one hundred and thirty
miles in thirty successive hours, and killed three Sioux
(hence his name) in one battle with that nation. He
is but twenty-three, but very compact and wiry-looking,
and his eye glowed through his veil of hen-feathers
like a coal of fire.

Next to the Sioux-killer sat “White Cloud,” the
chief of the Ioways. His face was the least warlike
of the three, and expressed a good nature and freedom
from guile, remarkable in an Indian. He is about
twenty-four, has very large features, and a fine, erect
person, with broad shoulders and chest. He was
painted less than the Fox chief, but of nearly the same
color, and carried, in the hollow of his arm, a small,
glittering tomahawk, ornamented with blue feathers.
His head was encircled by a kind of turban of silver-fringed
cloth, with some metallic pendents for earrings,
and his blanket, not particularly clean or handsome,
was partly open on the breast, and disclosed a calico
shirt, which was probably sold to him by a trader in
the west. They were all very attentive to the play,
but the Fox chief and White Cloud departed from the
traditionary dignity of Indians, and laughed a great
deal at some of Power's fun. The Sioux-killer sat
between them, as motionless and grim as a marble
knight on a tomb-stone.

The next day I had the pleasure of dining with
Mr. Power, who lived at the same hotel with the Indian
delegation; and while at dinner he received a
message from the Ioways, expressing a wish to call on
him. We were sitting over our wine when White
Cloud and the Sioux-killer came in with their interpreter.
There were several gentlemen present, one
of them in the naval undress uniform, whose face the
Sioux-killer scrutinized very sharply. They smiled
in bowing to Power, but made very grave inclinations
to the rest of us. The chief took his seat, assuming
a very erect and dignified attitude, which he preserved
immoveable during the interview; but the Sioux-killer
drew up his legs, resting them on the round of the
chair, and, with his head and body bent forward,
seemed to forget himself, and give his undivided attention
to the study of Power and his naval friend.

Tumblers of champagne were given them, which
they drank with great relish, though the Sioux-killer
provoked a little ridicule from White Cloud, by coughing
as he swallowed it. The interpreter was a halfbreed
between an Indian and a negro, and a most intelligent
fellow. He had been reared in the loway
tribe, but had been among the whites a great deal for
the last few years, and had picked up English very
fairly. He told us that White Cloud was the son of
old White Cloud, who died three years since, and
that the young chief had acquired entire command
over the tribe by his mildness and dignity. He had
paid the debts of the Ioways to the traders, very much
against the will of the tribe; but he commenced by
declaring firmly that he would he just, and had carried
his point. He had come to Washington to receive a
great deal of money from the sale of the lands of the
tribe, and the distribution of it lay entirely in his own
power. Only one old warrior had ventured to rise in
council and object to his measures; but when White
Cloud spoke, he had dropped his head on his bosom
and submitted. This information and that which
followed was given in English, of which neither of the
Ioways understood a word.

Mr. Power expressed a surprise that the Sioux-killer
should have known him in his citizen's dress.
The interpreter translated it, and the Indian said in
answer:—

“The dress is very different, but when I see a man's
eye I know him again.”

He then told Power that he wished, in the theatre,
to raise his war-cry and help him fight the three bad-looking
men who were his enemies (referring to the
three bailiffs in the scene in Paddy Carey). Power
asked what part of the play he liked best. He said
that part where he seized the girl in his arms and ran
off the stage with her (at the close of an Irish jig in
the same play).

The interpreter informed us that this was the first
time the Sioux-killer had come among the whites.
He had disliked them always till now, but he said he
had seen enough to keep him telling tales all the rest
of his life. Power offered them cigars, which they
refused. We expressed our surprise; and the Sioux-killer
said that the Indians who smoked gave out
soonest in the chase; and White Cloud added, very
gravely, that the young women of his tribe did not
like the breaths of the smokers. In answer to an inquiry
I made about the comparative size of Indians
and white men, the chief said that the old men of the
whites were larger than old Indians, but the young
whites were not so tall and straight as the youths of
his tribe. We were struck with the smallness of the
chief's hands and feet; but he seemed very much
mortified when the interpreter translated our remark to
him. He turned the little sallow fingers over and over,
and said that old White Cloud, his father, who had
been a great warrior, had small hands like his. The
young chief, we were told by the interpreter, has never
yet been in an engagement, and is always spared from
the heavier fatigues undergone by the rest of the
tribe.

