← catalogue

Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844

by Various · English · Gutenberg #16293 · 582,843 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844

Author: Various


        
Release date: July 14, 2005 [eBook #16293]
                Most recently updated: December 12, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16293

Credits: Produced by The Internet Library of Early Journals; Jon
        Ingram, Allen Siddle and the Online Distributed Proofreading
        Team at https://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE — VOLUME 55, NO. 340, FEBRUARY, 1844 ***




Produced by The Internet Library of Early Journals; Jon
Ingram, Allen Siddle and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at https://www.pgdp.net





BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CCCXL. FEBRUARY 1844. Vol. LV.




CONTENTS:


    THE HERETIC
    THRUSH-HUNTING. BY ALEXANDER DUMAS
    HIGH LIFE IN THE LAST CENTURY
    NEWS FROM AN EXILED CONTRIBUTOR
    THE PROPHECY OF THE TWELVE TRIBES
    A BEWAILMENT FROM BATH; OR, POOR OLD MAIDS
    MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN. PART VIII.
    SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND
    SITTING FOR A PORTRAIT
    MY FRIEND
    THE LAND OF SLAVES
    THE PRIEST'S BURIAL
    PRUDENCE
    FREE TRADE AND PROTECTION

             *       *       *       *       *




                         EDINBURGH:

         WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, 45, GEORGE STREET;
                 AND 22, PALL-MALL, LONDON.

      To whom all Communications (post paid) must be addressed.

       SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS THE UNITED KINGDOM.

             *       *       *       *       *

        PRINTED BY BALLANTYNE AND HUGHES, EDINBURGH.

             *       *       *       *       *





THE HERETIC.[1]

    [1] _The Heretic_. Translated from the Russian of Lajétchnikoff. By
    T.B. Shaw, B.A. of Cambridge. In three volumes.


It is now about three centuries since Richard Chancellor, pilot-major of
the fleet which, under the command of Sir Hugh Willoughby, and by the
advice of Sebastian Cabot, set out to discover a north-east passage to
China, carried his ship, the Edward Bonaventura, into Archangel. The rest
of the fleet put into a haven on the coast of Lapland, where all their
crews, with the gallant commander, perished miserably of cold and hunger.
Chancellor, accompanied by Master George Killingworthe, found his way to
Moscow, where he was courteously entertained by the Tsar Iván IV.,
surnamed the Terrible. On his return to England in 1554, he delivered a
friendly letter from the Tsar to King Edward VI., and announced to the
people of England "the discovery of Muscovy." The English adventurers
where mightily astonished by the state and splendour of the Russian
court, and gave a curious account of their intercourse with the tyrant
Iván, who treated them with great familiarity and kindness, though he was
perhaps the most atrocious monster, not excepting the worst of the Roman
emperors, that ever disgraced a throne. The Tsar "called them to his
table to receive each a cup from his hand to drinke, and took into his
hand Master George Killingworthe's beard, which reached over the table,
and pleasantly delivered it to the metropolitan, who seeming to bless it,
said in Russ, 'This is God's gift;' as indeed at that time it was not
only thicke, broad, and yellow coulered, but in length five foot and two
inches of a size."

Chancellor returned the following year to Moscow, and arranged with the
Tsar the commercial privileges and immunities of a new company of
merchant-adventurers who desired to trade with Muscovy; but in 1556, while
on his way home, accompanied by Osep Neped, the first Russian ambassador
to the court of England, their ship was wrecked on our own coast, at
Pitsligo bay, where Chancellor was drowned, with most of the crew; but
Osep Neped, who escaped, was conducted with much pomp to London, and there
established on a firmer basis the commercial relations between the two
countries, to which Chancellor's discovery had led, and of which he had
laid the foundation. The commerce thus begun has continued uninterrupted,
to the mutual advantage of both nations, up to this time, and thousands of
our countrymen have there gained wealth and distinction, in commerce, in
the arts, in science, and in arms.

But of the twenty-seven millions of men, women, and children who people
Great Britain and Ireland, how many may be presumed to know any thing of
Russian literature, or even to have enquired whether it contains any thing
worth knowing? Are there a dozen literary men or women amongst us who
could read a Russian romance, or understand a Russian drama? Dr Bowring
was regarded as a prodigy of polyglot learning, because he gave us some
very imperfect versions of Russian ballads; and we were thankful even for
that contribution, from which, we doubt not, many worthy and well-informed
people learned for the first time that Russia produced poets as well as
potashes. Russia has lately lost a poet of true genius, of whom his
countrymen are proud, and no doubt have a right to be proud, for his
poetry found its way at once to the heart of the nation: but how few there
are amongst us who know any thing of Poushkin, unless it be his untimely
and melancholy end?

The generation that has been so prolific of prose fiction in other parts
of Europe, has not been barren in Russia. She boasts of men to whom she is
grateful for having adorned her young literature with the creations of
their genius, or who have made her history attractive with the allurements
of faithful fiction, giving life, and flesh, and blood to its dry bones;
and yet, gentle reader, learned or fair--or both fair and learned--whether
sombre in small clothes, or brilliant in _bas-bleus_--how many could
you have named a year ago of those names which are the pride and delight
of a great European nation, with which we have had an intimate, friendly,
and beneficial intercourse for three consecutive centuries, and whose
capital has now for some years been easily accessible in ten days from our
own?

Surely it is somewhat strange, that while Russia fills so large a space,
not only on the map, but in the politics of the world--while the influence
of her active mind, and of her powerful muscle, is felt and acknowledged
in Europe, Asia, and America--that we, who come in contact with her
diplomatic skill and her intelligence at every turn and in every quarter,
should never have thought it worth while to take any note of her
literature--of the more attractive movements of her mind.

The history, the ancient mythology, and the early Christian legends of
Russia, are full of interest. We there encounter the same energetic and
warlike people, who, from roving pirates of the Baltic sea, became the
founders of dynasties, and who have furnished much of what is most
romantic in the history of Europe. The Danes, who ravaged our coasts, and
gave a race of princes to England; the Normans, from whom are descended
our line of sovereigns, and many of our noble and ancient families--the
Normans, who established themselves in Sicily and the Warrhag, or
Varangians, who made their leader, Rurik, a sovereign over the ancient
Sclavonic republic of Nóvgorod, and gave their own distinctive appellation
of Russ to the people and to the country they conquered, were all men of
the same race, the same habits, and the same character. The daring spirit
of maritime adventure, the love of war, and the thirst of plunder, which
brought their barks to the coasts of Britain and of France, was displayed
with even greater boldness in Russia. After the death of Rurik, these
pirates of the Baltic, under the regent Oleg, launching their galleys on
the Borysthenes, forced the descent of the river against hostile tribes,
defeated the armies of Byzantium, exercised their ancient craft on the
Black sea and on the Bosphorus, and, entering Constantinople in triumph,
extorted tribute and a treaty from the Keisar in his palace.

Then, after a time, came the introduction of the Christian religion and of
letters; and the contests which terminated in the triumph of Christianity
over the ancient mythology, in which the milder deities of the Pantheon,
with their attendant spirits of the woods, the streams, and the household
hearth, would seem to have mingled with the fiercer gods of the Valhalla.
Then the frequent contests and varying fortunes of the principalities into
which the country was divided--the invasions of the Tartar hordes, under
the successors of Chenjez Khan, destroying every living thing, and
deliberately making a desert of every populous place, that grass might
more abound for their horses and their flocks--the long and weary
domination of these desolating masters; the gradual relaxation of the iron
gripe with which they crushed the country; the pomp and power of the
Russian church, even in the worst times of Tartar oppression; the first
gathering together of the nation's strength as its spirit revived; the
first great effort to cast off the load under which its loins had been
breaking for more than two centuries, and the desperate valour with which
the Russians fought their first great battle for freedom and their faith,
and shook the Tartar supremacy, under the brave and skilful Dimítri, on
the banks of the Don--the cautious wisdom and foresight with which he
created an aristocracy to support the sovereignty he had made
hereditary--the pertinacity with which, in every change of fortune, his
successors worked out slowly, and more by superior intelligence than by
prowess, the deliverance of their country--the final triumph of this wary
policy, under the warlike, but consummately able and dexterous management
of Iván the Great--the rapidity and force with which the Muscovite power
expanded, when it had worn out and cast off the Tartar fetters that had
bound it--the cautious and successful attempts of Iván to take from the
first a high place amongst the sovereigns of Europe--the progress in the
arts of civilized life which was made in his reign--the accession of
weight and authority which the sovereign power received from the prudent
and dignified demeanour of his son and successor--the sanguinary tyranny
with which Iván IV., in the midst of the most revolting atrocities and
debaucheries, broke down the power of the aristocracy, prostrated the
energies of the nation, and paved the way for successive usurpations--the
skilful and crafty policy, and the unscrupulous means by which Boris
raised himself to the throne, after he had destroyed the last
representatives of the direct line of Rurik, which, in all the
vicissitudes of Russian fortune, had hitherto held the chief place in the
nation--the taint of guilt which poisoned and polluted a mind otherwise
powerful, and not without some virtues, and made him at length a
suspicious and cruel tyrant, who, having alienated the good-will of the
nation, was unable to oppose the pretensions of an impostor, and swallowed
poison to escape the tortures of an upbraiding conscience--the successful
imposture of the monk who personated the Prince Dimítri, one of the
victims of Boris' ambition, and who was slaughtered on the day of his
nuptials at the foot of the throne he had so strangely usurped, by an
infuriated mob; not because he was known to be an impostor, but because he
was accused of a leaning to the Latin church--the season of anarchy that
succeeded and led to fresh impostures, and to the Polish domination--the
servile submission of the Russian nobility to Sigismund, king of Poland,
to whom they sold their country; the revival of patriotic feelings, almost
as soon as the sacrifice had been made--the bold and determined opposition
of the Russian church to the usurpation of a Latin prince, the
persecutions, the hardships, the martyrdom it endured; the ultimate rising
of the Muscovite people at its call--the sanguinary conflict in Moscow;
the expulsion of the Poles; the election of Michael Romanoff, the first
sovereign of his family and of the reigning dynasty--the whole history of
the days of Peter, of Catharine, and of Alexander, and even the less
prominent reigns of intermediate sovereigns--are full of the interest and
the incidents which are usually considered most available to the writers
of historical romance.

But such materials abound in the history of every people. Men of genius
for the work find them scattered every where--in the peculiarities of
personal character developed in the contests of petty tribes or turbulent
burghers, as often as in the revolutions of empires. The value of
historical, as well as of other fictions, must be measured by the power
and the skill it displays, rather than by the magnitude of the events it
describes, or the historical importance of the persons it introduces; and
therefore no history can well be exhausted for the higher purposes of
fiction. Of what historical importance are the stories on which Shakspeare
has founded his _Romeo and Juliet_--his _Othello_--his _Hamlet_, or his
_Lear_? Does the chief interest or excellence of _Waverley_, or _Ivanhoe_,
or _Peveril of the Peak_, or _Redgauntlet_, or _Montrose_, depend on the
delineation of historical characters, or the description of historical
events? What space do Balfour of Burleigh, or Rob Roy, or Helen Macgregor,
fill in history? The fact appears to be, that, even in the purest
historical prose fictions, neither the interest nor the excellence
generally depend upon the characters or the incidents most prominent in
history. A man of genius, who calls up princes and heroes from the dust
into which they have crumbled, may delight us with a more admirable
representation than our own minds could have furnished of some one whose
name we have long known, and of whose personal bearing, and habits, and
daily thoughts, we had but a vague and misty idea; and acknowledging the
fidelity of the portrait we may adopt it; and then this historical person
becomes to us what the imagination of genius, not what history, has made
him, and yet the portrait is probably one in which no contemporary could
have recognized any resemblance to the original. But the characters of
which history has preserved the most full and faithful accounts, whose
recorded actions reflect most accurately the frame of their minds, are
precisely those which each man has pictured to himself with most precision,
and therefore those of which he is least likely to appreciate another
man's imaginary portraits. The image in our own minds is disturbed, and we
feel something of the disappointment we experience when we find some one
of whom we have heard much very different from what we had imagined him to
be. The more intimately and generally an historical character is known,
the more unfit must it be for the purposes of fiction.

Then again, in fiction, as in real life, our sympathies are more readily
awakened, and more strongly moved, by the sufferings or the successes of
those with whom we have much in common--of whose life we are, or fancy
that we might have been, a part. The figures that we see in history
elevated above the ordinary attributes of man, are magnified as we see
them through the mist of our own vague perceptions, and dwindle if we
approach too near them. If they are brought down from the lofty pedestal
of rank or fame on which they stood, that they may be within reach of the
warmest sympathies of men who live upon a lower level, the familiarity to
which we are admitted impairs their greatness, on the same principle, that
"no man is a hero to his _valet-de-chambre_."

We are inclined to believe that the great attraction of historical prose
fiction is not any facility which it affords for the construction of a
better story--for we think it affords none--nor any superior interest
that attaches to the known and the prominent characters with which it
deals, or to the events it describes; but rather the occasion it gives for
making us familiar with the everyday life of the age and the country in
which the scene is laid. Independent of the merits of the fiction as a
work of imagination, we find another source of pleasure; and, if it be
written faithfully and with knowledge, of instruction in the vivid light
it casts on the characteristics of man's condition, which history does not
deign to record. This kind of excellence may give value to a work which is
defective in the higher essential qualifications of imaginative writing;
as old ballads and tales, which have no other merit, may be valuable
illustrations of the manners of their time, so by carefully collecting and
concentrating scattered rays, a man possessed of talents for the task may
throw a strong light on states of society that were formerly obscure, and
thus greatly enhance the pleasure we derive from any higher merits we may
find in his story.

M. Lajétchnikoff, in the work before us, appears to have aimed at both
these kinds of excellence; and, in the opinion of his countrymen, to have
attained to that of which they are the best or the only good judges. Mr
Shaw, to whom we are indebted for all we yet know of this department of
Russian literature, tells us in his preface that he selected this romance
for translation because--

  "It is the work of an author to whom all the critics have adjudged
  the praise of a perfect acquaintance with the epoch which he has
  chosen for the scene of his drama. Russian critics, some of whom have
  reproached M. Lajétchnikoff with certain faults of style, and in
  particular with innovations on orthography, have all united in
  conceding to him the merit of great historical accuracy--not only as
  regards the events and characters of his story, but even in the less
  important matters of costume, language, &c.

  "This degree of accuracy was not accidental: he prepared himself for
  his work by a careful study of all the ancient documents calculated
  to throw light upon the period which he desired to recall--a
  conscientious correctness however, which may be pushed too far; for
  the original work is disfigured by a great number of obsolete words
  and expressions, as unintelligible to the modern Russian reader
  (unless he happened to be an antiquarian) as they would be to an
  Englishman. These the Translator has, as far as possible, got rid of,
  and has endeavoured to reduce the explanatory foot-notes--those
  'blunder-marks,' as they have been well styled--to as small a number
  as is consistent with clearness in the text."

M. Lajétchnikoff takes occasion, while referring to some anachronisms
which will be found in _The Heretic_, to state, in the following terms,
his opinion of the duties of an historical novelist--

  "He must follow rather the poetry of history than its chronology. His
  business is not to be the slave of dates; he ought to be faithful to
  the character of the epoch, and of the _dramatis personae_ which he
  has selected for representation. It is not his business to examine
  every trifle, to count over with servile minuteness every link in the
  chain of this epoch, or of the life of this character; that is the
  department of the historian and the biographer. The mission of the
  historical novelist is to select from them the most brilliant, the
  most interesting events, which are connected with the chief personage
  of his story, and to concentrate them into one poetic moment of his
  romance. Is it necessary to say that this moment ought to be pervaded
  by a leading idea?... Thus I understand the duties of the historical
  novelist. Whether I have fulfilled them, is quite another question."

We are not quite sure what is here meant by "a leading idea." If it be
that some abstract idea is to be developed or illustrated, we can neither
subscribe to the canon nor discover the leading idea of this specimen of
the author's productions; but we rather suppose that he only means to say
that there should be a main stream of interest running through the whole
story, to which the others are tributary--and in this sense he has acted
on the rule; for the _heretic_, from his birth to his burial, is never
lost sight of, and almost the whole action, from the beginning to the end,
is either directly or indirectly connected with his fortunes, which
preserve their interest throughout, amidst sovereigns and ambassadors,
officials and nobles, court intrigues and affairs of state, of love, of
war, and of religion. This machinery, though somewhat complicated, is on
the whole very skilfully constructed, and moves on smoothly enough without
jolting or jarring, without tedious stops or disagreeable interruptions,
and without having to turn back every now and then to pick up the
passengers it has dropped by the way. The author, however, appears to have
assumed--and, writing for Russians, was entitled to assume--that his
readers had some previous acquaintance with the history of the country and
the times to which his story belongs. His prologue, which has no connexion
with the body of the work, but which relates a separate incident that
occurred some years after the conclusion of the principal narrative,
introduces us to the death-bed of Iván III., at whose court the whole of
the subsequent scenes occur; and is calculated from this inversion of time,
and the recurrence of similar names, and even of the same persons, to
create little confusion in the mind of the reader who is ignorant of
Russian history.

  "The epoch chosen by Lajétchnikoff," says his translator, "is the
  fifteenth century; an age most powerfully interesting in the history
  of every country, and not less so in that of Russia. It was then that
  the spirit of enquiry, the thirst for new facts and investigations in
  religious, political, and physical philosophy, was at once stimulated
  and gratified by the most important discoveries that man had as yet
  made, and extended itself far beyond the limits of what was then
  civilized Europe, and spoke, by the powerful voice of Iván III., even
  to Russia, plunged as she then was in ignorance and superstition.
  Rude as are the outlines of this great sovereign's historical
  portrait, and rough as were the means by which he endeavoured to
  ameliorate his country, it is impossible to deny him a place among
  those rulers who have won the name of benefactors to their native
  land."

When Iván III., then twenty-two years old, mounted the tributary throne of
Muscovy in 1462, the power of the Tartars, who for nearly two centuries
and a half domineered over Russia, had visibly declined. Tamerlane, at the
head of fresh swarms from the deserts of Asia, had stricken the Golden
Horde which still held Russia in subjection; and having pursued its
sovereign, Ioktamish Khan, into the steppes of Kiptchak and Siberia,
turned back almost from the gates of Moscow, to seek a richer plunder in
Hindostan. Before the Golden Horde could recover from this blow, it was
again attacked, defeated, and plundered, by the khan of the Crimea. Still
the supremacy of the Tartar was undisputed at Moscow. The Muscovite prince
advanced to the outer door of his palace to receive the ambassador of his
master; spread costly furs under his horse's feet; kneeled at his stirrup
to hear the khan's orders read; presented a cup of kimmis to the Tartar
representative, and licked off the drops that fell upon the mane of his
horse.

But during nearly a century and a half, the Muscovite princes had laboured
successfully to consolidate their own authority, and to unite the nation
against its oppressors. The principle of hereditary succession to the
dependent throne had been firmly established in the feelings of the people;
the ties of country, kindred, and language, and still more the bonds of
common religion, had united the discordant principalities into which the
country was still divided, by a sentiment of nationality and of hatred
against the Tartars, which made them capable of combining against their
Mahommedan masters.

Iván's first acts were acts of submission. They were perhaps intended to
tranquillize the suspicions with which the first movements of a young
prince are certain to be regarded by a jealous superior; and this purpose
they effectually served. Without courage or talent for war, his powerful
and subtle mind sought to accomplish its objects by intellectual
superiority and by craft, rather than by force. Warned by the errors of
his predecessors, he did not dispute the right of the Tartars to the
tribute, but evaded its payment; and yet contrived to preserve the
confidence of the khan by bribing his ministers and his family, and by a
ready performance of the most humiliating acts of personal submission. His
conduct towards all his enemies--that is, towards all his neighbours--was
dictated by a similar policy; he admitted their rights, but he took every
safe opportunity to disregard them. So far did he carry the semblance of
submission, that the Muscovites were for some years disgusted with the
slavish spirit of their prince. His lofty ambition was concealed by rare
prudence and caution, and sustained by remarkable firmness and pertinacity
of purpose. He never took a step in advance from which he was forced to
recede. He had the art to combine with many of his enemies against one,
and thus overthrew them all in succession. It was by such means that he
cast off the Tartar yoke--curbed the power of Poland--humbled that of
Lithuania, subdued Nóvgorod, Tver, Pskoff, Kazán, and Viatka--reannexed
Veira, Ouglitch, Rezan, and other appanages to the crown, and added nearly
twenty thousand square miles with four millions of subjects to his
dominions. He framed a code of laws--improved the condition of his
army--established a police in every part of his empire--protected and
extended commerce--supported the church, but kept it in subjection to
himself; but was at all times arbitrary, often unjust and cruel, and
throughout his whole life, quite unscrupulous as to the means he employed
to compass his ends.

