Chapter 3

"O cousin, thou art come to set mine eye; The tackle of my heart is crack'd and burn'd; And all the shrouds, wherewith my life should sail, Are turned to one thread, one little hair; My heart hath one poor string to stay it by--

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"All this thou see'st is but a clod, And module of confounded royalty."

* * *

"But now a king--now thus-- This was now a king, and now is clay."

SHAKSPEARE.

The miserable king lay, indeed, upon his bed of death. He had refused to quit the room which he usually occupied, all encumbered as it was with his favourite hounds, his hunting accoutrements, and these horns, the winding of which had been his favourite amusement, and had contributed so powerfully to affect his lungs, and undermine his constitution. A sort of couch had been prepared for him of mattresses and cushions upon the floor; and upon that rude bed was the emaciated form of the dying monarch extended. To his customary attacks of blood-spitting, had succeeded a strange, and, until then, unknown symptom of malady, from which the very physicians recoiled with horror. Drops of red moisture, which bore all the appearance of blood, had burst, like perspiration, from the pores of the body; and there were moments when the wretched man writhed on his couch in the double anguish of body and mind, that, in spite of the efforts of the physicians to remove this extraordinary appearance, he might have been thought to be bathed in gore.

It was indeed an agony, and a bloody sweat!

The physicians had long since declared that there was no hope. In one of those fitful bursts of anger, in which Charles from time to time indulged, even in his state of exhaustion and in his dying moments, he had desired to be left by his doctors and attendants, and he slumbered his last slumber in this world, before closing his eyes for ever in the great sleep of death, to wake upon another. One person alone sat by the side of his couch; and that person was one, whom the incessant intriguing efforts of his mother would have taught him was his bitterest enemy.

That ivory paleness which had been so characteristic a trait of Charles, and had added at once to the melancholy and majesty of his face, was now of a yellow waxen colour, which might be said to increase from minute to minute in lividness of hue. His large nose stood frightfully prominent from those hollow sunken cheeks; his lips, in life, red almost to bleeding, were now ashy pale. Beneath his thin lids, the eyeballs, sunken into the deep cavities of his eyes, might be seen to roll and palpitate; whilst from his open and distorted mouth burst forth, even in his troubled sleep, moans, and then words of anguish.

The man who sat by his side, listened with varying feelings. Sometimes he started back with a movement of horror; sometimes he again bent forward in compassion, and with a kerchief lightly wiped away that fearful perspiration which burst from the hollow temples of the young man. The aspect of this personage was noble; his forehead was bold; his nose formed with that eagle curve which seems fashioned for command. The expression of his grey eyes denoted both resolution and wariness; whilst a general look of good temper and openness, which amounted almost to _insouciance_, pervaded the whole face. He was clothed in black. It was Henry of Navarre, the ill-used and betrayed victim of Catherine's policy.

During the whole reign of Charles IX., the Queen-mother had used every effort to instil into his mind suspicions of the loyalty of the man, who, were the Valois to die childless, would be heir to the throne of France; and whom the decrees of Providence finally led, through the wiles and plots set to snare his liberty and his life, and in the midst of the clashing of contending parties, to rule the destinies of the country, as Henry the Fourth. Henry of Navarre, whom the artifice and calumny of a Medicis had done their best to separate and estrange from his king and brother-in-law during life, was now the only attendant upon his last moments--the only friend to press his dying hand and close his eyes. By a last exercise of his authority, Charles had declared that it was his will that Henry of Navarre, and he alone, should be permitted to approach his couch, and receive his last instructions; and in spite of all the manoeuvres of the crafty Catherine, who no longer ventured openly to oppose her son's commands, the two princes were united in this supreme and awful hour.

And now Henry of Navarre sat and watched his dying relation with oppressed and anxious heart, aware that, were the king to die without providing for his safety by a last exercise of his power, his liberty, and even his life, would be in danger from the manoeuvres of the revengeful Catherine; that his only chance of escape was in flight before the death of the expiring king; and yet, too noble and generous to leave the man who, at such a time, had called him to his side, he sat and watched.

Presently the king rolled convulsively upon his couch; his parted lips quivered horribly; and with a mutter, which increased at last into a distinct and piercing scream, he let fall the words--

"Away--away--torment me not! Why do you haunt me thus? Fire--fire! Kill--kill! No--spare them--spare them, and spare me a hopeless misery. Ah! they fly--they bleed--they fall. And the poor old Admiral--his grey heirs are dabbled with blood. Away--away--it was not I--not I! Ah!"----

With a sudden start of horror, the king lifted his head from his pillow, and for a time gazed with staring and glassy eyes, as if the hideous vision which had tortured his sleep were still before him. Then with a bitter groan, he again fell back upon his couch. Again he raised his head, and, looking upon Henry, said, with a faint and plaintive voice, that contrasted strangely with these brusque and harsh tones which were natural to him,

"Why do they ever pursue me thus--those Huguenots, who perished with the Admiral? It was not I--it was my mother who was the cause of all. And yet, I myself, arquebuse in hand, I hunted them to the death. Oh! but my remorse has been long and bitter, Henry. What I have suffered none on earth can tell. Since that fatal night, I have never enjoyed a moment's peace of mind. Do kings ever enjoy peace of mind, Henry? Oh, be glad that thou art not a reigning king! Peace of mind is not for them. If there be a purgatory, Henry, in another world, I have already endured all its tortures on this earth. Is not remorse the worst purgatory? ay--the most damning hell. But why, then, do they pursue me thus in hideous visions still?"

The wretched king buried his head in his pillow.

"Strive to be calm," said Henry of Navarre, bending over him to lift up his head, and arrange his cushions. "Those visions will leave you."

"Yes! in the grave--perhaps!" replied Charles, again looking up with a shudder.

"Let us hope better things," continued Henry. "With more tranquillity of mind, you will regain your strength, and"----

"No--all is past," murmured the king. "I feel that I am dying. Know you not that there is one accused of practising sorcery upon me. Folly! madness! An evil deed _has_ been practised upon me. Yes--the thought will not leave me. I would drive it away, but it still rankles in my heart. Evil _has_ been done me, but not by sorcery. And yet the sorcerer must die. The world must believe that it was he who worked my death; but it was another. Come here, Henry; bend your ear to me, for I can no longer rise. Wouldst thou know who it was?"

A noise in the further part of the room startled the young King of Navarre at this moment, and he turned his head. The only living creature present was the favourite green ape of the king, that sat and grinned and moaned, as if in mockery of his dying master.

"Come nearer, Henry," pursued the king, "for I would speak that to thee, that not the very walls may hear. Know you what has caused my death--who has been my murderer?"

Henry bent his head over the dying man, more to satisfy a caprice of the sufferer, than in the expectation of any serious revelation; and, as Charles whispered in his ear, he started back in horror.

"Oh, sire, think not so! Drive away so miserable a suspicion!" he said. "It were too horrible. It is impossible!"

"Impossible!" repeated the king, with a faint ironical laugh. "To some hearts all things are possible."

"You had a mother once," continued Charles, after a painful pause. "But she was good and kind; and she is dead. Know you how she died?--Mine still lives--and now it is I who die."

"Speak not thus, I entreat you, sire!" interrupted Henry. "This is horrible!"

"Horrible! is it not?" repeated the wretched king with the same harrowing laugh. "Henry! trust not yourself to the tender mercies of my mother!"

Again the same strange noise struck upon the ear of Henry of Navarre.

"Nor shall my people, my poor suffering people, be trusted to her care," continued the king with more energy. "Henry, thou art the only one, in this my palace of the Louvre, who loves me. In spite of all that has been said and done, thou alone hast left me in repose, hast never troubled my last days by conspiracies against my crown, and against my life--ay, my life! Brother has been set against Brother in bitter hatred. Thou alone hast not hated me, Henry. Thou alone, in spite of all the wrongs I have done thee--thou hast loved me. To thee I commend my poor patient wife--to thee I commend my people!"

"But, sire, should it please Heaven to take you from us--and may you live long, I pray"--resumed Henry of Navarre, whilst the king shook his head--"it will be your mother who will claim the regency, until the return from Poland of your brother, Henry of Anjou. It will be hers probably to command!"

"When I bid you not trust yourself to her tender mercies," replied Charles, "think not I spoke as a child. My life is ebbing fast, I know, but my mind is clear. Give me that paper!" He pointed to a paper laid upon a table close by his side. "This is my last and binding command, which I shall now sign with my own hand," he continued, as Henry brought him the desired paper, and laid it upon his couch. "This declares, that, by my last will, I appoint you as Regent of this realm until the return of the King of Poland. The name is still in blank; for I would not that those who drew it up should know my purpose, and bring my mother clamouring to my side, to thwart my last wish by her reproaches. Give me a pen, Henry. Now, support me--so--in your arms. Where is now the paper? My sight is troubled; but I shall find strength to see and strength to trace that name."

Raised up in the arms of the King of Navarre, Charles took the pen placed in his hand, and laid it on the paper.

"When you are regent, Henry," he paused to say, "remove my mother from your court. It is I who bid you do it. She would hate you with a mortal hatred; for power is her only aim in this world, and for that she would forfeit her salvation in the next. Not a moment would your life be in safety. She would poison you, as she has poisoned her miserable son."

"Sire! retract those words!" said a voice close by the dying king.

Before the couch of her son stood Catherine de Medicis. Her face was cold and passionless as ever, although her dark eyes gleamed with unusual fire, and her pallid face was still more pale.

"What would you have with me, madam?" said Charles, shuddering, as she approached. "Have I not desired to be alone with my good brother Henry upon affairs of state?"

"Retract those words, sire!" pursued his mother, unheeding him. "You have brought against me the most awful accusation that malice can lay to the charge of a human being. Would you leave this world, if so it please the saints above, with so hideous a lie upon your lips? Sire! retract those words!"

"Leave me, woman! Leave me to die in peace!" said Charles, with an effort of energy, struggling with his weakness and the violence of his emotions. "Be you guilty of this deed, or be you not, may Heaven forgive you your misdeeds, as I pray it may forgive me mine."

"My son! my son!" cried Catherine, kneeling down by his side, whilst the tears, which were ever ready at her command, and might now have been natural tears of rage, rolled down her cheeks, "I cannot leave you thus, a victim to the most horrible suspicion. I may have erred against you, but it has been unconsciously. I have ever sought your honour and your glory, perhaps by means you now condemn; but I have acted, like a weak, fallible mortal, for the best. No--no--you really cannot entertain thoughts so terrible. It cannot be. This is the suggestion of my enemies--and my enemies are yours, my son." And, as she said these words, Catherine darted a cold, sharp look of rage at Henry of Navarre, who had risen, and now remained an unwilling spectator of so terrible a scene--a scene of the most fearful passions of the human heart between mother and son, and upon the bed of death. "No--no--you will retract your words. You will say you did not entertain that frightful thought."

As the Queen-mother spoke, her eyes were fixed upon the paper, which was to consign the regency to Henry of Navarre; and, in spite of the animation with which she addressed her son, it was evident that upon that paper her chief thoughts were directed.

"Madam!" said Charles faintly, raising himself with difficulty on one elbow, and struggling with internal pain--"you have received my last words of pardon. Let my last moments be undisturbed."

"Charles, Charles!" exclaimed his mother, wringing her hands. "Let me remove these horrible ideas from your mind. What shall I say? What shall I do? Can a son think thus of a mother who has ever loved him? Oh, no!--it is impossible. Your mind wandered. You did not think it."

"Enough, madam!--enough!" replied the King. "It was the passing fancy of a wandering brain, if you will have it so. It is gone now. I think of it no more. Now leave me."

"But, my son," persisted Catherine, "I have such secrets to reveal to you, as you alone may hear. They are necessary to the safety of the state--necessary to the salvation of your soul hereafter. I cannot, must not, leave you. It is my bounded duty to remain."

"The time is past, madam," gasped her son, "when I can listen to such matters. My moments are counted--and I have that to do that can brook no delay."

Catherine sprung up with a feeling of despair, and turned away for a moment.

"It is near noon," she muttered to herself. "And it was to be at noon, said the astrologer. Oh! a few minutes--but a few minutes"----

"My son," she continued aloud, again approaching the bed of the king, and having recourse once more to that importunity, which, in the latter days of his reign, was the only weapon with which she could contrive to work upon the mind of Charles, "but I have that to reveal which deeply affects the honour of our family. Would you that other ears should listen to our shame?"

"Aye, ever shame--ever blood--ever remorse!" murmured Charles, turning his head upon his pillow.

"Would you refuse the last request of her who is, after all, your mother?" exclaimed Catherine, with the well acted accent of extreme despair.

The king uttered not a word.

"Leave us, sir," said the Queen-mother, with an imperious sign of her hand to Henry of Navarre, upon seeing these symptoms of the wavering resolution of her son.

The young prince remained unmoved, to await the will of the dying king.

"Leave us, Henry," said the Monarch; "you will return to me anon. This is her last request--these are her last words. When she is gone, let me see you instantly."

Henry of Navarre shook his head with a look of mournful resignation, and then bowed and left the apartment.

"Now speak, madam," said the king, "and quickly. What would you reveal to me?"

"That Henry of Navarre conspires against your throne," commenced Catherine, rapidly; "that he has been proved to be in connexion with that sorcerer who has aimed at your life; that the chiefs of the accursed Huguenot party are concealed in Paris, awaiting but your death to place the crown upon his brow; that he also looks to this event to abjure once more the true Catholic faith, and return into the bosom of heresy; that by giving power into his hands, you endanger the safety of the state; that by committing the rule of the country to a Heretic and a Seceder, you endanger the safety of your own soul; that, by such a step, the honour of our House will be eternally lost; that in all the countries of Catholic Christendom, we shall be pointed at with the finger of scorn and shame."

"Madam, you have deceived me with words of equivocation to gain my ear," replied the king, mustering all the strength that still remained to him, "and you deceive me now."

"I deceive you not, my son," pursued Catherine, eagerly. "Each word that I pronounce is God's own truth. Could you then confide into the power of a base and lying Heretic, one who seeks your death, but to grasp himself the Crown, the government of a Catholic and a Christian country? Hear you not already the anathema of our holy father, the Pope, that curses even in the tomb that soul lost by a step so rash? See you not already our blessed Virgin, and all the saints of Heaven, turn from you their glorious faces, and refuse to look on one who has despised them, and set them at nought by a deed so unholy? Feel you not already the torture of that punishment to which the Heretic, and the aider and abettor of the Heretic, are eternally condemned? Have I deceived you when I said that you endanger the welfare of your own immortal soul?"

"But you err, madam," said her miserable son, shuddering at the picture thus placed before him, to work upon his mind in these last moments. "Henry is become a good and fervent Catholic."

"All is ready for his abjuration at the moment of your death," continued the Queen-mother. "To resume a powerful party among the Huguenots, he will renounce our religion. My son--my son--pause, reflect, before you thus sacrifice your own salvation, and throw your unhappy country beneath the Papal ban."

"Heaven aid me!" cried the miserable Charles. "On all sides darkness and despair, in this world and the next."

"Heaven shall aid you, my son," pursued his wily mother, "if you but trust the guidance of your kingdom to such hands as shall maintain it in the true religion. The paper that resigns your country to the hands of a regent, lies, I see, before you. Can you hesitate? Can you a moment doubt? Whose name should fill that space, where but just now you would have written the traitorous name of Henry of Navarre?"

"God guide my unhappy France!" sighed the king, turning his face away and closing his eyes. "In His hands I leave it."

Catherine smiled with a look of scorn, and then picking up the pen, which had fallen by the bedside, calmly fetched some ink from the table, and attempted to place the pen in her son's hand.

Before her purpose could be fulfilled, a noise was heard in the outer room. The voice of a woman clamoured loudly for admittance. Charles heard that voice, opened his eyes, and attempted to raise his head.

"Ah, it is she!" he cried, with choking voice. "At last!--at last! Let her come in."

Catherine de Medicis rose, for the purpose, probably, of opposing the order of her son; but before she could reach the door, an old woman, simply attired, and of a strange appearance and expression, had entered the room.

"What means this intrusion, and at such a moment?" exclaimed the Queen-mother.

"Perrotte!" stammered Charles. "Ah! thou art come at last to console and to forgive me."

Catherine clenched her teeth tightly together with rage; but she no longer attempted to oppose the entrance of the old woman.

The old Huguenot nurse advanced with solemn step into the room, and with a stern and troubled brow; but, on a sudden, a host of recollections seemed to crowd upon her mind at the sight of that emaciated form, and, hurrying to the side of the king, she flung herself down upon the couch and sobbed bitterly.

"Perrotte--my darling old Perrotte!" sobbed forth the dying king. "Art thou come then at last to thy poor nursling? Thou wast a mother to me, and yet thou couldst desert thy poor boy; but he deserved his lot. Perrotte! Perrotte! Thou knowest not what I have suffered since thou hast left me."

"My son," said Catherine, advancing, "is this a moment to bestow your tenderness upon a miserable woman like this? Greet her if you will, but bid her leave us."

"She was a mother to me--she"----continued Charles unheeding her, and, drawing forth his emaciated hand from beneath the coverlid, he held it forth towards the old woman, who lay stretched across his feet.

"Charlot," said the old woman, raising up her head with a haggard look, "they told me that thou wast dying; and I forgot all--all that thou hast done of evil--to see thee once more--to hear the words of repentance from thy own lips--to console and guide. They would have opposed my coming. They had placed guards about my door; but my Jocelyne, my grandchild, found means to lure them from their post, and I escaped them. I had promised her--what had I promised her? Oh, my poor Charlot! my brain wanders strangely at times. No matter. Here, in your palace of the Louvre, too, they would have shut the doors to me; but they knew you loved me, Charlot, and they dared not refuse my supplications. Oh my boy, my boy, that I should see you thus!"

"Perrotte! hast thou forgiven me?" said the king with a violent effort, for his breath was now fast failing him. His mother watched the scene with folded arms and haughty mien. Each ebbing of the breath brought her nearer to her much-desired power.

"Hast thou forgiven me?" sobbed the king.

"May God forgive the injuries thou hast done to others, as I now forgive thee on thy bed of suffering, those thou hast done to mine," said the old woman solemnly; and rising from her recumbent position, she advanced to the head of the couch, and took the dying man in her arms, as it were an infant she clasped to her bosom.

"And how can I repay thee, mother?" said Charles to his nurse; "speak quickly, for my moments are but few!"

"By thy repentance, my poor son," replied the Huguenot woman earnestly. "There is still time to repair thy errors. If thy remorse has reconciled thee to thy God, let thy last act reconcile thee to thy injured fellow-creatures. Ay! it is of that I would have spoken. That was my promise. Let thy last act of government as King, depute thy power into the hands of him who alone can pacify the unhappy religious discords of thy state, and thus thou mayst still save the life of the innocent and unjustly condemned."

"Woman! do you dare even in my presence?" said Catherine advancing.

"Silence, madam. I have heard you," interrupted her son: "let me now hear her who has been my real mother."

"My son, can you listen to the vile insinuations of an accursed heretic? Think on your soul," cried Catherine.

"Yea, think on thy soul, my son," said Perrotte solemnly, "and earn its salvation by thy repentance."

"Let that woman be dragged from our presence, who thus dares to utter treason and blasphemy in our face," exclaimed the Queen-mother, forgetting her forbearance in her wrath.

"My son, my son! Let peace and pardon await thee," urged the old Huguenot nurse, her face growing more wild with the excitement of the moment.

"Madam," said Charles faintly to the Queen-mother, "would you shorten the few moments still accorded to me of life? Perrotte, give me that pen, guide my hand to that paper. Quickly, as thou lovedst me, woman!"

"Never," exclaimed Catherine, violently grasping the arm of her dying son, as it approached the paper.

Charles raised his head to speak to her; but his emotions were too violent for his feeble frame. His lips quivered; the blood rose to his mouth, and choked his utterance. He fell back on his pillow, whilst a hollow rattling sounded in his throat; the pen remained between his powerless fingers.

"Ah! he is no more! he is dead!" screamed the nurse in despair, and she flung herself upon the bed.

"No--no," said the Queen-mother to herself. "There is still life. My son! Son," she continued aloud, "give me thy hand. If thou wilt sign that paper--be it signed." And grasping his hand, she conducted it to the place of signature on the paper. Mechanically the fingers followed the impulse she bestowed upon them. But four letters only of the name of Charles had been traced, when Catherine uttered a fearful scream. A rough hand had grasped her own, and lacerated its skin. The first thought of her superstitious mind was, that the arch-fiend himself had risen up in bodily form before her. On to the bed had sprung the ape; with a movement of detestation to the Queen-mother, which the animal had always evinced, when she approached its master; it bit the hand that held that of the dying king.

Catherine drew back with another cry, but after a moment she again advanced her hand to grasp that of her son. When she took it within her own it was utterly motionless; but, nothing daunted in her purpose, she again fixed the pen between the dead fingers, and thus guiding them, contrived to trace the three remaining letters, regardless of the stream of blood, which, trickling from her wounded hand, besmeared that fatal signature. Then letting fall the dead man's hand, she wrote her own name firmly into the blank space.

The Huguenot woman, aroused by her scream, had gazed upon the daring deed with horror.

For a moment not a sound was heard.

On one side of the corpse knelt the nurse, who had loved so well that erring man. On the other stood the Queen-mother, trembling in spite of her cold and dauntless nature. At the bed's head sat the hideous ape, grinning a fearful grin, as it were the evil spirit that had arisen to claim the lost soul of him who had thus passed away.

"Charles the King is dead," exclaimed the Queen-mother, "and Catherine de Medicis is Regent of the Realm!"

"It is false! That signature is a forgery," cried Perrotte, starting up, her eyes staring before her with all the expression of the deranged in mind. "I saw it done. To the world I will proclaim that--that Catherine de Medicis is a false Queen, and a usurping Regent."

Catherine smiled a smile of scorn; and advancing to the door of the outer room, she flung it open with the words.

"The King is dead!"

"The King, is dead!" was repeated along the corridors of the Louvre.

A pause ensued.

"The King is dead! Long live the King, Henry the Third of France!" again said Catherine.

"Long live the King!" was once more shouted from mouth to mouth.

"Gentlemen, his Majesty has been pleased, before his death, to sign a warrant appointing his mother Regent of France," announced Catherine once more to those assembled without.

"Long live the Queen Regent," was the cry which announced to many an anxious heart of the various parties in the State, that the reign of the dreaded Queen-mother had commenced.

"Let some of those without advance and seize that woman!" was the first order of the Regent. "Heed not her words! She is mad!"

Catherine of Medicis spoke with greater truth than she herself believed. The shock of that scene of death, and strife, and evil passions, had again turned the old woman's brain.

CONCLUSION.

