* A Distributed Proofreaders Canada eBook *

This eBook is made available at no cost and with very few restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make a change in the eBook (other than alteration for different display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of the eBook. If either of these conditions applies, please contact a https://www.fadedpage.com administrator before proceeding. Thousands more FREE eBooks are available at https://www.fadedpage.com.

This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE.

This eBook was produced by: Mardi Desjardins & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXI.      August, 1842      No. 2.

Contents

Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.

The Bud and the Blossom

Engraved by Welch & Walter, from a drawing by W. C. Ross, A.R.A.

GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

Vol. XXI.    PHILADELPHIA: AUGUST, 1842.    No. 2.

A REASON FOR BACHELORISM.

———

BY MRS. SEBA SMITH.

———

“You have told me, Mr. Hunter, at least a dozen times, you would reveal to me the secret of your bachelorism; now we have no visiters, and no prospect of any; the quiet patter of the rain has tempted you to cigar and slippers; and that dim burning of the coal in the grate, the drowsy fire of June, just enough to dispel the damp, and not enough to rouse one uneasy nerve, is of itself a pledge for a long, tranquil evening. And yet—by no means, my dear sir, don’t toss aside your cigar, and as to sighing, it is out of the question—you are too stout for sentiment, have a well-to-do air, a sort of tell-tale good-dinner aspect, that don’t accord well with the sentimental.”

Mr. Hunter drew from his bosom a small miniature, the portraits of two sisters, the one a girl of seventeen, the other a child of seven or eight—a bud and a blossom of female loveliness. Even I forgot the well-to-do air, and found myself unconsciously sympathizing as his smooth, unmarked face settled into an expression of melancholy. To be sure it was unnatural, and, just as it was about to reassume its habitual look of easy content, and the cigar was quietly restored to the lips, he caught a glimpse of my eyes, and they might have looked mischievous, for he flung the cigar aside, and declared he would never, no never, satisfy my curiosity. “Women were all alike heartless, untruthful, and full of whim. A man never knew where to find them—one thing to-day, another to-morrow. A book that is all preface—the reader never gets beyond the first page. No wonder married men are lean and cadaverous. That same lean Cassius must have been a married man. Othello’s occupation was done when he became a married man. Witness the spleen of Iago—it is that of a married man. Macbeth was a married murderer—it makes me desperate⁠—”

“Yes, desperate to be married. I won’t enter into a defence, because, my dear sir, I do so much want that same story. I forgive this little ebullition of bachelor spleen, believing it may be of service to you. But, Mr. Hunter, here is the secret of all the bachelorism in the world—Inconstancy—remember the old ballad that saith,

“Now do tell me the story of these pretty girls, and I promise not to annoy you.”

Mr. Hunter was too good-natured to refuse—bachelors are good natured.

“This is a painting from a sketch I made of the two girls, shortly before we embarked upon that fatal voyage. They were standing as you now see; Ellen with the same tranquil, gentle demeanor, and the roguish Anne in this very attitude indeed, but a thousand changeful meanings flitting over her face.

“I was but twenty-two—full of life, health, and the enthusiasm of early manhood. Ellen was the realization of my dreams, the one pure and blessed being forever floating about the fancies of the imagination, the impersonation of my ideal of womanhood at that time; meek, trusting, dependent, and loving with a singleness and purity of soul that sanctified every emotion. I need not say that the most restless dream of ambition, the most alluring incitements to pleasure, were as nothing to me when weighed by the wealth of her guileless tones of affection, the earnest and touching accents of tenderness that fell from her sweet lips.

“I was about to return to one of our southern cities, there to prosecute my profession, and Mrs. Lacey, a widow of some fortune, and long an invalid, determined to arrange her affairs and remove thither also, in company with her two daughters, my sweet Ellen and Anne.

“The first evening of our voyage Ellen joined me for a promenade on the deck, and as she confidingly put her arm within mine, I shall never forget the renewed sense of manhood I experienced at that moment, nor the exquisite delight arising from a consciousness that a creature of such grace and tenderness relied on me, and me only, for protection. Believe me, too, a woman can realize but once, I mean only in the one individual who engrosses her whole heart, that sweet sense of dependence, that delight in appealing to the manliness of a being, to whom alone she is not ashamed to confess her weakness.

“You smile, but we bachelors know more of your woman hearts than you do yourselves. For instance, you admire strength, because you are physically inferior. You admire intellect, because however intellectual you may be, you delight still more in the affections. Beauty is nothing to you, but self-sustaining manliness is every thing. You admire nobleness and generosity of sentiment, because they are not your own characteristics—courage because you are cowards⁠—”

“Oh! Mr. Hunter, Mr. Hunter, I do protest⁠—”

“Yet hear me through. Love with a woman must be commingled with reverence. She cannot love deeply, fervently; she cannot feel that the whole of her own exhaustless and beautiful sympathies are welling up to the light, like a pure fountain gushing up to the sunshine, only as love has become an idolatry, a holiness, a religion; and wo unto her when such is its nature! Earth has set its seal against it; the very stars look down sadly upon it; everywhere an altar arises to the living God, on which the incense that may not, cannot find a worthy censor here, is transferred to that of the Eternal. Thus it is that women are more religious than men—and thus it is that one of the most gifted of their number has said,

“But to my story. We had been out three or four days, with favorable winds, and the sea and sky had revealed to us each day their varied aspect of beauty. A change had been threatening through the day, and as the night approached the dense settling of the vapors seemed to hem us in, and that strange utterance of the elements, where they call from point to point, holding as they do undivided empire over the world of waters, was sublime, not to say appalling. Mrs. Lacey was a timid woman, and though the thread of life seemed every moment ready to sunder, she still clung to it with a wild tenacity. Ellen thought not of herself, and I believe she would have shrunk from witnessing the fearful uproar about us, as the vessel plunged onward, bravely onward, yet helpless even in her strength. I was leaning against the companion-way, alive to an almost painful sense of sublimity, when the light form of Anne rushed into my arms, and clasping hers about me she buried her face in my bosom.

“ ‘Oh! Charles, dear brother Charles, don’t send me back—let me stay with you and I shall fear nothing.’

“I gathered the sweet child to my bosom, and by a strange instinct approached the tafferel of the ship. I became aware of a sudden and terrible tumult—of a blackness even more dense than the thick clouds about us. Anne clung convulsively to my neck, and I instinctively put out my hands for support, for there was a fearful crash, a wild reeling beneath me, and I felt myself lifted from my feet and borne onward in the thick darkness. I was clinging to the chains of a larger ship that had crossed our track in that fearful storm, and had passed over her gallant souls, leaving all to perish, save us two so wondrously preserved.

“When afflictions come singly upon ourselves we are overpowered with a sense of desolation; we tread the wine-press alone, and the burden is often too much for human endurance; but when the calamity is general the individual is merged in the many, and the selfishness of grief is forgotten. I scarcely wept for the gentle and beautiful Ellen. I was conscious of a dull aching weight of bereavement; but then I felt as an atom, a quivering, vital one indeed, but yet only as an atom in the great mass of human suffering. The ocean, too, pure and deep, seemed a fit resting place for the good and lovely.

“When Anne awoke to consciousness, she called frantically for her mother and sister. Slowly and gently I revealed the sad reality. She stood with her little hands clasped, her wet hair streaming over her shoulders, and those deep earnest eyes gazing into mine with an intensity that pained me to the very heart. When all had become clear to her, she dropped her hands slowly and the tears gathered into her eyes; then, as by a new impulse, she drew herself to my bosom, and nestled there, like a dove, weary and desolate.

“Tender and beautiful sufferer! she gathered her duty only from my eyes, and assented to the slightest intimation of my will. I was her only friend on the earth, and her gentle nature, now doubly gentle in her sorrow, lavished all its tenderness on me.

“Gradually she awoke from the listlessness induced by newness to suffering, and the wonderful elasticity of her character revealed a thousand glowing and impassioned traits, that had hitherto escaped my observation. Frank and courageous, she regarded things as they were in themselves, and not as they might appear to others. Challenging the opinions of none, with an intuitive feminine tact, her conclusions were always what one would desire.

“Nature is, after all, the best teacher—would women but yield themselves to the promptings of a simple and womanly nature, they would be far more effective than they at present are. Our sex are worshippers of truth—you smile—but it is true nevertheless; and might you, dared you preserve your primitive truthfulness of heart, we should fall down and worship you.

“But I digress, and am describing Anne rather as she appeared when, like Spenser’s Amoret, she ‘reclined in the lap of womanhood,’ than while she sat upon my knee, a tender and simple child.

“I would scarcely assert that Anne was endowed with genius; and yet I know not—at any rate it was thoroughly a woman’s genius—earnest, truthful, affectionate, dependent, and yet nobly self-sustained—impassioned and yet never mistaking or perverting her emotions—embodying every quality of her sex, and yet elevating all—gay as a bird, simple as a child; her own bright nature investing all things with an ideal halo, and yet with a singular clearness of perception and soundness of judgment correcting all such illusions; a creature of contradictions, and yet grand in her consistency; a true woman; the life-study of a man, aye, and were he the wisest of his sex, he might never exhaust the sweet subject; just not an angel, but all a woman⁠—

“The ship that had wrecked our own good barque was bound on a three years cruise, and all that time Anne was the only one of her sex on board. She never seemed to feel the peculiarity of her situation, all she said or did was feminine and becoming, and her little state room worthy of Goethe’s Margery, ‘it is not every maiden keeps her room so chary,’ might have been said of her.

“Never shall I forget the wild delight with which she hailed our approach to land, nor the care with which she nurtured the plants that were to relieve the monotony of the voyage—the touching gratitude with which she received the gift of a bird or animal that was to be her especial pet. And then to mark her many little expedients to preserve the order and taste of her poor garments: true, nothing could be more picturesque than her half oriental costume, the loose trowsers and robe confined by a girdle that every sailor vied in keeping tasteful. Her dark, changeful eyes and luxuriant hair might well afford to meet a skin embrowned by exposure, but rich with the brightest hue of health. The sailors called her the little queen, from her proud air, and the officers applied a thousand aristocratic epithets, all indicating a playful reverence. She was a child in heart, but a woman in manner.

“I need not recount her studies, nor that pretty reserve that made her apply to me, and to me only, for aid. Alas! I knew not the poison I thus imbibed. I dreamed not that that sweet child could ever be aught to me but a sister.

“At length, after an absence of four years, I placed the dear girl under the protection of my mother. I was an only child, and she received Anne as the gift of God, a new object of attachment.

“But why dwell upon these things? Why tell how the child ripened into womanhood—beautiful, most beautiful, not in feature merely, though even there few of her sex were her equals; but beautiful in thought, in voice, and motion—that combination of parts, that wondrous result of grace, even where shades may be defective yet producing an harmonious whole? Why tell how her confiding, sisterly attachment remained unshaken, while I learned to love her with all the fervor of manhood? I felt it was hopeless, and became an exile from home, that I might not inflict a pang upon her trusting heart. After a long absence, in which time, which had only softened, I fondly trusted had cured me of my passion, I returned to find Anne but more lovely and attaching, and now doubly lost to me. When she pressed her maidenly lips to my cheek, and again called me brother, I rebelled at the term and madly revealed the truth.

“Poor Anne! she recoiled from me trembling and in tears. At length she put her arms about my neck, and with the same gentle accent, the same confiding tenderness that I remembered upon that fearful night at sea, she uttered—

“ ‘Dear, dear brother Charles, am I not your sister? You do love me, you will not cast me from you, though—though I have dared to love another.’

“I raised her head, and her calm eyes met mine, though her cheek and bosom were dyed with blushes.

“ ‘Never, dear Anne, you shall be my sister; God help me to regard you as such only.’

“I kept my promise. Oh, God! did I not, through years of agony that tongue might never utter!

“Anne became the wife of another, and never, never, can I enough admire her refined womanly deportment. Her whole soul, with all its unutterable wealth of loving, was now his; and yet in my presence all was chastened to a tranquil content, as if she, truthful as she was, dreaded I should know her deep fount of feeling, lest it might enhance my own sense of solitude. ‘Most excellent wretch,’ Othello would have said; every where I traced the evidences of her benevolence, and every where was she mindful of my happiness.

“Holy and generous woman! the earnest, the true-hearted—earth was no place for thee. Enough, she died—died ere a shadow had fallen upon her bright nature—ere the thought had assumed shape that the creature of her idolatry had brought a desecrated gift to the altar.”

How many of that class—deemed by the throng so cold and passionless—have for their solitary life some such cause as that which made my friend a bachelor! Surely there lives not man or woman who has not at some period loved; and thousands, like the heroes of fiction, make but one cast of the heart.

———

BY WM. C. BRYANT.

———

———

BY C. F. HOFFMAN, AUTHOR OF “GREYSLAKE,” “THE VIGIL OF FAITH,” ETC.

———

PAINTED BY DRUMMOND.        ENGRAVED BY SARTAIN.

The Watchers

Engraved Expressly for Graham’s Magazine.

ILLUSTRATION OF A PICTURE.

A TALE OF RICHELIEU.

———

BY THE AUTHOR OF “HENRI QUATRE; OR THE DAYS OF THE LEAGUE.”

———

CHAPTER I.

Beneath the vast superstructure of the Palais de Justice, a pile of buildings erected under various dynasties, now appropriated to the sittings of the several justiciary courts, and situate in the most unwholesome and dirtiest quarter of the city of Paris, is a low, narrow door—it may be seen on the right-hand of the grand staircase. This is the entrance to the Conciergerie du Palais, a prison famous in the annals of the French monarchy.

In May, of the year of grace, one thousand six hundred and forty, waiting with the same intent, yet standing apart from the crowd, was observable a maiden attended by an aged female domestic. At the hour of eight in the morning, knelled by the old palace-clock, the portal was opened to the admission, under heavy and inconvenient restrictions, of the friends and legal advisers of prisoners. The group of visiters entered the narrow threshold one by one, the maiden last, after exchanging an affectionate adieu with her attendant. Such had been her wonted custom the past week. Little curiosity existed among those who, like herself, were seeking admission within the dreaded walls, else they might have distinguished, what the mantle drawn close round the throat could not wholly conceal—a fair face subdued by recent sorrow. Last was she ever of the throng, for she shrank from the observation and contact of those as unhappy as herself. Let us pass the threshold with the maiden.

The narrow passage opened into a large, sombre vestibule, the walls of rough masonry, and on which were affixed lamps affording a dim, feeble light. At the entrance the damsel each day submitted a written order to a pair of ruffianly jailers, whose unwashed faces and long matted hair bespoke utter aversion to cleanliness. Holding the document to a lamp above his head, the light fell on the seamed face, begrimed with dirt, of the principal jailer. Hands of the same texture, and in the same state, had in the course of a week so soiled the pass that it appeared no longer the same document. The maiden who, whilst waiting in the outer-bureau of the minister of state, had witnessed the carefulness of the delicate hand, peeping from the lace-ruffle, which traced the characters on fair royal paper, sealed it with green office-wax, and bore it with all care in an envelop to Monseigneur, shrouded in his closet, would not have dared to show the secretary his bespoiled handiwork, and almost loathed receiving it from the grimed hand of the cerberus—but it was impolitic to exhibit the disgust she felt, and so, depositing the paper in its cleaner envelop, she walked through a long gallery, lighted, like the vestibule, by lamps, the whole day long. The gallery terminated in the prison-parlor, an apartment where the inmates held interviews with relatives and friends. And a strange parlor it appeared even to the maiden, though seen for the seventh time. Of the same confined width as the gallery, there were interposed on each side and at the extremity, strong iron rails; and between the bars of what might be compared to a bird-cage on a gigantic scale, conversed the prisoners and their visiters. Beyond the inmates’ side of the railing, was seen another row of iron-bars, and between the interstices of the latter, a scanty green whose blades of grass, few and far between, might easily be counted. Flanking this lawn were open-staircases leading to the apartments of prisoners treated with less rigor than others condemned to the noisome cells of the old structure.

The maiden paused not on reaching the parlor—she appeared to know, as it were intuitively, that the party she sought would not be found with the herd—but proceeding to the extremity of the cage, awaited the slow movement of the jailer’s assistant, who, seated on a bench, kept a sharp eye on what was passing around. Rising reluctantly, he unfastened the lock of the cage-door, admitting the fair visiter. She was about producing, as usual, the order which afforded her the exclusive privilege, but he motioned her to proceed.

“Jour de Dieu! Mademoiselle,” said the lazy official, “I am glad such commands are scarce, or I should have a fine life of it!”

Glad to escape further parley, she tripped forward to the gate which opened on the green—shook it—but the chain which passed between the bars of the gate and intertwined with the corresponding shafts of the iron inclosure, was fastened by a padlock. She turned round, but the jailer was at hand—and with something between a smile and a contortion of the muscles, he said, “Mademoiselle’s sentiments, no doubt, correspond with mine—there is no necessity for this vexation.”

The vexation complained of, was the being obliged to keep the gate locked and the key on his person, which placed the functionary at the mercy of every prisoner anxious to retire to the meditation of his cell, when there might happen to be an equal anxiety on the part of the warder to doze indolently with twinkling, half-opened eye on the comfortable bench.

Forcing a smile in reply to the remark, she walked quickly across the lawn—scant as the hairs on head of octogenarian—flew up one of the staircases, and entering a narrow passage, was about to knock at the chamber door, when it opened, and an elderly man, with a martial cast of countenance, stood before her, smiling.

“As punctual as the clock, my good Marguerite,” said the prisoner in a tone of gaiety, perhaps not wholly sincere.

Marguerite burst into tears and threw herself into his arms. The old man—he was her surviving parent—chid the damsel, and leading her to a chair—there were but two in the little chamber—bade her reassume the courage becoming the daughter of an old militaire.

“Father! my news is not good—there is no hope yet!” exclaimed Marguerite, drying her tears. She looked in his face, dreading the impression which the intelligence would produce.

“No hope, Marguerite?” exclaimed her father, “that cannot be—fortune indeed was never kind, but hope never forsakes me—she is as kind—as kind as Marguerite. And I see,” (looking at a basket which she brought under her mantle) “that you have not forgotten to cater for our breakfast.”

It was the Sieur De Pontis, whose wants were thus carefully administered to by an affectionate daughter. Of an ancient family in Limousin, and of moderate estate, he had in early life followed the profession of arms, serving in succession, and faithfully, the third and fourth Henry, and the reigning monarch, Louis, thirteenth of that name. With a fondness for the profession, rather than any ambition or abstract love of glory, he had arrived at a fair rank in the armies of France, and been personally noticed by the kings and princes whom he served. It were reasonable to suppose of such a man, that without objection on the score of family or descent, of fair estate, character and temper formed to make friends rather than provoke enmity, and whose career had been hitherto free from charge of neglect or error in military duties, that he should have found himself in old age, at least as rich as when he commenced life. Far from it! and the only way it could be accounted for by himself or friends, was conveyed in the remark that he was singularly unfortunate. Farm after farm had melted away, and there remained only one terre or estate—a barren place—in his native province, Limousin. Was he prudent or did he indulge in the excesses of a campaigning life? De Pontis, as we have said, had a fondness for the profession. He was, moreover, a strict disciplinarian, frugal, saving, and free from the prevailing vices of gaming and debauchery.

In endeavoring to account for the poverty of the old militaire, we are thus driven back to his own assertion, that he was unfortunate. Such a condition was perhaps satisfactory to De Pontis himself, who was merely a philosopher practically—as his biographer, it becomes us to look beneath the surface, and, if possible, pluck out the heart of the mystery. Let us in a few words, with a view to elucidation, examine the military system of the period.

De Pontis at the first start (and the mode was general) sold a portion of his land to equip himself honorably—in a way befitting name and lineage, as one anxious to maintain the standing of a French gentleman. Horses for himself and servants, military baggage and accoutrements, arms—and a few rouleaus of gold to lose with good grace and temper on introduction to the general’s table—required a considerable amount of money. In time of war, princes are needy. He who brought to the camp men and horses was a good, dutiful subject; but he who could, in addition, assist a distressed sovereign with a subsidy proportioned to his means, was a welcome friend. On the other hand, the governments of conquered towns and fortresses, the plunder of the enemy’s camp and country, and, above all, the ransom of prisoners taken in battle, were the means by which the French gentleman recruited his finances, and indemnified himself for the charges of military outlay.

A fair share of these windfalls had been the lot of De Pontis, and his excellent discipline and perfect knowledge of military tactics had extorted, on several occasions, from the French monarchs, presents of rare value. Still every year saw him grow poorer. And how happened it?

Returning once from a campaign in Germany, laden with gold, and a dozen fine horses, the spoil of the Austrian archduke’s stud, he was swindled out of the whole between Strasburg and Paris, by a youngster travelling the same route in grand style, calling himself Baron De Champoleon—but who was really only son of a poor minister of Nismes. Already an adept in roguery, he was on the road to Paris, intent on villanous practices, when he fell in with the unfortunate De Pontis.

Our militaire bore the loss philosophically, only exclaiming, “If he had but left me my favorite hack, Millefleurs, I should have been content!”

Twice he had been taken prisoner, losing horses and personal property, and obliged to instruct relatives at home to sell more paternal acres to pay ransom—the alternative being to submit to a dreary parole confinement in a remote town in Germany, and await the dubious and uncertain chance of an exchange of prisoners. On the last occasion that this calamity occurred, the distress was greatly aggravated by the dishonesty of the party through whom the funds raised for his ransom were conveyed—making necessary a second sale of land.

But without adding to the catalogue of untoward events, let it suffice to say, that circumstances which to most people, and on most occasions, proved instances of good fortune, were to the old soldier harbingers of ill-luck and misfortune.

“My poor De Pontis never prospers!” exclaimed the good-natured Louis one day, on hearing that the veteran had lost a diamond-ring, a late royal gift.

His wife dead, there remained only for the solace of old age, his fair daughter, Marguerite. Deeply as she felt her father’s distresses, fondly as she endeavored to hide her grief, and contribute by every art to his comfort, it proved that the damsel herself oftener stood in need of consolation than the veteran sufferer. He possessed such a fund of resignation, flow of strong animal spirits, and a heart void of high ambitious views, aiming only at duty and loyalty, that the shafts of misfortune lost much of their power.

Not so with Marguerite; though her father bore up manfully against adversity, yet she had witnessed one parent droop, pine and fall beneath the successive strokes of ill fortune, and despondency and gloom gathered around her young heart.

Even now, as she arranged the little breakfast service, stepping to and fro with an innate grace which quite dispelled the idea of the dread walls which enclosed her, it was evident how much her repulse of yesterday, of which she had barely hinted to her father, weighed on her spirits. Marguerite was now nineteen. The promise of youthful beauty had not disappointed expectation; each year of budding loveliness added to her charms; and the little sylph had expanded almost to womanhood. The roses smiled but languidly on her cheek; but the pale, delicate complexion, regular features, and jetty-black eyes with long fringes—so piquant in the drooping glance of a devotee—atoned for the departed bloom. But the devotee with eyes “loving the ground” is oft but an artifice of coquetry and affectation—whilst the timid, reserved glance of Marguerite breathed a spiritual essence. She had been early touched with the wand of sorrow, and the chastened spirits lent an impress of melancholy grace to her looks, her actions, even her walk. Strange contrast to the scarcely repining, ever sanguine, old soldier; and there were times, when the daughter, dwelling perhaps on the memory of her broken-hearted mother, looked up reproachfully in the calm face of the veteran.

But why was De Pontis mewed so closely in the Conciergerie du Palais—he, the favorite of three successive monarchs, and a master whom he had served faithfully, still reigning? That same master’s royal munificence was the unintentional cause! Let us, while Mademoiselle and her father are breakfasting, make the paradox clear.

It was the custom in France, when an alien died—and there were no immediate heirs to pray the throne’s mercy for permission—not always granted—to take possession of the effects—that the estate, after satisfaction to the just creditors of the deceased, became the property of his most Christian Majesty. The law, or rather usage, was called le droit d’aubaine. The king seldom availed of these royal waifs for the advantage of his private exchequer or privy purse, but usually made them over, in form of donation, to favorites. Courtiers were therefore on the lookout, and there often ensued a competition or race between parties anxious to gain prior audience of his majesty, and extort the royal word, ere more powerful rivals were apprized of the windfall.

