Chapter 1

A fortnight afterwards, was fought that famous battle of Gembloux, which added a new branch to the laurels of Don John of Austria; and constitutes a link of the radiant chain of military glories which binds the admiration of Europe to the soil of one of the obscurest of its countries!--Gembloux, Ramillies, Nivelle, Waterloo, lie within the circuit of a morning's journey, as well as within the circle of eternal renown.

By this brilliant triumph of the royalists, six thousand men-at-arms, their standards, banners, and artillery, were lost to the States. The cavalry of Spain, under the command of Ottavio Gonzaga, performed prodigies of valour; and the vanguard, under that of Gaspardo Nignio, equally distinguished itself. But the heat of the action fell upon the main body of the army, which had marched from Namur under the command of Don John; being composed of the Italian reinforcements dispatched to him from Parma by desire of the Pope, under the command of his nephew, Prince Alexander Farnese.

It was noticed, however, with surprise, that when the generals of the States--the Archduke Matthias, and Prince of Orange--retreated in dismay to Antwerp, Don John, instead of pursuing his advantage with the energy of his usual habits, seemed to derive little satisfaction or encouragement from his victory. It might be, that the difficulty of controlling the predatory habits of the German and Burgundian troops wearied his patience; for scarce a day passed but there issued some new proclamation, reproving the atrocious rapacity and lawless desperation of the army. But neither Gonzaga nor Nignio had much opportunity of judging of the real cause of his cheerlessness; for, independent of the engrossing duties of their several commands, the leisure of Don John was entirely bestowed upon his nephew, Alexander Farnese, who, only a few years his junior in age, was almost a brother in affection.

To him alone were confided the growing cares of his charge--the increasing perplexities of his mind. To both princes, the name of Ulrica had become, by frequent repetition, a sacred word; and though Don John had the comfort of knowing that her father, the Count de Cergny, was unengaged in the action of Gembloux, his highness had reason to fear that the regiment of Hainaulters under his command, constituted the garrison of one or other of the frontier fortresses of Brabant, to which it was now his duty to direct the conquering arms of his captains.

The army of the States having taken refuge within the walls of Antwerp, the royalists, instead of marching straight to Brussels, according to general expectation, effected in the first instance the reduction of Tirlemont, Louvain, D'Arschot, Sichem, and Diest,--Nivelle, the capital of Walloon Brabant, next succumbed to their arms--Maubeuge, Chimay, Barlaimont;--and, after a severe struggle, the new and beautiful town of Philippeville.

But these heroic feats were not accomplished without a tremendous carnage, and deeds of violence at which the soul sickened. At Sichem, the indignation of the Burgundians against a body of French troops which, after the battle of Gembloux, had pledged itself never again to bear arms against Spain, caused them to have a hundred soldiers strangled by night, and their bodies flung into the moat at the foot of the citadel; after which the town was given up by Prince Alexander to pillage and spoliation! Terrified by such an example, Diest and Leeuw hastened to capitulate. And still, at every fresh conquest, and while receiving day after day, and week after week, the submission of fortresses, and capitulation of vanquished chiefs, the anxious expectation entertained by Don John of an appeal to his clemency accompanying the Venetian ring, was again and again disappointed!--

At times, his anxieties on Ulrica's account saddened him into utter despondency. He felt convinced that mischance had overtaken her. All his endeavours to ascertain the position of the Count de Cergny having availed him nothing, he trusted that the family must be shut up in Antwerp, with the Prince of Orange and Archduke; but when every night, ere he retired to a soldier's rugged pillow, and pressed his lips to that long fair tress which seemed to ensure the blessings of an angel of purity and peace, the hopes entertained by Don John of tidings of the gentle Ulrica became slighter and still more slight.

He did not the more refrain from issuing such orders and exacting such interference on the part of Alexander Farnese, as promised to secure protection and respect to the families of all such officers of the insurgent army as might, in any time or place, fall into the hands of the royalists.

To Alexander, indeed, to whom his noble kinsman was scarcely less endeared by his chivalrous qualities than the ties of blood, and who was fully aware of the motive of these instructions, the charge was almost superfluous. So earnest were, from the first, his orders to his Italian captains to pursue in all directions their enquiries after the Count de Cergny and his family, that it had become a matter of course to preface their accounts of the day's movements with--"_No_ intelligence, may it please your highness, of the Count de Cergny!"

The siege of Limbourg, however, now wholly absorbed his attention; for it was a stronghold on which the utmost faith was pinned by the military science of the States. But a breach having been made in the walls by the Spanish artillery under the command of Nicolo di Cesi, the cavalry, commanded in person by the Prince Alexander, and the Walloons under Nignio di Zuniga, speedily forced an entrance; when, in spite of the stanch resistance of the governor, the garrison laid down their arms, and the greater portion of the inhabitants took the oath of fealty to the king.

Of all his conquests, this was the least expected and most desirable; in devout conviction of which, the Prince of Parma commanded a _Te Deum_ to be sung in the churches, and hastened to render thanks to the God of Battles for an event by which further carnage was spared to either host.

Escorted by his _état major_, he had proceeded to the cathedral to join in the august solemnization; when, lo! just as he quitted the church, a way-worn and heated cavalier approached, bearing despatches; in whom the prince recognised a faithful attendant of his household, named Paolo Rinaldo, whom he had recently sent with instructions to Camille Du Mont, the general charged with the reduction of the frontier fortresses of Brabant.

"Be their blood upon their head!" was the spontaneous ejaculation of the prince, after perusing the despatch. Then, turning to the officers by whom he was escorted, he explained, in a few words, that the fortress of Dalem, which had replied to the propositions to surrender of Du Mont only by the scornful voice of its cannon, had been taken by storm by the Burgundians, and its garrison put to the sword.

"Time that some such example taught a lesson to these braggarts of Brabant!"--responded Nignio, who stood at the right hand of Prince Alexander. "The nasal twang of their chaplains seems of late to have overmastered, in their ears, the eloquence of the ordnance of Spain! Yet, i'faith, they might be expected to find somewhat more unction in the preachments of our musketeers than the homilies of either Luther or Calvin!"

He spoke unheeded of the prince; for Alexander was now engaged apart in a colloquy with his faithful Rinaldo, who had respectfully placed in his hands a ring of great cost and beauty.

"Seeing the jewel enchased with the arms of the Venetian republic, may it please your highness," said the soldier, "I judged it better to remit it to your royal keeping."

"And from whose was it plundered?" cried the prince, with a sudden flush of emotion.

"From hands that resisted not!" replied Rinaldo gravely. "I took it from the finger of the dead!"

"And when, and where?"--exclaimed the prince, drawing him still further apart, and motioning to his train to resume their march to the States' house of Limbourg.

"The tale is long and grievous, may it please your highness!" said Rinaldo. "To comprise it in the fewest words, know that, after seeing the governor of Dalem cut down in a brave and obstinate defence of the banner of the States floating from the walls of his citadel, I did my utmost to induce the Baron de Cevray, whose Burgundians carried the place, to proclaim quarter. For these fellows of Hainaulters, (who, to do them justice, had fought like dragons,) having lost their head, were powerless; and of what use hacking to pieces an exhausted carcass?--But our troops were too much exasperated by the insolent resistance and defiance they had experienced, to hear of mercy; and soon the conduits ran blood, and shrieks and groans rent the air more cruelly than the previous roar of the artillery. In accordance, however, with the instructions I have ever received from your highness, I pushed my way into all quarters, opposing what authority I might to the brutality of the troopers."

"Quick, quick!"--cried Prince Alexander in anxious haste--"Let me not suppose that the wearer of this ring fell the victim of such an hour?"--

It was in passing the open doors of the church that my ears were assailed with cries of female distresses:--nor could I doubt that even _that_ sanctuary (held sacred by our troops of Spain!) had been invaded by the impiety of the German or Burgundian legions!--As usual, the chief ladies of the town had placed themselves under the protection of the high altar. But there, even there, had they been seized by sacrilegious hands!--The fame of the rare beauty of the daughter of the governor of Dalem, had attracted, among the rest, two daring ruffians of the regiment of Cevray."

"You sacrificed them, I trust in GOD, on the spot?"--demanded the prince, trembling with emotion. "You dealt upon them the vengeance due?"

"Alas! sir, the vengeance they were mutually dealing, had already cruelly injured the helpless object of the contest! Snatched from the arms of the Burgundian soldiers by the fierce arm of a German musketeer, a deadly blow, aimed at the ruffian against whom she was wildly but vainly defending herself; had lighted on one of the fairest of human forms! Cloven to the bone, the blood of this innocent being, scarce past the age of childhood, was streaming on her assailants; and when, rushing in, I proclaimed, in the name of God and of your highness, quarter and peace, it was an insensible body I rescued from the grasp of pollution!"

"Unhappy Ulrica!" faltered the prince, "and oh! my more unhappy kinsman!"

"Not altogether hopeless," resumed Rinaldo; "and apprized, by the sorrowful ejaculations of her female companions when relieved from their personal fears, of the high condition of the victim, I bore the insensible lady to the hospital of Dalem; and the utmost skill of our surgeons was employed upon her wounds. Better had it been spared!--The dying girl was roused only to the endurance of more exquisite torture; and while murmuring a petition for 'mercy--mercy to her _father_!' that proved her still unconscious of her family misfortunes, she attempted in vain to take from her finger the ring I have had the honour to deliver to your highness:--faltering with her last breath, 'for _his_ sake, Don John will perhaps show mercy to my poor old father!'"--

Prince Alexander averted his head as he listened to these mournful details.

"She is at rest, then?"--said he, after a pause.

"Before nightfall, sir, she was released."--

"Return in all haste to Dalem, Rinaldo," rejoined the prince, "and complete your work of mercy, by seeing all honours of interment that the times admit, bestowed on the daughter of the Comte de Cergny!"

Weary and exhausted as he was, not a murmur escaped the lips of the faithful Rinaldo as he mounted his horse, and hastened to the discharge of his new duty. For though habituated by the details of that cruel and desolating warfare to spectacles of horror--the youth--the beauty--the innocence--the agonies of Ulrica, had touched him to the heart; nor was the tress of her fair hair worn next the heart of Don John of Austria, more fondly treasured, than the one this rude soldier had shorn from the brow of death, in the ward of a public hospital, albeit its silken gloss was tinged with blood!--

Scarcely a month had elapsed after the storming of Dalem, when a terrible rumour went forth in the camp of Bouge, (where Don John had intrenched his division of the royalist army,) that the governor of the Netherlands was attacked by fatal indisposition!--For some weeks past, indeed, his strength and spirit had been declining. When at the village of Rymenam on the Dyle, near Mechlin, (not far from the ferry of the wood,) he suffered himself to be surprised by the English troops under Horn, and the Scotch under Robert Stuart, the unusual circumstance of the defeat of so able a general was universally attributed to prostration of bodily strength.

When it was soon afterwards intimated to the army that he had ceded the command to his nephew, Prince Alexander Farnese, regret for the origin of his secession superseded every other consideration.

For the word had gone forth that he was to die!--In the full vigour of his manhood and energy of his soul, a fatal blow had reached Don John of Austria!--

A vague but horrible accusation of poison was generally prevalent!--For his leniency towards the Protestants had engendered a suspicion of heresy, and the orthodoxy of Philip II. was known to be remorseless; and the agency of Ottavio Gonzaga at hand!--

But the kinsman who loved and attended him knew better. From the moment Prince Alexander beheld the ring of Ulrica glittering on his wasted hand, he entertained no hope of his recovery; and every time he issued from the tent of Don John, and noted the groups of veterans praying on their knees for the restoration of the son of their emperor, and heard the younger soldiers calling aloud in loyal affection upon the name of the hero of Lepanto, tears came into his eyes as he passed on to the discharge of his duties. For he knew that their intercessions were in vain--that the hours of the sufferer were numbered. In a moment of respite from his sufferings, the sacraments of the church were administered to the dying prince; having received which with becoming humility, he summoned around him the captains of the camp, and exhorted them to zeal in the service of Spain, and fidelity to his noble successor in command.

It was the 1st of October, the anniversary of the action of Lepanto, and on a glorious autumnal day of golden sunshine, that, towards evening, he ordered the curtains of his tent to be drawn aside, that he might contemplate for the last time the creation of God!--

Raising his head proudly from a soldier's pillow, he uttered in hoarse but distinct accents his last request, that his body might be borne to Spain, and buried at the feet of his father. For his eyes were fixed upon the glories of the orb of day, and his mind upon the glories of the memory of one of the greatest of kings.

But that pious wish reflected the last flash of human reason in his troubled mind. His eyes became suddenly inflamed with fever, his words incoherent, his looks haggard. Having caused them to sound the trumpets at the entrance of his tent, as for an onset, he ranged his battalions for an imaginary field of battle, and disposed his manoeuvres, and gave the word to charge against the enemy.[18] Then, sinking back upon his pillow, he breathed in subdued accents, "Let me at least avenge her innocent blood. Why, why could I not save thee, my Ulrica!"--

[Footnote 18: The foregoing details are strictly historical.]

It was thus he died. When Nignio de Zuniga (cursing in his heart with a fourfold curse the heretics whom he chose to consider the murderers of his master) stooped down to lay his callous hand on the heart of the hero, the pulses of life were still!--

There was but one cry throughout the camp--there was but one thought among his captains:--"Let the bravest knight of Christendom be laid nobly in the grave!" Attired in the suit of mail in which he had fought at Lepanto, the body was placed on a bier, and borne forth from his tent on the shoulders of the officers of his household. Then, having been saluted by the respect of the whole army, it was transmitted from post to post through the camp, on those of the colonels of the regiments of all nations constituting the forces of Spain.--And which of them was to surmise, that upon the heart of the dead lay the love-token of a heretic?--A double line of troops, infantry and cavalry in alternation, formed a road of honour from the camp of Bouge to the gates of the city of Namur. And when the people saw, borne upon his bier amid the deferential silence of those iron soldiers, bareheaded and with their looks towards the earth, the gallant soldier so untimely stricken, arrayed in his armour of glory and with a crown upon his head, after the manner of the princes of Burgundy, and on his finger the ruby ring of the Doge of Venice, they thought upon his knightly qualities--his courtesy, generosity, and valour--till all memory of his illustrious parentage became effaced. They forgot the prince in the man,--"and behold all Israel mourned for Jonathan!"

A regiment of infantry, trailing their halberts, led the march, till they reached Namur, where the precious deposit was remitted by the royalist generals, Mansfeldt, Villefranche, and La Cros, to the hands of the chief magistrates of Namur. By these it was bourne in state to the cathedral of St Alban; and during the celebration of a solemn mass, deposited at the foot of the high altar till the pleasure of Philip II. should be known concerning the fulfilment of the last request of Don John.

It was by Ottavio Gonzaga the tidings of his death were conveyed to Spain. It was by Ottavio Gonzaga the king intimated, in return, his permission that the conqueror of Lepanto should share the sepulture of Charles V., and all that now remains to Namur in memory of one of the last of Christian knights, the Maccabeus of the Turkish hosts, who expired in its service and at its gates, is an inscription placed on its high altar by the piety of Alexander Farnese, intimating that it afforded a temporary resting place to the remains of DON JOHN of AUSTRIA.[19]

[Footnote 19: Thus far the courtesies of fiction. But for those who prefer historical fact, it may be interesting to learn the authentic details of the interment of one whose posthumous destinies seemed to share the incompleteness of his baffled life. In order to avoid the contestations arising from the transit of a corpse through a foreign state, Nignio di Zuniga (who was charged by Philip with the duty of conveying it to Spain, under sanction of a passport from Henri III.) caused it to be _dismembered_, and the parts packed in three budgets, (_bougettes_,) and laid upon packhorses!--On arriving in Spain, the parts were _readjusted with wires!--"On remplit le corps de bourre_," says the old chronicler from which these details are derived, "_et ainsi la structure en aiant été comme rétablie, on le revétit de ses armes, et le fit voir au roi, tout debout apuyé sur son bâton de général, de sorte qu'il semblait encore vivant. L'aspect d'un mort si illustre ayant excité quelques larmes, on le porta à l'Escurial dans l'Eglise de St Laurens auprez de son père_."

Such is the account given in a curious old history (supplementary to those of D'Avila and Strada) of the wars of the Prince of Parma, published at Amsterdam early in the succeeding century. But a still greater insult has been offered to the memory of one of the last of Christian knights, in Casimir Delavigne's fine play of "Don Juan d'Autriche," where he is represented as affianced to a Jewess!]

POEMS AND BALLADS OF GOETHE.

No. I.

It may be as well to state at the outset, that we have not the most distant intention of laying before the public the whole mass of poetry that flowed from the prolific pen of Goethe, betwixt the days of his student life at Leipsic and those of his final courtly residence at Weimar. It is of no use preserving the whole wardrobe of the dead; we do enough if we possess ourselves of his valuables--articles of sterling bullion that will at any time command their price in the market--as to worn-out and threadbare personalities, the sooner they are got rid of the better. Far be it from us, however, to depreciate or detract from the merit of any of Goethe's productions. Few men have written so voluminously, and still fewer have written so well. But the curse of a most fluent pen, and of a numerous auditory, to whom his words were oracles, was upon him; and seventy volumes, more or less, which Cotta issued from his wareroom, are for the library of the Germans now, and for the selection of judicious editors hereafter. A long time must elapse after an author's death, before we can pronounce with perfect certainty what belongs to the trunk-maker, and what pertains to posterity. Happy the man--if not in his own generation, yet most assuredly in the time to come--whose natural hesitation or fastidiousness has prompted him to weigh his words maturely, before launching them forth into the great ocean of literature, in the midst of which is a Maelstrom of tenfold absorbing power!

From the minor poems, therefore, of Goethe, we propose, in the present series, to select such as are most esteemed by competent judges, including, of course, ourselves. We shall not follow the example of dear old Eckermann, nor preface our specimens by any critical remarks upon the scope and tendency of the great German's genius; neither shall we divide his works, as characteristic of his intellectual progress, into eras or into epochs; still less shall we attempt to institute a regular comparison between his merits and those of Schiller, whose finest productions (most worthily translated) have already enriched the pages of this Magazine. We are doubtless ready at all times to back our favourite against the field, and to maintain his intellectual superiority even against his greatest and most formidable rival. We know that he is the showiest, and we feel convinced that he is the better horse of the two; but talking is worse than useless when the course is cleared, and the start about to commence.

Come forward, then, before the British public, O many-sided, ambidextrous Goethe, as thine own Thomas Carlyle might, or could, or would, or should have termed thee, and let us hear how the mellifluous Teutonic verse will sound when adapted to another tongue. And, first of all--for we yearn to know it--tell us how thy inspiration came? A plain answer, of course, we cannot expect--that were impossible from a German; but such explanation as we can draw from metaphor and oracular response, seems to be conveyed in that favourite and elaborate preface to the poems, which accordingly we may term the

INTRODUCTION.

The morning came. Its footsteps scared away The gentle sleep that hover'd lightly o'er me; I left my quiet cot to greet the day And gaily climb'd the mountain-side before me. The sweet young flowers! how fresh were they and tender, Brimful with dew upon the sparkling lea; The young day open'd in exulting splendour, And all around seem'd glad to gladden me.

And, as I mounted, o'er the meadow ground A white and filmy essence 'gan to hover; It sail'd and shifted till it hemm'd me round, Then rose above my head, and floated over. No more I saw the beauteous scene unfolded-- It lay beneath a melancholy shroud; And soon was I, as if in vapour moulded, Alone, within the twilight of the cloud.

At once, as though the sun were struggling through, Within the mist a sudden radiance started; Here sunk the vapour, but to rise anew, There on the peak and upland forest parted. O, how I panted for the first clear gleaming, That after darkness must be doubly bright! It came not, but a glory round me beaming, And I stood blinded by the gush of light.

A moment, and I felt enforced to look, By some strange impulse of the heart's emotion; But more than one quick glance I scarce could brook, For all was burning like a molten ocean. There, in the glorious clouds that seem'd to bear her, A form angelic hover'd in the air; Ne'er did my eyes behold vision fairer, And still she gazed upon me, floating there.

"Do'st thou not know me?" and her voice was soft As truthful love, and holy calm it sounded. "Know'st thou not me, who many a time and oft, Pour'd balsam in thy hurts when sorest wounded? Ah well thou knowest her, to whom for ever Thy heart in union pants to be allied! Have I not seen the tears--the wild endeavour That even in boyhood brought thee to my side?"

"Yes! I have felt thy influence oft," I cried, And sank on earth before her, half-adoring; "Thou brought'st me rest when Passion's lava tide Through my young veins like liquid fire was pouring. And thou hast fann'd, as with celestial pinions, In summer's heat my parch'd and fever'd brow; Gav'st me the choicest gifts of earth's dominions, And, save through thee, I seek no fortune now.

"I name thee not, but I have heard thee named, And heard thee styled their own ere now by many; All eyes believe at thee their glance is aim'd, Though thine effulgence is too great for any. Ah! I had many comrades whilst I wander'd-- I know thee now, and stand almost alone: I veil thy light, too precious to be squander'd, And share the inward joy I feel with none."

Smiling, she said--"Thou see'st 'twas wise from thee To keep the fuller, greater revelation: Scarce art thou from grotesque delusions free, Scarce master of thy childish first sensation; Yet deem'st thyself so far above thy brothers, That thou hast won the right to scorn them! Cease. Who made the yawning gulf 'twixt thee and others? Know--know thyself--live with the world in peace."

"Forgive me!" I exclaim'd, "I meant no ill, Else should in vain my eyes be disenchanted; Within my blood there stirs a genial will-- I know the worth of all that thou hast granted. That boon I hold in trust for others merely, Nor shall I let it rust within the ground; Why sought I out the pathway so sincerely, If not to guide my brothers to the bound?"

And as I spoke, upon her radiant face Pass'd a sweet smile, like breath across a mirror; And in her eyes' bright meaning I could trace What I had answer'd well and what in error, She smiled, and then my heart regain'd its lightness, And bounded in my breast with rapture high: Then durst I pass within her zone of brightness, And gaze upon her with unquailing eye.

Straightway she stretch'd her hand among the thin And watery haze that round her presence hover'd; Slowly it coil'd and shrunk her grasp within, And lo! the landscape lay once more uncover'd-- Again mine eye could scan the sparkling meadow, I look'd to heaven, and all was clear and bright; I saw her hold a veil without a shadow, That undulated round her in the light.

"I know thee!--all thy weakness, all that yet Of good within thee lives and glows, I've measured;" She said--her voice I never may forget-- "Accept the gift that long for thee was treasured. Oh! happy he, thrice-bless'd in earth and heaven, Who takes this gift with soul serene and true, The veil of song, by Truth's own fingers given, Enwoven of sunshine and the morning dew.

