CHAPTER XII

"Bring the light nearer," said John Burley--"nearer still."

Leonard obeyed, and placed the candle on a little table by the sick man's bedside.

Burley's mind was partially wandering; but there was method in his madness. Horace Walpole said that "his stomach would survive all the rest of him." That which in Burley survived the last was his quaint wild genius. He looked wistfully at the still flame of the candle. "It lives ever in the air!" said he.

"What lives ever?"

Burley's voice swelled--"Light!" He turned from Leonard, and again contemplated the little flame. "In the fixed star, in the Will-o'-the-wisp, in the great sun that illumes half a world, or the farthing rushlight by which the ragged student strains his eyes--still the same flower of the elements. Light in the universe, thought in the soul--ay--ay--Go on with the simile. My head swims. Extinguish the light! You can not; fool, it vanishes from your eye, but it is still in the space. Worlds must perish, suns shrivel up, matter and spirit both fall into nothingness, before the combinations whose union makes that little flame, which the breath of a babe can restore to darkness, shall lose the power to unite into light once more. Lose the power!--no, the _necessity_:--it is the one _Must_ in creation. Ay, ay, very dark riddles grow clear now--now when I could not cast up an addition sum in the baker's bill! What wise man denied that two and two made four? Do they not make four? I can't answer him. But I could answer a question that some wise men have contrived to make much knottier." He smiled softly, and turned his face for some minutes to the wall.

This was the second night on which Leonard had watched by his bedside, and Burley's state had grown rapidly worse. He could not last many days, perhaps many hours. But he had evinced an emotion beyond mere delight at seeing Leonard again. He had since then been calmer, more himself. "I feared I might have ruined you by my bad example," he said, with a touch of humor that became pathos as he added, "That idea preyed on me."

"No, no; you did me great good."

"Say that--say it often," said Burley, earnestly; "it makes my heart feel so light."

He had listened to Leonard's story with deep interest, and was fond of talking to him of little Helen. He detected the secret at the young man's heart, and cheered the hopes that lay there, amidst fears and sorrows. Burley never talked seriously of his repentance; it was not in his nature to talk seriously of the things which he felt solemnly. But his high animal spirits were quenched with the animal power that fed them. Now, we go out of our sensual existence only when we are no longer enthralled by the Present, in which the senses have their realm. The sensual being vanishes when we are in the Past or the Future. The Present was gone from Burley; he could no more be its slave and its king.

It was most touching to see how the inner character of this man unfolded itself, as the leaves of the outer character fell off and withered--a character no one would have guessed in him--an inherent refinement that was almost womanly; and he had all a woman's abnegation of self. He took the cares lavished on him so meekly. As the features of the old man return in the stillness of death to the aspect of youth--the lines effaced, the wrinkles gone--so, in seeing Burley now, you saw what he had been in his spring of promise. But he himself saw only what he had failed to be--powers squandered--life wasted. "I once beheld," he said, "a ship in a storm. It was a cloudy, fitful day, and I could see the ship with all its masts fighting hard for life and for death. Then came night, dark as pitch, and I could only guess that the ship fought on. Toward the dawn the stars grew visible, and once more I saw the ship--it was a wreck--it went down just as the stars shone forth."

When he had made that allusion to himself, he sate very still for some time, then he spread out his wasted hands, and gazed on them, and on his shrunken limbs. "Good," said he, laughing low; "these hands were too large and rude for handling the delicate webs of my own mechanism, and these strong limbs ran away with me. If I had been a sickly, puny fellow, perhaps my mind would have had fair play. There was too much of brute body here! Look at this hand now! you can see the light through it! Good, good!"

Now, that evening, until he had retired to bed, Burley had been unusually cheerful, and had talked with much of his old eloquence, if with little of his old humor. Among other matters, he had spoken with considerable interest of some poems and other papers in manuscript which had been left in the house by a former lodger, and which, the reader may remember, that Mrs. Goodyer had urged him in vain to read, in his last visit to her cottage. But _then_ he had her husband Jacob to chat with, and the spirit-bottle to finish, and the wild craving for excitement plucked his thoughts back to his London revels. Now poor Jacob was dead, and it was not brandy that the sick man drank from the widow's cruise. And London lay afar amidst its fogs, like a world resolved back into nebulæ. So to please his hostess, and distract his own solitary thoughts, he had condescended (just before Leonard found him out) to peruse the memorials of a life obscure to the world, and new to his own experience of coarse joys and woes. "I have been making a romance, to amuse myself, from their contents," said he. "They may be of use to you, brother author. I have told Mrs. Goodyer to place them in your room. Among those papers is a journal--a woman's journal; it moved me greatly. A man gets into another world, strange to him as the orb of Sirius, if he can transport himself into the centre of a woman's heart, and see the life there, so wholly unlike our own. Things of moment to us, to it so trivial; things trifling to us, to it so vast. There was this journal--in its dates reminding me of stormy events of my own existence, and grand doings in the world's. And those dates there, chronicling but the mysterious unrevealed record of some obscure loving heart! And in that chronicle, O, Sir Poet, there was as much genius, vigor of thought, vitality of being, poured and wasted, as ever kind friend will say was lavished on the rude outer world by big John Burley! Genius, genius; are we all alike, then, save when we leash ourselves to some matter-of-fact material, and float over the roaring seas on a wooden plank or a herring-tub?" And after he had uttered that cry of a secret anguish, John Burley had begun to show symptoms of growing fever and disturbed brain; and when they had got him into bed, he lay there muttering to himself, until toward midnight he had asked Leonard to bring the light nearer to him.

So now he again was quiet--with his face turned toward the wall; and Leonard stood by the bedside sorrowfully, and Mrs. Goodyer, who did not heed Burley's talk, and thought only of his physical state, was dipping cloths into iced water to apply to his forehead. But as she approached with these, and addressed him soothingly, Burley raised himself on his arm, and waved aside the bandages. "I do not need them," said he, in a collected voice. "I am better now. I and that pleasant light understand one another, and I believe all it tells me. Pooh, pooh, I do not rave." He looked so smilingly and so kindly into her face, that the poor woman, who loved him as her own son, fairly burst into tears. He drew her toward him and kissed her forehead.

"Peace, old fool," said he, fondly. "You shall tell anglers hereafter how John Burley came to fish for the one-eyed perch which he never caught: and how, when he gave it up at the last, his baits all gone, and the line broken among the weeds, you comforted the baffled man. There are many good fellows yet in the world who will like to know that poor Burley did not die on a dunghill. Kiss me! Come, boy, you too. Now, God bless you, I should like to sleep." His cheeks were wet with the tears of both his listeners, and there was a moisture in his own eyes, which, nevertheless, beamed bright through the moisture.

He laid himself down again, and the old woman would have withdrawn the light. He moved uneasily. "Not that," he murmured--"light to the last!" And putting forth his wan hand, he drew aside the curtain so that the light might fall full on his face. In a few minutes he was asleep, breathing calmly and regularly as an infant.

The old woman wiped her eyes, and drew Leonard softly into the adjoining room, in which a bed had been made up for him. He had not left the house since he had entered it with Dr. Morgan. "You are young, sir," said she, with kindness, "and the young want sleep. Lie down a bit: I will call you when he wakes."

"No, I could not sleep," said Leonard. "I will watch for you."

The old woman shook her head. "I must see the last of him, sir; but I know he will be angry when his eyes open on me, for he has grown very thoughtful of others."

"Ah, if he had but been as thoughtful of himself!" murmured Leonard; and he seated himself by the table, on which, as he leaned his elbow, he dislodged some papers placed there. They fell to the ground with a dumb, moaning, sighing sound.

"What is that?" said he, starting.

The old woman picked up the manuscripts and smoothed them carefully.

"Ah, sir, he bade me place these papers here. He thought they might keep you from fretting about him, in case you would sit up and wake. And he had a thought of me, too; for I have so pined to find out the poor young lady, who left them years ago. She was almost as dear to me as he is; dearer perhaps until now--when--when--I am about to lose him."

Leonard turned from the papers, without a glance at their contents: they had no interest for him at such a moment.

The hostess went on--

"Perhaps she is gone to heaven before him: she did not look like one long for this world. She left us so suddenly. Many things of hers besides these papers are still here; but I keep them aired and dusted, and strew lavender over them, in case she ever comes for them again. You never heard tell of her, did you, sir?" she added, with great simplicity, and dropping a half courtsey.

"Of her?--of whom?"

"Did not Mr. John tell you her name--dear--dear?--Mrs. Bertram."

Leonard started;--the very name so impressed upon his memory by Harley L'Estrange.

"Bertram!" he repeated. "Are you sure?"

"O yes, sir! And many years after she had left us, and we had heard no more of her, there came a packet addressed to her here, from over sea, sir. We took it in, and kept it, and John would break the seal, to know if it would tell us any thing about her; but it was all in a foreign language like--we could not read a word."

"Have you the packet? Pray, show it to me. It may be of the greatest value. To-morrow will do--I can not think of that just now. Poor Burley!"

Leonard's manner indicated that he wished to talk no more, and to be alone. So Mrs. Goodyer left him, and stole back to Burley's room on tiptoe.

The young man remained in deep reverie for some moments. "Light," he murmured. "How often "Light" is the last word of those round whom the shades are gathering!"[C] He moved, and straight on his view through the cottage lattice there streamed light, indeed--not the miserable ray lit by a human hand--but the still and holy effulgence of a moonlit heaven. It lay broad upon the humble floors--pierced across the threshold of the death-chamber, and halted clear amidst its shadows.

[Footnote C: Every one remembers that Goethe's last words are said to have been, "More Light;" and perhaps what has occurred in the text may be supposed a plagiarism from those words. But, in fact, nothing is more common than the craving and demand for light a little before death. Let any consult his own sad experience in the last moments of those whose gradual close he has watched and tended. What more frequent than a prayer to open the shutters and let in the sun? What complaint more repeated, and more touching, than "that it is growing dark?" I once knew a sufferer--who did not then seem in immediate danger--suddenly order the sick-room to be lit up as if for a gala. When this was told to the physician, he said gravely, "No worse sign."]

Leonard stood motionless, his eye following the silvery silent splendor.

"And," he said inly--"and does this large erring nature, marred by its genial faults--this soul which should have filled a land, as yon orb the room, with a light that linked earth to heaven--does it pass away into the dark, and leave not a ray behind? Nay, if the elements of light are ever in the space, and when the flame goes out, return to the vital air--so thought, once kindled, lives for ever around and about us, a part of our breathing atmosphere. Many a thinker, many a poet, may yet illume the world, from the thoughts which yon genius, that will have no name, gave forth--to wander through air, and recombine again in some new form of light."

Thus he went on in vague speculations, seeking, as youth enamored of fame seeks too fondly, to prove that mind never works, however erratically, in vain--and to retain yet, as an influence upon earth, the soul about to soar far beyond the atmosphere where the elements that make fame abide. Not thus had the dying man interpreted the endurance of light and thought.

Suddenly, in the midst of his reverie, a low cry broke on his ear. He shuddered as he heard, and hastened forebodingly into the adjoining room. The old woman was kneeling by the bedside, and chafing Burley's hand--eagerly looking into his face. A glance sufficed to Leonard. All was over. Burley had died in sleep--calmly, and without a groan.

The eyes were half open, with that look of inexpressible softness which death sometimes leaves; and still they were turned toward the light; and the light burned clear. Leonard closed tenderly the heavy lids; and, as he covered the face, the lips smiled a serene farewell.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)

THE LITTLE GRAY GOSSIP.

Soon after Cousin Con's marriage, we were invited to stay for a few weeks with the newly-married couple, during the festive winter season; so away we went with merry hearts, the clear frosty air and pleasant prospect before us invigorating our spirits, as we took our places inside the good old mail-coach, which passed through the town of P----, where Cousin Con resided, for there were no railways then. Never was there a kinder or more genial soul than Cousin Con; and David Danvers, the good-man, as she laughingly called him, was, if possible, kinder and more genial still. They were surrounded by substantial comforts, and delighted to see their friends in a sociable, easy way, and to make them snug and cozy, our arrival being the signal for a succession of such convivialities. Very mirthful and enjoyable were these evenings, for Con's presence always shed radiant sunshine, and David's honest broad face beamed upon her with affectionate pride. During the days of their courtship at our house, they had perhaps indulged in billing and cooing a little too freely when in company with others, for sober, middle-aged lovers like themselves; thereby lying open to animadversions from prim spinsters, who wondered that Miss Constance and Mr. Danvers made themselves so ridiculous.

But now all this nonsense had sobered down, and nothing could be detected beyond a sly glance, or a squeeze of the hand now and then; yet we often quizzed them about by-gones, and declared that engaged pairs were insufferable--we could always find them out among a hundred!

"I'll bet you any thing you like," cried Cousin Con, with a good-humored laugh, "that among our guests coming this evening" (there was to be a tea-junketing), "you'll not be able to point out the engaged couple--for there will be only one such present--though plenty of lads and lasses that would like to be so happily situated! But the couple I allude too are real turtle-doves, and yet I defy you to find them out!"

"Done, Cousin Con!" we exclaimed; "and what shall we wager?"

"Gloves! gloves to be sure!" cried David. "Ladies always wager gloves; though I can tell you, my Con is on the safe side now;" and David rubbed his hands, delighted with the joke; and _we_ already, in perspective, beheld our glove-box enriched with half-a-dozen pair of snowy French sevens!

Never had we felt more interested in watching the arrivals and movements of strangers, than on this evening, for our honor was concerned, to detect the lovers, and raise the vail. Papas and mammas, and masters and misses, came trooping in; old ladies, and middle-aged; old gentlemen, and middle-aged--until the number amounted to about thirty, and Cousin Con's drawing-rooms were comfortably filled. We closely scrutinized all the young folks, and so intently but covertly watched their proceedings, that we could have revealed several innocent flirtations, but nothing appeared that could lead us to the turtle-doves and their engagement. At length, we really had hopes, and ensconced ourselves in a corner, to observe the more cautiously a tall, beautiful girl, whose eyes incessantly turned toward the door of the apartment; while each time it opened to admit any one, she sighed and looked disappointed, as if that one was not the one she yearned to see. We were deep in a reverie, conjuring up a romance of which she was the heroine, when a little lady, habited in gray, whose age might average threescore, unceremoniously seated herself beside us, and immediately commenced a conversation, by asking if we were admiring pretty Annie Mortimer--following the direction of our looks. On receiving a reply in the affirmative, she continued: "Ah, she's a good, affectionate girl; a great favorite of mine is sweet Annie Mortimer."

"Watching for her lover, no doubt?" we ventured to say, hoping to gain the desired information, and thinking of our white kid-gloves. "She is an engaged young lady?"

"Engaged! engaged!" cried the little animated lady: "no indeed. The fates forbid! Annie Mortimer is not engaged." The expression of the little lady's countenance at our bare supposition of so natural a fact, amounted almost to the ludicrous; and we with some difficulty articulated a serious rejoinder, disavowing all previous knowledge, and therefore erring through ignorance. We had now time to examine our new acquaintance more critically. As we have already stated, she was habited in gray; but not only was her attire gray, but she was literally gray all over: gray hairs, braided in a peculiar obsolete fashion, and quite uncovered; gray gloves; gray shoes; and, above all, gray eyes, soft, large, and peculiarly sad in expression, yet beautiful eyes, redeeming the gray, monotonous countenance from absolute plainness. Mary Queen of Scots, we are told, had gray eyes; and even she, poor lady, owned not more speaking or history-telling orbs than did this little unknown gossip in gray. But our attention was diverted from the contemplation, by the entrance of another actor on the stage, to whom Annie Mortimer darted forward with an exclamation of delight and welcome. The new comer was a slender, elderly gentleman, whose white hairs, pale face, and benignant expression presented nothing remarkable in their aspect, beyond a certain air of elegance and refinement, which characterized the whole outward man.

"That is a charming-looking old gentleman," said we to the gray lady; "is he Annie's father?"

"Her father! Oh dear, no! That gentleman is a bachelor; but he is Annie's guardian, and has supplied the place of a father to her, for poor Annie is an orphan."

"Oh!" we exclaimed, and there was a great deal of meaning in our oh! for had we not read and heard of youthful wards falling in love with their guardians? and might not the fair Annie's taste incline this way? The little gray lady understood our thoughts, for she smiled, but said nothing; and while we were absorbed with Annie and her supposed antiquated lover, she glided into the circle, and presently we beheld Annie's guardian, with Annie leaning on his arm, exchange a few words with her in an under tone, as she passed them to an inner room.

"Who is that pleasing-looking old gentleman?" said we to our hostess; "and what is the name of the lady in gray, who went away just as you came up? That is Annie Mortimer we know, and we know also that she isn't engaged!"

Cousin Con laughed heartily as she replied: "That nice old gentleman is Mr. Worthington, our poor curate; and a poor curate he is likely ever to continue, so far as we can see. The lady in gray we call our 'little gray gossip,' and a darling she is! As to Annie, you seem to know all about her. I suppose little Bessie has been lauding her up to the skies."

"Who is little Bessie?" we inquired.

"Little Bessie is your little gray gossip: we never call her any thing but Bessie to her face; she is a harmless little old maid. But come this way: Bessie is going to sing, for they won't let her rest till she complies; and Bessie singing, and Bessie talking, are widely different creatures."

Widely different indeed! Could this be the little gray lady seated at the piano, and making it speak? while her thrilling tones, as she sang of 'days gone by,' went straight to each listener's heart, she herself looking ten years younger! When the song was over, I observed Mr. Worthington, with Annie still resting on his arm, in a corner of the apartment, shaded by a projecting piece of furniture; and I also noted the tear on his furrowed cheek, which he hastily brushed away, and stooped to answer some remark of Annie's, who, with fond affection, had evidently observed it too, endeavoring to dispel the painful illusion which remembrances of days gone by occasioned.

We at length found the company separating, and our wager still unredeemed. The last to depart was Mr. Worthington, escorting Annie Mortimer and little Bessie, whom he shawled most tenderly, no doubt because she was a poor forlorn little old maid, and sang so sweetly.

The next morning at breakfast, Cousin Con attacked us, supported by Mr. Danvers, both demanding a solution of the mystery, or the scented sevens! After a vast deal of laughing, talking, and discussion, we were obliged to confess ourselves beaten, for there had been an engaged couple present on the previous evening, and we had failed to discover them. No; it was not Annie Mortimer; she had no lover. No; it was not the Misses Halliday, or the Masters Burton: they had flirted and danced, and danced and flirted indiscriminately; but as to serious engagements--pooh! pooh!

Who would have conjectured the romance of reality that was now divulged? and how could we have been so stupid as not to have read it at a glance? These contradictory exclamations, as is usual in such cases, ensued when the riddle was unfolded. It is so easy to be wise when we have learned the wisdom. Yet we cheerfully lost our wager, and would have lost a hundred such, for the sake of hearing a tale so far removed from matter-of-fact; proving also that enduring faith and affection are not so fabulous as philosophers often pronounce them to be.

Bessie Prudholm was nearly related to David Danvers, and she had been the only child of a talented but improvident father, who, after a short, brilliant career, as a public singer, suddenly sank into obscurity and neglect, from the total loss of his vocal powers, brought on by a violent rheumatic cold and lasting prostration of strength. At this juncture, Bessie had nearly attained her twentieth year, and was still in mourning for an excellent mother, by whom she had been tenderly and carefully brought up. From luxury and indulgence the descent to poverty and privation was swift. Bessie, indeed, inherited a very small income in right of her deceased parent, sufficient for her own wants, and even comforts, but totally inadequate to meet the thousand demands, caprices, and fancies of her ailing and exigent father. However, for five years she battled bravely with adversity, eking out their scanty means by her exertions--though, from her father's helpless condition, and the constant and unremitting attention he required, she was in a great measure debarred from applying her efforts advantageously. The poor, dying man, in his days of health, had contributed to the enjoyment of the affluent, and in turn been courted by them; but now, forgotten and despised, he bitterly reviled the heartless world, whose hollow meed of applause it had formerly been the sole aim of his existence to secure. Wealth became to his disordered imagination the desideratum of existence, and he attached inordinate value to it, in proportion as he felt the bitter stings of comparative penury. To guard his only child--whom he certainly loved better than any thing else in the world, save himself--from this dreaded evil, the misguided man, during his latter days, extracted from her an inviolable assurance, never to become the wife of any individual who could not settle upon her, subject to no contingencies or chances, the sum of at least one thousand pounds.

Bessie, who was fancy-free, and a lively-spirited girl, by no means relished the slights and privations which poverty entails. She therefore willingly became bound by this solemn promise; and when her father breathed his last, declaring that she had made his mind comparatively easy, little Bessie half smiled, even in the midst of her deep and natural sorrow, to think how small and easy a concession her poor father had exacted, when her own opinions and views so perfectly coincided with his. The orphan girl took up her abode with the mother of David Danvers, and continued to reside with that worthy lady until the latter's decease. It was beneath the roof of Mrs. Danvers that Bessie first became acquainted with Mr. Worthington--that acquaintance speedily ripening into a mutual and sincere attachment. He was poor and patronless then, as he had continued ever since, with slender likelihood of ever possessing £100 of his own, much less £1000 to settle on a wife. It is true, that in the chances and changes of this mortal life, Paul Worthington might succeed to a fine inheritance; but there were many lives betwixt him and it, and Paul was not the one to desire happiness at another's expense, nor was sweet little Bessie either.

Yet was Paul Worthington rich in one inestimable possession, such as money can not purchase--even in the love of a pure devoted heart, which for him, and for his dear sake, bravely endured the life-long loneliness and isolation which their peculiar circumstances induced. Paul did not see Bessie grow old and gray: in his eyes, she never changed; she was to him still beautiful, graceful, and enchanting; she was his betrothed, and he came forth into the world, from his books, and his arduous clerical and parochial duties, to gaze at intervals into her soft eyes, to press her tiny hand, to whisper a fond word, and then to return to his lonely home, like a second Josiah Cargill, to try and find in severe study oblivion of sorrow.

Annie Mortimer had been sent to him as a ministering angel: she was the orphan and penniless daughter of Mr. Worthington's dearest friend and former college-chum, and she had come to find a shelter beneath the humble roof of the pious guardian, to whose earthly care she had been solemnly bequeathed. Paul's curacy was not many miles distant from the town where Bessie had fixed her resting-place; and it was generally surmised by the select few who were in the secret of little Bessie's history, that she regarded Annie Mortimer with especial favor and affection, from the fact that Annie enjoyed the privilege of solacing and cheering Paul Worthington's declining years. Each spoke of her as a dear adopted daughter, and Annie equally returned the affection of both.

Poor solitaries! what long anxious years they had known, separated by circumstance, yet knit together in the bonds of enduring love!

I pictured them at festive winter seasons, at their humble solitary boards; and in summer prime, when song-birds and bright perfumed flowers call lovers forth into the sunshine rejoicingly. They had not dared to rejoice during their long engagement; yet Bessie was a sociable creature, and did not mope or shut herself up, but led a life of active usefulness, and was a general favorite amongst all classes. They had never contemplated the possibility of evading Bessie's solemn promise to her dying father; to their tender consciences, that fatal promise was as binding and stringent, as if the gulf of marriage or conventual vows yawned betwixt them. We had been inclined to indulge some mirth at the expense of the little gray gossip, when she first presented herself to our notice; but now we regarded her as an object of interest, surrounded by a halo of romance, fully shared in by her charming, venerable lover. And this was good Cousin Con's elucidation of the riddle, which she narrated with many digressions, and with animated smiles, to conceal tears of sympathy. Paul Worthington and little Bessy did not like their history to be discussed by the rising frivolous generation; it was so unworldly, so sacred, and they looked forward with humble hope so soon to be united for ever in the better land, that it pained and distressed them to be made a topic of conversation.

Were we relating fiction, it would be easy to bring this antiquated pair together, even at the eleventh hour; love and constancy making up for the absence of one sweet ingredient, evanescent, yet beautiful--the ingredient, we mean, of youth. But as this is a romance of reality, we are fain to divulge facts as they actually occurred, and as we heard them from authentic sources. Paul and Bessie, divided in their lives, repose side by side in the old church-yard. He dropped off first, and Bessie doffed her gray for sombre habiliments of darker hue. Nor did she long remain behind, loving little soul! leaving her property to Annie Mortimer, and warning her against long engagements.

The last time we heard of Annie, she was the happy wife of an excellent man, who, fully coinciding in the opinion of the little gray gossip, protested strenuously against more than six weeks' courtship, and carried his point triumphantly.

THE MOURNER AND THE COMFORTER.

It was a lovely day in the month of August, and the sun, which had shone with undiminished splendor from the moment of dawn, was now slowly declining, with that rich and prolonged glow with which it seems especially to linger around those scenes where it seldomest finds admittance. For it was a valley in the north of Scotland into which its light was streaming, and many a craggy top and rugged side, rarely seen without their cap of clouds or shroud of mist, were now throwing their mellow-tinted forms, clear and soft, into a lake of unusual stillness. High above the lake, and commanding a full view of that and of the surrounding hills, stood one of those countryfied hotels not unfrequently met with on a tourist's route, formerly only designed for the lonely traveler or weary huntsman, but which now, with the view to accommodate the swarm of visitors which every summer increased, had gone on stretching its cords and enlarging its boundaries, till the original tenement looked merely like the seed from which the rest had sprung. Nor, even under these circumstances, did the house admit of much of the luxury of privacy; for, though the dormitories lay thick and close along the narrow corridor, all accommodation for the day was limited to two large and long rooms, one above the other, which fronted the lake. Of these, the lower one was given up to pedestrian travelers--the sturdy, sunburnt shooters of the moors, who arrive with weary limbs and voracious appetites, and question no accommodation which gives them food and shelter; while the upper one was the resort of ladies and family parties, and was furnished with a low balcony, now covered with a rough awning.

Both these rooms, on the day we mention, were filled with numerous guests. Touring was at its height, and shooting had begun; and, while a party of way-worn young men, coarsely clad and thickly shod, were lying on the benches, or lolling out of the windows of the lower apartment, a number of traveling parties were clustered in distinct groups in the room above; some lingering round their tea-tables, while others sat on the balcony, and seemed attentively watching the evolutions of a small boat, the sole object on the lake before them. It is pleasant to watch the actions, however insignificant they may be, of a distant group; to see the hand obey without hearing the voice that has bidden; to guess at their inward motives by their outward movements; to make theories of their intentions, and try to follow them out in their actions; and, as at a pantomime, to tell the drift of the piece by dumb show alone. And it is an idle practice, too, and one especially made for the weary or the listless traveler, giving them amusement without thought, and occupation without trouble; for people who have had their powers of attention fatigued by incessant exertion, or weakened by constant novelty, are glad to settle it upon the merest trifle at last. So the loungers on the balcony increased, and the little boat became a centre of general interest to those who apparently had not had one sympathy in common before. So calm and gliding was its motion, so refreshing the gentle air which played round it, that many an eye from the shore envied the party who were seated in it. These consisted of three individuals, two large figures and a little one.

"It is Captain H---- and his little boy," said one voice, breaking silence; "they arrived here yesterday."

"They'll be going to see the great waterfall," said another.

"They have best make haste about it; for they have a mile to walk up-hill when they land," said a third.