It so happened that Monsieur De Pontis and his daughter lodged in the house of a rich upholsterer, a native of Spain. The man suddenly dying, and being without wife or children, our militaire had no scruple—as it would beggar no orphans—of proceeding direct to the Tuileries, and claiming audience of his master.

No man had less control over his own actions, or power over his own proscribed rights and privileges, than Louis. He was a well-intentioned, weak man, but an iron-handed, iron-hearted minister of state, the Cardinal Richelieu, was so effectually dominant, that even Anne, consort of royalty, could not select or dismiss a maid of honor without his permission.

De Pontis, a favorite with Louis, was not patronized by the minister. His petition was favorably received—but then there was the dreaded cardinal! If he should wish to bestow le droit elsewhere, he would have but little scruple in overruling the veteran’s pretensions. Majesty itself—in this matter on a par with the humblest follower of the court—was obliged to manœuvre to gain its ends when the Cardinal Duke De Richelieu was in question.

Louis had arrived at that stage of subjection to the master-intellect which governed him, that it was useless longer attempting concealment of the fact. He knew and confessed the infirmity—often seeking to make league against the tyrant—and ever ready to jest on his weakness. He resolved to serve De Pontis, and knew no other way of making the gift sure and irrevocable than executing on the spot, without aid of secretary, a warrant signed and sealed in due form.

“There, Monsieur!” exclaimed Louis, handing the document, “the cardinal cannot undo that without making ourself less than a gentleman; and we will hold to our pledged faith as a Bourbon.”

Kissing the royal hand, the old soldier departed, sighing at the condition to which he saw the son of the illustrious and high-spirited Henry the Fourth reduced.

With the royal warrant for authority, he took possession of the extensive ware-rooms of the deceased, and selecting a bed with hangings, an article of rare cost designed for a palace, curtains of silk and coverlet of velvet embroidered, masses of rich ostrich plumes waving on the summit of each of the four exquisitely carved columns, he sent it to the Tuileries a present to the Queen Anne.

The court was in a ferment, and more than one favorite of Richelieu flew off to Ruel to acquaint his eminence with the presumption of De Pontis in asking for such a wealthy droit d’aubaine. To hear them address the great patron, it might be supposed that each dependent had been deprived of promised right, and that the cardinal, by the act of his majesty, had been defrauded of the undoubted patronage of office.

A mandate from Richelieu came to De Pontis, prohibiting further exercise of ownership over the property, till the circumstances of the deceased had been made the subject of inquiry. What should the old man do? If he resisted the order, the Bastille stared him in the face, despite the sovereign’s protection. He repaired to the Tuileries, and, knowing the situation of affairs, contrived to gain the ear of majesty without its being known to whom the monarch gave audience. But royalty was at a loss how to advise—he must temporize, go visit the cardinal, plead his services to the State, and endeavor to mollify his eminence—meanwhile relying on the pledged Bourbon word.

“Monsieur perceives,” said Louis, with a faint smile, “that our minister expresses, ‘till the circumstances of the deceased had been made the subject of inquiry.’ He does not dispute our prerogative.”

De Pontis returned home, took horse and rode to Ruel, a country-seat of the cardinal, a few miles from Paris, and where he spent much time. His eminence is descried walking on a verdant, close-shaven lawn, alone and buried in meditation; friends and train have apparently received a hint to leave the great man to himself; they are scattered over the park and gardens.

The veteran would rather have marched a battalion of choice infantry against a line of artillery, than attack the solitary and stately priest. He ventured, nevertheless, into the presence, cap in hand and bowing lowly.

“Ah! my friend, Monsieur de Pontis,” said the cardinal, glancing one moment at the old soldier and continuing his walk.

Our militaire walked by his side, or rather a little to the rearward, cap still in hand, and asking permission to plead his suit. The cardinal made a sign that he should replace his cap, which De Pontis construing into a hint that he had liberty of speech, commenced a peroration of services, alluding to the misfortunes of his career, the necessity of making provision for a daughter, and the gracious wishes of his royal master.

Still, as he talked, the minister paced the turf, inclining his head occasionally without once looking the veteran in the face. De Pontis’ speech at length came to an end, and he awaited the illustrious man’s reply.

“Serviteur très-humble!” said the cardinal, with a low bow, intended for dismissal. The habits and peculiarities of his eminence were well known, and his auditor was aware that these were the words used when it was intended to negative the request of a petitioner; but De Pontis had a more than ordinary interest at stake, and he faltered out, “If Monseigneur would listen⁠—”

“Serviteur très-humble!” thundered the haughty cardinal, striding with a quicker pace over the green-sward.

The unlucky De Pontis started as though he had received a musket shot. He turned from his eminence and rode back to Paris, fancying in each echo of his horse’s hoofs that he heard the words “Serviteur très-humble!” of the cardinal duke.

[To be continued.

———

BY W. H. RACEY.

———

———

BY J. T. S. SULLIVAN.

———

———

BY THE AUTHOR OF “CRUISING IN THE LAST WAR,” THE “REEFER OF ’76,” ETC.

———

THE LEE SHORE.

“All hands ahoy!” rang through the ship, as the shrill whistle of the boatswain awoke me from a pleasant dream. I started, hastily threw on my monkey-jacket, and in a minute was on deck.

The winter sun had set clear, without a cloud to fleck the heavens, and when I went below at midnight, leaving the starboard watch in possession of the deck, the cold, bright stars were out, twinkling in the frosty sky; while a capful of wind was sending us merrily along. Six bells had just struck as I sprang up the gangway, and the night was still clear above, but, casting my eye hurriedly around, I saw a bank of mist, close on the starboard bow, driving rapidly for us, and covering sea and sky in that quarter, in a shadowy veil. The men were already at their posts, and as my watch came tumbling on deck each member of it sprang to aid his messmates, so that in less time than I have taken to describe it, we had got the light sails in, had kept away the schooner a few points, and were ready to let every thing go by the run, if necessary, as soon as the squall struck us. Nor did we wait long for the unwelcome visiter. Scarcely had our craft been made snug before the squall burst on us in a whirlwind of snow, hail, rain, and wind, against whose fury it was, for the moment, impossible to stand. As the gale struck the schooner, she heeled over until her decks were fearfully inclined, while the tall masts bent like rushes in the tempest, and the spars strained and cracked as if they were unequal to the torture. For a moment I thought that all was over, and clutching a rope I made ready to spring to windward as soon as she should capsize; but after a second of breathless uncertainty she slightly recovered herself, and dashed forward as if she had been shot like an arrow from the bow, her whole forward part buried in the foam that boiled around her bows, and flew high up the mast in showers. All this time the wind was shrieking through the hamper with an intonation like that of a tortured fiend; while the hail and snow driving horizontally against the men fairly pinned them to their stations. The ropes soon became coated with ice; while the cold grew intense, so that it was with difficulty we could get the fore and main sails reefed. At length, however, we stripped her to the fight, when she rose until nearly level, bearing gallantly up against the gale. Meantime, the snow fell thick and fast, covering the decks with its white carpeting, and dressing the shrouds, booms, and the weather side of the masts in the garments of the grave.

“Whew! what a flurry! Old Davy himself has laid hold of the bellows to-night,” said the captain of the starboard watch, stooping before the gale and turning his back to windward; “why it blows as if it would whiff our little craft away, like a feather, before it. By the gods, but that bucket full of hail that has just rattled on my shoulders was enough to have felled an ox! It must be as black as the ace of spades to windward—hark! how the infernal sleet sings in the rigging.”

“How long was the squall coming up?” said I, as soon as the roar of the elements suffered me to speak, for it was only in the occasional pauses in the gale, that I could hope to be heard.

“It came up like a pet in a woman—one moment her face is all smiles, the next black as a thunder cloud. When five bells struck the sky was as clear as a kitten’s eye, and now you can’t see a fathom over the starboard bow; while we are driving along here like a chip in a mill-race, or a land-bird caught by a nor’wester. Whistle, whistle—howl, howl, why it blows as if the devil himself was working the bellows up to windward.”

I could not help smiling at my messmate’s energy, and as he closed I looked thoughtlessly over the starboard quarter, when a wild dash of sleet right in my face, stinging as if ten thousand nettles had struck me, forced me to turn my back on the storm more rapidly than I had faced it.

“It is as sharp as a razor,” I ejaculated, when I recovered my breath, “and cuts to the bone. But let me see, Mr. Merrivale,” said I, approaching the binnacle, “this squall must be from the northeast. Aye! not a point either way. It’s a lucky thing we have a good offing; I wouldn’t be on the coast now for a year’s pay.”

“It would be an ugly berth,” said Merrivale, shaking the sleet from his hair, “I’ve no notion of being jammed up like a rat in a corner, with a lee-shore on one side, and a wind blowing great guns on the other, while one’s only chance is to hug the gale under a crowd of canvass that threatens to snap your masts off as I could snap a pipe-stem. No! thank God, we’re far at sea!”

The words had scarcely left his mouth, and I was as yet unable to answer, when a strange, booming sound, over the larboard bow, smote on my ear, thrilling through every nerve; while, at the same instant, the look-out shouted, in sharp, quick tones,

“Breakers ahead!”

For an instant there was an ominous silence, while even the tempest seemed to die momently away. No one who has not heard that fearful cry on a lee shore, when surrounded by darkness, can have any notion of our feelings. Each man held his breath, and turned his ear anxiously to leeward. In that awful second what varied emotions rushed through our minds, as we heard, rising distinctly over the partial lull of the tempest, the hoarse roar of the surf, apparently close under our lee.

“Port—a-port—jam her close to the wind,” almost shrieked Merrivale, the energy of his character, in the moment of peril, divesting him of his usual prolixity.

“Port it is,” answered the man at the helm, as the sheets came rattling in and the schooner flew to windward, shivering the opposing wave to atoms, and sending the foam crackling in showers over the forecastle. As she answered to her helm, we caught sight, through the shadowy tempest, of the white breakers boiling under our lee; and an ejaculation of heartfelt gratitude broke involuntarily from my lips when, a moment after, I saw the ghastly line of foam glancing astern.

“Thank God!” echoed Merrivale; “another instant of delay and we should have struck. But how could we have made such a mistake in our reckoning? Where are we?”

“We are off the Jersey coast, somewhere between Egg Harbor and Barnegat,” I answered, “but I thought we were at least twenty leagues at sea. How gallantly the old craft staggers to windward—she will yet weather the danger.”

The exertions of the schooner were indeed noble. With her nose close down to the tempest, and her masts bending before the fierce hurricane that whistled along her canvass, she threshed her way to windward, now doggedly climbing up an opposing billowy and now thumping through the head sea, scattering the foam on either side her path, her timbers quivering and groaning, in the desperate encounter. One moment the parted wave whizzed along the side, glittering with spectral brilliancy; and again, the wild spray went hissing by in the air, drenching the decks with water. Now, a huge billow striking on her bows, with the force of a dozen forge hammers, staggered her momently in her course; and now, shaking the water proudly from her, she addressed herself again to her task and struggled up the wave. Thus battling against sea, storm, and hurricane, she held on her way, like a strong man fighting through a host.

Every officer as well as man was now on deck, and each one, fully sensible of our danger, watched with eager eyes through the gloom to distinguish whether we gained ground in our desperate encounter. For an instant, perhaps, as the darkness hid the breakers from sight, or their roar came fainter to the ear in the increasing fury of the gale, we would fancy that our distance from the surf was slowly increasing; but as often, when the gale lulled, or the darkness on our lee broke partially away, our hearts sank within us at the conviction that our peril still continued as imminent as ever, and that the struggles of our gallant craft had been in vain. Meantime, the hurricane grew wilder and fiercer, and at length we saw that we were losing ground. The schooner still battled with a spirit as undaunted as before against her combined enemies, but she labored more and more at every opposing wave, as if fast wearing out in the conflict.

“We must crowd the canvass on her,” said the skipper, after a long and anxious gaze on the shore under our lee, “if we strike out here, a mile at least from land, we shall all be lost. Better then jerk the mast out of her in clawing off.”

The order was accordingly given to take a reef out of the fore and mainsail, and, after a desperate struggle with the canvass, the men succeeded in executing their duty. When our craft felt the increased sail, she started nervously forward, burying herself so deeply in the head sea that I feared she would never emerge, while every rope, shroud and timber in her cracked in the strain. At length, however, she rose from the surge, and rolled heavily to windward, slowly shaking from her the tons of water that had pressed on her decks and buried every thing forward in the deluge. With another partial check, and another desperate, but successful struggle, we breathed more freely. Yet there still came to our ears the sullen roar of the breakers on our lee, warning us that peril was yet imminent.

“Hark!” suddenly said Merrivale, “surely I heard a cannon. There is some craft nigh, even more dangerously situated than ourselves.”

“And there goes the flash,” I exclaimed, pointing ahead, while simultaneously the boom of a signal gun rose on the night. “God help them, they are driving on the breakers,” I added, as another flash lit up, for a moment, the scene before us, revealing a dismantled ship flying wildly before the tempest.

“They are whirling down to us with the speed of a racer—we shall strike,” ejaculated Merrivale.

As he spoke, the shadowy ship emerged from the tempest of snow and sleet, not a pistol shot from our bow. Never shall I forget the appearance of that spectral craft. She had no mast remaining, except the stump of the mizzen. From her size we knew her to be a sloop-of-war. So far as we could see through the obscurity, her decks were crowded with human beings, some apparently stupefied, some in the attitude of supplication, and some giving way to uncontrollable frenzy. As all power over her had been lost, she was driving directly before the tempest. The time that was consumed in these observations occupied but an instant, for the darkness of the storm was so dense that the eye could not penetrate the gloom more than a few fathoms; and a period scarcely sufficient for a breath elapsed from the first discovery of the ship before we saw that ere another instant she would come in contact with us. Already she was in fearful proximity to our bows. The danger was perceived by us and by the crew of the dismantled ship at the same moment, and a wild cry rose up which drowned even the frenzied tempest. Escape seemed impossible. We were between two dangers, to one of which we must fall a prey. Our only chance of avoiding the breakers was to keep our craft close to the wind, while, by so doing, a collision with the stranger appeared inevitable. Yet a single chance remained.

“Jam her up,” shouted the skipper, catching at the only hope, “aye! hard down till she shivers.”

We held our breath for the second that ensued. So close had the ship approached that I could have pitched a biscuit on her decks. Her bowsprit already threatened to come into collision with our bows, and involuntarily I grasped a rope, expecting the next instant to be at the mercy of the waves. On—on—she came, her huge hull, as it rose on the wave, fearfully overtopping our own, and threatening, at the first shock, to crush us. A second and wilder cry of agony burst from every lip, but, at that instant, she swerved, what seemed a hair’s breadth, to one side, her bowsprit grazed ours in passing, and she whirled by like a bird on the wing.

The scene did not occupy a minute. So sudden had been the appearance of the ship, so imminent had been our peril, and so rapidly had the moment of danger come and gone, that the whole occurrence seemed to me like a dream; and when, after a second’s delay, the ill-fated ship passed away into the darkness under our lee, and the shrieks of her crew were lost in the uproar of the gale, I almost doubted whether what we had just beheld had been real. But a glance at the faces of my messmates dissipated my incredulity, for on every countenance was written the history of the few last moments of agonizing suspense. A profound silence, meanwhile, reigned on our decks, every eye being strained after the drowning man-of-war. At length Merrivale spoke.

“It is a miracle how we escaped,” and then in a sadder tone he added, “the Lord have mercy on all on board yonder ship. But hark!” he suddenly exclaimed, and a wild, thrilling cry, as if a hundred voices had united in a shriek of agony, struggled up from leeward. Years have passed since then, and the hair that was once fair has now turned to gray, but that awful sound yet rings in my ears; and often since have I started from my sleep, fancying that I saw again that spectral ship flitting by through the gloom, or heard that cry of agony drowning, for the moment, the raging tempest. Our blood curdled at the sound, and we gazed into each other’s faces with horror on every line of countenance. More than a minute elapsed before a word was said; and, during the interval, we sought to catch a repetition of the cry, however faint; but only the singing of the sleet through the hamper, the whistle of the hurricane overhead, and the wild roar of the breakers under our lee, came to our ears. No further token of that ill-fated ship ever reached us. Not a living soul, of the hundreds who had crowded her deck when she whirled across our course, landed on that coast. With all their sins on their heads, afar from those they loved and by whom they were loved in return, her crew went down into the deep, “unknelled, uncoffined and unknown.” When that wintry storm had passed away, the timbers of a wreck were found strewing the inhospitable shore, with here and there a dead body clinging to a fragment of a spar, but neither man nor child survived to tell how agonizingly they struggled against their fate, to practise the reformation which they had promised in their hour of bitter need. And when the summer sun came forth, kissing the bright waters of the Atlantic, and children laughingly gathered shells along shore, who would have thought that, a few months before, the heavens had looked down, in that very spot, on the wild struggles of the dying? But I pass on.

At length that weary night wore away, and when morning dawned, we saw the full extent of the danger we had escaped. All along the coast, at a distance of more than a mile from the shore, stretched a narrow shoal, over which the breakers were now boiling as in a maelstrom. It needed no prophet to foretell our fate, had we struck amid this surf. No boat could have lived in that raging sea, and our frail craft would have been racked to pieces in less than half an hour. Nothing but the energy of the skipper in crowding the canvass on the schooner, though at the imminent hazard of carrying away the masts and thus ensuring certain destruction, enabled us to escape the doom which befell the ill-fated man-of-war.

In a few days we made Block Island, and hauled up for Newport, where we expected to meet The Arrow. It was a beautiful day in winter when we entered the outer harbor, and the waves which a light frosty breeze just rippled, glittered in the sunlight as if the surface of the water had been strewed with diamonds. The church bells were merrily ringing in honor of the intelligence, which had been just received, of the alliance with France. We came to anchor amid a salvo from the batteries of the fort, and of our consort who was already at anchor in the inner harbor.

Merry was our meeting with the ward-room and cock-pit of The Arrow, and many a gay sally bore witness to the hilarity with which we greeted each other after our mutual adventures. For a week, the town rung with our mirth. At the end of that time, I managed to obtain leave of absence, and remembering my promise to Mr. St. Clair, started for Pomfret Hall. As I lay back in the coach, and was whirled over the road behind two fast hackneys, I indulged in many a recollection of the past, in not a few reveries over the future. But most of all I wondered how Annette would receive me. The thoughts of our last parting were fresh in my memory, but months of changes had since elapsed, and might not corresponding changes have occurred in her feelings towards me? Would she meet me with the delightful frankness of our childhood, or with the trembling embarrassment of our few last interviews? Or might she not, perhaps, as too many before had done, welcome me with a cold politeness, that would be more dreadful to me than even scorn? The longer I thought of the subject, the more uncertainty I felt as to my reception. At first I had pictured to myself Annette, standing blushing and embarrassed on the steps, to greet me as soon as I alighted; but when I came to reflect I felt that, like all lovers, I had dreamed impossibilities; and I almost laughed at my wild vision when I recalled to mind that I stood in no other light to Annette than as an acquaintance, at most as a friend. My feelings then took a sudden revulsion, and I asked myself, might not she love another? What had I ever said to induce her to believe that I loved her? Could she be expected to give her affections, unasked, to any one, but especially to a poor adventurer, whose only fortune was his sword, when the proudest of the land would consider her hand as a boon? What madness to think that, surrounded as she doubtless had been by suitors, her heart before this had not been given to another! As I thought this, I fancied that I was going only to behold the triumph of some more fortunate rival, and I cursed myself for having come on such an errand. At one moment I was almost resolved to turn back. But again hope dawned in my bosom. I felt that Annette must have seen my love, and I recalled to mind how tremblingly alive she had been, during our last interview, to my attentions. Surely then she had not forgotten me. I was doing her injustice, and with this conviction, I leaned out of the carriage window, and ordered the postillion to drive faster.

The second day brought me in sight of the gates of Pomfret Hall, and as I dashed up to them, and felt that my suspense would soon be terminated, my heart fluttered wildly. As the carriage whirled into the avenue, I saw a procession of the neighboring village girls proceeding to the hall. They were dressed in white, and bore flowers, as if going to some festival. At that instant I recollected that the church bells had been ringing merrily ever since I came within hearing of them, and, with a sudden thrill of agony, I stopped the coach as the village girls stepped aside to let it pass, and inquired the meaning of their procession. My voice was so husky that, at first, it was undistinguishable; and I was forced to repeat the question.

“Oh! it’s the meaning of our going to the hall, the gentleman would know,” said a female at the head of the procession; then turning to me she said, with a curtsey, “The young mistress was married this morning, and we are going to the hall to present her with flowers. This is her school, sir, and I am the mistress.”

I sank back in the carriage with a groan. At first I thought of ordering the postillion to return, but then I resolved to go forward, and, concealing my sufferings, appear the gayest of the gay.

“Yes!” I exclaimed in bitter agony, “never shall she know the misery she has inflicted. And yet, oh, God! that Annette should thus have deserted me—” and, with these words, I sternly bid the postillion drive on. But I felt like a criminal bound to his execution.

WRITTEN AFTER THEIR DEPARTURE FOR EUROPE.

———

BY ANNA CORA MOWATT.

———

A TALE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

———

BY H. W. HERBERT, AUTHOR OF “RINGWOOD THE ROVER,” “THE BROTHERS,” “CROMWELL,” ETC. ETC.

———

(Continued from page 30.)

PART II.

