Chapter 2

Have I not in my time heard lions roar? Have I not heard the sea, puft up with wind, Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordnance in the field, And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in the pitched battle heard Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets clang?"

SHAKSPEARE.

Elnathan was a man of many cares, and every kind of wisdom, but one--the wisdom of knowing when he had wealth enough. He evidently loved accumulation; and the result was, that every hour of his existence was one of terror. Half the brokers and chief traders in France were already in prison; and yet he carried on the perilous game of commerce. He was known to be immensely opulent; and he must have regarded the day which passed over his head, without seeing his strong boxes put under the government seal, and himself thrown into some _oubliette_, as a sort of miracle. But he was now assailed by a new alarm. War with England began to be rumoured among the bearded brethren of the synagogue; and Elnathan had ships on every sea, from Peru to Japan. Like Shakspeare's princely merchant--

"His mind was tossing on the ocean, There where his argosies with portly sail, Like signiors, and rich burghers of the flood. Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea, Did overpower the petty traffickers, As they flew by them with their woven wings."

The first shot fired would inevitably pour out the whole naval force of England, and his argosies would put their helms about, and steer for Portsmouth, Plymouth, and every port but a French one. If this formidable intelligence had awakened the haughtiness of the French government to a sense of public peril, what effect must it not have in the counting-house of a man whose existence was trade? While I was on my pillow, luxuriating in dreams of French fêtes, Paul and Virginia carried off to the clouds, and Parisian _belles_ dancing cotillons in the bowers and pavilions of a Mahometan paradise, Elnathan spent the night at his desk, surrounded by his bustling generation of clerks, writing to correspondents at every point of the compass, and preparing insurances with the great London establishments; which I was to carry with me, though unacquainted with the transaction on which so many millions of francs hung trembling.

His morning face showed me, that whatever had been his occupation before I met him at the breakfast-table, it had been a most uneasy one. His powerful and rather handsome physiognomy had shrunk to half the size; his lips were livid, and his hand shook to a degree which made me ask, whether the news from Robespierre was unfavourable. But his assurance that all still went on well in that delicate quarter, restored my tranquility, which was beginning to give way; and my only stipulation now was, that I should have an hour or two to spend at Vincennes before I took my final departure. The Jew was all astonishment; his long visage elongated at the very sound; he shook his locks, lifted up his large hands, and fixed his wide eyes on me with a look of mingled alarm and wonder, which would have been ludicrous if it had not been perfectly sincere.

"In the name of common sense, do you remember in what a country, and in what times, we live? Oh, those Englishmen! always thinking that they are in England. My young friend, you are clearly not fit for France, and the sooner you get out of it the better."

I still remonstrated. "Do you forget yesterday?" he exclaimed. "Can you forget the man before whom we both stood? A moment's hesitation on your part to set out, would breed suspicion in that most suspicious brain of all mankind. Life is here as uncertain as in a field of battle. Begone the instant your passports arrive, and never behind you.--For my part, I constantly feel as if my head were in the lion's jaws. Rejoice in your escape."

But I was still unconvinced, and explained "that my only motive was, to relieve my friends in the fortress from the alarm which they had evidently felt for my fate, and to relieve myself from the charge of ingratitude, which would inevitably attach to me if I left Paris without seeing them."

Never was man more perplexed with a stubborn subject. He represented to me the imminent hazard of straying a hair's-breadth to the right or left of the orders of Robespierre! "I was actually under surveillance, and he was responsible for me. To leave his roof; even for five minutes, until I left it for my journey, might forfeit the lives of both before evening."

I still remonstrated; and pronounced the opinion, perhaps too flattering a one, of the dictator, that "he could not condescend to forbid a mere matter of civility, which still left me entirely at his service." The Jew at last, in despair, rushed from the room, leaving me to the unpleasing consciousness that I had distressed an honest and even a friendly man.

Two hours thus elapsed, when a _chaise de poste_ drew up at the door, with an officer of the police in front, and from it came Varnhorst and the doctor, both probably expecting a summons to the scaffold; but the Prussian bearing his lot with the composure of a man accustomed to face death, and the doctor evidently in measureless consternation, colourless and convulsed with fear. His rapture was equally unbounded when Elnathan, ushering them both into the apartment where I sat--

Chewing the cud of sweet and bitter thought"--

explained, that finding me determined on my point, he had adopted the old proverb--of bringing Mahomet to the mountain, if he could not bring the mountain to Mahomet; had procured an order for their attendance in Paris, through his influence with the chief of the police, and now hoped to have the honour of their company at dinner. This was, certainly, a desirable exchange for the Place de Grève; and we sat down to a sumptuous table, where we enjoyed ourselves with the zest which danger escaped gives to luxurious security.

All went on well. The doctor was surprised to find in the frowning banker, who had repulsed him so sternly from his desk, the hospitable entertainer; and Varhorst's honest and manly friendship was gratified by the approach of my release from a scene of perpetual danger.

I had some remembrances to give to my friends in Prussia; and at length, sending away the doctor to display his connoisseurship on Elnathan's costly collection of pictures, Varnhorst was left to my questioning. My first question naturally was, "What had involved him in the ill-luck of the Austrians."

"The soldier's temptation every where," was the answer; "having nothing to do at home, and expecting something to do abroad. When the Prussian army once crossed the Rhine, I should have had no better employment than to mount guard, escort the court dowagers to the balls, and finish the year and my life together, by dying of _ennui_. In this critical moment, when I was in doubt whether I should turn Tartar, or monk of La Trappe, Clairfait sent to offer me the command of a division. I closed with it at once, went to the king, obtained his leave, put spurs to my horse, and reached the Austrian camp before the courier."

I could not help expressing my envy at a profession in which all the honours of earth lay at the feet of a successful soldier! He smiled, and pointed to the police-officer, who was then sulkily pacing in front of the house.

"You see," said he, "the first specimen of my honours. Yet, from the moment of my arrival within the Austrian lines, I could have predicted our misfortune. Clairfait was, at least, as long-sighted as myself; and nothing could exceed his despondency but his indignation. His noble heart was half broken by the narrowness of his resources for defending the country, and the boundless folly by which the war council of Vienna expected to make up for the weakness of their battalions by the absurdity of their plans. 'I write for regiments,' the gallant fellow used to say; 'and they send me regulations! I tell them that we have not troops enough for an advanced guard; and they send me the plan of a pitched battle! I tell then that the French have raised their army in front of me to a hundred thousand strong; and they promise me reinforcements next year.' After all, his chief perplexity arose from their orders--every despatch regularly contradicting the one that came before.

"Something in the style," said I, "of Voltaire's caricature of the Austrian courier in the Turkish war, with three packs strapped on his shoulders, inscribed, 'Orders'--'Counter-orders'--and 'Disorders.'

"Just a case in point. Voltaire would have been exactly the historian for our campaign. What an incomparable tale he would have made of it! Every thing that was done was preposterous. We were actually beaten before we fought; we were ruined at Vienna before a shot was fired at Jemappes. The Netherlands were lost, not by powder and ball, but by pen and ink; and the consequence of our "march to Paris" is, that one half of the army is now scattered from Holland to the Rhine, and the other half is, like myself, within French walls."

I enquired how Clairfait bore his change of fortune.

"Like a man superior to fortune. I never saw him exhibit higher ability than in his dispositions for our last battle. He has become a magnificent tactician. But Alexander the Great himself could not fight without troops: and such was our exact condition.