"Rather they than I," rejoined a languid fourth; and again there was a pause. Meanwhile the boat party seemed to be thinking little about the waterfall, or the need for expedition. For a few minutes the quick-glancing play of the oars was seen, and then they ceased again; and now an arm was stretched out toward some distant object in the landscape, as if asking a question; and then the little fellow pointed here and there, as if asking many questions at once, and, in short, the conjectures on the balcony were all thrown out. But now the oars had rested longer than usual, and a figure rose and stooped, and seemed occupied with something at the bottom of the boat. What were they about? They were surely not going to fish at this time of evening? No, they were not; for slowly a mast was raised, and a sail unfurled, which at first hung flapping, as if uncertain which side the wind would take it, and then gently swelled out to its full dimensions, and seemed too large a wing for so tiny a body. A slight air had arisen; the long reflected lines of colors, which every object on the shore dripped, as it were, into the lake, were gently stirred with a quivering motion; every soft strip of liquid tint broke gradually into a jagged and serrated edge; colors were mingled, forms were confused; the mountains, which lay in undiminished brightness above, seemed by some invisible agency to be losing their second selves from beneath them; long, cold white lines rose apparently from below, and spread radiating over all the liquid picture: in a few minutes, the lake lay one vast sheet of bright silver, and half the landscape was gone. The boat was no longer in the same element: before, it had floated in a soft, transparent ether; now, it glided upon a plain of ice.

"I wish they had stuck to their oars," said the full, deep voice of an elderly gentleman; "hoisting a sail on these lakes is very much like trusting to luck in life--it may go on all right for a while, and save you much trouble, but you are never sure that it won't give you the slip, and that when you are least prepared."

"No danger in the world, sir," said a young fop standing by, who knew as little about boating on Scotch lakes as he did of most things any where else. Meanwhile, the air had become chill, the sun had sunk behind the hills, and the boating party, tired, apparently, of their monotonous amusement, turned the boat's head toward shore. For some minutes they advanced with fuller and fuller bulging sail in the direction they sought, when suddenly the breeze seemed not so much to change as to be met by another and stronger current of air, which came pouring through the valley with a howling sound, and then, bursting on the lake, drove its waters in a furrow before it. The little boat started, and swerved like a frightened creature; and the sail, distended to its utmost, cowered down to the water's edge.

"Good God! why don't they lower that sail? Down with it! down with it!" shouted the same deep voice from the balcony, regardless of the impossibility of being heard. But the admonition was needless; the boatman, with quick, eager motions, was trying to lower it. Still it bent, fuller and fuller, lower and lower. The man evidently strained with desperate strength, defeating, perhaps, with the clumsiness of anxiety, the end in view; when, too impatient, apparently, to witness their urgent peril without lending his aid, the figure of Captain H---- rose up; in one instant a piercing scream was borne faintly to shore--the boat whelmed over, and all were in the water.

For a few dreadful seconds nothing was seen of the unhappy creatures; then a cap floated, and then two struggling figures rose to the surface. One was evidently the child, for his cap was off, and his fair hair was seen; the other head was covered. This latter buffeted the waters with all the violence of a helpless, drowning man; then he threw his arms above his head, sank, and rose no more. The boy struggled less and less, and seemed dead to all resistance before he sank, too. The boat floated keel upward, almost within reach of the sufferers; and now that the waters had closed over them, the third figure was observed, for the first time, at a considerable distance, slowly and laboriously swimming toward it, and in a few moments two arms were flung over it, and there he hung. It was one of those scenes which the heart quails to look on, yet which chains the spectator to the spot. The whole had passed in less than a minute: fear--despair--agony--and death, had been pressed into one of those short minutes, of which so many pass without our knowing how. It is well. Idleness, vanity, or vice--all that dismisses thought--may dally with time, but the briefest space is too long for that excess of consciousness where time seems to stand still.

At this moment a lovely and gentle-looking young woman entered the room. It was evident that she knew nothing of the dreadful scene that had just occurred, nor did she now remark the intense excitement which still riveted the spectators to the balcony; for, seeking, apparently, to avoid all intercourse with strangers, she had seated herself, with a book, on the chair farthest removed from the window. Nor did she look up at the first rush of hurried steps into the room; but, when she did, there was something which arrested her attention, for every eye was fixed upon her with an undefinable expression of horror, and every foot seemed to shrink back from approaching her. There was also a murmur as of one common and irrepressible feeling through the whole house; quick footsteps were heard as of men impelled by some dreadful anxiety; doors were banged; voices shouted; and, could any one have stood by a calm and indifferent spectator, it would have been interesting to mark the sudden change from the abstracted and composed look with which Mrs. H---- (for she it was) first raised her head from her book to the painful restlessness of inquiry with which she now glanced from eye to eye, and seemed to question what manner of tale they told.

It is something awful and dreadful to stand before a fellow-creature laden with a sorrow which, however we may commiserate it, it is theirs alone to bear; to be compelled to tear away that vail of unconsciousness which alone hides their misery from their sight; and to feel that the faintness gathering round our own heart alone enables theirs to continue beating with tranquillity. We feel less almost of pity for the suffering we are about to inflict than for the peace which we are about to remove; and the smile of unconsciousness which precedes the knowledge of evil is still more painful to look back upon than the bitterest tear that follows it. And, if such be the feelings of the messenger of heavy tidings, the mind that is to receive them is correspondingly actuated. For who is there that thanks you really for concealing the evil that was already arrived--for prolonging the happiness that was already gone? Who cares for a reprieve when sentence is still to follow? It is a pitiful soul that does not prefer the sorrow of certainty to the peace of deceit; or, rather, it is a blessed provision which enables us to acknowledge the preference when it is no longer in our power to choose. It seems intended as a protection to the mind from something so degrading to it as an unreal happiness, that both those who have to inflict misery and those who have to receive it should alike despise its solace. Those who have trod the very brink of a precipice, unknowing that it yawned beneath, look back to those moments of their ignorance with more of horror than of comfort; such security is too close to danger for the mind ever to separate them again. Nor need the bearer of sorrow embitter his errand by hesitations and scruples how to disclose it; he need not pause for a choice of words or form of statement. In no circumstance of life does the soul act so utterly independent of all outward agency; it waits for no explanation, wants no evidence; at the furthest idea of danger it flies at once to its weakest part; an embarrassed manner will rouse suspicions, and a faltered word confirm them. Dreadful things never require precision of terms--they are wholly guessed before they are half-told. Happiness the heart believes not in till it stands at our very threshold; misery it flies at as if eager to meet.

So it was with the unfortunate Mrs. H----; no one spoke of the accident, no one pointed to the lake; no connecting link seemed to exist between the security of ignorance and the agony of knowledge. At one moment she raised her head in placid indifference, at the next she knew that her husband and child were lying beneath the waters. And did she faint, or fall as one stricken? No: for the suspicion was too sudden to be sustained; and the next instant came the thought, This must be a dream; God can not have done it. And the eyes were closed, and the convulsed hands pressed tight over them, as if she would shut out mental vision as well; and groans and sobs burst from the crowd, and men dashed from the room, unable to bear it; and women, too, untrue to their calling. And there was weeping and wringing of hands, and one weak woman fainted; but still no sound or movement came from her on whom the burden had fallen. Then came the dreadful revulsion of feeling; and, with contracted brow and gasping breath, and voice pitched almost to a scream, she said, "It is not true--tell me--it is not true--tell me--tell me!" And, advancing with desperate gestures, she made for the balcony. All recoiled before her; when one gentle woman, small and delicate as herself, opposed her, and, with streaming eyes and trembling limbs, stood before her. "Oh, go not there--go not there! cast your heavy burden on the Lord!" These words broke the spell. Mrs. H---- uttered a cry which long rang in the ears of those that heard it, and sank, shivering and powerless, in the arms of the kind stranger.

Meanwhile, the dreadful scene had been witnessed from all parts of the hotel, and every male inmate poured from it. The listless tourist of fashion forgot his languor, the way-worn pedestrian his fatigue. The hill down to the lake was trodden by eager, hurrying figures, all anxious to give that which in such cases it is a relief to give, viz., active assistance. Nor were these all, for down came the sturdy shepherd from the hills; and the troops of ragged, bare-legged urchins from all sides; and distant figures of men and women were seen pressing forward to help or to hear; and the hitherto deserted-looking valley was active with life. Meanwhile, the survivor hung motionless over the upturned boat, borne about at the will of the waters, which were now lashed into great agitation. No one could tell whether it was Captain H---- or the Highland boatman, and no one could wish for the preservation of the one more than the other. For life is life to all; and the poor man's wife and family may have less time to mourn, but more cause to want. And before the boat, that was manning with eager volunteers, had left the shore, down came also a tall, raw-boned woman, breathless, more apparently with exertion than anxiety--her eyes dry as stones, and her cheeks red with settled color; one child dragging at her heels, another at her breast. It was the boatman's wife. Different, indeed, was her suspense to that of the sufferer who had been left above; but, perhaps, equally true to her capacity. With her it was fury rather than distress; she scolded the bystanders, chid the little squalling child, and abused her husband by turns.

"How dare he gang to risk his life, wi' six bairns at hame? Ae body knew nae sail was safe on the lake for twa hours thegether; mair fule he to try!" And then she flung the roaring child on to the grass, bade the other mind it, strode half-leg high into the water to help to push off the boat; and then, returning to a place where she could command a view of its movements, she took up the child and hushed it tenderly to sleep. Like her, every one now sought some elevated position, and the progress of the boat seemed to suspend every other thought. It soon neared the fatal spot, and in another minute was alongside the upturned boat; the figure was now lifted carefully in, something put round him, and, from the languor of his movements, and the care taken, the first impression on shore was that Captain H---- was the one spared. But it was a mercy to Mrs. H---- that she was not in a state to know these surmises; for soon the survivor sat steadily upright, worked his arms, and rubbed his head, as if to restore animation; and, long before the boat reached the shore, the coarse figure and garments of the Highland boatman were distantly recognized. Up started his wife. Unaccustomed to mental emotions of any sudden kind, they were strange and burdensome to her.

"What, Meggy! no stay to welcome your husband!" said a bystander.

"Walcome him yoursal!" she replied; "I hae no the time. I maun get his dry claes, and het his parritch; and that's the best walcome I can gie him." And so, perhaps, the husband thought, too.

And now, what was there more to do? The bodies of Captain H---- and his little son had sunk in seventy fathom deep of water. If, in their hidden currents and movements they cast their victims aloft to the surface, all well; if not, no human hand could reach them. There was nothing to do! Two beings had ceased to exist, who, as far as regarded the consciousness and sympathies of the whole party, had never existed at all before. There had been no influence upon them in their lives, there was no blank to them in their deaths. They had witnessed a dreadful tragedy; they knew that she who had risen that morning a happy wife and mother was now widowed and childless, with a weight of woe upon her, and a life of mourning before her; but there were no forms to observe, no rites to prepare; nothing necessarily to interfere with one habit of the day, or to change one plan for the morrow. It was only a matter of feeling; a great only, it is true; but, as with every thing in life, from the merest trifle to the most momentous occurrence, the matter varied with the individual who felt. All pitied, some sympathized, but few ventured to help. Some wished themselves a hundred miles off, because they could not help her; others wished the same, because she distressed them; and the solitary back room, hidden from all view of the lake, to which the sufferer had been home, after being visited by a few well-meaning or curious women, was finally deserted by all save the kind lady we have mentioned, and a good-natured maid-servant, the drudge of the hotel, who came in occasionally to assist.

We have told the tale exactly as it occurred; the reader knows both plot and conclusion: and now there only remains to say something of the ways of human sorrow, and something, too, of the ways of human goodness.

Grief falls differently on different hearts; some must vent it, others can not. The coldest will be the most unnerved, the tenderest the most possessed; there is no rule. As for this poor lady, hers was of that sudden and extreme kind for which insensibility is at first mercifully provided; and it came to her, and yet not entirely--suspending the sufferings of the mind, but not deadening all the sensation of the body; for she shivered and shuddered with that bloodless cold which kept her pale, numb, and icy, like one in the last hours before death. A large fire was lighted, warm blankets were wrapped round her, but the cold was too deep to be reached; and the kind efforts made to restore animation were more a relief to her attendants than to her. And yet Miss Campbell stopped sometimes from the chafing of the hands, and let those blue fingers lie motionless in hers, and looked up at that wan face with an expression as if she wished that the eyes might never open again, but that death might at once restore what it had just taken. For some hours no change ensued, and then it was gradual; the hands were withdrawn from those that held them, and first laid, and then clenched together; deep sighs of returning breath and returning knowledge broke from her; the wrappers were thrown off, first feebly, and then restlessly. There were no dramatic startings, no abrupt questionings; but, as blood came back to the veins, anguish came back to the heart. All the signs of excessive mental oppression now began, a sad train as they are, one extreme leading to the other. Before, there had been the powerlessness of exertion, now, there was the powerlessness of control; before she had been benumbed by insensibility, now, she was impelled as if bereft of sense. Like one distracted with intense bodily pain, her whole frame seemed strained to endure. The gentlest of voices whispered comfort, she heard not; the kindest of arms supported her, she rested not. There was the unvarying moan, the weary pacing, the repetition of the same action, the measurement of the same distance, the body vibrating as a mere machine to the restless recurrence of the same thought.

We have said that every outer sign of woe was there--all but that which great sorrows set flowing, but the greatest dry up--she shed no tears! Tears are things for which a preparation of the heart is needful; they are granted to anxiety for the future, or lament for the past. They flow with reminiscences of our own, or with the example of others; they are sent to separations we have long dreaded, and to disappointments we can not forget; they come when our hearts are softened, or when our hearts are wearied; but, in the first amazement of unlooked-for woe, they find no place: the cup that is suddenly whelmed over lets no drop of water escape.

It was evident, however, through all the unruliness of such distress, that the sufferer was a creature of gentle and considerate nature; in the whirlpool which convulsed every faculty of her mind, the smooth surface of former habits was occasionally thrown up. Though the hand which sought to support her was cast aside with a restless, excited movement, it was sought the next instant with a momentary pressure of contrition. Though the head was turned away one instant from the whisper of consolation with a gesture of impatience, yet it was bowed the next as if in entreaty of forgiveness. Poor creature! what effort she could make to allay the storm which was rioting within her was evidently made for the sake of those around. With so much and so suddenly to bear, she still showed the habit of forbearance.

Meanwhile night had far advanced; many had been the inquiries and expressions of sympathy made at Mrs. H----'s door; but now, one by one, the parties retired each to their rooms. Few, however, rested that night as usual; however differently the terrible picture might be carried on the mind during the hours of light, it forced itself with almost equal vividness upon all in those of darkness. The father struggling to reach the child, and then throwing up his arms in agony, and that fair little head borne about unresistingly by the waves before they covered it over--these were the figures which haunted many a pillow. Or, if the recollection of that scene was lulled for a while, it was recalled again by the weary sound of those footsteps which told of a mourner who rested not. Of course, among the number and medley of characters lying under that roof, there was the usual proportion of the selfish and the careless. None, however, slept that night without confessing, in word or thought, that life and death are in the hands of the Lord; and not all, it is to be hoped, forgot the lesson. One young man, in particular, possessed of fine intellectual powers, but which unfortunately had been developed among a people who, God help them! affect to believe only what they understand, was indebted to this day and night for a great change in his opinions. His heart was kind, though his understanding was perverted; and the thought of that young, lovely, and feeble woman, on whom a load of misery had fallen which would have crushed the strongest of his own sex, roused within him the strongest sense of the insufficiency of all human aid or human strength for beings who are framed to love and yet ordained to lose. He was oppressed with compassion, miserable with sympathy, he longed with all the generosity of a manly heart to do something, to suggest something, that should help her, or satisfy himself. But what were fortitude, philosophy, strength of mind? Mockeries, nay, more, imbecilities, which he dared not mention to her, nor so much as think of in the same thought with her woe. Either he must accuse the Power who had inflicted the wound, and so deep he had not sunk, or he must acknowledge His means of cure. Impelled, therefore, by a feeling equally beyond his doubting or his proving, he did that which for years German sophistry had taught him to forbear; he gave but little, but he felt that he gave his best--he _prayed_ for the suffering creature, and in the name of One who suffered for all, and from that hour God's grace forsook him not.

But the most characteristic sympathizer on the occasion was Sir Thomas ----, the fine old gentleman who had shouted so loudly from the balcony. He was at home in this valley, owned the whole range of hills on one side of the lake from their fertile bases to their bleak tops, took up his abode generally every summer in this hotel, and felt for the stricken woman as if she had been a guest of his own. Ever since the fatal accident he had gone about in a perfect fret of commiseration, inquiring every half-hour at her door how she was, or what she had taken. Severe bodily illness or intense mental distress had never fallen upon that bluff person and warm heart, and abstinence from food was in either case the proof of an extremity for which he had every compassion, but of which he had no knowledge. He prescribed, therefore, for the poor lady every thing that he would have relished himself, and nothing at that moment could have made him so happy as to have been allowed to send her up the choicest meal that the country could produce. Not that his benevolence was at all limited to such manifestations; if it did not deal in sentiment, it took the widest range of practice. His laborers were dispatched round the lake to watch for any traces of the late catastrophe; he himself kept up an hour later planning how he could best promote the comfort of her onward journey and of her present stay; and though the good old gentleman was now snoring loudly over the very apartment which contained the object of his sympathy, he would have laid down his life to save those that were gone, and half his fortune to solace her who was left.

Some hours had elapsed, the footsteps had ceased, there was quiet, if not rest, in the chamber of mourning; and, shortly after sunrise, a side door in the hotel opened, and she who had been as a sister to the stranger, never seen before, came slowly forth. She was worn with watching, her heart was sick with the sight and sounds of such woe, and she sought the refreshment of the outer air and the privacy of the early day. It was a dawn promising a day as beautiful as the preceding; the sun was beaming mildly through an opening toward the east, wakening the tops of the nearest hills, while all the rest of the beautiful range lay huge and colorless, nodding, as it were, to their drowsy reflections beneath, and the lake itself looked as calm and peaceful as if the winds had never swept over its waters, nor those waters over all that a wife and mother had loved. Man is such a speck on this creation of which he is lord, that had every human being now sleeping on the green sides of the hills, been lying deep among their dark feet in the lake, it would not have shown a ripple the more. Miss Campbell, meanwhile, wandered slowly on, and though apparently unmindful of the beauty of the scene, she was evidently soothed by its influence. All that dreary night long had she cried unto God in ceaseless prayer, and felt that without His help in her heart, and His word on her lips, she had been but as a strengthless babe before the sight of that anguish. But here beneath His own heavens her communings were freer; her soul seemed not so much to need Him below, as to rise to Him above; and the solemn dejection upon a very careworn, but sweet face, became less painful, but perhaps more touching. In her wanderings she had now left the hotel to her left hand, the boatman's clay cottage was just above, and below a little rough pier of stones, to an iron ring in one of which the boat was usually attached. She had stood on that self-same spot the day before and watched Captain H---- and his little son as they walked down to the pier, summoned the boatman, and launched into the cool, smooth water. She now went down herself, and stood with a feeling of awe upon the same stones they had so lately left. The shores were loose and shingly, many footsteps were there, but one particularly riveted her gaze. It was tiny in shape and light in print, and a whole succession of them went off toward the side as if following a butterfly, or attracted by a bright stone. Alas! they we're the last prints of that little foot on the shores of this world! Miss Campbell had seen the first thunderbolt of misery burst upon his mother; she had borne the sight of her as she lay stunned, and as she rose frenzied, but that tiny footprint was worse than all, and she burst into a passionate fit of tears. She felt as if it were desecration to sweep them away, as if she could have shrined them round from the winds and waves, and thoughtless tread of others; but a thought came to check her. What did it matter how the trace of his little foot, or how the memory of his short life were obliterated from this earth? There was One above who had numbered every hair of his innocent head, and in His presence she humbly hoped both father and child were now rejoicing.

She was just turning away when the sound of steps approached, and the boatman's wife came up. Her features were coarse and her frame was gaunt, as we have said, but she was no longer the termagant of the day before, nor was she ever so. But the lower classes, in the most civilized lands, are often, both in joy and grief, an enigma to those above them; if nature, rare alike in all ranks, speak not for them, they have no conventional imitation to put in her place. The feeling of intense suspense was new to her, and the violence she had assumed had been the awkwardness which, under many eyes, knew not otherwise how to express or, conceal; but she had sound Scotch sense, and a tender woman's heart, and spoke them both now truly, if not gracefully.

"Ye'll be frae the hotel, yonder?" she said; "can ye tell me how the puir leddy has rested? I was up mysel' to the house, and they tell't me they could hear her greeting!"

Miss Campbell told her in a few words what the reader knows, and asked for her husband.

"Oh! he's weel eneugh in body, but sair disquieted in mind. No that he's unmindfu' of the mercy of the Lord to himsel', but he can no just keep the thocht away that it was he wha helped those poor creatures to their end." She then proceeded earnestly to exculpate her husband, assuring Miss Campbell that in spite of the heavy wind and the entangled rope, all might even yet have been well if the gentleman had kept his seat. "But I just tell him that there's Ane above, stronger than the wind, who sunk them in the lake, and could have raised them from it, but it was no His pleasure. The puir leddy would ha' been nane the happier if Andrew had been ta'en as well, and I and the bairns muckle the waur." Then observing where Miss Campbell stood, she continued, in a voice of much emotion, "Ah! I mind them weel as they came awa' down here; the bairnie was playing by as Andrew loosened the boat--the sweet bairnie! so happy and thochtless as he gaed in his beautiful claes--I see him noo!" and the poor woman wiped her eyes. "But there's something ye'll like to see. Jeanie! gang awa' up, and bring the little bonnet that hangs on the peg. Andrew went out again with the boat the night, and picked it up. But it will no be dry."

The child returned with a sad token. It was the little fellow's cap; a smart, town-made article, with velvet band, and long silk tassel which had been his first vanity, and his mother had coaxed it smooth as she pulled the peak low down over his fair forehead, and then, fumbling his little fingers into his gloves, had given him a kiss which she little thought was to be the last!

"I was coming awa' up wi' it mysel', but the leddy will no just bear to see it yet."

"No, not yet," said Miss Campbell, "if ever. Let me take it. I shall remain with her till better friends come here, or she goes to them;" and giving the woman money, which she had difficulty in making her accept, she possessed herself of the cap, and turned away.

She soon reached the hotel, it was just five o'clock, all blinds were down, and there was no sign of life; but one figure was pacing up and down, and seemed to be watching for her. It was Sir Thomas. His sympathy had broken his sleep in the morning, though it had not disturbed it at night. He began in his abrupt way:

"Madam, I have been watching for you. I heard you leave the house. Madam, I feel almost ashamed to lift up my eyes to you; while we have all been wishing and talking, you alone have been acting. We are all obliged to you, madam; there is not a creature here with a heart in them to whom you have not given comfort!"

Miss Campbell tried to escape from the honest overflowings of the old man's feelings.

"You have only done what you liked: very true, madam. It is choking work having to pity without knowing how to help; but I would sooner give ten thousand pounds than see what you have seen. I would do any thing for the poor creature, any thing, but I could not look at her." He then told her that his men had been sent with the earliest dawn to different points of the lake, but as yet without finding any traces of the late fatal accident; and then his eyes fell upon the cap in Miss Campbell's hand, and he at once guessed the history. "Picked up last evening, you say--sad, sad--a dreadful thing!" and his eyes filling more than it was convenient to hold, he turned away, blew his nose, took a short turn, and coming back again, continued, "But tell me, how has she rested? what has she taken? You must not let her weep too much!"

"Let her weep!" said Miss Campbell; "I wish I could bid her. She has not shed a tear yet, and mind and body alike want it. I left her lying back quiet in an arm-chair, but I fear this quiet is worse than what has gone before!"

"God bless my heart!" said Sir Thomas, his eyes now running over without control. "God bless my heart! this is sad work. Not that I ever wished a woman to cry before in my life, if she could help it. Poor thing! poor thing! I'll send for a medical man: the nearest is fifteen miles off!"

"I think it will be necessary. I am now going back to her room."

"Well, ma'am, I won't detain you longer, but don't keep all the good to yourself. Let me know if there is any thing that I, or my men, or," the old gentleman hesitated, "my money, madam, can do, only don't ask me to see her;" and so they each went their way--Sir Thomas to the stables to send off man and horse, and Miss Campbell to the chamber of mourning.

She started as she entered; the blind was drawn up, and, leaning against the shutter, in apparent composure, stood Mrs. H----. That composure was dreadful; it was the calm of intense agitation, the silence of boiling heat, the immovability of an object in the most rapid motion. The light was full upon her, showing cheek and forehead flushed, and veins bursting on the small hands. Miss Campbell approached with trembling limbs.

"Where is the servant?"--"I did not want her."

"Will you not rest?"--"I _can not_!"

Miss Campbell was weary and worn out; the picture before her was so terrible, she sunk on the nearest chair in an agony of tears.

Without changing her position, Mrs. H---- turned her head, and said, gently, "Oh, do not cry so! it is I who ought to cry, but my heart is as dry as my eyes, and my head is so tight, and I can not think for its aching; I can not think, I can not understand, I can not remember, I don't even know your name, then why should this be true? It is I who am ill, they are well, but they never were so long from me before." Then coming forward, her face working, and her breath held tightly, as if a scream were pressing behind, "Tell me," she said, "tell me--my husband and child--" she tried hard to articulate, but the words were lost in a frightful contortion. Miss Campbell mastered herself, she saw the rack of mental torture was strained to the utmost. Neither could bear this much longer. She almost feared resistance, but she felt there was one way to which the sufferer would respond.

"I am weary and tired," she said; "weary with staying up with you all night. If you will lie down, I will soon come and lie by your side."

Poor Mrs. H---- said nothing, but let herself be laid upon the bed.

Three mortal hours passed, she was burnt with a fever which only her own tears could quench; and those wide-open, dry eyes were fearful to see. A knock came to the door, "How is she now?" said Sir Thomas's voice, "The doctor is here: you look as if you wanted him yourself. I'll bring him up."

The medical man entered. Such a case had not occurred in his small country practice before, but he was a sensible and a kind man, and no practice could have helped him here if he had not been. He heard the whole sad history, felt the throbbing pulse, saw the flush on the face, and wide-open eyes, which now seemed scarcely to notice any thing. He took Miss Campbell into another room, and said that the patient must be instantly roused, and then bled if necessary.

"But the first you can undertake better than I, madam." He looked round. "Is there no little object which would recall?--nothing you could bring before her sight? You understand me?"

Indeed, Miss Campbell did. She had not sat by that bed-side for the last three hours without feeling and fearing that this was necessary; but, at the same time, she would rather have cut off her own hand than undertaken it. She hesitated--but for a moment, and then whispered something to Sir Thomas.

"God bless my heart!" said he: "who would have thought of it? Yes. I know it made me cry like a child."

And then he repeated her proposition to the medical man, who gave immediate assent, and she left the room. In a few minutes she entered that of Mrs. H---- with the little boy's cap in her hand, placed it in a conspicuous position before the bed, and then seated herself with a quick, nervous motion by the bed-side. It was a horrid pause, like that which precedes a cruel operation, where you have taken upon yourself the second degree of suffering--that of witnessing it. The cap lay there on the small stone mantle-piece, with its long, drabbled, weeping tassel, like a funeral emblem. It was not many minutes before it caught those eyes for which it was intended. A suppressed exclamation broke from her; she flew from the bed, looked at Miss Campbell one instant in intense inquiry, and the next had the cap in her hands. The touch of that wet object seemed to dissolve the spell; her whole frame trembled with sudden relaxation. She sank, half-kneeling, on the floor, and tears spouted from her eyes. No blessed rain from heaven to famished earth was ever more welcome. Tears, did we say? Torrents! Those eyes, late so hot and dry, were as two arteries of the soul suddenly opened. What a misery that had been which had sealed them up! They streamed over her face, blinding her riveted gaze, falling on her hands, on the cap, on the floor. Meanwhile the much-to-be-pitied sharer of her sorrow knelt by her side, her whole frame scarcely less unnerved than that she sought to support, uttering broken ejaculations and prayers, and joining her tears to those which flowed so passionately. But she had a gentle and meek spirit to deal with. Mrs. H---- crossed her hands over the cap and bowed her head. Thus she continued a minute, and then turning, still on her knees, she laid her head on her companion's shoulder.