The morning after Marian’s arrival at the Manor was one of those bright lovely dawns, sure harbingers of sweet and sunny days, that often interrupt the melancholy progress of an English autumn, fairer and softer as the season waxes older, and more enchanting from the contrast, which they cannot fail to suggest, between their balmy mildness and the chill winds and gloomy fogs of the approaching winter. The sky was altogether cloudless, yet it had nothing of the deep azure hue which it presents in summer, resembling in its tints and its transparency a canopy, if such a thing could be, of living aqua-marine, and kindled by a flood of pure, pale yellow lustre. None of the trees were wholly leafless, though none, perhaps, unless it were a few old oaks, but had lost something of their summer foliage; and their changed colors, varying from the deepest green through all the shades of yellow down to the darkest umber, although prophetic of their coming doom, and therefore saddening, with a sort of chastened spiritual sorrow, the heart of the observer, added a solemn beauty to the scenery that well accorded with its grand and romantic character. The vast round-headed hills, seen through the filmy haze which floated over them, filling up all their dells and hollows, showed every intermediate hue from the red russet of their heathery foreground to the rich purple of their farthest peaks. The grass, which had not yet begun to lose its verdant freshness, was thickly meshed with gossamer, which, sprinkled by the pure and plenteous dews, flashed like a net of diamonds upon a ground of emerald velvet to the early sunbeams. It had been summer, late indeed in that lovely season, but still full summer with all her garniture of green, her pomp of full blown flowers—the glorious mature womanhood of the year!—when Marian left her home; not a trace of decay or change was visible on its bright brow, not a leaf of its embroideries was altered, not a bud in its garland was blighted. She had returned, and every thing, though beautiful and glowing, bore the plain stamp of dissolution. The west wind blew as softly as in June through the tall sycamores, but after every breath, while all was lulled and peaceful, the broad sere leaves came whirling down from the shaken branches, on which their hold was now so slight that but the whisper of a sigh was needed to detach them—the skies, the waters, were as pure as ever, as beautifully clear and lucid; but in their brightness there was a chill and glassy glitter as different from their warm sheen under a July sun, as is the keen unnatural radiance of a blue eye in the consumptive girl from its rich lustrous light in a mature and healthy woman. Was it the contemplation of this change that brought so sad a cloud on the brow of lovely Marian Hawkwood, so dull a gloom into her speaking eye, so dead a paleness on the ripe damask of her cheek? Sad indeed always is such contemplation—sorrowful and grave thoughts must it awake in the minds of those who think the least, to revisit a fair well-known scene which they have quitted in the festal flush of summer, when all the loveliness they dwelt on so fondly is flown or flying. It brings a chill upon the spirit like that which touches the last guest

It wakes a passing anguish like that which thrills to the heart’s core of him who, after years of wandering in a foreign clime, returns to find the father whom he left still in the prime of vigorous and active manhood, bowed, bent, gray-haired and paralytic; the mother, whom he saw at their last parting glorious in summer beauty, withered and wrinkled, and bereft of every trace of former comeliness. All this it does, at times to all, to the reflective always—the solitary contemplation of the decaying year. Yet it was not this alone, it was not this at all, that blanched the cheek and dimmed the glance of Marian, as, at a very early hour of the morning, she was sauntering alone, with downcast eyes, and slow uncertain gait, beside the margin of the stream in the warm, sheltered garden; for she did not, in truth, seem to contemplate at all the face of external nature, or so much as to note the changes which had taken place during her absence; yet were those changes very great, and nowhere probably so strongly marked as on the very spot where she was wandering; for when she stood there last, to cull a nosegay ere she parted, the whole of that fair nook was glowing with the brightest colors, and redolent with the most fragrant perfumes, while hundreds of feathered songsters were filling every brake and thicket with bursts of joyous melody; and now only a few, the hardiest of the late autumnal flowers, displayed their scattered blossoms, and those, too, crisp and faded among sere leaves and withered branches; while for the mellow warblings of the thrush and blackbird nothing was heard except the feeble piping of a solitary robin, mixed with the wailing rush of the swollen streamlet. For nearly an hour she walked to and fro buried in deep and melancholy silence, and thinking, as it seemed from her air and gestures, most profoundly—occasionally she paused for a few seconds in her walk to and fro, and stood still gazing abstractedly on some spot in the withered herbage, on some pool of the brooklet, with her mind evidently far away; and once or twice she clasped her hands and wrung them passionately, and sighed very deeply. While she was yielding thus to some deep inward sorrow—for it could be no trivial passing grief that could so suddenly and so completely change so quick and gay a spirit—a gentle footstep sounded upon the gravel walk behind a cluster of thick leafy lilacs, and in a moment Annabel stepped from their screen upon the mossy greensward; her pale and pensive features were even paler and more thoughtful than was common, and her eyes showed as if she had been weeping, yet her step was as light and elastic as a young fawn’s, and a bright smile dimpled her cheek as she addressed her sister.

“Dear Marian, why so early? And why did you not call me to share your morning walk? What ails you, dearest, tell me? For I have seen you from my window walking here up and down so sorrowful and sad⁠—”

“Oh! can you ask me—can you ask me, Annabel,” exclaimed the lovely girl in a wild, earnest burst of passion—“can you not see that my heart is breaking?”—and with the words she flung her arms about her sister’s neck, and burying her face in her bosom fell into an agony of tears.

Annabel clasped Marian to her heart and held her there for many moments, kissing away the big drops from her cheeks, and soothing her with many a kind and soft caress, before she replied to her incoherent and wild words; but when her violent sobbing had subsided,

“Dearest,” she said, “I do not understand at all, nor can I even guess what should so grievously affect you—but if you fancy that we shall be parted, that our lives will hereafter be divided, and weep for that fond fancy, it is but a false apprehension that distresses you. I go not hence at all, dear sister, until these fearful wars be over; and then I go not till the course of time shall place De Vaux in his good father’s station, which—I pray Heaven—shall not fall out for years. And when I do go—when I do go away from this dear happy spot, you cannot, no you did not dream, my sister, that you should not go with me. Oh, if you did dream that, it would be very hard for me to pardon you.”

“Oh no—no! no! dear Annabel,” replied the other, not lifting up her eyes at all from the fond bosom on which she hung so heavily, and speaking in a thick husky voice, “it is not that at all—but I am so unhappy—so miserable—so despairing! Oh, would to God—oh, would to God! that I had never gone hence—or that Ernest De Vaux, at least, had not come hither!”

“Nay! now, I must know what you mean,” Annabel answered mildly, but at the same time very firmly—“I must, indeed, dear Marian—for either such words have a meaning, in which case it is absolutely right that I, your sister and his affianced wife, should know it—or, if they have not any, are cruel equally and foolish. So tell me—tell me, dear one, if there be aught that I should know; and in all cases let me share your sorrow⁠—”

“Oh! do not—do not ask me, Annabel—oh! oh! to think that we two who have been so happy should be so wretched now.”

“I know not what you would say, Marian, but your strange words awake strange thoughts within me! We have, indeed, been happy! fond, happy, innocent, dear sister—and I can see no cause why we should now be otherwise—I, at least, am still happy, Marian, unless it be to witness your wild sorrow; and, if I know myself, no earthly sorrow would ever make me wretched, much less repining or despairing.”

“Yes, you—yes, you, indeed, may yet be happy—blessed with a cheerful home, a noble, gallant husband, and, it may be, sweet prattlers at your knee—but I, oh God!” and she again burst into a fierce agony of tears and sobbing. Her sister for a time strove to console her, but she soon found not only that her efforts were in vain, but that, so far as she could judge, Marian’s tears only flowed the faster, her sobs became more suffocating, the more she would have soothed them; when she became aware of this, then, she withdrew gradually her arms from her waist, and spoke to her in a calm melancholy voice, full at the same time of deep sadness, and firm decided resolution.

“Marian,” she said, “I see, and how I am grieved to see it no words can possibly express, that you look not to me for sympathy or consolation—nay, more, that you shrink back from my caresses as if they were insincere or hateful. Your words, too, are so wild and whirling that for my life I cannot guess what is their meaning or their cause. I only can suspect, or, I should rather say, can only dread that you have either suffered some very grievous wrong, or done some very grievous sin, and as I must believe the last impossible, my fears must centre on the first dark apprehension. Could you confide in me, I might advise, might aid, and could, at least, most certainly console you. Why you cannot, or will not trust me, you can know only. Side by side have we grown up since we were little tottering things, guiding our weak steps hand in hand in mutual dependence, seldom apart, I might say never—for, now since you have been away, I have thought of you half the day, and dreamed of you all night, my earliest comrade, my best friend, my own, my only sister. And now we are two grown up maidens, with none exactly fit to counsel or console us, except ourselves alone—since it has pleased our Heavenly Father in his wisdom for so long to deprive us of our dear mother’s blessed guidance. We are two lone girls, Marian; and never yet, so far as I know or can recollect, have we had aught to be ashamed of, or that one should not have communicated to the other. And now there is not one thought in my mind, one feeling or affection in my heart, which I would hide from you, my sister. What, then, can be this heavy sin or sorrow which you are now ashamed or fearful to relate to one who surely loves you as no one else can do beneath the canopy of heaven? Marian, you must reply to me in full, or I must leave you till better thoughts shall be awakened in your soul, and till you judge more truly of those who most esteem you!”

“Too true!—it is too true!” Marian replied, “no one has ever loved me as you have done, sweet Annabel—and now no one will love me any more—no one—no one forever. But you are wrong, quite wrong, when you suppose that any one has injured me, or that as yet I have done any wrong—alas! alas! that I should even have thought sin! Oh no—no Annabel, dear Annabel, I will bear all my woes myself, and God will give me grace to conquer all temptations. Pardon me, sister dear, pardon me; for it is not that I am ashamed, or that I fear to tell you, but that, to save my own life, I would plant no thorn in your calm bosom. No! I will see you happy, and will resist the evil one that he shall flee from me, and God will give me strength, and you will pray for me, and we shall all be blessed.” As she spoke thus, the wildness and the strangeness of her manner passed away, and a calm smile flickered across her features, and she looked her sister steadfastly in the eye, and cast her arms about her neck and kissed her tenderly as she finished speaking.

But it was plain to see that Annabel was by no means satisfied; whether it was that she was anxious merely, and uneasy about the discomposure of her sister’s mind, or whether something of suspicion had disturbed the even tenor of her own, but her color came and went more quickly than was usual to her, and the glance of her gentle blue eye dwelt with a doubting and irresolute expression on Marian’s face as she made answer⁠—

“Very glad am I that, as you tell me, Marian, you have not suffered aught or done aught evil—and I trust that you tell me truly. Beyond this I cannot, I confess it, sympathize with you at all; for in order to sympathize one must understand, and that you know I do not. What sin you should have thought of I cannot so much as conceive—but as you say you have resisted your temptations hitherto—but, oh! what possible temptations to aught evil can have beset you in this dear, peaceful home?—I doubt not that you will be strengthened to resist them farther. You tell me, Marian, that you would not plant a thorn in my calm bosom—it is true that my bosom was calm yester morn, and very happy—but now I should speak falsely were I to say it is so. What thorn you could plant in my heart I know not—nor how you could suppose it—but this I do know, Marian, that you have set distrust, and dark suspicion, and deep sorrow in my soul this morning. Distrust of yourself, dear Marian—for what can these half confidences breed except distrust—suspicion of I know not, wish not to know, dare not to fancy what—deep sorrow that already, even from one short separation, a great gulf is spread out between us. I will not press you now to tell me any more, but this I must impress upon you, that you have laid a burthen upon me which, save you only, no earthly being can remove, which nothing can alleviate except its prompt removal. Nay! Marian, nay! answer me nothing now, nothing in this strong heat of passionate emotion; think of it at your calmer leisure, and if you can, in duty to yourself and others, give me your ample confidence, I pray you, Marian, do so. In the mean time, go to your chamber, dearest, and wipe away these traces of your tears, and rearrange your hair. Our guests will be assembled before this, to break their fasts in the south oriel chamber, and I have promised Ernest that we will all ride out and see his falcons fly this beautiful morning.”

Marian made no reply at all but following her sister into the house, hurried up to her chamber to readjust her garments, and remove from her bright face the signs of her late disorder. Meanwhile, sad and suspicious of she knew not what, and only by a violent effort concealing her heartfelt anxiety, Annabel joined her guests in the fair summer parlor. All were assembled when she entered, and all the preparations for the morning meal duly arranged upon the hospitable board—the morning meal, how widely different from that of modern days, how characteristic of those strong, stirring times, when every gentleman was, from his boyhood, half a soldier; when every lady was prepared for deeds of heroism—there were no luxuries, effeminate and childish, of tea and chocolate, or coffee, although the latter articles were just beginning to be known, no dry toast, nor hot muffins, nor aught else of those things which we now consider the indispensables of the first meal—but silver flagons mantling with mighty ale, and flasks of Bordeaux wine, and stoups of rich Canary, crowned the huge board, which groaned beneath sirloins of beef, and hams, and heads of the wild boar, and venison pasties, and many kinds of game and wild fowl. Ernest De Vaux arose, as Annabel came in, from the seat which he had occupied by the good vicar’s lady, whom he had been regaling with a thousand anecdotes of the court, and as many gay descriptions of the last modes, till she had quite made up her mind that he was absolute perfection, and hastened forward to offer her his morning salutation; but there was something of embarrassment in his demeanor, something of coldness in her manner, which was perceived for a moment by all her relatives and friends, but it passed away as it were in a moment, for by an effort he recovered almost instantly his self-possession, and began talking with light careless pleasantry that raised a smile upon the lips of all who heard him, and had the effect immediately of chasing the cloud from the brow of Annabel, who, after a few minutes, as if she had done some injustice to her lover in her heart and was desirous of effacing its remembrance, both from herself and him, gave free rein to her feelings, and was the same sweet joyous creature that she had been since his arrival had wakened new sensations and new dreams in her young guileless heart. Then before half an hour had elapsed, more beautiful perhaps than ever, Marian made her appearance; her rich profusion of brown curls, clustering on her cheeks and flowing down her neck from beneath a slashed Spanish hat of velvet, with a long ostrich feather, and her unrivalled figure set off to more than usual advantage by the long waist and flowing draperies of her green velvet riding dress. Her face was perhaps somewhat paler than its ordinary hue when she first entered, but as she met the eye of Ernest, brow, cheeks, and neck were crimsoned with a burning flush, which passed away, however, instantly, leaving her not the least embarrassed or confused, but perfectly collected, and, as it seemed, full of a quiet innocent mirthfulness. Nothing could be more perfect than was her manner, during the long protracted meal, towards her sister’s lover. She seemed to feel towards him already as if he were a tried friend and a brother; her air was perfectly familiar as she addressed him, yet free from the least touch of forwardness, the slightest levity or coquettishness; she met his admiring gaze—for he did at times gaze on her with visible admiration—yet admiration of so quiet and unpassionate a kind as a fond brother might bestow upon a sister’s beauty—with calm unconsciousness, or with a girlish mirth that defied misconstruction. And Annabel looked on—alas for Annabel!—and felt her doubts and her suspicions vanishing away at every moment; the vague distrust that had crept into her heart melted away like mist wreaths from the sunbeam; she only wondered now what the anxiety, what the distrust could possibly have been which for a moment had half maddened her. Then she began to marvel what could the sorrow be which, scarce an hour before, had weighed so heavily on Marian, and which had in so brief space so utterly departed. It must be, she thought as she gazed on her pure, speaking features and the clear sparkle of her bright blue eye, that she too loves, loves possibly in vain, that she has lost her young heart during her absence from her home, and now has overmastered her despair, her soul-consuming anguish, to sympathize in her sister’s happiness—and then she fancied how she would win from her her secret sorrow, and soothe it till she should forget the faithless one, and tend her with a mother’s love, a mother’s fond anxiety. Alas! alas! for Annabel!

The morning meal was ended, the sun was already high in the clear heavens, and the thin mist wreaths were dispersing from the broad valley and the bright river, and now a merry cavalcade swept round the lawn from the stables, a dozen foresters and grooms well mounted, with led horses, two of the latter decked with the velvet side-saddles which were then used by ladies, and seven or eight serving-men on foot, with hounds and spaniels in their leashes, and among them, conspicuous above the rest, the falconer with his attendants, one bearing a large frame whereon were cast, such was the technical jargon used in the mystery of rivers, eight or ten long-winged falcons, gosshawks, and jerfalcons, and peregrines, with all their gay paraphernalia of hoods, and bells, and jesses. A little longer and the fair girls came out; Annabel, now attired like her sister in velvet side robe and the slashed graceful hat, and were assisted to their saddles by the young lover; then he too bounded to his noble charger’s back, and others of the company in their turn mounted, and the whole party rode off merrily to the green meadows by the fair river’s side. Away! away! the spaniels are uncoupled and questing far and wide, among the long green flags, and water bryony, and mallows that fringe the banks of many a creek and inlet, over the russet stubbles, up the thick alder coppices that fringe the steep ravines. Away! away! the smooth, soft turf, the slight and brushy hedges invite the free and easy gallop, invite the fearless leap! Away! with hawk unhooded on the wrist and ready with graceful seat, light hand, and bounding heart. See how the busy spaniels snuff the hot scent and ply their feathery tails among the dry fern on the bank of that old sunny ditch—there has the game been lately—hold hard, bold cavaliers—hold hard, my gentle ladies—hurry not now the dogs. Hush! hark! the black King Charles is whimpering already; that beautiful long-eared and silky Blenheim joins in the subdued chorus—how they thread in and out the withered fern stalks, how they rush through the crackling brambles! Yaff! yaff!—now they give tongue aloud, yaff! yaff! yaff! yaff!—and whir-r-r upsprings the well grown covey—now give your hearts to the loud whoop!—now fling your hawks aloft!—now gather well your bridles in your hand, now spur your gallant horses—on! on! sweep over the low fence, skirt the green meadow, dash at the rapid brook—ladies and cavaliers pell-mell—all riding for themselves, and careless of the rest, forgetful of all fear, all thought, in the fierce, fast career, as with eyes all turned heavenward to mark the soaring contest of the birds, trusting their good steeds only to bear them swift and safely, they drive in giddy rout down the broad valley. And now the flight is over—each gallant hawk has struck his cowering quarry—the lures are shaken in the air, the falconer’s whoop and whistle recall the hovering falcon, and on they go at slower pace to beat for fresh game—and lo! flip-flap, there rises the first woodcock of the season. Ho! mark him—mark him down, good forester—we must not miss that fellow—the very prince of game—the king he would be, save that gray heronshaw of right has old claim to the throne of falconrie. Lo! there, my masters, he is down—down in that gulley’s bank where the broom and the brachens feather the sunny slope, and the small streamlet hardly murmurs among the long rank grasses that seem almost to choke its mossy runnel. Quick! quick! unhood the lanner—the young and speckle-breasted lanner!—cast off the old gray-headed jerfalcon—soh, Diamond, my brave bird! mark his quick glancing eye and his proud crest, soh! cast him off and he will wheel around our heads nor leave us till we flush the woodcock. No! no! hold the young lanner hard, let him not fly, he is too mettlesome and proud of wing to trust to—and couple all the dogs up, except the stanch red setter. Now we will steal on him up wind and give him every chance—best cross the gully here, fair dames, for it is something deep and boggy, and if ye were to brave it in the fury of the gallop you might be mired for your pains. That bird will show you sport, be sure of it, for lo! the field beyond is thickly set with stunted thorns and tufts of alder bushes, if your hawks be not keen of sight, and quick of wing too, be sure that he will dodge them, and if he reach yon hill-side only, all covered as it is with evergreen, dense holly brakes, and thick oak saplings, he is as safe there in that covert as though he were a thousand leagues away, in some deep glen of the wild Atlas mountains. Lo! there he goes, the gray hawk after him—by heaven! in fair speed he outstrips the jerfalcon, he does not condescend even to dodge or double, but flies wild and high toward the purple moorland, and there we cannot follow him. Ride, De Vaux; gallop for your life—cut in, cut in between the bird and that near ridge—soh! bravely done, black charger—now cast the lanner loose! so! that will turn him. See! he has turned and now he must work for it—the angle he has made has brought old Diamond up against his weather wing—now! he will strike—now! now! but lo! the wary bird has dodged, and the hawk, who had soared and was in act of pouncing, checked his fleet pinion and turned after him—how swift he flies dead in the wind’s eye—and the wind is rising, he cannot face it now—tack and tack, how he twists—how cleverly he beats to windward, but now the odds are terribly against him, the cunning falcons have divided, and are now flying sharply to cut him off, one at each termination of his tacks—the lanner has outstripped him. Whoop! Robin, whoop!—Soh! call him up the wind—up the wind, falconer, or he will miss his stroke. There! there he towers up! up! in airy circles—he poises his broad wing—he swoops—alack, poor woodcock! but no! he has—by Pan the god of hunters—he has missed his cast—no swallow ever winged it swifter than the wild bird of passage—not now does he fly high among the clouds, but skims the very surface of the lawn, twisting round every tree, and baffling the keen falcons. Now he is scarce ten paces from his covert, the old bird, Diamond, flying like lightning, struggles in vain to weather him—in vain—the game dashes behind the bole of a tall upright oak, darts down among the hollies and is lost—well flown, brave quarry—well flown, noble—ha! the hawk—the brave old hawk, set only on retrieving his lost flight, his eye set too steadily upon the bird which he so fiercely struggled to outfly, has dashed with the full impetus of his arrowy flight against the gnarled stem of the oak, he rebounds from it like a ball from the iron target—never so much as once flaps his fleet pinions, tears not the ground with beak or single—Diamond, brave Diamond, is dead—and pitying eyes look down on him, and gentle tears are shed, and the soft hands that were wont to fondle his high crest and smooth his ruffled wings, compose his shattered pinions and sleek his blood-stained plumage—alas, brave Diamond!—but fate—it is the fate of war. Another flight—another glowing gallop, to make the blood dance blythely in our veins—to drive dull care from our hearts. But no, the sylvan meal is spread—down by that leafy nook, under the still green canopy of that gigantic oak, where the pure spring wells out so clear and crystal from the bright yellow gravel under its gnarled and tortuous roots—there is the snow-white linen spread on the mossy greensward, there the cold pasty and the larded capon tempt the keen appetite of the jolly sportsman, there, plunged in the glassy waters, the tall flasks of champagne are cooling. Who knows not the delicious zest with which we banquet on the greensward, the merry, joyous ease which, all restraint and ceremonial banished, renders the sylvan meal, in the cool shadow by the rippling brook, so indescribably delightful? And all that were collected there were for the moment happy—oh, how happy!—and many, in sad after days, remembered that gay feast, and dwelt upon the young hopes which were so flattering then, hopes which so soon decayed, and lingered on the contemplation of that soon perished bliss, as if the great Italian had erred, when he declared so wisely that to the aims of men

The bright wine sparkled in the goblet, but brighter flashed the azure eyes of Marian, for her whole face was radiant with her wild starry beauty. Was it the thrilling rapture of the gallop that sent her blood boiling with strange excitement “through every petty artery of her body,” was it the spirit stirring chase alone, or did the rich blood of the Gallic grape, sparingly tasted though it was, lend something of unnatural fervor? hark to the silvery tones of that sweet, ringing laugh—and now how deep a blush mantles her brow, her neck, her bosom, when, in receiving her glass from the hand of Ernest, their fingers mingled for a moment. But Ernest is unmoved and calm, and seemingly unconscious—and Annabel, fond Annabel, rejoices to mark her sister’s spirits so happily, so fully, as it seems, recovered from that overmastering sorrow. She saw not the hot blush, she noted not its cause—and yet, can it be—can it be that casual pressure was the cause—can it be love—love for a sister’s bridegroom, that kindles so the eye—that flushes so the cheek—that thrills so the life blood of lovely Marian? Away! away with contemplation. Ernest reflects not, for his brow is smooth and all unruffled by a thought, his lips are smiling, his pulse calm and temperate—and Marian pauses not—and Annabel suspects—Hush! they are singing. Lo! how the sweet and flute-like tones of the fair girls are blended with the rich and deep contralto of De Vaux. Lo! they are singing—singing the wood notes wild of the great master of the soul⁠—

Alas! for trusting Annabel!—soon shall she wake from her fond dream, soon wake to wo, to anguish. Again they mount their steeds, again they sweep the meadows down to the very brink of the broad deep transparent Wharfe—and now the heronshaw is sprung—he flaps his dark gray vans, the hermit bird of the waters, and slowly soars away, till the falconer’s shrill whoop and the sharp whistling flutter of the fleet pinions in his rear arouse him to his danger—up! up! he soars—up! up! scaling to the very sky in small but swift gyrations, while side by side the well matched falcons wheel circling around him still, and still outtopping till all the three are lost in the gray fleecy clouds—the clouds!—no one has seen—no one has even dreamed, engrossed in the wild fervor of the sport, that all the sky was overclouded, and the thick blackness of the thunder-storm driving up wind, and settling down in terrible proximity to the earth. Away! away! what heed they the dark storm-clouds—the increasing blast?—these equestrians. Heavens! what a flash—how keen! how close! how livid! the whole horizon showed for a moment’s space the broad blue glare of fearful living light—and simultaneously the thunder bursts above them—a crash as of ten thousand pieces of earth’s heaviest ordnance shot off in one wild clatter. The horses of the party were all careering at their speed, their maddest speed, across a broad green pasture, bordered on the right hand by the broad channel of the Wharfe, and on the left by an impracticable fence of tall old thorn, with a deep ditch on either side, and a stout timber railing. The two fair sisters were in front, leading the joyous cavalcade, with their eyes in the clouds, their hearts full of the fire of the chase, when that broad dazzling glare burst full into their faces. Terrified by the livid glare, and the appalling crash of the reverberated thunder, the horses of the sisters bolted diverse, Annabel’s toward the broad and rapid Wharfe, between which and the meadow through which they had been so joyously careering there was no fence or barrier at that spot—Marian’s toward the dangerous ox-fence which has been mentioned. The charger of De Vaux, who rode the next behind them, started indeed and whirled about, but was almost immediately controlled by the strong arm and skilful horsemanship of his bold rider, but of the grooms, who followed, several were instantly dismounted, and there were only three or four who, mastering their terrified and fractious beasts, galloped off to the aid of their young mistresses—they were both good equestrians and ordinarily fearless, but in such peril what woman could preserve her wonted intrepidity unshaken—the sky as black as night, with ever and anon a sharp clear stream of the electric fluid dividing the dark storm clouds, and the continuous thunders rolling and crashing overhead—their horses mad with terror, and gifted by that very madness with tenfold speed and strength—Annabel, whose clear head and calm though resolute temper gave her no small advantage over her volatile, impetuous sister, sat, it is true, as firmly in her saddle as though she had been practising her manège in the riding school, and held her fiery jennet with a firm, steady hand; but naturally her strength was insufficient to control its fierce and headlong speed, so that she saw upon the instant that she must be carried into the whirling waters of the swift river—for a moment she thought of casting herself to the ground, but it scarcely required one moment of reflection to show her that such course could lead but to destruction—soon she drove erect and steady in her seat, guiding her horse well and keeping its head straight to the river bank, and hoping every instant to hear the tramp of De Vaux’s charger overtaking her, and bringing succor—alas! for Annabel!—the first sound that distinctly reached her ears was a wild piercing shriek—“Ernest—great God!—my Ernest—help me!—save me!—” It was the voice of Marian, the voice of her own cherished sister calling on her betrothed—and he?—Even in that dread peril, when life was on a cast, her woman heart prevailed above her woman fears—she turned and saw the steed of Marian rushing, the bit between his teeth, toward the dangerous fence, which lay, however, far more distant than the river to which her own horse was in terrible proximity, and he, her promised husband, the lord of her very soul, he, for whom she would have perished—oh how willingly!—perished with but the one regret of that separation, he had overlooked entirely, or heeded not at least her peril to whom his faith was sworn, and even before that wild appealing cry, had started in pursuit, and was, as she looked round, in the act of whirling Marian from her saddle with one hand, while with the other he controlled his own strong war-horse. When she first heard that cry her spirit sank within her, but when she saw herself deserted, when the drear consciousness that she was not beloved broke on her, it seemed as if an ice-bolt had pierced her heart of hearts, her eyes grew dim, there was a sound of rushing waters in her ear—not the sound of the rushing river, although her horse was straining now up the last slight ascent that banked it—her pulse stood still—had Annabel then died, the bitterness of death was over—before, however, she had so much as wavered in her saddle, much less lost rein or stirrup, a wild plunge, and the shock which ran through every nerve, as her horse leaped into the brimful river, awoke her for the moment to her present situation—unconsciously she had retained her seat—her horse was swimming boldly—a loud plunge sounded from behind!—another, and another! and the next instant her steed’s head was seized by the stalwart arm of a young falconer toward the shore she had just quitted, her brain reeled round and she again was senseless—thus was she borne to land without the aid or intervention of him who should have been the first to venture all, to lose all, for her safety.