"Wave but this veil on high, whene'er beneath The noonday fervour thou and thine are glowing, And fragrance of all flowers around shall breathe, And the cool winds of eve come freshly blowing. Earth's cares shall cease for thee, and all its riot; Where gloom'd the grave, a starry couch be seen; The waves of life shall sink in halcyon quiet; The days be lovely fair, the nights serene."

Come then, my friends, and whether 'neath the load Of heavy griefs ye struggle on, or whether Your better destiny shall strew the road With flowers, and golden fruits that cannot wither, United let us move, still forwards striving; So while we live shall joy our days illume, And in our children's hearts our love surviving Shall gladden them, when we are in the tomb.

This is a noble metaphysical and metaphorical poem, but purely German of its kind. It has been imitated, not to say travestied, at least fifty times, by crazy students and purblind professors--each of whom, in turn, has had an interview with the goddess of nature upon a hill-side. For our own part, we confess that we have no great predilection for such mysterious intercourse, and would rather draw our inspiration from tangible objects, than dally with a visionary Egeria. But the fault is both common and national.

* * * * *

The next specimen we shall offer is the far-famed _Bride of Corinth_. Mrs Austin says of this poem very happily--"An awful and undefined horror breathes throughout it. In the slow measured rhythm of the verse, and the pathetic simplicity of the diction, there is a solemnity and a stirring spell, which chains the feelings like a deep mysterious strain of music." Owing to the peculiar structure and difficulty of the verse, this poem has hitherto been supposed incapable of translation. Dr Anster, who alone has rendered it into English, found it necessary to depart from the original structure; and we confess that it was not without much labour, and after repeated efforts, that we succeeded in vanquishing the obstacle of the double rhymes. If the German scholar should perceive, that in three stanzas some slight liberties have been taken with the original, we trust that he will perceive the reason, and at least give us credit for general fidelity and close adherence to the text.

THE BRIDE OF CORINTH.

I.

A youth to Corinth, whilst the city slumber'd, Came from Athens: though a stranger there, Soon among its townsmen to be number'd, For a bride awaits him, young and fair: From their childhood's years They were plighted feres, So contracted by their parents' care.

II.

But may not his welcome there be hinder'd? Dearly must he buy it, would he speed. He is still a heathen with his kindred, She and her's wash'd in the Christian creed. When new faiths are born, Love and troth are torn Rudely from the heart, howe'er it bleed.

III.

All the house is hush'd. To rest retreated Father, daughters--not the mother quite; She the guest with cordial welcome greeted, Led him to a room with tapers bright; Wine and food she brought Ere of them he thought, Then departed with a fair good-night.

IV.

But he felt no hunger, and unheeded Left the wine, and eager for the rest Which his limbs, forspent with travel, needed, On the couch he laid him, still undress'd. There he sleeps--when lo! Onwards gliding slow, At the door appears a wondrous guest.

V.

By the waning lamp's uncertain gleaming There he sees a youthful maiden stand, Robed in white, of still and gentle seeming, On her brow a black and golden band. When she meets his eyes, With a quick surprise Starting, she uplifts a pallid hand.

VI.

"Is a stranger here, and nothing told me? Am I then forgotten even in name? Ah! 'tis thus within my cell they hold me, And I now am cover'd o'er with shame! Pillow still thy head There upon thy bed, I will leave thee quickly as I came."

VII.

"Maiden--darling! Stay, O stay!" and, leaping From the couch, before her stands the boy: "Ceres--Bacchus, here their gifts are heaping, And thou bringest Amor's gentle joy! Why with terror pale? Sweet one, let us hail These bright gods--their festive gifts employ."

VIII.

"Oh, no--no! Young stranger, come not nigh me; Joy is not for me, nor festive cheer. Ah! such bliss may ne'er be tasted by me, Since my mother, in fantastic fear, By long sickness bow'd, To heaven's service vow'd Me, and all the hopes that warm'd me here.

IX.

"They have left our hearth, and left it lonely-- The old gods, that bright and jocund train. One, unseen, in heaven, is worshipp'd only, And upon the cross a Saviour slain; Sacrifice is here, Not of lamb nor steer, But of human woe and human pain."

X.

And he asks, and all her words cloth ponder-- "Can it be, that, in this silent spot, I behold thee, thou surpassing wonder! My sweet bride, so strangely to me brought? Be mine only now-- See, our parents' vow Heaven's good blessing hath for us besought."

XI.

"No! thou gentle heart," she cried in anguish; "'Tis not mine, but 'tis my sister's place; When in lonely cell I weep and languish, Think, oh think of me in her embrace! I think but of thee-- Pining drearily, Soon beneath the earth to hide my face!"

XII.

"Nay! I swear by yonder flame which burneth, Fann'd by Hymen, lost thou shalt not be; Droop not thus, for my sweet bride returneth To my father's mansion back with me! Dearest! tarry here! Taste the bridal cheer, For our spousal spread so wondrously!"

XIII.

Then with word and sign their troth they plighted. Golden was the chain she bade him wear; But the cup he offer'd her she slighted, Silver, wrought with cunning past compare. "That is not for me; All I ask of thee Is one little ringlet of thy hair."

XIV.

Dully boom'd the midnight hour unhallow'd, And then first her eyes began to shine; Eagerly with pallid lips she swallow'd Hasty draughts of purple-tinctured wine; But the wheaten bread, As in shuddering dread, Put she always by with loathing sign.

XV.

And she gave the youth the cup: he drain'd it, With impetuous haste he drain'd it dry; Love was in his fever'd heart, and pain'd it, Till it ached for joys she must deny. But the maiden's fears Stay'd him, till in tears On the bed he sank, with sobbing cry.

XVI.

And she leans above him--"Dear one, still thee! Ah, how sad am I to see thee so! But, alas! these limbs of mine would chill thee: Love, they mantle not with passion's glow; Thou wouldst be afraid, Didst thou find the maid Thou hast chosen, cold as ice or snow."

XVII.

Round her waist his eager arms he bended, Dashing from his eyes the blinding tear: "Wert thou even from the grave ascended, Come unto my heart, and warm thee here!" Sweet the long embrace-- "Raise that pallid face; None but thou and are watching, dear!"

XVIII.

Was it love that brought the maiden thither, To the chamber of the stranger guest? Love's bright fire should kindle, and not wither; Love's sweet thrill should soothe, not torture, rest. His impassion'd mood Warms her torpid blood, Yet there beats no heart within her breast.

XIX.

Meanwhile goes the mother, softly creeping, Through the house, on needful cares intent, Hears a murmur, and, while all are sleeping, Wonders at the sounds, and what they meant. Who was whispering so?-- Voices soft and low, In mysterious converse strangely blent.

XX.

Straightway by the door herself she stations, There to be assured what was amiss; And she hears love's fiery protestations, Words of ardour and endearing bliss: "Hark, the cock! 'Tis light! But to-morrow night Thou wilt come again?"--and kiss on kiss.

XXI.

Quick the latch she raises, and, with features Anger-flush'd, into the chamber hies. "Are there in my house such shameless creatures, Minions to the stranger's will?" she cries. By the dying light, Who is't meets her sight? God! 'tis her own daughter she espies!

XXII.

And the youth in terror sought to cover, With her own light veil, the maiden's head, Clasp'd her close; but, gliding from her lover, Back the vestment from her brow she spread, And her form upright, As with ghostly might, Long and slowly rises from the bed.

XXIII.

"Mother! mother! wherefore thus deprive me Of such joy as I this night have known? Wherefore from these warm embraces drive me? Was I waken'd up to meet thy frown? Did it not suffice That, in virgin guise, To an early grave you brought me down?

XXIV.

"Fearful is the weird that forced me hither, From the dark-heap'd chamber where I lay; Powerless are your drowsy anthems, neither Can your priests prevail, howe'er they pray. Salt nor lymph can cool Where the pulse is full; Love must still burn on, though wrapp'd in clay.

XXV.

"To this youth my early troth was plighted, Whilst yet Venus ruled within the land; Mother! and that vow ye falsely slighted, At your new and gloomy faith's command. But no God will hear, If a mother swear Pure from love to keep her daughter's hand.

XXVI.

"Nightly from my narrow chamber driven, Come I to fulfil my destined part, Him to seek for whom my troth was given, And to draw the life blood from his heart. He hath served my will; More I yet must kill, For another prey I now depart.

XXVII.

"Fair young man! thy thread of life is broken, Human skill can bring no aid to thee. There thou hast my chain--a ghastly token-- And this lock of thine I take with me. Soon must thou decay, Soon wilt thou be gray, Dark although to-night thy tresses be.

XXVIII.

"Mother! hear, oh hear my last entreaty! Let the funeral pile arise once more; Open up my wretched tomb for pity, And in flames our souls to peace restore. When the ashes glow, When the fire-sparks flow, To the ancient gods aloft we soar."

* * * * *

After this most powerful and original ballad, let us turn to something more genial. The three following poems are exquisite specimens of the varied genius of our author; and we hardly know whether to prefer the plaintive beauty of the first, or the light and sportive brilliancy of the other twain.

FIRST LOVE.

Oh, who will bring me back the day, So beautiful, so bright! Those days when love first bore my heart Aloft on pinions light? Oh, who will bring me but an hour Of that delightful time, And wake in me again the power That fired my golden prime?

I nurse my wound in solitude, I sigh the livelong day, And mourn the joys, in wayward mood, That now are pass'd away. Oh, who will bring me back the days Of that delightful time, And wake in me again the blaze That fired my golden prime?

WHO'LL BUY A CUPID?

Of all the wares so pretty That come into the city, There's none are so delicious, There's none are half so precious, As those which we are binging. O, listen to our singing! Young loves to sell! young loves to sell! My pretty loves who'll buy?

First look you at the oldest, The wantonest, the boldest! So loosely goes he hopping, From tree and thicket dropping, Then flies aloft as sprightly-- We dare but praise him lightly! The fickle rogue! Young loves to sell! My pretty loves who'll buy?

Now see this little creature-- How modest seems his feature! He nestles so demurely, You'd think him safer surely; And yet for all his shyness, There's danger in his slyness! The cunning rogue! Young loves to sell! My pretty loves who'll buy?

Oh come and see this lovelet, This little turtle-dovelet! The maidens that are neatest, The tenderest and sweetest, Should buy it to amuse 'em, And nurse it in their bosom. The little pet! Young loves to sell! My pretty loves who'll buy?

We need not bid you buy them, They're here, if you will try them. They like to change their cages; But for their proving sages No warrant will we utter-- They all have wings to flutter. The pretty birds! Young loves to sell! Such beauties! Come and buy!

* * * * *

SECOND LIFE.

After life's departing sigh, To the spots I loved most dearly, In the sunshine and the shadow, By the fountain welling clearly, Through the wood and o'er the meadow, Flit I like a butterfly.

There a gentle pair I spy. Round the maiden's tresses flying, From her chaplet I discover All that I had lost in dying, Still with her and with her lover. Who so happy then as I?

For she smiles with laughing eye; And his lips to hers he presses, Vows of passion interchanging, Stifling her with sweet caresses, O'er her budding beauties ranging; And around the twain I fly.

And she sees me fluttering nigh; And beneath his ardour trembling, Starts she up--then off I hover. "Look there, dearest!" Thus dissembling, Speaks the maiden to her lover-- "Come and catch that butterfly!"

* * * * *

In the days of his boyhood, and of Monk Lewis, Sir Walter Scott translated the Erl King, and since then it has been a kind of assay-piece for aspiring German students to thump and hammer at will. We have heard it sung so often at the piano by soft-voiced maidens, and hirsute musicians, before whose roaring the bull of Phalaris might be dumb, that we have been accustomed to associate it with stiff white cravats, green tea, and a superabundance of lemonade. But to do full justice to its unearthly fascination, one ought to hear it chanted by night in a lonely glade of the Schwartzwald or Spessart forest, with the wind moaning as an accompaniment, and the ghostly shadows of the branches flitting in the moonlight across the path.

THE ERL KING.

Who rides so late through the grisly night? 'Tis a father and child, and he grasps him tight; He wraps him close in his mantle's fold, And shelters the boy from the biting cold.

"My son, why thus to my arm dost cling?" "Father, dost thou not see the Erlie-king? The king with his crown and long black train!" "My son, 'tis a streak of the misty rain! "

"Come hither, thou darling! come, go with me! Fair games know I that I'll play with thee; Many bright flowers my kingdoms hold! My mother has many a robe of gold!"

"O father, dear father and dost thou not hear What the Erlie-king whispers so low in mine ear?" "Calm thee, my boy, 'tis only the breeze Rustling the dry leaves beneath the trees!"

"Wilt thou go, bonny boy! wilt thou go with me? My daughters shall wait on thee daintilie; My daughters around thee in dance shall sweep, And rock thee, and kiss thee, and sing thee to sleep!"

"O father, dear father! and dost thou not mark Erlie-king's daughters move by in the dark?" "I see it, my child; but it is not they, 'Tis the old willow nodding its head so grey!"

"I love thee! thy beauty charms me quite; And if thou refusest, I'll take thee by might!" "O father, dear father! he's grasping me-- My heart is as cold as cold can be!"

The father rides swiftly--with terror he gasps-- The sobbing child in his arms he clasps; He reaches the castle with spurring and dread; But, alack! in his arms the child lay dead!

* * * * *

Who has not heard of Mignon?--sweet, delicate little Mignon?--the woman-child, in whose miniature, rather than portrait, it is easy to trace the original of fairy Fenella? We would that we could adequately translate the song, which in its native German is so exquisitely plaintive, that few can listen to it without tears. This poem, it is almost needless to say, is anterior in date to Byron's Bride of Abyos

MIGNON.

Know'st thou the land where the pale citron grows, And the gold orange through dark foliage glows? A soft wind flutters from the deep blue sky, The myrtle blooms, and towers the laurel high. Know'st thou it well? O there with thee! O that I might, my own beloved one, flee!

Know'st thou the house? On pillars rest its beams, Bright is its hall, in light one chamber gleams, And marble statues stand, and look on me-- What have they done, thou hapless child, to thee? Know'st thou it well? O there with thee! O that I might, my loved protector, flee!

Know'st thou the track that o'er the mountain goes, Where the mule threads its way through mist and snows, Where dwelt in caves the dragon's ancient brood, Topples the crag, and o'er it roars the flood. Know'st thou it well? O come with me! There lies our road--oh father, let us flee!

* * * * *

In order duly to appreciate the next ballad, you must fancy yourself (if you cannot realize it) stretched on the grass, by the margin of a mighty river of the south, rushing from or through an Italian lake, whose opposite shore you cannot descry for the thick purple haze of heat that hangs over its glassy surface. If you lie there for an hour or so, gazing into the depths of the blue unfathomable sky, till the fanning of the warm wind and the murmur of the water combine to throw you into a trance, you will be able to enjoy

THE FISHER.

The water rush'd and bubbled by-- An angler near it lay, And watch'd his quill, with tranquil eye, Upon the current play. And as he sits in wasteful dream, He sees the flood unclose, And from the middle of the stream A river-maiden rose.

She sang to him with witching wile, "My brood why wilt thou snare, With human craft and human guile, To die in scorching air? Ah! didst thou know how happy we Who dwell in waters clear, Thou wouldst come down at once to me, And rest for ever here.

"The sun and ladye-moon they lave Their tresses in the main, And breathing freshness from the wave, Come doubly bright again. The deep blue sky, so moist and clear, Hath it for thee no lure? Does thine own face not woo thee down Unto our waters pure?"

The water rush'd and bubbled by-- It lapp'd his naked feet; He thrill'd as though he felt the touch Of maiden kisses sweet. She spoke to him, she sang to him-- Resistless was her strain-- Half-drawn, he sank beneath the wave, And ne'er was seen again.

* * * * *

Our next extract smacks of the Troubadours, and would have better suited good old King René of Provence than a Paladin of the days of Charlemagne. Goethe has neither the eye of Wouverman nor Borgognone, and sketches but an indifferent battle-piece. Homer was a stark moss-trooper, and so was Scott; but the Germans want the cry of "boot and saddle" consumedly. However, the following is excellent in its way.

THE MINSTREL.

"What sounds are those without, along The drawbridge sweetly stealing? Within our hall I'd have that song, That minstrel measure, pealing." Then forth the little foot-page hied; When he came back, the king he cried, "Bring in the aged minstrel!"

"Good-even to you, lordlings all; Fair ladies all, good-even. Lo, star on star within this hall I see a radiant heaven. In hall so bright with noble light, 'Tis not for thee to feast thy sight, Old man, look not around thee!"

He closed his eyne, he struck his lyre In tones with passion laden, Till every gallant's eye shot fire, And down look'd every maiden. The king, enraptured with his strain, Held out to him a golden chain, In guerdon of his harping.

"The golden chain give not to me, For noble's breast its glance is, Who meets and beats thy enemy Amid the shock of lances. Or give it to thy chancellere-- Let him its golden burden bear, Among his other burdens.

"I sing as sings the bird, whose note The leafy bough is heard on. The song that falters from my throat For me is ample guerdon. Yet I'd ask one thing, an I might, A draught of brave wine, sparkling bright Within a golden beaker!"

The cup was brought. He drain'd its lees, "O draught that warms me cheerly! Blest is the house where gifts like these Are counted trifles merely. Lo, when you prosper, think on me, And thank your God as heartily As for this draught I thank you!"

* * * * *

We intend to close the present Number with a very graceful, though simple ditty, which Goethe may possibly have altered from the Morlachian, but which is at all events worthy of his genius. Previously, however, in case any of the ladies should like something sentimental, we beg leave to present them with as nice a little _chansonette_ as ever was transcribed into an album.

THE VIOLET.

A violet blossom'd on the lea, Half hidden from the eye, As fair a flower as you might see; When there came tripping by A shepherd maiden fair and young, Lightly, lightly o'er the lea; Care she knew not, and she sung Merrily!

"O were I but the fairest flower That blossoms on the lea; If only for one little hour, That she might gather me-- Clasp me in her bonny breast!" Thought the little flower. "O that in it I might rest But an hour!"

Lack-a-day! Up came the lass, Heeded not the violet; Trod it down into the grass; Though it died, 'twas happy yet. "Trodden down although I lie, Yet my death is very sweet-- For I cannot choose but die At her feet!"

* * * * *

THE DOLEFUL LAY OF THE NOBLE WIFE OF ASAN AGA.

What is yon so white beside the greenwood? Is it snow, or flight of cygnets resting? Were it snow, ere now it had been melted; Were it swans, ere now the flock had left us. Neither snow nor swans are resting yonder, 'Tis the glittering tents of Asan Aga. Faint he lies from wounds in stormy battle; There his mother and his sisters seek him, But his wife hangs back for shame, and comes not.

When the anguish of his hurts was over, To his faithful wife he sent this message-- "Longer 'neath my roof thou shalt not tarry, Neither in my court nor in my household."

When the lady heard this cruel sentence, 'Reft of sense she stood, and rack'd with anguish: In the court she heard the horses stamping, And in fear that it was Asan coming, Fled towards the tower, to leap and perish.

Then in terror ran her little daughters, Calling after her, and weeping sorely, "These are not the steeds of Father Asan; 'Tis thy brother Pintorovich coming!"

And the wife of Asan turn'd to meet him; Sobbing, threw her arms around her brother. "See the wrongs, O brother, of thy sister! These five babes I bore, and must I leave them?"

Silently the brother from his girdle Draws the ready deed of separation, Wrapp'd within a crimson silken cover. She is free to seek her mother's dwelling-- Free to join in wedlock with another.

When the woful lady saw the writing, Kiss'd she both her boys upon the forehead, Kiss'd on both the cheeks her sobbing daughters; But she cannot tear herself for pity From the infant smiling in the cradle!

Rudely did her brother tear her from it, Deftly lifted her upon a courser, And in haste, towards his father's dwelling, Spurr'd he onward with the woful lady.

Short the space; seven days, but barely seven-- Little space I ween--by many nobles Was the lady--still in weeds of mourning-- Was the lady courted in espousal.

Far the noblest was Imoski's cadi; And the dame in tears besought her brother-- "I adjure thee, by the life thou bearest, Give me not a second time in marriage, That my heart may not be rent asunder If again I see my darling children!"

Little reck'd the brother of her bidding, Fix'd to wed her to Imoski's cadi. But the gentle lady still entreats him-- "Send at least a letter, O my brother! To Imoski's cadi, thus imploring-- I, the youthful widow, greet thee fairly, And entreat thee, by this selfsame token, When thou comest hither with thy bridesmen, Bring a heavy veil, that I may shroud me As we pass along by Asan's dwelling, So I may not see my darling orphans."

Scarcely had the cadi read the letter, When he call'd together all his bridesmen, Boune himself to bring the lady homewards, And he brought the veil as she entreated.

Jocundly they reach'd the princely mansion, Jocundly they bore her thence in triumph; But when they drew near to Asan's dwelling, Then the children recognized their mother, And they cried, "Come back unto thy chamber-- Share the meal this evening with thy children;" And she turn'd her to the lordly bridegroom-- "Pray thee, let the bridesmen and their horses Halt a little by the once-loved dwelling, Till I give these presents to my children."

And they halted by the once-loved dwelling, And she gave the weeping children presents, Gave each boy a cap with gold embroider'd, Gave each girl a long and costly garment, And with tears she left a tiny mantle For the helpless baby in the cradle.

These things mark'd the father, Asan Aga, And in sorrow call'd he to his children-- "Turn again to me, ye poor deserted; Hard as steel is now your mother's bosom; Shut so fast, it cannot throb with pity!"

Thus he spoke; and when the lady heard him, Pale as death she dropp'd upon the pavement, And the life fled from her wretched bosom As she saw her children turning from her.

MY FIRST LOVE.

A SKETCH IN NEW YORK.

"Margaret, where are you?" cried a silver-toned voice from a passage outside the drawing-room in which I had just seated myself. The next instant a lovely face appeared at the door, its owner tripped into the room, made a comical curtsy, and ran up to her sister.

"It is really too bad, Margaret; pa' frets and bustles about, nearly runs over me upon the stairs, and then goes down the street as if 'Change were on fire. Ma' yawns, and will not hear of our going shopping, and grumbles about money--always money--that horrid money! Ah! dear Margaret, our shopping excursion is at an end for to-day!"

Sister Margaret, to whom this lamentation was addressed, was reclining on the sofa, her left hand supporting her head, her right holding the third volume of a novel. She looked up with a languishing and die-away expression--

"Poor Staunton will be in despair," said her sister. "This is at least his tenth turn up and down the Battery. Last night he was a perfect picture of misery. I could not have had the heart to refuse to dance with him. How could you be so cruel, Margaret?"

"Alas!" replied Margaret with a deep sigh, "how could I help it? Mamma was behind me, and kept pushing me with her elbow. Mamma is sometimes very ill-bred." And another sigh burst from the overcharged heart of the sentimental fair one.