One of the first acts of the Regency of Catherine de Medicis, was to give directions for the hastening the trial of La Mole, upon the charge of sorcery against the life of the late King. Although, with the Regency in her power, and in daily expectation of the return from Poland of her favourite son, whose weak and pliant mind she was aware she could bend to her own will in every thing, and thus have the whole power of the government within her own grasp, yet she still pursued her vengeance against the man who, in conspiring to place another of her sons upon the throne, had thwarted her designs. The wax figure formed by Ruggieri, who himself was fully screened by the Queen-mother, was made to form a prominent feature in this celebrated trial; and it is well known that the unfortunate La Mole fell a victim to an ambition, which, in the confused and distracted state of affairs at the time, could scarcely have been looked upon as a crime.

Among those who thronged to witness his execution was one, whose thread of life was nearly torn asunder by the blow of that axe which severed the beloved head from the trunk. Poor Jocelyne only recovered from the state of insensibility into which she fell, to linger on a few months of a wretched existence, during which she never spoke. Her heart was broken. The King's nurse was conveyed by the order of the Queen Regent to a place of security; but as soon as it was known that her senses were really lost, she was allowed to be taken back to her own home. Jocelyne's only thought for the living before her own death, was concentrated in her grandmother; when her bright spirit fled, it was Alayn who performed the mournful task of care for the welfare of the miserable old woman.

Henry of Anjou returned from Poland to claim his Crown; and, as Henry the Third of France, he filled the country with the scandals of that folly, licentiousness, and weakness of mind, which were fostered by his mother, Catherine de Medicis, in order to retain the power she coveted, completely within her own grasp.

Upon the assumption of the Regency, Henry of Navarre contrived to fly, in spite of the plans laid to entrap him by the Queen-mother, to his own country; his wife Margaret accompanied him to his solitude; and paid the penalty of her lightness of conduct at the court of France, in sorrow and ennui.

Despised and rejected by all parties, the weak Duke of Alencon, after a vain and abortive attempt to raise himself into a position of greater distinction, as the husband of Elizabeth of England, in whose eyes he found no grace or favour, died early, unlamented, and speedily forgotten.

A CAMPAIGN IN TEXAS.[G]

"A meeting of citizens"--so ran the announcement that, on the morning of the 11th October 1835, was seen posted, in letters a foot high, at the corner of every street in New Orleans--"a meeting of citizens this evening, at eight o'clock, in the Arcade Coffeehouse. It concerns the freedom and sovereignty of a people in whose veins the blood of the Anglo-Saxon flows. Texas, the prairie-land, has risen in arms against the tyrant Santa Anna, and the greedy despotism of the Romish priesthood, and implores the assistance of the citizens of the Union. We have therefore convoked an assembly of the inhabitants of this city, and trust to see it numerously attended.

"_The Committee for Texas._"

The extensive and fertile province of Texas had, up to the period of Mexico's separation from Spain, been utterly neglected. Situated at the north-eastern extremity of the vast Mexican empire, and exposed to the incursions of the Comanches, and other warlike tribes, it contained but a scanty population of six thousand souls, who, for safety's sake, collected together in a few towns, and fortified mission-houses, and even there were compelled to purchase security by tribute to the Indians. It was but a very short time before the outbreak of the Mexican revolution, that the Spaniards began to turn their attention to Texas, and to encourage emigration from the United States. The rich soil, the abundance of game, the excellence of the climate, were irresistible inducements; and soon hundreds of hardy backwoodsmen crossed the Sabine, with their families and worldly goods, and commenced the work of colonization. Between the iron-fisted Yankees and the indolent cowardly Mexicans, the Indian marauders speedily discovered the difference; instead of tribute and unlimited submission, they were now received with rifle-bullets and stern resistance; gradually they ceased their aggressions, and Texas became comparatively a secure residence.

The Mexican revolution broke out and triumphed, and at first the policy of the new government was favourable to the Americans in Texas, whose numbers each day increased. But after a time several laws, odious and onerous to the settlers, were passed; and various disputes and partial combats with the Mexican garrisons occurred. When Santa Anna put himself at the head of the liberal party in Mexico, the Texians gladly raised his banner; but they soon discovered that the change was to prove of little advantage to them. Santa Anna's government showed a greater jealousy of the American settlers than any previous one had done; their prayer, that the province they had colonized might be erected into a state of the Mexican union, was utterly disregarded, and its bearer, Stephen F. Austin, detained in prison at Mexico; various citizens were causelessly arrested, and numerous other acts of injustice committed. At last, in the summer of 1835, Austin procured his release, and returned to Texas, where he was joyfully received by the aggrieved colonists. Presently arrived large bodies of troops, under the Mexican general, Cos, destined to strengthen the Texian garrisons; and at the same time came a number of ordinances, as ridiculous as they were unjust. One of these ordered the Texians to give up their arms, only retaining one gun for every five plantations; another forbade the building of churches. The tyranny of such edicts, and the positive cruelty of the first-named, in a country surrounded by tribes of Indian robbers, are too evident to require comment. The Texians, although they were but twenty-seven thousand against eight millions, at once resolved to resist; and to do so with greater effect, they sent deputies to the United States, to crave assistance in the struggle about to commence.

The summons of the Texian committee of New Orleans to their fellow-citizens was enthusiastically responded to. At the appointed hour, the immense Arcade Coffeehouse was thronged to the roof, speeches in favour of Texian liberty were made and applauded to the echo; and two lists were opened--one for subscriptions, the other for the names of those who were willing to lend the aid of their arms to their oppressed fellow-countrymen. Before the meeting separated, ten thousand dollars were subscribed, and on the following afternoon, the steamer Washita ascended the Mississippi with the first company of volunteers. These had ransacked the tailors' shops for grey clothing, such being the colour best suited to the prairie, and thence they received the name of "The Greys;" their arms were rifles, pistols, and the far-famed bowie-knife. The day after their departure, a second company of Greys set sail, but went round by sea to the Texian coast; and the third instalment of these ready volunteers was the company of Tampico Blues, who took ship for the port of Tampico. The three companies consisted of Americans, English, French, and several Germans. Six of the latter nation were to be found in the ranks of the Greys; and one of them, a Prussian, of the name of Ehrenberg, who appears to have been for some time an inhabitant of the United States, and to be well acquainted with the country, its people, their language and peculiarities, survived, in one instance by a seeming miracle, the many desperate fights and bloody massacres that occurred during the short but severe conflict for Texian independence, in which nearly the whole of his comrades were slain. He has recently published an account of the campaign; and his narrative, highly characteristic and circumstantial, derives a peculiar interest from his details of the defeats suffered by the Texians, before they could succeed in shaking off the Mexican yoke. Of their victories, and especially of the crowning one at San Jacinto, various accounts have already appeared; but the history of their reverses, although not less interesting, is far less known; for the simple reason, that the Mexicans gave no quarter to those whom they styled rebels, and that the defeat of a body of Texians was almost invariably followed by its extermination.

Great was the enthusiasm, and joyful the welcome, with which the Texian colonists received the first company of volunteers, when, under the command of Captain Breece, they landed from their steamboat upon the southern bank of the river Sabine. No sooner had they set foot on shore, than a flag of blue silk, embroidered with the words, "To the first company of Texian volunteers from New Orleans," was presented to them in the name of the women of Texas; the qualification of Texian citizens was conferred upon them; every house was placed at their disposal for quarters; and banquets innumerable were prepared in their honour. But the moment was critical--time was too precious to be expended in feasts and merry-making, and they pressed onwards. A two days' march brought them to San Augustin, two more to Nacoydoches, and thence, after a short pause, they set out on their journey of five hundred miles to St Antonio, where they expected first to burn powder. Nor were they deceived in their expectations. They found the Texian militia encamped before the town, which, as well as its adjacent fort of the Alamo, was held by the Mexicans, the Texians were besieging it in the best manner their imperfect means and small numbers would permit. An amusing account is given by Mr Ehrenberg of the camp and proceedings of the besieging force:--

We had arrived late in the night, and at sunrise a spectacle offered itself to us, totally different from any thing we had ever before beheld. To our left flowed the river St Antonio, which, although it rises but a few miles from the town of the same name, is already, on reaching the latter, six or eight feet deep, and eighteen or twenty yards broad. It here describes a curve, enclosing a sort of promontory or peninsula, at the commencement of which, upstream, the Texian camp was pitched. At the opposite or lower extremity, but also on the right bank of the river, was the ancient town of St Antonio, hidden from the camp by the thick wood that fringes the banks of all Texian streams. Between us and the town was a maize-field, a mile long, and at that time lying fallow; opposite to the field, on the left bank, and only separated from the town by the river, stood the Alamo, the principal fortress of the province of Texas. The camp itself extended over a space half a mile in length, surrounded by maize-fields and prairie, the latter sprinkled with muskeet thickets, and with groups of gigantic cactuses; in the high grass between which the horses and oxen of our troops were peaceably grazing. On entering the adjacent fields, the air was instantly darkened by millions of blackbirds, which rose like a cloud from the ground, described a few circles, and then again settled, to seek their food upon the earth. In one field, which had been used as a place of slaughter for the cattle, whole troops of vultures, of various kinds, were stalling about amongst the offal, or sitting, with open beaks and wings outspread, upon the dry branches of the neighbouring pecan-trees, warming themselves in the sunbeams, no bad type of the Mexicans; whilst here and there, a solitary wolf or prairie dog prowled amongst the heads, hides, and entrails of the slaughtered beasts, taking his breakfast as deliberately as his human neighbours. The _reveille_ had sounded, and the morning gun been fired from the Alamo, when presently the drum beat to summon the various companies to roll-call; and the men were seen emerging from their tents and huts. It will give some idea of the internal organization of the Texian army, if I record the proceedings of the company that lay opposite to us, the soldiers composing which were disturbed by the tap of the drum in the agreeable occupation of cooking their breakfast. This consisted of pieces of beef, which they roasted at the fire on small wooden spits. Soon a row of these warriors, some only half-dressed, stood before the sergeant, who, with the roll of the company in his hand, was waiting their appearance; they were without their rifles, instead of which, most of them carried a bowie-knife in one hand, and a skewer, transfixing a lump of smoking meat, in the other. Several did not think proper to obey the summons at all, their roast not being yet in a state that permitted them to leave it. At last the sergeant began to call the names, which were answered to alternately from the ranks or from some neighbouring fire, and once a sleepy "here!" proceeding from under the canvass of a tent, caused a hearty laugh amongst the men, and made the sergeant look sulky, although he passed it over as if it were no unusual occurrence. When all the names had been called, he had no occasion to dismiss his men, for each of them, after answering, had returned to the fire and his breakfast.

We Greys, particularly the Europeans, looked at each other, greatly amused by this specimen of Texian military discipline. We ourselves, it is true, up to this time, had never even had the roll called, but had been accustomed, as soon as the _reveille_ sounded, to get our breakfast, and then set forward in a body, or by twos and threes, trotting, walking, or galloping, as best pleased us. Only in one respect were we very particular; namely, that the quartermaster and two or three men, should start an hour before us, to warn the inhabitants of our approach, and get food and quarters ready for our arrival. If we did not find every thing prepared, and that it was the quarter-master's fault, he was reduced to the ranks, as were also any of the other officers who misbehaved themselves. I must observe, however, that we were never obliged to break either of our captains; for both Breece of ours, and Captain Cook of the other company of Greys, made themselves invariably beloved and respected. Cook has since risen to the rank of major-general, and is, or was the other day, quartermaster-general of the republic of Texas.

Towards nine o'clock, a party crossed the field between our camp and the town, to reinforce a small redoubt erected by Cook's Greys, and provided with two cannon, which were continually thundering against the Alamo, and from time to time knocking down a fragment of wall. The whole affair seemed like a party of pleasure, and every telling shot was hailed with shouts of applause. Meanwhile, the enemy were not idle, but kept up a fire from eight or nine pieces, directed against the redoubt, the balls and canister ploughing up the ground in every direction, and driving clouds of dust towards the camp. It was no joke to get over the six or eight hundred yards that intervened between the latter and the redoubt, for there was scarcely any cover, and the Mexican artillery was far better served than ours. Nevertheless, the desire to obtain a full view of the Alamo, which, from the redoubt, presented an imposing appearance, induced eight men, including myself, to take a start across the field. It seemed as if the enemy had pointed at us every gun in the fort; the bullets fell around us like hail, and for a moment the blasting tempest compelled us to take refuge behind a pecan-tree. Here we stared at each other, and laughed heartily at the absurd figure we cut, standing, eight men deep, behind a nut-tree, whilst our comrades, both in the camp and the redoubt, shouted with laughter at every discharge that rattled amongst the branches over our heads.

"This is what you call making war," said one of our party, Thomas Camp by name.

"And that," said another, as a whole swarm of iron musquitos buzzed by him, "is what we Americans call variations on Yankee Doodle."

Just then there was a tremendous crash amongst the branches, and we dashed out from our cover, and across to the redoubt, only just in time; for the next moment the ground on which we had been standing was strewn with the heavy boughs of the pecan-tree.

All was life and bustle in the little redoubt; the men were standing round the guns, talking and joking, and taking it by turns to have a shot at the old walls. Before firing, each man was compelled to name his mark, and say what part of the Alamo he meant to demolish, and then bets were made as to his success or failure.

"A hundred rifle-bullets to twenty," cried one man, "that I hit between the third and fourth window of the barracks."

"Done!" cried half a dozen voices. The shot was fired, and the clumsy artilleryman had to cast bullets all next day.

"My pistols--the best in camp, by the by"--exclaimed another aspirant, "against the worst in the redoubt."

"Well, sir, I reckon I may venture," said a hard-featured backwoodsman in a green hunting-shirt, whose pistols, if not quite so good as those wagered, were at any rate the next best. Away flew the ball, and the pistols of the unlucky marksman were transferred to Green-shirt, who generously drew forth his own, and handed them to the loser.

"Well, comrade, s'pose I must give you yer revenge. If I don't hit, you'll have your pistols back again."

The cannon was reloaded, and the backwoodsman squinted along it, as if it had been his own rifle, his features twisted up into a mathematical calculation, and his right hand describing in the air all manner of geometrical figures. At last he was ready; one more squint along the gun, the match was applied, and the explosion took place. The rattle of the stones warned us that the ball had taken effect. When the smoke cleared away, we looked in vain for the third and fourth windows, and a tremendous hurra burst forth for old Deaf Smith, as he was called, for the bravest Texian who ever hunted across a prairie, and who subsequently, with a small corps of observation, did such good service on the Mexican frontier between Nueces and the Rio Grande.

The restless and impetuous Yankee volunteers were not long in finding opportunities of distinction. Some Mexican sharpshooters having come down to the opposite side of the river, whence they fired into the redoubt, were repelled by a handful of the Greys, who then, carried away by their enthusiasm, drove in the enemy's outposts, and entered the suburbs of the town. They got too far, and were in imminent risk of being overpowered by superior numbers, when Deaf Smith came to their rescue with a party of their comrades. Several days passed away in skirmishing, without any decisive assault being made upon the town or fort. The majority of the men were for attacking; but some of the leaders opposed it, and wished to retire into winter quarters in rear of the Guadalupe river, wait for further reinforcements from the States, and then, in the spring, again advance, and carry St Antonio by a _coup de main_. To an army, in whose ranks subordination and discipline were scarcely known, and where every man thought his opinion as worthy to be listened to as that of the general, a difference of opinion was destruction. The Texian militia, disgusted with their leader, Burleson, retreated in straggling parties across the Guadalupe; about four hundred men, consisting chiefly of the volunteers from New Orleans and the Mississippi, remained behind, besieging St Antonio, of which the garrison was nearly two thousand strong. The four hundred melted away, little by little, to two hundred and ten; but these held good, and resolved to attack the town. They did so, and took it, house by house, with small loss to themselves, and a heavy one to the Mexicans. On the sixth day, the garrison of the Alamo, which was commanded by General Cos, and which the deadly Texian rifles had reduced to little more than half its original numbers, capitulated. After laying down their arms, they were allowed to retire beyond the Rio Grande. Forty-eight pieces of cannon, four thousand muskets, and a quantity of military stores, fell into the hands of the Texians, whose total loss amounted to six men dead, and twenty-nine wounded.

After two or three weeks' sojourn at St Antonio, it was determined to advance upon Matamoras; and on the 30th December the volunteers set out, leaving a small detachment to garrison the Alamo. The advancing column was commanded by Colonel Johnson; but its real leader, although he declined accepting a definite command, was Colonel Grant, a Scotchman, who had formerly held a commission in a Highland regiment, but had now been for many years resident in Mexico. On reaching the little fort of Goliad, near the town of La Bahia, which had a short time previously been taken by a few Texians under Demmit, they halted, intending to wait for reinforcements. A company of Kentuckians, and some other small parties, joined them, making up their strength to about six hundred men; but they were still obliged to wait for ammunition, and as the troops began to get impatient, their leaders marched them to Refugio, a small town and ruinous fort, about thirty miles further on. Here, in the latter days of January 1836, General Houston, commander-in-chief of the Texian forces, suddenly and unexpectedly appeared amongst them. He assembled the troops, harangued them, and deprecated the proposed expedition to Matamoras as useless, that town being without the proposed limits of the republic. Nevertheless, so great was the impatience of inaction, that two detachments, together about seventy men, marched by different roads towards the Rio Grande, under command of Grant and Johnson. Their example might probably have been followed by others, had not the arrival of some strong reinforcements from the United States caused various changes in the plan of campaign. The fresh troops consisted of Colonel Fanning's free corps, the Georgia battalion under Major Ward, and the Red Rovers, from Alabama, under Doctor Shackleford. Fanning's and Ward's men, and the Greys, retired to Goliad, and set actively to work to improve and strengthen the fortifications; whilst Colonel Grant, whose chief failing appears to have been over-confidence, continued with a handful of followers his advance to the Rio Grande, promising at least to bring back a supply of horses for the use of the army.

On the 5th of March, the garrison of Goliad received intelligence of the declaration of Texian independence, and of the appointment of a government, with Burnet as president, and Lorenzo de Zavala, a Mexican, as vice-president. At the same time, came orders from General Houston to destroy the forts of Goliad and the Alamo, and retreat immediately behind the Guadalupe. Santa Anna, with twelve thousand men, was advancing, by rapid marches, towards Texas. The order reached the Alamo too late, for the little garrison of a hundred and eighty men was already hemmed in, on all sides, by several thousand Mexicans, and had sent messengers, imploring assistance, to Fanning at Goliad, and to Houston, who was then stationed with five hundred militia at Gonzales, high up on the Guadalupe. A second despatch from General Houston gave Fanning the option of retiring behind the Guadalupe; or, if his men wished it, of marching to the relief of the Alamo, in which latter case he was to join Houston and his troops at Seguin's Rancho, about forty miles from St Antonio. Fanning, however, who, although a man of brilliant and distinguished courage, seems to have been an undecided and wrongheaded officer, did neither, but preferred to wait for the enemy within the walls of Goliad. In vain did a majority of his men, and especially the Greys, urge him to march to the rescue of their comrades; he positively refused to do so, although each day witnessed the arrival of fresh couriers from St Antonio, imploring succour.

One morning three men belonging to the small detachment which, under Colonel Grant, had gone upon the mad expedition to the Rio Grande, arrived at Goliad with news of the destruction of their companions. Only thirty in number, they had collected four hundred fine horses, and were driving them northward to rejoin their friends, when, in a narrow pass between thickets, they were suddenly surrounded by several hundred of the enemy's lancers, whose attack, however, seemed directed rather against the horses than the escort. Grant, whose courage was blind, and who had already witnessed many instances of the almost incredible poltroonery of those half-Indians, drew his sword, and charged the Mexicans, who were at least ten times his strength. A discharge of rifles and pistols stretched scores of the lancers upon the ground; but that discharge made, there was no time to reload, and the Texians had to defend themselves as best they might, with their bowie-knives and rifle-buts, against the lances of the foe, with the certainty that any of them who fell wounded from their saddles, would instantly be crushed and mangled under the feet of the wild horses, which, terrified by the firing and conflict, tore madly about the narrow field. Each moment the numbers of the Texians diminished, one after the other disappeared, transfixed by the lances, trampled by the hoofs. Colonel Grant and three men--those who brought the news to Goliad--had reached the outskirt of the _melee_, and might at once have taken to flight; but Grant perceived some others of his men still fighting heroically amongst the mass of Mexicans, and once more he charged in to rescue them. Every thing gave way before him, his broadsword whistled around him, and man after man fell beneath its stroke. His three followers having reloaded, were rushing forward to his support, when suddenly the fatal lasso flew through the air, its coils surrounded the body of the gallant Scot, and the next instant he lay upon the ground beneath the feet of the foaming and furious horses. In horrorstruck silence, the three survivors turned their horses' heads north-east, and fled from the scene of slaughter.

Besides this disaster, numerous detachments of Texians were cut off by the Mexicans, who now swarmed over the southern part of the province. Colonel Johnson and his party were surprised in the town of San Patricio and cut to pieces, Johnson and four of his followers being all that escaped. Thirty men under Captain King, who had been sent by Fanning to escort some settlers on their way northwards, were attacked by overpowering numbers, and, after a most desperate defence, utterly exterminated. The Georgia battalion under Major Ward, which had marched from Goliad to the assistance of King and his party, fell in with a large body of Mexican cavalry and infantry, and although, during the darkness, they managed to escape, they lost their way in the prairie, were unable to return to Goliad, and subsequently, as will hereafter be seen, fell into the hands of the enemy. The Alamo itself was taken, not a man surviving of the one hundred and eighty who had so valiantly defended it. On the other hand, we have Mr Ehrenberg's assurance that its capture cost Santa Anna two thousand two hundred men. In the ranks of the besieging army were between two and three thousand convicts, who, on all occasions, were put in the post of danger. At the attack on the Alamo they were promised a free pardon if they took the place. Nevertheless, they advanced reluctantly enough to the attack, and twice, when they saw their ranks mown down by the fire of the Texians, they turned to fly, but each time they were driven back to the charge by the bayonets and artillery of their countrymen. At last, when the greater part of these unfortunates had fallen, Santa Anna caused his fresh troops to advance, and the place was taken. The two last of the garrison fell by the Mexican bullets as they were rushing, torch in hand, to fire the powder magazine. The fall of the Alamo was announced to Colonel Fanning in a letter from Houston.

"The next point of the enemy's operations," said the old general, "will be Goliad, and let the garrison reflect on the immensity of the force that within a very few days will surround its walls. I conjure them to make a speedy retreat, and to join the militia behind the Guadalupe. Only by a concentration of our forces can we hope to achieve any thing; and if Goliad is besieged, it will be impossible for me to succour it, or to stake the fate of the republic upon a battle in the prairie, where the ground is so unfavourable to our troops. Once more, therefore, Colonel Fanning--in rear of the Guadalupe!"

