University of Virginia Library

2. PART II;
INKLINGS OF ADVENTURE,
AND
LOITERINGS OF TRAVEL.

PREFACE.

The following passages are extracts from the
prefaces to the English editions of the two works
included in this book — “Inklings of Adventure”
and “Loiterings of Travel:” —

It will be seen, by many marks in the narratives
which follow, that they are not the work of imagination.
The dramas of real life are seldom well
wound up, and the imperfectness of plot which
might be objected to them as tales, will prove to
the observant reader that they are drawn more
from memory than fancy. It is because they are
thus imperfect in dramatic accomplishment, that I
have called them by the name under which they
have been introduced. They are rather intimations
of what seemed to lead to a romantic termination
than complete romances — in short, they are
Inklings of Adventure. The adventures were jotted
down — the events recorded — the poems indited,
and the letters despatched, while the thought was
freshly born, or the incident freshly heard or remembered
— at the first place which afforded the
leisure — in short, during Loiterings of Travel.

For the living portraitures of the book I have a
word to say. That sketches of the whim of the
hour, its manners, fashions, and those ephemeral
trifles, which, slight as they are, constitute in a
great measure its “form and pressure” — that these,
and familiar traits of persons distinguished in our
time, are popular and amusing, I have the most
weighty reasons certainly to know. They sell.
“Are they innocent?” is the next question. And
to this I know no more discreet answer than that
mine have offended nobody but the critics. It has
been said that sketches of contemporary society
require little talent, and belong to an inferior order
of literature, Perhaps. Yet they must be well
done to attract notice at all; and if true and graphic,
they are not only excellent material for future
biographers, but to all who live out of the magic
circles of fashion and genius, they are more than
amusing — they are instructive. To such persons,
living authors, orators, and statesmen, are as much
characters of history, and society in cities is as
much a subject of philosophic curiosity, as if a
century had intervened. The critic who finds
these matters “stale and unprofitable,” lives in the
circles described, and the pictures drawn at his
elbow lack to his eye the effect of distance; but
the same critic would delight in a familiar sketch
of a supper with “my lord of Leicester” in Elizabeth's
time, of an evening with Raleigh and
Spenser, or perhaps he would be amused with a
description by an eye-witness of Mary Queen of
Scots, riding home to Holyrood with her train of
admiring nobles. I have not named in the same
sentence the ever-deplored blank in our knowledge
of Shakspere's person and manners. What
would not a trait by the most unskilful hand be
worth now — if it were nothing but how he gave
the good-morrow to Ben Jonson in Eastcheap?

How far sketches of the living are a breach of
courtesy committed by the author toward the persons
described, depends, of course, on the temper
in which they are done. To select a subject for
complimentary description is to pay the most undoubted
tribute to celebrity, and, as far as I have
observed, most distinguished persons sympathize
with the public interest in them and their belongings,
and are willing to have their portraits drawn,
either with pen or pencil, by as many as offer
them the compliment. It would be ungracious to
the admiring world if they were not.

The outer man is a debtor for the homage paid
to the soul which inhabits him, and he is bound,
like a porter at the gate, to satisfy all reasonable

curiosity as to the habits of the nobler and invisible
tenant. He owes his peculiarities to the
world.

For myself, I am free to confess that no age
interests me like the present; that no pictures of
society since the world began, are half so entertaining
to me as those of English society in our
day; and that, whatever comparison the living
great men of England may sustain with those of
other days, there is no doubt in my mind that English
social life, at the present moment, is at a higher
pitch of refinement and cultivation than it was
ever here or elsewhere since the world began —
consequently it, and all who form and figure in it,
are dignified and legitimate subjects of curiosity
and speculation. The Count Mirabel and Lady
Bellair of D'Israeli's last romance, are, to my
mind, the cleverest portraits, as well as the most
entertaining characters, of modern novel-writing;
and D'Israeli, by the way, is the only English author
who seems to have the power of enlarging
his horizon, and getting a perspective view of the
times he lives in. His novels are far more popular
in America than in England, because the Atlantic
is to us a century. We picture to ourselves
England and Victoria as we picture to ourselves
England and Elizabeth. We relish an anecdote
of Sheridan Knowles as we should one of Ford
or Marlowe. This immense ocean between us is
like the distance of time; and while all that is
minute and bewildering is lost to us, the greater
lights of the age and the prominent features of society
stand out apart, and we judge of them like
posterity. Much as I have myself lived in England,
I have never been able to remove this long
perspective from between my eye and the great men
of whom I read and thought on the other side of
the Atlantic. When I find myself in the same
room with the hero of Waterloo, my blood creeps
as if I had seen Cromwell or Marlborough; and
I sit down afterward to describe how he looked,
with the eagerness with which I should communicate
to my friends some disinterred description
of these renowned heroes by a contemporary
writer. If Cornelius Agrippa were redivivus, in
short, and would show me his magic mirror, I
should as soon call up Moore as Dryden — Wordsworth
or Wilson as soon as Pope or Crichton.

PEDLAR KARL.

— L'Evangile des Femmes.

I am not sure whether Lebanon Springs, the scene
of a romantic story I am about to tell, belong to New
York or Massachusetts. It is not very important, to
be sure, in a country where people take Vermont and
Patagonia to be neighboring states, but I have a natural
looseness in geography which I take pains to mortify
by exposure. Very odd that I should not remember
more of the spot where I took my first lessons in
philandering! — where I first saw you, brightest and
most beautiful A. D. (not Anno Domini), in your white
morning-frocks and black French aprons!

Lebanon Springs are the rage about once in three
years. I must let you into the secret of these things,
gentle reader, for perhaps I am the only individual
existing who has penetrated the mysteries of the four
dyansties of American fashion. In the fourteen millions
of inhabitants in the United States, there are
precisely four authenticated and undisputed aristocratic
families. There is one in Boston, one in New
York, one in Philadelphia, and one in Baltimore. By
a blessed Providence they are not all in one state, or
we should have a civil war and a monarchy in no time.
With two hundred miles' interval between them, they
agree passably, and generally meet at one or another
of the three watering-places of Saratoga, Ballston, or
Lebanon. Their meeting is as mysterious as the process
of crystallization, for it is not by agreement. You
must explain it by some theory of homœopathy or
magnetism. As it is not known till the moment they
arrive, there is of course great excitement among the
hotel-keepers in these different parts of the country,
and a village that has ten thousand transient inhabitants
one summer, has, for the next, scarcely as many
score. The vast and solitary temples of Pæstum are
gay in comparison with these halls of disappointment.

As I make a point of dawdling away July and August
in this locomotive metropolis of pleasure, and
rather prefer Lebanon, it is always agreeable to me to
hear that the nucleus is formed in that valley of hemlocks.
Not for its scenery, for really, my dear east
ern-hemispherian! you that are accustomed to what
is called nature in England (to wit, a soft park, with a
gray ruin in the midst), have little idea how wearily
upon heart and mind presses a waste wilderness of
mere forest and water, without stone or story. Trees
in England have characters and tongues; if you see a
fine one, you know whose father planted it, and for
whose pleasure it was designed, and about what sum
the man must possess to afford to let it stand. They
are statistics, as it were — so many trees, ergo so many
owners so rich. In America, on the contrary, trees
grow and waters run, as the stars shine, quite unmeaningly;
there may be ten thousand princely elms, and
not a man within a hundred miles worth five pounds
five. You ask, in England, who has the privilege of
this water? or you say of an oak, that it stood in such
a man's time: but with us, water is an element unclaimed
and unrented, and a tree dabbles in the clouds
as they go over, and is like a great idiot, without soul
or responsibility.

If Lebanon had a history, however, it would have
been a spot for a pilgrimage, for its natural beauty.
It is shaped like a lotus, with one leaf laid back by
the wind. It is a great green cup, with a scoop for a
drinking-place. As you walk in the long porticoes of
the hotel, the dark forest mounts up before you like a
leafy wall, and the clouds seem just to clear the pine-tops,
and the eagles sail across from horizon to horizon,
without lifting their wings, as if you saw them
from the bottom of a well. People born there think
the world about two miles square, and hilly.

The principal charm of Lebanon to me is the village
of “shakers,” lying in a valley about three miles
off. As Glaucus wondered at the inert tortoise of
Pompeii, and loved it for its antipodal contrast to himself,
so do I affection (a French verb that I beg leave
to introduce to the English language) the shaking
quakers. That two thousand men could be found in
the New World, who would embrace a religion enjoining
a frozen and unsympathetic intercourse with
the diviner sex, and that an equal number of females
could be induced to live in the same community, without
locks or walls, in the cold and rigid observance
of a creed of celibacy, is to me an inexplicable and
grave wonder. My delight is to get into my stanhope
after breakfast, and drive over and spend the forenoon
in contemplating them at their work in the fields
They have a peculiar and most expressive physiogno

my; the women are pale, or of a wintry redness in
the cheek, and are all attenuated and spare. Gravity,
deep and habitual, broods in every line of their thin
faces. They go out to their labor in company with
those serious men, and are never seen to smile; their
eyes are all hard and stony, their gait is precise and
stiff, their voices are of a croaking hoarseness, and nature
seems dead in them. I would bake you such men
and women in a brick-kiln.

Do they think the world is coming to an end? Are
there to be no more children? Is Cupid to be thrown
out of business, like a coach proprietor on a railroad?
What can the shakers mean, I should be pleased to
know?

The oddity is that most of them are young. Men
of from twenty to thirty, and women from sixteen to
twenty-five, and often, spite of their unbecoming dress,
good-looking and shapely, meet you at every step. Industrious,
frugal, and self-denying, they certainly are,
and there is every appearance that their tenets of
difficult abstinence are kept to the letter. There is
little temptation beyond principle to remain, and they
are free to go and come as they list, yet there they
live on in peace and unrepining industry, and a more
thriving community does not exist in the republic.
Many a time have I driven over on a Sunday, and
watched those solemn virgins dropping in one after
another to the church; and when the fine-limbed and
russet-faced brotherhood were swimming round the
floor in their fanatical dance, I have watched their
countenances for some look of preference, some betrayal
of an ill-suppressed impulse, till my eyes ached
again. I have selected the youngest and fairest, and
have not lost sight of her for two hours, and she
might have been made of cheese-parings for any trace
of emotion. There is food for speculation in it. Can
we do without matrimony? Can we “strike,” and be
independent of these dear delightful tyrants, for whom
we “live and move and have our being?” Will it
ever be no blot on our escutcheon to have attained
thirty-five as an unfructifying unit? Is that fearful
campaign, with all its embarrassments and awkwardnesses,
and inquisitions into your money and morals,
its bullyings and backings-out — is it inevitable?

Lebanon has one other charm. Within a morning
drive of the springs lies the fairest village it has ever
been my lot to see. It is English in its character,
except that there is really nothing in this country
so perfect of its kind. There are many towns in the
United States more picturesquely situated, but this,
before I had been abroad, always seemed to me the
very ideal of English rural scenery, and the kind of
place to set apart for either love or death — for one's
honeymoon or burial — the two periods of life which
I have always hoped would find me in the loveliest
spot of nature. Stockbridge lies in a broad sunny
valley, with mountains at exactly the right distance,
and a river in its bosom that is as delicate in its windings,
and as suited to the charms it wanders among,
as a vein in the transparent neck of beauty. I am
not going into a regular description, but I have carried
myself back to Lebanon; and the remembrance
of the leafy mornings of summer in which I have
driven to that fair earthly paradise, and loitered under
its elms, imagining myself amid the scenes of song
and story in distant England, has a charm for me now.
I have seen the mother-land; I have rambled through
park, woodland, and village, wherever the name was
old and the scene lovely, and it pleases me to go back
to my dreaming days and compare the reality with the
anticipation. Most small towns in America have traces
of newness about them. The stumps of a clearing, or
freshly-boarded barns — something that is the antipodes
of romance — meets your eye from every aspect. Stockbridge,
on the contrary, is an old town, and the houses
are of a rural structure; the fields look soft and genial
the grass is swardlike, the bridges picturesque, the
hedges old, and the elms, nowhere so many and so
luxuriant, are full-grown and majestic. The village
is embowered in foliage.

Greatest attraction of all, the authoress of “Redwood”
and “Hope Leslie,” a novelist of whom America has
the good sense to be proud, is the Miss Mitford of Stockbridge.
A man, though a distinguished one, may have
little influence on the town he lives in, but a remarkable
woman is the invariable cynosure of a community,
and irradiates it all. I think I could divine the presence
of one almost by the growing of the trees and flowers.
“Our Village” does not look like other villages.

2. II.

You will have forgotten that I had a story to tell,
dear reader. I was at Lebanon in the summer of —
(perhaps you don't care about knowing exactly when
it was, and in that case I would rather keep shy of
dates. I please myself with the idea that time gets on
faster than I). The Springs were thronged. The
president's lady was there (this was under our administration,
the Adams'), and all the four cliques spoken
of above were amicably united — each other's beaux
dancing with each other's belles, and so on. If I were
writing merely for American eyes, I should digress
once more to describe the distinctive characters of the
south, north, and central representations of beauty;
but it would scarcely interest the general reader. I
may say, in passing, that the Boston belles were à
l'Anglaise, rosy and riantes; the New-Yorkers, like
Parisians, cool, dangerous, and dressy; and the Baltimoreans
(and so south), like Ionians or Romans, indolent,
passionate, lovely, and languishing. Men,
women, and pine-apples, I am inclined to think, flourish
with a more kindly growth in the fervid latitudes.

The campaign went on, and a pleasant campaign it
was — for the parties concerned had the management
of their own affairs; that is, they who had hearts to
sell made the bargain for themselves (this was the
greater number), and they who disposed of this commodity
gratis, though necessarily young and ignorant
of the world, made the transfer in the same manner, in
person. This is your true republic. The trading in
affections by reference — the applying to an old and
selfish heart for the purchase of a young and ingenuous
one — the swearing to your rents, and not to your
faithful passion — to your settlements, and not your
constancy — the cold distance between yourself and
the young creature who is to lie in your bosom, till
the purchase-money is secured — and the hasty marriage
and sudden abandonment of a nature thus
chilled and put on its guard, to a freedom with one
almost a stranger, that can not but seem licentious,
and can not but break down that sense of propriety in
which modesty is most strongly intrenched — this
seems to me the one evil of your old worm-eaten monarchies
this side the water, which touches the essential
happiness of the well-bred individual. Taxation
and oppression are but things he reads of in the morning
paper.

This freedom of intercourse between unmarried
people has a single disadvantage — one gets so desperately
soon to the end of the chapter! There shall be
two hundred young ladies at the Springs in a given
season, and, by the difference in taste so wisely arranged
by Providence, there will scarcely be, of course,
more than four in that number whom any one gentleman
at all difficult will find within the range of his
beau ideal. With these four he may converse freely
twelve hours in the day — more, if he particularly desires
it. They may ride together, drive together, ramble
together, sing together, be together from morning

till night, and at the end of a month passed in this way,
if he escape a committal, as is possible, he will know
all that are agreeable, in one large circle, at least, as well
as he knows his sisters — a state of things that is very
likely to end in his going abroad soon, from a mere
dearth of amusement. I have imagined, however,
the case of an unmarrying idle man, a character too
rare as yet in America to affect the general question.
People marry as they die in that country — when their
time come. We must all marry is as much an axiom
as we must all die, and eke as melancholy.

Shall we go on with the story? I had escaped for
two blessed weeks, and was congratulating the susceptible
gentleman under my waistcoat-pocket that we
should never be in love with less than the whole sex
again, when a German Baron Von — arrived at
the Springs with a lame daughter. She was eighteen,
transparently fair, and, at first sight, so shrinkingly
dependant, so delicate, so childlike, that attention to
her assumed the form almost of pity, and sprang as
naturally and unsuspectingly from the heart. The
only womanly trait about her was her voice, which
was so deeply soft and full, so earnest and yet so gentle,
so touched with subdued pathos and yet so melancholy
calm, that if she spoke after a long silence, I
turned to her involuntarily with the feeling that she
was not the same — as if some impassioned and eloquent
woman had taken unaware the place of the
simple and petted child.

I am inclined to think there is a particular tenderness
in the human breast for lame women. Any
other deformity in the gentler sex is monstrous; but
lameness (the devil's defect) is “the devil.” I picture
to myself, to my own eye, now — pacing those rickety
colonnades at Lebanon with the gentle Meeta hanging
heavily, and with the dependance inseparable from
her infirmity, on my arm, while the moon (which was
the moon of the Rhine to her, full of thrilling and unearthly
influences) rode solemnly up above the mountain-tops.
And that strange voice filling like a flute
with sweetness as the night advanced, and that irregular
pressure of the small wrist in her forgotten lameness,
and my own (I thought) almost paternal feeling
as she leaned more and more heavily, and turned her
delicate and fair face confidingly up to mine, and that
dangerous mixture altogether of childlikeness and
womanly passion, of dependance and superiority, of
reserve on the one subject of love, and absolute confidence
on every other — if I had not a story to tell, I
could prate of those June nights and their witcheries
till you would think

and myself “bitten by the dipsas.”

We were walking one night late in the gallery running
around the second story of the hotel. There was
a ball on the floor below, and the music, deadened
somewhat by the crowded room, came up softened and
mellowed to the dark and solitary colonnade, and added
to other influences in putting a certain lodger in my
bosom beyond my temporary control. I told Meeta
that I loved her.

The building stands against the side of a steep mountain
high up above the valley, and the pines and hemlocks
at that time hung in their primeval blackness
almost over the roof. As the most difficult and embarrassed
sentence of which I had ever been delivered
died on my lips, and Meeta, lightening her weight on
my arm, walked in apparently offended silence by my
side, a deep-toned guitar was suddenly struck in the
woods, and a clear, manly voice broke forth in a song.
It produced an instant and startling effect on my companion.
With the first word she quickly withdrew
her arm; and, after a moment's pause, listening with
her hands raised in an attitude of the most intense eagerness,
she sprang to the extremity of the balustrade,
and gazed breathlessly into the dark depths of the forest.
The voice ceased, and she started back, and laid
her hand hastily upon my arm.

“I must go,” she said, in a voice of hurried feeling;
“if you are generous, stay here and await me!” and in
another moment she sprang along the bridge connecting
the gallery with the rising ground in the rear, and
was lost in the shadows of the hemlocks.

“I have made a declaration,” thought I, “just five
minutes too soon.”

I paced up and down the now too lonely colonnade,
and picked up the fragments of my dream with what
philosophy I might. by the time Meeta returned —
perhaps a half hour, perhaps an age, as you measure
by her feelings or mine — I had hatched up a very pretty
and heroical magnanimity. She would have spoken,
but was breathless.

“Explain nothing,” I said, taking her arm within
mine, “and let us mutually forget. If I can serve you
better than by silence, command me entirely. I live
but for your happiness — even,” I added after a pause,
“though it spring from another.”

We were at her chamber-door. She pressed my
hand with a strength of which I did not think those
small, slight fingers capable, and vanished, leaving me,
I am free to confess, less resigned than you would suppose
from my last speech. I had done the dramatic
thing, thanks to much reading of you, dear Barry
Cornwall! but it was not in a play. I remained killed
after the audience was gone.

3. III.

The next day a new character appeared on the
stage.

“Such a handsome pedlar!” said magnificent Helen
— to me, as I gave my horse to the groom after
a ride in search of hellebore, and joined the promenade
at the well: “and what do you think? he sells
only by raffle! It's so nice! All sorts of Berlin iron
ornaments, and everything German and sweet; and
the pedlar's smile's worth more than the prizes; and
such a mustache! See! there he is! — and now, if
he has sold all his tickets — will you come, Master
Gravity?”

“I hear a voice you can not hear,” thought I, as I
gave the beauty my arm, and joined a crowd of people
gathered about a pedlar's box in the centre of the
parterre.

The itinerant vender spread his wares in the midst
of the gay assemblage, and the raffle went on. He
was excessively handsome. A head of the sweet gentleness
of Raphael's, with locks flowing to his shoulders
in the fashion of German students, a soft brown
mustache curving on a short Phidian upper lip, a
large blue eye expressive of enthusiasm rather than
passion, and features altogether purely intellectual —
formed a portrait of which even jealousy might console
itself. Through all the disadvantages of a dress
suited to his apparent vocation, an eye the least on
the alert for a disguise would have penetrated his in
a moment. The gay and thoughtless crowd about
him, not accustomed to impostors who were more than
they pretended to be, trusted him for a pedlar, but
treated him with a respect far above his station insensibly.

Whatever his object was, so it were honorable, I
inly determined to give him all the assistance in my
power. A single glance at the face of Meeta, who
joined the circle as the prizes were drawn — a face so
changed since yesterday, so flushed with hope and
pleasure, and yet so saddened by doubt and fear, the
small lips compressed, the soft black eye kindled and

restless, and the red leaf on her cheek deepened to a
feverish beauty — left me no shadow of hesitation. I
exchanged a look with her that I intended should say
as much.

4. IV.

I know nothing that gives one such an elevated idea
of human nature (in one's own person) as helping
another man to a woman one loves. Oh last days of
minority or thereabout! oh primal manhood! oh
golden time, when we have let go all but the enthusiasm
of the boy, and seized hold of all but the selfishness
of the man! oh blessed interregnum of the
evil and stronger genius! why can we not bottle up
thy hours like the wine of a better vintage, and enjoy
them in the parched world-weariness of age? In the
tardy honeymoon of a bachelor (as mine will be, if it
come ever, alas!) with what joy of paradise should we
bring up from the cellars of the past a hamper of that
sunny Hippocrene!

Pedlar Karl and “the gentleman in No. 10” would
have been suspected in any other country of conspiracy.
(How odd, that the highest crime of a monarchy
— the attempt to supplant the existing ruler — becomes
in a republic a creditable profession! You are a traitor
here, a politician there!) We sat together from
midnight onward, discoursing in low voices over sherry
and sandwiches; and in that crowded Babylon, his
entrances and exits required a very conspirator-like
management. Known as my friend, his trade and his
disguise were up. As a pedlar, wandering about
where he listed when not employed over his wares, his
interviews with Meeta were easily contrived, and his
lover's watch, gazing on her through the long hours
of the ball from the crowd of villagers at the windows,
hovering about her walks, and feeding his heart on
the many, many chance looks of fondness given him
every hour in that out-of-doors society, kept him comparatively
happy.

“The baron looked hard at you to-day,” said I, as
he closed the door in my little room, and sat down on
the bed.

“Yes; he takes an interest in me as a countryman,
but he does not know me. He is a dull observer, and
has seen me but once in Germany.”

“How, then, have you known Meeta so long?”

“I accompanied her brother home from the university,
when the baron was away, and for a long month
we were seldom parted. Riding, boating on the Rhine,
watching the sunset from the bartizan of the old castletowers,
reading in the old library, rambling in the park
and forest — it was a heaven, my friend, than which I
can conceive none brighter.”

“And her brother?”

“Alas! changed! We were both boys then, and a
brother is slow to believe his sister's beauty dangerous.
He was the first to shut the doors against me, when
he heard that the poor student had dared to love his
highborn Meeta.”

Karl covered his eyes with his hand, and brooded
for a while in silence on the remembrances he had
awakened.

“Do you think the baron came to America purposely
to avoid you?”

“Partly, I have no doubt, for I entered the castle
one night in my despair, when I had been forbidden
entrance, and he found me at her feet in the old corridor.
It was the only time he ever saw me, if, indeed,
he saw me at all in the darkness: and he immediately
hastened his preparations for a long-contemplated
journey, I knew not whither.”

“Did you follow him soon?”

“No, for my heart was crushed at first, and I despaired.
The possibility of following them in my
wretched poverty did not even occur to me for
months.”

“How did you track them hither, of all places in
the world?”

“I sought them first in Italy. It is easy on the
continent to find out where persons are not, and after
two years' wanderings, I heard of them in Paris.
They had just sailed for America. I followed; but
in a country where there are no passports, and no
espionage, it is difficult to trace the traveller. It was
probable only that they would be at a place of general
resort, and I came here with no assurance but hope.
Thanks to God, the first sight that greeted my eyes
was my dear Meeta, whose irregular step, as she
walked back and forth with you in the gallery, enabled
me to recognise her in the darkness.”

Who shall say the days of romance are over? The
plot is not brought to the catastrophe, but we hope it
is near.

5. V.

My aunt, Isabella Slingsby (now in heaven, with
the “eleven thousand virgins,” God rest her soul!),
was at this time, as at all others, under my respectable
charge. She would have said I was under hers —
but it amounts to the same thing — we lived together
in peace and harmony. She said what she pleased,
for I loved her — and I did what I pleased, for she
loved me. When Karl told me that Meeta's principal
objection to an elopement was the want of a matron,
I shut the teeth of my resolution, as they say in Persia,
and inwardly vowed my unconscious aunt to this
exigency. You should have seen Miss Isabella Slingsby
to know what a desperate man may be brought to
resolve on.

On a certain day, Count Von Raffle-off (as my witty
friend and ally, Tom Fane, was pleased to call the
handsome pedlar) departed with his pack and the
hearts of all the dressing-maids and some of their mistresses,
on his way to New York. I drove down the
road to take my leave of him out of sight, and give
him my last instructions.

How to attack my aunt was a subject about which
I had many unsatisfactory thoughts. If there was one
thing she disapproved of more than another, it was an
elopement; and with what face to propose to her to
run away with a baron's only daughter, and leave her
in the hands of a pedlar, taking upon herself, as she
must, the whole sin and odium, was an enigma I ate,
drank, and slept upon, in vain. One thing at last became
very clear — she would do it for nobody but me.
Sequitur, I must play the lover myself.

I commenced with a fit of illness. What was the
matter? For two days I was invisible. Dear Isabella!
it was the first time I had ever drawn seriously on thy
fallow sympathies, and, how freely they flowed at my
affected sorrows, I shame to remember! Did ever
woman so weep? Did ever woman so take antipathy
to man as she to that innocent old baron for his supposed
refusal of his daughter to Philip Slingsby? This
revival of the remembrance shall not be in vain. The
mignonette and roses planted above thy grave, dearest
aunt, shall be weeded anew!

Oh that long week of management and hypocrisy!
The day came at last.

“Aunt Bel!”

“What, Philip, dear?”

“I think I feel better to-day.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. What say you to a drive? There is the
stanhope.”

“My dear Phil, don't mention that horrid stanhope.
I am sure, if you valued my life — ”

“Precisely, aunt — (I had taken care to give her a

good fright the day before) — but Tom Fane has offered
me his ponies and Jersey wagon, and that, you know,
is the most quiet thing in the world, and holds four.
So, perhaps — ehem! — you'll — ask Meeta?”

“Um! Why, you see, Philip — ”

I saw at once, that, if it got to an argument, I was
perdu. Miss Slingsby, though a sincere Christian,
never could keep her temper when she tried to reason.
I knelt down on her footstool, smoothed away the false
hair on her forehead and kissed her. It was a fascinating
endearment of mine, that I only resorted to on
great emergencies. The hermit tooth in my aunt's
mouth became gradually visible, heralding what in
youth had been a smile; and, as I assisted her in rolling
up her embroidery, she looked on me with an unsuspecting
affection that touched my heart. I made
a silent vow that if she survived the scrape into which
she was being inveigled, I would be to her and her
dog Whimsiculo (the latter my foe and my aversion)
the soul of exemplary kindness for the remainder of
their natural lives. I lay the unction to my soul that
this vow was kept. My aunt blessed me shortly before
she was called to “walk in white” (she had hitherto
walked in yellow), and as it would have been unnatural
in Whimsiculo to survive her, I considered his
“natural life” as ended with hers, and had him peacefully
strangled on the same day. He lies at her feet,
as usual, a delicate attention of which (I trust in Swedenborg)
her spirit is aware.

With the exception of “Tom Thumb” and “Rattler,”
who were of the same double-jointed family of
interminable wind and bottom, there was never perhaps
such a pair of goers as Tom Fane's ponies. My
aunt had a lurking hope, I believe, that the baron
would refuse Meeta permission to join us, but either
he did not think me a dangerous person (I have said
before he was a dull man), or he had no objection to
me as a son-in-law, which my aunt and myself (against
the world) would have thought the natural construction
upon his indifference. He came to the end of the
colonnade to see us start, and as I eased the ribands
and let the ponies off like a shot from a crossbow, I
stole a look at Meeta. The color had fled from cheek
and lip, and the tears streamed over them like rain.
Aunt Bel was on the back seat, grace à Dieu!

We met Tom at the foot of the hill, and I pulled
up. He was the best fellow, that Tom Fane!

“Ease both the bearing reins,” said I, “I am going
up the mountain.”

“The devil you are!” said Tom, doing my bidding,
however; “you'll find the road to the shakers much
pleasanter. What an odd whim! It's a perpendicular
three miles, Miss Slingsby. I would as lief be
hoisted up a well and let down again. Don't go that
way, Phil, unless you are going to run away with
Miss Von — ”

thought I, and waving the tandem lash over the ears
of the ponies, I brought up the silk on the cheek of
their malaprop master, and spanked away up the hill,
leaving him in a range likely to get a fresh supply of
fuel by dinner-time. Tom was of a plethoric habit,
and if I had not thought he could afford to burst a
blood-vessel better than two lovers to break their hearts,
I should not have ventured on the bold measure of
borrowing his horses for an hour, and keeping them a
week. We have shaken hands upon it since, but it is
my private opinion that he has never forgiven me in
his heart.

As we wound slowly up the mountain, I gave Meeta
the reins, and jumped out to gather some wild flowers
for my aunt. Dear old soul! the attention reconciled
her to what she considered a very unwarrantable caprice
of mine. What I could wish to toil up that
steep mountain for? Well! the flowers are charming
in these high regions!

“Don't you see my reason for coming, then, aunt
Bella?”

“Was it for that, dear Philip?” said she, putting
the wild flowers affectionately into her bosom, where
they bloomed like broidery on saffron tapestry; “how
considerate of you!” And she drew her shawl around
her, and was at peace with all the world. So easily
are the old made happy by the young! Reader, I
scent a moral in the air!

We were at the top of the hill. If I was sane, my
aunt was probably thinking, I should turn here, and
go back. To descend the other side, and reascend
and descend again to the Springs, was hardly a sort of
thing one would do for pleasure.

“Here's a good place to turn, Philip,” said she, as
we entered a smooth broad hollow on the top of the
mountain.

I dashed through it as if the ponies were shod with
talaria. My aunt said nothing, and luckily the road
was very narrow for a mile, and she had a horror of a
short turn. A new thought struck me.

“Did you ever know, aunt, that there was a way
back around the foot of the mountain?”

“Dear, no; how delightful! Is it far?”

“A couple of hours or so; but I can do it in less.
We'll try;” and I gave the sure-footed Canadians the
whip, and scampered down the hills as if the rock of
Sisyphus had been rolling after us.

We were soon over the mountain-range, and the
road grew better and more level. Oh, how fast pattered
those little hoofs, and how full of spirit, and
excitement looked those small ears, catching the
lightest chirrup I could whisper, like the very spell of
swiftness! Pines, hemlocks and cedars, farmhouses
and milestones, flew back like shadows. My aunt sat
speechless in the middle of the back seat, holding on
with both hands, in apprehensive resignation! She
expected soon to come in sight of the Springs, and
had doubtless taken a mental resolution that if, please
God, she once more found herself at home, she would
never “tempt Providence” (it was a favorite expression
of hers) by trusting herself again behind such a pair
of fly-away demons. As I read this thought in her
countenance by a stolen glance over my shoulder, we
rattled into a village distant from Lebanon twenty
miles.

“There, aunt,” said I, as I pulled up at the door of
the inn, “we have very nearly described a circle.
Now, don't speak! if you do, you'll start the horses.
There's nothing they are so much afraid of as a woman's
voice. Very odd, isn't it? We'll just sponge
their mouths now, and be at home in the crack of a
whip. Five miles more, only. Come!”

Off we sped again like the wind, aunt Bel just venturing
to wonder whether the horses wouldn't rather go
slower. Meeta had hardly spoken; she had thoughts
of her own to be busy with, and I pretended to be fully
occupied with my driving. The nonsense I talked to
those horses, to do away the embarrassment of her silence,
would convict me of insanity before any jury in
the world.

The sun began to throw long shadows, and the short-legged
ponies figured like flying giraffes along the retiring
hedges. Luckily, my aunt had very little idea
of conjecturing a course by the points of the compass.
We sped on gloriously.

“Philip, dear! hav'n't you lost your way? It seems
to me we've come more than five miles since you
stopped” (ten at least), “and I don't see the mountains
about Lebanon at all!”

“Don't be alarmed, aunty, dear! We're very high,
just here, and shall drop down on Lebanon, as it were.
Are you afraid, Meeta?”

“Nein!” she answered. She was thinking in German,
poor girl, and heart and memory were wrapped
up in the thought.

I drove on almost cruelly. Tom's incomparable
horses justified all his eulogiums; they were indefatigable.
The sun blazed a moment through the firs,
and disappeared; the gorgeous changes of eve came
over the clouds; the twilight stole through the damp
air with its melancholy gray; and the whippoorwills,
birds of evening, came abroad, like gentlemen in debt,
to flit about in the darkness. Everything was saddening.
My own volubility ceased; the whiz of the
lash, as I waved it over the heads, of my foaming ponies,
and an occasional “Steady!” as one or the other
broke into a gallop, were the only interruptions to the
silence. Meeta buried her face in the folds of her
shawl, and sat closer to my side, and my aunt, soothed
and flattered by turns, believed and doubted, and was
finally persuaded, by my ingenious and well-inserted
fibs, that it was only somewhat farther than I anticipated,
and we should arrive “presently.”

Somewhere about eight o'clock the lights of a town
appeared in the distance, and, straining every nerve,
the gallant beasts whirled us in through the streets,
and I pulled up suddenly at the door of an hotel.

“Why, Philip!” said my aunt in a tone of unutterable
astonishment, looking about her as if she had
awoke from a dream, “this is Hudson!”

It was too clear to be disputed. We were upon the
North river, forty miles from Lebanon, and the steamer
would touch at the pier in half an hour. My aunt
was to be one of the passengers to New York, but she
was yet to be persuaded of it; the only thing now was
to get her into the house, and enact the scene as soon
as possible.

I helped her out as tenderly as I knew how, and, as
we went up stairs, I requested Meeta to sit down in a
corner of the room, and cover her face with her handkerchief.
When the servant was locked out, I took
my aunt into the recess of the window, and informed
her, to her very great surprise, that she had run away
with the baron's daughter.

“Philip Slingsby!”

My aunt was overcome. I had nothing for it but to
be overcome too. She sunk into one chair, and I into
the other, and burying my face in my hands, I looked
through my fingers to watch the effect. Five mortal
minutes lasted my aunt's wrath; gradually, however,
she began to steal a look at me, and the expression of
resentment about her thin lips softened into something
like pity.

“Philip!” said she, taking my hand.

“My dear aunt!”

“What is to be done?”

I pointed to Meeta, who sat with her head on her
bosom, pressed my hand to my heart, as if to suppress
a pang, and proceeded to explain. It seemed impossible
for my aunt to forgive the deception of the thing.
Unsophisticated Isabella! If thou hadst known that
thou wert, even yet, one fold removed from the truth,
— if thou couldst have divined that it was not for the
darling of thy heart that thou wert yielding a point
only less dear to thee than thy maiden reputation —
if it could have entered thy region of possibilities that
thine own house in town had been three days aired
for the reception of a bride, run away with by thy ostensible
connivance, and all for a German pedlar, in
whose fortunes and loves thou hadst no shadow of
interest — I think the brain in thee would have turned,
and the dry heart in thy bosom have broken with surprise
and grief!

I wrote a note to Tom, left his horses at the inn,
and at nine o'clock we were steaming down the Hudson,
my aunt in bed, and Meeta pacing the deck with
me, and pouring forth her fears and her gratitude in
a voice of music that made me almost repent my self
sacrificing enterprise. I have told the story gayly,
gentle reader! but there was a nerve ajar in my heart
while its little events went on.

How we sped thereafter, dear reader! — how the
consul of his majesty of Prussia was persuaded by my
aunt's respectability to legalize the wedding by his
presence — how my aunt fainted dead away when the
parson arrived, and she discovered who was not to be
the bridegroom and who was — how I persuaded her
she had gone too far to recede, and worked on her tenderness
once more — how the weeping Karl, and his
lame and lovely bride, lived with us till the old baron
thought it fit to give Meeta his blessing and some
money — how Tom Fane wished no good to the pedlar's
eyes — and lastly, how Miss Isabella Slingsby lived
and died wondering what earthly motive I could have
for my absurd share in these events, are matters of
which I spare you the particulars.

NIAGARA — LAKE ONTARIO — THE ST. LAWRENCE.

1. NO. I. — NIAGARA.

It was in my senior vacation, and I was bound to
Niagara for the first time. My companion was a specimen
of the human race found rarely in Vermont, and
never elsewhere. He was nearly seven feet high,
walked as if every joint in his body was in a hopeless
state of dislocation, and was hideously, ludicrously,
and painfully ugly. This whimsical exterior contained
the conscious spirit of Apollo, and the poetical susceptibility
of Keats. He had left his plough in the Green
mountains at the age of twenty-five, and entered as a
poor student at the university, where, with the usual
policy of the college government, he was allotted to
me as a compulsory chum, on the principle of breaking
in a colt with a cart-horse. I began with laughing
at him, and ended with loving him. He rejoiced in
the common appellation of Job Smith — a synonymous
soubriquet, as I have elsewhere remarked, which was
substituted by his classmates for his baptismal name
of Forbearance.

Getting Job away with infinite difficulty from a
young Indian girl who was selling moccasins in the
streets of Buffalo (a straight, slender creature of eighteen,
stepping about like a young leopard, cold, stern,
and beautiful), we crossed the outlet of Lake Erie at
the ferry, and took horses on the northern bank of
Niagara river to ride to the falls. It was a noble
stream, as broad as the Hellespont and as blue as the
sky, and I could not look at it, hurrying on headlong
to its fearful leap, without a feeling almost of dread.

There was only one thing to which Job was more
susceptible than to the beauties of nature, and that
was the beauty of woman. His romance had been
stirred by the lynx-eyed Sioux, who took her money
for the moccasins with such haughty and thankless
superbia, and full five miles of the river, with all the
gorgeous flowers and rich shrubs upon its rim, might
as well have been Lethe for his admiration. He rode
along, like the man of rags you see paraded on an ass
in the carnival, his legs and arms dangling about in
ludicrous obedience to the sidelong hitch of his pacer.

The roar of the falls was soon audible, and Job's
enthusiasm and my own, if the increased pace of our
Narraganset ponies meant anything, were fully aroused.
The river broke into rapids, foaming furiously on its

course, and the subterranean thunder increased like a
succession of earthquakes, each louder than the last.
I had never heard a sound so broad and universal. It
was impossible not to suspend the breath, and feel absorbed,
to the exclusion of all other thoughts, in the
great phenomenon with which the world seemed trembling
to its centre. A tall, misty cloud, changing its
shape continually, as it felt the shocks of the air, rose
up before us, and with our eyes fixed upon it, and our
horses at a hard gallop, we found ourselves unexpectedly
in front of a vast white — hotel! which suddenly
interposed between the cloud and our vision.
Job slapped his legs against the sides of his panting
beast, and urged him on, but a long fence on either
side the immense building cut him off from all approach;
and having assured ourselves that there was
no access to Niagara except through the back-door of
the gentleman's house, who stood with hat off to receive
us, we wished no good to his majesty's province
of Upper Canada, and dismounted.

“Will you visit the falls before dinner, gentlemen?”
asked mine host.

“No, sir!” thundered Job, in a voice that, for a moment,
stopped the roar of the cataract.

He was like an improvisatore who had been checked
by some rude birbone in the very crisis of his eloquence.
He would not have gone to the falls that
night to have saved the world. We dined.

As it was the first meal we had ever eaten under a
monarchy, I proposed the health of the king; but Job
refused it. There was an impertinent profanity, he
said, in fencing up the entrance to Niagara that was a
greater encroachment on natural liberty than the stamp
act. He would drink to no king or parliament under
which such a thing could be conceived possible. I left
the table and walked to the window.

“Job, come here! Miss — , by all that is lovely!”

He flounced up, like a snake touched with a torpe-do,
and sprang to the window. Job had never seen
the lady whose name produced such a sensation, but
he had heard more of her than of Niagara. So had
every soul of the fifteen millions of inhabitants between
us and the gulf of Mexico. She was one of those miracles
of nature that occur, perhaps, once in the rise
and fall of an empire — a woman of the perfect beauty
of an angel, with the most winning human sweetness
of character and manner. She was kind, playful, unaffected,
and radiantly, gloriously beautiful. I am sorry
I may not mention her name, for in more chivalrous
times she would have been a character of history.
Everybody who has been in America, however, will
know who I am describing, and I am sorry for those
who have not. The country of Washington will be
in its decadence before it sees such another.

She had been to the fall and was returning with her
mother and a troop of lovers, who, I will venture to
presume, brought away a very imperfect impression of
the scene. I would describe her as she came laughing
up that green bank, unconscious of everything but
the pleasure of life in a summer sunset; but I leave it
for a more skilful hand. The authoress of “Hope
Leslie” will, perhaps, mould her image into one of
her inimitable heroines.

I presented my friend, and we passed the evening
in her dangerous company. After making an engagement
to accompany her in the morning behind the
sheet of the fall, we said “Good-night” at twelve — one
of us at least as many “fathom deep in love” as a thousand
Rosalinds. My poor chum! The roar of the
cataract that shook the very roof over thy head was
less loud to thee that night than the beating of thine
own heart, I warrant me!

I rose at sunrise to go alone to the fall, but Job was
before me, and the angular outline of his gaunt figure,
stretching up from Table Rock in strong relief against
the white body of the spray, was the first object that
caught my eye as I descended.

As I came nearer the fall, a feeling of disappointment
came over me. I had imagined Niagara a vast
body of water descending as if from the clouds. The
approach to most falls is from below, and we get an
idea of them as of rivers pitching down to the plain
from the brow of a hill or mountain. Niagara river,
on the contrary, comes out from Lake Erie through a
flat plain. The top of the cascade is ten feet perhaps
below the level of the country around — consequently
invisible from any considerable distance. You walk
to the bank of a broad and rapid river, and look over
the edge of a rock, where the outlet flood of an inland
sea seems to have broken through the crust of the
earth, and, by its mere weight, plunged with an awful
leap into an immeasurable and resounding abyss. It
seems to strike and thunder upon the very centre of
the world, and the ground beneath your feet quivers
with the shock till you feel unsafe upon it.

Other disappointment than this I can not conceive
at Niagara. It is a spectacle so awful, so beyond the
scope and power of every other phenomenon in the
world, what I think people who are disappointed there
mistake the incapacity of their own conception for the
want of grandeur in the scene.

The “hell of waters” below need but a little red
ochre to out-Phlegethon Phlegethon. I can imagine
the surprise of the gentle element, after sleeping away
a se'nnight of moonlight in the peaceful bosom of
Lake Erie, at finding itself of a sudden in such a coil!
A Mediterranean sea-gull, which had tossed out the
whole of a January in the infernal “yeast” of the
Archipelago (was I not all but wrecked every day between
Troy and Malta in a score of successive hurricanes?)
— I say, the most weather-beaten of sea-birds
would look twice before he ventured upon the roaring
caldron below Niagara. It is astonishing to see how
far the descending mass is driven under the surface of
the stream. As far down toward Lake Ontario as the
eye can reach, the immense volumes of water rise
like huge monsters to the light, boiling and flashing
out in rings of foam, with an appearance of rage and
anger that I have seen in no other cataract in the
world.

“A nice fall, as an Englishman would say, my dear
Job.”

“Awful!”

Halleck, the American poet (a better one never
“strung pearls”), has written some admirable verses
on Niagara, describing its effect on the different individuals
of a mixed party, among whom was a tailor.
The sea of incident that has broken over me in years
of travel, has washed out of my memory all but the
two lines descriptive of its impression upon Snip: —

“Shall we go to breakfast, Job?”

“How slowly and solemnly they drop into the
abysm!”

It was not an original remark of Mr. Smith's. Nothing
is so surprising to the observer as the extraordinary
deliberateness with which the waters of Niagara
take their tremendous plunge. All hurry and foam
and fret, till they reach the smooth limit of the curve
— and then the laws of gravitation seem suspended,
and, like Cesar, they pause, and determine, since it is
inevitable, to take the death-leap with becoming dignity.

“Shall we go to breakfast, Job?” I was obliged to
raise my voice, to be heard, to a pitch rather exhausting
to an empty stomach.

His eyes remained fixed upon the shifting rainbows
bending and vanishing in the spray. There was no
moving him, and I gave in for another five minutes

“Do you think it probable, Job, that the waters of
Niagara strike on the axis of the world?”

No answer.

“Job!”

“What?”

“Do you think his majesty's half of the cataract is
finer than ours?”

“Much.”

“For water, merely, perhaps. But look at the delicious
verdure on the American shore, the glorious
trees, the massed foliage, the luxuriant growth even to
the very rim of the ravine! By Jove! it seems to me
things grow better in a republic. Did you ever see a
more barren and scraggy shore than the one you stand
upon?”

“How exquisitely,” said Job, soliloquizing, “that
small green island divides the fall! What a rock it
must be founded on, not to have been washed away
in the ages that these waters have split against it!”

“I'll lay you a bet it is washed away before the
year two thousand — payable in any currency with
which we may then be conversant.”

“Don't trifle!”

“With time, or geology, do you mean? Isn't it
perfectly clear from the looks of that ravine, that Niagara
has backed up all the way from Lake Ontario?
These rocks are not adamant, and the very precipice
you stand on has cracked, and looks ready for the
plunge.[1] It must gradually wear back to Lake Erie,
and then there will be a sweep, I should like to live
long enough to see. The instantaneous junction of
two seas, with a difference of two hundred feet in their
levels, will be a spectacle — eh, Job?”

“Tremendous!”

“Do you intend to wait and see it, or will you come
to breakfast?”

He was immoveable. I left him on the rock, went
up to the hotel and ordered mutton-chops and coffee,
and when they were on the table, gave two of the
waiters a dollar each to bring him up nolens-volens.
He arrived in a great rage, but with a good appetite,
and we finished our breakfast just in time to meet
Miss — , as she stepped like Aurora from her
chamber.

It is necessary to a reputation for prowess in the
United States to have been behind the sheet of the
fall (supposing you to have been to Niagara). This
achievement is equivalent to a hundred shower-baths,
one severe cold, and being drowned twice — but most
people do it.

We descended to the bottom of the precipice, at the
side of the fall, where we found a small house, furnished
with coarse linen dresses for the purpose, and
having arranged ourselves in habiliments not particularly
improving to our natural beauty, we reappeared —
only three out of a party of ten having had the courage
to trust their attractions to such a trial. Miss —
looked like a fairy in disguise, and Job like the most
ghostly and diabolical monster that ever stalked unsepultured
abroad. He would frighten a child in his
best black suit — but with a pair of wet linen trowsers
scarcely reaching to his knees, a jacket with sleeves
shrunk to the elbows, and a white cap, he was something
supernaturally awful. The guide hesitated
about going under the fall with him.

It looked rather appalling. Our way lay through a
dense descending sheet of water, along a slender
pathway of rocks, broken into small fragments, with
an overhanging wall on one side, and the boiling
caldron of the cataract on the other. A false step,
and you were a subject for the “shocking accident”
maker.

The guide went first, taking Miss — 's right
hand. She gave me her left, and Job brought up the
rear, as they say in Connecticut, “on his own hook.”
We picked our way boldly up to the water. The wall
leaned over so much, and the fragmented declivity
was so narrow and step, that if it had not been done
before, I should have turned back at once. Two
steps more, and the small hand in mine began to struggle
violently, and, in the same instant, the torrent beat
into my eyes, mouth, and nostrils, and I felt as if I
was drowning. I staggered a blind step onward, but
still the water poured into my nostrils, and the conviction
rushed for a moment on my mind that we were
lost. I struggled for breath, stumbled forward, and
with a gasp that I thought was my last, sunk upon
the rocks within the descending waters. Job tumbled
over me the next instant, and as soon as I could clear
my eyes sufficiently to look about me, I saw the
guide sustaining Miss — , who had been as nearly
drowned as most of the subjects of the Humane Society,
but was apparently in a state of resuscitation.
None but the half-drowned know the pleasure of
breathing.

Here we were within a chamber that Undine might
have coveted, a wall of rock at our back, and a transparent
curtain of shifting water between us and the
world, having entitled ourselves à peu près to the same
reputation with Hylas and Leander, for seduction by
the Naiads.

Whatever sister of Arethusa inhabits there, we
could but congratulate her on the beauty of her abode.
A lofty and well-lighted hall, shaped like a long pavilion,
extended as far as we could see through the spray,
and with the two objections, that you could not have
heard a pistol at your ear for the noise, and that the
floor was somewhat precipitous, one could scarce imagine
a more agreeable retreat for a gentleman who
was disgusted with the world, and subject to dryness
of the skin. In one respect it resembled the enchanted
dwelling of the Witch of Atlas, where, Shelley tells
us —

It is lucky for Witches and Naiads that they are not
subject to rheumatism.

The air was scarcely breathable — (if air it may be
called, which streams down the face with the density
of a shower from a watering-pot), and our footing upon
the slippery rocks was so insecure, that the exertion
of continually wiping our eyes was attended with imminent
danger. Our sight was valuable, for surely,
never was such a brilliant curtain hung up to the sight
of mortals, as spread apparently from the zenith to our
feet, changing in thickness and lustre, but with a constant
and resplendent curve. It was what a child might
imagine the arch of the sky to be where it bends over
the edge of the horizon.

The sublime is certainly very much diluted when
one contemplates it with his back to a dripping and
slimy rock, and his person saturated with a continual
supply of water. From a dry window, I think the infernal
writhe and agony of the abyss into which we
were continually liable to slip, would have been as fine
a thing as I have seen in my travels; but I am free to
admit, that, at the moment, I would have exchanged
my experience and all the honor attached to it, for a
dry escape. The idea of drowning back through that
thick column of water, was at least a damper to enthusiasm.
We seemed cut off from the living. There
was a death between us and the vital air and sunshine.

I was screwing up my courage for the return, when
the guide seized me by the shoulder. I looked around,
and what was my horror to see Miss — standing
far in behind the sheet upon the last visible point of

rock, with the water pouring over her in torrents, and
a gulf of foam between us, which I could in no way
understand how she had passed over.

She seemed frightened and pale, and the guide explained
to me by signs (for I could not distinguish a
syllable through the roar of the cataract), that she had
walked over a narrow ledge, which had broken with
her weight. A long fresh mark upon the rock at the
foot of the precipitous wall, made it sufficiently evident:
her position was most alarming.

I made a sign to her to look well to her feet; for
the little island on which she stood was green with
slime and scarce larger than a hat, and an abyss of full
six feet wide, foaming and unfathomable, raged between
it and the nearest foothold. What was to be
done? Had we a plank, even, there was no possible
hold for the further extremity, and the shape of the
rock was so conical, that its slippery surface evidently
would not hold a rope for a moment. To jump to her,
even if it were possible, would endanger her life, and
while I was smiling and encouraging the beautiful
creature, as she stood trembling and pale on her dangerous
foothold, I felt my very heart sink within me.

The despairing guide said something which I could
not hear, and disappeared through the watery wall,
and I fixed my eyes upon the lovely form, standing,
like a spirit in the misty shroud of the spray, as if the
intensity of my gaze could sustain her upon her dangerous
foothold. I would have given ten years of my
life at that moment to have clasped her hand in mine.

I had scarce thought of Job until I felt him trying
to pass behind me. His hand was trembling as he
laid it on my shoulder to steady his steps; but there
was something in his ill-hewn features that shot an
indefinable ray of hope through my mind. His sandy
hair was plastered over his forehead, and his scant
dress clung to him like a skin; but though I recall
his image now with a smile, I looked upon him with a
feeling far enough from amusement then. God bless
thee, my dear Job! wherever in this unfit world thy
fine spirit may be fulfilling its destiny!

He crept down carefully to the edge of the foaming
abyss, till he stood with the breaking bubbles at his
knees. I was at a loss to know what he intended.
She surely would not dare to attempt a jump to his
arms from that slippery rock, and to reach her in any
way seemed impossible.

The next instant he threw himself forward, and
while I covered my eyes in horror, with the flashing
conviction that he had gone mad and flung himself
into the hopeless whirlpool to reach her, she had
crossed the awful gulf, and lay trembling and exhausted
at my feet! He had thrown himself over the
chasm, caught the rock barely with the extremities of
his fingers, and with certain death if he missed his
hold or slipped from his uncertain tenure, had sustained
her with supernatural strength as she walked
over his body!

The guide providentially returned with a rope in
the same instant, and fastening it around one of his
feet, we dragged him back through the whirlpool, and
after a moment or two to recover from the suffocating
immersion, he fell on his knees, and we joined him,
I doubt not devoutly, in his inaudible thanks to God.

2. II. — LAKE ONTARIO.

The next bravest achievement to venturing behind
the sheet of Niagara, is to cross the river in a small
boat, at some distance below the Phlegethon of the
abyss. I should imagine it was something like riding
in a howdah on a swimming elephant. The immense
masses of water driven under by the Fall, rise
splashing and fuming far down the river; and they
are as unlike a common wave, to ride, as a horse and
a camel. You are, perhaps, ten or fifteen minutes
pulling across, and you may get two or three of these
lifts, which shove you straight into the air about ten
feet, and then drop you into the cup of an eddy, as if
some long-armed Titan had his hand under the water,
and were tossing you up and down for his amusement.
It imports lovers to take heed how their mistresses
are seated, as all ladies, on these occasions,
throw themselves into the arms of the nearest “hose
and doublet.”

Job and I went over to dine on the American side
and refresh our patriotism. We dined under a hickory-tree
on Goat island, just over the glassy curve of the
cataract; and as we grew joyous with our champagne,
we strolled up to the point where the waters divide
for the American and British Falls; and Job harangued
the “mistaken gentleman on his right,” in
eloquence that would have turned a division in the
house of commons. The deluded multitude, however,
rolled away in crowds for the monarchy, and at
the close of his speech the British Fall was still, by a
melancholy majority, the largest. We walked back
to our bottle like foiled patriots, and soon after, hopeless
of our principles, went over to the other side too!

I advise all people going to Niagara to suspend making
a note in their journal till the last day of their
visit. You might as well teach a child the magnitude
of the heavens by pointing to the sky with your
finger, as comprehend Niagara in a day. It has to
create its own mighty place in your mind. You have
no comparison through which it can enter. It is too
vast. The imagination shrinks from it. It rolls in
gradually, thunder upon thunder, and plunge upon
plunge; and the mind labors with it to an exhaustion
such as is created only by the extremest intellectual
effort. I have seen men sit and gaze upon it in a cool
day of antumn, with the perspiration standing on
their foreheads in large heads, from the unconscious
but toilsome agony of its conception. After haunting
its precipices, and looking on its solemn waters for
seven days, sleeping with its wind-played monotony
in your ears, dreaming, and returning to it till it has
grown the one object, as it will, of your perpetual
thought, you feel, all at once, like one who has compassed
the span of some almighty problem. It has
stretched itself within you. Your capacity has attained
the gigantic standard, and you feel an elevation
and breadth of nature that could measure girth and
stature with a seraph. We had fairly “done” Niagara.
We had seen it by sunrise, sunset, moonlight;
from top and bottom; fasting and full; alone and together.
We had learned by heart every green path
on the island of perpetual dew, which is set like an
imperial emerald on its front (a poetical idea of my
own, much admired by Job) — we had been grave, gay,
tender, and sublime, in its mighty neighborhood, we
had become so accustomed to the base of its broad
thunder, that it seemed to us like a natural property
in the air, and we were unconscious of it for hours;
our voices had become so tuned to its key, and our
thoughts so tinged by its grand and perpetual anthem,
that I almost doubted if the air beyond the reach of
its vibrations would not agonize us with its unnatural
silence, and the common features of the world seem
of an unutterable and frivolous littleness.

We were eating our last breakfast there, in tender
melancholy: mine for the Falls, and Job's for the
Falls and Miss — , to whom I had a half suspicion
that he had made a declaration.

“Job!” said I.

He looked up from his egg.

“My dear Job!”

“Don't allude to it, my dear chum,” said he, dropping
his spoon, and rushing to the window to hide his
agitation. It was quite clear.

I could scarce restrain a smile. Psyche in the embrace
of a respectable giraffe would be the first thought

in anybody's mind who should see them together.
And yet why should he not woo her — and win her
too? He had saved her life in the extremest peril, at
the most extreme hazard of his own; he had a heart
as high and worthy, and as capable of an undying
worship of her as she would find in a wilderness of
lovers; he felt like a graceful man, and acted like a
brave one, and was sans peur et sans reproche, and
why should he not love like other men? My dear
Job! I fear thou wilt go down to thy grave, and but
one woman in this wide world will have loved thee —
thy mother! Thou art the soul of a preux chevalier
in the body of some worthy grave-digger, who is strutting
about the world, perhaps, in thy more proper carcass.
These angels are so o'er hasty in packing!

We got upon our horses, and had a pleasant amble
before us of fifteen miles, on the British side of the
river. We cantered off stoutly for a mile to settle our
regrets, and then I pulled up, and requested Job to
ride near me, as I had something to say to him.

“You are entering,” said I, “my dear Job, upon
your first journey in a foreign land. You will see
other manners than your own, which are not therefore
laughable, and hear a different pronunciation from
your own, which is not therefore vulgar. You are to
mix with British subjects, whom you have attacked
vigorously in your school declamations as `the enemy,'
but who are not therefore to be bullied in their own
country, and who have certain tastes of their own,
upon which you had better reserve your judgment.
We have no doubt that we are the greatest country
that ever was, is, or ever shall be; but, as this is an
unpalatable piece of information to other nations, we
will not stuff it into their teeth, unless by particular
request. John Bull likes his coat too small. Let him
wear it. John Bull prefers his beefsteak to a fricandeau.
Let him eat it. John Bull will leave no stone
unturned to serve you in his own country, if you will
let him. Let him. John Bull will suffer you to find
fault for ever with king, lords, and commons, if you
do not compare them invidiously with other governments.
Let the comparison alone. In short, my
dear chum, as we insist that foreigners should adopt
our manners while they are travelling in the United
States, we had better adopt theirs when we return the
visit. They are doubtless quite wrong throughout,
but it is not worth while to bristle one's back against
the opinions of some score millions.”

The foam disappeared from the stream, as we followed
it on, and the roar of the falls —

was soon faint in our ears, and like the regret of parting,
lessened with the increasing distance till it was
lost. Job began to look around him, and see something
else besides a lovely face in the turnings of the
road, and the historian of this memorable journey,
who never had but one sorrow that “would not budge
with a fillip,” rose in his stirrups as he descried the
broad blue bosom of Lake Ontario, and gave vent to
his feelings in (he begs the reader to believe) the most
suitable quotation.

Seeing any celebrated water for the first time was
always, to me, an event. River, waterfall, or lake, if
I have heard of it and thought of it for years, has a
sensible presence, that I feel like the approach of a
human being in whom I am interested. My heart flutters
to it. It is thereafter an acquaintance, and I defend
its beauty or its grandeur as I would the fair fame
and worth of a woman that had shown me a preference.
My dear reader, do you love water? Not to
drink, for I own it is detestable in small quantities —
but water, running or falling, sleeping or gliding, tinged
by the sunset glow, or silvered by the gentle alchymist
of the midnight heaven? Do you love a
lake? Do you love a river? Do you “affect” any
one laughing and sparkling brook that has flashed on
your eye like a fay overtaken by the cock-crowing,
and tripping away slily to dream-land? As you see
four sisters, and but one to love; so, in the family of
the elements, I have a tenderness for water.

Lake Ontario spread away to the horizon, glittering
in the summer sun, boundless to the eye as the Atlantic;
and directly beneath us lay the small town of
Fort Niagara, with the steamer at the pier, in which
we promised ourselves a passage down the St. Lawrence.
We rode on to the hotel, which we found to
our surprise crowded with English officers, and having
disposed of our Narragansets, we inquired the hour
of departure, and what we could eat meantime, in as
nearly the same breath as possible.

“Cold leg of mutton and the steamboat's engaged,
sir!”

The mercury in Job's Britishometer fell plump to
zero. The idea of a monopoly of the whole steamer
by a colonel and his staff, and no boat again for a
week!

There was a government to live under!

We sat down to our mutton, and presently enter
the waiter.

“Colonel — 's compliments; hearing that two
gentlemen have arrived who expected to go by the
steamer, he is happy to offer them a passage if they
can put up with rather crowded accommodations.”

“Well, Job! what do you think now of England,
politically, morally, and religiously? Has not the
gentlemanlike courtesy of one individual materially
changed your opinions upon every subject connected
with the United Kingdom of Great Britain?”

“It has.”

“Then, my dear Job, I recommend you never again
to read a book of travels without writing down on the
margin of every bilious chapter, `probably lost his
passage in the steamer,' or `had no mustard to his
mutton,' or `could find no ginger-nuts for the interesting
little traveller,' or some similar annotation. Depend
upon it, that dear delightful Mrs. Trollope would
never have written so agreeable a book, if she had
thriven with her bazar in Cincinnati.”

We paid our respects to the colonel, and at six
o'clock in the evening got on board. Part of an Irish
regiment was bivouacked on the deck, and happier
fellows I never saw. They had completed their nine
years' service on the three Canadian stations, and
were returning to the ould country, wives, children,
and all. A line was drawn across the deck, reserving
the after quarter for the officers; the sick were disposed
of among the women in the bows of the boat,
and the band stood ready to play the farewell air to the
cold shores of Upper Canada.

The line was cast off, when a boy of thirteen rushed
down to the pier, and springing on board with a
desperate leap, flew from one end of the deck to the
other, and flung himself at last upon the neck of a
pretty girl sitting on the knee of one of the privates.

“Mary, dear Mary!” was all he could utter. His
sobs choked him.

“Avast with the line, there!” shouted the captain,
who had no wish to carry off this unexpected passenger.
The boat was again swung to the wharf, and the
boy very roughly ordered ashore. His only answer
was to cling closer to the girl, and redouble his tears,
and by this time the colonel had stepped aft, and the
case seemed sure of a fair trial. The pretty Canadian
dropped her head on her bosom, and seemed divided
between contending emotions, and the soldier stood up
and raised his cap to his commanding officer, but held
firmly by her hand. The boy threw himself on his
knees to the colonel, but tried in vain to speak.

“Who's this, O'Shane?” asked the officer.

“Sure, my swateheart, your honor.”

“And how dare you bring her on board, sir?”

“Och, she'll go to ould Ireland wid us, your honor.”

“No, no, no!” cried the convulsed boy, clasping
the colonel's knees, and sobbing as if his heart would
break; “she is my sister! She isn't his wife! Father'll
die if she does! She can't go with him! She
sha'n't go with him!”

Job began to snivel, and I felt warm about the eyes
myself.

“Have you got a wife O'Shane?” asked the
colonel.

“Plase your honor, never a bit,” said Paddy. He
was a tight, good-looking fellow, by the way, as you
would wish to see.

“Well — we'll settle this thing at once. Get up, my
little fellow! Come here, my good girl! Do you
love O'Shane well enough to be his wife?”

“Indeed I do, sir!” said Mary, wiping her eyes with
the back of her hand, and stealing a look at the “six
feet one” that stood as straight as a pike beside her.

“O'Shane! I allow this girl to go with us only on
condition that you marry her at the first place where
we can find a priest. We will make her up a bit of a
dowry, and I will look after her comfort as long as she
follows the regiment. What do you say, sir? Will
you marry her?”

O'Shane began to waver in his military position,
from a full front face getting to very nearly a right-about.
It was plain he was taken by surprise. The
eyes of the company were on him, however, and public
opinion, which, in most human breasts, is considerably
stronger than conscience, had its effect.

“I'll do it, your honor!” said he, bolting it out as
a man volunteers upon a “forlorn hope.”

Tears might as well have been bespoken for the
whole company. The boy was torn from his sister's
neck, and set ashore in the arms of two sailors, and
poor Mary, very much in doubt whether she was happy
or miserable, sank upon a heap of knapsacks, and
buried her eyes in a cotton handkerchief with a map
of London upon it, probably a gage d'amour from the
desaving O'Shane. I did the same myself with a
silk one, and Job item. Item the colonel and several
officers.

The boat was shoved off, and the wheels spattered
away, but as far as we could hear his voice, the cry
came following on, “Mary, Mary!”

It rung in my ears all night: “Mary, Mary!”

I was up in the morning at sunrise, and was glad
to escape from the confined cabin and get upon deck.
The steamer was booming on through a sea as calm
as a mirror, and no land visible. The fresh dewiness
of the morning air ashore played in my nostrils, and
the smell of grass was perceptible in the mind, but in
all else it was like a calm in mid ocean. The soldiers
were asleep along the decks, with their wives and
children, and the pretty runaway lay with her head on
O'Shane's bosom, her red eyes and soiled finery
showing too plainly how she had passed the night.
Poor Mary! she has enough of following a soldier,
by this, I fear.

I stepped forward, and was not a little surprised to
see standing against the railing on the larboard bow,
the motionless figure of an Indian girl of sixteen.
Her dark eye was fixed on the line of the horizon we
were leaving behind, her arms were folded on her
bosom, and she seemed not even to breathe. A common
shawl was wrapped carelessly around her, and
another glance betrayed to me that she was in a situation
soon to become a mother. Her feet were protected
by a pair of once gaudy but now shabby and
torn moccasins, singularly small; her hands were of a
delicate thinness unusual to her race, and her hollow
cheeks, and forehead marked with an expression of
pain, told all I could have prophesied of the history of
a white man's tender mercies. I approached very
near, quite unperceived. A small burning spot was
just perceptible in the centre of her dark cheek, and
as I looked at her steadfastly, I could see a working of
the muscles of her dusky brow, which betrayed, in one
of a race so trained to stony calmness, an unusual fever
of feeling. I looked around for the place in which
she must have slept. A mantle of wampum-work,
folded across a heap of confused baggage, partly occupied
as a pillow by a brutal-looking and sleeping
soldier, told at once the main part of her story. I felt
for her, from my soul!

“You can hear the great waterfall no more,” I said,
touching her arm.

“I hear it when I think of it,” she replied, turning
her eyes upon me as slowly, and with as little surprise,
as if I had been talking to her an hour.

I pointed to the sleeping soldier. “Are you going
with him to his country?”

`Yes.”

“Are you his wife?”

“My father gave me to him.”

“Has he sworn before the priest in the name of the
Great Spirit to be your husband!”

“No.” She looked intently into my eyes as she
answered, as if she tried in vain to read my meaning.

“Is he kind to you?”

She smiled bitterly.

“Why then did you follow him?”

Her eyes dropped upon the burden she bore at her
heart. The answer could not have been clearer if
written with a sunbeam. I said a few words of kindness,
and left her to turn over in my mind how I could
best interfere for her happiness.

3. III. — THE ST. LAWRENCE.

On the third evening we had entered upon the St.
Lawrence, and were winding cautiously into the
channel of the Thousand Isles. I think there is not,
within the knowledge of the “all-beholding sun,” a
spot so singularly and exquisitely beautiful. Between
the Mississippi and the Cimmerian Bosphorus, I know
there is not, for I have pic-nicked from the Symplegades
westward. The Thousand Isles of the St. Lawrence
are as imprinted on my mind as the stars of heaven.
I could forget them as soon.

The river is here as wide as a lake, while the channel
just permits the passage of a steamer. The
islands, more than a thousand in number, are a singular
formation of flat, rectangular rock, split, as it
were, by regular mathematical fissures, and overflowed
nearly to the tops, which are loaded with a
most luxuriant vegetation. They vary in size, but
the generality of them would about accommodate a
tea-party of six. The water is deep enough to float a
large steamer directly at the edge, and an active deer
would leap across from one to the other in any direction.
What is very singular, these little rocky platforms
are covered with a rich loam, and carpeted with
moss and flowers while immense trees take root in the
clefts, and interface their branches with those of the
neighboring islets, shadowing the water with the unsunned
dimness of the wilderness. It is a very odd
thing to glide through in a steamer. The luxuriant
leaves sweep the deck, and the black funnel parts the
drooping sprays as it keeps its way, and you may
pluck the blossoms of the acacia, or the rich chestnut
flowers, sitting on the taffrail, and, really, a magic passage
in a witch's steamer, beneath the tree-tops of an
untrodden forest, could not be more novel and startling.
Then the solitude and silence of the dim and
still waters are continually broken by the plunge and
leap of the wild deer springing or swimming from one

island to another, and the swift and shadowy canoe of
the Indian glides out from some unseen channel, and
with a single stroke of his broad paddle he vanishes,
and is lost again, even to the ear. If the beauty-sick
and nature-searching spirit of Keats is abroad in the
world, “my basnet to a 'prentice-cap” he passes his
summers amid the thousand isles of the St. Lawrence!
I would we were there with our tea-things,
sweet Rosa Matilda!

We had dined on the quarter-deck, and were sitting
over the colonel's wine, pulling the elm-leaves from
the branches as they swept saucily over the table, and
listening to the band, who were playing waltzes that
probably ended in the confirmed insanity of every
wild heron and red deer that happened that afternoon
to come within ear-shot of the good steamer Queenston.
The paddles began to slacken in their spattering,
and the boat came to, at the sharp side of one of the
largest of the shadowy islands. We were to stop an
hour or two, and take in wood.

Everybody was soon ashore for a ramble, leaving
only the colonel, who was a cripple from a score of
Waterloo tokens, and your servant, reader, who had
something on his mind.

“Colonel! will you oblige me by sending for Mahoney?
Steward! call me that Indian girl sitting
with her head on her knees in the boat's bow.”

They stood before us.

“How is this?” exclaimed the colonel; “another!
good God! these Irishmen! Well, sir! what do you
intend to do with this girl, now that you have ruined
her?”

Mahoney looked at her out of a corner of his eye
with a libertine contempt that made my blood boil.
The girl watched for his answer with an intense but
calm gaze into his face, that if he had had a soul,
would have killed him. Her lips were set firmly but
not fiercely together, and as the private stood looking
from one side to the other, unable or unwilling to answer,
she suppressed a rising emotion in her throat,
and turned her look on the commanding officer with a
proud coldness that would have become Medea.

“Mahoney!” said the colonel, sternly, “will you
marry this poor girl?”

“Never, I hope, your honor!”

The wasted and noble creature raised her burdened
form to its fullest height, and, with an inaudible murmur
bursting from her lips, walked back to the bow
of the vessel. The colonel pursued his conversation
with Mahoney, and the obstinate brute was still refusing
the only reparation he could make the poor
Indian, when she suddenly reappeared. The shawl
was no longer around her shoulders. A coarse blanket
was bound below her breast with a belt of wampum,
leaving her fine bust entirely bare, her small feet
trod the deck with the elasticity of a leopard about to
leap on his prey, and her dark, heavily-fringed eyes,
glowed like coals of fire. She seized the colonel's
hand, and imprinted a kiss upon it, another upon mine,
and without a look at the father of her child, dived
with a single leap over the gangway. She rose directly
in the clear water, swam with powerful strokes
to one of the most distant islands, and turning once
more to wave her hand as she stood on the shore,
strode on, and was lost in the tangles of the forest.

THE CHEROKEE'S THREAT.

There were a hundred students in the new class
matriculated at Yale College in Connecticut, in the
year 18 — . They were young men of different ages
and of all conditions in life, but less various in their
mien and breeding than in the characteristics of the
widely-separate states from which they came. It is
not thought extraordinary in Europe that the French
and English, the German, and the Italian, should possess
distinct national traits; yet one American is supposed
to be like every other, though the two between
whom the comparison is drawn were born and bred as
far apart, and in as different latitudes, as the Highland
cateran and the brigand of Calabria.

I looked around me with some interest, when, on
the first morning of the term, the president, professors,
and students of the university assembled in the college
chapel at the sound of the prayer-bell, and, with my
brother freshmen, I stood in the side aisle, closing
up with our motley, and, as yet, unclassical heads and
habiliments, the long files of the more initiated classes.
The berry-brown tan of the sun of Georgia, unblanched
by study, was still dark and deep on the cheek of one;
the look of command, breathing through the indolent
attitude, betrayed, in another, the young Carolinian
and slave-master; a coat of green, garnished with fur
and bright buttons, and shaped less by the tailor than
by the Herculean and expansive frame over which it
was strained, had a taste of Kentucky in its complexion;
the white skin and red or sandy hair, cold expression,
stiff black coat, and serious attention to the
service, told of the puritan son of New Hampshire or
Vermont; and, perked up in his well-fitted coat, the
exquisite of the class, stood the slight and metropolitan
New-Yorker, with a firm belief in his tailor and himself
written on his effeminate lip, and an occasional
look at his neighbors' coats and shoulders, that might
have been construed into wonder upon what western
river or mountain dwelt the builders of such coats and
men!

Rather annoyed at last by the glances of one or two
seniors, who were amusing themselves with my simple
gaze of curiosity, I turned my attention to my more
immediate neighborhood. A youth with close, curling,
brown hair, rather under-size, but with a certain
decision and nerve in his lip which struck me immediately,
and which seemed to express somehow a confidence
in himself which his limbs scarce bore out,
stood with his back to the pulpit, and, with his foot on
the seat and his elbow on his knee, seemed to have
fallen at once into the habit of the place, and to be
beyond surprise or interest. As it was the custom of
the college to take places at prayers and recitation
alphabetically, and he was likely to be my neighbor
in chapel and hall for the next four years, I speculated
rather more than I should else have done on his face
and manner; and as the president came to his Amen,
I came to the conclusion, that whatever might be Mr.
“S.'s” capacity for friendship, his ill-will would be
very demonstrative and uncomfortable.

The term went on, the politics of the little republic
fermented, and as first appearances wore away, or
peculiarities wore off by collision or developed by intimacy,
the different members of the class rose or fell
in the general estimation, and the graduation of talent
and spirit became more just and definite. The
“Southerners and Northerners,” as they are called,
soon discovered, like the classes that had gone before
them, that they had no qualities in common, and, of
the secret societies which exist among the students in
that university, joined each that of his own compatriots.
The Carolinian or Georgian, who had passed his
life on a plantation, secluded from the society of his
equals, soon found out the value of his chivalrous deportment
and graceful indolence in the gay society for
which the town is remarkable; while the Vermontese,
or White-Mountaineer, “made unfashionably,” and ill
at ease on a carpet, took another line of ambition, and
sat down with the advantage of constitutional patience

and perseverance to the study which he would find in
the end a “better continuer,” even in the race for a
lady's favor.

It was the only republic I have ever known — that
class of freshmen. It was a fair arena; and neither
in politics, nor society, nor literature, nor love, nor religion,
have I, in much searching through the world,
found the same fair play or good feeling. Talk of our
own republic! — its society is the very core and gall of
the worst growth of aristocracy. Talk of the republic
of letters! — the two graves by the pyramid of Caius
Cestius laugh it to scorn. Of love! — of religion.
What is bought and sold like that which has the name
of the first? What is made a snare and a tool by the
designing like the last? But here — with a government
over us ever kindly and paternal, no favor shown,
and no privilege denied; every equality in the competitors
at all possible — age, previous education, and,
above all, worldly position — it was an arena in which
a generous spirit would wrestle with an abandon of
heart and limb he might never know in the world
again. Every individual rising or falling by the estimation
he exacts of his fellows, there is no such
school of honor; each, of the many palms of scholarship,
from the severest to the lightest, aiming at that
which best suits his genius, and as welcome as another
to the goal, there is no apology for the laggard. Of
the feelings that stir the heart in our youth — of the
few, the very few, which have no recoil, and leave no
repentance — this leaping from the starting-post of
mind — this first spread of the encouraged wing in the
free heaven of thought and knowledge — is recorded in
my own slender experience as the most joyous and
the most unmingled. He who has soiled his bright
honor with the tools of political ambition — he who has
leant his soul upon the charity of a sect in religion —
he who has loved, hoped, and trusted, in the greater
arena of life and manhood — must look back on days
like these as the broken-winged eagle to the sky — as
the Indian's subdued horse to the prairie.

2. II.

New Haven is not alone the seat of a university.
It is a kind of metropolis of education. The excessive
beauty of the town, with its embowered streets and
sunny gardens, the refinement of its society, its central
position and accessibility, and the facilities for attending
the lectures of the college professors, render
it a most desirable place of instruction in every department.
Among others, the female schools of the
place have a great reputation, and this, which in Europe,
or with a European state of society, would
probably be an evil, is, from the simple and frank
character of manners in America, a mutual and decided
advantage. The daughters of the first families
of the country are sent here, committed for two, three,
and four years, to the exclusive care of the head of
the establishment, and (as one of the privileges and
advantages of the school) associating freely with the
general society of the town, the male part, of course,
composed principally of students. A more easy and
liberal intercourse exists in no society in the world,
and in no society that I have ever seen is the tone of
morals and manners so high and unexceptionable.
Attachments are often formed, and little harm is
thought of it; and unless it is a very strong case of
disparity or objection, no obstacle is thrown in the
way of the common intercourse between lovers; and
the lady returns to her family, and the gentleman
senior disappears with his degree, and they meet and
marry — if they like. If they do not, the lady stands
as well in the matrimonial market as ever, and the
gentleman (unlike his horse) is not damaged by having
been on his knees.

Like “Le Noir Fainéant,” at the tournament, my
friend St. John seemed more a looker-on than an actor
in the various pursuits of the university. A sudden
interference in a quarrel, in which a brother freshman
was contending against odds, enlightened the class as
to his spirit and personal strength; he acquitted himself
at recitations with the air of self-contempt for
such easy excellence; he dressed plainly, but with
instinctive taste; and at the end of the first term,
having shrunk from all intimacy, and lived alone with
his books and a kind of trapper's dog he had brought
with him from the west, he had acquired an ascendency
in the opinion of the class for which no one
could well account, but to which every one unhesitatingly
assented.

We returned after our first short vacation, and of
my hundred class-mates there was but one whom I
much cared to meet again. St. John had passed the
vacation in his rooms, and my evident pleasure at
meeting him, for the first time, seemed to open his
heart to me. He invited me to breakfast with him.
By favor seldom granted to a freshman, he had a lodging
in the town — the rest of the class being compelled
to live with a chum in the college buildings. I found
his rooms — (I was the first of the class who had entered
them) — more luxuriously furnished than I had
expected from the simplicity of his appearance, but
his books, not many, but select, and (what is in America
an expensive luxury) in the best English editions and
superbly bound, excited most my envy and surprise.
How he should have acquired tastes of such ultra-civilization
in the forests of the west was a mystery
that remained to be solved.