"Well," rejoined her sister, "I don't know why she so terribly dislikes poor Staunton; but to say the truth, our gallopade lost nothing by his absence. He is as stiff as a Dutch doll when he dances. Even our Louisianian backwoodsman here, acquits himself much more creditably."

And the malicious girl gave me such an arch look, that I could not be angry with the equivocal sort of compliment paid to myself.

"That is very unkind, Arthurine," said Margaret, her checks glowing with anger at this attack upon the graces of her admirer.

"Don't be angry, sister," cried Arthurine, running up to her, throwing her arms round her neck, and kissing and soothing her till she began to smile. They formed a pretty group. Arthurine especially, as she skipped up to her sister, scarce touching the carpet with her tiny feet, looked like a fairy or a nymph. She was certainly a lovely creature, slender and flexible as a reed, with a waist one could easily have spanned with one's ten fingers; feet and hands on the very smallest scale, and of the most beautiful mould; features exquisitely regular; a complexion of lilies and roses; a small graceful head, adorned with a profusion of golden hair; and then large round clear blue eyes, full of mischief and fascination. She was, as the French say, _à croquer_.

"Heigho!" sighed the sentimental Margaret. "To think of this vulgar, selfish man intruding himself between me and such a noble creature as Staunton! It is really heart-breaking."

"Not quite so bad as that!" said Arthurine. "Moreland, as you know, has a good five hundred thousand dollars; and Staunton has nothing, or at most a couple of thousand dollars a-year--a mere feather in the balance against such a golden weight."

"Love despises gold," murmured Margaret.

"Nonsense!" replied her sister; "I would not even despise silver, if it were in sufficient quantity. Only think of the balls and parties, the fêtes and pic-nics! Saratoga in the summer--perhaps even London or Paris! The mere thought of it makes my mouth water."

"Talk not of such joys, to be bought at such a price!" cried Margaret, quoting probably from some of her favourite novels.

"Well, don't make yourself unhappy now," said Arthurine. "Moreland will not be here till tea-time; and there are six long hours to that. If we had only a few new novels to pass the time! I cannot imagine why Cooper is so lazy. Only one book in a year! What if you were to begin to write, sister? I have no doubt you would succeed as well as Mrs Mitchell. Bulwer is so fantastical; and even Walter Scott is getting dull."

"Alas, Howard!" sighed Margaret, looking to me for sympathy with her sorrows.

"Patience, dear Margaret," said I. "If possible, I will help you to get rid of the old fellow. At any rate, I will try."

Rat-tat-tat at the house door. Arthurine put up her finger to enjoin silence, and listened. Another loud knock. "A visit!" exclaimed she with sparkling eyes. "Ha! ladies; I hear the rustle of their gowns." And as she spoke the door opened, and the Misses Pearce came swimming into the room, in all the splendour of violet-coloured silks, covered with feathers, lace, and embroideries, and bringing with them an atmosphere of perfume.

The man who has the good fortune to see our New York belles in their morning or home attire, must have a heart made of quartz or granite if he resists their attractions. Their graceful forms, their intellectual and somewhat languishing expression of countenance, their bright and beaming eyes, their slender figures, which make one inclined to seize and hold them lest the wind should blow them away, their beautifully delicate hands and feet, compose a sum of attraction perfectly irresistible. The Boston ladies are perhaps better informed, and their features are usually more regular; but they have something Yankeeish about them, which I could never fancy, and, moreover, they are dreadful blue-stockings. The fair Philadelphians are rounder, more elastic, more Hebe-like, and unapproachable in the article of small-talk; but it is amongst the beauties of New York that romance writers should seek for their Julias and Alices. I am certain that if Cooper had made their acquaintance whilst writing his books, he would have torn up his manuscripts, and painted his heroines after a less wooden fashion. He can only have seen them on the Battery or in Broadway, where they are so buried and enveloped in finery that it is impossible to guess what they are really like. The two young ladies who had just entered the room, were shining examples of that system of over-dressing. They seemed to have put on at one time the three or four dresses worn in the course of the day by a London or Paris fashionable.

It was now all over with my _tête-à-tête_. I could only be _de trop_ in the gossip of the four ladies, and I accordingly took my leave. As I passed before the parlour door on my way out, it was opened, and Mrs Bowsends beckoned me in. I entered, and found her husband also there.

"Are you going away already, my dear Howard?" said the lady.

"There are visitors up stairs."

"Ah, Howard!" said Mrs Bowsends.

"The workies[20] have carried the day," growled her husband.

[Footnote 20: The slang term applied to the mechanics and labourers, a numerous and (at elections especially) a most important class in New York and Philadelphia.]

"That horrid Staunton!" interrupted his better half. "Only think now'--

"Our side lost--completely floored. But you've heard of it, I suppose, Mister Howard?"

I turned from one to the other in astonished perplexity, not knowing to which I ought to listen first.

"I don't know how it is," whined the lady, "but that Mr Staunton becomes every day more odious to me. Only think now, of his having the effrontery to persist in running after Margaret! Hardly two thousand a-year "--

"Old Hickory is preparing to leave Hermitage already.[21] Bank shares have fallen half per cent in consequence," snarled her husband.

[Footnote 21: The name of General Jackson's country-house and estate.]

They were ringing the changes on poor Staunton and the new president.

"He ought to remember the difference of our positions," said Mrs B., drawing herself up with much dignity.

"Certainly, certainly!" said I.

"And the governor's election is also going desperate bad," said Mr Bowsends.

"And then Margaret, to think of her infatuation! Certainly she is a good, gentle creature; but five hundred thousand dollars!" This was Mrs Bowsends.

"By no means to be despised," said I.

The five hundred thousand dollars touched a responsive chord in the heart of the papa.

"Five hundred thousand," repeated he. "Yes, certainly; but what's the use of that? All nonsense. Those girls would ruin a Croesus."

"You need not talk, I'm sure," retorted mamma. "Think of all your bets and electioneering."

"You understand nothing about that," replied her husband angrily. "Interests of the country--congress--public good--must be supported. Who would do it if we"--

"Did not bet," thought I.

"You are a friend of the family," said Mrs Bowsends, "and I hope you will"--

"Apropos," interrupted her loving husband. "How has your cotton crop turned out? You might consign it to me. How many bales?"

"A hundred; and a few dozen hogsheads of tobacco."

"Some six thousand dollars per annum," muttered the papa musingly; "hm, hm."

"As to that," said I negligently, "I have sufficient capital in my hands to increase the one hundred bales to two hundred another year."

"Two hundred! two hundred!" The man's eyes glistened approvingly. "That might do. Not so bad. Well, Arthurine is a good girl. We'll see, my dear Mr Howard--we'll see. Yes, yes--come here every evening--whenever you like. You know Arthurine is always glad to see you."

"And Mr and Mrs Bowsends?" asked I.

"Are most delighted," replied the couple, smiling graciously.

I bowed, agreeably surprised, and took my departure. I was nevertheless not over well pleased with a part of Mr Bowsends' last speech. It looked rather too much as if my affectionate father-in-law that was to be, wished to balance his lost bets with my cotton bales; and, as I thought of it, my gorge rose at the selfishness of my species, and more especially at the stupid impudent egotism of Bowsends and the thousands who resemble him. To all such, even their children are nothing but so many bales of goods, to be bartered, bought, and sold. And this man belongs to the _haut-ton_ of New York! Five-and-twenty years ago he went about with a tailor's measure in his pocket--now a leader on 'Change, and member of twenty committees and directorships.

But then Arthurine, with her seventeen summers and her lovely face, the most extravagant little doll in the whole city, and that is not saying a little, but the most elegant, charming--a perfect sylph! It was now about eleven months since I had first become acquainted with the bewitching creature; and, from the very first day, I had been her vassal, her slave, bound by chains as adamantine as those of Armida. She had just left the French boarding-school at St John's. That, by the by, is one of the means by which our mushroom aristocracy pushes itself upwards. A couple of pretty daughters, brought up at a fashionable school, are sure to attract a swarm of young fops and danglers about them; and the glory of the daughters is reflected upon the papa and mamma. And this little sorceress knew right well how to work her incantations. Every heart was at her feet; but not one out of her twenty or more adorers could boast that he had received a smile or a look more than his fellows. I was the only one who had perhaps obtained a sort of passive preference. I was allowed to escort her in her rides, walks, and drives; to be her regular partner when no other dancer offered, and suchlike enviable privileges. She flirted and fluttered about me, and hung familiarly on my arm, as she tripped along Broadway or the Battery by my side. In addition to all these little marks of preference, it fell to my share of duty to supply her with the newest novels, to furnish her with English Keepsakes and American Tokens and Souvenirs, and to provide the last fashionable songs and quadrilles. All this had cost me no small sum; but I consoled myself with the reflection, that my presents were made to the prettiest girl in New York, and that sooner or later she must reward my assiduities. Twice had fortune smiled upon me; in one instance, when we were standing on the bridge at Niagara, looking down on the foaming waters, and I was obliged to put my arm round her waist, for fear she should become dizzy and fall in--in doing which, by the by, I very nearly fell in myself. A similar thing occurred on a visit we made to the Trenton falls. That was all I had got for my pains, however, during the eleven months that I had trifled away in New York--months that had served to lighten my purse pretty considerably. It is the fashion in our southern states to choose our wives from amongst the beauties of the north. I had been bitten by the mania, and had come to New York upon this important business; but having been there nearly a year, it was high time to make an end of matters, if I did not wish to be put on the shelf as stale goods.

This last reflection occurred to me very strongly as I was walking from the Bowsends' house towards Wall Street, when suddenly I caught sight of my fellow-sufferer Staunton. The Yankee's dolorous countenance almost made me smile. Up he came, with the double object of informing me that the weather was very fine, and of offering me a bite at his pigtail tobacco. I could not help expressing my astonishment that so sensitive and delicate a creature as Margaret should tolerate such a habit in the man of her choice.

"Pshaw!" replied the simpleton. "Moreland chews also."

"Yes, but he has got five hundred thousand dollars, and that sweetens the poison."

"Ah!" sighed Staunton.

"Keep up your courage, man; Bowsends is rich."

The Yankee shook his head.

"Two hundred thousand, they say; but to-morrow he may not have a farthing. You know our New Yorkers. Nothing but bets, elections, shares, railways, banks. His expenses are enormous; and, if he once got his daughters off his hands, he would perhaps fail next week."

"And be so much the richer next year," replied I.

"Do you think so?" said the Yankee, musingly.

"Of course it would be so. Mean time you can marry the languishing Margaret, and do like many others of your fellow citizens; go out with a basket on your arm to the Greenwich market, and whilst your delicate wife is enjoying her morning slumber, buy the potatoes and salted mackerel for breakfast. In return for that, she will perhaps condescend to pour you out a cup of bohea. Famous thing that bohea! capital antidote to the dyspepsia!"

"You are spiteful," said poor Staunton.

"And you foolish," I retorted. "To a young barrister like you, there are hundreds of houses open."

"And to you also."

"Certainly."

"And then I have this advantage--the girl likes me."

"I am liked by the papa and the mamma, and the girl too."

"Have you got five hundred thousand dollars?"

"No."

"Poor Howard!" cried Staunton, laughing.

"Go to the devil!" replied I, laughing also.

We had been chatting in this manner for nearly a quarter of an hour, when a coach drove out of Greenwich Street, in which I saw a face that I thought I knew. One of the Philadelphia steamers had just arrived. I stepped forward.

"Stop!" cried a well-known voice.

"Stop!" cried I, hastening to the coach door.

It was Richards, my school and college friend, and my neighbour, after the fashion of the southern states; for he lived only about a hundred and seventy miles from me. I said good-by to poor simple Staunton, got into the coach, and we rattled off through Broadway to the American hotel.

"For heaven's sake, George!" exclaimed my friend, as soon as we were installed in a room, "tell me what you are doing here. Have you quite forgotten house, land, and friends? You have been eleven months away."

"True," replied I; "making love--and not a step further advanced than the first."

"The report is true, then, that you have been harpooned by the Bowsends? Poor fellow! I am sorry for you. Just tell me what you mean to do with the dressed-up doll when you get her? A young lady who has not enough patience even to read her novels from beginning to end, and who, before she was twelve years old, had Tom Moore and Byron, _Don Juan_ perhaps excepted, by heart. A damsel who has geography and the globes, astronomy and Cuvier, Raphael's cartoons and Rossini's operas, at her finger-ends; but who, as true as I am alive, does not know whether a mutton chop is cut off a pig or a cow--who would boil tea and cauliflowers in the same manner, and has some vague idea that eggs are the principal ingredient in a gooseberry pie."

"I want her for my wife, not for my cook," retorted I, rather nettled.

"Who does not know," continued Richards, "whether dirty linen ought to be boiled or baked."

"But she sings like St Cecilia, plays divinely, and dances like a fairy."

"Yes, all that will do you a deal of good. I know the family; both father and mother are the most contemptible people breathing."

"Stop there!" cried I; "they are not one iota better or worse than their neighbours."

"You are right."

"Well, then, leave them in peace. I have promised to drink tea there at six o'clock. If you will come, I will take you with me."

"Know then already, man. I will go, on one condition; that you leave New York with me in three days."

"If my marriage is not settled," replied I.

"D----d fool!" muttered Richards between his teeth.

Six o'clock struck as we entered the drawing-room of my future mother-in-law. The good lady almost frightened me as I went in, by her very extraordinary appearance in a tremendous grey gauze turban, fire-new, just arrived by the Henri Quatre packet-ship from Havre, and that gave her exactly the look of one of our Mississippi night-owls. Richards seemed a little startled; and Moreland, who was already there, could not take his eyes off this remarkable head-dress. Miss Margaret was costumed in pale green silk, her hair flattened upon each side of her forehead _a la Marguerite_, (see the _Journal des Modes,_) and looking like Jephtha's daughter, pale and resigned, but rather more lackadaisical, with a sort of "though-absent-not-forgot" look about her, inexpressibly sentimental and interesting. The contrast was certainly rather strong between old Moreland, who sat there, red-faced, thickset, and clumsy, and the airy slender Staunton, who, for fear of spoiling his figure, lived upon oysters and macaroon, and drank water with a rose leaf in it.

I had brought the languishing beauty above described, Scott's _Tales of my Grandfather_, which had just appeared.

"Ah! Walter Scott!" exclaimed she, in her pretty melting tones. Then, after a moment's pause, "The vulgar man has not a word to say for himself;" said she to me, in a low tone.

"Wait a little," replied I; "he'll improve. It is no doubt his modest timidity that keeps his lips closed."

Margaret gave me a furious look.

"Heartless mocker!" she exclaimed.

Meanwhile Richards had got into conversation with Bowsends. The unlucky dog, who did not know that his host was a violent Adams-ite, and had lost a good five thousand dollars in bets and subscriptions to influence the voices of the sovereign people at the recent election, had fallen on the sore subject. He began by informing his host that Old Hickory would shortly leave the Hermitage to assume his duties as president.

"The blood-thirsty backwoodsman, half horse, half alligator" interrupted Mr Bowsends.

"Costs you dear, his election," said Moreland laughing.

"Smokes out of a tobacco pipe like a vulgar German," ejaculated Mrs Bowsends.

"Not so very vulgar for that," said blundering Moreland; "tobacco has quite another taste out of a pipe."

I gave him a tremendous dig in the back with my elbow.

"Do you smoke out of a tobacco pipe, Mr Moreland?" enquired Margaret in her flute-like tones.

Moreland stared; he had a vague idea that he had got himself into a scrape, but his straightforward honesty prevented him from prevaricating, and he blurted out--"Sometimes, miss."

I thought the sensitive creature would have swooned away at this admission; and I had just laid my arm over the back of her chair to support her, when Arthurine entered the room. She gave a quick glance to me; it was too late to draw back my arm. She did not seem to notice any thing, saluted the company gaily and easily, tripped up to Moreland, wished him good evening--asked after his bets, his ships, his old dog Tom--chattered, in short, full ten minutes in a breath. Before Moreland knew what she was about, she had taken one of his hands in both of hers. But they were old acquaintances, and he might easily have been her grandfather. Meanwhile Margaret had somewhat recovered from the shock.

"He smokes out of a pipe!" lisped she to Arthurine, in a tone of melancholy resignation.

"Old Hickory is very popular in Pennsylvania," said Richards, resuming the conversation that had been interrupted, and perfectly unconscious, as Moreland would have said, of the shoals he was sailing amongst. "A Bedford County farmer has just sent him a present of a cask of Monongahela."

"I envy him that present," cried Moreland. "A glass of genuine Monongahela is worth any money."

This second shock was far too violent to be resisted by Margaret's delicate nerves. She sank back in her chair, half fainting, half hysterical. Her maids were called in, and with their help she managed to leave the room.

"Have you brought her a book?" said Arthurine to me.

"Yes, one of Walter Scott's."

"Oh! then she will soon be well again," rejoined the affectionate sister, apparently by no means alarmed.

Now that this nervous beauty was gone, the conversation became much more lively. Captain Moreland was a jovial sailor, who had made ten voyages to China, fifteen to Constantinople, twenty to St Petersburg, and innumerable ones to Liverpool and through his exertions had amassed the large fortune which he was now enjoying. He was a merry-hearted man, with excellent sound sense on all points except one--that one being the fair sex, with which he was about as well acquainted as an alligator with a camera-obscure. The attentions paid to him by Arthurine seemed to please the old bachelor uncommonly. There was a mixture of kindness, malice, and fascination in her manner, which was really enchanting; even the matter-of-fact Richards could not take his eyes off her.

"That is certainly a charming girl!" whispered he to me.

"Did not I tell you so?" said I. "Only observe with what sweetness she gives in to the old man's humours and fancies!"

The hours passed like minutes. Supper was long over, and we rose to depart; when I shook hands with Arthurine, she pressed mine gently. I was in the ninety-ninth heaven.

"Now, boys," cried worthy Moreland, as soon as we were in the streets, "it would really be a pity to part so early on so joyous an evening. What do you say? Will you come to my house, and knock the necks off half a dozen bottles?"

We agreed to this proposal; and, taking the old seaman between us, steered in the direction of his cabin, as he called his magnificent and well-furnished house.

"What a delightful family those Bowsends are!" exclaimed Moreland, as soon as we were comfortably seated beside a blazing fire, with the Lafitte and East India Madeira sparkling on the table beside us. "And what charming girls! 'You're getting oldish,' says I to myself the other day, 'but you're still fresh and active, sound as a dolphin. Better get married.' Margaret pleased me uncommonly, so I"--

"Yes, my dear Moreland," interrupted I, "but are you sure that you please her?"

"Pshaw! Five times a hundred thousand dollars! I tell you what, my lad, that's not to be met with every day."

"Fifty years old," replied I.

"Certainly, fifty years old, but stout and healthy; none of your spindle-shanked dandies--your Stauntons"--

But Staunton smokes cigars, and not Dutch pipes."

"I give that up. For Miss Margaret's sake, I'll burn my nose and mouth with those damned stumps of cigars."

"Drinks no whisky," continued I. "He is president of a temperance society."

"The devil fly away with him!" growled Moreland; "I wouldn't give up my whisky for all the girls in the world."

"If you don't, she'll always be fainting away," replied I, laughing.

"Ah! It's because I talked of the Monongahela that she began with her hystericals, and went away for all the evening! That's where the wind sits, is it? Well, you may depend I ain't to be done out of my grog at any rate."

And he backed his assertion with an oath, swallowing off the contents of his glass by way of a clincher. We sat joking and chatting till past midnight during which time I flattered myself that I gave evidence of considerable diplomatic talents. As we were returning home, however, Richards doubted whether I had not driven the old boy rather too hard

"No matter," replied I, "if I have only succeeded in ridding poor Margaret of him."

Cool, calculating Richards shook his head.

"I don't know what may come of it," said he; "but I do not think you are likely to find much gratitude for your interference."

The next day was taken up in arranging matters of business consequent on the arrival of Richards. At least ten times I tried to go and see Arthurine, but was always prevented by something or other; and it was past tea-time when I at last got to the Bowsends' house. I found Margaret in the drawing-room, deep in a new novel.

"Where is Arthurine?" I enquired.

"At the theatre, with mamma and Mr Moreland," was the answer.

"At the theatre!" repeated I in astonishment. They were playing Tom and Jerry, a favourite piece with the enlightened Kentuckians. I had seen the first scene or two at the New Orleans theatre, and had had quite enough of it.

"That really _is_ sacrificing herself!" said I, considerably out of humour.

"The noble girl!" exclaimed Margaret. "Mr Moreland came to tea, and urged us so much to go"--

"That she could not help going, to be bored and disgusted for a couple of hours."

"She went for my sake," said Margaret sentimentally. "Mamma would have one of us go."

"Yes, that is it," thought I. Jealousy would have been ridiculous. He fifty years old, she seventeen. I left the house, and went to find Richards.

"What! Back so early?" cried he.

"She is gone to the theatre with her mamma and Moreland."

Richards shook his head.

"You put a wasp's nest into the old fellow's brain-pan yesterday," said he. "Take care you do not get stung yourself."

"I should like to see how she looks by his side," said I.

"Well, I will go with you. The sooner you are cured the better. But only for ten minutes."

There was certainly no temptation to remain longer in that atmosphere of whisky and tobacco fumes. It was at the Bowery theatre. The light swam as though seen through a thick fog; and a perfect shower of orange and apple peel, and even less agreeable things, rained down from the galleries. Tom and Jerry were in all their glory. I looked round the boxes, and soon saw the charming Arthurine, apparently perfectly comfortable, chatting with old Moreland as gravely, and looking as demure and self-possessed, as if she had been a married woman of thirty.

"That is a prudent young lady," said Richards; "she has an eye to the dollars, and would marry Old Hickory himself, spite of whisky and tobacco pipe, if he had more money, and were to ask her."

I said nothing.

"If you weren't such an infatuated fool," continued my plain-spoken friend, I would say to you, let her take her own way, and the day after to-morrow we will leave New York."

"One week more," said I, with an uneasy feeling about the heart.

At seven the next evening I entered what had been my Elysium, but was now, little by little, becoming my Tartarus. Again I found Margaret alone over a romance. "And Arthurine?" enquired I, in a voice that might perhaps have been steadier.

"She is gone with mamma and Mr Moreland to hear Miss Fanny Wright."

"To hear Miss Fanny Wright! the atheist, the revolutionist! What a mad fancy! Who would ever have dreamed of such a thing!"

This Miss Fanny Wright was a famous lecturess, of the Owenite school, who was shunned like a pestilence by the fashionable world of New York.

"Mr Moreland," answered Margaret, "said so much about her eloquence that Arthurine's curiosity was roused."

"Indeed!" replied I.

"Oh! you do not know what a noble girl she is. For her sister she would sacrifice her life. My only hope is in her."

I snatched up my hat, and hurried out of the house.