"Help me up," she said, "for I am without strength." And all weak, trembling, and sobbing, she allowed herself to be undressed and put to bed.

Miss Campbell lay down in the same room. She listened till the quivering, catching sobs had given place to deep-drawn sighs, and these again to disturbed breathings, and then both slept the sleep of utter exhaustion, and Miss Campbell, fortunately, knew not when the mourner awoke from it.

Oh, the dreary first-fruits of excessive sorrow! The first days of a stricken heart, passed through, writhed through, ground through, we scarcely know or remember how, before the knowledge of the bereavement has become habitual--while it is still struggle and not endurance--the same ceaseless recoil from the same ever-recurring shock. It was a blessing that she was ill, very ill; the body shared something of the weight at first.

Let no one, untried by such extremity, here lift the word or look of deprecation. Let there not be a thought of what she ought to have done, or what they would have done. God's love is great, and a Christian's faith is strong, but when have the first encounters between old joys and new sorrows been otherwise than fierce? From time to time a few intervals of heavenly composure, wonderful and gracious to the sufferer, may be permitted, and even the dim light of future peace discerned in the distance; but, in a moment, the gauntlet of defiance is thrown again--no matter what--an old look, an old word, which comes rushing unbidden over the soul, and dreadful feelings rise again only to spend themselves by their own violence. It always seems to us as if sorrow had a nature of its own, independent of that whereon it has fallen, and sometimes strangely at variance with it--scorching the gentle, melting the passionate, dignifying the weak, and prostrating the strong--and showing the real nature, habits, or principles of the mind, only in those defenses it raises up during the intervals of relief. With Mrs. H---- these defenses were reared on the only sure base, and though the storm would sweep down her bulwarks, and cover all over with the furious tide of grief, yet the foundation was left to cling to, and every renewal added somewhat to its strength.

Three days were spent thus, but the fourth she was better, and on Miss Campbell's approaching her bed-side, she drew her to her, and, putting her arms round her neck, imprinted a calm and solemn kiss upon her cheek.

"Oh! what can I ever do for you, dear friend and comforter? God, who has sent you to me in my utmost need, He alone can reward you. I don't even know your name; but that matters not, I know your heart. Now, you may tell me all--all; before, I felt as if I could neither know nor forget what had happened, before, it was as if God had withdrawn His countenance; but now He is gracious, He has heard your prayers."

And then, with the avidity of fresh, hungry sorrow, she besought Miss Campbell to tell her all she knew; she besought and would not be denied, for sorrow has royal authority, its requests are commands. So, with the hand of each locked together, and the eyes of each averted, they sat questioning and answering in disjointed sentences till the whole sad tale was told. Then, anxious to turn a subject which could not be banished, Miss Campbell spoke of the many hearts that had bled, and the many prayers that had ascended for her, and told her of that kind old man who had thought, acted, and grieved for her like a father.

"God bless him--God bless them all; but chiefly you, my sister. I want no other name."

"Call me Catherine," said the faithful companion.

Passionate bursts of grief would succeed such conversations; nevertheless, they were renewed again and again, for, like all sufferers from severe bereavements, her heart needed to create a world for itself, where its loved ones still were, as a defense against that outer one where they were not, and to which she was only slowly and painfully to be inured, if ever. In these times she would love to tell Catherine--what Catherine most loved to hear--how that her lost husband was both a believer and a doer of Christ's holy word, and that her lost child had learned at her knee what she herself had chiefly learned from his father. For she had been brought up in ignorance and indifference to religious truths, and the greatest happiness of her life had commenced that knowledge, which its greatest sorrow was now to complete.

"I have been such a happy woman," she would say, "that I have pitied others less blessed, though I trust they have not envied me." And then would follow sigh on sigh and tear on tear, and again her soul writhed beneath the agony of that implacable mental spasm.

Sometimes the mourner would appear to lose, instead of gaining ground, and would own with depression, and even with shame, her fear that she was becoming more and more the sport of ungovernable feeling. "My sorrow is sharp enough," she would say, "but it is a still sharper pang when I feel I am not doing my duty under it. It is not thus that _he_ would have had me act." And her kind companion, always at hand to give sympathy or comfort, would bid her not exact or expect any thing from herself, but to cast all upon God, reminding her in words of tenderness that her soul was as a sick child, and that strength would not be required until strength was vouchsafed. "Strength," said the mourner, "no more strength or health for me." And Miss Campbell would whisper that, though "weariness endureth for a night, joy comes in the morning." Or she would be silent, for she knew, as most women do, alike how to soothe and when to humor.

It was a beautiful and a moving sight to see two beings thus riveted together in the exercise and receipt of the tenderest and most intimate feelings, who had never known of each other's existence till the moment that made the one dependent and the other indispensable. All the shades and grades of conventional and natural acquaintanceship, all the gradual insight into mutual character, and the gradual growth into mutual trust, which it is so sweet to look back upon from the high ground of friendship, were lost to them; but it mattered not, here they were together, the one admitted into the sanctuary of sorrow, the other sharing in the fullness of love, with no reminiscence in common but one, and that sufficient to bind them together for life.

Meanwhile the friend without was also unremitting in his way. He crossed not her threshold in person, nor would have done so for the world, but his thoughts were always reaching Mrs. H---- in some kind form. Every delicate dainty that money could procure--beautiful fruits and flowers which had scarce entered this valley before--every thing that could tempt the languid appetite or divert the weary eye was in turn thought of, and each handed in with a kind, hearty inquiry, till the mourner listened with pleasure for the step and voice. Nor was Miss Campbell forgotten; all the brief snatches of air and exercise she enjoyed were in his company, and often did he insist on her coming out for a short walk or drive when the persuasions of Mrs. H---- had failed to induce her to leave a room where she was the only joy. But now a fresh object attracted Sir Thomas's activity, for after many days the earthly remains of one of the sufferers were thrown up. It was the body of the little boy. Sir Thomas directed all that was necessary to be done, and having informed Miss Campbell, the two friends, each strange to the other, and bound together by the interest in one equally strange to both, went out together up the hill above the hotel, and were gone longer than usual. The next day the intelligence was communicated to Mrs. H----, who received it calmly, but added, "I could have wished them both to have rested together; but God's will be done. I ought not to think of them as on earth."

The grave of little Harry H---- was dug far from the burial-ground of his fathers, and strangers followed him to it; but though there were no familiar faces among those who stood round, there were no cold ones; and when Sir Thomas, as chief mourner, threw the earth upon the lowered coffin, warm tears fell upon it also. Miss Campbell had watched the procession from the window, and told how the good old man walked next behind the minister, the boatman and his wife following him, and how a long train succeeded, all pious and reverential in their bearing, with that air of manly decorum which the Scotch peasantry conspicuously show on such occasions. And she who lay on a bed of sorrow and weakness blessed them through her tears, and felt that her child's funeral was not lonely.

From this time the mourner visibly mended. The funeral and the intelligence that preceded it had insensibly given her that change of the same theme, the want of which had been so much felt at first. She had now taken up her burden, and, for the dear sakes of those for whom she bore it, it became almost sweet to her. She was not worshiping her sorrow as an idol, but cherishing it as a friend. Meanwhile she had received many kind visits from the minister who had buried her child, and had listened to his exhortations with humility and gratitude; but his words were felt as admonitions, Catherine's as comfort. To her, now dearer and dearer, every day she would confess aloud the secret changes of her heart; how at one time the world looked all black and dreary before her, how at another she seemed already to live in a brighter one beyond; how one day life was a burden she knew not how to bear, and another how the bitterness of death seemed already past. Then with true Christian politeness she would lament over the selfishness of her grief, and ask where Miss Campbell had learned to know that feeling which she felt henceforth was to be the only solace of her life--viz., the deep, deep sympathy for others. And Catherine would tell her, with that care-worn look which confirmed all she said, how she had been sorely tried, not by the death of those she loved, but by what was worse--their sufferings and their sins. How she had been laden with those misfortunes which wound most and teach least, and which, although coming equally from the hand of God, torment you with the idea that, but for the wickedness or weakness of some human agent, they need never have been; till she had felt, wrongly no doubt, that she could have better borne those on which the stamp of the Divine Will was more legibly impressed. She told her how the sting of sorrow, like that of death, is sin; how comparatively light it was to see those you love dead, dying, crippled, maniacs, victims, in short, of any evil, rather than victims of evil itself. She spoke of a heart-broken sister and a hard-hearted brother; of a son--an only one, like him just buried--who had gone on from sin to sin, hardening his own heart, and wringing those of others, till none but a mother's love remained to him, and that he outraged. She told, in short, so much of the sad realities of life, in which, if there was not more woe, there was less comfort, that Mrs. H---- acknowledged in her heart that such griefs had indeed been unendurable, and returned with something like comfort to the undisturbed sanctity of her own.

About this time a summons came which required Sir Thomas to quit the valley in which these scenes had been occurring. Mrs. H---- could have seen him, and almost longed to see him; but he shrunk from her, fearing no longer her sorrow so much as her gratitude.

"Tell her I love her," he said, in his abrupt way, "and always shall; but I can't see her--at least, not yet." Then, explaining to Miss Campbell all the little arrangements for the continuation of the mourner's comfort, which his absence might interrupt, he authorized her to dispose of his servants, his horses, and every thing that belonged to him, and finally put into her hands a small packet, directed to Mrs. H----, with instructions when to give it. He had ascertained that Mrs. H---- was wealthy, and that her great afflictions entailed no minor privations. "But you, my dear, are poor; at least, I hope so, for I could not be happy unless I were of service to you. I am just as much obliged to you as Mrs. H---- is. Mind, you have promised to write to me and to apply to me without reserve. No kindness, no honor--nonsense. It is _I_ who honor _you_ above every creature I know, but I would not be a woman for the world; at least, the truth is, I _could_ not." And so he turned hastily away.

And now the time approached when she, who had entered this valley a happy wife and mother, was to leave it widowed and childless, a sorrowing and heavy-hearted woman, but not an unhappy one. She had but few near relations, and those scattered in distant lands; but there were friends who would break the first desolation of her former home, and Catherine had promised to bear her company till she had committed her into their hands.

It was a lovely evening, the one before their departure. Mrs. H---- was clad for the first time in all that betokened her to be a mourner; but, as Catherine looked from the black habiliments to that pale face, she felt that there was the deepest mourning of all. Slowly the widow passed through that side-door we have mentioned, and stood once more under God's heaven. Neither had mentioned to the other the errand on which they were bound, but both felt that there was but one. Slowly and feebly she mounted the gentle slope, and often she stopped, for it was more than weakness or fatigue that made her breath fail. The way was beautiful, close to the rocky bed and leafy sides of that sweetest of all sweet things in the natural world, a Scotch burn. And now they turned, for the rich strip of grass, winding among bush and rock, which they had been following as a path, here spread itself out in a level shelf of turf, where the burn ran smoother, the bushes grew higher, and where the hill started upward again in bolder lines. Here there was a fresh-covered grave. The widow knelt by it, while Catherine stood back. Long was that head bowed, first in anguish, and then in submission, and then she turned her face toward the lake, on which she had not looked since that fatal day, and gazed steadily upon it. The child lay in his narrow bed at her feet, but the father had a wider one far beneath. Catherine now approached and was folded in a silent embrace; then she gave her that small packet which Sir Thomas had left, and begged her to open it on the spot. It was a legal deed, making over to Mary H----, in free gift, the ground on which she stood--a broad strip from the tip of the hill to the waters of the lake. The widow's tears rained fast upon it.

"Both God and man are very good to me," she said; "I am lonely but not forsaken. But, Catherine, it is you to whom I must speak. I have tried to speak before, but never felt I could till now. Oh, Catherine! stay with me; let us never be parted. God gave you to me when He took all else beside; He has not done it for naught. I can bear to return to my lonely home if you will share it--I can bear to see this valley, this grave again, if you are with me. I am not afraid of tying your cheerfulness to my sorrow; I feel that I am under a calamity, but I feel also that I am under no curse--you will help to make it a blessing. Oh! complete your sacred work, give me years to requite to you your last few days to me. You have none who need you more--none who love you more. Oh! follow me; here, on my child's grave, I humbly entreat you, follow me."

Catherine trembled; she stood silent a minute, and then, with a low, firm voice, replied, "Here, on your child's grave, I promise you. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God." She kept her promise and never repented it.

LIFE OF BLAKE, THE GREAT ADMIRAL.

Robert Blake was born at Bridgewater, in August, 1599. His father, Humphrey Blake, was a merchant trading with Spain--a man whose temper seems to have been too sanguine and adventurous for the ordinary action of trade, finally involving him in difficulties which clouded his latter days, and left his family in straitened circumstances: his name, however, was held in general respect; and we find that he lived in one of the best houses in Bridgewater, and twice filled the chair of its chief magistrate. The perils to which mercantile enterprise was then liable--the chance escapes and valorous deeds which the successful adventurer had to tell his friends and children on the dark winter nights--doubtless formed a part of the food on which the imagination of young Blake, "silent and thoughtful from his childhood," was fed in the "old house at home." At the Bridgewater grammar-school, Robert received his early education, making tolerable acquaintance with Latin and Greek, and acquiring a strong bias toward a literary life. This _penchant_ was confirmed by his subsequent career at Oxford, where he matriculated at sixteen, and where he strove hard, but fruitlessly, for scholarships and fellowships at different colleges. His failure to obtain a Merton fellowship has been attributed to a crotchet of the warden's, Sir Henry Savile, in favor of tall men: "The young Somersetshire student, thick-set, fair-complexioned, and only five feet six, fell below his standard of manly beauty;" and thus the Cavalier warden, in denying this aspirant the means of cultivating literature on a little university oatmeal, was turning back on the world one who was fated to become a republican power of the age. This shining light, instead of comfortably and obscurely merging in a petty constellation of Alma Mater, was to become a bright particular star, and dwell apart. The avowed liberalism of Robert may, however, have done more in reality to shock Sir Henry, than his inability to add a cubit to his stature. It is pleasant to know, that the "admiral and general at sea" never outgrew a tenderness for literature--his first-love, despite the rebuff of his advances. Even in the busiest turmoil of a life teeming with accidents by flood and field, he made it a point of pride not to forget his favorite classics. Nor was it till after nine years' experience of college-life, and when his father was no longer able to manage his _res angusta vitæ_, that Robert finally abandoned his long-cherished plans, and retired with a sigh and last adieu from the banks of the Isis.

When he returned to Bridgewater, in time to close his father's eyes, and superintend the arrangements of the family, he was already remarkable for that "iron will, that grave demeanor, that free and dauntless spirit," which so distinguished his after-course. His tastes were simple, his manners somewhat bluntly austere; a refined dignity of countenance, and a picturesque vigor of conversation, invested him with a social interest, to which his indignant invectives against court corruptions gave distinctive character. To the Short Parliament he was sent as member for his native town; and in 1645, was returned by Taunton to the Long Parliament. At the dissolution of the former, which he regarded as a signal for action, he began to prepare arms against the king; his being one of the first troops in the field, and engaged in almost every action of importance in the western counties. His superiority to the men about him lay in the "marvelous fertility, energy, and comprehensiveness of his military genius." Prince Rupert alone, in the Royalist camp, could rival him as a "partisan soldier." His first distinguished exploit was his defense of Prior's Hill fort, at the siege of Bristol--which contrasts so remarkably with the pusillanimity of his chief, Colonel Fiennes. Next comes his yet more brilliant defense of Lyme--then a little fishing-town, with some 900 inhabitants, of which the defenses were a dry ditch, a few hastily-formed earth-works, and three small batteries, but which the Cavalier host of Prince Maurice, trying storm, stratagem, blockade, day after day, and week after week, failed to reduce or dishearten. "At Oxford, where Charles then was, the affair was an inexplicable marvel and mystery: every hour the court expected to hear that the 'little vile fishing-town,' as Clarendon contemptuously calls it, had fallen, and that Maurice had marched away to enterprises of greater moment; but every post brought word to the wondering council, that Colonel Blake still held out, and that his spirited defense was rousing and rallying the dispersed adherents of Parliament in those parts." After the siege was raised, the Royalists found that more men of gentle blood had fallen under Blake's fire at Lyme, than in all other sieges and skirmishes in the western counties since the opening of the war.

The hero's fame had become a spell in the west: it was seen that he rivaled Rupert in rapid and brilliant execution, and excelled him in the caution and sagacity of his plans. He took Taunton--a place so important at that juncture, as standing on and controlling the great western highway--in July, 1644, within a week of Cromwell's defeat of Rupert at Marston Moor. All the vigor of the Royalists was brought to bear on the captured town; Blake's defense of which is justly characterized as abounding with deeds of individual heroism--exhibiting in its master-mind a rare combination of civil and military genius. The spectacle of an unwalled town, in an inland district, with no single advantage of site, surrounded by powerful castles and garrisons, and invested by an enemy brave, watchful, numerous, and well provided with artillery, successively resisting storm, strait, and blockade for several months, thus paralyzing the king's power, and affording Cromwell time to remodel the army, naturally arrested the attention of military writers at that time; and French authors of this class bestowed on Taunton the name of the modern Saguntum. The rage of the Royalists at this prolonged resistance was extreme. Reckoning from the date when Blake first seized the town, to that of Goring's final retreat, the defense lasted exactly a year, and under circumstances of almost overwhelming difficulty to the besieged party, who, in addition to the fatigue of nightly watches, and the destruction of daily conflicts, suffered from terrible scarcity of provisions. "Not a day passed without a fire; sometimes eight or ten houses were burning at the same moment; and in the midst of all the fear, horror, and confusion incident to such disasters, Blake and his little garrison had to meet the storming-parties of an enemy brave, exasperated, and ten times their own strength. But every inch of ground was gallantly defended. A broad belt of ruined cottages and gardens was gradually formed between the besiegers and the besieged; and on the heaps of broken walls and burnt rafters, the obstinate contest was renewed from day to day." At last relief arrived from London; and Goring, in savage dudgeon, beat a retreat, notwithstanding the wild oath he had registered, either to reduce that haughty town, or to lay his bones in its trenches.

Blake was now the observed of all observers; but, unlike most of his compeers, he abstained from using his advantages for purposes of selfish or personal aggrandizement. He kept aloof from the "centre of intrigues," and remained at his post, "doing his duty humbly and faithfully at a distance from Westminster; while other men, with less than half his claims, were asking and obtaining the highest honors and rewards from a grateful and lavish country." Nor, indeed, did he at any time side with the ultras of his party, but loudly disapproved of the policy of the regicides. This, coupled with his influence, so greatly deserved and so deservedly great, made him an object of jealousy with Cromwell and his party; and it was owing, perhaps, to their anxiety to keep him removed from the home sphere of action, that he was now appointed to the chief naval command.

Hitherto, and for years afterward, no state, ancient or modern, as Macaulay points out, had made a separation between the military and the naval service. Cimon and Lysander, Pompey and Agrippa, had fought by sea as well as by land: at Flodden, the right wing of the English was led by her admiral, and the French admiral led the Huguenots at Jarnac, &c. Accordingly, Blake was summoned from his pacific government at Taunton, to assume the post of "General and Admiral at Sea;" a title afterward changed to "General of the Fleet." Two others were associated with him in the command; but Blake seems at _least_ to have been recognized as _primus inter pares_. The navy system was in deplorable need of reform; and a reformer it found in Robert Blake, from the very day he became an admiral. His care for the well-being of his men made him an object of their almost adoring attachment. From first to last, he stood alone as England's model seaman. "Envy, hatred, and jealousy dogged the steps of every other officer in the fleet; but of him, both then and afterward, every man spoke well." The "tremendous powers" intrusted to him by the Council of State, he exercised with off-handed and masterly success--startling politicians and officials of the _ancien régime_, by his bold and open tactics, and his contempt for tortuous by-paths in diplomacy. His wondrous exploits were performed with extreme poverty of means. He was the first to repudiate and disprove the supposed fundamental maxim in marine warfare, that no ship could attack a castle, or other strong fortification, with any hope of success. The early part of his naval career was occupied in opposing and defeating the piratical performances of Prince Rupert, which then constituted the support of the exiled Stuarts. Blake's utmost vigilance and activity were required to put down this extraordinary system of freebooting; and by the time that he had successively overcome Rupert, and the minor but stubborn adventurers, Grenville and Carteret, he was in request to conduct the formidable war with Holland, and to cope with such veterans as Tromp, De Witt, De Ruyter, &c.

On one occasion only did Blake suffer ever a defeat; and this one is easily explained by--first, Tromp's overwhelming superiority of force; secondly, the extreme deficiency of men in the English fleet; and, thirdly, the cowardice or disaffection of several of Blake's captains at a critical moment in the battle. Notwithstanding this disaster, not a whisper was heard against the admiral either in the Council of State or in the city; his offer to resign was flatteringly rejected; and he soon found, that the "misfortune which might have ruined another man, had given him strength and influence in the country." This disaster, in fact, gave him power to effect reforms in the service, and to root out abuses which had defied all his efforts in the day of his success. He followed it up by the great battle of Portland, and other triumphant engagements.

Then came his sweeping _tours de force_ in the Mediterranean; in six months he established himself as a power in that great midland sea, from which his countrymen had been politically excluded since the age of the Crusades--teaching nations, to which England's very name was a strange sound, to respect its honors and its rights; chastising the pirates of Barbary with unprecedented severity; making Italy's petty princes feel the power of the northern Protestants; causing the pope himself to tremble on his seven hills; and startling the council-chambers of Venice and Constantinople with the distant echoes of our guns. And be it remembered, that England had then no Malta, Corfu, and Gibraltar as the bases of naval operations in the Mediterranean: on the contrary, Blake found that in almost every gulf and island of that sea--in Malta, Venice, Genoa, Leghorn, Algiers, Tunis, and Marseilles--there existed a rival and an enemy; nor were there more than three or four harbors in which he could obtain even bread for love or money.

After this memorable cruise, he had to conduct the Spanish war--a business quite to his mind; for though his highest renown had been gained in his conflicts with the Dutch, he had secretly disliked such encounters between two Protestant states; whereas, in the case of Popish Spain, his soul leaped at the anticipation of battle--sympathizing as he did with the Puritan conviction, that Spain was the devil's stronghold in Europe. At this period, Blake was suffering from illness, and was sadly crippled in his naval equipments, having to complain constantly of the neglect at home to remedy the exigencies of the service. "Our ships," he writes, "extremely foul, winter drawing on, our victuals expiring, all stores failing, our men falling sick through the badness of drink, and eating their victuals boiled in salt water for two months' space" (1655). His own constitution was thoroughly undermined. For nearly a year, remarks his biographer, "he had never quitted the 'foul and defective' flag-ship. Want of exercise and sweet food, beer, wine, water, bread, and vegetables, had helped to develop scurvy and dropsy; and his sufferings from these diseases were now acute and continuous." But his services were indispensable, and Blake was not the man to shrink from dying in harness. His sun set gloriously at Santa Cruz--that miraculous and unparalleled action, as Clarendon calls it, which excited such grateful enthusiasm at home. At home! words of fascination to the maimed and enfeebled veteran, who now turned his thoughts so anxiously toward the green hills of his native land. Cromwell's letter of thanks, the plaudits of parliament, and the jeweled ring sent to him by his loving countrymen, reached him while homeward bound. But he was not again to tread the shores he had defended so well.

As the ships rolled through the Bay of Biscay, his sickness increased, and affectionate adherents saw with dismay that he was drawing near to the gates of the grave. "Some gleams of the old spirit broke forth as they approached the latitude of England. He inquired often and anxiously if the white cliffs were yet in sight. He longed to behold once more the swelling downs, the free cities, the goodly churches of his native land.... At last, the Lizard was announced. Shortly afterward, the bold cliffs and bare hills of Cornwall loomed out grandly in the distance. But it was too late for the dying hero. He had sent for the captains and other great officers of his fleet, to bid them farewell; and while they were yet in his cabin, the undulating hills of Devonshire, glowing with the tints of early autumn, came full in view.... But the eyes which had so yearned to behold this scene once more were at that very instant closing in death. Foremost of the victorious squadron, the _St. George_ rode with its precious burden into the Sound; and just as it came into full view of the eager thousands crowding the beach, the pier-heads, the walls of the citadel, &c, ready to catch the first glimpse of the hero of Santa Cruz, and salute him with a true English welcome--he, in his silent cabin, in the midst of his lion-hearted comrades, now sobbing like little children, yielded up his soul to God."

The corpse was embalmed, and conveyed to Greenwich, where it lay in state for some days. On the 4th of September, 1657, the Thames bore a solemn funeral procession, which moved slowly, amid salvos of artillery, to Westminster, where a new vault had been prepared in the noble abbey. The tears of a nation made it hallowed ground. A prince, of whom the epigram declares that, if he never said a foolish thing, he never did a wise one--saw fit to disturb the hero's grave, drag out the embalmed body, and cast it into a pit in the abbey-yard. One of Charles Stuart's most witless performances! For Blake is not to be confounded--though the Merry Monarch thought otherwise--with the Iretons and Bradshaws who were similarly exhumed. The admiral was a moderate in the closest, a patriot in the widest sense.

In the chivalric disposition of the man, there was true affinity to the best qualities of the Cavalier, mingled sometimes with a certain grim humor, all his own. Many are the illustrations we might adduce of this high-minded and generous temperament. For instance: meeting a French frigate of forty guns in the Straits, and signaling for the captain to come on board his flag-ship, the latter, considering the visit one of friendship and ceremony, there being no _declared_ war between the two nations--though the French conduct at Toulon had determined England on measures of retaliation--readily complied with Blake's summons; but was astounded on entering the admiral's cabin, at being told he was a prisoner, and requested to give up his sword. No! was the surprised but resolute Frenchman's reply. Blake felt that an advantage had been gained by a misconception, and scorning to make a brave officer its victim, he told his guest he might go back to his ship, if he wished, and fight it out as long as he was able. The captain, we are told, thanked him for his handsome offer, and retired. After two hours' hard fighting, he struck his flag; like a true French knight, he made a low bow, kissed his sword affectionately, and delivered it to his conqueror. Again: when Blake captured the Dutch herring-fleet off Bochness, consisting of 600 boats, instead of destroying or appropriating them, he merely took a tithe of the whole freight, in merciful consideration toward the poor families whose entire capital and means of life it constituted. This "characteristic act of clemency" was censured by many as Quixotic, and worse. But "Blake took no trouble to justify his noble instincts against such critics. His was indeed a happy fate: the only fault ever advanced by friend or foe against his public life, was an excess of generosity toward his vanquished enemies!" His sense of the comic is amusingly evidenced by the story of his _ruse_ during a dearth in the same siege. Tradition reports, that only one animal, a hog, was left alive in the town, and that more than half starved. In the afternoon, Blake, feeling that in their depression a laugh would do the defenders as much good as a dinner, had the hog carried to all the posts and whipped, so that its screams, heard in many places, might make the enemy suppose that fresh supplies had somehow been obtained.