3. III.

At the extremity of a green lane in the outer skirt
of the fashionable suburb of New Haven stood a rambling
old Dutch house, built probably when the cattle
of Mynheer grazed over the present site of the town.
It was a wilderness of irregular rooms, of no describable
shape in its exterior, and from its southern balcony,
to use an expressive Gallicism, “gave upon the bay.”
Long Island sound, the great highway from the northern
Atlantic to New York, weltered in alternate lead
and silver (oftener like the brighter metal, for the climate
is divine), between the curving lip of the bay and
the interminable and sandy shore of the island some
six leagues distant; the procession of ships and steamers
stole past with an imperceptible progress; the
ceaseless bells of the college chapel came deadened
through the trees from behind, and (the day being one
of golden autumn, and myself and St. John waiting
while black Agatha answered the door-bell) the sun-steeped
precipice of East Rock, with its tiara of blood-red
maples flushing like a Turk's banner in the light,
drew from us both a truant wish for a ramble and a
holyday. I shall have more to say anon of the foliage
of an American October: but just now, while I remember
it, I wish to record a belief of my own, that if, as
philosophy supposes, we have lived other lives — if

it is surely in the days tempered like the one I am remembering
and describing — profoundly serene, sunny
as the top of Olympus, heavenly pure, holy, and more
invigorating and intoxicating than luxurious or balmy;
the sort of air that the visiting angels might have
brought with them to the tent of Abraham — it is on
such days, I would record, that my own memory steps
back over the dim threshold of life (so it seems to me),
and on such days only. It is worth the translation of
our youth and our household gods to a sunnier land,
if it were alone for those immortal revelations.

In a few minutes from this time were assembled in

Mrs. Ilfrington's drawing-room the six or seven young
ladies of my more particular acquaintance among her
pupils, of whom one was a newcomer, and the object
of my mingled curiosity and admiration. It was the
one day of the week when morning visiters were admitted,
and I was there, in compliance with an unexpected
request from my friend, to present him to the
agreeable circle of Mrs. Ilfrington. As an habitué in
her family, this excellent lady had taken occasion to
introduce to me, a week or two before, the newcomer
of whom I have spoken above — a departure from the
ordinary rule of the establishment, which I felt to be
a compliment, and which gave me, I presumed, a tacit
claim to mix myself up in that young lady's destiny
as deeply as I should find agreeable. The newcomer
was the daughter of an Indian chief, and her name
was Nunu.

The wrongs of civilization to the noble aborigines
of America are a subject of much poetical feeling in
the United States, and will ultimately become the poetry
of the nation. At present the sentiment takes
occasionally a tangible shape, and the transmission of
the daughter of a Cherokee chief to New Haven, to
be educated at the expense of the government, and of
several young men of the same high birth to different
colleges, will be recorded among the evidences in history
that we did not plough the bones of their fathers
into our fields without some feelings of compunction.
Nunu had come to the seaboard under the charge of a
female missionary, whose pupil she had been in one
of the native schools of the west, and was destined,
though a chief's daughter, to return as a teacher to
her tribe when she should have mastered some of
the higher accomplishments of her sex. She was an
apt scholar, but her settled melancholy, when away
from her books, had determined Mrs. Ilfrington to try
the effect of a little society upon her, and hence my
privilege to ask for her appearance in the drawing-room.

As we strolled down in the alternate shade and sunshine
of the road, I had been a little piqued at the want
of interest, and the manner of course, with which St.
John had received my animated descriptions of the
personal beauty of the Cherokee.

“I have hunted with the tribe,” was his only answer,
“and know their features.”

“But she is not like them,” I replied, with a tone
of some impatience; “she is the beau ideal of a red
skin, but it is with the softened features of an Arab or
an Egyptian. She is more willowy than erect, and
has no higher cheek-bones than the plaster Venus in
your chambers. If it were not for the lambent fire in
her eye, you might take her, in the sculptured pose
of her attitudes, for an immortal bronze of Cleopatra.
I tell you she is divine.”

St. John called to his dog, and we turned along
the green bank above the beach, with Mrs. Ilfrington's
house in view, and so opens a new chapter in my story.

4. IV.

In the united pictures of Paul Veronese and Raphael,
steeped as their colors seem to have been in the
divinest age of Venetian and Roman female beauty, I
have scarcely found so many lovely women, of so different
models and so perfect, as were assembled during
my sophomore year under the roof of Mrs. Ilfrington.
They went about in their evening walks, graceful and
angelic, but, like the virgin pearls of the sea, they
poured the light of their loveliness on the vegetating
oysters about them, and no diver of fashion had
yet taught them their value. Ignorant myself in those
days of the scale of beauty, their features are enamelled
in my memory, and I have tried insensibly by
that standard (and found wanting) of every court in
Europe the dames most worshipped and highest born.
Queen of the Sicilies, loveliest in your own realm of
sunshine and passion! Pale and transparent princess
— pearl of the court of Florence — than whom the creations
on the immortal walls of the Pitti less discipline
our eye for the shapes of heaven! Gipsy of the Pactolus!
Jewess of the Thracian Gallipolis! Bright
and gifted cynosure of the aristocracy of England! —
ye are five women I have seen in as many years' wandering
over the world, lived to gaze upon, and live to
remember and admire — a constellation, I almost believe,
that has absorbed all the intensest light of the
beauty of a hemisphere — yet, with your pictures colored
to life in my memory, and the pride of rank and
state thrown over most of you like an elevating charm,
I go back to the school of Mrs. Ilfrington, and (smile
if you will!) they were as lovely, and stately, and as
worthy of the worship of the world.

I introduced St. John to the young ladies as they
came in. Having never seen him, except in the presence
of men, I was a little curious to know whether
his singular aplomb would serve him as well with the
other sex, of which I was aware he had had a very
slender experience. My attention was distracted at
the moment of mentioning his name to a lovely little
Georgian (with eyes full of the liquid sunshine of the
south), by a sudden bark of joy from the dog, who had
been left in the hall; and as the door opened, and the
slight and graceful Indian girl entered the room, the
usually unsocial animal sprang bounding in, lavishing
caresses on her, and seemingly wild with the delight
of a recognition.

In the confusion of taking the dog from the room, I
had again lost the moment of remarking St. John's
manner, and on the entrance of Mrs. Ilfrington, Nunu
was sitting calmly by the piano, and my friend was
talking in a quiet undertone with the passionate Georgian.

“I must apologize for my dog,” said St. John, bowing
gracefully to the mistress of the house; “he was
bred by Indians, and the sight of a Cherokee reminded
him of happier days — as it did his master.”

Nunu turned her eyes quickly upon him, but immediately
resumed her apparent deep study of the abstruse
figures in the Kidderminster carpet.

“You are well arrived, young gentlemen,” said Mrs.
Ilfrington; “we press you into our service for a botanical
ramble. Mr. Slingsby is at leisure, and will be
delighted, I am sure. Shall I say as much for you,
Mr. St. John?”

St. John bowed, and the ladies left the room for
their bonnets — Mrs. Ilfrington last. The door was
scarcely closed when Nunu reappeared, and checking
herself with a sudden feeling at the first step over the
threshold, stood gazing at St. John, evidently under
very powerful emotion.

“Nunu!” he said, smiling slowly and unwillingly,
and holding out his hand with the air of one who forgives
an offence.

She sprang upon his bosom with the bound of a
leveret, and between her fast kisses broke the endearing
epithets of her native tongue, in words that I only
understood by their passionate and thrilling accent.
The language of the heart is universal.

The fair scholars came in one after another, and we
were soon on our way through the green fields to the
flowery mountain-side of East Rock; Mrs. Ilfrington's
arm and conversation having fallen to my share, and
St. John rambling at large with the rest of the party,
but more particularly beset by Miss Temple, whose
Christian name was Isabella, and whose Christian charity
had no bowels for broken hearts.

The most sociable individuals of the party for a while
were Nunu and Lash; the dog's recollections of the
past seeming, like those of wiser animals, more agreeable
than the present. The Cherokee astonished Mrs.
Ilfrington by an abandonment to joy and frolic which

she had never displayed before — sometimes fairly out-running
the dog at full speed, and sometimes sitting
down breathless upon a green bank, while the rude
creature overpowered her with his caresses. The
scene gave origin to a grave discussion between that
well-instructed lady and myself, upon the singular
force of childish association — the extraordinary intimacy
between the Indian and the trapper's dog being
explained satisfactorily (to her, at least) on that attractive
principle. Had she but seen Nunu spring
into the bosom of my friend half an hour before, she
might have added a material corollary to her proposition.
If the dog and the chief's daughter were not
old friends, the chief's daughter and St. John certainly
were.

As well as I could judge by the motions of two
people walking before me, St. John was advancing fast
in the favor and acquaintance of the graceful Georgian.
Her southern indolence was probably an apology in
Mrs. Ilfrington's eyes for leaning heavily on her companion's
arm; but, in a momentary halt, the capricious
beauty disembarrassed herself of the bright scarf that
had floated over her shoulders, and bound it playfully
around his waist. This was rather strong on a first
acquaintance, and Mrs. Ilfrington was of that opinion.

“Miss Temple!” said she, advancing to whisper a
reproof in the beauty's ear.

Before she had taken a second step, Nunu bounded
over the low hedge, followed by the dog, with whom
she had been chasing a butterfly, and springing upon
St. John with eyes that flashed fire, she tore the scarf
into shreds, and stood trembling and pale, with her feet
on the silken fragments.

“Madam!” said St. John, advancing to Mrs. Ilfrington,
after casting on the Cherokee a look of surprise
and displeasure, “I should have told you before that
your pupil and myself are not new acquaintances. Her
father is my friend. I have hunted with the tribe, and
have hitherto looked upon Nunu as a child. You will
believe me, I trust, when I say her conduct surprises
me, and I beg to assure you that any influence I may
have over her will be in accordance with your own
wishes exclusively.”

His tone was cold, and Nunu listened with fixed lips
and frowning eyes.

“Have you seen her before since her arrival?” asked
Mrs. Ilfrington.

“My dog brought me yesterday the first intelligence
that she was here: he returned from his morning ramble
with a string of wampum about his neck, which
had the mark of the tribe. He was her gift,” he added,
patting the head of the dog, and looking with a softened
expression at Nunu, who dropped her head upon
her bosom, and walked on in tears.

5. V.

The chain of the Green mountains, after a gallop of
some five hundred miles, from Canada to Connecticut,
suddenly pulls up on the shore of Long-island sound,
and stands rearing with a bristling mane of pine-trees,
three hundred feet in air, as if checked in mid career
by the sea. Standing on the brink of this bold precipice,
you have the bald face of the rock in a sheer perpendicular
below you; and, spreading away from the
broken masses at its feet, lies an emerald meadow, inlaid
with a crystal and rambling river, across which,
at a distance of a mile or two, rise the spires of the
university, from what else were a thick-serried wilderness
of elms. Back from the edge of the precipice
extends a wild forest of hemlock and fir, ploughed on
its northern side by a mountain-torrent, whose bed of
marl, dry and overhung with trees in the summer, serve
as a path and a guide from the plain to the summit. It
were a toilsome ascent but for that smooth and hard
pavement, and the imprevious and green thatch of
pine tassels overhung.

Antiquity in America extends no farther back than
the days of Cromwell, and East Rock is traditionary
ground with us — for there harbored the regicides
Whalley and Goffe, and many a breath-hushing tale
is told of them over the smouldering log-fires of Connecticut.
Not to rob the historian, I pass on to say
that this cavernous path to the mountain-top was the
resort in the holyday summer afternoons of most of the
poetical and otherwise well-disposed gentlemen sophomores,
and, on the day of which I speak, of Mrs. Ilfrington
and her seven-and-twenty lovely scholars. The
kind mistress ascended with the assistance of my arm,
and St. John drew stoutly between Miss Temple and
a fat young lady with an incipient asthma. Nunu had
not been seen since the first cluster of hanging flowers
had hidden her from our sight, as she bounded
upward.

The hour or two of slanting sunshine, poured in
upon the summit of the precipice from the west, had
been sufficient to induce a fine and silken moss to
show its fibres and small blossoms above the carpet of
pine-tassels; and emerging from the brown shadow of
the wood, you stood on a verdant platform, the foliage
of sighing trees overhead, a fairies' velvet beneath you,
and a view below that you may as well (if you would
not die in your ignorance) make a voyage over the
water to see.

We found Nunu lying thoughtfully near the brink
of the precipice, and gazing off over the waters of the
sound, as if she watched the coming or going of a
friend under the white sails that spotted its bosom.
We recovered our breath in silence, I alone, perhaps,
of that considerable company gazing with admiration
at the lithe and unconscious figure of grace lying in
the attitude of the Grecian Hermaphrodite on the brow
of the rock before us. Her eyes were moist and motionless
with abstraction, her lips just perceptibly
curved in an expression of mingled pride and sorrow,
her small hand buried and clinched in the moss, and
her left foot and ankle, models of spirited symmetry, escaped
carelessly from her dress, the high instep strained
back as if recovering from a leap, with the tense control
of emotion.

The game of the coquettish Georgian was well
played. With a true woman's pique, she had redoubled
her attentions to my friend from the moment
that she found it gave pain to another of her sex; and
St. John, like most men, seemed not unwilling to see
a new altar kindled to his vanity, though a heart he
had already won was stifling with the incense. Miss
Temple was very lovely. Her skin, of that teint of
opaque and patrican white which is found oftenest in
Asian latitudes, was just perceptibly warmed toward
the centre of the cheek with a glow like sunshine
through the thick white petal of a magnolia; her eyes
were hazel, with those inky lashes which enhance the
expression a thousand-fold, either of passion or melancholy;
her teeth were like strips from the lily's
heart; and she was clever, captivating, graceful, and a
thorough coquette. St. John was mysterious, romantic-looking,
superior, and, just now, the only victim in
the way. He admired, as all men do, those qualities
which, to her own sex, rendered the fair Isabella unamiable;
and yielded himself, as all men will, a satisfied
prey to enchantments of which he knew the
springs were the pique and vanity of the enchantress.
How singular it is that the highest and best qualities
of the female heart are those with which men are the
least captivated!

A rib of the mountain formed a natural seat a little
back from the pitch of the precipice, and here sat Miss
Temple, triumphant in drawing all eyes upon herself
and her tamed lion; her lap full of flowers, which he
had found time to gather on the way, and her white

hands employed in arranging a bouquet, of which the
destiny was yet a secret. Next to their own loves,
ladies like nothing on earth like mending or marring
the loves of others; and while the violets and already-drooping
wild flowers were coquettishly chosen or rejected
by those slender fingers, the sun might have
swung back to the east like a pendulum, and those
seven-and-twenty misses would have watched their
lovely schoolfellow the same. Nunu turned her head
slowly around at last, and silently looked on. St.
John lay at the feet of the Georgian, glancing from
the flowers to her face, and from her face to the flowers,
with an admiration not at all equivocal. Mrs.
Ilfrington sat apart, absorbed in finishing a sketch of
New-Haven; and I, interested painfully in watching
the emotions of the Cherokee, sat with my back to
the trunk of a hemlock — the only spectator who
comprehended the whole extent of the drama.

A wild rose was set in the heart of the bouquet at
last, a spear of riband-grass added to give it grace
and point, and nothing was wanting but a string. Reticules
were searched, pockets turned inside out, and
never a bit of riband to be found. The beauty was
in despair.

“Stay,” said St. John, springing to his feet.
“Lash! Lash!”

The dog came coursing in from the wood, and
crouched to his master's hand.

“Will a string of wampum do?” he asked, feeling
under the long hair on the dog's neck, and untying a
fine and variegated thread of many-colored beads,
worked exquisitely.

The dog growled, and Nunu sprang into the middle
of the circle with the fling of an adder, and seizing
the wampum as he handed it to her rival, called the
dog, and fastened it once more around his neck.

The ladies rose in alarm; the belle turned pale, and
clung to St. John's arm; the dog, with his hair bristling
upon his back, stood close to her feet in an attitude
of defiance; and the superb Indian, the peculiar
genius of her beauty developed by her indignation,
her nostrils expanded, and her eyes almost showering
fire in their flashes, stood before them like a young
Pythoness, ready to strike them dead with a regard.

St. John recovered from his astonishment after a
moment, and leaving the arm of Miss Temple, advanced
a step, and called to his dog.

The Cherokee patted the animal on his back, and
spoke to him in her own language; and, as St. John
still advanced, Nunu drew herself to her fullest height,
placed herself before the dog, who slunk growling
from his master, and said to him, as she folded her
arms, “The wampum is mine.”

St. John colored to the temples with shame.

“Lash!” he cried, stamping with his feet, and endeavoring
to fright him from his protectress.

The dog howled and crept away, half crouching
with fear, toward the precipice; and St. John shooting
suddenly past Nunu, seized him on the brink, and
held him down by the throat.

The next instant, a scream of horror from Mrs. Ilfrington,
followed by a terrific echo from every female
present, started the rude Kentuckian to his feet.

Clear over the abyss, hanging with one hand by an
ashen sapling, the point of her tiny foot just poising
on a projecting ledge of rock, swung the desperate
Cherokee, sustaining herself with perfect ease, but
with all the determination of her iron race collected
in calm concentration on her lips.

“Restore the wampum to his neck,” she cried, with
a voice that thrilled the very marrow with its subdued
fierceness, “or my blood rest on your soul!”

St. John flung it toward the dog, and clasped his
hands in silent horror.

The Cherokee bore down the sapling till its slender
stem cracked with the tension, and rising lightly with
the rebound, alit like a feather upon the rock. The
subdued student sprang to her side; but with scorn
on her lip, and the flush of exertion already vanished
from her cheek, she called to the dog, and with rapid
strides took her way alone down the mountain.

6. VI.

Five years had elapsed. I had put to sea from the
sheltered river of boyhood — had encountered the
storms of a first entrance into life — had trimmed my
boat, shortened sail, and, with a sharp eye to windward,
was lying fairly on my course. Among others
from whom I had parted company was Paul St. John,
who had shaken hands with me at the university gate,
leaving me, after four years' intimacy, as much in
doubt as to his real character and history as the first
day we met. I had never heard him speak of either
father or mother, nor had he, to my knowledge, received
a letter from the day of his matriculation. He
passed his vacations at the university; he had studied
well, yet refused one of the highest college honors
offered him with his degree; he had shown many
good qualities, yet some unaccountable faults; and,
all in all, was an enigma to myself and the class. I
knew him, clever, accomplished, and conscious of
superiority; and my knowledge went no farther. The
coach was at the gate, and I was there to see him off;
and, after four years' constant association, I had not
an idea where he was going, or to what he was destined.
The driver blew his horn.

“God bless you, Slingsby!”

“God bless you, St. John”

And so we parted.

It was five years from this time, I say, and, in the
bitter struggles of first manhood, I had almost forgotten
there was such a being in the world. Late in the
month of October, in 1829, I was on my way westward,
giving myself a vacation from the law. I embarked,
on a clear and delicious day, in the small
steamer which plies up and down the Cayuga lake,
looking forward to a calm feast of scenery, and caring
little who were to be my fellow-passengers. As we
got out of the little harbor of Cayuga, I walked astern
for the first time, and saw the not very unusual sight
of a group of Indians standing motionless by the
wheel. They were chiefs, returning from a diplomatic
visit to Washington.

I sat down by the companion-ladder, and opened
soul and eye to the glorious scenery we were gliding
through. The first severe frost had come, and the
miraculous change had passed upon the leaves which
is known only in America. The blood-red sugar maple,
with a leaf brighter and more delicate than a Circassian
lip, stood here and there in the forest like the
Sultan's standard in a host — the solitary and far-seen
aristocrat of the wilderness; the birch, with its spirit-like
and amber leaves, ghosts of the departed summer,
turned out along the edges of the woods like a lining
of the palest gold; the broad sycamore and the fan-like
catalpa flaunted their saffron foliage in the sun,
spotted with gold like the wings of a lady-bird; the
kingly oak, with its summit shaken bare, still hid its
majestic trunk in a drapery of sumptuous dyes, like a
stricken monarch, gathering his robes of state about
him to die royally in his purple; the tall poplar, with
its minaret of silver leaves, stood blanched like a coward
in the dying forest, burthening every breeze with
its complainings; the hickory paled through its enduring
green; the bright berries of the mountain-ash
flushed with a more sanguine glory in the unobstructed
sun; the gaudy tulip-tree, the Sybarite of vegetation,
stripped of its golden cups, still drank the intoxicating
light of noonday in leaves than which the lip of an
Indian shell was never more delicately teinted; the
still deeper-dyed vines of the lavish wilderness, perishing

with the noble things whose summer they had
shared, outshone them in their decline, as woman in
her death is heavenlier than the being on whom in life
she leaned; and alone and unsympathizing in this
universal decay, outlaws from Nature, stood the fir
and the hemlock, their frowning and sombre heads
darker and less lovely than ever, in contrast with the
death-struck glory of their companions.

The dull colors of English autumnal foliage give
you no conception of this marvellous phenomenon.
The change here is gradual; in America it is the
work of a night — of a single frost!

Oh, to have seen the sun set on hills bright in the
still green and lingering summer, and to wake in the
morning to a spectacle like this!

It is as if a myriad of rainbows were laced through
the tree-tops — as if the sunsets of a summer — gold,
purple, and crimson — had been fused in the alembic
of the west, and poured back in a new deluge of light
and color over the wilderness. It is as if every leaf
in those countless trees had been painted to outflush
the tulip — as if, by some electric miracle, the dyes of
the earth's heart had struck upward, and her crystals
and ores, her sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies, had let
forth their imprisoned colors to mount through the
roots of the forest, and, like the angels that in olden
time entered the body of the dying, reanimate the perishing
leaves, and revel an hour in their bravery.

I was sitting by the companion-ladder, thinking to
what on earth these masses of foliage could be resembled,
when a dog sprang upon my knees, and, the
moment after, a hand was laid on my shoulder.

“St. John? Impossible!”

“Bodily!” answered my quondam classmate.

I looked at him with astonishment. The soigné
man of fashion I had once known was enveloped in a
kind of hunter's frock, loose and large, and girded to
his waist by a belt; his hat was exchanged for a cap
of rich otter skin; his pantaloons spread with a slovenly
carelessness over his feet; and, altogether, there
was that in his air which told me at a glance that he
had renounced the world. Lash had recovered his
leanness, and, after wagging out his joy, he crouched
between my feet, and lay looking into my face, as if
he was brooding over the more idle days in which we
had been acquainted.

“And where are you bound?” I asked, having answered
the same question for myself.

“Westward with the chiefs!”

“For how long?”

“The remainder of my life.”

I could not forbear an exclamation of surprise.

“You would wonder less,” said he, with an impatient
gesture, “if you knew more of me. And, by-the-way,”
he added with a smile, “I think I never
told you the first half of the story — my life up to the
time I met you.”

“It was not for want of a catechist,” I answered,
settling myself in an attitude of attention.

“No; and I was often tempted to gratify your curiosity:
but from the little intercourse I had had with
the world, I had adopted some precocious principles;
and one was, that a man's influence over others was
vulgarized and diminished by a knowledge of his
history.”

I smiled, and as the boat sped on her way over the
calm waters of the Cayuga, St. John went on leisurely
with a story which is scarce remarkable enough
for a repetition. He believed himself the natural son
of a western hunter, but only knew that he had passed
his early youth on the borders of civilization, between
whites and Indians, and that he had been more particularly
indebted for protection to the father of Nunu.
Mingled ambition and curiosity had led him eastward
while still a lad, and a year or two of a most vagabond
life in the different cities had taught him the caution
and bitterness for which he was so remarkable. A
fortunate experiment in lotteries supplied him with
the means of education, and, with singular application
in a youth of such wandering habits, he had applied
himself to study under a private master, fitted himself
for the university in half the usual time, and cultivated,
in addition, the literary taste which I have remarked
upon.

“This,” he said, smiling at my look of astonishment,
“brings me up to the time when we met. I
came to college at the age of eighteen, with a few
hundred dollars in my pocket, some pregnant experience
of the rough side of the world, great confidence
in myself, and distrust of others, and, I believe, a kind
of instinct of good manners, which made me ambitious
of shining in society. Yon were a witness to
my débût. Miss Temple was the first highly-educated
woman I had ever known, and you saw her
effect on me.”

“And since we parted?”

“Oh, since we parted my life has been vulgar
enough. I have ransacked civilized life to the bottom,
and found it a heap of unredeemed falsehoods.
I do not say it from common disappointment, for I
may say I succeeded in everything I undertook — ”

“Except Miss Temple,” I said, interrupting, at the
hazard of wounding him.

“No; she was a coquette, and I pursued her till I
had my turn. You see me in my new character now.
But a month ago I was the Apollo of Saratoga, playing
my own game with Miss Temple. I left her for
a woman worth ten thousand of her — and here she
is.”

As Nunu came up the companion-way from the
cabin, I thought I had never seen breathing creature
so exquisitely lovely. With the exception of a pair
of brilliant moccasins on her feet, she was dressed in
the usual manner, but with the most absolute simplicity.
She had changed in those five years from
the child to the woman, and, with a round and well-developed
figure, additional height, and manners at
once gracious and dignified, she walked and looked
the chieftain's daughter. St. John took her hand,
and gazed on her with moisture in his eyes.

“That I could ever have put a creature like this,”
he said, “into comparison with the dolls of civilization!”

We parted at Buffalo; St. John with his wife and
the chiefs to pursue their way westward by Lake
Erie, and I to go moralizing on my way to Niagara.

F. SMITH.

— Philaster.

If you can imagine a buried Titan lying along the
length of a continent with one arm stretched out into
the midst of the sea, the place to which I would transport
you, reader mine! would lie as it were in the
palm of the giant's hand. The small promontory to
which I refer, which becomes an island in certain
states of the tide, is at the end of one of the long capes
of Massachusetts, and is still called by its Indian name,
Nahant. Not to make you uncomfortable, I beg to
introduce you at once to a pretentious hotel, “squat
like a toad” upon the unsheltered and highest point
of this citadel in mid sea, and a very great resort for
the metropolitan New-Englanders. Nahant is perhaps,

liberally measured, a square half-mile; and it is
distant from what may fairly be called mainland, perhaps
a league.

Road to Nahant there is none. The oi polloi go
there by steam; but when the tide is down, you may
drive there with a thousand chariots over the bottom
of the sea. As I suppose there is not such another
place in the known world, my tale will wait while I
describe it more fully. If the Bible had been a fiction
(not to speak profanely), I should have thought
the idea of the destruction of Pharaoh and his host
had its origin in some such wonder of nature.

Nahant is so far out into the ocean, that what is
called the “ground swell,” the majestic heave of its
great bosom going on for ever like respiration (though
its face may be like a mirror beneath the sun, and a
wind may not have crisped its surface for days and
weeks), is as broad and powerful within a rood of the
shore as it is a thousand miles at sea.

The promontory itself is never wholly left by the
ebb; but, from its western extremity, there runs a
narrow ridge, scarce broad enough for a horse-path,
impassible for the rocks and sea-weed of which it is
matted, and extending at just high-water mark from
Nahant to the mainland. Seaward from this ridge,
which is the only connexion of the promontory with
the continent, descends an expanse of sand, left bare
six hours out of the twelve by the retreating sea, as
smooth and hard as marble, and as broad and apparently
as level as the plain of the Hermus. For three
miles it stretches away without shell or stone, a surface
of white, fine-grained sand, beaten so hard by the
eternal hammer of the surf, that the hoof of a horse
scarce marks it, and the heaviest wheel leaves it as
printless as a floor of granite. This will be easily understood
when you remember the tremendous rise and
fall of the ocean swell, from the very bosom of which,
in all its breadth and strength, roll in the waves of the
flowing tide, breaking down on the beach, every one,
with the thunder of a host precipitated from the battlements
of a castle. Nothing could be more solemn
and anthem-like than the succession of these plunging
surges. And when the “tenth wave” gathers, far out
at sea, and rolls onward to the shore, first with a
glassy and heaving swell as if some mighty monster
were lurching inland beneath the water, and then,
bursting up into foam, with a front like an endless and
sparry crystal wall, advances and overwhelms everything
in its progress, till it breaks with a centupled
thunder on the beach — it has seemed to me, standing
there, as if thus might have beaten the first surge on
the shore after the fiat which “divided sea and land.”
I am no Cameronian, but the sea (myself on shore)
always drives me to Scripture for an illustration of my
feelings.

The promontory of Nahant must be based on the
earth's axle, else I can not imagine how it should have
lasted so long. In the mildest weather, the groundswell
of the sea gives it a fillip at every heave that
would lay the “castled crag of Drachenfels” as low as
Memphis. The wine trembles in your beaker of
claret as you sit after dinner at the hotel; and if you
look out at the eastern balcony (for it is a wooden
pagoda, with balconies, veraudahs, and colonnades ad
libitum), you will see the grass breathless in the sunshine
upon the lawn, and the ocean as polished and
calm as Miladi's brow beyond, and yet the spray and
foam dashing fifty feet into the air between, and enveloping
the “Devil's Pulpit” (a tall rock split off from
the promontory's front) in a perpetual kaleidoscope of
mist and rainbows. Take the trouble to transport
yourself there! I will do the remaining honors on the
spot. A cavern as cool (not as silent) as those of
Trophonius lies just under the brow of yonder precipice,
and the waiter shall come after us with our wine.
You have dined with the Borromeo in the grotto of
Isola Bella, I doubt not, and know the perfection of
art — I will show you that of nature. (I should like to
transport you for a similar contrast from Terni to
Niagara, or from San Giovanni Laterano to an aisle in
a forest of Michigan; but the Dædalian mystery, alas!
is unsolved. We “fly not yet.”)

Here we are, then, in the “Swallow's Cave.” The
floor descends by a gentle declivity to the sea, and
from the long dark cleft stretching outward you look
forth upon the broad Atlantic — the shore of Ireland
the first terra firma in the path of your eye. Here is
a dark pool left by the retreating tide for a refrigerator,
and with the champagne in the midst, we will recline
about it like the soft Asiatics of whom we learned
pleasure in the east, and drink to the small-featured
and purple-lipped “Mignons” of Syria — those fine-limbed
and fiery slaves, adorable as Peris, and by turns
languishing and stormy, whom you buy for a pinch
of piastres (say 5l. 5s.) in sunny Damascus. Your
drowsy Circassian, faint and dreamy, or your crockery
Georgian — fit dolls for the sensual Turk — is, to him
who would buy soul, dear at a para the hecatomb.

We recline, as it were, in an ebon pyramid, with a
hundred feet of floor and sixty of wall, and the fourth
side open to the sky. The light comes in mellow and
dim, and the sharp edges of the rocky portal seem let
into the pearly arch of heaven. The tide is at half-ebb,
and the advancing and retreating waves, which at
first just lifted the fringe of crimson dulse at the lip
of the cavern, now dash their spray-pearls on the rock
below, the “tenth” surge alone rallying as if in scorn
of its retreating fellows, and, like the chieftain of Culloden
Moor, rushing back singly to the contest. And
now that the waters reach the entrance no more, come
forward and look on the sea! The swell lifts! — would
you not think the bases of the earth rising beneath it?
It falls! — would you not think the foundation of the
deep had given way? A plain, broad enough for the
navies of the world to ride at large, heaves up evenly
and steadily as if it would lie against the sky, rests a
moment spell-bound in its place, and falls again as
far — the respiration of a sleeping child not more regular
and full of slumber. It is only on the shore that
it chafes. Blessed emblem! it is at peace with itself!
The rocks war with a nature so unlike their own, and
the hoarse din of their border onsets resounds through
the caverns they have rent open; but beyond, in the
calm bosom of the ocean, what heavenly dignity! what
godlike unconsciousness of alarm! I did not think we
should stumble on such a moral in the cave!

By the deeper base of its hoarse organ, the sea is
now playing upon its lowest stops, and the tide is down.
Hear! how it rushes in beneath the rocks, broken and
stilled in its tortuous way, till it ends with a washing
and dull hiss among the sea-weed, and, like a myriad
of small tinkling bells, the dripping from the crags is
audible. There is fine music in the sea!

And now the beach is bare. The cave begins to
cool and darken, and the first gold teint of sunset is
stealing into the sky, and the sea looks of a changing
opal, green, purple, and white, as if its floor were
paved with pearl, and the changing light struck up
through the waters. And there heaves a ship into the
horizon, like a white-winged bird lying with dark breast
on the waves, abandoned of the sea-breeze within sight
of port, and repelled even by the spicy breath that
comes with a welcome off the shore. She comes from
“merry England.” She is freighted with more than
merchandise. The home-sick exile will gaze on her
snowy sail as she sets in with the morning breeze, and
bless it; for the wind that first filled it on its way
swept through the green valley of his home! What
links of human affection brings she over the sea?
How much comes in her that is not in her “bill of
lading,” yet worth, to the heart that is waiting for it, a
thousand times the purchase of her whole venture!

Mais montons nous! I hear the small hoofs of
Thalaba; my stanhope waits; we will leave this half
bottle of champagne, that “remainder biscuit,” and the
echoes of our philosophy, to the Naiads who have lent
us their drawing-room. Undine, or Egeria! Lurly,
or Arethusa! whatever thou art called, nympth of this
shadowy cave! adieu!

Slowly, Thalaba! Tread gingerly down this rocky
descent! So! Here we are on the floor of the vasty
deep! What a glorious race-course! The polished
and printless sand spreads away before you as far as
the eye can see, the surf comes in below, breast-high
ere it breaks, and the white fringe of the sliding wave
shoots up the beach, but leaves room for the marching
of a Persian phalanx on the sands it has deserted.
Oh, how noiselessly runs the wheel, and how dreamily
we glide along, feeling our motion but in the resistance
of the wind, and by the trout-like pull of the
ribands by the excited animal before us. Mark the
color of the sand! White at high-water mark, and
thence deepening to a silvery gray as the water has
evaporated less — a slab of Egyptian granite in the
obelisk of St. Peter's not more polished and unimpressible.
Shell or rock, weed or quicksand, there is
none; and mar or deface its bright surface as you
will, it is ever beaten down anew, and washed even of
the dust of the foot of man, by the returning sea.
You may write upon its fine-grained face with a crowquill
— you may course over its dazzling expanse with
a troop of chariots.

Most wondrous and beautiful of all, within twenty
yards of the surf, or for an hour after the tide has left
the sand, it holds the water without losing its firmness,
and is like a gray mirror, bright as the bosom of
the sea. (By your leave, Thalaba!) And now lean
over the dasher, and see those small fetlocks striking
up from beneath — the flying mane, the thorough-bred
action, the small and expressive head, as perfect in
the reflection as in the reality; like Wordsworth's
swan, he

You would swear you were skimming the surface of
the sea; and the delusion is more complete as the
white foam of the “tenth wave” skims in beneath
wheel and hoof, and you urge on with the treacherous
element gliding away visibly beneath you.

We seem not to have driven fast, yet three miles,
fairly measured, are left behind, and Thalaba's blood
is up. Fine creature! I would not give him

We have won champagne ere now, Thalaba, and I,
trotting on this silvery beach; and if ever old age
comes on me, and I intend it never shall on aught
save my mortal coil (my spirit vowed to perpetual
youth), I think these vital breezes, and a trot on these
exhilarating sands, would sooner renew my prime
than a rock in St. Hilary's cradle, or a dip in the well
of Kanathos. May we try the experiment together,
gentle reader!

I am not settled in my own mind whether this description
of one of my favorite haunts in America
was written most to introduce the story that is to follow,
or the story to introduce the description. Possibly
the latter, for having consumed by callow youth
in wandering “to and fro in the earth,” like Sathanas
of old, and looking on my country now with an eye
from which all the minor and temporary features have
gradually faded, I find my pride in it (after its glory
as a republic) settling principally on the superior
handiwork of nature in its land and water. When
I talk of it now, it is looking through another's eyes
— his who listens. I do not describe it after my own
memory of what it was once to me, but according to
my idea of what it will seem now to a stranger.
Hence I speak not of the friends I made, rambling by
lake or river. The lake and the river are there, but
the friends are changed — to themselves and me. I
speak not of the lovely and loving ones that stood by
me, looking on glen or waterfall. The glen and the
waterfall are romantic still, but the form and the heart
that breathed through it are no longer lovely or loving.
I should renew my joys by the old mountain and
river, for, all they ever were I should find them still,
and never seem to myself grown old, or cankered of
the world, or changed in form or spirit, while they
reminded me but of my youth, with their familiar
sunshine and beauty. But the friends that I knew —
as I knew them — are dead. They look no longer
the same; they have another heart in them; the
kindness of the eye, the smilingness of the lip, are
no more there. Philosophy tells me the material
and living body changes and renews, particle by particle,
with time; and experience — cold-blooded and
stony monitor — tells me, in his frozen monotone, that
heart and spirit change with it and renew! But the
name remains, mockery that it is! and the memory
sometimes; and so these apparitions of the past — that
we almost fear to question when they encounter us,
lest the change they have undergone should freeze our
blood — stare coldly on us, yet call us by name, and
answer, though coldly to their own, and have that
terrible similitude to what they were, mingled with
their unsympathizing and hollow mummery, that we
wish the grave of the past, with all that it contained
of kind or lovely, had been sealed for ever. The
heart we have lain near before our birth (so read I the
book of human life) is the only one that can not forget
that it has loved us. Saith well and affectionately
an American poet, in some birth-day verses to
his mother —

2. II.

I have observed that of all the friends one has in the
course of his life, the truest and most attached is exactly
the one who, from his dissimilarity to yourself,
the world finds it very odd you should fancy. We
hear sometimes of lovers who “are made for each
other,” but rarely of the same natural match in friendship.
It is no great marvel. In a world like this,
where we pluck so desperately at the fruit of pleasure,
we prefer for company those who are not formed with
precisely the same palate as ourselves. You will seldom
go wrong, dear reader, if you refer any human
question about which you are in doubt to that icy
oracle — selfishness.

My shadow for many years was a gentle monster,
whom I have before mentioned, baptized by the name
of Forbearance Smith. He was a Vermontese, a descendant
of one of the puritan pilgrims, and the first
of his family who had left the Green mountains since
the flight of the regicides to America. We assimilate
to what we live among, and Forbearance was very
green, and very like a mountain. He had a general
resemblance to one of Thorwaldsen's unfinished apostles
— larger than life, and just hewn into outline. My
acquaintance with him commenced during my first
year at the university. He stalked into my room one
morning with a hair-trunk on his back, and handed me
the following note from the tutor: —

Rather relieved by my lenient sentence (for, till the
next shedding of his well-saturated coat, the sky-blue
body and red mane and tail of the president's once
gray mare would interfere with that esteemed animal's
usefulness), I received Mr. Smith with more politeness
than he expected. He deposited his hair-trunk in
the vacant bedroom, remarked with a good-humored
smile that it was a cold morning, and seating himself
in my easiest chair, opened his Euclid, and went to
work upon a problem, as perfectly at home as if he
had furnished the room himself, and lived in it from
his matriculation. I had expected some preparatory
apology at least, and was a little annoyed; but being
upon my good behavior, I bit my lips, and resumed
the “Art of Love,” upon which I was just then practising
my nascent Latinity, instead of calculating logarithms
for recitation. In about an hour, my new chum
suddenly vociferated “Eureka!” shut up his book,
and having stretched himself (a very unnecessary operation),
coolly walked to my dressing-table, selected
my best hair-brush, redolent of Macassar, and used it
with the greatest apparent satisfaction.

“Have you done with that hair-brush?” I asked, as
he laid it in its place again.

“Oh yes!”

“Then, perhaps, you will do me the favor to throw
it out of the window.”

He did it without the slightest hesitation. He then
resumed his seat by the fire, and I went on with my
book in silence. Twenty minutes had elapsed, perhaps,
when he rose very deliberately, and without a
word of preparation, gave me a cuff that sent me flying
into the wood-basket in the corner behind me. As
soon as I could pick myself out, I flew upon him, but
I might as well have grappled with a boa-constrictor.
He held me off at arm's length till I was quite exhausted
with rage, and, at last, when I could struggle
no more, I found breath to ask him what the devil he
meant.

“To resent what seemed to me, on reflection, to be
an insult,” he answered, in the calmest tone, “and
now to ask your pardon for a fault of ignorance. The
first was due to myself, the second to you.”

Thenceforth, to the surprise of everybody, and Bob
Wilding and the tutor, we were inseparable. I took
Bruin (by a double elision Forbearance became “bear,”
and by paraphrase Bruin, and he answered to the
name) — I took him, I say, to the omnium shop, and
presented him with a dressing-case, and other appliances
for his outer man; and as my inner man was
relatively as much in need of his assistance, we mutually
improved. I instructed him in poetry and politeness,
and he returned the lesson in problems and
politics. My star was never in more fortunate conjunction.

Four years had woven their threads of memory about
us, and there was never woof more free from blemish.
Our friendship was proverbial. All that much care
and Macassar could do for Bruin had been done, but
there was no abating his seven feet of stature, nor reducing
the size of his feet proper, nor making the muscles
of his face answer to their natural wires. At his
most placid smile, a strange waiter would run for a
hot towel and the doctor (colic was not more like itself
than that like colic); and for his motions — oh
Lord! a skeleton, with each individual bone append
ed to its neighbor with a string, would execute a pas
seul with the same expression. His mind, however,
had none of the awkwardness of his body. A simplicity
and truth, amounting to the greatest naiveté, and
a fatuitous unconsciousness of the effect on beholders
of his outer man, were its only approaches to fault or
foible. With the finest sense of the beautiful, the
most unerring judgment in literary taste, the purest
romance, a fervid enthusiasm, constancy, courage, and
good temper, he walked about the world in a mask —
an admirable creature, in the guise and seeming of a
ludicrous monster.

Bruin was sensitive on but one point. He never
could forgive his father and mother for the wrong they
had entailed on him at his baptism. “Forbearance
Smith!” he would say to himself sometimes in unconscious
soliloquy, “they should have given me the virtue
as well as the name!” And then he would sit
with a pen, and scrawl “F. Smith” on a sheet of paper
by the hour together. To insist upon knowing his
Christian name was the one impertinence he never
forgave.

3. III.

My party at Nahant consisted of Thalaba, Forbearance,
and myself. The place was crowded, but I
passed my time very much between my horse and my
friend, and was as certain to be found on the beach
when the tide was down, as the sea to have left the
sands. Job (a synonyme for Forbearance which became
at this time his common soubriquet) was, of
course, in love. Not the least to the prejudice, however,
of his last faithful passion — for he was as fond
of the memory of an old love, as he was tender in the
presence of the new. I intended to have had him dissected
after his death, to see whether his organization
was not peculiar. I strongly incline to the opinion
that we should have found a mirror in the place of his
heart. Strange! how the same man who is so fickle
in love, will be so constant in friendship! But is it
fickleness? Is it not rather a superflu of tenderness in
the nature, which overflows to all who approach the
fountain? I have ever observed that the most susceptible
men are the most remarkable for the finer qualities
of character. They are more generous, more
delicate, and of a more chivalrous complexion altogether,
than other men. It was surprising how reasonably
Bruin would argue upon this point. “Because
I was happy at Niagara,” he was saying one day as
we sat upon the rocks, “shall I take no pleasure in
the falls of Montmorenci? Because the sunset was
glorious yesterday, shall I find no beauty in that of
to-day? Is my fancy to be used but once, and the
key turned upon it for ever? Is the heart like a bonbon,
to be eaten up by the first favorite, and thought
of no more? Are our eyes blind, save to one shape
of beauty? Are our ears insensible to the music save
of one voice?”

“But do you not weaken the heart, and become incapable
of a lasting attachment, by this habit of inconstancy?”

“How long, my dear Phil, will you persist in talking
as if the heart was material, and held so much love
as a cup so much water, and had legs to be weary, or
organs to grow dull? How is my sensibility lessened
— how my capacity enfeebled? What would I have
done for my first love, that I would not do for my last?
I would have sacrificed my life to secure the happiness
of one you wot of in days gone by: I would jump
into the sea, if it would make Blanche Carroll happier
to-morrow.”

“Sautez-donc!” said a thrilling voice behind; and
as if the utterance of her name had conjured her out
of the ground, the object of all Job's admiration, and
a little of my own, stood before us. She had a work-basket

in her hand, a gipsy-hat tossed carelessly on
her head, and had preceded a whole troop of belles
and matrons, who were coming out to while away the
morning, and breathe the invigorating sea-air on the
rocks.

Blanche Carroll was what the women would call
“a little love,” but that phrase of endearment would
not at all express the feeling with which she inspired
the men. She was small, and her face and figure
might have been framed in fairy-land for bewitching
beauty; but with the manner of a spoiled child, and,
apparently, the most thoughtless playfulness of mind,
she was as veritable a little devil as ever took the shape
of woman. Scarce seventeen at this time, she had
a knowledge of character that was like an instinct, and
was an accomplished actress in any part it was necessary
for her purpose to play. No grave Machiavel
ever managed his cards with more finesse than that
little intriguante the limited world of which she was
the star. She was a natural master-spirit and plotter;
and the talent that would have employed itself in the
deeper game of politics, had she been born a woman
of rank in Europe, displayed itself, in the simple society
of a republic, in subduing to her power everything
in the shape of a single man that ventured to her
net. I have nothing to tell of her at all commensurate
with the character I have drawn, for the disposal
of her own heart (if she has one) must of course be
the most important event of her life; but I merely
pencil the outline of the portrait in passing, as a
specimen of the material that exists — even in the
simplest society — for the dramatis personœ of a
court.

We followed the light-footed beauty to the shelter
of one of the caves opening on the sea, and seated ourselves
about her upon the rocks. Some one proposed
that Job or myself should read.

“Oh, Mr. Smith,” interrupted the belle, “where is
my bracelet? — and where are my verses?”

At the ball the night before she had dropped a
bracelet in the waltz, and Job had been permitted to
take care of the fragments, on condition of restoring
them, with a sonnet, the next morning. She had just
thought of it.

“Read them out! read them out!” she cried, as
Job, blushing a deep blue, extracted a tri-colored pink
document from his pocket, and tried to give it to her
unobserved, with the packet of jewelry. Job looked
at her imploringly, and she took the verses from his
hand, and ran her eye through them.

“Pretty well!” she said; “but the last line might
be improved. Give me a pencil, some one!” And
bending over it, till her luxuriant hair concealed her
fairy fingers in their employment, she wrote a moment
upon her knee, and tossing the paper to me, bade me
read it out with the emendation. Bruin had, meantime,
modestly disappeared, and I read with the more
freedom: —

Job's conclusion was more pathetic, but probably
less true. He appeared after the applause had ceased,
and resumed his place at the lady's feet, with a look
in his countenance of having deserved an abatement
of persecution. The beauty spread out the fragments
of the broken bracelet on the rock beside her.

“Mr. Smith!” said she, in her most conciliating
tone.

Job leaned toward her with a look of devoted inquiry.

“Has the tide turned?”

“Certainly. Two hours since.”

“The beach is passable, then?”

“Hardly, I fear.”

“No matter. How many hours' drive is it to Salem?”

“Mr. Slingsby drives it in two.”

“Then you'll get Mr. Slingsby to lend you his
stanhope, drive to Salem, have this bracelet mended,
and bring it back in time for the ball. I have spoken,
as the grand Turk says. Allez!”

“But my dear Miss Carroll — ”

She laid her hand on his mouth as he began to remonstrate,
and while I made signs to him to refuse,
she said something to him which I lost in a sudden
dash of the waters. He looked at me for my consent.

“Oh! you can have Mr. Slingsby's horse,” said the
beauty, as I hesitated whether my refusal would not
check her tyranny, “and I'll drive him out this evening
for his reward, N'est-ce pas? you cross man!”

So, with a sun hot enough to fry the brains in his
skull, and a quivering reflection on the sands that
would burn his face to a blister, exit Job, with the
broken bracelet in his bosom.

“Stop, Mr. Slingsby,” said the imperious little belle,
as I was making up a mouth, after his departure, to
express my disapprobation of her measures, “no lecture,
if you please. Give me that book of plays, and
I'll read you a precedent. Because you are virtuous,
shall we have no more cakes and ale? Ecoutez! And,
with an emphasis and expression that would have been
perfect on the stage, she read the following passage
from “The Careless Husband:” —

“Lady Betty. — The men of sense, my dear, make
the best fools in the world; their sincerity and good
breeding throw them so entirely into one's power, and
give one such an agreeable thirst of using them ill, to
show that power — 'tis impossible not to quench it.

“Lady Easy. — But, my Lord Morelove —

“Lady B. — Pooh! my Lord Morelove's a mere Indian
damask — one can't wear him out; o' my conscience,
I must give him to my woman at last. I begin
to be known by him; had I not best leave him off, my
dear?

“Lady E. — Why did you ever encourage him?

“Lady B. — Why, what would you have one do?
For my part, I could no more choose a man by my
eye than a shoe — one must draw them on a little, to
see if they are right to one's foot.

“Lady E. — But I'd no more fool on with a man I
could not like, than wear a shoe that pinched me.

“Lady B. — Ay; but then a poor wretch tells one
he'll widen 'em, or do anything, and is so civil and
silly, that one does not know how to turn such a trifle
as a pair of shoes, or a heart, upon a fellow's hands
again.

“Lady E. — And there's my Lord Foppington.

“Lady B. — My dear! fine fruit will have flies about
it; but, poor things! they do it no harm; for, if you
observe, people are generally most apt to choose that
the flies have been busy with. Ha! ha!

“Lady E. — Thou art a strange, giddy creature!

“Lady B. — That may be from too much circulation
of thought, my dear!”

“Pray, Miss Carroll,” said I, as she threw aside the
book with a theatrical air, “have you any precedent
for broiling a man's brains, as well as breaking his
heart? For, by this time, my friend Forbearance has
a coup de soleil, and is hissing over the beach like a
steam-engine.”

“How tiresome you are! Do you really think it
will kill him?”

“It might injure him seriously — let alone the danger
of driving a spirited horse over the beach, with the
tide quarter-down.”

“What shall I do to be `taken out of the corner,'
Mr. Slingsby?”

“Order your horses an hour sooner, and drive to
Lynn, to meet him half way on his return. I will resume
my stanhope, and give him the happiness of
driving back with you.”

“And shall I be gentle Blanche Carroll, and no
ogre, if I do?”

“Yes; Mr. Smith surviving.”

“Take the trouble to give my orders, then; and
come back immediately, and read to me till it is time
to go. Meantime, I shall look at myself in this black
mirror.” And the spoilt, but most lovely girl bent
over a dark pool in the corner of the cave, forming a
picture on its shadowy background that drew a murmur
of admiration even from the neglected group who
had been the silent and disapproving witnesses of her
caprice.”

4. IV.

A thunder-cloud strode into the sky with the rapidity
which marks that common phenomenon of a
breathless summer afternoon in America, darkened the
air for a few minutes, so that the birds betook themselves
to their nests, and then poured out its refreshing
waters with the most terrific flashes of lightning,
and crashes of thunder, which for a moment seemed to
still even the eternal base of the sea. With the same
fearful rapidity, the black roof of the sky tore apart, and
fell back, in rolling and changing masses, upon the
horizon; the sun darted with intense brilliancy
through the clarified and transparent air; the light-stirring
breeze came freighted with delicious coolness;
and the heavy sea-birds, who had lain brooding on the
waves while the tumult of the elements went on, rose
on their cimeter-like wings, and fled away, with incomprehensible
instinct, from the beautiful and freshened
land. The whole face of earth and sky had been
changed in an hour.

Oh, of what fulness of delight are even the senses
capable! What a nerve there is sometimes in every
pore! What love for all living and all inanimate
things may be born of a summer shower! How stirs
the fancy, and brightens hope, and warms the heart,
and sings the spirit within us, at the mere animal joy
with which the lark flees into heaven! And yet, of
this exquisite capacity for pleasure we take so little
care! We refine our taste, we elaborate and finish
our mental perception, we study the beautiful, that
we may know it when it appears — yet the senses by
which these faculties are approached, the stops by
which this fine instrument is played, are trifled with
and neglected. We forget that a single excess blurs
and confuses the music written on our minds; we
forget that an untimely vigil weakens and bewilders
the delicate minister to our inner temple; we know
not, or act as if we knew not, that the fine and easily-jarred
harmony of health is the only interpreter of
Nature to our souls; in short, we drink too much
claret, and eat too much páté foie gras. Do you understand
me, gourmand et gourmet?

Blanche Carroll was a beautiful whip, and the two
bay ponies in her phaeton were quite aware of it. La
Bruyère says, with his usual wisdom, “Une belle
femme qui a les qualités d'un honnête homme est ce
qu'il y a au monde d'un commerce plus délicieux;”
and, to a certain degree, masculine accomplishments
too, are very winning in a woman — if pretty; if plain,
she is expected not only to be quite feminine, but
quite perfect. Foibles are as hateful in a woman who
does not possess beauty, as they are engaging in a woman
who does. Clouds are only lovely when the
heavens are bright.

She looked loveliest while driving, did Blanche
Carroll, for she was born to rule, and the expression
native to her lip was energy and nerve; and as she
sat with her little foot pressed against the dasher, and
reined in those spirited horses, the finely-pencilled
mouth, usually playful or pettish, was pressed together
in a curve as warlike as Minerva's, and twice
as captivating. She drove, too, as capriciously as
she acted. At one moment her fleet ponies fled over
the sand at the top of their speed, and at the next they
were brought down to a walk, with a suddenness
which threatened to bring them upon their haunches.
Now far up on the dry sand, cutting a zigzag to
lengthen the way, and again below at the tide edge,
with the waves breaking over her seaward wheel; all
her powers at one instant engrossed in pushing them
to their fastest trot, and in another the reins lying
loose on their backs, while she discussed some sudden
flight of philosophy. “Be his fairy, his page, his
everything that love and poetry have invented,” said
Roger Ascham to Lady Jane Grey, just before her
marriage; but Blanche Carroll was almost the only
woman I ever saw capable of the beau idéal of fascinating
characters.

Between Miss Carroll and myself there was a safe
and cordial friendship. Besides loving another better,
she was neither earnest, nor true, nor affectionate
enough to come at all within the range of my possible
attachments, and though I admired her, she felt that
the necessary sympathy was wanting for love; and,
the idea of fooling me with the rest once abandoned,
we were the greatest of allies. She told me all her
triumphs, and I listened and laughed without thinking
it worth while to burden her with my confidence in
return; and you may as well make a memorandum,
gentle reader, that that is a very good basis for a friendship.
Nothing bores women or worldly persons so
much as to return their secrets with your own.

As we drew near the extremity of the beach, a boy
rode up on horseback, and presented Miss Carroll with
a note I observed that it was written on a very dirty
slip of paper, and was waiting to be enlightened as to
its contents, when she slipped it into her belt, took the
whip from the box, and flogging her ponies through
the heavy sand of the outer beach, went off, at a pace
which seemed to engross all her attention, on her road
to Lynn. We reached the hotel and she had not
spoken a syllable, and as I made a point of never inquiring
into anything that seemed odd in her conduct,
I merely stole a glance at her face, which wore the
expression of mischievous satisfaction which I liked
the least of its common expressions, and descended
from the phaeton with the simple remark, that Job
could not have arrived, as I saw nothing of my stanhope
in the yard.

“Mr. Slingsby.” It was the usual preface to asking
some particular favor.

“Miss Carroll.”

“Will you be so kind as to walk to the library and

select me a book to your own taste, and ask no questions
as to what I do with myself meantime?”

“But, my dear Miss Carroll — your father — ”

“Will feel quite satisfied when he hears that Cato
was with me. Leave the ponies to the groom, Cato,
and follow me.” I looked after her as she walked
down the village street with the old black behind her,
not at all certain of the propriety of my acquiescence,
but feeling that there was no help for it.

I lounged away a half hour at the library, and found
Miss Carroll waiting for me on my return. There
were no signs of Bruin; and as she seemed impatient
to be off, I jumped into the phaeton, and away we flew
to the beach as fast as her ponies could be driven
under the whip. As we descended upon the sands
she spoke for the first time.

“It is so civil of you to ask no questions, Mr. Slingsby;
but you are not offended with me?”

“If you have got into no scrape while under my
charge, I shall certainly be too happy to shake hands
upon it to-morrow.”

“Are you quite sure?” she asked archly.

“Quite sure.”

“So am not I,” she said with a merry laugh; and
in her excessive amusement she drove down to the sea,
till the surf broke over the nearest pony's back, and
filled the bottom of the phaeton with water. Our wet
feet were now a fair apology for haste, and taking the
reins from her, I drove rapidly home, while she wrapped
herself in her shawl, and sat apparently absorbed
in the coming of the twilight over the sea.

I slept late after the ball though I had gone to bed
exceedingly anxious about Bruin, who had not yet
made his appearance. The tide would prevent his
crossing the beach after ten in the morning, however,
and I made myself tolerably easy till the sands were
passable with the evening ebb. The high-water mark
was scarcely deserted by the waves, when the same
boy who had delivered the note to Miss Carroll the
day before, rode up from the beach on a panting horse,
and delivered me the following note: —

I got upon the boy's horse, and hurried over the
beach with whip and spur. I stopped at the justice's
office, and that worthy seemed uncommonly pleased
to see me.

“We have got him, sir,” said he.

“Got whom?” I asked rather shortly.

“Why, the fellow that stole your stanhope and Miss
Carroll's bracelet, and passed a twenty dollar counterfeit
bill — ha'n't you hearn on't?”

The justice's incredulity, when I told him it was
probably the most intimate friend I had in the world,
would have amused me at any other time.

“Will you allow me to see the prisoner?” I asked.

“Be sure I will. I let Miss Carroll have a peep at
him yesterday, and what do you think? Oh, Lord!
he wanted to make her believe she knew him! Good!
wasn't it? Ha! ha! And such an ill-looking fellow!
Why, I'd know him for a thief anywhere!
Your intimate friend, Mr. Slingsby! Oh, Lord!
when you come to see him! Ha! ha!”

We were at the prison-door. The grating bolts
turned slowly, the door swung rustily on its hinges as
if it was not often used, and in the next minute I was
enfolded in Job's arms, who sobbed and laughed, and
was quite hysterical with his delight. I scarce won
dered at the justice's prepossessions when I looked at
the figure he made. His hat knocked in, his coat
muddy, his hair full of the dust of straw — the natural
hideousness of poor Job had every possible aggravation.

We were in the stanhope, and fairly on the beach,
before he had sufficiently recovered to tell me the
story. He had arrived quite overheated at Lynn, but,
in a hurry to execute Miss Carroll's commission, he
merely took a glass of soda-water, had Thalaba's
mouth washed, and drove on. A mile on his way, he
was overtaken by a couple of ostlers on horseback,
who very roughly ordered him back to the inn. He
refused, and a fight ensued, which ended in his being
tied into the stanhope, and driven back as a prisoner.
The large note, which he had given for his soda-water,
it appeared, was a counterfeit, and placards, offering a
reward for the detection of a villain, described in the
usual manner as an ill-looking fellow, had been sticking
up for some days in the village. He was taken
before the justice, who declared at first sight that he
answered the description in the advertisement. His
stubborn refusal to give the whole of his name (he
would rather have died, I suppose), his possession of
my stanhope, which was immediately recognised, and
lastly, the bracelet found in his pocket, of which he
refused indignantly to give any account, were circumstances
enough to leave no doubt on the mind of the
worthy justice. He made out his mittimus forthwith,
granting Job's request that he might be allowed to
write a note to Miss Carroll (who, he knew, would
drive over the beach toward evening), as a very great
favor. She arrived as he expected.

“And what in Heaven's name did she say?” said I,
interested beyond my patience at this part of the story.

“Expressed the greatest astonishment when the
justice showed her the bracelet, and declared she
never saw me before in her life!”

That Job forgave Blanche Carroll in two days, and
gave her a pair of gloves with some verses on the
third, will surprise only those who have not seen that
lady. It would seem incredible, but here are the
verses, as large as life: —

EDITH LINSEY.

1. PART I.
FROST AND FLIRTATION.

It began to snow. The air softened; the pattering
of the horse's hoofs was muffled with the impeded vibration;
the sleigh glided on with a duller sound;
the large loose flakes fell soft and fast, and the low
and just audible murmur, like the tread of a fairy
host, melted on the ear with a drowsy influence, as if
it were a descent of palpable sleep upon the earth.
You may talk of falling water — of the running of a
brook — of the humming song of an old crone on a
sick vigil — or of the levi susurro of the bees of Hybla
— but there is nothing like the falling of the snow for
soft and soothing music. You hear it or not, as you
will, but it melts into your soul unaware. If you have
ever a heartache, or feel the need of “poppy or mandragora,”
or, like myself, grow sometimes a-weary of
the stale repetitions of this unvaried world, seek me
out in Massachusetts, when the wind softens and veers
south, after a frost — say in January. There shall
have been a long-lying snow on the ground, well-trodden.
The road shall be as smooth as the paths
to our first sins — of a seeming perpetual declivity, as
it were — and never a jolt or jar between us and the
edge of the horizon; but all onward and down apparently,
with an insensible ease. You sit beside me in
my spring-sleigh, hung with the lightness of a cobweb
cradle for a fairy's child in the trees. Our horse
is, in the harness, of a swift and even pace, and around
his neck is a string of fine small bells, that ring to his
measured step in a kind of muffled music, softer and
softer as the snow-flakes thicken in the air. Your
seat is of the shape of the fauteuil in your library,
cushioned and deep, and with a backward and gentle
slope, and you are enveloped to the eyelids in warm
furs. You settle down, with every muscle in repose,
the visor of your ermine cap just shedding the snow
from your forehead, and with a word, the groom stands
back, and the horse speeds on, steady, but beautifully
fast. The bells, which you hear loudly at first, begin
to deaden, and the low hum of the alighting flakes
steals gradually on your ear; and soon the hoof-strokes
are as silent as if the steed were shod with
wool, and away you flee through the white air, like
birds asleep upon the wing diving through the feathery
fleeces of the moon. Your eyelids fall — forgetfulness
steals upon the senses — a delicious torpor takes possession
of the uneasy blood — and brain and thought
yield to an intoxicating and trance-like slumber. It
were perhaps too much to ask that any human bosom
may go scathless to the grave; but in my own unworthy
petitions I usually supplicate that my heart
may be broken about Christmas. I know an anodyne
o' that season.

Fred Fleming and I occupied one of the seven long
seats in a stage-sleigh, flying at this time twelve miles
in the hour (yet not fast enough for our impatience),
westward from the university gates. The sleighing
had been perfect for a week, and the cold keen air had
softened for the first time that morning, and assumed
the warm and woolly complexion that foretokened
snow. Though not very cheerful in its aspect, this is
an atmosphere particularly pleasant to breathe, and
Fred, who was making his first move after a six weeks'
fever, sat with the furs away from his month, nostrils
expanded, lips parted, and the countenance altogether
of a man in a high state of physical enjoyment. I
had nursed him through his illness, by-the-way, in
my own rooms, and hence our position as fellow-travellers.
A pressing invitation from his father to
come home with him to Skaneateles, for the holydays,
had diverted me from my usual winter journey to the
North; and for the first time in my life, I was going
upon a long visit to a strange roof. My imagination
had never more business upon its hands.

Fred had described to me, over and over again,
every person I was to meet, brothers, sisters, aunts,
cousins, and friends — a household of thirty people,
guests included; but there was one person among
them of whom his descriptions, amplified as they
were, were very unsatisfactory.

“Is she so very plain?” I asked for the twentieth
time.

“Abominably!”

“And immense black eyes?”

“Saucers!”

“And large mouth?”

“Huge!”

“And very dark?”

“Like a squaw!”

“And skinny hands, did you say?”

“Lean, long, and pokerish!”

“And so very clever?”

“Knows everything, Phil!”

“But a sweet voice?”

“Um! everybody says so.”

“And high temper?”

“She's the devil, Phil! don't ask any more questions
about her.”

“You don't like her, then?”

“She never condescends to speak to me; how
should I?”

And thereupon I put my head out of the sleigh, and
employed myself with catching the snow-flakes on my
nose, and thinking whether Edith Linsey would like
me or no; for through all Fred's derogatory descriptions,
it was clearly evident that she was the ruling
spirit of the hospitable household of the Flemings.

As we got farther on, the new snow became deeper,
and we found that the last storm had been heavier
here than in the country from which we had come.
The occasional farm-houses were almost wholly
buried, the black chimney alone appearing above the
ridgy drifts, while the tops of the doors and windows
lay below the level of the trodden road, from which a
descending passage was cut to the threshold, like the
entrance to a cave in the earth. The fences were
quite invisible. The fruit-trees looked diminished to
shrubberies of snow-flowers, their trunks buried under
the visible surface, and their branches loaded with the
still falling flakes, till they bent beneath the burden.
Nothing was abroad, for nothing could stir out of the
road without danger of being lost, and we dreaded to
meet even a single sleigh, lest in turning out, the
horses should “slump” beyond their depth, in the
untrodden drifts. The poor animals began to labor
severely, and sunk at every step over their knees in
the clogging and wool-like substance; and the long
and cumbrous sleigh rose and fell in the deep pits like
a boat in a heavy sea. It seemed impossible to get on.
Twice we brought up with a terrible plunge and stood
suddenly still, for the runners had struck in too deep
for the strength of the horses; and with the snow-shovels,
which formed a part of the furniture of the
vehicle, we dug them from their concrete beds. Our
progress at last was reduced to scarce a mile in the
hour, and we began to have apprehensions that our
team would give out between the post-houses. Fortunately
it was still warm, for the numbness of cold
would have paralyzed our already flagging exertions.

We had reached the summit of a long hill with the
greatest difficulty. The poor beasts stood panting
and recking with sweat; the runners of the sleigh
were clogged with hard cakes of snow, and the air
was close and dispiriting. We came to a stand-still,
with the vehicle lying over almost on its side, and I
stepped out to speak to the driver and look forward.
It was a discouraging prospect; a long deep valley
lay before us, closed at the distance of a couple of

miles by another steep hill, through a cleft in the top
of which lay our way. We could not even distinguish
the line of the road between. Our disheartened animals
stood at this moment buried to their breasts, and
to get forward without rearing at every step seemed
impossible. The driver sat on his box looking uneasily
down into the valley. It was one undulating
ocean of snow, not a sign of a human habitation to be
seen, and even the trees indistinguishable from the
general mass by their whitened and overladen branches.
The storm had ceased, but the usual sharp cold
that succeeds a warm fall of snow had not yet lightened
the clamminess of the new-fallen flakes, and
they clung around the foot like clay, rendering every
step a toil.

“Your leaders are quite blown,” I said to the driver,
as he slid off his uncomfortable seat.

“Pretty nearly, sir!”

“And your wheelers are not much better.”

“Sca'cely.”

“And what do you think of the weather?”

“It'll be darnation cold in an hour.” As he spoke
he looked up to the sky, which was already peeling
off its clouds in long stripes, like the skin of an
orange, and looked as hard and cold as marble between
the widening rifts. A sudden gust of a more
chilling temperature followed immediately upon his
prediction, and the long cloth curtains of the sleigh
flew clear of their slight pillars, and shook off their
fringes of icicles.

“Could you shovel a little, mister?” said the driver,
handing me one of the broad wooden utensils
from his foot-board, and commencing himself, after
having thrown off his box-coat, by heaving up a solid
cake of the moist snow at the side of the road.

“It's just to make a place to rub down them creturs,”
said he, as I looked at him, quite puzzled to
know what he was going to do.

Fred was too weak to assist us, and having righted
the vehicle a little, and tied down the flapping curtains,
he wrapped himself in his cloak, and I set heartily
to work with my shovel. In a few minutes, taking
advantage of the hollow of a drift, we had cleared a
small area of frozen ground, and releasing the tired
animals from their harness, we rubbed them well down
with the straw from the bottom of the sleigh. The
persevering driver then cleared the runners of their
iced and clinging masses, and a half hour having
elapsed, he produced two bottles of rum from his box,
and, giving each of the horses a dose, put them again
to their traces.

We heaved out of the pit into which the sleigh had
settled, and for the first mile it was down-hill, and we
got on with comparative ease. The sky was by this
time almost bare, a dark, slaty mass of clouds alone
settling on the horizon in the quarter of the wind,
while the sun, as powerless as moonlight, poured with
dazzling splendor on the snow, and the gusts came
keen and bitter across the sparkling waste, rimming
the nostrils as if with bands of steel, and penetrating to
the innermost nerve with their pungent iciness. No
protection seemed of any avail. The whole surface
of the body ached as if it were laid against a slab of
ice. The throat closed instinctively, and contracted
its unpleasant respiration — the body and limbs drew
irresistibly together, to economize, like a hedge-hog,
the exposed surface — the hands and feet felt transmuted
to lead — and across the forehead, below the pressure
of the cap, there was a binding and oppressive
ache, as if a bar of frosty iron had been let into the
scull. The mind, meantime, seemed freezing up — unwillingness
to stir, and inability to think of anything
but the cold, becoming every instant more decided.

From the bend of the vailey our difficulties became
more serious. The drifts often lay across the road
like a wall, some feet above the heads of the horses,
and we had dug through one or two, and had been
once upset, and often near it, before we came to the
steepest part of the ascent. The horses had by this
time begun to feel the excitement of the rum, and
bounded on through the snow with continual leaps,
jerking the sleigh after them with a violence that
threatened momently to break the traces. The steam
from their bodies froze instantly, and covered them
with a coat like hoar-frost, and spite of their heat, and
the unnatural and violent exertions they were making,
it was evident by the pricking of their ears, and the
sudden crouch of the body when a stronger blast
swept over, that the cold struck through even their
hot and intoxicated blood.

We toiled up, leap after leap, and it seemed miraculous
to me that the now infuriated animals did not
burst a blood-vessel or crack a sinew with every one
of those terrible springs. The sleigh plunged on after
them, stopping dead and short at every other moment,
and reeling over the heavy drifts, like a boat in a
surging sea. A finer crystallization had meantime
taken place upon the surface of the moist snow, and
the powdered particles flew almost insensibly on the
blasts of wind, filling the eyes and hair, and cutting
the skin with a sensation like the touch of needle-points.
The driver and his maddened but almost exhausted
team were blinded by the glittering and whirling
eddies, the cold grew intenser every moment, the
forward motion gradually less and less, and when, with
the very last effort apparently, we reached a spot on
the summit of the hill, which, from its exposed situation,
had been kept bare by the wind, the patient and
persevering whip brought his horses to a stand, and
despaired, for the first time, of his prospects of getting
on. I crept out of the sleigh, the iron-bound runners
of which now grated on the bare ground, but found it
impossible to stand upright.

“If you can use your hands,” said the driver, turning
his back to the wind which stung the face like the
lash of a whip, “I'll trouble you to untackle them
horses.”

I set about it, while he buried his hands and face
in the snow to relieve them for a moment from the
agony of cold. The poor animals staggered stiffly as
I pushed them aside, and every vein stood out from
their bodies like ropes under the skin.

“What are you going to do?” I asked, as he joined
me again, and taking off the harness of one of the
leaders, flung it into the snow.

“Ride for life!” was his ominous answer.

“Good God! and what is to become of my sick
friend?”

“The Almighty knows — if he can't ride to the
tavern!”

I sprang instantly to poor Fred, who was lying in
the bottom of the sleigh almost frozen to death, informed
him of the driver's decision, and asked him if
he thought he could ride one of the horses. He was
beginning to grow drowsy, the first symptom of death
by cold, and could with difficulty be roused. With
the driver's assistance, however. I lifted him out of the
sleigh, shook him soundly, and making stirrups of the
traces, set him upon one of the horses, and started
him off before us. The poor beasts seemed to have a
presentiment of the necessity of exertion, and though
stiff and sluggish, entered willingly upon the deep
drift which blocked up the way, and toiled exhaustedly
on. The cold in our exposed position was agonizing.
Every small fibre in the skin of my own face felt splitting
and cracked, and my eyelids seemed made of ice.
Our limbs soon lost all sensation. I could only press
with my knees to the horse's side, and the whole collected
energy of my frame seemed expended in the
exertion. Fred held on wonderfully. The driver had
still the use of his arm, and rode behind, flogging the
poor animals on, whose every step seemed to be the

last summons of energy. The sun set, and it was
rather a relief, for the glitter upon the snow was exceedingly
painful to the sight, and there was no warmth
in its beams. I could see my poor friend drooping
gradually to the neck of his horse, but until he should
drop off it was impossible to assist him, and his faithful
animal still waded on. I felt my own strength fast
ebbing away. If I had been alone, I should certainly
have lain down, with the almost irresistible inclination
to sleep; but the thought of my friend, and the shouting
of the energetic driver, nerved me from time to
time — and with hands hanging helplessly down, and
elbows fastened convulsively to my side, we plunged
and struggled painfully forward. I but remember
being taken afterward to a fire, and shrinking from it
with a shriek — the suffering of reviving consciousness
was so intolerable. We had reached the tavern literally
frozen upon our horses.

2. II.

I was balancing my spoon on the edge of a cup at
the breakfast-table, the morning after our arrival, when
Fred stopped in the middle of an eulogium on my
virtues as a nurse, and a lady entering at the same
moment, he said simply in parenthesis, “My cousin
Edith, Mr. Slingsby,” and went on with his story. I
rose and bowed, and as Fred had the parole, I had
time to collect my courage, and take a look at the
enemy's camp — for, of that considerable household. I
felt my star to be in conjunction or opposition with
hers only, who was at that moment my vis-à-vis across
a dish of stewed oysters.

In about five minutes of rapid mental portrait-painting,
I had taken a likeness of Edith Linsey, which I
see at this moment (I have carried it about the world
for ten years) as distinctly as the incipient lines of age
in this thin-wearing hand. My feelings changed in
that time from dread or admiration, or something between
these, to pity; she was so unscrupulously and
hopelessly plain — so wretchedly ill and suffering in
her aspect — so spiritless and unhappy in every motion
and look. “I'll win her heart,” thought I, “by being
kind to her. Poor thing! it will be something new to
her, I dare say!” Oh, Philip Slingsby! what a doomed
donkey thou wert for that silly soliloquy!

And yet even as she sat there, leaning over her untasted
breakfast, listless, ill, and melancholy — with her
large mouth, her protruding eyes, her dead and sallow
complexion, and not one redeeming feature — there
was something in her face which produced a phantom
of beauty in my mind — a glimpse, a shadowing of a
countenance that Beatrice Cenci might have worn at
her last innocent orison — a loveliness moulded and
exalted by superhuman and overpowering mind — instinct
through all its sweetness with energy and fire.
So strong was this phantom portrait, that in all my
thoughts of her as an angel in heaven (for I supposed
her dying for many a month, and a future existence
was her own most frequent theme), she always rose to
my fancy with a face half Niobe, half Psyche, radiantly
lovely. And this, too, with a face of her own, a boná
fide physiognomy, that must have made a mirror an
unpleasant article of furniture in her chamber.

I have no suspicion in my own mind whether Time
was drunk or sober during the succeeding week of
those Christmas holydays. The second Saturday had
come round, and I just remember that Fred was very
much out of humor with me for having appeared to
his friends to be everything he had said I was not, and
nothing he had said I was. He had described me as
the most uproarious, noisy, good-humored, and agreeable
dog in the world. And I was not that at all —
particularly the last. The old judge told him he had
not improved in his penetration at the university.

A week! and what a life had been clasped within
its brief calendar, for me! Edith Linsey was two
years older than I, and I was considered a boy. She
was thought to be dying slowly, but irretrievably, of
consumption; and it was little matter whom she loved,
or how. They would only have been pleased, if, by
a new affection, she could beguile the preying melancholy
of illness; for by that gentle name they called,
in their kindness, a caprice and a bitterness of character
that, had she been less a sufferer, would not have
been endured for a day. But she was not capricious,
or bitter to me! Oh no! And from the very extreme
of her impatience with others — from her rudeness, her
violence, her sarcasm — she came to me with a heart
softer than a child's, and wept upon my hands, and
weighed every word that might give me offence, and
watched to anticipate my lightest wish, and was humble,
and generous, and passionately loving and dependant.
Her heart sprang to me with a rebound. She
gave herself up to me with an utter and desperate
abandonment, that owed something to her peculiar
character, but more to her own solemn conviction that
she was dying — that her best hope of life was not worth
a week's purchase.

We had begun with books, and upon them her past
enthusiasm had hitherto been released. She loved her
favorite authors with a passion. They had relieved
her heart; and there was nothing of poetry or philosophy
that was deep or beautiful, in which she had not
steeped her very soul. How well I remember her repeating
to me from Shelley those glorious lines to the
soaring swan: —

There was a long room in the southern wing of the
house, fitted up as a library. It was a heavily-curtained,
dim old place, with deep-embayed windows, and so
many nooks, and so much furniture, that there was
that hushed air, that absence of echo within it, which
is the great charm of a haunt for study or thought.
It was Edith's kingdom. She might lock the door,
if she pleased, or shut or open the windows; in short,
when she was there, no one thought of disturbing her,
and she was like a “spirit in its cell,” invisible and
inviolate. And here I drank into my very life and
soul the outpourings of a bosom that had been locked
till (as we both thought) the last hour of its life — a
flow of mingled intellect and passion that overran my
heart like lava, sweeping everything into its resistless
fire, and (may God forgive her!) leaving it scorched
and desolate when its mocking brightness had gone
out.

I remember that “Elia” — Charles Lamb's Elia —
was the favorite of favorites among her books; and
partly that the late death of this most-to-be-loved author
reminded me to look it up, and partly to have
time to draw back my indifference over a subject that
it something stirs me to recall, you shall read an imitation
(or continuation, if you will) that I did for Edith's
eye, of his “Essay on Books and Reading” I sat
with her dry and fleshless hand in mine while I read
it to her, and the fingers of Psyche were never fairer
to Canova than they to me.

“It is a little singular,” I began (looking into her
eyes as long as I could remember what I had written)
“that, among all the elegancies of sentiment for which
the age is remarkable, no one should ever have thought
of writing a book upon `Reading.' The refinements

of the true epicure in books are surely as various as
those of the gastronome and the opium-eater; and I
can conceive of no reason why a topic of such natural
occurrence should have been so long neglected, unless
it is that the taste itself, being rather a growth of indolence,
has never numbered among its votaries one of
the busy craft of writers.