At last, but unfortunately too late, Fanning decided to obey the orders of his general. The affairs of the republic of Texas were indeed in a most critical and unfavourable state. St Antonio taken, the army of volunteers nearly annihilated, eight or ten thousand Mexican troops in the country, for the garrison of Goliad no chance of relief in case of a siege, and, moreover, a scanty store of provisions. These were the weighty grounds which finally induced Fanning to evacuate and destroy Goliad. The history of the retreat will be best given in a condensed translation of the interesting narrative now before us.

On the 18th April 1836, says Mr Ehrenberg, at eight in the morning, we commenced our retreat from the demolished and still burning fort of Goliad. The fortifications, at which we had all worked with so much zeal, a heap of dried beef, to prepare which nearly seven hundred oxen had been slaughtered, and the remainder of our wheat and maize flour, had been set on fire, and were sending up black columns of smoke towards the clouded heavens. Nothing was to be seen of the enemy, although their scouts had for some days previously been observed in the west, towards St Antonio. All the artillery, with the exception of two long four-pounders and a couple of mortars, were spiked and left behind us. But the number of store and ammunition waggons with which we started was too great, and our means of drawing them inadequate, so that, before we had gone half a mile, our track was marked by objects of various kinds scattered about the road, and several carts had broken down or been left behind. At a mile from Goliad, on the picturesque banks of the St Antonio, the remainder of the baggage was abandoned or hastily thrown into the river, chests full of cartridges, the soldiers' effects, every thing, in short, was committed to the transparent waters; and having harnessed the oxen and draught horses to the artillery and to two ammunition waggons, we slowly continued the march, our foes still remaining invisible.

Our road lay through one of those enchanting landscapes, composed of small prairies, intersected by strips of oak and underwood. On all sides droves of oxen were feeding in the high grass, herds of wild-eyed deer gazed wonderingly at the army that thus intruded upon the solitary prairies of the west, and troops of horses dashed madly away upon our approach, the thunder of their hoofs continuing to be audible long after their disappearance. At eight miles from Goliad begins an extensive and treeless prairie, known as the Nine-mile Prairie; and across this, towards three in the afternoon, we had advanced about four or five miles. Myself and some of my comrades, who acted as rearguard, were about two miles behind, and had received orders to keep a sharp eye upon the forest, which lay at a considerable distance to our left; but as up to this time no signs of an enemy had been visible, we were riding along in full security, when, upon casually turning our heads, we perceived, about four miles off, at the edge of the wood, a something that resembled a man on horseback. But as the thing, whatever it was, did not appear to move, we decided that it must be a tree or some other inanimate object, and we rode on without taking further notice. We proceeded in this way for about a quarter of an hour, and then, the main body being only about a quarter of a mile before us, marching at a snail's pace, we halted to rest a little, and let our horses feed. Now, for the first time, as we gazed out over the seemingly boundless prairie, we perceived in our rear, and close to the wood, a long black line. At first we took it to be a herd of oxen which the settlers were driving eastward, to rescue them from the Mexicans; but the dark mass drew rapidly nearer, became each moment more plainly discernible, and soon we could no longer doubt that a strong body of Mexican cavalry was following us at full gallop. We sprang upon our horses, and, at the top of their speed, hurried after our friends, to warn them of the approaching danger. Its intimation was received with a loud hurra; all was made ready for the fight, a square was formed, and in this manner we marched on, as fast as possible certainly, but that was slowly enough. Fanning, our commander, was unquestionably a brave and daring soldier, but unfortunately he was by no means fitted for the post he held, or indeed for any undivided command. As a proof of this, instead of endeavouring to reach the nearest wood, hardly a mile off, and sheltered in which our Texian and American riflemen would have been found invincible, he resolved to give battle upon the open and unfavourable ground that we now occupied.

The Mexicans came up at a furious gallop to a distance of five or six hundred paces, and thence gave us a volley from their carbines, of which we took no notice, seeing that the bullets flew at a respectful height above our heads, or else fell whistling upon the earth before us, without even raising the dust. One only of the harmless things passed between me and my right hand man, and tore off part of the cap of my friend, Thomas Camp, who, after myself, was the youngest man in the army. We remained perfectly quiet, and waited for the enemy to come nearer, which he did, firing volley after volley. Our artillery officers, for the most part Poles, tall, handsome men, calmly waited the opportune moment to return the fire. It came; the ranks opened, and the artillery vomited death and destruction amongst the Mexicans, whose ill-broken horses recoiled in dismay and confusion from the flash and thunders of the guns. The effect of our fire was frightful, steeds and riders lay convulsed and dying upon the ground, and for a time the advance of the enemy was checked. We profited by this to continue our retreat, but had marched a very short distance before we were again threatened with a charge, and Fanning commanded a halt. It was pointed out to him that another body of the enemy was advancing upon our left, to cut us off from the wood, and that those who had already attacked us were merely sent to divert our attention whilst the manoeuvre was executed. But Fanning either did not see the danger, or he was vexed that another should be more quicksighted than himself, for he would not retract his order. At last, after much vain discussion, and after representing to him how necessary it was to gain the wood, the Greys declared that they would march thither alone. But it was too late. The enemy had already cut us off from it, and there was nothing left but to fight our way through them, or give battle where we stood. Fanning was for the latter course; and before the captains, who had formed a council of war, could come to a decision, the Mexican trumpets sounded the charge, and with shout and shot the cavalry bore down upon us, their wild cries, intended to frighten us, contrasting oddly with the silence and phlegm of our people, who stood waiting the opportunity to make the best use of their rifles. Again and again our artillery played havoc amongst the enemy, who, finding his cavalry so unsuccessful in its assaults, now brought up the infantry, in order to make a combined attack on all sides at once. Besides the Mexicans three hundred of their Indian allies, Lipans and Caranchuas, approached us on the left, stealing through the long grass, and, contemptible themselves, but formidable by their position, wounded several of our people almost before we perceived their proximity. A few discharges of canister soon rid us of these troublesome assailants.

Meanwhile the hostile infantry, who had now joined the cavalry, slowly advanced, keeping up a constant but irregular fire, which we replied to with our rifles. In a very short time we were surrounded by so dense a smoke that we were often compelled to pause and advance a little towards the enemy, before we could distinguish an object at which to aim. The whole prairie was covered with clouds of smoke, through which were seen the rapid flashes of the musketry, accompanied by the thunder of the artillery, the sharp clear crack of our rifles, and the occasional blare of the Mexican trumpets, encouraging to the fight. At that moment, I believe there was not a coward in the field; in the midst of such a tumult there was no time to think of self. We rushed on to meet the advancing foe, and many of us found ourselves standing firing in the very middle of his ranks. I myself was one of these. In the smoke and confusion I had got too far forward, and was too busy loading and firing, to perceive that I was in the midst of the Mexicans. As soon as I discovered my mistake, I hurried back to our own position, in all the greater haste, because the touchhole of my rifle had got stopped.

But things went badly with us; many of our people were killed, more, severely wounded; all our artillerymen, with the exception of one Pole, had fallen, and formed a wall of dead bodies round the guns; the battlefield was covered with dead and dying men and horses, with rifles and other weapons. Fanning himself had been thrice wounded. The third bullet had gone through two coats and through the pocket of his overalls, in which he had a silk handkerchief, and had entered the flesh, but, strange to say, without cutting through all the folds of the silk; so that when he drew out the handkerchief, the ball fell out of it, and he then for the first time felt the pain of the wound.

It was between five and six o'clock. In vain had the cavalry endeavoured to bring their horses against our ranks; each attempt had been rendered fruitless by the steady fire of our artillery and rifles, and at last they were obliged to retreat. The infantry also retired without waiting for orders, and our guns, which were now served by the Greys, sent a last greeting after them. Seven hundred Mexicans lay dead upon the field; but we also had lost a fifth part of our men, more than had ever fallen on the side of the Texians in any contest since the war began, always excepting the massacre at the Alamo. The enemy still kept near us, apparently disposed to wait till the next day, and then renew their attacks. Night came on, but brought us no repose; a fine rain began to fall, and spoiled the few rifles that were still in serviceable order. Each moment we expected an assault from the Mexicans, who had divided themselves into three detachments, of which one was posted in the direction of Goliad, another upon the road to Victoria, which was our road, and the third upon our left, equidistant from the other two, so as to form a triangle. Their signals showed us their position through the darkness. We saw that it was impossible to retreat unperceived and that our only plan was to spike the guns, abandon the wounded and artillery, put our rifles in as good order as might be, and cut our way through that body of Mexicans which held the road to Victoria. Once in the wood, we were safe, and all Santa Anna's regiments would have been insufficient to dislodge us. The Greys were of opinion that it was better to sacrifice a part than the whole, and to abandon the wounded, rather than place ourselves at the mercy of a foe in whose honour and humanity no trust could be reposed. But Fanning was of a different opinion. Whether his wounds--none of them, it is true, very severe--and the groans and complaints of the dying, had rendered him irresolute, and shaken his well-tried courage, or whether it was the hope that our vanguard, which had reached the wood before the Mexicans surrounded us, would return with a reinforcement from Victoria, only ten miles distant, and where, as it was falsely reported, six hundred militiamen were stationed, I cannot say; but he remained obstinate, and we vainly implored him to take advantage of the pitch-dark night, and retreat to the wood. He insisted upon waiting till eight o'clock the next morning, and if no assistance came to us by that time, we could cut our way, he said, in open day, through the ranks of our contemptible foe, and if we did not conquer, we could at least bravely die.

"Give way to my wishes, comrades," said he; "listen to the groans of our wounded brethren, whose lives may yet be saved by medical skill. Will the New Orleans' Greys, the first company who shouldered the rifle for Texian liberty, abandon their unfortunate comrades to a cruel death at the hands of our barbarous foes? Once more, friends, I implore you, wait till daybreak, and if no help is then at hand, it shall be as you please, and I will follow you."

In order to unstiffen my limbs, which were numbed by the wet and cold, I walked to and fro in our little camp, gazing out into the darkness. Not a star was visible, the night was gloomy and dismal, well calculated to crush all hope in our hearts. I stepped out of the encampment, and walked in the direction of the enemy. From time to time dark figures glided swiftly by within a short distance of me. They were the Indians, carrying away the bodies of the dead Mexicans, in order to conceal from us the extent of their loss. For hours I mournfully wandered about, and day was breaking when I returned to the camp. All were already astir. In silent expectation, we strained our eyes in the direction of the neighbouring wood, hoping each moment to see our friends burst out from its shelter; but as the light became stronger, all our hopes fled, and our previous doubts as to whether there really were any troops at Victoria, became confirmed. The Mexican artillery had come up during the night, and now appeared stationed with the detachment which cut us off from the wood.

It was seven o'clock; we had given up all hopes of succour, and had assembled together to deliberate on the best mode of attacking the Mexicans, when their artillery suddenly bellowed forth a morning salutation, and the balls came roaring over and around us. These messengers hastened our decision, and we resolved at once to attack the troops upon the road with rifle and bowie-knife, and at all hazards and any loss to gain the wood. All were ready; even the wounded, those at least who were able to stand, made ready to accompany us, determined to die fighting, rather than be unresistingly butchered. Suddenly, and at the very moment that we were about to advance, the white flag, the symbol of peace, was raised upon the side of the Mexicans. Mistrusting their intentions, however, we were going to press forward, when Fanning's command checked us. He had conceived hopes of rescuing himself and his comrades, by means of an honourable capitulation, from the perilous position into which he could not but feel that his own obstinacy had brought them.

Three of the enemy's officers now approached our camp, two of them Mexican cavalry-men, the third a German who had got into favour with Santa Anna, and had risen to be colonel of artillery. He was, if I am not mistaken, a native of Mayence, and originally a carpenter, but having some talent for mathematics and architecture, he had entered the service of an English mining company, and been sent to Mexico. There Santa Anna employed him to build his well-known country-house of Mango do Clavo, and conceiving, from the manner in which the work was executed, a high opinion of the talent of the builder, he gave him a commission in the engineers, and in time made him colonel of artillery. This man, whose name was Holzinger, was the only one who spoke English of the three officers who came with the flag of truce; and as he spoke it very badly, a great deal of our conference took place in German, and was then retranslated into Spanish. After a long discussion, Fanning agreed to the following conditions: namely, that we should deliver up our arms, that our private property should be respected, and we ourselves sent to Corpano or Matamora, there to embark for New Orleans. So long as we were prisoners of war, we were to receive the same rations as the Mexican soldiers. On the other hand, we gave our word of honour not again to bear arms against the existing government of Mexico.

Whilst the three officers returned to General Urrea, who commanded the Mexican army, to procure the ratification of these conditions, we, the volunteers from New Orleans and Mobile, surrounded Fanning, highly dissatisfied at the course that had been adopted. "What!" was the cry, "is this the way that Fanning keeps his promise--this his boasted courage? Has he forgotten the fate of our brothers, massacred at St Antonio? Does he not yet know our treacherous foes? In the Mexican tongue, to capitulate, means to die. Let us die then, but fighting for Texas and for liberty; and let the blood of hundreds of Mexicans mingle with our own. Perhaps, even though they be ten times as numerous, we may succeed in breaking through their ranks. Think of St Antonio, where we were two hundred and ten against two thousand, and yet we conquered. Why not again risk the combat?" But all our expostulations and reproaches were in vain. The majority were for a surrender, and we were compelled to give way and deliver up our weapons. Some of the Greys strode sullenly up and down the camp, casting furious glances at Fanning and those who had voted for the capitulation; others sat motionless, their eyes fixed upon the ground, envying the fate of those who had fallen in the fight. Despair was legibly written on the faces of many who but too well foresaw our fate. One man in particular, an American, of the name of Johnson, exhibited the most ungovernable fury. He sat grinding his teeth, and stamping upon the ground, and puffing forth volumes of smoke from his cigar, whilst he meditated, as presently appeared, a frightful plan of vengeance.

Stimulated by curiosity, a number of Mexicans now strolled over to our camp, and gazed shyly at the gloomy grey marksmen, as if they still feared them, even though unarmed. The beauty of the rifles which our people had given up, was also a subject of great wonder and admiration; and soon the camp became crowded with unwelcome visitors--their joy and astonishment at their triumph, contrasting with the despair and despondency of the prisoners. Suddenly a broad bright flame flashed though the morning fog, a tremendous explosion followed, and then all was again still, and the prairie strewn with wounded men. A cloud of smoke was crushed down by the heavy atmosphere upon the dark green plain; the horses of the Mexican officers reared wildly in the air, or, with bristling mane and streaming tail, galloped furiously away with their half-deafened riders. Numbers of persons had been thrown down by the shock, others had flung themselves upon the ground in consternation, and some moments elapsed before the cause of the explosion was ascertained. The powder magazine had disappeared--all but a small part of the carriage, around which lay a number of wounded, and, at about fifteen paces from it, a black object, in which the form of a human being was scarcely recognisable, but which was still living, although unable to speak. Coal-black as a negro, and frightfully disfigured, it was impossible to distinguish the features of this unhappy wretch. Inquiry was made, the roll was called, and Johnson was found missing. Nobody had observed his proceedings, and the explosion may have been the result of an accident; but we entertained little doubt that he had formed a deliberate plan to kill himself and as many Mexicans as he could, and had chosen what he considered a favourable moment to set fire to the ammunition-waggon. As it happened, the cover was not fastened down, so that the principal force of the powder went upwards, and his terrible project was rendered in a great measure abortive.

Scarcely had the confusion caused by this incident subsided, and the fury of our foes been appeased, when the alarm was sounded in the opposite camp, and the Mexicans ran to their arms. The cause of this was soon explained. In the wood, which, could we have reached it, would have been our salvation, appeared our faithful vanguard, accompanied by all the militia they had been able to collect in so short a time--the whole commanded by Colonel Horton. False indeed had been the report, that six or eight hundred men were stationed at Victoria; including our vanguard, the gallant fellows who thus came to our assistance were but sixty in number.

"With what horror," said the brave Horton, subsequently, "did we perceive that we had arrived too late! We stood thunderstruck and uncertain what to do, when we were suddenly roused from our bewilderment by the sound of the Mexican trumpets. There was no time to lose, and our minds were speedily made up. Although Fanning had so far forgotten his duty as to surrender, ours was to save ourselves, for the sake of the republic. Now, more than ever, since all the volunteers were either killed or prisoners, had Texas need of our arms and rifles. We turned our horses, and galloped back to Victoria, whence we marched to join Houston at Gonzales."

The Mexicans lost no time in pursuing Horton and his people, but without success. The fugitives reached the thickly-wooded banks of the Guadalupe, and disappeared amongst intricacies through which the foe did not dare to follow them. Had the reinforcement arrived one half hour sooner, the bloody tragedy soon to be enacted would never have taken place.

The unfortunate Texian prisoners were now marched back to Goliad, and shut up in the church, which was thereby so crowded that scarcely a fourth of them were able to sit or crouch upon the ground. Luckily the interior of the building was thirty-five to forty feet high, or they would inevitably have been suffocated. Here they remained all night, parched with thirst; and it was not till eight in the morning that six of their number were permitted to fetch water from the river. In the evening they were again allowed water, but for two nights and days no other refreshment passed their lips. Strong pickets of troops, and guns loaded with grape, were stationed round their prison, ready to massacre them in case of an outbreak which it seemed the intention of the Mexicans to provoke. At last, on the evening of the second day, six ounces of raw beef were distributed to each man. This they had no means of cooking, save at two small fires, which they made of the wood-work of the church; and as the heat caused by these was unendurable to the closely packed multitude, the majority devoured their scanty ration raw. One more night was passed in this wretched state, and then the prisoners were removed to an open court within the walls of the fortress. This was a great improvement of their situation, but all that day no rations were given to them, and they began to buy food of the soldiers, giving for it what money they possessed; and when that was all gone, bartering their clothes, even to their shirts and trousers. So enormous, however, were the prices charged by the Mexicans, Mr Ehrenberg tells us, that one hungry man could easily eat at a meal ten dollars' worth of _tortillas_ or maize-cakes. Not satisfied with this mode of extortion, the Mexican soldiers, who are born thieves, were constantly on the look-out to rob the unhappy prisoners of whatever clothing or property they had left.

On the fourth morning, three quarters of a pound of beef were given to each man; and whilst they were engaged in roasting it, there appeared to their great surprise a hundred and twenty fresh prisoners, being Major Ward's detachment, which had lost its way in the prairie, and, after wandering about for eight days, had heard of Fanning's capitulation, and surrendered on the same terms. Twenty-six of them, carpenters by trade, had been detained at Victoria by order of Colonel Holzinger, to assist in building bridges for the transport of the artillery across the river. On the seventh day came a hundred more prisoners, who had just landed at Copano from New York, under command of Colonel Miller, and had been captured by the Mexican cavalry. The rations were still scanty, and given but at long intervals; and the starving Texians continued their system of barter, urged to it by the pangs of hunger, and by the Mexican soldiers, who told them that they were to be shot in a day or two, and might as well part with whatever they had left, in order to render their last hours more endurable. This cruel assurance, however, the prisoners did not believe. They were sanguine of a speedy return to the States, and impatiently waited the arrival of an order for their shipment from Santa Anna, who was then at St Antonio, and to whom news of the capitulation had been sent. General Urrea had marched from Goliad immediately after their surrender, only leaving sufficient troops to guard them, and had crossed the Guadalupe without opposition. Santa Anna's order at last came, but its purport was far different from the anticipated one. We resume our extracts from Mr Ehrenberg's narrative:--

The eighth morning of our captivity dawned, and so great were our sufferings, that we had resolved, if some change were not made in our condition, to free ourselves by force, or die in the attempt, when a rumour spread that a courier from Santa Anna had arrived during the night. This inspired us with fresh hopes, and we trusted that the hour of our deliverance at last approached. At eight o'clock in the morning an officer entered our place of confinement, carrying Santa Anna's order in his hand, of the contents of which, however, he told us nothing, except that we were immediately to march away from Goliad. Whether we were to go to Copano or Matamoras, we were not informed. We saw several pieces of cannon standing pointed against our enclosure, the artillerymen standing by them with lighted matches, and near them was drawn up a battalion of infantry, in parade uniform, but coarse and ragged enough. The infantry had no knapsacks or baggage of any kind; but at the time I do not believe that one of us remarked the circumstance, as the Mexican soldiers in general carry little or nothing. For our part, we required but a very short time to get ready for the march, and in a few minutes we were all drawn up, two deep, with the exception of Colonel Miller's detachment, which was quartered outside the fort. Fanning and the other wounded men, the doctor, his assistants, and the interpreters, were also absent. They were to be sent later to New Orleans, it was believed, by a nearer road.

After the names had been called over, the order to march was given, and we filed out through the gate of the fortress, the Greys taking the lead. Outside the gate we were received by two detachments of Mexican infantry, who marched along on either side of us, in the same order as ourselves. We were about four hundred in number, and the enemy about seven hundred, not including the cavalry, of which numerous small groups were scattered about the prairie. We marched on in silence, not however, in the direction we had anticipated, but along the road to Victoria. This surprised us; but upon reflection we concluded that they were conducting us to some eastern port, thence to be shipped to New Orleans, which, upon the whole, was perhaps the best and shortest plan. There was something, however, in the profound silence of the Mexicali soldiers, who are usually unceasing chatterers, that inspired me with a feeling of uneasiness and anxiety. It was like a funeral march, and truly might it so be called. Presently I turned my head to see if Miller's people had joined, and were marching with us. But, to my extreme astonishment, neither they nor Fanning's men, nor the Georgia battalion, were to be seen. They had separated us without our observing it, and the detachment with which I was marching consisted only of the Greys and a few Texian colonists. Glancing at the escort, their full dress uniform and the absence of all baggage, now for the first time struck me. I thought of the bloody scenes that had occurred at Tampico, San Patricio, and the Alamo, of the false and cruel character of those in whose power we were, and I was seized with a presentiment of evil. For a moment I was about to communicate my apprehensions to my comrades; but hope, which never dies, again caused me to take a more cheering view of our situation. Nevertheless, in order to be prepared for the worst, and, in case of need, to be unencumbered in my movements, I watched my opportunity, and threw away amongst the grass of the prairie a bundle containing the few things that the thievish Mexicans had allowed me to retain.