[To be continued.

———

BY PARK BENJAMIN.

———

———

BY W. W. STORY.

———

———

BY THEODORE S. FAY, AUTHOR OF “NORMAN LESLIE,” “THE COUNTESS IDA,” ETC.

———

NO. VI.—MACBETH.

Macbeth is a great moral and religious lesson. Its application is as wide as Christendom, and I think may be justly regarded as an exposition of Christianity. It is applicable to all men, and is not by any means limited to kings or usurpers. Nearly every one has some strong desire, or passion, or plan. The “golden round” for which men, nowadays, file their minds, put rancors in the vessels of their peace, and give their eternal jewel to the common enemy of man, is not a crown, but it is not wanting. On a large or a small scale, the principle is the same. Whoever undertakes, by immoral, unlawful means, to effect a favorite object—whoever lives without habits of frequently appealing to God—whoever listens for an instant to the delusive promises of passion—is liable to be drawn on, like him, far beyond their intention, and involved at length in sin and ruin. The Scottish usurper—the individual, is dead. But the class, to which he belonged, survives. Macbeths are to be met with every day in the world—men who listen to the promises of the fiends, who build up a hope of safety and impunity upon as hollow a foundation as the charm of not being born of a woman—or of not being destroyed till the advancing against them of a forest. Many a man—many a woman—many a young girl becomes thus entangled from forgetting their Maker and clinging to the “weird sisters” of the world, till shame, vice and despair overwhelm them.

Read aright, this tragedy is a mighty lesson to the young. They are starting in life inexperienced, thoughtless, and ready to believe the brilliant promises of every wandering and dangerous hope. They are ready also to “jump the life to come,” if they can secure impunity in their present career. Let them read Macbeth with care, and get from its wondrous page a terrific glimpse of the world. Let them look on poor, weak, deluded human nature when trusting in itself. Let them see the highest earthly rank, when unblessed by Heaven—the haughtiest, loftiest, steadiest mind, when turned from God to follow, with its own rash steps, the mazes of life. Let them, while they are pure and innocent, remain so. Let them keep the quiet conscience of the gentlewoman, even if, to do so, they are obliged to remain in her lowly position. Let them never, for “the dignity of the body,” poison the quiet of the soul. Let them tread the darkest, weariest paths of common life, rather than file their minds with any delusive and hollow hope of worldly advantage. Put no rancors in the vessel of your peace, whatever be the temptation. Cling to him whose promises alone are fulfilled. Commit no act, great or small, which can prey on your imagination and poison the good which may be in store for you. Put no “damned spot” upon your hand. Once there, it is ineffacable by all the washing of the ocean—by all the perfumes of Arabia; and however great may appear the temptation, keep the eternal jewel, Innocence, from “the common enemy of man.”

I have said, in a former paragraph, that Macbeth had been guilty before, in deeds as well as thoughts. Let any one read the scene between him and the two murderers and he will feel at once the conviction that Macbeth himself has been guilty of those oppressive cruelties which he there lays upon Banquo.

And again,

What dark tale of oppression is connected with these vague disclosures we cannot tell; but the character of Banquo acquits him of having been the tyrant. These men have been, in some way or other, so trampled on that they are both rendered desperate, and Macbeth, who knows it so well, and whom, it seems, they had always considered the cause of their misfortunes, is most likely so in reality.

As to what I have said at the commencement of these papers respecting the want of a just appreciation of the poet on the part of his commentators—take Dr. Johnson, for example, on Macbeth. He begins with a defence of the introduction of supernatural machinery into the tragedy. This proves distrust of Shakspeare, as the transcendent genius he is now annually becoming in the estimation of every one. Hear the learned essayist descanting upon the dramatist as if he knew more of the art than the master. It is like the old Hungarian officer’s celebrated critique on Napoleon’s manœuvres.

“In order,” says Johnson, “to make a true estimate of the abilities and merit of a writer, it is always necessary to examine the genius of his age and the opinions of his cotemporaries. A poet who should now make the whole action of his tragedy depend upon enchantment and produce the chief events by the assistance of supernatural agents, would be censured as transgressing the bounds of probability, be banished from the theatre to the nursery, and condemned to write fairy tales instead of tragedies.”

In other words, had Shakspeare written Macbeth in the time of Dr. Johnson, that play would be considered unworthy to be performed, except before an audience of children, and the critic would advise the mistaken young author to adopt a profession in which he might hope for more success, than in literature. I can fancy some wiseacre in a London weekly, with the smartness and knack at severity which daily practice confers, taking to pieces “the tragedy of Macbeth, by a Mr. William Shakspeare, said to be a subordinate at Astley’s”—and serving the ambitious young gentleman up such a dressing for his witches, ghosts and murders, as would be enough to extinguish a better educated and more promising litterateur; showing how impossible it must be for witches to mingle in human affairs, in this enlightened age of hebdomadals, and banishing to the nursery a blunderer unworthy to cater for such sensible critics.

The denunciation, however, would embrace other literary works besides the puerile attempt of Mr. Shakspeare. Manfred, Cain, the Faust, and other trifles of the same description, in which the poet has made the action of his tragedy depend upon enchantment. Virgil or Homer might be equally censured. It is quite true that the witches may not be considered probable characters, but how can any one overlook their fearful and magnificent meaning allegorically?

Johnson goes on, however, in his defence.

“But a survey of the notions that prevailed at the time when this play was written, will prove that Shakspeare was in no danger of such censures, since he only turned the system that was then universally admitted to his advantage, and was far from overburthening the credulity of his audience.”

The doctor then goes on to a learned and interesting dissertation on the gross darkness of ignorance—on the credulity of the common people—on the diabolical opposition supposed to have been offered to the Christians in the crusades—quotes Olympidorus, St. Chrysostom, and a law of King James I. against conjurors, and shows much sagacious wisdom and learning, which have about as much to do with the real living beauty of Macbeth as they have with the Temple of Jerusalem.

“Upon this general infatuation,” continues the doctor, “Shakspeare might be easily allowed to found a play, especially as he has followed, with great exactness, such histories as were then thought to be true: nor can it be doubted that the scenes of enchantment, however they may now be ridiculed, were both by himself and his audience thought awful and affecting.”

No one can doubt the moral greatness of Dr. Johnson, but it was not of a kind which enabled him to enter fully into the living principle of beauty which inspires the Shakspeare plays.

He speaks of Macbeth with a sort of indifference which betrays his blindness to its highest merits. He praises the propriety of its fiction, and the solemnity, grandeur and variety of its actions. He adds, “but it has no nice discrimination of character. The events are too great to admit the influence of particular dispositions, etc. The danger of ambition is well described; and I know not whether it may not be said in defence of some parts which now seem improbable, that, in Shakspeare’s time, it was necessary to warn credulity against vain and illusive predictions.”

And in our own time, what leads every criminal astray, but some “vain and illusive prediction,” not uttered by three weird sisters, by an armed head, or the “apparition of a child crowned, with a tree in his hand,” but by the temptations of the world and the treacherous passions of the human heart? What was it which told Napoleon⁠—

Who told Robespierre—

It was not the spectres, in the witches’ case—nor the express conditions added.

Or,

But who can doubt that the principle of evil, had held forth, before both their minds, some illusive hope which led them to ruin?

As another instance of the careless errors committed by the commentators, and Johnson among the rest, take the following. The note occurs in Cawthorn’s (successor to Bell) edition, London, 1801, and although without Johnson’s name, is found between two notes of his, (p. 41,) and is, I believe, from his pen.

The passage referred to is in the second act of the Tempest, where the King of Naples, after the shipwreck, is wandering about the island with some of his suite. The reader will remember that the storm raised by Prospero overtakes them as the King Alonso is coming to Naples from Tunis, where he had been to marry his daughter Claribel. Great regret has been expressed that this marriage should have ever been thought of, since it is the cause of their present misfortune. The king himself is sorry and the rest are some of them angry and satirical.

Sebastian says,

The match is thought absurd by most of them, and when, in answer to Antonio’s question, “Who’s the next heir to Naples?” Sebastian replies, “Claribel,” Antonio rejoins the following passage;

On this there is the following note:

It does not seem to me that the passage warrants the supposition of such an opinion on the part of Shakspeare. It is obviously a mere hyperbole in jest. It is not credible that such a writer could be so ignorant, and where other evidences of it appear in the course of his works, it is more rational (when they cannot be explained away as in the present instance) to ascribe them to typographical confusion, or the liberties of ignorant copyists, &c.

To the passage complained of, Sebastian himself answers,

———

BY MRS. LOIS B. ADAMS.

———

THAT DROPPED ON DECK DURING A STORM AT SEA.

———

BY WILLIAM FALCONER.

———

———

BY MRS. EMMA C. EMBURY, AUTHOR OF “CONSTANCE LATIMER,” ETC.

———

One of the most beautiful of the many lovely villages which lie within the foldings of the Connecticut river is Elmsdale. Occupying a small peninsula, round which the stream winds so closely that at the first view it seems entirely separated from the main land, and lying aside from the highroad which traverses the valley of the Connecticut, Elmsdale is one of the most quiet and sequestered spots to be found in New England. Like most places which offer no inducement to the spirit of speculation, the village is inhabited chiefly by the descendants of those who had first settled there. The old men have been companions in boyhood, and have sported in the same fields which now echo to the merry shouts of their grandchildren. The most of them still cultivate the farms which belonged to their forefathers, and even the adventurous few, who have been tempted to go out into the world beyond, usually return to finish their days on their native soil.

The arrival of a stranger in a retired village is always a subject of curiosity and interest, but in a place like Elmsdale, where every body knew his neighbor, such an unusual event excited special attention. When, therefore, it was known throughout the hamlet that a strange lady had come to pass the summer with old farmer Moody, all the gossips were on the alert to find out who she could be. But they derived little satisfaction from their skilful questioning of the farmer; all he knew was soon told. The lady was travelling for health, and having been pleased with the situation of his comfortable abode, had applied to be received as a boarder during the summer months, offering to pay liberally in advance. Her evident ill-health, her gentle manners, and the temptation of her ready gold prevailed on the thrifty farmer to assent, and the stranger took possession of a neat chamber in his pleasant cottage.

Close to the bank of the river, on a little eminence commanding a view of the country around Elmsdale, stood a singularly constructed stone building which had long been unoccupied and deserted. Its original owner and projector was a man of singular habits, whose eccentricity had been universally regarded as a species of harmless insanity. Rich and childless, he had erected this mansion according to his own ideas of gothic architecture, and nothing could be more grotesque than its whole appearance. It soon obtained the appellation of Hopeton’s Folly, and though he whose name it bore had long since occupied a narrower house in the silent land, and the property had passed into other hands, the deserted mansion was still known by the same title. Great was the surprise of the villagers when it was known that the strange lady had become the purchaser of Hopeton’s Folly, and that in future she would reside permanently in Elmsdale. Curiosity was newly awakened, and every body was desirous to know something about one who seemed so unprotected and solitary. But there was a quiet dignity in her manners which rebuked and disconcerted impertinent inquiry, while all efforts to draw some information from her single attendant—an elderly sedate woman, who seemed to hold a middle rank between companion and servant—were equally unsuccessful.

“Has Mrs. Norwood been long a widow?” asked a pertinacious newsmonger, who kept the only thread and needle shop in the place, and therefore had a fine opportunity of gratifying her gossipping propensities.

“It is now nearly two years since she lost her husband,” was the reply of the discreet servant, who was busily employed in selecting some tape and pins.

“Only two years, and she has already laid aside her mourning!” exclaimed the shopkeeper; “but I suppose that is an English fashion.”

The woman made no reply, and, consequently, the next day, all the village was given to understand that Mrs. Norwood’s help had told Miss Debby Tattle that Mrs. Norwood was a very rich widow who had just arrived from England. This was all that Miss Debby’s ingenuity could make out of the scanty materials which she had been able to obtain, and with this meagre account people were obliged to be satisfied.

Mrs. Norwood was one of those quiet, gentle beings who, though little calculated to excite a sudden prepossession, always awakened a deep and lasting interest. Her age might have been about eight and twenty, but the ravages of illness, and, perhaps, the touch of a still more cruel destroyer, had given a melancholy expression to her countenance, and a degree of gravity to her manners which made her seem much older. Her features, still classically beautiful, were attenuated and sharpened, her complexion was pale almost to ghastliness, and her thin, flexible lips were perfectly colorless. But she possessed one charm which neither time nor disease could spoil. Her eyes—those dark, soft, lustrous eyes, with their veined and fringed lids, beautiful alike when the full orbs were veiled beneath their shadowy lashes, or when their beaming light turned full upon an object of regard—were the most distinguishing trait in Mrs. Norwood’s countenance. No one dreamed of calling her beautiful, but all noticed the grace of her tall and slightly bending figure, her courteous and ladylike manners, her low, sweet voice, and the touching air of melancholy which seemed to characterize her every movement.

Under the direction of its new mistress, Hopeton’s Folly was now fitted up with a degree of neatness and comfort which it had seemed scarcely capable of assuming. Furniture, plain but costly, was brought from a distant town, the grounds were laid out with a view to elegance rather than mere usefulness, and, in short, money and good taste soon converted the desolate spot into a little paradise of beauty. The neighbors, who, with the kindness which generally prevails in every place where fashion has not destroyed social feeling, had been ready to afford Mrs. Norwood every assistance in the completion of her plans, became now equally ready to share her hospitality, and, for a time, the newly arranged mansion was always full of well-disposed but ill-judging visiters. But Mrs. Norwood’s health was soon made the plea for discountenancing all such attentions on the part of the village gossips. Always courteous and hospitable, she yet declined all visitations to the frequent “hot water conventions” or “tea drinkings” which constituted the chief amusement of the place, while she managed to keep alive the good feelings of her new associates by many acts of unostentatious charity. Simple in her daily habits, benevolent in her impulses, yet retiring and reserved in her manners, Mrs. Norwood made her faithful old servant the almoner of her bounties, while the poor, the sick and the sorrowful were never refused admission to her presence. Her regular attendance on the public duties of religion, in the only church which Elmsdale could then boast, had tended to establish her character for respectability in a community so eminently moral and pious; and when it was known that the pastor, whose rigid ideas of propriety were no secret, had become a frequent visiter at Hopeton’s Folly, no doubt remained as to Mrs. Norwood’s virtues and claims upon general sympathy.

Mr. Allston, who for some ten years had presided over the single church in a place which had fortunately escaped the curse of sectarianism, was a man as remarkable in character as he was peculiar in habit. A close and unwearied student, ascetic in his daily life, and an enthusiast in his profession, he was almost idolized by his people, who regarded him as a being of the most saint-like character. Indeed, if self-denial could afford a title to canonization, he was fully competent to sustain the claim; but such is the inconsistency of human judgment, that Mr. Allston owed his high reputation to a belief in his stoical indifference to earthly temptations, and much of his influence would have been diminished if it had been suspected that resistance to evil ever cost him a single effort. The truth was that nature had made Allston a voluptuary, but religion had transformed him into an ascetic. He had set out in life with an eager thirst after all its pleasures, but he had been stayed in the very outset of his career by the reproaches of an awakened conscience. Violent in all his impulses, and ever in extremes, he had devoted himself to the gospel ministry because the keen goadings of repentance urged him to offer the greatest sacrifice in his power as atonement for past sins. But he had experienced all the trials which await those who, when gathering the manna from heaven, still remember the savory fleshpots of Egypt. His life was a perpetual conflict between passion and principle, and though his earthly nature rarely obtained the mastery, yet the necessity for such unwearied watchfulness had given a peculiar tone of severity to his manners. Like many persons of similar zeal, Allston had committed the error of confounding the affections with the passions of human nature, and believing all earthly ties to be but fetters on the wings of the soul, he carefully avoided all temptation to assume such bonds. His religion was one of fear rather than of love, and forgetting that He who placed man in a world of beauty and delight has said, “I will have mercy and not sacrifice,” he made existence only a protracted scene of self-devotion and privation. A superstitious dread of yielding even to the most innocent impulses had induced him to suppress every feeling of his ardent and excitable nature. He had turned from the face of beauty and the voice of love with the same dread as would have induced him to eschew the temptation of the gaming-table and the wine-cup, and his thirtieth summer found him still a solitary student by the fireside of his widowed mother. His fine talents as a preacher, his powers of persuasion, his thrilling eloquence, aided by the example of his own habits of life, had produced a great effect in the community where he had been called to minister in holy things. The church was in a most flourishing condition; numbers had been united to it, and the influence of the pastor over the minds of all, but especially those of the young, was almost unbounded. Is it strange, therefore, that spiritual pride should have grown up in the heart of the isolated student, and twined its parasitic foliage around many a hardy plant of grace and goodness? Is it to be wondered at if Charles Allston at length indulged the fancy that he had been set apart as one chosen for a high and holy work—that he was destined to be one of the “vessels of honor,” of whom St. Paul has spoken—and that nothing now could sully the spotless garments in which his self-denial had clothed him.

Mrs. Allston had been among the first to welcome the sick stranger to Elmsdale, and, pleased with the gentle grace which characterized her manners, had lavished upon her every kindness. Mrs. Norwood was grateful for her attentions, and seemed happy to find a friend whose mature age and experience could afford her counsel and sympathy. This feeling of childlike dependence, on the one hand, and matronly affection on the other, was growing up between them, and served to establish a closer intimacy than at first might have appeared natural to persons so entirely unlike in character. Mrs. Allston was a woman of unpretending good sense, and plain education, whose rustic habits and utter indifference to etiquette made her appear very different from the languid invalid whose elegant manners and refined language marked her cultivation rather than her strength of mind. But “accident,” and “the strong necessity of loving,” may often account for friendships as well as loves, and this world would be a sad desert of lonely hearts if we could only attach ourselves to our own counterparts. No one could know Mrs. Norwood intimately, without being irresistibly attracted towards a character of such singular sensitiveness and amiability. She seemed like one in whom the elements of strength had been slowly and gradually evolved by circumstances, for, though her disposition was by nature yielding and dependent, yet her habits of thought and action were full of decision and firmness. Gentle and feminine in her feelings, reserved and quiet in her demeanor, she appeared to a careless observer merely as the dignified and discreet, because unprotected woman. But one who looked beneath the calm surface, might have found a deep strong under-current of feeling. Heart-sickness, rather than bodily disease, had been at work with her, and the blight which had passed over her young beauty, was but a type of that which had checked the growth of her warm affections.

Whatever might have been Mrs. Norwood’s feelings when she first took possession of her new abode, she certainly seemed both healthier and happier after a year’s sojourn in Elmsdale. A faint color returned to her thin cheek, a smile, bright and transient as an April sunbeam, often lit up her fine face, her features lost much of their sharpness of outline, and gradually, almost imperceptibly, the feeble, drooping invalid was transformed by the renovating touch of health into the lovely and elegant woman. Yet the same pensiveness characterized her usual manner—the same reluctance to mingle in society was evident in her daily intercourse with her neighbors, and to a stranger she might still seem to be mourning over the memory of a buried affection. But Mrs. Allston and her son alone knew better. They alone knew that affection had been crushed in its very bud by unkindness and neglect—they alone believed that the widow had found death one of the best of friends, when he relieved her from the intolerable bondage of domestic tyranny. Not that Mrs. Norwood had ever confided to them her former history; for the slightest question which had reference to the past always seemed to give her exquisite pain, but a casual remark, a trifling hint, a passing allusion, uttered in the confidence of friendship, had led them to form such conclusions.

Allston had at first regarded the stranger merely as another member added to his flock—another soul for which he must hereafter be responsible. But a closer acquaintance with her awakened a much stronger interest in his mind. He fancied that her character bore a wonderful resemblance to his own. He thought he beheld in her the same secret control over strong emotions, the same silent devotion to deep-felt duties, the same earnest enthusiasm in religion, the same abstraction from worldly pleasures, as had long been the leading traits in his character. He believed that the difference of sex and her early sorrow might account for the diversities which existed between them, and actuated by the belief that he was an instrument in the hands of a higher Power, who had destined him for some great and glorious work, he persuaded himself that Providence had placed her in his path and pointed her out to him, by a mysterious sympathy, as his companion and fellow-laborer in his future duties. Had he not been blinded by the self-reliance which had taken the place of his wonted watchfulness, the very strength of his feelings would have led him to distrust their propriety. But habit had rendered all his ordinary practice of self-denial so easy to him that he fancied himself quite superior to mere earthly temptation, and therefore he was disposed to regard his present excitement, rather as a manifestation of the will of Heaven than as an impulse of natural affection. It cost him much thought and many severe conflicts with his doubts and his zeal ere he could decide upon the course he should pursue. Determined not to listen to the voice of passion but to be governed entirely by a sense of duty, he condemned himself to a rigorous fast of three days in the firm belief that he should receive some expression of the Divine Will. In the deep sleep of exhaustion which fell upon him during the third night, Mrs. Norwood appeared before him in a dream, wearing shining garments and smiling with an expression of perfect beatitude. This was enough for the wild enthusiast. From that moment he placed no restraint upon the promptings of his heart, but considering her as one peculiarly marked out for the same high destiny as himself, he poured out all the fulness of his long hoarded affections at her feet.

