CHAPTER XVII.

Left to myself in the earlier part of the day, I wandered, wistful and lonely, through the vast wilderness of London. By degrees I familiarised myself with that populous solitude. I ceased to pine for the green fields. That active energy all around, at first saddening, became soon exhilarating, and at last contagious. To an industrious mind nothing is so catching as industry! I began to grow weary of my golden holiday of unlaborious childhood, to sigh for toil, to look around me for a career. The University, which I had before anticipated with pleasure, seemed now to fade into a dull monastic prospect: after having trod the streets of London, to wander through cloisters was to go back in life. Day by day, my mind grew sensibly within me; it came out from the rosy twilight of boyhood--it felt the doom of Cain, under the broad sun of man.

Uncle Jack soon became absorbed in his new speculation for the good of the human race, and, except at meals, (whereat, to do him justice, he was punctual enough, though he did not keep us in ignorance of the sacrifices he made, and the invitations he refused, for our sake,) we seldom saw him. The Captain, too, generally vanished after breakfast; seldom dined with us; and it was often late before he returned. He had the latch-key of the house, and let himself in when he pleased. Sometimes (for his chamber was next to mine) his step on the stairs awoke me; and sometimes I heard him pace his room with perturbed strides, or fancied that I caught a low groan. He became every day more care-worn in appearance, and every day the hair seemed more gray. Yet he talked to us all easily and cheerfully; and I thought that I was the only one in the house who perceived the gnawing pangs over which the stout old Spartan drew the decorous cloak.

Pity, blended with admiration, made me curious to learn how these absent days, that brought nights so disturbed, were consumed. I felt that if I could master his secret, I might win the right both to comfort and to aid.

I resolved at length, after many conscientious scruples, to endeavour to satisfy a curiosity, excused by its motives.

Accordingly, one morning, after watching him from the house, I stole in his track, and followed him at a distance.

And this was the outline of his day. He set off at first with a firm stride, despite his lameness--his gaunt figure erect, the soldierly chest well thrown out from the threadbare but speckless coat. First, he took his way towards the purlieus of Leicester Square; several times, to and fro, did he pace the isthmus that leads from Piccadilly into that reservoir of foreigners, and the lanes and courts that start thence towards St Martin's. After an hour or two so passed, the step became more slow; and often the sleek napless hat was lifted up, and the brow wiped. At length he bent his way towards the two great theatres, paused before the play-bills, as if deliberating seriously on the chances of entertainment they severally proffered, wandered slowly through the small streets that surround those temples of the muse, and finally emerged into the Strand. There he rested himself for an hour at a small cook-shop; and, as I passed the window, and glanced within, I could see him seated before the simple dinner, which he scarcely touched, and poring over the advertisement columns of the _Times_. The _Times_ finished, and a few morsels distastefully swallowed, the Captain put down his shilling in silence, received his pence in exchange, and I had just time to slip aside as he reappeared at the threshold. He looked round as he lingered, but I took care he should not detect me; and then struck off towards the more fashionable quarters of the town. It was now the afternoon, and, though not yet the season, the streets swarmed with life. As he came into Waterloo Place, a slight figure buttoned up across the breast, like his own, cantered by on a handsome bay horse--every eye was on that figure. Uncle Roland stopped short, and lifted his hand to his hat; the rider touched his own with his fore-finger, and cantered on,--Uncle Roland turned round and gazed.

"Who," I asked, of a shop-boy just before me, who was also staring with all his eyes--"who is that gentleman on horseback?"

"Why, the Duke, to be sure," said the boy, contemptuously.

"The Duke?"

"Wellington--stu-pid!"

"Thank you," said I meekly. Uncle Roland had moved on into Regent Street, but with a brisker step: the sight of the old chief had done the old soldier good. Here again he paced to and fro; till I, watching him from the other side the way, was ready to drop with fatigue, stout walker though I was. But the Captain's day was not half done. He took out his watch, put it to his ear, and then, replacing it, passed into Bond Street, and thence into Hyde Park. There, evidently wearied out, he leant against the rails, near the bronze statue, in an attitude that spoke despondency. I seated myself on the grass near the statue and gazed at him: the park was empty compared with the streets, but still there were some equestrian idlers and many foot-loungers. My uncle's eye turned wistfully on each: once or twice, some gentleman of a military aspect (which I had already learned to detect) stopped, looked at him, approached and spoke; but the Captain seemed as if ashamed of such greetings. He answered shortly, and turned again.

The day waned--evening came on--the Captain again looked at his watch--shook his head, and made his way to a bench, where he sat perfectly motionless; his hat over his brows, his arms folded; till uprose the moon. I had tasted nothing since breakfast; I was famished, but I still kept my post like an old Roman sentinel.

At length the Captain rose, and re-entered Piccadilly; but how different his mien and bearing! languid, stooping, his chest sunk--his head inclined--his limbs dragging one after the other, his lameness painfully perceptible. What a contrast in the broken invalid at night, from the stalwart veteran of the morning!

How I longed to spring forward to offer my arm! but I did not dare.

The Captain stopped near a cab-stand. He put his hand in his pocket--he drew out his purse--he passed his fingers over the net-work; the purse slipped again into the pocket, and as if with a heroic effort, my uncle drew up his head, and walked on sturdily.

'Where next?' thought I. 'Surely home! No, he is pitiless.'

The Captain stopped not till he arrived at one of the small theatres in the Strand; then he read the bill, and asked if half-price was begun. "Just begun," was the answer, and the Captain entered. I also took a ticket and followed. Passing by the open doors of a refreshment room, I fortified myself with some biscuits and soda water. And in another minute, for the first time in my life I beheld a play. But the play did not fascinate me. It was the middle of some jocular after-piece, roars of laughter resounded round me. I could detect nothing to laugh at, and sending my keen eyes into every corner, I perceived at last, in the uppermost tier, one face as saturnine as my own. _Eureka!_ It was the Captain's! 'Why should he go to a play if he enjoys it so little?' thought I: 'better have spent a shilling on a cab, poor old fellow!'

But soon came smart-looking men, and still smarter-looking ladies, around the solitary corner of the poor Captain. He grew fidgety--he rose--he vanished. I left my place, and stood without the box to watch for him. Down stairs he stumped--I recoiled into the shade; and after standing a moment or two, as in doubt, he entered boldly the refreshment room, or saloon.

Now, since I had left that saloon, it had become crowded, and I slipped in unobserved. Strange was it, grotesque, yet pathetic, to mark the old soldier in the midst of that gay swarm. He towered above all like a Homeric hero, a head taller than the tallest; and his appearance was so remarkable, that it invited the instant attention of the fair. I, in my simplicity, thought it was the natural tenderness of that amiable and penetrating sex, ever quick to detect trouble, and anxious to relieve it, that induced three ladies, in silk attire--one having a hat and plume, the other two with a profusion of ringlets--to leave a little knot of gentlemen with whom they were conversing, and to plant themselves before my uncle. I advanced through the press to hear what passed.

"You are looking for some one, I'm sure," quoth one familiarly, tapping his arm with her fan.

The Captain started. "Ma'am, you are not wrong," said he.

"Can I do as well?" said one of those compassionate angels, with heavenly sweetness.

"You are very kind, I thank you: no, no, Ma'am," said the Captain, with his best bow.

"Do take a glass of negus," said another, as her friend gave way to her. "You seem tired, and so am I. Here, this way;" and she took hold of his arm to lead him to the table. The Captain shook his head mournfully; and then, as if become suddenly aware of the nature of the attention so lavished on him, he looked down upon these fair Armidas with a look of such mild reproach--such sweet compassion--not shaking off the hand in his chivalrous devotion to the sex, which extended even to all its outcasts--that each bold eye fell abashed. The hand was timidly and involuntarily withdrawn from the arm, and my uncle passed his way.

He threaded the crowd, passed out at the farther door, and I, guessing his intention, was in waiting for his steps in the street.

"Now home at last, thank heaven!" thought I. Mistaken still! My uncle went first towards that popular haunt, which I have since discovered is called "the Shades;" but he soon re-emerged, and finally he knocked at the door of a private house, in one of the streets out of St James's. It was opened jealously, and closed as he entered, leaving me without. What could this house be? As I stood and watched, some other men approached,--again the low single knock,--again the jealous opening, and the stealthy entrance.

A policeman passed and repassed me. "Don't be tempted, young man," said he, looking hard at me: "take my advice, and go home."

"What is that house, then?" said I, with a sort of shudder at this ominous warning.

"Oh, you know."

"Not I. I am new to London."

"It is a hell," said the policeman--satisfied, by my frank manner, that I spoke the truth.

"God bless me,--a what! I could not have heard you rightly?"

"A hell; a gambling-house!"

"Oh!" and I moved on. Could Captain Roland, the rigid, the thrifty, the penurious, be a gambler? The light broke on me at once; the unhappy father sought his son! I leant against the post, and tried hard not to sob.

By-and-by, I heard the door open: the Captain came out and took the way homeward. I ran on before, and got in first, to the inexpressible relief both of father and mother, who had not seen me since breakfast, and who were in equal consternation at my absence. I submitted to be scolded with a good grace. "I had been sight-seeing, and lost my way;" begged for some supper, and slunk to bed; and five minutes afterwards the Captain's jaded step came wearily up the stairs.

MODERN TOURISM.[15]

[15] _Eastern Life, Past and Present._ By HARRIET MARTINEAU.

The merits of the railroad and the steam-boat have been prodigiously vaunted, and we have no desire to depreciate the advantages of either. No doubt they carry us from town to town with greater rapidity than our fathers ever dreamt of; and instead of the "High-flyer coach, averaging ten miles an hour," whirl us over fifty. No doubt they are convenient for the viator who desires to reach America in a fortnight, or for the Queen's messenger who must be in Paris within the next twelve hours. No doubt they are first-rate inventions for an elopement, a fugitive debtor, or a banished king. But, they have afflicted our generation with one desperate evil; they have covered Europe with Tourists, all pen in hand, all determined not to let a henroost remain undescribed, all portfolioed, all handbooked, all "getting up a Journal," and all pouring their busy nothings on the "reading public," without compassion or conscience, at the beginning of the "season."

That the ignorant should write ignorantly, that professional sight-hunters should go sight-hunting to the ends of the earth, that minds born for nothing but scribbling should scribble to their last drop of ink or blood, can neither surprise nor irritate; but that they should publish, is the crime.

If we are told that this is but a harmless impertinence after all, we reply--No, it does general mischief; it spoils all rational travel; it disgusts all intelligent curiosity; it repels the student, the philosopher, and the manly investigator, from subjects which have been thus trampled into mire by the hoofs of a whole tribe of travelling bipeds, who might rejoice to exchange brains with the animals which they ride.

No sooner does the year shake off its robe of snow, and the sun begin to glimmer again, than the whole tribe are in motion; no matter where, all places are alike to their pens--the North Pole or the Antarctic. One of them thinks America an unexhausted subject, and we find her instantly on board the good ship Columbia, flying in the teeth of wind and tide, to caricature New York. Another puts on her wings for that unknown spot called Vienna; sends in her card to nobles and ministers; caricatures them too; talks of faces which she had never seen, describes fêtes to which she would never have been admitted, and quotes conversations which she never heard. Another takes a sweep of the French coast, and showers us with worn-out romance and modern vapidity, till we are sick of the art of printing, and long for the return of that happy period when the chief occupations of the fair sex were cookery and samplers. To all this, however, there _are_ exceptions; some of the sex, modest, well-informed, and capable of informing others, indulge the world, from time to time, with works which "it would not willingly let die." But our _horror_ is the professional tourist; the woman who runs abroad to forage for publication; reimports her baggage, bursting with a periodical gathering of nonsense; and with a freight of folly, at once empty as air and heavy as lead, discharges the whole at the heads of a suffering people.

Miss Martineau, however, deserves to stand in another category. She is a lively writer; if she seldom enlightens the reader of her pages, she seldom sends him to sleep; she prattles amusingly; and by the help of Wilkinson and Lane for the antique, and her own ear-trumpet and spectacles for the modern, she makes out of an Egyptian ramble a very readable book. And this book is by no means a superfluity; for, excepting Palestine, there is no country on earth which possesses so strong an interest for the Biblical student; or will, within a few years, possess so strong an interest for the whole political world. France, Russia, and Italy, are probably at this moment alike speculating on the changes which threaten Egypt. The death of Mehemet Ali cannot be far off. Ibrahim is sickly. The succession of eastern dynasties is the reverse of regular; and if by any chance war were lighted up at one end of the Mediterranean, it would be sure to burst out at the other. Egypt would be the prize of battle. To England the possession would be of little value; she has colonies enough, and she certainly will not be guilty of the crime of usurpation; but it will be of first-rate importance to her that Egypt shall not fall into the hands of a hostile power; for she cannot suffer her road to India to be barred up. Her natural policy would be to see it restored to the Ottoman. But how long will the Ottoman himself last? A Russian fleet at the mouth of the Bosphorus, with a Russian army encamped on the plains of Adrianople, would settle the occupancy in a week. In the mean time, France keeps up a powerful army in Algeria; and the question is, which would be first in the race for Alexandria? We observe that Ibrahim is building fortifications, and concentrating his strength on the sea-side; and the sagacity of this gallant son of a gallant father must often look to the sands of the Libyan desert, and listen for the sounds of the trumpet from the shores of Cyreniaca.

Miss Martineau is lady-president of the gossip school; and it is one of the especial characters of that school, to think that every trivial occurrence of their lives merits the attention of mankind. She thus informs us of the first _idea_ of her journey.

"In the autumn of 1846, I left home for, as I supposed, a few weeks, to visit some of my family and friends. At Liverpool, I was invited by my friends, Mr and Mrs Richard V. Yates, to accompany them in their proposed travels in the East. At Malta, we fell in with Mr Joseph C. Ewart, who presently joined our party, and remained with us till we reached Malta on our return. There is nothing that I do not owe to my companions for their unceasing care. They permitted me to read to them my Egyptian Journal. There was not time for the others." All this is in the purest style of gossipry. Her first views of Africa belong to the same style. On a "lurid evening in November," she saw a something, which, however, was _not_ the African shore, but an island. At last, however she saw a headland, a sandy shore, a tower; but even this was _not_ Egypt. So she steamed on, until certain signs gave the presumption that Alexandria lay in the distance. She "expected" to have arrived at noon, but was detained until twilight! All those things might have happened to her if she had been sitting in a bathing machine any where between Brighton and Dover,--the Martello supplying the place of the Arab tower, to considerable advantage. She then followed the route of the million, the Cairan canal, Cairo, and the Nile, up to the Cataracts.

She has a picturesque pen, and describes well; her art being to strike off the first impression on her mind, with the first impression on her eye. One of her fellow-travellers had asked her whether she would wish to have the first glimpse of the Pyramids; she made her way through the passengers to the bows of the boat, and there indulged herself with her triumph over the "careless talkers."

"In a minute, I saw them, emerging from behind a sandhill. They were very small, for we were still twenty-five miles from Cairo. But there could be no doubt about them for a moment, so sharp and clear were the light and shadow on the two sides which we saw. I had been assured that I should be disappointed in the first sight of the Pyramids. And I had maintained that I could not be disappointed, as of all the wonders of the world this is the most literal, and to a dweller among mountains, like myself, the least imposing. I now found both my informant and myself mistaken. So far from being disappointed, I was filled with surprise and awe; and so far from having anticipated what I saw, I felt as if I had never before looked on any thing so new, as those clear, vivid masses, with their sharp blue shadows, standing firm and alone in their expanse of sand. In a few minutes they appeared to grow wonderfully larger, and they looked lustrous and most imposing in the evening light. This impression of the Pyramids was never fully renewed. I admired them every evening from my window at Cairo, and I took the surest means of convincing myself of their vastness, by going to the top of the largest; but this first view of them was the most moving, and I cannot think of it now without emotion."

It is remarkable that, after some thousand years of ancient inquiry, and at least a century of keen and even of toilsome research, by modern scholarship, the world knows little more of the Pyramids than it knew, when the priesthood kept all the secrets of Egypt. By whom they were built, for what, or when, have given birth to volumes of researches; but to those questions no answers have been given worth the paper they cost in answering. Whether they were built by Israelite slaves or by Asiatic invaders, for sacrifice or for sepulture, or for both, or for the glory of individual kings, or for the memory of dynasties, or for treasure-houses, or for astronomical purposes, or for the mere employment of the multitude--workhouses having probably found their origin in Egypt--or for the rough ostentation of royal power: all are points undetermined since the travels of Herodotus. But that they must have cost stupendous toil, there is full evidence--the great Pyramid covering thirteen acres; exhibiting a mass of stone equal to _six_ Plymouth break-waters, and rising to a height of 479 feet, or 15 feet higher than St Peter's spire, and 119 higher than St Paul's.

But this style of monstrous building perplexes as much by its general diffusion, as by the magnitude of its several instances. We find it not only in Egypt, where the Pyramids spread for _seventy_ miles along the western shore of the Nile, and once evidently clustered like Arab tents, but in Upper Egypt and Nubia: they are to be found also in Mesopotamia. The Birs Nimrod, (the temple of Belus,) and the Mujelibè, near Babylon, were evidently built on the pyramidal plan, if not actual pyramids. They have been found in India. They have been found even on the other side of the Atlantic; and the largest in the world is the pyramid of Cholula, in Mexico, covering an area of more than forty-seven acres, or above _three_ times the base of the greatest Egyptian pyramid. All the pyramids, in both Asia, Africa, and America, have the sides facing the cardinal points, excepting those of Nubia,--an exception probably arising from the rudeness of the people. In many of those pyramids, remnants of the dead, and bones of the lower animals, have been found; but both may have been placed there for purposes of superstition. The resistance of the pyramidal form to the effects of climate has been surmised as the origin of the choice; but the equatorial countries of the East know little of the weather which, among us, destroys public constructions. It is at least possible, that a form so little adapted to dwelling, or to any of the common uses of life, or even to the direct purposes of sepulture, may have been chosen, from its resemblance to the shape of flame kindled on a large scale. The Egyptians chiefly buried their dead in catacombs. The pyramid was undoubtedly borrowed from the East; and, like the obelisk--also an Eastern memorial, whose general uselessness still perplexes inquiry--may have been an emblem of that worship of fire, which ascends to so remote an antiquity, was the worship of the early East, and was, we are strongly inclined to believe, the general worship of the apostate antediluvian world.

There is no country on earth which more curiously substantiates the saying of the wisest of kings, that "there, is nothing new under the sun," than Egypt. Every art of European life, and even of European luxury, finds its delineation among the tombs; every incident of society, whether serious or trifling, has its record on those subterranean walls; we find every occupation, every enjoyment, every national festivity, and every sport, from the nursery up to the assemblage of the wrestler, the runner, and the dancer, in short, the whole course of public and private existence, three thousand years ago, is revealed and revived for the intelligence and admiration of the nineteenth century of the Christian era. Why those miscellanies of life should be in tombs, where they must have been shut up from the living eye--why such labour of delineation, why such incongruity of subject to the place, why such cost lavished on designs in the grave, are all problems, which must remain beyond human answer, but which render Egypt the most interesting of all dead nations to the living world. Are those wonders, those intimations of greater wonders, those achievements of the arts, fully explored? Certainly not. We quite agree with Miss Martineau, that the most fortunate boon for Europe would be some mighty van or ventilator, which will blow away all the sands of Egypt. What a scene would then be opened!

"One statue and sarcophagus, brought from Memphis, was buried 130 feet below the surface. Who knows but that the greater part of old Memphis, and of other glorious cities, lies almost unharmed beneath the sand? Who can say what armies of sphinxes might start up on the banks of the river, or come forth from the hill-sides of the interior, when the cloud of sand had been wafted away? The ruins which we now go to study might then occupy only eminences, while below might be miles of colonnade, temples intact, and gods and goddesses safe in their sanctuaries!"

If this is the language of enthusiasm, there can be no question that barbarism and time have covered a large portion of the old glories of Egypt from the eye of man; and that, while what remains for the view of the traveller is mutilated and worn away, the much finer portion may be reserved for the triumph of the investigator spade in hand.

One of the best features of the book is the dexterity with which those tomb-pictures are interpreted by Miss Martineau's narrative. Every one knows, that the majority of those pictures, though often brilliantly coloured, exhibit nothing but isolated or ill-placed figures, of the rudest outline, and the most ungainly attitudes. They have a meaning; yet to ascertain that meaning, and combine their action, demands considerable imaginative skill. We have a clever instance of this art in the description of one of the tombs.

The writer sees, in one compartment, the master of a family. He is evidently opulent--a man of large possessions--a landlord; he has his people round him--ploughing, sowing, harrowing, reaping, thrashing, winnowing.

But the landlord is also a sportsman; he has round him game, geese, and fish. He is also a man of luxury; he has a barge on the river, and a pavilion built upon it. He is also a man of hospitality; there is a banquet, with the master and his wife in a great chair; every lady has a flower in her hand; a monkey is tied to the host's chair; and there are musicians with a harp and the double pipe. But there is also a final scene; the host dies, the banquets are no more, his _mummy_ is in the consecrated boat, which is to carry him over the river of death, and which deposits him in the land unknown.

All this is ingenious and probable, and if Miss Martineau had confined herself to the picturesque, had sported her fancies in Egypt alone, and never ventured beyond the Red Sea, we might close the book, giving it all the praise due to an original and lively narrative. But when she plays the theologian, we must stop, as we wish that she had done.

On leaving Egypt, her party turn their faces towards the Wilderness; and here the pen of the rash writer rambles away into lucubrations, neither consistent with the facts of history, nor suitable to the feelings of the scene. She begins by manufacturing a romance for Moses. She first tells us that he was "of the priestly _caste_," a matter rendered utterly improbable by the declaration of Scripture, that "by _faith_, when he was come to years, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God." She then proceeds to tell us a great many things, of which Moses has told us nothing: for example, that in the desert, which she regards as a place peculiarly "fruitful of meditation," (we doubt whether it produces much of this fruit among the Bedouins,) Moses and "_Mahomet after him_" (valuable companionship!) learned from the Past how to prophesy of the future.

"There," says Miss Martineau, "as Moses sat under the shrubby palm, and its moist rock, did the Past come at the call of his instructed memory, and tell him how those mighty Egyptians had been slaves, as his Hebrew brethren now were," &c., and came to the conclusion (by no means an unnatural one in any case of slavery,) "that the Hebrews must be _removed_ and educated, before they could be established." We then arrive at the confidential part of the story.

"In following up this course of speculation, he was led to perceive a _mighty truth_, which appears to have been known to no man before him,--the truth that all ideas are the common heritage of all men. (!)... As the images crossed him in his solitude, of the religious feasts of the Egyptians, the gross brute-worship into which they had sunk, &c., he conceived the brave purpose, the noblest enterprise, I believe, on record, of admitting every one of Jehovah's people to the fullest possible knowledge of them."

Of all these meditations not an iota is mentioned in the Scriptures. The story, however, goes on: Moses decided that the people must be removed. It does not tell us _how_. But it was done. Three millions of slaves were torn from the grasp of a king, at the head of an army of six hundred chariots and horsemen. But the grand difficulty arose--if they must be educated, where was to be the national school? who to be their tutors? Moses _meditated_ again, and the difficulty vanished. He had known the Arabs of the Wilderness long. Miss Martineau tells us that he knew their honour, their virtues, their "_comparative_ piety!" &c., &c.; and he determined to make them the teachers of his Egyptianised people. In this fortunate expedient, she forgot, and probably did not know, that those sons of desert simplicity, hospitality, piety, and so forth, were the Amalekites, one of the most ferocious tribes of earth, the savage borderers of Sinai; who no sooner saw the advance of the Israelites than, instead of teaching them the "virtues," they made a desperate _foray_ on them, and would have butchered the whole population if they had not been beaten by a miracle.

We are also entirely left in the dark, in this theory, as to the means by which the nation were subsisted for forty years in the Wilderness, where the thousandth part of their number could never since have subsisted for as many days; how they swept before their undisciplined crowd the armies of Palestine, stormed their fortresses, and took possession of their land; how they acquired the most perfect system of legislation in the ancient world; how they formed a religion unrivalled in purity, truth, and sanctity; how they conceived a ceremonial which was almost wholly a prophecy, the revelation of a mightier than Moses to come, the pledge of a more comprehensive religion, and the dawn of that triumph of truth over falsehood, which was to be the hope, the consolation, and ultimately the glory of mankind.

Need we remind the Christian, that the Scriptures account for all those mighty things by the power and the mercy of the God of Israel alone; that Moses was simply an instrument in the hand of Providence; that so far from meditating in the desert, plans of Jewish liberation, he was even a reluctant instrument. Every part of his character and condition repelled the very idea of his acting from himself. He was eighty years old; he had been forty years without seeing the face of his countrymen; his bold spirit had been so much changed by time, as to render him the "meekest" of men; and even when the miracle of the Divine presence was before him, he pleaded his unfitness for the task, and at length yielded only to the repeated command of Jehovah.

Willingly acquitting the writer of these volumes of all evil intention, we regret that she should have touched on Palestine at all. Whatever weakness there may be in her lucubrations on Moses, it is fully matched by her lucubrations on what she calls "Bibliolatry." But we shall not follow her rambles through subjects on which no mind ought to look but with a sense of the narrowness of human faculties, and with an humble and necessary solicitation for that loftier enlightenment which is given only to the humble heart. The knowledge of Scripture is to be attained only by the sincere search after truth, by natural homage in the presence of Infinite Wisdom, and by the intelligent exertion of mind, and the faithful gratitude, which alike rejoice in obeying the revealed will of Heaven.

EIGHTEEN HUNDRED AND TWELVE.

A RETROSPECTIVE REVIEW.

In the spring of the year 1815, a youth of sixteen, Lewis Rellstab by name, whom death had recently deprived of his father, left the Berlin academy, where he was pursuing, with much success, the study of music, to enter the Prussian army as a volunteer. Napoleon's return from Elba had just called Germany to arms; and the rising generation, emulous of their elder brethren, whose scars and decorations recalled the glorious campaign of 1813, flocked to the Prussian banner. But young Rellstab's moral courage and patriotic zeal exceeded his physical capabilities. Recruiting officers shook their heads at his delicate frame, and inspecting surgeons refused to pass him as able-bodied. Rejected, he still persevered, entered a military school, and in due time became officer of artillery. Leaving the service in 1821, he fixed himself at Berlin, and applied diligently to literary pursuits. He was already known as the author of songs of fair average merit, some of which are popular in Germany to the present day; but now he took up literature as a profession, stimulated to industry by loss of fortune in an unlucky speculation. Of great perseverance and active mind, he essayed his talents in various departments of the belles-lettres, in journalism, polemics, and criticism. As a musical critic, he ranks amongst the best. One of his early works, a satirical tale entitled, "Henrietta, or the Beautiful Singer," was disapproved by the authorities, and procured him several months' imprisonment in the fortress of Spandau. At a later period, his systematic and incessant opposition to Spontini the composer, from whose appointment as director of the Berlin opera he foretold the ruin of the German school of music, procured him other six weeks of similar punishment. He has managed several newspapers in succession, and, in the intervals of his editorial labours, has produced a number of tales and novels, three sketchy volumes entitled "Paris and Algiers," and a tragedy called "Eugene Aram." Simultaneously with these various occupations, he has found time to form some excellent singers for the German stage, and to advocate, with unwearying and successful zeal, the adoption of railroads in Germany. With such accumulated avocations, it is not surprising if his writings sometimes exhibit that lengthiness and verbal superfluity, the usual consequence of hurried composition and imperfect revision. Some of his best-conceived and most original tales lose power from prolixity: his good materials, too, often lack arrangement, and are encumbered with inferior matter. Still, he is one of the few living German novelists whose works rise high above the present dull, stagnant level of the light literature of his country. It is not now our intention minutely to analyse Mr Rellstab's general literary abilities, or to criticise the twenty compendious volumes forming the latest edition of his complete works. We propose confining ourselves to one novel, which we consider his masterpiece, as it also is his longest and most important work, and the one most popular in Germany. Notwithstanding the faults we have glanced at, we hold "1812" the best novel of its class that for a long time has appeared in the German language. Its historical and military chapters would, by their fidelity and spirit, give it high rank in whatever tongue it had been written. And the blemishes observable in its more imaginative and romantic portions are chargeable less upon the author than upon the foibles of the school and country to which he belongs.

It is a strong argument, were any needed, in favour of the superiority of the English literature of the day over that of Germany, that twenty English novels are translated into German for every German one that appears in English. To say nothing of high class books which are dished up in the Deutsch with incredible rapidity, (of Mr Warren's last work, three translations appeared within a few days after it was possible the original could have reached Germany,) all our more prolific and popular English novelists receive the honours of Germanisation. Not a catalogue of a German library or bookseller but exhibits the names of Messrs Marryat, Dickens, James, Ainsworth, Lever, &c., occupying the high places--exalted at the tops of columns, in all the glory of Roman capitals; and truly not without reason, when compared with most of the gentry that succeed and precede them. Their works appear in every possible form,--detached, in "complete editions," in "choice collections of foreign literature," even in monthly parts, when so published in England. Authors who have written less, or anonymously, or who are less known, must often be content to forego the immortalisation of a Leipsic catalogue, although their books will not the less be found there, sometimes with the bare notification that they are from English sources; at others, unceremoniously appropriated by the translator as results of his own unaided genius. Equal liberties are taken with the romantic literature of France and Sweden. Very different is the state of things in England. A translation from the German, unless it be of a short tale in a periodical, is a thing almost unknown--certainly of rare occurrence. Miss Bremer's poultry-yard romances, and Christian Andersen's novels, reached us through a German medium, but are originally Scandinavian. The only other recent translations of novels, in amount and volume worth the naming, are those from the French of Sue, Dumas, and Co., amusing gentlemen enough; but the circulation of whose works had, perhaps, just as well been confined to those capable of reading them in the original. The German literature of the last twenty years has yielded little to the English translator, or rather has been little made use of; for, without entertaining a very exalted opinion of its value and merit, it were absurd to suppose that some good things might not be selected from the hundreds of novels, tales, and romances, that each successive year brings forth in a country where any man who can hold a pen, and is acquainted with orthography, deems himself qualified for an author, and where an astonishingly large proportion of the population act upon this conviction. Mr Rellstab's "1812" is one of the few ears of wheat worthy of extraction from the wilderness of tares and stubble. Its great length, which might, however, have been advantageously curtailed, has, perhaps, proved an obstacle to its translation. Moreover, it is but partially known, even amongst the very limited number of English persons (chiefly ladies) addicted to German reading. Of one thing we are convinced,--that a book of equal merit appearing in England is certain of prompt and reiterated reproduction in Germany; not only in the language of that country, but in those piratical reprints which give in an eighteen-penny duodecimo the contents of three half-guinea post-octavos.

It is quite natural that Mr Rellstab, whose youthful predilections were so strongly military, who himself wore the uniform during his first six years of manhood, and who was contemporary, at the age when impressions are strongest, of the gigantic wars waged by Napoleon in Spain, Germany, and Russia, should recall with peculiar pleasure, at a later period of his life, the martial deeds with which in his boyhood all men's mouths were filled; that he should select them as a subject for his pen, dwell willingly upon their details, and bestow the utmost pains upon their illustration. His original plan of an historical romance was far more comprehensive than the one to which he finally adhered. He proposed employing as a stage for his actors all the European countries then the theatre of war. This bold plan gave great scope for contrast, allowing him to exhibit his personages, chiefly military men, engaged alternately with the Cossack and the Guerilla--alternately broiling under the sun of Castile, and frozen in Muscovy's snows. But the project was more easily formed than executed; and Mr Rellstab soon found (to use his own words) that he had taken Hercules' club for a plaything. The mass was too ponderous to wield; to interweave the entire military history of so busy a period with the plot of a romance, entailed an army of characters and a series of complications difficult to manage; and that might have ended by wearying the reader. Convinced that his design was too ambitious, he reduced it; limiting himself to the Russian campaign--itself no trifle to grapple with. This plan he successfully carried out. He had hoped to do so, he says, in three volumes, but was compelled to extend his limits, and fill four. The necessity is not obvious. In our opinion, "1812" would gain by compression (especially of the first half) within the limits originally proposed. Although some well-drawn and well-sustained characters are early introduced, and although the reader obtains, in the very first chapter, a mystery to ruminate, whilst of incident there is certainly an abundance, the real fascination of the book resides in the account of the advance to Moscow, of the conflagration of the city, and the subsequent retreat. The great power and truthfulness with which these events are depicted, convey the impression that the writer was an eyewitness of the scenes he so well describes. As this was not the case, we cannot doubt that Mr Rellstab obtained much information from some who made that terrible campaign. He acknowledges his great obligation to Count Segur's remarkable history.