"Dumourier, at the head of a hundred thousand men, had turned short from the Prussian retreat, and flung himself upon the Netherlands. How many troops do you think the wisdom of the Aulic Council had provided to protect the provinces? Scarcely more than a third of the number, and those scattered over a frontier of a hundred miles; in a country, too, where every Man spoke French, where every man was half Republican already, where the people had actually begun a revolution, and where we had scarcely a friend, a fortress in repair, or ammunition enough for _feu de joie_. The French, of course, burst in like an inundation, sweeping every thing before them. I was at dinner with Clairfait and his staff on the day when the intelligence arrived. The map was laid upon the table, and we had a kind of debate on the course which the Frenchman would take. That evening completed my opinion of him as a general. He took the clearest view among all our conjectures, as the event proved, so far as the enemy's movements were concerned; though I still retain my own idea of an original error in the choice of our field of battle. Before the twilight fell, we mounted our horses, and rode to the spot where Clairfait had already made up his mind to meet the French. It was certainly a capital position for defence--a range of heights not too high for guns, surmounted by a central plateau; the very position for a battery and a brigade; but the very worst that could be taken against the new enemy whom we had to oppose."

"Yet, what could an army of French recruits be expected to do against a disciplined force so strongly posted?" was my question.

"My answer to that point," said Varnhorst, "must be a quotation from my old master of tactics. If the purpose of a general is simply to defend himself, let him keep his troops on heights; if his purpose is simply to make an artillery fight, let him keep behind his guns; but if it is his purpose to beat the enemy, he must leave himself able to follow them--and this he can do only on a plain. In the end, after beating the enemy in a dozen attempts to carry our batteries, but without the power of striking a blow in retaliation, we saw them carried all at once, and were totally driven from the field."

"So much for bravery and discipline against bravery and enthusiasm," said I. "Yet the enemy's loss must have been tremendous. Every assault must have torn their columns to pieces." Even this attempt at reconciling him to his ill fortune failed.

"Yes," was the cool reply; "but they could afford it, which was more than we could do. Remember the maxim, my young friend, when you shall come to be a general, that the only security for gaining battles is, to have good troops, and a good many of them.--The French recruits fought like recruits, without knowing whether the enemy were before or behind them; but they fought, and when they were beaten they fought again. While we were fixed on our heights, they were formed into column once more, and marched gallantly up to the mouth of our guns. Then, we had but 18,000 men to the Frenchman's 60,000. Such odds are too great. Whether our great king would have fought at all with such odds against him, may be a question; but there can be none, whether he would have fixed himself where he could not manoeuvre. The Frenchman attacked us on flanks and centre, just when and where he pleased; there stood we, mowing down his masses from our fourteen redoubts, and waiting to be attacked again. To do him justice, he fought stoutly; and to do us justice, we fought sturdily. But still we were losing men; the affair looked unpromising from the first half hour; and I pronounced that, if Dumourier had but perseverance enough, he must carry the field."

I made some passing remark on the singular hazard of bringing untried troops against the proverbial discipline of a German army, and the probability that the age of the wild armies of peasantry in Europe would be renewed, by the evidence of its success.

"Right," said Varnhorst. "The thing that struck me most was, the new character of the whole engagement. It was Republicanism in the field; a bold riot, a mob battle. Nor will it be the last of its kind. Our whole line was once attacked by the French demi-brigades, coming to the charge, with a general chorus of the _Marseillaise_ hymn. The effect was magnificent, as we heard it pealing over the field through all the roar of cannon and musketry. The attack was defeated. It was renewed, under a chorus in honour of their general, and 'Vive Dumourier' was chanted by 50,000 voices, as they advanced against our batteries. This charge broke in upon our position, and took five of our fourteen redoubts. Even Clairfait now acknowledged that all was lost; two-thirds of our men were _hors de combat_, and orders were given for a retreat. My turn now came to act, and I moved forward with my small brigade of cavalry--but I was not more lucky than the rest."

I pressed to hear the particulars, but his mind was still overwhelmed with a sense of military calamity, always the most reluctant topic to a brave and honest soldier; and he simply said--"the whole was a _mêlée_. Our rear was threatened in force by a column which had stormed the heights under a young _brave_, whom I had observed, during the day, exposing himself gallantly to all the risks of the field. To stop the progress of the enemy on this point was essential; for the safety of the whole army was compromised. We charged them, checked them, but found the brigade involved in a force of ten times our number; fought our way out again with heavy loss; and after all, a shot, which brought my charger to the ground, left me wounded and bruised in the hands of the French. I was taken up insensible, was carried to the tent of the young commander of the column, whom I found to be a Duc de Chartres, the son of the late Duke of Orleans. His kindness to his prisoner was equal to his gallantry in the field. Few and hurried as our interviews were, while his army remained in its position he gave me the idea of a mind of great promise, and destined for great things, unless the chances of war should stop his career. But, though a Republican soldier, to my surprise he was no Republican. His enquiries into the state of popular opinion in Europe, showed at once his sagacity, and the turn which his thoughts, young as he was, were already taking.--But the diadem is trampled under foot in France for ever; and with cannon-shot in his front every day of his life, and the guillotine in his rear, who can answer for the history of any man for twenty-four hours together?"

My time in Paris had now come to a close. All my enquiries for the fate of Lafontaine had been fruitless; and I dreaded the still more anxious enquiries to which I should be subjected on my arrival; but I had at least the intelligence to give, that I had not left him in the fangs of the jailers of St Lazare. I took leave of my bold and open-hearted Prussian friend with a regret, which I had scarcely expected to feel for one with whom I had been thrown into contact simply by the rough chances of campaigning; but I had the gratification of procuring for him, through the mysterious interest of Elnathan, an order for his transmission to Berlin in the first exchange of prisoners. This promise seemed to compensate all the services which he had rendered to me. "I shall see the Rhine again," said he, "which is much more than I ever expected since the day of our misfortune. "I shall see the Rhine again!--and thanks to you for it." He pressed my hand with honest gratitude.

The carriage which was to convey me to Calais was now at the door. Still, one thought as uppermost in his mind; it was, that I should give due credit to the bravery of the Austrian general and his army. "If I have spoken of the engagement at all," said he, "it was merely to put you in possession of the facts. You return to England; you will of course hear the battle which lost the Netherlands discussed in various versions. The opinion of England decides the opinion of Europe. Tell, then, your countrymen, in vindication of Clairfait and his troops, that after holding his ground for nine hours against three times his force, he retreated with the steadiness of a movement on parade, without leaving behind him a single gun, colour, or prisoner. Tell them, too, that he was defeated only through the marvellous negligence of a government which left him to fight battles without brigades, defend fortresses without guns, and protect insurgent provinces with a fugitive army."

My answer was--"You may rely upon my fighting your battles over the London dinner-tables, as perseveringly, if not as much against odds, as you fought it in the field. But the fortune of war is proverbial, and I hope yet to pour out a libation to you as Generalissimo Varnsdorf, the restorer of the Austrian laurels."