“The great proportion of men read, as they eat, for
hunger. I do not consider them readers. The true
secret of the thing is no more adapted to their comprehension,
than the sublimations of Louis Eustache Ude
for the taste of a day-laborer. The refined reading-taste,
like the palate of gourmanderie, must have got
beyond appetite — gross appetite. It shall be that of a
man who, having fed through childhood and youth
on simple knowledge, values now only, as it were, the
apotheosis of learning — the spiritual nare. There are,
it is true, instances of a keen natural relish: a boy, as
you will sometimes find one, of a premature thoughtfulness,
will carry a favorite author in his bosom, and
feast greedily on it in his stolen hours. Elia tells the
exquisite story: —

“The pleasure as well as the profit of reading depends
as much upon time and manner, as upon the
book. The mind is an opal — changing its color with
every shifting shade. Ease of position is especially
necessary. A muscle straimed, a nerve unpoised, an
admitted sunbeam caught upon a mirror, are slight
circumstances; but a feather may tickle the dreamer
from paradise to earth. `Many a froward axiom,'
says a refined writer, `many an inhumane thought
hath arisen from sitting uncomfortably, or from a want
of symmetry in your chamber.' Who has not felt, at
times, an unaccountable disrelish for a favorite author?
Who has not, by a sudden noise in the street, been
startled from a reading dream, and found, afterward,
that the broken speall was not to be rewound? An
ill-tied cravat may unlink the rich harmonies of Taylor.
You would not think Barry Cornwall the delicious
heart he is, reading him in a tottering chair.

“There is much in the mood with which you come
to a book. If you have been vexed out of doors, the
good humor of an author seems unnatural. I think
I should scarce relish the `gentle spiriting' of Ariel
with a pulse of ninety in the minute. Or if I had
been touched by the unkindness of a friend, Jack
Falstaff would not move me to laughter as easily as
he is wont. There are tones of the mind, however,
to which a book will vibrate with a harmony than
which there is nothing more exquisite in nature. To
go abroad at sunrise in June, and admit all the holy
influences of the hour — stillness, and purity, and
balm — to a mind subdued and dignified, as the mind
will be by the sacred tranquillity of sleep, and then to
come in with bathed and refreshed senses, and a temper
of as clear joyfulness as the soaring lark's and
sit down to Milton or Spenser, or, almost loftier still,
the divine `Prometheus' of Shelley, has seemed to
me a harmony of delight almost too heavenly to be
human. The great secret of such pleasure is sympathy.
You must climb to the eagle poet's eyry.
You must have senses, like his, for the music that is
only andible to the fine ear of thought, and the beauty
that is visible only to the spirit-eye of a clear, and for
the time, unpolluted fancy. The stamp and pressure
of the magician's own time and season must be upon
you. You would not read Ossian, for example, in a
bath, or sitting under a tree in a sultry noon; but
after rushing into the eye of the wind with a fleet
horse, with all his gallant pride and glorious strength
and fire obedient to your rein, and so mingling as it
will, with his rider's consciousness, that you feel as
if you were gifted in your own body with the swiftness
and energy of an angel; after this, to sit down
to Ossian, is to read him with a magnificence of de
lusion, to my mind scarce less than reality. I never
envied Napoleon till I heard it was his habit, after a
battle, to read Ossian.

“You can not often read to music. But I love,
when the voluntary is pealing in church — every breath
in the congregation suppressed, and the deep-volumed
notes pouring through the arches of the roof with the
sublime and almost articulate praise of the organ — to
read, from the pew Bible, the book of Ecclesiastes.
The solemn stateliness of its periods is fitted to music
like a hymn. It is to me a spring of the most thrilling
devotion — though I shame to confess that the
richness of its eastern imagery, and, above all, the inimitable
beauty of its philosophy, stand out somewhat
definitely in the reminiscences of the hour.

“A taste for reading comes comparatively late.
`Robinson Crusoe' will turn a boy's head at ten.
The `Arabian Nights' are taken to bed with us at
twelve. At fourteen, a forward boy will read the
`Lady of the Lake,' `Tom Jones,' and `Peregrine
Pickle;' and at seventeen (not before) he is ready for
Shakspere, and, if he is of a thoughtful turn, Milton.
Most men do not read these last with a true relish till
after this period. The hidden beauties of standard
authors break upon the mind by surprise. It is like
discovering a secret spring in an old jewel. You take
up the book in an idle moment, as you have done a
thousand times before, perhaps wondering, as you
turn over the leaves, what the world finds in it to admire,
when suddenly as you read, your fingers press
close upon the covers, your frame thrills, and the
passage you have chanced upon chains you like a
spell — it is so vividly true and beautiful. Milton's
`Comus' flashed upon me in this way. I never could
read the `Rape of the Lock' till a friend quoted some
passages from it during a walk. I know no more exquisite
sensation than this warming of the heart to an
old author; and it seems to me that the most delicious
portion of intellectual existence is the brief period in
which, one by one, the great minds of old are admitted
with all their time-mellowed worth to the affections.
With what delight I read, for the first time,
the `kind-hearted plays' of Beaumont and Fletcher!
How I doated on Burton! What treasures to me
were the `Fairy Queen' and the Lyrics of Milton!

“I used to think, when studying the Greek and
Latin poets in my boyhood, that to be made a school-author
was a fair offset against immortality. I would
as lief, it seemed to me, have my verses handed down
by the town-crier. But latterly, after an interval of a
few years, I have taken up my classics (the identical
school copies with the hard places all thummed and
pencilled) and have read them with no little pleasure.
It is not to be believed with what a satisfaction the
riper eye glides smoothly over the once difficult line,
finding the golden cadence of poetry beneath what
once seemed only a tangled chaos of inversion. The
associations of hard study, instead of reviving the old
distaste, added wonderfully to the interest of a reperusal.
I could see now what brightened the sunken
eye of the pale and sickly master, as he took up the
hesitating passage, and read on, forgetful of the delinquent,
to the end. I could enjoy now, what was a
dead letter to me then, the heightened fulness of Herodotus,
and the strong-woven style of Thucydides,
and the magnificent invention of Eschylus. I took
an aversion to Homer from hearing a classmate in the
next room scan it perpetually through his nose.

There is no music for me in the `Iliad.' But, spite of
the recollections scored alike upon my palm and the
margin, I own to an Augustan relish for the smooth
melody of Virgil, and freely forgive the sometime
troublesome ferule — enjoying by its aid the raciness
of Horace and Juvenal, and the lofty philosophy of
Lucretius. It will be a dear friend to whom I put
down in my will that shelf of defaced classics.

“There are some books that bear reading pleasantly
once a year. `Tristram Shandy' is an annual with
me. I read him regularly about Christmas. Jeremy
Taylor (not to mingle things holy and profane) is a
good table-book, to be used when you would collect
your thoughts and be serious a while. A man of
taste need never want for Sunday reading while he
can find the sermons of Taylor, and South, and Fuller
— writers of good theological repute — though, between
ourselves, I think one likelier to be delighted
with the poetry and quaint fancifulness of their style,
than edified by the piety it covers. I like to have a
quarto edition of Sir Thomas Brown on a near shelf,
or Milton's prose works, or Bacon. These are healthful
moods of the mind when lighter nutriment is distasteful.

“I am growing fastidious in poetry, and confine
myself more and more to the old writers. Castaly of
late runs shallow. Shelley's (peace to his passionate
heart!) was a deep draught, and Wordsworth and
Wilson sit near the well, and Keats and Barry Cornwall
have been to the fountain's lip, feeding their
imaginations (the latter his heart as well), but they
have brought back little for the world. The `small
silver stream' will, I fear, soon cease to flow down to
us, and as it dries back to its source, we shall close
nearer and nearer upon the `pure English undefiled.'
The dabblers in muddy waters (tributaries to Lethe)
will have Parnassus to themselves.

“The finest pleasures of reading come unbidden.
You can not, with your choicest appliances for the
body, always command the many-toned mind. In the
twilight alcove of a library, with a time-mellowed
chair yielding luxuriously to your pressure, a June
wind laden with idleness and balm floating in at the
window, and in your hand some Russia-bound rambling
old author, as Izaak Walton, good-humored and
quaint, one would think the spirit could scarce fail to
be conjured. Yet often, after spending a morning
hour restlessly thus, I have risen with my mind unhinged,
and strolled off with a book in my pocket to
the woods; and, as I live, the mood has descended
upon me under some chance tree, with a crooked root
under my head, and I have lain there, reading and
sleeping by turns, till the letters were blurred in the
dimness of twilight. It is the evil of refinement that
it breeds caprice. You will sometimes stand unfatigued
for hours on the steps of a library; or in a
shop, the eye will be arrested, and all the jostling of
customers and the looks of the jealous shopman will
not divert you till you have read out the chapter.

“I do not often indulge in the supernatural, for I
am an unwilling believer in ghosts, and the topic excites
me. But, for its connexion with the subject
upon which I am writing, I must conclude these
rambling observations with a late mysterious visitation
of my own.

“I had, during the last year, given up the early
summer tea-parties common in the town in which the
university stands; and having, of course, three or
four more hours than usual on my hands, I took to an
afternoon habit of imaginative reading. Shakspere
came first, naturally; and I feasted for the hundredth
time upon what I think his (and the world's) most
delicate creation — the `Tempest.' The twilight of
the first day overtook me at the third act, where the
banquet is brought in with solemn music by the fairy
troop of Prospero, and set before the shipwrecked
king and his followers. I closed the book, and leaning
back in my chair, abandoned myself to the crowd
of images which throng always upon the traces of
Shakspere. The fancy music was still in my mind,
when an apparently real strain of the most solemn
melody came to my ear, dying, it seemed to me as it
reached it, the tones were so expiringly faint and low.
I was not startled, but lay quietly, holding my breath,
and more fearing when the strain would be broken,
than curious whence it came. The twilight deepened,
till it was dark, and it still played on, changing the
tune at intervals, but always of the same melancholy
sweetness; till, by-and-by, I lost all curiosity, and,
giving in to the charm, the scenes I had been reading
began to form again in my mind, and Ariel, with his
delicate ministers, and Prospero, and Miranda, and
Caliban, came moving before me to the measure, as
bright and vivid as the reality. I was disturbed in the
midst of it by Alfonse, who came in at the usual
hour with my tea; and, on starting to my feet, I listened
in vain for the continuance of the music. I sat
thinking of it a while, but dismissed it at last, and went
out to enjoy, in a solitary walk, the loveliness of the
summer night. The next day I resumed my book,
with a smile at my previous credulity, and had read
through the last scenes of the `Tempest.' when the
light failed me, I again closed the book, and presently
again, as if the sympathy was instantaneous, the
strain broke in, playing the same low and solemn melodies,
and falling with the same dying cadence upon
the ear. I listened to it, as before, with breathless attention;
abandoned myself once more to its irresistible
spell; and, half-waking, half-sleeping, fell again into
a vivid dream, brilliant as fairy-land, and creating itself
to the measures of the still audible music. I could
not now shake off my belief in its reality; but I was so
wrapt with its strange sweetness, and the beauty of my
dream, that I cared not whether it came from earth or
air. My indifference, singularly enough, continued
for several days; and, regularly at twilight, i threw
aside my book, and listened with dreamy wakefulness
for the music. It never failed me, and its results were
as constant as its coming. Whatever I had read —
sometimes a canto of Spenser, sometimes an act of a
play, or a chapter of romance — the scene rose before
me with the stately reality of a pageant. At last I
began to think of it more seriously; and it was a relief
to me one evening when Alfonse came in earlier than
usual with a message. I told him to stand perfectly
still; and after a minute's pause, during which I heard
distinctly an entire passage of a funeral hymn, I asked
him if he heard any music? He said he did not. My
blood chilled at his positive reply, and I bade him
listen once more. Still he heard nothing. I could
endure it no longer. It was to me as distinct and
audible as my own voice; and I rushed from my room
as he left me, shuddering to be left alone.

“The next day I thought of nothing but death.
Warnings by knells in the air, by apparitions, by mysterious
voices, were things I had believed in speculatively
for years, and now their truth came upon me
like conviction. I felt a dull, leaden presentiment
about my heart, growing heavier and heavier with
every passing hour. Evening came at last, and with
it, like a summons from the grave, a `dead march'
swelled clearly on the air. I felt faint and sick at
heart. This could not be fancy; and why was it, as
I thought I had proved, audible to my ear alone? I
threw open the window, and the first rush of the cool
north wind refreshed me; but, as if to mock my attempts
at relief, the dirge-like sounds rose, at the instant,
with treble distinctness. I seized my hat and
rushed into the street, but, to my dismay, every step
seemed to bring me nearer to the knell. Still I hurried
on, the dismal sounds growing distractingly louder,
till, on turning a corner that leads to the lovely

burying-ground of New Haven, I came suddenly upon
— a bell foundry! In the rear had lately been hung,
for trial, the chiming bells just completed for the new
Trinity church, and the master of the establishment
informed me that one of his journeymen was a fine
player, and every day after his work, he was in the
habit of amusing himself with the `Dead March in
Saul,' the `Marsellois Hymn,' and other melancholy
and easy tunes, muffling the hammers that he might
not disturb the neighbors.”

I have had my reward for these speculations, dear
reader — a smile that is lying at this instant, perdu, in
the innermost recess of memory — and I care not much
(without offence) whether you like it or no. She
thanked me — she thought it well done — she laid her
head on my bosom while I read it in the old library of
the Flemings, and every word has been “paid for in
fairy gold.”

I have taken up a thread that lengthens as I unravel
it, and I can not well see how I shall come to the
end, without trespassing on your patience. We will
cut it here, if you like, and resume it after a pause;
but before I close, I must give you a little instance of
how love makes the dullest earth poetical. Edith
had given me a portefeuille crammed with all kinds of
embossed and curious note-paper, all quite too pretty
for use, and what I would show you are my verses
on the occasion. For a hand unpractised, then, in
aught save the “Gradus ad Parnassum,” I must own
I have fished them out of that same old portefeuille
(faded now from its glory, and worn with travel — but
O how cherished!) with a pleasant feeling of paternity:

2. PART II.
LOVE AND SPECULATION.

Edith Linsey was religious. There are many
intensifiers (a new word, that I can't get on without:
I submit it for admission into the language); — there
are many intensifiers, I say, to the passion of love:
such as pride, jealousy, poetry (money, sometimes,
Dio mio!) and idleness:[1] but, if the experience of
one who first studied the Art of Love in an “evangelical”
country is worth a para, there is nothing
within the bend of the rainbow that deepens the tender
passion like religion. I speak it not irreverently.
The human being that loves us throws the value of
its existence into the crucible, and it can do no more.
Love's best alchymy can only turn into affection what
is in the heart. The vain, the proud, the poetical,
the selfish, the weak, can and do fling their vanity,
pride, poetry, selfishness, and weakness, into a first
passion; but these are earthly elements, and there is
an antagonism in their natures that is for ever striving
to resolve them back to their original earth. But
religion is of the soul as well as the heart — the mind
as well as the affections — and when it mingles in love,
it is the infusion of an immortal essence into an unworthy
and else perishable mixture.

Edith's religion was equally without cant, and
without hesitation or disguise. She had arrived
at it by elevation of mind, aided by the habit of never
counting on her tenure of life beyond the setting of
the next sun, and with her it was rather an intellectual
exaltation than an humility of heart. She thought
of God because the subject was illimitable, and her
powerful imagination found in it the scope for which
she pined. She talked of goodness, and purity, and
disinterestedness, because she found them easy virtues
with a frame worn down with disease, and she was
removed by the sheltered position of an invalid from
the collision which tries so shrewdly in common life
the ring of our metal. She prayed, because the fulness
of her heart was loosed by her cloquence when
on her knees, and she found that an indistinct and
mystic unburthening of her bosom, even to the Deity,
was a hush and a relief. The heart does not always
require rhyme and reason of language and tears.

There are many persons of religious feeling who,
from a fear of ridicule or misconception, conduct themselves
as if to express a devout sentiment was a want
of taste or good-breeding. Edith was not of these.
Religion was to her a powerful enthusiasm, applied
without exception to every pursuit and affection. She
used it as a painter ventures on a daring color, or a
musician a new string in his instrument. She felt
that she aggrandized botany, or history, or friendship,
or love, or what you will, by making it a stepping-stone
to heaven, and she made as little mystery of it as
she did of breathing and sleep, and talked of subjects
which the serious usually enter upon with a suppressed
breath, as she would comment upon a poem or
define a new philosophy. It was surprising what an
impressiveness this threw over her in everything;
how elevated she seemed above the best of those
about her; and with what a worshipping and half-reverent
admiration she inspired all whom she did not
utterly neglect or despise. For myself, my soul was
drank up in hers as the lark is taken into the sky, and
I forgot there was a world beneath me in my intoxication.
I thought her an angel unrecognised on earth.
I believed her as pure from worldliness, and as spotless
from sin, as a cherub with his breast upon his
lute; and I knelt by her when she prayed, and held
her upon my bosom in her fits of faintness and exhaustion,
and sat at her feet with my face in her hands
listening to her wild speculations (often till the morning
brightened behind the curtains) with an utter and
irresistible abandonment of my existence to hers,
which seems to me now like a recollection of another
life — it were, with this conscious body and mind, a
self-relinquishment so impossible!

Our life was a singular one. Living in the midst

of a numerous household, with kind and cultivated
people about us, we were as separated from them as if
the ring of Gyges encircled us from their sight. Fred
wished me joy of my giraffe, as he offensively called
his cousin, and his sisters, who were quite too pretty to
have been left out of my story so long, were more indulgent,
I thought, to the indigenous beaux of Skaneateles
than those aboriginal specimens had a right to
expect; but I had no eyes, ears, sense, or civility for
anything but Edith. The library became a forbidden
spot to all feet but ours; we met at noon after our late
vigils and breakfasted together; a light sleigh was set
apart for our tête-à-tête drives over the frozen lake,
and the world seemed to me to revolve on its axle
with a special reference to Philip Slingsby's happiness.
I won ler whether an angel out of heaven would have
made me believe that I should ever write the story of
those passionate hours with a smile and a sneer! I
tell thee, Edith! (for thou wilt read every line that I
have written, and feel it, as far as thou canst feel anything),
that I have read “Faust” since, and thought
thee Mephistopheles! I have looked on thee since,
with thy cheek rosy dark, thy lip filled with the blood
of health, and curled with thy contempt of the world
and thy yet wild ambition to be its master-spirit and
idol, and struck my breast with instinctive self-questioning
if thou hadst given back my soul that was
thine own! I fear thee, Edith. Thou hast grown
beautiful that wert so hideous — the wonder-wrought
miracle of health and intellect, filling thy veins, and
breathing almost a newer shape over form and feature;
but it is not thy beauty; no, nor thy enthronement
in the admiration of thy woman's world. These are
little to me; for I saw thy loveliness from the first,
and I worshipped thee more in the duration of a
thought than a hecatomb of these worldlings in their
lifetime. I fear thy mysterious and unaccountable
power over the human soul! I can scorn thee here,
in another land, with an ocean weltering between us,
and auatomize the character that I alone have read
truly and too well, for the instruction of the world (its
amusement, too, proud woman — thou wilt writhe at
that) — but I confess to a natural and irresistible obedience
to the mastery of thy spirit over mine. I would
not willingly again touch the radius of thy sphere. I
would come out of Paradise to walk alone with the
devil as soon.

How little even the most instructed women knew
the secret of this power! They make the mistake of
cultivating only their own minds. They think that,
by self-elevation, they will climb up to the intellects
of men, and win them by seeming their equals. Shallow
philosophers! You never remember that to subdue
a human being to your will, it is more necessary
to know his mind than you own — that, in conquering
a heart vanity is the first out-post — that while your are
employing your wits in thinking how most effectually
to dazzle him, you should be sounding his character
for its undeveloped powers to assist him to dazzle you
— that love is a reflected light, and to be pleased with
others we must be first pleased with ourselves!

Edith (it has occurred to me in my speculations
since) seemed to me always an echo of myself. She
expressed my thought as it sprang into my brain. I
thought that in her I had met my double and counterpart
with the reservation that I was a little the
stronger spirit, and that in my mind lay the material
of the eloquence that flowed from her lips — as the almond
that you endeavor to split equally leaves the
kernel in the deeper cavity of its shell. Whatever
the topic, she seemed using my thoughts, anticipating
my reflections, and, with an unobtrusive but thrilling
flattery, referring me to myself for the truth of what
I must know was but a suggestion of my own! O!
Lucrezia Borgia! if Machiavelli had but practised that
subtle cunning upon thee, thou wouldst have had little
space in thy delirious heart for the passion that, in
the history of crime, has made thee the marvel and
the monster.

The charm of Edith to most people was that she
was no sublimation. Her mind seemed of any or no
stature. She was as natural, and earnest, and as satisfied
to converse, on the meanest subject as on the
highest. She overpowered nobody. She (apparently)
eclipsed nobody. Her passionate and powerful eloquence
was only lavished on the passionate and powerful.
She never misapplied herself: and what a
secret of influence and superiority is contained in that
single phrase! We so hate him who out-measures
us, as we stand side by side before the world!

I have in my portfolio several numbers of a manuscript
“Gazette,” with which the Flemings amused
themselves during the deep snows of the winter in
which I visited them. It was contributed to by everybody
in the house, and read aloud at the breakfast-table
on the day of its weekly appearance, and, quite
apropos to these remarks upon the universality of
Edith's mind, there is in one of them an essay of hers
on what she calls minute philosophies. It is curious
as showing how, with all her loftiness of speculation
she descended sometimes to the examination of the
smallest machinery of enjoyment.

“The principal sources of everyday happiness,” (I
am copying out a part of the essay, dear reader), “are
too obvious to need a place in a chapter of breakfast-table
philosophy. Occupation and a clear conscience,
the very truant in the fields will tell you, are craving
necessities. But when these are secured, there are
lighter matters, which, to the sensitive and educated
at least, are to happiness what foliage is to the tree.
They are refinements which add to the beauty of life
without diminishing its strength; and, as they spring
only from a better use of our common gifts, they are
neither costly nor rare. I have learned secrets under
the roof of a poor man, which would add to the luxury
of the rich. The blessings of a cheerful fancy
and a quick eye come from nature, and the trailing of
a vine may develop them as well as the curtaining of
a king's chamber.

“Riding and driving are such stimulating pleasures,
that to talk of any management in their indulgence
seems superfiuous. Yet we are, in motion or at rest,
equally liable to the caprices of feeling, and, perhaps,
the gayer the mood the deeper the shade cast on it by
untoward circumstances. The time of riding should
never be regular. It then becomes a habit, and habits,
though sometimes comfortable, never amount to
positive pleasure. I would ride when nature prompted
— when the shower was past, or the air balmy, or
the sky beautiful — whenever and wherever the significant
finger of Desire pointed. Oh! to leap into
the saddle when the west wind blows freshly, and gallop
off into its very eye, with an undrawn rein, careless
how far or whither; or, to spring up from a book
when the sun breaks through after a storm, and drive
away under the white clouds, through light and shadow,
while the trees are wet and the earth damp and
spicy; or, in the clear sunny afternoons of autumn,
with a pleasant companion on the seat beside you, and
the glorious splendor of the decaying foliage flushing
in the sunshine, to loiter up the valley dreaming over
the thousand airy castles that are stirred by such
shifting beauty — these are pleasures indeed, and such
as he who rides regularly after his dinner knows as
little of as the dray-horse of the exultation of the
courser.

“There is a great deal in the choice of a companion.
If he is an indifferent acquaintance, or an indiscriminate
talker, or has a coarse eye for beauty, or is
insensible to the delicacies of sensation or thought —
if he is sensual, or stupid, or practical constitutionally
— he will never do. He must be a man who can detect

a rare color in a leaf, or appreciate a peculiar
passage in scenery, or admire a grand outline in a
cloud; he must have accurate and fine senses, and a
heart, noble at least by nature, and subject still to her
direct influences; he must be a lover of the beautiful
in whatever shape it comes; and, above all, he must
have read and thought like a scholar, if not like a
poet. He will then ride by your side without crossing
your humor: if talkative, he will talk well, and if
silent, you are content, for you know that the same
grandeur or beauty which has wrought the silence, in
your own thoughts has given a color to his.

“There is much in the manner of driving. I like
a capricious rein — now fast through a hollow, and
now loiteringly on the edge of a road or by the bank
of a river. There is a singular delight in quickening
your speed in the animation of a climax, and in
coming down gently to a walk with a digression of
feeling, or a sudden sadness.

“An important item in household matters is the
management of light. A small room well-lighted is
much more imposing than a large one lighted ill.
Cross lights are painful to the eye, and they destroy
besides the cool and picturesque shadows of the furniture
and figures I would have a room always partially
darkened: there is a repose in the twilight dimness
of a drawing-room which affects one with the
proper gentleness of the place: the out-of-door humor
of men is too rude, and the secluded light subdues
them fitly as they enter. I like curtains — heavy,
and of the richest material: there is a magnificence
in large crimson folds which nothing else equals, and
the color gives everything a beautiful teint as the light
streams through them. Plants tastefully arranged are
pretty; flowers are always beautiful. I would have my
own room like a painter's — one curtain partly drawn;
a double shadow has a nervous look. The effect of a
proper disposal of light upon the feelings is by most
people surprisingly neglected. I have no doubt that
as an habitual thing it materially affects the character;
the disposition for study and thought is certainly dependant
on it in no slight degree. What is more
contemplative than the twilight of a deep alcove in a
library! What more awakens thought than the dim
interior of an old church with its massive and shadowy
pillars?

“There may be the most exquisite luxury in furniture.
A crowded room has a look of comfort, and
suspended lamps throw a mellow depth into the features.
Descending light is always the most becoming;
it deepens the eye, and distributes the shadows in the
face judiciously. Chairs should be of different and
curious fashious, made to humor every possible weariness.
A spice-lamp should burn in the corner, and
the pictures should be colored of a pleasant tone, and
the subjects should be subdued and dreamy. It should
be a place you would live in for a century without an
uncomfortable thought. I hate a neat room. A dozen
of the finest old authors should lie about, and a new
novel, and the last new prints. I rather like the French
fashion of a bonbonniere, though that perhaps is an extravagance.

“There is a management of one's own familiar intercourse
which is more neglected, and at the same
time more important to happiness, than every other;
it is particularly a pity that this is not oftener understood
by newly-married people; as far as my own
observation goes, I have rarely failed to detect, far too
early, signs of ill-disguised and disappointed weariness.
It was not the reaction of excitement — not the return
to the quiet ways of home — but a new manner — a forgetful
indifference, believing itself concealed, and yet
betraying itself continually by unconscious and irrepressible
symptoms. I believe it resulted oftenest
from the same causes: partly that they saw each
other too much, and partly that when the form of et
quette was removed, they forgot to retain its invaluable
essence — an assiduous and minute disinterestedness.
It seems nonsense to lovers, but absence is the
secret of respect, and therefore of affection. Love is
divine, but its flame is too delicate for a perpetual
household lamp; it shold be burned only for incense,
and even then trimmed skilfully. It is wonderful how
a slight neglect, or a glimpse of a weakness, or a chance
defect of knowledge, dims its new glory. Lovers, married
or single, should have separate pursuits — they
should meet to respect each other for new and distinct
acquisitions. It is the weakness of human affections
that they are founded on pride, and waste with over-much
familiarity. And oh, the delight to meet after
hours of absence — to sit down by the evening lamp,
and with a mind unexhausted by the intercourse of
the day, to yield to the fascinating freedom of conversation,
and clothe the rising thoughts of affection in
fresh and unhackneyed language! How richly the
treasures of the mind are colored — not doled out,
counter by counter, as the visible machinery of thought
coins them, but heaped upon the mutual altar in lavish
and unhesitating profusion! And how a bold fancy assumes
beauty and power — not traced up through all its
petty springs till its dignity is lost by association, but
flashing full-grown and suddenly on the sense! The
gifts of no one mind are equal to the constant draught
of a lifetime; and even if they were, there is no one
taste which could always relish them. It is an humiliating
thought that immortal mind must be husbanded
like material treasure!

“There is a remark of Godwin, which, in rather
too strong language, contains a valuable truth: `A
judicious and limited voluptuousness,' he says, `is necessary
to the cultivation of the mind, to the polishing
of the manners, to the refiuement of the sentiment,
and to the development of the understanding; and a
woman deficient in this respect may be of use in the
government of our families, but can not add to the
enjoyment, nor fix the partiality of a man of taste!'
Since the days when `St. Leon' was written, the word
by which the author expressed his meaning is grown
perhaps into disrepute, but the remark is still one of
keen and observant discrimination. It refers (at least
so I take it) to that susceptibility to delicate attentions,
that fine sense of the nameless and exquisite tenderness
of manner and thought, which constitute in
the minds of its possessors the deepest undercurrent
of life — the felt and treasured, but unseen and inexpressible
richness of affection. It is rarely found in
the characters of men, but it outweights, when it is, all
grosser qualities — for its possession implies a generous
nature, purity, fine affections, and a heart open to all
the sunshine and meaning of the universe. It belongs
more to the nature of woman; but indispensable as it
is to her character, it is oftener than anything else,
wanting. And without it, what is she? What is love
to a being of such dull sense that she hears only its
common and audible language, and sees nothing but
what it brings to her feet to be eaten, and worn, and
looked upon? What is woman, if the impassioned
language of the eye, or the deepened fulness of the
tone, or the tenderness of a slight attention, are things
unnoticed and of no value? — one who answers you
when you speak, smiles when you tell her she is grave,
assents barely to the expression of your enthusiasm,
but has no dream beyond — no suspicion that she has
not felt and reciprocated your feelings as fully as you
could expect or desire? It is a matter too little looked
to. Sensitive and ardent men too often marry with
a blindfold admiration of mere goodness or loveliness.
The abandon of matrimony soon dissipates the gay
dream, and they find themselves suddenly unsphered,
linked indissolubly with affections strangely different
from their own, and lavishing their only treasure on
those who can neither appreciate nor return it. The

after-life of such men is a stifling solitude of feeling.
Their avenues of enjoyment are their maniform sympathies,
and when these are shut up or neglected, the
heart is dark, and they have nothing to do thenceforward
but to forget.

“There are many, who, possessed of the capacity
for the more elevated affections, waste and lose it by
a careless and often unconscious neglect. It is not a
plant to grow untended. The breath of indifference,
or a rude touch, may destroy for ever its delicate texture.
To drop the figure, there is a daily attention to
the slight courtesies of life, and an artifice in detecting
the passing shadows of feeling, which alone can preserve,
through life, the first freshness of passion. The
easy surprises of pleasure, and earnest cheerfulness of
assent to slight wishes, the habitual respect to opinions,
the polite abstinence from personal topics in the
company of others, the assiduous and unwavering attention
to her comfort, at home and abroad, and, above
all, the absolute preservation in private of those proprieties
of conversation and manner which are sacred
before the world — are some of the thousand secrets of
that rare happiness which age and habit alike fail to
impair or diminish.”

2. II.

Vacation was over, but Fred and myself were still
lingering at Fleming Farm. The roads were impassable
with a premature THAW. Perhaps there is nothing
so peculiar in American meteorology as the phenomenon
which I alone probably, of all the imprisoned
inhabitants of Skaneateles, attributed to a kind and
“special Providence.” Summer had come back, like
Napoleon from Elba, and astonished usurping winter
in the plenitude of apparent possession and security.
No cloud foreboded the change, as no alarm preceded
the apparition of “the child of destiny.” We awoke
on a February morning, with the snow lying chin-deep
on the earth, and it was June! The air was soft
and warm — the sky was clear, and of the milky cerulean
of chrysoprase — the south wind (the same, save
his unperfumed wings, who had crept off like a satiated
lover in October) stole back suddenly from the
tropics, and found his flowery mistress asleep and insensible
to his kisses beneath her snowy mantle. The
sunset warme I back from its wintry purple to the
golden teints of heat, the stars burned with a less
vitreous sparkle, the meteors slid once more lambently
down the sky, and the house-dove sat on the eaves,
washing her breast in the snow-water, and thinking
(like a neglected wife at a capricious return of her
truant's tenderness) that the sunshine would last for
ever!

The air was now full of music. The water trickled
away under the snow, and, as you looked around and
saw no change or motion in the white carpet of the
earth, it seemed as if a myriad of small bells were ringing
under ground — fairies, perhaps, startled in midrevel
with the false alarm of summer, and hurrying
about with their silver anklets, to wake up the slumbering
flowers. The mountain-torrents were loosed,
and rushed down upon the valleys like the Children
of the Mist: and the hoarse war-cry, swelling and falling
upon the wind, maintained its perpetual undertone
like an accompaniment of bassoons; and occasionally,
in a sudden full of the breeze, you would hear the
click of the undermined snow-drifts dropping upon the
earth, as if the chorister of spring were beating time
to the reviving anthem of nature.

The snow sunk perhaps a foot in a day, but it was
only perceptible to the eye where you could measure
its wet mark against a tree from which it had fallen
away, or by the rock, from which the dissolving bank
shrunk and separated, as if rocks and snow were as
heartless as ourselves and threw off their friends, too,
in their extremity! The low-lying lake, meantime,
surrounded by melting mountains, received the abandoned
waters upon its frozen bosom, and, spreading
them into a placid and shallow lagoon, separate by a
crystal plane from its own lower depths, gave them the
repose denied in the more elevated sphere in which
lay their birthright. And thus — (oh, how full is nature
of these gentle moralities!) — and thus sometimes
do the lowly, whose bosom, like the frozen lake, is at
first cold and unsympathetic to the rich and noble,
still receive them in adversity, and, when neighborhood
and dependance have convinced them that they
are made of the same common element, as the lake
melts its dividing and icy plane, and mingles the strange
waters with its own, do they dissolve the unnatural barrier
of prejudice, and take the humbled wanderer to
their bosom!

The face of the snow lost its dazzling whiteness as
the thaw went on — as disease steals away the beauty
of those we love — but it was only in the distance,
where the sun threw a shadow into the irregular pits
of the dissolving surface. Near to the eye (as the
dying one pressed to the bosom), it was still of its
original beauty, unchanged and spotless. And now
you are tired of my loitering speculations, gentle reader,
and we will return (please Heaven, only on paper!)
to Edith Linsey.

The roads were at last reduced to what is expressively
called, in New England, slosh (in New York,
posh, but equally descriptive), and Fred received a
hint from the judge that the mail had arrived in the
usual time, and his beaux jours were at an end.

A slighter thing than my departure would have been
sufficient to stagger the tottering spirits of Edith. We
were sitting at table when the letters came in, and the
dates were announced that proved the opening of the
roads; and I scarce dared to turn my eyes upon the
pale face that I could just see had dropped upon her
bosom. The next instant there was a general confusion,
and she was carried lifeless to her chamber.

A note, scarce legible, was put into my hand in the
course of the evening, requesting me to sit up for her
in the library. She would come to me, she said, if
she had strength.

It was a night of extraordinary beauty. The full
moon was high in the heavens at midnight, and there
had been a slight shower soon after sunset, which,
with the clearing-up wind, had frozen thinly into a
most fragile rime, and glazed everything open to the
sky with transparent crystal. The distant forest looked
serried with metallic trees, dazzlingly and unspeakably
gorgeous; and, as the night-wind stirred through them
and shook their crystal points in the moonlight — the
aggregated stars of heaven springing from their Maker's
hand to the spheres of their destiny, or the
march of the host of the archangel Michael with their
irradiate spear-points glittering in the air, or the diamond
beds of central earth thrust up to the sun in
some throe of the universe — would, each or all, have
been well bodied forth by such similitude.

It was an hour after midnight when Edith was supported
in by her maid, and, choosing her own position,
sunk into the broad window-seat, and lay with her head
on my bosom, and her face turned outward to the glittering
night. Her eyes had become, I thought, unnaturally
bright, and she spoke with an exhausted
faintness that gradually strengthened to a tone of the
most thrilling and melodious sweetness. I shall never
get that music out of my brain!

“Philip!” she said.

“I listen, dear Edith!”

“I am dying.”

And she looked it, and I believed her; and my heart
sunk to its deepest abyss of wretchedness with the
conviction.

She went on to talk of death. It was the subject

that pressed most upon her mind, and she could
scarce fail to be eloquent on any subject. She was
very eloquent on this. I was so impressed with the
manner in which she seemed almost to rhapsodize
between the periods of her faintness, as she lay in
my arms that night, that every word she uttered is
still fresh in my memory. She seemed to forget my
presence, and to commune with her own thoughts
aloud.

“I recollect,” she said, “when I was strong and
well (years ago, dear Philip!), I left my books on a
morning in May, and looking up to find the course of
the wind, started off alone for a walk into its very eye.
A moist steady breeze came from the southwest, driving
before it fragments of the dispersed clouds. The
air was elastic and clear — a freshness that entered freely
at every pore was coming up, mingled with the profuse
perfume of grass and flowers — the colors of the
new, tender foliage were particularly soothing to an
eye pained with close attention — and the just perceptible
murmur of the drops shaken from the trees, and
the peculiarly soft rustle of the wet leaves, made as
much music as an ear accustomed to the silence of
solitude could well relish. Altogether, it was one of
those rarely-tempered days when every sense is satisfied,
and the mind is content to lie still with its common
thoughts, and simply enjoy.

“I had proceeded perhaps a mile — my forehead
held up to the wind, my hair blowing back, and the
blood glowing in my cheeks with the most vivid flush
of exercise and health — when I saw coming toward
me a man apparently in middle life, but wasted by illness
to the extremest emaciation. His lip was colorless,
his skin dry and white, and his sunken eyes had
that expression of inquiring earnestness which comes
always with impatient sickness. He raised his head,
and looked steadily at me as I came on. My lips were
open, and my whole air must have been that of a person
in the most exulting enjoyment of health. I was
just against him, gliding past with an elastic step,
when, with his eye still fixed on me, he half turned,
and in a voice of inexpressible meaning, exclaimed,
`Merciful Heaven! how well she is!' I passed on,
with his voice still ringing in my ear. It haunted me
like a tone in the air. It was repeated in the echo of
my tread — in the panting of my heart. I felt it in the
beating of the strong pulse in my temples. As if it
was strange that I should be so well! I had never
before realized that it could be otherwise. It seemed
impossible to me that my strong limbs should fail me,
or the pure blood I felt bounding so bravely through
my veins could be reached and tainted by disease.
How should it come? If I ate, would it not nourish
me? If I slept, would it not refresh me? If I came
out in the cool, free air, would not my lungs heave,
and my muscles spring, and my face feel its grateful
freshness? I held out my arm, for the first time in my
life, with a doubt of its strength. I closed my hand
unconsciously, with a fear it would not obey. I drew
a deep breath, to feel if it was difficult to breathe; and
even my bounding step, that was as elastic then as a
fawn's, seemed to my excited imagination already to
have become decrepit and feeble.

“I walked on, and thought of death. I had never
before done so definitely; it was like a terrible shape
that had always pursued me dimly, but which I had
never before turned and looked steadily on. Strange!
that we can live so constantly with that threatening
hand hung over us, and not think of it always! Strange!
that we can use a limb, or enter with interest into any
pursuit of time, when we know that our continued
life is almost a daily miracle!

“How difficult it is to realize death! How difficult
it is to believe that the hand with whose every vein
you are familiar, will ever lose its motion and its
warmth? That the quick eye, which is so restless
now, will settle and grow dull? That the refined lip,
which now shrinks so sensitively from defilement, will
not feel the earth lying upon it, and the tooth of the
feeding worm? That the free breath will be choked,
and the forehead be pressed heavily on by the decaying
coffin, and the light and air of heaven be shut quite
out; and this very body, warm, and breathing, and
active as it is now, will not feel uneasiness or pain?
I could not help looking at my frame as these thoughts
crowded on me; and I confess I almost doubted my
own convictions — there was so much strength and
quickness in it — my hand opened so freely, and my
nostrils expanded with such a satisfied thirst to the
moist air. Ah! it is hard to believe at first that we
must die! harder still to believe and realize the repulsive
circumstances that follow that terrible change!
It is a bitter thought at the lightest. There is little
comfort in knowing that the soul will not be there —
that the sense and the mind that feel and measure suffering,
will be gone. The separation is too great a
mystery to satisfy fear. It is the body that we know.
It is this material frame in which the affections have
grown up. The spirit is a mere thought — a presence
that we are told of, but do not see. Philosophize as
we will, the idea of existence is connected indissolubly
with the visible body, and its pleasant and familiar
senses. We talk of, and believe, the soul's ascent to
its Maker; but it is not ourselves — it is not our own
conscious breathing identity that we send up in imagination
through the invisible air. It is some phantom
that is to issue forth mysteriously, and leave us gazing
on it in wonder. We do not understand, we can not
realize it.

“At the time I speak of, my health had been always
unbroken. Since then, I have known disease in many
forms, and have had, of course, more time and occasion
for the contemplation of death. I have never,
till late, known resignation. With my utmost energy
I was merely able, in other days, to look upon it with
quiet despair; as a terrible, unavoidable evil. I remember
once, after severe suffering for weeks, I overheard
the physician telling my mother that I must
die, and from that moment the thought never left me.
A thin line of light came in between the shutters of
the south window; and, with this one thought fastened
on my mind, like the vulture of Prometheus, I lay
and watched it, day after day, as it passed with its
imperceptible progress over the folds of my curtains.
The last faint gleam of sunset never faded from its
damask edge, without an inexpressible sinking of my
heart, and a belief that I should see its pleasant light
no more. I turned from the window when even imagination
could find the daylight no longer there, and
felt my pulse and lifted my head to try my remaining
strength. And then every object, yes, even the meanest,
grew unutterably dear to me; my pillow, and the
cup with which my lips were moistened, and the cooling
amber which I had held in my hand, and pressed
to my burning lips when the fever was on me — everything
that was connected with life, and that would remain
among the living when I was gone.

“It is strange, but with all this clinging to the world
my affection for the living decreased sensibly. I grew
selfish in my weakness. I could not bear that they
should go from my chamber into the fresh air, and
have no fear of sickness and no pain. It seemed unfeeling
that they did not stay and breathe the close
atmosphere of my room — at least till I was dead. —
How could they walk round so carelessly, and look
on a fellow-creature dying helplessly and unwillingly,
and never shed a tear! And then the passing courtesies
exchanged with the family at the door, and the
quickened step on the sidewalk, and the wandering looks
about my room, even while I was answering with my
difficult breath their cold inquiries! There was an inhuman
carelessness in all this that stung me to the soul.

“I craved sympathy as I did life; and yet I doubted
it all. There was not a word spoken by the friends
who were admitted to see me, that I did not ponder
over when they were gone, and always with an impatient
dissatisfaction. The tone, and the manner,
and the expression of face, all seemed forced; and
often, in my earlier sickness, when I had pondered for
hours on the expressed sympathy of some one I had
loved, the sense of utter helplessness which crowded
on me with my conviction of their insincerity, quite
overcame me. I have lain night after night, and
looked at my indifferent watchers: and oh how I
hated them for their careless ease, and their snatched
moments of repose! I could scarce keep from dashing
aside the cup they came to give me so sluggishly.

“It is singular that, with all our experience of sickness,
we do not attend more to these slight circumstances.
It can scarce be conceived how an ill-managed
light, or a suppressed whispering, or a careless
change of attitude, in the presence of one whose senses
are so sharpened, and whose mind is so sensitive as a
sick person's, irritate and annoy. And, perhaps, more
than these to bear, is the affectedly subdued tone of
condolence. I remember nothing which I endured so
impatiently.

“Annoyances like these, however, scarcely diverted
for a moment the one great thought of death. It became
at last familiar, but, if possible, more dreadfully
horrible from that very fact. It was giving it a new
character. I realized it more. The minute circumstances
became nearer and more real — I tried the position
in which I should lie in my coffin — I lay with
my arms to my side, and my feet together, and with
the cold sweat standing in large drops on my lip, composed
my features into a forced expression of tranquillity.

“I awoke on the second morning after the hope of
my recovery had been abandoned. There was a narrow
sunbeam lying in a clear crimson line across the
curtain, and I lay and watched the specks of lint sailing
through it, like silver-winged insects, and the thin
dust, quivering and disappearing on its definite limit,
in a dream of wonder. I had thought not to see
another sun, and my mind was still fresh with the expectation
of an immediate change; I could not believe
that I was alive. The dizzy throb in my temples was
done; my limbs felt cool and refreshed; my mind had
that feeling of transparency which is common after
healthful and sweet sleep; and an indefinite sensation
of pleasure trembled in every nerve. I thought that
this might be death, and that, with this exquisite feeling
of repose, I was to linger thus consciously with
the body till the last day; and I dwelt on it pleasantly
with my delicious freedom from pain. I felt no regret
for life — none for a friend even: I was willing — quite
willing — to lie thus for ages. Presently the physician
entered; he came and laid his fingers on my pulse,
and his face brightened. `You will get well,' he said,
and I heard it almost without emotion. Gradually,
however, the love of life returned; and as I realized it
fully, and all the thousand chords which bound me to
it vibrated once more, the tears came thickly to my eyes,
and a crowd of delightful thoughts pressed cheerfully
and glowingly on me. No language can do justice
to the pleasure of convalescence from extreme sickness.
The first step upon the living grass — the first
breath of free air — the first unsuppressed salutation of
a friend — my fainting heart, dear Philip, rallies and
quickens even now with the recollection.”

I have thrown into a continuous strain what was
murmured to me between pauses of faintness, and with
difficulty of breath that seemed overpowered only by
the mastery of the eloquent spirit apparently trembling
on its departure. I believed Edith Linsey would die
that night; I believed myself listening to words spoken
almost from heaven; and if I have wearied you, dear
reader, with what must be more interesting to me than
to you, it is because every syllable was burnt like
enamel into my soul, in my boundless reverence and
love.

It was two o'clock, and she still lay breathing painfully
in my arms. I had thrown up the window, and
the soft south wind, stirring gently among the tinkling
icicles of the trees, came in, warm and genial, and she
leaned over to inhale it, as if it came from the source
of life. The stars burned gloriously in the heavens;
and, in a respite of her pain, she lay back her head,
and gazed up at them with an inarticulate motion of
her lips, and eyes so unnaturally kindled, that I thought
reason had abandoned her.

“How beautiful are the stars to night, Edith!” I
said, with half a fear that she would answer me in
madness.

“Yes,” she said, putting my hand (that pressed her
closer, involuntary, to my bosom) first to her lips —
“Yes; and, beautiful as they are, they are all accurately
numbered and governed, and just as they burn
now have they burned since the creation, never `faint
in their watches,' and never absent from their place.
How glorious they are! How thrilling it is to see them
stand with such a constant silence in the sky, unsteadied
and unsupported, obeying the great law of
their Maker! What pure and silvery light it is! How
steadily it pours from those small fountains, giving
every spot of earth its due portion! The hovel and
the palace are shone upon equally, and the shepherd
gets as broad a beam as the king, and these few rays
that are now streaming into my feverish eyes were
meant and lavished only for me! I have often
thought — has it never occurred to you, dear Philip? —
how ungrateful we are to call ourselves poor, when
there is so much that no poverty can take away!
Clusters of silver rays from every star in these heavens
are mine. Every breeze that breaks on my forehead
was sent for my refreshment. Every tinkle and ray
from those stirring and glistening icicles, and the invigorating
freshness of this unseasonable and delicious
wind, and moonlight, and sunshine, and the glory of
the planets, are all gifts that poverty could not take
away! It is not often that I forget these treasures; for
I have loved nature, and the skies of night and day, in
all their changes, from my childhood, and they have
been unspeakably dear to me; for in them I see the
evidence of an Almighty Maker, and in the excessive
beauty of the stars and the unfading and equal splendor
of their steadfast fires, I see glimpses of an immortal
life, and find an answer to the eternal questioning
within me!

“Three! The village clock reaches us to night.
Nay, the wind can not harm me now. Turn me more
to the window, for I would look nearer upon the stars:
it is the last time — I am sure of it — the very last! Yet
to-morrow night those stars will all be there — not one
missing from the sky, nor shining one ray the less because
I am dead! It is strange that this thought
should be so bitter — strange that the companionship
should be so close between our earthly affections and
those spititual worlds — and stranger yet, that, satisfied
as we must be that we shall know them nearer
and better when released from our flesh, we still cling
so fondly to our earthly and imperfect vision. I feel,
Philip, that I shall traverse hereafter every star in those
bright heavens. If the course of that career of knowledge,
which I believe in my soul it will be the reward
of the blessed to run, be determined in any degree by
the strong desires that yearn so sickeningly within us,
I see the thousand gates of my future heaven shining
at this instant above me. There they are! the clustering
Pleiades, with `their sweet influences;' and
the morning star, melting into the east with its transcendent
lambency and whiteness; and the broad galaxy,
with its myriads of bright spheres, dissolving into

each other's light, and belting the heavens like a girdle.
I shall see them all! I shall know them and
their inhabitants as the angels of God know them;
the mystery of their order, and the secret of their
wonderful harmony, and the duration of their appointed
courses — all will be made clear!”

I have trespassed again, most indulgent reader, on
the limits of these Procrustean papers. I must defer
the “change” that “came o'er the spirit of my dream”
till another mood and time. Meanwhile, you may
consider Edith, if you like, the true heart she thought
herself (and I thought her) during her nine deaths in
the library; and you will have leisure to imagine the
three years over which we shall skip with this finale,
during which I made a journey to the north, and danced
out a winter in your own territories at Quebec — a circumstance
I allude to, no less to record the hospitalities
of the garrison of that time (this was in 27 — were
you there?) than to pluck forth from Time's hindermost
wallet a modest copy of verses I addressed thence
to Edith. She sent them back to me considerably
mended; but I give you the original draught, scorning
her finger in my poesies.

3. PART III.
A Digression.

It was a September night at the university. On the
morrow I was to appear upon the stage as the winner
of the first honors of my year. I was the envy — the
admiration — in some degree the wonder, of the col
legiate town in which the university stands; for I had
commenced my career as the idlest and most riotous
of freshmen. What it was that had suddenly made
me enamored of my chambers and my books — that
had saddened my manners and softened my voice — that
had given me a disgust to champagne and my old allies,
in favor of cold water and the Platonists — that, in
short, had metamorphosed, as Bob Wilding would
have said, a gentleman-like rake and vau-rien into so
dull a thing as an exemplary academician — was past
the divining of most of my acquaintances. Oh, once-loved
Edith! has thou any inkling in thy downward
metempsychosis of the philosophy of this marvel?

If you were to set a poet to make a town, with
carte blanche as to trees, gardens, and green blinds,
he would probably turn out very much such a place
as New Haven. (Supposing your education in geography
to have been neglected, dear reader, this is
the second capital of Connecticut, a half-rural, half-metropolitan
town, lying between a precipice that
makes the fag-end of the Green mountains and a
handsome bay in Long-Island sound.) The first
thought of the inventor of New Haven was to lay out
the streets in parallelograms, and the second was to
plant them from suburb to water-side with the magnificent
elms of the country. The result is, that at
the end of fifty years, the town is buried in leaves. If
it were not for the spires of the churches, a bird flying
over on his autumn voyage to the Floridas would
never mention having seen it in his travels. It is a
glorious tree, the elm — and those of the place I speak
of are famous, even in our land of trees, for their surprising
size and beauty. With the curve of their
stems in the sky, the long weepers of their outer and
lower branches drop into the street, fanning your face
as you pass under with their geranium-like leaves;
and close overhead, interwoven like the trellice of a
vine, they break up the light of the sky into golden
flecks, and make you, of the common highway, a
bower of the most approved secludedness and beauty.
The houses are something between an Italian palace
and an English cottage — built of wood, but, in the
dim light of those overshadowing trees, as fair to the
eye as marble with their triennial coats of paint; and
each stands in the midst of its own encircling grass-plot,
half buried in vines and flowers, and facing outward
from a cluster of gardens divided by slender
palings, and filling up with fruit-trees and summerhouses
the square on whose limit it stands. Then,
like the vari-colored parallelograms upon a chessboard,
green openings are left throughout the town,
fringed with triple and interweaving elm-rows, the long
and weeping branches sweeping downward to the
grass, and with their enclosing shadows keeping moist
and cool the road they overhang; and fair forms (it is
the garden of American beauty — New-Haven) flit
about in the green light in primitive security and freedom,
and you would think the place, if you alit upon
it in a summer's evening — what it seems to me now
in memory, and what I have made it in this Rosa-Matilda
description — a scene from Boccacio, or a
vision from long-lost Arcady.

New Haven may have eight thousand inhabitants.
Its steamers run to New York in six hours (or did in
my time — I have ceased to be astonished on that subject,
and should not wonder if they did it now in one
— a trifle of seventy miles up the sound), and the
ladies go up in the morning for a yard of bobbin and
return at night, and the gentlemen the same for a
stroll in Broadway; and it is to this circumstance that,
while it preserves its rural exterior, it is a very metropolitan
place in the character of its society. The
Armaryllis of the petty cottage you admire wears the
fashion twenty days from Paris, and her shepherd has
a coat from Nugee, the divine peculiarity of which is
not yet suspected east of Bond street; and, in the

newspaper hanging half out of the window, there is
news, red-hot with the velocity of its arrival, from
Russia and the Rocky Mountains, from the sources of
the Mississippi and the brain of Monsieur Herbault.
Distance is an imaginary quantity, and Time, that
used to give everything the go-by, has come to a
stand-still in his astonishment. There will be a proposition
in congress ere long to do without him altogether
— every new thing “saves time” so marvellously.

Bright as seems to me this seat of my Alma
Mater, however, and gayly as I describe it, it is to
me, if I may so express it, a picture of memory
glazed and put away; if I see it even again, it will
be but to walk through its embowered streets by
a midnight moon. It is vain and heart-breaking to go
back, after absence, to any spot of earth of which the
interest was the human love whose home and cradle it
had been. But there is a period in our lives when
the heart fuses and compounds with the things about
it, and the close enamel with which it overruns and
binds in the affections, and which hardens in the
lapse of years till the immortal germ within is not
more durable and unwasting, warms never again, nor
softens; and there is nothing on earth so mournful
and unavailing as to return to the scenes which are
unchanged, and look to return to ourselves and others
as we were when we thus knew them.

Yet we think (I judge you by my own soul, gentle
reader) that it is others — not we — who are changed!
We meet the friend that we loved in our youth, and it
is ever he who is cold and altered! We take the
hand that we bent over with our passionate kisses in
boyhood, and our raining tears when we last parted,
and it is ever hers that returns not the pressure and
her eyes, and not ours — oh, not ours! — that look back
the moistened and once familiar regard with a dry lid
and a gaze of stone! Oh God! it is ever he — the
friend you have worshipped — for whom you would
have died — who gives you the tips of his fingers, and
greets you with a phrase of fashion, when you would
rush into his bosom and break your heart with weeping
out the imprisoned tenderness of years! I could
carve out the heart from my bosom, and fling it with
a malison into the sea, when I think how utterly and
worse than useless it is in this world of mocking
names! Yet “love” and “friendship” are words
that read well. You could scarce spare them in
poetry.

2. II.

It was, as I have said, a moonlight night of unparalleled
splendor. The morrow was the college anniversary
— the day of the departure of the senior class
— and the town, which is, as it were, a part of the university,
was in the usual tumult of the gayest and
saddest evening of the year. The night was warm,
and the houses, of which the drawing-rooms are all
on a level with the gardens in the rear, and through
which a long hall stretches like a ball-room, were
thrown open, doors and windows, and the thousand
students of the university, and the crowds of their
friends, and the hosts of strangers drawn to the place
at this season by the annual festivities, and the families,
every one with a troop of daughters (as the leaves
on our trees, compared with those of old countries —
three to one — so are our sons and daughters) were all
sitting without lamps in the moon-lit rooms, or strolling
together, lovers and friends, in the fragrant gardens,
or looking out upon the street, returning the
greetings of the passers-by, or, with heads uncovered,
pacing backward and forward beneath the elms before
the door — the whole scene one that the angels in
heaven might make a holyday to see.

There were a hundred of my fellow-seniors — young
men of from eighteen to twenty-four — every one of
whom was passing the last evening of the four most
impressible and attaching years of his life, with the
family in which he had been most intimate, in a town
where refinement and education had done their utmost
upon the society, and which was renowned
throughout America for the extraordinary beauty of
its women. They had come from every state in the
Union, and the Georgian and the Vermontese, the
Kentuckian and the Virginian, were to start alike on
the morrow-night with a lengthening chain for home,
each bearing away the hearts he had attached to him
(one or more!) and leaving his own, till, like the magnetized
needle, it should drop away with the weakened
attraction; and there was probably but one that
night in the departing troop who was not whispering
in some throbbing ear the passionate but vain and
mocking avowal of fidelity in love! And yet I had
had my attachments too; and there was scarce a
house in that leafy and murmuring paradise of friendship
and trees, that would not have hailed me with
acclamation had I entered the door; and I make this
record of kindness and hospitality (unforgotten after
long years of vicissitude and travel), with the hope
that there may yet live some memory as constant as
mine, and that some eye will read it with a warmth in
its lid, and some lip — some one at least — murmur, “I
remember him!” There are trees in that town whose
drooping leaves I could press to my lips with an affection
as passionate as if they were human, though the
lips and voices that have endeared them to me are as
changed as the foliage upon the branch, and would
recognise my love as coldly.

There was one, I say, who walked the thronged
pavement alone that night, or but with such company
as Uhland's;[2] yet the heart of that solitary senior was
far from lonely. The palm of years of ambition was
in his grasp — the reward of daily self-denial and midnight
watching — the prize of a straining mind and
a yearning desire; and there was not one of the many
who spoke of him that night in those crowded rooms,
either to rejoice in his success or to wonder at its attainment,
who had the shadow of an idea what spirit
sat uppermost in his bosom. Oh! how common is
this ignorance of human motives! How distant, and
slight, and unsuspected, are the springs often of the
most desperate achievement! How little the world
knows for what the poet writes, the scholar toils, the
politician sells his soul, and the soldier perils his life!
And how insignificant and unequal to the result would
seem these invisible wires, could they be traced back
from the hearts whose innermost resource and faculty
they have waked and exhausted! It is a startling
thing to question even your own soul for its motive.
Ay, even in trifles. Ten to one you are surprised at
the answer. I have asked myself, while writing this
sentence, whose eye it is most meant to please; and,
as I live, the face that is conjured up at my bidding is
of one of whom I have not had a definite thought for
years. I would lay my life she thinks at this instant
I have forgotten her very name. Yet I know she
will read this page with an interest no other could
awaken, striving to trace in it the changes that have
come over me since we parted. I know (and I knew
then, though we never exchanged a word save in
friendship), that she devoted her innermost soul when
we strayed together by that wild river in the West
(dost thou remember it, dear friend? for now I speak
to thee!) to the study of a mind and character of which

she thought better than the world or their possessor;
and I know — oh, how well I know! — that with husband
and children around her, whom she loves and
to whom she is devoted, the memory of me is laid
away in her heart like a fond but incomplete dream
of what once seemed possible — the feeling with which
the mother looks on her witless boy, and loves him
more for what he might have been, than his brothers
for what they are!

I scarce know what thread I dropped to take up this
improvista digression (for, like “Opportunity and the
Hours,” I “never look back;”[3] ) but let us return to
the shadow of the thousand elms of New Haven.

The Gascon thought his own thunder and lightning
superior to that of other countries, but I must run the
hazard of your incredulity as well, in preferring an
American moon. In Greece and Asia Minor, perhaps
(ragione — she was first worshipped there), Cytheris
shines as brightly; but the Ephesian of Connecticut
sees the flaws upon the pearly buckler of the goddess,
as does the habitant of no other clime. His eye lies
close to the moon. There is no film, and no visible
beam in the clarified atmosphere. Her light is less
an emanation than a presence — the difference between
the water in a thunder-shower and the depths of
the sea. The moon struggles to you in England —
she is all about you, like an element of the air, in
America.

The night was breathless, and the fragmented light
lay on the pavement in motionless stars, as clear and
definite in their edges as if the “patines of bright gold”
had dropped through the trees, and lay glittering beneath
my feet. There was a kind of darkness visible
in the streets, overshadowed as they were by the massy
and leaf-burthened elms, and as I looked through the
houses, standing in obscurity myself, the gardens
seemed full of daylight — the unobstructed moon
poured with such a flood of radiance on the flowery
alleys within, and their gay troops of promenaders.
And as I distinguished one and another familiar friend,
with a form as familiar clining to his side, and, with
drooping head and faltering step, listening or replying
(I well knew), to the avowals of love and truth, I murmured
in thought to my own far away, but never-forgotten
Edith, a vow as deep — ay, deeper than theirs,
as my spirit and hers had been sounded by the profounder
plummet of sorrow and separation. How the
very moonlight — how the stars of heaven — how the
balm in the air, and the languor of summer night in
my indolent frame, seemed, in those hours of loneliness,
ministers at the passionate altar-fires of my love!
Forsworn and treacherous Edith! do I live to write
this for thine eye?

I linger upon these trifles of the past — these hours
for which I would have borrowed wings when they
were here — and, as then they seemed but the flowering
promise of happiness, they seem now like the fruit,
enjoyed and departed. Past and future bliss there
would seem to be in the world — knows any one of
such a commodity in the present? I have not seen
it in my travels.

3. III.

I was strolling on through one of the most fashionable
and romantic streets (when did these two words
ever before find themselves in a sentence together?)
when a drawing-room with which I was very familiar,
lit, unlike most others on that bright night, by a suspended
lamp, and crowded with company, attracted
my attention for a moment. Between the house and
the street there was a slight shrubbery shut in by a
white paling, just sufficient to give an air of seclusion
to the low windows without concealing them from the
passer-by, and, with the freedom of an old visiter, I
unconsciously stopped, and looked unobserved into
the rooms. It was the residence of a magnificent
girl, who was generally known as the Connecticut
beauty — a singular instance in America of what is
called in England a fine woman. (With us that word
applies wholly to moral qualities.) She was as large
as Juno, and a great deal handsomer, if the painters
have done that much-snubbed goddess justice. She
was a “book of beauty” printed with virgin type;
and that, by the way, suggests to me what I have all
my life been trying to express — that some women
seem wrought of new material altogether, apropos to
others who seem mortal réchauffes — as if every limb
and feature had been used, and got out of shape in
some other person's service. The lady I speak of
looked new — and her name was Isidora.

She was standing just under the lamp, with a single
rose in her hair, listening to a handsome coxcomb of
a classmate of mine with evident pleasure. She was
a great fool, (did I mention that before?) but weak,
and vacant, and innocent of an idea as she was,
Faustina was not more naturally majestic, nor Psyche
(soit elle en grande) more divinely and meaningly
graceful. Loveliness and fascination came to her as
dew and sunshine to the flowers, and she obeyed her
instinct, as they theirs, and was helplessly, and without
design, the loveliest thing in nature. I do not
see, for my part, why all women should not be so.
They are as useful as flowers; they perpetuate our
species.

I was looking at her with irresistible admiration,
when a figure stepped out from the shadow of a tree,
and my chum, monster, and ally, Job Smith (of whom
I have before spoken in these historical papers), laid
his hand on my shoulder.

“Do you know, my dear Job,” I said, in a solemn
tone of admonition, “that blind John was imprisoned
for looking into people's windows?”

But Job was not in the vein for pleasantry. The
light fell on his face as I spoke to him, and a more
haggard, almost blasted expression of countenance, I
never saw even in a madhouse. I well knew he had
loved the splendid girl that stood unconsciously in our
sight, since his first year in college; but that it would
ever so master him, or that he could link his monstrous
deformity, even in thought, with that radiant
vision of beauty, was a thing that I thought as probable
as that hirsute Pan would tempt from her sphere
the moon that kissed Endymion.

“I have been standing here looking at Isidora, ever
since you left me,” said he. (We had parted three
hours before, at twilight.)

“And why not go in, in the name of common
sense?”

“Oh! God, Phil! — with this demon in my heart?
Can you see my face in this light?”

It was too true, he would have frightened the
household gods from their pedestals.

“But what would you do, my dear Job? Why
come here to madden yourself with a sight you must
have known you would see.

“Phil?”

“What, my dear boy?”

“Will you do me a kindness?”

“Certainly.”

“Isidora would do anything you wished her to do.'

“Um! with a reservation, my dear chum!”

“But she would give you the rose that is in her
hair.”

“Without a doubt.”

“And for me — if you told her it was for me.
Would she not?”

“Perhaps. But will that content you?”

“It will soften my despair. I will never look on
her face more; but I should like my last sight of her
to be associated with kindness?”

Poor Job! how true it is that “affection is a fire
which kindleth as well in the bramble as in the oak,
and catcheth hold where it first lighteth, not where it
may best burn.” I do believe in my heart that the
soul in thee was designed for a presentable body — thy
instincts were so invariably mistaken. When didst
thou ever think a thought, or stir hand or foot, that it
did not seem prompted, monster though thou wert, by
conscious good-looking-ness! What a lying similitude
it was that was written on every blank page in
thy Lexicon: “Larks that mount in the air, build
their nests below in the earth; and women that cast
their eyes upon kings, may place their hearts upon
vassals.” Apelles must have been better looking than
Alexander, when Campaspe said that!

As a general thing you may ask a friend freely to
break any three of the commandments in your service,
but you should hesitate to require of friendship a violation
of etiquette. I was in a round jacket and boots,
and it was a dress evening throughout New Haven. I
looked at my dust-covered feet, when Job asked me
to enter a soirée upon his errand, and passed my
thumb and finger around the edge of my white jacket;
but I loved Job as the Arabian loves his camel, and for
the same reason, with a difference — the imperishable
well-spring he carried in his heart through the desert
of the world, and which I well knew he would give up
his life to offer at need, as patiently as the animal
whose construction (inner and outer) he so remarkably
resembled. When I hesitated, and looked down at
my boots, therefore, it was less to seek for an excuse
to evade the sacrificing office required of me, than to
beat about in my unprepared mind for a preface to my
request. If she had been a woman of sense, I should
have had no difficulty; but it requires caution and
skill to go out of the beaten track with a fool.

“Would not the rose do as well,” said I, in desperate
embarrassment, “if she does not know that it is
for you, my dear Job?” It would have been very
easy to have asked for it for myself.

Job laid his hand upon his side, as if I could not
comprehend the pang my proposition gave him.

“Away prop, and down, scaffold,” thought I, as I
gave my jacket a hitch, and entered the door.

“Mr. Slingsby,” announced the servant.

“Mr. Slingsby?” inquired the mistress of the house,
seeing only a white jacket in the clair obscur of the
hall.

“Mr. Slingsby!!!” cried out twenty voices in
amazement, as I stepped over the threshold into the
light.

It has happened since the days of Thebet Ben Khorat,
that scholars have gone mad, and my sanity was
evidently the uppermost concern in the minds of all
present. (I should observe, that in those days, I relished
rather of dandyism.) As I read the suspicion
in their minds, however, a thought struck me. I went
straight up to Miss Higgins, and, sotto voce, asked her
to take a turn with me in the garden.

“Isidora,” I said, “I have long known your superiority
of mind” (when you want anything of a woman,
praise her for that in which she is most deficient,
says La Bruyère), “and I have great occasion to rely
on it in the request I am about to make of you.”

She opened her eyes, and sailed along the gravelwalk
with heightened majesty. I had not had occasion
to pay her a compliment before since my freshman
year.

“What is it, Mr. Slingsby?”

“You know Smith — my chum.”

“Certainly.”

“I have just come from him.”

“Well!”

“He is gone mad!”

“Mad! Mr. Slingsby?”

“Stark and furious!”

“Gracious goodness!”

“And all for you!”

“For me!!”

“For you!” I thought her great blue eyes would
have become what they call in America “sot,” at this
astounding communication.

“Now, Miss Higgins,” I continued, “pray listen;
my poor friend has such extraordinary muscular
strength, that seven men can not hold him.”

“Gracious!”

“And he has broken away, and is here at your
door.”

“Good gracious!”

“Don't be afraid! He is as gentle as a kitten when
I am present. And now hear my request. He leaves
town to-morrow, as you well know, not to return. I
shall take him home to Vermont with keepers. He
is bent upon one thing, and in that you must humor
him.”

Miss Higgins began to be alarmed.

“He has looked through the window and seen you
with a rose in your hair, and, despairing even in his
madness of your love, he says, that if you would give
him that rose, with a kind word, and a farewell, he
should be happy. You will do it, will you not?”

“Dear me! I should be so afraid to speak to him!”

“But will you? and I'll tell you what to say.”

Miss Higgins gave a reluctant consent, and I passed
ten minutes in drilling her upon two sentences, which,
with her fine manner and sweet voice, really sounded
like the most interesting thing in the world. I left her
in the summer-house at the end of the garden, and
returned to Job.

“You have come without it!” said the despairing
lover, failing back against the tree.

“Miss Higgins' compliments, and begs you will go
round by the gate, and meet her in the summer-house.
She prefers to manage her own affairs.”

“Good God! are you mocking me?”

“I will accompany you, my dear boy.”

There was a mixture of pathos and ludicrousness
in that scene which starts a tear and a laugh together,
whenever I recall it to my mind. The finest heart in
the world, the most generous, the most diffident of
itself, yet the most self-sacrificing and delicate, was
at the altar of its devotion, offering its all in passionate
abandonment for a flower and a kind word; and she,
a goose in the guise of an angel, repeated a phrase of
kindness of which she could not comprehend the
meaning or the worth, but which was to be garnered
up by that half-broken heart, as a treasure that repaid
him for years of unrequited affection! She recited it
really very well. I stood at the latticed door, and interrupted
them the instant there was a pause in the
dialogue; and getting Job away as fast as possible, I
left Miss Higgins with a promise of secrecy, and resumed
my midnight stroll.

Apropos — among Job's letters is a copy of verses,
which, spite of some little inconsistencies, I think
were written on this very occasion: —

If Job had rejoiced in a more euphonious name, I
should have bought a criticism in some review, and
started him fairly as a poet. But “Job Smith!” —
“Poems by Job Smith!” — It would never do! If he
wrote like a seraph, and printed the book at his own
expense, illustrated and illuminated, and half-a-crown
to each person that would take one away, the critics
would damn him all the same! Really, one's father
and mother have a great deal to answer for!

But Job is a poet who should have lived in the
middle ages, no less for the convenience of the nom de
guerre, fashionable in those days, than because his
poetry, being chiefly the mixed product of feeling and
courtesy, is particularly susceptible to ridicule. The
philosophical and iron-wire poetry of our day stands
an attack like a fortification, and comes down upon
the besieger with reason and logic as good as his own.
But the more delicate offspring of tenderness and chivalry,
intending no violence, and venturing out to sea
upon a rose-leaf, is destroyed and sunk beyond diving-bells
by half a breath of scorn. I would subscribe
liberally myself to a private press and a court of honor
in poetry — critics, if admitted, to be dumb upon a
penalty. Will no Howard or Wilberforce act upon
this hint? Poets now-a-days are more slaves and
felons than your African, or your culprit at the old
Bailey!

I would go a great way, privately, to find a genuine
spark of chivalry, and Job lit his every-day lamp with
it. See what a redolence of old time there is in these
verses, which I copied long ago from a lady's album.
Yet, you may ridicule them if you like! —

I am mounted upon my hobby now, dear reader;
for Job Smith, though as hideous an idol as ever was
worshipped on the Indus, was still my idol. Here is
a little touch of his quality: —

I think I must give Edith another reprieve. I have
no idea why I have digressed this time from the story
which (you may see by the motto at the beginning of
the paper) I have not yet told. I can conceive easily
how people, who have nothing to do, betake themselves
to autobiography — it is so pleasant rambling
about over the past, and regathering only the flowers.
Why should pain and mortification be unsepultured?
The world is no wiser for these written experiences.
“The best book,” said Sonthey, “does but little good
to the world, and much harm to the author.” I shall
deliberate whether to enlighten the world as to Edith's
metempsychosis, or no.

4. PART IV.
SCENERY AND A SCENE.

Job Smith and myself were on the return from Niagara.
It was in the slumberous and leafy midst of
June. Lake Erie had lain with a silver glaze upon
its bosom for days; the ragged trees upon its green
shore dropping their branches into the stirless water,
as if it were some rigid imitation — the lake glass, and
the leaves emerald; the sky was of an April blue, as
if a night-rain had washed out its milkiness. till you
could see through its clarified depths to the gates of
heaven; and yet breathless and sunny as was the
face of the earth, there was a nerve and a vitality in
the air that exacted of every pulse its full compass —
searched every pore for its capacity of the joy of existence.

No one can conceive, who has not had his imagination
stretched at the foot of Niagara, or in the Titanic
solitudes of the west, the vastness of the unbroken
phases of nature; where every tree looks a king, and
every flower a marvel of glorious form and color —
where the rocks are rent every one as by the “tenth”
thunderbolt — and lake, mountain, or river, ravine or
waterfall, cave or eagle's nest, whatever it may be that
feeds the eye or the fancy, is as the elements have
shaped and left it — where the sculpture, and the painting,
and the poetry, and the wonderful alchymy of
nature, go on under the naked eye of the Almighty,
and by his own visible and uninterrupted hand, and
where the music of nature, from the anthem of the
torrent and storm, broken only by the scream of the
vulture, to the trill of the rivulet with its accompaniment
of singing birds and winds, is for ever ringing its
changes, as if for the stars to hear — in such scenes, I
say, and in such scenes only, is the imagination over-tasked
or stretched to the capacity of a seraph's: and
while common minds sink beneath them to the mere
inanition of their animal senses, the loftier spirit takes
their color and stature, and outgrows the common and
pitiful standards of the world. Cooper and Leatherstocking
thus became what they are — the one a high-priest
of imagination and poetry, and the other a simple-hearted
but mere creature of instinct; and Cooper
is no more a living man, liable to the common laws of
human nature, than Leatherstocking a true and life-like
transcript of the more common effect of those
overpowering solitudes on the character.

We got on board the canal-boat at noon, and Job
and myself, seated on the well-cushioned seats, with
the blinds half-turned to give us the prospect and exclude
the sun, sat disputing in our usual amicable way.
He was the only man I ever knew with whom I could
argue without losing my temper; and the reason was,
that I always had the last word, and thought myself
victorious.

“We are about to return into the bosom of society,
my dear Job,” said I, “looking with unctuous good
nature on the well-shaped boot I had put on for the
first time in a month that morning. (It is an unsentimental
fact that hob-nailed shoes are indispensable on
the most poetical spots of earth.)

“Yes,” said Job: “but how superior is the society
we leave behind! Niagara and Erie! What in your
crowded city is comparable to these?”

“Nothing, for size! — but for society — you will think
me a pagan, dear chum — but, on my honor, straight
from Niagara as I come, I feel a most dissatisfied yearning
for the society of Miss Popkins!”

“Oh, Phil!”

“On my honor!”

“You, who were in such raptures at the falls!”

“And real ones — but I wanted a woman at my elbow
to listen to them. Do you know, Job, I have
made up my mind on a great principle since we have
been on our travels? Have you observed that I was
pensive?”

“Not particularly — but what is your principle?”

“That a man is a much more interesting object than
a mountain.”

“A man! did you say?”

“Yes — but I meant a woman!”

“I don't think so.”

“I do! — and I judge by myself. When did I ever
see wonder of nature — tree, sunset, waterfall, rapid,
lake, or river — that I would not rather have been talking
to a woman the while? Do you remember the
three days we were tramping through the forest without
seeing the sun, as if we had been in the endless
aisle of a cathedral? Do you remember the long morning
when we lay on the moss at the foot of Niagara,
and it was a divine luxury only to breathe? Do you
remember the lunar rainbows at midnight on Goat
island? Do you remember the ten thousand glorious
moments we have enjoyed between weather and scenery
since the bursting of these summer leaves? Do
you?”

“Certainly, my dear boy!”

“Well, then, much as I love nature and you, there
has not been an hour since we packed our knapsacks,
that, if I could I have distilled a charming girl out of a
mixture of you and any mountain, river, or rock, that
I have seen, I would not have flung you, without remorse,
into any witch's caldron that was large enough,
and would boil at my bidding.”

“Monster!”

“And I believe I should have the same feelings in
Italy or Greece, or wherever people go into raptures
with things you can neither eat nor make love to.”

“Would not even the Venus fill your fancy for a
day?”

“An hour, perhaps, it might; for I should be studying,
in its cold Parian proportions, the warm structure
of some living Musidora — but I should soon tire of it,
and long for my lunch or my love; and I give you my
honor I would not lose the three meals of a single day
to see Santa Croce and St. Peter's.”

“Both?”

“Both.”

Job disdained to argue against such a want of sentimental
principle, and pulling up the blind, he fixed
his eyes on the slowly-gliding panorama of rock and
forest, and I mounted for a promenade upon the deck.

Mephistopheles could hardly have found a more
striking amusement for Faust than the passage of three
hundred miles in the canal from Lake Erie to the
Hudson. As I walked up and down the deck of the
packet-boat, I thought to myself, that if it were not
for thoughts of things that come more home to one's
“business and bosom” (particularly “bosom”), I could
be content to retake my berth at Schenectady, and return
to Buffalo for amusement. The Erie canal-boat
is a long and very pretty drawing-room afloat. It has
a library, sofas, a tolerable cook, curtains or Venetian
blinds, a civil captain, and no smell of steam or perceptible
motion. It is drawn generally by three horses
at a fair trot, and gets you through about a hundred
miles a day, as softly as if you were witched over the
ground by Puck and Mustard-seed. The company
(say fifty people) is such as pleases Heaven; though I
must say (with my eye all along the shore, collecting
the various dear friends I have made and left on that

long canal) there are few highways on which you will
meet so many lovely and loving fellow-passengers.
On this occasion my star was bankrupt — Job Smith
being my only civilized companion — and I was left to
the unsatisfactory society of my own thoughts and the
scenery.

Discontented as I may seem to have been, I remember,
through eight or ten years of stirring and thickly-sown
manhood, every moment of that lonely evening.
I remember the progression of the sunset, from the
lengthening shadows and the first gold upon the clouds,
to the deepening twilight and the new-sprung star
hung over the wilderness. And I remember what I
am going to describe — a twilight anthem in the forest
— as you remember an air of Rossini's, or a transition
in the half-fiendish, half-heavenly creations of Meyerbeer.
I thought time dragged heavily then, but I
wish I had as light a heart and could feel as vividly
now!

The Erie canal is cut a hundred or two miles
through the heart of the primeval wilderness of
America, and the boat was gliding on silently and
swiftly, and never sailed a lost cloud through the
abyss of space on a course more apparently new and
untrodden. The luxuriant soil had sent up a rank
grass that covered the horse-path like velvet; the
Erie water was clear as a brook in the winding canal;
the old shafts of the gigantic forest spurred into the
sky by thousands, and the yet unscared eagle swung
off from the dead branch of the pine, and skimmed the
tree-tops for another perch, as if he had grown to
believe that gliding spectre a harmless phenomenon
of nature. The horses drew steadily and unheard at
the end of the long line; the steersman stood motionless
at the tiller, and I lay on a heap of baggage
in the prow, attentive to the slightest breathing of nature,
but thinking, with an ache at my heart, of Edith
Linsey, to whose feet (did I mention it?) I was hastening
with a lover's proper impatience. I might as
well have taken another turn in my “fool's paradise.”