Lonely, desolate and sorrowful, Mrs. Norwood was almost bewildered by the sudden light which seemed to break in upon her when she thus found herself the object of true tenderness. She had long admired the genius of Mr. Allston, and her romantic temperament peculiarly fitted her to appreciate the peculiarities of his enthusiastic zeal. She had looked up to him as one as far above her in his unworldly sanctity, as in his gifted intellect, and thus to find herself the chosen of a heart which had heretofore rejected earth’s sweetest gifts of tenderness, was most unlooked-for happiness. She soon learned to love him with a depth and fervor which surprised even herself, yet she had suffered so much in early life that the presence of hope was now welcomed with tearful distrust. She dreaded rather than anticipated the future, and while listening to the wrapt eloquence of her lover, who seemed to spiritualize the impassioned language of affection, she could not but tremble to think what a blank life would be if this new-found bliss were suddenly extinguished. The peculiar tone of Allston’s mind was never more distinctly displayed than in his courtship. Of love he never spoke, but he dwelt on the high and mystical dreams which had charmed his solitude, he pictured passion under the garb of pure devotion, and attired human affections in the robes of immaculate purity until he had completely bewildered himself in the mazes of his own labyrinth of fancies. At length the decisive moment came, and, in a manner equally characteristic and unusual, Allston asked Mrs. Norwood to become his wife. He was scarcely prepared for her excessive agitation, and still less for her indefinite reply.

“It shall be for you to decide, Mr. Allston,” said the gentle widow, as she struggled with her tears, “I will not pretend to have misunderstood your feelings towards me, nor will I attempt to conceal the fact that to your proffered affection I owe the first gleam of happiness which has visited my weary heart since the days of childhood. But I have deceived you, and I cannot accept your hand while you remain ignorant of the events of my early life. Some months since, I wrote what I cannot bring my lips to utter, and you will find in this manuscript all you ought to know. Judge not too hardly of my concealment—my only error has been silence on a subject with which the world had naught to do, and this I trust your heart will not visit with too severe a punishment.”

Allston took the papers, and silent and dismayed hurried to the seclusion of his study. Dreading some evil, though he knew not what shape it might assume, he broke the seal and read as follows:

“Left an orphan at a very early age, my first recollections are those of school life. My parents, who were residents though not natives of the island of Jamaica, sent me to England for my education, and, dying soon after my departure, I became the ward of my mother’s cousin, a gay and dissipated bachelor, whose house offered not a proper home to a young girl. I was the heiress to great wealth, but was, at the same time, a homeless and desolate child, who might well have envied the privileges of domestic affection which are enjoyed by the offspring of poverty. My wealth procured me respect and consideration among my teachers and a few interested school-fellows, while it purchased for me exemption from much of the discipline of the school, as well as from many of the studies which I wished to avoid. I was, therefore, little likely to profit by the advantages of my position in life, while its disadvantages were in my case greatly multiplied. I was a wayward, wilful, warm-hearted child, full of impulsive affections, but irritable in temper, and, though perfectly docile to the law of kindness, utterly beyond the subjugation of severity. Frank and confiding in my disposition, I was easily led to place confidence in those who treated me with a semblance of affection, and the sense of loneliness which oppressed my heart, even in childhood, led me rather to seek for the friendship of those by whom I was surrounded, while the romance, which shows itself in a greater or less degree in the developing character of every school girl, assumed in me the form of a morbid desire to inspire affection in those whom Providence had placed around me, to fill the places of parents, and brothers and sisters to my desolate life.

“I was in my fifteenth year, full of exaggerated sensibility, and just beginning to model my dreams of future happiness after the standard afforded by my favorite novels, when a circumstance, apparently of trivial moment, occurred to shadow my whole life with sorrow. The only accomplishment in which I made any decided progress was that of drawing, and in this I had early exhibited both taste and skill. Our drawing-master, an old and wily Italian, requested permission to introduce his nephew, who could materially aid him in instructing us to sketch from nature; and, as it involved our school-mistress in no additional expense, she readily assented. Our new teacher was accordingly introduced to us under the name of Signior Baldini, but it needed scarcely one look to make us doubt his relationship to the old man, for his florid complexion, blond hair, and blue eyes bore little resemblance to the dark countenance and classical features of the fine Italian face. Those of us who were novel readers immediately fancied that we could detect beneath this humble disguise some noble heir or enamored youth who sought to obtain access to a ladye-love immured within the walls of our school. Our young and glowing hearts, full of passions which had been prematurely developed by the mischievous tenor of our stolen reading, and ready to welcome any thing which might give occupation to their restlessness, were quickly excited in favor of the new comer. Our sketching from nature required us to take many walks in the vicinity, and, though we were never unaccompanied by one of the female teachers, yet a thousand opportunities for forming an imprudent intimacy occurred during these excursions. I soon found, however, that the attentions of Signior Baldini were especially directed to me, and the vanity of my sex, as well as my own excited fancy, led me to encourage rather than repulse his proffered advances. I cannot recall all the details of the vile conspiracy to which I fell a victim. Imagine a child of fifteen summers subjected to the arts of a man more than twice her age—a man who had studied human nature in its worst forms, and therefore well knew how to take advantage of its slightest tendency to errors—a man whose talents enabled him to conceal the heart of a demon beneath the features of a demigod. Imagine the effect of these arts upon a sensitive and romantic girl, a lonely and orphaned creature who was yearning for the voice of affection, and weaving many a beautiful fancy of future happiness, to be found only in reciprocal affection, and you will anticipate the result.

“A well invented story of high birth, unmerited misfortunes, and a long cherished passion for me, awakened my sympathy, and I soon imagined that nothing could repay my lover’s tenderness but the bestowal of my hand and fortune. I fancied myself deeply and devotedly attached to one who had submitted to the degradation of disguise for my sake, and, on the day when I attained my sixteenth year, I eloped with my lover, who now dropped his assumed title and adopted his true name of Wallingford. As my guardian was at that time in Paris, we met with no molestation, and were privately married in London, where we had decided to take up our abode. I afterwards learned that those of my teachers who had been parties to the plot were well paid for their services, while the only real sufferer was the principal of the establishment, who had been kept in total ignorance of the scheme, and whose dignified sense of propriety was shocked at having such a stigma affixed to her school. When my guardian returned he read me a lecture on my imprudence, and tried to satisfy his conscience for past neglect, by refusing to allow me more than a mere maintenance until I should attain my majority. To this, however, I refused submission, and the matter was finally compromised in a manner quite satisfactory to both parties. Mr. Wallingford immediately engaged elegant lodgings, and we commenced living in a style better suited to my future fortune than to my actual income.

“My heart sickens when I look back to the weary years which succeeded my imprudent marriage. As time matured my judgment I was pained by the discovery of many weaknesses and faults in my husband, to which I would willingly have remained blind. Yet the discovery of these did not impair the simple, child-like affection with which I regarded the only being on earth to whom I was bound by any ties. I clung to him as the only one in the wide world whom I was permitted to love, and it required but little effort on his part to have strengthened my girlish fondness into the lasting fervor of womanly tenderness. While yet I remained in my minority Mr. Wallingford treated me with some show of consideration. Fitful gleams of kindness, transient visitings of former fondness, glimpses of the better nature which had been so perverted by evil habits, and endearments still bestowed in moments of persuasion, linked my heart to the ideal which I had enshrined in his image. But no sooner was I put in possession of my fortune than he threw off the mask entirely. I was too much in his power to render any further concealment necessary, and he now appeared before me in all the true deformity of his character. Dissipated in his habits, coarse in his feelings, low in his pursuits and pleasures, he had only sought me for the wealth which could minister to his depravity.

“I will not pain you by a detail of the petty tyranny to which I was now subjected. My impetuous temper was at first aroused, but, alas! it was soon subdued by frightful severity. Indifference, neglect, intemperance, infidelity, nay, even personal ill treatment, which left the discolored badge of slavery upon my flesh for days and weeks, were now my only portion. Broken in health and in spirit, I prayed for death to release me from my sufferings, and I verily believe my husband sought to aid my wishes by his cruel conduct. But the crushed worm was at length compelled to turn upon the foot which trampled it. I was driven from my home—a home which my wealth had furnished with all the appliances of taste and elegance—and placed in a farm-house at some distance from London, while a vile woman, whose name was but another word for pollution, ruled over my house. To increase the horrors of my situation, I learned that Wallingford was taking measures to prove me insane, and thus rid himself of my presence while he secured the guardianship of my person and property. This last injury aroused all the latent strength of my nature. Hitherto I had been like a child brought up in servitude and crouching beneath the master’s blow, but I was now suddenly transformed into the indignant and energetic woman.

“Alone and unaided I determined to appeal to the laws of the land for redress, and prudence directed me to men as wise as they were virtuous, who readily undertook my cause. Wallingford was startled at my sudden rebellion, but he was never unprepared for deeds of evil. My servants were suborned, papers were forged, falsehoods were blazoned abroad, all the idle gossip which had floated for its passing moment on the breath of scandal like the winged seed of some noxious plant on the summer breeze, was carefully treasured, and every thing that power could effect was tried to make me appear degraded in character and imbecile in mind. The circumstances attending my marriage—my first fatal error, committed at the suggestion and under the influence of him who now adduced it as proof of my weakness—was one of the evidences of my unworthiness, while the utterings of a goaded spirit and the wild anguish of a breaking heart were repeated as the language of insanity. But for once justice and equity triumphed over the quibbles of the law. The decree of the highest court in the realm released me from my heavy bondage. A conditional divorce which allowed me full power to marry again, but restrained my husband from such a privilege, in consequence of his well-attested cruelty and ill treatment, was the result of our protracted and painful lawsuit. My fortune, sadly wasted and diminished, was placed in the hands of trustees for my sole benefit, and I immediately settled upon Wallingford a sum sufficient to place him far above want, upon the sole condition that he never intruded himself into my presence.

“After these arrangements were completed I determined to put the ocean between me and my persecutor. On my twenty-sixth birthday—just ten years from the day which saw me a bride—I landed in America. Alas! how changed were all my prospects, how altered all my feelings! I was still in the prime of life, but hope and joy and all the sweet influences of affection were lost to me forever, and after wandering from place to place I finally took up my abode in Elmsdale, rather from a sense of utter weariness than from any anticipation of peace. I little knew that Providence had prepared for me so sweet a rest after all my sufferings. I little knew that peace and hope, aye, and even happiness, were yet in store for me. Resigning a name to which I had no longer any claim, I resumed my family name of Norwood, and sought to appear in society as the widowed rather than as the divorced wife. I have thus avoided painful remarks and impertinent questionings, while I was enabled to secure for myself a quiet retreat from the turmoil of the world. Perhaps to you, Charles Allston, I ought to have been more frank, but surely you cannot blame me for shrinking from the disclosure of such bitter and degrading memories. You have now learned all my early history—you have seen my error and you have traced its punishment—let me now unfold the page which can reveal the present.

“A fancy, light as the gossamer which the wind drives on its wing, first led to my marriage. I was a child in heart and mind and person, when I became the victim of arts which might have misled a wiser head and a less susceptible heart. Left to myself I should probably have forgotten my first love fancy even as one of the thousand dreams which haunt the brain of youth. But if, after my marriage, I had experienced kindness and tenderness from my husband, the feeling would have deepened into earnest and life-long affection, instead of curdling into hatred and contempt within my bosom. The love of my girlhood was blighted even as a flower which blossoms out of time, and loneliness has hitherto been my lot through life. Will you deem me too bold, my friend, if I tell you that from you I have learned my first lesson in womanly duty? Till I knew you I dreamed not of the power of a fervent and true passion—till I beheld you I believed my heart was cold and dead to all such gentle impulses. You have taught me that happiness may yet be found even for me. In loving you I am but doing homage to virtue and wisdom and piety—in bowing down before your image I am but worshipping the noblest attributes of human nature enshrined within your heart. I dared not pour out the fullness of my joy until I had told you my sad tale, but now that you know all—now that no shadow of distrust can fall upon the sunshine of the future, come to me, and assure me with your own dear voice that my troubled dream is now forever past, and that the dawn of happiness is breaking upon my weary heart!”

To comprehend the full effect of this letter on Charles Allston, the peculiarity of his character—his strict ideas of duty—his devotion to his holy calling—his shrinking dread of any thing which could, by any possibility, tend to diminish his influence over the consciences of his flock—and his long cherished dread of self-indulgence—must ever be borne in mind. He had loved Eleanor Norwood with a fervor startling even to himself, and according to his usual distrustful habits of thought, he had feared lest the very intensity of his feelings was a proof of their sinfulness. Accustomed to consider every thing as wrong which was peculiarly gratifying to himself—measuring by the amount of every enjoyment the extent of its wickedness—restraining the most innocent impulses because he conceived heaven could only be won by continual sacrifices—he had shrunk in fear and trembling at his own temerity when his overmastering passion led him to pour forth his feelings to the object of his love. He had retired to his apartment in a state of pitiable agitation, and while he awaited Mrs. Norwood’s reply with hope, he yet half repented of his proffered suit, lest there should have been too much of the leaven of mere earthly tenderness in the bosom which had vowed to forsake all its idols. This letter therefore produced a terrible revulsion in his feelings. His rigid sense of duty, and his adherence to divine rather than human laws, compelled him to behold in Eleanor Norwood only the wife of another. Vile and unworthy as Wallingford might be, he was to Allston’s view still the husband, and though the tie might be loosened by the hand of man it could only be entirely severed by the will of God. All the sternness of that long practised asceticism, which had given Allston such a twofold character, was called forth by the thought of the sin he had so nearly committed. The wild enthusiasm of his nature led him to regard Mrs. Norwood as a temptress sent to try the strength of his self-denying piety. He remembered the tale of the hermit, who for forty years abode in the wilderness, sinless in thought and in deed, while he kept his eye ever fixed upon the cross; but the moment of wavering came—the holy eremite turned his gaze for one single instant from the symbol, and Satan, who had long watched in vain, obtained the mastery over him whose life-long piety had not availed against a moment’s weakness. Allston shuddered as his busy fancy suggested the parallel between the monkish legend and his own present feelings. The thought of the disgrace which would attend him who, while reproving sin in others, could be accused of cherishing it in his own household—of the judgment which would fall upon him who should dare to minister to the people in holy things, while he bore the marks of a deadly leprosy within his own bosom—until at length the spiritual pride, which was in truth his besetting sin, subdued all lighter emotions.

That evening Mrs. Norwood sat in her quiet room, with the light of a shaded lamp falling upon the gentle beauty of a face now lighted up with hope, and which, but for the restless and hurried glance which was occasionally turned upon the quaintly fashioned clock, might have seemed the picture of placid happiness. A soft glow flushed her cheek, her eyes were full of radiance, and, as she raised her head in the attitude of a listener, a smile of almost childlike joyousness parted her flexible lips. A step resounded on the gravel walk without. Her first impulse led her to spring forward to welcome the expected visitant, but womanly pride checked her in mid career, and she yet stood in half uncertainty when the door opened to admit a servant who handed her a small parcel. Her cheek grew ashy pale as she broke the seal. A paper dropped from the envelop—it was her own letter to Allston; and she sank into a chair as she unfolded the note which accompanied it. Written in Allston’s hand, yet so blotted, and traced in such irregular characters, that the agitation of the writer might well be divined, were these words:

“I will not express the agony of mind with which I have perused the enclosed papers. I have been tried almost beyond my strength, but I have been mercifully spared the commission of a crime at which my soul shudders. I will not upbraid you, madam, for your cruel concealment; your own conscience will be your accuser, and it will not fail to remind you that your deception has nearly hurled me from an eminence which it has been the labor of my life to reach. But you have been only an instrument in the hands of a higher power. I fancied myself superior to temptation, and God has sent you to teach me the necessity of closer watchfulness over my still frail nature. Eleanor Norwood, I have loved you as I never loved earthly creature before, but sooner would I suffer the keenest pangs of that chronic heartbreak, to which the martyrdom of the pile and fagot is but pastime, than take to my arms the wife of a living husband. You have made me wretched but you cannot make me criminal. Henceforth we meet no more on earth, for I have vowed to tear your image from my heart, though, even now, every fibre bleeds at the rude sundering of such close knit ties. Receive my forgiveness and my farewell.”

When Mrs. Norwood’s faithful old servant entered the room, about an hour after the receipt of this letter, she found her mistress lying senseless on the floor. Suspecting something like the truth, the woman prudently gathered up the papers from view, and then summoned assistance. Mrs. Norwood was carried to her apartment and medical aid was immediately procured. The physician pronounced her to be suffering from strong nervous excitement, and, after giving her a sleeping draught, prescribed perfect quiet for the next few days. But ere morning she was in a state of delirium, and fears were entertained for her intellect if not for her life. Several days passed in great uncertainty, but at length hope revived and Mrs. Norwood once more awoke to consciousness. Feeble as an infant, however, she required great care to raise her from the brink of the grave, and the springs of life, so sadly shattered by long continued sorrow, were now in danger of being broken by a single stroke. Disease seemed undetermined in its final attack, and at length assumed the form under which it most frequently assists the insidious labors of secret sorrow. A hectic cough now racked her feeble frame, and it was evident that consumption would soon claim another victim. Just at this time a letter, sealed with black, was forwarded to Mrs. Norwood’s address, and after being withheld from her several weeks, by advice of her physician, was finally given to her because all hope of prolonging her life was at an end. The perusal of this letter seemed rather to soothe than to excite the sinking invalid. “It comes too late,” was her only exclamation as she deposited it in a little cabinet which stood beside her bed, and from that moment she made no allusion to its contents.

It was remarked in the village that Mr. Allston had become excessively severe in his denunciations of error, while his habits had become more rigid and reserved than ever. His former persuasive eloquence had given place to violent and bitter revilings of sin, while those who applied to him for religious consolation were terrified rather than attracted by the threatenings of the fiery zealot. Once only did he seem moved by gentler feelings. An aged clergyman, who occasionally visited him from a distant town, was summoned to the bedside of Mrs. Norwood, and when he returned to Mr. Allston’s study he feelingly described the bodily pangs and angelic patience of the gentle sufferer. The frame of the stern man shook as he listened, and tears—such tears as sear rather than relieve the heart—fell from his eyes. It was one of the last struggles of human feeling in the breast of one who vainly fancied himself marked out for a higher than human destiny—one more was yet to come, and then earth held no claim upon his heart.

It was not long delayed, for the time soon arrived when the bell tolled for her whose sorrowful life and early death had been the penalty of a single error. Allston stood beside the coffin and saw within its deep shadow the pale and stony features of the being whom he had loved; and even while his heart smote him as the shortener of her brief and melancholy span of life, he yet nerved himself with the high, stern resolve of one who suffers in the cause of duty. With that cold brow beneath his gaze, he poured forth, from the depths of an agonized heart, a prayer whose solemn eloquence thrilled every listener like a voice from the grave. No sound escaped his lips as the clods of the valley fell rattling on the coffin-lid which shrouded the heart so sorely tried in life, but, in the deep midnight, groans and bitter cries, which rived his stern bosom, were heard issuing from the pastor’s lonely closet.

Mrs. Norwood’s old servant inherited the property in Elmsdale, and one of her first duties was to place in Mr. Allston’s hands the cabinet which she said her mistress had requested might be given him after her death. It contained only Mrs. Norwood’s letter and her lover’s reply, together with a third, in an unknown hand, bearing a black seal. This last was dated some months earlier than the others, and contained the tidings of Mr. Wallingford’s death. He had fallen a victim to his own misdeeds in Italy, and at the moment when Allston had considered himself the subject of a temptation intended to try his strength, the divorced wife was in reality free from every shadow of a tie.

Why had she not disclosed these tidings to her scrupulous lover? Ask rather why she who had twice suffered from man’s wayward nature, and who had escaped from the vices of one only to perish by the too rigid virtues of another, should place trust in any earthly affection? Sick of life, hopeless of future peace, sinking under a fatal disease, she had taken a lesson from the inferior creation:

———

BY EPES SARGENT.

———

I became acquainted with Count Tousky Wousky in Paris somewhere in the year 1836. For some reason or other, which I did not at first understand, he devoted himself chiefly to the society of strangers, and, of all strangers, most affected the company of Americans. At that time there were several fair daughters of the Pilgrims in the gay metropolis, a few Knickerbockers, and at least one descendant of the Huguenot race in the person of Miss P . . . . . of Charleston. In this circle Tousky Wousky aspired to figure. He was a tall, handsome fellow, who had seen perhaps eight and twenty summers, with fine long and dark locks, to say nothing of the most unexceptionable whiskers and imperial. He smiled enchantingly, and the glimpses of his ivory-white teeth between their cushions of well-dyed bristles were quite “killing.” Altogether he was a most personable individual—waltzed charmingly—attitudinized beyond any dancer at the opera-house—and, though he said nothing except in a sort of mute challenge to man and woman to “look and admire,” he carried away more captive hearts than any man of his day.

In French society the count was very generally eschewed. Having no apparent means of livelihood, and being well understood to carry as little in his pocket if possible as in his head, the young men about town were somewhat shy of him, and he was considered not much better than a professed gambler. This would of course never have been known, had it not been that his familiarity was such with the few Americans of wealth who visited Paris during the winter of 1836, that he had made fourteen distinct matrimonial proposals. So susceptible was he, that he fell desperately in love with no less than fourteen of the sex in the same season—compassed fourteen courtships by his languishing and silent adoration—was fourteen times on his knees to fourteen fair creatures varying in age from fourteen to forty—fourteen times was referred to Monsieur, mon père, or to Monsieur, mon frère—had his character submitted to fourteen inquisitions, and was fourteen times politely informed that “his addresses must be discontinued.”

I left Paris, and thought nothing more of Count Tousky Wousky till I was walking some months afterward in Broadway. My friend Lieutenant P . . . . of the army, whom Commodore Elliot will probably recollect, if he recollects having been in the Mediterranean, was my guide-book and index on the occasion, for having been absent some years, the faces of my townsmen and townswomen were quite strange to me.

“P . . . .,” said I; “indicate the individual we have just passed. I have seen him a thousand times, but for the life of me I cannot recollect where or when.”

“That!” exclaimed P . . . .; “I should know from your question, that you were just off the salt water. But how very odd! That man is Count Tousky Wousky. How the deuce did it happen that you, who were so long in Paris, did not know Tousky Wousky?”

“Tousky Wousky!” I rejoined. “That’s his name sure enough—but what is Tousky Wousky doing here?”

“That’s neither your business nor mine. He is the handsomest man on the pavé, and has the entire run of the city, from the eight shilling balls at Tammany to the most brilliant routes in Bond street or Waverley Place.”

“Quite a range, P . . . . But does he patronize Tammany?”

“To be sure he does; and why not? It’s all one to him; and he has got the idea that there is good picking in the Bowery. He has heard of butchers’ families, where good ribs were to be had, and is not sure that he might not get pretty well suited at some wealthy tailor’s. In short, he is in search of a rich wife, and he is not over particular who or what she may be as long as she can plank the pewter.”

“That is to say, P . . . ., he is a penniless adventurer, who cannot find a wife in his own country, and proposes to confer the honor on us. Is that the arrangement?”

“You are not far out of the way in your guess.”

“But how is the individual received?”

“O, with open arms, to be sure. He gave out on his passage, that he was coming to this country to marry a fortune; that he should do it in about six months, and return to Paris.”

“How excessively condescending! And what credentials did he bring with him?”

“O, he carries his credentials on his face. The only necessary passports now to society are whiskers—moustache—imperial! They are the open sesame to the hearts of the ladies.”

“But what says papa?”

“I understand there was a general meeting of all our millionaires, and that they voted him forthwith the freedom of the city, and suggested that he should do the country the honor to marry some one of their daughters.”

“And what said the count?”

“Why, the count said that he would quarter on ’em a while before pitching his tent; that he would dine about with the old prigs, and drink their good wine, and that as soon as he became well assured in regard to the respective fortunes of the young ladies, he would just fling his handkerchief at one of them, and she is expected to drop forthwith into his arms.”

Not long after this conversation, it was my lot to meet Tousky Wousky on several occasions in society. It seemed to be the prevailing belief among those upon whom he condescended to shed the light of his smiles, that he was the sole remaining representative of a noble and ancient family, and that he was visiting the United States solely in pursuit of relaxation from arduous military duties in Algiers. Such was his own story, and such was the story which his defenders believed.