They showed great good nature in allowing us to
look at their ornaments, tomahawks, &c. White
Cloud wore a collar of bear's claws, which marked
him for a chief; and the Sioux-killer carried a great
cluster of brass bells on the end of his tomahawk, of
which he explained the use very energetically. It
was to shake when he stood over his fallen enemy in

he fight, to let the tribe know he had killed him.
After another tumbler of champagne each, they rose
to take their leave, and White Cloud gave us his hand
gently, with a friendly nod. We were all amused,
however, with the Sioux-killer's more characteristic
adieu. He looked us in the eye like a hawk, and gave
us each a grip of his iron fist, that made the blood
tingle under our nails. He would be an awkward
customer in a fight, or his fixed lips and keen eye very
much belie him.

18. CHAPTER XVIII.
WASHINGTON AFTER THE SESSION.

The leaf that is lodged in some sunny dell, after
drifting on the whirlwind—the Indian's canoe, after it
has shot the rapids—the drop of water that has struggled
out from the Phlegethon of Niagara, and sleeps
on the tranquil bosom of Ontario—are faint images
of contrast and repose, compared with a Washingtonian
after the session. I have read somewhere, in an
oriental tale, that a lover, having agreed to share his
life with his dying mistress, took her place in the
grave six months in the year. In Bagdad it might
have been a sacrifice. In Washington I could conceive
such an arrangement to make very little difference.

Nothing is done leisurely in our country; and, by
the haste with which everybody rushes to the railroad
the morning after the rising of congress, you
would fancy that the cars, like Cinderella's coach,
would be changed into pumpkins at the stroke of
twelve. The town was evacuated in a day. On the
fifth of March a placard was sent back by the innkeepers
at Baltimore, declaring that there was not so
much as a garret to be had in that city, and imploring
gentlemen and ladies to remain quietly at Washington
for twenty-four hours. The railroad engine, twice a
day, tugged and puffed away through the hills, drawing
after it, on its sinuous course, a train of brick-colored
cars, that resembled the fabulous red dragon trailing
its slimy length through the valley of Crete. The
gentlemen who sit by the fire in the bar-room at
Gadsby's, like Theodore Hook's secretary, who could
hear his master write “Yours faithfully” in the next
room, learned to distinguish “Received payment”
from “Sundries,” by listening to the ceaseless scratch
of the bookkeeper. The ticket-office at the depot
was a scene of struggle and confusion between those
who wanted places; while, looking their last on these
vanishing paymasters, stood hundreds of tatterdemalions,
white, yellow, and black, with their hands in
their pockets, and (if sincere regret at their departure
could have wrung it forth) a tear in their eye. The
bell rang, and the six hundred departures flocked to
their places—young ladies, with long faces, leaving
the delights of Washington for the dull repose of the
country—their lovers, with longer faces, trying, in vain,
to solve the X quantity expressed by the aforesaid
“Sundries” in their bill—and members of congress
with long faces, too—for not one in twenty has “made
the impression” he expected; and he is moralizing
on the decline of the taste for eloquence, and on the
want of “golden opportunity” for the display of indignant
virtue!