A quarter of an hour had elapsed since our departure from the fort, when suddenly the command was given in Spanish to wheel to the left, leaving the road; and, as we did not understand the order, the officer himself went in front to show us the way, and my companions followed without taking any particular notice of the change of direction. To our left ran a muskeet hedge, five or six feet in height, at right angles with the river St Antonio, which flowed at about a thousand paces from us, between banks thirty or forty feet high, and of which banks the one on the nearer side of the river rose nearly perpendicularly out of the water. We were marched along the side of the hedge towards the stream, and suddenly the thought flashed across us, "Why are they taking us in this direction?" The appearance of a number of lancers, cantering about in the fields on our right, also startled us; and just then the foot-soldiers, who had been marching between us and the hedge, changed their places, and joined those of their comrades who guarded us on the other hand. Before we could divine the meaning of this manoeuvre, the word was given to halt. It came like a sentence of death; for at the same moment that it was uttered, the sound of a volley of musketry echoed across the prairie. We thought of our comrades and of our own probable fate.

"Kneel down!" now burst in harsh accents from the lips of the Mexican commander.

No one stirred. Few of us understood the order, and those who did would not obey. The Mexican soldiers, who stood at about three paces from us, levelled their muskets at our breasts. Even then we could hardly believe that they meant to shoot us; for if we had, we should assuredly have rushed forward in our desperation, and, weaponless though we were, some of our murderers would have met their death at our hands. Only one of our number was well acquainted with Spanish, and even he seemed as if he could not comprehend the order that had been given. He stared at the commanding-officer as if awaiting its repetition, and we stared at him, ready, at the first word he should utter, to spring upon the soldiers. But he seemed to be, as most of us were, impressed with the belief that the demonstration was merely a menace, used to induce us to enter the Mexican service. With threatening gesture and drawn sword, the chief of the assassins again ejaculated the command to kneel down. The sound of a second volley, from a different direction with the first, just then reached our ears, and was followed by a confused cry, as if those at whom it had been aimed, had not all been immediately killed. Our comrade, the one who understood Spanish, started from his momentary lethargy and boldly addressed us.

"Comrades," cried he, "you hear that report, that cry! There is no hope for us--our last hour is come! Therefore, comrades--!"

A terrible explosion interrupted him--and then all was still. A thick cloud of smoke was wreathing and curling towards the St Antonio. The blood of our lieutenant was on my clothes, and around me lay my friends, convulsed by the last agony. I saw nothing more. Unhurt myself, I sprang up, and, concealed by the thick smoke, fled along the side of the hedge in the direction of the river, the noise of the water for my guide. Suddenly a blow from a heavy sabre fell upon my head, and from out of the smoke emerged the form of a little Mexican lieutenant. He aimed a second blow at me, which I parried with my left arm. I had nothing to risk, but every thing to gain. It was life or death. Behind me a thousand bayonets, before me the almost powerless sword of a coward. I rushed upon him, and with true Mexican valour, he fled from an unarmed man. On I went, the river rolled at my feet, the soldiers were shouting and yelling behind. "Texas for ever!" cried I, and, without a moment's hesitation, plunged into the water. The bullets whistled round me as I swam slowly and wearily to the other side, but none wounded me. Our poor dog, who had been with us all through the campaign, and had jumped into the river with me, fell a last sacrifice to Mexican cruelty. He had reached the middle of the stream, when a ball struck him, and he disappeared.

Whilst these horrible scenes were occurring in the prairie, Colonel Fanning and his wounded companions were shot and bayoneted at Goliad, only Doctor Thackleford and a few hospital aids having their lives spared, in order that they might attend on the wounded Mexicans. Besides Mr Ehrenberg, but three of the prisoners at Goliad ultimately escaped the slaughter.

Having crossed the St Antonio, Mr Ehrenberg struck into the high grass and thickets, which concealed him from the pursuit of the Mexicans, and wandered through the prairie, guiding himself, as best he might, by sun and stars, and striving to reach the river Brazos. He lost his way, and went through a variety of striking adventures, which, with some characteristic sketches of Texian life and habits, of General Sam Houston and Santa Anna, and a spirited account of the battle of St Jacinto, at which, however, he himself was not present, fill up the remainder of his book. Of one scene, between Houston and his army, we will make a final extract:--

It was the latter end of March, and the army of Texian militia, under Houston, which had increased to about thirteen hundred men, was assembled on the banks of the Colorado river. One messenger after another had arrived, bringing news that had converted them into perfect cannibals, thirsting after Mexican blood. The murder of Grant and his horsemen, that of Johnson and King with their detachments; the unaccountable disappearance of Ward, who was wandering about in the prairie; and finally, Horton's report of the capture of the unfortunate Fanning; all these calamities, in conjunction with the fall of the Alamo, had raised the fury of the backwoodsmen to such a pitch, that they were neither to hold nor bind, and nobody but Sam Houston would have been able to curb them.

The old general sat upon a heap of saddles; and in a circle round a large fire, sat or stood, leaning upon their rifles, the captains of the militia. The whole group was surrounded by a grumbling crowd of backwoodsmen. The dark fiery eyes of the officers, nearly all tall powerful figures, glanced alternately at the flames and at old Sam, who was the only calm person present. Slowly taking a small knife from his waistcoat pocket, he opened it, produced a huge piece of Cavendish, cut off a quid, shoved it between his upper lip and front teeth, and handed the tobacco to his nearest neighbour. This was a gigantic captain, the upper part of whose body was clothed in an Indian hunting-coat, his head covered with what had once been a fine beaver hat, but of which the broad brim now flapped down over his ears, whilst his strong muscular legs were wrapped from knee to ankle in thick crimson flannel, a precaution against the thorns of the muskeet-trees not unfrequently adopted in the west. His bullet-pouch was made out of the head of a leopard, in which eyes of red cloth had been inserted, bringing out, by contrast, the beauty of the skin, and was suspended from a strap of brown untanned deer-hide. With an expression of great bitterness, the backwoodsman handed the tobacco to the man next to him, and it passed on from hand to hand, untasted by any one--a sign of uncommon excitement amongst the persons there assembled. When the despised Cavendish had gone round, the old general stuck it in his pocket again, and continued the conference, at the same time whittling a stick with perfect coolness and unconcern.

"Yes," said he, "I tell you that our affairs look rather ticklish--can't deny it--but that is the only thing that will bring the people to their senses. Santa Anna may destroy the colonies, but it won't be Sam Houston's fault. Instead of at once assembling, the militia stop at home with their wives--quite comfortable in the chimney-corner--think that a handful of volunteers can whip ten thousand of these half-bloods. Quite mistaken, gentlemen--quite mistaken. You see it now--the brave fellows are gone--a scandal it is for us--and the enemy is at our heels. Instead of seeing four or five thousand of our people here, there are thirteen hundred--the others are minding the shop--making journeys to the Sabine. Can't help it, comrades, must retire to the Brazos, into the forests--must be off, and that at once."

"Stop, general, that ain't sense," cried a man, with a cap made out of a wild-cat's skin; "not a step backwards--the enemy must soon come, and then we'll whip 'em so glorious, that it will be a pleasure to see it; the miserable vampires that they are!"

"A fight! a fight!" shouted the surrounding throng. "For Texas, now or never!"

"Sam Houston is not of that opinion, my fine fellows," answered the general, "and it is not his will to fight. Sam will not risk the fate of the republic in a single foolhardy battle. The broad woods of the Brazos shall do us good service. Though you are brave, and willing to risk your lives, it would be small benefit to the country if you lost them. No, my boys, we'll give it to the vermin, never fear, they shall have it, as sure as Sam Houston stands in his own shoes."

"It's impossible for us to go back, General," cried another speaker; "can't be--must at 'em! What, General, our richest plantations lie between the Colorado and the Brazos, and are we to abandon them to these thieves? Old Austin[H] would rise out of his grave if he heard the footsteps of the murderers upon the prairie. No, General--must be at them--must conquer or die!"

"Must conquer or die!" was echoed through the crowd; but the old general sat whittling away, as cool as a cucumber, and seemed determined that the next victory he gained should be in his own camp.

"Boys," said he--and he stood up, took another quid, shut his knife, and continued--"Boys, you want to fight--very praiseworthy indeed--your courage is certainly very praiseworthy;--but suppose the enemy brings artillery with him, can you, will you, take the responsibility of giving battle before our tardy fellow-citizens come up to reinforce us? How will you answer it to your consciences, if the republic falls back under the Mexican yoke, because an undisciplined mob would not wait the favourable moment for a fight? No, no, citizens--we must retire to the Brazos, where our rifles will give us the advantage; whilst here we should have to charge the enemy, who is five times our strength, in the open prairie. Don't doubt your courage, as you call it--though it's only foolhardiness--but I represent the republic, and am answerable to the whole people for what I do. Can't allow you to fight here. Once more I summon you to follow me to San Felipe and all who wish well to Texas will be ready in an hour's time. Every moment we may expect to see the enemy on the other side of the river. Once more then--to the banks of the Brazos!"

The old general walked off to his tent, and the crowd betook themselves to their fires, murmuring and discontented, and put their rifles in order. But in an hour and a half, the Texian army left their camp on the Colorado. Sam Houston had prevailed, and the next evening he and his men reached San Felipe, and, without pausing there, marched up the river. On the 30th March the first squadron of the enemy showed itself near San Felipe. The inhabitants abandoned their well-stored shops and houses, set fire to them with their own hands, and fled across the river. The Mexicans entered the town, and their rage was boundless when, instead of a rich booty, they found heaps of ashes. Houston had now vanished, and his foes could nowhere trace him, till he suddenly, and of his own accord, reappeared upon the scene, and fell on them like a thunderbolt, amply refuting the false and base charge brought against him by his enemies, that he had retreated through cowardice. But to this day, it is a riddle to me how he managed to reduce to obedience the unruly spirits he commanded, and to induce them to retreat across the Brazos to Buffalo Bayou. Of one thing I am certain--only Sam Houston could have done it; no other man in the republic.

Mr Ehrenberg escaped from all his perils in time to share the rejoicings of the Texians at the final evacuation of the country by the Mexican army. And certainly they had cause for exultation, not only at being rid of their cruel and semi-barbarous oppressors, but in the persevering gallantry they had displayed throughout the whole campaign, during which many errors were committed and many lives uselessly sacrificed, but of which the close was nevertheless so glorious to those engaged in it. Unskilled in military tactics, without discipline or resources, the stubborn courage of a handful of American backwoodsmen proved an overmatch for Santa Anna and his hosts, and the fairest and freshest leaf of the Mexican cactus was rent from the parent stem, never to be reunited.[I]

FOOTNOTES:

[G] _Fahrten und Schicksale eines Deutschen in Texas._ Von H. EHRENBERG. Leipzig: 1845.

[H] The founder of the American colonies in Texas, and father of Stephen F. Austin.

[I] The arms of Mexico are a cactus, with as many leaves as there are states of the republic.

THE MOTHER AND HER DEAD CHILD.

With ceaseless sorrow, uncontroll'd, The mother mourn'd her lot; She wept, and would not be consoled, Because her child was not.

She gazed upon its nursery floor, But there it did not play; The toys it loved, the clothes it wore, All void and vacant lay.

Her house, her heart, were dark and drear, Without their wonted light; The little star had left its sphere, That there had shone so bright.

Her tears, at each returning thought, Fell like the frequent rain; Time on its wings no healing brought, And wisdom spoke in vain.

Even in the middle hour of night She sought no soft relief, But, by her taper's misty light, Sate nourishing her grief.

'Twas then a sight of solemn awe, Rose near her like a cloud; The image of her child she saw, Wrapp'd in its little shroud.

It sate within its favourite chair, It sate and seem'd to sigh, And turn'd upon its mother there A meek imploring eye.

"O child! what brings that breathless form Back from its place of rest? For well I know no life can warm Again that livid breast.

"The grave is now your bed, my child-- Go slumber there in peace." "I cannot go," it answer'd mild, "Until your sorrow cease.

"I've tried to rest in that dark bed, But rest I cannot get, For always with the tears you shed, My winding-sheet is wet.

"The drops, dear mother, trickle still Into my coffin deep; It feels so comfortless and chill I cannot go to sleep."

"O child those words, that touching look, My fortitude restore; I feel and own the blest rebuke, And weep my loss no more."

She spoke, and dried her tears the while; And as her passion fell, The vision wore an angel smile, And look'd a fond farewell.

THE GREEK AND ROMANTIC DRAMA.

The Drama, in its higher branches, is perhaps the greatest effort of human genius. It requires for its successful cultivation, a combination of qualities beyond what is necessary in any other department of composition. A profound and practical acquaintance with human nature in all its phases, and the human heart in all its changes, is the first requisite of the Dramatic Poet. The power of condensed expression--the faculty of giving vent to "thoughts that breathe in words that burn"--the art of painting, by a line, an epithet, an expression, the inmost and most intense feelings of the heart, is equally indispensable. The skill of the novelist in arranging the incidents of the piece so as to keep the attention of the spectators erect, and their interest undiminished, is not less necessary. How requisite a knowledge of the peculiar art called "stage effect," is to the success of dramatic pieces on the theatre, may be judged of by the well-known failures in actual representation of many striking pieces by our greatest tragic writers, especially Miss Baillie and Lord Byron. The eloquence of the orator, the power of wielding at will the emotions and passions of the heart, of rousing alternately the glow of the generous, and the warmth of the tender affections, is not less indispensable. The great dramatic poet must add to this rare assemblage, a thorough acquaintance with the characters and ideas of former times: with the lore of the historian, he must embody in his imaginary characters the incidents of actual event; with the fervour of the poet, portray the transactions and thoughts of past times; with the eye of the painter, arrange his scenery, dresses, and localities, so as to produce the strongest possible impression of reality on the mind of the spectator. Unite, in imagination, all the greatest and most varied efforts of the human mind--the fire of the poet and the learning of the historian, the conceptions of the painter and the persuasion of the orator, the skill of the novelist and the depth of the philosopher, and you will only form a great tragedian. Ordinary observers often express surprise, that dramatic genius, especially in these times, is rare; let the combination of qualities essential for its higher flights be considered, and perhaps the wonder will rather be, that it has been so frequent in the world.

It is a sense of this extraordinary combination of power necessary to the formation of a great dramatic poet, which has rendered the masterpieces of this art so general an object of devout admiration, to men of the greatest genius who have ever appeared upon earth. Euripides wept when he heard a tragedy of Sophocles recited at the Isthmian games; he mourned, but his own subsequent greatness proved without reason, the apparent impossibility of rivalling his inimitable predecessor. Milton, blind and poor, found a solace for all the crosses of life in listening, in old age, to the verses of Euripides. Napoleon, at St Helena, forgot the empire of the world, on hearing, in the long evenings, the masterpieces of Corneille read aloud. Stratford-on-Avon does not contain the remains of mere English genius, it is the place of pilgrimage to the entire human race. The names of persons of all nations are to be found, as on the summit of the Pyramids, encircled on the walls of Shakspeare's house; his grave is the common resort of the generous and the enthusiastic of all ages, and countries, ad times. All feel they can

"Rival all but Shakspeare's name below."

If the combination of qualities necessary to form a first-rate dramatic poet is thus rare, hardly less wonderful is the effort of genius to sustain the character of a great actor. The mind of the performer must be sympathetic with that of the author; it must be cast in the same mould with the original conceiver of the piece. To form an adequate and correct conception of the proper representation of the leading characters in the masterpieces of Sophocles, Shakspeare, or Schiller, requires a mind of the same cast as that of those poets themselves. The performer must throw himself, as it were, into the mind of the author; identify himself with the piece to be represented; conceive the character in reality, as the poet had portrayed it in words, and then convey by acting this _second conception_ to the spectators. By this double distillation of thought through the soul of genius, a finer and more perfect creation is sometimes formed, than the efforts of any single mind, how great soever, could have originally conceived. It may well be doubted whether Shakspeare's conception of Lady Macbeth or Desdemona was more perfect than Mrs Siddons's personation of them; or whether the grandeur of Cato or Coriolanus, as they existed in the original mind of Addison, or the patriarch of the English stage, equalled Kemble's inimitable performances of these characters. Beautiful as were the visions of Juliet and Rosalind which floated before the mind of the Bard of Avon, it may be doubted if they excelled Miss Helen Faucit's exquisite representation of those characters. The actor or actress brings to the illustration of the great efforts of dramatic genius, qualities of a different sort, _in addition_ to those which at first pervaded the mind of the author, but not less essential to the felicitous realization of his conception. Physical beauty, the magic of voice, look, and manner, the play of countenance, the step of grace, the witchery of love, the accents of despair, combine with the power of language to add a tenfold attraction to the creations of fancy. All the arts seem, in such representations, to combine their efforts to entrance the mind, every avenue to the heart is at once flooded with the highest and most refined enjoyment; the noblest, the most elevated feelings:--

"The youngest of the sister arts, Where all their beauty blends! For ill can poetry express Full many a tone of thought sublime; And painting, mute and motionless, Steals but a glance of time. But by the mighty actor brought, Illusion's perfect triumphs come-- Verse ceases to be airy thought, And sculpture to be dumb."

That an art so noble as that of dramatic poetry, ennobled by such genius, associated with such recollections, so lofty in its purpose, so irresistible in its effects, should have fallen into comparative decline in this country in the brightest era of its literary, philosophical, and political achievements, is one of those singular and melancholy circumstances of which it seems impossible at first sight to give any explanation. Since the deep foundations of the English mind were stirred by the Reformation, what an astonishing succession of great men in every branch of human thought have illustrated the annals of England! The divine conceptions of Milton, the luxuriant fervour of Thomson, the vast discoveries of Newton, the deep wisdom of Bacon, the burning thoughts of Gray, the masculine intellect of Johnson, the exquisite polish of Pope, the lyric fire of Campbell, the graphic powers of Scott, the glowing eloquence of Burke, the admirable conceptions of Reynolds, the profound sagacity of Hume, the pictured page of Gibbon, demonstrate how mighty and varied have been the triumphs of the human mind in these islands, in every branch of poetry, literature, and philosophy. Yet, strange to say, during two centuries thus marvellously illustrated by genius, intellect, and capacity in other departments of human exertion, there has not been a single great dramatic poet. Shakspeare still stands alone in solitary and unapproachable grandeur, to sustain, by his single arm, the tragic reputation of his country. Authors of passing or local celebrity have arisen: Otway has put forth some fine conceptions, and composed one admirable tragedy; Sheridan sketched some brilliant satires; Miss Baillie delineated the passions with epic power; and genius of the highest order in our times, that of Byron and Bulwer, has endeavoured to revive the tragic muse in these islands. But the first declared that he wrote his dramatic pieces with no design whatever to their representation, but merely as a vehicle of noble sentiments in dialogue of verse; and the second is too successful as a novelist to put forth his strength in dramatic poetry, or train his mind in the school necessary for success in that most difficult art. The English drama, in the estimation of the world, and in its just estimation, still stands on Shakspeare, and he flourished nearly three hundred years ago!

It was not thus in other countries, or in former times. Homer was the first, and still is one of the greatest, of dramatic poets; the _Iliad_ is a tragedy arranged in the garb of an epic poem. AEschylus borrowed, Prometheus-like, the divine fire, and embodied the energy of Dante and the soul of Milton in his sublime tragedies. Sophocles and Euripides were contemporary with Pericles and Phidias; the same age witnessed the _Clouds_ of Aristophanes, the death of Socrates, and the history of Thucydides. The warlike and savage genius of the Romans made them prefer the excitement of the amphitheatre to the entrancement of the theatre; but the comedies of Plautus and Terence remain durable monuments, that the genius of dramatic poetry among them advanced abreast of the epic or lyric muse. The names of Alfieri, Metastasio, and Goldoni, demonstrate that modern Italy has successfully cultivated the dramatic as well as the epic muse; the tragedies of the first are worthy the country of Tasso, the operas of the second rival the charms of Petrarch. In the Spanish peninsula, Lope de Vega and Calderon have astonished the world by the variety and prodigality of their conceptions;[J] and fully vindicated the title of the Castilians to place their dramatic writers on a level with their great epic poets.

Need it be told that France stands pre-eminent in dramatic excellence; that Corneille, Racine, and Moliere, were contemporaries of Bossuet, Massillon, and Boileau; that the tragedies of Voltaire were the highest effort of his vast and varied genius? Germany, albeit the last-born in the literary family of Europe, has already vindicated its title to a foremost place in this noble branch of composition; for Lessing has few modern rivals in the perception of dramatic excellence, and Schiller none in the magnificent historic mirror which he has placed on the stage of the Fatherland. How, then, has it happened, that when, in all other nations which have risen to greatness in the world, the genius of dramatic poetry has kept pace with its eminence in all other respects, in England alone the case is the reverse; and the nation which has surpassed all others in the highest branches of poetry, eloquence, and history, is still obliged to recur to the patriarch of a comparatively barbarous age for a parallel to the great dramatic writers of other states?

The worshippers of Shakspeare tell us, that this has been owing to his very greatness; that he was so much above other men as to defy competition and extinguish rivalry; and that genius, in despair of ever equalling his vast and varied conceptions, has turned aside into other channels where the avenue to the highest distinction was not blocked up by the giant of former days. But a little reflection must be sufficient to convince every candid inquirer, that this consideration not only does not explain the difficulty but augments it. Genius is never extinguished by genius; on the contrary, it is created by it. The divine flame passes from one mind to another similarly constituted. Thence the clusters of great men who, at intervals, have appeared simultaneously and close to each other in the world, and the long intervening periods of mediocrity or imitation. Did the immortal genius of Dante destroy subsequent poetic excellence in Italy? Let Tasso, Ariosto, Metastasio, and Alfieri, answer. Homer did not extinguish AEschylus--he created him. Greek tragedy is little more than the events following the siege of Troy dramatised. The greatness of Sophocles did not crush the rising genius of Euripides--on the contrary, it called it forth; and these two great masters of the dramatic muse thrice contended with each other for the prize awarded by the Athenians to dramatic excellence.[K] The great Corneille did not annihilate rivalry in the dramatic genius of France--on the contrary, he produced it; his immortal tragedies were immediately succeeded by the tenderness of Racine, the wit of Moliere, the versatility of Voltaire. Lessing in Germany was soon outstripped by the vast mind of Schiller. Michael Angelo, vast as his genius was, did not distance all competitors in Italy; he was speedily followed and excelled by Raphael; and when the boy Correggio saw Raphael's pictures, he said--"I, too, am a painter." Did the transcendent greatness of Burke close in despair the eloquent lips of Pitt and Fox; or the mighty genius of Scott quench the rising star of Byron? We repeat it--genius is never extinguished by genius; it is created by it.