I must plead guilty to never having been able to discover the peculiar charm of the count’s manners and appearance. I had heard much of the air noble, which was said to be his distinguishing trait, but could see nothing but the air puppyish, if I may so characterize a manner of supreme indifference to the comfort and convenience of those around him. In a ball-room, I have seen him extend himself at full length upon a sofa, after a quadrille, and fan himself with his perfumed handkerchief, while dozens of ladies were near in want of a seat. At other times he would place himself astride of a chair, with his face to the back, and his long legs protruded so as to endanger the necks of those, who might venture to step over them. These little liberties were regarded merely as the elegant abandon of one accustomed to the first society of Europe; and instances were cited of a similar aristocratic disregard of conventional decency among certain English noblemen, who had visited the country.

But what seemed to certify the count’s claims to nobility was the erudition he displayed in all that related to gastronomy. Did you ever notice the air of sagacity with which a chicken sips water, cocking her head after every bill full, and apparently passing judgment upon its quality? Of such an act would Tousky Wousky remind you when he took soup. Occasionally his criticisms would be given with a vivacity and esprit, which would excite general surprise. He could tell at a glance the name of the most recondite Parisian pâté. His decisions in regard to entremets, hors d’œuvres, and vol au vents were unimpeachable; and he would discourse upon sole en matelotte Normande with tears in his eyes. There was something earnest and affecting in the count’s manner when he touched upon these topics; whereas when questioned concerning events having relation to his military career, his answers were confused, imperfect and unsatisfactory.

After some months of investigation and hesitation, Tousky Wousky fixed his eyes upon the daughter of a retired tailor of the name of Remnant. Mature deliberation and inquiry convinced him that she was the most eligible of the candidates that had yet been presented to his notice. Old Remnant had commenced life as a journeyman—sat cross-legged upon the counter from his fourteenth to his twenty-first year—then opened a sort of slop-shop somewhere in Maiden Lane—married his master’s only daughter—succeeded to his business and wealth—and accumulated a large fortune.

Heaven forbid that I should breathe a flippant word against a vocation, in which I have encountered more than one ornament to humanity—men, in whom the Christian virtues of patience and forbearance were signally developed; of whose capacities for long suffering I could relate the most affecting instances. But I blame Remnant, not for having been a tailor, but for his foolish ambition in after life to sink all memorials of the shop, and launch into fashionable life. We all remember the story of the English member of Parliament, who, on being twitted by some sprig of nobility with having been bred a tailor, retorted, “if the gentleman himself had been so bred he would have been a tailor still.” The reply was as just as it was spirited, and showed a noble pride on the part of the speaker, in comparing his past with his present position. Remnant began by discontinuing his annual tribute to the Tailors’ Charitable Fund. Then he neglected to attend their annual ball at Tammany; and finally he cut his old associates in trade when he met them in Broadway—visited Europe, returned, built an elegant house—and set up a carriage with a liveried driver and footman. In all these procedures I have reason to believe that he was mainly influenced by his wife, whose fashionable furor was inextinguishable.

Through his endorsements for certain “genteel” speculators, Remnant contrived to get introduced with his family into what they believed to be the “fashionable circles.” The daughter, Sophia Ann, was a pretty, good-natured, frank, and unpretending girl, who, having received a fair education, bore her part extremely well in gay life, and betrayed few symptoms of the character of her parentage. Rumor whispered that she entertained a secret penchant for young Allen, a clerk in Flash, Fleetwood & Co.'s, establishment in Broadway. It was noticed that she always made her purchases at that shop, and frequently she remained much longer in conversation than was absolutely necessary for the closing of her bargains. Where was the propriety too of negotiating for a pair of gloves or a skein of silk in so very low and mysterious a tone of voice? It was suspicious, to say the least of it.

The ecstasy of Mrs. Remnant when Tousky Wousky condescended to ask an introduction to herself and daughter was beyond all reasonable bounds; and when, the next morning, he honored them with a call, it was as if she and all her family had received a brevet of nobility.

“Who knows, Sophia Ann,” said she after the count had taken his departure, “who knows but the count has been struck with your appearance, and intends making proposals?”

“And if he does, mamma,” replied Sophy, “you may be very sure he will propose in vain, so far as I am concerned. A vulgar, coarse, ill-mannered fop! Did you notice the crumbs of bread upon his odious moustaches?”

“A very good proof of his gentility, my dear. It shows that he has just breakfasted. I am amazed at your language, Sophia Ann.”

“Indeed I thoroughly detest the fellow. I hope you will not invite him to the house.”

“Indeed and indeed I shall, Miss Pert. I see the drift of your objections. You have taken a fancy to that low-bred fellow, Allen, and would disgrace your family by an unequal match. But let me advise you to beware how you encourage any such presumption. Your father is as determined as I am to cut you off with a shilling should you ever marry without our consent.”

Here Sophia rose, and, with her handkerchief to her eyes, left the room, while Mrs. Remnant sat down and penned a note to Tousky Wousky, asking the honor of his company at dinner the next day.

In less than two weeks after the count’s introduction he proposed for Sophia Ann. The mother was as propitious as could have been desired, and the father, who was swayed in all things by the superior energy of his wife, acquiesced on this occasion. Tousky Wousky supposed that all the essential preliminaries were now settled, and that it only remained to fix a day for the marriage ceremony. He had omitted, however, one little form. He had not yet asked the young lady herself whether she had any objection to becoming his bride. Dire was his dismay when, on popping the question, she rejected him point blank, without hesitation, reservation or equivocation. He twirled his moustaches, and showed his teeth in what was meant for a smile irresistible. Strange to say, Sophia Ann did not rush into his arms. He knelt and rolled up his eyes after the most approved Parisian fashion. The obdurate, intractable girl laughed in his face. He rose and attempted to clasp her waist and kiss her. Sophia upset a heavy piano-stool upon his shins, and, with a face burning with indignant blushes, left the room.

Tousky Wousky was completely nonplussed. The idea of being rejected by a “native,” one, too, who had never visited Paris, had not entered into his calculations. He looked in the glass—surveyed his incomparable whiskers, and glanced at his blameless legs.

“Sacrè! The girl must be crazy!” muttered Tousky Wousky, as he finished his examination of his person.

He laid his case immediately before the parents of the refractory young lady; alluded very pointedly to the numerous countesses and baronesses who were perishing for him in France, Germany, and Italy—swore that he had never known what love was till he had met Sophia Ann—and concluded by avowing the romantic determination to depart instantly for Niagara, jump into a skiff just above the rapids, loosen it from the shore, and, with folded arms, glide down over the cataract into the “peaceful arms of oblivion.”

The parents of Sophia Ann were much shocked at this tragic menace; and the mother declared that the cruel girl should be brought to her senses—it wasn’t probable she would ever have such another chance of becoming a countess—and marry Tousky Wousky she should! And off the old lady started to enforce her commands in person. Sophia Ann was not to be found. The fact was, she had just discovered that she was in want of a quantity of muslin, and knowing of no place in the city where she could procure it of a quality more to her satisfaction, she hastened to the store of Flash, Fleetwood & Co., and had a long consultation with the handsome clerk.

“Never mind, Sophy dear,” said Allen, after he had heard the story of her persecutions, “I have a plan for unmasking him. Do not suppose that I have been idle since you told me of your mother’s designs.”

And Sophy tripped home and listened very resignedly to a long lecture from her mother, upon the impropriety of young ladies presuming to decide for themselves upon matrimonial questions.

One of the consequences of Allen’s plan ensued the very day after these events.

Tousky Wousky was parading Broadway in all his magnificence. The African king, whose principal escape from nudity consisted in a gold-edged chapeau bras, never moved among his fellows with a more complacent feeling of superiority than Tousky Wousky experienced as he strutted across Chambers street toward the Astor House. His forehead was contracted in a superb and scornful frown—his whiskers and moustaches looked black as night—and his half-closed eyes seemed as if they deemed it an act of condescension on their part to open upon the works of the Creator. Tousky Wousky swung his cane, and looked neither to the right nor to the left, except when he bowed to some envied female acquaintance. As for that highly respectable portion of the human race, the males, the count rarely condescended to recognize their existence. He passed them by with supreme indifference. Had he known how many consultations there had been as to the propriety of knocking him down, perhaps he would have amended his conduct in this respect.

On the occasion, at which my narrative had now arrived, the count was interrupted in his promenade by an individual, gaily but not fastidiously dressed, who accosted him in the most familiar manner.

“Well met, Philippe!” cried the stranger, holding out his hand.

“You are mistaken in the person, sir,” said Tousky Wousky, drawing himself up, and attempting to look magnificently dignified.

“None of your nonsense, Philippe,” returned the stranger; “don’t you remember your old fellow-artist, Alphonse? Of course you do. Come⁠—”

“Out of the way, fellow, or I will demolish you with my cane.”

“Be civil, Philippe, and acknowledge me, or I will pull off your whiskers here in Broadway.”

This threat seemed to operate forcibly upon the count, for, extending his hand and striking an attitude, he exclaimed, “Alphonse! why how the devil did you get here?”

“Hush! don’t call me Alphonse. I am Count Deflamzi.”

“The deuce you are! Why, I am a count, too.”

“So I supposed. How do you get on?”

“Brilliantly—and you? When did you arrive?”

“By the last Cunard steamer. Is it possible you haven’t seen me announced in the newspapers?”

“I never read them. I consider newspapers a bore.”

“Ha! I understand. Beau Shatterly thought the same of parish registers—‘a d—d impertinent invention!’ So they are—as thus; Beware of imposition: A scoundrel calling himself Count Tousky Wousky, but whose real name is⁠—”

“Hush! Are you mad?”

“Ah! Philippe! Philippe! The chief cook at Vevay’s always used to say you would come to the gallows—eh?”

As he revived the recollection of this pleasant vaticination, Count Deflamzi poked the end of his cane at one of Tousky Wousky’s ribs, in a manner which partook more of the familiar than the dignified. Poor Tousky Wousky bent his body to escape the blow, while he looked the picture of despair—the more so as at that moment old Remnant’s carriage drew up near the curb-stone, and Sophy’s mother put her head out of the window to speak to her intended son-in-law.

“Good-bye, Alphonse; I will see you again soon,” said Tousky Wousky, endeavoring to shake off his unwelcome friend, and darting towards the carriage.

Deflamzi followed him, and after permitting him to greet Mrs. Remnant, and receive from her some intelligence in regard to Sophia Ann, he pulled Tousky Wousky by the skirt, and said; “My dear fellow, this is really embarrassing. Why don’t you introduce me to the lady?”

“Ahem! Blast the—Oh, yes—certainly—Mrs. Remnant, Count Deflamzi—Count Deflamzi, Mrs. Remnant.”

“Glad to see you, old lady,” said Deflamzi; and then, at a loss for a remark to show his quality, he added—“What a devilish vulgar country this is of yours!”

“An eccentric devil!” whispered Tousky Wousky in Mrs. Remnant’s ear; “who has a plenty of money and thinks he has a right to abuse every thing and every body.”

“I am most happy, count, to make your acquaintance,” said Mrs. Remnant, quite overlooking the puppy’s impertinence in her delight at being seen conversing with a couple of counts in Broadway.

“The pleasure of meeting Mrs. Remnant to-day is as unexpected as it is gratifying,” said Deflamzi. “I had intended asking my old friend Rufsky Fusky here, long since to introduce me, but⁠—”

“Rufsky Fusky!”

“A nick-name, by which he used to call me when we were boys,” said poor Tousky Wousky hastily, and then, in an aside, he muttered to Deflamzi; “Curse you, Alphonse! I wish you would call me by my right name.”

“What is it?”

“Tousky Wousky.”

“Ah, yes! pardon me,” said Deflamzi; and then, turning to the old lady in the coach, he continued; “as I was saying, Madam, I had intended asking my old friend, Whisky Frisky, to introduce me before, but the good fortune of⁠—”

“Whisky Frisky!”

“You see he will have his joke, Madam,” said Tousky Wousky, making a painful effort to smile.

“Ha, yes! A wag, I see. Well, I like pleasantry.”

“What I was about to say,” resumed Deflamzi, “simply was, that the felicitous accident which has made me acquainted with Mrs. Remnant, enables me to extend in person an invitation, which I had intended sending through our excellent friend Rowdy Powdy. Shall I have the honor of seeing you and your charming daughter, with Mr. Remnant of course, at a small dinner party, which I give at the Globe to-morrow to our distinguished friend here, Count Hoaxy Folksy?”

Mrs. Remnant was too much fluttered and flattered by this mark of respect to pay any attention to Deflamzi’s eccentric perversions of his friend’s name. She eagerly accepted the invitation; and Deflamzi took his leave of her and Tousky Wousky, with a significant hint to the latter, that if he did not come too he should be exposed.

“Dinner will be on the table at six. Au revoir!” said Deflamzi, bowing grotesquely, and strutting down Broadway.

“How vastly genteel!” thought Mrs. Remnant.

The next day, at the appointed hour, a select party, consisting of the two counts, the Remnant family, Mr. Allen, and half a dozen fashionable young men, whom Tousky Wousky remembered to have seen frequently in society, met in one of Blancard’s pleasant parlors. Mrs. Remnant was a little puzzled at encountering Allen; but, remembering that Deflamzi was an “eccentric devil,” she concluded it was all right. The good lady was placed at one end of the table, and Deflamzi took his seat at the other. Tousky Wousky and Sophia Ann sat opposite to each other, near the centre. Soup was handed round in the midst of an animated conversation, in which Deflamzi, however, did not join. His manner toward all but Tousky Wousky seemed singularly constrained and respectful.

As the soup was being passed round, a keen eye might have detected a piece of legerdemain practised by one of the waiters, in serving Tousky Wousky. Instead of giving him the plate, which Deflamzi had filled from the tureen, another was placed before him, which seemed to have been whisked in a mysterious manner from a side-table, unnoticed of course by the unsuspecting count.

The minute Tousky Wousky tasted his soup, he dropped his spoon with a face expressive of the deepest disgust.

“What is the matter, count?” asked Sophia Ann, while a mischievous twinkle was swimming in her dark eyes.

“Is it possible you can relish that soup?” inquired Tousky Wousky, regarding her with amazement as she swallowed spoonful after spoonful.

“It is very good, is it not?” said Sophy, looking the very picture of sweet simplicity.

Tousky Wousky took another spoonful, then suddenly seized a tumbler of iced water to drown the recollection of the nauseous compound. Turning to Deflamzi, he said, “What do you call this—stuff, my dear count?”

“It is Soup à la Julien to be sure, and very good.”

“Soup à la Julien!” exclaimed Tousky Wousky, “I should call it soup à la swill-pail. I never tasted anything half so bad. Here, garçon! take this plate away, and tell the cook I shall have him indicted for an attempt to poison.”

“Oui, monsieur.”

The dinner was a good dinner, and Tousky Wousky was suffered to finish the remainder of it in peace. Just before the dessert was introduced, Count Deflamzi was called out by a servant, and begging to be excused for a few minutes, quitted the apartment. He had not been gone long when the same servant re-entered and informed Tousky Wousky, that the cook, to whom he had sent the message touching the soup, desired to speak with him.

“Show him in! show him in!” exclaimed several voices. “Ten to one, he means to challenge you, Tousky Wousky, for abusing his soup. Ha! ha! ha!”

Tousky Wousky began to look pale, but tried to laugh it off, and said, “Nonsense! I can’t see the fellow now. Tell him to call on me at my hotel.”

“That won’t do. Show him in, garçon, show him in!” cried Tom Cawley, who was Allen’s principal ally in the plot.

Here the cook burst into the room. He had on a white cap and a white apron. A white apron was thrown over his shoulder, and his hands were white with flour.

“Alphonse!” exclaimed Tousky Wousky, starting up with dismay, as he gazed on the once familiar apparition.

“Count Deflamzi!” ejaculated Mrs. Remnant. “This is indeed eccentric.”

“No more Count Deflamzi, madame, than this is Count Tousky, but plain Alphonse Fricandeau, gastronomical artist, or in vulgar language, cook, from Paris.”

“What! isn’t he a count?”

“No, madame; he is a cook!”

“A cook! my salts, Mr. Remnant! Quick, you stupid man!”

“I appeal to the company,” said Tousky Wousky, recovering himself, “Madame, this is a conspiracy. I can produce letters from the first noblemen in London—”

“The company shall soon be satisfied on that point,” said Monsieur Fricandeau. “Eugene, request the attendance of Lord Morvale.”

At the sound of this name, Tousky Wousky sank into his chair quite unmanned. Lord Morvale soon entered, and after bowing to the rest of the company, turned to Tousky Wousky, and said, “At your old tricks, Philippe! Rogue! Have I found you at last?”

“Count Tousky Wousky a rogue! What does it all mean?” asked old Mr. Remnant, who could not well comprehend what was going on.

Lord Morvale turned to the company, and said, “This fellow, ladies and gentlemen, who calls himself Count Tousky Wousky, was for two years chief cook in my establishment, and I will do him the justice to say that his talents in that vocation are truly respectable. But it seems that he had a soul above pans and pâtés, and one day I found that he had broken open my desk, taken from it some money and letters, and decamped. I afterwards met him in Paris, but he was so skilfully disguised that I did not recognize him; and it was not till Monsieur Fricandeau apprised me that Count Tousky Wousky was my old cook in a new character, that I suspected the fact.”

This revelation was listened to without surprise by all except Mr. and Mrs. Remnant. No better proof of its truth was needed than Tousky Wousky’s abject appearance. Tom Cawley took Lord Morvale aside and whispered a few words in his ear, after which his Lordship came forward, and addressed Mr. and Mrs. Remnant as follows; “Any legal process against this fellow would from recent events be calculated to make public certain domestic occurrences in your family, the discussion of which might prove annoying. I will, therefore, consent to refrain from molesting him so you will consent to secure your daughter’s happiness by giving her to the man of her choice, and one who appears to be every way worthy of her preference. I allude to Mr. Allen, and I take this opportunity of inviting myself to his wedding.”

The idea of having a live lord present at the nuptials of her daughter, amply consoled Mrs. Remnant for the loss of Tousky Wousky as a son-in-law. It was not long before her visions were fulfilled. Lord Morvale gave away the bride; and a proud day it was for the race of the Remnants when that memorable event took place.

As for Count Tousky Wousky, I take this opportunity of cautioning the public against him. He is still prowling about the country under assumed names, and intends figuring at our principal watering places before the summer is over. He is quite confident that he will ultimately succeed in picking up a Yankee heiress, and I should not be surprised any day to hear of the fulfilment of his designs. The recent example of Captain S⁠—— has inspired him with new hopes.

It is Tousky Wousky’s intention to visit Portland while the warm weather lasts. To my certain knowledge he carries letters from his near kinsman, General Count Bratish Eliovitch, to my gifted and open-hearted friend, John Neal. Before Mr. Neal lends him his pocket-book and his protection, I beg that he will peruse a letter in regard to the character of the count’s endorser, from our minister at Paris, Mr. Cass, to Mr. Fairfield, Governor of Maine.

———

BY S. G. GOODRICH.

———

———

BY THE HON. MRS. NORTON.

———

———

BY ANN S. STEPHENS.

———

It was a deceitful thing, but my day of trouble dawned with a promise of uncommon enjoyment. It was our weekly holiday, and I looked from my bed-chamber window—merry as a bird, and peculiarly alive to the beauties of a bright June morning. The sky was warm, blue and cloudless, the flowers full of sweetness and lying with the dew upon them in its utmost abundance. The birds were all brimful of melody and the very gravel walk looked cool and clean with a shower that had swept over it during the night.

The sun was just up and we were ready with our bonnets on—my school-mate and I—for Colonel M. had promised us a ride and his phaeton was at the door.

“Come—come, are you ready,” exclaimed Maria, bounding into my room with her hat on one side—for she had been taking a run after her mamma’s dog, Pink, in the garden, and Pink had led her a race through a raspberry thicket which made a change of slippers necessary, and had displaced her bonnet as I have said.

“Come, Sophy, come, Tom has driven to the door—papa is in the hall and the horses are as restless as two wild eagles—nonsense, don’t take that great red shawl, the morning is beautiful—Come⁠—”

Before Maria finished speaking she had run down stairs, through the hall, and stood on the door step looking back impatiently for myself and her father, who was very tranquilly drawing on his gloves as he chatted to his wife through a door of the parlor where she still lingered by the breakfast table.

There is no enjoyment like riding, whether on horseback or in a carriage, providing your equipage be in good taste, your companions agreeable and the day fine. We were fortunate in all these. There was not a lighter or more beautiful phaeton in New Haven than that of Colonel M., and his horses—you never saw such animals in harness!—their jetty coats, arched necks and gazelle-like eyes were the very perfection of brute beauty. Never were creatures more perfectly trained. The play of their delicate hoofs was like the dancing of a fine girl, and they obeyed the slightest motion of the rein to a marvel.

As to my companions, they were unexceptionable, as the old ladies say; Maria was a lovely creature, not decidedly handsome, but good and delicate, with an eye like a wet violet. Her father was just the kind of man to give consequence to a brace of happy girls in their teens—not young enough to be mistaken for a brother or lover, nor old enough to check our mirth with wise saws and sharp reprimands—he was a careless, good-hearted man, as the world goes, in the prime of his good looks, with his black hair just beginning to be threaded with silver and the calm dignity of a gentleman fitting him like a garment. He always preferred the society of persons younger than himself, and encouraged us in an outbreak of mirth or mischief which made him one of the most pleasant protectors in the world, though, if the truth must be told, a serenade or so by two very interesting students of the Sophomore class, who played the guitar and flute with exceeding sweetness, and who had tortured those instruments a full hour the previous night, while looking unutterable things at our chamber windows, had just given us a first idea that gray hairs might be dispensed with, and the companion of a ride quite as agreeable. Nay, we had that very morning, before Pink deluded Maria into the garden, consulted about the possibility of dislodging the colonel from his seat in the phaeton in favor of the flute amateur, for my friend very thoughtfully observed that she was certain the interesting youth would be delighted to drive us out—if we could find the carriage, for, poor fellows, they never had much credit at the livery stables—but Colonel M. had something of Lady Gay Spanker’s disposition, he liked to “keep the ribbons,” and Maria, with all her boldness, had not courage to desire him to resign them to younger hands. I must say that the colonel—though her father—was a noble looking figure in an open carriage. There was not a better dressed man about town—his black coat, of the finest cloth, satin vest and plaited ruffles, were the perfection of good taste, and his driving would have made the aforesaid Lady Gay half crazy with envy; he would have scorned a horse that could not take his ten miles an hour, and without a quickened breath, too. Colonel M. had his imperfections and was a little overbearing and aristocratic in his habits, but he was a kind man and loved his wife, child, and horses—or rather his horses, child and wife, with a degree of affection which overbalanced a thousand such faults; he was proud of his house, of his gardens and hot-houses, but prouder of his stables, and would have been inclined to fox hunting if such a thing had ever been heard of in dear old Connecticut. He was very kind also to a certain wayward, idle, teasing young school girl, who shall be nameless, but who has many a pleasant and grateful memory connected with his residence.

I had forgotten—we were seated and the horses pawing the ground, impatient to be off. Black Tom, who had been patting their necks, withdrew his hold on the bits and away we went. It was like riding in a railroad car, so swiftly the splendid animals cleared the ground, with the sun glistening on their black coats and over the silver studded harness as they dashed onward. It was indeed a glorious morning, and to ride through the streets of New Haven at sunrise is like dashing through the gravel walks of a garden, for there is scarcely a dwelling which is not surrounded by a little wilderness of trees and shrubbery. The breath of a thousand flowering thickets was abroad, the sun lay twinkling amid their foliage, and the dewy grass with the shadows sleeping upon it looked so cool and silent, one longed to take a volume of Wordsworth and dream away the morning there—we dashed forward to the college grounds, by the Tontine and into Elm street, where we drove at a foot pace to enjoy the shade of the tall elms where they interlace, canopying the whole street with the stirring foliage, and weaving a magnificent arch through which the sunshine came flickering with broken and unsteady light. How deliciously cool it was with the dew still bathing the bright leaves and the long branches waving like green banners over us!