Nothing but an army, or such a concourse of people
as collects to witness an inauguration, could ever make
Washington look populous. But when congress, and
its train of ten thousand casual visiters are gone, and
only the official and indigenous inhabitants remain,
Balbec, or Palmyra, with a dozen Arabs scattered
among its ruins, has less a look of desolation. The
few stragglers in the streets add to its loneliness—pro
ducing exactly the effect sometimes given to a woodland
solitude by the presence of a single bird. The
vast streets seem grown vaster and more disproportionate—the
houses seem straggling to greater distances—the
walk from the president's house to the capitol
seems twice as long—and new faces are seen here and
there, at the doors and windows—for cooks and innkeepers
that had never time to lounge, lounge now,
and their families take quiet possession of the unrented
front parlor. He who would be reminded of his departed
friends should walk down on the avenue. The
carpet, associated with so many pleasant recollections
—which has been pressed by the dainty feet of wits
and beauties—to tread on which was a privilege and
a delight—is displayed on a heap of old furniture, and
while its sacred defects are rudely scanned by the curious,
is knocked down, with all its memories, under the
hammer of the auctioneer. Tables, chairs, ottomans
—all linked with the same glowing recollections—go
for most unworthy prices; and while, humiliated with
the sight, you wonder at the artificial value given to
things by their possessors, you begin to wonder whether
your friends themselves, subjected to the same
searching valuation, would not be depreciated too!
Ten to one, if their characters were displayed like
their carpets, there would come to light defects as unsuspected!

The person to whom this desolation is the “unkindest
cut” is the hackney-coachman. “His vocation”
is emphatically gone! Gone is the dollar made
every successive half hour! Gone is the pleasant sum
in compound addition, done “in the head,” while waiting
at the doors of the public offices! Gone are the
short, but profitable, trips to the theatre! Gone the
four or five families, all taken the same evening to parties,
and each paying the item of “carriage from nine
till twelve!” Gone the absorbed politician, who would
rather give the five-dollar bill than wait for his change!
the lady who sends the driver to be paid at “the bar;”
the uplifted fingers, hither and thither, which embarrass
his choice of a fare—gone, all! The chop-fallen
coachy drives to the stand in the morning and drives
home at noon; he creeps up to Fuller's at a snail-pace,
and, in very mockery of hope, asks the homeward-bound
clerk from the department if he wants a
coach! Night comes on, and his horses begin to believe
in the millenium—and the cobwebs are wove
over his whip-socket.

These changes, however, affect not unpleasantly the
diplomatic and official colony extending westward from
the president's. The inhabitants of this thin-sprinkled
settlement are away from the great thoroughfare, and
do not miss its crowds. The cessation of parties is to
them a relief from night-journeys, colds, card-leavings,
and much wear and tear of carriage-horses. They
live now in dressing-gowns and slippers, read the reviews
and the French papers, get their dinners comfortably
from the restaurateurs, and thank Heaven that
the capitol is locked up. The attachés grow fat, and
the despatches grow thin.

There are several reasons why Washington, till the
month of May, spite of all the drawbacks in the picture
delineated above, is a more agreeable residence
than the northern cities. In the first place, its climate
is at least a month earlier than that of New York, and,
in the spring, is delightful. The trees are at this moment
(the last week in March) bursting into buds;
open carriages are everywhere in use; walking in the
sun is oppressive; and for the last fortnight, this has
been a fair chronicle of the weather. Boston and
New York have been corroded with east winds, meantime,
and even so near as Baltimore, they are still
wrapped in cloaks and shawls. To those who, in
reckoning the comforts of life, agree with me in making
climate stand for nine tenths, this is powerful attraction.

Then the country about Washington, the drives
and rides, are among the most lovely in the world,
the banks of Rock creek are a little wilderness of
beauty. More brigh waters, more secluded bridle-paths,
more sunny and sheltered hill-sides, or finer
mingling of rock, hill, and valley, I never rode among.
Within a half hour's gallop, you have a sylvan retreat
of every variety of beauty, and in almost any direction;
and from this you come home (and this is not the
case with most sylvan rides) to an excellent French
dinner and agreeable society, if you like it. You have
all the seclusion of a rural town, and none of its petty
politics and scandal—all the means and appliances of
a large metropolis, and none of its exactions and limitations.
That which makes the charm of a city, and
that for which we seek the country, are equally here,
and the penalties of both are removed.

Until the reflux of population from the Rocky
mountains, I suppose Washington will never be a metropolis
of residence. But if it were an object with
the inhabitants to make it more so, the advantages I
have just enumerated, and a little outlay of capital and
enterprise, would certainly, in some degree, effect it.
People especially who come from Europe, or have
been accustomed to foreign modes of living, would be
glad to live near a society composed of such attractive
materials as the official and diplomatic persons at the
seat of government. That which keeps them away is,
principally, want of accommodation, and, in a less degree,
it is want of comfortable accommodation in the
other cities which drives them back to Europe. In
Washington you must either live at an hotel or a
boarding-house. In either case, the mode of life is
only endurable for the shortest possible period, and
the moment congress rises, every sufferer in these detestable
places is off for relief. The hotels are crowded
to suffocation; there is an utter want of privacy in
the arrangement of the suites of apartments; the service
is ill-ordered, and the prices out of all sense or
reason. You pay for that which you have not, and
you can not get by paying for it that which you want.

The boarding-house system is worse yet. To possess
but one room in privacy, and that opening on a
common passage; to be obliged to come to meals at
certain hours, with chance table companions, and no
place for a friend, and to live entirely in your bedroom
or in a public parlor, may truly be called as abominable
a routine as a gentleman could well suffer. Yet the
great majority of those who come to Washington are
in one or the other of these two categories.

The use of lodgings for strangers or transient residents
in the city does not, after all the descriptions in
books, seem at all understood in our country. This
is what Washington wants, but it is what every city in
the country wants generally. Let us describe it as if
it was never before heard of, and perhaps some enlightened
speculator may advance us half a century in
some of the cities, by creating this luxury.

Lodgings of the ordinary kind in Europe generally
consist of the apartments on one floor. The house,
we will suppose, consists of three stories above the
basement, and each floor contains a parlor, bedroom,
and dressing-room, with a small antechamber. (This
arrangement of rooms varies, of course, and a larger
family occupies two floors.) These three suites of
apartments are neatly furnished; bed-clothes, table-linen,
and plate, if required, are found by the proprietor,
and in the basement story usually lives a man and
his wife, who attend to the service of the lodgers;
i. e., bring water, answer the door-bell, take in letters,
keep the rooms in order, make the fires, and, if it is
wished, do any little cookery in case of sickness.
These people are paid by the proprietor, but receive a
fee for extra service, and a small gratuity, at departure,
from the lodger. It should be added to this, that it is
not infra. dig. to live in the second or third story.

In connexion with lodgings, there must be of course
a cook or restaurateur within a quarter of a mile.
The stranger agrees with him for his dinner, to consist
of so many dishes, and to be sent to him at a certain
hour. He gives notice in the morning if he dines out,
buys his own wine of the wine-merchant, and thus
saves two heavy items of overcharge in the hotel or
boarding-house. His own servant makes his tea or
coffee (and for this purpose has access to the fire in
the basement), and does all personal service, such as
brushing clothes, waiting at table, going on errands,
&c., &c. The stranger comes in, in short, at a moment's
warning, brings nothing but his servant and
baggage, and finds himself in five minutes at home,
his apartments private, and every comfort and convenience
as completely about him as if he had lived
there for years.

At from ten to fourteen dollars a week, such apartments
would pay the proprietor handsomely, and afford
a reasonable luxury to the lodger. A cook would
make a good thing of sending in a plain dinner for a
dollar a head (or more if the dinner were more expensive),
and at this rate, a family of two or more persons
might have a hundred times the comfort now enjoyed
at hotels, at certainly half the cost.

We have been seduced into a very unsentimental
chapter of “ways and means,” but we trust the suggestions,
though containing nothing new, may not be
altogether without use. The want of some such thing
as we have recommended is daily and hourly felt and
complained of.

THE FOUR RIVERS.
THE HUDSON—THE MOHAWK—THE CHENANGO-SUSQUEHANNAII.

Some observer of nature offered a considerable a
word for two blades of striped grass exactly similar.
The infinite diversity, of which this is one instance,
exists in a thousand other features of nature, but in
none more strikingly than in the scenery of rivers.
What two in the world are alike! How often does
the attempt fail to compare the Hudson with the Rhine
—the two, perhaps, among celebrated rivers, which
are the nearest to a resemblance? Yet looking at the
first determination of a river's course, and the natural
operation of its search for the sea, one would suppose
that, in a thousand features, their valleys would scarce
be distinguishable.