One of the most successful strokes of his policy, was his marriage with
Sophia, daughter of the Emperor Paleologos, who had been driven from
Constantinople by the Turks. This alliance, which he sought with great
assiduity, not only added to the dignity of his government at home, but
opened the way for an intercourse on equal terms with the greatest princes
of Europe. It was Sophia who dissuaded him from submitting to the
degrading ceremonial which had been observed on receiving the Tartar
ambassadors at Moscow--and to her he probably owed the feelings of
personal dignity which he evinced in the latter part of his reign. It was
this alliance that at once placed the sovereigns of Russia at the head of
the whole Greek church; whose dignitaries, driven from the stately dome of
St Sophia in Byzantium, found shelter in the humbler temple raised by the
piety of their predecessors, some ages before, in the wilds of Muscovy,
and more than repaid the hospitality they received by diffusing a love of
learning amongst a barbarous people. It was by means of the Greeks who
followed Sophia, that Iván was enabled to maintain a diplomatic
intercourse with the other governments of Europe; it was from her that
Russia received her imperial emblem, the double-headed eagle; it was in
her train that science, taste, and refinement penetrated to Moscow; it was
probably at her instigation that Iván embellished his capital with the
beauties of architecture, and encouraged men of science, and amongst
others Antonio, "the heretic," and Fioraventi Aristotle, the architect and
mechanician, to settle at Moscow.

But it is time we should proceed to the story. The greater part of the
first volume is occupied by an account of the family, birth, and youth of
the hero. Born of a noble family in Bohemia, he is educated as a physician.
This was not the voluntary act of his parents; for what haughty German
baron of those times would have permitted his son to degrade himself by
engaging in a profession which was then chiefly occupied by the accursed
Jews? No, this was a degradation prepared for the house of Ehrenstein, by
the undying revenge of a little Italian physician, whom the stalwart baron
had pitched a few yards out of his way during a procession at Rome. This
part of the history, though not devoid of interest, is hardly within the
bounds of a reasonable probability--but it contains some passages of
considerable vigour. The patient lying in wait of the revengeful Italian,
and the eagerness with which he presses his advantage, making an act of
mercy minister to the gratification of his passion, is not without merit,
and will probably have its attractions for those who find pleasure in such
conceptions.

The young Antonio is educated by the physician, Antonio Fioraventi of
Padua, in ignorance of his birth--is disowned by his father, but cherished
by his mother; and grows up an accomplished gentleman, scholar, and leech,
of handsome person, captivating manners, and ardent aspirations to extend
the limits of science, and to promote the advancement of knowledge and of
civilization all over the earth. While these dreams are floating in his
mind, a letter on the architect Fioraventi, who had for some time resided
in Moscow, to his brother, the Italian physician, requesting him to send
some skilful leech to the court of Iván, decides the fate of Antonio.

  "Fioraventi began to look out for a physician who would volunteer
  into a country so distant and so little known: he never thought of
  proposing the journey to his pupil; his youth--the idea of a
  separation--of a barbarous country--all terrified the old man. His
  imagination was no longer wild--the intellect and the heart alone had
  influence on him. And what had Antony to hope for there? His destiny
  was assured by the position of his instructor--his tranquillity was
  secured by circumstances--he could more readily make a name in Italy.
  The place of physician at the court of the Muscovite Great Prince
  would suit a poor adventurer; abundance of such men might be found at
  that time possessed of talents and learning. But hardly was
  Aristotle's letter communicated to Antony, than visions began to
  float in his ardent brain.--'To Muscovy!' cried the voice of
  destiny--'To Muscovy!' echoed through his soul, like a cry remembered
  from infancy. That soul, in its fairest dreams, had long pined for a
  new, distant, unknown land and people: Antony wished to be where the
  physician's foot had never yet penetrated: perhaps he might discover,
  by questioning a nature still rude and fresh, powers by which he
  could retain on earth its short-lived inhabitants; perhaps he might
  extort from a virgin soil the secret of regeneration, or dig up the
  fountain of the water of life and death. But he who desired to
  penetrate deeper into the nature of man, might have remarked other
  motives in his desire. Did not knightly blood boil in his veins? Did
  not the spirit of adventure whisper in his heart its hopes and high
  promises? However this might be, he offered, with delight, to go to
  Muscovy; and when he received the refusal of his preceptor, he began
  to entreat, to implore him incessantly to recall it.--'Science calls
  me thither,' he said, 'do not deprive her of new acquisitions,
  perhaps of important discoveries. Do not deprive me of glory, my only
  hope and happiness.' And these entreaties were followed by a new
  refusal.--'Knowest thou not,' cried Fioraventi angrily, 'that the
  gates of Muscovy are like the gates of hell--step beyond them, and
  thou canst never return.' But suddenly, unexpectedly, from some
  secret motive, he ceased to oppose Antony's desire. With tears he
  gave him his blessing for the journey.--'Who can tell,' said he,
  'that this is not the will of fate? Perhaps, in reality, honour and
  fame await thee there?'

  "At Padua was soon known Antony Ehrenstein's determination to make
  that distant journey; and no one was surprised at it: there were,
  indeed, many who envied him.

  "In truth, the age in which Antony lived was calculated to attune the
  mind to the search after the unknown, and to serve as an excuse for
  his visions. The age of deep profligacy, it was also the age of lofty
  talents, of bold enterprises, of great discoveries. They dug into the
  bowels of the earth; they kept up in the laboratory an unextinguished
  fire; they united and separated elements; they buried themselves
  living, in the tomb, to discover the philosopher's stone, and they
  found it in the innumerable treasures of chemistry which they
  bequeathed to posterity. Nicholas Diaz and Vasco de Gama had passed,
  with one gigantic stride, from one hemisphere to another, and showed
  that millions of their predecessors were but pigmies. The genius of a
  third visioned forth a new world, with new oceans--went to it, and
  brought it to mankind. Gunpowder, the compass, printing, cheap paper,
  regular armies, the concentration of states and powers, ingenious
  destruction, and ingenious creation--all were the work of this
  wondrous age. At this time, also, there began to spread indistinctly
  about, in Germany and many other countries of Europe, those ideas of
  reformation, which soon were strengthened, by the persecution of the
  Western Church, to array themselves in the logical head of Luther,
  and to flame up in that universal crater, whence the fury, lava, and
  smoke, were to rush with such tremendous violence on kingdoms and
  nations. These ideas were then spreading through the multitude, and
  when resisted, they broke through their dikes, and burst onward with
  greater violence. The character of Antony, eager, thirsting for
  novelty, was the expression of his age: he abandoned himself to the
  dreams of an ardent soul, and only sought whither to carry himself
  and his accumulations of knowledge.

  "Muscovy, wild still, but swelling into vigour, with all her
  boundless snows and forests, the mystery of her orientalism, was to
  many a newly-discovered land--a rich mine for human genius. Muscovy,
  then for the first time beginning to gain mastery over her internal
  and external foes, then first felt the necessity for real, material
  civilization."

Antony pays a farewell visit to his mother at the humble tower in Bohemia,
where she resided estranged from his father, of whose rank and condition
she left him ignorant.

  "If there were a paradise upon earth, Antony would have found it in
  the whole month which he passed in the Bohemian castle. Oh! he would
  not have exchanged that poor abode, the wild nature on the banks of
  the Elbe, the caresses of his mother, whose age he would have
  cherished with his care and love--no! he would not have exchanged all
  this for magnificent palaces, for the exertions of proud kinsmen to
  elevate him at the imperial court, for numberless vassals, whom, if
  he chose, he might hunt to death with hounds.

  "But true to his vow, full of the hope of being useful to his mother,
  to science, and to humanity, the visionary renounced this paradise:
  his mother blessed him on his long journey to a distant and unknown
  land: she feared for him; yet she saw that Muscovy would be to him a
  land of promise--and how could she oppose his wishes?"

Preceding our hero to Moscow, we are presented to the Great Prince before
Antonio's arrival. Ambassadors had come from Tver, and a Lithuanian
ambassador and his interpreter had been truly or falsely convicted of an
attempt to destroy Iván by poison. The Great Prince's enquiry what
punishment is decreed against the felon who reaches at another's life,
leads to the following dialogue:--

  "'In the soudébnik it is decreed,' replied Góuseff, 'whoever shall be
  accused of larceny, robbery, murder, or false accusation, or other
  like evil act, and the same shall be manifestly guilty, the boyárin
  shall doom the same unto the pain of death, and the plaintiff shall
  have his goods; and if any thing remain, the same shall go to the
  boyárin and the deacon.'...

  "'Ay, the lawyers remember themselves--never fear that the boyárin
  and deacon forget their fees. And what is written in thy book against
  royal murderers and conspirators?'

  "'In our memory such case hath not arisen.'

  "'Even so! you lawyers are ever writing leaf after leaf, and never do
  ye write all; and then the upright judges begin to gloze, to
  interpret, to take bribes for dark passages. The law ought to be like
  an open hand without a glove, (the Prince opened his fist;) every
  simple man ought to see what is in it, and it should not be able to
  conceal a grain of corn. Short and clear; and, when needful, seizing
  firmly!... But as it is, they have put a ragged glove on law; and,
  besides, they close the fist. Ye may guess--odd or even! they can
  show one or the other, as they like.'

  "'Pardon, my Lord Great Prince; lo, what we will add to the
  soudébnik--the royal murderer and plotter shall not live.'

  "'Be it so. Let not him live, who reached at another's life.' (Here
  he turned to Kourítzin, but remembering that he was always disinclined
  to severe punishments, he continued, waving his hand,) 'I forgot that
  a craven[2] croweth not like a cock.' (At these words the deacon's
  eyes sparkled with satisfaction.) 'Mamón, be this thy care. Tell my
  judge of Moscow--the court judge--to have the Lithuanian and the
  interpreter burned alive on the Moskvá--burn them, dost thou hear?
  that others may not think of such deeds.'

    [2] A _jeu de mots_ impossible to be rendered in English; _Kourítza_,
    in Russian, is a 'hen.'"--T.B.S.

  "The dvorétzkoi bowed, and said, stroking his ragged beard--'In a few
  days will arrive the strangers to build the palace, and the Almayne
  leech: the Holy Virgin only knoweth whether there be not evil men
  among them also. Dost thou vouchsafe me to speak what hath come into
  my mind?'

  "'Speak.'

  "'Were it not good to show them an example at once, by punishing the
  criminals before them?'

  "The Great Prince, after a moment's thought, replied--'Aristotle
  answereth for the leech Antony; he is a disciple of his brother's.
  The artists of the palace--foreigners--are good men, quiet men ...
  but ... who can tell!... Mamón, put off the execution till after the
  coming of the Almayne leech; but see that the fetters sleep not on
  the evil doers!'

  "Here he signed to Mamón to go and fulfill his order."

Here is another scene with the Great Prince.

  "He stopped, and turned with an air of stern command to Kourítzin.

  "The latter had addressed himself to speak--'The ambassadors from
  Tver ... from the'....

  "'From the prince, thou wouldst say,' burst in Iván Vassílievitch: 'I
  no longer recognize a Prince of Tver. What--I ask thee, what did he
  promise in the treaty of conditions which his bishop was to
  negotiate?--the bishop who is with us now.'

  "'To dissolve his alliance with the Polish king, Kazimír, and never
  without thy knowledge to renew his intercourse with him; nor with
  thine ill-wishers, nor with Russian deserters: to swear, in his own
  and his children's name, never to yield to Lithuania.'

  "'Hast thou still the letter to King Kazimír from our good
  brother-in-law and ally--him whom thou yet callest the Great Prince
  of Tver?'

  "'I have it, my lord.'

  "'What saith it?'

  "'The Prince of Tver urgeth the Polish King against the Lord of All
  Russia.'

  "'Now, as God shall judge me, I have right on my side. Go and tell
  the envoys from Tver, that I will not receive them: I spoke a word of
  mercy to them--they mocked at it. What do they take me for?... A
  bundle of rags, which to-day they may trample in the mud, and
  to-morrow stick up for a scarecrow in their gardens! Or a puppet--to
  bow down to it to-day, and to-morrow to cast it into the mire, with
  _Vuiduibái, father vuiduibái_![3] No! they have chosen the wrong man.
  They may spin their traitorous intrigues with the King of Poland, and
  hail him their lord; but I will go myself and tell Tver who is her
  real master. Tease me no more with these traitors!'

    [3] "When Vladímir, to convert the Russians to Christianity, caused
    the image of their idol Peróun to be thrown into the Dniépr, the
    people of Kíeff are said to have shouted '_vuiduibái, bátioushka,
    vuiduibái_!'--bátioushka signifies 'father;' but the rest of the
    exclamation has never been explained, though it has passed into a
    proverb."--T.B.S.

  "Saying this, the Great Prince grew warmer and warmer, and at length
  he struck his staff upon the ground so violently that it broke in two.

  "'Hold! here is our declaration of war,' he added--'yet one word more:
  had it bent it would have remained whole.'

  "Kourítzin, taking the fatal fragments, went out. The philosopher of
  those days, looking at them, shook his head and thought--'Even so
  breaketh the mighty rival of Moscow!'"

The Almayne physician is lodged by order of the Great Prince in one of the
three stone houses which Moscow could then boast--the habitation of the
voévoda Obrazétz, a fine old warrior, a venerable patriarch, and bigot,
such as all Russians then were. To him the presence of the heretic is
disgusting; his touch would be pollution; and the whole family is thrown
into the utmost consternation by the prospect of having to harbour so foul
a guest--a magician, a man who had sold his soul to Satan--above all, a
heretic. The voévoda had an only daughter, who, with Oriental caution, was
carefully screened from the sight of man, as became a high-born Russian
maiden.

  "From her very infancy Providence had stamped her with the seal of
  the marvellous; when she was born a star had fallen on the house--on
  her bosom she bore a mark resembling a cross within a heart. When ten
  years old, she dreamed of palaces and gardens such as eye had never
  seen on earth, and faces of unspeakable beauty, and voices that sang,
  and self-moving dulcimers that played, as it were within her heart,
  so sweetly and so well, that tongue could never describe it; and,
  when she awoke from those dreams, she felt a light pressure on her
  feet, and she thought she perceived that something was resting on
  them with white wings folded; it was very sweet, and yet awful--and
  in a moment all was gone. Sometimes she would meditate, sometimes she
  would dream, she knew not what. Often, when prostrate before the
  image of the Mother of God, she wept; and these tears she hid from
  the world, like some holy thing sent down to her from on high. She
  loved all that was marvellous; and therefore she loved the tales, the
  legends, the popular songs and stories of those days. How greedily
  did she listen to her nurse! and what marvels did the eloquent old
  woman unfold, to the young, burning imagination of her foster child!
  Anastasia, sometimes abandoning herself to poesy, would forget sleep
  and food; sometimes her dreams concluded the unfinished tale more
  vividly, more eloquently far."

We must give the pendant to this picture--the portrait of Obrazétz himself,
sitting in his easy-chair, listening to a tale of travels in the East.

  "How noble was the aged man, free from stormy passions, finishing the
  pilgrimage of life! You seemed to behold him in pure white raiment,
  ready to appear before his heavenly judge. Obrazétz was the chief of
  the party in years, in grave majestic dignity, and patriarchal air.
  Crossing his arms upon his staff, he covered them with his beard,
  downy as the soft fleece of a lamb; the glow of health, deepened by
  the cup of strong mead, blushed through the snow-white hair with
  which his cheeks were thickly clothed; he listened with singular
  attention and delight to the story-teller. This pleasure was painted
  on his face, and shone brightly in his eyes; from time to time a
  smile of good-humoured mockery flitted across his lips, but this was
  only the innocent offspring of irony which was raised in his good
  heart by Aphónia's boasting, (for very few story-tellers, you know,
  are free from this sin.) Reclining his shoulders against the back of
  his arm-chair, he shut his eyes, and, laying his broad hairy hand
  upon Andrióusha's head, he softly, gently dallied with the boy's
  flaxen locks. On his countenance the gratification of curiosity was
  mingled with affectionate tenderness: he was not dozing, but seemed
  to be losing himself in sweet reveries. In the old man's visions
  arose the dear never forgotten son, whom he almost fancied he was
  caressing. When he opened his eyes, their white lashes still bore
  traces of the touching society of his unearthly guest; but when he
  remarked that the tear betraying the secret of his heart had
  disturbed his companions, and made his daughter anxious, the former
  expression of pleasure again dawned on his face, and doubled the
  delighted attention of the whole party."

At length the dreaded guest arrived.

  "Evil days had fallen on Obrazétz and his family. He seemed himself
  as though he had lost his wife and son a second time. Khabár raged
  and stormed like a mountain torrent. Anastasia, hearing the horrible
  stories--is sometimes trembling like an aspen-leaf, and then weeps
  like a fountain. She dares not even look forth out of the sliding
  window of her bower. Why did Vassílii Féodorovitch build such a fine
  house? Why did he build it so near the Great Prince's palace? 'Tis
  clear, this was a temptation of the Evil One. He wanted, forsooth, to
  boast of a nonsuch! He had sinned in his pride.... What would become
  of him, his son and daughter! Better for them had they never been
  born!... And all this affliction arose from the boyárin being about
  to receive a German in his house!"

The voévoda gave strict injunctions that none of his family should go to
meet the procession; but M. Lajétchnikoff knows that all such orders are
unavailing.

  "Curiosity is so strong in human nature, that it can conquer even
  fear: notwithstanding the orders of the boyárin, all his servants
  rushed to obtain a glance at the terrible stranger; one at the gate,
  another through the crevices of the wooden fence, another over it.
  Khabár, with his arms haughtily a-kimbo, gazed with stern pride from
  the other gate. Now for the frightful face with mouse's ears, winking
  owlish eyes streaming with fiendish fire! now for the beak! They
  beheld a young man, tall, graceful, of noble deportment, overflowing
  with fresh vigorous life. In his blue eyes shone the light of
  goodness and benevolence through the moisture called up by the recent
  spectacle of the execution: the lips, surmounted by a slight soft
  mustache, bore a good-humoured smile--one of those smiles that it is
  impossible to feign, and which can only find their source in a heart
  never troubled by impure passions. Health and frost had united to
  tinge the cheeks with a light rosy glow; he took off his cap, and his
  fair curls streamed forth over his broad shoulders. He addressed
  Mamón in a few words of such Russian as he knew, and in his voice
  there was something so charming, that even the evil spirit which
  wandered through the boyárin's heart, sank down to its abyss. This,
  then, was the horrible stranger, who had harmed Obrazétz and his
  household! This, then, was he--after all! If this was the devil, the
  fiend must again have put on his original heavenly form. All the
  attendants, as they looked upon him, became firmly convinced that he
  had bewitched their eyes.

  "'Haste, Nástia![4] look how handsome he is!' cried Andrióusha to the
  voevóda's daughter, in whose room he was, looking through the sliding
  window, which he had drawn back. 'After this, believe stupid reports!
  My father says that he is my brother: oh, how I shall love him! Look,
  my dear!'

    [4]_Nástia_--the diminutive of Anastasia; Nástenka, the same.
    Russian caressing names generally end in sia, sha, óusha, or
    óushka--as Vásia, (for Iván;) Andrióusha, (Andrei;)
    Varpholoméoushka, ( Bartholomew.)"--T.B.S.

  "And the son of Aristotle, affirming and swearing that he was not
  deceiving his godmother, drew her, trembling and pale, to the window.
  Making the sign of the cross, with a fluttering heart she ventured to
  look out--she could not trust her eyes, again she looked out;
  confusion! a kind of delighted disappointment, a kind of sweet thrill
  running through her blood, never before experienced, fixed her for
  some moments to the spot: but when Anastasia recovered herself from
  these impressions, she felt ashamed and grieved that she had given
  way to them. She already felt a kind of repentance. The sorcerer has
  put on a mask, she thought, remembering her father's words: from this
  moment she became more frequently pensive."

We are conducted to the state prisons of Moscow, and introduced to some of
the prisoners whose names have figured in history. We select the following
dialogue as a specimen of the author's power to deal with such matters.
The prisoner is Márpha, the lady of Novogorod, who, by her courage and her
wealth, had laboured to preserve its independence.

  "Here the Great Prince rapped with his staff at a grating; at the
  knock there looked out an old roman, who was fervently praying on her
  knees. She was dressed in a much-worn high cap, and in a short veil,
  poor, but white as new-fallen snow; her silver hair streamed over a
  threadbare mantle: it was easy to guess that this was no common woman.
  Her features were very regular, in her dim eyes was expressed
  intellect, and a kind of stern greatness of soul. She looked proudly
  and steadily at the Great Prince.

  "'For whom wert thou praying, Marphóusha?' asked the sovereign.

  "'For whom but for the dead!' she sullenly replied.

  "'But for whom in particular, if I may make bold to ask?'

  "'Ask concerning that of my child, thou son of a dog--of him who was
  called thy brother, whom thou murderedst--of Nóvgorod, which thou
  hast drowned in blood, and covered with ashes!'

  "'O, ho, ho!... Thou hast not forgotten thy folly, then--Lady of
  Nóvgorod the Great.'

  "'I was such once, my fair lord!'

  "At these words she arose.

  "'Wilt thou not think again?'

  "'Of what?... I said that I was praying for the dead. Thy Moscow,
  with all its hovels, can twice a-year be laid in ashes, and twice
  built up again. The Tartar hath held it two ages in slavery.... It
  pined, it pined away and yet it remains whole. It hath but changed
  one bondage for another. But once destroy the queen--Nóvgorod the
  Great--and Nóvgorod the Great will perish for ever.'

  "'How canst thou tell that?'

  "'Can ye raise up a city of hewn stone in a hundred years?'

  "'I will raise one in a dozen.'