As regards Mr Rellstab's plot, its ingenuity is undeniable, and, in fact, excessive. More ingenious than probable, the coincidences are too numerous and striking; the artist's hand is too visible. The characters are too obliging in their exits and entrances; ever vanishing and reappearing just at the right moment, and meeting each other in the most unexpected and extraordinary manner. It is difficult to lose sight of the wires; the movements of the puppets are manifestly strained for the exhibitor's convenience. One never feels sure who is the hero of the book; the young German most prominent in its earlier portion, and who is intended for the principal character, is a tame youth, and cuts quite a secondary figure in the latter volumes. His friend Bernard, a joyous artist, whom circumstances convert into a private soldier, and his commander the Polish Colonel Rasinski, a worthy comrade of the heroic Poniatowsky, are much more lifelike and interesting. The mysteries of the tale, and the difficulties which of course beset the paths of the various pairs of lovers, are pretty well cleared up and dispelled at the end of the third volume. The fourth, which includes the worst portion of the retreat, is perhaps the most interesting; partly for the very reason that we have got rid of the private entanglements of the principal personages, who are seen grouped together, and, including a lady, struggling against the frightful hardships and dangers of that unparalleled military disaster. It will give an idea of the tangled nature of Mr Rellstab's plot and under-plots (all finally unravelled with considerable cleverness) to state, that in the foremost row stand five gentlemen and three ladies; that each of the ladies is beloved, at one period or other of the story, by at least two of the gentlemen, who, on the other hand, are all five bosom friends, and, in this capacity, make the most magnanimous sacrifices of love to friendship. Manifestly, the only way of getting out of such a fix, is to kill freely, which Mr Rellstab accordingly does, the retreat from Moscow affording him fine opportunities, whereof he unsparingly avails himself. The closing chapter shows us the very numerous _dramatis personæ_ reduced to two happy couples, dwelling, turtle-dove fashion, in a garden near Dresden, and to an elderly Polish lady, on the wing for America. Having thus told the end--a matter of very slight importance to the interest of the book--we will take a glance at the commencement.

The opening scene introduces us to a young German, who, after twelve months passed in Italy at the conclusion of his academical studies, is on his way back to his native land. The entrance of Napoleon's armies is once more converting Northern Germany into a vast camp, and Ludwig Rosen is hurrying homewards to the protection of his sister and widowed mother, then living in retirement at Dresden. Upon his journey to Italy, a year previously, he had encountered in the valley of Aosta a party of travellers, to one of whom, a young and very lovely woman, he restored a bracelet she had dropped upon the highway. Although this led to no acquaintance or intercourse beyond the exchange of a few sentences, the beauty of the foreigner (for such she certainly was, although of what country it was hard to decide,) had left a very strong impression upon the young man's memory and imagination. During his residence in Italy he sought her every where, but in vain. He could not trace her route; ignorant of her name, he knew not for whom to inquire. Once more upon the threshold of Italy, about to quit the romantic land where her image had so often filled his daydreams, he pauses at the outskirts of Duomo d' Ossola, the last Italian town, to take a fond and final look at the paradise he is on the point of leaving. Travelling on foot, his motions depend but on his own caprice, and he leaves the high-road to ascend an adjacent hillock, commanding a fine view. The blast of a post-horn and crack of whips break in upon his meditations, and an open travelling carriage rolls rapidly along the causeway. In one of two women who occupy it, Rosen thinks he recognises his incognita, but before he can reach the road, the vehicle is in the town. It is evening, and Rosen, persuaded the travellers will halt for the night at Duomo d' Ossola, hurries after them to the open square where the guardhouse and the principal inn are situated. The carriage stands at the door of the latter, but fresh horses are being harnessed, and the youth's hopes of passing the night under the same roof with the lady of his thoughts, and of improving his very slight acquaintance with her, begin to vanish in vapour. An unexpected incident again gives them consistence:--

"A large circle of idlers had collected round the travellers. An officer, issuing from the guardhouse, a paper in his hand, made his way through the crowd and approached the carriage-door: on his appearance the young lady got out, and took a few steps to meet him. The officer bowed and addressed her with great courtesy; but his manner, and the deprecating shrug of his shoulders, indicated inability to comply with some wish she had expressed. Ludwig drew nearer; but as the lady--of whose identity with her he sought he grew each moment more convinced--had her face turned from him, he made the circuit of the crowd to obtain a sight of her countenance. Heavens, it was herself! Her features were paler and more anxious than at their last meeting, and a tear trembled in her beauteous blue eye. Yielding to an irresistible impulse, Ludwig approached her, resolved, at risk of offence, to greet the lovely being whose apparition had gladdened his entrance into the glorious land he now was quitting, and to remind her of the moment of their first meeting and too speedy separation. He was encouraged to this step by beholding her unaccompanied, save by an old servant seated upon the box, and by an elderly woman, to all appearance an attendant, or humble companion. He hastily stepped forward out of the crowd, which had fallen a little back. As he did so, the lady's glance met his, and so sudden and joyful a glow over-spread her features, that he could not for an instant doubt her recognition of him. He was about to salute and address her, when, with startling haste, she exclaimed in French, 'Here is my brother!' and hurried to meet him. Before Ludwig, astounded at what he took for an extraordinary mistake, had time to utter a word, she continued in Italian, and in a loud tone, so that all around might hear and understand, 'Thank God, brother, you are come at last!' Then, in a rapid whisper, and in German, 'I am lost,' she said, 'if you deny me.' With prompt decision, she turned to the officer, took the paper from his hand and presented it to Ludwig. 'This gentleman would not admit the regularity of our passport because you were not present,' said she, reverting to the French language. 'See what trouble you give us, dear brother, by your romantic partiality for byways! You are Count Wallersheim,' she whispered in German.

"Startled and confounded as Ludwig was by this strange adventure, he retained sufficient presence of mind to understand that it was in his power to render important service to the beautiful woman who stood anxious and tearful before him. Readily taking his cue, his reply was prompt. 'Be not uneasy, dear sister,' he said, 'I will explain to the gentleman.' He turned to the Frenchman, and in order to gain time and some insight into the circumstances of the case, 'I must beg you, sir,' he said 'to repeat your objections to our passport. Ladies have little experience in such matters.' 'I have now,' replied the officer 'not the slightest objection to make. You are set down in the passport as the companion of the countess your sister and yet you were not with her. The passport was, consequently, not in order. The countess certainly told me you had left her only for a short time, to ramble on foot, and that you would rejoin her beyond the town; but at frontier places, like Duomo d' Ossola, our orders are so strict that I should have been compelled to detain the young lady till you made your appearance. Rest assured, however, count, that I should, have held it my duty to have had you sought upon the road to Sempione, to inform you of the obstacle to your sister's progress. I strongly advise you to remain with the countess so long as you are in this district, or you will inevitably encounter delay and annoyance. Once over the Swiss frontier, you are out of our jurisdiction, and travelling is easier.'

"Ludwig stood mute with astonishment, whilst the old servant got off the box,--took from him, without observation, the light travelling pouch that hung on his shoulder,--laid it in the carriage, and asked him if he would be pleased to get in. Scarce conscious of what he said, he gave the officer his hand, and uttered a few polite words. The servant put down the carriage steps,--the gallant Frenchman assisted the lady, who had muffled herself in her veil, to ascend them,--bowed low, and repeated his wishes for their pleasant journey. Ludwig, almost without knowing what he was about, took his place by the side of the enigmatical fair one, whose duenna had discreetly transferred herself to the opposite seat, and the carriage rattled through the streets."

Once out of town, the mysterious stranger greets Ludwig as her deliverer; and, before they cross the frontier, she has confided to him as much as she proposes at that time to reveal of her exceptional position. This does not, however, amount to a disclosure of her family, name, or even of her country. She bids him call her Bianca,--but with that he must rest content; and he is unable to conjecture, from the slight accent with which she speaks German, or from the language, to him unknown, in which she converses with her companions, to what nation she belongs. She intimates that her destiny is connected with the political events of the period,--that more than her own life is in peril,--and accepts his enthusiastic offer to sustain his assumed character, and to escort her, as her brother, to Germany. Her companions are her _gouvernante_ and an old trusty servant, and she would travel in safety were they the sole sharers of her secret. But, unfortunately, a fourth person possesses it, who accompanied her as far as Milan, under the name of Count Wallersheim,--endeavoured to abuse the fraternal intimacy to which he was admitted, and was indignantly repulsed. Bianca took an opportunity to leave him behind, and is well assured that out of revenge he turned traitor. The pursuers must already be upon her track,--each moment an order for her arrest may overtake her. And she does not conceal from Ludwig that, by accompanying her, he runs a heavy risk. This the enamoured youth despises,--insists on acting as her champion and defender, and keeps his seat in her carriage. That night they encounter various perils on the Simplon; and, finally, are locked up by an avalanche in a mountain gallery, whence they are not extricated till morning. In the course of the night's adventures, Ludwig obtains ground to suspect the existence of nearer ties between his two female companions than those of mistress and servant. The excitement and anxiety of the time, however, prevent his dwelling upon this suspicion: the carriage is patched up, and the party reach Brieg, in the Valais, where they are compelled to pause whilst their vehicle is put in better repair. Whilst Bianca reposes, Ludwig strolls out of the town. At about a mile from it, on his return, he is overtaken by a horseman at full gallop, followed, at an interval of a few hundred yards, by a second cavalier, and by a carriage at a pace nearly as rapid. This headlong speed strikes Ludwig as remarkable. Before he has time to reflect on its possible cause, he is addressed, in French, by the first horseman.

"'Do you belong to Brieg, sir?'

"'No,' replied Ludwig. 'I am a traveller, and have just rambled out of the town.'

"'Can you tell us if a carriage and four, with two ladies and a gentleman, and a servant on the box, has arrived there?'

"Ludwig was on the point of answering No, when the post-chaise came up and stopped. It contained a civilian and a French officer. The former leaned out of the window, and repeated the horseman's question. This gave Ludwig, who could not doubt the inquiries had reference to Bianca, time to devise a safe answer. He remembered that the post-house was at the commencement of the town, and that persons in haste would be likely to change horses there without going to the inn at all. This decided his reply.

"'Certainly,' said he quickly, 'such a carriage arrived some hours ago with a broken axle, I believe, which was mended here. But about a quarter of an hour back, just as I left the town, the strangers resumed their journey.'

"'The devil!' exclaimed the man in the carriage: 'which road did they take?'

"'The only one they could take, by Sion to Geneva,' replied Ludwig. 'You see it yonder, following the bank of the Rhone.'

"'Can we not cut across?' inquired the traveller hastily.

"'To be sure,' said the postilion, answering for Ludwig; 'just below this we can turn sharp to the left; and if your Excellencies are not afraid to ford the Rhone, even though the water should come into the carriage a little, we avoid the town altogether, and save a good half-hour. If your Excellencies allow me to take that road, never fear but I will overtake the travellers. They must now just be passing through yonder wood, otherwise we should see their carriage on the highway.'

"'Is the cross-road dangerous?'

"'Not a bit. Only a little rough. In an hour at most we will catch them, if your Excellencies will bear me harmless for passing the post station.'

"'That will I,' replied the officer in the carriage; 'and what is more, you shall have the twenty gold napoleons I promised you if you caught the fugitives before they reached Brieg. Now on, and at speed.'

"The carriage dashed forward, the horsemen galloping on either side."

The above short extracts contain what may be termed the root of the story, whence arise and branch forth a host of subsequent adventures. The misdirection given by Ludwig to Bianca's pursuers, exercises, especially, an extraordinary influence on his subsequent fortunes. In the first instance, however, it gives the lady time to escape on foot from the inn. Her two attendants, who are in fact her father and mother, Russian nobles in disguise, join her at a place appointed without the town, and Ludwig is to do the same, but misses his way, and is unable to find the fugitives. Already deeply in love with the interesting stranger, he is in despair at thus losing her; the more so as he is still ignorant of her name, and his chances of tracing her are even smaller than a year previously. After long but fruitless search, he pursues his journey northwards in company with three Polish officers, Rasinski, Jaromir, and Boleslaw, with whom he becomes acquainted at an inn, and is soon very intimate. The Poles are on their way to Dresden, to join Napoleon, then daily expected there, to open the Russian campaign. The new friends travel for some time in company. At Heidelberg an acquaintance puts a newspaper into Ludwig's hand, and calls his attention to a singular advertisement. It is a letter from Bianca to her unknown deliverer, couched in terms intelligible to him alone, thanking him, expressing regret at their sudden departure, and a wish that they may again meet, but giving no clue by which to find her. More deeply in love than ever, he proceeds to Dresden, where his invalid mother, and his beautiful sister Marie, an enthusiast for German nationality and freedom, welcome the wanderer with delight. There he also meets his friend Bernard, just returned from a tour in England and northern Europe. On a pleasure excursion with a party of ladies and Polish officers, Ludwig is seen and recognised by the man whom he had misdirected in the Valais. This is a Frenchman, named Beaucaire, formerly secretary to Bianca's father, now the confidant and tool of Baron de St Luces, one of Napoleon's most trusted agents,--half diplomatist, half policeman, with a dash of the spy. Beaucaire has Ludwig arrested; Bernard and one of the Poles rescue him by the strong hand from the gensdarmes, who are taking him to prison. But although at liberty he is still in the greatest peril. The police seek him every where. It appears that Bianca's father is a most important secret agent of Russia; that when flying from Italy he had with him papers of the greatest weight and value, and that death is the doom of Ludwig for aiding his escape. Bernard, who has become implicated by the vigorous assistance he rendered his friend, is liable to the same severe punishment. They apply to Colonel Rasinski for advice and succour. The best he is able to do for them is to enlist them in his regiment of Polish lancers, and pack them off to the depot at Warsaw. Under assumed names, and in the ranks of an army of six hundred thousand men, disguised also in the coarse garb of private dragoons, detection appears all but impossible. To console them as much as may be for this separation from friends and country, to share in a campaign with which they as Germans cannot sympathise, and to the cheerful endurance of whose hardships they are stimulated neither by patriotism nor ambition, Rasinski attaches the two friends to his person as orderlies; and throughout their whole period of service they associate, when off duty, on terms of perfect equality and intimacy, with him and the captains Jaromir and Boleslaw. The incident of the enlistment is rather forced. There is no apparent reason why Rasinski should detain his friends in his regiment after its uniform had served the purpose of escape from Dresden. Once smuggled out of the city, it was most natural to let them resume their civilian character, and seek concealment in a foreign country, if necessary, till the danger was over, and till they and their offences had been forgotten in the stirring events and perpetual changes of the times. This of course would not have answered Mr Rellstab's purpose; but he should have given more cogent reasons for the continuance in the service of two men, one of whom declares that he holds the gallows or the galleys as agreeable alternatives as the life of a private sentinel.

The merest outline, the most skeleton-like sketch of the plots and under-plots of "1812" would fill a long article, and prove, upon the whole, dry and of small interest. Nor is it, we have already said, by any means our opinion that the plot is the best part of Mr Rellstab's romance. By giving its details, we should be doing less to exhibit his talent, and to interest our readers, than by proceeding at once to the extraction and translation of one or two of its many remarkable scenes and passages.

During the advance of the French army into Russia, when the French Emperor, eager to engage the enemy, had the mortification of seeing them constantly recede on his approach, steadily avoiding an action, Polish Jews were frequently employed as spies, and sent forward to watch and report the movements of a foe whose plan of campaign even Napoleon's genius was unable to penetrate. The invasion of Russia, and anticipated triumph of the French host, were hailed with delight by the great mass of the Polish nation, who considered their liberation from the Muscovite yoke, and the re-establishment of Polish nationality, to be quite certain when once Napoleon took the field on their behalf. But these feelings of patriotic exultation were not partaken by the Jews of Poland, at least not to an extent that rendered them proof against the allurements of Russian gold. As usual, the guileless Israelites were at the service of the best bidder. Russian rubles and French crowns were equally welcome to their insatiable souls and fathomless pockets.

After crossing the Dnieper, Count Rasinski, whose knowledge of the people, language, and country, caused him to be frequently consulted by the Emperor, sent forward a Lithuanian Jew to ascertain if the enemy were concentrating their forces, and likely to make a stand.

"Towards three in the morning, and in profound darkness, the spy reappeared in the bivouac. Bernard had just awakened and stirred up the fire, when the strange figure of the Israelite, stealing noiselessly along, (wariness and caution had become his second nature,) entered the circle of light cast by the flames. Like a prowling and mischievous sorcerer, he suddenly stood before Bernard, who started at this strange and unexpected apparition. A black robe, confined at the waist by a leathern girdle, draped his meagre person; a red and pointed beard descended low upon his breast; his pale, wizened countenance peered forth from out a mass of tangled hair; his gray eyes had a cunning and malicious twinkle. A constrained smile distorted his lips, as he accosted Bernard in Jewish dialect.

"'Young gentleman! Tell me quick where my lord colonel sleeps. I am in haste to speak with him, young gentleman!'

"'The fellow looks like the devil changed into a fox,' muttered Bernard to himself. 'So they have not hanged you, eh, Isaac?'

"'Father Abraham! what is that for a question, young gentleman? D'ye think old Isaac would have lived so long, had he not known to keep his neck out of a coil of hemp? But take me to my lord colonel: it's in great haste!'

"'Come, son of Abraham,' said Bernard, parodying the Jewish mode of speaking; 'set thy shoe-soles upon the tracks of my feet, so shalt thou come to the presence of him whose gold thou covetest. Forward!' And, winding his way through the groups of weary soldiers who lay sleeping round the watch-fires, he guided the old spy to the spot where Rasinski, wrapped in his cloak, reposed upon a little straw. The colonel's watchful ear warned him of the approach of strange footsteps; he was roused in an instant, and looked keenly into the surrounding darkness.

"'Ha, friend Isaac!' he cried; 'well, what news? Are they of weight?'

"The Jew nodded mysteriously, and drew the count aside. Bernard would have returned to his fire, but Rasinski signed to him to remain. The count spoke long and low with his Hebrew emissary, and listened with the strongest interest, as it seemed, to the report of the latter. The spy's countenance each moment assumed a more important expression, and was lighted up, even at shorter intervals, by his false and repulsive smile, as he saw that Rasinski appeared satisfied with the intelligence he brought.

"'Accursed Judas!' quoth Bernard to himself. 'I could not put faith in that villanous physiognomy, though the fox's snout of it were to guide me into paradise. And yet Rasinski is a judge of men; that there is no denying.'

"Isaac had made his report; he stood submissively before Rasinski, and awaited his orders with the deepest humility. The colonel produced his purse; the Jew's visage was lighted up with joy; lust of gold gleamed in his eyes. But when he clutched in his extended palm a handful of gold pieces, he broke out into fulsome expressions of delight and gratitude.

"'God of Abraham!' he cried, endeavouring to seize and kiss Rasinski's hand, 'bless my dear benefactor, who saves me from perishing in these days of war and misery! Hunger would rend the poor Jew's entrails, till he howled like the starving wolf in winter, did not you, noble sir, deign generously to relieve him.'

"By word and gesture Rasinski commanded silence. The Jew turned to depart, pulling out at the same time a small leathern bag, wherein to stow his gold. With this empty bag he unintentionally drew out a purse, whose strings had got entangled with those of the bag, and which fell heavily to the ground. Visibly alarmed, Isaac stooped to pick it up, but Bernard, who had observed his countenance by the fire-light, conceived a sudden suspicion, and sprang forward with a like intention. The grass being high, and the light not falling on that spot, both men felt about for a few moments in vain. At last Bernard seized the prize.

"'Give it here, my dear young gentlemans,' cried Isaac eagerly; 'it is my small and hard-earned savings. Now-a-days nothing is safe, except what one carries with one. Give it me, I entreat!'

"The anxious tone and hasty gestures, with which he spoke these words, not only strengthened Bernard's suspicions, but also attracted the attention of Rasinski.

"'Humph! heavy,' said Bernard, significantly; 'very heavy. Nothing less than gold there, I expect.'

"Rasinski approached.

"'Heaven bless you!' cried Isaac, 'a little silver and copper, nothing more. Perhaps an old ducat or two amongst it.' And he hastily extended his arm to seize his property. Bernard drew back his hand, held the purse to the fire-light and loudly exclaimed--'Silver? copper? What I see through the meshes is gold, and that of the brightest!'

"'Show it here!' said Rasinski, stepping quickly forward. Bernard, laughing, handed him the purse; the Jew dared not object, but he trembled visibly, and expostulated in a humble and cringing tone. 'Most generous sir!' he said; 'it is the trifle I have rescued from the exactions and calamities of war. You will not rob a helpless old man of his little all.'

"'Rob!' repeated Rasinski, disdainfully. 'Am I a marauder? But you will not make me believe,' he continued, in an accent of menace, 'that this gold has been long in your possession. Think you I do not know what a Jew of your sort can save in Lithuania? A likely tale, indeed, that whilst passing as a spy, from one camp to the other, you carry this treasure on your person! Ten foot under ground in the thickest forest, you still would not think it safe. And why deny it to be gold? Where are the silver and copper amongst these fire-new ducats? Confess, Jew--whence have you this gold?'

"Isaac trembled in every limb.

"'What would you of me, most gracious lord count?' stammered he. 'How should old Isaac possess other gold than what he has saved during his sixty years of life? Where should he bury it? Where has he land to dig and delve at his pleasure? And if I wished to conceal that I have saved a few ducats, sure it is no crime in times like these?'

"'Miserable subterfuges!' replied Rasinski. 'Here, take your gold--I desire it not. But mark my words! molten I will have it poured down thy lying throat, if thou hast deceived me in this matter! These ducats look like the guerdon of weightier information than you have brought me. If you have betrayed aught to the enemy, if our present plan miscarries, tremble, for your treachery shall meet a fearful reward!'

"The Jew stood with tottering knees and pale as death; suddenly he prostrated himself at Rasinski's feet, his face distorted by an agony of terror.

"'Pardon! mercy!' he exclaimed.

"'Justice!' sternly replied Rasinski. 'Let his person be searched for papers.'

"An officer and two soldiers seized the Jew, dragged him to the next fire, and bade him strip from head to foot. In a few moments it was done. Gown and hose, shoes and stockings, were examined, without any thing being found. Even a cut through the shoe-soles brought nothing to light. Meanwhile Isaac stood shivering in his shirt, following with anxious glances each movement of the soldiers. As each portion of his dress passed muster and was thrown aside, his countenance cleared and brightened.

"'As sure as Jehovah dwells above us!' he exclaimed, 'I am an innocent old man. Give me back my money and my clothes, and let me home to my hut!'

"'There, put on your rags!' cried a corporal, throwing him his breeches. Isaac caught them, but at the same moment the soldier threw him his gown in the same unceremonious way. It fell over the Jew's face, enveloping him in its folds. Seeing this, the mischievous corporal seized one end of the loose garment, and pulled it backwards and forwards over the head of Isaac, who staggered to and fro, blinded and confused, but still struggling violently and crying out for mercy. Rasinski was on the point of checking this horse-play, when the Jew stumbled and fell, thus disentangling himself from the gown, which remained in his tormentor's hands. But to the utter dismay of the Israelite, and simultaneously with his robe, a wig was dragged from his head, leaving him completely bald. At first nobody attached importance to the circumstance, and the soldiers laughed at this climax of the Jew's misfortunes, when Bernard's quick eye detected upon the ground a scrap of paper, which had been concealed between scalp and wig. He clutched at it; but was forestalled by Isaac, who, in all haste, caught it up and threw it into the blazing watch-fire, where it instantly disappeared in a flake of tinder. This suspicious incident gave rise to a new investigation. The Jew denied every thing: he swore by the God of his fathers he knew of no letter, and had thrown nothing into the fire, but had merely picked up his handkerchief. Upon examining his head, however, it appeared that the hair had been recently shaved off, and that Isaac had no real occasion for a wig. Here again the wary Jew was ready with his justification.

"'God of mercy!' he cried, 'what I have done for your service proves my perdition. When, driven by need and hunger, I undertook your dangerous commission, I bethought me how I could best be useful to you. Could I tell what duties you would require of me? Had I not even heard that they consisted in carrying letters and papers, skilfully concealed? Therefore did I break the law by laying a razor on my head! And now I am punished for my sin. But is it for you Christians to condemn me, because I have transgressed to do your pleasure?'

"Spurred by the fear of death, Isaac continued in this strain with irrepressible volubility; and there was no denying that his excuses and reasons were plausible enough. Nevertheless, Rasinski found strong grounds for suspicion. He ordered the Jew to be kept in custody, and that, when the regiment went out, he should follow on a spare horse.

"'If I see by the enemy's movements,' said he to the Jew as he was led away, 'that he has notice of our project, you are ripe for the gallows, and shall not escape it. If there is no evidence of your treason, you shall be free to get yourself hung elsewhere, for beyond Liady you will be useless, seeing that the Russians do not tolerate your blood-sucking race in their land; the only good trait I am acquainted with in their character. Away with you--let him be well guarded."'

During a scamper after the Cossacks upon the following day, Isaac makes his escape, to reappear at the close of the retreat under very startling and horrible circumstances. At last Napoleon, who, ever since he crossed the Niemen, had expected battle, and who was furious at the retrograde tactics of the Russians, met at Smolensko the first serious resistance of his cautious and astute foe. Hitherto every thing had been of evil presage: nature seemed combined with man to check his progress, and discourage his ambition. His first arrival on the banks of the Niemen was marked by a fall from his horse; a terrible storm welcomed him upon the Russian territory; in crossing the first Russian river, the Wilna, a squadron of Polish horse, sent to find a ford, were swept away by the current. Bridges were cut, roads deserted, even the defiles protecting Wilna unguarded, but not an enemy was visible, save now and then a few wild Cossacks, stragglers from the Russian rear-guard. On the other hand, the French suffered from hunger and fatigue; provisions were scarce, the men discouraged; discipline grew lax, villages were plundered and burned; tales circulated in the ranks of the army, of young soldiers, new to privations, and disheartened by a long perspective of suffering, who turned aside upon the road and blew out their brains with their muskets. Already baggage-waggons and munition-carts, open and empty, strewed the plain, as in rear of a discomfited and retreating army; thousands of horses had died from feeding on green corn. All these misfortunes, before a blow had been struck, almost before a shot had been fired! Such disastrous inactivity was more destructive than the fiercest opposition; and no wonder Napoleon longed to meet one of those stubborn stands which he well knew the Russian troops would make, so soon as their leaders permitted them. The first of any importance was made at Smolensko. In the previous doubts and delays there is evidently fine scope for a historical romance-writer,--and Mr Rellstab busies himself with the events of the campaign, neglecting for a while the progress of his novel. We then obtain a peep into Russia, and are introduced to the castle of Count Dolgorow, Bianca's father. Preparations are making for the young Countess's marriage with Prince Ochalskoi, a marriage repugnant to her feelings, (for she still cherished a tender recollection of Ludwig,) but into which she is in a manner coerced by her parents. On her wedding day she receives a letter, left by her nurse in care of her confessor, not to be delivered to her till after marriage, by which she learns that she is not the Dolgorow's daughter; that her mother was a German lady, who died a few days after her birth, and that her adoption by the Count had, for motive, that an inheritance depended on his wife having children, which, after many years' marriage, were still denied him. Bianca, with whom a sense of filial duty had powerfully weighed when consenting to become the wife of a man she disliked, is in despair at finding how unnecessarily she has sacrificed herself. But the ceremony is over, and she has no alternative but resignation to her lot. That same evening, however, the castle, which is in the vicinity of Smolensko, is surprised by Rasinski, who, under cover of the darkness, has forded the Dnieper with his horsemen. On the threshold of the bridal chamber, Ochalskoi is startled by pistol-shots. The alarm-bell rings, the confusion is terrific. The principal tenants of the castle escape into the adjacent forest, but, in covering the retreat, Ochalskoi is mortally wounded. From Smolensko, Russian troops hurry out to repel the Poles, and Rasinski recrosses the river with his regiment, in whose ranks rides Ludwig, little suspecting how near he has been to the mistress of his heart. Having thus obligingly killed off the husband, before he had _de facto_ become entitled to the name, Mr Rellstab evidently intends ultimately rewarding the sufferings of Bianca, and the constancy of her German lover. There is still a slight difficulty in the way of this desirable consummation. Bernard, Ludwig's faithful friend, has also a hankering after the lady, whom he has seen in a London theatre, and surreptitiously sketched. He sacrifices himself to friendship, and is rewarded by the discovery that Bianca is his sister. Whereupon he finds out that he is in love with Marie, Ludwig's sister, and she, who has been wooed by Rasinski, and whose sole objection to the gallant Pole is the fact of his fighting in the French ranks, favours the suit of Bernard, whose temporary service under the tricolor was the consequence of his affection for her brother, and who atones his brief alliance with Frenchmen by taking a gallant part against them in the subsequent campaigns of 1813-15. Here, however, we are again anticipating--jumping from the middle of the second to the end of the fourth volume. We will presently retrace our steps for an extract or two. Just after the fight at Smolensko, which the Russians abandoned in the night, and the French took possession of on the 18th August, Ludwig receives a letter informing him of his mother's death, and is plunged into the deepest distress. We mention this incident, which, although its immediate cause is connected with the plot of the book, is, upon the whole, unimportant, merely because it gives us an opportunity of referring to a practice common amongst foreign writers, especially amongst German ones, and which occurs in "1812" more frequently than we should have expected to have found it in the production of a writer usually so manly as Mr Rellstab. We allude to the exorbitant allowance of hugging and kissing that goes on between the male characters of the romance. We have no objection to any decent amount of osculation, so long as the parties are of different sexes; we can even pardon the rather too warmly-coloured scenes in the bride's apartment near Smolensko, and in the boudoir or _clapier_--or whatever we are to call it--of Mademoiselle Françoise Alisette, the French singing woman. (Mr Rellstab, by the way, is particularly given to having his billing and cooing done where 'cannons are roaring and bullets are flying,' amidst death-wounds and conflagration.) But we cannot abide, or read with common patience, even though we know it to be mere fiction,--for surely no men wearing boots, breeches, a soldier's coat, and sword on hip, ever descended to such Sporus-like familiarities,--an account of soldiers kissing and slabbering each other like a set of sentimental school-girls parting for the holidays. Bernard the painter, a very worthy fellow, and efficient man-at-arms, and withal a bit of a cynic, departs from his natural character, and falls at once a hundred per cent in our estimation, when we read of his imprinting "a soft brother's kiss upon Ludwig's lips." Having done this, however, he announces his resolution to avoid for the future softness of all kinds, and to stand "like a veteran pilot, cold and calm amidst the storm of fate." Nevertheless, when Ludwig learns his mother's decease, we find the artist relapsing into the nasty weakness, clasping his friend in his arms, and pressing "a long kiss upon his lips." The same sort of maudlin is of frequent recurrence throughout the book. Formerly very prevalent upon the Continent, the practice of embracing amongst men is sensibly on the decline, or rather it has become modified, for the most part, into a sort of meaningless hug, compounded of a clasp round the body, and a grin over the shoulder. There is no harm in this, if it amuse the actors, or is in any way gratifying to their feelings. The last time we saw the ceremony gone through, by a couple of bearded big-paunched Frenchmen, we thought they looked rather conscious of the absurdity of the exhibition, and more than half ashamed of it. Any thing beyond this, any thing like contact of chins, lips, cheeks, or mustaches, is nauseous, and degrades any male animal of the genus _homo_, superior in moral dignity to a French man-milliner, or a German student drunk with beer. Let not, however, our rightful disgust be misinterpreted. There are kisses that are hallowed in history. Such was the kiss of Hardy upon the cheek of Nelson.