But if the state of dramatic poetry in Great Britain since the time of Shakspeare affords matter of surprise, the late history and present state of the drama, as it appears on the stage, afford subject of wonder and regret. We are continually speaking of the lights of the age, of the vast spread of popular information, of the march of intellect, and the superiority of this generation in intelligence and refinement over all that have gone before it. Go into any of the theatres of London at this moment, and consider what evidence they afford of this boasted advance and superiority. Time was when the versatile powers of Garrick enchanted the audience; and exhibited alternately the perfection of the comic and the dignity of the tragic muse. Mrs Siddons, supreme in greatness, has trod those boards; Kemble, the "last of all the Romans," has, in comparatively recent times, bade them farewell. Miss O'Neil, with inferior soul, but equal physical powers; Kean, with the energy, but unhappily the weaknesses of genius, kept up the elevation of the stage. Talent, and that too of a very high class, genius of the most exalted kind, are not awanting to support the long line of British theatric greatness; the names of Charles Kean, Fanny Kemble, and Helen Faucit are sufficient to prove, that if the stage is in a state of decrepitude, the fault lies much more with the authors or the public, than with the performers.[L] But all is unavailing. Despite the most persevering and laudable efforts to restore the dignity of the theatre, and revive the sway of the legitimate drama, in which Mr Macready has so long borne so conspicuous a part, Tragedy in the metropolis is almost banished from the stage. It has been supplanted by the melodrama, dancing, and singing. It has been driven off the field by _Timour the Tartar_. Drury-Lane, sanctified by so many noble recollections, has become an English opera-house. Covent-Garden is devoted to concerts, and hears the tragic muse no more. Even in the minor theatres, where tragedy is sometimes attempted, it can only be relied on for transient popularity. Its restoration was attempted at the Princess's Theatre in Oxford Street, but apparently with no remarkable success; and the tragedies of _Othello_ and _Hamlet_, supported by the talent of Macready, required to be eked out by Mrs Candle's _Curtain Lectures_. We are no strangers to the talent displayed at many of the minor theatres both by the authors and performers; and we are well aware that the varied population of every great metropolis requires several such places of amusement. What we complain of is, that they engross every thing; that tragedy and the legitimate drama are nearly banished from the stage in all but the provincial cities, where, of course, it never can rise to the highest eminence.

All the world are conscious of the reality of this change, and many different explanations have been attempted of it. It is said that modern manners are inconsistent with frequenting the theatre: that the late hours of dinners preclude the higher classes from going to it; that the ladies' dresses are soiled by the seats in the boxes, before going to balls. The austerity of principle, in the strictly religious portion of the community, is justly considered as a great bar to dramatic success; as it keeps from the theatre a large part of society, which, from the integrity and purity of its principles, would, if it frequented such places of amusement, be more likely than any other to counteract its downward tendency. The hideous mass of profligacy which in London, in the absence of the better classes of society, has seized upon the principal theatres as its natural prey, is loudly complained of by the heads of families; and the audience is, in consequence, too often turned into little more than strangers, or young men in quest of dissipation, and ladies of easy virtue in quest of gain. The spread of reading, and vast addition to the amount of talent devoted to the composition of novels and romances, is another cause generally considered as mainly instrumental in producing the neglect of the theatre. Sir Walter Scott, it is said, has brought the drama to our fireside: we draw in our easy-chairs when the winds of winter are howling around us, and cease to long for _Hamlet_ in reading the _Bride of Lammermoor_. There is some reality in all these causes assigned for the decline of the legitimate drama in this country; they are the truth, but they are not the whole truth. A very little consideration will at once show, that it is not to any or all of these causes, that the decline of the higher branches of this noble art in Great Britain is to be ascribed.

Modern manners, late dinners, ball-dresses, and the Houses of Parliament, are doubtless serious obstacles to the higher classes of the nobility and gentry frequently attending the theatre; but the example of the Opera-house, which is crowded night after night with the elite of that very class, is sufficient to demonstrate, that all these difficulties can be got over, when people of fashion make up their minds to go to a place of amusement, even where not one in ten understand the language in which the piece is composed. The strictness of principle--mistaken, as we deem it, and hurtful in its effects--which keeps away a large and important portion of the middle and most respectable portion of the community, at all times, and in all places, from the theatre, is without doubt a very serious impediment to dramatic success, and in nothing so much so, as in throwing the patronage and direction of its performance into the hands of a less scrupulous part of society. But these strict principles, ever since the Great Rebellion, have pervaded a considerable portion of British society; and yet how nobly was the stage supported during the eighteenth and the commencement of the nineteenth century, in the days of Garrick, Siddons, and Kemble! The great number of theatres which are nightly open in the metropolis, and rapidly increasing in all the principal cities of the kingdom, demonstrates, that the play-going portion of the community is sufficiently numerous to support the stage, generally in respectability, at times in splendour. Without doubt, the licentiousness of the saloons of the great theatres in London is a most serious evil, and it well deserves the consideration of Government, whether some means should not be taken for its correction; but is the Opera-house so very pure in its purlieus? and are the habitual admirers of the ballet likely to be corrupted by occasionally seeing Othello and Juliet? The prevailing, and in fact universal, passion for reading novels at home, unquestionably affords an inexhaustible fund of domestic amusement; but does experience prove that the imagination once kindled, the heart once touched, are willing to stop short in the quest of excitement--to be satisfied with imperfect gratification? Novel-reading is as common on the Continent as in this country; but still the legitimate drama exhibits no such appearances of decrepitude in its Capitals. The masterpieces of Corneille and Racine are still constantly performed to crowded houses at Paris; the theatres of Italy resound with the melody of Metastasio, the dignity of Alfieri; and singing and the melodrama have nowhere banished Schiller's tragedies from the boards of Vienna and Berlin.

We have said, that while we appreciate the motives, and respect the principles, which prevent so large a portion of the middle class of society from frequenting the theatre, we lament their determination, and regard it as an evil even greater to the morality than it is to the genius of the nation. In truth, it is founded on a mistaken view of the principles which influence human nature; and it would be well if moralists, and the friends of mankind, would reconsider the subject, before, in this country at least, it is too late. The love of the drama is founded on the deepest, the most universal, the noblest principles of our nature. It exists, and ever will exist. For good or for evil, its influence is immovable. We cannot extirpate, or even tangibly abridge its sway; the art of AEschylus and Shakspeare, of Sophocles and Racine, of Euripides and Schiller, is not to be extinguished by the reputable but contracted ideas of a limited portion of society. God has not made it sweeter to weep with those who weep, than to rejoice with those who rejoice, for no purpose. Look at the Arabs, as they cluster round the story-teller who charms the groups of Yemen, or the knots of delighted faces which surround the Polchinello of Naples, and you will see how universal is the passions in mankind for theatrical representations. But though we cannot eradicate the desire for this gratification, we may degrade its tendency, and corrupt its effects. We may substitute stimulants to the senses for elevation to the principle, or softening of the heart. By abandoning its direction to the most volatile and licentious of the community, we may render it an instrument of evil instead of good, and pervert the powers of genius, the magic of art, the fascinations of beauty, to the destruction instead of the elevation of the human soul.

It is for this reason that we lament, as a serious social and national evil, the long interregnum in dramatic excellence in our writers, and the woful degradation in the direction of dramatic representations at our metropolitan theatres. Immense is the influence of lofty and ennobling dramatic pieces when supported by able and impassioned actors. As deleterious is the sway of questionable or immoral pieces when decked out in the meretricious garb of fancy, or aided by the transient attractions of beauty. Who can tell how much the heart-stirring appeals of Shakspeare have done to string to lofty purposes the British heart; how powerfully the dignified sentiments of Corneille have contributed to sustain the heroic portions of the French character? "C'est l'imagination," said Napoleon, "qui domine le monde." The drama has one immense advantage over the pulpit or the professor's chair: it fascinates while it instructs--it allures while it elevates. It thus extends its influence over a wide and important circle, upon whom didactic precepts will never have any influence. Without doubt, the strong and deep foundations of public morality must be laid in religious and moral instruction; if they are wanting, the social edifice, how fair soever to appearance, is built on a bed of sand. But fully admitting this--devoutly looking to our national Establishment for the formation of public principle--to our schools and colleges for the training of the national intellect--the experienced observer, aware of the sway of active principles over the human soul, will not neglect the subordinate but still powerful aid to be derived, in the great work of elevating and ennobling society, from the emotions which may be awakened at the theatre--the enthusiasm so often excited by tragic excellence. The thing to be dreaded with the great bulk of the spectators--that is, by far the largest portion of mankind--is not their avowed infidelity and their open wickedness; it is the sway of the degrading or selfish passions which is chiefly dangerous. The thing to be feared is, not that they will say there is no God, but that they will live altogether without God in the world. How important, then, that genius should be called in here to the aid of virtue, and the fascinations of the highest species of excellence employed to elevate, where so many causes exist to degrade the soul!

"Cosi all egro fanciul' porgiamo aspersi, Di soave licor gli orli del Vaso; Succhi amari, ingannato intanto ei beve, Et dall' inganno suo vita riceve."

The elevating influence of the noble sentiments with which the higher dramatic works abound, is more loudly called for in this than it has been in any former period of British history. We are no longer in the age of enthusiasm. The days of chivalry have gone by--and gone by, it is feared, never to return. We are in the age of commerce and the mechanical arts. Material appliances, creature comforts,--stimulants to the senses--now form the great moving power of society. Gain is every where sought after with the utmost avidity; but it is sought not for any lofty object, but on account of the substantial physical comforts with which the possession of riches is attended. Sensuality, disguised under the veil of elegance, refinement, and accomplishment, is making rapid strides amongst us. It does so in all old, wealthy, and long-established communities; it is the well-known and oft-described premonitory symptom of national decline. We can scarce venture to hope, we should find in the British empire at this period the enthusiasm which manned the ramparts of Sarragossa, the patriotism which fired the torches of Moscow. We should find united, too generally it is to be feared, at least in a considerable portion, the timidity and selfishness which signed the capitulation of Venice. How important, then, to gain possession of so mighty a lever for moving the general mind, and counteracting the selfishness which is degrading society, as the enthusiasm of the theatre affords; and instead of permitting it to fall into the hands of vice, to become the handmaid of licentiousness, to turn its vast powers to the rousing of elevated sentiments, the strengthening of virtuous resolutions, the nourishing of generous emotions! Whoever succeeds in this, whether author, actor, or actress, is a friend to the best interests of humanity, and is to be ranked with the benefactors of the human race.

Nor be it said that the theatre has been now irrevocably turned, in this country, to frivolous or contemptible representations, or that dancing and singing have for ever banished the tragic muse from the stage. Facts--well known and universally acknowledged facts, prove the reverse. How strong soever the desire for excitement or physical enjoyment may be, the passion for heart-stirring incident, the _besoin_ of strong emotions, the thirst for tragic event, is still stronger. Look at the Parisian stage--what a concatenation of murders, suicides, conflagrations, massacres, and horrors of every description, have there grown up with the spread of the romantic drama in the lesser theatres! That shows how strong is the passion for tragic excitement in highly civilized and long corrupt society. Enter any of our courts of law, when any trial for murder or any other serious crime is going forward--observe how unwearied is the attention of all classes, and _especially the lowest_; with what patience they will sit for days and nights together, to watch the proceedings; mark the deathlike silence which pervades the hall, when any important part of the evidence is delivered, or the verdict of the jury is returned. Observe the mighty throng which attends a public execution. The writer once was present, when an hundred and fifty thousand persons assembled in one spot to witness the expiation of their guilt by two murderers on the scaffold.[M] When the mournful procession set out for the place of punishment, four miles distant, not a sound was to be heard from the innumerable spectators who lined the streets; the clang of the horses' hoofs on the pavement was audible among two hundred thousand persons. When it returned with the dead bodies, the clang of voices, the pent-up emotion, burst forth in so mighty a shout, that the discharge of artillery would hardly have been heard in the throng. The anxiety, sometimes amounting almost to frenzy, to get a sight of the convicted murderer, to be present at the condemned sermon, to see his last agonies on the scaffold, to examine the scenes of his crime, even to obtain a lock of his hair or a piece of his garments, is another proof of the disordered and often extravagant desires which the longing for strong and tragic excitement will produce in a large portion of society. Rely upon it, deep emotion, if rightly managed and properly directed, is more attractive than either amusement or licentiousness. Suffering exacts a far deeper sympathy than joy; the generous, for the time at least, overpower the selfish feelings. Let but the tragic muse be restored to her appropriate position on the stage, and supported by the requisite ability in the author and performers, and she will extinguish rivalry, and bear down opposition.

We have said that the tragic muse will do this, "if supported by the requisite ability in the _authors_ and performers." We have said this advisedly; for we belong to the former class, and we have no complaint to make of want of ability on the stage. On the contrary, talent and genius, of the most elevated kind, are to be found upon it. The fault lies with our own profession, or rather with that portion of it who cultivate dramatic composition. The origin of the evil is to be found, the remote cause of the present degraded condition of the stage, is to be found in--strike but hear--IN SHAKSPEARE!

The most devoted worshipper of the genius of the Bard of Avon, the most enthusiastic admirer of the profound knowledge of the human heart, and unequalled force of expression which he possessed, cannot exceed ourselves in the deep admiration which we entertain for his transcendent excellences. On the contrary, it is those very excellences which have done the mischief; it is they which have misled subsequent dramatic writers in this country, and occasioned the constant failures by which his imitators have been distinguished. It is not surprising that it is so. Shakspeare was supremely great; but he was so, not in consequence of his dramatic principles, but in spite of them. He fired his arrow further than mortal man has yet done; but he fired it not altogether in the right direction, and no one since has been able to draw the bow of Ulysses.

There is no one who has not heard of the famous dramatic unities, and the long-continued controversy which has been maintained between the admirers of the Greek drama, founded on their strict observance, and the followers of Shakspeare, who set them at defiance. In this, as in other disputes, probably neither party will ever convince the other; and the only effect of the contention is to fix each more immovably in its own opinion. But, waiving at present the abstract question, which of the two systems is in itself preferable, or essential to dramatic success, there is a practical consideration of deep interest to society, with which we are all concerned and the result of which throws no small light on the theoretical principle. It is this. Placing the creators of the two systems--AEschylus and Shakspeare--on a par; conceding to the author of _Hamlet_ an equal place with that of the composer of the _Prometheus Vinctus_; which of the two systems has had most success in the world; has longest preserved its sway over the human mind; has best withstood the causes of corruption inherent in all earthly change?

What a noble set of followers have, in all ages, graced the banners of the Athenian bard! Sophocles, Aristophanes, Menander, and Euripides, in Greece; Terence and Plautus in Rome; Metastasio, Goldoni, and Alfieri in Italy; Corneille, Racine, Moliere, and Voltaire in France; Schiller,[N] in himself a host, in Germany--contribute the brightest stars in the immortal band. Their merits may be unequal, their talent various, their pieces sometimes uninteresting; but, taken as a whole, their works exhibit the greatest efforts of human genius. What has the Romantic school to exhibit, after its inimitable founder, as a set-off to this long line of greatness? The ephemeral and now forgotten lights of the British stage--the blasting indecencies of Beaumont and Fletcher; the vigorous ribaldry of Dryden; the shocking extravagances of the recent French and Spanish stage; the _Tour de Nesle_, and other elevating pieces, which adorn the modern Parisian theatre, and train to virtuous and generous feeling the present youth of France. Shakspeare himself, with all his transcendent excellences, is unable to keep his ground on the British stage. Like all great men, whom accident or error has embarked in a wrong course, he has been passed by a host of followers, who, unable to imitate his beauties, have copied only his defects, till they have fairly banished the legitimate tragic drama from the London stage. If the precept of Scripture be true--"By their fruits shall ye know them"--the palm must be unquestionably awarded to the old Grecian school.

If the different principles on which the two great schools of the drama proceed are considered, it will not appear surprising that this result has taken place.

The Greek drama embraced a very limited number of stories and events, and they were all thoroughly known to every audience in the country. The incidents and tragic occurrences so wonderfully illustrated by the genius of their tragic poets, are almost all to be found sketched out in the _Odyssey_ of Homer, or in the successive disasters of the fated race of Oedipus. The sacrifice of Iphigenia to procure fair gales when setting out for Troy, the foundation of the exquisite tragedy by Euripides of _Iphigenia in Aulis_; the subsequent meeting of her with her brothers, the basis of _Iphigenia in Tauris_, by the same poet; the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra and her adulterous lover; the revenge of Electra and Orestes, who put their mother and her lover to death; the subsequent remorse and woful fate of the avenging brother and sister--form so many tragedies, which for centuries entranced the Athenian audience. The sorrows of Andromache, when torn from her home after the death of Hector and sack of Troy, and subjected to the jealousy of the daughter of Menelaus; the deep woes of Hecuba, who saw in one day her daughter sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles, and the corpse of her son washed ashore, after having been perfidiously murdered by his Thracian host, as they appeared in the thrilling verses of Euripides--were all previously well known to the Grecian audience. If to these we add the multiplied disasters of the line of Oedipus; the despair of that unhappy man at his incestuous marriage with Jocasta; his subsequent sorrow when an exile, poor and bowed down by misfortune; the dreadful fate which befell his sons when they fell by each others' hands before the walls of Thebes; and the heroic self-sacrifice of Antigone to procure the rites of sepulture for her beloved and innocent brother--we shall find we have embraced nearly the whole dramas which exercised the genius of AEschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

It resulted from this limited number of incidents in the Greek drama, and the thorough acquaintance of the audience, in every instance, with the characters, the incidents, and the _denouement_ of the piece, that the grand object of the poet was to work up a particular part of the story to the highest perfection, rather than, to an audience unacquainted with any part of it, to unfold the whole. It was that which created the difference between it and the Romantic drama of modern times. There was no use in attempting to tell the story, for that was already known to all the audience. It would have been like telling the story of Wallace, or Queen Mary, or Robert Bruce, to a Scottish assembly. Genius was to be displayed; effect was to be produced, not by unfolding new and unknown incidents, but working up to the highest degree those already known. Hence the peculiar character of the Greek drama; hence the astonishing and unequalled perfection to which it was brought. The world has never seen, perhaps it will never again see, any thing so exquisite as the masterpieces of Sophocles and Euripides--any thing so sublime as some of AEschylus. All subsequent ages have concurred in this opinion. All nations have united in it. The moderns and the ancients, differing in so many other points, are at one in this particular. There is as little diversity of opinion on the subject, as in the admiration of the sculpture of Phidias, the verses of Virgil, or the paintings of Raphael.

It was by the strict observance of the unities, and the necessity to which it exposed the poet of supplying, by his own genius and taste, all adventitious aids derived from change of scene, splendour of decoration, and novelty of story, that this astonishing perfection was attained. Force of language, grandeur of thought, pathos of feeling, were all in all. The dramatist was compelled to rest on these, and these alone. If he did not succeed in them, he was lost. The audience, composed of the most refined and enlightened citizens that then existed in the world, went to the theatre, expecting not to be interested or surprised by the unravelling of a new and intricate story, but to be fascinated by the force of expression and pathos of feeling, with which a mournful catastrophe already known was told. To attain this object, the dramatic writers of antiquity selected that period in an interesting and tragic story, when its incidents were approaching their crisis, when the _denouement_ for good or for evil took place; and they represented that at full length, and in all its detail to the spectators. The previous incidents which had brought matters up to this point, were narrated in the course of the dialogue in the earlier scenes; the closing catastrophe, often too terrible to be represented on the stage, was described by some of the characters who had witnessed it. But the intervening period, the events and thoughts which succeeded the past, and preceded the future, were painted in their fullest detail, and with all the force and finishing of which the artist was capable. Nothing resembles the structure of a tragedy of antiquity so much as a modern trial for murder; and in the undying interest which such a proceeding invariably excites in all countries and all ages, we may see the deep foundation laid in human nature for the influence of that species of dramatic composition. As in the Greek drama, the witnesses tell the preceding story, and explain the previous crimes or events by which matters have been brought to the present stage, when life or death depends upon the issue of the proceedings. The trial itself takes up these proceedings at the decisive point, and, with strict regard to unity of time and place, exhibits their aims and issue to the mind of the spectators. If the execution of the criminal were immediately to follow the verdict of the jury, and some persons were, when the spectators were still sitting in the hall thrilling with the interest they had felt, to come in, and relate the demeanour and last words of the unhappy being on the scaffold, that would be a Greek drama complete.

As the field of dramatic representation was thus limited on the stage of antiquity, the whole genius and powers of the poet were bent to concentrating on that narrow space all the powers and beauties of which his art was susceptible. Nothing was omitted which could either elevate, interest, entrance, or melt the heart of the audience. It is a common opinion in modern times with persons not acquainted in the originals with the Greek tragedy, that it was couched in a stately measured tone, wholly different from nature, and more akin to the pompous and sonorous verses of the French theatre. There never was a greater mistake. If it is characterized by any peculiarity more than another, it is the brevity and condensation of the language, the energy of the expressions, and the force with which the most vehement passions, and strongest emotions of the heart are conveyed in the simplest words. So brief is the expression, so frequent the breaks and interjections, that the rhythm and verse are frequently, and for a long period, forgotten. Euripides alone, who had great rhetorical powers, sometimes indulges in the lengthened disquisitions, the _arguments in verse_, which exhibit so admirable a view of all that can be urged on a particular subject, and which have been so frequently imitated by Corneille and Racine. But even he, when he comes to the impassioned or pathetic scenes, as in the _Medea_, the _Iphigenia in Aulis_, and _Hecuba_, is as brief and energetic in his expression as Shakspeare himself. Simplicity of language, energy of thought, and force of passion, are the grand characteristics of the Greek drama, as they were of the Greek oratory, and their combination constituted the excellence of both. The fire of the poet, the reach of imagination, was reserved for the chorus, which frequently exhibited the most sublime specimens of lyric poetry, rivalling the loftiest strains of the Pindaric muse. Thus the audience, in a short piece, in which the plot was rapidly urged forward, and the interest was never allowed for a moment to flag, were presented alternately with the force of Demosthenes' declamation, the pathos of Sophocles' expressions, and the fire of Pindar's poetry. It was as if the finest scenes of Shakspeare's tragedies were thrown together with no other interjections but the eloquence of Burke in the dialogue, and lyric poetry on a level with Dryden's "Alexander's Feast," Gray's "Bard," or Campbell's "Last Man," in the chorus. Is it surprising that tragedies, exhibiting such a combination, worked out by the most perfect masters of the human heart, should have entranced every subsequent age?