  "'Ay, but this is not in the fairy tale, where 'tis done as soon as
  said. Call together the Hanse traders whom thou hast driven away.'

  "'Ha, hucksteress! thou mournest for the traders more than for
  Nóvgorod itself.'

  "'By my huckstering she grew not poor, but rich.'

  "'Let me but jingle a piece of money, and straight will fly the
  merchants from all corners of the world, greedy for my grosches.'

  "'Recall the chief citizens whom thou hast exiled to thy towns.'

  "'Cheats, knaves, rebels! they are not worth this!'

  "'When was power in the wrong? Where is the water of life that can
  revive those thou hast slain? Even if thou couldst do all this,
  liberty, liberty would be no more for Nóvgorod, Iván Vassílievitch;
  and Nóvgorod will never rise again! It may live on awhile like
  lighted flax, that neither flameth nor goeth out, even as I live in a
  dungeon!'

  "'It is thine inflexible obstinacy that hath ruined both of ye. I
  should like to have seen how thou wouldst have acted in my place.'

  "'Thou hast done thy work, Great Prince of Moscow, I--mine. Triumph
  not over me, in my dungeon, at my last hour.'

  "Márpha Borétzkaia coughed, and her face grew livid; she applied the
  end of her veil to her lips, but it was instantly stained with blood,
  and Iván remarked this, though she endeavoured to conceal it.

  "'I am sorry for thee, Márpha,' said the Great Prince in a
  compassionate tone.

  "'Sharp is thy glance.... What! doth it delight thee?... Spread this
  kerchief over Nóvgorod.... 'Twill be a rich pall!'... she added with
  a smile.

  "'Let me in! let me in!... I cannot bear it.... Let me go in to her!'
  cried Andrióusha, bursting into tears.

  "On the Great Prince's countenance was mingled compassion and
  vexation. He, however, lifted the latch of the door, and let the son
  of Aristotle pass in to Borétzkaia.

  "Andrea kissed her hand. Borétzkaia uttered not a word; she
  mournfully shook her head, and her warm tears fell upon the boy's
  face.

  "'Ask him how many years she can live,' said the Great Prince to
  Aristotle, in a whisper.

  "'It is much, much, if she live three months; but, perhaps, 'twill be
  only till spring,' answered Antony. 'No medicine can save her: that
  blood is a sure herald of death.'

  "This reply was translated to Iván Vassílievitch in as low a tone as
  possible, that Borétzkaia might not hear it; but she waved her hand,
  and said calmly--'I knew it long ago'....

  "'Hearken, Márpha Isákovna, if thou wilt, I will give thee thy
  liberty, and send thee into another town.'

  "'Another town ... another place ... God hath willed it so, without
  thee!'

  "'I would send thee to Báyjetzkoi-Verkh.'

  "''Tis true, that was our country. If I could but die in my native
  land!'

  "'Then God be with thee: there thou mayst say thy prayers, give alms
  to the churches; I will order thy treasury to be delivered up to
  thee--and remember not the Great Prince of Moscow in anger.'

  "She smiled. Have you ever seen something resembling a smile on the
  jaws of a human skull?

  "'Farewell, we shall never meet again,' said the Great Prince.

  "'We shall meet at the judgment-seat of God!' was the last reply of
  Borétzkaia."

The daughter of Obrazétz loved the heretic, who was long unconscious of
the feelings he had inspired, and himself untouched by the mysterious fire
that was consuming the heart of the young Anastasia. But his turn, too,
had come--he, too, had seen and loved; but she knew not of his love--she
hardly knew the nature of her own feelings; sometimes she feared she was
under the influence of magic, or imagined that the anxiety she felt for
the heretic was a holy desire to turn him from the errors of his faith to
save his immortal soul--or, if she knew the truth, she dared not
acknowledge it even to her own heart--far less to any human being. To love
a heretic was a deadly sin; but to save a soul would be acceptable to
God--a holy offering at the footstool of the throne of grace and mercy.
This hope would justify any sacrifice. The great Prince was about to march
against Tver, and Antonio was to accompany him. Could she permit him to
depart without an effort to redeem him from his heresy, or, alas! without
a token of her love? She determined to send him the crucifix she wore
round her neck--a holy and a sacred thing, which it would have been a
deadly sin to part with unless to rescue a soul from perdition--and she
sent it. Her brother, too, was to accompany the army, and had besides, on
his return, to encounter a judicial combat. The soul of the old warrior
Obrazétz was deeply moved by the near approach of his son's departure. One
son had died by his side--he might never see Iván more, and his heart
yearned to join with him in prayer. "The mercies of God are unaccountable."

  "Trusting in them, Obrazétz proceeded to the oratory, whither, by his
  command, he was followed by Khabár and Anastasia.

  "Silently they go, plunged in feelings of awe: they enter the oratory;
  the solitary window is curtained; in the obscurity, feebly dispelled
  by the mysterious glimmer of the lamp, through the deep stillness,
  fitfully broken by the flaring of the taper, they were gazed down
  upon from every side by the dark images of the Saviour, the Holy
  Mother of God, and the Holy Saints. From them there seems to breathe
  a chilly air as of another world: here thou canst not hide thyself
  from their glances; from every side they follow thee in the slightest
  movement of thy thoughts and feelings. Their wasted faces, feeble
  limbs, and withered frames--their flesh macerated by prayer and
  fasting--the cross, the agony--all here speaks of the victory of will
  over passions. Themselves an example of purity in body and soul, they
  demand the same purity from all who enter the oratory, their holy
  shrine.

  "To them Anastasia had recourse in the agitation of her heart; from
  them she implored aid against the temptations of the Evil One; but
  help there was none for her, the weak in will, the devoted to the
  passion which she felt for an unearthly tempter.

  Thrice, with crossing and with prayer, did Obrazétz bow before the
  images; thrice did his son and daughter bow after him. This pious
  preface finished, the old man chanted the psalm--'Whoso dwelleth
  under the defence of the Most High.' Thus, even in our own times,
  among us in Russia, the pious warrior, when going to battle, almost
  always arms himself with this shield of faith. With deep feeling,
  Khabár repeated the words after his father. All this prepared
  Anastasia for something terrible she trembled like a dove which is
  caught by the storm in the open plain, where there is no shelter for
  her from the tempest that is ready to burst above her. When they
  arose from prayer, Obrazétz took from the shrine a small image of St
  George the Victorious, cast in silver, with a ring for suspending it
  on the bosom. 'In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
  Holy Ghost!' he said, with a solemn voice, holding the image in his
  left hand, and with his right making three signs of the cross--'with
  this mercy of God I bless thee, my dear and only son, Iván, and I
  pray that the holy martyr, George, may give thee mastery and victory
  over thine enemies: keep this treasure even as the apple of thine eye.
  Put it not off from thee in any wise, unless the Lord willeth that
  the foe shall take it from thee. I know thee, Ivan, they will not
  take it from thee living; but they may from thy corse. Keep in mind at
  every season thy father's blessing.'

  "Anastasia turned as white as snow, and trembled in every limb; her
  bosom felt oppressed as with a heavy stone, a sound as of hammering
  was in her ears. She seemed to hear all the images, one after another,
  sternly repeating her father's words. He continued--'It is a great
  thing, this blessing. He who remembereth it not, or lightly esteemeth
  it, from him shall the heavenly Father turn away his face, and shall
  leave him for ever and ever. He shall be cast out from the kingdom of
  heaven, and his portion shall be in hell. Keep well my solemn word.'

  "Every accent of Obrazétz fell upon Anastasia's heart like a drop of
  molten pitch. She seemed to be summoned before the dreadful
  judgment-seat of Christ, to hear her father's curse, and her own
  eternal doom. She could restrain herself no longer, and sobbed
  bitterly; the light grew dim in her eyes; her feet began to totter.
  Obrazétz heard her sobs, and interrupted his exhortation. 'Nástia,
  Nástia! what aileth thee?' he enquired, with lively sympathy, of his
  daughter, whom he tenderly loved. She had not strength to utter a
  word, and fell into her brother's arms. Crossing himself, the boyárin
  put back the image into its former place, and then hastened to
  sprinkle his child with holy water which always stood ready in the
  oratory. Anastasia revived, and when she saw herself surrounded by
  her father and brother, in a dark, narrow, sepulchral place, she
  uttered a wild cry, and turned her dim eyes around. 'My life, my
  darling child, my dove! what aileth thee?' cried the father.
  'Recollect thyself: thou art in the oratory. 'Tis plain some evil eye
  hath struck thee. Pray to the Holy Virgin: she, the merciful one,
  will save thee from danger.'

  "The father and son bore her to the image of the Mother of God. Her
  brother with difficulty raised her arm, and she, all trembling, made
  the sign of the cross. Deeply, heavily she sighed, applied her
  ice-cold lips to the image, and then signed to them with her hand
  that they should carry her out speedily. She fancied that she saw the
  Holy Virgin shake her head with a reproachful air.

  "When they had carried Anastasia to her chamber, she felt better."

Hitherto none had shared her secret thoughts; but the experienced eye of
the widow Selínova had detected the nature of her malady, and she longed
to know the object of her affection.

  "One day, they were sitting alone together, making lace. A kind of
  mischievous spirit whispered her to speak of the heretic. Imagine
  yourself thrown by destiny on a foreign land. All around you are
  speaking in an unknown tongue; their language appears to you a chaos
  of wild, strange sounds. Suddenly, amid the crowd, drops a word in
  your native language. Does not then a thrill run over your whole
  being? does not your heart leap within you? Or place a Russian
  peasant at a concert where is displayed all the creative luxury and
  all the brilliant difficulties of foreign music. The child of nature
  listens with indifference to the incomprehensible sounds; but
  suddenly Voróbieva with her nightingale voice trills out--_The cuckóo
  from out the fírs so dánk hath not cúckooed._ Look what a change
  comes over the half-asleep listener. Thus it was with Anastasia! Till
  this moment Selínova had spoken to her in a strange language, had
  only uttered sounds unintelligible to her; but the instant that she
  spoke the _native_ word, it touched the heart-string, and all the
  chords of her being thrilled as if they were about to burst.
  Anastasia trembled, her hands wandered vaguely over her lace cushion,
  her face turned deadly pale. She dared not raise her eyes, and
  replied at random, absently.

  "'Ah!' thought Selínova, 'that is the right key: that is the point
  whence cometh the storm!'

  "Both remained silent. At length Anastasia ventured to glance at her
  visitor, in order to see by the expression of her face, whether she
  had remarked her confusion. Selínova's eyes were fixed upon her work,
  on her face there was not even a shade of suspicion. The crafty widow
  intended little by little, imperceptibly, to win the confidence of
  the inexperienced girl.

  "'And where then is _he_ gone?' she asked after a short pause,
  without naming the person about whom she was enquiring.

  "'He is gone with the Great Prince on the campaign,' answered
  Anastasia blushing; then, after a moment's thought she added--'I
  suppose thou askedst me about my brother?'

  "'No, my dear, our conversation was about Antony the leech. What a
  pity he is a heretic! You will not easily find such another gallant
  among our Muscovites. He hath all, both height and beauty: when he
  looketh, 'tis as though he gave you large pearls; his locks lie on
  his shoulders like the light of dawn; he is as white and rosy as a
  young maiden. I wonder whence he had such beauty--whether by the
  permission of God, or, not naturally, by the influence of the Evil
  One. I could have looked at him--may it not be a sin to say, I could
  have gazed at him for ever without being weary!'

  "At these praises Anastasia's pale countenance blushed like the
  dawning that heralds the tempest. 'Thou hast then seen him?' asked
  the enamoured maiden, in a trembling, dying voice, and breaking off
  her work.

  "'I have seen him more than once. I have not only seen him, but
  wonder now, my dear--I have visited him in his dwelling!'

  "'The maiden shook her head, her eyes were dimmed with the shade of
  pensiveness; a thrill of jealousy, in spite of herself, darted to
  her heart. 'What! and didst thou not fear to go to him?' she
  said--'Is he not a heretic?'

  "'If thou knewest it, Nástenka, what wouldst thou not do for love?'

  "'Love?' ... exclaimed Anastasia, and her heart bounded violently in
  her breast.

  "'Ah if I were not afraid, I would disclose to thee the secret of my
  soul.'

  "'Speak, I pray thee, speak! Fear not; see! I call the Mother of God
  to witness, thy words shall die with me.'

  "And the maiden, with a quivering hand, signed a large cross.

  "'If so, I will confide in thee what I have never disclosed but to
  God. It is not over one blue sea alone that the mist lieth, and the
  darksome cloud: it is not over one fair land descendeth the gloomy
  autumn night; there was a time when my bosom was loaded with a heavy
  sorrow, my rebellious heart lay drowned in woe and care: I loved thy
  brother, Iván Vassílievitch. (The maiden's heart was relieved, she
  breathed more freely.) Thou knowest not, my life, my child, what kind
  of feeling is that of love, and God grant that thou mayest never know!
  The dark night cometh, thou canst not close thine eyes: the bright
  dawn breaketh, thou meetest it with tears, and the day is all
  weary--O, so weary! There are many men in the fair world, but thou
  see'st only one, in thy bower, in the street, in the house of God. A
  stone lieth ever on thy breast, and thou canst not shake it off.'

  "Then Selínova wept sincere tears. Her companion listened to her with
  eager sympathy: the feelings just depicted were her own.

       *       *       *       *       *

  "There was a deep silence. It was broken by the young widow.

  "'Nástenka, my life?' she began in a tone of such touching, such
  lively interest, as called for her reluctant confidence.

  "The daughter of Obrazétz glanced at her with eyes full of tears, and
  shook her head.

  "'Confide in me, as I have confided in thee,' continued Selínova,
  taking her hand and pressing it to her bosom. 'I have lived longer in
  the world than thou ... believe me, 'twill give thee ease ... 'tis
  clear from every symptom, my love, what thou ailest.'

  "And Anastasia, sobbing, exclaimed at last--'O, my love, my dearest
  friend, Praskóvia Vladimírovna, take a sharp knife, open my white
  breast, look what is the matter there!'

  "'And wherefore need we take the sharp knife, and wherefore need we
  open the white breast, or look upon the rebellious heart? Surely, by
  thy fair face all can tell, my child, how that fair face hath been
  darkened, how the fresh bloom hath faded, and bright eyes grown dull.
  After all, 'tis clear thou lovest some wandering falcon, some
  stranger youth.'

  "Anastasia answered not a word; she could not speak for tears; and
  hid her face in her hands. At last, softened by Selínova's friendly
  sympathy, and her assurances that she would be easier if she would
  confide her secret to such a faithful friend, she related her love
  for the heretic. The episode of the crucifix was omitted in this tale,
  which finished, of course, with assurances that she was enchanted,
  bewitched.

  "Poor Anastasia!

  "Snowdrop! beautiful flower, thou springest up alone in the bosom of
  thy native valley! And the bright sun arises every day to glass
  himself in thy morning mirror; and the beaming moon, after a sultry
  day, hastens to fan thee with her breezy wing, and the angels of God,
  lulling thee by night, spread over thee a starry canopy, such as king
  never possessed. Who can tell from what quarter the tempest may bring
  from afar, from other lands, the seeds of the ivy, and scatter them
  by thy side, and the ivy arises and twines lovingly around thee, and
  chokes thee, lovely flower! This is not all: the worm has crawled to
  thy root, hath fixed its fang therein, and kills ye both, if some
  kind hand save ye not."

These extracts will enable our readers to judge for themselves of the
merits of M. Lajétchnikoff's style as it appears in Mr Shaw's translation.
A better selection might have been made, had we not been desirous to avoid
any such anticipation of the development of the story as light diminish
its interest; but we are inclined to believe that most of our readers will
agree with us in thinking, that if M. Lajétchnikoff has succeeded in
faithfully illustrating the manners of the age of Iván the Great, he has
also shown that he possesses brilliancy of fancy, fervour of thought, and
elevation of sentiment, as well as knowledge of the movements of the heart,
revealed only to the few who have been initiated into nature's mysteries.

He does not appear to be largely gifted with the power of graphic
description, of placing the scenes of nature, or the living figures that
people them, vividly before us--he loves rather to indulge, even to excess,
mystical or passionate thoughts that are born in his own breast, and to
adorn them with garlands woven from the flowers of his fancy; but these
flowers are of native growth, the indigenous productions of the Russian
soil. His images often sound to our ears homely, sometimes even familiar
and mean, but they may be dignified in their native dress. He has no
lively perception of the beauties of external nature; his raptures are
reserved for the wonders of art, for what the human mind can create or
achieve; and, curiously enough, it is architecture that seems to excite in
him the greatest enthusiasm. In illustration of this feeling, we must
still extract an eloquent discourse on the life of the artist, which the
author puts into the mouth of Fioraventi Aristotle--a passage of much
feeling, and, we fear, of too much truth:--

  "Thou knowest not, Antony, what a life is that of an artist! While
  yet a child, he is agitated by heavy incomprehensible thoughts: to
  him the sphynx, Genius, hath already proposed its enigmas; in his
  bosom the Promethean vulture is already perched, and groweth with his
  growth. His comrades are playing and making merry; they are preparing
  for their riper years recollections of childhood's days of
  paradise--childhood, that never can be but once: the time cometh, and
  he remembereth but the tormenting dreams of that age. Youth is at
  hand; for others 'tis the time of love, of soft ties, of revelry--the
  feast of life; for the artist, none of these. Solitary, flying from
  society, he avoideth the maiden, he avoideth joy; plunging into the
  loneliness of his soul, he there, with indescribable mourning, with
  tears of inspiration, on his knees before his Ideal, imploreth her to
  come down upon earth to his frail dwelling. Days and nights he
  waiteth, and pineth after unearthly beauty. Woe to him if she doth
  not visit him, and yet greater woe to him if she doth! The tender
  frame of youth cannot bear her bridal kiss; union with the gods is
  fatal to man; and the mortal is annihilated in her embrace. I speak
  not of the education, of the mechanic preparation. And here at every
  step the Material enchaineth thee, buildeth up barriers before thee:
  marketh a formless vein upon thy block of marble, mingling soot with
  thy carmine, entangling thy imagination in a net of monstrous rules
  and formulas, commandeth thee to be the slave of the house-painter or
  of the stone-cutter. And what awaiteth thee, when thou hast come
  forth victorious from this mechanic school--when thou hast succeeded
  in throwing off the heavy sum of a thousand unnecessary rules, with
  which pedantry hath overwhelmed thee--when thou takest as thy guide
  only those laws which are so plain and simple?... What awaiteth thee
  then? Again the Material! Poverty, need, forced labour, appreciators,
  rivals, that ever-hungry flock which flieth upon thee ready to tear
  thee in pieces, as soon as it knoweth that thou art a pure possessor
  of the gift of God. Thy soul burneth to create, but thy carcass
  demandeth a morsel of bread; inspiration veileth her wing, but the
  body asketh not only to clothe its nakedness with a decent covering,
  but fine cloth, silk, velvet, that it may appear before thy judges in
  a proper dress, without which they will not receive thee, thou and
  thy productions will die unknown. In order to obtain food, clothes,
  thou must _work_: a merchant will order from thee a cellar, a
  warehouse; the signore, stables and dog kennels. Now at last thou
  hast procured thyself daily bread, a decent habit for thy bones and
  flesh: inspiration thirsteth for its nourishment, demanding from thy
  soul images and forms. Thou createst, thou art bringing thy Ideal to
  fulfilment. How swiftly move the wheels of thy being! Thy existence
  is tenfold redoubled, thy pulse is beating as when thou breathest the
  atmosphere of high mountains. Thou spendest in one day whole months
  of life. How many nights passed without sleep, how many days in
  ceaseless chain, all filled with agitation! Or rather, there is nor
  day nor night for thee, nor seasons of the year, as for other men.
  Thy blood now boileth, then freezeth; the fever of imagination
  wasteth thee away. Triumph setteth thee on fire, the fear of failure
  maddeneth thee, tearing thee to pieces, tormenting thee with dread of
  the judgments of men; then again ariseth the terror of dying with thy
  task unfinished. Add, too, the inevitable shade of glory, which
  stalketh ever in thy footsteps, and giveth thee not a moment of
  repose. This is the period of creation! While creating, thou hast
  been dwelling at the footstool of God. Crushed by thy contact with
  the hem of his garment, overwhelmed by inspiration from Him whom the
  world can scarcely bear, a poor mortal, half alive, half dead, thou
  descendest upon earth, and carriest with thee what thou hast created
  _there_, in _His_ presence! Mortals surround thy production, judging,
  valuing, discussing it in detail; the patron laudeth the ornaments,
  the grandeur of the columns, the weight of the work; the distributors
  of favour gamble away thy honour, or creep like mice under thy plan,
  and nibble at it in the darkness of night. No, my friend, the life of
  an artist is the life of a martyr."

We are so much accustomed to see virtue rewarded and vice punished, that
we might perhaps have been better pleased to have seen this kind of
poetical justice more equitably dispensed; but the cause of virtue is
perhaps as effectually served by making it attractive as by making it
triumphant, and vice is as much discouraged by making it odious or
contemptible as by making it unsuccessful.