The affair of Smolensko, bloody though it was, was a trifling skirmish compared with the terrible battle of the Borodino, excellently well described by Mr Rellstab. This was a profitless battle--nay, a disastrous one--to the victors, whose numerical loss rather exceeded that of the vanquished; and the Russians, little ruffled by their defeat, might almost have renewed the strife the following day, had it so pleased them. Another such victory would have been the ruin of the French. But it did not accord with Russian tactics to give them another chance. The invaders' doom awaited them there, where they anticipated safety and repose--in the ancient city of the Czars, imperial Moscow. The insignificant spoils of the action that had cost them so much blood, made it evident to the French host that the triumph was but nominal. What were a few hundred prisoners, and four-and-twenty guns, after such a tremendous day's slaughter? "It is the sun of Austerlitz!" Napoleon, with his accustomed clap-trap, had said upon the morning of the fight. Like that of Austerlitz, the sun set upon a victory; but how different in its results! "Let your descendants," said Napoleon, in one of his unrivalled and spirit-stirring proclamations, "make it their chief boast that their ancestors fought in that great battle before the walls of Moscow!" How few who shared in that day's perils and glories ever returned to their native land, to boast the exploits or bewail the mishaps of the most unfortunate campaign the world's military history can show! The action of the Borodino, claimed as a victory by the French, although in reality a drawn battle, inspired Napoleon's host with no feelings of exultation. The losses were too tremendous--the advantages too problematical. Still, the fight--or rather the voluntary retreat of the Russians during the following night--opened the road to Moscow, and this gave fresh spirits to the army: not that they rejoiced and triumphed at occupying the second capital of Russia, but because they well knew that Moscow was a further stage upon the only road by which they would be permitted to return to France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland--to all the eight or ten countries, in short, of whose inhabitants the armed multitude was made up. Moscow was to be their winter-quarters, their place of refuge, rest, and solace, after great hardships and sufferings. They of course expected they would have to fight for the city, but in this they did less than justice to Russian hospitality. They found the dwelling swept, the fires laid, and all ready for lighting. Mr Rellstab powerfully describes the aspect of the deserted city, when entered by Murat at the head of his cavalry.

"The streets through which they passed made a strange impression: alive with the clang of war, they yet were deadly still, for the houses on either hand stood like silent tombs, whence no sound or sign of life proceeded. Not a single chimney smoked. The cupolas of the cathedral glittered in shining gold, encircled with wreaths of green; the pillars of palaces towered in lofty magnificence. But the glories of this noble architecture resembled the dismal finery of a corpse laid out in state for a last melancholy exhibition, so mute, so rigid was all it enclosed. This mixture of the wanton splendour of life with the profound stillness and solitude of death was so painful, that it oppressed the hearts of those rough warriors, who as yet, however, were far from suspecting the terrible truth.

"For two hours the troops had perambulated this stony desert, in whose labyrinthine mazes they became ever more deeply involved. Their progress was of the slowest, for the King of Naples, still refusing to believe what each moment rendered more apparent, was in constant expectation of a surprise, and could not banish the idea that the foe cunningly inveigled him into this confused and treacherous network of streets and lanes, in order the better suddenly to assail him. He therefore sent strong detachments into every side street, to seek the enemy supposed to lurk there. None was detected. A dreadful stillness reigned in the huge city, where erst the din of traffic deafened every ear. There was heard but the dull, hollow hoof-tramp of the horses, and the jar of the weapons, dismally reverberated from the tall, dead walls; so that, when the column halted, complete silence spread like a shroud over the awe-stricken host. For the soldier was infected with the gloom of the scene, so that, although entering the hostile capital, no cry of victory or shout of joy escaped him; but grave and silent, scrutinising with astonished eye the surrounding edifices, in vain quest of a trace of life, he entered the metropolis of the old Czars.

"Now the walls and pinnacles of the Kremlin rose in dark majesty above the intruders' heads. For the first time a refreshing sound was heard--a confused jumble of human voices and warlike stir. It was a party of the inhabitants, collected in a dark swarm round a train of carts conveying provisions and wounded men, who had not been soon enough got out of the city. A few Cossacks, left behind to escort them, spurred their active little horses and quickly disappeared in the maze of streets, uninjured by the bullets sent after them. Suddenly from the Kremlin, at whose doors the French had now arrived, issued a horrible uproar of howling voices. Rasinski, at the noise of the firing, had galloped to the head of the column, followed by Bernard, to ascertain its cause; and even his manly heart, long accustomed to sounds and perils of every description, beat quicker at the ghastly tumult. His eye followed the direction given by his ear, and he beheld, upon the Kremlin's walls, a group of hideous figures, both men and women, furiously gesticulating, and evidently resolved to defend the entrance to the holy fortress. The women's tangled and dishevelled hair, the wild bristling beards of the men, the distorted features and frantic gestures of all, their horrible cries, and rags, and filth, and barbarous weapons, composed a picture frightful beyond expression. 'What!' cried Rasinski, with a start, 'has hell sent against us its most hideous demons?'--'Are they men or spectres?' inquired the shuddering Bernard. Again the grisly band set up their wild and horrid shriek, and shots were fired from the wall into the compact mass of soldiers. The King of Naples waved a white handkerchief in sign of truce, and called to Rasinski to tell the people in their own language that no harm should be done to them if they abandoned their useless and desperate opposition. Rasinski rode forward; but scarcely had he uttered the first word of peace, when his voice was drowned in a horrid yell, whilst the women furiously beat their breasts and tore their hair. Once more Rasinski called to them to yield. Thereupon a woman of colossal stature, whose loosened hair fell wildly on her shoulders, sprang upon a turret of the wall. 'Dog!' she cried, 'with my teeth will I rend thee, like a hungry wolf her prey! Robber! thou shalt be torn like the hunter who despoils the she-bear of her cubs! Curse upon ye, murderers of our sons and husbands! Curse upon ye, spoilers of our cities! A triple curse upon the godless crew, who defile our holy altars, and scoff the Almighty with a devil's tongue! Woe shall be your portion, worse your sufferings than those of the damned in the sulphur-pit! Curses, eternal curses upon ye all!'

"Rasinski shuddered. This menacing figure, although fearful to behold, excited not loathing. Wide robes of black and gray shrouded the person of the Pythoness; a blood-red cloth, half cap, half turban, was twined around her head. Her grizzled hair fluttered in the wind, her glittering eye rolled wildly in its orbit, whilst her open mouth poured forth curses, and her upraised hands appealed to heaven to fulfil them.

"Summoning all his strength, Rasinski once more shouted, in his lion-like voice--

"'Madmen! do you reject mercy?'

"Another wild howl, accompanied with threatening gestures, drowned his words. By a sign he warned the King that all was in vain, and Murat gave orders to burst open the door. The artillery was already unlimbered, and three shots, whose thunder resounded fearfully in the empty city, crashed through the barrier, which broke and shivered at the shock. As it opened, a dense throng of the mad Russians streamed out, and dashed headlong into the French ranks. The invaders would fain have spared them, for they were too few to prompt a powerful foe to needless bloodshed; but the fanatical patriotism of the unfortunates made mercy impossible. Like ferocious beasts, they threw themselves upon their foes, thinking only of destroying all they could. One raging madman, armed with a tree-branch, fashioned into a huge club, struck down two Frenchmen, and with a few agile leaps was close to the King of Naples--as usual foremost in danger--when Rasinski sprang forward and cut at him with his sabre. But the blow fell flat; with the fury of a goaded hound, the wounded man sprang upon the Count, dragged him with giant strength from his saddle, hurled him to the ground, and threw himself upon him. In a moment Bernard was off his horse, and, grappling the lunatic, who strove to throttle Rasinski, pulled him violently backwards. A French officer sprang to his assistance. With the greatest difficulty they unlocked the fierce grasp in which the Russian held Rasinski; and when this was done the wretch gnashed his teeth, and strove to use them on his prostrate opponent. But Rasinski had now an arm at liberty, and when his furious foe advanced his head to bite, he struck him with his clenched fist so severe a blow in the mouth, that a thick dark stream of blood gushed over his breast and face. Nevertheless, the barbarian yielded not, but made head against the three men with all the prodigious strength of his muscular body, until the bullet from the pistol of a dragoon, who coolly put the muzzle to his breast and shot him through the heart, laid him lifeless on the ground."

Convinced at last that the city is theirs without opposition, the French take up their quarters. Rasinski establishes himself with his friends in a spacious palace, full of corridors, staircases, and long suites of rooms, reminding us in some degree of one of Mrs Radcliffe's castles. Here some well-managed scenes occur. Voices and footsteps are heard, and Ludwig has a dream "that is not all a dream," in which Bianca appears to him, warning of danger, and bidding him fly. As token of her real presence, she leaves him a bracelet--the same by picking up which he first made her acquaintance--and a letter, a mysterious sort of missive, like that by which the gunpowder plot was discovered, in which she hints at danger underground. Rasinski, who has been disturbed by a dark figure passing through his room, at which he fires a pistol without effect, institutes a search through the palace. In the cellars they are met by a smell of sulphur, and presently the building shakes with the explosion of a mine. They hurry up to their apartments, and find them full of smoke. Just then the stillness of the night is broken by shouts of fire, and by sounds of drums and trumpets. Moscow is in flames.

And now begins, with the commencement of Mr Rellstab's third volume, the prodigious retreat from Moscow to Paris. It occupies six books out of the sixteen into which "1812" is divided; and however the interest of the other ten may occasionally be found drawn out and flagging, it must be admitted that these six are of intense and enthralling interest. From a rising ground near Moscow, Rasinski and his friends obtained a bird's-eye view of the retreating multitude, just as, encumbered with spoil, exasperated by unwonted reverse and disappointment, their blood, impoverished by previous privations, now inflamed to fever by brief but furious excesses in the palaces and wine-cellars of the Russian nobles, they started upon their weary march.

"In three broad streams the enormous mass of men and baggage poured across the fields, issuing forth in inexhaustible numbers from the ruins of Moscow, whilst the head of the column disappeared in the blue and misty distance. And besides this main body, the plain to the right and left was covered with scattered horsemen and pedestrians.

"'What is to become of it all?' said Rasinski, gazing down on the throng. 'How is an army to move with such baggage? Fortunately the first charge of Cossacks will rid us of at least half the encumbrance. What blind greediness has presided at the collection of the spoil! How many have laden themselves with useless burdens, under which they are destined to sink!'

"'I shall be much surprised,' said Jaromir, 'if the Emperor does not have the entire plunder burned so soon as we get into the open country.'

"'Not he,' replied Rasinski. 'He will not deprive the soldier, who has plodded wearily over two-thirds of Europe, of the recompense of oft-promised booty. But my word for it, before this day is over, the fellows will of themselves begin to throw their ballast overboard. See yonder, those two men, they look like officer's servants. Have they not gone and harnessed themselves to a hand-cart, and now draw their load wearily after them! Not six hours will their strength endure; but blinded by avarice, they forget the eight hundred leagues that lie between this and Paris. And yonder lines of heavy-laden carts, how long will their axles hold? And if one breaks, whence is it to be replaced? It is as much as the artillery can do to supply their deficiencies. The Emperor looks ill-pleased at all this encumbrance, but he leaves it to time to teach them the impossibility of their undertaking. There is a waggon down! do you see? one who will leave at half-a-league from Moscow all that he had probably reckoned upon conveying to Paris.'

"The cart which Rasinski saw upset was overloaded with plunder; an axle had broken, and it lay in the middle of the road, stopping the passage. There was an instant check in the whole column. From the rear came angry cries of 'Forward!' for all felt that the utmost exertion was necessary to make way through the throng and bustle. The very density of the crowd impeded movement, so that an accident diminishing the number of carts was a matter of self-gratulation to the others. As the broken vehicle could not immediately move on, and there was no room to turn it aside, the driver of one of the following carts called out to clear it away at any rate. 'Throw the lumber out of the road! every one for himself here! we cannot wait half the day for one man. Lend a hand, comrades; unharness the horses, and pitch the rubbish into the fields'. Instantly, twenty, thirty, fifty arms were extended to obey the suggestion. In vain the owner of the cart stormed and swore, and strove to defend his property. In two minutes he was surrounded on all sides; and not only was the cart pillaged of all it contained, but the horses were unharnessed, the wheels taken off, and the body of the vehicle broken up and thrown aside; so that the road was once more clear. The howling fury of the plundered man was drowned in the scornful laughter of the bystanders; no one troubled his head about the matter, or dreamed of affording assistance to the despoiled individual, who might consider himself fortunate that his horses were left him.

"'If this happens on the first day's march, at the gates of Moscow,' observed Rasinski, 'what is to be expected when an enemy threatens these heavy-laden masses? Yonder marauder has saved nothing but his pair of lean horses. The others may think themselves lucky if they save as much from the first feint-attack of half a hundred Cossacks! The fellow now howling and cursing is the luckiest of them all; for he is the first relieved from his useless drudgery. This very day he will have abundant opportunity to laugh and scoff in his turn, perhaps at his spoilers themselves. And before a week is over, he will bless his stars that he has been saved the profitless toil. The difference is merely that he loses to-day what others will lose to-morrow and the day after: of all these thousands not one will ultimately profit by his booty.'

"The prognostications of the experienced soldier were speedily verified. The track of the French army was marked first by abandoned spoils, then by the bodies of the spoilers. Napoleon's soldiers were little accustomed to retreats, and seemed to imagine that, now they had condescended to commence one, the enemy would show his surprise and respect by abstaining from molesting them. Such at least is the only plausible way of explaining the infatuation that loaded with the most cumbersome plunder the multitude of men who, on the 16th September 1812, turned their backs upon the blazing turrets of Moscow. Nothing was too clumsy or heavy to be carried off; but ultimately nothing was found portable enough to be carried through the fatigues and dangers of the winter march. Baggage and superfluous munition-carts were soon left behind, and the horses taken for the artillery; for which purpose, before reaching Smolensko, every second man in the cavalry was deprived of his charger. Although winter had not yet set in, there were frosts every night, and the slippery roads trebled the fatigues of the attenuated and ill-shod horses. After a short time, every means of transport, not monopolised by the guns, was required by the sick, wounded, and weary; and nobody thought of possessing more baggage than he could carry with him. And even the trophies selected in Moscow by Napoleon's order, to throw dust in the eyes of the Parisians,--splendid bronze ornaments from the palaces, outlandish cannon, (the spoils of Russia in her eastern wars,) and the cross of St Ivan, wrenched from the tower of the Kremlin,--were sunk in a lake by the roadside. Soon snow was the sole pillow, and horse-flesh the best nourishment, of the broken and dispirited army.

"At Smolensko, Ludwig and Bernard, when seeking in the storehouses of the depot a supply of shoes for the regiment, suddenly find themselves face to face with their old enemies, Beaucaire and the Baron de St Luces, who have them arrested as spies of Russia. Prevented from communicating with Rasinski, who is suddenly ordered off and compelled to march without them, they undergo a sort of mock examination in the gray of the morning, and are led out of the town to be shot. The place appointed for their execution is a snow-covered hillock, a few hundred yards from the walls, and close to the extremity of a thick pine wood. They are escorted by thirty men, and an escape appears impossible. Nevertheless Bernard, hopeful and energetic, despairs not of accomplishing it, and communicates his intentions to Ludwig.

"Seizing a favourable moment, Bernard suddenly knocked down the two foremost soldiers, sprang from amongst his guards, and shouting to Ludwig to follow, bounded like a roebuck towards the forest. He had cleared the way for Ludwig, who, prepared for the signal, availed himself of the opening, and sped across the snowy field. The soldiers stood astounded. 'Fire!' cried the officer; and a few obeyed the order, but already several were in full pursuit of the fugitives, preventing the others from firing, lest they should shoot their comrades. Seeing this, all threw down their muskets and joined in the chase. Ludwig sought to keep near Bernard, in order not to sever his fate from that of his trusty friend. But the number of their pursuers soon forced them to take different directions. The hunted and the hunters were alike impeded by the snow, which had been blown off the steep side of the hillock, but lay in thick masses on the table-land, and at every step the feet sank deep. Already Ludwig saw the dusky foliage of the pines close before him, already he deemed himself to have escaped his unjust doom, when suddenly he sunk up to the hips, and, by his next movement, up to the breast in the snow, which had drifted into a fissure in the earth. In vain he strained every muscle to extricate himself. In a few seconds his pursuers reached him, grappled him unmercifully, and pulled him out of the hole by his arms and hair.

"Ill treated by the soldiers, driven forward by blows from fists and musket butts, Ludwig was dragged, rather than he walked, to the place appointed for his death. Even the scornful gaze with which Beaucaire received him was insufficient to give him strength to enjoy in the last moments of his life an inward triumph over that contemptible wretch. But he looked anxiously around for Bernard, to see whether he again was the companion of his melancholy lot. He saw him not; he evidently was not yet captured. The hope that his friend had finally effected his escape, comforted Ludwig, although he felt that death, now he was alone to meet it, was harder to endure than when he was sustained by the companionship of the gallant Bernard.

"He was now again at the post, to which two soldiers secured him with musket-slings, his arms behind his back, as though they feared fresh resistance. The sergeant stepped up to him, a handkerchief in his hand.

"'I will bandage your eyes, comrade,' said he, compassionately; 'it is better so.'

"In the first instance Ludwig would have scorned the bandage, but now he let his kind-hearted fellow-soldier have his way. Suddenly it occurred to him that he might make the sergeant the bearer of his last earthly wishes.

"'Comrade,' said he, as the man secured the cloth over his eyes, 'you will not refuse me a last friendly service. So soon as you are able, go to Colonel Rasinski, who commands our regiment; tell him how I died, and beg him to console my sister. And if you outlive this war, and go to her in Warsaw or Dresden, and tell her that'--

"He was interrupted by several musket-shots close at hand.

"'Are those for me, already?' cried Ludwig,--for the sergeant had let go the handkerchief, now secured round his head, and had stepped aside. For sole reply Ludwig heard him exclaim--'The devil! what is that?' and spring forward. At the same time arose a confused outcry and bustle, and again shots were fired just in the neighbourhood, one bullet whistling close to Ludwig's head. He heard horses in full gallop, whilst a mixture of words of command, shouts, clash of steel and reports of fire-arms resounded on all sides. 'Forward!' cried the voice of the sergeant. 'Close your ranks! fire!'

"A platoon fire from some twenty muskets rang in Ludwig's ear; he imagined the muzzles were pointed at him, and an involuntary tremor, made his whole frame quiver. But he was still alive and uninjured. The complete darkness in which he found himself, the bonds that prevented his moving, the excitement and tension of his nerves, caused a host of strange wild ideas to flit across his brain. Hearing upon the left the stamp of hoofs and shouts of charging horsemen, he thought for a moment that Rasinski and his men had come to deliver him. Then, however, he heard the howling war-cry of the Russians. A 'hurrah' rent the air. The contending masses rushed past him; the smoke of powder whirled in his face; cries, groans, and clatter of weapons were all around him. He was in the midst of the fight; in vain he strove to break his bonds, that he might tear the bandage from his eyes; he continued in profound obscurity. 'Is it a frightful dream?' he at last gasped out, turning his face to heaven. 'Will none awake me, and end this horrible suffering?'

"But no hand touched him, and little by little the tumult receded, and was lost in the distance.

"Thus passed a few minutes of agonising suspense; Ludwig writhed in his fetters; a secret voice whispered to him, that could he burst them he yet might be saved, but they resisted his utmost efforts. Then he again heard loud voices, which gradually approached accompanied by hurried footsteps. On a sudden a rough hand tore the cloth from his eyes.

"Thunderstruck, he gazed around. Three men with long beards, whom he at once recognised as Russian peasants, stood before him, staring at him with a mixture of scorn and wonder. On the ground lay several muskets and the bodies of two French soldiers. Ludwig saw himself in the power of his enemies, whom a strange chance had converted into his deliverers."

Beaucaire and St Luces were also in the hands of the Russians, in whose unfriendly care we for the present leave both them and Ludwig, to recur, at a future day, to this interesting romance.

THE BLUE DRAGOON;[16]

A STORY OF CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE, FROM THE CRIMINAL RECORDS OF HOLLAND.

[16] The following singular story of circumstantial evidence is compressed from a collection of criminal trials, published at Amsterdam under the title "Oorkonden uit de Gedenkschriften van het Strafregt, en uit die der menschlyke Mishappen; te Amsterdam. By J. C. Van Kersleren, 1820." Notwithstanding the somewhat romantic complexion of the incidents, it has been included as genuine in the recent German collection, _Der Neue Pitaval_. 7 Band.

In the town of M----, in Holland, there lived, towards the close of the last century, an elderly widow, Madame Andrecht. She inhabited a house of her own, in company with her maid-servant, who was nearly of the same age. She was in prosperous circumstances; but, being in delicate health and paralysed on one side, she had few visitors, and seldom went abroad except to church or to visit the poor. Her chief recreation consisted in paying a visit in spring to her son, who was settled as a surgeon in a village a few miles off. On these occasions, fearing a return of a paralytic attack, she was invariably accompanied by her maid, and, during these visits, her own house was left locked up, but uninhabited and unwatched.

On the 30th June 17--, the widow returning to M---- from one of these little excursions, found her house had been broken open in her absence, and that several valuable articles, with all her jewels and trinkets, had disappeared. Information was immediately given to the authorities, and a strict investigation of the circumstances took place without delay.

The old lady had been three weeks absent, and the thieves of course had had ample leisure for their attempt. They had evidently gained access through a window in the back part of the house communicating with the garden, one of the panes of which had been removed and the bolts of the window forced back, so as to admit of its being pulled up. The bolts of the back-door leading into the garden had also been withdrawn, as if the robbers had withdrawn their plunder in that direction. The other doors and windows were uninjured; and several of the rooms appeared to have been unopened. The furniture, generally, was untouched; but the kitchen utensils were left in confusion, as if the robbers had intended removing them, but had been interrupted or pursued.

At the same time it was evident they had gone very deliberately about their work. The ceiling and doors of a heavy old press, the drawers of which had been secured by strong and well constructed locks, had been removed with so much neatness that no part of the wood-work had been injured. The ceiling and doors were left standing by the side of the press. The contents, consisting of jewels, articles of value, and fine linens, were gone. Two strong boxes were found broken open, from which gold and silver coin, with some articles of clothing, had been abstracted. The value of the missing articles amounted to about two thousand Dutch guldens. The house, however, contained many other articles of value, which, singularly enough, had escaped the notice of the thieves. In particular, the greater part of the widow's property consisted of property in the funds, the obligations for which were deposited, not in the press above-mentioned, but in an iron chest in her sleeping-room. This chest she had accidentally removed, shortly before her departure; placing it in a more retired apartment, where it had fortunately attracted no attention.

The robbery had, apparently, been committed by more than one person; and, it was naturally suspected, by persons well acquainted with the house, and with the circumstances of its inhabitants. The house itself, which was almost the only respectable one in the neighbourhood, was situated in a retired street. The neighbouring dwellings were inhabited by the poorer classes, and not a few of the less reputable members of society. The inner fosse of the town, which was navigable, flowed along the end of the garden through which the thieves had, apparently, gained admittance, being separated from the garden only by a thin thorn hedge. It was conjectured that the thieves had made their way close to the hedge by means of a boat, and from thence had clambered over into the garden, along the walks and flower-beds of which foot-marks were traceable.

The discovery of the robbery had created a general sensation, and the house was surrounded by a crowd of curious idlers, whom it required some effort on the part of the police to prevent from intruding into the premises. One of them only, a baker, and the inhabitant of the house opposite to that of the widow, succeeded in making his way in along with the officers of justice. His acquaintances awaited his return with impatience, trusting to be able, from his revelations, to gratify their curiosity at second-hand. If so, they were disappointed, for, on his exit, he assumed an air of mystery, answered equivocally, and observed, that people might suspect many things of which it might not be safe to speak.

In proportion, however, to his taciturnity was the loquaciousness of a woolspinner, Leendert Van N----, the inhabitant of the corner house next to that of the widow. He mingled with the groups who were discussing the subject; dropped hints that he had his own notions as to the culprits, and could, if necessary, give a clue to their discovery. Among the crowd who were observed to listen to these effusions, was a Jew dealer in porcelain, a suspected spy of the police. Before evening, the woolspinner received a summons to the town-house, and was called upon by the burgomaster for an explanation of the suspicious expressions he had used. He stammered, hesitated, pretended he knew of nothing but general grounds of suspicion, like his neighbours; but being threatened with stronger measures of compulsion, he at last agreed to speak out, protesting, at the same time, that he could willingly have spared persons against whom he had no grudge whatever, and would have been silent for ever, if he had foreseen the consequence of his indiscretion.

The substance of his disclosure was to this effect:--Opposite the German post-house, at the head of the street in which the woolspinner lived, there was a little alehouse. Nicholas D---- was the landlord. He was generally known among his acquaintances, not by his baptismal or family name, but by the appellation of the Blue Dragoon, from having formerly served in the horse regiment of Colonel Van Wackerbarth, which was popularly known by the name of the Blues. About two years before, he had become acquainted with and married Hannah, the former servant of Madame Andrecht, who had been six years in that situation, and possessed her entire confidence. Unwilling to part with her attendant, and probably entertaining no favourable notion of the intended husband, Madame Andrecht had long thrown impediments in the way of the match, so that the parties were obliged to meet chiefly at night, and by stealth. Nicholas found his way into the house at night through the garden of his acquaintance the woolspinner, and across the hedge which divided it from Madame Andrecht's. Of these nocturnal visits the woolspinner was at first cognisant, but, fearful of getting into a scrape with his respectable neighbour, he was under the necessity of intimating to the bold dragoon, that if he intended to continue his escalades, he must do so from some other quarter than his garden. Nicholas obeyed apparently, and desisted; but, to the surprise of the woolspinner, he found the lovers continued to meet not the less regularly in Madame Andrecht's garden. One evening, however, the mystery was explained. The woolspinner, returning home after dark, saw tied to a post in the canal, close by Madame Andrecht's garden, one of those small boats which were generally used by the dragoons for bringing forage from the magazine; and he at once conjectured that this was the means by which the dragoon was enabled to continue his nocturnal assignations. With the recollection of this passage in the landlord's history was combined a circumstance of recent occurrence, trifling in itself, but which appeared curiously to link in with the mode in which the robbery appeared to have been effected. Ten days before the discovery of the housebreaking, and while the widow was in the country, the woolspinner stated that he found, one morning, a dirty-coloured handkerchief lying on the grass bank of the fosse, and exactly opposite his neighbour's garden. He took it up and put it in his pocket, without thinking about it at the time. At dinner he happened to remember it, mentioned the circumstance to his wife, showed her the handkerchief, and observed jestingly, "If Madame Andrecht were in town, and Hannah were still in her service, we should say our old friend the Blue Dragoon had been making his rounds and had dropt his handkerchief." His wife took the handkerchief, examined it, and exclaimed, "In the name of wonder, what is that you say? Is not Hannah's husband's name Nicholas D----?" pointing out to him at the same time the initials N. D. in the corner. Both, however, had forgotten the circumstance till the occurrence of the robbery naturally recalled it to the husband's mind.

The woolspinner told his story simply; his conclusions appeared unstrained: suspicion became strongly directed against the Blue Dragoon, and these suspicions were corroborated by another circumstance which emerged at the same time.

During the first search of the house, a half-burnt paper, which seemed to have been used for lighting a pipe, was found on the floor, near the press which had been broken open. Neither Madame Andrecht nor her maid smoked; the police officers had no pipes when they entered the house; so the match had in all probability been dropped on the ground by the housebreakers.

On examination of the remains of the paper, it appeared to have been a receipt, such as was usually granted by the excise to innkeepers for payment of the duties on spirits received into the town from a distance, and which served as a permit entitling the holder to put the article into his cellars. The upper part of the receipt containing the name of the party to whom it was granted was burnt, but the lower part was preserved, containing the signature of the excise officer, and the date of the permit: it was the 16th March of the same year. From these materials it was easy to ascertain what innkeeper in the town had, on that day, received such a permit for spirits. From an examination of the excise register, it appeared that on that day Nicholas D---- had received and paid the duties on several ankers of Geneva. Taken by itself, this would have afforded but slender evidence that he had been the person who had used the paper for a match, and had dropped it within Madame Andrecht's room; but, taken in connexion with the finding of the handkerchief, and the suspicious history of his nocturnal rambles which preceded it, it strengthened in a high degree the suspicions against the ex-dragoon.

After a short consultation, orders were issued for his apprehension. Surprise, it was thought, would probably extort from him an immediate confession. His wife, his father--a man advanced in years--and his brother, a shoemaker's apprentice, were apprehended at the same time.

A minute search of the house of the innkeeper followed; but none of the stolen articles were at first discovered, and indeed nothing that could excite suspicion, except a larger amount of money than might perhaps have been expected. At last, as the search was on the point of being given up, there was found in one of the drawers a memorandum-book. This was one of the articles mentioned in the list of Madame Andrecht's effects; and, on inspection, there could be no doubt that this was the one referred to--for several pages bore private markings in her own handwriting, and in a side-pocket were found two letters bearing her address. Beyond this, none of the missing, articles could be traced in the house.

The persons apprehended were severally examined. Nicholas D---- answered every question with the utmost frankness and unconcern. He admitted the truth of the woolspinner's story of his courtship, his nightly scrambles over the hedge, and his subsequent visits to his intended by means of the forage-boat. The handkerchief he admitted to be his property. When and where he had lost it he could not say. It had disappeared about six months before, and he had thought no more about it. When the pocket-book which had been found was laid before him, he gave it back without embarrassment, declared he knew nothing of it, had never had it in his possession, and shook his head with a look of surprise and incredulity when told where it had been found.

The other members of his household appeared equally unembarrassed: they expressed even greater astonishment than he had done, that the pocket-book, with which they declared themselves entirely unacquainted, should have been found in the place where it was. The young wife burst out into passionate exclamations: she protested it was impossible; or if the book was really found on the spot, that it was inexplicable to her how it came there. The Saturday before, (her apprehension having taken place on a Thursday,) she had brushed out the press from top to bottom--had cleared out the contents, and nothing of the kind was then to be found there.

The behaviour of the married pair and their inmates made, on the whole, a favourable impression on the judge who conducted the inquiry. Their calmness appeared to him the result of innocence; their character was good; their house was orderly and quiet, and none of the articles of value had been discovered in their possession. True, they might have disposed of them elsewhere; but the articles were numerous, and of a kind likely to lead to detection. Why should they have preserved the comparatively worthless article found in the drawer, instead of burning or destroying it? Why, above all, preserve it in a spot so likely to be discovered, if they had so carefully made away with every trace of the rest?

Still unquestionable suspicions rested on the landlord. The thieves must have been well acquainted with Madame Andrecht's house; and this was undeniably his position. His handkerchief, found on the spot about the time of the robbery; the half-burned match dropped on the premises; the pocket-book found in his own house--these, though not amounting to proof, scarcely seemed to admit of an explanation absolutely consistent with innocence.

In this stage of the inquiry, a new witness entered upon the scene. A respectable citizen, a dealer in wood, voluntarily appeared before the authorities, and stated that his conscience would no longer allow him to conceal certain circumstances which appeared to bear upon the question, though, from an unwillingness to come forward or to appear as an informer against parties who might be innocent, he had hitherto suppressed any mention of them.

Among his customers was the well-known carpenter, Isaac Van C----, who was generally considerably in arrears with his payments. These arrears increased: the wood-merchant became pressing: at last he threatened judicial proceedings. This brought matters to a point. A few days before the discovery of the robbery at Madame Andrecht's, the carpenter made his appearance in his house, and entreated him to delay proceedings, which he said would be his ruin, by bringing all his creditors on his back. "See," said he, "in what manner I am paid myself," putting a basket on the table, which contained a pair of silver candlesticks and a silver coffee-pot. "One of my debtors owes me upwards of sixty guldens: I have tried in vain to get payment, and have been glad to accept of these as the only chance of making any thing of the debt. From the silversmiths here I should not get the half the value for them: I must keep them by me till I go to Amsterdam, where such things are understood; but I shall leave them with you in pledge for my debt." The wood-merchant at first declined receiving them, but at length, thinking that it was his only prospect of obtaining ultimate payment, he yielded, and the articles remained in his hands.

A few days afterwards, the robbery became public; the list of the silver articles contained a coffee-pot and candlesticks; and the wood-merchant, not doubting that the articles pledged had formed part of the abstracted effects, had felt himself compelled to make known the way in which they had been obtained, and to place them in the hands of the officers of justice. He meant, he said, to convey no imputation against the carpenter, but it would be easy to learn from his own lips who was the debtor from whom the articles had come.

The court ordered the basket with the plate to be placed, covered, upon the table, and sent forthwith for the carpenter. He arrived in breathless haste, but seemed prepared for what followed, and without waiting for the interrogatories of the judge, he proceeded with his explanation.

Pressed by his creditor the wood-merchant, the carpenter, in his turn, proceeded to press his own debtors. Among these was the Blue Dragoon, Nicholas D----, who was indebted to him in an account of sixty guldens for work done on his premises. Nicholas entreated for delay but the carpenter being peremptory, he inquired whether he would not take some articles of old silver plate in payment, which, he said, had belonged to his father, and had been left to him as a legacy by an old lady in whose family he had been coachman. It was at last agreed that the carpenter should take the plate at a certain value as a partial payment, and it was accordingly brought to his house the same evening by the dragoon. The latter advised him, in the event of his wishing to dispose of the plate, to take it to Amsterdam, as the silversmiths of the place would not give him half the value for the articles. The carpenter asked him why he had not carried it to Amsterdam himself. "So I would," he answered, "if you had given me time. As it is, give me your promise not to dispose of it here--I have my own reasons for it."