Though one scene only was presented in each tragedy on the Greek stage, so that unity of place was effectually observed, yet unity of _time_ was by no means so strictly attended to; so that the poet was far from being so fettered in this respect as is commonly imagined. Every scholar knows that a very considerable time, sometimes some hours, or half a day, were supposed to be consumed in the few minutes that the strophe and antistrophe of the chorus were in course of being chanted. For instance, in the _Antigone_ of Sophocles, during the time that one of the chorus is reciting a few verses, the heroic sister has found out the body of her beloved brother, and, in violation of the command of Creon, bestowed on it the rites of sepulture. In the _Hecuba_ of Euripides, in the brief space occupied by a chorus, her daughter Polyxine is led to the tomb of Achilles by Ulysses, and sacrificed there, in presence of the whole Greek army, to procure favourable gales for the return of the troops from Troy. In the _Electra_ of the same author, during the strophes of one chorus, Orestes and Electra effect the death of the husband of Clytemnestra; during another, murder their unhappy mother herself. In the _Phoenissae_ of Euripides, the duel between the two sons of Jocasta, their mutual slaughter, and the self-immolation of that fated mother on the body of her beloved son Polynices, take place while the chorus were reciting a few verses, and are described when the actors return on the stage. In truth, it is often in the tragic events which thus take place behind the scenes during the chorus, but in close connexion with what had just before been exhibited on the boards, that a material part of the interest of the piece consists, and the art of the poet is shown. The interest is never allowed for a moment to flag; it is wrought up first by the anticipation of the catastrophe, then by its description; and the intervening period, when it was actually going forward, is filled up by the recital of sublime lyric poetry, at once causing the stop of time to be forgotten, affording a brief respite to the overwrought feelings, and yet keeping up the enthusiastic and elevated state of mind in the audience.

It is impossible to conceive a more perfect drama than the _Antigone_ of Sophocles. The subject, the characters, the moral tone of the piece, are as perfect as its execution is masterly and felicitous. It possesses, what is not frequent in Greek tragedy, the interest arising from elevated moral feeling and heroic courage devoted to noble purposes. The steady perseverance of Antigone in her noble resolution to perform the last rites to her dead brother, in defiance of the cruel threats of Creon; the courage with which she does discharge those mournful duties; the rage of the tyrant at the violation of his commands; the momentary reappearance of the woman in Antigone, when she thinks of her betrothed, and contemplates her dreadful fate, to be shut up in a living tomb in the rock; the despair of Haemon, who kills himself on the body of his beloved; the silent despair of his mother, which, unable to find words for its expression, leads to her self-immolation--the last victim of the curses bestowed on the race of Oedipus; are all portrayed with inimitable force and pathos. Simplicity of expression, depth of feeling, resolution of mind, are its great characteristics, as they are of all the works of Sophocles. It has been revived with signal success in recent times. If a translation could be made, which should render into English the force and beauty of the original language, the mingled energy and delicacy of Sophocles's conception, we should, indeed, have a perfect idea of the magic of the Greek drama. Such a translation is not beyond the bounds of possibility; the English language is capable of it, and could, in the hands of a master, render back a faithful image of the brevity and power of the Greek. But that master must be a Sophocles, or a Shakspeare; and ages will probably elapse before the world produce either the one or the other.

The _Prometheus Vinctus_ of AEschylus is not properly a drama; at least, it has so little of the peculiar interest belonging to that species of poetry, that it can hardly be called such. Nevertheless, it is perhaps the most sublime composition that ever came from the thoughts of uninspired man. It is meant to portray the heroic devotion, the undaunted courage of Prometheus--the friend of man, the assuager of his sufferings, the aider of his enterprises--who was chained to a rock, exposed to the burning heats of summer, the shivering frosts of winter, by Jupiter, for having stolen fire--the parent of art, the spring of enterprise, the source of improvement--from heaven, to give it to the human race. From the expressions he uses on the ultimate results of that inestimable gift, one would almost suppose he had a prophetic anticipation of the marvels of Steam. The opening scene, where Prometheus is chained to a rock in Scythia, by Vulcan, in presence of "Force and Strength," the agents of Jupiter's commands; and the closing one, where he remains firm and unshaken amidst the wrath of the elements, the upheaving of the ocean, and the lightnings of heaven hurled at his devoted head, are of unrivalled sublimity. They literally realize the idea of the poet--

"Si fractus illabatur orbis, Impavidum ferient ruinae."

The _Prometheus Vinctus_ is the _Inferno_ of Dante dramatised; but it is fraught with a nobler moral. It does not portray the sufferings of sin for past guilt; it exhibits the heroism of virtue under present injustice. It paints the triumph of devoted benevolence, sustained by unconquerable will, over the oppression of physical force, the tyranny of resistless power. It exhibits the charity of the Saviour in the _Paradise Regained_, united to the indomitable spirit of Satan, who is chained on the burning lake, in _Paradise Lost_. It is the prophetical wail of humanity, so often doomed to suffer in the best of causes from external injustice.

The _Iphigenia in Aulis_ is the most perfect of all the tragedies of Euripides, and the best adapted for modern representation. The well-known story of the daughter of the King of Men being devoted to sacrifice, to appease the angry deities, and procure favourable gales for the fleet on the way to Troy, and of the agony of her parents under the infliction, is developed with all the pathos and eloquence of which that great master of the tragic art was capable. Nothing can exceed the progressive interest which the character of Iphigenia excites. At first, horrorstruck, and shrinking with the timidity of her sex from the axe of the priest, she gradually rises when her fate appears inevitable, and at length devotes herself for her country with a woman's devotion, and more than a man's fortitude. In the French plays on the same subject, a love episode is introduced between her and Achilles; but the simplicity of the Greek original appears preferable, in which she had no previous acquaintance with the son of Peleus, and he is interested in her fate, and strives to avert it, only from finding that his name, as her betrothed, had, without his knowledge, been used by Agamemnon to induce Clytemnestra to bring her to the Grecian camp. Doubtless, the tenderness of Racine in the love-scenes between her and Achilles, is inimitable; but the simplicity of the Greek original, where grief on her parents' part for her loss, and her own heroic self-sacrifice on the altar of patriotic duty, are undisturbed by any other emotion, is yet more touching, and far more agreeable to ancient manners, where love on the woman's part, previous to marriage, was, as now in the East, almost unknown.

In these great masterpieces of ancient art, the unity of emotions is strictly preserved; and it is that, joined to the lofty moral tone preserved through the drama, which constitutes their unequalled charm. This, however, is not always the case in the Greek tragedies. They are not insensible to the effect of a high moral tone, or the development of poetical justice; but they did not regard either as the principal object, or even a material part, of dramatic composition. To delineate the play of the passions was their great object: Aristotle says expressly that was the end of tragedy. To that object they devoted all their powers; they succeeded in laying bare the human heart in its most agonized moments, and in its inmost recesses, with terrible fidelity. In this way, they frequently represented it as torn by a double distress, each prompting to atrocious actions; as in the _Medea_ of Euripides, where the unhappy wife of Jason distracted by jealousy at the desertion and second marriage of her husband, destroys her own children in the fury of her vengeance against him; or the _Hecuba_ of the same author, where the discrowned and captive widow of Priam, doomed in one day to see her daughter sacrificed on the tomb of Achilles, and the dead body of her son washed ashore by the waves, takes a terrible vengeance on his murderer, by putting his children to death, and turning him, after his eyes have been put out, to beg his way through the world. The Greeks seem to have been deeply impressed with the evils, vicissitudes, and sufferings of life. No word occurs so frequently in their dramas as _evils_, ([Greek: kaka].) In witnessing the delineation of its miseries on the stage, they seem to have held somewhat of the same stern pleasure which the North American Indians have in beholding the prolonged torture inflicted on a condemned captive at the stake. Every one felt a thrill of interest at beholding how another could bear a series of reverses and sufferings, which might any day be his own.

Notwithstanding all our admiration for the Greek tragedies, and firmly believing that they are framed on the true principle of dramatic composition--the neglect of which has occasioned its long-continued decline in this country--we are yet far from thinking them perfect. The age of the world, the peculiarities of ancient manners, rendered it impossible it should be so. We could conceive dramas more perfect and varied than any even of the masterpieces of Sophocles or Euripides. We are persuaded the world will yet see them outdone; though they will be outdone only by those who follow out their principles. But there are three particulars, in which, in modern times, themes of surpassing interest and importance are opened to the dramatic poet, which were of necessity unknown to the writers of antiquity; and it is by blending the skilful use of these with the simplicity and pathos of the Greek originals, that the highest perfection of this noble art is to be attained.

In the first place, the Greeks had no idea whatever of a system of divine superintendence, or moral retribution, in this world. On the contrary their ideas were just the reverse. FATE, superior to the decrees of Jove himself, was the supreme power which they discerned in all the changes of time; and it was the crushing of a human soul beneath its chariot-wheels that they principally delighted to portray. The omnipotence of Fate, in their opinion, was more shown in the destruction than the rewards of the good. Success in life they were willing enough to ascribe to the able conduct of the persons concerned; they only began, like the French, to speak about destiny when they were unfortunate. Their ignorance of the fundamental principles of religion, familiar to every peasant in Europe, shines forth in every page of Sophocles and Euripides. The noblest tragedy of AEschylus, the _Prometheus Vinctus_, is intended to portray the highest divine benevolence overpowered by supreme power, and eternally suffering under eternal injustice. The frequent overthrow of virtue by wickedness, of innocence by fraud, of gentleness by violence, in this world, seems to have produced an indelible impression on their minds. They not only had no confidence in the divine justice, or the ultimate triumph of virtue over vice, but they had the reverse. They had a mournful conviction that innocence in this vale of tears was everlastingly doomed to suffering; that vice would eternally prove triumphant; and that it was in inward strength and resolution that the only refuge for oppressed virtue was to be found. Their greatest philosophers thought the same. Their tragedies were dramatised Stoicism. Grandeur of character, force of mind, the indomitable will, might be portrayed to perfection under such a belief; but the mild graces, the confidence in God, the resignation to his will, breathed into the human heart by the Gospel, were unknown. What a volume of thoughts and sentiments, of virtues and graces, were wanting in a world to which faith, hope, and charity were unknown! A dramatic Raphael was impossible in antiquity; it was the spirit of the Redeemer which inspired his _Holy Families_. Their morality, accordingly, is of a sterner cast than any thing with which we are acquainted in modern times. They were full of admiration of the qualities which formed the patriot and the hero, and have portrayed them to perfection in their dramas; but they were ignorant of that more heavenly disposition of mind, which

"sits a blooming bride, By valour's arm'd and awful side."

They perceived the tendency of firm and unbending virtue to elevate the soul above all that is earthly; but they knew not, in the sublime language of Milton,

"That if virtue feeble were, Heaven itself would stoop to her."

As a necessary consequence of this, the dramas of antiquity were destitute of those feelings of PIETY, which form so important a part in the most elevated characters of modern Europe. The ancients carried mere human virtue to the very highest point; in their poetry, their tragedies, their philosophy, they represented man resting on himself alone in the noblest aspect. But they were ignorant of God; they had no correct ideas of Heaven. The devotion to the divine will, the forgetfulness of self, the reliance on Supreme protection to innocence, the appeal to the Almighty, and the judgment of another world against the injustice of this, which runs through the most exalted conceptions of modern times, were to them unknown. Their ideas of the celestial beings were entirely drawn from human models: Olympus was peopled by gods and goddesses animated by passions, divided by jealousies, stimulated by desires entirely akin to those which are felt in this world. The shades below were a dark and gloomy region, the entrance to which was placed in the jaws of Vesuvius, or the dreary expanse of the Cimmerian Bosphorus, through which the cries of the damned in Tartarus incessantly resounded; and where even the blessed spirits in Elysium were continually regretting the joys and excitement of the upper world. Dante, in his _Inferno_, has painted to the life their prevailing ideas of futurity; the next world to them contained nothing but successive circles of Malebolge. Homer has expressed their feeling in a line, when he makes Achilles, in Elysium, say to Ulysses, on his descent to the infernal regions, that he would rather command the Grecian army one day, than dwell where he was through an infinity of ages. Compare this with the ideas of the Crusaders in modern Europe; with the death of the chivalric Bayard, when, mortally wounded, seated on the ground, with his eyes fixed on the cross of his sword, he said to the victorious Constable de Bourbon, "Pity not me--pity those who fight against their king, their country, and their oath!"

Lastly, the passion of love, as it is understood and felt in modern times, was unknown in antiquity; and to those who reflect how important a part it bears in the romances and plays of Europe, this will probably appear like performing Hamlet with the character of the Prince of Denmark omitted on the occasion. It was impossible they could have it, because their manners were much more Oriental than European; and young persons of opposites sexes rarely, if ever, met before marriage. They had a perfect idea of the mutual affection which arises after marriage; the tenderness of Hector and Andromache never has been surpassed in any tongue. With the passions of the harem they were perfectly familiar, and the dreadful pangs of jealousy never have been painted with more consummate ability, or more thorough knowledge of human nature. Euripides, in particular, has delineated the terrible effects of that passion with a master's hand; witness the raving of Medea at the desertion of Jason; the fury of Hermione at the captive Andromache. Love also, as it arises now in an Eastern seraglio, was not unknown to them; the passion of Phaedra for Hippolytus, as painted by Euripides, is a proof of it. But the love they thus conceived, had scarce any resemblance to the passion of the same name, which has risen up with the general intercourse of the sexes, and chivalrous manners of modern Europe. It is represented rather as a fever, as a fit of insanity, than any thing else; and is usually held forth as the withering blast inflicted by an offended deity, or the mania bequeathed as an inheritance on an accursed race. The refined and ennobling passion, so well-known and exquisitely described by the great masters of the human heart in modern times, that of Othello for Desdemona, of Tancrede for Clorinda, of Corinne for Oswald, was unknown in antiquity. Even the passions described by Ovid, which arose amidst the freer manners of the Roman patricians, had little resemblance to the refined sentiments, the bequest of the age of chivalry; the one was founded on the subjugation of mind by the senses, the other on the oblivion of the senses in the mind. What a vast addition to the range and interest of the drama has the refining and spiritualizing of this master-passion of the human breast, by the influence of Christianity, and the institutions of chivalry, made; and how inexcusable does it render modern genius, if, with such an additional chord to touch in the human heart, it has never yet rivalled the great models of antiquity!

And has modern genius not yet equalled the masterpieces of the drama in ancient Greece? We answer, decidedly not--either on the Continent or this country--any more than modern sculpture has rivalled the perfections of Grecian statuary. Neither in the old French and Italian school, which followed the ancient models, nor in the Romantic school in which old England and young France proposed to rival it, has any thing approaching to the interest and pathos of the Athenian dramatists been produced. It is not difficult to see what have been the causes of this inferiority, and they seem to have been these.

The regular drama of France was addressed, entirely and exclusively, to the court, the noble, and the highly educated classes. It was nothing more than an extension of the theatres of Versailles. The opinion of Louis XIV., his ministers or mistresses, of the Duke of Orleans, and a few leading nobles of Louvois, and one or two statesmen, were all in all. The approbation of the king stamped a tragedy in public opinion, as his dancing with her stamped the estimation of a new court beauty. The voice and feelings of the middle or lower ranks of society had no more to say on the subject than they had in the formation of court dresses, or the etiquette of the _Oeil de Boeuf_. They took their opinions from that of the magnates of the land, as milliners and tailors now do from the dresses of London and Paris. Rank and fashion were paramount in literature, as they are still in manner, dancing, and etiquette. It was impossible that the drama, addressed to, and having its success dependent on, the approbation of such an audience, could faithfully paint the human heart. The stately dances and haughty seigneurs of Versailles, would have been shocked with the vehement bursts of passion, the pathetic traits of nature, the undisguised expression of feeling, which appeared in Euripides and Sophocles, and entranced the mixed and more natural audience of Athens. It would have appeared vulgar and painful; it revealed what it was the great object of art and education to conceal. The stately Alexandrine verses, the sonorous periods, the dignified and truly noble thoughts, which so strongly characterize the French tragedies, arose naturally, and perhaps unavoidably, from the habits and tastes of the exclusive aristocratic circle to which they were addressed. In addition to this, the audience were all highly educated; at least according to the ideas and habits of the times. Classical images were those which recalled the most pleasing associations in every mind; classical events awakened the emotions most likely to prove generally attractive. The ancient models were before every mind, from the effect of early and universal education. Classical allusions and subjects were as unavoidable, as they now are in the prize poems of Oxford or Cambridge. Thus, the drama of Athens naturally was assumed as the model of modern imitation; but on it was ingrafted, not the vehemence and nature of the Greek originals, addressed to all mankind, but the measured march of heroic versification, intended for a narrow and dignified feudal circle.

Making allowance for this peculiarity, and considering the drama as, from this cause, diverted from its real object and highest flight, it is impossible to conceive any thing more perfect than the masterpieces of the French stage. Corneille was their greatest composer; he had most original genius, and was least fettered by artificial rules. He was the AEschylus of the French theatre. Voltaire said, that the king's ministers should be compelled to attend the performance of his finest pieces, to acquire the knowledge of human nature, and statesmanlike views requisite for the government of man. Napoleon said, if Corneille had lived in his time, he would have made him a counsellor of state; for he alone, of all writers, felt the overpowering importance of state necessity. The great Conde wept at the generosity of sentiment portrayed in his _Britannicus_. It is impossible to conceive any thing more dignified and elevated, more calculated to rouse the generous and lofty feelings, to nourish that forgetfulness of self and devotion to others, which is the foundation of every thing great and good in this world, than his finest tragedies. They are, however, very unequal. _Cinna_, _Les Horaces_, the _Cid_, and _Rodogune_, are his masterpieces; it is they which have won for him, by the consent of all nations, the surname of "le Grand Corneille." But still it is not nature which is generally represented in his tragedies. It is an ideal nature, seven foot high, clad in impenetrable panoply, steeled against the weaknesses, as above the littlenesses of humanity. Persons of a romantic, lofty tone of mind, will to the end of the world be fascinated by his pages; heroic resolutions, great deeds, will ever be prompted by his sentiments. But they are above the standard of common life. They evince a deep knowledge of human nature, but of human nature in noble and heroic bosoms only--and that is widely different from what it obtains with ordinary men. Hence his pieces are little adapted for general representation; and certainly, even the best translations of them never could succeed in this country.

Racine is a more general favourite than Corneille, because he paints feelings more commonly experienced; but he wants his great and heroic sentiments. No one ever thought of calling him the Great. Less deeply embued with the lofty spirit of chivalry, less romantic in his structure, less commanding in his ideas, he is more polished, more equal, and has a greater command of the pathetic. He is to Corneille what Virgil was to Homer, what Raphael to Michael Angelo. The anguish of the human heart was what he chiefly loved to represent, because he felt that there he excelled; and hence his tragedies are chiefly formed on the Greek model, and on the subjects already treated by Sophocles and Euripides. Agamemnon, Achilles, Alcestes, Orestes, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia, Oedipus, Hermione, Jocasta, Antigone, reappear on his pages, as in those of the masters of the Greek drama. But they reappear in a modern dress. They are very different from the inimitable simplicity of the originals. The refinements, conceits, extravagant flattery, politeness, and stately manners of the Grand Monarque, shine through every line. Achilles makes love to Iphigenia as if she were in the marbled gardens of Versailles; the passion of Phedre for Hippolyte, is the refined effusion of modern delicacy, not the burning fever and maniac delirium of Phaedra in Euripides. His Greek heroes and heroines address each other as if they were in the _Oeil de Boeuf_; it is "monsieur" and "madame" at every step. Under classical names, and with the scene laid in distant lands, it is still the ancient _regime_ of France which is portrayed in all his pieces--it is the passions and distresses of an old and highly civilized society which are depicted. Even _Athalie_, his masterpiece, has none of the ancient Jewish spirit in it; it is the modern priesthood which is represented as resisting oppression in the temple of Jerusalem. But the beauty of language, the melody of versification, the delicacy of sentiments, the frequent touches of the pathetic which his writings exhibit, will for ever secure him a high place in the opinion of men; and justify the saying of Voltaire, that whoever would acquire a pure and elegant French style, must have the _Petit Careme_ of Massillon, and _Athalie_ of Racine, constantly lying on his writing table.

Voltaire, though he adhered, in part at least, to the old subjects in his tragedies, is far more various and discursive in his mode of treating them. The prodigious fecundity of the author of a hundred volumes, the varied acquisitions of the philosopher, the historian, the satirist, the moralist, give diversity to his subjects, and an endless variety to his ideas. He possessed, as it were, a polyglot mind; he threw himself into the feelings and passions of every country and every age, and brought out in his dramas part at least of the inexhaustible store of human thoughts and events which have from the beginning of time agitated the human race. The East, with its sultans, its harems, its sultanas, and its jealousies, strongly arrested his imagination, and furnished the subjects of some of his finest pieces; witness _Mahomet_, _Bajazet_, _Tamerlane_, and _Zaire_. For this reason his tragedies are more general favourites now than either those of Corneille or Racine; you will see the audience in the parterre of the Theatre Francais repeating whole speeches from _Brutus_, _Alzire_, or _Le Fanatisme_, after the performer on the stage. They have sunk deeper into the general mind than any of their predecessors; more of their lines have become household expressions, as is the case with Shakspeare, Gray, and Campbell in England, than those of any other author in the French language. Voltaire, too, was strongly impressed with the necessity of keeping up the interest of his piece from first to last; he drives on the story with an untiring hand, and even before the final catastrophe, contrives to produce a passing excitement at every step, by subordinate and yet important events. What he constantly complains of in his admirable commentaries on Corneille is, that, in his inferior pieces at least, that great master lets the story flag, the interest die away, and that, trusting to the fascination of his language, the power of his thoughts, he neglects the important matters of dramatic power and stage effect. His perfect knowledge of both these important auxiliaries of his art, is not the least of Voltaire's many excellences; and has secured for him, to all appearance permanently, if not the first, unquestionably the most popular place in the French theatre. But still his dramas do not represent nature. They are noble pieces of rhetoric put into rhyme. They are the ablest possible debate arrayed in the pomp of Alexandrine verse. But they do not touch the heart like a few words in Sophocles, Euripides, or Shakspeare.

Metastasio was fettered by a double set of rules; for he was compelled to attend at once to the dramatic unities of Aristotle, and the musical restraints of the opera. It was no common genius which, amidst such difficulties, could produce a series of dramas which should not merely charm the world, when arrayed in the enchanted garb of the opera, with all the attractions of music and scenery, but form a perpetual subject of pleasing study to the recluse, far from the pomp and magnificence of theatric representation. It is impossible to imagine any thing more attractive than his dramas, considered as visionary pieces. Formed on the events of the ancient world, he depicts, under the name of Alexander, Titus, Dido, Regulus, Caesar, and Cleopatra, ideal beings having about as much resemblance to real mortals as the nymphs of the ballet have to ordinary women, or the recitative of Mozart to the natural human voice. But still they are very charming. If they are not a feature of this world, they are a vision of something above it; of a scene in which the littlenesses and selfishness of mortality are forgotten; in which virtue is generally in the end triumphant; in which honour in women proves victorious over love, and fortitude in men obtains the mastery of fortune. Generosity and magnanimity beyond what could have been even conceived, often furnishes the _denouement_ of the piece, and extricates the characters from apparently insurmountable difficulties. There can be no doubt this is not human life: Alexander the Great, Dido, Regulus, are not of every day's occurrence. But the total departure of such representations from the standard of reality, appears less reprehensible in the opera than the ordinary theatre, because the singing and recitative at any rate remove it from off the pale of mortality. We take up one of his dramas as we go to the opera, not to see any picture of actual existence, or any thing which shall recall the experienced feelings of the human heart, but to be charmed by a fairy tale, which, if it does not paint the stern realities of life, at least charms by its imagination.