The gold of the sunset had glided up the dark pine
tops and disappeared, like a ring taken slowly from an
Ethiop's finger; the whip-poor-will had chanted the
first stave of his lament; the bat was abroad, and the
screech-owl, like all bad singers, commenced without
waiting to be importuned, though we were listening
for the nightingale. The air, as I said before, had
been all day breathless; but as the first chill of evening
displaced the warm atmosphere of the departed
sun, a slight breeze crisped the mirrored bosom of the
canal, and then commenced the night anthem of the
forest, audible, I would fain believe, in its soothing
changes, by the dead tribes whose bones whiten amid
the perishing leaves. First, whisperingly yet articulately,
the suspended and wavering foliage of the birch
was touched by the many-fingered wind, and, like a
faint prelude, the silver-lined leaves rustled in the low
branches; and, with a moment's pause, when you
could hear the moving of the vulture's claws upon
the bark, as he turned to get his breast to the wind,
the increasing breeze swept into the pine-tops, and
drew forth from their fringe-like and myriad tassels a
low monotone like the refrain of a far-off dirge; and
still as it murmured (seeming to you sometimes like
the confused and heart-broken responses of the penitents
on a cathedral floor), the blast strengthened and
filled, and the rigid leaves of the oak, and the swaying
fans and chalices of the magnolia, and the rich cups
of the tulip-trees, stirred and answered with their different
voices like many-toned harps; and when the
wind was fully abroad, and every moving thing on the
breast of the earth was roused from its daylight repose,
the irregular and capricious blast, like a player on an
organ of a thousand stops, lulled and strengthened by
turns, and from the hiss in the rank grass, low as the
whisper of fairies, to the thunder of the impinging
and groaning branches of the larch and the fir, the
anthem went ceaselessly through its changes, and the
harmony (though the owl broke in with his scream,
and though the over-blown monarch of the wood
came crashing to the earth), was still perfect and without
a jar. It is strange that there is no sound of nature
out of tune. The roar of the waterfall comes
into this anthem of the forest like an accompaniment
of bassoons, and the occasional bark of the wolf, or
the scream of a night-bird, or even the deep-throated
croak of the frog, is no more discordant than the out-burst
of an octave flute above the even melody of an
orchestra; and it is surprising how the large rain-drops,
pattering on the leaves, and the small voice of
the nightingale (singing, like nothing but himself,
sweetest in the darkness) seems an intensitive and a
low burthen to the general anthem of the earth — as
it were, a single voice among instruments.

I had what Wordsworth calls a “couchant ear” in
my youth, and my story will wait, dear reader, while
I tell you of another harmony that I learned to love
in the wilderness.

There will come sometimes in the spring — say in
May, or whenever the snow-drops and sulphur butterflies
are tempted out by the first timorous sunshine —
there will come, I say, in that yearning and youth-renewing
season, a warm shower at noon. Our tent
shall be pitched on the skirts of a forest of young
pines, and the evergreen foliage, if foliage it may be
called, shall be a daily refreshment to our eye while
watching, with the west wind upon our cheeks, the
unclothed branches of the elm. The rain descends
softly and warm; but with the sunset the clouds break
away, and it grows suddenly cold enough to freeze.
The next morning you shall come out with me to a
hill-side looking upon the south, and lie down with
your ear to the earth. The pine tassels hold in every
four of their fine fingers a drop of rain frozen like a
pearl in a long ear-ring, sustained in their loose grasp
by the rigidity of the cold. The sun grows warm at
ten, and the slight green fingers begin to relax and
yield, and by eleven they are all drooping their icy
pearls upon the dead leaves with a murmur through
the forest like the swarming of the bees of Hybla.
There is not much variety in its music, but it is a
pleasant monotone for thought, and if you have a
restless fever in your bosom (as I had, when I learned
to love it, for the travel which has corrupted the heart
and the ear that it soothed and satisfied then) you may
lie down with a crooked root under your head in the
skirts of the forest, and thank Heaven for an anodyne
to care. And it is better than the voice of your friend,
or the song of your lady-love, for it exacts no gratitude,
and will not desert you ere the echo dies upon
the wind.

Oh, how many of these harmonies there are! — how
many that we hear, and how many that are “too
constant to be heard!” I could go back to my youth,
now, with this thread of recollection, and unsepulture
a hoard of simple and long-buried joys that would
bring the blush upon my cheek to think how my senses
are dulled since such things could give me pleasure!
Is there no “well of Kanathos” for renewing the
youth of the soul? — no St. Hilary's cradle? no elixir
to cast the slough of heart-sickening and heart-tarnishing
custom? Find me an alchymy for that, with
your alembic and crucible, and you may resolve to
dross again your philosopher's stone!

2. II.

Everybody who makes the passage of the Erie
canal, stops at the half-way town of Utica, to visit a
wonder of nature fourteen miles to the west of it, called
Trenton Falls. It would be becoming in me, before
mentioning the falls, however, to sing the praises of

Utica and its twenty thousand inhabitants — having
received much hospitality from the worthy burghers,
and philandered up and down their well-flagged trottoir
very much to my private satisfaction. I should
scorn any man's judgment who should attempt to convince
me that the Erie water, which comes down the
canal a hundred and fifty miles, and passes through
the market-place of that pleasant town, has not communicated
to the hearts of its citizens the expansion
and depth of the parent lake from which it is drawn.
I have a theory on that subject with which I intend to
surprise the world whenever politics and Mr. Bulwer
draw less engrossingly on its attention. Will any one
tell me that the dark eyes I knew there, and whose
like for softness and meaning I have inquired for in
vain through Italy, and the voice that accompanied
their gaze — (that Pasta, in her divinest out-gush of
melody and soul, alone recalls to me) — that these, and
the noble heart, and high mind, and even the genius,
that were other gifts of the same marvel among women
— that these were born of common parentage, and
nursed by the air of a demi-metropolis? We were
but the kindest of friends, that bright creature and myself,
and I may say, without charging myself with the
blindness of love, that I believe in my heart she was
the foster-child of the water-spirits on whose wandering
streamlet she lived — that the thousand odors that
swept down from the wilderness upon Lake Erie, and
the unseen but wild and innumerable influences of
nature, or whatever you call that which makes the
Indian a believer in the Great Spirit — that these
came down with those clear waters, ministering to the
mind and watching over the budding beauty of this
noble and most high-hearted woman! If you do not
believe it, I should like you to tell me how else such
a creature was “raised,” as they phrase it in Virginia.
I shall hold to my theory till you furnish me with a
more reasonable.

We heard at the hotel that there were several large
parties at Trenton Falls, and with an abridgment of
our toilets in our pockets, Job and I galloped out of
Utica about four o'clock of as bright a summer's afternoon
as was ever promised in the almanac. We drew
rein a mile or two out of town, and dawdled along the
wild road more leisurely, Job's Green mountain proportions
fitting to the saddle something in the manner
and relative fitness of a skeleton on a poodle. By the
same token he rode safely, the looseness of his bones
accommodating itself with singular facility to the
irregularities in the pace of the surprised animal beneath
him.

I dislike to pass over the minutest detail of a period
of my life that will be rather interesting in my biography
(it is my intention to be famous enough to merit
that distinction, and I would recommend to my friends
to be noting my “little peculiarities”), and with this
posthumous benevolence in my heart, I simply record,
that our conversation on the road turned upon Edith
Linsey — at this time the lady of my constant love — for
whose sake and at whose bidding I was just concluding
(with success I presumed) a probation of three
years of absence, silence, hard study, and rigid morals,
and upon whose parting promise (God forgive her!) I
had built my uttermost gleaning and sand of earthly
hope and desire. I tell you in the tail of this mocking
paragraph, dear reader, that the bend of the rainbow
spans not the earth more perfectly than did the
love of that woman my hopes of future bliss; and the
ephemeral are does not sooner melt into the clouds —
but I am anticipating my story.

Job's extraordinary appearance, as he extricated
himself from his horse, usually attracted the entire attention
of the by-standers at a strange inn, and under
cover of this, I usually contrived to get into the house
and commit him by ordering the dinner as soon as it
could be got ready. Else, if it was in the neighbor
hood of scenery, he was off till Heaven knew when,
and as I had that delicacy for his feelings never to
dine without him, you may imagine the necessity of
my hungry manœuvre.

We dined upon the trout of the glorious stream we
had come to see; and as our host's eldest daughter
waited upon us (recorded in Job's journal, in my possession
at this moment, as “the most comely and gracious
virgin” he had seen in his travels), we felt bound
to adapt our conversation to the purity of her mind,
and discussed only the philosophical point, whether
the beauty of the stream could be tasted in the flavor
of the fish — Job for it, I against it. The argument
was only interrupted by the entrance of an apple-pudding,
so hot that our tongues were fully occupied
in removing it from place to place as the mouth felt
its heat inconvenient, and then, being in a country
of liberty and equality, and the damsel in waiting, as
Job smilingly remarked, as much a lady as the President's
wife, he requested permission to propose her
health in a cool tumbler of cider, and we adjourned to
the moonlight.

3. III.

Ten or fifteen years ago, the existence of Trenton
Falls was not known. It was discovered, like Pæstum,
by a wandering artist, when there was a town of ten
thousand inhabitants, a canal, a theatre, a liberty-pole,
and forty churches, within fourteen miles of it.
It may be mentioned to the credit of the Americans,
that in the “hardness” of character of which travellers
complain, there is the soft trait of a passion for
scenery; and before the fact of its discovery had got
well into the “Cahawba Democrat” and “Go-the-whole-hog-Courier,”
there was a splendid wooden
hotel on the edge of the precipice, with a French
cook, soda-water, and olives, and a law was passed by
the Kentucky Travellers' Club, requiring a hanging-bird's
nest from the trees “frowning down the awful
abysm,” (so expressed in the regulation), as a qualification
for membership. Thenceforward to the present
time it has been a place of fashionable resort
during the summer solstice, and the pine woods, in
which the hotel stands, being impervious to the sun,
it is prescribed by oculists for gentlemen and ladies
with weak eyes. If the luxury of corn-cutters had
penetrated to the United States, it might be prescribed
for tender feet as well — the soft floor of pine-tassels
spread under the grassless woods, being considered
an improvement upon Turkey carpets and green-sward.

Trenton Falls is rather a misnomer. I scarcely
know what you would call it, but the wonder of nature
which bears the name is a tremendous torrent,
whose bed, for several miles, is sunk fathoms deep
into the earth — a roaring and dashing stream, so far
below the surface of the forest in which it is lost, that
you would think, as you come suddenly upon the
edge of its long precipice, that it was a river in some
inner world (coiled within ours, as we in the outer
circle of the firmament), and laid open by some
Titanic throe that had cracked clear asunder the crust
of this “shallow earth.” The idea is rather assisted
if you happen to see below you, on its abysmal shore,
a party of adventurous travellers; for, at that vast
depth, and in contrast with the gigantic trees and
rocks, the same number of well-shaped pismires,
dressed in the last fashions, and philandering upon
your parlor floor, would be about of their apparent size
and distinctness.

They showed me at Eleusis the well by which
Proserpine ascends to the regions of day on her annual
visit to the plains of Thessaly — but with the
genius loci at my elbow in the shape of a Greek girl
as lovely as Phryné, my memory reverted to the bared

axle of the earth in the bed of this American river,
and I was persuaded (looking the while at the feronière
of gold sequins on the Phidian forehead of my
Katinka) that supposing Hades in the centre of the
earth, you are nearer to it by some fathoms at Trenton.
I confess I have had, since my first descent into
those depths, an uncomfortable doubt of the solidity
of the globe — how the deuse it can hold together with
such a crack in its bottom!

It was a night to play Endymion, or do any Tomfoolery
that could be laid to the charge of the moon,
for a more omnipresent and radiant atmosphere of
moonlight never sprinkled the wilderness with silver.
It was a night in which to wish it might never be
day again — a night to be enamored of the stars, and
bid God bless them like human creatures on their
bright journey — a night to love in, to dissolve in — to
do everything but what night is made for — sleep!
Oh heaven! when I think how precious is life in such
moments; how the aroma — the celestial bloom and
flower of the soul — the yearning and fast-perishing
enthusiasm of youth — waste themselves in the solitude
of such nights on the senseless and unanswering air;
when I wander alone, unloving and unloved, beneath
influences that could inspire me with the elevation of
a seraph, were I at the ear of a human creature that
could summon forth and measure my limitless capacity
of devotion — when I think this, and feel this, and
so waste my existence in vain yearnings — I could extinguish
the divine spark within me like a lamp on an
unvisited shrine, and thank Heaven for an assimilation
to the animals I walk among! And that is the
substance of a speech I made to Job as a sequitur of a
well-meant remark of his own, that “it was a pity
Edith Linsey was not there.” He took the clause
about the “animals” to himself, and I made an apology
for the same a year after. We sometimes give our
friends, quite innocently, such terrible knocks in our
rhapsodies!

Most people talk of the sublimity of Trenton, but I
have haunted it by the week together for its mere
loveliness. The river, in the heart of that fearful
chasm, is the most varied and beautiful assemblage of
the thousand forms and shapes of running water that
I know in the world. The soil and the deep-striking
roots of the forest terminate far above you, looking like
a black rim on the enclosing precipices; the bed of
the river and its sky-sustaining walls are of solid rock,
and, with the tremendous descent of the stream —
forming for miles one continuous succession of falls
and rapids — the channel is worn into curves and cavities
which throw the clear waters into forms of inconceivable
brilliancy and variety. It is a sort of
half twilight below, with here and there a long beam
of sunshine reaching down to kiss the lip of an eddy
or form a rainbow over a fall, and the reverberating
and changing echoes: —

maintain a constant and most soothing music, varying
at every step with the varying phase of the current.
Cascades of from twenty to thirty feet, over which
the river flies with a single and hurrying leap (not a
drop missing from the glassy and bending sheet,) occur
frequently as you ascend; and it is from these
that the place takes its name. But the falls, though
beautiful, are only peculiar from the dazzling and unequalled
rapidity with which the waters come to the
leap. If it were not for the leaf which drops wavering
down into the abysm from trees apparently painted
on the sky, and which is caught away by the flashing
current as if the lightning had suddenly crossed it,
you would think the vault of the steadfast heavens a
flying element as soon. The spot in that long gulf of
beauty that I best remember is a smooth descent of some
hundred yards, where the river in full and undivided
volume skims over a plane as polished as a table of
scagliola, looking, in its invisible speed, like one mirror
of gleaming but motionless crystal. Just above,
there is a sudden turn in the glen which sends the
water like a catapult against the opposite angle of the
rock, and, in the action of years, it has worn out a
cavern of unknown depth, into which the whole
mass of the river plunges with the abandonment of a
flying fiend into hell, and, reappearing like the angel
that has pursued him, glides swiftly but with divine
serenity on its way. (I am indebted for that last
figure to Job, who travelled with a Milton in his
pocket, and had a natural redolence of “Paradise
Lost” in his conversation.)

Much as I detest water in small quantities (to drink),
I have a hydromania in the way of lakes, rivers, and
waterfalls. It is, by much, the belle in the family of
the elements. Earth is never tolerable unless disguised
in green. Air is so thin as only to be visible
when she borrows drapery of water; and Fire is so
staringly bright as to be unpleasant to the eyesight;
but water! soft, pure, graceful water! there is no
shape into which you can throw her that she does not
seem lovelier than before. She can borrow nothing
of her sisters. Earth has no jewels in her lap so brilliant
as her own spray pearls and emeralds; Fire has
no rubies like what she steals from the sunset; Air
has no robes like the grace of her fine-woven and ever-changing
drapery of silver. A health (in wine!) to
Water!

Who is there that did not love some stream in his
youth? Who is there in whose vision of the past
there does not sparkle up, from every picture of childhood,
a spring or a rivulent woven through the darkened
and torn woof of first affections like a thread of
unchanged silver? How do you interpret the instinctive
yearning with which you search for the
river-side or the fountain in every scene of nature —
the clinging unaware to the river's course when a
truant in the fields in June — the dull void you find in
every landscape of which it is not the ornament and
the centre? For myself, I hold with the Greek:
“Water is the first principle of all things: we were
made from it and we shall be resolved into it.”[4]

4. IV.

The awkward thing in all story-telling is transition.
Invention you do not need if you have experience;
for fact is stranger than fiction. A beginning in these
days of startling abruptness is as simple as open your
mouth; and when you have once begun you can end
whenever you like, and leave the sequel to the reader's
imagination: but the hinges of a story — the turning
gracefully back from a digression (it is easy to turn
into one) — is the pas qui coûte. My education on that
point was neglected.

It was, as I said before, a moonlight night, and
Job and myself having, like Sir Fabian, “no mind
to sleep,” followed the fashion and the rest of the company
at the inn, and strolled down to see the falls by
moonlight. I had been there before, and I took Job
straight to the spot in the bed of the river which I
have described above as my favorite, and, after watching
it for a few minutes, we turned back to a dark
cleft in the rock which afforded a rude seat, and sat
musing in silence.

Several parties had strolled past without seeing us
in our recess, when two female figures, with their
arms around each other's waists, sauntered slowly
around the jutting rock below, and approached us,
eagerly engaged in conversation. They came on to
the very edge of the shadow which enveloped us,
and turned to look back at the scene. As the head
nearest me was raised to the light, I started half to

my feet: it was Edith! In the same instant her
voice of music broke on my ear, and an irresistible
impulse to listen unobserved drew me down again
upon my seat, and Job, with a similar instinct, laid his
hand on my arm.

“It was his favorite spot!” said Edith. (We had
been at Trenton together years before.) “I stood here
with him, and I wish he stood here now, that I might
tell him what my hand hesitates to write.”

“Poor Philip!” said her companion, whom by the
voice I recognised as the youngest of the Flemings,
“I can not conceive how you can resolve so coldly to
break his heart.”

I felt a dagger entering my bosom, but still I listened.
Edith went on.

“Why, I will tell you, my dear little innocent. I
loved Philip Slingsby when I thought I was going to
die. It was then a fitting attachment, for I never
thought to need, of the goods of this world, more
than a sick chamber and a nurse; and Phil was kind-hearted
and devoted to me, and I lived at home.
But, with returned health, a thousand ambitious desires
have sprung up in my heart, and I find myself
admired by whom I will, and every day growing
more selfish and less poetical. Philip is poor, and
love in a cottage, though very well for you if you
like it, would never do for me. I should like him
very well for a friend, for he is gentlemanlike and
devoted, but, with my ideas, I should only make him
miserable, and so — I think I had better put him out of
misery at once — don't you think?

A half-smothered groan of anguish escaped my lips;
but it was lost in the roar of the waters, and Edith's
voice, as she walked on, lessened and became inaudible
to my ear. As her figure was lost in the shadow
of the rocks beyond, I threw myself on the bosom of
my friend, and wept in the unutterable agony of a
crushed heart. I know not how that night was spent,
but I awoke at noon of the next day, in my bed, with
Job's hand clasped tenderly in my own.

5. V.

I kept my tryst. I was to meet Edith Linsey at
Saratoga in July — the last month of the probation by
which I had won a right to her love. I had not spoken
to her, or written, or seen her (save, unknown to
her, in the moment I have described), in the three
long years to which my constancy was devoted. I
had gained the usual meed of industry in my profession,
and was admitted to its practice. I was on the
threshold of manhood; and she had promised, before
heaven, here to give me heart and hand.

I had parted from her at twelve on that night three
years, and, as the clock struck, I stood again by her
side in the crowded ballroom of Saratoga.

“Good God! Mr. Slingsby!” she exclaimed, as I
put out my hand.

“Am I so changed that you do not know me, Miss
Linsey?” I asked, as she still looked with a wondering
gaze into my face — pressing my hand, however,
with real warmth, and evidently under the control,
for the moment, of the feelings with which we had
parted.

“Changed, indeed! Why, you have studied yourself
to a skeleton! My dear Philip, you are ill!”

I was — but it was only for a moment. I asked her
hand for a waltz, and never before or since came wit
and laughter so freely to my lip. I was collected, but,
at the same time, I was the gayest of the gay; and
when everybody had congratulated me, in her hearing,
on the school to which I had put my wits in my
long apprenticeship to the law, I retired to the gallery
looking down upon the garden, and cooled my brow
and rallied my sinking heart.

The candles were burning low, and the ball was
nearly over, when I entered the room again, and requested
Edith to take a turn with me on the colonnade.
She at once assented, and I could feel by her
arm in mine, and see by the fixed expression on her
lip, that she did so with the intention of revealing to
me what she little thought I could so well anticipate.

“My probation is over,” I said, breaking the silence
which she seemed willing to prolong, and which
had lasted till we had twice measured the long colonnade.

“It was three years ago to-night, I think, since we
parted.” She spoke in an absent and careless tone, as
if trying to work out another more prominent thought
in her mind.

“Do you find me changed?” I asked.

“Yes — oh, yes! very!”

“But I am more changed than I seem, dear Edith!”

She turned to me as if to ask me to explain myself.

“Will you listen to me while I tell you how?”

“What can you mean? Certainly.”

“Then listen, for I fear I can scarce bring myself
to repeat what I am going to say. When I first learned
to love you, and when I promised to love you for
life, you were thought to be dying, and I was a boy.
I did not count on the future, for I despaired of your
living to share it with me, and, if I had done so, I
was still a child, and knew nothing of the world. I
have since grown more ambitious, and, I may as well
say at once, more selfish and less poetical. You will
easily divine my drift. You are poor, and I find myself,
as you have seen to-night, in a position which
will enable me to marry more to my advantage; and,
with these views, I am sure I should only make you
miserable by fulfilling my contract with you, and you
will agree with me that I consult our mutual happiness
by this course — don't you think?”

At this instant I gave a signal to Job, who approached
and made some sensible remarks about the weather;
and, after another turn or two, I released Miss Linsey's
arm, and cautioning her against the night air, left her
to finish her promenade and swallow her own projected
speech and mine, and went to bed.

And so ended my first love!

SCENES OF FEAR.

1. No. I.
THE DISTURBED VIGIL.

Such a night! It was like a festival of Dian. A
burst of a summer shower at sunset, with a clap or
two of thunder, had purified the air to an intoxicating
rareness, and the free breathing of the flowers, and
the delicious perfume from the earth and grass, and
the fresh foliage of the new spring, showed the delight
and sympathy of inanimate Nature in the night's beauty.
There was no atmosphere — nothing between the
eye and the pearly moon — and she rode through the
heavens without a veil, like a queen as she is, giving a
glimpse of her nearer beauty for a festal favor to the
worshipping stars.

I was a student at the famed university of Connecticut,
and the bewilderments of philosophy and poetry
were strong upon me, in a place where exquisite natural
beauty, and the absence of all other temptation,
secure to the classic neophite an almost supernatural
wakefulness of fancy. I contracted a taste for the
horrible in those days, which still clings to me. I

have travelled the world over, with no object but general
observation, and have dawdled my hour at courts
and operas with little interest, while the sacking and
drowning of a woman in the Bosphorus, the impalement
of a robber on the Nile, and the insane hospitals
from Liverpool to Cathay, are described in my capricious
journal with the vividness of the most stirring
adventure.

There is a kind of crystallization in the circumstances
of one's life. A peculiar turn of mind draws
to itself events fitted to its particular nucleus, and it is
frequently a subject of wonder why one man meets
with more remarkable things than another, when it is
owing merely to a difference of natural character.

It was, as I was saying, a night of wonderful beauty.
I was watching a corpse. In that part of the United
States, the dead are never left alone till the earth is
thrown upon them; and, as a friend of the family, I
had been called upon for this melancholy service on
the night preceding the interment. It was a death
which had left a family of broken hearts; for, beneath
the sheet which sank so appallingly to the outline of
a human form, lay a wreck of beauty and sweetness
whose loss seemed to the survivors to have darkened
the face of the earth. The ethereal and touching
loveliness of that dying girl, whom I had known only
a hopeless victim of consumption, springs up in my
memory even yet, and mingles with every conception
of female beauty.

Two ladies, friends of the deceased, were to share
my vigils. I knew them but slightly, and, having read
them to sleep an hour after midnight, I performed
my half-hourly duty of entering the room where the
corpse lay, to look after the lights, and then strolled
into the garden to enjoy the quiet of the summer night.
The flowers were glittering in their pearl-drops, and
the air was breathless.

The sight of the long, sheeted corpse, the sudden
flare of lights as the long snuffs were removed from
the candles, the stillness of the close-shuttered room,
and my own predisposition to invest death with a supernatural
interest, had raised my heart to my throat.
I walked backward and forward in the garden-path;
and the black shadows beneath the lilacs, and even
the glittering of the glow-worms within them, seemed
weird and fearful.

The clock struck, and I re-entered. My companions
still slept, and I passed on to the inner chamber.
I trimmed the lights, and stood and looked at the
white heap lying so fearfully still within the shadow
of the curtains; and my blood seemed to freeze. At
the moment when I was turning away with a strong
effort at a more composed feeling, a noise like a flutter
of wings, followed by a rush and a sudden silence,
struck on my startled ear. The street was as quiet as
death, and the noise, which was far too audible to be a
deception of the fancy, had come from the side toward
an uninhabited wing of the house. My heart stood
still. Another instant, and the fire-screen was dashed
down, and a white cat rushed past me, and with the
speed of light sprang like an hyena upon the corpse.
The flight of a vampyre into the chamber would not
have more curdled my veins. A convulsive shudder
ran cold over me, but recovering my self-command, I
rushed to the animal (of whose horrible appetite for
the flesh of the dead I had read incredulously), and attempted
to tear her from the body. With her claws
fixed in the breast, and a yowl like the wail of an infernal
spirit, she crouched fearlessly upon it, and the
stains already upon the sheet convinced me that it
would be impossible to remove her without shockingly
disfiguring the corpse. I seized her by the throat, in
the hope of choking her; but with the first pressure
of my fingers, she flew into my face, and the infuriated
animal seemed persuaded that it was a contest for life.
Half blinded by the fury of her attack, I loosed her
for a moment, and she immediately leaped again upon
the corpse, and had covered her feet and face with
blood before I could recover my hold upon her. The
body was no longer in a situation to be spared, and I
seized her with a desperate grasp to draw her off; but
to my horror, the half-covered and bloody corpse rose
upright in her fangs, and, while I paused in fear, sat
with drooping arms, and head fallen with ghastly helplessness
over the shoulder. Years have not removed
that fearful spectacle from my eyes.

The corpse sank back, and I succeeded in throttling
the monster, and threw her at last lifeless from the
window. I then composed the disturbed limbs, laid
the hair away once more smoothly on the forehead,
and, crossing the hands over the bosom, covered the
violated remains, and left them again to their repose.
My companions, strangely enough, slept on, and I paced
the garden-walk alone, till the day, to my inexpressible
relief, dawned over the mountains.

2. No. II.
THE MAD SENIOR.

I was called upon in my senior year to watch with
an insane student. He was a man who had attracted
a great deal of attention in college. He appeared in
an extraordinary costume at the beginning of our
freshman term, and wrote himself down as Washington
Greyling, of — , an unheard-of settlement
somewhere beyond the Mississippi. His coat and other
gear might have been the work of a Chickasaw
tailor, aided by the superintending taste of some white
huntsman, who remembered faintly the outline of habiliments
he had not seen for half a century. It was
a body of green cloth, eked out with wampum and
otter-skin, and would have been ridiculous if it had
not encased one of the finest models of a manly frame
that ever trod the earth. With close-curling black
hair, a fine weather-browned complexion, Spanish features
(from his mother — a frequent physiognomy in
the countries bordering on Spanish America), and
the port and lithe motion of a lion, he was a figure to
look upon in any disguise with warm admiration.
He was soon put into the hands of a tailor-proper,
and, with the facility which belongs to his countrymen,
became in a month the best-dressed man in college.
His manners were of a gentleman-like mildness,
energetic, but courteous and chivalresque, and, unlike
most savages and all coins, he polished without “losing
his mark.” At the end of his first term, he would
have been called a high-bred gentleman at any court
in Europe.

The opening of his mind was almost as rapid and
extraordinary. He seized everything with an ardor
and freshness that habit and difficulty never deadened.
He was like a man who had tumbled into a new star,
and was collecting knowledge for a world to which he
was to return. The first in all games, the wildest in
all adventure, the most distinguished even in the elegant
society for which the town is remarkable, and
unfailingly brilliant in his recitations and college performances,
he was looked upon as a sort of admirable
phenomenon, and neither envied nor opposed in anything.
I have often thought, in looking on him, that
his sensations at coming fresh from a wild western
prairie, and, at the first measure of his capacities with
men of better advantages, finding himself so uniformly
superior, must have been stirringly delightful. It is a
wonder he never became arrogant; but it was the last
foible of which he could have been accused.

We were reading hard for the honors in the senior
year, when Greyling suddenly lost his reason. He

had not been otherwise ill, and had, apparently in the
midst of high health, gone mad at a moment's warning.
The physicians scarce knew how to treat him.
The confinement to which he was at first subjected,
however, was thought inexpedient, and he seemed to
justify their lenity by the gentlest behavior when at
liberty. He seemed oppressed by a heart-breaking
melancholy. We took our turns in guarding and
watching with him, and it was upon my first night of
duty that the incident happened which I have thus
endeavored to introduce.

It was scarce like a vigil with a sick man, for our
patient went regularly to bed, and usually slept well.
I took my “Lucretius” and the “Book of the Martyrs,”
which was just then my favorite reading, and
with hot punch, a cold chicken, books, and a fire, I
looked forward to it as merely a studious night; and,
as the wintry wind of January rattled in at the old
college windows, I thrust my feet into slippers, drew
my dressing-gown about me, and congratulated myself
on the excessive comfortableness of my position.
The Sybarite's bed of roses would have been no temptation.

It had snowed all day, but the sun had set with a
red rift in the clouds, and the face of the sky was
swept in an hour to the clearness of — I want a comparison
— your own blue eye, dear Mary! The all-glorious
arch of heaven was a mass of sparkling stars.

Greyling slept, and I, wearied of the cold philosophy
of the Latin poet, took to my “Book of Martyrs.” I
read on, and read on. The college clock struck, it
seemed to me, the quarters rather than the hours.
Time flew: it was three.

“Horrible! most horrible!” I started from my chair
with the exclamation, and felt as if my scalp were
self-lifted from my head. It was a description in the
harrowing faithfulness of the language of olden time,
painting almost the articulate groans of an impaled
Christian. I clasped the old iron-bound book, and
rushed to the window as if my heart was stifling for
fresh air.

Again at the fire. The large walnut fagots had
burnt to a bed of bright coals, and I sat gazing into it,
totally unable to shake off the fearful incubus from
my breast. The martyr was there — on the very hearth
— with the stakes scornfully crossed in his body; and
as the large coals cracked asunder and revealed the
prightness within, I seemed to follow the nerve-rending
instrument from hip to shoulder, and suffer with him
pang for pang, as if the burning redness were the pools
of his fevered blood.

“Aha!”

It struck on my ear like the cry of an exulting fiend.

“Aha!”

I shrunk into the chair as the awful cry was repeated,
and looked slowly and with difficult courage
over my shoulder. A single fierce eye was fixed upon
me from the mass of bed-clothes, and, for a moment,
the relief from the fear of some supernatural presence
was like water to a parched tongue. I sank back relieved
into the chair.

There was a rustling immediately in the bed, and,
starting again, I found the wild eyes of my patient
fixed still steadfastly upon me. He was creeping
stealthily out of bed. His bare foot touched the floor,
and his toes worked upon it as if he was feeling its
strength, and in a moment he stood upright on his
feet, and, with his head forward and his pale face livid
with rage, stepped toward me. I looked to the door.
He observed the glance, and in the next instant he
sprang clear over the bed, turned the key, and dashed
it furiously through the window.

“Now!” said he.

“Greyling!” I said. I had heard that a calm and
fixed gaze would control a madman, and with the most
difficult exertion of nerve, I met his lowering eye, and
we stood looking at each other for a full minute, like
men of marble.

“Why have you left your bed?” I mildly asked.

“To kill you!” was the appalling answer; and in
another moment the light-stand was swept from between
us, and he struck me down with a blow that
would have felled a giant. Naked as he was, I had
no hold upon him, even if in muscular strength I had
been his match; and with a minute's struggle I yielded,
for resistance was vain. His knee was now upon my
breast and his left hand in my hair, and he seemed
by the tremulousness of his clutch to be hesitating
whether he should dash my brains out on the hearth.
I could scarce breathe with his weight upon my chest,
but I tried, with the broken words I could command,
to move his pity. He laughed, as only maniacs can,
and placed his hand on my throat. Oh God! shall I
ever forget the fiendish deliberation with which he
closed those feverish fingers?

“Greyling! for God's sake! Greyling!”

“Die! curse you!”

In the agonies of suffocation I struck out my arm,
and almost buried it in the fire upon the hearth.
With an expiring thought, I grasped a handful of the
red-hot coals, and had just strength sufficient to press
them hard against his side.

“Thank God!” I exclaimed with my first breath,
as my eyes recovered from their sickness, and I looked
upon the familiar objects of my chamber once more.

The madman sat crouched like a whipped dog in
the farthest corner of the room, gibbering and moaning,
with his hands upon his burnt side. I felt that I
had escaped death by a miracle.

The door was locked, and, in dread of another attack,
I threw up the broken window, and to my
unutterable joy the figure of a man was visible upon
the snow near the out-buildings of the college. It
was a charity-student, risen before day to labor in the
wood-yard. I shouted to him, and Greyling leaped
to his feet.

“There is time yet!” said the madman; but as he
came toward me again with the same panther-like
caution as before. I seized a heavy stone pitcher
standing in the window-seat, and hurling it at him
with a fortunate force and aim, he fell stunned and
bleeding on the floor. The door was burst open at
the next moment, and, calling for assistance, we tied
the wild Missourian into his bed, bound up his head
and side, and committed him to fresh watchers....

We have killed bears together at a Missouri saltlick
since then; but I never see Wash. Greyling with
a smile off his face, without a disposition to look
around for the door.

3. No. III.
THE LUNATIC'S SKATE.

I have only, in my life, known one lunatic — properly
so called. In the days when I carried a satchel
on the banks of the Shawsheen (a river whose half-lovely,
half-wild scenery is tied like a silver thread
about my heart), Larry Wynn and myself were the
farthest boarders from school, in a solitary farm-house
on the edge of a lake of some miles square, called by
the undignified title of Pomp's pond. An old negro,
who was believed by the boys to have come over with
Christopher Columbus, was the only other human
being within anything like a neighborhood of the
lake (it took its name from him), and the only approaches
to its waters, girded in as it was by an almost
impenetrable forest, were the path through old Pomp's
clearing, and that by our own door. Out of school,
Larry and I were inseparable. He was a pale, sad-faced

boy, and, in the first days of our intimacy, he
had confided a secret to me which, from its uncommon
nature, and the excessive caution with which he
kept it from every one else, bound me to him with
more than the common ties of schoolfellow attachment.
We built wigwams together in the woods, had
our tomahawks made of the same fashion, united our
property in fox-traps, and played Indians with perfect
contentment in each other's approbation.

I had found out, soon after my arrival at school,
that Larry never slept on a moonlight night. With
the first slender horn that dropped its silver and graceful
shape behind the hills, his uneasiness commenced,
and by the time its full and perfect orb poured a flood
of radiance over vale and mountain, he was like one
haunted by a pursuing demon. At early twilight he
closed the shutters, stuffing every crevice that could
admit a ray; and then, lighting as many candles as
he could beg or steal from our thrifty landlord, he sat
down with his book in moody silence, or paced the
room with an uneven step, and a solemn melancholy
in his fine countenance, of which, with all my familiarity
with him, I was almost afraid. Violent exercise
seemed the only relief, and when the candles
burnt low after midnight, and the stillness around the
lone farm-house became too absolute to endure, he
would throw up the window, and, leaping desperately
out into the moonlight, rush up the hill into the
depths of the wild forest, and walk on with supernatural
excitement till the day dawned. Faint and pale he
would then creep into his bed, and, begging me to
make his very common and always credited excuse of
illness, sleep soundly till I returned from school. I
soon became used to his way, ceased to follow him,
as I had once or twice endeavored to do, into the
forest, and never attempted to break in on the fixed
and wrapt silence which seemed to transform his lips
to marble. And for all this Larry loved me.

Our preparatory studies were completed, and, to
our mutual despair, we were destined to different
universities. Larry's father was a disciple of the great
Channing, and mine a Trinitarian of uncommon zeal;
and the two institutions of Yale and Harvard were in
the hands of most eminent men of either persuasion,
and few are the minds that could resist a four years'
ordeal in either. A student was as certain to come
forth a Unitarian from one as a Calvinist from the
other; and in the New England states these two sects
are bitterly hostile. So, to the glittering atmosphere
of Channing and Everett went poor Larry, lonely
and dispirited; and I was committed to the sincere
zealots of Connecticut, some two hundred miles off,
to learn Latin and Greek, if it pleased Heaven, but
the mysteries of “election and free grace,” whether
or no.

Time crept, ambled, and galloped, by turns, as we
were in love or out, moping in term-time, or revelling
in vacation, and gradually, I know not why, our correspondence
had dropped, and the four years had
come to their successive deaths, and we had never
met. I grieved over it; for in those days I believed
with a school-boy's fatuity,

and I loved Larry Wynn, as I hope I may never love
man or woman again — with a pain at my heart. I
wrote one or two reproachful letters in my senior
years, but his answers were overstrained, and too full
of protestations by half; and seeing that absence had
done its usual work on him, I gave it up, and wrote
an epitaph on a departed friendship. I do not know,
by the way, why I am detaining you with all this, for
it has nothing to do with my story; but let it pass as
an evidence that it is a true one. The climax of things
in real life has not the regular procession of incidents
in a tragedy.

Some two or three years after we had taken “the
irrevocable yoke” of life upon us (not matrimony,
but money-making), a winter occurred of uncommonly
fine sleighing — sledging, you call it in England.
At such times the American world is all
abroad, either for business or pleasure. The roads
are passable at any rate of velocity of which a horse
is capable; smooth as montagnes Russes, and hard
as is good for hoofs; and a hundred miles is diminished
to ten in facility of locomotion. The hunter
brings down his venison to the cities, the western
trader takes his family a hundred leagues to buy
calicoes and tracts, and parties of all kinds scour the
country, drinking mulled wine and “flip,” and shaking
the very nests out of the fir-trees with the ringing of
their horses' bells. You would think death and sorrow
were buried in the snow with the leaves of the
last autumn.

I do not know why I undertook, at this time, a
journey to the west; certainly not for scenery, for it
was a world of waste, desolate, and dazzling whiteness,
for a thousand unbroken miles. The trees were
weighed down with snow, and the houses were
thatched and half-buried in it, and the mountains and
valleys were like the vast waves of an illimitable sea,
congealed with its yesty foam in the wildest hour of a
tempest. The eye lost its powers in gazing on it.
The “spirit-bird” that spread his refreshing green
wings before the pained eyes of Thalaba would have
been an inestimable fellow-traveller. The worth of
the eyesight lay in the purchase of a pair of green
goggles.

In the course of a week or two, after skimming over
the buried scenery of half a dozen states, each as
large as Great Britain (more or less), I found myself
in a small town on the border of one of our western
lakes. It was some twenty years since the bears had
found it thinly settled enough for their purposes, and
now it contained perhaps twenty thousand souls.
The oldest inhabitant, born in the town, was a youth
in his minority. With the usual precocity of new
settlements, it had already most of the peculiarities of
an old metropolis. The burnt stumps still stood about
among the houses, but there was a fashionable circle,
at the head of which were the lawyer's wife and the
member of Congress's daughter; and people ate their
peas with silver forks, and drank their tea with scandal,
and forgave men's many sins and refused to forgive
woman's one, very much as in towns whose history
is written in black letter. I dare say there were
not more than one or two offences against the moral
and Levitical law, fashionable on this side the water,
which had not been committed, with the authentic
aggravations, in the town of — ; I would mention
the name if this were not a true story.

Larry Wynn (now Lawrence Wynn, Esq.) lived
here. He had, as they say in the United States, “hung
out a shingle” (Londonicé, put up a sign) as attorney-at-law,
and to all the twenty thousand innocent inhabitants
of the place, he was the oracle and the squire.
He was besides colonel of militia, churchwarden,
and canal commissioner; appointments which speak
volumes for the prospects of “rising young men” in
our flourishing republic.

Larry was glad to see me — very. I was more glad
to see him. I have a soft heart, and forgive a wrong
generally, if it touches neither my vanity nor my
purse. I forgot his neglect, and called him “Larry.”
By the same token he did not call me “Phil.” (There
are very few that love me, patient reader; but those
who do, thus abbreviate my pleasant name of Philip.
I was called after the Indian sachem of that name,
whose blood runs in this tawny hand.) Larry looked
upon me as a man. I looked on him, with all his
dignities and changes, through the sweet vista of
memory — as a boy. His mouth had acquired the

pinched corners of caution and mistrust common to
those who know their fellow-men; but I never saw it
unless when speculating as I am now. He was to me
the pale-faced and melancholy friend of my boyhood;
and I could have slept, as I used to do, with my arm
around his neck, and feared to stir lest I should wake
him. Had my last earthy hope lain in the palm of
my hand, I could have given it to him, had he needed
it, but to make him sleep; and yet he thought of me
but as a stranger under his roof, and added, in his
warmest moments, a “Mr.” to my name! There is
but one circumstance in my life that has wounded me
more. Memory avaunt!

Why should there be no unchangeableness in the
world? why no friendship? or why am I, and you,
gentle reader (for by your continuing to pore over
these idle musings, you have a heart too), gifted with
this useless and restless organ beating in our bosoms,
if its thirst for love is never to be slaked, and its aching
self-fulness never to find flow or utterance? I
would positively sell my whole stock of affections for
three farthings. Will you say “two?”

“You are come in good time,” said Larry one morning,
with a half-smile, “and shall be groomsman to
me. I am going to be married.”

“Married?”

“Married.”

I repeated the word after him, for I was surprised.
He had never opened his lips about his unhappy lunacy
since my arrival, and I had felt hurt at this apparent
unwillingness to renew our ancient confidence,
but had felt a repugnance to any forcing of the topic
upon him, and could only hope that he had outgrown
or overcome it. I argued, immediately on this information
of his intended marriage, that it must be so.
No man in his senses, I thought, would link an impending
madness to the fate of a confiding and lovely
woman.

He took me into his sleigh, and we drove to her
father's house. She was a flower in the wilderness.
Of a delicate form, as all my countrywomen are, and
lovely, as quite all certainly are not, large-eyed, soft
in her manners, and yet less timid than confiding and
sister-like, with a shade of melancholy in her smile,
caught, perhaps, with the “trick of sadness” from himself,
and a patrician slightness of reserve, or pride,
which Nature sometimes, in very mockery of high
birth, teaches her most secluded child — the bride elect
was, as I said before, a flower in the wilderness. She
was one of those women we sigh to look upon as they
pass by, as if there went a fragment of the wreck of
some blessed dream.

The day arrived for the wedding, and the sleigh-bells
jingled merrily into the village. The morning
was as soft and genial as June, and the light snow on
the surface of the lake melted, and lay on the breast
of the solid ice beneath, giving it the effect of one white
silver mirror, stretching to the edge of the horizon.
It was exquisitely beautiful, and I was standing at the
window in the afternoon, looking off upon the shining
expanse, when Larry approached, and laid his hand
familiarly on my shoulder.

“What glorious skating we shall have,” said I, “if
this smooth water freezes to-night!”

I turned the next moment to look at him; for we
had not skated together since I went out, at his earnest
entreaty, at midnight, to skim the little lake where we
had passed our boyhood, and drive away the fever from
his brain, under the light of a full moon.

He remembered it, and so did I; and I put my arm
behind him, for the color fled from his face, and I
thought he would have sunk to the floor.

“The moon is full to-night,” said he, recovering instantly
to a cold self-possession.

I took hold of his hand firmly, and, in as kind a
tone as I could summon, spoke of our early friend
ship, and apologizing thus for the freedom, asked if he
had quite overcome his melancholy disease. His face
worked with emotion, and he tried to withdraw his
hand from my clasp, and evidently wished to avoid an
answer.

“Tell me, dear Larry,” said I.

“Oh God! No!” said he, breaking violently from
me, and throwing himself with his face downward upon
the sofa. The tears streamed through his fingers upon
the silken cushion.

“Not cured? And does she know it?”

“No! no! thank God! not yet!”

I remained silent a few minutes, listening to his
suppressed moans (for he seemed heart-broken with
the confession), and pitying while I inwardly condemned
him. And then the picture of that lovely and
fond woman rose up before me, and the impossibility
of concealing his fearful malady from his wife, and
the fixed insanity in which it must end, and the whole
wreck of her hopes and his own prospects and happiness
— and my heart grew sick.

I sat down by him, and, as it was too late to remonstrate
on the injustice he was committing toward her,
I asked how he came to appoint the night of a full
moon for his wedding. He gave up his reserve, calmed
himself, and talked of it at last as if he were relieved
by the communication. Never shall I forget the
doomed pallor, the straining eye, and feverish hand,
of my poor friend during that half hour.

Since he had left college he had striven with the
whole energy of his soul against it. He had plunged
into business — he had kept his bed resolutely night
after night, till his brain seemed on the verge of phrensy
with the effort — he had taken opium to secure to himself
an artificial sleep; but he had never dared to confide
it to any one, and he had no friend to sustain him
in his fearful and lonely hours; and it grew upon him
rather than diminished. He described to me with the
most touching pathos how he had concealed it for
years — how he had stolen out like a thief to give vent
to his insane restlessness in the silent streets of the city
at midnight, and in the more silent solitudes of the
forest — how he had prayed, and wrestled, and wept
over it — and finally, how he had come to believe that
there was no hope for him except in the assistance and
constant presence of some one who would devote life
to him in love and pity. Poor Larry! I put up a silent
prayer in my heart that the desperate experiment might
not end in agony and death.

The sun set, and, according to my prediction, the
wind changed suddenly to the north, and the whole
surface of the lake in a couple of hours became of the
lustre of polished steel. It was intensely cold.

The fires blazed in every room of the bride's paternal
mansion, and I was there early to fulfil my office
of master of ceremonies at the bridal. My heart was
weighed down with a sad boding, but I shook off at
least the appearance of it, and superintended the concoction
of a huge bowl of punch with a merriment
which communicated itself in the shape of most joyous
hilarity to a troop of juvenile relations. The house
resounded with their shouts of laughter.

In the midst of our noise in the small inner room
entered Larry. I started back, for he looked more like
a demon possessed than a Christian man. He had walked
to the house alone in the moonlight, not daring to
trust himself in company. I turned out the turbulent
troop about me, and tried to dispel his gloom, for a face
like his at that moment would have put to flight the
rudest bridal party ever assembled on holy ground.
He seized on the bowl of strong spirits which I had
mixed for a set of hardy farmers, and before I could
tear it from his lips had drank a quantity which, in an
ordinary mood, would have intoxicated him helplessly
in an hour. He then sat down with his face buried in
his hands, and in a few minutes rose, his eyes sparkling

with excitement, and the whole character of his
face utterly changed. I thought he had gone wild.

“Now, Phil,” said he; “now for my bride!” And
with an unbecoming levity he threw open the door,
and went half dancing into the room where the friends
were already assembled to witness the ceremony.

I followed with fear and anxiety. He took his place
by the side of the fair creature on whom he had placed
his hopes of life, and, though sobered somewhat by
the impressiveness of the scene, the wild sparkle still
danced in his eyes, and I could see that every nerve
in his frame was excited to the last pitch of tension.
If he had fallen a gibbering maniac on the floor, I
should not have been astonished.

The ceremony proceeded, and the first tone of his
voice in the response startled even the bride. If it had
rung from the depths of a cavern, it could not have
been more sepulchral. I looked at him with a shudder.
His lips were curled with an exulting expression,
mixed with an indefinable fear; and all the blood
in his face seemed settled about his eyes, which were
so bloodshot and fiery, that I have ever since wondered
he was not, at the first glance, suspected of insanity.
But oh! the heavenly sweetness with which that loveliest
of creatures promised to love and cherish him, in
sickness and in health! I never go to a bridal but it
half breaks my heart; and as the soft voice of that
beautiful girl fell with its eloquent meaning on my
ear, and I looked at her, with lips calm and eyes moistened,
vowing a love which I knew to be stronger than
death, to one who, I feared, was to bring only pain and
sorrow into her bosom, my eyes warmed with irrepressible
tears, and I wept.

The stir in the room as the clergyman closed his
prayer, seemed to awake him from a trance. He
looked around with a troubled face for a moment; and
then, fixing his eyes on his bride, he suddenly clasped
his arms about her, and straining her violently to his
bosom, broke into an hysterical passion of tears and
laughter. Then suddenly resuming his self-command,
he apologized for the over-excitement of his feelings,
and behaved with forced and gentle propriety till the
guests departed.

There was an apprehensive gloom over the spirits
of the small bridal party left in the lighted rooms; and
as they gathered round the fire, I approached, and endeavored
to take a gay farewell. Larry was sitting
with his arm about his wife, and he wrung my hand in
silence as I said, “Good-night,” and dropped his head
upon her shoulder. I made some futile attempt to
rally him, but it jarred on the general feeling, and I
lef the house.

It was a glorious night. The clear piercing air had
a vitreous brilliancy, which I have never seen in any
other climate, the rays of the moonlight almost visibly
splintering with the keenness of the frost. The
moon herself was in the zenith, and there seemed
nothing between her and the earth but palpable and
glittering cold.

I hurried home: it was but eleven o'clock; and,
heaping up the wood in the large fireplace, I took a
volume of “Ivanhoe,” which had just then appeared,
and endeavored to rid myself of my unpleasant
thoughts. I read on till midnight; and then, in a
pause of the story, I rose to look out upon the night,
hoping, for poor Larry's sake, that the moon was
buried in clouds. The house was near the edge of
the lake; and as I looked down upon the glassy waste,
spreading away from the land, I saw the dark figure
of a man kneeling directly in the path of the moon's
rays. In another moment he rose to his feet, and
the tall, slight form of my poor friend was distinctly
visible, as, with long and powerful strokes, he sped
away upon his skates along the shore.

To take my own Hollanders, put a collar of fur
around my mouth, and hurry after him, was the work
of but a minute. My straps were soon fastened; and,
following in the marks of the sharp irons at the top of
my speed, I gained sight of him in about half an hour,
and with great effort neared him sufficiently to shout
his name with a hope of being heard.

“Larry! Larry!”

The lofty mountain-shore gave back the cry in repeated
echoes — but he redoubled his strokes, and
sped on faster than before. At my utmost speed I
followed on; and when, at last, I could almost lay
my hand on his shoulder, I summoned my strength
to my breathless lungs, and shouted again — “Larry!
Larry!”

He half looked back, and the full moon at that instant
streamed full into his eyes. I have thought
since that he could not have seen me for its dazzling
brightness; but I saw every line of his features with
the distinctness of daylight, and I shall never forget
them. A line of white foam ran through his half-parted
lips; his hair streamed wildly over his forehead,
on which the perspiration glittered in large drops; and
every lineament of his expressive face was stamped with
unutterable and awful horror. He looked back no
more; but, increasing his speed with an energy of
which I did not think his slender frame capable, he
began gradually to outstrip me. Trees, rocks, and
hills, fled back like magic. My limbs began to grow
numb; my fingers had lost all feeling, but a strong
northeast wind was behind us, and the ice smoother
than a mirror: and I struck out my feet mechanically,
and still sped on.

For two hours we had kept along the shore. The
branches of the trees were reflected in the polished
ice, and the hills seemed hanging in the air, and floating
past us with the velocity of storm-clouds. Far
down the lake, however, there glimmered the just
visible light of a fire, and I was thanking God that
we were probably approaching some human succor,
when, to my horror, the retreating figure before me
suddenly darted off to the left, and made swifter than
before toward the centre of the icy waste. Oh, God!
what feelings were mine at that moment! Follow him
far I dared not; for, the sight of land once lost, as it
would be almost instantly with our tremendous speed,
we perished, without a possibility of relief.

He was far beyond my voice, and to overtake him
was the only hope. I summoned my last nerve for
the effort, and keeping him in my eye, struck across
at a sharper angle, with the advantage of the wind full
in my back. I had taken note of the mountains, and
knew that we were already forty miles from home, a
distance it would be impossible to retrace against the
wind; and the thought of freezing to death, even if
I could overtake him, forced itself appallingly upon
me.

Away I flew, despair giving new force to my limbs,
and soon gained on the poor lunatic, whose efforts
seemed flagging and faint. I neared him. Another
struggle! I could have dropped down where I was,
and slept, if there were death in the first minute, so
stiff and drowsy was every muscle in my frame.

“Larry!” I shouted. “Larry!”

He started at the sound, and I could hear a smothered
and breathless shriek, as, with supernatural
strength, he straightened up his bending figure, and,
leaning forward again, sped away from me like a
phantom on the blast.

I could follow no longer. I stood stiff on my skates,
still going on rapidly before the wind, and tried to
look after him, but the frost had stiffened my eyes,
and there was a mist before them, and they felt like
glass. Nothing was visible around me but moonlight
and ice, and dimly and slowly I began to retrace the
slight path of semicircles toward the shore. It was
painful work. The wind seemed to divide the very
fibres of the skin upon my face. Violent exercise no

longer warmed my body, and I felt the cold shoot
sharply into my loins, and bind across my breast like
a chain of ice; and, with the utmost strength of mind
at my command, I could just resist the terrible inclination
to lie down and sleep. I forgot poor Larry.
Life — dear life! — was now my only thought! So selfish
are we in our extremity!

With difficulty I at last reached the shore, and then,
unbuttoning my coat, and spreading it wide for a sail,
I set my feet together, and went slowly down before
the wind, till the fire which I had before noticed began
to blaze cheerily in the distance. It seemed an
eternity in my slow progress. Tree after tree threw
the shadow of its naked branches across the way; hill
after hill glided slowly backward; but my knees
seemed frozen together, and my joints fixed in ice;
and if my life had depended on striking out my feet,
I should have died powerless. My jaws were locked,
my shoulders drawn half down to my knees, and in a
few minutes more, I am well convinced, the blood
would have thickened in my veins, and stood still, for
ever.

I could see the tongues of the flames — I counted
the burning fagots — a form passed between me and
the fire — I struck, and fell prostrate on the snow; and
I remember no more.

The sun was darting a slant beam through the trees
when I awoke. The genial warmth of a large bed of
embers played on my cheek, a thick blanket enveloped
me, and beneath my head was a soft cushion of withered
leaves. On the opposite side of the fire lay four
Indians wrapped in their blankets, and, with her head
on her knees, and her hands clasped over her ankles,
sat an Indian woman, who had apparently fallen asleep
upon her watch. The stir I made aroused her, and,
as she piled on fresh fagots, and kindled them to a
bright blaze with a handful of leaves, drowsiness came
over me again, and I wrapped the blanket about me
more closely, and shut my eyes to sleep.

I awoke refreshed. It must have been ten o'clock
by the sun. The Indians were about, occupied in various
avocations, and the woman was broiling a slice
of deer's flesh on the coals. She offered it to me as I
rose; and having eaten part of it with a piece of a cake
made of meal, I requested her to call in the men, and,
with offers of reward, easily induced them to go with
me in search of my lost friend.

We found him, as I had anticipated, frozen to death,
far out on the lake. The Indians tracked him by the
marks of his skate-irons, and from their appearance
he had sunk quietly down, probably drowsy and exhausted,
and had died of course without pain. His
last act seemed to have been under the influence of
his strange madness, for he lay on his face, turned
from the quarter of the setting moon.

We carried him home to his bride. Even the Indians
were affected by her uncontrollable agony. I
can not describe that scene, familiar as I am with pictures
of horror.

I made inquiries with respect to the position of his
bridal chamber. There were no shutters, and the
moon streamed broadly into it: and after kissing his
shrinking bride with the violence of a madman, he
sprang out of the room with a terrific scream, and she
saw him no more till he lay dead on his bridal bed.

INCIDENTS ON THE HUDSON.

M. Chabert, the fire-eater, would have found New
York uncomfortable. I would mention the height of
the thermometer, but for an aversion I have to figures.
Broadway, at noon, had been known to fry soles.

I had fixed upon the first of August for my annual
trip to Saratoga — and with a straw hat, a portmanteau,
and a black boy, was huddled into the “rather-faster-than-lightning”
steamer, “North America,” with about
seven hundred other people, like myself, just in time.
Some hundred and fifty gentlemen and ladies, thirty
seconds too late, stood “larding” the pine chips upon
the pier, gazing after the vanishing boat through showers
of perspiration. Away we “streaked” at the rate
of twelve miles in the hour against the current, and
by the time I had penetrated to the baggage-closet,
and seated William Wilberforce upon my portmanteau,
with orders not to stir for eleven hours and seven minutes,
we were far up the Hudson, opening into its hills
and rocks, like a witches' party steaming through the
Hartz in a caldron.

A North-river steamboat, as a Vermont boy would
phrase it, is another guess sort o' thing from a Britisher.
A coal-barge and an eight-oars on the Thames
are scarce more dissimilar. Built for smooth water
only, our river boats are long, shallow, and graceful,
of the exquisite proportions of a pleasure-yacht, and
painted as brilliantly and fantastically as an Indian
shell. With her bow just leaning up from the surface
of the stream, her cut-water throwing off a curved and
transparent sheet from either side, her white awnings,
her magical speed, and the gay spectacle of a thousand
well-dressed people on her open decks, I know nothing
prettier than the vision that shoots by your door
as you sit smoking in your leaf-darkened portico on
the bold shore of the Hudson.

The American edition of Mrs. Trollope (several
copies of which are to be found in every boat, serving
the same purpose to the feelings of the passengers as
the escape-valve to the engine) lay on a sofa beside
me, and taking it up, as to say, “I will be let alone,”
I commenced dividing my attention in my usual quiet
way between the varied panorama of rock and valley
flying backward in our progress, and the as varied
multitude about me.

For the mass of the women, as far as satin slippers,
hats, dresses, and gloves, could go, a Frenchman might
have fancied himself in the midst of a transplantation
from the Boulevards. In London, French fashions are
in a manner Anglified: but an American woman looks
on the productions of Herbault, Boivin, and Maneuri,
as a translator of the Talmud on the inspired text. The
slight figure and small feet of the race rather favor the
resemblance; and a French milliner, who would probably
come to America expecting to see bears and buffaloes
prowling about the landing-place, would rub her
eyes in New York, and imagine she was still in France,
and had crossed, perhaps, only the broad part of the
Seine.

The men were a more original study. Near me sat
a Kentuckian on three chairs. He had been to the metropolis,
evidently for the first time, and had “looked
round sharp.” In a fist of no very delicate proportions,
was crushed a pair of French kid-gloves, which,
if they fulfilled to him a glove's destiny, would flatter
“the rich man” that “the camel” might yet give him
the required precedent. His hair had still the traces
of having been astonished with curling-tongs, and
across his Atlantean breast was looped, in a complicated
zig-zag, a chain that must have cost him a wilderness
of rackoon-skins. His coat was evidently the
production of a Mississippi tailor, though of the finest
English material; his shirt-bosom was ruffled like a
swan with her feathers full spread, and a black silk
cravat, tied in a kind of a curse-me-if-I-care-sort-of-a-knot,
flung out its ends like the arms of an Italian
improvisatore. With all this he was a man to look
upon with respect. His under jaw was set up to its
fellow with an habitual determination that would
throw a hickory-tree into a shiver; but frank good-nature,
and the most absolute freedom from suspicion,

lay at large on his Ajacean features, mixed with
an earnestness that commended itself at once to your
liking.

In a retired corner, near the wheel, stood a group
of Indians, as motionless by the hour together as
figures carved in rosso antico. They had been on
their melancholy annual visit to the now-cultivated
shores of Connecticut, the burial-place, but unforgotten
and once wild home of their fathers. With the
money given them by the romantic persons whose
sympathies are yearly moved by these stern and poetical
pilgrims, they had taken a passage in the “fire-canoe,”
which would set them two hundred miles on
their weary journey back to the prairies. Their
Apollo-like forms loosely dressed in blankets, their
gaudy wampum-belts and feathers, the muscular arm
and close clutch upon the rifle, the total absence of
surprise at the unaccustomed wonders about them,
and the lowering and settled scorn and dislike expressed
in their copper faces, would have powerfully
impressed a European. The only person on whom
they deigned to cast a glance was the Kentuckian,
and at him they occasionally stole a look, as if, through
all his metropolian finery, they recognised metal with
whose ring they were familiar.

There were three foreigners on board, two of them
companions, and one apparently alone. With their
coats too small for them, their thick-soled boots and
sturdy figures, collarless cravats, and assumed unconsciousness
of the presence of another living soul, they
were recognisable at once as Englishmen. To most
of the people on board they probably appeared equally
well-dressed, and of equal pretensions to the character
of gentlemen; but any one who had made observations
between Temple Bar and the steps of Crockford's,
would easily resolve them into two Birmingham bag-men
“sinking the shop,” and a quiet gentleman on a
tour of information.

The only other persons I particularly noted were a
southerner, probably the son of a planter from Alabama,
and a beautiful girl, dressed in singularly bad
taste, who seemed his sister. I knew the “specimen”
well. The indolent attitude, the thin but powerfully-jointed
frame, the prompt politeness, the air of superiority
acquired from constant command over slaves, the
mouth habitually flexible and looking eloquent even
in silence, and the eye in which slept a volcano of violent
passions, were the marks that showed him of a
race that I had studied much, and preferred to all the
many and distinct classes of my countrymen. His
sister was of the slightest and most fragile figure,
graceful as a fawn, but with no trace of the dancing
master's precepts in her motions, vivid in her attention
to everything about her, and amused with all she saw;
a copy of Lalla Rookh sticking from the pocket of
her French apron, a number of gold chains hung outside
her travelling habit, and looped to her belt, and a
glorious profusion of dark curls broken loose from her
combs and floating unheeded over her shoulders.

Toward noon we rounded West Point, and shot
suddenly into the overshadowed gorge of the mountains,
as if we were dashing into the vein of a silver
mine, laid open and molten into a flowing river by a
flash of lightning. (The figure should be Montgomery's;
but I can in no other way give an idea of
the sudden darkening of the Hudson, and the underground
effect of the sharp over-hanging mountains as
you sweep first into the highlands.)

The solitary Englishman, who had been watching
the southern beauty with the greatest apparent interest,
had lounged over to her side of the boat, and,
with the instinctive knowledge that women have of
character, she had shrunk from the more obtrusive
attempts of the Brummagems to engage her in conversation,
and had addressed some remark to him,
which seemed to have advanced them at once to ac
quaintances of a year. They were admiring the stupendous
scenery together a moment before the boat
stopped for a passenger, off a small town above the
point. As the wheels were checked, there was a sudden
splash in the water, and a cry of “a lady over-board!”
I looked for the fair creature who had been
standing before me, and she was gone. The boat was
sweeping on, and as I darted to the railing I saw the
gurgling eddy where something had just gone down;
and in the next minute the Kentuckian and the
youngest of the Indians rushed together to the stern,
and clearing the taffrail with tremendous leaps, dived
side by side into the very centre of the foaming circle.
The Englishman had coolly seized a rope, and, by the
time they reappeared, stood on the railing with a coil
in his hand, and flung it with accurate calculation
directly over them. With immovably grave faces, and
eyes blinded with water, the two divers rose, holding
high between them — a large pine fagot! Shouts of
laughter pealed from the boat, and the Kentuckian,
discovering his error, gave the log an indignant fling
behind, and, taking hold of the rope, lay quietly to be
drawn in; while the Indian, disdaining assistance,
darted through the wake of the boat with arrowy
swiftness, and sprang up the side with the agility of a
tiger-cat. The lady reappeared from the cabin as
they jumped dripping upon the deck; the Kentuckian
shook himself, and sat down in the sun to dry; and
the graceful and stern Indian, too proud even to put
the wet hair away from his forehead, resumed his
place, and folded his arms, as indifferent and calm,
save the suppressed heaving of his chest, as if he had
never stirred from his stone-like posture.

An hour or two more brought us to the foot of the
Catskills, and here the boat lay alongside the pier to
discharge those of her passengers who were bound to
the house on the mountain. A hundred or more
moved to the gangway at the summons to get ready,
and among them the southerners and the Kentuckian.
I had begun to feel an interest in our fair fellow-passenger,
and I suddenly determined to join their party
— a resolution which the Englishman seemed to come
to at the same moment, and probably for the same
reason.

We slept at the pretty village on the bank of the
river, and the next day made the twelve hours' ascent
through glen and forest, our way skirted with the
most gorgeous and odorent flowers, and turned aside
and towered over the trees whose hoary and moss-covered
trunks would have stretched the conceptions
of the “Savage Rosa.” Everything that was not
lovely was gigantesque and awful. The rocks were
split with the visible impress of the Almighty power
that had torn them apart, and the daring and dizzy
crags spurred into the sky, as if the arms of a buried
and phrensied Titan were thrusting them from the
mountain's bosom. It gave one a kind of maddening
desire to shout and leap — the energy with which it
filled the mind so out-measured the power of the frame.

Near the end of our journey, we stopped together
on a jutting rock, to look back on the obstacles we
had overcome. The view extended over forty or fifty
miles of vale and mountain, and, with a half-shut eye,
it looked, in its green and lavish foliage, like a near
and unequal bed of verdure, while the distant Hudson
crept through it like a half-hid satin riband, lost as if
in clumps of moss among the broken banks of the
highlands. I was trying to fix the eye of my companion
upon West Point, when a steamer, with its
black funnel and retreating line of smoke, issued as if
from the bosom of the hills into an open break of the
river. It was as small apparently as the white hand
that pointed to it so rapturously.

“Oh!” said the half-breathless girl, “is it not like
some fairy bark on an eastern stream, with a spice-lamp
alight in its prow?”

“More like an old shoe afloat, with a cigar stuck in
it,” interrupted Kentucky.

As the sun began to kindle into a blaze of fire, the
tumultuous masses, so peculiar to an American sky,
turning every tree and rock to a lambent and rosy
gold, we stood on the broad platform on which the
house is built, braced even beyond weariness by the
invigorating and rarified air of the mountain. A hot
supper and an early pillow, with the feather beds and
blankets of winter, were unromantic circumstances,
but I am not aware that any one of the party made
any audible objection to them; I sat next the Kentuckian
at table, and can answer for two.

A mile or two back from the mountain-house, on
nearly the same level, the gigantic forest suddenly
sinks two or three hundred feet into the earth, forming
a tremendous chasm, over which a bold stag might
almost leap, and above which the rocks hang on
either side with the most threatening and frowning
grandeur. A mountain-stream creeps through the
forest to the precipice, and leaps as suddenly over, as
if, Arethusa-like, it fled into the earth from the pursuing
steps of a satyr. Thirty paces from its brink,
you would never suspect, but for the hollow reverberation
of the plunging stream, that anything but a
dim and mazy wood was within a day's journey. It
is visited as a great curiosity in scenery, under the
name of Cauterskill Falls.

We were all on the spot by ten the next morning,
after a fatiguing tramp through the forest; for the
Kentuckian had rejected the offer of a guide, undertaking
to bring us to it in a straight line by only the
signs of the water-course. The caprices of the little
stream had misled him, however, and we arrived half-dead
with the fatigue of our cross-marches.

I sat down on the bald edge of the precipice, and
suffered my more impatient companions to attempt
the difficult and dizzy descent before me. The Kentuckian
leaped from rock to rock, followed daringly
by the southerner; and the Englishman, thoroughly
enamored of the exquisite child of nature, who knew
no reserve beyond her maidenly modesty, devoted
himself to her assistance, and compelled her with
anxious entreaties to descend more cautiously. I lay
at my length as they proceeded, and with my head
over the projecting edge of the most prominent crag,
watched them in a giddy dream, half-stupified by the
grandeur of the scene, half-interested in their motions.

They reached the bottom of the glen at last, and
shouted to the two who had gone before, but they had
followed the dark passage of the stream to find its
vent, and were beyond sight or hearing.

After sitting a minute or two, the restless but over-fatigued
girl rose to go nearer the fall, and I was remarking
to myself the sudden heaviness of her steps,
when she staggered, and turning toward her companion,
fell senseless into his arms. The closeness of the
air below, combined with over-exertion, had been too
much for her.

The small hut of an old man who served as a guide
stood a little back from the glen, and I had rushed
into it, and was on the first step of the descent with a
flask of spirits, when a cry from the opposite crag, in
the husky and choking scream of infuriated passion,
suddenly arrested me. On the edge of the yawning
chasm, gazing down into it with a livid and death-like
paleness, stood the southerner. I mechanically followed
his eye. His sister lay on her back upon a flat
rock immediately below him, and over her knelt the
Englishman, loosening the dress that pressed close
upon her throat, and with his face so near to hers as to
conceal it entirely from the view. I felt the brother's
misapprehension at a glance, but my tongue clung to
the roof of my mouth; for in the madness of his fury
he stood stretching clear over the brink, and every
instant I looked to see him plunge headlong. Be
fore I could recover my breath, he started back, gazed
wildly round, and seizing upon a huge fragment of
rock, heaved it up with supernatural strength, and
hurled it into the abyss. Giddy and sick with horror,
I turned away and covered up my eyes. I felt assured
he had dashed them to atoms.

The lion roar of the Kentuckian was the first sound
that followed the thundering crash of the fragments.

“Hallo, youngster! what in tarnation are you arter?
You've killed the gal, by gosh!”

The next moment I heard the loosened stones as he
went plunging down into the glen, and hurrying after
him with my restorative, I found the poor Englishman
lying senseless on the rocks, and the fainting girl,
escaped miraculously from harm, struggling slowly to
her senses.

On examination, the new sufferer appeared only
stunned by a small fragment which had struck him
on the temple, and the Kentuckian, taking him up in
his arms like a child, strode through the spray of the
fall, and held his head under the descending torrent
till he kicked lustily for his freedom. With a draught
from the flask, the pale Alabamian was soon perfectly
restored, and we stood on the rock together looking
at each other like people who had survived an earthquake.

We climbed the ascent and found the brother lying
with his face to the earth, beside himself with his
conflicting feelings. The rough tongue of the Kentuckian
to whom I had explained the apparent cause
of the rash act, soon cleared up the tempest, and he
joined us presently, and walked back by his sister's
side in silence.

We made ourselves into a party to pass the remainder
of the summer on the lakes, unwillingly letting off
the Kentuckian, who was in a hurry to get back to
propose himself for the legislature.

Three or four years have elapsed, and I find myself
a traveller in England. Thickly sown as are the
wonders and pleasures of London, an occasional dinner
with a lovely countrywoman in — Square, and
a gossip with her husband over a glass of wine, in
which Cauterskill Falls are not forgotten, are memorandums
in my diary never written but in “red
letters.”

THE GIPSY OF SARDIS.

Our tents were pitched in the vestibule of the house
of Crœsus, on the natural terrace which was once the
imperial site of Sardis. A humpbacked Dutch artist,
who had been in the service of Lady Hester Stanhope
as a draughtsman, and who had lingered about between
Jerusalem and the Nile till he was as much at
home in the east as a Hajji or a crocodile; an Englishman
qualifying himself for “The Travellers';”
a Smyrniote merchant in figs and opium; Job Smith
(my inseparable shadow) and myself, composed a
party at this time (August, 1834), rambling about
Asia Minor in turbans and Turkish saddles, and pitching
our tents, and cooking our pilau, wherever it
pleased Heaven and the inexorable suridji who was
our guide and caterer.

I thought at the time that I would compound to
abandon all the romance of that renowned spot, for a
clean shirt and something softer than a marble frustrum
for a pillow; but in the distance of memory, and my

self at this present in a deep morocco chair in the
library at “The Travellers';” the same scene in the
ruins of Sardis does not seem destitute of interest.

It was about four in the lazy summer afternoon.
We had arrived at Sardis at mid-day, and after a
quarrel whether we should eat immediately or wait till
the fashionable hour of three, the wooden dish containing
two chickens buried in a tumulus of rice,
shaped (in compliment to the spirit of the spot) like
the Mound of Alyattis in the plain below, was placed
in the centre of a marble pedestal; and with Job and
the Dutchman seated on the prostrate column dislodged
for our benefit, and the remainder of the party squatted
in the high grass, which grew in the royal palace as if
it had no memory of the foot-prints of the kings of
Lydia, we spooned away at the saturated rice, and
pulled the smothered chickens to pieces with an independence
of knives and forks that was worthy of the
“certain poor man in Attica.” Old Solon himself,
who stood, we will suppose, while reproving the ostentatious
monarch, at the base of that very column now
ridden astride by an inhabitant of a country of which
he never dreamed — (at least it strikes me there is no
mention of the Yankees in his philosophy) — the old
graybeard of the Academy himself, I say, would have
been edified at the primitive simplicity of our repast.
The salt (he would have asked if it was Attic) was
contained in a ragged play-bill, which the Dutchman
had purloined as a specimen of Modern Greek, from
the side of a house in Corfu; the mustard was in a
cracked powder-horn, which had been slung at the
breast of old Whalley the regicide, in the American
revolution, and which Job had brought from the Green
mountains, and held, till its present base uses, in religious
veneration; the ham (I should have mentioned
that respectable entremet before) was half enveloped
in a copy of the “Morning Post;” and the bread,
which had been seven days out from Smyrna, and had
been kept warm in the suridji's saddle bags twelve
hours in the twenty-four, lay in disjecta membra around
the marble table, with marks of vain but persevering
attacks in its nibbled edges. The luxury of our larder
was comprised in a flask which had once held Harvey's
sauce, and though the last drop had served as a
condiment to a roasted kid some three months before,
in the Acropolis at Athens, we still clung to it with
affectionate remembrance, and it was offered and refused
daily around the table for the melancholy pleasure
of hearing the mention of its name It was unlucky
that the only thing which the place afforded of the
best quality, and in sufficient quanities, was precisely
the one thing in the world for which no individual of
the party had any particular relish — water! It was
brought in a gourd from the bed of the “golden-sanded
Pactolus,” rippling away to the plain within pistol-shot
of the dining-room; but, to the shame of our simplicity
I must record, that a high-shouldered jug of
the rough wine of Samos, trodden out by the feet of
the lovely slaves of the Ægcan, and bought for a farthing
the bottle, went oftener to the unclassical lips of
the company. Methinks, now (the wind east in London,
and the day wet and abominable). I could barter
the dinner that I shall presently discuss, with its suite
of sherries and anchovy, to kneel down by that golden
river in the sunshine, and drink a draught of pure
lymph under the sky of effeminate Asia. Yet, when
I was there — so rarely do we recognise happiness till
she is gone — I wished myself (where I had never been)
in “merry England.” “Merry,” quotha? Scratch
it out, and write comfortable. I have seen none
“merry” in England, save those who have most cause
to be sad — the abandoned of themselves and the
world!

Out of the reach of ladies and the laws of society,
the most refined persons return very much to the natural
instincts from which they have departed in the
progress of civilization. Job rolled off the marble
column when there was nothing more to eat, and went
to sleep with the marks of the Samian wine turning
up the corners of his mouth like the salacious grin of
a satyr. The Dutchman got his hump into a hollow,
and buried his head in the long grass with the same obedience
to the prompting of nature, and idem the suridji
and the fig-merchant, leaving me seated alone among
the promiscuous ruins of Sardis and the dinner. The
dish of philosophy I had with myself on that occasion
will appear as a rechauffe in my novel (I intend to
write one); but meantime I may as well give you the
practical inference; that, as sleeping after dinner is
evidently Nature's law, Washington Irving is highly
excusable for the practice, and he would be a friend of
reason who should introduce couches and coffee at that
somnolent period, the digestive nap taking the place
of the indigestible politics usually forced upon the company
on the disappearance of the ladies. Why should
the world be wedded for ever to these bigoted inconveniences!

The grand track from the south and west of Asia
Minor passes along the plain between the lofty Acropolis
of Sardis and the tombs of her kings; and with
the snore of travellers from five different nations in
my ear, I sat and counted the camels in one of the
immense caravans never out of sight in the valley of
the Hermus. The long procession of those brown
monsters wound slowly past on their way to Smyrna,
their enormous burthens covered with colored trappings
and swaying backward and forward with their disjointed
gait, and their turbaned masters dozing on the
backs of the small asses of the east, leading each a
score by the tether at his back; the tinkling of their
hundred bells swarmed up through the hot air of the
afternoon with the drowsiest of monotones; the native
oleanders, slender-leaved and tall, and just now in all
their glory, with a color in their bright flowers stolen
from the bleeding lips of Houris, brightened the plains
of Lydia like the flush of sunset lying low on the earth;
the black goats of uncounted herds browsed along the
ancient Sarabat, with their bearded faces turned every
one to the faintly coming wind: the eagles (that abound
now in the mountains from which Sardis and a hundred
silent cities once scared their bold progenitors) sailed
slowly and fearlessly around the airy citadel that flung
open its gates to the Lacedæmonian; and, gradually,
as you may have lost yourself in this tangled paragraph,
dear reader, my senses became confused among the
objects it enumerates, and I fell asleep with the speech
of Solon in my ears, and my back to the crumbling
portico of Crœsus.

The Dutchman was drawing my picture when I
awoke, the sun was setting, and Job and the suridji
were making tea. I am not a very picturesque object,
generally speaking, but done as a wild Arab lying at
the base of a column in a white turban, with a stork's
nest over my head, I am not so ill-looking as you would
suppose. As the Dutchman drew for gelt, and hoped
to sell his picture to some traveller at Smyrna who
would take that opportunity to affirm in his book that
he had been at Sardis (as vide his own sketch), I do
not despair of seeing myself yet in lithograph. And,
talking of pictures, I would give something now if I
had engaged that hump-backed draughtsman to make
me a sketch of Job, squat on his hams before a fire in
the wall, and making tea in a tin pot with a “malignant
and turbaned Turk,” feeding the blaze with the
dry thorn of Syria.[5] It would have been consolation
to his respectable mother, whom he left in the Green
mountains (wondering what he could have to do with
following such a scapegrace as myself through the

world), to have seen him in the turban of a Hajji taking
his tea quietly in ancient Lydia. The green turban,
the sign of the Hajji, belonged more properly to
myself; for though it was Job who went bodily to
Jerusalem (leaving me ill of a fig-fever at Smyrna), the
sanctity of the pilgrimage by the Mohammedan law
falls on him who provides the pilgrim with scallop-shell
and sandals, aptly figured forth in this case, we will suppose,
by the sixty American dollars paid by myself for
his voyage to Jaffa and back. The suridji was a
Hajji, too, and it was amusing to see Job, who respected
every man's religious opinions, and had a little
vanity besides in sharing with the Turk[6] the dignity of
a pilgrimage to the sacred city, washing his knees and
elbows at the hour of prayer, and considerately, but
very much to his own inconvenience, transferring the
ham of the unclean beast from the Mussulman's saddle-bags
to his own. It was a delicate sacrifice to a
pagan's prejudices worthy of Socrates or a Christian.