The next morning I got up, restless and uneasy; and eleven o'clock had scarcely struck when I reached the Bowsends' house. This time both sisters were at home; and as I entered the drawing-room, Arthurine advanced to meet me with a beautiful smile upon her face. There was nevertheless a something in the expression of her countenance that made me start. I pressed her hand. She looked tenderly at me.

"I hope you have been amusing yourself these last two days," said I after a moment's pause.

"Novelty has a certain charm," replied Arthurine. "Yet I certainly never expected to become a disciple of Miss Fanny Wright," added she, laughing.

"Really! I should have thought the transition from Tom and Jerry rather an easy one."

"A little more respect for Tom and Jerry, whom _we_ patronize--that is to say, Mr Moreland and our high mightiness," replied Arthurine, trying, as I fancied, to conceal a certain confusion of manner under a laugh.

"I should scarcely have thought my Arthurine would have become a party to such a conspiracy against good taste," replied I gravely.

"_My_ Arthurine!" repeated she, laying a strong accent on the pronoun possessive. "Only see what rights and privileges the gentleman is usurping! We live in a free country, I believe?"

There was a mixture of jest and earnest in her charming countenance. I looked enquiringly at her.

"Do you know," cried she, "I have taken quite a fancy to Moreland? He is so good-natured, such a sterling character, and his roughness wears off when one knows him well."

"And moreover," added I, "he has five hundred thousand dollars."

"Which are by no means the least of his recommendations. Only think of the balls, Howard! I hope you will come to them. And then Saratoga; next year London and Paris. Oh! it will be delightful."

"What, so far gone already?" said I, sarcastically.

"And poor Margaret is saved!" added she, throwing her arms round her sister's neck, and kissing and caressing her. I hardly knew whether to laugh or to cry.

"Then, I suppose, I may congratulate you?" said I, forcing a laugh, and looking, I have no doubt, very like a fool.

You may so," replied Arthurine. "This morning Mr Moreland begged permission to transfer his addresses from Margaret to your very humble servant."

"And you?"--

"We naturally, in consideration of the petitioner's many amiable qualities, have promised to take the request into our serious consideration. For decorum's sake, you know, one must deliberate a couple of days or so."

"Are you in jest or earnest, Arthurine?"

"Quite in earnest, Howard."

"Farewell, then!"

"'Fare-thee-well! and if for ever Still for ever fare-thee-well!'"

said Arthurine, in a half-laughing, half-sighing tone. The next instant I had left the room.

On the stairs I met the beturbaned Mrs Bowsends, who led the way mysteriously into the parlour.

"You have seen Arthurine?" said she. "What a dear, darling child!--is she not? Oh! that girl is our joy and consolation. And Mr Moreland--the charming Mr Moreland! Now that things are arranged so delightfully, we can let Margaret have her own way a little."

"What I have heard is true, then?" said I.

"Yes; as an old friend I do not mind telling you--though it must still remain a secret for a short time. Mr Moreland has made a formal proposal to Arthurine."

I do not know what reply I made, before flinging myself out of the room and house, and running down the street as if I had just escaped from a lunatic asylum.

"Richards," cried I to my friend, "shall we start tomorrow?"

"Thank God!" exclaimed Richards. "So you are cured of the New York fever? Start! Yes, by all means, before you get a relapse. You must come with me to Virginia for a couple of months."

"I will so," was my answer.

As we were going down to the steam-boat on the following morning, Staunton overtook us, breathless with speed and delight.

"Wish me joy!" cried he. "I am accepted!"

"And I jilted!" replied I with a laugh. "But I am not such a fool as to make myself unhappy about a woman."

Light words enough, but my heart was heavy as I spoke them. Five minutes later, we were on our way to Virginia.

* * * * *

HYDRO-BACCHUS.

Great Homer sings how once of old The Thracian women met to hold To "Bacchus, ever young and fair," Mysterious rites with solemn care. For now the summer's glowing face Had look'd upon the hills of Thrace; And laden vines foretold the pride Of foaming vats at Autumn tide. There, while the gladsome Evöe shout Through Nysa's knolls rang wildly out, While cymbal clang, and blare of horn, O'er the broad Hellespont were borne; The sounds, careering far and near, Struck sudden on Lycurgus' ear-- Edonia's grim black-bearded lord, Who still the Bacchic rites abhorr'd, And cursed the god whose power divine Lent heaven's own fire to generous wine. Ere yet th' inspired devotees Had half performed their mysteries, Furious he rush'd amidst the band, And whirled an ox-goad in his hand. Full many a dame on earth lay low Beneath the tyrant's savage blow; The rest, far scattering in affright, Sought refuge from his rage in flight.

But the fell king enjoy'd not long The triumph of his impious wrong: The vengeance of the god soon found him, And in a rocky dungeon bound him. There, sightless, chain'd, in woful tones He pour'd his unavailing groans, Mingled with all the blasts that shriek Round Athos' thunder-riven peak. O Thracian king! how vain the ire That urged thee 'gainst the Bacchic choir The god avenged his votaries well-- Stern was the doom that thee befell; And on the Bacchus-hating herd Still rests the curse thy guilt incurr'd. For the same spells that in those days Were wont the Bacchanals to craze-- The maniac orgies, the rash vow, Have fall'n on thy disciples now. Though deepest silence dwells alone, Parnassus, on thy double cone; To mystic cry, through fell and brake, No more Cithaeron's echoes wake; No longer glisten, white and fleet, O'er the dark lawns of Taÿgete, The Spartan virgin's bounding feet: Yet Frenzy still has power to roll Her portents o'er the prostrate soul. Though water-nymphs must twine the spell Which once the wine-god threw so well-- Changed are the orgies now, 'tis true, Save in the madness of the crew. Bacchus his votaries led of yore Through woodland glades and mountains hoar; While flung the Maenad to the air The golden masses of her hair, And floated free the skin of fawn, From her bare shoulder backward borne. Wild Nature, spreading all her charms, Welcomed her children to her arms; Laugh'd the huge oaks, and shook with glee, In answer to their revelry; Kind Night would cast her softest dew Where'er their roving footsteps flew; So bright the joyous fountains gush'd, So proud the swelling rivers rush'd, That mother Earth they well might deem, With honey, wine, and milk, for them Most bounteously had fed the stream. The pale moon, wheeling overhead, Her looks of love upon them shed, And pouring forth her floods of light, With all the landscape blest their sight. Through foliage thick the moonshine fell, Checker'd upon the grassy dell; Beyond, it show'd the distant spires Of skyish hills, the world's grey sires; More brightly beam'd, where far away, Around his clustering islands, lay, Adown some opening vale descried, The vast Aegean's waveless tide. What wonder then, if Reason's power Fail'd in each reeling mind that hour, When their enraptured spirits woke To Nature's liberty, and broke The artificial chain that bound them, With the broad sky above, and the free winds around them! From Nature's overflowing soul, That sweet delirium on them stole; She held the cup, and bade them share In draughts of joy too deep to bear.

Not such the scenes that to the eyes Of water-Bacchanals arise; Whene'er the day of festival Summons the Pledged t' attend its call-- In long procession to appear, And show the world how good they are. Not theirs the wild-wood wanderings, The voices of the winds and springs: But seek them where the smoke-fog brown Incumbent broods o'er London town; 'Mid Finsbury Square ruralities Of mangy grass, and scrofulous trees; 'Mid all the sounds that consecrate Thy street, melodious Bishopsgate! Not by the mountain grot and pine, Haunts of the Heliconian Nine: But where the town-bred Muses squall Love-verses in an annual; Such muses as inspire the grunt Of Barry Cornwall, and Leigh Hunt. Their hands no ivy'd thyrsus bear, No Evöe floats upon the air: But flags of painted calico Flutter aloft with gaudy show; And round then rises, long and loud, The laughter of the gibing crowd.

O sacred Temp'rance! mine were shame If I could wish to brand thy name. But though these dullards boast thy grace, Thou in their orgies hast no place. Thou still disdain'st such sorry lot, As even below the soaking sot. Great was high Duty's power of old The empire o'er man's heart to hold; To urge the soul, or check its course, Obedient to her guiding force. These own not her control, but draw New sanction for the moral law, And by a stringent compact bind The independence of the mind-- As morals had gregarious grown, And Virtue could not stand alone. What need they rules against abusing? They find th' offence all in the using. Denounce the gifts which bounteous Heaven To cheer the heart of man has given; And think their foolish pledge a band More potent far than God's command. On this new plan they cleverly Work morals by machinery; Keeping men virtuous by a tether, Like gangs of negroes chain'd together.

Then, Temperance, if thus it be, They know no further need of thee. This pledge usurps thy ancient throne-- Alas! thy occupation's gone! From earth thou may'st unheeded rise, And like Astræa--seek the skies.

MARTIN LUTHER.

AN ODE.

Who sits upon the Pontiff's throne? On Peter's holy chair Who sways the keys? At such a time When dullest ears may hear the chime Of coming thunders--when dark skies Are writ with crimson prophecies, A wise man should be there; A godly man, whose life might be The living logic of the sea; One quick to know, and keen to feel-- A fervid man, and full of zeal, Should sit in Peter's chair.

Alas! no fervid man is there, No earnest, honest heart; One who, though dress'd in priestly guise, Looks on the world with worldling's eyes; One who can trim the courtier's smile, Or weave the diplomatic wile, But knows no deeper art; One who can dally with fair forms, Whom a well-pointed period warms-- No man is he to hold the helm Where rude winds blow, and wild waves whelm, And creaking timbers start.

In vain did Julius pile sublime The vast and various dome, That makes the kingly pyramid's pride, And the huge Flavian wonder, hide Their heads in shame--these gilded stones (O heaven!) were very blood and bones Of those whom Christ did come To save--vile grin of slaves who sold Celestial rights for earthy gold, Marketing grace with merchant's measure, To prank with Europe's pillaged treasure The pride of purple Rome.

The measure of her sins is full, The scarlet-vested whore! Thy murderous and lecherous race Have sat too long i' the holy place; The knife shall lop what no drug cures, Nor Heaven permits, nor earth endures, The monstrous mockery more. Behold! I swear it, saith the Lord: Mine elect warrior girds the sword-- A nameless man, a miner's son, Shall tame thy pride, thou haughty one, And pale the painted whore!

Earth's mighty men are nought. I chose Poor fishermen before To preach my gospel to the poor; A pauper boy from door to door That piped his hymn. By his strong word The startled world shall now be stirr'd, As with a lion's roar! A lonely monk that loved to dwell With peaceful host in silent cell; This man shall shake the Pontiff's throne: Him Kings and emperors shall own, And stout hearts wince before

The eye profound and front sublime Where speculation reigns. He to the learned seats shall climb, On Science' watch-tower stand sublime; The arid doctrine shall inspire Of wiry teachers with swift fire; And, piled with cumbrous pains, Proud palaces of sounding lies Lay prostrate with a breath. The wise Shall listen to his word; the youth Shall eager seize the new-born truth Where prudent age refrains.

Lo! when the venal pomp proceeds From echoing town to town! The clam'rous preacher and his train, Organ and bell with sound inane, The crimson cross, the book, the keys, The flag that spreads before the breeze, The triple-belted crown! It wends its way; and straw is sold-- Yea! deadly drugs for heavy gold, To feeble hearts whose pulse is fear; And though some smile, and many sneer, There's none will dare to frown.

None dares but one--the race is rare-- One free and honest man: Truth is a dangerous thing to say Amid the lies that haunt the day; But He hath lent it voice; and, lo! From heart to heart the fire shall go, Instinctive without plan; Proud bishops with a lordly train, Fierce cardinals with high disdain, Sleek chamberlains with smooth discourse, And wrangling doctors all shall force, In vain, one honest man.

In vain the foolish Pope shall fret, It is a sober thing. Thou sounding trifler, cease to rave, Loudly to damn, and loudly save, And sweep with mimic thunders' swell Armies of honest souls to hell! The time on whirring wing Hath fled when this prevail'd. O, Heaven! One hour, one little hour, is given, If thou could'st but repent. But no! To ruin thou shalt headlong go, A doom'd and blasted thing.

Thy parchment ban comes forth; and lo! Men heed it not, thou fool! Nay, from the learned city's gate, In solemn show, in pomp of state, The watchmen of the truth come forth, The burghers old of sterling worth, And students of the school: And he who should have felt thy ban Walks like a prophet in the van; He hath a calm indignant look, Beneath his arm he bears a book, And in his hand the Bull.

He halts; and in the middle space Bids pile a blazing fire. The flame ascends with crackling glee; Then, with firm step advancing, He Gives to the wild fire's wasting rule The false Decretals, and the Bull, While thus he vents his ire:-- "Because the Holy One o' the Lord Thou vexed hast with impious word, Therefore the Lord shall thee consume, And thou shalt share the Devil's doom In everlasting fire!"

He said; and rose the echo round "In everlasting fire!" The hearts of men were free; one word Their inner depths of soul had stirr'd; Erect before their God they stood A truth-shod Christian brotherhood, And wing'd with high desire. And ever with the circling flame Uprose anew the blithe acclaim:-- "The righteous Lord shall thee consume, And thou shalt share the Devil's doom In everlasting fire!"

Thus the brave German men; and we Shall echo back the cry; The burning of that parchment scroll Annull'd the bond that sold the soul Of man to man; each brother now Only to one great Lord will bow, One Father-God on high. And though with fits of lingering life The wounded foe prolong the strife, On Luther's deed we build our hope, Our steady faith--the fond old Pope Is dying, and shall die.

TRADITIONS AND TALES OF UPPER LUSATIA.

No. II

THE FAIRY TUTOR.

Discreet Reader!

You have seen--and 'tis no longer ago than YESTERDAY!--you must well remember the picture--which showed you from the rough yet delicate--the humorous yet sympathetic and picturesque--the original yet insinuating pencil of a shrewd and hearty Lusatian mountaineer--the aerial, brilliant, sensitive, subtle, fascinating, enigmatical, outwardly--mirth-given, inwardly--sorrow-touched, congregated folk numberless--of the Fairies Proper!--showed them at the urgency of a rare and strange need--clung, in DEPENDENCY, to one fair, kind, good and happily-born Daughter of Man!--And what wonder?--The once glorious, but now forlorn spirits, leaning for one fate-burthened instant their trust upon the spirits ineffably favoured!--What wonder! that often as the revolution of ages brings on the appointed hour, the rebellious and outcast children of heaven must sue--to their keen emergency--help--oh! speak up to the height of the want, of the succour! and call it _a lent ray of grace_, from the rebellious and REDEEMED children of the earth!--And see, where, in the serene eyes of the soft Christian maiden, the hallowing influence shines!--Auspiciously begun, the awed though aspiring Rite, the still, the multitudinous, the mystical, prospers!--_Gratefully_, as for the boon inexpressibly worth--_easily_, as of their own transcending power--_promptly_, as though fearing that a benefit received could wax cold, the joyful Elves crown upon the bright hair of their graciously natured, but humanly and womanly weak benefactress--the wedded felicity of pure love!

And the imaginary curtain has dropped! Lo, where it rises again, discovering to view our stage, greatly changed, and, a little perhaps, our actors!--Once more, attaching to the HUMAN DRAMA, slight, as though it were structured of cloud, of air, the same light and radiant MACHINERY! Once more, only that They, whom you lately saw tranquil, earnest even to pathos--"now are frolic"--enough and to spare!--Once more--THE FAIRIES.

And see, too--where, centring in herself interest and action of the rapidly shifting scenery--ever again a beautiful granddaughter of Eve steps--free and fearless, and bouyant and bounding--our fancy-laid boards!--Ah! but how much unresembling the sweet maid!--_Outwardly_, for lofty-piled is the roof that ceils over the superb head of the modern Amazon, Swanhilda--more unlike _within_. Instead of the clear truth, the soul's gentle purity, the "plain and holy Innocence" of the poor fairy-beloved mountain child--SHE, in whose person and fortunes you are invited--for the next fifty minutes--to forget your own--harbours, fondly harbours, ill housemates of her virginal breast! a small, resolute, well-armed and well confederated garrison of unwomanly faults. Pride is there!--The iron-hard and the iron-cold! There Scorn--edging repulse with insult!--and envenoming insult with despair!--leaps up, in eager answer to the beseeching sighs, tears, and groans of earth-bent Adoration. And there is the indulged Insolency of a domineering--and as you will precipitately augur--an _indomitable_ Will! And there is exuberant SELF-POWER, that, from the innermost mind, oozing up, out, distilling, circulating along nerve and vein, effects a magical metamorphosis! turns the nymph into a squire of arms; usurping even the clamorous and blood-sprinkled joy of man--the tempestuous and terrible CHASE, which, in the bosom of peace, imaging war, shows in the rougher lord of creation himself, as harsh, wild, and turbulent! Oh, how much other than yon sweet lily of the high Lusatian valleys, the shade-loving Flower, the good Maud--herself looked upon with love by the glad eyes of men, women, children, Fairies, and Angels! oh, other indeed! And yet, have you, in this thickly clustered enumeration of unamiable qualities, implicitly heard the CALL which must fasten, which has fastened, upon the gentle Maud's _haughty_ antithesis--the serviceable regard, and--the FAVOUR, even of THE FAIRIES.

The FAVOUR!!

Hear, impatient spectator, the simple plot and its brief process. You are, after a fashion, informed with what studious, persevering, and unmerciful violation of all gentle decorum and feminine pity, the lovely marble-souled tyranness has, in the course of the last three or four years, turned back from her beetle-browed castle-gate, one by one, as they showed themselves there--a hundred, all worthily born--otherwise more and less meritorious--petitioners for that whip-and-javelin-bearing hand. You are NOW to know, that upon this very morning, an embassy from the willow-wearers all--or, to speak indeed more germanely to the matter, of the BASKET-BEARERS[22], waited upon their beautiful enemy with an ultimatum and manifesto in one, importing first a requisition to surrender; then, in case of refusal to capitulate, the announcement that HYMEN having found in CUPID an inefficient ally, he was about associating with himself, in league offensive, the god MARS, with intent of carrying the Maiden-fortress by storm, and reducing the aforesaid wild occupants of the stronghold into captivity--whereunto she made answer--

----our castle's strength Will laugh a siege to scorn--

herself laughing outrageously to scorn the senders and the sent This crowning of wrong upon wrong will the Fairies, in the first place, wreak and right.

[Footnote 22: To German ears--to SEND A BASKET--is to REFUSE A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE.]

But further, later upon the same unlucky day, the Kingdom of Elves, being in full council assembled in the broad light of the sun, upon the fair greensward; ere the very numerous, but not widely sitting diet had yet well opened its proceedings--"tramp, tramp, across the land," came, flying at full speed, boar-spear in hand, our madcap huntress; and without other note of preparation sounded than their own thunder, her iron-grey's hoofs were in the thick of the sage assembly, causing an indecorous trepidation, combined with devastation dire to persons and--wearing apparel.

This wrong, in the second place, the Fairies will wreak and right.

And all transgression and injury, under one procedure, which is--_summary_; as, from the character of the judges and executioners, into whose hands the sinner has fallen, you would expect; sufficiently prankish too. With one sleight of their magical hand they turn the impoverished heiress of ill-possessed acres forth upon the highway, doomed to earn, with strenuous manual industry, her livelihood; until, from the winnings of her handicraft, she is moreover able to make good, as far as this was liable to pecuniary assessment, the damage sustained under foot of her fiery barb by the Fairy realm; comfort with handsome presents the rejected suitors; and until, thoroughly tame, she yields into her softened and opened bosom, now rid of its intemperate inmates, an entrance to the once debarred and contemned visitant--LOVE.

As to the way and style of the Fairy operations that carry out this drift, comparing the Two Tales, you will see, that omitting, as a matter that is related merely, not presented, that misadventure under the oak-tree--there is, in the chamber of Swanhilda, but a Fairy delegation active, whilst under the Sun's hill whole Elfdom is in presence; in that resplendent hollow, wearing their own lovely shapes; within the German castle-walls, in apt masquerade. There they were grave. Here, we have already said, that they are merry. There their office was to feel and to think. Here, if there be any trust in apparitions, they drink, and what is more critical for an Elfin lip--they eat!

Lastly, to end the comparisons for our well-bred, well-dressed, and right courtly cavalier, who transacted between the Fairy Queen and the stonemason's daughter, him you shall presently see turned into a sort of Elfin cupbearer or court butler; not without fairy grace of person and of mind assuredly; not without a due innate sense of the beautiful, as his perfumed name (SWEETFLOWER) at the outset warns you; and, as the proximity of his function to her Majesty's person--for we do not here fall in with any thing like mention of a king--would suggest, independently of the delicately responsible part borne by him in the action, the chief stress of which you will find incumbent upon his capable shoulders.

Such, in respect of the subject, is, thrice courteous and intelligent reader, the second piece of art, which we are glad to have the opportunity of placing before you, from our clever friend Ernst Willkomm's apparently right fertile easel. The second, answering to the first, LIKE and UNLIKE, you perceive, as two companion pictures should be.

But it would be worse than useless to tell you that which you have seen and that which you will see, unless, from the juxtaposition of the two fables, there followed--a moral. They have, as we apprehend, a moral--_i.e._ one moral, and that a grave one, in common between them.

Hitherto we have superficially compared THE FAIRIES' SABBATH and the FAIRY TUTOR. We now wish to develope a profounder analogy connecting them. We have compared them, as if ESTHETICALLY; we would now compare them MYTHOLOGICALLY--for, in our understanding, there lies at the very foundation of both tales A MYTHOLOGICAL ROOT--by whomsoever set, whether by Ernst Willkomm to-day, or by the population of the Lusatian mountains--three, six, ten centuries ago; or, in unreckoned antiquity, by the common Ancestors of the believers, who, in still unmeasured antiquity, brought the superstition of the Fairies out of central Asia to remote occidental Europe.

This ROOT we are bold to think is--"A DEEPLY SEATED ATTRACTION, ALLYING THE FAIRY MIND TO THE PURITY AND INTEGRITY OF THE MORAL WILL IN THE MIND OF MEN." And first for the Tale which presently concerns us:--THE FAIRY TUTOR.

SWEETFLOWER will beguile us into believing that the interposition of the Fairies in our Baroness's domestic arrangements, grows up, if one shall so hazardously speak, from TWO seeds, each bearing two branches--namely, from two wrongs, the one hitting, the other striking from, themselves--BOTH which wrongs they will AVENGE and AMEND. We take up a strenuous theory; and we deny--and we defy--SWEETFLOWER. Nay, more! Should our excellent friend, ERNST WILLKOMM, be found taking part, real or apparent, with SWEETFLOWER, we defy and we deny Ernst Willkomm. For in this mixed case of the Fairy wrong, we distinguish, first, INJURIES which shall be retaliated, and, as far as may be, compensated; and secondly, a SHREW, who is to be turned _into_ a WIFE, being previously turned _out of_ a shrew.