The moral aspects of his character appear in this memoir in an admirable light. If he did not stand so high as some others in public notoriety, it was mainly because, to stand higher than he did, he must plant his feet on a _bad_ eminence. His patriotism was as pure as Cromwell's was selfish. Mr. Dixon, his biographer, alludes to the strong points of contrast, as well as of resemblance between the two men. Both, he says, were sincerely religious, undauntedly brave, fertile in expedients, irresistible in action. Born in the same year, they began and almost closed their lives at the same time. Both were country gentlemen of moderate fortune; both were of middle age when the revolution came. Without previous knowledge or professional training, both attained to the highest honors of their respective services. But there the parallel ends. Anxious only for the glory and interest of his country, Blake took little or no care of his personal aggrandizement. His contempt for money, his impatience with the mere vanities of power, were supreme. Bribery he abhorred in all its shapes. He was frank and open to a fault; his heart was ever in his hand, and his mind ever on his lips. His honesty, modesty, generosity, sincerity, and magnanimity were unimpeached. Cromwell's inferior moral qualities made him distrust the great seaman; yet, now and then, as in the case of the street tumult at Malaga, he was fain to express his admiration of Robert Blake. The latter was wholly unversed in the science of nepotism, and "happy family" compacts; for, although desirous of aiding his relatives, he was jealous of the least offense on their part, and never overlooked it. Several instances of this disposition are on record. When his brother Samuel, in rash zeal for the Commonwealth, ventured to exceed his duty, and was killed in a fray which ensued, Blake was terribly shocked, but only said: "Sam had no business there." Afterward, however, he shut himself up in his room, and bewailed his loss in the words of Scripture: "Died Abner as a fool dieth!" His brother Benjamin, again, to whom he was strongly attached, falling under suspicion of neglect of duty, was instantly broken, and sent on shore. "This rigid measure of justice against his own flesh and blood, silenced every complaint, and the service gained immeasurably in spirit, discipline, and confidence." Yet more touching was the great admiral's inexorable treatment of his favorite brother Humphrey, who, in a moment of extreme agitation, had failed in his duty. The captains went to Blake in a body, and argued that Humphrey's fault was a neglect rather than a breach of orders, and suggested his being sent away to England till it was forgotten. But Blake was outwardly unmoved, though inwardly his bowels did yearn over his brother, and sternly said: "If none of you will accuse him, I must be his accuser." Humphrey was dismissed from the service. It is affecting to know how painfully Blake missed his familiar presence during his sick and lonely passage homeward, when the hand of death was upon that noble heart. To Humphrey he bequeathed the greater part of the property which he left behind him. In the rare intervals of private life which he enjoyed on shore, Blake also compels our sincere regard. When released for awhile from political and professional duties, he loved to run down to Bridgewater for a few days or weeks, and, as his biographer says, with his chosen books, and one or two devout and abstemious friends, to indulge in all the luxuries of seclusion. "He was by nature self-absorbed and taciturn. His morning was usually occupied with a long walk, during which he appeared to his simple neighbors to be lost in profound thought, as if working out in his own mind the details of one of his great battles, or busy with some abstruse point of Puritan theology. If accompanied by one of his brothers, or by some other intimate friend, he was still for the most part silent. Always good-humored, and enjoying sarcasm when of a grave, high class, he yet never talked from the loquacious instinct, or encouraged others so to employ their time and talents in his presence. Even his lively and rattling brother Humphrey, his almost constant companion when on shore, caught, from long habit, the great man's contemplative and self-communing gait and manner; and when his friends rallied him on the subject in after-years, he used to say, that he had caught the trick of silence while walking by the admiral's side in his long morning musings on Knoll Hill. A plain dinner satisfied his wants. Religious conversation, reading, and the details of business, generally filled up the evening until supper-time; after family prayers--always pronounced by the general himself--he would invariably call for his cup of sack and a dry crust of bread, and while he drank two or three horns of Canary, would smile and chat in his own dry manner with his friends and domestics, asking minute questions about their neighbors and acquaintance; or when scholars or clergymen shared his simple repast, affecting a droll anxiety--rich and pleasant in the conqueror of Tromp--to prove, by the aptness and abundance of his quotations, that, in becoming an admiral, he had not forfeited his claim to be considered a good classic."

The care and interest with which he looked to the well-being of his humblest followers, made him eminently popular in the fleet. He was always ready to hear complaints, and to rectify grievances. When wounded at the battle of Portland, and exhorted to go on shore for repose and proper medical treatment, he refused to seek for himself the relief which he had put in the way of his meanest comrade. Even at the early period of his cruise against the Cavalier corsairs of Kinsale, such was Blake's popularity, that numbers of men were continually joining him from the enemy's fleet, although he offered them less pay, and none of that license which they had enjoyed under Prince Rupert's flag. They gloried in following a leader _sans peur et sans reproche_--one with whose renown the whole country speedily rang--the renown of a man who had revived the traditional glories of the English navy, and proved that its meteor flag could "yet terrific burn."

THE BRITISH MUSEUM AND ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS.

BY FREDRIKA BREMER.

London possesses two scenes of popular enjoyment on a great scale, in its British Museum and its Zoological Gardens. In the former, the glance is sent over the life of antiquity; in the latter, over that of the present time in the kingdom of nature; and in both may the Englishman enjoy a view of England's power and greatness, because it is the spirit of England which has compelled Egypt and Greece to remove hither their gods, their heroic statues: it is England whose courageous sons at this present moment force their way into the interior of Africa, that mysterious native land of miracles and of the Leviathan; it is an Englishman who held in his hand snow from the clefts of the remote Mountains of the Moon; it is England which has aroused that ancient Nineveh from her thousands of years of sleep in the desert; England, which has caused to arise from their graves, and to stand forth beneath the sky of England, those witnesses of the life and art of antiquity which are known under the name of the Nineveh Marbles, those magnificent but enigmatical figures which are called the Nineveh Bulls, in the immense wings of which one can not but admire the fine artistic skill of the workmanship, and from the beautiful human countenances of which glances Oriental despotism--with eyes such as those with which King Ahasuerus might have gazed on the beautiful Esther, when she sank fainting before the power of that glance. They have an extraordinary expression--these countenances of Nineveh, so magnificent, so strong, and at the same time, so joyous--a something about them so valiant and so joyously commanding! It was an expression which surprised me, and which I could not rightly comprehend. It would be necessary for me to see them yet again before I could fully satisfy myself whether this inexpressible, proudly joyous glance is one of wisdom or of stupidity! I could almost fancy it might be the latter, when I contemplate the expression of gentle majesty in the head of the Grecian Jupiter. Nevertheless, whether it be wisdom or stupidity--these representations of ancient Nineveh have a real grandeur and originality about them. Were they then representatives of life there? Was life there thus proud and joyous, thus unconscious of trouble, care, or death, thus valiant, and without all arrogance? Had it such eyes? Ah! and yet it has lain buried in the sand of the desert, lain forgotten there many thousand years. And now, when they once more look up with those large, magnificent eyes, they discover another world around them, another Nineveh which can not understand what they would say. Thus proudly might Nineveh have looked when the prophet uttered above her his "woe!" Such a glance does not accord with the life of earth.

In comparison with these latest discovered but most ancient works of art, the Egyptian statues fall infinitely short, bearing evidence of a degraded, sensual humanity, and the same as regarded art. But neither of these, nor of the Elgin marbles, nor of many other treasures of art in the British Museum which testify at the same time to the greatness of foregone ages, and to the power of the English world-conquering intelligence, shall I say any thing, because time failed me rightly to observe them, and the Nineveh marbles almost bewitched me by their contemplation.

It is to me difficult to imagine a greater pleasure than that of wandering through these halls, or than by a visit to the Zoological Garden which lies on one side of the Regent's Park. I would willingly reside near this park for a time, that I might again and again wander about in this world of animals from all zones, and listen to all that they have to relate, ice-bears and lions, turtles and eagles, the ourang-outang and the rhinoceros! The English Zoological Garden, although less fortunate in its locality than the _Jardin des Plantes_ in Paris, is much richer as regards animals. That which at this time attracted hither most visitors was the new guest of the garden, a so-called river-horse or hippopotamus, lately brought hither from Upper Egypt, where it was taken when young. It was yet not full-grown, and had here its own keeper--an Arab--its own house, its own court, its own reservoir, to bathe and swim in! Thus it lived in a really princely hippopotamus fashion. I saw his highness ascend out of his bath in a particularly good-humor, and he looked to me like an enormous--pig, with an enormously broad snout. He was very fat, smooth, and gray, and awkward in his movements, like the elephant. Long-necked giraffes walked about, feeding from wooden racks in the court adjoining that of the hippopotamus, and glancing at us across it. One can scarcely imagine a greater contrast than in these animals.

The eagles sate upon crags placed in a row beneath a lofty transparent arch of iron work, an arrangement which seemed to me excellent, and which I hope seemed so to them, in case they could forget that they were captives. Here they might breathe, here spread out their huge wings, see the free expanse of heaven, and the sun, and build habitations for themselves upon the rock. On the contrary, the lions, leopards, and such-like noble beasts of the desert, seemed to me particularly unhappy in their iron-grated stone vaults; and their perpetual, uneasy walking backward and forward in their cages--I could not see that without a feeling of distress. How beautiful they must be in the desert, or amid tropical woods, or in the wild caverns of the mountains, those grand, terrific beasts--how fearfully beautiful! One day I saw these animals during their feeding time. Two men went round with wooden vessels filled with pieces of raw meat; these were taken up with a large iron-pronged fork, and put, or rather flung, through the iron grating into the dens. It was terrible to see the savage joy, the fury, with which the food was received and swallowed down by the beasts. Three pieces of meat were thrown into one great vault which was at that time empty, a door was then drawn up at the back of the vault, and three huge yellow lions with shaggy manes rushed roaring in, and at one spring each possessed himself of his piece of flesh. One of the lions held his piece between his teeth for certainly a quarter of an hour, merely growling and gloating over it in savage joy, while his flashing eyes glared upon the spectators, and his tail was swung from side to side with an expression of defiance. It was a splendid, but a fearful sight. One of my friends was accustomed sometimes to visit these animals in company with his little girl, a beautiful child, with a complexion like milk and cherries. The sight of her invariably produced great excitement in the lions. They seemed evidently to show their love to her in a ravenous manner.

The serpents were motionless in their glass house, and lay, half-asleep, curled around the trunks of trees. In the evening by lamp-light they become lively, and then, twisting about and flashing forth their snaky splendors, they present a fine spectacle. The snake-room, with its walls of glass, behind which the snakes live, reminded me of the old northern myth of Nastrond, the roof of which was woven of snakes' backs, the final home of the ungodly--an unpleasant, but vigorous picture. The most disagreeable and the ugliest of all the snakes, was that little snake which the beautiful Queen Cleopatra, herself false as a serpent, placed at her breast; a little gray, flat-headed snake which liked to bury itself in the sand.

The monkey-family lead a sad life; stretch out their hands for nuts or for bread, with mournful human gestures; contentious, beaten, oppressed, thrust aside, frightening one another, the stronger the weaker--mournfully human also.

Sad, also, was the sight of an ourang-outang, spite of all its queer grimaces, solitary in its house, for it evidently suffered ennui, was restless, and would go out. It embraced its keeper and kissed him with real human tenderness. The countenance, so human, yet without any human intelligence, made a painful impression upon me; so did the friendly tame creature here, longing for its fellows, and seeing around it only human beings. Thou poor animal! Fain would I have seen thee in the primeval woods of Africa, caressing thy wife in the clear moonlight of the tropical night, sporting with her among the branches of the trees, and sleeping upon them, rocked by the warm night wind. There thy ugliness would have had a sort of picturesque beauty. After the strange beast-man had climbed hither and thither along the iron railing, seizing the bars with his hands, and feet which resembled hands, and also with his teeth, he took a white woolen blanket, wrapped it around him in a very complicated manner, and ended by laying himself down as a human being might do, in his chilly, desolate room.

After this, all the more charming was the spectacle presented by the water-fowl from every zone--Ducks, Swans, and Co., all quite at home here, swimming in the clear waters, among little green islands on which they had their little huts. It was most charmingly pretty and complete. And the mother-duck with her little, lively golden-yellow flock, swimming neck and heels after her, or seeking shelter under her wings, is at all times one of the most lovely scenes of natural life--resembling humanity in a beautiful manner.

Even among the wild beasts I saw a beautiful human trait of maternal affection. A female leopard had in her cage two young cubs, lively and playful as puppies. When the man threw the flesh into her cage, she drew herself back and let the young ones first seize upon the piece.

Crows from all parts of the world here live together in one neighborhood, and that the chattering and laughter was loud here did not surprise me, neither that the European crows so well maintained their place among their fellows. That which, however, astonished and delighted me was, the sweet flute-like melodious tones of the Australian crow. In the presence of this crow from Paradise--for originally it must have come therefrom--it seemed to me that all the other crows ought to have kept silence with their senseless chattering. But they were nothing but crows, and they liked better to hear themselves.

Parrots from all lands lived and quarreled together in a large room, and they there made such a loud screaming, that in order to stand it out one must have been one of their own relations. Better be among the silent, dejected, stealthy, hissing, shining snakes, than in company with parrots! The former might kill the body, but the latter the soul.

Twilight came on, and drove me out of the Zoological Garden each time I was there, and before I had seen all its treasures. Would that I might return there yet a third time and remain still longer!

A TERRIBLY STRANGE BED.

The most difficult likeness I ever had to take, not even excepting my first attempt in the art of Portrait-painting, was a likeness of a gentleman named Faulkner. As far as drawing and coloring went, I had no particular fault to find with my picture; it was the _expression_ of the sitter which I had failed in rendering--a failure quite as much his fault as mine. Mr. Faulkner, like many other persons by whom I have been employed, took it into his head that he must assume an expression, because he was sitting for his likeness; and, in consequence, contrived to look as unlike himself as possible, while I was painting him. I had tried to divert his attention from his own face, by talking with him on all sorts of topics. We had both traveled a great deal, and felt interested alike in many subjects connected with our wanderings over the same countries. Occasionally, while we were discussing our traveling experiences, the unlucky set-look left his countenance, and I began to work to some purpose; but it was always disastrously sure to return again, before I had made any great progress--or, in other words, just at the very time when I was most anxious that it should not re-appear. The obstacle thus thrown in the way of the satisfactory completion of my portrait, was the more to be deplored, because Mr. Faulkner's natural expression was a very remarkable one. I am not an author, so I can not describe it. I ultimately succeeded in painting it, however; and this was the way in which I achieved my success:

On the morning when my sitter was coming to me for the fourth time, I was looking at his portrait in no very agreeable mood--looking at it, in fact, with the disheartening conviction that the picture would be a perfect failure, unless the expression in the face represented were thoroughly altered and improved from nature. The only method of accomplishing this successfully, was to make Mr. Faulkner, somehow, insensibly forget that he was sitting for his picture. What topic could I lead him to talk on, which would entirely engross his attention while I was at work on his likeness?--I was still puzzling my brains to no purpose on this subject, when Mr. Faulkner entered my studio; and, shortly afterward, an accidental circumstance gained for me the very object which my own ingenuity had proved unequal to compass.

While I was "setting" my pallet, my sitter amused himself by turning over some portfolios. He happened to select one for special notice, which contained several sketches that I had made in the streets of Paris. He turned over the first five views rapidly enough; but when he came to the sixth, I saw his face flush directly; and observed that he took the drawing out of the portfolio, carried it to the window, and remained silently absorbed in the contemplation of it for full five minutes. After that, he turned round to me; and asked, very anxiously, if I had any objection to part with that sketch.

It was the least interesting drawing of the series--merely a view in one of the streets running by the backs of the houses in the Palais Royal. Some four or five of these houses were comprised in the view, which was of no particular use to me in any way; and which was too valueless, as a work of Art, for me to think of _selling_ it to my kind patron. I begged his acceptance of it, at once. He thanked me quite warmly; and then, seeing that I looked a little surprised at the odd selection he had made from my sketches, laughingly asked me if I could guess why he had been so anxious to become possessed of the view which I had given him?

"Probably"--I answered--"there is some remarkable historical association connected with that street at the back of the Palais Royal, of which I am ignorant."

"No"--said Mr. Faulkner--"at least, none that _I_ know of. The only association connected with the place in _my_ mind, is a purely personal association. Look at this house in your drawing--the house with the water-pipe running down it from top to bottom. I once passed a night there--a night I shall never forget to the day of my death. I have had some awkward traveling adventures in my time; but _that_ adventure--! Well, well! suppose we begin the sitting. I make but a bad return for your kindness in giving me the sketch, by thus wasting your time in mere talk."

He had not long occupied the sitter's chair (looking pale and thoughtful), when he returned--involuntarily, as it seemed--to the subject of the house in the back street. Without, I hope, showing any undue curiosity, I contrived to let him see that I felt a deep interest in every thing he now said. After two or three preliminary hesitations, he at last, to my great joy, fairly started on the narrative of his adventure. In the interest of his subject he soon completely forgot that he was sitting for his portrait--the very expression that I wanted, came over his face--my picture proceeded toward completion, in the right direction, and to the best purpose. At every fresh touch, I felt more and more certain that I was now getting the better of my grand difficulty; and I enjoyed the additional gratification of having my work lightened by the recital of a true story, which possessed, in my estimation, all the excitement of the most exciting romance.

This, as nearly as I can recollect, is, word for word, how Mr. Faulkner told me the story:--

Shortly before the period when gambling-houses were suppressed by the French Government, I happened to be staying at Paris with an English friend. We were both young men then, and lived, I am afraid, a very dissipated life, in the very dissipated city of our sojourn. One night, we were idling about the neighborhood of the Palais Royal, doubtful to what amusement we should next betake ourselves. My friend proposed a visit to Frascati's; but his suggestion was not to my taste. I knew Frascati's, as the French saying is, by heart; had lost and won plenty of five-franc pieces there, "merely for the fun of the thing," until it was "fun" no longer; and was thoroughly tired, in fact, of all the ghastly respectabilities of such a social anomaly as a respectable gambling-house. "For Heaven's sake"--said I to my friend--"let us go somewhere where we can see a little genuine, blackguard, poverty-stricken gaming, with no false gingerbread glitter thrown over it at all. Let us get away from fashionable Frascati's, to a house where they don't mind letting in a man with a ragged coat, or a man with no coat, ragged or otherwise."--"Very well," said my friend, "we needn't go out of the Palais Royal to find the sort of company you want. Here's the place, just before us; as blackguard a place, by all report, as you could possibly wish to see." In another minute we arrived at the door, and entered the house, the back of which you have drawn in your sketch.

When we got up-stairs, and had left our hats and sticks with the doorkeeper, we were admitted into the chief gambling-room. We did not find many people assembled there. But, few as the men were who looked up at us on our entrance, they were all types--miserable types--of their respective classes. We had come to see blackguards; but these men were something worse. There is a comic side, more or less appreciable, in all blackguardism--here, there was nothing but tragedy; mute, weird tragedy. The quiet in the room was horrible. The thin, haggard, long-haired young man, whose sunken eyes fiercely watched the turning up of the cards, never spoke; the flabby, fat-faced, pimply player, who pricked his piece of pasteboard perseveringly, to register how often black won, and how often red--never spoke; the dirty, wrinkled old man, with the vulture eyes, and the darned great coat, who had lost his last _sous_, and still looked on desperately, after he could play no longer--never spoke. Even the voice of the croupier sounded as if it were strangely dulled and thickened in the atmosphere of the room. I had entered the place to laugh; I felt that if I stood quietly looking on much longer, I should be more likely to weep. So, to excite myself out of the depression of spirits which was fast stealing over me, I unfortunately went to the table, and began to play. Still more unfortunately, as the event will show, I won--won prodigiously; won incredibly; won at such a rate, that the regular players at the table crowded round me; and staring at my stakes with hungry, superstitious eyes, whispered to one another that the English stranger was going to break the bank.

The game was _Rouge et Noir_. I had played at it in every city in Europe, without, however, the care or the wish to study the Theory of Chances--that philosopher's stone of all gamblers! And a gambler, in the strict sense of the word, I had never been. I was heart-whole from the corroding passion for play. My gaming was a mere idle amusement. I never resorted to it by necessity, because I never knew what it was to want money. I never practiced it so incessantly as to lose more than I could afford, or to gain more than I could coolly pocket, without being thrown off my balance by my good luck. In short, I had hitherto frequented gambling-tables--just as I frequented ball-rooms and opera-houses--because they amused me, and because I had nothing better to do with my leisure hours.

But, on this occasion, it was very different--now, for the first time in my life, I felt what the passion for play really was. My success first bewildered, and then, in the most literal meaning of the word, intoxicated me. Incredible as it may appear, it is nevertheless true, that I only lost, when I attempted to estimate chances, and played according to previous calculation. If I left every thing to luck, and staked without any care or consideration, I was sure to win--to win in the face of every recognized probability in favor of the bank. At first, some of the men present ventured their money safely enough on my color; but I speedily increased my stakes to sums which they dared not risk. One after another they left off playing, and breathlessly looked on at my game. Still, time after time, I staked higher and higher; and still won. The excitement in the room rose to fever pitch. The silence was interrupted, by a deep, muttered chorus of oaths and exclamations in different languages, every time the gold was shoveled across to my side of the table--even the imperturbable croupier dashed his rake on the floor in a (French) fury of astonishment at my success. But one man present preserved his self-possession; and that man was my friend. He came to my side, and whispering in English, begged me to leave the place, satisfied with what I had already gained. I must do him the justice to say, that he repeated his warnings and entreaties several times; and only left me and went away, after I had rejected his advice (I was to all intents and purposes gambling-drunk) in terms which rendered it impossible for him to address me again that night.

Shortly after he had gone, a hoarse voice behind me cried: "Permit me, my dear sir!--permit me to restore to their proper place two Napoleons which you have dropped. Wonderful luck, sir!--I pledge you my word of honor as an old soldier, in the course of my long experience in this sort of thing, I never saw such luck as yours!--never! Go on, sir--_Sacré mille bombes!_ Go on boldly, and break the bank!"

I turned round and saw, nodding and smiling at me with inveterate civility, a tall man, dressed in a frogged and braided surtout. If I had been in my senses, I should have considered him, personally, as being rather a suspicious specimen of an old soldier. He had goggling, bloodshot eyes, mangy mustaches, and a broken nose. His voice betrayed a barrack-room intonation of the worst order, and he had the dirtiest pair of hands I ever saw--even in France. These little personal peculiarities exercised, however, no repelling influence on me. In the mad excitement, the reckless triumph of that moment, I was ready to "fraternize" with any body who encouraged me in my game. I accepted the old soldier's offered pinch of snuff; clapped him on the back, and swore he was the honestest fellow in the world; the most glorious relic of the Grand Army that I had ever met with. "Go on!" cried my military friend, snapping his fingers in ecstasy--"Go on, and win! Break the bank--_Mille tonnerres!_ my gallant English comrade, break the bank!"

And I _did_ go on--went on at such a rate, that in another quarter of an hour the croupier called out: "Gentlemen! the bank has discontinued for to-night." All the notes, and all the gold in that "bank," now lay in a heap under my hands; the whole floating capital of the gambling-house was waiting to pour into my pockets!

"Tie up the money in your pocket-handkerchief, my worthy sir," said the old soldier, as I wildly plunged my hands into my heap of gold. "Tie it up, as we used to tie up a bit of dinner in the Grand Army; your winnings are too heavy for any breeches pockets that ever were sewed. There! that's it!--shovel them in, notes and all! _Credié!_ what luck!--Stop! another Napoleon on the floor! _Ah! sacré petit polisson de Napoleon!_ have I found thee at last? Now, then, sir--two tight double knots each way with your honorable permission, and the money's safe. Feel it! feel it, fortunate sir! hard and round as a cannon ball--_Ah, bah!_ if they had only fired such cannon balls at us at Austerlitz--_nom d'une pipe!_ if they only had! And now, as an ancient grenadier, as an ex-brave of the French army, what remains for me to do? I ask what? Simply this: to entreat my valued English friend to drink a bottle of champagne with me, and toast the goddess Fortune in foaming goblets before we part!"

Excellent ex-brave! Convivial ancient grenadier! Champagne by all means! An English cheer for an old soldier! Hurrah! hurrah! Another English cheer for the goddess Fortune! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!

"Bravo! the Englishman; the amiable, gracious Englishman, in whose veins circulates the vivacious blood of France! Another glass? _Ah, bah!_--the bottle is empty! Never mind! _Vive le vin!_ I, the old soldier, order another bottle, and half a pound of _bon-bons_ with it!"

No, no, ex-brave; never--ancient grenadier! _Your_ bottle last time; _my_ bottle this. Behold it! Toast away! The French Army!--the great Napoleon!--the present company! the croupier! the honest croupier's wife and daughters--if he has any! the Ladies generally! Every body in the world!

By the time the second bottle of champagne was emptied, I felt as if I had been drinking liquid fire--my brain seemed all a flame. No excess in wine had ever had this effect on me before in my life. Was it the result of a stimulant acting upon my system when I was in a highly-excited state? Was my stomach in a particularly disordered condition? Or was the champagne particularly strong?

"Ex-brave of the French Army!" cried I, in a mad state of exhilaration. "_I_ am on fire! how are _you_? You have set me on fire! Do you hear; my hero of Austerlitz? Let us have a third bottle of champagne to put the flame out!" The old soldier wagged his head, rolled his goggle-eyes, until I expected to see them slip out of their sockets; placed his dirty forefinger by the side of his broken nose; solemnly ejaculated "Coffee!" and immediately ran off into an inner room.

The word pronounced by the eccentric veteran, seemed to have a magical effect on the rest of the company present. With one accord they all rose to depart. Probably they had expected to profit by my intoxication; but finding that my new friend was benevolently bent on preventing me from getting dead drunk, had now abandoned all hope of thriving pleasantly on my winnings. Whatever their motive might be, at any rate they went away in a body. When the old soldier returned, and sat down again opposite to me at the table, we had the room to ourselves. I could see the croupier, in a sort of vestibule which opened out of it, eating his supper in solitude. The silence was now deeper than ever.

A sudden change, too, had come over the "ex-brave." He assumed a portentously solemn look; and when he spoke to me again, his speech was ornamented by no oaths, enforced by no finger-snapping, enlivened by no apostrophes, or exclamations.

"Listen, my dear sir," said he, in mysteriously confidential tones--"listen to an old soldier's advice. I have been to the mistress of the house (a very charming woman, with a genius for cookery!) to impress on her the necessity of making us some particularly strong and good coffee. You must drink this coffee in order to get rid of your little amiable exaltation of spirits, before you think of going home--you _must_, my good and gracious friend! With all that money to take home to-night, it is a sacred duty to yourself to have your wits about you. You are known to be a winner to an enormous extent, by several gentlemen present to-night, who, in a certain point of view, are very worthy and excellent fellows; but they are mortal men, my dear sir, and they have their amiable weaknesses! Need I say more? Ah, no, no! you understand me! Now, this is what you must do--send for a cabriolet when you feel quite well again--draw up all the windows when you get into it--and tell the driver to take you home only through the large and well-lighted thoroughfares. Do this; and you and your money will be safe. Do this; and to-morrow you will thank an old soldier for giving you a word of honest advice."

Just as the ex-brave ended his oration in very lachrymose tones, the coffee came in, ready poured out in two cups. My attentive friend handed me one of the cups, with a bow. I was parched with thirst, and drank it off at a draught. Almost instantly afterward, I was seized with a fit of giddiness, and felt more completely intoxicated than ever. The room whirled round and round furiously; the old soldier seemed to be regularly bobbing up and down before me, like the piston of a steam-engine. I was half-deafened by a violent singing in my ears; a feeling of utter bewilderment, helplessness, idiotcy, overcame me. I rose from my chair, holding on by the table to keep my balance; and stammered out, that I felt dreadfully unwell--so unwell, that I did not know how I was to get home.