The more impassioned mind and vehement passions of Alfieri disdained those trammels by which the French and Italian stages had so long been fettered. Gifted by nature with an ardent imagination, impetuous feelings, deep and lasting emotions, he early saw that the modern drama, founded on, and fettered by, the strict observance of the Greek unities, and yet discarding its broken and rapid diction, its profound knowledge of the human heart, its vehement expression of passion, had departed far from the real object of the art, and could not be brought back to it but by a total change of system. He has himself told us, in his most interesting life, that when he read the tragedies of Racine and Corneille, the book fell from his hands. They conveyed no idea whatever of reality; they had no resemblance to the ardent feelings which he felt burning in his own breast. Anxiously seeking vent for passions too fierce to be controlled, he found it in the study of the Greek drama. The wrath of Medea, the heroism of Antigone, the woes of Andromache, the love of Phaedra, found a responsive echo in his bosom; they combined every thing he could desire, they represented every thing that he felt. He saw what Tragedy had been--what it ought to be. His taste was immediately formed on the true model. When he came to write tragedies himself, he composed them on the plan of Sophocles. He did more. He made the language as brief, the voice of passion as powerful, the plot as simple; but he brought even fewer characters on the stage. He trusted entirely to the force of passion the wail of suffering, the accents of despair. Immense was the effect of this recurrence to unsophisticated feeling, in a luxurious and effeminate society. It was like the burst of admiration with which the picture of the human heart was at the same time hailed in France, drawn by the magic hand of Rousseau; or, in the next age, the fierce passions of the melodramatic corsairs of Byron were received in the artificial circles of London society. Nature was something new; they had never heard her voice before.

Had Alfieri, with this ardent mind and clear perception of the true end of the drama, been endowed with that _general_ knowledge of the human heart, and of human character in all its bearings, which the Greek dramatists possessed he would have formed the greatest tragedian of modern continental Europe. But in these vital particulars he was very deficient. His position in society, character, and habits, precluded him from acquiring it. The dissipated, heartless nobleman, who flew from one devoted passion to another, without the slightest compunction as to their effects on the objects of his adoration; who fought Lord Ligonier in the Park, in pursuance of an intrigue with his lady; and stole from the Pretender his queen, when age and dissipation had wellnigh brought him to the grave; who traversed, post-haste, France and Italy with fourteen blood-horses, which he wore out in his impetuous course, was not likely either to feel the full force of the generous, or paint the _real_ features of the selfish passion. He did not mingle with the ordinary world on a footing of _equality_. This it is which ever makes aristocratic and high-bred authors ignorant of the one thing needful in history or the drama--a knowledge of human nature. No man ever learned that, who had not been practically brought into collision with men in all ranks, from the highest to the lowest. Hence his characters are almost all overdrawn. Vice and virtue are exhibited in too undisguised colours; the malignity of the wicked is laid too bare to the reader. He makes the depraved _admit they are bad, but yet persevere in their crimes_; a certain proof that he did not know the human heart. He knew it better who said, "The heart _is deceitful above all things_, and desperately wicked." Napoleon knew it better when he said to Talma, after seeing his representation of Nero in _Britannicus_--"You are quite wrong in your idea of Nero; you should _conceal the tyrant_. No man admits he was guilty either to himself or others." Alfieri himself is a proof of it: he recounts, in his life, many criminal acts he committed, but never with the slightest allusion to their having been wrong. He admitted, later in life, that he had been ignorant of human nature in the great body of mankind; for he said, on recounting the horrors of the 10th August, which he had witnessed at Paris--"Je connais bien les grands, _mais je ne connais pas les petits_."

It is hard to say whether Schiller belongs to the Greek or Romantic school in the drama. His subjects are in great part chosen from the latter class: he changes the scene, and did not hold himself bound by the rules of Aristotle. But in his mode of treating these subjects, he approaches more nearly to the tragedians of antiquity. He utterly discarded the limited range of subjects, and measured pomp of the French drama; he felt that the world had grown old since the days of Euripides, and that it was time for tragedy to embrace a wider range of subjects than the family disasters which followed the return of the Greeks from the siege of Troy. He knew that it was not in stately rhyme or measured cadences, that passion finds vent from the human breast. He was essentially historical in his ideas. The past with its vast changes and endless variety of events, lay open before him. And he availed himself of all its riches. He is unequalled in the ability with which he threw himself into his subject, identified himself, not merely with the characters, but the periods in which they arose, and brought before the mind of the spectators the ideas, interests, passions, and incidents, the collision of which produced the catastrophe which formed the immediate subject of his piece. The best informed English or Scottish historians will have something to learn on the history of Queen Mary, from the incomparable summary of arguments for and against her detention in captivity by Queen Elizabeth, in the two first acts of his noble tragedy of _Mary Stuart_. The learned Spaniard will find himself transported to the palace of the Escurial, and the frightful tragedies of its bigoted court, in his terrible tragedy of _Don Carlos_. Schiller rivals Shakspeare himself in the energy with which, by a word or an epithet, he paints the fiercest or tenderest passions of the heart: witness the devoted love of Thekla for Max in _Wallenstein_; or the furious jealousy of the Queen in _Don Carlos_. He has not the grotesque of Shakspeare; we do not see in his tragedies that mixture of the burlesque and the sublime which is so common in the Bard of Avon, and is not infrequent with the greatest minds, who play, as it were, with the thunderbolts, and love to show how they can master them. Hence, in reading at least, his dramas produce a more uniform and unbroken impression than those of the great Englishman, and will, with foreign nations, command a more general admiration. But the great charm in Schiller is the romantic turn of mind, the noble elevation of sentiment, the truly heroic spirit, with which his tragedies abound. In reading them, we feel that a new intellectual soil has been turned up in the Fatherland; the human soul, in its pristine purity and beauty, comes forth from beneath his hand; it reappears like the exquisite remains of Grecian statuary, which, buried for ages in superincumbent ruins, emerge pure and unstained in virgin snow, when a renewal of cultivation has again exposed them to the light. If he were equally great at all times, he would have been the most perfect dramatist of modern times. But he is far from being so. At times he is tedious; often dull; it is his great scenes, such as the last sacrament of Queen Mary, which have gained for him his colossal reputation, and produce an indelible impression on the mind of his reader.

We have exhausted, perhaps exceeded, our limits and we have only got through half our subject. A noble theme remains: Shakspeare, with the Romantic drama, will be treated in the Number which is to follow; and the causes considered which have brought the school, created by such a master, into the state of comparative mediocrity in which, with some brilliant exceptions, it is now placed.

FOOTNOTES:

[J] The first wrote _eighteen hundred_ plays, the variety in the plots of which is so prodigious, that they are the great quarry from which almost all subsequent dramatic writers have borrowed the elements of their theatrical pieces.

[K] Euripides was fifteen years younger than Sophocles--the latter being born in the year 495 B.C., the former in 480; and they thrice contended for the prize at the public games of Greece.

[L] Miss Cushman's Lady Macbeth is a performance of the very highest merit, and proves that the genius of the stage is capable of being matured in transatlantic climes.

[M] At the execution of Doolan and another, for a combination murder near Glasgow, on May 13th, 1842.

[N] Schiller's dramas are of the modern kind, and the unities are not strictly observed; but his finer pieces belong more nearly to the Grecian than the Romantic school.

MY COLLEGE FRIENDS.

NO. III.

MR W. WELLINGTON HURST.

It would probably puzzle Mr William Wellington Hurst, as much as any man, to find out on what grounds I placed him on the list of my College friends; for certainly our intimacy was hardly sufficient to warrant such a liberty; and he was one of those happy individuals who would never have suspected that it could be out of gratitude for much amusement afforded me by sundry of his sayings and doings. But so it is; and it happens, that while the images of many others of my companions--very worthy good sort of fellows, whom I saw more or less of nearly every day--have vanished from my memory, or only flit across occasionally, like shadows, the full-length figure of Mr W. Wellington Hurst, exactly as he turned out, after a satisfactory toilet, in the patent boots and scarf of many colours, stands fixed there like a daguerreotype--more faithful than flattering.

My first introduction to him was by running him down in a skiff, when I was steering the College eight--not less to his astonishment than our own gratification. It is perfectly allowable, by the laws of the river, if, after due notice, these small craft fail to get out of your way; but it is not very easy to effect. However, in this instance, we went clean over him, very neatly indeed. The men helped him into our boat, just as his own sunk from under him; and he accepted a seat by my side in the stern-sheets, with many apologies for being so wet, appearing considerably impressed with a sense of my importance, and still more of my politeness. When we reached Sandford, I prescribed a stiff tumbler of hot brandy and water, and advised him to run all the way home, to warm himself, and avoid catching cold; and, from that time, I believe he always looked upon me as a benefactor. The claim, on my part, certainly rested on a very small foundation originally; it was strengthened afterwards by a less questionable act of patronage. Like many other under-graduates of every man's acquaintance, Hurst laboured under the delusion, that holding two sets of reins in a very confused manner, and flourishing a long whip, was driving; and that to get twenty miles out of Oxford in a "team," without an upset, or an imposition from the proctor, was an _opus operatum_ of the highest possible merit. To do him justice, he laboured diligently in the only exercise which he seemed to consider strictly academical--he spent an hour every morning, standing upon a chair, "catching flies," as he called it, and occasionally flicking his scout with a tandem whip, and practised incessantly upon tin horns of all lengths, with more zeal than melody, until he got the erysipelas in his lower lip, and a hint of rustication from the tutors. Yet he was more ambitious than successful. His reputation on the road grew worse and worse every day. He had a knack of shaving turnpike gates, and cutting round corners on one wheel, and getting his horses into every possible figure but a straight line, which made every mile got over without an accident almost a miracle. At last, after taking a four-in-hand over a narrow bridge, at the bottom of a hill, pretty much in the Olympic fashion--all four abreast--men got rather shy of any expeditions of the kind in his company. There was little credit in it, and a good deal of danger. First, he was reduced to soliciting the company of freshmen, who were flattered by any proposal that sounded _fast_. But they, too, grew shy, after one or two ventures; and poor Hurst soon found a difficulty in getting a companion at all. He was a liberal fellow enough, and not pushed for a guinea when his darling science was concerned: so he used to offer to "sport the train" himself; but even when he condescended to the additional self-devotion of standing a dinner and champagne, he found that the closest calculators among his sporting acquaintance had as much regard for their necks as their pockets.

To this inglorious position was his fame as a charioteer reduced, when Horace Leicester and myself, early in his third term, had determined somewhat suddenly to go to see a steeple-chase about twelve miles off, where Leicester had some attraction beside the horses, in the shape of a pretty cousin; (_two_, he told me, and bribed me with the promise of an introduction to "the other," but she did not answer to sample at all.) We had engaged a very nice mare and stanhope, which we knew we could depend upon, when, the day before the race, the chestnut was declared lame, and not a presentable four-legged animal was to be hired in Oxford. Hurst had engaged his favourite pair of greys (which would really go very well with any other driver) a week beforehand, but had been canvassing the last batch of freshmen in vain for an occupant of the vacant seat. A huge red-headed north-country man, who had never seen a tandem in his life, but who, as far as pluck went, would have ridden postilion to Medea's dragons, was listening with some apparent indecision to Hurst's eloquence upon the delights of driving, just as we came up after a last unsuccessful search through the livery stables; and the pair were proceeding out of college arm in arm, probably to look at the greys, when Leicester, to my amusement, stepped up with--"Hurst, who's going with you to B----?"

"I--why, I hardly know yet; I think Sands here will, if"----

"I'll go with you then, if you like; and if you've got a cart, Hawthorne can come too, and it will be very jolly."

If the university had announced their intention of creating him a B.A. by diploma, without examination, Hurst could hardly have looked more surprised and delighted. Leicester, it should be borne in mind, was one of the most popular men in the college--a sort of _arbiter elegantiarum_ in the best set. Hurst knew very little of him, but was no doubt highly flattered by his proposal. From coaxing freshmen to come out by the bribe of paying all expenses, to driving to B---- steeple-chase side by side with Horace, (my modesty forbids me to include myself,) was a step at once from the ridiculous to the sublime of tandemizing. For this advancement in life, he always, I fancy, considered himself indebted to me, as I had originally introduced him to Leicester's acquaintance; and when we both accepted an invitation, which he delivered himself of with some hesitation, to breakfast in his rooms on the morning of the expedition, his joy and gratitude appeared to know no bounds. It is not usual, be it remembered, for a junior man in college to ask a senior to a party from whom he has never received an invitation himself; but hunting and tandem-driving are apt occasionally to set ordinary etiquette at defiance. "Don't ask a lot of men, that's all--there's a good fellow," said Horace, whose good-natured smile, and off-hand and really winning manner, enabled him to carry off, occasionally, a degree of impudence which would not have been tolerated from others--"I hate a large formal breakfast party of all things; it disgusts me to see a score of men jostling each other over tough beefsteaks."

"I asked Sands yesterday," apologised Hurst. "I thought perhaps he would come out with me; but I dare say I can put him off, if"----

"Oh! on no account whatever; you mean the carroty freshman I saw you with just now? Have him by all means; it will be quite refreshing to meet any man so regularly green. So there will be just four of us; eight o'clock, I suppose? it won't do to be much later."

And Horace walked off, having thus arranged matters to his own satisfaction and his host's. I was an interested party in the business, however, and had my own terms to make. "You've disposed of me rather coolly," said I; "you don't surely imagine, that at my time of life I'm going to trust my neck to that fellow's furious driving?"

"Make your mind easy, Frank; William Wellington sha'n't finger a riband."

"Nonsense, Leicester; you can't treat a man in that kind of way--not to let him drive his own team. Hurst _is_ a bit of an ass, certainly; but you can't with any decency first ask a man for a seat, and then refuse to give him up the reins."

"Am I in the habit, sir, of doing things in the very rude and ungentlemanly style you insinuate?" And Horace looked at me with mock dignity for a second or two, and then burst into a laugh. "Leave it to me, Hawthorne, and I'll manage it to the satisfaction of all parties: I'll manage that Hurst shall have a capital day's fun, and your valuable neck shall be as safe as if you were tried by a Welsh jury."

With this indefinite assurance I was obliged to be content; and accordingly, at half-past eight the next morning, after a very correct breakfast, we mounted the tandem-cart at the college back-gates, got the leader hitched on, as usual, a mile out of the city, for fear of proctors, and were bowling merrily along, in the slight frost of an autumn morning, towards B----. Leicester took the driving first, by Hurst's special request, after one or two polite but faint refusals, the latter sitting by his side; while I occupied, for the present, the queer little box which in those days was stuck on behind, (the more modern carts, which hold four, are an improvement introduced into the University since my driving days.) With wonderful gravity and importance did Leicester commence his lectures on the whip to his admiring companion: I almost think he began in the approved style, with a slight allusion to the Roman _biga_, and deduced the progress of the noble science from Ericthonius down to "Peyton and Ward." I have a lively recollection of a comparison between Automedon of the Homeric times, and "Black Will" of Oxford celebrity--the latter being decided as only likely to be less immortal, because there was no Homer among the contemporary under-graduates. A good deal was lost to me, no doubt, from my position behind; but Hurst seemed to suck it all in with every disposition to be edified. From the history of his subject, Horace proceeded, in due course, to the theory, from theory to facts, from facts to illustrations. In the practical department, Horace, I suspect, like many other lecturers, was on his weakest ground; for his own driving partook of the under-graduate character.

"You throw the lash out so--you see--and bring it back sharp, so--no, not _so_ exactly--so--hang the thing, I can't do it now; but that's the principle, you understand--and then you take up your double thong, so--pshaw, I did it very well just now--to put it into the wheeler, so--ah, I missed it then, but that's the way to do it."

He put me considerably in mind of a certain professor of chemistry, whose lectures on light and heat I once was rash enough to attend, who, after a long dry disquisition which had nearly put us all to sleep, used to arouse our attention to the "beautiful effects" produced by certain combinations, which he would proceed to illustrate, as he said, by a "little experiment." But, somehow or other, these little experiments always, or nearly always, failed: and after the room had been darkened, perhaps, for five minutes or so, in order to give the exhibition full effect, the result would be, a _fizz_ or two, a faint blue light, and a stink, varying according to circumstances, but always abominable. "It's very odd, John," the discomfited operator used to exclaim to his assistant; "very odd; and we succeeded so well this morning, too: it's most unaccountable: I'm really very sorry, gentlemen, but I can assure you, this very same experiment we tried to-day with the most beautiful result; didn't we, John?" "We did, sir," was John's invariably dutiful reply: and so the audience took John's word for it, and the experiment was considered to have been, virtually, successful.

So we rattled on to the ground: Leicester occasionally putting the reins into his companion's hand, teaching him to perform some impossible movement with his third finger, and directing his attention to non-existent flies, which he professed to remove from the leader, out of sheer compassion, with the point of the whip.

"You are sure you wouldn't like to take the reins now? Well, you'll drive home then, of course? Hawthorne, will you try your hand now? Hurst's going to take up the tooling when we come back."

"No, thank you," said I; "I won't interfere with either of your performances."--"And if Hurst does drive home," was my mental determination, expressed to Leicester as far as a nod can do it, "I'll walk."

There was no difficulty in finding out the localities: the field in which the winning-flag was fixed was not far from the turnpike road, and conspicuous enough by the crowd already collected. Of course, pretty nearly all the sporting characters among the gownsmen were there, the distance from the University being so trifling. Mounted on that seedy description of animal peculiar to Oxford livery-stables, which can never by any possibility be mistaken for any thing but a hired affair, but will generally go all day, and scramble through almost any thing; with showily mounted jockey-whips in their hands, bad cigars (at two guineas a-pound) in their mouths, bright blue scarfs, or something equivalent, round their necks--their neat white cords and tops (things which they _do_ turn out well in Oxford) being the only really sportsmanlike article about them; flattering themselves they looked exceedingly knowing, and, in nine cases out of ten, being deceived therein most lamentably; clustered together in groups of four or five, discussing the merits of the horses, or listening, as to an oracle, to the opinion of some Oxford horse-dealer, delivered with insolent familiarity--here were the men who drunk out of a fox's head, and recounted imaginary runs with the Heythrop. Happy was he amongst them, and a positive hero for the day, who could boast a speaking acquaintance with any of those anomalous individuals, at present enshrouded in great-coats, but soon to appear in all the varieties of jockey costume, known by the style and title of "gentlemen riders;" who could point out, confidentially, to his admiring companions, "Jack B----," and "Little M----," and announce, from authority, how many ounces under weight one was this morning, and how many blankets were put upon the other the night before, to enable him to come to the scales at all. Here and there, more plainly dressed, moving about quickly on their own thorough-breds, or talking to some neighbouring squire who knew the ground, were the few really sporting-men belonging to the university; who kept hunters in Oxford, simply because they were used to keep them at home, and had been brought up to look upon fox-hunting as their future vocation. Lolling on their saddles, probably voting it all a bore, were two or three tufts, and their "tail;" and stuck into all sorts of vehicles, lawful and unlawful, buggies, drags, and tandems, were that ignoble herd, who, like myself, had come to the steeple-chase, just because it was the most convenient idleness at hand, and because other men were going. There were all sorts of people there besides, of course: carriages of all grades of pretension, containing pretty bonnets and ugly faces, in the usual proportion; "all the beauty and fashion of the neighbourhood," nevertheless, as the county paper assured us; and as I may venture to add, from personal observation, a very fair share of its disrespectability and blackguardism besides.

After wandering for a short time among these various groups, Leicester halted us at last in front of one of those old-fashioned respectable-looking barouches, which one now so seldom sees, in which were seated a party, who turned out to consist of an uncle and aunt, and the pair of cousins before alluded to. Hurst and I were duly introduced; a ceremony which, for my own part, I could have very readily excused, when I discovered that the only pair of eyes in the party worth mentioning bestowed their glances almost exclusively on Horace, and any attempt at cutting into the conversation in that quarter was as hopeless, apparently, as ungracious. Our friend's taste in the article of cousins was undeniably correct; Flora Leicester was a most desirable person to have for a cousin; very pretty, very good-humoured, and (I am sure she was, though I pretend to no experience of the fact) very affectionate. If one could have put in any claim of kindred, even in the third or fourth degree, it would have been a case in which to stickle hard for the full privileges of relationship. As matters stood, it was trying to the sensibilities of us unfortunate bystanders, whose cousins were either ugly or at a distance; for the rest of our new acquaintances were not interesting. The younger sister was shy and insipid; the squire like ninety-nine squires in every hundred; and the lady-mother in a perpetual state of real or affected nervous agitation, to which her own family were happily insensible, but which taxed a stranger's polite sympathies pretty heavily. Though constantly in the habit, as she assured me, of accompanying her husband to run courses, and enjoying the sport, she was always on the look-out for an accident, and was always having, as she said, narrow escapes; some indeed so very narrow, that, according to her own account, they ought _to have had, by every rule of probability, fatal terminations_. In fact, her tone might have led one to believe that she looked upon herself as an ill-used woman, in getting off so easily--at least she was exceedingly angry when the younger daughter ventured to remark, _en pendant_ to one of her most thrilling adventures, that "there was no great danger of an upset when the wheel stuck fast." Not content with putting her head out of the carriage every five minutes, to see if her own well-trained bays were standing quiet, as they always did, there was not a restive horse or awkward rider on the ground but attracted the good lady's ever watchful sense of danger. "He'll be thrown! I'm sure he will! foolish man, why don't he get off!" "Oh, oh! there they go! they're off, those horrid horses! they'll never stop 'em!" Such were the interjections, accompanied with extraordinary shudderings and drawings of the breath, with which Mrs John Leicester, her eyes fixed on some distant point, occasionally broke in upon the general conversation, sometimes with a vehemence that startled even her nephew and eldest daughter, though, to do them justice, they paid very little attention to any of us.