We dare to believe that this last-mentioned end is the thing uppermost, and undermost, and middlemost in the mind of the Fairies; is, in fact, the true and _the sole final cause_ of all their proceedings.

Or that the _moral heart_ of the poem--that root in the human breast and will, from which every true poem springs heavenward--is here the zeal of the spirits for _morally reforming Swanhilda_; is, therefore, that deep-seated attraction, which, as we have averred, essentially allies the inclination of the Fairies to the moral conscience in our own kind.

One end, therefore, grounds the whole story, although two and more are proposed by _Sweetflower_. It is one that _satisfies_ the moral reason in man; for it is no less than to cleanse and heal the will, wounded with error, of a human creature. That other, which he displays, with mock emphasis, of restitution to the downtrodden fairyhood, is an exotic, fair and slight bud, grafted into the sturdier indigenous stock. For let us fix but a steady look upon the thing itself, and what is there before us? a whim, a trick of the fancy, tickling the fancy. We are amused with a quaint calamity--a panic of caps and cloaks. We laugh--we cannot help it--as the pigmy assembly flies a thousand ways at once--grave councillors and all--throwing terrified somersets--hiding under stones, roots--diving into coney-burrows--"any where--any where"--vanishing out of harm's--if not out of dismay's--reach. In a tale of the Fairies, THE FANCY rules:--and the interest of such a misfortune, definite and not infinite, is congenial to the spirit of the gay faculty which hovers over, lives upon surfaces, and which flees abysses; which thence, likewise, in the moral sphere, is equal to apprehending resentment of a personal wrong, and a judicial assessment of damages--but NOT A DISINTERESTED MORAL END.

What is our conclusion then? plainly that the dolorous overthrow of the fairy divan is no better than an invention--the device of an esthetical artist. We hold that Ernst Willkomm has _gratuitously_ bestowed upon us the disastrous catastrophe; that he has done this, knowing the obligation which lies upon Fancy within her own chosen domain to _create_, because--there, Fancy listens and reads. The adroit Fairy delineator must wile over and reconcile the most sportive, capricious, and self-willed spirit of our understanding, to accept a purpose foreign to that spirit's habitual sympathies--a purpose solemn and austere--THE MORAL PURPOSE OF RESCUING A SIN-ENTANGLED HUMAN SOUL.

Or, if Ernst Willkomm shall guarantee to us, that the reminiscences of his people have furnished him with the materials of this tale; if he is, as we must needs hope, who have freely dealt with you to believe that he is--honest: honest both as to the general character, and the particular facts of his representations--if, in short, the Lusatian Highlanders do, sitting by the bench and the stove, aver and protest that the said Swanhilda did overturn both council-board and councillors--then we say, upon this occasion, that which we must all, hundreds of times, declare--namely, that _The Genius of Tradition_ is the foremost of artists; and further, that in this instance _an unwilled fiction_, determined by a necessity of the human bosom, has risen up _to mantle seriousness with grace_, as a free woodbine enclasps with her slender-gadding twines, and bedecks with her sweet bright blossoms, a towering giant of the grove.

It will perhaps be objected, that the moral purity and goodness that are so powerful to draw to themselves the regard and care of the spiritual people, are wanting in the character of the over-bold Swanhilda. We have said that her _faults_ are the CALL to the Fairies for help and reformation: but we may likewise guess that Virtue and Truth first won their love. It must be recollected that the faults which are extirpated from the breast of our heroine, are not such as, in our natural understanding of humanity, dishonour or sully. Taken away, the character may stand clear. It is quite possible that this gone, there shall be left behind a kind, good, affectionate, generous, noble nature.

We are free, or, more properly speaking, we are bound to believe, that thus the Fairies left Swanhilda.

As for Maud, we know--for she was told--that the Fairies loved her for herself ere they needed her aid. Hanging as it were upon that wondrous power to help which dwelt within her--her simple goodness--may we not say that the Fairies discover an ENFORCED attraction, when they afterwards approach the maiden for their own succour and salvation; as they do, a FREE attraction, when, in the person of Swanhilda, they disinterestedly attach themselves to reforming a fault for the welfare and happiness of her whom it aggrieves?

* * * * *

We will now proceed, as in our former communication, to adduce instances from other quarters, confirming the fairy delineations offered by our tale; or which may tend generally to bring out its mythological and literary character.

Two points would suggest themselves to us in the tale of the Fairy Tutor, as chiefly provoking comparison. The first is:--_The affirmed Presidency of the Fairies over human morals_, viewed as _a Shape of the Interest_ which they take in the uprightness and purity of the human will.

The second is:--

_The Manner and Style of their operations_: or, THE FAIRY WAYS. In which we chiefly distinguish--1, The active presence of the Sprites in a human habitation. 2, Their masquerading. 3, Their dispatch of human victuals. 4, The liability of Elfin limbs to human casualties. 5, The personality of that saucy Puck, our tiny ambassador elf.

We are at once tempted and restrained by the richness of illustration, which presents itself under all these heads. The necessity of limitation is, however, imperious. This, and a wish for simplicity, dispose us to throw all under one more comprehensive title.

Perhaps the reader has not entirely forgotten that in the remarks introductory to THE FAIRIES' SABBATH, having launched the question--what is a Fairy?--we offered him in the way of answer, _eight_ elements of the Fairy Nature. Has he quite forgotten that for one of these--it was the third--we represented the Spirit under examination, as ONE WHICH AT ONCE SEEKS AND SHUNS MANKIND?

The cursory treatment of this Elfin criterion will now compendiously place before the reader, as much illustration of the two above-given heads as we dare impose upon him.

The popular Traditions of entire Western Europe variously attest for all the kinds of the Fairies, and for some orders of Spirits partaking of the Fairy character, the singularly composed, and almost self-contradictory traits of a _seeking_ implicated and attempered with a _shunning_; of a shunning with a seeking. The inclination of our Quest will be to evidences of the _seeking_. The shunning will, it need not be doubted, take good care of itself.

The attraction of the Fairy Species towards our own is,

1. Recognised--in their GENERIC DESIGNATIONS. 2. Apparent--in their GOOD NEIGHBOURHOOD with us. 3. IN THEIR FREQUENTING AND ESTABLISHING THEMSELVES in the places of our habitual occupancy and resort. 4. IN THEIR CALLING OR CARRYING US into the places of their Occupancy and Resort; whether to return _hither_, or to remain _there_. 5. BY THEIR ALIGHTING UPON THE PATH, worn already with some blithe or some weary steps, OF A HUMAN DESTINY;--as friendly, or as unfriendly Genii.

We collect the proofs: and--

1. Of their GENERIC APPELLATIVES, a Word!

One is tempted to say that THE NATIONS, as if conscious of the kindly disposition inhering in the spiritual existences toward ourselves, have simultaneously agreed in conferring upon them titles of endearment and affection. The brothers Grimm write--"In Scotland they [The Fairies] are called _The Good People, Good Neighbours, Men of Peace;_ in Wales--_The Family, The Blessing of their Mothers, The Dear Ladies;_ in the old Norse, and to this day in the Faroe islands, _Huldufolk_ (_The Gracious People;_) in Norway, _Huldre_;[23] and, in conformity with these denominations, discover a striving to be in the proximity of men, and to keep up a good understanding with them."[24]

[Footnote 23: May we for HULDRE read HULDREFOLK; and understand the _following_, or the _Folk_ of HULDRE? Huldre _means_ the Gracious Lady: she is a sort of Danish and Norwegian Fairy-Queen.--See GRIMM'S _German Mythology_, p. 168. First edition.]

[Footnote 24: The Brothers GRIMM: _Introduction to the Irish Fairy Tales_.]

2. THIS GOOD NEIGHBOURHOOD, to which these last words point, is interestingly depicted by the Traditions.

In Scotland and Germany the Fairies plant their habitation _adjoining_ that of man--"_under the threshold_"--and in such attached Fairies an alliance is unfolded with us of a most extraordinary kind. "The closest connexion" (_id est_, of the Fairy species with our own) "is expressed," say the Brothers Grimm, "by the tradition, agreeably to which the family of the Fairies ORDERED ITSELF ENTIRELY AFTER THE HUMAN to which it belonged; and OF WHICH IT WAS AS IF A COPY. These domestic Fairies _kept their marriages upon the same day_ as the Human Beings; _their children were born upon the same day_; and _upon the same day they wailed for their dead._"[25]

[Footnote 25: The Brothers GRIMM: _Introduction to the Irish Fairy Tales._]

Two artlessly sweet breathings of Elfin Table, from the Helvetian Dales,[26] lately revived to your fancy the sinless--blissful years, when gods with men set fellowing steps upon one and the same fragrant and unpolluted sward, until transgression, exiling those to their own celestial abodes, left these lonely--a nearer, dearer, BARBARIAN Golden Age--wherein the kindly Dwarf nation stand representing the great deities of Olympus.

[Footnote 26: See _The Dwarfs upon the Maple-Tree_, and _The Dwarfs upon the Crag-Stone_, in the former paper.]

The healthful pure air fans restoration again to us. We lay before you--

GERMAN TRADITIONS

No. CXLIX _The Dwarfs' Feet_.

"In old times the men dwelt in the valley, and round about them, in caves and clefts of the rock, the Dwarfs, _in amity and good neighbourhood_ with the people, for whom they performed by night many a heavy labour. When the country folk, betimes in the morning, came with wains and implements, and wondered that all was ready done, the Dwarfs were hiding in the bushes, and laughed out loud. Frequently the peasants were angry when they saw their yet hardly ripe corn lying reaped upon the field; but when presently after hail and storm came on, and they could well know that probably not a stalk should have escaped perishing, they were then heartily thankful to the provident Dwarfs. At last, however, the inhabitants, by their sin, fooled away the grace and favour of the Dwarfs. These fled, and since then has no eye ever again beheld them. The cause was this following:--A herdsman had upon the mountain an excellent cherry-tree. One summer, as the fruit grew ripe, it befell that the tree was, for three following nights, picked, and the fruit carried, and fairly spread out in the loft, in which the herdsman had use to keep his cherries. The people said in the village, that doth no one other than the honest dwarflings--they come tripping along by night, in long mantles, with covered feet, softly as birds, and perform diligently for men the work of the day. Already often have they been privily watched, but one may not interrupt them, only let them, come and go at their listing. By such speeches was the herdsman made curious, and would fain have wist wherefore the Dwarfs hid so carefully their feet, and whether these were otherwise shapen than men's feet. When, therefore, the next year, summer again came, and the season that the Dwarfs did stealthily pluck the cherries, and bear them into the garner, the herdsman took a sackful of ashes, which he strewed round about the tree. The next morning, with daybreak, he hied to the spot; the tree was regularly gotten, and he saw beneath in the ashes the print of many geese's feet. Thereat the herdsman fell a-laughing, and made game, that the mystery of the Dwarfs was bewrayed; but these presently after brake down and laid waste their houses, and fled deeper away into their mountain. They harbour ill-will toward men, and withhold from them their help. That herdsman which had betrayed the Dwarfs turned sickly and half-witted, and so continued until his dying day!"

There! Plucked amidst the lap of the Alps from its own hardily-nursed wild-brier, by the same tenderly-diligent hand[27] that brought home to us those other half-disclosed twin-buds of Helvetian tradition, you behold a third, like pure, more expanded blossom. Twine the three, young poet! into one soft-hued and "odorous chaplet," ready and meet for binding the smooth clear forehead of a Swiss Maud!--or fix it amidst the silken curls of thine own dove-eyed, innocent, nature-loving--Ellen or Margaret.

[Footnote 27: Of Professor Wyes.]

These old-young things--bequests, as they look to be--from the loving, singing childhood of the earth, may lawfully make children, lovers, and songsters of us all; and _will_, if we are _fond_, and hearken to them.

In that same "hallowed and gracious time," lying YON-SIDE our chronologies,

"When the world and love were young, And truth on every shepherd's tongue,"

the men and the Dwarfs had unbroken intercourse of _borrowing and lending_. Many traditions touch the matter. Here is one resting upon it.

No. CLIV. _The Dwarfs near Dardesheim_.

"Dardesheim is a little town betwixt Halberstadt and Brunswick. Close to the north-east side, a spring of the clearest water flows, which is called the Smansborn,[28] and wells from a hill wherein formerly the Dwarfs dwelled. When the ancient inhabitants of the place needed a holiday dress, or any rare utensil for a marriage, they betook them to this Dwarf's Hill, knocked thrice, and with a well audible voice, told their occasion, adding--

'Early a-morrow, ere sun-light, At the hill's door, lieth all aright.'

[Footnote 28: For LESSMANSBORN, _i.e._ LESSMANN'S WELL.]

The Dwarfs held themselves for well requited if somewhat of the festival meats were set for them by the hill. Afterward gradually did bickerings interrupt the good understanding that was betwixt the Dwarfs' nation and the country folk. At the beginning for a short season; but, in the end, the Dwarfs departed away; because the flouts and gibes of many boors grew intolerable to them, as likewise their ingratitude for kindnesses done. Thenceforth none seeth or heareth any Dwarfs more."

In _Auvergne_, Miss Costello has just now learned, how the men and the Fairies anciently lived upon the friendliest footing, nigh one another: how the _knowledge_ and _commodious use_ of the _Healing Springs_ was owed by the former to these Good Neighbours: how, of yore, the powerful sprites, by rending athwart a huge rocky mound, opened an _innocuous channel_ for _the torrent_, which used with its overflow to lay desolate arable ground and pasturage: how they were looked upon as being, in a general sense, _the protectors_ against harm of the country: and, in fine, how the two orders of neighbours lived in long and happy communion of kind offices with one another; until, upon one unfortunate day, the ill-renowned freebooter, Aymerigot Marcel, with his ruffianly men-at-arms, having approached, by stealth, from his near-lying hold, stormed the romantically seated rock-mansion of the bountiful pigmies: who, scared, and in anger, forsook the land. Ever since the foul outrage, only a straggler may, now and then, be seen at a distance.

Thus, too, the late _Brillat-Savarin_, from a sprightly, acute, brilliant Belles-letteriste, turned, for an hour, honest antiquary, lets us know how, upon the southern bank of the Rhone, flowing out from Switzerland, in the narrowly-bounded and, when he first quitted it, yet hidden valley of his birth:--The FAIRIES--elderly, not beautiful, but benevolent unmarried ladies--kept, while time was, open school in THE GROTTO, which was their habitation, for the young girls of the vicinity, whom they taught--SEWING.

3. We go on to exemplifying--ELFIN _Frequentation of, and Settlement with,_ MAN.

The Fairies are drawn into the houses and to the haunts of men by manifold occasions and impulses. They halt on a journey. They celebrate marriages. They use the implements of handicraft. They purchase at the Tavern--from the Shambles, or in open Market. They _steal_ from oven and field. They go through a house, blessing the rooms, the marriage-bed--and stand beside the unconscious cradle. They give dreams. They take part in the evening mirth. They pray in the churches. They seem to work in the mines. Drawn by magical constraint into the garden, they invite themselves within doors. They dance in the churchyard.[29] They make themselves the wives and the paramours of men; or the serviceable hobgoblin fixes himself, like a cat, in the house--once and for ever.

We present traditions for illustrating some of these points, as they offer themselves to us.

[Footnote 29:

"Part fenced by man, part by the ragged steep That curbs a foaming brook, a GRAVE-YARD lies; The hare's best couching-place for fearless sleep! Where MOONLIT FAYS, far seen by credulous eyes, ENTER, IN DANCE!"

WORDSWORTH.--_Sonnet upon an_ ABANDONED _Cemetery._]

THEY HALT ON A JOURNEY.

No. XXXV. _The Count of Hoia_.

"There did appear once to a count of Hoia, a little mauling in the night, and, as the count was alarmed, said to him he should have no fear: he had a word to sue unto him, and begged that he should not be denied. The count answered, if it were a thing possible to do, and should be never burthensome to him and his, he will gladly do it. The manling said--'There be some that desire to come to thee this ensuing night, into thy house, and to make their stopping. Wouldst thou so long lend them kitchen and hall, and bid thy domestics that they go to bed, and none look after their ways and works, neither any know thereof, save only thou? They will show them, therefore, grateful. Thou and thy line shall have cause of joy, and in the very least matter shall none hurt happen unto thee, neither to any that belong to thee.' Whereunto the count assented. Accordingly, upon the following night, they came like a cavalcade, marching over the drawbridge to the house; one and all--tiny folk, such as they use to describe the hill manlings. They cooked in the kitchen, fell too, and rested, and nothing seemed otherwise than as if a great repast were in preparing. Thereafter, nigh unto morn, as they will again depart, comes the little manling a second time to the count, and after conning him thanks, handed him a _sword_, a _salamander cloth_, and a _golden ring_, in which was RED LION set above--advertising him, withal, that he and his posterity shall well keep these three pieces, and so long as they had them all together, should it go with fair accordance and well in the county; but so soon as they shall be parted from one another, shall it be a sign that nothing good impendeth for the county. Accordingly, the red lion ever after, when any of the stem is near the point of dying, hath been seen to wax wan.

"Howsoever, at the time that Count Job and his brothers were minors, and Francis of Halle governor in the country, two of the pieces--viz., the Sword and the Salamander Cloth, were taken away; but the Ring remained with the lordship unto an end. Whither it afterwards went is not known."

THEY HOLD A WEDDING.

No.XXXI. _The Small People's Wedding Feast._

"The small people of the Eulenberg in Saxony would once hold a marriage, and for this purpose slipped in, in the night, through the keyhole and the window-chinks into the Hall, and came leaping down upon the smooth floor, like peas tumbled out upon the threshing-floor. The old Count, who slept in the high canopy bed in the Hall, awoke, and marvelled at the number of tiny companions; one of whom, in the garb of a herald, now approached him, and in well-set phrase, courteously prayed him to bear part in their festivity. 'Yet one thing,' he added, 'we beg of you. Ye shall alone be present; none of your court shall be bold to gaze upon our mirth--yea, not so much as with a glance.' The old Count answered pleasantly--'Since ye have once for all waked me up, I will e'en make one among you.' Hereupon was a little wifikin led up to him, little torch-bearers took their station, and a music of crickets struck up. The Count had much ado to save losing his little partner in the dance; she capered about so nimbly, and ended with whirling him round and round, until hardly might he have his breath again. But, in the midst of the jocund measure, all stood suddenly still; the music ceased, and the whole throng hurried to the cracks in the doors, mouse-holes, and hiding-places of all sorts. The newly-married couple only, the heralds, and the dancers, looked upward towards an orifice that was in the hall ceiling, and there descried the visage of the old Countess, who was curiously prying down upon the mirthful doings. Herewith they made their obeisance to the Count; and the same which had bidden him, again stepping forward, thanked him for his hospitality. 'But,' continued he, 'because our pleasure and our wedding hath been in such sort interrupted, that yet another eye of man hath looked thereon, henceforward shall your house number never more than seven Eulenbergs.' Thereupon, they pressed fast forth, one upon another. Presently all was quiet, and the old Count once again alone in the dark Hall. The curse hath come true to this hour, so as ever one of the six living knights of Eulenberg hath died ere the seventh was born."

THEY JOIN THE EVENING MIRTH.

No. xxxix. _The Hill-Manling at the Dance_.

"Old folks veritable declared, that some years ago, at Glass, in Dorf, an hour from the Wunderberg, and an hour from the town of Salzburg, a wedding was kept, to which, towards evening, a Hill-Manling came out of the Wunderberg. He exhorted all the guests to be in honour, gleesome, and merry, and requested leave to join the dancers, which was not refused him. He danced accordingly, with modest maidens, one and another; evermore, three dances with each, and that with a singular featness; insomuch that the wedding guests looked on with admiration and pleasure. The dance over, he made his thanks, and bestowed upon either of the young married people three pieces of money that were of an unknown coinage; whereof each was held to be worth four kreuzers; and therewithal _admonished them to dwell in peace and concord, live Christianly, and piously walking, to bring up their children in all goodness_. These coins they should put amongst their money, and constantly remember him--so should they seldom fall into hardship. _But they must not therewithal grow arrogant, but, of their superfluity, succour their neighbours_.

"This Hill-Manling stayed with them into the night, and took of every one to drink and to eat what they proffered; but from every one only a little. He then paid his courtesy, and desired that one of the wedding guests might take him over the river Salzbach toward the mountain. Now, there was at the marriage a boatman, by name John Standl, who was presently ready, and they went down together to the ferry. During the passage, the ferryman asked his meed. The Hill-Manling tendered him, in all humility, three pennies. The waterman scorned at such mean hire; but the Manling gave him for answer--'He must not vex himself, but safely store up the three pennies; for, so doing, he should never suffer default of his having--_if only he did restrain presumptousness_--at the same time he gave the boatman a little pebble, saying the words--'If thou shalt hang this about thy neck, thou shalt not possibly perish in the water.' Which was proved in that same year. Finally, _he persuaded him to a godly and humble manner of life_, and went swiftly away."

ANOTHER OF THE SAME.

No. CCCVI. _The Three Maidens from the Mere._

"At Epfenbach, nigh Sinzheim, within men's memory, three wondrously beautiful damsels, attired in white, visited, with every evening, the village spinning-room. They brought along with them ever new songs and tunes, and new pretty tales and games. Moreover, their distaffs and spindles had something peculiar, and no spinster might so finely and nimbly spin the thread. But upon the stroke of eleven, they arose; packed up their spinning gear, and for no prayers might be moved to delay for an instant more. None wist whence they came, nor whither they went. Only they called them, The Maidens from the Mere; or, The Sisters of the Lake. The lads were glad to see them there, and were taken with love of them; but most of all, the schoolmaster's son. He might never have enough of hearkening and talking to them, and nothing grieved him more than that every night they went so early away. The thought suddenly crossed him, and he set the village clock an hour back; and, in the evening, with continual talking and sporting, not a soul perceived the delay of the hour. When the clock struck eleven--but it was properly twelve--the three damsels arose, put up their distaffs and things, and departed. Upon the following morrow, certain persons went by the Mere; they heard a wailing, and saw three bloody spots above upon the surface of the water. Since that season, the sisters came never again to the room. The schoolmaster's son pined, and died shortly thereafter."

AN ELFIN IS BOUND, IN UNLAWFUL CHAINS, TO A HUMAN LOVER.

No. LXX. _The Bushel, the Ring, and the Goblet._

"In the duchy of Lorraine, when it belonged, as it long did, to Germany, the last count of Orgewiler ruled betwixt Nanzig and Luenstadt.[30] He had no male heir of his blood, and upon his deathbed, shared his lands amongst his three daughters and sons-in-law. Simon of Bestein had married the eldest daughter, the lord of Crony the second, and a German Rhinegrave the youngest. Beside the lordships, he also distributed to his heirs three presents; to the eldest daughter a BUSHEL, to the middle one a DRINKING-CUP, and to the third a jewel, which was a RING, with an admonition that they and their descendants should carefully hoard up these pieces, so should their houses be constantly fortunate."