If this statement was correct--and there seemed no reason to doubt the fairness of the carpenter's story--it pressed most heavily against the accused. He was thus found in possession of part of the stolen property, and disposing of it, under the most suspicious circumstances, to a third party.

He was examined anew, and the beginning of his declaration corresponded exactly with the deposition of the carpenter. The latter had worked for him: he was sixty guldens in his debt. He was asked if he had paid the account: he answered he had not been in a condition to do so. He was shown the silver plate, and was told what had been stated by the carpenter. He stammered, became pale, and protested he knew nothing of the plate; and in this statement he persisted in the presence of witnesses. He was then shown the gold which had been found in his house. It belonged, he said, not to himself, but to his father-in-law.

This part of the statement, indeed, was confirmed by the other inmates of his family; but, in other respects, their statements were calculated to increase the suspicions against him. Nicholas, for instance, had stated that no part of his debt to Isaac, had been paid--that in fact he had not been in a condition to do so--while the other three members of the household, on the contrary, maintained that a few months before he _had_ made a payment of twenty guldens to Isaac, expressly to account of this claim. Nicholas became vastly embarrassed when this contradiction between his own statement and the evidence of the witnesses was pointed out to him. For the first time his composure forsook him--he begged pardon for the falsehood he had uttered. It was true, he said, that he had counted out twenty guldens, in presence of the members of his family, and told them it was intended as a payment to account of Isaac's claim; but the money had not been paid to his creditor. He had been obliged to appropriate it to the payment of some old gambling debts, of which he could not venture to inform his wife.

This departure from truth on the part of the accused had apparently but slender bearing on the question of the robbery; but it excited a general doubt as to his statements, which further inquiry tended to confirm. The carpenter, anxious to remove any suspicion as to the truth of his own story, produced a sort of account-book kept by himself, in which, under the sale of 23d June, there was the following entry,--"The innkeeper, Nicholas D----, has this day paid me the value of thirty guldens in old silver." The housekeeper and apprentice of the carpenter also deponed that they had been present on one occasion when the dragoon had proposed that their master should take the silver in payment.

If, on the one hand, the innkeeper had handed over to the carpenter the silver plate, it was plain he was either the thief or the receiver: if he had not done so, the carpenter had not only been guilty of a calumnious accusation, but the suspicion of a guilty connexion with the robbery became turned against himself. All presumptions, however, were against the innkeeper. He had admittedly been guilty of a decided falsehood as to the payment,--he could not or would not give the names of any one of those to whom his gambling debts had been paid, as he alleged,--and the fact that he had brought the plate to the carpenter's was attested by three creditable witnesses.

The general opinion in the town was decidedly against him. The utmost length that any one ventured to go, was, to suggest that his relations, who had been apprehended along with him, might be innocent of any participation in his guilt; though, being naturally anxious to save him, they might somewhat have compromised the truth by their silence, or their statements.

The dragoon was removed from his provisional custody to the prison pf the town; the others were subjected to a close surveillance, that all communication between them might be prevented. As all of them, however, persisted in the story, exactly as it had at first been told, stronger measures were at length resorted to. On the motion of the burgomaster, as public prosecutor, "that the principal party accused, Nicholas D----, should be delivered over to undergo the usual preparatory process for compelling confession," namely the torture, the court, after consideration of the state of the evidence, unanimously issued the usual warrant against him to that effect. Some pitied him, though none doubted his guilt. The general impression in the town was, that the courage of the innkeeper would soon give way, and that, in fact, he would probably confess the whole upon the first application of the torture.

The preparations were complete--the torture was to take place the next day, when the following letter, bearing the post-mark of Rotterdam, was received by the court,--

"Before I leave the country, and betake myself where I shall be beyond the reach either of the court of M---- or the military tribunal of the garrison, I would save the poor unfortunate persons who are now prisoners at M----. Beware of punishing the innkeeper, his wife, his father, and brother, for a crime of which they are not guilty. How the story of the carpenter is connected with theirs, I cannot conjecture. I have heard of it with the greatest surprise. The latter may not himself be entirely innocent. Let the judge pay attention to this remark. You may spare yourselves the trouble of inquiring after me. If the wind is favourable, by the time you read this letter I shall be on my passage to England.

"JOSEPH CHRISTIAN RUHLER,

"Former Corporal in the Company of Le Lery."

The court gladly availed themselves of the opportunity afforded by this letter to put off the torture. At first sight it did not appear a mere device to obtain delay. A company under Captain Le Lery was in garrison in the town; in that company there was a corporal of the name of Ruhler, who some weeks before had deserted and disappeared from his quarters. All inquiries after him since had proved in vain. The court subsequently learned from the report of the officer in command, that he had disappeared the evening before the day when the news of the robbery became public. He had been last seen by the guard in the course of the forenoon before his disappearance. Some connexion between the events appeared extremely probable.

But a new discovery seemed suddenly to demolish the conclusions founded on the letter. It had been laid before the commanding officer, who at once declared the handwriting was counterfeited; it was not that of Ruhler, which was well known, nor had it the least resemblance to it. The evidence of several of his comrades, and a comparison of the handwriting with some regimental lists, undoubtedly in the handwriting of Ruhler, proved this beyond a doubt.

The letter from Rotterdam thus was merely the device of some unknown friend or confederate, and probably resorted to only to put off the punishment of the accused. How indeed, if Ruhler was really implicated in the robbery, should he have thus cast suspicion upon himself? If his object had been merely to preserve the innkeeper and his friends from the torture, he would have assumed some other name. In all probability, therefore, some third party, implicated in the robbery, had availed himself of the accidental disappearance of the corporal to throw the suspicion of the robbery upon him, and to exculpate the guilty parties, who, if brought to the torture, might be induced to disclose the names of all their associates. To prevent this was probably the object of the letter. This, at least, was the prevailing opinion.

The strongest efforts were now made to discover the true writer of the letter; and mean time the torture was put off, when two other important witnesses made their appearance on the stage. Neither had the least connexion with the other; nay, the circumstances which they narrated appeared in some respects contradictory, and while they threw light on the subject in one quarter, they only served to darken it in another.

A merchant in the town, who dealt in different wares, and lived in the neighbourhood of Madame Andrecht's house, had been absent on a journey of business during the discovery of the robbery, and the course of the subsequent judicial proceedings. Scarcely had he returned and heard the story of the robbery, when he voluntarily presented himself next morning before the authorities, for the purpose, as he said, of making important revelations, which might have the effect of averting destruction from the innocent. In the public coach he had already heard some particulars of the case, and had formed his own conjectures; but since his return, these conjectures had with him grown into convictions, and he had not closed an eye from the apprehension that his disclosures might come too late. Had he returned sooner, matters would never have reached this length.

At the time when the robbery must have taken place, he had been in the town. The carpenter, Isaac Van C----, called upon him one day, begging the loan of the boat, which he was in the custom of using for the transport of bales and heavy packages to different quarters of the town. The boat generally lay behind the merchant's house, close to his warehouse, which was situated on the bank of the town fosse already alluded to. Isaac assured him he would require the boat only for a night or two, and would take care that it was returned in the morning in good condition. To the question why he wanted the boat at night, he, after some hesitation, returned for answer, that he had engaged to transport the furniture of some people who were removing, and who had their own reasons for not doing so in daylight, implying that they were taking French leave of their creditors. "And you propose to lend yourself to such a transaction," said the merchant, peremptorily refusing the loan of the boat. The carpenter interrupted him: assured him he had only jested; that his real object was only to amuse himself in fishing with some of his comrades; and that he had only not stated that at first, as the merchant might be apprehensive that the operation would dirty his boat. The merchant at last yielded to the continued requests of the carpenter, and agreed to lend him the boat, but upon the express condition that it should be returned to its place in the morning. In this respect the carpenter kept his word; when the merchant went to his warehouse in the morning, he saw the carpenter and his apprentice engaged in fastening the boat. They went away without observing him. It struck him, however, as singular, that they appeared to have with them neither nets nor fishing-tackle of any kind. He examined the boat, and was surprised to find it perfectly clean and dry, whereas, if used for fishing, it would probably have been found half-filled with water, and dirty enough. In this particular, then, the carpenter had been detected in an untruth. The boat had not been fastened to its usual place; the merchant jumped into it for that purpose, and from a crevice in the side he saw something protruding; he took it out; it was a couple of silver forks wrapped in paper. Thus the carpenter's first version of the story--as to the purpose for which he wanted the boat,--was the true one after all. He _had_ been assisting some bankrupt to carry off his effects. Angry at having been thus deceived, the merchant put the forks in his pocket, and set out forthwith on his way to Isaac's. The carpenter, his apprentice, and his housekeeper, were in the workshop. He produced the forks. "These," said he, "are what you have left in my boat. Did you use these to eat your fish with?"

The three were visibly embarrassed. They cast stolen glances upon one another; no one ventured to speak. The housekeeper first recovered her composure. She stammered out,--"that he must not think ill of them; that her master had only been assisting some people who were leaving the town quietly, to remove their furniture and effects." As the transaction was unquestionably not of the most creditable character, this might account for the visible embarrassment they betrayed; when he demanded, however, the names of the parties whose effects they had been removing, no answer was forthcoming. The carpenter at last told him he was not at liberty to disclose them then, but that he should learn them afterwards. All three pressingly entreated him to be silent as to this matter. He was so; but in the mean time made inquiry quietly as to who had left the town, though without success. Shortly after, his journey took place, and the transaction had worn out of mind, till recalled to his recollection on his return, when he was made aware of the whole history of the robbery; and forthwith came to the conclusion, that there lay at the bottom of the matter some shameful plot to implicate the innocent, and to shield those whom he believed to be the true criminals, namely, Isaac Van C----, his apprentice, and housekeeper, the leading witnesses, in fact, against the unfortunate dragoon.

The criminal proceedings, in consequence of these disclosures, took a completely different turn. The merchant was a witness entirely above suspicion. True, there was here only the testimony of one witness, either to the innocence of the dragoon, or the guilt of the carpenter; but the moral conviction to which his statement gave rise in the mind of the judge was so strong, that he did not hesitate to issue an immediate order for the arrest of the carpenter and his companions, before publicity should be given to the merchant's disclosures. No sooner were they apprehended, than a strict scrutiny was made in the carpenter's house.

This measure was attended with the most complete success. With the exception of a few trifles, the whole of the effects which had been abstracted from Madame Andrecht's, were found in the house. The examination of the prisoners produced a very different result from those of Nicholas and his comrades. True, they denied the charges, but they did so with palpable confusion, and their statements abounded in the grossest contradictions of each other and even of themselves. They came to recriminations and mutual accusations; and, being threatened with the torture, they at last offered to make a full confession. The substance of their admissions was as follows:--

Isaac Van C----, his apprentice, and his housekeeper, were the real perpetrators of the robbery at Madame Andrecht's. Who had first suggested to them the design, does not appear from the evidence. But with the old lady's house and its arrangements they were as fully acquainted as the dragoon. The apprentice, when formerly in the service of another master, had wrought in it, and knew every corner of it thoroughly. They had borrowed the boat for the purpose of getting access across the canal into the garden, and used it for carrying off the stolen property, as already mentioned. On the morning when the robbery became public, the master and the apprentice had mingled with the crowd to learn what reports were in circulation on the subject. Among other things, the apprentice had heard that the woolspinner's wife had unhesitatingly expressed her suspicions against the Blue Dragoon. Of this he informed his comrades, and they, delighted at finding so convenient a scapegoat for averting danger from themselves, forthwith formed the infernal design of directing, by every means in their power, the suspicions of justice against the innkeeper.

The apprentice entered the drinking-room of the innkeeper, and called for some schnaps, at the same time asking for a coal to light his pipe. While the innkeeper went out to fetch the coal, the apprentice took the opportunity of slipping the widow's memorandum-book, which he had brought in his pocket, betwixt the drawers. He succeeded, and the consequences followed as the culprits had foreseen: the house was searched, the book found, and, in the eyes of many, the dragoon's guilt established.

If these confessions were to be trusted, the dragoon and his family seemed exculpated from any actual participation in the robbery. Still, there were circumstances which these confessions did not clear up; some grave points of doubt remained unexplained. That the carpenter had himself pledged the silver plate with the wood-merchant, without having received it from Nicholas, was now likely enough; he had accused him, probably, only to screen himself. But how came Nicholas's handkerchief to be found by the side of the hedge? How came the excise receipt, which belonged to him, to be used as a match by the thieves? The carpenter and his comrades declared that as to these facts they knew nothing; and as they had now no inducement to conceal the truth, there could be no reasonable doubt that their statement might, in these particulars, be depended upon.

The suspicion again arose that other accomplices must be concerned in the affair; and the subject of the letter from the corporal who had deserted, became anew the subject of attention. If not written by himself, it might have been written by another at his suggestion, and in one way or other it might have a connexion with the mysterious subject of the robbery.

In fact, while the proceedings against the carpenter and his associates were in progress, an incident had occurred, which could not fail to awaken curiosity and attention with regard to this letter. The schoolmaster of a village about a league from the town presented himself before the authorities, exhibited a scrap of paper on which nothing appeared but the name Joseph Christian Ruhler, and inquired whether, shortly before, a letter in this handwriting and subscribed with this name, had not been transmitted to the court? On comparing the handwriting of the letter with the paper exhibited by the schoolmaster, it was unquestionable that both were the production of the same hand.

The statement of the schoolmaster was this,--

In the village where he resided, there was a deaf and dumb young man, named Henry Hechting, who had been sent by the parish to the schoolmaster for board and education. He had succeeded in imparting to the unfortunate youth the art of writing; so perfectly, indeed, that he could communicate with any one by means of a slate and slate-pencil which he always carried about with him. He also wrote so fair a hand, that he was employed by many persons, and even sometimes by the authorities, to transcribe or copy writings for them. Some time before, an unknown person had appeared in the village, had inquired after the deaf and dumb young man in the schoolmaster's absence, and had taken him with him to the alehouse to write out something for him. The unknown had called for a private room, ordered a bottle of wine, and, by means of the slate, gave him to understand that he wanted him to make a clean copy of the draft of a letter which he produced. Hechting did so at once without suspicion. Still, the contents of the letter appeared to him of a peculiar and questionable kind, and the whole demeanour of the stranger evinced restlessness and anxiety. When he came, however, to add the address of the letter, "To Herr Van der R----, Burgomaster of M----," he hesitated to do so, and yielded only to the pressing entreaties of the stranger, who paid him a gulden for his trouble, requesting him to preserve strict silence as to the whole affair.

The deaf and dumb young man, when he began to reflect on the matter, felt more and more convinced that he had unconsciously been made a party to some illegal transaction. He at last confessed the whole to his instructor, who at once perceived that there existed a close connexion between the incident which had occurred and the criminal procedure in the noted case of the robbery. The letter of the corporal had already got into circulation in the neighbourhood, and was plainly the one which his pupil had been employed to copy. The schoolmaster, at his own hand, set on foot a small preliminary inquiry. He hastened to the innkeeper of the village inn, and asked him if he could recollect the stranger who some days before had ordered a private room and a bottle of wine, and who had been for some time shut up with the deaf and dumb lad. The host remembered the circumstance, but did not know the man. His wife, however, recollected that she had seen him talking on terms of cordial familiarity with the corn-miller, Overblink, as he was resting at the inn with his carts. The schoolmaster repaired on the spot to Overblink, inquired who was the man with whom he had conversed and shaken hands some days before at the inn; and the miller, without much hesitation, answered, that he remembered the day, the circumstance, and the man, very well: and that the latter was his old acquaintance the baker, H----, from the town. The schoolmaster hastened to lay these particulars before the authorities.

How, then, was the well-known baker, H----, implicated in this affair, which seemed gradually to be expanding itself so strangely? The facts as to the robbery itself seemed exhausted by the confessions of the carpenter and his associates. They alone had broken into the house--they alone had carried off and appropriated the stolen articles. And yet, if the baker was entirely unconnected with the matter, what could be his motive for mixing himself up with the transaction, and writing letters, as if to avert suspicion from those who had been first accused? Was his motive simply compassion? Was he aware of the real circumstances of the crime, and its true perpetrators? Did he know that the Blue Dragoon was innocent? But if so, why employ this mysterious and circuitous mode of assisting him? Why resort to this anxious precaution of employing a deaf and dumb lad as his amanuensis? why such signs of restlessness and apprehension,--such anxious injunctions of silence? Plainly the baker was not entirely innocent: this was the conviction left on the minds of the judges; for it was now recollected that this baker was the same person who, on the morning when the robbery was detected, had contrived to make his way into the house along with the officers of justice. It was he who had lifted from the ground the match containing the half-burnt receipt, and handed it to the officers present. His excessive zeal had even attracted attention before. Had he, then, broken into the house independently of the carpenter? Had he, too, committed a robbery--and was he agitated by the fear of its detection? But all the stolen articles had been recovered, and all of them had been found with the carpenter. The mystery, for the moment, seemed only increased; but it was about to be cleared up in a way wonderful enough, but entirely satisfactory.

While the schoolmaster and the miller Overblink were detained at the Council-Chamber, the baker H---- was taken into custody. A long and circumstantial confession was the result, to the particulars of which we shall immediately advert. From his disclosures, a warrant was also issued for the apprehension of the woolspinner, Leendert Van N---- and his wife--the same who had at first circulated the reports and suspicions against the dragoon; and who had afterwards given such plausible, and, as it appeared, such frank and sincere information against him before the court. Both had taken the opportunity of making off: but the pursuit of justice was successful--before evening they were brought back and committed to prison.

The criminal procedure now proceeded rapidly to a close, but it related to a quite different matter from the robbery. This third association of culprits, it appeared, had as little to do with the carpenter and his comrades as these had with the dragoon and his inmates. But for the housebreaking, in which the persons last arrested had no share, the real crime in which they were concerned would, in all human probability, never have seen the light.

The following disclosures were the result of the confessions of the guilty, and of the other witnesses who were examined.

On the evening of the 29th June, there were assembled in the low and dirty chamber of the woolspinner, Leendert Van N----, a party of cardplayers. It has already been mentioned that this quarter of the town was in a great measure inhabited by the disreputable portion of the public--only a few houses, like those of Madame Andrecht, being occupied by the better classes. The gamblers were the Corporal Ruhler, of the company of Le Lery, then lying in garrison in the place, the master baker H----, and the host himself, Leendert Van N----. The party were old acquaintances; they hated and despised each other, but a community of interests and pursuits drew them together.

The baker and corporal had been long acquainted; the former baked the bread for the garrison company, the latter had the charge of receiving it from him. The corporal had soon detected various frauds committed by the baker, and gave the baker the choice of denouncing them to the commanding officer, or sharing with him the profits of the fraud. The baker naturally chose the latter, but hated the corporal as much as he feared him; while the latter made him continually feel how completely he considered him in his power.

A still deadlier enmity existed between the corporal and the woolspinner and his wife. The latter had formerly supplied the garrison with gaiters and other articles of clothing, and he had reason to believe that the corporal had been the means of depriving him of this commission, by which he had suffered materially. But the corporal had still a good deal in his power; he might be the means of procuring other orders, and it was necessary, therefore, to suppress any appearance of irritation, and even to appear to court his favour.

Such an association as that which subsisted among these comrades, where each hates and suspects the other, and nothing but the tie of a common interest unites them, can never be of long duration. The moment is sure to arrive when the spark falls upon the mine which has been so long prepared, and the explosion takes place, the more fearful the longer it has been delayed.

These worthy associates were playing cards on the evening above-mentioned: they quarrelled; and the quarrel became more and more embittered. The long-suppressed hatred on the part of the baker and the woolspinner burst forth. The corporal retorted in terms equally offensive; he applied to them the epithets which they deserved. From words they proceeded to blows, and deadly weapons were laid hold of on both sides. But two male foes and a female fury, arrayed on one side, were too much even for a soldier. The corporal, seized and pinioned from behind by the woman, fell under the blows of the woolspinner. As yet the baker had rather hounded on the others than actually interfered in the scuffle; but when the corporal, stretched on the ground, and his head bleeding from a blow on the corner of the table, which he had received in falling, began to utter loud curses against them, and to threaten them all with public exposure--particularly that deceitful scoundrel the baker--the latter, prompted either by fear or hatred, whispered to the woolspinner and his wife that now was the time to make an end of him at once; and that if they did not, they were ruined.

The deadly counsel was adopted: they fell upon the corporal; with a few blows life was extinct; the corpse, swimming in blood, lay at their feet. The deed was irrevocable; all three had shared in it; all were alike guilty, and had the same reason to tremble at the terrors of the law. With the body still warm at their feet, they entered into a solemn mutual engagement to be true to each other; to preserve inviolable secrecy as to the crime; and to extinguish, so far as in them lay, every trace of its commission.

On the night of the murder, they had devised no plan for washing out the blood, and removing the body, which of course required to be disposed of, so that the disappearance of Ruhler might cause no suspicion. The terrors of conscience, and the apprehension of the consequences of their crime, had too completely occupied their minds for the moment. The next morning, however, they met again at the woolspinner's house to arrange their plans. Suddenly a noise was heard in the street,--it was the commotion caused by the news of the discovery of the robbery at Madame Andrecht's. The culprits stood pale and confounded. What was more probable than that an immediate search in pursuit of the robbers, or of the stolen articles, would take place into every house of this suspected and disreputable quarter. The woolspinner's house was the next to that which had been robbed; the flooring was at that moment wet with blood; the body of the murdered corporal lay in the cellar. Immediate measures must be resorted to, to stop the apprehended search, till time could be found for removing the body.

The object, then, was to give to the authorities such hints as should induce them to pass over the houses of the baker and the woolspinner. The woolspinner's wife had the merit of devising the infernal project which occurred to them. The Blue Dragoon was to be the victim. A robbery had taken place. Why might he not have been the criminal? He had often scaled the hedge--had often entered the house at night during his courtship. But then a corroborating circumstance might be required to ground the suspicion. It was supplied by the possession of a handkerchief which he had accidentally dropt in her house, and which she had not thought it necessary to restore to him. It might be placed in any spot they thought fit, and the first links in the chain of suspicion were clear.

The invention of the baker came to the aid of the woolspinner's wife. One token was not enough; a second proof of the presence of the dragoon in Madame Andrecht's house must be devised. The baker had, one day, been concluding a bargain with a peasant before the house of the dragoon. He required a bit of paper to make some calculation, and asked the host for some, who handed him an old excise permit, telling him to make his calculations on the back. This scrap of paper the baker still had in his pocket-book. This would undoubtedly compromise the dragoon. But then it bore the name and handwriting of the baker on the back. This portion of it was accordingly burnt; the date and the signature of the excise officer were enough for the diabolical purpose it was intended to effect. It was rolled up into a match, and deposited by the baker (who, as already said, had contrived to make his way along with the police into the house) upon the floor, where he pretended to find it, and deliver it to the authorities.

The machinations of these wretches were unconsciously assisted by those of the carpenter and his confederates. The suspicion which the handkerchief and the match had originated, the finding of the pocket-book within the house of the dragoon appeared to confirm and complete,--an accidental concurrence of two independent plots, both resorted to from the principle of self-preservation, and having in view the same infernal object.

But this object, so far as concerned the baker and the woolspinner, had been too effectually attained. They had wished to excite suspicion against Nicholas, only with the view of gaining time to remove the corpse, and efface the traces of the murder. This had been effected--their intrigue had served its purpose; and they could not but feel some remorse at the idea that an innocent person should be thereby brought to ruin. The strange intervention of chance--the finding of the pocket-book, the accusation by the carpenter, filled them with a secret terror; they trembled: their consciences again awoke. The thought of the torture, which awaited the unfortunate innkeeper, struck them with horror. It was not the ordinary fear of guilty men, afraid of the disclosures of an accomplice--for the dragoon knew nothing, he could say nothing to compromise them,--it was a feeling implanted by a Divine power, which seemed irresistibly to impel them to use their endeavours to avert his fate.

They met, they consulted as to their plans. A scheme occurred to them which promised to serve a double purpose,--by which delay might be obtained for Nicholas, while at the same time it might be made the means of permanently ensuring their own safety. To resuscitate the murdered Corporal Ruhler in another quarter, and to charge him with the guilt of the robbery, might serve both ends. It gave a chance of escape to Nicholas: it accounted for the disappearance of the corporal. Hence the letter which represented him as alive, as the perpetrator of the robbery, and as a deserter flying to another country; which they thought would very naturally put a stop to all further inquiry after him.

But their plan was too finely spun, and the very precautions to which they had resorted, led, as sometimes happens, to discovery. If they had been satisfied to allow the proposed letter to be copied out by the woolspinner's wife, as she offered, to be taken by her to Rotterdam, and put into the post, suspicion could hardly have been awakened against them: the handwriting of the woman, who had seldom occasion to use the pen, would have been unknown to the burgomaster or the court. The deaf and dumb youth, to whom they resorted as their copyist, betrayed them: step by step they were traced out,--and, between fear and hope, a full confession was at last extorted from them.

Sentence of death was pronounced against the parties who had been concerned in the housebreaking as well as in the murder, and carried into effect against all of them, with the exception of the woolspinner's wife, who died during her imprisonment. The woolspinner alone exhibited any signs of penitence.

LAURELS AND LAUREATES.

A young lady of Thessaly, celebrated for her beauty and modesty, was admired by a dissolute young gentleman, a native of the erratic isle of Delos. This roving blade was of high birth and consummate address, yet the nymph was more than coy; she turned from him with aversion, and when he would have pressed his suit, she took to her heels along the banks of the Peneus. The audacious lover darted after her, as a greyhound in pursuit of a hare; and the fugitive, perceiving that she must lose the race, implored the gods to screen her. The breath of the pursuer was fanning her "back hair;" his hands stretched forth to stop her; but as he closed them, instead of the prize that he expected to secure, he embraced an armful of green leaves. The hunter had lost his game in a thicket of bay or female laurel. Inconsolable, he shed some natural tears; but having a conceit in his misery, he twined a branch of the laurel into a wreath, and placed it on his head in memorial of his misadventure. A glance at himself in the nearest pool of the river told him that the glossy ornament was becoming to his fine complexion; and the youth, being a poet and pretty considerably a coxcomb, wore one ever after; and it has been the custom ever since to adorn the brows of all great poets, and of some small ones, with sprigs of laurel.

"Tis sung in ancient minstrelsy That Phœbus wont to wear The leaves of any pleasant tree Around his golden hair; Till Daphne, desperate with pursuit Of his imperious love, At her own prayer transform'd, took root-- A laurel in the grove.

Then did the Penitent adorn His brow with laurel green; And mid his bright locks, never shorn, No meaner leaf was seen; _And poets sage through every age About their temples wound The bay._"

So sings our living laureate; and this authentic anecdote, familiar to every schoolboy who studies ancient history in Ovid, shows that the coronation of poets was customary long before the age of Homer; and coeval, as it were, with poetry itself. The disappointed lover of Daphne, the first poet, was also the first laureat, and placed the crown on his head with his own hands, as many poets have done since, with a frank Napoleon-like self-appreciation. Having afterwards quarrelled with his father, and been expelled from home for sundry extravagancies, he returned with his lyre and laurel into Thessaly, the land of his first love--_primus amor Phœbi, Daphne Peneia_--and for nine years served a prince of that country in the double capacity of poet and shepherd. Thus, though the exact date is not ascertained, the original tenure of the honourable office of poet-royal is pretty clearly traced to Apollo himself.

But if we proceed from Apollo, our chapter on laureates will be longer than the tail of a comet. We must apply our wise saws to comparatively modern instances, hardly glancing for a moment even as far back as the age of Augustus, to observe that, of his two laurelled favourites, Virgil and Horace, the latter loftily maintains the dignity of the poet's position, when, in his Ode to Lollius, he shows that the alliance between poetic and regal or heroic power, was mutually important from the earliest ages. Kings, wise and great, flourished before Agamemnon, but are utterly forgotten:

"Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride! They had no poet, and they died: In vain they schemed, in vain they bled! They had no poet, and are dead."

Petrarch is, perhaps, the first eminent poet, among Christians, whose genius is indisputably associated with the laurel crown, which was conferred on him with all form, at Rome, by authority of the king, senate, and people, _in especial token of his quality of poet_. But the laurel was conspicuously the type of his fame in that character. His mistress was a laurel in name, and a Daphne in nature, if we give credence to his melodious complaints of her coldness. Many persons have doubted the very existence of Laura as any thing but an Apollonic laurel, or poetical abstraction of glory, almost too subtle for analysis by metaphysics. We have no such doubt of her materiality; for, over and above all other evidence, there are many passages in those songs and sonnets, that tell of a love, in the poet at least, which, though ever refined, was not all spiritual. In the same way, Dante's Beatrice has been pronounced an incorporeal creation,--a vision of theology, though in his _Vita Nuova_ he expressly declares who she was, where and when she was born, her age and his own, when he first met her, and the year and the day, and the very hour, when she died. Milton read them both truly, and recognised in their writings the language of the human heart, and the truth of human passion undebased by a particle of grossness. Speaking of the laureate fraternity of poets, and of his own early partiality for the elegiac writers, he nobly says: "Above them all, I preferred the two famous renowners of Beatrice and Laura, who never write but in honour of them to whom they devote their verse, displaying sublime and pure thoughts without transgression." After that lofty encomium from such authority, may we venture to observe that among the laureates of Italy there is one still greater poet than the Recluse of Avignon? We do not say a greater man, for the popular reputation of Petrarch, resting as it does on his accomplishment of verse, is not perhaps founded on the strongest of his claims to admiration. But Tasso, too, was a formally laureated bard. And his chaplet was unwithered in the dungeon, to which the cruellest Turk among the desecrators of Jerusalem would hardly have condemned him, for merely presumptuous aspirations after a bright ornament of his harem. Tasso's eulogium, in his grand epic, of the Christian prince who afterwards became his jailer, is an immortal reprobation of the unfeeling tyrant. The wrongs of genius are avenged even by its praise, which, when thus proved to have been undeserved, is satire undisguised. Petrarch and Tasso appear to be the only distinguished laureates of Italy. The rest were mere versifiers, for the most part fluent and insipid. But some Italian poets were complimented with the laurel in Germany, where the poetical college, founded at Vienna by Maximilian I., produced few native laureates worthy of the honour. Yet "the Emperors of Germany," says D'Israeli, who condemned the Abbé Resnel's memoir on the subject, "retained the laureateship in all its splendour. The selected bard was called _Il Poeta Cesareo_. Apostolo Zeno, as celebrated for his erudition as for his poetic powers, was succeeded by that most enchanting poet Metastasio,"--of whom, by-the-by, Sir James Mackintosh has also written in enthusiastic commendation; not, however, for his felicity as a poet, but for the deep and well-digested critical learning displayed in his prose treatise on Aristotle's Art of Poetry. "The French," continues Mr D'Israeli,--and we quote what he borrows from Resnel, because, though they do not tell us much, scarcely any other persons have hitherto told us any thing to the purpose on this matter,--"the French never had a poet-laureate, though they had royal poets, for none were ever solemnly crowned. The Spanish nation, always desirous of titles of honour, seem to have known that of the laureate; but little information concerning it can be gathered from their authors." We fear there must have been something suggestive of the hard, dry, see-saw of the _turpis asella_ in the tone of the Spanish laureates; for Sancho Panza, in his tender consolation to his ass Dapple, when they had both tumbled into the quarry, says, "_Yo prometo de ponerte una corona de laurel en la cabeza que no parezcas sino un laureado poeta, y de darte los piensos dobados._" "I promise to give thee double feeds, and to place a crown of laurel on thy head, that thou mayest look like a poet-laureate."