"My dear friend," answered the old soldier; and even his voice seemed to be bobbing up and down, as he spoke--"My dear friend, it would be madness to go home, in _your_ state. You would be sure to lose your money; you might be robbed and murdered with the greatest ease. _I_ am going to sleep here: do _you_ sleep here, too--they make up capital beds in this house--take one; sleep off the effects of the wine, and go home safely with your winnings, to-morrow--to-morrow, in broad daylight."

I had no power of thinking, no feeling of any kind, but the feeling that I must lie down somewhere, immediately, and fall off into a cool, refreshing, comfortable sleep. So I agreed eagerly to the proposal about the bed, and took the offered arms of the old soldier and the croupier--the latter having been summoned to show the way. They led me along some passages and up a short flight of stairs into the bedroom which I was to occupy. The ex-brave shook me warmly by the hand; proposed that we should breakfast together the next morning; and then, followed by the croupier, left me for the night.

I ran to the wash-hand stand; drank some of the water in my jug; poured the rest out, and plunged my face into it--then sat down in a chair, and tried to compose myself. I soon felt better. The change for my lungs, from the fetid atmosphere of the gambling-room to the cool air of the apartment I now occupied; the almost equally refreshing change for my eyes, from the glaring gas-lights of the "Salon" to the dim, quiet flicker of one bedroom candle; aided wonderfully the restorative effects of cold water. The giddiness left me, and I began to feel a little like a reasonable being again. My first thought was of the risk of sleeping all night in a gambling-house; my second, of the still greater risk of trying to get out after the house was closed, and of going home alone at night, through the streets of Paris, with a large sum of money about me. I had slept in worse places than this, in the course of my travels; so I determined to lock, bolt, and barricade my door.

Accordingly, I secured myself against all intrusion; looked under the bed, and into the cupboard; tried the fastening of the window; and then, satisfied that I had taken every proper precaution, pulled off my upper clothing, put my light, which was a dim one, on the hearth among a feathery litter of wood ashes; and got into bed, with the handkerchief full of money under my pillow.

I soon felt, not only that I could not go to sleep, but that I could not even close my eyes. I was wide awake, and in a high fever. Every nerve in my body trembled--every one of my senses seemed to be preternaturally sharpened. I tossed, and rolled, and tried every kind of position, and perseveringly sought out the cold corners of the bed, and all to no purpose. Now, I thrust my arms over the clothes; now, I poked them under the clothes; now, I violently shot my legs straight out, down to the bottom of the bed; now, I convulsively coiled them up as near my chin as they would go; now, I shook out my crumpled pillow, changed it to the cool side, patted it flat, and lay down quietly on my back; now, I fiercely doubled it in two, set it up on end, thrust it against the board of the bed, and tried a sitting posture. Every effort was in vain; I groaned with vexation, as I felt that I was in for a sleepless night.

What could I do? I had no book to read. And yet, unless I found out some method of diverting my mind, I felt certain that I was in the condition to imagine all sorts of horrors; to rack my brains with forebodings of every possible and impossible danger; in short, to pass the night in suffering all conceivable varieties of nervous terror. I raised myself on my elbow, and looked about the room--which was brightened by a lovely moonlight pouring straight through the window--to see if it contained any pictures or ornaments, that I could at all clearly distinguish. While my eyes wandered from wall to wall, a remembrance of Le Maistre's delightful little book, "Voyage autour de ma Chambre," occurred to me. I resolved to imitate the French author, and find occupation and amusement enough to relieve the tedium of my wakefulness by making a mental inventory of every article of furniture I could see, and by following up to their sources the multitude of associations which even a chair, a table, or a wash-hand stand, may be made to call forth.

In the nervous, unsettled state of my mind at that moment, I found it much easier to make my proposed inventory, than to make my proposed reflections, and soon gave up all hope of thinking in Le Maistre's fanciful track--or, indeed, thinking at all. I looked about the room at the different articles of furniture, and did nothing more. There was, first, the bed I was lying in--a four-post bed, of all things in the world to meet with in Paris!--yes, a thorough clumsy British four-poster, with the regular top lined with chintz--the regular fringed valance all round--the regular stifling, unwholesome curtains, which I remembered having mechanically drawn back against the posts, without particularly noticing the bed when I first got into the room. Then, there was the marble-topped wash-hand stand, from which the water I had spilt, in my hurry to pour it out, was still dripping, slowly and more slowly, on to the brick floor. Then, two small chairs, with my coat, waistcoat, and trowsers flung on them. Then, a large elbow chair covered with dirty-white dimity: with my cravat and shirt-collar thrown over the back. Then, a chest of drawers, with two of the brass handles off, and a tawdry, broken china inkstand placed on it by way of ornament for the top. Then, the dressing-table, adorned by a very small looking-glass, and a very large pincushion. Then, the window--an unusually large window. Then, a dark old picture, which the feeble candle dimly showed me. It was the picture of a fellow in a high Spanish hat, crowned with a plume of towering feathers. A swarthy sinister ruffian, looking upward; shading his eyes with his hand, and looking intently upward--it might be at some tall gallows at which he was going to be hanged. At any rate he had the appearance of thoroughly deserving it.

This picture put a kind of constraint upon me to look upward, too--at the top of the bed. It was a gloomy and not an interesting object, and I looked back at the picture. I counted the feathers in the man's hat; they stood out in relief; three, white; two, green. I observed the crown of his hat, which was of a conical shape, according to the fashion supposed to have been favored by Guido Fawkes. I wondered what he was looking up at. It couldn't be at the stars; such a desperado was neither astrologer nor astronomer. It must be at the high gallows, and he was going to be hanged presently. Would the executioner come into possession of his conical crowned hat, and plume of feathers? I counted the feathers again; three, white; two, green.

While I still lingered over this very improving and intellectual employment, my thoughts insensibly began to wander. The moonlight shining into the room reminded me of a certain moonlight night in England--the night after a pic-nic party in a Welsh valley. Every incident of the drive homeward through lovely scenery, which the moonlight made lovelier than ever, came back to my remembrance, though I had never given the pic-nic a thought for years; though, if I had _tried_ to recollect it, I could certainly have recalled little or nothing of that scene long past. Of all the wonderful faculties that help to tell us we are immortal, which speaks the sublime truth more eloquently than memory? Here was I, in a strange house of the most suspicious character, in a situation of uncertainty, and even of peril, which might seem to make the cool exercise of my recollection almost out of the question; nevertheless remembering, quite involuntarily, places, people, conversations, minute circumstances of every kind, which I had thought forgotten forever, which I could not possibly have recalled at will, even under the most favorable auspices. And what cause had produced in a moment the whole of this strange, complicated, mysterious effect? Nothing but some rays of moonlight shining in at my bedroom window.

I was still thinking of the pic-nic; of our merriment on the drive home; of the sentimental young lady, who _would_ quote Childe Harold because it was moonlight. I was absorbed by these past scenes and past amusements, when, in an instant, the thread on which my memories hung, snapped asunder; my attention immediately came back to present things more vividly than ever, and I found myself, I neither knew why or wherefore, looking hard at the picture again.

Looking for what? Good God, the man had pulled his hat down on his brows!--No! The hat itself was gone! Where was the conical crown? Where the feathers; three, white; two green? Not there! In place of the hat and feathers, what dusky object was it that now hid his forehead--his eyes--his shading hand? Was the bed moving?

I turned on my back, and looked up. Was I mad? drunk? dreaming? giddy again? or, was the top of the bed really moving down--sinking slowly, regularly, silently, horribly, right down throughout the whole of its length and breadth--right down upon me, as I lay underneath?

My blood seemed to stand still; a deadly paralyzing coldness stole all over me, as I turned my head round on the pillow, and determined to test whether the bed-top was really moving or not, by keeping my eye on the man in the picture. The next look in that direction was enough. The dull, black, frowsy outline of the valance above me was within an inch of being parallel with his waist. I still looked breathlessly. And steadily, and slowly--very slowly--I saw the figure, and the line of frame below the figure, vanish, as the valance moved down before it.

I am, constitutionally, any thing but timid. I have been, on more than one occasion, in peril of my life, and have not lost my self-possession for an instant; but, when the conviction first settled on my mind that the bed-top was really moving, was steadily and continuously sinking down upon me, I looked up for one awful minute, or more, shuddering, helpless, panic-stricken, beneath the hideous machinery for murder, which was advancing closer and closer to suffocate me where I lay.

Then the instinct of self-preservation came, and nerved me to save my life, while there was yet time. I got out of bed very quietly, and quickly dressed myself again in my upper clothing. The candle, fully spent, went out. I sat down in the arm-chair that stood near, and watched the bed-top slowly descending. I was literally spell-bound by it. If I had heard footsteps behind me, I could not have turned round; if a means of escape had been miraculously provided for me, I could not have moved to take advantage of it. The whole life in me, was, at that moment, concentrated in my eyes.

It descended--the whole canopy, with the fringe round it, came down--down--close down; so close that there was not room now to squeeze my finger between the bed-top and the bed. I felt at the sides, and discovered that what had appeared to me, from beneath, to be the ordinary light canopy of a four-post bed was in reality a thick, broad mattress, the substance of which was concealed by the valance and its fringe. I looked up, and saw the four posts rising hideously bare. In the middle of the bed-top was a huge wooden screw that had evidently worked it down through a hole in the ceiling, just as ordinary presses are worked down on the substance selected for compression. The frightful apparatus moved without making the faintest noise. There had been no creaking as it came down; there was now not the faintest sound from the room above. Amid a dead and awful silence I beheld before me--in the nineteenth century, and in the civilized capital of France--such a machine for secret murder by suffocation, as might have existed in the worst days of the Inquisition, in the lonely Inns among the Hartz Mountains, in the mysterious tribunals of Westphalia! Still, as I looked on it, I could not move; I could hardly breathe; but I began to recover the power of thinking; and, in a moment, I discovered the murderous conspiracy framed against me, in all its horror.

My cup of coffee had been drugged, and drugged too strongly. I had been saved from being smothered, by having taken an over-dose of some narcotic. How I had chafed and fretted at the fever fit which had preserved my life by keeping me awake! How recklessly I had confided myself to the two wretches who had led me into this room, determined, for the sake of my winnings, to kill me in my sleep, by the surest and most horrible contrivance for secretly accomplishing my destruction! How many men, winners like me, had slept, as I had proposed to sleep, in that bed; and never been seen or heard of more! I shuddered as I thought of it.

But, erelong, all thought was again suspended by the sight of the murderous canopy moving once more. After it had remained on the bed--as nearly as I could guess--about ten minutes, it began to move up again. The villains, who worked it from above, evidently believed that their purpose was now accomplished. Slowly and silently, as it had descended, that horrible bed-top rose toward its former place. When it reached the upper extremities of the four posts, it reached the ceiling too. Neither hole nor screw could be seen--the bed became in appearance, an ordinary bed again, the canopy, an ordinary canopy, even to the most suspicious eyes.

Now, for the first time, I was able to move, to rise from my chair, to consider of how I should escape. If I betrayed by the smallest noise, that the attempt to suffocate me had failed, I was certain to be murdered. Had I made any noise already? I listened intently, looking toward the door. No! no footsteps in the passage outside; no sound of a tread, light or heavy, in the room above--absolute silence every where. Besides locking and bolting my door, I had moved an old wooden chest against it, which I had found under the bed. To remove this chest (my blood ran cold, as I thought what its contents _might_ be!) without making some disturbance, was impossible; and, moreover, to think of escaping through the house, now barred-up for the night, was sheer insanity. Only one chance was left me--the window. I stole to it on tiptoe.

My bedroom was on the first floor, above an _entresol_, and looked into the back street, which you had sketched in your view. I raised my hand to open the window, knowing that on that action hung, by the merest hair's-breadth, my chance of safety. They keep vigilant watch in a House of Murder--if any part of the frame cracked, if the hinge creaked, I was, perhaps, a lost man! It must have occupied me at least five minutes, reckoning by time--five _hours_, reckoning by suspense--to open that window. I succeeded in doing it silently, in doing it with all the dexterity of a house-breaker; and then looked down into the street. To leap the distance beneath me, would be almost certain destruction! Next, I looked round at the sides of the house. Down the left side, ran the thick water-pipe which you have drawn--it passed close by the outer edge of the window. The moment I saw the pipe, I knew I was saved; my breath came and went freely for the first time since I had seen the canopy of the bed moving down upon me!

To some men the means of escape which I had discovered might have seemed difficult and dangerous enough--to _me_, the prospect of slipping down the pipe into the street did not suggest even a thought of peril. I had always been accustomed, by the practice of gymnastics, to keep up my schoolboy powers as a daring and expert climber; and knew that my head, hands, and feet would serve me faithfully in any hazards of ascent or descent. I had already got one leg over the window-sill, when I remembered the handkerchief, filled with money, under my pillow. I could well have afforded to leave it behind me; but I was revengefully determined that the miscreants of the gambling-house should miss their plunder as well as their victim. So I went back to the bed, and tied the heavy handkerchief at my back by my cravat. Just as I had made it tight, and fixed it in a comfortable place, I thought I heard a sound of breathing outside the door. The chill feeling of horror ran through me again as I listened. No! dead silence still in the passage--I had only heard the night air blowing softly into the room. The next moment I was on the window-sill--and the next, I had a firm grip on the water-pipe with my hands and knees.

I slid down into the street easily and quietly, as I thought I should, and immediately set off, at the top of my speed, to a branch "Prefecture" of Police, which I knew was situated in the immediate neighborhood. A "Sub-Prefect" and several picked men among his subordinates, happened to be up, maturing, I believe, some scheme for discovering the perpetrator of a mysterious murder, which all Paris was talking of just then. When I began my story, in a breathless hurry and in very bad French, I could see that the Sub-Prefect suspected me of being a drunken Englishman, who had robbed somebody, but he soon altered his opinion, as I went on; and before I had any thing like concluded, he shoved all the papers before him into a drawer, put on his hat, supplied me with another (for I was bare-headed), ordered a file of soldiers, desired his expert followers to get ready all sorts of tools for breaking open doors and ripping up brick-flooring, and took my arm, in the most friendly and familiar manner possible, to lead me with him out of the house. I will venture to say, that when the Sub-Prefect was a little boy, and was taken for the first time to the Play, he was not half as much pleased as he was now at the job in prospect for him at the "Gambling-House!"

Away we went through the streets, the Sub-Prefect cross-examining and congratulating me in the same breath, as we marched at the head of our formidable _posse comitatus_. Sentinels were placed at the back and front of the gambling-house the moment we got to it; a tremendous battery of knocks were directed against the door; a light appeared at a window; I waited to conceal myself behind the police--then came more knocks, and a cry of "Open in the name of the law!" At that terrible summons, bolts and locks gave way before an invisible hand, and the moment after, the Sub-Prefect was in the passage, confronting a waiter, half-dressed and ghastly pale. This was the short dialogue which immediately took place:

"We want to see the Englishman who is sleeping in this house?"

"He went away hours ago."

"He did no such thing. His friend went away; _he_ remained. Show us to his bedroom!"

"I swear to you, Monsieur le Sous-Préfet, he is not here! he--"

"I swear to you, Monsieur le Garçon, he is. He slept here--he didn't find your bed comfortable--he came to us to complain of it--here he is, among my men--and here am I, ready to look for a flea or two in his bedstead. Picard! (calling to one of the subordinates, and pointing to the waiter) collar that man, and tie his hands behind him. Now, then, gentlemen, let us walk up-stairs!"

Every man and woman in the house was secured--the "Old Soldier," the first. Then I identified the bed in which I had slept; and then we went into the room above. No object that was at all extraordinary appeared in any part of it. The Sub-Prefect looked round the place, commanded every body to be silent, stamped twice on the floor, called for a candle, looked attentively at the spot he had stamped on, and ordered the flooring there to be carefully taken up. This was done in no time. Lights were produced, and we saw a deep raftered cavity between the floor of this room and the ceiling of the room beneath. Through this cavity there ran perpendicularly a sort of case of iron, thickly greased; and inside the case appeared the screw, which communicated with the bed-top below. Extra lengths of screw, freshly oiled--levers covered with felt--all the complete upper works of a heavy press, constructed with infernal ingenuity so as to join the fixtures below--and, when taken to pieces again, to go into the smallest possible compass, were next discovered, and pulled out on the floor. After some little difficulty, the Sub-Prefect succeeded in putting the machinery together, and, leaving his men to work it, descended with me to the bedroom. The smothering canopy was then lowered, but not so noiselessly as I had seen it lowered. When I mentioned this to the Sub-Prefect, his answer, simple as it was, had a terrible significance. "My men," said he, "are working down the bed-top for the first time--the men whose money you won, were in better practice."

We left the house in the sole possession of two police agents--every one of the inmates being removed to prison on the spot, The Sub-Prefect, after taking down my "_procès-verbal_" in his office, returned with me to my hotel to get my passport. "Do you think," I asked, as I gave it to him, "that any men have really been smothered in that bed, as they tried to smother _me_?"

"I have seen dozens of drowned men laid out at the Morgue," answered the Sub-Prefect, "in whose pocket-books were found letters, stating that they had committed suicide in the Seine, because they had lost every thing at the gaming-table. Do I know how many of those men entered the same gambling-house that _you_ entered? won as _you_ won? took that bed as _you_ took it? slept in it? were smothered in it? and were privately thrown into the river, with a letter of explanation written by the murderers and placed in their pocket-books? No man can say how many, or how few, have suffered the fate from which you have escaped. The people of the gambling-house kept their bedstead machinery a secret from _us_--even from the police! The dead kept the rest of the secret for them. Good-night, or rather good-morning, Monsieur Faulkner! Be at my office again at nine o'clock--in the mean time, _au revoir_!"

The rest of my story is soon told. I was examined, and re-examined; the gambling-house was strictly searched all through, from top to bottom; the prisoners were separately interrogated; and two of the less guilty among them made a confession. _I_ discovered that the Old Soldier was the master of the gambling-house--_justice_ discovered that he had been drummed out of the army, as a vagabond, years ago; that he had been guilty of all sorts of villainies since; that he was in possession of stolen property, which the owners identified; and that he, the croupier, another accomplice, and the woman who had made my cup of coffee, were all in the secret of the bedstead. There appeared some reason to doubt whether the inferior persons attached to the house knew any thing of the suffocating machinery; and they received the benefit of that doubt, by being treated simply as thieves and vagabonds. As for the Old Soldier and his two head-myrmidons, they went to the galleys; the woman who had drugged my coffee was imprisoned for I forget how many years; the regular attendants at the gambling-house were considered "suspicious," and placed under "surveillance"; and I became, for one whole week (which is a long time), the head "lion" in Parisian society. My adventure was dramatized by three illustrious playmakers, but never saw theatrical daylight; for the censorship forbade the introduction on the stage of a correct copy of the gambling-house bedstead.

Two good results were produced by my adventure, which any censorship must have approved. In the first place, it helped to justify the government in forthwith carrying out their determination to put down all gambling-houses; in the second place, it cured me of ever again trying "Rouge et Noir" as an amusement. The sight of a green cloth, with packs of cards and heaps of money on it, will henceforth be forever associated in my mind with the sight of a bed-canopy descending to suffocate me, in the silence and darkness of the night.

Just as Mr. Faulkner pronounced the last words, he started in his chair, and assumed a stiff, dignified position, in a great hurry. "Bless my soul!" cried he--with a comic look of astonishment and vexation--"while I have been telling you what is the real secret of my interest in the sketch you have so kindly given to me, I have altogether forgotten that I came here to sit for my portrait. For the last hour, or more, I must have been the worst model you ever had to paint from!"

"On the contrary, you have been the best," said I. "I have been painting from your expression; and, while telling your story, you have unconsciously shown me the natural expression I wanted."

WHAT THE SUNBEAM DOES.

Heat, or the caloric portion of the sunbeam, is the great cause of life and motion in this our world. As it were with a magical energy, it causes the winds to blow and the waters to flow, vivifies and animates all nature, and then bathes it in refreshing dew. The intensity of the heat which we receive depends on the distance of the earth from the sun, its great source, and still more on the relative position of the two orbs; since in winter we are nearer the sun than we are in summer, yet, in consequence of the position of the earth at that season, the sun's rays fall obliquely on its northern hemisphere, rendering it far colder than at any other period of the year.

A great portion of the heat-rays which are emitted by the sun are absorbed in their passage through the atmosphere which surrounds our globe. It is calculated that about one-third of the heat-rays which fall on it never reach the earth, which fact adds another to the many beneficent purposes fulfilled by our gaseous envelope, screening us from the otherwise scorching heat. It is curious to trace the varied fates of the calorific rays which strike on the surface of the earth. Some at once on falling are reflected, and, passing back through the atmosphere, are lost amid the immensity of space; others are absorbed or imbibed by different bodies, and, after a time, are radiated from them; but the greater part of the beams which reach the earth during the summer are absorbed by it, and conveyed downward to a considerable distance, by conduction from particle to particle. Heat also spreads laterally from the regions of the equator toward the poles, thereby moderating the intense cold of the arctic and antarctic circles, and in winter, when the forest-trees are covered with snow, their deeply-penetrating roots are warmed by the heat, which, as in a vast store-house, has been laid up in the earth, to preserve life during the dreary winter. The rays which fall on the tropical seas descend to the depth of about three hundred feet. The sun's attraction for the earth, being also stronger at that quarter of the world, the heated waters are drawn upward, the colder waters from the poles rush in, and thus a great heated current is produced, flowing from the equator northward and southward, which tends to equalize the temperature of the earth. The sailor also knows how to avail himself of this phenomenon. When out at sea, despite his most skillful steering, he is in constant danger of shipwreck, if he fails to estimate truly the force and direction of those currents which are dragging him insensibly out of the true course. His compass does not help him here, neither does any log yet known give a perfectly authentic result. But he knows that this great gulf-stream has a stated path and time, and, by testing from hour to hour the temperature of the water through which he is proceeding, he knows at what point he is meeting this current, and reckons accordingly.

We have already said that heat was the producer of the winds, which are so essential to the preservation of the purity of the atmosphere. In order to understand their action, we shall consider the stupendous phenomenon of the trade-winds, which is similar to that of the current we have described. The rays of the sun falling vertically on the regions between the tropics, the air there becomes much heated. It is the property of air to expand when heated, and, when expanded, it is necessarily lighter than the cooler air around it. Consequently it rises. As it rises, the cooler air at once takes its place. Rushing from the temperate and polar regions to supply the want, the warm air which has risen flows toward the poles, and descends there, loses its heat, and again travels to the tropics. Thus a grand circulation is continually maintained in the atmosphere. These aerial currents, being affected by the revolution of the earth, do not move due north and south, as they otherwise would. Hence, while they equalize the temperature of the atmosphere, they also preserve its purity; for the pure oxygen evolved by the luxuriant vegetation of the equatorial regions is wafted by the winds to support life in the teeming population of the temperate zones, while the air from the poles bears carbonic acid gas on its wings to furnish food for the rich and gorgeous plants of the tropics. Thus the splendid water-lily of the Amazon, the stately palm-tree of Africa, and the great banyan of India, depend for nourishment on the breath of men and animals in lands thousands of miles distant from them, and, in return, they supply their benefactors with vivifying oxygen.

Little less important, and still more beautiful, is the phenomenon of dew, which is produced by the power of radiating heat, possessed in different degrees by all bodies. The powers both of absorbing and of radiating heat, in great measure, depend on the color of bodies--the darker the color, the greater the power; so that each lovely flower bears within its petals a delicate thermometer, which determines the amount of heat each shall receive, and which is always the amount essential to their well-being. The queenly rose, the brilliant carnation, the fair lily, and the many-colored anemone, all basking in the same bright sunshine, enjoy different degrees of warmth, and when night descends, and the heat absorbed by day is radiated back, and bodies become cooler than the surrounding air, the vapor contained in the atmosphere is deposited in the form of dew. Those bodies which radiate most quickly receive the most copious supply of the refreshing fluid. This radiating power depends on the condition of the surface, as well as upon color, so that we may often see the grass garden bathed in dew, while the gravel walks which run through it are perfectly dry, and, again, the smooth, shining, juicy leaves of the laurel are quite dry, while the rose-tree beneath it is saturated with moisture.

The great effect produced on the vegetable kingdom by the heat-rays may be judged of from the fact, that almost all the plants which exhibit the remarkable phenomena of irritability, almost approaching to animal life, are confined to those regions where the heat is extreme. On the banks of the Indian rivers grows a plant in almost constant motion. In the hottest of the conservatories at Kew is a curious plant, whose leaflets rise by a succession of little starts. The same house contains Venus's fly-trap. Light seems to have no effect in quickening their movements; but the effect of increased heat is at once seen. They exhibit their remarkable powers most during the still hot nights of an Indian summer.

Heat is of essential importance in the production and ripening of fruit. Many trees will not bear fruit in our cold climate, which are most productive in the sunny south. Animal as well as vegetable life is in great measure dependent on heat. Look at the insect tribes. The greater number of them pass their winter in the pupa state. Hidden in some sheltered nook, or buried in the earth, they sleep on, until the warmth of returning spring awakens them to life and happiness; and if, by artificial means, the cold be prolonged, they still sleep on, whereas, if they he exposed to artificial heat, their change is hastened, and butterflies may be seen sporting about the flowers of a hothouse, when their less favored relatives are still wrapped in the deepest slumber. To judge of the influence of heat on the animal and vegetable economy, we need but contrast summer and winter--the one radiant and vocal with life and beauty, the other dark, dreary, and silent.

The third constituent of the sunbeam is actinism--its property being to produce chemical effects. So long ago as 1556, it was noticed by those strange seekers after impossibilities, the alchemists, that horn silver, exposed to the sunbeam, was blackened by it. This phenomenon contained the germ of those most interesting discoveries which have distinguished the present age; but, in their ardent search for the philosopher's stone and the elixir of life, they overlooked many an effect of their labors which might have led them to important truths.

As yet, the effects of actinism have been more studied in the inanimate than the organic creation. Still, in the vegetable kingdom, its power is known to be of the utmost importance. A seed exposed to the entire sunbeam will not germinate; but bury it in the earth, at a depth sufficient to exclude the light, yet enough to admit actinism, which, like heat, penetrates the earth to some distance, and soon a chemical change will take place; the starch contained in the seed is converted into gum and water, forming the nutriment of the young plant; the tiny root plunges downward, the slender stem rises to the light, the first leaves, or cotyledons, then unfold, and now fully expand to the light, and a series of chemical changes of a totally different nature commence, which we have before noticed, when speaking of light. Experiments clearly prove that this change is to be attributed to actinism, and not to heat. Glass has been interposed of a dark blue color, which is transparent to actinism, though opaque to light and heat, and germination has been thereby quickened. Gardeners have long known this fact practically, and are accustomed to raise their cuttings under blue shades. There is no doubt that actinism exercises a powerful and beneficent influence on plants during their whole existence, but science has yet to demonstrate its nature; and it is curious to observe that the actinic element is most abundant in the sunbeam in the spring, when its presence is most essential in promoting germination--in summer the luminous rays are in excess, when they are most needed for the formation of woody fibre--and in autumn the heat-rays prevail, and ripen the golden grain and the delicious fruit; in each day the proportions of the different rays vary--in the morning the actinic principle abounds most, at noon the light, and at eventide the heat.

The influence of actinism on the animal world is not well known; but it is probable that many of the effects hitherto referred to light are in reality due to actinism. It has the strange power of darkening the human skin, causing the deep color of those tribes who inhabit the sunniest regions of the earth; and even in our own country, in summer, that darkening of the skin called sun-burning. Doubtless, more careful investigation will discover this principle to be equally important to the life and health of animals as either of its closely allied powers of light and heat.