"Well, Marston, may you be a true prophet! But read that letter from Guiscard; our long-headed friend not merely crops our German laurels, but threatens to root up the tree." He handed me a letter from the Prussian philosopher: it was a curious _catalogue raisonné_ of the _im_probabilities of success in the general war of Europe against the Republic; concluding with the words, so characteristic of his solemn and reflective views of man and the affairs of man--

"War is the original propensity of human nature, and civilization is the great promoter of war. The more civilized all nations become, the more they fight. The most civilized continent of the world has spent the fourth of its modern existence in war. Every man of common sense, of course, abhors its waste of life, of treasure, and of time. Still the propensity is so strong, that it continues the most prodigal sacrifice of them all. I think that we are entering on a period, when war, more than ever, will be the business of nations. I should not be surprised if the mania of turning nations into beggars, and the population into the dust of the field, should last for half a century; until the whole existing generation are in their graves, and a new generation shall take their places, astonished at the fondness of their fathers for bankruptcy and bloodshed." After some sharp censures of the unpurposed conduct of the German cabinets, he finished by saying--"If the French continue to fight as they have just fought, Jemappes will be the beginning of a new era. In the history of the world, every great change of human supremacy has been the result of a change in the principles of war; and the nation which has been the first to adopt that change, has led the triumph for its time. France has now found out a new element in war--the force of multitude, the charge of the masses; and she will conquer, until the kings of Europe follow her example, and call their nations to the field. Till then she will be invincible, but then her conquests will vanish; and the world, exhausted by carnage, will be quiet for a while. But the wolfish spirit of human nature will again hunger for prey; some new system of havoc will be discovered by some great genius, who ought to be cursed to the lowest depths of human memory; but who will be exalted to the most rapturous heights of human praise. Then again, when one half of the earth is turned into a field of battle, and the other into a cemetery, mankind will cry out for peace; and again, when refreshed, will rush into still more ruinous war:--thus all things run in a circle. But France has found out the secret for this age, and--_vae victis!_--the pestilence will be tame to the triumph of her frenzy, her rapine, and her revenge."

"Exactly what I should have expected from Guiscard," was my remark; "he is always making bold attempts to tear up the surface of the time, and look into what is growing below."

"Well, well," replied my honest fellow soldier, "I never perplex my brain with those things. I dare say your philosophers may be right; at least once in a hundred years. But take my word for it, that musket and bayonet will be useful matters still; and that discipline and my old master Frederick, will be as good as Dumourier and desperation, when we shall have brigade for brigade."

The postillions cracked their whips, the little Norman horses tore their way over the rough pavement; the sovereign people scattered off on every side, to save their lives and limbs; and the plan of St Denis, rich with golden corn, and tracked by lines of stately trees, opened far and wide before me. From the first ascent I gave a _parting_ glance at Paris--it was mingled of rejoicing and regret. What hours of interest, of novelty, and of terror, had I not passed within the circuit of those walls! Yet, how the eye cheats reality!--that city of imprisonment and frantic liberty, of royal sorrow and of popular exultation, now looked a vast circle of calm and stately beauty. How delusive is distance in every thing! Across that plain, luxuriant with harvest, surrounded with those soft hills, and glittering in the purple of this glorious evening, it looked a paradise. I knew it--a pendemonium!

I speeded on--every thing was animated and animating in my journey. It was the finest season of the year; the roads were good; the prospects--as I swept down valley and rushed round hill, with the insolent speed of a government _employé_, leaving all meaner vehicles, travellers, and the whole workday world behind--seemed to be to redeem the character of French landscape. But how much of its colouring was my own! Was _I_ not _free?_ was I not _returning to England?_ was I not approaching scenes, and forms, and the realities of those recollections, which, even in the field of battle, and at the foot of the scaffold, had alternately cheered and pained, delighted and distressed me?--yet which, even with all their anxieties, were dearer than the most gilded hopes of ambition. Was I not about to meet the gay smile and poignant vivacity of Mariamne? was I not about to wander in the shades of my paternal castle? to see those relatives who were to shape so large a share of my future happiness; to meet in public life the eminent public men, with whose renown the courts and even the camps of Europe were already ringing: and last, proudest, and most profound feeling of all--was I not to venture near the shrine on which I had placed my idol; to offer her the solemn and distant homage of the heart; perhaps to hear of her from day to day; perhaps to see her noble beauty; perhaps even to _hear_ that voice, of which the simplest accents sank to my soul.--But I must not attempt to describe sensations which are in their nature indescribable; which dispose the spirit of man to silence; and which, in their true intensity, suffer but one faculty to exist, absorbing all the rest in deep sleep and delicious reverie.

I drove with the haste of a courier to London; and after having deposited my despatches with one of the under-secretaries of the Foreign office, I flew to Mordecai's den in the city. London appeared to me more crowded than ever; the streets longer, and buildings dingier; and the whole, seen after the smokeless and light-coloured towns of the Continent, looked an enormous manufactory, where men wore themselves out in perpetual blackness and bustle, to make their bread, and die. But my heart beat quickly as I reached the door of that dingiest of all its dwellings, where the lord of hundreds of thousands of pounds burrowed himself on the eyes of mankind.

I knocked, but was long unanswered; at last a meagre clerk, evidently of the "fallen people," and who seemed dug up from the depths of the dungeon, gave me the intelligence that "his master and family had left England." The answer was like an icebolt through my frame. This was the moment to which I had looked forward with, I shall not say what emotions. I could scarcely define them; but they had a share of every strong, every faithful, and every touching remembrance of my nature. My disappointment was a pang. My head grey dizzy, I reeled; and asked leave to enter the gloomy door, and rest for a moment. But this the guardian of the den was too cautious to allow, and I should have probably fainted in the street, but for the appearance of an ancient Rebecca, the wife of the clerk, who, feeling the compassion which belongs to the sex in all instances, and exerting the authority which is so generally claimed by the better-halves of men, pushed her husband back, and led the way into the old cobwebbed parlour where I had so often been. A glass of water, the sole hospitality of the house, revived me; and after some enquiries alike fruitless with the past, I was about to take my leave, when the clerk, in his removal of some papers, not to be trusted within reach of a stranger, dropped a letter from the bundle, on which was my name. From the variety of addresses it had evidently travelled far, and had been returned from half the post-offices of the Continent. It was two months' old, but its news was to me most interesting. It was from Mordecai; and after alluding to some pecuniary transactions with his foreign brethren, always the first topic, he hurried on in his usual abrupt strain:--"Mariamne has insisted on my leaving England for a while. This is perplexing; as the war must produce a new loan, and London is, after all, the only place where those affairs can be transacted without trouble.--My child is well, and yet she looks pallid from time to time, and sheds tears when she thinks herself unobserved. All this may pass away, but it makes me uneasy; and, as she has evidently made up her mind to travel, I have only to give way--for, with all her caprices, she is my child, my only child, and my beloved child!

"I have heard a good deal of your proceedings from my correspondent and kinsman in Paris. You have acquitted yourself well, and it shall not be unknown in the quarter where it may be of most service to you.--I have been stopped by Mariamne's singing in the next room, and her voice has almost unmanned me; she is melancholy of late, and her only music now is taken from those ancestral hymns which our nation regard as the songs of the Captivity. Her tones at this moment are singularly touching, and I have been forced to lay down my pen, for she has melted me to tears. Yet her colour has not altogether faded lately, and I think sometimes that her eyes look brighter than ever! Heaven help me, if I should lose her. I should then be alone in the world.