2. II.

In all simple states of society, sunset is the hour of
better angels. The traveller in the desert remembers
his home — the sea-tost boy his mother and her last
words — the Turk talks, for a wonder, and the chattering
Greek is silent, for the same — the Italian forgets
his mustache, and hums la patria — and the Englishman
delivers himself of the society of his companions,
and “takes a walk.” It is something in the influences
of the hour, and I shall take trouble, some day, to
maintain that morn, noon, and midnight, have their
ministry as well, and exercise each an unobserved but
salutary and peculiar office on the feelings.

We all separated “after tea;” the Suridji was off to
find a tethering place for his horses; the Englishman
strolled away by himself to a group of the “tents of
Kedar” far down in the valley with their herds and
herdsmen; the Smyrniote merchant sat by the camel-track
at the foot of the hill waiting for the passing of a
caravan; the Green-Mountaineer was wandering around
the ruins of the apostolic church; the Dutchman was
sketching the two Ionic shafts of the fair temple of
Cybele; and I, with a passion for running water which
I have elsewhere alluded to, idled by the green bank
of the Pactolus, dreaming sometimes of Gyges and
Alexander, and sometimes of you, dear Mary!

I passed Job on my way, for the four walls over
which the “Angel of the Church of Sardis” kept his
brooding watch in the days of the Apocalypse stand
not far from the swelling bank of the Pactolus, and
nearly in a line between it and the palace of Crœsus. I
must say that my heart almost stood still with awe as I
stepped over the threshold. In the next moment, the
strong and never-wasting under-current of early religious
feeling rushed back on me, and I involuntarily
uncovered my head, and felt myself stricken with the
spell of holy ground. My friend, who was never without
the Bible that was his mother's parting gift, sat on
the end of the broken wall of the vestibule with the
sacred volume open at the Revelation in his hand.

“I think, Philip,” said he, as I stood looking at him
in silence, “I think my mother will have been told by
an angel that I am here.”

He spoke with a solemnity that, spite of every other
feeling, seemed to me as weighty and true as prophecy.

“Listen, Philip,” said he, “it will be something to
tell your mother as well as mine, that we have read the
Apocalypse together in the Church of Sardis.”

I listened with what I never thought to have heard
in Asia — my mother's voice loud at my heart, as I had
heard it in prayer in my childhood: —

“Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have
not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with
me in white: for they are worthy.”

I strolled on. A little farther up the Pactolus stood
the Temple of Cybele. The church to which “He”
spoke “who hath the seven spirits of God and the seven
stars,” was a small and humble ruin of brick and mortar;
but, of the temple of the Heathen Mother of the
world, remained two fair columns of marble with their
curiously carved capitals, and the earth around was
strewn with the gigantic frusta of an edifice, stately
even in the fragments of its prostration. I saw for a
moment the religion of Jupiter and of Christ with the
eyes of Crœsus and the philosopher from Athens; and
then I turned to the living nations that I had left to
wander among these dead empires, and looking still
on the eloquent monuments of what these religions
were, thought of them as they are, in wide-spread
Christendom.

We visit Rome and Athens, and walk over the ruined
temples of their gods of wood and stone, and take pride
to ourselves that our imaginations awake the “spirit
of the spot.” But the primitive church of Christ, over
which an angel of God kept watch — whose undefiled
members, if there is truth in Holy Writ, are now
“walking with him in white” before the face of the
Almighty — a spot on which the Savior and his apostles
prayed, and for whose weal, with the other churches
of Asia, the sublime revelation was made to John —
this, the while, is an unvisited shrine, and the “classic”
of pagan idolatry is dearer to the memories of men
than the holy antiquities of a religion they profess!

3. III.

The Ionic capitals of the two fair columns of the
fallen temple were still tinged with rosy light on the
side toward the sunset, when the full moon, rising
in the east, burnished the other like a shaft of silver.
The two lights mingled in the sky in a twilight
of opal.

“Job,” said I, stooping to reach a handful of sand
as we strolled up the western bank of the river, “can
you resolve me why the poets have chosen to call this
pretty stream the `golden-sanded Pactolus?' Did you
ever see sand of a duller gray?”

“As easy as give you a reason,” answered Job,
“why we found the turbidus Hermus, yesterday, the
clearest stream we have forded — why I am no more
beautiful than before, though I have bathed like Venus
in the Scamander — why the pumice of Naxos no
longer reduces the female bust to its virgin proportions
— and why Smyrna and Malta are not the best
places for figs and oranges!”

“And why the old king of Lydia, who possessed
the invisible ring, and kept a devil in his dog's collar,
lies quietly under the earth in the plain below us, and
his ring and his devil were not bequeathed to his successors.
What a pleasant auxiliary to sin must have
been that invisible ring! Spirit of Gyges, thrust thy
finger out of the earth, and commit it once more to a
mortal! Sit down, my dear monster, and let us speculate
in this bright moonshine on the enormities we
would commit!”

As Job was proceeding, in a cautious periphrasis,
to rebuke my irreverent familiarity with the prince of
darkness and his works, the twilight had deepened,
and my eye was caught by a steady light twinkling far
above us in the ascending bed of the river. The green
valley wound down from the rear of the Acropolis, and
the single frowning tower stood in broken and strong
relief against the sky; and from the mass of shadow below
peered out, like a star from a cloud-rack, the steady
blaze of a lamp.

“Allons! Job!” said I, making sure of an adventure,
“let us see for whose pleasure a lamp is lit in
the solitude of this ruined city.”

“I could not answer to your honored mother,” said
my scrupulous friend, “if I did not remind you that
this is a spot much frequented by robbers, and that
probably no honest man harbors at that inconvenient
altitude.”

I made a leap over a half-buried frieze that had
served me as a pillow, and commenced the ascent.

“I could as ill answer to your anxious parent,” said
Job, following with uncommon alacrity, “if I did not
partake your dangers when they are inevitable.”

We scrambled up with some difficulty in the darkness,
now rolling into an unseen hollow, now stumbling
over a block of marble — held fast one moment by the
lacerating hooked thorn of Syria, and the next brought
to a stand-still by impenetrable thickets of brushwood.
With a half hour's toil, however, we stood on a clear
platform of grass, panting and hot; and as I was suggesting
to Job that we had possibly got too high, he
laid his hand on my arm, and, with a sign of silence,
drew me down on the grass beside him.

In a small fairy amphitheatre, half encircled by a
bend of the Pactolus, and lying a few feet below the
small platform from which we looked, lay six low tents,
disposed in a crescent opposite to that of the stream,
and enclosing a circular area of bright and dewy grass,
of scarce ten feet in diameter. The tents were round,
and laced neatly with wicker-work, with their curtaindoors
opening inward upon the circle. In the largest
one, which faced nearly down the valley, hung a small
iron lamp of an antique shape, with a wick alight in
one of its two projecting extremities, and beneath it
swung a basket-cradle suspended between two stakes,
and kept in motion by a woman apparently of about
forty, whose beauty, but for another more attractive
object, would have rewarded us alone for our toil. The
other tents were closed and seemed unoccupied, but the
curtain of the one into which our eyes were now straining
with intense eagerness, was looped entirely back to
give admission to the cool night air; and, in and out,
between the light of the lamp and the full moon, stole
on naked feet a girl of fifteen, whose exquisite symmetry
and unconscious but divine grace of movement
filled my sense of beauty as it had never been filled by
the divinest chisel of the Tribune. She was of the
height and mould of the younger water-nymph in
Gibson's Hylas,[7] with limbs and lips that, had I created
and warmed her to life like Pygmalion, I should
have just hesitated whether or not they wanted another
half-shade of fulness. The large shawl of the east,
which was attached to her girdle, and in more guarded
hours concealed all but her eyes, hung in loose
folds from her waist to her heels, leaving her bust and
smoothly-rounded shoulders entirely bare; and, in
strong relief even upon her clear brown skin, the flakes
of her glossy and raven hair floated over her back, and
swept around her with a grace of a cloud in her indolent
motions. A short petticoat of striped Brusa silk
stretched to her knees, and below appeared the full
trowser of the east, of the same material, narrowed at
the ankle, and bound with what looked in the moonlight
an anklet of silver. A profusion of rings on her
fingers, and a gold sequin on her forehead, suspended
from a colored fillet, completed her dress, and left
nothing to be added by the prude or the painter. She
was at that ravishing and divinest moment of female
life, when almost the next hour would complete her
womanhood — like the lotus ere it lays back to the
prying moonlight the snowy leaf nearest its heart.

She was employed in filling a large jar which stood
at the back of the tent, with water from the Pactolus,
and as she turned with her empty pitcher, and came
under the full blaze of the lamp in her way outward,
treading lightly lest she should disturb the slumber of
the child in the cradle, and pressing her two round
hands closely to the sides of the vessel, the gradual
compression of my arm by the bony hand which still
held it for sympathy, satisfied me that my own leaping
pulse of admiration found an answering beat in the
bosom of my friend. A silent nod from the woman,
whose Greek profile was turned to us under the lamplight,
informed the lovely water-bearer that her labors
were at an end; and with a gesture expressive of heat,
she drew out the shawl from her girdle, untied the
short petticoat, and threw them aside, and then tripping
out into the moonlight with only the full silken
trowsers from her waist to her ankles, she sat down on
the brink of the small stream, and with her feet in the
water, dropped her head on her knees, and sat as motionless
as marble.

“Gibson should see her now,” I whispered to Job,
“with the glance of the moonlight on that dimpled
and polished back, and her almost glittering hair veiling
about her in such masses, like folds of gossamer!”

“And those slender fingers clasped over her knees,
and the air of melancholy repose which is breathed into
her attitude, and which seems inseparable from those
indolent Asiatics. She is probably a gipsy.”

The noise of the water dashing over a small cascade
a little farther up the stream had covered our approach
and rendered our whispers inaudible. Job's conjecture
was probably right, and we had stumbled on a small
encampment of gipsies — the men possibly asleep in
those closed tents, or possibly absent at Smyrna. After
a little consultation, I agreed with Job that it would
be impolitic to alarm the camp at night, and resolving
on a visit in the morning, we quietly and unobserved
withdrew from our position, and descended to our own
tents in the ruins of the palace.

4. IV.

The suridji had given us our spiced coffee in the
small china cups and filagree holders, and we sat discussing,
to the great annoyance of the storks over our
heads, whether we should loiter another day at Sardis,
or eat melons at noon at Casabar on our way to Constantinople.
To the very great surprise of the Dutchman,
who wished to stay to finish his drawings, Job and
myself voted for remaining — a view of the subject which
was in direct contradiction to our vote of the preceding
evening. The Englishman, who was always in a hurry,
flew into a passion, and went off with the phlegmatic
suridji to look after his horse; and having disposed
of our Smyrniote, by seeing a caravan (which
was not to be seen) coming southward from Mount
Tmolus, I and my monster started for the encampment
of the gipsies.

As we rounded the battered wall of the Christian
church, a woman stepped out from the shadow; through
a tattered dress, and under a turban of soiled cotton set
far over her forehead, and throwing a deep shadow into
her eyes, I recognised at once the gipsy woman whom
we had seen sitting by the cradle.

“Buon giorno, signori,” she said, making a kind of
salaam, and relieving me at once by the Italian salutation
of my fears of being unintelligible.

Job gave her the good-morning, but she looked at
him with a very unsatisfactory glance, and coming
close to my ear, she wished me to speak to her out of
the hearing of “il mio domestico!”

“Amico piu tosto!” I added immediately with a consideration
for Job's feelings, which, I must do myself
the justice to say, I always manifested, except in very
elegant society. I gave myself the greater credit in

this case, as, in my impatience to know the nature of
the gipsy's communication, I might be excused for
caring little at the moment whether my friend was
taken for a gentleman or a gentleman's gentleman.

The gipsy looked vexed at her mistake, and with a
half-apologetic inclination to Job, she drew me into
the shade of the ruin, and perused my face with great
earnestness. “The same to yourself,” thought I, as
I gave back her glance, and searched for her meaning
in two as liquid and loving eyes as ever looked out of
the gates of the Prophet's paradise for the coming of
a young believer. It was a face that had been divine,
and in the hands of a lady of fashion would have still
made a bello rifacimento.

“Inglese?” she said at last.

“No, madre — Americano.”

She looked disappointed.

“And where are you going, filio mio?”

“To Stamboul.”

“Benissimo!” she answered, and her face brightened.
“Do you want a servant?”

“Unless it is yourself, no!”

“It is my son.”

It was on my lips to ask if he was like her daughter,
but an air of uneasiness and mystery in her manner put
me on the reserve, and I kept my knowledge to myself.
She persevered in her suit, and at last the truth came
out, that her boy was bound on an errand to Constantinople,
and she wished safe conduct for him. The
rest of the troop, she said, were at Smyrna, and she
was left in care of the tents with the boy and an infant
child. As she did not mention the girl, who, from the
resemblance, was evidently her daughter — I thought it
unwise to allude to our discovery: and promising that,
if the boy was mounted, every possible care should be
taken of him, I told her the hour on the following
morning when we should be in the saddle, and rid myself
of her with the intention of stealing a march on
the camp.

I took rather a circuitous route, but the gipsy was
there before me, and apparently alone. She had sent
the boy to the plains for a horse, and though I presumed
that the loveliest creature in Asia was concealed
in one or the other of those small tents, the curtains
were closely tied, and I could find no apology for intruding
either my eyes or my inquiries. The handsome
Zingara, too, began to look rather becomingly
fiere; and as I had left Job behind, and was always
naturally afraid of a woman, I reluctantly felt myself
under the necessity of comprehending her last injunction,
and with a promise that the boy should join us
before we reached the foot of Mount Sypilus, she fairly
bowed me off the premises. I could have forsworn
my complexion and studied palmistry for a gipsy, had
the devil then tempted me!

5. V.

We struck our tents at sunrise, and were soon dashing
on through the oleanders upon the broad plain of
the Hermus, the dew lying upon their bright vermeil
flowers like the pellucid gum on the petals of the ice-plant,
and nature, and my five companions, in their
gayest humor. I was not. My thoughts were of
moonlight and the Pactolus, and two round feet
ankle-deep in running water. Job rode up to my
side.

“My dear Phil! take notice that you are nearing
Mount Sypilus, in which the magnetic ore was first
discovered.”

“It acts negatively on me, my dear chum! for I
drag a lengthening chain from the other direction.”

Silence once more, and the bright red flowers still
fled backward in our career. Job rode up again.

“You must excuse my interrupting your revery, but
I thought you would like to know that the town where
we sleep to-night is the residence of the `beys of Oglou,'
mentioned in the `Bride of Abydos.”'

No answer, and the bright red blossoms still flew
scattered in our path as our steeds flew through the
coppice, and the shovel-like blades of the Turkish stirrups
cut into them right and left in the irregular gallop.
Job rode again to my side.

“My dear Philip, did you know that this town of
Magnesia was once the capital of the Turkish empire —
the city of Timour the Tartar?”

“Well!”

“And did you know that when Themistocles was
in exile, and Artaxerxes presented him with the tribute
of three cities to provide the necessaries of life, Magnesia
[8] found him in bread?”

“And Lampascus in wine. Don't bore me, Job!”

We sped on. As we neared Casabar toward noon,
and (spite of romance) I was beginning to think with
complacency upon the melons, for which the town is
famous, a rattling of hoofs behind put our horses upon
their mettle, and in another moment a boy dashed into
the midst of our troop, and reining up with a fine display
of horsemanship, put the promised token into
my hand. He was mounted on a small Arabian mare,
remarkable for nothing but a thin and fiery nostril,
and a most lavish action, and his jacket and turban
were fitted to a shape and head that could not well
be disguised. The beauty of the gipsy camp was
beside me!

It was as well for my self-command, that I had
sworn Job to secrecy in case of the boy's joining us,
and that I had given the elder gipsy, as a token, a very
voluminous and closely-written letter of my mother's.
In the twenty minutes which the reading of so apparently
“lengthy” a document would occupy, I had
leisure to resume my self-control, and resolve on my
own course of conduct toward the fair masquerader.
My travelling companions were not a little astonished
to see me receive a letter by courier in the heart of
Asia, but that was for their own digestion. All the
information I condescended to give, was that the boy
was sent to my charge on his road to Constantinople;
and as Job displayed no astonishment, and entered
simply into my arrangements, and I was the only person
in the company who could communicate with the
suridji (I had picked up a little modern Greek in the
Morea), they were compelled (the Dutchman, John
Bull, and the fig-merchant) to content themselves
with such theories on the subject as Heaven might
supply them withal.

How Job and I speculated apart on what could be
the errand of this fair creature to Constantinople —
how beautifully she rode and sustained her character
as a boy — how I requested her, though she spoke
Italian like her mother, never to open her lips in any
Christian language to my companions — how she slept
at my feet at the khans, and rode at my side on the
journey, and, at the end of seven days, arriving at
Scutari, and beholding across the Bosphorus the golden
spires of Stamboul, how she looked at me with tears
in her unfathomable eyes, and spurred her fleet Arab
to his speed to conceal her emotion, and how I felt
that I could bury myself with her in the vizier's
tomb we were passing at the moment, and be fed on
rice with a goule's bodkin, if so alone we might not
be parted — all these are matters which would make
sundry respectable chapters in a novel, but of which
you are spared the particulars in a true story. There
was a convenience both to the dramatist and the audience
in the “cetera intus agentur” of the Romans.

6. VI.

We emerged from the pinnacled cypresses of the
cemetery overlooking Constantinople, and dismount

ing from my horse, I climbed upon the gilded turban
crowning the mausoleum of a royal Ichoglan (a sultan's
page, honored more in his burial than in his life),
and feasted my eyes on the desecrated but princely
fair birth-right of the Palæologi. The Nekropolis —
the city of the dead — on the outermost tomb of whose
gloomy precincts I had profanely mounted, stands
high and black over the Bosphorus on one side, while
on the other, upon similar eminences, stand the gleaming
minarets and latticed gardens of the matchless city
of the living — as if, while Europe flung up her laughing
and breathing child to the sun, expiring Asia, the
bereaved emperess of the world, lifted her head to the
same heavens in majestic and speechless sorrow.

But oh! how fairer than Venice in her waters —
than Florence and Rome in their hills and habitations,
than all the cities of the world in that which is most
their pride and glory — is this fairest metropolis of the
Mahomets! With its two hundred mosques, each
with a golden sheaf of minarets laying their pointed
fingers against the stars, and encircled with the fretted
galleries of the callers to prayer, like the hand of a
cardinal with its costly ring — with its seraglio gardens
washed on one side by the sea, and on the other by the
gentle stream that glides out of the “Valley of Sweet
Waters;” men-of-war on one side, flaunting their red
pennants over the nightingale's nest which sings for
the delight of a princess, and the swift caique on the
other gliding in protected waters, where the same imprisoned
fair one might fling into it a flower (so slender
is the dividing cape that shuts in the bay) — with
its Bosphorus, its radiant and unmatched Bosphorus —
the most richly-gemmed river within the span of the
sun, extending with its fringe of palaces and castles
from sea to sea, and reflecting in its glassy eddies a
pomp and sumptuousness of costume and architecture
which exceeds even your boyish dreams of Bagdad
and the califs — Constantinople, I say, with its turbaned
and bright-garmented population — its swarming
sea and rivers — its columns, and aqueducts, and
strange ships of the east — is impenetrable seraglio,
and its close-shuttered harems — its bezestein and its
Hippodrome — Constantinople lay before me! If the
star I had worshipped had descended to my hand out
of the sky — if my unapproachable and yearning dream
of woman's beauty had been bodied forth warm and
real — if the missing star in the heel of Serpentarius,
and the lost sister of the Pleiades had waltzed back
together to their places — if poets were once more
prophets, not felons, and books were read for the good
that is in them, not for the evil — if love and truth had
been seen again, or any impossible or improbable thing
had come to pass — I should not have felt more thrillingly
than now the emotions of surprise and wonder!

While I stood upon the marble turban of the Ichoglan,
my companions had descended the streets of
Scutari, and I was left alone with the gipsy. She sat
on her Arab with her head bowed to his neck, and
when I withdrew my eye from the scene I have faintly
described, the tear-drops were glistening in the flowing
mane, and her breast was heaving under her embroidered
jacket with uncontrollable grief. I jumped
to the ground, and taking her head between my hands,
pressed her wet cheek to my lips.

“We part here, signor,” said she, winding around
her head the masses of hair that had escaped from
her turban, and raising herself in the saddle as if to
go on.

“I hope not, Maimuna!”

She bent her moist eyes on me with a look or earnest
inquiry.

“You are forbidden to intrust me with your errand
to Constantinople, and you have kept your word to
your mother. But whatever that errand may be, I
hope it does not involve your personal liberty?”

She looked embarrassed, but did not answer.

“You are very young to be trusted so far from your
mother, Maimuna!”

“Signor, si!”

“But I think she can scarce have loved you so well
as I do to have suffered you to come here alone!”

“She intrusted me to you, signor.”

I was well reminded of my promise. I had given
my word to the gipsy that I would leave her child at
the Persian fountain of Tophana. Maimuna was
evidently under a control stronger than the love I half-hoped
and half-feared I had awakened.

“Andiamo!” she said, dropping her head upon her
bosom with the tears pouring once more over it like
rain; and driving her stirrups with abandoned energy
into the sides of her Arabian, she dashed headlong
down the uneven streets of Scutari, and in a few minutes
we stood on the limit of Asia.

We left our horses in the “silver city,”[9] crossing to
the “golden” in a caique, and with Maimuna in my
bosom, and every contending emotion at work in my
heart, the scene about me still made an indelible impression
on my memory. The star-shaped bay, a
mile perhaps in diameter, was one swarm of boats of
every most slender and graceful form, the caikjis, in
their silken shirts, and vari-colored turbans, driving
them through the water with a speed and skill which
put to shame the gondolier of Venice, and almost the
Indian in his canoe; the gilded lattices and belvideres
of the seraglio, and the cypresses and flowering trees
that mingle their gay and sad foliage above them,
were already so near that I could count the roses upon
the bars, and see the moving of the trees in the evening
wind; the muezzins were calling to sunset-prayer,
their voices coming clear and prolonged over the
water; the men-of-war in the mouth of the Bosphorus
were lowering their blood-red flags; the shore we
were approaching was thronged with veiled women,
and bearded old men, and boys with the yellow slipper
and red scull-cap of the east; and watching our approach,
stood apart, a group of Jews and Armenians,
marked by their costume for an inferior race, but looking
to my cosmopolite eye as noble in their black
robes and towering caps as the haughty Mussulman
that stood aloof from their company.

We set foot in Constantinople. It was the suburb
of Tophana, and the suridji pointed out to Maimuna,
as we landed, a fountain of inlaid marble and brass,
around whose projecting frieze were traced inscriptions
in the Persian. She sprang to my hand.

“Remember, Maimuna!” I said, “that I offer you
a mother and a home in another and a happier land.
I will not interfere with your duty, but when your
errand is done, you may find me if you will. Farewell.”

With a passionate kiss in the palm of my hand, and
one beaming look of love and sorrow in her large and
lustrous eyes, the gipsy turned to the fountain, and
striking suddenly to the left around the mosque of
Sultan Selim, she plunged into the narrow street running
along the water-side to Galata.

7. VII.

We had wandered out from our semi-European,
semi-Turkish lodgings on the third morning after our
arrival at Constantinople, and picking our way listlessly
over the bad pavement of the suburb of Pera,
stood at last in the small burying-ground at the summit
of the hill, disputing amicably upon what quarter
of the fair city beneath us we should bestow our share
in the bliss of that June morning.

“It is a heavenly day,” said Job, sitting down unthinkingly
upon a large sculptured turban that formed

the head-stone to the grave of some once-wealthy
pagan, and looking off wistfully toward the green summit
of Bulgurlu.

The difference between Job and myself was a mania,
on his part for green fields, and on mine for human
faces. I knew very well that his remark was a leader
to some proposition for a stroll over the wilder hills of
the Bosphorus, and I was determined that he should
enjoy, instead, the pleasure of sympathy in my nevertiring
amusement of wandering in the crowded bazars
on the other side of the water. The only way to accomplish
it, was to appear to yield the point, and then
rally upon his generosity. I had that delicacy for his
feelings (I had brought him all the way from the Green
mountains at my own expense) never to carry my
measures too ostentatiously.

Job was looking south, and my face was as resolutely
turned north. We must take a caique in any case
at Galata (lying just below us) but if we turned the
prow south in the first instance, farewell at every
stroke to the city! Whereas a northern course took
us straight up the Golden Horn, and I could appear to
change my mind at any moment, and land immediately
in a street leading to the bazars. Luckily, while
I was devising an errand to go up the channel instead
of down, a small red flag appeared gliding through the
forest of masts around the curve of the water-side at
Tophana, and, in a moment more, a high-pooped
vessel, with the carved railings and outlandish rigging
of the ships from the far east, shot out into the
middle of the bay with the strong current of the
Bosphorus, and squaring her lateen sail, she rounded
a vessel lying at anchor with the flag of Palestine, and
steered with a fair wind up the channel of the Golden
Horn. A second look at her deck disclosed to me a
crowd of people, mostly women, standing amid-ships,
and the supposition with which I was about inducing
Job to take a caique and pull up the harbor after her
seemed to me now almost a certainty.

“It is a slave-ship from Trebizond, ten to one, my
dear Job!”

He slid off the marble turban which he had profaned
so unscrupulously, and the next minute we
passed the gate that divides the European from the
commercial suburb, and were plunging down the steep
and narrow straits of Galata with a haste that, to the
slippered and shuffling Turks we met or left behind,
seemed propably little short of madness. Of a hundred
slender and tossing caiques lying in the disturbed
waters of the bay, we selected the slenderest and best
manned; and getting Job in with the usual imminent
danger of driving his long legs through the bottom of
the egg-shell craft, we took in one of the obsequious
Jews who swarm about the pier as interpreters, coiled
our legs under us in the hollow womb of the caique,
and shot away like a nautilus after the slaver.

The deep-lying river that coils around the throbbing
heart of Constantinople is a place of as delicate navigation
as a Venetian lagoon on a festa, or a soiree of
middling authors. The Turk, like your plain-spoken
friend, rows backward, and with ten thousand egg-shells
swarming about him in every direction, and his
own prow rounded off in a pretty iron point, an extra
piastre for speed draws down curses on the caikji and
the Christian dogs who pay him for the holes he lets
into his neighbors' boats, which is only equalled in bitterness
and profusion by the execrations which follow
what is called “speaking your mind.” The Jew
laughed, as Jews do since Shylock, at the misfortunes
of his oppressors; and, in the exercise of his vocation,
translated us the oaths as they came in right and left
— most of them very gratuitous attacks on those (as
Job gravely remarked), of whom they could know very
little — our respected mothers.

The slackening vessel lost her way as she got opposite
the bazar of dried fruits, and, as her yards came
down by the run, she put up her helm, and ran her
towering prow between a piratical-looking Egyptian
craft, and a black and bluff English collier, inscribed
appropriately on the stern as the “snow-drop” from
Newcastle. Down plumped her anchor, and in the
next moment the Jew hailed her by our orders, and
my conjecture was proved to be right. She was from
Trebizond, with slaves and spices.

“What would they do if we were to climb up her
side?” I asked the Israelite.

He stretched up his crouching neck till his twisted
beard hung clear off like a waterfall from his chin, and
looked through the carved railing very intently.

“The slaves are Georgians,” he answered, after
awhile, “and if there were no Turkish purchasers on
board, they might simply order you down again.”

“And if there were — ”

“The women would be considered damaged by a
Christian eye, and the slave merchant might shoot you
or pitch you overboard.”

“Is that all?” said Job, evolving his length very
deliberately from his coil, and offering me a hand the
next moment from the deck of the slaver. Whether
the precedence he took in all dangers arose from affection
for me, or from a praiseworthy indifference to the
fate of such a trumpery collection as his own body
and limbs, I have never decided to my own satisfaction.

In the confusion of port-officers and boats alongside,
all hailing and crying out together, we stood on the
outer side of the deck unobserved, and I was soon intently
occupied in watching the surprise and wonder
of the pretty toys who found themselves for the first
time in the heart of a great city. The owner of their
charms, whichever of a dozen villanous Turks I saw
about them it might be, had no time to pay them very
particular attention, and dropping their dirty veils
about their shoulders, they stood open-mouthed and
staring — ten or twelve rosy damsels in their teens, with
eyes as deep as a well, and almost as large and liquid.
Their features were all good, their skins without a
flaw, hair abundant, and figures of a healthy plumpness
— looking, with the exception of their eyes, which
were very oriental and magnificent, like the great, fat,
pie-eating, yawning, boarding-school misses one sees
over a hedge at Hampstead. It was delicious to see
their excessive astonishment at the splendors of the
Golden Horn — they from the desert mountains of
Georgia or Circassia, and the scene about them
(mosques, minarets, people, and men-of-war, all together),
probably the most brilliant and striking in the
world. I was busy following their eyes and trying to
divine their impressions, when Job seized me by the
arm. An old Turk had just entered the vessel from
the land-side, and was assisting a closely-veiled female
to mount after him. Half a glance satisfied me that it
was the Gipsy of Sardis — the lovely companion of our
journey to Constantinople.

“Maimuna!” I exclaimed, darting forward on the
instant.

A heavy hand struck me back as I touched her, and
as I returned the blow, the swarthy crew of Arabs
closed about us, and we were hurried with a most unceremonious
haste to the side of the vessel. I scarce
know, between my indignation and the stunning effect
of the blow I had received, how I got into the caique,
but we were pulling fast up the Golden Horn by the
time I could speak, and in half an hour were set ashore
on the green bank of the Barbyses, bound on a solitary
ramble up the valley of Sweet Waters.

8. VIII.

The art of printing was introduced into the Mohammedan
empire in the reigns of Achmet III, and
Louis XV. I seldom state a statistical fact, but this

is one I happen to know, and I mention it because the
most fanciful and romantic abode with which I am acquainted
in the world was originally built to contain
the first printing-press brought from the court of Versailles
by Mehemet Effendi, ambassador from the
“Brother of the Sun.” It is now a maison de plaisance
for the sultan's favorite women, and in all the
dreams of perfect felicity which visit those who have
once seen it, it rises as the Paradise of retreats from
the world.

The serai of Khyat-Khana is a building of gold and
marble, dropped down unfenced upon the greensward
in the middle of a long emerald valley, more
like some fairy vision, conjured and forgotten to be
dissolved, than a house to live in, real weather-proof,
and to be seen for the value of one and sixpence. The
Barbyses falls over the lip of a sea-shell (a marble
cascade sculptured in that pretty device), sending up
its spray and its perpetual music close under the gilded
lattice of the sultana, and following it back with the
eye, like a silver thread in a broidery of green velvet,
it comes stealing down through miles of the tenderest
verdure, without tree or shrub upon its borders, but
shut in with the seclusion of an enchanted stream and
valley by mountains which rise in abrupt precipices
from the edges of its carpet of grass, and fling their
irregular shadows across it at every hour save high
noon — sacred in the east to the sleep of beauty and
idleness.

In the loving month of May it is death to set foot in
the Khyat-Khana. The ascending caique is stopped
in the Golden Horn, and on the point of every hill is
stationed a mounted eunuch with drawn sabre. The
Arab steeds of the sultan are picketed on the low-lying
grass of the valley, and his hundred Circassians
come from their perlumed chambers in the seraglio,
and sun their untold loveliness on the velvet banks of
the Barbyses. From the Golden Horn to Belgrade,
twelve miles of greensward (sheltered like a vein of
ore in the bosom of the earth, and winding away after
the course of that pebbly river, unseen, save by the
eye of the sun and stars), are sacred in this passion-born
month from the foot of man, and, riding in their
scarlet arubas with the many-colored ribands floating
back from the horns of their bullocks, and their own
snowy veils dropped from their guarded shoulders and
deep-dyed lips, wander, from sunrise to sunset, these
caged birds of a sultan's delight, longing as wildly
(who shall doubt?) to pass that guarded barrier into
the forbidden world, as we, who sigh for them without,
to fly from falsehood and wrong, and forget that same
world in their bosoms!

How few are content! How restless are even the
most spoiled children of fortune! How inevitably
the heart sighs for that which it has not, even though
its only want is a cloud on its perpetual sunshine!
We were not of those — Job and I — for we were of
that school of philosophers[10] who “had little and
wanted nothing;” but we agreed, as we sat upon the
marble bridge sprung like a wind-lifted cobweb over
the Barbyses, that the envy of a human heart would
poison even the content of a beggar! He is a fool
who is sheltered from hunger and cold and still complains
of fortune; but he is only not a slave or a seraph,
who feeling on the innermost fibre of his sensibility the
icy breath of malice, utters his eternal malison on the
fiend who can neither be grappled with nor avoided.
I could make a paradise with loveliness and sunshine,
if envy could be forbidden at the gate!

We had walked around the Serai and tried all its
entrances in vain, when Job spied, under the shelter
of the southern hill, a blood-red flag flying at the top
of a small tent of the Prophet's green — doubtless concealing
the kervas, who kept his lonely guard over the
precincts. I sent my friend with a “pinch of piastres”
to tempt the trowsered infidel to our will, and he soon
came shuffling in his unmilitary slippers, with keys,
which, the month before, were guarded like the lamp
of Aladdin. We entered. We rambled over the
chambers of the chosen houries of the east; we looked
through their lattices, and laid the palms of our hands
on the silken cushions dimmed in oval spots by the
moisture of their cheeks as they slept; we could see by
the tarnished gold, breast-high at the windows, where
they had pressed to the slender lattices to look forth
upon the valley; and Job, more watchfully alive to
the thrilling traces of beauty, showed me in the diamond-shaped
bars the marks of their moist fingers and
the stain as of lips between, betraying where they had
clung and laid their faces against the trellis in the
indolent attitude of gazers from a wearisome prison.
Mirrors and ottomans were the only furniture; and
never, for me, would the wand of Cornelius Agrippa
have been more welcome, than to wave back into
those senseless mirrors the images of beauty they had
lost.

I sat down on a raised corner of the divan, probably
the privileged seat of the favorite of the hour. Job
stood with his lips apart, brooding in speechless poeticalness
on his own thoughts.

“Do you think, after all,” said I, reverting to the
matter-of-fact vein of my own mind, which was paramount
usually to the romantic — “do you think really,
Job, that the Zuleikas and Fatimas who have by turns
pressed this silken cushion with their crossed feet
were not probably inferior in attraction to the most
third-rate belle of New England? How long would
you love a woman that could neither read, nor write,
nor think five minutes on any given theme? The utmost
exertion of intellect in the loveliest of these deep-eyed
Circassians is probably the language of flowers;
and, good Heavens! think how one of your della
Cruscan sentiments would be lost upon her! And yet,
here you are, ready to go mad with romantic fancies
about women that were never taught even their
letters.”

Job began to hum a stave of his favorite song, which
was always a sign that he was vexed and disenchanted
of himself.

“How little women think,” said I, proceeding with
my unsentimental vein, while Job looked out of the
window, and the kervas smoked his pipe on the sultana's
ottoman — “how little women think that the
birch and the dark closet, and the thumbed and dogeared
spelling-book (or whatever else more refined torments
their tender years in the shape of education),
was, after all, the groundwork and secret of their fascination
over men! What a process it is to arrive at
love! `D-o-g, dog — c-a-t, cat!' If you had not
learned this, bright Lady Melicent, I fear Captain
Augustus Fitz-Somerset would never have sat, as I
saw him last night, cutting your initials with a diamond
ring on the purple-claret glass which had just
poured a bumper to your beauty!”

“You are not far wrong,” said Job, after a long
pause, during which I had delivered myself, unheard,
of the above practical apostrophe — “you are not far
wrong, quoad the women of New England. They
would be considerable bores if they had not learned,
in their days of bread-and-butter, to read, write, and
reason. But, for the women of the softer south and
east, I am by no means clear that education would
not be inconsistent with the genius of the clime. Take
yourself back to Italy, for example, where, for two
mortal years, you philandered up and down between
Venice and Amalfi, never out of the sunshine or away
from the feet of women, and, in all that precious episode
of your youth, never guilty, I will venture to presume,
of either suggesting or expressing a new thought.
And the reason is, not that the imagination is dull, but

that nobody thinks, except upon exigency, in these
latitudes. It would be violent and inapt to the spirit
of the hour. Indolence, voluptuous indolence of body
and mind (the latter at the same time lying broad
awake in its chamber, and alive to every pleasurable
image that passes uncalled before its windows) is the
genius, the only genius, of the night and day. What
would be so discordant as an argument by moonlight
in the Coliseum? What so ill-bred and atrocious as
the destruction by logic of the most loose-spun theory
by the murmuring fountains of the Pamfili? To live
is enough in these lands of the sun. But merely to
live, in ours, is to be bound, Prometheus-like, to a
rock, with a vulture at our vitals. Even in the most
passionate intercourse of love in your northern clime,
you read to your mistress, or she sings to you, or you
think it necessary to drive or ride; but I know nothing
that would more have astonished your Venetian bionda
than, when the lamp was lit in the gondola that you
might see her beauty on the lagune in the starless
night, to have pulled a book from your pocket, and
read even a tale of love from Boccaccio. And that is
why I could be more content to be a pipe-bearer in
Asia than a schoolmaster in Vermont, or, sooner than
a judge's ermine in England, to wear a scrivener's
rags, and sit in the shade of a portico, writing love-letters
for the peasant-girls of Rome. Talk of republics
— your only land of equality is that in which to breathe
is the supreme happiness. The monarch throws open
his window for the air that comes to him past the brow
of a lazzaroni, and the wine on the patrician's lip intoxicates
less than the water from the fountain that is
free to all, though it gush from the marble bosom of a
nymph. If I were to make a world, I would have the
climate of Greece, and no knowledge that did not
come by intuition. Men and women should grow
wise enough, as the flowers grow fair enough, with
sunshine and air, and they should follow their instincts
like the birds, and go from sweet to sweet with as little
reason or trouble. Exertion should be a misdemeanor,
and desire of action, if it were not too monstrous
to require legislation, should be treason to the
state.”

“Long live King Job!”

2. PART II.

I had many unhappy thoughts about Maimuna: the
glance I had snatched on board the Trebizond slaver
let in my memory a pair of dark eyes full of uneasiness
and doubt, and I knew her elastic motions so well,
that there was something in her single step as she
came over the gangway which assured me that she
was dispirited and uncertain of her errand. Who was
the old Turk who dragged her up the vessel's side
with so little ceremony? What could the child of
a gipsy be doing on the deck of a slaver from Trebizond?

With no very definite ideas as to the disposal of
this lovely child should I succeed in my wishes, I had
insensibly made up my mind that she could never be
happy without me, and that my one object in Constantinople
was to get her into my possession. I had a
delicacy in communicating the full extent of my design
to Job, for, aside from the grave view he would take
of the morality of the step, and her probable fate as a
woman, he would have painful and just doubts of my
ability to bear this additional demand upon my means.
Though entirely dependant himself, Job had that natural
contempt for the precions metals, that he could
not too freely assist any one to their possession who
happened to set a value on the amount in his pocket;
and this, I may say, was the one point which, between
my affectionate monster and myself, was not discussed
as harmoniously as the loves of Corydon and Alexis.
The account of his expenditure, which I regularly exacted
of him before he tied on his bandanna at night,
was always more or less unsatisfactory; and though
he would not have hesitated to bestow a whole scudo
unthinkingly on the first dirty dervish he should meet,
he was still sufficiently impressed with the necessity
of economy to remember it in an argument of any
length or importance: and for this and some other
reasons I reserved my confidence upon the intended
addition to my suite.

Not far from the Burnt Column, in the very heart
of Stamboul, lived an old merchant in attar and jessamine,
called Mustapha. Every one who has been at
Constantinople will remember him and his Nubian
slave in a small shop on the right, as you ascend to
the Hippodrome. He calls himself essence-seller to
the sultan, but his principal source of profit is the
stranger who is brought to his divans by the interpreters
in his pay; and to his credit be it said, that, for the
courtesy of his dealings, and for the excellence of his
extracts, the stranger could not well fall into better
hands.

It had been my fortune, on my first visit to Mustapha,
to conciliate his good will. I had laid in my
small stock of spice-woods and essences on that occasion,
and the call which I made religiously every time
I crossed the Golden Horn was purely a matter of
friendship. In addition to one or two trifling presents,
which (with a knowledge of human nature) I
had returned in the shape of two mortal sins — a keg
of brandy and a flask of gin, bought out of the English
collier lying in the bay — in addition to his kind
presents, I say, my large-trowsered friend had made
me many pressing offers of service. There was little
probability, it was true, that I should ever find occasion
to profit by them; but I nevertheless believed
that his hand was laid upon his heart in earnest sincerity,
and in the course of my reflections upon the
fate of Maimuna, it had occurred to me more than
once that he might be of use in clearing up the mystery
of her motions.

“Job!” said I, as we were dawdling along the street
of confectioners with our Jew behind us one lovely
morning, “I am going to call at Mustapha's.”

We had started to go to the haunt of the opium-eaters,
and he was rather surprised at my proposition,
but, with his usual amiableness (very inconvenient
and vexatious in this particular instance), he stepped
over the gutter without saying a word, and made for
the first turning to the right. It was the first time
since we had left New England that I wished myself
rid of his company.

“But, Job,” said I, calling him back to the shady
side of the street, and giving him a great lump of
candy from the nearest stall (its oriental name, by the
way, is “peace-to-your-throat,”) “I thought you were
bent on eating opium to-day?”

My poor friend looked at me for a minute, as if to
comprehend the drift of my remark, and as he arrived
by regular deduction at the result, I read very clearly
in his hideous physiognomy the painful embarrassment
it occasioned him. It was only the day before, that,
in descending the Bosphorus, we had seen a party of
the summary administrators of justice quietly suspending
a Turkish woman and her Greek paramour
from the shutters of a chamber-window — intercourse
with a Christian in that country of liberal legislation
being punishable without trial or benefit of dervish.
From certain observations on my disposition in the
course of my adventures, Job had made up his mind,
I well knew, that my danger was more from Delilah
than the Philistines; and while these victims of love
were kicking their silken trowsers in the air, I saw, by
the look of tender anxiety he cast upon me, from the
bottom of the caique, that the moral in his mind would

result in an increased vigilance over my motions.
While he stood with his teeth stuck full of “peace-to-your-throat,”
therefore, forgetting even the instinct
of mastication in his surprise and sorrow, I well understood
what picture was in his mind, and what construction
he put upon my sudden desire to solitude.

“My dear Philip!” he began, speaking with difficulty
from the stickiness of the candy in his teeth,
“your respected mother — ”

At this instant a kervas, preceding a Turk of rank,
jostled suddenly against him, and as the mounted
Mussulman, with his train of runners and pipe-bearers,
came sweeping by, I took the opportunity of Job's
surprise to slip past with the rest, and, turning down
an ally, quietly mounted one of the saddle-horses
standing for hire at the first mosque, and pursued my
way alone to the shop of the attar-merchant. To
dismount and hurry Mustapha into his inner and private
apartment, with an order to the Nubian to deny
me to everybody who should inquire, was the work of
a minute, but it was scarcely done before I heard Job
breathless at the door.

“Ha visto il signore?” he exclaimed, getting to the
back of the shop with a single stride.

“Effendi, no!” said the imperturbable Turk, and he
laid his hand on his heart, as he advanced, and offered
him with grave courtesy the pipe from his lips.

The Jew had come puffing into the shop with his
slippers in his hand, and dropping upon his hams near
the door, he took off his small gray turban, and was
wiping the perspiration from his high and narrow forehead,
when Job darted again into the street with a
sign to him to follow. The look of despair and exhaustion
with which he shook out his baggy trowsers
and made after the striding Yankee, was too much
even for the gravity of Mustapha. He laid aside his
pipe, and, as the Nubian struck in with the peculiar
cackle of his race, I joined myself in their merriment
with a heartiness to which many a better joke might
have failed to move me.

While Mustapha was concluding his laugh between
the puffs of his amber pipe, I had thrown myself along
the divan, and was studying with some curiosity the
inner apartment in which I had been concealed. A
curtain of thick but tarnished gold cloth (as sacred
from intrusion in the east as the bolted and barred
doors of Europe) separated from the outer shop a
small octagonal room, that, in size and furniture, resembled
the Turkish boudoirs, which, in the luxurious
palaces of Europe, sometimes adjoin a lady's chamber.
The slippered foot was almost buried in the rich carpets
laid, but not fitted to the floor. The divans were
covered with the flowered and lustrous silk of Brusa,
and piled with vari-colored cushions. A perpetual
spice-lamp sent up its thin wreaths of smoke to the
black and carved ceiling, diffusing through the room a
perfume which, while it stole to the innermost fibres
of the brain with a sense of pleasure, weighed on the
eyelids and relaxed the limbs; and as the eye became
more accustomed to the dim light which struggled in
from a window in the arched ceiling, and dissolved in
the luxurious and spicy atmosphere, heaps of the rich
shawls of the east became distinguishable with their
sumptuous dyes, and, in a corner, stood a cluster of
crystal narghiles, faintly reflecting the light in their
dim globes of rose-water, while costly pipes, silver-mounted
pistols, and a rich Damascus sabre in a
sheath of red velvet, added gorgeousness to the apartment.

Mustapha was a bit of a philosopher in his way, and
he had made his own observations on the Europeans
who came to his shop. The secluded and oriental
luxuriousness of the room I have described was one of
his lures to that passion for the picturesque which he
saw in every traveller; and another was his gigantic
Nubian, who, with bracelets and anklets of gold, a
white turban, and naked legs and arms, stood always
at the door of his shop, inviting the passers-by — not to
buy essences and pastilles — but to come in and take
sherbet with his master. You will have been an hour
upon his comfortable divans, have smoked a pipe or
two, and eaten a snowy sherbet or a dish of rice-paste
and sugar, before Mustapha nods to his slave, and produces
his gold-rimmed jars of essences, from which,
with his fat fore-finger, he anoints the palm of your
hand, or, with a compliment to the beauty of your
hair, throws a drop into the curl on your temples.
Meanwhile, as you smoke, the slave lays in the bowl
of your pipe a small pastille wrapped in gold leaf,
from which presently arrives to your nostrils a perfume
that might delight a sultan; and then, from the
two black hands which are held to you full of cubical-edged
vials with gilded stoppers, you are requested
with the same bland courtesy to select such as in
size or shape suit your taste and convenience — the
smallest of them, when filled with attar, worth near a
gold piastre.

This is not very ruinous, and your next temptation
comes in the shape of a curiously-wrought censer,
upon the filagree grating of which is laid strips of
odorent wood which, with the heat of the coals beneath,
give out a perfume like gums from Araby.
This, Mustapha swears to you by his beard, has a
spell in its spicy breath provocative as a philtre, and
is to be burnt in your lady's chamber. It is worth its
weight in gold, and for a handful of black chips you
are persuaded to pay a price which would freight a
caique with cinnamon. Then come bracelets, and
amulets, and purses, all fragrant and precious, and,
while you hesitate, the Nubian brings you coffee that
would open the heart of Shylock, and you drink and
purchase. And when you have spent all your money,
you go away delighted with Mustapha, and quite persuaded
that you are vastly obliged to him. And, all
things considered, so you are!

When Mustapha had finished his prayers (did I say
that it was noon?) he called in the Nubian to roll up
the sacred carpet, and then closing the curtain between
us and the shop, listened patiently to my story
of the gipsy, which I told him faithfully from the
beginning. When I arrived at the incident on board
the slaver, a sudden light seemed to strike upon his
mind.

“Pekhe, filio mio! pekhe!” he exclaimed, running
his fore-finger down the middle of his beard, and
pouring out a volume of smoke from his mouth and
nostrils which obscured him for a moment from my
sight.

(I dislike the introduction of foreign words into a
story, but the Turkish dissyllable in the foregoing
sentence is as constantly on an eastern lip as the amber
of the pipe.)

He clapped his hands as I finished my narration,
and the Nubian appeared. Some conversation passed
between them in Turkish, and the slave tightened his
girdle, made a salaam, and taking his slippers at the
outer door, left the shop.

“We shall find her at the slave-market,” said Mustapha.

I started. The thought had once or twice passed
through my mind, but I had as often rejected it as
impossible. A freeborn Zingara, and on a confidential
errand from her own mother! — I did not see how
her freedom, if there were danger, should have been
so carelessly put in peril.

“And if she is there!” said I; remembering, first,
that it was against the Mohammedan law for a Christian
to purchase a slave, and next, that the price, if it did
not ruin me at once, would certainly leave me in a situation
rather to lessen than increase my expenses.

“I will buy her for you,” said Mustapha.

The Nubian returned at this moment, and laid at

my feet a bundle of wearing apparel. He then took
from a shelf a shaving apparatus, with which he proceeded
to lather my forehead and temples, and after a
short argument with Mustapha, in which I pleaded in
vain for two very seducing clusters of curls, those
caressed minions dropped into the black hand of the
slave, and nothing was left for the petits soins of my
thumb and fore-finger in their leisure hours save a
well-coaxed and rather respectable mustache. A
scull-cap and turban completed the transformation of
my head, and then, with some awkwardness, I got
into a silk shirt, big trowsers, jacket, and slippers, and
stood up to look at myself in the mirror. I was as
like one of the common Turks of the street as possible,
save that the European cravat and stockings had
preserved an unoriental whiteness in my neck and
ankles. This was soon remedied with a little brown
juice, and after a few cautions from Mustapha as to my
behavior, I settled my turban and followed him into
the street.

It is a singular sensation to be walking about in a
strange costume, and find that nobody looks surprised.
I could not avoid a slight feeling of mortification at
the rude manner with which every dirty mussulman
took the wall of me. After long travel in foreign
lands, the habit of everywhere exciting notice as a
stranger, and the species of consequence attached to
the person and movements of a traveller, become
rather pleasures than otherwise, and it is not without
pain that one finds oneself once more like common
people. I have not yet returned to my own land
(Slingsby is an American, gentle reader), and can not
judge, therefore, how far this feeling is modified by
the pleasures of a recovered home; but I was vexed
not to be stared at when playing the Turk at Constantinople,
and, amusing as it was to be taken for an
Englishman on first arriving in England (different as
it is from every land I have seen, and still more different
from my own), I must confess to have experienced
again a feeling of lessened consequence, when, on my
first entrance into an hotel in London, I was taken for
an Oxonian, “come up for a lark” in term-time. Perhaps
I have stumbled in this remark upon one of those
unconfessed reasons why a returned traveller is proverbially
discontented with his home.

Whether Mustapha wished to exhibit his new pipe-bearer
to his acquaintances, or whether there was fun
enough in his obese composition to enjoy my difficulties
in adapting myself to my new circumstances, I
can not precisely say; but I soon found that we were
not going straight to the slave-market. I had several
times forgotten my disguise so far as to keep the narrow
walk till I stood face to face with the bearded
Mussulmans, who were only so much astonished at my
audacity that they forgot to kick me over the gutter;
and passing, in the bazar of saddle-cloths, an English
officer of my acquaintance, who belonged to the
corvette lying in the Bosphorus, I could not resist the
temptation of whispering in his ear the name of his
sweetheart (which he had confided to me over a bottle
at Smyrna), though I rather expected to be seized
by the turban the next moment, with the pleasant consequences
of a mob and an exposure. My friend was
so thoroughly amazed, however, that I was deep in
the crowd before he had drawn breath, and I look
daily now for his arrival in England (I have not seen
him since), with a curiosity to know how he supposes
a “blackguard Turk” knew anything of the lock of
hair he carried in his waistcoat pocket.

The essence-seller had stopped in the book-bazar,
and was condescendingly smoking a pipe, with his
legs crossed on the counter of a venerable Armenian,
who sat buried to the chin in his own wares, when
who should come pottering along (as Mrs. Butler would
say) but Job with his Jew behind him. Mustapha
(probably unwilling to be seen smoking with an Ar
menian) had ensconced himself behind a towering
heap of folios, and his vexed and impatient pipe-bearer
had taken his more humble position on the narrow
base of one of the chequered columns which are peculiar
to the bazar devoted to the bibliopolists. As
my friend came floundering along “all abroad” with
his legs and arms, as usual, I contrived, by an adroit
insertion of one of my feet between his, to spread him
over the musty tomes of the Armenian in a way calculated
to derange materially the well-ordered sequence
of the volumes.

“Allah! Mashallah!” exclaimed Mustapha, whose
spreading lap was filled with black-letter copies of the
Khoran, while the bowl of his pipe was buried in the
fallen pyramid.

“Bestia Inglese!” muttered the Armenian, as Job
put one hand in the inkstand in endeavoring to rise,
and with the next effort laid his blackened fingers on
a heap of choice volumes bound in snowy vellum.

The officious Jew took up the topmost copy, marked
like a cinq-foil with his spreading thumb and fingers,
and quietly asked the Armenian what il signore would
be expected to pay. As I knew he had no money in
his pocket, I calculated safely on his new embarrassment
to divert his anger from the original cause of his
overthrow.

“Tre colonati,” said the bookseller.

Job opened the book, and his well-known guttural
of surprise and delight assured me that I might come
out from behind the column and look over his shoulder.
It was an illuminated copy of Hafiz, with a
Latin translation — a treasure which his heart had
been set upon from our first arrival in the east,
and for which I well knew he would sell his coat
off his back without hesitation. The desire to give
it him passed through my mind, but I could see no
means, under my present circumstances, either of
buying the book or relieving him from his embarrassment;
and as he buried his nose deeper between
the leaves, and sat down on the low counter, forgetful
alike of his dilemma and his lost friend, I nodded
to Mustapha to get off as quietly as possible,
and, fortunately slipping past both him and the
Jew unrecognised, left him to finish the loves of
Gulistan and settle his account with the incensed
Armenian.

2. II.

As we entered the gates of the slave-market, Mustapha
renewed his cautions to me with regard to my
conduct, reminded me that, as a Christian, I should see
the white female slaves at the peril of my life, and immediately
assumed, himself, a sauntering and poco-curante
manner, equally favorable to concealment and to his
interests as a purchaser. I followed close at his heels
with his pipe, and, as he stopped to chat with his acquaintances,
I now and then gave a shove with the bowl
between his jacket and girdle, rendered impatient to the
last degree by the sight of the close lattices on every
side of us, and the sounds of the chattering voices
within.

I should have been interested, had I been a mere
spectator, in the scene about me, but Mustapha's unnecessary
and provoking delay, while (as I thought possible,
if she really were in the market), Maimuna might
be bartered for at that moment within, wound my rage
to a pitch at last scarcely endurable.

We had come up from a cellar to which one of Mustapha's
acquaintances had taken him to see a young
white lad he was about to purchase, and I was hoping
that my suspense was nearly over, when a man came forward
into the middle of the court, ringing a hand-bell,
and followed by a black girl, covered with a scant blanket.
Like most of her race (she was an Abyssinian), her
head was that of a brute, but never were body and limbs

more exquisitely moulded. She gazed about without
either surprise or shame, stepping after the crier with
an elastic, leopard-like tread, her feet turned in like
those of the North American Indian, her neck bent
gracefully forward, and her shoulders and hips working
with that easy play so lost in the constrained dress and
motion of civilized women. The Mercury of Giovanni
di Bologna springs not lighter from the jet of the fountain
than did this ebon Venus from the ground on which
she stood.

I ventured to whisper to Mustapha, that, under cover
of the sale of the Abyssinian, we might see the white
slaves more unobserved.

A bid was made for her.

“Fifteen piastres!” said the attar-seller, wholly absorbed
in the sale, and not hearing a syllable I said to
him, “She would be worth twice as much to gild my
pastilles!” And handing me his pipe, he waddled into
the centre of the court, lifted the blanket from the slave's
shoulders, turned her round and round, like a Venus
on a pivot, looked at her teeth and hands, and after a
conversation aside with the crier, he resumed his pipe,
and the black disappeared from the ground.

“I have bought her!” he said, with a salacious grin,
as I handed him his tobacco-bag, and muttered a round
Italian execration in his ear.

The idea that Maimuna might have become the
property of that gross and sensual monster just as easily
as the pretty negress he had brought, sent my blood
boiling for an instant to my cheek. Yet I had seen this
poor savage of seventeen sold without a thought, save
mental congratulation that she would be better fed and
clad. What a difference one's private feelings make
in one's sympathies!

I was speculating, in a kind of tranquil despair, on
the luxurious evils of slavery, when Mustapha called to
him an Egyptian, in a hooded blue cloak, whom I remembered
to have seen on board the Trebisondian.
He was a small-featured, black-lipped, willowy Asiatic,
with heavy-lidded eyes, and hands as dry and rusty as
the claws of a harpy. After a little conversation, he
rose from the platform on which he had crossed his
legs, and taking my pro-tempore master by the sleeve,
traversed the quadrangle to a closed door in the best-looking
of the miserable houses that surrounded the
court. I followed close upon his heels with a beating
heart. It seemed to me as if every eye in the crowded
market-place must penetrate my disguise. He knocked,
and answering to some one who spoke from within,
the door was opened, and the next moment I found myself
in the presence of a dozen veiled women, seated in
various attitudes on the floor. At the command of our
conductor, carpets were brought for Mustapha and himself;
and, as they dropped upon their hams, every veil
was removed, and a battery of staring and unwinking
eyes was levelled full upon us.

“Is she here?” said Mustapha to me in Italian, as
I stooped over to hand him his eternal pipe.

“Dio mio! no!”

I felt insulted, that with half a glance at the Circassian
and Georgian dolls sitting before us, he could ask
me the question. Yet they were handsome! Red
cheeks, white teeth, black eyes, and youth could scarce
compose a plain woman; and thus much of beauty
seemed equally bestowed on all.

“Has he no more?” I asked, stooping to Mustapha's
ear.

I looked around while he was getting the information
I wanted in his own deliberate way; and, scarce
knowing what I did, applied my eye to a crack in the
wall, through which had been coming for some time a
strong aroma of coffee. I saw at first only a small dim
room, in the midst of which stood a Turkish manghal,
or brazier of coals, sustaining the coffee-pot from which
came the agreeable prefume I had inhaled. As my
eye became accustomed to the light, I could distinguish
a heap of what I took to be shawls lying in the centre
of the floor; and presuming it was the dormitory of one
of the slave-owners, I was about turning my head away,
when the coffee on the manghal suddenly boiled over,
and at the same instant started, from the heap at which
I had been gazing, the living form of Maimuna!

“Mustapha!” I cried, starting back, and clasping
my hands before him.

Before I could utter another word, a grasp upon my
ankle, that drew blood with every nail, restored me to
my self-possession. The Circassians began to giggle,
and the wary old Turk, taking no apparent notice of
my agitation, ordered me, in a stern tone, to fill his
pipe, and went on conversing with the Egyptian.

I leaned with an effort at carelessness against the
wall, and looked once more through the crevice. She
stood by the manghal, filling a cup with a small filagree-holder
from the coffee-pot, and by the light of the
fire I could see every feature of her face as distinctly
as daylight. She was alone, and had been sitting
with her head on her knees, and the shawl, which had
now fallen to her shoulders, drawn over her till it concealed
her feet. A narrow carpet was beneath her,
and as she moved from the fire, a slight noise drew my
attention downward, and I saw that she was chained by
the ankle to the floor. I stooped to the ear of Mustapha,
told him in a whisper of my discovery, and implored
him, for the love of Heaven, to get admission
into her apartment.

“Pekhe! pekhe! filio mio!” was the unsatisfactory
answer to my impatience, while the Egyptian rose and
proceeded to turn around, in the light of the window,
the fattest of the fair Circassians, from whom he had
removed every article of dress save her slippers and
trousers.

I returned to the crevice. Maimuna had drunk her
coffee, and stood, with her arms folded, thoughtfully
gazing on the fire. The expression in her beautiful
and youthful face was one I could scarcely read to my
satisfaction. The slight lips were firmly but calmly
compressed, the forehead untroubled, the eye alone
strained, and unnaturally fixed and lowering. I
looked at her with the heart beating like a hammer in
my bosom, and the impatience in my trembling limbs
which it required every consideration of prudence to
suppress. She moved slowly away at last, and sinking
again to her carpet, drew out the chain from beneath
her, and drawing the shawl once more over her
head, lay down, and sunk apparently to sleep.

Mustapha left the Circassian, whose beauties he had
risen to examine more nearly, and came to my side.

“Are you sure that it is she?” he asked, in an almost
inaudible whisper.

“Si!”

He took the pipe from my hand, and requested me,
in the same suppressed voice, to return to his shop.

“And Maimuna” —

His only answer was to point to the door, and thinking
it best to obey his orders implicity, I made the
best of my way out of the slave-market, and was soon
drinking a sherbet in his inner apartment, and listening
to the shuffle of every passing slipper for the coming
of the light step of the gipsy.

3. III.

The rules of good-breeding discountenance in society
what is usually called “a scene.” I detest it as
well on paper. There is no sufficient reason, apparent
to me, why my sensibilities should be drawn upon
at sight, as I read, any more than when I please myself
by following my own devices in company. Violent
sensations are, abstractly as well as conventionally,
ill-bred. They derange the serenity, fluster the manner,
and irritate the complexion. It is for this reason
that I forbear to describe the meeting between Maimuna

and myself after she had been bought for forty
pounds by the wily and worthy seller of essences and
pastilles — how she fell on my neck when she discovered
that I, and not Mustapha, was her purchaser and master
— how she explained, between her hysterical sobs,
that the Turk who had sold her to the slave-dealer was
a renegade gipsy, and her mother's brother (to whom
she had been on an errand of affection) — and how she
sobbed herself to sleep with her face in the palms of
my hands, and her masses of raven hair covering my
knees and feet like the spreading fountains of San Pietro
— and how I pressed my lips to the starry parting
of those raven tresses on the top of her fairest head,
and blessed the relying child as she slept — are circumstances,
you will allow, my dear madam! that could
not be told passably well without moving your amiable
tenderness to tears. You will consider this paragraph,
therefore, less as an ingenious manner of disposing of
the awkward angles of my story, than as a polite and
praise-worthy consideration of your feelings and complexion.
Flushed eyelids are so very unbecoming!

4. IV.

My confidential interviews with Job began to take
rather an unpleasant coloring. The forty pounds I
had paid for Maimuna's liberty, with the premium to
Mustapha, the suit of European clothes necessary to
disguise my new companion, and the addition of a
third person in our European lodgings at Pera, rather
drove my finances to the wall. Job cared very little
for the loss of his allowance of pocket-money, and
made no resistance to eating kibaubs at a meat-shop,
instead of his usual silver fork and French dinner at
Madame Josepino's. He submitted with the same
resignation to a one-oared caique on the Bosphorus,
and several minor reductions in his expenses, thinking
nothing a hardship, in short, which I shared cheerfully
with him. He would have donned the sugar-loaf hat
of a dervish, and begged his way home by Jerusalem
or Mecca, so only I was content. But the morality of
the thing!

“What will you do with this beautiful girl when
you get to Rome? how will you dispose of her in
Paris? how will your friends receive a female, already
arrived at the age of womanhood, who shall have
travelled with you two or three years on the continent?
how will you provide for her? how educate her? how
rid yourself of her, with any Christian feeling of compassion,
when she has become irrevocably attached to
you?”

We were pulling up to the Symplegades while my
plain-spoken Mentor thrust me these home questions,
and Maimuna sat coiled between my feet in the bottom
of the caique, gazing into my face with eyes that
seemed as if they would search my very soul for the
cause of my emotion. We seldom spoke English in
her presence, for the pain it gave her when she felt
excluded from the conversation amounted in her all-expressive
features to a look of anguish that made it
seem to me a cruelty. She dared not ask me, in
words, why I was vexed; but she gathered from Job's
tone that there was reproof in what he said, and
flashing a glance of inquiring anger at his serious
face, she gently stole her hand under the cloak to
mine, and laid the back of it softly in my palm. There
was a delicacy and a confidingness in the motion that
started a tear into my eye; and as I smiled through it,
and drew her to me and impressed a kiss on her forehead,
I inwardly resolved, that, as long as that lovely
creature should choose to eat of my bread, it should
be free to her in all honor and kindness, and, if need
were, I would supply to her, with the devotion of my
life, the wrong and misconstruction of the world.
As I turned over that leaf in my heart, there crept
through it a breath of peace, and I felt that my good
angel had taken me into favor. Job began to fumble
for the lunch, and the dancing caique shot forth merrily
into the Black sea.

“My dearest chum!” said I, as we sat round our
brown paper of kibaubs on the highest point of the
Symplegades, “you see yourself here at the outermost
limit of your travels.”

His mouth was full, but as soon as he could conveniently
swallow, he responded with the appropriate
sigh.

“Six thousand miles, more or less, lie between you
and your spectacled and respectable mother; but
nineteen thousand, the small remainder of the earth's
circumference, extending due east from this paper of
cold meat, remain to you untravelled!”

Job fixed his eye on a white sea-bird apparently
asleep on the wing, but diving away eastward into the
sky, as if it were the heart within us sped onward with
our boundless wishes.

“Do you not envy him?” he asked enthusiastically.

“Yes; for nature pays his travelling expenses, and
I would our common mother were as considerate to
me! How soon, think you, he will see Trebisond,
posting at that courier speed?”

“And Shiraz, and Isaphan, and the valley of Cashmere!
To think how that stupid bird will fly over
them, and, spite of all that Hafiz, and Saadi, and Tom
Moore, have written on the lands that his shadow may
glide throught, will return, as wise as he went, to
Marmora! To compound natures with him were a
nice arrangement, now!”

“You would be better looking, my dear Job!”

“How very unpleasant you are, Mr. Slingsby! But
really, Philip, to cast the slough of this expensive and
il-locomotive humanity, and find yourself afloat with
all the necessary apparatus of life stowed snugly into
breast and tail, your legs tucked quietly away under
you, and, instead of coat and unmentionables to be put
off and on and renewed at such inconvenient expense, a
self-renewing tegument of cleanly feathers, brushed
and washed in the common course of nature by wind
and rain — no valet to be paid and drilled — no dressing-case
to be supplied and left behind — no tooth-brushes
to be mislaid — no tight boots — no corns — no passports
nor host-horses! Do you know, Phil, on reflection, I
find this `mortal coil' a very inferior and inconvenient
apparatus!”

“If you mean your own, I quite agree with you.”

“I am surprised, Mr. Slingsby, that you, who value
yourself on knowing what is due from one highly-civilized
individual to another, should indulge in these
very disagreeable reflections!”

Maimuna did not quite comprehend the argument,
but she saw that the tables were turned, and, without
ill-will to Job, she paid me the compliment of always
taking my side. I felt her slender arm around my
neck, and as she got upon her knees behind me and
put forward her little head to get a peep at my lips, her
clear bird-like laugh of enjoyment and triumph added
visibly to my friend's mortification. A compunctious
visiting stole over me, and I began to feel that I should
scarce have revenged myself for what was, after all,
but a kind severity.

“Do you know, Job,” said I (anxious to restore his
self-complacency without a direct apology for my rudeness),
“do you know there is a very deep human truth
hidden in the familiar story of `Beauty and the Beast?'
I really am of opinion, that, between the extremes of
hideousness and the highest perfection of loveliness,
there is no face which, after a month's intercourse,
does not depend exclusively on its expression (or, in
other words, on the amiable qualities of the individual)
for the admiration it excites. The plainest features
become handsome unaware when associated only with
kind feelings, and the loveliest face disagreeable when
linked with ill-humor or caprice. People should re

member this when selecting a face which they are to
see every morning across the breakfast-table for the remainder
of their natural lives.”

Job was appeased by the indirect compliment contained
in this speech; and, gathering up our kibaubs,
we descended to the caique, and pulling around the
easternmost point of the Symplegades, bade adieu to
the orient, and took the first step westward with the
smile of conciliation on our lips.

We were soon in the strong current of the Bosphorus,
and shot swiftly down between Europe and Asia,
by the light of a sunset that seemed to brighten the
west for our return. It was a golden path homeward.
The east looked cold behind; and the welcome of
our far-away kinsmen seemed sent to us on those purpling
clouds, winning us back. Beneath that kindling
horizon — below that departed sun — lay the fresh and
free land of our inheritance. The light of the world
seemed gone over to it. These, from which the day
had declined, were countries of memory — ours, of
hope. The sun, that was setting on these, was dawning
gloriously on ours.

On ordinary occasions, Job would have given me a
stave of “Hail Columbia!” after such a burst of patriotism.
The cloud was on his soul, however.

“We have turned to go back,” he said, in a kind of
musing bitterness, “and see what we are leaving behind!
In this fairy-shaped boat you are gliding like a
dream down the Bosphorus. The curving shore of
Therapia yonder is fringed for miles with the pleasure-loving
inhabitants of this delicious land, who think a
life too short, of which the highest pleasure is to ramble
on the edge of these calm waters with their kinsmen
and children. Is there a picture in the world
more beautiful than that palace-lined shore? Is there
a city so magnificent under the sun as that in which it
terminates? Are there softer skies, greener hills,
simpler or better people, to live among, than these?
Oh, Philip! ours, with all its freedom, is a `working-day'
land. There is no idleness there! The sweat is
ever on the brow, the `serpent of care' never loosened
about the heart! I confess myself a worshipper of
leisure: I would let no moment of my golden youth
go by unrecorded with a pleasure. Toil is ungodlike,
and unworthy of the immortal spirit, that should walk
unchained through the world. I love these idle orientals.
Their sliding and haste-forbidding slippers, their
flowing and ungirded habiliments, are signs most expressive
of their joy in life. Look around, and see
how on every hill-top stands a maison de plaisance;
how every hill-side is shelved into those green platforms,
[11] so expressive of their habits of enjoyment!
Rich or poor, their pleasures are the same. The
open air, freedom to roam, a caique at the water-side,
and a sairgah on the hill — these are their means of
happiness, and they are within the reach of all; they
are nearer Utopia than we, my dear Philip! We shall
be more like Turks than Christians in paradise!”

“Inglorious Job!”

“Why? Because I love idleness? Are there
braver people in the world than the Turks? Are
there people more capable of the romance of heroism?
Energy, though it sound a paradox, is the child of
idleness. All extremes are natural and easy; and the
most indolent in peace is likely to be the most fiery in
war. Here we are, opposite the summer serai of Sultan
Mahmoud; and who more luxurious and idle?
Yet the massacre of the Janissaries was one of the
boldest measures in history. There is the most perfect
orientalism in the description of the Persian beauty
by Hafiz: —

`Her heart is full of passion, and her eyes are full of sleep.'
Perhaps nothing would be so contradictory as the true
analysis of the character of what is called an indolent
man. With all the tastes I have just professed, my
strongest feeling on leaving the Symplegades, for example,
was, and is still, an unwillingness to retrace my
steps. `Onward! onward!' is the perpetual cry of
my heart. I could pass my life in going from land to
land, so only that every successive one was new. Italy
will be old to us; France, Germany, can scarce lure
the imagination to adventure, with the knowledge we
have; and England, though we have not seen it, is so
familiar to us from its universality that it will not seem,
even on a first visit, a strange country. We have satiety
before us, and the thought saddens me. I hate
to go back. I could start now, with Maimuna for a
guide, and turn gipsy in the wilds of Asia.”

“Will you go with him, Maimuna?”

“Signor, no!”

I am the worst of story-tellers, gentle reader; for I
never get to the end. The truth is, that in these rambling
papers, I go over the incidents I describe, not as
they should be written in a romance, but as they occurred
in my travels: I write what I remember. There
are, of course, long intervals in adventure, filled up
sometimes by feasting or philosophy, sometimes with
idleness or love; and, to please myself, I must unweave
the thread as it was woven. It is strange how,
in the memory of a traveller, the most wayside and unimportant
things are the best remembered. You may
have stood in the Parthenon, and, looking back upon
it through the distance of years, a chance word of the
companion who happened to be with you, or the attitude
of a Greek seen in the plain below, may come up
more vividly to the recollection than the immortal
sculptures on the frieze. There is a natural antipathy
in the human mind to fulfil expectations. We wander
from the thing we are told to admire, to dwell on
something we have discovered ourselves. The child
in church occupies itself with the fly on its prayerbook,
and “the child is father of the man.” If I indulge
in the same perversity in story-telling, dear
reader — if, in the most important crisis of my tale, I
digress to some trifling vein of speculation — if, at the
close even, the climax seem incomplete, and the moral
vain — I plead, upon all these counts, an adherence to
truth and nature. Life — real life — is made up of half-finished
romance. The most interesting procession of
events is delayed, and travestied, and mixed with the
ridiculous and the trifling, and at the end, oftenest left
imperfect. Who ever saw, off the stage, a five-act
tragedy, with its proprieties and its climax?

3. PART III.

Ten o'clock A. M., and the weather like the prophet's
paradise,

Madame Josepino stood at the door of her Turco-Italian
boarding-house in the nasty and fashionable main
street of Pera, dividing her attention between a handsome
Armenian, with a red button in the top of his
black lamb's-wool cap,[12] and her three boarders, Job,
Maimuna, and myself, at that critical moment about
mounting our horses for a gallop to Belgrade.

We kissed our hands to the fat and fair Italian, and
with a promise to be at home for supper, kicked our
shovel-shaped stirrups into the sides of our horses, and
pranced away up the street, getting many a glance of
curiosity, and one or two that might be more freely
translated, from the dark eyes that are seen day and
night at the windows of the leaden-colored houses of
the Armenians.

We should have been an odd-looking cavalcade for
the Boulevard or Bond street, but, blessed privilege of
the east! we were sufficiently comme il faut for Pera.
To avoid the embarrassment of Maimuna's sex, I had
dressed her, from an English “slop-shop” at Galata,
in the checked shirt, jacket, and trowsers of a sailor-boy,
but as she was obstinately determined that her
long black hair should not be shorn, a turban was her
only resource for concealment, and the dark and
glossy mass was hidden in the folds of an Albanian
shawl, forming altogether as inharmonious a costume
as could well be imagined. With the white duck
trowsers tight over her hips, and the jacket, which was
a little too large for her, loose over her shoulders and
breast, the checked collar tied with a black silk cravat
close round her throat, and the silken and gold fringe
of the shawl flowing coquetishly over her left cheek
and ear, she was certainly an odd figure on horseback,
and, but for her admirable riding and excessive grace of
attitude, she might have been as much a subject for a
caricature as her companion. Job rode soberly along
at her side, in the green turban of a Hajji (which he
had persisted in wearing ever since his pilgrimage to
Jerusalem), and, as he usually put it on askew, the
gaillard and rakish character of his head-dress, and
the grave respectability of his black coat and salt-and-pepper
trowsers, produced a contrast which elicited
a smile even from the admiring damsels at the windows.

Maimuna went caracoling along till the road entered
the black shadow of the cemetery of Pera, and then,
pulling up her well-managed horse, she rode close to
my side, with the air of subdued respect which was
more fitting to the spirit of the scene. It was a lovely
morning, as I said, and the Turks, who are early risers,
were sitting on the graves of their kindred with their
veiled wives and children, the marble turbans in that
thickly-sown nekropolis less numerous than those of the
living, who had come, not to mourn the dead who lay
beneath, but to pass a day of idleness and pleasure on
the spot endeared by their memories.

“I declare to you,” said Job, following Maimuna's
example in waiting till I came up, “that I think the
Turks the most misrepresented and abused people on
earth. Look at this scene! Here are whole families
seated upon graves over which the grass grows green
and fresh, the children playing at their feet, and their
own faces the pictures of calm cheerfulness and enjoyment.
They are the by-word for brutes, and there is
not a gentler or more poetical race of beings between
the Indus and the Arkansas!”

It was really a scene of great beauty. The Turkish
tombs are as splendid as white marble can make them,
with letters and devices in red and gold, and often the
most delicious sculptures, and, with the crowded closeness
of the monuments, the vast extent of the burial-ground
over hill and dale, and the cypresses (nowhere
so magnificent) veiling all in a deep religious shadow,
dim, and yet broken by spots of the clearest sunshine,
a more impressive and peculiar scene could scarce be
imagined. It might exist in other countries, but it
would be a desert. To the Mussulman death is not
repulsive, and he makes it a resort when he would be
happiest. At all hours of the day you find the
tombs of Constantinople surrounded by the living.
They spread their carpets, and arrange their simple
repast around the stone which records the name and
virtues of their own dead, and talk of them as they do
of the living and absent — parted from them to meet
again, if not in life, in paradise.

“For my own part,” continued Job, “I see nothing
in scripture which contradicts the supposition that we
shall haunt, in the intermediate state between death
and heaven, the familiar places to which we have been
accustomed. In that case, how delightful are the habits
of these people, and how cheeringly vanish the horrors
of the grave! Death, with us, is appalling! The
smile has scarce faded from our lips, the light scarce
dead in our eye, when we are thrust into a noisome
vault, and thought of but with a shudder and a fear.
We are connected thenceforth, in the memories of our
friends, with the pestilent air in which we lie, with the
vermin that infest the gloom, with chillness, with darkness,
with disease; and, memento as it is of their own
coming destiny, what wonder if they chase us, and the
forecast shadows of the grave, with the same hurried
disgust from their remembrance. Suppose, for an instant
(what is by no means improbable), that the
spirits of the dead are about us, conscious and watchful!
Suppose that they have still a feeling of sympathy
in the decaying form they have so long inhabited,
in its organs, its senses, its once-admired and long-cherished
grace and proportion; that they feel the
contumely and disgust with which the features we professed
to love are cast like garbage into the earth, and
the indecent haste with which we turn away from the
solitary spot, and think of it but as the abode of festering
and revolting corruption!”

At this moment we turned to the left, descending to
the Bosphorus, and Maimuna, who had ridden a little
in advance during Job's unintelligible monologue, came
galloping back to tell us that there was a corpse in the
road. We quickened our pace, and the next moment
our horses started aside from the bier, left in a bend of
the highway with a single individual, the grave-digger,
sitting cross-legged beside it. Without looking up at
our approach, the man mumbled something between
his teeth, and held up his hand as if to arrest us in our
path.

“What does he say?” I asked of Maimuna.

“He repeats a verse of the Koran,” she replied,
“which promises a reward in paradise to him who
bears the dead forty steps on its way to the grave.”

Job sprang instantly from his horse, threw the bridle
over the nearest tombstone, and made a sign to the
grave-digger that he would officiate as bearer. The
man nodded assent, but looked down the road without
arising from his seat.

“You are but three,” said Maimuna, “and he waits
for a fourth.”

I had dismounted by this time, not to be behind my
friend in the humanities of life, and the grave-digger,
seeing that we were Europeans, smiled with a kind
of pleased surprise, and uttering the all-expressive
“Pekkhe!” resumed his look-out for the fourth
bearer.