Our knowledge of actinic influence on inanimate nature is not so scanty, for it is now a well established fact, that the sunbeam can not fall on any body, whether simple or compound, without producing on its surface a chemical and molecular change. The immovable rocks which bound our shores, the mountain which rears its lofty head above the clouds, the magnificent cathedral, the very triumph of art, and the beautiful statue in bronze or marble, are all acted on destructively by the sunbeam, and would soon perish beneath its irresistible energy, but for the beautiful provision made for their restoration during the darkness of night--the repose of darkness being no less essential to inorganic, than it is to animated nature. During its silent hours, the chemical and molecular changes are all undone, and the destruction of the day repaired, we know not how.

The art of painting by the sunbeam has been rather unfortunately called photography, which means light-painting, for the process is not due to light, but is rather interfered with by it; and, contrary to all preconceived ideas, the pictures taken in our comparatively sombre country, are more easily and brilliantly produced than in brighter and more sunny lands--so much so, that a gentleman, who took the requisite materials to Mexico, in order to take views of its principal buildings, met with failure after failure, and it was not until the darker days of the rainy season that he met with any measure of success.

THE RECORD OF A MADNESS WHICH WAS NOT INSANITY.

A fresh, bright dawn, the loveliest hour of an English summer, was rousing the slumbering life in woods and fields, and painting the heavens and the earth in the gorgeous hues of the sunrise.

Beautiful it was to see the first blush of day mantling over the distant hills, tinging them with a faint crimson, and the first smile shooting, in one bright beam through the sky, while it lit up the fair face of nature with a sparkling light. Lilias Randolph stood on the flight of steps which led from the Abbey to the park, and looked down on the joyous scene. She seemed herself a very type of the morning, with her sunny eyes, and her golden hair; and her gaze wandered glad and free over the spreading landscape, while her thoughts roamed far away in regions yet more bright--even the sunlit fields of fancy.

It was the day and the hour when she was to go and meet Richard Sydney, in order to have, at length, a full revelation of his mysterious connection with her cousin. She knew that it was an interview of solemn import to both of those, in whom she felt so deep an interest; yet, so entirely were one thought and one feeling alone gaining empire over her spirit that, even then, in that momentous hour, they had no share in the visions with which her heart was busy.

So soon, therefore, as Lilias came within sight of Richard Sydney, who had arrived first at the place of rendezvous, she resolutely banished the thoughts that were so absorbing to her own glad heart, and set herself seriously to give her entire attention to the work now before her, if, haply, it might be given her, in some degree, to minister unto their grievous misery. And truly her first glance upon the face of the man who stood there, with his eyes fixed on the path which was to bring her and her hoped-for succor near to him, would have sufficed to have driven all ideas from her mind, save the one conviction, that in that look alone she had acquired a deeper knowledge of suffering than her own past life, in all its details, had ever afforded her. Sydney heard her step, long before she believed it possible, and, bounding toward her, he seized her hand with a grasp which was almost convulsive. He drew her aside to some little distance from her nurse, who sat down on a bank to wait for them.

Lilias bent down her head that she might not seem to note the workings of his countenance, as he laid bare before her the most hidden springs of his soul, and he began:

"I was born heir to a curse. Centuries ago an ancestor of mine murdered a woman he once had loved, because his neglect had driven her mad, and that in her ravings she revealed his many crimes. With her dying breath she invoked the curse of insanity on him and his house forever, and the cry of her departing soul was heard. There has not been a generation in our family since that hour which has not had its shrieking maniac to echo in our ears the murdered woman's scream. Some there have been among the Sydneys of peculiar constitution, as it would seem, who have not actually been visited with the malady; but they have never failed to transmit it to their children. Of such am I; while my father died a suicide by his own senseless act, and his only other child besides myself, my sister, wears her coronet of straw in the Dublin Asylum, and calls herself a queen.

"It would appall you to hear the fearful calamities which each succeeding family has undergone through this awful curse. At last, as the catalogue of tragic events grew darker and darker, it became a solemn matter of discussion to our unhappy race, whether it were not an absolute duty that the members of a house so doomed, should cease at last to propagate the curse, and by a resolute abandonment of all earthly ties, cause our name and misery to perish from the earth. The necessity for this righteous sacrifice was admitted; but the resolution in each separate individual to become the destined holocaust, has hitherto forever failed before the power of the mighty human love that lured them ever to its pure resistless joys. It was so with my father--like myself he was an only son; and, in the ardor of a generous youth, he vowed to be the offering needful to still the cry of that innocent blood for vengeance; but the sweet face of my mother came between him and his holy vow. He married her, and the punishment came down with fearful weight on both, when her fond heart broke at sight of his ghastly corpse. Then it was she knew the retribution in their case had been just; and on her dying bed, with the yet unclosed coffin of her husband by her side, she made me vow upon the holy cross that I, myself, would be the sacrifice--that never would I take a wife unto my heart or home; and that never, from my life, should any helpless being inherit existence with a curse. That vow I took, that vow I kept, and that vow I will keep, though Aletheia, beloved of my heart and soul, dearer than all beneath the skies, were to lay herself down beneath my very feet to die. Oh! shall we not rest in heaven."

He bowed his head for a moment, and his frame shook with emotion, but driving back the tide of anguish, he went on: "After my mother's death and my sister's removal, who had been insane almost from childhood, I shut myself up entirely at Sydney Court, and gave way to a species of morbid melancholy which was thought to be fearfully dangerous for one in my position. I had friends, however; and the best and truest was Colonel Randolph, my Aletheia's father, the early companion of my own poor, hapless parent. He was resolved to save me from the miserable condition in which I then was. He came to me and told me, with all the authority of his long friendship, that I must go with him to the M----, where he had been appointed governor. He said it was a crime to waste a life, which, though unblest by human ties, might be made most useful to my fellow-creatures. I had studied much in brighter days, and given to the world the fruits of my labors. These had not passed unheeded; he told me they had proved that talents had been committed to me whereby I might be a benefactor to my race, all the more that no soft endearments of domestic joys would wean my thoughts from sterner duties. I was to go with him; he insisted it would benefit myself, and would injure none. His family consisted of his one daughter, his precious, beloved Aletheia, for he doated on her with more than the ordinary love of a father. She knew my history, and would be to me a sister. Alas! alas! for her destruction, I consented."

Again, a momentary pause. Lilias gently raised her compassionate eyes, but he saw her not; he seemed lost in a vision of the past, and soon went on:

"That lovely land where I dwelt with her, it seems a type of the beauty and happiness which was around me then! And, oh! what a dream it is to think of now--the cloudless sky--the glorious sun--and her eyes undimmed, her smile unfaded! Oh! Aletheia--my Aletheia--treasure of many lives! bright and joyous--light to the eyes that looked on her, blessing to the hearts that loved her--would that I had died or ever I drew her very soul into mine, and left her the poor, crushed, helpless being that she is! You can not picture to yourself the fascination that was around her then--high-minded, noble in heart, lofty in soul; her bright spirit stamped its glory on her face, and she was beautiful, with all spiritual loveliness. None ever saw her who loved her not--her rare talents--her enchanting voice; that voice of her very soul, which spoke in such wonderful music, drew to her feet every creature who knew her; for with all these gifts, this wonderful intellect, and rarest powers of mind, she was playful, winning, simple as an innocent child. I say none saw her, and loved her not; how, think you, _I_ loved her?--the doomed man, the desolate being, whose barren, joyless life walked hand in hand with a curse. Let this anguish tell you how I loved her;" and he turned on Lilias a face of ghastly paleness, convulsed with agony, and wet with the dews of suffering; but he did not pause, he went on rapidly: "I was mad, then, in one sense, though it was the madness of the heart, and not the brain. Poor wretch, I thought I would wring a joy out of my blasted life in spite of fate, and, while none other claimed her as their own, I would revel in her presence, and in the rapture of her tenderness. I knew it was mockery when I bid her call me brother--a sister truly is loved with other love than that I gave her. I would have seen every relation I had ever known laid dead at my feet, could I have thereby purchased for her, my thrice-beloved one, one moment's pleasure.

"Lilias, does a passion of such fearful power shock and terrify you, who have only known the placid beating of a gentle, childlike heart? Take a yet deeper lesson, then, in the dark elements of which this life may be composed, and learn that deep, and true, and mighty as was my love for her, it is as a mere name, a breath, a vapor, compared with that most awful affection which Aletheia had already, even then, vowed unto me, in the depth of her secret heart. Ah! it needed, in truth, such an agony as that which is now incorporate with it in her heart, to cope with its immensity; for, truly, no weak happiness of earth could have had affinity with it--a love so saint-like must needs have been a martyr. I will not attempt to tell you what her devotion to me was, and is, and shall be, while one faintest throb of life is stirring in her noble heart. You have seen it--you have seen that love looking through those eyes of hers, like a mighty spirit endowed with an existence separate from her own, which holds her soul in its fierce, powerful grasp.

"I must hurry on now, and my words must be rapid as the events that drove us from the serene elysian fields of that first dear companionship, through storm and whirlwind, to this wilderness of misery where I am sent to wander to and fro, like a murderer, as I am; condemned to watch the daily dying of the sweet life I have destroyed. You may think me blind and senseless, for so I surely was, but it is certain that I never suspected the love she bore me. I saw that she turned away from the crowds that flocked around, and was deaf to all the offers that were made to her, of rank, and wealth, and station, and many a true heart's love; but I thought this was because her own was yet untouched, and when I saw that I alone was singled out to be the object of her attention and solicitude, I fancied it was but the effect of her deep, generous pity for my desolate condition--and pity it was, but such as the mother feels for the suffering of the first-born, whom she adores. And the day of revelation came!

"I told you how Colonel Randolph doated on his daughter; truly, none ever loved Aletheia with a common love. When he was released from the duties of his high office, it was one of his greatest pleasures to walk, or ride with me, that he might talk to me of her. One morning he came in with a packet of letters from England, and, taking me by the arm, drew me out into the garden, that he might tell me some news, which, he said, gave him exceeding joy. The letters announced the arrival of the son of an old friend of his, who had just succeeded to his title and estates, the young Marquis of L----, and further communicated, in the most unreserved manner, that his object in coming to the M---- was to make Aletheia his wife, if he could win her to himself; he had long loved her, and had only delayed his offer till he could install her in his lordly castle with all the honors of his station. To see this union accomplished, Colonel Randolph said, had been his one wish since both had played as children at his feet, and he now believed the desired consummation was at hand. Aletheia's consent was alone required, and there seemed no reason to doubt it would be given, for there was not, he asserted, in all England, one more worthy of her, by every noble gift of mind, than the high-born, generous-hearted L----.

"Why, indeed, should she not, at once, accept the brilliant destiny carved out for her!--I did not doubt it more than the exulting father, and I heard my doom fixed in the same senseless state of calm with which the criminal who knows his guilt and its penalty, hears the sentence of his execution. I had long known this hour must come; and what had I now to do but gather, as it were, a shroud round my tortured soul, and, like the Cæsars, die decently to all earthly happiness! Even in that tremendous hour, I had a consciousness of the dignity of suffering--suffering, that is, which comes from the height of heaven above, and not from the depths of crime below! I resolved that the lamp of my life's joy should go out without a sigh audible to human ears, save hers alone, who had lit that pure flame in the black night of my existence.

"Lilias, I enter into no detail of what I felt in that momentous crisis, for you have no woman's heart if you have not understood it, in its uttermost extent of misery. One thought, however, stood up pre-eminent in that chaos of suffering--the conviction that I must not see Aletheia Randolph again, or the very powers of my mind would give way in the struggle that must ensue. This thought, and one other--one solitary gleam of dreary comfort, that alone relieved the great darkness which had fallen upon me, were all that seemed distinct in my mind: that last mournful consolation was the resolution taken along with the vow to see her no more, that ere I passed forever from her memory, she should know what was the love with which I loved her.

"Quietly I gave her father my hand when I quitted him, and he said, 'We shall meet in the evening;' my own determination was never to look upon his face again. I went home, and sitting down, I wrote to Aletheia a letter, in which all the pent-up feelings of the deep, silent devotion I cherished for her, were poured out in words to which the wretchedness of my position gave a fearful intensity--burning words, indeed! She has told me since, that they seemed to eat into her heart like fire. I left the letter for her and quitted the house; and I believed my feet should never pass that beloved threshold again. There was a spot where Aletheia and I had gone almost day by day to wander, since we had dwelt in that land. She loved it, because she could look out over the ocean in its boundlessness, whose aspect soothed her, she said, as with a promise of eternity. It was a huge rock that rose perpendicularly from the sea, and sloped down on the other side, by a gentle declivity, to the plain. I have often thought what a type of our life it was; we saw nothing of the precipice as we ascended the soft and verdant mount, and suddenly it was at our feet, and if the blast of heaven had driven us another step, it had been into destruction.

"Thither, when I had parted, as I believed, forever, with that darling of my heart, I went with what intent I know not: it was not to commit suicide; although in that form, in the mad longing for it, the curse of my family has ever declared itself. I was yet sane, and my soul acknowledged and abhorred the tremendous guilt of that mysterious crime, wherein the created dashes back the life once given, in the very face of the Creator; not for suicide I went, yet, Lilias, as I stood within an inch of death, and looked down on the placid waters that had so swiftly cooled the burning anguish of my heart and brain, I felt, in the intense desire to terminate my life, and in that desire resisted, a more stinging pain than any which my bitter term of years has ever offered me. Oh, how shall I tell you what followed? I feel as though I could not: and briefly, and, indeed, incoherently, must I speak; for on the next hour--the supreme, the crowning hour of all my life--my spirit enters not, without an intensity of feeling which well-nigh paralyzes every faculty.

"I stood there, and suddenly I heard a sound--a soft, breathing sound, as of a gentle fawn wearied in some steep ascent--a sound coming nearer and nearer, bringing with it ten thousand memories of hours and days that were to come no more: a step, light and tremulous, falling on the soft grass softly, and then a voice.--Oh, when mine ears are locked in death, shall I not hear it?--a voice uttering low and sweet, my well-known name. I turned, and when I saw that face, on whose sweet beauty other eyes should feed, yea, other lips caress, for one instant the curse of my forefather seemed upon me; my brain reeled, and I would have sprung from the precipice to die. But ere I could accomplish the sudden craving of this momentary frenzy, Aletheia, my own Aletheia, was at my feet, her clinging arms were round me, her lips were pressed upon my hands, and her voice--her sweet, dear voice--went sounding through my soul like a sudden prophecy of most unearthly joy, murmuring, 'Live, live for me, mine own forever!'

"Oh, Lilias, how can I attempt with human words to tell you of these things, so far beyond the power of language to express! I felt that what she said was true--that in some way, by some wonderful means, she was in very deed and truth, 'mine own, forever,' though, in that moment of supremest joy, no less firmly than in the hour of supremest sorrow by my mother's dying bed, my heart and soul were faithful to the vow then taken, that never on my desolate breast a wife should lay her head to rest. 'Mine own forever!'--as I looked down, and met the gaze of fathomless, unutterable love with which her tearful eyes were fastened full upon my own, I was as one who having long dwelt in darkest night, was blinded with the sudden glare of new returning day. I staggered back, and leant against the rock; faint and shivering I stretched out my hands on that beloved head, longing for the power to bless her, and said, 'Oh, Aletheia, what is it you have said: have you forgotten who and what I am!'

"'No!' was her answer, steady and distinct; 'and for that very reason, because you are a stricken man, forever cut off from all the common ties of earth, have I been given to you, to be in heart and soul peculiarly your own, with such a measure of entire devotion as never was offered to man on earth before.'

"I looked at her almost in bewilderment. She rose up to her full height, perfectly calm, and with a deep solemnity in her words and aspect.

"'Richard,' she said, 'the lives of both of us are hanging on this hour; by it shall all future existence on this earth be shaped for us, and its memory shall come with death itself to look us in the face, and stamp our whole probation with its seal; it becomes us, therefore, to cast aside all frivolous rules of man's convention, and speak the truth as deathless soul with deathless soul. Hear me, then, while I open up my inmost spirit to your gaze, and then decide whether you will lay your hand upon my life, and say--'Thou art my own;' or whether you will fling it from you to perish as some worthless thing?'

"I bowed my head in token that she should continue, for I could not speak. I, Lilias, who had looked death and insanity in the face, under their most frightful shapes, trembled, like a reed in the blast, before the presence of a love that was mightier than either! Aletheia stretched out her hand over the precipice, and spoke--

"'Hear me, then, declare first of all, solemnly as though this hour were my last, that, not even to save you from that death which, but now, you dared to meditate, would I ever consent to be your wife, even if you wished it, as utterly as I doubt not you abhor the idea of such perjury--not to save you from death--I say--the death of the mortal body, for by conniving at your failure in that most righteous vow, once taken on the holy cross itself, I should peril--yea, destroy, it may be, the immortal soul, which is the true object of my love. Hear me, in the face of that pure sky announce this truth, and then may I freely declare to you all that is in my heart--all the sacred purpose of my life for you, without a fear that my worst enemy could pronounce me unmaidenly or overbold, though I have that to say which few women ever said unasked.'

"Unmaidenly! Oh, Lilias, could you have seen the noble dignity of her fearless innocence in that hour, you would have felt that never had the impress of a purer heart been stamped upon a virgin brow."

"'Have you understood and well considered this my settled purpose never to be your wife?' she continued.

"And I said--'I have.'"

"'Then speak out, my soul,' she exclaimed, lifting up her eyes as if inspired. 'Tell him that there is a righteous Providence over the life that immolates itself for virtue's sake! and that another existence hath been sent to meet it in the glorious sacrifice, in order that this one may yield up its treasures to the heart that would have stript itself of all! Richard, Richard Sydney, you have made a holocaust of your life, and lo! by the gift of another life, it is repaid to you.'

"Slowly she knelt down, and took my hand in both of hers, while with an aspect calm and firm, and a voice unfaltering, she spoke this vow:

'I, Aletheia Randolph, do most solemnly vow and promise to give myself, in heart and soul, unto the last day of my life, wholly and irrevocably, to Richard Sydney. I devote to him, and him alone, my whole heart, my whole life, and my whole love. I do forever forswear, for his sake, all earthly ties, all earthly affections, and all earthly hopes. I will love him only, live for him only, and make it my one happiness to minister to him in all things as faithfully and tenderly as though I were bound to him by the closest of human bonds--in spite of all obstacles and the world's blame--in defiance of all allurements, which might induce me to abandon him. I will seek to abide ever as near to him as may be, that I may bestow on him all the care and tender watchfulness which the most faithful wife could offer; but absent or present, living or dying, no human being on this earth shall ever have known such an entire devotion as I will give to him till the last breath pass from this heart in death!'

"I was speechless, Lilias--speechless with something almost of horror at the sacrifice she was making! I strove to withdraw my hand--I could have died to save her from thus immolating herself; but she clung to me, and a deadly paleness spread itself over her countenance as she felt my movement.

"'Hear me! hear me yet again, Richard Sydney!' she exclaimed; 'you can not prevent me taking this vow; it was registered in the record of my fate--uttered again and again deep in my soul, long before it was spoken by these mortal lips!--it is done--I am yours forever, or forever perjured! But hear me!--hear me!--although the offering of my life is made, yea, and it _shall_ be yours in every moment, in every thought, in every impulse of my being, yet I can not force you to accept this true oblation, made once for all, and forever! I can not constrain you to load your existence with mine. Now, now, the consummation of all is in your own hands; you may make this offering, which is never to be recalled, as you will--a blessing or a curse to yourself as unto me! I am powerless--what you decree I must submit to; but hear me, hear me!--although you now reject, and scorn, and spurn me--me, and the life which I have given you--although you drive me from you, and command me never to appear before your eyes again, yet, Richard Sydney, I WILL KEEP MY VOW! Even in obeying you, and departing to the uttermost corner of the earth that you may never look upon my face again; yet will I keep my vow, and the life shall be yours, and the love shall be around you; and the heart, and the soul, and the thoughts, and the prayers of her, who is your own forever, shall be with you night and day, till she expires in the agony of your rejection.

"'This were the curse, and curse me if you will, I yet will bless you! And now hear, hear what the blessing might be if you so willed it. In spiritual union we should be forever linked, soul with soul, and heart with heart--all in all to one another in that wedding of our immortal spirits only, as truly and joyously as though we had been bound in an earthly bridal at the altar; abiding forever near each other in sweetest and most pure companionship, while my father lives under the same roof, and afterward still meeting daily; one in love, in joy, in hope, in sorrow; one in death (for if your soul were first called forth, I know that mine would take that summons for its own), and one, if it were so permitted, in eternity itself. This we may be, Richard Sydney, this we shall be, except you will, this day, trample down beneath your feet the life that gives itself to you. But wherefore, oh, wherefore would you do so? Why cast away the gift which hath been sent, in order that, by a wondrous and most just decree, the righteous man who, in his noble rectitude, abandoned every earthly tie, should be possessed, instead thereof, of such a deep, devoted love as never human heart received before? Wherefore, oh! wherefore? Yet, do as you will, now you know all; and I, who still, whatever be your decree, happen what may, am verily your own forever, must here abide the sentence of my life.'

"Slowly her dear head fell down upon her trembling hands, and, kneeling at my feet, she waited my acceptance or rejection of the noblest gift that ever one immortal spirit made unto another. Lilias, I told you when I commenced this agonizing record, that there were portions of it which I would breathe to no mortal ears, not even to yours, good and gentle as you are. And now, of such is all that followed in the solemn, blessed hours of which I speak; you know what my answer was; it can not be that you doubt it--could it have been otherwise, indeed? She had said truly, that the deed was done--the sacrifice was made--the life was given. What would it have availed if I, by my rejection, had punished her unparalleled devotion with unexampled misery? and for myself, could I--could I--should I have been human if I, who, till that hour, had believed myself of all men most accursed on earth--had suddenly refused to be above all men blest?

"When the sun went down that night, sinking into the sea, whose boundlessness seemed narrow to my infinity of joy, Aletheia lay at my feet like a cradled child; and as I bent down over her, and scarcely dared to touch, with deep respect, the long, soft tresses of her waving hair, which the light breeze lifted to my lips, I heard her ever murmuring, as though she could never weary of that sound of joy--'Mine own, mine own forever.'

"The period which followed that wonderful hour was one of an Eden-like happiness, such as, I believe, this fallen world never could before have witnessed--it was the embodiment, in every hour and instant, of that blessing of which my Aletheia had so fervently spoken--the spiritual union which linked us in heart and soul alone, was as perfect as it was unearthly; and the intense bliss which flowed from it, on both of us, could only have been equaled by the love, no less intense, that made us what we were.

"But, Lilias, of this brief dream of deep delight I will not and I can not speak. This is a record of misery and not of joy," he continued, turning round upon her almost fiercely. "It becomes not me, who have been the murderer of Aletheia's joyous life, to take so much as the name of happiness between my lips. It passed--it departed--that joy, as a spirit departs out of the body; unseen, unheard; you know not it is gone, till suddenly you see that the beautiful living form has become a stark and ghastly corpse!--and so, in like manner, our life became a hideous thing....

"Colonel Randolph asked me to go on an embassy to a distant town; the absence was to be but for a fortnight. We were to write daily to one another, and we thought nothing of it. Nevertheless, in one sense, we felt it to be momentous. Aletheia designed, if an opportunity occurred, to inform her father of the change in her existence, and the irrevocable fate to which she had consigned herself. She had delayed doing so hitherto, because his mind had been fearfully disturbed by grievous disappointments in public affairs; and as he was a man of peculiarly sensitive temperament, she would not add to his distresses by the announcement of the fact, which she knew he would consider the great misfortune of his life. It was impossible, indeed, that the doating father could fail to mourn bitterly over the sacrifice of his one beloved daughter, to the man who dared not so much as give her barren life the protection of his name lest haply, he wed her to a maniac.

"It was within two days of my proposed return to their home, that an express arrived in fiery haste to tell me Colonel Randolph had fallen from his horse, had received a mortal injury, and was dying. I was summoned instantly. He had said he would not die in peace till he saw me. One hurried line from Aletheia, in addition to the aid-de-camp's letter, told how even, in that awful hour, I was first and last in his thoughts. It ran thus: 'He is on his death-bed, and I have told him all. I could not let him die unknowing the consecration of his child to one so worthy of her. But, alas! I know not why, it seems almost to have maddened him. He says he will tell you all; come, then, with all speed.'

"In two hours I was by the side of the dying man. Aletheia was kneeling with her arms round him, and he was gazing at her with sombre, mournful fondness. The instant he saw me he pushed her from him. 'Go,' he said, 'I must see this man alone.' The epithet startled me. I saw he was filled with a bitter wrath. His daughter obeyed; she rose and left the room; but as she passed me she took my hand, and bowing herself as to her master, pressed it to her lips, then turning round she said. 'Father, remember what I have told you: he is mine own forever; not even your death-bed curse could make me falter in my vow.' He groaned aloud: 'No curse, no curse, my child,' he cried; 'fear not; it is not you whom I would curse. Come--kiss me; we may perhaps not meet again; and if you find me dead at your return--' He waited till she closed the door, and then added, 'Say that Richard Sydney killed me, and you will speak the truth! Madman, madman, indeed! What is it you have done? Was it for this I took you into my home, and was to you a father? That you might slay my only daughter--that you might make such havoc of her life as is worse than a thousand deaths.'

"I would have spoken; he fiercely interrupted me: 'I know what you would say--that she gave herself to you--that she offered this oblation of a whole existence--but I tell you, if one grain of justice or of generosity had been within your coward heart, you would have flung yourself over that precipice, and so absolved her from her vow, rather than let her immolate herself to a doom so horrible; for you know not, yourself, what is that doom! Yes, poor wretch,' he added, more gently, 'you knew not what you did; but I know, and now will I tell. I, who have watched over the soul of Aletheia Randolph for well-nigh twenty years, know well of what fire it is made; I tell you I have long foreknown that there was a capacity of love in her which is most awful, and which would most infallibly work her utter woe, except its ardent immensity found a perpetual outlet in the many ties which weave themselves around a happy wife and mother. And now, oh! was there none to have mercy on her, and save her noble heart and life from such destruction; this soul of flame, fathomless as the deep, burning and pure as the spotless noonday sky, hath gone forth to fasten itself upon a desolating, barren, mournful love, where, hungering forever after happiness, and never fed, it will be driven to insanity or death! Yes, I tell you, it will be so; my departing spirit is almost on my lips, and my words must be few, but they are words of fearful truth. I know her, and I know that thus it will be; one day's separation from you, whom the world will never admit to be her own--one cloud upon your brow, which she has not the power to disperse, will work in her a torment that will sap her noble mind, and will make her, haply, the lunatic, and _you_--_you_, descendant of the maniac Sydneys, her keeper! Oh, what had she done to you that you should hate her so? Oh, wherefore have you cursed her, my innocent child, my only daughter?'

"I fell on my knees; I gasped for breath; Lilias, I felt that every word he said was true, that all would come to pass as he foretold; for he spoke with the prophetic truth of the dying; he saw my utter agony. Suddenly he lifted himself up in the bed, and the movement broke the bandage on his head, whence the blood streamed suddenly with a destructive violence; he heeded it not, but grasped my arm with the last energy of life.

"'I see you are in torments,' he said, 'and fitly so; but if you have this much of grace left, now at least to suffer, it may be that every spark of justice is not dead within you, and that you will save her yet.'

"'Save her!' I almost shrieked. 'Yes, if by any means upon this earth such a blessing be possible! Shall I die? I am ready--oh, how ready.'