The colleges, too, with their extensive common formed a beautiful picture, the noble buildings threw their deep shadows on the grass, while here and there a group of young men—poets and statesmen of the future—were grouped picturesquely beneath the old trees—some chatting and laughing merrily, with neglected books lying at their feet, and others sitting apart poring over some open volume, while the pure breath of morning came and softly turned the leaves for them. As we drove by a party sitting beneath a tree close by the paling, Maria stole her hand round to mine, and with a nod toward the group and a roguish dimple in her cheek, gave me to understand that our serenaders were of the party. They saw us, and instantly there was a sly flourishing of white cambric handkerchiefs and—it was not our fault, we tried to look the other way—a superlative waste of kisses wafted toward us from hands which had discoursed such sweet music beneath our windows the night before. When we looked back on turning the corner—for of course we were anxious that the young gentlemen should not be too demonstrative—they had moved to another side of the tree and stood leaning against it in very graceful attitudes, gazing after our phaeton from the shadows of their Leghorn hats. The hats were lifted, the white cambric began to flutter again—our horses sprang forward, and on we dashed over the Hotchkisstown road. We stopped at that gem of a village, a pretty cluster of houses nestled under the shelving cliffs of East Rock. We clambered up the mountain, searched over its broken and picturesque features, and gazed down on the Arcadian scenery below with a delight which I can never forget; the town lying amid its forest of trees, the glittering Sound, the line of Long Island stretching along the horizon, and the green meadows and pretty village at our feet, lay within our glance, and human eye never dwelt upon a scene more lovely.

It was late in the morning when we drove through the town again—our horses in a foam—our cheeks glowing with exercise and our laps full of wild blossoms.

“Oh, mamma, we have had a delightful drive,” exclaimed Maria, as she sprang upon the door step, scattering a shower of wild lilies over the pavement in her haste to leave the phaeton. “Take care, Sophia, take care, or you will tread on my flowers,” and with this careless speech she ran up the steps happy and cheerful as a summer bird. I was about to follow her when Mrs. M. detained me long enough to say that some persons from S——, the town which contained my own loved home, were waiting for me in the hall.

For the first time in my life I had spent three months from my father’s hearth-stone, and could have welcomed the dog who had once passed the threshold of my home, been patted by my sisters, or who had looked into the face of my mother—as an old friend. Without staying to inquire who my visiters could be, I went eagerly forward, my hand half extended in welcome, and with all the dear feelings of home stirring about my heart. It certainly was a damper—the sight of that lean gossiping little man, our town miller—with the marks of his occupation whitening his hatband, lying in the seams of his coat, and marking the wrinkles in his boots—a personage who had ground some fifty bushels of wheat for my father, during his lifetime, but with whom I had never known the honor of exchanging a dozen consecutive words on that or any other subject. There he sat, very diminutive and exceedingly perpendicular on one of the hall chairs, with his feet drawn under him, and his large bell-crowned hat standing on the carpet by his side. Planted against the wall, and on a direct file with himself, sat his better half, one of the most superlatively silly and talkative patterns of humanity that I have ever been in contact with. In order to be a little genteel—as she called it—Mrs. Johnson had honored the visit with her best gown, a blazing calico with an immense pattern running over it, which, with a Leghorn bonnet lined with pink and trimmed with blue, white silk gloves much too small for her hands, and morocco shoes ready to burst with the wealth of feet they contained, composed the tout ensemble, which few persons could have looked upon once without feeling particularly desirous for a second survey. The appearance of Mr. Johnson and Mrs. Johnson was vulgar enough in all conscience without the aid of their hopeful progeny, in the shape of two little Johnsons, with freckled faces and sun-burnt locks, who sat by the side of their respectable mamma, in jackets of blue cotton, striped trowsers much too short, and with their dear little feet perched on the chair-rounds squeezing their two unfortunate wool hats between their knees and gazing with open mouths through the drawing-room door. It certainly was an exquisite group for the halls of an aristocratic and fastidious man like Colonel M.; I dared not look toward him as he stood giving some directions to Tom, but went forward with an uncomfortable suspicion that the negro was exhibiting rather more of his teeth than was exactly necessary in his master’s presence.

The fear of ridicule was strong in my heart, but other and more powerful feelings were beating there. My visiters were vulgar but honest people, and I could not treat them coldly while the sweet impulses and affectionate associations their coming had given rise to were swarming in my bosom. They might be rude, but had they not lately trod the places of my childhood? Their faces were coarse and inanimate, but they were familiar ones, and as such I welcomed them; for they brought to my heart sweet thoughts of a happy home. I went forward and shook hands with them all, notwithstanding a glimpse I caught of Maria as she paused on the stairs, her roguish eyes absolutely laughing with merriment as she witnessed the scene.

An hour went by, and the Johnsons were still sitting in Colonel M.’s hall. I had gained all the information regarding my friends which they could communicate. It was drawing near the dinner hour, and, in truth, I had become exceedingly anxious for my visiters to depart. But there sat Mrs. Johnson emitting a continued current of very small talk about her currant bushes, her luck in making soap, and the very distressing mortality that had existed among her chickens—she became pathetic on this subject—six of her most promising fledglings had perished under an old cart during a thunder-storm, and as many goslings had been dragged lifeless from her husband’s mill-dam, where they had insisted upon swimming before they were sufficiently fledged. The account was very touching; peculiarly so from a solemn moral which Mrs. J. contrived to deduct from the sad and untimely fate of her poultry—which moral, according to the best of my memory, was, that if the chickens had obeyed their mother and kept under the parent wing, the rain had not killed them, and if the goslings had not put forth their swimming propensities too early, they might, that blessed moment, have been enjoying the coolness of the mill-dam in all the downy majesty of half-grown geese. Mrs. Johnson stopped the hundredth part of a second to take breath and branched off into a dissertation on the evils of disobedience in general, and the forwardness and docility of her two boys in particular. Then, drawing all her interesting topics to a focus, she took boys, geese, chickens, currant bushes, &c., &c., and bore them rapidly onward in the stream of her inveterate loquacity. One might as well have attempted to pour back the waters rushing from her husband’s mill-dam, when the flood-gates were up, as to check the motion of her unmanageable tongue. The clatter of his whole flour establishment must have been a poetical sound compared to the incessant din of meaningless words that rolled from it. Another good hour passed away, and the volubility of that tongue was increasing, while my politeness and patience, it must be owned, were decreasing in an exact ratio.

Maria had dressed for dinner, and I caught a glimpse of her bright face peeping roguishly over the banisters. Mrs. M. came into the hall, looked gravely toward us, and walked into the garden with a step rather more dignified than usual.

“Dear me, is that the lady you are staying with?” said Mrs. Johnson, cutting short the thread of her discourse, “how sorry I am that I didn’t ask her how she did, she must think we country people hav’n’t got no bringing up.”

Without replying to Mrs. Johnson, I seized the opportunity to inquire at what house they stayed, and innocently proposed calling on them after dinner.

“Oh,” said the little man, with a most insinuating smile, “we calculate to put up with you. Didn’t think we were the kind o’ people to slight old friends—ha?”

“With me—old friends!” I was thunderstruck, and replied, I fear with some lack of politeness, that Colonel M. did not keep a hotel.

“Wal, I guess I knowd that afore, but I’d jist as lives pay him my money as any body else.”

This was too much—I cast a furtive look at the banister; Maria’s handkerchief was at her mouth, and her face sparkled all over with suppressed mirth. Before I could answer Mr. Johnson’s proposition, Colonel M. came into the ball, and the modest little gentleman very coolly informed him of the high honor intended his house.

Colonel M. glanced at my burning face—made his most solemnly polite bow, and informed my tormentor that he should entertain any visiter of mine with great pleasure.

I was about to disclaim all Mr. Johnson’s pretensions to hospitality, backed by an acquaintance with myself, when he interrupted me with⁠—

“Wal, that’s jest what I was a saying to my woman here as we came along. Wife, says I, never put up to a tavern when you can go any where else. I’d jest as lives pay my money to a private as to a tavern-keeper; they’re expensive fellers and allers grumble if one brings his own horse provender.”

The colonel stared at him a moment, then coldly saying “he was very welcome,” passed on.

“What a polite gentleman the colonel is!” ejaculated the little miller, rubbing his hands together as if he had been kneading a batch of his own flour, and turning triumphantly to his wife, who looked as pleased as if she had just heard of the resuscitation of her six lamented goslings, chickens inclusive.

“Come now,” she said, jumping up and tying the strings of her bonnet, “let’s go down to the salt water and eat our dinner on the grass. Run up and get your things, Miss Sophy—now come to think on it, I s’pose it wouldn’t be the genteel thing if we didn’t ask the colonel and his wife and that young girl that just come in with you—but the wagon is not large enough to hold us all without husband there can find a board to put along the front for an extra seat.”

I heard a sound of smothered laughter from the stairs, and hastened to relieve Mrs. Johnson from her dilemma, by declining her invitation for myself, while I informed her that Colonel M. expected company, and I was certain could not benefit by her politeness.

“Wal, then,” said Mr. Johnson, setting down his bell-crowned hat—“It don’t make much difference whether we eat our dinner here or on the sea-side. So, if Miss Sophy and the rest on ’em can’t go, s’posing we give it up and go to the museum.”

This plan was less endurable than the other. I knew that company would drop in after dinner, and the very thought of introducing Mr. Johnson and Mrs. Johnson, with both the little Johnsons, to my friends was enough to drive me into the salt water, as they called it, if those interesting persons had given me no other alternative. And then to be dragged to the museum with them! I accepted the sea-side dinner in a fit of desperation, and ran up stairs to get ready, half angry with the droll face which Maria made up for my benefit as I passed her in the upper hall.

I put on a calash, folded a large shawl about me, and, with a parasol in my hand, was descending the stairs when I heard Mr. J. observe to his wife that he had felt pretty sure of managing affairs all the time, and that he was ready to bet any thing Colonel M. wouldn’t charge for what little trouble they should be. Mrs. Johnson pinched his arm unmercifully when I appeared in sight, which gentle admonition broke off his calculation of expenses and sent him in search of his equipage. He returned with a rickety one-horse wagon—a rusty harness, tied by pieces of rope in sundry places, which covered an old chesnut horse, whose organs of starvation were most astonishingly developed over his whole body. Into this crazy vehicle Mr. Johnson handed us, with a ludicrous attempt at gallantry which made the old horse turn his head with a rueful look to see what his master could be about. The wagon contained but one springless seat, and where we should find accommodations for five persons was a subject of mystery to me. I however quietly took my portion of the seat; Mrs. Johnson, whose dimensions required rather more than half, placed herself by my side, her husband grasped the reins and crowded his diminutive proportions between us, while the dear little boys stood up behind and held by the back of our seat. Mr. Johnson gave his reins a jerk and flourished a whip—with a very short and white hickory handle, a long lash, and a thong of twisted leather fastened on for a snapper—with peculiar grace over the drooping head of our steed. The poor animal gathered up his limbs and walked down the street, dragging us after him, with great majesty and decorum. We must have been a magnificent exhibition to the pedestrians as we passed down State street, Mr. Johnson shaking the reins and cheruping the poor horse along—his wife exclaiming at every thing she saw, and those interesting boys standing behind us very upright, with their wool hats set far back on their heads, and they pointing and staring about as only very young gentlemen from the country can stare and point, while I, poor victim, sat crouching behind Mr. J., my calash drawn to its utmost extension over my face, and my parasol directed with a reference to the side-walk rather than to the sun. I was young, sensitive, and perhaps a little too keenly alive to the ridiculous, and if I did not feel exactly like a criminal going to execution, I did feel as if some old lady’s fruit stall had been robbed and I was the suspected person.

When about three miles from town, we left our equipage, whose rattle had given me a headache, and, after walking along the shore awhile, Mrs. J. selected a spot of fresh grass, shaded by a clump of junipers, where she commenced preparations for dinner. First, with the assistance of her two boys, she dragged forth a basket that had been stowed away under the wagon seat—then a table-cloth, white as a snow drift, was spread on the grass—next appeared sundry bottles of cider and currant wine, with cakes of various kinds and dimensions, but mostly spiced with caraway seed. To these were added a cold tongue, a loaf of exquisite bread, a piece of cheese, a cup of butter covered with a cool cabbage leaf, and, last of all, a large chicken-pie, its edge pinched into regular scollops by Mrs. Johnson’s two thumbs, and the centre ornamented by the striking resemblance of a broken leaf, cut by the same ingenious artist in the original paste.

Truly a day is like a human life, seldom all clouds or entire sunshine. The most gloomy is not all darkness, nor the most happy all light. When the remembrance of that sea-side dinner, under the juniper bushes, comes over me, I must acknowledge that my day of tribulation—with all its provoking incidents and petty vexations—had its hour of respite, if not of enjoyment. There we sat upon the grass in a refreshing shade, with nobody to look on as we cut the tender crust of that pie, while the cider and the currant wine sparkled in the two glasses which we circulated very promiscuously from lip to lip, while the cool wind came sweeping over us from the water, and the sunshine, that else had been too powerful, played and glittered every where about. A few yards from our feet the foam-crested waves swept the beach with their dash of perpetual music. The Sound, studded by a hundred snowy sails, lay out-stretched before us. Far on our right spread an extensive plain, with cattle grazing peacefully over it, and here and there a dwelling or a cluster of trees flinging their shadows on the grass. On our left was the town, with its houses rising, like palaces of snow, among the overhanging trees; its taper steeples pencilled in regular lines against the sky, and a picturesque extremity of the Green Mountains looming in the distance.

It cannot be denied that I rather enjoyed that dinner under the juniper bushes, and was not half so much shocked by the jocund conversation and merry laughter of my companions as became the dignity of a young lady whose “Lines to a Rose-bud” had been extensively copied through several remote papers of the Union, and who had been twice serenaded by her own words, set to most excruciating music, but I hope the refined reader will excuse my fault. It happened several years ago, and I am to this day a little inclined to be social with good-natured people, even those who are not particularly literary or intelligent. They do not expect you to talk books because you write them—never torment you with a discussion of “woman’s rights,” equality of the sexes, and like popular absurdities—or force you into a detestation of all books with quotations, which you would rejoice to think were “unwritten music.”

The clocks were striking four when we drove into town again, much as we had left it except the basket of fragments under our seat. When we reached Colonel M’s. door there was a sound of voices in the drawing-room, and I knew that company was there. I entered the hall, and with a palpitating heart persuaded Mrs. Johnson to accompany me to my chamber, leaving her husband to take care of himself, and devoutly hoping that he would find his way into the garden, or stables, or any where except the drawing-room.

I entered my chamber resolved to entertain Mrs. Johnson so pleasantly that she would be content to remain there. I opened the window and pointed out one of the most lovely prospects that eye ever dwelt upon, but she was busy with the pink bows and cotton lace border of her cap, and preferred the reflection of her own stout figure in the looking-glass to any the open sash could afford. When her toilet was finished, I was even preposterous enough to offer a book, but, after satisfying herself that it contained no pictures, she laid it down and walked toward the door. As a last resource, I flung open my wardrobe, as if by accident, and that had its effect; she came back with the avidity of a great child, handled every article, and was very particular to inquire the price of each garment, and the number of yards it contained. How I wished that Queen Elizabeth had but left me heiress to her nine hundred dresses. Had she been so thoughtful, it is highly probable that Mrs. Johnson would have contented herself in my room till morning; but, alas! my wardrobe was only extensive enough to detain her half an hour, and when that failed she grew stubborn and insisted on going down.

I followed Mrs. J. down stairs and into the drawing-room with the resolution of a martyr. She paused at the door, dropped three sublime curtsies, put on one of her superlatively silly smiles, and entered, with a little mincing step and her cap ribands all in a flutter. Had I been called upon to select the five persons whom I should have been most unwilling to meet in my irksome predicament, it would have been the two beautiful girls and three highly bred students of the law-school whom I found in a group near the centre table. Maria was with them, but looking almost ill-tempered with annoyance. When she saw Mrs. Johnson, the crimson that burned on her usually pale cheek spread over her face and neck, while, spite of shame and anger, her mouth dimpled almost to a laugh as that lady performed her curtsies at the door. Maria gave one glance of comic distress at my face, which was burning till it pained me, and another toward the farther extremity of the room. There was Mr. Johnson perched on a music stool, and fingering the keys of a piana, as he called Maria’s superb rose-wood instrument, and the feet of those little Johnsons dangled from two of the chairs near by: there, at my right hand, was Mrs. Johnson, radiant as a sunflower, and disposed to make herself peculiarly fascinating and agreeable to our visiters. She informed the law students that her husband was a great musicianer, that he led the singing in the Methodist meeting-house at home, every other Sunday, when the ministers came to preach, and that her two boys gave strong indications of musical genius which had almost induced Mr. Johnson to patronize their village singing-school. While in the midst of this eloquence, her eye was caught by a rich scarf worn by one of our lady visiters, so changing the subject she began to express her admiration, and, after taking an end of the scarf in her hands and minutely examining the pattern, she inquired the price of its fair owner, and called her husband to say if he could not afford one like it for her.

There was a roguish look in the lady’s eye, but she politely informed Mrs. J. where the scarf was purchased, and, being too well bred to laugh in our faces, the party took their leave. We breathed freely once more; but Maria and I had scarcely exchanged glances of congratulation for their absence, when another party was announced. To be mortified thus a second time was beyond endurance, and while Maria stepped forward to close the folding doors on Mr. Johnson and his musical performance, I turned in very desperation to his better half and proposed to accompany her in a walk about the city. Most earnestly did I entreat her to exchange that fine bonnet and orange-colored silk shawl for a cottage and merino of my own; but no, Mrs. J. clung to her tri-colors tenaciously as a Frenchman, so investing myself in the rejected articles we sallied forth.

As we were turning a corner into Chapel-street, I looked back and lo, the two boys walking behind us, lovingly as the Siamese twins. This reminded Mrs. Johnson that she had promised them some candy, so I was forced into a confectioner’s shop that the young gentlemen might be gratified. The candy was purchased and a pound of raisins called for. While the man was weighing them, she called out,

“Stop a minute, while I see if I’ve got change enough for ’em,” and sitting down on a keg she took out a large green worsted purse with deliberate ostentation, and untied a quantity of silver and copper cents into her lap. Being satisfied with this display of her wealth, she gave the man permission to proceed. I had suffered so much that day that the jeering smile of that candy-man went for nothing.

On leaving the candy shop I allowed my tormentor to choose her own direction, which, as my evil stars would have it, led directly before the Tontine, and there, upon the steps, stood the two young gentlemen who had serenaded Maria and myself only the night before, and whom we had seen that morning on the college grounds. They recognized me and bowed, Mrs. Johnson instantly appropriated the compliment, paused, faced about and returned their salutations with a curtsey for each, while she scolded the boys for not having “manners enough to make their bows when gentlemen noticed them.” The urchins took off their wool hats and did make their bows. My serenaders of the Sophomore class could not withstand this, and though their faces were turned away, I had a delightful consciousness that they were ready to die with suppressed laughter as I urged my companion down the street.

A short distance below the Tontine stands a most splendid mansion, perhaps, at that time, the most costly one in the city. Two of my school mates resided there and I was very anxious to pass without being observed, but just as we came opposite the front windows which opened to the ground, Mrs. Johnson made a dead halt, and pointing to the house, called out, “Come here, boys, and see what a sight o’ windows this ere house has got.”

The little Johnsons had lingered behind, but they ran up and obeyed their mother’s summons, by planting themselves directly before us, and the whole group took another survey of the building. I looked up, the blinds of a chamber were gently parted and I caught a glimpse of two sweet, familiar faces looking down upon our interesting party. “They are staring at us, do walk on!” I whispered in a perfect agony.

Mrs. Johnson paid no attention, she was looking earnestly down the street, I apprehensively followed the direction of her gaze. The two Sophomore students were coming up the opposite side walk laughing immoderately, a piece of ill breeding which they endeavored to check when their eyes met mine, but all in vain. Their eyes laughed in spite of the violence put upon the lips. I could endure it no longer but tore my arm from the tenacious grasp of my tormentor, turned the first corner and hastened home.

When Mrs. Johnson returned she had forgotten my rudeness in her delight at the attentions paid her by the students. “They had talked and laughed together a full half hour,” she said, “and were so perlite.”

“What did you talk about?” I inquired with uncomfortable foreboding.

“Why, I believe it was purty much about you, after all.”

“Me?” said I, faintly.

“Yes, they asked how long we’d been acquainted, so, of course, I told them what old friends we were—kind of relations.”

The last drop was flung in the bowl—and it overflowed—I said I was ill—had a headache—and running to my room, locked myself in.

I never had courage to ask Maria what occurred after my exit. But the next morning I arose very early, threw open the blinds and looked out. The day was breaking, like an angel’s smile, in the east, dividing the gray mist with a line of radiance, and embroidering the horizon with its delicate golden threads. The fresh air came up from an opposite garden rich with fragrance. The flowers bent their wet heads as it came with a gentle breath and charmed the odor from their cups; the grass had not yet flung off its night jewelry, and all around was still and silent as the heart of a wilderness—no, there was one sound not so musical as it might have been, but still the most welcome that ever fell on my ear. It was the rattle of Mr. Johnson’s wagon as it came lumbering up to the front door. And the most gratifying sight of that lovely morning was the old chesnut horse stalking down the street, and dragging behind him Mr. Johnson, Mrs. Johnson, and both the little Johnsons.

———

BY ROBERT MORRIS.

———

COMPOSED FOR GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

It will give pleasure to the lovers of elegant literature to learn that Mr. Bryant has prepared a second volume of poems. Many, if not all of them, have before appeared in the magazines; but the book will not be welcomed the less warmly for that reason. Indeed, no one reads a poem by this author without desiring to possess it in the most agreeable and permanent form. His admirers will be gratified, therefore, that he has so far overcome his singular feeling of modesty as to make a collection of his scattered gems, and present them in a casket to the public.

So much has been said of the character of Bryant’s genius that we have no disposition to enter upon that subject now; his various and high excellencies have been pretty generally recognized; indeed, more universally than those of any other living poet; and he himself—even if his literary vanity is a thousand times as great as we believe it to be—and his most ardent admirers, must be satisfied with the feeling entertained by the public toward him. They must be satisfied, because that feeling is in the highest degree friendly. As to ourselves, we are conscious that our estimation of him has been constantly undergoing a change. We have been deepening and enlarging the grounds of our admiration. The more we have read, the more we have reflected upon his poems, the stronger have grown our convictions of his preëminent merit. Nor are we alone in this experience. We remember well the remark of a friend, in whose critical discernment we are accustomed to place considerable reliance, and who, being a foreigner, is not likely to have been led away by that fondness for over praise which is said to mark the literary criticisms of the Americans—“I have been,” said he, “again reading your poet; and must confess that, as deeply as I felt his excellence before, I have never until now formed an adequate idea of the extent of his genius. Although I thought I had exhausted his depth, I find that new views of the most exalted and touching thought are continually opening upon me. I know not when I shall have done admiring.” We replied, and the observation is worth repeating, that this only showed the perfection of the poet’s art; for true art, like nature—indeed, being nature itself—is inexhaustible, and the more it is studied the greater and the richer are the resources which it discovers. A creation, whether it be of a world, a poem, or a picture, is an infinite work, and can be profitably contemplated year after year—each look revealing some new and remarkable trait.