But our main business is with the laureates of England; and the origin of their office is sufficiently obscure, and not the less worthy of consideration for the antiquity that such obscurity implies. It has certainly been associated with our monarchical institutions from very early times; and, for that reason alone, if for no other, we should be disposed, in this antimonarchical fever of the day, to respect the loyalty of the office, however little respect may have been due to some who have held it, and however higher than the office is every true poet, "whose mind to him a kingdom is," and who possesses a royalty of his own, wider than that of Charlemagne. We do not know that the poets cited in the Saxon Chronicle were rhymers more inspired by the mead of the court than of the cloister; but the supposition is not improbable,--for we do know the fondness of Alfred for the gleeman's craft, and that he, "lord of the harp and liberating spear," was himself a gleeman; nor are we unmindful that King Canute honoured verse-men, and that he could even improvise an accordant rhyme, still extant, to the holy chant of the monks of Ely, as his bargemen rowed him down the Ouse, under the chapel wall. It is not apparent that _trouvères_ followed William of Normandy to Sussex _officially_, or celebrated his triumph over Harold,--for the story of Taliefer is hardly a case in point, and we do not hear much about the northern trouvères till somewhat later, though some writers will have it that they are of older standing than the troubadours of the south of France. We do not imagine that William Rufus patronised harmony more intellectual than the blast of the hunting-horn. But so early at least as the twelfth century, in the reign of Richard, "the heart of courage leonine," as Wordsworth calls him, we have a king's versifier in the person of Gulielmus, of whom little is known, except that he produced a poem on the crusade of this romantic, poetical, bones-breaking Richard,--a prince whose Gothic blood (for it must be remembered that he was of the restored Saxon line) might seem to have been tinged with orientalism by some unaccountable process; for, even before his embarkation on his adventure with his red-cross knights, his character exhibited a strange combination of the stout and somewhat obtuse doggedness of the bandog, and the lordliness of the lion--a mixture of Saxon homeliness and Saracenic magnificence. The strength of thews and sinews, and the prowess of mere animal courage, (vulgar glories, for the most part, looked at with civilised eyes,) wear an aspect of redeeming generosity in Richard, that still recommends him to us as a hero of romance, worthy of minstrel praise, in spite of his ferocious temper, his demerits as a son, and his indomitable wrong-headedness as a prince. The poem of Gulielmus is not extant, but it must have been interesting if he possessed any genius. Richard's rough warfare with the Soldan, his marriage with Berengaria, and his delivery from the dungeon of the base Duke of Austria, were subjects as pregnant as any of the adventures of Hercules, an idol of hero-worship whom he in some respects resembles. In King John's reign, the poets seem to have been against the king, and in favour of the opposing barons. Whether he consoled himself with the stipendiary services of a court poet, we do not discover. Throughout his long and troubled reign he seems to have been pelted with lampoons.

In the year 1251, reign of Henry III., the King's versifier was requited by an annual pension of 100 shillings--not such a very niggardly stipend as it now sounds, if we compare the value of money in those times with the price of commodities. In the two following reigns we find a poet-royal of some repute in Robert Baston. He was a Carmelite monk, and attained the dignity of prior of the convent of that order at Scarborough. Bishop Bale (in his _Illustrûm Majoris Britanniæ Scriptorum Summarium_) says that Baston was a laureated poet and public orator at Oxford, which Wood denies. But Bale might have had access to information which could no longer be authenticated in Anthony's time; for Bale, though he lived to be Edward the Sixth's Bishop of Assory, and a prebendary of the Cathedral of Canterbury, where he died and was buried, had himself been a Carmelite friar. "Great confusion," observes Warton, "has entered into the subject of the institution of poets-laureate, on account of the degrees in grammar, which included rhetoric and versification, anciently taken in our universities, particularly at Oxford, on which occasion a wreath of laurel was presented to the new graduate, who was afterwards usually styled Poeta Laureatus. These scholastic laureations, however, seem to have given rise to the appellation in question. With regard to the poet-laureate of the Kings of England, he is undoubtedly the same that is styled the king's versifier in the thirteenth century. But when or how that title commenced, and whether this officer was ever formally crowned with laurel at his first investiture, I will not pretend to determine, after the researches of the learned Seldon have proved unsuccessful. It seems probable that at length those only were in general invited to this appointment who had received academical sanction, and had merited a crown of laurel in the universities for their abilities in Latin composition, particularly Latin versification. Thus the king's laureate was nothing more than a graduated rhetorician, employed in the king's service." Warton adds an opinion, which seems well founded, "that it was not customary for the royal laureate to write in English till the Reformation had begun to diminish the veneration for the Latin tongue, or rather till the love of novelty, and a better sense of things, had banished the pedantry of monastic erudition, and taught us to cultivate our native language." It is true, that neither before nor after the Conquest was there any lack of rhymers in the vulgar tongue, whether Saxon or Norman, or mixed; and they would be the popular poets, but not exactly the poets in fashion at court. At all events, the fashion of writing _court_ poems in low Latin began early and continued long; and we suspect that the Anglo-Saxon gleemen, whom the monkish historians call _joculatores regis_, were for the most part mere merrymen, as their monkish _sobriquet_ implies--jugglers, dancers, fiddlers, tumblers. Berdic, the king's fool, is styled _Joculator Regis_ in Doomsday Book. Some of these retainers, no doubt, could both compose ballads and sing them, suiting the action to the word, and they might occasionally amuse the court with their songs; but the authentic poet for state occasions was the Latin verse-maker. We say this with all due love and regard for our ballad-singers, old and modern, from King Alfred to Alfred Tennyson; and remembering, too, that we have two good sets-offs against Harry Hotspur's sneer at "metre ballad-mongers,"--one in Sir Philip Sidney's declaration that the ballad of the Percy hunt in Cheviotdale stirred his heart like the sound of a trumpet; and another, in the fact that one of the most illustrious of modern Percys, the Bishop of Dromore, owes his well-deserved popular reputation to nothing else than his industry, talent, and good taste in editing the _Reliques of Ancient English Poetry and Old Heroic Ballads_.

Robert Baston, from whom we have digressed, was not a ballad-monger, but a Latin versifier _ex officio_. Edward I., in his expedition to Scotland in 1304, took Baston with him, that he might be an eye-witness of his triumph over this country, and celebrate it in Latin verse. Hollinshed comments on this fact as a strong proof of Edward's presumption and overweening confidence in himself; but the censure is not strikingly pertinent, for at this period a poet was a stated officer in the royal retinue, when the monarch went to war. The haughty old king's discomfiture, after all his successes in this favourite enterprise, was as mortifying, but not so comical as the disastrous issue of the campaign to his poet. The jolly prior had not done chanting one of his heroics in honour of Edward's siege of Stirling, when he was pounced on by a foray of Scots, and carried away into durance; nor was this the worst of the misadventure, for, with a shrewdly balancing humour, they obliged him to pay his ransom in verse, and only released him when he had recorded the praises of his captors and their cause. He does not appear to have been much inspired by the subject; for Hector Boece says that he made, "rusty verses" in praise of the Scots; and rusty enough they were, if they all resembled the initial line as it is quoted--

"De planta cudo metrum cum carmine nudo."

The poem must have stood in more awkward antagonism with "De Strivilniensi Obsidione," which is extant in Fordun, than Waller's panegyric on Cromwell does face to face with his eulogium on Charles II. We doubt whether the monk had so witty an apology for his double tongue as the courtier; but he had a better excuse, for he said, "_Actus me invito, factus, non est meus actus_." There is both rhyme and reason in that. The stubbornness of the Scots, which was at last a choke-pear to Edward, seems to have stimulated the poet almost as much as it exasperated the king. For, besides the siege of Stirling, we find on the list of Baston's productions one entitled "De Altero Scotorum Bello," and another "De Scotiæ guerris Variis." Baston survived his master, the broken _Malleus Scotorum_, only three years. It is uncertain whether he retained his office after the accession of Edward the Second; but, if so, death had released him from duty before that prince's invasion of this country in 1314. Otherwise he would probably have had to pay another visit to the ominous neighbourhood of Stirling Castle, at a risk, if he escaped a deadlier chance, of being captured by the Bruce himself, and of having a caged poet's leisure to meditate a threnodia for Bannockburn. Boece, in Bellenden's version, asserts that this was actually the case,--that it was "Edward the Second, who, by vain arrogance, as if the Scotch had been sicker in his hands, brought with him ane Carmelite monk to put his victory in versis; that the poet was taken in this field of Bannockburn, and commandit by King Robert the Bruce to write as he saw, in sithement of his ransom." There is also among the political songs published by the Camden Society, a wretched transcript (from the Cotton. MSS.) of a wretched piece of raving on this very battle, also attributed to Baston,--(and announced, we suppose by an error of the press, as written in the reign of Edward the Third.) But we are inclined to believe that Baston died about four years before that great day for Scotland. We do not, however, undertake to settle the point. We have no certain accounts of Baston's successor.

It is asserted by writers not incautious, that Gower and Chaucer were laureates; and we are unwilling to doubt it, though the authority is far from conclusive. Chaucer, born about 1328, the second year of Edward the Third's reign, died in 1400. It is certain that he was liberally patronised, and gratified with lucrative appointments by Edward. It is recorded, too, that he was employed on foreign missions of trust; that on one occasion he was an envoy to Genoa, and that he then visited Petrarch at Padua; and as the arguments for and against the probability of this interview are pretty nearly balanced, we are not bound to deny ourselves the pleasure of believing it. Froissart, as well as Hollinshed and Barnes, bears testimony to Chaucer's having been one of a mission to the court of France, in the last year of Edward's reign; but it is not clear, nor even at all deducible from the nature of the public employments, and the character of Edward, that it was his poetical merit which promoted him to the royal confidence in matters of business.

Gower, born, it is supposed, somewhat earlier than Chaucer, died two years later, in 1402, and had been blind for the last two or three years of his life. Bale makes Gower _equitem auratum et poetam laureatum_; but Winstansley says he was neither laureated nor hederated, but only rosated, having a chaplet of four roses about his head on his monumental stone in St Mary Overy's Church, Southwark. His "_Confessio Amantis_" is said to have been prompted by the command of Richard the Second, who, chancing to meet him on the Thames, invited him into his gilded barge,--

"While proudly riding o'er the azure realm, Youth at the prow, and pleasure at the helm,"

enjoined him to "book something new." In the three next reigns of the line of Lancaster, Henry the Fourth, Henry the Fifth, and Henry the Sixth, a period of sixty-two years, we hardly know what became of the court poets, or whether there were any. Musicians were liberally privileged as palace servants by Henry the Fourth, but his reign was unfavourable to the minstrel art. Henry the Fifth was partial to minstrelsy, and rewarded it generously; but we find no report of a laureat poet. In Henry the Sixth's time, boys were pressed into the minstrel service of the court; but it is not recorded that any one was made a poet by virtue of royal kidnapping. They were instructed in music for the solace of his majesty.

To Edward the Fourth, the first king of the line of York, John Kay, as "his Majesty's humble Laureate," dedicated a History of Rhodes.

The wars of the Roses seem almost to have silenced the nightingales. But no sooner was contention terminated by the union of Henry of Lancaster with the heiress of York, than a rivalry sprang up for the office of king's poet. In the year 1486, the next after the coronation of Henry the Seventh, and shortly after his marriage, that king, by an instrument _Pro Poeta Laureato_, of which a copy is preserved in Rymer's Fœdera, granted to Andrew Bernard, poet-laureate, a salary of fifteen marks, until he should obtain some equivalent appointment. This was no very munificent grant. But Henry the Seventh was not addicted to liberality out of his own exchequer. He afterwards found means to reward him with ecclesiastical preferments; and his prodigal, but still more selfish successor, gratified him in the same way. Bernard, who was a native of Toulouse, and an Augustine monk, obtained many preferments in England; and was besides not only poet-laureate, but historiographer to the king, and preceptor in grammar to Prince Arthur. The preceptorship, however honourable, was perhaps not worth much on the score of emolument. All the pieces now to be found in his character of laureate are in Latin. Among these are, "An Address to Henry the Eighth, for the most Auspicious Beginning of the Tenth Year of his Reign;" "A New-Year's Offering for the Year 1515;" and "Verses wishing Prosperity to his Majesty's Thirteenth Year, 1522." He left many prose pieces, written in his quality of historiographer to both monarchs, particularly a Chronicle of the Life and Achievements of Henry the Seventh to the taking of Perkin Warbeck. And here occurs a little difficulty in the reconcilement of dates, when we are told that Skelton also was poet-laureate to Henry the _Seventh_ and his son: for it has been shown that Bernard was alive in 1522, if not later. Skelton was laureated at Oxford about 1489, three years after the date of the recorded grant to the _poet-laureate_, Andrew Bernard. We more than half suspect that Skelton, though a graduated university laureate, was never poet-laureate to either king at all, except as a sort of volunteer, licensed by his own saucy consent. Puttenham expressly says, that "Skelton usurped the name of poet-laureate, being indeed but a rude railing rimer, and all his doings ridiculous." It is stated that Skelton, having, a few years subsequent to his laureation at Oxford, been permitted to wear his laurel publicly at Cambridge also, was further privileged by Henry the Seventh to wear some particular dress, or additional ornament to his dress. Henry the Seventh was not much given to jesting, or we should infer that it was a badge appropriate to the king's fool; for Skelton, though an able man, was, like Leo the Tenth's arch-poet Querno, who was crowned laureate for the joke's sake, ambitious of the fool's honours. He was a buffoon even in the pulpit.

Skelton directed his ribaldry especially against the mendicant friars and the formidable Wolsey. We can easily imagine how these audacities were not intolerable to the "Defender of the Faith," even in the plenitude of the cardinal's power; and how he might have tolerated his assumption of the character of court-poet, so long as the spurious laureate's sallies did not trench on the sovereign's personal dignity. Skelton, like his quondam royal pupil, was already a reformer in his way, and not long before his death, which occurred June 21, 1529, just before the downfall of Wolsey, he used a strange argument against the celibacy of the priesthood; he excused himself for having openly lived with a concubine, because he considered her as his wife! Erasmus, the caustic censor of the vices of the clergy, praised Skelton's learning and wit, probably from sympathy with his application of them, bolder, though far less dignified than his own, to the same objects of satire; but "the glory of the priesthood and the shame," could hardly have admitted the validity of such an apology from the Vicar of Dallyng, a vowed celibate priest.

We must return for a moment to Bernard. This poet-laureate had a notable subject to begin with in the union of the Two Roses. How he treated it we have no means of judging, as the performance is not in existence; and though it has perished, it would be unfair, perhaps, to assume that his freshest effort on an event that might have quickened the slowest fancy, was not superior to his later exercises, on occasions of weaker interest, such as are preserved in the Cottonian Library, and that of New College, Oxford. Of all the events in the history of the British monarchy, there is one subject, and probably one only, of those that could come within the range of a court-poet's province, of equal national importance, and equally poetical quality with the marriage of Henry the Seventh--that is, the marriage of his daughter, Margaret, to James the Fourth of Scotland; and even those of our "constant readers" who, to their loss, may know nothing of William Dunbar but what they have read in former pages of this magazine, must know that the court of Scotland, at the time of the celebration of these nuptials, possessed a poet worthy of the subject, for they cannot have forgotten his inspired vision on the Thistle and the Rose. In the one case the wounds of England were closed after long wars of disputed succession, as desolating as any intestine wars on record: in the other, two nations, jealous neighbours, and till then implacable enemies, formed an alliance that promised to be lasting, and which finally effected more than it had promised, by the consolidation of the two thrones into one. On the head of the Scottish great-grandson of the English Margaret, the double crown was secure from the casuistry of jurists. Neither Elizabeth of York, nor her daughter, was a happy wife. Henry the Seventh proved cold and ungrateful as a husband; James the Fourth faithless; but we have nothing to do here with the domestic infelicity of those ill-used princesses, except as it shows that the court-poets, who predicted so much happiness for them, were not infallible _Vates_. Poets, on such occasions, are prophets of hope only. And as to the struggles and disasters that followed, the glowing vision of Dunbar was luckily as impassive to the shadows of coming events (Flodden Field, and Fotheringay, and the scaffold at Whitehall, and the rout on the Boyne water) as were the quondam visions and religious meditations of Lamartine in the days of Charles Dix to the shadows of the barricades, and the prestige of the Hotel de Ville.

We do not find that the young successor of England's royal Blue-beard had a poet-laureate. Queen Mary, though a learned and accomplished lady, had no such an appendage to her state. Heywood was her favourite poet; he had consoled her with honest praise in the days when it was the fashion of courtiers to neglect her. On his presenting himself at her levee, after her accession, "Mary asked him," says the chronicler of queens, "what wind has blown you hither?" He answered, "Two special ones--one of them to see your Majesty." "Our thanks for that," said Mary; "but the other?" "That your Majesty might see me." He used to stand by her side at supper, and amuse her with his jests--not a very dignified employment for a poet--but he was a player, and being accustomed to play many parts, did not decline that of Double to Mary's female Fool, Jane. He appears, however, to have been her life-long solace. He had ministered to her diversion in her childhood, with a company of child-players, whom Shakspeare calls "little eye-asses"--(callow hawks)--and in her long illness he was frequently sent for, and, when she was able to listen to recitation, he repeated his verses, or superintended performances for her amusement.

Malone insists that Queen Elizabeth, too, had no poet-laureate; yet Spenser is by other writers as confidently preferred to that post, and Daniel is said to have officially succeeded him. Spenser's "Gloriana" and "Dearest Dread," though abundantly shrewd and sagacious, and though somewhat of a scholar and a wit, and sufficiently vain of her own poor rhymes, had no true perception or appreciation of the art divine of poesy. The most eminent dramatic genius the world ever saw was as moderately encouraged as any inferior playhouse droll might have been. She could laugh at Falstaff and Dame Quickly, and stimulate that humour in the author: and, to use her sister's words to Heywood, "our thanks for that." Edmund Spenser, also, was less indebted to her own taste, or even to her enormous appetite for flattery, than to Sir Philip Sidney's enlightened friendship, and to his introduction to her by Sir Walter Raleigh, for such favours as he received. These, however, were not small; and neither the Fairy Queen herself, (gigantic fairy!) nor her sage counsellor Cecil, is justly responsible for the unhappiness of Spenser. His pension of £50 a-year was but a portion of the emoluments he derived from court interest. That pension, which he received till his death in 1598, was no doubt an annuity assigned him as Queen's poet, though the title of laureate is not given in his patent, nor in that of his two immediate successors, Daniel and Ben Jonson. So far Malone is accurate.

Daniel's laudatory verse, whether he volunteered it or not, was acceptable to King James, and rewarded by a palace appointment. He was Gentleman Extraordinary, and one of the grooms to Queen Anne of Denmark. He was on terms of social intimacy with Shakspeare, Marlow, and Chapman, as well as with persons of higher social rank; and he had the honour to be tutor to the famous Anne Clifford, Countess of Pembroke, who caused a cenotaph to be erected to his memory at Beckington, near Frome, in his native county. He died in 1619.

The masques and pageants of his successor, Ben Jonson, prove that he held no sinecure from either of his royal masters; but in Charles the First he at least served a prince who could respect genius, and remember that the labourer is worthy of his hire. Jonson received, "in consideration of services of wit and pen already done to us and our father, and which we expect from him," £100 a-year and a tierce of Spanish canary, his best-beloved Hippocrene, out of the royal cellars at Whitehall.

On his decease, 1637, William Davenant was appointed poet-laureate, _by patent_, through the influence of Henrietta Maria, though her husband had intended the reversion for Thomas May. This man was so disgusted that, forgetting many former obligations to Charles, who had a high and just opinion of his talents, he soon after turned traitor, and attached himself to the Roundheads. Davenant proved himself worthy of the preference, not only by his poetry, but by his steadfast gallant loyalty. He was son of an innkeeper at Oxford, but is said to have rather sanctioned a vague rumour that attributed his paternity to Shakspeare. At ten years of age he produced his first poem, a little ode in three sextains, "In remembrance of Master William Shakspeare." The first stanza has some feeling in it, the other two are puerile conceits, clever enough for so young a boy. When his sovereign was in trouble, he volunteered into the army, and was soon found eligible to no mean promotion. He was raised to the rank of lieutenant-general of ordnance, under the Duke of Newcastle, and was knighted for his services at the siege of Gloucester. His "Gondibert," begun in exile at Paris, was continued in prison at Cowes Castle, though he daily expected his death-warrant. But he was removed to the Tower of London to be tried by a high commission; and it is believed that his life was saved by the generous intervention of Milton, whom he subsequently repaid in kind, by softening the resentment of the restored government against him. Davenant, though perhaps a man of irregular life, and though, as a dramatist and playhouse manager, he proved any thing but allegiant to Shakspeare, and was active in communicating a depraved taste, was yet a man of brave, honest, and independent mind. It is curious that he should not only have disappointed May of the laurel when living, but that it should have been his chance to take his place in Poet's Corner when dead. The Puritans had erected a pompous tomb to May, which was savagely enough removed by the returned royalists. Near the same spot, in Westminster Abbey, is the monument to Davenant.

The Usurpation was not without its poets of far loftier reach than May, though he, too, was no dwarf. It would have been ridiculous in Cromwell to appoint a poet-laureate. The thing was impossible, though the flatteries of his kinsman, Waller, show that it was not the want of a subservient royalist gentleman of station, as well of talent, that made it so. Andrew Marvel, though he wrote such vigorous verse on Cromwell's victories in Ireland, would hardly have accepted the office, and what other Puritan would? But without the form, the Protector of the commonwealth had the reality in his Latin secretary, to whom Marvel was assistant. The lineal heir of the most ancient race of kings might have been proud of such a poet. The greatness of Milton might be a pledge to all ages of the greatness of Cromwell, unchallenged even by those who most detest grim Oliver of Hungtindon for "Darwent stream with blood of Scots imbrued," and "Worcester's laureate wreath." Here it is the poet who confers on the conqueror a laurel crown, of which the imperishable leaves, green as ever bard or victor wore, mitigate, though they do not hide, the evil expression on the casque-worn brow of the _senex armis impiger_, and give it a dignity that might abate the stoutest loyalist's abhorrence, but for one fatal remembrance, which forbids him to exclaim,

"_Nec sunt hi vultus regibus usque truces._"

Sir William Davenant, who recovered the laureateship at the Restoration, and retained it till his death in 1668, was succeeded by Dryden. Glorious John, although he had hastily flattered Richard Cromwell's brief authority by an epicede on Oliver, was not rejected by the merry monarch, who could laugh at poets' perjuries as lightly as at those of lovers. During that disgraceful reign, the poet made it no part of his vocation and privilege to check the profligate humours brought into fashion by the court.

"Unhappy Dryden! in all Charles' days, Roscommon only boasts unspotted lays."

At the revolution of 1688, the laureate was discrowned, as well as King James; and he condescended to revenge himself by Macflecnoe on his substitute Shadwell, as if he had not beforehand administered sufficient chastisement to that miserable Og, in the bitter satire with which he supplied Tate for the second part of Absolom and Achitophel. One might pity Shadwell under the lash of such an enemy as Dryden, if his writings either in verse or prose entitled him to a grain of respect. Charles, sixth Earl of Dorset--himself an elegant wit and indifferent versifier, but the descendant and representative of a very illustrious poet, Sackville, the first Earl, author of the noble "Induction to a Mirror for Magistrates"--vindicated his recommendation of Shadwell to the poet-laureateship, "not because he was a poet, but an honest man." We suppose he meant that he had not oscillated between Popery and Reformation like Dryden, and that he was more honest, also, in a political sense, and less liable to suspicion as an adherent of the expelled monarch's heartless daughter, and her Dutch husband, the hero of the Boyne and Glencoe. But, in another and not unimportant sense, Shadwell was far from honest; for he was notorious for the ribaldry of his conversation. It has been asserted, while that fact was admitted, that, as an author before the public, he was a promoter of morality and virtue. Nothing can be more untrue. Of his many comedies, there is none which is not as rife in pollution as any of the grossest plays of the time. But their boasted humour is physic for the bane; for it is distilled "from the dull weeds that grow by Lethe's side." His comedies are five-act farces of wearisome vulgarity, and, though suffered in their day, were destined, as Pope leniently expresses it in the Dunciad,

"Soon to that mass of nonsense to return, Where things destroyed are swept to things unborn."

In "The Royal Shepherdess," however, a play in blank verse, altered by Shadwell from Fountain of Devonshire, there are some fine lines, so far above any thing known to be Shadwell's that we readily take him at his word in his preface, where, modest for once, he invites the reader, if he finds any thing good in the play, to set it down to Mr Fountain. The following lines are a favourable specimen, notwithstanding the _breeding barrenness_:--

"No more, no more must we scorn cottages; Those are the rocks from whence our jewels come. Gold breeds in barren hills; the brightest stars Shine o'er the poorer regions of the north."

Still better, where a king, in a vicious attempt upon an innocent girl, has compelled her consent to a meeting at night. The queen, apprised of the design, personates the intended victim, and appeals to his conscience with an effect that he thus describes:--

"She only whisper'd to me, as she promised, Yet never heard I any voice so loud: And though the words were gentler far than those That holy priests do speak to dying saints, Yet never thunder signified so much."

The songs in this piece are all by Shadwell, except, as he declares, the last but one, which is Fountain's, and the only one not below mediocrity. Shadwell had also the impudence to alter and corrupt "Timon of Athens," and to produce the farrago on the stage as an improvement on the original. In the dedication he says, "It has the inimitable hand of Shakspeare in it; yet I can truly say, I have made it into a play." This "tun of man and kilderkin of wit" was admitted to a tomb in Westminster Abbey, an honour (?) said to have been denied to the remains of a noble poet, the author of "Don Juan." Yet Shadwell had also produced a "Don Juan." His tragedy of "The Libertine," the same hero, is ten times more indecent than the most objectionable parts of Byron's poem. But it is, indeed, also less noxious, for it has not a single attractive grace of fancy or feeling. A print of Shadwell, prefixed to Tonson's edition of his works, ludicrously bears out Dryden's description of the outer man. He looks like an alehouse Bacchus, or rather like one of those carnal cherubs whom the French call _anges bouffis_--his cheeks bulging out as if they were stuffed with apples from the forbidden tree. He died in December 1692, and was succeeded by

Nahum Tate, the psalmodist. Every one knows what sort of poet he was, and how the harp of Israel is but a Jew's harp in the hands of Tate and Brady. Yet some passages in his second part of "Absolom and Achitophel" are not such feeble mimicries of the tone of his friend, Dryden, as might have been expected from so poor a performer. The praise of Asaph, glorious John himself, is pleasing. It concludes with these lines:--

"While bees in flowers rejoice, and flowers in dew, While stars and fountains to their course are true, While Judah's throne and Sion's rock stand fast, The song of Asaph, and the fame, shall last."

At his death in 1715, a year after the accession of George the First, the withering laurel recovered a little lustre on the brow of Nicholas Rowe, the translator of Lucan, and the pathetic dramatist of "The Fair Penitent," and "Jane Shore." His occasional verses were, of course, very respectable; and his only signal failure was when he attempted comedy. After the banter he incurred for his play of "The Biter," he was so sensible that he was the biter bit, that he excluded it from his works, and made no second venture of the kind. Yet the man who could move an audience to tears, and who had so little command of their sympathies when he tried his powers of wit on them, was any thing but a lachrymist by temperament. When Spence observed that he should have thought "the tragic Rowe too grave to write such things." Pope answered, "He! why, he would laugh all the day long! He would do nothing but laugh!" He survived the acquisition of the laurel only three years, dying at the age of forty-five.

Laurence Eusden, "a parson much bemused in beer," stumbled into his place, just in time to elaborate, _singultu laborare_, the Coronation Ode for George the Second. A specimen or two of his loyal suspirations may be as welcome as a hundred.

"Hail, mighty Monarch! whose desert alone Would, without birthright, raise thee to a throne! _Thy virtues shine peculiarly nice. Ungloom'd with a confinity to vice._"

Lord Hervey's "Memoirs of the Court of George the Second," recently made public, are an edifying exposition of the "peculiarly nice" virtues here extolled.

"What strains shall equal to thy glories rise, First to the world, and borderer on the skies?"

The conjuror who can make out the meaning of the last line may be able to answer the question. In his joy for a George the Second, the inspired bard dries up his tears for George the First:--

"How exquisitely great! who canst inspire Such joy that Albion _mourns no more thy sire_! A dull, fat, thoughtless heir unheeded springs From a long _slothful_ line of _restive_ kings: But when a stem, with fruitful branches crown'd, Has flourish'd, in each various branch renown'd, His great forerunners when the last outshone, Who could a brighter hope, or even as bright a son?"

He ends with a kick at the Stuarts:

"Avaunt, degenerate _grafts_, or spurious breed! 'Tis a George only can a George succeed."

If Charles Edward had known that, he might have saved himself a good deal of trouble.

Eusden died at his rectory in Lincolnshire in 1730. Colley Cibber wore the laurel with unblushing front for twenty-seven years from that date. His annual birth-day and new-year odes for all that time are treasured in the _Gentleman's Magazine_. They are all so bad, that his friends pretended that he made them so on purpose. Dr Johnson, however, often asserted, from his personal knowledge of the man, that he took great pains with his lyrics, and thought them far superior to Pindar's. The Doctor was especially merry with one ultra-Pindaric flight which occurs in the Cibberian "Ode for the New-Year 1750."

"Through ages past the muse preferr'd Her high-sung hero to the skies; Yet now reversed the rapture flies, And Caesar's fame sublimes the bard. _So on the towering eagle's wing The lowly linnet soars to sing._ Had her Pindar of old Known her Cæsar to sing, More rapid his raptures had roll'd; But never had Greece such a king!"

So proud was Cibber of that marvellous image of the linnet and eagle, that he repeated it in the "Natal Ode for 1753." In his last "New-year Ode," too, 1757, he again scolds Pindar for his sluggishness--

"Had the lyrist of old Had our Cæsar to sing, More rapid his numbers had roll'd; But never had Greece such a king, No, never had Greece such a king!"

Those effusions are truly incomparable. Not only are they all bad, but not one of them in twenty-seven years contains a good line. Yet he was, happily for himself, more impenetrable to the gibes of the wits than a buffalo to the stings of mosquitoes. Of the numerous epigrams twanged at him, here is one from the _London Magazine_ for 1737.

"ON SEEING TOBACCO-PIPES LIT WITH ONE OF THE LAUREATE'S ODES.

"While the soft song that warbles George's praise From pipe to pipe the living flame conveys, Critics who long have scorn'd must now admire, For who can say his ode now wants its fire?"

Dr Johnson honoured him with another, equally complimentary to Cibber and his Cæsar.

"Augustus still survives in Maro's strain, And Spenser's verse prolongs Eliza's reign; Great George's acts let tuneful Colley sing, For nature form'd the poet for the king."

Yet Cibber, the hero of the Dunciad, was not a dunce, except in his attempts at verse; even Pope, who calls him "a _pert_ and _lively_ dunce," epithets rather incongruous, admits the merit of his "Careless Husband." His Apology for his own Life, too, is no mean performance; some passages in it are both judicious and eloquent, particularly his criticisms on Nokes and Betterton, and on acting in general. Though the most wretched of poetasters, he was an abler prose writer than half of his critics.

At his death, the laureateship was offered to Gray, with an exemption from the duty of furnishing annual odes, but he refused the office, as having been degraded by Cibber. It was then given, on the usual terms, to William Whitehead, who won even the approbation of Gray for the felicity with which he occasionally performed his task. What now appears most noticeable in Whitehead's odes is his prolonged and ludicrous perplexity about the American war. At the first outbreak he is the indignant and scornful patriot, confident in the power of the mother country, and threatening the rebels with condign punishment. As they grow more and more obstinate, he becomes the pathetic remonstrant with those unnatural children, and coaxes them to be good boys. When any news of success to the British arms has arrived, he mounts the high horse again, and gives the Yankees hard words, but not without magnanimous hints that the gates of mercy are not quite closed to repentance. Reverses come, and he consoles the king. Matters grow worse, and he is at his wit's-end. At last the struggle is over; he accommodates himself to the unpleasant necessity of the case, and sings the blessings of peace and concord.

Laureate odes, good or bad, are always fair game for squibs. Whitehead had his share of ridicule, but he had more courage than Gray, who was so painfully afflicted by the parodies of Lloyd and Coleman, that he almost resolved to forswear poetry. Whitehead retorted on his assailants with easy good-humour, in "An Apology for all Laureates, past, present, and to come," beginning,

"Ye silly dogs, whose half-year lays Attend, like satellites, on Bays, And still with added lumber load Each birth-day and each new-year ode, Why will ye strive to be severe? In pity to yourselves forbear; Nor let the sneering public see What numbers write far worse than he."

and ending,

"To Laureates is no pity due, Encumber'd with a thousand clogs? I'm very sure they pity you, Ye silliest of silly dogs."