"'No; to die were but to carry her into your grave,' the cruel voice replied; 'but living, I believe that you may save her. From what I know of that most noble child's pure soul, I do believe that you may save her yet. Man! who have been her curse and mine, will you swear to do so, by any means I may command?'

"'I will swear!' was my answer, and his glazing eyes were suddenly lit up with a fierce delight. 'And how?' I cried.

"'Thus,' he answered, drawing me close to him, and putting his lips to my ear: 'by rendering yourself hateful to her! To quit her were to bid her lament you unto the death; but _by her very side to render yourself abhorrent to her_, thus shall you save her! You have sworn--remember, you have sworn! Go! When I am dead, give up that voice and look of love; put on a stern aspect; treat her as a cruel taskmaster treats a slave; be harsh; be merciless; tell her the love she bears you, by its depth of passion, hath become a crime, and you have vowed to crush it out of her; but say not I commanded it; let her believe it is your own free will; punish her for that love; let her think you hate her for it; trample her soul beneath your haughty feet; let her hear naught but bitterest words--see naught but sternest looks--feel naught but a grasp severe and torturing--to tear her clinging arms from around you!--so shall you save her; for she will suffer but a little while at first, and then will leave you to be forever blest;--so shall you crush her love, and send her out from your heart to seek a better. Sydney, you have sworn to do it--you have sworn!'

"He repeated the words with fearful vehemence, for life was ebbing with the blood that flowed. Gathering up his last energies, he shrieked into my ear--'Say that you have sworn!--answer, or my spirit curses you forever!' and I answered: 'I have sworn!'

"He burst into a laugh of awful triumph, sunk back, and expired....

"Lilias, I have kept that vow!"

At these words, uttered in a hoarse and ominous tone, which seemed to convey a volume of fearful meaning, a cold shiver crept over the frame of the young Lilias: a horror unspeakable took possession of her, as the vail seemed suddenly lifted up from the mysterious agony which had made Aletheia's life, even to the outward eye, a mere embodiment of perpetual suffering; and her deep and womanly appreciation of what her unhappy cousin had endured, caused her to shrink almost in fear from the wretched man by her side, who had thus been constrained to become the cruel tyrant of her he loved so fondly. But he spoke again in such broken, faltering accents, that her heart once more swelled with pity for him.

"Yes, Lilias, I kept that fearful vow: the grasp of the dead man's hand, which, even as he stiffened into a mass of senseless clay, still locked my own as with an iron gripe, seemed to have bound it on my soul, and I, alas! believed in the efficacy of this means for her restoration from the destructive madness of her love to such an one as I. I believed I thus should save her, and turn her pure affection to a salutary hate. Yes; with energy, with fierce determination, I did keep that vow, because it was to bind myself unto such untold tortures, that it seemed a righteous expiation; and what, oh, what has been the result! Her father thought he knew her. He thought the intensity of her tenderness would brave insanity or death; but, not _my_ hatred and contempt! and he knew her not, in her unparalleled generosity! for behold her glorious devotion hath trampled even my contumely under foot, and hath risen faithful, changeless, all perfect as before.

"Oh, Lilias, I can not tell you the detail of the cruelties I have perpetrated on her--redoubled, day by day, as I saw them all fall powerless before her matchless love. I told her that because of its intensity, her affection had become a crime, for one whose eternal abiding place was not within this world, and that it inspired me with horror and with wrath; and since she had taken me for her master, as her master, I would drive this passion from her soul, by even the sternest means that fancy can devise; and then, I dare not tell you all that I have done; but she, with her imploring voice, her tender, mournful eyes, forever answered that if she were hateful to me I had better leave her, only with me should go her love, her life, her very soul! Alas! alas! I could not leave her till my fearful task was done. I have labored--oh, let the spirit of that dead father witness--I have labored according to his will, and what has been the up-shot of it all? Lilias," he spoke with sudden fierceness, "I have learnt to crush the life out of her, _but not the love_! the pure, devoted, boundless love is there, still, true and tender as before, only it abides my torture, day and night, chained to the rack by these cruel hands."

He buried his face on his knees, and a strong convulsion shook his frame.

A TALE OF MID-AIR.

In a cottage in the valley of Sallanches near the foot of Mont Blanc, lived old Bernard and his three sons. One morning he lay in bed sick, and, burning with fever, watched anxiously for the return of his son, Jehan, who had gone to fetch a physician. At length a horse's tread was heard, and soon afterward the Doctor entered. He examined the patient closely, felt his pulse, looked at his tongue, and then said, patting the old man's cheek, "It will be nothing, my friend--nothing!" but he made a sign to the three lads, who open-mouthed and anxious, stood grouped around the bed. All four withdrew to a distant corner, the doctor shook his head, thrust out his lower lip, and said "Tis a serious attack--very serious--of fever. He is now in the height of the fit, and as soon as it abates he must have sulphate of quinine."

"What is that, doctor?"

"Quinine, my friend, is a very expensive medicine, but which you may procure at Sallanches. Between the two fits your father must take at least three francs' worth. I will write the prescription. You can read, Guillaume?"

"Yes, doctor."

"And you will see that he takes it?"

"Certainly."

When the physician was gone, Guillaume, Pierre, and Jehan looked at each other in silent perplexity. Their whole stock of money consisted of a franc and a half, and yet the medicine must be procured immediately.

"Listen," said Pierre, "I know a method of getting from the mountain before night three or four five-franc pieces."

"From the mountain?"

"I have discovered an eagle's nest in a cleft of a frightful precipice. There is a gentleman at Sallanches, who would gladly purchase the eagles; and nothing made me hesitate but the terrible risk of taking them; but that's nothing when our father's life is concerned. We may have them now in two hours."

"I will rob the nest," said Guillaume.

"No, no, let me," said Jehan, "I am the youngest and lightest."

"I have the best right to venture," said Pierre, "as it was I who discovered it."

"Come," said Pierre, "let us decide by drawing lots. Write three numbers, Guillaume, put them into my hat, and whoever draws number one will try the venture."

Guillaume blackened the end of a wooden splinter in the fire; tore an old card into three pieces; wrote on them one, two, three, and threw them into the hat.

How the three hearts beat! Old Bernard lay shivering in the cold fit, and each of his sons longed to risk his own life, to save that of his father.

The lot fell on Pierre, who had discovered the nest; he embraced the sick man.

"We shall not be long absent, father," he said, "and it is needful for us to go together."

"What are you going to do?"

"We will tell you as soon as we come back."

Guillaume took down from the wall an old sabre, which had belonged to Bernard when he served as a soldier; Jehan sought a thick cord which the mountaineers use when cutting down trees; and Pierre went toward an old wooden cross, reared near the cottage, and knelt before it for some minutes in fervent prayer.

They set out together, and soon reached the brink of the precipice. The danger consisted not only in the possibility of falling several hundred feet, but still more in the probable aggression of the birds of prey, inhabiting the wild abyss.

Pierre, who was to brave these perils, was a fine athletic young man of twenty-two. Having measured with his eye the distance he would have to descend, his brothers fastened the cord around his waist, and began to let him down. Holding the sabre in his hand, he safely reached the nook that contained the nest. In it were four eaglets of a light yellowish-brown color, and his heart beat with joy at the sight of them. He grasped the nest firmly in his left hand, and shouted joyfully to his brothers, "I have them! Draw me up!"

Already the first upward pull was given to the cord, when Pierre felt himself attacked by two enormous eagles, whose furious cries proved them to be the parents of the nestlings.

"Courage, brother! defend thyself! don't fear!"

Pierre pressed the nest to his bosom, and with his right hand made the sabre play around his head.

Then began a terrible combat. The eagles shrieked, the little ones cried shrilly, the mountaineer shouted and brandished his sword. He slashed the birds with its blade, which flashed like lightning, and only rendered them still more enraged. He struck the rock and sent forth a shower of sparks.

Suddenly he felt a jerk given to the cord that sustained him. Looking up he perceived that, in his evolutions, he had cut it with his sabre, and that half the strands were severed!

Pierre's eyes, dilated widely, remained for a moment immovable, and then closed with terror. A cold shudder passed through his veins, and he thought of letting go both the nest and the sabre.

At that moment one of the eagles pounced on his head, and tried to tear his face. The Savoyard made a last effort, and defended himself bravely. He thought of his old father, and took courage.

Upward, still upward, mounted the cord: friendly voices eagerly uttered words of encouragement and triumph; but Pierre could not reply to them. When he reached the brink of the precipice, still clasping fast the nest, his hair, which an hour before had been as black as a raven's wing, was become so completely white, that Guillaume and Jehan could scarcely recognize him.

What did that signify? the eaglets were of the rarest and most valuable species. That same afternoon they were carried to the village and sold. Old Bernard had the medicine, and every needful comfort beside, and the doctor in a few days pronounced him convalescent.

STORIES ABOUT BEASTS AND BIRDS.

The strength and courage of the lion is so great that, although he is seldom four feet in height, he is more than a match for fierce animals of three or four times his size, such as the buffalo. He will even attack a rhinoceros or an elephant, if provoked. He possesses such extraordinary muscular power, that he has been known to kill and carry off a heifer of two years old in his mouth, and, after being pursued by herdsmen on horseback for five hours, it has been found that he has scarcely ever allowed the body of the heifer to touch the ground during the whole distance. But here is an instance of strength in a man--a different sort of strength--which surpasses all we ever heard of a lion:

Three officers in the East Indies--Captain Woodhouse, Lieutenant Delamain, and Lieutenant Laing--being informed that two lions had made their appearance, in a jungle, at some twenty miles' distance from their cantonment, rode off in that direction to seek an engagement. They soon found the "lordly strangers," or natives, we should rather say. One of the lions was killed by the first volley they fired; the other retreated across the country. The officers pursued, until the lion, making an abrupt curve, returned to his jungle. They then mounted an elephant, and went in to search for him. They found him standing under a bush, looking directly toward them. He sought no conflict, but seeing them approach, he at once accepted the first challenge, and sprang at the elephant's head, where he hung on. The officers fired; in the excitement of the onset their aim was defeated, and the lion only wounded. The elephant, meanwhile, had shaken him off, and, not liking such an antagonist, refused to face him again. The lion did not pursue, but stood waiting. At length the elephant was persuaded to advance once more; seeing which, the lion became furious, and rushed to the contest. The elephant turned about to retreat, and the lion, springing upon him from behind, grappled his flesh with teeth and claws, and again hung on. The officers fired, while the elephant kicked with all his might; but, though the lion was dislodged, he was still without any mortal wound, and retired into the thicket, content with what he had done in return for the assault. The officers had become too excited to desist; and in the fever of the moment, as the elephant, for his part, now directly refused to have any thing more to do with the business, Captain Woodhouse resolved to dismount, and go on foot into the jungle. Lieutenant Delamain and Lieutenant Laing dismounted with him, and they followed in the direction the lion had taken. They presently got sight of him, and Captain Woodhouse fired, but apparently without any serious injury, as they saw "the mighty lord of the woods" retire deeper into the thicket "with the utmost composure." They pursued, and Lieutenant Delamain got a shot at the lion. This was to be endured no longer, and forth came the lion, dashing right through the bushes that intervened, so that he was close upon them in no time. The two lieutenants were just able to escape out of the jungle to re-load, but Captain Woodhouse stood quietly on one side, hoping the lion would pass him unobserved. This was rather too much to expect after all he had done. The lion darted at him, and in an instant, "as though by a stroke of lightning," the rifle was broken and knocked out of his hand, and he found himself in the grip of the irresistible enemy whom he had challenged to mortal combat. Lieutenant Delamain fired at the lion without killing him, and then again retreated to re-load. Meantime, Captain Woodhouse and the lion were both lying wounded on the ground, and the lion began to craunch his arm. In this dreadful position Captain Woodhouse had the presence of mind, and the fortitude, amid the horrible pain he endured, to lie perfectly still--knowing that if he made any resistance now, he would be torn to pieces in a minute. Finding all motion had ceased, the lion let the arm drop from his mouth, and quietly crouched down with his paws on the thigh of his prostrate antagonist. Presently, Captain Woodhouse, finding his head in a painful position, unthinkingly raised one hand to support it, whereupon the lion again seized his arm, and craunched it higher up. Once more, notwithstanding the intense agony, and yet more intense apprehension of momentary destruction, Captain Woodhouse had the strength of will and self-command to lie perfectly still. He remained thus, until his friends, discovering his situation, were hastening up, but upon the wrong side, so that their balls might possibly pass through the lion, and hit him. Without moving, or manifesting any hasty excitement, he was heard to say, in a low voice, "To the other side!--to the other side!" They hurried round. Next moment the magnanimous lion lay dead by the side of a yet stronger nature than his own.

Diedrik Müller, during his hunting time in South Africa, came suddenly upon a lion. The lion did not attack him, but stood still, as though he would have said, "Well, what do you want here in my desert?" Müller alighted from his horse, and took deliberate aim at the lion's forehead. Just as he drew the trigger, his horse gave a start of terror, and the hunter missed his aim. The lion sprang forward; but, finding that the man stood still--for he had no time either to remount his horse, or take to his heels--the lion stopped within a few paces, and stood still also, confronting him. The man and the lion stood looking at each other for some minutes; the man never moved; at length the lion slowly turned, and walked away. Müller began hastily to re-load his gun. The lion looked back over his shoulder, gave a deep growl, and instantly returned. Could words speak plainer? Müller, of course, held his hand, and remained motionless. The lion again moved off, warily. The hunter began softly to ram down his bullet. Again the lion looked back, and gave a threatening growl. This was repeated between them until the lion had retired to some distance, when he bounded into a thicket.

A very curious question is started by the worthy vicar of Swaffham Bulbec on the mortality of birds. The mortality must be enormous every year, yet how seldom in our country rambles do we find a dead bird. One, now and then, in the woods or hedgerows, is the utmost seen by any body, even if he search for them. Very few, comparatively, are destroyed by mankind. Only a few species are killed by sportsmen; all the rest can not live long, nor can they all be eaten by other birds. Many must die from natural causes. Immense numbers, especially of the smaller birds, are born each year, yet they do not appear to increase the general stock of the species. Immense numbers, therefore, must die every year; but what becomes of the bodies? Martins, nightingales, and other migratory birds, may be supposed to leave a great number of their dead relations in foreign countries; this, however, can not apply to our own indigenous stock. Mr. Jenyns partly accounts for this by saying, that no doubt a great many young birds fall a prey to stronger birds soon after leaving the nest, and probably a number of the elder birds also; while the very old are killed by the cold of winter; or, becoming too feeble to obtain food, drop to the earth, and are spared the pain of starvation by being speedily carried off by some hungry creature of the woods and fields. Besides these means for the disposal of the bodies, there are scavenger insects, who devour, and another species who act as sextons, and bury the bodies. During the warm months of summer, some of the burying beetles will accomplish "the humble task allotted them by Providence," in a surprisingly short time. Mr. Jenyns has repeatedly, during a warm spring, placed dead birds upon the ground, in different spots frequented by the _necrophorus vespillo_, and other allied beetles, who have effected the interment so completely in four-and-twenty hours, that there was a difficulty in finding the bodies again.

All this goes a great way to account for our so very seldom seeing any dead birds lying about, notwithstanding the immense mortality that must take place every year; but it certainly is not satisfactory; for although the birds of prey, and those which are not devoured by others, are comparatively small in number, how is it that none of _these_ are ever found? Once in a season, perhaps, we may find a dead crow, or a dead owl (generally one that has been shot), but who ever finds hawks, ravens, kites, sparrow-hawks, or any number of crows, out of all the annual mortality that must occur in their colonies? These birds are for the most part too large for the sexton beetle to bury; and, quickly as the foxes, stoats, weasels, and other prowling creatures would nose out the savoury remains, or the newly-fallen bodies, these creatures only inhabit certain localities--and dead birds may be supposed to fall in many places. Still, they are not seen.

A pair of robins built their nest in the old ivy of a garden wall, and the hen shortly afterward sat in maternal pride upon four eggs. The gardener came to clip the ivy; and, not knowing of the nest, his shears cut off a part of it, so that the four eggs fell to the ground. Dropping on leaves, they were not broken. Notice being attracted by the plaintive cries of the hen bird, the eggs were restored to the nest, which the gardener repaired. The robins returned, the hen sat upon the eggs, and in a few days they were hatched. Shortly afterward the four little ones were all found lying upon the ground beneath, cold, stiff, and lifeless. The gardener's repairs of the nest had not been according to the laws of bird-architecture, and a gap had broken out. The four unfledged little ones were taken into the house, and, efforts being made to revive them by warmth, they presently showed signs of life, recovered, and were again restored to the nest. The gap was filled up by stuffing a small piece of drugget into it. The parent robins, perched in a neighboring tree, watched all these operations, without displaying any alarm for the result, and, as soon as they were completed, returned to the nest. All went on well for a day or two: but misfortune seemed never weary of tormenting this little family. A violent shower of rain fell. The nest being exposed, by the close clipping of the ivy leaves, the drugget got sopped, the rain half filled the nest, and the gardener found the four little ones lying motionless in the water. Once more they were taken away, dried near the fire, and placed in the nest of another bird fixed in a tree opposite the ivy. The parent birds in a few minutes occupied the nest, and never ceased their attentions until the brood were able to fly, and take care of themselves.

The story we have already related of Diedrik Müller's lion, is surpassed by another of a similar kind, which we take to be about the best lion-story that zoological records can furnish.

A hunter, in the wilds of Africa, had seated himself on a bank near a pool, to rest, leaving his gun, set upright against a rock, a few feet behind him. He was alone. Whether he fell asleep, or only into a reverie, he did not know, but suddenly he saw an enormous lion standing near him, attentively observing him. Their eyes met, and thus they remained, motionless, looking at each other. At length the hunter leaned back, and slowly extended his arm toward his gun. The lion instantly uttered a deep growl, and advanced nearer. The hunter paused. After a time, he very gradually repeated the attempt, and again the lion uttered a deep growl, the meaning of which was not to be mistaken. This occurred several times (as in the former case), until the man was obliged to desist altogether. Night approached; the lion never left him the whole night. Day broke; the lion still was there, and remained there the whole day. The hunter had ceased to make any attempt to seize his gun, and saw that his only hope was to weary the lion out by the fortitude of a passive state, however dreadful the situation. All the next night the lion remained. The man, worn out for want of sleep, dared not to close his eyes, lest the lion, believing him to be dead, should devour him. All the provision in his wallet was exhausted. The third night arrived. Being now utterly exhausted, and having dropped off to sleep, several times, and as often come back to consciousness with a start of horror at finding he had been asleep, he finally sunk backward, and lay in a dead slumber. He never awoke till broad day, and then found that the lion was gone.

On the question of "best" stories of animals, there are so many excellent stories of several species that the superlative degree may be hard to determine. Setting down the above, however, as the best lion-story, we will give what we consider to be (up to this time) the best elephant-story. In one of the recent accounts of scenes of Indian warfare (the title of the book has escaped us, and perhaps we met with the narrative in a printed letter), a body of artillery was described as proceeding up a hill, and the great strength of elephants was found highly advantageous in drawing up the guns. On the carriage of one of these guns, a little in front of the wheel, sat an artilleryman, resting himself. An elephant, drawing another gun, was advancing in regular order close behind. Whether from falling asleep, or over-fatigue, the man fell from his seat, and the wheel of the gun-carriage, with its heavy gun, was just rolling over him. The elephant comprehending the danger, and seeing that he could not reach the body of the man with his trunk, seized the wheel by the top, and, lifting it up, passed it carefully over the fallen man, and set it down on the other side.

The best dog-story--though there are a number of best stories of this honest fellow--we fear is an old one; but we can not forbear telling it, for the benefit of those who may not have met with it before. A surgeon found a poor dog, with his leg broken. He took him home, set it, and in due time gave him his liberty. Off he ran. Some months afterward the surgeon was awoke in the night by a dog barking loudly at his door. As the barking continued, and the surgeon thought he recognized the voice, he got up, and went down stairs. When he opened the door, there stood his former patient, wagging his tail, and by his side another dog--a friend whom he had brought--who had also had the misfortune to get a leg broken. There is another dog-story of a different kind, told by Mr. Jenyns, which we think very amusing. A poodle, belonging to a gentleman in Cheshire, was in the habit of going to church with his master, and sitting with him in the pew during the whole service. Sometimes his master did not come; but this did not prevent the poodle, who always presented himself in good time, entered the pew, and remained sitting there alone: departing with the rest of the congregation. One Sunday, the dam at the head of a lake in the neighborhood gave way, and the whole road was inundated. The congregation was therefore reduced to a few individuals, who came from cottages close at hand. Nevertheless, by the time the clergyman had commenced reading the Psalms, he saw his friend the poodle come slowly up the aisle, dripping with water: having been obliged to swim above a quarter of a mile to get to church. He went into his pew, as usual, and remained quietly there to the end of the service. This is told on the authority of the clergyman himself.

A hungry jackdaw once took a fancy to a young chicken which had only recently been hatched. He pounced upon it accordingly, and was carrying it off, when the hen rushed upon him, and beat him with her wings, and held him in her beak, until the cock came up, who immediately attacked the jackdaw, and struck him so repeatedly that he was scarcely able to effect his escape by flight. But the best hen-story is one in Mr. Jenyns' "Observations." A hen was sitting on a number of eggs to hatch them. An egg was missing every night; yet nobody could conjecture who had stolen it. One morning, after several had been lost in this way, the hen was discovered with ruffled feathers, a bleeding breast, and an inflamed countenance. By the side of the nest was seen the dead body of a large rat, whose skull had been fractured--evidently by blows from the beak of the valiant hen, who could endure the vile act of piracy no longer.

Mr. Jenyns relates a good owl-story. He knew a tame owl, who was so fond of music that he would enter the drawing-room of an evening, and, perching on the shoulder of one of the children, listen with great attention to the tones of the piano-forte: holding his head first on one side, then on the other, after the manner of connoisseurs. One night, suddenly, spreading his wings, as if unable to endure his rapture any longer, he alighted on the keys, and, driving away the fingers of the performer with his beak, began to hop about upon the keys himself, apparently in great delight with his own execution. This pianist's name was _Keevie_. He was born in the woods of Northumberland, and belonged to a friend of the Reverend Mr. Jenyns.

Good bear-stories are numerous. One of the best we take from the "Zoological Anecdotes." At a hunt in Sweden, an old soldier was charged by a bear. His musket missed fire, and the animal being close upon him, he made a thrust, in the hope of driving the muzzle of his piece down the bear's throat. But the thrust was parried by one of huge paws with all the skill of a fencer, and the musket wrested from the soldier's hand, who was forthwith laid prostrate. He lay quiet, and the bear, after smelling, thought he was dead, and then left him to examine the musket. This he seized by the stock, and began to knock about, as though to discover wherein its virtue consisted, when the soldier could not forbear putting forth one hand to recover his weapon. The bear immediately seized him by the back of the head, and tore his scalp over his crown, so that it fell over the soldier's face. Notwithstanding his agony, the poor fellow restrained his cries, and again pretended death. The bear laid himself upon his body, and thus remained, until some hunters coming up relieved him from this frightful situation. As the poor fellow rose, he threw back his scalp with his hand, as though it had been a peruke, and ran frantically toward them, exclaiming--"The bear! the bear!" So intense was his apprehension of his enemy, that it made him oblivious of his bodily anguish. He eventually recovered, and received his discharge in consequence of his loss of hair. There is another bear-story in this work, which savors--just a little--of romance. A powerful bull was attacked by a bear in a forest, when the bull succeeded in striking both horns into his assailant, and pinning him to a tree. In this situation they were both found dead--the bear, of his wounds; the bull (either fearing, or, from obstinate self-will, refusing, to relinquish his position of advantage) of starvation!

The beat cat-and-mouse story (designated "Melancholy Accident--a Cat killed by a Mouse") is to be found in "The Poor Artist," the author of which seems to have derived the story from a somewhat questionable source, though we must admit the possibility. "A cat had caught a mouse on a lawn, and let it go again, in her cruel way, in order to play with it; when the mouse, inspired by despair, and seeing only one hole possible to escape into--namely, the round red throat of the cat, very visible through her open mouth--took a bold spring into her jaws, just escaping between her teeth, and into her throat he struggled and stuffed himself; and so the cat was suffocated." It reads plausibly; let us imagine it was true.

The best spider-and-fly story we also take from the last-named book. "A very strong, loud, blustering fellow of a blue-bottle fly bounced accidentally into a spider's web. Down ran the old spider, and threw her long arms round his neck; but he fought, and struggled, and blew his drone, and fuzzed, and sung sharp, and beat, and battered, and tore the web in holes--and so got loose. The spider would not let go her hold round him--and _the fly flew away with the spider_!" This is related on the authority of Mr. Thomas Bell, the naturalist, who witnessed the heroic act.

A MISER'S LIFE AND DEATH.

This is Harrow Weal Common; and a lovely spot it is. Time was when the whole extent lay waste, or rather covered with soft herbage and wild flowers, where the bee sought her pasture, and the lark loved to hide her nest. But since then, cultivation has trenched on much of Harrow Weal. Cottages have risen, and small homesteads tell of security and abundance. It is pleasant to look upon them from this rising ground; to follow the windings of the broad stream, with pastures on either side, where sheep and cattle graze. Look narrowly toward yonder group of trees, and that slight elevation of the ground covered with wild chamomile; if the narrator who told concerning the miser of Harrow Weal Common has marked the spot aright, that mound and flowers are associated with the history of one whose profitless life affords a striking instance of the withering effects of avarice.

On that spot stood the house of Daniel Dancer; miserable in the fullest conception of the word: desolate and friendless, for no bright fire gleamed in winter on the old man's hearthstone; nor yet in spring, when all nature is redolent of bliss, did the confiding sparrow build her nest beside his thatch. The walls of his solitary dwelling were old and lichen-dotted; ferns sprung from out their fissures, and creeping ivy twined through the shattered window-panes. A sapling, no one knew how, had vegetated in the kitchen; its broken pavement afforded a free passage, and, as time went on, the sapling acquired strength, pushing its tall head through the damp and mouldering ceiling; then, catching more of air and light, it went upward to the roof, and, finding that the tiles were off and part of the rafters broken, that same tree looked forth in its youth and vigor, throwing its branches wide, and serving, as years passed on, to shelter the inmates of the hut.

Other trees grew round; unpruned and thickly-tangled rank grass sprang up wherever the warm sunbeams found an entrance; and as far as the eye could reach, appeared a wilderness of docks and brambles, with huge plantains and giant thistles, inclosed with a boundary hedge of such amazing height as wholly to exclude all further prospect.

Eighty acres of good land belonged to Dancer's farm. An ample stream once held its winding course among them, but becoming choked at the further end with weeds and fallen leaves, and branches broken by the wind, it spread into a marsh, tenanted alike by the slow, creeping blind-worm, and water-newt, the black slug, and frogs of portentous size. The soil was rich, and would have yielded abundantly; the timber, too, was valuable, for some of the finest oaks, perhaps, in the kingdom grew upon the farm; but the cultivation of the one, and the culling of the other, was attended with expense, and both were consequently left uncared for.

In the centre of this lone and wretched spot, dwelt the miserable Dancer and his sister, alike in their habits and penuriousness. The sister never went from home; the brother rarely, except to sell his hay. He had some acres of fine meadow-land, upon which the brambles had not trenched, and his attention was exclusively devoted to keeping them clear of weeds. Having no other occupation, the time of hay-harvest seems to have been the only period at which his mind was engrossed with business, and this too was rendered remarkable by the miser's laying aside his habits of penuriousness--scarcely any gentleman in the neighborhood gave his mowers better beer, or in greater quantity; but at no other time was the beverage of our Saxon ancestors found within his walls.