"You may rely on my intelligence--a war is _inevitable_. You may also rely on my conjecture--that it will be the most desperate war which Europe has yet seen. One that will break up _foundations_, as well as break down superstructures; not a war of politics but of principles; not a war for conquest but for ruin. All the treasuries of Europe will be bankrupt within a twelvemonth of its commencement; unless England shall become their banker. This will be the harvest of the men of money.--It is unfortunate that your money is all lodged for your commission; otherwise, in the course of a few operations, you might make cent per cent, which I propose to do. _Apropos_ of commissions. I had nearly omitted, in my own family anxieties, to mention the object for which I began my letter. I have _failed_ in arranging the affair of your commission! This was not for want of zeal. But the prospect of a war has deranged and inflamed every thing. The young nobility have actually besieged the Horse-guards. All the weight of the aristocracy has pressed upon the minister, and minor influence has been driven from the field. The spirit is too gallant a one to be blamed;--and yet--are there not a hundred other pursuits, in which an intelligent and active mind, like your own, might follow on the way to fortune? You have seen enough of campaigning to know, that it is not all a flourish of trumpets. Has the world but one gate, and that the Horse-guards? If my personal judgment were to be asked, I should feel no regret for a disappointment which may have come only to turn your knowledge and ability to purposes not less suitable to an ambitious spirit, nor less likely to produce a powerful impression on the world--the only thing, after all, worth living for! You may laugh at this language from a man of my country and my trade. But even _I_ have my ambition; and you may yet discover it to be not less bold than if I carried the lamp of Gideon, or wielded the sword of the Maccabee.--I must stop again; my poor restless child is coming into the room at this moment, complaining of the chill, in one of the finest days of summer. She says that this villa has grown sunless, airless, and comfortless. Finding that I am writing to you, she sends her best wishes; and bids me ask, what is the fashionable colour for mantles in Paris, and also what is become of that 'wandering creature,' Lafontaine, if you should happen to recollect such a personage."

"P.S.--My daughter insists on our setting out from Brighton to-morrow, and crossing the Channel the day after. She has a whim for revisiting Switzerland; and in the mean time begs that if, during our absence, _you_ should have a whim for sea air and solitude, you may make of the villa any use you please.--Yours sincerely,

"J.V. MORDECAI."

After reading this strange and broken letter, I was almost glad that I had not seen Mariamne. Lafontaine was in her heart still, in spite of absence. At this I did not wonder, for the heart of woman, when once struck, is almost incapable of change: but the suspense was killing her; and I had no doubt that her loss would sink even her strong-headed parent to the grave. Yet, what tidings had I to give? Whether her young soldier was shot in the attempt to escape from St Lazare, or thrown into some of those hideous dungeons, where so many thousands were dying in misery from day to day, was entirely beyond my power to tell. It was better that she should be roving over the bright hills, and breathing the fresh breezes of Switzerland, than listening to my hopeless conjectures at home; trying to reconcile herself to all the chances which passion is so painfully ingenious in creating, and dying, like a flower in all its beauty, on the spot where it had grown.

But the letter contained nothing of the _one_ name, for which my first glance had looked over every line with breathless anxiety. There was not a syllable of Clotilde! The father's cares had absorbed all other thoughts; and the letter was to me a blank in that knowledge for which I panted, as the hart pants for the fountains. Still, I was not dead to the calls of friendship; and that night's mail carried a long epistle to Mordecai, detailing my escapes, and the services of his kindred in France; and for Mariamne's ear, all that I could conceive cheering in my hopes of that "wandering creature, Lafontaine."

But I was forced to think of sterner subjects. I had arrived in England at a time of the most extraordinary public excitement. Every man felt that some great trial of England and of Europe was at hand; but none could distinctly define either its nature or its cause. France, which had then begun to pour out her furious declamations against this country, was, of course, generally looked to as the quarter from which the storm was to come; but the higher minds evidently contemplated hazards nearer home. Affiliated societies, corresponding clubs, and all the revolutionary apparatus, from whose crush and clamour I had so lately emerged, met the ear and the eye on all occasions; and the fiery ferocity of French rebellion was nearly rivalled by the grave insolence of English "Rights of Man." But I am not about to write the history of a time of national fever. The republicanism, which Cicero and Plutarch instil into us all at our schools, had been extinguished in me by the squalid realities of France. I had seen the dissecting-room, and was cured of my love for the science. My spirit, too, required rest. I could have exclaimed with all the sincerity, and with all the weariness too, of the poet:--

Oh, for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumour of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war, Might never reach me more!"

But, perhaps fortunately for my understanding, if not for my life, I was not suffered to take refuge in the wilderness. London was around me; rich and beggared, splendid and sullen, idle and busy London. I was floating on those waves of human being, in which the struggler must make for the shore, or sink. I was in the centre of that huge whispering gallery, where every sound of earth was echoed and re-echoed with new power; and where it was impossible to dream. My days were now spent in communication with the offices of government, and a large portion of my nights in carrying on those correspondences, which, though seldom known in the routine of Downing Street, form the essential part of its intercourse with the continental cabinets. But a period of suspense still remained. Parliament had been already summoned for the 13th of December. Up to nearly the last moment, the cabinet had been kept in uncertainty as to the actual intents of France. There had been declamation in abundance in the French legislature and the journals; but with this unsubstantial evidence the cabinet could not meet the country. Couriers were sent in all directions; boats were stationed along the coast to bring the first intelligence of actual hostilities suddenly; every conceivable expedient was adopted; but all in vain. The day of opening the Session was within twenty-four hours. After lingering hour by hour, in expectancy of the arrival of despatches from our ambassador at the Hague, I offered to cross the sea in the first fishing-boat which I could find, and ascertain the facts. My offer was accepted; and in the twilight of a winter's morning, and in the midst of a snow-storm, I was making my shivering way homeward through the wretched lanes which, dark as pitch and narrow as footpaths, then led to the centre of the diplomatic world; when, in my haste, I had nearly overset a meagre figure, which, half-blinded by the storm, was tottering towards the Foreign office. After a growl, in the most angry jargon, the man recognized me; he was the clerk whom I had seen at Mordecai's house. He had, but an hour before, received, by one of the private couriers of the firm, a letter, with orders to deliver it with all expedition. He put it into my hand: it was not from Mordecai, but from Elnathan, and was simply in these words:--"My kinsman and your friend has desired me to forward to you the first intelligence of hostilities. I send you a copy of the bulletin which will be issued at noon this day. It is yet unknown; but I have it from a source on which you may perfectly rely. Of this make what use you think advantageous. Your well-wisher."

With what pangs the great money-trafficker must have consigned to my use a piece of intelligence which must have been a mine of wealth to any one who carried it first to the Stock Exchange, I could easily conjecture. But I saw in it the powerful pressure of Mordecai, which none of his tribe seemed even to have the means of resisting. My sensations were singular enough as I traced my way up the dark and lumbering staircase of the Foreign office; with the consciousness that, if I had chosen to turn my steps in another direction, I might before night be master of thousands, or of hundreds of thousands. But it is only due to the sense of honour which had been impressed on me, even in the riot and roughness of my Eton days, to say, that I did not hesitate for a moment Sending one of the attendants to arouse the chief clerk, I stood waiting his arrival with the bulletin unopened in my hands. The official had gone to his house in the country, and might not return for some hours. My perplexity increased. Every moment might supersede the value of my priority. At length a twinkling light through the chinks of one of the dilapidated doors, told me that there was some one within, from whom I might, at least, ask when and how ministers were to be approached. The door was opened, and, to my surprise, I found that the occupant of the chamber was one of the most influential members of administration. My name and purpose were easily given; and I was received as I believe few are in the habit of being received by the disposers of high things in high places. The fire had sunk to embers, the lamp was dull, and the hearer was half frozen and half asleep. Yet no sooner had he cast his eyes upon the mysterious paper which I gave into his grasp, than all his faculties were in full activity.

"This," said he, "is the most important paper that has reached this country since the taking of the Bastile. THE SCHELDT IS OPENED! This involves an attack on Holland; the defence of our ally is a matter of treaty, and we must arm without delay. The war is begun, but where it shall end"--he paused, and fixing his eyes above, with a solemnity of expression which I had not expected in the stern and hard-lined countenance, "or who shall live to see its close--who shall tell?"