The next laureate, Thomas Warton, the historian of English poetry, is too well known and appreciated to require any lengthened notice here. In 1747 and 1748 he held the appointment of _laureated_ poet, to which he was inaugurated, according to the ancient custom, in the common-room of Trinity College, Oxford. His duty was to celebrate a lady chosen as lady patroness, and Warton performed his task crowned with a wreath of laurel. In 1757, he was elected professor of poetry, as his father had formerly been in the same university. On the demise of Whitehead in 1785, the laureateship was conferred on him by command of George the Third. He was quizzed as his predecessor had been, and, like him, laughed at the jesters; and he gradually turned their scoffs to approbation by his equanimity and the merit of his performances. Warton had not only the wit to be diverted by probationary odes in mockery of his own, which he valued at less than they were worth, but he had temper to endure the malignant scurrility of Ritson, in reference to more important labours, with no severer remark than that he was a _black-lettered dog_. A portion of his later days was devoted to a labour of love--an edition of the juvenile poems of Milton, with copious notes. Though of sedentary college habits, and a free liver, he enjoyed vigorous health to the age of 62: he then broke down. He went to Bath with the gout, and returned, as he thought, in an improved condition. The evening of May 20, 1790, he passed cheerfully in the common-room, but, before midnight, he was stricken with paralysis, and the next day he was a corpse.

Henry James Pye, who was of a family of which the founder is stated to have come to England with the Conqueror, was likewise representative, by the female line, of the patriot Hampden. In 1784, he was returned to parliament as member for Berkshire. But the expense of the contest ruined him, and he was obliged to sell his estate; and even the slender salary of a laureate was not unacceptable when it fell in his way. Besides his official odes, he produced numerous works, epic, dramatic, and lyric, and also published several translations, and a corrected edition of Francis's Horace. The reader will be content if we pass all these with the remark that he was a respectable writer, a good London police-magistrate, and an honourable gentleman in a less equivocal sense than the parliamentary style. As factor of annual odes for the court, he was, of course, scurvily used by the wags. The joke on "Pindar, Pye, et parvus Pybus," was once in every body's mouth. He died in 1813, and was succeeded by

Robert Southey, who held the office for thirty years; and this prolonged tenure of it, still longer than Cibber's, by a man of unimpeachable worth and distinguished genius, is a happy set-off against the disgrace which frightened Gray, and made him refuse it. The concession proposed to Gray, that he should write only when and what he chose, was also virtually, though not formally, yielded to Southey. "The performance of the annual odes," he says, "had been suspended from the time of George the Third's illness in 1810, and fell completely into disuse. Thus terminated a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance." How is it that we have yet no biography of Southey? It is rumoured that his only surviving son, the Reverend Cuthbert Southey, has one in preparation. We hope that the report is true, and that it will contain abundance of his father's delightful letters, and be published soon. _Bis dat qui cito dat_,--that is, not that a book should be got up in a hurry, but that, after a delay of five years, the reasonable expectation of Robert Southey's admirers and regretters should be now promptly gratified.

We began with the earliest of laureates and the latest,--Apollo and the venerable Wordsworth,--and with them we will conclude. In a snug nook, sheltered from the north and east winds by Helvellyn, and Fairfield, Wordsworth has for many years cultivated his own laurels with success, till he is absolutely imbowered in them. The original slip, from which all this throng of greenery has sprung, is said to have been a cutting from a scion of the bay-tree planted by Petrarch at the tomb of Virgil, which tree was unquestionably derived from the undying root of that which supplied leaves for the garland of Apollo, and assuaged the divinity of his brow, when, as we reminded the reader at our outset on this ramble, he hired himself as poet-laureate to King Admetus, on a daily stipend of a hornful of milk.

THE HORSE-DEALER--A TALE OF DENMARK.

BY CHRISTIAN WINTHER.

The King of Sweden, Charles X., lay with his army before Copenhagen. His generals, the young Prince of Sulzbach and Count Steenbock, besieged the city, and his troops showed themselves worthy sons of the famous Thirty Years' War. The system of cruelty and extortion that had characterised their Polish and German campaigns was renewed in Denmark, and with the greater fierceness that national antipathy served at once as pretext and stimulus to the soldier's lust of blood and plunder. And thus was it that upon the island of Funen scenes were enacted, whose frightful record, handed down by history, now appears scarcely credible. Men and women, priests and laymen, old and young, the humble and the illustrious, were subjected to the grossest ill-treatment, either to extort money, or as punishment for not possessing it. Amongst the Danes themselves mutual fear and mistrust existed; for individuals were not wanting who, through fear, or in hope of profit, played openly or secretly into the hands of the enemy. And, to add to the desolation the Swedes brought with them, the inhabitants had scarcely yet recovered the ravages of a pestilence, which had disappeared from their shores but a few years previously. Whether it was the king's absence from the island, or a notion in the Swedes' mind that they would soon have to leave the country, which rendered the soldiery so unbridled in their excesses, certain it is, that the scourge of war made itself more severely felt than ever towards the end of the year 1659. The doubtful sort of succour afforded by the Dutch fleet was chiefly confined to Zealand, and it was small consolation to the people of Funen to see the proud ships of the rich republic cruising in the Belt and Cattegat. The scanty intelligence from the capital, which in summer some bold boatman occasionally brought over, was not always to be relied upon, seldom or never satisfactory, and ceased altogether when winter came, and dark and stormy nights rendered the navigation between the islands impracticable for small craft.

At a moderate distance from the town of Nyeborg, on the east coast of Funen, stands the village of Vinding, one of whose richest inhabitants, at the time of the Swedish occupation, was a certain Thor Hansen. He had a son, called, of course, Hans Thorsen--for in that country the names of the peasants are like a pair of gloves, which, when turned inside out, change their places, so that the right becomes the left and the left the right; and with this transposition names are handed down from generation to generation, never becoming out of fashion. In Thor Hansen's house dwelt a young girl, a distant relative of his own; and although Christina's sole dowry was her pretty cherry-cheeked countenance, and her comely healthy person, he had preferred her to all others for his daughter-in-law. Many might marvel at such a choice, especially those who know that the Danish peasant is at least as proud of his hide of land and nook of garden as the noble of his wide estates, or the wealthy merchant of his well-stored warehouses, and that marriages, unsuitable in a pecuniary point of view, are as rare in that country as in any other in the world. But on this head Thor Hansen thought differently from his fellows. He saw that Christina was a smart active girl, who, young though she was, had kept his house after his wife's death with all care and industry, had milked his cows, cooked his oatmeal, and spun his flax. As to the son Hans, of nothing in the world was he more desirous than to get Christina for his wife; and Christina, when father and son opened their minds to her, could scarcely answer for joy. Thus all were agreed, and the old man already thought of making over his land to his son, and of settling down to pass the rest of his days in peace and the chimney corner. The wedding-day was fixed, the fish and saffron for the soup were purchased, when suddenly the Swede arrived. This unexpected and unwelcome intrusion disturbed the plans of many. With lamentation throughout the land, few thought of joy and merry-making; and a wedding, essentially the most joyous of festivals, would have been out of keeping with the universal misery. Partly influenced by a feeling of this kind, and partly by other circumstances, old Thor Hansen resolved to postpone the projected marriage, and the young people silently acquiesced.

Amidst the general misery and suffering, Thor Hansen might be considered highly favoured, as compared with many others. For sergeant Jon Svartberg, of the first regiment of Finland horse, who had quartered himself upon the best house in the village, namely, upon that of Hansen, was milder-mannered and of gentler heart than the majority of his brethren in arms. Not but that he did honour to his military schooling in Germany and Poland, and resembled a bear far oftener than a lamb: he required much, and exacted it rigorously; but still there was a limit to his demands, and when these were complied with, the persons he was quartered upon had not to fear the wanton torments and ill treatment which drive the oppressed to despair. The smart young sergeant certainly deemed himself the first person in the house, and expected to be treated as such; but, that conceded, he asked no more. He stood up for what he considered his rights, and no one must infringe upon them. One quality he had, which perhaps contributed to soften and humanise his nature--he was a devoted admirer of the gentler sex. Nor was he deficient in the qualities that frequently find favour with women. A handsome well-grown fellow with golden hair, and a fresh complexion, somewhat weathered by campaigns; his lofty leathern helmet, his blue facings and broad yellow bandelier, with brightly burnished buckles, his tall boots and jingling spurs, became him well; in manner he was frank and joyous, and when he laughed, which was often and loud, a row of ivory teeth showed themselves beneath his light brown beard, and his blue eyes had a bold and amorous sparkle. Confident in these various recommendations, which had perhaps already, in other countries, procured him the favour of the fair, Svartberg cherished the notion of his invincibility, and flattered himself he had but to appear to overcome all rivals and conquer all hearts. That he had completely gained that of Christina, and that it was ready at any moment to beat the chamade and surrender at discretion, he did not for an instant doubt. To say nothing of his personal recommendations, he had never, during the whole time he had been master in Thor Hansen's house, seen the least sign of a rival. This arose from the circumstance that Hans and Christina had kept their engagement a secret from the soldier, as if some instinct or internal voice had told them that his acquaintance with it might prove for them the source of great vexation and suffering. To maintain the disguise, however, was no easy or pleasant task. Many consider it a very hard case when two lovers are prevented seeing each other as often as they wish but how much more painful must it be to have to feign coldness in presence of a third person, and on his account? The young people felt that the innocent familiarities of betrothed lovers would have been highly displeasing to the enamoured Swede,--and deeply enamoured he was, as none, having eyes, could fail to see. So Hans and Christina were fain to be on their guard, except at such hours as the sergeant was on duty, or when they worked together in farm or garden. When Svartberg was at home, he was continually after Christina--paying her compliments, cutting jokes, taking her by the chin, catching her round the waist and making her waltz round the room, stealing her slippers as she sat spinning, and playing other witty pranks of a similar kind.

It was a November evening, and for those acquainted with that season in the island of Funen, it is unnecessary to say that the night was a rough one. The gale drove black masses of clouds across the sky, and roared and whistled through the small thicket, composed of a score of venerable oak trees mingled with hazel bushes, that grew at a short distance from Thor Hansen's little garden. At that time there was still a great deal of oak and beach timber in the neighbourhood of Nyeborg, of which now scarce a vestige remains; and this small group of trees, bounded on the north by a rivulet, lay within the limits of the old man's farm. Although the night was dreary and cheerless out of doors, it was warm and snug in Thor Hansen's cottage. Thor himself sat on one side the huge fireplace, comfortably sunk in an old cushioned chair; opposite to him Christina had taken her station, and was busy with her distaff. Between them hung a large four-cornered iron lantern; and upon the end of a bench Hans had seated himself, in such a position that he could conveniently throw his arm round the young girl's waist. Moreover, his cheek rested upon her shoulder, and in this agreeable attitude he kept up an incessant whispering, only interrupting the stream of his volubility to snatch an occasional kiss from her ruddy cheek.

"But how know you all that, Hans?" said the maiden, who for some time had listened with deep attention to her lover's words. "Who told you?"

"Not so loud, darling!" replied Hans; "I do not want the old man to hear it yet: the thing is uncertain, and the result still more so. My father becomes each day more anxious, so that I am almost uneasy lest in his terror he should himself throw you into the arms of the accursed Swede, if things looked dangerous."

"The _accursed_ Swede?" repeated Christina; "he deserves not the word at your hands. He _has_ done us much service, and no harm. When I think of my uncle's two poor girls, and of the many others who have shared their lot, I deem myself most lucky, and so should you, that our roof covers so gentle a foe."

"Certainly," replied Hans. "God knows, I do think myself lucky, and wish Svartberg no manner of harm in the main, but, on the contrary, every thing that is good, save and except yourself. But listen further. I fell in this afternoon with a couple of peasants from the plain; they had stopped at the public-house to bait, and had been doing work for Count Steenbock. Whilst the dragoons, whom they accompanied with their carts, sat and drank in the tavern, I got into discourse with these two men. I had noticed them whispering together, and looking carefully about them, and felt sure there was something up,--something they knew of, and which the Swede did not. I questioned the oldest of them, and at last he told me that the rumour of powerful and speedy succour was abroad in the country: he had his information more particularly from Martin Thy; he had seen him not far from the Odensee, standing at a forge, and bargaining with Swedish officers about a horse."

"Martin Thy, say you?" cried Christina; "he is sick in bed."

"Never mind that, darling! You don't know Martin; he can be sick and well at the same time, just as he pleases. At this moment his health is as good as yours; and if this red cheek does not lie, you are as fresh as a fish. Or have my kisses made your cheek so red? Come, let me kiss the other."

"Nonsense, Hans! be quiet; the old man hears you," whispered Christina, warding off with her arm the threatened salutation.

"What is that about Martin Thy?" inquired Thor Hansen from beyond the fire. Without waiting an answer to his question, he sat up in his chair, and anxiously listened. "What is that?" he said. "Who comes at this hour of night? Svartberg it cannot be; his guard is not yet over. Run out, Hans, and see who it is."

The son left the room, and in the moment of silence that ensued the yard-dog barked loudly, and the tramp and neigh of a horse were heard. After brief delay, Hans re-entered the apartment, accompanied by another man.

"Yes, yes, Hans," said the stranger; "you are a very good lad, but that is a matter I understand better than you do. Black Captain is as good a beast as a horseman need wish to cross."

"May be," replied Hans; "but at present he is lame, if not hip-shot."

"Thank ye, friend," replied the stranger, warmly. "I expect you are a judge. A trifle weary and footsore he may be. He has had a heavy day's work, and drags a little with one leg. But no matter. The peace of God and a good evening to this house," continued he, turning to Thor Hansen and taking his hand. "Dog's-weather this," he added, as he knocked the water from his broad-brimmed round hat till it streamed over the floor, and passed both hands over his thick eyebrows and black bushy hair. "I am wet to the very skin, and as stiff and weary as an old plough-horse that can no longer follow the furrow. With your permission!"--and so saying, he seated himself by the table, on the end of the wooden bench. He was a little, broad-shouldered man, with an unusual quantity of long hair upon his head, and with small lively black eyes, shaded by projecting brows. He wore a peasant's jerkin of coarse brown woollen stuff, and carried his whip, the end of whose lash was tied to the handle, slung across his broad back, as a fowler carries his gun.

"Whence so late, Martin Thy?" quoth Thor Hansen, with a curious glance at the new-comer.

"Direct from Middelfahrt," replied the horse-dealer in a suppressed voice. "I would speak with Sergeant Svartberg before I go to bed, and therefore have I ridden straight up here. The worshipful sergeant is doubtless at home?" he added, but with an expression of countenance as if he wished the contrary. On receiving the assurance that Svartberg was out, and not expected back for two or three hours, Martin Thy peeped cautiously into the best bed-chamber, which the Swede occupied, then into the kitchen and court; and having at last fully satisfied himself that the person he inquired about was really absent, he pulled his whip over his head, and threw it violently down upon the floor.

"I may speak then, and tell you the news," he said, thrusting both hands into the breast of his doublet, and standing, with his short, strong legs apart, colossus-fashion, in the middle of the floor. "I went to Middelfahrt in a lucky hour. Every face was joyful, and every mouth full of reports of a great and immediate succour, with which we should drive the Swedes out of the country; and on this side the Odensee I heard the Swedes themselves talk of it. For my part I have not a doubt about the matter, and my information is of the best. I was up there, bargaining with the Swedish Rittmeister Kron for his gray mare, and doctoring one of his troop-horses which had broken its fore-foot, and I heard the gossip of the grooms and soldiers, and all manner of curious stories."

"Of course," said Thor Hansen, shaking his head incredulously; "if lies were Latin, I too might turn preacher."

The horse-jockey looked Hansen hard in the face, whilst the young people exchanged signs of intelligence.

"I tell you what it is, neighbour," continued Thy; "I am a tolerably well-broken nag, and can keep a straight road of my own. There's no shying or stumbling in me--I go a steady even trot, and aint vicious, so you may take my word when I give it. Yes," added he, slowly and significantly, and with a glance at Christina, "it might well happen that others besides yourself found cause to repent your mistrust."

At these words the old man grew thoughtful, and listened attentively.

"Have you not heard of the many pretty country lasses made to serve this year at Raskenbjerg, when young Count Magnus lay there in quarters? Know ye not how it fared there with your own wife's nieces? If you fancy they left the place as they went to it, you are mightily mistaken. The Swede does not handle such wares so tenderly. Count Magnus has his spies every where--he well knows whom to choose for such work; your house may have its turn. The girl has a comely face and a white neck, a smart walk and a bright eye, and those are hard to hide at this time, and in this island."

"Nonsense!" said Thor Hansen. "More noise than mischief. And who would do us so ill a turn?"

"I name no names," replied the horse-dealer. "You know him as well as I do. But I have a means of protecting you and Christina from him, and all other blood-hounds of his breed. If you are wise you will avail yourself of it. Give her me to wife. And when any look after her, tell them she is Martin Thy's betrothed, and you will soon see the difference! What boots it that I wear silver buttons on my doublet, and may soon wear gold ones? what avails it that I own fields and garden, cows and horses, if I have not a nice young wife to share my prosperity? She will be well cared for, and as comfortable as if she lay in Abraham's bosom."

"He is old enough, certainly," muttered Hans with a smile.

"Hans, my boy, just run out and give Black Captain a handful of hay, will you? Go, my son, go." Hans obeyed, and Martin continued, "I have only this to tell you; beware of the sergeant! Trust him not! Svartberg means the maiden no good. Do not ask how I know it, but the fact is certain. Do as you like, however. If you have courage to risk it, you are right to do so."

"Ay, but what would poor Hans say?" quoth the old man musingly.

"Hans!" cried the horse-dealer, much surprised; "I thought it was all off, long ago, between Hans and Christina. They never whinny after each other, and she seems ready to lash out whenever he comes near her." He paused for a minute, and then drew Thor Hansen aside, and spoke to him in an under tone. "It is only for appearance sake," said he; "you don't suppose I am serious? A rusty old roadster like myself would never suit to run in harness with so frisky a filly. What say you, my child? Will you not for a while make believe to be Martin Thy's sweetheart?"

"Have done with such nonsense," said the young girl, repulsing the jockey's advances. He ran round the room after her, caught, and would have kissed her, but she slipped through his hands like an eel, and made for the kitchen. Just then the door opened, and Sergeant Svartberg, who had entered the court unheard, strode into the room, his heavy steel spurs jingling at every step. The sort of scuffle between the young girl and the horse-dealer attracted his notice.

"What's up now, in the devil's name?" he cried, taking off his heavy helmet.

"Nothing, sergeant," replied Martin Thy, in no way disconcerted. "A very small matter, at least. I wanted to steal the first kiss from my bride that is to be, and she would not allow it."

"Your bride, fat-paunch!" cried Svartberg in extreme wonderment; "what the devil is all this? This will never do. Harkye, old currycomb, no one has a right to take any thing here, not so much as a kiss, without my leave. D'ye hear that?"

"Gently, gently," retorted Martin Thy in a jesting tone; "I am certainly a mere David in comparison with such a Goliath as you, but I am more active than I look--can jump higher than any one would think--high enough, perhaps, to catch you by the flaxen curls upon your forehead, if you meddle with the best horse in my stable. But you can take a joke, sergeant dear?" concluded he, with a sly side-glance at the Swede.

"No, no, jockey, not I indeed,--you are a deal too cunning for me,--one never finds you where one leaves you. When I sent for you the other day for my horse, they said you were sick, but it seems you were on the road. Where have you been?"

"Westward," replied the horse-dealer quietly, "on my own honest business. I came home this evening, and the first person I cared to see was my little girl here--besides that, I have a word or two to say to the worshipful sergeant."

"To me? Come then, and be quick about it, and have a care that my sabre does not take a fancy to speak a word or two to your shoulders." And with this uncivil warning, Svartberg took the little man by the collar, and pushed him before him into the adjoining room.

Thor Hansen and the young people had listened in silence to this short and sharp dialogue. Out of prudence they abstained from interrupting the horse-dealer, although his bold assertions were not very pleasing to them. Now they stood embarrassed and attentive, trying to catch something of what passed in the next apartment,--but without success, for the Swede and his companion spoke in low tones and in short broken sentences. In a short time the two men returned to the sitting-room, the horse-dealer's countenance wearing its usual sly quick expression; the tall sergeant with less decision in his gait, and with a mixture of vexation and mistrust upon his features. When Martin Thy took his leave and departed, he followed him with a sort of constrained courtesy as far as the courtyard, and did not re-enter the house till the horse's hoofs were heard trotting along the narrow road.

Meanwhile the father and son had gone out to fodder the cattle. With folded arms Svartberg walked for a while up and down the room. On a sudden he stopped short in front of Christina, who sat spinning, as usual, and gazed at her long and tenderly. At last he broke silence.

"Fye upon you, my pretty Christina!" he said; "you surely do not seriously mean to throw yourself away on yon black-bearded monster?"

"You must not take for earnest all Martin Thy says," replied the maiden, blushing; "you know what a strange creature he is."

"Oh certainly," replied the soldier in a sharper tone, "I know devilish well what he is, and I also know what I am myself. Better I certainly might be; but you, Christina, your father and all belonging to you, know well that I am none of the worst."

"That we do, Svartberg,--you have been a help and protection so long as you have dwelt in our house; and, without you, Heaven knows how it might have fared with us."

"Once for all, then, Christina, tell me how I stand with you; for curse me if I can make out. You know I love you,--I have never concealed it, and I did think you looked kindly upon me; but here comes this pot-bellied horse-dealer, and says you are to marry him! Tell me honestly, is it true?"

Whilst the young girl, with natural bashfulness, hesitated to reply to this home-question, the sergeant seated himself by her side, and, in his softest tones and sweetest words, told her how ardently he loved her. He strove to rouse her gratitude by reminding her of the beneficial influence of his presence in the house, how he had defended and saved her and hers from the plunder and ill-treatment they would otherwise inevitably have suffered. In glowing colours he depicted the happy and prosperous life they would lead together, if she would follow him to Sweden when his term of service expired. He had a farm in Dalecarlia, he said, and she should be his wife and its mistress. Then he drew from his finger a broad gold ring, with his name upon it, and endeavoured, but in vain, to prevail upon her to accept it. And many times he asked, with mournful earnestness, if what Master Thy had told him were true; betraying in his manner, each time he mentioned the name of this man, previously so indifferent to him, an unusual reserve and circumspection. At last, as Christina, although with eyes full of tears, still persisted in her silence, he rose from his seat.

"I have opened my whole heart to you, Christina," said he, "and I have too good an opinion of you to suppose for an instant you would, without compulsion, prefer that little punchy hedgehog of a Jutlander to a gallant Swede and smart soldier like myself. Perhaps you are afraid of your father? or of your dwarf of a bridegroom? If so, I promise you efficient protection. I have at Raskenbjerg"--here the young girl looked up from her work with a terrified glance,--"a good comrade, who has married a country-woman of yours. With your consent, I will conduct you thither, and there you shall remain, in all safety, until we leave the country;--and that will not be long," added he, sinking his voice, and with a cautious glance around him.

The mere name of Raskenbjerg had upon Christina an effect of which Svartberg never dreamed. She thought with a shudder of the tales she had often heard related, and to which the horse-dealer had so recently referred. She remembered the blunt cordiality with which Martin Thy had promised her protection, and suspected Svartberg of evil designs, which he proposed carrying out by craft rather than by violence. Full of this idea, she told the sergeant plainly that she really was betrothed to Martin Thy, entreated him to show himself as generous in this matter as he had always previously been, and declared firmly and positively she would adhere to her promise. She ventured even to tell him, he must have a very poor opinion of her if he thought to lead her astray by honeyed words and fine manners. All this she said to the young Swede in plain language, and in tones earnest, although gentle; and the whole expression of her countenance and manner gave evidence of so much strength of will that Svartberg, after having once or twice more passionately conjured her to tell him the truth about Martin Thy--betraying, each time he mentioned the name, the same kind of confused manner as before--grasped helm and sabre, and with an exclamation of disappointment and vexation, hurried into his apartment.

It had rained and blown the entire night, the sky was gray and dreary, the first glimpse of dawn scarce appeared in the east. Christina had milked the cows, but still she lingered in the stable awaiting her lover. Her heart was very heavy; the peace and safety in which the family had hitherto lived seemed suddenly to have fled, and that she should be the innocent cause of its departure forced many a sigh from her gentle bosom. She had not waited long when there was a cautious tap at the back-door leading into the field; she opened it quickly, and Hans entered. Christina threw her arms round his neck.

"At last, dear Hans!" said she tenderly: "how anxiously I have waited for you!"

"I come from the horse-dealer's," replied Hans, breathing short, like one who had made speed. "He was in bed and fast asleep, and was almost angry with me for awaking him. He told me, however, that he had heard, God knows from whom, that Danish troops had attempted a night-landing near Nyeborg, but had been prevented by the storm, and had sailed northwards. He pretends also that Danish and German reinforcements are off the west coast of the island. With respect to you, and the proposal he made last night, he maintains it is the only safe means of escaping Svartberg's designs. Whether the offer was serious or sham, he would not distinctly say: it was no business of mine, he said; it might be joke, or it might be earnest. And when I solemnly swore to him that I would endure neither the one nor the other, he laughed at me, and bid me go home and let him go to sleep. As I stole through the village, the trumpeters blew the alarm, and the troopers began to mount. So we are not safe here; the sergeant may surprise us at any moment."

And having concluded his parting narrative, Hans prepared to quit his mistress for the day. So engrossed were the young people by a long farewell kiss, that they were unaware of the entrance of sergeant Svartberg, till he had gazed at them for some seconds in a state of seeming petrifaction.

"Hell and the devil!" was the profane exclamation of the gallant sergeant, on recovering his powers of speech. "Pretty work this, by my honour! So so, my coy beauty," continued he, his lips trembling, his cheeks pale, his eyes ominously flashing, and with bitter irony in his voice, "is it the custom in this country to marry two husbands, one young and the other old? Now I know the meaning of your shyness, and what your intentions are; oh! I see through the whole conspiracy. But wait a bit, I'll pay you all off. Hallo! Olof and Peter!" cried he to two dragoons in the stable-yard, "dismount, and tie this younker upon the ammunition-waggon you have to take to Nyeborg."

Whilst the bearded horsemen got out of their saddles to obey their sergeant's commands, the latter turned once more to the trembling Christina.

"So this was your game, my charmer!" said he scornfully. "Have you already forgotten what you told me last evening, when you had me sighing like an old woman? I never felt so soft in my life, not since my mother first laid me in the cradle, with a pap-spoon in my mouth. Ha! it shall be the last time I waste fair words when force will gain my end. No, no!" he shouted, as Christina, with tearful eyes and speechless with grief, extended her clasped hands in supplication, "you won't get him off, I can tell you, not if you were an angel from heaven. Why don't you intercede for your other lover, the old one? No, no, neither mercy nor pardon."

"Ah! sergeant, be not so cruel; let the lad go," exclaimed a voice behind Svartberg. "Surely you are not going to turn restive! You kick out a little, but I am certain a mouthful of hay will pacify you. Come, a word with you!"

The horse-dealer, for he it was, took the angry Swede by the bandelier, and Svartberg followed him, although with manifest unwillingness, to the further side of the court. Here Martin Thy deliberately unbuttoned his brown doublet and three or four waistcoats, produced, from the inmost recesses of his attire, a small greasy leather book, and thence extracted a scrap of parchment. This he placed before the eyes of the sergeant, following the lines with his finger as Svartberg read, and pausing now and then at particular words, as if they were talismanic characters, intended to allay the soldier's irritation. This, whatever they were, they appeared to do. More calmly, but with a harsh and sullen expression of countenance, and like a man yielding with an ill grace to a power he dares not resist, Svartberg approached Hans Thorsen, who stood in gloomy silence between the two dragoons.

"Let the fellow go," he cried, "and to horse! You tell me we shall not come back, Thy. I neither know nor care how you learned it, but remember I make you responsible for both of them. If I do return, I will claim both her and him at your hands, and God help you if they are not forthcoming."

He spoke thus whilst tightening his horse's girths, and when he turned his head the horse-dealer had already disappeared. With a muttered oath, Svartberg sprang into the saddle, and, without bestowing another glance upon the young people, galloped out of the court, quite forgetting to bequeath Christina one of those graceful salutations with which it was his wont to bid her adieu.

Field-marshal Shack had landed his troops without accident at Kjerteminde, and Lieutenant-general Eberstein, with equal good fortune, had got his little army on shore at Middelfahrt. The young prince of Sulzbach at first advanced against the latter general; but then, afraid of being cut off and surrounded by the former, he changed his plan, and drew back his whole forces to a stronger position at Nyeborg. The entire Swedish army lay either in this town, or encamped in its front; their previous quarters were vacant. Consequently, in the village of Vinding all was still and quiet as in the grave. It was evening. Thor Hansen and his son had betaken themselves to the tavern, where a great number of peasants, retainers of the lord of the soil, travellers, and others, were assembled, discussing the latest news. These seemed important, judging from the noise and excitement that prevailed: all spoke at once, none listened, and, as if all danger were now over, none troubled their heads about what passed out of doors. But in the little room at Thor Hansen's house, Christina sat at work, full of melancholy thoughts. She certainly understood little about the march of events and prospects of the country, but love and sorrow had so far quickened her perceptions of political matters, that she foresaw much evil to herself and Hans if the Swedes got the upper hand. Another of her subjects of meditation was the strange influence the horse-dealer exercised over Svartberg. Upon what was it founded? Would it last? And, even if it did, and she was thereby delivered from the sergeant's importunities, might not Martin Thy press his own claims--claims which her own and her father's consent, admitted to Svartberg, and whereon was based the protection they enjoyed, rendered in some sort valid? These, and similar reflections, always ending in fears for Hans, drew bitter tears from her eyes, and so absorbed her mind that she was as unconscious as the noisy party at the tavern of what occurred without. Suddenly the latch was lifted, the house-door gently opened, and Svartberg stood before her.

"You weep, dearest!" he said, as he slowly approached the table beside which Christina sat, whilst an expression of mingled irony and grief passed across his martial features; "do those precious tears flow, perchance, for me? By the cross! how pale and moist are those pretty cheeks."

"What would you, sergeant?" said the maiden, recovering from her first surprise, and in accents of deep affliction. "Do you come to renew your recent cruelty, or to atone for it?"

"What I would?" replied the sergeant. "You know, Christina, that my heart is not a hard one, but quite the contrary, soft as can be, and you it is, my angel, who have made it so. Frankly and plainly, however, do I tell you, that without you it will harden again, ay, as marble. Without you I cannot live: you must away with me on the instant!"

"Alas, Svartberg, have I not already told you I am betrothed to Martin Thy!" cried the alarmed maiden anxiously.

"Pshaw!" cried Svartberg, "you do not expect me to swallow that fable? All lie and deception, as sure as there is a God in heaven. I have long seen through the old fox, but now I know him, and he shall not stand long in any body's way. As to any harm he may have told you of me, the knave lies in his throat."

"Svartberg!" exclaimed Christina, terrified at the increasing vehemence of the Swede's tone and manner, "you have power----"

"Ha!" interrupted the soldier, "that have I, and know how to use it. Christina, I cannot exist without you--by the living God I cannot! and though you were betrothed to Sweden's king, to me you must belong--mine you shall be! I have here," he continued, in a hurried and passionate whisper, "two comrades, and a cart to convey you to Nyeborg. I shall soon have served my time, and then will I take you home to my old mother in Dalecarlia, and there you shall live like a queen, or my name is not Jon Svartberg! Come! every moment is precious!"

The stalwart sergeant seized the fainting girl by the waist, raised her in his arms, regardless of her feeble struggles, and hurried to the door. Just then a loud uproar arose outside the house. Svartberg started, laid Christina in an arm-chair, and listened. The noise increased; shouts and cries, and two pistol-shots, reached his ear; and then Hans Thorsen and Martin Thy, followed by a legion of rustics armed with axes and hay-forks, poured into the room through both its doors. Surprised, but no way disconcerted, by their sudden appearance and menacing mien, the sergeant, with a military eye for a good position, retreated into a corner, where the oak table served him as barricade, and laid hand upon a pistol in his belt. Either on account of the great odds against him, or through fear of injuring Christina, or because consciousness of evil-doing robbed him of his usual decision, he did not use the weapon, however, but preferred flight to a contest whose issue could hardly have been advantageous to him. Springing actively upon the long bench below the window, and still keeping his face to the enemy, he set his heavily-booted leg against the casement, which gave way, and fell with a clatter and jingling into the garden. Then, with his favourite exclamation, "Ha! in the devil's name!" he swung himself, light as a bird, through the opening. A peasant, on sentry below, essayed to seize him, but was prostrated by a blow that might have felled an ox; and the fugitive sped through the garden, his accoutrements rattling as he ran, and indicating the direction he took. All this while the peasants were not idle: some followed him through the window, others through the door; and as it was nearly full moon and the sky tolerably clear, the foremost distinctly saw him run across the meadow, and disappear amongst the oaks. With all speed they surrounded the little thicket; some lining the banks of the stream bounding it to the north, whilst others made diligent search amongst the trees and brushwood. Far and near their voices were heard, shouting to each other encouragement and inquiries. "Have you got him? Is he there? He has not crossed the stream. Look out, lads! Cut him down, wherever you find him!" And cut down the Swede undoubtedly would have been, had he been found; but to find him was the great difficulty. Not a bush large enough to shelter a rabbit but was beaten by the peasants, furious at the disappointment of their revenge on one of the detested tyrants who so long had oppressed them. Even the branches of the trees, although stripped of their leaves by the chill autumn wind so as scarcely to afford concealment, did not escape examination. But all was in vain. It seemed as though the earth had swallowed the missing man. He had disappeared and left no trace. When at last convinced of this, the boors gazed at each other in astonishment and vexation, not unmingled with dismay. The devil--so some of them muttered--had helped his own. At last Hans Thorsen, convinced of the inutility of further research, prevailed on a few of the most resolute to keep guard round the wood, and returned home to look for his father and comfort his mistress.