There could be no better proof of the singular merits of Mr. Bryant’s poetry than the fact that men of every school of art, and of every variety of taste, agree in the acknowledgment of its claims. The disciples of Pope and of Wordsworth—those who profess to find the excellence of the poetic art only in its external forms, and those who look into the body of its thought and meaning—the lover of graceful rhythm and expression, and the admirer of profound reflection or passion—alike concur in the sentiment of admiration and respect for Bryant. We do not mean that it shall be inferred from this that no one is a poet who does not awaken this unanimity of feeling, for some of the greatest poets of the last century—Shelley for instance—are not even yet appreciated; but we mean that when this unanimity does exist it is a most unquestionable proof of merit. It is true, it does not always demonstrate the highest merit; yet it shows, more conclusively perhaps than anything, that the beauties of the author are of that unequivocal, obvious kind, which the child and the savage, the illiterate man and the philosopher, are alike capable of recognizing. It is an easy task, then, to point out the characteristics which have given the poet his general celebrity. One of the most striking is the complete mastery of language that he every where displays. If there were not many higher traits to be discovered, we should think he spent his whole time in casting his thoughts in the most beautiful form of expression. Precision, compactness, purity, elegance, and force, mark every line in an almost equal degree. It is this nice perception of the proprieties of language that gives such exquisite finish to his versification. Its melody is perfect.^[1] Line follows line in liquid and beautiful harmony—yet all is as simple as the utterance of a child. There is no where swelling pomp or straining for effect. The terms, no less than the style and manner arise naturally out of the thought. When the subject is grave and imposing, the movement is slow and solemn; but when the theme is lighter, the measure becomes airy, elastic, and playful. Compare, as a proof of this, the impressive tread of “The Ages,” or “Thanatopsis,” in which the long line of buried nations and men file before us in all their silent majesty, with the graceful motion of “The Gladness of Nature” or the wild dance of “The Song of the Stars.”

Two things, however, above all others, distinguish the poetry of Mr. Bryant. The first is the fidelity with which it paints natural scenery, and the second, the pensive and profound, yet Christian philosophy which pervades its spirit. As we have remarked in another place, no man ever lived whose sensibility was more susceptible than Mr. Bryant’s. Not only is his eye open to Nature, but every fibre of his being seems to be tremblingly alive to its presence. His nerves, like the Æolian harp, the faintest breath of wind can make vibrate musically. The shapes and hues of natural objects, in all their infinite diversity, seem to be the constant companions of his thoughts. Hardly a leaf or a flower exists with which he is not familiar. From the spire of grass by the wayside to the huge oak in the mountains, from the violet in its secluded bed to the bright and boundless firmament, from the shy bird brooding in his silent nooks to the stars that weave their everlasting web of motion through the sky, all things of nature claim his loving friendship and care. Streams, and woods, and meadows, and rocks, and lakes mingle in his musings, and are the very staple of his imagination. They are

If we turn over his title-pages, we shall find that about two thirds of his subjects are drawn from the various aspects or phenomena of external nature; while, by consulting the poems themselves, we shall see that so delicate is his eye, so perfect his command of language, and so exquisite his taste, that his descriptions have all the effect of a faithful but warmly colored picture. We say warmly colored, for with all his minuteness and accuracy in the delineation of nature, he possesses a wonderful power of imagination.

But it is not so much the graces of language or style, or the appropriateness or beauty of imagery, as the pensive but deep and manly philosophy, that incites our admiration of Mr. Bryant’s genius. It must strike every one, upon the most slight and cursory perusal of his poems, that he is a man of the most unquestionable good sense. The silent meditation of nature, in her more genial and subduing aspects, seems to have imparted to him the gentleness, truth, simplicity, and calmness that ever await upon her teachings. In the spirit of his own “Forest Hymn,” he seems often to have returned to the solitudes, to reassure his virtue, and thus, while meditating in “God’s first temples,” His milder majesty,

Sweet affections, tenderness, patience, love, and, above all, trust in Nature and God, are the virtues that chiefly inspire his song. It is for this reason, that amidst his most striking and picturesque descriptions there is always something to soften and improve. Not the tempest, the earth-quake, or the torrent move him, but nature, in her gladness and smiles. With every phase of the external world he has connected some noble moral, or some beautiful religious or philosophical sentiment. Indeed, these are so many and so touching that it is equally a matter of amusement and instruction to trace them. Thus, in the deep slumber of the woodlands he finds an emblem of the inward peace that marks the life of virtue, twilight hues, “lingering after the bright sun has set,” are like the memory of good men gone; the perishing flowers of autumn recall those who “in their youthful beauty died;” the golden sunlight that follows the tempest anticipates the day when “the voice of war shall cease, and married nations dwell in harmony;” the unconscious flow of the rivulet shows how changeless nature is amid all her change; the flight of the lone bird amid the air tells of that power that in “the long way that we must tread alone, will guide our steps aright;” while “morn and eve, whose glimmerings almost meet,” indicate the spread of the light of that knowledge and justice which is destined to

It must be confessed, however, speaking of the spirit of Mr. Bryant’s poetry, that many of his readers feel the absence of a deep and fervid interest in humanity. They have complained, and we think in some degree justly, that he exhibits too little of human passion. His mind, to use a distinction of the Germans, has been too objective, and not enough subjective; the forms and appearance of the outward world have absorbed his attention almost to the exclusion of the feelings and sentiments of the inward being. Not that he has been wholly wanting in sympathy for his race, for in the “Ages,” the “Old Man’s Funeral,” the “Living Lost,” the “Fairest of the Rural Maids,” and other of his poems, there are to be found passages of the most touching and subduing pathos; but that the truths of man’s existence; his experience on earth; the mysteries of his condition; the trials of his life; his deathless affections; his sublime hopes of a future state; and other topics of that character, have been neglected. They have wished that one who could discourse so truthfully and genially of stars, and skies, and flowers, and forests, should speak to them, out of the depths of his own nature, of that quickening principle which is more lovely in itself, of higher worth, and more lasting, than the whole outward world—the human soul. They have wished that he who has been able to interpret in such beautiful meaning the language of nature, would apply the same noble and accomplished skill to the interpretation of the heart. They would have him, like Wordsworth, to whom he is in this respect only second, sing more

We say that they would have him treat more frequently of such themes; let us add that their wishes are in a fair way of being gratified. We find, on comparing the present volume with Mr. Bryant’s former one, that his thoughts have already taken the direction to which we refer. Indeed, we have before remarked, that of late years his mind had been coming into closer contact with human sympathies. The last poem of his first volume—The Battle Field—so full of the highest truth, so inspiring and consolatory, may be ranked with the best lyrics of the language. In the volume before us, the larger number of poems are of a similar character. Where is there a finer or a loftier hymn than the following?

Whoever can read this without feeling his affections expand, or his whole nature grow better, has less than the sensibility of humanity. We should be glad to present other pieces to our readers, of the same character;^[2] and particularly to quote the noble poem entitled “The Antiquity of Freedom,” in which liberty is so nobly impersonated, but we have not room for further extracts, and can only indulge in one or two closing remarks. It appears to be a common regret with those who speak or write of Mr. Bryant, that he has not, as they express it, written a “great” poem. Be it observed, that by a great poem is here meant a long poem—a poem that in print will form a quarto! This kind of critic measures poems as the Dutch are said formerly to have gauged the merits of books—by their size. Perhaps of no author is there less reason for the lamentation that he has not written a great poem; for, in truth, he has written not only one, but nearly two dozen works of this description. He has written a series of lyrics, each perfect in itself, manifesting the highest excellence of that department of art, and destined to an existence as indestructible as the richest treasures of the English tongue. Indeed, we may safely say of him, that he has written a larger number of excellent poems than any other English author. So uniform is this excellence that it is difficult to make a selection between his various compositions. As some one has said of Shakspeare’s plays, the best one is that which you read last. The cause of this is, that Mr. Bryant writes as an artist. He does not, with the multitude of our poetasters, throw off lines as a patent printing press does newspapers, five thousand an hour. He feels like a true artist, and composes with the labor and spirit of one who is confident that his works will live.

Every year, we believe, the name of Alexander Hamilton is becoming dearer to the American People. The prejudices occasioned by some of his unpopular and perhaps erroneous political opinions are passing away, and all men are beginning to look upon his great qualities and important services with candor, and consequent admiration and gratitude. The volume of his official and other papers before us was edited by the Rev. Francis L. Hawks, D. D. whose known familiarity with early American history fitted him well for the duty. It commences with some letters written while Hamilton was a clerk in a merchant’s counting-house in the island of St. Croix, in 1769. He was then but thirteen years old, and his correspondence at this early period is chiefly remarkable as showing that strong reliance on his own resources which was so well vindicated by the after fortunes of the man. The remainder of the book is made up of controversial essays in defence of the measures of the continental Congress and of the steps preparatory to the Revolution, and of his military and private correspondence down to the close of the year 1780. A few of the letters have before been published. Almost every one has read the admirable account of the arrest and fate of Andre, which he addressed to his friend Laurens. It is not surpassed in interest or pathos by any narrative of the circumstances, in prose or verse, by historian or novelist, that has appeared. General Hamilton was an accomplished gentleman and a brave soldier, but his fame, as “the second man of the republic,” rests on his achievements as a statesman, and the succeeding volume of these papers, to embrace the period from 1780 to 1793, will contain matters of far more general and profound interest than the one before us. The task of Dr. Hawks has been little more than that of compilation; he but arranged the papers in chronological order and added occasionally a note; thinking that the recently published life of General Hamilton by his son, John C. Hamilton, rendered a biographical notice unnecessary. We think he erred: there are among us but few such character-writers as the historian of the Church in America, and an extended introduction to the work, from his pen, would have added much to its value.

This is a splendid octavo volume, in the style of S. C. Hall’s “Book of Gems,” published in London, in 1838, but is larger and more profusely illustrated. It contains an elaborate and well written essay on the English poetry of the present age, and selections from the works of the following authors, with brief biographical and critical notices. William Gifford, Joanna Baillie, Hannah Moore, Robert Bloomfield, George Crabbe, William Sotheby, Samuel Rogers, William Lisle Bowles, William Wordsworth, James Montgomery, Charles Dibdin, Thomas Haynes Bayley, Sir Walter Scott, S. T. Coleridge, Mary Tighe, James Hogg, Walter Savage Landor, Robert Southey, Charles Lamb, Thomas Campbell, Ebenezer Elliott, Reginald Heber, Thomas Moore, Leigh Hunt, Henry Kirke White, Lord Byron, Barry Cornwall, Professor Wilson, Henry Hart Milman, Charles Wolfe, Allan Cunningham, P. B. Shelley, John Clare, Mrs. Hemans, John Keats, George Croly, Robert Pollok, Mary Russel Mitford, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, James Sheridan Knowles, Mrs. Norton, and others. We have not had leisure to examine the selections generally, but presume they are judiciously made. Doubtless the work will be in great demand during the holiday season.

This is a novel and interesting contribution to our historical literature, Mr. Van Schaack was an eminent young lawyer in the city of New York during the period immediately preceding the Revolution, and was on terms of intimacy with John Jay, Richard Harrison, Gouverneur Morris, and other master-spirits of that time. He was opposed to the declaration of independence in the colonies, and to the resort to arms in its defence, and for his opinions was banished to England. While abroad he was placed in situations to see and to learn much in regard to the movements of both parties, and his strictures on the policy of the British, notices of public characters, etc., throw additional light upon the most important era in our history. He was a pious and well educated man, with strong powers of observation, classical taste and much skill in the use of language; and his son has done the country an acceptable service by publishing his memoirs and writings. A fine portrait by Gimbrede, from a painting by Colonel Trumbull, adds to the beauty and value of the volume.

The valuable notes from the most distinguished theological writers of the sixteenth century, biographical sketches of celebrated divines and controvertists, indices, etc. which the learned editor has added to the great work of Bishop Burnet, must cause this edition to supersede every other as a manual for students. It is printed in Messrs. Appleton and Company’s usual style of elegance and correctness.

From the interesting memoir by Professor Park we learn that Mr. Homer was a native of Boston; that he was educated at Amherst College and the Theological School at Andover; and that he died in 1841, at South Berwick, in Maine, where he was settled as minister over a Congregational Church. His literary remains consist of addresses, religious discourses, and notes on the classics, all of which are distinguished for elegance of taste and correct and appropriate thought. It is hardly necessary so to speak of a volume from the Boston press, as well printed.

The American Missionary Society has doubtless done more for the promotion of religion and civilization than any other association in the world. Its progress, condition, and prospects must, therefore, be deeply interesting to the better classes of men in every country. The work before as is written with great care and ability, and brings the history of the society’s operations down to the commencement of the present year. It is compactly printed and illustrated by several engravings.

Lucy Hooper died last year in the city of Brooklyn, near New York, at the early age of twenty-four years. She had previously become widely known by her contributions, in prose and verse, to the periodicals, distinguished alike for their elegant diction, purity of thought, and womanly feeling. The Memoir, by Mr. Keese, is an admirable specimen of character-writing, and the work altogether is one of the most interesting of its kind published in this country. We regret our inability to give a more extended notice of it in this number of our magazine.

To Readers And Correspondents.—It affords us great pleasure to state that the publisher of this magazine has entered into engagements with James Fenimore Cooper, the most popular of our country’s authors, by which we shall be enabled to present in every number, after that for September, an article from his pen. Mr. Cooper has never before been connected with any periodical. His works are so familiar to every reader in the old or the new world, that it is unnecessary to speak at length of the increase in interest and value our magazine will derive from his contributions.

Of Professor Longfellow’s poems several have already appeared in this magazine. He has recently completed a drama, in three acts, entitled “The Spanish Student,” the MS. of which is in our possession. It is the most elaborate, and will unquestionably prove to be the most popular of his poetical works. It will appear, entirely or in part, in our next number. Professor Longfellow is now abroad, in quest of health. From an exquisite poem addressed to him on the day of his departure, by his friend George S. Hillard, we quote the following stanza, joining heartily in the invocation⁠—

The name of William Cullen Bryant—dear to the lovers of elegant literature wherever the English tongue is spoken—appears now, for the first time, on our pages. We have elsewhere given some opinions on his character as a poet, in which we doubt not every reader will concur.

“Henri Quatre, or the Days of the League” was republished in this country immediately after its appearance in London, and universally pronounced one of the best romances in the language. It has since passed through several editions, and is now incorporated with the standard works of fiction. The author, it will be perceived, has become a writer for this magazine, and the admirable story entitled “De Pontis,” of which the first part is given in the preceding pages, will sustain his high reputation.

Charles Fenno Hoffman, the accomplished author of “A Winter in the West,” “Wild Scenes in the Forest and the Prairie,” “Greyslaer,” “The Vigil of Faith,” etc., has also become a regular contributor, and our next number will contain a tale in his best manner.

Theodore S. Fay, author of “Norman Leslie,” “Reveries of a Quiet Man,” “The Countess Ida,” etc., and now United States Secretary of Legation at Berlin, will continue to write for our pages.

Henry T. Tuckerman, author of “Isabelle, or Sicily,” “The Italian Sketch Book,” “Rambles and Reveries,” etc., has likewise been engaged, and an article from his pen will appear in September.

Alfred B. Street, one of the best descriptive poets now living, has forwarded to us a beautiful poem which will also be published in the number for the next month.

One more part will complete Mr. Herbert’s spirited tale, “The Sisters.” We have received another article by this popular writer, which will soon be laid before our readers.

Niagara Falls.—This number of our magazine appears in the midst of “the hot season,” while the warmest aspirations of its readers are for “the cool retreats, the woodlands, and the waves.” In August no place is more attractive than Niagara—as our friend Schoolcraft, who understands better than any one else the Indian tongues, says the name should be pronounced—and the following letter from the Cataract House will therefore be read with interest, especially by those who intend to visit the scenes it so admirably describes.

CATARACT HOUSE, Niagara Falls, July, 1842.

Friend Griswold:—Years, though not many, have weighed upon me since first, in boyhood, I gazed from the deck of a canal-boat upon the distant cloud of white vapor which marked the position of the world’s great cataract, and listened to catch the rumbling of its deep thunders. Circumstances did not then permit me to gratify my strong desire of visiting it; and now, when I am tempted to wonder at the stolidity of those who live within a day’s journey, yet live on through half a century without one glance at the mighty torrent, I am checked by the reflection that I myself passed within a dozen miles of it no less than five times before I was able to enjoy its magnificence. The propitious hour came at last, however; and, after a disappointed gaze from the upper terrace on the British side, (in which I half feared that the sheet of broken and boiling water above was all the cataract that existed,) and a rapid tortuous descent by the woody declivity, I stood at length on Table Rock, and the whole immensity of the tremendous avalanche of waters burst at once on my arrested vision, while Awe struggled with Amazement for the mastery of my soul.

This was late in October; I have twice revisited the scene amid the freshness and beauty of June; but I think the later Autumn is by far the better season. There is then a sternness in the sky, a plaintive melancholy in the sighing of the wind through the mottled forest foliage, which harmonizes better with the spirit of the scene. For the Genius of Niagára, O friend! is never a laughter-loving spirit. For the gaudy vanities, the petty pomps, the light follies of the hour, he has small sympathy. Let not the giddy heir bring here his ingots, the selfish aspirant his ambition, the libertine his victim, and hope to find enjoyment and gaiety in the presence. Let none come here to nurse his pride, or avarice, or any low desire. God and His handiwork here stand forth in lone sublimity; and all the petty doings and darings of the ants at the base of the pyramid appear in their proper insignificance. Few can have visited Niagára and left it no humbler, no graver than they came.

The common fault of visiters here, as of sight-seers elsewhere, is that of haste. Two hours are devoted to a scene which requires days, if not weeks, for its proper appreciation. Niagára, like St. Peter’s at Rome, enlarges on the vision; the mind must have time to expand ere it can grasp all its giant proportions. The first view always deludes and disappoints the gazer with regard to the height of the perpendicular fall; the vast scale on which Nature has fashioned her wonder-work deceives; the depth, and breadth, and volume, detract from the altitude; and I doubt if the larger number of new comers would not estimate the height at less than one half the one hundred and sixty feet which the line gives from surface above to surface below. Observation, however, soon corrects the error; if not, a walk down the interminable stairway, and a gaze upward at the ocean which seems to be poured from a window of heaven, will do it at once.

The giant masonry of Nature, which has so long interposed a barrier against the draining of Lake Erie into Ontario at a rush, and the consequent overwhelming of all the dwellers upon the latter and the St. Lawrence by a deluge, is evidently wearing away; I can perceive a decided change since I first stood here, seven years ago. The main or British fall is receding near the middle, and thus exchanging its original (or recent) form of a horseshoe for that of an irregular wedge. By this process the beauty and grandeur of the cataract are sensibly diminished. I understand that the recession here, under the pressure of so vast a body of water, has been so rapid as essentially to diminish the amount of water flowing on the American side of Goat Island, even within twenty years. Five hundred will probably suffice to dry this channel altogether; five thousand may or may not suffice to bring on the great convulsion which will destroy the falls entirely, change Lake Erie into a sandy valley divided by a rapid river, leave one half the Erie Canal without water, and change the whole face of Nature from Detroit to the Ocean, And why from Detroit only? It may be that a barrier of rock equally firm prevents the immediate occurrence of a similar convulsion at the mouths of the Huron and Michigan, and thus the cataract will but be transferred to a point much nearer the Superior; yet I should deem it quite as likely that the final submersion of Niagara, if instantaneous, as it very probably will be, when the rocky barrier has been sapped and broken down so nearly through as no longer to afford adequate resistance to the intense pressure of Lake Erie, will be the signal for a convulsion so mighty as to change the whole topography of Central North America.

Since I wrote the foregoing, I have slept to the music of the great cataract, my window looking out on the foaming and hurrying waters of the American current, just before it is precipitated over the ledge. It has rained through a good part of the night, though the roar of the waters drowned completely the noise of the storm, and the morning is wet and forbidding, while a heavy fog or cloud detracts much from the grandeur of the scene. My morning walk along the American shore has been less satisfactory than any previous observation, the water suspended in vapor somewhat shrouding the spectacle, while that falling or fallen detracts likewise from the comfort of all but web-footed travellers. No matter—I did not meditate any precise description of the Fall, and shall not attempt it. The readers of your Magazine, I presume, are mainly of the class who have either been here or intend to see for themselves at a fitting season. And beside, description avails very little in such a case. It is only by its comparisons and assimilations of the unknown with the known that description enlightens—and what has the world to compare with Niagara?

A few hints to visiters must close this hasty epistle. They tell you, good friends, that the best view of the Cataract is that from the Canada side; and so it is; but it is far from being the only good or even necessary view. The details are essential to the completeness and fulness of your impression, and those are only gleaned from hours of intent observation from all positions. The very best view is probably that from Table Rock; the next best perhaps that from under the same, on the point just before passing behind the grand curtain, when having descended the winding stairway and scrambled over some rods of shale between the beetling cliff and the whirling basin, forcing your way through an eternal tempest of wind and rain such as upper earth endures but once in many years, you stand at length directly face to face with the mighty torrent, and put your hands, if you please, into the edge of its very self. You look up, and the columnar sea seems pouring from the very sky overhead; you now learn to appreciate more justly the vast height of the Fall; as you gaze, the impending water seems to advance upon, and the next moment likely to dash over and whelm you.

But these are not alone as points of deepest interest; and I think some of the many views from Goat Island scarcely inferior in impressiveness, while superior in softness and beauty. The noble forest, the velvet turf, the glowing sun-beams, the unconstrained stillness of all things save the Great Cataract itself, fitly blend with and modify the first sensations of unapproachable grandeur and power. The stern severity, the austere majesty of the scene is softened down; and we return to our primal knowledge of Nature under no stepmother aspect, but as a sympathizing confidant and friend. I must break off.

Yours,

H. G.

John Fitch.—Our readers will be pleased to learn that Miss Leslie is preparing for the press a Memoir of this remarkable man, to whom the world is really indebted for the most important of modern discoveries. While Fitch was in London Miss Leslie’s father was one of his warmest friends, and the papers of her family enable her to give many particulars of his history unknown to other biographers. A year or two since, we wrote a brief account of the eccentric and unfortunate inventor, which led to an interesting correspondence with several eminent persons who had been acquainted with him. Among the letters which we received was the following, from the venerable Noah Webster, LL. D., of New Haven.

The papers to which Dr. Webster alludes in the above letter have been examined by Miss Leslie, and the curious details they contain of Fitch’s early life, his courtship, unfortunate marriage, captivity among the Indians, experiments, etc. will be embraced in her work, which will undoubtedly be one of the most interesting biographies in our language.

William L. Stone, author of “The Life of Brant,” “Life and Eloquence of Red Jacket,” “History of Wyoming,” etc., is now engaged on another important historical work to be called “The Life and Times of Sir William Johnson.” It will embrace accounts of the French wars in America from 1743 to 1849, and from 1754 to 1761, which resulted in the conquest of Canada. With this interesting period no writer is more familiar than Mr. Stone, and he will unquestionably produce a volume of great value.

Segur’s Life of Charles VIII.—Among the new works soon to appear is the Memoir of Charles VIII., King of France, by Count Philip De Segur, author of the “History of Napoleon’s Campaigns in Russia,” etc., translated by Richard R. Montgomery, of this city. It is one of the most interesting books ever written. In its style it resembles the Chronicles of Philip de Comines.

Mr. Stevens, the Traveller.—Mr. Stevens, with Mr. Catherwood who accompanied him as draughtsman, has returned a second time from Central America, and is now busily engaged on a new work in regard to the curious antiquities of that country. It will be published by the Harpers, during the autumn.

William Gilmore Simms.—Mr. Simms has become editor of “The Magnolia,” a monthly literary magazine, recently established at Charleston. No man in the South is so well qualified for the office. We give him joyfully the right hand of fellowship.

Mr. Cooper.—“La Few Follet, or Wing-and-Wing, a Nautical Tale,” by the author of the “Spy,” will appear in a few weeks. The scene of the story is the Mediterranean, in 1799. It will be published simultaneously in Philadelphia and London.

John Augustus Shea.—This gentleman has in press a collection of his poetical writings, of which we shall take due notice on its appearance.

Transcriber’s Notes:

Table of Contents has been added for reader convenience. Archaic spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious punctuation and typesetting errors have been corrected without note.

[The end of Graham's Magazine Vol. XXI No. 2 August 1842 edited by George Rex Graham]