"We have been waiting," said he, "for this intelligence from week to week, with the fullest expectation that it would come; and yet, when it has come, it strikes like a thunderclap. This is the third night that I have sat in this hovel, at this table, unable to go to rest, and looking for the despatch from hour to hour.--You see, sir, that our life is at least not the bed of roses for which the world is so apt to give us credit. It is like the life of my own hills--the higher the sheiling stands, the more it gets of the blast."

I do not give the name of this remarkable man. He was a Scot, and possessed of all the best characteristics of his country. I had heard him in Parliament, where he was the most powerful second of the most powerful first that England had seen. But if all men were inferior to the prime minister in majesty and fulness of conception, the man to whom I now listened had no superior in readiness of retort, in aptness of illustration--that mixture of sport and satire, of easy jest and subtle sarcasm, which forms the happiest talent for the miscellaneous uses of debate. If Pitt moved forward like the armed man of chivalry, or rather like the main body of the battle--for never man was more entitled to the appellation of a "host in himself"--never were front, flanks, and rear of the host covered by a more rapid, quick-witted, and indefatigable auxiliary. He was a man of family, and brought with him into public life, not the manners of a menial of office, but the bearing of a gentleman. Birth and blood were in his bold and manly countenance; and I could have felt no difficulty in conceiving him, if his course had followed his nature, the chieftain on his hills, at the head of his gallant retainers, pursuing the wild sports of his romantic region; or in some foreign land, gathering the laurels which the Scotch soldier has so often and so proudly added to the honours of the empire.

He was perfectly familiar with the great question of the time, and saw the full bearings of my intelligence with admirable sagacity; pointed out the inevitable results of suffering France to take upon herself the arbitration of Europe, and gave new and powerful views of the higher relation in which England was to stand, as the general protectress of the Continent. "This bulletin," said he, "announces the fact, that a French squadron has actually sailed up the Scheldt to attack Antwerp. Yet it was not ten years since France protested against the same act by Austria, as a violation of the rights of Holland. The new aggression is, therefore, not simply a solitary violence, but a vast fraud; not merely the breach of an individual treaty, but a declaration that no treaty is henceforth to be held as binding; it is more than an act of rapine; it is an universal dissolution of the principles by which society is held together. In what times are we about to live?"

My reply was--"That it depended on the spirit of England herself, whether the conflict was to be followed by honour or by shame; that she had a glorious career before her, if she had magnanimity sufficient to take the part marked out for her by circumstances; and that, with the championship of the world in her hands, even defeat would be a triumph."

He now turned the conversation to myself; spoke with more than official civility of my services, and peculiarly of the immediate one; and asked in what branch of diplomacy I desired advancement?

My answer was prompt. "In none. I desired promotion but in one way--the army." I then briefly stated the accidental loss of my original appointment, and received, before I left the chamber, a note for the secretary at war, recommending me, in the strongest terms, for a commission in the Guards.--The world was now before me, and the world in the most vivid, various, and dazzling shape; in the boldest development of grandeur, terror, and wild vicissitude, which it exhibited for a thousand years--ENGLAND WAS AT WAR!

There is no sight on earth more singular, or more awful, than a great nation going to war. I saw the scene in its highest point of view, by seeing it in England. Its perfect freedom, its infinite, and often conflicting, variety of opinion--its passionate excitement, and its stupendous power, gave the summons to hostilities a character of interest, of grandeur, and of indefinite but vast purposes, unexampled in any other time, or in any other country. When one of the old monarchies commenced war, the operation, however large and formidable, was simple. A monarch resolved, a council sat, less to guide than to echo his resolution; an army marched, invaded the enemy's territory, fought a battle--perhaps a dubious one--rested on its arms; and while _Te Deum_ was sung in both capitals alike for the "victory" of neither, the ministers of both were constructing an armistice, a negotiation, and a peace--each and all to be null and void on the first opportunity.

But the war of England was a war of the nation--a war of wrath and indignation--a war of the dangers of civilized society entrusted to a single championship--a great effort of human nature to discharge, in the shape of blood, a disease which was sapping the vitals of Europe; or in a still higher, and therefore a more faithful view, the gathering of a tempest, which, after sweeping France in its fury, was to restore the exhausted soil and blasted vegetation of monarchy throughout the Continent; and in whose highest, England, serene and undismayed, was to

"Ride in the whirlwind, and direct the storm."

I must acknowledge, that I looked upon the coming conflict with a strange sense of mingled alarm and rejoicing. For the latter feeling, perhaps I ought to make some apology; but I was young, ardent, and ambitious. My place in life was unfixed; standing in that unhappy middle position, in which stands a man of birth too high to suffer his adoption of the humbler means of existence, and yet of resources too inadequate to sustain him without action--nay, bold and indefatigable exertion. I, at the moment, felt a very inferior degree of compunction at the crisis which offered to give me at least a chance of being seen, known, and understood among men. I felt like a man whose ship was stranded, and who saw the storm lifting the surges that were to lift him along with them; or like the traveller in an earthquake, who saw the cleft in the ground swallowing up the river which had hitherto presented an impassable obstacle--cities and mountains might sink before the concussion had done its irresistible will, but, at all events, it had cleared his way.

In thoughts like these, rash and unconnected as they were, I spent many a restless day, and still more restless night. I often sprang from a pillow which, if I had lived in the days of witchcraft, I should have thought spelled to refuse me sleep; and walking for hours, endeavoured to reduce into shape the speculations which filled my mind with splendours and catastrophes worthy of oriental dreams. Why did I not then pursue the career in which I had begun the world? Why not devote myself to diplomacy, in which I had hitherto received honour? Why not enter into Parliament, which opened all the secrets of power? For this I had two reasons. The first--and, let me confess, the most imperious--was, that my pride had been deeply hurt by the loss of my commission. I felt that I had not only been deprived of a noble profession, accidental as was the loss; but that I had subjected myself to the trivial, but stinging remarks, which never fail to find an obnoxious cause for every failure. While this cloud hung over me, I was determined never to return to my father's house. Good-natured as the friends of my family might be, I was fully aware of the style in which misfortune is treated in the idleness of country life; and the Honourable Mr Marston's loss of his rank in his Majesty's guards, or his preference of a more pacific promotion, was too tempting a topic to lose any of its stimulants by the popular ignorance of the true transaction. My next reason was, that my mind was harassed and wearied by disappointment, until I should not have regreted to terminate the struggle in the first field of battle. The only woman whom I loved, and whom, in the strange frenzy of passion, I solemnly believed to be the only woman on earth deserving to be so loved, had wholly disappeared, and was, by this time, probably wedded. The only woman whom I regarded as a friend, was in another country, probably dying. If I could have returned to Mortimer Castle--which I had already determined to be impossible--I should have found only a callous, perhaps a contemptuous, head of the family, angry at my return to burden him. Even Vincent--my old and kind-hearted friend Vincent--had been a soldier; and though I was sure of never receiving a reproach from his wise and gentle lips, was I equally sure that I could escape the flash, or the sorrow, of his eye?

In thoughts like these, and they were dangerous ones, I made many a solitary rush out into the wild winds and beating snows of the winter, which had set in early and been remarkably severe; walking bareheaded in the most lonely places of the suburbs, stripping my bosom to the blast, and longing for its tenfold chill to assuage the fever which burned within me. I had also found the old delay at the Horse-guards. The feelings of this period make me look with infinite compassion on the unhappy beings who take their lives into their own hands, and who extinguish all their earthly anxieties at a plunge. But I had imbibed principles of a firmer substance, and but upon one occasion, and one alone, felt tempted to an act of despair.