It only remains to say a few words of the translator's labours; and
although we do not pretend to decide on the fidelity of the version he has
given us, or how much his author may have lost or gained in his hands, we
cannot but think that we perceive internal evidence of efforts to be
faithful, even at the hazard of losing perhaps something of more value in
the attempt. However this may be, it is plain that Mr Shaw is himself a
vigorous and eloquent writer of his own language, as the extracts we have
given may vouch. We feel greatly indebted to him for unlocking to us the
stores of Russian fiction, which, if they contain many such works as _The
Heretic_, will well repay the labour of a careful examination. There is
about every thing Russian an air of orientalism which gives a peculiar
character to their dress, their mansions, their manners, their feelings,
their expressions, and their prejudices, which will probably long continue
to distinguish Russian literature on that of the other nations of Europe,
whose steps she has followed, perhaps too implicitly, in her attempts to
overtake them in the race of civilization and intellectual improvement.

       *       *       *       *       *




THRUSH-HUNTING.

BY ALEXANDER DUMAS.


We have heard of certain cooks, the Udes and Vatels of their day, whose
boast it was to manufacture the most sumptuous and luxurious repast out of
coarse and apparently insufficient materials. We will take the liberty of
comparing M. Dumas with one of these artistical _cuisiniers_, possessing in
the highest degree the talent of making much out of little, by the skill
with which it is prepared, and the piquant nature of the condiments
applied. A successful dramatist, as well as a popular romance-writer, his
dialogues have the point and brilliancy, his narrative the vivid terseness,
generally observable in novels written by persons accustomed to dramatic
composition. Confining himself to no particular line of subject, he
rambles through the different departments of light literature in a most
agreeable and desultory manner; to-day a tourist, to-morrow a novelist;
the next day surprising his public by an excursion into the regions of
historical romance, amongst the well-beaten highways and byways of which
he still manages to discover an untrodden path, or to embellish a familiar
one by the sparkle of his wit and industry of his researches. The majority
of his books convey the idea of being written _currente calamo_, and with
little trouble to himself; and these have a lightness and brilliancy
peculiar to their lively author, which cannot fail to recommend them to
all classes of readers. They are like the sketches of a clever artist, who,
with a few bright and bold touches, gives an effect to his subject which
no labour would enable a less talented painter to achieve. But M. Dumas
can produce highly finished pictures as well as brilliant sketches,
although for the present it is one of the latter that we are about to
introduce to our readers.

Every body knows, or ought to know, that M. Dumas has been in Italy, and
found means to make half a dozen highly amusing volumes out of his rambles
in a country, perhaps, of all others, the most familiar to the inhabitants
of civilized Europe--a country which has been described and re-described
_ad nauseam_, by tourists, loungers, and idlers innumerable. On his way to
the land of lazzaroni he made a pause at Marseilles to visit his friend
Méry, a poet and author of some celebrity; and here he managed to collect
materials for a volume which we can recommend to the perusal of the daily
increasing class of our countrymen who think that a book, although written
in French, may be witty and amusing without being either blasphemous or
indecent.

We have reason to believe that many persons who have not visited the
south-eastern corner of France, think of it as a "land of the cypress and
myrtle;" where troubadours wander amongst orange groves, or tinkle their
guitars under the shade of the vine and the fig-tree. There is something
in a name, and Provence, if it were only for the sake of its roses, ought,
one would think, to be a smiling and beautiful country. And so part of it
is; but in this part is assuredly not included the district around its
chief city. One hears much of the vineyards and orange groves of the south.
We do not profess to care much about vines, except for the sake of what
they produce; most of the vineyards we ever saw looked very like
plantations of gooseberry bushes, and the best of them were not so
graceful or picturesque as a Kentish hop-ground. As to olives, admirable
as they undoubtedly are when flanking a sparkling jug of claret, we find
little to admire in the stiff, greyish, stunted sort of trees upon which
they think proper to grow. But neither vines nor olives are to be found
around Marseilles. Nothing but dust; dust on the roads, dust in the fields,
dust on every leaf of the parched, unhappy-looking trees that surround the
country-houses of the Marseillais. The fruit and vegetables consumed there
are brought for miles overland, or by water from places on the coast;
flowers are scarce--objecting, probably, to grow in so arid a soil, and in
a heat that, for some months of the year, is perfectly African. Game there
is little or none; notwithstanding which, there are nowhere to be found
more enthusiastic sportsmen than at Marseilles. It is on this hint M.
Dumas speaks. His description of the manner in which the worthy burghers
of Marseilles make war upon the volatiles is rather amusing.

"Every Marseillais who aspires to the character of a keen sportsman, has
what is termed a _poste à feu_. This is a pit or cave dug in the ground in
the vicinity of a couple of pine-trees, and covered over with branches. In
addition to the pine-trees, it is usual to have _cimeaux_, long spars of
wood, of which two are supported horizontally on the branches of the trees,
and a third planted perpendicularly in the ground. These _cimeaux_ are
intended as a sort of treacherous invitation to the birds to come and rest
themselves. So regularly as Sunday morning arrives, the Marseillais
Cockney installs himself in his pit, arranges a loophole through which he
can see what passes outside, and waits with all imaginable patience. The
question that will naturally be asked, is--What does he wait for?

"He waits for a thrush, an ortolan, a beccafico, a robin-redbreast, or any
other feathered and diminutive biped. He is not so ambitious as to expect
a quail. Partridges he has heard of; of one, at least, a sort of phoenix,
reproduced from its own ashes, and seen from time to time before an
earthquake, or other great catastrophe. As to the hare, he is well aware
that it is a fabulous animal of the unicorn species.

"There is a tradition, however, at Marseilles, that during the last three
months of the year, flocks of wild pigeons pass over, on their way from
Africa or Kamschatka, or some other distant country. Within the memory of
man no one has ever seen one of these flights; but it would nevertheless
be deemed heresy to doubt the fact. At this season, therefore, the
sportsman provides himself with tame pigeon, which he fastens by a string
to the _cimeaux_, in such a manner that the poor bird is obliged to keep
perpetually on the wing, not being allowed rope enough to reach a perch.
After three or four Sundays passed in this manner, the unfortunate decoy
dies of a broken heart."

There is not nearly so much caricature in this picture as our readers may
be disposed to think. Whoever has passed a few weeks of the autumn in a
French provincial town, must have witnessed and laughed at the very
comical proceedings of the _chasseurs_, the high-sounding title assumed by
every Frenchman who ever pointed a gun at a cock-sparrow. One sees them
going forth in the morning in various picturesque and fanciful costumes,
their loins girded with a broad leathern belt, a most capacious game-bag
slung over their shoulder, a fowling-piece of murderous aspect balanced on
their arm; their heads protected from the October sun by every possible
variety of covering, from the Greek skull-cap to the broad-brimmed Spanish
sombrero. Away they go, singly, or by twos and threes, accompanied by a
whole regiment of dogs, for the most part badly bred, and worse broken
curs, which, when they get into the field, go pottering about in a style
that would sorely tempt an English sportsman to bestow upon them the
contents of both barrels. Towards the close of the day, take a stroll
outside the town, and you meet the heroes returning. "Well, what sport?"
"_Pas mal, mon cher_. Not so bad," is the reply, in a tone of
ill-concealed triumph; and plunging his hand into his game-bag, the
chasseur produces--a phthisical snipe, a wood pigeon, an extenuated quail,
and perhaps something which you at first take for a deformed blackbird,
but which turns out to be a water-hen. As far as our own observations go,
we do aver this to be a very handsome average of a French sportsman's
day's shooting. If by chance he has knocked down a red-legged partridge,
(grey ones are very scarce in France,) his exultation knows no bounds. The
day on which such a thing occurs is a red-letter day with him for the rest
of his life. He goes home at once and inscribes the circumstance in the
family archives.

But this state of things, it will perhaps be urged, may arise from the
scarcity of game in France, as probably as from the sportsman's want of
skill. True; but the worst is to come. After you have duly admired and
examined snipe, pigeon, quail, and water-hen, your friend again rummages
in the depths of his _gibecière_, and pulls out--what?--a handful of
tomtits and linnets, which he has been picking off every hedge for five
miles round. "_Je me suis rabattu sur le petit gibier_," he says, with a
grin and a shrug, and walks away, a proud man and a happy, leaving you in
admiration of his prowess.

M. Dumas expresses a wish to make the acquaintance of one of these modern
Nimrods, and his friend Méry arranges a supper, to which he invites a
certain Monsieur Louet, who plays the fourth bass in the orchestra of the
Marseilles theatre. The conversation after supper is a good specimen of
_persiflage_. After doing ample justice to an excellent repast, during
which he had scarcely uttered a word,

"Monsieur Louet threw himself back in his chair and looked at us all, one
after the other, as if he had only just become aware of our presence,
accompanying his inspection with a smile of the most perfect benevolence;
then, heaving a gentle sigh of satisfaction--'Ma foi! I have made a
capital supper!' exclaimed he.

"'M. Louet! A cigar?' cried Méry: 'It is good for the digestion.'

"'Thank you, most illustrious poet!' answered M. Louet; 'I never smoke. It
was not the fashion in my time. Smoking and boots were introduced by the
Cossacks. I always wear shoes, and am faithful to my snuff-box.'

"So saying, M. Louet produced his box, and offered it round. We all
refused except Méry, who, wishing to flatter him, attacked his weak side.

"'What delicious snuff, M. Louet! This cannot be the common French snuff?'

"'Indeed it is--only I doctor it in a particular manner. It is a secret I
learned from a cardinal when I was at Rome.'

"'Ha! You have been to Rome?' cried I.

"'Yes, sir; I passed twenty years there.'

"'M. Louet,' said Méry, 'since you do not smoke, you ought to tell these
gentlemen the story of your thrush-hunt.'

"'I shall be most happy,' replied M. Louet graciously, 'if you think it
will amuse the company.'

"'To be sure it will,' cried Méry. 'Gentlemen, you are going to hear the
account of one of the most extraordinary hunts that has taken place since
the days of Nimrod the mighty hunter. I have heard it told twenty times,
and each time with increased pleasure. Another glass of punch, M. Louet.
There! Now begin.--We are all impatience.'

"'You are aware, gentlemen,' said M. Louet, 'that every Marseillais is
born a sportsman.'

"'Perfectly true,' interrupted Méry 'it is a physiological phenomenon
which I have never been able to explain; but it is nevertheless quite
true.'

"'Unfortunately,' continued M. Louet, 'or perhaps I should say fortunately,
we have neither lions nor tigers in the neighbourhood of Marseilles. On
the other hand, we have flights of pigeons.'

"'There!' cried Méry, 'I told you so. They insist upon it.'

"'Certainly,' replied M. Louet, visibly vexed; 'and, whatever you may say
to the contrary, the pigeons _do_ pass. Besides, did you not lend me the
other day a book of Mr Cooper's, the _Pioneers_, in which the fact is
authenticated?'

"'Ah, yes! Authenticated in America.'

"'Very well! If they pass over America why should they not pass over
Marseilles? The vessels that go from Alexandria and Constantinople to
America often pass here.'

"'Very true!' replied Méry, thunderstruck by this last argument. 'I have
nothing more to say. M. Louet, your hand. I will never contradict you
again on the subject.'

"'Sir, every man has a right to his opinion.'

"'True, but I relinquish mine. Pray go on, M. Louet.'

"'I was saying, then, that instead of lions and tigers we have flights of
pigeons.' M. Louet paused a moment to see if Méry would contradict him.
Méry nodded his head approvingly.

"'True,' said he, 'they have flights of pigeons.'"

Satisfied by this admission M. Louet resumed.

"'You may easily imagine that at the period of the year when these flights
occur, every sportsman is on the alert; and, as I am only occupied in the
evening at the theatre, I am fortunately able to dispose of my mornings as
I like. It was in 1810 or '11, I was five-and-thirty years of age; that is
to say, gentlemen, rather more active than I am now. I was one morning at
my post, as usual, before daybreak. I had tied my decoy pigeon to the
_cimeaux_, and he was fluttering about like a mad thing, when I fancied I
saw by the light of the stars something perched upon my pine-tree.
Unfortunately it was too dark for me to distinguish whether this something
were a bat or a bird, so I remained quite quiet, waiting for the sun to
rise. At last the sun rose and I saw that it was a bird. I raised my gun
gently to my shoulder, and, when I was sure of my aim, I pulled the
trigger. Sir, I had omitted to discharge my gun on returning from shooting
the evening before. It had been twelve hours loaded, and it hung fire.

"'Nevertheless I saw by the way in which the bird flew that he was touched.
I followed him with my eyes till he perched again. Then I looked for my
pigeon; but by an extraordinary chance a shot had cut the string which
tied him, and he had flown away. Without a decoy I knew very well it was
no use remaining at the post, so I resolved to follow up the thrush. I
forgot to tell you, gentlemen, that the bird I had fired at was a thrush.

"'Unluckily I had no dog. When one shoots with a decoy, a dog is worse
than useless--it is a positive nuisance. I was obliged, therefore, to beat
the bushes myself. The thrush had run along the ground, and rose behind me
when I thought I still had him in front. At the sound of his wings I
turned and fired in a hurry. A shot thrown away, as you may suppose.
Nevertheless I saw some feathers fall from him.'

"'You saw some feathers?' cried Méry.

"'Yes, sir. I even found one, which I put in my buttonhole.'

"'In that case,' said Méry, 'the thrush was hit?'

"'That was my opinion at the time. I had not lost sight of him, and I
continued the pursuit; but the bird was scared, and this time flew away
before I got within range. I fired all the same. There is no saying where
a stray shot may go.'

"'A stray shot is not enough for a thrush,' said Méry, shaking his head
gravely. 'A thrush is a very hard-lived bird.'

"'Very true, sir; for I am certain my two first shots had wounded him, and
yet he made a third flight of nearly half a mile. But I had sworn to have
him, and on I went. Impossible to get near him. He led me on, mile after
mile, always flying away as soon as I came within fifty or sixty paces. I
became furious. If I had caught him I think I should have eaten him alive,
and the more so as I was beginning to get very hungry. Fortunately, as I
had calculated on remaining out all day, I had my breakfast and dinner in
my game-bag, and I eat as I went along.'

"'Pardon me,' said Méry, interrupting M. Louet; 'I have an observation to
make. Observe, my dear Dumas, the difference between the habits of the
human race in northern and southern climes. In the north the sportsman
runs after his game; in the south he waits for it to come to him. In the
first case he takes out an empty bag and brings home a full one; in the
other he takes it out full and brings it home empty. Pray, go on, my dear
M. Louet. I have spoken.' And he recommenced puffing at his cigar.

"'Where was I?' said M. Louet, who had lost the threat of his narrative
through this interruption.

"'Speeding over hill and dale in pursuit of your thrush.'

"'True, sir. I cannot describe to you the state of excitement and
irritation I was in. I began to think of the bird of Prince Camaralzaman,
and to suspect that I, too, might be the victim of some enchantment. I
passed Cassis and La Ciotat, and entered the large plain extending from
Ligne to St. Cyr. I had been fifteen hours on my feet, and I was half dead
with fatigue. I made a vow to Our Lady of La Garde to hang a silver thrush
in her chapel, if she would only assist me to catch the living one I was
following; but she paid no attention to me. Night was coming on, and in
despair I fired my last shot at the accursed bird. I have no doubt he
heard the lead whistle, for this time he flew so far that I lost sight of
him in the twilight. He had gone in the direction of the village of St.
Cyr. Probably he intended to sleep there, and I resolved to do the same.
Fortunately there was to be no performance that night at the Marseilles
theatre.'"

The worthy basso goes to the inn at St. Cyr, and relates his troubles to
the host, who decides that the object of his pursuit must have halted for
the night in a neighbouring piece of brushwood. By daybreak M. Louet is
again a-foot, accompanied by the innkeeper's dog, Soliman. They soon get
upon the scent of the devoted thrush.

"'Every body knows that a true sporting dog will follow any one who has a
gun on his shoulder. "Soliman, Soliman!" cried I; and Soliman came. Sir,
the instinct of the dog was remarkable: we had hardly got out of the
village when he made a point--such a point, sir!--his tail out as straight
as a ramrod. There was the thrush, not ten paces from me. I fired both
barrels--Poum! Poum! Powder not worth a rush. I had used all my own the
day before, and this was some I had got from my host. The thrush flew away
unhurt. But Soliman had kept his eye on him, and went straight to the
place where the bird was. Again he made a most beautiful point; but
although I looked with all my eyes, I could not see the thrush. I was
stooping down in this manner, looking for the creature, when suddenly it
flew away, and so fast, that before I got my gun to my shoulder, it was
out of reach. Soliman opened his eyes and stared at me; as much as to say,
"What is the meaning of all this?" The expression of the dog's face made
me feel quit humiliated. I could not help speaking to him. "Never mind,"
said I, nodding my head, "you will see next time." You would have thought
the animal understood me. He again began to hunt about. In less than ten
minutes he stopped as if he were cut out of marble. I was determined not
to lose this chance; and I went right before the dog's nose. The bird rose
literally under my feet; but I was so agitated that I fired my first
barrel too soon, and my second too late. The first discharge passed by him
like a single ball; the second was too scattered, and he passed between it.
It was then that a thing happened to me--one of those things which I
should not repeat, but for my attachment to the truth. The dog looked at
me for a moment with a sort of smile upon his countenance: then, coming
close up to me while I was reloading my gun, he lifted his left hind leg,
made water against my gaiter, and then turning round, trotted away in the
direction of his master's house. You may easily suppose, that if it had
been a man who had thus insulted me, I would have had his life, or he
should have had mine. But what could I say, sir, to a dumb beast which God
had not gifted with reason?'"

This canine insult only acts as a spur to the indefatigable chasseur, who,
dogless as he finds himself, follows up his thrush till he reaches the
town of Hyères. Here he loses all trace of the bird, but endeavours to
console himself by eating the oranges which grow in the garden of his
hotel. Whilst thus engaged, a thrush perches on a tree beside him, and the
first glance at the creature's profile satisfied him that it is the same
bird whose society he has been rejoicing in the for the last two days.
Unfortunately his gun is in the house, of which the thrush seems to be
aware, for it continues singing and dressing its feathers on a branch
within ten feet of his head. Afraid of losing sight of it, M. Louet waits
till the landlord comes to announce supper, and then desires him to bring
his gun. But there is a punishment of fine and imprisonment for whoever
fires a shot, between sunset and sunrise, within the precincts of the town;
and although the enthusiastic sportsman is willing enough to run this risk,
the hotel-keeper fears to be taken for an accomplice, and refuses to fetch
the gun, threatening to drive away the bird if M. Louet goes for it
himself. At last they come to terms. M. Louet sups and sleeps under the
tree, the bird roosts on the same; and at the first stroke of the matin
bell, mine host appears with the fowling-piece. Our chasseur stretches out
his hand to take it, and--the bird flies away.

M. Louet throws down the price of his supper, and scales the garden wall
in pursuit. He follows his intended victim the whole of that day, and at
last has the mortification of seeing it carried away before his eyes by a
hawk. Foot-sore and tired, hungry and thirsty, the unfortunate musician
sinks down exhausted by the side of a road. A peasant passes by.

"'My friend,' said I to him, 'is there any town, village, or house in
this neighbourhood?'

"'_Gnor si_,' answered he, '_cé la citta di Nizza un miglia avanti_.'

"The thrush had led me into Italy."

At Nice M. Louet is in great tribulation. In the course of his long ramble
his money has worked a hole in his pocket, and he discovers that he is
penniless just at the moment that he has established himself at the best
hotel, and ordered supper for three by way of making up for past
privations. He gets out of his difficulties, however, by giving a concert,
which produces him a hundred crowns; and he then embarks for Toulon, on
board the letter of marque, La Vierge des Sept Douleurs, Captain Garnier.

Once on the water, there is a fine opportunity for a display of French
naval heroism, at the expense, of course, of the unfortunate English, to
whom M. Dumas bears about the same degree of affection that another
dark-complexioned gentleman is said to do to holy water. This is one of M.
Dumas's little peculiarities or affectations, it is difficult to say which.
Wherever it is possible to bring in England and the English, depreciate
them in any way, or turn them into ridicule, M. Dumas invariably does it,
and those passages are frequently the most amusing in his books. In the
present instance, it is a very harmless piece of faufarronade in which he
indulges.

The armed brig in which M. Louet has embarked, falls in which a squadron
of English men-of-war. Hearing a great bustle upon deck, our musician goes
up to enquire the cause, and finds the captain quietly seated, smoking his
pipe. After the usual salutations--

"'M. Louet, have you ever seen a naval combat?' said the captain to me.

"'Never, sir.'

"'Would you like to see one?'

"'Why, captain, to say the truth, there are other things I should better
like to see.'

"'I am sorry for it; for it you wished to see one, a real good one, your
wish would soon be gratified.'

"'What! captain,' cried I, feeling myself grow pale; 'you do not mean to
say we are going to have a naval combat? Ha, ha! I see you are joking,
captain.'

"'Joking, eh? Look yonder. What do you see?'

"'I see three very fine vessels.'

"'Count again.'

"'I see more. Four, five, there are six of them.'

"'Can you distinguish what there is on the flag of the nearest one? Here,
take the glass.'

"'I cannot make out very well, but I think I see a harp.'

"'Exactly.--The Irish harp. In a few minutes they'll play as a tune on it.'

"'But captain,' said I, 'they are still a long way off, and it appears to
me, that by spreading all those sails which are now furled upon your masts
and yards, you might manage to escape. In your place I should certainly
run away. Excuse me for the suggestion, but it is my opinion as fourth
bass of the Marseilles theatre. If I had the honour to be a sailor, I
should perhaps think differently.'"

Very sensible advice, too, M. Louet, _we_ should have thought at least,
considering the odds of six to one. But the fire-eating Frenchman thinks
otherwise.

"'If it were a man, instead of a bass, who made me such a proposal,'
replied the captain, 'I should have had a word or two to say to him about
it. Know, sir, that Captain Garnier _never_ runs away! He fights till his
vessel is riddled like a sieve, then he allows himself to be boarded, and
when his decks are covered with the enemy, he goes into the powder
magazine with his pipe in his mouth, shakes out the burning ashes, and
sends the English on a voyage of discovery upwards.'

"'And the French?'

"'The French too.'

"'And the passengers?'

"'The passengers likewise.'

"'At that moment, a small white cloud appeared issuing from the side of
one of the English ships. This was followed by a dull noise like a heavy
blow on the big drum. I saw some splinters fly from the top of the brig's
gunwale, and an artilleryman, who was just then standing on his gun, fell
backwards upon me. 'Come, my friend,' said I, 'mind what you are about.'
And, as he did not stir, I pushed him. He fell upon the deck. I looked at
him with more attention. His head was off.

"My nerves were so affected by this sight, that five minutes later I found
myself in the ship's hold, without exactly knowing how I had got there."

Thanks to a storm, the six English men of war manage to escape from the
brig, and when M. Louet ventures to re-appear upon deck, he finds himself
in the Italian port of Piombino, opposite the island of Elba. He has had
enough of the water, and goes on shore, where he bargains with a vetturino
to take him to Florence. A young officer of French hussars, and four
Italians, are his travelling companions. The former, on learning his name
and profession, asks him sundry questions about a certain Mademoiselle
Zephyrine, formerly a dancer at the Marseilles theatre, and in whom he
seems to take a strong interest.

Bad springs and worse roads render it very difficult to sleep. At last, on
the second night of their journey, M. Louet succeeds in getting up a doze,
out of which he is roused in a very unpleasant manner. We will give his
own account of it.

"'Two pistol-shots, the flash of which almost burned my face, awoke me.
They were fired by M. Ernest, (the hussar officer.) We were attacked by
banditti.'

"'_Faccia in terra! Faccia in terra!_' I jumped out of the carriage, and
as I did so, one of the brigands gave me a blow between the shoulders,
that threw me upon my face. My companions were already in that position,
with the exception of M. Ernest, who was defending himself desperately. At
length he was overpowered and made prisoner.

"My pockets were turned inside out, and my hundred crowns taken away. I
had a diamond ring on my finger, which I hoped they would not observe, and
I turned the stone inside, heartily wishing, as I did so, that it had the
power of Gyges' ring, and could render me invisible. But all was in vain.
The robbers soon found it out. When they had taken every thing from us--

"'Is there a musician amongst you?' said he who appeared the chief.

"Nobody answered.

"'Well,' repeated he, 'are you all deaf? I asked if any of you knew how to
play on an instrument.'

"'Pardieu!' said a voice, which I recognized as that of the young officer;
'there's M. Louet, who plays the bass.'

"I wished myself a hundred feet under ground.

"'Which is M. Louet?' said the brigand. 'Is it this one?' And, stooping
down, he laid hold of the collar of my shooting-jacket, and lifted me on
my feet.

"'For Heaven's sake, what do you want with me?' cried I.

"'Nothing to be so frightened about,' was the answer. 'For a week past we
have been hunting every where for a musician, without being able to find
one. The captain will be delighted to see you.'

"'What!' cried I, 'are you going to take me to the captain?'

"'Certainly we are.'

"'To separate me from my companions?'

"'What can we do with them? _They_ are not musicians.'

"'Gentlemen!' cried I, 'for God's sake, help me! do not let me be carried
off in this manner.'

"'The gentlemen will have the goodness to remain with their noses in the
dust for the space of a quarter of an hour,' said the brigand. 'As to the
officer, tie him to a tree,' continued he, to the four men who were
holding the hussar. 'In a quarter of an hour the postillion will untie him.
Not a minute sooner, if you value your life.'

"The postillion gave a sort of affirmative grunt, and the robbers now moved
off in the direction of the mountains. I was led between two of them.
After marching for some time, we saw a light in a window, and presently
halted at a little inn on a cross-road. The bandits went up stairs,
excepting two, who remained with me in the kitchen, and one of whom had
appropriated my fowling-piece, and the other my game-bag. As to my diamond
ring and my hundred crowns, they had become perfectly invisible.

"Presently somebody shouted from above, and my guards, taking me by the
collar, pushed me up stairs, and into a room on the first floor.

"Seated at a table, upon which was a capital supper and numerous array of
bottles, was the captain of the robbers, a fine-looking man of thirty-five
or forty years of age. He was dressed exactly like a theatrical robber, in
blue velvet, with a red sash and silver buckles. His arm was passed round
the waist of a very pretty girl in the costume of a Roman peasant; that is
to say, an embroidered boddice, short bright-coloured petticoat, and red
stockings. Her feet attracted my attention, they were so beautifully small.
On one of her fingers I saw my diamond ring--a circumstance which, as well
as the company in which I found her, gave me a very indifferent idea of
the young lady's morality.

"'What countryman are you?' asked the captain.

"'I am a Frenchman, your excellency.'

"'So much the better!' cried the young girl.

"I saw with pleasure that, at any rate, I was amongst people who spoke my
own language.

"'You are a musician?'

"'I am fourth bass at the Marseilles theatre.'

"'Bring this gentleman's bass,' said the captain to one of his men. 'Now,
my little Rina,' said he, turning to his mistress, 'I hope you are ready
to dance."

"'I always was,' answered she, 'but how could I without music?'

"'_Non ho trovato l'instrumento_,' said the robber, reappearing at the
door.

"'What!' cried the captain in a voice of thunder; 'no instrument?'

"'Captain,' interposed his lieutenant, 'I searched every where, but could
not find even the smallest violoncello.'

"'_Bestia_!' cried the captain.

"'Excellency,' I ventured to observe, 'it is not his fault. I had no bass
with me.'

"'Very well,' said the captain, 'send off five men immediately to Sienna,
Volterra, Grossetto--all over the country. I must have a bass by to-morrow
night.'

"I could not help thinking I had seen Mademoiselle Rina's face somewhere
before, and I was cudgeling my memory to remember where, when she
addressed the captain.

"'Tonino,' said she, 'you have not even asked the poor man if he is
hungry.'

"I was touched by this little attention, and, on the captain's invitation,
I drew a chair to the table, in fear and trembling I acknowledge; but it
was nearly twelve hours since I had eaten any thing, and my hunger was
perfectly canine. Mademoiselle Rina herself had the kindness to pass me
the dishes and fill my glass; so that I had abundant opportunities of
admiring my own ring, which sparkled upon her finger. I began to perceive,
however, that I should not be so badly off as I had expected, and that the
captain was disposed to treat me well.

"Supper over, I was allowed to retire to a room and a bed that had been
prepared for me. I slept fifteen hours without waking. The robbers had the
politeness not to disturb me till I awakened of my own accord. Then,
however, five of them entered my room, each carrying a bass. I chose the
best, and they made firewood of the others.

"When I had made my choice, they told me the captain was waiting dinner
for me; and accordingly, on entering the principal room of the inn, I
found a table spread for the captain, Mademoiselle Rina, the lieutenant,
and myself. There were several other tables for the rest of the banditti.
The room was lighted up with at least three hundred wax candles.

"The dinner was a merry one. The robbers were really very good sort of
people, and the captain was in an excellent humour. When the feasting was
over,

"'You have not forgotten your promise, Rina, I hope?' said he.

"'Certainly not,' was the reply. 'In a quarter of an hour I am ready.'

"So saying, she skipped out of the room.

"'And you, Signor Musico,' said the captain, 'I hope you are going to
distinguish yourself.'

"'I will do my best, captain.'

"'If I am satisfied, you shall have back your hundred crowns.'

"'And my diamond ring, captain?'

"'Oh! as to that, no. Besides, you see Rina has got it, and you are too
gallant to wish to take it from her.'

"At this moment Mademoiselle Rina made her appearance in the costume of a
shepherdess--a boddice of silver, short silk petticoats, and a large
Cashmere shawl twisted round her waist. She was really charming in this
dress. I seized my bass. I fancied myself in the orchestra at Marseilles.

"'What would you like me to play, Mademoiselle?'

"'Do you know the shawl-dance in the ballet of _Clary_?'

"'Certainly; it is my favourite.'

"I began to play, Rina to dance, and the banditti to applaud. She danced
admirably. The more I looked at her, the more convinced I became that I
had seen her before.

"She was in the middle of a _pirouette_ when the door opened, and the
innkeeper entering, whispered something in the captain's ear.

"'_Ove sono_?' said the latter, quietly. 'Where are they?'

"'A San Dalmazio.'

"'No nearer? Then there is no hurry.'

"'What is the matter?' said Rina, executing a magnificent _entrechat_.

"'Nothing. Only those rascally travellers have given the alarm at Florence,
and the hussars of the Grand-duchess Eliza are looking for us.'

"'They are too late for the performance,' said Rina, laughing. 'I have
finished my dance.'

"It was lucky, for the bow had fallen from my hands at the news I had just
heard. Rina made one bound to the door, and then turning, as if she had
been on the stage, curtsied to the audience, and kissed her hand to the
captain. The applause was deafening; I doubt if she had ever had such a
triumph.

"'And now, to arms!' cried the captain. 'Prepare a horse for Rina and
another for the musician. _We_ will go on foot. The road to Romagna,
remember! Stragglers to rejoin at Chianciano.'

"For a few minutes all was bustle and preparation.

"'Here I am,' cried Rina, running in, attired in her Roman peasant's
dress.

"'_Usseri, Usseri_!' said the innkeeper.

"'Off with you!' cried the captain, and every one hurried towards the
stairs.

"'The devil!' said the captain, turning to me, 'you are forgetting your
bass, I think.'

"I took the bass. I would willingly have crept into it. Two horses stood
ready saddled at the house door.

"'Well, Monsieur le Musicien,' said Rina, 'do you not help me to get on my
horse? You are not very gallant.'

"I held out my arm to assist her, and as I did so she put a small piece of
paper into my hand.

"A cold perspiration stood upon my forehead. What could this paper be? Was
it a billet-doux? Had I been so unfortunate as to make a conquest, which
would render me the rival of the captain? My first impulse was to throw
the note away; but on second thoughts I put it in my pocket.

"'_Usseri, Usseri_!' cried the innkeeper again, and a noise like that of a
distant galloping was heard. I scrambled on my horse, which two of the
robbers took by the bridle; two others led that of Mademoiselle Rina. The
captain, with his carbine on his shoulder, ran beside his mistress, the
lieutenant accompanied me, and the remainder of the band, consisting of
fifteen or eighteen men, brought up the rear. Five or six shots were fired
some three hundred yards behind us, and the balls whistled in our ears.
'To the left!' cried the captain, and we threw ourselves into a sort of
ravine, at the bottom of which ran a rapid stream. Here we halted and
listened, and heard the hussars gallop furiously past on the high-road.

"'If they keep on at that pace, they'll soon be at Grossetto,' said the
captain laughing."

This is the unfortunate musician's first essay in horsemanship, and when,
after twelve hours' march across the country, with his bass strapped upon
his shoulders, he halts at the inn at Chianciano, he is more dead than
alive. He remembers, however, to read Mademoiselle Rina's note. From this,
and a few words which she takes an opportunity of saying to him, he finds
that she is an opera-dancer named Zephyrine, who had had an engagement a
year or two previously at the Marseilles theatre. She had since
transferred herself to the Teatro de la Valle at Rome, where the bandit
captain, Tonino, happening to witness her performance, became enamoured of
her, and laid a plan for carrying her off, which had proved successful.
Her lover, however, Ernest, the same officer of hussars who had been M.
Louet's travelling companion, is in search of her; and, to assist him in
his pursuit, she writes her name, and that of the place they are next
going to, upon the window of each inn they stop at. It was for this
purpose she had secured M. Louet's diamond ring.

If contrast was Dumas' object in writing this volume, he has certainly
been highly successful in carrying out his intention. Most writers would
have contented themselves with composing the female portion of the
brigands' society, of some dark-browed Italian _contadina_, with flashing
eyes and jetty ringlets, a knife in her garter and a mousquetoon in her
brawny fist, and a dozen crucifixes and amulets round her neck. At most,
one might have expected to meet with some English lady in a green veil,
(all English ladies, who travel, wear green veils,) whose carriage had
been attacked, and herself carried off on the road from Florence to Rome.
But M. Dumas scorns such commonplace _dramatis personae_, and is satisfied
with nothing less than transporting a French ballet-dancer into the
Appenines, with all her paraphernalia of gauze drapery, tinsel decorations,
and opera airs and graces; not forgetting the orchestra, in the person of
the luckless bass player. Yet so ingeniously does he dovetail it all
together, so probable does he make his improbabilities appear, that we
become almost reconciled to the idea of finding Mademoiselle Zephyrine
Taglionizing away upon the filthy floor of a mountain _osteria_, and are
inclined to be astonished that the spectators should not be provided with
bouquets to throw at her upon the conclusion of her performance.

Several days are passed in running from one place to the other, always
followed by the hussars, from whom the banditti have some narrow escapes.
M. Louet is taken great care of in consideration of his skill as a
musician, and he on his part takes all imaginable care of his bass, which
he looks upon as a sort of a safeguard. At length they arrive at the
castle of Anticoli, a villa which the captain rents from a Roman nobleman,
and where he considers himself in perfect safety. Here M. Louet is
installed in a magnificent apartment, where he finds linen and clothes, of
which he is much in need. His toilet completed, he is conducted to the
drawing-room by a livery servant, who bears a strong resemblance to one of
his friends the banditti. But we will let him tell his story in his own
words.

"There were three persons in the room into which I was ushered; a young
lady, a very elegantly dressed man, and a French officer. I thought there
must be some mistake, and was walking backwards out of the apartment, when
the lady said--

"'My dear M. Louet, where are you going? Do you not mean to dine with us?'

"'Pardon me,' said I, 'I did not recognise you, Mademoiselle.'

"'If you prefer it, you shall be served in your apartment,' said the
elegant-looking man.

"'What, captain,' cried I, 'is it you?'

"'M. Louet would not be so unkind as to deprive us of his society,' said
the French officer with a polite bow. I turned to thank him for his
civility. It was the lieutenant. It put me in mind of the changes in a
pantomime.

"'_Al suo commodo_,' said a powdered lackey, opening the folding doors of
a magnificent dining-room. The captain offered his hand to Mademoiselle
Zephyrine. The lieutenant and I followed.

"'I hope you will be pleased with my cook, my dear M. Louet,' said the
captain, waving me to a chair, and seating himself. 'He is a French artist
of some talent. I have ordered two or three Provençal dishes on purpose
for you.'

"'Pah! with garlic in them!' said the French officer, taking a pinch of
perfumed snuff out of a gold box. I began to think I was dreaming.

"'Have you seen the park yet, M. Louet?' asked the captain.

"'Yes, Excellency, from the window of my room.'

"'They say it is full of game. Are you fond of shooting?'

"'I delight in it. Are there any thrushes in the park?'

"'Thrushes! thousands.'

"'Bravo! You may reckon upon me, captain, for a supply of game. That is,
if you will order my fowling-piece to be returned to me. I cannot shoot
well with any other.

"'Agreed,' said the captain.

"'Tonino,' said Mademoiselle Zephyrine, 'you promised to take me to the
theatre to-morrow. I am curious to see the dancer who has replaced me.'

"'There is no performance to-morrow,' replied the captain, 'and I am not
sure the carriage is in good condition. But we can take a ride to Tivoli
or Subiaco, if you like.'

"'Will you come with us, my dear M. Louet?' said Mademoiselle Zephyrine.

"'Thank you,' replied I; 'I am not accustomed to ride. I would rather have
a day's shooting.'

"'I will keep M. Louet company,' said the lieutenant.

"On retiring to my apartment that night, I found my fowling-piece in one
corner, my game-bag in another, and my hundred crowns on the chimney-piece.
Captain Tonino was a man of his word.

"Whilst I was undressing, the French cook came to know what I would choose
for breakfast. 'Count Villaforte,' he said, 'had ordered that I should be
served in my room, as I was going out shooting.' The captain, it appeared,
had changed his name as well as his dress.

"The next morning I had just dressed and breakfasted, when the lieutenant
came to fetch me, and I accompanied him down-stairs. In front of the villa
four saddle-horses were being led up and down--one for the captain, one
for Mademoiselle Zephyrine, and the two others for servants. The captain
put a brace of double-barrelled pistols into his holsters, and the
servants did the same. Master and men had a sort of fancy costume, which
allowed them to wear a couteau-de-chasse. The captain saw that I remarked
all these precautions.

"'The police is shocking in this country, M. Louet,' said he, 'and there
are so many bad characters about, that it is well to be armed.'

"Mademoiselle Zephyrine looked charming in her riding-habit and hat.

"'Much pleasure, my dear M. Louet,' said the captain, as he got on his
horse. 'Beaumanoir, take care of M. Louet.'

"'The best possible care, count.' replied the lieutenant.

"'The captain and Zephyrine waved their hands, and cantered away, followed
by their servants.

"'Pardon me, sir,' said I, approaching the lieutenant; 'I believe it was
you whom the count addressed as Beaumanoir.'

"'It was so.'

"'I thought the family of Beaumanoir had been extinct.'

"'Very possible. I revive it, that's all.'

"'You are perfectly at liberty to do so, sir,' replied I. 'I beg pardon
for the observation.'

"'Granted, granted, my dear Louet. Would you like a dog, or not?'

"'Sir, I prefer shooting without a dog. The last I had insulted me most
cruelly, and I should not like the same thing to occur again.'

"'As you please. Gaetano, untie Romeo.'

"We commenced our sport. In six shots I killed four thrushes, which
satisfied me that the one which I had followed from Marseilles had been an
enchanted one. Beaumanoir laughed at me.

"'What!' cried he. 'Do you amuse yourself in firing at such game as that?'

"'Sir,' replied I, 'at Marseilles the thrush is a very rare animal. I have
seen but one in my life, and it is to that one I owe the advantage of
being in your society.'

"Here and there I saw gardeners and gamekeepers whose faces were familiar
to me, and who touched their hats as I passed. They looked to me very like
my old friends, the robbers, in a new dress; but I had, of late, seen so
many extraordinary things, that nothing astonished me any longer.

"The park was very extensive, and enclosed by a high wall, which had light
iron gratings placed here and there, to afford a view of the surrounding
country. I happened to be standing near one of these gratings, when M.
Beaumanoir fired at a pheasant.

"'_Signore_,' said a countryman, who was passing, '_questo castello e il
castello d'Anticoli?_'

"'Villager,' I replied, walking towards the grating, 'I do not understand
Italian; speak French, and I shall be happy to answer.'

"'What! Is it you, M. Louet?' exclaimed the peasant.

"'Yes, it is,' said I; 'but how do you know my name?'

"'Hush! I am Ernest, the hussar officer, your travelling companion.'

"'M. Ernest! Ah! Mademoiselle Zephyrine will be delighted.'

"'Zephyrine is really here, then?'

"'Certainly she is. A prisoner like myself.'

"'And Count Villaforte?'

"'Is Captain Tonino.'

"'And the castle?'

"'A den of thieves.'

"'That is all I wanted to know. Adieu, my dear Louet. Tell Zephyrine she
shall soon hear from me.' So saying, he plunged into the forest.

"'Here, Romeo, here!' cried Mr. Beaumanoir to his dog, who was fetching
the bird he had shot. I hastened to him.

"'A beautiful pheasant!' cried I. 'A fine cock!'

"'Yes, yes. Who were you talking to, M. Louet?'

"'To a peasant, who asked me some question, to which I replied, that
unfortunately I did not understand Italian.'

"'Hum!' said Beaumanoir, with a suspicious side-glance at me. Then, having
loaded his gun, 'We will change places, if you please,' said he. 'There
may be some more peasants passing, and, as I understand Italian, I shall
be able to answer their questions.'

"'As you like, M. Beaumanoir,' said I.

"The change was effected; but no more peasants appeared.

"When we returned to the house, the captain and Zephyrine had not yet come
back from their ride, and I amused myself in my room with my bass, which I
found to be an excellent instrument. I resolved, more than ever, not to
part with it, but to take it back to France with me, if ever I returned to
that country.

"At the hour of dinner, I repaired to the drawing-room, where I found
Count Villaforte and Mademoiselle Zephyrine. I had scarcely closed the
door, when it was reopened, and the lieutenant put in his head.

"'Captain!' said he, in a hurried voice.

"'Who calls me captain? Here there is no captain, my dear Beaumanoir, but
a Count Villaforte.'

"'Captain, it is a serious matter. One moment, I beg.'

"The captain left the room. When the door was shut, and I was sure he
could not hear me, I told Zephyrine of my interview with her lover. I had
just finished when the captain reappeared.

"'Well,' said Zephyrine, running to meet him. 'What makes you look so
blank? Are there bad news?'

"'Not very good ones.'

"'Do they come from a sure source?' asked she with an anxiety which this
time was not assumed.

"'From the surest possible. From one of our friends who is employed in the
police.'

"'Gracious Heaven! What is going to happen?'

"'We do not know yet, but it appears we have been traced from Chianciano
to the Osteria Barberini. They only lost the scent behind Mount Gennaro.
My dear Rina, I fear we must give up our visit to the theatre to-morrow.'

"'But not our dinner to-day, captain, I hope,' said I.

"'Here is your answer,' said the captain, as the door opened, and a
servant announced that the soup was on the table.

"The captain and lieutenant dined each with a brace of pistols beside his
plate, and in the anteroom I saw two men armed with carbines. The repast
was a silent one; I did not dine comfortably myself, for I had a sort of
feeling that the catastrophe was approaching, and that made me uneasy.

"'You will excuse me for leaving you,' said the captain, when dinner was
over; 'but I must go and take measures for our safety. I would advise you
not to undress, M. Louet, for we may have to make a sudden move, and it is
well to be ready.'

"The lieutenant conducted me to my apartment, and wished me good-night
with great politeness. As he left the room, however, I heard that he
double-locked the door. I had nothing better to do than to throw myself on
my bed, which I did; but for some hours I found it impossible to sleep, on
account of the anxieties and unpleasant thoughts that tormented me. At
last I fell into a troubled slumber.

"I do not know how long it had lasted, when I was awakened by being
roughly shaken.

"'Subito! subito!' cried a voice.

"'What is the matter?' said I, sitting up on the bed.

"'_Non capisco, seguir me_!' cried the bandit.

"'And where am I to _seguir_ you?' said I, understanding that he told me
to follow him.

"'Avanti! Avanti!'

"'May I take my bass?' I asked.

"The man made sign in the affirmative, so I put my beloved instrument on
my back, and told him I was ready to follow him. He led me through several
corridors and down a staircase; then, opening a door, we found ourselves
in the park. Day was beginning to dawn. After many turnings and windings,
we entered a copse or thicket, in the depths of which was the opening of a
sort of grotto, where one of the robbers was standing sentry. They pushed
me into this grotto. It was very dark, and I was groping about with
extended arms, when somebody grasped my hand. I was on the point of crying
out; but the hand that held mine was too soft to be that of a brigand.

"'M. Louet!' said a whispering voice, which I at once recognized.

"'What is the meaning of all this, Mademoiselle?' asked I, in the same
tone.

"'The meaning is, that they are surrounded by a regiment, and Ernest is at
the head of it.'

"'But why are we put into this grotto?'

"'Because it is the most retired place in the whole park, and consequently
the one least likely to be discovered. Besides there is a door in it,
which communicates probably with some subterraneous passage leading into
the open country.'

"Just then we heard a musket shot.

"'Bravo!' cried Zephyrine; 'it is beginning.'

"There was a running fire, then a whole volley.

"'Mademoiselle,' said I, 'it appears to me to be increasing very much.'

"'So much the better,' answered she.

"She was as brave as a lioness, that young girl. For my part I acknowledge
I felt very uncomfortable. But it appears I was doomed to witness
engagements both by land and sea.

"'The firing is coming nearer,' said Zephyrine.

"'I am afraid so, Mademoiselle,' answered I.

"'On the contrary, you ought to be delighted. It is a sign that the
robbers are flying.'

"'I had rather they fled in another direction.'

"There was a loud clamour, and cries as if they were cutting one another's
throats, which, in fact, they were. The shouts and cries were mingled with
the noise of musketry, the sound of the trumpets, and roll of the drum.
There was a strong smell of powder. The fight was evidently going on
within a hundred yards of the grotto.

"Suddenly there was a deep sigh, then the noise of a fall, and one of the
sentries at the mouth of the cave came rolling to our feet. A random shot
had struck him, and as he just fell in, a ray of light which entered the
grotto, we were able to see him writhing in the agonies of death.
Mademoiselle Zephyrine seized my hands, and I felt that she trembled
violently.

"'Oh, M. Louet.' said she, 'it is very horrible to see a man die!'

"At that moment we heard a voice exclaiming--'Stop, cowardly villain! Wait
for me!'

"'Ernest!' exclaimed Zephyrine. 'It is the voice of Ernest!'

"As she spoke the captain rushed in, covered with blood.

"'Zephyrine!' cried he, 'Zephyrine, where are you?'

"The sudden change from the light of day to the darkness of the cave,
prevented him from seeing us. Zephyrine made me a sign to keep silence.
After remaining for a moment as if dazzled, his eyes got accustomed to the
darkness. He bounded towards us with the spring of a tiger.

"'Zephyrine, why don't you answer when I call? Come!'

"He seized her arm, and began dragging her towards the door at the back of
the grotto.

"'Where are you taking me?' cried the poor girl.

"'Come with me--come along!'

"'Never!' cried she, struggling.

"'What! You won't go with me?'

"'No; why should I? I detest you. You carried me off by force. I won't
follow you. Ernest, Ernest, here!'

"'Ernest!' muttered the captain. 'Ha! 'Tis you, then, who betrayed us?'

"'M. Louet!' cried Zephyrine, 'if you are a man, help me!'

"I saw the blade of a poniard glitter. I had no weapon, but I seized my
bass by the handle, and, raising it in the air, let it fall with such
violence on the captain's skull, that the back of the instrument was
smashed in and the bandit's head disappeared in the interior of the bass.
Either the violence of the blow, or the novelty of finding his head in a
bass, so astonished the captain that he let go his hold of Zephyrine, at
the same time uttering a roar like that of a mad bull.

"'Zephyrine! Zephyrine!' cried a voice outside.

"'Ernest!' answered the young girl, darting out of the grotto.

"I followed her, terrified at my own exploit. She was already clasped in
the arms of her lover.

"'In there,' cried the young officer to a party of soldiers who just then
came up. 'He is in there. Bring him out, dead or alive.'

"They rushed in, but the broken bass was all they found. The captain had
escaped by the other door.

"On our way to the house we saw ten or twelve dead bodies. One was lying
on the steps leading to the door.

"'Take away this carrion,' said Ernest.

"Two soldiers turned the body over. It was the last of the Beaumanoirs.

"We remained but a few minutes at the house, and then Zephyrine and myself
got into a carriage and set off, escorted by M. Ernest and a dozen men. I
did not forget to carry off my hundred crowns, my fowling-piece, and
game-bag. As to my poor bass, the captain's head had completely spoiled it.

"After an hour's drive, we came in sight of a large city with an enormous
dome the middle of it. It was Rome.

"'And did you see the Pope, M. Louet?'

"'At that time he was at Fontainbleau, but I saw him afterwards, and his
successor too; for M. Ernest got me an appointment as bass-player at the
Teatro de la Valle, and I remained there till the year 1830. When I at
last returned to Marseilles, they did not know me again, and for some time
refused to give me back my place in the orchestra, under pretence that I
was not myself.'

"'And Mademoiselle Zephyrine?'

"'I heard that she married M. Ernest, whose other name I never knew, and
that he became a general, and she a very great lady."

"'And Captain Tonino? Did you hear nothing more of him?'

"'Three years afterwards he came to the theatre in disguise; was
recognised, arrested, and hung.'

"'And thus it was, sir,' concluded M. Louet, 'that a thrush led me into
Italy, and caused me to pass twenty years at Rome.'"

And so ends the thrush-hunt. One word at parting, to qualify any too
sweeping commendation we may have bestowed on M. Dumas in the early part
of this paper. While we fully exonerate his writings from the charge of
grossness, and recognise the absence of those immoral and pernicious
tendencies which disfigure the works of many gifted French writers of the
day, we would yet gladly see him abstain from the somewhat too
Decameronian incidents and narratives with which he occasionally varies
his pages. That he is quite independent of such meretricious aids, is
rendered evident by his entire avoidance of them in some of his books,
which are not on that account a whit the less _piquant_. With this single
reservation, we should hail with pleasure the appearance on our side the
Channel of a few such sprightly and amusing writers as Alexander Dumas.

       *       *       *       *       *




HIGH LIFE IN THE LAST CENTURY.[5]

    [5] _George Selwyn and his Contemporaries, with Memoirs and Notes_.
    By T.H. Jesse. 4 vols.


The volumes of which we are about to give fragments and anecdotes, contain
a portion of the letters addressed to a man of witty memory, whose
existence was passed almost exclusively among men and women of rank; his
life, in the most expressive sense of the word, West End; and even in that
West End, his chief haunt St James's Street. Parliament and the Clubs
divided his day, and often his night. The brilliant roués, the steady
gamesters, the borough venders, and the lordly ex-members of ex-cabinets,
were the only population of whose living and breathing he suffered himself
to have any cognizance. In reverse of Gray's learned mouse, eating its way
through the folios of an ancient library--and to whom

  "A river or a sea was but a dish of tea,
  And a kingdom bread and butter,"

to George Selwyn, the world and all that it inhabits, were concentrated in
Charles Fox, William Pitt, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and the circle of
men of pleasantry, loose lives, and vivacious temperaments, who, with
whatever diminishing lustre, revolved round them.

Of the City of London, Selwyn probably had heard; for though fixed to one
spot, he was a man fond of collecting curious knowledge; but nothing short
of proof positive can ever convince us that he had passed Temple Bar. He,
of course, knew that there were such things on the globe as merchants and
traders, because their concerns were occasionally talked of in "the House,"
where, however, he heard as little as possible about them; for in the
debates of the time he took no part but that of a listener, and even then
he abridged the difficulty, by generally sleeping through the sitting. He
was supposed to be the only rival of Lord North in the happy faculty of
falling into a sound slumber at the moment when any of those dreary
persons, who chiefly speak on such subjects, was on his legs. St James's,
and the talk of St James's, were his business, his pleasures, the exciters
of his wit, and the rewarders of his toil. He had applied the art of
French cookery to the rude material of the world, and refined and reduced
all things into a _sauce piquante_--all its realities were concentrated in
essences; and, disdaining the grosser tastes of mankind, he lived upon the
_aroma_ of high life--an epicure even among epicures; yet not an indolent
enjoyer of the luxuries of his condition, but a keen, restless, and eager
_student_ of pleasurable sensations--an Apicius, polished by the manners,
and furnished with the arts of the most self-enjoying condition of mankind,
that of an English gentleman of fortune in the 18th century.

We certainly are not the champions of this style of life. We think that
man has other matters to consider than _pâtés_ and _consommés_, the
flavour of his Burgundy and pines, or even the _bons-mots_ of his friends.
We are afraid that we must, after all, regard the whole Selwyn class as
little better than the brutes in their stables, or on their hearth-rugs;
with the advantage to the brutes of following their natural appetites,
having no twinges of either conscience or the gout, and not being from
time to time stripped by their friends, or plundered by the Jews. The
closing hours of the horse or the dog are also, perhaps, more complacent
in general, and their deaths are less a matter of rejoicing to those who
are to succeed to their mangers and cushions. Of higher and more startling
contemplations, this is not the place to speak. If such men shall yet have
the power of looking down from some remoter planet on their idle, empty,
and self-indulgent course in our own, perhaps they would rejoice to have
exchanged with the lot of him whose bread was earned by the sweat of his
brow, yet who had fulfilled the duties of his station; and whose hand had
been withheld by necessity from that banquet, where all the nobler purposes
of life were forgotten, and where the senses absorbed the higher nature.
Still, we admit that these are topics on which no man ought to judge the
individual with severity. We have spoken only of the class. The individual
may have had virtues of which the world can know nothing; he may have been
liberal, affectionate, and zealous, when his feelings were once awakened;
his purse may have dried many a tear, and soothed many a pulse of secret
suffering. It is, at all events, more kindly to speak of poor human nature
with fellow feeling for those exposed to the strong temptations of fortune,
than to establish an arrogant comparison between the notorious errors of
others, and the secret failures of our own.

But we have something to settle with Mr Jesse. He is alive, and therefore
may be instructed; he is making books with great rapidity, and therefore
may be advantageously warned of the perils of book-making. The _title_ of
his volumes has altogether deceived us. We shall not charge him with
intending this; but it has unquestionably had the effect. "_George Selwyn_
and his contemporaries." We opened the volumes, expecting to find our
witty clubbist in every page; George in his full expansion, "in his armour
as he lived;" George, every inch a wit, glittering before us in his full
court suit, in his letters, his anecdotes, his whims, his odd views of
mankind, his caustic sneerings at the glittering world round him; an
epistolary HB., turning every thing into the pleasant food of his pen and
pungency. But we cannot discover any letters from him, excepting a few
very trifling ones of his youth. We have letters from all sorts of persons,
great lords and little, statesmen and travellers, placemen and
place-hunters; and amusing enough many of them are. Walpole furnishes some
sketches, and nothing can be better. In fact the volumes exhibit, not
George Selwyn, the only one whose letters we should have cared to see, but
those who wrote to him. And the disappointment is not the less, that in
those letters constant allusions are made to his "sparkling, delightful,
sportive, characteristic, &c. &c., epistles." Great ladies constantly urge
him to write to _them_. Maids, wives, and widows, pour out a stream of
perpetual laudation. Men of rank, men of letters, men at home, and men
abroad, unite in one common supplication for "London news" _réchaufféed_,
spiced, and served up, by the perfect _cuisinerie_ of George's art of
story-telling; like the horse-leech's two daughters, the cry is, "Give,
give." And this is what we wanted to see. Selwyn, the whole Selwyn, and
nothing but Selwyn.

It is true that there is a preface which talks in this wise:--

It seems to have been one of the peculiarities of George Selwyn, to
preserve not only every letter addressed to him by his correspondents
during the course of his long life, but also the most trifling notes and
memoranda. To this peculiarity, the reader is indebted for whatever
amusement he may derive from the perusal of these volumes. The greater
portion of their contents consists of letters addressed to Selwyn, by
persons who, in their day, moved in the first circles of wit, genius, and
fashion."

We have thus let Mr Jesse speak for himself. If the public are satisfied,
so let it be. But people seldom read prefaces. The title is the thing, and
that title is, "_George Selwyn_ and his contemporaries." If it had been
"Letters of the contemporaries of George Selwyn," we should have
understood the matter.

Still we are not at all disposed to quarrel with the volumes. They contain
a great deal of pleasant matter; and the letters are evidently, in general,
the work of a higher order of persons than the world has often an
opportunity of seeing in their deshabille. The Persian proverb, which
accounted for the fragrance of a pebble by its having lain beside the rose,
has been in some degree realized in these pages. They are evidently of the
Selwyn school; and if he is not here witty himself, he is, like the "fat
knight," the cause of wit in others. We are enjoying a part of the feast
which his science had cooked, and then distributed to his friends to
figure as the _chefs-d'oeuvre_ of their own tables. At all events, though
often on trifling subjects, and often not worth preserving, they vindicate
on the whole the claim of English letter-writing to European superiority.
Taking Walpole as the head, and nothing can be happier than his mixture of
keen remark, intelligent knowledge of his time, high-bred ease of language,
and exquisite point and polish of anecdote; his followers, even in these
few volumes, show that there were many men, even in the midst of all the
practical business and nervous agitation of public life, not unworthy of
their master. We have no doubt that there have been hundreds of persons,
and thousands of letters, which might equally contribute to this most
interesting, and sometimes most brilliant, portion of our literature. The
French lay claim to superiority in this as in every thing else; but we
must acknowledge that it is with some toil we have ever read the boasted
letters of De Sévigné--often pointed, and always elegant, they are too
often frivolous, and almost always local. We are sick of the adorable
Grignan, and her "belle chevelure." The letters of Du Deffand, Espinasse,
Roland, and even of De Staël, though always exhibiting ability, are too
hard or too hot, too fierce or too fond, for our tastes; they are also so
evidently intended for any human being except the one to whom they were
addressed, or rather for all human beings--they were so palpably "private
effusions" for the public ear--sentiments stereotyped, and sympathies for
the circulating library--that they possessed as little the interest as the
character of correspondence.

Voltaire's letters are always spirited. That extraordinary man could do
nothing on which his talent was not marked; but his letters are
epigrammes--all is sacrificed to point, and all is written for the salons
of Paris. What Talleyrand's _might_ be, we can imagine from the singular
subtlety and universal knowledge of that most dexterous player of the most
difficult game which was ever on the diplomatic cards. But as his
definition of the excellence of a letter was--"to say any thing, but mean
nothing," we must give up the hope of his contribution. Grimm's volumes
are, after all, the only collection which belongs to the style of letters
to which we allude. They are amusing and anecdotical, and, in our
conception, by much the most intelligent French correspondence that has
fallen into our hands. But they are too evidently the work of a man
writing as a task, gathering the Parisian news as a part of his profession,
and in fact sending a daily newspaper to his German patron.

Of the German epistolary literature we have seen nothing which approaches
to the excellence of the English school. The conception is generally vague,
vapourish, and metaphysical. And this predominates absurdly through all
its classes. The poet prides himself on being as much a dreamer in his
prose as in his poetry; the scholar is proud of being perplexed and
pedantic; the statesman is naturally immersed in that problematic style,
which belongs to the secrecy of despotic governments, and to the stiffness
of circles where all is etiquette. But Walpole and his tribe have fashion
wholly to themselves, and possess force without heaviness, and elegance
without effeminacy.

We are strongly tempted to ask, whether there may not be letters of the
gay, the refined, and the sparkling George Canning. He was constantly
writing; knew every thing and every body; was engaged in all the high
transactions of his time; saw human nature in all possible shades; and was
a man whose talent, though capable of very noble efforts "on compulsion,"
yet naturally loved a more level rank of times and things. It is perfectly
true to human experience, that there are minds, which, like caged
nightingales and canary-birds, though their wings were formed with the
faculty of cleaving the clouds, yet pass a perfectly contented existence
within their wires, and sing as cheerfully in return for their water and
seeds, as if they had the range of the horizon. Canning's whole song for
thirty years was in one cage or another, and he sang with equal
cheerfulness in them all. The moral of all this is, that we wish Mr Jesse,
or any one else, to apply himself, without delay, to the depositaries of
George Canning's familiar correspondence, and give his pleasant, piquant,
and graceful letters (for we are sure that they are all these) to the
world.

Lord Dudley's letters have disappointed every body: but it is to be
observed, that we have only a small portion of them; that they were
written to a college tutor, a not very exciting species of correspondent
at any time, and who in this instance having nothing to give back, and
plodding his way through the well-meant monotony of college news, allowed
poor Lord Dudley not much more chance of brilliancy, than a smart drummer
might have of producing a reveillé on an unbraced drum. We must live in
hope.

Lord Holland, we think, might, as the sailors say, "loom out large." The
life of that ancient Whig having been chiefly employed in telling other
men's stories over his own table--and much better employed, too, than in
talking his original follies in public--a tolerable selection from his
journals might furnish some variety; for when Whigs are cased up no longer
in the stiff braces and battered armour of their clique, they may
occasionally be amusing men. But Walpole still reigns: his whims, his
flirtings, his frivolities will disappear with his old china and trifling
antiquities; but his best letters will always be the best of their kind
among men.

George Selwyn was a man of fashionable life for the greater part of the
last century, or perhaps we may more justly say, he was a man of
fashionable life for the seventy-two years of his existence; for, from his
cradle, he lived among that higher order of mankind who were entitled to
do nothing, to enjoy themselves, and alternately laugh at, and look down
upon the rest of the world. His family were opulent, and naturally
associated with rank; for his father had been aide-de-camp to the Duke of
Marlborough--a great distinction even in that brilliant age; and his
mother was the daughter of a general officer, and woman of the bedchamber
to Queen Caroline. She is recorded as a woman of talents, and peculiarly
of wit; qualities which seem frequently connected with long life, perhaps
as bearing some relation to that good-humour which undoubtedly tends to
lengthen the days of both man and woman. If the theory be true, that the
intellect of the offspring depends upon the mother, the remarkable wit of
George Selwyn may be adduced in evidence of the position.

George, born in 1719, was sent, like the sons of all the court gentlemen
of his age and of our own, to Eton. After having there acquired classics,
aristocracy, and cricket, all consummated at Oxford, he proceeded to go
through the last performance of fashionable education, and give himself
the final polish for St James's; he proceeded to make the tour of Europe.
What induced him to recommence his boyhood, by returning to Oxford at the
ripe age of twenty-five, is among the secrets of his career, as also is
the occasion of his being expelled from the university; if that occasion
is not to be found in some of the burlesques of religion which he had
learned amongst the fashionable infidels of the Continent, similar to
those enacted by Wilkes in his infamous monkery. But every thing in his
career equally exhibits the times. At an age when he was fit for nothing
else, he was considered fit to receive the salary of a sinecure; and, at
twenty-one, he was appointed to a brace of offices at the mint. His share
of the duty consisted of his enjoying the weekly dinners of the
establishment, and signing the receipts for his quarter's pay.

Within a few years more, he came into parliament; and in his thirty-second
year, by the death of his father and elder brother, he succeeded to the
family estates, consisting of three handsome possessions, one of which had
the additional value of returning a member of parliament. Nor was this all;
for his influence in Gloucestershire enabled him to secure, during many
years, his own seat for Gloucester, thus rendering his borough disposable;
and thus, master of a hereditary fortune, an easy sinecurist, the
possessor of two votes, and the influencer of the third--a man of family,
a man of connexion, and a man of the court--George Selwyn began a path
strewed with down and rose leaves.

In addition to these advantages, George Selwyn evidently possessed a very
remarkable subtlety and pleasantry of understanding; that combination
which alone produced true wit, or which, perhaps, would be the best
definition of wit itself; for subtlety alone may excite uneasy sensations
in the hearer, and pleasantry alone may often be vulgar. But the acuteness
which detects the absurd of things, and the pleasantry which throws a
good-humoured coloring over the acuteness, form all that delights us in
wit.

If we are to judge by the opinion of his contemporaries, and this is the
true criterion after all, Selwyn's wit must have been of the very first
order in a witty age. Walpole is full of him. Walpole himself, a wit, and
infinitely jealous of every rival in every thing on which he fastened his
fame, from a picture gallery down to a snuff-box, or from a history down
to an epigram, bows down to him with almost Persian idolatry. His letters
are alive with George Selwyn. The _bons-mots_ which Selwyn carelessly
dropped in his morning wall through St James's Street, are carefully
picked up by Walpole, and planted in his correspondence, like exotics in a
greenhouse. The careless brilliancies of conversation, which the one threw
loose about the club-rooms of the Court End, are collected by the other
and reset by this dexterous jeweller, for the sparklings and ornaments of
his stock in trade with posterity.

Yet it may reconcile those less gifted by nature and fortune to their
mediocrity; to know that those singular advantages by no means constitute
happiness, usefulness, moral dignity, or even public respect. Selwyn, as
the French Abbé said, "had nothing to do, and he did it." His possession
of fortune enabled him to be a lounger through life, and he lounged
accordingly. The conversations of the clubs supplied him with the daily
toys of his mind, and he never sought more substantial employment. Though
nearly fifty years in parliament, he was known only as a silent voter; and,
after a life of seventy-two years, he died, leaving three and twenty
thousand pounds of his savings to a girl who was not his daughter; and the
chief part of his estates to the Duke of Queensberry, an old man already
plethoric with wealth, of which he had never known the use, and already
dying.

His passion for attending executions was notorious and unaccountable,
except on the ground of that love of excitement which leads others to
drinking or the gaming-table. Those sights, from which human nature
shrinks, appear to have been sought for by Selwyn with an eagerness
resembling enjoyment. This strange propensity was frequently laughed at by
his friends. Alluding to the practice of criminals dropping a handkerchief
as a signal for the executioner, says Walpole, "George never thinks, but
_à la tête tranchée_. He came to town the other day to have a tooth drawn,
and told the man that he would drop his handkerchief for the signal."

Another characteristic anecdote is told on this subject. When the first
Lord Holland, a man of habitual pleasantry, was confined to his bed, he
heard that Selwyn, who had been an old friend, had called to enquire for
his health. "The next time Mr Selwyn calls," said he, "show him up; if I
am alive, I shall be delighted to see him; and, if I am dead, he will be
delighted to see me."

Walpole says, after telling a story of one Arthur Moore, "I told this the
other day to George Selwyn, whose passion is to see corpses and executions.
He replied, 'that Arthur Moore had his coffin chained to that of his
mistress.'

"Said I, 'How do you know?'

"'Why, I--I saw them the other day in a vault in St Giles's.'

"George was walking this week in Westminster Abbey, with Lord Abergavenny,
and met the man who shows the tombs. 'Oh, your servant, Mr Selwyn; I
expected to have seen you here the other day, when the old Duke of
Richmond's body was taken up.'" Walpole then mentions Selwyn's going to
see Cornberry, with Lord Abergavenny and a pretty Mrs Frere, who were in
some degree attached to each other.

"Do you know what you missed in the other room?" said Selwyn to the lady.
"Lord Holland's picture."

"Well, what is Lord Holland to me?"

"Why, do you know," said he, "my Lord Holland's body lies in the same
vault, in Kensington church, with my Lord Abergavenny's mother."

Walpole, speaking of the share which he had in capturing a house-breaker,
says, "I dispatched a courier to White's in search of George Selwyn. It
happened that the drawer who received my message had very lately been
robbed himself, and had the wound fresh in his memory. He stalked up into
the club-room, and with a hollow trembling voice, said, 'Mr Selwyn, Mr
Walpole's compliments to you, and he has got a house-breaker for you.'"

But some of his practical pleasantries were very amusing. Lady Townshend,
a woman of wit, but, in some points of character, a good deal scandalized,
was supposed to have taken refuge from her recollections in Popery. "On
Sunday last," says Walpole, "as George was strolling home to dinner, he
saw my Lady Townshend's coach stop at Caraccioli's chapel. He watched; saw
her go in; her footman laughed; he followed. She went up to the altar; a
woman brought her a cushion; she knelt, crossed her self, and prayed. He
stole up, and knelt by her. Conceive her face, if you can, when she turned
and found him close to her. In his demure voice, he said, 'Pray, ma'am,
how long has your ladyship left the pale of our church?' She looked furies,
and made no answer. Next day he went to see her, and she turned it off
upon curiosity. But is any thing more natural? No; she certainly means to
go armed with every viaticum: the Church of England in on hand, Methodism
in the other, and the Host in her mouth."

Every one knows that _bons-mots_ are apt to lose a great deal by
transmission. It has been said that the time is one-half of the merit, and
the manner the other; thus leaving nothing for the wit. But the fact is,
that the wit so often depends upon both, as to leave the best _bon-mot_
comparatively flat in the recital. With this palliative we may proceed.
Walpole, remarking to Selwyn one day, at a time of considerable popular
discontent, that the measures of government were as feeble and confused as
in the reign of the first Georges, and saying, "There is nothing new under
the sun." "No," replied Selwyn, "nor under the grandson."

Selwyn one day observing Wilkes, who was constantly verging on libel,
listening attentively to the king's speech, said to him, "May Heaven
preserve the ears you lend!" an allusion to the lines of the _Dunciad_--

  "Yet, oh, my sons, a father's words attend;
  So may the fates preserve the ears you lend."

The next is better. A man named Charles Fox having been executed, the
celebrated Charles asked Selwyn whether he had been present at the
execution as usual. "No," was the keen reply, "I make a point of never
attending rehearsals."

Fox and General Fitzpatrick at one time lodged in the house of Mackay, an
oilman in Piccadilly, a singular residence for two men of the first
fashion. Somebody, probably in allusion to their debts, observed that such
lodgers would be the ruin of Mackay. "No," said Selwyn, "it will make his
fortune. He may boast of having the first pickles in London."

_Nonchalant_ manners were the tone of the time; and to cut one's country
acquaintance (a habit learned among the French _noblesse_) was high
breeding. An old haunter of the pump-room in Bath, who had frequently
conversed with Selwyn in his visits there, meeting him one day in St
James's Street, attempted to approach him with his usual familiarity.
Selwyn passed him as if he had never seen him before. His old acquaintance
followed him, and said, "Sir, you knew me very well in Bath." "Well, sir,"
replied Selwyn, "in Bath I may possibly know you again," and walked on.

When _High Life Below Stairs_ was announced, Selwyn expressed a wish to be
present at its first night. "I shall go," said he, "because I am tired of
low life above stairs."

One of the waiters at Arthur's had committed a felony, and was sent to
jail. "I am shocked at the committal," said Selwyn; "what a horrid idea
the fellow will give of us to the people in Newgate."

Bruce's Abyssinian stories were for a long time the laugh of London.
Somebody at a dinner once asked him, whether he had seen any relics of
musical instruments among the Abyssinians, or any thing in the style of
the ancient sculptures of the Thebaid. "I think I saw one lyre there," was
the answer. "Ay," says Selwyn to his neighbour, "and that one left the
country along with him."

Selwyn did not always spare his friends. When Fox's pecuniary affairs were
in a state of ruin, and a subscription was proposed; one of the
subscribers said that their chief difficulty was to know "how Fox would
take it." Selwyn, who knew that necessity has nothing to do with
delicacies of this order, replied, "Take it, why, quarterly to be sure!"

Mr. Jesse's anecdotes are generally well told, but their version is
sometimes different from ours. Selwyn was one day walking up St James's
Street with Lord Pembroke, when a couple of sweeps brushed against them.
"Impudent rascals!" exclaimed Lord Pembroke. "The sovereignty of the
people," said Selwyn. "But such dirty dogs," said Pembroke. "Full dress
for the court of St Giles's," said Selwyn, with a bow to their sable
majesties.

But Selwyn, with all his affability and pleasantry, had his dislikes, and
among them was the celebrated Sheridan. The extraordinary talent and early
fame of that most memorable and unfortunate man, had fixed all eyes upon
him from the moment of his entering into public life; and Selwyn, who had
long sat supreme in wit, probably felt some fears for his throne. At all
events, he determined to keep one place clear from collision with this
dangerous wit; and, on every attempt to put up Sheridan's name for
admission into Brookes's, two black balls were found in the balloting-box,
one of which was traced to Selwyn, while the other was supposed to be that
of Lord Besborough. One ball being sufficient to exclude, the opposition
was fatal; but Fox and his friends were equally determined, on their side,
to introduce Sheridan; and for this purpose a curious, though not very
creditable, artifice was adopted. On the evening of the next ballot, and
while George and Lord Besborough were waiting, with their usual
determination, to blackball the candidate, a chairman in great haste
brought in a note, apparently from Lady Duncannon, to her father-in-law
Lord Besborough, to tell him that his house in Cavendish Square was on
fire, and entreating him to return without a moment's delay. His lordship
instantly quitted the room, and hurried homewards. Immediately after, a
message was sent to George Selwyn that Miss Fagniani, the child whom he
had adopted, and whom he supposed to be his own, was suddenlly seized with
a fit, and that his presence was instantly required. He also obeyed the
summons. Both had no sooner left the room than the ballot was proceeded
with, the two ominous balls were not to be found, and Sheridan was
unanimously chosen. In the midst of the triumph, Selwyn and Lord
Besborough returned, indignant at the trick, but of course unable to find
out its perpetrators. How Sheridan and his friends looked may be imagined.
The whole scene was perfectly dramatic.

Burke's speeches, which were destined to become the honour of his age, and
the delight of posterity, were sometimes negligently received by the house.
His splendid prolixity, which was fitter for an assembly of philosophers
than an English Parliament, sometimes wearied mere men of business, as
much as his fine metaphysics sometimes perplexed them; and the man who
might have sat between Plato and Aristotle, and been listened to with
congenial delight by both, was often left without an audience. One night,
when Selwyn was hurrying into the lobby with a crowd of members, a
nobleman coming up asked him, "Is the house up?" "No," was the reply, "but
Burke is."

A model of fashionable life, Selwyn unhappily indulged in that vice which
was presumed to be essential to the man of fashion. The early gaming
propensities of Charles Fox are well known; he was ruined, estate,
personal fortune, sinecures and reversions, and all, before he was five
years in public life--ruined in every possible shape of ruin. There were
times when he could not command a guinea in the world. Yet there were
times when he won immensely. At one sitting he carried off £8000, but in a
few more he lost £11,000. He was a capital whist player; and in the cool
calculation of the clubs on such subjects, it was supposed that he might
have made £4000 a-year, if he had adhered to this profitable direction of
his genius. But, like many other great men, he mistook his forte, and
disdained all but the desperation of hazard. There he lost perpetually and
prodigiously, until he was stripped of every thing, and pauperised for
life.

It gives a strong conception of the universality of this vice, to find so
timid and girlish a nature as the late William Wilberforce's initiated
into the same career.

"When I left the University," says Wilberforce, in his later reminiscences,
"so little did I know of general society, that I came up to London stored
with arguments to prove the authenticity of 'Rowley's Poems,' (the
academic and pedantic topic of the day,) and now I was at once immersed in
politics and fashion. The very first time I went to Boodle's, I won
twenty-five guineas of the Duke of Norfolk. I belonged at this time to
five clubs, Miles' and Evans', Brookes', Boodle's, White's, and
Goosetree's. The first time I was at Brookes', scarcely knowing any one, I
joined, from mere shyness, in play at the faro-table, where George Selwyn
kept bank. A friend who knew my inexperience, and regarded me as a victim
dressed out for sacrifice, called to me--'What, Wilberforce, is that you?'
Selwyn quite resented the interference, and turning to him, said in his
most expressive tone--'Oh, sir, don't interrupt Mr Wilberforce, he could
not be better employed.' Nothing could be more harmonious than the style
of those clubs--Fox, Sheridan, Fitzpatrick, and all your leading men
frequented them, and associated upon the easiest terms. You either chatted,
played at cards, or gambled, as you pleased."

We have no idea of entering into any of the scandals of the time. The
lives of all the men of fashion of that day were habitually profligate.
The "Grand Tour" was of but little service to their morals, and Pope's
sarcastic lines were but too true.

        "He travell'd Europe round,
  And gather'd every vice on foreign ground;
  Till home return'd, and perfectly well-bred,
  With nothing but a solo in his head;
  Stolen from a duel, follow'd by a nun,
  And, if a borough choose him--not undone."

But this vice did not descend among the body of the people. It was limited
to the idlers of high life, and even among them it was extinguished by the
cessation of our foreign intercourse at the French revolution; or was at
least so far withdrawn from the public eye, as to avoid offending the
common decencies of a moral people.

Selwyn was probably more cautious in his habits than his contemporaries,
for he survived almost every man who had begun life with him; and he lived
to a much greater age than the chief of the showy characters who rose into
celebrity during his career. He died at the age of seventy-two, January 25,
1791. He had long relinquished gaming, assigning the very sufficient
reason, "It was too great a consumer of four things--time, health, fortune,
and _thinking_." But what man of his day escaped the gout, and the natural
termination of that torturing disease in dropsy? After seven years'
suffering from both, with occasional intervals of relief, he sank at last.
Walpole, almost the only survivor among his early friends, thus wrote on
the day of his expected death:--"I have lost, or am on the point of losing,
my oldest acquaintance and friend, George Selwyn, who was yesterday at the
extremity. Those misfortunes, though they can be so but for a short time,
are very sensible to the old: but him I loved, not only for his infinite
wit, but for a thousand good qualities." He writes a few days after, "Poor
Selwyn is gone; to my sorrow; and no wonder. Ucalegon feels it."

Selwyn, with all his pleasantry, had evidently a quick eye for his own
interest. He contrived to remain in parliament for half a century, and he
gathered the emoluments of some half dozen snug sinecures. Among those
were the Registrar of Chancery in Barbadoes, and surveyor-general of the
lands. Thus he lived luxuriously, and died rich.

Orator Henley is niched in an early part of this correspondence. The
orator was known in the last century as a remarkably dirty fellow in his
apparel, and still more so in his mind. He was the son of a gentleman, and
had received a gentleman's education at St John's, Cambridge. There, or
subsequently, he acquired Hebrew, and even Persian; wrote a tragedy on the
subject of Esther, in which he exhibited considerable poetic powers; and
finished his scholastic fame by a grammar of ten languages! On leaving
college, he took orders, and became a country curate. But the decency of
this life did not suit his habits, and he resolved to try his chance in
London for fortune and fame. Opening a chapel near Newport market,
Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, he harangued twice a-week, on theological subjects
on Sundays, and on the sciences and literature on Wednesdays. The audience
were admitted by a shilling ticket, and the butchers in the neighbourhood
were for a while his great patrons. At length, finding his audience tired
of common sense, he tried, like other charlatans since his day, the effect
of nonsense. His manner was theatrical, his style eccentric, and his
topics varied between extravagance and buffoonery. The history of such
performances is invariably the same--novelty is essential, and novelty
must be attained at all risks. He now professed to reform all literature,
and all religion. But even this ultimately failed him. At length the
butchers deserted him, and, falling from one disgrace to another, he sank
into dirt and debauchery, and died in 1750 at the age of sixty-four,
remembered in the world only by being pilloried in the Dunciad.

  "Embrown'd with native bronze, lo! Henley stands,
  Tuning his voice, and balancing his hands;
  How fluent nonsense trickles from his tongue,
  How sweet the periods neither said nor sung.
  Still break the benches, Henley, with thy strain,
  While Sherlock, Hare, and Gibson preach in vain."

The orator's contribution consists but of two notes; the first to Selwyn--

  "I dine at twelve all the year, but shall be glad to take a glass
  with you at the King's Arms any day from four to six. If I have
  disobliged Mr Parsons, (who I hear was with you,) or any of you
  gentlemen, I never intended it, and ask your pardons. I shall be
  proud to oblige my Lord Carteret, or you, or the rest, at any time.
  Pray let them see this."

  "J. HENLEY."

There appears to have been some kind of riot at one of Henley's lectures,
probably a rough burlesque of his manner, in which Selwyn, then a student
of Oxford, made himself conspicuous. At least the letter is addressed to
him.

"I am accountable for the peace of my congregation; and among the rules
and articles of my consent and conditions as owner and minister, one rule
is, to go out directly, forfeiting what has been given, if any person
cannot or will not preserve those conditions; for the smallest
circumstance of disorder has been inflamed to the highest outrage. The
bishop's nephew began something of the kind two months ago, and made me
retribution; so have others, and I must send an attorney to warn them not
to come whom I suspect hereafter. You have been at his sport before."

We now come to a man of more importance, Richard Rigby, the "blushing
Rigby" of Junius. He was the son of a linen-draper, who, as factor to the
South Sea Company, acquired considerable property. This, however, his son,
who had adopted public life as his pursuit, rapidly squandered in
electioneering, in pleasure, and the irresistible vice of the time, play.
Frederic, Prince of Wales, was the first object of all needy politicians,
and Rigby for a while attached himself to this feeble personage with all
the zeal of a prospective placeman. But the prince remained too long in
opposition for the fidelity of courtiership, and Rigby glided over to the
Duke of Bedford; who unquestionably exhibited himself a steady and zealous
friend to his new adherent. The duke lent him money to pay his debts; gave
him the secretaryship for Ireland on his appointment to the viceroyalty;
gave him a seat in Parliament for Tavistock; was the means of his being
made a privy counsellor; obtained for him a sinecure of L.4000 a-year; and
at that period when most men are sincere, on his deathbed, appointed Rigby
his executor, and cancelled his bond for the sum which he had originally
lent to him.

We know few instances of such steady liberality in public life, and the
man who gave, and the man who received those munificent tokens of
confidence, must have had more in them than the world was generally
inclined to believe. The duke has been shot through and through by the
pungent shafts of Junius: and Rigby was covered with mire throughout life
by all the retainers of party. Yet both were evidently capable of strong
friendship, and thus possessed the redeeming quality most unusual in the
selfishness and struggles of political existence.

Amongst official men, Rigby is recorded as one of the most popular
personages of his time. One art of official popularity, and that too a
most unfailing one, he adopted in a remarkable degree--he kept an
incomparable table. Sir Robert Walpole, one of the shrewdest of men, had
long preserved his popularity by the same means. Rigby's paymastership of
the forces enabled him to support a splendid establishment, and it was his
custom, after the debates in the House of Commons, to invite the ministers
and the pleasantest men of the time, to supper at his apartments in
Whitehall. His wines were exquisite, his cookery was of the most
_recherché_ order; and by the help of a good temper, a broad laugh,
natural joviality, and a keen and perfect knowledge of all that was going
on round him in the world of fashion, he made his parties a delightful
resource to the wearied minds of the Cabinet.

Wraxall, a very pleasant describer of men and manners, thus sketches
him:--"In Parliament he was invariably habited in a full-dress suit of
clothes, commonly of a dark colour, without lace or embroidery, close
buttoned, with his sword thrust through the pocket. His countenance was
very expressive, but not of genius; still less did it indicate timidity or
modesty. All the comforts of the pay-office seemed to be eloquently
depicted in it; his manner, rough yet frank, admirably set off whatever
sentiments he uttered in Parliament. Like Jenkinson, he borrowed neither
from ancient nor modern authors; his eloquence was altogether his own,
addressed not to the fancy, but to the plain comprehension of his hearers.
There was a happy audacity about him, which must have been the gift of
nature--art could not obtain it by any efforts. He seemed not to fear, nor
even to respect, the House, whose composition he well knew; and to the
members of which assembly he never appeared to give credit for any portion
of virtue, patriotism, or public spirit. Far from concealing those
sentiments, he insinuated, or even pronounced them, without disguise; and
from his lips they neither excited surprise, nor even commonly awaked
reprehension."

But this flow of prosperity was to have its ebb. The jovial placeman was
to feel the uncertainties of office; and on Lord North's resignation in
1782, and the celebrated Edmund Burke's appointment to the paymastership,
Rigby found himself suddenly called on for a considerable arrear. It had
been the custom to allow the paymaster to make use of the balances in his
hands until they were called for, and this formed an acknowledged and very
important part of his income. But his expenses left him no resource to
meet the demand. Whether fortunately or unfortunately, Sir Thomas Rumbold,
the recalled governor of Madras, had just then returned to England, under
investigation by the House of Commons for malpractices in his office. It
was the rumour of the day that Rigby, on the advance of a large sum by
Rumbold, had undertaken to soften the prosecution against him. Whether
this were the fact or not, it is certain that the charges soon ceased to
be pursued, and that Rigby's nephew and heir was soon after married to
Rumbold's daughter. Rigby, who had never been married, died in 1788, in
his sixty-seventh year.

His letter to Selwyn, in 1745, is characteristic of the man and the time.
"I am just got home from a cock match, where I have won forty pounds in
ready money, and not having dined, am waiting till I hear the rattle of
the coaches from the House of Commons, in order to dine at White's.

"I held my resolution of not going to the Ridotto till past three o'clock,
when, finding that nobody was willing to sit any longer but Boone, who was
_not able_, I took, as I thought, the least of two evils, and so went
there rather than to bed; but found it so infinitely dull, that I retired
in half an hour. The next morning I heard that there had been extreme deep
play, and that Harry Furnese went drunk from White's at six o'clock, and
won the dear memorable sum of one thousand guineas.

"I saw Garrick in _Othello_ that same night, in which, I think, he was
very unmeaningly dressed, and succeeded in no degree of comparison with
Quin, except in the second scene, where Iago gives the first suspicions of
Desdemona."

As the letter does not describe Garrick's dress, we can only suppose it to
have been remarkably absurd, when it could have attracted the censure of
any one accustomed to the stage in the middle of the last century. Nothing
could be more ignorant, unsuitable, or unbecoming, that the whole system
of theatrical costume. Garrick, for example, usually played Macbeth in the
uniform of an officer of the Guards--scarlet coat, cocked hat, and
regulation sword, were the exhibition of the Highland chieftain's wardrobe,
and the period, too, when the Highland dress was perfectly known to the
public eye. It must be acknowledged that we owe the reformation of the
stage, in this important point, to the French. It was commenced by the
celebrated Clairon, and perfected by the not less celebrated Talma.

"I supped that night, _tête-à-tête_, with Metham, who was d----d angry
with Hubby Bubby (Doddington) for having asked all the Musquetaires to
supper but him. He went to sleep at twelve, and I to White's, where _I
staid till six_. Yesterday I spent a good part of the day with my Lord
Coke at a _cock match_; and went, towards the latter end of Quin's benefit,
to Mariamne.

"The coaches rattle by fast, and George brings me word the House is up,
and I assure you I am extremely hungry."

We now come to the name of a man who attained a considerable celebrity in
his own time, but has almost dropped into oblivion in ours, Sir Charles
Hanbury Williams. He was the third son of John Hanbury, Esq., a
Monmouthshire gentleman, and took the name of Williams on succeeding to
the property of his grandfather. His mother was aunt to George Selwyn.
Entering Parliament early in life, he adopted the ministerial side, and
was a steady adherent to Sir Robert Walpole. He had his reward in
ministerial honours, being created a Knight of the Bath; and though Sir
Robert died in 1745, Williams had so far established his court influence,
that he was successively appointed envoy to Saxony, minister at Berlin,
and ambassador at St Petersburg. He was a man of great pleasantry, some
wit, and perpetual verse-making--the name of poetry is not to be stooped
to such compositions as his; but their liveliness and locality, their
application to existing times and persons, and their occasional hits at
politics and principles, made both them and their author popular. But the
fashionable language of the day had tendencies which would not now be
tolerated; and Sir Charles, a fashionable voluptuary, is charged with
having written what none should wish to revive. After a residence of ten
years on the Continent, he fell into a state of illness which deranged his
understanding. From this he recovered, but subsequently relapsed into the
same unhappy state, and died, it was surmised, by his own hand in 1759.
His letter details, in his own flighty style, one of the frolics of
fashion.

"The town-talk for some time past has been your child, (a note says
'apparently the Honourable John Hobart, afterwards Earl of
Buckinghamshire;') the moment you turned your back he flew out, went to
Lady Tankerville's drum-major, (a rout,) having unfortunately dined that
day with Rigby, who plied his head with too many bumpers, and also made
him a present of some Chinese crackers. Armed in this manner, he entered
the assembly, and resolving to do something that should make a noise, he
gave a string of four and twenty crackers to Lady Lucy Clinton, and bid
her put it in the candle, which she very innocently did, to her and the
whole room's astonishment. But when the first went off she threw the rest
upon the tea-table, where, one after the other, they all went off, with
much noise and not a little stench, to the real joy of most of the women
present, who don't dislike an opportunity of finding fault. Lady Lucy,
indeed, was plentifully abused, and Mr Hobart had his share; and common
fame says he has never had a card since. Few women will curtsy to him; and
I question if he ever will lead any one to their chair again as long as he
lives. I leave you to judge how deeply he feels this wound. Every body
says it would never have happened if you had not retired to your studies;
and you are a little blamed for letting him out alone. He has sunk his
chairman's wages 5s. a-week upon this accident, and intends to turn them
off in Passion week, because he then can go nowhere at all. All private
houses are already shut against him, and at that holy time no public place
is open."

We have then some letters written in a time of great public anxiety, 1745.

"All our forces are come from Flanders. The Pretender's second son (Henry
Stuart, afterwards Cardinal of York) is come to Dunkirk, where it is said
there are forty transports. The rebels, it is said, are very
advantageously encamped between two rivers, and are fortifying their camp."

Another hurried letter says.

"An express arrives to-day, (Dec. 8th,) while his Majesty was at chapel,
which brought an account of the rebels being close to Derby, and that the
Duke of Cumberland was at Meredan, four miles beyond Coventry observing
their motions."

Another of the same date, six o'-clock at night, says, "The Tower guns
have not fired to-day. A letter has been received, stating that the rebels
had retreated towards Ashbourne."

Walpole, in a letter to Sir Horace Mann, on the 9th repeats the news, and
says, "The Highlanders got nine thousand pounds at Derby, and had the
books brought to them, and obliged everybody to give them what they had
subscribed against them. They then retreated a few miles, but returned
again to Derby, got £10,000 more, and plundered the town; they are gone
again, and got back to Leake in Staffordshire, but miserably harassed;
they have left all their cannon behind them, and twenty waggons of sick."

Nothing can give a stronger example of the changes which may take place in
a country, than the different state of preparation for an invader,
exhibited by England in 1745, and in little more than half a century after.
On the threat of Napoleon's invasion, England exhibited an armed force of
little less than a million, which would have been quadrupled in case of an
actual descent. In 1745, the alarm was extravagant, and almost burlesque.
The Pretender, with but a few thousand men--brave undoubtedly, but almost
wholly unprovided for a campaign--marched into the heart of England, and
reached within a hundred and thirty miles of the capital. But the
enterprise was then felt to be wholly beyond his means. A powerful force
under the Duke of Cumberland was already thrown between him and London.
What was more ominous still, no man of English rank had joined him, London
was firm, the Protestant feeling of the nation, though slowly excited, was
beginning to be roused, by its recollection of the bigotry of James, and
in England, this feeling will always be ultimately victorious. Even if
Charles Edward had arrived in London, and seized the throne, he would have
only had to commence a civil war against the nation. His retreat to the
north saved England from this great calamity, and probably saved himself,
and his adherents in both countries, from a more summary fate than that
which drove his miserable and bigoted father from the throne.

One of the chief contributors to this correspondence is George James
Williams, familiarly styled Gilly Williams; a man of high life, uncle by
marriage to the minister Lord North, and lucky in the possession of an
opulent office--that of receiver-general of the excise. He, with George
Selwyn and Dick Edgecumbe, who met at Strawberry Hill at certain seasons,
formed what Walpole termed his out-of-town party. Life seems to have
glided smoothly with him, for he lived till 1785, dying at the ripe age of
eighty-six.

He thus begins:--

"Dear George--I congratulate you on the near approach of Parliament, and
figure you before a glass at your rehearsals. I must intimate to you not
to forget to begin closing your periods with a significant stroke of the
breast, and recommend Mr Barry as a pattern, (the actor.)

"You must observe, in letters from the country, every sentence begins with
being either sorry or glad. Apropos, I am glad to hear B. Bertie (son of
the Duke of Ancaster) is returned from Scarborough, having laid in such a
stock of health and spirits by the waters, as to dedicate the rest of his
days altogether to wine."

In another letter he says--"I had almost forgot to tell you, that I rode
near ten miles on my way home with the ordinary of Gloucester, and have
several anecdotes of the late burnings and hangings, which I reserve for
your own private ear. I do not know whether he was sensible you had a
partiality for his profession; but he expressed the greatest regard for
you, and I am sure you may command his services."

Gilly writes from Crome, Lord Coventry's seat in Worcestershire--

"Our life here for a while would not displease you, for we eat and drink
well, and the Earl (Coventry) holds a faro-bank every night to us, which
we have as yet plundered considerably.

"I want to know where to find you, and how long you stay at your
mansion-house; for it would not be pleasant to ride so far only to see
squinting Jenny and the gardener at the end of my journey. I suppose we
shall see you here, where you will find the Countess of Coventry in high
spirits and in great beauty."

We now come to a brief mention of two women, the most remarkable of their
day for popular admiration, if not for finish and fashion--the Gunnings,
afterwards Lady Coventry and the Duchess of Hamilton. They were the
daughters of an Irish country gentleman, John Gunning, of Castle Coote in
Ireland. On their first appearance at court in England, the elder was in
her nineteenth, and the second in her eighteenth year. They appear to have
excited a most unprecedented sensation in London. Walpole thus writes to
Sir Horace Mann--

"You, who knew England in other times, will find it difficult to conceive
what indifference reigns with regard to ministers and their squabbles. The
two Miss Gunnings are twenty times more the subject of conversation than
the two brothers (the Pelhams) and Lord Granville. They are two Irish
girls of no fortune, who are declared the handsomest women alive. I think
there being two so handsome, and both such perfect figures, is their chief
excellence, for, singly, I have seen much handsomer women than either.
However, they can't walk in the Park, or go to Vauxhall, but such crowds
follow them, that they are generally driven away." And this effect lasted;
for, two months after, Walpole writes--"I shall tell you a new story of
the Gunnings, who make more noise than any of their predecessors since the
days of Helen. They went the other day to see Hampton Court. As they were
going into the Beauty room, another company arrived, and the housekeeper
said--'This way, ladies, here are the beauties,' the Gunnings flew into a
passion, and asked her what she meant; they came to see the palace, not to
be shown as sights themselves."

To the astonishment, and perhaps to the envy, of the fashionable world,
those two unportioned young women made the most splendid matches of the
season. The Duke of Hamilton fell in love with the younger at a masquerade,
and made proposals to her. The marriage was to take place within some
months; but his passion was so vehement, that in two nights after he
insisted on marrying her at the moment. Walpole tells us that he sent for
a clergyman, who however refused to marry them without license or ring. At
this period marriages were frequently performed in a very unceremonious
and unbecoming manner. From the laxity of the law, they were performed at
all hours, frequently in private houses, and sometimes even in jails, by
pretended clergymen. The law, however, was subsequently and properly
reformed. The duke and duchess are said to have been married with a
curtain-ring, at half-past twelve-at night, at May Fair Chapel. This
precipitated the marriage of Lord Coventry, a personage of a grave stamp,
but who had long paid attention to the elder sister Maria. He married her
about three weeks after. Except that we are accustomed to hear of the
frenzy which seizes people in the name of fashion, we should scarcely
believe the effect which those two women, handsome as they were, continued
to produce. On the Duchess of Hamilton's presentation at Court on her
marriage, the crowd was immense; and so great was the curiosity, that the
courtly multitude got on the chairs and tables to look at her. Mobs
gathered round their doors to see them get into their chairs; people
crowded early to the theatres when they heard they were to be there. Lady
Coventry's shoemaker is said to have made a fortune by selling patterns of
her shoe; and on the duchess's going to Scotland, several hundred people
walked about all night round the inn where she slept, on the Yorkshire
road, that they might have a view of her as she went off next morning.

Yet they appear to have been strangely neglected in their education;
good-humoured and good-natured undoubtedly, but little better than hoydens
after all. Lord Down met Lord and Lady Coventry at Calais, and offered to
send her ladyship a tent-bed, for fear of bugs at the inn. "Oh dear!" said
she, "I had rather be bit to death than lie one night from my dear Cov."

She is, however, memorable for one _étourderie_, which amused the world
greatly. Old George II., conversing with her on the dulness of the season,
expressed a regret that there had been no masquerades during the year, the
handsome rustic answered him, that she had seen sights enough, and the
only one she wanted to see now was--"a coronation." The king, however,
had the good sense to laugh, and repeated it good-humouredly to his circle
at supper.

Lady Coventry died a few years after of consumption, at the age of
twenty-seven. It was said that her death was hastened by the habit of
using white lead as a paint, the fashionable custom of the time. The Duke
of Hamilton had died two years before, in 1758, and the duchess became
subsequently the wife of Colonel John Campbell, afterwards Duke of Argyle.
The narrative observes the remarkable circumstance, that the untitled
daughter of an Irish commoner should have been the wife of two dukes and
the mother of four. By her first husband she was the mother of James,
seventh duke, and of Douglas, eighth duke, of Hamilton; and by her second
husband, of William, sixth duke, and of Henry, seventh duke, of Argyle.
The duchess, though at the time of Lady Coventry's illness supposed to be
in a consumption, survived for thirty years, dying in 1790.

Mason the poet commemorated Lady Coventry's death in a long elegy, which
had some repute in those days, when even Hayley was called a poet. They
are dawdling and dulcified to a deplorable degree.

  "Yes, Coventry is dead; attend the strain,
  Daughters of Albion, ye that, light as air,
  So oft have trips in her fantastic train,
  With hearts as gay, and faces half as fair;
  For she was fair beyond your highest bloom;
  This envy owns, since now her bloom is fled.
  &c. &c. &c.

We have then a sketch of a man of considerable celebrity in his day, Lord
Sandwich. Educated at Eton and Cambridge; on leaving college, he made the
then unusual exertion of a voyage round the Mediterranean, of which a
volume was published by his chaplain on his return. Shortly after, taking
his seat in the House of Lords, he came into ministerial employment as a
Lord of the Admiralty. In 1746, he was appointed minister to the States
General. And from that period, for nearly thirty years, he was employed in
high public offices; was twice an ambassador, three times first Lord of
the Admiralty, and twice Secretary of State. Lord Sandwich's personal
character was at least accused of so much profligacy, that, if the charges
be true, we cannot comprehend how he was suffered to retain employments of
such importance for so many years. Wilkes, who had known him intimately,
describes him, in his letters to the electors of Aylesbury, as "the most
abandoned man of the age." He is even said not to have been a man of
business; yet the Admiralty was a place which can scarcely be managed by
an idler, and the Secretaryship of State, in this country, can never be a
sinecure. He had certainly one quality which is remarkable for
conciliation, and without which no minister, let his talents be what they
may, has ever been personally popular; he was a man of great affability,
and of shrewd wit. The latter was exhibited, in peculiarly cutting style,
to Mr Eden, afterwards Lord Auckland. Eden, sagacious in his generation,
had suddenly ratted to Pitt, adding, however, the monstrous absurdity of
sending a circular to his colleagues by way of justification. Obviously,
nothing could be more silly than an attempt of this order, which could
only add their contempt for his understanding to their contempt for his
conduct. Lord Sandwich's answer was in the most cutting spirit of scorn:--

"Sir,--Your letter is now before me, and in a few minutes will be _behind
me_."

An unhappy circumstance brought Lord Sandwich with painful prominence
before the world. A Miss Ray, a person of some attraction, had
unfortunately lived under his protection for several years. It happened,
however, that a young officer on the recruiting service, who had dined
once or twice at Lord Sandwich's house in the country, thought proper to
pay her some marked attentions, which, after allowing them, as it appears,
to proceed to some extent, she suddenly declined. On this the officer,
whose name was Hackman, and who was evidently of a fantastic and violent
temperament, rushed from England in a state of desperation, flew over to
Ireland, threw up his commission, and took orders in the church. But
instead of adopting the quietude which would have been suitable for his
new profession, the clerical robes seem to have made him more intractable
than the military uniform. After some months of rambling and romance in
Ireland, he rushed over to England again, resolving to conquer or die at
her feet; but the lady still rejected him, and, being alarmed at his
violence, threatened to appeal to Lord Sandwich. There are many
circumstances in the conduct of this unfortunate man, amounting to that
perversion of common sense which, in our times, is fashionably and
foolishly almost sanctioned as monomania. But nothing can be clearer than
the fact, that the most unjustifiable, dangerous, and criminal passion,
may be pampered, until it obtains possession of the whole mind, and leads
to the perpetration of the most atrocious offences against society. The
modern absurdity is, to look, in the violence of the passion for the
excuse of the crime; instead of punishing the crime for the violence of
the passion. We might as well say, that the violences of a drunkard were
more innocent the more furiously he was intoxicated; the whole being a
direct encouragement to excessive guilt. The popular feeling of justice in
the last century, however, was different; robbers and murderers were put
to death as they deserved, and society was relieved without burlesquing
the common understandings of man. Mr Hackman was a murderer, however he
might be a monomaniac, and he was eventually hanged as he deserved. The
trial, which took place in April 1779, excited the most extraordinary
public curiosity. By the statement of the witnesses, it appeared that a Mr
Macnamara, being in the lobby of Covent Garden Theatre when the audience
were coming away, and seeing Miss Ray making her way with some difficulty
through the crowd to her carriage, he went forward with Irish gallantry to
offer her his arm, which she accepted; and as they reached the door of the
carriage, a pistol was fired close to them, when Miss Ray clapped her hand
to her forehead and fell, when instantly another pistol-report followed.
He thought that she had fainted away through fright; but when he raised
her up, he found that she was wounded, and assisted the people in carrying
her into the Shakspeare Tavern; and on Hackman's being seized, and being
asked what could possess him to be guilty of such a deed, his only answer
was to give his name, and say, "It is not a proper place to ask such
questions." It appeared in evidence, that Hackman had been waiting some
time for Miss Ray's coming out of the theatre; that he followed her to the
carriage door, and pulling out two pistols, fired one at the unfortunate
woman, the ball of which went through her brain, and the other at himself,
crying out as he fell, "Kill me--kill me!"

Of course, after evidence like this, there could be no defence, and none
as attempted. Hackman evidently wished to have died by his own hand; but
having failed there, his purpose was to perish by the law, and plead
guilty. However, on being brought to trial, he said that he now pleaded
not guilty, that he might avoid the appearance of contemning death--an
appearance not suitable to his present condition; that, on second thoughts,
he had considered the plea of guilty as rendering him accessory to a
second peril of his life; and that he thought that he could pay his debt
more effectually to the justice of the country by suffering his offences
to be proved by evidence, and submitting to the forms of a regular trial.
This, though it was penitence too late, was at least decorous language.
His whole conduct on the trial showed that, intemperate as his passions
were, he possessed abilities and feelings worthy of a wiser career, and a
less unhappy termination. Part of his speech was even affecting.

"I stand here this day," he said, "the most wretched of human beings, and
confess myself criminal in a high degree; yet while I acknowledge, with
shame and repentance, that my determination against my own life was formal
and complete, I protest, with that regard which becomes my situation, that
the will to destroy her who was ever dearer to me than life, was never
mine till a momentary frenzy overpowered me, and induced me to commit the
deed I deplore. Before this dreadful act, I trust, nothing will be found
in the tenor of my life which the common charity of mankind will not
excuse. I have no wish to avoid the punishment which the laws of my
country appoint for my crime; but being already too unhappy to feel a
punishment in death, or a satisfaction in life, I submit myself with
penitence and patience to the disposal and judgment of Almighty God, and
to the consequences of this enquiry into my conduct and intentions."

After a few minutes' consultation, the jury returned a verdict of guilty,
and he was executed two days after. It is surprising how strong an
interest was felt on this subject by persons of every condition; by the
populace, who loved excitement from whatever quarter it may come; by the
middle order, to whom the romance of the early part of the transaction and
the melancholy catastrophe were subjects of natural impression; and by the
nobility, to whom the character of Miss Ray and the habits of Lord
Sandwich were equally known.

The Earl of Carlisle thus writes to Selwyn, beginning with a sort of
customary allusion to Selwyn's extraordinary fondness for those displays:--

"Hackman, Miss Ray's murderer, is hanged. I attended his execution in
order to give _you_ an account of his behaviour, and from no curiosity of
my own. I am this moment returned from it. Every one enquired after you.
_You have friends_ every where. The poor man behaved with great fortitude;
no appearances of fear were to be perceived, but very evident signs of
contrition and repentance."

A novel, of some pathos and considerable popularity, was founded on this
unhappy transaction, and "The Letters of Mr Hackman and Miss Ray" long
flourished in the circulating libraries. But the groundwork was vulgar,
mean, and vicious, after all; and, divested of that colouring which
imagination may throw on any event, was degrading and criminal in all its
circumstances. The shame of the wretched woman herself, living in a state
of open criminality from year to year; the grossness of Hackman in his
proposal to make this abandoned woman his wife; the strong probability
that his object might have been the not uncommon, though infinitely vile
one, of obtaining Lord Sandwich's patronage, by relieving him of a
connexion of which that notorious profligate, after nine years, might be
weary--all characterise the earlier portion of their intercourse as
destitute of all pretence to honourable feelings. The catastrophe is
merely the work of an assassin. If there may be some slight allowance for
overwhelming passion, for suddenly excited jealousy, or for remediless
despair, yet those impulses act only to the extent of inflicting injury on
ourselves. No love ever seeks the death of its object. It is then mere
ruffianism, brute cruelty, savage fu

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/16293