The corpse was that of a poor old man. The coffin
was without a cover, and he lay in it, in his turban
and slippers, his hands crossed over his breast, and
the folds of his girdle stuck full of flowers. He might
have been asleep, for any look of death about him.
His lips were slightly unclosed, and his long beard was
combed smoothly over his breast. The odor of the
pipe and the pastille struggled with the perfume of the
flowers, and there was in his whole aspect a life-likeness
and peace, that the shroud and the close coffin,
and the additional horrors of approaching death, perhaps,
combine, in other countries, utterly to do away.

“Hitherto,” said Job, as he gazed attentively on the
calm old man, “I have envied the Scaligers their uplifted
and airy tombs in the midst of the cheerful street
of Verona, and, next to theirs, the sunny sarcophagus
of Petrarch, looking away over the peaceful Campagna
of Lombardy; but here is a Turkish beggar who will

be buried still more enviably. Is it not a paradise of
tombs — a kind of Utopia of the dead?”

A young man with a load of vegetables for the
market of Pera, came toiling up the hill behind his
mule. Sure of his assistance, the grave-digger arose,
and as we took our places at the poles, the marketer
quietly turned his beast out of the road, and assisted
us in lifting the dead on our shoulders. The grave
was not far off, and having deposited the corpse on its
border, we returned to our horses, and, soon getting
clear of the cemetery, galloped away with light hearts
toward the valley of Sweet Waters.

2. II.

We were taking breath on the silken banks of the
Barbyses — Maimuna prancing along the pebbly bed,
up to her barb's girths in sparkling water, and Job and
myself laughing at her frolics from either side, when
an old woman, bent double with age, came hobbling
toward us from a hovel in the hill-side.

“Maimuna,” said Job, fishing out some trumpery
paras from the corner of his waistcoat pocket, “give
this to that good woman, and tell her that he who gives
it is happy, and would share his joy with her.”

The gipsy spurred up the bank, dismounted at a
short distance from the decrepit creature, and after a
little conversation returned, leading her horse.

“She is not a beggar, and wishes to know why you
give her money?”

“Tell her, to buy bread for her children,” said my
patriarchal friend.

Maimuna went back, conversed with her again, and
returned with the money.

“She says she has no need of it. There is no human
creature between her and Allah!”

The old woman hobbled on, Job pocketed his rejected
paras, and Maimuna rode between us in silence.

It was a gem of natural poetry that was worthy of
the lips of an angel.

3. III.

We kept up the valley of Sweet Waters, tracing
the Barbyses through its bosom, to the hills; and then
mounting a steep ascent, struck across to the east, over
a country, which, though so near the capital of the
Turkish empire, is as wild as the plains of the Hermus.
Shrubs, forest-trees, and wild grass, cover the apparently
illimitable waste, and save a half-visible horse-path
which guides the traveller across, there is scarce
an evidence that you are not the first adventurer in the
wilderness.

What a natural delight is freedom! What a bound
gives the heart at the sight of the unfenced earth, the
unseparated hill-sides, the unhedged and unharvested
valleys! How thrilling it is — unlike any other joy —
to spur a fiery horse to the hill-top, and gaze away
over dell and precipice to the horizon, and never a
wall between, nor a human limit to say “Thus far
shalt thou go, and no farther!” Oh, I think we have
an instinct, dulled by civilization, which is like the
caged eaglet's, or the antelope's that is reared in the
Arab's tent; an instinct of nature that scorns boundary
and chain; that yearns to the free desert; that would
have the earth, like the sea or the sky, unappropriated
and open; that rejoices in immeasurable liberty of foot
and dwelling-place, and springs passionately back to
its freedom even after years of subduing method and
spirit-breaking confinement! I have felt it on the sea,
in the forests of America, on the desolated plains of
Asia and Roumelia; I should feel it till my heart
burst, had I the wings of a bird!

The house once occupied by Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu stands on the descent of a hill in the little village
of Belgrade, some twelve or fourteen miles from
Constantinople. It is a common-place two-story affair,
but the best house of the dozen that form the village,
and overlooks a dell below that reminds one of the
“Emerald valleys of Cashmeer.” We wandered
through its deserted rooms, discussed the clever woman
who has described her travels so graphically, and
then followed Maimuna to the narrow street, in search
of kibaubs. The butcher's shop in Turkey is as open
as the trottoir to the street, and with only an entire
sheep hanging between us and a dozen hungry beggars,
attracted by the presence of strangers, we crossed
our legs on the straw carpet, and setting the wooden
tripod in the centre, waited patiently the movements of
our feeder, who combined in his single person the
three vocations of butcher, cook, and waiter. One
must have travelled east of Cape Colonna to relish a
dinner so slightly disguised, but, once rid of European
prejudices, there is nothing more simple than the fact
that it is rather an attractive mode of feeding — a traveller's
appetite subauditur.

Our friend was a wholesome-looking Turk, with a
snow-white turban, a black, well-conditioned beard, a
mouth incapable of a smile, yet honest, and a most
trenchant and janissaresque style of handling his
cleaver. Having laid open his bed of coals with a
kind of conjurer's flourish of the poker, he slapped the
pendent mutton on the thigh in a fashion of encouragement,
and waiting an instant for our admiration to subside,
he whipping his knife from its sheath, and had out
a dozen strips from the chine (as Job expressed it in
Vermontese) “in no time.” With the same alacrity
these were cut into bits “of the size of a piece of
chalk” (another favorite expression of Job's), run
upon a skewer, and laid on the coals, and in three
minutes, more or less, they appeared smoking on the
trencher, half lost in a fine green salad, well peppered,
and of a most seducing and provocative savor. If you
have performed your four ablutions A.M., like a devout
Mussulman, it is not conceived in Turkey that you
have occasion for the medium of a fork, and I frankly
own, that I might have been seen at Belgrade, cross-legged
in a kibaub-shop, between my friend and the
gipsy, and making a most diligent use of my thumb
and fore-finger. I have dined since at the Rocher de
Cancale and the Traveller's with less satisfaction.

Having paid something like sixpence sterling for
our three dinners (rather an overcharge, Maimuna
thought), we unpicketed our horses from the long
grass, and bade adieu to Belgrade, on our way to the
aqueducts. We were to follow down a verdant valley,
and, exhilarated by a flask of Greek wine (which
I forgot to mention), and the ever-thrilling circumstances
of unlimited greensward and horses that wait
not for the spur, we followed the daring little Asiatic
up hill and down, over bush and precipice, till Job
cried us mercy. We pulled up on the edge of a sheet
of calm water, and the vast marble wall, built by the
sultans in the days of their magnificence and crossing
the valley from side to side, burst upon us like a scene
of enchantment in the wilderness.

Those same sultans must have lived a great deal at
Belgrade. Save these vast aqueducts, which are splendid
monuments of architecture, there is little in the
first aspect to remind you that you are not in the wilds
of Missouri; but a further search discloses, in the recesses
of the hidden windings of the valley, circular
staircases of marble leading to secluded baths, now
filled with leaves and neglected, but evidently on a
scale of the most imperial sumptuousness. From the
perishable construction of Turkish dwelling-houses, all
traces even of the most costly serai may easily have
disappeared in a few years, when once abandoned to
ruin; and I pleased myself with imagining, as we
slackened bridle, and rode slowly beneath the gigantic
trees of the forest, the gilded pavilions, and gay scenes
of oriental pleasure that must have existed here in

the days of the warlike yet effeminate Selims. It is a
place for the enchantments of the “Arabian Nights”
to have been realized.

I have followed the common error in giving these
structures in the forest of Belgrade the name of aqueducts.
They are rather walls built across the deep
valleys, of different altitudes, to create reservoirs for
the supply of aqueducts, but are built with all the
magnificence and ornament of a facade to a temple.

We rode on from one to the other, arriving at last at
the lowest, which divides the valley at its wildest part,
forming a giddy wall across an apparently bottomless
ravine, as dark and impracticable as the glen of the
Cauterskill in America. Our road lay on the other
side, but though with a steady eye one might venture
to cross the parapet on foot, there were no means of
getting our horses over, short of a return of half a mile
to the path we had neglected higher up the valley.
We might swim it, above the embankment, but the
opposite shore was a precipice.

“What shall we do?” I asked.

Job made no answer, but pulled round his beast,
and started off in a sober canter to return.

I stood a moment, gazing on the placid sheet of
water above, and the abyss of rock and darkness below,
and then calling to Maimuna, who had ridden
farther down the bank, I turned my horse's head after
him.

“Signore!” cried the gipsy from below.

“What is it, Carissima?”

“Maimuna never goes back!”

“Silly child!” I answered, “you are not going to
cross the ravine?”

“Yes!” was the reply, and the voice became more
indistinguishable as she galloped away. “I will be
over before you!”

I was vexed, but I knew the self-will and temerity
of the wild Asiatic, and, very certain that if there
were danger it would be run before I could reach
her, I drove the stirrups into my horse's sides, and
overtook Job at the descent into the valley. We ascended
again, and rode down the opposite shore to the
embankment, at a sharp gallop. Maimuna was not
there.

“She will have perished in the abyss,” said Job.

I sprang from my horse to cross the parapet on foot
in search of her, when I heard her horse's footsteps,
and the next moment she dashed up the steep, having
failed in her attempt, and stood once more where we
had parted. The sun was setting, and we had ten
miles to ride, and impatient of her obstinacy, I sharply
ordered her to go up the ravine at speed, and cross as
we had done.

I think I never shall forget, angry as I was at the
moment, the appearance of that lovely creature, as
she resolutely refused to obey me. Her horse, the
same fiery Arabian she had ridden from Sardis (an
animal that, except when she was on his back, would
scarce have sold for a gold sequin), stood with head
erect and panting nostrils, glancing down with his
wild eyes upon the abyss into which he had been
urged — the whole group, horse and rider, completely
relieved against the sky from the isolated mound they
occupied, and, at this instant, the gold flood of the setting
sun pouring full on them through a break in the
masses of the forest. Her own fierce attitude, and
beautiful and frowning face, the thin lip curled resolutely,
and the brown and polished cheek deepened
with a rosy glow, her full and breathing bosom swelling
beneath its jacket, and her hair, which had escaped
from the turban, flowing over her neck and shoulders,
and mingling with the loosened fringes of red and gold
in rich disorder — it was a picture which the pencil of
Martin (and it would have suited his genius) could
scarce have exaggerated. The stately half Arabic,
half Grecian architecture of the aqueducts, and the
cold and frowning tints of the abyss and the forest
around, would have left him nothing to add to it as a
composition.

I was crossing the giddy edge of the parapet, looking
well to my feet, with the intention of reasoning
with the obstinate being, who, vexed at my reproaches
and her own failure, was now in as pretty a rage as
myself, when I heard the trampling of horses in the
forest. I stopped mid-way to listen, and presently
there sprang a horseman up the bank in an oriental
costume, with pistols and ataghan flashing in the
sun, and a cast of features that at once betrayed his
origin.

“A Zingara!” I shouted back to Job.

The gipsy, who was about nineteen, and as well-made
and gallant a figure for a man as Maimuna for a
woman, seemed as much astonished as ourselves, and
sat in his saddle gazing on the extraordinary figure I
have described, evidently recognising one of his own
race, but probably puzzled with the mixture of costumes,
and struck at the same time with Maimuna's
excessive beauty. Lovely as she always was, I had
never seen her to such advantage as now. She might
have come from fairy-land, for the radiant vision she
seemed in the gold of that burning sunset.

I gazed on them both a moment, and was about
finishing my traverse of the parapet, when a troop of
mounted gipsies and baggage-horses came up the bank
at a quick pace, and in another minute Maimuna was
surrounded. I sprang to her bridle, and apprehensive
of, I scarce knew what danger, gave her one of the
two pistols I carried always in my bosom.

The gipsy chief (for such he evidently was) measured
me from head to foot with a look of dislike, and
speaking for the first time, addressed Maimuna in his
own language, with a remark which sent the blood to
her temples with a suddenness I had never before
seen.

“What does he say?” I asked.

“It is no matter, signore, but it is false!” Her
black eyes were like coals of fire, as she spoke.

“Leave your horse,” I said to her, in a low tone,
“and cross the parapet. I will prevent his following
you, and will join you on your own before you can
reach Constantinople. Turn the horses' heads homeward!”
I continued in English to Job, who was crying
out to me from the other side to come back.

Maimuna laid her hand on the pommel to dismount,
but the gipsy, anticipating her motion, touched his
horse with the stirrup, and sprang with a single leap
between her and the parapet. The troop had gathered
into a circle behind us, and seeing our retreat
thus cut off, I presented my pistol to the young chief,
and demanded, in Italian, that he should clear the
way.

A blow from behind, the instant that I was pulling
the trigger, sent the discharged pistol into the ravine,
and, in the same instant, Maimuna dashed her horse
against the unguarded gipsy, nearly overturning him
into the abyss, and spurred desperately upon the parapet.
One cry from the whole gipsy troop, and then
all was as silent as the grave, except the click of her
horse's hoofs on the marble verge, as, trembling palpably
in every limb, the terrified animal crossed the
giddy chasm at a half trot, and, in the next minute,
bounded up the opposite bank, and disappeared with
a short of fear and delight amid the branches of the
forest.

What with horror and wonder, and the shock of the
blow which had nearly broken my arm. I stood motionless
where Maimuna had left me, till the gipsy, recovering
from his amazement, dismounted and put his
pistol to my breast.

“Call her back!” he said to me, in very good Italian,
and with a tone in which rage and determination
were strangely mingled, “or you die where you stand!”

Without regarding his threat, I looked at him, with
a new thought stealing into my mind. He probably
read the pacific change in my feelings, for he dropped
his arm, and the frown on his own features moderated
to a steadfast and inquisitive regard.

“Zingara!” I said, “Maimuna is my slave.”

A clutch of his pistol-stock, and a fiery and impatient
look from his fine eyes, interrupted me for an instant.
I proceeded to tell him briefly how I had obtained
possession of her, while the troop gradually
closed around, attracted by his excessive look of interest
in the tale, though they probably did not understand
the language in which I spoke, and all fixing
their wild eyes earnestly on my face.

“And now, Zingara,” I said, “I will bring her back
on one condition — that, when the offer is fairly made
her, if she chooses still to go with me, she shall be
free to do so. I have protected her, and sworn still
to protect her as long as she should choose to eat of
my bread. Though my slave, she is pure and guiltless
as when she left the tent of her mother, and is
worthy of the bosom of an emperor.”

The Zingara took my hand, and put it to his lips.

“You agree to our compact, then?” I asked.

He put his hand on his forehead, and then laid it,
with a slight inclination, on his breast.

“She can not have gone far,” I said, and stepping
on the mound above the parapet, I shouted her name
till the woods rang again with the echo.

A moment, and Job and Maimuna came riding to
the verge of the opposite hill, and with a few words
of explanation, fastened their horses to a tree, and
crossed to us by the parapet.

The chief returned his pistols to his girdle, and
stood aside while I spoke to Maimuna. It was a difficult
task, but I felt that it was a moment decisive of
her destiny, and the responsibility weighed heavily on
my breast. Though excessively attached to her —
though she had been endeared to me by sacrifices, and
by the ties of protection — though, in short, I loved
her, not with a passion, but with an affection — as a
father more than as a lover — I still felt it to be my duty
to leave no means untried to induce her to abandon
me, to return to her own people and remain in her own
land of the sun. What her fate would be in the state
of society to which I must else introduce her, had
been eloquently depicted by Job, and will readily be
imagined by the reader.

After the first burst of incredulity and astonishment
at my proposal, she folded her arms on her bosom,
and, with the tears streaming like rain over her jacket,
listened in silence and with averted eyes. I concluded
with representing to her, in rather strong colors,
the feelings with which she might be received by my
friends, and the difficulty she would find in accommodating
herself to the customs of people, to whom not
only she must be inferior in the accomplishments of
a woman, but who might find, even in the color of that
loveliest cheek, a reason to despise her.

Her lip curled for an instant, but the grief in her
heart was stronger than the scorn for an imaginary
wrong, and she bowed her head again, and her tears
flowed on.

I was silent at last, and she looked up into my face.

“I am a burthen to you,” she said.

“No, dearest Maimuna! no! but if I were to see
you wretched hereafter, you would become so. Tell
me! the chief will make you his wife; will you rejoin
your people?”

She flung herself upon the ground, and wept as if
her heart would break. I thought it best to let her
feelings have away, and walking apart with the young
gipsy, I gave him more of the particulars of her history,
and exacted a promise that, if she should finally
be left with the troop, he would return with her to the
tribe of her mother, at Sardis.

Maimuna stood gazing fixedly into the ravine when
we turned back, and there was an erectness in her attitude,
and a fierte in the air of her head, that, I must
acknowledge, promised more for my fears than my
wishes. Her pride was roused, it was easy with half
a glance to see.

With the suddenness of oriental passion, the young
chief had become already enamored of her, and, with
a feeling of jealousy which, even though I wished him
success, I could not control, I saw him kneel at her
feet and plead with her in an inaudible tone. She had
been less than woman if she had been insensible to
that passionate cadence, and the imploring earnestness
of the noble countenance on which she looked.
It was evident that she was interested, though she
began with scarce deigning to lift her eyes from the
ground.

I felt a sinking of the heart which I can not describe
when he rose to his feet and left her standing alone.
The troop had withdrawn at his command, and Job,
to whom the scene was too painful, had recrossed the
parapet, and stood by his horse's head waiting the result.
The twilight had deepened, the forest looked
black around us, and a single star sprang into the sky,
while the west was still glowing in a fast purpling gold
and crimson.

“Signore!” said Maimuna, walking calmly to my
hand, which I stretched instinctively to receive her,
“I am breaking my heart; I know not what to do.”

At this instant a faint meteor shot over the sky, and
drew its reflection across the calm mirror whose verge
we were approaching.

“Stay!” she cried; “the next shall decide the fate
of Maimuna! If it cross to the east, the will of Allah
be done! I will leave you!”

I called to the gipsy, and we stood on the verge of
the parapet in breathless expectation. The darkness
deepened around us, the abyss grew black and indistinguishable,
and the night-birds flitted past like audible
shadows. I drew Maimuna to my bosom, and
with my hands buried in her long hair, pressed her to
my heart, that beat as painfully and as heavily as her
own.

A sudden shriek! She started from my bosom, and
as she fell upon the earth, my eye caught, on the face
of the mirror from which I had forgetfully withdrawn
my gaze, the vanishing pencil of a meteor, drawn like
a beam of the sunset, from west to east!

I lifted the insensible child, impressed one long kiss
on her lips, and flinging her into the arms of the gipsy,
crossed the parapet, and rode, with a speed that tried
in vain to outrun my anguish, to Constantinople.

TOM FANE AND I.

Tom Fane's four Canadian ponies were whizzing
his light phaeton through the sand at a rate that would
have put spirits into anything but a lover absent from
his mistress. The “heaven-kissing” pines towered on
every side like the thousand and one columns of the
Palæologi at Constantinople; their flat and spreading
tops shutting out the light of heaven almost as effectually
as the world of mussulmans, mosques, kiosks,
bazars, and Giaours, sustained on those innumerable
capitals, darkens the subterranean wonder of Stamboul.
An American pine forest is as like a temple,
and a sublime one, as any dream that ever entered
into the architectural brain of the slumbering Martin.
The Yankee methodists in their camp-meetings, have

but followed an irresistible instinct to worship God in
the religious dimness of these interminable aisles of the
wilderness.

Tom Fane and I had stoned the storks together in
the palace of Crœsus at Sardis. We had read Anastasius
on a mufti's tomb in the Nekropolis of Scutari.
We had burned with fig-fevers in the same caravanserai
at Smyrna. We had cooled our hot foreheads
and cursed the Greeks in emulous Romaic in the dim
tomb of Agamemnon at Argos. We had been grave
at Paris, and merry at Rome; and we had pic-nic'd
with the beauties of the Fanar in the Valley of Sweet
Waters in pleasant Roumelia; and when, after parting
in France, he had returned to England and his regiment,
and I to New England and law, whom should
I meet in a summer's trip to the St. Lawrence but
Captain Tom Fane of the — th, quartered at the
cliff-perched and doughty garrison of Quebec, and
ready for any “lark” that would vary the monotony
of duty!

Having eaten seven mess-dinners, driven to the
falls of Montmorenci, and paid my respects to Lord
Dalhousie, the hospitable and able governor of the
Canadas, Quebec had no longer a temptation: and
obeying a magnet, of which more anon, I announced
to Fane that my traps were packed, and my heart sent
on, a l'avant courier, to Saratoga.

“Is the pretty?” said Tom.

“As the starry-eyed Circassian we gazed at through
the grill in the slave-market at Constantinople!” —
(Heaven and my mistress forgive me for the comparison!
— but it conveyed more to Tom Fane than a folio
of more respectful similitudes.)

“Have you any objection to be drawn to your ladylove
by four cattle that would buy the soul of Osbaldiston?”

“`Objection!' quotha?”

The next morning, four double-jointed and well-groomed
ponies were munching their corn in the bow
of a steamer, upon the St. Lawrence, wondering possibly
what, in the name of Bucephalus, had set the
hills and churches flying at such a rate down the river.
The hills and churches came to a stand-still with the
steamer opposite Montreal, and the ponies were landed
and put to their mettle for some twenty miles, where
they were destined to be astonished by a similar flying
phenomenon in the mountains girding the lengthening
waters of Lake Champlain. Landed at Ticonderoga,
a few miles' trot brought them to Lake George and a
third steamer, and, with a winding passage among
green islands and overhanging precipices loaded like
a harvest-wagon with vegetation, we made our last
landing on the edge of the pine forest, where our story
opens.

“Well, I must object,” says Tom, setting his whip
in the socket, and edging round upon his driving-box,
“I must object to this republican gravity of yours. I
should take it for melancholy, did I not know it was
the `complexion' of your never-smiling countrymen.”

“Spare me, Tom! `I see a hand you can not see.'
Talk to your ponies, and let me be miserable, if you
love me.”

“For what, in the name of common sense? Are
you not within five hours of your mistress? Is not
this cursed sand your natal soil? Do not

and in the years that we have dangled about, `here-and-there-ians'
together, were you ever before grave,
sad, or sulky? and will you without a precedent, and
you a lawyer, inflict your stupidity upon me for the
first time in this waste, and being-less solitude? Half
an hour more of the dread silence of this forest, and
it will not need the horn of Astolpho to set me irremediably
mad!”

“If employment will save your wits, you may invent
a scheme for marrying the son of a poor gentleman
to the ward of a rich trader in rice and molasses.”

“The programme of our approaching campaign, I
presume?”

“Simply.”

“Is the lady willing?”

“I would fain believe so.”

“Is Mr. Popkins unwilling?”

“As the most romantic lover could desire.”

“And the state of the campaign?”

“Why, thus: Mr. George Washington Jefferson
Frump, whom you have irreverently called Mr. Popkins,
is sole guardian to the daughter of a dead West
Indian planter, of whom he was once the agent. I fell
in love with Kate Lorimer from description, when she
was at school with my sister, saw her by favor of a
garden-wall, and after the usual vows — ”

“Too romantic for a Yankee, by half!”

“ — Proposed by letter to Mr. Frump.”

“Oh, bathos!”

“He refused me.”

“Because — ”

“Imprimis, I was not myself in the `sugar line,' and
in secundis, my father wore gloves and `did nothing
for a living' — two blots in the eyes of Mr. Frump,
which all the waters of Niagara would never wash from
my escutcheon.”

“And what the devil hindered you from running off
with her?”

“Fifty shares in the Manhattan Insurance Company,
a gold mine in Florida, Heaven knows how many
hogsheads of treacle, and a million of acres on the
banks of the Missouri.”

“`Pluto's flame-colored daughter' defend us! what
a living El Dorado!”

“All of which she forfeits if she marries without old
Frump's consent.”

“I see — I see! And this Io and her Argus are now
drinking the waters at Saratoga?”

“Even so.”

“I'll bet you my four-in-hand to a sonnet, that I get
her for you before the season is over.”

“Money and all?”

“Mines, molasses, and Missouri acres!”

“And if you do, Tom, I'll give you a team of Virginian
bloods that would astonish Ascot, and throw you
into the bargain a forgiveness for riding over me with
your camel on the banks of the Hermus.”

“Santa Maria! do you remember that spongy foot
stepping over your frontispiece? I had already cast
my eyes up to Mont Sypilus to choose a clean niche
for you out of the rock-hewn tombs of the kings of
Lydia. I thought you would sleep with Alyattis,
Phil!”

We dashed on through dark forest and open clearing,
through glens of tangled cedar and wild vine, over
log bridges, corduroy marshes, and sand hills, till, toward
evening, a scattering shanty or two, and an occasional
sound of a woodman's axe, betokened our vicinity
to Saratoga. A turn around a clump of tall pines
brought us immediately into the broad street of the
village, and the flaunting shops, the overgrown, unsightly
hotels, riddled with windows like honeycombs,
the fashionable idlers out for their evening lounge to
the waters, the indolent smokers on the colonnades,
and the dusty and loaded coaches driving from door
to door in search of lodgings, formed the usual evening
picture of the Bath of America.

As it was necessary to Tom's plan that my arrival
at Saratoga should not be known, he pulled up at a
small tavern at the entrance of the street, and dropping
me and my baggage, drove on to Congress Hall,
with my best prayers, and a letter of introduction to
my sister, whom I had left on her way to the Springs

with a party at my departure for Montreal. Unwilling
to remain in such a tantalizing vicinity, I hired a
chaise the next morning, and despatching a note to
Tom, drove to seek a retreat at Barhydt's — a spot that
can not well be described in the tail of a paragraph.

Herr Barhydt is an old Dutch settler, who, till the
mineral springs of Saratoga were discovered some five
miles from his door, was buried in the depth of a forest
solitude, unknown to all but the prowling Indian. The
sky is supported above him (or looks to be) by a wilderness
of straight, columnar pine shafts, gigantic in
girth, and with no foliage except at the top, where
they branch out like round tables spread for a banquet
in the clouds. A small ear-shaped lake, sunk as deep
into the earth as the firs shoot above it, black as Erebus
in the dim shadow of its hilly shore and the obstructed
light of the trees that nearly meet over it, and
clear and unbroken as a mirror, save the pearl-spots
of the thousand lotuses holding up their cups to the
blue eye of heaven that peers through the leafy vault,
sleeps beneath his window; and around him, in the
forest, lies, still unbroken, the elastic and brown carpet
of the faded pine tassels, deposited in yearly layers
since the continent rose from the flood, and rooted a
foot beneath the surface to a rich mould that would
fatten the Sympleglades to a flower-garden. With his
black tarn well stocked with trout, his bit of a farm
in the clearing near by, and an old Dutch bible, Herr
Barhydt lived a life of Dutch musing, talked Dutch to
his geese and chickens, sung Dutch psalms to the
echoes of the mighty forest, and, except on his far-between
visits to Albany, which grew rarer and rarer
as the old Dutch inhabitants dropped faster away, saw
never a white human face from one maple-blossoming
to another.

A roving mineralogist tasted the waters of Saratoga,
and, like the work of a lath-and-plaster Aladdin, up
sprung a thriving village around the fountain's lip, and
hotels, tin tumblers, and apothecaries, multiplied in the
usual proportion to each other, but out of all precedent,
with everything else for rapidity. Libraries,
newspapers, churches, livery stables, and lawyers, followed
in their train; and it was soon established, from
the plains of Abraham to the savannahs of Alabama,
that no person of fashionable taste or broken constitution
could exist through the months of July and August
without a visit to the chalybeate springs and populous
village of Saratoga. It contained seven thousand
inhabitants before Herr Barhydt, living in his
wooded seclusion only five miles off, became aware of
its existence. A pair of lovers, philandering about the
forest on horseback, popped in upon him one June
morning, and thenceforth there was no rest for the
soul of the Dutchman. Everybody rode down to eat
his trout and make love in the dark shades of his mirrored
lagoon; and at last, in self-defence, he added a
room or two to his shanty, enclosed his cabbage-garden,
and put a price upon his trout-dinners. The
traveller now-a-days who has not dined at Barhydt's
with his own champagne cold from the tarn, and the
white-headed old settler “gargling” Dutch about the
house, in his manifold vocation of cook, ostler, and
waiter, may as well not have seen Niagara.

Installed in the back-chamber of the old man's last
addition to his house, with Barry Cornwall and Elia
(old fellow-travellers of mine), a rude chair, a ruder,
but clean bed, and a troop of thoughts so perpetually
from home, that it mattered very little what was the
complexion of anything about me, I waited Tom's operations
with a lover's usual patience. Barhydt's visiters
seldom arrived before two or three o'clock, and the
long, soft mornings, quiet as a shadowy Elysium on the
rim of that ebon lake, were as solitary as a melancholy
man could desire. Didst thou but know, oh! gentle
Barry Cornwall! how gratefully thou hast been read
and mused upon in those dim and whispering aisles of
the forest, three thousand and more miles from thy
smoky whereabout, methinks it would warm up the
flush of pleasure around thine eyelids, though the
“golden-tressed Adelaide” were waiting her goodnight
kisses at thy knee!

I could stand it no longer. On the second evening
of my seclusion, I made bold to borrow old Barhydt's
supernnuated roadster, and getting up the steam with
infinite difficulty in his rickety engine, higgled away,
with a pace to which I could not venture to affix a
name, to the gay scenes of Saratoga.

It was ten o'clock when I dismounted at the stable
in Congress Hall, and, giving der Teufel, as the old
man ambitiously styled his steed, to the hands of the
ostler, stole round through the garden to the eastern
colonnade.

I feel called upon to describe “Congress Hall.”
Some fourteen or fifteen millions of white gentlemen
and ladies consider that wooden and windowed Babylon
as the proper palace of Delight — a sojourn to be
sighed for, and sacrificed for, and economized for —
the birthplace of Love, the haunt of Hymen, the arena
of fashion — a place without which a new lease of life
were valueless — for which, if the conjuring cap of King
Erricus itself could not furnish a season ticket, it
might lie on a lady's toilet as unnoticed as a bride's
night-cap a twelvemonth after marriage. I say to myself,
sometimes, as I pass the window at White's, and
see a worldsick worldling with the curl of satiety and
disgust on his lip, wondering how the next hour will
come to its death, “If you but knew, my friend, what
a campaign of pleasure you are losing in America —
what belles than the bluebell slighter and fairer — what
hearts than the dewdrops fresher and clearer — are living
their pretty hour, like gems undived for in the
ocean — what loads of foliage, what Titans of trees,
what glorious wildernesses of rocks and waters, are
lavishing their splendors on the clouds that sail over
them, and all within the magic circle of which Congress
Hall is the centre, and which a circling dove
would measure to get an appetite for his breakfast — if
you but knew this, my lord, as I know it, you would
not be gazing so vacantly on the steps of Crockford's,
nor consider `the graybeard' such a laggard in his
hours!”

Congress Hall is a wooden building, of which the
size and capacity could never be definitely ascertained.
It is built on a slight elevation, just above the strongly-impregnated
spring whose name it bears, with little attempt
at architecture, save a spacious and vine-covered
colonnade, serving as a promenade on either side, and
two wings, the extremities of which are lost in the distance.
A relic or two of the still-astonished forest
towers above the chimneys, in the shape of a melancholy
group of firs; and, five minutes' walk from the
door, the dim old wilderness stands looking down on
the village in its primeval grandeur, like the spirits of
the wronged Indians, whose tracks are scarce vanished
from the sand. In the strength of the summer solstice,
from five hundred to a thousand people dine together
at Congress Hall, and after absorbing as many
bottles of the best wines of the world, a sunset promenade
plays the valve to the sentiment thus generated,
and, with a cup of tea, the crowd separates to dress
for the nightly ball. There are several other hotels
in the village, equally crowded and equally spacious,
and the ball is given alternately at each. Congress
Hall is the “crack” place, however, and I expect that
Mr. Westcott, the obliging proprietor, will give me the
preference of rooms, on my next annual visit, for this
just and honorable mention.

The dinner-tables were piled into an orchestra, and
draped with green baize and green wreaths, the floor
of the immense hall was chalked with American flags
and the initials of all the heroes of the Revolution, and
the band were playing a waltz in a style that made

the candles quiver, and the pines tremble audibly in
their tassels. The ballroom was on the ground floor,
and the colonnade upon the garden side was crowded
with spectators, a row of grinning black fellows edging
the cluster of heads at every window, and keeping
time with their hands and feet in the irresistible sympathy
of their music-loving natures. Drawing my hat
over my eyes, I stood at the least-thronged window,
and concealing my face in the curtain, waited impatiently
for the appearance of the dancers.

The bevy in the drawing-room was sufficiently
strong at last, and the lady patronesses, handed in by
a state governor or two, and here and there a member
of congress, achieved the entree with their usual intrepidity.
Followed beaux and followed belles. Such
belles! Slight, delicate, fragile-looking creatures, elegant
as Retzsch's angels, warm-eyed as Mohammedan
houries, yet timid as the antelope whose hazel orbs
they eclipse, limbed like nothing earthly except an
American woman — I would rather not go on! When
I speak of the beauty of my countrywomen, my heart
swells. I do believe the New World has a newer
mould for its mothers and daughters. I think I am
not prejudiced. I have been years away. I have
sighed in France; I have loved in Italy; I have bargained
for Circassians in an eastern bezestein, and I
have lounged at Howell and James's on a sunny day
in the season; and my eye is trained, and my perceptions
quickened: but I do think (honor bright! and
Heath's “Book of Beauty” forgiving me) that there
is no such beautiful work of God under the arch of
the sky as an American girl in her bellehood.

Enter Tom Fane in a Stultz coat and Sparding
tights, looking as a man who had been the mirror of
Bond street might be supposed to look, a thousand
leagues from his club-house. She leaned on his arm.
I had never seen her half so lovely. Fresh and calm
from the seclusion of her chamber, her transparent
cheek was just tinged with the first mounting blood,
from the excitement of lights and music. Her lips
were slightly parted, her fine-lined eyebrows were
arched with a girlish surprise, and her ungloved arm
lay carelessly and confidingly within his, as white,
round, and slender, as if Canova had wrought it in
Parian for his Psyche. If you have never seen a
beauty of northern blood nurtured in a southern clime,
the cold fairness of her race warmed up as if it had
been steeped in some golden sunset, and her deep blue
eye darkened and filled with a fire as unnaturally resplendent
as the fusion of crysoprase into a diamond,
and if you have never known the corresponding contrast
in the character, the intelligence and constancy
of the north kindling with the enthusiasm and impulse,
the passionateness and the abandon of a more burning
latitude — you have seen nothing, let me insinuate,
though you “have been i' the Indies twice,” that
could give you an idea of Kate Lorimer.

She waltzed, and then Tom danced with my sister,
and then, resigning her to another partner, he offered
his arm again to Miss Lorimer, and left the ballroom
with several other couples for a turn in the fresh air
of the colonnade. I was not jealous, but I felt unpleasantly
at his returning to her so immediately. He
was the handsomest man, out of all comparison, in the
room, and he had dimmed my star too often in our
rambles in Europe and Asia, not to suggest a thought,
at least, that the same pleasant eclipse might occur in
our American astronomy. I stepped off the colonnade,
and took a turn in the garden.

Those “children of eternity,” as Walter Savage
Landor poetically calls “the breezes,” performed their
soothing ministry upon my temples, and I replaced
Tom in my confidence with an heroic effort, and turned
back. A swing hung between two gigantic pines, just
under the balustrade, and flinging myself into the cushioned
seat, I abandoned myself to the musings natural
to a person “in my situation.” The sentimentalizing
promenaders lounged backward and forward above me,
and not hearing Tom's drawl among them, I presumed
he had returned to the ballroom. A lady and gentleman,
walking in silence, stopped presently, and leaned
upon the railing opposite the swing. They stood a
moment, looking into the dim shadow of the pine-grove,
and then a voice, that I knew better than my
own, remarked in a low and silvery tone upon the
beauty of the night.

She was not answered, and after a moment's pause,
as if resuming a conversation that had been interrupted,
she turned very earnestly to her companion, and asked.
“Are you sure, quite sure, that you could venture to
marry without a fortune?”

“Quite, dear Miss Lorimer!”

I started from the swing, but before the words of
execration that rushed choking from my heart could
struggle to my lips, they had mingled with the crowd
and vanished.

I strode down the garden-walk in a phrensy of passion.
Should I call him immediately to account?
Should I rush into the ballroom and accuse him of
his treachery to her face? Should I drown myself in
old Barhydt's tarn, or join an Indian tribe, and make
war upon the whites? Or should I — could I — be magnanimous
— and write him a note immediately, offering
to be his groomsman at the wedding?

I stepped into the punch-room, asked for pen, ink,
and paper, and indited the following note: —

Having despatched it to his room, I flew to the stable,
roused der Teufel, who had gathered up his legs in the
straw for the night, flogged him furiously out of the
village, and giving him the rein as he entered the forest,
enjoyed the scenery in the humor of mad old Hieronymo
in the Spanish tragedy — “the moon dark, the
stars extinct, the winds blowing, the owls shrieking,
the toads croaking, the minutes jarring, and the clock
striking twelve!”

Early the next day Tom's “tiger” dismounted at
Barhydt's door, with an answer to my note, as follows:
—

“`Comedy!' call you this, Mr. Fane?” I felt my
heart turn black as I threw down the letter. After a
thousand plans of revenge formed and abandoned —
borrowing old Barhydt's rifles, loading them deliberately,
and discharging them again into the air — I flung
myself exhausted on the bed, and reasoned myself back
to my magnanimity. I would be his groomsman!

It was a morning like the burst of a millennium on
the world. I felt as if I should never forgive the birds
for their mocking enjoyment of it. The wild heron
swung up from the reeds, the lotuses shook out their
dew into the lake as the breeze stirred them, and the

senseless old Dutchman sat fishing in his canoe, singing
one of his unintelligible psalms to a quick measure
that half maddened me. I threw myself upon the
yielding floor of pine-tassels on the edge of the lake,
and with the wretched school philosophy, “Si gravis
est, brevis est,” endeavored to put down the tempest
of my feelings.

A carriage rattled over the little bridge, mounted the
ascent rapidly, and brought up at Barhydt's door.

“Phil!” shouted Tom, “Phil!”

I gulped down a choking sensation in my throat, and
rushed up the bank to him. A stranger was dismounting
from his horse.

“Quick!” said Tom, shaking my hand hurriedly —
“there is no time to lose. Out with your inkhorn,
Mr. Poppletree, and have your papers signed while I
tie up my ponies.”

“What is this, sir?” said I, starting back as the
stranger deliberately presented me with a paper, in
which my own name was written in conspicuous letters.

The magistrate gazed at me with a look of astonishment.
“A contract of marriage, I think, between
Mr. Philip Slingsby and Miss Katherine Lorimer, spinster.
Are you the gentleman named in that instrument,
sir?”

At this moment my sister, leading the blushing girl
by the hand, came and threw her arms about my neck,
and drawing her within my reach, ran off and left us
together.

There are some pure moments in this life that description
would only profane.

We were married by the village magistrate in that
magnificent sanctuary of the forest, old Barhydt and
his lotuses the only indifferent witnesses of vows as
passionate as ever trembled upon human lips.

I had scarce pressed her to my heart and dashed the
tears from my eyes, when Fane, who had looked more
at my sister than at the bride during the ceremony, left
her snddenly, and thrusting a roll of parchment into
my pocket, ran off to bring up his ponies. I was on
the way to Saratoga, a married man, and my bride on
the seat beside me, before I had recovered from my
astonishment.

“Pray,” said Tom, “if it be not an impertinent
question, and you can find breath in your ecstasies,
how did you find out that your sister had done me
the honor to accept the offer of my hand?”

The resounding woods rung with his unmerciful
laughter at the explanation.

“And pray,” said I, in my turn, “if it is not an impertinent
question, and you can find a spare breath in
your ecstasies, by what magic did you persuade old
Frump to trust his ward and her title-deeds in your
treacherous keeping?”

“It is a long story, my dear Phil, and I will give you
the particulars when you pay me the `Virginia bloods'
you wot of. Suffice it for the present, that Mr. Frump
believes Mr. Tom Fane (alias Jacob Phipps, Esq.,
sleeping partner of a banking-house at Liverpool) to
be the accepted suitor of his fair ward. In his extreme
delight at seeing her in so fair a way to marry into a
bank, he generously made her a present of her own
fortune, signed over his right to control it by a document
in your possession, and will undergo as agreeable
a surprise in about five minutes as the greatest lover
of excitement could desire.”

The ponies dashed on. The sandy ascent by the
Pavilion Spring was surmounted, and in another minute
we were at the door of Congress Hall. The last
stragglers from the breakfast-table were lounging down
the colonnade, and old Frump sat reading the newspaper
under the portico.

“Aha! Mr. Phipps,” said he, as Tom drove up —
“back so soon, eh? Why, I thought you and Kitty
would be billing it till dinner-time!”

“Sir!” said Tom, very gravely, “you have the honor
of addressing Captain Thomas Fane, of his majesty's
— th Fusileers; and whenever you have a moment's
leisure, I shall be happy to submit to your perusal a
certificate of the marriage of Miss Katherine Lorimer
to the gentleman I have the pleasure to present to you.
Mr. Frump, Mr. Slingsby!”

At the mention of my name, the blood in Mr.
Frump's ruddy complexion turned suddenly to the
color of the Tiber. Poetry alone can express the
feeling pictured in his countenance: —

George Washington Jefferson Frump, Esq., left
Congress Hall the same evening, and has since ungraciously
refused an invitation to Captain Fane's wedding
— possibly from his having neglected to invite him on
a similar occasion at Saratoga. This last, however, I
am free to say, is a gratuitous supposition of my own.

LARKS IN VACATION.

1. CHAPTER I.
DRIVING STANHOPE PRO TEM.

In the edge of a June evening in the summer vacation
of 1827, I was set down by the coach at the gate
of my friend Horace Van Pelt's paternal mansion — a
large, old-fashioned, comfortable Dutch house, clinging
to the side of one of the most romantic dells on
the North river. In the absence of his whole family
on the summer excursion to the falls and lakes (taken
by almost every “well-to-do” citizen of the United
States), Horace was emperor of the long-descended,
and as progressively enriched domain of one of the
earliest Dutch settlers — a brief authority which he exercised
more particularly over an extensive stud, and
bins number one and two.

The west was piled with gold castles, breaking up
the horizon with their burnished pinnacles and turrets,
the fragrant dampness of the thunder-shower that had
followed the heat of noon was in the air, and in a low
room, whose floor opened out so exactly upon the
shaven sward, that a blind man would not have known
when he passed from the heavily-piled carpet to the
grass, I found Horace sitting over his olives and claret,
having waited dinner for me till five (long beyond the
latest American hour), and, in despair of my arrival,
having dined without me. The old black cook was
too happy to vary her vocation by getting a second
dinner; and when I had appeased my appetite, and
overtaken my friend in his claret, we sat with the
moonlight breaking across a vine at our feet, and coffee
worthy of a filagree cup in the Bezestein, and debated,
amid a true embarras des richesses, our plans
for the next week's amusement.

The seven days wore on, merrily at first, but each
succeeding one growing less merry than the last. By
the fifth eve of my sojourn, we had exhausted variety.
All sorts of headaches and megrims in the morning,
all sorts of birds, beasts, and fishes, for dinner, all sorts
of accidents in all sorts of vehicles, left us on the seventh
day out of sorts altogether. We were two discontented
Rasselases in the Happy Valley. Rejoicing
as we were in vacation, it would have been a relief to
have had a recitation to read up, or a prayer-bell to
mark the time. Two idle sophomores in a rambling,

lonely old mansion, were, we discovered, a very insufficient
dramatis personœ for the scene.

It was Saturday night. A violent clap of thunder
had interrupted some daring theory of Van Pelt's on
the rising of champagne-bubbles, and there we sat,
mum and melancholy, two sated Sybarites, silent an
hour by the clock. The mahogany was bare between
us. Any number of glasses and bottles stood in their
lees about the table; the thrice-fished juice of an
olive-dish and a solitary cigar in a silver case had been
thrust aside in a warm argument, and, in his father's
sacred gout-chair, buried to the eyes in his loosened
cravat, one leg on the table, and one somewhere in
the neighborhood of my own, sat Van Pelt, the eidolon
of exhausted amusement.

“Phil!” said he, starting suddenly to an erect position,
“a thought strikes me!”

I dropped the claret-cork, from which I was at the
moment trying to efface the “Margaux” brand, and
sat in silent expectation. I had thought his brains as
well evaporated as the last bottle of champagne.

He rested his elbows on the table, and set his chin
between his two palms.

“I'll resign the keys of this mournful old den to the
butler, and we'll go to Saratoga for a week. What
say?”

“It would be a reprieve from death by inanition,”
I answered, “but, as the rhetorical professor would
phrase it, amplify your meaning, young gentleman.”

“Thus: To-morrow is Sunday. We will sleep till
Monday morning to purge our brains of these cloudy
vapors, and restore the freshness of our complexions.
If a fair day, you shall start alone in the stanhope, and
on Monday night sleep in classic quarters at Titus's
in Troy.”

“And you!” I interrupted, rather astonished at his
arrangement for one.

Horace laid his hand on his pocket with a look of
embarrassed care.

“I will overtake you with the bay colts in the
drosky, but I must first go to Albany. The circulating
medium — ”

“I understand.”

II.

We met on Monday morning in the breakfast-room
in mutual spirits. The sun was two hours high, the
birds in the trees were wild with the beauty and elasticity
of the day, the dew glistened on every bough,
and the whole scene, over river and hill, was a heaven
of natural delight. As we finished our breakfast, the
light spattering of a horse's feet up the avenue, and
the airy whirl of quick-following wheels, announced
the stanhope. It was in beautiful order, and what
would have been termed on any pave in the world a
tasteful turn-out. Light cream-colored body, black
wheels and shafts, drab lining edged with green, dead-black
harness, light as that on the panthers of Bacchus
— it was the last style of thing you would have
looked for at the “stoup” of a Dutch homestead.
And Tempest! I think I see him now! — his small inquisitive
ears, arched neck, eager eye, and fine, thin
nostril — his dainty feet flung out with the grace of a
flaunted riband — his true and majestic action and his
spirited champ of the bit, nibbling at the tight rein with
the exciting pull of a hooked trout — how evenly he
drew! — how insensibly the compact stanhope, just
touching his iron-gray tail, bowled along on the road
after him!

Horace was behind with the drosky and black boy,
and with a parting nod at the gate, I turned northward,
and Tempest took the road in beautiful style. I
do not remember to have been ever so elated. I was
always of the Cyrenaic philosophy that “happiness is
motion,” and the bland vitality of the air had refined
my senses. The delightful feel of the reins thrilled me
to the shoulder. Driving is like any other appetite,
dependant for the delicacy of its enjoyment on the
system, and a day's temperate abstinence, long sleep,
and the glorious perfection of the morning, had put
my nerves “in condition.” I felt the air as I rushed
through. The power of the horse was added to my
consciousness of enjoyment, and if you can imagine a
centaur with a harness and stanhope added to his living
body, I felt the triple enjoyment of animal exercise
which would then be his.

It is delightful driving on the Hudson. The road is
very fair beneath your wheels, the river courses away
under the bold shore with the majesty inseparable
from its mighty flood, and the constant change of outline
in its banks gives you, as you proceed, a constant
variety of pictures, from the loveliest to the most sublime.
The eagle's nest above you at one moment, a
sunny and fertile farm below you at the next — rocks,
trees, and waterfalls, wedded and clustered as, it
seems to me, they are nowhere else done so picturesquely
— it is a noble river, the Hudson! And every
few minutes, while you gaze down upon the broad
waters spreading from hill to hill like a round lake, a
gayly-painted steamer with her fringed and white awnings
and streaming flag, shoots out as if from a sudden
cleft in the rock, and draws across it her track of
foam.

Well — I bowled along. Ten o'clock brought me
to a snug Dutch tavern, where I sponged Tempest's
mouth and nostrils, lunched and was stared at by the
natives, and continuing my journey, at one I loosed
rein and dashed into the pretty village of — , Tempest
in a foam, and himself and his extempore master
creating a great sensation in a crowd of people, who
stood in the shade of the verandah of the hotel, as if
that asylum for the weary traveller had been a shop for
the sale of gentlemen in shirt-sleeves.

Tempest was taken round to the “barn,” and I ordered
rather an elaborate dinner, designing still to go
on some ten miles in the cool of the evening, and having,
of course, some mortal hours upon my hands.
The cook had probably never heard of more than
three dishes in her life, but those three were garnished
with all manner of herbs, and sent up in the best
china as a warranty for an unusual bill, and what with
coffee, a small glass of new rum as an apology for a
chassee café, and a nap in a straight-backed chair, I
killed the enemy to my satisfaction till the shadows of
the poplars lengthened across the barnyard.

I was awoke by Tempest, prancing round to the
door in undiminished spirits; and as I had begun the
day en grand seigneur, I did not object to the bill,
which considerably exceeded the outside of my calculation,
but giving the landlord a twenty-dollar note,
received the change unquestioned, doubled the usual
fee to the ostler, and let Tempest off with a bend forward
which served at the same time for a gracious bow
to the spectators. So remarkable a coxcomb had probably
not been seen in the village since the passing of
Cornwallis's army.

The day was still hot, and as I got into the open
country, I drew rein and paced quietly up hill and
down, picking the road delicately, and in a humor of
thoughtful contentment, trying my skill in keeping the
edges of the green sod as it leaned in and out from the
walls and ditches. With the long whip I now and
then touched the wing of a sulphur butterfly hovering
over a pool, and now and then I stopped and gathered
a violet from the unsunned edge of the wood.

I had proceeded three or four miles in this way,
when I was overtaken by three stout fellows, galloping
at speed, who rode past and faced round with a
peremptory order to me to stop. A formidable pitchfork
in the hand of each horseman left me no alternative.
I made up my mind immediately to be robbed

quietly of my own personals, but to show fight, if necessary,
for Tempest and the stanhope.

“Well, gentlemen,” said I, coaxing my impatient
horse, who had been rather excited by the clatter of
hoofs behind him, “what is the meaning of this?”

Before I could get an answer, one of the fellows
had dismounted and given his bridle to another, and
coming round to the left side, he sprang suddenly into
the stanhope. I received him as he rose with a well-placed
thrust of my heel which sent him back into the
road, and with a chirrup to Tempest, I dashed through
the phalanx and took the road at a top speed. The
short lash once waved round the small ears before me,
there was no stopping in a hurry, and away sped the
gallant gray, and fast behind followed my friends in
their short sleeves, all in a lathering gallop. A couple
of miles was the work of no time, Tempest laying his
legs to it as if the stanhope had been a cobweb at his
heels; but at the end of that distance there came a
sharp descent to a mill-stream, and I just remember
an unavoidable milestone and a jerk over a wall, and
the next minute, it seemed to me, I was in the room
where I had dined, with my hands tied, and a hundred
people about me. My cool white waistcoat was matted
with mud, and my left temple was, by the glass
opposite me, both bloody and begrimed.

The opening of my eyes was a signal for a closer
gathering around me, and between exhaustion and the
close air I was half suffocated. I was soon made to
understand that I was a prisoner, and that the three
white-frocked highwaymen, as I took them to be, were
among the spectators. On a polite application to the
landlord, who, I found out, was a justice of the peace
as well, I was informed that he had made out my mittimus
as a counterfeiter, and that the spurious note I
had passed upon him for my dinner was safe in his
possession! He pointed at the same time to a placard
newly stuck against the wall, offering a reward for the
apprehension of a notorious practiser of my supposed
craft, to the description of whose person I answered,
to the satisfaction of all present.

Quite too indignant to remonstrate, I seated myself
in the chair considerately offered me by the waiter,
and listening to the whispers of the persons who were
still permitted to throng the room, I discovered, what
might have struck me before, that the initials on the
panel of the stanhope and the handle of the whip had
been compared with the card pasted in the bottom of
my hat, and the want of correspondence was taken as
decided corroboration. It was remarked also by a bystander
that I was quite too much of a dash for an
honest man, and that he had suspected me from first
seeing me drive into the village! I was sufficiently
humbled by this time to make an inward vow never
again to take airs upon myself if I escaped the county
jail.

The justice meanwhile had made out my orders,
and a horse and cart had been provided to take me to
the next town. I endeavored to get speech of his
worship as I was marched out of the inn parlor, but
the crowd pressed close upon my heels, and the dignitary-landlord
seemed anxious to rid his house of me.
I had no papers, and no proofs of my character, and
assertion went for nothing. Besides, I was muddy,
and my hat was broken in on one side, proofs of villany
which appeal to the commonest understanding.

I begged for a little straw in the bottom of the cart,
and had made myself as comfortable as my two rustic
constables thought fitting for a culprit, when the vehicle
was quickly ordered from the door to make away
for a carriage coming at a dashing pace up the road.
It was Van Pelt in his drosky.

Horace was well known on the road, and the stanhope
had already been recognised as his. By this
time it was deep in the twilight, and though he was instantly
known by the landlord, he might be excused
for not so readily identifying the person of his friend
in the damaged gentleman in the straw.

“Ay, ay! I see you don't know him,” said the landlord,
while Van Pelt surveyed me rather coldly; “on
with him, constables! he wound have us believe you
knew him, sir! walk in, Mr. Van Pelt! Ostler, look
to Mr. Van Pelt's horses! Walk in, sir!”

“Stop!” I cried out in a voice of thunder, seeing
that Horace really had not looked at me, “Van Pelt!
stop, I say!”

The driver of the cart seemed more impressed by
the energy of my cries than my friends the constables,
and pulled up his horse. Some one in the crowd cried
out that I should have a hearing or he would “wallup
the comitatus,” and the justice, called back by this expression
of an opinion from the sovereign people, requested
his new guest to look at the prisoner.

I was preparing to have my hands untied, yet feeling
so indignant at Van Pelt for not having recognised
me that I would not look at him, when, to my surprise,
the horse started off once more, and looking back, I
saw my friend patting the neck of his near horse, evidently
not having thought it worth his while to take
any notice of the justice's observation. Choking with
rage, I flung myself down upon the straw, and jolted
on without further remonstrance to the county town.

I had been incarcerated an hour when Van Pelt's
voice, half angry with the turnkey and half ready to
burst into a laugh, resounded outside. He had not
heard a word spoken by the officious landlord, till after
the cart had been some time gone. Even then, believing
it to be a cock-and-bull story, he had quietly
dined, and it was only on going into the yard to see
after his horses that he recognised the debris of his
stanhope.

The landlord's apologies, when we returned to the
inn, were more amusing to Van Pelt than consolatory
to Philip Slingsby.

2. CHAPTER II.
SARATOGA SPRINGS.

It was about seven o'clock of a hot evening when
Van Pelt's exhausted horses toiled out from the Pine
Forest, and stood, fetlock deep in sand, on the brow
of the small hill overlooking the mushroom village of
Saratoga. One or two straggling horsemen were returning
late from their afternoon ride, and looked at
us, as they passed on their fresher hacks, with the curiosity
which attaches to new-comers in a watering-place;
here and there a genuine invalid, who had
come to the waters for life, not for pleasure, took advantage
of the coolness of the hour and crept down
the foot-path to the Spring; and as Horace encouraged
his flagging cattle into a trot to bring up gallantly
at the door of “Congress Hall,” the great bell
of that vast caravanserai resounded through the dusty
air, and by the shuffling of a thousand feet, audible as
we approached, we knew that the fashionable world
of Saratoga were rushing down, en masse, “to tea.”

Having driven through a sand-cloud for the preceding
three hours, and, to say nothing of myself, Van
Pelt being a man, who, in his character as the most
considerable beau of the University, calculated his first
impression, it was not thought advisable to encounter,
uncleansed, the tide of fashion at that moment streaming
through the hall. We drove round to the side-door,
and gained our pigeon-hole quarters under cover
of the back-staircase.

The bachelors' wing of Congress Hall is a long, unslightly,
wooden barrack, divided into chambers six feet
by four, and of an airiness of partition which enables

the occupant to converse with his neighbor three rooms
off, with the ease of clerks calling out entries to the
leger across the desks of a counting-house. The
clatter of knives and plates came up to our ears in a
confused murmur, and Van Pelt having refused to dine
at the only inn upon the route, for some reason best
known to himself, I commenced the progress of a long
toilet with an appetite not rendered patient by the
sounds of cheer below.

I had washed the dust out of my eyes and mouth,
and, overcome with heat and hunger, I knotted a cool
cravat loosely round my neck, and sat down in the one
chair.

“Van Pelt!” I shouted.

“Well, Phil!”

“Are you dressed?”

“Dressed! I am as pinguid as a pate foie gras —
greased to the eyelids in cold cream!”

I took up the sixpenny glass and looked at my own
newly-washed physiognomy. From the temples to the
chin it was one unmitigated red — burned to a blister
with the sun! I had been obliged to deluge my head
like a mop to get out the dust, and not naturally remarkable
for my good looks, I could, much worse than
Van Pelt, afford these startling additions to my disadvantages.
Hunger is a subtle excuse-finder, however,
and, remembering there were five hundred people in
this formidable crowd, and all busy with satisfying their
appetites, I trusted to escape observation, and determined
to “go down to tea.” With the just-named
number of guests, it will easily be understood why it
is impossible to obtain a meal at Congress Hall, out of
the stated time and place.

In a white roundabout, a checked cravat, my hair
plastered over my eyes a la Mawworm, and a face like
the sign of the “Rising Sun,” I stopped at Van Pelt's
door.

“The most hideous figure my eyes ever looked
upon!” was his first consolatory observation.

“Handsome or hideous,” I answered, “I'll not
starve! So here goes for some bread and butter!”
and leaving him to his “appliances,” I descended to the
immense hall which serves the comers to Saratoga, for
dining, dancing, and breakfasting, and in wet weather,
between meals, for shuttlecock and promenading.

Two interminable tables extended down the hall,
filled by all the beauty and fashion of the United States.
Luckily, I thought, for me, there are distinctions in this
republic of dissipation, and the upper end is reserved
for those who have servants to turn down the chairs
and stand over them. The end of the tables nearest
the door, consequently, is occupied by those whose
opinion of my appearance is not without appeal, if they
trouble their heads about it at all, and I may glide in,
in my white roundabout (permitted in this sultry
weather), and retrieve exhausted nature in obscurity.

An empty chair stood between an old gentleman
and a very plain young lady, and seeing no remembered
faces opposite, I glided to the place, and was soon lost
to apprehension in the abysm of a cold pie. The table
was covered with meats, berries, bottles of chalybeate
water, tea appurtenances, jams, jellies, and radishes,
and, but for the absence of the roast, you might have
doubted whether the meal was breakfast or dinner,
lunch or supper. Happy country! in which any one
of the four meals may serve a hungry man for all.

The pigeon-pie stood, at last, well quarried before
me, the debris of the excavation heaped upon my plate;
and, appetite appeased, and made bold by my half
hour's obscurity, I leaned forward and perused with
curious attention the long line of faces on the opposite
side of the table, to some of whom, doubtless, I was to
be indebted for the pleasures of the coming fortnight.

My eyes were fixed on the features of a talkative
woman just above, and I had quite forgotten the fact
of my dishabille of complexion and dress, when two
persons entered who made considerable stir among
the servants, and eventually were seated directly opposite
me.

“We loitered too long at Barhydt's,” said one of the
most beautiful women I had ever seen, as she pulled
her chair nearer to the table and looked around her
with a glance of disapproval.

In following her eyes to see who was so happy as
to sympathize with such a divine creature even in the
loss of a place at table, I met the fixed and astonished
gaze of my most intimate friend at the University.

“Ellerton!”

“Slingsby!”

Overjoyed at meeting him, I stretched both hands
across the narrow table, and had shaken his arm nearly
off his shoulders, and asked him a dozen questions, before
I became conscious that a pair of large wondering
eyes were coldly taking an inventory of my person
and features. Van Pelt's unflattering exclamation
upon my appearance at his door, flashed across my
mind like a thunderstroke, and, coloring through my
burned skin to the temples, I bowed and stammered I
know not what, as Ellerton introduced me to his
sister!

To enter fully into my distress, you should be apprized
that a correspondence arising from my long and
constant intimacy with Tom Ellerton, had been carried
on for a year between me and his sister, and that, being
constantly in the habit of yielding to me in manners of
taste, he had, I well knew, so exaggerated to her my
personal qualities, dress, and manners, that she could
not in any case fail to be disappointed in seeing me.
Believing her to be at that moment two thousand miles
off in Alabama, and never having hoped for the pleasure
of seeing her at all, I had foolishly suffered this
good-natured exaggeration to go on, pleased with seeing
the reflex of his praises in her letters, and, Heaven
knows, little anticipating the disastrous interview upon
which my accursed star would precipitate me! As I
went over, mentally, the particulars of my unbecomingness,
and saw Miss Ellerton's eyes resting inquisitively
and furtively on the mountain of pigeon bones
lifting their well-picked pyramid to my chin, I wished
myself an ink-fish at the bottom of the sea.

Three minutes after, I burst into Van Pelt's room,
tearing my hair and abusing Tom Ellerton's good nature,
and my friend's headless drosky, in alternate
breaths. Without disturbing the subsiding blood in his
own face by entering into my violence, Horace coolly
asked me what the devil was the matter.

I told him.

“Lie down here!” said Van Pelt, who was a small
Napoleon in such trying extremities; “lie down on
the bed, and anoint your phiz with this unguent. I see
good luck for you in this accident, and you have only
to follow my instructions. Phil Slingsby, sunburnt,
in a white roundabout, and Phil Slingsby, pale and well
dressed, are as different as this potted cream and a dancing
cow. You shall see what a little drama I'll work
out for you!”

I lay down on my back, and Horace kindly anointed
me from the trachea to the forelock, and from ear to
ear.

“Egad,” said he, warming with his study of his proposed
plot as he slid his fore-fingers over the bridge of
my nose, “every circumstance tells for us. Tall man
as you are, you are as short-bodied as a monkey (no
offence, Phil!) and when you sit at table, you are rather
an under-sized gentleman. I have been astonished
every day these three years, at seeing you rise after
dinner in Commons' Hall. A thousand to one, Fanny
Ellerton thinks you a stumpy man.”

“And then, Phil,” he continued, with a patronising
tone, “you have studied minute philosophy to little
purpose if you do not know that the first step in winning

a woman to whom you have been overpraised, is
to disenchant her at all hazards, on your first interview.
You will never rise above the ideal she has
formed, and to sink below it gradually, or to remain
stationary, is not to thrive in your wooing.”

Leaving me this precocious wisdom to digest,
Horace descended to the foot of the garden to take a
warm bath, and overcome with fatigue, and the recumbent
posture, I soon fell asleep and dreamed of the
great blue eyes of Fanny Ellerton.

II.

The soaring of the octave flute in “Hail Columbia,”
with which the band was patriotically opening the
ball, woke me from the midst of a long apologetic letter
to my friend's sister, and I found Van Pelt's black
boy Juba waiting patiently at the bed-side with curling-tongs
and Cologne-water, ordered to superintend
my toilet by his master, who had gone early to the
drawing-room to pay his respects to Miss Ellerton.
With the cold cream disappeared entirely from my
face the uncomfortable redness to which I had been a
martyr, and, thanks to my ebony coiffeur, my straight
and plastered locks soon grew as different to their
“umquhile guise” as Hyperion's to a satyr's. Having
appeared to the eyes of the lady, in whose favor I
hoped to prosper, in red and white (red phiz and white
jacket), I trusted that in white and black (black suit
and pale viznomy), I should look quite another person.
Juba was pleased to show his ivory in a complimentary
smile at my transformation, and I descended to
the drawing-room, on the best terms with the coxcomb
in my bosom.

Horace met me at the door.

“Proteus redivivus!” was his exclamation. “Your
new name is Wrongham. You are a gentle senior,
instead of a bedeviled sophomore, and your cue is to
be poetical. She will never think again of the monster
in the white jacket, and I have prepared her for
the acquaintance of a new friend, whom I have just
described to you.

I took his arm, and with the courage of a man in a
mask, went through another presentation to Miss Ellerton.
Her brother had been let into the secret by
Van Pelt, and received me with great ceremony as his
college superior; and, as there was no other person at
the Springs who knew Mr. Slingsby, Mr. Wrongham
was likely to have an undisturbed reign of it. Miss
Ellerton looked hard at me for a moment, but the
gravity with which I was presented and received, dissipated
a doubt if one had arisen in her mind, and
she took my arm to go to the ball-room, with an
undisturbed belief in my assumed name and character.

I commenced the acquaintance of the fair Alabamian
with great advantages. Received as a perfect
stranger, I possessed, from long correspondence with
her, the most minute knowledge of the springs, of her
character, and of her favorite reading and pursuits,
and, with the little knowledge of the world which she
had gained on a plantation, she was not likely to penetrate
my game from my playing it too freely. Her
confidence was immediately won by the readiness
with which I entered into her enthusiasm and anticipated
her thoughts; and before the first quadrille was
well over, she had evidently made up her mind that
she had never in her life met one who so well “understood
her.” Oh! how much women include in that
apparently indefinite expression. “He understands
me!”

The colonnade of Congress Hall is a long promenade
laced in with vines and columns, on the same
level with the vast ball-room and drawing-room, and
(the light of heaven not being taxed at Saratoga)
opening at every three steps by a long window into
the carpeted floors. When the rooms within are lit
in a summer's night, that cool and airy colonnade is
thronged by truants from the dance, and collectively
by all who have anything to express that is meant for
one ear only. The mineral waters of Saratoga are no
less celebrated as a soporific for chaperons than as a
tonic for the dyspeptic, and while the female Argus
dozes in the drawing-room, the fair Io and her Jupiter
(represented in this case, we will say, by Miss Ellerton
and myself) range at liberty the fertile fields of
flirtation.

I had easily put Miss Ellerton in surprised good
humor with herself and me during the first quadrille,
and with a freedom based partly upon my certainty of
pleasing her, partly on the peculiar manners of the
place, I coolly requested that she would continue to
dance with me for the rest of the evening.

“One unhappy quadrille excepted,” she replied,
with a look meant to be mournful.

“May I ask with whom?”

“Oh, he has not asked me yet; but my brother has
bound me over to be civil to him — a spectre, Mr.
Wrongham! a positive spectre.”

“How denominated?” I inquired, with a forced indifference,
for I had a presentiment I should hear my
own name.

“Slingsby — Mr. Philip Slingsby — Tom's fidus
Achates, and a proposed lover of my own. But you
don't seem surprised!”

“Surprised! E-hem! I know the gentleman!”

“Then did you ever see such a monster! Tom
told me he was another Hyperion. He half admitted
it himself, indeed; for to tell you a secret, I have corresponded
with him a year!”

“Giddy Miss Fanny Ellerton! — and never saw
him!”

“Never till to-night! He sat at supper in a white
jacket and red face, with a pile of bones upon his plate
like an Indian tumulus.”

“And your brother introduced you?”

“Ah, you were at table! Well, did you ever see in
your travels, a man so unpleasantly hideous?”

“Fanny!” said her brother, coming up at the moment,
“Slingsby presents his apologies to you for not
joining your cordon to-night — but he's gone to bed
with a head-ache.”

“Indigestion, I dare say,” said the young lady.
“Never mind, Tom, I'll break my heart when I have
leisure. And now, Mr. Wrongham, since the spectre
walks not forth to-night, I am yours for a cool hour
on the colonnade.”

Vegetation is rapid in Alabama, and love is a weed
that thrives in the soil of the tropics. We discoursed
of the lost Pleiad and the Berlin bracelets, of the five
hundred people about us, and the feasibility of boiling
a pot on five hundred a year — the unmatrimonial sum
total of my paternal allowance. She had as many negroes
as I had dollars, I well knew, but it was my cue
to seem disinterested.

“And where do you mean to live, when you marry,
Mr. Wrongham?” asked Miss Ellerton, at the two
hundredth turn on the colonnade.

“Would you like to live in Italy?” I asked again,
as if I had not heard her.

“Do you mean that as a sequitur to my question,
Mr. Wrongham?” said she, half stopping in her walk;
and though the sentence was commenced playfully,
dropping her voice at the last word, with something, I
thought, very like emotion.

I drew her off the colonnade to the small garden
between the house and the spring, and in a giddy
dream of fear and surprise at my own rashness and
success, I made, and won from her, a frank avowal of
preference.

Matches have been made more suddenly.

III.

Miss Ellerton sat in the music-room the next morning
after breakfast, preventing pauses in a rather interesting
conversation, by a running accompaniment
upon the guitar. A single gold thread formed a fillet
about her temples, and from beneath it, in clouds of
silken ringlets, floated the softest raven hair that ever
grew enamored of an ivory shoulder. Hers was a
skin that seemed woven of the lily-white, but opaque
fibre of the magnolia, yet of that side of its cup turned
toward the fading sunset. There is not term in painting,
because there is no touch of pencil or color, that
could express the vanishing and impalpable breath
that assured the healthiness of so pale a cheek. She
was slight as all southern women are in America, and
of a flexible and luxurious gracefulness equalled by
nothing but the movings of a smoke-curl. Without
the elastic nerve remarkable in the motions of Taglioni,
she appeared, like her, to be born with a lighter specific
gravity than her fellow-creatures. If she had
floated away upon some chance breeze you would only
have been surprised upon reflection.

“I am afraid you are too fond of society,” said Miss
Ellerton, as Juba came in hesitatingly and delivered
her a note in the hand-writing of an old correspondent.
She turned pale on seeing the superscription, and
crushed the note up in her hand, unread. I was not
sorry to defer the denouement of my little drama, and
taking up the remark which she seemed disposed to
forget, I referred her to a scrap-book of Van Pelt's,
which she had brought home with her, containing
some verses of my own, copied (by good luck) in that
sentimental sophomore's own hand.

“Are these yours, really and really?” she asked,
looking pryingly into my face, and showing me my
own verses, against which she had already run a pencil
line of approbation.

“Peccavi!” I answered. “But will you make me
in love with my offspring by reading them in your own
voice.”

They were some lines written in a balcony at daybreak,
while a ball was still going on within, and contained
an allusion (which I had quite overlooked) to
some one of my ever-changing admirations. As well
as I remember they ran thus: —

“And who was this `sweet lover,' Mr. Wrongham?
I should know, I think, before I go farther with so expeditious
a gentleman.”

“As Shelley says of his ideal mistress —

It was but an apostrophe to the presentiment of that
which I have found, dear Miss Ellerton! But will you
read that ill-treated billet-doux, and remember that
Juba stands with the patience of an ebon statue waiting
for an answer?”

I knew the contents of the letter, and I watched the
expression of her face, as she read it, with no little
interest. Her temples flushed, and her delicate lips
gradually curled into an expression of anger and scorn,
and having finished the perusal of it, she put it into
my hand, and asked me if so impertinent a production
deserved an answer.

I began to fear that the eclaircissement would not
leave me on the sunny side of the lady's favor, and felt
the need of the moment's reflection given me while
running my eye over the letter.

“Mr. Slingsby,” said I, with the deliberation of an
attorney, “has been some time in correspondence with
you?”

“Yes.”

“And, from his letters and your brother's commendations,
you had formed a high opinion of his character,
and had expressed as much in your letters?”

“Yes — perhaps I did.”

“And from this paper intimacy he conceives himself
sufficiently acquainted with you to request leave
to pay his addresses?”

A dignified bow put a stop to my catechism.

“Dear Miss Ellerton!” I said, “this is scarcely a
question upon which I ought to speak, but by putting
this letter into my hand, you seemed to ask my opinion.”

“I did — I do,” said the lovely girl, taking my hand,
and looking appealingly into my face; “answer it for
me! I have done wrong in encouraging that foolish
correspondence, and I owe perhaps to this forward
man a kinder reply than my first feeling would have
dictated. Decide for me — write for me — relieve me
from the first burden that has lain on my heart
since — ”

She burst into tears, and my dread of an explanation
increased.

“Will you follow my advice implicitly?” I asked.

“Yes — oh, yes!”

“You promise?”

“Indeed, indeed!”

“Well, then, listen to me! However painful the
task, I must tell you that the encouragement you have
given Mr. Slingsby, the admiration you have expressed
in your letters of his talents and acquirements, and the
confidence you have reposed in him respecting yourself,
warrant him in claiming as a right, a fair trial of
his attractions. You have known and approved Mr.
Slingsby's mind for years — you know me but for a few
hours. You saw him under the most unfavorable
auspices (for I know him intimately), and I feel bound
in justice to assure you that you will like him much
better upon acquaintance.”

Miss Ellerton had gradually drawn herself up during
this splendid speech, and sat at last as erect and
as cold as Agrippina upon her marble chair.

“Will you allow me to send Mr. Slingsby to you,”
I continued, rising — “and suffer him to plead his own
cause?”

“If you will call my brother, Mr. Wrongham, I
shall feel obliged to you,” said Miss Ellerton.

I left the room, and hurrying to my chamber, dipped
my head into a basin of water, and plastered my long
locks over my eyes, slipped on a white roundabout,
and tied around my neck the identical checked cravat
in which I had made such an unfavorable impression
on the first day of my arrival. Tom Ellerton was soon
found, and easily agreed to go before and announce me
by my proper name to his sister; and treading closely
on his heels, I followed to the door of the music-room.

“Ah, Ellen!” said he, without giving her time for
a scene, “I was looking for you. Slingsby is better,
and will pay his respects to you presently. And, I
say — you will treat him well, Ellen, and — and, don't
flirt with Wrongham the way you did last night! —
Slingby's a devilish sight better fellow. Oh, here he
is!”

As I stepped over the threshold, Miss Ellerton gave
me just enough of a look to assure herself that it was
the identical monster she had seen at the tea-table,
and not deigning me another glance, immediately commenced
talking violently to her brother on the state of
the weather. Tom bore it for a moment or two with
remarkable gravity, but at my first attempt to join in
the conversation, my voice was lost in an explosion of
laughter which would have been the death of a gentleman
with a full habit.

Indignant and astonished, Miss Ellerton rose to her
full height, and slowly turned to me.

“Peccavi!” said I, crossing my hands on my bosom,
and looking up penitently to her face.

She ran to me, and seized my hand, but recovered
herself instantly, and the next moment was gone from
the room.

Whether from wounded pride at having been the
subject of a mystification, or whether from that female
caprice by which most men suffer at one period or
other of their bachelor lives, I know not — but I never
could bring Miss Ellerton again to the same interesting
crisis with which she ended her intimacy with Mr.
Wrongham. She proffered to forgive me, and talked
laughingly enough of our old correspondence; but
whenever I grew tender, she referred me to the “sweet
lover,” mentioned in my verses in the balcony, and
looked around for Van Pelt. That accomplished
beau, on observing my discomfiture, began to find out
Miss Ellerton's graces without the aid of his quizzing-glass,
and I soon found it necessary to yield the pas
altogether. She has since become Mrs. Van Pelt,
and when I last heard from her was “as well as could
be expected.”

3. CHAPTER III.
MRS. CAPTAIN THOMPSON.

The last of August came sweltering in, hot, dusty,
and faint, and the most indefatigable belles of Saratoga
began to show symptoms of weariness. The stars
disappeared gradually from the ballroom; the barkeeper
grew thin under the thickening accounts for
lemonades; the fat fellow in the black band, who
“vexed” the bassoon, had blown himself from the
girth of Falstaff to an “eagle's talon in the waist;”
papas began to be waylaid in their morning walks by
young gentlemen with propositions; and stage-coaches
that came in with their baggageless tails in the air, and
the driver's weight pressing the foot-board upon the
astonished backs of his wheelers, went out with the
trim of a Venetian gondola — the driver's up-hoisted
figure answering to the curved proboscis of that stern-laden
craft.

The vocation of tin-tumblers and water-dippers was
gone. The fashionable world (brazen in its general
habit) had drank its fill of the ferrugineous waters.
Mammas thanked Heaven for the conclusion of the
chaperon's summer solstice; and those who came to
bet, and those who came to marry, “made up their
books,” and walked off (if they had won) with their
winnings.

Having taken a less cordial farewell of Van Pelt
than I might have done had not Miss Ellerton been
hanging confidingly on his arm, I followed my baggage
to the door, where that small epitome of the inheritance
of the prince of darkness, an American stagecoach,
awaited me as its ninth inside passenger. As
the last person picked up, I knew very well the seat
to which I was destined, and drawing a final cool
breath in the breezy colonnade, I summoned resolution
and abandoned myself to the tender mercies of
the driver.

The “ray of contempt” that “will pierce through
the shell of the tortoise,” is a shaft from the horn of
a new moon in comparison with the beating of an
American sun through the top of a stage-coach. This
“accommodation,” as it is sometimes bitterly called,
not being intended to carry outside passengers, has a
top as thin as your grandmother's umbrella, black, porous,
and cracked; and while intended for a protection
from the heat, it just suffices to collect the sun's
rays with an incredible power and sultriness, and exclude
the air that makes it sufferable to the beasts of
the field. Of the nine places inside this “dilly,” the
four seats in the corners are so far preferable that the
occupant has the outer side of his body exempt from
a perspirative application of human flesh (the thermometer
at 100 degrees of Fahrenheit), while, of the
three middle places on the three seats, the man in the
centre of the coach, with no support for his back, yet
buried to the chin in men, women, and children, is at
the ninth and lowest degree of human suffering. I
left Saratoga in such a state of happiness as you
might suppose for a gentleman, who, besides fulfilling
this latter category, had been previously unhappy in
his love.

I was dressed in a white roundabout and trowsers
of the same, a straw hat, thread stockings, and pumps,
and was so far a blessing to my neighbors that I looked
cool. Directly behind me, occupying the middle of
the back seat, sat a young woman with a gratis passenger
in her lap (who, of course, did not count among
the nine), in the shape of a fat and a very hot child
of three years of age, whom she called John, Jacky,
Johnny, Jocket, Jacket, and the other endearing diminutives
of the namesakes of the great apostle. Like
the saint who had been selected for his patron, he was
a “voice crying in the wilderness.” This little gentleman
was exceedingly unpopular with his two neighbors
at the windows, and his incursions upon their legs
and shoulders in his occasional forays for fresh air,
ended in his being forbidden to look out at either window,
and plied largely with gingerbread to content him
with the warm lap of his mother. Though I had no
eyes in the back of my straw hat, I conceived very
well the state in which a compost of soft gingerbread,
tears, and perspiration, would soon leave the two unscrupulous
hands behind me; and as the jolts of the
coach frequently threw me back upon the knees of
his mother, I could not consistently complain of the
familiar use made of my roundabout and shoulders in
Master John's constant changes of position. I vowed
my jacket to the first river, the moment I could make
sure that the soft gingerbread was exhausted — but I
kept my temper.