[Footnote 30: LUNEVILLE.]

The tradition, how the things came into the possession of the count, the Marshal of Bassenstein,[31] great-grandson of Simon, does himself relate thus:--[32]

[Footnote 31: BASSOMPIERRE.]

[Footnote 32: _Mémoires du Maréchal de_ BASSOMPIERRE: Cologne, 1666. Vol. I. PP. 4-6. The Marshal died in 1646.]

"The count was married: but he had beside a secret amour with a marvellous beautiful woman, which came weekly to him every Monday, into a summer-house in the garden. This commerce remained long concealed from his wife. When he withdrew from her side, he pretended to her, that he went, by night, into the Forest, to the Stand.

"But when a few years had thus passed, the countess took a suspicion, and was minded to learn the right truth. One summer morning early, she slipped after him, and came to the summer bower. She there saw her husband, sleeping in the arms of a wondrous fair female; but because they both slept so sweetly, she would not awaken them; but she took her veil from her head, and spread it over the feet of both, where they lay asleep.

"When the beautiful paramour awoke, and perceived the veil, she gave a loud cry, began pitifully to wail, and said:--

"'Henceforwards, my beloved, we see one another never more. Now must I tarry at a hundred leagues' distance away, and severed from thee.'

"Therewith she did 1eave the count, but presented him first with those afore-named three gifts for his three daughters, which they should never let go from them.

"The House of Bassenstein, for long years, had a toll, to draw in fruit, from the town of Spinal,[33] whereto this Bushel was constantly used."

[Footnote 33: EPINAL.]

THE HOUSEHOLD SPIRIT DOES HOUSEHOLD SERVICE IN A MILL.

No. LXXIII. _The Kobold in the Mill._

"Two students did once fare afoot from Rintel. They purposed putting up for the night in a village; but for as much as there did a violent rain fall, and the darkness grew upon them, so as they might no further forward, they went up to a near-lying mill, knocked, and begged a night's quarters. The miller was, at the first, deaf, but yielded, at the last, to their instant entreaty, opened the door, and brought them into a room. They were hungry and thirsty both; and because there stood upon a table a dish with food, and a mug of beer, they begged the miller for them, being both ready and willing to pay; but the miller denied them--would not give them even a morsel of bread, and only the hard bench for their night's bed.

"'The meat and the drink,' said he, 'belong to the Household Spirit. If ye love your lives, leave them both untouched. But else have ye no harm to fear. If there chance a little din in the night, be ye but still and sleep.'

"The two students laid themselves down to sleep; but after the space of an hour or the like, hunger did assail the one so vehemently that he stood up and sought after the dish. The other, a Master of Arts, warned him to leave to the Devil what was the Devil's due; but he answered, 'I have a better right than the Devil to it'--seated himself at the table, and ate to his heart's content, so that little was left of the cookery. After that, he laid hold of the can, took a good Pomeranian pull, and having thus somewhat appeased his desire, he laid himself again down to his companion; but when, after a time, thirst anew tormented him, he again rose up, and pulled a second so hearty draught, that he left the Household Spirit only the bottoms. After he had thus cheered and comforted himself, he lay down and fell asleep.

"All remained quiet on to midnight; but hardly was this well by, when the Kobold came banging in with so loud coil,[34] that both sleepers awoke in great fright. He bounced a few times to and fro about the room, then seated himself as if to enjoy his supper at the table, and they could plainly hear how he pulled the dish to him. Immediately he set it, as though in ill humour, hard down again, laid hold of the can, pressed up the lid, but straightway let it clap sharply to again. He now fell to his work; he wiped the table, next the legs of the table, carefully down, and then swept, as with a besom, the door diligently. When this was done, he returned to visit once more the dish and the beercan, if his luck might be any better this turn, but once more pushed both angrily away. Thereupon he proceeded in his labour, came to the benches, washed, scoured, rubbed them, below and above. When he came to the place where the two students lay, he passed them over, and worked on beyond their feet. When this was done, he began upon the bench a second time above their heads; and, for the second time likewise, passed over the visitants. But the third time, when he came to them, he stroked gently the one which had nothing tasted, over the hair and along the whole body, without any whit hurting him; but the other he griped by the feet, dragged him two or three times round the room upon the floor, till at the last he left him lying, and ran behind the stove, whence he laughed him loudly to scorn. The student crawled back to the bench; but in a quarter of an hour the Kobold began his work anew, sweeping, cleaning, wiping. The two lay there quaking with fear:--the one he felt quite softly over, when he came to him; but the other he flung again upon the ground, and again broke out, at the back of the stove, into a flouting horse-laugh.

[Footnote 34: Exactly so, the hairy THRESHING Goblin of Milton--at _going out_, again:--

"Till, cropful, out o' door HE FLINGS." He, too, is paid for his work, with ----"_his_ CREAM-BOWL, duly set."

"The students now no longer chose to lie upon the bench, rose, and set up, before the closed and locked door, a loud outcry; but none took any heed to it. They were at length resolved to lay themselves down close together upon the flat floor; but the Kobold left them not in peace. He began, for the third time, his game:--came and lugged the guilty one about, laughed, and scoffed him. He was now fairly mad with rage, drew his sword, thrust and cut into the corner whence the laugh rang, and challenged the Kobold with bravadoes, to come on. He then sat down, his weapon in his hand, upon the bench, to await what should further befall; but the noise ceased, and all remained still.

"The miller upbraided them upon the morrow, for that they had not conformed themselves to his admonishing, neither had left the victuals untouched. It was as much as their two lives were worth."

* * * * *

Three heads only of the ATTRACTION, above imputed to the Fairies towards our own kind, have been here imperfectly brought out; and already the narrowness of our limits warns us--with a sigh given to the traditions crowding upon us from all countries, and which we perforce leave unused--to bring these preliminary remarks to a close.

_Still_, something has been gained for illustrating our Tale. The Hill-Manling at the dance diligently warns against PRIDE--the rank ROOT evil which the Fairies will weed out from the bosom of our heroine, whilst throughout a marked feature of the Fairy ways--"THE ACTIVE PRESENCE OF THE SPIRITS IN A HUMAN HABITATION" has forced itself upon us, in diverse, and some, perhaps, unexpected forms.

And _still_, our fuller examples, coming to us wholly from the Collection of the Two Brothers, and expressing the habitudes of _various_ WIGHTS and ELVES, may furnish, for comparison with Ernst Willkomm's Upper Lusatian, an EXTRA Lusatian picture of the TEUTONIC FAIRYHOOD.

THE FAIRY TUTOR.

"In days of yore there lived, alone in her castle, a maiden named Swanhilda. She was the only child of a proud father, lately deceased. Her mother she had lost when she was but a child; so that the education of the daughter had fallen wholly into the hands of the father.

"During the lifetime even of the old knight, many suitors had offered themselves for Swanhilda; but she seemed to be insensible to every tender emotion, and dismissed with disdainful haughtiness the whole body of wooers. Meanwhile she hunted the stag and the board, and performed squire's service for her gradually declining parent. This manner of life was so entirely to the taste of the maiden, notwithstanding that in delicacy of frame, and in bewitching gracefulness of figure, she gave place to none of her sex, that when at length her father died, she took upon herself the management of the castle, and lived aloof in pride and independence, in the very fashion of an Amazon. Maugre the many refusals which Swanhilda had already distributed on every side, there still flocked to her loving knights, eager to wed; but, like their predecessors, they were all sent drooping home again. The young nobility could at last bear this treatment no longer; and they, one and all, resolved either to constrain the supercilious damsel to wedlock, or to make her smart for a refusal. An embassy was dispatched, charged with notifying this resolution to the mistress of the castle. Swanhilda heard the speakers quietly to the end; but her answer was tuned as before, or indeed rang harsher and more offensive than ever. Turning her back upon the embassy, she left them to depart, scorned and ashamed.

"In the night following the day upon which this happened, Swanhilda was disturbed out of her sleep by a noise which seemed to her to ascend from her chamber floor; but let her strain her eyes as she might, she could for a long while discern nothing. At length she observed, in the middle of the room, a straying sparkle of light, that threw itself over and over like a tumbler, tittering, at the same time, like a human being. Swanhilda for a while kept herself quiet; but as the luminous antic ceased not practising his harlequinade, she peevishly exclaimed--'What buffoon is carrying on his fooleries here? I desire to be left in peace.' The light vanished instantly, and Swanhilda already had congratulated herself upon gaining her point, when suddenly a loud shrilly sound was heard--the floor of the apartment gave way, and from the gap there arose a table set out with the choicest viands. It rested upon a lucid body of air, upon which the tiny attendants skipped with great agility to and fro, waiting upon seated guests. At first Swanhilda was so amazed that her breath forsook her; but becoming by degrees somewhat collected, she observed, to her extreme astonishment, that an effigy of herself sat at the strange table, in the midst of the numerous train of suitors, whom she had so haughtily dismissed. The attendants presented to the young knights the daintiest dishes, the savour of which came sweetly-smelling enough to the nostrils of the proud damsel. As often, however, as the knights were helped to meat and drink, the figure of Swanhilda at the board was presented by an ill-favoured Dwarf, who stood as her servant behind her, with an empty basket, whereat the suitor's broke out into wild laughter. She also soon became aware, that as many courses were served up to the guests as she had heretofore dispensed refusals, and the amount of these was certainly not small.

"Swanhilda, weary of the absurd phantasmagoria, was going to speak again; but to her horror she discovered that the power of speech had left her. She had for some time been struck with a kind of whispering and tittering about her. In order to make out whence this proceeded, she leaned out of her bed, and, peering between the silk curtains, perceived two smart diminutive cupbearers, in garments of blue, with green aprons, and small yellow caps. She had scarcely got sight of the little gentlemen when their whispering took the character of audible words; and the dumb Swanhilda was enabled to overhear the following discourse:

"'But, I pri'thee, tell me, Sweetflower, how this show shall end?' said one of the two cupbearers,--'thou art, we know, the confidant of our queen, and, certes, canst disclose to me somewhat of her plans?'

"'That can I, my small-witted Monsieur Silverfine,' answered Sweetflower. 'Know, therefore, that this sweet and lovely to behold brute of a girl, is now beginning to suffer the castigation due to her innumerable offences. Swanhilda has sinned against all maidenly modesty, has borne herself proud and overbearing towards honourable gentlemen, and, besides, has most seriously offended our queen.'

"'How so?' enquired Silverfine.

"'By storming on her Barbary steed, like the devil himself, through the thick of our States' Assembly, pounding the arms and legs of I don't know how many of our sapient representatives. What makes the matter worse is, that this happened at the very opening of the diet, and whilst the grand prelusive symphony of the whole hidden people was in full burst. We were sitting by hundreds of thousands upon blades, stalks, and leaves; some of us still actively busied arranging comfortable seats for the older people in the blue harebells. For this we had stripped the skins of sixty thousand red field spiders, and wrought them into canopies and hangings. All our talented performers had tuned their instruments, scraped, fluted, twanged, jingled, and shawmed to their hearts' content, and had resined their fiddlesticks upon the freshest of dewdrops. All at once, tearing out of the wood, with your leave, or without your leave, comes this monster of a girl, plump upon upper house and lower house together. Ah, lack-a-daisy! what a massacre it was! The first hoof struck a thousand of our prime orators dead upon the spot, the other three hoofs scattered the Imperial diet in all directions, and, what is worse than all, tore to pieces a multitude of our exquisite caps. Our queen was almost frantic at the breach of the peace--she stamped with her foot, and cried out, "LIGHTNING!" and what that means we all pretty well know. Just at this time, too, she received information of the maiden's arrogant behaviour towards her suitors, and on the instant she determined to put the sinner to her prayers. We began by devouring every thing clean up, giving her the pleasure of looking on.'

"'Silly, absurd creatures!' _thought_ Swanhilda, as the little butler advanced to the table to put on some fresh wine. During his absence she had time to note how perhaps a dozen other Fairies drew up through the floor whole pailfuls of wine and smoking meats, which were conveyed immediately to the table, and there consumed as if by the wind. She was heartily longing for the day to dawn, that the sun might dissipate her dream, when the sprightly little speaker came to his place again.

"'Now we can gossip a little longer,' said Sweetflower. 'My guests are provided for, and between this and cock-crow--when house and cellar will be emptied--there's some time yet.'

"Swanhilda uttered (_mentally_) a prodigious imprecation, and turned herself so violently in the bed, that the little gentlemen were absolutely terrified.

"'I verily believe we are going to have an earthquake!' said Silverfine.

"'No such thing!' answered Sweetflower. 'The amiable young lady in bed there has seen the sport perhaps, and is very likely not altogether pleased with it.'

"'Don't you think she would speak, if she saw all this wastefulness going on?' asked Silverfine.

"'Yes, if she could!' chuckled Sweetflower. 'But our queen has been cruel enough to strike her dumb, whilst she looks upon this heartbreaking spectacle. If she once wakes, she won't be troubled again with sleep before cock-crow.'

"'A pretty business!' _thought_ Swanhilda, once more tossing herself passionately about in her bed.

"'Quite right!' said Sweetflower triumphantly. 'The imp of a girl has waked up.'

"'Insolent wretches!' said Swanhilda (internally.) 'Brute and imp to me! Oh, if I could only speak!'

"'Why, the whole fun of the thing is,' said Sweetflower, almost bursting with laughter, 'just that that wish won't be gratified. Does the fool of a woman think that she is to trample down our orchestra with impunity, to put our States' Assembly to flight, and to crush our very selves into a jelly!'

"'And the unbidden guests divine my very thoughts!' _thought_ Swanhilda. 'Upon my life, it looks as if a spice of omniscience had really crept under their caps!'

"'Why, of course!' answered Sweetflower.

"'Then will I think no more!' _resolved_ Swanhilda.

"'And there, my prudent damsel, you show a good discretion,' returned Sweetflower, saluting her with an ironical bow.

"'How will it be, then, with our caps?' enquired Silverfine. 'Are they to be repaired?'

"'Oh, certainly,' returned Sweetflower; 'and that will cost our Amazon here more than all. Indeed, the conditions of her punishment are, to make good the caps, to pledge her troth to one of her despised suitors, to compensate the rest with magnificent gifts, and, for the future, never to mount hunter more, but to amble upon a gentle palfrey, as a lady should. And, till all this is done, am I to have the teaching of her.'

"'Pretty conditions truly!' thought Swanhilda. 'I would rather die than keep them.'

"'Just as you please, most worthy madam,' answered Sweetflower; 'but you'll think better of it yet, perhaps.'

"'It will fall heavy enough upon her,' said Silverfine, 'seeing that we have it in command to seize upon all the lady's treasures.'

"'Capital, capital!' shouted Sweetflower. 'That's peppering the punishment truly! For now must this haughty man-hating creature go about begging, catching and carrying fish to market, and so submitting herself to the scorn and laughter of all her former lovers, till her trade makes her rich again. Nothing but luck in fishing will our queen vouchsafe the audacious madam. Three years are allowed her. But, in the interim, she must starve and famish like a white mouse learning to dance.'

"At this moment a monstrous burst of laughter roared from the table. The guests sang aloud--

"'The last flagon we end, Swanhilda shall mend; Huzza, knights, and drink To the last dollar's chink!'

"As the song ceased, the table descended, the floor closed up, and stillness was in the room again, as when the lady had first retired to her couch. The cock crew, and Swanhilda fell into a deep sleep.

* * * * *

"When it left her, the sun already shone high and bright, and played on her silken bed-curtains. She rubbed her eyes, and seeing every thing about her in its usual state, she concluded that what had happened was nothing worse than a feverish dream. She now arose, began dressing herself, and would have allayed her waking thirst, but she could find neither glass nor water-pitcher. She called angrily to her waiting-woman.

"'How come you to forget water, blockhead?' she exclaimed; 'get some quickly, and then--Breakfast!'

"The attendant departed, shaking her head; for she knew well enough that every thing had been put in order as usual on the evening before. She very quickly returned, frightened out of her wits, and hardly able to speak.

"'Oh my lady! my lady! my lady!' she stammered out.

"'Well, where is the water?'

"'Gone! all drained and dried up! Tub, brook, well--all empty and dry!'

"'Is it possible?' said Swanhilda. 'Your eyes have surely deceived you! But never mind--bring up my breakfast. A ham and two Pomeranian geese-breasts.'

"'Alack! gracious lady!' answered the girl, sobbing, 'every thing in the house is gone too! The wine-casks lie in pieces on the cellar floor; the stalls are empty; your favourite horse is away--hay and corn rotted through. It is shocking!'

"Swanhilda dismissed her, and broke out at first into words wild and vehement. She checked them; but tears of disappointment and bitter rage forced their way in spite of her. A visit to her cellar, store-rooms, and granaries, convinced her of the horrible transformation which a night had effected in every thing that belonged to her. She found nothing every where but mould and sickly-smelling mildew; and was too soon aware that the hideous images of the night were nothing less than frightful realities. Her hardened heart stood proof; and since the whole region for leagues round was turned into a blighted brown heath, she at one resolved to die of hunger. Ere noon her few servants had deserted the castle, and Swanhilda herself hungered till her bowels growled again.

"This laudable self-castigation she persevered in for three days long, when her hunger had increased to such a pitch that she could no longer remain quiet in the castle. In a state of half consciousness, she staggered down to the lake, known far and wide by the name of the Castle mere. Here, on the glassy surface, basked the liveliest fishes. Swanhilda for a while watched in silence the disport of the happy creatures, then snatched up a hazel wand lying at her feet, round the end of which a worm had coiled, and, half maddened by the joyance of the finny tribe, struck with it into the water. A greedy fish snapped at the switch. The famishing Swanhilda clutched hungeringly at it, but found in her hand a piece of offensive carrion, and nothing more; whilst around, from every side, there rang such a clatter of commingled mockery and laughter, that Swanhilda vented a terrible imprecation, and shed once more--a scorching tear.

"'Oh! we shall soon have you tame enough!' said a voice straight before her, and she recognized it at once for the speaker of that miserable night. Looking about her, she perceived a moss-rose that luxuriated upon the rock. In one of the expanded buds sat a little kicking fellow, with green apron, sky-blue vest, and yellow bonnet. He was laughing right into the face of the angry miss; and, quaffing off one little flower-cup after another, filled them bravely again, and jingled with his tiny bunch of keys, as if he had been grand butler to the universe.

"'A flavour like a nosegay!' said the malicious rogue. 'Wilt hob-nob with me, maiden? What do you say? Are we adepts at sacking a house? 'Twill give thee trouble to fill thy cellars again as we found them. Take heart, girl. If you will come to, and take kindly to your angling, and do the thing that's handsome by your wooers, you shall have an eatable dinner yet up at the castle.'

"'Infamous pigmy!' exclaimed Swanhilda, lashing with her rod, as she spoke, at the little rose. The small buffeteer meanwhile had leaped down, and, in the turning of a hand, had perched himself upon the lady's nose, where he drummed an animating march with his heels.

"'Thy nose, I do protest, is excellently soft, thou wicked witch!' said the rascal. 'If thou wilt now try thy hand at fishing for the town market, thou shalt be entertained the while with the finest band of music in the world. Be good and pretty, and take up thy angling-rod. Trumpets and drums, flutes and clarinets, shall all strike up together.'

"Swanhilda tried hard to shake the jocular tormentor off, but he kept his place on the bridge as if he had grown to it. She made a snatch at him, and he bit her finger.

"'Hark'e, my damsel!' quoth Sweetflower; 'if you are so unmannerly, 'tis time for a lesson. You smarted too little when you were a young one. We must make all that good now;' and forthwith he settled himself properly upon her nose, dangling a leg on either side, like a cavalier in saddle. 'Come, my pretty, be industrious,' continued he; 'get to work, and follow good counsel.' And then he whistled a blithe and gamesome tune.

"Swanhilda, not heedlessly to prolong her own vexation, dipped the rod into the water, and immediately saw another gleaming fish wriggling at its end. A basket, delicately woven of flowers, stood beside her, half filled with clear water. The fish dropped into it of themselves. The wee companion beat meanwhile with his feet upon the wings of the lady's nose, played ten instruments or more at once, and extemporized a light rambling rhyme, wherein arch gibes and playful derision of her present forlorn estate were not unmingled with auguries of a friendlier future.

"'There, you see! where's the distress?' said the urchin, laughing. 'The basket is as full as it can hold. Off with you to the town, and when your fish are once sold, you may make yourself--some water-gruel.' With these words the elf leaped into the fish-basket, crept out again on the other side, plucked a king-cup, took seat in it, and gave the word--'Forwards!' The flower, on the instant, displayed its petals. There appeared sail and rudder to the small and delicate ship, which at once took motion, and sailed gaily through the air.

"'A prosperous market to you, Swanhilda!' cried Sweetflower, 'behave discreetly now, and do your tutor justice!'

"Swanhilda, perforce, resigned herself to her destiny. She took her basket, and carried it home, intending to disguise herself as completely as possible before making for the town. But all her clothes lay crumbling into dust. Needs must she then, harassed by hunger and thirst, begin her weary walk, equipped, as she was, in her velvet riding-habit.

"Without fatigue, surprised at her celerity--she was in the market-place. The eyes of all naturally took the direction of the well-born fisherwoman. Still pity held the tongue of scorn in thrall, and Swanhilda saw her basket speedily emptied. Once more within her castle walls, she beheld a running spring in the courtyard, and near it an earthen pitcher. She filled--drank--and carried the remainder to the hall, where she found a small fire burning, a pipkin, and a loaf. She submissively cooked herself a meagre pottage of bread and water, appeased the cravings of nature, and fell into a sound sleep.

"Morning came, and she awoke with thirst burning afresh. She hastened to the spring, but fountain and pitcher were no loner there. In their stead a hoarse laugh greeted her; and in the next instant she perceived the tiny butler, astride upon a cork, galloping before her across the courtyard, and addressing his pupil with another snatch of his derisive song.

"The courage of Swanhilda surmounted her wrath, and she carried her fish-basket to the lake. It was soon filled, and she again on her way to market. An amazing multitude of people were already in motion here, who presently thronged about the market-woman. The basket was nearly emptied, when two of her old suitors approached. Swanhilda was confounded, and a blush of deep shame inflamed her countenance. Curiosity and the pleasure of malice spurred them to accost her; but the sometime-haughty damsel cast her eyes upon the ground, and in answer tendered her fish for sale. The knights bought; mixing, however, ungentle gibes with their good coin. Swanhilda, at the moment, caught sight of her tutor peeping from a daisy--saluting her with his little cap, and nodding approbation.

"'I would you were in the kingdom of pepper!' thought Swanhilda, and in the next instant the fairy was running upon her nose and cheeks, most unmercifully stamping, and tickling her with a little hair till she sneezed again.

"'Stay, stay, I must teach thee courtesy, if I can. What! a profane swearer too! Wish me in the kingdom of pepper! We'll have pepper growing on thy soft cheeks here. There, there--is that pepper? Thou art rouged, my lady, ready for a ball!'

"Swanhilda turned upon her homeward way, the adhesive Elf still tripping ceaselessly about her face, and bore her infliction with a virtuous patience. In her court and hall she found, as before, the spring, the bread, and the fire. As before, she satisfied hunger and thirst, and slept--the sweeter already for her punishment and pain.

"And so passed day after day. The tricky Elf became a less severe, still trusty schoolmaster. The profits of her trading, under fairy guardianship, were great to marvelling; and it must be owned that her aversion to angling craft did not increase in proportion. As time ran on, she had encountered all her discarded knights, now singly and now in companies. A year and a half elapsed, and left the relation between suitors and maiden as at the beginning. At length a chivalric and gentle knight, noble in person as in birth, ventured to accost her, loving and reverently as in her brighter days of yore. Abashed, overcome with shame, the maiden was at the mercy of the light-winged, blithe, and watchful god, who seized his hour to enthrone himself upon her heart. She bought the fairy caps and mantles--she made honourable satisfaction to the knights, and to him whose generous constancy had won her heart, she gave a willing and a softened hand.

"Upon her wedding day, the QUIET PEOPLE did not fail to adorn the festival with their radiant presence; albeit the merry creatures played a strange cross-game on the occasion. The blissful day over, and the happy bride and bridegroom withdrawing from the banquet and the dance, the well-pleased chirping, able little tutor hopped before them, and led them to the hymeneal bower with floral flute, and gratulatory song!"

PORTUGAL.[35]

[Footnote 35: _Memoirs of the Marquis of Pombal_. By J. SMITH, Esq., Private Secretary to the Marquis of Saldanha. Two vols.]

The connexion of Portugal with England has been continued for so long a period, and the fortunes of Portugal have risen and fallen so constantly in the exact degree of her more intimate or more relaxed alliance with England that a knowledge of her interests, her habits, and her history, becomes an especial accomplishment of the English statesman. The two countries have an additional tie, in the similitude of their early pursuits, their original character for enterprise, and their mutual services. Portugal, like England, with a narrow territory, but that territory largely open to the sea, was maritime from her beginning; like England, her early power was derived from the discovery of remote countries; like England, she threw her force into colonization, at an era when all other nations of Europe were wasting their strength in unnecessary wars; like England, without desiring to enlarge her territory, she has preserved her independence; and, so sustain the similitude to its full extent, like England, she founded an immense colony in the western world, with which, after severing the link of government, she retains the link of a common language, policy, literature, and religion.

The growth of the great European powers at length overshadowed the prosperity of Portugal, and the usurpation of her government by Spain sank her into a temporary depression. But the native gallantry of the nation at length shook off the yoke; and a new effort commenced for her restoration to the place which she was entitled to maintain in the world. It is remarkable that, at such periods in the history of nations, some eminent individual comes forward, as if designated for the especial office of a national guide. Such an individual was the Marquis of Pombal, the virtual sovereign of Portugal for twenty-seven years--a man of talent, intrepidity, and virtue. His services were the crush of faction and the birth of public spirit, the fall of the Jesuits and the peace of his country. His inscription should be, "The Restorer of his Country."

The Marquis of Pombal was born on the 13th of May 1699, at Soure, a Portuguese village near the town of Pombal. His father, Manoel Carvalho, was a country gentleman of moderate fortune, of the rank of _fidalgo de provincia_--a distinction which gave him the privileges attached to nobility, though not to the title of a grandee, that honour not descending below dukes, marquises, and counts. His mother was Theresa de Mendonca, a woman of family. He had two brothers, Francis and Paul. His own names were Sebastian Joseph, to which was added that of Mello, from his maternal ancestor.

Having, like the sons of Portuguese gentlemen in general, studied for a period in the university of Coimbra, he entered the army as a private, according to the custom of the country, and rose to the rank of corporal, which he held until circumstances, and an introduction to Cardinal Motta, who was subsequently prime-minister, induced him to devote himself to the study of history, politics, and law. The cardinal, struck with his ability, strongly advised him to persevere in those pursuits, appointed him, in 1733, member of the Royal Academy of History, and shortly after, the king proposed that he should write the history of certain of the Portuguese monarchs; but this design was laid aside, and Pombal remained unemployed for six years, until, in 1739, he was sent by the cardinal to London, as Portuguese minister. He retained his office until 1745; yet it is remarkable, and an evidence of the difficulty of acquiring a new language, that Pombal, though thus living six active years in the country, was never able to acquire the English language. It must, however, be recollected, that at this period French was the universal language of diplomacy, the language of the court circles, and the polished language of all the travelled ranks of England. The writings, too, of the French historians, wits, and politicians, were the study of every man who pretended to good-breeding, and the only study of most; so that, to a stranger, the acquisition of the vernacular tongue could be scarcely more than a matter of curiosity. Times, however, are changed; and the diplomatist who should now come to this country without a knowledge of the language, would be despised for his ignorance of an essential knowledge, and had better remain at home. Soon after his return, he was employed in a negotiation to reconcile the courts of Rome and Vienna on an ecclesiastical claim. His reputation had already reached Vienna; and it is surmised that Maria Theresa, the empress, had desired his appointment as ambassador. His embassy was successful. At Vienna, Pombal, who was a widower, married the Countess Ernestein Daun, by whom he had two sons and three daughters. Pombal was destined to be a favourite at courts from his handsome exterior. He was above the middle size, finely formed, and with a remarkably intellectual countenance; his manners graceful, and his language animated and elegant. His reputation at Vienna was so high, that on a vacancy in the Foreign office at Lisbon, Pombal was recalled to take the portfolio in 1750. Don John, the king, died shortly after, and Don Joseph, at the age of thirty-five, ascended the throne, appointing Pombal virtually his prime-minister--a rank which he held, unshaken and unrivaled, for the extraordinary period of twenty-seven years.

The six years of unemployed and private life, which the great minister had spent in the practical study of his country, were of the most memorable service to his future administration. His six years' residence in England added practical knowledge to theoretical; and with the whole machinery of a free, active, and popular government in constant operation before his eyes, he returned to take the government of a dilapidated country. The power of the priesthood, exercised in the most fearful shape of tyranny; the power of the crown, at once feeble and arbitrary; the power of opinion, wholly extinguished; and the power of the people, perverted into the instrument of their own oppression--were the elements of evil with which the minister had to deal; and he dealt with them vigorously, sincerely, and successfully.

The most horrible tribunal of irresponsible power, combined with the most remorseless priestcraft, was the Inquisition; for it not merely punished men for obeying their own consciences, but tried them in defiance of every principle of enquiry. It not only made a law contradictory of every other law, but it established a tribunal subversive of every mode by which the innocent could be defended. It was a murderer on principle. Pombal's first act was a bold and noble effort to reduce this tribunal within the limits of national safety. By a decree of 1751, it was ordered that thenceforth no judicial burnings should take place without the consent and approval of the government, taking to itself the right of enquiry and examination, and confirming or reversing the sentence according to its own judgment. This measure decided at once the originality and the boldness of the minister: for it was the first effort of the kind in a Popish kingdom; and it was made against the whole power of Rome, the restless intrigues of the Jesuits, and the inveterate superstition of the people.

Having achieved this great work of humanity, the minister's next attention was directed to the defences of the kingdom. He found all the fortresses in a state of decay, he appropriated an annual revenue of L.7000 for their reparation; he established a national manufactory of gunpowder, it having been previously supplied by contract, and being of course supplied of the worst quality at the highest rate. He established regulations for the fisheries, he broke up iniquitous contracts, he attempted to establish a sugar refinery, and directed the attention of the people largely to the cultivation of silk. His next reformation was that of the police. The disorders of the late reign had covered the highways with robbers. Pombal instituted a police so effective, and proceeded with such determined justice against all disturbers of the peace, that the roads grew suddenly safe, and the streets of Lisbon became proverbial for security, at a time when every capital of Europe was infested with robbers and assassins, and when even the state of London was so hazardous, as to be mentioned in the king's speech in 1753 as a scandal to the country. The next reform was in the collection of the revenue. An immense portion of the taxes had hitherto gone into the pockets of the collectors. Pombal appointed twenty-eight receivers for the various provinces, abolished at a stroke a host of inferior officers, made the promisers responsible for the receivers, and restored the revenue to a healthy condition. Commerce next engaged his attention; he established a company to trade to the East and China, the old sources of Portuguese wealth. In the western dominions of Portugal, commerce had hitherto languished. He established a great company for the Brazil trade. But his still higher praise was his humanity. Though acting in the midst of a nation overrun with the most violent follies and prejudices of Popery, he laboured to correct the abuses of the convents; and, among the rest, their habit of retaining as nuns the daughters of the Brazilian Portuguese who had been sent over for their education. By a wise and humane decree, issued in 1765, the Indians, and a large portion of Brazil, were declared free. Expedients were adopted to civilize them, and privileges were granted to the Portuguese who should contract marriage among them. Of course those great objects were not achieved without encountering serious difficulties. The pride of the idle aristocracy, the sleepless intriguing of the Jesuits, the ignorant enthusiasm of the people, and the sluggish supremacy of the priests, were all up in arms against him. But his principle was pure, his knowledge sound, and his resolution decided. Above all, he had, in the person of the king, a man of strong mind, convinced of the necessities of change, and determined to sustain the minister. The reforms soon vindicated themselves by the public prosperity; and Pombal exercised all the powers of a despotic sovereign, in the benevolent spirit of a regenerator of his country.

But a tremendous physical calamity was now about to put to the test at once the fortitude of this great minister, and the resources of Portugal.

On the morning of All-Saints' day, the 1st of November 1755, Lisbon was almost torn up from the foundations by the most terrible earthquake on European record. As it was a high Romish festival, the population were crowding to the churches, which were lighted up in honour of the day. About a quarter before ten the first shock was felt, which lasted the extraordinary length of six or seven minutes; then followed an interval of about five minutes, after which the shock was renewed, lasting about three minutes. The concussions were so violent in both instances that nearly all the solid buildings were dashed to the ground, and the principal part of the city almost wholly ruined. The terror of the population, rushing through the falling streets, gathered in the churches, or madly attempting to escape into the fields, may be imagined; but the whole scene of horror, death, and ruin, exceeds all description. The ground split into chasms, into which the people were plunged in their fright. Crowds fled to the water; but the Tagus, agitated like the land, suddenly rose to an extraordinary height, burst upon the land, and swept away all within its reach. It was said to have risen to the height of five-and-twenty or thirty feet above its usual level, and to have sunk again as much below it. And this phenomenon occurred four times.

The despatch from the British consul stated, that the especial force of the earthquake seemed to be directly under the city; for while Lisbon was lifted from the ground, as if by the explosion of a gunpowder mine, the damage either above or below was not so considerable. One of the principal quays, to which it was said that many people had crowded for safety, was plunged under the Tagus, and totally disappeared. Ships were carried down by the shock on the river, dashes to pieces against each other, or flung upon the shore. To complete the catastrophe, fires broke out in the ruins, which spread over the face of the city, burned for five or six days, and reduced all the goods and property of the people to ashes. For forty days the shocks continued with more or less violence, but they had now nothing left to destroy. The people were thus kept in a constant state of alarm, and forced to encamp in the open fields, though it was now winter. The royal family were encamped in the gardens of the palace; and, as in all the elements of society had been shaken together, Lisbon and its vicinity became the place of gathering for banditti from all quarters in the kingdom. A number of Spanish deserters made their way to the city, and robberies and murders of the most desperate kind were constantly perpetrated.

During this awful period, the whole weight of government fell upon the shoulders of the minister; and he bore it well. He adopted the most active measures for provisioning the city, for repressing plunder and violence, and for enabling the population to support themselves during this period of suffering. It was calculated that seven millions sterling could scarcely repair the damage of the city; and that not less than eighty thousand lives had been lost, either crushed by the earth or swallowed up by the waters. Some conception of the native mortality may be formed from that of the English: of the comparatively small number of whom, resident at that time in Lisbon, no less than twenty-eight men and fifty women were among the sufferers.

The royal family were at the palace of Belem when this tremendous calamity occurred. Pombal instantly hastened there. He found every one in consternation. "What is to be done," exclaimed the king, as he entered "to meet this infliction of divine justice?" The calm and resolute answer of Pombal was--"Bury the dead, and feed the living." This sentence is still recorded, with honour, in the memory of Portugal.

The minister then threw himself into his carriage, and returned to the ruins. For several days his only habitation was his carriage; and from it he continued to issue regulations for the public security. Those regulations amounted to the remarkable number of two hundred; and embraced all the topics of police, provisions, and the burial of the sufferers. Among those regulations was the singular, but sagacious one, of prohibiting all persons from leaving the city without a passport. By this, those who had robbed the people, or plundered the church plate, were prevented from escaping to the country and hiding their plunder, and consequently were obliged to abandon, or to restore it. But every shape of public duty was met by this vigorous and intelligent minister. He provided for the cure of the wounded, the habitancy of the houseless, the provision of the destitute. He brought troops from the provinces for the protection of the capital, he forced the idlers to work, he collected the inmates of the ruined religious houses, he removed the ruins of the streets, buried the dead, and restored the services of the national religion.

Another task subsequently awaited him--the rebuilding of the city. He began boldly; and all that Lisbon now has of beauty is due to the taste and energy of Pombal. He built noble squares. He did more: he built the more important fabric of public sewers in the new streets, and he laid out a public garden for the popular recreation. But he found, as Wren found, even in England, the infinite difficulty of opposing private interest, even in public objects; and Lisbon lost the opportunity of being the most picturesque and stately of European cities. One project, which would have been at once of the highest beauty and of the highest benefit--a terrace along the shore of the Tagus from Santa Apollonia to Belem, a distance of nearly six miles, which would have formed the finest promenade in the world--he was either forced to give up or to delay, until its execution was hopeless. It was never even begun.

The vigour of Pombal's administration raised bitter enemies to him among those who had lived on the abuses of government, or the plunder of the people. The Jesuits hated alike the king and his minister. They even declared the earthquake to have been a divine judgment for the sins of the administration. But they were rash enough, in the intemperance of their zeal, to threaten a repetition of the earthquake at the same time next year. When the destined day came, Pombal planted strong guards at the city gates, to prevent the panic of the people in rushing into the country. The earthquake did not fulfil the promise; and the people first laughed at themselves, and then at the Jesuits. The laugh had important results in time.

There are few things more remarkable in diplomatic history, than the long connexion of Portugal with England. It arose naturally from the commerce of the two nations--Portugal, already the most adventurous of nations, and England, growing in commercial enterprise. The advantages were mutual. In the year 1367, we have a Portuguese treaty stipulating for protection to the Portuguese traders in England. In 1382, a royal order of Richard II. permits the Portuguese ambassador to bring his baggage into England free of duty--perhaps one of the earliest instances of a custom which marked the progress of civilization, and which has since been generally adopted throughout all civilized nations. A decree of Henry IV., in 1405, exonerates the Portuguese resident in England, and their ships, from being made responsible for the debts contracted by their ambassadors. In 1656, the important privilege was conceded to the English in Portugal, of being exempted from the native jurisdiction, and being tried by a judge appointed by England. This, in our days, might be an inadmissible privilege; but two centuries ago, in the disturbed condition of the Portuguese laws and general society, it might have been necessary for the simple protection of the strangers.

The theories of domestic manufactures and free trade have lately occupied so large a portion of public interest, that it is curious to see in what light they were regarded by a statesman so far in advance of his age as Pombal. The minister's theory is in striking contradiction to his practice. He evidently approved of monopoly and prohibitions, but he exercised neither the one nor the other--nature and necessity were too strong against him. We are, however, to recollect, that the language of complaint was popular in Portugal, as it always will be in a poor country, and that the minister who would be popular must adopt the language of complaint. In an eloquent and almost impassioned memoir by Pombal, he mourns over the poverty of his country, and hastily imputes it to the predominance of English commerce. He tells us that, in the middle of the eighteenth century, Portugal scarcely produced any thing towards her own support. Two thirds of her physical necessities were supplied from England. He complains that England had become mistress of the entire commerce of Portugal, and in fact that the Portuguese trade was only an English trade; that the English were the furnishers and retailers of all the necessaries of life throughout the country, and that the Portuguese had nothing to do but look on; that Cromwell, by the treaty which allowed the supply of Portugal with English cloths to the amount of two million sterling, had utterly impoverished the country; and in short, that the weakness and incapacity of Portugal, as an European state, were wholly owing, to her being destitute of trade, and that the destitution was wholly owing to her being overwhelmed by English commodities.

We are not about to enter into detail upon this subject, but it is to be remembered, that Portugal obtained the cloth, even if she paid for it, cheaper from England than she could have done from any other country in Europe; that she had no means of making the cloth for herself, and that, after all, man must be clothed. Portugal, without flocks or fire, without coals or capital, could never have manufactured cloth enough to cover the tenth part of her population, at ten times the expense. This has occurred in later days, and in more opulent countries. We remember, in the reign of the Emperor Paul, when he was frantic enough to declare war against England, a pair of broadcloth pantaloons costing seven guineas in St Peterburg. This would have been severe work for the purse of a Portuguese peasant a hundred years ago. The plain fact of domestic manufactures being this, that no folly can be more foolish than to attempt to form them where the means and the country do not give them a natural superiority. For example, coals and iron are essential to the product of all works in metal. France has neither. How can she, therefore, contest the superiority of our hardware? She contests it simply by doing without it, and by putting up with the most intolerable cutlery that the world has ever seen. If, where manufactures are already established, however ineffectual, it may become a question with the government whether some privations must not be submitted to by the people in general, rather than precipitate those unlucky manufactures into ruin; there can be no question whatever on the subject where manufactures have not been hitherto established. Let the people go to the best market, let no attempt be made to force nature, and let no money be wasted on the worst article got by the worst means. One thing, however, is quite clear with respect to Portugal, that, by the English alliance, she has gained what is worth all the manufactures of Europe--independence. When, in 1640, she threw off the Spanish usurpation, and placed the Braganza family on the national throne, she threw herself on the protection of England; and that protection never has failed her to this hour. In the Spanish invasion of Portugal in 1762, England sent her ten thousand men, and the first officer of his day, Count La Lippe, who, notwithstanding his German name, was an Englishman born, and had commenced his service in the Guards. The Spaniards were beaten in all directions, and Portugal was included in the treaty of Fontainbleau in 1763. The deliverance of Portugal in the Peninsular war is too recent to be forgotten, and too memorable to be spoken of here as it deserves. And to understand the full value of this assistance, we are to recollect, that Portugal is one of the smallest kingdoms of Europe, and at the same time the most exposed; that its whole land frontier is open to Spain, and its whole sea frontier is open to France; that its chief produce is wine and oranges, and that England is incomparably its best customer for both.

Pombal, in his memoir, imputes a portion of the poverty of Portugal to her possession of the gold mines of Brazil. This is one of the paradoxes of the last century; but nations are only aggregates of men, and what makes an individual rich, cannot make a nation poor. The true secret is this--that while the possession of the gold mines induced an indolent government to rely upon them for the expenses of the state, that reliance led them to abandon sources of profit in the agriculture and commerce of the country, which were of ten times the value. This was equally the case in Spain. The first influx from the mines of Peru, enabled the government to disregard the revenues arising from the industry of the people. In consequence of the want of encouragement from the government, the agriculture and commerce of Spain sank rapidly into the lowest condition, whilst the government indolently lived on the produce of the mines. But the more gold and silver exist in circulation, the less becomes their value. Within half a century, the imports from the Spanish and Portuguese mines, had reduced the value of the precious metals by one half; and those imports thus became inadequate to the ordinary expenses of government. Greater efforts were then made to obtain them from the mines. Still, as the more that was obtained the less was the general value, the operation became more profitless still; and at length both Spain and Portugal were reduced to borrow money, which they had no means to pay--in other words, were bankrupt. And this is the true solution of the problem--why have the gold and silver mines of the Peninsula left them the poorest nations of Europe? Yet this was contrary to the operation of new wealth. The discovery of the mines of the New World appears to have been a part of that providential plan, by which a general impulse was communicated to Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Europe was preparing for a new vigour of religion, politics, commerce, and civilization. Nothing stimulates national effort of every kind with so much power and rapidity, as a new general accession of wealth, or, as the political economist would pronounce it, a rise of wages, whether industrial or intellectual; and this rise was effected by the new influx of the mines. If Peru and Mexico had belonged to England, she would have converted their treasures into new canals and high-roads, new harbours, new encouragements to agriculture, new excitements to public education, new enterprises of commerce, or the colonization of new countries in the productive regions of the globe; and thus she would at once have increased her natural opulence, and saved herself from suffering under the depreciation of the precious metals, or more partially, by her active employment of them, have almost wholly prevented that depreciation. But the Peninsula, relying wholly on its imported wealth, and neglecting its infinitely more important national riches, was exactly in the condition of an individual, who spends the principal of his property, which is continually sinking until it is extinguished altogether.

Another source of Peninsular poverty existed in its religion. The perpetual holidays of Popery made even the working portion of the people habitually idle. Where labour is prohibited for nearly a fourth of the year by the intervention of holidays, and thus idleness is turned into a sacred merit, the nation must prepare for beggary. But Popery goes further still. The establishment of huge communities of sanctified idlers, monks and nuns by the ten thousand, in every province and almost in every town, gave a sacred sanction to idleness--gave a means of escaping work to all who preferred the lounging and useless life of the convent to regular labour, and even provided the means of living to multitudes of vagabonds, who were content to eat their bread, and drink their soup, daily at the convent gates, rather than to make any honest decent effort to maintain themselves. Every country must be poor in which a large portion of the public property goes to the unproductive classes. The soldiery, the monks, the state annuitants, the crowds of domestics, dependent on the families of the grandees, all are necessarily unproductive. The money which they receive is simply consumed. It makes no return. Thus poverty became universal; and nothing but the singular fertility of the peopled districts of Spain and Portugal, and the fortune of having a climate which requires but few of the comforts essential in a severer temperature, could have saved them both from being the most pauperized of all nations, or even from perishing altogether, and leaving the land a desert behind them. It strangely illustrates these positions, that, in 1754, the Portuguese treasury was so utterly emptied, that the monarch was compelled to borrow 400,000 crusadoes (L.40,000) from a private company, for the common expenses of his court.