Taking my lonely dinner in a tavern of the suburbs, the waiter handed me a newspaper, which he had rescued for my behoof from the hands of a group, eager, as all the world then was, for French intelligence. My eye rambled into the fashionable column; and the first paragraph, headed "Marriage in high life," announced that, on the morrow, were to be solemnized the nuptials of Clotilde, Countess de Tourville, with the Marquis de Montrecour, colonel of the French Mousquetaires, &c. The paper dropped from my hands. I rushed out of the house; and, scarcely knowing where I went, I hurried on, until I found myself out of the sight or sound of mortal. The night was pitch-dark; there was no lamp near; the wind roared; and it was only by the flash of the foam that I discovered the broad sheet of water before me. I had strayed into Hyde Park, and was on the bank of the Serpentine. With what ease might I not finish all! It was another step. Life was a burden--thought was a torment--the light of day a loathing. But the paroxysm soon gave way. Impressions of the duty and the trials of human nature, made in earlier years, revived within me with a singular freshness and force. Tears gushed from my eyes, fast and flowing; and, with a long-forgotten prayer for patience and humility, I turned from the place of temptation. As I reached the streets once more, I heard the trumpets of the Life Guards, and the band of a battalion returning to their quarters. The infantry were the Coldstream. They had been lining the streets for the king's procession to open the sitting of Parliament. This was the 13th of December--the memorable day to which every heart in Europe was more or less vibrating; yet which I had totally forgotten. What is man but an electrical machine after all? The sound and sight of soldiership restored me to the full vividness of my nature. The machine required only to be touched, to shoot out its latent sparks; and with a new spirit and a new determination kindling through every fibre, I hastened to be present at that debate which was to be the judgment of nations.

My official intercourse with ministers had given me some privileges, and I obtained a seat under the gallery--that part of the House of Commons which is occasionally allotted to strangers of a certain rank. The House was crowded, and every countenance was pictured with interest and solemn anxiety. Grey, Sheridan, and other distinguished names of party, had already taken their seats; but the great heads of Government and Opposition were still absent. At length a buzz among the crowd who filled the floor,--and the name of Fox repeated in every tone of congratulation, announced the pre-eminent orator of England. I now saw Fox for the first time; and I was instantly struck with the incomparable similitude of all that I saw of him to all that I had conceived from his character and his style. In the broad bold forehead, the strong sense--in the relaxed mouth, the self-indulgent and reckless enjoyment--in the quick, small eye under those magnificent black brows, the man of sagacity, of sarcasm, and of humour; and in the grand contour of a countenance and head, which might have been sculptured to take its place among the sages and sovereigns of antiquity, the living proof of those extraordinary powers, which could have been checked in their ascent to the highest elevation of public life, only by prejudices and passions not less extraordinary. As he advanced up the House, he recognized every one on both sides, and spoke or smiled to nearly all. He stopped once or twice in his way, and was surrounded by a circle with whom, as I could judge from their laughter, he exchanged some pleasantry of the hour. When at length he arrived at the seat which had been reserved for him, he threw himself upon it with the easy look of comfort of a man who had reached home--gave nod to Windham, held out a finger to Grey, warmly shook hands with Sheridan; and then, opening his well-known blue and buff costume, threw himself back into the bench, and laughingly gasped for air.

But another movement of the crowd at the bar announced another arrival, and Pitt entered the House. His look and movement were equally characteristic with those of his great rival. He looked to neither the right nor the left; replied to the salutations of his friends by the slightest possible bow; neither spoke nor smiled; but, slowly advancing, took his seat in total silence. The Speaker, hitherto occupied with some routine business, now read the King's speech, and, calling on "Mr Pitt," the minister rose. I have for that rising but one description--the one which filled my memory at the moment, from the noblest poet of the world.

"Deep on his front engraven, Deliberation sat, and public care. Sage he stood, With Atlantean shoulders, fit to bear The weight of mightiest monarchies. His look Drew audience and attention, still as night, Or summer's noontide air."

THE WEEK OF AN EMPEROR

The week ending the 8th of June, was the most brilliant that ever occupied and captivated the fashionable world of a metropolis of two millions of souls, the head of an empire of two hundred millions. The recollection runs us out of breath. Every hour was a new summons to a new _fête_, a new fantasy, or a new exhibition of the handsomest man of the forty-two millions of Russia proper. The toilettes of the whole _beau monde_ were in activity from sunny morn to dewy eve; and from dewy eve to waxlighted midnight. A parade of the Guards, by which the world was tempted into rising at ten o'clock; a _dejeuner à la fourchette_, by which it was surprised into _dining_ at three, (_more majorum;_) an opera, by which those whose hour for going out is eleven, were forced into their carriages at nine; a concert at Hanover Square, finished by a ball and supper at Buckingham palace;--all were among those brilliant perversions of the habits of high life which make the week one brilliant tumult; but which never could have been revolutionized but by an emperor in the flower of his age. Wherever he moved, he was followed by a host of the fair and fashionable. The showy equipages of the nobility were in perpetual motion. The parks were a whirlwind of horsemen and horsewomen. The streets were a levy _en masse_ of the peerage. The opera-house was a gilded "black hole of Calcutta." The front of Buckingham palace was a scene of loyalty, dangerous to life and limb; men, careful of either, gave their shillings for a glimpse through a telescope; and shortsighted ladies fainted, that they might be carried into houses which gave then a full view. Mivart's, the retreat of princes, had the bustle of a Bond Street hotel. Ashburnham House was in a state of siege. And Buckingham palace, with its guards, cavalcades, musterings of the multitude, and thundering of brass bands, seemed to be the focus of a national revolution. But it was within the palace that the grand display existed. The gilt candelabra, the gold plate, the maids of honour, all fresh as tares in June; and the ladies in waiting, all Junos and Minervas, all jewelled, and none under forty-five, enraptured the mortal eye, to a degree unrivalled in the recollections of the oldest courtier, and unrecorded in the annals of queenly hospitality.

But we must descend to the world again; we must, as the poet said,

"Bridle in our struggling muse with pain, That longs to launch into a nobler strain."

We bid farewell to a description of the indescribable.

During this week, but one question was asked by the universal world of St James's--"What was the cause of the Czar's coming?"

Every one answered in his own style. The tourists--a race who cannot live without rambling through the same continental roads, which they libel for their roughness every year; the same hotels, which they libel for their discomforts; and the same _table-d'hotes_, which they libel as the perfection of bad cookery, and barefaced _chicane_--pronounced that the love of travel was the imperial impulse. The politicians of the clubs--who, having nothing to do for themselves, manage the affairs of all nations, and can discover high treason in the manipulation of a toothpick, and symptoms of war in a waltz--were of opinion, that the Czar had come either to construct an European league against the marriage of little Queen Isabella, or to beat up for recruits for the "holy" hostilities of Morocco. With the fashionable world, the decision was, that he had come to see Ascot races, and the Duke of Devonshire's gardens, before the sun withered, or St Swithin washed them away. The John Bull world--as wise at least as any of their betters, who love a holiday, and think Whitsuntide the happiest period of the year for that reason, and Greenwich hill the finest spot in creation--were convinced that his Majesty's visit was merely that of a good-humoured and active gentleman, glad to escape from the troubles of royalty and the heaviness of home, and take a week's ramble among the oddities of England. "Who shall decide," says Pope, "when doctors disagree?" Perhaps the nearest way of reaching the truth is, to take all the reasons together, and try how far they may be made to agree. What can be more probable than that the fineness of the finest season within memory, the occurrence of a moment of leisure in the life of a monarch ruling a fifth of the habitable globe, roused the curiosity of an intelligent mind, excited, like that of his great ancestor Peter, by a wish to see the national improvements of the great country of engineering, shipbuilding, and tunnelling; perhaps with Ascot races--the most showy exhibition of the most beautiful horses in the world--to wind up the display, might tempt a man of vigorous frame and active spirit, to gallop across Europe, and give seven brief days to England!