Although Sergeant Svartberg had never implicitly believed Martin Thy's story of his intended marriage with Christina, the horse-dealer had found means to inspire him with a certain respect, which prevented his pursuing his object with open violence. His passion for the maiden, inflamed by unexpected resistance, had made him resolve, especially when the scene in the cow-house put him upon the trail of the truth, to employ every means to attain his end. Hans he despised as a peasant lout, and felt himself in no way obliged to respect his claims, or consider his rights. Were Christina once his, he trusted to win, by redoubled tenderness, a heart which he believed--perhaps rightly--harboured no particular repugnance towards him. He was overjoyed, therefore, when he received orders to take two dragoons, and fetch a couple of ammunition waggons left behind in Vinding; and he promised himself he would make good use of this favourable opportunity of carrying out his designs upon Thor Hansen's pretty kinswoman. Out of precaution, he avoided riding through the village, and took a circuitous route to Hansen's house. Before arriving there, however, he was compelled to pass some stables where Martin Thy was wont to keep horses, of which he sometimes had a great number on hand. Cunning Martin, whom nothing escaped, was looking through a hole in the stable wall, and recognised, notwithstanding the evening gloom, Jon Svartberg's big-boned mare. Suspecting mischief, he hurried to the tavern, and proposed to surprise the uninvited guests; the peasants joyfully assented, and at once sallied forth, heated with liquor and with thirst of revenge. The scene just described was the result.

But that very night the bold boors were doomed to experience the evil consequences of their exploit. Intimidated by the crowd of assailants, the two dragoons took to flight, leaving the sergeant to take care of himself. They hurried back to the camp, and made report to their captain of the evening's events. The captain, unwilling to lose a daring and useful subordinate, instantly despatched another sergeant to Vinding, with a stronger party, and with orders to fetch the waggons, to rescue Svartberg, or, should violence have been done him, to arrest the murderers. Fortunately, the approach of the troopers was observed sufficiently soon for old Hansen and Christina to find a hiding-place; but, in facilitating their escape, Hans was so unlucky as to fall into the hands of the Swedes, who hurried him off to Count Steenbock's quarters at Nyeborg.

Early the following morning, Christina donned her holiday attire, put on a clean cap, a pair of yellow leathern gloves, and her best apron, and, without telling the old man a word of her intentions, took the road to Nyeborg. She thought not of the dangers besetting her path: she thought only of sharing her lover's fate, should she find it impossible to rescue him; and bitterly reproached herself for having consented to separate from him. Mournfully, and with eyes red from weeping, she hurried along the rain-soaked road, when she heard the tramp of hoofs behind her, and looked round in alarm. It was Martin Thy, mounted upon Black Captain, to whose tail two other horses were tied. When near enough to recognise Christina, he drew rein with an exclamation of astonishment, and inquired whither she was going. She briefly told him her destination, and the object of her journey. He at first tried to dissuade her from prosecuting the latter, representing the many dangers to which she exposed herself, and without a chance of benefit, seeing that none would listen to her entreaties and representations. Finding his advice and remonstrances unattended to by the faithful and loving girl, he suddenly sprang from his horse. "You shall not go afoot, at any rate," he cried, "so long as Martin Thy has a horse belonging to him, on whose back you can sit. You shall have a ride on Black Captain for once in your life at least. You see, my lamb," continued he, throwing the right stirrup over the horse's neck and tightening the girths--"you see what a soft-mouthed beast I am; I may be ridden any where with a plain snaffle by those who know me. Come, I will help you up." He placed her in the saddle, detached the other horses from Captain's tail, clambered with considerable difficulty upon the bare back of one of them, and set off at a trot.

"Only see," said he, "if we do not resemble Mary and old Joseph, in the picture upon the lid of my box at home. To be sure, Black Captain is no jackass; and indeed," he added, with a sly smile, "there is another difference besides that."

It was a chilly morning; the wind blew keen and cutting from the coast, and the air was clear and transparent; so that from afar the travellers discerned the Swedish tents, shimmering snow-white in the sunshine. Before they had proceeded much farther, the murmur of the camp became audible, like the hum from a stack of bee-hives. On reaching the outposts they were challenged; but the horse-dealer stooped his head and whispered a word in the ear of the vidette, who forthwith allowed him and his companion free passage, and they proceeded through the southern portion of the Swedish camp, towards the farm-house where Steenbock had his quarters. Preoccupied by her grief, Christina did not observe how completely at home Martin Thy seemed to be. Every body knew him, and he found his way without assistance through the canvass mazes of the camp. When close to the general's quarters, the travellers' progress was for a moment delayed by a crowd of people following two soldiers, who escorted a prisoner into the house. From her lofty seat upon the back of Black Captain, Christina saw over the heads of the throng, and in the captive recognised her lover, with hands bound behind his back. With a cry of grief, she sprang unaided from the saddle, and pressed through the crowd. Wonder at her boldness, and compassion for her evident affliction, procured her a passage, and, after some effort, she succeeded in penetrating to the hall where the court-martial was held. The case was probably prejudged by the Swedish officers, who made no scruple to sacrifice a peasant, whether innocent or guilty, by way of example and warning to the disaffected. But the trial, and the threats for which it gave opportunity, might probably, they thought, throw light upon the fate of Sergeant Svartberg, and account for his mysterious disappearance--besides eliciting the names of the accomplices in the murder of which, there could be small doubt, he had been a victim. The sergeant was respected and beloved by his comrades and superiors, and dissatisfaction was apprehended if his fate did not receive due investigation.

The court-martial was over. All that could be extracted from Hans Thorsen amounted to no more than was already known. Svartberg had attempted to carry off his mistress, and he and others had interfered to frustrate his design. He gave a plain narrative of the wonderful disappearance of the sergeant, and did not conceal his regret that the ravisher had thus escaped his vengeance. To the tears and entreaties of Christina the court naturally paid small attention, and she was at last compelled by threats to cease her importunity. Sentence was passed; the president of the court stood up, and gave orders to the provost-marshal to carry out the prisoner's doom by hanging him in front of the camp. In the extremity of despair, Christina cast her eyes over the crowd which filled the room to the very doorway, seeking succour where she expected none, when suddenly she perceived Martin Thy, who stood in a corner, with folded arms and immovable features, watching the proceedings. The sight of the horse-dealer was a gleam of hope to the unhappy girl.

"Help us!" she cried, hurrying to him with clasped hands--"for the blessed Saviour's sake, help us if you can!"

"Ay, but what shall I get by that, my lamb?" replied Martin in a suppressed voice. "I give nothing for nothing, and like to gain by my bargains. Do you still remember what you lately told Svartberg? Keep your word to me, and I will see what I can do."

The peril was pressing, and Christina beside herself with sorrow. Distracted by fears for her lover, whom the soldiers were already leading away to execution, she promised all that was asked of her. The horse-dealer gave a satisfied nod, and advanced slowly and with a certain air of importance to the green table around which some members of the court still sat, whilst others had risen and were about to depart. Making as low a bow as his fat, thickset figure was capable of, he respectfully begged a hearing. The officers looked at him with surprise; Hans, recognising the voice, turned his face towards him, whilst his escort lingered a moment, as if to indulge their prisoner with a last glance at a friendly face.

"What is your business?" abruptly demanded the president of the court-martial. "Have you aught new to communicate touching this affair?"

"A single word, with your excellency's permission," replied Martin Thy; and, approaching the Count, he whispered something in his ear. Steenbock took a step backwards, and looked keenly in the horse-dealer's face, examining him for a few seconds attentively, and without speaking. Then beckoning him into a corner of the room, where they could not be overheard, he exchanged a few sentences with him, and cast his eyes over some papers produced by the horse-dealer. This done, the two men returned to the table.

"I think, therefore, with due submission to your excellency," said the horse-dealer in more decided tones, "that the truth is most likely to be got at in the manner I suggest. If the sergeant has been murdered, this lad was certainly not his only assassin. Upon the other hand, if, as I think more probable, Svartberg is in some place of concealment, the punishment of the prisoner would but increase his danger. And that the worshipful sergeant has sunk into the earth or ascended to heaven, vanishing so as to leave no trace--that, of course, is a fable my horses would laugh at."

"Well, well, jockey," said the Count, loud enough for all in the room to hear, "if you undertake to throw light upon the business, I will make over the prisoner to you, it being well understood you become responsible for him: the girl, too, must appear, should I require her presence. And remember, you cannot deceive me without risking your own neck. Enough! you are answerable for them both."

"With my life!" replied the horse-dealer, again bowing low, "so soon as I am out of the camp. Until then, I crave an escort."

The protection demanded was accorded, and its necessity was fully proved by the savage glances cast at Hans by the Swedish soldiery, as he and his companions passed through the camp. Once beyond its boundary, Martin Thy conducted Christina to her home, and Hans to his own house; and after exacting from both a solemn oath not to endanger his life by flight, saddled a fresh horse and rode away.

The next day, the memorable 14th of November, witnessed the defeat of the Swedes and the triumph of the Danish arms; and upon the day afterwards, the whole Swedish army, shut up in Nyeborg, surrendered to the victors. The Prince of Sulzbach and Count Steenbock had run the gauntlet through the Dutch fleet, and escaped to Corsor, where they met any thing but a flattering reception from King Charles Gustavus. Delivered from their merciless foe, and once more under Danish government, the inhabitants of Funen again raised their heads, and resumed their former habits and occupations. Gradually things fell into the old routine: vexatious losses were forgotten in the comforts and security of peace; fugitives returned home; friends and relatives, long severed, again met; news were received of many reported dead, and the fate of others, whom the demon of war had really devoured, was accurately ascertained. But of Martin Thy, the horse-dealer, not a word was heard. Since the day that he had rescued Hans Thorsen from the jaws of death, none of his relatives or neighbours had seen him; no intelligence, save faint and improbable rumours, had been obtained concerning him. Hans, when the enemy had quitted the country, (as he and every body else fondly believed for ever,) held himself absolved from his oath, and returned to his father's house at Vinding. There he undertook to persuade Christina that a promise forced from her, by the most cruel necessity, was not so binding that, under certain circumstances, it might not be broken; and, moreover, that it could not absolve her from her more ancient vows plighted to himself. But all the arguments of the impatient young lover, although supported by those of his father, who was desirous, before he died, to behold the happiness of his children, failed for some time to convince the maiden's sound sense and grateful heart. At last their persuasions and representations, powerfully aided by her love for Hans, induced her to fix a certain period, at the expiration of which, if Martin Thy did not in the interval appear to maintain his claim, she would become the wife of her younger suitor. Although vexed at the delay, Hans was compelled to consent to it; and for the satisfaction of Christina's conscience, two months were allowed to elapse. Then, the horse-dealer not appearing, the wedding was celebrated with the customary festivity and rejoicing.

At the marriage-feast the conversation naturally turned upon the events of the previous year, and, amongst other names and persons brought under discussion, Martin Thy was mentioned. Unobservant or regardless of the confusion manifest on the faces of both bride and bridegroom, half a score persons immediately exclaimed--"Ay, what has become of Thy, the punchy horse-dealer?" "Whither has the scamp betaken himself?" asked others. One of the company, an elderly man, whose words obtained deference and attention, replied to these questions to the following effect: Martin Thy, he said, was unquestionably one of the many spies employed by Charles Gustavus, and many of whom were intrusted by him with very considerable powers. For that king, reckoning on other means than the mere force of arms for the subjugation of the country, employed numerous agents, chosen from all ranks and classes, to ascertain the state of feeling amongst the people. Soldiers, pilots, pedlars, artisans, peasants, and students, took his wages for these dishonourable services. The horse-dealer, however,--so the speaker affirmed,--either conscience-stricken after taking the money of the Swedish government, or finding it agreeable and convenient to eat from two platters at one time, had also accepted from the Danish authorities a passport and secret instructions. On the occasion of the murder of a Swedish sergeant in the vicinity of Nyeborg, he had come in contact with officers of high rank, some of whom having reason, in spite of his cunning and plausibility, to mistrust his honesty, instituted investigations which resulted in his being sent handcuffed, with two other gentlemen of the same kidney, to Corsor, where, without further form of trial, they were all three hung. Other accounts said that Martin Thy had got off with the mere fright, having succeeded, by means of a small file, concealed in his bushy hair, in cutting his prison bars and making his escape. The guests, however, were unanimously of opinion that this was a mere postponement of his doom, and that to-morrow morning a tree in the Danish woods might serve as a gallows for Martin Thy. The conversation still ran upon this subject, when a young lad who waited at table whispered something in the ear of the bridegroom. The latter rose from table with an air of surprise and uneasiness, and slipped out of the house. The messenger conducted him to the wood-store, where a stranger, desirous of speaking with him, awaited his coming. Upon entering the ill-lighted shed, Hans Thorsen beheld a pale thin little man, clothed in squalid rags, and reclining, as if overcome with fatigue and exhaustion, upon a pile of chopped wood. The stranger arose, and with a limping step advanced to meet Hans. It was Martin Thy. But how changed within a few short weeks! His comfortable corpulence had disappeared, his cheeks were hollow and colourless, his long hair hung matted and uncombed about his ears, his doublet was travel-stained and tattered. It was scarce possible to recognise the once jovial well-conditioned horse-dealer. Hans Thorsen lifted up his hands in astonishment.

"Martin Thy!" he exclaimed in a tone of mingled vexation and compassion, "whence come you, in heaven's name, and what means this wretched plight?"

"You hardly know me again, Hans," said the horse-dealer, with somewhat of his former gaiety in his voice. "I am not surprised at it. I look just like an old horse who has been turned out to pass his winter in the woods. My paunch quite gone--left behind in yonder dry hole at Corsor," continued he with a smile, whilst with both hands he displayed his vest, which hung about him like a sack. "You want to know my business here?--never vex thyself about that, lad! I do not come to trespass on your manor. There are plenty here would drive me away, did I wish to stay. Tell your little wife (for I know this is your wedding-day) not to fret herself, for Martin Thy releases her. I know she will be glad to hear that. Of money I have plenty, ragged as I look; but I crave a service of you, for old acquaintance sake--'tis the last, perhaps. Lend me a horse, for I have not a leg to stand on. I will leave it in your uncle's care at Aastrup, near Faaborg: I myself shall not return. It matters little whether my fodder grows in Germany or Funen; and there are stables every where."

The good-natured heart of Hans Thorsen melted within him, as he contemplated the woful plight of the unlucky little man, and the constrained indifference and joviality of manner with which he endeavoured to carry off his misfortunes. His mind at ease about Christina, he thought only of comforting the man to whom he owed his life. He brought him beer and brandy, bread and beef, offered him a complete change of clothes, and pressed him earnestly to accept a pair of large silver buckles, which he took from his own shoes. But Martin Thy refused every thing, smiled in reply to the condolences of Hans, saddled the horse himself, cordially pressed the young man's hand, and galloped out of the court. Hans gazed after him till a turn of the road hid horse and rider from his view, and then returned into the house, to dissipate by a whisper the last shadow of doubt and anxiety that still clouded the happiness, and weighed upon the gentle heart, of Christina Thorsen.

From that day no word was heard in Funen of Martin Thy the horse-dealer.

* * * * *

Nearly a century and a half had elapsed since the incidents above narrated. It was the month of July in one of the last years of the eighteenth century. The day had been oppressively hot, but in the afternoon a storm and shower had cooled and lightened the air. The minister at Vinding had a stranger stopping with him. This was a young gentleman from Copenhagen, whose pale thoughtful countenance told of assiduous toil in the paths of learning, and of late vigils by the study-lamp. Notwithstanding the elegance of his attire, and the courtly arrangement of his hair--gathered together upon his nape into a tail, according to the fashion of the day--the thorough Danish cut of his features, and a certain homely plainness of mien, seemed to indicate plebeian descent, and to warrant a conjecture that his father's hand had been more familiar with the plough-handle than with general's baton or magistrate's wand. His speech also, notwithstanding the advantages of an excellent education, was tinged with the accent of the province in which he then found himself. He had journeyed from the capital to his native place, for the purpose of examining whatever relies of antiquity there existed, and of discovering, if possible, some hitherto unknown. Not a Runic stone, or moss-grown font, or battered chalice, cracked bell, or stained window, not a tombstone or altar-piece, could escape his searching eye and investigating finger. Besides these mute memorials of ancient days, he interested himself greatly in the old rhymes and legends still current in Funen. To aid him in the collection of these, and in his other antiquarian researches, he had applied to the right man. The venerable minister was in every way as enthusiastic an admirer as the student of the vestiges of old days; and having besides some knowledge of music, which his companion did not possess, he would sing with great unction, in a voice somewhat cracked but not disagreeable, strange wild ballads about Sivard, and Varland, and Vidrick, and of the good horse Skimming, and of King Waldemar and his queen Dagmar; whilst the young man stood by, his hand in his breast, and his eyes upon the ground, listening and musing.

"The rain is quite over," said the old clergyman, turning to the student; "let us go into the garden, for the sultry air is not yet out of the house. See here, how dry it is beneath these chestnut trees, notwithstanding the pelting shower we have had; and mark how the drops patter from leaf to leaf above our heads! A severe storm this has been. At one time, I thought our church was struck by lightning: I am sure the thunderbolt fell very near the steeple. But see yonder, what a splendid rainbow! It looks exactly as if it had one foot in my meadow. Let us sit here awhile, my dear young friend: the bench is quite dry. Ah! how fragrant smells the tobacco in the fresh open air! But you do not appreciate it. You prefer a Danish ditty to all the aromatic vapours of the noble Nicotian herb."

And to gratify his young guest, the minister struck up the beautiful Danish air--"_Jeg gik mig ud en Sommerdag at höre_"--beating the time with his long pipe-stick of Hungarian cherry. The eyes of the sensitive student were already dim with tears, when the plaintive song was interrupted by the clergyman's fair-haired daughter, who, came bounding down the garden.

"Father, John has come, and wants to speak to you."

"Which John?" asked the minister.

"John Thorsen," replied the young lady. "Shall I send him to you?"

"No, child, I will go to him. I know what he wants. It is about his son's christening. Excuse me for a moment, my friend."

In less than five minutes the clergyman returned.

"Are you disposed for a short walk?" he said: "I must visit one of my parishioners. I may, perhaps, have an opportunity to show you something more worthy your antiquarian attention than the legend of St Matthew and his fountain."[17]

[17] A mineral spring in the parish of Vinding, dedicated to St Matthew by the monks of a neighbouring convent, which existed there previously to the Reformation.

The two men took hat and stick and followed the peasant, who led them through the village to his little farm, across a garden and a small meadow, till he stopped before a knoll of ground, and turned to his companions.

"Your reverence must know," said he, "that here upon the hillock, and round about, an oak copse formerly grew, for which reason we still call the field 'Oak Meadow,' although no one now living remembers any oaks here save yonder old one, cloven by this day's lightning. It was quite hollow, but that could not be seen till now. If your reverence will take the trouble to come up the knoll--stay, give me your hand, I will help you."

"Thank you, my son," said the minister, "I can do without assistance."

And the worthy man gently ascended the little eminence. One half of the huge oak still stood erect, surmounted by rich green foliage--the other moiety had been riven away by the lightning's power--and the whole interior of the tree was exposed to view like an open cupboard. It was melancholy to behold this forest monarch thus rent and overthrown, his verdant crown defaced and trailing in the dust. But this reflection found no place in the minds of either clergyman or student--their attention was engrossed by a variety of objects that lay in a confused heap in the cavity of the oak. Upon near examination these proved to consist of the remains of a human skeleton, which, to judge from the position of the bones, must have stood upright in the tree, its arms extended upwards. A pair of large iron spurs, several nails and brass buckles, a long sword, nearly consumed by rust, pieces of iron and brass belonging to a dragoon's helmet, some coins of the reign of Charles Gustavus, and finally a broad gold finger-ring, were also discovered. Upon the last the initials J. S. were plainly legible; and on the hilt of the sword, as on some of the fragments of metal, were the letters F.R.F.D., standing for First Regiment Finland Dragoons.

Although it was at once evident that these relics had not the age requisite to give them value in antiquarian eyes, the student and his venerable friend did not the less examine them with strong interest. On their way to the oak, the minister and Johann Thorsen had told their companion the story of the Swedish sergeant, and his wonderful disappearance. The tradition was current amongst the peasantry, and some details of it were still in existence in an old vestry register. That day's storm had cleared up the marvel, and explained the mystery,--there could be no doubt that the skeleton discovered in the oak was that of poor Svartberg. The letters upon the sabre and buckles, and especially those upon the gold ring, sufficiently proved this; the latter unquestionably stood for Jon Svartberg. It was evident that the young Swede, pursued by those from whom he had little mercy to expect, and impeded in running by the weight of his accoutrements had climbed the oak for safety, and had slipped down into the hollow, between whose narrow sides he got closely wedged, and was thence unable to extricate himself. There he remained immured alive in a living sarcophagus; and there upon every one of seven-score succeeding springs, the deceitful oak (like Dead-Sea apples, all freshness without and rottenness within) had put forth, above his mouldering remains, a wreath of brilliant green.

Upon the same Sunday on which little Thor Hansen was christened in the church of Vinding, Svartberg's remains were consigned to consecrated ground. John Thorsen and the student stood beside his grave: the old minister threw earth upon his ashes and wished him good rest. Some sorry jesters in the village-tavern opined he would need it, after being, so long upon his legs.

SKETCHES IN PARIS.

So fleeting are the scenes of revolutionary history--so phantasmagoric are they in their character, as well from their quickly evanescent nature as from their wild and startling effect--so rapid are the changes that every day, and almost every hour, produce, that before they can be well sketched they have flitted away from before the eyes, to be replaced by others as strange and startling. Those that have been hastily transferred to the note-book are gone as soon as traced: those that follow upon the next leaf grow pale, however high and bold their colouring, by the side of the still more vivid picture that is placed in contrast the next day. The interest of the present swallows up that of the past: that of the future will shortly devour the interest of the present. In no country is the difficulty of seizing the revolutionary physiognomy before it changes, and stamping it in permanent daguerreotype, more sensible than among the easily excited, and consequently ever-changeful French--in no place on the earth more than in that fickle and capricious city, the capital of revolutionised France. There, more than elsewhere, the scenes of revolution have the attribute of dissolving views. They are before your eyes at one moment: as you still gaze, they change--they run into other colours and other forms,--they have given way to a complete transformation. Such scenes have all the effect of the flickering, uncertain, and varying phantom pictures of the _mirage_ of the desert: and this effect, so observable in the outward state of things,--in the aspect of the streets, in the tumult, or the sulky calm, in the rapidly rolling panorama of the day, changed in all its objects and its colours on the morrow,--is just as remarkable in moral influences, in the enthusiasm of one hour, which becomes execration in the next; in the hope, the fear, the confidence, and the despair. This is true, and perhaps even to a greater extent, in men, as well as things or deeds. Have we not seen so lately the hero, the idol, the demigod of one moment, become, by a sudden and almost unconnected transition, the object of hatred, suspicion, and mistrust, at another? On such occasions the dissolving views have scarcely time to dissolve.

Nothing, then, is a more difficult or a more thankless task, than to sketch scenes of a revolutionary time among such a rapidly self-revolutionising people. Scarcely is the scene sketched, but it is superseded by one of newer, and consequently more powerful interest; its effect has faded utterly away; it is old, _rococo_, unsatisfactory: the new one alone claims every eye, and the tribute of all emotions. With such fearful express-train hurry and dash does history rush along, that the history of yesterday seems already "ancient" history, and the tale of the last hour "a tale of other times," no longer fit to command a thought, or excite a sensation; or, at best, it may be said to belong only to those grubbing antiquaries in political considerations, who live out of the whirling movement of their age. On those who linger among such scenes, this feeling is so powerfully impressed that they seem to themselves to grow old with frightful rapidity, and to have lived ten years at least in as many days.

Thus, in opening a Parisian Sketch-book, in which many a scene has been traced during the last few months, the feeling that the sketches therein hastily made are already too old, too "flat, stale, and unprofitable," to please the novelty-craving public eye,--that even the latest, while being exhibited, may be thrown into the shade by newer and more vivid scenes, which would afford subjects for fresher pictures,--deters from their exhibition. But still there _may be_ some of those grubbing antiquaries in revolutionary history, who may not be sorry to have a specimen of "old times" in the shape of a vignette or two drawn upon the spot, although it was done yesterday, or even the day before, placed within his hands; and so the Sketch-book shall be opened, and turned over at hap-hazard, and a few sketches of revolutionary Paris offered to public gaze.

See! first of all we fall upon a rapid tracing or two of scenes from those wild abysses, in which have sunk industry, trade, confidence, and principle--the _ateliers nationaux_. The pencil of a moral Salvator Rosa is alone worthy to paint them! But great breadth of light and shade, and powerful colouring, must not be sought for in a scrap of a vignette. Perhaps we have not stumbled so utterly _malà propos_ upon these pictures; for since the _ateliers nationaux_ were so intimately connected with the pretexted causes, and the fearful organisation, of the bloody insurrection in the latter end of June, they may be supposed, as events go rattling on, to belong to the "middle ages" of the past French revolutionary history, and not to be so positively lost already in its "dark ages" as to have become utterly uninteresting.

The sketch is taken in the park of Monceaux, at the western extremity of the capital. The old trees stand there pretty nearly as they did, although some have been cut down or torn up, no one can well say why, unless it may have been from a spirit of devastation for devastation's sake; the old clumps, and the grass-plots, although sadly worn, are still there; but how different is the aspect of the spot from that which might have been sketched last year in the same sweet spring-tide! The calm and the make-believe rurality are gone. Where nurse-maids and children gambolled on the greensward, or a couple of lovers lingered so near the tumult of the capital, and yet so secluded and unobserved, or the dreamer lounged to dream at ease, although the roar of the great city still rang in his ears, is now a scene of confusion and disorder. A herd of miserable, or idle and reckless men, have been there got together; and the spot has been allotted as one of the newly constituted revolutionary national workshops. "Workshops!" what irony in the word! Work there is none for the wretched men to do; profit there is none, at the very best, to expect from it. The impoverished and harassed country is burdened with new taxes, to keep the dangerous and disorderly in a seeming state of quiet; the fears of a government, or even its treacherous designs, call for funds from all the country to pay this herd of men, who prefer eating the bread of idleness as their due--for have not they been told that they are the masters, and that the country must support them?--to earning their bread by the sweat of their brow, when they are enabled to do it: and all this sacrifice shall not hereafter avert the danger anticipated by those fears.

The first impression conveyed by the scene is that, some how or other, we have been suddenly transported into the "back woods" of a Transatlantic settlement. A few huts of wood are knocked up in different parts under the trees, for the use of those paid superintendents who have nothing to superintend, and who only aid in fostering the passions of the wild men whom they are vainly said to have under their command, and in organising into revolutionary bands, to work the will of a disappointed and frantic party, a host of half-savage beings, disorganised to every social tie. The hundreds of half-dressed men who are grouped hither and thither, with instruments of labour in their hands, might be supposed, were they really employed upon any exertion, to be the settlers, occupied in effecting a clearance. Some even might be taken, from their wild looks and wilder gestures, for a few of the last remnants of the aboriginal savages, who had just sold the heritage of their fathers for deep draughts of the "fire-water." But when we look more nearly to the details in the composition of the picture, we shall find component parts of it perfectly exceptional, and peculiarly belonging to the circumstances of the place and of the day. Some of the men in the groups, it is true, bear all the air of sturdy workmen, although they are demoralised by their position of real idleness, that "root of all evil," and disgusted with having their energies employed upon "make-believe" work. "Make-believe" indeed! for children could scarcely be seduced into the fantasy that they were really doing any labour of positive utility. Some again are strong men, capable of bearing exertion as settlers or forest clearers; but they are not the men of the "woods and wilds." Those hands plunged down into the deep pockets of their full trowsers, without the least show of willingness to work; those heads tossed back, that sharp cunning roll of the evil eye, that leer, that sardonic grin, that mouth carelessly pursed up to whistle, all betray the common city-thief, who knows not why he should not share in the bounty of the country to the idle and disorderly, particularly when his own trade thrives so ill in these days of the patrollings and marchings, and drummings about the streets, by night as well as day, of the national guards: among those faces, also, we may find the dark scowl of the branded felon and the murderer. But look at those pale puny men, with their lank hair and scanty beards! How out of place they seem in these "backwoods" of civilisation! How miserably they hang their heads, and look upon the earth! They are the poor weavers, and fabricators of jewellery, and makers of all kinds of articles of luxury, whose trade is closed to them by the ruin caused to all wealth and luxury by the revolution, and who are out of employ. They are real objects of charity: and they are true objects of pity also, as they thus stand, unable and unwilling to work at their useless trades, and brood over their misery, and think of their wives and babes, for whom they, who might have before earned a decent livelihood, must now beg, from a nation's reckless charity, a scanty subsistence. Poor woe-begone wretches! they have cursed the revolution in the bitterness of their hearts; although by a strange but not uncommon revulsion of feeling, they will throw themselves, perhaps, soon into the arms of their enemy, and espouse, in despair, its wildest, bloodiest doctrines, with the hope that any change, however desperate, may tend to relieve them from their utter misery, but to find out, at last, that they have plunged into a still more fearful abyss. Look! in that corner, beneath that further clump of trees, are some who have thrown themselves gloomily upon the ground, to dream of a gloomy future; or lean their backs against the stems, to raise their eyes despairingly to heaven; or see! perhaps they laugh wildly, to affect a gaiety far from their hearts. Poor fellows! The deity they have worshipped is thrown down from the high pedestal on which they had put her up aloft, or one is replaced by another, wearing a hideously coarse red cap of liberty; their fair dream, in which they lived, has flown, with its bright rainbow colours, and left before them nothing but a naked, rugged, hideous reality; the poetry, as well as the necessary materialism of their lives, have been cut off at once; the pleasant sward, on which they trod forward, "with daisies pied," has terminated on a sudden, upon an abyss formed by the unexpected convulsion of an earthquake. Their divinity was Art; she has fled with a sob before the advance of coarse democracy, that proclaims her a useless and foolish idol. Their dream was the worship in the temple of Art; the temple has fallen to the ground, and the rainbow coruscations of its altar have vanished. The path which was to lead on to fame and fortune has abruptly terminated. There is no hand to foster the neglected and degraded deity; the poor artists, who were just commencing their career, are now reduced to penury: for the most part, these poor orphan children of art are penniless--almost houseless; they have been forced to lay aside the brush for the spade or pick-axe--the brightly-coloured pallet for the dull earth; and now they brood here, in the _ateliers nationaux_, over their fantasies flown and their real misery--happy even that they can receive the national pittance to prevent them from starving. Look to those young men, sprinkled here and there in the groups--boys, they are almost sometimes--with their thin delicate mustaches, and their hair arranged with some coquetry of curl, even in the midst of their disorder, and in spite of the _blouse_ with which their attire is covered. Look at their hands! they are white and delicate--they are not used to handle the implements of labour. If they work, the drops of perspiration trickle over their pale faces like tears which _will_ find a passage, even if the eyes refuse to let them go. They have been evidently used, the weak boys, to a certain degree of luxury, and their harsh occupation is repugnant to their feelings. They are young lads from the many shops of the luxuries of manufacture of every kind in formerly flourishing Paris, which have now closed in consequence of the ruin and desolation that has fallen upon trade. Those who have not shut up entirely, have discharged the greater part of their former servitors, who now are turned adrift in hundreds upon the _pavé_ of Paris, and know not how or where to seek their bread. Those hands have been accustomed to handle the velvet, the satin, and the lace, and shrink back from the contact of the rough wood and cutting stone: but starve they cannot, and they add to the wild motley crew of the _ateliers nationaux_. Those discontented affected faces are those of young actors, and singers also, improvident to a proverb, who have been left exposed to the rude buffetings of the world by the failure of several of the theatres, which have not been able to meet the necessities of revolutionary times, when even Parisians--even theatrical Parisians--desert the theatres for the club-rooms, and which have closed their bankrupt doors. What a change, again, from the illusion of the glittering dress, and the lighted scene, and the heart-fluttering applause, to the stern realities of poverty and labour. Among such men as these are young rising authors also, who have thrown aside the uncertain resource of the pen for the scanty but sure return of public charity, with a pretence of labour. The _ateliers nationaux_ have become the only salvation, in the suspension of literature as well as art, of the poor poet or novelist who does not dip his pen in the black gall of ultra-republican democracy, and earn a scanty subsistence as journalist in one of the "thousand and one" new violent republican journals of the day--for such a one alone can find his reader and his profit. But such figures as these among the groups are the bright lights, sad as they may be, of the picture. The greatest mass of the herd of so-called workmen consists of those accustomed to labour and to hardship, or of those who have been inured to play all parts, and fill all situations, by long acquaintance with all the necessities of crime.