Wholly and justly disclaiming the imputation which would pronounce Portugal a dependent on England, it is impossible to turn a page of her history without seeing the measureless importance of her English connexion. Every genuine source of her power and opulence has either originated with, or been sustained by, her great ally. Among the first of these has been the wine trade. In the year 1756--the year following that tremendous calamity which had sunk Lisbon into ruins--the wine-growers in the three provinces of Beira, Minho, and Tras-os-Montes, represented that they were on the verge of ruin. The adulteration of the Portuguese wines by the low traders had destroyed their character in Europe, and the object of the representation was to reinstate that character. Pombal immediately took up their cause; and, in the course of the same year, was formed the celebrated Oporto Wine Company, with a capital of £120,000. The declared principles of the establishment were, to preserve the quality of the wines, to secure the growers by fixing a regular price, and to protect them from the combinations of dealers. The company had the privilege of purchasing all the wines grown within a particular district at a fixed price, for a certain period after the vintage. When that period had expired, the growers were at liberty to sell the wines which remained unpurchased in whatever market they pleased. Monopolies, in the advanced and prosperous career of commercial countries, generally sink into abuse; but they are, in most instances, absolutely necessary to the infant growth of national traffic. All the commerce of Europe has commenced by companies. In the early state of European trade, individuals were too poor for those large enterprises which require a large outlay, and whose prospects, however promising, are distant. What one cannot do, must be done by a combination of many, if it is to be done at all. Though when individual capital, by the very action of that monopoly, becomes powerful enough for those enterprises, then the time is at hand when the combination may be dissolved with impunity. The Oporto Wine Company had no sooner come into existence, than its benefits were felt in every branch of Portuguese revenue. It restored and extended the cultivation of the vine, which is the staple of Portugal. It has been abolished in the revolutionary changes of late years. But the question, whether the country is yet fit to bear the abolition, is settled by the fact, that the wine-growers are complaining of ruin, and that the necessity of the case is now urging the formation of the company once more.

The decision of Pombal's character was never more strongly shown than on this occasion. The traders into whose hands the Portuguese wines had fallen, and who had enjoyed an illegal monopoly for so many years, raised tumults, and serious insurrection was threatened. At Oporto, the mob plundered the director's house, and seized on the chief magistrate. The military were attacked, and the government was endangered. The minister instantly ordered fresh troops to Oporto; arrests took place; seventeen persons were executed; five-and-twenty sent to the galleys; eighty-six banished, and others subjected to various periods of imprisonment. The riots were extinguished. In a striking memoir, written by Pombal after his retirement from office, he gives a brief statement of the origin of this company--a topic at all times interesting to the English public, and which is about to derive a new interest from its practical revival in Portugal. We quote a fragment.

"The unceasing and urgent works which the calamitous earthquake of November 1st, 1755, had rendered indispensable, were still vigorously pursued, when, in the following year, one Mestre Frei Joao de Mansilla presented himself at the Giunta at Belem, on the part of the principal husbandmen of Upper Douro, and of the respectable inhabitants of Oporto, in a state of utter consternation.

"In the popular outcry of the time, the English were represented as making themselves the sole managers of every thing. The fact being, that, as they were the only men who had any money, they were almost the sole purchasers in the Portuguese markets. But the English here complained of were the low traffickers, who, in conjunction with the Lisbon and Oporto vintners, bought and managed the wines at their discretion. It was represented to the king, that, by those means, the price of wine had been reduced to 7200 rios a pipe, or less, until the expense of cultivation was more than the value of the produce; that those purchasers required one or two years' credit; that the price did not pay for the hoeing of the land, which was consequently deserted; that all the principal families of one district had been reduced to poverty, so much so as to be obliged to sell their knives and forks; that the poor people had not a drop of oil for their salad, so that they were obliged, even in Lent, to season their vegetables with the fat of hogs." The memoir mentions even gross vice as a consequence of their extreme poverty.

We quote this passage to show to what extremities a people may be reduced by individual mismanagement, and what important changes may be produced by the activity of an intelligent directing power. The king's letters-patent of 1756, establishing the company, provided at once for the purity of the wine, its extended sale in England, and the solvency of the wine provinces. It is only one among a thousand instances of the hazards in which Popery involves all regular government, to find the Jesuits inflaming the populace against this most salutary and successful act of the king. At confession, they prompted the people to believe "that the wines of the company were not fit for the celebration of mass." (For the priests drink wine in the communion, though the people receive only the bread.) To give practical example to their precept, they dispersed narratives of a great popular insurrection which had occurred in 1661; and both incentives resulted in the riots in Oporto, which it required all the vigour of Pombal to put down.

But the country and Europe was now to acknowledge the services of the great minister on a still higher scale. The extinction of the Jesuits was the work of his bold and sagacious mind. The history of this event is among the most memorable features of a century finishing with the fall of the French monarchy.

The passion of Rome for territory has been always conspicuous, and always unsuccessful. Perpetually disturbing the Italian princes in the projects of usurpation, it has scarcely ever advanced beyond the original bounds fixed for it by Charlemagne. Its spirit of intrigue, transfused into its most powerful order the Jesuits, was employed for the similar purpose of acquiring territorial dominion. But Europe was already divided among powerful nations. Those nations were governed by jealous authorities, powerful kings for their leaders, and powerful armies for their defence. All was full; there was no room for the contention of a tribe of ecclesiastics, although the most daring, subtle, and unscrupulous of the countless slaves and soldiers of Rome. The world of America was open. There a mighty power might grow up unseen by the eye of Europe. A population of unlimited multitudes might find space in the vast plains; commerce in the endless rivers; defence in the chains of mountains; and wealth in the rocks and sands of a region teeming with the precious metals. The enterprise was commenced under the pretext of converting the Indians of Paraguay. Within a few years the Jesuits formed an independent republic, numbering thirty-one towns, with a population of a hundred thousand souls. To render their power complete, they prohibited all communication between the natives and the Spaniards and Portuguese, forbidding them to learn the language of either country, and implanting in the mind of the Indians an implacable hatred of both Spain and Portugal. At length both courts became alarmed, and orders were sent out to extinguish the usurpation. Negotiations were in the mean time opened between Spain and Portugal relative to an exchange of territory, and troops were ordered to effect the exchange. Measures of this rank were unexpected by the Jesuits. They had reckoned upon the proverbial tardiness of the Peninsular councils; but they were determined not to relinquish their prize without a struggle. They accordingly armed the natives, and prepared for a civil war.

The Indians, unwarlike as they have always been, now headed by their Jesuit captains, outmanoeuvred the invaders. The expedition failed; and the baffled invasion ended in a disgraceful treaty. The expedition was renewed in the next year, 1755, and again baffled. The Portuguese government of the Brazils now made renewed efforts, and in 1756 obtained some advantages; but they were still as far as ever from final success, and the war, fruitless as it was, had begun to drain heavily the finances of the mother country. It had already cost the treasury of Lisbon a sum equal to three millions sterling. But the minister at the head of the Portuguese government was of a different character from the race who had, for the last hundred years, wielded the ministerial sceptres of Spain and Portugal. His clear and daring spirit at once saw where the evil lay, and defied the difficulties that lay between him and its cure. He determined to extinguish the order of the Jesuits at a blow. The boldness of this determination can be estimated only by a knowledge of the time. In the middle of the eighteenth century, the Jesuits were the ecclesiastical masters of Europe. They were the confessors of the chief monarchs of the Continent; the heads of the chief seminaries for national education; the principal professors in all the universities;--and this influence, vast as it was by its extent and variety, was rendered more powerful by the strict discipline, the unhesitating obedience, and the systematic activity of their order. All the Jesuits existing acknowledged one head, the general of their order, whose constant residence was at Rome. But their influence, powerful as it was by their open operation on society, derived perhaps a superior power from its secret exertions. Its name was legion--its numbers amounted to thousands--it took every shape of society, from the highest to the lowest. It was the noble and the peasant--the man of learning and the man of trade--the lawyer and the monk--the soldier and the sailor--nay, it was said, that such was the extraordinary pliancy of its principle of disguise, the Jesuit was suffered to assume the tenets of Protestantism, and even to act as a Protestant pastor, for the purpose of more complete deception. The good of the church was the plea which purified all imposture; the power of Rome was the principle on which this tremendous system of artifice was constructed; and the reduction of all modes of human opinion to the one sullen superstition of the Vatican, was the triumph for which those armies of subtle enthusiasm and fraudulent sanctity were prepared to live and die.

The first act of Pombal was to remove the king's confessor, the Jesuit Moreira. The education of the younger branches of the royal family was in the hands of Jesuits. Pombal procured a royal order that no Jesuit should approach the court, without obtaining the express permission of the king. He lost no time in repeating the assault. Within a month, on the 8th of October 1767, he sent instructions to the Portuguese ambassador at Rome, to demand a private audience, and lay before the pope the misdemeanours of the order.

Those instructions charged the Jesuits with the most atrocious personal profligacy, with a design to master all public power, to gather opulence dangerous to the state, and actually to plot against the authority of the crowns of Europe. He announced, that the king of Portugal had commanded all the Jesuit confessors of the prince and princesses to withdraw to their own convents; and this important manifesto closed by soliciting the interposition of the papal see to prevent the ruin, by purifying an order which had given scandal to Christianity, by offences against the public and private peace of society, equally unexampled, habitual, and abominable. In 1758, the representation to the pope was renewed, with additional proofs that the order had determined to usurp every function, and thwart every act of the civil government; that the confessors of the royal family, though dismissed, continued to conspire; that they resisted the formation of royal institutions for the renewal of the national commerce; and that they excited the people to dangerous tumults, in defiance of the royal authority.

Their intrigues comprehended every object by which influence was to be obtained, or money was to be made. The "Great Wine Company," on which the chief commerce of Portugal, and almost the existence of its northern provinces depended, was a peculiar object of their hostility, for reasons which we can scarcely apprehend, except they were general jealousy of all lay power, and hostility to all the works of Pombal. They assailed it from their pulpits; and one of their popular preachers made himself conspicuous by impiously exclaiming, "that whoever joined that company, would have no part in the company of Jesus Christ."

The intrigues of this dangerous and powerful society had long before been represented to the popes, and had drawn down upon them those remonstrances by which the habitual dexterity of Rome at once saves appearances, and suffers the continuance of the delinquency. The Jesuits were too useful to be restrained; yet their crimes were too palpable to be passed over. In consequence, the complaints of the monarchs of Spain and Portugal were answered by bulls issued from time to time, equally formal and ineffective. Yet even from these documents may be ascertained the singularly gross, worldly, and illegitimate pursuits of an order, professing itself to be supremely religious, and the prime sustainer of the "faith of the gospel." The bull of Benedict the XIV., issued in 1741, prohibited from "trade and commerce, all worldly dominion, and the _purchase_ and _sale_ of converted Indians." The bull extended the prohibition generally to the monkish orders, to avoid branding the Jesuits especially. But a bull of more direct reprehension was published at the close of the year, expressly against the Jesuits in their missions in the east and west. The language of this document amounts to a catalogue of the most atrocious offences against society, humanity, and morals. By this bull, "all men, and especially _Jesuits_," are prohibited, under penalty of excommunication, from "making slaves of the Indians; from selling and bartering them; from separating them from their wives and children; from robbing them of their property; from transporting them from their native soil," &c.

Nothing but the strongest necessity, and the most ample evidence, would ever have drawn this condemnation from Rome, whether sincere or insincere. But the urgencies of the case became more evident from day to day. In 1758, the condemnation was followed by the practical measure of appointing Cardinal Saldanha visitor and reformer of the Jesuits in Portugal, and the Portuguese settlements in the east and west.

Within two months of this appointment the following decree was issued:--"For just reasons known to us, and which concern especially the service of God and the public welfare, we suspend from the power of confessing and preaching, in the whole extent of our patriarchate, the fathers of the Society of Jesus, from this moment, and until further notice." Saldanha had been just raised to the patriarchate.

We have given some observations on this subject, from its peculiar importance to the British empire at this moment. The order of the Jesuits, extinguished in the middle of the last century by the unanimous demand of Europe, charged with every crime which could make a great association obnoxious to mankind, and exhibiting the most atrocious violations of the common rules of human morality, has, within this last quarter of a century, been revived by the papacy, with the express declaration, that its revival is for the exclusive purpose of giving new effect to the doctrines, the discipline, and the power of Rome. The law which forbids the admission of Jesuits into England, has shared the fate of all laws feebly administered; and Jesuits are active by hundreds or by thousands in every portion of the empire. They have restored the whole original system, sustained by all their habitual passion for power, and urging their way, with all their ancient subtlety, through all ranks of Protestantism.

The courage and intelligence of Pombal placed him in the foremost rank of Europe, when the demand was the boldest and most essential service which a great minister could offer to his country; he broke the power of Jesuitism. But an order so numerous--for even within the life of its half-frenzied founder it amounted to 19,000--so vindictive, and flung from so lofty a rank of influence, could not perish without some desperate attempts to revenge its ruin. The life of Pombal was so constantly in danger, that the king actually assigned him a body guard. But the king himself was exposed to one of the most remarkable plots of regicide on record--the memorable Aveiro and Tavora conspiracy.

On the night of the 3d of September 1758, as the king was returning to the palace at night in a cabriolet, attended only by his valet, two men on horseback, and armed with blunderbusses, rode up to the carriage, and leveled their weapons at the monarch. One of them missed fire, the other failed of its effect. The royal postilion, in alarm, rushed forward, when two men, similarly waiting in the road, galloped after the carriage, and both fired their blunderbusses into it behind. The cabriolet was riddled with slugs, and the king was wounded in several places. By an extraordinary presence of mind, Don Joseph, instead of ordering the postilion to gallop onward, directed him instantly to turn back, and, to avoid alarming the palace, carry him direct to the house of the court surgeon. By this fortunate order, he escaped the other groups of the conspirators, who were stationed further on the road, and under whose repeated discharges he would probably have fallen.

The public alarm and indignation on the knowledge of this desperate atrocity were unbounded. There seemed to be but one man in the kingdom who preserved his composure, and that one was Pombal. Exhibiting scarcely even the natural perturbation at an event which had threatened almost a national convulsion, he suffered the whole to become a matter of doubt, and allowed the king's retirement from the public eye to be considered as merely the effect of accident. The public despatch of Mr Hay, the British envoy at Lisbon, alludes to it, chiefly as assigning a reason for the delay of a court mourning--the order for this etiquette, on the death of the Spanish queen, not having been put in execution. The envoy mentions that it had been impeded by the king's illness,--"it being the custom of the court to put on _gala_ when any of the royal family are blooded. When I went to court to enquire after his majesty's health, I was there informed that the king, on Sunday night the 3d instant, passing through a gallery to go to the queen's apartment, had the misfortune to fall and bruise his right arm; he had been blooded eight different times; and, as his majesty is a fat bulky man, to prevent any humours fixing there, his physicians have advised that he should not use his arm, but abstain from business for some time. In consequence, the queen was declared regent during Don Joseph's illness."

This was the public version of the event. But appended to the despatch was a postscript, in _cipher_, stating the reality of the transaction. Pombal's sagacity, and his self control, perhaps a still rarer quality among the possessors of power, were exhibited in the strongest light on this occasion. For three months not a single step appeared to be taken to punish, or even to detect the assassins. The subject was allowed to die away; when, on the 9th of December, all Portugal was startled by a royal decree, declaring the crime, and offering rewards for the seizure of the assassins. Some days afterwards Lisbon heard, with astonishment, an order for the arrest of the Duke of Aveira, one of the first nobles, and master of the royal household; the arrest of the whole family of the Marquis of Tavora, himself, his two sons, his four brothers, and his two sons-in-law. Other nobles were also seized; and the Jesuits were forbidden to be seen out of their houses.

The three months of Pombal's apparent inaction had been incessantly employed in researches into the plot. Extreme caution was evidently necessary, where the criminals were among the highest officials and nobles, seconded by the restless and formidable machinations of the Jesuits. When his proofs were complete, he crushed the conspirators at a single grasp. His singular inactivity had disarmed them; and nothing but the most consummate composure could have prevented their flying from justice. On the 12th of January 1759, they were found guilty; and on the 13th they were put to death, to the number of nine, with the Marchioness of Tavora, in the square of Belem. The scaffold and the bodies were burned, and the ashes thrown into the sea.

Those were melancholy acts; the works of melancholy times. But as no human crime can be so fatal to the security of a state as regicide, no imputation can fall on the memory of a great minister, compelled to exercise justice in its severity, for the protection of all orders of the kingdom. In our more enlightened period, we must rejoice that those dreadful displays of judicial power have passed away; and that laws are capable of being administered without the tortures, or the waste of life, which agonize the feelings of society. Yet, while blood for blood continued to be the code; while the sole prevention of crime was sought for in the security of judgment; and while even the zeal of justice against guilt was measured by the terrible intensity of the punishment--we must charge the horror of such sweeping executions to the ignorance of the age, much more than to the vengeance of power.

This tragedy was long the subject of European memory; and all the extravagance of popular credulity was let loose ill discovering the causes of the conspiracy. It was said, in the despatches of the English minister, that the Marquis of Tavora, who had been Portuguese minister in the East, was irritated by the royal attentions to his son's wife. Ambition was the supposed ground of the Duke of Aveira's perfidy. The old Marchioness of Tavora, who had been once the handsomest woman at court, and was singularly vein and haughty, was presumed to have received some personal offence, by the rejection of the family claim to a dukedom. All is wrapped in the obscurity natural to transactions in which individuals of rank are involved in the highest order of crime. It was the natural policy of the minister to avoid extending the charges by explaining the origin of the crime. The connexions of the traitors were still many and powerful; and further disclosures might have produced only further attempts at the assassination of the minister or the king.

It was now determined to act with vigour against the Jesuits, who were distinctly charged with assisting, if not originating, the treason. A succession of decrees were issued, depriving them of their privileges and possessions; and finally, on the 5th of October 1759, the cardinal patriarch Saldanha issued the famous mandate, by which the whole society was expelled from the Portuguese dominions. Those in the country were transported to Civita Vecchia; those in the colonies were also conveyed to the Papal territory; and thus, by the intrepidity, wisdom, and civil courage of one man, the realm was relieved from the presence of the most powerful and most dangerous body which had ever disturbed the peace of society.

Portugal having thus the honour of taking the lead, Rome herself at length followed; and, on the accession of the celebrated Ganganelli, Clement XIV., a resolution was adopted to suppress the Jesuits in every part of the world. On the 21st of July 1773, the memorable bull "Dominus ac Redemptor," was published, and the order was at an end. The announcement was received in Lisbon with natural rejoicing. _Te Deum_ was sung, and the popular triumph was unbounded and universal.

We now hasten to the close of this distinguished minister's career. His frame, though naturally vigorous, began to feel the effects of his incessant labour, and an apoplectic tendency threatened to shorten a life so essential to the progress of Portugal; for that whole life was one of _temperate_ and _progressive_ reform. His first application was to the finances; he found the Portuguese exchequer on the verge of bankruptcy. A third of the taxes was embezzled in the collection. In 1761, his new system was adopted, by which the finances were restored; and every week a balance-sheet of the whole national expenditure was presented to the king. His next reform was the royal household, where all unnecessary expenses--and they were numerous--were abolished. Another curious reform will be longer remembered in Portugal. The nation had hitherto used _only_ the _knife_ at dinner! Pombal introduced the _fork_. He brought this novel addition to the table with him from England in 1745!

The nobility were remarkably ignorant. Pombal formed the "College of Nobles" for their express education. There they were taught every thing suitable to their rank. The only prohibition being, "that they should _not converse in Latin_," the old pedantic custom of the monks. The nobles were directed to converse in English, French, Italian, or their native tongue; Pombal declaring, that the custom of speaking Latin was only "to teach them to barbarize."

Another custom, though of a more private order, attracted the notice of this rational and almost universal improver. It had been adopted as a habit by the widows of the nobility, to spend the first years of their widowhood in the most miserable seclusion; they shut up their windows, retired to some gloomy chamber, slept on the floor, and, suffering all kinds of voluntary and absurd mortifications, forbade the approach of the world. As the custom was attended with danger to health, and often with death, besides its general melancholy influence on society, the minister publicly "enacted," that every part of it should be abolished; and, moreover, that the widows should always remove to another house; or, where this was not practicable, that they "should _not_ close the shutters, nor '_mourn_' for more than a week, nor remain at home for more than a month, nor sleep on the ground." Doubtless, tens of thousands thanked him, and thank him still, for this war against a popular, but most vexatious, absurdity.

His next reform was the army. After the peace of 1763, he fixed it at 30,000 men, whom he equipped effectually, and brought into practical discipline.

A succession of laws, made for the promotion of European and colonial trade, next opened the resources of Portugal to an extent unknown before. Pombal next abolished the "Index Expurgitorius"--an extraordinary achievement, not merely beyond his age, but against the whole superstitious spirit of his age. He was not content with abolishing the restraint; he attempted to _restore_ the PRESS in Portugal. Hitherto nearly all Portuguese books had been printed in foreign counties. He established a "Royal Press," and gave its superintendence to Pagliarini, a Roman printer, who had been expatriated for printing works against the Jesuits. Such, in value and extent, were the acts which Portugal owed to this indefatigable and powerful mind, that when, in 1766, he suffered a paralytic stroke, the king and the people were alike thrown into consternation.

At length Don Joseph, the king, and faithful friend of Pombal, died, after a reign of twenty-seven years of honour and usefulness. Pombal requested to resign, and the Donna Maria accepted the resignation, and conferred various marks of honour upon him. He now retired to his country-seat, where Wraxall saw him in 1772, and thus describes his appearance. "At this time he had attained his seventy-third year, but age seemed to have diminished neither the freshness nor the activity of his faculties. In his person he was very tall and slender, his face long, pale, and meagre, but full of intelligence."

But Pombal had been too magnanimous for the court and nobles; and the loss of his power as minister produced a succession of intrigues against him, by the relatives of the Tavora family, and doubtless also by the ecclesiastical influence, which has always been at once so powerful and so prejudicial in Portugal. He was insulted by a trial, at which, however, the only sentence inflicted was an order to retire twenty leagues from the court. The Queen was, at that time, probably suffering under the first access of that derangement, which, in a few years after, utterly incapacitated her, and condemned the remainder of her life to melancholy and total solitude. But the last praise is not given to the great minister, while his personal disinterestedness is forgotten. One of the final acts of his life was to present to the throne a statement of his public income, when it appeared that, during the twenty-seven years of his administration, he had received no public emolument but his salary as secretary of state, and about L.100 a-year for another office. But he was rich; for, as his two brothers remained unmarried, their incomes were joined with his own. He lived, held in high respect and estimation by the European courts, to the great age of eighty-three, dying on the 5th of May without pain. A long inscription, yet in which the panegyric did not exceed the justice, was placed on his tomb. Yet a single sentence might have established his claim to the perpetual gratitude of his country and mankind--

"Here lies the man who banished the Jesuits from Portugal."

Mr Smith's volume is intelligently written, and does much credit to his research and skill.

MARSTON; OR, THE MEMOIRS OF A STATESMAN.