I think, of all excitements in the world, that of the
first discovery and explanation of a noble river, must
be the most eager and enjoyable. Fancy “the bold
Englishman,” as the Dutch called Hendrich Hudson,
steering his little yacht, the Halve-Mane, for the first
time through the Highlands! Imagine his anxiety
for the channel forgotten as he gazed up at the towering
rocks, and round upon the green shores, and onward,
past point and opening bend, miles away into the
heart of the country; yet with no lessening of the
glorious stream beneath him, and no decrease of
promise in the bold and luxuriant shores! Picture
him lying at anchor below Newburgh, with the dark
pass of the “Wey-Gat” frowning behind him the
lofty and blue Catskills beyond, and the hill-sides
around covered with the red lords of the soil, exhibiting
only less wonder than friendliness. And how
beautifully was the assurance of welcome expressed,
when the “very kind old man” brought a bunch of
arrows, and broke them before the stranger, to induce
him to partake fearlessly of his hospitality!

The qualities of the Hudson are those most likely
to impress a stranger. It chances felicitously that the
traveller's first entrance beyond the sea-board is usually
made by the steamer to Albany. The grand and imposing
outlines of rock and horizon answer to his anticipations
of the magnificence of a new world; and if
he finds smaller rivers and softer scenery beyond, it
strikes him but as a slighter lineament of a more enlarged
design. To the great majority of tastes, this,
too, is the scenery to live among. The stronger lines
of natural beauty affect most tastes; and there are
few who would select country residence by beauty at
all, who would not sacrifice something to their preference
for the neighborhood of sublime scenery. The
quiet, the merely rural—a thread of a rivulet instead
of a broad river—a small and secluded valley, rather
than a wide extent of view, bounded by bold mountains,
is the choice of but few. The Hudson, therefore,
stands usually foremost in men's aspirations for
escape from the turmoil of cities; but to my taste,
though there are none more desirable to see, there
are sweeter rivers to live upon.

I made one of a party, very lately, bound upon a
rambling excursion up and down some of the river-courses
of New York. We had anticipated empty
boats, and an absence of all the gay company usually
found radiating from the city in June, and had made
up our minds for once to be contented with the study
of inanimate nature. Never were wiseheads more
mistaken. Our kind friend, Captain Dean, of the
Stevens, stood by his plank when we arrived, doing his
best to save the lives of the female portion of the
crowd rushing on board; and never, in the most palmy
days of the prosperity of our country, have we seen a
greater number of people on board a boat, nor a stronger
expression of that busy and thriving haste, which
is thought to be an exponent of national industry.
How those varlets of newsboys contrive to escape in
time, or escape at all, from being crushed or carried
off; how everybody's baggage gets on board, and
everybody's wife and child; how the hawsers are
slipped, and the boat got under way, in such a crowd
and such a crush, are matters understood. I suppose,
by Providence and the captain of the Stevens—but
they are beyond the comprehension of the passenger.

Having got out of hearing of “Here's the Star!”
“Buy the old major's paper, sir?” “Here's the Express!”
“Buy the New-Ery?” “Would you like a
New-Era, sir?” “Take a Sun, miss?” and a hundred
such deafening cries, to which New York has of
late years become subject, we drew breath and comparative
silence off the green shore of Hoboken, thanking
Heaven for even the repose of a steamboat, after
the babel of a metropolis. Stillness, like all other
things, is relative.

The passage of the Hudson is doomed to be be-written,
and we will not again swell its great multitude of
describers. Bound onward, we but gave a glance, in
passing, to romantic Undercliff and Cro'-Nest, hallowed
by the sweetest poetry our country has yet committed
to immortality; gave our malison to the black
smoke of iron-works defacing the green mantle of
nature, and our benison to every dweller on the shore
who has painted his fence white, and smoothed his
lawn to the river; and sooner than we used to do by
some five or six hours (ere railroads had supplanted
the ploughing and crawling coaches to Schenectady),
we fed our eyes on the slumbering and broad valley
of the Mohawk.

How startled must be the Naiad of this lovely river
to find her willowy form embraced between railroad
and canal! one intruder on either side of the bed so
sacredly overshaded! Pity but there were a new
knight of La Mancha to avenge the hamadryads and
water-nymphs of their wrongs from wood-cutters and
contractors! Where sleep Pan and vengeful Oread,
when a Yankee settler hews me down twenty wood-nymphs
of a morning! There lie their bodies, limbless
trunks, on the banks of the Mohawk, yet no Dutchman
stands sprouting into leaves near by, nor woollen
jacket turning into bark, as in the retributive olden
time! We are abandoned of these gods of Arcady!
They like not the smoke of steam funnels!

Talking of smoke reminds me of ashes. Is there
no way of frequenting railroads without the loss of
one's eyes. Must one pay for velocity as dearly as
Cacus for his oxen? Really this new invention is a
blessing—to the oculists! Ten thousand small crystals
of carbon cutting right and left among the fine vessels
and delicate membranes of the eye, and all this amid
glorious scenery, where to go bandaged (as needs
must), is to slight the master-work of nature! Either
run your railroads away from the river courses, gentlemen
contractors, or find some other place than your
passengers' eyes to bestow your waste ashes! I have
heard of “lies in smiles,” but there's a lye in tears,
that touches the sensibilities more nearly!

There is a drowsy beauty in these German flats that
seems strangely profaned by a smoky monster whisking
along twenty miles in the hour. The gentle canal-boat
was more homogeneous to the scene. The hills
lay off from the river in easy and sleepy curves, and
the amber Mohawk creeps down over its shallow gravel
with a deliberateness altogether and abominably out
of tune with the iron rails. Perhaps it is the rails out
of tune with the river—but any way there is a discord.
I am content to see the Mohawk, canal, and railroad
inclusive, but once a year.

We reached the head waters of the Chenango river,
by what Miss Martineau celebrates as an “exclusive
extra,” in an afternoon's ride from Utica. The latter
thrifty and hospitable town was as redolent of red
bricks and sunshine as usual; and the streets, to my
regret, had grown no narrower. They who laid out
the future legislative capital of New York, must have
been lovers of winter's wind and summer's sun. They
forgot the troubles of the near-sighted—(it requires
spectacles to read the signs or see the shops from one
side to the other); they forgot the perils of old women
and children in the wide crossings; they forgot the
pleasures of shelter and shade, of neighborly vis-à-vis,
of comfortable-lookingness. I maintain that Utica is
not a comfortable-looking town. It affects me like the
clown in the pantomime, when he sits down without
bending his legs—by mere straddling. I would not
say anything so ungracious if it were not to suggest a
remedy—a shady mall up and down the middle! What
a beautiful town it would be—like an old-fashioned
shirt bosom, with a frill of elms! Your children
would walk safely within the rails, and your country-neighbors
would expose their “sa'ace,” and cool their
tired oxen in the shade. We felt ourselves compensated
for paying nearly double price for our “extra,”
by the remarkable alacrity with which the coach came
to the door after the bargain was concluded, and the
politeness with which the “gentleman who made out
the way-bill,” acceded to our stipulation. He bowed
us off, expressed his happiness to serve us, and away
we went.

The Chenango, one of the largest tributaries to the
Susquehannah, began to show itself, like a small brook,
some fifteen or twenty miles from Utica. Its course
lay directly south—and the new canal kept along its
bank, as deserted, but a thousand times less beautiful
in its loneliness than the river, whose rambling curves
it seemed made to straighten. We were not in the
best humor, for our double priced “extra” turned out
to be the regular sage; and while we were delivering
and waiting for mails, and taking in passengers, the
troop of idlers at tavern-doors amused themselves with
reading the imaginative production called our “extra
way-bill,” as it was transferred, with a sagacious wink,

from one driver's hat to the other. I thought of
Paddy's sedan-chair, with the bottom out. “If it
were not for the name of the thing,” said he, as he
trotted along with a box over his head.