How an American Jehu gets his team over ten
miles in the hour, through all the variety of sand, ruts,
clay-pits, and stump-thickets, is a problem that can
only be resolved by riding beside him on the box. In
the usual time we arrived at the pretty village of Troy,
some thirty miles from Saratoga; and here, having exchanged
my bedaubed jacket for a clean one, I freely
forgave little Pickle his freedoms, for I hoped never
to set eyes on him again during his natural life. I was
going eastward by another coach.

Having eaten a salad for my dinner, and drank a
bottle of iced claret, I stepped forth in my “blanched
and lavendered” jacket to take my place in the other
coach, trusting Providence not to afflict me twice in

the same day with the evil I had just escaped, and feeling,
on the whole, reconciled to my troubled dividend
of eternity. I got up the steps of the coach with as
much alacrity as the state of the thermometer would
permit, and was about drawing my legs after me upon
the forward seat, when a clammy hand caught me
unceremoniously by the shirt-collar, and the voice I
was just beginning to forget cried out with a chuckle,
“Dada!”

“Madam!” I said, picking off the gingerbread from
my shirt as the coach rolled down the street, “I had
hoped that your infernal child — ”

I stopped in the middle of the sentence, for a pair
of large blue eyes were looking wonderingly into mine,
and for the first time I observed that the mother of
this familiar nuisance was one of the prettiest women I
had seen since I had become susceptible to the charms
of the sex.

“Are you going to Boston, sir?” she inquired, with
a half-timid smile, as if, in that case, she appealed to
me for protection on the road.

“Yes, madam!” I answered, taking little Jocket's
pasty hand into mine, affectionately, as I returned her
hesitating look; “may I hope for your society so
far?”

My fresh white waistcoat was soon embossed with a
dingy yellow, where my enterprising fellow-passenger
had thrust his sticky fist into the pockets, and my sham
shirt-bosom was reduced incontinently to the complexion
of a painter's rag after doing a sunset in gamboge.
I saw everything, however, through the blue eyes of
his mother, and was soon on such pleasant terms with
Master John, that, at one of the stopping-places, I inveigled
him out of the coach and dropped him accidentally
into the horse-trough, contriving to scrub him
passably clean before he could recover breath enough
for an outcry. I had already thrown the residuum
of his gingerbread out of the window, so that his familiarities
for the rest of the day were, at least, less
adhesive.

We dropped one or two way-passengers at Lebanon,
and I was left in the coach with Mrs. Captain and
Master John Thompson, in both whose favors I made
a progress that (I may as well depone) considerably
restored my spirits — laid flat by my unthrift wooing at
Saratoga. If a fly hath but alit on my nose when my
self-esteem hath been thus at a discount, I have
soothed myself with the fancy that it preferred me — a
drowning vanity will so catch at a straw!

As we bowled along through some of the loveliest
scenery of Massachusetts, my companion (now become
my charge), let me a little into her history, and at the
same time, by those shades of insinuation of which
women so instinctively know the uses, gave me perfectly
to comprehend that I might as well economize
my tenderness. The father of the riotous young gentleman
who had made so free with my valencia waistcoat
and linen roundabouts, had the exclusive copyhold
of her affections. He had been three years at
sea (I think I said before), and she was hastening to
show him the pledge of their affections — come into
the world since the good brig Dolly made her last
clearance from Boston bay.

I was equally attentive to Mrs. Thompson after this
illumination, though I was, perhaps, a shade less enamored
of the interesting freedoms of Master John.
One's taste for children depends so much upon one's
love for their mothers!

It was twelve o'clock at night when the coach rattled
in upon the pavements of Boston. Mrs. Thompson
had expressed so much impatience during the last
few miles, and seemed to shrink so sensitively from
being left to herself in a strange city, that I offered my
services till she should find herself in better hands,
and, as a briefer way of disposing of her, had bribed
the coachman, who was in a hurry with the mail, to
turn a little out of his way, and leave her at her husband's
hotel.

We drew up with a prodigious clatter, accordingly,
at the Marlborough hotel, where, no coach being expected,
the boots and bar-keeper were not immediately
forthcoming. After a rap “to wake the dead,” I set
about assisting the impatient driver in getting off the
lady's trunks and boxes, and they stood in a large
pyramid on the sidewalk when the door was opened.
A man in his shirt, three parts asleep, held a flaring
candle over his head, and looked through the half-opened
door.

“Is Captain Thompson up?” I asked rather brusquely,
irritated at the sour visage of the bar-keeper.

“Captain Thompson, sir!”

“Captain Thompson, sir!” I repeated my words
with a voice that sent him three paces back into the
hall.

“No, sir,” he said at last, slipping one leg into his
trowsers, which had hitherto been under his arm.

“Then wake him immediately, and tell him Mrs.
Thompson is arrived.” Here's a husband, thought I,
as I heard something between a sob and a complaint
issue from the coach-window at the bar-keeper's intelligence.
To go to bed when he expected his wife and
child, and after three years' separation! She might
as well have made a parenthesis in her constancy!

“Have you called the captain?” I asked, as I set
Master John upon the steps, and observed the man
still standing with the candle in his hand, grinning
from ear to ear.

“No, sir,” said the man.

“No!” I thundered, “and what in the devil's name
is the reason?”

“Boots!” he cried out in reply, “show this gentleman
`forty-one.' Them may wake Captain Thompson
as likes! I never hearn of no Mrs. Thompson!”

Rejecting an ungenerous suspicion that flashed
across my mind, and informing the bar-keeper en passant,
that he was a brute and a donkey, I sprang up
the staircase after a boy, and quite out of breath, arrived
at a long gallery of bachelors' rooms on the fifth
floor. The boy pointed to a door at the end of the
gallery, and retreated to the banisters as if to escape
the blowing up of a petard.

Rat-a-tat-tat!

“Come in!” thundered a voice like a hailing trumpet.
I took the lamp from the boy, and opened the
door. On a narrow bed well tucked up, lay a most
formidable looking individual, with a face glowing
with carbuncles, a pair of deep-set eyes inflamed and
fiery, and hair and eyebrows of glaring red, mixed
slightly with gray; while outside the bed lay a hairy
arm, with a fist like the end of the club of Hercules.
His head tied loosely in a black silk handkerchief, and
on the light-stand stood a tumbler of brandy-and-water.

“What do you want?” he thundered again, as I stepped
over a threshold and lifted my hat, struck speechless
for a moment with this unexpected apparition.

“Have I the pleasure,” I asked, in a hesitating
voice, “to address Captain Thompson?”

“That's my name!”

“Ah! then, captain, I have the pleasure to inform
you that Mrs. Thompson and little John are arrived.
They are at the door at this moment.”

A change in the expression of Captain Thompson's
face checked my information in the middle, and as I
took a step backward, he raised himself on his elbow,
and looked at me in a way that did not diminish my
embarrassment.

“I'll tell you what, Mr. Milk-and-water,” said he,
with an emphasis on every word like the descent of a
sledge-hammer; “if you're not out of this room in
two seconds with your `Mrs. Thompson and little

John,' I'll slam you through that window, or the devil
take me!”

I reflected as I took another step backward, that if
I were thrown down to Mrs. Thompson from a fifth
story window I should not be in a state to render her
the assistance she required; and remarking with an
ill-feigned gayety to Captain Thompson that so decided
a measure would not be necessary, I backed
expeditiously over the threshold. As I was closing
his door, I heard the gulp of his brandy-and-water,
and the next instant the empty glass whizzed past my
retreating head, and was shattered to pieces on the
wall behind me.

I gave the “boots” a cuff for an untimely roar of
laughter as I reached the staircase, and descended,
very much discomfited and embarrassed, to Mrs.
Thompson. My delay had thrown that lady into a
very moving state of unhappiness. Her tears were
glistening in the light of the street lamp, and Master
John was pulling away unheeded at her stomacher,
and crying as if he would split his diaphragm. What
to do? I would have offered to take her to my paternal
roof till the mystery could be cleared up — but I
had been absent two years, and to arrive at midnight
with a woman and a young child, and such an improbable
story — I did not think my reputation at
home would bear me out. The coachman, too, began
to swear and make demonstrations of leaving us in the
street, and it was necessary to decide.

“Shove the baggage inside the coach,” I said at
last, “and drive on. Don't be unhappy Mrs. Thompson!
Jocket, stop crying, you villain! I'll see that
you are comfortably disposed of for the night where
the coach stops, madam, and to-morrow I'll try a
little reason with Captain Thompson. How the devil
can she love such a volcanic specimen!” I muttered
to myself, dodging instinctively at the bare remembrance
of the glass of brandy-and-water.

The coachman made up for lost time, and we rattled
over the pavements at a rate that made Jocket's hullybaloo
quite inaudible. As we passed the door of my
own home, I wondered what would be the impression
of my respectable parent, could he see me whisking
by, after midnight, with a rejected woman and her
progeny upon my hands; but smothering the unworthy
doubt that re-arose in my mind, touching the
legitimacy of Master John, I inwardly vowed that I
would see Mrs. Thompson at all risks fairly out of
her imbroglio.

We pulled up with a noise like the discharge of a
load of paving-stones, and I was about saying something
both affectionate and consolatory to my weeping
charge, when a tall handsome fellow, with a face as
brown as a berry, sprang to the coach-door, and seized
her in his arms! A shower of kisses and tender epithets
left me not a moment in doubt. There was
another Captain Thompson!

He had not been able to get rooms at the Marlborough,
as he had anticipated when he wrote, and
presuming that the mail would come first to the postoffice,
he had waited for her there.

As I was passing the Marlborough a week or two
afterward, I stopped to inquire about Captain Thompson.
I found that he was an old West India captain,
who had lived there between his cruises for twenty
years more or less, and had generally been supposed a
bachelor. He had suddenly gone to sea, the landlord
told me, smiling at the same time, as if thereby
hung a tale if he chose to tell it.

“The fact is,” said Boniface, when I pushed him a
little on the subject, “he was skeared off.”

“What scared him?” I asked very innocently.

“A wife and child from some foreign port!” he answered
laughing as if he would burst his waistband,
and taking me into the back parlor to tell me the particulars.

A LOG IN THE ARCHIPELAGO.

The American frigate, in which I had cruised as
the ward-room guest for more than six months, had
sailed for winter quarters at Mahon, and my name was
up at the pier of Smyrna, as a passenger in the first
ship that should leave the port, whatever her destination.

The flags of all nations flew at the crowded peaks of
the merchantmen lying off the Marina, and among them
lay two small twin brigs, loading with figs and opium
for my native town in America. They were owned by
an old schoolfellow of my own, one of the most distinguished
and hospitable of the Smyrniote merchants,
and, if nothing more adventurous turned up, he had
offered to land me from one of his craft at Malta on
Gibraltar.

Time wore on, and I had loitered up and down the
narrow street “in melancholy idleness” by day, and
smoked the narghile with those “merchant princes”
by night, till I knew every paving-stone between the
beach and the bazar, and had learned the thrilling
events of the Greek persecution with the particularity
of a historian. My heart, too, unsusceptible enough
when “packed for travel,” began to uncoil with absence
of adventure, and expose its sluggish pulses to
the “Greek fire,” still burning in those Asiatic eyes,
and I felt sensibly, that if, Telemachus-like, I did not
soon throw myself into the sea, I should yield, past
praying for, to the cup of some Smyrniote Circe.
Darker eyes than are seen on that Marina swim not in
delight out of paradise!

I was sitting on an opium-box in the counting-house
of my friend L — n (the princely and hospitable merchant
spoken of above), when enter a Yankee “skipper,”
whom I would have clapped on the shoulder for
a townsman if I had seen him on the top of the minaret
of the mosque of Sultan Bajazet. His go-ashore black
coat and trowsers, worn only one month in twelve,
were of costly cloth, but of the fashion prevailing in
the days of his promotion to be second mate of a cod-fisher;
his hat was of the richest beaver, but getting
brown with the same paucity of wear, and exposure to
the corroding air of the ocean; and on his hands were
stretched (and they had well need to be elastic) a pair
of Woodstock gloves that might have descended to
him from Paul Jones “the pilot.” A bulge just over
his lowest rib gave token of the ship's chronometer,
and, in obedience to the new fashion of a guard, a fine
chain of the softest auburn hair (doubtless his wife's,
and, I would have wagered my passage-money, as pretty
a woman as he would see in his v'yage) — a chain, I
say, braided of silken blond ringlets passed around his
neck, and drew its glossy line over his broad-breasted
white waistcoat — the dewdrop on the lion's mane not
more entitled to be astonished.

A face of hard-weather, but with an expression of
care equal to the amount of his invoice, yet honest and
fearless as the truck of his mainmast; a round sailor's
back, that looked as if he would hoist up his deck if
you battered him beneath hatches against his will;
and teeth as white as his new foresail, completed the
picture of the master of the brig Metamora. Jolly old
H — t, I shall never feel the grip of an honester hand,
nor return one (as far as I can with the fist you crippled
at parting) with a more kindly pressure! A fair
wind on your quarter, my old boy, wherever you may
be trading!

“What sort of accommodations have you, captain?”
I asked, as my friend introduced me.

“Why, none to speak of, sir! There's a starboard
birth that a'n't got much in it — a few boxes of figs, and
the new spritsail, and some of the mate's traps — but I
could stow away a little perhaps, sir.”

“You sail to-morrow morning?”

“Off with the land-breeze, sir.”

I took leave of the kindest of friends, laid in a few
hasty stores, and was on board at midnight. The next
morning I awoke with the water rippling beside me,
and creeping on deck, I saw a line of foam stretching
behind us far up the gulf, and the ruins of the primitive
church of Smyrna, mingled with the turrets of a
Turkish castle, far away in the horizon.

The morning was cool and fresh, the sky of an oriental
purity, and the small low brig sped on like a
nautilus. The captain stood by the binnacle, looking
off to the westward with a glass, a tarpaulin hat over
his black locks, a pair of sail-cloth pumps on his feet,
and trowsers and roundabout of an indefinable tarriness
and texture. He handed me the glass, and, obeying
his direction, I saw, stealing from behind a point of
land, shaped like a cat's back, the well-known topsails
of the two frigates that had sailed before us.

We were off Vourla, and the commodore had gone
to pay his respects to Sir Pulteney Malcolm, then lying
with his fleet in this little bay, and waiting, we
supposed, for orders to force the Dardanelles. The
frigates soon appeared on the bosom of the gulf, and
heading down, neared our larboard bow, and stood for
the Archipelago. The Metamora kept her way, but
the “United States,” the fleetest of our ships, soon
left us behind with a strengthening breeze, and, following
her with the glass till I could no longer distinguish
the cap of the officer of the deck, I breathed a
blessing after her, and went below to breakfast. It is
strange how the lessening in the distance of a ship in
which one has cruised in these southern seas, pulls on
the heartstrings!

I sat on deck most of the day, cracking pecan-nuts
with the captain, and gossiping about schooldays in
our native town, occasionally looking off over the hills
of Asia Minor, and trying to realize (the Ixion labor of
the imagination in travel) the history of which these
barren lands have been the scene. I know not whether
it is easy for a native of old countries to people these
desolated lands from the past, but for me, accustomed
to look on the face of the surrounding earth as mere
vegetation, unstoried and unassociated, it is with a constant
mental effort alone that I can be classic on classic
ground — find Plato in the desert wastes of the
Academy, or Priam among the Turk-stridden and
prostrate columns of Troy. In my recollections of
Athens, the Parthenon and the Theseion and the solemn
and sublime ruins by the Fount of Callirhoe stand
forth prominent enough; but when I was on the spot
— a biped to whom three meals a day, a washerwoman,
and a banker, were urgent necessities — I shame
to confess that I sat dangling my legs over the classic
Pelasgicum, not “fishing for philosophers with gold
and figs,” but musing on the mundane and proximate
matters of daily economy. I could see my six shirts
hanging to dry, close by the temple of the Winds, and
I knew my dinner was cooking three doors from the
crumbling capitals of the Agora.

As the sun set over Ephesus, we neared the mouth
of the gulf of Smyrna, and the captain stood looking
over the leeward-bow rather earnestly.

“We shall have a snorter out of the nor'east,” he
said, taking hold of the tiller, and sending the helmsman
forward — “I never was up this sea but once
afore, and it's a dirty passage through these islands in
any weather, let alone a Levanter.”

He followed up his soliloquy by jamming his tiller
hard a-port, and in ten minutes the little brig was running
her nose, as it seemed to me, right upon an inhospitable
rock at the northern headland of the gulf.
At the distance of a biscuit-toss from the shore, however,
the rock was dropped to leeward, and a small
passage appeared, opening with a sharp curve into
the miniature but sheltered bay of Fourgas. We
dropped anchor off a small hamlet of forty or fifty
houses, and lay beyond the reach of Levanters in a
circular basin that seemed shut in by a rim of granite
from the sea.

The captain's judgment of the weather was correct,
and, after the sun set, the wind rose gradually to a violence
which sent the spray high over the barriers of
our protected position. Congratulating ourselves that
we were on the right side of the granite wall, we got
out our jolly-boat on the following morning, and ran
ashore upon the beach half a mile from town, proposing
to climb first to the peak of the neighboring hill,
and then forage for a dinner in the village below.

We scrambled up the rocky mountain-side, with
some loss of our private stock of wind, and considerable
increase from the nor'easter, and getting under the
lee of a projecting shelf, sat looking over toward Lesbos,
and ruminating in silence — I, upon the old question,
“an Sappho publica fuerit,” and the captain probably
on his wife at Cape Cod, and his pecan-nuts, figs,
and opium, in the emerald-green brig below us. I
don't know why she should have been painted green,
by-the-by (and I never thought to suggest that to the
captain), being named after an Indian chief, who was
as red as her copper bottom.

The sea toward Mitylene looked as wild as an eagle's
wing ruffling against the wind, and there was that
smoke in the sky as if the blast was igniting with its
speed — the look of a gale in those seas when unaccompanied
with rain. The crazy-looking vessels of
the Levant were scudding with mere rags of sails for
the gulf; and while we sat on the rock, eight or ten
of those black and unsightly craft shot into the little
bay below us, and dropped anchor — blessing, no doubt,
every saint in the Greek calendar.

Having looked toward Lesbos an hour, and come to
the conclusion, that, admitting the worst with regard
to the private character of Sappho, it would have been
very pleasant to have known her; and the captain
having washed his feet in a slender tricklet oozing
from a cleft in a rock, we descended the hill on the
other side, and stole a march on the rear to the town
of Fourgas. Four or five Greek women were picking
up olives in a grove lying half way down the hill, and
on our coming in sight, they made for us with such
speed, that I feared the reverse of the Sabine rape —
not yet having seen a man on this desolate shore; they
ran well, but they resembled Atalanta in no other possible
particular. We should have taken them for the
Furies, but there were five. They wanted snuff and
money — making signs easily for the first, but attempting
amicably to put their hands in our pockets when
we refused to comprehend the Greek for “Give us a
para.” The captain pulled from his pocket an American
dollar-note (payable at Nantucket), and offered it
to the youngest of the women, who smelt at it and returned
it to him, evidently unacquainted with the Cape
Cod currency. On farther search he found a few of
the tinsel paras of the country, which he substituted
for his “dollar-bill,” a saving of ninety-nine cents to
him, if the bank has not broke when he arrives at Massachusetts.

Fourgas is surrounded by a very old wall, very much
battered. We passed under a high arch containing
marks of having once been closed with a heavy gate
and, disputing our passage with cows, and men that
seemed less cleanly and civilized, penetrated to the
heart of the town in search of the barber's shop, café
and kibaub shop — three conveniences usually united
in a single room and dispensed by a single Figaro in
Turkish and Greek towns of this description. The
word café is universal, and we needed only to pronounce
it to be led by a low door into a square apartment
of a ruinous old building, around which, upon a
kind of shelf, waist-high, sat as many of the inhabitants
of the town as could cross their legs conveniently.
As soon as we were discerned through the smoke by
the omnifarious proprietor of the establishment, two

of the worst-dressed customers were turned off the
shelf unceremoniously to make room for us, the fire
beneath the coffeepot was raked open, and the agreeable
flavor of the spiced beverage of the east ascended
refreshingly to our nostrils. With his baggy trowsers
tucked up to his thigh, his silk shirt to his armpits,
and his smoke-dried but clean feet wandering at large
in a pair of red morocco slippers, our Turkish Ganymede
presented the small cups in their filagree holders,
and never was beverage more delicious or more
welcome. Thirsty with our ramble, and unaccustomed
to such small quantities as seem to satisfy the
natives of the east, the captain and myself soon became
objects of no small amusement to the wondering beards
about us. A large tablespoon holds rather more than
a Turkish coffee-cup, and one, or, at most, two of
these, satisfies the dryest clay in the Orient. To us,
a dozen of them was a bagatelle, and we soon exhausted
the copper pot, and intimated to the astonished
cafidji that we should want another. He looked
at us a minute to see if we were in earnest, and then
laid his hand on his stomach, and rolling up his eyes,
made some remark to his other customers which provoked
a general laugh. It was our last “lark” ashore
for some time, however, and spite of this apparent
prophecy of a colic, we smoked our narghiles and
kept him running with his fairy cups for some time
longer. One never gets enough of that fragrant liquor.

The sun broke through the clouds as we sat on the
high bench, and, hastily paying our Turk, we hurried
to the seaside. The wind seemed to have lulled, and
was blowing lightly off shore; and, impatient of loitering
on his voyage, the captain got up his anchor and
ran across the bay, and in half an hour was driving
through a sea that left not a dry plank on the deck of
the Metamora.

The other vessels at Fourgas had not stirred, and
the sky in the northeast looked to my eye very threatening.
It was the middle of the afternoon, and the
captain crowded sail and sped on like a sea-bird,
though I could see by his face when he looked in the
quarter of the wind, that he had acted more from impulse
than judgment in leaving his shelter. The heavy
sea kicked us on our course, however, and the smart
little brig shot buoyantly over the crests of the waves
as she outran them, and it was difficult not to feel that
the bounding and obedient fabric beneath our feet was
instinct with self-confidence, and rode the waters like
their master.

I well knew that the passage of the Archipelago was
a difficult one in a storm even to an experienced pilot,
and with the advantage of daylight; and I could not
but remember with some anxiety that we were entering
upon it at nightfall, and with a wind strengthening
every moment, while the captain confessedly had made
the passage but once before, and then in a calm sea of
August. The skipper, however, walked his deck confidently,
though he began to manage his canvass with a
more wary care, and, before dark, we were scudding
under a single sail, and pitching onward with the heave
of the sea at a rate that, if we were to see Malta at all,
promised a speedy arrival. As the night closed in we
passed a large frigate lying-to, which we afterward
found out was the Superbe, a French eighty-gun ship
(wrecked a few hours after on the island of Andros).
The two American frigates had run up by Mitylene,
and were still behind us: and the fear of being run
down in the night, in our small craft, induced the
captain to scud on, though he would else have lain-to
with the Frenchman, and perhaps have shared his
fate.

I stayed on deck an hour or two after dark, and before
going below satisfied myself that we should owe
it to the merest chance if we escaped striking in the
night. The storm had become so furious that we ran
with bare poles before it; and though it set us pretty
fairly on our way, the course lay through a narrow
and most intricate channel, among small and rocky
islands, and we had nothing for it but to trust to a
providential drift.

The captain prepared himself for a night on deck,
lashed everything that was loose, and filled the two
jugs suspended in the cabin, which, as the sea had
been too violent for any hope from the cook, were to
sustain us through the storm. We took a biscuit and
a glass of Hollands and water, holding on hard by the
berths lest we should be pitched through the skylight,
and as the captain tied up the dim lantern, I got a
look at his face, which would have told me, if I had
not known it before, that though resolute and unmoved,
he knew himself to be entering on the most
imminent hazard of his life.

The waves now broke over the brig at every heave,
and occasionally the descent of the solid mass of water
on the quarter-deck seemed to drive her under like a
cork. My own situation was the worst on board, for
I was inactive. It required a seaman to keep the deck,
and as there was no standing in the cabin without great
effort, I disembarrassed myself of all that would impede
a swimmer, and got into my berth to await a wreck
which I considered almost inevitable. Braced with
both hands and feet, I lay and watched the imbroglio
in the bottom of the cabin, my own dressing-case
among other things emptied of its contents and swimming
with some of my own clothes and the captain's,
and the water rushing down the companion-way with
every wave that broke over us. The last voice I heard
on deck was from the deep throat of the captain calling
his men aft to assist in lashing the helm, and then,
in the pauses of the gale, came the awful crash upon
deck, more like the descent of a falling house than a
body of water, and a swash through the scuppers immediately
after, seconded by the smaller sea below, in
which my coat and waistcoat were undergoing a rehearsal
of the tragedy outside.

At midnight the gale increased, and the seas that descended
on the brig shook her to the very keel. We
could feel her struck under by the shock, and reel and
quiver as she recovered and rose again; and, as if to
distract my attention, the little epitome of the tempest
going on in the bottom of the cabin grew more and
more serious. The unoccupied berths were packed
with boxes of figs and bags of nuts, which “brought
away” one after another, and rolled from side to side
with a violence which threatened to drive them through
the side of the vessel; my portmanteau broke its lashings
and shot heavily backward and forward with the
roll of the sea; and if I was not to be drowned like a
dog in a locked cabin, I feared, at least, I should have
my legs broken by the leap of a fig-box into my berth.
My situation was wholly uncomfortable, yet half ludicrous.

An hour after midnight the captain came down, pale
and exhausted, and with no small difficulty managed
to get a tumbler of grog.

“How does she head?” I asked.

“Side to wind, drifting five knots an hour.”

“Where are you?”

“God only knows. I expect her to strike every
minute.”

He quietly picked up the wick of the lamp as it
tossed to and fro, and watching the roll of the vessel,
gained the companion-way, and mounted to the deck.
The door was locked, and I was once more a prisoner
and alone.

An hour elapsed — the sea, it appeared to me,
strengthening in its heaves beneath us, and the wind
howling and hissing in the rigging like a hundred
devils. An awful surge then burst down upon the
deck, racking the brig in every seam: the hurried
tread of feet overhead told me that they were cutting

the lashings of the helm; the seas succeeded each
other quicker and quicker, and, conjecturing from the
shortness of the pitch, that we were nearing a reef, I
was half out of my berth when the cabin door was
wrenched open, and a deluging sea washed down the
companion-way.

“On deck for your life!” screamed the hoarse voice
of the captain.

I sprang up through streaming water, barefoot and
bareheaded, but the pitch of the brig was so violent
that I dared not leave the ropes of the companion ladder,
and, almost blinded with the spray and wind, I
stood waiting for the stroke.

“Hard down!” cried the captain in a voice I shall
never forget, and as the rudder creaked with the strain,
the brig fell slightly off, and rising with a tremendous
surge, I saw the sky dimly relieved against the edge
of a ragged precipice, and in the next moment, as if
with the repulse of a catapult, we were flung back
into the trough of the sea by the retreating wave, and
surged heavily beyond the rock. The noise of the
breakers, and the rapid commands of the captain
now drowned the hiss of the wind, and in a few minutes
we were plunging once more through the uncertain
darkness, the long and regular heavings of
the sea alone assuring us that we were driving from
the shore.

The wind was cold, and I was wet to the skin.
Every third sea broke over the brig and added to the
deluge in the cabin, and from the straining of the
masts I feared they would come down with every succeeding
shock. I crept once more below, and regained
my berth, where wet and aching in every joint, I
awaited fate or the daylight.

Morning broke, but no abatement of the storm.
The captain came below and informed me (what I had
already presumed) that we had run upon the southernmost
point of Negropont, and had been saved by a
miracle from shipwreck. The back wave had taken
us off, and with the next sea we had shot beyond it.
We were now running in the same narrow channel for
Cape Colonna, and were surrounded with dangers.
The skipper looked beaten out; his eyes were protruding
and strained, and his face seemed to me to have
emaciated in the night. He swallowed his grog, and
flung himself for half an hour into his berth, and then
went on deck again to relieve his mate, where tired of
my wretched berth, I soon followed him.

The deck was a scene of desolation. The bulwarks
were carried clean away, the jolly-boat swept off, and
the long-boat the only moveable thing remaining.
The men were holding on to the shrouds, haggard and
sleepy, clinging mechanically to their support as the
sea broke down upon them, and, silent at the helm,
stood the captain and the second mate keeping the
brig stern-on to the sea, and straining their eyes for
land through the thick spray before them.

The day crept on, and another night, and we passed
it like the last. The storm never slacked, and all
through the long hours the same succession went on,
the brig plunging and rising, struggling beneath the
overwhelming and overtaking waves, and recovering
herself again, till it seemed to me as if I had never
known any other motion. The captain came below
for his biscuit and grog and went up again without
speaking a word, the mates did the same with the same
silence, and at last the bracing and holding on to prevent
being flung from my berth became mechanical,
and I did it while I slept. Cold, wet, hungry, and
exhausted, what a blessing from Heaven were five
minutes of forgetfulness!

How the third night wore on I scarce remember.
The storm continued with unabated fury, and when
the dawn of the third morning broke upon us the captain
conjectured that we had drifted four hundred
miles before the wind. The crew were exhausted
with watching, the brig labored more and more heavily,
and the storm seemed eternal.

At noon of the third day the clouds broke up a little,
and the wind, though still violent, slacked somewhat
in its fury. The sun struggled down upon the lashed
and raging sea, and, taking our bearings, we found ourselves
about two hundred miles from Malta. With
great exertions, the cook contrived to get up a fire in
the binnacle and boil a little rice, and never gourmet
sucked the brain of a woodcock with the relish which
welcomed that dark mess of pottage.

It was still impossible to carry more than a hand's
breadth of sail, but we were now in open waters and
flew merrily before the driving sea. The pitching and
racking motion, and the occasional shipping of a heavy
wave, still forbade all thoughts or hopes of comfort,
but the dread of shipwreck troubled us no more, and
I passed the day in contriving how to stand long
enough on my legs to get my wet traps from my
floating portmanteau, and go into quarantine like a
Christian.

The following day, at noon, Malta became visible
from the top of an occasional mountain wave; and still
driving under a reefed topsail before the hurricane, we
rapidly neared it, and I began to hope for the repose
of terra firma. The watch towers of the castellated
rock soon became distinct through the atmosphere of
spray, and at a distance of a mile, we took in sail and
waited for a pilot.

While tossing in the trough of the sea the following
half hour, the captain communicated to me some embarrassment
with respect to my landing which had not
occurred to me. It appeared that the agreement to
land me at Malta was not mentioned in his policy of
insurance, and the underwriters of course were not responsible
for any accident that might happen to the
brig after a variation from his original plan of passage.
This he would not have minded if he could have set
me ashore in a half hour, as he had anticipated, but
his small boat was lost in the storm, and it was now a
question whether the pilot-boat would take ashore a
passenger liable to quarantine. To run his brig into
harbor would be a great expense and positive loss of
insurance, and to get out the long-boat with his broken
tackle and exhausted crew was not to be thought of.
I knew very well that no passenger from a plague port
(such as Smyrna and Constantinople) was permitted
to land on any terms at Gibraltar, and if the pilot here
should refuse to take me off, the alternative was clear,
I must make a voyage against my will to America!

I was not in a very pleasant state of mind during the
delay which followed; for, though I had been three
years absent from my country and loved it well, I had
laid my plans for still two years of travel on this side
the Atlantic, and certain moneys for my “charges” lay
waiting my arrival at Malta. Among lesser reasons,
I had not a rag of clothes dry or clean, and was
heartily out of love with salt water and the smell of
figs.

As if to aggravate my unhappiness, the sun broke
through a rift in the clouds and lit up the white and
turreted battlements of Malta like an isle of the blessed
— the only bright spot within the limits of the stormy
horizon. The mountain waves on which we were
tossing were tempestuous and black, the comfortless
and battered brig with her weary crew looked more
like a wreck than a seaworthy merchantman, and no
pilot appearing, the captain looked anxiously seaward,
as if he grudged every minute of the strong wind rushing
by on his course.

A small speck at last appeared making toward us
from the shore, and, riding slowly over the tremendous
waves, a boat manned by four men came within hailing
distance. One moment as high as our topmast, and
another in the depths of the gulf a hundred feet below
us, it was like conversing from two buckets in a well.

“Do you want a pilot?” screamed the Maltese in
English, as the American flag blew out to the wind

“No!” roared the captain, like a thunder-peal,
through his tin-trumpet.

The Maltese, without deigning another look, put
up his helm with a gesture of disappointment, and
bore away.

“Boat ahoy!” bellowed the captain.

“Ahoy! ahoy!” answered the pilot.

“Will you take a passenger ashore?”

“Where from?”

“Smyrna!”

“No — o — o — o!”

There was a sound of doom in the angry prolongation
of that detested monosyllable that sunk to the
bottom of my heart like lead.

“Clear away the mainsail,” cried the captain getting
round once more to the wind. “I knew how it
would be, sir,” he continued, to me, as I bit my lips in
the effort to be reconciled to an involuntary voyage of
four thousand miles; “it wasn't likely he'd put himself
and his boat's crew into twenty days' quarantine
to oblige you and me.”

I could not but own that it was an unreasonable expectation.

“Never mind, sir,” said the skipper, consolingly,
“plenty of salt fish in the locker, and I'll set you on
Long Wharf in no time!”

“Brig ahoy!” came a voice faintly across the waves.

The captain looked over his shoulder without losing
a capful of wind from his sail, and sent back the hail
impatiently.

The pilot was running rapidly down upon us, and
had come back to offer to tow me ashore in the brig's
jolly-boat for a large sum of money.

“We've lost our boat, and you're a bloody shark,”
answered the skipper, enraged at the attempt at extortion.
“Head your course!” he muttered gruffly to
the man at the helm, who had let the brig fall off that
the pilot might come up.

Irritated by this new and gratuitous disappointment,
I stamped on the deck in an ungovernable fit of rage,
and wished the brig at the devil.

The skipper looked at me a moment, and instead of
the angry answer I expected, an expression of kind
commiseration stole over his rough face. The next
moment he seized the helm and put the brig away
from the wind, and then making a trumpet of his two
immense hands, he once more hailed the returning
pilot.

“I can't bear to see you take it so much to heart,
sir,” said the kind sailor, “and I'll do for you what I
wouldn't do for another man on the face o' the 'arth.
All hands there!”

The men came aft, and the captain in brief words
stated the case to them, and appealed to their sense
of kindness for a fellow-countryman, to undertake a
task, which, in the sea then running, and with their
exhausted strength, was not a service he could well
demand in other terms. It was to get out the longboat,
and wait off while the pilot towed me ashore and
returned with her.

“Ay, ay! sir,” was the immediate response from
every lip, and from the chief mate to the black cabinboy,
every man sprang cheerily to the lashings. It
was no momentary task, for the boat was as firmly set
in her place as the mainmast, and stowed compactly
with barrels of pork, extra rigging, and spars — in short,
all the furniture and provision of the voyage. In the
course of an hour, however, the tackle was rigged on
the fore and main yards, and with a desperate effort
its immense bulk was heaved over the side, and lay
tossing on the tempestuous waters. I shook hands
with the men, who refused every remuneration beyond
my thanks, and, following the captain over the
side, was soon toiling heavily on the surging waters,
thanking Heaven for the generous sympathies of home
and country implanted in the human bosom. Those
who know the reluctance with which a merchant captain
lays-to, even to pick up a man overboard in a fair
wind, and those who understand the meaning of a forfeited
insurance, will appreciate this instance of difficult
generosity. I shook the hard fist of the kind-hearted
skipper on the quarantine stairs, and watched
his heavy boat as she crept out of the little harbor
with the tears in my eyes. I shall travel far before I
find again a man I honor more heartily.

THE REVENGE OF THE SIGNOR BASIL.

1. PART I.

It was in the golden month of August, not very
long ago, that the steamer which plies between St.
Mark's Stairs, at Venice, and the river into which
Phaeton turned a somerset with the horses of the sun,
started on its course over the lagoon with an unusual
God-send of passengers. The moon was rising from
the unchaste bed of the Adriatic (wedded every year
to Venice, yet every day and night sending the sun
and moon from her lovely bosom to the sky), and while
the gold of the west was still glowing on the landward
side of the Campanile, a silver gleam was brightening
momently on the other, and the Arabic domes of St.
Mark and the flying Mercury on the Dogana paled to
the setting orb and kindled to the rising with the same
Talleyrand-esque facility.

For the first hour the Mangia-foco sputtered on her
way with a silent company; the poetry of the scene,
or the regrets at leaving the delicious city lessening
in the distance, affecting all alike with a thoughtful
incommunicativeness. Gradually, however, the dolphin
hues over the Brenta faded away — the marble
city sank into the sea, with its turrets and bright spires
— the still lagoon became a sheet of polished glass —
and the silent groups leaning over the rails found
tongues and feet, and began to stir and murmur.

With the usual unconscious crystallization of society,
the passengers of the Mangia-foco had yielded
one side of the deck to a party of some rank, who had
left their carriages at Ferrara in coming from Florence
to Venice, and were now upon their return to the city
of Tasso, stomaching, with what grace they might, the
contact of a vulgar conveyance, which saved them the
hundred miles of posting between Ferrara and the
Brenta. In the centre of the aristocratic circle stood
a lady enveloped in a cashmere, but with her bonnet
hung by the string over her arm — one of those women
of Italy upon whom the divinest gifts of loveliness are
showered with a profusion which apparently impoverishes
the sex of the whole nation. A beautiful woman
in that land is rarely met; but when she does appear,
she is what Venus would have been after the contest
for beauty on Ida, had the weapons of her antagonists,
as in the tournaments of chivalry, been added to the
palm of victory. The marchesa del Marmore was apparently
twenty-three, and she might have been an
incarnation of the morning-star for pride and brightness.

On the other side of the deck stood a group of
young men, who, by their careless and rather shabby
dress, but pale and intellectual faces, were of that class
met in every public conveyance of Italy. The portfolios
under their arms, ready for a sketch, would have
removed a doubt of their profession, had one existed;
and with that proud independence for which the class

is remarkable, they had separated themselves equally
from the noble and ignoble — disqualified by inward
superiority from association with the one, and by accidental
poverty from the claims cultivation might give
them upon the other. Their glances at the divine
face turned toward them from the party I have alluded
to, were less constant than those of the vulgar, who
could not offend; but they were evidently occupied
more with it than with the fishing-boats lying asleep
on the lagoon: and one of them, half-buried in the
coil of rope, and looking under the arm of another,
had already made a sketch of her that might some day
make the world wonder from what seventh heaven of
fancy such an angelic vision of a head had descended
upon the painter's dream.

In the rear of this group, with the air of one who
would conceal himself from view, stood a young man
who belonged to the party, but who, with less of the
pallor of intellectual habits in his face, was much better
dressed than his companions, and had, in spite of
the portfolio under his arm, and a hat of the Salvator
breadth of rim, the undisguisable air of a person accustomed
to the best society. While maintaining a
straggling conversation with his friends, with whom he
seemed a favorite, Signor Basil employed himself in
looking over the sketch of the lovely marchesa going
on at his elbow — occasionally, as if to compare it with
the original, stealing a long look from between his
hand and his slouched hat at the radiant creature sitting
so unconsciously for her picture, and in a low
voice correcting, as by the result of his gaze, the rapid
touches of the artist.

“Take a finer pencil for the nostril, caro mio!” said
he; “it is as thin as the edge of a violet, and its transparent
curve — ”

“Cospetto!” said the youth; “but you see by this
faint light better than I: if she would but turn to the
moon — ”

The signor Basil suddenly flung his handkerchief
into the lagoon, bringing its shadow between the queen
of night and the marchesa del Marmore; and, attracted
from her revery by the passing object, the lady
moved her head quickly to the light, and in that moment
the spirited lip and nostril were transferred to the
painter's sketch.

“Thanks, mio bravo!” enthusiastically exclaimed
the looker-on; “Giorgione would not have beaten
thee with the crayon!” — and, with a rudeness which
surprised the artist, he seized the paper from beneath
his hand, walked away with it to the stern, and leaning
far over the rails, perused it fixedly by the mellow
lustre of the moon. The youth presently followed
him, and after a few words exchanged in an undertone,
Signor Basil slipped a piece of gold into his
hand, and carefully placed the sketch in his own portfolio.

2. II.

It was toward midnight when the Mangia-foco entered
the Adige, and keeping its steady way between
the low banks of the river, made for the grass-grown
and flowery canal which connects its waters with the
Po. Most of the passengers had yielded to the drowsy
influence of the night air, and, of the aristocratic party
on the larboard side, the young marchesa alone was
waking: her friends had made couches of their cloaks
and baggage, and were reclining at her feet, while the
artists, all except the signor Basil, were stretched fairly
on the deck, their portfolios beneath their heads, and
their large hats covering their faces from the powerful
rays of the moon.

“Miladi does justice to the beauty of the night,”
said the waking artist, in a low and respectful tone,
as he rose from her feet with a cluster of tuberoses she
had let fall from her hand.

“It is indeed lovely, Signor Pittore,” responded the
marchesa, glancing at his portfolio, and receiving the
flowers with a gracious inclination; “have you touched
Venice from the lagoon to-night?”

The signor Basil opened his portfolio, and replied
to the indirect request of the lady by showing her a
very indifferent sketch of Venice from the island of
St. Lazzaro. As if to escape from the necessity of
praising what had evidently disappointed her, she
turned the cartoon hastily, and exposed, on the sheet
beneath, the spirited and admirable outline of her own
matchless features.

A slight start alone betrayed the surprise of the
highborn lady, and raising the cartoon to examine it
more closely, she said with a smile, “You may easier
tread on Titian's heels than Canaletti's. Bezzuoli has
painted me, and not so well. I will awake the marquis,
and he shall purchase it of you.”

“Not for the wealth of the Medici, madam!” said
the young man, clasping his portfolio hastily, “pray
do not disturb monsignore! The picture is dear to
me!”

The marchesa, looking into his face, and with a
glance around, which the accomplished courtier before
her read better than she dreamed, she drew her
shawl over her blanched shoulders, and settled herself
to listen to the conversation of her new acquaintance.

“You would be less gracious if you were observed,
proud beauty,” thought Basil; “but while you think
the poor painter may while away the tediousness of a
vigil, he may feed his eyes on your beauty as well.”

The Mangia-foco turned into the canal, threaded
its lily-paved waters for a mile or two, and then, putting
forth upon the broad bosom of the Po, went on
her course against the stream, and, with retarded pace,
penetrated toward the sun-beloved heart of Italy. And
while the later hours performed their procession with
the stars, the marchesa del Marmore leaned sleepless
and unfatigued against the railing, listening with mingled
curiosity and scorn to the passionate love-murmur
of the enamored painter. His hat was thrown aside,
his fair and curling locks were flowing in the night
air, his form was bent earnestly but respectfully toward
her, and on his lip, with all its submissive tenderness,
there sat a shadow of something she could not define,
but which rebuked, ever and anon, as with the fierce
regard of a noble, the condescension she felt toward
him as an artist.

3. III.

Upon the lofty dome of the altar in the cathedral of
Bologna stands poised an angel in marble, not spoken
of in the books of travellers, but perhaps the loveliest
incarnation of a blessed cherub that ever lay in the
veined bosom of Pentelicus. Lost and unobserved on
the vast floor of the nave, the group of artists, who had
made a day's journey from Ferrara, sat in the wicker
chairs hired for a baioch during the vesper, and drew
silently from this angel, while the devout people of
Bologna murmured their Ave Marias around. Signor
Basil alone was content to look over the work of his
companions, and the twilight had already begun to
brighten the undying lamps at the shrine, when he
started from the pillar against which he leaned, and
crossed hastily toward a group issuing from a private
chapel in the western aisle. A lady walked between
two gentlemen of noble mien, and behind her, attended
by an equally distinguished company, followed that
lady's husband, the marchese del Marmore. They
were strangers passing through Bologna, and had been
attended to vespers by some noble friends.

The companions of the signor Basil looked on with
some surprise as their enamored friend stepped confidently
before the two nobles in attendance upon the

lady, and arrested her steps with a salutation which,
though respectful as became a gentleman, was marked
with the easy politeness of one accustomed to a favorable
reception.

“May I congratulate miladi,” he said, rising slowly
from his bow, and fixing his eyes with unembarrassed
admiration on her own liquid but now frowning orbs,
“upon her safe journey over the marches! Bologna,”
he continued, glancing at the nobles with a courteous
smile, “welcomes her fittingly.”

The lady listened with a look of surprise, and the
Bolognese glanced from the dusty boots of the artist
to his portfolio.

“Has the painter the honor to know la signora?”
asked the cavalier on her right.

“Signor, si!” said the painter, fiercely, as a curl
arched the lady's lip, and she prepared to answer.

The color mounted to the temples of the marchesa,
and her husband, who had loitered beneath the madonna
of Domenichino, coming up at the instant, she
bowed coldly to the signor Basil, and continued down
the aisle. The artist followed to her carriage, and
lifted his hat respectfully as the lumbering equipage
took its way by the famous statue of Neptune, and
then with a confident smile, which seemed to his companions
somewhat mistimed, he muttered between his
teeth, “Ciascuno son bel' giorno!” and strolled loitering
on with them to the trattoria.

4. IV.

The court of the grand-duke of Florence is perhaps
the most cosmopolitan and the most easy of access in
all Europe. The Austrian-born monarch himself,
adopting in some degree the frank and joyous character
of the people over whom he reigns, throws open
his parks and palaces, his gardens and galleries, to the
strangers passing through; and in the season of gayety
almost any presentable person, resident at Florence,
may procure the entree to the court balls, and start
fair with noble dames and gentlemen for grace in
courtly favor. The fêtes at the Palazzo Pitti, albeit
not always exempt from a leaven of vulgarity, are always
brilliant and amusing, and the exclusives of the
court, though they draw the line distinctly enough to
their own eye, mix with apparent abandonment in the
motley waltz and mazurka, and either from good-nature
or a haughty conviction of their superiority, never
suffer the offensive cordon to be felt, scarce to be suspected,
by the multitude who divert them. The
grand-duke, to common eyes, is a grave and rather
timid person, with more of the appearance of the
scholar than of the sovereign, courteous in public, and
benevolent and earnest in his personal attentions to
his guests at the palace. The royal quadrille may be
shared without permission of the grand chamberlain,
and the royal eye, after the first one or two dances of
ceremony, searches for partners by the lamp of beauty,
heedless of the diamonds on the brow, or the star of
nobility on the shoulder. The grand supper is scarce
more exclusive, and on the disappearance of the royal
cortege, the delighted crowd take their departure,
having seen no class more favored than themselves,
and enchanted with the gracious absence of pretension
in the nobilita of Tuscany.

Built against the side of a steep hill, the Palazzo
Pitti encloses its rooms of state within massive and
sombre walls in front, while in the rear the higher stories
of the palace open forth on a level with the delicious
gardens of the Boboli, and contain suites of
smaller apartments, fitted up with a cost and luxury
which would beggar the dream of a Sybarite. Here
lives the monarch, in a seclusion rendered deeper and
more sacred by the propinquity of the admitted world
in the apartments below; and in this sanctuary of royalty
is enclosed a tide of life as silent and unsuspected
by the common inhabitant of Florence as the flow of
the ocean-veiled Arethusa by the mariner of the Ionian
main. Here the invention of the fiery genius of Italy
is exhausted in poetical luxury; here the reserved and
silent sovereign throws off his maintein of royal condescension,
and enters with equal arms into the lists of
love and wit; here burn (as if upon an altar fed with
spice-woods and precious gums) the fervent and uncalculating
passions of this glowing clime, in senses refined
by noble nurture, and hearts prompted by the
haughty pulses of noble blood; and here — to the
threshold of this sanctuary of royal pleasure — press all
who know its secrets, and who imagine a claim to it
in their birth and attractions, while the lascia-passare
is accorded with a difficulty which alone preserves its
splendor.

Some two or three days after the repulse of the
signor Basil in the cathedral of Bologna, the group of
travelling artists were on their way from the grand gallery
at Florence to their noonday meal. Loitering
with slow feet through the crowded and narrow Via
Calzaiole, they emerged into the sunny Piazza, and
looking up with understanding eyes at the slender shaft
of the Campanile (than which a fairer figure of religious
architecture points not to heaven), they took
their way toward the church of Santa Trinita, proposing
to eat their early dinner at a house named, from
its excellence in a certain temperate beverage, La
Birra. The traveller should be advised, also, that by
paying an extra paul in the bottle, he may have at this
renowned eating-house an old wine sunned on the
southern shoulder of Fiesole, that hath in its flavor a
certain redolence of Boccaccio — scarce remarkable,
since it grew in the scene of the Decameron — but of a
virtue which, to the Hundred Tales of Love (read
drinking), is what the Gradus ad Parnassum should
be to the building of a dithyrambic. The oil of two
crazie upon the palm of the fat waiter Giuseppe will
assist in calling the vintage to his memory.

A thundering rap upon the gate of the adjoining
Palazzo arrested the attention of the artists as they
were about to enter the Birra, and in the occupant of
a dark-green cabriolet, drawn by a pampered horse of
the duke's breed, they recognised, elegantly dressed
and posed on his seat a la d'Orsay, the signor Basil.
His coat was of an undecided cut and color, and his
gloves were of primrose purity.

The recognition was immediate, and the cordiality
of the greeting mutual. They had parted from their
companion at the gate of Florence, as travellers part,
without question, and they met without reserve to part
as questionless again. The artists were surprised at
the signor Basil's transformation, but no follower of
their refined art would have been so ill-bred as to express
it. He wished them the bon appetito, as a tall
chasscur came out to say that her ladyship was at
home; and with a slacked rein the fiery horse sprang
through the gateway, and the marble court of the
palace rang with his prancing hoofs.

He who was idle and bought flowers at the Café of
the Colonna at Florence will have remarked, as he sat
in his chair upon the street in the sultry evening the
richly ornamented terrace and balustrade of the Palazzo
Corsi giving upon the Piazza Trinita. The
dark old Ghibelline palace of the Strozzi lets the eye
down upon it, as it might pass from a helmeted knight
with closed vizor to his unbonneted and laughing
page. The crimson curtains of the window opening
upon the terrace, at the time of our story, reminded
every passing Florentine of the lady who dwelt within
— a descendant of one of the haughtiest lines of English
chivalry — resident in Italy since many years for
health, but bearing in her delicate frame and exquisitely
transparent features, the loftiest type of patrician
beauty that had ever filled the eye that looked
upon her. In the inner heaven of royal exclusiveness

at the Pitti — in its constellation of rank and wit — the
lady Geraldine had long been the worshipped and ascendant
cynosure. Happy in a husband without rank
and but of moderate fortune, she maintained the spotless
character of an English wife in this sphere of
conventional corruption; and though the idol of the
duke and his nobles, it would have been like a whisper
against the purity of the brightest Pleiad, to have
linked her name with love.

With her feet upon a sofa covered with a gossamer
cashmere, her lovely head pillowed on a cushion of
silk, and a slight stand within arm's length holding a
vase of flowers and the volume from which she had
been reading, the lady Geraldine received the count
Basil Spiriford, some time attaché to the Russian embassy
at Paris (where he had first sunned his eyes in
her beauty), and at present the newly-appointed secretary
to the minister of the same monarch near the
court of Tuscany.

Without a bow, but with the hasty step and gesture
of a long absent and favored friend, the count Basil
ran to the proffered hand, and pressed its alabaster
fingers to his lips. Had the more common acquaintances
of the diplomate seen him at this moment, they
would have marvelled how the mask of manhood may
drop, and disclose the ingenuous features of the boy.
The secretary knew his species, and the lady Geraldine
was one of those women for whom the soul is
unwilling to possess a secret.

After the first inquiries were over, the lady questioned
her recovered favorite of his history since they
had parted. “I left you,” she said, “swimming the
dangerous tide of life at Paris. How have you come
to shore?”

“Thanks, perhaps, to your friendship, which made
life worth the struggle! For the two extremes, however,
you know what I was at Paris — and yesterday I
was a wandering artist in velveteen and a sombrero!”

Lady Geraldine laughed.

“Ah! you look at my curls — but Macassar is at a
discount! It is the only grace I cherished in my incognito.
A resumer — I got terribly out of love by the
end of the year after we parted, and as terribly in
debt. My promotion in diplomacy did not arrive, and
the extreme hour for my credit did. Pozzo di Borgo
kindly procured me conge for a couple of years, and I
dived presently under a broad-rimmed hat, got into a
vetturino with portfolio and pencils, joined a troop of
wandering artists, and with my patrimony at nurse,
have been two years looking at life without spectacles
at Venice.”

“And painting?”

“Painting!”

“Might one see a specimen?” asked the lady Geraldine,
with an incredulous smile.

“I regret that my immortal efforts in oils are in the
possession of a certain Venetian, who lets the fifth
floor of a tenement washed by the narrowest canal in
that fair city. But if your ladyship cares to see a
drawing or two — ”

He rang the bell, and his jocki Anglais presently
brought from the pocket of his cabriolet a wayworn
and thinly furnished portfolio. The lady Geraldine
turned over a half-dozen indifferent views of Venice,
but the last cartoon in the portfolio made her start.

“La Marchesa del Marmore!” she exclaimed, looking
at Count Basil with an inquiring and half uneasy
eye.

“Is it well drawn?” he asked quietly.

“Well drawn? It is a sketch worthy of Raphael.
Do you really draw so well as this, or” — she added,
after a slight hesitation — “is it a miracle of love?”

“It is a divine head,” soliloquized the Russian, half
closing his eyes, and looking at the drawing from a
distance, as if to fill up the imperfect outline from his
memory.

The lady Geraldine laid her hand on his arm. “My
dear Basil,” she said seriously, “I should be wretched
if I thought your happiness was in the power of this
woman. Do you love her?”

“The portrait was not drawn by me,” he answered,
“though I have a reason for wishing her to think so.
It was done by a fellow-traveller of mine, whom I wish
to make a sketch of yourself, and I have brought it
here to interest you in him as an artist. Mais revenons
a nos moutons — la marchesa was also a fellow-traveller
of mine, and without loving her too violently, I owe
her a certain debt of courtesy contracted on the way.
Will you assist me to pay it?”

Relieved of her fears, and not at all suspecting the
good faith of the diplomatist in his acknowledgments
of gratitude, the lady Geraldine inquired simply how
she could serve him.

“In the twenty-four hours since my arrival at Florence,”
he said, “I have put myself, as you will see,
au courant of the minor politics of the Pitti. Thanks
to my Parisian renown, the duke has enrolled me already
under the back-stairs oligarchy, and to-morrow
night I shall sup with you in the saloon of Hercules
after the ball is over. La marchesa, as you well know,
has, with all her rank and beauty, never been able to
set foot within those guarded penetralia — soit her malicious
tongue, soit the interest against her of the men
she has played upon her hook too freely. The road
to her heart, if there be one, lies over that threshold,
and I would take the toll. Do you understand me,
most beautiful lady Geraldine?”

The count Basil imprinted another kiss upon the
fingers of the fair Englishwoman, as she promised to
put into his hand the following night the illuminated
ticket which was to repay, as she thought, too generously, a debt of gratitude; and plucking a flower from
her vase for his bosom, he took his leave to return at
twilight to dinner. Dismissing his cabriolet at the
gate, he turned on foot toward the church of San
Gaetano, and with an expression of unusual elation in
his step and countenance, entered the trattoria, where
dined at that moment his companions of the pencil.

5. V.

The green lamps glittering by thousands amid the
foliage of the Boboli had attained their full brightness,
and the long-lived Italian day had died over the distant
mountains of Carrara, leaving its inheritance of light
apparently to the stars, who, on their fields of deepening
blue, sparkled, each one like the leader of an unseen
host in the depths of heaven, himself the foremost
and the most radiant. The night was balmy and
voluptuous. The music of the ducal band swelled
forth from the perfumed apartments on the air. A
single nightingale, far back in the wilderness of the
garden, poured from his melodious heart a chant of
the most passionate melancholy. The sentinel of the
body-guard stationed at the limit of the spray of the
fountain leaned on his halberd and felt his rude senses
melt in the united spells of luxury and nature. The
ministers of a monarch's pleasure had done their utmost
to prepare a scene of royal delight, and night and
summer had flung in their enchantments when ingenuity
was exhausted.

The dark architectural mass of the Pitti, pouring a
blaze of light scarce endurable from its deeply-sunk
windows, looked like the side of an enchanted mountain
laid open for the revels of sorcery. The aigrette
and plume passed by; the tiara and the jewel upon
the breast; the gayly-dressed courtiers and glittering
dames; and to that soldier at his dewy post, it seemed
like the realized raving of the improvisatore when he
is lost in some fable of Araby. Yet within walked
malice and hate, and the light and perfume that might
have fed an angel's heart with love, but deepened

in many a beating bosom the consuming fires of
envy.

With the gold key of office on his cape, the grand
chamberlain stood at the feet of the dowager grand
dutchess, and by a sign to the musicians, hidden in
a latticed gallery behind the Corinthian capital of the
hall, retarded or accelerated the soft measure of the
waltz. On a raised seat in the rear of the chairs of
state, sat the ladies of honor and the noble dames
nearest allied to royal blood; one solitary and privileged
intruder alone sharing the elevated place — the
lady Geraldine. Dressed in white, her hair wound
about her head in the simplest form, yet developing
its divine shape with the clear outline of statuary, her
eyes lambent with purity and sweetness, heavily fringed
with lashes a shade darker than the light auburn
braided on her temples, and the tint of the summer's
most glowing rose turned out from the threadlike parting
of her lips; she was a vision of loveliness to take
into the memory, as the poet enshrines in his soul
the impossible shape of his ideal, and consumes youth
and age searching in vain for its like. Fair Lady Geraldine!
thou wilt read these passionate words from
one whose worship of thy intoxicating loveliness has
never before found utterance, but if this truly-told tale
should betray the hand that has dared to describe thy
beauty, in thy next orisons to St. Mary of pity, breathe
from those bright lips a prayer that he may forget
thee!

By the side of the lady Geraldine, but behind the
chair of the grand dutchess, who listened to his conversation
with singular delight, stood a slight young
man of uncommon personal beauty, a stranger apparently
to every other person present. His brilliant uniform
alone betrayed him to be in the Russian diplomacy;
and the marked distinction shown him, both by the
reigning queen of the court, and the more powerful
and inaccessible queen of beauty, marked him as an
object of keen and universal curiosity. By the time
the fifth mazurka had concluded its pendulous refrain,
the grand chamberlain had tolerably well circulated
the name and rank of Count Basil Spirifort, the renowned
wit and elegant of Paris, newly appointed to
the court of his royal highness of Tuscany. Fair
eyes wandered amid his sunny curls, and beating bosoms
hushed their pulses as he passed.

Count Basil knew the weight of a first impression.
Count Basil knew also the uses of contempt. Upon
the first principle he kept his place between the grand
dutchess and Lady Geraldine, exerting his deeply-studied
art of pleasing, to draw upon himself their exclusive
attention. Upon the second principle, he was
perfectly unconscious of the presence of another human
being; and neither the gliding step of the small-eared
princess S — in the waltz, nor the stately
advance of the last female of the Medici in the mazurka,
distracted his large blue eyes a moment from their
idleness. With one hand on the eagle-hilt of his
sword, and his side leaned against the high cushion of
red velvet honored by the pressure of the lady Geraldine,
he gazed up into that beaming face, when not
bending respectfully to the dutchess, and drank steadfastly
from her beauty, as the lotus-cup drinks light
from the sun.

The new secretary had calculated well. In the
deep recess of the window looking toward San Miniato,
stood a lady nearly hidden from view by the muslin
curtains just stirring with the vibration of the music,
who gazed on the immediate circle of the grand dutchess
with an interest that was not attempted to be disguised.
On her first entrance into the hall, the marchesa
del Marmore had recognised in the new minion
of favor her impassioned lover of the lagoon, her slighted
acquaintance of the cathedral. When the first shock
of surprise was over, she looked on the form which
she had found beautiful even in the disguise of pover
ty, and, forgetting her insulting repulse when he would
have claimed in public the smile she had given him
when unobserved, she recalled with delight every syllable
he had murmured in her ear, and every look she
had called forth in the light of a Venetian moon. The
man who had burned upon the altar of her vanity the
most intoxicating incense — who had broken through
the iron rules of convention and ceremony, to throw
his homage at her feet — who had portrayed so incomparably
(she believed) with his love-inspired pencil
the features imprinted on his heart — this chance-won
worshipper, this daring but gifted plebeian, as she had
thought him, had suddenly shot into her sphere and
become a legitimate object of love; and, beautified by
the splendor of dress, and distinguished by the preference
and favor of those incomparably above her, he
seemed tenfold, to her eyes, the perfection of adorable
beauty. As she remembered his eloquent devotion to
herself, and saw the interest taken in him by a woman
whom she hated and had calumniated — a woman who
she believed stood between her and all the light of existence
— she anticipated the triumph of taking him
from her side, of exhibiting him to the world as a falcon
seduced from his first quarry; and never doubting
that so brilliant a favorite would control the talisman
of the paradise she had so long wished to enter, she
panted for the moment when she should catch his eye
and draw him from his lure, and already heard the
chamberlain's voice in her ear commanding her presence
after the ball in the saloon of Hercules.

The marchesa had been well observed from the first
by the wily diplomate. A thorough adept in the art
(so necessary to his profession) of seeing without appearing
to see, he had scarce lost a shade of the varying
expressions of her countenance; and while she
fancied him perfectly unconscious of her presence, he
read her tell-tale features as if they had given utterance
to her thoughts. He saw, with secret triumph,
the effect of his brilliant position upon her proud and
vain heart; watched her while she made use of her
throng of despised admirers to create a sensation near
him and attract his notice; and when the ball wore on,
and he was still in unwearied and exclusive attendance
upon the lady Geraldine, he gazed after her with a
momentary curl of triumph on his lip, as she took up
her concealed position in the embayed window, and
abandoned herself to the bitter occupation of watching
the happiness of her rival. The lady Geraldine had
never been so animated since her first appearance at
the court of Tuscany.

It was past midnight when the grand-duke, flushed
and tired with dancing, came to the side of the lady
Geraldine. Count Basil gave place, and, remaining a
moment in nominal obedience to the sovereign's polite
request which he was too politic to construe literally,
he looked down the dance with the air of one who has
turned his back on all that could interest him, and,
passing close to the concealed position of the marchesa,
stepped out upon the balcony.

The air was cool, and the fountain played refreshingly
below. The count Basil was one of those minds
which never have so much leisure for digression as
when they are most occupied. A love, as deep and
profound as the abysses of his soul, was weaving thread
for thread with a revenge worthy of a Mohican; yet,
after trying in vain to count eight in the Pleiades, he
raised himself upon the marble balustrade, and perfectly
anticipating the interruption to his solitude which
presently occurred, began to speculate aloud on the
dead and living at that hour beneath the roof of the
Pitti.

“A painter's mistress,” he said, “immortal in her
touch of her paramour's pencil, is worshipped for centuries
on these walls by the pilgrims of art; while the
warm perfection of all loveliness — the purest and divinest
of highborn women — will perish utterly with the

eyes that have seen her! The Bella of Titian, the
Fornarina of Raffaelle — peasant-girls of Italy — have,
at this moment, more value in this royal palace than
the breathing forms that inhabit it! The lady Geraldine
herself, to whom the sovereign offers at this moment
his most flattering homage, would be less a loss
to him than either! Yet they despise the gods of the
pencil who may thus make them immortal! The dull
blood in their noble veins, that never bred a thought
beyond the instincts of their kind, would look down,
forsooth, on the inventive and celestial ichor that inflames
the brain, and prompts the fiery hand of the
painter! How long will this very sovereign live in the
memories of men? The murderous Medici, the ambitious
cardinals, the abandoned women, of an age gone
by, hang in imperishable colors on his walls; while of
him, the lord of this land of genius, there is not a bust
or a picture that would bring a sequin in the marketplace!
They would buy genius in these days like
wine, and throw aside the flask in which it ripened.
Raffaelle and Buonarotti were companions for a pope
and his cardinals: Titian was an honored guest for the
doge. The stimulus to immortalize these noble friends
was in the love they bore them; and the secret of their
power to do it lay half in the knowledge of their characters,
gained by daily intimacy. Painters were princes
then, as they are beggars now; and the princely art is
beggared as well!”

The marchesa del Marmore stepped out upon
the balcony, leaning on the arm of the grand
chamberlain. The soliloquizing secretary had foretold
to himself both her coming and her companon.

“Monsieur le comte,” said the chamberlain, “la
marchesa del Marmore wishes for the pleasure of your
acquaintance.”

Count Basil bowed low, and in that low and musical
tone of respectful devotion which, real or counterfeit,
made him irresistible to a woman who had a soul to be
thrilled, he repeated the usual nothings upon the beauty
of the night; and when the chamberlain returned
to his duties, the marchesa walked forth with her
companion to the cool and fragrant alleys of the garden,
and, under the silent and listening stars, implored
forgiveness for her pride; and, with the sudden abandonment
peculiar to the clime, poured into his ear
the passionate and weeping avowal of her sorrow and
love.

“Those hours of penitence in the embayed window,”
thought Count Basil, “were healthy for your
soul.” And as she walked by his side, leaning heavily
on his arm, and half-dissolved in a confiding tenderness,
his thoughts reverted to another and a far sweeter
voice; and while the caressing words of the marchesa
fell on an unlistening ear, his footsteps insensibly turned
back to the lighted hall.

6. VI.

As the daylight stole softly over Vallombrosa, the
luxurious chariot of the marchesa del Marmore stopped
at the door of Count Basil. The lady Geraldine's suit
had been successful; and the hitherto excluded Florentine
had received, from the hand of the man she had
once so ignorantly scorned, a privilege for which she
would have bartered her salvation: she had supped at
his side in the saloon of Hercules. With many faults
of character, she was an Italian in feeling, and had a
capacity, like all her countrywomen, for a consuming
and headlong passion. She had better have been born
of marble.

“I have lifted you to heaven,” said Count Basil, as
her chariot-wheels rolled from his door; “but it is as
the eagle soars into the clouds with the serpent. We
will see how you will relish the fall!”

2. PART II.

The grand-duke's carriages, with their six horses
and outriders, had turned down the Borg'ognisanti,
and the “City of the Red Lily,” waking from her
noonday slumber, was alive with the sound of wheels.
The sun was sinking over the Apennine which kneels
at the gate of Florence; the streets were cool and
shadowy; the old women, with the bambina between
their knees, braided straw at the doors; the booted
guardsman paced his black charger slowly over the
jeweller's bridge; the picture-dealer brought forward
his brightest “master” to the fading light; and while
the famous churches of that fairest city of the earth
called to the Ave-Maria with impatient bell, the gallantry
and beauty of Tuscany sped through the dampening
air with their swift horses, meeting and passing
with gay greetings amid the green alleys of the Cascine.

The twilight had become gray, when the carriages
and horsemen, scattered in hundreds through the interlaced
roads of this loveliest of parks, turned by common
consent toward the spacious square in the centre,
and drawing up in thickly-serried ranks, the soirèe on
wheels, the reunion en plein air, which is one of the
most delightful of the peculiar customs of Florence,
commenced its healthful gayeties. The showy carriages
of the grand-duke and the ex-king of Wurtemberg
(whose rank would not permit them to share in
the familiarities of the hour) disappeared by the avenue
skirting the bank of the Arno, and with much delicate
and some desperate specimens of skill, the coachmen
of the more exclusive nobility threaded the embarrassed
press of vehicles, and laid their wheels together
on the southern edge of the piazza. The beaux in the
saddle, disembarrassed of ladies and axletrees, enjoyed
their usual butterfly privilege of roving, and with light
rein and ready spur pushed their impatient horses to
the coronetted panels of the loveliest or most powerful;
the laugh of the giddy was heard here and there
over the pawing of restless hoofs; an occasional scream
— half of apprehension, half of admiration — rewarded
the daring caracole of some young and bold rider:
and while the first star sprang to its place, and the dew
of heaven dropped into the false flowers in the hat of
the belle, and into the thirsting lips of the violet in the
field (simplicity, like virtue, is its own reward!), the
low murmur of calumny and compliment, of love and
lightheartedness, of politeness, politics, puns, and poetry,
arose over that assembly upon wheels: and if it
was not a scene and an hour of happiness, it was the
fault neither of the fragrant eve nor of the provisions
of nature and fortune. The material for happiness
was there.

A showy calêche with panels of dusky crimson, the
hammer-cloth of the same shade, edged with a broad
fringe of white, the wheels slightly picked out with the
same colors, and the coachman and footman in corresponding
liveries, was drawn up near the southern edge
of the Piazzi. A narrow alley had been left for horsemen
between this equipage and the adjoining ones,
closed up at the extremity, however, by a dark-green
and very plain chariot, placed with a bold violation of
etiquette directly across the line, and surrounded just
now by two or three persons of the highest rank leaning
from their saddles in earnest conversation with the
occupant. Not far from the calêche, mounted upon
an English blood-horse of great beauty, a young man
had just drawn rein as if interrupted only for a moment
on some pressing errand, and with his hat slightly
raised, was paying his compliments to the venerable
Prince Poniatowski, at that time the Amphytrion of
Florence. From moment to moment, as the pauses
occurred in the exchange of courteous phrases, the
rider, whose spurred heel was close at his saddle-girths,
stole an impatient glance up the avenue of

carriages to the dark-green chariot, and, excited by
the lifted rein and the proximity of the spur, the graceful
horse fretted on his minion feet, and the bending
figures from a hundred vehicles, and the focus of
bright eyes radiating from all sides to the spot, would
have betrayed, even to a stranger, that the horseman
was of no common mark. Around his uncovered temples
floated fair and well-cherished locks of the sunniest
auburn; and if there was beauty in the finely-drawn
lines of his lips, there was an inexpressibly fierce spirit
as well.

2. II.

The count Basil had been a month at Florence. In
that time he had contrived to place himself between
the duke's ear and all the avenues of favor, and had
approached as near, perhaps nearer, to the hearts of
the women of his court. A singular and instinctive
knowledge of the weaknesses of human nature, perfected
and concealed by conversance with the consummate
refinement of life at Paris, remarkable personal
beauty, and a quality of scornful bitterness for which
no one could divine a reason in a character and fate
else so happily mingled, but which at the same time
added to his fascination, had given Count Basil a command
over the varied stops of society, equalled by few
players on that difficult and capricious instrument.
His worldly ambition went swimmingly on, and the
same wind filled the sails of his lighter ventures as
well. The love of the marchesa del Marmore, as he
had very well anticipated, grew with his influence and
renown. A woman's pride, he perfectly knew, is difficult
to wake after she has once believed herself adored;
and, satisfied that the portrait taken on the lagoon, and
the introduction he had given her to the exclusive penetralia
of the Pitti, would hold her till his revenge was
complete, he left her love for him to find its own food
in his successes, and never approached her but to lay
to her heart more mordently the serpents of jealousy
and despair.

For the lady Geraldine the count Basil had conceived
a love, the deepest of which his nature was capable.
Long as he had known her, it was a passion
born in Italy, and while it partook of the qualities of
the clime, it had for its basis the habitual and well-founded
respect of a virtuous and sincere friendship.
At their first acquaintance at Paris, the lovely Englishwoman,
newly arrived from the purer moral atmosphere
of her own country, was moving in the dissolute,
but skilfully disguised society of the Faubourg
St. Germain, with the simple unconsciousness of the
pure in heart, innocent herself, and naturally unsuspicious
of others. The perfect frankness with which
she established an intimacy with the clever and accomplished
attaché, had soon satisfied that clear-sighted
person that there was no passion in her preference,
and, giddy with the thousand pleasures of that metropolis
of delight, he had readily sunk his first startled
admiration of her beauty in an affectionate and confiding
friendship. He had thus shown her the better
qualities of his character only, and, charmed with his
wit and penetration, and something flattered, perhaps,
with the devotion of so acknowledged an autocrat of
fashion and talent, she had formed an attachment for
him that had all the earnestness of love without its
passion. They met at Florence, but the “knowledge
of good and evil” had by this time driven the lady
Geraldine from her Eden of unconsciousness. Still
as irreproachable in conduct, and perhaps as pure in
heart as before, an acquaintance with the forms of vice
had introduced into her manners those ostensible cautions
which, while they protect, suggest also what is
to be feared.

A change had taken place also in Count Basil. He
had left the vitreous and mercurial clime of France,
with its volatile and superficial occupations, for the
voluptuous and indolent air of Italy, and the study of
its impassioned deifications of beauty. That which
had before been in him an instinct of gay pleasure — a
pursuit which palled in the first moment of success,
and was second to his ambition or his vanity — had become,
in those two years of a painter's life, a thirst
both of the senses and the imagination, which had
usurped the very throne of his soul. Like the Hindoo
youth, who finds the gilded plaything of his childhood
elevated in his maturer years into a god, he bowed his
heart to what he held so lightly, and brought the
costly sacrifice of time and thought to its altars. He
had fed his eyes upon the divine glories of the pencil,
and upon the breathing wonders of love in marble, beneath
the sky and in the dissolving air in which they
rose to the hand of inspiration; and with his eye disciplined,
and his blood fused with taste and enthusiasm,
that idolatry of beauty, which had before seemed
sensual or unreal, kindled its first fires in his mind,
and his senses were intoxicated with the incense.
There is a kind of compromise in the effects of the
atmosphere and arts of Italy. If the intellect takes
a warmer hue in its study of the fair models of antiquity,
the senses in turn become more refined and
intellectual. In other latitudes and lands woman is
loved more coldly. After the brief reign of a passion
of instinct, she is happy if she can retain her empire
by habit, or the qualities of the heart. That divine
form, meant to assimilate her to the angels, has never
been recognised by the dull eye that should have
seen in it a type of her soul. To the love of the painter
or the statuary, or to his who has made himself conversant
with their models, is added the imperishable
enthusiasm of a captivating and exalted study. The
mistress of his heart is the mistress of his mind. She
is the breathing realization of that secret ideal which
exists in every mind, but which, in men ignorant of the
fine arts, takes another form, and becomes a woman's
rival and usurper. She is like nothing in ambition —
she is like nothing in science or business — nothing in
out-of-door pleasures. If politics, or the chase, or the
acquisition of wealth, is the form of this ruling passion,
she is unassociated with that which is nearest his heart,
and he returns to her with an exhausted interest and a
flagging fancy. It is her strongest tie upon his affection,
even, that she is his refuge when unfit for that
which occupies him most — in his fatigue, his disappointment,
his vacuity of head and heart. He thinks
of her only as she receives him in his most worthless
hours; and, as his refreshed intellects awake, she is
forgotten with the first thought of his favorite theme —
for what has a woman's loveliness to do with that?

Count Basil had not concluded his first interview
with the lady Geraldine, without marvelling at the new
feelings with which he looked upon her. He had
never before realized her singular and adorable beauty.
The exquisitely turned head, the small and pearly
ears, the spiritual nostril, the softly moulded chin, the
clear loftiness of expression yet inexpressible delicacy
and brightness in the lips, and a throat and bust than
which those of Faustina in the delicious marble of the
Gallery of Florence might be less envied by the queen
of love — his gaze wandered over these, and followed
her in the harmony of her motions, and the native and
unapproachable grace of every attitude; and the pictures
he had so passionately studied seemed to fade in
his mind, and the statues he had half worshipped
seemed to descend from their pedestals depreciated.
The lady Geraldine, for the first time, felt his eye.
For the first time in their acquaintance, she was offended
with its regard. Her embarrassment was read
by the quick diplomate, and at that moment sprang
into being a passion, which perhaps had died but for
the conscious acknowledgment of her rebuke.

Up to the evening in the Cascine, with which the

second chapter of this simply true tale commences,
but one of the two leading threads in the count Basil's
woof had woven well. “The jealous are the damned,”
and the daily and deadly agony of the marchesa del
Marmore was a dark ground from which his love to
the lady Geraldine rose to his own eye in heightened
relief. His dearest joy forwarded with equal step his
dearest revenge; and while he could watch the working
of his slow torture in the fascinated heart of his
victim, he was content to suspend a blow to which
that of death would be a mercy. “The law,” said
Count Basil, as he watched her quivering and imploring
lip, “takes cognizance but of the murder of
the body. It has no retribution for the keener dagger
of the soul.”

3. III.

The conversation between the Russian secretary
and the prince Poniatowski ended at last in a graceful
bow from the former to his horse's neck; and the
quicker rattling of the small hoofs on the ground, as
the fine creature felt the movement in the saddle and
prepared to bound away, drew all eyes once more
upon the handsomest and most idolized gallant of
Florence. The narrow lane of carriages, commencing
with the showy calêche of the marchesa del Marmore,
and closed up by the plain chariot of the lady Geraldine,
was still open, and with a glance at the latter
which sufficiently indicated his destination, Count
Basil raised his spurred heel, and with a smile of delight
and the quickness of a barb in the desert, galloped
toward the opening. In the same instant the
marchesa del Marmore gave a convulsive spring forward,
and, in obedience to an imperative order, her
coachman violently drew rein and shot the back and
forward wheels of the calêche directly across his path.
Met in full career by this sudden obstacle, the horse
of the Russian reared high in air; but ere the screams
of apprehension had arisen from the adjacent carriages,
the silken bridle was slacked, and with a low bow to
the foiled and beautiful marchesa as he shot past, he
brushed the hammer-cloths of the two scarce separated
carriages, and at the same instant stood at the
chariot window of the lady Geraldine, as calm and
respectful as if he had never known danger or emotion.

A hundred eyes had seen the expression of his face
as he leaped past the unhappy woman, and the drama
of which that look was the key was understood in Florence.
The lady Geraldine alone, seated far back in
her chariot, was unconscious of the risk run for the
smile with which she greeted its hero; and unconscious,
as well, of the poignant jealousy and open mortification
she had innocently assisted to inflict, she
stretched her fair and transparent hand from the carriage,
and stroked the glossy neck of his horse, and
while the marchesa del Marmore drove past with a
look of inexpressible anguish and hate, and the dispersing
nobles and dames took their way to the city
gates, Count Basil leaned close to the ear of that loveliest
of breathing creatures, and forgot, as she forgot
in listening to the bewildering music of his voice, that
the stars had risen, or that the night was closing
around them.

The Cascine had long been silent when the chariot
of the lady Geraldine took its way to the town, and,
with the reins loose upon his horse's neck, Count
Basil followed at a slower pace, lost in the revery of a
tumultuous passion. The sparkling and unobstructed
stars broke through the leafy roof of the avenue whose
silence was disturbed by those fine and light-stepping
hoofs, and the challenge of the duke's forester, going
his rounds ere the gates closed, had its own deep-throated
echo for its answer. The Arno rippled
among the rushes on its banks, the occasional roll of
wheels passing the paved arch of the Ponte Seraglio,
came faintly down the river upon the moist wind, the
pointed cypresses of the convent of Bello Sguardo
laid their slender fingers against the lowest stars in the
southern horizon, and with his feet pressed, carelessly,
far through his stirrups, and his head dropped on his
bosom, the softened diplomats turned instinctively to
the left in the last diverging point of the green alleys,
and his horse's ears were already pricked at
the tread, before the gate, of the watchful and idle
doganieri.