An additional conjecture has been proposed by the papers presumed to be best informed in cabinet secrets; that this rapid journey has had for its distinct purpose the expression of the Imperial scorn for the miserable folly and malignant coxcombry of the pamphlet on the French navy; which has excited so much contempt in England, and so much boasting in France, and so much surprise and ridicule every where else in Europe. Nothing could be more in consonance with a manly character, than to show how little it shared the conceptions of a coxcomb; and no more direct mode could be adopted than the visit, to prove his willingness to be on the best terms with her government and her people. We readily receive this conjecture, because it impresses a higher character on the whole transaction; it belongs to an advanced spirit of royal intercourse, and it constitutes an important pledge for that European peace, which is the greatest benefaction capable of being conferred by kings.

The Emperor may be said to have come direct from St Petersburg, as his stops on the road were only momentary. He reached Berlin from his capital with courier's speed, in four days and six hours, on Sunday fortnight last. His arrival was so unexpected, that the Russian ambassador in Prussia was taken by surprise. He travelled through Germany incognito, and on Thursday night, the 30th, arrived at the Hague. Next day, at two o'clock, he embarked at Rotterdam for England. Here, two steamers had been prepared for his embarkation. The steamers anchored for the night at Helvoetsluys. At three in the following morning, they continued the passage, arriving at Woolwich at ten. The Russian ambassador and officers of the garrison prepared to receive him; but on his intimating his particular wish to land in private, the customary honours were dispensed with. Shortly after ten, the Emperor landed. He was dressed in the Russian costume, covered with an ample and richly-furred cloak. After a stay of a few minutes, he entered Baron Brunow's carriage with Count Orloff, and drove to the Russian embassy. The remainder of the day was given to rest after his fatigue.

On the next morning, Sunday, Prince Albert paid a visit to the Emperor. They met on the grand staircase, and embraced each other cordially in the foreign style. The Prince proposed that the Emperor should remove to the apartments which were provided for him in the palace--an offer which was politely declined. At eleven, the Emperor attended divine service at the chapel of the Russian embassy in Welbeck Street. At half-past one, Prince Albert arrived to conduct him to the palace. He wore a scarlet uniform, with the riband and badge of the Garter. The Queen received the Emperor in the grand hall. A _dejeuner_ was soon afterwards served. The remainder of the day was spent in visits to the Queen-Dowager and the Royal Family. One visit of peculiar interest was paid. The Emperor drove to Apsley House, to visit the Duke of Wellington. The Duke received him in the hall, and conducted him to the grand saloon on the first floor. The meeting on both sides was most cordial. The Emperor conversed much and cheerfully with the illustrious Duke, and complimented him highly on the beauty of his pictures, and the magnificence of his mansion. But even emperors are but men, and the Czar, fatigued with his round of driving, on his return to the embassy fell asleep, and slumbered till dinner-time, though his Royal Highness of Cambridge and the Monarch of Saxony called to visit him. At a quarter to eight o'clock, three of the royal carriages arrived, for the purpose of conveying the Emperor and his suite to Buckingham palace.

On Monday, the Emperor rose at seven. After breakfast he drove to Mortimer's, the celebrated jeweller's, where he remained for an hour, and is _said_ to have purchased L.5000 worth of jewellery. He then drove to the Zoological gardens and the Regent's park. In the course of the drive, he visited Sir Robert Peel, and the families of some of our ambassadors in Russia. At three o'clock, he gave a _dejeuner_ to the Duke of Devonshire, who had also been an ambassador in Russia. Dover Street was crowded with the carriages of the nobility, who came to put down their names in the visiting-book.

At five, a guard of honour of the First Life-Guards came to escort him to the railway, on his visit to Windsor; but on his observing its arrival, he expressed a wish to decline the honour, for the purpose of avoiding all parade. The Queen's carriages had arrived, and the Emperor and his suite drove off through streets crowded with horsemen. On arriving at the railway station, the Emperor examined the electrical telegraph, and, entering the saloon carriage, the train set off, and arrived at Slough, a distance of nearly twenty miles, in the astonishingly brief time of twenty-five minutes.

At the station, the Emperor was met by Prince Albert, and conveyed to the castle.

The banquet took place in the Waterloo chamber, a vast hall hung with portraits of the principal sovereigns and statesmen of Europe, to paint which, the late Sir Thomas Laurence had been sent on a special mission at the close of the war in 1815. Sir Thomas's conception of form and likeness was admirable, but his colouring was cold and thin. His "Waterloo Gallery" forms a melancholy contrast with the depth and richness of the adjoining "Vandyk Chamber;" but his likenesses are complete. The banquet was royally splendid. The table was covered with gold plate and chased ornaments of remarkable beauty--the whole lighted by rows of gold candelabra. The King of Saxony, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Aberdeen, and the chief noblemen of the household, were present at the entertainment.

TUESDAY.

This was the day of Ascot races. The road from Windsor to the course passes through a couple of miles of the rich quiet scenery which peculiarly belongs to England. The course itself is a file open plain, commanding an extensive view. Some rumours, doubting the visit of the royal party, excited a double interest in the first sight of the cavalcade, preceded by the royal yeomen, galloping up to the stand. They were received with shouts. The Emperor, the King of Saxony, and Prince Albert, were in the leading carriage. They were attired simply as private gentlemen, in blue frock-coats. The Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and the household, followed in the royal carriages. The view of the Stand at this period was striking, and the royal and noble personages were repeatedly cheered. An announcement was conveyed to the people, that the Emperor had determined to give L.500 a-year to the course. The Czarewitch had already given L.200 at Newmarket. The announcement was received with renewed cheering. All kings are fond of horses; and the monarch of the most numerous and active cavalry in the world, may be allowed to be a connoisseur in their strength, swiftness, and perseverance, by a superior right. The Emperor can call out 80,000 Cossacks at a sound of his trumpet. He exhibited an evident interest in the races. The horses were saddled before the race in front of the grand stand, and brought up to it after the race, for the purpose of weighing the jockeys. He had a full opportunity of inspection; but not content with this, when the winner of the gold vase, the mare Alice Hawthorn, was brought up to the stand, he descended, and examined this beautiful animal with the closeness and critical eye of a judge.

On Wednesday, the pageant in which emperors most delight was exhibited--a review of the royal guards. There are so few troops in England, as the Prince de Joinville has "the happiness" to observe, that a review on the continental scale of tens of thousands, is out of the question. Yet, to the eye which can discern the excellence of soldiership, and the completeness of soldierly equipment, the few in line before the Emperor on this day, were enough to gratify the intelligent eye which this active monarch turns upon every thing. The infantry were--the second battalion of the grenadier guards, the second battalion of the Coldstream guards, the second battalion of the fusilier guards, and the forty-seventh regiment. The cavalry were--two troops of the royal horse guards, (blue,) the first regiment of the life guards, and the seventeenth lancers. The artillery were--detachments of the royal horse artillery, and the field artillery.

A vast multitude from London by the trains, and from the adjoining country, formed a line parallel to the troops; and nothing could exceed the universal animation and cheering when the Emperor, the King of Saxony, and the numerous and glittering staff, entered the field, and came down the line.