I say we were not in the best of humors with our
prompt and polite friend at Utica, but even through
these bilious spectacles, the Chenango was beautiful.
Its valley is wide and wild, and the reaches of the
capricious stream through the farms and woods along
which it loiters, were among the prettiest effects of
water scenery I have ever met. There is a strange
loneliness about it; and the small towns which were
sprinkled along the hundred miles of its course, seem
rather the poineers into a western wilderness, than
settlements so near the great thoroughfare to the lakes.
It is a delicious valley to travel through, barring
“corduroy.” Tre-men-dous! exclaims the traveller,
as the coach drops into a pit between two logs, and
surges up again—Heaven only knows how. And, as
my fellow-passenger remarked, it is a wonder the road
does not echo—“tree-mend-us!”

Five miles before reaching the Susquehannah, the
road began to mend, the hills and valleys assumed the
smile of cultivation, and the scenery before us took a
bolder and broader outline. The Chenango came
down full and sunny to her junction, like the bride,
who is most lovely when just losing her virgin name,
and pouring the wealth of her whole existence into
the bosom of another; and, untroubled with his new
burden, the lordly Susquehannah kept on his majestic
way, a type of such vainly-dreaded, but easily-borne
responsibilities.

At Binghamton, we turned our course down the
Susquehannah. This delicious word, in the Indian
tongue, describes its peculiar and constant windings,
and I venture to say that on no river in the world are
the grand and beautiful in scenery so gloriously mixed.
The road to Owego follows the course of the valley
rather than of the river, but the silver curves are constantly
in view; and, from every slight elevation, the
majestic windings are seen—like the wanderings of a
vein, gleaming through green fringes of trees, and
circling the bright islands which occasionally divide
their waters. It is a swift river, and singularly living
and joyous in its expression.

At Owego there is a remarkable combination of bold
scenery and habitable plain. One of those small,
bright rivers, which are called “creeks” in this country,
comes in with its valley at right angles, to the vale
and stream of the Susquehannah, forming a star with
three rays, or a plain with three radiating valleys, or a
city (in the future, perhaps), with three magnificent
exits and entrances. The angle is a round mountain,
some four or five hundred feet in height, which kneels
fairly down at the meeting of the two streams, while
another round mountain, of an easy acclivity, lifts
gracefully from the opposite bank, as if rising from
the same act of homage to Nature. Below the town
and above it, the mountains, for the first time, give in
to the exact shape of the river's short and capricious
course; and the plain on which the town stands, is
enclosed between two amphitheatres of lofty hills,
shaped with the regularity and even edge of a coliseum,
and resembling the two halves of a leaf-lined vase,
struck apart by a twisted wand of silver.

Owego creek should have a prettier name—for its
small vale is the soul and essence of loveliness. A
meadow of a mile in breadth, fertile, soft, and sprinkled
with stately trees, furnishes a bed for its swift
windings; and from the edge of this new tempe, on
the southern side, rise three steppes, or natural terraces,
over the highest of which the forest rears its
head, and looks in upon the meeting of the rivers,
while down the sides, terrace by terrace, leap the small
streamlets from the mountain-springs, forming each
again its own smaller dimple in this loveliest face of
Nature.

There are more romantic, wilder places than this
in the world, but none on earth more habitably beautiful.
In these broad valleys, where the grain-fields,
and the meadows, and the sunny farms, are walled in
by glorious mountain sides, not obtrusively near, yet
by their noble and wondrous outlines, giving a perpetual
refreshment, and an hourly-changing feast to
the eye—in these valleys, a man's household gods
yearn for an altar. Here are mountains that, to look
on but once, “become a feeling”—a river at whose
grandeur to marvel—and a hundred streamlets to lace
about the heart. Here are fertile fields, nodding with
grain; “a thousand cattle” grazing on the hills—here
is assembled together, in one wondrous centre, a specimen
of every most loved lineament of Nature. Here
would I have a home! Give me a cottage by one of
these shining streamlets—upon one of these terraces,
that seem steps to Olympus, and let me ramble over
these mountain sides, while my flowers are growing,
and my head silvering in tranquil happiness. He
whose Penates would not root ineradicably here, has
no heart for a home, nor senses for the glory of Nature!