Some people thought that the old man was crazed; but those who knew him spoke well of his intelligence. As his father had been before him, so was he; his mantle had descended in darkness and in fullness on all who bore his name, and while that of Daniel Dancer was perhaps the most familiar, his three brothers were equally penurious. One sordid passion absorbed their every faculty; they loved money solely and exclusively for its own sake, not for the pleasures it could procure, nor yet because of the power it bestowed, but for the love of hoarding.

When the father of Daniel Dancer breathed his last, there was reason to believe that a large sum, amounting to some thousands, was concealed on the premises. This conjecture occasioned his son no small uneasiness, not so much from the fear of loss, as from the apprehension lest his brothers should find the treasure and divide it among themselves. Dancer, therefore, kept the matter as much as possible to himself. He warily and secretly sought out every hole and corner, thrusting his skinny hand into many a deserted mouse-hole, and examining every part of the chimney. Vain were all his efforts, till at length, on removing an old grate, he discovered about two hundred pounds, in gold and bank-notes, between two pewter dishes. Much more undoubtedly there was, but the rest remained concealed.

Strange beings were Dancer and his sister to look upon. The person of the old man was generally girt with a hay-band, in order to keep together his tattered garments; his stockings were so darned and patched that nothing of the original texture remained; they were girt about in cold and wet weather with strong bands of hay, which served instead of boots, and his hat having been worn for at least thirteen years, scarcely retained a vestige of its former shape. Perhaps the most wretched vagabond and mendicant that ever crossed Harrow Weal Common was more decently attired than this miserable representative of an ancient and honorable house.

The sister possessed an excellent wardrobe, consisting not only of wearing apparel, but table linen, and twenty-four pair of good sheets; she had also clothes of various kinds, and abundance of plate belonging to the family, but every thing was stowed away in chests. Neither the brother nor the sister had the disposition or the heart to enjoy the blessings that were liberally given them; and hence it happened that Dancer was rarely seen, and that his sister scarcely ever quitted her obscure abode.

The interior of the dwelling well befitted its occupants. Furniture, and that of a good description, had formerly occupied a place within the walls, but every article had long since been carefully secluded from the light, all excepting two antique bedsteads which could not readily be removed. These, however, neither Dancer nor his sister could be prevailed to occupy; they preferred sleeping on sacks stuffed with hay, and covered with horse-rugs. Nor less miserable was their daily fare. Though possessed of at least ten thousand pounds, they lived on cold dumplings, hard as stone, and made of the coarsest meal; their only beverage was water; their sole fire a few sticks gathered on the common, although they had abundance of wood, and noble trees that required lopping.

Thus they lived, isolated from mankind, while around them the desolation of their paternal acres, and the rank luxuriance of weeds and brambles, presented a mournful emblem of their condition. Talents, undoubtedly they had; kindly tempers in early life, which might have conduced to the well-being of society. Daniel especially possessed many admirable qualities, with good sense and native integrity; his manners, too, though unpolished by intercourse with the world, were at one time both frank and courteous, but all and each were absorbed by one master passion--sordid avarice took possession of his soul, and rendered him the most despicable of men.

At length Dancer's sister died. They had lived together for many years, similar in their penuriousness, though little, perhaps, of natural affection subsisted between them. The sister was possessed of considerable wealth, which she left to her brother. The old man greatly rejoiced at its acquisition; he resolved, in consequence, that her funeral should not disgrace the family, and accordingly contracted with an undertaker to receive timber in exchange for a coffin, rather than to part with gold.

Lady Tempest, who resided in the neighborhood, compassionating the wretched condition of an aged woman, sick, and destitute of even pauper comforts, had the poor creature conveyed to her house. Every possible alleviation was afforded, and medical assistance immediately obtained; but they came too late. The disease, which proceeded originally from want, proved mortal, and the victim of sordid avarice was borne unlamented to her grave.

There was crowding on the funeral day beside the road that led to Lady Tempest's. People came trooping from far and near, with a company of boys belonging to Harrow School, thoughtless, and amused with the strangeness of a spectacle which might rather have excited feelings of sorrow and commiseration. First came a coffin of the humblest kind, containing the emaciated corpse of one who had possessed ample wealth--a woman to whom had been committed the magnificent gift of life, fair talents, and health, with faculties for appropriating each to the glory of Him who gave them, but who, on dying, had no soothing retrospect of life, no thankfulness for having been the instrument of good to others, no hope beyond the grave. Behind that coffin, as chief-mourner, followed the brother, unbeloved, and heedless of all duties either to God or man--a miserable being; the possessor of many thousands, yet too sordid to purchase even decent mourning. It was only by the importunate entreaties of his relatives that he consented to unbind the hay-bands with which his legs were covered, and to put on a second-hand pair of black worsted stockings. His coat was of a whitish brown color, his waistcoat had been black about the middle of the last century, and the covering of his head was a nondescript kind of wig, which had descended to him as an heirloom. Thus attired, and followed and attended by a crowd whom curiosity had drawn together, went on old Daniel and the coffin of his sister toward the place of its sojourn. When there, the horse's girth gave way, for they were past all service, and the brother was suddenly precipitated into his sister's grave; but the old man escaped unhurt. The service proceeded; and slowly into darkness and forgetfulness went down the remains of his miserable counterpart.

One friend, however, remained to the miser--and this was Lady Tempest. That noble-minded woman had given a home to the sister, and sought by every possible means to alleviate her sufferings; now also, when the object of her solicitude was gone, she endeavored to inspire the brother with better feelings, and to ameliorate his miserable condition. This kindly notice by Lady Tempest, while it soothed his pride, served also to lessen the sufferings and sorrows of his declining age; and so far did her representations prevail, that, having given him a comfortable bed, she actually induced him to throw away the sack on which he slept for years. Nay, more, he took into his service a man of the name of Griffith, and allowed him an ample supply of food, but neither cat nor dog purred or watched beneath his roof; he had no kindliness of heart to bestow upon them, nor occasion for their services, for he still continued to live on crusts and fragments; even when Lady Tempest sent him better fare, he could hardly be prevailed to partake of it.

In his boyish days, he possessed, it might be, some natural feelings of affection toward his kind; but as years passed on, and his sordid avarice increased, he manifested the utmost aversion for his brother, who rivaled himself in penury and wealth, and still continued to pasture sheep on the same common. To his niece, however, he once presented a guinea, on the birth of a daughter, but this he made conditional, she was either to name the child Nancy, after his mother, or forfeit the whole sum.

Still, with that strange contrariety which even the most penurious occasionally present, gleams of kindness broke forth at intervals, as sunbeams on a stony waste. He was known secretly to have assisted persons whose modes of life and appearance were infinitely superior to his own; and though parsimonious in the extreme, he was never guilty of injustice, or accused of attempting to overreach his neighbors. He was also a second Hampden in defending the rights and privileges of those who were connected with his locality. While old Daniel lived, no infringements were permitted on Harrow Weal Common; he heeded neither the rank nor wealth of those who attempted to act unjustly, but, putting himself at the head of the villagers, he resisted such aggressions with uniform success. On one occasion, also, having been reluctantly obliged to prosecute a horse-stealer at Aylesbury, he set forth with one of his neighbors on an unshod steed, with a mane and tail of no ordinary growth, a halter for a bridle, a sack instead of a saddle. Thus equipped, he went on, till, having reached the principal inn at Aylesbury, the miser addressed his companion, saying,

"Pray, sir, go into the house and order what you please, and live like a gentleman, I will settle for it readily; but as regards myself, I must go on in my old way."

His friend entreated him to take a comfortable repast, but this he steadily refused. A penny-worth of bread sufficed for his meal, and at night he slept under his horse's manger; but when the business that brought him to Aylesbury was ended, he paid fifteen shillings, the amount of his companion's bill, with the utmost cheerfulness.

Grateful too, he was, as years went on, to Lady Tempest for her unwearied kindness, and he resolved to leave her the wealth which he had accumulated. His sister, too, expressed the same wish; and when, after six months of continued attention from that lady, Miss Dancer found her end approach, she instructed her brother to give their benefactress an acknowledgment from the one thousand six hundred pounds which she had concealed in an old tattered petticoat.

"Not a penny of that money," said old Dancer, unceremoniously to his sister. "Not a penny as yet. The good lady shall have the whole when I am gone."

At length the time came when the old man must be gone; when his desolate abode and neglected fields should bear witness no longer against him. Few particulars are known concerning his death. The fact alone is certain, that the evening before his departure, he dispatched a messenger to Lady Tempest requesting to see her ladyship, and that, being gratified by her arrival, he expressed great satisfaction. Finding himself somewhat better, his attachment to the hoarded pelf, which he valued even more than the only friend he had on earth, overcame the resolution he had formed of giving her his will; and though his hand was scarcely able to perform its functions, he took hold of the precious document and replaced it in his bosom.

The next morning he became worse, and again did the same kind lady attend the old man's summons; when, having confided to her keeping the title-deeds of wealth which he valued more than life, his hand suddenly became convulsed, his head sunk upon the pillow, and the miser breathed his last.

The house in which he died, and where he first drew breath, exhibited a picture of utter desolation. Those who crossed the threshold stood silent, as if awe-struck. Yet that miserable haunt contained the hoarded wealth of years. Gold and silver coins were dug up on the ground-floor; plate and table-linen, with clothes of every description, were found locked up in chests; large bowls, filled with guineas and half-guineas came to light, with parcels of bank-notes stuffed under the covers of old chairs. Some hundred-weights of waste-paper, the accumulation of half a century, were also discovered; and two or three tons of old iron, consisting of nails and horse-shoes, which the miser had picked up.

Strange communings had passed within the walls--sordid, yet bitter thoughts, the crushing of all kindly yearnings toward a better state of mind. The outer conduct of the man was known, but the internal conflict between good and evil remains untold.

Nearly sixty-four years have elapsed since the miser and his sister passed from among the living. Perchance some lichen-dotted stone, if carefully sought for and narrowly examined, may give the exact period of their death, but, as yet, no record of the kind has been discovered. Collateral testimonies, however, go far to prove that the death of the miser took place about the year 1775, and that his sister died a few months previous.

RESULTS OF AN ACCIDENT.--THE GUM SECRET.

In journeying from Dublin westward, by the banks of the Liffey, we pass the village of Chapelizod, and hamlet of Palmerstown. The water-power of the Liffey has attracted manufacturers at different times, who with less or greater success, but, unfortunately, with a general ill-success, have established works there. Paper-making, starch-making, cotton-spinning and weaving, bleaching and printing of calicoes, have been attempted. But all have been in turn abandoned, though occasionally renewed by some new firm or private adventurer. Into the supposed causes of failure it is not here necessary to inquire. The manufacture of starch has survived several disasters.

The article British gum, which is now so extensively used by calico-printers, by makers-up of stationery, by the Government in postage-stamp making, and in various industrial arts, was first made at Chapelizod. Its origin and history are somewhat curious.

The use of potatoes in the starch factories excited the vehement opposition of the people, whose chief article of food was thus consumed and enhanced in price. These factories were several times assailed by angry multitudes, and on more than one occasion set on fire by means never discovered. The fires were not believed to have been always accidental.

On the fifth of September, 1821, George the Fourth, on his return to England from visiting Ireland, embarked at Dunleary harbor, near Dublin. On that occasion the ancient Irish name of Dunleary was blotted out, and in honor of the royal visit that of Kingston was substituted. In the evening the citizens of Dublin sat late in taverns and at supper parties. Loyalty and punch abounded. In the midst of their revelry a cry of "fire" was heard. They ran to the streets, and some, following the glare and the cries, found the fire at a starch manufactory near Chapelizod. The stores not being of a nature to burn rapidly, were in great part saved from the fire, but they were so freely deluged with water, that the starch was washed away in streams ankle-deep over the roadways and lanes into the Liffey.

Next morning one of the journeymen block-printers--whose employment was at the Palmerstown print-works, but who lodged at Chapelizod--woke with a parched throat and headache. He asked himself where he had been. He had been seeing the King away; drinking, with thousands more, Dunleary out of, and Kingston into, the map of Ireland. Presently, his confused memory brought him a vision of a fire: he had a thirsty sense of having been carrying buckets of water; of hearing the hissing of water on hot iron floors; of the clanking of engines, and shouts of people working the pumps, and of himself tumbling about with the rest of the mob, and rolling over one another in streams of liquefied wreck, running from the burning starch stores.

He would rise, dress, go out, inquire about the fire, find his shopmates, and see if it was to be a working day, or once again a drinking day. He tried to dress; but--a--hoo!--his clothes were gummed together. His coat had no entrance for his arms until the sleeves were picked open, bit by bit; what money he had left was glued into his pockets; his waistcoat was tightly buttoned up with--what? Had he been bathing with his clothes on, in a sea of gum-arabic--that costly article used in the print-works?

This man was not the only one whose clothes were saturated with gum. He and four of his shopmates held a consultation, and visited the wreck of the starch factory. In the roadway, the starch, which, in a hot, calcined state, had been watered by the fire-engines the night before, was now found by them lying in soft, gummy lumps. They took some of it home; they tested it in their trade; they bought starch at a chandler's shop, put it in a frying-pan, burned it to a lighter or darker brown, added water, and at last discovered themselves masters of an article, which, if not gum itself, seemed as suitable for their trade as gum-arabic, and at a fraction of the cost.

It was their own secret; and, could they have conducted their future proceedings as discreetly as they made their experiments, they might have realized fortunes, and had the merit of practically introducing an article of great utility--one which has assisted in the fortune-making of some of the wealthiest firms in Lancaster (so long as they held it as a secret), and which now the Government of the British empire manufacture for themselves.

Its subsequent history is not less curious than that just related. Unfortunately for the operative block-printers, who discovered it, their share in its history is soon told.

It is said that six of them subscribed money to send one of their number to Manchester with samples of the new gum for sale; the reply which he received from drysalters and the managers of print-works, was either that they would have nothing to do with his samples, or an admonition to go home for the present, and return when he was sober. His fellow-workmen, hearing of his non-success and fearing the escape of the secret, sent another of their number to his aid with more money. The two had no better success than the one. The remaining four, after a time, left their work at Dublin, and joined the two in Manchester. They now tried to sell their secret. Before this was effected one died; two were imprisoned for a share in some drunken riots; and all were in extreme poverty. What the price paid for the secret was, is not likely to be revealed now. Part of it was spent in a passage to New Orleans, where it is supposed the discoverers of British gum did not long survive their arrival.

The secret was not at first worked with success. It passed from its original Lancashire possessor to a gentleman who succeeded in making the article of a sufficiently good quality; and at so low a price that it found a ready introduction in the print-works. But he could not produce it in large quantity without employing assistants, whom he feared to trust with a knowledge of a manufacture so simple and so profitable. In employing men to assist in some parts of the work, and shutting them out from others, their curiosity, or jealousy, could not be restrained. On one or two occasions they caused the officers of Excise to break in upon him when he was burning his starch, under the allegation that he was engaged in illicit practices. His manufactory was broken into in the night by burglars, who only wanted to rob him of his secret. Once the place was maliciously burned down. Other difficulties, far too numerous for present detail, were encountered. Still, he produced the British gum in sufficient quantities for it to yield him a liberal income. At last, in a week of sickness, he was pressed by the head of a well-known firm of calico-printers for a supply. He got out of bed; went to his laboratory; had the fire kindled; put on his vessel of plate-iron; calcined his starch, added the water, observed the temperature; and all the while held conversation with his keen-eyed customer, whom he had unsuspectingly allowed to be present. It is enough to say that this acute calico-printer never required any more British gum of the convalescent's making. Gradually the secret spread, although the original purchaser of it still retained a share of the manufacture.

When penny postage came into operation, it was at first doubtful whether adhesive labels could be made sufficiently good and low-priced, which would not have been the case with gum-arabic. British gum solved the difficulty; and the manufacturer made a contract to supply it for the labels. In the second year of his contract, a rumor was spread, that the adhesive matter on the postage stamps was a deleterious substance, made of the refuse of fish, and other disgusting materials. The great British gum secret was then spread far and wide. The public was extensively informed that the postage-label poison was made simply of--potatoes.

MY LITTLE FRENCH FRIEND.

Mademoiselle Honorine is a teacher of her own language in a cathedral town south of the Loire, celebrated for the finest church and the longest street in France; at least, so say the inhabitants, who have seen no others. The purest French is supposed to be spoken hereabouts, and the reputation thus given has for many years attracted hosts of foreigners anxious to attain the true accent formerly in vogue at the court of the refined Catherine de Medici. It is true that this extreme grace of diction and tone is not acknowledged by Parisians; who, when they had a court, imagined the best French was spoken in the capital where that court resided; and they have been long in the habit of sneering at the pretensions of their rivals; who, however, among foreigners, still keep their middle-age fame.

Mademoiselle Honorine is not a native of this remarkable town; and the French she teaches is of a different sort, for she comes from a far-off province, by no means so remarkable for purity of accent. She is an Alsatian, and her natal town is no other than Vancouleurs, where the tree under which Joan of Arc saw angels and became inspired, once existed.

As may be imagined, Mademoiselle Honorine is proud of this accident of birth, and tells with much exultation of having, at the age of fifteen, some thirty-five years ago, borne the part of La Pucelle in the grand procession to Domremy, formerly an annual festival. She relates that she attracted universal attention on that occasion, chiefly from the circumstance of her hair, which is now of silvery whiteness, having been equally so then, much to the admiration of all who beheld her.

"I was always," she remarks, with satisfied vanity, "celebrated for my hair, and I had at all times a high color and bright eyes; so that, though some people preferred the beauty of my sisters, I always got more partners than they at all our _fêtes_. It is true they all married, and no one proposed to me, except old Monsieur de Monzon, who suffered from the gout and a very bad temper; but I had no respect for his character and though he was rich, and I might have been a _châtelaine_, instead of such a poor woman as I am, still I refused him, for I preferred my liberty; and that, also, was the reason I left my uncle's domain, because I like independence. We used, my aunt, my uncle, and I, to spend most of our time at his country place, going out every day lark-catching, which we did with looking-glasses: they held the glasses and lured the birds, while I was ready with the net to throw over them. My uncle, however, was always scolding me for talking and frightening the birds away; so I got tired of this amusement and of the dependence in which I lived."

The independence preferred by Mademoiselle Honorine to lark-catching and snubbing, consists in giving lessons to the English. As, of late, we islanders have been as hard to catch as the victims of the looking-glasses, her occupation is not lucrative; and although she sometimes devotes her energies to the arts, in the form of twisted colored paper tortured into the semblance of weeping willows, and nondescript flowers, yet these specimens of ingenuity do not bring in a very large revenue. In fact, her income, when I knew her, could not be considered enormous; for, to pay house-rent, board, washing, and sundry little expenses, she possessed twelve francs a month: yet with these resources, nevertheless, she contrived to do more benevolent and charitable acts than any person I ever met with. She has always halfpence for the poor's bag at church--always farthings for certain regular pensioners, who expect her donation as she passes them, at their begging stations, on her way to her pupils. Moreover, on New-year's day, she has always the means of making the prettiest presents to a friend who for years has shown her countenance, and put little gains in her way.

She obtains six francs per month from a couple of pupils, whose merit is as great in receiving, as hers in giving lessons. These are two young workwomen who desire to improve their education, and daily devote to study the only unoccupied hour they possess. From six o'clock till seven, Mademoiselle Honorine, therefore, on her return from the five o'clock mass--which she never misses--calls at the garret of these devotees, and imparts her instruction in reading and writing to the zealous aspirants for knowledge.

"I would not," she says, "miss their lessons for the world; because, you see, I have thus always an eye upon their conduct, and have an opportunity of throwing in a little good advice, and making them read good books."

As these young damsels go out to their work directly after the lesson is over--taking breakfast at a late hour in the day--Mademoiselle Honorine provides herself, before starting to the five o'clock mass, with a bit of dry bread, which she puts in her pocket, ready to eat when the moment of hunger arrives. She never allows herself any other breakfast; and, as she drinks only cold water, no expenditure of fuel is necessary for this in her establishment. Except it occurs to any of her pupils--few of whom are much richer than her earliest-served--to offer her some refreshment to lighten her labors, Mademoiselle Honorine contrives to walk, and talk, and laugh, and be amusing on an empty stomach, till dinner-time, when she is careful to provide herself with an apple and another slice of bread, which she enjoys in haste, and betakes herself to other occupations, chiefly unremunerative--such as visiting a sick neighbor, reading to a blind friend, or taking a walk on the fashionable promenade with an infirm invalid, who requires the support of an arm.

Fire in France is an expensive luxury which she economizes--not that she indulges, when forced to allow herself in comfort, in much besides turf or pine-cones, with perhaps a sprinkling of fagot-wood if a friend calls in. She is able, however, to keep a little canary in a cage, who is her valued companion; and she nourishes, besides, several little productive plants in pots, such as violets and résida; chiefly, it must be owned, with a view of having the means of making floral offerings, on birthdays and christenings, to her very numerous acquaintances.

She is never seen out of spirits, and is welcomed as an object of interest whenever she flits along with her round, rosy, smiling face, shrined in braids of white hair, and set off with a smart fashionable-shaped bonnet; for she likes being in the fashion, and is proud of the slightness of her waist, which her polka shows to advantage. The strings of her bonnet, and the ribbons and buttons of her dress, are sometimes very fresh, and her mittens are sometimes very uncommon: this she is particular about, as she shows her hands a good deal in accompanying herself on the guitar, which she does with much taste, for her ear is very good and her voice has been musical. There are few things Mademoiselle Honorine can not do to be useful. She can play at draughts and dominos, can knit or net, knowing all the last new patterns; her satin stitch is neatness itself. It is suspected that she turns some of these talents to advantage; but that is a secret, as she considers it more dignified to be known only as a teacher.

She had a curious set of pupils when I became acquainted with her. Those whom I knew were English; who were, rather late in their career, endeavoring to become proficients in a tongue positively necessary for economical, useful, or sentimental purposes, as the case might be, but which in more early days they had not calculated on requiring.

They were of those who encourage late ambition--

"And from the dregs of life think to receive What the first sprightly running could not give."

The first of these was a bachelor of some fifty-five, formerly a medical practitioner, now retired, and living in a lively lodging, in a _premier_ that overlooked the Loire; which reflected back so much sun from its broad surface on a bright winter's day, that the circumstance greatly diminished his expenses in the dreaded article of fuel--a consideration with both natives and foreigners. Economy was strictly practiced by Dr. Drowler. Nevertheless, as he was very gallant, and loved to pay compliments to his fair young French friends, whom he did not suspect of laughing at him, he became desirous of acquiring greater facility in the lighter part of a language which served him indifferently well in the ordinary concerns of his bachelor house-keeping. He therefore resolved to take advantage of the low terms and obliging disposition of Mademoiselle Honorine, and placed himself on her form. There was much good-will on both sides, and his instructress declared that she should have felt little fear of his ultimate success, but for his defective hearing; which considerably interfered with his appreciation of those shades of pronunciation which might be necessary to render him capable of charming the attentive ears of the young ladies, who were on the tiptoe of expectation to hear what progress he had made in the language of Jean Jacques Rousseau.

Another of Mademoiselle Honorine's charges was Mrs. Mumble, a widow of uncertain age, whose early education had been a good deal left to nature; and who--her income being small--had sought the banks of the poetical Loire (in, she told her Somersetshire friends, the south of France) to make, as she expressed it, "both ends meet." "One lesson a week at a _franc_," she reflected, "won't ruin me, and I shall soon get to speak their language as well as the best of 'em." Mademoiselle Honorine herself would not have despaired of her pupil arriving at something approaching to this result, could she have got the better of a certain indistinctness of utterance caused by the loss of several teeth.

Miss Dogherty was a third pupil; a young lady of fifty, with very youthful manners, and a slight figure. She had labored long to acquire the true "Porris twang," as she termed it; but, finding her efforts unavailing, she had resolved during her winter in Touraine, to devote herself to the language, drawing it pure from the source; and agreed to sacrifice ten francs per month, in order, by daily hours of devotion, to reach the goal. An inveterate Tipperary accent interfered slightly with her views, but she hit on an ingenious expedient for concealing the defect; this was, never to open her mouth to more than half its size in speaking; and always to utter her English in a broken manner, which might convey to the stranger the idea of her being a foreigner. She had her cards printed as Mademoiselle Durté, which made the illusion complete.

But these pupils were not to be entirely relied on for producing an income--Mademoiselle Honorine could scarcely reckon on the advantages they presented for a continuance, sanguine as she was. In fact, she may be said to have, as a certainty, only one permanent pupil, whom she looks upon as her chief stay, and her gratitude for this source of emolument is such, that she is always ready to evince her sense of its importance by adopting the character of nursemaid, classical teacher--although her knowledge of the dead languages is not extensive--or general governess, approaching the maternal character the nearer from the compassion she feels for the pretty little orphan English boy, who lives under the care of an infirm old grandmother. With this little gentleman, whose domicile is situated about two miles from her own, at the top of a steep hill, she walks, and talks, and laughs, and teaches, and enjoys herself so much, that she considers it but right to reward him for the pleasure he gives her by expending a few sous every day in sweetmeats for his delectation; this sum making a considerable gap in the monthly salary his grandmother is able to afford. However, her disinterestedness is not thrown away here, and I learn with singular satisfaction that Mademoiselle Honorine having been detected in the act of devouring her dry crust, by way of breakfast, and her pupil having won from her the confession that she never had any other, a cup of hot chocolate was always afterward prepared and offered to her by the little student as soon as she entered his study. When I had an opportunity of judging--a fact which more than once occurred to me--of the capabilities of Mademoiselle Honorine's appetite, I was gratified, though surprised, to find that nothing came amiss to her; that she could enjoy any thing in the shape of fish, flesh, or fowl, and drank a good glass of Bordeaux, or even Champagne, with singular glee.

It happened, not long since, that the friend who had revealed to me the secret of her manner of life, was suddenly called upon to pay a sum of money on some railway shares she possessed; and, being unprepared, was lamenting in the presence of Mademoiselle Honorine, the inconvenience she was put to.

The next day, the lively little dame appeared with a canvas bag in her hand, containing no less a sum than five hundred francs. "Here," she said, smiling, "is the exact sum you want. It is most lucky I should happen to have as much. I have been collecting it for years; for, you know, in case of sickness, one likes to avoid being a burden to one's friends. It is at your service for as long a time as you like, and you will relieve me from anxiety in taking it into your hands." It was impossible to refuse the offer; and the good little woman was thus enabled to repay the many kindnesses she had received, and to add greatly to her own dignity; of which she is very tenacious.

"Ah!" said a Parisian lady to her one day, after hearing of her thousand occupations and privations, "how do you contrive to live; and what can you care about life? I should have had recourse to charcoal long ago, if I had been in your situation. Yet you are always laughing and gay, as if you dined on foie-gras and truffles every day of your existence!"

"So I do," replied the little heroine--"at least on what is quite as good--for I have all I want, all I care about, never owing a sous, and being a charge to no one. Besides, I have a secret happiness which nothing can take away; and, when I go into the church of a morning to mass, I thank God with all my heart for all the blessings he gives me, and, above all, for the extreme content which makes all the world seem a paradise of enjoyment. I never know what it is to be dull, and as for charcoal, I have no objection to it in a foot-warmer, but that is all the acquaintance I am likely to make with it."

"Poor soul!" returned the Parisienne, "how I pity you!"

BLEAK HOUSE.[D]

BY CHARLES DICKENS.

[Footnote D: Continued from the June Number.]