Close under the city wall on this side Florence,
the traveller will remember that the trees are more
thickly serried, and the stone seats, for the comfort
and pleasure of those who would step forth from the
hot streets for an hour of fresh air and rest, are mossy
with the depth of the perpetual shade. In the midst
of this dark avenue, the unguided animal beneath the
careless and forgetful rider suddenly stood still, and
the next moment starting aside, a female sprang high
against his neck, and Count Basil, ere awake from his
revery, felt the glance of a dagger-blade across his bosom.

With the slender wrist that had given the blow
firmly arrested in his left hand, the count Basil slowly
dismounted, and after a steadfast look, by the dim
light, into the face of the lovely assassin, he pressed
her fingers respectfully, and with well counterfeited
emotion, to his lips.

“Twice since the Ave-Maria!” he said in a tone of
reproachful tenderness, “and against a life that is your
own!”

He could see, even in that faint light, the stern compression
of those haughty lips, and the flash of the
darkest eyes of the Val d'Arno. But leading her gently
to a seat, he sat beside her, and with scarce ten
brief moments of low-toned and consummate eloquence,
he once more deluded her soul!

“We meet to-morrow,” she said, as, after a burst
of irrepressible tears, she disengaged herself from his
neck, and looked toward the end of the avenue, where
Count Basil had already heard the pawing of her impatient
horses.

“To-morrow!” he answered; “but, mia carissima!”
he continued, opening his breast to stanch the blood of
his wound, “you owe me a concession after this rude
evidence of your love.”

She looked into his face as if answer were superfluous.

“Drive to my palazzo at noon, and remain with me
till the Ave-Maria.”

For but half a moment the impassioned Italian hesitated.
Though the step he demanded of her was apparently
without motive or reason — though it was one
that sacrificed to a whim her station, her fortune, and
her friends — she hesitated but to question her reason
if the wretched price of this sacrifice would be paid —
if the love, to which she fled from this world and heaven,
was her own. In other countries, the crime of infidelity
is punished: in Italy it is the appearance only
that is criminal. In proportion as the sin is overlooked,
the violation of the outward proprieties of life is
severely visited; and while a lover is stipulated for in
the marriage-contract, an open visit to that lover's
house is an offence which brands the perpetrator with
irremediable shame. The marchesa del Marmore
well knew that in going forth from the ancestral palace
of her husband on a visit to Count Basil, she took
leave of it for ever. The equipage that would bear
her to him would never return for her; the protection,
the fortune, the noble relations, the troops of friends,
would all drop from her. In the pride of her youth
and beauty — from the highest pinnacle of rank — from
the shelter of fortune and estcem — she would descend,
by a single step, to be a beggar for life and love from
the mercy of the heart she fled to!

“I will come,” she said, in a firm voice, looking

close into his face, as if she would read in his dim features
the prophetic answer of his soul.

The count Basil strained her to his bosom, and starting
back as if with the pain of his wound, he pleaded
the necessity of a surgeon, and bade her a hasty goodnight.
And while she gained her own carriage in secrecy,
he rode round to the other gate, which opens
upon the Borg'ognisanti, and dismounting at the
Café Colonna, where the artists were at this hour usually
assembled, he sought out his fellow-traveller,
Giannino Speranza, who had sketched the marchesa
upon the lagoon, and made an appointment with him
for the morrow.

4. IV.

While the count Basil's revenge sped thus merrily,
the just Fates were preparing for him a retribution in
his love. The mortification of the marchesa del Marmore,
at the Cascine, had been made the subject of
conversation at the prima sera of the lady Geraldine;
and other details of the same secret drama transpiring
at the same time, the whole secret of Count Basil's
feelings toward that unfortunate woman flashed clearly
and fully upon her. His motives for pretending to
have drawn the portrait of the lagoon — for procuring
her an admission to the exclusive suppers of the Pitti
— for a thousand things which had been unaccountable,
or referred to more amiable causes — were at once
unveiled. Even yet, with no suspicion of the extent
of his revenge, the lady Geraldine felt an indignant pity
for the unconscious victim, and a surprised disapproval
of the character thus unmasked to her eye. Upon
further reflection, her brow flushed to remember that
she herself had been made the most effective tool of
his revenge; and as she recalled circumstance after
circumstance in the last month's history, the attention
and preference he had shown her, and which had gratified
her, perhaps, more than she admitted to herself,
seemed to her sensitive and resentful mind to have
been only the cold instruments of jealousy. Incapable
as she was of an unlawful passion, the unequalled fascinations
of Count Basil had silently found their way
to her heart, and if her indignation was kindled by a
sense of justice and womanly pity, it was fed and
fanned unaware by mortified pride. She rang, and
sent an order to the gate that she was to be denied for
the future to Count Basil Spirifort.

The servant had appeared with his silver tray in his
hand, and before leaving her presence to communicate
the order, he presented her with a letter. Well
foreseeing the eclaircissement which must follow the
public scene in the Cascine, the count Basil had left
the café for his own palazzo; and, in a letter, of which
the following is the passage most important to our
story, he revealed to the lady he loved a secret, which
he hoped would anticipate the common rumor: —

* * * * * “But these passionate words will have
offended your ear, dearest lady, and I must pass to a
theme on which I shall be less eloquent. You will
hear to-night, perhaps, that which, will all your imagination,
will scarce prepare you for what you will
hear to-morrow. The marchesa del Marmore is the
victim of a revenge which has only been second in my
heart to the love I have for the first time breathed to
you. I can never hope that you will either understand
or forgive the bitterness in which it springs; yet
it is a demon to which I am delivered, soul and body,
and no spirit but my own can know its power. When
I have called it by its name, and told you of its exasperation,
if you do not pardon, you will pity me.

“You know that I am a Russian, and you know the
station my talents have won me; but you do not know
that I was born a serf and a slave! If you could rend
open my heart and see the pool of blackness and bitterness
that lies in its bottom — fallen, drop by drop,
from this accursed remembrance — there would be little
need to explain to you how this woman has offended
me. Had I been honorably born, like yourself, I
feel that I could have been, like you, an angel of light:
as it is, the contumely of a look has stirred me to a
revenge which has in it, I do not need to be told, the
darkest elements of murder.

“My early history is of no importance, yet I may
tell you it was such as to expose to every wind this
lacerated nerve. In a foreign land, and holding an
official rank, it was seldom breathed upon. I wore,
mostly, a gay heart at Paris. In my late exile at Venice
I had time to brood upon my dark remembrance,
and it was revived and fed by the melancholy of my
solitude. The obscurity in which I lived, and the occasional
comparison between myself and some passing
noble in the Piazza, served to remind me, could I have
forgotten it. I never dreamed of love in this humble
disguise, and so never felt the contempt that had most
power to wound me. On receiving the letters of my
new appointment, however, this cautious humility did
not wait to be put off with my sombrero. I started
for Florence, clad in the habiliments of poverty, but
with the gay mood of a courtier beneath. The first
burst of my newly-released feelings was admiration for
a woman of singular beauty, who stood near me on
one of the most love-awakening and delicious eves
that I ever remember. My heart was overflowing, and
she permitted me to breathe my passionate adoration
in her ear. The marchesa del Marmore, but for the
scorn of the succeeding day, would, I think, have been
the mistress of my soul. Strangely enough, I had
seen you without loving you.

“I have told you, as a bagatelle that might amuse
you, my rencontre with del Marmore and his dame in
the cathedral of Bologna. The look she gave me
there sealed her doom. It was witnessed by the companions
of my poverty, and the concentrated resentment
of years sprang up at the insult. Had it been a
man, I must have struck him dead where he stood:
she was a woman, and I swore the downfall of her
pride.” * * *

Thus briefly dismissing the chief topic of his letter,
Count Basil returned to the pleading of his love. It
was dwelt on more eloquently than his revenge; but
as the lady Geraldine scarce read it to the end, it need
not retard the procession of events in our story. The
fair Englishwoman sat down beneath the Etruscan
lamp, whose soft light illumined a brow cleared, as if
by a sweep from the wing of her god angel, of the
troubled dream which had overhung it, and in brief
and decided, but kind and warning words, replied to
the letter of Count Basil.

5. V.

It was noon on the following day, and the Contadini
from the hills were settling to their siesta on the steps
of the churches, and against the columns of the Piazza
del Gran' Duca. The artists alone, in the cool gallery,
and in the tempered halls of the Pitti, shook off
the drowsiness of the hour, and strained sight and
thought upon the immortal canvass from which they
drew; while the sculptor, in his brightening studio,
weary of the mallet, yet excited by the bolder light,
leaned on the rough block behind him, and with listless
body but wakeful and fervent eye, studied the last
touches upon his marble.

Prancing hoofs, and the sharp quick roll peculiar to
the wheels of carriages of pleasure, awakened the aristocratic
sleepers of the Via del Servi, and with a lash
and jerk of violence, the coachman of the marchesa
del Marmore, enraged at the loss of his noonday repose,
brought up her showy calêche at the door of
Count Basil Spirifort. The fair occupant of that luxu

rious vehicle was pale, but the brightness of joy and
hope burned almost fiercely in her eye.

The doors flew open as the marchesa descended,
and following a servant in the count's livery, of whom
she asked no question, she found herself in a small saloon,
furnished with the peculiar luxury which marks
the apartment of a bachelor, and darkened like a painter's
room. The light came in from a single tall window,
curtained below, and under it stood an easel, at
which, on her first entrance, a young man stood
sketching the outline of a female head. As she advanced,
looking eagerly around for another face, the
artist laid down his palette, and with a low reverence
presented her with a note from Count Basil. It informed
her that political news of the highest importance
had called him suddenly to the cabinet of his
chef, but that he hoped to be with her soon; and,
meantime, he begged of her, as a first favor in his
newly-prospered love to bless him with the possession
of her portrait, done by the incomparable artist who
would receive her.

Disappointment and vexation overwhelmed the heart
of the marchesa, and she burst into tears. She read
the letter again, and grew calmer; for it was laden with
epithets of endearment, and seemed to her written in
the most sudden haste. Never doubting for an instant
the truth of his apology, she removed her hat, and
with a look at the deeply-shaded mirror, while she
shook out from their confinement the masses of her
luxuriant hair, she approached the painter's easel, and
with a forced cheerfulness inquired in what attitude
she should sit to him.

“If the signora will amuse herself,” he replied,
with a bow, “it will be easy to compose the picture,
and seize the expression without annoying her with a
pose.”

Relieved thus of any imperative occupation, the unhappy
marchesa seated herself by a table of intaglios
and prints, and while she apparently occupied herself
in the examination of these specimens of art, she was
delivered, as her tormentor had well anticipated, to the
alternate tortures of impatience and remorse. And
while the hours wore on, and her face paled, and her
eyes grew bloodshot with doubt and fear, the skilful
painter, forgetting everything in the enthusiasm of his
art, and forgotten utterly by his unconscious subject,
transferred too faithfully to the canvass that picture of
agonized expectation.

The afternoon, meantime, had worn away, and the
gay world of Florence, from the side toward Fiesole,
rolled past the Via dei Servi on their circuitous way
to the Cascine, and saw, with dumb astonishment, the
carriage and liveries of the marchesa del Marmore at
the door of Count Basil Spirifort. On they swept by
the Via Mercata Nova to the Lung' Arno, and there
their astonishment redoubled: for in the window of
the Casino dei Nobili, playing with a billiard-cue, and
laughing with a group of lounging exquisites, stood
Count Basil himself, the most unoccupied and listless
of sunset idlers. There was but one deduction to be
drawn from this sequence of events; and when they
remembered the demonstration of passionate jealousy
on the previous evening in the Cascine, Count Basil,
evidently innocent of partieipation in her passion, was
deemed a persecuted man, and the marchesa del Marmore
was lost to herself and the world!

Three days after this well-remembered circumstance
in the history of Florence, an order was received from
the grand-duke to admit into the exhibition of modern
artists a picture by a young Venetian painter, an
elève of Count Basil Spirifort. It was called “The
Lady expecting an Inconstant,” and had been pronounced
by a virtuoso, who had seen it on private
view, to be a masterpiece of expression and color. It
was instantly and indignantly recognised as the portrait
of the unfortunate marchesa, whose late aban
donment of her husband was fresh on the lips of common
rumor; but ere it could be officially removed,
the circumstance had been noised abroad, and the
picture had been seen by all the curious in Florence.
The order for its removal was given; but the purpose
of Count Basil had been effected, and the name of the
unhappy marchesa had become a jest on the vulgar
tongue.

This tale had not been told, had there not been
more than a common justice in its sequel. The worst
passions of men, in common life, are sometimes inscrutably
prospered. The revenge of Count Basil,
however, was betrayed by the last which completed
it; and while the victim of his fiendish resentment
finds a peaceful asylum in England under the roof of
the compassionate Lady Geraldine, the once gay and
admired Russian wanders from city to city, followed
by an evil reputation, and stamped unaccountably as a
jattatore.[1]

LOVE AND DIPLOMACY.

It was on a fine September evening, within my time
(and I am not, I trust, too old to be loved), that Count
Anatole L — , of the impertinent and particularly
useless profession of attaché, walked up and down before
the glass in his rooms at the “Archduke Charles,”
the first hotel, as you know, if you have travelled, in
the green-belted and fair city of Vienna. The brass
ring was still swinging on the end of the bell-rope, and,
in a respectful attitude at the door, stood the just-summoned
Signor Attilio, valet and privy councillor
to one of the handsomest coxcombs errant through
the world. Signor Attilio was a Tyrolese, and, like
his master, was very handsome.

Count Anatole had been idling away three golden
summer months in the Tyrol, for the sole purpose,
as far as mortal eyes could see, of disguising his fine
Phidian features in a callow mustache and whiskers.
The crines ridentes (as Eneas Sylvius has it) being now
in a condition beyond improvement, Signor Attilio had
for some days been rather curious to know what course
of events would next occupy the diplomatic talents of
his master.

After a turn or two more, taken in silence, Count
Anatole stopped in the middle of the floor, and eying
the well-made Tyrolese from head to foot, begged to
know if he wore at the present moment his most becoming
breeches, jacket, and beaver.

Attilio was never astonished at anything his master
did or said. He simply answered, “Si, signore.”

“Be so kind as to strip immediately, and dress yourself
in that travelling suit lying on the sofa.”

As the green, gold-corded jacket, knee-breeches,
buckles, and stockings, were laid aside, Count Anatole
threw off his dressing-gown, and commenced encasing
his handsome proportions in the cast-off habiliments.
He then put on the conical, slouch-rimmed hat, with
the tall eagle's-feather stuck jauntily on the side, and
the two rich tassels pendant over his left eye; and, the
toilet of the valet being completed at the same moment,
they stood looking at one another with perfect gravity
— rather transformed, but each apparently quite at home
in his new character.

“You look very like a gentleman, Attilio,” said the
count.

“Your excellency has caught to admiration, l'aria

del paese,” complimented back again the sometime
Tyrolese.

“Attilio!”

“Signore?”

“Do you remember the lady in the forest of
Friuli?”

Attilio began to have a glimmering of things. Some
three months before, the count was dashing on at a
rapid post-pace through a deep wood in the mountains
which head in the Adriatic. A sudden pull-up
at a turning in the road nearly threw him from his
britska; and looking out at the “anima di porco!” of
the position, he found his way impeded by an overset
carriage, from which three or four servants were endeavoring
to extract the body of an old man, killed
by the accident.

There was more attractive metal for the traveller,
however, in the shape of a young and beautiful woman,
leaning, pale and faint, against a tree, and apparently
about to sink to the ground, unassisted. To bring a
hat full of water from the nearest brook, and receive
her falling head on his shoulder, was the work of a
thought. She had fainted quite away, and taking her,
like a child, into his arms, he placed her on a bank by
the road-side, bathed her forehead and lips, and chafed
her small white hands, till his heart, with all the distress
of the scene, was quite mad with her perfect
beauty.

Animation at last began to return, and as the flush
was stealing into her lips, another carriage drove up
with servants in the same livery, and Count Anatole,
thoroughly bewildered in his new dream, mechanically
assisted them in getting their living mistress and dead
master into it, and until they were fairly out of sight,
it had never occurred to him that he might possibly
wish to know the name and condition of the fairest
piece of work he had ever seen from the hands of his
Maker.

An hour before, he had doubled his bono mano to
the postilion, and was driving on to Vienna as if to sit
at a new congress. Now, he stood leaning against the
tree, at the foot of which the grass and wild flowers
showed the print of a new-made pressure, and the
postilion cracked his whip, and Attilio reminded him
of the hour he was losing, in vain.

He remounted after a while; but the order was to
go back to the last post-house.

Three or four months at a solitary albergo in the
neighborhood of this adventure, passed by the count
in scouring the country on horseback in every direction,
and by his servant in very particular ennui, brings
up the story nearly to where the scene opens.

“I have seen her!” said the count.

Attilio only lifted up his eyebrows.

“She is here, in Vienna!”

“Felice lei!” murmured Attilio.

“She is the princess Leichstenfels, and, by the
death of that old man, a widow.”

“Veramente?” responded the valet, with a rising
inflexion; for he knew his master and French morals
too well not to foresee a damper in the possibility of
matrimony.

“Veramente!” gravely echoed the count. “And
now listen. The princess lives in close retirement.
An old friend or two, and a tried servant, are the only
persons who see her. You are to contrive to see this
servant to-morrow, corrupt him to leave her, and recommend
me in his place, and then you are to take
him as your courier to Paris; whence, if I calculate
well, you will return to me before long, with important
despatches. Do you understand me?”

“Signor, si!”

In the small boudoir of a masio de plaisance, belonging
to the noble family of Leichstenfels, sat the
widowed mistress of one of the oldest titles and finest
estates of Austria. The light from a single long win
dow opening down to the floor and leading out upon
a terrace of flowers, was subdued by a heavy crimson
curtain, looped partially away, a pastille lamp was
sending up from its porphyry pedestal a thin and just
perceptible curl of smoke, through which the lady
musingly passed backward and forward one of her
slender fingers, and, on a table near, lay a sheet of
black-edged paper, crossed by a small silver pen, and
scrawled over irregularly with devices and disconnected
worlds, the work evidently of a fit of the most
absolute and listless idleness.

The door opened, and a servant in mourning livery
stood before the lady.

“I have thought over your request, Wilhelm,” she
said. “I had become accustomed to your services,
and regret to lose you; but I should regret more to
stand in the way of your interest. You have my permission.”

Wilhelm expressed his thanks with an effort that
showed he had not obeyed the call of mammon without
regret, and requested leave to introduce the person
he had proposed as his successor.

“Of what country is he?”

“Tyrolese, your excellency.”

“And why does he leave the gentleman with whom
he came to Vienna?”

“Il est amoureux d'une Viennaise, madame,” an
swered the ex-valet, resorting to French to express
what he considered a delicate circumstance.

“Pauvre enfant!” said the princess, with a sigh
that partook as much of envy as of pity; let him
come in!”

And the count Anatole, as the sweet accents reached
his car, stepped over the threshold, and in the coarse
but gay dress of the Tyrol, stood in the presence of
her whose dewy temples he had bathed in the forest,
whose lips he had almost “pried into for breath,”
whose snowy hands he had chafed and kissed when the
senses had deserted their celestial organs — the angel
of his perpetual dream, the lady of his wild and uncontrollable,
but respectful and honorable love.

The princess looked carelessly up as he approached,
but her eyes seemed arrested in passing over his features.
It was but momentary. She resumed her
occupation of winding her taper fingers in the smoke-curls
of the incense-lamp, and with half a sigh, as if
she had repelled a pleasing thought, she leaned back
in the silken fauteuil, and asked the new-comer his
name.

“Anatole, your excellency.”

The voice again seemed to stir something in her
memory. She passed her hand over her eyes, and
was for a moment lost in thought.

“Anatole,” she said (oh, how the sound of his own
name, murmured in that voice of music thrilled
through the fiery veins of the disguised lover!)
“Anatole, I receive you into my service. Wilhelm
will inform you of your duties, and — I have a fancy
for the dress of the Tyrol — you may wear it instead
of my livery, if you will.”

And with one stolen and warm gaze from under his
drooping eyelids, and heart and lips on fire, as he
thanked her for her condescension, the new retainer
took his leave.

Month after month passed on — to Count Anatole in
a bewildering dream of ever deepening passion. It
was upon a soft and amorous morning of April, that a
dashing equipage stood at the door of the proud palace
of Leichstenfels. The arms of E — blazed on the
panels, and the insouciants chasseurs leaned against
the marble columns of the portico, waiting for their
master, and speculating on the gayety likely to ensue
from the suite he was prosecuting within. How could
a prince of E — be supposed to sue in vain?

The disguised footman had ushered the gay and
handsome nobleman to his mistress' presence. After

rearranging a family of very well-arranged flowerpots,
shutting the window to open it again, changing
the folds of the curtains not at all for the better, and
looking a stolen and fierce look at the unconscious
visiter, he could find no longer an apology for remaining
in the room. He shut the door after him in a
tempest of jealousy.

“Did your excellency ring?” said he, opening the
door again, after a few minutes of intolerable torture.

The prince was on his knees at her feet!

“No, Anatole; but you may bring me a glass of
water.”

As he entered with a silver tray trembling in his
hand, the prince was rising to go. His face expressed
delight, hope, triumph — everything that could madden
the soul of the irritated lover. After waiting on
his rival to his carriage, he returned to his mistress,
and receiving the glass upon the tray, was about
leaving the room in silence, when the princess called
to him.

In all this lapse of time it is not to be supposed that
Count Anatole played merely his footman's part. His
respectful and elegant demeanor, the propriety of his
language, and that deep devotedness of manner which
wins a woman more than all things else, soon gained
upon the confidence of the princess; and before a
week was passed she found that she was happier when
he stood behind her chair, and gave him, with some
self-denial, those frequent permissions of absence from
the palace which she supposed he asked to prosecute
the amour disclosed to her on his introduction to her
service. As time flew on, she attributed his earnestness
and occasional warmth of manner to gratitude;
and, without reasoning much on her feelings, gave
herself up to the indulgence of a degree of interest in
him which would have alarmed a woman more skilled
in the knowledge of the heart. Married from a convent,
however, to an old man who had secluded her
from the world, the voice of the passionate count in
the forest of Friuli was the first sound of love that had
ever entered her ears. She knew not why it was that
the tones of her new footman, and now and then a look
of his eyes, as he leaned over to assist her at table,
troubled her memory like a trace of a long-lost dream.

But, oh, what moments had been his in these fleeting
months! Admitted to her presence in her most
unguarded hours — seeing her at morning, at noon, at
night, in all her unstudied and surpassing loveliness —
for ever near her, and with the world shut out — her
rich hair blowing with the lightest breeze across his
fingers in his assiduous service — her dark full eyes,
unconscious of an observer, filling with unrepressed
tears, or glowing with pleasure over some tale of love
— her exquisite form flung upon a couch, or bending
over flowers, or moving about the room in all its native
and untrammelled grace — and her voice, tender, most
tender to him, though she knew it not, and her eyes,
herself unaware, ever following him in his loitering
attendance — and he, the while, losing never a glance
nor a motion, but treasuring all up in his heart with
the avarice of a miser — what, in common life, though
it were the life of fortune's most favored child, could
compare with it for bliss?

Pale and agitated, the count turned back at the call
of his mistress, and stood waiting her pleasure.

“Anatole!”

“Madame!”

The answer was so low and deep it startled even
himself.

She motioned him to come nearer. She had sunk
upon the sofa, and as he stood at her feet she leaned
forward, buried her hands and arms in the long curls
which, in her retirement, she allowed to float luxuriantly
over her shoulders, and sobbed aloud. Over
come and forgetful of all but the distress of the lovely
creature before him, the count dropped upon the cushion
on which rested the small foot in its mourning
slipper, and taking her hand, pressed it suddenly and
fervently to his lips.

The reality broke upon her! She was beloved —
but by whom? A menial! and the appalling answer
drove all the blood of her proud race in a torrent upon
her heart, sweeping away all affection as if her nature
had never known its name. She sprang to her feet,
and laid her hand upon the bell.

“Madame!” said Anatole, in a cold proud tone.

She stayed her arm to listen.

“I leave you for ever.”

And again, with the quick revulsion of youth and
passion, her woman's heart rose within her, and she
buried her face in her hands, and dropped her head in
utter abandonment on her bosom.

It was the birthday of the emperor, and the courtly
nobles of Austria were rolling out from the capital to
offer their congratulations at the royal palace of
Schoenbrunn. In addition to the usual attractions
of the scene, the drawing-room was to be graced by
the first public appearance of a new ambassador,
whose reputed personal beauty, and the talents he had
displayed in a late secret negotiation, had set the whole
court, from the queen of Hungary to the youngest
dame d'honneur, in a flame of curiosity.

To the prince E — there was another reason for
writing the day in red letters. The princess Leichstenfels,
by an express message from the emperess,
was to throw aside her widow's weeds, and appear
once more to the admiring world. She had yielded
to the summons, but it was to be her last day of splendor.
Her heart and hand were plighted to her Tyrolese
minion; and the brightest and loveliest ornament
of the court of Austria, when the ceremonies of the
day were over, was to lay aside the costly bauble
from her shoulder, and the glistening tiara from her
brow, and forget rank and fortune as the wife of his
bosom!

The dazzling hours flew on. The plain and kind
old emperor welcomed and smiled upon all. The
wily Metternich, in the crime of his successful manhood,
cool, polite, handsome, and winning, gathered
golden opinions by every word and look; the young
duke of Reichstadt, the mild and gentle son of the
struck eagle of St. Helena, surrounded and caressed
by a continual cordon of admiring women, seemed forgetful
that opportunity and expectation awaited him,
like two angels with their wings outspread; and haughty
nobles and their haughtier dames, statesmen, scholars,
soldiers, and priests, crowded upon each other's
heels, and mixed together in that doubtful podrida,
which goes by the name of pleasure. I could moralize
here had I time!

The princess of Leichstenfels had gone through the
ceremony of presentation, and had heard the murmur
of admiration, drawn by her beauty, from all lips. Dizzy
with the scene, and with a bosom full of painful and
conflicting emotions, she had accepted the proffered
arm of Prince E — to breathe a fresher air upon
the terrace. They stood near a window, and he was
pointing out to his fair but inattentive companion the
various characters as they passed within.

“I must contrive,” said the prince, “to show you
the new envoy. Oh! you have not heard of him.
Beautiful as Narcissus, modest as Pastor Corydon,
clever as the prime minister himself, this paragon of
diplomatists has been here in disguise these three
months, negotiating about — Metternich and the devil
knows what — but rewarded at last with an ambassador's
star, and — but here he is: Princess Leichstenfels,
permit me to present — ”

She heard no more. A glance from the diamond

star on his breast to the Hephæstion mouth and keen
dark eye of Count Anatole, revealed to her the mystery
of months. And as she leaned against the window
for support, the hand that sustained her in the
forest of Friuli, and the same thrilling voice, in almost
the same never-forgotten cadence, offered his impassioned
sympathy and aid — and she recognised and remembered
all.

I must go back so far as to inform you, that Count
Anatole, on the morning of this memorable day, had
sacrificed a silky but prurient mustache, and a pair
of the very sauciest dark whiskers out of Coventry.
Whether the prince E — recognised in the new
envoy the lady's gentleman who so inopportunely
broke in upon his tender avowal, I am not prepared to
say. I only know (for I was there) that the princess
Leichstenfels was wedded to the new ambassador in
the “leafy month of June;” and the prince E — ,
unfortunately prevented by illness from attending the
nuptials, lost a very handsome opportunity of singing
with effect —

supposing it translated into German.

Whether the enamored ambassadress prefers her
husband in his new character, I am equally uncertain;
though from much knowledge of German courts and
a little of human nature, I think she will be happy if
at some future day she would not willingly exchange
her proud envoy for the devoted Tyrolese, and does
not sigh that she can no more bring him to her feet
with a pull of a silken string.

THE MADHOUSE OF PALERMO.

He who has not skimmed over the silvery waters of
the Lipari, with a summer breeze right from Italy in
his topsails, the smoke of Stromboli alone staining the
unfathomable-looking blue of the sky, and, as the sun
dipped his flaming disk in the sea, put up his helm for
the bosom of La Concha d'Oro, the Golden Shell, as
they beautifully call the bay of Palerno: he who has
not thus entered, I say, to the fairest spot on the face
of this very fair earth, has a leaf worth the turning in
his book of observation.

In ten minutes after dropping the anchor, with sky
and water still in a glow, the men were all out of the
rigging, the spars of the tall frigate were like lines pencilled
on the sky, the band played inspiringly on the
poop, and every boat along the gay Marina was freighted
with fair Palermitans on its way to the stranger
ship.

I was standing with the officer-of-the-deck by the
capstan, looking at the first star which had just sprung
into its place like a thing created with a glance of the
eye.

“Shall we let the ladies aboard, sir?” said a smiling
middy, coming aft from the gangway.

“Yes, sir. And tell the boatswain's mate to clear
away for a dance on the quarter-deck.”

In most of the ports of the Mediterranean, a ship-of-war,
on a summer cruise, is as welcome as the breeze
from the sea. Bringing with her forty or fifty gay
young officers overcharged with life and spirits, a band
of music never so well occupied as when playing for a
dance, and a deck whiter and smoother than a ball-room
floor, the warlike vessel seems made for a scene
of pleasure. Whatever her nation, she no sooner
drops her anchor, than she is surrounded by boats from
the shore; and when the word is passed for admission,
her gangway is crowded with the mirth-loving and
warm people of these southern climes, as much at
home on board, and as ready to enter into any scheme
of amusement, as the maddest-brained midshipman
could desire.

The companion-hatch was covered with its grating,
lest some dizzy waltzer should drop his partner into the
steerage, the band got out their music-stand, and the
bright buttons were soon whirling round from larboard
to starboard, with forms in their clasp, and dark eyes
glowing over their shoulders, that might have tempted
the devil out of Stromboli.

Being only a passenger myself, I was contented with
sitting on the slide of a carronade, and with the music
in my ear, and the twilight flush deepening in the fine-traced
angles of the rigging, abandoning myself to the
delicious listlessness with which the very air is pregnant
in these climates of paradise.

The light feet slid by, and the waltz, the gallopade,
and the mazurka, had followed each other till it was
broad moonlight on the decks. It was like a night
without an atmosphere, the radiant flood poured down
with such an invisible and moonlike clearness.

“Do you see the lady leaning on that old gentleman's
arm by the hammock-rail?” said the first lieutenant,
who sat upon the next gun — like myself, a
spectator of the scene.

I had remarked her well. She had been in the ship
five or ten minutes, and in that time, it seemed to me,
I had drunk her beauty, even to intoxication. The
frigate was slowly swinging round to the land breeze,
and the moon, from drawing the curved line of a gipsy-shaped
capella di paglia with bewitching concealment
across her features, gradually fell full upon the
dark limit of her orbed forehead. Heaven! what a
vision of beauty! Solemn, and full of subdued pain
as the countenance seemed, it was radiant with an almost
supernatual light of mind. Thought and feeling
seemed steeped into every line. Her mouth was large
— the only departure from the severest model of the
Greek — and stamped with calmness, as if it had been
a legible word upon her lips. But her eyes — what can
I say of their unnatural lightning — of the depth, the
fulness, the wild and maniac-like passionateness of their
every look?

My curiosity was strongly moved. I walked aft to
the capstan, and throwing off my habitual reserve with
some effort, approached the old gentleman on whose
arm she leaned, and begged permission to lead her out
for a waltz.

“If you wish it, carissima mia!” said he, turning to
her with all the tenderness in his tone of which the
honeyed language of Italy is capable.

But she clung to his arm with startled closeness, and
without even looking at me, turned her lips up to his
ear, and murmured, “Mai piu!”

At my request the officer on duty paid them the compliment
of sending them ashore in one of the frigate's
boats; and after assisting them down the ladder, I stood
upon the broad stair on the level of the water, and
watched the phosphoric wake of the swift cutter till
the bright sparkles were lost amid the vessels nearer
land. The coxswain reported the boat's return; but
all that belonged to the ship had not come back in her.
My heart was left behind.

The next morning there was the usual bustle in the
gunroom preparatory to going ashore. Glittering uniforms
lay about upon the chairs and tables, sprinkled
with swords, epaulettes, and cocked hats; very well-brushed
boots were sent to be rebrushed, and very
nice coats to be made, if possible, to look nicer; the
ship's barber was cursed for not having the hands of
Briareus, and no good was wished to the eyes of the
washerwoman of the last port where the frigate had
anchored. Cologne-water was in great request, and
the purser had an uncommon number of “private interviews.”

Amid all the bustle, the question of how to pass the

day was busily agitated. Twenty plans were proposed;
but the sequel — a dinner at the Hotel Anglais, and a
stroll for a lark” after it — was the only point on which
the speakers were quite unanimous.

One proposition was to go to Bagaria, and see the
palace of Monsters. This is a villa about ten miles
from Palermo, which the owner, Count Pallagonia, an
eccentric Sicilian noble, has ornamented with some
hundreds of statues of the finest workmanship, representing
the form of woman in every possible combination,
with beasts, fishes, and birds. It looks like the
temptation of St. Anthony on a splendid scale, and is
certainly one of the most extraordinary spectacles in
the world.

Near it stands another villa, the property of Prince
Butera (the present minister of Naples at the court of
France), containing, in the depths of its pleasuregrounds,
a large monastery, with wax monks, of the
size and appearance of life, scattered about the passages
and cells, and engaged in every possible unclerical
avocation. It is a whimsical satire on the order,
done to the life.

Another plan was to go to the Capuchin convent,
and see the dried friars — six or eight hundred bearded
old men, baked, as they died, in their cowls and beards,
and standing against the walls in ghastly rows, in the
spacious vaults of the monastery. A more infernal
spectacle never was seen by mortal eyes.

A drive to Monreale, a nest of a village on the mountain
above the town — a visit to the gardens of a nobleman
who salutes the stranger with a jet d'eau at every
turning — and a lounge in the public promenade of
Palermo itself — shared the honors of the argument.

I had been in Sicily before, and was hesitating which
of these various lions was worthy of a second visit,
when the surgeon proposed to me to accompany him
on a visit to a Sicilian count living in the neighborhood,
who had converted his château into a lunatic asylum,
and devoted his time and a large fortune entirely to
this singular hobby. He was the first to try the system,
now, thank God, generally approved, of winning
back reason to these most wretched of human sufferers
by kindness and gentle treatment.

We jumped into one of the rattling calesini standing
in the handsome corso of Palermo, and fifteen minutes
beyond the gates brought us to the Casa dei Pazzi.
My friend's uniform and profession were an immediate
passport, and we were introduced into a handsome
court, surrounded by a colonnade, and cooled by a
fountain, in which were walking several well-dressed
people, with books, drawing-boards, battledores, and
other means of amusement. They all bowed politely
as we passed, and at the door of the interior we were
met by the count.

“Good God!” I exclaimed — “she was insane,
then!”

It was the old man who was on board the night before!

“E ella?” said I, seizing his arm, before he had
concluded his bow, quite sure that he must understand
me with a word.

“Era pazza” He looked at me as he answered,
with a scrutiny, as if he half suspected my friend had
brought him a subject.

The singular character of her beauty was quite explained.
Yet what a wreck!

I followed the old count around his establishment
in a kind of dream, but I could not avoid being interested
at every step. Here were no chains, no whips,
no harsh keepers, no cells of stone and straw. The
walls of the long corridors were painted in fresco, representing
sunny landscapes, and gay dancing figures.
Fountains and shrubs met us at every turn. The
people were dressed in their ordinary clothes, and all
employed in some light work or amusement. It was
like what it might have been in the days of the count's
ancestors — a gay château, filled with guests and dependants,
with no more apparent constraint than the
ties of hospitality and service.

We went first to the kitchen. Here were ten
people, all, but the cook, stark mad! It was one of
the peculiarities of the count's system, that his patients
led in his house the lives to which they had previously
been accustomed. A stout Sicilian peasant
girl was employed in filling a large brasier from the
basin of a fountain. While we were watching her
task, the fit began to come on her, and after a fierce
look or two around the room, she commenced dashing
the water about her with great violence. The cook
turned, not at all surprised, and patting her on the
back, with a loud laugh, cried, “Brava, Pepina!
brava!” ringing at the same moment a secret bell.

A young girl of sixteen with a sweet, smiling countenance,
answered the summons, and immediately
comprehending the case, approached the enraged
creature, and putting her arms affectionately round her
neck, whispered something in her ear. The expression
of her face changed immediately to a look of delight,
and dropping the bucket, she followed the young
attendant out of the room with peals of laughter.

“Venite!” said the count, “you shall see how we
manage our furies.”

We followed across a garden filled with the sweetest
flowers to a small room opening on a lawn. From
the centre of the ceiling was suspended a hammock,
and Pepina was already in it, swung lightly from side
to side by a servant, while the attendant stood by, and,
as if in play, threw water upon her face at every approach.
It had all the air of a frolic. The violent
laughter of the poor maniac grew less and less as the
soothing motion and the coolness of the water took
effect, and in a few minutes her strained eyes gently
closed, the hammock was swung more and more
gently, and she fell asleep.

“This,” said the count, with a gratified smile, “is
my substitute for a forced shower-bath and chains;
and this,” kissing his little attendant on the forehead,
“for the whip and the grim turnkey.” I blessed him
in my heart.

“Come!” said he, as we left the sleeper to her repose,
“I must show you my grounds.”

We followed him to an extensive garden, opening
from the back of the château, laid out originally in the
formal style of an Italian villa. The long walks had
been broken up, however, by beautiful arbors with
grottoes in their depths, in which wooden figures, of
the color and size of life, stood or sat in every attitude
of gayety or grotesqueness. It was difficult, in the
deep shadow of the vines and oleanders, not to believe
them real. We walked on through many a winding
shrubbery, perfumed with all the scented flowers of
the luxuriant climate, continually surprised with little
deceptions of perspective, or figures half concealed in
the leaves, till we emerged at the entrance of a charming
summer theatre, with sodded seats, stage, orchestra,
and scenery, complete. Orange-trees, roses, and
clematis, were laced together for a wall in the rear.

“Here,” said the old man, bounding gayly upon the
stage, “here we act plays the summer long.”

“What! not with your patients?”

“Si, signore! Who else?” And he went on to
describe to us the interest they took in it, and the singular
power with which the odd idea seized upon their
whimsied intellects. We had been accompanied from
the first, by a grave, respectable looking man, whom I
had taken for an assistant. While we were listening
to the description of the first attempt they had made
at a play, he started out from the group, and putting
himself in an attitude upon the stage, commenced
spouting a furious passage in Italian.

The count pointed to his forehead, and made a sign
to us to listen. The tragedian stopped at the end of

his sentence, and after a moment's delay, apparently
in expectation of a reply, darted suddenly off and disappeared
behind the scenes.

“Poveretto!” said the count, “it is my best actor!”

Near the theatre stood a small chapel, with a circular
lawn before it, on which the grass had been lately
much trodden. It was surrounded partly by a green
bank, and here the count seated us, saying with a significant
look at me, that he would tell us a story.

I should like to give it you in his own words — still
more with his own manner; for never was a tale told
with more elegance of language, or a more natural
and pleasant simplicity. But a sheet of “wire-wove”
is not a Palermitan cavaliere, and the cold English
has not the warm eloquence of the Italian. He laid
aside his hat, ordered fruit and wine, and proceeded.

“Almost a year ago I was called upon by a gentleman
of a noble physiognomy and address, who inquired
very particularly into my system. I explained
it to him at his request, and he did me the honor, as
you gentlemen have done, to go over my little establishment.
He seemed satisfied, and with some hesitation
informed me that he had a daughter in a very desperate
state of mental alienation. Would I go and
see her?

“This is not, you know, gentlemen, a public institution.
I am crazy,” he said it very gravely, “quite
crazy — the first of my family of fools, on this particular
theme — and this asylum is my toy. Of course it is
only as the whim seizes me that I admit a patient; for
there are some diseases of the brain seated in causes
with which I wish not to meddle.

“However, I went. With the freedom of a physician
I questioned the father, upon the road, of the
girl's history. He was a Greek, a prince of the Fanar,
who had left his degraded people in their dirty and
dangerous suburb at Constantinople, to forget oppression
and meanness in a voluntary exile. It was just
before the breaking out of the last Greek revolution,
and so many of his kinsmen and friends had been sacrificed
to the fury of the Turks, that he had renounced
all idea of ever returning to his country.

“`And your daughter?'

“`My dear Katinka, my only child, fell ill upon receiving
distressing news from the Fanar, and her
health and reason never rallied after. It is now several
years, and she has lain in bed till her limbs are withered,
never having uttered a word, or made a sign
which would indicate even consciousness of the presence
of those about her.'

“I could not get from him that there was any disappointment
of the heart at the bottom of it. It seemed
to be one of those cases of sudden stupefaction, to
which nervously sensitive minds are liable after a violent
burst of grief; and I began, before I had seen her,
to indulge in bright hopes of starting once more the
sealed fountains of thought and feeling.

“We entered Palermo, and passing out at the other
gate, stopped at a vine-laced casino on the lip of the
bay, scarcely a mile from the city wall. It was a
pretty, fanciful place, and, on a bed in its inner chamber,
lay the most poetical-looking creature I had ever
seen out of my dreams. Her head was pillowed in an
abundance of dark hair, which fell away from her forehead
in masses of glossy curls, relieving with a striking
effect, the wan and transparent paleness of a face which
the divinest chisel could scarce have copied in alabaster.
Dio mio! — how transcendant was the beauty of
that poor girl!”

The count stopped and fed his memory a moment
with closed eyes upon the image.

“At the first glance I inwardly put up a prayer to
the Virgin, and determined, with her sweet help, to
restore reason to the fairest of its earthly temples. I
took up her shadow of a hand, and spread out the thin
fingers in my palm, and as she turned her large wan
dering eye toward me, I felt that the blessed Mary
had heard my prayer, `You shall see her well again,'
said I confidently.

“Quite overcome, the prince Ghika fell on the bed
and embraced his daughter's knees in an agony of
tears.

“You shall not have the seccatura, gentlemen, of
listening to the recital of all my tedious experiments
for the first month or two. I brought her to my house
upon a litter, placed her in a room filled with every
luxury of the east, and suffered no one to approach
her except two Greek attendants, to whose services
she was accustomed. I succeeded in partially restoring
animation to her benumbed limbs by friction,
and made her sensible of music, and of the perfumes
of the east, which I burned in a pastille-lamp in
her chamber. Here, however, my skill was baffled.
I could neither amuse nor vex. Her mind was beyond
me. After trying every possible experiment, as it
seemed to me, my invention was exhausted, and I
despaired.

“She occupied, however, much of my mind.
Walking up and down yonder orange-alley one sweet
morning, about two months ago, I started off suddenly
to my chamber with a new thought. You would
have thought me the maddest of my household, to
have seen me, gentlemen. I turned out by the shoulders
the regazza, who was making my bed, washed
and scented myself, as if for a ball, covered my white
hairs with a handsome brown wig, a relic of my coxcombical
days, rouged faintly, and, with white gloves,
and a most youthful appearance altogether, sought
the chamber of my patient.

“She was lying with her head in the hollow of her
thin arm, and, as I entered, her dark eyes rested full
upon me. I approached, kissed her hand with a respectful
gallantry, and in the tenderest tones of which
my damaged voice was susceptible, breathed into her
ear a succession of delicately-turned compliments to
her beauty.

“She lay as immovable as marble, but I had not
calculated upon the ruling passion of the sex in vain.
A thin flush on her cheek, and a flutter in her temple,
only perceptible to my practised eye, told me that the
words had found their way to her long-lost consciousness.

“I waited a few moments, and then took up a ringlet
that fell negligently over her hand, and asked permission
to sever it from the glossy mass in which the
arm under her head was literally buried.

“She clutched her fingers suddenly upon it, and
glancing at me with the fury of a roused tigress, exclaimed
in a husky whisper, `Lasciate me, signore!'

“I obeyed her, and, as I left the room, I thanked
the Virgin in my heart. It was the first word she had
spoken for years.

“The next day, having patched myself up more
successfully in my leisure, in a disguise so absolute
that not one even of my pets knew me as I passed
through the corridor, I bowed myself up once more to
her bedside.

“She lay with her hands clasped over her eyes, and
took no notice of my first salutation. I commenced
with a little raillery, and under cover of finding fault
with her attitude, contrived to pay an adroit compliment
to the glorious orbs she was hiding from admiration.
She lay a moment or two without motion, but
the muscles of her slight mouth stirred just perceptibly,
and presently she drew her fingers quickly apart,
and looking at me with a most confiding expression
in her pale features, a full sweet smile broke like sudden
sunshine through her lips. I could have wept for
joy.

“I soon acquired all the influence over her I could
wish. She made an effort at my request to leave her
bed, and in a week or two walked with me in the garden.

Her mind, however, seemed to have capacity
but for one thought, and she soon began to grow unhappy,
and would weep for hours. I endeavored to
draw from her the cause, but she only buried her face
in my bosom, and wept more violently, till one day,
sobbing out her broken words almost inarticulately, I
gathered her meaning. She was grieved that I did not
marry her!

“Poor girl!” soliloquized the count, after a brief
pause, “she was only true to her woman's nature. Insanity
had but removed the veil of custom and restraint.
She would have broken her heart before she had betrayed
such a secret, with her reason.

“I was afraid at last she would go melancholy mad,
this one thought preyed so perpetually on her brain —
and I resolved to delude her into the cheerfulness necessary
to her health by a mock ceremony.

“The delight with which she received my promise
almost alarmed me. I made several delays, with the
hope that in the convulsion of her feelings a ray of
reason would break through the darkness; but she
took every hour to heart, and I found it was inevitable.

“You are sitting, gentlemen, in the very scene of our
mad bridal. My poor grass has not yet recovered, you
see, from the tread of the dancers. Imagine the spectacle.
The chapel was splendidly decorated, and at
the bottom of the lawn stood three long tables, covered
with fruits and flowers, and sprinkled here and
there with bottles of colored water (to imitate wine),
sherbets, cakes, and other such innocent things as I
could allow my crazy ones. They were all invited.”

“Good God!” said the surgeon, “your lunatics?”

“All — all! And never was such a sensation produced
in a household since the world was created.
Nothing else was talked of for a week. My worst patients
seemed to suspend for the time their fits of violence.
I sent to town for quantities of tricksy stuffs,
and allowed the women to deck themselves entirely
after their own taste. You can conceive nothing like
the business they made of it! Such apparitions! —
Santa Maria! shall I ever forget that Babel?

“The morning came. My bride's attendants had
dressed her from her Grecian wardrobe; and with her
long braid parted over her forehead, and hanging back
from her shoulders to her very heels, her close-fitted
jacket, of gorgeous velvet and gold, her costly bracelets,
and the small spangled slippers upon her unstockinged
feet, she was positively an angelic vision of beauty.
Her countenance was thoughtful, but her step was
unusually elastic, and a small red spot, like a rose-leaf
under the skin, blushed through the alabaster paleness
of her cheek.

“My maniacs received her with shouts of admiration.
The women were kept from her at first with
great difficulty, and it was only by drawing their attention
to their own gaudier apparel, that their anxiety
to touch her was distracted. The men looked at
her, as she passed along like a queen of love and
beauty, and their wild, gleaming eyes, and quickened
breaths, showed the effect of such loveliness upon the
unconcealed feelings. I had multiplied my attendants,
scarce knowing how the excitement of the scene
might affect them; but the interest of the occasion,
and the imposing decencies of dress and show, seemed
to overcome them effectually. The most sane guests
at a bridal could scarce have behaved with more propriety.

“The ceremony was performed by an elderly friend
of mine, the physician to my establishment. Old as I
am, gentlemen, I could have wished that ceremony to
have been in earnest. As she lifted up her large liquid
eyes to heaven, and swore to be true to me till death, I
forgot my manhood, and wept. If I had been younger
— ma che porcheria!

“After the marriage the women were invited to sa
lute the bride, and then all eyes in my natural party
turned at once to the feast. I gave the word. Fruits,
cakes, and sherbets, disappeared with the rapidity of
magic, and then the music struck up from the shrubbery,
and they danced — as you see by the grass.

“I committed the bride to her attendants at sunset,
but I could with difficulty tear myself away. On the
following day I called at her door, but she refused to
see me. The next day and the next I could gain no
admittance without exerting my authority. On the
fourth morning I was permitted to enter. She had resumed
her usual dress, and was sad, calm, and gentle.
She said little, but seemed lost in thought to which
she was unwilling or unable to give utterance.

“She has never spoken of it since. Her mind, I
think, has nearly recovered its tone, but her memory
seems confused. I scarce think she remembers her
illness, and its singular events, as more than a troubled
dream. On all the common affairs of life she seems
quite sane, and I drive out with her daily, and have
taken her once or twice to the opera. Last night we
were strolling on the Marina when your frigate came
into the bay, and she proposed to join the crowd and
go off to hear the music. We went on board, as you
know; and now, if you choose to pay your respects
to the lady who refused to waltz with you, take another
sip of your sherbet and wine, and come with
me.”

To say more would be trespassing perhaps on the
patience of my readers, but certainly on my own feelings.
I have described this singular case of madness
and its cure, because I think it contains in itself the
seeds of much philosophy on the subject. It is only
within a very few years that these poor sufferers have
been treated otherwise than as the possessors of incarnate
devils, whom it was necessary to scourge out
with unsparing cruelty. If this literal statement of a
cure in the private madhouse of the eccentric conte
— , of Palermo, induce the friends of a single unfortunate
maniac to adopt a kind and rational system
for his restoration, the writer will have been rapaid for
bringing circumstances before the public which have
since had much to do with his own feelings.

MINUTE PHILOSOPHIES.

A summer or two since, I was wasting a college vacation
among the beautiful creeks and falls in the
neighborhood of New York. In the course of my
wanderings, up-stream and down-stream, sometimes
on foot, sometimes on horseback, and never without
a book for an excuse to loiter on the mossy banks and
beside the edge of running water, I met frequently a
young man of a peculiarly still and collected eye, and
a forehead more like a broad slab of marble than a human
brow. His mouth was small and thinly cut; his
chin had no superfluous flesh upon it; and his whole
appearance was that of a man whose intellectual nature
prevailed over the animal. He was evidently a
scholar. We had met so frequently at last, that, on
passing each other one delicious morning, we bowed
and smiled simultaneously, and, without further introduction,
entered into conversation.

It was a temperate day in August, with a clear but
not oppressive sun, and we wandered down a long

creek together, mineralizing here, botanizing there,
and examining the strata of the ravines, with that sort
of instinctive certainty of each other's attainments
which scholars always feel, and thrusting in many a
little wayside parenthesis, explanatory of each other's
history and circumstances. I found that he was one
of those pure and unambitious men, who, by close
application and moderate living while in college, become
in love with their books; and, caring little for
anything more than the subsistence, which philosophy
tells them is enough to have of this world, settle down
for life into a wicker-bottomed chair, more contentedly
than if it were the cushion of a throne.

We were together three or four days, and when I
left him, he gave me his address, and promised to write
to me. I shall give below an extract from one of his
letters. I had asked him for a history of his daily
habits, and any incidents which he might choose to
throw in — hinting to him that I was a dabbler in literature,
and would be obliged to him if he would do it
minutely, and in a form of which I might avail myself
in the way of publication.

After some particulars, unimportant to the reader,
he proceeds: —

“I keep a room at a country tavern. It is a quiet,
out-of-the-way place, with a whole generation of elms
about it; and the greenest grass up to the very door,
and the pleasantest view in the whole country round
from my chamber-window. Though it is a public
house, and the word `HOTEL' swings in golden capitals
under a landscape of two hills and a river, painted
for a sign by some wandering Tinto, it is so orderly a
town, that not a lounger is ever seen about the door;
and the noisiest traveller is changed to a quiet man, as
if it were by the very hush of the atmosphere.

“Here, in my pleasant room, upon the second floor,
with my round table covered with choice books, my
shutters closed just so much as to admit light enough
for a painter, and my walls hung with the pictures
which adorned my college chambers, and are therefore
linked with a thousand delightful associations — I
can study my twelve hours a day, in a state of mind
sufficiently even and philosophical. I do not want for
excitement. The animal spirits, thanks to the Creator,
are enough at all times, with employment and
temperate living, to raise us above the common shadows
of life; and after a day of studious confinement,
when my mind is unbound, and I go out and give it
up to reckless association, and lay myself open unreservedly
to the influences of nature — at such a time,
there comes mysteriously upon me a degree of pure
joy, unmingled and unaccountable, which is worth
years of artificial excitement. The common air seems
to have grown rarer; my step is strangely elastic; my
sense of motion full of unwonted dignity; my thoughts
elevated; my perceptions of beauty acuter and more
pleasurable; and my better nature predominant and
sublime. There is nothing in the future which looks
difficult, nothing in my ambition unattainable, nothing
in the past which can not be reconciled with good: I
am a purer and a better man; and though I am elevated
in my own thoughts, it will not lead to vanity,
for my ideas of God, and of my fellow-men, have been
enlarged also. This excitement ceases soon; but it
ceases like the bubbling of a fountain, which leaves
the waters purer for the influence which has passed
through them — not like the mirth of the world, which
ebbs like an unnatural tide, and leaves loathsomeness
and disgust.

“Let no one say that such a mode of life is adapted
to peculiar constitutions, and can be relished by those
only. Give me the veriest worldling — the most devoted,
and the happiest of fashionable ephemera, and
if he has material for a thought, and can take pride
in the improvement of his nature, I will so order his
daily round, that, with temperance and exercise, he
shall be happier in one hour spent within himself,
than in ten wasted on folly.

“Few know the treasures in their own bosoms —
very few the elasticity and capacity of a well-regulated
mind for enjoyment. The whole world of philosophers,
and historians, and poets, seem, to the secluded
student, but to have labored for his pleasure; and as
he comes to one new truth and beautiful thought after
another, there answers a chord of joy, richer than
music, in his heart — which spoils him for the coarser
pleasures of the world. I have seen my college chum
— a man, who, from a life of mingled business and
pleasure, became suddenly a student — lean back in his
chair, at the triumph of an argument, or the discovery
of a philosophical truth, and give himself up for a few
moments to the enjoyment of sensations, which, he
assured me, surpassed exceedingly the most vivid
pleasures of his life. The mind is like the appetite —
when healthy and well-toned, receiving pleasure from
the commonest food; but becoming a disease, when
pampered and neglected. Give it time to turn in upon
itself, satisfy its restless thirst for knowledge, and it
will give birth to health, to animal spirits, to everything
which invigorates the body, while it is advancing
by every step the capacities of the soul. Oh! if
the runners after pleasure would stoop down by the
wayside, they might drink waters better even than
those which they see only in their dreams. They will
not be told that they have in their possession the golden
key which they covet; they will not know that the
music they look to enchant them, is sleeping in their
own untouched instruments; that the lamp which
they vainly ask from the enchanter, is burning in
their own bosoms!

“When I first came here, my host's eldest daughter
was about twelve years of age. She was, without being
beautiful, an engaging child, rather disposed to be
contemplative, and, like all children, at that age, very
inquisitive and curious. She was shy at first, but soon
became acquainted with me; and would come into
my room in her idle hours, and look at my pictures
and read. She never disturbed me, because her natural
politeness forbade it; and I pursued my thoughts
or my studies just as if she were not there, till, by-and-by,
I grew fond of her quiet company, and was happier
when she was moving stealthily around, and looking
into a book here and there in her quiet way.

“She had been my companion thus for some time,
when it occurred to me that I might be of use to her
in leading her to cultivate a love for study. I seized
the idea enthusiastically. Now, thought I, I will see
the process of a human mind. I have studied its philosophy
from books, and now I will take a single
original, and compare them, step by step. I have
seen the bud, and the flower full blown, and I am told
that the change was gradual, and effected thus — leaf
after leaf. Now I will watch the expansion, and while
I water it and let in the sunshine to its bosom, detect
the secret springs which move to such beautiful results.
The idea delighted me.

“I was aware that there was great drudgery in the
first steps, and I determined to avoid it, and connect
the idea of my own instruction with all that was delightful
and interesting to her mind. For this purpose
I persuaded her father to send her to a better
school than she had been accustomed to attend, and,
by a little conversation, stimulated her to enter upon
her studies with alacrity.

“She was now grown to a girl, and had begun to
assume the naive, womanly airs which girls do at her
age. Her figure had rounded into a flowing symmetry,
and her face, whether from associating principally
with an older person, or for what other reason I
know not, had assumed a thoughtful cast, and she
was really a girl of most interesting and striking personal
appearance.

“I did not expect much from the first year of my
experiment. I calculated justly on its being irksome
and common-place. Still I was amused and interested.
I could hear her light step on the stair, always at the
same early hour of the evening, and it was a pleasure
to me to say `Come in,' to her timid rap, and set her
a chair by my own, that I might look over her book,
or talk in a low tone to her. I then asked her about
her lessons, and found out what had most attracted her
notice, and I could always find some interesting fact
connected with it, or strike off into some pleasant association,
till she acquired a habit of selection in her
reading, and looked at me earnestly to know what I
would say upon it. You would have smiled to see
her leaning forward, with her soft blue eye fixed on
me, and her lips half parted with attention, waiting for
my ideas upon some bare fact in geography or history;
and it would have convinced you that the natural,
unstimulated mind, takes pleasure in the simplest
addition to its knowledge.

“All this time I kept out of her way everything
that would have a tendency to destroy a taste for mere
knowledge, and had the pleasure to see that she
passed with keen relish from her text books to my observations,
which were as dry as they, though recommended
by kindness of tone and an interested manner.
She acquired gradually, by this process, a habit of
reasoning upon everything which admitted it, which
was afterward of great use in fixing and retaining the
leading features of her attainments.

“I proceeded in this way till she was fifteen. Her
mind had now become inured to regular habits of inquiry,
and she began to ask difficult questions and
wonder at common things. Her thoughts assumed a
graver complexion, and she asked for books upon subjects
of which she felt the want of information. She
was ready to receive and appreciate truth and instruction,
and here was to begin my pleasure.

“She came up one evening with an air of embarrassment
approaching to distress. She took her usual
seat, and told me that she had been thinking all day
that it was useless to study any more. There were so
many mysterious things — so much, even that she could
see, which she could not account for, and, with all her
efforts, she got on so slowly, that she was discouraged.
It was better, she said, to be happy in ignorance, than
to be constantly tormented with the sight of knowledge
to which she could not attain, and which she only knew
enough to value. Poor child! she did not know that
she was making the same complaint with Newton, and
Locke, and Bacon, and that the wisest of men were
only `gatherers of pebbles on the shore of an illimitable
sea!' I began to talk to her of the mind. I spoke
of its grandeur, and its capacities, and its destiny. I
told her instances of high attainment and wonderful
discovery — sketched the sublime philosophies of the
soul — the possibility that this life was but a link in a
chain of existences, and the glorious power, if it were
true, of entering upon another world, with a loftier capacity
than your fellow-beings for the comprehension
of its mysteries. I then touched upon the duty of self-cultivation
— the pride of a high consciousness of improved
time, and the delicious feelings of self-respect
and true appreciation.

“She listened to me in silence, and wept. It was
one of those periods which occur to all delicate minds,
of distrust and fear; and when it passed by, and her
ambition stirred again, she gave vent to her feelings
with a woman's beautiful privilege. I had no more
trouble to urge her on. She began the next day with
the philosophy of the mind, and I was never happier
than while following her from step to step in this delightful
study.

“I have always thought that the most triumphant
intellectual feeling we ever experience, is felt upon the
first opening of philosophy. It is like the interpreta
tion of a dream of a lifetime. Every topic seems to
you like a phantom of your own mind, from which a
mist has suddenly melted. Every feature has a kind
of half-familiarity, and you remember musing upon it
for hours, till you gave it up with an impatient dissatisfaction.
Without a definite shape, this or that very
idea has floated in your mind continually. It was a phenomenon
without a name — a something which you
could not describe to your friend, and which, by-and-by,
you came to believe was peculiar to yourself, and
would never be brought out or unravelled. You read
on, and the blood rushes to your face in a tumultuous
consciousness — you have had feelings in peculiar
situations which you could not define, and here
are their very features — and you know, now, that it was
jealousy, or ambition, or love. There have been moments
when your faculties seemed blinded or reversed.
You could not express yourself at all when you felt
you should be eloquent. You could not fix your
mind upon the subject, of which, before, you had been
passionately fond. You felt an aversion for your very
partialities, or a strange warming in your heart toward
people or pursuits that you had disliked; and when
the beauty of the natural world has burst upon you,
as it sometimes will, with an exceeding glory, you
have turned away from it with a deadly sickness of
heart, and a wish that you might die.

“These are mysteries which are not all soluble even
by philosophy. But you can see enough of the machinery
of thought to know its tendencies, and like
the listener to mysterious music, it is enough to have
seen the instrument, without knowing the cunning
craft of the player.

“I remembered my school-day feelings, and lived
them over again with my beautiful pupil. I entered
with as much enthusiasm as she, into the strength and
sublimity which I had wondered at before; and I believe
that, even as she sat reading by herself, my blood
thrilled, and my pulses quickened, as vividly as her
own, when I saw, by the deepening color of her cheek,
or the marked passages of my book, that she had found
a noble thought or a daring hypothesis.

“She proceeded with her course of philosophy rapidly
and eagerly. Her mind was well prepared for its
relish. She said she felt as if a new sense had been
given her — an inner eye which she could turn in upon
herself, and by which she could, as it were, stand aside
while the process of thought went on. She began to
respect and to rely upon her own mind, and the elevation
of countenance and manner, which so certainly
and so beautifully accompanies inward refinement,
stole over her daily. I began to feel respectful in her
presence, and when, with the peculiar elegance of a
woman's mind, she discovered a delicate shade of
meaning which I had not seen, or traced an association
which could spring only from an unsullied heart,
I experienced a sensation like the consciousness of an
unseen presence — elevating, without alarming me.

“It was probably well that with all this change in
her mind and manner, her person still retained its
childish grace and flexibility. She had not grown
tall, and she wore her hair yet as she used to do — falling
with a luxuriant fulness upon her shoulders.
Hence she was still a child, when, had she been taller
or more womanly, the demands upon her attention,
and the attractiveness of mature society, might have
divided that engrossing interest which is necessary to
successful study.

“I have often wished I was a painter; but never so
much as when looking on this beautiful being as she
sat absorbed in her studies, or turned to gaze up a
moment to my face, with that delicious expression of
inquiry and affection. Every one knows the elevation
given to the countenance of a man by contemplative
habits. Perhaps the natural delicacy of feminine features
has combined with its rarity, to make this expression

les observable in woman; but, to one familiar
with the study of the human face, there is, in the
look of a truly intellectual woman, a keen subtlety of
refinement, a separation from everything gross and
material, which comes up to our highest dream of the
angelic. For myself, I care not to analyze it. I leave
it to philosophy to find out its secret. It is enough
for me that I can see and feel it in every pulse of my
being. It is not a peculiar susceptibility. Every man
who approaches such a woman feels it. He may not
define it; he may be totally unconscious what it is
that awes him; but he feels as if a mysterious and invisible
veil were about her, and every dark thought is
quenched suddenly in his heart, as if he had come
into the atmosphere of a spirit. I would have every
woman know this. I would tell every mother who
prays nightly for the peculiar watchfulness of good
spirits over the purity of her child, that she may weave
round her a defence stronger than steel — that she may
place in her heart a living amulet whose virtue is like
a circle of fire to pollution. I am not `stringing pearls.'
I have seen, and I know, that an empty mind is not a
strong citadel; and in the melancholy chronicle of
female ruin, the instances are rare of victims distinguished
for mental cultivation. I would my pen were
the `point of a diamond,' and I were writing on living
hearts! for when I think how the daughters of a house
are its grace and honor — and when I think how the
father and mother that loved her, and the brother that
made her his pride, and the sister in whose bosom she
slept, are all crushed, utterly, by a daughter's degradation,
I feel, that if every word were a burning coal,
my language could not be extravagant!

“My pupil, had, as yet, read no poetry. I was uncertain
how to enter upon it. Her taste for the beautiful
in prose had become so decided, that I feared for
the first impression of my poetical world. I wished it
to burst upon her brilliantly — like the entrance to an
inner and more magnificent temple of knowledge. I
hoped to dazzle her with a high and unimagined
beauty, which should exceed far the massive but plain
splendors of philosophy. We had often conversed on
the probability of a previous existence, and, one evening,
I opened Wordsworth, and read his sublime
`Ode upon Intimations of Immortality.' She did not
interrupt me, but I looked up at the conclusion, and
she was in tears. I made no remark, but took Byron,
and read some of the finest passages in Childe Harold,
and Manfred, and Cain — and, from that time, poetry
has been her world!

“It would not have been so earlier. It needs the
simple and strong nutriment of truth to fit us to relish
and feel poetry. The mind must have strength and
cultivated taste, and then it is like a language from
Heaven. We are astonished at its power and magnificence.
We have been familiar with knowledge as
with a person of plain garment and a homely presence
— and he comes to us in poetry, with the state of a
king, glorious in purple and gold. We have known
him as an unassuming friend who talked with us by
the wayside, and kept us company on our familiar
paths — and we see him coming with a stately step, and
a glittering diadem on his brow; and we wonder that
we did not see that his plain garment honored him
not, and his bearing were fitter for a king!

“Poetry entered to the very soul of Caroline Grey.
It was touching an unreached string, and she felt as
if the whole compass of her heart were given out. I
used to read to her for hours, and it was beautiful to
see her eye kindle, and her cheek burn with excitement.
The sublimed mysticism and spirituality of
Wordsworth were her delight, and she feasted upon
the deep philosophy and half-hidden tenderness of
Coleridge.

“I had observed, with some satisfaction, that, in the
rapid development of her mental powers, she had not
found time to study nature. She knew little of the
character of the material creation, and I now commenced
walking constantly abroad with her at sunset,
and at all the delicious seasons of moonlight and starlight
and dawn. It came in well with her poetry. I
can not describe the effect. She became, like all who
are, for the first time, made sensible of the glories
around them, a worshipper of the external world.

“There is a time when nature first loses its familiarity,
and seems suddenly to have become beautiful.
This is true even of those who have been taught early
habits of observation. The mind of a child is too
feeble to comprehend, and does not soon learn, the
scale of sublimity and beauty. He would not be surprised
if the sun were brighter, or if the stars were
sown thicker in the sky. He sees that the flower is
beautiful, and he feels admiration at the rainbow; but
he would not wonder if the dyes of the flower were
deeper, or if the sky were laced to the four corners
with the colors of a prism. He grows up with these
splendid phenomena at work about him, till they have
become common, and, in their most wonderful forms,
cease to attract his attention. Then his senses are
suddenly, as by an invisible influence, unsealed, and,
like the proselyte of the Egyptian pyramids, he finds
himself in a magnificent temple, and hears exquisite
music, and is dazzled by surpassing glory. He never
recovers his indifference. The perpetual changes of
nature keep alive his enthusiasm, and if his taste is not
dulled by subsequent debasement, the pleasure he receives
from it flows on like a stream — wearing deeper
and calmer.

“Caroline became now my constant companion.
The changes of the natural world have always been
my chief source of happiness, and I was curious to
know whether my different sensations, under different
circumstances, were peculiar to myself. I left her,
therefore, to lead the conversation, without any expression
of my feelings, and, to my surprise and delight,
she invariably struck their tone, and pursued the
same vein of reflection. It convinced me of what I
had long thought might be true — that there was, in
the varieties of natural beauty, a hidden meaning, and
a delightful purpose of good; and, if I am not deceived,
it is a new and beautiful evidence of the proportion
and extent of God's benevolent wisdom.
Thus, you may remember the peculiar effect of the
early dawn — the deep, unruffled serenity, and the perfect
collectedness of your senses. You may remember
the remarkable purity that pervades the stealing
in of color, and the vanishing of the cold shadows of
gray — the heavenly quiet that seems infused, like a
visible spirit, into the pearly depths of the east, as the
light violet tints become deeper in the upper sky, and
the morning mist rises up like a veil of silvery film,
and softens away its intensity; and then you will remember
how the very beatings of your heart grew
quiet, and you felt an irresistible impulse to pray!
There was no irregular delight, no indefinite sensation,
no ecstacy. It was deep, unbroken repose, and
your pulses were free from the fever of life, and your
reason was lying awake in its chamber.

“There is a hush also at noon; but it is not like
the morning. You have been mingling in the business
of the world, and you turn aside, weary and distracted,
for rest. There is a far depth, in the intense blue of
the ksy which takes in the spirit, and you are content
to lie down and sleep in the cool shadow, and forget
even your existence. How different from the cool
wakefulness of the morning, and yet how fitted for the
necessity of the hour!

“The day wears on and comes to the sunsetting.
The strong light passes off from the hills, and the
leaves are mingled in golden masses, and the tips of the
long grass, and the blades of maize, and the luxuriant
grain, are all sleeping in a rich glow, as if the daylight

had melted into gold and descended upon every living
thing like dew. The sun goes down, and there is a
tissue of indescribable glory floating upon the clouds,
and the almost imperceptible blending of the sunset
color with the blue sky, is far up toward the zenith.
Presently the pomp of the early sunset passes away;
and the clouds are all clad in purple, with edges of
metallic lustre; and very far in the west, as if they
were sailing away into another world, are seen spots
of intense brightness, and the tall trees on the hilly
edge of the horizon seem piercing the sky, on fire with
its consuming heat. There is a tumultuous joy in
the contemplation of this hour which is peculiar to
itself. You feel as if you should have had wings; for
there is a strange stirring in your heart to follow on —
and your imagination bursts away into that beautiful
world, and revels among the unsubstantial clouds till
they become cold. It is a triumphant and extravagant
hour. Its joyousness is an intoxication, and its pleasure
dies with the day.

“The night, starry and beautiful, comes on. The
sky has a blue, intense almost to blackness, and the
stars are set in it like gems. They are of different
glory, and there are some that burn, and some that
have a twinkling lustre, and some are just visible and
faint. You know their nature, and their motion; and
there is something awful in so many worlds moving on
through the firmament so silently and in order. You
feel an indescribable awe stealing upon you, and your
imagination trembles as it goes up among them. You
gaze on, and on, and the superstitions of olden time,
and the wild visions of astrology, steal over your memory,
till, by-and-by, you hear the music which they
`give out as they go,' and drink in the mysteries of
their hidden meaning, and believe that your destiny is
woven by their burning spheres. There comes on
you a delirious joy, and a kind of terrible fellowship
with their sublime nature, and you feel as if you could
go up to a starry place and course the heavens in company.
There is a spirituality in this hour, a separation
from material things, which is of a fine order of
happiness. The purity of the morning, and the noontide
quietness, and the rapture of the glorious sunset,
are all human and comprehensible feelings; but this
has the mystery and the lofty energy of a higher world,
and you return to your human nature with a refreshed
spirit and an elevated purpose: see now the wisdom
of God! — the collected intellect for the morning prayer
and our daily duty — the delicious repose for our
noontide weariness — and the rapt fervor to purify us
by night from our worldiness, and keep wakeful the
eye of immortality! They are all suited to our need;
and it is pleasant to think, when we go out at this or
that season, that its peculiar beauty is fitted to our peculiar
wants, and that it is not a chance harmony of our
hearts with nature.

“The world had become to Caroline a new place.
No change in the season was indifferent to her — nothing
was common or familiar. She found beauty in
things you would pass by, and a lesson for her mind or
her heart in the minutest workmanship of nature. Her
character assumed a cheerful dignity, and an elevation
above ordinary amusements or annoyances. She was
equable and calm, because her feelings were never
reached by ordinary irritations; and, if there were no
other benefit in cultivation, this were almost argument
enough to induce it.

“It is now five years since I commenced my tutorship.
I have given you the history of two of them. In
the remaining three there has been much that has interested
my mind — probably little that would interest
yours. We have read together, and, as far as possible,
studied together. She has walked with me, and shared
all my leisure, and known every thought. She is now a
woman of eighteen. Her childish graces are matured,
and her blue eye would send a thrill through you. You
might object to her want of fashionable tournure, and
find fault with her unfashionable impulses. I do not.
She is a high-minded, noble, impassioned being, with
an enthusiasm that is not without reason, and a common
sense that is not a regard to self-interest. Her
motion was not learned at schools, but it is unembarrassed
and free; and her tone has not been educated
to a refined whisper, but it expresses the meaning of
her heart, as if its very pulse had become articulate.
The many might not admire her — I know she would
be idolized by the few.

“Our intercourse is as intimate still; and it could
not change without being less so — for we are constantly
together. There is — to be sure — lately — a slight
degree of embarrassment — and — somehow — we read
more poetry than we used to do — but it is nothing at
all — nothing.”

My friend was married to his pupil a few months
after writing the foregoing. He has written to me
since, and I will show you the letter if you will call,
any time. It will not do to print it, because there are
some domestic details not proper for the general eye;
but, to me, who am a bachelor, bent upon matrimony,
it is interesting to the last degree. He lives the same
quiet, retired life, that he did before he was married.
His room is arranged with the same taste, and with
reference to the same habits as before. The light
comes in as timidly through the half-closed window,
and his pictures look as shadowy and dim, and the
rustle of the turned leaf adds as mysteriously to the
silence. He is the fondest of husbands, but his affection
does not encroach on the habits of his mind. Now
and then he looks up from his book, and, resting his
head upon his hand, lets his eye wander over the pale
cheek and drooping lid of the beautiful being who sits
reading beside him; but he soon returns to his half-forgotten
page, and the smile of affection which had
stolen over his features fades gradually away into the
habitual soberness of thought. There sits his wife,
hour after hour, in the same chair which she occupied
when she first came, a curious loiterer to his room;
and though she does not study so much, because other
cares have a claim upon her now, she still keeps pace
with him in the pleasanter branches of knowledge, and
they talk as often and as earnestly as before on the
thousand topics of a scholar's contemplation. Her
cares may and will multiply; but she understands the
economy of time, and I have no doubt that, with every
attention to her daily duties, she will find ample time
for her mind, and be always as well fitted as now for
the companionship of an intellectual being.

I have, like all bachelors, speculated a great deal
upon matrimony. I have seen young and beautiful
women, the pride of gay circles, married — as the world
said — well! Some have moved into costly houses, and
their friends have all come and looked at their fine
furniture and their splendid arrangements for happiness,
and they have gone away and committed them to
their sunny hopes, cheerfully, and without fear. It is
natural to be sanguine for the young, and, at such
times, I am carried away by similar feelings. I love to
get unobserved into a corner, and watch the bride in
her white attire, and with her smiling face and her soft
eyes moving before me in their pride of life, weave a
waking dream of her future happiness, and persuade
myself that it will be true. I think how they will sit
upon that luxurious sofa as the twilight falls, and build
gay hopes, and murmur in low tones the now unforbidden
tenderness, and how thrillingly the allowed kiss
and the beautiful endearments of wedded life, will
make even their parting joyous, and how gladly they
will come back from the crowd and the empty mirth
of the gay, to each other's quiet company. I picture
to myself that young creature, who blushes, even now,
at his hesitating caress, listening eagerly for his foot-steps

as the night steals on, and wishing that he would
come; and when he enters at last, and, with an affection
as undying as his pulse, folds her to his bosom, I
can feel the very tide that goes flowing through his
heart, and gaze with him on her graceful form as
she moves about him for the kind offices of affection,
soothing all his unquiet cares, and making him
forget even himself, in her young and unshadowed
beauty.

I go forward for years, and see her luxuriant hair
put soberly away from her brow, and her girlish graces
ripened into dignity, and her bright loveliness chastened
with the gentle meekness of maternal affection.
Her husband looks on her with a proud eye, and
shows the same fervent love and delicate attention
which first won her, and fair children are growing
up about them, and they go on, full of honor and
untroubled years, and are remembered when they
die!

I say I love to dream thus when I go to give the
young bride joy. It is the natural tendency of feelings
touched by loveliness that fears nothing for itself,
and, if I ever yield to darker feelings, it is because the
light of the picture is changed. I am not fond of
dwelling on such changes, and I will not, minutely,
now. I allude to it only because I trust that my simple
page will be read by some of the young and beautiful
beings who move daily across my path, and I
would whisper to them as they glide by, joyously and
confidingly, the secret of an unclouded future.

The picture I have drawn above is not peculiar. It
is colored like the fancies of the bride; and many — oh
many an hour will she sit, with her rich jewels lying
loose in her fingers, and dream such dreams as these.
She believes them, too — and she goes on, for a while,
undeceived. The evening is not too long while they
talk of their plans for happiness, and the quiet meal is
still pleasant with the delightful novelty of mutual reliance
and attention. There comes soon, however, a
time when personal topics become bare and wearisome,
and slight attentions will not alone keep up the social
excitement. There are long intervals of silence, and
detected symptoms of weariness, and the husband, first
in his impatient manhood, breaks in upon the hours
they were to spend together. I can not follow it circumstantially.
There come long hours of unhappy
listelessness, and terrible misgivings of each other's worth
and affection, till, by-and-by, they can conceal their
uneasiness no longer, and go out separately to seek
relief, and lean upon a hollow world for the support
which one who was their “lover and friend” could not
give them!

Heed this, ye who are winning, by your innocent
beauty, the affections of highminded and thinking
beings! Remember that he will give up the brother
of his heart with whom he has had, ever, a fellowship
of mind — the society of his contemporary runners in
the race of fame, who have held with him a stern
companionship — and frequently, in his passionate love,
he will break away from the arena of his burning ambition,
to come and listen to the “voice of the charmer.”
It will bewilder him at first, but it will not long;
and then, think you that an idle blandishment will
chain the mind that has been used, for years, to an
equal communion? Think you he will give up, for a
weak dalliance, the animating themes of men, and the
search into the fine mysteries of knowledge? — Oh no,
lady! — believe me — no! Trust not your influence to
such light fetters! Credit not the old-fashioned absurdity
that woman's is a secondary lot — ministering
to the necessities of her lord and master! It is a
higher destiny I would award you. If your immortality
is as complete, and your gift of mind as capable
as ours of increase and elevation, I would put no wisdom
of mine against God's evident allotment. I
would charge you to water the undying bud, and give
it healthy culture, and open its beauty to the sun —
and then you may hope, that when your life is bound
up with another, you will go on equally, and in a
fellowship that shall pervade every earthly interest!