After the usual salutes, and marching past the centre, where the royal carriages had taken their stand, the evolutions began. They were few and simple, but of that order which is most effective in the field. The formation of the line from the sections; the general advance of the line; the halt, and a running fire along the whole front; the breaking up of the line into squares; the squares firing, then deploying into line, and marching to the rear. The Queen, with the royal children, left the ground before the firing began, The review was over at half-past two. The appearance of the troops was admirable; the manoeuvres were completely successful; and the fineness of the day gave all the advantages of sun and landscape to this most brilliant spectacle.

But the most characteristic portion of the display consisted in the commanding-officers who attended, to give this unusual mark of respect to the Emperor.

Wellington, the "conqueror of a hundred fights," rode at the head of the grenadier guards, as their colonel Lord Combermere, general of the cavalry in the Peninsula, rode at the head of his regiment, the first life guards. The Marquis of Anglesey, general of the cavalry at Waterloo, rode at the head of his regiment, the royal horse guards. Sir George Murray, quartermaster-general in the Peninsula, rode at the head of the artillery, as master-general of the ordnance. His royal highness the Duke of Cambridge rode at the head of his regiment, the Coldstream. His royal highness Prince Albert rode at the head of his regiment, the Scotch fusiliers. General Sir William Anson rode at the head of his regiment, the forty-seventh. Lieutenant-Colonel Quentin rode at the head of the seventeenth lancers, the colonel of the regiment, Prince George of Cambridge, being in the Ionian Islands. Thus, three field-marshals, and four generals, passed in review before the illustrious guests of her Majesty. The Emperor expressed himself highly gratified; as every eye accustomed to troops must have been, by the admirable precision of the movements, and the fine appearance of the men. A striking instance of the value of railways for military operations, was connected with this review. The forty-seventh regiment, quartered in Gosport, was brought to Windsor in the morning, and sent back in the evening of the review day; the journey, altogether, was about 140 miles! Such are the miracles of machinery in our days. This was certainly an extraordinary performance, when we recollect that it was the conveyance of about 700 men; and shows what might be done in case of any demand for the actual services of the troops. But even this exploit will be eclipsed within a few days, by the opening of the direct line from London to Newcastle, which will convey troops, or any thing, 300 miles in twelve hours. The next step will be to reach Edinburgh in a day!

The Emperor was observed to pay marked attention to the troops of the line, the forty-seventh and the lancers; observing, as it is said, "your household troops are noble fellows; but what I wished particularly to see, were the troops with which you gained your victories in India and China." A speech of this kind was worthy of the sagacity of a man who knew where the true strength of a national army lies, and who probably, besides, has often had his glance turned to the dashing services of our soldiery in Asia. The household troops of every nation are select men, and the most showy which the country can supply. Thus they are nearly of equal excellence. The infantry of ours, it is true, have been always "fighting regiments"--the first in every expedition, and distinguished for the gallantry of their conduct in every field. The cavalry, though seldomer sent on foreign service, exhibited pre-eminent bravery in the Peninsula, and their charges at Waterloo were irresistible. But it is of the marching regiments that the actual "army" consists, and their character forms the character of the national arms.

In the evening the Emperor and the King of Saxony dined with her Majesty at Windsor.

THURSDAY.

The royal party again drove to the Ascot course, and were received with the usual acclamations. The Emperor and King were in plain clothes, without decorations of any kind; Prince Albert wore the Windsor uniform. The cheers were loud for Wellington.

The gold cup, value three hundred guineas, was the principal prize. Eight horses ran, and the cup was won by a colt of Lord Albemarle's. His lordship is lucky, at least on the turf. He won the cup at Ascot last year.

FRIDAY.

The royal party came to London by the railway. The Emperor spent the chief part of the day in paying visits, in the Russian ambassador's private carriage, to his personal friends--chiefly the families of those noblemen who had been ambassadors to Russia.

SATURDAY.

The Emperor, the King, and Prince Albert, went to the Duke of Devonshire's _dejeuner_ at Chiswick. The Duke's mansion and gardens are proverbial as evidences of his taste, magnificence, and princely expenditure. All the nobility in London at this period were present. The royal party were received with distinguished attention by the noble host, and his hospitality was exhibited in a style worthy of his guests and himself. While the suite of _salons_ were thrown open for the general company, the royal party were received in a _salon_ which had been decorated as a Turkish tent. Bands of the guards played in the gardens, a quadille band played in the ball-room, and the fineness of the weather gave the last charm to a _fête_ prepared with equal elegance and splendour. We doubt whether Europe can exhibit any open air festivity that can compete with a _dejeuner_ at Chiswick. The gardens of some of the continental palaces are larger, but they want the finish of the English garden. Their statues and decorations are sometimes fine; but they want the perfect and exquisite neatness which gives an especial charm to English horticulture. The verdure of the lawns, the richness and variety of the flowers, and the general taste displayed, in even the most minute and least ornamental features, render the English garden wholly superior, in fitness and in beauty, to the gardens of the continental sovereigns and nobility.

In the evening, the Queen and her guests went to the Italian opera. The house was greatly, and even hazardously crowded. It is said that, in some instances, forty guineas was paid for a box. But whether this may be an exaggeration or not, the sum would have been well worth paying, to escape the tremendous pressure in the pit. After all, the majority of the spectators were disappointed in their principal object, the view of the royal party. They all sat far back in the box, and thus, to three-fourths of the house, were completely invisible. In this privacy, for which it is not easy to account, and which it would have been so much wiser to have avoided, the audience were long kept in doubt whether the national anthem was to be sung. At last, a stentorian voice from the gallery called for it. A general response was made by the multitude; the curtain rose, and God save the Queen was sung with acclamation. The ice thus broken, it was followed by the Russian national anthem, a firm, rich, and bold composition. The Emperor was said to have shed tears at the unexpected sound of that noble chorus, which brought back the recollection of his country at so vast a distance from home. But if these anthems had not been thus accidentally performed, the royal party would have lost a much finer display than any thing which they could have seen on the stage--the rising of the whole audience in the boxes--all the fashionable world in _gala_, in its youth, beauty, and ornament, seen at full sight, while the chorus was on the stage.

SUNDAY.

On this day at two o'clock, the Emperor, after taking leave of the Queen and the principal members of the Royal family, embarked at Woolwich in the government steamer, the Black Eagle, commanded for the time by the Earl of Hardwicke. The vessel dropped down the river under the usual salutes from the batteries at Woolwich; the day was serene, and the Black Eagle cut the water with a keel as smooth as it was rapid. The Emperor entered into the habits of the sailor with as much ease as he had done into those of the soldier. He conversed good-humouredly with the officers and men, admired the discipline and appearance of the marines, who had been sent as his escort, was peculiarly obliging to Lord Hardwicke and Lieutenant Peel, (a son of the premier,) and ordered his dinner on deck, that he might enjoy the scenery on the banks of the Thames. The medals of some of the marines who had served in Syria, attracted his attention, and he enquired into the nature of their services. He next expressed a wish to see the manual exercise performed, which of course was done; and his majesty, taking a musket, went through the Russian manual exercise. On his arrival on the Dutch coast, the King of Holland came out to meet him in a steamer; and on his landing, the British crew parted with him with three cheers. The Imperial munificence was large to a degree which we regret; for it would be much more gratifying to the national feelings to receive those distinguished strangers, without suffering the cravers for subscriptions to intrude themselves into their presence.

On the Emperor's landing in Holland, he reviewed a large body of Dutch troops, and had intended to proceed up the Rhine, and enjoy the landscape of its lovely shores at his leisure. But for him there is no leisure; and his project was broken up by the anxious intelligence of the illness of one of his daughters by a premature confinement. He immediately changed his route, and set off at full speed for St