Just as I was meditating something desperate, in order to relieve myself from the office of soother-general of Mrs Leicester's imaginary terrors, and to bring Flora's sunny face once more within my line of vision, (she had been turning the back of her bonnet upon me perseveringly for the last ten minutes,) a general commotion gave us notice that the horses were started, and the race begun. The hill on which we were stationed was close to the winning-post, and commanded a view of pretty nearly the whole ground from the start. The race, as, I suppose, pretty nearly like other steeple-chases, and there is the less need for me to describe it, because a very full and particular account appeared in the _Bell's Life_ next ensuing. The principal impressions which remain on my mind, are of a very smart gentleman in black and crimson, mounted on a very powerful bay, who seemed as if he had been taking it easy, who came in first, and after having been sufficiently admired by an innocent public, myself among the number, as the winner, turned out to have gone on the right hand instead of the left, of some flag or other, and to have lost the race accordingly; and of a very dirty-looking person, who arrived some minute or two afterwards without a cap, whose jacket was green and his horse grey, so far as the mud left any colour visible, and who, to the great disappointment, of the ladies especially, turned out to be the real hero after all.

We had made arrangements to have an independent beefsteak together after the race, in preference to joining the sporting ordinary announced as usual on such occasions; but the squire insisted on Leicester bringing us both to dine with his party at five. After a few modest and conscientious scruples on my part, at intruding on the hospitality of comparative strangers, and a strong private remonstrance from Hurst, on the impropriety of sitting down to dinner with ladies in a surtout and white cords, we accepted the invitation, and betook ourselves to kill the intervening hour or so as we best could.

"Well, Horace," said I, as Hurst went off to make his apology for a toilet--"how are you going to settle about the driving home?"

"Oh! never fear; I'll manage it: I have just seen Miller and Fane; they've got a drag over here, and there's lots of room inside; so they've promised to take Hurst home with them, if we can only manage to leave him behind: they are going to dine here, and are sure not to go home till late; and we must be off early, you know, because I have some men coming to supper; so we'll leave our friend behind, somehow or other. A painful necessity, I admit; but it must be done, even if I have to lock him up in the stable."

Leicester seemed to have more confidence in his own resources than I had; but he was in too great a state of excitement to listen to any demurrers of mine on the point, and hurried us off to join his friends. Ushered into the drawing-room A. 1. of the Saracen's Head, we found _la bella_ Flora awaiting us alone, the rest of the family being not as yet visible. There was not the slightest necessity for enquiring whether she felt fatigued, for she was looking even more lovely than in the morning; or whether she had been amused or not, for if the steeple-chase had not delighted her, something else had, for there was a radiant smile on her face which could not be mistaken. Hurst was cut short rather abruptly in a speech which appeared tending towards a compliment, by Leicester's enquiring--"My good fellow, have you seen the horses fed?"

"No, upon my word," said Hurst, "I"----

"Well, I have then; but I wish you would just step across the yard, and see if that stupid ostler has rubbed them dry, as I told him. You understand those things, I know, Hurst--the fellows won't humbug you very easily; as to Hawthorne, I wouldn't trust him to see to any thing of the sort. Flora here knows more about a horse than he does."

Any compliment to Hurst's acuteness in the matter of horse-flesh was sure to have its effect, and he walked off with an air of some importance to discharge his commission.

"Now then," said Horace eagerly, "we have got rid of him for ten minutes, which was all I wanted; if you please, Flora dear, we must have your cleverness to help us in a little difficulty."

"Indeed!" said Miss Leicester, colouring a little, as her cousin, in his eagerness, seized her hand in both of his--"what scrape have you got into now, Horace, and how can I possibly help you?"

"Oh, I want you to hit upon some plan for keeping that fellow Hurst here after we are gone."

"Upon my word!"

"Stay; you don't know what I mean. I'll tell you why--if he drives home to Oxford, he'll infallibly upset us; and drive he must if he goes home with us, because, in fact, the team is his, and I drove them all the way here."

"Then why, in the multitude of absurdities (which you Oxonians perpetrate)--I beg your pardon, Mr Hawthorne--but why need you have come out in a tandem at all, with a man who can't drive?"

"Simply, Flora, because I had no other way of coming at all."

"It was very absurd in us, Miss Leicester, I allow," said I, "but you know what an attraction a steeple chase is, to your cousin especially; and after having made up his mind to come--altogether, you see, it would have been a disappointment"--(to all parties, I had a mind to add, but I thought the balance was on my side without it.)

"After all," said Horace, "I shouldn't care a straw to run the chance, as far as I am concerned. I dare say the horses will go home straight enough, if he'll only let them: or if he wouldn't, I shouldn't mind knocking him off the box at once--by accident; but Frank here is rather particular, and I promised him I would not let Hurst drive. I thought once, if we had dined by ourselves, of persuading him he was drunk, and sending him home in a fly; but I am afraid, as matters stand, that plea is hardly practicable."

"Could I persuade him to let you or Mr Hawthorne drive, do you think?"

Horace looked at her as if he thought, as I dare say he did, that his cousin Flora could, if she were so minded, persuade a man to do any thing; so I was compelled, somewhat at the expense of my reputation for gallantry, to assure them both, that if Ulysses of old, among his various arts and accomplishments, had piqued himself upon his tandem-driving, his vanity would have stopped his ears effectually, and the Syren might have sung herself hoarse before he would have given up the reins.

"I'll give the boots half-a-crown to steal his hat," said Horace, "and start while he is looking for it."

"Stay," said his cousin; "I dare say it may be managed." But I thought she looked disappointed. "Did you know we were all going to the B----theatre to-night?"

"No! really! what fun?"

"No fun for you; for you must start early, as you said just now. The owners of the horses here patronise a play, and they have made papa promise to go, and so we must, I suppose, and"----

"Oh! we'll all go, of course," said Horace, decidedly.--"You'll stay and go, won't you, Hawthorne?"

"You forget your supper party," said I.

"Oh! hang it, they'll take care of themselves, so long as the supper's there; they wont miss me much."

"Didn't I hear something of your being confined to college after nine?"

"Ah, yes; I believe I am--but it won't matter much for once; I'll call on the dean to-morrow, and explain."

"No, no, Horace, that won't do; you and Mr Hawthorne must go home like good boys," said Flora, with a smile only half as merry as usual, "and Mary and I will persuade Mr Hurst to stay and go to the theatre with us."

"Oh! confound it!"--Horace began.

"Hush! here comes papa; remember this is my arrangement; you ought to be very much obliged, instead of beginning to swear in that way; I'm sure Mr Hawthorne is very grateful to me for taking so much interest in the question of his breaking his neck, if you are not. Oh! papa," she continued, "do you know that we shall lose all our beaux to-night; they have some horrid supper party to go back to, and we shall have to go to the play ourselves!"

Most of the Squire's sympathies were at this moment absorbed in the fact that dinner was already four minutes late, so that he had less to spare for his daughter's disappointment than Mrs Leicester, who on her arrival took up the lamentation with all her heart. She attacked her nephew at once upon the subject, whose replies were at first wavering and evasive, till he caught Flora's eye, and then he answered with a dogged sort of resolution, exceedingly amusing to me who understood his position, and at last got quite cross with his aunt for persisting in her entreaties. I declared, for my part, that I was dependent on Horace's movements; that, if I could possibly have anticipated the delightful evening which had been arranged for us, every other arrangement should have given way, &c. &c.; when Hurst's reappearance turned the whole force of Mrs Leicester's persuasions upon him, backed, too, as she was by both her daughters. "Won't _you_ stay, Mr Hurst? Must you go too? Will you be so shabby as to leave us?" How could any man stand it? William Wellington Hurst could not, it was very plain. At first he looked astonished; wondered why on earth we couldn't all stay; then protested he couldn't think of letting us go home by ourselves; a piece of self-devotion which we at once desired might not be thought of; then hesitated--he was meditating, no doubt, on the delight of driving--how was he to get home? the inglorious occupant of the inside of a drag; or the solitary tenant of a fly, (though I suggested he might drive that if he pleased;) Couldn't Leicester go home, and I and he follow together? I put in a decided negative; he looked from Mrs Leicester's anxious face to Flora's, and surrendered at discretion. We were to start at eight precisely in the tandem, and Miller and his party, who were sure to wait for the fly, were to pick up Mr Wellington Hurst as a supernumerary passenger at some hour unknown. And so we went to dinner. Mrs Leicester marched off in triumph with her new capture, as if fearful he might give her the slip after all, and committed Flora to my custody. I was charitable enough, however, in consideration of all circumstances, to give up my right of sitting next to her to Horace, and established myself on the other side of the table, between Mrs Leicester and her younger daughter; and a hard post I had of it. Mary would not talk at all, and her mamma would do nothing else; and she was one of those pertinacious talkers, too, who, not content with running on themselves, and leaving you to put in an occasional interjection, inflict upon you a cross-examination in its severest form, and insist upon a definite and rational answer to every question. However, availing myself of those legitimate qualifications of a witness, an unlimited amount of impudence, and a determination not to criminate myself, I got on pretty tolerably. Who did I think her daughter Flora like? I took the opportunity of diligently examining that young lady's features for about four minutes--not in the least to her confusion, for she scarcely honoured me with a glance the whole time--and then declared the resemblance to mamma quite startling. Mary? Oh, her father's eyes decidedly; upon which the squire, whose pet she appeared to be--I suppose it was the contrast between her quietness and Mrs Leicester's incessant fidgeting that was so delightful--laughed, and took wine with me. Then she took up the subject of my private tastes and habits. Was I fond of riding? Yes. Driving? Pretty well. Reading? Very. Then she considerately hoped that I did not read much by candle-light--above all by an oil-lamp--it was very injurious. I assured her that I would be cautious for the future. Then she offered me a receipt for eye-water, in case I suffered from weakness arising from over-exertion of those organs--declined, with thanks. Hoped I did not read above twelve hours a-day: some young men, she had heard, read sixteen, which she considered as really inconsistent with a due regard to health. I assured her that our sentiments on that point perfectly coincided, and that I had no tendency to excesses of that kind. At last she began to institute inquiries about certain under-graduates with whose families she was acquainted; and the two or three names which I recognised being hunting men, I referred her to Hurst as quite _au fait_ in the sporting circles of Oxford, and succeeded in hooking them into a conversation which effectually relieved me.

Leicester, as I could overhear, had been still rather rebellious against going home before the play was over, and was insisting that his being in college by nine was not really material; nor did he appear over-pleased, when, in answer to an appeal from Flora, I said plainly, that the consequences of his "knocking in" late, when under sentence of strict confinement to the regular hour, might not be pleasant--a fact, however, which he himself, though with a very bad grace, was compelled to admit.

At last the time arrived for our party to separate: Horace and I to return to Oxford, and the others to adjourn to see _Richard the Third_ performed at the B---- theatre, under the distinguished patronage of the members of the H---- Hunt. It was a beautiful moonlight night, and as Hurst accompanied us to the stable-yard to "start us," as he complacently phrased it, it was clear that he was suffering, like a great many unfortunate individuals in public and private life, under an overweening sense of his own importance. "You'll have an uncommon pleasant drive of it; upon my word you will," he remarked; "it wouldn't do for me to say I would not stay, you know, as Miss Leicester--Mrs Leicester, that is--seemed to make such a point of it; but really"----

"Oh, come, Hurst," said I, "don't pretend to say you've made any sacrifice in the matter, I know you are quite delighted; I'm sure I should have liked to stay of all things, only it would have been uncivil to our friend here to send him home by himself from his own party."

"Oh! hang it, I don't mean to call it a sacrifice; I have no doubt I shall have a very pleasant evening; only I wish we could all have stayed, and driven home together afterwards."

"You may keep Hawthorne with you now, if you like," said Horace, who was not in the best of tempers; "I can take the horses home myself."

"No, no, that would be hardly fair," said I.

"Oh! no--off with you both," said Hurst; "stay, Leicester, you'll find the grey go more pleasantly if you drive him from the cheek; I'll alter it in a second."

"Have the goodness just to let them alone, my good fellow; as I'm to drive, I prefer putting them my own way, if you have no objection."

"Well, as you please; good-night."

"Miller's coming to my rooms when he gets home; if you like to look in with him, you'll find some supper, I dare say."

Horace continued rather sulky for the first few miles, and only opened to anathematize, briefly but comprehensively, steeple-chases, tandems, deans and tutors, and "fellows like Hurst." I thought it best to let him cool down a little; so, after this ebullition, we rattled on in silence as long as his first cigar lasted.

"Come," said I, as I gave him a light, "we got rid of our friend's company pretty cleverly, thanks to your cousin."

"Ay, I told you I'd take care of that; ha! ha! poor Hurst! he little bargained, when he ordered his team, how precious little driving he was to get out of it; a strong instance of the vanity of human expectations. I wish him joy of it, stuck up in an old barn, as I suppose he is by this time, gaping at a set of strolling players; how Flora will laugh at him! I really shouldn't wonder if she were to tell him, before the evening is over, how nicely he has been humbugged, just for the fun of it!"

"At all events," said I, "I think we must have a laugh at him to-night when he comes home; though he's such a good-tempered fellow, it's rather a shame, too."

It was very plain, however, that it was not quite such a good joke to Master Horace himself as he was trying to make out; and that, in point of fact, he would have considerably preferred being seated, as Hurst probably was at that moment, by his pretty cousin's side in the B---- theatre, wherever and whatever that might chance to be, (even with the full expectation of being laughed at afterwards,) to holding the reins of the best team that ever was turned out of Oxford.

We reached Oxford just in time to hear the first stroke of "Old Tom." By the time I joined Leicester in his rooms, supper was ready, and most of the party assembled. The sport of the day was duly discussed; those who knew least about such matters being proportionately the most noisy and positive in giving their opinions. One young hero of eighteen, fresh from Winchester, in all the importance of a probationary Fellow, explained for our benefit, by the help of the forks and salt-cellars, the line which the horses undoubtedly ought to have taken, and which they did not take; until one of his old schoolfellows, who was present, was provoked to treat us to an anecdote of the young gentleman's first appearance in the hunting-field--no longer ago than the last term--when he mistook the little rough Scotch terrier that always accompanied ----'s pack for the fox, and tally-ho'd him so lustily as to draw upon himself sundry very energetic, but not very complimentary, remarks from the well-known master of the hounds. By degrees Leicester recovered his usual good-humour; and supper passed over, and several songs had been sung with the usual amount of applause, (except one very sentimental one which had no chorus,) and we had got pretty deep into punch and politics, without Hurst's name having once been mentioned by either of us. A knock at the oak, and in walked Fane.

"So you're come back at last?" said Horace. "Sit down, if you can find room. Allow me to introduce your left-hand neighbour--Powell of Merton, Fane, one of our brightest ornaments; quite the _spes gregis_ we consider him; passed his little-go, and started a pink only last week; give him a glass of punch. Perhaps you are not aware we've been drinking your health. But, by the way, Fane, where's our friend Wellington?"

"Who?" said Fane; "what on earth are you talking about?"

"Wellington Hurst; didn't you bring him home with you?"

"Certainly not; didn't _you_ bring him home?"

"No; Miller promised me he should have a seat inside your drag, because we could not wait for him; did you stay to the play?"

"Yes, and capital fun it was; by the way, the last time I saw your friend Hurst was mounted up in a red baise place that was railed off for the patrons and patronesses, as they called them; there he was in the front row, doing the civil to a very odd-looking old dowager in bright blue velvet, with a neck like an ostrich."

"Thank you," said Leicester, "that's my aunt."

"Well, on that ground, we'll drink her health," said Fane, whose coolness was proverbial. "There was Hurst, however, sitting between her and an uncommonly pretty girl, with dark hair and eyes, dressed in--let me see"--

"Never mind; it was one of my cousins, I suppose," interposed Horace, who was engaged in lighting a cigar at the candle, apparently with more zeal than success.

"Well, we'll drink _her_ health for her own sake, if you have no particular objection. I've no doubt the rest of the company will take my word for her being the prettiest girl on the ground to-day; Hurst would second me if he were here, for I never saw a man making love more decidedly in my life."

"Stuff!" said Horace, pitching his cigar into the fire; "pass that punch."

"What jealous, Leicester?" said two or three of the party--"preserved ground, eh?"

"Not at all, not at all," said Horace, trying with a very bad grace to laugh off his evident annoyance; "at all events, I don't consider Hurst a very formidable poacher; but what I want to know is, how he didn't come home with Miller and your party?"

"Miller said he was coming up directly, so you can ask him; I really heard nothing of it. Hark, there are steps coming up the staircase now."

It proved to be Miller himself, followed by the under-porter, a good-tempered fellow, who was the factotum of the under-graduates at late hours, when the ordinary staff of servants had left college for the night.

"How are you, Leicester?" said he, as he walked straight to the little pantry, or "scouts' room," immediately opposite the door, which forms part of the usual suite of college apartments; "come here, Bob."

"Where's Hurst?" was Horace's impatient query.

"Wait a bit," replied Miller from inside, where he was rattling the plates in the course of investigating the remains of the supper--he was not the man to go to bed supperless after a twelve miles' drive. "Here, Bob," he continued, as he emerged at last with a cold fowl--"take this fellow down with you, and grill him in no time; here's a lump of butter--and Harvey's sauce--and--where do you keep the pickled mushrooms, Leicester? here they are--make a little gravy; and here, Bob--it's a cold night--here's a glass of wine; now you'll drink Mr Leicester's health, and vanish."

Bob drank the toast audibly, floored his tumbler of port at two gulps, and departed.

"Now," said Horace, "do just tell me--what _is_ become of Hurst? how didn't you bring him home?"

"Confound it!" said Miller, as he looked into all the jugs--"no whiskey punch?"

"Oh, really I forgot it; here's bishop, and that brandy punch is very good. But how didn't he come home with you?"

"Forgot it!" soliloquized Miller pathetically.

"Forgot it? how the deuce came you to forget it? and how will he come now?" rejoined Horace.

"How came _you_ to forget it? I was talking about the whiskey punch," said Miller, as we all roared with laughter. "I couldn't bring Hurst, you know, if he wouldn't come. He left the playhouse even before we did, with some ladies--and we came away before it was over--so I sent up to tell him we were going to start in ten minutes, and had a place for him; and the Boots came down and said they had just had supper in, and the gentleman could not possibly come just yet. Well, I sent up again, just as we were ready harnessed, and then he threatened to kick Boots down stairs."

"What a puppy!" said Horace.

"I don't quite agree with you there: I don't pretend to much sentiment myself, as you are all aware; but with a lady _and_ a supper in the case, I should feel perfectly justified in kicking down stairs any Boots that ever wore shoes, if he hinted at my moving prematurely."

Miller's unusual enthusiasm amused us all except Horace. "Gad," said he, at last, "I hope he won't be able to get home to-night at all!" In this friendly wish he was doomed to be disappointed. It was now verging towards twelve o'clock; the out-college members of the party had all taken their leave; Miller and Fane, having finished their grilled chicken at a little table in the corner, had now drawn round the fire with the three or four of us who remained, and there was a debate as to the expediency of brewing more punch, when we heard a running step in the Quadrangle, which presently began to ascend the staircase in company with a not very melodious voice, warbling in a style which bespoke the owner's high state of satisfaction.

"Hush! That's Hurst to a certainty!"

"Queen of my soul, whose starlike eyes Are all the light I seek"--

(Here came an audible stumble, as if our friend were beginning his way down again involuntarily by half-a-dozen steps at a time.) "Hallo! Leicester! just lend us a candle, will you? The lamp is gone out, and it's as dark as pitch; I've dropped my hat."

"Open the door, somebody," said Horace; and Hurst was admitted He looked rather confused at first, certainly; for the sudden transition from outer darkness into a small room lighted by a dozen wax-candles made him blink, and our first greeting consisting of "ha-ha's" in different keys, was perhaps somewhat embarrassing; but he recovered himself in a second.

"Well," said he, "how are you all? glad you got home safe, Hawthorne; hope I didn't keep you waiting, Miller; you got the start of me, all of you, coming home; but really I spent an uncommon jolly evening."

"Glad to hear it," said Leicester, with a wink to us.

"Yes;--'pon my life; I don't know when I ever spent so pleasant a one;" and, with a sort of chuckle to himself, Hurst filled a glass of punch.

"What did you think of _Richard the Third_?" said I.

"Oh! hang the play! there might have been six Richards in the field for all I can say: I was better engaged."

"Ay," said Fane, "I rather fancy you were."

"We had a very pleasant drive home," said I, willing to effect a diversion in favour of Leicester, who was puffing desperately at his cigar in a savage kind of silence;--"and a capital supper afterwards; I wish you had been with us."

"And I had a very jolly drive too: I got a gig, and galloped nearly all the way; and a very good supper, too, before I started; but I won't return your compliment; we were a very snug party without you. Upon my word, Leicester, your eldest cousin is one of the very nicest girls I ever met: the sort of person you get acquainted with at once, and so very lively and good-humoured--no nonsense about her."

"I'll make a point of letting her know your good opinion," replied Horace, in a tone conveying pretty plainly a rebuke of such presumption. But it was lost upon Hurst.

"Probably you need not trouble yourself," said Fane; "I dare say he has let her know it himself already."

"No--really no"--said Hurst, as if deprecating any thing so decided; "but Miss Leicester _is_ a _very_ nice girl; clever, I should say, decidedly; there's a shade of one can hardly call it rusticity--about her manner; but I like it, myself--I like it."

"Do you?"--said Horace, very drily.

"Oh! a season in London would take all that off." And Hurst began to quaver again--

"Queen of my soul, whose"--

"I'll tell you what," said Horace, rising, and standing with his back to the fire, with his hands under his coat-tails--"You may not be aware of it, but you're rather drunk, Hurst."

"Drunk!" said Hurst; "no, that's quite a mistake; three glasses, I think it was, of champagne at supper; and you men have sat here drinking punch all the evening; if any body's drunk, it's not me."

Hurst's usually modest demeanour was certainly so very much altered as to justify, in some measure, Leicester's supposition; but I really believe Flora Leicester's bright eyes had more to answer for in that matter than the champagne, whether the said three glasses were more or less.

However, as Horace's temper was evidently not improving, Miller, Fane, and myself wished him good-night, and Hurst came with us. We got him into Fane's rooms and then extracted from him a full history of the adventures of that delightful evening, to our infinite amusement, and apparently to his own immense satisfaction. It was evident that Miss Flora Leicester had made an impression, of which I do not give that young lady credit for being in the least unconscious.

The impression, however, like many others of its kind, soon wore off, I fancy; for the next time I saw Mr Wellington Hurst, he had returned to his usual frame of mind, and appeared quite modest and deferential; but it will not perhaps surprise my readers any more than it did myself, that Horace was never fond of referring to our drive to the steeple-chase at B----, and did not appear to appreciate, as keenly as before, the trick we had played Hurst in leaving him behind; while all the after-reminiscences of the latter bore reference, whenever it was possible, to his favourite date--"That day when you and I and Leicester had that team to B---- together."

THE STUDENT OF SALAMANCA.