What a strange scene these pensioners of the republican government form!--stranger still when the nature of the supposed work upon which they are believed to be engaged is considered. It is not by any means the half of the assembled herd, however, that makes any show of working at all. See! several hundreds of men are moving backwards and forwards, with wheelbarrows, over the more vacant spaces of the now desolate-looking park; they move from a hole to a heap, from a heap to a hole. At the one, men are lazily making a pretext of digging up the earth--at the other, of shovelling it upon a mound. To what purpose? To none whatever. When the heap begins to grow too big not to be added to without exertion, it is again demolished; the earth is wheeled off elsewhere; another heap of earth is made upon another spot, or the hole that has been made is again filled. It is the endless task of the Danaïdes, condemned to fill a bottomless tun, on which they are engaged; or it is that of the web of Penelope, undone as soon as done: but it is without the advantage of the punishment of the one, or of the purpose of the other. But see, in the back-ground, a party have grown ashamed of the futile absurdity of the employment upon which they are vainly engaged. In order to give a faint and frivolous colouring to their acceptation of their wages of idleness, they have thrown down their misused implements, and, like a party of school-boys, they have put their so-called superintendents into their wheelbarrows, and are wheeling them up and down amidst shouts and cries, and yells of the hideous Ca Ira. This, however, is but poor sport in comparison with the recreation that many of the national workmen permit themselves, for the good of the nation.

For instance, those knots of men which stand here and there, in thick encircling masses, whence issues the sound of many voices of declamation, of shouts, or of murmurs--and where now and then heads may be seen of eager and wildly-gesticulating orators, who have mounted upon the bottoms of upturned wheel-barrows in order to spout--have formed themselves into _al fresco_ clubs, in which they, the masters and arbiters of the destinies of the country, as they have been taught to believe themselves, are settling the affairs of the nation according to their own views, or rather according to the frantic opinions instilled into them as a poisonous draught, rushing like fire through their veins, and disturbing and corrupting the whole system, by the violent demagogic orators of a furious disappointed party, whom they imitate second-hand, and naturally caricature, if possible, to a still greater excess of anarchist doctrine. Listen to them! under the hot-bed fostering influence of the _ateliers nationaux_, or rather of their instigators and supporters, they have got far beyond Louis Blanc, the high-priest of the one deity of the Republican trinity, _Egalité_, and his utopian talent-levelling theories for the organisation of labour. Listen to the declamations that come rolling forth from these crowds. They are illustrative of communistic doctrines to the utmost limits of communism. The declaration that all property in land is a spoliation of the people, and a crying iniquity--that the soil of the earth belongs to the community, to the nation at large; that it must all be confiscated, seized, and placed in the hands of the _Res publica_, to be administered for the public good; that the profits of its culture must be distributed equally amongst all--is but the A B C of the long alphabet of communistic principles, which they proclaim in the name of humanity, and to the advantage of themselves. It is needless to run through every letter. The omega--the great O--which is to prove the result of all their declamations, is, that if the National Assembly does not decree this general confiscation, they will take up arms against it; that they have once made the stones of the street rise at their command, and that they will make them rise again, when the time shall come, to do once more their bidding. And how have they kept their word? The blood-red standard of that fantastic vision of blood, the _République Sociale et Démocratique_, the Republic of spoliation and destruction, is raised aloft in the _ateliers nationaux_, to be planted hereafter upon the deadly barricades of June. And round these open conspiracies, under the sky of heaven, and in the face of men, see, there stand the brigadiers, and superintendents and masters put over them by the government, with their hands in their pockets; and they listen and applaud. Look, also, at the furious frown of the orator on the wheel-barrow, in the midst of his yelling companions of the national workshops. How he knits his brows, and rolls his eyes, with a tiger aspect! This is all "make-believe" again; for he thinks it necessary for an "only true and pure" republican to make a terrible face, to the alarm and terror of all supposed aristocrats. Republicans did it, and were painted so in former days; and, to be a real republican, he must do the same: and his associates follow his example, and frown, and roar, and denounce like himself. All this is playing a part. But when they have learned by heart the part that they are rehearsing now, under yon trees, in the transmogrified park of Monceaux, they will play it as their own to the life--nay, to the death! If we were to approach that fellow in the _blouse_ there, who is lying on his back on a hillock, reposing from his fatigues of doing nothing, and _jerking_ lazy puffs of blue-white smoke into the pure spring air from the short clay-pipe that almost seems to grow out of his mass of beard, we may get perhaps to some comprehension of the tenets of the _braves ouvriers_ of the _ateliers nationaux_; for, after all, although we are gentlemen, and he weens himself our lord and master, he looks like a _bon homme_, and he may condescend to expound to us his principles of "liberty, equality, and fraternity," upon the best-avowed communist, socialist, and ultra-republican system. Let us ask him who are the people? It is we--we who have nothing, and are not rascally thievish proprietors--we are the people; and the sovereignty of the people belongs to us, he will tell you. If you insinuate to him that, according to the laws of equality, you ought to have your own little share of this sovereignty, he will reply--No such thing--you are not of the people, you are, a _bourgeois_, a _mange-tout_, an _accapareur_, a _riche_, a _fainéant_ (what is _he_ doing?) an _aristocrate_: this last word is the climax of the terms of objurgation. Endeavour to explain to him, or to convey by inuendo, that "aristocrats," in all languages, mean those who pretend alone and exclusively to the exercise of the sovereignty of a country, he will scowl upon you with contempt, and, without deigning to analyse your definition, will again declare that you lie if you pretend to be of the people, which is sovereign, and not you.

The picture is a fanciful, and not an unpicturesque one. There is a wildness about the bearded haggard faces, and the disconsolate looks; there is colour enough in the blue _blouses_, the red cravats, the blood-red scarfs of the brigadiers, and the uniforms of the young men of the schools, who superintend: the background of the old trees, with the log-huts peeping out from among them, is well disposed. The greensward is below--the clear blue spring sky above. There is brightness enough about the picture; but dark and gloomy are the passions smouldering within the hearts of those men--passions that find vent now in short hasty ebullitions, like puffs of steam let off from a safety-valve, in their political declamations, but that shortly will burst out in terrific explosion, and cover Paris with devastation and destruction.

Let us open the Sketch-book once more, at a picture again representing one of these same _ateliers nationaux_, after a change in the government of the country. The National Assembly has met. Several of the more experienced and far-seeing members of that confused body have seen the misery of this filthy sore upon the body of the commonwealth; they have probed the ulcering wound; they have foreseen, like good political doctors, that gangrene and mortification of the whole social state of France, and death, to all its last chances of life in prosperity, must result from such a state of things. They have denounced the whole corrupted system with energy. The government has confessed the misery and the danger of the national workshops, as they were constituted: it has promised that they shall be entirely reorganised, that the tares of evil men shall be sundered from the wheat of good and honest, but suffering workmen; that some shall be draughted off, that the works shall be made useful and productive, that the superintendents shall be replaced; the chiefs, suspected of encouraging sedition and insurrectionary tendencies, removed; the abuses in the administration of the funds rectified. Much has been promised: and, until the needy workmen can be removed into the provinces, in order to be employed upon railroads and canals, and other great public works, or, where it is possible, upon labours congenial to their education, the Assembly has consented to close its eyes, and hope that the dangerous _ateliers nationaux_ are gradually acquiring a healthier and more prosperous aspect.

Let us turn, then, to a sketch of the workshops in their reorganised state. We seek it out with more cheerful hopes; and, in order to change the background of our picture, let us look in the direction of the eastern outskirts of Paris, and investigate the scene presented by the national workshops upon the little plain of St Maur. Before we arrive there, however, we shall fall upon another sketch, which is not without its characteristic traits, as illustrative of the history of revolutionising Paris. Those masses of towers that rise from the midst of walls surrounded by moats, not far from the roadside, and are flanked and backed by the low trees of thick woods at a little distance, belong to the fortress of Vincennes. Within these towers, connected with many a dark page of French history, are confined those frantic and disappointed demagogues, who on the 15th of May endeavoured to overthrow the Assembly, constituted by universal suffrage as the sovereign power of the country, and to substitute their own regime of tyranny and terror in its place. There sit the moody Barbés, whose ideas of republicanism go no further than constant subversion of "what _is_;" and the cold-blooded and cunning, but ferocious Blanqui, that strange mixture in character, as well as in physiognomy, of the fox and the wolf; there mourns Albert, so lately one of the autocratic rulers of the country--the workman who, not content with his temporary power, helped to plot its return under bloody auspices. There are many others of those furious ultra-republicans, who dreamed of founding a government upon pillage, and supporting it by the guillotine. Those towers, in fact, contain the leaders upon whom a furious party counts, as the master-spirits who are to lead it on to power. Their liberation from confinement is the dream of the party: in every _émeute_ with which the streets of Paris has been almost daily, or rather nightly, animated, the cry has been, "_Vive Barbés!_" in the fearful insurrection and the civil conflicts of June, the name of Barbés was the rallying cry. Long before that period of terrific memory, the government knew that plots were constantly being laid for the surprise of the fortress, and the liberation of the prisoners. When, led on by the chiefs of the ultra clubs, a band of so-called _ouvriers_ waited upon the minister of the interior, to inform him that an immense monster fraternity banquet was to be held in the forest of Vincennes on a certain day,--they were met by the reply of the minister, that no day could be better chosen, inasmuch as he had appointed that very day for a grand review, on the same spot, of all the troops of Paris, who would thus have an opportunity of fraternising with their "brethren of the workshops." The monster banquet was, consequently, never held,--or rather it was held in the streets of Paris; and the people banquetted upon carnage, and blood, and the still quivering limbs of the unhappy _Gardes Mobiles_. But that dread hour is not yet come, at the time the sketch is taken. Aware of the designs of the conspirators, the government has sent reinforcements to protect the fortress of Vincennes. The whole forest around is now a camp. In the midst looms the donjon, with its towers and walls, a dark and gloomy prison house: the cannon is on the battlements; the garrison is on duty, as if the fortress were at that moment in a state of siege; and, strikingly contrasting with this stern spectre of stone, is the scene presented by the wooded environs. It partakes of the camp and the fair. The whole place is beleaguered with troops. But if you look among the trees, you will see the tents gleaming forth from among the green. Pickets are scattered here and there; now you see a body of troops of the line drawn up under arms; there again they are reposing upon the grass, or playing among themselves. At intervals comes up the white smoke of a fire, at which the mid-day meal of the soldiers is being cooked, from among the trees; then _improviso al fresco_ kitchens are glimmering, and crackling, and smoking heavily in all directions. The jaunty _vivandières_, in their short blue petticoats, their tight red jacket boddices, and their little boots, with hats, bearing tricolor-cockades, stuck jauntily on the sides of their heads, are serving out wine to red-epauletted and red-breeched soldiers under the green branches, from their little painted barrels; and booths there are in every direction, with canvass coverings, gleaming out from the low forest, where there are wine and cider venders, and where sausages and other savoury dainties are being fired by little hand-stoves upon the ground. Venders of pamphlets and newspapers, all for one sou, are there also in herds, to tempt the young soldiers to buy their ultra-republican literary wares; and there may be a deeper purpose than mere speculation in the movements of some of the herd. Petty merchants there are also moving about, with every imaginable article of petty merchandise; ragged men with cracked voices, old women, and children of both sexes, are among these speculators upon the scanty purses of the military. The scene is gay and diversified, but it is sadly confused; and above all, when its component parts, and their various details be considered, it tells a sad tale of a city close by, given up to all the miseries of opposition, hatred, suspicion, mistrust, and active conspiracy.

Pass we on, then, to the picture of the reorganised national workshops,--of the reorganisation of which so much boast has been made by members of the government: we come to it at last, having only turned over, on our way, a leaf containing another sketch, which caught our eye in passing.

The scene is devoid of all the picturesque accessories of the park of Monceaux. It represents one of those desert, chalky, open space, that so violently offend the eye in the environs of Paris. In the distance are suburb houses, and scaffoldings of unfinished buildings, and heaps of stone, and mounds of earth,--all is dry, harsh, barren, desolate; it is glaring and painful to the sense in the bright sunlight; it is dreary, muddy, more desolate and offensive still in the time of rain. The sun, however, is bright and hot enough now, when the sketch is taken, about the middle of June. The brains of the thousand and nine workmen, who have been collected in the middle space of the picture, are seething probably beneath that hot sun, and fermenting to desperate schemes. What a pandemonium is represented by this desolate little plain, occupied by the reorganised national workmen. If they have been reorganised, it is only to worse confusion. They are more reckless, more lazy, more noisy, more insubordinate than ever. Those alone are quiet who lie snoring on their bulks in the sunshine; but they will wake ere long, and to active and bloody work, I trow. Yonder is a group employed, as if the welfare of the nation depended upon it, in the interesting and instructive game of _bouchon_, or of throwing _sous_ at a cork; all their energies and their activity, engaged to earn their pay, are occupied in this work. They are merry and thoughtless, however; but wait! their merriment is but for the moment, and bloody thoughts will be awakened in them before long, under the pernicious influence of those who are allowed to wander among them, and instil poison in their ears. Look! there are jovial fellows reeling about under the influence of strong drink,--they have already thrown away all disguise--they cry "_Vive Barbés! Vive la République Démocratique et Sociale! A bas tout le monde!_" They at least show that they are ripe for revolt. Some brandish their spades in their hands--for here again is the same pretence of work, and of wheeling earth from one heap to another--and shout the Marseillaise in hideous chorus, or the "_Mourir pour la patrie_;" and anon they change their song to the Ca Ira of fearful memory; for the other republican ditties are not advanced enough for the bold would-be heroes of the "Red Republic." Here is one squatting under a bare hillock of earth, and piping all alone, in melancholy tone, upon a clarionet; but his musical efforts are as miserably out of time and tune, as are his seeming bucolics under the circumstances. Another has got upon a mound, and is fiddling to a set of fellows who are dancing the horrid Carmagnole, with gestures and faces that need only the pikes, with trunkless heads on them, of the old revolution, to make the scene complete. But the scene _will be completed soon_; bayonets shall bear heads upon their points, and the Carmagnole shall be danced behind barricades around mutilated bodies. "_Vivent les Ateliers Nationaux!_" Look at that group who are lowering darkly among themselves, and hold on to each others' _blouses_ in the energy of their suppressed and whispered converse. See! there is another there upon the plain, and there again another such a crowd. They look like conspirators,--and in truth conspirators they are, communicating to each other the plans for the approaching insurrection. And this passes in open day, and we may be there to witness and even to hear; and the whole city shakes its head, and in vague apprehension expects the crisis that is about to come. And yet it will be said by ministers, and ministerial agents, that the national workshops are reorganised,--yes, reorganised to bloodshed and revolt! And no means will be taken by the government to control or suppress--it will not even attempt to stem--the torrent it has wilfully dammed up in these organised clubs of sedition. None now even deign to make a show of working, or, if the overseers come by and shake their heads, they take up their spades, and digging up a little earth, fling it, laughing in confident impunity, upon the back of the superintendent as he turns away. In the hands of such men as these, the pickaxes and spades have the air of the weapons of a murderous crew; and how soon will they not be used to aid them to purposes of murder! And this scene of confusion, and reckless effrontery, is sketched from the life at one of the national workshops in their _reorganised_ state. Bright it is not, but it might shame one of Callot's most wild and turbulent pictures, such as he alone has shown how to etch.

Connected with such scenes as these, in as far as they tended to produce the last stirring sketches with which the Parisian Sketch-book was filled in the month of June, are others, which can only be fleetingly turned over. There is the large dingily lighted club-room, with its dark tribune, its president and secretaries and accolytes, dressed in blue smocks, with blood-red scarfs and cravats--its fiery orators denouncing the _bourgeois_ to the hatred of the working classes, and instilling division, rancour, battle to the death between classes, with violent gesture and frowning brow; and its benches and galleries filled with a fermenting crowd, that yells and clamours, and applauds the sentiment of "hatred and death" to the _bourgeois_. It is no uninteresting, although a heart-wearying _chiaro-oscuro_ scene, with its strong lights and dark shades--albeit, in its moral as well as its material aspect, the lights are few, the shades many, and dark to utter blackness. Connected with the same _suite_ of subjects, also, is the nature of the small room in the crooked streets of the _Cité_, or the suburb, with a table spread with papers, around which sit bearded full-faced men, discussing sternly, as may be seen by the scanty lamplight that illumines those haggard physiognomies; it is the room of the conspirators of the "Red Republic," or of the revolutionary agents to be despatched throughout the country, and into other lands, to propagandise the doctrine of destruction to all that _is_. But this scene must surely be a fancy sketch. Connected, also, is that black sketch of a cellar, in which are concealed arms, guns, pistols, lead, cartridges, barrels of powder, that have evidently fallen into the hands of subversive anarchist conspirators, by means of the connivance, treachery, or at least culpable negligence of those placed in power by the sovereign Assembly, and that have been conveyed thither hidden in wood, in bales, in sacks, amidst provisions. Connected, also, are many other gloomy vignettes. The scribbler in the small room, writing with a sneer of bitterness upon his lip, and the stamp of overflowing bile on his pale face, writing with the red cap of liberty on his head, as if to inspire his brains with visions of all the horrors of a past revolution, glancing now and then, for a hint, at the portraits of Marat and Robespierre, which decorate his room, and grasping, now and then, the pistols on the table by his side, as if to instil the smell of powder and the breath of murder into the very lines he writes;-and again, the printing press worked by the light of the dying candle;--and again, in the hazy morning, the figure of the newspaper vender, swaggering down the boulevard, and skreeching out, with hoarse voice, the "True Republic," or the "People's Friend;" and of the deluded workman, who leans, after his morning dram, against a post, and sucks in the revolutionary poison of those prints, more deadly and damning to his mind, and more fatal to his future existence, than the dram is deleterious to his health, and pernicious to his future life; and prepares his mind for the bayonet and the gun-barrel, by which he means to destroy all those detested, and, his paper tells him, detestable beings, who have toiled to possess any wealth, while he possesses nothing;--and again, by night, the meeting of the man in power and the discontented conspirator, in the well-appointed apartment, where a hideous deed of treachery is to be plotted; or of the wavering workman--who fears he is about to plunge into greater misery, and yet hopes the realisation of the false promises made him--standing, still uncertain, to listen to the voice of the tempting instigator to rebellion under the gas lamp at the obscure street corner, on a drizzling night. All these are sketches connected with the past ones of the national workshops, and with those to come; they lead on to the last in the dark series, irresistibly, inevitably: but as most of them must necessarily be fancy sketches, and not "taken from the life," let them be turned over hurriedly with but a glance.

And those that follow--what a confused mass of startling subjects they offer! See here! the bands of united men assembling by night, and marching silently through the sleeping streets; then shouting and tossing up their arms in open defiance; then the rising barricades, all bristling with bayonets; then the national guards and troops pouring through the streets; the smoke of the firing; the mass of uniforms mounting the barricades; the tottering falling men; the confusion; the bodies strewn hither and thither, of wounded and dead; the struggle, hand to hand upon the barricades, of the _blouse_ with the uniform of the national guard,--fury and hatred between fellow countrymen in each face; the cavalry dashing down the boulevards; the cannon rapidly dragged along; the tottering houses battered down; and then the biers slowly borne upon sad men's shoulders, supporting the dying or the dead; the carts filled with corpses; the wounded, upon straw littered down on the pavement, attended by the doctor in his common black attire, contrasting with the pure white cap and pinners of the _sœur de charité_; the uniforms, now smeared with blood and blackened by smoke, mingling with the long dark dress and falling white collar of the administering priest. See! now again, in the midst of the carnage and uproar and smoke, the young soldier of the day, the _Garde Mobile_, borne on the shoulders of his comrades, and waving in his hand the banner which he has wrested with valour from the hands of the insurgents on the barricade; and women, even in the midst of the terror and dismay, fling down flowers from the windows upon the heads of these young defenders of their country--the perfume of the flower mingling with the scent of stifling powder-smoke and the rank taint of blood. See again! there is a cessation of the combat for a time; the weary national guards are returning from the place of action. What a picture does the vista of the boulevards present! Those who have any knowledge of others passing by, stop them to fall upon the neck of a familiar face, and embrace it in grateful thankfulness that even a scarcely known acquaintance is saved from the frightful carnage that has taken place; and men ask for their friends, and heads are shaken; some have fallen, others return not; and in all the windows and the doors are agonised female faces; and women rush out to scream for husbands, fathers, and brothers, and follow those who they think can tell them of their fate in frantic entreaty along the pavement; and others sit more calmly at doorways, and watch, picking lint, in sad apprehension for the future, and silently moistening, with their tears of agonising uncertainty, that work which but too soon may be moistened with blood. How dark, and yet how stirring, how exciting, and yet how heart-rending, are these scenes! Then comes a sketch of a subject that may hereafter be used for many a historical picture. See! that fine old prelate, with his honest and firm face, and his white hair contrasting with his dark brow: he is borne along, first in the arms of confused and mingled men, insurgents and defenders of order mixing in one common cause; then, upon a hastily constructed litter. He lies in his episcopal robes: his face is mild and calm, although he suffers pain; his words are words of Christian forgiveness and heavenly hope, although he has been treacherously assassinated with the words of peace and Christian charity in his venerable mouth; and tears stream from the eyes of armed men, and trickle down their beards; and fellows with fierce faces and gloomy brows kneel to kiss his hand, that now grows colder and colder as he is borne, a victim and a martyr, over the barricades of death, and sobs of remorse and grief are heard among the infernal and battle-stained masses that line his path. Is there then still a feeling of noble generosity among the savages who form the great herd of the city which boasts itself to be the most civilised in the world,--as if civilisation were indeed at so low an ebb of retrograde tide? So there is still a sentiment of religion among the mass of France? Or is this but the theatrical display of men who live only in theatrical emotions, and will act a part before the eyes of their fellow actors, even if it be to the death? It might almost be supposed so--for now the dying prelate is carried by, and gone--the moment for the display of emotions is past: it is gone with that form. See! they are again with the musket on their shoulder--the knife in the hand of women and children! The scene is again, once more, one of smoke and carnage, and yells of execration and blood.

And now again come other scenes of men scouring along the outskirt plains of Paris. The insurgents are vanquished: the people of the Red Republic fly, and leave traces of the colour of their appalling banner in trails of blood; and there are pictures of soldiers and national guards running to the chase, and shooting down the hunted men like rabbits in an affrighted warren.--God have mercy on them all!

We turn over the leaves of the Sketch-book. It is over! The cannon no longer fills the streets with the smoke of the battle-field. Ruined houses compose a scene of hideous desolation in all the further eastern and northern streets of Paris. Affrighted inhabitants begin to crawl out of their houses. Windows are reopened. There is the air of relief from terror upon many a face--and yet how sad an air of grief and consternation pervades every scene in the vast city. The sun is shining brightly and hotly over the capital: there is a flood of light and heavenly love and brightness poured down upon the streets; but it only calls up still more reekingly to heaven the vapour of the blood, that goes up like an accusing spirit. How sadly, too, the bright summer air, and its broad cheering lights upon the white houses and the gilded balconies, contrast with the pale forms of the wearied and wounded men who crawl about, and with the weeping women who sit beneath the porchways, and with the coffins incessantly borne along--not one, or two, or three, but twenty or thirty each hour--and with the crape upon the arms of the men in uniform, or upon the hats, and with the convulsed faces of the wounded and dying, who lie upon their beds of down in the richly furnished apartment, or on the pallets of the hospital, as they shine into the windows of the wounded and dying. Bright as is the day of June, never was sadder scene witnessed in any capital: civil war has never raged more furiously within a city's walls since men conglomerated together in cities for mutual advantage and protection. How many hearts have ached! how many tears have been shed! how many wives are widows! how many children fatherless! how many affianced girls, with fondly beating hearts, will see the face of him they love in life no more! Oh, splendid sun of June! what a mockery thou seemest to be in these pictures of this dark Parisian scrap-book!

But the sun is shining still, and the little birds are twittering merrily upon the house-tops, and the caged canaries chirp at windows, and perchance there is the merry laugh of children. All these things heed not the terror and desolation of the city. It is shining still--into huge churches also, where thick masses of straw are littered down, and the wounded lie in hundreds to overflowing--into courts, where again is scattered straw, and again groan wounded and dying--upon street-side pavements, where again are strewn these sad beds of the victims of civil contention, excited by the most frantic of delusions--and through narrow windows, into prison vaults and palace cellars, where are crowded together masses of prisoners, who, for the most part, regret not the part they have played in the scenes of blood, and sit gloomily upon the damp stone, brooding over schemes of vengeance upon the detested _bourgeois_, should they escape, and the Red Republic ever be triumphant! It is shining still; and every where it shines, it smiles upon misery: it seems to mock the doomed unhappy city.

But there are still stirring, striking, unaccustomed scenes limned in the Parisian Sketch-book. Paris has been declared in a state of siege by the military autocrat, into whose hands the salvation of the capital and the country from utter anarchy has been given. The scenes of marching men and torrents of bayonets coming down the broad boulevards, and sentinels at street corners, and patrols, and military manœuvres, and galloping dragoons, and of drums beaten from daybreak until late into the night, are nothing new to Paris: such scenes have been traced upon its Sketch-book again and again, for the last four disastrous months. But Paris has gone further now. See! in these sketches it represents one vast camp. All along the broad vast vista of the boulevards are whole regiments bivouacking: the horses of the cavalry are stabled upon straw along the pavements, or around the triumphal arches; arms are piled together at street corners: some sleep upon the straw, while others watch as if in battle array. The shops are still shut, although pale faces look from windows; and the grateful inhabitants shower blessings upon those who have saved the terrified people from the horrors of the Red Republic, the pillage, and the guillotine; and ladies bring out food and wine from the houses; and none think that they can find words enough to express their gratitude, and praise the heroism of their defenders. Alas! those who fought in that evil desperate cause showed equal heroism, equal courage, still more reckless rage! What a strange scene it is, this scene sketched in the streets! The closing scene of a battle-field of unexampled carnage amidst a peaceful population--the soldier and the tenderly nurtured lady placed side by side amidst the wounded and the weary! the mourning of the bereaved family upon the same spot with the first emotion of victory! Since the agitated and disturbed city of Paris has existed, it has witnessed many wild and strange scenes in its bloody and tormented history, but none perhaps so glaring in their strange contrasts as these which have been last painted in its Sketch-book. All over Paris similar pictures may be limned. In the Place de la Concorde is again a camp, again piled arms and cannon, and littered beds of straw, and cooking fires, and groups of men in uniform, in all the various attitudes of the camp and battle-field; and in the glittering Champs Elysées are tents and temporary stabling, and horses, and assembled troops; and beneath the fine trees of the garden of the Tuileries are grouped, in similar fashion, battalions of the national guards of the departments, who have hurried up to the defence of Paris, and who bivouac, night as well as day, beneath the summer sky, in the once royal gardens. All these scenes are strange and most picturesque, and would be even pleasant ones, could the heart forget its terror and its grief--could the sight of the uniforms, the muskets, and the bayonets be severed from the sorrow and the despair, the bloodshed and the crime. In all these scenes Paris has lost its usual aspect, to become a fortress and a camp. The civil dress is rarely visible--the uniform is on almost every back. The carriage and the public vehicle are rare in these sketches; the dashing officer on horseback, the mounted ordnance, the galloping squadrons, take their place. That thin man, with his slim military waist, his long thin bronzed face, his thick mustaches and tufted beard, and his dark, somewhat heavy, eyes gleaming forth from beneath a calm but stern brow, who is riding at the head of a brilliant staff, is General Cavaignac, the military commander of the hour, the autocrat into whose hands the National Assembly of France has confided its destinies. Although, when he removes his plumed hat to salute those who receive him now with enthusiastic acclamations, he exhibits a head partially bald, yet his general air is that of a man in the full vigour of his best years, in the full active use of his lithy form. See! at the head of another mounted group is a still younger man of military command. His face is fuller and handsomer; and his thick mustaches give him a rough bold look, which does not, however, detract from his prepossessing appearance. This is the young General de Lamoricière, also of African fame. He is now minister at war. There are others, also, of the heroes of Algeria, who have not fallen in the street combat, in which so many, who had earned a reputation upon the open battle-field, received death by the hands of their fellow-countrymen. In every sketch are to be seen, as prominent figures, these military rulers of the destinies of France, which a few days have again changed so rapidly. We cannot look upon their striking portraits in these sketches, without asking ourselves how long Cæsar and Anthony may be content to rule the country hand-in-hand, or how soon the jealousy of the young generals may not be turned against each other, and they may not leave the country once more a prey to the dangers of a bloody faction; or which, if not more than one, may not fall a victim to the treachery of a vanquished party's vengeance by assassination? The leaves of the book are blank as regards the future. No one can venture to trace even the slightest outline upon them, with the assurance that it may hereafter be filled up as it has been drawn: and yet that those blank leaves must and will be filled with startling pictures once again, no one can doubt. How far will these young generals supply the most prominent figures in them? together, or sundered in opposition? The hand of fate is ready to trace those sketches; but never was that hand more hidden in the dark cloud of unfathomable mystery. The blank leaves of the album, in which the observing and self-regulating man keeps a daily journal of his doings and his thoughts, are always awful to contemplate: no thinking man can look upon them without asking himself what words, for good or for ill, may be recorded on them. But how far more awful still is the book of fate, upon the leaves of which are to be sketched the stirring scenes of a revolutionary city's history, so intimately connected with a country's destiny! and no one can tell what they may be.

The last sketch in the Parisian Sketch-book, as it is now filled up--now in the middle of the month of July (for others may be painting even as these lines are traced)--is the dark monster hearse containing the bodies of those who have fallen in the cause of order--the black-behung altar in that _Place_, which has lost its name of Concord and Peace, to take the more suitable one of "Revolution"--the catafalk--the burning candelabras--the black-caparisoned horses that drag the funeral-car--the black draperied columns of the Madeleine--the authorities in mourning attire--the long procession--the sprinkled clouds of burning incense from the waved censers--and the widow's tears.

Such a picture of mocking pomp in desolate sorrow closes well the long suite of sketches with which the Parisian Sketch-book has been filled during the _first phase_ of the French revolution. The curtain has fallen at the end of the first act, upon a _tableau_ befitting the dark scenes which have been so fearfully enacted in it. The curtain will rise again--again will bloody scenes, probably, be enacted upon that troubled stage of history,--again will harrowing sketches, probably, be drawn in the Parisian Sketch-book. Those which we have now recorded have been selected from among thousands, because they form a suite, as natural in their course, as fatally inevitable, as any suite of pictures in which the satirising artist painted the natural course of a whole life. From the fallacious promises, and the foolish or culpable designs, that occasioned the establishment of those nurseries of discontent, disorder, and conspiracy, the _ateliers nationaux_,--the steps through the club-room, the rendezvous of the conspirators, the furious journalist's office, to the sedition, the insurrection, the carnage, the civil war, the murder, the terror, and the mourning catafalk, have followed as they could not but follow. It is only the first series, however, that is closed here. There can be little doubt but that similar consequences will again follow, as similar causes still exist; and that the red banner of the so-called "social and democratic republic" will again wave,--and perhaps before long,--a prominent object in the scenes of the _Parisian Sketch-book_.

_Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh._